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# Bohr’s Conception of the Quantum Mechanical State of a System and Its Role in the Framework of Complementarity

## 1 The Conceptual Framework for the Description of Nature

The concept of the quantum mechanical state of a physical system around which so much controversy swirls was formulated by reasoning from an analogy to the classical mechanical state. Niels Bohr repeatedly appealed to this kind of reasoning in feeling his way from the ‘stationary states’ of his original quantized model of the atomic system of 1913 to his mature understanding of the quantum formalisms of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. As a contribution to clarifying basic concepts, here I propose to offer an analysis of how this crucial concept of the ‘state’ of a ‘physical system’ was transformed from the ‘intuitive’ classical concept formulated in terms derived from ordinary human experience into the context of the ‘mysterious’ quantum theoretical representation of the atomic domain. This transformation, and the general epistemological lesson it teaches, is at the heart of Niels Bohr’s thinking in formulating his new framework of complementarity.

In reconstructing the thought of an influential scientist one must be careful not to impute to the historical actors a consciousness which itself is the product of their very own contribution to the scientific outlook, and hence how history often has come to perceive them. Thus Newton was no Newtonian—certainly not what that name would have meant even by the mid-eighteenth century. And Einstein had no conception of the Big Bang cosmology which is the boldest fruit of his contribution to the scientific conception of the universe. In Bohr’s case there are at least two ways which we can say the product of his labors has disoriented the philosopher’s attempt to reconstruct how he saw the scientists’ description of nature.

The first is the historical fact that Bohr came to play the role of captain of the philosophically quite diverse crew of Copenhagen. Whatever it was that this assortment of geniuses who professed loyalty to Bohr held in common was erected into something like a creed under the banner of ‘The Copenhagen Interpretation,’ the confession of which—in the opening paragraphs of a textbook—was held to expiate the author from demand for any further philosophical explication. ‘The Copenhagen Interpretation’ was a term Bohr never used and surely regretted. Given its essentially strategic function in the history of atomic physics, a sociological analysis of the party in the grip of the Copehagenergeist, such as that offered recently by Beller, can provide an illuminating example of the dynamics of scientific belief formation, but inevitably only from the point of view of one who already knows where the story is going. Thus this cannot establish how the actors in these events saw what it was they were doing from their side of the revolutionary divide. Moreover even if we grant there is no single coherent account of nature in the so-called ‘orthodox view’—regarded as a strategic alliance among distinct thinkers—that does not establish that the individuals associated with it do not have a coherent view to call their own. But this does require that to make out some coherent reconstruction of Bohr’s thinking, we need to penetrate through the Copenhagener’s front lines, and look just at this individual physicist as he approached these issues.

A second way in which we lose the historical scent is that we ask questions that arise from how we currently understand the quantum formalism, which of course was not an available option in the midst of the quantum revolution. Clearly Bohr could not have thought in terms of mathematical representations such as the collapse of the wave packet or operations on vectors in Hilbert space—as we are wont to do today—for these came only later after his creative work was done. But even if we disregard its ahistoricity, such an approach which moves from the mathematical formalism to an account of nature, was the very opposite of Bohr’s philosophical modus operandi. His whole career was staked on the building of atomic models and a concern with what the physicist must do in order to make such models harmonize with the empirical evidence. The same approach has been proposed by Fuchs in a letter to David Mermin, where he makes the following observation:

> The issue in my mind is not to start with complex Hilbert space, unitary evolution, the tensor product rule for combining systems, the identification of measurements with Hermitian operators, etc., etc., and showing that Bohr’s point of view is consistent with that. Instead it is to start with Bohr’s point of view (or some variant thereof) and see that the precise mathematical structure of quantum theory must follow from it. Why complex instead of real? Why unitary, rather than simply linear? Indeed, why linear? Why tensor product instead of tensor sum? And, so on. When we can answer these questions, then we will really understand complementarity.

Although talk about the ‘quantum mechanical state’ is central to discussions which proceed from the current formalism, in fact that phrase was never used by Bohr. If we want to recapture how Bohr would have regarded this concept of a quantum mechanical state, we must approach it from his side of the revolutionary divide, not from that of the subsequent formalism.

By avoiding these disorienting ways of asking questions, we can reconstruct a plausible account of Bohr’s philosophy which is at least coherent, but frustratingly incomplete. To put things in philosophical jargon, I would maintain that many have misread Bohr as advocating an anti-realist interpretation of physics, whereas I maintain that if we look at him in the midst of the quantum revolution, we see a realist trying to reconstruct the classical conceptual scheme for the description of nature in order to deal with a brute shock to the physicists’ preconceptions about nature. The result was what he called ‘complementarity’ and what it purported to be was a ‘new framework for the description of nature.’ No matter what triumphs the Copenhagen Interpretation may have had, Bohr’s lifelong campaign to promote this new framework, which he often called the ‘epistemological lesson’ taught to us by atomic physics, was a failure. Perhaps one reason is that his ‘epistemological lesson’ needed an ontological lesson to go with it, yet Bohr failed to provide any clear indication of what such a revision would entail. Here I would like to pick up the trail and try to sketch out what I take to be the ontological revisions suggested by the framework of complementarity.

Bohr’s formation of his philosophy of science was more or less contemporary with the positivism of the Vienna Circle, and he does share much with the positivists, but his ‘big picture’ in building his philosophy of science really points at least as much towards later post-positivist images of science associated with so-called Weltanschauungen analyses. ‘Natural science’ for Bohr is that part of ‘human knowledge’ which is concerned with the ‘description of nature.’ A ‘conceptual framework’ is necessary for expressing the knowledge gained in this scientific description of nature in an ‘objective’ manner. The scientist attempts to fit the framework to agree with empirical evidence generated by the extension of the empirical basis into new domains, such as the interior of the atom. This requires revision of the framework which is constrained both by the demand for logical consistency and the need to accommodate the recalcitrant experience. Although contemporary philosophers have been made very much aware of these points by the works of Quine and Kuhn, it is worth pointing out that Bohr was writing well before these thinkers had made such themes familiar.111I suspect that this may be because all these thinkers shared a common debt to pragmatism generally, and William James in particular, but the evidence for the connection between James and Bohr, I have to admit, is equivocal and it is not likely it will ever be established to everyone’s satisfaction.

For Bohr the crux of the revision in our understanding of how this conceptual framework attaches to nature lies in the need to redefine the ‘objectivity’ of the description of nature. In particular, the epistemological lesson Bohr drew from this revolutionary transition taught that the ‘objectivity’ of a description cannot be based on the ontological claim that the description refers to the properties which define the mechanical state of a system isolated from interaction with observers. Hence he proposed to redefine the ‘objectivity’ necessary for scientific description in the epistemic demand for unambiguously communicable descriptions of observational results. This move has profound consequences for how we can understand the concept of the quantum mechanical state and the nature of the ‘system’ which is ‘in’ this state.

## 2 The Classical Mechanical State of the System

The thesis I want to explore is that the old notion of the ‘entity’ or the ‘object’ which is in a classical mechanical state is derived ultimately from a concept of ‘information’ based on the Aristotelian analysis of propositions and the substance/property ontology associated with it. Aristotle defined ‘primary substances,’ i.e., the ‘entities’ or ‘beings’ of which the physical world is composed, as that which is the ultimate subject of all predicative assertions but which themselves can never be predicated of anything else. While such primary substances are the ultimate individuals of the Aristotelian description of the physical universe, all such assertions, i.e. all statements of ‘information,’ predicate universals of the particular substance which is its subject. These are the substance’s ‘accidents’ or ‘properties.’

For Aristotle ‘scientific knowledge’ arises only when the active mind, nous, grasps the set of universals which are essential to that substance’s being what it is; but in doing so, knowledge can have as its object only the ‘whatness’ of that substance, never its individual ‘thisness,’ its particularity. The Aristotelian solution was to make the substance into a hylomorphic synthesis of form and matter with the universal form, the object of scientific knowledge, incorporated into the ‘matter’ which made a substance into an individual particular being. But while one can speak intelligibly of formed matter, the concept of pure ‘prime matter’ stripped of all form, becomes—on this analysis—ultimately unknowable, that of which no universal predicate can be affirmed. For this reason ultimately, in the Aristotelian system, knowledge of the individual of this particular, contingent world recedes from our grasp.

Ancient epistemology was not concerned with the distinction between the subject’s perception—of which we are immediately aware in consciousness—versus an ‘objective reality’ which in some way is imagined to lie ‘behind’ that conscious experience. For Aristotle we experience the world objectively as it is, and the world is as we objectively experience it. But in the modern philosophy of the Enlightenment, the mechanization of nature accompanying the Cartesian turn toward the certainty of what is present in subjective consciousness led to a conception of nature wholly unlike the world revealed in human experience. While the problem of accounting for knowledge of the particular individual ‘thisness’ of concrete beings confounded Aristotelian ontology, the new mechanistic world-view could easily deal with that problem by identifying the individual by its unique spatio-temporal locus. Thus the ‘objects’ of which the physical universe is composed had to be things of which spatio-temporal locus, the property which makes a kinematic description possible, could be necessarily and universally predicated. Extension became the ‘essence’ of physical substance. This was significant for it meant that physical beings, the things that were ‘in’ classical mechanical states, must be the sorts of things that can be pictured; they are essentially, we might say, ‘visualizable in space and time’ even though (as Berkeley pointed out) no one has ever seen extended substance simpliciter.

With Newton’s achievement the mechanization of nature added to extended substances the dynamical properties necessary to account for the causes of change in kinematic properties over time. This then completed the list of properties objectively possessed by ‘mechanical systems,’ because together the kinematic and dynamic properties were all the predicates needed for a complete mechanical description of physical systems and their interactions. Therefore to construct a mechanistic ontology one needed only this small handful of properties which were solely those essential for a mechanical description of extended substances. Thus they came to replace the bounteous supply of Aristotelian natural essences, as the only universals which could be truly predicated of individual beings as they objectively exist in Nature. Aside from these true cases of objective predication, the rest of those universals we affirm of the objects of sensory experience have only subjective validity; these properties exist only in human sense perception of the world.

From the time of the scientific revolution initiating this classical mechanical world-view, the concept of an ‘objective’ description was understood in this ontological sense, as referring to a description which was limited to predicating only those properties actually possessed by the ‘object’ being described. These so-called ‘primary qualities’ of bodies are ‘real’ in the sense of existing apart from any observation of them; they are ‘out there’ in the ‘world.’ In contrast the far larger host of ‘secondary qualities’ which objects are perceived as having merely exist as the causal effects in a subject’s consciousness of the mechanical interaction between bodily sense organs and ‘external’ bodies which really possess only the primary qualities. The mechanician’s conception of the physical universe may seem an austere shadow of the luxuriant world of sensory experience, but it’s the real thing. It is what is required by an ‘objective’ description.

Of course this distinction between primary and secondary qualities arose in a Cartesian rationalist conception of the mechanical world view, and once imported into empiricism by Locke, it was exposed as an unfounded ‘philosophers’ distinction by Berkeley. No empiricist since Hume would countenance this rationalist hang up. In spite of that fact, up to the quantum revolution this seventeenth century understanding of the definition of the mechanical state of a physical system as essentially the representation of the primary qualities of a substance remained a standing rationalist bastion in a field otherwise conquered by empiricism. Yet in creating its concept of the ‘mechanical state’ of the ‘system’ from the older ontology of ‘substance’ and ‘accident,’ and making this the basis of ‘objectivity,’ classical mechanism naively moved from a concept of how we know the world to how the world must be with a distinctly pre-modern ease. Kant’s revolution was ‘Copernican’ in that it showed you cannot simply ‘read off’ the structure of Being from the structure of Knowing, as the older Enlightenment philosophers had naively presumed you could. But Kant’s revolution notwithstanding, the continued triumph of mechanism throughout the 18th and 19th centuries could easily be used to support the most materialistic of ontologies based on a univocal correlation of the ‘primary qualities’ of the mechanical description with the properties of an objective ‘Reality.’

## 3 Bohr’s Rational Generalization of the Concept of the ‘Mechanical State of the System’

The central theme of Bohr’s career was the effort to fashion a successful theoretical model of the atomic system. From his experience with Rutherford at Manchester he entered the world of physics with the conviction that classical mechanics could not be successful at accounting for the stability of atoms by representing them as classical mechanical systems of charged particles. Although the notion of electron orbits often assumes center stage in presentations of Bohr’s model, in fact Bohr saw the heart of his ‘revolution’ to be the postulate that atomic systems exist in a quantized series of ‘stationary states’ which defy the laws of classical mechanics. Interactions between atomic systems and the electromagnetic field or other particles therefore imply discontinuous changes of state. “Taking the indivisibility of the quantum of action as a starting-point,” Bohr tells us, he was led to suggest “that every change in the state of an atom should be regarded as an individual process, incapable of more detailed description, by which the atom goes over from one so-called stationary state into another. According to this view, the spectra of the elements do not give us immediate information about the motions of the atomic parts, but each spectral line is associated with a transition process between two stationary states….the necessity of making an extensive use, nevertheless, of the classical concepts, upon which depends ultimately the interpretation of all experience, gave rise to the formulation of the so-called correspondence principle which expresses our endeavors to utilize all the classical concepts by giving them a suitable quantum-theoretical re-interpretation.”  Thus ab initio Bohr’s work was predicated on an outlook which demanded in the atomic domain a new ‘quantum theoretical re-interpretation’ of a physical system being in a ‘mechanical state’ to replace the classical mechanical conception.

Bohr’s ground level argument appears in variations in many of his essays. He starts with the observation that widening experience often forces revisions of the conceptual scheme employed for the description of nature. He then turns to Planck’s ‘discovery’ (not ‘invention’) of the quantum of action as forcing such a revision. Bohr calls this surprising discovery the ‘quantum postulate’ and maintains that it has been forced upon us by the need to account for the known relations between matter and radiation. Thus the quantum revolution demands a revision of the conceptual framework for the description of nature because at the atomic level we must describe physical systems as changing their states discontinuously. Bohr expresses this point by saying that the quantum postulate requires that ‘interactions’ between ‘systems’ be accorded a feature of ‘wholeness’ or ‘individuality.’

Right from his 1913 model of the atom—long before the development of what we know as ‘quantum theory’—Bohr always emphasized two aspects of his atomic model: First, all information about the properties of atomic systems comes through interactions between atomic systems and the field or other material systems in which the atomic system changes from one ‘stationary state’ to another ‘stationary state’ discontinuously. Second, when no dynamical exchange is taking place between the atomic system and electromagnetic radiation or other material particles, the atomic system exists in a ‘stationary state’ isolated from interaction. While one may construct familiar visualizable spatio-temporal models of this atomic system in its ‘stationary states’ isolated from any interaction, such constructions are purely theoretical abstractions because by definition of the ‘stationary state,’ the properties of the ‘orbits’ or otherwise visualizable trajectories used in these kinematic ‘pictures’ cannot be observed, because observation is interaction:

> …any attempt to fix the space-time co-ordinates of the constituent particles of an atom would ultimately involve an essentially uncontrollable exchange of energy and momentum with the measuring rods and clocks which prevents an unambiguous correlation of the dynamical behaviour of the atomic particles before the observation with their later behaviour. Inversely, every application of conservation theorems, for instance to the energy balance in atomic reactions, involves an essential renunciation as regards the pursuance in space and time of the individual atomic particles. In other words, the use of the idea of stationary states stands in a mutually exclusive relationship to the applicability of space-time pictures.

The visualizable ‘space-time pictures’ of the stationary states by means of orbits in space and time cannot be understood realistically because the energy exchanged between the atom and the field is a function not of the orbital characteristics but of the differences between the stationary states. Because they involve such discontinuous changes in state, interactions at the atomic level cannot be described as mechanical processes taking place in space and time.

Classical mechanics was able to get away with its conception of defining the state of an isolated system by observation only because the presumption of the continuity of interaction allowed one to make the dynamical effect of the interaction involved in the observation infinitesimally small. In much the same way that it was commonly held that relativistic mechanics is a ‘generalization’ of the ‘special case’ of classical mechanics in which the speed of light is imagined to be infinite, Bohr held that the quantum mechanical description is a rational generalization of the special case of the classical description, where it is imagined the parameter of action is defined for a continuous range of values.

Of course this view of progress which represents earlier theories as ‘special cases’ of later more general theories was common coin during the heyday of positivism when Bohr wrote, but today’s philosophers are keenly aware of a well known argument against it by Thomas Kuhn. He argued that this alleged reduction of earlier theories to special cases of later theories is misleading to the extent that although the analogous theories are expressed in parallel vocabularies, in the transition from one framework to the next, crucial terms change meanings. Although Bohr no where advocates the radical semantic incommensurability which so preoccupied philosophers in the decades following Kuhn’s provocative work, far from taking the standard positivist line, Bohr actually anticipated Kuhn in cautioning that in this new quantum description of atomic systems one must recognize that the classical descriptive concepts employed attach to nature in a manner different from that of their use in the classical context. In particular, to pass the criterion of ‘science’ the revision of the ‘classical’ framework necessary to accommodate the quantum postulate must result in a description of nature which is ‘objective,’ but the ‘objectivity’ demanded of a description of the quantum state of a system now has to be given a new meaning because of the semantic shift to the new framework.

Let us see how Bohr reached this conclusion: What we would like to determine by observation—based on our classically trained expectations—is a space-time ‘picture’ in which we ‘visualize’ the state of the system ‘objectively,’ i.e. how it is isolated from any perturbation in its state resulting from the observation. The system is imagined, along classical lines, as an entity which possesses essentially those properties which define its classical mechanical state. But observations require an interaction with the object system, which, because of the ‘indivisibility’ of interaction at the atomic level, alters its state in a non-determined way. For determining what state a system is in by means of observation, the dynamical conservation principles must be employed to trace the causal interaction between observed system and measuring instruments. Thus the classical description employed a conjunction of dynamical conservation principles for a causal analysis of the observational interaction with a spatio-temporal visualizable representation of the mechanical state of the system. But the indivisibility of interaction expressed by the quantum postulate now requires that this conjunction becomes transformed into a ‘complementary’ or ‘reciprocal’ relationship, as expressed in Heisenberg’s infamous relations. Complementarity is thus first proposed as a point of view to replace what Bohr called the ‘the frame of the ordinary causal description’ of the ‘ideal of causality’ employed by the classical framework. In a nice summary from 1937 he writes:

> However, a still further revision of the problem of observation has since been made necessary by the discovery of the universal quantum of action, which has taught us that the whole mode of description of classical physics, including the theory of relativity, retains its adequacy only as long as all quantities of action entering into the description are large compared to Planck’s quantum. When this is not the case, as in the region of atomic physics, there appear new uniformities which cannot be fitted into the frame of the ordinary causal description ….Indeed this circumstance presents us with a situation concerning the analysis and synthesis of experience which is entirely new in physics and forces us to replace the ideal of causality by a more general viewpoint usually termed ‘complementarity.’ The apparently incompatible sorts of information about the behavior of the object under examination which we get by different experimental arrangements can clearly not be brought into connection with each other in the usual way, but may, as equally essential for an exhaustive account of all experience, be regarded as ‘complementary’ to each other.

Note that Bohr presents this line of reasoning entirely from the quantum postulate and his general philosophical position regarding the need to revise conceptual frameworks with the expansion of experience into new domains. Nowhere does he appeal to the specific formalism of Heisenberg or Schrödinger or the properties of a mathematical representation or model. While Bohr’s formulation of this argument was coeval with Heisenberg’s derivation of the indeterminacy relations, it was the outcome of a path on which Bohr had been set long before 1927, rather than a move to explain or justify Heisenberg’s surprising mathematical derivation after the fact. Bohr saw in the indeterminacy relations confirmation of a point of view he had reached primarily from conceptual analysis.

Having established the need to revise the classical conceptual framework, Bohr then calls attention to the fact that an objective description of an observation requires an ‘object’ to be unambiguously distinguished from the physical systems employed as ‘measuring instruments’ in the observation.

> This circumstance, at first sight paradoxical, finds its elucidation in the recognition that in this region it is no longer possible sharply to distinguish between the autonomous behavior of a physical object and its inevitable interaction with other bodies serving as measuring instruments, the direct consideration of which is excluded by the very nature of the concept of observation in itself….In particular, the frustration of every attempt to analyse more closely the ‘individuality’ of single atomic processes, symbolized by the quantum of action, by a subdivision of their course, is explained by the fact that each section in this course definable by a direct observation would demand a measuring arrangement which would be incompatible with the appearance of the uniformities considered.

By our free choice in designing a particular experiment we bring about the occurrence of a particular ‘phenomenon,’ as Bohr used that word after EPR in 1935. What Bohr calls the ‘interpretation’ of the phenomenon as an ‘observation’ or ‘measurement’ which yields a certain outcome requires describing the phenomenon as a dynamical interaction between the ‘object’ and the ‘measuring instruments.’ To make the distinction between object and observing instruments unambiguous in our description of the phenomenon, we must employ theoretical notions taken from classical physics, but the wholeness or ‘individuality’ of that interaction required by the quantum postulate implies that exactly where that distinction is drawn is a function of the particular description and whatever it is described as a measurement of. “Ultimately, every observation can, of course, be reduced to our sense perceptions,” he tells us, but the “circumstance… that in interpreting observations use has always to be made of theoretical notions entails that for every particular case it is a question of convenience at which point the concept of observation involving the quantum postulate with its inherent ‘irrationality’ is brought in….After all, the concept of observation is in so far arbitrary as it depends upon which objects are included in the system to be observed.” It is this arbitrariness inherent in the description of a indivisible interaction as a measurement which later in response to EPR led Bohr to contend that in describing the interaction as an observation which determines the observed property of the object, our description will be ‘ambiguous’ unless the entire interaction—the whole ‘phenomenon’—is described. It is worth noting that the ‘ambiguity’ of which he speaks is not that it is ‘ambiguous’ whether the system is to be considered a ‘wave’ or a ‘particle,’ but rather that it is the ‘description’ of the state of the system which is ‘ambiguous’ because the experimental arrangements necessary to determine both canonical state parameters are mutually exclusive. He first introduces ‘complementarity’ in his ‘Como paper’ of 1927 with this remark:

> This situation has far-reaching consequences. On one hand, the definition of the state of a physical system, as ordinarily understood, claims the elimination of all external disturbances. But in that case, according to the quantum postulate, any observation will be impossible, and, above all, the concepts of space and time lose their immediate sense. On the other hand, if in order to make observation possible we permit certain interactions with suitable agencies of measurement, not belonging to the system, an unambiguous definition of the state of the system is naturally no longer possible, and there can be no question of causality in the ordinary sense of the word. The very nature of the quantum theory thus forces us to regard the space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and definition respectively.

He observes, “This situation has far-reaching consequences” but aside from telling us that “space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality” are“complementary but exclusive features of the description” it is far from clear what these consequences are. Here I want to suggest that these consequences are ‘far-reaching’ because they imply that the ‘objectivity’ of the resulting description can no longer be grounded in the ontological supposition that the description of nature predicates properties of its ‘object’ which refer to properties actually possessed by the object system apart from any observational interaction with it. Thus to save the objectivity of the description, the ‘quantum mechanical state’ of a physical system must be understood in a different sense from the way the classical mechanical state description was understood.

In his new framework, Bohr moves ‘objectivity’ from the ontological context given to it by classical mechanism and reconstructs it on an epistemological basis. ‘Objective’ description now means description which is unambiguously expressed in terms of everyday human experience, of the ‘common framework adapted to human use and daily life’ such that everyone could agree on it. Again Bohr’s reasoning precapitulates the subsequent development of positivism. In the 1920’s and 30’s when Bohr was writing, positivists hoped to reduce the superstructure of theoretical statements to foundational ‘incorrigible’ observation reports expressed in a purely observational vocabulary. This would have been the empiricists’ surrogate for the rationalist doctrine of primary properties. They would refer directly to properties of elements of pure experience, or sense data or whatever, unsullied by any subjective ‘interpretation’ put upon what is alleged to be ‘directly given.’ But the quest for such a foundational vocabulary was doomed. Eventually positivists—as well as the pragmatists and Popperian realists—had to retreat back to the conventionalist position that there is no one privileged language or conceptual scheme which attaches directly to empirical reality. Alternative possibilities exist, and the choice of the language that actually does get chosen is made for pragmatic, rather than foundational, reasons. This was Carnap’s move to ‘physicalism’: observation sentences are simply those on which all rational persons with normal sense organs will agree. In this sense Bohr’s new conception of ‘objectivity’—like the positivist recourse to physicalism— provides an empiricist foundational ‘observation’ statement, but it is only a relative foundation, relative to the particular framework used to express this particular description of nature. It is, I think, fair to say that Bohr’s proposed revision of the conception of objective knowledge is at least as much ‘pragmatic’ as ‘positivistic,’ but the point I want to make here is not its philosophical pedigree, but that once ‘objectivity’ is defined in this manner, its basis is epistemic, resting on what we are justified in accepting or believing, rather than ontological, seated in the properties independently possessed by an individual object, a body as described by classical mechanism.

## 4 The Ontological Lesson of Complementarity

Because Bohr redefines ‘objectivity’ in the manner he proposes, in moving from describing systems in classical mechanical states to describing them in quantum mechanical states the system which is in such a state can no longer be regarded as a ‘substance possessing properties’ precisely because what we predicate of the system in such a state is not, in general, regarded as the ‘properties’ possessed by a substance. Now in the quantum description, the ‘system’ which is in a quantum mechanical state must be reconceived as an interaction which has a feature of ‘wholeness’ or ‘individuality’ that implies that the distinction between ‘object system’ and ‘observing system’ necessary for making a description of that interaction ‘unambiguous’ is relative to the context of the description. He certainly recognized that this move would have ontological consequences, for in the passage immediately preceding his inaugural introduction of ‘complementary’ he tells us that “…the quantum postulate implies that any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected. Accordingly, an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation.” But aside from this merely negative declaration that they do not have “an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense,” Bohr leaves us in the dark ontologically, when it comes to the sort of non-ordinary ‘reality’ we are to ascribe to the objects of atomic physics. This reticence in making ontological claims left this dimension of complementarity undeveloped. So from here on we must extrapolate from—or perhaps reconstruct—what Bohr has told us about his ‘new viewpoint.’ Bohr developed an epistemological lesson because his argument terminated in a conclusion about how we gain scientific knowledge about physical systems at the atomic level. But epistemological claims about what kind of knowledge we can or cannot have about such systems have ontological implications about what such systems which are in quantum mechanical states must be. Until such implications are understood, the ‘foundations’ of the quantum theoretical description of matter will remain mysterious.

Traditional realists have aspired to construct ontological models on the basis of a pattern of reasoning long enshrined in the classical conception of an ‘objective’ description within a substance/property ontology. Following such reasoning, a ‘realist’ reading of complementarity seems to produce paradoxes such as a particle which traces a trajectory through the left slit, but ‘knows’ whether the right slit is opened or closed; or a cat in a superposition of alive and dead states. Such paradoxes do not arise because of any application of the formalism, which in each case is self consistent and in accord with the empirical data. However, the paradoxical character of the description lies in the disconnect between the concept of being the sort of ‘system’ which could be in a quantum mechanical state, and our ontological preconceptions about substances and their properties conditioned by classical mechanical expectations.

If we say that the ‘system’ which is described as ‘in a quantum mechanical state’ is not understood via the traditional Aristotelian conception of subject as substance, that of which our description truly predicates properties, but rather is an indivisible phenomenon described as an interaction of which we predicate possible outcomes, the paradoxical quality of the concept of the quantum mechanical state disappears. This is what Bohr called the unexpected feature of ‘atomicity’ in the quantum world. What are indivisible are not tiny ‘bodies,’ Cartesian rei extensae, but processes or events in which the prior state of one system has a causal effect on the subsequent state of another system. Thus the ontological lesson which the need for recourse to complementary descriptions teaches us is that the physical properties to which the classical concepts refer now belong to the termini of an indivisible phenomenon; they define at one end its preparation state and at the other its outcome state. The quantum-mechanical ‘systems’ of which we predicate ‘quantum mechanical states’ are interactions with a ‘superposition’ of probabilistically weighted possible outcomes.

Much of our confusion, it would seem, arises from what amounts to an equivocation on what is an ‘object’ in the description of nature. Classically the ‘object of our description,’ a body possessing primary kinematic and dynamic properties, was the same object which is the ‘system’ that is ‘in a classical mechanical state.’ Whether that system was described as ‘interacting’ with another system or as ‘isolated’ from interaction classically was irrelevant. In the quantum theoretical description of nature at the microlevel we can no longer move directly from observed system to isolated system, but the tendency to do so is deeply entrenched because the objects in the world of our ordinary perceptual experience, which are the ultimate referents of any description of an empirical outcome, are objects which can be treated as ‘isolated’ from any dynamical effects of our perception of them. Consequently the predicative assertions we make about them can be treated as attributing properties to substances in the manner long ago analyzed by Aristotle. When we treat statements about the things described by quantum mechanics in the same way, because of the quantum postulate, we are led to paradoxical conclusions. Therefore, the object of our description, the ‘system’ which is ‘in a quantum mechanical state,’ cannot be a substance possessing properties, but must be regarded as a whole phenomenon which theory allows us to interpret as an interaction between measuring system and the object—the ‘atomic system’—of which a measurement outcome is predicated. But the quantum postulate, implying as it does the indivisibility of such interactions, forces us recognize that the ‘object’ in this sense of that of which we predicate a measurement outcome is not the same ‘object’ which is the system ‘in a quantum mechanical state.’

While I would contend that such an ontological lesson, once fully absorbed into the physicist’s conception of nature, would remove the paradoxical or mysterious quality of the microdomain, there remains—of course—something ‘surprising’ about this quantum description. It is that the objects of our description, these interactions, do not have determined outcomes. If Bohr and the Copenhageners are right, indeterminacy is a real aspect of Nature; and quantum theory is, after all, the consequence of a fundamental indeterminacy of nature at the microlevel. This is surprising against classical intuitions, but not ‘paradoxical’ in the same sense as a cat in a superposition of alive and dead states.

Of course we have had nearly a century to get used to the idea of indeterminacy at the atomic level. We’re not so classically obsessed anymore, and that’s not so terribly ‘surprising.’ But the ontological lesson—at least to a realist—that remains also still ‘surprising’ is that if the seeds of being are not substances possessing essentially spatial locus but are interactions which have a feature of ‘indivisibility’ or ‘atomicity,’ then a single whole interaction may very well have nonlocal outcomes. Bohr’s response to EPR explicitly warned that a description would be ‘ambiguous’—and so not ‘objective’ in his sense—if the entire phenomenon is not included as a single indivisible whole in the description. ‘Quantum systems’ are ‘non-separable’ precisely because on this view they are not spatio-temporally located substances; we must, in Bohr’s words, ‘renounce space-time pictures.’ Thus in Bell type phenomena spatially separated measurements on ‘particles’ all form part of the outcome of a single interaction in a single ‘quantum mechanical state.’ Perhaps this remains surprising to us in a way which I suspect it didn’t seem to Bohr from his ‘new point of view of complementarity’ because we have not followed the same journey he did. After all, these violations of determinacy and locality had their birth in Bohr’s conception of the interaction between an atom and the field as a ‘discontinuous’ transition between non-visualizable stationary states: in the famous words attributed to Schrödinger: ‘those damned quantum jumps.’


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# Are Bose-Einstein Correlations emerging from correlations of fluctuations?

## 1 Introduction

Bose-Einstein correlations (BEC) between identical bosons are since long time recognized as indispensable tool in searching for dynamics of multiparticle production processes because of their potential ability to provide some space-time information about them 111The ”infinite” number of references on BEC will be projected here on some selected number only, starting from the pedagogical review  and followed by a selected number of more recent, mostly complementary in their approach to BEC, reviews .. However, serious investigation of such processes can be performed only by means of involved numerical modelling using for this purpose one of the specially designed Monte Carlo event generators (MCEG) . Their a priori probabilistic structure prevents the genuine BEC to occur because they are of purely quantum statistical origin. The best one can do is either to change accordingly the output of such MCEG’s  to provide for the necessary bunching of identical bosonic particles (mostly $`\pi `$’s) in the phase space or to try to incorporate somehow their bosonic character (or at least some specific features distinguishing the bosonic and purely classical particles) into the MCEG itself, i.e., to construct the MCEG providing on the output particles already showing the bunching mentioned above . Our proposition discussed here (based on our works ) can be in this respect regarded as belonging to the first category but, at the same time, it uses also ideas explored in  and, to some extent, can be regarded as improvement of  (at least in what concerns the numerical performance).

Whatever one is doing the final objective is always the same: to reproduce the characteristic signals of BEC obtained experimentally, which for the case of $`2`$-particle BEC means that the following two-particle correlation function,

$$C_2(Q=|p_ip_j|)=\frac{N_2(p_i,p_j)}{N_1(p_i)N_1(p_j)},$$
(1)
defined as ratio of the two-particle distributions to the product of single-particle distributions increases towards $`C_2=2`$ when $`Q`$ approaches zero. Notice that (1) depends explicitly on the measured momenta $`(p_i,p_j)`$ of the (like) particles, the searched for space-time information can be obtained only when treating it as a specific Fourier-transform of the distributions $`\rho (r)`$ of the production points, in which case $`C_2`$ is usually (schematically) written as

$$C_2(Q)=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+\left|𝑑x\rho (r)e^{iQr}\right|^2=\left|\stackrel{~}{\rho }(Q)\right|^2.$$
(2)
It allows (in principle) to translate the (observed) width of the peak in $`C_2(Q)`$ into the (deduced) size of the region of emission $`\rho (r)`$ 222In reality all this is, of course, much more complicated  but this will not be our point of interest here. Notice only that what is being deduced in this way is not the whole interaction region but rather the region where the like-particles with similar momenta are produced. We could call it the elementary emitting cell, introducing in this way the idea used later on in this talk.. From that point of view the first approach to the numerical modelling of BEC mentioned above is addressing (in one or other form) directly the (2) whereas second (and our as well) is providing only (1) which can be later analysed (much in the same way as the experimental data are) to obtain the information on $`\rho (r)`$ .

## 2 BEC - quantum-statistical approach

In what follows we shall treat the BEC as arising because of correlations of some specific fluctuations present in physical system under consideration (known as photon bunching effect in quantum optics  where similar correlations are also known under the name of HBT effect). Notice that the main ingredient of $`C_2`$ is the correlator $`n_1n_2`$, which can be written as  333Here $`\sigma (n)`$ is dispersion of the multiplicity distribution $`P(n)`$ of produced secondaries and $`\rho `$ is the correlation coefficient depending on the type of particles produced: $`\rho =+1,1,0`$ for bosons, fermions and Boltzmann statistics, respectively.

$$n_1n_2=n_1n_2+\left(n_1n_1\right)\left(n_2n_2\right)=n_1n_2+\rho \sigma (n_1)\sigma (n_2).$$
(3)
Therefore the two-particle correlation function (1) is entirely given in terms of the covariances (3) explicitly showing its stochastic character:

$$C_2(Q=|p_ip_j|)=\frac{n_i\left(p_i\right)n_j\left(p_j\right)}{n_i\left(p_i\right)n_j\left(p_j\right)}=1+\rho \frac{\sigma \left(n_i\right)}{n_i\left(p_i\right)}\frac{\sigma \left(n_j\right)}{n_j\left(p_j\right)}.$$
(4)
In eq.(4) above $`C_2(Q)`$ is just a measure of correlation of fluctuations present in the system under consideration, which is maximal (i.e., $`C_2=2`$) whenever fluctuations are maximal (i.e., for $`\sigma (n)=n`$, what happens for the geometrical distribution of the produced particles, which in turn happens in a natural way where they are bosons and as such show maximal tendency to bunch themselves in the same state (or cell) in the phase space).

This feature is the cornerstone of the only MCEG providing particles already showing $`C_2(Q)>1`$ without any additional procedures 444The nearest in spirit to is the unpublished attempt presented in . The two others  are providing BEC in not so natural way as .. Those who would like to start with the symmetrization of the corresponding multiparticle wave function should realize  that such symmetrization is equivalent to the change from the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics (classical, distinguishable particles) to the Bose-Einstein one (indistinguishable quantum particles). To do this one has to select as independent subsystems not the individual particles but rather the groups of particles in the consecutive states. In effect the original Poissonian distribution of particles goes over to the geometrical one mentioned above. This can be visualised in a best way on the following simple example, which will also represent the main ideas of  555Those interested in details should consult  directly.. Suppose that mass $`M`$ (in rest) is going to hadronize (for simplicity for one kind of neutral particles with mass $`m`$ each). When one is selecting each time a particle with energy $`E_i`$ according to the simple statistical distribution $`P(E_i)=\mathrm{exp}\left(E_i/T\right)`$ until the whole $`M`$ is used up, one gets multiplicity distribution of the produced secondaries, $`P(n)`$, in poissonian form (with $`<n>`$ depending on the parameter $`T`$). Suppose now that one is changing algorithm in a following way: after selection the first energy, $`E_1`$, one adds with a probability $`P`$ to the particle chosen in this way another particles of the same energy $`E_1`$ and does it until the first failure (i.e., until the random number selected is greater than $`P`$). Then one is selecting a new particle with energy $`E_2`$ (i.e., in fact one is selecting a new energy $`E_2`$) and repeats the above procedure again and again, until the whole mass $`M`$ is used up. It is straightforward to realize that what one is getting is the number of poisson-like distributed cells (with $`n_{cells}`$ depending on $`T`$ containing each a number of geometrically distributed secondaries (with $`n`$ in a given cell given by parameter $`P`$). Taken together this convolution of poissonian and geometrical distributions results in well defined Negative Binomial (NB) distribution of the produced secondaries 666This can shed a new light on the NB distributions and its different applications as discussed during this conference  with, for example, our cells being the equivalent to clans in the standard approach to NB distributions. Similar concept of elementary emitting cells has been also proposed in .. However, in order to get $`C_2(Q)`$ with a characteristic width $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q1/R`$ (corresponding to a ”radius” $`R`$) one has to allow for a spreading of energies $`E_k^{(i)}`$ of particles belonging to the $`k`$-th cell, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_E`$. Let us stress at this point that it is precisely this spreading which translates finally into the dimensional parameter $`R`$ being the main subject of interest when interpreting experimental results for $`C_2`$.

The MCEG proposed in  has the same structure with particles selected according to Bose-Einstein distribution, $`P(E_i)\mathrm{exp}\left[n_i\left(\mu E_i\right)/T\right]`$ ($`n_i`$ is their multiplicity and $`E_i`$ are their energies, the two parameters, ”temperature” $`T`$ and ”chemical potential $`\mu `$ correspond to the previous $`T`$ and $`P`$) and the like-particles are located in the cells of a fixed size $`\delta y`$ (in the longitudinal, i.e., rapidity $`y`$ space), which is the third parameter corresponding to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_E`$ above).

It turns out that in this approach one gets at the same time both the correct BEC pattern (i.e., correlations) and fluctuations (as characterized by the observed intermittency pattern) . This is very strong advantage of this model, which is so far the only example of hadronization model, in which Bose-Einstein statistics is not only included from the very beginning on a single event level, but it is also properly used in getting the final secondaries. In all other approaches  at least one of the above elements is missing. The serious shortcoming of method  are, however, numerical difficulties to keep the energy-momentum conservation as exact as possible and its limitation to the specific event generator only777Notice that in our simple example, which apparently did not show these shortcomings, we were considered only one type of produced secondaries. When one attempts to incorporate all charges and to keep the energy-momentum conserved, our example starts to be also intractable in practice..

## 3 BEC - our proposal: general ideas

In  we have proposed a new method of numerical modelling of BEC, which we shall shortly introduce now (some of its elements were already formulated in ). It was thought as additional element of any MCEG describing multiparticle production processes. So far it was tested only on some special hadronization scheme proposed by us (the CAS model ) and on the JETSET model for $`e^+e^{}`$ processes (to be shown below). We aimed at fast and universal algorithm providing BEC among the secondaries produced by a given MCEG already at the event-by-event basis.

Our way of reasoning was as follows: the BEC is a quantum mechanical phenomenon whereas all MCEG are of classical character. Therefore to mimic BEC one has to resign from a part of information provided by the MCEG, which usually gives us energy-momenta, space-time positions and charges $`(Q_i)`$ of the produced secondaries. All methods  are in one or other way changing the first two888This is especially visible in works claiming to describe BEC from the very beginning in a quantum mechanical way .. We propose to keep them intact and to change, instead, the original charge assignment provided by the MCEG. This is done in the following way . Suppose that our MC event generator provides us with $`N(+)`$, $`N()`$ and $`N(0)`$ of positive, negative and neutral particles, uniformly distributed and showing no BEC pattern (cf. Fig. 1, left panel). We change now their charge allocation (keeping the same $`N(+)`$, $`N()`$ and $`N(0)`$) and getting the picture shown in the right panel of Fig. 1. The like charges are in visible (albeit strongly exaggerated) way bunched (correlated) together leading to signal of BEC. What we have done is the following: $`(a)`$ we have resigned from the (not directly measurable) part of the information provided by event generator concerning the charge allocation to produced particles and $`(b)`$ we have allocated charges anew in such a way as to keep the like charges as near in phase space as possible (keeping also the total charge of any kind the same as the original one). In this way we have formed objects which we shall call in what follows elementary emitting cells (EEC) , each containing only particles of the same sign and belonging to the same state. In Fig. 1 they are shown as separate in the phase space but in principle they can overlap. Particles belonging to such a cell are supposed to be in the same state (the fact that their momenta differ from each other reflects only the natural spreading of such state in the momentum space and precisely this spreading is the source of the analogous complementary spreading in the position space and eventually in the observed structure of the $`C_2(Q)`$).

The actual implementation of our proposition (algorithm) is presented in detail in . Here we shall discuss some further points of the proposed approach and present new results of its application to the known algorithms for hadronization applied to the $`e^+e^{}`$ data. We would like to stress the point that the basic entity here is not so much the hadronizing source but the EEC mentioned above and $`C_2(Q)`$ are in our approach directly sensitive to the number of such cells and to their mean occupation. There is no direct dependence on the ”size of the hadronizing source” 999Notice, that the ”size” $`R`$ (or its variants) discussed in all known analyses of BEC (both data and formulas) are representing at first the distance between the two emitting points, $`R=r_1r_2`$, and therefore are only indirectly sensitive to the ”true” size of the source. Nevertheless, customary they are referred to as the ”size of the source” .. On the other hand our approach contains automatically BEC of all orders (in practice, the highest order accounted for is given by the highest multiplicity in a given EEC one can reach).

## 4 BEC - our proposal: numerical results

To illustrate how our prescription works we present in Fig. 2 sample of results using as initial source of secondaries the CAS hadronization model developed by us some time ago  and the standard JETSET model . This very preliminary and limited in scope attempt (for example, for simplicity only direct pions were produced both by the CAS and JETSET MCEG’s) shows in a clear way the main points of our method mentioned before. The EEC’s were formed according to the algorithm given in  using as parameter the probability that a new selected particle will joint the particular EEC which is being actually filled. This probability was kept constant in the case of CAS (and equal $`P`$, as indicated in Fig. 2(a)) whereas in the case of using JETSET it was given by $`P=\mathrm{exp}(E/T)`$ (where $`E`$ is the energy of the particle considered at given moment) with value of parameter $`T`$ as indicated in Fig. 2b. In the case of CAS the, so called, ”two split-type sources” (cf.  for details) were used101010It means that original source were supposed to consists of two sub-sources of equal mass each, which were cascading independently, and our algorithm was then applied to all particles without discriminating which source they were coming from. In effect one is obtaining much more dense source (i.e., particles are packed more closely in the phase space) than in the case of the single cascade only . The slope of $`C_2(Q)`$ turns out to be very sensitive to this . The opposite situation, in which particles from different sources are supposed not to show BEC, is referred to as ”indep-type sources” and can, for example, easily explain the BEC puzzle for $`W^+W^{}`$ production data .. Together with fits to the sample of DELPHI data  are shown the corresponding distributions of EEC’s, $`P(N_{cell})`$, and particles in such cell, $`P(n_{part})`$.

Notice that, with a very good accuracy, distribution of particles in a single EEC is of geometrical type (i.e., according to our discussion before, corresponding to bosonic particles). This follows directly from the construction of our algorithm  (one is adding new particles to the EEC with probability $`P`$ until the first failure, in such a case in the ideal situation $`n_{part}=P/(1P)`$). The strength of BEC will in our case depend on how much (on average) particles are allocated to EEC and how many EEC’s one has (on average) in an event. One can see in Fig. 2 that the first number is rather low, $`n_{part}1.2÷1.3`$, the probability to get $`3`$ or more particles in a single EEC is of the order of $`1\%`$ only (and less). It means that multi-particle BEC are not very prominent feature under normal circumstances and, if at all, should be probably looked for in a really very high multiplicity events (which, on the other hand, are very rare ). The second number is of the order of $`7`$. Notice that the EEC’s are distributed essentially in a poisson-like manner. It is interesting then to notice that, according to what we have already mentioned before, it means that the total multiplicity distribution is of NB type . Actually, this is the distribution provided by the original MCEG we are working with (in our case CAS  and JETSET ), which is then reproduced by the action of our generator modelling the BEC (as it should be)111111It is worth to stress at this point that, according to our discussion in , a constant number $`k`$ of EEC with geometrical distribution of particles in each of them leads to NB (and in the limit of large $`k`$ to Poisson) distribution whereas binomially distributed EEC’s, with $`k`$ limited for some reason, leads to the so called modified negative binomial (MNB) multiplicity distributions  characterised by oscillating cumulant moments ..

## 5 Summary

Our presentation of BEC is surely not the orthodox one, i.e., we do not see BEC as the immediate source of the information on the space-time characteristic of the hadronizing object. We approach the problem from the quantum statistical point of view, stressing more the behaviour of the like-charged bosons in the momentum-space (which, after all, is what is really measured!) necessary to be incorporated in the MCEG whenever one aims to model the true BEC. Our particles feel the BEC only when they are in the same state (it allows for the sizeable differences in their momenta because of the spreading of momenta of the wave packets representing such states). It means then that our primary objects are EEC’s rather, than the whole emitting hadronic source itself. And it is the property of the average EEC, which is responsible for the finally observed structure of the $`C_2(Q)`$ function.

Most of our presentation deals with a kind of universal algorithm , which should be suitable as a simple addition to (almost) any MCEG 121212What are physical changes the action of our algorithm brings to the original MCEG used is discussed in full in .. However, it is very likely that such approach will fail when subjected to the more serious scrutiny than it is done so far (in the sense that its action will have to be connected with a re-parameterization of the original MCEG in order to get the right results, i.e., to correct for deviations introduced by the BEC implementation ). In such case, the only solution left seems to be to start to construct MCEG from assuring that it models in a correct way the bosonic character of produced secondaries, i.e., to follow and improve the program started with the work  along the lines presented at the beginning of this talk.

## Acknowledgments

GW would like to thank Prof. N.G. Antoniou and all Organizers of X-th International Workshop on Multiparticle Production, Correlations and Fluctuations in QCD for financial support and kind hospitality.


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# Constraints on the Neutron Star Magnetic Field of the two X-ray Transients SAX J1808.4–3658 and Aql X–1

## 1 Introduction

Low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) consist of a neutron star, generally with a weak magnetic field ($`B10^{10}`$ Gauss), accreting matter from a low-mass ($`1M_{}`$) companion. Neutron star soft X-ray transients (hereafter SXT) are a special subgroup of LMXBs. SXTs are usually found in a quiescent state, with luminosities in the range $`10^{32}10^{33}`$ ergs/s. On occasions they exhibit outbursts, during which the luminosity increases to $`10^{36}10^{38}`$ ergs/s and their behavior closely resemble that of persistent LMXBs. SXTs indeed form a rather inhomogeneous class, with sources showing regular outbursts (e.g. Aql X–1, Cen X–4, 4U 1608–522) and sources with long on/off activity periods (e.g. KS 1731–260, X 1732–304; see Campana et al. 1998 for a review).

The mechanism for the quiescent X-ray emission in these sources is still uncertain (e.g., Menou et al. 1999; Campana & Stella 2000; Bildsten & Rutledge 2001). The spectrum in quiescence is usually well fit by a soft thermal component (blackbody temperature of $`0.10.3`$ keV) plus a power-law component with a photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }12`$. The blackbody component is interpreted as thermal emission from a pure hydrogen neutron-star atmosphere (e.g. Rutledge et al. 1999, 2000), while the power-law component is thought to be due to residual accretion or the interaction of a pulsar wind with matter released by the companion star (see e.g. Campana & Stella 2000, and references therein).

Some of these neutron star SXTs also show type-I X-ray bursts. During these bursts nearly-coherent oscillations are sometimes observed, the frequencies of which are in the rather narrow range between 300 and 600 Hz (see van der Klis 2000; Strohmayer 2001 for reviews). This frequency is interpreted as the neutron star rotation frequency (or twice this value), due to a hot spot (or spots) in an atmospheric layer of the rotating neutron star. Many LMXBs (including most of the SXTs) show rich time variability both at low and at high frequencies, in the form of noise components or quasi periodic oscillations (QPOs). In particular, QPOs at kilohertz frequencies (kHz QPOs), with frequencies ranging from a few hundred Hz up to $`12001300`$ Hz (see van der Klis 2000 for a review), have been observed in the emission of about 20 LMXBs. Usually two kHz QPO peaks (“twin peaks”) are simultaneously observed, the difference between their centroid frequencies being in the range 250–350 Hz (usually similar, but not exactly identical, to the corresponding nearly-coherent frequency of the burst oscillations, or half that value).

The presence and intensity of a magnetic field in LMXBs is an important question to address. The widely accepted scenario for the formation of millisecond radio pulsars is the recycling of an old neutron star by a spin-up process driven by accretion of matter and angular momentum from a Keplerian disc, fueled via Roche lobe overflow of a binary late-type companion (see Bhattacharya & van den Heuvel 1991 for a review). Once the accretion and spin-up process ends, the neutron star is visible as a millisecond radio pulsar. The connection between LMXBs and millisecond radio pulsars indicates that neutron stars in LMXBs have magnetic fields of the order of $`B10^810^9`$ Gauss. In this case, the accretion disc in LMXBs should be truncated at the magnetosphere, where the disc pressure is balanced by the magnetic pressure exerted by the neutron star magnetic field. Although widely accepted, there is no direct evidence confirming this scenario yet. However, the discovery of coherent X-ray pulsations at $`2.5`$ ms in SAX J1808.4–3658 (a transient LMXB with an orbital period $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}=2`$ h, Wijnands & van der Klis 1998) has proved that the neutron star in a LMXB can be accelerated to millisecond periods. Recently, other two transient LMXBs have been discovered to be millisecond X-ray pulsars, namely XTE J1751–305 ($`P_{\mathrm{spin}}2.3`$ ms, $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}=42`$ min, Markwardt et al. 2002) and XTE J0929–314 ($`P_{\mathrm{spin}}5.4`$ ms, $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}=43`$ min, Galloway et al. 2002).

Although there are indications for the presence of a (weak) magnetic field in LMXBs, it is not clear yet whether this magnetic field plays a role in the accretion process onto the neutron star. If the neutron stars in LMXBs have magnetic fields and spin rates similar to those of millisecond radio pulsars (as implied by the recycling scenario), then the accretion disk should be truncated quite far (depending on the accretion rate) from the stellar surface, and the magnetic field should affect the accretion process. However, the similarity in the spectral and timing behavior between LMXBs containing neutron stars and black hole binaries (see Di Salvo & Stella 2002, van der Klis 2000 for reviews) suggests that the neutron star magnetic field is so weak (less than $`10^8`$ Gauss, Kluzniak 1998) that it plays no dynamical role, and the disk is truncated quite close to the marginally stable orbit, both in neutron star and in black hole systems.

We have proposed a method to constrain the magnetic field of transient LMXBs containing neutron stars based on their measured luminosity in quiescence and spin rates (when available, Burderi et al. 2002a). In this paper we apply this method to some SXTs for which the luminosity in quiescence and the spin period are known.

## 2 Constraints on the neutron star magnetic field from the quiescent X-ray luminosity

Burderi et al. (2002a) have shown that it is possible to derive an upper limit on the neutron star magnetic field measuring the luminosity of these sources in quiescence and comparing it with the expectations from the different mechanisms that have been proposed to explain the quiescent X-ray emission of neutron star SXTs. In the following we will summarize their conclusions. There exist three sources of energy which might produce some X-ray luminosity in quiescence:

* Residual accretion onto the neutron star surface at very low rate (e.g. Stella et al. 1994);
* Rotational energy of the neutron star converted into radiation through the emission from a rotating magnetic dipole, a fraction of which can be emitted in X-rays (e.g. Possenti et al. 2002; Campana et al. 1998b, and references therein);
* Thermal energy, stored into the neutron star during previous phases of accretion, released during quiescence (e.g. Brown, Bildsten, & Rutledge 1998; Colpi et al. 2001; Rutledge et al. 2001).

Constraints on the neutron star magnetic field can be derived considering processes a and b, in the hypothesis that the neutron star spin frequency is known. Note that, while processes a and b are mutually exclusive, process c will probably always contribute to the luminosity in quiescence, reducing the amount of emission due to one of the first two processes.

If the neutron star has a non-zero magnetic field, then its magnetospheric radius, i.e. the radius at which the pressure due to the (assumed dipolar) neutron star magnetic field equals the ram pressure of the accreting matter, can only be inside or outside the light-cylinder radius (i.e. the radius at which an object corotating with the neutron star, having spin period $`P`$, attains the speed of light $`c`$, $`r_{\mathrm{LC}}=cP/2\pi `$), with different consequences on the neutron star behavior.

If the magnetospheric radius is inside the light cylinder radius, scenario a, there should be some matter flow inside the light cylinder radius in order to keep the magnetospheric radius small enough. Actually, accretion onto a spinning, magnetized neutron star is centrifugally inhibited once the magnetospheric radius is outside the corotation radius, i.e. the radius at which the Keplerian frequency of the orbiting matter is equal to the neutron star spin frequency, $`r_{\mathrm{co}}=1.5\times 10^6P_3^{2/3}m^{1/3}\mathrm{cm}`$ (where $`P_3`$ is the spin period in ms and $`m`$ is the neutron star mass in solar masses, $`M_{}`$). In this scenario we have therefore two possibilities: a1) the magnetospheric radius is inside the co-rotation radius, so accretion onto the neutron star surface is possible; a2) the magnetospheric radius is outside the co-rotation radius (but still inside the light cylinder radius), so the accretion onto the neutron star is centrifugally inhibited, but an accretion disk can still be present outside $`r_{\mathrm{co}}`$ and emit X-rays.

If the magnetospheric radius falls outside the light-cylinder radius, it will also be outside the corotation radius. This means that the space surrounding the neutron star will be free of matter up to the light cylinder radius. It has been demonstrated that a rotating magnetic dipole in vacuum emits electromagnetic dipole radiation according to the Larmor’s formula, and a wind of relativistic particles associated with magnetospheric currents along the field lines is expected to arise (e.g. Goldreich & Julian 1969). Therefore, the neutron star will emit as a radio pulsar. In this case X-ray emission can be produced by: b1) reprocessing of part of the bolometric luminosity of the rotating neutron star into X-rays in a shock front between the relativistic pulsar wind and the circumstellar matter; b2) the intrinsic emission in X-rays of the radio pulsar.

In all these scenarios we have calculated the expected X-ray luminosity in quiescence, which of course depends on the neutron star spin frequency and magnetic field (see Burderi et al. 2002a, and references therein, for details). This can be compared with the observed quiescent luminosity (which has to be considered as an upper limit for the luminosity due to each of these processes, given that process c is also expected to contribute) giving an upper limit on the magnetic field, once the neutron star spin frequency is known. For each of the scenarios above, these upper limits are:

* $`\mu _{26}0.08L_{33}^{1/2}m^{1/3}P_3^{7/6}`$
* $`\mu _{26}1.9L_{33}^{1/2}m^{1/4}P_3^{9/4}`$
* $`\mu _{26}0.05L_{33}^{1/2}P_3^2\eta ^{1/2}`$
* $`\mu _{26}2.37L_{33}^{0.38}P_3^2`$

where $`\mu _{26}`$ is the neutron star magnetic moment in units of $`10^{26}`$ Gauss cm3, $`L_{33}`$ is the accretion luminosity in units of $`10^{33}`$ ergs/s, and $`\eta 0.010.1`$ is the efficiency in the conversion of the rotational energy into X-rays (e.g. Campana et al. 1998b; Tavani 1991; Kaspi et al. 1995; Grove et al. 1995). Note that the values assumed for $`\eta `$ are quite uncertain given that they are inferred from radio pulsar studies and, of course, depend on the geometry of the system as well as on the characteristics of the surrounding environment. However, these values are also in agreement with the measured quiescent X-ray emission of SXTs (Campana et al. 1998b).

We have already applied this considerations to the case of KS 1731–260, getting valuable results (Burderi et al. 2002a). In the following we re-calculate the upper limit on the neutron star magnetic field of this source using the most recent measurement of its quiescence luminosity ($`(25)\times 10^{32}`$ ergs/s in the $`0.510`$ keV energy range) obtained from XMM-Newton observations (Wijnands et al. 2002).

KS 1731–260 is a neutron star SXT, which in February 2001 entered a quiescent state after a long period of activity lasted more than a decade. The quiescent X-ray luminosity of $`10^{33}`$ ergs/s was measured with BeppoSAX (Burderi et al. 2002a) and Chandra (Wijnands et al. 2001). The X-ray spectrum obtained with Chandra is well described by a blackbody at a temperature of $`0.3`$ keV (Wijnands et al. 2001) or by a hydrogen atmosphere model, obtaining an effective temperature of 0.12 keV and an emission area radius of $`10`$ km (Rutledge et al. 2001). KS 1731–260 also shows nearly-coherent burst oscillations at $`524`$ Hz (corresponding to a period of 1.91 ms, which is most probably the neutron star spin period, see Muno et al. 2000). Using this information we have applied the method described above to derive constraints on the neutron star magnetic field, which turned out to be less than $`9\times 10^8`$ Gauss (Burderi et al. 2002a). A recent XMM-newton observation of this source gave a quiescent luminosity of $`(25)\times 10^{32}`$ ergs/s, about a factor of two lower than the previous BeppoSAX and Chandra estimations. Adopting therefore a quiescent luminosity of $`5\times 10^{32}`$ ergs/s and a spin period of 1.9 ms, the upper limits to the magnetic field of the neutron star in KS 1731–260 are: a1) $`\mu _{26}0.2P_{1.9}^{7/6}m^{1/3}`$; a2) $`\mu _{26}5.9P_{1.9}^{9/4}m^{1/4}`$; b1) $`\mu _{26}1.3P_{1.9}^2\eta _{0.01}^{1/2}`$; b2) $`\mu _{26}6.6P_{1.9}^2`$. Here $`P_{1.9}`$ is the spin period in units of 1.9 ms, and $`\eta _{0.01}`$ is the conversion efficiency $`\eta `$ in units of 0.01. In any case the magnetic field of KS 1731–260 results most probably less than $`7\times 10^8`$ Gauss.

## 3 Constraints on the magnetic field of SAX J1808.4–3658 and Aql X–1

SAX J1808.4–3658, another bursting SXT, was the first (low magnetized) LMXB to show coherent pulsations, at a frequency of $`401`$ Hz, in its persistent emission (Wijnands & van der Klis 1998), thus providing the first direct evidence of the current evolutionary scenarios according to which LMXBs are the progenitors of millisecond radio pulsars. SAX J1808.4–3658 has been observed in quiescence with XMM: the 0.5–10 keV unabsorbed luminosity was $`5\times 10^{31}`$ ergs/s (Campana et al. 2002). Using the reasoning described above we can calculate the upper limits on the neutron star magnetic field in this system, which for the various process are respectively: a1) accretion: $`\mu _{26}<0.054m^{1/3}`$; a2) propeller: $`\mu _{26}<3.4m^{1/4}`$; b1) reprocessed radio emission: $`\mu _{26}<0.71\eta _{0.01}^{1/2}`$; b2) radio pulsar emission: $`\mu _{26}<4.69`$. In this case we find a maximum neutron star magnetic field strength of $`4.7\times 10^8`$ Gauss. A lower limit on the pulsar magnetic field in SAX J1808.4–3658 was calculated using the observation of coherent pulsations during the 1998 outburst, i.e. imposing that the magnetospheric radius is larger than the neutron star radius at the highest flux level; this gives $`B1\times 10^8`$ Gauss (Psaltis & Chakrabarty 1999). Combining this with our upper limit, we can constrain the neutron star magnetic field in this system in the rather small range $`(15)\times 10^8`$ Gauss. Note that the presence of coherent pulsations in this source excludes the possibility that the magnetic field is as weak as $`0.05`$ Gauss; therefore the residual accretion (scenario a1) is excluded in this case. This has important consequences as regards the understanding of the origin of the quiescent emission. In the case of SAX J1808.4–3658 the X-ray spectrum in quiescence is dominated by the power-law component; the soft blackbody component (if any) contributes at least a factor of 15 less than the power law to the quiescent luminosity in the 0.5–10 keV range (see Campana et al. 2002). Although the details of the emission in the propeller regime are not clear, we would expect that in this regime the source spectrum is dominated by a thermal component from the residual accretion disk that should be present outside the magnetospheric radius. This is not the case for SAX J1808.4–3658. Therefore we suggest that while its thermal (blackbody) component is almost certainly due to what we called process c, i.e. cooling of the neutron star heated during the previous accretion phase, its non-thermal (power-law) component, which sometimes constitutes most of the quiescent emission, is most probably due to dipole emission from the radio pulsar (scenarios b1 and/or b2). Note, however, that recent observational results on the variability of the soft component during a quiescence period of Aql X–1 pose some problems to the neutron star cooling scenario (see Rutledge et al. 2002).

Aql X–1 is a SXT showing type-I X-ray bursts. Based on RXTE/PCA observations taken during an outburst in 1997, Zhang et al. (1998) discovered nearly coherent oscillations with an asymptotic frequency of 548.9 Hz (corresponding to a period of 1.82 ms) during the decay of a type I X-ray burst. This signal, as well as similar signals observed during type I X-ray bursts from about ten low mass X-ray binaries, likely corresponds to the neutron star rotation frequency (or twice its value; for a review see Strohmayer 2001). Aql X–1 also shows kHz QPOs: the lower peak frequency varies in the range $`670930`$ Hz, while the upper peak was only marginally detected at $`1040`$ Hz. The peak separation between the kHz QPOs is $`241\pm 9`$ Hz, inconsistent with (but close to) half the frequency of the burst oscillations. We will therefore assume that the neutron star in this system is spinning at a period of 1.82 ms or 3.64 ms. Note, however, that the lack of harmonic content in the burst oscillations (see Muno et al. 2002) might suggest that these correspond indeed to the neutron star spin frequency. Aql X–1 was observed several times in quiescence (with ROSAT, Verbunt et al. 1994; ASCA, Asai et al. 1998; BeppoSAX, Campana et al. 1998; and Chandra, Rutledge et al. 2001). For the quiescent X-ray luminosity of Aql X–1 we adopt the minimum value reported in the literature, that is $`1.6\times 10^{33}`$ ergs/s (from Verbunt et al. 1994, extrapolated in the 0.5-10 keV energy range and recomputed for a distance of 5 kpc, see Rutledge et al. 2002). Using these parameters we can apply the formulas above to calculate the upper limit on the neutron star magnetic field in Aql X–1: a1) accretion: $`\mu _{26}<0.20P_{1.8}^{7/6}m^{1/3}`$; a2) propeller: $`\mu _{26}<9.25P_{1.8}^{9/4}m^{1/4}`$; b1) reprocessed radio emission: $`\mu _{26}<2.1P_{1.8}^2\eta _{0.01}^{1/2}`$; b2) radio pulsar emission: $`\mu _{26}<7.85P_{1.8}^2`$. Here $`P_{1.8}`$ is the spin period in units of 1.8 ms. For a spin period of 1.82 ms, the highest magnetic field we get is $`9\times 10^8`$ Gauss. Assuming a spin period of 3.64 ms, the magnetic field is less constrained, with a maximum value of $`4\times 10^9`$ Gauss that is obtained in the propeller (a2) scenario (note that much lower upper limits are obtained in the case of residual accretion, a1, and reprocessed radio emission, b2).

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

We have applied a method to constrain the magnetic field of transient LMXBs containing neutron stars based on their measured luminosity in quiescence and spin rates. This gives a magnetic field lower than $`7\times 10^8`$ Gauss for KS 1731–260 and lower than $`10^9`$ Gauss for Aql X–1, and constrains the magnetic field of the millisecond X-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4–3658 in the quite narrow range between $`10^8`$ and $`5\times 10^8`$ Gauss.

In the case of SAX J1808.4–3658 we also find that residual accretion onto the neutron star very unlikely contributes to the source luminosity in quiescence, and we suggest that the non-thermal (power-law) component of the source spectrum in quiescence is probably produced by reprocessed and/or direct dipole emission from the radio pulsar, which may switch on at very-low accretion rates. In the arguments developed above we assume that, once the accretion rate significantly decreases during quiescence, the radio pulsar switches on when the magnetospheric radius becomes larger than the light cylinder radius. In this case, we can estimate the timescale on which the pulsar is expected to clean the space up to its light cylinder radius and turn on, which of course will depend on the details of the decrease in the mass accretion rate. Assuming that the mass accretion rate instantaneously drops to a very low value, we have estimated the net force on the disk (considered in the standard Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973, configuration) induced by the magnetic field pressure. This rough calculation gives a timescale of $`110`$ s (depending on the residual accretion rate and on the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$) in the case of SAX J1808.4–3658.

However, more evidences are needed to confirm this suggestion, as, for instance, the detection of pulsed radio emission in quiescence. Indeed, despite thoroughly searched in radio during its X-ray quiescent phase, no pulsed radio emission has been detected from SAX J1808.4-3658 up to now (see e.g. Burgay et al. 2002). This can be caused by the presence of a strong wind of matter emanating from the system: the mass released by the companion star swept away by the radiation pressure of the pulsar, as predicted in the so-called radio-ejection model (Burderi et al. 2001; see also Burderi et al. 2002b). This means that SAX J1808.4-3658 may show radio pulsations in quiescence when observed at frequencies higher than the standard 1.4 GHz (the frequency at which radio pulsars are normally searched), where the free-free absorption is less severe.

We note, however, that our magnetic field upper limits are subject to significant uncertainties (that will be probably addressed by future studies) due to our lack of understanding of the structure of the accretion flow in quiescence. In particular, our calculations consider an accretion-disk geometry. In a different geometry, it is not clear whether a clear distinction between the residual accretion scenario and the propeller scenario can be made. Menou et al. (1999) have presented a propeller scenario that still allows for partial residual accretion if accretion in quiescent neutron star SXTs occurs via a quasi-spherical Advection Dominated Accretion Flow (ADAF), rather than a thin disk. This allows some material to accrete near the poles, bypassing the centrifugal barrier (see also Zhang et al. 1998). However, only a very small fraction (if any) of the total accretion rate in quiescence is expected to accrete onto the neutron star surface (Menou et al. 1999), consistently with the fact that no coherent pulsations are detected during quiescence. Other significant uncertainties are in the assumed values of the efficiency $`\eta `$ in the conversion of the pulsar spin-down energy into X-rays in the shock front, b1, scenario and in the fraction of the intrinsic radio-pulsar emission emitted in X-rays (scenario b2).

Although subject to some uncertainties our upper limits on the neutron star magnetic field are reasonable and in agreement with limits found from different considerations. The presence of a weak, but not negligible, magnetic field in LMXBs has been invoked to explain some observational facts such as the QPO at $`2060`$ Hz (the so-called low-frequency QPO in atoll sources or horizontal branch oscillations, HBOs, in Z sources; Psaltis et al. 1999), or the disappearance of the kHz QPOs at low and high inferred mass accretion rates (e.g. Campana 2000; Cui 2000). In particular, linking the kHz QPO observability to variations of the neutron star magnetospheric radius, in response to changes in the mass accretion rate, Campana (2000) estimates a magnetic field of $`B(0.31)\times 10^8`$ Gauss for Aql X-1 and of $`B(18)\times 10^8`$ Gauss for Cyg X-2. A method for determining the B-field around neutron stars based on observed kilohertz and other QPOs frequencies, in the framework of the transition layer QPO model (Titarchuk, Lapidus, & Muslimov 1998), gives dipole fields with the strengths of $`10^710^8`$ Gauss on the neutron star surface for 4U 1728–34, GX 340+0, and Scorpius X-1 (Titarchuk, Bradshaw, & Wood 2001).

The accurate measurement of the luminosity in quiescence of other SXTs (and in particular of the other X-ray millisecond pulsars, for which the spin period is precisely determined), certainly possible with the high sensitivity of the instruments on board Chandra and XMM-Newton, will give important information about the magnetic field in these systems and therefore about the connection between the populations of LMXBs and millisecond radio pulsars as well as about the influence of the magnetic field in the accretion process onto the neutron star.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was performed in the context of the research network ”Accretion onto black holes, compact stars and protostars”, funded by the European Commission under contract number ERB-FMRX-CT98-0195, and was partially supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). LB thanks MIUR for financial support.