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# Rapid Variability as a Diagnostic of Accretion and Nuclear Burning in Symbiotic Stars and Supersoft X-ray Sources

## 1. Introduction

Accretion onto a white dwarf (WD) and nuclear shell burning probably power the observed activity in supersoft X-ray binaries (SSXBs) and many symbiotic stars (SS). Besides the hallmark high-excitation-state emission lines (for SS) and soft X-ray spectra (for SSXBs), this activity can include outbursts and collimated jets. But in SS, emission and absorption by the nebula can hide the spectroscopic signatures of a disk and absorb the soft X-rays from the nuclear-burning shell. In SSXBs, the disk is optically visible, but the optical emission is dominated by reflected nuclear-burning light, and the disk is significantly heated (e.g., Popham & Di Stefano 1996). One way to examine the region close to the accreting WD despite these complications is to look for rapid variations.

In the context of this work, ‘rapid’ or ‘fast’ variations are those which could be associated with WD-disk phenomena. Stochastic variations from a disk, termed “flickering”, generally occur on either a dynamical time

$`t_{dyn}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_k}}4\mathrm{s}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{10^9\mathrm{cm}}}\right)^{3/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_{WD}}{0.6M_{}}}\right)^{1/2}`$
(where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k=\mathrm{\Omega }_k(r)`$ is the Keplerian angular velocity, $`r`$ is the radial position in the disk, and $`M_{WD}`$ is the mass of the WD), or a viscous time

$$t_{visc}\frac{1}{\alpha }\left(\frac{r}{H}\right)^2\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_k}8\mathrm{hr}\left(\frac{\alpha }{0.1}\right)^{4/5}\left(\frac{\dot{M}}{10^8M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1}\right)^{3/10}\left(\frac{r}{10^9\mathrm{cm}}\right)^{5/4}$$

(where $`H`$ is the disk height, $`\alpha `$ is the viscosity parameter, and $`\dot{M}`$ is the accretion rate onto the WD; Frank, King, and Raine 1992). Disk flickering therefore depends on the size and properties of the disk, and the location of the emitting region within the disk. In WD disks, fluctuations occur with time scales of roughly a day or less, and observations verify that the fastest stochastic variations come from the inner disk (e.g., Bruch 2000).

Brightness oscillations due to magnetic accretion should also have time scales ranging from minutes to hours. When a WD is in spin equilibrium (neither being spun up nor spun down by torques from the disk material), it rotates with the Keplerian frequency at the radius where the ram pressure from in-falling material balances the pressure in the magnetic field. For fields typically measured in intermediate polars (IPs; $`B_S10^510^6`$ G) and accretion rates that are reasonable for SS or SSXBs ($`\dot{M}10^910^7M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$), the equilibrium spin periods are tens of minutes.

Changes in the luminosity from a burning shell occur on the nuclear time, $`t_{nuc}`$, which is roughly the time to accrete the envelope scaled by the fraction of the envelope that must be burned to heat the entire envelope to temperature $`T`$:

$`t_{nuc}`$ $``$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{C_PT}{E_{nuc}}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }M}{\dot{M}}}\right)`$
$``$ $`3\mathrm{yr}\left({\displaystyle \frac{T}{3\times 10^7\mathrm{K}}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }M}{6\times 10^5M_{}}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\dot{M}}{4\times 10^8M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1}}\right)^1,`$
where $`C_P`$ is the specific heat at constant pressure, $`E_{nuc}`$ is the energy released per gram from nuclear burning of H, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ is the mass of the envelope, which is dependent on $`M_{WD}`$ and $`\dot{M}`$ (Fujimoto 1982). Therefore, fast variations cannot be due to fundamental changes in the nuclear burning emission (changes due to obscuration or reflection of this emission, however, could happen quickly).

Even though the nuclear burning luminosity cannot change quickly, it is still an important consideration in rapid-variability studies. Since $`E_{nuc}/E_{grav}40`$ (where $`E_{grav}`$ is the energy released per gram from accretion onto the WD), quasi-steady nuclear shell burning dominates the energetics of the hot component when present. Nuclear burning can therefore hide or diminish rapid variations that are directly associated with accretion. The maximum and minimum accretion rates to produce quasi-steady shell burning are

$`\dot{M}_{steady,max}`$ $`=`$ $`2.8\times 10^7+\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}5.9}\times 10^7\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_{WD}}{M_{}}}1.0\right)M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$
$`\dot{M}_{steady,min}`$ $`=`$ $`1.32\times 10^7M_{WD}^{3.57}M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1.`$
(Paczyński & Rudak 1980; Iben 1982). If $`\dot{M}>\dot{M}_{steady,max}`$, the fuel cannot be burned as fast as it is accreted, and the envelope could expand or be ejected. If $`\dot{M}<\dot{M}_{steady,min}`$, material burns unstably in nova explosions, although a period of residual burning may follow. If the hot-component luminosity ($`L_{hot}`$) is greater than approximately $`100L_{}`$, significant nuclear burning must be present, since such high luminosities cannot be produced by accretion with $`\dot{M}<\dot{M}_{steady,min}`$.

One final time scale of interest is the recombination time in a SS nebula,

$`t_{rec}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n_s\alpha _B}}1\mathrm{h}\mathrm{r}\left({\displaystyle \frac{n_s}{10^9\mathrm{cm}^3}}\right)^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _B}{2.59\times 10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^3/\mathrm{s}}}\right)^1\mathrm{at}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}10}^4\mathrm{K}`$
(where $`n_s`$ is the density at the outer edge of the ionized region and $`\alpha _B`$ is the case-B recombination coefficient; Fernández-Castro et al. 1995). Any high-energy (far-UV or soft X-ray) variations faster than $`t_{rec}`$ will be smeared out when the nebula reprocesses them into the optical.

In §2, I discuss the first known case of a WD with both magnetically channeled accretion and surface nuclear burning (Z And). I describe photometric evidence for changes in an accretion disk associated with the production of a jet in a WD accretor (CH Cyg) in §3, and discuss how high-time-resolution studies can reveal the relative importance of nuclear burning vs. viscous dissipation in §4. Disk flickering from the supersoft source MR Vel is described in §5, and minute-time-scale spectral line variability that can act as a diagnostic for the physical conditions in the line-emitting regions (RS Oph) is shown in §6. I discuss the overall results from these variability studies in §7.

## 2. Magnetic Accretion in Z Andromedae

In IPs, the WD magnetic field is strong enough to truncate the inner accretion disk, channel material onto the WD polar caps, and produce an X-ray and/or optical oscillation at the WD spin period (see e.g., Warner 1995). If strong WD fields are fossil fields of magnetic Ap and Bp stars (see Wickramasinghe & Ferrario 2000), then the fraction of magnetic WDs in interacting binaries should be higher than the fraction of single WDs with strong fields111Because the accreting WD in a CV-like interacting binary was originally the more massive of the pair, the progenitor population of these WDs contains relatively more Ap and Bp stars.. A higher fraction of WDs in CVs do appear to be magnetic (25% vs. 5% in the field; Wickramasinghe & Ferrario 2000). But selection effects could bias this comparison, since CVs are often discovered because of their X-ray pulsations. It is therefore useful to examine different classes of WD accretors. Until recently, however, no IP-like oscillations had been found in either a SS or SSXB.

In 1997 and 1998, Sokoloski & Bildsten (1999) observed the prototypical symbiotic Z And on 8 occasions, with the 1-m telescope at Lick Observatory, and found a 28-minute oscillation each time. Figure 1 shows example $`B`$-band light curves and the corresponding power spectra. Taking reasonable values for the WD mass, radius, and accretion rate, a spin period of 28 m implies a WD surface magnetic field strength of at least $`B_S=3\times 10^4`$ G, and if the WD is in spin equilibrium, $`B_S=6\times 10^6`$ G (Sokoloski & Bildsten 1999). This field is comparable to fields found in magnetic CVs. The amplitude of the optical oscillation ($`<2`$ mmag, or $`<0.2`$% in quiescence), however, is roughly 10 to 100 times smaller than the optical spin modulations seen in magnetic CVs. If such low oscillation amplitudes are typical of magnetic SS, then they were probably not discovered earlier because past observations were not sufficiently sensitive.

Mürset et al. (1991) estimate a WD luminosity for Z And of $`L_{hot}6001600L_{}`$, so Z And is probably experiencing some nuclear shell burning. Two important points follow: 1) magnetic accretion can produce an optical modulation at the WD spin period even in a WD with quasi-steady nuclear burning (and Z And is the first example), and 2) the presence of nuclear shell burning and a nebula that can reprocess high-energy emission into the optical may reduce the amplitude of the optical modulation.

Osborne et al. (2001) found what may be the first X-ray oscillation due to magnetic accretion onto a WD with surface nuclear burning - in the supersoft source M31PSS. The X-ray modulation amplitude was roughly 50%. King, Osborne, & Schenker (2002) argue that the X-ray flux varies at the WD spin period because the nuclear burning rate is higher near the poles, where the burning shell is preferentially supplied with fresh fuel. In contrast, the X-ray flux of Z And was constant to within the errors in an XMM observation on 2001 28 January (A. Kong, private communication). The amplitude of any sinusoidal spin modulation was less than roughly 10%. The small X-ray oscillation amplitude compared to M31PSS could mean that the high WD luminosity in Z And is due to residual burning from a previous nova rather than accretion with $`\dot{M}>\dot{M}_{steady,min}`$. Alternatively, the X-ray oscillation amplitude could be reduced by the presence of an additional source of X-ray flux, such as emission from shock-heated colliding winds.

The behavior of the 28-m optical oscillation amplitude during two recent outbursts of Z And has implications for the nature of these events. In 1997, the oscillation amplitude was highest near the optical peak of the outburst, and decreased as the outburst faded (see Figure 2). The hot spots near the WD surface were therefore not hidden by an expanded photosphere. Instead, the oscillation-amplitude evolution is consistent with an increase in $`\dot{M}`$ during outburst, such as from a dwarf-nova-like disk instability. Near the optical peak of the larger outburst in 2000-2002, on the other hand, the optical oscillation was not detected, and FUV observations indicate that a shell of material was ejected (Sokoloski et al. 2002). The 2000 outburst may have also been triggered by an disk instability, but with a more dramatic response by the burning layer.

## 3. Disk-Jet Connection in CH Cygni

In CH Cyg, both the optical flickering amplitude and power-spectrum shape can change. Figure 3 shows some example high-speed light curves, and Figure 4 (top) shows the long-term light curve with the times of the fast photometric observations marked. In 1996 and 1997, CH Cyg dropped to a very low optical state, and low amplitude, rolling (hour-time-scale) variations were present, with little to no minute-time-scale variability (see also Rodgers et al. 1997). This type of smooth light curve is unusual for CH Cyg, which more commonly shows CV-like fluctuations on time scales from seconds to hours. In 1997 August, when the optical flux began to rise again, the minute-time-scale variations returned, although the overall flickering amplitude was still low ($`<0.1`$ mag). In 1998 August, when CH Cyg returned to an optical high state, the peak-to-peak flickering amplitude increased to $`<0.5`$ mag. In 1999 July, the optical flux was constant to within the detection limit of a few mmag, presumably due to an eclipse of the accreting WD by a companion orbiting with a period of roughly 14 yr (e.g., Crocker et al. 2001). High-speed photometric observations from between 1997 and 2000 are described in detail by Sokoloski & Kenyon (2003a,b).

The unusual, smooth light curves from 1996 and 1997 were obtained right after material was ejected from the system and during the development of a radio jet (Karovska, Carilli, and Mattei 1998; Sokoloski & Kenyon 2003a). The bottom panel of Figure 4 shows the times of the fast photometric observations in the context of the rising radio flux densities. Since both the dynamical and viscous time scales increase with radius in the disk, and flickering is likely to be associated with dynamical or viscous processes, the fastest variations generally come from the innermost portion of the disk. In fact, observations of stochastic and quasi-periodic oscillations originating at different distances from the central object in X-ray binaries, CVs, and pre-main-sequence stars support a radial dependence of fluctuation speeds (e.g., Revnivtsev et al. 2000; Kenyon et al. 2000; Mauche 2002). Sokoloski & Kenyon (2003a) therefore interpret the absence of minute-time-scale variations in 1996 and 1997 as due to the disruption of the inner accretion disk. CH Cyg may therefore reveal a connection between jet-producing WD accretors and jet-producing X-ray binaries, since some X-ray binaries have also shown evidence for a disruption of the inner accretion disk with jet production (e.g., Feroci et al. 1999; Belloni et al. 1997). A link between WD systems and LMXBs with neutron-star or black-hole accretors is intriguing, since the energetics are quite different, and the accretion flow in CH Cyg is unlikely to be advection dominated.

To explain the jet activity and brightness changes in CH Cyg, Mikołajewski & Mikołajewska (1988) proposed that the WD in CH Cyg has a strong magnetic field, and that optical brightness changes, flickering changes, and transient collimated jets occur when the system moves between accretor and propeller states (see also Mikołajewski et al. 1990a,b; Panferov & Mikołajewski 2000; Tomov, this volume). In magnetic CVs, however, the optical and X-ray emission generally oscillates at the WD spin period. Optical quasi-period oscillations (QPOs) have been claimed for CH Cyg (e.g., Mikołajewski et al 1990a; Rodgers et al. 1997), but the putative QPO frequencies are not consistent with each other, and the significance of the claimed detections is difficult to evaluate due to the presence of ’red noise’ in the power spectrum. To determine the statistical significance of a peak in a power spectrum with broad-band power, one can assume that the noise powers are distributed like $`\chi ^2`$ about the best-fit power law (van der Klis 1989; Deeter & Boynton 1982). Dividing the power spectrum by the best-fit model then recovers the familiar statistical properties of white noise, e.g., $`\mathrm{Pr}(P_{noise}>P)=e^P`$ (for unbinned and non-averaged power spectra, where $`\mathrm{Pr}(P_{noise}>P)`$ is the probability that a statistical fluctuation will produce a peak greater than $`P`$; see also Fig. 5). Sokoloski & Kenyon (2003b) applied this technique to CH Cyg light curves from both the high and low states, and did not find any significant oscillations. They thus concluded that alternatives to the magnetic propeller model for CH Cyg should be considered.

As one alternative, Sokoloski & Kenyon (2003b) suggest that the activity in CH Cyg is driven by an unstable disk, as in dwarf novae. The flickering amplitude in CH Cyg tends to be low when it is in an optical low state, and high when it is in an optical high state. Assuming that the flickering is from an accretion disk (almost all systems with disk accretion produce stochastic brightness variations), the correlation between flickering amplitude and optical brightness state implies that increased mass flow through the disk is responsible for the high states in CH Cyg. Since jets are generally observed after a decline in optical brightness, an unstable disk could also be associated with (e.g., trigger or be triggered by) the outflow of material in collimated jets.

## 4. Survey of 35 SS and the Prevalence of Nuclear Shell Burning

As discussed in §3, accretion through a disk generally produces stochastic variations in interacting binaries. But early flickering studies of SS found many systems that do not flicker (Walker 1977; Dobrzycka, Kenyon, & Milone 1996). Because it is not clear whether most SS have disks, additional observations may help to determine whether the prevalence of flickering is related to disk formation, or, as I argue below, disk flickering in many SS could be hidden by emission from nuclear burning material on the surface of the WD.

To address these questions, as well as to search for magnetic SS, Sokoloski, Bildsten, & Ho (1999; hereafter SBH) obtained high-time-resolution differential CCD light curves for 35 SS, more than doubling the number of SS observed in this way. The light curves generally fall into three categories (excluding Z And); Figure 6 shows examples of each type. Twenty-five of the 35 survey objects did not vary. In these systems, aperiodic (e.g., stochastic) variations were constrained to be less than just a few mmag, and sinusoidal oscillation amplitudes were constrained to be less than 2 - 10 mmag ($``$ 0.2 - 1 % fractional variation). Strong stochastic variations were confirmed in five well-known flickering systems - RS Oph, T CrB, CH Cyg, MWC 560, and Mira. The four final systems (EG And, BX Mon, CM Aql, and BF Cyg) varied at a low level ($`<`$ tens of mmag), but need additional observations to be considered high-confidence detections. Thus, despite the dramatic fast variability of a few well-studied systems like CH Cyg, and the presence of magnetism in at least one SS (Z And), most SS do not show either aperiodic or periodic rapid variations at a level greater than roughly 1%. Furthermore, the distribution of flickering amplitudes is bi-modal; although a few systems flicker with variations on the order of tenths of a mag, the flickering in most systems is constrained to less than roughly 10 mmag.

There are several possible reasons why optical flickering is absent in most SS. Accretion disks could be absent, or the flickering could be hidden by emission from the red giant or luminous WD. Because direct evidence for an accretion disk, such as double-peaked emission lines, has been difficult to find in SS, the hypothesis that the presence of flickering reflects the presence of a disk is hard to test. Optical flickering is unlikely to be hidden by light from the red giant in most SS because there is no systematic difference between the red giants in the large-amplitude flickerers and the non-flickering systems. There is, however, a systematic difference in the WD luminosities, $`L_{hot}`$. The few low-$`L_{hot}`$ systems are much more likely to flicker (as first noted by Dobrzycka et al. 1996), whereas the high-$`L_{hot}`$ systems generally do not flicker. Much of the WD luminosity is radiated at high energies, but the nebula absorbs some of this light and re-radiates it in the optical. Since $`E_{nuc}E_{grav}`$, this nebular emission could easily hide the optical disk flickering. A high $`L_{hot}`$ indicates nuclear burning, so the flickering amplitude seems to be related to the fundamental power source - nuclear shell burning vs. accretion alone. The lack of flickering in most SS thus indicates that most SS may be powered by nuclear shell burning on the WD.

## 5. Disk Flickering from Supersoft Source MR Velorum

As discussed in the previous section, reprocessed nuclear shell burning can overwhelm optical disk flickering in SS. Some SSXBs may also to be powered by WD nuclear shell burning, so it is natural to ask whether disk flickering is also hidden in SSXBs. In the standard picture, the mass-donor star in SSXBs transfers material via Roche-lobe overflow. An accretion disk almost certainly forms. These disks may be quite flared; models with high rims can reproduce eclipse profiles in some edge-on SSXBs (Schandl, Meyer-Hofmeister, & Meyer 1997; Meyer-Hofmeister, Schandl, & Meyer 1997). Dubus et al. (1999), however, claim that an extremely flared structure is unphysical for an illuminated disk, and that a thick inner region should shield the outer disk.

In 2001 January, Sokoloski, Charles, and Clarkson (2003) observed the Galactic transient-jet SSXB MR Vel (= RX J0925.7-4758) with the 1.9-m telescope at SAAO. They repeatedly found what is almost never seen in SS – flickering with a moderate amplitude of $`6080`$ mmag. Figure 7 shows one MR Vel differential white light CCD light curve. The power spectrum is well-represented by a power-law-plus-constant model, with a power-law slope of 1.5. The power law drops below the white-noise at around 4 mHz, indicating that variations with time scales as short as 4 m were present. Simultaneous $`BVR`$ light curves are shown in Figure 8. The overall variability amplitude was slightly larger in $`B`$ ($`\sigma _B=22.1`$ mmag, $`\sigma _V=16.3`$ mmag, and $`\sigma _R=17.9`$ mmag), and the fastest flare was significantly stronger in $`B`$ compared to $`V`$ and $`R`$.

Meyer-Hofmeister et al. (1997) suggested that alterations in the size of a reflecting disk rim (on the dynamical time at the edge of the disk) could introduce variations into the optical emission. If $`R_{disk}0.3a`$ (where $`R_{disk}`$ is the disk radius, and $`a`$ is the binary separation), as in CVs (Warner 1995), the disk in MR Vel has a radius of roughly $`3\times 10^{11}(P_{orb}/4\mathrm{d})^{2/3}(M_{tot}/2M_{})^{1/3}`$ cm. The dynamical time at this radius (taking $`M_{WD}=1M_{}`$) is roughly 4 h. But the MR Vel light curves reveal variations as fast as minutes. Therefore, either the changing disk-rim model may not account for all the observed variations, or the disk is smaller than a scaled-up CV disk (i.e., $`R_{disk}<0.3a`$).

Another possible explanation for the visible flickering is that disks in SSXBs convert less of the high-energy photons to optical photons than are converted by the nebulae in SS. In this case, the ratio $`L_{opt,acc}/L_{opt,nuc}`$ (where $`L_{opt,acc}`$ is the component of the optical luminosity from viscous dissipation in a disk and $`L_{opt,nuc}`$ is the component of optical luminosity due to reflected nuclear-burning light) could be larger in SSXBs than SS, allowing some of the disk flickering to show through. On the other hand, the fractional variability in SSXBs is less than in CVs, so the there appears to be at least some reduction in amplitude due to the nuclear burning. The multi-color light curves in Figure 8 support the idea that at least some of the variable optical light in MR Vel is due to CV-like viscous dissipation in the disk. The bluer color of the fast flare marked with a box in Fig. 8 compared to similar-sized slower flares implies that the fastest flares could be due to a different physical process (perhaps more directly related to accretion) or originate in a different (hotter) physical region than the hour-time-scale variations. If they are from the inner disk, they provide a diagnostic of the region that, as in CH Cyg, could be associated with jet production.

## 6. Fast Emission-Line Variations from RS Ophiuchi

Rapid spectral changes can in principle give us the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the variable source, and also probe the properties of the intervening material. In practice, determining the SED of the underlying flickering source is complicated by the need to separate intrinsic source variations from Poisson variations. Because of the relatively lower Poisson contribution, measuring changing line fluxes is more straight-forward. Sokoloski et al. (2003) performed simultaneous optical differential photometric observations and spectroscopic observations of RS Oph on the 1- and 3-m telescopes at UCO/Lick Observatory. The KAST dual-armed spectrograph covered 3200 - 5300 Å on the blue side, and 5300 - 6750 Å on the red side. Assuming that the red giant does not vary on a time scale of minutes, they used normalizations from fits of a template red giant plus a power law to the red end of each spectrum to correct for losses due to guiding errors and seeing changes. Figure 9 shows example plots of the flux density (above the continuum) in several lines.

The spectral flux-density variations in RS Oph prove that the red giant was an effective internal calibration source, and they reveal new aspects of the well-known flickering. The light curves produced from the featureless portions of the normalized spectra (Fig. 9, top two panels) agree well with the simultaneous differential photometry. The calibration technique was therefore considered reliable. The He II $`\lambda `$4686 line varied as fast as the blue-side observing cadence of approximately one spectrum every 4 minutes (two red-side spectra were taken per blue-side spectrum), and the changes were roughly correlated with the spectral continuum and photometric fluctuations. Thus, there must exist a source of photons that have energies greater than 55 eV (i.e., a source with $`T>50,000`$ K), such as an optically thick accretion-disk boundary layer, that varies on a time scale of minutes. Furthermore, the He II line variations appear to lead the featureless continuum variations, suggesting that the region which produces the He II emission could drive the flickering variability. Alternatively, some of the variable continuum flux may be recombination radiation from the nebula (instead of, or in addition to, optical light directly from the disk). In this case, the light-travel-time delay between the He II-line and continuum changes would imply that the He II emission region is closer to the hot WD than the continuum emission region. The lower-ionization-state He I and Balmer lines varied more slowly than the He II line (see Fig. 9, bottom two panels), possibly due to the emission regions being farther from the hot WD, longer recombination times, or a larger optical depth in these lines.

## 7. Discussion

Rapid-variability studies suggest that the strength of aperiodic variations in SS is related to the power source (nuclear shell burning or accretion alone). Systems with high $`L_{hot}`$ generally do not show large-amplitude flickering, whereas SS with low $`L_{hot}`$ almost always do (Walker 1977; Dobrzycka et al. 1996; SBH and references therein). The luminosity ratio of a typical high-$`L_{hot}`$ system ($`1001000L_{}`$) to a typical low-$`L_{hot}`$ system ($`110L_{}`$) is close to the ratio of the energy released per nucleon in the nuclear burning of hydrogen-rich material to that from accretion onto a WD. Therefore, if nebular emission in a symbiotic is powered by quasi-steady nuclear shell burning on the surface of a WD, flickering or oscillations from accretion are often hidden or reduced. In many SSXBs, on the other hand, nuclear-burning emission is probably reprocessed into the optical by the accretion disk, and the ratio of reprocessed light to direct disk emission may be low enough that some CV-like disk flickering is detectable. Since symbiotic recurrent novae are preferentially low-$`L_{hot}`$ systems, the presence of flickering may also be related to the type of outburst a SS experiences.

Whether a symbiotic burns material quasi-steadily or not, observations described in §2 and §3 suggest that accretion-disk instabilities may play a role in the more common, classical SS outbursts. Furthermore, Mikołajewska (this volume) found that SS with ellipsoidal variations (in which the red giant is closer to filling its Roche lobe, and a disk is more likely to form due to focusing of the red giant wind) have more outburst activity. So the presence of disks could be broadly associated with outbursts in classical SS. In CH Cyg and also possibly in Z And (Brocksopp et al. 2003), collimated jets are sometimes produced during or after outbursts, so disks may also be related to the production of jets in SS. As discussed in §3, there is evidence that the disk in CH Cyg was disrupted when a jet was produced. Similar behavior has been reported for some transient-jet X-ray binaries, so, as suggested by Zamanov & Marziani (2002), disks and jets may provide a link between symbiotic and black-hole jet sources.

Finally, periodic variations provide information about magnetism. Given the very low oscillation amplitude in Z And, however, SBH could not rule out strong magnetic fields in any of their survey objects. The detection fraction for magnetic WDs of 3% is therefore only a crude lower limit. More sensitive observations are needed to determine the magnetic fraction in SS, and thereby test theories of the origin of magnetism in WDs and binary stellar evolution. Identification of additional magnetic SS is also needed to clarify whether a strong WD field helps produce collimated jets (as suggested by Panferov & Mikołajewski 2000 and references therein; Tomov, this volume) or inhibits their formation by truncating the inner accretion disk where the jet is launched (as may be the case in NS X-ray binaries; Fender & Hendry 2000). Finally, since magnetically channeled accretion with $`\dot{M}>\dot{M}_{steady,min}`$ produces a large soft X-ray spin modulation, whereas residual burning on a magnetic WD does not (King et al. 2002), comparison between the X-ray oscillation amplitudes in magnetic SS and magnetic SSXBs may provide information about the different (or similar) causes of nuclear shell burning in these two classes of systems.

### Acknowledgments.

I am grateful to S. Kenyon and R. Di Stefano for helpful comments.

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# Electromagnetic structure of the deuteron

## 1 Introduction

This talk reviews recent theoretical and experimental results for elastic electron deuteron scattering (yielding the deuteron form factors), threshold electrodisintegration ($`e+de^{}+p+n`$ where the mass of the final $`np`$ pair, $`W`$, is only a few MeV above the threshold value of $`m_p+m_n`$), and high energy deuteron photodisintegration ($`\gamma +dp+n`$). The talk is based on the complete reviews of Refs. GVO ; S ; GG , with a few new results not previously reported.

## 2 Deuteron Wave Functions

The deuteron wave functions are calculated from a potential (or a relativistic kernel) that has been fitted to $`NN`$ scattering data below lab kinetic energies of 350 MeV. Figs. 1,2, and 3 show the coordinate and momentum space wave functions for six models: Argonne AV18 AV18 , Paris Paris , CD Bonn CDBonn , IIB gvoh92 , W16 sg97  and the recent Idaho potential Idaho . These figures are modified versions of those in Ref. GG ; the principle change is the inclusion of the new Idaho wave functions (the heavy dashed-triple dotted line) which have a rapid but smooth cutoff above 600 MeV momentum. This cutoff explains the ripples in the $`r`$ space wave functions, and will have a profound effect on the deuteron form factors.

## 3 Deuteron Form Factors

The deuteron form factors are defined by the relativistic deuteron current, which has the form

$`d^{}|J^\mu |d`$ $`=`$ $`G_1(Q^2)[\xi ^{}\xi ](d^\mu +d^\mu )`$ (1)
$`+G_3(Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{(\xi ^{}q)(\xi q)}{2m_d^2}}(d^\mu +d^\mu )`$
$`G_M(Q^2)[\xi ^\mu (\xi ^{}q)\xi ^\mu (\xi q)],`$
where $`Q^2=q^2`$, with $`q=d^{}d`$, is the square of the four-momentum transferred by the electron, and $`d(d^{})`$ and $`\xi (\xi ^{})`$ are the incoming (outgoing) deuteron four momenta and polarization, respectively. Instead of $`G_1`$ and $`G_3`$, it is customary to use the linear combinations

$`G_C`$ $`=G_1+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\eta G_Q`$
$`G_Q`$ $`=G_1G_M+(1+\eta )G_3,`$ (2)
with $`\eta =Q^2/4m_d^2`$. At $`Q^2=0`$, the form factors $`G_C`$, $`G_M`$, and $`G_Q`$ give the charge, magnetic and quadrupole moments of the deuteron

$`G_C(0)`$ $`=1`$ $`(\mathrm{in}\mathrm{units}\mathrm{of}e)`$
$`G_Q(0)`$ $`=Q_d`$ $`(\mathrm{in}\mathrm{units}\mathrm{of}e/m_d^2)`$
$`G_M(0)`$ $`=\mu _d`$ $`(\mathrm{in}\mathrm{units}\mathrm{of}e/2m_d).`$ (3)
The form factors must be extracted from measurements of the elastic $`e+de^{}+d^{}`$ cross section, and the polarization transfer $`T_{20}`$, which give the combinations

$`A(Q^2)=G_C^2(Q^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{8}{9}}\eta ^2G_Q^2(Q^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\eta G_M^2(Q^2)`$
$`B(Q^2)={\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}\eta (1+\eta )G_M^2(Q^2)`$
$`\stackrel{~}{T}_{20}=\sqrt{2}{\displaystyle \frac{y(2+y)}{1+2y^2}}\mathrm{with}y=2\eta G_Q/3G_C.`$ (4)
### 3.1 Nonrelativistic Theory

Figure 4 gives a comparison of the $`A`$ structure function with the theoretical predictions of the nonrelativistic impulse approximation (the NRIA includes no relativistic effects or exchange current contributions). The figure shows that the NRIA fails at large $`Q^2`$ by a factor of 4 to 8 for most of the models, and by a much larer factor for the Idaho model. Because the deuteron form factors are purely isoscalar, and isoscalar exchange currents are largely of relativistic origin, an explanation of the form factors will require a relativistic theory. The figure also shows that the Idaho model in NRIA, with no high momentum components, greatly underpredicts the $`A`$ structure function at high $`Q^2`$, requiring exceptionally large exchange currents in order to explain the data.

### 3.2 Relativistic Theory

The deuteron form factors are an ideal system for a test relativistic theory. The data is accurate, and the form factors are reasonably well approximated by the nonrelativistic theory of a single $`NN`$ channel, making them comparatively simple to calculate. Many groups have accepted the challenge and nearly all of the possible relativistic approaches outlined in Fig. 5 have been tried. The methods break into two large classes, which I call propagator dynamics (based on field theory) and hamiltonian dynamics (based on the three choices of dynamics originally classified by Dirac). The predictions of seven different relativistic calculations, listed in Table 1, are compared in Ref. GG  and in the left panel of Fig. 8 below. As shown in the table, two of these use propagator dynamics, and five use hamiltonian dynamics. Space does not permit a discussion of these approaches here; look at Ref. GG  for a detailed discussion. Here I want to highlight some features of the VOG approach vdg95 , which uses the manifestly covariant spectator theory GCS .

In this theory the $`NN`$ propagator is obtained from the covariant Bethe-Salpeter propagator by replacing one of the nucleon propagators by

$`S(p)={\displaystyle \frac{m+\mathit{}}{m^2p^2}}2\pi \delta _+(m^2p^2){\displaystyle \underset{s}{}}u(𝐩,s)\overline{u}(𝐩,s).`$ (5)
This substitution insures that the nucleon with momentum $`p`$ is on its positive energy mass shell, reducing the 4-d Bethe-Salpeter equation to the covariant 3-d spectator equation. The resulting relativistic wave functions depend only on the three-momentum, as in the nonrelativistic case, but can be Lorentz transformed from frame-to-frame using transformations that do not depend on the details of the dynamics (i.e. they are kinematic). The boost transformation is

$`(\mathrm{\Lambda })\mathrm{\Psi }_{\alpha \lambda }^\mu (p,d)\xi _\mu =B_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\alpha ^{}\lambda ^{}}^\mu (\mathrm{\Lambda }p,\mathrm{\Lambda }d)(\mathrm{\Lambda }\xi )_\mu d_{\lambda ^{}\lambda }^{(1/2)}(\omega ),`$ (6)
where $`\alpha `$ is the Dirac index of the off-shell particle, $`\lambda `$ the helicity of the on-shell particle, and $`\omega `$ is the Wigner rotation angle for the helicity of the on-shell particle. This exact formula makes it possible to calculate the recoil of the outgoing deuteron exactly to all orders in $`(v/c)`$, and is used in calculations of the form factors. Finally, I emphasize that the close connection of this formalism to field theory makes it possible to design currents that are complete, physical, and consistent.

Figure 6 shows how experimental values of $`G_C`$ extracted from measurements of $`A`$ (corrected by removing the magnetic and quadrupole contributions111These corrections, of the order of 5% at the larger $`Q`$ shown, were omitted from Ref. GG .) compare to Sick’s best fit S , and to different relativistic calculations. Using the Argonne AV18 NRIA as a nonrelativistic standard, the data support the conclusion that relativistic effects grow rapidly for $`Q0.3`$ GeV. Furthermore, the accuracy of the measurements is comparable to the differences between relativistic approaches, suggesting that a precision 1% measurement of $`G_C`$ would further constrain relativistic theory JLabexpt . The apparent inconsistency between the Simon and Platchkov measurements is an additional motivation, but Sick has studied both measurements in detail and reports that the data sets are consistent within statistical and systematic errors S2 .

I will conclude this discussion by calling attention to one aspect of the VOG spectator calculation of special theoretical interest. Feynman showed years ago that a photon amplitude will be gauge invariant if (i) the coupling of the photon to the (off-shell) constituents inside the amplitude satisfies the Ward-Takahashi identities, and (ii) electromagnetic couplings to all particles inside the amplitude are included. In 1987, Riska and I found out how to generalize this result to calculations using either Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes or spectator amplitudes involving composite constituents GR87 . In the VOG theory, off-shell nucleons are described by a dressed propagator $`S(p)=h^2S_0(p)`$, where $`h=h(p)`$ is a scalar function of the square of the off-shell nucleon four-momentum $`p^2`$ \[with its only parameter fixed by fits to the $`NN`$ data\], and $`S_0`$ is the undresed nucleon propagator. Use of this propagator requires that the simplest, but not unique single nucleon current must have the form

$`j^\mu (p^{},p)`$ $`=`$ $`f_0(p^{},p)\left(F_1(Q^2)\gamma ^\mu +{\displaystyle \frac{F_2(Q^2)}{2m}}i\sigma ^{\mu \nu }q_\nu \right)`$ (7)
$`+g_0(p^{},p)F_3(Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{m\overline{)}p^{}}{2m}}\gamma ^\mu {\displaystyle \frac{m\overline{)}p}{2m}},`$
where $`f_0`$ and $`g_0`$ are known functionals of $`h`$ and $`h^{}=h(p^{})`$ \[with $`p^{}`$ the four momentum of the outgoing nucleon\], and $`F_3(0)=1`$ but is otherwise undefined. In the original calculations, $`F_3`$ was taken to be a dipole, but if it is made somewhat harder, all of the deuteron observables can be well described by the spectator theory. This remarkable result is shown in Fig. 7. Neglecting the $`\rho \pi \gamma `$ exchange current, and choosing $`F_3`$ to be the tripole $`(1+Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_t^2)^3`$ with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_t^2=`$ 5 GeV2, brings all of the observables into excellent agreement with the high $`Q^2`$ data measured at SLAC and JLab (including $`T_{20}`$ not shown). Alternatively, using the “standard” dipole form, $`F_3=(1+Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_d^2)^2`$ with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_d^2=0.71`$ GeV2 and choosing a dipole form for the $`\rho \pi \gamma `$ form factor (with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_d^2=`$ 1.5 GeV2) will give agreement for the structure function $`A`$, but increases the disagreement in $`B`$. I conclude that a reasonable choice of $`F_3`$ will bring the VOG model into perfect agreement with the deuteron data. Of course, it remains to see if this choice will also describe other electromagnetic processes, and this brings us nicely to the next topic.

## 4 Threshold Electrodisintegration

Deuteron electrodisintegration to an $`np`$ final state with an invariant mass $`W`$ only a few MeV above the threshold, $`W_t=m_p+m_n`$, is very closely related theoretically to elastic $`ed`$ scattering. Here the final scattering state can be as reliably calculated as the initial deuteron state using the same theory. If the mass of the final state is close enough to threshold, the transition will be dominated by (purely magnetic) transitions to the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ final state (transitions to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}`$ final state are suppressed by the orthogonality of the states), and the transition amplitude will be purely isovector. Together with elastic scattering (purely isoscalar) the two processes can be used to independently determine the isoscalar and isovector exchange currents.

Figure 8 compares calculations of threshold electrodisintegration with recent calculations of the $`B`$ structure function (the magnetic counterpart of the electrodisintegration amplitude). In spite of the close theoretical connection between these two reactions, few theoretical groups have calculated both. Both are very sensitive to the details of the theory, and together will provide a stringent test. More accurate data is needed for both reactions, particularly in the region of the minima near $`Q^2`$1.5 GeV2.

## 5 Photodisintegration

There are significant differences between elastic $`ed`$ scattering using electrons of several GeV, discussed above, and photodisintegration by photons of several GeV. In the elastic reaction, the final state remains bound, all of the virtual photon energy going into the recoil of the final deuteron. In the VOG relativistic approach where the boost operators are purely kinematic, this recoil can be calculated exactly, and one can hope to describe the process using dynamics based on low energy physics. In photodisintegration, however, the bulk of the photon energy goes into exciting the final state, and 4 GeV photons have sufficient energy to excite all of the nucleon resonances listed in the particle data book! A hadronic calculation of this final state is necessarily a complicated problem involving the coupling of over 200 channels. Clearly the theory of high energy photodisintegration must either be based on an average treatment of many hadronic channels, or on the use of quark degrees of freedom, which provides the high energy alternative to hadronic based descriptions.

A number of theoretical descriptions using quarks or of Reggie trajectories (a form of averaging over hadronic degrees of freedom) have been applied to the description of photodisintegration. For a discussion see the review GG  or the talk by Patrizia Rossi elsewhere in these procedings PR . Here we call attention only to the status of the prediction from perturbative QCD, that the cross section should fall like $`s^{11}`$. Figure 9 shows that recent high energy data from JLab bochna98 ; schulte01  generally confirm this behavor, but a model by Raydushkin (the dot-dashed line) with an $`s^{10}`$ behavior does just as well.

Polarization observables provide the most stringet test of any model, and pQCD in particular. Figure 10 shows recent high energy Yerevan data adamian00  on the polarized photon asymmetry $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The result expected from pQCD (supplemented by additional assumptions) that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(90^{})1`$ as $`E_\gamma \mathrm{}`$ is not confirmed.

## 6 Conclusions

Elastic scattering and photodisintegration with 4 GeV electrons are closely related experimentally, but require very different theoretical approaches. For example, if reasonable adjustments are made in the high $`Q^2`$ behavior of the current of an off-shell nucleon, elastic scattering is well described by a relativistic theory based on low energy $`NN`$ scattering. This study confirms our fundamental understanding of low energy $`NN`$ scattering, shows us that the relativistic theory is under control, and fixes the high $`Q^2`$ behavior of the off-shell nucleon current.

A similar understanding of high energy photodisintegration is not yet available; quark degrees of freedom, hidden in elastic scattering, may eventually be required for an understanding of photodisintegration. However, the early successes of pQCD do not seem sufficiently robust to serve as a basis for a deeper understanding in this energy range.

###### Acknowledgements.

It is a pleasure to thank Ron Gilman for the collaborative effort leading to Ref. GG . He supplied many of the figures in this minireview. I also thank Ingo Sick for helpful discussions and for a computer version of his form factor fits, and Ruprecht Machleidt for numerical values of his Idaho wave functions. My apologies to the many people who supplied information or whose work is not cited in this short summary; they are listed and cited in GG . This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy. The Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility under DOE contract DE-AC05-84ER40150. It also is a pleasure to acknowledge support under DOE grant No. DE-FG02-97ER41032.


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# What is the monster

###### What is the monster

Richard E. Borcherds,  Supported by NSF grant DMS-9970611.

Mathematics department, Evans Hall #3840, University of California at Berkeley, CA 94720-3840 U. S. A.

e-mail: reb@math.berkeley.edu

www home page www.math.berkeley.edu/~reb

When I was a graduate student, my supervisor John Conway would bring his 1 year old son into the department, who was soon known as the baby monster. A more serious answer to the question is that the monster is the largest of the (known\**\**The announcement of the classification of the finite simple groups about 20 years ago was a little over-enthusiastic, but a recent 1300 page preprint by Aschbacher and Smith should finally complete it.) sporadic simple groups. Its name comes from its size: the number of elements is

$$\begin{array}{cc}& 8080,17424,79451,28758,86459,90496,17107,57005,75436,80000,00000\hfill \\ \hfill =& 2^{46}.3^{20}.5^9.7^6.11^2.13^3\mathrm{.17.19.23.29.31.41.47.59.71},\hfill \end{array}$$

about equal to the number of elementary particles in the planet Jupiter.

The monster was originally predicted to exist by Fischer and by Griess in the early 1970’s. Griess constructed it a few years later in an extraordinary tour de force as the group of linear transformations on a vector space of dimension 196883 that preserved a certain commutative but non-associative bilinear product, now called the Griess product.

Our knowledge of the structure and representations of the monster is now pretty good. The 194 irreducible complex representations were worked out by Fischer, Livingstone and Thorne (before the monster was even shown to exist) They take up 8 large pages in the atlas \[A\] of finite groups, which is the best single source of information about the monster (and other finite simple groups). The subgroup structure is mostly known; in particular there is an almost complete list of the maximal subgroups, and the main gaps in our knowledge concern embeddings of very small simple groups in the monster. If anyone wishes to multiply elements of the monster explicitly, R. A. Wilson can supply two matrices that generate the monster. But there is a catch: each matrix takes up about 5 gigabytes of storage, and to quote from Wilson’s atlas page: “standard generators have now been made as $`196882\times 196882`$ matrices over GF(2)… They have been multiplied together, using most of the computing resources of Lehrstuhl D für Mathematik, RWTH Aachen for about 45 hours…”. (The difficulty of multiplying two elements of the monster is caused not so much by its huge size as by the lack of “small” representations; for example, the symmetric group $`S_{50}`$ is quite a lot bigger than the monster, but it only takes a few minutes to multiply two elements by hand.) Finally the modular representations of the monster for large primes were worked out by Hiss and Lux; the ones for small primes still seem to be out of reach at the moment.

In the late 1970’s John McKay decided to switch from finite group theory to Galois theory. One function that turns up in Galois theory is the elliptic modular function

$$j(\tau )=q^1+744+196884q+21493760q^2+\mathrm{}=c(n)q^n$$

($`q=e^{2\pi i\tau }`$), which is essentially the simplest non-constant function invariant under the action $`\tau (a\tau +b)/(c\tau +d)`$ of $`SL_2(𝐙)`$ on the upper half plane $`\{\tau |\mathrm{}(\tau )>0\}`$. He noticed that the coefficient 196884 of $`q^1`$ was almost equal to the degree 196883 of the smallest complex representation of the monster (up to a small experimental error). The term “moonshine” roughly means weird relations between sporadic groups and modular functions (and anything else) similar to this. It was clear to many people that this was just a meaningless coincidence; after all, if you have enough large integers from various areas of mathematics then a few are going to be close just by chance, and John McKay was told that his observation was about as useful as looking at tea-leaves. John Thompson took McKay’s observation further, and pointed out that the next few coefficients of the elliptic modular function were also simple linear combinations of dimensions of irreducible representations of the monster; for example, $`21493760=21296876+196883+1`$. He suggested that there should be a natural infinite dimensional graded representation $`V=_{n𝐙}V_n`$ of the monster such that the dimension of $`V_n`$ is the coefficient $`c(n)`$ of $`q^n`$ in $`j(\tau )`$, at least for $`n0`$. (The constant term of $`j(\tau )`$ is arbitrary as adding a constant to $`j`$ still produces a function invariant under $`SL_2(𝐙)`$, and is set equal to 744 mainly for historical reasons.) Conway and Norton \[C-N\] followed up Thompson’s suggestion of looking at the McKay-Thompson series $`T_g(\tau )=_nTrace(g|V_n)q^n`$ whose coefficients are given by the traces of elements $`g`$ of the monster on the representations $`V_n`$, and found by calculating the first few terms that they all seemed to be Hauptmoduls of genus 0. (A Hauptmodul is a function similar to $`j`$, but invariant under some group other than $`SL_2(𝐙)`$). Atkin, Fong, and Smith showed by computer calculation that there was indeed an infinite dimensional graded representation of the monster whose McKay-Thompson series were the Hauptmoduls found by Conway and Norton, and soon afterwards Frenkel, Lepowsky, and Meurman explicitly constructed this representation using vertex operators.

If a group acts on a vector space it is natural to ask if it preserves any algebraic structure, such as a bilinear form or product. The monster module constructed by FLM has a vertex algebra structure invariant under the action of the monster. Unfortunately there is no easy way to explain what a vertex algebra is; see \[K\] for the best introduction to them. Vertex algebras are a generalization of commutative rings with derivations (at least in characteristic 0). Roughly speaking they can be thought of as commutative rings with derivation where the ring multiplication is not quite defined everywhere; this is analogous to rational maps in algebraic geometry, which are also not quite defined everywhere. A more concrete but less intuitive definition of a vertex algebra is that it consists of a space with a countable number of bilinear products satisfying certain rather complicated identities. In the case of the monster vertex algebra $`V=V_n`$, this gives bilinear maps from $`V_i\times V_j`$ to $`V_k`$ for all integers $`i,j,k`$, and the special case of the map from $`V_2\times V_2`$ to $`V_2`$ is (essentially) the Griess product. So the Griess algebra is a sort of section of the monster vertex algebra.

Following an idea of Frenkel, the monster vertex algebra can be used to construct the monster Lie algebra by using the Goddard-Thorn no-ghost theorem from string theory. This is a $`𝐙^2`$-graded Lie algebra, whose piece of degree $`(m,n)𝐙^2`$ has dimension $`c(mn)`$ whenever $`(m,n)(0,0)`$. The monster should be thought of as a group of “diagram automorphisms” of this Lie algebra, in the same way that the symmetric group $`S_3`$ is a group of diagram automorphisms of the Lie algebra $`D_4`$. The monster Lie algebra has a denominator formula, similar to the Weyl denominator formula for finite dimensional Lie algebras and the Macdonald-Kac identities for affine Lie algebras, which looks like

$$j(\sigma )j(\tau )=p^1\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m>0}{n𝐙}}{}(1p^mq^n)^{c(mn)}$$

where $`p=e^{2\pi i\sigma }`$, $`q=e^{2\pi i\tau }`$. This formula was discovered independently in the 1980’s by several people, including Koike, Norton, and Zagier. There are similar identities with $`j(\tau )`$ replaced by the McKay-Thompson series of any element of the monster, and Cummins and Gannon showed that any function satisfying such identities is a Hauptmodul. So this provides some sort of explanation of Conway and Norton’s observation that the McKay-Thompson series are all Hauptmoduls.

So the question “What is the monster” now has several reasonable answers:

1 The monster is the largest sporadic simple group, or alternatively the unique simple group with its order.

2 It is the automorphism group of the Griess algebra.

3 It is the automorphism group of the monster vertex algebra. (This is probably the best answer.)

4 It is a group of diagram automorphisms of the monster Lie algebra.

Unfortunately none of these definitions is completely satisfactory. At the moment all constructions of the algebraic structures above seem artificial; they are constructed as sums of two or more apparently unrelated spaces, and it takes a lot of effort to define the algebraic structure on the sum of these spaces and to check that the monster acts on the resulting structure.

###### References

\[A\] J. H. Conway, R. T. Curtis, S. P. Norton, R. A. Parker, R. A. Wilson, Atlas of finite groups, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985.

\[C-N\] J. H. Conway, S. Norton, Monstrous moonshine, Bull. London. Math. Soc. 11 (1979) 308-339.

\[K\] V. Kac, Vertex algebras for beginners. Second edition. University Lecture Series, 10. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1998.


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# Supernovae and Neutrinos

## 1 Introduction

When the next Galactic supernova occurs, approximately $`10^4`$ detected neutrino events are expected among the several detectors around the world. It is widely believed that these $`10^4`$ events will provide important clues to the astrophysics of the supernova as well as the properties of the neutrinos themselves. Interestingly, recent breakthroughs in understanding solar and atmospheric neutrinos each occurred when the accumulated samples of detected events first exceeded $`10^4`$.

But will we have enough information to study the supernova neutrino signal in detail? Almost all of the detected events will be charged-current $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$, which will be well-measured, both because of the large yield and because the measured positron spectrum is closely related to the neutrino spectrum. Because of the charged-lepton thresholds, the flavors $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$, $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$ can only be detected in neutral-current reactions, of which the total yield is expected to be approximately $`10^3`$ events. However, in general one cannot measure the neutrino energy in neutral-current reactions. This talk presents an exception. These four flavors are expected to carry away about 2/3 of the supernova binding energy, and are expected to have a higher temperature than $`\nu _e`$ or $`\overline{\nu }_e`$. However, there is no experimental basis for these statements, and present numerical models of supernovae cannot definitively address these issues either. If there is no spectral signature for the neutral-current detection reactions, then neither the total energy carried by these flavors nor their temperature can be separately determined from the detected number of events.

But it is crucial that these quantities be measured. Both are needed for comparison to numerical supernova models. The total energy is needed to determine the mass of the neutron star, and the temperature is needed for studies of neutrino oscillations. At present, such studies would suffer from the need to make model-dependent assumptions. This problem has long been known, but perhaps not widely enough appreciated. In this talk, I clarify this problem, and provide a realistic solution that can be implemented in two detectors, KamLAND (already operating) and Borexino (to be operating soon). The solution is based on neutrino-proton elastic scattering, which has never before been shown to be a realistic detection channel for low-energy neutrinos.

In this talk, I will focus on just the problem of measuring the temperature and total energy of $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$, $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$, since everything else in understanding supernova neutrinos depends on it.

## 2 Cross Section

The cross section for neutrino-proton elastic scattering is an important prediction  of the Standard Model, and it has been confirmed by extensive measurements at GeV energies (see, e.g., Ref. ). At the energies considered here, the full cross section formula  can be greatly simplified. The differential cross section as a function of neutrino energy $`E_\nu `$ and struck proton recoil kinetic energy $`T_p`$ (and mass $`M_p`$) is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{dT_p}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2M_p}{\pi }}`$
$`\times `$ $`\left[\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{M_pT_p}{2E_\nu ^2}}\right)c_V^2+\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{M_pT_p}{2E_\nu ^2}}\right)c_A^2\right].`$
In this equation, we have taken $`(E_\nu T_p)^2E_\nu ^2`$ (i.e., keeping only the lowest order in $`E_\nu /M_p`$, a very good approximation); the full expression was used in the calculations below. The neutral-current coupling constants between the exchanged $`Z^{}`$ and the proton are

$`c_V`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{14\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _w}{2}}=0.04,`$ (2)
$`c_A`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1.27}{2}},`$ (3)
where the factor 1.27 is determined by neutron beta decay. The cross section for antineutrinos is obtained by the substitution $`c_Ac_A`$. As will be emphasized below, our results are totally independent of oscillations among active flavors, as this is a neutral-current reaction.

We consider only free proton targets; the small yield from bound protons creates a small background signal, as discussed in Ref. . We use the struck proton kinetic energy in the laboratory frame as our kinematic variable, as appropriate to scintillator detectors. For a neutrino energy $`E_\nu `$, $`T_p`$ ranges between 0 and $`T_p^{max}`$, where

$$T_p^{max}=\frac{2E_\nu ^2}{M_p+2E_\nu }\frac{2E_\nu ^2}{M_p}.$$
(4)
The maximum is obtained when the neutrino recoils backwards with its original momentum $`E_\nu `$, and thus the proton goes forward with momentum $`2E_\nu `$. Since $`c_Ac_V`$, the largest proton recoils are favored, which is optimal for detection.

## 3 Supernova Neutrinos

In this talk, I characterize the supernova neutrino signal in a very simple way, though consistently with numerical supernova models . The change in gravitational binding energy between the initial stellar core and the final proto-neutron star is about $`3\times 10^{53}`$ ergs, about $`99\%`$ of which is carried off by all flavors of neutrinos and antineutrinos over about 10 s. The emission time is much longer than the light-crossing time of the proto-neutron star because the neutrinos are trapped and must diffuse out, eventually escaping with approximately Fermi-Dirac spectra characteristic of the surface of last scattering. In the usual model, $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$ and their antiparticles are emitted with temperature $`T8`$ MeV, $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ has $`T5`$ MeV, and $`\nu _e`$ has $`T3.5`$ MeV. The temperatures differ from each other because $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ and $`\nu _e`$ have charged-current opacities (in addition to the neutral-current opacities common to all flavors), and because the proto-neutron star has more neutrons than protons. It is generally assumed that each of the six types of neutrino and antineutrino carries away about $`1/6`$ of the total binding energy, though this has an uncertainty of at least $`50\%`$ . The supernova rate in our Galaxy is estimated to be $`(3\pm 1)`$ per century (this is reviewed in Ref. ).

The expected number of events (assuming a hydrogen to carbon ratio of $`2:1`$) is

$`N`$ $`=`$ $`70.8\left[{\displaystyle \frac{E}{10^{53}\mathrm{erg}}}\right]\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{MeV}}{T}}\right]`$ (5)
$`\times `$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{10\mathrm{kpc}}{D}}\right]^2\left[{\displaystyle \frac{M_D}{1\mathrm{kton}}}\right]\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma }{10^{42}\mathrm{cm}^2}}\right].`$
(Though written slightly differently, this is equivalent to the similar expression in Ref. .) We assume $`D=10`$ kpc, and a detector fiducial mass of 1 kton for KamLAND. As written, Eq. (5) is for the yield per flavor, assuming that each carries away a portion $`E`$ of the total binding energy (nominally, $`E_B=3\times 10^{53}`$ ergs, and $`E=E_B/6`$). The thermally-averaged cross section (the integral of the cross section with normalized Fermi-Dirac distribution) is defined for each $`\mathrm{CH}_2`$ “molecule”, and a factor of 2 must be included for electron or free proton targets.

Prior to Ref. , the largest expected yield in any oil or water detector was from $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$. The total cross sections for charged-current $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$ and neutral-current $`\nu +p\nu +p`$ have similar forms, though the latter is about 4 times smaller. However, this is compensated in the yield by the contributions of all six flavors, as well as the higher temperature assumed for $`\nu _\mu `$ and $`\nu _\tau `$ ($`T=8`$ MeV instead of 5 MeV). Thus, the total yield from $`\nu +p\nu +p`$ is larger than that from $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$, when the detector threshold is neglected.

Taking into account radiative, recoil, and weak magnetism corrections, the thermally-averaged cross section for $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$ at $`T=5`$ MeV is $`44\times 10^{42}`$ cm2 (for 2 protons) . These corrections reduce the thermally-averaged cross section by about 20%, and also correct the relation $`E_e=E_\nu 1.3`$ MeV. The total expected yield from this reaction is thus about 310 events in 1 kton.

Since the struck protons in $`\nu +p\nu +p`$ have a relatively low-energy recoil spectrum, and since realistic detectors have thresholds, it is crucial to consider the proton spectrum in detail, and not just the total yield of neutrinos that interact.

## 4 Proton Recoil Spectrum

The elastically-scattered protons will have kinetic energies of a few MeV. Obviously, these nonrelativistic protons will be completely invisible in any Čerenkov detector like Super-Kamiokande. However, such small energy depositions can be readily detected in scintillator detectors such as KamLAND and Borexino. We first consider the true proton spectrum, and then how this spectrum would appear in a realistic detector.

The proton spectrum (for one flavor of neutrino) is given by

$$\frac{dN}{dT_p}\left(T_p\right)=C_{(E_\nu )_{min}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E_\nu f(E_\nu )\frac{d\sigma }{dT_p}(E_\nu ,T_p),$$
(6)
where $`f(E_\nu )`$ is a normalized Fermi-Dirac spectrum and the differential cross section is given by Eq. (2). For a given $`T_p`$, the minimum required neutrino energy is

$$(E_\nu )_{min}=\frac{T_p+\sqrt{T_p(T_p+2M_p)}}{2}\sqrt{\frac{M_pT_p}{2}}.$$
(7)
The normalization constant $`C`$ is determined by Eq. (5), as the integral of Eq. (6) over all $`T_p`$ without the $`C`$ factor is $`\sigma `$.

Throughout, I refer to the $`\nu _e`$ ($`T=3.5`$ MeV), $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ ($`T=5`$ MeV), and the combined $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$, $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$ ($`T=8`$ MeV) flavors. Since we know that there are neutrino oscillations, this language is somewhat incorrect. However, our results are totally insensitive to any oscillations among active neutrinos or antineutrinos (since this is a neutral-current cross section), and also to oscillations between active neutrinos and antineutrinos (since the cross section is dominated by the $`c_A^2`$ terms). Thus when we refer to the $`\nu _e`$ flavor, we mean “those neutrinos emitted with a temperature $`T=3.5`$ MeV, whatever their flavor composition now,” etc. The true proton spectra corresponding to the various flavors are shown in Fig. 1. As seen in the figure, the contributions of $`\nu _e`$ and $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ are quite suppressed relative to the sum of $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$, $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$.

## 5 Quenching

For highly ionizing particles like low-energy protons, the light output is reduced or “quenched” relative to the light output for an electron depositing the same amount of energy. The observable light output $`E_{equiv}`$ (i.e., equivalent to an electron of energy $`E_{equiv}`$) can be calculated by integrating Birk’s Law with tables of $`dE/dx`$ for protons in the KamLAND oil-scintillator mixture . The observed energy in terms of the proton kinetic energy is shown in Fig. 2. Thus the proton quenching factor ($`E_{equiv}/T_p`$) is thus roughly 1/2 at 10 MeV, 1/3 at 6 MeV, 1/4 at 3 MeV, and so on.

Using the quenching function shown in Fig. 2, we can transform the true proton spectrum shown in Fig. 1 into the expected measured proton spectrum, shown in Fig. 3. If the quenching factor were a constant, it would simply change the units of the $`T_p`$ axis. However, it is nonlinear, and reduces the light output of the lowest recoils the most. It also reduces the number of events above threshold. The anticipated threshold in KamLAND is 0.2 MeV electron equivalent energy. With the expected proton quenching, this corresponds to a threshold on the true proton kinetic energy of 1.2 MeV. The number of events above this threshold for each flavor appears in Table 1. The measured proton spectrum will primarily reflect the shape of the underlying Fermi-Dirac spectrum for the sum of $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$ $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$. This has been convolved with both the differential cross section (which gives a range of $`T_p`$ for a given $`E_\nu `$), and also the effects of quenching. However, as we will show, the properties of the initial neutrino spectrum can still be reliably deduced.

Background considerations, while important, are a small correction, and so we ignore them here; see Ref.  for a complete discussion.

## 6 Proton Spectrum Fits

The measured proton spectrum can be used to separately determine the total energy of the $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$, $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$ neutrinos and their time-averaged temperature. The total number of detected events is proportional to the portion of the total binding energy carried away by these four flavors, and we denote this by $`E^{tot}`$ (note that this is not the total binding energy $`E_B`$). For a standard supernova, $`E^{tot}=4(E_B/6)=2/3E_B2\times 10^{53}`$ ergs. We denote the temperature of these four flavors by $`T`$. If only the total yield were measured, as for most neutral-current reactions, there would be an unresolved degeneracy between $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$, since

$$NE^{tot}\frac{\sigma }{T}.$$
(8)
Note that for $`\sigma E_\nu ^n`$, then $`\sigma T^n`$. For $`\nu +d\nu +p+n`$ in SNO, for example, $`\sigma E^2`$, so $`NE^{tot}T`$. Thus for a given measured number of events, one would only be able to define a hyperbola in the plane of $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$. The scaling is less simple here because of threshold effects, but the idea is the same.

Here we have crucial information on the shape of the neutrino spectrum, revealed through the proton spectrum. To remind the reader, in most neutral-current reactions there is no information on the neutrino energy, e.g., one only counts the numbers of thermalized neutron captures, or measures nuclear gamma rays (the energies of which depend only on nuclear level splittings).

We performed quantitative tests of how well the parameters $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ can be determined from the measured proton spectrum. (We did also investigate the effects of a chemical potential in the Fermi-Dirac distribution, but found that it had little effect. This is simply because the cross section is not rising quickly enough to see the tail of the thermal distribution in detail .) Of course, if the distance to the supernova is not known, then we are effectively fitting for $`E^{tot}/D^2`$.

We performed Monte Carlo simulations of the supernova signal in KamLAND and made chi-squared fits to determine $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ for each fake supernova. To perform the fits, we started with an “ideal” spectrum, as described by the integral:

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{dN}{dT_p}}\right)_{\mathrm{ideal}}`$ $`=`$ $`C{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑T_p^{}G(T_p^{};T_p,\delta T_p)`$ (9)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle _{(E_\nu )_{min}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑E_\nu f(E_\nu ){\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{dT_p^{}}}(E_\nu ,T_p^{})`$
where the inner integral is as in Eq. (6), with the addition that quenching corrections are applied to $`T_p^{}`$ after convolution with $`f(E_\nu )`$. For the Gaussian energy resolution $`G(T_p^{};T_p,\delta T_p)`$, we used $`\delta T_p=0.1\sqrt{T_p/(1\mathrm{MeV})}`$ . The normalization constant $`C`$ is given by comparison to Eq. (5). Example spectra are shown in Fig. 4.

Using $`(dN/dT_p)_{\mathrm{ideal}}`$, we binned the spectrum by the following integral:

$$N_i=_{(E_{min})_i}^{(E_{max})_i}𝑑T_p\left(\frac{dN}{dT_p}\right)_{\mathrm{ideal}}$$
(10)
where $`N_i`$ is the number of events in bin $`i`$, and $`(E_{min})_i`$ and $`(E_{max})_i`$ are the minimum and maximum energies for bin $`i`$. Eight bins of variable width were used, chosen to contain roughly the same number of expected events per bin. For a chosen $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$, this was the starting point of our Monte Carlo (and the bin boundaries were kept fixed). For each fake supernova, we sampled the number of events in each of these bins according to the appropriate Poisson distributions. The resulting spectrum was as one might obtain from a single supernova, given the finite number of events expected. We then varied $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ in Eq. (10) until the values that best fit the fake spectral data were determined. For a given set of assumed $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$, this procedure was repeated many times. The distributions of the final $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ thus reveal the expected errors on fitting $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ for a single real future supernova. Three examples are shown in Fig. 5, where one can see that $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ can each be determined with roughly 10% error.

## 7 Discussion and Conclusions

We have shown that neutrino-proton elastic scattering, previously unrecognized as a useful detection reaction for low-energy neutrinos, in fact has a yield for a supernova comparable to $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$, even after taking into account the quenching of the proton scintillation light and assuming a realistic detector threshold.

In addition, the measured proton spectrum is related to the incident neutrino spectrum. We have shown explicitly that one can separately measure the total energy and temperature of $`\nu _\mu `$, $`\nu _\tau `$, $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, and $`\overline{\nu }_\tau `$, each with uncertainty of order 10% in KamLAND. This greatly enhances the importance of detectors like KamLAND and Borexino for detecting supernova neutrinos.

For Borexino, the useful volume for supernova neutrinos is 0.3 kton, and the hydrogen to carbon ratio in the pure pseudocumene (C9H12) is $`1.3:1`$ , so there are about 4.7 times fewer free proton targets than assumed for KamLAND. However, the quenching is less in pure scintillator (KamLAND is about 20% pseudocumene and 80% paraffin oil ), and the errors on $`E^{tot}`$ and $`T`$ scale as $`1/\sqrt{N}`$, so that the precision in Borexino should be about 20% or better.

Other techniques for bolometric measurements of supernova neutrino fluxes have been studied. Detectors for elastic neutral-current neutrino scattering on electrons  and coherently on whole nuclei  have been discussed, but never built. If neutrino oscillations are effective in swapping spectra, then the temperature of the “hot” flavors may be revealed in the measured positron spectrum from $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$; two recent studies have shown very good precision ($`<5\%`$) for measuring the temperatures and the total binding energy . However, they assumed exact energy equipartition among the six neutrino flavors, whereas the uncertainty on equipartition is at least 50% . Nevertheless, under less restrictive assumptions, this technique may play a complementary role. Finally, since for different cross sections, the neutral-current yields depend differently on temperature, comparison of the yields may provide some information . However, there are caveats. In neutrino-electron scattering, the neutrino energy is not measured because the neutrino-electron angle is much less than the angular resolution due to multiple scattering. The scattered electrons, even those in a forward cone, sit on a much larger background of $`\overline{\nu }_e+pe^++n`$ events, so it is difficult to measure their spectrum ; also, their total yield is only weakly dependent on temperature. At the other extreme (see Fig. 3 of Ref. ), the yield of neutral-current events  on 16O depends strongly on a possible chemical potential term in the thermal distribution.

It is important to note that the detection of recoil protons from neutron-proton elastic scattering at several MeV has been routinely accomplished in scintillator detectors (see, e.g., Ref. ). Since both particles are massive, the proton will typically take half of the neutron energy. This reaction provides protons in the same energy range as those struck in neutrino-proton elastic scattering with $`E_\nu 30`$ MeV. This is a very important proof of concept for all aspects of the detection of low-energy protons.

Though low-energy backgrounds will be challenging, it is also important to note that the background requirements for detecting the supernova signal are approximately 3 orders of magnitude less stringent than those required for detecting solar neutrinos in the same energy range (taking quenching into account for our signal). Borexino has been designed to detect very low-energy solar neutrinos, and KamLAND hopes to do so in a later phase of the experiment.

These measurements would be considered in combination with similar measurements for $`\nu _e`$ and $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ from charged-current reactions in other detectors. Separate measurements of the total energy and temperature for each flavor will be invaluable for comparing to numerical supernova models . They will also be required to make model-independent studies of the effects of neutrino oscillations . If the total energy release $`E_B`$ in all flavors has been measured, then

$$E_B\frac{3}{5}\frac{GM_{NS}^2}{R_{NS}},$$
(11)
thus allowing a direct and unique measurement of the newly-formed neutron star properties, principally the mass $`M_{NS}`$ .

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This talk was based on collaborative work with Will Farr and Petr Vogel, whom I happily acknowledge. JFB is supported as the David N. Schramm Fellow at Fermilab, which is operated by URA under DOE contract No. DE-AC02-76CH03000. JFB was additionally supported by NASA under NAG5-10842.


text:
# Comment on “Quantum noise influencing human behaviour could fake effectiveness of drugs in clinical trials”

## 1 Introduction

In the paper  it is suggested to consider possibility of influation of quantum effects in every-day life events like clinical studies. If to recall, how difficult and fine may be experiments for testing of quantum nonlocality , it is really unexpectedly, how it would be possible to test such kind of results in very complicated area, like clinical studies of real people, there even classical statistical criteria may be applied only with certain limitations. It should be mentioned, that even in precise physical experiments observation of quantum correlations still is under certain investigation . Let us consider a few concrete problems related with models discussed in .

## 2 Physics and Cryptography. (Testing quantum correlation for time-like interval)

It should be mentioned, that first design used in  has essential difference with usual experiment  and to talk about experimental confirmation is not quite correct.

Such kind of experiments are not performed (yet?) not only because of certain difficulties, but also, because treatment of counterfactual data suggested in  is not very common in natural sciences. Let us consider physical model correponding to first kind of trials suggested in  Fig. 1.

Here should be considered not a simple case, then time gap between events is very small (it would correspond to less accurate earlier tests of quantum nonlocality, then space-like interval between events can be not guaranteed), but as an experiment when between a moment “m” (when it is already possible to state, that fist photon was absorbed by detector after first polarizer p1 and only one photon still exists) and the second measurement p2 of polarization passed (in laboratory time) even not few days or weeks (as it would be necessary for purposes discussed in ), but at least a few seconds.

Such kind of time-like quantum correlation still impracticable and not only because of enormous difficulties, but also due to doubtful possibility of clear interpretation of such experiments: on the one hand it could be considered as strange example of quantum correlations between past and future, between existing and not-existing particle, but there is more simple, usual and mathematically equal model suggesting, that somewhere after moment “m,” and before measurement p2 there is only one particle in pure state described by polarization orthogonal to measured by first polarizer p1. And finally, there is (again mathematically equivalent) absolutely weird model, that it is future measurement of polarization p2 influences on first particle and causes it to be in pure state with polarization orthogonal to result of this measurement111On the other hand we may hear sometime, “doctor suggested the pills because it will help your,” as if future help causes some past event. So even such weird interpretations indirectly present in our reasoning..

Problem 1. Despite of some resemblance, (due to “uncovering secrets of Nature”) physics has certain difference with cryptography. It is often not enough to suggest a model that reproduces behavior of some system. One proper key is enough to uncover code, but here often exists many different explanations and some of them may be absurd or completely irrelevant.

## 3 Breltmann’s pills

Dr. Breltmann222 Name used by Bell is slightly changed by some reasons.  recently developed new kind of (quantum®) medicine for curing suggestibility, but clinical tests produced absolutely negative result — all patients, who following his advice and used the pills (very bitter) after testing demonstrated, that their level of suggestibility is even higher, than in group of people, who refused to use the tablets. But after such result Dr. Breltmann realized, that the trials anyway demonstrated very strong influence of his pills on human beings and suggested to use it for medical treatment of obstinacy. He succeeds this time — clinical trials confirm, that 100% of patients, who agreed to use the pills lately passed a difficult test on completely absence of obstinancy.

The similar example was considered also in , but here it is reproduced in such extreme form to recall corresponding Bell consideration: in  he discussed classical model of correlation for two spin-1/2 particles, then probabilities of registration are :

$$\begin{array}{c}P(up,up)=P(down,down)=\frac{|ab|}{2\pi }\hfill \\ P(down,up)=P(up,down)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{|ab|}{2\pi }\hfill \end{array}\}$$
(1)
instead of

$$\begin{array}{c}P(up,up)=P(down,down)=\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathrm{sin}\frac{ab}{2}\right)^2\hfill \\ P(down,up)=P(up,down)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathrm{sin}\frac{ab}{2}\right)^2\hfill \end{array}\}$$
(2)
in quantum case and wrote next :

> “Thus the ad hoc model does what is required of it (i.e., reproduces quantum mechanical results) only at $`(ab)=0`$, $`(ab)=\pi /2`$ and $`(ab)=\pi `$, but not at intermediate angles.
>
> \[…\] Could we not be a little more clever, and device a model which reproduces the quantum formulae completely? No. It cannot be done, so long as action at a distance is excluded. This point was realized only subsequently. Neither EPR nor their contemporary opponents were aware of it. Indeed the discussion was for long entirely concentrated on the points $`|ab|=0`$, $`\pi /2`$ and $`\pi `$.”

It should be mentioned, that correlation functions

$$E(a,b)=P(up,up)+P(down,down)P(down,up)P(up,down)$$
(3)
produced from classical Eq. (1) and quantum Eq. (2) expressions have similar behavior with same minimal value (anticorrelation) for $`ab=0`$, maximal (correlation) for $`|ab|=\pi `$, an intermediate for $`|ab|=\pi /2`$ (see picture in ).

Problem 2. Even for simpler setup with particles and polarizers there are certain problems with distinction between quantum and classical correlations. For much more complicated situation with clinical research such difference may be completely hidden (see below)

## 4 Identity of physical systems. Non-identity of patients. What is the spin of patient?

There is yet another property of classical Bell’s model discussed above: for any difference between two angles $`\mathrm{\Delta }=ab`$ there is some value $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ that reproduces all probabilities on classical model for the fixed values of angles. Three points mentioned by Bell are special case, then $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$. So we may not say, that quantum correlation are “stronger” than classical as it sometime may be found in not very accurate popular presentations (in quote above even suggested, that it was so for any papers before Bell’s works).

As it follows from , authors are aware about the problem, but in the abstract may be found following sentence:

> “Quantum effects could fake an increase of the recovery rate by about $`13\%`$ although the drug would hurt as many patients as it would help if everyone took it.”

It may cause a wrong conclusion, that quantum correlation may produce additional fake effect, stronger than analogue with classical “Breltmann’s placebo pills” discussed earlier. Really in  $`13\%`$ is value of specific expression for collective property of some group of people333Due to properties of Bell’s classical model discussed above, quantum corelations could not be ensured by arbitrary number of trials with fixed parameters, like angles of polarizers. with different “angular parameters”  and so only loosely can be considered as “recovery rate” (it is like situation, then instead of value of blood pressure in clinic you got a puzzle like “your pressure is 0.87 of mine two years ago.”)

In  also is not discussed an important consequences that may destroy overall idea. In such a model  angles $`a,b`$ are not simply accessible or at least observable parameters like for experiments with polarizers. On the other hand, for any experiment with fixed angles and trial with one particular patient always exists two angles for classical model, that completely reproduce necessary correlations, i.e. arbitrary value between $`1`$ and $`+1`$.

It is necessary to perform many experiments with particles and four concrete fixed angles, to prove quantum nature of correlation. It is not enough to use only one pair of angles. It is clear also, that we should ensure that each polarizer may have only two given angles. If it may be set in some unknown variety of different angles, then we again may not hope to measure any true correlations.

So model suggested in  could work only if all patients may be characterized by the same four fixed angles. Seems the limitation is enough to make the model not very realistic, but here is yet another related point. There is some difference between Eq. (2) above and equations used in . All angles in expressions differ in two times. Really both expressions are valid. The difference is because in  used expressions for photon with spin-1, but in  for electron with spin-1/2.

So here is rather naive question: even if we accept that quantum model of patient suggested in  is true, what is “a spin of patient”? Or yet another question, let us suggest, that clinical trial may be described by correlation with some complicated function, not “cos” in  and the expression may not be explained neither by classical nor but quantum hidden latent parameters. Could we use the experimental data as a proof, that we find some new law of physics? That is the difference between such idea and model in 444It was rather pathetic question partially related with suggestion in  to use counterfactual statements. It is written, that it is possible, if we have a model. But we may have also a model of new physical law, that explains new kind of correlation function mentioned above, or mathematical model of a nurse-esper, who directly recovered patients without any medicine.? The problem, that we have two different ways to explain some phenomenon (recovering of patients): with direct causal effects of medicine and without it, but with latent quantum phenomena. It is not clear, how to distinguish those and why we should accept rather vague quantum model developed in . So …

Problem 3. Elementary physical systems are equivalent. This property together with possibility of ideal repetition with same setup of experimental equipment is necessary condition for testing quantum correlations, but it is doubtful, that the same is true for real patients and clinical trials.

Problem 4. It is even not such a big flaw to object using classical theory for clinical trials (after all, “classical” is some synonym of “known already to scientists living more than century ago”), but how does it possible to use only simplest models of quantum theory (hardly applicable even to two particles, see above) for very complex beings?

## 5 $`𝐂^{}`$ algebra of patient.”

Some problems discussed above was concerned rather with difficulty of observation quantum effects discussed in , but it may be not must important problem. Authors of  themselves were aware about it and wrote in abstract:

> “We do not present any realistic model showing this effect, we only point out that the physics of decision making could be relevant for the causal interpretation of every-day life statistical data.”

and in conclusion:

> …“Hence the violation of the instrumental inequalities requires quantum coherence that is stable for a long time (compared to time scales of decoherence in technical quantum systems). Therefore the violation seems to be even less likely.
>
> However, the main purpose of this paper was to show that some classical causal interpretations of every-day life statistical data could in principle fail if latent quantum effects influence our behavior.”

But it was not mentioned rather simple principle:

Problem 5. There are many absolutely different phenomena described by similar expressions and so resemblance of mathematical formulae should not be considered as proof of equality.

After all it could be possible to comment some interesting result discussed in  as it is found, that models of linear algebra developed for description of quantum mechanical systems are also convenient for description of decision making in AI and statistics, but not as an evidence of reducibility of some psychological and physiological processes to quantum entanglement of two particles somewhere inside of human brain (idea about “one-particle entanglement” suggested in  even more mysterious).

## 6 Affine separability. (ZHSL-BCJLPS theorems and fake quantum correlations)

May be pretensions about vague quantum models or irony about spin of patient are not appropriate here? After all in  is discussed saturated and detailed $`C^{}`$-algebraic model of patient and it may include complicated issues of spins or quantum behavior of multi-particle alive systems. But here there is yet another point.

As it was already mentioned in introduction, basic general question related with  is: how it is possible in principle to talk about quantum correlations in clinical trials, if even in “refined” condition of usual physical experiments, it is challenging task near limit of accuracy of modern physical equipment? But if we have a complicated mathematical model like in , how to check the misgivings about inadequacy?

Seems here may help a rather general result about “affine separability” discussed in  and overlapped with earlier applications of ZHSL-BCJLPS theorem555Życzkowski, Horodecki, Sanpera, Lewenstein  – Braunstein, Caves, Jozsa, Linden, Popescu, Schack  theorem..

More detailed account may be found in original papers , but general idea rather simple and shows, that in realistic conditions with weak signal due to quantum effect and big background noise it is not possible to distinguish classical and quantum correlations. Due to such problem in  was raised question about legitimacy to talk about quantum effect in real NMR experiments. That can be said in such a case about clinical trials?

The trials considered in  are also relevant to error model necessary for wrong interpretation used in . Very close analogue of the models  was considered in . It was discussed misclassification of case-control studies666Studies discussed in  are called so sometime. due to problems similar with discussed in . The model developed in  could not be mentioned in , written more earlier, but after developing of this model and even before appearance of  it becomes clear, that such a model is relevant not only to physical research, but in more wide area including situations discussed in .

The model of error developed in  also appropriate to general algebraic framework used in , because let show, that using quite simple transformation it is possible to produce “classically correlated state” from arbitrary quantum state and it is relevant also for description of quantum states used in  (i.e., some linear functional on a $`C^{}`$ algebra ).777It should be mentioned yet, that ZHSL-BCJLPS theorem formally still proved only for finite-dimensional systems, but it is enough for consideration of .

The transformation corresponds to distortion of probabilities $`p_k`$ of some outcomes described as

$$p_k^{}=sp_kb.$$
(4)
Here coefficients $`s`$ and $`b`$ should be connected by simple relation to ensure unit probability for sum of all possible outcomes (see ). The equation Eq. (4) may looks strange only at first sight, but it has many realistic applications. For example, it corresponds to linear approximation of a model with arbitrary nonlinear function $`p^{}=f(p)`$ or may be rewritten as

$$p^{}=apb\overline{p},a=sb,\overline{p}1p$$
(5)
and the expression produces more clear interpretation of Eq. (4). It corresponds to erroneous reduction of probability estimation due to events of “complimentary”888In classical sense. kind.

It should be mentioned also, that Eq. (4) is not necessary related with some error. It may describe true change of probabilities of some processes due to pure classical reason. Let us consider example with two neurons considered in . There was suggested Bell-type correlations between two neurons due to quantum effects. It is strange to use ideas of nonlocality test with special setup ensuring of noninteraction between objects to systems with possibility of active interdependency. For neurons it is very actual, because “saturation of probabilities” discussed in relation with Eq. (5) is very common process here  and can be represented by simple scheme of lateral inhibition Fig. 2.

It may be familiar in physical society due to chapter about color vision in first volume of The Feynman lectures on physics . Here mathematical problem with physically impossible negative value for intensity of red color discussed in  has formal resemblance with physically impossible negative probability discussed by Feynman in his first lecture on quantum simulators , and it is again an example of mathematically similar and physically different models. Excitations of neurons may be described by models of linear algebra  and it is similar with quantum mechanics, but the excitation is result of very difficult chemical processes with many molecules and classical description.

For testing some of these laws are enough simple pictures like Fig. 3.

Problem 6. The model discussed in  is illustrative example of conditions for fake quantum correlations due to errors or wrong interpretation of complicated experimental data recently discussed in . So even appearance of regularity suggested by the models  could not confirm quantum correlation due to many unpredictable sources of errors in real clinical trials, because in such conditions criteria for distinction between classical and quantum correlations may not be applied.