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# Nature of fault planes in solid neutron star matter

## 1 Introduction

It is widely assumed that brittle fractures caused by Maxwell or other stresses in neutron star crusts are involved in a number of phenomena, for example, the soft gamma repeaters (SGR), the persistent emission of the anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXP) (Thompson et al 2000), and large pulsar glitches (Ruderman, Zhu & Chen 1998). In current theories of the AXP and SGR sources, brittle fractures, propagating with a velocity of the order of the shear-wave velocity $`c_s`$, generate shear waves which in turn couple with magnetospheric Alfvén modes. At angular frequencies $`\omega 10^{45}`$ rad s-1, the coupling is thought to be an efficient mechanism for energy transfer to the magnetosphere, as shown by Blaes et al (1989). Statistical comparisons of SGR burst properties with those of terrestrial earthquakes are not inconsistent with the brittle fracture assumption (Hurley et al 1994, Cheng et al 1996, Gogus et al 1999). However, the purpose of this letter is to note that elementary deductions of the properties of neutron-star fault planes show that brittle fracture is not possible.

## 2 Neutron-star fault planes

The relation between stability and stratification for neutron star matter (Reisenegger & Goldreich 1992; see also Jones 2002) constrains the movement of matter, bounded by any fault plane which may be formed, to an almost exactly spherical equipotential surface. Shear strain (for in-plane shear) is shown in Figure 1 by the displacement of a series of constant surfaces in Lagrangian coordinates which intersect a local element of the fault plane $`xz`$. In the neutron star case, it might be caused by a changing Maxwell stress reflecting evolution of the internal magnetic flux density distribution. The components $`\sigma _{ij}`$ of the stress tensor act on the surfaces of the volume elements shown on opposite sides of the fault-plane. (We assume an isotropic elastic medium in which, before fracture, stress propagates perfectly across the plane.) In the brittle fracture of a terrestrial earthquake, the stress falls at the instant of failure from $`f=\sigma _{xy}`$ to a much smaller value (zero in the ideal case). Stress energy is largely converted to kinetic energy so that strain relaxation $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ occurs with an acceleration $`\dot{v}`$ such that shear waves are generated efficiently (see Kostrov & Das 1988 concerning the definition of a tectonic earthquake source). The mechanical properties of terrestrial matter, as a function of depth, have been tabulated, for example, in Kaye & Laby (1986). At a typical earthquake focus depth of 15 km, the pressure $`P10^2\mu `$, where $`\mu `$ is the shear modulus. Crack propagation is possible because $`P`$ is not so large that it inhibits void formation behind the tip. At greater depths, the increases in $`T/T_m`$, where $`T_m`$ is the melting temperature, and in $`P/\mu `$ both inhibit the void formation which is necessary for crack propagation. Thus a transition to plastic stress-response occurs at approximately 20 km depth because dislocation glide is not pressure-inhibited (see Scholz 1990). Tectonic earthquake sources are not found in the plastic region. The deep-focus sources, which occur in subduction zones at depths up to 500 km, are probably intermittently running polymorphic phase transitions, following the original idea of P. W. Bridgman (1945).

The contrast with neutron-star matter is extreme because the latter is not absolutely stable, being in equilibrium only at finite pressure. Those isotropic components of the stress tensor derived from the electrons and from Coulomb interaction (the Coulomb-electron partial pressure $`P_{Ce}`$ which excludes the neutron partial pressure) are one or two orders of magnitude larger than the shear modulus and this largely determines the structure of defects such as monovacancies (Jones 1999). The way in which the nearest neighbours to a monovacancy site relax by displacement considerably reduces the monovacancy formation enthalpy, for example, to 13 Mev at a matter density of $`8\times 10^{13}`$ g cm-3 in the neutron-drip region. Such relaxation is not possible for the nuclei surrounding a void whose linear dimension is of the order of, or greater than, the relativistic electron screening length. In any solid for which the inequality $`P_{Ce}\mu `$ is satisfied, it is anticipated that a void, even if formed, would be unstable against dissociation to monovacancies with a lifetime, in neutron-star matter, perhaps of the order of $`10^{21}`$ s. Thus we can assert that nuclei at a fault plane may have different, probably less, small-distance order than exists elsewhere but almost the same nearest-neighbour separations. Reference to the theory of crack stability (Anderson 1995, see also Landau & Lifshitz 1970) shows that, in brittle fracture, the important properties of the stress distribution of an unstable crack are the zero on the fault plane and the singularity at its tip (in the ideal case) which enable it to propagate into regions of much lower stress. These do not exist in neutron stars owing to the impossibility of forming a sufficiently long-lived void.

Previous formation enthalpy calculations (Jones 2001) have shown that an amorphous heterogeneous solid phase is formed in the crust and is likely to persist as the star cools. The mean square deviation $`\overline{(\mathrm{\Delta }Z)^2}`$ from the average nuclear charge is large compared with unity. The system is analogous with a multi-component amorphous alloy in having some local order, which vanishes with increasing length scales, but differs in having no absolute stability. Shear stress acting on such a system produces faults in the form of localized shear bands. These are thin layers of inhomogeneuos plastic flow, formed sequentially, which permit local strain relaxation through through dissipation and the transfer of stress energy to neighbouring regions. A shear band has structure similar to a viscous layer being deformed adiabatically between parallel plates (see, for example, Xing et al 1999, who also give a typical stress-strain relation). The process is not analogous with brittle fracture because most of the local stress energy, instead of being converted to kinetic energy, is either dissipated or transferred to neighbouring regions. The rotation of a circular cylinder of solid crust under Maxwell stress, by plastic flow on the cylindrical fault surface delimiting it, is an elementary example satisfying the stratification and stability constraint (see also Thompson et al 2000). The plastic flow threshold is $`f_o`$ and the Maxwell stress is assumed to be $`f\mathrm{exp}(s/s_o)`$, decreasing with slip distance $`s`$, where $`s_o`$ and $`f`$ are constants. Suppose that an unspecified stress-transfer incident results in $`\mathrm{\Delta }f=ff_o>0`$ at some instant. The equation of motion is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\rho a\ddot{s}=\mathrm{\Delta }ff{\displaystyle \frac{s}{s_o}}`$ (1)
where $`\rho `$ is the matter density and $`a`$ the cylinder radius. The velocity at time $`t`$ during slip through a distance $`2s_p`$, where $`s_p=s_o\mathrm{\Delta }f/f`$, is $`v=\dot{s}=\stackrel{~}{\omega }s_p\mathrm{sin}(\stackrel{~}{\omega }t)`$. The angular velocity $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }=\sqrt{4f/\rho as_o}`$ is small compared with the values $`10^{45}`$ rad s-1 for which there is efficient coupling of shear and Alfvén waves. ( It is $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }=6.3\times 10^2`$ rad s-1 for the maximum shear stress $`10^{27}`$ dyne cm-2, $`\rho =10^{14}`$ g cm-3, and $`s_o=a=10^4`$ cm.) In principle, adiabatic heating on the fault surface could lead to a localized solid-liquid phase transition, the reduction in viscosity by many orders of magnitude giving slip velocities much larger than $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }s_p`$. An order of magnitude estimate of the condition that slip and adiabatic heating should increase the temperature to $`T_m`$ on the fault surface is given by $`f_os_pCT_m\sqrt{\left(\kappa /\stackrel{~}{\omega }C\right)}`$, where $`\kappa `$ is the thermal conductivity and $`C`$ the specific heat. At a typical density of $`8\times 10^{13}`$ g cm-3, $`T_m=5.8\times 10^9`$ K for the lattice parameters given by Negele & Vautherin (1973). The specific heat is almost entirely that of normal neutrons; $`C=4.9\times 10^{20}`$ erg cm-3K-1 for an effective mass of $`0.8m_n`$ (see Pines & Nozieres 1966). The thermal conductivity $`\kappa =1\times 10^{20}`$ erg cm-1s-1K-1 has been estimated from the electron conductivity results given by Gnedin et al (2001). For $`f_o10^{27}`$ dyne cm-2, this condition shows that a local slip distance exceeding $`s_p50`$ cm would be required to increase the fault surface temperature to $`T_m`$. Thus a slip of this order of magnitude could produce melting and subsequent slip velocities much larger than $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }s_p`$. But the assumption of a single shear band in the form of a cylindrical fault surface is unique and does not appear realistic. The general case is of more complex movements, with considerable deformation, in the form of plastic flow where stress transfer produces many distinct shear bands with small slip distances not satisfying the melting condition. In such flow, the velocity $`vc_s\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ and acceleration $`\dot{v}\omega v`$ necessary for efficient shear wave generation at angular velocity $`\omega `$ are not reached.

## 3 Conclusions

Our conclusion is that the strain relaxation conditions necessary for the generation of shear waves are not present in neutron stars. This need not have a great impact on theories of the pulsar glitch phenomena. In the theory of Ruderman, Zhu & Chen (1998), the movements caused by Maxwell stress and by spin-down of the neutron superfluid in the core can be many orders of magnitude slower than those associated with brittle fracture and yet remain consistent with the observed upper limit on the spin-up time for Vela glitches. But the hypothesis that a plastic-brittle transition, on cooling to internal temperature $`T10^1T_m`$ at ages between $`10^3`$ and $`10^4`$ yr, is responsible for the absence of large glitches in very young pulsars is not consistent with the properties of neutron-star matter fault-planes deduced here. These may also be useful in determining the mechanism for energy release in AXP and SGR sources (Thompson & Duncan 1996, Thompson et al 2000). These authors assume that a plastic-brittle transition occurs at internal magnetic flux densities near to $`B_\mu =\sqrt{4\pi \mu }`$, and that brittle fractures at $`B<B_\mu `$ are the source of Alfvén wave generation (Blaes et al 1989) leading to both quiescent and burst emission. But the mode of fracture is determined by the nature of the solid, and its occurrence depends not on the absolute size of Maxwell stress components but on the extent to which they deviate from values that would give an equilibrium in a completely liquid star. Our conclusion, that brittle fracture is not possible at any temperature, indicates that other mechanisms (see, for example, Thompson, Lyutikov & Kulkarni 2002; Mereghetti et al 2002) need to be considered in more detail.


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# Skyrmion Excitation in Two-Dimensional Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate

## I INTRODUCTION

Topological objects have been attracting interest from various fields of physics for several decadesa . Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of topological excitations in two-dimensional space. The configuration of the first kind, such as vortex or monopole, has a natural singularity and depends on azimuthal angles even at infinity. These excitations have infinite kinetic energy unless they are coupled to other fields vanishing at infinity. In order to obtain a topological structure with finite energy, the configuration of the second kind must be uniform at infinity, which means that the topological structure should be defined in a compactified space. The skyrmion is an example of the second kind topological structure, and the skyrmion excitation in $`n`$-dimensional space exists when the $`n`$th homotopy group of the internal space is nontrivial.

Since its introduction in the 1960s in nuclear physicsb  and its application in QCDc , skyrmions have been found in condensed matter systems such as quantum Hall effectd  and high temperature superconductivity. The achievement of Bose-Enistein condensate (BEc) in dilute Bose gases provide an opportunity to investigate many-body theory in new system. So far some topological excitations such as vortices and vortex rings in scalar BEc have been observed in a number of labse . Recently the realization of a spinor BEcf , whose spin degrees of freedom are unfrozen has generated interest in studying richer topological excitations in such systemsg h i .

The mean field description of spin-$`1`$ BEc was proposed in pioneer works of Ho and Ohmi et alj . The symmetry group of the ground state order parameter of an antiferromagnetic spin-1 BEc is found to be $`U\left(1\right)\times S^2/Z^2`$,Zhou  where $`U(1)`$ denotes the global phase angle and $`S^2`$ is a unit sphere denoting all orientation of the spin quantization axis. The additional $`Z^2`$ is because the refection of spin quantization axis is equivalent to the change the global phase by $`\pi `$. The general form of such a spinor field is

$$\zeta =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{c}m_x+im_y\\ \sqrt{2}m_z\\ m_x+im_y\end{array}\right)$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{}{m}`$ is the Bloch vector. It should be pointed out that the second homotopy group of $`S^2`$ is homomorphic to integer group, this not only tells us of the existence of monopole excitation in three-dimensional antiferromagnetic BEc, which had been investigated by  H.T.C. Stoof  et alh , but also implies the existence of the skyrmion excitation in two-dimensional case.

It is naturally to ask if this excitation mode is energetically stable or not. In this paper, we answer the question within the Thomas-Fermi approximation and a variational method, and we find that the skyrmion is always energetically unstable. In other words, in presence of any energy dissipation mechanism, the spin texture will always decay. However, this result does not imply that the skyrmion can not be created, a skyrmion with half topological charge has been successfully generated in a recent experiment by adiabatic deformation of the magnetic trapex . Although the half skyrmion created in this experiment is different from that discussed in this paper, it is believed that a skyrmion with integer winding number can also be created in the near future.

Furthermore, it is useful to discover whether the skyrmion decays by expanding to infinity size or shrinking to tiny size after it is created, and to understand how its center of mass moves. To answer these two questions, we need to obtain the energy of skyrmion as a function of its size and position, this energy function is the central result of our paper. We also find that the presence of a vortex influences skyrmion’s motion. Additionally based on the results of Ref.g , we will point out that the decay rate of high winding number skyrmions will be much slower than those with winding number $`1`$.

## II The energetic stability of $`Q=1`$ Skyrmion

When we only focus on the energy property of skyrmions, we can first neglect the interaction in spin channel which disrupt the $`S^2`$ order parameter, and the energy functional for such BEc can be simplified as following:

$`K(\phi ,\zeta )={\displaystyle d^2\stackrel{}{r}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\left|\phi \right|^2+\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\left|\zeta \right|^2\left|\phi \right|^2\left(\mu V_{trap}(\stackrel{}{r})\right)\left|\phi \right|^2+\frac{4\pi \mathrm{}^2a_{sc}N}{m}\left|\phi \right|^4\right)}`$ (2)
$`\mu `$ is the chemical potential and $`V_{trap}`$ is the confining trap potential. In this section, we will use conformal mapping to construct a general skyrmion excitation with winding number $`Q=1`$. These variational wave functions are used to show that such skyrmions are always energetically unstable.

Equation (2) is a nonlinear sigma model coupled to a $`\phi ^4`$ model in an external potential. An $`n`$-skyrmion is an instanton solution to the $`1+1`$ dimensional nonlinear sigma modela , this skyrmion minimizes the energy functional in the sector of each homotopy class, and can be constructed from the help of fractional linear mapping which maps the compactified complex space into itself, and the most general form of this mapping is

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=f(z)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{a_iz+b_i}{c_iz+d_i}$$
(3)
with the constraint $`a_id_ib_ic_i=1`$, where $`N`$ is the winding number. Complex number $`\omega `$ are mapped to vectors on the unit sphere via

$$m_x=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }+\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{1+\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|^2},m_y=i\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{1+\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|^2},m_z=\frac{\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|^21}{\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|^2+1}$$
(4)
Owing to the conformal invariance of the nonlinear sigma model, its classical solutions are infinitely degenerate and the total energy is independent of the parameters in the analytical function $`f\left(z\right)`$. The coupling between the spinor field $`\zeta `$ and the superfluid field $`\phi `$ breaks the conformal invariance, and skyrmions are not classical solutions to our model . The spin texture defined by equation(3) can however be used in a variational calculation. The texture of spinor field contributes an effective potential, which changes the density profile. Given an effective potential, the minimum of the energy functional, is function of the parameters in the conformal mapping $`f\left(z\right)`$. This function will tell us the information about the energetic stability of skyrmion excitation.

We first consider the $`Q=1`$ case, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=f\left(z\right)=\frac{az+b}{cz+d}`$. It is not difficult to show that

$$\left|\zeta \right|^2=8\frac{\left|f^{}\left(z\right)\right|^2}{\left[1+\left|f\left(z\right)\right|^2\right]^2}=\frac{8}{\left[\left|cz+d\right|^2+\left|az+b\right|^2\right]^2}$$
(5)
On the condition $`adbc=1`$, the effective potential is non-singular implying the density remains finite at the skyrmion core. This result is consistent with the coreless character of skyrmion excitation. The effective potential has two barrier localized at $`z=\frac{d}{c}`$ and $`z=\frac{b}{a}`$, with the height $`\left|c\right|^4`$ and $`\left|a\right|^4`$ respectively, where the density of the condensate should be smaller than the surrounding. Recall that in the repulsive case the interaction constant $`g`$ is positive, both the interaction energy and the kinetic energy favor homogenous density profile, too much undulation will no doubt increase the energy, so the choice $`c=0`$ helps to decrease the energy. This value of $`c`$ also produces the most symmetric texture. The function $`f\left(z\right)`$ is reduced to $`a^2(zz_1)`$, where the parameters $`a`$ and $`z_1`$ characterizes the size and location of the skyrmion. l .

For simplicity, we first force $`z_1=0`$ to be at the center of the trap. Non-zero $`z_1`$ will be discussed later. The effective potential from the spin texture now is $`\frac{1}{\left[\left|\frac{1}{a}\right|^2+\left|a\right|^2r^2\right]^2}`$, and the full potential is showed in Figure 1 for different $`a`$. Notice that the barrier height of the effective potential is proportional to $`\left|a\right|^4`$, and that integrating the potential energy over the whole two-dimension space results in a constant. In the limit $`a0`$, the effective potential spreads uniformly throughout the whole space. In the contrary limit of infinite $`a`$, the effective potential becomes a $`\delta `$ function.

We now investigate the energetic stability of skyrmion in the framework of TF approximation where the term $`|\phi |^2`$ is neglected. In this approximation, the density profile is

$$n\left(\stackrel{}{r}\right)=\left(\mu a_{HO}^2r^2\frac{8}{\left[\left(\frac{1}{a}\right)^2+a^2r^2\right]^2}\right)\frac{1}{2g}\mathrm{\Theta }\left(\mu a_{HO}^2r^2\frac{8}{\left[\left(\frac{1}{a}\right)^2+a^2r^2\right]^2}\right)$$
(6)
in which $`a_{HO}=\left(\frac{m\omega }{\mathrm{}}\right)^2`$ and $`g=8\pi a_{sc}N`$, $`\omega `$ is the frequency of the harmonic trap, and $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)`$ is a step function. The normalization condition and the constraint that the condensate density is non-negative give the following two equations:

$$\frac{1}{2g}\underset{0}{\overset{x}{}}\underset{0}{\overset{2\pi }{}}r𝑑r𝑑\theta \left[\mu a_{HO}^2r^2\frac{8}{\left[\left(\frac{1}{a}\right)^2+a^2r^2\right]^2}\right]=1$$
(7)
$$\mu a_{HO}^2x^2\frac{8}{\left[\left(\frac{1}{a}\right)^2+a^2x^2\right]^2}=0$$
(8)
where $`x`$ is the value of $`r`$ at which the Thomas-Fermi density vanishes. Solving the two equations we obtain the relationship between the chemical potential $`\mu `$, Thomas-Fermi radius $`x`$ and the skyrmion’s size $`a`$. One can substitute these relationships back to the energy functional and then obtain the minimal energy $`E`$ as a function of size $`a`$ which is plotted in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows that the minimal energy $`E`$ has two minima occurring at zero and infinity, and there exists a critical size $`a_c`$ which corresponds to the maximal value of $`E`$. When $`a`$ is quite large, the TF approximation fails, we use variational density profile to obtain a more accurate resultm , which is shown in Figure 3.

Physically, we can understand the two figures in the following way. When the size parameter $`a`$ is sufficiently small, the spin configuration within the TF radius becomes uniform, the effective potential becomes flat inside the TF radius and just becomes a uniform shift of the chemical potential. So the energy approaches the ground state energy as $`a0`$. In the opposite limit, the barrier is quite high and thus the density almost vanishes at the center of the skyrmion, but at the same time the width of the barrier becomes narrow. The energy cost of the low density region is proportional to the volume and decreases as $`a`$ becoming larger. In this case the skyrmion can be observable by imaging the density profile, and observing the low density core. These figures tell us that the $`Q=1`$ skyrmion is energetically unstable, in presence of any weak dissipation, it will either expand to become unobservable, or shrink to an infinitesimal size. As a semi-classical object the dissipative dynamics of a skyrmion depends on whether or not its initial size is larger than the critical size $`a_c`$.

For the same reason, the position $`z_1`$ of the skyrmion tends to move toward the edge of the condensate where the density is lower and the energy cost $`V_{eff}|\phi |^2`$ is smaller.

## III Dissipation Dynamics

Although we believe that the energetically unstable skyrmion will decay in presence of any weak dissipation, the exact description of the dynamics depends on the details of the dissipation mechanism. A possible source of dissipation is interaction with the non-condensed component. Since skyrmion is a global topological object and the system is in a quite low temperature, this may not be important. Another source of dissipation is the spontaneous emission of other excitation modes, such as phonons mode or vortices, similar to the spontaneous emission of an excited atom. This mechanism is observed in numerical studies of superfluid vortex recconnection n . Let us discuss the process in more detail. When $`a`$ increases, the peak of effective potential grows and atoms are pushed away from the center of the skyrmion. The kinetic energy of these atoms will lead to oscillatory motion of the condensate density. If the trap harmonic potential is anisotropic, the extracted atoms can also rotate to form a vortex. These modes take energy away from the skyrmion, leading to a change of the skyrmion size.

## IV Interaction Between A Vortex and A Skyrmion

We rewrite $`\phi `$ as $`\mathrm{\Psi }e^{i\theta }`$. In equation (2) the phase field $`\theta `$ is not directly coupled to the spinor field $`\zeta `$, but they both interacts with the density field. Since both vortices and skyrmion have low density cores, it is favorable that the skyrmion core fits entirely within the vortex, thus one expects that the presence of vortex change the dominant trend of the evolvement of the skyrmion from expanding to shrinking, and one should find the skyrmion attracted to the vortex center instead of moving toward the cloud’s edge.

In principle, we can integrate out the $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ field in the action and obtain the effective Hamiltonian to describe the interaction between a vortex and a skyrmion. Unfortunately the $`\mathrm{\Psi }^4`$ term makes this procedure difficult. However in the TF approximation, where the derivative terms of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ are neglected, the action is a quadratic form of the density field $`n`$. We can integrate it out and obtain an effective Hamiltonian describing the interaction between $`\theta `$ and $`\zeta `$:

$$H_{int}=\frac{1}{2g}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\right)^2d^2\stackrel{}{r}\left(\left|\theta \right|^2\left|\zeta \right|^2\right)$$
(9)
The interaction energy will be smallest when the maximum of $`\left|\theta \right|`$ and $`\left|\zeta \right|`$ coincide. This result is consistent with the above picture.

## V $`Q>1`$ Skyrmion

In this section we discuss skyrmions with $`Q>1`$, demonstrating their differences from the $`Q=1`$ skyrmion. Following the logic of the second section, we choose the most symmetric case, $`f\left(z\right)=a^2z^n`$, finding the effective potential

$$V_n=8\frac{n^2r^{2n2}}{[(\frac{1}{a})^2+a^2r^{2n}]^2}$$
(10)
The barrier of $`V_n`$ ($`n>2`$) lies on a circle

$`r=\left({\displaystyle \frac{2n2}{2n+2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}\right)^4\right)^{\frac{1}{2n}}`$ (11)
with the height

$`V_{max}=2\left(n^21\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{2n+1}{2n1}}a^4\right)^{\frac{1}{n}}`$ (12)
this structure is markedly different from $`V_1`$ whose peak is always localized at its center. In the center, the effective potentials is always zero for any $`n2`$. Figure 4 shows $`V_2`$ for different value of $`a`$. As $`a`$ is decreasing, the location of the off-center peak of the potential approaches infinity as $`\left(\frac{1}{a}\right)^{\frac{4}{2n}}`$ and its height decreases as $`a^{\frac{4}{n}}`$. Because the size of condensate is always finite, this implies that it is energetically favorable for a skyrmion to increase to a larger size so that the peak of the effective potential is outside the TF radius and the effective potential becomes small and uniform inside the condensate. What is different from the $`Q=1`$ case is the atoms must tunnel through the barrier of the effective potential as the size increases. Thus, the rate of the process will be characterized by the WKB tunnelling rate. The situation has been studied carefully in Refg , and it showed that the tunnelling rate of such process may be long enough to form a dynamic metastable skyrmion.

## VI Conclusion

In summary, we constructed and studied the skyrmion excitation mode of the spinor field and showed that any finite size skyrmion is always unstable. Through a variational study of the skyrmion excitation energy for different size and position, we find that it is energetically favorable for skyrmion to expand to infinite size or shrinking to infinitesimal size, resolution in a uniform spin texture in most part of the condensate. We discussed the interplay between skyrmion modes and other excitation modes: (1) the emission phonons can dissipate the skyrmion energy and change its size, and (2) the vortex has attractive interactions with a skyrmion. We also showed that the behavior of $`Q>1`$ skyrmions are quite different from $`Q=1`$ skyrmion since the effective potentials induced by their configuration have some markedly difference. However, all these discussions are concentrated on properties of the skyrmion mode its itself and a qualitative prediction on the skyrmion dynamics is made from the energetic consideration. To study the detail of skyrmion dynamic process, it is important to consider the interaction in spin channel, which cause spin fluctuations exceeding the $`S^2`$ internal space.h

In the end, noticing that $`\zeta `$ represents local spin-gauge degrees of freedom, we remark that the model we explored in this paper shares some features of Yang-Mills theory, that is, the instanton solutions having the same winding number are saddle points of the Langrangian and are energetically degenerate although they have different shape and size, because of the local scaling invariance of the pure gauge theory. However, when the coupling to matter field breaks the conformal symmetry, the instanton solutions are no longer classical solutions and have different actions. In addition, the dynamic term of gauge field is absent in our model. The conclusion of energetic instability of any finite size skyrmion is determined by the above two features.

Acknowledgements: The authors thank Professor C.N. Yang for encouraging. We acknowledge Professor Tin-Lun Ho for helpful discussion, and Doctor Erich Mueller, L$`\ddot{u}`$ Rong for his a lot of wonderful comments and suggestions. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China ( Grant No. 10247002 and 90103004 )


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# On the central structure of M15

## 1 Introduction

Gerssen et al. (2002) have recently reported evidence for an intermediate-mass ($`1.7\pm 2.7\times 10^3M_{}`$) black hole (IMBH) at the center of globular cluster M15. If confirmed, this would be an exciting and important discovery, and may necessitate a fundamental change in our understanding of the dynamical evolution of globular clusters. To evaluate the need for such a change, we confront the observations with the most detailed cluster simulations currently available.

In the standard view (Spitzer, 1987; Meylan and Heggie, 1997), globular clusters are born with relatively low central densities. Through two-body relaxation, some of them may reach core collapse, with very high central stellar density. If the cluster contains a significant population ($`\stackrel{>}{}10`$%) of primordial binaries, the kinetic energy released by binary–binary and binary–single-star interactions eventually halts the contraction of the core and the cluster reaches a quasi-steady state (Goodman and Hut, 1989) that may endure for substantially longer than a Hubble time. If the cluster contains few primordial binaries, the contraction of the core is halted instead at much higher density by the formation of binaries through three-body interactions. In this case, there is no steady state, and the core may exhibit gravothermal oscillations (Bettwieser and Sugimoto, 1984; Makino, 1997).

In this picture, the central density of a globular cluster becomes high only after several gigayears, since it typically takes several half-mass relaxation times for core collapse to occur. This view is observationally well supported, since most Galactic globular clusters do have sizeable cores (Djorgovski and Meylan, 1994; Harris, 1996). It is unlikely that an IMBH could have formed as a result of M15’s core collapse, as present conditions at the cluster center are unsuitable for runaway stellar collisions to occur (Lee, 1987; Portegies Zwart and McMillan, 2002). Alternative possibilities are that the cluster was initially very compact and that a runaway merger leading to an IMBH may have occurred (Portegies Zwart et al., 1999), or that an initial seed black hole grew slowly over a Hubble time via occasional collisions with other stars (Miller and Hamilton, 2002), forming an IMBH by the present time.

In this paper we compare the M15 observations with direct $`N`$-body simulations of star clusters in which stellar evolution and the effects of the Galactic tidal field are realistically taken into account (Baumgardt and Makino, 2002). In §2 we describe our cluster model and in §3, we present “observations” of our model cluster and compare them with the actual observations of M15. We briefly summarize and conclude in §4.

## 2 Model description

Baumgardt and Makino (2002) have performed simulations of star clusters with up to 131072 (128k) stars, using the NBODY4 code (Aarseth, 1999) on the GRAPE-6 computer (Makino et al., 2002). Here we concentrate on a member of their “Family 2.” Initial stellar masses were chosen from a Kroupa (2001) mass function with lower and upper mass limits of 0.1 and 15 $`M_{}`$. Primordial binaries were not included. The initial distribution of stars was given by a King model with dimensionless central potential $`W_0=7`$. The model cluster was placed on a circular orbit at a distance of 8.5 kpc from the Galactic center. The Galactic potential was treated as a singular isothermal sphere with a constant rotation velocity of 220 km/s. Stellar evolution was modeled according to Hurley et al. (2000). The initial half-mass radius of the cluster (with $`N=128`$k stars and a mass of $`7.2\times 10^4`$ M) was 7.1 pc; the initial half-mass crossing time was 4.1 Myr. Core collapse occurred at $`T=12.6`$ Gyr, when the remaining cluster mass was $`2\times 10^4`$ M. The calculation, to the point of complete dissolution, took about 1000 hours computing time on a 4-board, single-host GRAPE-6 system. Details of the calculation are described in Baumgardt and Makino (2002).

Note that our 128k-body model still contains far fewer stars than M15—we cannot yet perform star-by-star simulations of a relatively large globular cluster. Rather, we compare nondimensional quantities, such as the radial dependence of the velocity dispersion, its slope, $`M/L`$ etc. In the next section we present a comparison of the luminosity and velocity dispersion profiles near the centers of the two systems.

In the calculations of Baumgardt and Makino (2002), collisions between stars were not taken into account, and hence massive black holes could not form. We have also performed simulations in which stellar collisions were properly included (Portegies Zwart et al., 2001; Portegies Zwart and McMillan, 2002) and find that, for initial conditions appropriate for globular clusters, the neglect of stellar collisions is justified.

## 3 Analysis

Figure 1 shows the “observed” line-of-sight velocity dispersion profile of our model cluster. In order to improve statistics, we have superimposed ten snapshots spanning a 500 Myr period following core collapse. We calculated the velocity dispersion of the model cluster in two ways. First, we determined the velocity dispersion using all stars (including compact remnants), averaging over three orthogonal directions. In the second method, we used only stars brighter than $`V=19`$ at the distance of M15 (assumed to be 10 kpc), the sample actually used by Gerssen et al. (2002). Except for the innermost parts, both profiles agree rather well with each other; within the error bars, the model velocity dispersion profile is also very similar to that of M15 (Figure 9 of Gerssen et al. 2002).

Figure 2 depicts the surface number density of bright ($`V<22`$) stars and of compact remnants. The adopted cutoff of $`V=22`$ is the photometric limit found in the study of the cluster center by Sosin and King (1997), and is also consistent with the limit of $`V=22.5`$ in the data of van der Marel et al. (2002). For both groups, the inner region shows clear power-law cusps, with indices of approximately $`0.8`$ and $`1.2`$, respectively. The surface density of bright stars is again in very good agreement with the HST WFPC2 and FOC star count results (Guhathakurta et al., 1996; Sosin and King, 1997).

A cluster in deep collapse should have a density profile steeper than isothermal, since the velocity dispersion increases inward (Lynden-Bell & Eggleton, 1980; Cohn, 1980). One might wonder why the central density profile of bright stars shows a slope shallower than that of an isothermal sphere ($`r^1`$ in projection). The reason is simply that the bright stars are not the most massive components in present-day globular clusters (Murphy & Cohn, 1988; Lugger et al., 1995). Compact remnants (neutron stars and massive white dwarfs) are more massive, and are the dominant population in the central region (see Figure 2). Their density profile ($`\rho r^{2.2}`$ in 3 dimensions) is close to the theoretical prediction for the central profile of a core-collapsed cluster: $`\rho r^{2.26}`$ (see Baumgardt et al. (2002) and references therein). As a consequence, proper interpretation of Figure 1 must take into account the substantial radial variation of the mass to light ratio in the cluster core.

As an illustration, we compare the observed velocity dispersion profile of our model with the velocity dispersion profile inferred from the distribution of bright stars, using the Jeans equation with an isotropic velocity distribution and a constant mass-to-light ratio. The numerical procedure is as described by Gerssen et al. (2002) (section 5). Figure 3 shows the result. Not surprisingly, we find a large discrepancy between the inferred velocity dispersion and the observed profile, as illustrated by the lowest dashed line in Figure 3. The predicted central velocity dispersion, based on the mass contribution of the visible stars, would actually dip in the center, contrary to what is observed. Most of the discrepancy is caused by the neglect of the central concentration of dark matter in the form of stellar remnants. Trying to improve the fit by introducing a central point mass as a free parameter leads to a central mass of approximately 80 $`\text{M}_{}`$ (second dashed line from the top in Figure 3).

Gerssen et al. (2002) have analysed the velocity distribution of the bright stars in M15, using two different methods and averaging the results. They first assume a constant mass-to-light ratio, then adopt a more realistic radial run of mass to light, obtained from Fokker-Planck simulations (Dull et al., 1997). Their first method leads to an inferred central black hole mass of $`3.2\times 10^3\text{M}_{}`$, containing a fraction of $`3.2\times 10^3\text{M}_{}/4.9\times 10^5\text{M}_{}=0.65\%`$ of the total cluster mass. (The choice of M15 mass is taken from Dull et al.) This is similar to the fractional mass of the central point mass deduced above from Figure 3, to which we ascribed a mass ratio of $`80\text{M}_{}/20,000\text{M}_{}=0.4\%`$ of our cluster mass.

Using the correct cluster potential (solid line in Figure 3) in the analysis of our simulations recovers the velocity dispersion of stars of $`V<19`$ without the need for a central point mass. In effect, we use the (known) variation in the mass-to-light ratio of the model cluster to convert from the observed $`V<22`$ number density to the actual potential. Comparison of the central point-mass data with the error bars in the “observed” ($`V<19`$) velocity dispersion in Figure 3 suggests that the largest point mass that could be hidden in the data has a mass of $`\stackrel{<}{}40M_{}`$. This would correspond to $`\stackrel{<}{}10^3M_{}`$ in the M15 system. In contrast, the equivalent (second) method employed by Gerssen et al. (2002) actually increased the inferred central mass to $`4.5\times 10^3\text{M}_{}`$. This mass determination was subsequently shown to be erroneous (Gerssen et al., 2003). 111Gerssen et al. (2003) report that Figures 9 and 12 of Dull al. contained errors which critically affected their analysis. They were already aware of this fact, and informed us of it after receiving a copy of the submitted manuscript of the current paper. The correct treatment yielded a formal mass of $`1.7\times 10^3\text{M}_{}`$; however a mass of zero was excluded only at the $`\frac{1}{2}\sigma `$ level.

In their addendum, (Gerssen et al., 2003) maintain that a central black hole remains a viable interpretation of the M15 data, citing the probability that most neutron stars would have escaped the cluster on formation, in contradiction to the assumption of 100% neutron star retention made by Dull et al. (1997) and also in Figure 3 above. Most neutron stars receive substantial “kicks” at birth (Lyne & Lorimer, 1994), which may eject them from their parent cluster. Theoretical estimates of the retention fraction range from $`5`$ to $``$20% (Drukier, 1996). If no neutron stars were present in the core, the slope of the luminosity profile would be expected to steepen somewhat (Takahashi & Lee, 2000).

To address this possibility, we have repeated our earlier simulation with the extreme alternative assumption that no neutron stars were retained. The result is plotted in Figure 4, which presents the analogous information to Figure 3 for this model. The discrepancy between the “observed” velocity profile and the expected profile calculated from the distribution of stars with $`V<22`$, assuming a constant mass-to-light ratio, still exists, since in this case massive white dwarfs have accumulated in the center and replaced the main-sequence stars. Thus, changing the neutron star retention fraction does not significantly alter our conclusion. The assumption of constant $`M/L`$ now yields a black-hole mass of $`40M_{\mathrm{}}`$, half the value found in Figure 3, since massive white dwarfs and neutron stars contributed roughly equally to the central dark mass in that model.

Using the same reasoning as before, we then estimate a value of $`20M_{\mathrm{}}`$, for the maximum mass that could be hidden in the form of a central black hole. In the case of M15, this would correspond to $`\stackrel{<}{}500M_{}`$. We note, however, that the fitting procedure is relatively insensitive to the precise nature of the dark matter contained within the innermost 0.5 pc (H. Cohn and P. Lugger, 2002, private communication). The present data are probably consistent with dark matter in the form of a range of combinations of neutron stars, massive white dwarfs, or an intermediate-mass black hole.

## 4 Conclusions

In this paper we compare recent observations of the central regions of M15 with recent direct $`N`$-body simulations of realistic models of star clusters. We find that the velocity dispersion and luminosity profiles obtained from the $`N`$-body simulations, after appropriate scaling, reproduce the observations without any need to invoke a central point mass. Earlier Fokker–Planck results without a black hole (Dull et al., 1997, 2002) are also consistent with the current observations. Thus we conclude that the M15 observations can be adequately explained without recourse to a central massive black hole.

Although the current observations do not prove the existence of a central massive black hole, they do not disprove it either. Our analysis (Figure 3) indicates that a moderate intermediate-mass black hole of $`10^3`$ solar masses is still possible. Such an object is not altogether unexpected, since it might have formed early in the cluster’s evolution through runaway merging (Ebisuzaki et al., 2001; Portegies Zwart and McMillan, 2002). To confirm this interesting possibility, or to place more stringent limits on the mass of a possible black hole, will require detailed evolutionary modeling of the cluster for different evolutionary scenarios. We plan to carry out such simulations in the near future.

## Acknowledgments

HB and JM thank Toshi Fukushige and Yoko Funato for stimulating discussions; PH and SM acknowledge several collegial conversations with Roeland van der Marel, Karl Gebhardt, Haldan Cohn and Phyllis Lugger following submission of this paper. We also acknowledge detailed and helpful comments on the manuscript by Phyllis Lugger and an anonymous second referee. This work is supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B (13440058) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, by grants NASA ATP grants NAG5-6964 and NAG5-9264, and by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA)


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

If you start to write a software, you cannot imagine that anybody wants to use it, too. It’s often that you start to write a part of software for your own use only.

An example: You want to analyse your experimental data. Your data are stored in an electronic form, and you want to find out the maximum count for each spectrum you measured. The first approach is to look at the files if they are stored in a human readable format and find out the maximum by searching by hand. It is a stupid job. This may also been done by a computer. It is foolish enough to do this job if you tell it, what is to be done. The next step is to write all maxima for all files you analysed and draw a plot with these values. The written program helps you to analyse the data. You tell this to one of your colleagues who wants to use it, too. But his machine is not same as yours. He has a different operation system, compiler, etc.

To install this software on his machine you have to change your Makefile (which hopefully exists). Afterwards you try to create your software on this machine. After some efforts you may finish this job. But actually you would like to have a system doing this job for you. You remembered that in some software packages you downloaded from the WWW they told you to install a package by typing in only the following three commands:

```
user> ./configure
user> make
user> make install

```

and the software is installed and useable.

You wondered, where this mysterious configure comes from and who wrotes this nearly incomprehensible Makefile, since your own Makefile look much simpler. The wizards who have done these jobs are: the autotools.

This set of tools comes from the GNU world. It consists of three parts: autoconf, automake, and libtool. autoconf is designed for checking the system (testing compiler, linker, its options and so on), automake for creating a makefile with automatically added standard rules from a simple template file, and libtool assists the developer during the creation of statically and/or dynamically linked libraries. All three may be used alone, but the combination of all of them is the most efficient way.

I will give an introduction of using the autotools in combination. I will show, how you can write a software which is portable from one to another system.

## 2 Example

Let’s consider the following situation. You have some files belonging to the project (some of these files build a library):

```
main.c
func_a.h
func_a.c
func_b.h
func_b.c

```

The file main.c contains the code for the main program whereas func\_a.c and func\_b.c contain the code for two functions A() and B() .

The files func\_a.h and func\_b.h contain the declarations of functions A() and B().

You want to generate a program myprog and a library libmylib. The library may be created as static as well as as shared library.

You have to write two files, configure.ac and Makefile.am for doing this job. As you can imagine the file configure.ac will contain some information for the configuration of the software and the Makefile.am some information for building the software from the sources.

At first let’s have a look at the configure.ac file.

## 3 configure.ac file

The configure.ac file starts with a line:

```
AC_INIT(myproject, 1.0.0, [myproject-bug@myproject.org])

```

This lines tells the system: Generate a project named myproject with the version number 1.0.0. The last parameter gives the email address by which the developer of this project may be contacted.

The meaning of the next three lines is the following:

```
AC_PREREQ(2.52)
AC_COPYRIGHT([(c) Jens Krueger])
AC_REVISION([1.0])

```

the system requires an autoconf version at least 2.52, it defines the copyright message and defines the version of this file.

By the help of

```
AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR(func_a.c)

```

the system may verify that it works on the right system. The parameter of AC\_CONFIG\_SRCDIR should point to a file unique for this project.

```
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.6])

```

gives autotools the input that at least the version 1.6 of automake is required.

So up to this point you have configured a lot of things only for the autotools itself, but nothing for your own project with the exception of the first line. For compiling your project you need a C compiler. To tell autotools: ”Search for a C compiler and linker and find out the right options” you use the following line.

```
AC_PROG_CC

```

The next line checks the existence of libtool which is very helpful for creating libraries.

```
AC_PROG_LIBTOOL

```

An useful feature of autotools is the preselection of an installation path. As developer you may preselect a path for the installation of the software package. If the user does not overwrite this during the configuration run, the default installation path will be used. The line

```
AC_DEFAULT_PREFIX(/usr/local)

```

sets the default installation path. This may be overwritten during the configuration time with the option --prefix=/new-installation-path.

The last lines are very interesting for the project. These lines tell the autotools which files have to be created. The AC\_CONFIG\_FILES macro defines the file names to be created. For each file given in this list, a file with the extension ”.in” has to exist. In your example you need a file Makefile.in. But where does it come from? It comes from the Makefile.am. How this works will be explained in the next chapter. AC\_OUTPUT macro performs the creation of the files given by the AC\_CONFIG\_FILES macro.

```
AC_CONFIG_FILES(Makefile)
AC_OUTPUT

```

## 4 Makefile.am file

As described in the previous chapter, the Makefile.am leads to a Makefile which can be used by the make command.

The Makefile.am contains the following lines:

```
bin_PROGRAMS = myprog
myprog_SOURCES = main.c
lib_LTLIBRARIES = libmylib.la
libmylib_la_SOURCES = func_a.c func_b.c
include_HEADERS = func_a.h func_b.h

```

Now let’s have a deeper look into the Makefile.am. The first line declares that you want to generate an executeable, which should be installed in the $prefix/bin directory, called myprog. The following line gives information on the source file(s) from which the myprog should be generated: main.c. If the myprog should also be generated from file myprog.c you have simply to add myprog.c to this line.

The third line tells you that you want to build a so-called libtool archive (.la). This is a library, but at this time you have not to decide whether you want to use static or shared libraries. This will be done at configuration time. The library will be installed in the $prefix/lib directory.

The fourth line defines the sources from which the library has to be built up. Please pay attention to the fact, that the ’.’ has been replaced by a underscore character.

The last line defines that the files func\_a.h and func\_b.h have to be installed in the $prefix/include directory.

## 5 Preparing the system for a build

Now you have finished the set-up of your project and you should start the creation of the configure file.

By calling

```
user> libtoolize --copy --automake

```

you tell the libtool package that you want to use it in cooperation with the automake package and it should copy all neccessary files into the local directory. Omitting the parameter `--copy` the libtoolize command only creates symbolic links instead of copies of its administrative files.

The next step you have to do is to call the aclocal program, which extracts all macros used in the configure.ac and generates a file aclocal.m4 later used by autoconf.

The third call

```
user> automake --copy --add-missing

```

generates a template Makefile.in and installs some administrative files. Omitting the parameter `--copy` similarly to the libtoolize call leads to symbolic links instead of local copies of the admin files. You get some messages:

```
Makefile.am: required file ‘./NEWS’ not found
Makefile.am: required file ‘./README’ not found
Makefile.am: required file ‘./AUTHORS’ not found
Makefile.am: required file ‘./ChangeLog’ not found

```

These missing files are required in the GNU world. It is a good idea to create these files by

```
user> touch NEWS README AUTHORS ChangeLog

```

and fill them with useful information about your project. Additionally automake creates two other files COPYING and INSTALL which contain the GNU Public License and the standard installation guide of the project. If you want to change the license or the installation guide simply change the content of these files. If you created them as symbolic links remove them and create regular files with the same name.

At last you have to call

```
user> autoconf

```

which produces the configure script.

The preparations for generating a portable build process are finished. Now you configure your system by typing in:

```
user> ./configure

```

The output of this command tells you a lot of things, for example what kind of C compiler is installed and found on the system, whether the system may create static or shared libraries, whether they should be created, and so on. If the call does finish without any errors you may start your build process by typing in

```
user> make

```

If the build process ran successfully, you may install your package by typing:

```
user> make install

```

The reverse process may be called by typing

```
user> make uninstall

```

## 6 Roll out

If your package runs correctly you need a way for distributing your software in a tar’ed format. The simplest but not the best way is to tar the complete directory, in which you built your software. The autotools help you with two targets in the Makefile which are generated automatically: dist and distcheck.

The dist target provides the creation of a tar file containing all necessary files for a build process on another machine. The created tar file has to be installed on the target machine. But this way is not safe. A better way is to call the target distcheck.

This target creates a tar file, installs this in a temporary directory, calls the configure script and the make command to build the software, to install, and to uninstall it. If the process was successful you get the message:

```
================================================
myproject-1.0.0.tar.gz is ready for distribution
================================================

```

This message tells you that your software package distributed in the
`myproject-1.0.0.tar.gz` file may be installable on other machines with different operating systems and architectures.

## 7 Extending the configuration task

At this point we have to make some remarks: Above a very simple example was discusssed to show you how to use the autotools. They are powerful and provide a lot of macros for distinct tasks. So it is possible:

* to search for a special library
* to search for a special function in a library
* to look for a special header file on the target system
* and, and, …

autotools also give you the chance to create a machine dependent config file which may be included in your sources. This controls the compile process of the sources depending on the found header files, compilers, library versions and so on.

Let’s extend your project by some of these features. Assuming you want to use the NeXus library  in your project some requirements have to be fulfilled. You have to install the HDF library  on which NeXus is based and the NeXus library itself.

What do you have to do now? For the inclusion of NeXus you need the declaration of the NeXus API which is given in the file napi.h as well as the library libNeXus either in statically or dynamically linked form. For the HDF library you need the HDF API, which is given in the file mfhdf.h and the library itself libmfhdf. With this knowledge you may tell your configuration system that it has to look for these files.

This has to be done in the configure.ac file. Please insert after line 9 the following lines:

```
AC_CHECK_HEADERS([napi.h mfhdf.h],
        [],
        AC_MSG_ERROR([Did not found the NeXus headers]))

```

These lines instruct the autotools to search in the standard include pathes for the files napi.h and mfhdf.h. If one of these file was not found the configure script stops with an error message:

```
configure: error: Did not found the NeXus headers.

```

For searching the HDF library you have to add these lines into your file configure.ac:

```
AC_CHECK_LIB(mfhdf, Hclose,
        AC_MSG_RESULT([HDF library found]),
        AC_MSG_ERROR([Did not found the HDF library]),
Ψ[-ldf -ljpeg -lz])

```

It is designed to search for a special function (in this case Hclose) in the library libmfhdf to test the existence of the library. If it is found configure outputs:

```
HDF library found.

```

or else it gives an error message that it did not found the library and stops its execution.

For the search of the NeXus library you should add:

```
AC_CHECK_LIB(NeXus, nxiclose_,
         [],
         AC_MSG_ERROR([Did not found the NeXus library]))

```

The `AC_CHECK_LIB` assumes that the tested function has no parameters. It tests only the linking of the program, if you want to test the right parameters of a certain function you have to perform more sophisticated tests. For this a deeper look into the manuals , , or the book  helps.

## 8 Summary

This paper gives a short introduction into the use of autotools, i.e. autoconf, automake, and libtool. At hand of a little example its usage is explained, and it is discussed how the project may be extended and adopted to the specific environment. The use of autotools simplifies the creation and distribution of software which has to run on different systems.