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# Data analysis methods for XMM-Newton observations of extended sources. Application to bright massive clusters of galaxies at 𝑧=0.2

## 1 INTRODUCTION

After two years and a half of in-orbit operations, the XMM-Newton telescopes have almost completed their GT (Guaranted Time) and GO1 (1st Guest Observer cycle) duties. The selection process among the proposals for the GO2 (2nd Guest Observer cycle) is about to end, so that the corresponding observations may start within a semester, by early 2003. Tab. 1 shows that ClG (Clusters of Galaxies) related proposals represents one third to one seventh of the total, depending on whether one includes connected topics (individual galaxies, groups of galaxies and large scale structures surveys) or not. It may be assumed that the same ratio will appear in the final GO2 schedule, and has already appeared in the GT and GO1 schedules. However, Tab. 1 indicates a rather lower ratio in terms of published results.

As a matter of fact, clusters of galaxies, along with supernovae remnants, are the only X-rays diffuse emitters that may cover a substantial fraction of the, if not the whole, XMM-Newton telescope FOV (Field Of View). The case of the diffuse EXRB (Extragalactic X-Rays Background) is more complex since it is proven to originate from the cumulated emission of an unresolved distribution of distant AGN (Active Galaxy Nuclei), in correlation with the FIR (Far Infra-Red) background. But at any rate, this kind of observations suffers from the main XMM-Newton advantage, which can turn into a drawback, namely its great throughput and sensitivity. With its spectro-imaging capability extending upto $`12keV`$, as compared to that of the previous major X-rays observatory ROSAT, limited to $`3keV`$, and its three mirrors combined effective area $`3`$ to $`5`$ times greater than that of the contemporary Chandra telescope, XMM-Newton opens the window of spatially resolved spectroscopy, and achieve photon statistics just sufficient to detect fainter parts of extended objects of which only the cores were previously analysed. But the problems araising then are those of any pioneer: common data analysis tools evolved so as to encompass these new capabilities, but are obviously limited in dealing with all the new parameters and corrections necessary; uncertainties in instrument calibration may reach the same order of magnitude than photon statistics for faint regions falling on the edges of the FOV (where the mirror vignetting effect is important), so that it is not always clear whether extending the analysis upto those faintest parts of an extended source is limited either by the accuracy of the models fitted to the data, or by the calibration corrections applied to the data (or both).

In the following sections (§34), a review is presented of the main analysis methods used so far in the frame of XMM-Newton EPIC observational data, with a list of their advantages and drawbacks, as well as proposals for improving them, and examples applied to the analysis of a bright massive ClG, namely Abell 209. But before going into the data analysis details, the next section (§2) summarizes briefly the main instrumental effects that will have to be dealt with further on.

## 2 INSTRUMENTAL ASPECTS

### 2.1 Photon detection efficiency

An XMM-Newton X-rays telescope basically consists of a chain of 3 optical devices: (a) the mirror module which collects and focuses the light; (b) a filter (chosen among the six self-explanatory different positions of a filter wheel: “open”, “thin1”, “thin2”, “medium”, “thick”, “closed”) aimed at blocking UV and greater wavelength and reducing the X-rays flux from the brightest sources; (c) a CCD camera which detects the photons through the photo-electric effect, and is able to function in a photon counting mode due to the high amount of energy deposited by each single photon. Two of the three telescopes are also equipped with a reflection grating device which allows for dispersing half of the flux collected by the mirrors onto a high resolution spectrometer (RGS instrument) at a secondary focal plane.

Each of these devices has its own reflection or transmission or detection efficiency, the combination of which forms the overall telescope efficiency. A basic description of their origin and consequences is given hereafter, more details and graphs may be found in the XMM-Newton user’s handbook, other dedicated papers and other articles ibid.

#### 2.1.1 Mirrors effective area and vignetting

The basic reflectivity of the grazing angles mirrors is known to decrease with energy, as a consequence of the absorbtivity of its constitutive materials (here Gold and Nickel) and of the Bragg’s law which states the optimal incidence angle as a function of the wavelength: $`2dcos(\theta _i)=n\lambda `$.

This coefficient, between $`1`$ and $`0`$, may be multiplied by the nominal collecting surface (in $`cm^2`$) of the mirror module to form the effective area.

Another effect results from the fact that some X-rays may fall in the mirrors FOV with a direction not parallel to the optical axis, for instance those coming from secondary point sources on the edge of the FOV, or those coming from the edge of very extended objects while the telescope axis is aligned on its core. These off-axis X-rays hence have angles of incidence slightly off the optimal Bragg value and suffer a loss of reflectivity; the more off-axis, the less efficient. Again, this effect, known as vignetting, is increasing (the reflectivity is decreasing) with energy.

We may thus summarize the mirror overall efficiency as follow:

$$\text{ME}(E,\theta )=A_{eff}(E)V(E,\theta )$$
(1)
#### 2.1.2 Filter transmission

The transmission here is simply a function of the thickness of the absorbing layers (mainly Aluminium and Polypropylen or Polyamide). The efficiency hence increases with the photon energy and decreases with the thickness of the filter. One may expect small spatial inhomogeneities according to a possible spatial variation of the thickness, but this is assumed to be negligeable and anyway has not been accurately measured yet.

We have then:

$$\text{FE}(E)=T(E)$$
(2)
#### 2.1.3 Detector quantum efficiency

When the remaining photons, after going through the mirror and the filter, eventually hit the camera, there are many ways of losing some of the photo-electrons created by the impact: missing hits (because the photon were not enough energetic to penetrate the semiconductor, or too energetic and went completely through without depositing all its energy), scattering within neighbouring pixels (“patterns”), mixing with neighbouring photons (“pile up”), loss during photo-charges transfer to the electronic readout node (“charge transfer inefficiency” or CTI)…

This results in two main effects. On one hand, the overall number of counted photo-electric events within a given lapse of time is lower than the incident photon flux, due to an overall efficiency lower than $`1`$; this may be expressed in terms of a detection QE (Quantum Efficiency) as a function of the incident photon energy. On the other hand, there is a slight redistribution effect of the energy spectrum of the incident photon flux, due to various charge transfer and electronic readout mechanisms which may lead to some photo-events being affected an energy value lower than that of the incident photon; this may be represented by a two-dimensional matrix, the RMF (Redistribution Matrix Function), which is function of the incident photon energy and the output electronic channel energy.

We then define the detection QE and RMF as follow:

$`\text{QE}(E)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_{counts}^{detector}}{N_{photons}^{detector}(E)}}`$ (3)
$`\text{RMF}(E,C)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_{counts}^{detector}(C)}{\text{QE}(E)N_{photons}^{detector}(E)}}`$ (4)
#### 2.1.4 Overall response functions

Assuming the detector is operated in pile-up limiting conditions (increasing the filter thickness and decreasing the camera reading cycle in order to observe sources with increasing flux), one can define an “on-axis ARF” (Ancilliary Response Function) by grouping Eqn. 1, Eqn. 2 and Eqn. 3 with $`\theta =0`$:

$`\text{ARF}(E)`$ $`=`$ $`\text{ME}(E,0)\text{FE}(E)\text{QE}(E)`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_{counts}^{detector}}{N_{photons}^{sky,\theta =0}(E)}}`$ (6)
In the same way, one can combine the RMF and the ARF (Eqn. 4 and Eqn. 5) to form the overall telescope on-axis response matrix:

$`\text{Resp}(E,C)`$ $`=`$ $`\text{RMF}(E,C)\times \text{ARF}(E)`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_{counts}^{detector}(C)}{N_{photons}^{sky,\theta =0}(E)}}`$ (8)
These response functions may be used (see §4) by some dedicated softwares to fold a given physical X-rays emission spectrum model (along a true energy axis) and try fitting the observed data (which are projected onto a digital units, or channels, energy axis).

### 2.2 Instrument spatial resolution

X-rays mirrors, as those of any other telescopes, suffer from a spatial redistribution of the events on the detector, with respect to the incident photon flux, in an analogous fashion as the energy dependent RMF. It is called the PSF (Point Spread Function), and determines the spatial resolution of the instrument. In general the PSF has a 2D-gaussian shape, and the spatial resolution may be defined as the gaussian FWHM (Full Width at Half Maximum); in the case of the XMM-Newton mirrors, the PSF is better modelled as King profiles, and its FWHM (which would be equal to twice the King profile core radius if the power index were unity) varies between $`4`$ and $`8arcsec`$ across the FOV and the energy passband.

### 2.3 Background origins

During quiescent periods (no significant soft protons contamination), the EPIC background has been shown to be mainly composed of:

* Remaining cosmic rays induced events (high energy; non vignetted): unrejected by on-board electronics.
* Instrumental fluorescent X-rays emission (from camera close environment, mainly the Aluminium line around $`1.4keV`$ for both MOS and pn, and the Copper complex around $`8keV`$ for pn; non vignetted): no significant increase in fluorescence level after solar flares has been observed so far, but images in corresponding sharp energy bands show that these emission features are correlated to regions of corresponding material in the camera structure.
* Electronic noise (bright pixels and dark current; non vignetted): (a) since the pn pixels are about the size of the PSF, bright pixels are sometimes undistinguishable from point sources (hence missed by the XMMSAS algorithms); (b) an electronic overshoot problem seems to cause noise accumulation near the pn readout edges (outer edge of the FOV); (c) ionizing particles secondary effects on the MOS often materialize as flickering pixels at low energies; (d) finally, the MOS dark current may be negligeable (of the order of $`0.5cnt/s/CCD`$ in the $`0.210keV`$ band) and the same may be expected from the pn.
* Remaining low flux soft protons (high energy; vignetted): a magnetic divertor in the telescopes prevents electrons from reaching the cameras, but some protons may still contaminate the data; while this effect is still under investigations, it seems that these protons mainly show up as additional flickering pixels occuring at dates very close to a forthcoming flaring period.
* Sky X-rays background (low to medium energy; vignetted): in the case of ClG observations, looking away from the galactic center, these events are mainly due to the EXRB, mostly unresolved faint and/or far AGN sources.

## 3 BACKGROUND SUBTRACTION

The first step before performing any advanced spectro-imaging analysis on X-rays data is to clean them from any pertubating and/or non-X-rays events.

### 3.1 Selecting only valid events

Despite the first electronic processing onboard, a lot of non-photon events are still present in the raw data, and can only be sorted out after a standard pipeline processing (XMMSAS tasks: `emchain` or `emproc` for the MOS, `epchain` or `epproc` for the pn) aiming at pattern and energy recognition, which includes a flagging step where events falling on or near badpixels or CCD edges are marked accordingly. Minimizing onboard processing, despite its necessity for limiting the telemetry, allows for software and algorithms improvements, and old data sets may be re-analysed later with better results and minimal information loss.

Tab. 2 summarizes the different flag values. By hexadecimal combinations, it is possible to give a multiple description for a given event, if need be. Inversely, by excluding some hexadecimal combinations, one can select a cleaned subset of the original events. A straightforward method consists of keeping only those events having a total flag value equal to $`0`$ (no warning), by adding to the XMMSAS task `evselect` the following filter: `FLAG==0`.

A more subtle method is proposed by the current pipeline software, which consists of removing the defined flags from number 16 to 31, respectively: `(FLAG & 0x766b0000)==0` for the MOS, `(FLAG & 0xfa0000)==0` for the pn. Note that, in the latter case, events from out the FOV are still in, which may not be the desired results, so that one should prefer for the pn: `(FLAG & 0x2fb0000)==0`.

Finally, it would seem safe to exclude also events from offset columns and spoiled frames, to remove electronic noise, ending with the filter formulae: `(FLAG & 0x766b0808)==0` for the MOS, `(FLAG & 0x2fb0808)==0` for the pn.

In the same way, events originating from piled up photons and/or cosmic rays show different pattern photon events. A description of the patterns may be found in the bibliography, along with the following additionnal selection criterion: `PATTERN in [0:12]` for the MOS (singles, doubles, triples and quadruples), `PATTERN in [0:4]` for the pn (singles and doubles only, because the pn pixels are larger). Note that the MOS pattern number 31, which could also point at real photo-events, has been excluded since it appears extremely noisy.

Leaving events with non valid flag or pattern value would lead to meaningless results, especially for spectral analysis, where some non valid pn events may have negative energy values, or some special MOS events between $`12`$ and $`15keV`$ show a triangular distribution along time since they are triggered by an electronic readout device (GATTI).

Finally, a third selection criterion on the event energy111in PI (or Pulse Independent) units; i.e. electronic channel units translated into equivalent $`eV`$ units; but remember that, due to redistibution effect, this energy may not be that of the incident photon and still is a kind of “channel” energy may be set up to filter out regions were the spectral response of the EPIC cameras is not well calibrated and/or rather noisy, respectively: `PI in [300:12000]` for the MOS, `PI in [300:15000]` for the pn. Nevertheless, on the one hand, the low energy calibrations are improving regularly, and on the other hand, the high energy part is dominated by other sources of noise (§3.2), so that this criterion should become less important in the future. In addition, a last energy band selection may be performed independently with most of the spectral analysis softwares.

### 3.2 Keeping only quiescent periods

Some XMM-Newton EPIC observations presents periods (from $`0`$ to $`100\%`$ of the total observation duration… generally about $`5\%`$) of unusually high background level (Fig. 1, left), which mainly consists of photon-like events, at rather high energies (from $`1`$ to $`20keV`$). These events are thought to originate from solar soft protons being directly gathered by the grazing mirrors modules, and/or maybe trapped beforehand by earth magnetosphere. Studies of correlation with altitude and attitude of the telescope with respect to the sun and the earth magnetic field lines are still under work. Their time variation is highly chaotic and their spectral shape also seems to be variable (Fig. 1, right).

At least five different methods may be used to screen out these flaring periods, with more or less accuracy but also complexity.

The most straightforward method is based on a selection of time intervals where the count rate in a given energy band is lower to a given threshold. This is the most robust and the simplest to implement into the XMMSAS: tasks `evselect` with criterion from §3.2 to generate a lightcurve, then `tabgtigen` to generate a range of GTI (Good Time Intervals) to be added to further selection operations. However, the energy range and threshold have to be found out empirically and manually. But, in general, values of $`10counts`$ per $`100s`$ bin for each MOS, or $`80counts`$ per $`100s`$ bin for the pn work fine in the $`200`$ to $`12000eV`$ range. Other threshold and energy bands may be found in the litterature. They mainly depends on whether very hard objects (like neutron stars, which may drastically raise the mean count rate even above $`12keV`$) are present in the FOV, and on the local overall background for the considered observation (a few rare data sets show an anormalously high “quiet background” level in addition to shorter soft protons flaring periods). A last variant consists of doing exactly the same analysis but only on events situated on detector parts outside the FOV: since the soft protons are mechanicaly diffused within the telescope, they may reach these regions, as well as photons from instrumental fluorescence, while photons from the sky should not. But since these regions are rather limited in area, the statistics is quite poor and this variant should be discouraged.

A second method is a bit more sophisticated and propose a fixed recipe to determine a count rate threshold, given a starting energy band: to compute the average count rate $`\overline{c}`$ and choose as a threshold value $`\overline{c}+3\sigma `$ (Fig. 2, left). This presents a drawback and an advantage: statistical functions provided within the XMMSAS (tasks `statgets` or `lcplot`) are not sufficient because the flares peaks will contaminate the moments values, and a gaussian fit over the histogram of the rate curve would be the correct algorithm, but requires use of an external routine, not always easy to implement in a batch analysis; however, in addition to its automatic design, this method has been tested succesfully on data sets contaminated by soft protons upto $`75\%`$.

A third method consists of an empirical determination of the threshold value, for a given energy band, by analysing the remaining exposure time after thresholding as a function of the threshold value. This should lead to an asymptotic graph (Fig. 2, right), which should allow to determine the optimum threshold. This iterative method appears very slow, even in an automatic batch process, and the asymptotic threshold determination not trivial.

A fourth method would be based on an analysis of a cumulative lightcurve (a cumulative histogram of the events dates), where quiescent regions would appear as straight lines of equal slope, separated by steeper steps at the dates of proton flaring (Fig. 3, left). The detection of linear regions seems easier but still beyond the capabilities of the XMMSAS, hence uneasy to implement in a batch analysis.

A fifth method would be based on a clustering analysis (relying on wavelet transformations) on an energy-time (Fig. 3, right) or space-time diagram, where flares clearly appears as stronger vertical patches. This has not been fully developped yet, but could provide a solution for complete removal of soft protons contamination.

Remaining events associated to soft protons flares would mainly result in an artificial hardening of the source spectrum, hence leading to higher temperature determination in the case of the intracluster medium. Up to now, remaining flickering pixels due to low level soft protons contamination of quiescent periods cannot be directly detected and removed (see §3.3).

### 3.3 Estimating all other background components

To remove all other background components (mainly: instrumental fluorescence, remaining cosmic rays and the EXRB), it has been proposed to build pseudo-observation data sets from real observation data of “blank” sky regions, like the Lockman Hole, and to use these auxiliary data to estimate and remove the background from the main analysed object.

More details can be found in a dedicated technical note, but the basic principle is to merge several different data sets in order to achieve the best possible statistics, lowering background error bars below the level of the main data errors. This merged blank set may then be reprojected onto the sky attitude of the main object, so that exactly the same cleaning selection may be performed, hence resulting in the same effective detector area, making any subtraction possible, without any bias. But many other problems araise then.

First of all, these merged data sets reach important file size, so that they are a trade off between statistics and memory usage. Their size may be reduced by applying cleaning selection (like those in §3.1, §3.2), but this could prevent users to define different criteria and introduce a bias with respect to their main data analysis. In the end, only two selections were applied, the first one being a flare removal as conservative as possible, allowing the user for a second tighter pass if need be.

Then, any “blank” field never is purely “blank” and always holds field stars and sources. The second selection was indeed a manual removal of point sources, along with an automatic badpixel screening. With at least five different data sets being merged, it is assumed that “holes” thus created in each data set will be filled by the others, so no further correction is needed. But the point is that each data set amounts for at least $`30ks`$ exposure, while for most of ClG observations the typical remaining exposure after cleaning rarely reaches $`20ks`$. This means that faint sources that are easily resolved in the empty sky data may still lie in the noise in the ClG data, thus leading to an underestimation of the empty sky and hence to an overestimation of the remaining ClG signal, specially at low energies ($`<2keV`$) according to the EXRB and field stars cumulated spectra.

In addition, these auxiliary blank data sets have only been generated, yet, using observations with the “thin” filter on, assuming that it was the most used filter setting during observations of extended sources, which flux are by definition extended enough to limit the risk of pile-up. Unfortunately, many such observations must be carried out with the medium filter due to the closing presence of a bright star in the FOV, and many supernovae remnants are both extended and very bright sources and also require use of thicker filter. This may have no influence on the pure instrumental noise (fluorescence), and very limited influence on the very energetic noise (cosmic rays) since all filters transmissions tend to unity above $`3keV`$, so that it could be expected that subtracting blank data may always remove these components, whatever the filter settings. But a major bias is introduced at low energies concerning the EXRB estimation. If the ClG is observed with thicker filter than the blank fields, this would tend to go in the opposite direction as the previous effect, overestimating the background level relatively to the main data.

Another bias cause for the low energies resides in the different levels of galactic absorption (due to the hydrogen column density on the line of sight, as measured by the $`N_H`$) between blank fields, which are chosen as “blank” because they have low $`N_H`$ values as well as limited field source population, whereas typical ClG observations may suffer from $`N_H`$ values $`2`$ to $`5`$ times higher, even worse for some galactic supernovae remnants objects. This again tends to an overestimation of the EXRB from the blank fields relatively to the main source, and may be aggravated by a filter setting bias.

Yet another bias related to instrumental settings may appear for the pn camera only. It comes from the fact that the blank fields have mainly been observed in the “full frame” mode, while the “extended full frame” mode should be prefered in the case of relatively low flux sources, because this mode has a longer readout cycle and hence is more sensitive to pile up, but less to out-of-time events contamination. The pn camera has no memory zone where to stack photo-charges of a previous frame while integrating the next one, nor any obturator to prevent further photons to impact the camera during the readout process. This results in an accumulation of low energy events near the readout nodes, as well as some bright columns full of trailing events in the regions exposed to higher fluxes. The consequence in terms of background estimation within blank fields that have been observed in a different mode is that a spectral discrepancy will appear below $`500eV`$.

Finally, because of various factors, including electronic gain influence, the mean instrumental and energetic cosmic rays background levels inside the blank fields are expected to be slightly different from that within the main data. Many variants of renormalization have been tested (inside or outside the FOV, in different energy bands or selection criteria), but probably the most robust one relies on the comparison of count rates outside the FOV in the whole analysis energy range. Indeed, these regions should only contain instrumental and cosmic rays noise (§3.2), allowing to directly compare background levels between blank fields and main data, while the broader energy range ensures minimal statistics. However, this renormalization finishes to make any EXRB component estimation completely meaningless because there is no reason for it following the same variations than the instrumental or high energies (from solar and/or galactic center origin) components.

The following sections propose ways to improve this situation. As a last note, it should be noticed that any time- and/or pointing dependent variability in these various background components still needs to be carefully investigated, even if it only occurs at the moment through those huge flarings periods (to be removed), $`N_H`$ differences (still to be quantified) or small instrumental renormalizations (typical factors values between $`0.75`$ and $`1.3`$). Also, the high energy component may not be as insensitive to the filter thickness as it may be expected, since cosmic rays are not photons but energetic nuclei, and transmission through the filter follows different matter interaction laws; for instance, some particles may deposit upto $`50\%`$ of their energy in the “thick” filter, so that the result in terms of photo-charges noise on the camera may be well different than if the particle had gone through the “thin” filter. In the same fashion, changing the Aluminium thickness in front of the detector may change the fluorescence level of the Aluminium line without affecting much of the continuum background level, but again this still has to be quantified. On the other hand, blank fields may be expected to hold a similar fraction of remaining low level soft protons so that they may be the only way, yet, to remove this component from the main data.

### 3.4 Isolating the instrumental background

It may seem natural now to look for a method allowing to isolate the instrumental and high energy particles background components from the EXRB component. One way has been called the “double background subtraction” method. It relies on the assumption that a detector region may be defined free of any sky sources within the main data. A first direct subtraction of the blank field from the main data, assuming that there is no filter bias nor operating mode bias and that all selections and renormalizations have been made, allows for instrumental and particles noise removal. While the signal from the region holding the analysed source is still pertubated by the EXRB and the biased subtraction (due to possible $`N_H`$ difference, abusive renormalization and/or unresolved point sources), the signal within the outer “free” region should be exactly equal to that perturbation. Hence, after taking into account the difference in terms of effective detector surface, the signal from the outer free region may simply be subtracted again from the main region to get at last a cleaned measurement.

Another possibility is offered by data sets acquired with the filter wheel in the “closed” position. This ensures that no photons from the sky may reach the camera, so that the data set only contains instrumental and particles (which may still go through or induce secondary fluorescence as before) components, like a kind of “dark field”. A second advantage of these data is that they hold much less events for a given exposure duration than an equivalent blank field, precisely because of the absence of sky photons. As for blank fields, a set of merged dark fields may thus be used to clean the main data, leaving again the EXRB correction for a second pass: either from an outer free region of the main data, or from a model, or even from blank fields which have been also cleaned for their dark components in the same way. This second step is discussed in §4.

A first study of dark fields was conducted in January 2002. At that time, using the online log browser from the XMM-Newton internet site, a list of data sets could be established: c.a. $`190ks`$ for full frame MOS1, $`170ks`$ for full frame MOS2, $`114ks`$ for full frame pn, $`30ks`$ for extended full frame pn. But not all of them were available from the public FTP (part of proprietary data, or not yet processed by the official pipeline which treats science observation in priority), and from those available a few appeared contaminated by those periods of unusually high overall background level (§3.2). After processing, only remained respectively222corresponding data files have been made public, and will be regularly maintained and updated, on ftp://www-station.ias.u-psud.fr/pub/epic/Closed!: $`110ks`$, $`101ks`$, $`15ks`$ and $`27ks`$. Dark data for other modes were even rarer and at any rate beyond the scope of this first analysis, for ClG observations seldomly make use of them.

As shown on Fig. 4, dark fields contain all background components except soft protons and the EXRB. As for blank fields, they are dependent on the instrumental mode (pn full frame and extended frame count rates differ by a factor of about about $`1.4`$ in the full FOV and in the $`100:7100keV`$ range; the factor goes down to $`1`$ in the $`1100:7100keV`$ range), but are easier to merge together since they require no particular cleaning (neither flares nor point sources). During the last months, new observations in closed filter have been performed and will soon be added to this analysis to improve statistics.

### 3.5 Software upgrades

A last caveat to be aware of is the spectral discrepancy that may appear when using blank or dark fields, that have been processed with a different XMMSAS software version than for the main data. Indeed, algorithms taking CTI effects (§1) into account have been regularly improved, resulting in better event energy reconstruction and hence more accurate fluorescence line centering. Other parameters, like the effective exposure duration, may also gain in accuracy as the XMMSAS chain tasks and CCF (Current Calibration Files) improve with time, so that on one hand users should be encouraged to process their data with the latest available softwares, and on the other hand, blank and dark merged data sets should be maintained for consistency.

## 4 SPECTRO-IMAGING ANALYSIS

Considering that now instrumental and particles background components may be filtered out or corrected for satisfactorily enough, the last step of analysis should yield to the EXRB correction. Again, different methods may be tried out, depending mainly on the size of the studied source relatively to the EPIC FOV.

### 4.1 Field source removal

As already mentioned in §3.3, particular care must be given to the detection and masking off of field sources that may contaminate the diffuse emission from the analysed extended source.

At the moment, two different detection tasks are provided within the XMMSAS (`emldetect` and `ewavelet`) using different algorithms and achieving different performance, but other methods are also under development. The `ewavelet` tasks has nevertheless this particularity of being able to detect remaining spurious bright pixels and columns (Fig. 5), which may be a drawback when searching for serendipitous new astrophysical sources, but an advantage in the purpose of cleaning the emission from a known extended object. Then, the problem of deciding whenever any source detection really is a separated foreground (or background) source or part of the diffuse emission structure araise. In the case of ClG observations, the straightforward method consists of masking off any detected bright spot, but that point would deserve a serious investigation in the light of the more and more numerous reports about cooling flows and substructures origins in the intracluster medium (cf. proceedings from dedicated conferences).

### 4.2 The weights method

A last caveat about extended source data analysis concerns the mixing of spatial and spectral instrumental artifacts, so that it is difficult to extract correct images or spectra from X-rays event lists. The standard way to correct an image for mirror vignetting effect is to divide it by a “flat field map” (or “exposure map” when it is multiplied by the integration time), but spectral information about energy dependent efficiency is lost. The same for a spectrum which is in general compared to a model folded through the instrument response (RMF and ARF), only valid for a given off-axis angle (in general $`\theta =0`$), while the spatial off-axis dependent vignetting effect may extend over a substantial fraction of the detector.

Spectroscopy is one key investigation tool for intracluster gas temperature structure and physics, that is why it has been proposed, in the frame of very extended sources studies, to correct spectra for spatial vignetting effects using a “weights” method inherited from ROSAT experience. The basic principle is to accumulate, for each listed event of energy $`E`$ and off-axis position $`\theta `$, $`N`$ effective events instead of only $`1`$, where $`N=1/V(E,\theta )`$ (Eqn. 1). This method has already been extensively described, as well as the possible generalization ($`N=1/ARF(E,\theta )`$, Eqn. 5) which could be used to correct in one pass images for spectral features as well as vignetting, and has been eventually implemented in the last XMMSAS software version333The user should be warned, as very recently noticed at the last EPIC-CAL meeting, that this new evigweight! task produces wrong output when used in conjunction with a version of the XMM\_MISCDATA! CCF older than 0014! (`v5.3`).

This method is in addition fully compatible with the background removal methods using auxiliary data (§3.33.4) as long as the same detector areas are considered in each data set (by masking off the same detected point sources regions in the auxiliary set for instance), since non-vignetted background events will be abusively weighted in the same way within both sets and will still cancel out by subtraction. On the other hand, this method increases the noise on the results, because of the uncertainty on the individual weights coming from the uncertainty on the individual positions (smeared by the PSF) and individual energies (smeared by the RMF).

### 4.3 Brightness Profiles

Brightness profiles are usually extracted to study the intracluster mass profile, within relaxed ClG (where spherical symmetry may be assumed). As the `radial` XMMSAS task has now disappeared from the new version release, due to maintainance difficulties, the general purpose `evselect` event selection routine should be prefered, asking for a radial distance histogram; a radial distance column may be easily computed on the basis of the $`X`$ and $`Y`$ columns which are relative to the “RA-DEC” WCS (Right Ascension - Declination World Coordinate System) using the `tabcalc` for example. More accurate routines, for computation of true angular distance along sky great circles, have been developped using IDL softwares444they will be made public as soon as possible, and probably are also available in packages like EXSAS555http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/ web/exsas.html!.

In the light of the previous sections, it should now be possible to subtract adequately a corresponding background profile to that coming from the main data. But problems raised earlier shall now become apparent.

Using only blank fields for instance, in combination to the weights method for a very extended source like the Abell 2163 ClG, may lead to some residuals, especially at soft energies. Furthermore, in case the main data have been acquired using a different filter than for blank fields, the generalized weights method should be applied (correcting not only for spatial vignetting, but also for spectral transmission, at least that of the filters), but then the weights will not be the same for both data sets causing instrumental background subtraction bias. One can call twice upon the dark fields data set in order to clean the main and blank fields separately, before extracting radial profiles and subtract them, but this implies many more operations and memory usage, and increases the noise.

Another way is to use only dark fields to remove instrumental noise from the main data, leaving only the EXRB in the resulting radial profile (Fig. 6). It can be then included in the model to be fitted as an additional constant parameter. If this is not desirable for any reason, the EXRB may also be estimated from an outer free region in the main data, before being subtracted from it (or added to model). Current EXRB modelization attempts may also provide a useful value if the main source is too extended to leave empty regions on the detector. Finally, a last method consists of computing a differential radial profile (where the $`i`$th bin of the differential profile $`dP`$ may be deduced from the original profile $`P`$ bins by $`dP_i=P_iP_{i+1}`$), which may be simply fitted by a differential model, where any constant term (including the EXRB) should have been canceled out in the differentiation process (Fig. 6).

Note that any model to be fitted to the profile should be first convolved by the PSF. This step is not trivial since the PSF differs slightly from one XMM-Newton telescope to another, and also is a function of energy and off-axis angle. A temporary method consists of computing a kind of average PSF over the considered detector region and energy band, according to the most recent calibration. A more sophisticated method is discussed in §4.5. The only calibration parameter that has not been taken into account at this point is the RMF (the pure redistribution effect; the spectral efficiency may be included in the generalized weights if necessary; see §24.2), but it should not be an issue as long as the radial models do not truly depends on energy.

### 4.4 Wide Spectra

Spectra are directly extracted using the `evselect` task. The same kind of cleaning algorithms as in §4.3 may be used, and the same difficulties may be encountered. Most spectral fitting packages, like XSPEC666http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/lheasoft!, are designed to handle different data files which account for various background components, as well as instrumental response (ARF & RMF, §2). The main problem here is to take the PSF into account whenever extracting spectra from narrow regions, like concentric annuli for the purpose of temperature profile reconstruction. But as long as the region is more extended than the PSF §2, this should not be an issue.

### 4.5 Hardness Profiles and Maps

But since XMM-Newton opened the spatially resolved spectroscopy window (§1), all the previous methods may appear somewhat restricted in the frame of studying the intracluster medium structure. That is the reason that motivated the following new methodology. Its driving principle resides in that PSF corrections may be only carried out within images, and that if the energy band of those images was large enough, the RMF should not be an issue.

And, indeed, it is possible to get a temperature measurement through the use of images, extracted in two (or more) different energy bands and recombined to form a hardness image, just as for “false color images”. Classical combinations use two images, one “hard” (in a high energy band) image $`H`$ and one “soft” (in a low energy band) image $`S`$, and are of the form $`H/S`$ (which is simple) or $`(HS)/(H+S)`$ (which limits divergence when fluxes drop to zero). A hardness-to-temperature conversion function may be build using a spectral model fitting software (Fig. 7), by calculating the hardness ratio from model spectra at different temperatures.

A first approach consists then in extracting two radial brightness profiles in two energy bands, and building a hardness profile using previous relations, which can then be translated into temperature units. The hardness profile should rather be build from models fitted to the brightness profiles (§4.3) in order to deconvolve from the PSF effect. A tentative example is shown in Fig. 7, but without error bars yet due to the youth of the method. More accuracy has even been obtained by fitting models to brightness profiles within narrow energy bands ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E=500eV`$), and recombining them afterwards into larger bands ($`0.2:3.0keV`$ and $`3.0:5.0keV`$).

The next step is to apply the same algorithm to images, which can also be splitted into narrow energy bands, and even annuli (at the cost of heavier memory and processor duty). Then a smoothing algorithm using a kernel equal to the PSF core may provide a way to correct the images from spatial smearing effects (Fig. 8). Better, a two-dimensional brightness model, convolved by the PSF, could be fitted to the maps, allowing a hardness determination based on those models; the drawback still being that this forbids any substructure analysis that has not been included in the models ab initio. Eventually, a temperature image may be reconstructed using the above method.

However, all this is obviously very idealistic, since the correct methodology would be in fact to reverse-engineer the events through the PSF, but also the RMF since it is now question of splitting data into narrow energy bands. In addition, such energy and off-axis splits lead to regions with very poor statistics, and global methods should be prefered. Methods are indeed currently investigated, on the basis of data inversion algorithms generally used for millimetric data coming from bolometers to study anisotropies in the diffuse Cosmological Microwave Background, or on the basis of multiscale wavelet image restoration algorithms. While the former is entirely based on instrumental response and seems very promising, the latter makes use of very little ad hoc hypothesis but it is not yet clear how it can properly handle PSF, and above all RMF, aspects.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

This review lists the various analysis methods required by extended sources data from XMM-Newton EPIC instruments. It emphasizes the difficulties of automated batch processing (in the frame of surveys or catalogs of ClG), and the need for improving and maintaining tools (for weights correction, profiles and map extraction…) and auxiliary data files, like the blank fields and dark fileds which could include more statistics and be available for all instrumental settings (mode and filter). At least three teams actively work on that latter topic, while the core of the XMMSAS softwares is managed by the XMM-Newton SOC777http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es!.

In addition, more studies are still needed concerning the modelization of the EXRB, which is also a hot topic, as well as in the field of foreground or background source detection algorithm (§4.1).

The main difference with point source objects analysis is eventually held in the background determination and subtraction problem, in all its aspects, since extended sources suffer from the dilution of their flux at levels sometimes not much higher than the background itself. The farther the object, the fainter its flux and the more critical the background problem; on the other hand, the closest the object, the more it fills the FOV leaving little free detector area to estimate the background. And using even inaccurate auxiliary data may still be an issue in the determination of the true extension and mass of extended objects, which border regions are fainter than their cores.

The ultimate goal of this work is to make batch analysis possible for ClG data, eventually pipelining the softwares to online internet databases, like BAX or the XMM-Newton science archive.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the NASA.

The authors wish to thank Alain Blanchard, David Lumb, Bruno Altieri, Richard Saxton, Christian Erd, as well as the whole “EPIC-CAL” team.


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# An Instanton Picture O.P.E. ⟨𝐴²⟩ Condensate?

## 1 QCD coupling constant, O.P.E. and $`A^2`$ condensate.

Lattice calculations of the QCD coupling constant and gluon propagator based in the Green Functions Method , suggest the necessity to add power corrections to the purely perturbative expressions to correctly describe their running . An Operator Product Expansion (O.P.E.) analysis of the Green functions in Landau gauge111In the lattice we will work in the minimum $`A^2`$ Landau gauge, $`_\mu A_\mu =0`$, so all gauge dependent quantities, will be expressed in this particular gauge. relates this power corrections to the existence of a non-perturbative $`A^2`$ condensate , through expressions:

$`G_{O.P.E.}^{(2)}(p^2)=G_{Pert.}^{(2)}(p^2)+c{\displaystyle \frac{A^2_{R,\mu }}{p^2}},`$
$`\alpha _s^{O.P.E}(p^2)=\alpha _s^{Pert.}(p^2)+c^{}{\displaystyle \frac{A^2_{R,\mu }}{p^2}},`$ (1)
where perturbative expressions are developed at three loops, and the functions $`c`$ and $`c^{}`$ include the Wilson coefficient of the expansion, and the anomalous dimension of the condensate at leading logarithm.

By performing a combined fit of lattice results to expressions in (1), in two different $`\mathrm{MOM}`$ schemes, a value of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}`$ is extracted, in fairly good agreement with the one obtained by the ALPHA collaboration , by a completely different method. A value of the condensate comes out from the analysis. The physical meaning of this condensate is still an open question, and a lot of work is being devoted to its study during last years, for example, in relation to confinement . The aim in this work will be to study the possible semiclassical contribution to this condensate coming from instantons, and whether they might explain the presence of power corrections in Green Functions.

## 2 The role of instantons.

Instantons have been extensively studied as a possible description of the QCD vacuum (See  for a general overview), and so as a major source of QCD properties at low energies. In relation with the aim of this work, an ensemble of non-interacting instantons ($`\mathrm{I}`$) and antiinstantons ($`\overline{\mathrm{I}}`$) in Landau gauge would give a contribution to the $`A^2`$ condensate;

$`A^2_{\mathrm{inst}}{\displaystyle \frac{N}{V}}{\displaystyle d^4xA_\mu ^a(x)A_\mu ^a(x)}=12\pi ^2\rho ^2n,`$ (2)
where $`A_\mu ^a(x)`$ is the standard ’t Hooft Polyakov instanton gauge field , $`\rho `$ the average radius, and $`n=\frac{N_I+N_{\overline{\mathrm{I}}}}{V}`$ the density.

If we accept the phenomenological values assigned to $`n`$ and $`\rho `$ by the Instanton Liquid Model  ($`n0.5fm^4`$ and $`\rho 1/3fm`$), the instantonic contribution will be $`A^2_{Inst.}0.5\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. We will perform, however, our own analysis, thus testing the latter approach.

### 2.1 Cooling.

In principle, a direct measure of $`A^2`$ in the lattice should be possible, but the presence of the UV divergent part is hardly separable from the soft, instantonic one. The other possibility is to perform a cooling procedure, that will allow us to compute the number and size of instantons, giving an indirect measure of the $`A^2`$ through (2).

We will use the traditional cooling method , even if it introduces a number of known biases, as $`\mathrm{I}\overline{\mathrm{I}}`$ annihilation, and a modification of instanton sizes and lattice spacing. The approach proposed here is to compute instanton properties for different number of cooling sweeps, and extrapolate back to the thermalised situation in order to recover their physical meaning222 The use of improved cooling methods, as the one developed in , could improve this approach, as radii evolution is minimised, but $`\mathrm{I}\overline{\mathrm{I}}`$ annihilation is unavoidable, so the extrapolation will be anyway necessary..

### 2.2 Shape Recognition.

Instantons will be localised in cooled lattices via a geometrical method (Described in .) that accepts a topological charge lump as an instanton when the ratio of the integral over a given fraction of the topological charge at the maximum, $`\alpha `$, and its theoretical counterpart, $`ϵ`$, is $`1`$, for a range of values of $`\alpha `$:

$`ϵ={\displaystyle \frac{_{x/\frac{|Q_\rho (x)|}{|Q_\rho (0)|}\alpha }d^4xQ_\rho (x)}{13\alpha ^{1/2}+2\alpha ^{3/4}}}`$ (3)
Once the lump has been identified as an instanton, the radius will be computed from the size of the cluster where the integral has been developed.

### 2.3 A naive model of annihilation.

With the method outlined above, we compute the density and size of instantons in a lattice, for different numbers of cooling sweeps, $`n_c`$, obtaining values with a strong dependence on $`n_c`$ (See figure), that avoids to obtain any physical information at fixed $`n_c`$.

As a first approach to the understanding of this evolution, we will make a simple model, where instantons annihilate with antiinstantons (Being so $`\mathrm{\Delta }N=N_IN_{\overline{I}}`$ a constant) proportionally to their packing ratio, and to the number of antiinstantons, so that the equation for the evolution of $`N=N_I+N_{\overline{I}}`$ is:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{N}{n_c}}={\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{2V}}\rho ^4(n_c)(N(n_c)^2\mathrm{\Delta }N^2).`$ (4)
If we assume $`\rho (n_c)=cte`$, the solution of Eq. (4) will give $`N(n_c)\frac{N(0)}{1+\lambda n_c}`$, the expression used in , as a first order approach, but our cooling procedure modifies instanton’s size (See figure), in a way thah we phenomenologically parametrise as:

$`\rho (n_c)=\rho (0)(1+a\mathrm{ln}(1+n_c)).`$ (5)
We will include (5) in equation (4), with $`\rho (0)`$ the extrapolated radius at the thermalised situation and $`a`$ a constant to determine.

After performing a combined fit of our lattice results to the expressions (5) and the one coming from the integration of (4), we can fix the initial values of the density, $`n(0)`$ and the radius $`\rho (0)`$, and the two constants that govern the evolution, $`\lambda `$ and $`a`$.

## 3 Results and conclussion.

The result of the combined fit gives a value of the instantonic contribution to $`A_{Ins}^20.4\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, however the result of the extrapolation is highly dependent on the value of $`\rho `$, which due to the logarithmic behaviour is hardly reliable. We therefore prefer the value at the maximum, 1.12(11) $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, as a crude estimation of $`A_{Ins}^2`$.

This semiclassical evaluation of $`A^2`$, which does not run with the scale, is difficult to relate to that appearing in the O.P.E. expansion, which does depend on the renormalisation scheme and scale. The typical scale of instantons is $`\rho ^10.7\mathrm{GeV}`$. Unluckly it is not possible to run the $`A_{O.P.E.}^2`$ to such a low energy, where pertubative QCD is not valid. The lowest reacheble energy scale is $`2.6\mathrm{GeV}`$ ;

$`A_{O.P.E.}^2(2.6\mathrm{GeV})=1.4(3)(3)\mathrm{GeV}^2,`$ (6)
the first error coming from the OPE determination of the condensate renormalised at 10 $`\mathrm{GeV}`$, and the second from higher orders in the running.

Keeping in mind the level of uncertainty of these calculations, we can nevertheless claim a rather encouraging agreement between the instantonic contribution to the condensate and the one computed from the running of the Green Functions.

## Acknowledgements.

F. de Soto wants to thank L.P.T. for its warm hospitality and Fundación Cámara and the MCYT (Contract BFM2002-03315) for financial support.


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# Untitled Document

BCCUNY-HEP/02-03 hep-th/0209049

Remarks on Fundamental String Cosmology

Ramzi R. Khuri e-mail: khuri@gursey.baruch.cuny.edu.

Department of Natural Sciences, Baruch College, CUNY

17 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Graduate School and University Center, CUNY

365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10036

Abstract

In recent work, it was shown that velocity-dependent forces between moving strings or branes lead to an accelerating expanding universe without assuming the existence of a cosmological constant. Here we show that the repulsive velocity-dependent force arises in more general contexts and can lead to cosmic structure formation.

September 2002

In \[1,,2\], it was shown that the velocity-dependent forces between parallel fundamental strings lead to an expanding universe in one less dimension. The same result was noted to hold for parallel identical $`p`$-branes in general as well as for dual branes, such as the case of fundamental strings propagating in a solitonic fivebrane background. In the particular case of a four-dimensional universe, it was shown by both a mean-field approximation  and a spherical “shell” model  that the early universe for these models undergoes an inflationary exponential growth, equivalent to a positive cosmological constant. Power-law accelerating expansion was found for other dimensions.

The expanding spherical model of  is easily adaptable to the case of a spatially flat ($`k=0`$) universe. Following the calculation of , one again finds an exponential growth in the early universe. This is certainly no surprise, since the mean-field approximation of , whose findings agree with those of , makes no reference to the curvature of the universe. We shall therefore assume henceforth that the mean-field approximation represents a reasonable first-approximation to the general expansion of the universe in this kind of model.

The mean-field approximation essentially assumes that the many-body dynamics of the moving strings can be averaged by the one-body problem of a single string moving in the background of a much larger string. Let $`x^i`$ be the coordinate of the moving test string in the transverse space, where the source string is at the origin, $`r^2=x^ix_i`$ and $`\dot{x}^2=\dot{x}^i\dot{x}_i`$. Let $`h=1+k/r^n`$, where $`k`$ is the Noether charge of the source string, and $`n=D4`$, where $`D`$ is the number of spacetime dimensions. We obtain the Lagrangian

$$=mh^1\left(\sqrt{1h\dot{x}^2}1\right),$$

and Hamiltonian

$$H=\frac{m}{h}\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{1h\dot{x}^2}}1\right)=E,$$

where $`m`$ is the mass of the test string and $`E`$ is its constant energy. For parallel fundamental strings in $`D`$ spacetime dimensions, (1) and (1) lead to an accelerating, expanding universe.

The spherically-symmetric multi-string model in  was constructed to test the validity of the mean-field results, with agreement being found between the two methods.

The exponential accelerating universe found in \[1,,2\] is not peculiar to string theory. It can easily be checked that the low-velocity Lagrangian for, say, moving extremal Reissner-Nordström black holes  also leads to an exponentially expanding universe in the mean-field approximation. In this case, the Lagrangian is a low-velocity two-body interaction

$$L=M+\frac{1}{2}M\stackrel{}{V}^2+\frac{1}{2}\mu \stackrel{}{v}^2\left(\left[1+M/r\right]^32\mu M^2/r^3\right),$$

where $`M=m_1+m_2`$, $`\mu =m_1m_2/M`$, $`\stackrel{}{V}`$ is the CM velocity, $`\stackrel{}{v}`$ is the relative velocity and $`r=|\stackrel{}{r}|`$ is the relative separation between the two black holes. In fact, it was shown in  that three-body and four-body interactions also exist, but these lead to the same result in the mean-field limit for the general behaviour of the expansion.

One can go even further and show that the mean-field approximation of  leads to an accelerating expanding universe whenever the velocity-dependent Lagrangian has the form

$$L=\frac{mv^2}{2}\left(1+f(r)v^2\right),$$

as in the case of maximally supersymmetric strings or branes up to $`O(v^4)`$ in \[1,,2\], or of the form

$$L=\frac{mv^2}{2}\left(1+g(r)\right),$$

as in , whenever $`f(r)`$ and $`g(r)`$ are monotonically decreasing functions of the separation $`r`$. Assuming only radial motion, this can be easily seen from the Euler-Lagrange equations by noting that the radial acceleration $`\ddot{r}`$ is always positive, given by

$$\ddot{r}=\frac{3\dot{r}^4f^{}}{2(1+6f\dot{r}^2)}$$

for (1) and by

$$\ddot{r}=\frac{\dot{r}^2g^{}}{2(1+g)}$$

for (1), where  indicates differentiation with respect to $`r`$, so that $`f^{}`$ and $`g^{}`$ are always negative.

The fact that this kind of velocity-dependent force is always repulsive easily explains an accelerating growth in the size of the model universe, simply since it implies an accelerating separation between the various constituents. This kind of interaction, on the other hand, would seem to make it difficult, if not impossible, for any cosmic structure, or clumping of any sort, to arise. Interestingly enough, this may not be the case at all.

This can be seen by revisiting, say, the fundamental string model of (1). It was shown in  that, if an initial outward motion is assumed, then by using a mean-field approximation, one can replace the total repulsive force by a single radial force due to a large source string at the origin. From (1), it follows that

$$\dot{r}^2=\frac{\rho \left(h\rho +2\right)}{\left(h\rho +1\right)^2},$$

where $`\rho =E/m`$. Here $`k`$ essentially represents the total Noether charge of these extremal fundamental strings and therefore the total mass of the universe in this model. For $`n=2`$, in the limit of small $`\dot{r}`$, (1) reduces to

$$\dot{r}^2\frac{\rho ^2}{k},$$

which for initial positive $`\dot{r}`$ leads to the exponential growth

$$r=r_0\mathrm{exp}(t/\sqrt{k}).$$

Suppose now that, within the exponential expansion in the early universe of the fundamental string (or brane) model of (1), a test string had an initial outward velocity, but at some point acquired a velocity towards a local configuration of strings, whose total mass is much larger than that of the test string. Again, in the mean-field approximation, we assume that the repulsive force due to this local mass configuration may be taken to be radial, governed by the same equation (1), but now with effective Noether charge $`k^{}<k`$. Since the test string is oriented towards the local configuration, the solution of (1) for the separation $`r^{}`$ between the test string and the local configuration takes the form

$$r^{}=r_0^{}\mathrm{exp}(t/\sqrt{k^{}}).$$

Thus the velocity-dependent force, while still repulsive, allows for the test string to head towards the local configuration, essentially acting as a critical damping. This allows for structure formation within the general expansion. The same result occurs for Lagrangians (1) and (1).

To summarize, the strings may be moving outwardly in general, at an accelerating pace, but the nonradial components of the velocities necessarily lead to some strings moving towards each other. The velocity dependent forces between the string is at all times repulsive, but it is such that the strings may yet join together, or produce stable clusters and hence cosmic structure. This scenario occurs in the very earliest stages of the expansion, after which the whole model probably loses validity, but once the anisotropies (or density variations) are formed, they can presumbly be stabilized, once gravitational forces begin to outweigh the repulsive quantum interactions. This might in turn occur as a result of the departure of the strings from extremality due to the acquisition of energy.

The above arguments are based on a mean-field approximation, which is assumed to be fairly robust. The specific toy model considered here is much too simplistic to represent a serious cosmological model. In particular, in the absence of specific assumptions on the anisotropy arising from the departures from a purely radial expansion, the time scale for structure formation implied by (1) is much too small 1 This was pointed out to me by Dan Chung.. Nevertheless, the possibility that clumping could take place in the context of the repulsive velocity-dependent force suggests that a more realistic model of this type may give rise to structure formation. It would therefore be of interest to try to understand the general statistical multi-body problem for these interacting strings or extremal black holes. Work on this problem is in progress.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the CERN Theory Division for their hospitality. I would like to thank Dan Chung, Elias Kiritsis, Costas Kounnas, Fernando Quevedo and Gabrielle Veneziano for helpful discussions.

References

relax R. R. Khuri, Phys. Lett. B520 (2001) 353, hep-th/0109041. relax R. R. Khuri and A. Pokotilov, Nucl. Phys. B633 (2002)295, hep-th/0201194; Phys. Lett. B535 1 (2002) hep-th/0202158. relax R. C. Ferrell and D. M. Eardley, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59 (1987) 1617.


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# A continuous isotropic-nematic liquid crystalline transition of F-actin solutions

## Abstract

The phase transition from the isotropic (I) to nematic (N) liquid crystalline suspension of F-actin of average length $`3\mu `$m or above was studied by local measurements of optical birefringence and protein concentration. Both parameters were detected to be continuous in the transition region, suggesting that the I-N transition is higher than 1st order. This finding is consistent with a recent theory by Lammert, Rokhsar & Toner (PRL, 1993, 70:1650), predicting that the I-N transition may become continuous due to suppression of disclinations. Indeed, few line defects occur in the aligned phase of F-actin. Individual filaments in solutions of a few mg/ml F-actin undergo fast translational diffusion along the filament axis, whereas both lateral and rotational diffusions are suppressed.

The isotropic (I) to nematic (N) liquid crystalline transition occurs in solutions of rodlike particles including stiff polymers Sato97 , protein filaments Buxbaum87 ; Kerst90 , and filamentous viruses Tang95 . Such a phase transition is predicted to be 1st order based on statistical mechanical theories Onsager49 ; Flory69 . Landau and de Gennes deGennes94  treated the I-N transition by a general method of free energy expansion, as a function of the nematic order parameter, which contains a 3rd order term and thus predicts the I-N transition to be 1st order. This classic analysis led to the conventional wisdom that the I-N transition belongs to a different universality class as the magnetic systems, for which the order-disorder transition is generally continuous.

In a recent theory examining topology and nematic ordering by Lammert, Rokhsar & Toner (LRT) Lammert93 , it is shown, however, that the weakly 1st order I-N transition can break into two continuous transitions if the disclination core energy is raised sufficiently high. The LRT theory has been developed with the thermotropic nematogens in mind, although no particular experimental system has been shown to date in direct support of the theory. In this report, we first present experimental features of the I-N transition of F-actin, and then discuss the relevance of our findings to the theory of LRT.

The protein filaments F-actin provide us a challenging system to study the liquid crystalline transition. On one hand, since the protein is well characterized biochemically, special techniques such as fluorescence labeling are available to probe both structure and dynamics of an F- actin solution Kas95 . On the other hand, extreme polydispersity in filament length due to the stochastic nature of actin polymerization renders the theoretical analysis of the I-N transition less definitive than for the simpler monodisperse systems. Recent experimental studies show that F-actin forms a nematic phase at slightly above 2 mg/ml protein concentrations Kerst90 ; Coppin92 ; Furukawa93 ; Suzuki91 , and the onset actin concentration for the I-N transition is inversely proportional to the average filament length, $`\mathrm{¯}l`$ Coppin92 ; Suzuki91 . There have also been bulk measurements suggesting a concentration range in which partially aligned domains exist Suzuki91 . The goal of our study was set to determine the I-N transition phase diagram by measuring local alignment of actin filaments, the co-existing domains of aligned filaments (N) and filaments with random orientations (I), all in close correlation with variation of local protein concentrations, c. Through these measurements, we discovered surprising features suggesting that the I-N transition of F-actin is continuous as a function of c.

For a sample of an aligned array of rodlike filaments, the difference in index of refraction between the direction of the alignment and the direction perpendicular to it can be measured optically. This difference, known as the optical birefringence, $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$, is directly proportional to the order parameter of a uniaxial nematic suspension, $`S=𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }f(\theta )P_2(\theta )`$, where $`f(\theta )`$ is the orientational distribution function and $`P_2(\theta )=\left(3\mathrm{cos}^2(\theta )1\right)/2`$ is the 2nd Legendre polynomial. In this report, the birefringence measurements were performed on a Nikon TE-300 microscope, equipped with a Cambridge Research Inc (CRI) Polscope package (Cambridge, MA). The Polscope software is capable of determining $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ at each pixel position, thus reporting local $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$, as well as the directions of slow axis throughout the sample Oldenbourg95 . In contrast, other birefringence measurement techniques average over a bulk sample, and are prone to large variability due to cancellation of random orientations of separately aligned domains. The measured values by the Polscope can also be averaged over all pixel values for the entire field of view, free of the cancellation effect due to different alignment directions at different positions.

Fig. 1

shows the birefringence of F-actin as a function of c and $`\mathrm{¯}l`$, measured using the Polscope technique. Rectangular capillary tubes of 0.4 mm thickness and 8 mm width were used to observe the alignment of F-actin in large domains. After injecting an actin solution of the desired concentration into the capillary tube immediately following the addition of 50 mM KCl and 2 mM $`\text{MgCl}_2`$ to start polymerization, both ends were sealed with melted plastic. The sample was aligned by upside down inversions using a table top centrifuge. Repeated spins showed that the average birefringence of the sample reached a saturation value after two or three inversions (data not shown). Our measurements confirm the previous findings that the threshold concentration of the I-N transition is inversely related to $`\mathrm{¯}l`$ . The specific birefringence, $`\mathrm{\Delta }n/c`$, increases with the c and reaches a saturated level at the long filament conditions. Further increase in c increased $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ but not $`\mathrm{\Delta }n/c`$, suggesting that the entire sample was in the nematic state. Actin samples of shorter $`\mathrm{¯}l`$ did not reach the saturation level for $`\mathrm{\Delta }n/c`$, suggesting that either the filaments were only weakly aligned, or that the measured value was the weighed average of co-existing domains. Variation of birefringence with position was observed, but usually over relatively large regions with no sharp boundaries. No clearly separated domains of either I or N phase were detected based on the birefringence measurements.

Co-existing I-N domains were expected theoretically to contain filaments of different concentrations, which is the basic criterion for a 1st order phase transition of a rodlike suspension. In order to detect the concentration difference between co-existing I-N domains of F-actin, TRITC- phalloidin (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) was added into F-actin to a ratio of 1/1000 and the intensity of fluorescence provided a quantitative report of concentration variation, especially in regions of the capillary where local birefringence varied. Measurements of birefringence and fluorescence were performed for F-actin samples in order to correlate variations of both parameters. Fig. 2

displays a set of combined measurements in one representative condition of a 7.3 mg/ml F-actin sample of $`\mathrm{¯}l=3\mu `$m. It is shown in Fig. 1 that F-actin under this condition is in the I-N transition region. Therefore, one would expect to have I-N co-existence based on the theoretical predictions of a 1st order transition. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ in the particular region shows alternating stripes of high and low values, a phenomenon reported earlier Coppin92 ; Suzuki91 . Such a zebra pattern with white stripes and black grooves appeared occasionally in both thick (up to 0.4 mm thickness using a rectangular capillary) and thin samples ($`10\mu `$m, for example, as shown in Fig. 2). Due to the continuous variation in both $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ and direction of the slow axis over the entire region, the dark and bright areas do not correspond to separate I-N domains. The black grooves are not disclination lines Chandrasekhar86 . In most cases of our observations for the nematic samples of $`\mathrm{¯}l3\mu `$m, zebra patterns were either not formed, or too fuzzy to be discerned. Instead, the birefringence pictures appeared rather uniform, with few line defects. Disclinations were observed less frequent than once per hundreds of sample slides.

The corresponding fluorescence image (Fig. 2, C and D) shows constant c over the entire region of this sample. The same result of uniform concentration holds for weakly birefringent regions of less defined patterns, as well (data not shown). In all actin concentrations up to 7.3 mg/ml and $`\mathrm{¯}l3\mu `$m, we saw no discernable domain boundaries of co-existence based on the birefringence data. Instead, a blending of domains of comparable levels of alignment was occasionally observed, which led to either zebra patterns or other variants. In all cases, c was measured to be strictly uniform, forcing us to conclude that no co-existence occurred to F-actin spanning the region of I-N phase transition.

Additional experiments were performed to examine two possible causes for the lack of concentration variation in the I-N transition of F-actin. First, we suspected that the F-actin network at several mg/ml might be weakly crosslinked Tang99 . As a result, the polymerizing actin solution may first form a nematic phase when $`\mathrm{¯}l`$ reaches the value required by the excluded volume effect. Further polymerization and/or annealing by the crosslinking effect may lead to gelation so that the network is unable to achieve its true thermodynamic equilibrium, with well separated I-N domains in co-existence. A second possibility is that the extremely long F-actin tend to get sufficiently entangled and thus kinetically trapped in a gel-like or glassy state with local orientational order but no global phase equilibrium. We address these concerns by mixing a small number of labeled filaments with 7 mg/ml unlabeled F-actin, both of $`\mathrm{¯}l=3\mu `$m, and show that the labeled filaments undergo rapid thermal motions. Fig. 3

shows a time sequence of one filament in a nematic domain by overlaying images with 0.5 sec intervals. The filaments diffuse preferentially along their axis. The diffusion coefficient of each labeled filament was determined by calculating the $`\mathrm{\Delta }x^2`$ over a movie sequence of 50–150 frames. The translational diffusion of labeled filament along its axis is found to be $`1.30/\mathrm{L}(\mu m^2/\text{sec})`$, where L, omitting its unit of $`\mu `$m, is the length of the diffusing filament. The pre-factor of 1.30 obtained from the fit in Fig. 3 is smaller than the theoretical value of 3.90 for the translational diffusion along filament axis in the dilute limit. This reduction by a factor of 3 is not surprising since F-actin are highly entangled at a few mg/ml. In contrast, the lateral and rotational diffusion coefficients are suppressed by factors of at least 10 and 100, respectively, although we were unable to obtain these small values limited by the image resolution.

We propose that the I-N transition of F-actin of $`\mathrm{¯}l3\mu `$m corresponds to the continuous transition between a topologically ordered isotropic phase (T) and a weakly aligned nematic phase (N), as predicted theoretically by Lammert, Rokhsar & Toner (LRT) Lammert93 . First, the suspension of long (aspect ratio over 300) and stiff (persistence length $`15\mu `$m Gittes93 ) actin filaments satisfy one key criterion of defect suppression, which according to the LRT theory renders the transition continuous. The disclination lines are energetically costly for F-actin, as the bending elastic constant ($`\mathrm{K}_3`$) is far greater than splay ($`\mathrm{K}_1`$) and twist ($`\mathrm{K}_2`$) for long and stiff rods Lee86 . Indeed, few line defects and nearly no disclinations were observed in F-actin samples. Second, suppression of rotational diffusion likely leads to breaking the inversion symmetry of long filaments in the concentrated F-actin. Therefore, vectorial directionality can be assigned to individual filaments, and in this context, the isotropic state becomes topologically ordered. A schematic phase diagram for F-actin as shown in Fig. 4,

which translates the main predictions of the LRT theory, as depicted in Fig. 2 of ref. Lammert93 .

We now briefly discuss two other features that affect the I-N transition: the filament flexibility and the polydispersity of length. The flexibility is known to suppress the concentration gap between co-existing I-N domains. For instance, such a gap for the I-N transition of the semiflexible fd/M13 viruses is reduced to about 10% of the up limit concentration of the isotropic phase Tang95 , down from over 30% predicted by the Onsager theory for rigid rods Onsager49 . The fd or M13 virus has about the same diameter as F-actin, but a persistence length of $`2.2\mu `$m Tang95 , much shorter than that of F-actin (15–$`20\mu `$m) Gittes93 . Therefore, the effect of limited flexibility for F-actin is insufficient to lead to disappearance of the concentration gap characteristic of a 1st order transition for most polymer liquid crystals Ciferri82 . While polydispersity has been speculated as a possible cause of smearing the I-N phase boundary, calculations for bidispersed rods suggest not narrower but wider co-existing regions Vroege93 . Experimental study of polydisperse systems of short rods suggests a wider co-existence region for the I-N transition Buitenhuis95 .

Dogic and Fraden recently attempted to detect co-existence for the I-N transition of pf1, another filamentous bacteriophage of $`2\mu `$m length. Similar to our findings for the long F-actin, they observed no domain separation for the I-N transition (Dogic and Fraden, private communications). Since the pf1 virus has similar diameter and persistent length to fd/M13, but is twice as long, the different behavior between their I-N transitions implies that even the $`2\mu `$m filaments are perhaps too long to lead to domain separation. The similar behavior of pf1 to F-actin also supports the argument that polydispersity is unlikely to account for the observed continuous transition for F-actin, since pf1 viruses are monodisperse.

In summary, the I-N transition for F-actin of $`\mathrm{¯}l3\mu `$m is continuous in alignment and protein concentration. This experimental finding, and more importantly, its proposed relevance to the LRT theory, will likely provoke further query, such as a search for the I-T transition closely related to the T-N transition and the resultant critical fluctuations.

###### Acknowledgements.

We appreciate helpful discussions with Bob Pelcovits, John Toner, James Swihart, Seth Fraden, and Zvonimir Dogic. This work is supported by NSF DMR 9988389. Jorge Viamontes is a GAANN fellow, supported by the US Department of Education.


text:
# The CERN-Gran Sasso Neutrino Program

## 1 Introduction

Among the various recent experimental results concerning neutrino physics, two of them give very strong hints for the existence of an oscillation mechanism and they are driving the main motivations for the future projects. The first one is the clear $`\nu _\mu `$ disappearance observed by Super-Kamiokande, SoudanII and Macro in the atmospheric data which can be very well described by the presence of $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillation. The best fit of this hypothesis to the latest Super-Kamiokande data gives the oscillation parameters $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2=2.5`$x$`10^3`$$`eV^2`$ with $`sin^22\theta `$=1.0 . The range of allowed values at 90% CL correspond to 1.6x$`10^3<\mathrm{\Delta }m^2<`$ 3.9x$`10^3`$$`eV^2`$ and $`sin^22\theta >`$0.92.

The second result concerns the well established solar neutrino deficit for which a clear flavour change process has been demonstrated with the recently published SNO data . The solar observations are compatible with an oscillation process favouring again a large mixing angle but at a $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ one order of magnitude less than for the atmospheric data.

At this stage it is very important to test in a conclusive manner an oscillation mechanism or not as the origin of those results. The primary goal of the first generation of Long Baseline projects is to confirm and verify the nature of the oscillations observed in the atmospheric data as well as to provide more precise measurements of the corresponding oscillation parameters. Three projects using ‘home-made’ $`\nu _\mu `$ are under progress. The K2K  and Numi/Minos  projects are looking primarily at $`\nu _\mu `$ disappearance using low energy beams, while the main goal of the CNGS project described in this paper is to search for $`\nu _\tau `$ appearance in a high energy $`\nu _\mu `$ beam at 730 km from the neutrino source.

## 2 The CNGS beam line

The CNGS  is a $`\nu _\mu `$ beam produced with 400 GeV protons extracted from the SPS complex at CERN. During one year in a mode where the use of the SPS is shared with LHC operation, 4.5x$`10^{19}`$ protons on target (pot) can be delivered, assuming 200 days of operation. The protons hit a target made of graphite rods and the produced secondary particles pass through a magnetic focusing system designed to select high energy (20-50 GeV) $`\pi ^+`$ and $`K^+`$. This makes the neutrino beam a high energy beam optimised for $`\nu _\tau `$ appearance with a mean neutrino energy of about 17 GeV. Fig. 1 shows the expected neutrino energy distribution at Gran Sasso located at 732 km from CERN.

In the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, the $`\nu _\mu `$ flux should correspond to 3.5 x $`10^{11}`$ $`\nu /m^2`$/year with a contamination of 2.1% $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, 0.8% $`\nu _e`$ and less than 0.05% of $`\overline{\nu }_e`$. The number of charged current interactions expected from $`\nu _\mu `$ is about 2600 /kton/year. If the $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillation hypothesis is confirmed the number of $`\tau `$’s produced via charged current interaction at the Gran Sasso is about 15 /kton/year for $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2=`$2.5x$`10^3`$$`eV^2`$ at full mixing.

Civil engineering work is progressing well and it should be finished by spring 2003. The accelerator team plans to deliver the first neutrino beam by May 2006. The possibility of an increase of the neutrino beam intensity by a factor 1.5 is under study .

## 3 Experimental signature

The $`\nu _\tau `$ appearance search is based on the observation of events produced by charged current interaction (CC) with the $`\tau `$ decaying in all possible decay modes. Since the expected event rate is small, it is crucial to separate efficiently the $`\nu _\tau `$ CC events from all the other flavour neutrino events and to keep the background at a very low level. For this purpose the detectors will have to identify the events by exploiting the $`\tau `$ specific properties characterised by a non negligible lifetime and the presence of missing transverse momentum due to the final state $`\nu _\tau `$ produced in the $`\tau `$ decays.

The two proposed detectors, OPERA  and ICARUS , are using two different approaches for identifying the events. The choice made by OPERA is to observe the $`\tau `$ decay topology in nuclear emulsions, while ICARUS will separate the $`\nu _\tau `$ CC events from the background through kinematical criteria using a large volume TPC filled with liquid argon. The ICARUS and OPERA detectors will be installed in hall B and hall C, respectively, of the Gran Sasso underground laboratory. The 2400 meters of rock above the experimental halls provide a very efficient cosmic ray shielding.
The detectors are described in more details in the following two sections.

## 4 The OPERA experiment

The principle of the OPERA experiment is to observe the $`\tau `$ trajectories and the decay products in thin layers of emulsion. To provide the large target mass (1.8 ktons) the emulsion films are interleaved with 1 mm thick lead plates. Fig. 2 sketches the basic structure of the detector, called Emulsion Cloud Chamber (ECC). An emulsion film in OPERA consists of two emulsion layers (50 $`\mu `$m thick) put on either side of a plastic base (200 $`\mu `$m thick).

### 4.1 The detector structure

The basic detector unit, called ECC brick, is obtained by stacking 56 lead plates and emulsion films, plus an extra film before and another one, called Changeable Sheet (CS), behind after 2mm of plastic. The CS can be detached from the rest of the brick for analysis. It will be used to first locate the tracks produced in neutrino interactions which have to be followed in the rest of the brick. The dimensions of a brick are 12.5 x 10.2 x 7.5 $`cm^3`$. In terms of radiation length, a brick corresponds to a thickness of 10 $`X_o`$.

In order to reach 1.8 kton target mass, 206336 bricks will be installed into walls containing 64 rows of 52 bricks and separated from each other by vertical planes of electronic target trackers.

Fig. 3 shows the general layout of the OPERA detector.

It consists of 2 identical parts called super module (SM). Each SM has a target section and a muon spectrometer. The spectrometer measures the charge and momentum of muons going through by means of a dipolar magnet providing 1.6 Tesla transverse to the neutrino beam axis and equipped with drift tubes and RPC chambers.

The target section is composed of 31 walls of bricks. The bricks will be installed in a support structure and manipulated from the sides of the walls using an automated manipulator.

An electronic target tracker module composed of 2 planes of 6.6 m long scintillator strips in the two transverse directions (X and Y) is installed behind each brick wall. The main goal of the electronic detector is to provide a trigger for the neutrino interactions and a localisation of the brick where the event occured. The strips, 2.6 cm wide and 1 cm thick, have WLS fibers for readout by 64 channel multi-anode photomultiplier tubes. The brick transverse pointing accuracy is about 1.5 cm for CC events and 3.0 cm for NC events. The efficiency to find the right brick is about 70-80%.

The candidate brick is then removed for subsequent analysis. The analysis flow is the following: The brick is removed using the brick manipulator system and the changeable sheet is detached and developped. The film is then scanned to search for the track originating from the neutrino interaction. If none are found then the brick is left untouched and another one is removed. When a neutrino event is observed, the brick is exposed to cosmics to collect alignment tracks before going to the development. After development the emulsions are sent to the automatic scanning microscope in order to start the analysis which consists of finding the neutrino vertex and the decay kink in the vertex region.

### 4.2 Detector performance

The angular resolution for reconstructing a track in a film from the two emulsion layers is about 2 mrad. This is entirely limited by the scanning accuracy of the microscope stage and the digitisation. However this resolution allows a momentum measurement using the particle multiple scattering occuring within the lead plates. The difference of the track angles before and after lead sheets can be measured accurately all along the track. Test beam results have shown that a resolution better than 20% for momentum below 4 GeV can be achieved using only half a brick (5 $`X_o`$) with this angular method.

The brick thickness ($`10X_o`$) and the high precision in reconstructing track segments makes the brick a good electromagnetic calorimeter. Fig. 4 shows an electron shower reconstructed in a brick exposed to an electron beam at CERN. The shower structure is clearly visible with all the segmets representing electron tracks from the shower seen in the emulsions. The efficiency to identify such showers is about 90%.

The shower energy can be measured by counting the number of track segments reconstructed in a cone of 50 mrad around the incoming electron direction. This technique gives an energy resolution of 40%/$`\sqrt{E}`$.

These results show the high capability of OPERA in $`\tau e`$ decay studies and in the search for $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ appearance.

### 4.3 Physics performance: $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ search

The $`\tau `$ decay channels investigated by OPERA are the e, $`\mu `$ and hadron. They are classified in 2 categories: long and short decays. The latter corresponds to the cases where the $`\tau `$ decays in the same lead plate as the neutrino interaction occured. Those events are selected on the basis of the impact parameter of the $`\tau `$ daughter track with respect to the interaction vertex (IP $`>`$ 5-20 $`\mu `$m). This is applied only for the electron and muon channels. In the long decay category the $`\tau `$ does not decay in the same lead plate and its track can be reconstructed in one film. The $`\tau `$ candidate events are selected on the basis of the existence of a kink angle between the $`\tau `$ and the daughter tracks ($`\theta _{kink}>`$ 20 mrad).

Table 1 summarises the OPERA performance after 5 years of running with the CNGS (2.25x$`10^{20}`$ pot). The number of expected signal events from $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillations is given as a function of the studied channel for three different values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ at full mixing. The total efficiency including the branching ratios amounts to 9.1% and the total background is estimated to be less than 0.65 event. The main background sources are charm decays, large angle muon scattering and hadron reinteractions. A 4$`\sigma `$ significance is achieved after 5 years for $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2>2.0`$ x $`10^3`$$`eV^2`$.

Fig. 5 shows the constraint on the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ which can be achieved after 5 years if the observed rate of $`\nu _\tau `$ events corresponds to the expectation for full mixing and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$=3.2x$`10^3eV^2`$. Using the atmospheric result to constrain the mixing angle the precision on $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ at 2.5x$`10^3`$ $`eV^2`$ is about 16%.
Improvement in the background reduction is under progress. A preliminary analysis has shown that low energy muons can be identified in the bricks, using the dE/dX measurement in the emulsions (grain density) as a function of the particle range. Applying this idea reduces the estimated background from 0.65 to 0.42 without changing the signal efficiency.

## 5 The ICARUS experiment

The principle of ICARUS is to reconstruct the event kinematics with enough precision to allow the selection of interesting candidates and the rejection of background events with kinematical criteria based on energy measurements and on very good particle ID. The technology relies on the possibility to do 3 dimensional imaging of events in a large time projection chamber filled with liquid argon, with space resolution similar to that in bubble chambers, but with electronic readout and continuous sensitivity. An important characteristic of this detector concept is the use of very pure liquid argon, with less than 1 ppb of contaminant, allowing the electrons to drift along distances larger than 1.5 m. The scintillation light produced by the ionising particles in liquid argon is used to give a precise reference time of the ionisation track. The readout is achieved with 3 parallel wire planes (2 induction and 1 collection planes) with 3 different orientations, at 0, $`60^o`$ and $`60^o`$. The wire pitch is 3 mm. The spatial resolution is 250$`\mu `$m along the drift direction (z) and 1 mm for the x and y directions.

In addition, the energy deposited by an ionising particle along its path (dE/dx) is measured accurately from the charge collected on each wire of the collection plane with a time sampling of 400 nsec. Since the particle momentum can be measured from the range of stopping particles or from multiple scattering measurement, it provides a very clean method for particle identification of soft particles.

### 5.1 Detector structure

The ICARUS detector has a modular concept which should allow to build a multi kton device by replicating the basic component. The smallest detector unit contains 300 tons of liquid argon and corresponds to half a T600 module. Figure 6 shows the internal view of the first T600 half module. The cryostat has dimensions of 4x4x20 $`m^3`$. A high voltage system produces a uniform electric field, perpendicular to the wire planes allowing the drift of the ionisation electrons towards the wires over a maximum path of 1.5 m.

This first module has been fully instrumented and succesfully tested during a technical run lasting 5 months during 2001 in Pavia (Italy). The results were found to be in agreement with the expectations and have validated the LAr TPC technology at these large scales.

The aim of the ICARUS collaboration is to build a 3000 ton detector (T3000) which should be installed in the Gran Sasso Hall B. To fully exploit the know-how acquired with the first half T600 construction and running, the T3000 design is based on cloning the T600 module to reach a sensitive mass of 2.35 ktons of liquid argon. Fig. 7 shows the general layout of the T3000 detector in the Gran Sasso laboratory.

The first part to be installed is the existing T600 module composed of the tested half module prototype and a second half module under construction. The complete module should be installed early 2003 with the aim of starting the collection of atmospheric and solar neutrino events in 2003. Then the mass should be increased gradually with time with the installation of two T1200 units (1 T1200 module is made of 2 T600 modules superimposed in the same insulation enveloppe) before summer 2006.

The ICARUS physics program is quite broad. It should cover, in addition to the CNGS program, the study of solar, atmospheric and supernovae neutrino as well as proton decay search.

### 5.2 Detector performance

The large homogeneous tracking medium allows to fully identify and sample electromagnetic and hadronic showers. The total shower energy is obtained from integrating the charge collected on the wires. As a result ICARUS has excellent calorimeter capabilities with very good energy resolution, featuring excellent electron identification and e/$`\pi ^o`$ separation in addition to its high capability of dE/dx measurements.

Since there is no magnetic field, momentum for energetic muon is measured using multiple coulomb scattering in liquid argon. The resulting momentum resolution is about 20% for 10 GeV muons.

### 5.3 Physics performance: $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ search

ICARUS has considered two $`\tau `$ decay channels for the $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ search. Their “golden” channel corresponds to $`\tau e\nu _e\nu _\tau `$. The main background should come from the $`\nu _e`$ present in the beam which interact via charged current. It is suppressed kinematically exploiting the fact that signal events have missing momentum due to the final state neutrinos which is not the case for the background events. An analysis based on a 3 dimensional likelihood built for the signal and background events with 3 distributions derived from the visible energy and transverse missing momentum distributions has been used. Fig. 8 shows the ratio of the corresponding signal and background likelihoods for background (shaded area) and $`\tau `$ events normalised to 5 years of CNGS in shared mode. The two components are clearly distinct and a cut on this variable allows the selection of a rather clean signal sample.

The other channel which has been exploited is the $`\tau \rho `$ where $`\rho ^{}\pi ^{}\pi ^o`$. The main background comes from $`\nu _\mu `$ NC events and in this case, both signal and background events have missing energy. The selection is then based on some isolation criteria instead of energy balance since the candidate hadron is more isolated with respect to the total momentum for the signal. Table 2 summarises the overall ICARUS performance after 5 years of running with the CNGS (2.25x$`10^{20}`$ pot) for $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ search. The number of expected signal events from $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillations is given as a function of the studied channel for three different values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ at full mixing. The total efficiency including the branching ratios amounts to 5.9% and the total background is estimated to be less than 0.7. These results show that ICARUS can reach a sensitivity comparable to OPERA for this study.

## 6 Search for $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ appearance

In addition to the dominant $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillation, it is possible that a sub-leading transition involving $`\nu _e`$ occurs as well. In the 3 flavour neutrino oscillation framework, assuming $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{12}^2<<\mathrm{\Delta }m_{23}^2=\mathrm{\Delta }m_{13}^2=\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$, oscillation probabilities can be expressed like:

$`P(\nu _\mu \nu _\tau )=cos^4\theta _{13}sin^22\theta _{23}sin^2(1.27\mathrm{\Delta }m^2L/E)`$
$`P(\nu _\mu \nu _e)=sin^2\theta _{23}sin^22\theta _{13}sin^2(1.27\mathrm{\Delta }m^2L/E)`$
The sub-leading $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ oscillation at the atmospheric scale is driven by the mixing angle $`\theta _{13}`$ which is constrained by CHOOZ experiment to be small ($`sin^2\theta _{13}<`$0.14) . Having excellent electron identification capabilities, both ICARUS and OPERA have estimated their sensitivity in searching for $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ appearance with the CNGS beam. The analysis principle is based on a search for an excess of $`\nu _e`$ CC events at low neutrino energies. The main background comes from the electron neutrino contamination present in the beam. The analysis takes into account the electron events coming from $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ events where $`\tau e\nu _\tau \nu _e`$ since both oscillations would occur at the atmospheric $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ scale. These events distort the kinematical distributions where the low energy events contribute. This is illustrated in Fig. 9 showing the ICARUS visible energy distribution for the events contributing in the $`\nu _e`$ CC sample when $`\theta _{13}=7^o`$. The contribution from both oscillations have different shapes than the rest of the events.

The sensitivity to $`\theta _{13}`$ is obtained by doing a $`\chi ^2`$ minimisation using the visible energy, the missing transverse energy and the electron transverse momentum distributions in which the oscillation parameters are allowed to vary. Table 3 summarises the expected number of selected events for ICARUS assuming 5 years running (2.25x$`10^{20}`$ pot) from $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ and $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillations in three family mixing and from background $`\nu _e`$ at 3 values of $`\theta _{13}`$.

The limit obtained by ICARUS at 90% CL on $`\theta _{13}`$ is $`5.8^o`$ after 5 years.

The recent analysis performed by OPERA and described in details in Ref.  gives a limit of $`7.1^o`$ at 90% CL. Both experimental results lead to significant improvement over the actual CHOOZ limit and open an important window on the third mixing angle.

## 7 Conclusion

The CNGS construction is progressing well. The project is on schedule and a startup is expected for june 2006. At the same time OPERA enters the construction phase and should be ready to take data by 2006. ICARUS has successfully demonstrated its principle with the full scale 300 ton prototype technical run and the collaboration aims to build a 3000 ton detector by 2006.
The detector performances are such that an unambiguous $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ appearance signal should be seen after only a few years of data taking. Combining these observations, the two experiments expect to see 20-25 $`\tau `$ events after 5 years with very little background at $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ = 2.5x$`10^3`$ $`eV^2`$. They can achieve a measurement of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ with 10% accuracy. The very good electron identification and measurement of the two detectors give the possibility to explore the $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ appearance channel pushing down the $`\theta _{13}`$ limit below $`7^o`$. This may correspond to the best sensitivity that can be reached before the JHF program  turns on.