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# Non-Cooperative Quantum Game Theory

## 1 Introduction

Quantum mechanics revolutionized physics a century ago. During the past decade, quantum mechanics has extended its impact into the fields of information theory and computer science. By manipulating qubits—where ‘qubit’ denotes the quantum equivalent of the single bit from classical information theory—researchers have made some remarkable discoveries: perfectly secure cryptography is feasible , certain computational tasks can be performed more efficiently than their classical counterparts , and teleportation and superdense coding have been proved possible . The key common element in each of these applications is information—and information is ultimately a physical quantity since it needs to be stored on, and manipulated by, a physical system. Games are no different in that their physical implementation (i.e. the playing of the game) will also require a physical system. In particular, the actions of players in games can ultimately be broken down into yes/no responses to a series of specific questions posed by an external referee. Since such a yes/no binary response has a natural quantum equivalent in terms of a qubit, game theory becomes an obvious candidate for the incorporation of quantum mechanical effects.

The study of quantum games started in 1999 . Eisert, Wilkens and Lewenstein later proposed a quantized version of the prisoner’s dilemma game, claiming that the resulting ‘quantum game’ resolves the prisoner’s dilemma . This particular conclusion was later criticized by Benjamin and Hayden on the grounds that the quantum strategies considered were limited in an unphysical way . However the theoretical framework introduced by Eisert and co-workers is unaffected by this criticism, and moreover underlies most of the subsequent research in quantum games . In this paper, we introduce a general formalism of quantum games based on Eisert et al’s framework, and study the quantized prisoner’s dilemma game as a specific example.

Before presenting a detailed discussion of quantum games, we start by motivating the general formalism. In particular, we will single out the essential elements in classical non-cooperative game theory and then argue how these elements motivate the introduction of the corresponding elements in the quantum version. We note that from now on, all games considered will be non-cooperative and finite. We will also restrict ourselves to two-player games, but will comment on how this can be generalized.

Classically, any game is fully described by its corresponding payoff matrix. For instance, the prisoner’s dilemma game may be represented by the following payoff matrix which has two rows (labelled by 0 and 1, for example) and two columns:

$$\left[\begin{array}{cc}(3,3)& (0,5)\\ (5,0)& (1,1)\end{array}\right].$$
(1)
We can then ignore the underlying motivation for the game in question, since playing the game becomes equivalent to picking a number corresponding to a particular row (or column for the second player) of the game matrix, e.g. 0 or 1. Indeed, one of the successes of game theory may be seen as the incorporation of a utility function into entries of a game matrix, hence making a mathematical treatment possible. After the players have made their choices, e.g. by writing 0 or 1 on separate pieces of paper, someone needs to collect together this information and distribute the corresponding payoffs. Hence we assume the existence of a referee whose sole purpose is to collate the choices made by the players and to assign the corresponding payoffs. In short, playing a game constitutes an exchange of information between the players and the referee. The messages exchanged can generally be thought to be encoded as bit-strings of fixed length, hence strengthening the information-theoretic theme. In the prisoner’s dilemma game, each player only needs one bit to encode his/her choice: more generally, if there are $`n`$ pure strategies available for a specific player then $`\mathrm{log}_2n`$ bits are needed to specify his/her choice of strategy. Of course, there is nothing forbidding the players from picking their pure strategies randomly. This prompts the mapping of each player’s set of strategies to a multi-dimensional simplex. Indeed, the compactness and convexity of the strategy spaces and the multi-linearity of the payoff function are indispensable in proving the Nash Equilibrium Theorem and the Minimax Theorem.

## 2 Quantum games

Given the many applications mentioned above in which qubits are manipulated rather than classical bits, an immediate approach to quantize classical games would be to replace the bits by qubits. A qubit may be regarded as a quantum system with two states (a so-called two-level system). Physically, it may be represented by the spin of an electron or the ground and excited states of an atom. However this naive approach would not give anything new. A more sophisticated approach was discussed in Ref.  and was later shown to be capable of enriching the current scope of classical game theory . Instead of players manufacturing their own qubits, the players in this approach operate on the qubits sent to them by the referee. Each player then sends his/her manipulated qubit back to the referee. The players’ strategy spaces are thus related to the spaces of operators for the qubits. This is similar to the study of quantum error correction: there it is the vector space of error operators on codewords which is of interest, as opposed to the classical case in which it is the vector space of codewords which matters . The full procedure within this game-playing scheme is therefore the following: the referee first sends out sets of qubits to the players; the players then operate separately on the qubits received; they then send the resulting qubits back to the referee, who makes a measurement on these qubits in order to determine the payoffs for each player. As we will show, quantum mechanics plays an essential role in this game by:

1. restricting the feasible set of qubits
2. restricting the physical operations available to the players, and
3. restricting the physical measurements which can be performed by the referee.

For classical games, we already have a clear picture of the meaning of the three restrictions above. Namely, (1) the messages exchanged are always encoded as bit-strings; (2) the operations allowed are restricted to tensor products of the bit-flip ($`X`$) and the identity ($`I`$) operators, for example $`IXI(101)=111`$, and randomized ensembles of these operators; (3) the referee just ‘reads’ the bit-strings received and assigns the payoffs according to the payoff matrix of the game. In contrast, quantum mechanics enforces far less limitation on the vector space of qubits and on the players’ strategy spaces. On the other hand, quantum mechanics does not allow perfect state estimation in general and so the referee has limitations on how much he can learn from the qubits. We will now give an axiomatic description on the elements of quantum mechanics that concern us. A more complete treatment may be found in Ref. . We note that all the matrices in this paper can have complex numbers as entries.

###### Definition 1

(Description of qubits) A set of $`n`$ qubits is described by a $`2^n\times 2^n`$ square matrix, $`\rho `$, such that

1. tr$`(\rho )`$=1,
2. $`\rho `$ is a positive matrix.

Any such $`\rho `$ is called a density matrix.

###### Definition 2

(Description of physical operations) Given a density matrix $`\rho `$, any of the physically-implementable operations on $`\rho `$ can be described by a set of square matrices, $`\{E_k\}`$, such that the $`E_k`$’s are of the same dimension as $`\rho `$ and $`_kE_k^{}E_k=I`$. Moreover under any physical map $`\{E_k\}`$, the resulting density matrix will be $`_kE_k\rho E_k^{}`$ which is again a density matrix.

If $`n`$ qubits are divided into two subsets of $`n_1`$ and $`n_2`$ qubits, and if each part is operated upon separately, then any physical operation is described by $`\{E_kF_l\}`$, where the $`E_k`$’s are ($`2^{n_1}\times 2^{n_1}`$)-matrices and the $`F_l`$’s are ($`2^{n_2}\times 2^{n_2}`$)-matrices such that $`_kE_k^{}E_k=I`$ and $`_lF_l^{}F_l=I`$. The resulting density matrix will be $`_{k,l}(E_kF_l)\rho (E_k^{}F_l^{})`$.

###### Definition 3

(Description of physical measurements) A measurement with $`L`$ possible outcomes on a density matrix $`\rho `$ corresponds to $`L`$ matrices, $`\{M_k\}`$, of the same dimension as $`\rho `$, such that $`_{k=1}^LM_k^{}M_k=I`$. The probability of outcome $`m`$ is given by tr$`(M_m^{}M_m\rho )`$.

Given the above definitions, we are now ready to introduce a general theory of quantum games. We will restrict ourselves first to two-player games. We assume that the referee employs the measurement $`\{M_k\}`$, assigning payoffs $`a_m^\mathrm{I}`$ and $`a_m^{\mathrm{II}}`$ to players I and II respectively if the outcome is $`m`$. If players I and II decide to use operations $`\{E_k\}`$ and $`\{F_k\}`$ respectively, then the resulting state $`\pi `$ will be given by $`_{k,l}(E_kF_l)\rho (E_k^{}F_l^{})`$. Hence the payoff for player I is $`_{k=1}^La_k^\mathrm{I}\mathrm{tr}(M_k^{}M_k\pi )=\mathrm{tr}[(_{k=1}^La_k^\mathrm{I}M_k^{}M_k)\pi ]`$, with a similar expression describing the payoff for player II. It is therefore convenient to denote $`_{k=1}^La_k^\mathrm{I}M_k^{}M_k`$ by $`R^\mathrm{I}`$, and likewise for $`R^{\mathrm{II}}`$. We note that $`R^\mathrm{I},R^{\mathrm{II}}`$ and the initial state $`\rho `$, define the game completely.

By treating the set of physical maps as a vector space, we may fix a basis for it. We now suppose that $`\{\stackrel{~}{E}_\alpha \}`$ form such a basis. Using $`\{E_k=_\alpha e_{k\alpha }\stackrel{~}{E}_\alpha \}`$ and $`\{F_l=_\alpha f_{l\alpha }\stackrel{~}{E}_\alpha \}`$, then the payoff for player $`j`$ is

$$\underset{k,l,\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\delta }{}e_{k\alpha }\overline{e_{k\beta }}f_{l\gamma }\overline{f_{l\delta }}A_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }^j$$
(2)
where $`A_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }^j:=\mathrm{tr}[R^j(\stackrel{~}{E}_\alpha \stackrel{~}{E}_\gamma )\rho (\stackrel{~}{E}_\beta ^{}\stackrel{~}{E}_\delta ^{})]`$. Letting $`\chi _{\alpha \beta }=_ke_{k\alpha }\overline{e_{k\beta }}`$ and $`\xi _{\gamma \delta }=_lf_{l\gamma }\overline{f_{l\delta }}`$, then $`\chi `$ and $`\xi `$ are positive Hermitian matrices by construction. In quantum information, the above procedure is called $`\chi `$ matrix representation . We now rewrite Eq. 2 as follows:

$$\underset{\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\delta }{}\chi _{\alpha \beta }\xi _{\gamma \delta }A_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }^j.$$
(3)
We note that the tensors $`A`$s fully describes the game being played, and the choices for $`\chi `$ and $`\xi `$ are limited by the laws of physics. In particular, by denoting the set of allowable $`\chi `$ by $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, the conditions described in definition 2 are transformed to the following conditions:

1. $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a subset of the set of positive Hermitian matrices,
2. For all $`\chi \mathrm{\Omega }`$, then $`_{\alpha ,\beta }\overline{\chi _{\alpha \beta }}\stackrel{~}{E}_\alpha ^{}\stackrel{~}{E}_\beta =I`$.

We can now see a striking similarity between static quantum games and static classical finite games. The payoff for a classical finite two-player game has the form $`_{i,j}x_iA_{ij}y_j`$ where $`x,y`$ belong to some multi-dimensional simplexes and $`A`$ is a general matrix: the payoff for a static quantum game is $`_{\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\delta }\chi _{\alpha \beta }\xi _{\gamma \delta }A_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }`$ where $`\chi ,\xi `$ belong to some multi-dimensional compact and convex sets $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Indeed the multi-linear structure of the payoff function together with the convexity and compactness of the strategy sets, are the essential features underlying both classical and quantum games. Indeed, we can exploit these similarities in order to extend some classical results into the quantum domain. Two immediate examples are the Nash Equilibrium Theorem and the Minmax Theorem . We note that the classical strategy set, i.e. a multi-dimensional simplex, and the quantum strategy set $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ cannot be made identical if the linearity of the payoff function is to be preserved. This is because there is no linear homeomorphism that maps $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$ to a simplex of any dimension. In essence the positivity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$, i.e. the conditions $`\chi _{\alpha \alpha }\chi _{\beta \beta }|\chi _{\alpha \beta }|^2`$ for all $`\chi \mathrm{\Omega }_k`$, spoils this possibility. Therefore, if we identify $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$ as some multi-dimensional simplex, we must lose linearity of the payoff function. The structure of the strategy sets in the quantum case therefore introduces new complexity to the study of finite games.

This entire analysis can easily be generalized to $`N`$-player games. For instance, any particular $`N`$-player static game will have payoff matrices of the form $`A^k=\mathrm{tr}[R^k(\stackrel{~}{E}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{E})\rho (\stackrel{~}{E}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{E})]`$ where we have omitted the index summation for clarity.

## 3 Quantized prisoner’s dilemma game

We now apply the formalism developed in the previous section, to discuss the quantized prisoner’s dilemma game introduced in Ref. . Considering this game within our formalism, we are led to the following forms for the initial density matrix $`\rho `$ and the matrices $`R^\mathrm{I}`$, $`R^{\mathrm{II}}`$:

$$\rho =\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1/2& 0& 0& i/2\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ i/2& 0& 0& 1/2\end{array}\right),$$
(4)
$$R^\mathrm{I}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}2& 0& 0& i\\ 0& 5/2& 5i/2& 0\\ 0& 5i/2& 5/2& 0\\ i& 0& 0& 2\end{array}\right)R^{\mathrm{II}}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}2& 0& 0& i\\ 0& 5/2& 5i/2& 0\\ 0& 5i/2& 5/2& 0\\ i& 0& 0& 2\end{array}\right).$$
(5)
The motivation behind the above forms is as follows: if only the bit-flip and the identity operations are allowed, then the above game reduces to the classical prisoner’s dilemma game with the following game matrix :

$$\left[\begin{array}{cc}(3,3)& (0,5)\\ (5,0)& (1,1)\end{array}\right]$$
(6)
To perform concrete calculations, we identify the basis set $`\{\stackrel{~}{E}_\alpha \}`$ as $`\{n_{[ij]}\}`$ where $`n_{[ij]}`$ denotes an $`n\times n`$ square matrix such that the $`(ij)`$-entry is equal to 1 while all other entries are equal to zero. Denoting $`\alpha `$ by $`ij`$ and recalling the conditions on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, we have the following restrictions on all $`\chi \mathrm{\Omega }:_i\chi _{ijij}=1`$, $`_i\chi _{ijil}=0`$ and $`\chi _{ijij}\chi _{klkl}|\chi _{ijkl}|^2`$, where the first two sub-indices represent $`\alpha `$ while the latter two represent $`\beta `$. A further calculation shows that $`n_{[ij]}n_{[kl]}=n_{[(i1)n+k,(j1)n+l]}^2`$. For arbitrary $`R`$ and $`\rho `$, we find the following:

$$A_{\underset{\alpha }{\underset{}{ab}}\underset{\beta }{\underset{}{cd}}\underset{\gamma }{\underset{}{ij}}\underset{\delta }{\underset{}{kl}}}=R_{((c1)n+k),((a1)n+i)}\times \rho _{((b1)n+j),((d1)n+l)}.$$
(7)
We can therefore compute the $`A`$’s easily for the above quantized prisoner’s dilemma game. These are shown explicitly in Figure 1.

It can be seen that the matrices contain imaginary numbers and negative numbers. However there is no cause for concern: once we properly take the conditions on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ into account, the resulting payoffs for the two players will always lie between 0 and 5. From the form of the matrices, one can also see that there is a Nash equilibrium with payoff $`2.5`$ for each player: this corresponds to player I adopting the strategy $`\chi ^{}`$, where $`\chi _{0000}^{}=\chi _{0101}^{}=1`$ and $`\chi ^{}=0`$ for all other entries and player II adopting the strategy $`\xi ^{}`$, where $`\xi _{1010}^{}=\xi _{1111}^{}=1`$ and $`\xi ^{}=0`$ for all other entries. One can check that the above $`\chi `$ and $`\xi `$ is contained in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, and is hence physically implementable. We note that this is a Nash equilibrium with the highest common payoff which is known in this game.

## 4 Concluding remarks

We have taken a brief tour through quantum games, and have shown that quantum games are indeed quite distinct from classical games. In particular, the strategy sets are no longer simplexes and the payoff matrices admit complex entries. These new features are certainly interesting from an academic point of view. However the success of classical game theory lies in its applications. To render quantum game theory interesting, one must search for real-life scenarios where quantum games are useful. It turns out that such examples are not hard to find: for example, multi-party communication schemes can naturally be envisaged as a multi-player game. Cryptography is another immediate example . Moreover, game-theoretic language is well-suited to describe scenarios with multi-party interactions: indeed there are many examples of researchers discussing analogies between games and quantum systems long before the words ‘quantum games’ were introduced . In addition, pursuing the underlying concept that information is physical and that physical systems can be seen as information-processors, one is led to the idea that game theory might even provide a novel interpretation of both classical and quantum physics. Such possibilities are likely to ignite future interest in game theory within the physical sciences both from the classical and quantum perspectives. In short, game theory is once again poised to extend its formidable range of application – however, this time the application lies at the heart of fundamental science.


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# Global warming: What does the data tell us?

## 1 Introduction

We present a study of global warming based on the data obtained at $`13472`$ weather stations covering the period from 1702 to 1990. In particular we are interested in finding the effect of human activity on global warming. Since the world population doubled from 1952 to 1990, we search for any changes in the trend of global warming between the first and second halves of the 20’th century.

The data used in this study is described in Section 2, the analysis is presented in Section 3 and the conclusions are collected in Section 4.

## 2 The data

The temperature data set used in this analysis is “The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) version 2” released in 1997. This data is a “comprehensive global surface baseline climate data set designed for monitoring and detecting climate change.” In particular we used the “Adjusted Monthly Mean Temperature Data” (in file v2.mean.adj) and the “Raw Monthly Mean Temperature Data” (in file v2.mean). Each station is labeled by a $`12`$ digit code.

## 3 Discussion

We define a “valid year” for a particular station as a year that has all twelve months with valid mean temperatures. We average these twelve monthly temperatures to obtain the “mean annual temperature” for that station. In Figures 1, 2 and 3 we present the mean annual temperatures $`T_i`$ of the three oldest stations using the “Raw Monthly Mean Temperature Data” set. In Figure 4 we present the corresponding temperatures of our home city Quito. We fit these temperatures to a straight line. The slopes $`a_1`$ for the period covered by the data are shown in the figure captions. All errors in this article are statistical and one standard deviation or $`68\%`$ confidence. The high slope of the temperature measured in Quito may be due to the fact that the city grew around the weather station.

Figure 5 presents global warming at-a-glance. This figure was obtained as follows. We consider stations that have the first valid year less than or equal to 1900 and the last valid year greater than or equal to 1990. Furthermore we require at least 85 valid years between 1900 and 1990 inclusive. We chose these stations to be able to make meaningfull comparisons of global warming between the first and second halves of the 20’th century. We define the “reference temperature” of a station to be the average temperature of valid years between 1945 and 1955 inclusive (so at least one valid year in this interval is required). In Figure 5 we present the difference between the average temperature per 5 year bin and the reference temperature, averaged over all stations in the “Raw Monthly Mean Temperature Data” set passing the selection criteria. In Figure 6 we present the corresponding information for the “Adjusted Monthly Mean Temperature Data” set.

From these figures we see that the global temperature has been increasing since the earliest measurements in 1702. We see no acceleration of global warming in the second half of the 20’th century compared to the first half.

The data shown in Figures 5 and 6 are dominated by stations in the USA as can be seen in Figure 7. However, the general conclusions, i.e. warming since the earliest measurements and no acceleration of the warming in the second half of the 20’th century, can be observed elsewhere as shown in Figures 8 to 11.

## 4 Conclusions

The mean annual temperature of a station fluctuates from year to year by typically $`\pm 0.6^o`$C (one standard deviation). Superimposed on this fluctuation is a linear increase of temperature by typically $`0.40\pm 0.01^o`$C per century ever since reliable data is available, i.e. since 1702, as shown in Figure 5. All errors are statistical only, one standard deviation. The world population has doubled from 1952 to 1990 as seen in Figure 12, yet we see no statistically significant acceleration of global warming in that period: see Figures 5 to 11. We conclude that the effect of humankind on global warming up to 1990 is $`0.0\pm 0.1^o`$C. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, the data support the view that human activity has had no significant effect on global warming up to the year 1990 covered by this study.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The measurements of the relic density of cold dark matter (CDM) have provided stringent constraints on the parameters of the R-parity conserving mininal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). Hence a large effort has been devoted to the calculation of the relic density in the MSSM, and many private and public programs have been developed -. Here we present micrOMEGAs, a program that is publicly available . To make predictions for the relic density of CDM at the few percent level, special care must be taken to treat carefully the case where annihilation via a s-channel resonance can occur as well as the case of coannihilations where the LSP interacts with slightly heavier sparticles.

The calculation of the relic density necessitates the evaluation of a thermally averaged cross-section. The proper relativistic formalism for treating this was introduced in Ref. 8 and proved to be essential when annihilation through s-channel pole is important. The generalization of this formalism to the case of coannihilations , was implemented in the codes of Refs. 2-3, for the case of gaugino coannihilations. We follow basically this formalism.

Coannihilation processes where the LSP interacts with slightly heavier sparticles can occur in principle with any supersymmetric particle , although in SUGRA models, the most common coannihilations are with gauginos , right-handed sleptons  or stops . In micrOMEGAs we include ALL coannihilation channels, in all more than 2800 processes not counting charged conjugate processes. The tree-level cross-sections are calculated exactly including the full set of diagrams contributing to each process. The calculations of the cross-sections are based on CompHEP. Furthermore we include also some higher order effects, namely the two-loop corrections to the Higgs mass  and the one-loop QCD corrections to the Higgs width . The latter turns out to be particularly important in the large $`tan\beta `$ region with the enhanced coupling of the Higgs to b quarks.

After the important equations for the calculation of the relic density are summarized, we give a short description of the package. We present some results and comparisons with other programs emphasizing the role of coannihilations and Higgs poles. Finally we discuss the impact of the choice of the RGE code in SUGRA models on the relic density.

## 2 Calculation of the relic density

The calculation of the relic density at present necessitates solving the evolution equation for the relic abundance, $`Y`$

$$\frac{dY}{dT}=\sqrt{\frac{\pi g_{}(T)}{45G}}<\sigma v>(Y^2Y_{eq}^2)$$
(1)
where $`Y_{eq}`$ represents the thermal equilibrium abundance. This equation depends on $`<\sigma v>`$, the relativistic thermally averaged annihilation cross-section, which involves a sum over $`\sigma _{ij}`$ , the total cross section for annihilation of a pair of supersymmetric particles into Standard Model particles.

$$<\sigma v>=\frac{\underset{i,j}{}g_ig_j\underset{(m_i+m_j)^2}{}𝑑s\sqrt{s}K_1(\sqrt{s}/T)p_{ij}^2\sigma _{ij}(s)}{2T\left(\underset{i}{}g_im_i^2K_2(m_i/T)\right)^2},$$
(2)
The total number of processes involving two SUSY particles into two SM particles exceeds 2800. In practice, processes involving the heavier SUSY particles contribute only when there is a near mass degeneracy with the LSP due to a strong Boltzmann suppression factor. To speed up the program a given subprocess is removed from the sum (2) if the total mass of the incoming particles is below a value defined by the user, typically $`2.5m_{\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0}`$.

Rather than solving for $`Y`$ numerically, which is extremely time consuming especially when we include a great number of processes, we follow the usual procedure of defining a freeze-out temperature $`T_f`$ . This approach differs from the one in DarkSusy.

## 3 Description of micrOMEGAs

micrOMEGAs is a C program that also calls some external FORTRAN functions. micrOMEGAs relies on CompHEP  for the definition of the parameters and the evaluation of all cross-sections. Only a small fraction of the available processes are needed for a given model, those with a sparticle close in mass to the LSP. To restrict the size of the program, we include in our package the program CompHEP which generates, while running, the subprocesses needed for a given set of MSSM parameters. The generated code is linked during the run to the main program and executed.

The model file used by CompHEP is obtained via LanHEP , a program that generates the complete set of particles and vertices once given a Lagrangian. In the model used, the Higgs masses are calculated at two-loop with FeynHiggsFast . Higher order QCD corrections to the Higgs widths are incorporated by extracting, from HDECAY , effective quark masses $`m_q(m_H)`$ which are then included in the $`Hq\overline{q}`$ vertices.

In micrOMEGAs, there are two options for the input parameters: either the soft parameters of the supersymmetric Lagrangian at the weak scale or the parameters of a SUGRA-type model at the GUT scale. In Version 1.1.1, the latter option is made available via a link to Isajet. However, the next upgrade will include links to other codes, namely SuSpect and SoftSusy, as will be discussed in the last section.

After the calculation of the relic density is performed, the list of channels that give the most significant contribution to $`\mathrm{\Omega }h^2`$ are given. We also provide subroutines that calculate various constraints on the MSSM parameters: direct limits from colliders, $`bs\gamma `$ and $`(g2)_\mu `$.

## 4 Results and Comparisons

The micrOMEGAs code was extensively tested against another public package for calculating the relic density, DarkSUSY. The two codes differ somewhat in the numerical method used for solving the density equations, in the number of channels included (all subprocesses in micrOMEGAs ) and in the use of loop-corrected Higgs widths 222 Sfermions coannihilations will be included in upgrades of DarkSusy.. Whenever the coannihilation channels with sfermions and the Higgs pole are not important we find good agreement with DarkSUSY 333Complete agreement between micrOMEGAs and an improved version of DarkSusy including slepton coannihilation channels was found recently in Ref. .. However, when non gaugino coannihilations are important, we find that the impact of the extra channels can be as large as two order of magnitude and depends critically on the mass difference with the lightest neutralino. Due to the large cross-sections in channels involving strongly interacting particles, the effect of coannihilation is particularly striking when the NLSP is a squark (Fig. 1a).

Near a heavy Higgs resonance, we also observe differences with DarkSusy, these disappear if we switch to the tree-level width option. The effect of the Higgs width is particularly important at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ with the enhanced contribution of the $`b`$-quark coupling to the heavy scalar Higgs. One-loop QCD corrections which reduce the Higgs width especially at large values of $`m_H`$ can change $`\mathrm{\Omega }h^2`$ by as much as a factor 2 (Fig. 1b).

In the case of SUGRA models, we find qualitative agreement with Ref.  particularly for small values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Significant differences are found at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. This can be due to the RGE code used to calculate the soft parameters at the weak scale, as will be discussed next.

## 5 RGE code and relic density

To determine the influence on the RGE code used to determine the soft MSSM parameters on the calculation of the relic density, we have compared three of the most widely used RGE codes: Isajet, SuSpect and SoftSusy. The parameters that we expect might influence significantly the value of the relic density are $`\mu `$ which determines the gaugino fraction, $`m_A`$ which is relevant when neutralino annihilation occurs near the Higgs s-channel pole and finally the NLSP-LSP mass difference.

In the notoriously difficult large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ region, significant differences in the value of $`m_A`$  can lead up to factors of two differences in the relic density (Fig. 2). At large $`M_0`$, the relic density calculated in Isajet can be two orders of magnitude below that in the other two codes due to a significantly lower value for the parameter $`\mu `$  (leading to a large increase in the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0W^+W^{}`$ cross-section). Finally in the coannihilation regions, the relic density can vary by an order of magniture even though the differences between the codes can be rather small (a few Gev’s). This occurs at large $`M_{1/2}`$ and/or large $`A_0`$ where the $`\stackrel{~}{\tau }`$ is the NLSP (Fig. 2) . In general rather good agreement is found between SoftSusy and SuSpect, whereas larger differences can be observed with Isajet.

## 6 Conclusion

The package micrOMEGAs that allows to calculate the relic density of the LSP in the MSSM is the first program that includes all possible coannihilation channels. Loop corrections to the masses and widths of Higgs particles are implemented. Good agreement with existing calculations is found when identical channels are included and higher order corrections are removed.

The next upgrade of micrOMEGAs will include more links to programs for calculating RGE, (SoftSusy and SuSpect) as well as new improved routine to $`bs\gamma `$. Progress has also been made towards including new models beyond the MSSM, such as the nMSSM, and additonal modules for calculating constraints on the MSSM such as $`B_s\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ will be available.

## Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the PICS-397.


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# VLT spectroscopy of globular clusters in the Sombrero galaxy

## 1 Observations and reduction

Multiobject spectroscopy of globular cluster candidates in the halo of M 104 was obtained using FORS1 at the ESO VLT in service mode in April 2000. Five MOS setups were observed with exposure time $`2\times 50`$ min each with the 600B grism and 1′′ wide slitlets, yielding a resolution of $`6`$ Å (FMHM). All the available 19 movable slits were used, giving the highest priority to globular clusters spectroscopically confirmed by Bridges and coll. brid+97 . In total 75 objects were observed, including candidates visually selected on the basis of their shape and magnitude. Since most targets were observed in more than one mask, the typical target exposure time is 200 min. Long-slit spectra of Galactic globular clusters spanning a wide range in metallicity were also obtained for radial velocity and line strength calibration.

The MOS spectra were extracted and wavelength calibrated using IRAF standard tasks. The cross-correlation task FXCOR was employed to measure radial velocities, using integrated spectra of Galactic globular clusters as templates, and checking the velocity systematics against synthetic spectra of simple stellar populations vazd99 . In total 57 objects were confirmed to be globular clusters in the Sombrero galaxy on the basis of their radial velocities, 27 of which are new.

## 2 Metallicities and ages

Absorption line indices were measured for all the confirmed clusters, after convolving the spectra with an appropriate wavelength-dependent kernel to match the resolution of the Lick/IDS system. The line strengths were measured using the passbands defined by Worthey et al. wort94 . The measurements of the template Galactic globular clusters were compared with previous index data brod+huch90  to put our measurements on a standard system. Small offsets were applied to some indices (e.g., Mg1, Mg2), while no corrections were needed for narrow-band indices such as Mg$`b`$. The correlations between different metal line indices are well defined and give a consistent picture of metal line strengths in the M 104 globular clusters. Analysis of the relative abundances of iron-peak versus $`\alpha `$-elements, and comparison with models including non-solar abundance ratios (e.g., thom+02 ), will be presented in a future paper.

The metallicities of globular clusters in M 104 were derived following the empirical approach based on the index-metallicity relations for Galactic clusters. Weighted mean metallicities were calculated using several indices brod+huch90 . The assumptions behind the empirical calibrations are that clusters in M 104 are as old as those in the Milky Way, and the abundance ratios follow the same trend with metallicity as in the Milky Way globular cluster system. This approach has the advantage of providing a robust, model-independent ranking based on direct comparison of the line strengths in the target clusters with those of the Milky Way globulars.

For some indices, the index-metallicity relation becomes distinctly non-linear for metal-rich clusters. An example is given in Fig. 1 for the Mg2 versus \[Fe/H\] relation. The non-linearity is confirmed by the spectral synthesis models, and was previously noticed by others (greg94 , kiss+98 ). As a result, a straightforward extrapolation of the original linear calibrations above \[Fe/H\]$`0.7`$ would seriously overestimate the metallicity of the stronger-lined clusters. As a simple approximation of the non-linear behavior of Mg2 and other indices, we adopted two different slopes for clusters below and above \[Fe/H\]$`=0.7`$. For clusters less metal-rich than this value, our calibration is identical to the original one brod+huch90 . Details on the new relations for very metal-rich clusters, as well as abundances derived from comparisons with models, will be given elsewhere. We find a range in metallicity from \[Fe/H\]$`=2.13`$ to \[Fe/H\]$`=+0.26`$ with a mean value \[Fe/H\]$`=0.90`$. Some clusters with super-solar abundances are indeed present in M 104. Very few clusters appear to be more metal-poor than \[Fe/H\]$`=1.8`$.

Diagnostic diagrams of Balmer line strengths against metal line indices were used to estimate the ages of globular clusters in the halo of M 104. Figure 2 shows the distribution of clusters in the diagram using H$`\beta `$ against Mg2. Most globular clusters in M 104 appear consistent with an old age, comparable to that of Milky Way globular clusters. The clusters in the halo of M 104 appear to be coeval with the clusters in the inner (bulge) regions studied by lars+02 . Only for a few clusters is H$`\beta `$ strong enough to be consistent with an age $`2`$ Gyr. Measurements of other Balmer line indices are in progress.

## 3 Kinematics

Figure 3 shows the radial velocities of candidates with $`400<v_r<2000`$ km s-1, which are probable members of the globular cluster system of M 104. The clusters on the E side have $`v_r=1132`$ km s-1 with a velocity dispersion $`\sigma _v=187`$ km s-1. On the W side, the velocity dispersion is $`\sigma _v=234`$ km s-1 and the mean radial velocity 1052 km s-1. The velocity distribution is non-gaussian on the E side due to the presence of a distinct group of clusters with radial velocities $`<900`$ km s-1. Given the large scatter of the velocity measurements, the evidence for rotation is marginal. A linear fit including all data points gives a small difference for the mean cluster velocities on the E and W sides, indicating a very shallow rotation curve, $`4.5`$ km s-1 kpc-1. With the present data, no difference is obvious between the kinematics of metal-rich and metal-poor clusters. A larger sample of precise radial velocities will be necessary to establish the presence of rotation for the M 104 halo clusters, and further observations are planned to this aim. Figure 3 also shows (right panel) the spatial distribution of clusters with approaching and receding velocity. This distribution might suggest that the kinematic axis is inclined with respect to the photometric minor axis.

## 4 Conclusions

The metallicities derived from spectroscopy of globular clusters in the bulge and halo of M 104 confirm a bimodal \[Fe/H\] distribution, in agreement with the results from photometry (lars+01 ; Moretti et al. 2002, this volume) and with the spectroscopic results for the inner cluster sample lars+02 . A two-gaussian fit to the distribution has two peaks at \[Fe/H\]$`1.7`$ and \[Fe/H\]$`0.7`$, very similar to those of globular clusters in our Galaxy (see also lars+01 ). The abundance distribution indicates that out to 15 kpc, the metal-rich clusters are 4 times more abundant than the metal-poor ones. A plot of globular cluster metallicities against the distance from the center shows that metal-rich clusters are more numerous near the galaxy center. This radial gradient has been mostly interpreted as caused by a changing mix of two (metal-rich and metal-poor) cluster populations. However, Fig. 4 suggests that the global \[Fe/H\] distribution is produced by superposition of cluster populations whose properties vary in a complex way as a function of distance from the galaxy center. Bimodality seems to be an (over)simplified description of the metallicity distribution of globular clusters in M 104 – reality is probably more complex than we thought in this and many other galaxies.


text:
# Masses of Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei

## 1. The Importance of Reverberation Masses

A detailed knowledge of the masses of supermassive black holes (SBHs) in AGNs is an important element of our understanding of how the accretion process works in nature. Highly accurate (to 10% or so) masses are needed to understand the energy budgets in AGNs: how much of the energy is converted into radiation, how much appears in the form of kinetic energy in jets and winds, and how much (if any) is advected in the black hole itself? Less accurate mass determinations (to within a factor of a few or so) are nevertheless very useful for current-epoch black-hole demographics that allow us to approach the same questions about accretion physics from a statistical point of view. Current estimates of black-hole masses are anchored by nearly 40 AGNs (Wandel, Peterson, & Malkan 1999; Kaspi et al. 2000; Onken et al. 2002) whose SBH masses have been estimated by emission-line reverberation methods (Blandford & McKee 1982; Peterson 1993, 2001), in which the response time of the broad emission lines to continuum variations is taken to be the light-travel time across the line-emitting region. By combining this length scale with a measurement of the line width, a virial mass estimate is obtained through

$$M=\frac{kc\tau V^2}{G},$$
(1)
where $`c`$ and $`G`$ are the speed of light and gravitational constant, respectively, $`\tau `$ is the response time scale for a broad emission line, $`V`$ is a suitable measure of the emission-line width, and $`k`$ is a numerical factor that depends on the currently unknown structure and kinematics of the line-emitting region. There are two strong pieces of evidence that suggest that reverberation masses are reliable to within a factor of a few:

1. In four AGNs for which multiple emission-line lags and line widths have been measured, a virial relationship between lag and line width (i.e., $`\tau V^2`$) is seen (Peterson & Wandel 1999, 2000; Onken & Peterson 2002).
2. AGN SBH masses seem to follow the same relationship between black-hole mass and host galaxy bulge velocity dispersion, the $`M\text{}\sigma `$ relationship (Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Gebhardt et al. 2000), that is seen in quiescent galaxies (Ferrarase et al. 2001, and references therein).

Masses obtained by reverberation methods are becoming increasingly important as they are used to anchor scaling methods that allow estimation of the black-hole masses in higher-redshift, higher-luminosity AGNs (e.g., Wandel, Peterson, & Malkan 1999; Vestergaard 2002; McLure & Jarvis 2002) which thus allows us in principle to probe the growth of quasar masses over most of the history of the Universe. Furthermore, unlike stellar-dynamical and gas-dynamical methods, the reverberation mapping technique is directly applicable to higher-redshift sources because it is independent of angular resolution.

Given the potential importance of the reverberation masses for these sources and the simple fact that a similar or superior sample is not likely to be obtained in the immediate future, we decided to undertake a detailed reanalysis of the existing reverberation data to improve on the homogeneity and accuracy of the database. In this contribution, we describe some preliminary results.

## 2. Refining Reverberation Masses

Our intent is to improve both the accuracy and precision to which reverberation masses are known. The specific goals of this investigation are:

1. To minimize the formal errors in BLR radius and line width determinations. The goal is to increase the measured precision of the virial product $`rV^2`$. We assume that the virial relationship holds, and test various characterizations of the emission-line time lag and velocity width to minimize the scatter in the virial product for AGNs for which multiple measurements are available.
2. To determine the best characterization of the black-hole mass. The goal is to improve the accuracy of reverberation masses by determining the constant $`k`$ in eq. (1). Here we assume that AGNs and quiescent galaxies follow the same $`M\text{}\sigma `$ relationship and that $`k`$ can be determined by scaling the AGNs relative to quiescent black holes. In sacrificing the chance of finding systematic differences between active and quiescent galaxies, we are able to constrain the BLR geometry and kinematics in a statistical sense by determining both $`k`$ and its corresponding uncertainty, i.e., the scatter in the AGN $`M`$$`\sigma `$ relationship.

## 3. Some Preliminary Results

As we will describe in detail elsewhere, we conducted tests based on both numerical simulations and different treatments of actual monitoring data. The large database on NGC 5548 (see Peterson et al. 2002 and references therein), for which there are 14 years of optical monitoring data plus two years of UV monitoring, plays a particularly important role in this analysis. We examined the data carefully to determine which measures of lag and line width give the most consistent virial product $`rV^2`$. We reach the following conclusions:

1. In general, the centroid of the cross-correlation function is a more robust estimate of the lag than the peak value of the cross-correlation.
2. The width of an emission-line in the rms spectrum111The multiple spectra obtained in a reverberation-mapping experiment can be used to compute both a mean and root-mean-square spectrum. The latter isolates the variable part of the spectrum. better characterizes the line-of-sight velocity dispersion than does the line width in the mean spectrum.
3. The line dispersion (i.e., the second moment of the emission-line profile) is superior to the full-width at half maximum (FWHM) as a measure of the line-of-sight velocity width. However, both measures give a slope consistent with $`\tau V^2`$.

## 4. The $`𝑴\text{}𝝈`$ Relationship for AGNs

If we make the reasonably well-justified assumption that AGNs follow the same $`M`$$`\sigma `$ relationship as quiescent galaxies, then we can compute the scale factor $`k`$ in eq. (1) by scaling the raw virial products $`rV^2`$ to the nominal quiescent-galaxy $`M`$$`\sigma `$ relationship. In a statistical sense, this can provide us with an admittedly quite weak statistical constraint on the structure of the broad-line region. The result of such a scaling exercise is shown in Fig. 1, for which we find $`k=9.57\pm 0.15`$. This weighted fit is dominated by Akn 120, NGC 5548, and NGC 7469, the three AGNs with the highest-precision virial products. The scatter of the AGNs around the $`M\text{}\sigma `$ relationship is about 0.5 dex; i.e., reverberation masses appear to be accurate to a factor of about three.

For comparison, we note that the values of $`k`$ for various trivial BLR models are $`k=3`$ for an isothermal sphere or for a thin spherical shell of randomly inclined Keplerian orbits, and $`k=2/\mathrm{sin}^2i`$ for a ring at inclination $`i`$. In the latter case, a typical inclination of $`i27`$o would yield our present estimate of $`k`$. The fact that our inferred value of $`k`$ is in the expected range for simple models reassures us that our assumption that the $`M\text{}\sigma `$ relationships for active and quiescent galaxies are identical is probably not grossly in error.

### Acknowledgments.

The work described here is being undertaken with my colleagues K.M. Gilbert, C.A. Onken, R.W. Pogge, and M. Vestergaard (Ohio State), L. Ferrarese and D. Merritt (Rutgers), S. Kaspi, D. Maoz, and H. Netzer (Tel-Aviv Univ.), and A. Wandel (Hebrew Univ.). We are grateful for funding of this work through NASA grant NAG5-8397, National Science Foundation grant AST-0205964, and US-Israel Binational Science Foundation grant 1999336.

## References

Blandford, R., & McKee, C.F. 1982, ApJ, 255, 419

Ferrarese, L. 2002, in Current High-Energy Emission Around Black Holes, ed. C.-H. Lee (Singapore: World Scientific), in press (astro-ph/0203047)

Ferrarese, L., & Merritt, D. 2000, ApJ, 539, L9

Ferrarese, L., Pogge, R.W., Peterson, B.M., Merritt, D., Wandel, A., & Joseph, C.L. 2001, ApJ, 555, L79

Gebhardt, K., et al. 2000, ApJ, 539, 13

Kaspi, S., et al. 2000, ApJ, 533, 631

McLure, R.J., & Jarvis, M.J. 2002, MNRAS, in press (astro-ph/0204473)

Onken, C.A., & Peterson, B.M. 2002, ApJ, 572, 746

Onken, C.A., Peterson, B.M., Dietrich, M., Robinson, A., & Salamanca, I. 2002, submitted to ApJ

Peterson, B.M. 1993, PASP, 105, 247

Peterson, B.M. 2001, in Advanced Lectures on the Starburst–AGN Connection, ed. I. Aretxaga, D. Kunth, & R. Mújica, (Singapore: World Scientific), 3

Peterson, B.M, et al. 2002, ApJ, in press (astro-ph/0208064)

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# BUHEP-02-30 hep-ph/0210240 Deconstructing Dimensional Deconstruction

## 1 WHAT IS DIMENSIONAL DECONSTRUCTION?

There has been considerable interest lately in a new approach to model–building called “dimensional deconstruction” (DD). In the beginning, there were two views of DD. The one we discuss in this paper is due to Arkani-Hamed, Cohen and Georgi (ACG) . It is based on the fact that certain renormalizable, asymptotically free 4d field theories look, for a limited range of energies, like $`d>4`$–dimensional theories in which the extra dimensions are compactified and discretized (on a periodic lattice). Here, the extra dimensions are a mirage. The other view is that of Hill and his collaborators  who assume the extra dimensions are real. They discretize the extra dimensions too—to regulate the theory. Both Arkani-Hamed et al. and Hill et al. use features of the higher dimensional model to deduce the form, magnitude, and sensitivity to high–scale ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$) physics of phenomenologically important operators such as mass terms (generically, $`M`$), self–interactions ($`\lambda `$), and vevs ($`v`$) of light composite Higgs bosons (LCH) . Their LCH models aim for $`Mv100`$–200 GeV and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }10\mathrm{TeV}`$, relevant to electroweak symmetry breaking.

The simplest DD example is the $`d=5`$ “moose ring” model  depicted in Fig. 1. This shows the full content (“UV–completed”) of the model at the high energy scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. It contains $`N`$ strong $`SU(n)`$ and weak $`SU(m)`$ (coupling $`g^2/4\pi 1`$) gauge groups, with matter fields that are the massless chiral fermions

$`\psi _{Lk}(n,m,1),\psi _{Rk}(n,1,m)`$
$`\mathrm{of}(SU(n)_k,SU(m)_k,SU(m)_{k+1}).`$ (1)
The index $`k`$ is periodically identified with $`k+N`$. As $`g0`$, these fermions have a large chiral symmetry, $`[SU(m)_LSU(m)_R]^N`$. At $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the strong $`SU(n)`$ interactions cause them to condense, creating $`N`$ sets of $`m^21`$ composite Goldstone bosons (GBs), $`\pi _k^a`$ with $`k=1,\mathrm{},N`$ and $`a=1,\mathrm{},m^21`$. Their decay constant $`f\mathrm{\Lambda }/4\pi `$.

Below $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, this is a nonlinear sigma model, with fields $`U_k=\mathrm{exp}(i\pi _k^at_a/f)\mathrm{exp}(i\pi _k/f)`$ interacting with the weakly–coupled $`SU(m)_k`$ gauge fields $`A_{k\mu }=A_{k\mu }^at_a`$. They transform as $`U_kW_kU_kW_{k+1}^{}`$ with $`W_kSU(m)_k`$. This low energy theory is represented by the “condensed moose” obtained from Fig. 1 by erasing the $`SU(n)`$ squares and linking the $`SU(m)_k`$ and $`SU(m)_{k+1}`$ circles by $`U_k`$.

Now, $`N1`$ gauge boson multiplets eat $`N1`$ sets of GBs and acquire the masses $`_k=2gf\mathrm{sin}(k\pi /N)`$ for $`k=1,\mathrm{},N`$. The massless gauge field $`A_\mu ^a=(A_{1\mu }^a+\mathrm{}+A_{N\mu }^a)/\sqrt{N}`$ couples with strength $`g/\sqrt{N}`$ and the uneaten GB is $`\pi ^a=(\pi _1^a+\mathrm{}+\pi _N^a)/\sqrt{N}`$. In the unitary gauge, the 4d theory below $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is described by uniform link variables $`U_k=\mathrm{exp}(i\pi ^at_a/\sqrt{N}f)`$ plus the massless and massive gauge fields.

Alternatively, at energies well below $`gf`$, this looks like a 5d gauge theory: The fifth dimension is compactified on a discretized circle, represented exactly by the condensed moose. For $`kN`$, there is a Kaluza–Klein tower of gauge excitations with masses $`_k=2\pi gfk/N`$ . The circumference of the circle is $`R=Na`$ where the lattice spacing $`a=1/gf`$ and the 5–dimensional gauge coupling is $`g_5^2=g^2a`$. The fifth component of the gauge boson $`A_5^a=g\pi ^a/\sqrt{N}`$. The geometrical connection is clear: $`\pi ^a`$ is the zero mode associated with rotation about the circle of $`SU(m)`$ groups in four dimensions and it corresponds to the fifth–dimensional gauge freedom associated with $`A_5^a`$. At higher energies, $`f`$ or $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the fifth dimension is deconstructed as the underlying asymptotically free 4d theory appears.

## 2 WHAT IS DD GOOD FOR?

But, $`\pi ^a`$ is really a 4d pseudoGoldstone boson (PGB) whose symmetry is explicitly broken by the weak $`SU(m)_k`$ interactions. So it might be a candidate for the LCH of electroweak symmetry breaking. To be a truly natural LCH, its vev $`v\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ also. This requires its quartic couplings $`\lambda M^2/v^2=𝒪(1)`$ or, at least, not $`1`$. The idea of DD is that the magnitude and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$–dependence of $`M^2`$ and $`\lambda `$ can be deduced from the higher dimensional theory. Let’s see.

Higher dimensional gauge invariance allows mass for $`A_5`$ from $`|𝒲|^2`$, where $`𝒲=P\mathrm{exp}(i𝑑x_5A_5)`$ is the nontrivial Wilson loop around the fifth dimension . Since $`|𝒲|^2`$ is a nonlocal operator, it cannot be generated with a UV–divergent coefficient. On the discretized circle, $`𝒲=\text{Tr}[\mathrm{\Pi }_{k=1}^N\mathrm{exp}(iaA_{5k})]`$. In the 4d theory this is just the gauge–invariant $`\text{Tr}(U_1U_2\mathrm{}U_N)`$, and so this is what provides the mass for $`\pi ^a`$. Standard power counting indicates that the strength of $`|\text{Tr}(U_1U_2\mathrm{}U_N)|^2`$ is $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^2f^2(g^2/16\pi ^2)^N`$. This is correct only for $`N=1`$. For $`N2`$ infrared singularities from the gauge boson masses at $`g0`$ overcome this power counting. For $`N=2`$, $`M^2g^4f^2\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/_B^2)g^4f^2\mathrm{log}(N^2/g^2)`$ where $`_B^2g^2f^2/N^2`$ is a typical $`SU(m)`$ gauge boson mass. For $`N3`$, $`M^2g^4f^2`$. Thus, for $`N2`$ and $`g^2/4\pi 10^2`$, we have $`M\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, as desired.

DD predicts that $`\pi ^a`$ will fail as an LCH because the quartic interactions of $`A_5`$ are derivatively coupled and/or induced by weak $`SU(m)`$ interactions. This is true for $`\pi ^a`$ as well. Since $`p/fM/fg^2`$, all quartic couplings of $`\pi ^a`$ are $`𝒪(g^4)`$. So, in this model, DD is a reliable guide. To achieve larger $`\lambda `$, ACG applied DD to a 6d model with nonderivative PGB interactions .

## 3 THE $`6d`$ TOROIDAL MOOSE MODEL.

Consider a 4d theory described below its UV–completion scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ by the condensed moose in Fig. 2. This resembles a discretized torus with $`N\times N`$ sites labeled periodically by integers $`(k,l)`$. Weakly–coupled ($`g`$) gauge groups $`SU(m)_{kl}`$ at the sites are linked by nonlinear sigma model fields $`U_{kl}`$ and $`V_{kl}`$, transforming as

$`U_{kl}=\mathrm{exp}(i\pi _{u,kl}/f)W_{kl}U_{kl}W_{k,l+1}^{},`$
$`V_{kl}=\mathrm{exp}(i\pi _{v,kl}/f)W_{kl}V_{kl}W_{k+1,l}^{}.`$ (2)
The $`\pi _{u,kl}`$ and $`\pi _{v,kl}`$ comprise $`2N^2`$ $`SU(m)`$ adjoints of composite Goldstone bosons.

The $`SU(m)_{kl}`$ gauge bosons eat $`N^21`$ sets of GBs. The spectrum of massive gauge bosons, $`_{kl}^2=4g^2f^2[\mathrm{sin}^2(k\pi /N)+\mathrm{sin}^2(l\pi /N)]`$ is KK–like for small $`k,l`$. The massless gauge boson is $`B_{NN}^\mu =N^1_{k,l}A_{kl}^\mu `$ and its coupling is $`g/N`$. Among the $`N^2+1`$ leftover PBS, two that ACG proposed as light composite Higgses are

$$\pi _u=\frac{1}{N}\underset{k,l}{}\pi _{u,kl},\pi _v=\frac{1}{N}\underset{k,l}{}\pi _{v,kl}.$$
(3)
These are the zero modes associated with going around the torus in the $`U`$ and $`V`$–directions.

What does DD predict for the masses and couplings of $`\pi _{u,v}`$? Viewing the condensed moose as the compactified and discretized dimensions 5,6 of a 6d gauge theory, the extra–dimensional gauge fields are $`A_{5,6}^a=g\pi _{u,v}^a/N`$. As before, DD predicts small $`M_{\pi _{u,v}}^2g^4f^2\mathrm{log}(N^2/g^2)`$ for $`N=2`$ and $`g^4f^2`$ for $`N3`$.

In the 6d model, $`A_{5,6}`$ have moderately strong nonderivative interactions . They come from the term $`\text{Tr}F_{56}^2=\text{Tr}([A_5,A_6]^2)+\mathrm{}=\lambda \text{Tr}([\pi _u,\pi _v]^2)+\mathrm{}`$ which, in turn, arises from the “plaquette” Hamiltonian

$$_\mathrm{P}=\underset{k,l}{}\lambda _{kl}f^4\text{Tr}\left(U_{kl}V_{k,l+1}U_{k+1,l}^{}V_{kl}^{}\right)+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.$$
(4)
Note that $`_\mathrm{P}`$ leaves $`\pi _{u,v}`$ massless.

In 6d, the quartic coupling may be shown to be $`\lambda \frac{1}{2}_{k,l}\lambda _{kl}/N^4=g^2/2N^2`$ . Depending on the $`N`$–dependence of the Higgs masses, this may be large enough to give a Higgs vev comparable to $`M_{\pi _{u,v}}`$. In 4d, this prediction of DD fails. The strength of $`\lambda `$ depends entirely on the nature of the toroidal moose model’s UV completion.

The most natural UV completion of this model is the analog of Fig. 1: At $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, there are $`2N^2`$ massless fermions $`\psi `$ with strong $`SU(n)`$ interactions located midway between the weak $`SU(m)`$’s . Then, the plaquette interaction arises only from weak gauge interactions. It is of $`𝒪(g^4)`$ and, so, $`v^2M_{\pi _{u,v}}^2/\lambda M_{\pi _{u,v}}^2`$.

It is possible to find UV completions of the toroidal moose that yield larger $`\lambda `$. They involve elementary scalars and, therefore, supersymmetry to avoid unnatural fine–tuning of parameters . More generally, one can construct sigma models whose symmetries are tailored to give an effective Lagrangian with arbitrarily and separately tunable $`M^2`$ and $`\lambda `$—at least at the one–loop level. This is the basis of an interesting new direction that has evolved from DD . But this approach, called “little Higgs”, has nothing to do with the original idea of deconstruction—that the strengths of a composite Higgs’ mass and interactions may be deduced from corresponding terms in higher dimensional gauge theories. Finding a truly dynamical, natural way of UV–completing little Higgs models remains one of the greatest challenges to this new idea for electroweak symmetry breaking.

## Acknowledgements

This is the written version of my talk at The 31st International Conference on High Energy Physics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 24–31, 2002. I thank the organizers for their kind help and solicitude. I have benefitted greatly from discussions with Nima Arkani-Hamed, Bill Bardeen, Sekhar Chivukula, Andy Cohen, Estia Eichten, Howard Georgi and Chris Hill. I thank Gerard ’t Hooft and the theory group at the University of Utrecht for their hospitality and lively discussion. I am grateful to Fermilab and its Theory Group for a 2001–2002 Frontier Fellowship which supported this research. It was also supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy under Grant No. DE–FG02–91ER40676.


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# On Hydrodynamical Description of Thermal Photons

## 1 Introduction and Theoretical Framework

Photons are suggested to be an ideal probe for the hot initial state of the relativistic heavy ion collisions, since, due to the large mean free path in a hadronic matter, they escape from the collision zone right after being emitted without any further interactions. Unfortunately, photons emitted at early stages of the collision are difficult to obtain experimentally, since the decays of the final state hadrons, especially neutral pions and etas, dominate the production of photons in the collision. So far only the WA98 collaboration at the CERN SPS has reported an excess of photons over those originating from decays of the final state hadrons . Photons are measured also by the PHENIX collaboration at Brookhaven RHIC collider, but more statistics is needed to reach conclusions .

In a hydrodynamical description of relativistic heavy ion collision the secondary interactions are assumed to lead to thermalization of the fireball. With this assumption, the evolution of the system can be described by equilibrium hydrodynamics and transverse momentum spectrum of the thermal photons emitted during the expansion can be calculated if thermal emission rate in the matter is known. Experimentally measured direct photon spectrum has a contribution from primary interactions as well , referred as pQCD (or prompt) photons in following.

Several groups  have performed hydrodynamical studies to explain WA98 data. The authors of  use a (2+1)-dimensional hydrodynamical code that takes into account also the finite longitudinal size of the initial collision zone, whereas the studies in  are based on the boost-invariant approximation. In the boost-invariant scenario very hot initial state , considerable initial radial velocity  or modification of hadron masses  is needed to explain the WA98 data. I have made a choice to omit discussion on modifications of hadron masses  and also chosen references  to represent boost-invariant studies in this note.

Important improvements have been obtained in a perturbative calculation of the thermal emission rate of photons from the thermalized QGP . In hadron gas mesonic processes $`\pi \pi \rho \gamma `$ and $`\pi \rho \rho \gamma `$, described with a pseudo-vector Lagrangian, are included in the photon emission rate . The $`\pi \rho `$ scattering channel gets a large contribution from the interaction with the a1 axial meson: $`\pi \rho \mathrm{a}_1\rho \gamma `$ . Parametrizations of the emission rates are provided by the authors of . The effects of baryons are not included in the rates.

## 2 Details of Hydrodynamics and Results

In section 2.1 results of three different groups  are compared to the WA98 data . Groups  use 2-loop photon emission rates in QGP  while in  resummed rate , complete in order $`\alpha _s`$, is used. In works  contribution of the pQCD photons is taken from . The authors of  present their own estimate for the pQCD photons.

In section 2.2 a prediction for direct photon spectrum in Au$`+`$Au collisions with $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ AGeV is given. Results for hadronic observables in this study, where the initial state is based on perturbative QCD $`+`$ saturation model, can be found in . For this energy, hard pQCD photons from the primary interactions are studied in .

The following discussion will concentrate on the role of the initial state in hydrodynamical models, since especially high transverse momentum $`k_t`$ part of the thermal photon spectrum is sensitive to the initial conditions. In particular, temperature $`T`$ in the initial state plays a big role due to the Boltzmann suppression $`e^{k_t/T}`$ in the emission rates.

### 2.1 Comparison with the WA98 Data

In boost-invariant hydrodynamical studies one must give the initial energy density $`ϵ(r,\tau _0)`$ and velocity $`v(r,\tau _0)`$ distributions in the transverse plane at fixed formation (thermalization) time $`\tau _0`$, that are the initial conditions for the hydrodynamical evolution. Let us start with a case $`v(r,\tau _0)0`$ for all $`r`$. For the shape of the initial energy density $`ϵ(r,\tau _0)`$ various choices can be found in the literature. For example, it can be proportional to wounded nucleon distribution , Woods-Saxon distribution  or nuclear overlap function . Within these choices, the formation time $`\tau _0`$ remains as the main uncertainty in the boost-invariant picture. At SPS energies, $`\tau _0`$ is expected to be $`1`$ fm/c based on the geometrical argument, that it takes a time $`2R_A/\gamma `$, where $`R_A`$ is the nuclear radius and $`\gamma `$ the Lorentz gamma-factor, for the colliding nuclei to pass through each other. Fixing $`\tau _0=1`$ fm/c leaves only the normalization of the initial energy density as a free parameter, that can be fixed from experimentally measured hadron spectra.

Studies by the authors of  reveal a problem in this simple approach. If initial time is chosen to be of the order 1 fm/c, the initial state is way too cool to reproduce high transverse momentum, $`k_t`$, part of the spectrum as measured by the WA98 collaboration. Since decreasing of initial time considerably raises the temperature in the initial state111If radial expansion is omitted, $`T(r,\tau )=T(r,\tau _0)\times (\tau /\tau _0)^{1/3}`$ for massless ideal gas. and final state hadron spectra are fairly insensitive to small changes of $`\tau _0`$, the data seems to suggest very rapid thermalization and hot initial state within the boost-invariant scenario.

Figure 2 shows the main results in . The data is well reproduced with initial time $`\tau _0=0.2`$ fm/c which corresponds to an average initial temperature $`T_{\mathrm{ini}}=335`$ MeV in their choice of the initial state. This temperature is considerably higher than the expected critical temperature $`T_c=150180`$ MeV from recent lattice calculations  and hence the authors of  conclude that this confirms the formation of the QGP. However, in my opinion, one should consider the initial time $`\tau _0=0.2`$ fm/c carefully, although the WA98 data seem to favor it. The geometrical argument above, on the transit time of the nuclei, suggests that at such a short initial time primary collisions are still taking place, and only part of the matter has been produced .

Let us turn to discuss effects from non-zero initial radial velocity. The authors of  have studied the effects of radially increasing initial velocity $`v(r,\tau _0)=(r/R_A)\mathrm{\Theta }(Rr)V^{\mathrm{max}}`$, where $`V^{\mathrm{max}}`$ is treated as a free parameter. They have performed a simultaneous $`\chi ^2`$ analysis of $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ spectra measured by the WA98 collaboration  to find the best combination of the thermalization time $`\tau _0`$ and the velocity parameter $`V^{\mathrm{max}}`$. Their results  with a phase transition to QGP are presented in figure 2. Curves in the figure 2 correspond to the choices of the initial parameters presented in the table 1.

The results show clear interplay between the initial temperature and the strength of the initial radial velocity: thermal photons with large $`k_t`$ are emitted at first moments of the evolution when the temperature is high. Lowering of initial temperature, or equivalently increasing the thermalization time $`\tau _0`$, requires an introduction of initial radial velocity, which boosts the emitted photons to larger $`k_t`$. With this compensation, initial temperature can be lowered below 200 MeV and the thermalization time rises to values $`\tau _0>1`$ fm/c. These values of the temperature are quite close to the critical temperature and hence the authors of  conclude, that, considering uncertainties of the model, formation of QGP or its absence cannot be distinguished.

The origin and the magnitude of the initial radial velocity is a somewhat uncertain. The authors of  explain its origin “as a result of significant radial energy gradient coming from the shapes of the colliding nuclei”. They do not present a (quantitative) model that could explain how this leads to a collective motion into the radial direction at initial time $`\tau _0`$. In this sense, I would consider $`V^{\mathrm{max}}`$ to be an extra fitting parameter in the model. In any case, initial radial velocity can not be large. The authors of  have made a boost-invariant calculation with initial radial velocity profile taken from . They found a good agreement with the photon data by choosing initial parameters $`\tau _0=1.0`$ fm/c and $`V^{\mathrm{max}}=0.30`$, but the resulting $`\pi ^0`$ spectrum clearly overshoots the experimental one. It should be noted that the initial energy density profile — normalization is fixed from multiplicity in both cases — and the equation of state are different in these two studies, and in  chemical and kinetic freeze-out temperatures are the same. These differences may explain the discrepancy on the $`\pi ^0`$ spectrum.

The authors of  used a (2+1)-dimensional hydrodynamical code, where also the longitudinal extend of the fireball is finite and the longitudinal velocity evolves dynamically from a given initial state. Details of this model can be found in references . My first remark is, that there is no uniquely defined initial time, when the assumption of boost-invariant flow is relaxed. In the boost-invariant case the source is pointlike in the $`zt`$-plane and one can trace all the particles back to the collision point. This cannot be done when the longitudinal flow profile of the system is not that of the scaling flow, $`v_z=z/t`$. To estimate the thermalization time one can relate a timescale to the longitudinal extent by considering the collision geometry. In the model  the initial length of the system was chosen to be 3.4 fm. Since $`\gamma 10`$ at SPS energies, the system is roughly 1.3 fm thick when the colliding nuclei overlap and it would take $`1`$ fm/c for the system to reach longitudinal extent of 3.4 fm . The rapidity distribution of initial energy density is assumed to be Gaussian. The energy per unit transverse area, $`e(r)=𝑑zT^{00}(r,z)`$, is assumed to equal the energy per unit transverse area of the incoming nucleons. To convert this distribution to spatial energy density, one must define initial velocity profiles. Initial conditions, chosen to reproduce the observed hadron spectra, depend also on the equation of state (EoS). In  EoS H describes a hadron resonance gas without phase transition and EoS A has a first order phase transition to QGP. Initial radial velocity is set to zero. For the longitudinal velocity profile two different choices were studied ; in the case called IS 1 the longitudinal flow rapidity is assumed to increase linearly with the distance $`z`$. This gives a large peak, by a factor of two over the Bjorken estimate, to the initial energy density. In the other choice, IS 2, the $`z`$ dependence is nonlinear and the resulting energy density profile is almost flat.

Combinations IS 1 + EoS A and IS 2 + EoS H reproduce simultaneously the NA49 data for the rapidity distributions of hadrons , and the WA98 data for neutral pions and direct photons . Figure 4 shows the results for measured rapidity density of negative charged hadrons, comparison to $`\pi ^0`$ spectrum can be found in  and figure 4 shows the results for direct photons. Maximum and average temperatures in $`z=0`$ in the initial state are given in the table 2.

At the given temperature, the thermal emission rate of photons is larger in hadronic matter, which makes IS 2 with lower initial temperature more suitable for purely hadronic scenario. Choosing IS 1 $`+`$ EoS A leads to a high initial temperature, but gives a good agreement also with the high $`k_t`$ part of the measured photon spectrum, as shown in the figure 4. Despite the $`50`$ MeV difference in the initial temperature, later evolution is so similar in these two choices for the initial state, that hadronic spectra are equally well reproduced. These observations reflect the ambiguity in the choice of the initial state.

After pQCD photon spectrum from the ref.  is added to the thermal one (upper set of curves, scaled by a factor of 100, in the figure 4), the authors of  find that the WA98 data can be reproduced both with or without a phase transition to QGP. However, the maximum (average) temperature 245 (213) MeV in the initial state with hadron gas is fairly high, and clearly over the expected phase transition temperature 150$``$180 MeV . Also the shape of the solid curve in the figure 4, which corresponds to the results from IS 1 $`+`$ EoS A with the phase transition, seems to follow the data better.

### 2.2 Thermal Photons at RHIC Collider

References  show results for hadronic observables from boost-invariant hydrodynamics, when the initial state is obtained from a pQCD + saturation model. With this model for the initial state, only free parameter in the hydrodynamical description is the decoupling temperature. The initial time and energy density, including normalization, can be calculated from the model when the center of mass energy of the collision, $`\sqrt{s}`$, mass number of the colliding nuclei, $`A`$, and the experimental centrality cut are given. Construction of the initial state is explained in , where also results for global observables (e.g. multiplicity) are shown. In  the effect of the decoupling temperature is discussed and results are compared to hadron spectra measured by the PHENIX collaboration . Following results for thermal photons are calculated with initial parameters $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ AGeV and $`A=197`$, which lead to $`\tau _0=0.17`$ fm/c, $`\sigma E_T=86.33`$ mbGeV and $`A_{\mathrm{eff}}=178`$ for a 6 % most central collisions. For details see .

The initial time is determined from the saturation momentum scale, $`p_{\mathrm{sat}}`$, of the perturbative minijet calculation . This leads to a very short initial time $`\tau _0=1/p_{\mathrm{sat}}=0.17`$ fm/c compared to values $`>0.6`$ fm/c, that are used in many recent hydrodynamical studies at RHIC energies, for a review see e.g. . The short initial time $`\tau _0=0.17`$ fm/c is consistent with the geometrical argument presented in section 2.1. The produced minijet system also looks thermal from the point of view of the number of the partons and the energy per particle at the initial time . Starting hydrodynamics at $`\tau _0=0.17`$ fm/c can be considered to give an upper limit for the initial temperature and the thermal photon production.

The solid line in the figure 6 shows the transverse momentum spectrum of thermal photons. The dashed line shows contribution from quark-gluon plasma and QGP part of the mixed phase, and the dotted line likewise from hadron gas. The plasma contribution dominates the thermal emission for $`k_t>3`$ GeV. Comparing results from SPS and RHIC energies one can see roughly a factor of 100 increase in thermal emission at $`k_t=4`$ GeV, but the difference is less than order of magnitude at $`k_t=1`$ GeV, which reflects a clear increase of the maximum temperature.

To analyze the effect from initial temperature (thermalization time) I have scaled the initial state from $`\tau _0=0.17`$ to 1.0 fm/c with longitudinal Bjorken expansion so that entropy in unit rapidity does not change. Neglecting transverse expansion before $`\tau =1.0`$ fm/c is not physical, but in this way one can define a cooler initial state in such a way that the results for hadronic observables do not change much. Table 3 shows the changes in the maximum and average values of the initial temperature and energy density. Effect on the thermal photon spectrum is

presented in the figure 6.

Increasing initial time from $`\tau _0=0.17`$ to 1.0 fm/c reduces the thermal emission by a factor of 20 at $`k_t=4`$ GeV. Unfortunately, the amount of thermal photons in this region may be hard to resolve experimentally, because pQCD photons from primary interactions may dominate the direct photon spectrum there. The analysis of the pQCD photons can be found in . In  the centrality cut is 10 % instead of 6, so the pQCD results presented in the figure 6 are multiplied with a factor of 1.1 . Results for two different values of the intrinsic transverse momentum, $`p_t^2=0`$ and 2.4 GeV2, are given.

These theoretical results on excess photons at RHIC can be summarized as an upper limit given by the sum of the solid and dashed lines and a lower limit given by the sum of the dotted and dash-dotted lines. Uncertainties are fairly large, but in any case one should see a change in the slope in the region $`k_t2.03.5`$ GeV, above which the pQCD photons start to dominate the spectrum. In principle a very clean data around $`k_t2`$ GeV could fix the value of the initial time, but one should keep in mind the possible effects from initial transverse velocity and longitudinal geometry discussed in the section 2.1. These effects may be smaller at RHIC energies, because rapid thermalization means shorter time interval to build up the initial transverse velocity. Also the rapidity range is broader at RHIC, and hence scaling hydrodynamics should work better.

## 3 Conclusions

I have reviewed hydrodynamical studies to explain the WA98 excess photon spectrum. The role of the initial state and the uncertainty in the values of initial temperature were emphasized in the discussion. The data can be explained with or without QGP phase transition, but high initial temperatures, well above the predicted critical temperature, are favored. In the case without boost-invariance the shape of the spectrum is closer to the data, when a phase transition is assumed. Still, both theoretical and experimental uncertainties are somewhat too large to rule out either alternative.

Using boost-invariant hydrodynamics with an initial state calculated from a pQCD + saturation model, theoretical estimates of the upper and lower limits for the thermal photons were given and compared with the results for the pQCD photons .
Acknowledgments:
The author is grateful to P. V. Ruuskanen for discussions, P. Huovinen for comments and making the figures 3 and 4, and A. Dumitru and L. Gerland for sending their results for pQCD photons. The author would like to thank the GRASPANP graduate school, funded by the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Finland, for financial support.