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# Where is the Higgs boson?

## I Introduction

The Higgs boson is the missing link connecting the real world with the unified electroweak (EW) gauge group by spontaneously breaking the latter. Precision measurements of EW observables constrain the Higgs mass below about 200 GeV at 95% C.L. Takeuchi:2003mk ; Chanowitz:2003hx ; Langacker:hi ; Erler:2002ix ; Langacker:2002sy ; Villa:2002zt ; Chanowitz:2002cd  within the standard model (SM). Thus, it is expected that a Higgs particle will be discovered at the Run 2 of the Tevatron, provided sufficient luminosity Carena:2000yx . But it is intriguing to notice that the EW observables strongly prefer a SM like Higgs with mass below 114.1 GeV Langacker:2002sy ; Chanowitz:2002cd , which is the present lower limit from LEP 2. The data also indicate that the Higgs boson should have already been discovered Langacker:2002sy , and the fact that it was not found can be interpreted as new physics crucially affecting the Higgs sector Chanowitz:2002cd . In this work we put forward a model in which the presently missing signal of the lightest Higgs boson is due to a suppression of the Higgs production cross section at LEP and the Tevatron. This suppression arises from the non-trivial ‘location’ of the lightest Higgs boson in a five dimensional space. However, the same feature promises enhancement of the Higgs signal at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and possibly at a multi TeV linear collider (CLIC).

The idea that our universe could be confined to a higher dimensional defect has been revived both in field theory Rubakov:bb  and string contexts Antoniadis:1990ew . It has been laid on more solid ground in the context of non-perturbative string analyses Polchinski:1995mt ; Lykken:1996fj ; Horava:1996ma , and applied as a possible solution to the gauge hierarchy problem Antoniadis:1997zg ; Arkani-Hamed:1998rs ; Antoniadis:1998ig ; Arkani-Hamed:1998kx . Such a solution relies on the existence of $`n>0`$ additional compact space-like dimensions. In models based on this idea, the four dimensional Planck scale $`M_P\mathrm{}`$ becomes an effective quantity and it is related to the fundamental scale $`M`$ by the volume of the extra space $`V_n`$ via the relation $`M_P\mathrm{}^2=M^{n+2}V_n`$ . If one requires $`M=𝒪`$(TeV) then for $`n=2`$, the compactification radius $`RV_n^{1/n}`$ is in the order of a millimeter, but for $`n=7`$ it is less than a fermi, not far from the inverse of a TeV. It is remarkable to notice that with $`𝒪`$(TeV-1) size extra dimensions the hierarchy problem is indeed nullified, since the fundamental scales $`M1/R`$ are close to TeV.

The string arguments of Ref.s Polchinski:1995mt ; Horava:1996ma  also allow the standard gauge and Higgs sectors to penetrate the bulk. If the compactification scale $`M_c=1/R`$ is higher than $`𝒪`$(TeV), phenomenology does not conflict with this scenario either Pomarol:1998sd ; Antoniadis:1998sd ; Delgado:1998qr ; carone ; Dienes:1998vh ; Dienes:1999vg . This makes the inverse TeV size extra dimensional models attractive. Alternatively, the hierarchy problem can be solved with the use a non-factorizable geometry, which has also been proposed in five dimensions. The introduction of an exponential ‘warp’ factor reduces all mass parameters of the order of a fundamental $`M_P\mathrm{}`$ of a distant brane to TeV’s on the brane where we live Randall:1999ee . In order to explain large hierarchies among energy scales one simply has to explain small distances along the extra dimension, thus this mechanism requires a Planck scale size extra dimension Randall:1999ee ; Arkani-Hamed:1999hk .

These intriguing possibilities have opened a new window for the exploration of physics beyond the SM Giudice:1999ck ; Han:1999sg ; Uehara:2002yv , in particular, the phenomenology of the Higgs sector. In Ref. Grzadkowski:1999xh  it is shown that it is possible to obtain electroweak symmetry breaking in an extra dimensional scenario even in the absence of tree-level Higgs self interactions. Also, in Ref. edhixcoll  we find scenarios in which the radion in the Randall-Sundrum model is contrasted with the SM Higgs boson. Studying several models that lead to a universal rate suppression of Higgs boson observables, Ref. Wells:2002gq  concluded that the Tevatron and LHC will have difficulty finding evidence for extra dimensional effects. Yet another study of universal extra dimensions Appelquist:2001jz  conjectures that a suppression of the Higgs rates occurs petriello .

However, just as in the SM and other four dimensional theories, the Higgs sector remains the least constrained, since it can live either on the brane or in the bulk, each choice being phenomenologically consistent. One way to parametrize this freedom is to consider an extra dimensional two Higgs doublet model (XD THDM) where one doublet lives in the bulk while the other is confined to the brane. The lightest Higgs boson state, which will resemble the SM one, will then be a linear combination of the neutral components of the two doublets. Constraints from electroweak precision data have been applied to such a model, and it was found that the compactification scale is larger than a couple of TeVs Masip:1999mk .

In this paper, we study the ability of present and future colliders to find the lightest Higgs boson in a XD THDM with a single TeV-1 size new dimension. In particular, our aim is to estimate the minimal size of the compact dimension for which the lightest Higgs signal is distinguishable from that of the SM (or THDM) at the LHC or at CLIC.

We assume that the SM gauge bosons and one of the Higgs doublets propagate in this compact dimension. The SM $`W^\pm `$ and $`Z`$ particles are identified with the zero modes of the five dimensional gauge boson fields. There is a second Higgs field restricted to the brane together with all the matter fields of the SM. Although the Higgs spectrum includes two CP-even states ($`h,H`$, with $`m_h<m_H`$), one CP-odd Higgs ($`A`$) and a charged pair ($`H^\pm `$), in this work we focus on the lightest Higgs boson $`h`$, because most likely this will be the first Higgs state that future colliders will detect. The CP-even Higgses may be the combinations, i.e. brane-bulk mixed states, of the two Higgs doublets.

We derive the Lagrangian for Higgs interactions and apply it to calculate the cross section of the associated production of Higgs with gauge bosons at the LC, as well as the dominant Higgs decays including the possible contributions from virtual KK states. Crucial to our approach is the cumulative effect of the virtual gauge boson KK states, $`W^{\pm (n)}`$ and $`Z^{(n)}`$, which contribute to the cross section for the production of the Higgs associated with the $`W^\pm `$ and $`Z`$ and to the three-body decay $`hVf\overline{f}^{}`$ ($`V=W^{\pm (0)},Z^{(0)}`$). The corresponding reactions at hadron colliders are studied as well.

We remark that in this scenario, with a low enough compactification scale, the discovery of the extra dimension would probably precede the discovery of the lightest Higgs boson. Gauge bosons propagating in the new dimension would exhibit unambiguous resonances, for example, in their $`s`$-channel production at the LHC. Our focus is on the lightest Higgs because we investigate how much information the various colliders can give us about the Higgs sector with a second Higgs doublet in the bulk. While more exotic processes might provide more useful to this end, we restrict ourselves to $`Vh`$ production ($`V=W^\pm `$ or $`Z`$) because our emphasis is that this dominant search channel is suppressed at the Tevatron (and at LEP), while possibly enhanced at future colliders.

The organization of our paper is as follows. In Section II, we present the model that we use to study the brane-bulk mixing of the Higgs boson. Then in Section III, we derive formulae for the Higgs production and decays. These include the evaluation of the contribution from virtual $`Z^{(n)}`$ KK states to the associated production at linear colliders, i.e. $`e^+e^{}hZ^{(0)}`$, as well as to the three-body decay $`hVf\overline{f}^{}`$. Results of our calculation for the hadron collider case are also included. The discussion of the implications of our results for present and future colliders appears in Section IV, while the conclusions are presented in Section V.

## II Modeling the Higgs location

To describe the brane-bulk Higgs mixing, we work with a five dimensional (5D) extension of the SM that contains two Higgs doublets. The SM fermions and one Higgs doublet ($`\mathrm{\Phi }_u`$) live on a 4D boundary, the brane, while the gauge bosons and the second Higgs doublet ($`\mathrm{\Phi }_d`$), are all allowed to propagate in the bulk. The constraints from electroweak precision data Masip:1999mk  show that the compactification scale can be of $`𝒪`$(TeV) (3-4 TeV at 95 % C.L.). The relevant terms of the 5D $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ gauge and Higgs Lagrangian are given by

$$^5=\frac{1}{4}\left(F_{MN}^a\right)^2\frac{1}{4}\left(B_{MN}\right)^2+|D_M\mathrm{\Phi }_d|^2+|D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_u|^2\delta (x^5),$$
(1)
where the Lorentz indices $`M`$ and $`N`$ run from $`0`$ to $`4`$, and $`\mu `$ runs from $`0`$ to $`3`$. The covariant derivative is given by

$$D_M=_M+ig_5^{}\frac{Y}{2}B_M+ig_5\frac{\sigma ^a}{2}A_M^a.$$
(2)
Given this definition, the mass dimensions of the fields are: $`dim(\mathrm{\Phi }_d)=3/2`$, $`dim(\mathrm{\Phi }_u)=1`$, $`dim(A_M)=3/2`$, $`dim(B_M)=3/2`$, and the 5D gauge couplings have a mass dimension of $`1/2`$. Bulk fields are defined to have even parity under $`x^5x^5`$, and are expanded as

$$𝒮(x^\mu ,x^5)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi R}}\left(S^{(0)}(x^\mu )+\sqrt{2}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{nx^5}{R}\right)S^{(n)}(x^\mu )\right).$$
(3)
This decomposition, together with Eq. (1), guarantees that after compactification we obtain the usual 4D kinetic terms for all fields.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) of EW symmetry occurs when the Higgs doublets acquire vacuum expectation values (vevs). After SSB the Higgs fields on the brane can be written as

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_u`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Phi }_u^0\\ \mathrm{\Phi }_u^{}\end{array}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{c}v_u+h\mathrm{cos}\alpha +H\mathrm{sin}\alpha +i\mathrm{cos}\beta A\\ \mathrm{cos}\beta H^{}\end{array}\right),`$ (8)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_d^{(0)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Phi }_d^+\\ \mathrm{\Phi }_d^0\end{array}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{sin}\beta H^+\\ v_dh\mathrm{sin}\alpha +H\mathrm{cos}\alpha +i\mathrm{sin}\beta A\end{array}\right),`$ (13)
where the neutral CP-even bosons are denoted by $`h`$ and $`H`$, and $`h`$ is identified with the lightest Higgs: $`m_h<m_H`$. The mixing angle $`\alpha `$ is introduced to diagonalize the CP-even mass matrix. The CP-odd and charged Higgs fields are denoted by $`A`$ and $`H^\pm `$, and $`v_u`$ and $`v_d`$ are the vevs of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_u`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_d^{(0)}`$ respectively. Note that the angles $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta =\mathrm{arctan}(v_u/v_d)`$ parametrize what we call brane-bulk mixing, or higher dimensional ‘location’, of the neutral Higgses.

After performing the KK-mode expansion and identifying the physical states, one derives the interaction Lagrangian for all the vertices of the neutral and charged Higgses. In particular, the interactions $`ZZh`$ and $`ZZ^{(n)}h`$, which are necessary to calculate the Higgs production in association with a $`Z`$, as well as the vertices involving the $`W^\pm `$ bosons, are given by the following 4D Lagrangian:

$`^4`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{gM_Z}{2c_W}}\left(h\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )+H\mathrm{cos}(\beta \alpha )\right)Z_\mu Z^\mu `$ (14)
$`+`$ $`\sqrt{2}{\displaystyle \frac{gM_Z}{c_W}}\left(h\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha +H\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{sin}\alpha \right){\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}Z_\mu ^{(n)}Z^\mu `$
$`+`$ $`gM_W\left(h\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )+H\mathrm{cos}(\beta \alpha )\right)W_\mu ^+W^\mu `$
$`+`$ $`\sqrt{2}gM_W\left(h\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha +H\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{sin}\alpha \right){\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(W_\mu ^+W^{(n)\mu }+W_\mu ^{}W^{+(n)\mu }\right).`$
Thus, the vertices $`hZZ`$ and $`hWW`$ have the same form as in the usual 4D THDM, i.e. proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )`$. Meanwhile the couplings $`hZZ^{(n)}`$ and $`hW^\pm W^{\pm (n)}`$ are proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha `$, vanishing either when $`\beta =0`$ or $`\alpha =\pi /2`$, i.e. either when EWSB is driven exclusively by the vev of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_d^{(0)}`$ or when the CP-even Higgs comes entirely from $`\mathrm{\Phi }_d^{(0)}`$. Similarly, the couplings of the CP-odd Higgs $`A`$ and the charged Higgs resemble the THDM, although new vertices of the type $`H^+W^{}Z^{(n)}`$ or $`H^+W^{(n)}Z`$ could be induced.

On the other hand, because the fermions are confined to the brane, the Higgs-fermion couplings could take any of the THDM I, II or III versions Diaz-Cruz:wp ; Diaz-Cruz:1999xe . However, for the THDM III version the possible FCNC problems would be ameliorated, as the bulk-brane couplings will be suppressed by the factor $`1/\sqrt{2\pi R}`$ Sakamura:1999pt . Thus, for the flavor conserving couplings one can use the formulae of the widely studied THDM II, which appears for instance in the Higgs Hunters Guide Gunion:1989we .

## III Extra dimensional contribution to Higgs production and decays

### III.1 Associated production $`h+Z`$ at linear colliders

In order to study Higgs production at future colliders, first we derive the cross section for the Bjorken process, namely for $`e^+e^{}hZ`$. The total amplitude includes the contribution of virtual $`Z=Z^{(0)}`$ and $`Z^{(n)}`$ states in the $`s`$-channel. The sum over all KK modes can be performed analytically, which considerably simplifies the final expression. Our result for the cross section is given by

$`\sigma (e^+e^{}hZ)=\sigma _{SM}F_{XD}(\alpha ,\beta ,s).`$ (15)
Here $`\sigma _{SM}`$ denotes the SM cross section, given by

$$\sigma _{SM}=\frac{G_F^2M_Z^4}{3\pi }\left(4s_w^42s_w^2+\frac{1}{2}\right)\frac{|𝐤|}{\sqrt{s}}\frac{(3M_Z^2+|𝐤|^2)}{(sM_Z^2)},$$
(16)
with

$`|𝐤|={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{s}}}\left(\left({\displaystyle \frac{s+M_Z^2m_h^2}{2}}\right)^2sM_Z^2\right)^{1/2}`$ (17)
being the 3-momentum of the $`Z`$ boson.

The extra dimensional contribution is factorized into

$`F_{XD}(\alpha ,\beta ,s)=\left[\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )+2\mathrm{cos}\alpha \mathrm{sin}\beta F_{KK}(s)\right]^2.`$ (18)
The function $`F_{KK}`$, which arises after summing over all the virtual KK-modes, is given by

$$F_{KK}(s)=2\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{sM_Z^2}{sM_n^2}=RA(s)\pi \mathrm{cot}(RA(s)\pi )1,$$
(19)
where

$$M_n=\sqrt{n^2/R^2+M_Z^2},$$
(20)
is the mass of the $`n^{th}`$ KK level. When neglecting the widths,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_n=M_n\alpha _g(v_f^2+a_f^2)/3,$$
(21)
of the KK resonances111The width of the $`n`$-th KK state is defined as its total decay rate into a SM fermion pair., we can write

$$A(s)=\sqrt{sM_Z^2}.$$
(22)
(Here $`v_f`$ and $`a_f`$ are the SM vector and axial coupling strength of the vector boson to fermions.) This is a reasonable approximation, since $`\alpha _g=g^2/(4\pi )1`$. By neglecting only $`M_Z\alpha _g`$ terms (next to $`M_Z`$), we can even include the dominant width effect by setting

$$A(s)=\sqrt{c(scM_Z^2)}/c,$$
(23)
where $`c=(1+2i\alpha _g)`$.

Recently it was pointed out that summing over a large number of KK resonances may jeopardize the unitarity of standard-like extra dimensional models Chivukula:2003kq . Thus, we mention that the sum in Eq.(19) can also be performed analytically for a finite number of terms with the result:

$$F_{KK}(s)=2\underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{sM_Z^2}{sM_n^2}=RA(s)(\pi \mathrm{cot}(RA(s)\pi )H_{NRA(s)}+H_{N+RA(s)})1,$$
(24)
where $`H_x`$ is the harmonic number function. (The KK width can also be included as above). Since the $`F_{KK}`$ function can be calculated even analytically, we can easily check its sensitivity to the number of KK levels and the inclusion of KK width. Fig.(1) shows that, for a typical set of parameters, $`F_{KK}`$ is reasonably insensitive to these, which ensures that our later results are robust against cutoff and width effects of KK levels in the relevant energy range.

These expressions also apply for the process $`q\overline{q}^{}W^\pm h`$ after changing $`\sigma _{SM}`$ and $`M_Z`$ to $`M_W`$ at the appropriate places.

### III.2 Associated production $`h+Z,h+W^\pm `$ at hadron colliders

When considering Higgs production at hadron colliders, an expression similar to Eq.(15) holds at the parton level for the production cross section of the Higgs in association with a $`W^\pm `$ or $`Z`$. To obtain the hadronic cross section $`h_1h_2hZ`$, the partonic cross section must be convoluted with the parton distribution functions (PDFs):

$$\sigma (h_1h_2Zh)=\underset{q\overline{q}}{}_0^1_0^1f_{q/h_1}(x_1,\widehat{s})\sigma (q\overline{q}Zh)f_{\overline{q}/h_2}(x_2,\widehat{s})𝑑x_1𝑑x_2+q\overline{q}.$$
(25)
Here $`f_{q/h_i}(x,\widehat{s})`$ gives the distribution of a parton $`q`$ in the hadron $`h_i`$ as a function of the longitudinal momentum fraction $`x`$ and the factorization scale, which is chosen to be the partonic center of mass $`\widehat{s}`$. In our numeric study we use CTEQ4M PDFs Lai:1996mg . The sum in Eq. (25) extends over the light quark flavors $`q=u,d,s,c`$.

The large center of mass energy that can be achieved at the LHC also opens up the possibility to produce a Higgs boson in association with KK states, for instance $`hZ^{(1)}`$, which will have a very distinctive signature that could allow ‘direct’ detection of the first KK modes at the LHC. This possibility is studied elsewhere.

### III.3 Higgs decays

For Higgs bosons lying in the intermediate mass range, which is in fact favored by the analysis of electroweak radiative corrections, the dominant decay is into $`b\overline{b}`$ pairs. In our higher dimensional model this decay width is given by the formulae of the THDM, just as that of the other tree-level two-body modes. On the other hand, for the three-body decays $`hWl\nu _l`$ and $`hZl^+l^{}`$, which can play a relevant role at the Tevatron and LHC, the corresponding decay width could receive additional contributions from the virtual $`KK`$ states. The inclusion of these KK modes leads to the following expression for the differential decay width:

$$\frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }}{dx}(hWl\overline{\nu }_l)=\frac{g^4m_h}{3072\pi ^3}\frac{(x^24r_w)^{1/2}}{1x}f_V(x)\left[\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )+2\mathrm{cos}\alpha \mathrm{sin}\beta F_{KK}\right]^2,$$
(26)
where $`f_V(x)=x^212r_wx+8r_w+12r_w^2`$, with $`r_w=M_W^2/m_h^2`$, and $`2r_w^{1/2}<x<1+r_w`$. The $`F_{KK}`$ function is given as in Eq. (19), with the replacements $`sq^2=m_h^2(1x)`$ and $`M_ZM_W`$. A similar expression can be derived for the decay $`hZl^+l^{}`$.

To study the effect of the KK modes on the decay $`hWl\overline{\nu }_l`$, we have evaluated the ratio of the corresponding decay width in the extra dimensional scenario over the SM decay width:

$$R_{hWW^{}}=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(hWl\overline{\nu }_l)_{XD}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(hWl\overline{\nu }_l)_{SM}}.$$
(27)
Results for this ratio are shown in Table 1, for several representative sets of parameters which are chosen as

* : $`M_c=2`$ TeV, $`\alpha =\pi /3`$, B : $`M_c=2`$ TeV, $`\alpha =\pi /1.28`$,
* : $`M_c=2`$ TeV, $`\alpha =\pi `$, D : $`M_c=5`$ TeV, $`\alpha =\pi `$,

while $`\beta =\pi /4`$ remains fixed. We observe that significant deviations from the SM can appear, although this effect is largely due to the difference of the Higgs couplings in the THDM and the SM.

On the other hand, the loop induced decays $`h\gamma \gamma ,Z\gamma `$ also receive contributions from the $`W^{(n)}`$ KK modes. But since the coupling $`hWW^{(n)}`$ that appears in the loop is proportional to $`M_W`$, rather than $`M_{W^{(n)}}`$, the contribution of the KK states will decouple, as there are no mass factors that could cancel the ones in the numerator. Thus, the KK contribution can be neglected for the decay widths of the loop induced decays.

We conclude that in the intermediate Higgs mass range the decay $`hb\overline{b}`$ will continue to dominate, even more than in the SM case for some values of parameters. In the limit $`M_c>>O(1)`$ TeV, one recovers the SM pattern for the Higgs decays.

## IV Implications for Higgs searches at future colliders

### IV.1 The LC case

Because of its simplicity, first we discuss Higgs production at a linear collider. The present bound on the compactification scale is $`M_c\stackrel{>}{}3.8`$ TeV Rizzo:1999br , for the cases when the Higgs field is either in the bulk or confined to the brane. For the general case of “mixing” one obtains similar bounds Muck:2002af .

The results for the $`e^+e^{}hZ`$ cross section, after the inclusion of the virtual $`Z`$ KK contribution, are shown in Fig. 2. This plot shows the cross section as a function of the center of mass energy ($`200<\sqrt{s}<4000`$ GeV), for $`m_h=120`$ GeV and a value of the compactification scale $`M_c=4`$ TeV. We plot the SM cross section $`\sigma _{SM}`$, the THDM cross section $`\sigma _{THDM}`$, as well as the extra dimensional cross section $`\sigma _{XD}`$. Three different pairs of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ were chosen to compute $`\sigma _{THDM}`$ and $`\sigma _{XD}`$. They are given by

1. : $`\beta =\pi /4`$, $`\alpha =\pi /4`$, b : $`\beta =\pi /4`$, $`\alpha =0`$, c : $`\beta =\pi /4`$, $`\alpha =0.241\pi `$.

Choice a corresponds to a case in which $`\sigma _{THDM}=\sigma _{SM}`$; b corresponds to a case where the effect of the mixing due to $`\alpha `$ in the term involving the KK sum is maximum; c corresponds to values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ for which $`\sigma _{XD}/\sigma _{THDM}`$ is larger than 1 above $`\sqrt{s}=2`$ TeV.

The first frame of Fig.(2) shows well that the shape of the cross section is determined by the product of $`F_{KK}`$, as shown in Fig.(1), and the SM cross section.

We can see that in all three cases the cross section of the XD model is always smaller than that of the SM at $`\sqrt{s}=500,1000`$ GeV, and that in order to obtain a larger cross section, one needs energies greater than $`\sqrt{s}2`$ TeV. This is understood from the fact that the heavier KK modes, through their propagators, interfere destructively with the SM amplitude thus reducing the cross section. We mention that the three cases presented in Fig. 2 are only representative, and that one can find broad regions of parameter space in which $`\sigma _{XD}>\sigma _{THDM}`$.

Moreover, as Fig. 2 shows, once the center of mass energy approaches the threshold for the production of the first KK state, the cross section starts growing. For instance, with $`M_c=4`$ TeV, $`\sigma _{SM}\sigma _{XD}`$ for $`\sqrt{s}2`$ TeV. However, one would need higher energies in order to have a cross section larger than that of the SM, which may only be possible at CLIC Assmann:2000hg .

According to current studies, when the cross section is 4% larger than the SM cross section, with the estimated precision that could be obtained at the LC Battaglia:2000jb , it may be possible to distinguish between the SM and XD Higgs scenarios. We can see that this might be possible at CLIC for $`M_c=3`$–4 TeV for a broad range of parameter values. It is interesting to note that such deviations in the cross section from the SM prediction arise even when the couplings of the Higgs to the gauge bosons are indistinguishable from the SM couplings.

### IV.2 Implications for the Tevatron

After the productive but unsuccessful Higgs search at LEP2, the Run 2 of the Tevatron continues the search until the LHC starts operating. The luminosity that is required to achieve a 5 or 3 $`\sigma `$ discovery, or a 95% C.L. exclusion limit, was presented by the Run 2 Higgs working group Carena:2000yx . For instance, with $`m_h=120`$ GeV, the corresponding numbers are about 20, 6 and 2 $`fb^1`$ respectively.

Assuming $`M_c2`$ TeV, the inclusion of the KK modes decreases the $`hW^\pm `$ and $`hZ`$ associated production cross section at the Tevatron. Depending on the actual values of $`M_c`$, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, the suppression in the parton level cross section may be anything between 1 and 99 percent. For example, if $`M_c`$ is a few TeV then the $`s`$-channel process $`q\overline{q}^{}W^\pm h`$ can receive a considerable suppression, as it can be inferred from Fig. 2. This is so unless the KK contribution itself is suppressed by $`\mathrm{cos}\alpha `$ and/or $`\mathrm{sin}\beta `$ in Eq. (15), in which case the presented model has little relevance. Thus, as a general prediction of this model, we conclude that more than the above listed luminosity is required to find a light Higgs boson. This slims the chances of the Tevatron to find the Higgs of this model.

### IV.3 Higgs production at the LHC

The Higgs discovery potential in this model is more promising at the LHC. We illustrate this in Fig. 3, showing the $`pphZ`$ differential cross section as the function of the $`hZ`$ invariant mass $`M_{hZ}`$. The typical resonance structure displayed by Figs. 1 and 2 is preserved by the hadronic cross section. The resonance peak is well pronounced when $`M_{hZ}M_c`$. This leads to a large enhancement over the SM (or THDM) cross section.

The singularity at $`M_c=M_{hZ}`$ is regulated by the width of the KK mode, which is included in our calculation as given by Eq.(21). Thus, Fig. 3 gives a reliable prediction of the XD cross section even in the peak regions. Depending on the particular values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ the enhancement is more or less pronounced. For an optimistic set $`\alpha =0`$ and $`\beta =\pi /2`$, the XD production cross section is considerably enhanced compared to the SM at $`M_{hZ}=M_c`$. This enhancement may be detectable up to about $`M_c=6`$ TeV. We estimate that with 100 fb-1 for $`M_c=6`$ TeV there are about 20 $`hZ`$ events in the bins around $`M_{hZ}M_c`$. As Fig. 3 shows, in the SM less than one event is expected in the same $`M_{hZ}`$ range. It is needless to say that similar results hold for $`pphW^\pm `$, which further enhances the discovery prospects.

Based on these results, we conclude that in the Bjorken process alone the reach of the LHC may extend to about $`M_c=6`$ TeV, depending on the values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$. Finally, we note that the XD contribution to the running of the gauge couplings is important when the effective center of mass energy of the collider is close to $`1/R`$ Dienes:1998vh ; Dienes:1999vg . Since not included in this work, this contribution is expected to change our results somewhat for $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}\stackrel{>}{}M_c`$ .

## V Conclusions

In this work, we studied the extent to which present and future colliders can probe the brane-bulk location of the Higgs boson in a model with a TeV-1 size extra dimension. In this model one Higgs doublet is located on the brane while another one propagates in the bulk. We found that the virtual KK states of the gauge bosons contribute to the associated production of the Higgs with $`W^{\pm (n)}`$ and $`Z^{(n)}`$, and at low energies ($`\sqrt{s}<1/R`$ GeV) the cross section is suppressed compared to the SM case. Meanwhile at higher energies, i.e. at $`\sqrt{s}1/R`$, the cross section can receive an enhancement that has important effects on the discovery of the Higgs at future colliders.

Analysing compactification scales in the range of 2–8 TeV, we concluded that to find a Higgs signal in this model the Tevatron Run 2 and the LC with $`\sqrt{s}=5001500`$ GeV are required to have a luminosity higher than in the SM case. Meanwhile, the LHC and possibly CLIC with $`\sqrt{s}3`$–5 TeV might have a greater potential to find and study a Higgs signal. Depending on the model parameters, these colliders may be able to distinguish between the extra dimensional and the SM for compactification scales up to about 6 TeV. If this model is relevant for weak scale physics, the LHC should see large enhancements in the associated production rates. Thus, not finding the Higgs at the Tevatron may be good news for the XD Higgs search at the LHC.

## Acknowledgments

A.A. was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy under grant DE-FG02-91ER40676. C.B. was also supported by the DOE, under contract number DE-FG02-97ER41022. J.L. D.-C. was supported by CONACYT and SNI (México).


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# The Evolutionary Stage of 5 Southern Galactic Unclassified B[e] Stars

## 1. Forbidden Lines

The presence of some forbidden lines is a criterion to distinguish differents groups of massive stars. For example, LBV and sgB\[e\] have similar spectral characteristics, however, \[OI\] lines are present only in the sgB\[e\] (Zickgraf, 1989). Below, we have a table showing the presence (Yes) or not (No) of some important forbidden lines. Figure 1 shows the profiles of forbidden and permitted NII lines in the spectra of HD 326823.

| Objects | \[OI\] | \[OII\] | \[OIII\] | \[SII\] | \[NII\] | \[FeII\] |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| HD 87643 | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Hen 3-847 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GG Car | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| MWC 300 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HD 326823 | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |

Figure 1 -Profiles of NII lines in the high resolution spectrum (FEROS-agreement ESO/ON) of HD 326823. The permitted lines are in absorption, indicating a photospheric origin, and the forbidden are in emission, indicating a circumstellar origin.

## 2. The Evolutionary Phase of unclB\[e\] Stars

From the comparison with spectra of well-stabilished groups, it is possible to derive the evolutive stage of these 5 unclB\[e\].

HD 326823 \- The He overabundance indicates that it is an evolved star. In agreement with the literature, we suggest that is a pre-WN star with the B\[e\] phenomenon (Fernandes et al. 2001). This suggests a new class of B\[e\] stars.

HD87643 \- There is a doubt if it is a pre-main sequence or a supergiant object. The absence of inverse P-Cygni profiles and absence of a strong variability suggest an evolved star, as sgB\[e\].

Hen 3-847 \- This object used to be classified as a pre-main sequence star. However, our spectra do not show any characteristic feature of young objects. We suggest that it is a sgB\[e\] candidate.

GG Car \- This star was classified as sgB\[e\], but some authors consider it as a binary system, with a B star and a K star. Our spectra do not show any feature from the late type star. So we suggest that it is a sgB\[e\].

MWC 300 \- This object is classified, in the literature, as sgB\[e\] candidate. Our analysis of its spectrum confirms that suggestion.

We have already started a study of the physical properties and parameters of the circumstellar material of those objects. The full result of this study will be published in A&A by the same authors.

## References

Fernandes, M.B., de Araújo, F.X., Pereira, C.B., Landaberry, S.J.C. 2001, ApJS 136, 747

Lamers, H.J.G.L.M., Zickgraf, F.-J., de Winter, D., Houziaux, L., Zorec, J. 1998, A&A 340, 117

Zickgraf, F.-J. 1989, in: L. A. Wilson & R. Stalio (eds.), Angular Momentum and Mass Loss for Hot Stars , NATO ASI Series 316, 245


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# Faint dwarf spheroidals in the Fornax Cluster:

## 1 Introduction

Little is known about the very faint end of the galaxy luminosity function (LF) – the realm of the dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. The current CDM models of galaxy and structure formation (e.g. Moore et al. moor98a (1998)) suggest that dwarf galaxies were very abundant in the early universe and represented the building-blocks of larger galaxies. Especially in galaxy clusters, large numbers of dwarf galaxies should have been formed. Different models result in a steep slope at the faint end of the LF: $`1.4d\mathrm{log}N/d\mathrm{log}L2.0`$ (e.g. Kauffmann et al. kauf94 (1994)).

Most of our knowlegde about the dwarf spheroidals comes from studies of Local Group examples (e.g. Mateo mate98 (1998)). Some authors do not distinguish them from the somewhat brighter dwarf ellipticals (dEs), but here we follow the definition given by Grebel (greb01 (2001)) who characterizes them as diffuse, low surface brightness dwarfs with $`M_V<14`$ mag and $`\mu _V>22`$ mag arcsec<sup>-2</sup>. Although primarily old stellar populations, dSphs are not the simple systems they were once thought to be – many show evidence of star formation in multiple bursts and traces of molecular gas (e.g. Grebel greb97 (1997)). Such gross differences are very likely due to the effects of the environment these galaxies exist in, and thus are efficient tracers of evolutionary processes in galaxies. A large-scale study of these systems in nearby clusters would be essential for the understanding of the “global” picture of galaxy evolution.

The faint end of the luminosity function of the Local Group is quite flat compared with CDM model predictions. A Schechter function fit gives a faint-end slope of $`\alpha =1.1\pm 0.1`$ (Pritchet & van den Bergh prit99 (1999)). Several CCD studies of galaxy clusters show rising numbers of low-luminosity dEs down to about $`M_V11`$ mag with very different faint-end slopes in the range $`1.1>\alpha >2.2`$ (e.g. De Propris et al. depr95 (1995); López-Cruz et al. lope97 (1997)). However, it is not known whether the galaxy luminosity function in clusters continues to $`M_V=9`$, as it does in the Local Group. In fact, the latest discoveries of previously unknown dSphs (e.g. Armandroff et al. arma99 (1999)) raises the question of how complete is the Local Group sample. Is there a true cutoff or one imposed solely by small number statistics? The detection of a lower-L cutoff would add strong constraints to galactic formation models.

The most complete investigation of the Fornax dwarf galaxies was done by Ferguson (ferg89a (1989)) as well as by Davies et al. (davie88 (1988)). As shown by Hilker et al. (1999a ) and Drinkwater et al. (drin01b (2001)) the morphological classification of Fornax members by Ferguson (ferg89a (1989)) is very reliable and very few dEs were missed within the survey limits.

The luminosity function of the Fornax dwarf galaxies was studied by Ferguson & Sandage (ferg88 (1988)). The faint end slope of the dE/dS0 LF, fitted by a Schechter (sche76 (1976)) function up to $`M_V13`$, is quite flat ($`\alpha =1.08\pm 0.10`$). However, in a recent study, Kambas et al. (kamb00 (2000)) report the discovery of a very large number of low surface brightness dwarfs in Fornax, resulting in a steep faint-end slope of the LF ($`\alpha 2.0`$) down to $`M_B12`$ mag.

## 2 Observations and data analysis

The observations were performed in an observing run in December 1999 with the 100-inch du Pont telescope at Las Campanas, Chile. The Wide-Field CCD images a 25$`\mathrm{}`$ diameter field, with a scale of about 0.774$`\mathrm{}`$/pixel. 14 fields in the central region of the Fornax cluster and one additional background field have been observed through the Johnson $`VI`$ filters. All nights were photometric throughout, and the seeing was in the range $`1\stackrel{}{.}5`$$`2\stackrel{}{.}0`$.

The CCD frames were processed with standard IRAF routines, instrumental aperture magnitudes were derived using SExtractor2.1 (Bertin & Arnouts berti96 (1996)). Surface brightness profiles of all galaxies were measured with the ellipse fitting routines under the stsdas package of IRAF.

In order to optimize the detection of faint resolved sources by the software routines, all CCD fields were first inspected carefully by eye, independently by the authors MH and SM, to search for low surface brightness objects with sizes of Local Group dSphs (core radii of 150-400 pc, corresponding to core diameter of $`3\mathrm{}`$ to $`9\mathrm{}`$ in Fornax distance). This search resulted in the detection of about 70 previously uncatalogued dSph candidates.

The detection-sensitive parameters of SExtractor2.1 were then optimized such that most objects of the by-eye-catalog were detected by the program. Further visual inspection of the SExtractor detections within the same parameter space as the visual detections, added about 10% more dSph candidates to the by-eye-catalog. About 10% of the obvious by-eye detections could still not be found by the routine. These sources were kept in the catalog, but not considered for the determination of the LF.

For the study of the faint end of the LF, the number counts of dSph candidates have to be completeness corrected. Therefore, we randomly distributed 2000 simulated dSphs (in 100 runs) in each of the 14 CCD fields. The magnitudes and central surface brightnesses were chosen such that they extended well beyond the observed parameter space at the faint limits. The optimized detection parameters were used to recover the artificial galaxies. The same selection criteria as for the discovered dSphs were applied to derive the completeness values as a function of magnitude and central surface brightness (see Fig. 2). For the number counts of the LF the completeness in each CCD field has been corrected individually to account for the differing number densities.

Further details of the observations and data analysis will be given in Hilker et al. (2003, in prep.).

## 3 Dwarf spheroidal candidates in Fornax

Since the faintest Local Group dSphs appear just resolved when projected to the Fornax distance ($`1\mathrm{}`$ corresponds to about 92 pc at 19 Mpc; Ferrarese et al. ferra00 (2000)), the first selection criterion for dSphs in Fornax was a measured FWHM larger than $`5\mathrm{}`$. Furthermore the color range was restricted to within $`\pm 2\sigma `$ of the color-magnitude relation (see Fig. 1). Finally, probable dSphs candidates should be located within $`\pm 2\sigma `$ of the magnitude-surface brightness relation (Fig. 2).

The photometric parameters of the dwarf galaxies have been derived from the analysis of their surface brightness profiles: the total magnitude by a curve of growth analysis, the color within an aperture of $`8\mathrm{}`$ diameter, and the central surface brightness from an exponential fit to the outer part of the profile.

### 3.1 The color-magnitude relation

In Fig. 1 the color magnitude diagram (CMD) of all objects is shown. The newly discovered dSphs are highlighted by large triangles. Except for some outliers, they follow a well defined color-magnitude sequence in the sense that the fainter galaxies are bluer. A linear fit to the data yields: $`(VI)=0.035V+1.61`$ with a rms of 0.14.

The color-magnitude relation of early-type galaxies is well known from other clusters (e.g. Coma cluster, Secker et al. seck97 (1997)). It is likely explained by a strong metallicity-luminosity relation (see Poggianti et al. pogg01a (2001)). Here we show for the first time that this relation extends all the way down to the regime of dSphs. For the Local Group dSphs, there do not exist homogeneous $`(VI)`$ colors. However, assuming that they are single stellar populations and then transforming their average iron abundances \[Fe/H\] (Grebel et al. greb02a (2002)) to $`(VI)`$ colors using equation (4) given in Kissler-Patig et al. (kiss98a (1998)), they follow surprisingly well the same color-magnitude relation (Fig. 1).

### 3.2 The magnitude-surface brightness relation

Dwarf ellipticals are known to follow a $`r_{\mathrm{eff}}`$-$`M_V`$ relation distinct to that of giant ellipticals (e.g. Bender et al. bend92 (1992)). Also, they follow a tight $`M_V`$$`\mu _V`$ relation in the sense that central surface brightness increases with increasing luminosity (Ferguson & Sandage ferg88 (1988)). The validity of this relation has been a subject of lively debate. A number of authors have argued against the existence of a magnitude-surface brightness relation for dEs (i.e. Irwin et al. irwi90 (1990)) and questioned the cluster membership assignement to dEs based on morphology. However, Drinkwater et al. (drin01b (2001)) confirm the surface brightness-magnitude relation for Fornax dwarfs, based on their spectroscopic survey.

Our data shows that the magnitude-surface brightness relation continues even to fainter magnitudes. As one can see in Fig. 2, the sequence of Fornax cluster dSphs matches well the location of Local Group dSphs in this plot (data from Grebel et al. greb02a (2002)). Note that some more compact dSphs still might be hidden in the barely resolved objects.

## 4 The faint end of the luminosity function

In Fig. 3, the luminosity distribution of the dEs and dSphs in Fornax is shown. When fitting a Schechter (sche76 (1976)) function to the counts with a completeness larger than 50% the faint-end slope is $`\alpha =1.11\pm 0.10`$. This agrees with the result by Ferguson & Sandage (ferg88 (1988)), although their faintest dwarfs were 2.5 mag brighter than ours.

There seems to be a dip in the luminosity distribution at about $`M_V=14`$ mag. Although this might be due to small number counts (the amplitude of the dip is about equal to the Poisson error of the number density at the corresponding magnitude), it is interesting to note that this is near the luminosity where the separation of dEs and dSphs is defined (e.g. Grebel greb01 (2001)). A sum of two Schechter functions does better fit the data (see lower panel in Fig. 3) but does not change the faint -nd slope.

### 4.1 Comparison with Kambas’ results

Recently, Kambas et al. (kamb00 (2000)) reported the discovery of a very large number ($`>3400`$) of very low surface brightness (VLSB) galaxies which are concentrated towards the center of the Fornax cluster. The resulting faint-end slope is very steep: $`\alpha 2`$. Thus, although having a comparable limiting magnitude, Kambas’ results are in large disagreement with ours. The data sets and selection criteria of both studies are quite different. Kambas et al. took $`R`$ band images on a CCD chip with a scale of $`2\stackrel{}{.}3`$ per pixel, thus having a 3 times lower resolution than we do. The VLSB candidates were selected by lower limits in the scale length and surface brightness derived from the isophotal magnitude and area measured by SExtractor. No curve-of-growth analysis or surface brightness profile fitting was performed to cross-check the SExtractor results.

To find the reason for this discrepancy, Kambas kindly provided us with his data. In the overlapping region of both data sets, all VLSBs (in total 473) were also detected by us. According to Kambas et al., only 110 of them are background objects. However, by comparison with our data we found that at least 300 of the 473 objects are clear non-members of the Fornax clusters. About 90 objects are clear point sources even at our 3 times higher resolution. More than 250 objects have a $`(VI)`$ color redder than 1.4 mag, and thus are background galaxies (which could not be detected with only one filter at hand). Many other VLSB candidates are either clearly multiple or are located in the halo of brighter galaxies or close to saturated stars.

We therefore suggest that most of Kambas’ VLSB dwarf candidates are not dwarf galaxies in Fornax. And we conclude that SExtractor values that characterize the sizes of objects do not provide reliable selection criteria close to the resolution limit and close to the magnitude and surface brightness limit.

## 5 Summary and Conclusions

A deep wide field survey of the central 2.4 square degrees of the Fornax cluster has revealed a large population of previously undetected low surface brightness dwarf galaxies whose brightness profiles could been measured. It is found that they resemble the Local Group dwarf spheroidals. In particular, they follow the same magnitude-surface brightness relation. Also they follow a quite tight color-magnitude relation which can be explained by a metallicity effect, in the sense that fainter dwarf galaxies are more metal-poor than brighter ones.

Our study has therefore shown for the first time that the counterparts of the Local Group dwarf spheroidals do exist in cluster environments. The faint end slope of their luminosity function is flat ($`\alpha =1.1\pm 0.1`$) in comparison to the expected initial slope of small halos in current CDM simulations of galaxy clusters. If theory is right, this might point to the destruction of a large number of dwarfs during the evolution of a cluster. One might suggest that the debris of these dwarfs have partly built up the huge cD halo around the central galaxy (e.g. Hilker et al. 1999b ).

A dip in the luminosity function at the transition between dwarf ellipticals and dwarf spheroidals (at $`M_V14`$ mag) might point to two distinct families of galaxies. Although their photometric properties are very similar, dEs and dSphs might have experienced different evolutionary histories, i.e. that dSphs evolved from dwarf irregulars that have consumed their gas or have lost it by ram pressure stripping (Grebel greb01 (2001)).

Our study has also shown that the combination of deep multi-color photometry in a wide field with a sufficient resolution is crucial in order to unambigously identify dwarf spheroidal candidates in nearby clusters. In upcoming studies one should push the limits to even fainter magnitudes and surface brightnesses, since we have still not seen a mass cutoff of the smallest galactic systems.

###### Acknowledgements.

We gratefully thank A. Kambas for providing us with his data. LI and SM acknowlegde support from ‘Proyecto FONDAP 15010003’. SM was supported by DAAD PhD grant Kennziffer D/01/35298. MH thanks du Pont staff for support.


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# Cosmological parameters estimation in the Quintessence Paradigm

## 1 Introduction

The determination of cosmological parameters has always been a central question in cosmology. In this respect the measurements of the Cosmological Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies on degree angular scales has brought one of the most spectacular results in the field: the flatness of the spatial geometry of the universe, implying that its density is close to the critical density. Although, during the last twenty years the evidence for the existence of non-baryonic dark matter has strongly gained in robustness, observations clearly favor a relatively low matter content somewhere between $`20`$ and $`50\%`$ of the critical density, indicating that the dominant form of the density of the universe is an unclustered form. Furthermore, the observations of distant supernovae, at cosmological distance, provide a direct evidence for an accelerating universe, which is naturally explained by the gravitational domination of a component with a relatively large negative pressure, $`P_\mathrm{Q}=w_\mathrm{Q}\rho _\mathrm{Q}`$ with $`w_\mathrm{Q}<1/3`$. The cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (for which $`w_\mathrm{\Lambda }=1`$) is historically the first possibility which has been introduced and which satisfies this requirement. However, the presence of a non-zero cosmological constant is a huge problem in physics: (i) quantum field theory predicts that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ should be the sum of a number of enormous contributions, so in order to avoid a cosmological catastrophe, it is usually assumed that a yet unknown mechanism produces a cancelation between all these contributions; (ii) it is difficult to think of a mechanism which puts $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to $`0`$ exactly, but it is even more difficult to find a mechanism which gives $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }\rho _\mathrm{c}10^{122}\rho _{\mathrm{Pl}}`$, as the supernovae observations suggest, where $`\rho _{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ and $`\rho _\mathrm{c}`$ are the Planck energy density and the critical density today, respectively. For this reason the concept of quintessence, a scalar field with negative pressure, has recently been proposed as a possible alternative to a cosmological constant.

In this paper we shortly describe the quintessence paradigm and its effect on some observable quantities. We then summarise the different sets of data and methods used to constrain cosmological parameters. We then conclude by showing the results on quintessence and cosmological parameters.

## 2 Quintessence

The idea of quintessence was proposed in order to allow the presence of an non zero dark energy, as suggested by observations, without being confronted to the dramatic fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant. Indeed, one still assumes that an unknown mechanism puts the bare cosmological constant is zero, and the smallness of the dark energy has a dynamical origin, coming from a scalar field $`\varphi `$ which has not yet reached the minimum of its potential $`V(\varphi )`$.

A large number of quintessence models were already considered in the literature. Historically, the first proposed quintessence model had an inverse power law potential, $`V(\varphi )=M^{4+\alpha }/\varphi ^\alpha `$ (Ratra & Peebles ratra (1988); Wetterich wett (1988); Caldwell et al. caldwell (1998)), where the exponent $`\alpha `$ is positive and $`M`$ is an energy scale fixed so that the scalar field has the correct energy density today. This unusual shape, which can have some motivations from particle physics (Binétruy bin1 (1999), bin2 (2000)), insures that regardless of the initial conditions, the field will reach a so-called “tracking regime” (Steinhardt et al. steinh (1999)), where its pressure and energy density tend to a constant ratio given by $`P_\mathrm{Q}/\rho _\mathrm{Q}w_\mathrm{Q}=(\alpha w_\mathrm{B}2)/(\alpha +2)`$, where $`w_\mathrm{B}`$ represent the pressure to energy density ratio of the other background matter fluids (photons, neutrinos, baryons, and cold dark matter). Moreover, since we have in this regime $`w_\mathrm{Q}<w_\mathrm{B}`$, this ensures that the quintessence energy density decreases more slowly than that of the background fluids and that ultimately, the quintessence field will become dominant. When this occurs, i.e., when its density parameter reaches $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.5}`$, the field slows down in its potential, and reaches asymptotically $`w_\mathrm{Q}=1`$ (Steinhardt et al. steinh (1999)). The rate at which one goes from the tracking regime to the cosmological regime is usually quite slow, so that unless $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ is already close to $`1`$ in the tracking regime, it will still be significantly different from $`1`$ when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}0.7`$. For example, if $`\alpha =6`$, in which case $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0.25`$ in the tracking regime during the matter-dominated era, one has $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0.4`$ today if $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.7`$. This feature leaves the hope of distinguishing a quintessence field from a cosmological constant.

The effect of a quintessence field on CMB anisotropies is twofold (Brax et al. brax2 (2000)). First, when the quintessence field becomes dominant it modifies the expansion rate of the universe. This translates into a modification of the angular distance vs. redshift relation, and hence a shift in the peak structure of the CMB anisotropies power spectrum, the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$’s, for $`\mathrm{}>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}100}`$. Second, the gravitational potentials decay at late time as the universe is no longer matter-dominated. This produces a so-called integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect and modifies the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ spectrum at low multipoles ($`\mathrm{}<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}20}`$) as a consequence of the fact that photons exchange energy with time-varying gravitational potentials. Both of these effects are also present with a cosmological constant, but they differ quantitatively with a quintessence field: the shift in the peak position is smaller, whereas the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect can be very different (Caldwell et al. caldwell (1998)).

Most of the CMB experiments do not cover a large fraction of the sky. On the contrary, the new Archeops data (Benoît et al. 2002a ; Benoît et al. 2002b ) are extremely precise around $`\mathrm{}200`$ improving by a factor of two the precision measurements on the location of the first Doppler peak (Benoît et al. 2002c ), whereas at larger angular scales (low $`\mathrm{}`$) the COBE data are limited by a large cosmic variance (Tegmark tegmark (1996)). Therefore we can hope being able to contrain the quintessence parameters by through their influence on the position of the first Doppler peak rather than through the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. It is well-known that the position of the first peak is primarily sensitive to the curvature but also to several other cosmological parameters. It is therefore important to investigate a wide space of parameters in order to constraint the possible existence of quintessence in a robust way.

Finally, let us add that quintessence also modifies significantly the matter power spectrum: as for the cosmological constant, matter fluctuations stop growing at the onset of quintessence domination. This has an influence on the normalization of the matter power spectrum on small scales, $`\sigma _8`$. This effect of $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ can be understood as follows: as long as $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ is not too close to $`0`$, one can roughly consider that the universe has experienced two distinct epochs since recombination: a first (usual) one where it was matter-dominated, and a second one where it is quintessence-dominated. The transition occurs when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}=\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.5`$. If we suppose that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.7`$ today, then the transition epoch occured at a redshift of

$$z_\mathrm{Q}^{\mathrm{mat}}=\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}}\right)^{\frac{1}{3w_\mathrm{Q}}}1.$$

For $`w_\mathrm{Q}=1`$ (cosmological constant case), one has $`z_\mathrm{\Lambda }^{\mathrm{mat}}=0.33`$, whereas for $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0.2`$, this gives $`z_\mathrm{Q}^{\mathrm{mat}}=3.1`$. If we suppose that perturbations grow as the scale factor before the transition and stop growing immediately afterward, then, this corresponds to a reduction of

$$R=\left(\frac{1+z_\mathrm{\Lambda }^{\mathrm{mat}}}{1+z_\mathrm{Q}^{\mathrm{mat}}}\right)^2=\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}}\right)^{\frac{2}{3}\left(1+\frac{1}{w_\mathrm{Q}}\right)},$$

in the matter power spectrum as compared to the cosmological constant case. In practice, several factors modify this amount, such as the fact the the matter perturbation still grow (although slowly) in the quintessence-dominated era, but this illustrate the dramatic change in the matter power spectrum that quintessence can trigger \[see also Benabed & Bernardeau (benber (2001))\]. When $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0`$, the situation is even more dramatic as matter never dominates. In order to understand the value of $`\sigma _8`$, one is has to compute the growth of dark matter perturbations when one has a mixture of matter and quintessence with identical equation of state. Neglecting the quintessence fluctuations (which are never subject to any instability), the Jeans equation is rewritten as

$$\ddot{\delta }+\dot{\delta }\frac{3}{2}^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}\delta =0,$$

When $`\delta `$ represents the matter perturbation density constrast, an overdot denotes a derivative with respect to conformal time (defined by $`a\mathrm{d}\eta =\mathrm{d}t`$, where $`a`$ is the scale factor and $`t`$ is the cosmic time), and $`\dot{a}/a`$. The only difference with the usual matter-dominated case is that we do not have $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}=1`$ in the above equation. In the matter-dominated era, $`a\eta ^2`$, so that $`=2/\eta `$, and one has

$$\ddot{\delta }+\frac{2}{\eta }\dot{\delta }\frac{6}{\eta ^2}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}\delta =0.$$

When $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}=1`$, one gets the usual result that the growing mode goes as $`\delta ^+a`$. If we now suppose that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}=0.3`$, then the growing mode goes as $`\delta ^+a^{0.466}`$. If this regime lasts for several orders of magnitude in redshift, then this represents an enormous reduction in the matter power spectrum, of around $`(1+\mathrm{\Delta }z)^{1.07}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ represent the duration of this regime. This effect will imply that $`\sigma _8`$ is drastically reduced when one goes from $`w_\mathrm{Q}=1`$ to $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0`$. In order to illustrate this point we have computed the amplitude of matter fluctuations $`\sigma _8`$ for a family of models which have the same same cosmological parameters but the equation of state $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ (Fig. 1). As one can see $`\sigma _8`$ varies dramatically with $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ and is therefore a very useful quantity to take into account in order to constrain quintessence.

## 3 Methods and Data

In the following, we make use of the most recent data available on the CMB as well as on other relevant cosmological quantities in order to examine constraints that can be set on the amount of quintessence present in the universe. We assume Gaussian adiabatic fluctuations and a flat geometry of space. We assume a vanishing amount of gravitational waves as such a contribution has little impact on the position of the peak, but rather modifies the relative amplitude power between low and large $`\mathrm{}`$. Identically, a reionisation effect and a possible hot dark matter component are neglected in the following. We make the assumption that $`w_\mathrm{Q}=\mathrm{Const}`$ throughout all the epochs of interest. This assumption is unjustified in realistic quintessence models as one expects $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ to have varied at the radiation to matter transition and to be decreasing today. However, if we want to study the influence of the quintessence field on the position of the Doppler peaks of the CMB anisotropies, then this is sufficent, and the constant $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ has to be seen as some “average” of a dynamical $`w_\mathrm{Q}(z)`$ arising in a quintessence scenario.

### 3.1 Likelihood from CMB

In order to use CMB data, we first reconstruct the likelihood function of the various experiments.

We follow the technique developped in Bartlett et al. (bdbl (2000)), and used in Douspis et al. (dbsbl (2001)) and Benoît et al. (2002c ), by constructing a large $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ power spectra database. We investigate six cosmological parameters assuming flat cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{tot}}=1`$). The density of the universe is parametrised by the baryon contribution, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}h^2`$, and the dark energy, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$, for which we allow its pressure-energy density ratio, $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ to vary.

The Hubble parameter, $`H_0`$, the spectral index, $`n`$, and the normalisation of the spectra, parametrized in this work by $`\sigma _8`$ are the remaining free parameters. Table 1 describes the corresponding gridding used for the database.

We proceed by estimating cosmological parameters from the likelihood functions reconstructed as described in Benoît et al. (2002c ). We compute the value of the likelihood considering the actual band powers dataset of the COBE, BOOMERanG, DASI, MAXIMA, VSA, CBI, Archeops experiments (Tegmark tegmark (1996); Netterfield et al. boom2 (2002); Halverson et al. halverson (2002); Lee et al. maxima2 (2001); Scott et al. scott (2002); Pearson et al.pearson (2002); Benoît et al. 2002b ) on each model of our grid. In our approach, the best model is estimated as being those for which the likelihood is maximal $`_{\mathrm{max}}`$, while the $`68\%`$ (resp. $`95\%`$) 1-parameter interval corresponds to $`2\mathrm{ln}(/_{\mathrm{max}})[0,1]`$ (resp. $`2\mathrm{ln}(/_{\mathrm{max}})[0,4]`$) and the $`68\%`$ (resp. $`95\%`$) 2-parameters interval corresponds to $`2\mathrm{ln}(/_{\mathrm{max}})[0,2.3]`$ (resp. $`2\mathrm{ln}(/_{\mathrm{max}})[0,6.18]`$). The likelihood shown in the following are already margilalized (by maximisation) over the calibration uncertainties and the amplitude. The results are presented as 2-D contour plots, showing in shades of blue the regions where the likelihood function for a combination of any two parameters drops to the levels corresponding to $`68\%`$, $`95\%`$, and $`99\%`$ confidence regions. They would correspond to $`1`$, $`2`$, $`3`$ $`\sigma `$, respectively if the likelihood function were Gaussian. Dashed red contours mark the limits to be projected if confidence intervals are sought for any one of the parameters. To calculate either 1- or 2-D confidence intervals, the likelihood function is maximized over the remaining parameters.

### 3.2 Other Data

In order to combine with other data of cosmological relevance, the corresponding additional likelihood have to be evaluated.

An interesting useful additional constraint to add is those obtain on the amplitude of matter fluctuations on small scales: present day clusters data allow to constrain $`\sigma _c`$, related to $`\sigma _8`$ with a high accuracy, of the order of $`5\%`$ (Blanchard et al. bsbl (2000)). Similar constraint can be obtained from weak lensing measurements (Bacon et al. bacon (2000); van Waerbeke et al. vw (2002)). However, significant differences among similar analyses have appeared in recent works based on clusters as well as on weak lensing measurements (Jarvis et al. jarvis (2002); Brown et al. brown (2002), Hamana et al. hamana (2002)). We have therefore chosen to use two recent constraints, the differences of which will allow us to investigate a realistic range of systematic uncertainties. We first consider a constraint leading to high values of $`\sigma _8`$ (high $`\sigma _8`$ hereafter), in agreement with Pierpaoli et al. (pierpaoli (2001)): $`\sigma _8\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}^{0.6}=0.5\pm 10\%`$ ($`68\%`$ C.L.). Then, new estimations from Seljak et al. (seljak (2001)), Viana et al. (viana (2002)), Reiprich et al. (reip (2002)), leading to lower values, are considered by taking $`\sigma _8\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{mat}}^{0.38}=0.43\pm 10\%`$ ($`68\%`$ C.L.), hereafter low $`\sigma _8`$. The latter error bars estimates encompass the three above low normalization measurements of $`\sigma _8`$.

We also use the recent determination of the Hubble parameter from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project (Freedman et al. freedman (2001)): $`H_0=72\pm 8`$ ($`68\%`$ C.L.), assuming Gaussian uncertainty.

For the distant supernovae constraints we compute the likelihood as follows. The magnitude-redshift relation of the supernovae is given by the following relation

$$M=+5\mathrm{log}_{10}𝒟_L(z,w_\mathrm{Q},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}),$$

where $`M`$ is the observed magnitude and $`𝒟_L`$ and $``$ are respectively the “Hubble-parameter-free” luminosity-distance and the “Hubble-parameter-free” absolute magnitude at the maximum of the supernova. $`𝒟_L`$ is a function of redshift of the supernova, $`z`$, and of the cosmological parameters $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$. In the case of a flat universe with $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ as the pressure to energy density ratio of the quintessence field, the $`𝒟_L`$ function is given by

$`𝒟_L(z,w_\mathrm{Q},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q})`$ $`=`$
$`(1+z){\displaystyle _0^z}`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}u}{\sqrt{(1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q})(1+u)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}(1+u)^{3(1+w_\mathrm{Q})}}}}.`$ (1)
With the sample of supernovae from Perlmutter et al. (perlmutter (1999)), we construct the likelihood $`_{\mathrm{SN}}`$ with the following procedure:

$$_{\mathrm{SN}}=C\mathrm{exp}\left[\underset{i}{}\left(\frac{(M_i^{\mathrm{obs}}M_i(,w_\mathrm{Q},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}))^2}{2\sigma _i^2}\right)\right],$$

where $`C`$ is an arbitrary constant. We take for measured magnitude $`M^{\mathrm{obs}}`$ and uncertainty $`\sigma `$ the B-band peak magnitude and the total uncertainty of the supernovae from Perlmutter et al. (perlmutter (1999)). At each point of the two parameters grid, $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$ is associated a likelihood value obtained by maximising it over the absolute magnitude $``$.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 CMB alone

Constraints given by the CMB on some of our investigated parameters are shown in Fig. 2. Considering only CMB constraints leads to degeneracies between parameters. Fig. 2 shows the case of two parameters, $`n`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}h^2`$, which are not affected by the assumed equation of state of the dark energy. Their prefered values and error bars are $`n=0.95\pm 0.05`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}h^2=0.021\pm 0.003`$ ($`68\%`$ C.L.). Using CMB alone leaves the 2-parameters space ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q},w_\mathrm{Q}`$) almost unconstrained. Finally, 2D diagrams $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$ vs. $`H_0`$ or $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ vs. $`H_0`$ show significant level of correlation, but with degeneracies. This is illustrated by the plot $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$ vs. $`H_0`$ shown in Fig. 2. In our analysis, we found that with the improvement of CMB data obtained by the addition of Archeops band powers reduces appreciably the contours of constraints on the quintessence parameters as well as on cosmological parameters because of the position and the amplitude of the first acoustic peak are better determined, but still does not allow to break the degeneracies.

### 4.2 Adding Non CMB priors

As cluster abundance observations lead to a strong constraint on the normalization of the matter power spectrum, and $`\sigma _8`$ is rather sensitive to the changing the equation of state, it is natural to expect that this constraint in combination with constraints from $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ will lead to tight constraint on quintessence scenarios. Fig. 3 (left panels) shows the combination of CMB data with the two $`\sigma _c`$ priors described previously. As one can see, constraints on the amplitude of matter fluctuations on small scales has the potential to break the degeneracies between $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$. Only a band-shaped region of the plane is not excluded. Furthermore, combinations with different priors lead to different likelihood contours, due to the strong effect of the equation of state on $`\sigma _8`$ emphasized in Section 2. More specifically, we find that the CMB, combined with the high normalization leads to a prefered region which is marginally consistent with the constraints given by high redshift supernovae (overplotted black lines in Fig. 3). The “concordance model” ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.7`$, $`w_\mathrm{Q}=1`$) lies on the $`99\%`$ C.L. contours, and defines the two dataset as inconsistent. The best model appears then to have $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.4`$, $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0.5`$, which is itself outside the $`99\%`$ confidence region of the supernovae constraints. The combination of CMB with low normalization leads on the other hand to likelihood contours in agreement with those of supernovae and HST key project determination of $`H_0`$.

Due to the form of the joint CMB + $`\sigma _8`$ (high or low) contours, a combination with the HST constraints is expected to give stronger constraints on both $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$. The corresponding likelihood contours of Fig. 3 (middle right panel) show that quintessence is not prefered over classical cosmological constant even if the degeneracy is not totally broken: $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.70_{0.12}^{+0.16}`$, $`w_\mathrm{Q}=1^{+0.4}`$ ($`95\%`$ C.L.).

In order to break the degeneracy, it is clearly necessary to consider the additional information on the angular distance coming from distant supernovae. Considering a flat cosmology, the information on the luminosity of the supernovae can be expressed in term of constraints on the dark energy density and equation of state. Prefered value are consistent with a cosmological constant, and the likelihood contours are almost perpendicular to those of CMB, as shown in Fig. 3. Combining all the priors finally allows to put strong constraints on both quintessence parameters (Fig. 3, rightmost panel): $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.70_{0.17}^{+0.10}`$, $`w_\mathrm{Q}=1^{+0.25}`$ ($`95\%`$ C.L.) and finally breaks the $`(H_0,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q})`$ degeneracy, see Fig. 4.

As a main result, it appears that the classical $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM scenario is then conforted and given the priors we used there is no need for quintessence to reproduce the present data, although quintessence models with low $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ are still viable, and that good fits to the data can also be found for models with $`w_\mathrm{Q}<1`$ (Melchiorri et al. melch (2002))<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1During the preparation of this work, another group submitted a related paper to the archive (Melchiorri et al. melch (2002)). Although the analysis is not exactly the same, their conclusions are similar.. However, those correspond to rather unusual quintessence models.

Going back to typical quintessence models, finding only low values of $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ raises some interesting points. If we consider a pure inverse power law potential, having $`w_\mathrm{Q}<0.6`$ when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.7`$ implies a low value of the exponent $`\alpha `$ (if the slope of the potential is too steep, the field does not stop rapidly when it starts dominating, and $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ is too large). This translates into an annoyingly low value of the energy scale $`M`$ arising in the potential, since one has $`MM_{\mathrm{Pl}}(\rho _\mathrm{c}/M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^4)^{1/(4+\alpha )}`$ (Brax et al. brax2 (2000)). For example, in order to have $`M>10^3\mathrm{TeV}`$, one needs $`\alpha 6`$, whereas data favor $`w_\mathrm{Q}<0.6`$, which corresponds to $`\alpha <\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3}`$, or $`M<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}20}\mathrm{GeV}`$. There are of course several possibilities which allow to have a lower $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ in quintessence scenarios. An example to evade this problem is to use the SUGRA potential found by Brax & Martin (brax1 (1999)), which is given by $`V=M^{4+\alpha }/\varphi ^\alpha \times \mathrm{exp}(\frac{1}{2}\varphi ^2/M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2)`$. The exponential correction comes from supergravity considerations and insures that the potential has a local minimum which is almost reached by the field today. For example, for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q}=0.7`$, one has $`w_\mathrm{Q}=0.8`$, almost independently of $`\alpha `$. This illustrates the fact that if it is still difficult to distinguish some quintessence models from a cosmological constant with the present state of available data, although these already allow to exclude a large number of quintessence models, among which the simplest one.

## 5 Conclusion

We have studied the constraints that can be obtained on cosmological parameters within the quintessence paradigm by using various combinations of observational data set. For simplicity, only models with constant $`w_\mathrm{Q}`$ were examined as they are believed to be sufficient to existing data at their present accuracy level. For similar reasons, we neglected possible reionization or non-zero gravitational wave contribution. Indeed, this approach has the advantage to help to understand whether quintessence models should be favored or not over a classical cosmological constant, while constraints on more specific scenarios have to be investigated directly one by one (Douspis et al. dousp2 (2002)). Our analysis method has been to investigate contours in 2-D parameters space. Such an approach allows to examine possible degeneracies among parameters which are not easy to identify when constraints are formulated in term of a single parameter. For instance, we found that CMB data alone, despite the high precision data obtained by Archeops do not require the existence of a non-zero contribution of quintessence, because of the degeneracy with the Hubble parameter: in practice CMB data leave a large fraction of the $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q},w_\mathrm{Q})`$ plane unconstrained, while only a restricted region of the $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{Q},H_0)`$ plane is allowed. On the contrary, we found that almost no correlation exist with the baryonic content $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}`$ nor the primordial index $`n`$. In order to restrict the parameter space of allowed models, we have applied several different constraints. Interestingly, we found that the amplitude of the dark matter fluctuations, as measured by clusters abundance or large scale weak lensing data can potentially help to break existing degeneracies, although existing uncertainties, mainly systematics in nature, do not allow firm conclusion yet. Clearly this will be an important check of consistency in the future. We have then added constraints from supernovae data as well as HST estimation of the Hubble parameter in order to break existing degeneracies. This allows us to infer very tight constraints on the possible range of equation of state of the dark energy. Probably the most remarkable result is that no preference for quintessence does emerge from existing CMB data although, accurate measurement of the amplitude of matter fluctuations on scale of $`8h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ may change this picture.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors acknowledge the use of the CAMB code (Lewis et al. camb (2000)). M.D. is on a CMBNet fellowship and acknowledges Oxford Astrophysics group computational facilities and the Archeops collaboration. Y.Z. acknowledges support from the C.N.R.S. This work has greatly benefitted from discussions inside the Archeops collaboration


text:
# Does the Charm Flow at RHIC?

## I Introduction

Heavy quark production in nuclear collisions ($`A+Ac(b)+X`$) is conventionally calculated via pQCD Combridge:1978kx ; Gavai:1994gb ; Sjostrand:2000wi ; Wang:1991ht . Final state elastic scattering effects either at the partonic Thoma:1990fm  or the hadronic rescattering level Zhang:2002ta ; Lin:2000jp  are not expected to be large distortions of the initial spectra because the cross sections involved are small. On the other hand, energy loss in dense matter via induced gluon radiation could possibly lead to a large suppression of the high $`p_T`$ distribution relative to pQCD predictions Shuryak:1996gc ; Mustafa:1997pm ; Lin:1998bd . It was this suppression that was thought to be essential to prevent the open charm “background” from swamping dilepton signatures of the sought after thermal plasma. However, more recent considerations suggest that the “dead cone” effect for heavy quarks Dokshitzer:2001zm  may inhibit induced radiative energy loss. More quantitative calculations appear to support this assertion magda . Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect that heavy quark (and open charm hadron) production could be well approximated by conventional factorized pQCD even in central $`Au+Au`$ collisions at RHIC. This would indicate that the produced medium is essentially transparent to heavy quarks, or equivalently, the heavy quark and subsequent D or B have mean free paths at least as large as nuclear dimensions. In this case, the charm and bottom quark yields are predicted to scale with atomic number $`A`$ and impact parameter $`b`$, simply according to the Glauber nuclear overlap density $`T_{AB}(b)`$. The predicted distribution of heavy quarks, $`Q=c,b`$, is then

$$\frac{dN_Q^{AB(b)}}{dyd^2pt}=T_{AB}(b)\frac{d\sigma _Q^{PQCD}}{dyd^2pt}.$$
(1)
For central 10% $`Au+Au`$ collisions $`T_{AuAu}(cent)=22.6mb^1`$. Nuclear geometry therefore amplifies the $`p+p`$ rate by the number of binary collisions $`N_{binary}905`$. See ref. Gavai:1994gb  for an extensive survey of pQCD heavy quark production.

Experimentally, recent PHENIX data PHENIX\_e  on “prompt” single electron production in central and “minimum bias” $`Au+Au`$ collisions at $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ AGeV have tested the above pQCD predictions. Utilizing PYTHIA Sjostrand:2000wi  to take into account the $`cD,D^{}`$ fragmentation and subsequent open charm decays, the data were found to be in good agreement with the pQCD predictions within the errors quoted, revealing no indication of a medium effect. Furthermore the observed binary collision scaling of the yield with centrality shows no hint (within relatively large errors) of possible suppression due to gluon shadowing or saturation effects. It should be noted that nuclear modifications to the parton distribution functions may only lead to a small effect on the charm cross section because the PHENIX acceptance spans both the conventional shadowing and anti-shadowing $`x0.050.15`$ range.

In this letter we point out however that the single electron spectra in the observed $`p_T<3`$ GeV range may hide much more extreme dynamics. We show that the same observed $`e^{}`$ spectra is reproduced by a thermal hydrodynamic model that is consistent with the lighter hadron transverse momentum distributions. In the $`p_T<2`$ GeV range, striking collective flow signatures have been observed at RHIC for $`\pi ,K,p`$ v2phenix ; v2star ; ptdata . Hydrodynamic models of course assume that (at least for light quarks and gluons) the opacity of the produced quark-gluon plasma is high enough that local equilibrium is achieved early in the collision and maintained through hadronization. This extreme assumption, first proposed by Landau and Feinberg, has until recently consistently over-predicted collective flow effects in hadronic interactions.

The collective flow velocity field in hydrodynamics is predicted to lead to strong mass dependent distortions of the transverse momentum spectra Stocker:jr ; Shuryak:ds ; VanHove:1982vk  relative to pQCD predictions in Eqn. 1. In pQCD the spectral distribution in $`A+B`$ collisions is identical to that in $`p+p`$ up to the $`T_{AB}`$ geometrical scale factor. Recent detailed hydrodynamic calculations of collective flow patterns expected in $`Au+Au`$ at $`\sqrt{s}=130,200`$ AGeV using realistic QCD equations of state found remarkable good agreement with the radial flow and azimuthal asymmetries observed in the $`\pi ,K,p`$ spectra Huovinen:2001cy ; Teaney:2001av ; Huovinen:2002rn . This is in sharp contrast to lower energy data (SPS, AGS, SIS, Bevalac) where one fluid hydrodynamics always over-predicted collective flow and large dissipative non-equilibrium corrections to its predictions were necessary to reconcile theory with data. We note that phenomenological fits Schnedermann:1993ws ; Peitzmann:2002nt  with adjustable parameters could reproduce SPS data, but these fits required fine tuning of initial conditions and are not consistent with more realistic one-fluid hydrodynamics results Kolb:2000fh .

At RHIC the produced density and equilibration rates could be high enough that at least the light quarks and gluons may achieve local equilibrium and subsequent hydrodynamic collective flow. However, that local equilibrium could be achieved poses an entirely non-trivial problem for transport theory. Recent studies Molnar:2001ux ; Lin:2002gc ; Bass:2002fh ; Dumitru:2000up  based on parton cascade dynamics indicate that the opacity needed to achieve local equilibrium must be at least an order of magnitude higher than pQCD estimates. We note that non-linear Yang-Mills dynamics Teaney:2002kn  is too weak to account for the strong observed azimuthal collectivity observed out to several GeV. In contrast, the data are easily described if local equilibrium is simply assumed! Jet tomographic analysis of the high $`p_T`$ quenching pattern also suggests that the matter produced is indeed highly opaque Gyulassy:2001nm .

The question then naturally arises whether in spite of the strong theoretical prejudice against heavy quark local equilibration in nuclear collisions, could the mechanisms that appear to effect such an equilibration in the light partons also coerce the heavy quarks “to go with the flow” Bugaev:2002fd ? We test this hypothesis by computing the transverse momentum spectra of open charm and bottom hadrons using the same transverse boosted Bjorken model that fits the light hadron $`p_T`$ spectra up to 2 GeV. The numerical results of realistic Bjorken boost invariant hydrodynamics at RHIC can be approximated via Schnedermann:1993ws ; Kolb:2000fh

$$\frac{dN_H}{dyd^2p_{}}=\frac{dN_H}{dy}\frac{m_{}}{Z}_0^Rr𝑑rI_0\left(\frac{p_{}\mathrm{sinh}\rho _{}(r)}{T_{fo}}\right)K_1\left(\frac{m_{}\mathrm{cosh}\rho _{}(r)}{T_{fo}}\right)$$
(2)
where $`T_{fo}`$ is the freeze-out temperature and $`Z`$ normalizes the transverse momentum integral. The radial Doppler boost rapidity is taken as

$$\rho _{}(r)=\mathrm{tanh}^1(\beta _T(r))$$
(3)
and

$$\beta _T(r)=\beta _{max}\left(\frac{r}{R}\right)$$
(4)
which assumes a linear boost profile.

In Fig. 1, the resulting “Doppler shifted” transverse momentum distributions for $`\pi `$, $`D`$ and $`B`$ hadrons are compared to the pQCD event generator PYTHIA for 10% central $`Au+Au`$ collisions at $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ AGeV. The PYTHIA parameters PYTHIA\_param  for charm and bottom are taken from PHENIXe , where the values were tuned to lower energy FNAL charm data and ISR single electron data. The PYTHIA $`\pi `$ results use a K factor = 3.5, which agrees well with the UA1 parameterization scaled to $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ GeV and scaled for the $`\pi /h`$ ratio, as calculated in phenix\_highpt . For the hydrodynamic model calculation, we use a fixed temperature $`T=128`$ MeV heinz  and fit to the PHENIX $`\pi ,K,p`$ transverse momentum distributions phenix\_hadrons  to determine $`\beta _{max}=0.65`$ for central collisions. These values are compatible with those previously derived jane . The $`\pi `$ hydrodynamic calculation result is normalized to the PHENIX measured $`dN/dy(\pi ^+)=276\pm 3`$ phenix\_hadrons , and the $`D`$ and $`B`$ results are normalized to the PYTHIA pQCD integrated dN/dy values. Different boost profiles are also allowed and should be considered, including full hydrodynamic model calculations.

Note that in the case of pions, there is a substantial difference between the unquenched PYTHIA pQCD prediction and the radial hydrodynamic flow results. Also shown in Fig. 1 are the PHENIX $`\pi ^+`$ yields for 5% central $`Au+Au`$ collisions phenix\_hadrons  and the PHENIX $`\pi ^0`$ yields for 10% central $`Au+Au`$ collisions phenix\_highpt . The data are well described by the hydrodynamic calculation up to $`p_T2`$ GeV, but still fall substantially below the PYTHIA and UA1 parameterization at higher $`p_T`$. However, remarkably the difference between these two extreme dynamics is much less for the heavy open charm and bottom hadrons. The two models agree quite well up to $`p_T`$ 3 and 5 GeV for $`D`$ and $`B`$ mesons respectively.

In Fig. 2 we show the hydrodynamic model and PYTHIA pQCD calculations for $`D`$ mesons, $`B`$ mesons, and their resulting decay electron distributions for 10% central $`Au+Au`$ collisions at $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ AGeV. Also shown are the PHENIX measured “prompt” single electron distribution PHENIXe . Both the infinite mean free path pQCD PYTHIA prediction and the zero mean free path hydrodynamic flow prediction reproduce the electron data. This is the central observation of this letter.

We have also compared these calculations for “minimum bias” (0-92% central) $`Au+Au`$ collisions at $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ AGeV as shown in Fig. 3. For the “minimum bias” data, PYTHIA pQCD is scaled by $`T_{AA}=6.2mb^1`$ (or equivalently $`N_{binary}=246`$). The hydrodynamic calculation uses temperature (T) and boost ($`\beta _{max}`$) values for discrete centrality bins and then takes a weighted average, using the number of binary collisions for each centrality class as the weight factor. Assuming a temperature $`T=128MeV`$ independent of centrality, we find reasonable agreement with the PHENIX $`\pi ,K,p`$ spectra phenix\_hadrons  with $`\beta _{max}`$ = 0.65, 0.65, 0.63, 0.55, 0.25 for centralities 0-5%, 5-15%, 15-30%, 30-60%, 60-92%, respectively. Again, we find reasonable agreement between hydrodynamics, PYTHIA and the PHENIX experimental data.

It may be a coincidence at RHIC, but the fact is that the initial charm and bottom quarks from pQCD may be produced going with the flow of light quark and gluons. This means that even if the heavy quark would lose energy in a static plasma, they do not because they are essentially at rest in the comoving frame of the flowing plasma. The feedback of positive energy gain from the comoving matter makes it impossible for the heavy quark in this momentum range to change its distribution appreciably. The single electron data are thus also consistent with the formation of a highly opaque fluid that sweeps even the heavy quarks along its strong currents.

If there exist interactions that maintain local thermal equilibrium, could they be strong enough to bring heavy quarks into chemical equilibrium as well? At lower SPS energies there is not sufficient time to “cook up the charm”, and chemical equilibrium calculations vastly over-predict the charm yield relative to pQCD Gorenstein:2000re . However, at RHIC energies heavy quark chemistry may not be as far off as long as exact charm conservation is taken into account in the canonical formulation Andronic:2002pj . Recent estimates suggest that canonically suppressed charm is in fact too small by about an order of magnitude relative to pQCD and the PHENIX data peterb . However, charm and chemistry are exponentially sensitive to the freeze-out conditions Gorenstein:2000re . More work is needed to test this most radical of possibilities.

The single electron data below $`p_T3`$ GeV therefore provides strong motivation to look to other observables to help differentiate extreme dynamical scenarios. Certainly these models must be confronted with higher statistics single electron data and a full range of exclusive centrality bins. This data is expected in the near future from the PHENIX experiment in $`Au+Au`$ at $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ AGeV ralf\_qm . Of course more precise data at higher $`p_T`$ could differentiate such models since pQCD is only power law suppressed while hydrodynamics is always eventually exponentially suppressed. However, this does not rule out a role for hydrodynamics at the lower $`p_T`$.

The smoking gun signature for hydrodynamic flow would be to observe elliptic flow for $`D`$ (or $`B`$) mesons including of course $`J/\psi `$. Unfortunately, the current statistical method used by PHENIX for measuring charm via single electrons requires the subtraction of a significant background from Dalitz decay and conversion electrons. This “background” makes extraction of $`v_2`$ for heavy quarks challenging. Even a displaced vertex tag (from a future experimental upgrade) would only partially resolve this problem since the electrons direction is not well correlated with the $`D`$ meson direction, thus blurring the orientation for measuring $`v_2`$. It may prove that only a displaced vertex combined with a complete reconstruction via $`D\pi +K`$ will suffice for such a measurement. Another possibility is that if the plasma is opaque enough to direct the $`J/\psi `$ or its pre-cursor $`c\overline{c}`$ into azimuthally asymmetric flow, then a $`v_2`$ measurement of $`J/\psi `$ could serve as the smoking gun. Note that in this case the $`J/\psi `$ may arise completely from a late stage “coalescence” Thews:2000rj . This may be the easiest and most direct way resolve whether the charm and bottom really flows or are simply bystanders that coincidentally have the same azimuthally averaged transverse distribution as the plasma at RHIC.

## II Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of Nuclear Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Grant No. DE-FG02-93ER40764 and DE-FG02-00ER41152 and DE-FG02-86ER40281. JLN acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.