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# Automorphisms of Real 4 Dimensional Lie Algebras and the Invariant Characterization of Homogeneous 4-Spaces

## 1 Introduction

Automorphisms of 3-dimensional, real Lie Algebras , have been proven a powerful tool for analyzing the dynamics of 3+1 Bianchi Cosmological Models . At the classical level, time-dependent automorphisms inducing diffeomorphisms can be used to simplify the line element – and thus the Einstein’s Field Equations – without loss of generality . They also provide an algorithm for counting the number of essential constants; the results obtained agree for all Bianchi Types with the preexisting results  but, unlike these, the algorithm can be extended to 4 or more dimensions. At the quantum level, outer automorphisms provide integrals of motion of the classical Hamiltonian dynamics; their quantum analogues can be used to reconcile quantum Hamiltonian dynamics with the kinematics of homogeneous 3-spaces .

A corresponding analysis of these issues for the case of 4+1 spatially homogeneous geometries, seems very interesting in itself. It could also prove valuable for the nowadays fashionable brane world models. As a first step in implementing such an analysis, we exhibit the automorphisms for all, real, 4-dimensional Lie Algebras (a first treatise of the subject can be found in ) and subsequently use them, to invariantly describe homogeneous 4-spaces.

## 2 Automorphisms

Before exhibiting the results on the automorphisms and their generators, we briefly recall some basic elements of the Theory of Lie Groups. Topological issues will not concern us, since at this stage of study, are rather irrelevant.

Let $`V_N`$, be a vector space over the field $``$. For each point $`x^m`$ in the space, a set of transformations $`\stackrel{~}{x}^m=f^m(x^n;\alpha ^\mu )`$ depending on some parameters $`\alpha ^\mu `$ (with Greek indices ranging on the closed interval $`[1,\mathrm{},M]`$, while Latin ones, on the closed $`[1,\mathrm{},N]`$) is defined, endowed with the following properties:

* The parameters are essential, i.e. they are not functions of others; rather, they take values on a compact domain.
* There are particular values for each and every parameter $`\alpha ^\mu `$ – which without loss of generality can be taken to be all zero – such that $`x^m=f^m(x^n;0,\mathrm{},0)`$. In other words, the identity transformation, is reached continuously, when all the parameters reach this particular set of values (here the zeros).
* The Jacobian of the transformation, $`J_n^m=|f^m(x^k;\alpha ^\mu )/x^n|`$, is non vanishing on its entire domain of definition. For, every transformation, at least locally, must be invertible.

If one assumes that the parameters are small, and expands in Taylor series the transformations (the functions $`f^m`$ are taken to be $`C^n`$ differentiable, with $`n`$ depending on the application) he will get:

$`\stackrel{~}{x}^m=f^m(x^k;0,\mathrm{},0)+\alpha ^\mu \left({\displaystyle \frac{f^m(x^k;\alpha ^\nu )}{\alpha ^\mu }}|_{\alpha ^\nu =0}\right)+𝒪(\alpha ^\mu \alpha ^\nu )`$ (2.1)
(the Einstein Summation Convention, is in use). Then, a set of $`M`$, $`N`$-dimensional, vector fields (each for every essential parameter), is associated to the previous infinitesimal transformations:

$`X_\mu ^m={\displaystyle \frac{f^m(x^n;\alpha ^\nu )}{\alpha ^\mu }}|_{\alpha ^\nu =0}`$ (2.2)
These vector fields are called “Generators” and form an Algebra:

$`[X_\mu ,X_\nu ]=C_{\mu \nu }^\kappa X_\kappa `$ (2.3)
which is called Lie Algebra – due to the above mentioned properties. If the quantities $`C_{\mu \nu }^\kappa `$ do not depend on the space point $`x^m`$, they are called “Structure Constants”, otherwise “Structure Functions” and the corresponding algebras, open Lie Algebras. In what follows, the Lie Algebras, are assumed to be closed. In this case, the vector space $`V_N`$, admits a Group of Motions (i.e. transformations) $`G_M`$ to which the Lie Algebra of the generators of the transformations, is associated. Then it can be proven that $`M<N(N+1)/2`$ – see , for a detailed analysis.

The Jacobi Identities for the generators, hold:

$`[[X_\mu ,X_\nu ],X_\kappa ]+[[X_\nu ,X_\kappa ],X_\mu ]+[[X_\kappa ,X_\mu ],X_\nu ]=0`$ (2.4)
or in terms of the structure constants:

$`C_{\mu \nu }^\rho C_{\rho \kappa }^\sigma +C_{\nu \kappa }^\rho C_{\rho \mu }^\sigma +C_{\kappa \mu }^\rho C_{\rho \nu }^\sigma =0`$ (2.5)
If one contracts the index $`\sigma `$ with a contravariant index – e.g. $`\kappa `$ –, one gets the Contracted Jacobi Identities:

$`C_{\mu \nu }^\rho C_{\rho \sigma }^\sigma =0`$ (2.6)
and thus a “natural” quantity emerges, namely $`C_{\rho \sigma }^\sigma \nu _\rho `$, which is a covector under the action of $`GL(M,)`$ – see  and the references therein.

Under a linear mixing, i.e. the action of the $`GL(M,)`$, of the generators:

$`X_\nu \stackrel{~}{X}_\nu =L_\nu ^\mu X_\mu `$ (2.7)
the structure constants, transform – according to (2.3) – as:

$`C_{\mu \nu }^\kappa \stackrel{~}{C}_{\mu \nu }^\kappa =L_\mu ^\alpha L_\nu ^\beta (L^1)_\rho ^\kappa C_{\alpha \beta }^\rho `$ (2.8)
while:

$`\nu _\nu \stackrel{~}{\nu }_\nu =L_\nu ^\mu \nu _\mu `$ (2.9)
The subset of those transformations (i.e. of the form (2.7)) with respect to which the structure constants are invariant, is the Automorphism Group of the Lie Algebra $`Aut(G)`$. If $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu `$ are the matrices of this group, then:

$`C_{\mu \nu }^\kappa =\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\beta (\mathrm{\Lambda }^1)_\rho ^\kappa C_{\alpha \beta }^\rho `$ (2.10)
At first sight, in order to find the Automorphism Group of a given Lie Algebra (i.e. for a given set of non vanishing structure constants), one has to solve the cubic system (2.10), which can be transformed to quadratic by noting that the matrices of interest, are non singular and thus:

$`C_{\mu \nu }^\kappa \mathrm{\Lambda }_\kappa ^\rho =\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\beta C_{\alpha \beta }^\rho `$ (2.11)
but still, the quest for the solutions, remains a difficult task.

A first simplification may by achieved by observing that:

$`\nu _\nu =\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu \nu _\mu `$ (2.12)
A second simplification, makes use of the Killing-Cartan metric – provided by a famous theorem due to Cartan:

$`g_{\mu \nu }=C_{\beta \mu }^\alpha C_{\alpha \nu }^\beta `$ (2.13)
Automorphisms preserve its form i.e. are isometries of this metric:

$`g_{\mu \nu }=\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\beta g_{\alpha \beta }`$ (2.14)
The combined use of (2.11), (2.12) and (2.14) makes the first simpler to solve, providing us with useful necessary conditions restricting the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu `$’s.

In order to find the generators of the Automorphism Group of a given Lie Algebra, it is necessary to consider a family of automorphic matrices which is connected to the identity i.e. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu =\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu (\tau )`$ for some parameter $`\tau `$ such that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu (0)=I_M`$, with $`I_M`$ the $`M`$ dimensional identity matrix. Then if one substitutes this family to (2.11), differentiates with respect to this parameter, and sets at zero, one will get:

$`\lambda _\rho ^\kappa C_{\mu \nu }^\rho =\lambda _\mu ^\rho C_{\rho \nu }^\kappa +\lambda _\nu ^\rho C_{\mu \rho }^\kappa `$ (2.15)
where:

$`\lambda _\nu ^\mu ={\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu (\tau )}{d\tau }}|_{\tau =0}`$ (2.16)
is the requested generator. The system (2.15) is linear and thus easy to solve, when the values of the structure constants are given. The number of independent solutions to it, determines the number of the independent parameters of the generators of the Automorphism Group.

The situation in the literature, concerning the 4-dim, real Lie Algebras, is characterized by a certain degree of diversity. The main reason is that, unlike the case of 3-dim, real Lie Algebras, a unique decomposition of the structure constants’ tensor in terms of lower rank objects, has not been found. As a result, the presentations of Petrov , MacCallum  and Patera et. al. , differ substantially, especially as far as the number of different real Lie Algebras, is concerned.

In the following the non vanishing structure constants for the various 4-dimensional, real, Lie Algebras (according to Patera et. al. Ref.  which is considered to be the most complete and extensive), the automorphism matrices and their generators, are given in Table 1. Also, for each algebra, an irreducible form of a generic, $`4\times 4`$, symmetric, positive definite, real matrix is given, in Table 2, along with a suggested basis of invariants.

We now come to the invariant description of a homogeneous 4-space. Let $`\sigma _i^\alpha (x)`$ denote the basis of one forms, invariant under the action of the symmetry group of motions, acting simply transitively on the space. Then:

$`\sigma _{i,j}^\alpha (x)\sigma _{j,i}^\alpha (x)=2C_{\mu \nu }^\alpha \sigma _j^\mu (x)\sigma _i^\nu (x)`$ (2.17)
where $`C_{\mu \nu }^\alpha `$, are the structure constants of the corresponding Lie Algebra. Using this basis we can write, in these coordinates the most general, manifestly invariant, line element as:

$`ds^2=\gamma _{\alpha \beta }\sigma _i^\alpha (x)\sigma _j^\beta (x)dx^idx^j`$ (2.18)
where $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ is a numerical, $`4\times 4`$, real, positive definite, symmetric matrix. If we consider the class of general co-ordinate transformations (GCT’s) $`x^i=f^i(y^m)`$ which leave the given basis one forms quasi-form invariant, i.e. those satisfying:

$`\sigma _i^\alpha (x){\displaystyle \frac{x^i}{y^m}}=\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\alpha \sigma _m^\mu (y)`$ (2.19)
then we have a well defined, non trivial action, on the configuration space, spanned by $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$’s, given by:

$`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }_{\mu \nu }=\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\beta \gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ (2.20)
The relevant result for 3-spaces, are given in  and the generalization to 4-spaces, is obvious. The requirement for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ to be constant leads, through the integrability conditions for (2.19), to the restrictions:

$`C_{\mu \nu }^\rho \mathrm{\Lambda }_\rho ^\alpha =\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\kappa \mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\sigma C_{\kappa \sigma }^\alpha `$ (2.21)
which reveal $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$, as an element of the automorphism group of the corresponding Lie Algebra. Thus, the configuration space, is divided into equivalence classes by the action of the automorphism group according to (2.20).

In order to have an infinitesimal description of this action, we need to consider the generators $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$. Their defining relations are (2.15). We can easily see that the linear vector fields in the configuration space:

$`X_{(i)}=\lambda _{\mu (i)}^\alpha \gamma _{\alpha \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{}{\gamma _{\mu \nu }}}`$ (2.22)
induce, through their integral curves, exactly the motions (2.20) – $`(i)`$ is a collective index corresponding to a choice of base for $`\lambda _\mu ^\alpha `$ and counts the number of independent vector fields. Thus, if we wish for a scalar function $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Psi }(\gamma _{\alpha \beta })`$ to change only when we move from one class to another, then we must demand:

$`X_{(i)}\mathrm{\Psi }=0,i[1,\mathrm{},d],d<10`$ (2.23)
The solutions to this system of equations, say $`q^A=q^A(C_{\mu \nu }^\alpha ,\gamma _{\mu \nu })`$ lead to the finite description of the action of automorphisms – with $`A`$ taking its values on the interval $`[1,\mathrm{},10d]`$. By construction, they satisfy:

$`q^{(1)A}=q^{(2)A}\text{for every}(\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{(1)},\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{(2)})`$ (2.24)
connected through an automorphism, as in (2.20). A kind of inverse to this proposition, which completes the finite description of the 4-spaces, discussed here, is contained in the following:

###### Theorem 1.

Let $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{(1)},\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{(2)}`$ belong to the configuration space. If $`q^{(1)A}=q^{(2)A}`$ $`A`$, then there is $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha Aut(G)`$ such that $`\gamma _{\mu \nu }^{(2)}=\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\beta \gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{(1)}`$.

###### Proof.

We first observe that, as seen in Table 2, for each and every Lie Algebra, the – connected to the identity – component of the automorphism group, suffices to bring the generic, positive definite, real, $`4\times 4`$, $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ to an irreducible (though not unique) form $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{\text{Ir.}}`$, possessing a number of remaining arbitrary components which equals the number of independent $`q^{(A)}`$’s. Thus, in this ‘’gauge‘’ the hypothesis of the theorem i.e. $`q^{(1)A}=q^{(2)A}`$ $`A`$, implies – through the implicit function theorem  – that $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{\text{Ir.}(2)}=\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{\text{Ir.}(1)}`$. Therefore, if $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^{(2)\alpha },\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^{(1)\alpha }`$ are the simplifying automorphisms, i.e. $`\gamma _{\mu \nu }^{(2)}=\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^{(2)\alpha }\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^{(2)\beta }\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{\text{Ir.}(2)}`$ and $`\gamma _{\mu \nu }^{(1)}=\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mu ^{(1)\alpha }\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^{(1)\beta }\gamma _{\alpha \beta }^{\text{Ir.}(1)}`$ then the transformation
$`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha =(\mathrm{\Lambda }^1)_\rho ^{(1)\alpha }\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^{(2)\rho }`$ connects $`\gamma _{\mu \nu }^{(2)}`$ to $`\gamma _{\mu \nu }^{(1)}`$ and obviously belongs to $`Aut(G)`$. ∎

Returning to the form of the solutions to equations (2.23) it is straightforward to check that every scalar combination of $`C_{\mu \nu }^\lambda `$ and $`\gamma _{\mu \nu },\gamma ^{\alpha \beta }`$, is annihilated by all $`X_{(i)}`$’s. The number of independent such scalar contractions is, at most, six: the 10 $`\gamma _{\mu \nu }`$’s plus the 12 $`C_{\mu \nu }^\lambda `$’s (24 initially independent - 12 independent Jacobi Identities) minus 16 arbitrary elements of $`GL(4,)`$. The same number is obtained by observing that the automorphism group always contains the inner automorphism subgroup which has 4 generators thus, there will be at most, 10-4=6 independent scalar combinations.

A common, though not unique, suitable basis in the space of all such scalars, valid for all 4-dim, Real Lie Algebras is:

$`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5,q^6`$ (2.25a)
where:
$`q^1`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta \mu \nu }\gamma ^{\alpha \mu }\gamma ^{\beta \nu }`$ (2.25b)
$`q^2`$ $`=`$ $`C_{\beta \kappa }^\alpha C_{\alpha \lambda }^\beta \gamma ^{\kappa \lambda }`$ (2.25c)
$`q^3`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta \mu \nu }\mathrm{\Pi }^{\alpha \beta \mu \nu }`$ (2.25d)
$`q^4`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta \kappa \lambda }\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }\mathrm{\Pi }^{\alpha \beta \mu \rho }\gamma ^{\kappa \nu }\gamma ^{\lambda \sigma }`$ (2.25e)
$`q^5`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_\alpha \mathrm{{\rm Y}}_\beta \gamma ^{\alpha \beta }`$ (2.25f)
$`q^6`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\alpha \mathrm{\Omega }_\beta \gamma ^{\alpha \beta }`$ (2.25g)
with the allocations:

$`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta \mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`C_{\alpha \beta }^\rho C_{\mu \nu }^\sigma \gamma _{\rho \sigma }`$ (2.26)
$`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta \mu \nu }C_{\kappa \lambda }^\nu \gamma ^{\beta \lambda }\gamma ^{\mu \kappa }`$ (2.27)
$`\mathrm{\Omega }_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta \mu \nu }C_{\kappa \lambda }^\nu \mathrm{\Pi }^{\beta \lambda \mu \kappa }`$ (2.28)
(Greek indices are raised and lowered with $`\gamma ^{\alpha \beta }`$ and $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ respectively).

The number of functionally independent $`q^A`$’s is 6, only for a 5 out of the 30 homogeneous 4-spaces, here considered – a fact that is reminiscent of the analogous situation in Bianchi Types, where only Type $`VIII`$ and $`IX`$ possess three functionally independent $`q`$’s. For the rest of the cases, the number of functionally independent $`q^A`$’s is less than 6.

These $`q^A`$’s can serve as ‘’coordinates‘’ of the reduced configuration space on which the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, is to be founded.

## 3 Discussion

We have investigated the action of the automorphism group of all 4-dim, Real Lie Algebras, in the space of $`4\times 4`$, real, symmetric, and positive definite matrices, which is the configuration space of homogeneous 4-spaces (admitting an invariant basis of one-forms). These automorphisms naturally emerge as the non trivial action of the Diffeomorphism Group on this space. The finite invariant description of these 4-spaces, is given in terms of the scalar combinations of the structure constants with the scale factor matrix. The number of independent such scalars is found to be at most 6. These scalars can be considered either as the independent solutions to (2.23) or as the differential scalar contractions constructed out of the metric and its derivatives.
In 3-dim these are the curvature and/or higher derivative curvature scalars; in 4-dim there are also scalar combinations of the metric and its derivatives of degree greater than 3 (metric invariants ), which can not be expressed as higher derivative curvature invariants.
The $`q^A`$’s given in (2.25b) may be curvature, higher derivative curvature, or metric invariants. They irreducibly characterize the corresponding homogeneous space. These quantities are useful both at the classical and quantum level: classically the irreducible of the scale factor matrix, (which in the light of the Theorem are essentially the $`q^A`$’s) can be used as a starting point for solving the Einstein Field Equations of the corresponding 5-dim cosmological models. Quantum mechanically the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, when an action principle exists, is to be constructed on the reduced configuration space spanned by the $`q^A`$’s. The reasoning of this is the desire to have “gauge” invariant wave functions.

Our analysis does not treat the Kantowski-Sacks like geometries (homogeneous spaces with multiply transitive groups of motions). These are 6 in number .

Finally, we would like to mention a word about the computation of the basis of invariants: it can be carried out using a symbolic algebra package (such as Mathematica) and the hard thing is to find a basis valid for all the 30 homogeneous spaces.The price one pays is that one has to consider as many as 10 powers of the structure constants ( i.e. 10 derivatives of the metric . This, however,is a worthwhile sacrifice of simplicity, since it will enable one to make comparative studies of the corresponding 5-dimensional Quantum Cosmologies.

## Table Captions

Table1
The first column gives the names of the Lie Algebras according to . The second, gives the non vanishing structure constants. Column three, exhibits the corresponding automorphism group $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ –along with the disconnected to the identity component, when it exists. Finally, in column four, the generators of the automorphism group $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$, are presented.

Table2
The first column gives the names of the Lie Algebras according to . The second, gives a possible irreducible form for a generic $`4\times 4`$, real, symmetric and positive definite matrix, $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ as resulting by the action of the corresponding automorphism group. Care has been taken, so that the exhibited reduced form can always be achieved. Finally, in column three, a set of functionally idependent metric invariants, is given. Functional independence has been tested using the reduced form of $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$’s –given in column 2. However, since the reduction has been achieved by the appropriate automorphism group, and since this action is nothing but the effect of a general co-ordinate transformation, one concludes that the given metric invariants are functionally indepedendet, with respect to the generic $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$, as well.

| TABLE 1 | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | Non Vanishing | Automorphisms | Generators |
|  | Structure Constants | $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ | $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ |
| $`4A_1`$ |  | $`GL(4,\mathrm{})`$ | $`GL(4,\mathrm{})`$ |
| $`A_2A_1`$ | $`C_{12}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ a_5& a_6& 0& 0\\ a_9& 0& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ a_{13}& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& 0\\ g_5& g_6& 0& 0\\ g_9& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ g_{13}& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`2A_2`$ | $`C_{12}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^4=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ a_5& a_6& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ or $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_7& a_8\\ 1& 0& 0& 0\\ a_{13}& a_{14}& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& 0\\ g_5& g_6& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,1}A_1`$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{11}a_6a_{10}a_7& a_2& a_3& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& 0\\ 0& a_{10}& a_{11}& 0\\ 0& a_{14}& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_6+g_{11}& g_2& g_3& g_4\\ 0& g_6& g_7& 0\\ 0& g_{10}& g_{11}& 0\\ 0& g_{14}& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,2}A_1`$ | $`C_{13}^1=1`$ $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{23}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& 0\\ 0& a_1& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& g_2& g_3& 0\\ 0& g_1& g_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,3}A_1`$ | $`C_{13}^1=1`$ $`C_{23}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& 0\\ a_5& a_6& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& g_2& g_3& 0\\ g_5& g_6& g_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,4}A_1`$ | $`C_{13}^1=1`$ $`C_{23}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& a_3& 0\\ 0& a_6& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ or $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& a_2& a_3& 0\\ a_5& 0& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& g_3& 0\\ 0& g_6& g_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |

| TABLE 1 (Continued) | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | Non Vanishing | Automorphisms | Generators |
|  | Structure Constants | $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ | $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ |
| $`A_{3,5}^\alpha A_1`$ |  |  |  |
| $`0<|\alpha |<1`$ | $`C_{13}^1=1`$ $`C_{23}^2=\alpha `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& a_3& 0\\ 0& a_6& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& g_3& 0\\ 0& g_6& g_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,6}A_1`$ | $`C_{13}^2=1`$ $`C_{23}^1=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& 0\\ a_2& a_1& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ , $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& 0\\ a_2& a_1& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& g_2& g_3& 0\\ g_2& g_1& g_4& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,7}^\alpha A_1`$ | $`C_{13}^1=\alpha `$ $`C_{13}^2=1`$ $`C_{23}^1=1`$ |  |  |
| $`0<\alpha `$ | $`C_{23}^2=\alpha `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& 0\\ a_2& a_1& a_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& a_{15}& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& g_2& g_3& 0\\ g_2& g_1& g_7& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& g_{15}& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{3,8}A_1`$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{13}^2=1`$ $`C_{12}^3=1`$ | see Appendix |  |
| $`A_{3,9}A_1`$ | $`C_{12}^3=1`$ $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{31}^2=1`$ | see Appendix |  |
| $`A_{4,1}`$ | $`C_{24}^1=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{11}a_{16}^2& a_7a_{16}& a_3& a_4\\ 0& a_{11}a_{16}& a_7& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& a_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_{11}+2g_{16}& g_7& g_3& g_4\\ 0& g_{11}+g_{16}& g_7& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ |

| TABLE 1 (Continued) | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | Non Vanishing | Automorphisms | Generators |
|  | Structure Constants | $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ | $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ |
| $`A_{4,2}^\alpha `$ | $`C_{14}^1=\alpha `$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ |  |  |
| $`\alpha (0,1)`$ | $`C_{34}^3=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& 0& a_4\\ 0& a_6& 0& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_6& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& 0& g_4\\ 0& g_6& 0& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_6& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,2}^1`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ |  |  |
|  | $`C_{34}^3=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& 0& a_4\\ a_5& a_6& 0& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_6& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& 0& g_4\\ g_5& g_{11}& 0& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,3}`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& 0& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_6& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& 0& g_4\\ 0& g_{11}& g_7& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,4}`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ |  |  |
|  | $`C_{34}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^3=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& a_4\\ 0& a_1& a_2& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_1& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& g_7& g_3& g_4\\ 0& g_1& g_7& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_1& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{\alpha ,\beta }`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=\alpha `$ $`C_{34}^3=\beta `$ |  |  |
| $`1\alpha <\beta <1`$, $`\alpha \beta 0`$ |  | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& 0& a_4\\ 0& a_6& 0& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& 0& g_4\\ 0& g_6& 0& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |

| TABLE 1 (Continued) | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | Non Vanishing | Automorphisms | Generators |
|  | Structure Constants | $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ | $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{\alpha ,\alpha }`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=\alpha `$ $`C_{34}^3=\alpha `$ |  |  |
| $`1\alpha <1`$, $`\alpha 0`$ |  | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& 0& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_{10}& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& 0& g_4\\ 0& g_6& g_7& g_8\\ 0& g_{10}& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{\alpha ,1}`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=\alpha `$ $`C_{34}^3=1`$ |  |  |
| $`1\alpha <1`$, $`\alpha 0`$ |  | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& a_3& a_4\\ 0& a_6& 0& a_8\\ a_9& 0& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& g_3& g_4\\ 0& g_6& 0& g_8\\ g_9& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{1,1}`$ | $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^3=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& a_4\\ a_5& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ a_9& a_{10}& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& g_2& g_3& g_4\\ g_5& g_6& g_7& g_8\\ g_9& g_{10}& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,6}^{\alpha ,\beta }`$ | $`C_{14}^1=\alpha `$ $`C_{24}^2=\beta `$ $`C_{24}^3=1`$ |  |  |
| $`\alpha 0`$, $`\beta 0`$ | $`C_{34}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^3=\beta `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& 0& 0& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_7& a_6& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_1& 0& 0& g_4\\ 0& g_{11}& g_{10}& g_8\\ 0& g_{10}& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,7}`$ | $`C_{14}^1=2`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ |  |  |
|  | $`C_{34}^3=1`$ $`C_{23}^1=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_6^2& a_{12}a_6& a_{12}(a_6+a_7)+a_6a_8& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_6& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}2g_{11}& g_{12}& g_{12}+g_8& g_4\\ 0& g_{11}& g_7& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |

| TABLE 1 (Continued) | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | Non Vanishing | Automorphisms | Generators |
|  | Structure Constants | $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ | $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ |
| $`A_{4,8}`$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^3=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{11}a_6& a_{12}a_6& a_{11}a_8& a_4\\ 0& a_6& 0& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ or | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_{11}+g_6& g_{12}& g_8& g_4\\ 0& g_6& 0& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
|  |  | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{10}a_7& a_{10}a_8& a_{12}a_7& a_4\\ 0& 0& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_{10}& 0& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ |  |
| $`A_{4,9}^\beta `$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{14}^1=1+\beta `$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ |  |  |
| $`0<|\beta |<1`$ | $`C_{34}^3=\beta `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{11}a_6& a_{12}a_6/\beta & a_8a_{11}& a_4\\ 0& a_6& 0& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_{11}+g_6& g_{12}/\beta & g_8& g_4\\ 0& g_6& 0& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,9}^1`$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{14}^1=2`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ |  |  |
|  | $`C_{34}^3=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{11}a_6a_{10}a_7& a_{12}a_6+a_{10}a_8& a_8a_{11}a_7a_{12}& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_{10}& a_{11}& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_{11}+g_6& g_{12}& g_8& g_4\\ 0& g_6& g_7& g_8\\ 0& g_{10}& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
| $`A_{4,9}^0`$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{14}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_{11}a_6& a_2& a_8a_{11}& a_4\\ 0& a_6& 0& a_8\\ 0& 0& a_{11}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_{11}+g_6& g_2& g_8& g_4\\ 0& g_6& 0& g_8\\ 0& 0& g_{11}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |

| TABLE 1 (Continued) | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | Non Vanishing | Automorphisms | Generators |
|  | Structure Constants | $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_\beta ^\alpha `$ | $`\lambda _\beta ^\alpha `$ |
| $`A_{4,10}`$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{24}^3=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_6^2+a_7^2& a_{12}a_7a_6a_8& a_{12}a_6a_7a_8& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_7& a_6& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ or | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}2g_{11}& g_8& g_{12}& g_4\\ 0& g_{11}& g_{10}& g_8\\ 0& g_{10}& g_{11}& g_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
|  |  | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_6^2a_7^2& a_{12}a_7+a_6a_8& a_{12}a_6+a_7a_8& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_7& a_6& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ |  |
| $`A_{4,11}^\alpha `$ | $`C_{23}^1=1`$ $`C_{14}^1=2\alpha `$ $`C_{24}^2=\alpha `$ |  |  |
| $`\alpha >0`$ | $`C_{24}^3=1`$ $`C_{34}^2=1`$ $`C_{34}^3=\alpha `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_6^2+a_7^2& (w1)/(1+\alpha ^2)& (w2)/(1+\alpha ^2)& a_4\\ 0& a_6& a_7& a_8\\ 0& a_7& a_6& a_{12}\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}2g_{11}& g_2& g_3& g_4\\ 0& g_{11}& g_{10}& g_2+\alpha g_3\\ 0& g_{10}& g_{11}& \alpha g_2g_3\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |
|  |  | $`w1=a_6(\alpha a_{12}+a_8)+a_7(\alpha a_8a_{12})`$ |  |
|  |  | $`w2=a_6(a_{12}\alpha a_8)+a_7(\alpha a_{12}+a_8)`$ |  |
| $`A_{4,12}`$ | $`C_{13}^1=1`$ $`C_{23}^2=1`$ $`C_{14}^2=1`$ |  |  |
|  | $`C_{24}^1=1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& a_4\\ a_2& a_1& a_4& a_3\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ or $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a_1& a_2& a_3& a_4\\ a_2& a_1& a_4& a_3\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}g_6& g_5& g_8& g_7\\ g_5& g_6& g_7& g_8\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)`$ |

## Appendix A Appendix

We give the automorphisms and their generators for $`A_{3,8}A_1`$ and $`A_{3,9}A_1`$ Lie Algebras, in symbolic (matrix) notation.

* $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\text{Rotation}_{xy}\text{Boost}_{xz}\text{Boost}_{yz}C`$ (A.1)
where:

$`\text{Rotation}_{xy}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{cos}(a_1)& \mathrm{sin}(a_1)& 0& 0\\ \mathrm{sin}(a_1)& \mathrm{cos}(a_1)& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ (A.6)
$`\text{Boost}_{xz}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{cosh}(a_2)& 0& \mathrm{sinh}(a_2)& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ \mathrm{sinh}(a_2)& 0& \mathrm{cosh}(a_2)& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ (A.11)
$`\text{Boost}_{yz}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{cosh}(a_3)& \mathrm{sinh}(a_3)& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{sinh}(a_3)& \mathrm{cosh}(a_3)& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ (A.16)
$`C`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& a_4\end{array}\right)`$ (A.21)
The generator:

$`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& g_2& g_3& 0\\ g_2& 0& g_7& 0\\ g_3& g_7& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ (A.26)
* $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\text{Rotation}_{xy}\text{Rotation}_{xz}\text{Rotation}_{yz}C`$ (A.27)
where:

$`\text{Rotation}_{xy}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{cos}(a_1)& \mathrm{sin}(a_1)& 0& 0\\ \mathrm{sin}(a_1)& \mathrm{cos}(a_1)& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ (A.32)
$`\text{Rotation}_{xz}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{cos}(a_2)& 0& \mathrm{sin}(a_2)& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ \mathrm{sin}(a_2)& 0& \mathrm{cos}(a_2)& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ (A.37)
$`\text{Rotation}_{yz}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{cos}(a_3)& \mathrm{sin}(a_3)& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{sin}(a_3)& \mathrm{cos}(a_3)& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ (A.42)
$`C`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& a_4\end{array}\right)`$ (A.47)
The generator:

$`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& g_2& g_3& 0\\ g_2& 0& g_7& 0\\ g_3& g_7& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& g_{16}\end{array}\right)`$ (A.52)

| TABLE 2 | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | (Possible) Reducible Form of $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ | Functionally Independent Invariants |
| $`4A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | None |
| $`A_22A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2`$ |
| $`2A_2`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& \gamma _{13}& \gamma _{14}\\ 0& 1& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{24}\\ \gamma _{13}& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5,q^6`$ |
| $`A_{3,1}A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1`$ |
| $`A_{3,2}A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{3,3}A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2`$ |
| $`A_{3,4}A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |

| TABLE 2 (Continued) | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | (Possible) Reducible Form of $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ | Functionally Independent Invariants |
| $`A_{3,5}^\alpha A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{3,6}A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{3,7}^\alpha A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^3,q^5,q^6`$ |
| $`A_{3,8}A_1`$ and $`A_{3,9}A_1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& \gamma _{14}\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ \gamma _{14}& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5,q^6`$ |
| $`A_{4,1}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& \gamma _{12}& 0& 0\\ \gamma _{12}& \gamma _{22}& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,2}^\alpha `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& \gamma _{13}& 0\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& \gamma _{23}& 0\\ \gamma _{13}& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5,q^6`$ |

| TABLE 2 (Continued) | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | (Possible) Reducible Form of $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ | Functionally Independent Invariants |
| $`A_{4,2}^1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& \gamma _{13}& 0\\ 0& 1& \gamma _{23}& 0\\ \gamma _{13}& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,3}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& \gamma _{13}& 0\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& 0& 0\\ \gamma _{13}& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,4}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& \gamma _{23}& 0\\ 0& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{\alpha ,\beta }`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& \gamma _{13}& 0\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& \gamma _{23}& 0\\ \gamma _{13}& \gamma _{23}& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{\alpha ,\alpha }`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& 0& 0\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{\alpha ,1}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& \gamma _{23}& 0\\ 0& \gamma _{23}& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2`$ |
| $`A_{4,5}^{1,1}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1`$ |

| TABLE 2 (Continued) | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | (Possible) Reducible Form of $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ | Functionally Independent Invariants |
| $`A_{4,6}^{\alpha ,\beta }`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& \gamma _{12}& \gamma _{13}& 0\\ \gamma _{12}& 1& 0& 0\\ \gamma _{13}& 0& \gamma _{33}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,7}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,8}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& \gamma _{23}& 1& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,9}^\beta `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,9}^1`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3`$ |
| $`A_{4,9}^0`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |
| $`A_{4,10}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5`$ |

| TABLE 2 (Continued) | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lie Algebra | (Possible) Reducible Form of $`\gamma _{\alpha \beta }`$ | Functionally Independent Invariants |
| $`A_{4,11}^\alpha `$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma _{11}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& \gamma _{24}\\ 0& 0& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^3,q^4,q^5,q^6`$ |
| $`A_{4,12}`$ | $`\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \gamma _{22}& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}\\ 0& \gamma _{23}& \gamma _{33}& \gamma _{34}\\ 0& \gamma _{24}& \gamma _{34}& \gamma _{44}\end{array}\right)`$ | $`q^1,q^2,q^3,q^4,q^5,q^6`$ |

Acknowledgements
One of us (G.O. Papadopoulos) is currently a scholar of the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y.) and acknowledges the relevant financial support.


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# Limits on 𝜈_𝜏 mass by DELPHI

## 1 Introduction

The question whether neutrinos are massive is one of the outstanding issues in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

Among the possible frameworks, the “see-saw” mechanism  is considered to be the most interesting because it explains the smallness of neutrino masses by connecting them to the scale of new physics. In fact the see-saw mechanism assumes a neutrino mass hierarchy similar to that of quarks or leptons.

On the basis of cosmological arguments a stable tau neutrino with a mass larger than a few eV$`/c^2`$ cannot exist; however unstable neutrinos can be more massive, so a direct neutrino mass measurement of the order of a few MeV$`/c^2`$ would suggest that the $`\nu _\tau `$ is unstable .

The clearest evidence of neutrinos having mass comes from the oscillation experiments , even if this kind of experiments cannot give the neutrino mass scale. Only direct measurements can do it and the most recent experiments  have fixed the mass of the $`\nu _e`$ to be about 2 eV$`/c^2`$. However the results of the oscillation experiments must be confirmed before concluding that massive unstable neutrinos cannot exist.

The kinematic properties of the observed final state in hadronic $`\tau `$ decays give direct bounds on $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$. The best decay channels for a missing mass measurement are those with a high hadronic mass, where the little energy is available for undetected neutrinos. This kind of $`\tau `$ decays presents a small branching fraction , so the data sample generally consists of a few events.

High multiplicity decays $`\tau ^\pm 3\pi ^\pm 2\pi ^{}\overline{\nu }_\tau (\nu _\tau )`$ have been selected for this analysis. The end point of the invariant mass distribution of the hadronic system, compared to $`m_\tau `$, gives a limit on the $`\nu _\tau `$ mass.

Several direct experimental measurements have been done on the $`\nu _\tau `$ mass. The world’s best limit was obtained by the ALEPH Collaboration  with $`m_{\nu _\tau }<`$ 18.2 MeV$`/c^2`$ at 95% confidence level.

## 2 The method

Multi-hadron decays of the $`\tau `$ lepton  are due to the couplings of the charged weak current to hadrons, which in the case of $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau `$ decays reduces to the coupling of the $`W^\pm `$ boson to the $`ud^{}`$ current.

We can describe the tau decay as a two-body decay:

$$\tau ^{}(E_\tau ,\stackrel{}{p}_\tau )h^{}(E_h,\stackrel{}{p}_h)+\nu _\tau (E_\nu ,\stackrel{}{p}_\nu )$$
(1)
where the hadronic system $`h^{}`$ is composed by five pions. In the tau rest frame, the energy of the hadronic system is used to compute the value of $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ because of its dependence on $`m_\tau `$, $`m_h`$ and $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$:

$$E_h^{}=\frac{m_\tau ^2+m_h^2m_{\nu _\tau }^2}{2m_\tau }$$
(2)
In the laboratory frame this energy becomes:

$$E_h=\gamma \left(E_h^{}+\beta p_h^{}\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)$$
(3)
where $`\beta `$ is the tau velocity, $`\gamma `$ is the boost factor and $`\theta `$ is the angle between the direction of the $`\tau `$ and that of the hadronic system in the tau rest frame. We assume that the $`\tau `$ energy, $`E_\tau `$, is equal to the beam energy, $`E_{beam}`$. Initial (ISR) and final (FSR) state radiation can reduce $`E_\tau `$ and will be considered later in section 6.

Because of the undetected neutrino, the direction of the $`\tau `$ is not determined, so $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ cannot be computed directly. However, the energy of the hadronic system is helpful because it partially recovers the loss of information. In fact $`E_h`$ depends on $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ and it must fall inside the interval $`E_{min}E_hE_{max}`$:

$$E_h^{min,max}=\gamma \left(E_h^{}\pm \beta p_h^{}\right)$$
(4)
As a consequence kinematic allowed regions are defined for different values assumed by $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$, as shown in Fig. 1.

The probability to find an event in the allowed region clearly depends on the kinematic of the decay and on the resonance structure. Because both the invariant mass $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ and the $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$ of the hadronic system are functions of the measured momenta, a positive correlation arises between these two quantities. The error ellipses for each event must be taken into account, so that, as shown in Fig. 1, event 1 constrains the neutrino mass $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ much more than event 2, even if the latter has a higher hadronic mass. This is the advantage of fitting the distribution of the two variables $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ and $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$, rather than $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ alone.

## 3 The DELPHI detector

The DELPHI detector and its performances are described in detail in . The whole detector, composed by a main central part (*barrel*) and by two forward regions (*end-caps*), covers the full solid angle. A superconducting solenoid provides a uniform axial magnetic field of 1.23 T. Charged particles are tracked in the barrel region using a combination of four cylindrical subdetectors: the silicon Vertex Detector (VD), the Inner Detector (ID), the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and the Outer Detector (OD). Electron and photon idenification is provided by the High density Projection Chamber (HPC) located outside the OD.

## 4 Data selection

For LEP centre-of-mass energies of $`\sqrt{s}M_{Z^0}`$, $`\tau ^+`$ and $`\tau ^{}`$ are produced back-to-back (ignoring radiative effects). Each $`\tau `$ decays producing one, three or more charged particles in addition to one or two neutrinos and, possibly, neutral mesons. All particles apart from neutrinos can be detected by DELPHI. $`e^+e^{}Z^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ decays are easy to identify because the two back-to-back jets are narrow and with low charged multiplicity. The presence of neutrinos implies that not all the energy in the event is seen and the invariant mass of the final state particles $`m_h^{}`$ is less than $`m_\tau `$.

The background from multi-hadron production $`e^+e^{}Z^0q\overline{q}`$ at LEP energies can easily be reduced since it is characterized by a relatively high charged multiplicity and by a high invariant mass. Final states from $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{}`$ and $`e^+e^{}\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ leave very characteristic signatures in DELPHI and are effectively discriminated.

The analysis presented here is based on the data collected by DELPHI from 1992 to 1995; the centre-of-mass energy $`\sqrt{s}`$ of the $`e^+e^{}`$ system was between 89 and 93 GeV.

### 4.1 $`𝒆^\mathbf{+}𝒆^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}𝒁^\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}𝝉^\mathbf{+}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}`$ selection

The first step in data selection was to reject all non$`Z^0`$ decay (cosmics, secondary interactions in the vacuum pipe, etc.). Each event has been divided into two hemispheres defined by the plane perpendicular to the thrust axis. It was required that the reconstructed topology was one charged particle in one side and five in the other (1-5 topology).

Events were accepted if $`P_{vis}`$, the sum of the momenta of all the charged particles plus the total neutral electromagnetic energy, was greater than 0.09$`\sqrt{s}`$, rejecting some of the hadronic $`Z^0`$ decays, $`\gamma \gamma `$ interactions and beam gas interactions. To reject cosmics and to reduce further the contamination from beam gas events it was required that, defining particles 1 and 2 as the most energetic in each hemisphere, $`r_{1,2}<`$ 1.5 cm and $`|z_{1,2}|<`$ 4.5 cm, where $`r_j`$ and $`z_j`$ are their transverse and longitudinal distances of closest approach to the average beam spot.

Part of the hadronic $`q\overline{q}`$ background was rejected by the requirement on the topology and on the impact parameters as described above. The remaining low multiplicity $`q\overline{q}`$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$ events can be easily rejected by requiring that the isolation angle $`\theta _{iso}`$ be greater than 160°. The isolation angle is defined as the minimum angle between any pair of tracks belonging to opposite hemispheres.

Another discriminating variable was the total momentum of the 5-prong system, $`P_5`$. It must be greater than 30 GeV$`/c`$. Even if either $`\theta _{iso}`$ and $`P_5`$ are related to the invariant mass of the hadronic system, the distribution of $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ in the region of the end point is not affected by these selections.

To reduce further $`q\overline{q}`$ it was required that the total number of neutrals must be less than six. The hadronic $`Z^0`$ decays usually have a large number of neutrals, whereas $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ events should have no or few neutrals. Four-fermion background was suppressed by the requirement on the topology.

### 4.2 $`𝝉^\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟑}𝝅^\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟐}𝝅^{\mathbf{}}\overline{𝝂}_𝝉\mathbf{(}𝝂_𝝉\mathbf{)}`$ selection

The minimum momentum among the five charged particles and the minimum number of hits in the Vertex Detector help to reject those events that are reconstructed with a 5-prong multiplicity because of a secondary interaction or a $`\pi ^0`$ Dalitz decay ($`\pi ^0\gamma e^+e^{}`$), as for example $`\tau ^\pm 3\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau \pi ^0`$. For this kind of events, secondary interactions or successive decays cause a degradation of the outcoming momenta. Events with $`P_{min}`$ less than 0.5 GeV$`/c`$ were rejected.

The minimum invariant mass of pairs of oppositely charged particles in the hemisphere containing five tracks, $`m_{ee}^{}`$ (assuming the electron mass for both), was required to be greater than 0.05 GeV$`/c^2`$, to reject events with a $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ conversion. The $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau \pi ^0`$ decays are rejected requiring the maximum value of the electromagnetic energy being less than 4 GeV.

### 4.3 Final data sample

The composition of the selected data sample, as determined with the Montecarlo, is listed in Table 1.

A total of 47 $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau `$ candidates have been selected in the data. Fig. 2 shows the distribution of the hadronic invariant mass $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ for the simulation (signal and backgrounds) and a comparison between the simulation and data. $`Z^0q\overline{q}`$ events have values of the invariant mass greater than 2 GeV$`/c^2`$; other kind of $`\tau `$ decays have small values of $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$, so they are located on the left side of the invariant mass spectrum.

## 5 The likelihood function

In order to determine the upper limit on $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ an unbinned likelihood fit has been performed. The likelihood function depends both on the invariant mass $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ and on the energy $`E_{5\pi }`$ of the hadronic system:

$$=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{obs}}{}}P(m_i^{},E_i|m_{\nu _\tau })$$
(5)
where $`N_{obs}`$ is the number of the selected candidates, while $`P(m_i^{},E_i|m_{\nu _\tau })`$ is the probability for observing each selected event $`i`$ at the position ($`m_i^{}m_{5\pi }^{}`$, $`E_iE_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$) in the kinematic plane defined as a function of the tau neutrino mass $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill P(m_i^{},E_i|m_{\nu _\tau })& =\frac{1}{N}\frac{d^2N(m_i^{},E_i|m_{\nu _\tau })}{dmdE}\hfill \\ & (m,E,\rho ,\sigma _m,\sigma _E)\hfill \\ & ϵ(m,E)\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
where $``$ is the experimental resolution function of the detector and $`ϵ`$ is the selection efficiency. Both $``$ and $`ϵ`$ could be a function of either the invariant mass and the normalized energy. The shape of the resolution function $``$ has been determined from simulation. Since the two variables are correlated, $``$ is a 2D gaussian depending on the three parameters $`\sigma _m`$, $`\sigma _E`$ and $`\rho `$. The invariant mass resolution is about 16 MeV$`/c^2`$ (in average) and the normalized energy resolution is of the order of 10<sup>-2</sup> ($`\sigma _E`$ 500 MeV). If the resolution is constant, the experimental resolution function can be factorized, and the likelihood $``$ becomes simpler. In this analysis each event is considered with its proper resolution.

The selection efficiency $`ϵ`$ was found to be constant with respect to the invariant mass and the energy if $`m_{5\pi }^{}>`$ 1.6 GeV$`/c^2`$ and $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$ greater than 0.85. As a consequence, the fit will be restricted to this region of the ($`m_{5\pi }^{}`$, $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$) plane. Fig. 3 shows this upper part of the plane with the 15 candidates used in the fit.

The theoretical prediction $`P(m_i^{},E_i|m_{\nu _\tau })`$ has been calculated as a function of $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ including initial (ISR) and final (FSR) state radiation with the KORALZ 4.0  Montecarlo event generator for $`e^+e^{}Z^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$. The KORALZ 4.0 simulator incorporated the TAUOLA 2.4  package for modelling the $`\tau `$ lepton decays.

The $`1/N`$ factor in equation (6) ensures that the probability density used in the event likelihood is normalized for any values of neutrino mass because the distribution of events in the kinematic allowed region of the ($`m_{5\pi }^{}`$, $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$) plane depends on the value of $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$.

The fraction of backgrounds has been determined from simulation. As shown in Fig. 2, hadronic events have values of the invariant mass greater than $`m_\tau `$, while background from $`\tau 3\pi ^\pm 1\pi ^0\nu _\tau `$ or $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \pi ^0\nu _\tau `$ gives contribution in the low invariant mass part of the spectrum. The end point of $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ is therefore reasonably background-free. However a flat background (6% of signal) has been considered, so the likelihood was expanded as:

$$=\alpha _{signal}+(1\alpha )_{bgd}$$
(7)
where $`\alpha `$ is the background fraction. Only 15 of the 47 selected candidates are in the fit region. The fit gives an upper limit on the neutrino mass of $`m_{\nu _\tau }<`$ 48.0 MeV$`/c^2`$ at 95% CL. Fig. 4 shows the log-likelihood for these 15 events.

A possible bias in the analysis method has been investigated by fitting high statistics Montecarlo samples with three different input values of $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$: 0, 30 and 60 MeV$`/c^2`$. In all cases the best fit results are in good agreement with the input values. The corrisponding values are listed in Table 2.

The expected best limit for $`m_{\nu _\tau }=`$ 0 MeV$`/c^2`$ is about 30 MeV$`/c^2`$.

## 6 Systematic effects

Four sources of systematic errors have been considered. For each source a new fit has been performed after having changed the parameter of that particular source by one standard deviation. The difference between the 95% CL upper limit on the tau neutrino mass computed in section 5 and the one obtained by the modified likelihood has been considered as the systematic effect due to that particular source. Then all these variations have been summed in quadrature to obtain the global systematic error which can be added linearly to the upper limit of the original fit.

The systematic sources considered in this analysis are summarized in the following:

* the tau mass $`m_\tau `$ and its energy $`E_\tau `$;
* detector effects such as the hadronic mass scale and the experimental resolution function. The DELPHI hadronic mass scale studied using the $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}\pi ^+`$ decay shows a shift of +4 MeV$`/c^2`$ ;
* the selection efficiency and the effect of the size of the fitted region;
* the intermediate structure of the decay. The hadronic invariant mass depends on the dynamics of the decay. Intermediate resonances have the effect of shifting the shape of $`m_{5\pi }^{}`$ spectrum to higher $`q^2`$ values. Some studies have been performed by assuming $`\tau ^\pm a_1^\pm \pi ^\pm \pi ^{}\overline{\nu }_\tau (\nu _\tau )`$ decay, $`\tau ^\pm \rho 2\pi ^\pm \pi ^{}\overline{\nu }_\tau (\nu _\tau )`$ or $`\tau ^\pm 2\rho \pi ^\pm \overline{\nu }_\tau (\nu _\tau )`$.

Fig. 5 shows the invariant mass distribution compared with those predicted by a pure phase space model and by the models with intermediate resonances. A model with a $`2\rho \pi ^\pm `$ seems to be preferred. However, because of the small number of observed events, it is not possible to state which is the correct resonance. Table 3 shows the 95% CL upper limits obtained for the resonance structures considered.

Table 4 summarises all the variations considered in this analysis.

## 7 Review of the existing collider results

There are some interesting limits on the $`\nu _\tau `$ mass obtained by collider experiments. Recent results are summarized in Table 5 and shortly presented in the following sections.

### 7.1 Low energy measurements

The main difference between measurements performed at different $`\sqrt{s}`$ values is that the selection between high multiplicity $`\tau `$ decays and low multiplicity hadronic events from $`e^+e^{}q\overline{q}`$ becomes easier and easier with the increasing of the center-of-mass energy. So LEP experiments select $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ events more efficiently and with a higher purity. On the other hand, taus are produced more abundantly at CESR.

CLEO collected tau pairs produced at a center-of-mass energy of 10.6 GeV. The analysis was performed using $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau `$ events and fitting the 36 selected events, using the invariant mass and the hadronic energy. The 95% CL upper limit was $`m_{\nu _\tau }<`$ 33.9 MeV$`/c^2`$ .

In addition CLEO analyzed $`\tau ^\pm 3\pi ^\pm 2\pi ^0\nu _\tau `$ decays. This channel can be studied better at low energy machine, because at LEP photons from $`\pi ^0`$ conversions are highly collimated and the selection more difficult. An upper limit at the 95% confidence level of 35.9 MeV$`/c^2`$ was found. The combined result found by CLEO is 30.0 MeV$`/c^2`$ .

An analysis with $`\tau ^\pm 3\pi ^\pm \pi ^0\overline{\nu }_\tau (\nu _\tau )`$ decays was also done . This is a useful decay because of the larger branching ratio than 5-prong, and in addition the invariant mass is very close to $`m_\tau `$. From a data sample of 29058 candidates, the obtained 95% CL upper limit on the tau neutrino mass is 28.0 MeV$`/c^2`$.

Fig. 6 shows the distribution of the 5 body selected events in the ($`m_{5\pi }^{}`$, $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$) plane.

ARGUS used $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau `$ events collected at center-of-mass energy of about 10.6 GeV. Performing a fit only to the hadronic invariant mass, the result was $`m_{\nu _\tau }<`$ 31.0 MeV$`/c^2`$ .

### 7.2 High energy measurements

At LEP energy, $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ events present a typical two back-to-back narrow jets structure. ALEPH and OPAL, as DELPHI, have analyzed data collected at center-of-mass energy equal or close to the $`Z^0`$ resonance.

ALEPH obtained two separate limits by fitting the distribution of the visible energy and the invariant mass. The fits to the 2939 $`\tau ^\pm 3\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau `$ and to the 55 $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \left(\pi ^0\right)\nu _\tau `$ events have given 95% CL upper limits on $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ of 26.5 MeV$`/c^2`$ and 22.3 MeV$`/c^2`$ respectively. These two results have been combined to obtain a 95% confidence level upper limit of 18.2 MeV$`/c^2`$, and this is the world’s best limit on $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ . Fig. 7 shows the distribution of events in the upper part of the ($`m_{5\pi }^{}`$, $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$) plane for the 5-prong data.

Also OPAL determined an upper limit for $`m_{\nu _\tau }`$ with the decay $`\tau ^\pm 5\pi ^\pm \nu _\tau `$. A limit of 43.2 MeV$`/c^2`$ at 95% CL has been obtained using a two-dimensional method in the hadronic invariant mass and energy distributions from 22 selected candidates . Combining this result with OPAL’s previously published measurement using $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}3h^\pm \overline{\nu }_\tau +3h^{}\nu _\tau `$ decays, a new limit of $`m_{\nu _\tau }<`$ 27.6 MeV$`/c^2`$ (95% CL) was obtained .

Before the 5-prong analysis presented here, DELPHI has set a limit with a measurement of the leptonic branching fractions of the $`\tau `$ lepton. The 95% confidence level limit found was 66.0 MeV$`/c^2`$ . This method is however limited by the precision of the leptonic branching ratio measurements, and is not competitive with the one described in this talk.

## 8 Conclusions

The CLEO experiment had analyzed a very large statistics sample and its mass and energy resolutions were better than LEP experiments.

Looking at Fig. 3 and 7, it’s easy to outline that with comparable mass and energy resolutions, the position of events in the ($`m_{5\pi }^{}`$, $`E_{5\pi }/E_{beam}`$) plane determines a “*luck factor*” for an experiment. So, the ALEPH limit is strongly driven by the two candidates lying in top right-hand corner of the kinematic allowed region. The most sensitive region of that plane for OPAL and DELPHI is empty. OPAL and DELPHI’s 5-prong analysis present very similar results.

## Acknowledgemets

The author thanks Clara Matteuzzi, Tommaso Tabarelli de Fatis and Francisco Matorras for their helpful suggestions and for many discussions for this analysis.


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# Statistics of turbulence profile at Cerro Tololo

## 1 Introduction

A crucial role of ‘seeing’ in ground-based astronomy was recognized long time ago. Nowadays it is possible to improve the seeing with adaptive optics (AO), but this technology is itself so dependent on the properties of turbulence that it generated a new and important driver for detailed atmospheric studies. AO requires a knowledge of the temporal time constant and of the vertical turbulence profile, in addition to the overall (integrated) seeing. It is desirable to have a reliable statistics of these parameters for a given site in order to predict the performance of AO systems. A real-time monitoring of optical turbulence would help in optimizing the AO operation. For example, the scintillometer of Ochs. et al. was regularly operated at the AMOS station for this reason (Chonasky & Deuel, 1988).

The vertical distribution of the optical turbulence strength (characterized by the altitude dependence of the refractive index structure constant $`C_n^2`$) is notoriously difficult to monitor. Balloon-born micro-thermal probes are expensive and sample the turbulence profile (TP) only once per flight, without any statistical averaging. Optical remote sounding by SCIDAR (Fuchs et al., 1998) is free from this drawback, but it requires moderately large telescopes, sensitive detectors, and powerful signal processing. For these reasons SCIDAR was only used in a campaign mode at existing observatories.

A limited number of TPs measured world-wide revealed that turbulence is typically concentrated in few thin layers. The physical mechanism generating such distribution was studied by Coulman et al. (1995). It inspired designers of AO systems to add more deformable mirrors, each conjugated to its own layer, and thus to compensate seeing over a much wider field with such multi-conjugate AO (MCAO). The promising potential and wide popularity of MCAO added even more pressure to measure turbulence profiles; the Gemini site testing campaign at Cerro Pachón (Vernin et al., 2000; Avila et al., 2000) is an example of such MCAO-driven study.

Ground-based telescopes of next generation with apertures of 20-100 m will include turbulence compensation already in their designs. Sites for these telescopes are being selected with a strong weight given to AO-related turbulence parameters; site surveys based on seeing measurements alone, as was the case for the previous generation of telescopes, are no longer sufficient. Seeing is very much dominated by local and orographic effects that diminish predictive power of seeing data. With modern computers, a modeling of optical turbulence becomes feasible, giving new insights into the physics of seeing and new guidance to the choice of sites, e.g. (Masciadri et al., 2001). But computer models still need real TPs for their calibration.

A low-resolution turbulence profile monitor, Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS), was developed in response to the needs of AO and MCAO, as well as a portable instrument for site testing (Tokovinin & Kornilov, 2001; Kornilov et al., 2002). MASS was operated in 2002 for several months at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) jointly with the Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) (Boccas, 2000). This paper presents the results of this campaign. It appears to be the most extensive data base of turbulence profiles existing to date worldwide.

Our aim was to gain some understanding of the turbulence localization above CTIO. We were specifically interested in the fraction of turbulence in the first few hundred meters over the ground and in the seeing that can be attained if these low layers were compensated by AO. Ground-layer compensation offers improved seeing in a much wider field than does classical AO (Rigaut, 2001). This option is being studied for the 4.2-m SOAR telescope located close to CTIO on Cerro Pachón (Tokovinin et al., 2002), as well as for extremely large telescopes of next generation. Our work quantifies the gain expected from ground-layer compensation at a specific good astronomical site, CTIO.

In Sect. 2 we briefly describe the instrumentation used in this study and give typical examples of the data. The statistics of the vertical turbulence distribution is explored in Sect. 3. Sect. 4 contains summary and conclusions.

## 2 Site, instruments and data

### 2.1 Site

Cerro Tololo is located in Chile some 500 km to the north of Santiago ($`70\mathrm{°}48\mathrm{}52\stackrel{}{.}7`$ W, $`30\mathrm{°}09\mathrm{}55\stackrel{}{.}5`$ S). Altitude is 2200 m above sea level (a.s.l.). Among other Chilean sites, Cerro Tololo is known for its low ground wind speed.

The two instruments used in this campaign, Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS) and Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM), were placed at the northern edge of the summit, facing the direction of prevailing wind (Fig. 1). DIMM is placed in a small tower at some 6 m above the ground. The MASS feeding telescope was installed on the Losmandy equatorial mount, initially on the ground and later in a small dome.

### 2.2 MASS

MASS (Tokovinin & Kornilov, 2001; Kornilov et al., 2002) measures low-resolution turbulence profiles from the scintillation of single stars. Light flux is received by four concentric-ring apertures with diameters of 2, 3.7, 7.0, and 13 cm and detected by photo-multipliers in photon counting mode with 1 ms time sampling. Statistical analysis of the fluxes with 1 minute accumulation time produces 10 scintillation indices that correspond to 4 individual apertures and 6 pair-wise aperture combinations. MASS is fed by a 14-cm off-axis reflecting telescope specially designed for this purpose.

At the beginning of a night, MASS is pointed to a bright ($`V<2^m`$) blue single star close to zenith. After background measurement and star centering, a series of continuous 1-minute integrations is started, with either manual or automatic guiding of the telescope. When zenith distance of the star increases above $`45^{}`$, the telescope is re-pointed to another object (a total of 3-4 stars per night).

A model of turbulence distribution with 6 layers at fixed altitudes of 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 km above ground is fitted to the data. Each ‘layer’ represents in fact an integral of turbulence $`J_l`$

$$J_l=_{\mathrm{layer}}C_n^2(h)W(h)dh$$
(1)
measured in m1/3, where $`C_n^2(h)`$ is the refractive-index structure constant in m-2/3 and $`W(h)`$ is the dimensionless response function of the instrument. MASS response functions are nearly triangular, going to zero at the altitudes of adjacent layers (Fig. 2). Thus, the 8-km layer measures, roughly, integrated turbulence strength from 6 to 12 km, while 16-km layer measures everything above 12 km. Turbulence at 6 km will show up in 4-km and 8-km ‘layers’ with equal intensity. The sum of all response functions is constant (within 10%) at altitudes above 0.5 km.

Atmospheric seeing $`ϵ_l`$ (full width at half maximum of a long-exposure image in a large telescope) produced by a turbulent layer can be computed from the intensity $`J_l`$. For $`ϵ_l`$ in arcseconds at $`\lambda =500`$ nm and $`J_l`$ in m1/3,

$$ϵ_l=(J_l/6.810^{13})^{3/5}.$$
(2)
The sum of all layer intensities measured by MASS gives a good estimate of the ‘free-atmosphere seeing’ $`ϵ_f`$ – the seeing that would be obtained without contribution of the turbulence in the first 500 m above ground. The free-atmosphere seeing is also estimated by MASS directly from a combination of 3 scintillation indices. There is a very good agreement between $`ϵ_f`$ computed from the integrated profiles and directly. More details on the restoration procedure are given in (Tokovinin et al., 2002). It is shown in this study that noise in MASS is signal-dependent, becoming smaller under low-turbulence conditions. The strength of dominating layers is always measured with a typical relative error of 10% which may be as low as $`410^{15}`$ m1/3 under calm conditions.

MASS data are reduced in real time and stored in an ASCII file, a profile every minute. Many additional parameters (instrumental configuration, stellar fluxes, quality of the model fit) are also written to this file. This permits to identify and reject any wrong data. The reasons for erroneous data are guiding errors, wrong background estimates, and, by far most numerous, clouds. It was found that MASS gives consistent and reproducible results through thin cirrus clouds because slow light variations (below 1 Hz) are filtered out in the data reduction algorithm. We rejected only the data with low stellar fluxes and with flux variance (in 1 minute with 1 s flux averaging) of more than 1% that indicated varying cloud transmission during integration.

### 2.3 DIMM

DIMM measures the Fried parameter $`r_0`$ related to the full seeing $`ϵ=0.98\lambda /r_0`$ at wavelength $`\lambda `$ (Sarazin & Roddier, 1990; Tokovinin, 2002). The seeing is deduced from the variance of the angle-of-arrival fluctuations (or image motion) is two small apertures.

The CTIO DIMM (Boccas, 2000) uses 25 cm Meade as feeding telescope. The diameter of the apertures is 95 mm (partially obstructed), the distance between their centres is 15.3 cm. Images of a bright star formed by both apertures are separated by a wedge prism placed on one entrance aperture and detected by a CCD camera with pixel size of $`0\stackrel{}{.}77`$. Frame exposure time is alternating between 5 ms and 10 ms, the integration time for seeing estimate is 1 minute, with acquisition rate about 300 images per minute. Upon background subtraction, the centroids of images are computed in a window of 8 pixel radius. The variance of centroid coordinate differences in two orthogonal directions is corrected for noise variance and converted to seeing. The bias in seeing caused by finite exposure time is corrected by the modified exponential prescription as detailed in (Tokovinin, 2002). The DIMM data are stored in an ASCII file and are also available through WEB in real time.

DIMM operates in a robotic mode, opening its dome and pointing suitable stars when the meteo conditions are adequate. Guiding is done in-between 1-minute data accumulations. Robotic operation was interrupted repeatedly by failures to find a star which called for manual interventions (the Meade mount does not have absolute position sensors to recover its pointing) and by failures of the drive motors, replaced several times. For this reason the time coverage of DIMM is somewhat less than that of MASS for the same period.

### 2.4 Comparison between MASS and DIMM

MASS and DIMM measure different ‘seeings’, $`ϵ_f`$ and $`ϵ`$. Whenever the contribution of the first 500 m above ground to the total seeing is small, we must obtain $`ϵ_fϵ`$, otherwise the inequality $`ϵ_f<ϵ`$ must hold. This is indeed the case. In Fig. 3 we display a portion of data for the night of June 19-20 2002 with very calm atmospheric conditions. Around 9.5h UT an increased turbulence at 2 km dominated the seeing, with both instruments giving very similar results. For the rest of the night, the full seeing $`ϵ`$ was very good, but still worse than $`ϵ_f`$ because of ground-layer turbulence.

The condition $`ϵ_fϵ`$ illustrated above was not exceptional, but, on the contrary, was encountered regularly. Dominating high layers were frequently located at 0.5 – 1 km, but could be as high as 8 km. The agreement between the two very different instruments, MASS and DIMM, is better than one could expect; it gives confidence that both produce correct data.

Fig. 4 shows free-atmosphere seeing compared to the full seeing measured simultaneously (interpolated to the moments of MASS measurement from two adjacent DIMM points) for the whole data set. The occasional equality $`ϵ_fϵ`$ is clearly seen. A small number of points is located below the diagonal, $`ϵ_f>ϵ`$. These points can be explained by noise and by the fact that both instruments used different stars, so small localized patches of turbulence occasionally caused spikes in the MASS seeing not matched by DIMM. The inverse is also happening, of course.

### 2.5 Data overview

First useful MASS data were obtained on March 21-27 2002 during the commissioning of this instrument. Systematic profile monitoring started on April 29. Here we consider the data obtained to July 28 inclusive, with 3 complete months covered. During this period MASS worked for 58 nights, but some of them were partially cloudy with a reduced number of data. On a clear night MASS measured some 500-600 profiles. The total number of TPs used for the analysis (after the cleaning mentioned above) is 22300, of which 16968 TPs have matching DIMM data.

The periods of bad weather are apparent in Fig. 5 where nightly median values of $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ_f`$ are plotted. A particularly long cloudy period occurred between May 11 and June 6.

All seeing and TP data in this article refer to the wavelength of 500 nm and to zenith. The following results characterize atmosphere at Cerro Tololo in the period May-July 2002. This corresponds to autumn and winter conditions, typically worse than average.

## 3 Data analysis

### 3.1 Relative contribution of atmospheric layers to seeing

Table 1 contains the main levels of cumulative distributions of seeing: total $`ϵ`$, free-atmosphere $`ϵ_f`$, and ground-layer seeing $`ϵ_g=(ϵ^{5/3}ϵ_f^{5/3})^{3/5}`$. In 7% of cases with $`ϵ_f>ϵ`$ we assume that ground layer seeing was close to zero. The data used for this analysis refer only to cases when both MASS and DIMM measurements are available. We also include the distribution of the isoplanatic angle $`\theta _0`$ which is readily computed from MASS data.

Supposing that ground-layer turbulence can be measured and corrected by AO, we can estimate the resulting improvement in seeing. Of course, realistic adaptive optics will not correct ground-layer turbulence perfectly, but, on the other hand, it will partially correct higher layers. Still, the analysis presented in Table 2 and in Fig. 6 gives a quantitative idea on the gain in angular resolution expected from ground-layer correction. The gain increases when a thicker slab of turbulence is corrected, but at the same time the size of corrected field becomes smaller.

Table 1 also contains the distribution of the fraction of $`C_n^2`$ integral contained in the first 500 m above the ground, $`f_g=(ϵ_g/ϵ)^{5/3}`$. We studied this parameter separately for good ($`<0\stackrel{}{.}6`$) and bad ($`>1\mathrm{}`$) seeing and did not find any substantial dependence. For example, median fractions of ground layer for good and bad seeing are 0.57 and 0.53, respectively. The largest median contribution of ground layer – 0.66 – is found for seeing between $`0\stackrel{}{.}6`$ and $`1\mathrm{}`$. Turbulence profiles measured at the nearby mountain Cerro Pachón by Vernin et al. (2000) led to a model where average contribution of ground layer is 65% (Ellerbroek & Rigaut, 2000).

Our results should be compared to the extensive monitoring of turbulence profile at Cerro Tololo with Generalized SCIDAR reported by Vernin et al. (2000) and Avila et al. (2000). These authors obtained 6900 TPs over 22 nights distributed in 4 campaigns throughout year 1998. They find median total seeing of $`ϵ=1\stackrel{}{.}06`$ ($`0\stackrel{}{.}85`$ when dome contribution is excluded), median free-atmosphere seeing $`ϵ_f=0\stackrel{}{.}56`$ and median isoplanatic angle $`\theta _0=2\stackrel{}{.}14`$. The agreement with our data is encouraging. Free atmosphere was more perturbed in April and July compared to January and October 1998. Thus, we expect that somewhat better seeing and larger isoplanatic angles will be measured during summer months.

Barletti et al. (1976) proposed a TP model based on 67 micro-thermal soundings. It predicts an average free-atmosphere seeing (all layers above 1 km) of $`0\stackrel{}{.}80`$. Their ‘lucky observer’ model assumes the lowest turbulence levels measured at each altitude and predicts $`ϵ_f=0\stackrel{}{.}28`$. We see from Table 1 that such conditions are indeed encountered at Cerro Tololo 10% of time and that the median $`ϵ_f`$ is significantly better than $`0\stackrel{}{.}80`$. Marks (2002) used 15 soundings in Antarctica to claim that upper atmosphere there is exceptionally calm, with a mean $`ϵ_f=0\stackrel{}{.}37`$. Equivalent or better conditions do occur at Cerro Tololo 25% of time even during unfavorable winter months.

It is interesting that even when all layers except the highest are corrected, the expected seeing is almost never better than $`0\stackrel{}{.}15`$. The same conclusion is strikingly apparent in Fig. 4 where $`ϵ_f`$ has a sharp lower cutoff at $`0\stackrel{}{.}15`$. There is always some non-negligible turbulence at the upper boundary of the troposphere (see also Fig. 9). Median $`C_n^2`$ integral in the 16 km layer is $`3.210^{14}`$ m1/3, some 10 times higher than the instrumental noise of MASS, which means that the effect is real and not related to some instrumental threshold. Vernin et al. (2000) measured the median seeing produced between 15 km and 20 km as $`0\stackrel{}{.}14`$.

The consequences of this finding are important for adaptive optics. Even when the turbulence profile is completely dominated by few strong and sharp layers, their correction by means of MCAO will not suffice to reach diffraction-limited resolution in a wide field because of the remaining high layers. The numbers in Table 2 indicate median fraction of the 16 km layer as 5%; a similar fraction of high-altitude turbulence is adopted in MCAO simulations for Gemini (Ellerbroek & Rigaut, 2000). Another consequence of the upper-troposphere layers is the effective limit on isoplanatic field size $`\theta _0`$: even under very calm conditions it practically never exceeds $`5\mathrm{}`$ as measured at several sites. Median turbulence measured at 16 km layer alone would give isoplanatic angle $`\theta _0=13\stackrel{}{.}4`$.

### 3.2 Temporal variation of turbulence

Strong bursts of turbulence that last typically for less than 0.5 hour were observed repeatedly in almost all layers. An example of a typical night with perturbed atmosphere and bursts is given in Fig. 7 (note the coarser vertical scale compared to Fig. 3).

In Fig. 8 the normalized temporal autocorrelation functions $`A(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ for low, intermediate and high layers are plotted. The data – layer intensities $`J(t)`$ – are not evenly spaced in time and have some gaps, making computation of covariance somewhat difficult. For this purpose we re-binned the $`J(t_i)`$ on a uniform grid with 3 minute step, padding missing data with zeroes. The covariance $`C(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ was then computed and transformed into autocorrelation $`A(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$:

$`C(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle J(t_i)J(t_i+\mathrm{\Delta }t)},`$ (3)
$`A(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{C(\mathrm{\Delta }t)\overline{J}^2}{C(0)\overline{J}^2}},`$ (4)
where $`N`$ is the total number of non-zero products for a time lag $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ and $`\overline{J}`$ is the average of $`J`$.

It can be seen that the time constant of turbulence variation is longer for high layers and shorter for low layers. At 50% correlation this time is 0.6, 1.3 and 1.9 hours for 1, 4, and 16 km layers respectively. The autocorrelation functions show a fast decrease at small time lags that correspond to a presence of more rapid variations and are suggestive of power-law temporal spectrum. On the other hand, the ‘tails’ of $`A(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ reflect long-term, night-to-night variations. If we subtract the tail from the 1 km autocorrelation, the 50% correlation time would become 0.25 hour, giving a better idea on the duration of turbulent bursts. Bursts are shorter than periods between them, but $`A(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ cannot reflect this difference.

Rich data on TPs enable a better understanding of the physics of atmospheric seeing. Seeing variations usually observed at good astronomical sites with a time scale of $`1.2`$ h (Sarazin, 1997) can now be traced to the appearance turbulence bursts at specific altitudes. These bursts are a local phenomenon. We frequently compared the seeing at Cerro Tololo with the seeing at La Silla, only $``$ 100 km away: there is no correlation between seeing variations at these sites. Turbulence at medium altitudes must be related to the orographic disturbances. If at some lucky summit this turbulence could be avoided, it would enjoy a better and more stable seeing. Hydrodynamical modeling of turbulent flows is necessary to understand whether such ‘lucky summits’ indeed exist. On the other hand, it becomes evident that seeing statistics at any specific site is not necessarily representative of other mountains in the same region.

### 3.3 Seeing and weather

A period of calm atmosphere over Cerro Tololo shown in Fig. 3 actually lasted for four consecutive nights, from June 19 to June 22. The free-atmosphere seeing was very stable at $`0\stackrel{}{.}20\stackrel{}{.}25`$; the burst shown in Fig. 3 is the worst $`ϵ_f`$ measured during this whole period. The total seeing as measured by DIMM was good but not exceptional. Seeing at the ESO sites La Silla and Paranal was also only moderately good. Based on DIMMs alone, one would never tell that something special was happening in the atmosphere on these dates. We have continuous profile data for the period from June 6 to June 30, with only small gaps due to cirrus clouds, that bracket this special period. Nightly median values of seeing, wind in the high atmosphere and at the ground for this period are listed in Table 3.

Investigation of meteorological conditions that produce extended periods of calm atmosphere is of evident practical interest if it can lead to understanding and prediction of such periods. A similar 3-day calm period was detected by Avila (2002) in May 2000 at San Pedro Mártir in Mexico, with stable values of $`ϵ_f0\stackrel{}{.}2`$. This proves that calm atmosphere is something not very unusual. If all layers were independent of each other, a probability of all being quiet simultaneously would be low, and a probability of extended quiet periods would be vanishingly small. Instead, there must be a factor common to all layers that produces calm conditions in a systematic way, as noted for the first time by Barletti et al. (1976).

As a first attempt to understand quiet periods, we analyzed the data on the speed of jet stream (wind at 200 mb pressure or 12 km a.s.l.) over La Silla as collected by ESO. Indeed, the wind velocity $`V_{200\mathrm{m}\mathrm{b}}`$ was low. We have data on $`V_{200\mathrm{m}\mathrm{b}}`$ only up to July 4, 2002. Seeing produced by low and high layers is compared to $`V_{200\mathrm{m}\mathrm{b}}`$ for this period in Fig. 9. The period studied is certainly not long enough to cover all representative meteo conditions; the discussion that follows may be affected by a specific combination of weather patterns that occurred during this period.

Looking at Fig. 9, we note that there is no one-to-one correlation between jet stream and turbulence, but some tendencies do emerge. Low layers are generally more quiet when the jet stream speed is low. Of course, this may be related to the fact that wind speed and stability in all layers correlate with the 200 mb wind. The behaviour of the upper tropospheric layer (16 km), however, is noteworthy: it shows a clear minimum of turbulence for jet stream speeds between 20 and 40 m/s, whereas the turbulence increases at both faster and slower winds. Somehow low jet stream is ‘unnatural’ for high atmosphere and causes more turbulence! Note that high layer is never perfectly calm, unlike lower layers.

We also studied the relation between ground-layer seeing and ground wind as measured by the meteo station on top of Cerro Tololo. Most frequently ground wind blows from North-East, otherwise it is from South-West; the wind-rose clearly shows these two dominating directions. We plot the ground-layer seeing $`ϵ_g`$ against wind speed for these two directions separately in Fig. 10. There is practically no correlation for northern winds and some correlation for southern winds. Southern wind is definitely better for ground-layer seeing.

## 4 Summary and conclusions

For a period of few months we followed with amazement the evolution of optical turbulence over Cerro Tololo, for the first time being able to know where the ‘seeing’ comes from and why it changes. The database of some 28000 low-resolution TPs, most of which are complemented by seeing data, is unique by its volume and time coverage. The insights gained from these data can be summarized as follows:

1. Ground layer turbulence (first 500 m) at CTIO contributes 60% of the total turbulence integral in 50% of cases. Thus, a complete compensation of this layer would typically improve the seeing $`0.4^{3/5}=1.7`$ times.
2. The median free-atmosphere seeing $`ϵ_f`$ (all layers above 500 m) is $`0\stackrel{}{.}55`$, in 10% of cases it is better than $`0\stackrel{}{.}28`$, but it is practically never better than $`0\stackrel{}{.}15`$. The effective lower limit to $`ϵ_f`$ is related to the ever-present weak turbulence in the upper tropospheric layers above 12 km.
3. The periods of stably calm upper atmosphere with $`ϵ_f<0\stackrel{}{.}25`$ can be as long as few days. This occurs when the wind velocity at 12 km a.s.l. is around 20-30 m/s. During these periods, a resolution gain from ground layer AO compensation will be 2-3.
4. The characteristic time of turbulence variation increases with increasing layer altitudes, from 15 min. (at 50% correlation level) at 1 km to 1-2 hours at 16 km. Often the turbulence at altitudes of 1-8 km has a character of recurrent strong bursts that last for $`0.5`$ hour and repeat every 1-2 hours.

Perhaps the most important impression from the data is the fragility of astronomical seeing. Most of the seeing results from local orographic effects and is significantly influenced by very unstable ground-layer turbulence. A common opinion that all good sites are similar and have a median seeing around $`0\stackrel{}{.}7`$ is in contradiction with the complexity of turbulence phenomena evidenced by this study. We believe that a better understanding and modeling of optical turbulence is possible and will help to choose ‘lucky summits’ that are much less affected by turbulence generated near surrounding mountains. Statistical data on TP will be essential for this work.

## Acknowledgments

This work extensively uses the data from CTIO DIMM developed by M. Boccas, N. Long, E. Bustos, and H.E.M. Schwarz. The support of this campaign by the CTIO telescope operations staff was crucial and is acknowledged. Development of MASS and the observing campaign were supported by the ‘Sites’ program of the New Initiatives Office of NOAO and managed by A. Walker.