text:
# Untitled Document

Speckle interferometric observations of close binary stars

S. K. Saha1, V. Chinnappan1, L. Yeswanth 1 e-mail: sks@iiap.ernet.in, vchin@iiap.ernet.in, yeswanth@iiap.ernet.in, 2anbu@iiap.ernet.in, and P. Anbazhagan2

1Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore 560 034. India.

2 Vainu Bappu Observatory, Kavalur 635 704. India.

Abstract. Speckle interferometric technique is employed to record a series of hundreds of short-exposure images of several close binary stars with sub-arcsecond separation through a narrow band filter at the Cassegrain focus of the 2.34 meter (m) Vainu Bappu telescope (VBT), situated at Vainu Bappu Observatory (VBO), Kavalur, India. The data are recorded sequentially by a Peltier-cooled intensified CCD camera with 10 ms exposure. The auto-correlation method is applied to determine the angular separations and position angles of these binary systems.

Key words: interferometer, speckle imaging, close binary stars.

1. Introduction

Speckle interferometric technique (Labeyrie, 1970) is widely used to decode the deleterious effect of the atmospheric turbulence that limits the resolution of ground-based telescopes. Recent reviews by Saha (1999, 2002) describe in depth the utility of this method. One of the important subjects in stellar astrophysics is the studies of close binary stars. This interferometric technique deciphers the diffraction-limited autocorrelation of the object. In case of the components in a group of stars, this method retrieves the separation, position angle with 180 ambiguity, and the relative magnitude difference at low light levels. This paper presents the results obtained at the Cassegrain end of the 2.34 m VBT, VBO, Kavalur using such technique. Data analysis was carried out using the algorithm developed by Saha and Maitra (2001).

2. Instrumentation & Observations

Large number of speckle-grams of several close binary stars and of reference stars were recorded on 10th. April, 1999 using the speckle interferometer (Saha et al., 1999) at the Cassegrain focus of the VBT through a 10 nm filter centered on 6761 Å. These images were acquired with a Peltier-cooled ICCD camera with an exposure time of 10 ms. This camera offers options of choosing the exposure time, viz., 1 ms, 5 ms, 10 ms, 20 ms etc. It can operate in full frame, frame transfer and kinetic modes. Since the CCD is cooled to - 40C, the dark noise is low. Data are digitized to 12 bits and can be archived to a Pentium based PC. In full frame, as well as in frame transfer modes, the region of interest can be acquired at a faster speed. While in the kinetic mode, the image can be confined to a small area.

3. Data reduction and the results

Data of two close binary stars, HR4891 and HR5298 alongwith the respective reference stars were processed. The data acquired using window 3.1 software is stored in the SPE format. The data is then converted to FITS (16 bit unsigned integer) format. The SPE format has a fixed header size of 4100 bytes, followed by an array of 16 bit integer values, the size of which is determined by the image section used and the number of frames acquired in a single sequence.

More than 400 frames of each of the aforementioned stars are scanned carefully. Some of the frames contained specklegrams whose centroid were displaced with respect to the circular pinhole image. In the case of binary stars, these images considerably reduce the visibility of the fringes in the processed image. Since the Fourier transform method of image reconstruction is effective only when the noise content in the acquired image is within acceptable limits, each frame was inspected, and the frames in which the centroid of the specklegram was centered within the pinhole image to within 10-15 pixels were selected. The elimination of the faulty frames in this manner has improved the fringe contrast by a factor of 2. The separation of the components of HR4891 and HR5298 are found to be 0.094′′ and 0.109′′ respectively. These results are consistent with the CHARA catalogue. Figure 1 depicts the autocorrelation of the binary star HR5298; the companion star is imprinted on either side of the primary star.

Figure 1. Autocorrelation of HR5298.

References

CHARA third Catalogue, 1997, eds. W. Hartkopf, H. McAlister, and B. Mason.

Labeyrie A., 1970, A & A, 6, 85.

Saha S. K., 1999, BASI, 27, 443.

Saha S. K., 2002, Rev. Mod. Phys., (April issue).

Saha S. K., Maitra D., 2001, Ind. J. Phys. 75B, 391.

Saha S. K., Sudheendra G., Umesh Chandra A., Chinnappan V., 1999, Experimental Astronomy, 9, 39.


format: text

text:
# Second parameter globulars and dwarf spheroidals around the Local Group massive galaxies: what can they evidence?

## 1 Introduction

Color–magnitude diagram (CMD) studies of the Galactic globular clusters (GCs) accumulated in 1960-ies have convincingly shown that metallicity is not the only parameter governing the clusters’ horizontal branch (HB) morphology and that some other parameter(s) affect the distribution of stars on the HB. In other words, a ”second parameter” effect takes place: at a given metallicity, GCs with the second parameter phenomenon exhibit redder HB morphology. Thanks to numerous CMD studies, with limiting magnitude below the main sequence turnoff, of GCs in the Milky Way and in its nearest satellites, age has been revealed to play an important role in the second parameter effect. However, different investigators make contradictory conclusions regarding whether or not it is mainly responsible for the effect (for comparison, see Stetson et al. stetson (1996) and Sarajedini et al. saraj97 (1997); or VandenBerg van (2000)).

We stress the point that the second parameter problem itself is beyond the scope of the present paper. However, since the Galactic GCs under study have historically been called SPGCs, it is this term that is used hereafter to denote GCs younger than primeval ones, but with approximately the same mean metallicity, close to $`[Fe/H]1.6`$.

It is now well recognized (for instance, Zinn zinn (1993); van den Bergh vdB93 (1993); Lee et al. lee (1994)) that GCs in the outer halo of the Milky Way form two subpopulations, ”old” and ”young”. The latter consists of the SPGCs displaying predominantly red HB morphology. Presently, there is little doubt about the younger ages ($`2`$ Gyr) of the SPGCs as compared to the old GCs in the Galactic halo (e.g., Lee et al. lee (1994)). In addition to such age characteristics, their predominant location in the halo at Galactocetric distance $`R_{GC}>8`$ kpc poses the fundamental problem of the origin of these clusters. It is a long–standing, poorly understood problem that arose more than three decades ago. Revealing the cause of these GCs in the outer Galactic halo would be beneficial in understanding their formation and the early history of the Milky Way, and other related questions.

By proceeding from the tentative inference that age is responsible for the second parameter, Searle & Zinn (sz (1978)), in their scenario of halo formation, hypothesized that the origin of SPGCs was in gaseous condensations, ”transient protogalactic fragments that continued to fall into dynamical equilibrium with the Galaxy for some time after the collapse of its central regions had been completed”. In this scenario the authors also considered the possibility of merging of low–mass galaxies with the Milky Way. Later, owning to development of the cold dark matter theories of galaxy formation, some investigators tentatively identified these hypothetical transient fragments with ”dark halos” which, in turn, were found in the dSph galaxies, real objects with both the appropriate masses of visible matter and signs of a rather high dark matter content (see, among others, the review of various topics related to dSphs by Gallagher & Wyse galwys (1994); review by Mateo mateo (1998) ). Moreover, a number of important observations – in particular, the discovery by Ibata et al. (ibata (1994)) of the Sagittarius dSph that shows obvious signs of tidal disruption; findings about the second parameter effect displayed by the old stellar populations in dSphs and by GCs belonging to them (e.g., among others, Buonanno et al. buonan85 (1985); Suntzeff et al. suntz (1993); Demers & Irwin demirw (1993) ); a highly ordered spatial distribution of the Galactic dSph galaxies, as noted by Kunkel & Demers (kundem (1976)) and Lynden-Bell (lynden (1982)), along with a close resemblance between three–dimentional distribution of SPGCs having the reddest HB morphology and some of the dSphs (Majewski majew (1994)) – are evidence suggesting that the origin of the Galactic SPGCs is a consequence of tidal disruption/stripping (TD/S), during a Hubble time, of the formerly more numerous dSph–like systems or larger Galactic companion(s). Thus, the role of such a mechanism is at present widely believed to be crucial, and its reliability with regard to the formation of the Galactic halo is currently being investigated (for instance, Morrison et al. morris (2000); Harding et al. hard (2001)).

Explaining the population of Galactic SPGCs by TD/S of the respective ancestral galaxies, dSph or some other satellites to the Milky Way appears to be a natural and well grounded approach to the problem. However, even if it was an absolute fact it would simply replace the problem by other one(s) related to the origin of the ancestors themselves. Indeed, the Galactic SPGCs are, on the one hand, younger than the old halo globulars, but, on the other hand, they should have been among the oldest constituents of their hypothetical parent (dSph) systems. Therefore, we have to conclude that these tidally dissolved dSphs are younger (by $`2`$ Gyr or so) than the oldest objects populating the Galactic spheroid. Then, we need to explain the mysterious emergence of the ”young” satellite galaxies in the outer Galactic halo, in about two Gyr after the beginning of its formation, as well as their relatively rapid subsequent dissolution by the Galactic tidal forces. Moreover, different facts and their detailed analysis (see Section 2) can militate against such an attractive ”destructive” mechanism as being the major one responsible for the Galactic SPGC system formation.

Instead of (or in addition to) this we have recently suggested (Kravtsov krav (2001)), and here we analyze in detail, a ”creative” process which would perhaps be able to explain the origin of populations of both SPGCs and dSphs, belonging not only to the Galaxy but also to two other massive galaxies of the LG. Specifically, M31 includes six dSph systems (Grebel 2000a ), while M33 has no dwarf companions, but according to data of Sarajedini et al. (saraj98 (1998)) it has appreciable population of SPGCs.

The role of the dSph–consuming process in the formation of the Galactic SPGCs population and populations of sush GCs in M33 and M31 is analyzed in the next section, taking into consideration diverse observational data obtained to date. In Section 3, we summarize the basic characteristics of both the population of Galactic SPGCs and the dSph galaxies, which may be consistent with and explained by the processes described in Section 4.

## 2 Is dSph–consuming process responsible for the origin of the SPGCs?

To achieve a more adequate understanding of the nature of the Galactic SPGC population, observational information about such clusters in other massive galaxies of the LG is very valuable. Preliminary relevant results obtained to date seem to increase doubts about the TD/S of dSphs as the universal mechanism of and main contributor to the formation of populations of SPGCs in the three most massive galaxies of the LG. Contrary to expectations following from the large mass of M31 and hence its comparatively high destructive ability, among GCs studied in the galaxy there are only hints of the existence of SPGCs (Rich et al. rich (2001)). This means that the relative number of these clusters among GCs in M31 is presumably low. Selection effects can take place though, taking into account that among Galactic globulars the SPGCs have, on average, lower concentrations and luminosities (van den Bergh vdB96 (1996)). At the same time, a surprisingly large number of GCs, eight out of ten in the sample studied by Sarajedini et al. (saraj98 (1998)) in M33, have turned out to show exclusively red HB morphology at the mean metallicity $`[Fe/H]=1.6`$, i.e. they are the SPGCs. The authors carefully selected most probable candidates for the halo objects of M33, and hence relative number of SPGCs in the halo of the Triangulum nebula is apparently high. This is further supported by the latest investigation by Chandar et al. (chand (2002)). They found that $`60\%`$ of 17 kinematically selected halo clusters of M33 appear to be ”young” ones, ”a much higher fraction of young to old halo clusters than found in the Milky Way”. The observed clusters’ projected distances from the galaxy center, at the given mass of the galaxy, do not exclude the origin of SPGCs in M33 due to tidal disruption of hypothetical dSphs (but not to stripping, because we see no companions to M33). However, the observations by Sarajedini et al. and by Chandar et al. (chand (2002)) coupled with recent result of Chandar et al. (chandar (2001)) are able to put significant constraints on such a possibility. The latter authors have estimated the total number of GCs in M33 to be $`75\pm 14`$, which gives a specific frequency significantly higher than in other late–type spirals. It is most probable that this surprising excess is due to the presence of SPGCs. Therefore, in the framework of the dSph–consuming view of the origin of SPGCs we should again assume, as in the case of our Galaxy, the mysterious emergence of the hypothetical ”young” satellite dSph galaxies in the halo of M33 a few Gyr after the beginning of its formation. Moreover, it is necessary to accept a surprisingly complete disruption of all these dwarfs, as well as their preferably high mass, since only the high–mass dwarfs would be able to form GCs. These processes and characteristics seem to be fairly strange and artificial, and they could hardly be real in such a combination as applied to M33. But, there is little doubt that some specific process(es) occurred in the halo of M33 that led to both the prolonged formation of GCs and their obvious surplus population in the galaxy compared to those in many other late–type spiral galaxies.

Important constraints on the Galactic halo formation by the dSph–consuming process come from the latest abundance investigations. Shetrone et al. (shetrone (2001)) have determined and analyzed abundance ratios for more than 20 elements in spectra, obtained with the Keck I telescope, of red giant stars belonging to the Draco, Sextans, and Ursa Minor dSphs. From a comparison of the measured values with published ones for the Galactic halo stars, a number of essential differences between them was found, particularly in $`[\alpha /Fe]`$. Hence, the authors have concluded that their observations do not support the notion ”that the Galactic halo has been assembled entirely through the disruption of very low–luminosity dSph galaxies like the three galaxies” studied by them. From a similar comparison of element abundance ratios measured for the Galactic halo stars and dSph stars within the same range of metallicity, Fulbright (fulb (2002)) has made even stronger claims that the former stars in the solar neighborhood are unlikely to have been constituents of disrupted dSphs similar to the studied ones.

Fairly strong limits to the Galactic halo formation via dSph satellite merging have been set by Unavane et al. (unavane (1996)) and Gilmore et al. (gilmore (2000)) as well. According to their estimates no more than some $`10\%`$ of the halo could have formed due to this process over approximately the last 10 Gyr. The latter authors also conclude that ”either the dwarfs merged before they formed stars, or they never formed”.

Interesting supplementary constraints on the Galactic SPGCs were analyzed by van den Bergh (vdB96 (1996)).

In addition to the above–mentioned, indirect studies of possible TD/S of the hypothetical dwarf galaxies in the past, direct investigations were carried out regarding the impact of the TD/S on mass loss from the dSph ”survivors” really existing in the outer Galactic halo. Unfortunately, the respective results obtained to date for some dSph galaxies are very different, and they now cannot provide a decisive answer to the problem. Apart from the conventional process of the TD/S of the Sagittarius dSph galaxy, indications of an extratidal population around the Ursa Minor dSph are reported by Martinez-Delgado et al. (mart (2001)). A substantial extratidal population from the Carina dSph galaxy has been found by Majewski et al. (majew00 (2000)), who have determined the rate of current mass loss from the galaxy to be surprisingly high, namely of order of $`27\%`$ of its mass every Gyr. Hence, they evaluate, under some assumptions, that 14 Gyr ago the Carina dSph was 100 times more massive than now. At the same time, Odenkirchen et al. (oden (2001)) and Aparicio et al. (aparicio (2001)) have found no tidal tails or an extratidal extension of the stellar populations belonging to the Draco dSph galaxy. For comparison with some of the above findings it is interesting to note the latest results obtained by Hayashi et al. (hayashi (2002)), modeling the dark matter halos surrounding dSph satellites of the Milky Way. They find that these halos have circular velocity curves with peaks at essentially higher velocities than determined from the stellar velocity dispersion, and that the tidal radii of the dSphs are larger than those derived from observations.

Taken at face value, these observations may imply that a role played by the dSph–consuming process in the formation of the population of SPGCs in the outer Galaxy, as well as populations of these clusters around the LG massive spirals, is secondary. For this reason, we suggest other process as being important. In our approach we proceed from the recognized starting point that there is an apparent relationship between the dSphs and SPGCs. However, we assume that both kinds of objects originated from the same cause rather than the dSph–consuming process resulted in the populations of SPGCs.

## 3 Summary of the basic characteristics

The relationship between the Galactic populations of dSphs and SPGCs is reliably shown by their basic characteristics which, in turn, should be consistent with the process suspected to be responsible for the origin of these objects. These characteristics are summarized below.

The age of the SPGCs, as mentioned above, differs from that of the old GCs by a few Gyr, typically $`2`$ Gyr (but see age data for some ”young” globulars in VandenBerg van (2000)).

These clusters exhibit peculiar kinematic characrestics. They have, on average, marginally retrograde or zero rotation, whereas old GCs show direct motion with lower dispersion. According to Da Costa (dacosta (1994)) the mean velocities of rotation are $`V_{rot}=45\pm 81`$ km s-1 and $`V_{rot}=58\pm 24`$ km s-1, respectively.

Metallicities of the SPGCs, as noted by Rodgers & Paltoglou (rodpal (1984)) and confirmed by van den Bergh (vdB93 (1993)), fall in a quite narrow range, within $`\mathrm{\Delta }[Fe/H]=0.4`$ dex, with no relation between metallicity and Galactocentric distance. However, Yoon & Lee (yoonlee (2002)) argue that the majority of the most metal–poor ($`[Fe/H]<2.0`$) Galactic GCs are younger, by $`1`$ Gyr, than the oldest globulars, and find that these clusters ”display a planar alignment in the outer halo”, close to the Magellanic Plane.

Majewski (majew (1994)) has shown that three–dimentional distribution of the SPGCs with reddest HB morphology is such that they appear to populate the so-called ”Fornax–Leo–Sculptor stream” consisting of five dSph galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. He has argued that all these objects ”may be related through origin in a common Galactic accretion event”.

Moreover, Galactic dSphs themselves show ordered distribution on the sky, with the plane formed by them being nearly orthogonal to the Galactic plane (Kunkel & Demers kundem (1976); Lynden-Bell lynden (1982); Majewski majew (1994)). A similar ordered distribution is also displayed by dSphs belonging to the Andromeda galaxy. Both dSph populations around the two parent galaxies apear to be distributed in space either roughly near the same plane or near two planes with a low inclination between them, as may be seen, for example, in the results of Hartwick (hartwick (2000)) or in the Figures 1 and 3 from Grebel (2000b ) and Mateo (mateo (1998)), respectively.

In contrast to dwarf irregular galaxies, which are more or less uniformly distributed across the LG, dSphs show obvious concentration to the Galaxy and M31 (e.g.,Einasto et al. einasto (1974); van den Bergh vdB94 (1994); Grebel 2000a ).

CMDs of dSphs and their GCs, like those of the SPGCs, are strongly affected by the second parameter. This may be evidence that ages of at least some of the objects are younger than the old globulars. For instance, according to Suntzeff et al. (suntz (1993)) the Sextans dSph galaxy ”may be a few Gyr younger than the typical Galactic globular cluster”. Saragedini et al. (saraj02 (2002)) conclude that the Cetus dSph is 2–3 Gyr younger than Galactic GCs with the same metallicity, provided that age is primarily responsible for the second parameter. On the contrary, Buonanno et al. (buonan98 (1998)) find no significant difference in age between GCs belonging to the Fornax dwarf galaxy and Galactic GCs M68 and M92. Also, the Ursa Minor dSph galaxy is estimated to be as old as the latter globular (Mighell & Burke migbur (1999)). It should be noted here that, due to a number of well known reasons, the accuracy of the relative age estimates for the Galactic dSph galaxies is hardly better than 1 Gyr, even at best. In any case, it is quite probable that at least a number of the presently observed dSphs belonging to the Milky Way are not the primeval objects in the sense that their oldest stellar populations are younger than the old Galactic globulars. One can suggest that either such dSphs were formed in relation to some secondary process(es) or initial starbursts in the protodSphs (”dark halos”) were delayed until they were triggered by these processes.

Note also that both the number of dSphs orbiting the Galaxy and the total mass of luminous matter that they comprise, as one can deduce from the compilative data of Grebel 2000a , are apparently larger when compared to dSph systems belonging to M31.

## 4 Putative consequence of the mass outflows

It has been argued since 1970s (e.g., Larson larson (1974); Bookbinder et al. book (1980); Marochnik & Suchkov marsuch (1984); Berman & Suchkov bersuch (1991)) that some properties of galaxies, particularly chemical ones, and those of hot gas in clusters of galaxies imply a considerable mass loss which may have occurred in the early epoch of formation and evolution of the galaxies. This is mainly due to the mass outflows caused by supernovae–driven winds during the most powerfull (initial) star formation event(s). Such a loss of gas by galaxies such as M31 and the Milky Way has been evaluated to amount up to a half mass of the respective protogalaxy, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }M10^{11}M_{}`$.

These conclusions, reached in earlier studies, seem to be in general agreement with the latest results achieved on the basis of more advanced observational and theoretical investigations of starbursting galaxies at different redshift. The high–redshift Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) are suggested to be progenitors of the present–day massive spheroids being, in particular, components of luminous early–type spirals (Friaca & Terlevich friter (1999), for instance). Starburst–driven galactic superwinds observed in LBGs play important role in the mass outflow from them and in enrichment of the intergalactic medium. As summarized by Heckman (heckman (2001), and references therein), ”the outflows carry mass out of the starburst at a rate comparable to the star–formation rate”. This implies that outflows from a starforming protogalaxy, like M31, during the most powerful episode(s) of its Population II formation, that is (are) assumed to last $`2`$ Gyr with the star formation rate $`100M_{}`$ yr-1 (Granato et al. granato (2001)) would be able to carry off the protogalaxy a total mass of gas somewhat exceeding $`10^{11}M_{}`$. Because according to Pettini et al. (pet (2001)) typical speeds of such a gas in LBGs range from a few $`10^2`$ to $`10^3`$ km s-1, some tens of percent of this mass, i.e. up to $`\mathrm{\Delta }M10^{11}M_{}`$ (that is in agreement with the former estimate), with velocities exceeding the escape velocity of M31, could have left the galaxy.

If so, then portion of the gas that escaped from M31 could be accreted onto its massive companion(s), our Galaxy (and M33), as it might be expected from the well–known processes taking place in binary star systems. We can easily estimate an order of magnitude of a time delay between starting an expansion of the gas from M31 and its subsequent accretion onto the Galaxy. If we build upon both the present distance between the two galaxies ($`0.7`$ Mpc) and the ratio of their mass ($`M_G/M_A1/1.5`$) then we find that the time spent by the gas to reach a region of the Lagrangian point between the two galaxies ($`0.4`$ Mpc) may be as long as 1 Gyr at a mean velocity of the expanding gas of the order of $`400`$ km s-1. The assumed duration ($`2`$ Gyr) of mass loss from M31 combined with the above time delay can explain, in particular, the mean age difference between the SPGCs and primeval globulars in our Galaxy.

Yet one key quantity is an upper limit of mass of the gaseous material $`\delta M`$ that might have been accreted onto the Galaxy if the total amount of gas lost by M31 was $`\mathrm{\Delta }M(10^{11}M_{})`$. For this purpose we have applied a formula deduced by Postnov (postnov (2000)) in the approach of gas accretion in gravity potential $`\phi \frac{1}{R}`$ of the field of the less massive companion in a binary system. By substituting the corresponding values in the formula, we obtain:

$$\delta M\frac{1}{4}\left(\frac{M_G}{M_A}\right)^2\mathrm{\Delta }M\frac{1}{10}\mathrm{\Delta }M10^{10}M_{}$$

Even if a mass of really accreted gas was an order of magnitude lower than the upper limit estimated and if, in turn, approximately ten percent of this mass was converted into objects, i.e., $`10^8M_{}`$, that would be equal to a total mass of the bulk of SPGCs, a few dSph galaxies, and also of field stars with their total mass 1 – 1.5 order of magnitude higher compared to the mass of all the SPGCs, which might have formed due to such a process in the outer halo of our Galaxy. The typical cluster and dSph masses are accepted to be $`10^5M_{}`$ and $`10^7M_{}`$, respectively. It is worth of noting that from a detailed analysis of the space motions of the Galactic halo stars, Chiba & Beers (chibeers (2000)) find both an excess number of high–eccentricity stars and a sharp discontinuity, near zero, of the mean rotational velocities to occur near the same metallicity, $`[Fe/H]1.7`$. They suggest that a significant fraction of stars with metallicity near this value might form from infalling gas with the corresponding chemical abundance during the early formation of the Galaxy. Intriguingly enough, average metallicities of SPGCs in the Galaxy and M33, falling near $`[Fe/H]1.6`$, are very close to the above value.

Similarly, by applying the above formula to the case of M33 and taking into account that its mass is a factor of ten lower than the mass of M31, it is possible to conclude that objects assumed to form from a gas accreted onto M33 might include some dozen (or more) GCs and a population of field stars too.

Apart from M31, the early Galaxy is also expected to lose a sizable amount of partially enriched gas, though its overall mass should apparently be less than in the case of the former galaxy. Therefore, a less significant mass transfer, from the star–forming protoGalaxy to its massive companions, along with the respective consequences are suspected to have taken place too. Here, it is worth of mentioning that, by analyzing potometric properties of the paired early–type galaxies, Demin (demin (1984)) assumed the possibility of mass–exchange processes between such galaxies at the early stage of their evolution, and Demin & Sazhin (1985a , 1985b ) studied this possibility. In particular, in the latter paper the authors conclude that mass exchange between companions in a binary galactic system can be more preferable than a mass loss from the system.

Of course, we here use simple evaluations which are preliminary. However, they appear to be sufficient to show, in principle, the expected scale and consequences of mass transfer between the most massive members of the LG. Additionally, the numerous observations of present–day formation of massive star clusters and dwarf galaxies in the tidal tails of interacting galaxies (e.g., Gallagher et al. galetal (2001) and references therein) may be important indirect observational evidence supporting the formation of such objects due to the suggested type of interaction between the LG massive galaxies during formation of their spheroids. At this stage of their formation, a high portion of mass of each of the starbursting galaxy remains in the form of a gas, part of which is contracting to the central regions of the spheroids, and another part is expanding out of them. It is gas in the outer regions of the star–forming protoGalaxy that could primarily collide with an accelerated infalling stream of gas which was being transferred from the Andromeda protogalaxy through a region of the Lagrangian point between the early galaxies. Supersonic gas motion and accretion, under a speed of the gaseous material relative motion reaching at least a few $`10^2`$ km s-1, should have led to shockwaves. Indeed, sound speed in gas with $`T10^6K`$ is near 150 km s-1, whereas the speed of the accelerated infalling gas might be not less than $`200÷300`$ km s-1. Shockwaves are known to be powerful factor triggering and essentially increasing efficiency of star formation. Perhaps, the conditions favourable for the formation of stars and clusters were more or less met at a distance of several tens of kiloparsecs from the Galactic centre. The efficiency of star formation would probably be highest, irrespective of Galactocetric distance, if it happened that the infalling stream collided with relatively dense gas contained in the ”dark halos”. It is important to empasize that, by analogy with a mass transfer between companions in an interacting binary star system, the passage of gas through the Lagrangian point between spheroids of the two protogalaxies should have led the infalling gas to become denser and to have more or less ordered distribution and motion around the protoGalaxy, close to the plane defined by the relative motion of M31 and the Milky Way at that moment. Therefore, the objects that could form from the infalling gas, thanks to the mass transfer from M31 to the Galaxy, would exhibit signs of the respective kinematics and spatial distribution around the latter galaxy in its outer parts. The same should be correct for gas accretion onto M33. The observed characteristics of the aforementioned stars with metallicity around $`[Fe/H]1.7`$ and populations of both the Galactic SPGCs and dSphs seem to agree well with the objects’ origin due to such a process. Kinematic and spatial characteristics of SPGCs in M33 also suggest their accretive origin in the halo of the galaxy (Chandar et al. chand (2002)).

Similarly, it is not excluded that the infalling gas might have collided with the interstellar matter in the outer parts of the early LMC, the largest Galactic satellite. This could result in the induced formation of additional globulars more weakly bound to the LMC, which were subsequently captured by the Galaxy.

Accepting the proposed and discussed interaction between the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, and the Triangulum nebula in their early history, we can naturally explain (in the present section) the existence and the basic characteristics (Section 3) of SPGCs and (at least) some dSphs orbiting these galaxies. We omit the problem dealing with the relationship between the number of SPGCs and field stars formed in the same star–forming process. It is related to the more general, complex problem of GC (massive cluster) formation and its efficiency (e.g., Larsen & Richtler larich (2000); Elmegreen elmeg (2001)). Note only that for the populations of ”normal”, metal–poor and metal–rich GCs belonging to either elliptical galaxies or spheroids of spirals such a relationship may vary essentially (e.g., Harris et al. harris (1999) and Durrell et al. durrell (2001)).

Observations of high redshift structures of galaxies, such as reported by Venemans et al. (venem (2002)), would perhaps be able to shed light on the problem of the mass transfer between massive galaxies at early stage of their evolution.

## 5 Conclusions

The present paper discusses long–standing problem of the origin of the Galactic SPGCs. We show that there arise questions about the currently popular and conventional view on the origin of a population of these globulars as a result of TD/S of dSph galaxies, especially taking into account recent relevant observational data including those on the populations of such globulars in the two other most massive galaxies of the LG, M31 and M33. On the one hand, answering these questions requires a number of a priori assumptions, some of which seem to be rather artificial and contradictory, about hypothetical events and objects. On the other hand, we argue that even if this view is correct, the problem is merely replaced by other one(s) related to the origin of dSphs themselves. In order to interpret and reconcile the various observational data on SPGCs (and probably dSphs) belonging to the three spirals of the LG we propose here other scenario. It is based on the realistic suggestion about natural consequences of mass loss from M31 in its early history, namely, subsequent partial accretion of the gaseous material onto the early Galaxy and M33 should have contributed to the formation of their (outer) halos.

In addition, we draw attention to the possible interaction between massive galaxies at the early stage of their formation and evolution in pairs, groups, and perhaps in small clusters. In contrast to the relatively well–known and recognized consequences of a tidal interaction between galaxies, the suspected role of the interaction we deal with seems to be presently missing or underestimated. We suggest that if some starbursting massive protogalaxy, like M31 or our Galaxy, really loses a substantial amount of its gas, then the partially enriched gas expanding out and escaping from the protogalaxy not only contributes to the intergalactic medium but also should partially be trasferred to massive companion(s) of the protogalaxy. Because of the sizable amount of the gaseous material (probably, around a few per cent of mass lost by the starbursting massive protogalaxy) trasferred to and accreted onto the massive companions, they may experience additional large–scale starbursts leading to the formation, out of this material, of supplementary objects (stars, star clusters, and even dwarf galaxies) with particular appropriate characteristics. Therefore, strictly speaking, such galaxies do not form and evolve as completely isolated entities, and they may contain populations of SPGCs (and probably dSphs) as tracers of the interaction under study.

We suppose that just this kind of interaction occurred between the most massive galaxies of the LG and lasted approximately 2 – 3 Gyr after the beginning epoch of their formation, and it could primarily be responsible for the origin of both their SPGC populations and some of the dSph galaxies, as well as for the basic observables of these objects.

###### Acknowledgements.

The author is very grateful to A.A. Suchkov for his first encouraging comments on the idea of the scenario presented, and to S. van den Bergh whose attention and interest in the scenario outline presented in astro–ph was important moral support. Thanks are due to Yu.N. Efremov, K. Postnov, A.S. Rastorguev, M.V. Sazhin, N.I. Shakura, Yu.A. Shchekinov, and V.V. Slavutinsky for useful discussions. L. Murray’s assistance in improving the English of the paper is acknowledged. The author thanks an anonymous referee whose useful criticism stimulated improvement of the paper.


text:
# Blind separation of noisy Gaussian stationary sources. Application to cosmic microwave background imaging.

## 1 SOURCE SEPARATION for ASTRONOMY

### 1.1 Astronomical components

Source separation consists in recovering components from a set of observed mixtures. Component separation is a topic of major interest to the Planck space mission, to be launched in 2007 by ESA to map the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The blackbody temperature of this radiation as a function of direction on the sky will be measured in $`m=10`$ different frequency channels, corresponding to wavelengths ranging from $`\lambda =350`$microns to $`\lambda =1`$cm. In each channel, the temperature map will show not only the CMB contribution but also contributions from other sources called *foregrounds*, among which Galactic dust emission, emission from very remote (and hence quasi point-like) galaxy clusters, and several others. It is expected that (after some heavy pre-processing), the map built from the $`i`$-th channel can be accurately modeled as $`y_i(\stackrel{}{r})=_{j=1}^na_{ij}s_j(\stackrel{}{r})+n_i(\stackrel{}{r})`$ where $`s_j(\stackrel{}{r})`$ is the spatial pattern for the $`j`$-th component and $`n_i(\stackrel{}{r})`$ is an additive detector noise. In other words, cosmologists expect to observe a noisy instantaneous (*i.e.* non convolutive) mixture of essentially independent components (independence being the consequence of the physically distinct origins of the various components). Even though recovering as cleanly as possible the CMB component is the primary goal of the mission, astrophysicists are also interested in the *other* components, in particular for collecting data regarding the morphology and physical properties of Galactic foregrounds (dust…) and the distribution of galaxy clusters.

This paper deals with *blind* component separation. Blindness means recovering the components without knowing in advance the coefficients of the mixture. In practice, this may be achieved by resorting to the strong but often plausible assumption of mutual statistical independence between the components. The motivation for a blind approach is obvious: even though some coefficients of the mixture may be known in advance with good accuracy (in particular those related to the CMB), some other components are less well known or predictable. It is thus very tempting to run blind algorithms which do not require *a priori* information about the mixture coefficients.

### 1.2 Blind separation methods

Several attempts at blind component separation for CMB imaging have already been reported. The first proposal, due to Baccigalupi et al. use a non Gaussian noise-free i.i.d. model for the components, hence following the ‘standard’ path to source separation. One problem with this approach is that the most important component, namely the CMB itself, seems to closely follow a Gaussian distribution. It is well known that, in i.i.d. models, it is possible to accommodate at most one Gaussian component. It does not seem to be a good idea, however, to use a non Gaussian model when the main component itself has a Gaussian distribution.

Another reason why the i.i.d. modeling (which is implicit in ‘standard’ ICA) probably is not appropriate to our application: most of the components are very much dominated by the low-frequency part of their spectra. Thus sample averages taken through the data set tend not to converge very quickly to their expected values. This may explain why Fourier methods, presented below, seem to perform better.

Thus, rather than exploiting the non Gaussianity of (all but one of) the components, one may think of exploiting their spectral diversity. A very sensible approach is proposed by Pham: using the Whittle approximation of the likelihood, he shows that blind separation can be achieved by jointly diagonalizing spectral covariance matrices computed over several frequency bands . This conclusion however is reached only in the case of noise-free models. Therefore, it is not appropriate for CMB imaging where a very significant amount of noise is expected.

In this paper, we follow Pham’s approach but we take additive noise into account, leading to a likelihood function which is no longer a joint diagonality criterion, thus requiring some new algorithmics. We present below the form taken by the EM algorithm when applied to a set of spectral covariance matrices. This approach leads to an efficient algorithm, much faster than the algorithms obtained via the EM technique in the case of non Gaussian i.i.d. modeling as in  or .

### 1.3 A stationary Gaussian model

Our method is obtained by starting from a stationary Gaussian model. For ease of exposition, we assume that the observations are $`m`$ times series rather than $`m`$ images (extension to images is straightforward). The $`m\times 1`$-dimensional observed process $`y(t)=[y_1(t);\mathrm{};y_m(t)]`$ is modeled as

$$y(t)=As(t)+n(t)$$
(1)
where $`A`$ is an $`m\times n`$ matrix with linearly independent columns. The $`n`$-dimensional source process $`s(t)`$ (the components) and the $`m`$-dimensional noise process $`n(t)`$ are modeled as real valued, mutually independent and stationary with spectra $`S_s(\nu )`$ and $`S_n(\nu )`$ respectively. The spectrum of the observed process then is

$$S_y(\nu )=AS_s(\nu )A^{}+S_n(\nu ).$$
(2)
The $``$ superscript denotes transconjugation even though transposition would be enough almost everywhere in this paper (our method is easily adapted to deal with complex signals/mixtures). The assumption of independence between components implies that $`S_s(\nu )`$ is a diagonal matrix:

$$[S_s(\nu )]_{ij}=\delta _{ij}P_i(\nu )$$

where $`P_i(\nu )`$ is the power spectrum of the $`i`$th source at frequency $`\nu `$. For simplicity, we also assume that the observation noise is uncorrelated both in time and across sensors:

$$[S_n(\nu )]_{ij}=\delta _{ij}\sigma _i^2$$
(3)
meaning that the noise spectral density $`\sigma _i^2`$ on the $`i`$th detector does not depend on frequency $`\nu `$. In summary the probability distribution of the process is fully specified by $`m\times n`$ mixture coefficients, $`m`$ noise levels and $`n`$ power spectra.

## 2 THE OBJECTIVE FUNCTION

Our method boils down to adjusting smoothed versions of the spectral covariance matrices (2) to their empirical estimates. The estimated parameters are those which give the best match, as measured by an objective function. This objective function is introduced in this section. In the following section, we show how it stems from the maximum likelihood principle.

### 2.1 Spectral averaging.

A key feature of our method is that it uses low dimensional statistics obtained as averages over *spectral domains* in Fourier space. These Fourier domains simply are frequency bands in the 1D case or are two-dimensional domains of the Fourier plane when the method is applied to images.

Consider a partition of the frequency interval $`(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2})`$ into $`Q`$ domains (bands): $`(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2})=_{q=1}^Q𝒟_q`$ which are required to be symmetric: $`f𝒟_qf𝒟_q`$. For any function $`f(\nu )`$ of frequency, denote $`f_q`$ its average over the $`q`$-th spectral domain when sampled at multiples of $`1/T`$:

$$f_q=\frac{1}{w_q}\underset{\frac{p}{T}𝒟_q}{}f\left(\frac{p}{T}\right),q=1,\mathrm{},Q$$
(4)
where $`w_q`$ is the number of points in domain $`𝒟_q`$.

### 2.2 Spectral statistics

Denoting $`Y(\nu )`$ the discrete-time Fourier transform of $`T`$ samples:

$$Y(\nu )=\frac{1}{\sqrt{T}}\underset{t=0}{\overset{T1}{}}y(t)\mathrm{exp}(2i\pi \nu t),$$
(5)
the *periodogram* is $`\widehat{S}_y(\nu )=Y(\nu )Y(\nu )^{}`$ and its averaged version is

$$\widehat{S}_y_q=Y(\nu )Y(\nu )^{}_q.$$
(6)
Note that $`Y(\nu )=Y(\nu )^{}`$ for real data so that $`\widehat{S}_y_q`$ actually is a real valued matrix if $`𝒟_q`$ is a symmetric domain.

This sample spectral covariance matrix will be our estimate for the corresponding averaged quantity

$$S_y_q=AS_s_qA^{}+S_n_q$$
(7)
where the equality results from averaging model (2).

A key point is that the structure of the model is not affected by spectral averaging since $`S_s_q`$ remains a diagonal matrix after averaging:

$$S_s_q=\mathrm{diag}[P_1_q,\mathrm{},P_n_q]$$

and, of course, $`S_n_q=S_n=\mathrm{diag}(\sigma _1^2,\mathrm{},\sigma _m^2)`$ still is a constant diagonal matrix.

### 2.3 Blind identification via spectral matching

Our proposal for blind identification simply is to match the sample spectral covariance matrices $`\widehat{S}_y_q`$, which depend on the data, to their theoretical values $`S_y_q`$, which depend on the unknown parameters. There are $`m\times n+Q\times n+m`$ of these parameters, 111 There are actually $`n`$ redundant parameters since a scale factor can be exchanged between each column of $`A`$ and the corresponding power spectra.  collectively referred to as $`\theta `$:

$$\theta =\{[A_{ij}]_{i=1,j=1}^{i=m,j=n};[P_j_q]_{j=1,q=1}^{j=n,q=Q};[\sigma _i^2]_{i=1}^{i=m}\}.$$
(8)
The mismatch between the sample statistics and their expected values is quantified by the average divergence:

$$\varphi (\theta )=\underset{q=1}{\overset{Q}{}}w_qD(\widehat{S}_y_q,S_y_q)$$
(9)
where the positive weight $`w_q`$ is (as above) proportional to the size of the $`q`$-th spectral domain and where $`D(,)`$ is a measure of divergence between two $`m\times m`$ positive matrices defined as

$$D(R_1,R_2)=\mathrm{tr}\left(R_1R_2^1\right)\mathrm{log}det(R_1R_2^1)m$$
(10)
This is nothing but the Kullback divergence between two $`n`$-dimensional zero-mean Gaussian distributions with positive covariance matrices $`R_1`$ and $`R_2`$ respectively.

The reason for using the mismatch measure (9) is its connection to maximum likelihood principle (see below). Even though the divergence (9) may, at first sight, seem more difficult to deal with than a simple quadratic distance, it is actually a better choice in at least two respects: first, we expect it to yield efficient parameters estimates because of the asymptotic optimality of maximum likelihood estimation; second, thanks to its connection to the log-likelihood, it lends itself to simple optimization via the EM algorithm (see below).

A last note: since domain averaging does not change the algebraic structure of the spectral covariance matrices (*i.e.* eq. (2) becomes (7)), it does not introduce any bias in the estimation of $`A`$.

## 3 MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD AND EM

### 3.1 Whittle approximation

The Whittle approximation is a spectral approximation to the likelihood of stationary processes. It has been introduced for the blind separation of noise-free mixtures by Pham . Simplifying a little bit, this approximation boils down to asserting that the coefficients $`Y(\nu )`$ of definition (5) taken at frequencies $`\nu =p/T`$ are uncorrelated, have zero-mean and a covariance matrix equal to $`S_y(\nu )`$. Simple computations then show that —up to a constant and a scalar factor— the (negative) log-likelihood of the data takes the form (9) under the additional approximation that $`S_y(\nu )`$ is constant over each spectral domain.

The Whittle approximation is good for Gaussian processes but certainly does not capture all the probability structure, even for large $`T`$, for non Gaussian processes. However, it it still provides a principled way of exploiting the spectral structure of the process, leading to the selecting of (9) as an objective function. In addition, it suggests to use the EM algorithm for minimizing (9).

### 3.2 An EM algorithm in the spectral domain

Using the EM technique for maximizing a likelihood function requires defining latent (unobserved) data. In the case of source separation, there is an obvious choice: take the components as the latent data. This approach was introduced in  for a noisy non Gaussian i.i.d. model of source separation and later in  for a noisy non Gaussian model in the spectral domain. Both these models lead to heavy computation. In contrast, by i) using only a Gaussian model (the Whittle approximation) and ii) averaging over spectral domains, the EM algorithm becomes very computationally attractive.

Room is lacking for a complete derivation of the EM algorithm in our case but it is not difficult to adapt, for instance, the computations of  to our case. Let us only mention why the resulting algorithm is much simpler.

First, when dealing with data structured as $`y=As+n`$, EM needs to evaluate conditional expectations $`E(s|y)`$ and $`E(ss^{}|y)`$. Thanks to the Gaussian model, these are readily found to be *linear* functions of $`y`$ and $`yy^{}`$ respectively:

$`E(s|y)`$ $`=`$ $`Wy`$ (11)
$`E(ss^{}|y)`$ $`=`$ $`Wyy^{}W^{}+C`$ (12)
where matrices $`C`$ and $`W`$ are defined as

$`C`$ $`=`$ $`(A^{}R_n^1A+R_s^1)^1`$ (13)
$`W`$ $`=`$ $`(A^{}R_n^1A+R_s^1)^1A^{}R_n^1`$ (14)
with covariance matrices $`R_s=\mathrm{Cov}(s)`$, $`R_n=\mathrm{Cov}(n)`$.

Second, this linearity is preserved through domain averaging, meaning that the EM algorithm only needs to operate on the sample covariance matrices $`\widehat{S}_y_q`$. This set of matrices is a sufficient statistic set in our model; it is also all that is needed to run the EM algorithm.

Thus, blind separation of noisy mixtures of stationary sources can be achieved by computing the periodogram, averaging it into a set of sample covariance matrices and maximizing the likelihood by then running the EM algorithm. The algorithm is summarized in pseudo-code (see Alg. 1), but its derivation (which is purely mechanical) is omitted.

In this pseudo-code, the $`\mathrm{diag}()`$ operator sets to $`0`$ the off-diagonal elements of its argument. We also include a renormalization step which deals with the scale indetermination inherent to source separation: each column of $`A`$ is normalized to have unit norm and the corresponding scale factor is applied to the average source spectra.

## 4 APPLICATION AND COMMENTS

### 4.1 Separating astrophysical components

Preliminary tests have been carried on simulated observations in six channels at microwave frequencies 100, 143, 217, 353, 545 and 857 GHz, over sky patches of size $`12.5^{}\times 12.5^{}`$ sampled over a $`300\times 300`$ pixel grid. Mixtures include three astrophysical components (CMB, Galactic dust, and emission from galaxy clusters) and white noise.

Since isotropic observations are expected, we choose spectral domains which are not only symmetric but also rotation invariant; in other words: spectral rings. The sample spectral covariance are computed over 15 such rings equally spaced over the whole band. Data reduction thus is by a factor of $`(6\times 300\times 300)/(15\times 6\times 6)=1000`$. The EM algorithm converges in a few tens of iterations amounting to a few seconds on a 1 GHZ machine when coded in octave (a free clone of Matlab: http://www.octave.org).

Room is lacking for a detailed description of our experiments which will be reported elsewhere. See figure 1 for an illustration with a typical (and significant) level of noise.

A notable feature here is the separation of the galaxy clusters. The SNR on the CMB component is also much improved at high frequency even though this cannot be assessed from the picture. See the companion paper in these proceedings for more details.

### 4.2 Conclusion

We have proposed an efficient method to maximize the likelihood of a model of noisy mixtures of stationary sources by implementing the EM algorithm on spectral domains. The procedure jointly estimates all the parameters: mixing matrix, average source spectra, noise level in each sensor. Spectral averaging offers large computational savings, especially when dealing with images.

Since the inference principle is maximum likelihood for a ‘smooth’ Gaussian stationary model, we expect a good statistical efficiency when the source spectra are reasonably smooth (even though we saw little performance degradation in our experiments when using a very coarse $`Q=2`$ spectral partition) and when the sources actually are Gaussian. In the CMB application, some components are very close to Gaussian (the CMB itself) while others are strongly non Gaussian; it is not clear yet how to best combine non Gaussian information with spectral diversity.

As final note, we recall that, in the noise-free case, the ability to blindly separate Gaussian stationary components rests on *spectral diversity*: the spectra of any two sources should not be proportional. The noisy case is complicated by the fact that the noise parameters also have to be estimated.

Future research should cover many issues: blind identifiability in unknown noise, choice of the spectral domains, integration of non Gaussian information, integration of prior information,…


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Composite and granular materials have permitted during last decades an important enhancement in various materials science fields like electronics, mechanics and optics.

Indeed, such systems showed physical properties unreachable by the conventional materials. Thus some composites presented actually a very interesting corrosion resistance, which led to choose them as a skin of boats . Other metal-insulating mixtures presented an anormally high optical absorption , thus instigating interest to military industry. We can also mention some polymer-Carbone black mixtures which reach electrical resistances comparable to the lead allowing interesting applications mainly on the fabrication of light batteries .

Such performances may depend both on the components properties, the grains distribution as well as the contact between them. For instance, Hertz showed that electrical resistance decreases for an increasing stress. From the various techniques used for analysing the physical properties of such materials we can mention the impedance spectroscopy. This method allows to determine the frequency dependance of the electrical response and particularly the characteristic frequencies. These frequencies inform us about the dielectric and optical properties of these materials.

Recently, a numerical and experimental investigation of impedance spectra on powder  determined their characteristic frequencies, by taking into account tunnelling effect between grains. In this study, the conductance was taken to depend exponentially on the inter-grains distance whose distribution was chosen to be uniform.

In this work, we use the above modelization by assuming the inter-grain distribution to be Gaussian in order to examine the effect of the conducting grains organization. We investigate also the scaling effect on the complex impedance at the characteristic frequencies.

## 2 The model

Impedance measurements on mixtures of conducting and insulating powder showed that the system can have an inductive behavior. This behavior is attributted to the inter-grains contact rather than the grains themselves in this range of frequencies. The system is then modelled by $`RLC`$ circuits representing the contact impedance . Some polymers doped by carbon black have shown an electric conduction even with an insufficient carbon concentration to make an infinite cluster. The resulting current is either a quantum (tunnelling) effect or a thermal activation energy. Because of the variation of the inter-grains distances, the conducting or insulating bonds do not have identical conductances.

Let us consider two agregates conductors bonded by $`N(p)`$ tunnel junctions, $`p`$ being the concentration of metallic grains. On a network of bonds $`N(p)`$ is the number of simple dielectric junctions (bonds) allowing eventually a tunnelling transmission between two nearest neighbor agregates. The conductivity of the $`i^{th}`$ tunnel junction then reads

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_ia_0\sigma _m\mathrm{exp}(l_i/\delta )$$
(1)
where $`a_0`$ is a typical grain (or agregate) size, $`l_i`$ the size of the $`i^{th}`$ junction ($`0<l<a0`$) and $`\delta `$ the characteristic size for tunnelling effect. This form can be obtained by analogy with the electron transmission by thermal activation above a barrier energy $`E`$ ($`exp(E/KT)`$, $`K`$ being the Boltzman constant and $`T`$ the temperature). Equation (1) becomes then

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_ia_0\sigma _m\mathrm{exp}(\lambda _0x_i)$$
(2)
with $`\lambda _0=a_0/\delta `$ and $`x_i=l_i/a0`$ is a dimensionless distance distributed between $`0`$ and $`1`$. Only the best junctions contribute to the tunnelling current. We can then assume that the tunnel conductance between two conducting agregates $`j,k`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{j,k}a_0\sigma _m\mathrm{exp}(\lambda _0x_{\mathrm{min}\{j,k\}}).$$
(3)
When the percolation $`p_c`$  is reached, the distance between two agregates becomes more and more smaller and the probability of finding a junction of high conductance increases. By taking into account all junctions the conductance becomes

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{j,k}a_0\sigma _m\mathrm{exp}(\lambda (p)y_{j,k});\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}<y_{j,k}<1$$
(4)
with $`\lambda (p)\lambda _0/N(p)`$ a $`p`$ dependent renormalized tunnelling parameter. If we simplify the fluctuations on $`C`$ (considered constant here), the quantities $`R`$ and $`L`$ obey to the following distributions (From Eq. 4)

$`R_{i,j}`$ $`=`$ $`R_010^{\lambda x_{i,j}}`$ (5)
$`L_{i,j}`$ $`=`$ $`L_010^{\lambda x_{i,j}}`$ (6)
with $`x_{i,j}`$ a random variable distributed within the intervalle $`\{0,1\}`$, $`R_0`$ is the minimum value of $`R`$ and characterises the doping of the system and $`\lambda `$ the width of the distribution. From experimental data, there is a constant ratio between $`R_{i,j}`$ and $`L_{i,j}`$. The computation of the effective conductance is done by using Kirchoff equations following a method solving exactly these equations . For a system of size $`L`$x$`L`$ this leads to the use of an $`L^2`$x$`L^2`$ matrix which is handled by blocs because of its sparse shape and arrangement near the diagonal region. This method allows us to reach very large sizes in comparison with those reached by  and to study the scaling effects of the impedance.

## 3 Results and discussions

Impedance spectra measurements on powder can be realized via an impedance analyzer where the sample is constituted actually of insulating grains (like galss balls treated at surface) and conducting ones (like glass balls leads treated at surface) .

In a theoretical work , the inter-grains distance was uniformly distributed assuming that there are no correlations between them. However, because of the boundary conditions on such systems (the size of the system is fixed) it seems reasonable to think about a distribution taking into account correlated distances which are characterized by their average value with fluctuations around it. We choose for this end a Gaussian distribution with the same parameters: $`R_0`$, $`C`$, $`L_0`$ used by ref.  and $`\lambda =7`$.

Figure 1 shows a comparison between these distributions on the complex impedance spectra for a sample of size $`30`$x$`30`$. We define here the characteristic frequencies as those corresponding to the maximum of the real part of the impedance ($`\omega _r`$) and its imaginary part ($`\omega _i`$). In a simple $`RC`$ branch $`\omega _i`$ is the relaxation frequency while in for an $`RLC`$ circuit $`\omega _r`$ is the resonance frequency. These frequencies seem to depend slightly on the inter-grains distribution. This implies a slight effect of the inter-grains distributions on the optical and dielectric properties of the system. However, these results correspond only to small sizes ($`30`$x$`30`$) which are probably statistically insufficient.

It is then important to investigate the scaling effect of these spectra. We remark in figure 2, large fluctuations for small sizes which decrease for larger samples. Except for the above fluctuations, it is difficult to study the scaling effect from the whole range of frequencies.

We examine then the scaling effect only on the characteristic frequencies which represent the main physical properties of the system. This is shown in figure 3 where, despite of the fluctuations for small sizes there is an obvious scaling dependence for both parts of the impedance with a saturation at a size $`200`$x$`200`$ for $`\omega _r`$ while for $`\omega _i`$ it should be reached at a larger size (around $`400`$x$`400`$). From this figure it is clearly seen that $`\omega _r`$ depends on the inter-grains distribution (where the uniform distribution yields a larger frequency) while $`\omega _i`$ seems to be independent (within the statistical errors).

## 4 Conclusion

We have studied numerically the impedance spectra for metal-insulator composites in order to model their dielectric properties. The inter-grains distances distribution seems to affect sensitively one characteristic frequency ($`\omega _r`$) for large samples while it does not seem to change the other frequency ($`\omega _i`$). The scaling investigation showed that $`\omega _r`$ saturates above sizes of $`200`$x$`200`$ while we need much larger samples (about $`400`$x$`400`$) to reach the saturation of the other frequency. It is then interesting to search the distribution which fits best the the existing experimental data particularly the characteristic frequency since from the comparison between the two used distributions the spectrum seems to be not globally affected. It is also important to investigate the spectra of such systems away from the percolation threshold in order to apply these results to the corrosion and also to the control of active systems composition (insulator-insulator) for pharmaceutical applications .

Acknowledgement

Two of us (L.Z. and N.Z.) would like to acknowledge the hospitality of the Abdus Salam ICTP (Trieste, Italy) during the progress of this work. Financial support from the Arab Fund is acknoledged by N.Z.

Figure Captions

Figure 1 Comparison of the real part (a) and imaginary part (b) spectra of the impedance for two different distributions.

Figure 2 Imaginary part of the impedance for different sizes and for a uniform distribution (a) and a Gaussian distribution (b).

Figure 3Comparison of the characteristic frequencies $`\omega _i`$ (a) and $`\omega _r`$ (b) for uniform and Gaussian distributions.


text:
# Magnetar-like X-ray Bursts from an Anomalous X-ray Pulsar

## Acknowledgements

We thank E. Kuulkers, K. Hurley, K. Jahoda, C. Kouveliotou, W. Lewin, M. Lyutikov, M. Muno, D. Psaltis, S. Ransom, M. Roberts, D. Smith, and C. Thompson for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by a NASA LTSA grant, an NSERC Research Grant, and an NSF Career Award. VMK is a Canada Research Chair and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. This research has made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to vkaspi@physics.mcgill.ca.

| Table 1 AXP Burst Timing and Spectral Properties | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | Burst 1 | Burst 2 |
| Temporal Properties | | |
| Burst day, (MJD) | 52211 | 52227 |
| Burst start time, (fraction of day, UT) | 0.2301949(24) | 0.836323379(68) |
| Burst rise time, $`t_r`$ (ms) | $`21_5^{+9}`$ | $`5.9_{1.2}^{+2.0}`$ |
| Burst duration, $`T_{90}`$ (s) | $`51_{19}^{+28}`$ | $`2.0_{0.7}^{+4.9}`$ |
| Burst phase | $``$0.018 $`\pm `$ 0.034 | 0.051 $`\pm `$ 0.032 |
| Fluxes and Fluences | | |
| $`T_{90}`$ fluence (counts) | 485 $`\pm `$ 118 | 101 $`\pm `$ 15 |
| $`T_{90}`$ fluence ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | 20.3 $`\pm `$ 4.8 | 5.3 $`\pm `$ 1.2 |
| 1-s fluence (counts) | 117 $`\pm `$ 13 | 69 $`\pm `$ 10 |
| 1-s fluence ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`5.9_{1.9}^{+8.6}`$ | $`4.0_{0.8}^{+3.5}`$ |
| Peak flux for 64 ms ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`31_{10}^{+45}`$ | $`26_5^{+23}`$ |
| Peak flux for $`t_r`$ ms ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`54_{17}^{+79}`$ | $`114_{23}^{+100}`$ |
| Spectral Properties | | |
| Power law: |  |  |
| power law index | $`0.89_{0.71}^{+1.8}`$ | $`1.38_{0.62}^{+0.75}`$ |
| power law flux ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`2.0_{1.8}^{+8.4}`$ | $`4.0_{0.8}^{+3.5}`$ |
| line energy (keV) | $`13.9\pm 0.9`$ |  |
| line width, $`\sigma `$ (keV) | $`2.2_{1.0}^{+1.3}`$ |  |
| line flux ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`3.9_{1.6}^{+2.2}`$ |  |
| reduced $`\chi ^2`$/degrees of freedom | 1.24/15 | 0.77/5 |
| Black body: |  |  |
| $`kT`$ (keV) | $`3.9_{2.7}^{+3.7}`$ | $`3.6_{1.3}^{+2.2}`$ |
| black body flux ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`2.4_{2.1}^{+5.0}`$ | $`3.8_{1.5}^{+3.3}`$ |
| line energy (keV) | $`14.2_{1.2}^{+1.1}`$ |  |
| line width (keV) | $`2.1_{1.3}^{+1.5}`$ |  |
| line flux ($`\times 10^{10}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$) | $`3.7_{1.9}^{+2.2}`$ |  |
| reduced $`\chi ^2`$/degrees of freedom | 1.23/15 | 1.66/5 |

## Table Caption

Table 1. The uncertainty on the burst start time is the burst rise time $`t_r`$ and is given in parenthesis as the uncertainty in the last digits shown. The burst rise times were determined by a maximum likelihood fit to the unbinned data using a piecewise function having a linear rise and exponential decay. The burst duration, $`T_{90}`$, is the interval between when 5% and 95% of the total 2–20 keV burst fluence was received. The background regions used for both the duration and spectral analyses are shown in Figure 1. Burst phase is defined such that the peak of the periodic pulsation is at phase 0/1. All fluences and fluxes are in the 2–20 keV range. $`T_{90}`$ fluences in cgs units were calculated assuming a power-law spectral model and spectral grouping that demanded a minimum of 20 counts per spectral bin. The 1-s fluences in cgs units correspond to the fluxes found in the spectral modeling. The spectral rebinning method used in all spectral modeling for Burst 1 was to group the 256 PCA channels by a factor of 4, while for Burst 2, we demanded at least 20 counts per spectral bin. Peak fluxes on the short time scales were determined by scaling the 1-s fluxes by number of counts. For all spectral fits, the equivalent neutral hydrogen column density was held fixed at $`1.2\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, the value determined from recent XMM observations\[Tiengo et al.¡25¿\]. Spectral fits were determined for the first 1 s after the burst start times. Spectral modeling was done using photons in the 2–40 keV range. Response matrices were created using the FTOOL pcarsp 111http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/recipes/pca\_response.html. Uncertainties in the Table are 68% confidence intervals, except for those reported for the cgs-unit fluences and fluxes, as well as the spectral model parameters, for which we report 90% confidence intervals.

Figure 1 Caption

Lightcurves for the observed bursts. The RXTE AXP data set consists of short ($``$3 ks) snapshots, as well as longer archival observations, all taken in the PCA GoodXenonwithPropane mode, which records photon arrival times with 1-$`\mu `$s resolution, and bins photon energies into 256 channels. Time series were initially created with 31.25-ms resolution from photons having energies in the range 2–20 keV for each PCA Proportional Counter Unit (PCU) separately, using all xenon layers. Photon arrival times at each epoch were adjusted to the solar system barycentre. The resulting time series were searched for significant excursions from the mean count rate by comparing each time bin value with a windowed 7-s running mean. Bursts were identified assuming Poissonian statistics, and by combining probabilities from the separate PCUs. Left Panel: Background subtracted 2-20 keV light curves for Burst 1, displayed with 2-s time resolution. The solid horizontal lines before and after the bursts are the boundaries of the pre- and post-background intervals used for calculating $`T_{90}`$ and for spectral modeling. The $`T_{90}`$ interval is shown as a horizontal dashed line. Right Panel: Same but for Burst 2, and with 0.5-s time resolution in the main panel. The insets show the peak of each burst with 31.25-ms time resolution. We verified that there was no significantly enhanced signal from PCA events not flagged as “good” at the times of the bursts (such as those that do not enter through the PCA aperture) in the RXTE “Standard 1” event files. We also verified that both events were clearly detected in all operational PCUs. Hence the events are unlikely to be instrumental in origin.

Figure 2 Caption

X-ray spectrum in the 2–40 keV range for the 1 s after the onset of Burst 1. For all spectral analyses, we first created spectral files having 256 channels across the full PCA energy range ($``$0.2–60 keV), although subsequent factor of 4 rebinning was necessary because of the paucity of burst counts. The burst and background intervals were used as input to the X-ray spectral fitting package XSPEC\[Arnaud¡26¿\] v11.1.0222http://xspec.gsfc.nasa.gov. The spectrum of the first 1 s after Burst 1 onset is not well characterized by any continuum model. The best fit power-law plus Gaussian line model is shown as a solid line. The F-test shows that the addition of a line of arbitrary energy, width and normalization to a simple power law model improves the fit significantly, with a chance probability of this occuring of $`0.0032`$. Monte Carlo simulations in XSPEC were done to verify this conclusion: 10,000 simulations of similar data sets were produced assuming a simple power-law energy distribution, then fit with a power law plus Gaussian line of arbitrary energy, width and normalization. This procedure is conservative, since it ignores that the observed large line has flux comparable to the measured continuum. In 10,000 trials, we found 1 trial with the same or smaller chance occurence probability as judged by the F-test, indicating that the probability of the line we observed being due to random chance is $`<0.0001`$. We repeated this procedure for data having a black-body spectrum, with similar results, namely the probability of the line being due to chance is $`<0.0008`$. The spectrum also shows possible additional features at $``$7 keV and $``$30 keV (suggestive of of lines at multiples of 1, 2 and 4 of $``$7 keV). These additional features are not apparent in all binning schemes and are not statistically significant.


text:
# A Global Potential Analysis of the 16O+28Si Reaction Using a New Type of Coupling Potential

## I Introduction

Since the first observation of the unexpectedly large cross-section near $`\theta _{CM}`$=180 for the elastic and the inelastic scattering between light and medium heavy nuclei , considerable experimental and theoretical efforts have been devoted to the systematic studies of this phenomenon and related aspects.

The physical origin of the observed structure is not yet fully understood  and presents a challenge to different approaches that have been proposed to explain it. These approaches range from the occurrence of possibly overlapping shape resonances  and the scattering from surface-transparent optical potentials  to more exotic effects like explicit parity dependence of the ion-ion potential . At present, none of these approaches provides a consistent explanation for all the existing data for this system.

Consequently, the following problems continue to exist for this reaction : $`(1)`$ the explanation of anomalous large angle scattering data; $`(2)`$ the reproduction of the oscillatory structure near the Coulomb barrier; $`(3)`$ the out-of-phase problem between theoretical predictions and experimental data; $`(4)`$ the consistent description of angular distributions together with excitation functions data; $`(5)`$ the deformation parameters ($`\beta `$ values): previous calculations require $`\beta `$ values that are at variance with the empirical values and are physically unjustifiable.

The elastic and inelastic scattering data of the 16O+28Si system have been studied extensively and some of the above-mentioned problems could not be accounted for . The most extensive study for this system was carried out by Kobos and Satchler  who used a double folding potential with two small additional ad-hoc potentials to reproduce the measured elastic scattering data. Without two small additional potentials, they observed that the theoretical calculations and the experimental data were completely out-of-phase and could not reproduce the experimental data.

Therefore, building on two previous papers , which were outstandingly successful in explaining the experimental data for the 12C+12C and 12C+24Mg reactions which both have been intensively investigated over the years , we investigate the elastic and inelastic scattering of 16O+28Si system from 29.0 MeV to 142.5 MeV. The excitation functions for the ground and the first excited states have also been analyzed over this energy range. In this paper, our aim is to reproduce all the experimental data with empirical $`\beta `$ value.

In the next section, we first introduce the standard coupled-channels model and then show the results of these analyzes in section III from ELab=29.0 MeV to 142.5 MeV. In section IV, we introduce a new coupling potential to analyze the experimental data in the same energy range and show the results of these new coupled-channels calculations. Finally, section V is devoted to our summary and conclusion.

## II The Standard Coupled-Channels Calculations

In the present coupled-channels calculations, we describe the interaction between 16O and 28Si nuclei with a deformed optical potential. The real potential is assumed to have the square of a Woods-Saxon shape:

$$V_N(r)=\frac{V_0}{(1+exp(rR)/a)^2}$$
(1)
with $`V_0`$=706.5 MeV, R=$`r_0`$($`A_P`$1/3+$`A_T`$1/3) with $`r_0`$=0.7490 fm and a=1.40 fm. The parameters of the real potential are fixed as a function of energy and are not changed in the present calculations although it was observed that small changes could improve the quality of the fits. The Coulomb potential with a radius of 5.56 fm is also added.

The imaginary part of the potential is taken as the sum of a Woods-Saxon volume and surface potentials:

$$W(r)=W_Vf(r,R_V,a_V)+4W_Sa_Sdf(r,R_S,a_S)/dr$$
(2)
$$f(r,R,a)=\frac{1}{1+exp((rR)/a)}$$
(3)
with $`W_V`$=59.9 MeV, $`a_V`$=0.127 fm and $`W_S`$=25.0 MeV, $`a_S`$=0.257 fm. These parameters are also fixed in the calculations and only their radii increase linearly with energy according to the following formulae:

$$R_V=0.061E_{CM}0.44$$
(4)
$$R_S=0.241E_{CM}2.19$$
(5)
The real and imaginary potentials are shown in figure 1 for $`E_{Lab}`$= 41.17 MeV. The sum of the nuclear, Coulomb and the centrifugal potentials is also shown in the same figure for the orbital angular momentum quantum number, $`l=10`$. The superposition of the attractive and repulsive potentials results in the formation of a potential pocket, which the width and depth of the pocket depend on the orbital angular momentum. This pocket is very important for the interference of the barrier and internal waves, which produces the pronounced structure in the cross-section. The effect of this pocket can be understood in terms of the interference between the internal and barrier waves that correspond to a decomposition of the scattering amplitude into two components, the inner and external waves .

The relative significance of the volume and surface components of the imaginary potential has also been examined for all the energies considered. For higher energies, omitting the volume term predominantly affects the amplitude of the cross-section at large angles. However, this effect is small and negligible at lower energies. Omitting the surface term increases the cross-sections at large angles which are as much as two orders of magnitude. It is observed that this term has a significant effect at all the energies considered.

Since the target nucleus 28Si is strongly deformed, it is essential to treat its collective excitation explicitly in the framework of the coupled-channels formalism. It has been assumed that the target nucleus has a static quadrupole deformation, and that its rotation can be described in the framework of the collective rotational model. It is therefore taken into account by deforming the real optical potential in the following way

$$R(\theta ,\varphi )=r_0A_P^{1/3}+r_0A_T^{1/3}[1+\beta _2Y_{20}(\theta ,\varphi )]$$
(6)
where $`P`$ and $`T`$ denote the projectile and target nuclei respectively and $`\beta _2`$=-0.64 is the deformation parameter of 28Si. This value is actually larger than the value calculated from the known B(E2). However this larger $`\beta _2`$ was needed to fit the magnitude for the 2+ state data as discussed in the next sections.

In the present calculations, the first two excited states of the target nucleus 28Si, i.e. 2+ (1.78 MeV) and 4+ (4.62 MeV), are included and the 0+-2+-4+ coupling scheme is employed. The reorientation effects for 2+ and 4+ excited states are also included. The inclusion of the 2+ and 4+ excited states has important effects as their effects change the elastic scattering fits substantially. These effects confirm that it is essential to use the coupled-channels method in the case where one of the nuclei in the reaction is strongly deformed. Extensively modified version of the code CHUCK  has been used for the all calculations.

## III Results

Using this standard coupled-channels model, the results for the ground and first excited states are shown in figures 2, 3, 4 and 5. It should be stressed that very close fits to the experimental data at forward, backward and intermediate angles were obtained without applying any ad-hoc procedures other than increasing the $`\beta _2`$ value (see $`\chi ^2`$ values in table I). In general, the previous coupled-channels calculations aiming to explain the structures at large angles obtained rather poor fits at forward angles or vice versa. Even when the forward and backward angles were fitted, the intermediate angles were not .

However, there are problems in our first excited state results. The magnitude of the cross-sections and the phase of the oscillations are obtained correctly at most angles. However, when one looks at the 2+ state results in detail, it is apparent that the experimental data and our predictions are out-of-phase towards large angles at higher energies. This problem was also found in earlier coupled-channels calculations for this system .

When studying this reaction systematically in a wide energy range, we came across several problems: The first problem relates to the oscillatory structure and to the backward rise in the cross-section at large angles for which the standard coupled-channels model provides a solution.

The second problem pertains to the calculation of the first excited state cross-section. Using the exact $`\beta `$ value, we observed that the calculations underestimated the experimental data, a phenomenon confirmed by other works which assert that in the coupled-channels or DWBA calculations, one has to increase or decrease the deformation parameter($`\beta `$) to be able to get agreement with the measured experimental data and that the choice of the $`\beta `$ value is somehow arbitrary in fitting the data. Therefore, we also adopted to increase the $`\beta `$ value.

The third problem arises due to Blair’s phase rule  which states that ‘the oscillations for even-$`l`$ transfer are out-of-phase with those for elastic scattering, while those for odd-$`l`$ transfer are in phase’. These experimental data obey this rule at numerous energies, except the energies around $`E_{Lab}`$$``$35.0 MeV (see figures 3 and 5). While the measured cross-section for the ground state has maxima at $``$180, it has also maxima at $``$180 for the 2+ state whereas, it should have minima $``$180 according to the Blair’s phase rule.

The theoretical predictions are completely out-of-phase around these energies for the 2+ state although they fit the ground state data. This problem is also clearly observed in the 180 excitation function of the 2+ state as shown in figure 6. The magnitudes of our calculations are also at least twice bigger than the experimental data at lower energies.

Our coupled-channels calculations showed that the threshold energy is $`E_{Lab}`$$``$35.0 MeV. It was also reported  that the irregular behavior of the experimental data starts beyond this energy. No coupled-channels calculation has been carried out below and above this energy simultaneously. However, research has been conducted and studies have been published pertaining to below or above this energy ($`E_{Lab}`$$``$35.0 MeV).

In the past, a number of models have been proposed in order to solve the above-mentioned problems, ranging from isolated resonances  to cluster exchange between the projectile and target nucleus  (see  for a detailed discussion). We have attempted to overcome these problems by modifying the shape and the parameters of the real potential as well as the parameters and the shape of the imaginary potential. These modifications in the real and imaginary potentials improved the 180 excitation function. However, we were unable to fit individual angular distributions and excitation functions simultaneously over the whole energy range.

We then sought to include the 6+ excited state. The inclusion of one additional excited state weakened the imaginary potential and this was useful to infer what the shape of the imaginary potential should be. Nevertheless, we were unable to include it in the final stage since it created a numerical accuracy/instability problem in the code. We finally changed the $`\beta _2`$ value and included a $`\beta _4`$ deformation. However, varying the value of the $`\beta _2`$ and the inclusion of the $`\beta _4`$ did not solve the problems.

In summary, these attempts failed to provide a wholistic solution to the above-mentioned problems. We were unable to explain the elastic and inelastic scattering data as well as their 180 excitation functions simultaneously.

## IV New Coupling Potential

The limitations of the standard coupled-channels theory in the analysis of this reaction has been well established by both our analyzes and the works published so far. We came across the same type of failure of the standard coupled-channels method in explaining the experimental data for the 12C+12C and 12C+24Mg reactions.

In order to explain the experimental data for these systems, we had to introduce a new type of coupling potential, which is a second-derivative coupling potential used in the place of the usual first derivative coupling potential. This new coupling potential has successfully explained the scattering observables of these two reactions over wide energy ranges and has made major improvement on the all the previous coupled-channels calculations for these systems. The reason and a possible interpretation of such a new coupling potential have been discussed in the two previous papers .

Building on these two previous papers, here we use a new second-derivative coupling potential to find a global solution to the problems that 16O+28Si reaction manifests. This new coupling potential is displayed in comparison with the standard coupling potential in figure 7. It is parameterized accurately as the second-derivative of the Woods-Saxon shape in the following form:

$$V_C(r)=\frac{V_{C_0}e^x(e^x1)}{a^2\left[1+e^x\right]^3}$$
(7)
where $`x=(rR)/a`$ and $`V_{C_0}`$=155.0 MeV, $`R`$=4.16 fm and $`a`$=0.81 fm.

In the new coupled-channels calculations, the real and imaginary potentials have the same shapes as given by the equations 1 and 2 and the same potential parameters are used except for the depth of the real potential and the $`\beta _2`$ value. They have to be readjusted as $`V_0`$=750.5 MeV and $`\beta _2`$=-0.34, which corresponds to the exact value derived from the life time of the 2+ state .

We have analyzed the experimental in the same energy range using this empirical $`\beta _2`$ value and the results of the new coupled-channels calculations are shown in figures 8, 9 and 10 for the ground state. Figure 11 presents the inelastic scattering while figure 12 shows the 180 excitation function for the ground and first excited states.

This new coupling potential solves the out-of-phase problem as shown in figure 12 and fits the ground state data and the 180 excitation functions simultaneously. A comparison is given for the 2+ excited state in figure 12. While the standard coupling potential is out-of-phase with the measured one, this new coupling potential significantly improves the agreement with the experimental data and solves the out-of-phase problem.

It is striking that the phase variation and the absolute magnitude of the inelastic cross-sections for all energies are correctly accounted for with this model. In contrast to the predictions of the standard coupled-channels calculations, the magnitude of the 2+ excited state data at lower and intermediate energies where we have available experimental data for the individual angular distributions are fitted well. The comparison of the $`\chi ^2`$ values with the standard one is given in table I.

Finally, table II shows the volume integrals of the real and surface and volume imaginary potentials. The volume integrals of the real and imaginary potentials are calculated by using following formulae:

$`J_V(E)=\left[{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi }{A_PA_T}}{\displaystyle _0^R}V(r,E)r^2𝑑r\right]`$ (8)
(9)
$`J_W(E)=\left[{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi }{A_PA_T}}{\displaystyle _0^R}W(r,E)r^2𝑑r\right]`$ (10)
The radii of the imaginary potentials are calculated from equations 4 and 5. It is seen from table II that the potentials fulfill the dispersion relations and the agreement between r$`_{W_{S,V}}`$ and J$`_{W_{S,V}}`$ is very good.

## V Summary

We have shown a consistent description of the elastic and inelastic scattering of the 16O+28Si system from 29.0 MeV to 142.5 MeV in the laboratory system by using the standard and new coupled-channels calculations. In the introduction, we presented the problems that this reaction manifests. We attempted to find a consistent solution to these problems. However, within the standard coupled-channels method, we failed, as others did, to describe certain aspects of the data, in particular, the magnitude of the 2+ excitation inelastic scattering data although the optical model and coupled-channels models explain perfectly some aspects of the elastic scattering data. In order to reproduce the first excited state (2+) data in the standard coupled-channels calculations, we were compelled to increase the value of nuclear deformation and such arbitrary uses of $`\beta `$ have been practiced in the past without giving any physical justifications other than stating it is required to fit the experimental data. Although we obtained a reasonable agreement between the experimental data and theoretical calculations for the ground and 2+ state data, the standard coupled-channels method have totaly failed in providing simultaneous fits to the individual angular distributions and 180 excitation functions and could not solve the out-of-phase problem between the theory and experimental data for these states.

We have, however, obtained excellent agrement with the experimental data over the whole energy range studied by using a new coupling potential, which has been outstandingly successful in explaining the experimental data for the the 12C+12 and 12C+24Mg  systems over wide energy ranges. The comparison of the results indicates that a global solution to the problems relating to the scattering observables of this reaction over a wide energy range has been provided by this new coupling potential. However, it is not possible at present to provide a solid theoretical foundation and further work in order to derive this term from a microscopic viewpoint is still under-progress. Any insights that would lead to progress in this direction will be greatly welcome in the future.

## VI Acknowledgments

Authors wish to thank Doctors Y. Nedjadi, S. Ait-Tahar, B. Buck, A. M. Merchant, Professor B. R. Fulton and Ayşe Odman for valuable discussions and encouragements. I. Boztosun also would like to thank the Turkish Council of Higher Education (YÖK) and Erciyes University, Turkey, for their financial support.


text:
# LARGE BULK MATTER SEARCH FOR FRACTIONAL CHARGE PARTICLES

## 1 Introduction

We have carried out the largest search for fractional electric charge elementary particles in bulk matter using 70.1 mg of silicone oil. That is, we looked for stable particles whose charge $`Q`$ deviates from $`Ne`$ where $`N`$ is an integer, and $`e`$ is the electron charge. No evidence for such particles was found. We used our new version  of the Millikan oil drop method containing two innovations compared to the classical method that we used in Halyo et al.. One innovation is that the drop charge is obtained by observing the drop motion in a *horizontal*, alternating electric field compared to the classical use of a vertical electric field. The other innovation is the use of an upward flow of air to reduce the vertical terminal velocity of the drop, which enabled us to use larger drops, about 20.6 $`\mu `$m in diameter compared to the 10 $`\mu `$m drops used in our previous experiments. Figure 1 depicts the principle of the technique.

## 2 Apparatus

Recent advances in inkjet printing technology and computer imaging are the key enabling technologies behind the experiment. The apparatus is built around a micromachined , drop-on-demand fluid ejector, and a digital charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. The drop ejector produces extremely uniform oil drops with radii constant to $`\pm 0.2\%`$. This ability to precisely control the drop radius, in addition to the large statistics gained by measuring many drops, allows the experiment to be self-calibrating, significantly reducing the possibility of an artifact.

The experiment is completely automated. The measurement region, approximately 2.3 mm horizontally by 3.0 mm vertically, is viewed by the CCD camera producing a 10 Hz stream of images in 8 bit greyscale at $`736\times 240`$ pixel resolution. This data is acquired, stored, and analyzed in real-time using custom written software. This software analyzes the images, measuring the positions of the drops to sub-pixel accuracy, and performs pattern recognition to identify the trajectories of individual drops. The charge $`Q`$ on each drop is calculated from the best possible fit to the measured trajectory, where the precision is primarily limited by Brownian motion.

## 3 Results

Data was collected for 30 weeks. From this sample, approximately $`11\%`$ of the drops were rejected using predetermined selection criteria. These selection criteria eliminated incorrectly measured drops, and were unbiased with regard to fractional charge. A total of $`17\times 10^6`$ drops were accepted into the final data sample.

The resulting distributions of $`Q`$ and the residual charge $`Q_r`$, defined to be $`Q_r=QN_le`$ where $`N_l`$ is the largest integer less than $`Q/e`$, are shown in Figure 2. No drops with fractional charge were observed, yielding a 95% confidence level upper limit on the abundance of fractional charge particles in silicone oil, for $`0.18eQ_r0.82e`$, of $`1.17\times 10^{22}`$ particles per nucleon. This result is described in detail in Lee et al..

## 4 Acknowledgments

This experiment was performed at SLAC under the direction of Martin Perl, and in collaboration with Sewan Fan, Valerie Halyo, Peter C. Kim, Eric R. Lee, Dinesh Loomba, and Howard Rogers. Thanks also to Klaus S. Lackner and Gordon Shaw.

This work was supported by Department of Energy contract DE-AC03-76SF00515.