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# Microwave anisotropies from the Galactic halo

## 1 Introduction

Studies of the microwave sky play a critical rôle in cosmology, and measurements of the degree-scale microwave anisotropies can provide tight constraints on the cosmological model (e.g. Hu and Dodelson 2002). It is therefore particularly important that we understand the power-spectrum arising from foreground microwave sources, and much attention has already been given to this topic (e.g. Tegmark and Efstathiou 1996; de Oliveira-Costa and Tegmark 1999). The various foreground sources which have been considered to date include: normal galaxies and Active Galactic Nuclei; Galactic synchrotron emission; Galactic free-free emission; and Galactic dust emission. At frequencies in the range $`50\nu 150`$ GHz, none of these sources is thought to make a significant contribution to the power-spectrum for multipoles $`l500`$ (Tegmark and Efstathiou 1996). This conclusion must be regarded as tentative in the case of the extragalactic sources, because the difficulty of undertaking large area surveys at high radio-frequencies means that the source populations are poorly constrained in this frequency range — see Toffolatti et al (1999) for a discussion. The Galactic emission, on the other hand, is known to be very significant at both low frequencies (synchrotron) and high frequencies (dust); and, in fact, at all frequencies at low Galactic latitudes. However, observing at high/low frequencies yields template distributions for those contaminants, and these templates can be cross-correlated with data in the preferred frequency band to estimate their contamination level. This procedure has provided robust confirmation that, at high latitudes, the recognised Galactic foregrounds do not significantly contaminate the COBE DMR data (Kogut et al 1996).

Although robust, the method we have just described clearly cannot be applied if there is no template for the foreground. This is the circumstance we are faced with if the Galactic dark matter has a substantial component in the form of cold gas clouds, as has been proposed by a number of authors (Pfenniger, Combes and Martinet 1994; De Paolis et al 1995; Henriksen and Widrow 1995; Gerhard and Silk 1996; Walker and Wardle 1998; Sciama 2000a). Such clouds emit primarily in the microwave band, and that emission is thermal at temperatures of only a few degrees; consequently the magnitude of this putative foreground is at present only subject to very weak direct observational constraints. Indirect constraints – from the small amplitude of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis – are generally supposed to exclude any significant amount of baryonic dark matter (e.g. Turner and Tyson 1999), but these arguments are not entirely free of loopholes (Hogan 1993; Walker and Wardle 1999) and direct constraints are desirable. Given the great sensitivity of the microwave data which are now being acquired, it is therefore prudent to consider what Galactic microwave emission is expected for models in which the dark matter is composed of cold gas.

To proceed with a calculation we need to specify a particular model. The success of the now-standard structure formation paradigm, exemplified by the Cold Dark Matter model (e.g. Peebles 1992), argues that any acceptable model must possess clustering properties that are similar to those of CDM, in order to match the data on large-scale-structure, and consequently we utilise the properties of CDM halos as a guide. It then remains to specify the properties of the individual clouds. Radio-wave scintillation data – specifically the Extreme Scattering Events (Fiedler et al 1987; Fiedler et al 1994) – suggest a vast population of $`\mathrm{AU}`$-sized clouds, each of planetary mass (Walker and Wardle 1998), and we assume that these properties are appropriate to the individual clouds.

The present paper is organised as follows: in §2 we derive the angular spectrum for an unclustered cloud distribution; in §3 the influence of CDM-like clustering is considered; §4 combines the results of §§2,3 into a prediction for the root-mean-square temperature anisotropy spectrum, under the assumption of grey-body emission, and considers the constraints which existing data place upon the input model; §5 then considers how these results are modified in the case where the clouds have “dusty” emission spectra.

## 2 Power from individual clouds

As a tool to describe the statistical properties of the microwave sky, it is conventional to employ the power-spectrum

$$C_l\frac{1}{2l+1}\underset{m=l}{\overset{l}{}}a_{lm}^{}a_{lm},$$
(1)
where the $`a_{lm}`$ are coefficients in the expansion of the brightness temperature field, $`\delta T`$, in terms of the spherical harmonic functions $`Y_{lm}`$:

$$\delta T(\theta ,\varphi )=\underset{l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{m=l}{\overset{l}{}}a_{lm}Y_{lm}(\theta ,\varphi ).$$
(2)
We will model only the power-spectrum which would be derived from measurements over a small patch of sky, so that we need only consider the case $`l1`$, for which some mathematical simplifications are possible. The restriction to large $`l`$ also means that we do not have to model the structure of the Galaxy in any detailed way, because we are considering angular scales which are sufficiently small that the source (cloud) positions are essentially random.

The starting point for our calculation is the white-noise spectrum ($`C_l=C_l^w`$, independent of $`l`$) which is introduced by a random distribution of point sources, each of flux $`F`$, with a mean number per unit solid-angle of $`\mathrm{d}N/\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }`$:

$$C_l^w=F^2\frac{\mathrm{d}N}{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }}.$$
(3)
If the individual sources are not point-like, but each source is axisymmetric with power-spectrum $`F^2C_l^s`$ (so that $`C_l^s`$ is the power-spectrum for a source of unit flux), then the power-spectrum of the source population is $`C_l=4\pi C_l^sC_l^w`$. Now if we consider sources at various distances, $`D`$, with corresponding number density $`n`$, it follows that $`\delta (\mathrm{d}N/\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega })=D^2n\delta D`$, and hence

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}C_l}{\mathrm{d}D}=4\pi C_l^sD^2nF^2.$$
(4)
Integrating along the line-of-sight then yields the power-spectrum of this source population.

The gas clouds we are considering are expected to cool primarily through thermal continuum emission in the microwave band, with this emission arising from precipitates of molecular hydrogen (Wardle and Walker 1999). The bulk of the interior of a cloud is too hot for solid hydrogen to exist; all the radiation is expected to come from a thin, nearly isothermal atmosphere. There is at present no quantitative description of the internal cloud structure, and consequently we have adopted a simple model of the surface brightness profile, namely a uniform intensity disk. Provided that the cloud radius is $`R_oD`$, this model yields a power-spectrum

$$C_l^s=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left[\frac{2J_1(lR_o/D)}{lR_o/D}\right]^2$$
(5)
for a single cloud, with $`J_1`$ being a Bessel function of the first kind. For $`lD/R_o`$ this model is a poor one in that it over-predicts the power spectrum — a result of the discontinuity in the intensity profile at the limb of the cloud. To counteract this tendency to overpredict the power at large $`l`$, we have simply truncated the power spectrum at $`lR_o=10D`$. This ad hoc treatment of the high frequency behaviour means that the predicted power-spectrum for the cloud population is unreliable in the regime $`lR_oD`$; however the corresponding angular scales are so small (sub-milli-arcsecond; see §4) that this limitation is not important in practice.

In equilibrium the luminosity of any cloud must be balanced by heating, so a cloud of mass $`M_o`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{\Gamma }M_o=4\pi D^2F`$, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the heating rate per unit mass. This heating is expected to be due primarily to cosmic-rays (Wardle and Walker 1999; Sciama 2000a). In this paper we consider only lines-of-sight at high or mid Galactic latitude, and for these directions it is reasonable to model the cosmic-ray density variations with a simple analytic function; we employ the form $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\mathrm{exp}(|z|/h)`$, where $`z=D\mathrm{sin}b`$ is the height above the Galactic disk at Galactic latitude $`b`$. A more realistic model is offered by a sum of thin and thick disks (Higdon 1979; Beuermann, Kanbach and Berkhuijsen 1985), but for our illustrative calculations this level of detail is unwarranted and we have adopted a single component model. with a scale-height of $`h=3`$ kpc (corresponding to the thick disk). This choice of scale-height is a compromise between the (larger) values deduced from analysis of the radio synchrotron data (Higdon 1979; Beuermann, Kanbach and Berkhuijsen 1985), and the (smaller) values inferred from existing cosmic-ray propagation models (Webber, Lee and Gupta 1992). Note, however, that if the putative cloud population does indeed exist, then these models of cosmic-ray propagation need to be revised (Sciama 2000a, b).

To complete our prescription we need to specify the number density of the clouds. For this purpose we employ the collisional isothermal halo model of Walker (1999: W99). In this model, or indeed any quasi-spherical halo model, the density of dark matter varies only slowly in comparison to the scale-height of the cosmic-ray disk, and this variation can be neglected:

$$n=\frac{\rho }{M_o}\frac{V^2}{4\pi GM_o(r_{gc}^2+r_d^2)},$$
(6)
where $`V220\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ is the rotation speed for the Galactic disk, $`r_{gc}8.5`$ kpc is the distance to the Galactic Centre, and $`r_d`$ is the core radius of the dark halo. For the Galaxy, the latter is specified as $`r_d6.2`$ kpc in W99’s model.

For a homogeneous source population, with $`n`$ constant, and $`F1/D^2`$, equation 4 indicates that the low-frequency power (for which $`4\pi C_l^s1`$) is dominated by the nearest clouds within the field-of-view, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The lower limit on the integration over $`D`$ must therefore not be taken as zero, but as $`D_{min}`$, the expected distance of the closest cloud, with

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }}{3}D_{min}^3n:=\frac{1}{2}.$$
(7)
For a field of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }0.1`$ sr, similar to the coverage of the BOOMERanG experiment (de Bernardis et al 2000), for example, we have $`D_{min}0.57`$ pc.

Using the descriptions given above, we can compute the power-spectrum for our model of unclustered gas clouds, $`C_l^u`$:

$$\frac{C_l^u(k)}{C_l^u(0)}=y_y^{\mathrm{}}dx\mathrm{exp}(x|\mathrm{sin}b|)\left[\frac{2J_1(k/x)}{k}\right]^2,$$
(8)
where $`x2D/h`$, so that $`y=2D_{min}/h`$, and $`k2lR_o/h`$. The power level at zero frequency is

$$C_l^u(0)=\frac{M_oV^2\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^2}{(4\pi )^3G(r_{gc}^2+r_d^2)D_{min}}.$$
(9)
Figure 1 shows a plot of $`\delta I=k\sqrt{C_l^u(k)/C_l^u(0)}`$, the standard-deviation of the intensity fluctuations. In constructing this figure we have taken $`|\mathrm{sin}b|=1`$, and we have adopted the parameters of the model given above, for which $`D_{min}0.57`$ pc, hence $`y3.8\times 10^4`$.

Three distinct regimes of behaviour can be seen in figure 1. For $`ky`$, all of the clouds are expected to be unresolved on the corresponding angular scales, so the power-spectrum is simply $`C_l^u(k)C_l^u(0)`$ and the r.m.s. intensity fluctuations are proportional to $`k`$. For $`ky`$ some of the closest clouds are resolved out, and for $`yk1/|\mathrm{sin}b|`$ the power flattens to $`C_l^u(k)/C_l^u(0)2y/\pi k`$, so the r.m.s. intensity is $`\delta I\sqrt{k}`$. It should be noted that up to this point the results are independent of the scale-height, $`h`$, and the line-of-sight, i.e. the latitude $`b`$; in other words the behaviour is completely determined by the local conditions (dark matter density and cosmic-ray heating rate). However, the location ($`k=k_p\sqrt{2}/|\mathrm{sin}b|`$) and height of the peak fluctuations are influenced by $`h`$ and $`b`$: clouds which lie outside the cosmic-ray disk have very low luminosity and consequently contribute little to the temperature anisotropies, so on angular scales smaller than those characteristic of a cloud at distance $`Dh/|\mathrm{sin}b|`$ the fluctuations decline rapidly. The peak value of the anisotropy spectrum can be estimated from $`C_l^u(k_p)/C_l^u(0)\sqrt{2}y|\mathrm{sin}b|/\pi `$. If we make numerical estimates of these values we find that the peak occurs on milli-arcsecond scales ($`l3\times 10^8`$) and reaches a value $`4`$ mK, as discussed in §4.

### 2.1 Source counts

In connecting the foregoing model with observations we must take a little care, in that low-frequency power is dominated by the brightest sources within the field-of-view. If observations are made with a sensitive instrument that has good angular resolution, then these will be recognised as point sources and subtracted from the map before the anisotropy power-spectrum is estimated. In order to quantify this possibility we need to estimate the source counts. For bright sources, with $`Dh/|\mathrm{sin}b|`$, the source luminosity and density are uniform over the population, hence the usual Euclidean result applies:

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}N(>F)}{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left(\frac{F_{max}}{F}\right)^{3/2},$$
(10)
where $`F_{max}`$ is the expected flux of the brightest source on the sky. For the case we are considering, the bolometric luminosity is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }M_o`$, so the brightest source is expected to have a flux of $`F_{max}=\mathrm{\Gamma }M_o/4\pi D_{min}^2`$. This result breaks down at low flux levels, where the sources lie outside the cosmic-ray disk, but $`F_{max}`$ corresponds to a source which is only about 0.1 pc distant, so with a disk scale-height of $`h=3`$ kpc the form given in equation 10 is a good approximation for $`F10^9F_{max}`$. Numerical estimates for $`F_{max}`$ are given in §4.

### 2.2 Mean sky brightness

Using the foregoing model, it is straightforward to calculate the mean sky brightness contributed by the cloud population, the result is:

$$I=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0V^2h\mathrm{csc}|b|}{(4\pi )^2G(r_{gc}^2+r_d^2)}.$$
(11)
The mean sky brightness thus does not depend explicitly on the properties of the individual clouds, although there is an implicit dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ on the column-density of the clouds, as we shall see in §4.1. Consequently the same result for $`I`$ is obtained for the model described in the next section, in which clustering of the clouds is considered. Using the cosmic-ray heating rate determined in §4.1, and an atmospheric temperature of 4.2 K for the clouds (§4.2), we deduce a mean sky brightness temperature, in the Rayleigh-Jeans regime, of $`T_b30\mu \mathrm{K}`$ at the Galactic pole.

## 3 Power due to clustering

The Cold Dark Matter model provides an elegant framework within which we can understand the formation of structure in the Universe (Blumenthal et al 1984; Davis et al 1985; Peebles 1992). The key ingredients of this model are (i) a scale-invariant power-spectrum of density fluctuations, and (ii) dark matter which initially has low velocities. Gravity does the rest. Dense gas clouds are expected to satisfy the second of these requirements (i.e. they are a type of cold dark matter), provided that they form in the early Universe and survive to the present time (Hogan 1993; Walker and Wardle 1999). The first requirement is naturally satisfied for inflationary models of the early Universe, independent of the nature of the dark matter. Consequently structures forming in a Universe dominated by dense gas clouds may resemble those found in CDM models. This is as true for galactic and sub-galactic mass-scales as it is for cluster and super-cluster scales. The substructure within CDM halos follows a power-law mass spectrum with index approximately equal to $`2`$ (Moore et al 1999; Klypin et al 1999), and we adopt this result as our model for the clustering properties of dense gas clouds comprising the Galactic dark halo. Consequently we expect the halo to be populated with a number density $`n_{mh}`$ of mini-halos, such that

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}n_{mh}}{\mathrm{d}M}=\frac{\rho }{M^2\mathrm{log}_e(M_2/M_1)}$$
(12)
extending over a mass range $`M_1<M<M_2`$. It should be noted that this formulation implies that all of the dark matter is in the form of mini-halos, and this is apparently at odds with the results of simulations, for which only $`10`$% of the halo mass appears in this form (e.g. Ghigna et al 1998). However, the simulations which have been undertaken to date are capable of resolving only the upper end of the mini-halo mass range which we consider here (see §4.3), and such simulations have little to say about the existence of lower mass halos. Moreover, if the only relevant physics is cold gravitational collapse, acting on a power-law spectrum of density perturbations, then there is no reason to expect any characteristic mass-scale in the clustering, until one reaches masses which are so small that the discreteness of the dark matter particles begins to play a role. At the very least the circumstance described by equation (12) can be considered as a limiting case: the total density in mini-halos cannot exceed the total dark matter density.

Because these aggregates are much smaller than their parent halos, their internal structure has not yet been thoroughly investigated with simulations. However, we know that their density profiles are consistent with tidally-truncated isothermal spheres (Moore et al 1999), and we adopt that description. In addition to tidal truncation, the density distribution must have a central core as a result of collisions occurring between the constituent clouds (W99). We therefore employ a model density profile

$$\varrho =\frac{M\mathrm{exp}(r^2/2r_t^2)}{(2\pi )^{3/2}r_t(r^2+r_c^2)},$$
(13)
where $`r_t`$ is the tidal radius and $`r_c`$ the core radius of the mini-halo, and we have assumed that $`r_cr_t`$. From this three-dimensional profile we can determine the column-density seen by a distant observer. The microwave intensity is proportional to this column, so the angular power-spectrum for a source of unit flux is

$$C_l^s\frac{\mathrm{exp}(2lr_c/D)}{4\pi +8l^2r_t^2/D^2}.$$
(14)
The features of this power-spectrum are as follows. For $`lr_tD`$, $`C_l^s1/4\pi `$; and for $`D/r_tlD/r_c`$ we have $`C_l1/l^2`$, cutting off exponentially for $`lD/r_c`$. Most of the contribution to the intensity fluctuations therefore comes from the frequency range $`D/r_tlD/r_c`$, and the existence of a core in the density profile is critical in determining the power-spectrum at high wave-numbers. If there were no core in the halo density profile, the intensity fluctuations would be independent of $`l`$ in the range $`lD/r_t`$.

We need to calculate the tidal radius and the core radius; both depend on the mass of the mini-halo under consideration. To estimate the tidal radius we note that the scale-height of the cosmic-ray disk, $`h`$, is expected to be small in comparison with $`r_{gc}`$, so we can make the approximation that all of the mini-halos within the field-of-view which make a significant contribution to the power-spectrum are at the same Galactocentric radius $`r=r_{gc}`$. Now the tidal radius of each mini-halo is determined by the tides at perigalacticon, and because $`r_{gc}`$ is an upper limit to the galactocentric radius at that point – i.e. most mini-halos will be on orbits which take them much closer to the centre of the Galaxy – and simulations of halo formation find that mini-halo orbits have quite large eccentricities (Ghigna et al 1998), we take $`r_{gc}/2`$ as an estimate of the Galactocentric radius at perigalacticon. We then follow the usual procedure (Binney and Tremaine 1987), leading to an estimated tidal radius $`r_t^3:=\alpha M`$, where

$$\alpha =\frac{Gr_{gc}^2}{12V^2}8.0\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{g}^1.$$
(15)
The core radius of each halo is determined by the collisional nature of the dark matter (W99), with the velocity dispersion of each mini-halo being related to its mass by comparing equation 13 (for $`rr_t`$) with the standard form for a self-gravitating isothermal sphere. This procedure leads to the estimate $`r_c^2=\gamma M`$, where

$$\gamma =\frac{12\sqrt{2}Vt_H}{(2\pi )^{3/4}\pi \mathrm{\Sigma }r_{gc}}2.5\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1,$$
(16)
with $`t_H10^{10}`$ years being the elapsed time since the mini-halo virialised, and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }M_o/\pi R_o^2`$ is the mean column-density of the individual clouds. W99’s model gives $`\mathrm{\Sigma }140\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, and we have used that value in estimating $`\gamma `$.

The power-spectrum for the whole population of mini-halos can be obtained by integrating

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}^2C_l}{\mathrm{d}D\mathrm{d}M}=4\pi C_l^sD^2\frac{\mathrm{d}n_{mh}}{\mathrm{d}M}F^2,$$
(17)
with respect to $`M`$ and $`D`$. The integration over distance is taken out to infinity but, as for the case of the individual clouds, the lower limit cannot be taken as zero because at low frequencies the power-spectrum is dominated by contributions from the nearest sources. We can estimate the lower distance limit, as a function of mini-halo mass, by analogy with equation 7, making the replacement $`n\mathrm{log}_e(M_2/M_1)\mathrm{d}n_{mh}/\mathrm{d}\mathrm{log}_eM`$, whence

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }}{3}D_{min}^3\mathrm{log}_e(M_2/M_1)\frac{\mathrm{d}n_{mh}}{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{log}_eM}=\frac{1}{2}.$$
(18)
This equation states that the closest mini-halo within the mass range $`M_1`$ to $`M_2`$ has a 50% chance of being located within a distance $`D_{min}`$. If we now define $`z2D_{min}/\stackrel{~}{h}`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{h}h/|\mathrm{sin}b|`$ then with reference to the expected mini-halo mass spectrum (equation 12) we can write $`z^3:=\beta M`$, where

$$\beta =\frac{12}{\stackrel{~}{h}^3\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }\rho }2.7\times 10^{40}\mathrm{g}^1.$$
(19)
In estimating the numerical value of $`\beta `$, here, we have assumed a field-of-view of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }=0.1\mathrm{sr}`$ at the Galactic pole ($`|\mathrm{sin}b|=1`$), with the mass limits $`M_{1,2}`$ as given in §4. An important point can now be made, even before we calculate the power-spectrum of the population. Because the tidal radius, $`r_t`$, and the distance to the closest mini-halo, $`D_{min}`$, both vary as $`M^{1/3}`$, the angular radius of the nearest mini-halo is $`r_t/D_{min}=(2/\stackrel{~}{h})(\alpha /\beta )^{1/3}4^{}`$, independent of $`M`$, (and also independent of $`h`$ and $`b`$). Remembering that the power-spectrum is dominated by contributions from the closest mini-halos, we thus expect a peak in the intensity fluctuations on degree scales.

We can now integrate equation 17 over $`D`$ and $`M`$ to obtain our power-spectrum estimate; the result is

$$C_l^c=C_l^c(0)(\kappa ,\kappa _c),$$
(20)
where

$$C_l^c(0)=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }}{6\mathrm{log}_e(M_2/M_1)}\left(\frac{V}{4\pi }\right)^4\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\stackrel{~}{h}}{G(r_{gc}^2+r_d^2)}\right]^2,$$
(21)
and

$$(\kappa ,\kappa _c)=3dzz^2_z^{\mathrm{}}dx\frac{\mathrm{exp}(x\kappa z^{3/2}/\kappa _cx)}{x^2+\kappa ^2z^2},$$
(22)
having introduced $`x2D/\stackrel{~}{h}`$. The wavenumber is now expressed as $`\kappa (l/\stackrel{~}{h})(\alpha /\beta )^{1/3}(8/\pi )^{1/2}`$, and the parameter $`\kappa _c`$ is $`\kappa _c:=\alpha ^{1/3}\beta ^{1/6}/\sqrt{2\pi \gamma }`$. The limits of integration over $`z`$ are determined by the limits of the mini-halo mass-spectrum, so $`z_{1,2}^3:=\beta M_{1,2}`$, and we have adopted the values of $`M_{1,2}`$ as estimated in §4, leading to $`z_1=3.8\times 10^3`$ and $`z_2=9.1`$.

It is easy to verify that $`1`$ as $`\kappa 0`$. Unfortunately this low frequency regime (i.e. $`\kappa 1`$) is the only one for which we have been able to determine a simple analytic form for $``$. It is, however, straightforward to evaluate $``$ numerically, once $`\kappa _c`$ is specified. Using the numerical values for the various parameters which we have already given (see also the following section), we find $`\kappa _c1.3`$, leading to the fluctuation spectrum shown in figure 2. At low frequencies, where essentially all of the mini-halos are unresolved, this spectrum displays the usual form for Poisson noise from point-like sources: $`\delta I\kappa `$. The spectrum then peaks at $`\kappa 1`$, corresponding to the characteristic angular scale of the nearest mini-halos, and declines slowly as $`\kappa `$ increases.

## 4 Model parameters

The anisotropy models we have just presented do not incorporate any free parameters: all of the various inputs can be estimated – albeit rather crudely in some cases – from other types of data. We now turn to the business of estimating those quantities which have not yet been specified, in order to arrive at numerical results for the brightness-temperature anisotropy spectrum.

### 4.1 Cosmic-ray heating

For high column-density clouds, such as we are considering here ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }140\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, W99), there is significant attenuation of the cosmic-ray flux from surface to centre, and so the cosmic-ray heating rate differs from that deduced for diffuse interstellar gas (Umebayashi and Nakano 1981; Sciama 2000a). We have estimated the cosmic-ray heating rate local to the Sun, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$, appropriate to dense clouds, using the Monte Carlo simulation program GEANT (Ohishi, Mori and Walker 2003; http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/asd/geant). GEANT was developed for studying interactions in laboratory particle detectors, but can be used for astrophysical calculations without modification. By using GEANT we are able to study the transport of cosmic rays into high column-density clouds, with all relevant particle interactions included. The main disadvantage of GEANT, for our purposes, is that it does not conserve energy very accurately in the hadronic interactions (GEANT Bug Reports #171 & #389). There is a “patch” available for the relevant piece of code, GHEISHA which treats hadronic interactions, but this patch appears to introduce further problems of its own (GEANT Bug Report #415), and we have therefore used GEANT with the un-patched version of GHEISHA. We can easily calculate the heating rate in the limiting case of very dense clouds, without using GEANT, because all of the incident power is absorbed in this case. We find that in this limit GEANT over-estimates the power deposition by $``$25%, and this estimate can be taken as a gauge of the accuracy of our computations of the heating rate, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

For the purposes of estimating the microwave emissivity of the gas, we need only calculate the total power deposited by the incident cosmic-rays; however, the interaction between the cosmic-rays and the gas also gives rise to gamma-rays (principally via electron bremmstrahlung and $`\pi ^\mathrm{o}`$ production), and we will report elsewhere on the consequences of these processes for the interpretation of the mean gamma-ray spectrum of diffuse Galactic emission (Ohishi, Mori and Walker 2003), and for the interpretation of the unidentified EGRET sources (Walker, Mori and Ohishi 2003). In our calculations of the gas heating rate we approximated each cloud as a sphere of uniform density, and used GEANT to compute the power deposited as a function of the gas density (the radius of each cloud being fixed at 1 AU). We adopted the “median” cosmic-ray proton spectrum quoted by Mori (1997; but note that the units on his equation  should read $`\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1\mathrm{GeV}^1`$), including energies down to 100 MeV, and the electron spectrum from Skibo and Ramaty (1993), with a low-energy cutoff of 10 MeV; more details of these simulations will be presented elsewhere (Ohishi, Mori and Walker 2003). These cosmic-ray spectra are appropriate to the vicinity of the Sun, and it is implicit in our model that the spectra elsewhere in the Galaxy have the same shape, and differ only in normalisation. We caution that the cosmic-ray spectra which we are employing are not identical to the spectra which are directly observed, but are “demodulated”, to correct for the influence of the solar magnetosphere. At low particle energies the demodulation corrections are large, with large associated uncertainties.

Our results are shown in figure 3, in the form of heating rate per unit mass, as a function of the mean column-density, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$. Electron and proton contributions are shown separately (points) and in combination (solid line). Taken separately the electrons and protons display the same qualitative behaviour: at low columns the specific heating rate is approximately constant, while at high columns it declines according to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\mathrm{\Sigma }^1`$. For low column-densities our calculations yield cosmic-ray heating rates of order $`3\times 10^4\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{g}^1`$ which are consistent with previously reported cosmic-ray ionisation rates appropriate to diffuse interstellar gas (e.g. Webber 1998), given an absorbed energy of approximately 7 eV per ionisation (Glassgold and Langer 1973; Cravens and Dalgarno 1978). However, we caution that our calculated heating rates in the low column-density regime are sensitive to the low-energy cutoff of the primary cosmic-ray electrons included in the simulation. More generally, this finding implies that at low column-density the heating rate is sensitive to the form of the adopted cosmic-ray electron spectrum at low energies, and in this regime the spectrum is poorly constrained. The uncertainties in cosmic-ray spectra have been highlighted by the recent determination (McCall et al 2003) of an ionisation rate, in a diffuse cloud (column $`3\times 10^3\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$), which is 40 times higher than previously assumed. This suggests that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ may be as large as $`10^2\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{g}^1`$ at the extreme left of figure 3. However, for the column densities which concern us here the heating rate is determined primarily by the total energy density in cosmic-rays (see below), and it is not clear whether the new data imply any significant revision of this quantity.

The behaviour of the heating rate at high/low columns is straightforward to understand: for small columns the cloud is “optically thin” to the cosmic rays, so that the absorbed power is directly proportional to the mass of the cloud and the specific heating rate is independent of the column. At large columns essentially all of the power incident on the cloud surface is absorbed, so that the total heating rate is proportional to surface area, independent of the cloud mass, and the specific heating rate is therefore inversely proportional to the column-density. In this regime the computed heating rate is not sensitive to the details of the cosmic-ray spectrum, being dependent only on the total energy density resident in the cosmic rays. We are primarily interested in high column-density gas, for which the heating is mainly due to protons — most of the cosmic-ray energy-density being resident in protons of energy $``$few GeV. For our preferred column-density of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }140\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (see §4.2), the heating rate is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_010^4\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{g}^1`$; 80% of this power is contributed by the protons.

### 4.2 Properties of individual clouds

Individually the cloud mass and radius are poorly known, but the mean column-density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }M_o/\pi R_o^2`$, is quite tightly constrained because it determines the rate of conversion of dark to visible matter (W99). Matching the model to the Tully-Fisher relation for late-type spirals yields $`\mathrm{\Sigma }140\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (W99). Essentially all of the uncertainty is then in the choice of cloud mass. The viable mass range is currently rather large, perhaps as broad as $`10^6\mathrm{M}_{}M_o10^2\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (Wardle and Walker 1999). At present the best estimate we can make for the cloud mass comes from the optical variability of quasars: Hawkins (1993, 1996) pointed out that the observed optical variations, on a time-scale of years, could be interpreted in terms of a near-critical Universal density of planetary-mass gravitational lenses. In the context of our model, these lenses are to be identified with the individual gas clouds (whereas Hawkins suggested that they might be primordial black holes). Hawkins’s (1993) estimate of the mass of the individual lenses is $`10^3\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Schneider (1993), however, has modelled the same data set and his analysis suggests a mass of $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ if the observed variability is interpreted as lensing. Minty (2001) re-examined this issue and demonstrated consistency between lensing models and the data for lens masses in the range $`10^510^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$. The lower end of this range is, however, excluded by data on Galactic microlensing (Rafikov and Draine 2001), because of refraction in the neutral gas (Draine 1998). We adopt the value $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$. This choice then determines the cloud radius, because the column-density is fixed; correspondingly $`R_o1.4\mathrm{AU}`$, close to our adopted value (§4.1) of 1 AU.

The other key aspect of the individual clouds is their emission spectrum. The model of Wardle and Walker (1999), which focusses on the thermal stability of the clouds, requires that they be cooled by thermal continuum emission from $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ precipitates. Here we assume, initially, that the hydrogen “snowflakes” are large compared to the $``$mm wavelengths of their thermal emission, and that the individual snowflakes have a large optical depth to absorption at these wavelengths. These assumptions imply grey-body emission ($`I_\nu B_\nu `$) at the temperature of the “snowflake”. (Later, in §5, we will examine how the model predictions are modified if we relax these assumptions.) The latter is, to a very good approximation, just the temperature of the atmosphere of the cloud. We noted earlier that the interior of the cloud is likely to be convective, and we can therefore make an estimate of the the atmospheric temperature by calculating where an $`\mathrm{n}=3/2`$ polytropic model crosses the phase-equilibrium curve for hydrogen. Fixing the mean column density at $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=140\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, this method yields the following estimated atmospheric temperatures: $`5.8,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}4.9},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}4.2},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3.7},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3.4}`$ K, for clouds of mass $`10^6,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^5,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^4,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^3,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^2\mathrm{M}_{}`$, respectively. For our preferred cloud mass, then, the atmospheric temperature is roughly 4.2 K, and this corresponds to a conversion factor of $`\delta T/\delta I=752\mathrm{K}\mathrm{erg}^1\mathrm{s}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{sr}`$ between brightness-temperature, in the Rayleigh-Jeans limit, and bolometric intensity. In the formulation we have given, the root-mean-square intensity spectrum – i.e. the quantity $`\delta I=\sqrt{l(l+1)C_l/2\pi }`$ – has the units of bolometric intensity, and must be multiplied by this conversion factor to deduce the temperature anisotropy.

Similarly, when considering source counts, the conversion factor between flux density and bolometric flux for our model parameters is $`F_\nu /F=2.3\times 10^{16}\nu ^2\mathrm{Hz}^1`$, in the Rayleigh-Jeans regime, with $`\nu `$ in GHz. Using these conversion factors we can estimate the flux of the closest single cloud, it is $`F_{max}10\mathrm{nK}\mathrm{sr}`$, implying that it may just be detectable by the MAP satellite (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov). Sciama (2000a) has previously noted that the proposed Planck satellite (http://astro.estec.esa.nl/Planck) would easily detect the closest examples of the posited clouds. In more conventional units the expected flux of the brightest source can be writen as $`F_{max}120\mathrm{mJy}`$ at 20 GHz, and scaling as $`\nu ^2`$ in the Rayleigh-Jeans regime ($`\nu 150`$ GHz).

### 4.3 Properties of the minihalos

The mass-spectrum of the mini-halos is given in equation 12, but we have not yet specified the range $`[M_1,M_2]`$ over which it applies. It is implicit in equation 12 that the (dark) density $`\rho `$ is entirely composed of mini-halos with masses in the range $`M_1<M<M_2`$. The appropriate value of $`M_1`$ is difficult to estimate. To form a stable cluster there should be a large number of clouds in each mini-halo, although the choice of what constitutes a large number is somewhat arbitrary; we have chosen $`M_1=0.1\mathrm{M}_{}10^3M_o`$. The upper limit is easier to estimate: $`M_2`$ should be chosen such that there is a 50% chance of finding a more massive halo within the field-of-view. If the total mass of the dark halo of our Galaxy is $`M_{tot}`$, which we take to be $`2\times 10^{12}\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (Zaritsky 1999), then it follows that

$$\frac{1}{2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }}{4\pi }\frac{M_{tot}}{M_2\mathrm{log}_e(M_2/M_1)},$$
(23)
and solving yields $`M_21.4\times 10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }=0.1\mathrm{sr}`$. Fortunately our final results are not very sensitive to the particular values of $`M_{1,2}`$ adopted, as they enter principally through the factor $`\mathrm{log}_e(M_2/M_1)23`$, and secondarily through the limits of integration ($`z_{1,2}M_{1,2}^{1/3}`$).

### 4.4 Temperature anisotropies and constraints

With the above numerical estimates, and the power-spectrum formulations derived in §§2,3, we are now in a position to quantify the temperature anisotropies expected in the present model. The results are graphed in figure 4, showing both the mini-halo contribution, which leads to the peak at $`l50`$, and the much larger peak at $`l3\times 10^8`$ is the Poisson noise from individual clouds.

Recalling, from §2.2, that the mean sky brightness is approximately $`30\mu \mathrm{K}`$, in our model, we see that the mini-halos introduce fluctuations which are small in comparison with the mean intensity, while the reverse is true for the fluctuations due to the individual clouds. This difference simply reflects the fact that the mini-halos are sufficiently large that they cover the entire sky several times over, whereas the individual clouds cover only a tiny fraction of the sky and the root-mean-square intensity is consequently much greater than the mean. It is worth emphasising that each of these contributions is computed under the assumption that all of the dark matter is in the corresponding form – i.e. clustered into mini-halos, or entirely unclustered – and the calculated contributions are in this sense mutually exclusive. However, recognising that (i) the minihalos are made up of individual clouds, (ii) the minihalos are unbiased tracers of the mean density, and (iii) the minihalos introduce only a small modulation around the mean sky brightness, we see that in practice the predicted properties of the $``$milli-arcsecond fluctuation peak are largely independent of whether or not the clouds are clustered into minihalos. If all the clouds are clustered into minihalos, then there would, however, be many fewer clouds very local to the Sun, and so the low-frequency (i.e. small $`l`$) power from individual clouds would be much reduced.

How do our predictions compare with existing data? We do not consider, here, the low-order multipoles ($`l10`$) which were measured by COBE (Smoot et al 1992), because the calculations we have undertaken are valid only for $`l1`$. The COBE detections at small $`l`$ did, however, create great interest in measuring the higher order multipoles, and after much effort expended on special-purpose experiments there are now several clear detections of anisotropies on degree scales (e.g. de Bernardis et al 2000; Hanany et al 2000; Pryke et al 2002; Benoît et al 2002). The peak of the observed signal – $`\delta T_b70\mu \mathrm{K}`$ at $`l200`$ – is roughly 20 times larger than the model predictions at the same angular scale, for high-latitude fields, and for many purposes this small contribution to the observed power (about 0.3%) can be neglected. However, it may still be possible to detect the predicted mini-halo anisotropies against the background of the dominant CMB fluctuations, if we select the data appropriately. In particular the CMB anisotropies fall to $`30\mu \mathrm{K}`$ at multipoles $`l50`$, near the peak of the predicted spectrum, while the latter attains a value $`8\mu \mathrm{K}`$ at $`|b|=30^{}`$. Data collected by the MAP satellite<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov should be able to reveal this Galactic foreground, provided that the spectrum is close to the assumed grey-body form (see §5 and figure 5).

To date there has been only limited interest in the arcminute-scale anisotropies, because Silk damping is expected to strongly supress any primary cosmological anisotropy on these scales (Silk 1968). Consequently there is at present only a limited amount of data in the region $`10^3l10^4`$ (Subrahmanyan et al 1997; Dawson et al 2001; Mason et al 2002). Here again the observed signal is large in comparison with the model: $`25\mu \mathrm{K}`$ at $`l2500`$ (Mason et al 2002); roughly an order of magnitude larger than the anisotropies predicted by the present model. Consequently data at these very high multipoles do not yet provide strong constraints on the model we have presented. Moreover these angular scales are below the resolution of the instrumentation carried by MAP, so there is no immediate prospect of a major improvement in sensitivity. It would, however, be useful to obtain further measurements of the power-spectrum using ground-based interferometers, particularly with a view to constraining its latitude dependence, because the origin of the observed high-frequency power (Mason et al 2002) is not clear at present and it remains possible that it is a Galactic signal.

For $`l10^4`$ the anisotropies predicted by our model are dominated by the individual clouds, and more specifically the closest examples within the area under study; consequently for these angular scales the model predicts very little latitude dependence in the power-spectrum. The domain of large $`l`$ is also technically challenging, in that the sensitivity of an interferometer to surface brightness fluctuations worsens in proportion to $`l`$. Thus the predicted milli-Kelvin peak on milli-arcsecond scales is not immediately open to experimental scrutiny. Fortunately the model predictions can be put to the test in another way: rather than attempting to measure the anisotropies per se we can simply study the bright source counts. At low frequencies the flux from each cloud increases as $`\nu ^2`$, or faster, whereas the flux from non-thermal (synchrotron) radio sources typically declines with increasing frequency. Thus in a sky-survey for compact sources at high frequencies the predicted population should stand out. For the purposes of testing the model, the ideal approach is to make a survey of a large fraction of the sky, with sufficient sensitivity to detect sources having flux much less than $`F_{max}`$. The model then predicts that many sources with thermal spectra should be detected, and any such sources can be selected out and subjected to detailed studies to determine their nature.

To date surveys at high radio frequencies have covered only a very small fraction of the sky with the necessary sensitivity — this is simply a consequence of the rapid decrease in area of the primary beam of an antenna, as the observing frequency increases, requiring a much larger number of pointings to cover a given area of sky. For example, the survey of Taylor et al (2001), made with the Ryle Telescope, covered only $`63\mathrm{deg}^2`$ at $`\nu =15`$ GHz, to a flux limit of 20 mJy. Using the predicted source-counts for our model (§§2.1,4.2), it is straightforward to estimate that the expected number of cloud detections for this survey is approximately 0.01 and these data therefore have little to say about the present model. A more extensive interferometric survey, covering the entire southern sky, is planned for later this year. This survey is expected to have a flux limit of roughly 40 mJy at 20 GHz – thus improving substantially on the pilot survey (Ekers et al 2003) – and could detect examples of the closest clouds if their spectra are indeed grey bodies (see §5).

Deep surveys at much higher frequencies have also been undertaken, again covering very small areas of the sky. Interestingly, Lawrence (2001) has pointed out that the “blank field SCUBA sources” are consistent with being a very local population of Galactic sources, rather than high-redshift star-forming galaxies as is usually assumed. Indeed Lawrence (2001) points out that their properties are remarkably similar to those expected for the population of cold gas clouds postulated by Walker and Wardle (1998); the main point of discrepancy noted by Lawrence is that he infers a thin disk population, rather than a quasi-spherical halo. However, as noted earlier, the luminosity of each cloud is determined by the cosmic-ray heating rate, and models of the Galactic synchrotron emission (Higdon 1979; Beuermann Kanbach and Berkhuijsen 1985) suggest that the cosmic-ray energy density initially declines very rapidly (scale-height $`0.3`$ kpc) as one moves away from the plane of the disk, changing to a more gradual decline further out. Thus the discrepancy suggested by Lawrence might not be all that serious. Clearly problematic, though, in the context of the present model, is the high bolometric flux of the SCUBA sources. For a 2 mJy source density of $`10^3\mathrm{deg}^2`$ – as per Lawrence (2000) – assuming Euclidean source counts, the brightest source on the sky should be of order 240 Jy. These are continuum fluxes at 850 $`\mu `$m ($`3.5\times 10^{11}`$ Hz), so the bolometric flux of the brightest source should be of order $`10^9\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. The present model predicts a maximum bolometric flux (§2.1) which is only 1% of this value, based on cosmic-ray heating. This conclusion is largely independent of the spectrum of the emission, within the plausible range of possibilities. However, it is important to note that Lawrence’s analysis excluded grey-body spectra for the SCUBA sources, preferring a “dusty” thermal emission spectrum (see next section). Lawrence’s interpretation of the SCUBA data can be tested by surveying a large area of the sky, in order to measure the bright source counts, and following up with detailed studies of the brightest (presumably the closest) sources. The Planck satellite<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2http://sci.esa.int/home/planck should be able to detect the closest of the individual dense gas clouds (Sciama 2000a).

## 5 Discussion

The calculations presented in §4.4 assume that the cold gas emits as a grey-body. This is plausible, but not certain. Lawrence (2001) has suggested that the Blank Field SCUBA sources are cold, dense gas clouds, with properties similar to those which we have considered in this paper, and he uses data on these sources to exclude grey-body spectra, preferring “dusty” spectra which exhibit much less flux at frequencies below the thermal peak. In addition to this uncertainty, the atmospheric temperature could be slightly higher than the 4.2 K we have adopted, again diminishing the predicted power at low frequencies. We have quantified these uncertainties by computing the mini-halo anisotropies for two models representing the plausible range of emitted spectra: a 4.2 K grey-body spectrum (the reference model used in the foregoing sections of the present paper), and a 4.9 K “dusty” spectrum (i.e. $`I_\nu \nu ^4`$ at low frequencies). The results are shown in figure 5 for the $`l50`$ peak of the model anisotropies, together with models (adapted from Tegmark and Efstathiou 1996) for the known Galactic foregrounds (diffusely distributed dust, synchrotron and free-free emission). The plot is made for $`|b|=90^{}`$, and at lower latitudes all of the Galactic contributions scale up as $`1/|\mathrm{sin}b|`$.

From this figure we can see that, in the case of a grey-body spectrum, mini-halo anisotropies are predicted to be the dominant Galactic foreground for observing frequencies in the range 40–80 GHz, at multipoles $`l50`$. Furthermore, the predicted power contribution amounts to $``$5% of the cosmic background anisotropies, at $`|b|=30^{}`$ and may therefore be detectable with data from the MAP satellite. On the other hand, if the emission spectrum of the clouds is “dusty” we can see that the predicted mini-halo anisotropies are negligibly small at all frequencies, and could not expect to be detected by any current or planned instrument.

The foregoing considerations are specific to the anisotropy power spectrum, but it may be possible to detect microwave emission from the mini-halos in other ways. In particular we note that the brightest mini-halos may be detectable as individual sources. In this case those sources should also be bright in gamma-rays, and a sensible strategy is therefore to search for microwave counterparts to the Unidentified EGRET sources (Walker, Mori and Ohishi 2003). We also note the possibility of detecting the predicted microwave foreground component via its mean intensity which, as noted earlier, is much larger than the anisotropy level. For grey-body emission the mean intensity is roughly $`30/|\mathrm{sin}b|\mu \mathrm{K}`$ in the Rayleigh-Jeans regime.

The fact that the present model naturally yields a degree-scale anisotropy peak, in the form of low-temperature thermal radiation, suggests that it might be possible to construct a model in which the observed microwave anisotropies are interpreted entirely in terms of emission from mini-halos. In support of this idea we note that (i) the frequency dependence of the anisotropies would be quite small (assuming a grey-body spectrum at 4.2 K – see figure 5), and (ii) the heating rate of the clouds might be rather larger than our estimate, either because of a very large population of low-energy cosmic-rays (see the discussion in §4.1), or because there are other heat sources which are more important than cosmic-rays. However, a generic prediction of any such model is a strong latitude dependence of the peak power, and this is at odds with existing constraints on any latitude dependence (Griffiths and Lineweaver 2003).

## 6 Conclusions

We have calculated the microwave anisotropies which are expected in a model where the dark halo of the Galaxy is composed entirely of cold, dense gas clouds, heated by cosmic-rays. There are contributions to the anisotropy arising from the Poisson noise of individual clouds, and from the Poisson noise of clusters of clouds. The latter contribution has been computed under the assumption of a CDM-like mass-spectrum for the clustering, and we find that it peaks at $`l50`$. The Poisson noise contributed by individual clouds is, for $`l3\times 10^8`$, isotropic and sufficiently small that it will be extremely difficult to detect. A better approach to constraining this component is to attempt to detect the individual clouds themselves, and this is best done with high-resolution all-sky surveys at high frequencies. The Planck satellite will collect data of this type and should detect $`10`$ such sources.

The predicted power due to clusters of clouds increases toward the Galactic plane as $`1/\mathrm{sin}^2b`$. If the clouds emit as grey-bodies, then such clusters are predicted to be the dominant Galactic foreground over the range 40–80 GHz, at multipoles $`l50`$. For these circumstances the predicted power contribution is $``$5% at $`|b|=30^{}`$, and by virtue of its latitude dependence this component may be detectable in MAP data. On the other hand, if the clouds have a “dusty” emission spectrum, then their contribution to the anisotropies is too small to be detected, being swamped by other Galactic foregrounds at all frequencies.

We thank Mark Wardle for providing his radial temperature profile for a polytrope with index $`\mathrm{n}=3/2`$, and Lister Staveley-Smith for a critical reading of the manuscript.


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# MEASUREMENT OF TRILINEAR GAUGE COUPLINGS AT A 𝛾𝛾 AND 𝑒𝛾 COLLIDER

## 1 Introduction

If no light Higgs boson exists weak interactions become strong at high energies and for example WW scattering finally violates unitarity at $`\sqrt{s}=1.2\mathrm{TeV}`$. First signs of this effect should be seen in a modification of the triple gauge-boson couplings already at lower energies. If, on the contrary, the model remains perturbative up to very high energies triple gauge couplings are modified by loop corrections making them sensitive to new physics at high energy in the same way as the weak mixing angle $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta `$, measured at LEP and SLD, is sensitive to the Higgs boson mass.

The cross sections $`\gamma \gamma \mathrm{W}^+\mathrm{W}^{}`$ and $`e\gamma \nu W`$ are about an order of magnitude larger than $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\mathrm{W}^+\mathrm{W}^{}`$ and the dominating Feynman diagrams, shown in figure 1, contain the triple gauge coupling. Also in $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ the WW$`\gamma `$ and WWZ couplings are mixed. They can, however, be separated, if beam polarization is available.

A $`\gamma \gamma `$ collider can be realized if a linear collider is run in the $`e^{}e^{}`$ mode and a high power laser beam is collided with the electron beam a few mm in front of the interaction point. By Compton scattering photons of up to 80% of the beam energy can be obtained and the luminosity in the high energy part of the spectrum can be as high as a third of the $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ luminosity. For $`e\gamma `$ one can either switch off one laser or one can use the parasitic $`e\gamma `$ luminosity in the $`\gamma \gamma `$ mode using unconverted electrons. In the latter case it is, however, not possible to distinguish from which of the two directions the electron was coming and one has additional background from $`\gamma \gamma `$ collisions.

In this note the processes $`\gamma \gamma \mathrm{W}^+\mathrm{W}^{}`$ and $`e\gamma \nu W`$ are analyzed requiring hadronic decays of the Ws. This ensures that the events can be fully reconstructed. In the $`\gamma \gamma `$ fully hadronic mode in general the $`W^+`$ and the $`W^{}`$ cannot be distinguished. This is, however, no problem since the cross section has to be symmetric in the production angle $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$. Also for hadronically decaying Ws it is not possible in general to distinguish the quark from the antiquark. This leaves a twofold ambiguity in the decay angles. One can still separate longitudinally from transversely polarized Ws, but the two transverse states cannot be separated.

$`\gamma \gamma `$ and $`e\gamma `$ colliders allow a high degree of beam polarization. For $`\gamma \gamma `$ one has two distinct polarization states $`J_z=0`$ and $`J_z=2`$. For $`e\gamma `$ the electron has to be left-handed in order to couple to W-bosons. The cross section then depends on the helicity of the photon, $`J_\gamma `$.

Both processes proceed via t-channel exchange of a W and are strongly forward peaked, as can be seen from figure 2 for the $`e\gamma `$ case. The anomalous couplings, which are parameterized with the usual parameters $`\kappa _\gamma ,\lambda _\gamma `$  manifest themselves with modifications of the total and differential cross section and of the polarization structure as seen in figure 3.

## 2 Event Selection

The processes $`\gamma \gamma \mathrm{W}^+\mathrm{W}^{}`$ and $`e\gamma \nu W`$ and the relevant background processes have been simulated with PYTHIA  using the correct $`\gamma `$ energy spectra. The detector has been simulated with SIMDET , assuming in addition that no particles below $`7^{}`$ are accepted. For $`\gamma \gamma `$ the only background is $`\gamma \gamma q\overline{q}`$. For $`e\gamma `$ the relevant backgrounds are $`e\gamma eZ`$ and $`e\gamma eq\overline{q}`$. The additional backgrounds to $`e\gamma \nu W`$ in the $`\gamma \gamma `$ mode have not yet been studied. As shown for two examples in figure 4 the backgrounds can be rejected efficiently with kinematic cuts. In $`\gamma \gamma `$ a signal/background ratio of 15 for $`J_z=2`$ can be reached. For $`J_z=0`$ it is much higher. In $`e\gamma `$ only some background is left at extreme polar angles that can easily be cut without a significant loss in the efficiency. The efficiency for both processes is around 90% over most of the solid angle with a drop to about 80% in the very forward region. In the forward region the Pythia efficiencies might be somewhat optimistic since the polarization structure of the Ws is not included. However in the final analysis a multi-dimensional acceptance function is used binned in the production angle and the polar decay angles of the Ws. In this way only some small effects stemming from the azimuthal decay angles are lost. The acceptance functions have been cross checked at a fixed beam energy with WHIZARD  that includes the full polarization structure.

## 3 Sensitivity Estimate

To estimate the sensitivity of the two processes to anomalous couplings helicity amplitudes for stable Ws have been used . The center of mass energy has been taken to be $`0.8\sqrt{s}`$ for $`\gamma \gamma `$ and $`0.9\sqrt{s}`$ for $`e\gamma `$ which corresponds to the maximum energy for these modes. The beam polarization has been assumed to be 100%. The events have been binned in the production angle and the polar decay angle of the one or two Ws. The azimuthal decay angles, which are sensitive to the interference of the different helicity amplitudes are neglected for the moment. Using these amplitudes event rates are predicted without anomalous couplings in the different bins in the production and decay angles assuming a given luminosity. These event rates are then multiplied by the acceptance function to obtain rates of measured events which are taken as “data”. These “data” are fitted with a $`\chi ^2`$ fit using the same helicity amplitudes multiplied by the acceptance function allowing for anomalous couplings. To allow for a possible normalization uncertainty from the luminosity and efficiency calculation, a free normalization factor has been included in the fit which has been constrained with the assumed accuracy on the normalization. The fits have been repeated with the normalization fixed to unity.

Table 1 shows the results for $`\sqrt{s}_{ee}=500\mathrm{GeV},=110\mathrm{fb}^1`$ and $`J_z=2`$ for $`\gamma \gamma `$ and $`J_\gamma =1`$ for $`e\gamma `$. For the results shown, only one anomalous coupling has been left free in the fit while the other has been fixed to its Standard Model value. In a fit with both couplings left free the correlations for $`e\gamma `$ are small so that the errors practically don’t change. For $`\gamma \gamma `$ the correlations are large and the errors increase by a factor four. For the not shown polarization states the errors are up to a factor four larger than for the shown ones, where the difference increase with larger normalization uncertainty. Between $`\sqrt{s}_{ee}=500\mathrm{GeV}`$ and $`\sqrt{s}_{ee}=800\mathrm{GeV}`$ the sensitivity dependence on the center of mass energy is very small.

The $`e\gamma `$ results are given for the dedicated running mode. In the parasitic mode during $`\gamma \gamma `$ running, the same sensitivity can be reached for $`\kappa _\gamma `$ while the expected uncertainty for $`\lambda _\gamma `$ is a factor two larger, if the same efficiency and purity can be reached.

The sensitivity estimates don’t include yet the azimuthal decay angles which are sensitive to the interference of the helicity amplitudes. Some improvement can be expected from the inclusion of these angles. On the contrary, apart from the normalization no systematic uncertainties have been included up to now. Both studies are planned in the near future.

## 4 Conclusion

According to preliminary estimates the WW$`\gamma `$ triple gauge couplings can be measured in $`\gamma \gamma `$ end $`e\gamma `$ collisions with an accuracy about a factor two worse than in $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ . However the measurements in $`\gamma \gamma `$ end $`e\gamma `$ are in the spacelike region at lower scales, so that they are complementary to the $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ measurements, in case deviations from the Standard Model predictions are found.


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# Exploratory Behavior, Trap Models and Glass Transitions

## Abstract

A random walk is performed on a disordered landscape composed of $`N`$ sites randomly and uniformly distributed inside a $`d`$-dimensional hypercube. The walker hops from one site to another with probability proportional to $`\mathrm{exp}[\beta E(D)]`$, where $`\beta =1/T`$ is the inverse of a formal temperature and $`E(D)`$ is an arbitrary cost function which depends on the hop distance $`D`$. Analytic results indicate that, if $`E(D)=D^d`$ and $`N\mathrm{}`$, there exists a glass transition at $`\beta _d=\pi ^{d/2}/\mathrm{\Gamma }(d/2+1)`$. Below $`T_d`$, the average trapping time diverges and the system falls into an out-of-equilibrium regime with aging phenomena. A Lévy flight scenario and applications of exploratory behavior are considered.

random walks, trap model, exploratory behavior, rugged landscapes, glass transition, disordered media.

This work focus on a surprising connection between two apparently disparated fields: models of exploratory behavior Viswanathan et al. (1999, 1996) and the statistical physics of glass transitions described by trap models Mézard (2002); Bouchaud (1992); Monthus and Bouchaud (1996); Rinn et al. (2001). We show that a glass transition may appear when a walker explores a random landscape with localized resources. This depends on a well defined manner of the cost function used to weight the possible movements. We have also obtained analytical results for finite size effects. This model is a simpler version of the stochastic tourist walk Lima et al. (2001); Stanley and Buldyrev (2001); Kinouchi et al. (2002); Risau-Gusman et al. (2003).

The stochastic tourist walk can be viewed as a coarse-grained description of protein folding dynamics. We represent low-lying minima by points in a $`d`$-dimensional configuration space. It is known that, in the glass phase, the configurational distance between minima constitute the dominant “barrier” (instead of energetic barriers) when considering coarse grained transitions between minima Caliri (2003). Another possible application of our results is in the study of charge diffusion over atoms which are random impurities in a substrate Ferreira and Libero (2000). An exponential decay of the transition probability as the configurational distance increases is a good approximation in both cases.

Trap models have been used to handle anomalous diffusion Barkay and Fleurov (1998) and a low temperature regime in glass forming liquids where the system is supposed to hop among (free) energy minima Dyre (1987, 1995). In their simplest version Bouchaud (1992); Monthus and Bouchaud (1996), each state $`i=1,\mathrm{},N`$ represents a deep minimum which is endowed with a trap energy $`E_i`$ (“energy model”). When the system escapes from a given state, the model assumes that all other states have equal probability of being choosen as the next state. Alternatively, one can assume barriers $`B_{ij}`$ between the states $`i`$ and $`j`$ (“barrier model”) Rinn et al. (2001). In such models, at some temperature $`T_c`$, there is a transition to an out-of-equilibrium regime where the system average trapping time diverges and aging phenomena occurs. This kind of scenario has been called “weak ergodicity breaking” transition Rinn et al. (2001); Bertin and Bouchaud (2002).

Consider a random walk on a disordered landscape composed of $`N`$ sites (representing, for example, localized feeding sites as flowers, trees, water holes, islands etc.). The coordinates of these sites are random and uniformly distributed along the unitary sides of $`d`$-dimensional hypercube. To perform a transition to another site, the walker uses a strategy based in some arbitrary cost function $`E(D_{ij})`$ which depends on the distance $`D_{ij}`$ between sites $`i`$ and $`j`$. Thus, $`E(D_{ij})`$ is similar to a barrier in trap models. In our model the random variable is $`D_{ij}`$ with the probability distribution function (PDF) $`P(D_{ij})`$ fixed by the landscape. This contrasts to usual trap models, where $`E`$ is the random variable with $`P(E)`$ given by experimental evidences. Examples of the latter are Gumbel (exponential) distribution for extreme minima Bertin and Bouchaud (2002) and Gaussian PDF for super cooled liquids Denny et al. (2002). A further contrast is that one has freedom to choose the cost function $`E(D_{ij})`$. Depending on its functional form, several scenarios can be envisaged for the decay of transition probabilities with distance, for example exponential, Gaussian, power law etc. For each value of spatial dimension $`d`$, we have found the specific cost function that creates a glass transition which separates two distinct exploratory behaviors.

The glass transition is characterized by a diverging mean residence time leading to out-of-equilibrium behavior. We have found analytically that the critical point is related to geometrical aspects of the distribution of sites and occurs at $`\beta _d=1/T_d=\pi ^{d/2}/\mathrm{\Gamma }(d/2+1)`$, which is the volume of a $`d`$-dimensional hypersphere of unitary radius and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(d/2+1)`$ is the gamma function. Monte Carlo experiments validate the analytical analysis. We also show that the finite size and finite sample effects depend logarithmically on the number of sites and samples.

Consider a Poisson landscape where special (“feeding”) sites have coordinates $`x_i^{(k)}`$, with $`i=1,2,\mathrm{},N`$ and $`k=1,2,\mathrm{},d`$, that are uniform and randomly chosen in the interval $`[0,1]`$. A normalized Euclidean distance between sites $`i`$ and $`j`$: $`D_{ij}=N^{1/d}\{_{k=1}^d[x_i^{(k)}x_j^{(k)}]^2\}^{1/2}`$ is introduced to simulate a constant density of points since the mean site separation is proportional to $`N^{1/d}`$. The walker goes from site $`i`$ to any other site $`j`$, at each time step, with a “thermal” activation probability:

$$W_{ij}=\frac{e^{\beta E(D_{ij})}}{Z_i(\beta )}\text{with}Z_i(\beta )=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}e^{\beta E(D_{ij})},$$
(1)
where $`\beta `$ is an external parameter which is the inverse of a formal temperature. The cost function $`E(D_{ij})`$ depends on the normalized distance $`D_{ij}`$ such that $`E(D_{ii})=0`$ allowing the walker remain in the site $`i`$. Clearly, if $`\beta \mathrm{}`$, the walker remains in the present site ($`W_{ii}=1`$). On the other hand, if $`\beta 0`$, the walker goes equally to any other site, regardless the distance.

Next we want to show that, although any site has a finite trapping time, the average residence time $`t_r`$ diverges below a finite stochasticity level $`T_d`$. In this case, the system falls into a out-of-equilibrium regime and aging phenomena appears.

Consider discrete time steps. The probability of a walker to remain in a given site $`a`$ is $`p_a(\beta )W_{aa}=1/Z_a`$ and the probability that the walker leaves site $`a`$ is $`q_a(\beta )=1p_a(\beta )`$. Calculations become easier if the distances are relabeled according to the ordering with respect site $`a`$, so that the nearest neighbor of site $`a`$ is at $`D_1^{(a)}`$, the second nearest neighbor is at $`D_2^{(a)}`$ and so forth. One may write $`Z_a(\beta )=1+\mathrm{exp}[\beta E(D_1^{(a)})]_{j=1}^{N1}\mathrm{exp}[\beta \mathrm{\Delta }_j^{(a)}]`$ with: $`\mathrm{\Delta }_j^{(a)}=E(D_j^{(a)})E(D_1^{(a)})`$.

Given that at $`t=0`$, the walker is at site $`a`$, the probability the walker remains there till time $`t`$ and leaves this site at $`t+1`$ is given by the geometric distribution (the first failure after $`t`$ successes): $`P_\beta (t)=p_a^t(\beta )q_a(\beta )`$. The residence (trapping) time associated to site $`a`$ is defined as the expected time: $`t_r^{(a)}(\beta )=_{t=0}^{\mathrm{}}tp_a^t(\beta )q_a(\beta )=p_a(\beta )/[1p_a(\beta )]`$, which reads: $`t_r^{(a)}(\beta )=\mathrm{exp}[\beta E(D_1^{(a)})]/\{1+_{j=2}^{N1}\mathrm{exp}[\beta \mathrm{\Delta }_j^{(a)}]\}`$.

The mean residence time for one realization of site distribution is: $`t_r(\beta )=_{a=1}^Nt_r^{(a)}(\beta )/N`$ and the average over the disorder leads to:

$`t_r(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \text{d}D_1\mathrm{}\text{d}D_{N1}\frac{P(D_1,\mathrm{},D_{N1})t_1(\beta )}{1+_{j=2}^{N1}e^{\beta \mathrm{\Delta }_j}}}`$
$`t_1(\beta )`$ $``$ $`e^{\beta E(D_1)}.`$ (2)
To calculate the average of this trapping time over all possible sites, one needs to average over the full probability density distribution of neighbor distances $`P(D_1,\mathrm{},D_{N1})`$. This is a difficult task once it takes the boundaries into account. To remove the dependence on the boundaries one takes the thermodynamical limit $`N\mathrm{}`$. Since the set of distances is an ordered set $`D_1<D_2<\mathrm{}<D_N`$, the interdependence of the variables does not allow the factorization of the joint probability. One can make an approximation by considering the effect on the trapping time of the transitions to the first neighbor ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_j\mathrm{}`$). Considering $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{N1}>\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Delta }_2>E(D_1)`$, one can consider $`_{j=2}^{N1}\mathrm{exp}[\beta \mathrm{\Delta }_j]1`$ and neglect this summation, which can also be viewed as a $`\beta `$ (high temperature) expansion. In this approximation one considers only the nearest neighbor distance PDF $`P(D_1)`$ leading to $`t_r(\beta )t_1(\beta )`$ where:

$$t_1(\beta )=_0^{\mathrm{}}\text{d}D_1P(D_1)e^{\beta E(D_1)}.$$
(3)
Considering bounds on the influence of the next neighbors it is possible to show that $`t_1(\beta )`$ diverges, with the same exponent, at the same $`\beta `$ as the exact $`t_r(\beta )`$ as it be shown.

For a spatial Poisson process, one can easily show Cox (1981) that $`P(D_1)=\mathrm{exp}[V_d(D_1)]\text{d}V_d(D_1)/\text{d}D_1`$, where $`V_d(R)=A_dR^d`$ is the volume of a hypersphere of radius $`R`$ and the geometrical factor (the volume of an unitary radius hypersphere) is $`A_d=\pi ^{d/2}/\mathrm{\Gamma }(d/2+1)`$, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(z)`$ being the gamma function. Then: $`P(D_1)=A_ddD_1^{d1}e^{V_d(D_1)}`$ and

$$t_1(\beta )=A_dd_0^{\mathrm{}}\text{d}D_1D_1^{d1}e^{\left[\beta E(D_1)A_dD_1^d\right]}.$$
(4)
Firstly, consider a cost function family which depends on a power of the distance, $`E(D_{ij})=D_{ij}^\alpha `$, where $`\alpha `$ is an adjustable exponent. For $`\alpha <d`$ the above integral is finite for any $`\beta `$ value, so that, for long times, the system presents usual diffusive behavior. Conversely, for $`\alpha >d`$, the above integral is always divergent and the system is in an out-of-equilibrium regime. However, for $`\alpha =d`$, the residence time and the tail of the distance distribution compete and a glass transition appears at finite value of $`\beta `$: $`t_1(\beta )=A_dd_0^{\mathrm{}}\text{d}D_1D_1^{d1}e^{D_1^d\left(A_d\beta \right)}=A_d_0^{\mathrm{}}\text{d}xe^{x\left(A_d\beta \right)}`$:

$$t_1(\beta )=\{\begin{array}{cc}A_d/(A_d\beta )& (\beta <A_d)\hfill \\ \mathrm{}& (\beta A_d)\hfill \end{array}.$$
(5)
The mean residence time is finite only for $`\beta <A_d`$ and it diverges at:

$$\beta _d=A_d=\frac{\pi ^{d/2}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(d/2+1)},$$
(6)
which is just the volume of an unitary radius hypersphere in $`d`$ dimensions. For example, $`\beta _1=2`$, $`\beta _2=\pi `$, $`\beta _3=4\pi /3`$ etc. The value of $`\beta _1`$ has been also found in Ref. Risau-Gusman et al. (2003), where the walker is not allowed to remain at the same site.

The residence time divergence at $`\beta _d`$ occurs only in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ and it is difficult to be observed in numerical experiments. Thus, finite size effects are important and they can be taken into account considering a cutoff value $`D_c(N)`$: $`t_1=A_dd_0^{D_c}\text{d}D_1D_1^{d1}e^{D_1^d\left(\beta A_d\right)}`$, and Eq. (2) becomes:

$$t_1=\frac{A_d}{A_d\beta }\left[1e^{(A_d\beta )D_c^d}\right].$$
(7)
Notice that at $`\beta =\beta _d`$, the mean residence time is the volume of the largest hypersphere found in the $`N_r`$ realizations: $`t_1=V_d(D_c)=A_dD_c^d`$.

The value of $`D_c`$ can be estimated from extremal statistics concepts, being the most probable value of the Gumbel distribution Bouchaud and Mézard (1997). Consider a Monte Carlo calculation of Eq. (3) where the average is taken over $`M`$ landscapes with $`N`$ points, i.e., $`N_r=MN`$ distances $`D_1`$ are sampled. The cut-off $`D_c`$ is obtained from the condition $`N_r_{D_c}^{\mathrm{}}\text{d}D_1P(D_1)=1`$ which reads $`N_r\mathrm{exp}[V_d(D_c)]=1`$ or $`D_c=[\mathrm{ln}N_r/A_d]^{1/d}`$. For $`d=1`$, one has $`D_c=\mathrm{ln}(N_r)/2`$ and for $`d=2`$, $`D_c=[\mathrm{ln}(N_r)/\pi ]^{1/2}`$. In Fig. 1 we compare Eq. (7) with results from Monte Carlo calculations for $`t_1`$ and for the full residence time $`t_r`$. Here we stress that in $`t_r`$ the normalization $`Z_i`$ is calculated with all the terms $`\mathrm{exp}[\beta E(D_k)]`$. Notice that, for $`\beta =0`$, we have $`t_1=1`$ and $`t_r=1/(N1)`$ but the two curves grows in the same way for larger $`\beta `$.

One can find the residence time PDF $`P_T(t_1)`$ at temperature $`T`$, in the first neighbor approximation. Changing variables $`D_1=(T\mathrm{ln}t_1)^{1/d}`$ \[see Eq. (2)\] in $`P_T(t_1)=P[D_1(t_1)]\text{d}D_1/\text{d}t_1`$ leads to $`P_T(t_1)=A_dTt_1^{(1+A_dT)}`$, which has a power law tail $`t_1^\gamma `$ with exponent $`\gamma =1+A_dT`$. As it is well known, the first moment diverges when the exponent is bellow $`\gamma _c=2`$, that is, $`T_d=1/A_d`$.

For $`d=2`$ the distance distribution function $`P(D_1)=\pi D_1\mathrm{exp}(\pi D_1^2)`$ presents a Gaussian tail. In this case, a well-defined glass transition appears when the cost function takes the form $`E(D_{ij})=D_{ij}^2`$. Notice that no glass transition occurs when $`E(D_{ij})=D_{ij}`$, although very long residence times exist when $`\beta \mathrm{}`$. This case $`E(D_{ij})=D_{ij}`$ is mathematically equivalent to Bouchaud’s trap model for barrier distribution with Gaussian tail (with notation $`B_{ij}=D_{ij}`$). Thus, no glass transition is present at finite $`T`$ in the latter case Denny et al. (2002). To have a glass transition at finite $`T`$, the hopping probability in a Gaussian Bouchaud’s trap model should have a Gaussian form $`W_{ij}\mathrm{exp}(\beta B_{ij}^2)`$.

Now we consider an improved calculation for the mean residence time $`t_r(\beta )`$ when $`E(D)=ND^d`$. The approximation consists to replace the distances to their mean values Percus and Martin (1996); Chakraborti (2001) in the denominator of Eq. 2: $`D_j=D_j=(A_dN)^{1/d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(j+1/d)/\mathrm{\Gamma }(j)=[j/(NA_d)]^{1/d}`$, where the approximation Percus and Martin (1996): $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(j+1/d)/\mathrm{\Gamma }(j)=j^{1/d}`$ has been employed. In this way we obtain:

$$t_r(\beta )=\frac{1e^{\beta /A_d}}{1e^{(N1)\beta /A_d}}t_1(\beta ),$$
(8)
where $`t_1(\beta )`$ is given by Eq. (3). As it can be seen in Fig. 1 this curve is in very good agreement with the Monte Carlo calculation.

The specific distribution $`P(D_1)=\mathrm{exp}[V_d(D_1)]`$ studied here arises from the particular distribution of sites used (Poisson process), nevertheless other scenarios can be envisaged. Consider, for example, a distribution of points where the distance PDF has a power law tail, $`P(D_1)D_1^b`$ (Lévy process) Mantegna and Stanley (1994); Koponen (1995); Tsallis et al. (1995). For any cost function of the form $`E=D_{ij}^\alpha `$ the walker is always in the glass regime. In the integral of Eq. (3), $`P(D_1)`$ cannot compete with an exponentially increasing residence times $`\mathrm{exp}(\beta D_1^\alpha )`$. However, if the walker now uses a cost function of the form $`E(D_{ij})=\mathrm{ln}(1+D_{ij})`$, both the transition probability and the residence time have power law forms, $`W_{ij}=(1+D_{ij})^\beta /Z_i`$ and $`t_1=(1+D_1)^\beta `$, respectively. In this case, the average residence time is: $`t_1(\beta )\text{d}D_1D_1^{(\beta b)}`$ and a glass transition occurs at $`\beta _d=b1`$.

In a destructive foraging scenario Viswanathan et al. (1999) a walker wants to find unvisited feeding sites. One can naively think that the walker should avoid glass transitions to reduce trapping times by choosing $`\alpha <d`$. Such values of $`\alpha `$ produce long hoppings which favor transitions to unvisited sites (the limit $`\alpha 0`$, $`\beta \mathrm{}`$ such that $`\alpha \beta =\text{cte}`$ produces Lévy flights). Nevertheless this procedure also increases the total traveling cost. We conjecture that the efficiency of this kind of exploration is maximized when the cost function allows a glass transition, for instance $`E(D)=D^d`$ in the Poisson case. Then, the optimal exploratory process may occur at some temperature above the glass temperature $`T_d`$. This will be fully discussed elsewhere.

Finally, we compare the present to previous models of exploratory behavior. If one prohibits the walker to remain at the same site ($`W_{aa}=0`$) the fundamental traps are cycles of period two instead of single sites. Also in this case we have found similar glass transitions Risau-Gusman et al. (2003). If one prohibits the walker to go to sites within a self-avoiding window of the $`\tau `$ past visited sites, the traps are cycles of diverse periods Lima et al. (2001); Stanley and Buldyrev (2001); Kinouchi et al. (2002). In the latter case we also expect that the escaping from cycles is done through a glass transition which is a theme for a future study.

In conclusion, we have introduced a simple exploratory behavior model where the hop probability between feeding sites depends on the site distances and a formal temperature that controls the stochasticity level. We have presented a simple analytical treatment that predicts the existence of a glass transition. This transition depends on the competition between the walker cost function and the geometry of first neighbor distances. Our model brings glass transitions previously found in usual trap models to a very simple geometrical context. The approximations used give insight on the transition mechanism and accords well with results from numerical experiments. Finite size effects depend logarithmically on the number of sites and sample for large $`N`$ and $`M`$. The mean neighbor distance approximation on the calculation of the mean residence time extends the trap model approximation where only the first neighbor is considered.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors acknowledge useful conversations with N. Caticha, R. Dickman, J. R. Drugowich de Felício, M. A. Idiart, G. F. Lima, R. da Silva and D. Stariolo. O. Kinouchi thanks financial support from FAPESP.


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# Tuning the onset voltage of resonant tunneling through InAs quantum dots by growth parameters

## Abstract

We investigated the size dependence of the ground state energy in self-assembled InAs quantum dots embedded in resonant tunneling diodes. Individual current steps observed in the current-voltage characteristics are attributed to resonant single-electron tunneling via the ground state of individual InAs quantum dots. The onset voltage of the first step observed is shown to decrease systematically from 200 mV to 0 with increasing InAs coverage. We relate this to a coverage-dependent size of InAs dots grown on AlAs. The results are confirmed by atomic force micrographs and photoluminescence experiments on reference samples.

Recently, self-assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown in the Stranski-Krastanov mode have attracted much interest as a novel nanostructure with interesting electronic properties. In particular, their well defined optical characteristics as investigated in numerous photoluminescence experiments BimbergBuch  may be used for application in optical and opto-electronic devices such as QD laser and memories. Application

Until present only few experiments directly access the electronic transport through InAs QDs by means of resonant tunneling through QDs embedded single-barrier tunneling diodes.Nott1 ; Jap1 ; Jap2 ; Nott2 ; IHW1 ; IHW2  Although typically 105 \- 106 QDs are present in the macroscopic devices used in such experiments, resonant single-electron tunneling through individual QDs was observed. This means that only a small proportion of the QDs in a tunneling structure contribute to the tunneling current, a much larger one is electrically inactive. As a consequence, a correlation between the experimentally observed single-QD features and the properties of the macroscopic QD ensemble is far from being straightforward in such type of experiments.

In this paper we will show that even in macroscopic diodes we can nevertheless relate the onset voltage for resonant single-electron tunneling through an individual QD to the ensemble properties of all QDs which can be thoroughly controlled by growth parameters. In particular, with increasing InAs coverage we find a systematically decreasing onset voltage for the first current step related to single-electron tunneling through the energetically lowest lying electronically accessible InAs QD. We relate this to an increasing quantum dot size with increasing coverage leading to a lower ground state energy. Our results are additionally supported by photoluminescence experiments and atomic force micrographs on reference samples. These findings may open up a new way to control the properties of single-electron devices based on resonant tunneling via QDs.

The resonant-tunneling diode structures were grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) on a 2 inch $`n^+`$-doped GaAs (100) substrate ($`n^+=2\times 10^{24}`$ m-3).IHW1 ; IHW2  A $`n`$-GaAs-back contact of 1 $`\mu `$m thickness with graded Si-doping followed by an undoped GaAs prelayer of 15 nm and a 5 nm AlAs barrier was deposited at a substrate temperature $`T_S=600^o`$C. During a growth interruption of 60 s $`T_S`$ was lowered to 520oC and the substrate rotation was stopped. Subsequently, with a slow growth rate of 0.05 ML/s, nominally 1.8 monolayers (ML) InAs, as measured in the middle of the wafer, were deposited. The formation of self-assembled QDs was observed by the change of the reflective high electron energy diffraction (RHEED) pattern after deposition of 1.6 ML of InAs.

Due to the geometric position of the In effusion cell with respect to the non-rotating substrate an actual gradient ranging from 1.55 to 2.05 ML of InAs coverage is present across the wafer. On the parts of the wafer where the InAs coverage $`x`$ exceeds 1.6 ML we observe the formation of self-assembled QDs in atomic force microscopy (AFM) images on comparable reference samples. On the remaining parts of the wafer ($`x<1.6`$ ML) only a two-dimensional InAs wetting layer with no self-assembled QDs is formed.

After the InAs growth and a subsequent growth interruption during 10 s the wafer was rotated again and the QDs were covered with a 5 nm thick AlAs barrier. Simultaneously $`T_S`$ was slowly ramped up to 600oC. Finally, another 15 nm of undoped GaAs and an upper contact of 1 $`\mu `$m graded $`n`$-GaAs were grown.

Pieces with different InAs coverage were cut from the wafer and tunneling diodes with standard AuGeNi contacts were fabricated on a $`40\times 40\mu `$m2 area by wet-chemically etching. Each of these diodes contains approximately $`5\times 10^9`$ InAs QDs. Reference wafers for AFM and photoluminescence (PL) measurements were grown under similar growth conditions. For the AFM experiments a wafer with uncovered QDs grown on 20 nm of AlAs was used. An identical wafer, additionally capped by 20 nm AlAs and 10 nm GaAs, was grown for the use in PL experiments.

The layer structure of the resonant-tunneling diodes is designed such that a 3D electron gas with a Fermi energy $`E_F`$ of about 15 meV above the conduction band is formed in the GaAs contact.IHW2  As sketched in the top panel of Fig. 1 the QD ground states are generally situated above $`E_F`$ at zero bias. When increasing the bias voltage these states move towards lower energies with respect to $`E_F`$, and, whenever $`E_F`$ comes into resonance with such a QD level a step in the current-voltage ($`I`$-$`V`$) characteristics appears, see Fig. 1(b).

In the bottom panel of Fig. 1 we show such typical low-bias $`I`$-$`V`$-curves for diodes with different InAs coverages measured at 4.2 K. In the structure with the lowest InAs coverage of 1.55 ML no QDs have formed and, consequently, a structureless, roughly exponential increase of the tunneling current is observed. In contrast, diodes with InAs coverages of more than 1.6 ML display step-like increasing $`I`$-$`V`$-characteristics which we assign to the resonant tunneling through individual InAs QDs. The first step in each $`I`$-$`V`$-curve appears at an onset voltage $`V_0`$, marked by the arrows in Fig. 1. With increasing InAs coverage $`V_0`$ systematically moves down towards zero. This shows that the energy levels of the QDs accessed by tunneling continuously shift to lower energies when the InAs coverage is increased.IHW

The onset voltage $`V_0`$ is in fact directly related to the ground state energy $`E_0`$ of the first dot accessible to resonant tunneling, $`\alpha eV_0=E_0`$, where $`E_0`$ is measured with respect to the Fermi energy in the emitter at zero bias. The lever factor $`\alpha `$ accounts for the fact that only a part of the total voltage applied drops between the emitter and the QD. Since we observe an abrupt onset of current steps at a finite voltage it is reasonable to assume that the first tunneling steps can be related to dots with a relatively low ground state energy situated in the low-energy tail of the QD energy distribution. Subsequent steps then address dots with an energetically higher lying ground state.

The total number of dots per diode that participate in resonant tunneling can be roughly estimated by referring the total current at higher voltages to the current contribution of one single dot. Supposing a current contribution of 20 pA for transport through one single dot a current of typically 1 nA observed around 400 mV yields a total number of about 50 dots electronically active at this bias voltage. Each dot contibutes to the current in a bias range of 40 mV.Nauen  Using the total energetic width of the dot distribution as deduced from photoluminescence measurements (see below) we can extrapolate the 50 dots observed in a 40 mV range to an upper bound of totally less than 1000 dots participating in resonant tunneling over the entire bias voltage range.

The systematic decrease of $`V_0`$ with increasing InAs coverage was verified by measuring totally 85 samples with InAs QDs. All the measured onset voltages are compiled in Fig. 2. In particular for InAs coverages $`x>1.8`$ ML a strong correlation between the onset voltage of the first current step and the InAs coverage is found. Such a correlation clearly shows that $`V_0`$ is strongly related to the macroscopic ensemble properties of the InAs quantum dots, and, in particular, to ground state energies $`E_0`$ decreasing with increasing coverage.

We have verified this statement with photoluminescence (PL) experiments on reference samples performed at $`T=6`$ K under cw excitation with an Ar+ laser (514 nm). As shown in Fig. 3(a) the position of the PL peak corresponding to the average energy of the ground-state transitions inside the InAs QDs indeed moves systematically towards lower energies when increasing the InAs coverage.

We have additionally investigated the energy distribution of the QDs accessed by resonant tunneling by systematically measuring 4 samples with a similar InAs coverage $`x1.9`$ ML over a broad voltage range. As can been seen in the inset of Fig. 2 the step density, defined as the number of steps in a 20-mV interval summed up over all four samples, increases with an increasing absolute value of the bias voltage. This clearly proves that the first steps indeed do access the low energy tail of the QD distribution and subsequent steps access energetically higher lying states with energies moving towards the maximum in the energy distribution of the QDs. Supposing a simple Gaussian distribution with a half-width $`\sigma 70`$meV as deduced from PL and a lever factor $`\alpha =0.34`$ IHW2  we extrapolate that only totally 40 dots per structure could be involved in resonant tunneling,rem  about 8 of them are situated in the low energy tail corresponding to onset voltages up to 200 mV.

The key point to understand the in Fig. 2 observed systematic tendency in the coverage dependence of the onset voltage for the first current step lies in the fact that the size of the dots grown on relatively rough AlAs is increasing when the InAs coverage is risen.InAs-AlAs  In contrast, the size of InAs QDs grown on a much smoother GaAs surface does merely depend on the amount of InAs deposited. Such a size variation of the InAs QDs as a function of the InAs coverage can be verified independently by AFM, see Fig. 3(b). Indeed, the lateral QD dimensions increase from 10 to 14 nm in diameter when varying the InAs coverage from 1.6 ML to 2.0 ML. On the other hand, as shown in Fig. 3(c), the QD density of InAs dots grown on AlAs, $`n_{QD}3\times 10^{15}`$m-2 , is nearly independent on the InAs coverage $`x`$, whereas it strongly depends on $`x`$ for InAs QDs grown on GaAs. This observation shows that the growth of InAs QDs on AlAs (at the temperatures used in our experiments) is kinetically limited by a slower In adatom diffusion compared to the GaAs surface, which results into a fast nucleation of QDs at positions predefined by the surface roughness.

In conclusion we have shown that the onset of resonant single-electron tunneling through self-assembled InAs QDs embedded in macroscopic tunneling diodes can be tuned between 0 and 0.3 V by adjusting the amount of InAs deposited during MBE growth of the corresponding device. This observation was explained by a systematic increase of the InAs QDs with increasing InAs coverage which can be related to the specific growth mechanism of QDs on AlAs. The energetic distribution of the dots involved in resonant tunneling was shown to correspond to that of the macroscopic ensemble. However, only a small relative proportion of InAs QDs were shown to participate in resonant tunneling, the rest are electronically inactive.