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# References

ON THE PRODUCTS IN THE FINITE GROUPS
V.V.Genk
Belarusian State Politechnical College
Tsentralnaya sq.2, Molodechno, Minsk region, 222310, The Republic of Belarus
E-mail: gravitation@mail.admiral.ru

Sequences of elements of a finite group can form “a good” in this or that sense, part of a group (see, for example, -), and a set of products of all commutators is a commutant of a group. A question arises: what information about a group does a set made of every possible products of all elements of the finite group taken in an unspecified order carry?

Let $`G=\{1,a_1,a_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{1},\mathrm{},a_n,a_{n}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}\}`$ be a finite group of an odd order $`2n+1`$ (later on simply “an odd group”), where $`a_i^{\pm 1}`$ — the whole of different elements of the group.

Let’s form a set:

$$K=\{g_{\sigma (1)}\mathrm{}g_{\sigma (2n)}\sigma S_{2n},g_iG1,g_ig_j\text{for }ij\},$$

where $`S_{2n}`$ — a set of substitutions in $`2n`$ symbols. Let’s later on call a set $`K`$ as a $`K`$-set. This paper proposes a hypothesis on the structure of a $`K`$-set of odd groups and a special case of this hypothesis is proved.

T h e b a s i c h y p o t h e s i s.

A $`K`$-set of any odd group coincides with its commutant.

The following two suggestions take place (the first is evident, the second is proved by induction on word length out of a $`K`$-set).

S u g g e s t i o n 1.

A $`K`$-set of an odd group is its invariant subset, containing the unit of a group and also together with any element and its inverse.

S u g g e s t i o n 2.

A K-set of an odd group is contained in its commutant.

Just from these suggestions by the Feit-Thompson theorem such a consequence arises (indicated by prof. L.S.Kazarin):

C o n s e q u e n c e.

A K-set of an odd group is solvable too, i.e. a repeat procedure of taking of a K-sets through the finite number of steps leads to the unit of a group.

When proving the following theorem commutator identities are systematically used

$$[a,b]=[a,ab],[a,b]=[b^1,ab],[a,b]^1=[b,a],$$
(1)
and an obvious lemma as well:

L e m m a.

Not any other element of an odd group but the unit can be conjugated with its inverse.

T h e o r e m.

The product of two commutators in an odd group belongs to its $`K`$-set.

P r o o f.

It’s sufficient to check that the inclusion takes place when one of the commutators is made of elements which themselves or their inverse enter the other commutator. Sixteen variants of accurance of common elements or their inverse into commutators are possible with an accuracy to designation of the elements of a group:

$$\begin{array}{cccc}[a_1,a_2][a_1,a_3],& [a_1,a_2][a_2,a_3],& [a_1,a_2][a_3,a_2],& \\ [a_1,a_2][a_3,a_1],& [a_1,a_2][a_3,a_1^1],& [a_1,a_2][a_1^1,a_3],& \\ [a_1,a_2][a_2^1,a_3],& [a_1,a_2][a_3,a_2^1],& [a_1,a_2][a_2,a_1],& \\ [a_1,a_2][a_1,a_2],& [a_1,a_2][a_1,a_2^1],& [a_1,a_2][a_1^1,a_2],& \\ [a_1,a_2][a_2,a_1^1],& [a_1,a_2][a_2^1,a_1],& [a_1,a_2][a_2^1,a_1^1],& \\ [a_1,a_2][a_1^1,a_2^1].& & & \end{array}$$
(2)
Let’s consider the first of them in more detail. The rest are analyzed similarly or reduced to already analyzed ones. It’s clear that the product of elements $`a_1a_2\{a_1,a_2,a_1^1,a_2^1\}`$.

Let

$$a_1a_2\{a_3,a_3^1,a_i^\epsilon \},\text{where }i>3,\epsilon =\pm 1.$$

1) If $`a_1a_2=a_i^\epsilon ,`$
then by the second of the identities (1):

$$[a_1,a_2][a_1,a_3]=[a_2^1,a_i^\epsilon ][a_1,a_3]K.$$

2) Let $`a_1a_2=a_3`$, then:

$$[a_1,a_2][a_1,a_3]=[a_2^1,a_3][a_1,a_3].$$

Consider the product of elements $`a_2^1a_3`$. As shown above

$$a_2^1a_3\{a_1,a_1^1,a_i^\epsilon \},i>3.$$

a) For $`a_2^1a_3=a_i^\epsilon `$ by the first of the identities (1):

$$[a_2^1,a_i^\epsilon ][a_1,a_3]K.$$

b) If $`a_2^1a_3=a_1`$, then $`a_3a_1=a_1a_2a_2^1a_3=a_1a_3`$ and

$$[a_1,a_2][a_1,a_3]K.$$

c) It remains $`a_2^1a_3=a_1^1`$, from which $`a_1^1=a_2^1a_1a_2`$, i.e. $`a_1a_1^1`$ and this case is impossible due to the lemma.

3) Let, finally, $`a_1a_2=a_3^1`$. Then

$$[a_1,a_2][a_1,a_3]=[a_2^1,a_3^1][a_1,a_3].$$

Considering the product

$$a_2^1a_3^1\{a_1,a_1^1,a_i^\epsilon \},i>3$$

as above one can make sure that in any case

$$[a_1,a_2][a_1,a_3]K.$$

All another variants in (2) may be considered similarly. So the proof is completed.

Thus, the basic hypothesis is true for odd groups with a commutant elements of which reach the limit of products of not more than two commutators. What concerns noncommutative groups of an even order the question about a structure of $`K`$-sets of such groups remains open. An example of symmetric group $`S_3`$ shows that a $`K`$-set of an even group can disagree with its commutant.

The author expresses his thanks to prof. L.S.Kazarin for useful discussions and valuable remarks.


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# 1 Abstract

## 1 Abstract

The Ginibre ensemble of nonhermitean random Hamiltonian matrices $`K`$ is considered. Each quantum system described by $`K`$ is a dissipative system and the eigenenergies $`Z_i`$ of the Hamiltonian are complex-valued random variables. The second difference of complex eigenenergies is viewed as discrete analog of Hessian with respect to labelling index. The results are considered in view of Wigner and Dyson’s electrostatic analogy. An extension of space of dynamics of random magnitudes is performed by introduction of discrete space of labeling indices. The comparison with the Gaussian ensembles of random hermitean Hamiltonian matrices $`H`$ is performed.

## 2 Introduction

Random Matrix Theory RMT studies quantum Hamiltonian operators $`H`$ which are random matrix variables. Their matrix elements $`H_{ij}`$ are independent random scalar variables . There were studied among others the following Gaussian Random Matrix ensembles GRME: orthogonal GOE, unitary GUE, symplectic GSE, as well as circular ensembles: orthogonal COE, unitary CUE, and symplectic CSE. The choice of ensemble is based on quantum symmetries ascribed to the Hamiltonian $`H`$. The Hamiltonian $`H`$ acts on quantum space $`V`$ of eigenfunctions. It is assumed that $`V`$ is $`N`$-dimensional Hilbert space $`V=𝐅^N`$, where the real, complex, or quaternion field $`𝐅=𝐑,𝐂,𝐇`$, corresponds to GOE, GUE, or GSE, respectively. If the Hamiltonian matrix $`H`$ is hermitean $`H=H^{}`$, then the probability density function of $`H`$ reads:

$`f_{}(H)=𝒞_{H\beta }\mathrm{exp}[\beta {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{Tr}(H^2)],`$ (1)
$`𝒞_{H\beta }=({\displaystyle \frac{\beta }{2\pi }})^{𝒩_{H\beta }/2},`$
$`𝒩_{H\beta }=N+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}N(N1)\beta ,`$
$`{\displaystyle f_{}(H)𝑑H}=1,`$
$`dH={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{ji}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\gamma =0}{\overset{D1}{}}}dH_{ij}^{(\gamma )},`$
$`H_{ij}=(H_{ij}^{(0)},\mathrm{},H_{ij}^{(D1)})𝐅,`$
where the parameter $`\beta `$ assume values $`\beta =1,2,4,`$ for GOE($`N`$), GUE($`N`$), GSE($`N`$), respectively, and $`𝒩_{H\beta }`$ is number of independent matrix elements of hermitean Hamiltonian $`H`$. The Hamiltonian $`H`$ belongs to Lie group of hermitean $`N\times N𝐅`$-matrices, and the matrix Haar’s measure $`dH`$ is invariant under transformations from the unitary group U($`N`$, F). The eigenenergies $`E_i,i=1,\mathrm{},N`$, of $`H`$, are real-valued random variables $`E_i=E_i^{}`$. It was Eugene Wigner who firstly dealt with eigenenergy level repulsion phenomenon studying nuclear spectra . RMT is applicable now in many branches of physics: nuclear physics (slow neutron resonances, highly excited complex nuclei), condensed phase physics (fine metallic particles, random Ising model \[spin glasses\]), quantum chaos (quantum billiards, quantum dots), disordered mesoscopic systems (transport phenomena), quantum chromodynamics, quantum gravity, field theory.

## 3 The Ginibre ensembles

Jean Ginibre considered another example of GRME dropping the assumption of hermiticity of Hamiltonians thus defining generic $`𝐅`$-valued Hamiltonian $`K`$ . Hence, $`K`$ belong to general linear Lie group GL($`N`$, F), and the matrix Haar’s measure $`dK`$ is invariant under transformations form that group. The distribution of $`K`$ is given by:

$`f_𝒦(K)=𝒞_{K\beta }\mathrm{exp}[\beta {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{Tr}(K^{}K)],`$ (2)
$`𝒞_{K\beta }=({\displaystyle \frac{\beta }{2\pi }})^{𝒩_{K\beta }/2},`$
$`𝒩_{K\beta }=N^2\beta ,`$
$`{\displaystyle f_𝒦(K)𝑑K}=1,`$
$`dK={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\gamma =0}{\overset{D1}{}}}dK_{ij}^{(\gamma )},`$
$`K_{ij}=(K_{ij}^{(0)},\mathrm{},K_{ij}^{(D1)})𝐅,`$
where $`\beta =1,2,4`$, stands for real, complex, and quaternion Ginibre ensembles, respectively. Therefore, the eigenenergies $`Z_i`$ of quantum system ascribed to Ginibre ensemble are complex-valued random variables. The eigenenergies $`Z_i,i=1,\mathrm{},N`$, of nonhermitean Hamiltonian $`K`$ are not real-valued random variables $`Z_iZ_i^{}`$. Jean Ginibre postulated the following joint probability density function of random vector of complex eigenvalues $`Z_1,\mathrm{},Z_N`$ for $`N\times N`$ Hamiltonian matrices $`K`$ for $`\beta =2`$ :

$`P(z_1,\mathrm{},z_N)=`$ (3)
$`={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi j!}}{\displaystyle \underset{i<j}{\overset{N}{}}}|z_iz_j|^2\mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}|z_j|^2),`$
where $`z_i`$ are complex-valued sample points ($`z_i𝐂`$).

We emphasize here Wigner and Dyson’s electrostatic analogy. A Coulomb gas of $`N`$ unit charges moving on complex plane (Gauss’s plane) C is considered. The vectors of positions of charges are $`z_i`$ and potential energy of the system is:

$$U(z_1,\mathrm{},z_N)=\underset{i<j}{}\mathrm{ln}|z_iz_j|+\frac{1}{2}\underset{i}{}|z_i^2|.$$
(4)
If gas is in thermodynamical equilibrium at temperature $`T=\frac{1}{2k_B}`$ ($`\beta =\frac{1}{k_BT}=2`$, $`k_B`$ is Boltzmann’s constant), then probability density function of vectors of positions is $`P(z_1,\mathrm{},z_N)`$ Eq. (3). Therefore, complex eigenenergies $`Z_i`$ of quantum system are analogous to vectors of positions of charges of Coulomb gas. Moreover, complex-valued spacings $`\mathrm{\Delta }^1Z_i`$ of complex eigenenergies of quantum system:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^1Z_i=Z_{i+1}Z_i,i=1,\mathrm{},(N1),$$
(5)
are analogous to vectors of relative positions of electric charges. Finally, complex-valued second differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i`$ of complex eigenenergies:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i=Z_{i+2}2Z_{i+1}+Z_i,i=1,\mathrm{},(N2),$$
(6)
are analogous to vectors of relative positions of vectors of relative positions of electric charges.

The eigenenergies $`Z_i=Z(i)`$ can be treated as values of function $`Z`$ of discrete parameter $`i=1,\mathrm{},N`$. The ”Jacobian” of $`Z_i`$ reads:

$$\mathrm{Jac}Z_i=\frac{Z_i}{i}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^1Z_i}{\mathrm{\Delta }^1i}=\mathrm{\Delta }^1Z_i.$$
(7)
We readily have, that the spacing is an discrete analog of Jacobian, since the indexing parameter $`i`$ belongs to discrete space of indices $`iI=\{1,\mathrm{},N\}`$. Therefore, the first derivative with respect to $`i`$ reduces to the first differential quotient. The Hessian is a Jacobian applied to Jacobian. We immediately have the formula for discrete ”Hessian” for the eigenenergies $`Z_i`$:

$$\mathrm{Hess}Z_i=\frac{^2Z_i}{i^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i}{\mathrm{\Delta }^1i^2}=\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i.$$
(8)
Thus, the second difference of $`Z`$ is discrete analog of Hessian of $`Z`$. One emphasizes that both ”Jacobian” and ”Hessian” work on discrete index space $`I`$ of indices $`i`$. The spacing is also a discrete analog of energy slope whereas the second difference corresponds to energy curvature with respect to external parameter $`\lambda `$ describing parametric “evolution” of energy levels . The finite differences of order higher than two are discrete analogs of compositions of ”Jacobians” with ”Hessians” of $`Z`$.

The eigenenergies $`E_i,iI`$, of the hermitean Hamiltonian $`H`$ are ordered increasingly real-valued random variables. They are values of discrete function $`E_i=E(i)`$. The first difference of adjacent eigenenergies is:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^1E_i=E_{i+1}E_i,i=1,\mathrm{},(N1),$$
(9)
are analogous to vectors of relative positions of electric charges of one-dimensional Coulomb gas. It is simply the spacing of two adjacent energies. Real-valued second differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2E_i`$ of eigenenergies:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^2E_i=E_{i+2}2E_{i+1}+E_i,i=1,\mathrm{},(N2),$$
(10)
are analogous to vectors of relative positions of vectors of relative positions of charges of one-dimensional Coulomb gas. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i`$ have their real parts $`\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i`$, and imaginary parts $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i`$, as well as radii (moduli) $`|\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i|`$, and main arguments (angles) $`\mathrm{Arg}\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i`$. $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2Z_i`$ are extensions of real-valued second differences:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^2E_i=E_{i+2}2E_{i+1}+E_i,i=1,\mathrm{},(N2),$$
(11)
of adjacent ordered increasingly real-valued eigenenergies $`E_i`$ of Hamiltonian $`H`$ defined for GOE, GUE, GSE, and Poisson ensemble PE (where Poisson ensemble is composed of uncorrelated randomly distributed eigenenergies) . The Jacobian and Hessian operators of energy function $`E(i)=E_i`$ for these ensembles read:

$$\mathrm{Jac}E_i=\frac{E_i}{i}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^1E_i}{\mathrm{\Delta }^1i}=\mathrm{\Delta }^1E_i,$$
(12)
and

$$\mathrm{Hess}E_i=\frac{^2E_i}{i^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^2E_i}{\mathrm{\Delta }^1i^2}=\mathrm{\Delta }^2E_i.$$
(13)
The treatment of first and second differences of eigenenergies as discrete analogs of Jacobians and Hessians allows one to consider these eigenenergies as a magnitudes with statistical properties studied in discrete space of indices. The labelling index $`i`$ of the eigenenergies is an additional variable of ”motion”, hence the space of indices $`I`$ augments the space of dynamics of random magnitudes.


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# Deep XMM-Newton observation of a northern LMC field: I. Selected X-ray sources XMM-Newton is an ESA Science Mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member states and the USA (NASA)

## 1 Introduction

Due to their proximity the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud (LMC, SMC) were always subject to X-ray surveys for satellites carrying imaging instruments. The most sensitive and most complete survey is available from ROSAT data obtained between 1990 and 1998 in the energy range 0.1–2.4 keV. In particular pointed observations with the PSPC detector with its large field of view covered in total $``$59 and $``$18 square degrees of the LMC and SMC regions on the sky (Haberl & Pietsch 1999; Haberl et al. 2000). The ROSAT PSPC and HRI observations revealed about 1000 and 750 X-ray sources in the direction of the LMC and SMC, respectively (see also Sasaki et al. 2000a, b).

The large number of X-ray sources in the Magellanic Cloud fields allows population studies on rich samples of various kinds of source types powered by different mechanisms. An unusually high concentration of Be/X-ray binary systems was found in the SMC (Haberl & Sasaki 2000). Detectors sensitive to higher energies on board ASCA and XTE detected pulsations from many new Be/X-ray transients during outburst (Yokogawa et al. 2002). The high sensitivity of the XMM-Newton instruments promises the detection of pulsations to much lower X-ray fluxes (Sasaki et al. 2001) usually observed from Be/X-ray binaries in their low state.

To study the source population in the LMC to flux limits below $`10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 a deep $``$60 ks XMM-Newton observation was performed as part of the telescope scientist guaranteed time. The selected field, aimed at RA = 05h31m20s and Dec = –65°57′38″, was chosen because of its location on the rim of the supergiant shell (SGS) LMC 4 (Meaburn 1980) and the simultaneous coverage of three known high mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). These are : 1) The Be/X-ray binary pulsar EXO 053109-6609.2 discovered in outburst during EXOSAT observations of the LMC X-4 region in 1983 (Pakull et al. 1985). X-ray pulsations with a pulse period of 13.7 s were detected for the first time in ROSAT data by Dennerl et al. (1996). 2) An outburst observed from RX J0529.8-6556 by ROSAT and the detection of 69 s X-ray pulsations led to the suggestion by Haberl et al. (1997) that RX J0529.8-6556 is also a Be/X-ray binary. Optical spectroscopy by Negueruela & Coe (2002) confirmed this. 3) The highly variable source RX J0532.5-6551 proposed as first HMXB in the LMC powered by accretion from the wind of an OB supergiant companion (Haberl et al. 1995) which is supported by optical spectroscopy (Negueruela & Coe 2002).

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) behind nearby galaxies are of interest for two main reasons. They can be used to define a precise reference coordinate system (e.g. Anguita et al. 2000) and provide line of sight probes to study the interstellar medium in the galaxies (e.g. Kahabka et al. 2001; Haberl et al. 2001). The new X-ray observatories Chandra and XMM-Newton will largely increase the number of background AGN as first results from LMC observations demonstrate (Haberl et al. 2001; Dobrzycki et al. 2002).

In this article first results from the deep XMM-Newton observation are presented. The paper concentrates on spectral and temporal analyses of a selected sample of X-ray sources which includes the three known HMXBs and new candidates for supernova remnants (SNRs), a supersoft source (SSS), a likely Be/X-ray binary pulsar and ten candidates for background AGN.

## 2 The XMM-Newton observation

XMM-Newton (Jansen et al. 2001) observed the field located in the northern part of the LMC during satellite revolution #152 on Oct. 7, 2000 from 03:36 to 22:43 UT with a gap in the middle of about 90 min due to ground station hand-over. A preliminary analysis of the EPIC data, which did not apply proper corrections for telescope vignetting and point spread function, was reported in Haberl (2002). Here results of the analysis of a selected sample of detected X-ray sources are presented utilizing the data collected with the European Photon Imaging Cameras (EPICs). The cameras are based on MOS (EPIC-MOS1 and -MOS2, Turner et al. 2001) and pn (EPIC-pn, Strüder et al. 2001) CCD detectors and are mounted behind the three X-ray multi-mirror systems (Aschenbach et al. 2000) and observe simultaneously. All cameras were operated in Full-Frame read-out mode providing data over a field of view of $``$13′ radius and used the medium filter to block out optical light. The data were processed using the XMM-Newton analysis package SAS version 5.3.3 to produce the photon event files and binned data products like images, spectra and light curves.

### 2.1 The LMC field

Images were created in the energy bands 0.3–1.0 keV (soft), 1.0–2.0 keV (medium) and 2.0–7.5 keV (hard) and smoothed using intensity-dependent adaptive filtering. Detector-intrinsic particle induced background from an observation with closed filter wheel (on April 5, 2000) was subtracted before each image was corrected for telescope vignetting and exposure. A true colour image was produced by combining the three images and using red, green and blue colour scales to represent the intensities in the soft, medium and hard energy bands, respectively. This RGB image is presented in Fig. 1. According to their spectral energy distribution X-ray sources of different type are characterized by different colours. Sources predominantly radiating in the soft band appear in red while hard sources are blue. Nearby bright sources outside the field of view (an order of magnitude brighter than the brightest source inside the field) cause arc-like structures in the images due to photons which are single-reflected on the mirror shells. Arcs caused by the bright star AB Dor (at $``$35′ angular distance from the optical axis) can be seen in the NW part of the image. The supernova remnant N63A (an extended source $``$27′ off-axis) located East produces extended arcs on the left side of the image. Another arc from the pair of bright SNRs (N49/N49B, $``$34′) is visible on the edge of the image to the SW. To first order the energy dependence of the single-reflection efficiency is similar to that of “normal” double-reflected photons and the spectrum is little altered. Therefore, the arcs from the SNRs show the typical red-green colours of this class of sources with thermal spectra.

## 3 Selected X-ray sources

Source detection based on sliding window and maximum likelihood methods available in the SAS package yielded about 150 discrete X-ray sources in the field. A source list with X-ray properties and a statistical analysis will be presented in a follow-up paper. Here a sample of twenty sources is investigated which is selected on the basis of brightness, hardness and angular extent. To easily identify the sources in Fig. 1, their locations are marked in a grey-scale broad-band image in Fig. 2. Some information useful for the identification of the sources is provided in Table 1. Sixteen of them are located within 15″ distance to ROSAT sources as presented in Haberl & Pietsch (1999) and Sasaki et al. (2000a) and thirteen have a likely optical counterpart in the USNO A2.0 catalogue (one additional bright star is listed only in the HST guide star catalogue). Angular distances between the X-ray and optical positions are listed in the table (delta) together with the optical R and B magnitudes given in the USNO catalogue.

Finding charts produced from the DSS2 (red) image for some of the sources presented here are published in Haberl (2002), however with preliminary X-ray source positions which can differ of the order of a few arc seconds. Among the optically brightest objects in the sample three are likely late-type foreground stars given their red colours. The identification of the X-ray sources with these stars is supported by the X-ray spectrum (see below). Three other objects with B brighter than 15 mag are identified with known HMXBs and the fourth with XMMU J053011.2-655122, a candidate HMXB proposed by Haberl (2002), based on the X-ray spectrum and the brightness of the optical counterpart which is similar to those of the known HMXBs in the field. Haberl (2002) also proposed two new candidates for SNRs which can be easily identified in Fig. 1 from their angular extent and colours. For the brightest fourteen sources a sufficient number of counts ($`>`$500 in pn) were collected to allow spectral and temporal analyses. For sources with extreme X-ray spectrum a smaller number of counts allows a classification of the X-ray source. Six such sources were selected including a likely faint SSS, two SNRs, two more foreground stars and the known HMXB RX J0532.5-6551.

### 3.1 EPIC X-ray spectra

Source spectra averaged over the whole observation were extracted from MOS and pn data in circular regions around the source positions with typical radii of 16″–22″. For the extended candidate SNRs larger radii of 30″ and 45″ were used. Background was taken from nearby circular regions chosen to be at a comparable distance to the read-out node of the pn detector (RAWY coordinate) in order to avoid detector-intrinsic background variations. Redistribution matrices available with SAS 5.3 were used in combination with effective area files produced by “arfgen” which include corrections for vignetting and point spread function losses. The set of three spectra (MOS1, MOS2 and pn) was analyzed using XSPEC by simultaneously fitting a common spectral model where the normalizations between the instruments were independent parameters to allow for inter-calibration uncertainties. Errors and upper limits were derived for 90% confidence levels. Except for the brightest source (EXO 053109-6609.2) which requires a more complex model, single component models attenuated by photo-electric absorption were fit to the spectra. EPIC spectra from eight representative sources from the sample are shown in Fig. 3. Various source types can be clearly distinguished from their different energy distribution in the 0.15–10.0 keV energy band.

#### 3.1.1 High Mass X-ray Binaries

Although the Be/X-ray pulsar EXO 053109-6609.2 is known since almost 20 years, little is known about its X-ray spectrum. The small angular separation to LMC X-4 made it impossible to take spectra with non-imaging instruments and only measurements with the EXOSAT Low Energy imaging detector with different filters at energies below 2 keV were available (Brunner 1987). In the 2–20 keV band a spectrum of low statistical quality was obtained from the coded mask SL2 XRT experiment which was consistent with a power-law with a photon index 1.0$`{}_{0.5}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.6}`$ and an absorbing hydrogen column density of 7$`{}_{7}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+16}`$$`\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 (Hanson et al. 1989).

The XMM-Newton observation yielded the first 0.2–12 keV spectrum (Fig. 3) of EXO 053109-6609.2. The spectrum is complex and cannot be represented by the simple power-law (neither by including a high-energy cutoff) model sufficient to characterize most Be/X-ray binaries. Below 1 keV clearly a soft component is detected with features too narrow to be fit with continuum spectra as produced by e.g. blackbody or multi-temperature disk-blackbody emission. The only acceptable model was found to be thermal emission from hot plasma in collisional equilibrium (VMEKAL model in XSPEC, Mewe et al. 1985) with a temperature kT of 0.1 keV and reduced abundances (0.29 solar) of elements heavier than oxygen. Above 3 keV a highly absorbed ($``$$`10^{23}`$ cm-2) power-law gives an acceptable fit consistent with the SL2 results. However, both components described so far do not contribute significantly to the flux between 1 and 2 keV. Reducing the absorption in the power-law component yields too high flux around 2–3 keV and does not fit. Several components were tested in the model to account for the emission between 1 and 2 keV. Neither blackbody, disk-blackbody nor a second VMEKAL give acceptable results.

The best fit was obtained by adding another power-law component which is attenuated at low energies by the same amount of absorption as the thermal plasma component. The power-law index was forced to be the same as the index of the high absorption power-law. The best fit values for the photon index and the two column densities are listed in Table 2. The normalization of the low-absorption component relative to the high-absorption component is 0.23. The two power-law components may originate from the same emission region partially covered by different amounts of absorbing matter. Partially may be interpreted here as spatially or temporally varying. The latter is supported by spectral variations seen during the pulse period (see below). Adding a narrow Fe emission line (6.32$`\pm 0.06`$ keV) with an equivalent width of 329 eV improved the $`\chi ^2`$ by 13 to the best fit with $`\chi ^2`$=520 for 336 degrees of freedom. The model spectrum is illustrated in Fig. 4.

A soft spectral component is so far only detected from a few HMXBs, most of them located in the Magellanic Clouds (e.g. Kohno et al. 2000; Yokogawa et al. 2000). In the Milky Way the HMXBs are concentrated in the galactic plane and the large interstellar absorption strongly attenuates the soft X-ray energies. Therefore, the HMXBs in the Magellanic Clouds are ideal to investigate the soft part of the spectrum. No pulsations were detected in the soft spectral component seen from RX J0059.2-7138 with ASCA (Kohno et al. 2000) which suggests emission from a relatively large region. The emission measures derived for EXO 053109-6609.2, if the thin plasma model is adopted, of $`4`$$`\times 10^{61}`$ cm-3 and for RX J0059.2-7138 of $``$$`10^{61}`$cm-3 (Kohno et al. 2000) support this. A possible origin of the soft emission may be the disk-like dense stellar wind around the Be star which is illuminated by the strong X-ray source with luminosities of the order of $`10^{38}`$ erg s-1. However, to differentiate between emission lines produced in collisionally or photo-ionized plasma high resolution grating spectra are required. E.g. Chandra observations of the HMXB Cen X-3, a close system with supergiant primary, revealed emission lines excited by both kinds of processes (Wojdowski et al. 2002).

From RX J0532.5-6551 and RX J0529.8-6556 only ROSAT PSPC spectra in the energy band 0.1–2.4 keV were available. The spectra are of low statistical quality and the narrow energy coverage did not allow to determine power-law index and column density with high accuracy (Haberl et al. 1995, 1997). Haberl (2002) proposed a new candidate HMXB based on its hard X-ray spectrum and the presence of a likely optical counterpart on the DSS2 (R) image with similar brightness as the counterparts of the other two nearby Be/X-ray binaries. Detection of a possible pulse period (see below) for XMMU J053011.2-655122 leaves little doubt about the HMXB and most likely Be/X-ray binary nature of this source. Fitting an absorbed power-law to the spectra of XMMU J053011.2-655122, RX J0529.8-6556 and RX J0532.5-6551 yields acceptable fits (reduced $`\chi ^2`$ 0.9–1.3) with power-law indices in the range 1.0–1.4 (Table 2). The EPIC spectra of these sources are shown together with the best fit model in Fig. 3. XMMU J053011.2-655122 was also detected in ROSAT data (Haberl & Pietsch 1999; Sasaki et al. 2000a) with a count rate corresponding to a flux which is a factor of 2.2 below the XMM-Newton measurement (assuming spectral parameters derived from the EPIC spectra).

#### 3.1.2 AGN

The majority of the X-ray brightest sources in the field (ten out of fourteen) most likely consists of AGN in the background of the LMC. Their X-ray spectra can be represented by power-laws with indices between 1.8 and 2.3 with only one case with index 1.4 (Table 2), typically for this source class. Moreover they do not possess an optical counterpart with B brighter than 18th magnitude in the USNO A2.0 catalogue (Table 1). As an example the EPIC spectra of XMMU J053150.9-655616 together with the best fit model are plotted in Fig. 3.

#### 3.1.3 Supernova remnants

Two new SNRs were proposed by Haberl (2002) from their spatial extent and X-ray colours (Fig. 1) in the EPIC data. Both SNRs were detected in the ROSAT PSPC data (sources 190 and 205 in Haberl & Pietsch 1999) with indication for spatial extent. However, due to the low statistical quality of the data the sources were not classified as SNR candidates. XMMU J053226.2-655352 is sufficiently bright to allow the investigation of the X-ray spectrum which shows little flux above 2 keV. Fitting a MEKAL model results in a best fit temperature kT = 0.68 keV consistent with radiation from a thermal SNR. For the Fe abundance a best fit value of 0.41$`{}_{0.11}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.15}`$ was derived. The best fit model to the EPIC spectra of XMMU J053226.2-655352 is shown in Fig. 3. Due to the lower number of detected photons from XMMU J053034.9-655653 the temperature was fixed at 0.7 keV in the fit to the EPIC spectra. Also in this case a low Fe abundance was deduced (upper limit of 0.06).

#### 3.1.4 Foreground stars

The EPIC spectra of sources identified with foreground stars also do not show significant emission above 2 keV. However the absorbing column density is lower than that of sources located in the LMC clearly distinguishing them from SNRs (in addition they are unresolved X-ray sources). Spectra of three foreground stars were investigated and the results are listed in Table 2. All three spectra can be represented by emission from hot thermal emission with temperature between 0.5 and 0.7 keV and low Fe abundance of 0.1–0.2 solar. For the absorption column densities only upper limits could be derived consistent with nearby objects. The X-ray spectra suggest emission from late-type stars with active corona which is also consistent with their B-R index derived from the magnitudes listed in USNO A2.0. As an example the spectra of XMMU J052924.3-655724 are plotted in Fig. 3.

#### 3.1.5 Supersoft source

The faint source XMMU J053056.2-654809 is characterized by red colour in the image of Fig. 1 indicating an extremely soft X-ray spectrum. Only the pn detector is sensitive enough to allow accumulation of an energy spectrum which is only detected below 0.5 keV (see Fig. 3). A formal fit with a blackbody model yields a temperature of 49 eV which is typical for supersoft sources, AM Her systems, isolated white dwarfs or isolated X-ray dim neutron stars. Its luminosity of 1.3$`\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1 for a distance of 50 kpc is too high to originate from an AM Her type cataclysmic variable in the LMC (for luminosities of the soft blackbody component in AM Her systems see e.g. Ramsay et al. 1994). XMMU J053056.2-654809 is not contained in the ROSAT catalogues of the LMC and therefore archival PSPC data (45 ks observation with ID 200692P) was investigated and an upper limit of 7.9$`\times 10^4`$ cts s-1 (3$`\sigma `$, 0.1–0.6 keV) was determined. Folding the spectral model fitting the EPIC pn data through the PSPC response an expected count rate of 2.6$`\times 10^2`$ cts s-1 is obtained which implies that XMMU J053056.2-654809 was at least a factor of 33 fainter during the ROSAT observation in October/November 1991. The high variability excludes an explanation as dim isolated neutron star or single white dwarf in the foreground. An AM Her system located in the Milky Way is expected to be brighter in the optical than the close USNO catalogue object. Therefore, XMMU J053056.2-654809 is considered most likely to be a variable SSS in the LMC.

### 3.2 X-ray pulsars

Temporal analysis was performed on the data of the HMXBs and the other eleven brightest sources in the sample. Fast Fourier power spectra were produced from light curves in the 0.3–7.5 keV energy band. A folding analysis was then performed around frequency peaks identified in the power spectra. Pulsations were detected only from the known HMXB pulsars and from the new candidate HMXB which is discussed in the following.

#### 3.2.1 EXO 053109-6609.2

For EXO 053109-6609.2 a mean pulse period of 13.66817(1) s was derived (1$`\sigma `$ error given for the last digit). The power spectrum exhibits also peaks at the first and third harmonic, consistent with the highly non-sinusoidal pulse profile (Fig. 5). Pulsations are seen above and below 4 keV confirming that the two spectral power-law components (Fig. 4) originate both from EXO 053109-6609.2. Due to the strong re-distribution of events to lower energy-channels at energies below $``$1 keV in the EPIC pn CCD it is not possible to verify if the soft thermal plasma emission below 0.5 keV shows pulsations or not. For a spectrum steeply falling towards lower energies the contribution from photons above 0.5 keV dominates the events below channel 100 (nominally corresponding to energy 0.5 keV) and therefore pulsations seen in the flux above 0.5 keV will also be seen in the lowest channels.

To investigate possible spectral changes during the pulse period, hardness ratio plots were produced by creating light curves folded on the pulse period in different energy bands and dividing the obtained count rates as function of pulse phase. The folded light curves from energy bands 0.15–0.4 keV and 0.4–2.0 keV are plotted in Fig. 6 (left) together with the hardness ratio. The hardness ratio shows remarkable increases around the two intensity dips which resemble the behaviour of an X-ray source viewed through a dense atmosphere before and after it is eclipsed. The facts that the eclipse seen here is not total and that two eclipses are seen about 0.5 in phase apart, suggest that we see two emission regions in EXO 053109-6609.2, most likely from the accreting magnetic poles of the neutron star. Before the pole is self-eclipsed by the neutron star or the accretion column the emission is viewed through dense matter, most likely matter from the accretion column above the pole which attenuates the emission more strongly at lower energies. During eclipse (when the emission is probably dominated by the other pole) the hardness ratio remains constant within the errors. Hardness ratios which involve emission from energies above 2 keV (which is less affected by absorption and more sensitive to changes in the intrinsic spectrum) are plotted in Fig. 6 (right). They show that the spectrum softens during the eclipses. This can be explained by a spatial temperature variation in the emission region with the temperature increasing with height above the neutron star surface. The cooler regions become only visible during closest approach of the magnetic axis to the line of sight. Such a picture is expected from matter in the accretion column shocked at a certain height above the neutron star surface and cooling during the final settlement onto the neutron star.

Comparison of the pulse profiles of the XMM-Newton observation with those obtained from BeppoSAX data (Burderi et al. 1998) shows a major difference which is best visible in the 2–10 keV band. During the BeppoSAX observation the profile shows a strong peak after the deeper eclipse while after the secondary eclipse the intensity remains as low as during the eclipse. During the XMM-Newton observation this behaviour is mirrored around the secondary eclipse (at phase $``$0.55 in Fig. 6) with low intensity before and high intensity after the eclipse. This behaviour is probably related to the overall source intensity. The pulse profile obtained during a long ROSAT observation (Dennerl et al. 1996) when the source was in a low-intensity state (1$`\times 10^{35}`$ erg s-1) resembles those of the XMM-Newton observation (with observed luminosity of 1.7$`\times 10^{35}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.1–2.4 keV band). During the BeppoSAX observation the source was in outburst with an observed luminosity in excess of $`10^{37}`$ erg s-1 compared to 2.1$`\times 10^{36}`$ erg s-1 measured by EPIC (note the luminosity given in Table 2 is corrected for absorption). It should be noted that no attempt was made in the presented analysis to determine secular period changes and the pulse profiles based on a mean pulse period may be smeared out somewhat.

#### 3.2.2 RX J0529.8-6556 and XMMU J053011.2-655122

The pulse period of 69.232(2) s detected in the EPIC data from RX J0529.8-6556 confirms the discovery by ROSAT. For the second brightest X-ray source in the field during the XMM-Newton observations, XMMU J053011.2-655122, probable pulsations were found with a period of 271.97(5) s. From the folding analysis the $`\chi ^2`$ test yields a formal significance of 4.6 $`\sigma `$ for the probability that this detection is real. Together with the X-ray spectrum and the brightness of the proposed optical counterpart the pulsations strongly support the identification of XMMU J053011.2-655122 as fourth HMXB system in the observed field. Power spectra and light curves folded with the pulse period for RX J0529.8-6556 and XMMU J053011.2-655122 are shown in Fig. 5.

## 4 Source populations

Chu (1997) used a sample of SNRs in OB associations in the LMC to study how interstellar environments affect the physical properties of SNRs. She found that SNRs in H II regions all show the three classical SNR signatures (bright X-ray emission, non-thermal radio emission and enhanced \[S II\]/H$`\alpha `$ ratio) while some SNRs in super-bubbles show only X-ray emission. The observed LMC field presented here is located at the northern rim of the SGS LMC 4 and one reason that the two new X-ray selected SNRs were not detected yet at radio or optical wavelengths may be the explosion of their progenitors into the hot and low density interior of the SGS. Very likely the formation of the progenitors was triggered by the expanding shell and the SNRs are now shocking the inner walls of the shell (Chu 1997). A relatively large number of SNRs with X-ray luminosities around $`10^{34}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 may therefore still be detectable in XMM-Newton observations of the Magellanic Clouds and in particular inside the supergiant shells in the LMC. Promising candidates may be found among the sources listed in the ROSAT catalogues (Haberl & Pietsch 1999; Haberl et al. 2000; Sasaki et al. 2000a, b) with indication for spatial extent but without sufficient number of detected photons (and therefore a low likelihood for the extent) to allow a classification of the sources.

The SMC is peculiar in its high number of Be/X-ray binaries (both in absolute terms given the size of the galaxy and relative to the number of supergiant HMXBs and SNRs, Haberl & Sasaki 2000; Yokogawa et al. 2002) which may indicate an increased star forming rate about $`10^7`$ years ago (the time which elapses between the formation of a massive binary and its evolution into a HMXB, van den Heuvel 1983). The star formation must have largely declined since then as the lower number of descendants of young massive stars like supergiant HMXBs and type-II SNRs indicates (Yokogawa et al. 2002). With respect to the space density of HMXBs the observed XMM-Newton field and its close neighborhood in the northern area of the SGS LMC 4 are similar to that of the SMC. However, the existence of a relatively high number of younger SNRs and the supergiant HMXB system RX J0532.5-6551 is consistent with a more constant star formation rate over the last $`10^7`$ years in this part of the LMC 4 region. The stochastic self-propagating star formation (SSPSF) scenario proposed to explain the production of supergiant shells (Feitzinger et al. 1981) predicts a gradient in the age of stars, from young stars at the edges to older ones inside. However, no such gradient was found for stars in the interior of LMC 4 with stellar ages in a narrow range of 9 Myr to 16 Myr (Braun et al. 1997) leading to the conclusion that LMC 4 may have formed without contribution from SSPSF, although the ring of young associations and H II regions around the edge were triggered by the events inside the SGS. The X-ray source census of HMXBs and SNRs in the LMC 4 region is fully consistent with this picture and the Be/X-ray binaries may well belong to the stellar population found by Braun et al. (1997).

The majority of X-ray sources in the observed field are most likely AGN behind the LMC. Their spectra are characterized by power-laws attenuated by photo-electric absorption due to interstellar gas in the Milky Way and the LMC along the line of sight. From H I 21-cm maps the Galactic contribution is measured to 5.7$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Dickey & Lockman 1990) while the LMC column density varies between 5$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 and 9$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Kim et al. 1998) across the field. From the ten AGN candidates about half have X-ray measured column densities well above the H I values. Since the absorption in the X-ray band is dominated by the metals in the absorbing gas lower metallicities adopted in the spectral fits (0.5 solar for the LMC, Russell & Dopita 1992) would lead to correspondingly higher hydrogen column densities. Similar results, but with larger excess column densities, were obtained for AGN detected in the 30 Doradus region and Haberl et al. (2001) concluded for the 30 Doradus region that either large amounts of H II and/or H2 or higher metal abundances exist along the line of sights through the LMC. The case of the XMM-Newton field presented here is less clear. No dense clouds are visible on H$`\alpha `$ images (e.g. Domgörgen et al. 1995) or CO maps (Yamaguchi et al. 2001) in the observed field at the northern rim of the LMC 4 SGS and in the sample of candidate AGN the excess absorption may be explained by AGN intrinsic obscuration. Indeed relatively large fractions of obscured AGN were found in deep surveys (e.g. Mainieri et al. 2002), however, mainly among the X-ray and optically fainter ones. The ten brightest AGN in the LMC field have 2.0–10.0 keV fluxes higher than 3$`\times 10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 and six of them likely counterparts with R magnitudes (from USNO A2.0) between 17 and 18, confining them to the upper left part of the flux – magnitude diagram of Fig. 6 in Mainieri et al. (2002). There objects are located which show a much lower fraction of obscured AGN. To help to identify those unobscured AGN which can be used to probe the interstellar medium in the LMC optical spectra are required.

## 5 Summary

The deep XMM-Newton observation of a northern field in the LMC allows to uniquely classify the detected X-ray sources to flux levels of $``$$`10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 from their X-ray properties alone. X-ray spectra obtained by the EPIC cameras over a relatively broad energy band (0.15–12.0 keV) emphasize the various energy distributions observed from the different types of X-ray sources. A first analysis of twenty selected sources, presented here, yielded the discovery of a previously undetected supersoft source, revealed two ROSAT sources with indication for spatial extent as supernova remnants and rendered the detection of a possible pulsation in the X-ray flux of a candidate HMXB in the LMC. This increases the number of known HMXBs in the observed field to four. Among the fourteen brightest sources three HMXBs, one foreground star and up to ten AGN were found. Particular results on individual objects are discussed in Sect. 3 while in Sect 4 the analyzed sample of X-ray sources is considered in the view of source population studies in the Magellanic Clouds and nearby galaxies in general.

###### Acknowledgements.

The XMM-Newton project is supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung / Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (BMBF / DLR), the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and the Heidenhain-Stiftung. The USNO A2.0 catalogue was produced by the US Naval Observatory.


text:
# Five Years at the Movies

## 1 Introduction

GAIA is an astrometric satellite which has recently been approved by the European Space Agency for launch in about 2010. It will measure the angles between objects in fields that are separated on the sky by about a radian. Data will stream continuously at 1 Mbps from GAIA’s three telescopes, providing information on the positions of the billion or more astrophysical objects brighter than 20th magnitude. The motion of objects across the sky, due to both their space motion and their parallactic motion and the variability in the brightnesses of objects in 15 wavebands will be measured because each object is observed at least 150 times during the 5 year mission lifetime. From the raw time series, a three-dimensional movie of the motions of stars in the Galaxy will be synthesized. Just as the human brain interprets signals from the retina in terms of moving three-dimensional objects, so GAIA will interpret signals from its sensors in terms of moving astrophysical objects. GAIA’s job is dramatically the more difficult because (1) GAIA’s sensors return time-series rather than images, (2) the global adjustment of the myriad of instantaneous positions is a computational task of huge complexity, (3) GAIA has to correct for gravity-induced distortions of space-time, and (4) GAIA sees in 15 colours rather than three.

This article presents highlights from the five-year GAIA movie show. The alert despatcher in the GAIA mission will provide forewarning of many kinds of bursting and variable phenomena. We discuss two applications in detail here. First, the astrometric microlensing signal will allow us to take a complete inventory of all objects – no matter how dark – in the solar neighbourhood. Second, the catalogue of supernova (SN) detections will be the largest ever taken. It will provide opportunities both for follow-ups in other wavebands and numerous examples of scarce phenomena (like SNe II-L or SNe Ib/c).

## 2 Dark Matter in the Solar Neighbourhood

There are many direct detection experiments searching for the particle dark matter in the solar neighbourhood . A crucial question is: how much particle dark matter is there? This is not an easy question to answer. Within 1.1 kpc of the Galactic plane, the column density of all matter is $`71M_{}\mathrm{pc}^2`$, of which $`41M_{}\mathrm{pc}^2`$ is already accounted for by the known populations of stars and gas . This leaves $`30M_{}\mathrm{pc}^2`$ as the column density of dark matter. How much of the missing matter is made up from elementary particles, as opposed to dark compact objects like dim stars?

GAIA is the first instrument which has the capability of answering this question. Local populations of black holes and halo or disk white dwarfs could easily have eluded identification thus far. Similarly, there may be an extensive local population of very cool brown dwarfs. The 2 Micron All Sky Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have increased the known population of local dwarf stars with spectral types later than M to over a hundred . Nonetheless, the coolest brown dwarfs will have easily eluded the grasp of these and all current surveys. Future projects like the Space Infrared Telescope Facility may be able to detect very old brown dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood by using long integration times, but a large-scale survey will be prohibitively costly in terms of time. However, the astrometric microlensing signal seen by GAIA will be sensitive to local populations of even the dimmest of stars and darkest of these objects.

GAIA cannot resolve the two images of a microlensed source. However, GAIA can measure the small deviation (of the order of a fraction of a milliarcsec) of the centroid of the two images around the trajectory of the source. Astrometric microlensing is the name given to this excursion of the image centroid . The cross section of a lens is proportional to the area it sweeps out on the sky, and so to the product of lens proper motion and angular Einstein radius. Each of these falls off with lens distance, so the signal is dominated by close lenses (within $`1`$ kpc of the Sun). The all-sky source-averaged astrometric microlensing optical depth is $`10^5`$, over an order of magnitude greater than the photometric microlensing optical depth . Fig. 1 shows two views of an astrometric microlensing event. The upper panel shows the right ascension and declination recorded by a barycentric and a terrestrial observer (or equivalently a satellite at the $`\mathrm{L}_2`$ Lagrange point, like GAIA). However, GAIA does not provide the data in such a clean form. The observed quantity is the CCD transit time for the coordinate along the scan. (This is the same way that the Hipparcos satellite worked ). From the sequence of these one-dimensional measurements, the astrometric path of the source, together with any additional deflection caused by microlensing, must be recovered. The lower panel shows the event as seen by GAIA. The simulated datapoints have been produced by generating random transit angles, and sampling the astrometric curve according to GAIA’s scanning law. The transits are strongly clustered, as GAIA spins on its axis once every 3 hours and so may scan the same patch of sky four or five times a day. The transit angle is the same for all transits in such a cluster, but changes randomly from cluster to cluster. The two insets show the astrometric deviations at the beginning and at the maximum of the event, from which it is clear that GAIA can detect that a microlensing event has occurred.

Can the local mass function be recovered from the astrometric microlensing signal seen by GAIA? A covariance error analysis shows that $`2500`$ astrometric events detected by GAIA will be of such high quality that the mass of the lens will be recovered with good accuracy . These events are biased towards lenses with mass greater than $`0.3M_{}`$. This is not too surprising, as it is more difficult to measure the deviation if the Einstein radius is small. This already suggests that GAIA’s astrometric microlensing signal will be an unbiased and powerful probe of the local population of stellar remnants, such as white dwarfs and neutron stars. However, the signal seen on smaller mass-scales will required modelling and correction for selection effects before it is unbiased. Reid & Hawley  compute the mass function (MF) for nearby stars from the volume-limited 8 Parsec Sample using empirical mass-luminosity relationships. They obtain a power-law MF ($`f(M)M^1`$) over the range $`0.1`$ to $`1.0M_{}`$. This is in rough agreement with the MF as inferred from studies of the luminosity function (LF) of red disk stars seen with Hubble Space Telescope . The behaviour of the MF becomes more uncertain as the hydrogen-burning limit is approached. So, we use three MFs that span the range of reasonable possibilities. Above $`0.5M_{}`$, the MF is always derived from the Reid-Hawley luminosity function. Below $`0.5M_{}`$, it may be flat ($`f(M)M^1`$), rising ($`f(M)M^{1.44}`$) or falling ($`f(M)M^{0.05}`$). For the falling MF, we choose the power-law index to be that implied by the decline in the LF below $`M_v13`$. For the rising MF, we choose the power-law index by assuming that the rise at $`M_v11`$ continues to fainter magnitudes and that these stars are missing from the data because of incompleteness. Of course, the flat MF is so called because it has equal numbers of objects in each decade of mass and so appears flat in a plot of $`\mathrm{log}Mf(M)`$ versus $`\mathrm{log}M`$. For each of the three MFs, we generate samples of 2500 astrometric microlensing events from models of the Galaxy and compute the mass uncertainty using the covariance analysis. (In actual practice, the high quality events would be selected on the basis of the goodness of their $`\chi ^2`$ fits). We build up the MF as a histogram. The vertical error bar associated with each bin is proportional to the square root of events in the bin. The horizontal error bar is the size of the bin.

The three cases are shown in Fig. 2 with the solid line representing the underlying MF. The simulated datapoints with error bars show the MFs reconstructed from the high quality events. It is evident that GAIA can easily distinguish between the flat, rising and falling MFs. The MFs are reproduced accurately above $`0.3M_{}`$. Below this value, the reconstructed MFs fall below the true curves, as a consequence of the bias against smaller Einstein radii. However, this does not compromise GAIA’s ability to discriminate between the three possibilities. In practice, of course, simulations could be used to re-calibrate the derived MFs at low masses and correct for the bias. We have also carried out simulations with MFs containing spikes of compact objects, such as populations of $`0.5M_{}`$ white dwarfs. They lie in the mass régime to which GAIA’s astrometric microlensing signal is most sensitive. So, such spikes stand out very clearly in the reconstructed MFs. We conclude that one of the major scientific contributions that GAIA can make is to determine the local MF. Microlensing provides the only way of measuring the masses of individual objects irrespective of their luminosity. GAIA is quite simply the best survey instrument to carry out an inventory of masses in the solar neighbourhood.

## 3 Supernovae Detection

Supernovae (SNe) are divided into type I and II primarily on the basis of their spectra, with lightcurve shape as a secondary diagnostic. SNe Ia are thermonuclear explosions in white dwarf stars which have accreted too much matter from a companion. It is unclear whether the companion is also a white dwarf or is a main sequence/red giant star. In fact, whether the progenitors of SNe Ia are doubly degenerate or singly degenerate binaries is one of the major unsolved problems in the subject. SNe Ib/c and II originate in the core collapse of massive stars. SNe Ia have found ready application in cosmology. Their intrinsic brightness means that they can be detected to enormous distances. Although their peak luminosities vary by a factor of 10, Phillips  found a correlation between the peak absolute magnitude and the rate of decline, which enables SNe Ia to be calibrated and used as “standard candles”. Claims for an accelerating universe partly rest on their use as distance estimators, yet there are obvious concerns regarding systematic errors . So, a major thrust of modern SNe studies is to understand and quantify the differences in the morphology of SNe Ia lightcurves and the scatter in the Phillips relation. GAIA is an ideal tool to study nearby SNe (within a redshift $`z0.14`$). GAIA will provide a huge dataset of high quality local SNe Ia in which any deviations from “standard candles” can be analysed. Here, we ask the question: How many supernovae will GAIA detect over the five-year mission lifetime?

Richardson et al.  use the Asiago Supernova Catalogue to study the V band absolute magnitude distributions according to type. They find that the mean absolute magnitude of SNe Ia at maximum is $`18.99`$. This figure includes the contribution from the internal absorption of the host galaxy. As GAIA’s limiting magnitude is $`V20`$, this means that the most distant SNe Ia accessible to GAIA are $`630`$ Mpc away. Similarly, the mean absolute magnitude of SNe Ib/c at maximum is $`17.75`$, so that the most distant SNe Ib/c detectable by GAIA are $`355`$ Mpc away. SNe II are subdivided further according to lightcurve into linear (L) and plateau (P) types. The mean absolute magnitude of II-L type is $`17.63`$ and of II-P type is $`16.44`$ (Richardson et al. 2002). These correspond to distances of $`335`$ Mpc and $`195`$ Mpc respectively. Such distances emphasise that GAIA is the ideal tool to discover relatively nearby SNe.

The rates with which SNe occur in different galaxies at low redshift are given in van den Bergh & Tammann . The host galaxies follow the local large-scale structure. We use the latest version of the CfA redshift catalogue . This contains the sky positions and heliocentric velocities of $`\mathrm{20\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ galaxies. On plotting numbers of galaxies versus distance, the graph peaks at $`75`$ Mpc and thence shows a steady decline. This suggests that the CfA catalogue can be used out to at most $`75`$ Mpc. The numbers in the catalogue must be regarded as lower limits to the true numbers within 75 Mpc, as the luminosity functions (LFs) derived from the catalogue are incomplete at faint magnitudes. Beyond 75 Mpc, we assume that the distribution of galaxies is homogeneous and that the number scales like $`D^3`$ where $`D`$ is the heliocentric distance. Given the numbers of galaxies and the observed rates, we can then straightforwardly compute the total number of SNe that explode during the five-year GAIA mission lifetime and are brighter than the limiting magnitude. In all, there are at least $`\mathrm{48\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ SNe Ia and $`7000`$ SNe Ib/c. The numbers for SNe II depend on the relative frequency of II-L with respect to II-P, which is not very well-known. Henceforth, we denote the fraction of all SNe II that are L-type by $`f_{II}`$. Then, the numbers of SNe II that explode are $`\mathrm{28\hspace{0.17em}500}f_{II}+5600(1f_{II})`$. These numbers are lower limits for two reasons – first because no contribution from faint galaxies is included and second because GAIA’s limiting magnitude may be deeper than 20th in practice.

By using simulations of SNe detection with GAIA’s scanning law , we find that GAIA records data on $`30\%`$ of all the SNe Ia within 630 Mpc, which marks the limit of the most distant SNe Ia accessible. Similarly, GAIA records data on $`20\%`$ of all SNe Ib/c, $`31\%`$ of all SNe II-L and $`48\%`$ SNe II-P within these distances. This means that GAIA will provide some (perhaps rather limited) information on $`\mathrm{14\hspace{0.17em}300}`$ SNe Ia and $`1400`$ SNe Ib/c during its five-year mission. For SNe II, the number depends on the relative frequency $`f_{II}`$ and is $`8700f_{II}+2700(1f_{II})`$. If SNe II-L and SNe II-P occur equally frequently ($`f_{II}=0.5`$), then the total number of SNe II is $`5700`$. In other words, GAIA will provide some information on $`\mathrm{21\hspace{0.17em}400}`$ SNe in total. These are huge numbers, both compared to the sizes of existing catalogues and to the likely datasets gathered by other planned space missions. Almost all the SNe that GAIA misses explode in the 20 days just after GAIA samples that location in the sky. Before the next transit of the telescopes, the SN reaches maximum and then fades to below GAIA’s limiting magnitude ($`V20`$).

Fig. 3 shows the fraction of the detected SNe as a function of phase of the lightcurve. Some $`44\%`$ of the detected SNe Ia are caught before maximum, $`37\%`$ of the detected SNe Ib/c, $`37\%`$ of the detected SNe II-L and $`9\%`$ of the detected SNe II-P. The low fraction for SNe II-L is largely a consequence of the fact that they are intrinsically the faintest. The total number of all SNe found before maximum during the 5 year mission lifetime is $`\mathrm{8\hspace{0.17em}500}`$. This number can be broken down into $`\mathrm{6\hspace{0.17em}300}`$ SNe Ia, $`500`$ SNe Ib/c and 1700 SNe II (assuming $`f_{II}=0.5`$).

GAIA will provide a large dataset of nearby SNe, which are very interesting from the point of view of understanding the properties and the underlying physics of the explosions themselves. The advantage of SNe surveys with GAIA is that selection effects are either minimised or easy to model, and that there will be many examples of comparatively scarce phenomena (e.g., subluminous SNe, SNe II-L, SNe Ib/c). At present, SNe rates come from relatively small datasets and are subject to substantial uncertainties. Selection effects – depending on the type of host galaxy, the extinction and the distance from the center of the galaxy – seriously afflict all current datasets. Given the large numbers of alerted SNe, GAIA will provide accurate rates as a function of position, extinction and type of host galaxy. These give valuable, if indirect, information on both the star formation rate and the high mass end of the mass function. There have also been suggestions that populations of subluminous SNe may have been systematically missed in existing catalogues . If so, then GAIA is the ideal instrument with which to find them.

## 4 Conclusions

The GAIA satellite is scheduled for launch in about 2010. It will determine the positions, velocities and astrophysical nature of over a billion stars distributed throughout the Milky Way Galaxy and into the Local Group. Each object will be monitored between 150 and 400 times during the 5 year mission (depending on ecliptic latitude). The resulting catalogue will be one of the largest astrophysical datasets ever taken. The positions and velocities of stars, together with the changing brightness of variable sources (e.g., bursting and eruptive stars, supernovae, killer asteroids, eclipsing variables, microlensed stars), will all be synthesized into a three-dimensional movie show.

This article has discussed two applications of real-time detection of variable sources with the GAIA satellite. GAIA will provide the best determination of the local mass function of stars down to brown dwarf mass scales – which is important for reckoning the baryonic and particle dark matter content of the solar neighbourhood. This can be inferred from the astrometric microlensing signal of nearby stars. GAIA will provide the largest sample of nearby supernovae ever acquired – which is crucial for assessing how the scatter in properties affects their use as cosmological distance indicators. This will provide opportunities both for follow-ups in other wavebands (e.g., X ray and gamma-ray) and with other detectors (e.g., neutrino, gravitational waves). Further applications are given in references  and .


text:
# Spatial structure of a vortex in low density neutron matter

## Abstract

We study in a fully selfconsistent approach the structure of a vortex in low density superfluid neutron matter. We determine that the matter density profile of a vortex shows a significant depletion in the region of the core, a feature never reported for a vortex state in a Fermi superfluid.

Almost thirty years ago Anderson and Itoh  put forward the idea that vortices should appear in neutron stars and that they can also get pinned to the solid crust. They argued that the ”star–quakes,” observable on Earth as pulsar ”glitches,” apparently the only evidence so far that solid matter exits in the universe apart from planets, are caused by the vortex de–pinning. This idea and its various implications have been examined by numerous authors, see Refs.  and further references therein, but a general consensus does not seem to have emerged so far. In spite of this, there does not seem to be a doubt in anybody’s mind that a significant part of the matter in a neutron star is a superfluid of one kind or another. In particular, for densities less than nuclear saturation densities one expects neutrons to form $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ Cooper pairs, similar to ordinary electrons in superconductors. Even though at low neutron densities the kinetic energy dominates over interaction energy, since this is mainly attractive, Cooper instability occurs. Neutrons become a Fermi superfluid and vortices can appear. In a low density neutron matter various nuclear–like objects  exist as well, a state of matter often referred to as ”pasta,” ”meat balls” and ”Swiss cheese” phases. The nuclei–like objects in some of these phases are significantly denser than the surrounding low density neutron matter and positively charged and are expected to form a rather stiff Coulomb lattice. However, other alternatives (liquid crystals, amorphous, disordered or heterogeneous state) have been discussed in the literature as well . In any case, these inhomogeneities are the ”islands” on which vortices can get ”pinned down,” at least temporarily. The estimates of the de–pinning energy available in literature are rather crude. The profile of a vortex in neutron matter is typically determined using a Ginzburg–Landau equation, which is expected to give mostly a qualitative picture and its accuracy is difficult to estimate. Surprisingly, there exists only one microscopic calculation of a vortex in low density neutron matter . In regular superconductors the pairing energy is a relatively small quantity, when compared to the Fermi energy, and the presence or absence of the pairing field is not expected to lead to any noticeable changes in the electron density . For this reason is typical in the case of electrons to neglect the mean–field (more exactly, to assume it a constant), and only account for the presence of the magnetic field induced by the electron super–flow. It is known that inside a vortex core one can have bound states within the pairing gap , basically due to the phenomenon known as Andreev reflection. The presence of these localized states inside the vortex core leads to a number of observables, in particular their presence modifies the specific heat at low temperatures. This aspect could prove crucial for the thermal emission from neutron stars, but apparently so far this aspect has not been considered. A small change in the profile of the matter density and of the mean–field was recently reported in dilute atomic Fermi gases, but it was not considered noteworthy , see also Ref. .

We report here on a fully microscopic analysis of a vortex in pure neutron matter and but we do not consider explicitly so far an impurity, on which such a vortex might get pinned. The ratio of the pairing gap to the Fermi energy in low density neutron matter is larger than in other systems and as we have found, the matter distribution is influenced appreciably by the presence of a vortex. It is natural to expect that a major change in the density profile of a vortex is bound to affect the magnitude and the character of the pinning mechanism. This particular aspect, apparently never reported in literature until now, can have significant consequences on the physics of vortices in neutron stars.

In order to describe selfconsistently neutron matter, we use a nuclear energy density functional approach (NEDF), which works surprisingly well in finite nuclei . This NEDF has as the main part the contribution describing normal nuclear matter , which was fitted by Fayans to reproduce the microscopic many body calculations of Refs.  for the case of homogeneous matter distribution. Fayans has supplemented this input with a phenomenological gradient correction energy density (which we take into account here) as well as with a spin–orbit energy density (neglected here). A separate contribution to the energy density functional should describe pairing correlations. It is well known that even in very dilute systems, the induced interactions play a significant role in determining the magnitude of the pairing gap, drastically reducing it by a factor close to 2.2 when compared to a naive BCS calculation with bare interaction . Neutron matter becomes dilute in the sense that $`\rho |a|^3<1`$ (where $`a`$ is the nn–scattering length) only at densities smaller than $`6\times 10^6`$ fm-3. The range of neutron densities we are considering here are significantly larger and the arguments presented in Refs.  strictly do not apply. Over the years a number of investigators arrived at qualitatively similar conclusions, even though the specific corrections considered often varied from one set of authors to another  and the neutron matter was certainly not dilute in the sense mentioned above. One should note also, that in nuclei  the effect seems to be the opposite, a conclusion, which for the wrong reasons, agrees with the analysis of Ref.  for the case when the number of fermion species is four (two for spin and two for isospin). All analyses however seem to agree that the pairing gap in neutron matter as a function of the Fermi momentum has a maximum of approximately 1 MeV for a Fermi momentum of $`k_F0.8`$ fm-1. and that the gap vanishes for Fermi momenta larger than $`1.5`$ fm-1. This shape of the pairing gap could be reproduced rather satisfactorily with the formula

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=\left(\frac{2}{e}\right)^{7/3}\frac{\mathrm{}^2k_F^2}{2m}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\pi }{2\mathrm{tan}\delta (k_F)}\right),$$
(1)
where $`k_F`$ is the Fermi wave vector, $`m`$ the nucleon mass and $`\delta (k_F)`$ is the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ nn–phase shift. Following the arguments given in Refs. , we have changed the corresponding formula for the gap given in Ref.  by including the effect of induced interactions as an additional factor of $`1/(4e)^{1/3}0.45`$. Since for the neutron densities we are considering here, the effective range approximation to the Nijmegen $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ nn–phase shift is essentially exact , we have parametrized the pairing gap in homogeneous neutron matter using this approximation. The resulting pairing gap is well within the theoretical uncertainties, including various corrections as discussed in Refs.  and references therein. For each value of the neutron density we have determined a corresponding value for the “bare coupling constant” $`g(\rho )`$ as discussed in Refs. . This completes the construction of the NEDF, in complete analogy with the construction of the normal part of the electron EDF , see Figs. 12 for details.

The rest of the technical details were described previously in Refs. . We note only that the normal and anomalous densities were evaluated using the technique initially described in Ref. , and consequently all the boundary conditions were taken into account exactly and there was no need to either enclose the vortex in a cylinder or to introduce periodic boundary conditions along the vortex axis. Moreover, there is no need to diagonalize any matrices and the fact that the single–quasiparticle spectrum has (or has not) a number of discrete eigenvalues does not require any change in the numerical algorithm. Since we consider a straight vortex, the quasiparticle wave functions in cylindrical coordinates $`𝒓=(r,\varphi ,z)`$ have the simple structure

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}u_𝜶(𝒓)\hfill \\ v_𝜶(𝒓)\hfill \end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}u_\alpha (r)\mathrm{exp}\left[in\varphi +ikz\right]\hfill \\ v_\alpha (r)\mathrm{exp}\left[i(n1)\varphi +ikz\right]\hfill \end{array}\right),$$
(2)
where $`\alpha `$ labels the quasiparticle states, $`n`$ is integer and $`k`$ is the wave vector of the quasiparticle state along the vortex $`Oz`$–axis and $`𝜶=(\alpha ,k,n)`$. (Note that we use $`𝒓`$ for the 3d–coordinate and $`r`$ for the radial cylindrical coordinate.) The mean–field depends only on radial coordinate $`r`$ (measured from the vortex axis), while the pairing field has the structure $`\mathrm{\Delta }(r)\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )`$.

Our results are summarized in Figs. 36 where we show the vortex density, mean–field, pairing field and velocity profiles, as functions of the distance from the vortex axis, for several values of the neutron chemical potential. The most unexpected feature of these profiles is the prominent depression of the matter density in the region of the vortex axis. In the case of superfluid dilute bosons at the vortex axis the density practically vanishes. Except for the barely visible features in the density profile of a vortex reported in Refs.  but not commented on, such features have not been discussed in literature in the case of a Fermi system. The asymptotic density changes roughly by a factor of forty from the lowest to the highest values of the chemical potential plotted in these figures and the Fermi momentum changes by approximately a factor of three. The size of the inhomogeneity in the matter distribution and the mean–field $`U(r)`$ are governed by the asymptotic value of the Fermi wavelength, while the spatial profile of the pairing field $`\mathrm{\Delta }(r)`$ is controlled mostly by the coherence length, $`\xi =\epsilon _F/\mathrm{\Delta }k_F1/k_F`$ (where $`k_F`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`\epsilon _F`$ are the asymptotic values for the Fermi wave vector, pairing gap and Fermi energy). The density gradients are noticeable and the gradient correction terms in the NEDF, even though they are small, are non–negligible. The density depletion drives the mean–field to become less attractive in the vortex core, which in its turn, due to the self-consistency, stabilizes this structure. The density depletion is likely so significant in neutron matter because the pairing field is relatively stronger than in the case of electrons. The magnitude of the pairing correlations is characterized by the ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }(r)/\epsilon _F(r)=\mathrm{\Delta }(r)/(\mu U(r))`$. In the vortex core region the behavior $`\mathrm{\Delta }(r)0`$ as $`r0`$ can be partially compensated by an increasing $`U(r)`$, which induces in its turn a density depletion. The density and pairing field profiles (and to a lesser extent the mean–field as well) show some rather faint Friedel–like oscillations, which can be attributed to the presence of discrete states inside the vortex core .

The presence of the vortex implies a net flow of the neutron superfluid around the vortex axis with the velocity given by

$$\mathrm{V}_s(r)\widehat{𝒆}_\mathit{\varphi }=\frac{i\mathrm{}}{mr\rho (r)}\underset{𝜶}{}v_𝜶^{}(𝒓)\widehat{𝒆}_\mathit{\varphi }\frac{}{\varphi }v_𝜶(𝒓),$$
(3)
where $`\widehat{𝒆}_\mathit{\varphi }=(y,x,0)/r`$, the summation over $`𝜶`$ should be interpreted as a sum or integral when appropriate, over all quasiparticle states with energies $`E_\alpha >0`$ and $`\rho (r)`$ is the neutron number density. Naturally $`\mathrm{V}_s(0)=0`$. If all neutron matter would be involved in such a super–flow around the vortex axis, the superfluid velocity would be given by

$$\mathrm{V}_v(r)\widehat{𝒆}_\mathit{\varphi }=\frac{\mathrm{}}{2mr^2}(y,x,0),$$
(4)
which corresponds to Osanger’s quantization condition  per Cooper pair

$$\frac{1}{2\pi }_C\mathrm{V}_v(r)\widehat{𝒆}_\mathit{\varphi }𝑑𝒓=\frac{\mathrm{}}{2m},$$
(5)
and where the contour $`C`$ is any closed curve, around the vortex axis. While at relatively large distances from the vortex axis the neutron super–flow indeed approaches this “classical” limit, that is not the case at distances smaller or of the order of the coherence length $`\xi `$. The interpretation of this behavior is relatively simple. Since the pairing field vanishes at the vortex axis, the neutron matter in the immediate neighborhood is not fully superfluid. Only the fraction $`f_s(r)=\mathrm{V}_s(r)/\mathrm{V}_v(r)`$ of the neutrons are entrained into the superfluid flow. This fraction vanishes at the vortex axis and approaches unity far from the vortex core, essentially in a monotonic fashion. $`\mathrm{V}_s(r)`$ is always significantly smaller than the Fermi velocity.

The existence of a strong density depletion in the vortex core is going to affect appreciably the energetics of a neutron star crust. One can obtain a gross estimate of the pinning energy of a vortex on a nucleus as $`E_{pin}^V=[\epsilon (\rho _{out})\rho _{out}\epsilon (\rho _{in})\rho _{in}]V`$, where $`\epsilon (\rho )`$ is the energy per particle at density $`\rho `$, see Fig. 1, $`\rho _{in}`$ and $`\rho _{out}`$ are the densities inside and outside the vortex core and $`V`$ is the volume of the nucleus. Naturally, this simple formula does not take into account a number of factors, in particular surface effects and the changes in the velocity profile and the pairing field. These last contributions were accounted for (with some variations) in the past . However, if the density inside the vortex core and outside differ significantly one expects $`E_{pin}^V`$ to be the dominant contribution. In the low density region, where $`\epsilon (\rho _{out})\rho _{out}/\epsilon (\rho _{in})\rho _{in}`$ is largest, see Fig. 4, one expects a particularly large anti–pinning effect $`(E_{pin}^V>0)`$. The energy per unit length of a simple vortex is expected to be significantly lowered when compared with previous estimates  by $`[\epsilon (\rho _{out})\rho _{out}\epsilon (\rho _{in})\rho _{in}]\pi R^2`$, where $`R`$ is an approximate core radius, see Fig. 3. How a significant density depletion found here affects the neutron star properties in the crust will be addressed in our future work.

This work benefited from partial financial support from DOE under contract DE–FG03–97ER41014.


text:
# I Introduction

## I Introduction

Quark condensates, the non-vanishing vacuum expectation values of normal product $`\overline{q}q`$, which characterize the non-perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) vacuum, correspond to the breaking of Chiral invariance. Their phenomenological importance to hardronic physics properties exhibits itself by the initial work of Shifman, Vainshtein and Zakharov , which is now known as QCD sum rule. The QCD sum rule approach tries to incorporate non-perturbative elements of full QCD. As the starting point, operator product expansion method was used to expand the time ordered currents into a series of quark and gluon condensates which parameterize the long distance properties, while the short distance effects are incorporated in the Wilson coefficients. However, these elements (condensates) can not yet be rigorous in QCD. In this letter, we clarify the algebra expression for calculating the quark condensate based on the non-perturbative quark propagator calculated through Schwinger-Dyson equation. The letter is arranged as: in section 2, re-normalization group evolution of the quark condensate; in section 3, calculation of the quark propagator and algebra expression for the quark condensate; in section 4, conclusion.

## II Re-normalization group evolution of the quark condensate

Let us begin our work by the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner (GMOR) relation , which announces the existence of non-zero quark condensate for the first time.

$$f_\pi ^2m_\pi ^2=(m_u+m_d)_\mu \{\overline{u}u_\mu +\overline{d}d_\mu \}.$$
(1)
This relation can be easily obtained by a few algebra manipulation. The left hand side of Eq.(1) is scale independent, while the components of the right hand side is scale dependent. To make a scale independent quantity, the $`m_\mu `$ and $`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ must evolve in opposite direction:

$`m_\mu =\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^dm_\mathrm{\Lambda },\overline{q}q_\mu =\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^d\overline{q}q_\mathrm{\Lambda }=\{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)\}^dconstant,`$ (2)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ is the QCD scale parameter , $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ serves as boundary condition, $`d`$ is the anomaly dimension. The $`\overline{q}q_\mu `$, which characterizes the low energy non-perturbative QCD vacuum, acquires a divergent quantity at large energy scale, while the perturbative effects are dominating. It is obvious an artifact of the re-normalization group equation. We can borrow some idea from quantum electrodynamics (QED), if we take QED as self consistent theory, to avoid the Landau singularity and triviality , the perturbative expansion of coupling must break down at some energy scale far below Landau singularity and the QED emerges into grand unified gauge theory which is an asymptotic gauge theory, through not very successful  . It is an indication there must be some constrains for the application of the re-normalization group equation.

Considering the particular scale behaviour of non-abelian gauge theory, we can divide the QCD vacuum into both non-perturbative and perturbative parts. The full two point quark Green function can then be expressed into the following form:

$`S(x)=S_{PT}(x)_\mu +S_{NP}(x)_\mu .`$ (3)
The scale $`\mu `$ is the Chiral phase transition point, the effects above which can be calculated by the usual perturbative expansion method, while the effects below is embodied in the quark vacuum condensate. For example, for $`\mu >m_c`$, the values of $`\alpha _s(\mu )`$ are sufficiently small that the effects of strong interaction can be treated in perturbation theory. When one moves to low energy scale, $`\alpha _s`$ increases. At $`\mu 1GeV`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\overline{MS}}^{(3)}`$ (Here 3 is the number of quark flavor), $`\alpha _s>0.5`$. It signals the breakdown of perturbation expansion. We can also get support from renormalon theory of QCD, which serves as a bridge between perturbative and non-perturbative QCD. In general, ultraviolet renormalon can be canceled by introducing counter terms while the infrared renormalon is absorbed into vacuum condensate due to the strong coupling at low energy scale . If the vacuum condensate be pure collective non-perturbative objects, the $`\mu `$ can not taken to be very large where the perturbative effects are dominating.

## III Calculation of the quark propagator and algebra expression for the quark condensate

If the full two point quark Green function is known, the calculation of the quark condensate can be greatly facilitated. To obtain the full quark Green function, let us first examine the status of two main non-perturbative method, the Schwinger-Dyson(SD) equation and lattice simulation.

Quantum chromodynamics, as a non-breaking $`SU(3)`$ gauge theory, merits asymptotic freedom when the energy scale is large, which protects the perturbative calculation doing the work, so we can get the full two point quark Green function by loops calculation. However, at small energy scale, the expansion of large coupling constant leads to a divergent series. On the other hand, one of the main non-perturbative method, lattice calculation can not give reliable results below 1 GeV, where the most novel physics are supposed to lie. Furthermore, lattice calculation suffers its own shortcomings, such as Gribov copies, boundary conditions, extrapolation and so on. The most outstanding may be that the lattice simulation can not include the contribution from the quark loops. Neglecting the quark loops may lead to very different results comparing with the corresponding full ones. For example, although the ghost contributions are important for the protection of unitary condition for the transition amplitude, they can be safely neglected for its small numerical values at high energy scales. However, at low energy scale, including ghost greatly changes the infrared structure of gluons two point functions. That is, one get an infrared vanished instead an infrared enhanced gluon propagator  (Ref. are comprehensive review).

We can not solve the Euler-Lagrange equation for quarks, gluons and ghost, and get the analytic expression for those fields. At the present time SD equation is the most reliable tool for studying the infrared behaviour of the quarks and gluons propagators in the continuum limit, while it has its own shortcomings. One can get a series of coupled re-normalized integral equations for those Green functions through functional integral method by including the counter terms. However, it is a divergent series and difficult to deal with in practice, one have to make some truncation. In fact, the long part of dressed vertex can be approximated through the solution of the corresponding Ward-Takahashi or Slavnov-Taylor identity  while the transverse part of vertex can be determined with the guide of high energy behaviour, for example, Ball-Chiu vertex  and Curtis-Pennington vertex . The re-normalized SD equation for quark propagator can be expressed in the following form:

$$S^1(p,\mu )=Z_2(\mu ,\mathrm{\Lambda })[\gamma pm_0(\mathrm{\Lambda })]+\frac{16\pi i}{3}Z_1(\mu ,\mathrm{\Lambda })^\mathrm{\Lambda }\frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}\gamma _\mu S(k,\mu )\mathrm{\Gamma }_\nu G^{\mu \nu }(kp),$$
(4)
where

$`S^1(p,\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`A(p,\mu )\gamma pB(p,\mu )A(p,\mu )[\gamma pm(p)],`$ (5)
$`G^{\mu \nu }(k)`$ $`=`$ $`(g^{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{k^\mu k^\nu }{k^2}})G(k^2),`$ (6)
and $`m_0`$ stands for an explicit quark mass-breaking term. With the explicit small mass term, we can preclude the zero solution for $`B(p)`$ and in fact there indeed exist a bare current quark mass which is given by the Yukawa coupling of Higgs due to the spontaneous breaking of SU(2) Chiral symmetry at an energy scale about 246 GeV. The full vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu `$ can be approximated by the Ball-Chiu vertex and Curtis-Pennington vertex. This dressing comprises the notation of constituent quarks by providing a mass $`m(p)=B(p,\mu )/A(p,\mu )`$, which is corresponding to dynamical symmetry breaking. Because the form of the gluon propagator $`g^2G(p)`$ in the infrared region is unknown, one often one often uses model forms as input in the previous studies of the rainbow SD equation . Although the loops integration is in general divergent, the full quark gluon loop integration maybe non divergent. There are some successful model dependent formulations for the coupling constant which insure a natural integral cut off at large energy scale, for example, confining $`\delta ^4(k)`$ model, gauss distribution model, flat bottom model . There is no need for the nomenclature subtraction and hence re-normalization, if there is no divergent in the loops integration. The re-normalization coefficients can be set to 1.

The quark condensate, as isolated closed non-perturbative quark loop integral, if dependent on any energy scale, the scale is the momentum cut off in the quark loop integral,

$`\overline{q}(x)q(0)_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`(4N_c){\displaystyle _0^\mu }{\displaystyle \frac{d^4p}{(2\pi )^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{B(p^2)}{p^2A^2(p^2)+B^2(p^2)}}e^{ipx}.`$ (7)
At x=0 the expression for the local condensate $`\overline{q}(0)q(0)`$ is recovered,

$$\overline{q}(0)q(0)_\mu =\frac{12}{16\pi ^2}_0^\mu 𝑑ss\frac{B(s)}{sA^2(s)+B^2(s)}.$$
(8)
In fact, the energy scale $`\mu `$ is implicitly determined by the effective gluon propagator, we can use above expression as the definition for the quark condensate. However, presently, the non-perturbative technique can not prove the relation

$$_0^\mu 𝑑ss\frac{B(s)}{sA^2(s)+B^2(s)}(\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2))^d,$$
(9)
at low energy scale. Here $`d`$ is the anomalous dimension and takes the value $`d=\frac{12}{332n_f}`$.

Operator product expansion has proven that at large Euclidean momentum, the effective quark mass evolves as

$$m(q^2)_{q^2\mathrm{}}=\frac{c}{q^2}\{\mathrm{log}(q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)\}^{d1}+m(\mu )\{\frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}\}^d,$$
(10)
here $`c=\frac{4\pi d}{3}\frac{\overline{q}q}{[\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)]^d}`$ is some constant independent of $`\mu `$ , this implies that $`\overline{q}q_\mu [\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)]^d`$, but not the definition of Eq.(8) .

If we take the limit $`\mu \mathrm{}`$ and assume ultraviolet dominating, the above relation $`\overline{q}q_\mu (\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2))^d`$ is indeed the case, although the quark condensate is only defined at low energy scale.

When the energy scale $`\mu `$ increase, one obtain an increasing quantity. It is obvious a great mount of perturbative effects come in the integral, then $`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ contains both perturbative and non-perturbative parts and can be best interpreted as ”smeared collective effects”, due to the falling attraction force can hardly bind the quarks together to form vacuum condensate. There is another description of quark confinement, the propagator of a colored state should have no singularities on the real time-like $`p^2`$ axial, the absence of Kallen-Lehmann spectral representation precludes the existence of free quarks . The interaction between dressed quarks may diminish at separation beyond the characteristic length scale at which point the quark Green’s function approaches its vacuum values, but the vacuum’s repulsive force due to the absence of a mass pole in the dressed quark propagator again compresses the quarks together. However, there is a long way to go before the repulsive quark-vacuum interaction can be quantified.

Here we borrow some idea from studies of strong coupling quantum electrodynamics, which is often used as an abelian model for QCD. In those studies, the effective coupling constant is often taken as constant, and there does exist divergent in the loops integral, so re-normalization is necessary . We have to change above algebra formulation for the quark condensate through using re-normalized quark propagator,

$$\overline{q}q_\mu =4N_c_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d^4p}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{m(p^2)}{A(p,\mu )(p^2+m^2(p))},$$
(11)
where

$$A(p,\mu )|_{p^2=\mu ^2}=1.$$
(12)
The effects from hard gluonic radiative corrections to the quark propagator are connected to a possible change of the re-normalization scale $`\mu `$ at which the condensates are defined. Those effects are of minor importance for the non-perturbative effects in the low and medium energy regions, and should be neglected as it is perturbative contribution if we take quark condensate as pure collective objects. In fact, the separation is hard to perform,

On the other hand, if we take the GMOR relation as the starting point, one should not take the scale be very large due to the artifact of the re-normalization group for $`\overline{q}q_\mu `$. the evolution of quark condensate with $`\mu `$ can be determined from GMOR relation and re-normalization group equation,

$`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^d\overline{q}q_\mathrm{\Lambda }.`$ (13)
In the following, we write the expressions more explicitly:

$`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^d{\displaystyle \frac{12}{16\pi ^4}}{\displaystyle _0^\mathrm{\Lambda }}d^4p{\displaystyle \frac{B(p^2)}{A(p^2)^2p^2+B(p^2)^2}}`$ (14)
and

$`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^d{\displaystyle \frac{12}{16\pi ^4}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d^4p{\displaystyle \frac{m(p^2)}{A(p,\mathrm{\Lambda })(p^2+m^2(p))}},`$ (15)
here one should not take $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ a large value. Equation (15) and Eq.(14) are expressions for quark condensate with and without hard gluonic radiative corrections respectively.

In Ref. , the authors got a scale dependent of $`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ through analyzing the Ward-Takahashi identity and the Beth-Salpeter equation with the tacit acceptance of the GMOR relation.

$`\overline{q}q_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^d\overline{q}q_\mathrm{\Lambda },`$ (16)
$`=`$ $`\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2)}}\}^d(4N_c){\displaystyle _0^\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\displaystyle \frac{d^4p}{(2\pi )^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{m(p^2)}{A(p,\mu )(p^2+m^2(p))}},`$ (17)
In fact, although the expression has explicit scale dependence, it does not satisfy the re-normalization group equation due to the scale dependence of $`A(p,\mu )`$.

## IV conclusion

In this letter, we examine the algebra definition of quark condensate. To obtain the quark condensate, we have to get the non-perturbative quark propagator through quark SD equation. If there is no divergent in the loops integration, re-normalization is unnecessary. The quark condensate, as isolated closed non-perturbative quark loop integral, if dependent on any energy scale, the scale is the momentum cut off in the quark loop integral. Otherwise, for a re-normalized quark propagator, the subtraction point provided a natural energy scale, we should use the definition Eq.(11). As the critical point for perturbative-nonperturbative phase transition is about 1 GeV, one should not get a quantity at large energy scale $`\overline{q}q_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and the then evolve to lower energy scale through re-normalization group equation. To get explicitly scale dependent expressions for quark condensate, one can use Eq.(14) and Eq.(15) with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ taken not far above 1 GeV. At large energy scale, the falling attraction force can hardly bind the quark together to form vacuum condensate, meanwhile, a great mount of perturbative effects come in the integral, the quark condensate $`\overline{q}q_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ contains both perturbative and non-perturbative parts and can be best interpreted as ”smeared collective effects”. If one take the quark condensate as pure collective objects, the $`\mu `$ should not taken to be large, one can also get some support from renormalon theory of QCD .

Acknowledgment

One of the author (S.L.Wan) would thank Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No. 19875048 for financial support.