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# Structure and Time-Evolution of an Internet Dating Community

## I Introduction

With the growing interest in social network analysis from the physics community, a new research area is emerging in the intersection between statistical physics and sociology (Albert and Barabási 2002; Dorogovtsev and Mendes 2002; Newman 2003). Sociologists have been interested in network analysis for at least half a century, and with mathematicians and statisticians they have developed a set of tools to analyze positions, structures, and processes of social networks (Wasserman and Faust 1994; Butts 2001). Although there are exceptions (Fararo and Sunshine 1964; Skvoretz 1990), most sociological and anthropological studies of networks have focused on small-group interaction or cognitive networks. In one respect this is quite natural as most groups and formal organizations are of small size. Also, a pragmatic reason for this is that data collection of large social networks, behavioral or cognitive, is cumbersome and often practically impossible to carry through. Therefore, although recent analyses (Watts and Strogatz 1998; Watts 1999; Newman 2001) have brought new attention to comparative analysis of large-scale social networks, the statistical physics method, emphasizing the limit of large system sizes (Albert and Barabási 2002), has been of limited utility. However, the extended use of database technology provide new possibilities for constructing real world networks for the analysis of e.g. movie-actor networks (Watts and Strogatz 1998) and co-authorship in science (Newman 2001). Surely, these networks reflect social interaction, but they are also heavily constrained by the logic of a particular industry or a particular professional activity. Thus, to allow for exploration of the possible universal properties of social networks in general, there is still an urgent need to analyze other types of large empirical social networks. In this paper we report on an investigation of a large social network, aiming to give a phenomenological description that will hopefully shed some new light on the processes forming the structure of social networks. To put results in context, we try to compare our findings to other studies whenever possible, and to contrast parameters to what would be expected from a random network with similar characteristics.

To construct network data and large graphs based on more spontaneous patterns of human interaction than e.g. co-authorship and co-actorship, one can consider data from e-mail exchange (Ebel, Mielsch et al. 2002) or user activity in Internet communities (Rothaermel and Sugiyama 2001; Smith 2002). The present work belongs to the latter category, with a strong focus on the dynamics of the network. In contrast to previous studies of Internet communities (Smith 2002), we use down-to-the-second timing of the communication to investigate time evolution and obtain steady state estimates of well-known measures of graph structure. We use data from a Swedish Internet community called pussokram.com (roughly “kiss’n’hug” in English) that is primarily targeted at adolescents and young adults. The community provides an arena for flirting, dating, and other romantic communication; as well as communication for non-romantic friendship.

Studies suggest that online interaction is driven by the same needs as face-to-face interaction, and should not be regarded as a separate arena but as an integrated part of modern social life (Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002). Thus communicative actions taken by members of the community can be expected to share many features with the web of human acquaintances and romances in the social off-line world. Indeed, for many people in contemporary Western societies, interaction on the Internet is as real as any other interaction (Wellman 2001). Internet communities are interesting by and for themselves, but this suggests that the formation and dynamics of social networks in an Internet community can share the same generic properties as all social acquaintance networks, and that the study of Internet communities can provide important information for enhancing our understanding of social networks in general.

The paper is divided into four sections. In the next section we give a detailed description of the functions of the Internet community in focus. The third section contains statistical analyses and presentation of results that we summarize and discuss in the fourth and concluding section.

## II The Internet community pussokram.com

Pussokram.com is a Swedish Internet community primarily intended for romantic communication and targeted at adolescents and young adults. The community had around 30 000 active users during the spring and summer 2002, the mean user age is 21 years, and approximately 70 percent of the users are women (therefore, and to simplify, we will use the female gender when referring to users in this paper). Both age and sex are self reported. It is possible to have multiple accounts on the community. A crude check on the number of accounts linked to every unique e-mail address indicates that this is not very common (more than 99.7% of the membership accounts are associated with a unique e-mail address and no e-mail address are associated with more than 5 accounts).111Of course it is possible to use an unique e-mail address for every unique e-mail account but since this information is not revealed its hard to see way on would go through the extra effort so doing. Our data consists of all the user activities on pussokram.com logged for 512 days from 13:39:25 on February 13, 2001 ($`t\mathrm{ }=\mathrm{ }0`$) to 13:28:19 on July 10, 2002. The smallest time-unit on the log is 1 second. We analyze the activity of all users registered at time $`t\mathrm{ }=\mathrm{ }0`$, as well as the activity of any new users during this time span.222Personal integrity is of course an issue here. For the analysis, we study the anonymized data to prevent any intrusion of privacy, and we do not have access to specific message contents. Like everyone else, we can read the guest books, but still we cannot link an user (and her guest book) to the vertices of the network. Thus, we cannot identify any specific individual person in the data. We do not even have data that can be cross-examined with other databases (like computer IP-addresses) to detect users identity Time $`t\mathrm{ }=\mathrm{ }0`$ defines the start up day for this particular community. However prior to $`t\mathrm{ }=\mathrm{ }0`$ there was a mail server for sending anonymous love messages on the Internet. Registered users of this service had their accounts automatically transferred to pussokram.com. We only study activity on the community, nevertheless this recruitment might induce higher initial growth of active users.

Pussokram.com has a pronounced romantic profile, where:

* Users are encouraged to send messages to others that they are secretly in love with.
* The provider answers questions related to love and sex posed by the users under the pseudonym Dr. Love.
* The design of the HTML-pages makes use of a romantic iconography well known to the targeted users (with Valentine’s hearts, deep red colors, etc., see Fig. 1). Nevertheless, a quick glance through some of the public guest books reveals that many of the contacts taken are also non-romantic.

### II.1 Types of contacts in pussokram.com

There are four major modes of communication at pussokram.com. We study each of the networks generated by these four types of contacts separately and we also study the union of these networks generated by any of these contacts. A brief description of the four types of contacts follows:

* The Messages are in effect intra-community e-mails. These are private in the sense that no one in the community, except the sender and receiver, can access them. Not even information on how many messages other users have received are retrievable for other users.
* In Guest book signing, each user has a guest book that every community member is free to write in.
* Flirt or “friendship request:” User A can ask user B to be her friend. If user B accepts user A’s request then they can both easily see if the other is online whenever they are logged onto pussokram.com. Information on the friends of a specific user is private to the user only.
* Friendship: A friendship relation is established after acceptance of a friendship request, as described above. The friendship network is thus bi-directional. A friendship can be canceled by any of the friends.

### II.2 Ways to receive attention and search users

Unless engaged in peer-to-peer contact of some sort, users at pussokram.com are relatively anonymous towards each other. There is reason to believe that knowledge about the prior interactive behavior of other individuals structures the present interactive behavior of a given individual (the so called imitation factor). The only information about a user’s interaction history available to other users. But there are several ways for an user to draw attention to herself (i.e. to direct other users to her community homepage), and for users to find information about others. Here we summarize various ways that can be used to receive attention, search for other users, and promote oneself at pussokram.com. The following information is displayed when a logged on user browse the pussokram.com website:

* The username of the most recently registered community member.
* The name of the most recently edited diary (each user has space open for others to read, intended as a diary).
* The names of the most recent users to browse a specific user’s homepage.
* The names of similar users are displayed on a specific users homepage. Similarity is assesses through self-reported background variables.
* A long interview with the “user of the week” (although updated more seldom than weekly). This is an epithet that users can apply for.
* Photographs of 10-20 users are displayed at the login-page.

A user can search out other users with a search engine (the “sökofinder”—in English “search’n’finder”—in Fig. 1) that handles the following criteria: Sub-string of the username, gender, age, place of residence, online status, and if a user has provided a photograph of herself. Presumably, these are the characteristics that drive user activity, but because it is hard to assess their validity, and because we are only interested in structural properties, we do not conduct any analysis on them.

### II.3 Comparisons with other empirical and statistical networks

For comparison we also use networks by instant messaging at the French Internet community nioki.com and scientific collaboration (or, rather, co-authorship) networks. nioki.com and pussokram.com are rather similar, both in terms of content and design, but compared to pussokram.com, nioki.com is even more youth oriented and not as focused on romantic relations as pussokram.com. Besides the possibility of searching for user names, nioki.com has two search procedures recherche l’amitié (search for friendship) and recherche l’amour (search for love), where one can fill out questionnaires to find other users that match ones preferences. In the nioki.com network, an arc connects user A to user B if user B is in user A’s list of contacts (for details see (Smith 2002). In the scientific collaboration networks (Newman 2001) the vertices are scientists who have uploaded manuscripts to the Los Alamos preprint repository arXiv.org, arcs are added between scientists who have co-authored a paper. In contrast to the pussokram.com and nioki.com networks, ties in the scientific collaboration network is bi-directional. Note, that the pussokram.com networks are dynamic, while we only have access to snapshot data of nioki.com and scientific collaboration networks. For this reason we can only make comparisons between the static properties of these networks.

In addition, following (Anderson, Butts et al. 1999; Pattison, Wasserman et al. 2000; Shen-Orr, Milo et al. 2002), we compare some observed quantities to the corresponding average values from randomized networks with the same degree-sequence as the original. By this approach, we examine how aspects of structures other than the degree sequence, influences the quantities. Every known real social network deviates from the average randomized network in a larger or lesser extent, depending on the social forces structuring the interaction. For example, with regards to the present case, we believe that an Internet community network will be closer to the average randomized network than several other types of social networks, because time and space constraints are much less pressing than in, e.g., a kinship network. These randomized networks are generated by sequentially going through all directed arcs A-B, and for every such arc randomly select another arc, C-D, and then rewire so that A-D forms one arc, and C-B forms another. The choice of C-D is done with uniform randomness among all arcs that would not introduce a loop or a multiple arc. We use this algorithm to generate $`3000`$ networks and the quantities are averaged over these networks. This procedure is inspired by Roberts (2000). However it differs from Roberts in the sense that we use sweeps over all arcs (where each arc is rewired at least once) as the unit of iterations of the algorithm.333To be precise our algorithm run as follows: We go sequentially through the arc set $`A`$ (see Sect. III). For every arc $`(v,w)`$ we construct a set $`A^{}`$ of arcs such that if a member $`(v^{},w^{})`$ of $`A^{}`$ is to be rewired with $`(v,w)`$—i.e. so that $`(v,w)`$ and $`(v^{},w^{})`$ are replaced by $`(v,w^{})`$ and $`(v^{},w)`$—then no loops or multiple arcs are formed. Then we choose one of $`A`$’s arcs with uniform randomness and rewire that arc with $`(v,w)`$.

## III Statistical analysis

The pussokram.com network consists of all registered users and the communication flow between these users as described above. Communication is conceived of as directed links between users. This is translated into a graph of vertices (users) and arcs (ties). Vertices are added to the network the first time a registered user is active, i.e. the first time the user sends or receives a message, signs a guest book, or sends or accepts a friendship request as described above. Each of these interactions defines a unique network, and by adding an arc for any activity one gets a total network of online activities. We thus study five networks, and for each of them the vertex set is empty at $`t=0`$. We represent the network as a directed graph, $`G=(V,A)`$, where $`V`$ is the vertex set and $`A`$ is the set of arcs, or ordered pairs of vertices. $`N=|V|`$ denotes the order (number of vertices) of $`G`$, and $`M=|A|`$ represents the number of arcs. Sometimes we study properties of the undirected graph obtained by taking the reflexive closure of $`G`$.444I.e. the graph obtained if for every $`(u,v)A`$ and $`(v,u)A`$ then $`(v,u)`$ is added to $`A`$.

### III.1 Decreasing growth rate of network size and convergence of average degree

For each network, the number of vertices of each network, $`N`$, as a function of time during the sampling is displayed in Fig. 2(a), and the average degree, i.e. the average number of arcs per vertex, $`M/N`$, is displayed in Fig 2(b). As can be seen, both the number of vertices and the average degree are increasing as a function of time, but with at a decreasing growth rate. The average degree appears to converge to a constant, but for $`t<100`$, it increases as a power function. The more rapid growth rate in the beginning of the period is explained by the fact that old users log on for the first time during our sampling period (see discussion in Section II). The decreasing growth, and apparent approach to equilibrium, stand in contrast to the accelerated growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web (Dorogovtsev and Mendes 2002), as well the linear growth of scientific co-authorship networks extracted from article databases (Newman 2001; Newman 2001; Barabási, Jeong et al. 2002). However, in social networks, the average degree cannot be increasing without bounds, and this goes for scientific collaboration networks too. We believe the difference stems from a wider effective sampling time frame—due to the much more rapid dynamics of an Internet community (compared to scientific collaborations) we are, relatively speaking, able to follow the process for a much longer period. In the sense that $`G`$ is a steadily growing dynamic network, we deal with a non-equilibrium representation of the social situation. When we speak of the network “reaching equilibrium,” we refer to when all quantities that are bounded as a function of $`N`$ (such as the average degree) are reaching their constant limits.

### III.2 Reciprocity varies between networks

Various types of social relations differ in direction, intensity, and frequency (Granovetter 1973). Messages between agents with different social status for example, tend to be unevenly distributed (Gould 2002). In the present analysis, we can investigate the reciprocity of communicative action by looking at the direction of the communication flow between any two users. For example, if user A sends a friendship request to user B, we observe a link between user A and user B, and note an arc between the two vertices. But it makes quite a difference whether user B accepts the invitation or not, i.e. whether we note one or two arcs between the vertices. We define reciprocity $`R`$, as the fraction of mutual dyads, i.e. the ratio between the number of vertex-pairs $`\{v,w\}`$ occur in two arcs ($`(v,w)`$ and $`(w,v)`$) and vertex-pairs that occur in at least one arc. More analytically:

$$R=\frac{2M}{M_2}1.$$
(1)
where $`M_2`$ is the number of arcs in the reflexive closure of $`G`$. $`R`$ lies strictly in the interval $`[0,1]`$; if $`(u,v)`$ is an arc then $`R=0`$ implies that $`(v,u)`$ is not an arc and $`R=1`$ implies that $`(v,u)`$ is an arc.

The time evolution of the reciprocity can be seen in Fig. 3a. As is evident from the figure, reciprocity levels differ little between the different networks. By definition, the friendship network has reciprocity of 1. And by the same token, the flirt network has a reciprocity equal to zero. For the other two networks, the curves converge to values around 0.4 for the guest book and messages networks, and 0.5 for the all contacts network (see Table 1). It’s hard to judge whether these are high or low values of reciprocity. They are however compatible with data for the French Internet community nioki.com. We normally assume acquaintance networks to have a high degree of reciprocity, but one reason to expect a lower value for online interaction is that an actor feels less social pressure to respond to a communicative act over the Internet than in a face-to-face, or telephone encounter, for example.

### III.3 Disassortative mixing coefficients of the pussokram.com networks

Together with the degree distribution, the degree-degree correlation is considered to govern much of the network’s robustness towards disturbances as well as the information flow. In other contexts the discussion is usually phrased in terms of resilience against epidemics and attack. A positive degree-degree correlation is also referred to as assortative mixing by degree, and it means that vertices of high degree preferably attaches to each other, and vice versa. For example, assortative mixing makes the networks more vulnerable to outbreaks of diseases, and more robust against strategic attack (Newman 2002), because if people with many contacts are connected to other people with many contacts, the epidemic threshold will be lowered. Disassortative mixing, on the other hand, gives rise to larger epidemics (Morris and Kretzschmar 1995).

We measure assortative mixing by calculating Pearson’s correlation coefficient $`r`$ for the degrees at either side of an edge as suggested by Newman (2002):

$$r=\frac{k_{\mathrm{to}}k_{\mathrm{from}}k_{\mathrm{to}}k_{\mathrm{from}}}{\sqrt{k_{\mathrm{to}}^2k_{\mathrm{to}}^2}\sqrt{k_{\mathrm{from}}^2k_{\mathrm{from}}^2}}$$
(2)
In equation 2, $`\mathrm{}`$ denotes the average over arcs, $`k_{\mathrm{from}}`$ is some (in-, out-, or total) degree of the vertex that the arc starts from, and $`k_{\mathrm{to}}`$ is some degree of the vertex that the arc leads to. We look at $`r`$ for total degree of both bi-directional (where the reflexive closure has been taken if the network is not bi-directional by definition) and directed graphs $`r_{\mathrm{dir}}`$. Furthermore, we measure the four combinations of in- and out degree correlations; e.g. the out-in correlation coefficient indicates whether users that have many contacts (high out-degree) prefers to communicate with those users that themselves receive communication from many users (high in-degree).

The values for pussokram.com and other networks are displayed in Table 1. Interestingly enough all the pussokram.com networks, as well as the nioki.com network display a significant disassortative mixing for all types of degree-degree correlations. This is in contrast to what have been measured for (scientific-, actor-, and business-) collaboration networks (Newman 2002). To set these results in perspective we also measure $`r`$ for a scientific collaboration network, which clearly displays a positive assortative mixing coefficient. Maybe an assortative mixing is significant only to interaction in competitive areas, such as professional collaborations (where only already big names are likely to be successful in collaborating with other big names). This result relates to research on exchange networks that claim that negative mixing is optimal when actors are substitutable, as for example in friendship and dating network (Cook, Emerson et al. 1983). In contrasts, professional collaboration is positive because both knowledge and already established channels for cooperation screen off potential alternative collaborators. Another issue is the skewness of the degree distribution. Intuitively, a large spread in the degree distribution will increase the likelihood of observing negative mixing. And as can be seen from the randomized networks in Table 1, given the degree distribution we would expect a negative mixing coefficient. However, the observed coefficients are consistently, and significantly, higher than expected. This strongly suggests that negative mixing arise from this particular form of social interaction in which alters are substitutable (Cook, Emerson et al. 1983). Note though, that some network models, analyzing completely different forms of interaction, with skewed degree distributions produce networks of zero or positive assortative mixing (Newman 2002; Park and Newman 2003).

The six different assortative mixing coefficients of Table 1 are all of the same sign and roughly of the same magnitude. This is interesting since it suggests that the $`r`$-values is a result of other structures (presumably the degree-sequence) rather than from the behavior of individuals: There are no a priori reasons for $`r_{\mathrm{in}\mathrm{out}}`$ to be the same as e.g. $`r_{\mathrm{in}\mathrm{in}}`$, as a large $`r_{\mathrm{in}\mathrm{out}}`$ means that actors that are active in the community (have a high $`k_{\mathrm{out}}`$) tend to associate with those who are successful in promoting themselves in the community (have a high $`k_{\mathrm{in}}`$), while a large $`r_{\mathrm{in}\mathrm{in}}`$ means that the latter category has a preference towards each other.

Fig. 3b shows the time development of the assortative mixing coefficient $`r_{\mathrm{dir}}`$ (the time development of the other assortative mixing coefficients of Table 1 is qualitatively similar). We see that $`r_{\mathrm{dir}}`$ converges more quickly than the average degree. This is not surprising since the correlation coefficient is a function of the way ties are formed rather than the size or average degree of the network. An interesting detail of Fig. 3b is the jump at $`t300`$ days in the flirt (friendship request) network. This is due to the formation of a tie between two of the most connected actors. (The fact that the flirt network is by far the sparsest strengthens this effect.)

### III.4 Cumulative degree distributions are highly skewed

The degree distribution has received much attention in comparative analyses of complex networks since the work of Barabási and Albert (1999). A skewed degree distribution is commonly regarded as a cumulative effect in the attachment of new arcs to the network (Simon 1955; Barabási and Albert 1999), and it offers a way to classify different types of networks (Amaral, Scala et al. 2000). Indeed it has been demonstrated that many apparently dissimilar types of networks share the same highly skewed degree distributions of a (truncated) power-law form (Albert and Barabási 2002), indicating an emerging scale-free structure. Such degree distributions are generated through a growth process in which new arcs are drawn between already existing vertices and new vertices only. However, a process that reasonably describes the activity of an Internet community would allow also for new arcs to be drawn between two already existing vertices. Such a mixed process however, would result in a stretched exponential distribution, and not a power-law, and thus a stretched exponential distribution is what we would expect to observe. Another process that can be responsible for cutting the tails of power-law degree distributions in real-world networks is a limited capacity of the actors.

Following (Liljeros, Edling et al. 2001) we measure the cumulative degree distribution of all the pussokram.com networks, see Fig. 4. If the degree distribution follows a power-law with exponent $`\gamma `$ then the cumulative distribution will have the exponent $`\alpha =\gamma +1`$. All pussokram.com networks are highly skewed, but none of them fits a power-law form across the whole range observed. However, it is interesting to note that there are no clear signs of the (inevitable) high-degree truncation in any of the graphs (Fig. 4). A previous study of the French nioki.com has reported a power-law fit of the cumulative degree distribution (Smith 2002). Our result might appear to set the pussokram.com community apart from the nioki.com community, but a closer inspection of our graphs and (Smith 2002) reveals a striking similarity in the functional form of the distribution. We therefore conclude that the dynamics shaping the degree-distribution is to a large extent the same for the two communities.

### III.5 Evolution of average geodesic length

As a general measure of how closely connected a graph is, the average geodesic (shortest path) length is one of the most studied network quantities. There is no unique natural definition of average geodesic length in an arbitrary directed graph—the problem is the contribution from disconnected pairs of vertices. One choice is to measure the geodesic distance averaged over pairs of vertices in the giant component:

$$l_{\mathrm{GC}}=\frac{1}{|A_{\mathrm{GC}}|}\underset{(u,v)A_{\mathrm{GC}}}{}d(u,v),$$
(3)
where $`d(u,v)`$ is the distance between $`u`$ and $`v`$, and $`A_{\mathrm{GC}}`$ is the arc-set of the giant component. Another option is to average the inverse geodesic length (Latora and Marchiori 2001),

$$l^1=\frac{1}{M}\underset{(u,v)A}{}\frac{1}{d(u,v)},$$
(4)
where $`1/d(u,v)`$ is defined as zero when no path exists from $`u`$ to $`v`$. In the present paper we focus on $`l^1`$, and $`l_{\mathrm{GC}}`$ for the reflexive closure of $`G`$. If the two measures agree, we can infer that there is no additional effect influencing the shortest paths in a substantial way, other than the bi-directional structure of the largest connected subgraph.

As time evolves there are two conflicting mechanisms governing the average geodesic length: The increasing number of vertices works for an increase of $`l`$, whereas the increasing average degree makes $`l`$ shorter. For the pussokram.com data the latter effect dominates, during the time span of our data set, to give a monotonously decreasing $`l_{\mathrm{GC}}`$ (monotonously increasing $`l^1`$) as shown in Fig. 5. The same situation has been reported for scientific collaboration networks (Barabási, Jeong et al. 2002). Assuming the community outlives its members, $`l`$ will eventually start to increase (when the number of inactive users slows down the accelerated growth sufficiently).

### III.6 Density of short circuits

Acquaintance networks are expected to have a high degree of transitivity (Wasserman and Faust 1994), or in other words, a high density of triangles, since if person A knows person B and person C, then person B and person C are likely to be acquainted. We apply a commonly used measure that gives the fraction of triangles out of the connected 3-paths of the graph (a quantity that was defined for undirected graphs, but is trivially generalized to directed graphs, for which we use subscript “dir”). If we let $`p(n)`$ denote the number of representations of paths555A representation of a path of length three is a triplet $`(u,v,w)`$ such that $`(u,v)`$ and $`(v,w)`$ are arcs. In an undirected network a path have two representations and a triangle has six representations. and $`c(n)`$ denote the number of representations of circuits, of length $`n`$, then we can express the clustering coefficient,666This quantity is sometimes called transitivity, sometimes clustering coefficient. Note however that is not identical to Watts and Strogatz’s (1998) clustering coefficient (where they average a local transitivity measure over the vertex set). $`C`$, as:

$$C=\frac{c(3)}{p(3)}$$
(5)
One can expect that social networks with many heterosexual romantic relationships, such as the pussokram.com networks, to have rather few triangles.777Presumably, homosexual relationships are not the common type of romantic relationship among Swedish adolescents. Therefore we expect few triangles. As a corollary, in a community populated largely by homosexual individuals, the number of triangles would be much higher. Regrettably we cannot test this hypothesis with available data.  To get a better picture of the density of short circuits we also measure the density of circuits of length four:

$$D=\frac{c(4)}{p(4)}$$
(6)
The $`n`$-behavior of $`c(n)/p(n)`$ varies from network to network, and could possibly be an informative quantity in it self. A very high $`C`$ will in most cases probably imply a high $`D`$ (for $`R=1`$ network, two triangles with one arc in common will contribute to $`c(4)`$), but the reverse is less certain.

Values for $`C_{\mathrm{dir}}`$ and $`D_{\mathrm{dir}}`$ and their undirected counterparts are shown in Table 2. We note that, with a few exceptions, the values for the real networks are significantly larger than the randomized; the difference, however, is far less dramatic than for the scientific collaboration network. This is contrast between the Internet community networks and the arXiv.org data is easily explained from the fact that a paper with $`n_{\mathrm{auth}}3`$ authors represents a fully connected subgraph of $`G`$ (contributing with $`n_{\mathrm{auth}}(n_{\mathrm{auth}}1)(n_{\mathrm{auth}}2)/3`$ triangles). However, we would like to stress that the values themselves are not very informative, compared to their time dependence.

The time development of $`C`$ and $`D`$ for different networks is shown in Fig. 6. As a quantity dependent on only the local network structure the density of short circuits is an intrinsic quantity; and, as seen for the clustering coefficient (Barabási, Jeong et al. 2002), these quantities approach their equilibrium values from above. Interestingly, just as for the assortative mixing coefficient, the relaxation towards equilibrium is faster for $`C`$ and $`D`$ than for the average degree $`M/N`$; i.e. the density of short cycles is rather independent of the average degree.

As can be seen in Fig. 6, most $`C`$ and $`D`$ curves have extremes in the middle of the time range (the density of short circuits are at their minima). The reason for this comes from a conflict between counteracting mechanisms of different time-scales. There are three natural time-scales in the system: The average time between new registrations; the average time between new contacts for an individual user; and the average life span of a user in the community. The latter time-scale should be responsible for the long-term behavior such as the increase towards equilibrium of $`M/N`$. And as shorter circuits are more likely in a dense network, it is natural that $`C`$ and $`D`$ increase in the large $`t`$ limit. The decrease for early times is a finite size effect that can be seen in evolving network models with constant average degree such as the Barabási-Albert model (Barabási and Albert 1999; Barabási, Albert et al. 1999; Barabási, Jeong et al. 2002) and extensions (Holme and Kim 2002), where the $`C`$ and $`D`$ curves converge from above.

Another interesting aspect is that the values of $`C`$ and $`D`$, although finite in the large $`t`$ limit, is much smaller than in the actor- and scientific-collaboration networks. In an Internet community the way by which people introduce strangers among their acquaintances to each other (Newman 2001; Holme and Kim 2002) is likely not the mechanism responsible for the finite clustering (remember that in network models such as the Erdös-Rényi (1959) and Barabási-Albert (Barabási and Albert 1999; Barabási, Albert et al. 1999; Barabási, Jeong et al. 2002) models the clustering goes to zero as the network grows). Instead a finite density of short circuits can be explained by the tendency formulated in the proverbial like-attracts-like, where the similarity is defined by signaled social, psychological, and physiological traits.888Another possible explanation for the convergence of $`C`$ and $`D`$ to finite values is that short circuits are introduced from the offline world outside the community. Reading users’ guest books, however, gives the impression that the vast majority of community-dyads were strangers offline. We believe that this effect is negligible, but we are unfortunately unable to go beyond speculation on this point.

To further convince ourselves that the sampling time is large enough we also use rewiring to examine the time evolution of two structural measures (the assortative mixing coefficient and the clustering coefficient for the undirected all-contacts network). As seen in Fig. 7 the rewired quantities converge in the same time scale as $`r`$ and $`C`$, which reconfirm that the sampling time frame is sufficient. We note that for $`k>200`$ days the assortative mixing coefficient is significantly lower than the rewired reference curve. For the same time interval the rewired clustering coefficient closely overlap the measured $`C`$-value; for $`t>200`$ days the actual value overlap the mid-quartiles of the rewired data during around 30% of the 512 days. For the initial ‘non-equilibrium’ part ($`t<100`$ days) of the time-evolution the curves of the rewired and real networks diverges. In this region the network is rather sparse (see Fig 7) which explains the low $`C`$-values for the rewired $`C`$-curve. The high early values of $`C`$ seems contradictory to the apparent absence of tendency towards triangle formation during latter times. This means that the contact patterns of the early network is no the same as later on. As it turns out, in the early community, a group of actors contact each other rather frequently (rather more like ‘chatting’ than romantic contact making) whereas another group makes a few contacts before quitting the community. We interpret this such that it requires a minimal number, or “critical mass” (cf. Schelling 1978) of people for the community to function. Before the critical mass is reached, the users either have the community as a chat room (a usage with a presumably smaller critical mass) or leave it.

## IV Summary and conclusions

We have investigated networks of communication between the users of the Internet community pussokram.com. The four different means of contact at pussokram.com defines five different networks in our study (one for each separately and one for all taken together). Apart from recent studies of scientific collaboration networks and movie actor networks, there are very few such phenomenological descriptions of large social networks, and thus there is limited knowledge that our findings can be related to.

It is obvious that the fact that the interaction under study takes place on the Internet creates special conditions for communication. We believe that the interaction online is exposed to less structural forces than what is typically the case in most other social settings. For example, simultaneous interaction is not a prerequisite for communication in an Internet community, i.e. time as a structural force is therefore of less importance than in most other settings. Neither does geographical space constraint communication. And in addition, that social signifiers are less visible (compared to e.g. face-to-face interaction), and the relative ease with which you can conceal your identity and transform your appearance in online interaction, are factors reducing the structure forming forces at work in ‘offline’ social activity. It is therefore interesting to note, that despite these caveats, the networks under study here are much more structured than what would be expected in a random network.

To summarize our findings of the Internet community pussokram.com, we see that:

* The average degree converges over time, but surprisingly we observe no cut-off in the degree distribution. Previous studies do suggest that there is an upper limit to the mean number of contacts (Marsden 1987), and on average we find this socio-cognitive limitation despite the fact that time and space is of less important here. The reason we see continued growth in the cumulative degree distribution might be that it’s relatively costless to have a high turnover on ones contacts in an online community. Contacts are established without much investment, and can also be dropped without much sanctioning.
* Reciprocity is rather low, and presumably lower can be expected in a regular acquaintance network. Reciprocity levels quickly converge to a steady state.
* Most assortative mixing coefficients have small negative values, suggesting a pattern of dissasortative mixing. This can partly be explained by the conventional effect from the skewed degree sequence (Newman 2002). The observed effect is significantly larger than can be expected solely from the degree distribution. An explanation for these higher $`r`$-values is the particular nature of the dating interaction (Cook, Emerson et al. 1983). We also find that mixing coefficients as a function of time converge rapidly. The dissasortative mixing in the Internet community networks is in striking contrast to the strong assortative mixing seen in scientific collaboration networks, and the nice correspondence with previous work in sociology indicates that Internet communities indeed strongly resembles off-line social communities.
* The cumulative degree distributions are highly skewed, being a mixture of previous mappings of acquaintance networks (Amaral, Scala et al. 2000)—for few contacts—and partnership networks (Liljeros, Edling et al. 2001)—for many contacts.
* The geodesic length initially increases as new vertices are added to the network. But as the network settles the increase is limited by the growing average degree. Both $`l_{\mathrm{GC}}`$ and $`l^1`$ shows consistently that the average geodesic length is decreasing during the whole sample period (a situation that can only exist for a non-equilibrium network).
* Clustering—the density of triangles—converges over time to non-zero values (as opposed to completely random networks). Still, values are probably on a much lower level than would be expected in offline acquaintance networks. The explanation for these low values is twofold—the lack of introduction as a mechanism for tie-formation, and the romantic profile of pussokram.com promoting romantic contacts. The latter aspect is also manifested in that the density of 4-circuits is larger than the density of triangles for the pussokram.com networks. Once again, the Internet community networks are different from the scientific collaboration network where clustering is larger than the density of 4-circuits.

An Internet community such as pussokram.com defines a structured social network that share more of the structuring forces with general acquaintance networks than networks of professional collaborations do. We believe that the precise timing resolution and fast dynamics (giving a wide effective sampling time-frame) will make Internet communities an invaluable object for future social networks studies of the largest scale.

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# A Simple Dynamical Model for 𝜔 Cen

## 1 Introduction

Dynamical modelling of individual globular clusters has a long history (see, for example, the review by Meylan & Heggie 1997). For the most part the models used have been variants of the King-Michie model. While incorporating essential aspects of stellar dynamics they have nothing to say about dynamical evolution, which has been the focus of theory for many years.

Dynamical evolutionary models, based on Fokker-Planck codes, have been constructed for a number of individual clusters by members of Cohn’s group (Grabhorn et al 1992, Dull et al 1997, Drukier 1995). These models were tested against available observational data on the surface brightness profiles, individual stellar radial velocities, sometimes ground-based mass functions, and even data on the exotic stellar components in a cluster (Phinney 1993).

In the meantime a wealth of high quality data on the main sequence mass function down to near the H-burning limit has been acquired, thanks mainly to the high resolution of HST (e.g. Elson et al 1995, Cool et al 1996, Santiago et al 1996, von Hippel et al 1996, Piotto et al 1997, King et al 1998, Marconi et al 1998, Pulone et al 1999, Paresce & De Marchi 2000, De Marchi et al 2000, Andreuzzi et al 2001, where we have restricted the credits to one citation per lead author). Though static (King-like) models have been constructed which incorporates some of this data (Anderson 1997, Sosin & King 1997, Saviane et al 1998, Piotto & Zoccali 1999, in addition to some of the foregoing references), we are not aware of any evolutionary models which do so.

Our aim in this paper is a first step in this direction, i.e. to construct a dynamical evolutionary model of a well observed, old, galactic globular cluster, so as to represent its surface brightness profile, profile of radial velocity dispersion, and mass function. The object we have chosen for this project is $`\omega `$ Cen (NGC 5139). Being massive, it has a long relaxation time, and is therefore dynamically relatively unevolved. Despite the uncertain effects of evolution of stars above the turnoff, the mildness of any dynamical evolution makes it relatively straightforward to guess appropriate initial conditions. Nevertheless, some iteration is necessary, and for this purpose a fast method of computing dynamical evolution is preferred. We have adopted a slightly modified version of a Monte Carlo code.

In the following section we first summarise the observational data we have used. Next we outline the manner in which the code was adapted for this specific application, and how the output was converted for comparison with observational data. We then present our model, and discuss briefly how the initial conditions were arrived at. The final section summarises our conclusions, and discusses the simplifying assumptions on which our work is based.

## 2 A model of $`\omega `$ Cen

### 2.1 Observational constraints

$`\omega `$ Cen is a famous object, and has even had its own conference recently. In the proceedings (van Leeuwen et al 2002) our present understanding of the many sides of $`\omega `$ Cen is summarised in detail. For our purposes, however, the observational data will be restricted to three sources: (i) a surface brightness profile; (ii) the dispersion of radial velocities; and (iii) the mass function at two radii.

For the surface brightness profile we have adopted the data in the compilation by Meylan (1987). The surface brightness profile consists of both photometric data and values derived from star counts, the latter having been normalised to fit the former in the overlap region. In modelling it might well be better to treat the two kinds of data separately, but we have followed Meylan in treating the surface brightness profile as a single data set. The surface brightness has been adjusted approximately for interstellar absorption. Much doubt was cast on the reliability of this surface brightness profile by van Leeuwen et al (2000), on the basis of a proper motion study, but more recently the results have been reconciled (van Leeuwen & Le Poole 2002).

Our radial velocity data is taken from Meylan et al (1995). We have used the binned data presented in this paper, rather than individual values in Meylan’s catalogue. This implies that the largest radius is at about 28pc, compared with a nominal tidal radius of about 70pc (Meylan 1987). Therefore at large radii the surface brightness profile is the only constraint.

For the mass function we have used the luminosity functions presented by De Marchi (1999), converted to a mass function using the model of Baraffe et al (1997) for metallicity $`[M/H]=1.5`$. We have assumed that the data of De Marchi give the numbers of observed stars per magnitude bin in the two fields (with his stated adjustment by 0.1 dex for the outer field). This assumption is consistent with the stated numbers of objects in each field. The two fields for which mass functions are given are stated to be at radii of about $`7^{}`$ and $`4.6^{}`$, and these are the values we have adopted. Nevertheless, from an inspection of the image fields in relation to $`\omega `$ Cen, we consider that the outer field is centred more nearly at $`7.4^{}`$. We have also corrected these radii for the ellipticity, using values from Geyer et al (1983). A more recent determination of the ellipticity (van Leeuwen & Le Poole 2002) suggests that the ellipticity is even larger.

### 2.2  Features of the Monte Carlo code

The Monte Carlo code (Giersz 1998, 2001) models a spherically symmetric stellar system by a number of spherical shells characterised by radius, energy and angular momentum. As described in these papers the number of such shells equals the number of stars in the real system. In the present application, however, the number of shells is much smaller than the number of stars, just as in the earlier formulations by Hénon (1971) and Stodołkiewicz (1982), and so each shell is referred to as a superstar. Each superstar represents a large number of stars of the same stellar mass, energy and angular momentum. In this investigation the initial number of shells was chosen in the range from $`1024`$ to $`16384`$. Where individual models are discussed below, $`16384`$ shells were used.

Very briefly, the code chooses the radius of each star in a manner appropriate to its energy and angular momentum. The energy and angular momentum are adjusted in a manner dictated by the theory of two-body relaxation. These processes are repeated until the required evolution time (which we assume to be 12Gyr) has elapsed.

For dynamical purposes, stellar evolution is treated in a very simple manner. At the start, each star is assigned an evolution time (depending on its initial mass) according to the prescription adopted by Chernoff & Weinberg (1990). At this time the star is replaced by a degenerate remnant whose mass is also determined as in Chernoff & Weinberg, except for one point: for an initial mass in the range $`4.7M_{}<m<8.0M_{}`$ the remnant is assumed to be a neutron star of $`1.4M_{}`$. Neutron stars are given no kick, and so all are retained, except those which may escape by relaxation or tidal overflow; see also Sec.3.3.

Now we discuss briefly the data output from the Monte-Carlo code. At any time a model is defined by the radius, energy, angular momentum and mass of its supershells. The resulting surface brightness and radial velocity dispersion profiles may be very noisy, for two reasons. First, each shell gives a cusp in surface brightness at its edge. Secondly, these profiles are dominated by the relatively small number of evolving stars. It is better, therefore, to represent each superstar by a space density, corresponding to its orbital motion. As a compromise, we represented each superstar by 100 radii, chosen with the correct radial distribution for a superstar with given energy and angular momentum.

### 2.3 Conversion to observational data

Each shell of nominal radius $`r`$ is taken to represent a uniform spherical shell of radii $`0.9r`$ and $`1.1r`$, to further reduce the effects of the cusp which would exist at the projected edge of a thin shell. This shell also corresponds to known values of the radial and transverse velocity. It is therefore easy to compute a density-weighted velocity dispersion along a line of sight. Because the observed radial velocities are obtained for giants, only shells corresponding to non-degenerate stars above $`0.7M_{}`$ were included. (Though not all such stars would be giants, it was assumed that mass segregation in the range of masses from $`0.7M_{}`$ to the turnoff mass could be ignored.)

The mass functions were obtained in a similar way.

The most problematic area is creation of the surface brightness profile, which requires computation of the luminosity of each star from its mass and age (12 Gyr). For main sequence stars we used the formulae of Eggleton et al (1989), but scaled the evolution time (i.e. the time for the end of non-degenerate phases of evolution) to coincide with those used in the Monte Carlo code (i.e. those of Chernoff & Weinberg 1990).

Applied to evolving stars, this approach led to the occurrence of a very few shells with very high luminosity, which produced a very rough (“bumpy”) surface brightness profile. Therefore we computed the time-averaged luminosity during these phases of evolution, and assigned this luminosity to each evolving star (i.e. post-main sequence but non-degenerate stars). For this purpose we used the code of Hurley et al (2000). We checked that the mean luminosity of stars brighter than $`m_V=16`$ in the catalogue of Lyngå (1996) is approximately consistent with what would be obtained from the code.

The surface brightness was corrected for extinction. A simple bolometric correction was also applied (Reed 1998)111Note that, in his formula (5), $`T`$ should be replaced by $`10^4T`$.

## 3 Finding a model of $`\omega `$ Cen

### 3.1 Initial conditions

Our initial model is a King model (King 1966), specified by its total mass, $`M`$, and scaled central potential, $`W_0`$. The initial tidal radius was set from observational estimates of current values ($`M=3.9\times 10^6M_{}`$ \[Pryor & Meylan 1993\], $`r_t=63.9`$pc, from data in Trager et al (1993) and Peterson (1993)), assuming that $`r_tM^{1/3}`$.

Guided by recent observational data (Kroupa 2001) we adopted an initial mass function in the form of a continuous broken power law

$$f(m)\{\begin{array}{cc}m^{\alpha _1},\hfill & \text{if }m_1<m<m_b\text{;}\hfill \\ m^{\alpha _2},\hfill & \text{if }m_b<m<m_2\text{.}\hfill \end{array}$$

We quickly realised that $`\alpha _1`$ was quite tightly constrained near $`\alpha _1=1`$ by the mass functions, and adopted this value. We also fixed $`m_1=0.1M_{}`$ and $`m_2=15M_{}`$. The value of $`m_1`$ is a little lower than the lowest mass included in the mass functions. Specification of the upper mass limit $`m_2`$ is relatively unimportant in our models: because the number of superstars is so modest, all shells have masses considerably below $`m_2`$, unless $`\alpha _2`$ is rather low. The mass function is therefore specified by the mass at the break point between the two power laws, $`m_b`$, and the slope of the initial mass function for higher masses, $`\alpha _2`$.

In summary, each initial model is specified by the four parameters $`M`$, $`W_0`$, $`\alpha _2`$, $`m_b`$.

### 3.2 Exploration of initial conditions

Using 4096 shells, the computation of a single model takes a few minutes on a 400MHz Sun workstation. After the Monte Carlo code has run, the output can then be compared with the three kinds of data, i.e. the profiles of surface brightness and velocity dispersion, and the mass functions at two observed radii. This was done both visually and by a calculation of $`\chi ^2`$. For the latter purpose, estimates of the errors of the observational data were adopted. Because of the Monte Carlo nature of the code, the predictions of each model are also subject to statistical uncertainty, but no attempt was made to quantify this for purposes of computation of $`\chi ^2`$.

After preliminary examination of a number of models, the parameter space was explored somewhat more systematically, but still manually, by considering the effect of variation in each of the parameters. The conclusions are summarised in Table 1, which also gives the ranges of values of the four parameters outside which the fit was observed to deteriorate grossly (as judged both by graphical display and by the values of $`\chi ^2`$). At this stage the best parameter values found were approximately $`M=10^7M_{}`$, $`W_0=8`$, $`\alpha _2=1.9`$ and $`m_b=0.6M_{}`$.

In order to improve these preliminary values several methods were tried, and we describe here the two most successful ones. The first was simply to conduct a Monte Carlo search of the range constrained by the values in Table 1, i.e. by uniform random sampling of the corresponding hypercube in parameter space. By plotting the resulting values of $`\chi ^2`$ against each parameter, it was quite easy to determine the best values with acceptable accuracy. This is a relatively slow method, however, and requires thousands of Monte Carlo runs. A faster and automatic method, requiring only of order 50 runs, treats our problem as one of stochastic optimization, the stochasticity arising from the nature of the Monte Carlo method used for the dynamical evolution. Known simply as DIRECT, for “DIviding RECTangles” (Jones 2001), it proceeds by subdividing the search domain in a manner that balances global and local searches for a minimum.

### 3.3 Features of a typical model

Both methods described in the previous subsection led to fairly consistent conclusions. The first method yielded initial conditions $`M1.0\times 10^7M_{}`$, $`W_07.7`$, $`\alpha _21.9`$ and $`m_b0.6M_{}`$, while DIRECT gave results in the ranges $`0.94\times 10^7M_{}<M<1.23\times 10^7M_{}`$, $`7.4<W_0<7.9`$, $`1.95<\alpha _2<2.12`$ and $`0.63M_{}<m_b<1.14M_{}`$. One of the best models is illustrated in Fig.1. The current mass is $`3.6\times 10^6M_{}`$, which is perhaps a little too small: the resulting tidal radius is perhaps a little too small to account for the surface brightness profile at the largest radii. On the other hand the modelling of the tide as a cutoff is inaccurate near the tidal radius, and so a good fit here may not be achievable.

We have not tried to adjust the initial mass function on the lower main sequence to improve the detailed fit with the mass function. Of greater concern is the fact that the model mass functions are often slightly but systematically too low or high, at the inner and outer radii, respectively. The suggestion that the ellipticity exceeds the value we used (see Sec.2.1) would help.

In attempting to construct a multi-mass King model for $`\omega `$ Cen, Meylan (1987) drew attention to the need for heavy remnants, by which we mean here both neutron stars and white dwarfs. Our models include such remnants, which arise from the evolution of stars above the turnoff mass in our mass function. Their proportion by mass at the present day, in our best models, is of order 50%, and even so it is not possible to quite reach the observed velocity dispersion at small radii. This problem worsens if all neutron stars are removed at birth (i.e. it is assumed that each receives a kick exceeding the escape speed). Though the total fraction of degenerate stars declines only to about 40%, the central velocity dispersion drops to about $`12`$km/s.

Several other features of these models may be of interest. The models are mildly anisotropic. If the anisotropy parameter $`\beta `$ is defined by $`\beta =1v_r^2/v_t^2`$, where $`v_r`$, $`v_t`$ are the radial and transverse velocities in the plane of the sky (i.e. as measured by proper motions), we find that $`\beta `$ varies from a value of about 0 within the innermost 2pc to about $`0.15`$ at a radius of 10 pc, and then rises towards 0 as the tidal boundary is approached. At 20 pc, close to the radius where King & Anderson (2002) found only mild anisotropy, $`\beta 0.05`$.

The models also exhibit mild mass segregation. In the model exhibited in Fig.1, the mean mass of unevolved stars is nearly $`0.40M_{}`$ at all (projected) radii less than about 1pc, and about 0.34 beyond 10pc; the mean mass declines steadily between 1 and 10pc. The primordial value (over the same range of stellar masses) was $`0.35M_{}`$. For a single power law $`f(m)dmm^\alpha dm`$ between the minimum mass and turnoff, the variation of mean mass corresponds to a variation of $`\alpha `$ of about 0.5. Relative to the centre, therefore, there is an excess of stars of lowest mass at the outside of the cluster by a factor of order 3 (0.5dex). Anderson (2002) has observed slight mass segregation by comparing the luminosity function at the centre relative to a field at about $`7^{}`$. His faintest stars are underabundant at the centre by about 0.2dex, but do not extend to such low masses.

The fact that the signatures of dynamical evolution in $`\omega `$ Cen are not great is no surprise, but this is perhaps the first time they have been quantified theoretically.

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

### 4.1 Discussion

Before summarising the tentative findings of this study, it is important to set out some aspects of $`\omega `$ Cen which we have not included.

The most important constituent we have omitted is any population of binary stars. At the expense of introducing further parameters, it would have been possible to do so by treating the population as dynamically “inert”, i.e. as simply a population of slightly more massive stellar objects. Nevertheless it would have been desirable to treat their stellar evolution in a fundamentally different way from that of the single stars, and so for this exploratory study they were neglected entirely. If included, they might have helped to deepen the potential well and increase the central velocity dispersion, without unduly distorting the surface brightness there. They might also assist the retention of neutron stars, with the same result. Our treatment of the evolution of single stars could also be improved significantly.

Dynamically, we have taken no notice of the fact that $`\omega `$ Cen is rotating (see Merritt et al 1997). For purposes of dynamical evolution it seems that rotation does not play a dominant role (Spurzem 2001), but our practical reason for omitting rotation is that the code cannot cope with it. The rotation of $`\omega `$ Cen may be a symptom of past mergers (Norris et al 1997), and this possibility is ignored here also.

In fitting models to observational data we have ignored the kinematical evidence from internal proper motions (van Leeuwen et al 2000). This data appears to be entirely consistent with the radial velocity, which we did employ, and also covers a similar range of radius within the cluster. Another reason for neglecting this data is that we have it in mind to apply our methods to several other clusters for which such data is lacking entirely.

A significant dynamical mechanism that we have also ignored is the time taken for stars to escape. As Baumgardt (2001) has shown, the effect is that the lifetime in a tidal field is not proportional to the relaxation time, as we would find using our Monte Carlo code. On the other hand we have also simplified the treatment of the tidal boundary condition by supposing that the tide is steady, as for a cluster on a circular galactic orbit. We have made no attempt to model the tidal debris of $`\omega `$ Cen, whose mass is considerable (Leon et al 2000).

An issue which we would have liked to address is the uniqueness of the model initial conditions that we have found. While we have explored the parameter space in various ways, and have tried to place bounds on the parameters which give acceptable models, perhaps radically different models are possible.

Our best model is no more than a tolerable fit to the data with which it has been compared. On the other hand the data itself is not without problems, such as the difficulty of converting from a magnitude distribution to a mass function.

### 4.2 Conclusions

We have found that the surface brightness profile, velocity dispersion profile and mass function of $`\omega `$ Cen can be fitted approximately by the dynamical evolution, over 12Gyr, of a cluster with the following initial conditions: the initial mass is about $`1.1\times 10^7M_{}`$, the initial tidal radius is about $`90`$pc, and the initial model is a King model with a scaled central potential $`W_0=7.7`$ approximately; the initial mass function is a broken power law, with slopes of about $`1`$ and $`1.9`$ respectively below and above the break-point mass of about $`0.6M_{}`$.

The resulting present mass and tidal radius are about $`3.6\times 10^6M_{}`$ and 61pc, respectively. The current proportion of mass in heavy remnants in our model is about 55%.

## Acknowledgments

DCH thanks CAMK for its cheerful hospitality during a visit when this research was begun, and MG similarly thanks Edinburgh for its hospitality during a visit, supported under grant 2 PO3D 024 19 of the Polish National Committee for Scientific Research, when it was largely completed. We are grateful to R. Butler and J. Kaluzny for their advice on observational matters, and J.A.J. Hall for pointing us in the direction of DIRECT. We thank the referee also for his attentive comments. We gratefully acknowledge the use we have made of the internet facilities of the HST ECF, CDS and ADS.


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# 1. FRW equations in the background of de Sitter Schwarzschild black hole

## 1. FRW equations in the background of de Sitter Schwarzschild black hole

We first consider a 4-dimensional time-like brane in 5-dimensional dS Schwarzschild background. From the analogy of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we can regard that 4-dimensional CFT exists on the brane which is the boundary of the 5-dimensional dS Schwarzschild background. The dynamics of the brane is described by the boundary action:

$`_b={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi G_5}}{\displaystyle _{}}\sqrt{g}𝒦+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{8\pi G_5}}{\displaystyle _{}}\sqrt{g}.`$ (1)
Here $`G_5`$ is 5-dimensional bulk Newton constant, $``$ denotes the surface of the brane, $`g`$ is the determinant of the induced metric on $``$, $`𝒦_{ij}`$ is the extrinsic curvature, and $`𝒦=𝒦_i^i`$, $`\kappa `$ is a parameter related to tension of the brane.

From this Lagrangian, we can get the equation of motion of the brane as :

$`𝒦_{ij}={\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{2}}g_{ij},`$ (2)
which implies that $``$ is a brane of constant extrinsic curvature. The bulk action is given by 5-dimensional Einstein action with cosmological constant. The dS Schwarzschild space is one of the exact solutions of bulk equations of motion and can be written in the following form,

$`ds_5^2`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{G}_{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu `$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{e}^{2\rho }dt^2+\mathrm{e}^{2\rho }dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2,`$
$`\mathrm{e}^{2\rho }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}\left(\mu +r^2{\displaystyle \frac{r^4}{l^2}}\right).`$ (3)
Here $`l`$ is the curvature radius of dS and $`\mu `$ is the black hole mass. In case of AdS Schwarzschild gravity, there is a holographic relation between FRW brane universe which is reduction from AdS Schwarzschild background and boundary CFT which lives on the brane ,. We assume that there are some holographic relations between FRW universe which is reduction from dS Schwarzschild background and boundary CFT. To investigate it, we rewrite dS Schwarzschild metric (1.) in the form of FRW metric by using a new time parameter $`\tau `$ following the method of the work . And the parameter $`t`$ and $`r`$ in (1.) are the function of $`\tau `$, namely $`r=r(\tau ),t=t(\tau )`$. For the purpose of getting the 4-dimensional FRW metric, we impose the following condition,

$`e^{2\rho }\left({\displaystyle \frac{t}{\tau }}\right)^2+e^{2\rho }\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{\tau }}\right)^2=1.`$ (4)
Thus we obtain FRW metric:

$`ds_4^2=g_{ij}dx^idx^j=d\tau ^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2.`$ (5)
The extrinsic curvature, $`𝒦_{ij}`$, of the brane can be calculated and expressed in term of the function $`r(\tau )`$ and $`t(\tau )`$. Thus one rewrites the equations of motion (2) as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dt}{d\tau }}={\displaystyle \frac{\kappa r}{2}}e^{2\rho }.`$ (6)
Using (4) and (6), we can derive FRW equation for a radiation dominated universe, Hubble parameter $`H`$ which is defined by $`H=\frac{1}{r}\frac{dr}{d\tau }`$ is given by

$`H^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{l^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{r^4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa ^2}{4}}.`$ (7)
Following AdS Schwarzschild gravity case , we choose $`\kappa =2/l`$ from now on 222 From the point of view of brane-world physics , the tension of brane should be determined without ambiguity. In fact, we can calculate it to cancel the leading divergence of bulk AdS Schwarzschild .. This equation can be rewritten by using 4-dimensional energy $`E_4`$ and volume $`V`$ in the form of the standard FRW equation with the positive cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$:

$`H^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi G_4}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{E_4}{V}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{3}},`$
$`E_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3\mu V}{8\pi G_4r^4}},\mathrm{\Lambda }={\displaystyle \frac{6}{l^2}}.`$ (8)
Here $`G_4`$ is the 4-dimensional gravitational coupling, which is defined by

$`G_4={\displaystyle \frac{2G_5}{l}}.`$ (9)
$`E_4`$ can be regarded as 4-dimensional energy on the brane in dS Schwarzschild background which is identical with AdS Schwarzschild case. The cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ does not appear in AdS Schwarzschild background because we can choose brane tension $`\kappa `$ to cancel the cosmological constant of AdS Schwarzschild background. But it is impossible for dS Schwarzschild case because if we choose brane tension to cancel the cosmological constant of dS Schwarzschild background, the brane tension should be imaginary.

By differentiating eq.(1.) with respect to $`\tau `$, we obtain the second FRW equation:

$`\dot{H}`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi G_4\left({\displaystyle \frac{E_4}{V}}+p\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}},`$
$`p`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{8\pi G_4r^4}}.`$ (10)
Here $`p`$ is 4-dimensional pressure of the matter on the boundary. From eqs.(1.) and (1.), we find that the energy-momentum tensor is traceless:

$$T_{}^{\mathrm{matter}\mu }{}_{\mu }{}^{}=\frac{E_4}{V}+3p=0.$$
(11)
Therefore the matter on the brane can be regarded as the radiation, which is consistent with the work  whose calculation has been done in some asymptotically dS space in a sense of dS/CFT correspondence. This result means the field theory on the brane should be CFT as in case of AdS Schwarzschild background .

Next, we consider space-like brane in 5-dimensional dS Schwarzschild background. Similarly, we impose the following condition to obtain space-like brane metric instead of eq.(4):

$`e^{2\rho }\left({\displaystyle \frac{t}{\tau }}\right)^2+e^{2\rho }\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{\tau }}\right)^2=1.`$ (12)
Thus we get following FRW-like metric:

$`ds_4^2=g_{ij}dx^idx^j=d\tau ^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2.`$ (13)
Note that this metric is also derived by Wick-rotation $`\tau i\tau `$ in eq.(5). We again calculate the equations of motion and the extrinsic curvature of space-like brane instead of (2) and (6). These equations lead FRW like equation as follows: 333In the works ,, the similar equations to eqs.(7),(14) were obtained in terms of Ricci scalar of the induced metric of the brane.

$`H^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{l^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{r^4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa ^2}{4}}.`$ (14)
To cancel the cosmological constant, we take $`\kappa =2/l`$ in the same way of AdS Schwarzschild gravity . We assume this equation can be rewritten by using 4-dimensional energy $`E_4`$ and volume $`V`$ by the analogous form of the standard FRW equations:

$`H^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi G_4}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{E_4}{V}},E_4={\displaystyle \frac{3\mu V}{8\pi G_4r^4}}.`$ (15)
$`\dot{H}`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi G_4\left({\displaystyle \frac{E_4}{V}}+p\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}},p={\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{8\pi G_4r^4}}.`$ (16)
The reason why the sign of FRW equations is different from the standard FRW equations (1.) results from the condition (12), namely $`\tau i\tau `$ in eq.(5). From eqs.(15) and (16), we find the energy-momentum tensor is traceless again.

We stress again that we can take cosmological constant to zero for FRW-like equation in space-like brane in dS Schwarzschild background as the same way in the AdS/CFT correspondence. This will imply that the dS/CFT correspondence can be valid for space-like brane in dS Schwarzschild background.

## 2. The Cardy-Verlinde formula for the dS/CFT correspondence

E. Verlinde showed that the $`d`$-dimensional FRW equation can be regarded as an analogue of the Cardy formula of 2-dimensional CFT .

$$S_4=2\pi \sqrt{\frac{c}{6}\left(L_0\frac{c}{24}\right)}.$$
(17)
For time-like brane of 5-dimensional dS Schwarzschild background, identifying

$`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{3}}\left(E_4r+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }Vr}{8\pi G_4}}\right)`$ $``$ $`2\pi L_0,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{8\pi G_4r}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c}{24}},`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{HV}{2G_4}}`$ $``$ $`S_4,`$ (18)
FRW equation (1.) has the form (17). The effect of the cosmological constant appears in Cardy formula. We included contribution of the cosmological constant in $`L_0`$ because it shifts the vacuum energy. This means the cosmological entropy bound  should be changed. The Bekenstein bound  in 4-dimensions is

$`SS_B,S_B{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{3}}Er.`$ (19)
Using eq.(2.), the Bekenstein entropy bound should be changed as follows:

$`SS_B,S_B{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{3}}\left(Er+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }Vr}{8\pi G_4}}\right).`$ (20)
Then we find out that the effect of the cosmological constant appears in the change of the Bekenstein entropy bound.

For the case of space-like brane, identifying

$`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{3}}E_4r`$ $``$ $`2\pi L_0,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{8\pi G_4r}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c}{24}},`$
$`i{\displaystyle \frac{HV}{2G_4}}`$ $``$ $`S_4,`$ (21)
Here $`H`$ changes as $`HiH`$ since $`H`$ is defined by $`H=\frac{1}{r}\frac{dr}{d\tau }`$ and $`\frac{d}{d\tau }`$ change as $`i\frac{d}{d\tau }`$ by the Wick-rotation, $`\tau i\tau `$. The third correspondence in eq.(2.) is identical with space-like brane in AdS Schwarzschild background  exactly.

The moment when time-like brane crosses the black hole horizon444The time-like brane can only cross the black hole horizon $`r=r_H`$ which is derived from $`e^{2\rho (r_H)}=0`$, the Hubble parameter in (7) becomes as $`H=\pm 1/l`$. Here the plus sign corresponds to the expanding brane universe and the minus one to the contracting universe. We choose the expanding case. Note that the relation $`H=\pm 1/l`$ is the same form as the case of AdS Schwarzschild black hole ,. Using eqs.(9),(2.), we obtain 4-dimensional entropy $`S_4`$ as follows:

$`S_4={\displaystyle \frac{V}{2lG_4}}={\displaystyle \frac{V}{4G_5}}.`$ (22)
This entropy is nothing but the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of 5-dimensional dS black hole similar to AdS/CFT correspondence ,.

We now understand that discovered relation between FRW equations and entropy formulas  can be also applied to dS Schwarzschild background. If we take time-like brane which is the boundary of dS Schwarzschild background, the cosmological constant of the brane appears in FRW equations. Therefore the effect of cosmological constant contributes to raising the the Bekenstein entropy bound. But if we take space-like brane in dS Schwarzschild background, we obtain the approximately same result of AdS Schwarzschild black hole ,. The difference between space-like brane in dS Schwarzschild background and time-like brane in AdS Schwarzschild background is the sign of FRW equations and third correspondence in eq.(2.). When the time-like brane crosses the black hole horizon of dS Schwarzschild black hole, the entropy formula of the CFT exactly agrees with the black hole entropy of 5-dimensional dS background as it happens in the AdS/CFT correspondence. This implies that the holographic principle holds true for dS Schwarzschild background.

### Acknowledgement

I would like to thank S. Nojiri, S.D. Odintsov for useful discussions. I wish to thank the conference organizers for their hospitality. This work is supported in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under the Postdoctoral Research Program.


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# Transverse spectra of hadrons at RHIC

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The average transverse momentum of primary particles in heavy ion collisions is expected to be larger than the experimentally observed one. Two ways out of this problem have been discussed: In one case the number of produced particles is small and the final multiplicity is achieved after fragmentation which reduces also the average transverse momenta of final, observed particles . On the other hand, results from the calculation can be used as initial conditions in a hydrodynamical approach . In this case the extra transverse energy is transferred into the longitudinal motion through the work by pressure in the expansion. The transfer from transverse to longitudinal degrees of freedom takes place because the matter is produced in a strong longitudinal expansion.

When time passes, also a transverse flow builds up and leads, e.g., to a clear mass dependence of final hadron spectra. The shape of spectra depend both on the transverse flow and the decoupling temperature $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$ but the ratios of particle multiplicities on the $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$ and on the baryon chemical potential $`\mu _{B,\mathrm{dec}}`$. Strangeness chemical potential is fixed by demanding that the net strangeness density is zero.

Modelling the heavy ion collisions at collider energies in terms of perturbative QCD calculation of minijet production at saturation  and of hydrodynamic expansion of produced matter, has lead to a successful description of multiplicities and transverse energy at mid-rapidities . This talk summarizes the predictions for particle spectra in central Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ GeV from the pQCD+saturation+hydrodynamics model .

## 2 THE MODEL FOR CALCULATING THE TRANSVERSE SPECTRA

In a high energy $`AA`$ collision parton production can be calculated from the nuclear parton distribution functions and the perturbative parton-parton cross sections, provided that the momentum transfer in the partonic collision $`p_T\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$. Assuming independent partonic collisions, the dominant part of the initial production is obtained by extending the (LO) calculation of partonic jets down to $`p_0=1\mathrm{}2`$ GeV$`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ .

The basic quantities for characterizing the parton production in nuclear collisions are the number and the total transverse energy of minijets per unit rapidity. These are obtained as a function of $`p_0`$ from the transverse energy distribution of minijets in the central rapidity unit as the normalization $`\sigma _{\mathrm{jet}}(p_0)`$ and the first moment $`\sigma E_T`$ . Combining these with the nuclear overlap function $`T_{AA}`$ (or the product of thickness functions of colliding nuclei) gives the average total number and transverse energy of partons with $`p_\mathrm{T}>p_0`$. The net baryon number can be obtained as a difference of the quark and anti-quark numbers . Finally, to close the model, a cut-off momentum must be fixed and here we assume that it originates from the saturation of partons . We express this in terms of final, produced partons as a simple geometrical condition: each parton is given a transverse size $`\pi /p_T^2`$, and when the partons overlap, extra independent primary collisions with smaller $`p_T`$ are suppressed. The lower cut-off $`p_0=p_{\mathrm{sat}}`$ is thus fixed from the saturation condition  $`N(p_0,\mathrm{\Delta }y)\pi /p_0^2=\pi R_A^2`$.

From the minijets at saturation we can calculate the energy density and the net baryon number density after introducing a correlation between the longitudinal momentum and the longitudinal space-time formation point of the minijet. We assume that rapidity of the minijet equals the space-time rapidity of the formation point, $`y=\eta =0.5\mathrm{ln}[(t+z)/(tz)]`$. The formation time, defined as $`1/p_{\mathrm{sat}}`$ is taken as the initial time for the hydrodynamic evolution. The details of the determination of the initial state can be found in .

It can be argued that $`\tau _0=1/p_{\mathrm{sat}}`$ ($``$0.2 fm/$`c`$ for Au+Au at RHIC) is too short to achieve thermalization. However, from the point of view of the average energy per particle, the system does look thermal . Also, one should expect collisions to take place and the build-up of collective behaviour to start already during the thermalization process. From this point of view, the use of hydrodynamics at early times should be considered to approximate the effects of momentum transfer in the collisions during equilibration.

To solve the hydrodynamic equations, an equation of state (EoS) is needed. We assume an ideal QGP high temperature phase with a first order phase transition to a hadron resonance gas at $`T_c=165`$ MeV. All hadrons and hadron resonances with $`M<2`$ GeV are included and a repulsive mean field is assumed in order to ensure a consistent temperature behaviour of the pressure . The final spectra are obtained using the Cooper–Frye freeze-out procedure and the two- and three-body decays of all resonances are included.

## 3 RESULTS

In Figure 1 the $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$ dependence of spectra of negative pions, kaons and antiprotons is shown together with the data measured by the PHENIX Collaboration . The slopes of the spectra are seen to change considerably with $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$. For $`p_T>1.5`$ GeV, the decrease of $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$ from 150 MeV to 120 MeV changes the inverse slope $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ from 265 MeV to 305 MeV for pions, from 275 MeV to 330 MeV for kaons and from 295 MeV to 375 MeV for protons. For the $`p_T`$ the changes are from 0.46, 0.65 and 0.86 GeV to 0.53, 0.78 and 1.08 GeV for pions, kaons and protons, respectively. The change of the decoupling temperature affects also the normalization of spectra, that is the multiplicity. In fact the multiplicity of pions increases slightly whereas that of kaons decreases 21 % and of protons 52 %. As has been observed earlier , to reproduce in thermal models the multiplicities of heavier particles and pions simultaneously, a freeze-out temperature for chemical reactions must be of the order of 150 to 160 MeV. In our calculation not only the multiplicities but also the observed shapes of the spectra are obtained if the kinetic freeze-out and the chemical freeze-out are assumed to take place at the (approximately) same temperature of order 150$`\mathrm{}`$160 MeV.

In Figure 2 the spectra of positive pions, kaons and protons are depicted using $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}=150`$ MeV in the calculation. Within the accuracy of the data the normalizations of pions and kaons agree but the calculated proton spectrum is slightly below the measured one. This is to be expected since the feed-down from hyperons is included among the measured but not the calculated protons. PHENIX has also reported $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$ yields corrected for hyperon feed-down, $`dN/dy=19.3\pm 0.6`$ and $`13.7\pm 0.7`$ . Our results for $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}=150`$ MeV are 20.2 and 13.1 in excellent agreement with the measurement. Also the ratio $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.70`$ is consistent with the PHENIX result $`0.75\pm 0.09`$ .

Note that the deviation of $`\overline{p}/p`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ from unity is due to the net baryon number content of the initial matter at saturation. In the pQCD + saturation calculation the net baryon number cannot be changed independently of the total multiplicity. The relative production of quarks and antiquarks (and gluons) is completely fixed by the parton distributions and the perturbative parton level cross sections. In addition to the net baryon number, the number of baryons relative to that of antibaryons depends strongly on decoupling temperature and again in our calculation agreement is obtained only for $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$ 150$`\mathrm{}`$160 MeV.

## 4 DISCUSSION

Using the pQCD + saturation model  to calculate the initial particle production in central Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ GeV and hydrodynamics to describe the expansion of the matter we obtain a good agreement between the calculated and measured quantities. We find it remarkable that in order to reproduce either the multiplicities, the slopes or the antibaryon-to-baryon ratios we come up in each case with the same decoupling temperature of order 150$`\mathrm{}`$160 MeV. Similar conclusion was also obtained in .

It has been argued that $`\tau _0=1/p_{\mathrm{sat}}0.2`$ fm/c is too short a time for achieving full thermalization. This might well be so but it is not plausible to assume that there are no collisions with momentum transfers among the constituents at times before a possible later thermalization time. Collective motion, the flow, is a result of the collisions among the particles of the matter which lead to a net momentum transfer from denser to less dense parts in the matter. From this point of view it is difficult to justify the starting of a hydrodynamical calculation at a later time assuming no initial transversal velocity. In any case, we have checked the effect of the initial time on the shapes of the spectra. Taking $`\tau _0=0.6`$ fm/c, needed to explain the formation of elliptic flow , while keeping the total entropy fixed, changes the slopes only slightly. Even $`\tau _0=1.0`$ fm/c is not enough to compensate for the change from the decrease of $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$ from 150 to 120 MeV.

Finally, we want to emphasize that our model scheme is very tight. Uncertainties in the pQCD + saturation calculation are essentially fixed from a single global quantity, like the total multiplicity. In the hydrodynamical part a large number of hadrons and hadron resonances must be included but after fixing the EoS, the only real freedom left is the decoupling temperature $`T_{\mathrm{dec}}`$.

Acknowledgement. We thank the Academy of Finland, Project 50338, for financial support.