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# Anomalous X-ray Pulsars: Long-Term Monitoring and Soft-Gamma Repeater like X-ray Bursts

## INTRODUCTION

The nature of anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) was a mystery for the past 20 years, since the discovery of the first example (1E 2259.1+586; Fahlman and Gregory,, 1981). There are currently only five confirmed AXPs, all of which are located in the Galactic plane, with two at the geometric centers of supernova remnants (Fahlman and Gregory,, 1981; Vasisht and Gotthelf,, 1997). AXP characteristics can be summarized as follows (see Israel et al.,, 2002, for a review): they exhibit X-ray pulsations in the range $`L_x`$6–12 s; they have pulsed X-ray luminosities in the range $`10^{33}10^{35}`$ erg s-1; they spin down regularly; they have spectra that are characterized by thermal emission of $`kT0.4`$ keV plus a hard power-law tail. They have faint or no optical/IR counterparts (Hulleman et al., 2000a, ; Hulleman et al., 2000b, ; Israel et al.,, 2002). The optical counterpart of one AXP, 4U 0142+61 is reportedly pulsed (Kern and Martin,, 2002).

AXPs are called “anomalous” because it has been unclear what powers their radiation. They are not rotation-powered as their observed X-ray luminosities are much greater than the rate of loss of rotational kinetic energy inferred from their spin-down. They were long thought to be accreting from a low mass companion (e.g. Mereghetti and Stella,, 1995). However this model is difficult to reconcile with observations: the absence of Doppler shifts even on short time scales (e.g. Mereghetti et al.,, 1998), the absence of a detectable optical/IR companion or bright accretion disk (see Mereghetti and Stella,, 1995; Hulleman et al., 2000a, ), the apparent associations with supernova remnants, that AXP spectra are very different from those of known accreting sources, and that $`L_x`$ is generally smaller than in known accreting sources, all are inconsistent with this scenario. Chatterjee et al., (2000) (see also van Paradijs et al.,, 1995; Corbet et al.,, 1995) proposed that AXPs are accreting from a fossil disk made of fall-back material from the supernova. However, this model overpredicts the observed optical/IR flux from the disk (Perna et al.,, 2000; Hulleman et al., 2000a, ; Hulleman et al., 2000b, ; Kaplan et al.,, 2001).

Thompson and Duncan, (1996) suggested that the main source of free energy for AXP emission is from the magnetic field itself. In this model, AXPs are young, isolated, highly magnetized neutron stars or “magnetars”. Prior to our RXTE monitoring campaign, the primary evidence in favor of this model for AXPs was the inferred strength of the surface dipolar magnetic field required to slow the pulsar down in vacuo, assuming magnetic dipole braking as in radio pulsars. These fields are in the range $`10^{14}10^{15}`$ G. The spin-down ages in this model, inferred assuming a small birth spin period, are in the range $``$8–200 kyr. This suggested youth is further evidenced by the associations with supernova remnants, and from the location of AXPs in the Galactic plane.

The identification of AXPs with magnetars was further strongly motivated by the similarity of AXP emission to that of the soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) in quiescence. Specifically, the latter have similar pulse periods, are spinning down (Kouveliotou et al.,, 1998, 1999), and have X-ray spectra that are comparable to, though somewhat harder than, those of the AXPs, at least when not in outburst (Mereghetti et al.,, 2000; Kulkarni et al.,, 2002). Independent evidence for the ultra-high magnetic fields exists in SGRs; for example, a $`10^{15}`$ G magnetic field is required to confine the radiation that is seen following major outbursts (Thompson and Duncan,, 1995). Indeed the only strong distinction between the emission from SGRs and AXPs appeared to be the fact that SGRs exhibit occasional and repeating short bursts, while AXPs did not.

## RESULTS

The results presented here were obtained using the Proportional Counter Array (PCA; Jahoda et al.,, 1996) on board NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The PCA consists of an array of five collimated xenon/methane multi-anode proportional counter units operating in the 2 – 60 keV range, with a total effective area of approximately $`6500\mathrm{cm}^2`$ and a field of view of $`1^\mathrm{o}`$ FWHM. A program to monitor AXPs regularly using RXTE was begun in 1996 in order to determine their long-term timing, pulsed flux, and pulse profile stabilities (Kaspi et al.,, 1999, 2000, 2001; Gavriil and Kaspi,, 2002). As part of this program, motivated by the existence of SGR bursts, we also searched the AXP data for bursts (Gavriil et al.,, 2002). Our observations consist primarily of short snapshots taken on a monthly basis. In addition, we used a handful of archival observations; the exposures in these observations vary. We used the GoodXenonwithPropane data mode, which records photon arrival times with 1-$`\mu `$s resolution and bins energies into one of 256 channels. Below, we summarize the results of this monitoring campaign thus far (see Kaspi et al.,, 2001; Gavriil and Kaspi,, 2002; Gavriil et al.,, 2002, for details).

### Phase-Coherent Timing

In the timing analysis, each binned time series was epoch-folded using the best estimate frequency determined initially from either a periodogram or Fourier transform (though later folding was done using the timing ephemeris determined by maintaining phase coherence; see below). Resulting pulse profiles were cross-correlated in the Fourier domain with a high signal-to-noise template created by adding phase-aligned profiles from previous observations. The cross-correlation returns an average pulse time-of-arrival (TOA) for each observation corresponding to a fixed pulse phase. The pulse phase $`\varphi `$ at any time $`t`$ can be expressed as a Taylor expansion,

$$\varphi (t)=\varphi (t_0)+\nu _0(tt_0)+\frac{1}{2}\dot{\nu }_0(tt_0)^2+\frac{1}{6}\ddot{\nu }_0(tt_0)^3+\mathrm{},$$
(1)
where $`\nu 1/P`$ is the pulse frequency, $`\dot{\nu }d\nu /dt`$, etc. and subscript ‘$`0`$’ denotes a parameter evaluated at the reference epoch $`t=t_0`$. The TOAs were fit to the above polynomial using the pulsar timing software package TEMPO111http://pulsar.princeton.edu/tempo. Unambiguous pulse numbering is made possible by obtaining monitoring observations spaced so that the best-fit model parameters have a small enough uncertainty to allow prediction of the phase of the next observation to within $`0.2`$. Typically this requires two closely spaced observations (within a few of hours of each other) followed by one spaced a few days later, and regular monitoring thereafter, as long as phase coherence can be maintained.

Using phase coherent timing we have shown that AXPs can be phase connected over long intervals, implying they can spin down with impressive stability, which is at odds with what is seen in most X-ray pulsars that definitely have accretion disks (Kaspi et al.,, 1999, 2000; Gavriil and Kaspi,, 2002, see Figure 2). However this is not true of all our sources. 1E 1048.1–5937 shows large deviations from a simple spin down (Figure 2, Kaspi et al.,, 2001). However, the very noisy timing behavior seen in 1E 1048.1–5937 shows no evidence for correlated flux variations, as are expected in fall-back disk models.

### Pulse Morphology

Motivated by a previous report of a significant pulse morphology change in an AXP (1E 2259.1+586; Iwasawa et al.,, 1992) we used our RXTE data to search for more such events. Morphology changes are expected in the magnetar model during outbursts or torque variations.

To search for pulse profile changes, the profiles were first phase aligned using the templates and the same cross-correlation procedure used for timing. Each data profile was fit to a high signal-to-noise template by adjusting the amplitude and the offset in order to minimize a $`\chi ^2`$ statistic. The resulting data profile was subtracted from the template to yield “profile residuals” for each observation. The procedure was repeated for each pulsar with different binning in order to have sensitivity to a variety of types of pulse profile changes. We have not detected any large pulse profile variations, except for 1E 2259.1+586 during a major outburst (see below). This justifies our other analysis procedures which assume a fixed profile. However, in a handful of observations, we have found low-level pulse profile changes, at the $`3\sigma `$ level for all sources.

It is difficult to set quantitative upper limits on the amplitude of pulse profile changes to which we were sensitive, as these depend on the shape of the change, and vary depending on the length of the observation. Typically, RMS profile residuals are $``$20% of the pulse peak, although this varied from 4–40%.

### Pulsed Flux and Spectra

We have also used our RXTE observations to monitor the pulsed flux of each AXP. By considering the stability of pulsed fluxes, we test the two competing AXP models. In accreting systems, torque fluctuations are generally accompanied by variation in the mass accretion rate and hence luminosity, and vice versa. In the magnetar model, abrupt flux changes could occur in analogy with SGR-like outbursts. Given the large field-of-view of the PCA, the low count rates for the sources relative to the background, and the fact that, for example, 1E 2259.1+586 is in a supernova remnant, total flux measurements are difficult with our RXTE data. Instead, we have determined the pulsed component of the flux, by using the off-pulse emission as a background estimator.

Data from each observing epoch were folded at the expected pulse period as was done for the timing analysis. However, for the flux analysis, 16 phase bins were used across the pulse. For each phase bin, we maintained a spectral resolution of 128 bins over the PCA range. Given the broad morphologies of the average pulse profile, only one phase bin could be used as a background estimator. The pulse profiles were phase aligned, so that the same off-pulse bin was used for background in every case. The remaining phase bins were summed, and their spectral bins regrouped using the FTOOL grppha. The regrouped, phase-summed data sets, along with the background measurement, were used as input to the X-ray spectral fitting software package XSPEC222http://xspec.gsfc.nasa.gov. Response matrices were created using the FTOOLs xtefilt and pcarsp. Because of the limited statistics, fitting a two-component model was not practical, so we used a simple photoelectrically absorbed power law, at first holding only $`N_H`$ fixed. For all sources we found that the photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ was constant within the uncertainties; we therefore held it fixed at its mean value. To extract a pulsed flux at each observing epoch we refit each spectrum by varying only the normalization. Other than after a major outburst from 1E 2259.1+586 (see below), we found no evidence for any large variability in the pulsed flux within 20%–30% consistent with the systematic errors. AXP spectra are generally best fit by a two-component model consisting of a photoelectrically absorbed blackbody with a hard power-law tail (Israel et al. 1999). Whether these two components are physically distinct is an open question (Özel et al.,, 2001; Thompson et al.,, 2002). To investigate this, we compared the pulse profile morphology of the AXPs in two energy bands. Thus far, we have found that pulse profile energy-dependence is generally subtle, but varies from source to source. We found no clear patterns when considering average pulse profiles as a function of energy (Gavriil and Kaspi,, 2002).

### SGR-like X-ray Bursts from 1E 1048.1–5937

In the magnetar model for SGRs (Thompson and Duncan,, 1996), bursts are a result of sudden crustal yields due to stress from the outward diffusion of the huge internal magnetic field. Such yields cause crust shears which twist the external magnetic field, releasing energy. Thompson and Duncan, (1996) who, upon suggesting that AXPs are also magnetars, predicted X-ray bursts should eventually be seen from them. In order to confirm this prediction we searched our RXTE data for bursts. Our burst searching algorithm is summarized below (see Gavriil et al.,, 2002, for details).

Time series were created with 31.25-ms resolution from photons having energies in the range 2–20 keV for each PCA Proportional Counter Unit (PCU) separately, using all xenon layers. Photon arrival times at each epoch were adjusted to the solar system barycentre. The resulting time series were searched for significant excursions from the mean count rate by comparing each time bin value with a windowed 7-s running mean. Bursts were identified assuming Poissonian statistics, and by combining probabilities from the separate PCUs.

We discovered two short, highly significant X-ray bursts, separated by 16 days, from the direction of the AXP 1E 1048.1–5937 in data from Fall 2001 (Gavriil et al.,, 2002). The first occurred during a 3-ks PCA observation obtained on 2001 October 29, and the second during a 3-ks observation obtained on 2001 November 14. We searched a total of 442 ks of PCA observing time from 1996–2002, and no other significant bursts were found toward 1E 1048$``$5937. The burst profiles are shown in Figure 3.

We fit the spectra from the first 1 s of each burst to two one-component models, a power law and a black body. Continuum models provided an adequate characterization of the Burst 2 spectrum but not of the Burst 1 spectrum. As seen in Figure 4, the spectrum for the 1 s after the Burst 1 onset exhibits a feature near 14 keV. This feature is clear in all binning schemes and is prominent throughout the first $``$1 s of the burst. No known PCA instrumental effect produces a feature at this energy (K. Jahoda, personal communication). Intriguingly, in some spectral binning schemes, we saw hints of features in the spectrum consistent with additional multiples of 7 keV, suggesting cyclotron lines. However these were not statistically significant.

Due to the wide ($``$1) field-of-view (FOV) and lack of imaging capabilities of the PCA, we cannot verify that the bursts originated from the location of the AXP. The low peak X-ray fluxes of the events (see Table 1) preclude determining the source’s location using data from other, better imaging instruments that were contemporaneously observing the X-ray sky, such as the RXTE All Sky Monitor, or the Wide Field Camera aboard BeppoSAX. We must therefore consider other possible origins from the bursts before concluding they were from the AXP.

The bursts’ short rise times (Table 1) require emission regions of less than a few thousand km, implying a compact object origin. Type I bursts from an LMXB in the same FOV as 1E 1048.1–5937 are unlikely to explain our observed bursts because (i) the burst rise times are much shorter than those of Type I bursts; (ii) the burst spectra are much harder than those of Type I bursts; (iii) Burst 2 shows no evidence for spectral softening with time and no Type I burst has ever exhibited a spectral feature like the one detected in Burst 1; (iv) the bursts are extremely faint, implying a source location well outside the Milky Way for Type I burst luminosities (v) there are no known LMXBs in the FOV (Liu et al.,, 2001). Furthermore, the bursts we have observed are unlikely to be Type II bursts from an unknown X-ray binary in the PCA FOV because (i) of the rarity of such events (observed thus far only in two sources, both accreting binaries); (ii) Type II bursts have longer rise times than do our bursts; (iii) no Type II burst has exhibited a spectral feature like that seen in Burst 1. Classical gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) sometimes exhibit prompt X-ray emission that can have temporal and spectral signatures similar to those we have observed(Heise et al.,, 2001). However, the likelihood of two GRBs occurring within $`1^{}`$ of each other is small, and GRBs are not known to repeat.

The observed burst properties are in many ways similar to those seen from SGRs (Göğüş et al.,, 2001). The fast rise and slow decay profiles are consistent with SGR time histories, as are the burst durations. Both AXP and SGR bursts are spectrally much harder than is their quiescent pulsed emission. The burst peak fluxes and fluences fall within the range seen for SGRs, and the spectrum of Burst 2 is consistent with SGR burst spectra of comparable fluence. Burst 1 has characteristics unlike nearly all SGR bursts, specifically its long tail (Table 1) and spectral feature. However, we note that one event from SGR 1900+14 was shown (Ibrahim et al.,, 2001; Strohmayer and Ibrahim,, 2000) to possess each of these properties. The marginal increase in the pulsed flux that we observed at the burst epochs is consistent with SGR pulsed flux increases seen during bursting episodes (Woods et al.,, 2001). Finally, the fact that in spite of several years of monitoring, the only two bursts detected occurred within two weeks of each other suggests episodic bursting activity, the hallmark of SGRs. Thus, the characteristics of these events match the burst properties of SGRs far better than any other known burst phenomenon.

The large 14-keV spectral line in the first burst in intriguing. An electron cyclotron feature at this energy $`E`$ implies a magnetic field of $`B=2\pi mcE/he1.2\times 10^{12}`$ G (where $`m`$ is the electron mass, $`c`$ is the speed of light, $`h`$ is Planck’s constant, and $`e`$ is the electron charge), while a proton cyclotron feature implies $`B2.4\times 10^{15}`$ G. The former is significantly lower than is implied from the source’s spin-down and is typical of conventional young neutron stars, rather than magnetars. The latter is higher than is implied by the spin-down yet reasonable for the magnetar model as the spin-down torque is sensitive only to the dipolar component of the magnetic field.

### A Major Outburst from 1E 2259.1+586

On 2002 June 18, fortuitously during one of our RXTE monitoring observations of 1E 2259.1+586, over 80 bursts were detected in the span of 14 ks (Kaspi and Gavriil,, 2002; Kaspi et al.,, 2002). Figure 6 shows the 0.125 s light curve. 1E 2259.1+586, in contrast to 1E 1048.1–5937, had been an extremely stable rotator and had shown no signs of “volatility.” The association of the bursts toward 1E 1048.1–5937 with the AXP could not be unambiguously verified, however, the bursts seen here (Figure 6; top panel) clearly originated from 1E 2259.1+586. During and following the outburst, the pulsed flux increased (see Figure 6) and there was a significant pulsed morphology change, such that the relative amplitude of the leading and trailing pulse were swapped (see Figure 6).

Target-of-opportunity observations were made by many major observatories in addition to RXTE at the time of this outburst. No radio emission was detected in spite of sensitive VLA observations, nor were any bursts seen in TOO XMM-Newton data obtained roughly a week afterward. Near-infrared observations obtained with the Gemini North 8-m reflector on June 21 showed that the proposed IR counterpart had brightened by a factor of 3.4 (Kaspi et al. 2002). A few days later, it faded back to its pre-burst value. This represents the first detection of transient optical/IR emission from an isolated neutron star. Subsequently, Israel et al., (2002) reported possible IR variability from the proposed counterpart to 1E 1048.1$``$5937, which they suggested might be related to its bursting behaviour. The origin of IR emission is currently not addressed in the magnetar model.

Pulse morphology changes can occur, according to the magnetar model, during outbursts as in the SGRs, as this is when magnetic reconfigurations occur. Indeed during the outburst of 1E 2259.1+586, significant pulse morphology changes were seen, such that the relative amplitude of the double peaked profile was swapped (see Figure 6). Iwasawa et al., (1992) also reported a significant change in the pulse morphology of 1E 2259.1+586 in GINGA observations obtained in 1990, such that the leading pulse had amplitude roughly half of the trailing pulse. In both instances the pulse profile returned back to its long-term state.

Pulsed flux enhancements in both the pulsed and persistent flux are observed in the SGRs during bursting episodes and are thought to be a result of back heating of the surface and outer crust by the burst emission in the magnetosphere. The pulsed flux of 1E 2259.1+586 increased by a factor of $`4`$ during its bursting episode (see Figure 6). We noted a marginal ($`3\sigma `$) increase in the pulsed flux from 1E 1048.1$``$5937 that commenced with the observation in which Burst 1 was detected, and which lasted $``$4 weeks (Gavriil et al.,, 2002). There have been past claims of X-ray flux changes, by up to a factor of $``$10 in two AXPs (1E 2259.1+586 and 1E 1048.1–5937; Baykal and Swank,, 1996; Oosterbroek et al.,, 1998), although the reported fluxes were measured with different instruments having very different spectral responses and angular resolutions. If correct, these past claims of increased flux might imply previous bursting activity.

## DISCUSSION

We have presented a variety of observational results for all AXPs using regular monitoring observations and archival observations from the PCA aboard RXTE. There is now strong evidence that AXPs are magnetars. The great rotationally stability in some AXPs is at odds with an accretion scenario, as is the absence of pulsed flux or pulse morphology changes correlated with torque. Extended periods of spin-up would only, though not necessarily, be expected in an accretion scenario, however all AXPs have exhibited relatively steady spin-down. Furthermore, and perhaps most compellingly, accretion models cannot account for the bursting episodes seen in two AXPs. Interestingly, there is a correlation between timing stability and $`\dot{\nu }`$ in our data. The sources with by far the smallest $`\dot{\nu }`$’s, are the most stable in quiescence (at least during our observations), while those with large $`\dot{\nu }`$’s are less so. The SGRs, being even less stable (Woods et al.,, 2002), have even larger $`\dot{\nu }`$’s, in agreement with this trend. If correct, the trend suggests a continuum of timing properties between the AXP and SGR populations, lending additional support to the connection between them.

The identification with magnetars is further strongly motivated by the similarity of the AXP emission to that of the SGRs. Specifically, the latter have similar pulse periods, are spinning down (Kouveliotou et al.,, 1998, 1999), and have X-ray spectra that are comparable to, though somewhat harder than, those of the AXPs, at least when not in outburst. With the detection of X-ray bursts from two AXPs the two classes are now similar in that respect as well. These very recent results appear to have sealed the connection between SGRs and AXPs, as was originally predicted by Thompson and Duncan, (1996). However, the identification of the two classes objects as magnetars has left some open questions. For instance, what if anything distinguishes AXPs and SGRs? Are AXPs the progenitors of SGRs or vice versa? Recently Kulkarni et al., (2002) have shown that the X-ray spectrum of the quiescent counterpart to SGR 0526–66 has a power-law index $`3`$, similar to those seen in AXPs, but softer than those of SGRs. As SGR 0526–66 has been inactive for almost two decades, this suggests SGRs and AXPs are one and the same object, and may have even cycle back and forth between each flavor. Another noteworthy question is what is the magnetar/radio pulsar connection? Recent observations of radio pulsars having apparent surface dipolar magnetic fields comparable (Camilo et al.,, 2000), and in one very new case (McLaughlin et al., private communication), surpassing those of some AXPs, leaves open the question of what physically distinguishes a magnetar from a rotation-powered pulsar of high magnetic field? Pivovaroff et al., (2000) suggested that the sources classified as magnetars might have much higher fields, in the form of multipole moments. Perhaps comparing the thermal X-ray emission from radio pulsars having a variety of magnetic fields may illuminate the situation.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by NASA, NATEQ and CIAR. VMK is a Canada Research Chair and a Fellow of the CIAR. This research has made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

E-mail address of V.M. Kaspi vkaspi@physics.mcgill.ca


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

One of the, at first sight, somewhat irritating features of string theories (or M-theory) is that their mathematical consistency requires the existence of more than four space-time dimensions. This apparent discrepancy with observation is conventionally accomodated by demanding the additional dimensions to be compact. Assuming the compact part of space-time and the string length to be sufficiently small, the resulting spectrum allows a clear separation between very heavy modes and modes that are very light, or massless. If one is only interested in low energy processes, the heavy modes can be integrated out, and one is left with an effective, lower-dimensional field theory that describes all low-energy phenomena.

The set of light fields of such a string compactification typically includes a number of scalar fields whose vacuum expectation values (vevs) are not fixed by a perturbative scalar potential. The vevs of some of these moduli fields have a simple geometrical interpretation in that they parameterize deformations of the compactification manifold that cost no energy.

For certain values of these deformation parameters, one sometimes encounters the phenomenon that some of the generically heavy modes suddenly become light. As a classical example, consider a string compactification that involves an $`S^1`$ factor. The radius, $`R`$, of the circle is in general not fixed by perturbative string physics and thus gives rise to a modulus, $`\varphi `$, whose vev is proportional to the radius: $`\varphi =aR`$. At $`\frac{\varphi }{a}=\sqrt{\alpha ^{}}`$, the circle is at its self-dual radius, and certain otherwise massive Kaluza-Klein and winding modes become massless (and lead to an $`SU\left(2\right)`$ gauge symmetry enhancement).

As another, non-perturbative, example (which can, however, sometimes be dual to the previous one (see below)), consider a compactification manifold with a non-trivial $`p`$-cycle. If the string (or M-)theory in question has appropriate solitonic objects ($`p`$-branes), these may wrap around the cycle and give rise to pointlike particles in the uncompactified dimensions . The mass of such particles is proportional to the volume of the $`p`$-cycle. When the size of the cycle corresponds to a modulus in the low energy effective theory, a vanishing vev for this modulus field corresponds to the cycle being collapsed to zero size. The wrapped brane then gives rise to additional massless states in the lower-dimensional theory at that particular point in the moduli space.

Clearly, away from these special points, such extra states are heavy and should be integrated out of the effective action. Near the points in moduli space where they become light, however, it is inaccurate, or rather inconsistent, to neglect them in the low energy theory. This inconsistency is typically reflected in couplings becoming singular or discontinuous when the modulus reaches the special value at which additional fields become massless. In order to obtain a consistent and non-singular action, one would have to avoid integrating out the extra light modes, at least in the region of the moduli space where they are light.

This can, in principle, be achieved in two different ways:
(i) Either one uses a microscopic string calculation in order to determine all the low energy couplings of the extra modes, or
(ii) one hopes that the generic low energy effective action without the extra states is sufficiently well-known and that there are sufficiently many symmetries involved so that one can “integrate the extra modes back in” by simply exploiting all these symmetries.

The second (“bottom-up”) method might not always be applicable, but if it is, it can be much simpler than the first, especially, when the microscopic formulation is not so well understood (such as, e.g., in the case of M-theory). In this talk I summarize two non-trivial examples  in which the second method has been carried out in full detail. For applications in the context of geometric phase transitions, I refer to T. Mohaupt’s talk .

## 2 The $`STU`$-model in five dimensions

The model we are going to study first is the $`E_8\times E_8`$ heterotic string on $`K3\times S^1`$ with instanton numbers $`(14,10)`$ . This model is believed to be dual  to M-theory compactified on the Calabi-Yau threefold $`Y_{1,1,2,8,12}\left(24\right)`$ , which is an elliptic fibration over the second Hirzebruch surface $`𝐈𝐅_2`$. The generic low energy effective action of this compactification describes the coupling of two Abelian vector multiplets and 244 neutral hypermultiplets to five-dimensional (5D), $`𝒩=2`$ (i.e., minimal) supergravity. The hypermultiplets play no rôle in the following and will be consistently truncated out. The bosonic part of the Lagrangian is of the form

$`e^1_{\mathrm{bosonic}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}R{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\stackrel{}{a}_{IJ}F_{\mu \nu }^IF^{\mu \nu J}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}g_{xy}\left(_\mu \varphi ^x\right)\left(^\mu \varphi ^y\right)`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{e^1}{6\sqrt{6}}}C_{IJK}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma \lambda }F_{\mu \nu }^IF_{\rho \sigma }^JA_\lambda ^K,`$
where $`\varphi ^x`$ $`\left(x=1,2\right)`$ are two real scalars, and the index $`I=0,1,2`$ collectively labels the graviphoton and the vector fields from the two vector multiplets. The completely symmetric tensor $`C_{IJK}`$ in the $`FFA`$ term of (1) is independent of the scalar fields and completely determines the entire theory via a cubic polynomial (or “prepotential”)

$$𝒱\left(h\right):=C_{IJK}h^Ih^Jh^K$$
(2)
in three real variables $`h^I`$ ($`I=0,1,2`$). $`𝒱\left(h\right)`$ endows the auxiliary space $`^3`$ spanned by the $`h^I`$ with a metric,

$$a_{IJ}\left(h\right):=\frac{1}{3}\frac{}{h^I}\frac{}{h^J}\mathrm{ln}𝒱\left(h\right).$$
(3)
The two-dimensional target space, $``$, of the scalar fields $`\varphi ^x`$ can then be represented as the hypersurface

$$𝒱\left(h\right)=C_{IJK}h^Ih^Jh^K=1$$
(4)
with $`g_{xy}`$ being the pull-back of (3) to $``$. The quantity $`\stackrel{}{a}_{IJ}\left(\varphi \right)`$ appearing in (1), finally, is given by the restriction of $`a_{IJ}`$ to $``$: $`\stackrel{}{a}_{IJ}\left(\varphi \right)=a_{IJ}|_{𝒱=1}`$. Due to these relations, the physical requirement that $`g_{xy}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{a}_{IJ}`$ be positive definite imposes constraints on the possible prepotentials $`𝒱`$.

For our particular string compactification, these constraints are, of course, satisfied, and the corresponding prepotential reads

$$𝒱(S,T,U)=STU+\frac{1}{3}U^3,$$
(5)
where, as is common in the literature, the letters $`S,T,U`$ are used instead of the variables $`h^0,h^1,h^2`$. This prepotential is valid in the region $`T>U`$. For $`T<U`$, it has to be replaced by

$$𝒱(S,T,U)=STU+\frac{1}{3}U^3+\frac{1}{3}\left(TU\right)^3.$$
(6)
Obviously, (5) and (6) combine to form a continuous function $`𝒱`$ at $`T=U`$. The couplings in the Lagrangian (1), however, depend on derivatives of $`𝒱`$, and these are not all continuous at $`T=U`$. The physical reason for these discontinuities is exactly as described in the Introduction: At $`TU=0`$, the circle of the heterotic compactification manifold $`K3\times S^1`$ is at its self-dual radius, and two additional vector multiplets (containing two $`W^\pm `$ bosons) become light and restore an $`SU\left(2\right)`$ gauge symmetry. In the dual M-theory picture, this very same situation corresponds to a collapsed 2-cycle in the Calabi-Yau threefold, and the two additional vector multiplets are supplied by the zero modes of wrapped M2 branes . Thus, near $`T=U`$, a complete low energy effective theory should also contain these two additional vector multiplets. Let us use $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ do denote the Lagrangian of this more complete theory (“in”, because the two extra vector multiplets have been “integrated back in”). $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ has to have the following properties:
(i) Just as $``$ in eq. (1), it is based on a cubic polynomial, but now this is a polynomial in $`3+2=5`$ variables. We call this polynomial $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}`$.
(ii) Whereas $``$ is Abelian, $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ exhibits $`SU\left(2\right)`$ as a Yang-Mills-type gauge symmetry. This implies that three of the five variables entering $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}`$ transform in the adjoint of $`SU\left(2\right)`$; the other two are $`SU\left(2\right)`$ singlets. We use $`C^a`$ $`\left(a=1,2,3\right)`$ to denote the $`SU\left(2\right)`$ triplet and $`Z^1`$ and $`Z^2`$ for the two singlets. The polynomial $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}(Z^1,Z^2,C^a)`$ has to be $`SU\left(2\right)`$ invariant.
(iii) The metrics $`g_{xy}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{a}_{IJ}`$ that follow from $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}`$ have to be positive definite.
(iv) Integrating out the two extra multiplets from $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ should reproduce $``$ and the underlying prepotential $`𝒱(S,T,U)`$ (eqs. (5), (6)).

In , it was shown that, modulo reparameterizations, $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}(Z^1,Z^2,C^a)`$ (and with it $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$) is completely fixed by (i)-(iv). The approach was to view the integrating out process $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}𝒱`$ as a two-step procedure, in which, in the language of Feynman diagrams, the two extra multiplets represented by, say, $`C^1`$ and $`C^2`$ are first removed as external lines by setting them equal to zero in $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}`$. This yields an intermediate (unphysical) prepotential

$$𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}:=𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}|_{C^1=C^2=0}.$$
(7)
In a second step, one then has to take into account that the two extra multiplets can also occur as internal lines and run in loops. Integrating them out will thus also produce additional effective interactions among the remaining fields. These induced interactions are subsumed in an additional contribution $`\delta 𝒱`$, so that

$$𝒱=𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}+\delta 𝒱.$$
(8)
In order to determine $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}`$, one simply has to go backwards. As explained in , $`\delta 𝒱`$ is simply given by a one-loop correction to the $`FFA`$ term in $``$, which in our case turns out to be $`\delta 𝒱=\left(TU\right)^3/6`$, implying

$$𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}=STU+\frac{1}{3}U^3+\frac{1}{6}\left(TU\right)^3.$$
(9)
This truncated prepotential now has to be “untruncated”, i.e., the variables $`(S,T,U)`$ have to be transformed to $`(Z^1,Z^2,C^3)`$, and $`C^1`$ and $`C^2`$ have to be appropriately re-inserted. Using the list of admissible polynomials given in , one can show that, modulo obvious linear transformations, there is essentially only one way to do that : The two $`SU\left(2\right)`$ singlets are given by $`Z^1=S\left(TU\right)/2`$ and $`Z^2=\left(T+U\right)/2`$, whereas $`C^3=\left(TU\right)/2`$. In terms of these variables, $`𝒱_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}`$ becomes quadratic in $`C^3`$, and re-introducing $`C^1`$ and $`C^2`$ is simply done by $`SU\left(2\right)`$ covariantization: $`\left(C^3\right)^2\left[\left(C^1\right)^2+\left(C^2\right)^2+\left(C^3\right)^2\right]`$.

## 3 The $`STU`$-model in four dimensions

In the previous section, we have reconstructed the low energy effective theory of a five-dimensional string (or M-theory) compactification near an $`SU\left(2\right)`$ enhancement line in the moduli space. The one-loop threshold effects allowed by $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry added a certain degree of non-triviality to this exercise. Nevertheless, one might wonder how much this construction relied on the purely cubic form of the prepotential in five dimensions. Let us therefore, in this section, consider the same theory compactified to four dimensions. In other words, we are now considering the heterotic string on $`K3\times T^2`$ with instanton numbers (14,10) or, equivalently, type IIA string theory on the Calabi-Yau manifold $`Y_{1,1,2,8,12}\left(24\right)`$ . The generic low energy effective theory describes 4D, $`𝒩=2`$ supergravity coupled to three Abelian vector multiplets and 244 neutral hypermultiplets. Again, the hypermultiplets can be ignored, and the vector multiplet couplings are summarized in terms of a prepotential, $``$ . Just as in five dimensions, this prepotential depends on three variables $`(S,T,U)`$. This time, however, the fields $`(S,T,U)`$ are complex, rather than real, and they do not have to satisfy a hypersurface constraint of the form (4). Furthermore, the prepotential $``$ no longer has to be cubic. Instead, $``$ can now be a rather arbitrary holomorphic function of the moduli (with possible logarithmic branch cuts and singularities). For $`\text{Re }S>\text{Re }T>\text{Re }U>0`$, $``$ turns out to be

$$=STU+\frac{1}{3}U^3+\frac{2}{\left(2\pi \right)^3}Li_3\left(e^{2\pi \left(TU\right)}\right)+\frac{2}{\left(2\pi \right)^3}\underset{k,l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}c_1\left(kl\right)Li_3\left(e^{2\pi \left(kT+lU\right)}\right)+^{\left(NP\right)},$$
(10)
where $`Li_3`$ denotes the third polylog (see, e.g., ), and the coefficients $`c_1\left(kl\right)`$ can be found in . The term $`^{\left(NP\right)}`$ summarizes non-perturbative corrections.

The prepotential (10) has a logarithmic singularity along the surface $`T=U`$, where two additional vector multiplets become massless and enhance the gauge group to $`U\left(1\right)^3\times SU\left(2\right)`$. At $`T=U=1`$ and $`T=U=e^{i\pi /6}`$, the gauge group is further enhanced to, respectively, $`U\left(1\right)^2\times SU\left(2\right)^2`$ and $`U\left(1\right)^2\times SU\left(3\right)`$. In contrast to the 5D case, these symmetry enhancements do not survive non-perturbative quantum corrections , and we therefore have to restrict our considerations to the perturbative heterotic string, dropping from now on the term $`^{\left(NP\right)}`$.

We will now try to derive an effective action, $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$, that includes the two additional light vector multiplets near $`T=U`$ and describes the $`SU\left(2\right)`$ gauge symmetry enhancement . Except at the discrete points where further gauge symmetry enhancement occurs, we expect this effective theory to be non-singular. The underlying prepotential will be called $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$. Just as its five-dimensional analogue, $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ is a function of 3+2=5 variables: one $`SU\left(2\right)`$ triplet $`C^a`$ $`\left(a=1,2,3\right)`$ and two singlets, $`Z^1`$ and $`Z^2`$. Again, we expect $``$ and $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ to be related by a relation of the form

$$=_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}+\delta ,$$
(11)
where $`_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}:=_{\mathrm{in}}|_{C^1=C^2=0}`$, and $`\delta `$ subsumes the threshold effects.

Let us introduce $`T_\pm :=\left(T\pm U\right)/2`$. Obviously, $`T_{}`$ represents the order parameter of the symmetry breaking $`SU\left(2\right)U\left(1\right)`$, and when we identify $`\left(C^1\pm iC^2\right)`$ with the scalar superpartners of the $`W^\pm `$-bosons (as we implicitly did above), we have to identify $`C^3=T_{}`$. The mass of the $`W^\pm `$ bosons is then proportional to the vev of $`\left|T_{}\right|`$. Integrating them out induces a one-loop threshold correction to the gauge coupling of the vector field $`A_\mu ^{}`$, i.e., the superpartner of the scalar field $`T_{}`$. This correction is of the form  $`\delta g^2log\left|m\right|^2log\left|T_{}\right|^2`$. The quantity $`g^2`$ is essentially the second derivative of the prepotential, and if one inserts all prefactors correctly, one deduces that

$$\delta =\frac{2}{\pi }T_{}^2\mathrm{log}T_{}+A_2T_{}^2+A_1\left(T_+\right)T_{}+A_0\left(T_+\right).$$
(12)
Here, $`A_2`$ is an arbitrary constant related to the cut-off scale, and $`A_1\left(T_+\right)`$ and $`A_0\left(T_+\right)`$ are a priori undermined functions.

Using (10) and (11), one can now solve for $`_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}`$. Expanding the first polylogarithmic term in (10), one then finds that the logarithmic singularity in $``$ is precisely cancelled by $`\delta `$ as given in (12) . Thus, $`_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}`$ is regular at $`T=U`$, as it should.

It remains to “untruncate” $`_{\mathrm{in}}^{\mathrm{truncated}}`$ to obtain the desired function $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$. Just as in five dimensions, this is done by first going over from the variables $`(S,T,U)`$ (or $`(S,T_+,T_{})`$) to the $`SU\left(2\right)`$ covariant variables $`(Z^1,Z^2,C^3)`$ and then replacing everywhere $`\left(C^3\right)^2`$ by $`\left[\left(C^1\right)^2+\left(C^2\right)^2+\left(C^3\right)^2\right]`$. Modulo obvious linear combinations, the right change of variables turns out to be the same as in five dimensions : $`Z^1=ST_{}`$, $`Z^2=T_+`$, $`C^3=T_{}`$. Modulo theta angles, one then finds that , in terms of the variables $`(Z^1,Z^2,C^3)`$, $`C^3`$ only appears with *even* powers, provided that the as yet undetermined function $`A_1\left(T_+\right)`$ vanishes identically: $`A_1\left(T_+\right)0`$. The substitution $`\left(C^3\right)^2\left[\left(C^1\right)^2+\left(C^2\right)^2+\left(C^3\right)^2\right]`$ can then be readily performed.

It remains to determine the remaining unknown function $`A_0\left(T_+\right)`$ that appeared in eq. (12). As is shown in , a diagonal $`SL(2,)`$ subgroup of the perturbative quantum symmetry $`SL(2,)_T\times SL(2,)_U`$ remains unbroken on the line $`T=U`$ in the ‘in’ theory and implies $`_+^5A_0\left(T_+\right)0`$. Hence, $`A_0\left(T_+\right)`$ can at most be a quartic polynomial in $`T_+`$. Taking the 5D decompactification limit of $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$, one can then even show that $`A_0\left(T_+\right)`$ can be at most quadratic in $`T_+`$ .

To sum up, up to a polynomial of the form $`A_0\left(T_+\right)=a_0+a_1T_++a_2T_+^2`$, the prepotential $`_{\mathrm{in}}`$ can be reconstructed using only symmetry arguments and some 4D quantum field theory reasoning. In order to fix the remaining three coefficients, a few more couplings have to be considered. In any case, it shows that the method we used successfully in 5D, can also be applied in 4D.

Acknowledgement The results presented in this talk were obtained in collaboration with Jan Louis and Thomas Mohaupt . The work was supported in part by the German Science Foundation (DFG).


text:
# Huge metastability in high Tc superconductors induced by parallel magnetic field

## Abstract

We present a study of the temperature-magnetic field phase diagram of homogeneous and inhomogeneous superconductivity in the case of a quasi-two-dimensional superconductor with an extended saddle point in the energy dispersion under a parallel magnetic field. At low temperature, a huge metastability region appears, limited above by a steep superheating critical field (Hsh) and below by a strongly reentrant supercooling field (Hsc). We show that the Pauli limit (Hp) for the upper critical magnetic field is strongly enhanced due to the presence of the Van Hove singularity in the density of states. The formation of a non-uniform superconducting state is predicted to be very unlikely.

The theoretical phase diagram of two-dimensional isotropic superconductors under parallel magnetic fields shows distinctive features such as a tricritical point where a high temperature second order phase transition gives way to a low temperature first order transition maki ; shim  and consequently to a region of metastability. Furthermore, in such systems, superconductivity may persist at magnetic fields higher than the first order critical field if the formation of an inhomogeneous superconducting phase, i.e., the so-called Fulde-Ferrel (FF) phase,shim ; fuld ; lark  occurs.

Superconducting copper-oxides have strong quasi-two-dimensional character, but the energy dispersion of the CuO2 planes is clearly anisotropic and in particular, it contains extended saddle points as documented by angle resolved photoemission experiments.gof  Extended saddle points have also been found in the case of the two-dimensional Hubbard model by Assaad and Imada imad  using the Quantum Monte Carlo technique. Such saddle points lead to strong Van Hove singularities (VHS) in the density of states and recently, it has been suggested dias  that such singularities could provide an explanation for the strange out-of-plane upper critical field of the High-Tc superconductors.mck  In this paper, we study the phase diagram of a two-dimensional superconductor with an extended saddle point in the energy dispersion under parallel magnetic field.

In a strictly two-dimensional superconductor under an in-plane magnetic field, orbital frustration due to magnetic field is not present and the upper critical field is determined by Zeeman pair breaking. Therefore, we consider the Hamiltonian

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝒌\sigma }{}}\xi _{𝒌\sigma }a_{𝒌\sigma }^{}a_{𝒌\sigma }`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{S}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝒌_1𝒌_2𝒌_3𝒌_4}{}}\delta _{𝒌_1𝒌_2,𝒌_4𝒌_3}a_{𝒌_1+𝒒/2}^{}a_{𝒌_2+𝒒/2}^{}`$
$`\times a_{𝒌_3+𝒒/2}a_{𝒌_4+𝒒/2}`$
with $`\xi _{𝒌\sigma }=\xi _𝒌\sigma h`$, $`\xi _𝒌=ϵ_𝒌\mu `$ and $`h=\mu _BH`$ and where $`V`$, $`\mu `$, $`H`$, $`S`$ and $`\mu _B`$ are respectively the attractive interaction constant, the chemical potential, the magnetic field, the area of the system and the Bohr magneton. The $`𝒌`$ sums in the interaction term follow the usual BCS restrictions.

S-wave symmetry is assumed throughout the paper, for simplicity. The effects of d-wave symmetry in the case of a superconductor with constant density of states have been addressed by several authors. yang  It leads to visible modifications in the phase diagram for inhomogeneous superconductivity with, in particular, the appearance of a low temperature kink in the phase boundary between the FF phase and the normal phase. However, the phase diagram for homogeneous superconductivity remains very similar to that of an s-wave superconductor.

Minimizing the free energy rick ; shim  or, equivalently, following a BCS mean field approach in the case of an homogeneous gap function, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=VS^1_𝒌a_𝒌a_𝒌`$, one obtains the two-dimensional gap equation $`1=VS^1_𝒑[1f(\xi _𝒑^\mathrm{\Delta })f(\xi _𝒑^\mathrm{\Delta })](2\xi _𝒑^\mathrm{\Delta })^1`$ with $`\xi _{𝒌\sigma }^\mathrm{\Delta }=\xi _𝒌^\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma h`$, $`\xi _𝒌^\mathrm{\Delta }=\sqrt{\xi _𝒌^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}`$ and where $`f(x)`$ is the Fermi distribution function. Taking the limit $`\mathrm{\Delta }0`$, one obtains

$$\frac{1}{V}=_0^{\omega _D}𝑑\xi \frac{N(\xi )}{2\xi }\left[\mathrm{tanh}\frac{\xi h}{2t}+\mathrm{tanh}\frac{\xi +h}{2t}\right]$$
(2)
where $`\omega _D`$ is the usual frequency cutoff and $`t=k_BT`$. From this equation, one extracts the temperature dependence of the critical field (Hsc) that induces the second order phase transition from the homogeneous superconducting state to the normal state. Below a certain temperature (the tricritical point temperature), the phase transition becomes of first order and the field given by the previous equation becomes a supercooling field above which the normal state is a local minimum of the free energy. Note that this critical field has no dependence on the Fermi surface shape, only density of states dependence.

In a two-dimensional system, a Van Hove singularity in the density of states results usually from the presence of a saddle point in the energy dispersion $`ϵ(𝒌)`$. In the case of a simple saddle point, $`ϵ(𝒒)q_x^2q_y^2`$, one has a logarithmic singularity in the density of states. In the case of an extended saddle point, $`ϵ(𝒒)|q_x|^n|q_y|^m`$, with higher powers and this leads to a power-law divergence in the density of states $`N(ϵ)(ϵϵ_{vh})^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha =1\frac{1}{n}\frac{1}{m}`$. Besides two-dimensional systems, power-law divergences are present in one dimensional systems. In a one-dimensional system, a $`q^2`$ dispersion leads to a inverse square root divergence in the density of states. In the following, we will assume that the VHS is pinned at the Fermi level as observed in photoemission experiments in the copper-oxides gof  and also indicated by theoretical studies of correlated two-dimensional models.gon

Assuming $`N(ϵ)=N_o|ϵϵ_{vh}|^\alpha `$, in the weak coupling limit, Eq. 2 can be rewritten as

$$\frac{\alpha }{g}=\frac{1}{(2t)^\alpha }G\left(\frac{h}{2t}\right)$$
(3)
with $`g=VN_o/2`$ and

$$G(x)=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\xi \frac{\xi ^\alpha }{\alpha }\left[\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(\xi +x)}+\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^2(\xi x)}\right].$$
(4)
The upper limit of the integral in Eq. 2 was extended to infinity due to the fast decay of the integrand and therefore, in the weak coupling limit, the supercooling field has no dependence on the frequency cutoff. The zero field critical temperature obtained from Eq. 3 is given by $`2t_{c0}[g/(\alpha \alpha ^2)]^{1/\alpha }`$ which implies the well known enhancement of critical temperature which motivated the Van Hove scenario of high $`T_c`$ cuprate superconductors. The zero temperature supercooling field ($`h_{sc,0}`$) is given by $`h_{sc,0}=(2g/\alpha )^{1/\alpha }`$.remark  Therefore, $`h_{sc,0}(1\alpha )^{1/\alpha }t_{c0}`$ and one has a much larger enhancement of $`t_{c0}`$ than that of $`h_{sc,0}`$ in the limit of very strong VHS, $`\alpha 1`$. The reason behind the different enhancements is reflected in the fact that for fixed finite temperature and zero magnetic field, the pairing susceptibility diverges in the limit $`\alpha 1`$, but it does not diverge for fixed finite magnetic field and zero temperature (note that $`\mathrm{tanh}(x)`$ is linear for small $`x`$).

In Fig. 1, the temperature dependence of the reduced upper critical field (or supercooling field) obtained numerically from Eq. 2 is displayed for both a superconductor with a VHS and a superconductor with constant density of states (BCS superconductor). The VHS exponent $`\alpha =1/2`$ is obtained in the case of a quadratic one-dimensional energy dispersion or for example, in the case of an extended saddle point with quartic dispersion as found in the two-dimensional Hubbard model.imad  One observes in Fig. 1 that the maximum second order critical field is not reached at zero temperature, but at an intermediate temperature. This reentrant behavior for the supercooling field is known in BCS superconductors,maki  and it has been recently observed in thin aluminum films.prl-al  In the case of a VHS superconductor, this maximum is enhanced relatively to the zero temperature supercooling field and the reentrance becomes more pronounced.

The strong reentrant behavior of hsc can be explained in the following way. At zero temperature, the Fermi surface splitting in the normal ground state due to the Zeeman coupling creates a no-pairing or blocking region around the zero field Fermi surface since, in order to contribute to the formation of a Cooper pair of momentum $`𝒒`$, two states with opposite spins and of momenta $`𝒌+𝒒`$ and $`𝒌`$ must be either both empty or both occupied at zero temperature. In the case of homogeneous superconductivity, Cooper pairs have zero total momentum, $`q=0`$. At finite temperature, thermal excitations provide low energy pairing possibilities within this no-pairing region and therefore, the pairing susceptibility grows with temperature. In the presence of a VHS at the Fermi level, the number of these thermal excitations is much larger due to the strong splitting of the Fermi surface in the saddle point regions and therefore, this effect is more pronounced.

Given a certain value of the superconducting gap, the free energy difference between the superconducting and the normal state can be determined from maki

$$F_s(T,H)F_n(T,H)=_0^\mathrm{\Delta }\frac{d(1/V)}{d\mathrm{\Delta }^{}}\mathrm{\Delta }^2𝑑\mathrm{\Delta }^{}$$
(5)
The transition to the normal state with variation of field or temperature occurs when the zero gap local extreme of the free energy becomes the absolute minimum. If the finite gap local minimum of the superconducting phase converges to the normal state local extreme as the transition is approached, the transition is of second order, otherwise it is of first order and there is a region of metastability limited below by the supercooling field $`h_{sc}`$ and above by the superheating field $`h_{sh}`$. The superheating field is the highest field for which there is still a finite gap solution of Eq. 2.maki  It can be shown that below this field, there is a finite gap local minimum in the free energy. The first order critical field $`h_1`$ and the superheating field determined numerically from Eqs. 2 and 5 are shown in Fig. 1. At zero temperature, the superheating field is just the zero temperature gap function, $`h_{sh,0}=\mathrm{\Delta }_0=[A(\alpha )g]^{1/\alpha }t_{c0}`$, with $`A(\alpha )=2\pi \text{cosec}[(1\alpha )\pi ]P_\alpha (0)`$ where $`P_\nu (x)`$ is the Legendre function of the first kind. Consequently, $`h_{sc,0}(1\alpha )^{1/\alpha }h_{sh,0}`$ and there is a huge metastability region. In Fig. 1, it is also apparent that the reduced temperature of the tricritical point is slightly larger in the case of the VHS superconductor.

At zero temperature, the free energy difference is given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }F(0,H)=\frac{N_o}{42\alpha }\left[\frac{4}{1\alpha }h^{2\alpha }\alpha A(\alpha )\mathrm{\Delta }^{2\alpha }\right].$$
(6)
The zero temperature critical field associated with the first order transition is usually denominated by Pauli limit or Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit Shan . This field is easily extracted from the previous result, $`h_p=\{\alpha (1\alpha )A(\alpha )/4\}^{\frac{1}{2\alpha }}\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ and therefore, this limit to superconductivity is as strongly enhanced as the zero temperature superconducting gap due to the presence of the VHS. For $`\alpha =0`$, one recovers the well known result, $`h_p=\mathrm{\Delta }_0/\sqrt{2}`$.maki  In the limit $`\alpha 1`$, $`h_p\mathrm{\Delta }_0/2`$. Note that recent experiments indicate that the in-plane upper critical field in the copper-oxides exceeds considerably the BCS Pauli limit.exp1

The previous results are independent of the shape of the Fermi surface. Now, we will consider finite $`𝒒`$ solutions of the gap equation, that is, we will search for a Fulde-Ferrel phase in the phase diagram. Following the BCS mean field approach in the case of an inhomogeneous gap function, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_𝒒=VS^1_𝒌a_{𝒌𝒒}a_𝒌`$, and taking the limit $`\mathrm{\Delta }_𝒒0`$, one obtains the following two-dimensional gap equation,shim

$$1=\frac{V}{S}\underset{𝒑}{}\frac{1f(\xi _{𝒑+𝒒/2})f(\xi _{𝒑𝒒/2})}{\xi _{𝒑+𝒒/2}+\xi _{𝒑𝒒/2}}.$$
(7)
For a given temperature, the FF critical field is determined by searching for the highest field solution of this equation for any value of $`𝒒`$.

It is well known that the Fulde-Ferrel state becomes enhanced in the presence of Fermi surface nesting.dupu  One might imagine that a VHS pinned at the Fermi level could provide a similar nesting effect in the Fulde-Ferrel state. However, one should be aware of a difference: while Fermi surface nesting does not enhance homogenous superconductivity, in the case of VHS nesting it is considerably enhanced. It is therefore possible that the Fulde-Ferrel region of the phase diagram is narrower or that it even does not exist. We will show that at zero temperature and finite magnetic field, saddle points lead in fact to very poor Fermi surface nesting and indeed the Fulde-Ferrel region of the phase diagram is absent in the case of an extended saddle point. Furthermore, this phase remains absent even if one improves the nesting property by considering an isotropic Fermi surface with vanishing Fermi velocity.

Let us consider the latter first. In order for an isotropic energy dispersion to have an VHS in the density of states, it must be of the form $`\xi _𝒌=ϵ_𝒌ϵ_{vh}=a\text{sign}(q)|q|^b`$ where $`q=kk_{vh}`$. Again, we assume $`k_F=k_{vh}`$. The density of states for the above model is $`N(ϵ)a^{1/b}b^1\xi ^{\frac{1}{b}1}`$ and therefore the inhomogeneous gap equation can be rewritten as

$$1=V_0^{\omega _D}𝑑\xi N(\xi )_0^\pi \frac{d\theta }{\pi }\frac{\mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{\xi ^+}{2t}\right)+\mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{\xi ^{}}{2t}\right)}{\xi ^++\xi ^{}}$$
(8)
with $`\xi ^\pm =[|\xi |^{1/b}\text{sgn}(\xi )\pm 1/2q\mathrm{cos}\theta ]^b\pm h`$ where we have neglected a $`q^2/k`$ term since $`qk_F`$ and where $`[x]^b`$ should be understood as $`\text{sgn}(x)|x|^b`$. In order to keep the expressions simpler, we have considered $`a=1`$. Note that in the one-dimensional case, the angle integration would be absent.

In the weak coupling limit, the zero temperature critical field, for $`\stackrel{~}{q}=q/(2h^{1/b})1`$, can be obtained from the equation $`h_{c,0}(\stackrel{~}{q})=[2gG(\stackrel{~}{q})]^{\frac{1}{\alpha }}`$ with

$$G(\stackrel{~}{q})=_0^\pi \frac{d\theta }{\pi }_{(1\stackrel{~}{q}\mathrm{cos}\theta )^b}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\xi \frac{2\xi ^{1+\frac{1}{b}}}{(\xi ^{\frac{1}{b}}+\stackrel{~}{q}\mathrm{cos}\theta )^b+(\xi ^{\frac{1}{b}}\stackrel{~}{q}\mathrm{cos}\theta )^b}$$
(9)
Note that now the blocking region is no longer $`\xi =h`$ but $`\xi =h(1\stackrel{~}{q}\mathrm{cos}\theta )^b`$. $`G(x)`$ has a maximum for $`x=1`$ and therefore the maximum $`H_c(q)`$ is reached when $`\stackrel{~}{q}=q/(2h^{1/b})=1`$. This field is significantly enhanced by the VHS since it is proportional to $`V^{\frac{1}{\alpha }}`$, with $`\alpha =1\frac{1}{b}`$. However, there is only a weak enhancement in comparison with the $`q=0`$ supercooling field as observed in Fig. 1 in the case of $`\alpha =1/2`$. The FF phase boundary lies clearly below the first order critical field $`h_1`$ and therefore, this phase will not be observed.

The same conclusion is reached if now one considers a energy dispersion with saddle points, $`\xi _𝒌=ϵ_𝒌ϵ_{vh}=a(|q_x|^n|q_y|^m)`$ where $`𝐪=𝐤𝐤^{vh}`$, with the values of the momentum restricted to a small region around the saddle points $`𝐤^{vh}`$ and $`𝐤^{vh}`$ by a cutoff. In this case, the zero gap pairing susceptibility (the integrand of Eq. 8) has its maximum value for $`q=0`$ even for a simple quadratic saddle point. In Fig. 2, plots of the zero gap pairing susceptibility at zero temperature and for a fixed magnetic field are displayed for a BCS superconductor and for an extended saddle point with $`m=n=4`$. The direction of momentum $`𝒒`$ for the latter is chosen to be along the x axis or along the diagonal of the Brillouin zone. For the saddle point, the maximum of the pairing susceptibility is for $`q=0`$. In the case of a simple quadratic saddle point, the maximum remains at $`q=0`$. If one “weakens” the saddle point by choosing exponents smaller than two, the maximum shifts to finite $`q`$, and rapidly becomes fixed at $`\stackrel{~}{q}=1`$. One could therefore conclude that the Fulde-Ferrel state is absent in systems with energy dispersions containing saddle points close to the Fermi level. However, one should be aware that the Fulde-Ferrel state is extremely sensitive to nesting properties of the Fermi surface and that we have only consider the saddle point contribution to the formation of this state and ignored the rest of the Fermi surface. In the case of homogeneous superconductivity, such procedure is justified since the saddle point contribution clearly dominates. In the case of Fulde-Ferrel superconductivity, if some portion of the Fermi surface is strongly nested, it may lead to a higher critical field than that of homogeneous superconductivity.

Concerning the experimental relevance of the results presented in this paper to the particular case of the cuprates, an obvious statement is that an huge metastability region in the phase diagram is reflected by a low temperature hysteretic behavior which can be probed, for instance, by resistive critical field measurements rcf  or tunnelling measurements of density of states (as recently in thin Al films prl-al ). Unfortunately, in-plane critical fields of the high-$`T_c`$ superconductors are presently outside the experimental magnetic field range. One can partially circumvent this difficulty by considering strongly overdoped or underdoped cuprates with lower critical fields. A study of hysteresis in these materials would provide a test of the validity of the extended Van Hove scenario for High Tc cuprate superconductivity.

In conclusion, we have shown that a two-dimensional superconductor with an extended saddle point in the energy dispersion pinned at the Fermi level has at low temperature a large metastability region in the temperature-parallel magnetic field phase diagram and that the Pauli limit, $`H_p`$, for the upper critical magnetic field is strongly enhanced in this extended Van Hove scenario. Fulde-Ferrel superconductivity is absent from the phase diagram unless there are Fermi surface sections (away from the saddle point region) with very good nesting properties.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The Dirac oscillator was first formulated and investigated in the context of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics by Moshinsky-Szczepaniak . They construct a Dirac Hamiltonian, linear in the momentum $`\stackrel{}{p}`$ and position $`\stackrel{}{r},`$ whose square leads to the ordinary harmonic oscillator in the nonrelativistic limit. In 1992, Dixit et al. instead of modifying the momentum, considered a Dirac oscillator with scalar coupling, by modification of the mass term .

In a recent paper Alhaidari has proposed a generalization for Moshinsky’s equation which contains the oscillator and the Coulomb problem as special cases. He also claims to have formulated and solved the Dirac-Morse problem and obtaining its relativistic bound states and spinor wave functions . In a later paper a similar method is applied to include shape invariant potentials via supersymmetry in quantum mechanics (SUSYQM) . However, his calculation contains serious mistakes as we explain below . We also explain another way of treating the problem.

## 2 Problem with Alhaidari’s Calculation

The Hamiltonian that appears in the work of Alhaidari  does not lead to his equation (1). The Hamiltonian should be in the notation is that of Bjorken and Drell .

$$H=𝜶(𝐩i\beta \widehat{𝐫}W(r))+\beta M+V(r)$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{𝐫}=\frac{𝐫}{r}`$ and we consider $`\mathrm{}=1`$ and the mass as being $`M.`$ Due to the matrix $`\beta `$ accompanying $`W`$ in the Hamiltonian Alhaidari’s interpretation of the vector $`(V,\widehat{𝐫}W)`$ as an electromagnetic potential is incorrect. To verify our assertion we put

$$\mathrm{\Psi }=\left(\begin{array}{c}\frac{iG_\mathrm{}j}{r}\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}\\ \frac{F_\mathrm{}j}{r}𝝈\widehat{𝐫}\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}\end{array}\right)$$
(2)
where $`\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}`$ are as defined in reference . Then using the relations

$$𝝈𝐩\frac{f(r)}{r}\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}=\frac{i}{r}(\frac{df}{dr}+\frac{\kappa f}{r})𝝈\widehat{𝐫}\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}$$
(3)
and

$$𝝈𝐩𝝈\widehat{𝐫}\frac{f(r)}{r}\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}=\frac{i}{r}(\frac{df}{dr}\frac{\kappa f}{r})\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}$$
(4)
where $`\kappa =\pm (j+\frac{1}{2})`$ for $`\mathrm{}=j\pm \frac{1}{2}`$, and defining

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\left(\begin{array}{c}G_\mathrm{}j\\ F_\mathrm{}j\end{array}\right)$$
(5)
we get the radial equations

$$\left(i\rho _2\frac{d}{dr}+\rho _1(W+\frac{\kappa }{r})(EV)+M\rho _3\right)\mathrm{\Phi }=0$$
(6)
where $`\rho _i`$ are the Pauli matrices. The last equation corresponds to Alhaidari’s equation (1) where the quantum numbers $`l`$ and $`j`$ are omitted incorrectly.

Next, there is no reason for the functions $`V(r)`$ and $`W(r)`$ which appear in the Hamiltonian to depend on the angular quantum numbers which make their appearance only when we separate variables to solve the Dirac equation. Hence his choice of the constraint

$$W(r)=\frac{\alpha }{S}V(r)\frac{\kappa }{r}$$
(7)
cannot be satisfied since $`\kappa =\pm (j+\frac{1}{2})`$ for $`l=j\pm \frac{1}{2}`$ is not a fixed quantity. Since the Dirac operator

$$K=\gamma ^0(1+𝚺𝐋)$$
(8)
satisfies the property

$$K\varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}=\kappa \varphi _{jm}^{\mathrm{}}.$$
(9)
Alhaidari could have avoided the contradiction by taking the Hamiltonian to be

$$H=𝜶(𝐩i\beta \widehat{𝐫}(W(r)+\frac{K}{r}))+\beta M+V(r)$$
(10)
which leads to the radial equations

$$\left(i\rho _2\frac{d}{dr}+W\rho _1(EV)+M\rho _3\right)\mathrm{\Phi }=0.$$
(11)
Applying the transformation

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=e^{i\rho _2\eta }\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}$$
(12)
we have

$`\left[i\rho _2{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dr}}(EV)+\rho _1(W\mathrm{cos}2\eta M\mathrm{sin}2\eta )\right]\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$
$`+\left[\rho _3(W\mathrm{sin}2\eta +M\mathrm{cos}2\eta )\right]\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}=0.`$ (13)
Choosing

$`W={\displaystyle \frac{V}{\mathrm{sin}2\eta }}.`$ (14)
Hence

$`\left[i\rho _2{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dr}}E+V(1+\rho _3)+\rho _1({\displaystyle \frac{V}{\mathrm{tan}2\eta }}M\mathrm{sin}2\eta )\right]\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$
$`+\left[\rho _3M\mathrm{cos}2\eta \right]\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}=0`$ (15)
which gives

$$\widehat{F}_\mathrm{}j=\frac{1}{E+M\mathrm{cos}2\eta }(\frac{d}{dr}+\frac{V}{\mathrm{tan}2\eta }M\mathrm{sin}2\eta )\widehat{G}_\mathrm{}j$$
(16)
and

$$\left[\frac{d^2}{dr^2}+(\frac{V}{\mathrm{tan}2\eta })^2+2EV\frac{1}{\mathrm{tan}2\eta }\frac{dV}{dr}(E^2M^2)\right]\widehat{G}_\mathrm{}j=0.$$
(17)
The last three equations correspond to equations (3-5) of Alhaidari. The choice $`W=\frac{V}{\mathrm{sin}2\eta }`$ gives equations (4) and (7) of Alhaidari.

The resulting energy levels will be degenerate in $`l,j,m`$ in contrast to what happens in the case of relativistic Coulomb and relativistic harmonic oscillator problems.

## 3 The Morse potential: An alternative treatment

Even if one interprets the results of Alhaidari as corresponding only to $`\mathrm{}=0,s=0,k=1,`$ the unitary transformation is puzzling. It does not appear at all if we start with $`V=0`$ as in the treatment of Castaños et al. earlier . Then equation (16) gives $`F`$ in terms of $`G`$ and the second order equation for $`k=1`$ is

$$\left[\frac{d^2}{dr^2}+(W\frac{1}{r})^2+\frac{d}{dr}(W\frac{1}{r})(E^2M^2)\right]\widehat{G}_\mathrm{}j=0.$$
(18)
The choice $`W=\frac{1}{r}+ABe^{\lambda r}`$ gives the S-wave Morse potential in quantum mechanics with an additional $`A^2`$ term in the potential. Although the relativistic spectrum is different, the same non-relativistic limit is obtained.

## 4 Conclusion

In this communication we have pointed out the limitation of a published treatment of the relativistic Morse potential problem. We also present an alternative treatment which is similar to the supersymmetric formulation of the Dirac oscillator as given by Castños et al. . A similar modification holds for relativistic shape invariant potentials as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

RLR was supported in part by CNPq (Brazilian Research Agency). He wishes to thank J. A. Helayel Neto for the kind of hospitality at CBPF-MCT. The authors wish also thank the staff of the CBPF and DCEN-CFP-UFCG. The authors are also grateful to the organizing commitee at the Brazilian National Meeting on Particles and fields, October 15 to 19, 2002, Águas de Lindóia-SP, Brazil.


text:
# Molar mass estimate of dark matter from the dark mass distribution measurements

## I Introduction

The problem of dark matter has been one of the biggest puzzles in astrophysics for more than a decade. First revealed in galaxy halos through the so-called rotation curves, it was later found in even larger scales such as in the clusters of galaxies. Nowadays, the dark matter is an important and intrinsic part of the cosmological picture of the universe. Even though nobody doubts the existence of this hidden substance these days, little unless nothing is known about its microscopic properties. Many candidate particles have been suggested for the composition of dark matter from various possible standard model extensions but their existence has not yet been confirmed experimentally.

In this paper, we are going to undertake a rather different approach and attempt to estimate the dark matter parameters from the available experimental data based on the simple but general physical principles. In the next section (Section II), we begin with the mass profile of CL0024 galaxy cluster measured by Tyson et al. in 1998  and show a way for these data to reveal an amazing correlation between dark and visible mass distributions. Using a simple thermodynamic point of view, we relate the parameters of this correlation with the molar mass ratio of visible and dark matter. In section III, we extend our thermodynamic approach to the case of spiral galaxies and analyze the Universal Rotation Curves (URC) as our input  to see if we can strengthen our conclusions. Remarkably, the estimate for the molar mass ratio in this dramatically different system comes out consistent with the result of section II. In section IV, we present possible interpretations of our findings and deduce that they indicate the mass of dark matter particle between 200MeV and 800MeV. Discussion and conclusion follow in section V. In Appendices A and B, the details of our URC analysis and the scaling properties of CL0024 mass profile are presented, respectively.

## II Analysis of the mass profile of galaxy cluster CL0024

The idea that the mass distribution in galaxies or galaxy clusters can be measured from the data on gravitational lensing is not new . In the last decade many systems exhibiting gravitational lensing have been studied . Among them, the study by Tyson et al. in 1998  is distinguished in that the detailed mass map was presented both for total and visible mass components. Assuming that the dark matter follows the known thermodynamical laws, we now note that the comparison of these two maps may give a valuable insight in properties of dark matter particles from the experimental perspective.

A brief survey of the measurement is in place. In 1998 the study of Hubble telescope images of galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 has been carried out by Tyson et al. and the mass density profile of the cluster has been derived from strong gravitational lensing . It was found that the vast majority of the mass is not associated with the galaxies and forms a smooth elliptical distribution, slightly shallower than isothermal sphere, with a soft core of $`r_{core}=35\pm 3h^1kpc`$, where $`h`$ is the normalized Hubble constant. No evidence of in-falling massive clumps has been found for the dark component. The projected dark matter density profile is well fit by a power law model

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(y)=\frac{K(1+\eta y^2)}{(1+y^2)^{2\eta }},$$
(1)
where $`y=r/r_{core}`$, $`K=7900\pm 100hM_{}pc^2`$, $`r_{core}=35\pm 3h^1kpc`$ and $`\eta =0.57\pm 0.02`$. The primary conclusion from the observed mass distribution was that the predicted profile in Ref. was inconsistent with the observed result.

In this section, we attempt to study the mass density profile in CL0024 from a thermodynamic point of view. In particular, we assume that the dark matter complies with the known thermodynamic laws and that it is in the classical region so that Boltzmann statistics can be applied. If the rotation can be neglected, the general thermodynamics principles imply the following distribution for visible and dark mass components in a gas cloud

$$\begin{array}{c}\rho _i(r)=a_ie^{\beta _i(r)\mu _i\mathrm{\Phi }(r)},\end{array}$$
(2)
where $`\mu _i`$ is the molar mass for the corresponding component, $`\beta _i=1/kT_i`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }(r)`$ is the gravitational potential at position $`r`$. Even though the details of the radial distribution of the gravitating gas may be difficult to model and understand  (see e.g. Appendix B for some discussion on the radial mass distribution in CL0024), Eq.(2) leads to a simple relation between mass densities of dark and visible components, i.e.

$$\mathrm{ln}\rho _i(r)d_i=\mu _i\beta _i(r)\mathrm{\Phi }(r),$$
(3)
where $`d_i=\mathrm{ln}a_i`$. One may expect therefore to see a linear correlation between $`\rho _v(r)`$ and $`\rho _d(r)`$ by plotting the data on Log-Log scale. The slope $`\kappa `$ is then given by the ratio of the Boltzmann factors for visible and dark matter, i.e. $`(\kappa \beta _v\mu _v)/(\beta _d\mu _d)`$. Although the local fluctuations in the mass density of one component might locally shift $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _i(r))`$, outside of the fluctuation region we would still expect to see a line with a certain slope. This motivates us to study these distributions in CL20024 from the assumption that elementary thermodynamics laws can be applied to the analysis of the mass density profile including the dark matter halos. Note that the ”linear regime” in Log-Log plot of visible vs. dark matter distribution can be easily spoiled by many factors, e.g. non-equilibrium processes, local fluctuations or effects of rotation. Thus, the validity of this thermodynamic assumption must be carefully evaluated from the consistency of the results obtained from the analysis of different systems, as we discuss in the present and next sections (Section II and III).

In Fig.1, we present the sample of points taken from the graph for the radial projected mass distribution of dark and visible matter by Tyson et al.  in the Log-Log scale. In the plot we indeed observe a linear correlation. The short horizontal segment on the graph, once related to the radial mass distributions from Tyson et al., could indicate presence of two major subsystems in the visible component of the cluster: inner with smaller spread, and outer with larger spread. We can attribute the inner subsystem to the region of gravitational influence of the central formation in the cluster, while the outer subsystem corresponds to the concentrations of matter formed outside of this region. Transition between the two subsystems occurs in relatively narrow region at distance of about 100 $`h^1`$ kpc, as can be observed from the original plots by Tyson et al., and manifests itself as the above mentioned flat segment. While this effect is rather interesting and deserves further attention in its own, we will leave it aside for the sake of main point in the present discussion.

Outside of the transition region, remarkably, the datum reveals linear correlations with the same slopes. To extract this slope we may further deal with the dataset by either cutting off all points beyond the bridge or by cutting out only the transition region and keeping the other points in the set:

In both cases, indeed, the estimate for the slope of the correlation is similar. For the truncated set one obtains $`\kappa (3.554.9)`$ while for the corrected set one obtains $`\kappa (3.614.35)`$. Guided by the above thermodynamical idea, we can conjecture from these plots that the ratio of the Boltzmann factors for dark mass distribution and visible mass distribution is consistent with a constant given by $`\kappa (3.64.4)`$.

## III Analysis of the Universal Rotation Curves for spiral galaxies

It is well known that the rotation curves (RC) of spiral galaxies do not show any Keplerian fall-off beyond their optical radius (see Fig.4). This is one of the most remarkable manifestations of large dark mass component in galaxies. Thus, RCs are indeed the measurements of dark mass distribution in galaxies and it would be interesting to see if the approach presented in Section II yields a meaningful result in this case.

We shall also note that, although the measurement of the mass distribution in CL0024 cluster is a remarkable result, it is quite unique in the sense that there are just few other studies that yield detailed distribution of dark vs. visible matter in galaxy clusters. On the other hand, RCs have been studied for a long time in many galaxies (over 1000 by now) and thus can provide a good consistency check for our method. Moreover, the spiral galaxies and the galaxy clusters are tremendously different systems in their scales and dynamics. The consistency of our approach in these two dramatically different regimes would provide a good evidence of its validity.

Application of the above ideas to the mass distribution in spiral galaxies, however, faces many experimental as well as theoretical complications. It is experimentally difficult and controversial to measure RC and map out the visible mass contribution to it . Although a large number of such separations have been carried out , the quality of these results is uncertain. Furthermore, the measured RCs rarely extend to more than 1.5-2 optical radius. Thus, in most cases, only a very limited part of dark matter distribution becomes visible that doesn’t include the fall-off tail which is the most sensitive part for the properties of dark matter. Also, theoretically, the spiral galaxy is a complex conglomerate of dark matter, interstellar gas, stars and radiation in the presence of essential gravitational pull and rotation. Thus, it is unclear if such a system should satisfy the thermodynamic Boltzmann distribution at all. Even if it does, how the effect of rotation should be included into the analysis is not absolutely clear. Finally, the global temperature variations along the stellar disk may pose a serious problem for the analysis.

In our study, we therefore should check first the consistency of the Boltzmann distribution in spiral galaxies. To begin our study, we accept “the exponential rotating disk plus spherical dark halo” as a conventional mass model for the spiral galaxy and the Universal Rotation Curves (URC)  as the experimental input for RCs (see Appendix A).

Note that URC maps out the gravitational potential throughout the galaxy disk via a simple relationship

$$v_{URC}^2(r)/r=\widehat{r}\stackrel{}{}\mathrm{\Phi }(r)=\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }(r)}{dr},$$
(4)
so that for the Boltzmann distribution of mass we can write

$$\begin{array}{c}\rho _v(r)=a_ve^{\beta _v\mu _vE(r)},\\ E(r)=\mathrm{\Phi }(r)+v_{URC}^2(r)/2,\mathrm{\Phi }(r)=\underset{0}{\overset{r}{}}𝑑r^{}v_{URC}^2(r^{})/r^{},\end{array}$$
(5)
where $`\beta _v=1/kT_v`$, $`\mu _v`$ is the molar mass of the matter and $`E(r)`$ is the specific energy (by mass) at distance $`r`$ including the contribution from the rotation which we assume in the form $`v_{URC}^2(r)/2`$. Note that, owing to the spherical form of the dark halo, we may assume that the rotation of the dark halo is negligible, i.e.

$$\rho _d(r)=a_de^{\beta _d\mu _d\mathrm{\Phi }(r)}.$$
(6)
In Fig.5, we present the radial distribution of the gravitational potential and rotation energy, normalized to $`v_{opt}^2=v_{URC}^2(r_{opt})`$, vs. the distance, normalized to the optical radius denoted by $`r_{opt}`$. From this figure, one can note that the relative effect of rotation decreases with distance and reduces to almost constant contribution at $`r0.6r_{opt}`$. The effect of rotation on the Boltzmann distribution is therefore negligible at these distances.

To check the consistency of the Boltzmann distribution, we should compare consequently $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _v)`$ with $`E(r)=\underset{0}{\overset{r}{}}𝑑r^{}v_{URC}^2(r^{})/r^{}+v_{URC}^2(r)/2`$ and $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _d)`$ with $`\mathrm{\Phi }(r)=\underset{0}{\overset{r}{}}𝑑r^{}v_{URC}^2(r^{})/r^{}`$, respectively. Despite many possible complications mentioned above, for the distribution of visible mass, we do find a good linear correlation between $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _v)`$ and $`E(r)`$ for the entire range of available URCs as shown in Fig.6. The correlation gets worse for galaxies with higher luminosities which we may attribute to increasing global variations of temperature along the stellar disk and increased effects from the galaxy bulge.

For the dark mass, as shown in Fig.7, we observe much worse situation since the linear regime is reached only in the outer part of the stellar disk $`r0.6r_{opt}`$.

While this might be used to argue against our assumptions, we must also note that the dark matter distribution is usually inferred from the separation of RC and thus is subject to a large uncertainty. This is quite different from the case of visible mass distribution which is modeled by the light/mass ratio from the photometric data. Indeed, in Fig.8, we compare the two quite different dark mass distributions, used in  and , i.e. solid and dashed lines, respectively. Both give perfect URC fits but they behave quite differently in small $`r`$ region.

We must therefore conclude that the URC is not sensitive to the details of small $`r`$ behavior of the dark mass distribution and the discrepancies in Fig.7 cannot be used to ultimately discard the validity of Boltzmann distribution in dark halos. Instead, we should check if an acceptable fit to URC can be made by assuming the dark mass distribution in the form given by Eq.(6).

We performed such fits for a wide range of luminosities from M=-18.5 to M=-23.2 and found that a perfect fit can be constructed by varying $`a_d`$ and $`\kappa _d=\beta _d\mu _d`$ in every case that we considered.

We also found that, although the best fit $`\kappa _d`$ for each luminosity M varies with M ($`\kappa _d0.81.2`$), the URC is not very sensitive to $`\kappa _d`$ and very good fits can be obtained in all cases even if $`\kappa _d`$ is kept constant and only $`a_d`$ is varied.

From the above discussion, we can conclude therefore that the global profile of visible and dark mass in spiral galaxies is consistent with almost isothermal Boltzmann distribution. Even though the data of visible and dark mass distribution plotted in Figs.6 and 7 only partially justify the use of the linear regime, we have found that it is satisfactory in explaining the URCs plotted in Figs.9 and 10. The temperature of the distribution can be estimated as

$$T\frac{\mu _{H_2}v_{opt}^2}{\kappa _vk_B}10^510^6\text{K},$$
(7)
which is consistent with the temperature of the interstellar gas.

Consequently, we found that the ratio $`\kappa _v/\kappa _d5`$ for a range of galaxy luminosities. Since we used a synthetic URC as our input data and a synthetic mass model for the visible mass distribution, it is impossible to properly estimate the error in $`\kappa `$ and we assume the variance of $`\kappa `$ with M in our URC-fits, e.g. $`\kappa _d0.81.2`$, as such an estimate. In this case $`\kappa _v4.7\pm 0.1`$ and $`\kappa _d1.0\pm 0.2`$, from which we obtain the ratio

$$\kappa =(3.75.7).$$
(8)
Our result here is consistent with analysis of the CL0024 galaxy cluster. This is quite remarkable since there is a tremendous difference in the systems under consideration. A lot of complexities in dynamics of spiral galaxies might have affected our thermodynamic picture. Nevertheless, in both situations we may conclude that the ratio of the Boltzmann factors for visible and dark matter is a constant. Including both of our analysis presented in Sections II and III, the constant can be estimated as $`\kappa =3.65.1`$.

## IV Interpretation of the result

As was already mentioned in Section II, $`\kappa `$ can be related to the ratio of molar masses for the visible and dark components $`\kappa =(\beta _v/\beta _d)(\mu _v/\mu _d)`$. In the previous sections(Sections II and III), we found that this ratio is constant in a variety of very different conditions such as the galaxy clusters and the spiral galaxies of different luminosities. Although it is still an open question how the two apparently different systems, i.e. dark matter and visible matter, could share the same temperature, it is essentially the local thermodynamic equilibrium which we think is the most natural way to consistently describe the data with such variety of different conditions. Since the temperature ($`\beta `$) and the molar mass ($`\mu `$) are independent variables, it is unlikely that $`\mu _v/\mu _d`$ varies in a precise correlation with $`\beta _v/\beta _d`$ in such a way that $`\kappa `$ is a constant both for the CL0024 galaxy cluster and the spiral galaxies with various luminosities. This leads rather naturally that $`\beta _v/\beta _d`$ must be a constant within about 20% from our analyses presented in Sections II and III. Moreover, the temperature is likely to vary with the distance as shown in Appendix B but yet no significant change in $`\kappa `$ is noticeable in the mass profiles of CL0024. Also, the temperature given by Eq.(7) vary widely even though $`\kappa _v`$ and $`\kappa _d`$ vary insignificantly as shown in Section III, since it is proportional to $`v_{opt}^2`$, yet the ratio $`\beta _v/\beta _d`$ is consistent with constant. Due to such correlation between $`\beta _v`$ and $`\beta _d`$ evident in our analysis, we think that the local thermodynamic equilibrium between the dark and visible matter, i.e. $`\beta _d(r)\beta _v(r)`$, is the most natural way to describe these data. This might imply that the gravitational scattering in the dark matter may create non-vanishing relaxation effect at the scales and times of the galactic halos. Feasible mechanism to reach the local thermal equilibrium along this line may deserve further investigations. Under the local thermodynamic equilibrium between dark and visible matter

$$\kappa \mu _v/\mu _d.$$
(9)
Hence, our result gives us a possibility to estimate $`\mu _d`$ once $`\mu _v`$ is known. Since the ordinary matter primarily consists of $`H`$, $`H_2`$ and $`He`$ , we immediately conclude that the range for the mass of dark matter particle is from 150MeV to 1250MeV. The exact number, however, may depend significantly on the exact composition of visible matter.

Indeed, if one takes into account that the visible matter is made of few components which are in fairly strong gravitational field, one finds that the relative content of matter in such conditions changes dramatically with the distance (e.g. In Fig.11, the upper and lower lines represent the densities of $`H_2`$ and $`He`$, respectively, as functions of the logarithmic distance; they are normalized to 1 at the origin) .

One may ask then if the linear correlation is at all to be expected between $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _d)`$ and $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _v)=\mathrm{ln}(\rho _{H_2}+\rho _{He})`$. To answer this question we perform a simulation for such situation with different relative contents for visible mass.

When this effect is taken into account, the correlation is still linear although the different relative contents obviously affect the slope of the line a little. We conclude therefore that when the composite nature of the interstellar medium is taken into account the linear correlation between $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _v)`$ and $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _d)`$ is still preserved. The slope of this correlation is not very sensitive to the exact concentrations although the knowledge of the visible mass composition is needed to reliably extract the mass of dark matter particle from the slope of the correlation. From this and the above results we can estimate the mass of dark matter particle, including the uncertainty in visible mass content, as

$$\mu _d(200800)MeV=500\pm 300MeV.$$

In more details, our error estimates include other uncertainties. The statistical uncertainty in $`\kappa `$ we find to be $`ϵ_120`$%. The uncertainty due to the effects of rotation can be estimated by considering the case of spiral galaxies with and without correction due to rotation in which case we find variance of about $`ϵ_220`$%. As we discussed in the beginning of this section, we assumed the local thermodynamic equilibrium between dark and visible matter, i.e. $`\beta _v(r)/\beta _d(r)1`$. Although in the absence of any direct measurements of the properties of the dark matter it is simply impossible to estimate the uncertainty on $`\beta _v(r)/\beta _d(r)`$, we may hope that the variation due to this ratio in part revealed itself through variation in measurements of $`\kappa `$ and thus may not be larger than the statistical uncertainty in $`\kappa `$. Taking these uncertainties into account for given $`\kappa `$ we may relax the range to $`\mu _v/\mu _d3.06.0`$. The uncertainty in the visible matter composition is more difficult to estimate due to absence of reliable measurements as well as due to the fact that this composition may vary greatly throughout the space. We estimate this uncertainty as due to the uncertainty in content of atomic and molecular $`H`$ in which case $`\mu _v(12002100)MeV`$. Accumulating these uncertainties we get $`\mu _d(200800)MeV`$.

## V Discussion and Conclusion

We studied the mass distribution in the CL0024 galaxy cluster and RCs for the spiral galaxies from the thermodynamic point of view. We showed that the global visible and dark mass distribution in spiral galaxies is consistent with an almost isothermal Boltzmann distribution. We find that the $`\mu /T`$ factors of these distributions are close to a constant for a wide range of galaxy luminosities both for visible and dark matter. Consequently, we find that the ratio of $`\mu /T`$’s for visible and dark matter is a universal constant of approximately $`\kappa 4.4\pm 0.8`$. The same conclusion is also drawn from the analysis of mass distribution in the galaxy cluster CL0024.

The simplest interpretation of this result implies that the visible matter is approximately 4 times heavier than the dark matter. If we narrow down the composition of visible matter as the one in the interstellar medium suggested in Ref., i.e. 45% H, 45% H<sub>2</sub> and 10% He, then we get that the dark matter is made of particles with mass of about 300MeV. To our knowledge, there are no candidates of mass in this range within the current extensions of Standard Model. Massive neutrinos and axions are usually ruled out by the cosmological arguments of large structure formation. Also, their experimental mass limits $`<25`$MeV for the heaviest $`\tau `$-neutrino  are well below our range. The most favorable candidates for non-baryonic dark matter, such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) with the mass anywhere between 10GeV and 1TeV and the SUSY lightest particle, e.g. neutralino, with the mass above 30GeV , are also far out of the range yielded from our analysis. In fact, any existing dark matter particle candidate would result in either too stretched (neutrinos and axions) or too shrunk (WIMP & neutralino) halos and thus have difficulties explaining observed extent of dark halos. It is however interesting to note that the energy scale of 300MeV is astonishingly close to the QCD scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ and constituent u-d quark masses. Whether our finding is indeed related to the QCD vacuum properties may deserve a further study.

Because our analysis is based on the assumptions of the local statistical equilibrium of dark and visible matter and the equal temperature between the visible and dark matter components, we add some more comments here‘ risk of repeating ourselves. The hypothesis of linear regime in Log-Log plots of dark vs. visible matter distributions is motivated by very elementary thermodynamics reasoning. This regime, however, can be easily spoiled by various non-equilibrium and rotation effects. Thus the validity of this hypothesis can be verified only from the consistency of the final results. In our study we do find consistent estimates for $`\kappa `$ from two tremendously different classes of systems and we do find that the hypothesis of linear regime is satisfactory in explaining the dark mass distribution in galaxy cluster CL0024 as well as the URC in spiral galaxies of different luminosities. Furthermore we find that the ratio of factors $`\mu /T`$ for the visible and the dark components is constant up to about 20%. While it is still possible that the independant variances in the temperature of visible and dark matter are all within our measurement uncertainty, this implies that $`\beta _v`$ and $`\beta _d`$ vary in a correlated way so that the ratio $`\beta _v/\beta _d`$ is preserved as a constant. Under these conditions the most feasible explanation is that the ratio $`\beta _v/\beta _d`$ is unity due to thermodynamic equilibrium which implies the local statistical equilibrium and the equal temperature between the visible and dark matter components. Unfortunately we do lack crucial experimental evidences to provide the decisive argument here or to estimate properly uncertainty caused by this assumption. Yet, if the assumption of local thermal equilibrium is to be discarded, one needs to suggest other physical mechanism that could provide constant observed dark to visible temperature ratio other than 1.

Also it may be still possible that $`\mu `$ in global Boltzmann distributions might be something other than the molar mass of the matter. Yet, the molar mass seems to be the most natural choice for $`\mu `$ and the consistency of the temperature of the visible matter distribution in this case shows that this choice is, indeed, the most viable variant. Finally, we also neglected the effect of rotation for the dark component (and in the case of the galaxy cluster CL0024 we also neglected the rotation effect of visible component) that could alter the value of $`\kappa `$. Such assumption, however, was natural for the given smooth elliptical form of dark halos. Still we estimate the uncertainty due to rotation from considering spiral galaxies with and without effects of rotation and include it in the total uncertainty of our final estimate for $`\mu _d`$.

To summarize, in our study, we found that the isothermal Boltzmann distribution is satisfactory in explaining observed visible and dark matter profiles in spiral galaxies. The factors of these distributions are constant over a wide range of galaxy luminosities. The ratio of these factors for visible and dark matter is a constant. If this constant is related to the ratio of the molar mass of dark matter to that of the visible component, then it gives an estimate for the mass of dark matter particle: $`\mu _d(200800)`$ MeV. The measurement in the galaxy cluster CL0024 along with the fact that the lightest component of the visible matter most significantly affects $`\kappa `$, as was pointed out in Section IV, indicates that the mass of the dark matter particle is in fact closer to 300MeV, which appears astonishingly close to QCD energy scale.

## A The universal rotation curves of spiral galaxies

The study in Ref., involving the samples of more than 1000 spiral RCs, has shown that RCs grouped by luminosity follow certain universal profiles. These profiles were called Universal Rotation Curves (URC) and it was shown that they can be well fitted for a wide range of luminosities with a simple mass model including exponential disk and spherical halo.

According to the synthetic luminous mass profiles, the mass distribution in stellar disks can be well fitted by assuming $`\rho _vr^2\mathrm{exp}(3.2r/r_{opt})`$. The self-gravity on an infinitely thin disk with the surface mass density $`I(x)\mathrm{exp}(3.2x)`$, ($`x=r/r_{opt}`$) yields an equilibrium circular velocity given by

$$v_v^2(x)=1.28\beta v_{opt}^2x^2(I_0(1.6x)K_0(1.6x)I_1(1.6x)K_1(1.6x)),$$
(A1)
where $`\beta =v_v^2(r_{opt})/v_{opt}^2=1.1GM_v/v_{opt}^2r_{opt}`$ and $`I_0,I_1,K_0,K_1`$ are the Bessel functions. In , this contribution is fitted with a simpler formula valid in the range $`x2`$:

$$v_v^2(x)=v_{opt}^2\beta 1.97\frac{x^{1.22}}{(x^2+0.78^2)^{1.43}}$$
(A2)
which we used in our calculations. Beyond $`2r_{opt}`$, the Keplerian regime is practically attained so that $`v^2(r)_v=v_v^2(2r_{opt})(2r_{opt}/r)`$.

The contribution from a dark halo can be well represented by

$$v_d^2(x)=v_{opt}^2(1\beta )(1+\alpha ^2)\frac{x^2}{x^2+\alpha ^2}$$
(A3)
with $`\alpha `$ being the ‘velocity core radius’ normalized to $`r_{opt}`$. The URC profile then can be very well fitted by assuming

$$\begin{array}{c}v_{URC}^2(r)=v_d^2(r)+v_v^2(r),\\ \beta =0.72+0.44\mathrm{log}(L/L_{}),\\ \alpha =1.5(L/L_{})^{1/5},\end{array}$$
(A4)
with $`L`$ being the I-band luminosity $`L/L_{}=10^{(M+21.9)/5}`$. Eq.(A4) reproduces the URC for various luminosities M in the range from -18.5 to -23.2 within their rms. Small $`r`$ behavior of the URC is dictated by stellar disk and is close to $`v^2r`$, while at large distances URC is dominated by dark halo contribution (especially for smaller galaxies) and is close to constant.

## B Interesting scaling properties of CL0024 mass profile

As was pointed out the observed mass density for dark matter is typically inconsistent with the simulations with the cold dark matter (CDM) model. Another naive try would be to consider an isothermal gas cloud model. If one neglects the rotation, fairly simple result for the mass density profile can be obtained. This case is known as the Lane-Emden equation

$$\frac{d^2\omega }{dy^2}+\frac{2}{y}\frac{d\omega }{dy}=e^\omega ,$$
(B1)
where y is the distance normalized to $`r_0=\sqrt{\sigma ^2/4\pi G\rho _0}`$ ($`\rho _0`$ is the mass density at the origin, i.e. $`r=0`$) and $`\sigma `$ is the constant velocity dispersion (related to the temperature of the sphere $`T`$ and the particle mass $`\mu `$ by $`\sigma ^2=kT/\mu `$), so that the mass density is given by

$$\rho (r)=\rho _0e^{\omega (r/r_0)}.$$
(B2)
The isothermal sphere solution has a soft core which is qualitatively consistent with the observed mass distribution in CL0024 , however, as more detailed study shows, it falls off too rapidly and as such is not quantitatively acceptable.

If one agrees, however, that isothermal sphere is good in describing some global features of the CL0024 profile, one might expect then to see some of major features of the isothermal solution in experimental profile. One of such features is the specific form of the solution, i.e. $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _i(r)/\rho _i(0))\omega _i(r/r_{0,i})`$. On the Log-Log plot this would mean that $`\mathrm{ln}(\rho _i/\rho _i(0))f(zz_i)`$ where $`z=\mathrm{log}(r)`$. Guided by this idea we compare the experimental mass profiles for the visible and dark components as well as for the total mass. One can see that, indeed, the mass profiles are aligned pretty well with simple horizontal shift. We find that the visible component profile is shifted on the Log-Log plot with respect to the dark component profile by $`\mathrm{\Delta }z0.62`$, while the total mass profile is shifted by $`\mathrm{\Delta }z0.22`$. The visible component mass profile is shifted with respect to the total mass profile by $`\mathrm{\Delta }z0.4`$.

We believe this observed similarity can be understood in terms of the dimensionless variables of possible configurations of the rotating (and possibly not isothermal) self-gravitating gas.