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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The predicted phase transition from confined hadrons to a deconfined phase of their constituents (i.e. the asymptotically-free quarks and gluons or the so-called Quark-Gluon Plasma, QGP) is a challenge to the theory of strong interaction. Over the past two decades a lot of efforts has been spent to both the theoretical study of deconfinement phase transition and the search for its possible manifestation in relativistic heavy ion collisions, properties of neutron stars and Universe evolution. A unique opportunity provided by relativistic heavy-ion collisions allowed to reach a state with temperature and energy density exceeding the critical values, $`T_c170MeV`$ and $`\epsilon _c1GeV/fm^3`$, specific for the deconfinement phase transition. A rather long list of various signals for the QGP formation in hot and dense nuclear matter is available now and it has been probed in experiments with heavy ions. Unfortunately, there is no crucial signal for unambiguous identification of the deconfinement phase and, for a particular reaction at the given bombarding energy, practically every proposed signal can be simulated to some extent by hadronic interactions.

In this paper we turn to the study of excitation functions for observables to be sensitive to the expected QCD deconfinement phase transition. Its manifestation has been considered already some time ago by . Since a phase transition slows down the time evolution of the system due to softening of the EoS, and one can expect a remarkable loss of correlations around some critical incident energy resulting in definite observable effects.

## 2 Equation of state in mixed phase model

Following the common strategy of the two-phase (2P) bag model , one can determine the deconfinement phase transition by means of the Gibbs conditions matching the EoS of a relativistic gas of hadrons and resonances, whose interactions are simulated by the Van der Waals excluded volume correction, to that of an ideal gas of quarks and gluons, where the change in vacuum energy in a QGP state is parameterized by the bag constant $`B`$. Thermodynamics of the hadron gas is described in the grand canonical ensemble. All hadrons with the mass $`m_j<1.6GeV`$ i are taken into consideration. One should emphasize that the phase transition in the 2P model is right along of the first order by constructing.

To reproduce the variety of phase transitions predicted by QCD lattice calculations we represent a phenomenological Mixed Phase (MP) model . The underlying assumption of the MP model is that unbound quarks and gluons may coexist with hadrons forming a homogeneous quark/gluon–hadron phase. Since the mean distance between hadrons and quarks/gluons in this mixed phase may be of the same order as that between hadrons, the interaction between all these constituents (unbound quarks/gluons and hadrons) plays an important role and defines the order of the phase transition.

Within the MP model  the effective Hamiltonian is expressed in the quasiparticle approximation with density-dependent mean-field interactions. Under quite general requirements of confinement for color charges, the mean-field potential of quarks and gluons is approximated by

$$U_q(\rho )=U_g(\rho )=\frac{A}{\rho ^\gamma };\gamma >0$$
(1)
with the total density of quarks and gluons

$$\rho =\rho _q+\rho _g+\underset{j}{}\nu _j\rho _j,$$

where $`\rho _q`$ and $`\rho _g`$ are the densities of unbound quarks and gluons outside of hadrons, while $`\rho _j`$ is the density of hadron type $`j`$ and $`\nu _j`$ is the number of valence quarks inside. The presence of the total density $`\rho `$ in (1) implies interactions between all components of the mixed phase. The approximation (1) mirrors two important limits of the QCD interaction. For $`\rho 0`$, the interaction potential approaches infinity, i.e. an infinite energy is necessary to create an isolated quark or gluon, which simulates the confinement of color objects. In the other extreme case of large energy density corresponding to $`\rho \mathrm{}`$, we have $`U_q=U_g=0`$ which is consistent with asymptotic freedom.

The use of the density-dependent potential (1) for quarks and the hadronic potential, described by a modified non-linear mean-field model , requires certain constraints to be fulfilled, which are related to thermodynamic consistency . For the chosen form of the Hamiltonian these conditions require that $`U_g(\rho )`$ and $`U_q(\rho )`$ do not depend on temperature. From these conditions one also obtains a form for the quark–hadron potential .

A detailed study of the pure gluonic $`SU(3)`$ case with a first-order phase transition allows one to fix the values of the parameters as $`\gamma =0.92`$ and $`A^{1/(3\gamma +1)}=250`$ MeV. These values are then used for the $`SU(3)`$ system including quarks. As is shown in Fig.1 for the case of quarks of two light flavors at zero baryon density ($`n_B=0`$), the MP model is consistent with lattice QCD data providing a continuous phase transition if the crossover type with a deconfinement temperature $`T_{dec}=153`$ MeV. For a two-phase approach based on the bag model a first-order deconfinement phase transition occurs with a sharp jump in energy density $`\epsilon `$ at $`T_{dec}`$ close to the value obtained from lattice QCD.

Though at a glimpse the temperature dependencies of the energy density $`\epsilon `$ and pressure $`p`$ for the different approaches presented in Fig.1 look quite similar, there is a large difference revealed when $`p/\epsilon `$ is plotted versus $`\epsilon `$ (cf. Fig.2, left panel). The lattice QCD data differ at low $`\epsilon `$, which is due to difficulties within the Kogut–Susskind scheme  in treating the hadronic sector. A particular feature in the MP model is that, for $`n_B=0`$, the softest point of the EoS, defined as a minimum of the function $`p(\epsilon )/\epsilon `$ , is not

very pronounced and located at comparatively low values of the energy density: $`\epsilon _{SP}0.45`$ GeV/fm3, which roughly agrees with the lattice QCD value . This value of $`\epsilon `$ is close to the energy density inside a nucleon, and hence, reaching this value indicates that we are dealing with a single big hadron consisting of deconfined matter. In contradistinction, the bag-model EoS exhibits a very pronounced softest point at large energy density $`\epsilon _{SP}1.5`$ GeV/fm3 .

The MP model can be extended to baryon-rich systems in a parameter-free way . As demonstrated in Fig.2 (right panel), the softest point for baryonic matter is gradually washed out with increasing baryon density and vanishes for $`n_B\text{ }>0.3n_0`$ ($`n_0`$ is normal nuclear matter density). This behavior differs drastically from that of the two-phase bag-model EoS, where $`\epsilon _{SP}`$ is only weakly dependent on $`n_B`$ . It is of interest to note that the interacting hadron gas model has no softest point at all and, in this respect, its thermodynamic behavior is close to that of the MP model at high energy densities .

These differences between the various models of EoS should manifest themselves in dynamics discussed below.

## 3 Directed flow of baryons

The EoS described above is applied to a two-fluid (2F) hydrodynamic model , which takes into account finite stopping power of colliding heavy ions. In this dynamical model, the total baryonic current and energy-momentum tensor are written as

$`J^\mu `$ $`=`$ $`J_p^\mu +J_t^\mu ,`$ (2)
$`T^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`T_p^{\mu \nu }+T_t^{\mu \nu },`$ (3)
where the baryonic current $`J_\alpha ^\mu =n_\alpha u_\alpha ^\mu `$ and energy-momentum tensor $`T_\alpha ^{\mu \nu }`$ of the fluid $`\alpha `$ are initially associated with either target ($`\alpha =t`$) or projectile ($`\alpha =p`$) nucleons. Later on these fluids contain all hadronic and quark–gluon species, depending on the model used for describing the fluids. The twelve independent quantities (the baryon densities $`n_\alpha `$, 4-velocities $`u_\alpha ^\mu `$ normalized as $`u_{\alpha \mu }u_\alpha ^\mu =1`$, as well as temperatures $`T`$ and pressures $`p`$ of the fluids) are obtained by solving the following set of equations of two-fluid hydrodynamics

$`_\mu J_\alpha ^\mu `$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (4)
$`_\mu T_\alpha ^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`F_\alpha ^\nu ,`$ (5)
where the coupling term

$`F_\alpha ^\nu =n_p^sn_t^sV_{rel}{\displaystyle 𝑑\sigma _{NNNX}(s)(pp_\alpha )^\nu }`$ (6)
characterizes friction between the counter-streaming fluids. The cross sections $`d\sigma _{NNNX}`$ take into account all elastic and inelastic interactions between the constituents of different fluids at the invariant collision energy $`s^{1/2}`$ with the local relative velocity $`V_{rel}=[s(s4m_N^7)]^{1/2}/2m_N^2.`$ The average in (6) is taken over all particles in the two fluids which are assumed to be in local equilibrium intrinsically . The set of Eqs. (4) and (5) is closed by EoS, which is naturally the same for both colliding fluids.

Following the original paper , it is assumed that a fluid element decouples from the hydrodynamic regime, when its baryon density $`n_B`$ and densities in the eight surrounding cells become smaller than a fixed value $`n_f`$. A value $`n_f=0.8n_0`$ is used for this local freeze-out density which corresponds to the actual density of the freeze-out fluid element of about $`0.60.7n_0`$.

The directed flow characterizes the deflection of emitted hadrons away from the beam axis within the reaction $`xz`$ plane. In particular, one defines the differential directed flow by the mean in-plane component $`p_x(y)`$ of the transverse momentum at a given rapidity $`y`$. This deflection is believed to be quite sensitive to the elasticity or softness of the EoS and can be quantified in two ways: In terms of the derivative (a slope parameter) at mid-rapidity

$$F_y=\frac{dp_x(y)}{dy}|_{y=y_{cm}},$$
(7)
which is quite suitable for analyzing the flow excitation function, and by another integral quantity to be less sensitive to possible rapidity fluctuations of the in-plane momentum:

$$P_x=\frac{{\displaystyle 𝑑p_x𝑑p_y𝑑yp_x\left(E\frac{d^3N}{dp^3}\right)}}{{\displaystyle 𝑑p_x𝑑p_y𝑑y\left(E\frac{d^3N}{dp^3}\right)}},$$
(8)
where the integration in the c.m.system runs over the rapidity region $`[0,y_{cm}]`$. Excitation functions in the SIS-AGS-SPS energy range are plotted in Fig.3 for both characteristics .

Our first 2F hydrodynamic calculations of $`F_y(E_{lab})`$ are in a good agreement with experiment in the whole energy range considered. In the left lower panel of Fig.3 our results are compared with transport calculations. The ARC and ART are cascade models, while the RQMD takes also into account mean-field effects. Though all these models agree with experimental data at $`E_{lab}10`$ A$``$GeV (considered as a reference point), values of $`F_y`$ at lower energies are clearly underestimated, as is evident from comparison with results of the E895 Collaboration  (see empty squares in Fig.3). Recently, a good description of experimental points (including the E895 data) was reported within a relativistic BUU (RBUU) model . The good agreement with experiment was achieved here by a special fine tuning of the mean fields involved in the particle propagation.

The calculated excitation functions of $`P_x`$ for baryons within different hydrodynamic models are shown in the right panel of Fig.3. Conventional 1F hydrodynamics for pure hadronic matter  results in a very large directed flow due to the inherent instantaneous stopping of the colliding matter. This instantaneous stopping is unrealistic at high beam energies. If the deconfinement phase transition, based on the bag-model EoS , is included into this model, the excitation function of $`P_x`$ exhibits a deep minimum near $`E_{lab}6`$ A$``$GeV, which manifests the softest-point effect of the bag-model EoS as shown in the right panel of Fig.2.

The result of 2F hydrodynamics with the MP EoS noticeably differs from the 1F calculations. After a maximum around 1 A$``$GeV, the average directed flow decreased slowly and smoothly. This difference is caused by two reasons. First, as follows from Fig.2, the softest point of the MP EoS is washed out for $`n_B\text{ }>0.4`$. The second reason is dynamical: the finite stopping power and direct pion emission change the evolution pattern. The latter point is confirmed by comparison to three-fluid calculations with the bag EoS  plotted in the right lower panel of Fig.3. The third pionic fluid in this model is assumed to interact only with itself neglecting the interaction with baryonic fluids. Therefore, with regard to the baryonic component, this three-fluid hydrodynamics  is completely equivalent to our two-fluid model and the main difference is due to the different EoS. As seen in Fig.3, the minimum of the directed flow excitation function, predicted by the one-fluid hydrodynamics with the bag-model EoS, survives in the three-fluid (nonunified) regime but its value decreases and its position shifts to higher energies. If one applies the unification procedure of , which favors fusion of two fluids into a single one, and thus making stopping larger, three-fluid hydrodynamics practically reproduces the one-fluid result and predicts in addition a bump at $`E_{lab}40`$ A$``$GeV.

## 4 Strangeness production

Enhanced strangeness production as compared to proton-proton or proton-nucleus collisions is one of the QGP signals proposed a long time ago. In the hydrodynamic model described above only baryon charge rather than strangeness exchange is included. So, to see experimental consequences of EoS with different phase transition order, we consider an expanding homogeneous blob of the compressed and heated QCD matter (a fireball) formed in heavy-ion collisions. The initial state ($`\epsilon _0`$ and $`n_B`$) for this fireball is estimated from results of the QGSM transport calculations in the center-of-mass frame inside a cylinder of the volume $`V_0`$ with radius $`R=5fm`$ and Lorentz-contracted length $`L=2R/\gamma _{c.m.}`$. Isoentropic expansion is treated in an approximate manner assuming $`VV_0t`$ until the freeze-out point defined by $`\epsilon _f=0.15GeV/fm^3m_Nn_0`$ (for more detail see ).

One should note that till this point the grand canonical ensemble was used where complete chemical equilibrium is assumed and the strangeness conservation is controlled on average by the strange chemical potential $`\mu _S`$. In the thermodynamical limit, fluctuations in a number of strange particles are small and coincide with those for the canonical ensemble. However, it is not the case for finite systems at relatively small $`T`$ where the strangeness canonical ensemble should be applied, taking into account the associative nature of strange particle creation by exact and local conservation of strangeness. Using the general formalism for the canonical strangeness conservation proposed in , the partition function of a gas of hadrons with strangeness $`s_i=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\pm 3`$ and total strangeness $`S=0`$ can be written as follows

$$Z_S=\frac{1}{2\pi }_\pi ^\pi 𝑑\varphi \mathrm{exp}(\underset{s=3}{\overset{3}{}}𝒮_se^{is\varphi })$$
(9)
where $`𝒮_s=V_iZ_i.`$ Here $`Z_i`$ is the one-particle partition function for species $`i`$ and the sum is taken over all particles and resonances carrying strangeness $`s_i`$. A number of strange particles can be found by the appropriate differentiation of the partition function $`Z_S`$, Eq.(9). It is easy to see that canonical result can be obtain in the Boltzmann approximation from the grand canonical one by replacing the strange fugacity in the following way :

$$\mathrm{exp}(\mu _s/T)\left(\frac{𝒮_1}{\sqrt{𝒮_1𝒮_1}}\right)^s\frac{I_s(x)}{I_0(x)},$$
(10)
where the argument of the Bessel functions $`x2\sqrt{𝒮_1𝒮_1}V`$. This receipt was applied to our treatment of particle abundance at the freeze-out point. Generally, the correlation volume in the suppression factor $`I_s(x)/I_0(x)`$ of (10) does not coincide with the system volume $`V`$. In our model, the initial Lorentz-contracted volume $`V_0`$ is considered as a strangeness correlation volume.

Inspection of Fig.4 shows that the inclusion of the canonical strangeness suppression factor allows one to decrease noticeably strange particle abundance. However, comparing canonical and grand canonical results for the MP model, one can see that they do not coincide at high energies as it would be expected. This is explained by the beam energy dependence of the strangeness correlation volume in contrast with usual canonical description . The most striking result followed from Fig.4 is that all the models considered in the strangeness canonical ensemble predict practically the same relative abundance of strange hadrons in the whole energy range studied. The measured excitation function for $`K^+/\pi ^+`$ are reproduced reasonably well excluding maybe the SIS energy. In the case of $`K^{}/\pi ^{}`$ the general form of excitation functions also agrees with experimental one but the relative abundance is overestimated what mainly originates from neglecting the electric charge (isospin) conservation. A simple estimate shows that taking into account the isospin conservation the $`K^{}/\pi ^{}`$ ratio decreases by about $`18\%`$ and $`12\%`$ at $`E_{lab}=10`$ and $`150AGeV`$, respectively, without any essential influence on the $`K^+/\pi ^+`$ ratio. The relative yield of hyperons, in particular $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/\pi ^+`$’s, seems to be overshot in the energy range $`E_{lab}\text{ }<10AGeV`$ what can result from the simplified dynamical treatment: The Bjorken-like longitudinal expansion can be applied at the SPS energies, but at the SIS energies the transverse expansion is not negligible. It is worthy to note that all calculations have been done with the same shock-like freeze-out condition for every EoS without any special tuning.

## 5 Conclusions

It has been shown that the directed flow excitation functions $`F_y`$ and $`P_x`$ for baryons are sensitive to the EoS, but this sensitivity is significantly masked by nonequilibrium dynamics of nuclear collisions. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the widely used two-phase EoS, based on the bag model  and giving rise to a first-order phase transition, seems to be inappropriate. The neglect of interactions near the deconfinement temperature results in an unrealistically strong softest-point effect within this two-phase EoS. Smooth experimental excitation function of the directed flow is reasonably reproduced within the MP model.

The dynamical trajectories for a fireball state in the $`T\mu _B`$ plane are quite different for different EoS . However, after using the shock-like freeze-out, the global strangeness production is turned out to be completely insensitive to the particular EoS as illustrated by the calculation of excitation functions for $`K^+,K^{}`$ and hyperons. To get agreement with experiment the canonical suppression factor should be taken into account. The only trace of dynamics is the beam-energy dependence of the strangeness correlation volume. This effect results in a negative slope of the $`K^+/\pi ^+`$ excitation function at high energies which is not reproduced by the equilibrium statistical model with canonical account of strangeness .

Among other signals of the QCD deconfinement phase transition, the dilepton and hard photon production is the most promising. Being sensitive to the whole evolution time of a system, these signals can become experimentally observable to disentangle the crossover phase transition, predicted by the MP model, from the first order one which is peculiar for the bag-model EoS.

Useful and numerous discussions with B. Friman, Yu.B. Ivanov, E.G. Nikonov, W. Nörenberg and K. Redlich are acknowledged. This work was supported in part by DFG (project 436 RUS 113/558/0) and RFBR (grant 00-02-04012).


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# Spectroscopy of Main Sequence Stars in Globular Clusters

## 1. Introduction

This meeting is in honour of Ivan King, who has led the way in many aspects of star cluster research. Although he has not, so far as I am aware, done very much spectroscopic work, we might be in better shape today if he had. The same principles which he and his colleagues have applied so effectively in the careful analysis of HST astrometry and photometry apply equally in the field of spectroscopy with ground-based telescopes. We are now in the happy position of being able to obtain good high dispersion spectra of tens of stars, or intermediate dispersion spectra for hundreds of cluster stars, using fibre-fed multi-object spectrographs on large telescopes. As a result we are no longer limited by the low signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of individual spectra or by small number statistics. However, we are encountering new difficulties and are often limited by systematic errors or calibration problems. The complexity of modern instruments also means that observers often have to treat the control and data-analysis systems as ‘black boxes’. The result is that although we can obtain vast amounts of data rather quickly and easily, to analyse them carefully is still as time-consuming as ever, and requires the combined skills of teams of people with complementary expertise. To finally understand what we observe remains the hardest and slowest step.

The old assumption that all the stars in a given cluster have about the same chemical composition and age remains a valid first approximation today, as shown by the very well-defined sequences in the best colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs). There is one glaring anomaly, $`\omega `$ Centauri, which certainly has a wide spread in metallicity (by more than a factor of ten) and possibly a wide range in star formation epoch; this cluster was the topic of an entire meeting just one year ago (van Leeuwen, Hughes & Piotto, 2002). However, for most well-observed globular clusters any spread in the abundance of iron or other heavy elements is below the level of detectability. Similarly, there is no evidence for significant internal age spreads, although here the limits are generally at the level of about 1-2 Gy or 10% of the age of the clusters, so there is scope for some initial spread in star formation.

The situation is however very different for some of the lighter elements, especially C, N and O, and a few related species including Na, Al and Mg. Large variations in the strength of features due to CN and CH were first noted more than 30 years ago (see e.g. the reviews by Freeman & Norris, 1981 and Kraft, 1994). Initially these were seen in bright red giants and were generally assumed to be due to the dredge-up of processed material from the cores of the stars. There is good evidence that such processes do occur, especially in very metal-poor clusters. However, the CNO variations often persist down on to the main sequence (m.s.) (e.g. Hesser, 1978), where neither the requisite nuclear reactions nor the mixing mechanisms are supposed to occur. It seems that some stars contain substantial amounts of material which have been processed through the CNO cycle in more massive stars, and that there may have been an extended period of star formation or some other processes of self-enrichment and accretion during the early life of the clusters.

There are two main strands to recent work: observations of large samples of stars using multi-object systems, and higher dispersion spectra for smaller samples. We concentrate more on the former, because others here (Gratton, 2002; several poster contributions) deal with the latest VLT and Keck results. We have obtained spectra for a few hundred main sequence turn-off (MSTO) stars in each of 47 Tuc, NGC 6752 and $`\omega `$ Cen, using the 2dF facility on the AAT (Lewis et al, 2002). Total exposure times were about 4 hours for each sample of $`300`$ stars, yielding spectra with S/N $`30`$ per pixel and a resolution of about 3Å. Two spectral regions were covered, blue spectra extending from 3700Å to 4800Å and red spectra centred on the Na D lines at 5900Å. More details of the observations are given in Cannon et al (2002).

It is convenient to group the clusters since those with similar metallicities seem to show similar CNO abundance patterns. However, it is not yet clear whether this signifies a real metallicity dependence or merely reflects the most easily observable effects, or indeed if it is simply an accident of the small number of clusters studied so far.

## 2. Relatively metal-rich clusters with \[Fe/H\] $``$ –0.8

### 2.1. CN and CH in 47 Tuc

The individual 47 Tuc blue spectra show obvious variations in the strengths of the CH band near 4300Å and the UV CN band near 3880Å, although the latter feature is harder to assess visually due to the converging Balmer series of H lines and other features. To provide a quantitative measure we use simple band strength indices. The result for one sample is shown in Fig. 1. There is a clear anti-correlation between the strengths of CN and CH and the distribution appears to be bi-modal, at least in the more sensitive CN index. Both of these features are qualitatively the same as seen in the red giants in 47 Tuc (Norris & Freeman, 1979). The bi-modality may be to some extent an artefact of non-linearity in the formation of the molecular bands (Langer, 1985) but synthetic spectra show that there is certainly a large range in the abundances of C and N.

We can split the sample in two according to CN strength and produce two very high S/N spectra with about 200 hours of exposure each. Figure 2 shows (a) the mean spectra for some 50 CN-strong stars and 80 CN-weak stars, and (b) the result of dividing one by the other. The UV CN absorption shows up very strongly in the quotient spectrum, while the anti-correlated CH G-band appears in ‘emission’, along with some broader features extending from 4200Å to 4450Å. The CaII H & K lines, which are the strongest features in the original spectra, have cancelled almost perfectly, as have the Balmer series H lines and other absorption lines due to Fe, CaI and other species. This accurate cancellation shows that the two samples of 47 Tuc stars must have almost exactly the same mean effective temperature, surface gravity and heavy element abundances. It appears that the two samples of stars vary only in their surface C and N abundances.

In order to quantify the difference in C and N abundances we have made synthetic spectra to match the 47 Tuc stars, using the ssg code of Bell & Gustafsson (1978) and MARCS model atmospheres (Gustafsson et al. 1975). The best fit is obtained with a pair of models having overall \[Fe/H\] $`=0.7`$, one having \[C/Fe\] and \[N/Fe\] close to the solar values and the other with C depleted by a factor of 2.3 and N enhanced by a factor of 10. The synthetic ‘quotient spectrum’ is plotted in the lower panel of Fig. 2. There is very good agreement with the observed quotient spectrum, both in terms of the overall strength of the molecular bands and their detailed structure. The numerical values of the C and N abundances are close to those derived previously for much smaller (and lower S/N) samples of m.s. stars in 47 Tuc by Briley et al. (1996) and Cannon et al. (1998), and to the abundances seen in the evolved red giants.

Very recently Harbeck, Smith & Grebel (2002) obtained VLT spectra for a sample of 115 m.s. stars in 47 Tuc. These extend more than 2 mag fainter than the turn-off and show clearly the same CN dichotomy as the 2dF data, with the strength of the molecular features increasing markedly as the stars get fainter, presumably because the temperature is decreasing.

### 2.2. Sodium in 47 Tuc

The individual red AAT 2dF spectra show few features apart from the Na D doublet at 5900Å. The result of combining the spectra of the same 50 CN-strong stars as before is shown in Fig. 3. Many fainter absorption lines appear, most of them due to iron. Some residual night sky features are seen from strong \[OI\] emission lines at 5577Å, 6300Å and 6363Å; these have not cancelled perfectly because of their high intensity and small variations in the point spread function of the images in the 2dF spectrographs.

When the mean red CN-strong spectrum is divided by the mean red CN-weak spectrum, the only real features which remain are the Na D lines in absorption. Evidently the Na absorption is correlated with the N enhancement, as found by Cottrell & Da Costa (1981) for red giants, and by Briley et al. (1996) for a sample of six m.s. stars in 47 Tuc.

### 2.3. M71

M71 has about the same metallicity as 47 Tuc but is much less massive (\[Fe/H\] $`=0.8`$; $`M_v=5.6`$ cf $`9.4`$ for 47 Tuc). Briley & Cohen (2001) have obtained spectra for a sample of stars near the MSTO. They find very similar results to those reported here for 47 Tuc, i.e. a strongly bi-modal distribution of CN band strengths, anti-correlated with CH. This similarity removes the previous worry that perhaps 47 Tuc is atypical, being one of the most massive globular clusters and with a very concentrated core. In another recent result based on the same Keck spectra, Ramirez & Cohen (2002) have found that there are no measurable differences in the iron abundances of stars across the CMD of M71.

## 3. Intermediate-metallicity clusters, with \[Fe/H\] $``$ –1.4

### 3.1. NGC 6752

The red giants in NGC 6752, like those in 47 Tuc, show bi-modal CN variations which are anti-correlated with CH (Norris et al, 1981). However, the overall metallicity of NGC 6752 is about 4 times lower than in 47 Tuc, so the molecular bands in MSTO stars are much weaker because of both the lower abundance and the higher temperature; the abundance effect is doubly severe in the case of CN. Synthetic spectra show that this is indeed the case: the bands have similar structure to those in 47 Tuc, but the features are 10-20 times weaker.

The same technique of combining spectra for many faint stars can be used, but this time using the stronger CH G-band to divide the sample. In NGC 6752 the quotient spectrum again shows UV CN absorption anti-correlated with the CH feature, but the detection is rather marginal and it is impossible to say whether the distribution is bi-modal.

Independent evidence for main-sequence abundance variations in NGC 6752 comes from recent high-dispersion VLT spectra for a small sample of stars by Gratton et al. (2001). They find that the oxygen and sodium abundances are anti-correlated, while the Fe abundance remains fixed at the same value across the CMD.

### 3.2. M5

Cohen, Briley & Stetson (2002) have used LRIS on Keck to obtain low-dispersion spectra for more than 40 stars near the base of the red giant branch in M5, the largest uniformly observed sample of stars near the base of the giant branch in any cluster. They find strongly anti-correlated variations in CN and CH, although no evidence for bi-modality. By contrast, Smith & Norris (1983) found a strongly bi-modal CN distribution, again anti-correlated with CH, for 29 brighter giants in M5.

## 4. Metal-poor clusters, with \[Fe/H\] $``$ –2.0

The red giants in several low-metallicity clusters provide convincing evidence of the dredge-up of internally processed material to the surface (e.g. Langer et al, 1986 for M92; Briley et al, 1990, for NGC 6397). It will probably be impossible to detect the CN bands in turn-off stars in such metal-poor clusters. However, recent high resolution spectra taken with the ESO VLT for m.s. stars in NGC 6397 (\[Fe/H\] $`2.1`$) by Gratton et al. (2001) show that the O and Na features remain constant in this cluster, as they do among the giant stars, in contrast to the anti-correlated pattern seen in NGC 6752. No results for C or N have been reported as yet, but in another study of the same set of 12 spectra, Bonifacio et al. (2002) find that all the stars have the same Li abundance, at a level which is about equal to the primordial ‘Spite plateau’. On the other hand, Boesgaard et al. (1998) do find a significant spread in Li abundance from Keck spectra for 7 m.s. stars in M92.

## 5. The special case of $`\omega `$ Centauri

While the majority of $`\omega `$ Cen stars are metal-poor with \[Fe/H\] $`1.7`$, it has red giant and m.s. members whose metallicity extends to well above $`1.0`$. Recently, Lee et al. (1999) and Pancino et al. (2000) discovered a very red, high metallicity component of the giant branch in $`\omega `$ Cen. If this comes from a substantially younger population of stars (Hilker & Richtler, 2000) then it should be easiest to detect the different stellar populations in the vicinity of the subgiant branch, where the isochrones are well separated.

Preliminary results from new AAT 2dF observations for a sample of 900 stars redwards of the m.s., obtained in March 2002, show that faint red radial velocity members of $`\omega `$ Cen do indeed exist, with $`17.5<V<18.5`$ and $`(BV)>0.8`$, but the data analysis has not yet proceeded far enough to determine the metallicities of these stars and hence to trace separate isochrones. It was already clear from earlier observations that there are a number of very unusual stars lying to the red of the $`\omega `$ Cen main sequence, including at least one with an extreme over-abundance of Sr by a factor of about 100 (as reported by JEN at IAUXXIV, JD5, Manchester 2000).

## 6. Interpretation and future work

The last couple of years have seen a sudden expansion in our knowledge of abundances in faint stars in globular clusters, coming both from high resolution spectra with the new $`810`$m class telescopes and from large samples of lower resolution spectra taken with multi-object systems. We still lack comprehensive homogeneous data for large samples of stars in all parts of the CMD for any one cluster, but it is now possible to make a few general statements.

* N over-abundances correlate with C and O depletions and some Na enhancement.
* The N abundance pattern often appears to be bi-modal, at least in the more metal-rich clusters, with comparable numbers of CN-strong and CN-weak stars.
* The abundances of most heavy elements, such as Fe and Ca, show no detectable variations within each cluster (apart from $`\omega `$ Cen).
* The C and N abundances needed to explain the m.s. results are approximately the same as those needed on the subgiant and giant branches.
* Clusters with similar metallicities show similar abundance anomalies.

One other key datum is the evidence that field red giants in the Galaxy show smaller abundance anomalies than similar stars in clusters (e.g. Langer et al, 1992; Charbonnel & Palacios here), which indicates that the CNO variations are probably related to the cluster environment.

All these results suggest that the CNO and Na m.s. abundance variations within clusters must be something to do with their formation and early evolution. They are apparently not due to internal nucleosynthesis and mixing within the cluster stars themselves (although such effects also certainly occur on the giant branch), nor can they be readily explained as a truly primordial phenomenon (e.g. if clusters formed from the collisions of separate gas clouds), since no variations are seen in Fe and Ca.

The similarity of the CNO and Na abundance patterns on the main sequence, lower and upper giant branches indicates that the abundance variations are inherent in the stars, involving at least the outer 30% of their mass. Any transient effects of a small amount of surface pollution would be wiped out when the stars leave the m.s. and develop fully convective envelopes at the base of the red giant branch.

The simplest explanation is that there was some sort of self-enrichment process within each cluster. Whether this involved mechanisms of pollution, accretion, mass exchange, binary star mergers or multiple generations of stars is not yet clear. Some or all of these processes may well have gone on during the first few times $`10^8`$ years of the lives of the clusters, which being $`<5`$% of their current age would be very hard to detect in the CMDs today.

The observations imply that we are seeing the products of CNO-processed material in m.s. stars in many clusters. The most popular hypothesis for the origin of this material is that it has come from intermediate-mass stars, with masses in the range from say 2 to 5 M$`_{}`$, which do produce material with the appropriate composition (e.g. Cottrell & Da Costa, 1981; d’Antona, Gratton & Chieffi, 1983). However, it is difficult to see how such material could be so efficiently accreted, or why stars seem to accrete either a large amount of material (more than 0.3 M$`_{}`$) or almost none at all. Thoul et al. (2002; also poster at this conference) have revisited this problem and find that sufficiently large amounts of gas can be accreted, at least in massive concentrated clusters. Alternatively, perhaps the answer lies in the pre-supernovae stage for more massive stars, i.e. in stellar winds prior to the Wolf-Rayet phase (R. Rood, private comm.), or even in supernovae themselves, if the ejecta sometimes consist of only the outer layers where CNO has been produced but not the heavier elements, as invoked to explain the abundance patterns recently observed in some extremely metal-poor stars (e.g. Norris et al, 2002). Or, it may be that binary stars, now being recognised for their major effects in the dynamical evolution of clusters, may also be the keys to understanding the abundance anomalies. We need proper models of the early lives of globular clusters, including the star formation process and the full effects of gas flows and binary star interactions.

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text:
# Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Vibrational Phase Relaxation along the Critical Isochore of Nitrogen : The Role of Local Density Fluctuations

## Abstract

Vibrational dephasing of nitrogen molecule is known to show highly interesting anomalies near its gas-liquid critical point. Here we present theoretical and computational studies of the Raman linewidth of nitrogen along the critical isochore. The linewidth is found to have a lambda shaped temperature dependence near the critical point. As observed in experimental studies, the calculated lineshape becomes Gaussian as the critical temperature ($`T_c`$) is approached. Both the present simulation and a mode coupling theory (MCT) analysis show that the slow decay of the enhanced density fluctuations near the critical point (CP), probed at the sub-picosecond time scales by vibrational frequency modulation, along with an enhanced vibration-rotation coupling, are the main causes of the observed anomalies.

PACS numbers: 64.70.Fx, 82.53.Uv, 61.25.Em, 78.30.Cp

As the gas-liquid critical point of a fluid is approached, several dynamical properties of the system, such as the thermal conductivity, the bulk viscosity, the linewidth of the central Rayleigh spectrum, show anomalous behaviour. This behaviour is collectively known as critical slowing downstanley ; ma  and is physically explained by exploiting the divergence of the correlation length and using the dynamic mode coupling theory (MCT)fixman ; ks . In the recent years, several anomalies have also been observed in molecular relaxation processes near the critical point or in the supercritical fluid. One of them is the surprising augmentation of the solvent density around a solutemar . Another interesting case is the vibrational phase relaxation which shows more than one anomaly, yet to be understood.

In their experiments, Clouter et al.clout  found that the isotropic Raman lineshape of a simple fluid like $`N_2`$ exhibits a remarkable additional non-rotational broadening near the gas-liquid critical points ($`\rho _{crit},T_{crit}`$). They measured the Raman spectra along the triple point to the critical point and the behaviour of the lineshape as the critical point is approached from above. Recently Musso et al.musso  measured the temperature dependence of the lineshape parameters (i.e shift, width and asymmetry) both along the coexistence and the critical isochore of liquid nitrogen and found that the temperature dependent linewidth ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$) is $`\lambda `$ shaped. The lineshape was found to undergo a change from Lorentzian (away form $`T_c`$) to Gaussian (near $`T_c`$).

The observation of such anomalies has, till now, defied a convincing explanation. Mukamel, Stern and Ronis muk  had earlier interpreted the rapid broadening of Raman lineshape as a manifestation of dynamical critical phenomena. This interpretation raises the following questions. As the microscopic time correlation function involved decays in less than a picosecond (actually in about 200 fs), why and how are the slow long wavelength density fluctuations important and relevant? The physics here is clearly different from the one involved in the critical slowing down at the long wavelengths.

In a recent investigation, vibrational phase relaxation of the fundamental and the overtones of the N-N stretch in pure nitrogen was simulated by MD simulations, and the mode coupling theory (MCT)gay  was used to explain the simulation results. This study could reproduce the rapid rise in dephasing rate as the critical point is approached along the co-existence line, although it didn’t include the vibrational coordinate(q) dependence of the inter-atomic potential and ignored the cross-term between the vibration-rotation coupling and force and their derivatives. Everitt and Skinner skin  studied the Raman lineshape of nitrogen in a systematic way by including of the bond length dependence of the dispersion and repulsive force parameters along the coexistence line of nitrogen. They also incorporated the cross-correlation terms which were neglected earlier. Their results for the lineshifts and linewidths along the gas-liquid coexistence of $`N_2`$ are in good agreement with experimental results. These theoretical studies did not consider dephasing along the critical isochore. In addition, a convincing picture of anomalies did not emerge. The results presented in this Letter provide first microscopic explanation of the above anomalies.

The theories of the vibrational dephasing are all based on Kubo’s stochastic theory of the lineshapekubo1 , extended to the study of vibrational dephasing by Oxtobyox . The isotropic Raman lineshape, $`I(\omega )`$, is the Fourier transform of the normal coordinate time correlation function, $`C_Q(t)`$ox ,

$$I(\omega )=_0^{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{exp}(i\omega t)\left[<Q(t)Q(0)>\right].$$
(1)
A cumulant expansion of Eq.(1) followed by truncation after second order gives the following well-known expression of $`C_Q(t)`$kubo2 ,

$`<Q(t)Q(0)>=Re\mathrm{exp}(i\omega _0t+i<\mathrm{\Delta }\omega >t)`$
$`\times \mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑t^{}(tt^{})<\mathrm{\Delta }\omega (t^{})\mathrm{\Delta }\omega (0)>\right].`$ (2)
The frequency modulation time correlation function, $`C_\omega (t)=<\mathrm{\Delta }\omega (t)\mathrm{\Delta }\omega (0)>`$, derives contributions from the atom-atom(AA), resonance(Rs), vibration-rotation(VR) coupling, and also the cross-termsox . We calculated the linewidth, the lineshape and the dephasing time of $`N_2`$ for different thermodynamical state points of nitrogen, both along the coexistence line and the critical isochore, using Eqs. 1 and 2.

The Hamiltonian of homonuclear diatomic molecules can be written as

$$\mathrm{H}(\stackrel{}{q})=\mathrm{H}_v+\mathrm{T}(\stackrel{}{q})+\mathrm{U}(\stackrel{}{q}),$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{H}_v`$ is the vibrational Hamiltonian, $`\mathrm{T}(\stackrel{}{q})`$ is the total translational and rotational kinetic energy, $`\mathrm{U}(\stackrel{}{q})`$ is the inter-molecular potential energy, and $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ is the collection of vibration coordinates $`q_i`$. The inter-molecular potential energy is sum of the following site-site ($`v_{ij}`$) between two molecules i and j skin . The total intermolecular potential energy is taken to be

$`\mathrm{U}(\stackrel{}{\mathrm{q}})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha \beta }{}}v_{\mathrm{𝑖𝑗}}(ϵ_{ij},\sigma _{ij},r_{i\alpha j\beta })`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha ,\beta }{\overset{\mathit{1},\mathit{2}}{}}}4ϵ_{i\alpha j\beta }\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{i\alpha j\beta }}{\mathrm{r}_{i\alpha j\beta }}}\right)^{12}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{i\alpha j\beta }}{\mathrm{r}_{i\alpha j\beta }}}\right)^6\right],`$
where $`r_{i\alpha j\beta }=|\stackrel{}{r}_{j\beta }(q_j)\stackrel{}{r}_{i\alpha }(q_i)|`$ and $`\stackrel{}{r}_{j\beta }(q_j)=\stackrel{}{r}_{j\beta }(0)+\widehat{r}_{j\beta }q_j/2`$. $`\stackrel{}{r}_{j\beta }(q_j)`$ is the position of the nucleus of atom $`\beta `$ in molecule $`j`$, and $`\widehat{\mathrm{r}_\mathrm{j}}_\beta `$ is the unit vector oriented from the center-of-mass of molecule j to the $`\beta `$th atom. The vibrational coordinate dependence of Lennard-Jones parameters are given by, $`ϵ_{i\alpha j\beta }=\sqrt{ϵ_{i\alpha }ϵ_{j\beta }}=ϵ(1+\gamma q_i+\gamma q_j+2\gamma ^2q_iq_j)`$ and $`\sigma _{i\alpha j\beta }=\left(\frac{\sigma _{\alpha \alpha }+\sigma _{\beta \beta }}{2}\right)=\sigma (1+\delta q_i+\delta q_j)`$. We use the linear expansion coefficients $`\gamma `$ and $`\delta `$ as determined by Everitt and Skinner skin ; param .

Microcanonical (NVE) MD simulationsallen  were carried along the coexistence line and along the critical isochore using the leap-frog algorithm for different thermodynamical state points of nitrogen. A system of 256 diatomic particles was enclosed in a cubic box, and periodic boundary conditions were used. In simulation, the system was allowed to equilibrate for 100 000 time steps with $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.0002}\tau `$, where $`\tau `$ \[$`=\sqrt{(m\sigma ^2/ϵ)}`$, m being the mass of the molecule \] is found to be equal to 3.147 ps. The averages were calculated over 400 000 MD steps. The thermodynamic state of the system can be expressed in terms of the reduced density of $`\rho ^{}=\rho \sigma ^3`$ and a reduced temperature of $`T^{}=k_BT/ϵ`$. The density of the system has been expressed in terms of number of molecules per unit volume times $`\sigma ^3`$ and the temperature is in units of $`ϵ/k_B`$. Where $`\sigma `$ and $`k_B`$ is the Lennard-Jones diameter of the molecule and is the Boltzmann constant, respectively. Limited number of simulations have been done with N = 512 molecules. We found no significant difference in the linewidth at the larger system.

Figure $`1`$ shows both the simulated temperature dependent dephasing rate of nitrogen and also the experimental one. The solid squares are the linewidth for different state points along the coexistence curve of nitrogen and the solid circles are the linewidth along the critical isochore. The interesting feature in the figure is the lambda-shaped linewidth when the values for two different regions of nitrogen are presented together. This figure is similar to the one observed experimentally (see figure $`4`$ of Ref.musso ). It is interesting to note the sharp rise in the dephasing rate as the CP is approached. There are noticeable difference in the high temperature region along the critical isochore.

To understand the origin of this critical behaviour, we carefully analyzed each of the six termssix  (three auto correlations and three cross-terms between density, vibration-rotation coupling and resonance), which are responsible for the modulation of the vibrational frequency for fundamental transition. Two terms are found to dominate near the CP and these are the density and the vibration-rotation coupling. The temperature dependence of these two terms are shown in figure $`2`$ where the integrand of Eq.2, $`X_{ij}(t)=_0^t𝑑t^{}(tt^{})C_\omega ^{ij}(t^{})`$, is plotted against time for seven state points along the critical isochore. Where i, j represents the density(den), vibration-rotation coupling(VR) and resonance(Rs) terms respectively. Note the sharp rise in the value of the integrand as the critical temperature is approached, and the fall when it is crossed. We have found that both these contributions at the CP are distinct compared to the other state points. Thus, the rise and fall of dephasing rate arises partly from the rise and fall in the density and the vibration-rotation terms.

A crossover from Lorentzian-like to Gaussian lineshape can happen when the usually large separation in the time scales of decay of $`C_\omega (t)`$ and $`C_Q(t)`$ musso ; ox  ceases to exist and the two time correlation functions begin to overlap. Indeed, the computed lineshape becomes Gaussian near the from CP. Note that the frequency modulation time correlation function decays fully in about 200 femtosecond.

What could be the reason for this dramatic crossover behaviour? The increase in density fluctuationsmuk ; bin  near the CP increases the magnitude of the mean square frequency fluctuation $`<\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _i^2>`$. This leads itself to an increase in the rate of decay of the normal coordinate time correlation function, ($`C_Q(t)`$). In addition, the frequency modulation time correlation function slows down somewhat. As the decay of these two time correlation functions become comparable, the lineshape goes over to the Gaussian form. This a novel effect and different from that commonly encountered.

If one considers only the number density as the relevant slow variable in dephasing, then mode coupling theory analysis (MCT) gives the following expression for the density dependence frequency modulation time correlation functionsarika ,

$`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _\rho (0)\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _\rho (t)={\displaystyle \frac{k_BT}{6\pi ^2\mathrm{}^2\rho }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}k^2𝑑kF_s(k,t)C^2(k)F(k,t),`$ (5)
where $`C(k)`$ is the Fourier Transform of two particle direct correlation function. Near CP, the main contribution is derived from the long wavelength (that is small $`k`$) region, where self-intermediate scattering function, $`F_s(k,t)=e^{D_sk^2t}`$ and intermediate scattering function, $`F(k,t)=S(k)e^{D_Tk^2t}`$, $`D_s`$ is the self-diffusion coefficient, where $`S(k)`$ is the static structure factor, and $`D_T`$ is the thermal diffusivity. Thus, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _\rho (0)\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _\rho (t)S(k0)e^{(D_s+D_T)k^2t}`$. Near CP, $`S(k0)`$ becomes very large ( as compressibility diverges at $`T=T_c`$ ), leading towards a Gaussian behaviour for lineshape. $`D_T`$ also undergoes a slowdown near $`T_c`$. This complex dependence may lead to a Levy distribution from time dependence of $`Q(0)Q(t)`$ as discussed earlier by Mukamel et al.muk  However, a limitation of the above analysis is the absence of the VR term which contributes significantly and may mask some of the critical effects. At high temperature, the latter dominates over the density term. A complete Lorentzian behaviour is predicted only in the low temperature liquid phase. Interestingly, the predicted divergence of $`<\mathrm{\Delta }\omega ^2(0)>`$ very close to $`T_c`$ enhances the rate of dephasing and this shifts the decay of $`<Q(t)Q(0)>`$ to short times, giving rise to the Gaussian behaviour. We shall return to this point later. We have used MCT to demonstrate that the large enhancement of Vibration-Rotation coupling near the gas-liquid critical point arises from the non-Gaussian behavior of density fluctuation and this enters through a non-zero value of the triplet direct correlation function.

To further explore the origin of these anomalous critical temperature effects, we have investigated for the presence of dynamical heterogeneities in the fluid at three temperatures near the CP, by calculating the well-known non-Gaussian parameter $`\alpha (t)`$ defined asara , $`\alpha (t)=\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)\frac{<r^4(t)>}{<r^2(t)>^2}1`$ where $`<\mathrm{\Delta }r(t)^2>`$ is the mean squared displacement and $`<\mathrm{\Delta }r(t)^4>`$ the mean quartic displacement of the center of mass of nitrogen molecule. It can only approach zero (and hence Gaussian behaviour) for times exceeding the time scale required for individual particles to sample their complete kinetic environments. As can be seen from figure $`3`$, the function $`\alpha `$(t) is large near CP at times 0.5 - 5 ps, indicating the presence of long lived heterogeneities near $`T_c`$.

The contribution of the density term reflects the combined effects of collisions, repulsive and attractive interactions on the friction on the bond. This term naturally grows as the CP is approached. The rise in the contribution of the vibration-rotation term has a different origin. This increase is due to the slowing down of the rotational time correlation function near the CPzewail . As we approach the CP, the number of molecules having slow decay of rotational time correlation function increases. While one can describe the average effect of density fluctuation through the divergence of the static structure factor $`S(k)`$ at small wavenumbers (as discussed above), this approach does not capture the full scenario. This is because the decay of the frequency modulation time correlation function ($`C_\omega (t)`$) occurs in the femtosecond time scale. At that time scale, the density fluctuation is nearly static. Thus, vibrational dephasing provides snap shots of the large density fluctuations present near the critical temperature. Even more interesting is the origin of the ultrafast decay of $`C_\omega (t)`$–this is partly due to the cancellation which arises from the cross-terms of VR coupling with the density and the resonance terms. These terms have sign opposite to the pure terms but have comparable magnitude, leading to further enhancement in the rate of decay of $`C_\omega (t)`$. The reason for such large negative cross-correlation can be understood in terms of the inhomogeneity. Note that critical anomaly is nearly absent in $`CF_4`$, $`CH_4`$ and $`CO_2`$refB . While cubic symmetry in the the former two precludes VR coupling, $`CO_2`$ may be too heavy for VR to be important.

It is indeed surprising that our simulations could capture many of the novel features observed in experiments, including the lambda shaped temperature dependence of the dephasing rate and the cross-over from the Lorentzian to the Gaussian form. Large density fluctuations near $`T_c`$ shifts the dynamics probed to sub-picosecond times. This combined with VR coupling, give rise to the observed anomalies.

We thank P. Jose, A. Mukherjee, and R. K. Murarka for helpful discussions. SR acknowledges the CSIR (India) for financial support. This work is supported in part by grants from DAE and CSIR, India.


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# ADDENDUM: “THE DYNAMICS OF M15: OBSERVATIONS OF THE VELOCITY DISPERSION PROFILE AND FOKKER-PLANCK MODELS” (ApJ, 481, 267 [1997])

It has recently come to our attention that there are axis scale errors in three of the figures presented in Dull et al. (1997, hereafter D97). This paper presented Fokker-Planck models for the collapsed-core globular cluster M15 that include a dense, centrally concentrated population of neutron stars and massive white dwarfs. These models do not include a central black hole. Figure 12 of D97, which presents the predicted mass-to-light profile, is of particular interest, since it was used by Gerssen et al. (2002a) as an input to their Jeans equation analysis of the HST-STIS velocity measurements reported by van der Marel et al. (2002). Based on the original, incorrect version of Figure 12, Gerssen et al. (2002a) concluded that the D97 models can only fit the new data with the addition of an intermediate-mass black hole. However, this is counter to our previous finding, shown in Figure 6 of D97, that the Fokker-Planck models predict the sort of moderately rising velocity dispersion profile that Gerssen et al. (2002a) infer from the new data. Baumgardt et al. (2002) have independently noted this apparent inconsistency.

We appreciate the thoughtful cooperation of Roeland van der Marel in resolving this issue. Using our corrected version of Figure 12 (see below), Gerssen et al. (2002b) now find that the velocity dispersion profile that they infer from the D97 mass-to-light ratio profile is entirely consistent with the velocity dispersion profile presented in Figure 6 of D97. Gerssen et al. (2002b) further find that there is no statistically significant difference between the fit to the van der Marel et al. (2002) velocity measurements provided by the D97 intermediate-phase model and that provided by their model, which supplements this D97 model with a $`1.7_{1.7}^{+2.7}\times 10^3M_{}`$ black hole. Thus, the choice between models with and without black holes will require additional model predictions and observational tests.

We present corrected versions of Figures 9, 10, and 12 of D97. We take responsibility for the errors in the original versions of these figures and regret any confusion that these may have caused. We also present an expanded version of Figure 6, which extends the radial scale to both smaller and larger values, in order to show the full run of the velocity dispersion profile. The profile of the intermediate-phase model of D97 is in good agreement with the HST-STIS velocity dispersion profile presented by Gerssen et al. (2002a). In particular, the central value of $`14\text{km\hspace{0.17em}s}\text{-1}`$, predicted by this model, nicely coincides with their findings.

We note that three independent studies have now demonstrated that there is a dense, central concentration of dark mass in M15, by use of three alternative methods: Fokker-Planck simulations (D97), GRAPE-6 simulations (Baumgardt et al., 2002), and Jeans equation modeling (Gerssen et al., 2002a, b). The dark mass is proposed to consist of neutron stars and massive white dwarfs, in the former two studies, versus a central black hole in the latter. Irrespective of these different interpretations of the nature of the dark mass, its presence now appears to be well established on dynamical grounds.

Fig. 6.— Velocity dispersion versus radius for stars in M15. The filled squares are the data from D97 and the open circles represent the Gebhardt et al. (1994) data. The radial scale has been extended both inwards and outwards, relative to the original version of this figure, to allow comparison with the much broader radial coverage that is now available.

Fig. 9.— The LOS acceleration as produced by the mean-field gravitational potential of the best-fitting models. The data symbol indicates the minimum LOS acceleration needed to account for the negative period derivatives of PSR 2127+11A (lower horizontal line) and PSR 2127+11D (upper horizontal line); the pulsars lie at nearly the same distance from the cluster center. The radial scale of this figure has been corrected from the original version, increasing every radius by a factor of 2.82. The top and bottom axes have been interchanged, for consistency with the other figures.

Fig. 10.— Surface density profiles for the six mass groups of the intermediate-phase Fokker-Planck model. At small radius, the curves are arrayed in order of increasing stellar mass, illustrating the effect of mass segregation. Note that groups 1 and 2 (neutron stars and heavy white dwarfs) are strongly centrally concentrated relative to the luminous stars. The vertical scale of this figure has been corrected from the original version, increasing all of the densities by a factor of 2.53.

Fig. 12.— Mass-to-light ratio profile for the three best-fitting Fokker-Planck models and the King model. $`M/L`$ is calculated as the ratio of surface mass density to surface brightness. The strong rise in $`M/L`$ at small radius is due to the centrally concentrated populations of nonluminous remnants seen in Figs. 10 and 11. The radial scale of this figure has been corrected from the original version, increasing every radius by a factor of 2.82. The top and bottom axes have been interchanged, for consistency with the other figures.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Lower dimensional gauge theories have yielded unexpected subtleties in their structure, be it in the form of massive propagating modes in the 1+1-dimensional Schwinger model , topologically massive gauge theories in 2+1-dimensions  or a ”‘hidden”’ gauge invariance in Self-Dual (SD) models in 2+1-dimensions . Once again, as in the case of 1+1-dimensions, these bosonic models are connected to fermionic models in the large fermion mass limit . Indeed, the above interrelations are interesting from the point of view of providing unifications among diverse models  as well as exploiting the equivalences in explicit computations.

Let us elaborate a little on the SD models in 2+1-dimensions as we will be concerned with them in the present work. Only abelian gauge theories will be considered here. The local lagrangian formulation of them were first provided in . However, their equivalence with the well studied Maxwell-Chern-Simons (MCS) topological gauge theory  was revealed in . Intuitively, the duality was expected since both SD and MCS models allow the propagation of a (parity violating) massive mode. But the above correspondence was clearly established by Deser and Jackiw  by the construction of a ”‘master”’ lagrangian from which both SD and MCS models can be generated. The manifest gauge invariance of SD and the parent ”‘master”’ model is hidden in the SD model, where the above symmetry is not manifest.

In recent years, Non-Commutative (NC) field theories  and in particular NC Gauge Theories (NCGT)  have generated a lot of interest due to their appearance in open string and D-brane physics. This space-time noncommutativity modifies the previous results in a non-trivial way and can lead to physically interesting bounds on the NC parameter $`\theta ^{\rho \sigma }`$. For this reason a lot of effort is being given to re-derive existing results in NC space-time.

In this paper, we are going to assess the effect of noncommutativity in the above mentioned SD-MCS duality. This is all the more pertinent since gauge invariance plays a major role here and the noncommutativity affects gauge invariant and non-invariant theories in strikingly different ways . The work of Seiberg and Witten  showed that there exists a mapping, the Seiberg-Witten Map (SWM), that lifts a gauge theory to its NC counterpart such that gauge orbits are mapped into NC gauge orbits. The SWM is unique in the lowest nontrivial order of $`\theta ^{\rho \sigma }`$. On the other hand, in a non-gauge theory, noncommutativity affects only products of fields (in the action), without changing the individual field structures. This shows that the SD and MCS theories will be generalized to NC field theories in distinct ways due to their manifest gauge variance and invariance respectively. We will explicitly demonstrate by way of constructing the ”‘master”’ lagrangian that in spite of the above complications, the SD-MCS duality is maintained in the NC space-time. Incidentally, the NCGT with abelian gauge group is structurally quite akin to a non-abelian gauge theory in conventional space-time. Hence our analysis might shed some light on the SD-MCS duality in conventional space-time with a non-abelian gauge group . This constitutes the first part of our work.

In the second part of our work, we show that there is another way of comparing noncommutative SD and MCS theories where the conventional SD theory is first embedded in a gauge invariant theory via the Stuckelberg formalism. Thus the starting SD and MCS theories, both being manifestly gauge invariant, will be altered in similar ways under NC generalizations. We again establish the SD-MCS duality through the ”‘master”’ lagrangian.

## 2 Self-dual and Maxwell-Chern-Simons Duality in Noncommutative Space-time

The NC space-time is characterized by,

$$[x^\rho ,x^\sigma ]_{}=i\theta ^{\rho \sigma }.$$
(1)
The $``$-product is given by the Moyal-Weyl formula,

$$p(x)q(x)=pq+\frac{i}{2}\theta ^{\rho \sigma }_\rho p_\sigma q+O(\theta ^2).$$
(2)
All our discussions will be valid up to the first non-trivial order in $`\theta `$. The (inverse) SWM  to $`O(\theta )`$ is,

$$A_\mu =\widehat{A}_\mu \theta ^{\sigma \rho }\widehat{A}_\rho (_\sigma \widehat{A}_\mu \frac{1}{2}_\mu \widehat{A}_\sigma )\widehat{A}_\mu +\widehat{a}_\mu (\widehat{A}_\nu ,\theta )$$

$$\lambda =\widehat{\lambda }+\frac{1}{2}\theta ^{\rho \sigma }\widehat{A}_\rho _\sigma \widehat{\lambda },$$
(3)
where the ”‘hatted”’ variables on the right live in NC space-time. The significance of the above map is that under an NC or $``$-gauge transformation of $`\widehat{A}_\mu `$ by,

$$\widehat{\delta }\widehat{A}_\mu =_\mu \widehat{\lambda }+i[\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{A}_\mu ]_{},$$

$`A_\mu `$ will undergo the transformation

$$\delta A_\mu =_\mu \lambda $$

given in (6). Subsequently, under this mapping, a gauge invariant action in conventional space-time will be mapped to its NC counterpart, which will be $``$-gauge invariant.

Let us start by introducing the SD-MCS duality in conventional space-time. For convenience we follow the notations and metric $`(g^{\mu \nu }=diag(1,1,1))`$ of . The self-dual lagrangian, consisting of the ordinary and topological mass terms is ,

$$_{𝒮𝒟}=\frac{1}{2}f^\mu f_\mu \frac{1}{2m}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }f_\alpha _\beta f_\gamma .$$
(4)
On the other hand, the MCS model  is described by,

$$_{𝒞𝒮}=\frac{1}{2}(_\alpha A_\beta _\beta A_\alpha )^\alpha A^\beta +\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }A_\alpha _\beta A_\gamma .$$
(5)
Note that total derivative terms in the lagrangian will be dropped throughout the present (classical) discussion. Clearly (5) is invariant under the gauge transformation,

$$A_\mu A_\mu +_\mu \lambda ,$$
(6)
whereas no such manifest symmetry exists for (4). Indeed, one can solve the equations of motion and constraints for both of the above models and show that there exists the identification ,

$$f_\mu =ϵ_{\mu \nu \tau }^\nu A^\tau .$$

An alternative way is the construction of the following ”‘master”’ lagrangian

$$_{𝒟𝒥}=\frac{1}{2}f^\mu f_\mu ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }f_\alpha _\beta A_\gamma +\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }A_\alpha _\beta A_\gamma ,$$
(7)
which reduces to (4) or (5) upon integrating out $`A_\mu `$ or $`f_\mu `$ respectively, by exploiting the equations of motion. Note that (7) is also gauge invariant.

The mapping (3) together with $`f_\mu =\widehat{f}_\mu `$ lifts the ”‘master”’ lagrangian in (7) to NC ”‘master”’ lagrangian,

$$\widehat{}_{DJ}=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{f}^\mu \widehat{f}_\mu ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }\widehat{f}_\alpha _\beta (\widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{a}_\gamma )+\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{A}_\alpha +\widehat{a}_\alpha )_\beta (\widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{a}_\gamma )$$

$$=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{f}^\mu \widehat{f}_\mu ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }\widehat{f}_\alpha _\beta (\widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{a}_\gamma )+\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{A}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{A}_\gamma +2\widehat{a}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{A}_\gamma )+O(\theta ^2).$$
(8)
Let us now follow the computational scheme, (of selective integration of fields), used in the conventional space-time. Variation of $`\widehat{f}_\mu `$ yields the equation,

$$\widehat{f}_\mu =ϵ_{\mu \nu \tau }^\nu (\widehat{A}^\tau +\widehat{a}^\tau ).$$
(9)
Substituting $`\widehat{f}_\mu `$ from (9) in (8), we obtain,

$$\widehat{}_{DJ}=\frac{1}{2}(_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu _\nu \widehat{A}_\mu )^\mu \widehat{A}^\nu (_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu _\nu \widehat{A}_\mu )^\mu \widehat{a}^\nu +\frac{m}{2}ϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }(\widehat{A}^\mu ^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta +2\widehat{A}^\mu ^\alpha \widehat{a}^\beta ).$$
(10)
To $`O(\theta )`$, this is nothing but $`\widehat{}_{MCS}`$ where

$$\widehat{}_{MCS}=\frac{1}{2}[_\alpha (\widehat{A}_\beta +\widehat{a}_\beta )_\beta (\widehat{A}_\alpha +\widehat{a}_\alpha )][^\alpha (\widehat{A}^\beta +\widehat{a}_\beta )]+\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{A}_\alpha +\widehat{a}^\alpha )_\beta (\widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{a}_\gamma ).$$
(11)
In a similar manner, variation of $`\widehat{A}_\mu `$ reproduces the equation of motion,

$$mϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta ϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }^\alpha (\widehat{f}^\beta m\widehat{a}^\beta )ϵ_{\nu \alpha \beta }(m^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta ^\alpha \widehat{f}^\beta )\frac{\delta \widehat{a}^\nu }{\delta \widehat{A}^\mu }.$$
(12)
Notice that the last term in the right hand side of (12) is actually of $`O(\theta ^2)`$ and hence can be omitted. Once again putting back the above relation (12) in (8) we recover $`\widehat{}_{SD}`$,

$$\widehat{}_{SD}=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{f}^\mu \widehat{f}_\mu \frac{1}{2m}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }\widehat{f}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{f}_\gamma .$$
(13)
This constitutes the demonstration that (to $`O(\theta )`$) the SD-MCS duality remains intact in noncommutative space-time even though the mappings of the SD and MCS models to their respective noncommutative counterparts are entirely different. It appears that, to the first non-trivial order in $`\theta `$ (that we are presently interested in), existence of the perturbative form of the SWM  is sufficient to guarantee the SD-MCS duality in noncommutative space-time, irrespective of the explicit structure of the map in (3). We will return to this point briefly at the end.

## 3 Duality in the Stuckelberg Formalism

For various reasons it sometimes turns out to be convenient to embed the particular model under study in a larger phase space in which the extended model has a gauge invariance. The original model and its gauge invariant extension are obviously gauge equivalent so that the physical (i.e. gauge invariant) sector of the original model remains intact. Stuckelberg formalism is one of the simplest such prescription where the gauge variant SD model $`_{𝒮𝒟}`$ in (4) can be extended to the manifestly gauge invariant $`_{𝒮𝒟}^𝒮`$,

$$_{𝒮𝒟}^𝒮=\frac{1}{2}(f^\mu ^\mu \varphi )(f_\mu _\mu \varphi )\frac{1}{2m}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }f_\alpha _\beta f_\gamma .$$
(14)
Here $`\varphi `$ is an auxiliary degree of freedom, which is introduced to induce the invariance of $`_{𝒮𝒟}^𝒮`$ under the gauge transformation,

$$f_\mu f_\mu +_\mu \sigma ,\varphi \varphi +\sigma .$$
(15)
Obviously $`\varphi `$ is a gauge degree of freedom and the gauge choice $`\varphi =0`$ reproduces $`_{𝒮𝒟}`$.

The ”‘master”’ lagrangian $`_{𝒟𝒥}^𝒮`$ corresponding to the pair, $`_{𝒮𝒟}^𝒮`$ of (14) and the earlier MCS model (5), (which remains unchanged), is given by the following extended version of $`_{𝒟𝒥}`$,

$$_{DJ}^S=\frac{1}{2}(f^\mu ^\mu \varphi )(f_\mu _\mu \varphi )ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }f_\alpha _\beta A_\gamma +\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }A_\alpha _\beta A_\gamma .$$
(16)
The above model (16) actually has two independent gauge invariances,

$$A_\mu A_\mu +_\mu \lambda ;f_\mu f_\mu +_\mu \sigma ,\varphi \varphi +\sigma .$$
(17)
Now we consider the SWM appropriate for the present gauge theory (16) having two gauge invariances. Thus, the SWM of (3) has to be augmented by the following map,

$$f_\mu =\widehat{f}_\mu \theta ^{\alpha \rho }\widehat{f}_\rho (_\alpha \widehat{f}_\mu \frac{1}{2}_\mu \widehat{f}_\alpha )\widehat{f}_\mu +\widehat{h}_\mu (\widehat{f}_\nu ,\theta )$$

$$\sigma =\widehat{\sigma }+\frac{1}{2}\theta ^{\rho \alpha }\widehat{f}_\rho _\alpha \widehat{\sigma }\widehat{\sigma }+\widehat{\sigma }^1,$$
(18)
The full SWM leads to the NC counterpart of $`_{DJ}^S`$,

$$\widehat{}_{DJ}^S=\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{f}^\mu +\widehat{h}^\mu ^\mu \widehat{\varphi })(\widehat{f}_\mu +\widehat{h}_\mu _\mu \widehat{\varphi })ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{f}_\alpha +\widehat{h}_\alpha )_\beta (\widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{a}_\gamma )$$

$$+\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{A}_\alpha +\widehat{a}_\alpha )_\beta (\widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{a}_\gamma )$$

$$=\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{f}^\mu ^\mu \widehat{\varphi })(\widehat{f}_\mu _\mu \widehat{\varphi })+(\widehat{f}^\mu ^\mu \widehat{\varphi })\widehat{h}_\mu ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{f}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{A}_\gamma +\widehat{f}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{a}_\gamma +\widehat{h}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{A}_\gamma )$$

$$+\frac{m}{2}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{A}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{A}_\gamma +2\widehat{a}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{A}_\gamma )+O(\theta ^2).$$
(19)
Two points regarding this model are to be noted. Firstly, although there are two independent gauge invariances with distinct gauge parameters $`\lambda `$ and $`\sigma `$, this feature does not show up in $`\widehat{}_{DJ}^S`$, since the SWM for the gauge field is independent of the gauge transformation function.

Secondly, from the basic tenet of the SWM, that for abelian gauge group, gauge invariant sectors in ordinary spacetime under SWM will be translated to \*-gauge invariant sectors in NC spacetime, we conclude that the combination $`\widehat{f}^\mu +\widehat{h}^\mu ^\mu \widehat{\varphi }`$ has to be \*-gauge invariant, since $`f^\mu ^\mu \varphi `$ is gauge invariant. This shows that under \*-gauge transformation,

$$\widehat{\delta }\widehat{\varphi }=\widehat{\sigma }\frac{1}{2}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }\widehat{f}_\beta _\alpha \widehat{\sigma }.$$
(20)
Now, we follow the formal way  of extracting the SWM for $`\varphi `$ and use the following expansions,

$$\widehat{\varphi }=\varphi +\phi (\theta )+O(\theta ^2);\widehat{f}^\mu =f^\mu +h^\mu (\theta )+O(\theta ^2);\widehat{\sigma }=\sigma +\sigma _1(\theta )+O(\theta ^2),$$
(21)
in (20). $`\widehat{h}^\mu `$ and $`\sigma _1`$ are defined in (18). Comparing powers of $`\theta `$, we get

$$\delta \varphi =\sigma ;\delta \phi =0.$$
(22)
But such a gauge invariant structure for $`\phi `$ is impossible to construct indicating that $`\phi =0`$ and so $`\widehat{\varphi }=\varphi +O(\theta ^2)`$.

Proceeding in exactly the same way as before, the variational equations of motion are obtained as,

$$\widehat{f}_\mu _\mu \widehat{\varphi }=ϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta +ϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }^\alpha \widehat{a}^\beta \widehat{h}_\mu +(ϵ_{\nu \alpha \beta }^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta \widehat{f}^\nu +^\nu \widehat{\varphi })\frac{\delta \widehat{h}_\nu }{\delta \widehat{f}^\mu }+O(\theta ^2),$$
(23)
$$mϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta =ϵ_{\mu \alpha \beta }^\alpha (\widehat{f}^\beta m\widehat{a}^\beta +\widehat{h}^\beta )ϵ_{\nu \alpha \beta }(m^\alpha \widehat{A}^\beta ^\alpha \widehat{f}^\beta )\frac{\delta \widehat{a}^\nu }{\delta \widehat{A}^\mu }+O(\theta ^2).$$
(24)
Note that in both the above equations (23) and (24), the last terms in the right hand side containing variational derivatives are actually of $`O(\theta )^2`$ and hence can be left out in the present analysis. Substitution of (23) in (19) reproduces (11), the noncommutative version of the MCS model. On the other hand, using (24) in (19) we get, $`\widehat{}_{SD}^S`$, the noncommutative analogue of $`_{SD}^S`$ in (14),

$$\widehat{}_{SD}^S=\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{f}^\mu +\widehat{h}^\mu ^\mu \widehat{\varphi })(\widehat{f}_\mu +\widehat{h}_\mu _\mu \widehat{\varphi })\frac{1}{2m}ϵ^{\alpha \beta \gamma }(\widehat{f}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{f}_\gamma +2\widehat{h}_\alpha _\beta \widehat{f}_\gamma ).$$
(25)
This exercise shows that the DS-MCS duality remains intact in NC space-time, when the SD model is also treated as a gauge theory in the Stuckelberg formalism.

It should be mentioned that from the variational nature of the problem, it might seem that under any change of the field variable to the lowest non-trivial order, the equivalence or duality relations of this sort will remain intact. However, in general this may not be true. The explicit nature of the ”‘master”’ lagrangian as well as the induced lagrangians, and the fact that the Seiberg-Witten map does not distinguish between different gauge invariances, (as far as the field variables are concerned), all contribute to the above derivations.

It would be very interesting to establish the equivalence between self dual and Maxwell-Chern-Simons theories for arbitrary orders in $`\theta `$, since that will bring into play the explicit forms of the SWM. However, that has not been included in the present work mainly because (I): $`O(\theta )`$ computations and results have a very important role in NC theories, and (II): there are ambiguities  in the SWM for higher orders in $`\theta `$. On the other hand, the above duality may be exploited to favour one expression of the SWM over the other alternatives for say $`O(\theta ^2)`$. These issues will be addressed separately. Note addeded:
It is straightforward to show that the duality between Maxwell-Chern-Simons and self dual theories, in the noncommutative plane, holds to all orders in $`\theta `$. We start with the full equation corresponding to (12),

$$ϵ^{\sigma \beta \gamma }_\beta (\widehat{f}m\widehat{A})_\gamma (g_\sigma ^\alpha +\frac{\delta \widehat{c}_\sigma }{\delta \widehat{A}_\alpha })=mϵ^{\sigma \beta \gamma }_\beta \widehat{c}_\gamma (g_\sigma ^\alpha +\frac{\delta \widehat{c}_\sigma }{\delta \widehat{A}_\alpha }),$$
(26)
where $`\widehat{c}^\mu `$ denotes the full $`\theta `$ correction to $`A^\mu `$. Since the operator $`(g_\sigma ^\alpha +\frac{\delta \widehat{c}_\sigma }{\delta \widehat{A}_\alpha })`$ is invertible, one gets the exact relation

$$ϵ^{\sigma \beta \gamma }_\beta (\widehat{f}m\widehat{A})_\gamma =mϵ^{\sigma \beta \gamma }_\beta \widehat{c}_\gamma .$$
(27)
Substituting this in the NC master Lagrangian (8) (with $`\widehat{a}^\mu `$ replaced by $`\widehat{c}^\mu `$), reproduces the self dual model.

Acknowledgement: It is a pleasure to thank the referee for the constructive comments.


text:
# Time scales for fission at finite temperature

## 1 Introduction

Fission at finite thermal excitation is characterized by the evaporation of light particles and $`\gamma `$’s. Any description of such a process must rely on statistical concepts, both with respect to fission itself as well as with respect to particle emission. For decades it has been customary to describe experiments in terms of particle111To simplify the discussion we will not distinguish the nature of the ”particles” and in this sense include $`\gamma `$’s in this notation. and fission widths, where the former, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n`$, is identified through the evaporation rate and the latter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f`$ is given by the Bohr-Wheeler formula $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{BW}}`$ for the fission rate. Often in the literature this is referred to as the ”statistical model”. It was only in the 80’s that discrepancies of this procedure with experimental evidence was encountered: Sizably more neutrons were seen to accompany fission events than given by the ratio $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n/\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{BW}}`$ (for a review see e.g. ). It was then that one recalled Kramers’ old objection  against the Bohr-Wheeler formula. Indeed, in this seminal paper he pointed to the deficiency of the picture of Bohr and Wheeler in that it discards the influence of couplings of the fission mode to the nucleonic degrees of freedom. Such couplings will in general reduce the flux across the barrier as the energy in the fission degree of freedom $`Q`$ may be diminished and fall below the barrier.

In Kramers’ picture this effect is realized through the presence of frictional and fluctuating forces (intimately connected to each other by the fluctuation dissipation theorem). For not too weak dissipation Kramers’ rate formula writes

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}=\frac{\mathrm{}\varpi _\mathrm{a}}{2\pi }\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{E_\mathrm{b}}{T}\right)\left(\sqrt{1+\eta _\mathrm{b}^2}\eta _\mathrm{b}\right)=\frac{\mathrm{}}{\tau _\mathrm{K}}=\mathrm{}R_\mathrm{K}.$$
(1)
Here, $`T`$ and $`E_\mathrm{b}`$ stand for temperature and barrier height, $`\varpi _\mathrm{a}`$ for the frequency of the motion in the (only) minimum at $`Q=Q_\mathrm{a}`$ and $`\eta _\mathrm{b}=(\gamma /(2M\varpi ))_\mathrm{b}`$ for the dissipation strength at the barrier (at $`Q=Q_\mathrm{b}`$) with $`\gamma `$ being the friction coefficient and $`M`$ the inertia. For the sake of simplicity we will assume these coefficients not to vary along the fission path; otherwise the formula must be modified . For vanishing dissipation strength (1) reduces to the Bohr-Wheeler formula (simplified to the case that the equilibrium of the nucleons can be parameterized by a temperature).

Commonly, formula (1) is derived in a time dependent picture solving the underlying Fokker-Planck equation for special initial conditions with respect to the time dependence of the distribution function222For Kramers’ equation proper this involves the coordinate $`Q`$ and a momentum $`P`$. The latter is absent in the Smoluchoski equation into which the former turns into for overdamped motion.. The initial condition is intimately related to the condition of a compound reaction, in that the decay process is assumed to be independent of how the compound nucleus is produced. In this spirit one does not need to care for the truly initial stages of the reaction. One simply assumes the system to be located initially around the ground state minimum $`Q=Q_\mathrm{a}`$ of the static energy. However, there still is room for the precise definition, as the system may or may not be in (quasi-)equilibrium with respect to the fission degree of freedom $`Q`$ — which for large damping belongs to the slowest modes present. Since the corresponding momentum may safely be assumed to relax much faster one may also let the system start sharply at $`Q=Q_\mathrm{a}`$ with a Maxwell distribution in $`P`$. In any case, for the current across the barrier it takes some finite time to build up. This apparent delay of fission was taken  as an indication for additional possibilities to emit light particles beyond the measure given by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n/\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}>\mathrm{\Gamma }_n/\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{BW}}`$.

In case that the full process is studied in a time dependent picture both for fission as well as for particle emission, as done in the typical Langevin codes , such an effect is included automatically. Problems arise, however, if one tries to imitate this delay in statistical codes which are in use for analyzing experimental results. Such codes are based on time independent reaction theory. For this reason it is not obvious how this method may be reconciled with the picture of fission delay, the ”transient effect”. In the present note we like to shed some light on this problem by exploiting the concept of a ”mean first passage time” (MFPT).

## 2 Time dependent current across the barrier

Solutions of the transport equation require appropriate boundary conditions for the coordinate $`Q`$ (and $`P`$ if present). For the solutions discussed above the boundary conditions are chosen to make sure that the distribution vanishes at infinity. Calculations of the current $`j(t)`$ across the barrier then typically imply a behavior as exhibited in Fig.1 for different initial conditions. In all cases the asymptotic value of $`j_\mathrm{b}(t)`$ is seen to behave like $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}t/\mathrm{})`$. The differences at short times are due to the following choices:

(i) For the dashed curves the system starts out of equilibrium for both $`Q`$ and $`P`$; the curve on the left corresponds to the current at the barrier $`j_\mathrm{b}(t)=j(Q_\mathrm{b},t)`$ and the right one to that in the scission region $`j_{\mathrm{sc}}(t)=j(Q_{\mathrm{sc}},t)`$. The equilibrium is defined by the oscillator potential which approximates the $`V(Q)`$ around $`Q_\mathrm{a}`$.

(ii) For the fully drawn line the system starts at $`Q_\mathrm{a}`$ sharp with a Maxwell distribution in $`P`$. The obvious delay is essentially due to the relaxation of $`Q`$ to the quasi-equilibrium in the well. This feature is demonstrated on the right by the $`t`$-dependence of the width in $`Q`$ (as given by the average potential energy).

(iii) The dotted curve corresponds to an initial distribution which is also sharp in the momentum but centers at the finite value $`P_{t=0}=\sqrt{MT}`$.

The figure demonstrates clearly a remarkable uncertainty in the very concept of the ”transient effect”, namely that the $`j_\mathrm{b}(t)`$ reaches its asymptotic behavior only after some finite time $`\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$. Even more important appears to be that the whole effect is due to the arbitrariness in choosing time zero. If the calculation were repeated at some later time $`t_0>\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$, the same behavior would be seen! This is due to the fact that the whole transient effect only comes about because in the initial distribution there is some favorable region in phase space from which it is easiest to reach the barrier. This is demonstrated in Fig.2. There, all initial points in phase space are sampled which cross the barrier after some time $`\tau _s`$. On the right a sufficiently large time was chosen such that most parts of the initial distribution have ”fissioned”. As exhibited on the left, for the much shorter time, of the order of $`\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$, only a small fraction of points have succeeded to do this, namely those which start close to the barrier with a more favorite initial momentum. The vast majority of particles are still waiting to complete the same motion but at a later time! This feature is very important for several reasons, in particular (i) for an understanding of the essentials of the concept of the MFPT , (ii) that there still is ample time for neutrons to be emitted inside the barrier, even for $`t\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$.

The calculations have been performed by simulating the Langevin equations exploiting a locally harmonic oscillation, for the following parameters: $`T=3`$ MeV, $`E_b=8`$ MeV, $`\mathrm{}\varpi _a=1`$ MeV and $`\eta _a=1`$. The potential was constructed from two oscillators, an upright one and one upside down, joined at some point between the minimum and the saddle with a smooth first derivative.

## 3 The mean first passage time

For the sake of simplicity we take the example of overdamped motion for which the momentum is always in equilibrium such that one only needs to consider the time evolution of the fission coordinate $`Q`$. The first passage time may then be defined in the following way. Suppose that at $`t=0`$ the particle starts at the potential minimum $`Q_\mathrm{a}`$ sharp. Because of the fluctuating force there will be many trajectories $`i`$ which will pass a certain exit point $`Q_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ once. This process may take the time $`t_i`$, the first passage time. The mean-FPT $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_{\mathrm{ex}})`$ is defined by the average $`t_i`$ over all possibilities. In order to really obtain the mean first passage time the $`i`$ has to be removed from the ensemble once it has exited the interval at $`Q_{\mathrm{ex}}`$: the ”particle” can be said to be absorbed at $`Q_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ (”absorbing barrier”). As the potential $`V(Q)`$ is assumed to rise to infinity for $`Q\mathrm{}`$, any motion to the far left will bounce back: the region $`Q\mathrm{}`$ acts as a ”reflecting barrier”.

The MFPT $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}`$ can also be calculated from solutions $`K(Q,t|Q_\mathrm{a},0)`$ of the Smoluchowski equation, adequate for overdamped motion . The initial condition for the particles to start at $`Q_\mathrm{a}`$ is then: $`lim_{t0}K(Q,t|Q_\mathrm{a},0)=\delta (QQ_\mathrm{a})`$, which is identical to the one used for the fully drawn line of Fig.1. It is this case which (for constant friction and temperature) allows for an analytic form for the MFPT,

$$\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_{\mathrm{ex}})=\frac{\gamma }{T}_{Q_\mathrm{a}}^{Q_{\mathrm{ex}}}𝑑u\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{V(u)}{T}\right]_{\mathrm{}}^u𝑑v\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{V(v)}{T}\right],$$
(2)
by reasoning as follows: The probability of finding at time $`t`$ the particle still inside the interval $`(\mathrm{},Q_{\mathrm{ex}})`$ is given by $`W(Q_\mathrm{a},t)=_{\mathrm{}}^{Q_{\mathrm{ex}}}𝑑QK(Q,t|Q_\mathrm{a},0)`$. Hence, the probability for it to leave the region during the time lap from $`t`$ to $`t+dt`$ is determined by $`dW=\frac{}{t}W(Q_\mathrm{a},t)dt`$, such that one has $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_{\mathrm{ex}})=t𝑑W`$ which turns into

$$\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_{\mathrm{ex}})=_0^{\mathrm{}}_{\mathrm{}}^{Q_{\mathrm{ex}}}K(Q,t|Q_\mathrm{a},0)𝑑Q𝑑t=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑ttj(Q_{\mathrm{ex}},t|Q_\mathrm{a},0).$$
(3)
These formulas are associated to the special boundary conditions with respect to the

coordinate mentioned before, the reflecting barrier at $`Q\mathrm{}`$ and an absorbing barrier at $`Q_{\mathrm{ex}}`$. In particular for the latter reason it is not permitted to use in (3) the currents shown in Fig.1. Inserting them blindly would indeed lead to expressions for $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}`$ in which the $`\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ appears333Approximating the form of the current by $`j_\mathrm{b}(t)=j_{\mathrm{norm}}(1e^{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{trans}}t/\mathrm{}})\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}t/\mathrm{}\right)`$ one would falsely get $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{b})=\mathrm{}/(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{trans}})+\mathrm{}/\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}`$.. This is in clear distinction to the correct expression (2). Actually, the derivation of (2) involves proper solutions of that equation which is ”adjoint” to the Smoluchowski equation, and which describes motion backward in time. In Fig.3 we show the dependence of $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_{\mathrm{ex}})`$ on $`Q_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ as given by (2) calculated for a cubic potential. Evidently, the MFPT needed to reach the saddle at $`Q_\mathrm{b}`$ is exactly half the asymptotic value. The latter may be identified as the mean fission life time $`\tau _f\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_{\mathrm{ex}}Q_\mathrm{b})`$. For the typical conditions under which Kramers’ rate formula (1) is valid for overdamped motion, this relation of $`R_\mathrm{K}=\left(\tau _f\right)^1`$ to the asymptotic MFPT can be derived analytically . Another remarkable feature seen in Fig.3 is the insensitivity of the MFPT to the exit point for small and large $`Q_{\mathrm{ex}}`$.

## 4 Discussion

It should be evident from the previous discussion that in the very concept of the MFPT there is no room for a transient effect. After all, formula (2) is based on exact solutions of the transport equation which satisfy the same initial condition as those used for the plots in Fig.1. One essential difference is seen in the fact that the evaluation of the MFPT takes into account an average over all initial points, as is warranted by the definition of the MFPT through the probability distribution $`dW`$. Contrasting this feature, and as outlined in sect.2, the transient effect only represents a minor part of the initial population, namely that one which reaches the barrier first. Discarding the rest implies ignoring the many particles which are still moving inside the barrier for times typically much longer than $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_\mathrm{b})`$. Neutrons from deformations corresponding to that region are not only emitted within $`\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ but within $`\tau _{\mathrm{mfpt}}(Q_\mathrm{a}Q_\mathrm{b})`$, which turns out to be just half of the total fission time $`\tau _\mathrm{K}`$. Of course, this discussion shows that — besides the additional neutrons often associated to the transient effect — also those, supposedly emitted during the motion from saddle to scission are not treated correctly by introducing the saddle to scission time $`\tau _{\mathrm{ssc}}`$ of . As one may guess from Fig.3, like the $`\tau _{\mathrm{trans}}`$, the $`\tau _{\mathrm{ssc}}`$ does not appear to be in accord with the MFPT either. These findings suggest that one simply estimates the emission rate of neutrons over fission from the ratio $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n/\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{K}`$. Anything else does not seem to be in accord with the assumption that fission can be described by the Kramers or Smoluchowski equations, for the usually assumed form of the potential. This does not rule out any effects related to a more complicated dynamics, in particular if the initial stage of the whole reaction is to be described with a different transport theory. These findings may perhaps imply that some of the existing statistical codes will have to be revised. The question of the temperature dependence of nuclear transport does not seem to be a closed one yet. A theoretical prediction has been given in .

The authors benefitted greatly from a collaboration meeting on ”Fission at finite thermal excitations” in April, 2002, sponsored by the ECT\* (’STATE’ contract). One of us (F.A.I.) would like to thank the Physik Department of the TUM for the hospitality extended to him during his stay at Garching.