text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In ref. the effect of the dissipative term ($`\eta \stackrel{}{q}`$) on the motion of an electron confined in a plane and in the presence of an external magnetic field $`B`$, normal to the plane, was analyzed. By using the correspondence principle it was possible to quantize the system and to study its time evolution on large time scales ($`t\frac{1}{\eta }`$) employing coherent states techniques. It was found that the effect of dissipation would simply be accounted for by a rotation combined with a scale transformation on the coordinate $`z`$ of the electron: $`z(\rho e^{i\gamma })z`$, $`\rho =\left(\frac{\eta ^2+\omega ^2}{\omega ^2}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$, $`\gamma =\mathrm{arctan}\left(\frac{\eta }{\omega }\right)`$. As a result, the gaussian width describing the electron in the lowest Landau level ($`LLL`$) state would get reduced. Furthermore the current operator, lying in the Hall direction in the absence of dissipation, for $`\eta 0`$ would acquire a longitudinal component, with a resulting metallic conductance $`\sigma _L0`$ for the multielectron system.

It is remarkable that such an effect was soon after proposed in ref. in the context of boundary conformal field theories (BCFT). The authors consider a system of two massless free scalar fields which have a boundary interaction with a periodic potential and furthermore are coupled to each other through a boundary magnetic term. By using a string analogy, this last interaction allows for exchange of momentum of the open string moving in an external magnetic field. The magnetic interaction enhances one chirality with respect to the other producing the same effect of a rotation together with a scale transformation on the fields as for the dissipative system of ref.  where the string parameter places the role of dissipation. It is crucial to observe that conformal invariance of the theory is preserved only at special values of the parameters entering the action, the so called “magic” points.

The aim of this letter is to show that the effective conformal field theory, the twisted model (TM), recently proposed in refs. $``$ is well suited to describe a dissipative system precisely at the “magic” points. In fact the presence of a $`Z_m`$ twist accounts, in the open string picture, for a mismatch of momentum exchange at its two endpoints. For the special $`Z_2`$ case the TM has central charge $`c=2`$ and describes a system of two layers coupled through a topological defect. It is interesting to notice that the fields which diagonalize such an interaction can be expressed in terms of the original layers fields through a rotation and a scale transformation. The amount of the rotation and scale transformation is fixed by the order of the twist. This is the content of the $`m`$-reduction procedure introduced in ref. . The paper is organized as follows:

In sec. 2 we recall some results of the dissipative quantum mechanics obtained in refs. .

In sec. 3 we review the properties of the TM which are relevant to the description of the dissipative effects and make a correspondence with the BCFT approach of ref. .

In sec. 4 we analyze the effect of the magnetic field on the TM boundary states (BS) recently introduced in ref.  and make a correspondence with the bulk degrees of freedom of ref. .

In sec. 5 we give explicitly the duality transformations which relate the UV properties with the IR ones in the TM context.

## 2 Dissipative quantum mechanics

In the presence of dissipation, the equations of motion of an electron moving in a plane with a magnetic field $`B`$ transverse to it are given by:

$$\frac{d^2z}{dt^2}=\left(\eta +i\omega \right)\frac{dz}{dt}\text{ }\frac{d^2\overline{z}}{dt^2}=\left(\eta i\omega \right)\frac{d\overline{z}}{dt},$$
(1)
where $`z\left(t\right)=x\left(t\right)+iy\left(t\right)`$, $`\omega =B`$ (in the units $`m=c=e=1`$) and $`\eta `$ is the viscosity coefficient.

By assuming the following relations between the canonical momenta $`p_z`$, $`p_{\overline{z}}`$ and the velocities $`v_z`$, $`v_{\overline{z}}`$ for $`\eta 0`$:

$$p_z=v_z+\frac{\eta +i\omega }{2}z\text{ }p_{\overline{z}}=v_{\overline{z}}+\frac{\eta i\omega }{2}\overline{z},$$
(2)
it is possible to quantize the system using the correspondence principle and to define the creation and annihilation operators $`\widehat{b}`$ and $`\widehat{b}^+`$

$$\widehat{b}=\frac{\omega +i\eta }{\sqrt{2\omega }}\text{ }\widehat{\overline{z}}_{\mathrm{}}^+\text{ }\widehat{b}^+=\frac{\omega i\eta }{\sqrt{2\omega }}\text{ }\widehat{z}_{\mathrm{}},$$
(3)
with commutation relation $`[\widehat{b},\text{ }\widehat{b}^+]=1`$. The coordinates $`z_{\mathrm{}}`$, $`\overline{z}_{\mathrm{}}`$ describe the center of the Larmor orbit of the electron and $`\widehat{z}_{\mathrm{}}`$, $`\widehat{\overline{z}}_{\mathrm{}}`$ are the corresponding operators. It is now interesting to observe that the time evolution on a large time scale ($`t\frac{1}{\eta }`$) is simply defined as:

$$\psi _{j,t\mathrm{}}^\eta \left(z\right)=\underset{t\mathrm{}}{lim}z\left|U(t,0)\right|\psi _j=z_{\mathrm{}}|\psi _j.$$
(4)
We are interested to the case in which $`\psi _j\left(z\right)`$ is the wave function of an electron in the lowest Landau level $`(LLL)`$:

$$\psi _j\left(z\right)=\sqrt{\frac{\omega }{\pi }}\frac{1}{\sqrt{j!}}\left(z\sqrt{\frac{\omega }{2}}\right)^je^{\frac{\omega }{4}\left|z\right|^2}.$$
(5)
In order to build the state $`|z\left(t\right)_t\mathrm{}`$ it is possible to define the coherent state $`|\xi `$ such that $`\widehat{b}|\xi =\xi |\xi `$ where $`\xi =\frac{\omega i\eta }{\sqrt{2\omega }}\overline{z}`$ and $`|\xi `$ is given by $`|\xi =e^{\frac{\left|\xi \right|^2}{2}}e^{\widehat{b}^+\xi }|0`$ with the vacuum state $`|0=\sqrt{\frac{\omega }{\pi }}e^{\frac{\omega +i\eta }{4}\left|z\right|^2}`$ annihilated by $`\widehat{b}`$: $`\widehat{b}|0=0`$.

If we require that the zero angular momentum state $`\psi _0\left(z\right)`$ is annihilated by $`\widehat{b}`$ (that is we require unitarity in our description), then we immediately get

$$\psi _{j,t\mathrm{}}^\eta \left(\xi \right)=e^{\frac{\left|\xi \right|^2}{2}}0\left|e^{\widehat{b}\overline{\xi }}\frac{\left(\widehat{b}^+\right)^j}{\sqrt{j!}}\right|0=\sqrt{\frac{\omega ^2+\eta ^2}{\pi \omega }}\frac{1}{\sqrt{j!}}\left(\frac{\omega i\eta }{\sqrt{2\omega }}z\right)^je^{\frac{\omega ^2+\eta ^2}{4\omega }\left|z\right|^2},$$
(6)
having expressed $`\xi `$, $`\overline{\xi }`$ in terms of the original $`z`$, $`\overline{z}`$ variables. By comparing eq. (6) with eq. (5) we can infer that the effect of dissipation can be simply accounted for by making the following transformations on the variable $`z`$: $`z(\rho e^{i\gamma })z`$, where $`\rho =\left(\frac{\eta ^2+\omega ^2}{\omega ^2}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$ and $`\gamma =\mathrm{arctan}\left(\frac{\eta }{\omega }\right)`$, that is a rotation plus a scale transformation.

Furthermore for a vector operator $`O`$ one has the transformation properties:

$`O_{x,t\mathrm{}}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}\left(O_{x,0}\mathrm{cos}\gamma O_{y,0}\mathrm{sin}\gamma \right)`$
$`O_{y,t\mathrm{}}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}\left(O_{x,0}\mathrm{sin}\gamma +O_{y,0}\mathrm{cos}\gamma \right).`$ (7)
The striking consequence of the above relations (see ref.) is that, if one starts with the current density operator $`\stackrel{}{J}`$ which accounts for a Hall conductance $`\sigma ^H=\frac{1}{\omega }`$ (being $`\stackrel{}{J}=(\frac{E}{\omega },0)`$) only, by applying the transformations given in eq. (7 ) one obtains

$$\stackrel{}{J}^\eta =(\frac{\omega }{\omega ^2+\eta ^2}E,\frac{\eta }{\omega ^2+\eta ^2}E)$$
(8)
with a resulting metallic conductance $`\sigma ^L=\frac{\eta }{\omega ^2+\eta ^2}`$ different from zero! The brackets above indicate an expectation value.

It is remarkable that such an effect was soon after proposed in ref.  in the context of BCFT. A system of two massless scalar fields in $`1+1`$ dimensions is considered, which are free in the bulk except for boundary interactions, which couple them. Its action is given by $`S=S_{bulk}+S_{pot}+S_{mag}`$ where:

$`S_{bulk}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^T}𝑑t{\displaystyle _0^l}𝑑\sigma \left(\left(_\mu X\right)^2+\left(_\mu Y\right)^2\right),`$ (9)
$`S_{pot}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^T}𝑑t\left(\mathrm{cos}X(t,0)+\mathrm{cos}Y(t,0)\right),`$ (10)
$`S_{mag}`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{\beta }{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^T}𝑑t\left(X_tYY_tX\right)_{\sigma =0}.`$ (11)
In the equations above $`\alpha `$ determines the strength of dissipation and is related to the potential $`V`$, as it can be seen, by rescaling the fields; $`\beta `$ is related to the strength of the magnetic field $`B`$ orthogonal to the $`XY`$ plane, as $`\beta =2\pi B`$.

The magnetic term introduces a coupling between $`X`$ and $`Y`$ at the boundary keeping conformal invariance. Such a symmetry gets spoiled by the presence of the interaction potential term except for the magic points $`(\alpha ,\beta )=(\frac{1}{n^2+1},\frac{n}{n^2+1}),n`$. For such parameters values the theory is conformal invariant for any potential strength $`V`$. It is possible to express all the degrees of freedom of such a system in terms of the boundary states, which can be easily constructed in two steps:

* By considering first the magnetic interaction term it is easy to see that the net effect of the magnetic field is a chiral $`o(2)`$ rotation of the Neumann boundary state $`|N>`$ as:

$$|B_0>=\mathrm{sec}\left(\frac{\delta }{2}\right)e^{i\delta _M}|N>.$$
(12)
Above the rotation operator $`_M`$ is given by

$$_M=(y_L^0p_L^Xx_L^0p_L^Y)+\underset{n>0}{}\frac{i}{n}\left(\alpha _n^Y\alpha _n^X\alpha _n^Y\alpha _n^X\right)$$
(13)
and the rotation parameter $`\delta `$ is defined in terms of the parameters $`\alpha ,\beta `$ as $`\mathrm{tan}\left(\frac{\delta }{2}\right)=\frac{\beta }{\alpha }`$.
* By considering in addition the effect of the potential term one obtains the boundary state $`|B_V>`$ as:

$$|B_V>=\mathrm{sec}\left(\frac{\delta }{2}\right)e^{i\delta _M}e^{H_{pot}\left(2X_L^{^{}}\right)H_{pot}\left(2Y_L^{^{}}\right)}|N^X^{^{}}>|N^Y^{^{}}>$$
(14)

where the rotated and rescaled coordinates $`X^{^{}},Y^{^{}}`$ have been introduced as:

$`X^{^{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{2}}\left(\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{2}}X\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{2}}Y\right)`$
$`Y^{^{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{2}}\left(\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{2}}X+\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{2}}Y\right).`$ (15)
Since the $`o(2)`$ rotation commutes with the Virasoro generators $`L_n`$, the state $`|B_V>`$ satisfies the Ishibashi condition $`\left(L_n\stackrel{~}{L}_n\right)|B_V>=0`$. Notice the strong resemblance of the above relations with the transformation properties given in eq. (7), describing the effect of dissipation on the vector operator $`O`$. We will come back later to further comment on this analogy, after introducing the TM in section 3. Let us only observe here that it is possible to get further insight into this analogy by considering the partition function $`Z_{NB_V}`$ defined as:

$$Z_{NB_V}=\mathrm{sec}\left(\frac{\delta }{2}\right)<N|q^{L_0+\stackrel{~}{L}_0}|B_V>$$
(16)
because, in the open string language, the rotation $`_M`$ introduces now twisted boundary conditions in the $`\sigma `$ direction.

In the following section we will introduce the two interacting layers system in the picture of the twisted theory and show that the interlayer interaction is diagonalized by the effective fields $`X,\varphi `$ which are related to the layers fields $`Q^{(1)},Q^{(2)}`$ just by the relation given in eq. (15) for $`\alpha =\beta `$. Also a generalized construction of the partition function $`Z_{NB_V}`$ will be performed in that context.

## 3 The TM model

In order to introduce the TM model let us consider a system of two interacting parallel layers of $`2D`$ electrons in a strong perpendicular magnetic field $`B`$. The filling factor $`\nu ^{(a)}=\frac{1}{2p+2}`$ is the same for the two $`a=1`$, $`2`$ layers (balanced system) while the total filling is $`\nu =\frac{1}{p+1}`$. The CFT description for such a system can be given in terms of two compactified bosons $`Q^{(a)}`$ (with central charge $`c=2`$) defined on the single layer “$`a`$”.

We review now the construction of the $`Q^{(a)}`$ fields in the TM description in its key steps, which will turn out to be also relevant for the analogy we are proposing. We show how the $`m`$-reduction procedure is equivalent to the effect of a magnetic boundary term; in other words the magnetic term can result in a twist on the neutral field.

* Starting from the Fubini field

$$Q(z)=qiplnz+i\underset{n0}{}\frac{a_n}{n}z^n$$
(17)
compactified on a circle with radius $`R^2=1/\nu =2(p+1)`$ , we perform the transformation $`ze^{i\theta _j}z`$ and get $`Q(e^{i\theta _j}z)`$, where $`z=e^{i\frac{2\pi x}{L}}`$ and $`\theta _j=\frac{2\pi j}{m}`$, $`j=0,\mathrm{},m1`$.
* For $`m=2`$ (which regards the two layers system considered in the paper) there are two possible values, $`\theta _0=0,\theta _1=\pi `$, with the corresponding fields:

$`Q(z)`$ $`=`$ $`qiplnz+i{\displaystyle \underset{n0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_n}{n}}z^nQ^{(1)}\left(z\right)`$ (18)
$`Q(z)`$ $`=`$ $`q+\pi piplnz+i{\displaystyle \underset{n0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_n}{n}}\left(1\right)^nz^nQ^{(2)}\left(z\right)\text{.}`$ (19)

* Summing and subtracting, we get the charged field $`X(z)`$ and the neutral one $`\varphi (z)`$ which satisfies twisted boundary conditions $`\varphi (e^{i\pi }z)=\varphi (z)`$. The $`X(z)`$ and $`\varphi (z)`$ fields, which have the profound meaning of diagonalizing the interlayer interaction (see ref.  and following section) can be rewritten in a more enlightening form as:

$`X(z)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}(\theta /4)\left(\mathrm{sin}(\theta /4)Q^{(1)}(z)+\mathrm{cos}(\theta /4)Q^{(2)}(z)\right)`$ (20)
$`\varphi (z)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}(\theta /4)\left(\mathrm{cos}(\theta /4)Q^{(1)}(z)\mathrm{sin}(\theta /4)Q^{(2)}(z)\right).`$ (21)
Such a transformation consists of a scale transformation plus a rotation; for $`\theta =\pi `$ the fields $`X(z)`$ and $`\varphi (z)`$ of the $`Z_2`$ twisted theory introduced in refs.  are obtained and the transformations above coincide with the transformations given in eqs. (15) for $`\delta =\frac{\pi }{2}`$.
* In this context it is possible to express the effect of a boundary magnetic term as:

$$|B_0(\delta )>=\mathrm{sec}(\theta /4)e^{i\delta _M}|N(\theta 2\delta )>$$
(22)
where

$$|N(\theta )>=\sqrt{R}e^{_{n>0}\overline{a}_n^{(X)}a_n^{(X)}}e^{_{n>0}\overline{a}_n^{(\varphi )}a_n^{(\varphi )}}|w_X,0>|w_\varphi ,0>$$
(23)
and the rotation $`_M,`$ defined in eq. (13), is now given in terms of $`X`$ and $`\varphi `$.

The boundary state for the (untwisted) twisted sector in the folded theory is obtained from the above rotation on the Neumann boundary state when $`\delta =0,\frac{\pi }{2}`$ and can be seen as due to a boundary magnetic term according to .
* Finally, if we perform the rescaling $`zz^{\frac{1}{2}}`$, $`a_{2n+l}\sqrt{2}a_{n+\frac{l}{2}}`$, $`q\frac{q}{\sqrt{2}}`$, for $`\alpha =\beta `$ $`\left(\text{that is also for }\eta =\omega \right)`$, we obtain the $`X(z)`$ and $`\varphi (z)`$ fields in the standard form; that is the twisted CFT just constructed (see refs. ) can be conjectured to represent the correct CFT which describes dissipative quantum mechanics (DQM) of ref. .

The full set of characters and the partition function for this model was given in . In  the effect of the presence of an impurity in the system was analyzed by mapping the impurity into a boundary state by using the well known folding procedure and the boundary partition function $`Z_{AB}`$ was given. In the rest of the paper we will try to convince the reader that such a conjecture is correct even in the context of boundary CFT. More precisely we will study the effect of the magnetic field on the BS of the TM model  and construct the correspondent partition function $`Z_{NB_V}`$ (see eq. (16)). In the following section we will explicitly see how the boundary state so constructed is related, for the different values of $`\delta =0`$ or $`\delta =\frac{\pi }{2}`$, to the description of the bulk degrees of freedom of the TM.

## 4 Twisted Model and magnetic boundary interaction

In order to analyze the effect of a magnetic boundary term in the TM we can resort to the fermionized theory and define a pair of left-moving fermions as:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\psi _1=c_1e^{\frac{i}{2}\left(Q^{\left(2\right)}+Q^{\left(1\right)}\right)}=c_1e^{iX}& & \psi _2=c_2e^{\frac{i}{2}\left(Q^{\left(2\right)}Q^{\left(1\right)}\right)}=c_2e^{i\varphi }\end{array}$$
(24)
where $`c_i`$, $`i=1,2`$ are cocycles necessary for the anticommutation.

At the first non-trivial “magic” point $`\alpha =\beta =\frac{1}{2}`$ of ref.  corresponding in our model to the $`m=2`$, $`p=0`$ case it is very simple to obtain the action of the magnetic boundary term on the Neumann state $`|N>`$. In fact, separating the two Dirac fermions into real and imaginary parts, $`\phi _1=\psi _{11}+i\psi _{12}`$, $`\phi _2=\psi _{21}+i\psi _{22}`$, we get four left-moving Majorana fermions given by $`\psi =(\psi _{11},\psi _{12},\psi _{21},\psi _{22})=(\mathrm{cos}X,\mathrm{sin}X,\mathrm{cos}\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\varphi )`$ and a corresponding set of right-moving ones. In this new language the magnetic term acts only on the fourth Majorana fermion as $`\mathrm{R}_M=e^{2i\delta }`$ where $`\delta =0`$ ($`\delta =\frac{\pi }{2}`$) for the untwisted (twisted) sector of our theory, being its action the identity for the other components. Now we add a potential term which acts on the Majorana as:

$$\mathrm{R}_P=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{cos}\left(2V\right)& \mathrm{sin}\left(2V\right)& 0& 0\\ \mathrm{sin}\left(2V\right)& \mathrm{cos}\left(2V\right)& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& \mathrm{cos}\left(2V\right)& \mathrm{sin}\left(2V\right)\\ 0& 0& \mathrm{sin}\left(2V\right)& \mathrm{cos}\left(2V\right)\end{array}\right).$$
(25)
So the overall rotation of the corresponding fermionic boundary states is $`\mathrm{R}=\mathrm{R}_M\mathrm{R}_P`$.

In terms of $`\mathrm{R}`$ the partition function $`Z_{AB},`$ where $`|A>`$ is the Neumann boundary state $`|N>`$ and $`|B>`$ is the magnetic-potential BS $`|B_V>`$, can be rewritten as:

$$Z_{NB_V}(\delta ,V)=N|e^{L\left(L_0+\overline{L}_0\right)}|B_V\left(\delta \right)>=\sqrt{2}\left(q\right)^{2/24}\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}det\left(\mathrm{I}+q^{n\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{R}\right)$$
(26)
where $`q=e^{2i\pi \tau }`$ and $`\mathrm{I}`$ is the identity matrix.

Finally we get:

$$Z_{NB_V}(\delta ,V)=\sqrt{2}\frac{\theta _3\left(V|\tau \right)}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}\sqrt{\frac{\theta _3\left(V|\tau \right)}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}}\sqrt{\frac{\theta _3\left(\delta +V|\tau \right)}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}},$$
(27)
where $`\delta =0`$ ($`\delta =\frac{\pi }{2}`$) for the untwisted (twisted) sector.

On the other hand, choosing $`|A>`$ to be the vacuum state we can compute the partition functions $`Z_{AB}`$ where $`|B>`$ are all the BS for the TM obtained in ref. . In terms of the characters defined in  (for $`i=0,1`$ and $`f=0,1`$)

$`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{((i,0),f)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _3\left(\tau \right)}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _3\left(\tau \right)+()^f\sqrt{\theta _3\left(\tau \right)\theta _4\left(\tau \right)}}{2^{3/2}\eta \left(\tau \right)}}+()^i{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _4\left(\tau \right)}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _4\left(\tau \right)+()^f\sqrt{\theta _4\left(\tau \right)\theta _3\left(\tau \right)}}{2^{3/2}\eta \left(\tau \right)}};`$
$`\chi _{(0,0)}^+(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _3\left(\tau \right)}{\sqrt{2}\eta \left(\tau \right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\theta _2\left(\tau \right)\theta _3\left(\tau \right)}}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}};\text{ }\chi _{(1,0)}^+(\tau )={\displaystyle \frac{\theta _2\left(\tau \right)}{\sqrt{2}\eta \left(\tau \right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\theta _3\left(\tau \right)\theta _2\left(\tau \right)}}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}}`$
$`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _2\left(\tau \right)}{\eta \left(\tau \right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _2\left(\tau \right)}{2\eta \left(\tau \right)}};`$ (28)
we get, by using eqs.(27,28):

| $`Z_{NB_V}\left(\delta =0,V=0\right)=\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{((0,0),0)}(\frac{1}{\tau })+\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{((1,0),0)}(\frac{1}{\tau })+\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{((0,0),1)}(\frac{1}{\tau })+\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{((1,0),1)}(\frac{1}{\tau });`$ |
| --- |
| $`Z_{NB_V}\left(\delta =0,V=\frac{\pi }{2}\right)=2\sqrt{2}\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{(0)}(\frac{1}{\tau });Z_{NB_V}\left(\delta =\frac{\pi }{2},V=0\right)=2\chi _{(0,0)}^+(\frac{1}{\tau });`$ |
| $`Z_{NB_V}\left(\delta =\frac{\pi }{2},V=\frac{\pi }{2}\right)=2\chi _{(1,0)}^+(\frac{1}{\tau })`$ |

(29)
We will comment on such results in the following section, resorting to the duality properties of the TM vacua, which are explicitly evidenced in its analogy with the one impurity Kondo model.

## 5 Duality properties and comments

Our description adapts very closely to a system of two interacting Luttinger liquids coupled resonantly through an impurity placed in between. Indeed, as stated in ref. , the problem of tunneling between two different quantum Hall states at $`\nu =1`$ and $`\nu =1/3`$ can be mapped onto that of tunneling through a barrier in a $`g_L=1/2`$ Luttinger liquid; in particular, if the two layers are equivalent the two tunneling barriers are symmetric. This is the condition for a perfect resonance, where the system flows to the perfectly transmitting fixed point . Equivalently such a model can be mapped to an anisotropic two channel Kondo problem in which the occupation of the impurity state corresponds to the state of the Kondo spin, the two leads are the two channels, the tunneling amplitudes play the role of the transverse couplings and the scaling dimensions of the fields are related to anisotropy. So we get:

$$^{UV}V\left(S_j^x\mathrm{cos}\left(X\left(0\right)\right)\mathrm{cos}\left(\varphi \left(0\right)\right)+S_j^y\mathrm{sin}\left(X\left(0\right)\right)\mathrm{cos}\left(\varphi \left(0\right)\right)\right)$$
(30)
where $`X`$ and $`\varphi `$ coincide with the charged and neutral fields introduced in eqs. (20) and (21) and $`S_j^{x(y)}`$ are $`su\left(2\right)_q`$ impurity spins in the spin $`j`$ representation. As pointed out in ref.  there is a duality between the UV and the IR regime in the Kondo problem. Indeed let us consider the anisotropic Kondo model defined by a boundary Lagrangian as in eq. (30) where $`X`$, $`\varphi `$ are massless bosonic fields. Such an interaction induces a flow from Neumann (UV) to Dirichlet (IR) boundary conditions as $`V`$ increases. The integrability constraint requires the infrared Lagrangian to contain a single non-trivial term:

$$^{IR}V_D\left(S_{j1/2}^x\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{X}\left(0\right)}{g_L}\right)\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\varphi }\left(0\right)}{g_L}\right)+S_{j1/2}^y\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{X}\left(0\right)}{g_L}\right)\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\varphi }\left(0\right)}{g_L}\right)\right)$$
(31)
where now $`\stackrel{~}{X}\left(0\right),\stackrel{~}{\varphi }\left(0\right)`$ are the “dual” bosonic fields<sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3The fields $`X(0,t),\varphi (0,t),\stackrel{~}{X}(0,t),\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(0,t)`$ appearing in eqs. (30), (31) are expressed in the folded system description as $`\left(left\right)\pm \left(right\right)`$ components respectively (see ref.  for a more detailed description). and the spins are in the representation of spin $`j1/2`$. In conclusion the duality results in the following transformations:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}g_L\frac{1}{g_L},& VV_D,& S_j^{x(y)}S_{j1/2}^{x(y)}.\end{array}$$
(32)
If we remember the relation $`R=2\sqrt{g_L}`$ , we see that duality maps the compactification radius $`R^2`$ to $`4/R^2`$, a half-integer spin to an integer one (i.e. no spin) and conversely. At the same time the weak coupling limit goes to the strong one, Neumann boundary conditions to Dirichlet ones and a description in terms of Laughlin quasiholes to one in terms of electrons. It also maps an untwisted sector to a twisted one ($`\delta \delta +\pi /2`$) and conversely. In such a context, the theory without spin is dual to our TM model in which the presence of a spin-$`1/2`$ impurity gives rise to twisted boundary conditions . In fact the above duality can be explicitly realized as follows. Let us consider the UV vacuum corresponding to the boundary partition function $`Z_{NB_V}(\delta =0,V=\frac{\pi }{2})`$; by performing the transformations: $`\tau \frac{1}{\tau }`$ and $`\delta =0\delta =\pi /2`$ we find

$$Z_{NB_V}(\delta =0,V=\frac{\pi }{2})Z_{NB_V}(\delta _D=\frac{\pi }{2},V_D=\frac{\pi }{2})$$
(33)
i.e. the partition function $`Z_{NB_V}(\delta _D=\frac{\pi }{2},V_D=\frac{\pi }{2})`$ corresponding to the IR vacuum. The finite renormalized value of $`V_D`$ is the consequence of the non-perturbative multi-solitons corrections (see ref. for details). Moreover the effect of the spin-$`1/2`$ impurity (a quasihole impurity in our case) is to induce twisted boundary conditions (i.e. $`\delta =0\pi /2`$). This is the analog of the non-Fermi liquid behavior of the overscreened Kondo problem. Moreover, the duality between the two fixed points with twisted (untwisted) boundary conditions implies that two equivalent descriptions exist in which the role of the electrons and quasiholes gets exchanged. That extends the duality between Laughlin quasiparticles and electrons to the quasiholes which characterize the paired states. In this case the impurity spin, which is not present in the classic problem of tunneling between edge states in the fractional Quantum Hall Effect, plays a crucial role, as discussed before. The impurity spin leads us to define a larger group with respect to the modular transformations in which it also plays a role: the “duality” group.

It is useful now to give a physical interpretation of our results in terms of dissipation. The present framework adapts very well to the description of an impurity interacting with a thermal bath which is realized in terms of two kinds of light particles (i.e. the two Quantum Hall Fluids). The dissipation is given by the kinetic term for the two fluids and a periodic potential is added. This problem can be solved in the two regimes of strong and week “corrugation”  and flow occurs toward the stable point. When a magnetic term is added for the impurity, the system drastically changes its properties and a more stable point with $`\alpha =\beta =1/2`$ appears. The effect of $`\beta 0`$ is to rotate the current $`\stackrel{}{J}`$ getting a “metallic” component (see eq.(8)). In the two layers system this implies that a current flows between the layers due to the twisted boundary conditions.

Finally we point out that this description can be also applied to a system of two Branes interacting with strings as it was proposed in .


format: text

text:
# Spectral Energy Distribution in Supercritical Disk Accretion Flows through Photon-trapping Effects

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The standard-disk model proposed by Shakura & Sunyaev (1973) has had some success in describing optically thick accretion flow structure in luminous objects, such as X-ray binary sources in the soft state. However, the standard-disk model is constructed under number of approximations and its treatment is only justified when the mass-accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$, is less than the critical mass-accretion rate, $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$, where the critical mass-accretion rate is given by $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{crit}}L_\mathrm{E}/c^2`$ with the Eddington luminosity, $`L_\mathrm{E}=4\pi cGMm_\mathrm{p}/\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$, where $`c`$, $`M`$, $`m_\mathrm{p}`$, and $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$ are the light velocity, the black-hole mass, the proton mass, and the Thomson scattering cross-section, respectively. Since the mass-accretion rate is determined by some mechanism which is independent of the nature of the central star itself (Alme & Wilson 1976; Spruit & Ritter 1983; Norman & Scoville 1988; King et al. 1997; Umemura, Fukue, & Mineshige 1998; Ohsuga et al. 1999), there are no reasons why $`\dot{M}`$ should always be below $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$. That is, the supercritical accretion flow may naturally arise. Indeed, several possible sites of super- or near-critical accretion flow have been suggested; e.g., micro-quasars (Yamaoka, Ueda, & Inoue 2001), ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) (Okada et al. 1998; Colbert & Mushotzky 1999; Mizuno et al. 1999; Makishima et al. 2000; Watarai et al. 2000; Revnivtsev et al. 2002), narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (Boller 2000; Mineshige et al. 2000), quasars (Collin et al. 2002), and Gamma-ray bursts (Narayan, Piran, & Kumar 2001; Kohri & Mineshige 2002).

When the mass-accretion rate exceeds the critical value, photon trapping plays an important role within the trapping radius,

$$r_{\mathrm{trap}}\dot{m}\left(\frac{H}{r}\right)r_\mathrm{g},$$
(1)
where $`\dot{m}`$ is the mass-accretion rate normalized by the critical mass-accretion rate, $`H`$ is the disk-half thickness, $`r`$ is the radius, and $`r_\mathrm{g}`$ is the Schwarzschild radius (Ohsuga et al. 2002, hereafter referred to as Paper I, see also Begelman 1978 for the spherical case). Thus, the radiation energy, which is generated by viscosity in the vicinity of the black hole, is trapped in the flow and advected inward without being immediately radiated away. Since the advective energy transport was firstly considered in the slim-disk model by Abramowicz et al. (1988), in the context of the accretion-disk models this model has been believed to be the solution of the supercritical disk accretion flow (Kato, Fukue, & Mineshige 1998). However, it is shown in Paper I that the photon-trapping effects are not accurately treated in the slim-disk approach. The reason for this is that the time delay between the energy generation deep inside the disk and the energy release at the surface is not taken into account in the slim-disk formulation, although the time delay is not negligible and exceeds the accretion timescale within the trapping radius.

In the light of the recent discovery of the supercritically accreting objects, it is of great importance to study the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the supercritical disk accretion flow. But, little is known about the SED of the flow suffering the photon-trapping effects except for the case of the slim-disk model. Szuszkiewicz, Malkan, & Abramowicz (1996) and Watarai et al. (2000) have calculated the SED of the slim disk by superposition of blackbody/modified-blackbody spectra. Wang et al. (1999) have solved the radiation transfer equations in the vertical direction, coupling with the slim-disk formulation. As we noted above, however, the slim-disk model has not fully considered the photon-trapping effects, so we need further studies.

In paper I, we investigated the photon-trapping effects in the disk accretion flow, but only solved the monochromatic radiation transfer equations inside the accretion flow. In this work, we investigate the SED of the optically-thick supercritical accretion flows by solving multi-frequency radiation transfer equations. In §2, we give our model and the basic equations. The resultant SEDs are presented in §3. Comparing our results with the observational data, we discuss the role of the photon trapping in the actual objects. Finally, §4 and §5 are devoted to discussion and conclusions, respectively.

## 2 OUR MODEL AND BASIC EQUATIONS

In this section, we numerically solve the multi-frequency radiation-transfer equations, as well as the energy equations of gas and radiation, by taking into account the photon-trapping effects. Since we are concerned with the radiation processes, especially the photon-trapping effects themselves, we employ a simple model for the accretion flow structure (see Paper I).

Here, the cylindrical coordinates, $`(r,\phi ,z)`$, are used. We consider that the accretion disk is axisymmetric and steady in the Eulerian description; $`/\phi =/t=0`$. We employ the Gaussian density profile in the vertical direction,

$$\rho (r,z)=\rho _0(r)\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(\frac{z}{H}\right)^2\right],$$
(2)
where $`\rho _0`$ is the gas density on the equatorial plane and we assume the ratio of the disk-half thickness to the radius, $`H/r`$, to be a constant in radius, depending on $`\dot{m}`$;

$$\frac{H}{r}=\epsilon _{100}\left(\frac{\dot{m}}{10^2}\right),$$
(3)
with $`\epsilon _{100}`$ being a dimensionless parameter representing the aspect ratio, $`H/r`$, at $`\dot{m}=100`$. Such a linear relation between $`H/r`$ and $`\dot{m}`$ exactly holds in the radiation pressure-dominated part of the standard-disk model \[see, e.g., equation (3.61) of Kato, Fukue, & Mineshige (1998)\], and also roughly holds in the slim-disk model as long as $`\dot{m}`$ is less than a few hundreds (Watarai et al. 2000). The density on the equatorial plane, $`\rho _0`$, is related to the surface density as,

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(r)=2\rho _0(r)_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(\frac{z}{H}\right)^2\right]𝑑z=2\sqrt{\pi }\rho _0(r)H(r),$$
(4)
where the surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, is calculated by the continuity equation for a given accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$,

$$\dot{M}=2\pi rv_r\mathrm{\Sigma },$$
(5)
with $`v_r`$ being the radial component of the velocity.

Since the radial component of the velocity, $`v_r`$, is related to the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$ through $`v_r\alpha \left(H/r\right)c_\mathrm{s}`$ with $`c_\mathrm{s}`$ being the sound velocity (see, e.g., Frank, King, & Raine 1985; Kato, Fukue, & Mineshige 1998), and $`H`$ is given by the equation (3), $`v_r`$ is finally expressed in terms of the free-fall velocity as

$$v_r=\alpha \epsilon _{100}^2\left(\frac{\dot{m}}{10^2}\right)^2\left(\frac{GM}{r}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(6)
The vertical component is prescribed as

$$v_z=\frac{z}{r}v_r,$$
(7)
i.e., we assume a convergence flow.

Through equations (3), (5), and (6), $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\rho `$ are related to $`\epsilon _{100}`$ and $`\dot{m}`$ in our model; $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\epsilon _{100}^2\dot{m}^1`$ and $`\rho \epsilon _{100}^3\dot{m}^2`$. The photon-trapping radius is rewritten by using equation (3) as,

$$r_{\mathrm{trap}}10^2\epsilon _{100}\dot{m}^2r_\mathrm{g}.$$
(8)
Here, it is noted that the photon-trapping radius not only indicates the critical radius for the photon trapping but also expresses the significance of the photon-trapping effects, since this relation is derived from the comparison between the accretion timescale and the radiative diffusion timescale. Thus, the photon-trapping effects are more pronounced in the case of larger $`\epsilon _{100}`$ and $`\dot{m}`$.

We suppose the structure of the accretion disk to be locally plane parallel; that is, the disk is regarded as consisting of accreting ring elements (see discussion in the end of this section). Each ring is composed of $`N`$ layers in the $`z`$-direction, and the thickness of each layer is $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=2H_0/N`$ (see Figure 2 of Paper I). Here, $`H_0`$ defines the upper boundary of the disk in the numerical simulations in such a way that $`\rho (r,H_0)=0.1\rho _0(r)`$. We solve the time-dependent energy fields of gas and radiation in the ring element during the course of accretion motion until the element reaches the inner edge of the disk. Both of the viscous heating and compressional heating though converging inflow are considered. Since the flow assumed to be steady ($`/t=0`$), time coordinate can be transformed to the spatial coordinates; i.e., $`D/Dt=v_r/r+v_z/z`$ with $`v_r`$ and $`v_z`$ being given by equations (6) and (7). We thus express the multi-frequency radiative flux at the disk surface as a function of radius and then calculate the resultant SED and luminosity of the disk.

In the plane-parallel approximation, the radial and azimuthal components of the radiative flux are null. Also, non-diagonal components of the radiation stress tensor are null. Hence, using equations (6) and (7), we write the energy equations of radiation and gas as

$`\rho \left(v_r{\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{z}{r}}v_r{\displaystyle \frac{}{z}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{E_\nu }{\rho }}\right)`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{F_\nu ^z}{z}}{\displaystyle \frac{v_r}{r}}\nu {\displaystyle \frac{}{\nu }}`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}P_\nu ^{rr}P_\nu ^{\phi \phi }P_\nu ^{zz}\right)`$
$`+4\pi \kappa _\nu B_\nu c\kappa _\nu E_\nu ,`$ (9)
and

$`\rho \left(v_r{\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{z}{r}}v_r{\displaystyle \frac{}{z}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{e}{\rho }}\right)`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{v_r}{r}}p_{\mathrm{gas}}4\pi \kappa _PB`$ $`+c\kappa _EE+q_{\mathrm{vis}},`$ (10)
respectively, where $`E_\nu `$ and $`E(E_\nu 𝑑\nu )`$ are the radiation energy density and its frequency-integrated form, respectively, $`F_\nu ^z`$ is the radiative flux in the $`z`$-direction, $`P_\nu ^{ii}`$ is the diagonal ($`ii`$-th) components of the radiation stress tensor, $`B_\nu `$ and $`B=\sigma T_{\mathrm{gas}}^4/\pi `$ are the Planck function and its frequency-integrated form, respectively, with $`T_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ being the gas temperature and $`\sigma `$ being the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, $`\kappa _\nu =3.7\times 10^8T_{\mathrm{gas}}^{1/2}(\rho /m_\mathrm{p})^2\nu ^3\{1\mathrm{exp}(h\nu /kT_{\mathrm{gas}})\}`$ is the free-free absorption coefficient (Rybicki & Lightman 1979), with $`h`$ being the Planck constant and $`k`$ being the Boltzmann constant, $`e`$ is the internal energy density, $`p_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ is the gas pressure, $`\kappa _P`$ and $`\kappa _E`$ are the Planck-mean and energy-mean opacities, respectively,

$$\kappa _P=\frac{1}{B}\kappa _\nu B_\nu 𝑑\nu ,$$
(11)
$$\kappa _E=\frac{1}{E}\kappa _\nu E_\nu 𝑑\nu ,$$
(12)
and $`q_{\mathrm{vis}}`$ is the viscous heating rate per unit volume (Mihalas & Klein 1982; Mihalas & Mihalas 1984; Fukue, Kato, & Matsumoto 1985; Stone, Mihalas, & Norman 1992).

To close the set of equations, we apply the multi-frequency flux-limited diffusion approximation (FLD), for the radiative flux and stress tensor,

$$F_\nu ^z=\frac{c\lambda _\nu }{\chi _\nu }\frac{E_\nu }{z},$$
(13)
$$P_\nu ^{rr}=P_\nu ^{\phi \phi }=\frac{1}{2}(1f_\nu )E_\nu ,$$
(14)
and

$$P_\nu ^{zz}=f_\nu E_\nu ,$$
(15)
with $`\chi _\nu `$ being the extinction coefficient,

$$\chi _\nu =\frac{\rho \sigma _\mathrm{T}}{m_\mathrm{p}}+\kappa _\nu ,$$
(16)
where $`\lambda _\nu `$, $`R_\nu `$, and $`f_\nu `$ are defined as

$$\lambda _\nu =\frac{2+R_\nu }{6+3R_\nu +R_\nu ^2},$$
(17)
$$R_\nu =\frac{1}{\chi _\nu E_\nu }\left|\frac{E_\nu }{z}\right|,$$
(18)
and

$$f_\nu =\lambda _\nu +\lambda _\nu ^2R_\nu ^2.$$
(19)
These relations correspond to the multi-frequency form of the monochromatic FLD represented by Turner & Stone (2001). This approximation holds both in the optically thick and thin regimes. In the optically thick limit ($`R_\nu 0`$), we find $`\lambda _\nu 1/3`$ and $`f_\nu 1/3`$. In the optically thin limit of $`R_\nu \mathrm{}`$, on the other hand, we have $`|F_\nu ^z|=cE_\nu `$, $`P_\nu ^{rr}=P_\nu ^{\phi \phi }=0`$, and $`P_\nu ^{zz}=E_\nu `$. These give correct relations in the optically thick diffusion limit and optically thin streaming limit, respectively. Thus, we can rewrite the radiation energy equation (9) as

$`\rho \left(v_r{\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{z}{r}}v_r{\displaystyle \frac{}{z}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{E_\nu }{\rho }}\right)`$
$`=c{\displaystyle \frac{}{z}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _\nu }{\chi _\nu }}{\displaystyle \frac{E_\nu }{z}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{v_r}{r}}`$ $`\nu `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{3f_\nu +1}{4}}E_\nu \right)`$
$`+4\pi \kappa _\nu B_\nu c\kappa _\nu E_\nu .`$ (20)
These nonlinear equations (10) and (20) are integrated iteratively by the Newton-Raphson method with the Gauss-Jordan elimination for a matrix inversion, by being coupled with the equation of state,

$$p_{\mathrm{gas}}=\frac{2}{3}e.$$
(21)
We employ the simple model for viscous heating rate, whose distribution in the $`z`$-direction is proportional to the total pressure; that is,

$$q_{\mathrm{vis}}(r,z)=Q_{\mathrm{vis}}(r)\frac{E(r,z)+2e(r,z)/3}{_0^{H_0}\left\{E(r,z)+2e(r,z)/3\right\}𝑑z},$$
(22)
where $`Q_{\mathrm{vis}}`$ is the half vertically-integrated viscous heating rate per unit surface,

$$Q_{\mathrm{vis}}\frac{3}{8\pi }\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}^2\dot{M}\left[1\left(\frac{r_{\mathrm{in}}}{r}\right)^{1/2}\right],$$
(23)
(Shakura & Sunyaev 1973; Lynden-Bell & Pringle 1974), with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}`$ being the Keplerian angular speed.

Throughout the present study, $`\alpha `$ and $`N`$ are set to be 0.1 and 100, respectively. We consider the range of frequency, $`\mathrm{log}\nu =1620`$, with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}\nu =0.08`$. Since the radiative flux from the vicinity of the black hole gives negligible contribution to the total SED due to the large redshift in the face-on case, we neglect the emission from the regions inside, $`r<3r_\mathrm{g}`$ \[see, e.g., equation (3.159) of Kato, Fukue, & Mineshige (1998)\]. The supercritical disk becomes relatively geometrically thick through the strong radiation pressure and is obscured by the outer part of the disk in the edge-on case so that it would be observed as objects of small inclination angle. The black-hole mass is fixed to be $`10M_{}`$ except in §3.4, where we adopt $`50M_{}`$ and $`100M_{}`$ to compare our results with the observations of ULXs.

In our simulations, we assumed the disk to be locally plane parallel. Hence, the radiation energy diffuses towards only the $`z`$-direction in the frame moving with gas; i.e., the radial and azimuthal components of the radiative flux are null. However, if the radial gradient of the radiation energy density is comparable to the vertical one, $`|E/z||E/r|`$, the diffusion of the radiation energy towards the $`r`$-direction is not negligible. Such a situation would hold in the very vicinity of the inner edge of the disk, where the radiation energy effectively falls onto the black hole because of $`F^r<0`$. Thus, the photon trapping would be enhanced at $`r<3r_\mathrm{g}`$. In contrast, the radiative flux would become positive, $`F^r>0`$, at $`r>3r_\mathrm{g}`$, and may not be negligible if the aspect ratio, $`H/r`$, is of the order of unity. In this case, the photon-trapping effects would be reduced. Such a reduction of the photon trapping is roughly estimated as follows. Since the radiative diffusion timescale is given by $`c/\tau `$, the ratio of the radial diffusion velocity and vertical diffusion velocity is roughly obtained to be $`v_{\mathrm{diff},\mathrm{r}}/v_{\mathrm{diff},\mathrm{z}}\tau _z/\tau _rH/r`$. Here, $`\tau _z\rho \sigma _\mathrm{T}H/m_\mathrm{p}`$ and $`\tau _r\rho \sigma _\mathrm{T}r/m_\mathrm{p}`$ are the optical depth for the Thomson cross-section in vertical and radial directions, respectively. By taking into account the radiative diffusion in the radial direction, the timescale for the radiation energy to be swallowed by the black hole is $`\tau _{\mathrm{swa}}r/(v_rv_{\mathrm{diff},\mathrm{r}})`$. By comparison between this timescale and the diffusion timescale in vertical direction, $`H/(c/\tau _z)`$, we find that the photon-trapping radius is modified as

$$r_{\mathrm{trap}}^{}r_{\mathrm{trap}}\left\{1+\left(\frac{H}{r}\right)^2\right\}^1,$$
(24)
where equations (1), (5), $`\tau _z=\sigma _\mathrm{T}\mathrm{\Sigma }/m_\mathrm{p}`$, $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{crit}}L_\mathrm{E}/c^2`$, and $`L_\mathrm{E}=4\pi cGMm_\mathrm{p}/\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$ are used. Since the luminosity depends on the trapping radius as $`L_{r_{\mathrm{trap}}}2\pi rQ_{\mathrm{vis}}𝑑rr_{\mathrm{trap}}^1`$ (Paper I), the luminosity would increase by a factor of $`1+(H/r)^2`$ on account of the radiative diffusion in the radial direction. For $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, our formulation underestimate luminosity by $`(H/r)^20.25(\dot{m}/100)^2`$. Doppler beaming tends to focus radiation field to be more confined within the equatorial plane, thereby enhancing the photon trapping effects. The details would be elucidated by solving two-dimensional radiation transfer equations as future work.

## 3 RESULTS

### 3.1 Luminosity

We first plot the luminosity against the mass-accretion rate in Figure 1, where the luminosity and mass-accretion rate are normalized by the Eddington luminosity and the critical mass-accretion rate, respectively. The luminosity should increase along the dashed line, if the energy-conversion efficiency, $`\eta \dot{M}c^2/L`$, is constant. However, it is found that the energy-conversion efficiency decreases with increase in the mass-accretion rate at $`L>2L_\mathrm{E}`$ due to the photon trapping. We also see that the larger $`\epsilon _{100}`$ is, the lower becomes the luminosity at high mass-accretion rates, $`\dot{m}10`$. This can be understood, since the photon-trapping effects are more conspicuous for larger $`\epsilon _{100}`$ \[see equation (8)\]. We have confirmed the results of Paper I, whereby energy-conversion efficiency decreases with increase of the mass-accretion rate, by the multi-frequency radiation transfer simulations.

### 3.2 Effective Temperature

The effective temperature profile is shown in Figure 2. Here, the effective temperature is defined as $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}=(F/\sigma )^{1/4}`$, where $`F=F_\nu 𝑑\nu `$. The profile becomes a bit flatter in the vicinity of the black hole when $`\dot{m}>30`$ due to the photon-trapping effects. In particular, the slope becomes somewhat flatter than that predicted by the slim-disk model, $`r^{1/2}`$, in the case of $`\dot{m}=100`$. When $`\dot{m}=10`$, in contrast, the profile is consistent with the standard-disk model, in which $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}r^{3/4}`$, except at $`r/r_\mathrm{g}<7`$, where boundary effects appear, since the photon-trapping effects are negligible. Here, it should be stressed that the flatter effective temperature means a reduction of the radiative flux at small radii, however, the local emergent spectrum is no longer a simple multi-color blackbody spectrum (discussed in the next subsection).

### 3.3 Spectral Energy Distribution

We show the SED of the accretion flow with $`\dot{m}=10`$ for $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, 0.17, and 0.1 in Figure 3. For such a low $`\dot{m}`$, the photon-trapping effects do not appear yet, but the calculated SEDs grossly deviate from the SED predicted by the standard disk with the same $`\dot{m}`$, which is indicated by the dotted curve. It is found that the SED is shifted towards the higher-energy side as $`\epsilon _{100}`$ increases. This is explained by the transmission of high-energy photons generated near the equatorial plane, since for given $`\dot{m}`$ both of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\rho `$ decrease as $`\epsilon _{100}`$ increases, leading to a decrease of $`\kappa _\nu `$, especially at high $`\nu `$ (note $`\kappa _\nu \rho ^2`$ and $`\kappa _\nu `$ decreases as $`\nu `$ increases). Then, the high-energy photons arising from deep inside the disk can pass through the disk body when $`\epsilon _{100}`$ is large. In the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$ and 0.17, the frequency of the SED peak intensity (hereafter referred to as the peak frequency) is by about three times higher than that of the standard disk. This result might resolve the so-called ‘too hot accretion disk problem’ (Makishima et al. 2000). That is, the black-hole masses of some ULXs are inferred to be at least $`100M_{}`$, since their luminosities reach $`10^{40}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$, while the source luminosities can not exceed the Eddington luminosity. Then, the standard-disk model predicts that the innermost disk temperatures of these objects should be $`kT_{\mathrm{in}}<`$ 1 keV for $`M>100M_{}`$, however, the observed temperatures are much higher (1.1-1.8 keV). This is the ‘too hot accretion disk problem.’

In our simulations, the spectral hardening of the emergent SED is caused by the transmission of the high-energy photons arising from deep inside the disk. The Comptonization is not taken into account in our simulations although it provides another important cause of the hardening. The hardening due to the Comptonization was demonstrated by Czerny & Elvis (1987) and Ross, Fabian, & Mineshige (1992) \[see, however, Laor & Netzer (1989) for negative results\]. Shimura & Takahara (1993) solved multi-frequency radiation transfer equations coupled with the hydrostatic balance and Comptonization, finding the spectral hardening factor of $`\kappa 1.7`$.

When $`\epsilon _{100}`$ is small, say $`\epsilon _{100}=0.1`$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\kappa _\nu `$ are large, and, therefore, photons tend to be absorbed and re-emitted before reaching the disk surface. Thus, only low-energy photons which are generated near the disk surface can go out and thus the emergent SED becomes similar to that of the standard disk. However, since the absorption coefficient by the free-free absorption strongly depends on the frequency as $`\nu ^3`$, a part of high-energy photons can directly pass through the disk, and a double peak appears (see the cases with $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$ and 0.1). Here, we should note that the higher-energy peak might disappear, if the metal absorption, which can be much more effective at high frequency, is included (discussed later).

The emergent SEDs in the case of $`\dot{m}=100`$ is shown in Figure 4. As was mentioned above, the peak frequency tends to increase as $`\epsilon _{100}`$ increases due to the transmission of the high-energy photons. However, the SED in the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$ is softer than other cases. This is caused by the photon-trapping effects. Since the higher-energy photons originate from deep inside the disk, they tend to be more effectively trapped in the flow than lower-energy ones. As a consequence, the peak frequency of the emergent SED eventually turns to decrease as $`\dot{m}`$ further increases. That is, the photon trapping provides the counter effect to the transmission of the high-energy photons. Thus, the peak frequency of emergent photons starts to decrease when $`\dot{m}`$ exceeds some critical value \[see equation (8)\].

In Figure 4, the thin solid curve is the SED of the multi-color disk (MCD) model for $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, where the SED of the MCD model is calculated by the superposition of the blackbody spectra with various effective temperature, $`B_\nu (T_{\mathrm{eff}})`$ with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}(F/\sigma )^{1/4}`$. As shown in this figure, the emergent SED is deviated from that of the MCD model. Therefore, not only the standard-disk model but also the MCD model can not successfully reproduce the actual SEDs in the supercritical accretion flow, and it is necessary to incorporate photon-trapping effects accurately when $`\dot{m}>100`$.

In Figure 5, we plot the variations of SED with changes in $`\dot{m}`$ for $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$ and 0.5. Symbols filled squares and circles indicate the locations of the SED peak. The peak frequency of the SED increases as the mass-accretion rate increases up to $`\dot{m}=30`$ for both cases. When $`\dot{m}`$ is larger than 30, however, the peak frequency no longer increases, since the photon trapping works and tends to suppress the emergence of high-energy photons. In the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, in which the photon-trapping effects are more enhanced than the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$, the peak frequency rather decreases with increase of the mass-accretion rate.

To sum up, the SED of the supercritical accretion flow shifts towards the higher-energy side owing to the transmission of high-energy photons as long as the photon-trapping effects are not appreciable. When $`\dot{m}`$ exceeds $`30`$, however, the photon-trapping effects become substantial if $`\epsilon _{100}>0.17`$, and the peak frequency starts to decrease in spite of an increase of the mass-accretion rate.

### 3.4 Spectral fitting

#### 3.4.1 X-ray H-R diagram

In the previous subsection, we overviewed the emergent SED in the supercritical accretion flow with careful considerations on the photon-trapping effects. Here, we fit the calculated spectra, following Watarai et al. (2000). In this fitting method, a simple temperature profile, $`T_{\mathrm{in}}(r/r_{\mathrm{in}})^{3/4}`$ with $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ being fitting parameters, is employed for the model SED (Mitsuda et al. 1984). We adopt the photon energy range between 0.1keV and 5keV for the fitting, but we should keep in mind that the fitting results depend on the adopted energy range, in which the fitting is made. We plot the calculated $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ as a function of $`L`$ in comparison with the observational data in the X-ray H-R diagram (see Figure 6).

As shown in Figure 6, $`kT_{\mathrm{in}}`$ increases as the mass-accretion rate increases for the case of $`M=10M_{}`$ and $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$ (filled squares). In the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$ (filled circles), in contrast, the innermost temperature $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ decreases with increase of $`\dot{m}`$ when $`\dot{m}>30`$. This is due to very efficient photon-trapping effects, by which the emergent SED shifts towards the lower-energy side, leading to a decrease in $`kT_{\mathrm{in}}`$. As was mentioned in the previous subsection, the photon-trapping effects are more conspicuous in the accretion flow with larger $`\epsilon _{100}`$.

In this figure, we found that the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$ (filled squares) coincides most with the observational results of M81 S-6. The cases of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$ (filled circles) does not reproduce the observed trend. Therefore, we can rule out the cases of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, that is, the photon-trapping effects should only moderately appear in the accretion flow of ULXs. This conclusion is supported by the fitting to the IC 342 S1 data, which is also well reproduced by the cases with $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$, if the black-hole mass is scaled up to $`M=50100M_{}`$ (small and big open squares).

From the fitting to the IC 342 S1 data, we find that the black hole in IC 342 S1 is considerably massive; its mass is $`50100M_{}`$. Note that our estimation is by a factor of $`1.73`$ larger than the value $`30M_{}`$ which Watarai, Mizuno, & Mineshige (2001) estimated based on the slim-disk model. Scatters of IC 342 S1 data in the H-R diagram is understood in term of the variation of the mass-accretion rate according to our model. If we adopt the standard-disk model, the black-hole mass should change to fit the observation which is, of course, unreasonable. Our model is certainly preferable.

#### 3.4.2 Inner-edge radius and hardening factor

Next, we estimate the inner-edge radius, $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$, by adopting equation (4) in Makishima et al. (2000) to our calculated SEDs. We assume that the hardening factor is $`\kappa =1.7`$ and the correction factor to $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$, which is required to remove boundary effects is set to be $`\xi =0.42`$. As shown in the upper panel of Figure 7, the resultant inner-edge radius depends on the parameter, $`\epsilon _{100}`$, as well as the mass-accretion rate, $`\dot{m}`$; namely it depends on how important the photon-trapping effects are. The photon-trapping effects tend to increase the inner-edge radius and decrease of $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ because of suppression of emergence of high-energy photons. In the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ drastically shifts from 40 km to 160 km as the mass-accretion rate increases from $`\dot{m}=30`$ to 100 due to very efficient photon trapping. If $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$, conversely, the radius decreases with increase in the mass-accretion rate as long as $`\dot{m}<50`$. At higher $`\dot{m}>50`$, the radius slightly increases due to the mild photon-trapping effects.

In the lower panel of Figure 7, we plot the hardening factor, $`\kappa `$, by employing equation (4) in Makishima et al. (2000). Here, we set $`R_{\mathrm{in}}=3r_\mathrm{g}`$ and $`\xi =0.412`$. It is clear in this figure that the hardening factor is reduced by the photon-trapping effects. In the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.5`$, $`\kappa `$ decreases when $`\dot{m}`$ exceeds 30. If $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$, $`\kappa `$ slightly increases for $`\dot{m}<50`$, but it decreases at $`\dot{m}>50`$ when photon-trapping effects are substantial.

## 4 DISCUSSION

### 4.1 Comparison with the Slim-disk Model

In some slim-disk approach, the emergent SED is assumed to be the superposition of blackbody spectra with different effective temperatures (Szuszkiewicz, Malkan, & Abramowicz 1996; Watarai et al. 2000). However, such a method is not successful in reproducing the actual SED as was shown in §3.3. Moreover, we found that the effective temperature profiles may deviate from the prediction of the slim-disk model, $`r^{1/2}`$, at large $`\dot{m}`$ since the photon-trapping effects are not accurately treated in the slim-disk model (§3.2, see also Paper I).

Nevertheless the slim-disk model, as well as our model for the case of $`\epsilon _{100}=0.17`$, can reproduce the basic trend of the ULXs data in the X-ray H-R diagram (Watarai, Mizuno, & Mineshige 2001). However, we should stress that the physical reason to cause apparent decrease in $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$ (or ratio of $`L/T_{\mathrm{eff}}^4`$) completely differ. In the slim-disk approach, the physical inner edge actually shifts and extends down to $`r_\mathrm{g}`$ at high $`\dot{m}`$. The consequence is that the ULXs data can be fitted well with small $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$. In our model, in contrast the disk inner edge is assumed not change, but the disk temperature increases apparently due to the transmission of the high-energy photons from deep inside. In realistic situations, both will work, but which is more important is not clear at the moment.

Finally, we indicate the important difference between the slim-disk model and our model. The black-hole mass of IC 342 S1 is estimated to be $`30M_{}`$ in the slim-disk approximation (Watarai, Mizuno, & Mineshige 2001), whereas it is considerably massive, $`50100M_{}`$, in the present study. We need to remark on the limitations of the present model, however, since our model is essentially one-dimensional model and the flow structure is not properly solved. We need further studies (see below).

### 4.2 Future Work

Throughout the present study, we treated only the free-free absorption/emission and the Thomson scattering as physical interaction between gas and radiation. However, the Comptonization may play an important role on the emergent SED (Czerny & Elvis 1987; Ross, Fabian, & Mineshige 1992; Shimura & Takahara 1993). Then, the emergent spectra get even harder. If the corona exists above the disk, farther, the high-energy power-low photons will be generated by the inverse Compton scattering (Haardt & Maraschi 1991; Liu, Mineshige, & Ohsuga 2002). The emergent SED would be improved by simulations of radiation transfer which incorporates Comptonization, e.g., Monte Carlo simulations (Pozdnyakov, Sobol’, & Sunyaev 1977).

The metal absorption may be effective at high frequency. Then, the high-energy photons generated deep inside the disk may be absorbed at a certain depth. If this is the case, the higher-energy peak may disappear and the peak of the emergent SED shift to lower-energy side. We expect that the emission lines by metals should be observed in the emergent SED. If the cross-section for the metal absorption is comparable to or more than that of the Thomson scattering, the photon trapping is drastically enhanced and the energy-conversion efficiency is more reduced. Then, such accretion flows will be observed as relatively dim and metal rich objects.

In this study, we adopted the plane-parallel approximation, which introduces error of $`(H/r)^21`$. As future work, we need to solve full two-dimensional radiation transfer equations.

The convection which seems to occur when the disk is radiation pressure dominated (Shakura, Sunyaev, & Zilitinkevich 1978; Agol et al. 2001) would also reduce the photon-trapping effects. Since the high-energy photons trapped in the flow can be carried towards the disk surface by the convection, the high-energy photons emerge and the peak of the SED would be higher than that of the expectation in our present study (see discussion in Mineshige et al. 2000).

The photon-trapping effects would be much reduced, if the gas density distribution is strongly patchy in the disk, since the photons can pass through the disk along the low-density regions. Begelman (2002) suggested that by such a effect the disk luminosity can exceed the Eddington luminosity. The details are not clear before multi-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamical (RHD) simulations are performed. Two-dimensional RHD simulations have been initiated by Eggum, Coroniti, & Katz (1987, 1988), and followed by Okuda, Fujita, & Sakashita (1997), Fujita & Okuda (1998), Kley & Lin (1999), Okuda & Fujita (2000), and Okuda (2002), though the radiation fields are treated in monochromatic form.

Finally, we employ the FLD approximation in the present work. Though this formulation well agrees with the exact solution both in the optically thick and thin regimes, it would be better to solve the radiation transfer equations without using the approximation. Especially, the FLD approximation might be invalid when the patchy structure forms inside the accretion flow, since the FLD approximation does not always give the exact solution at the regions of moderate optical thickness.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

By solving the multi-frequency radiation transfer and the energy equations of gas as well as radiation, we have investigated the SED of the supercritical accretion flow with special attention on the photon-trapping effects. The present results are summarized as follows.

(1) For $`L<2L_\mathrm{E}`$ ($`\dot{m}<30`$), at which the photon trapping does not occur, the peak frequency of the resultant SED becomes, at maximum, three times higher than that expected by the standard-disk theory. This is a result of the transmission of the high-energy photons from deep inside because of smaller opacity for higher-energy radiation. This result might resolve the so-called ‘too hot accretion disk problem’ (Makishima et al. 2000).

(2) For $`L>2L_\mathrm{E}`$ ($`\dot{m}>30`$), the photon-trapping effects are substantial. Then, the high-energy photons are more efficiently trapped in the flow than the low-energy ones, since the former arise near the equatorial plane. Thus, the SED shifts towards the lower-energy side as $`\dot{m}`$ increases.

(3) By comparing with the observational data of ULXs in the X-ray H-R diagram, we found that the photon-trapping effects would only moderately appear in the accretion flow of ULXs. We can explain the observed time variations of IC 342 S1 on the X-ray H-R diagram in terms of $`\dot{m}`$ modulation. Its black-hole mass is estimated to be $`M100M_{}`$, which is greater than the previous estimate based on the slim-disk model, $`M30M_{}`$ (Watarai, Mizuno, & Mineshige 2001).

The calculations were carried out at Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto University. This work is supported in part by Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists, 02796 (KO) and 01680 (KW), and the Grants-in Aid of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport, 13640238 (SM).


text:
# Grid Data Management in Action: Experience in Running and Supporting Data Management Services in the EU DataGrid Project

## I Introduction

Data management is one of the key features of a Data Grid where large amounts of data are distributed and/or replicated to remote sites, potentially all over the world. In general, a Data Grid needs to provide features of a pure computational Grid Hoschek00  (resource discovery, sharing etc.) as well as more specialised data management features like replica management which is the main focus of this article.

The European DataGrid project EDG  (also referred to as *EDG* in this article), one of the largest Data Grid projects today, has a main focus on providing and deploying such data replication tools. Although the project officially started in January 2001, prototype implementations started already in early 2000 and a first data management architecture was presented in Hoschek00 . Thus, within the project there is already a well-established experience in providing replication tools and deploying them on a large-scale testbed.

Since interoperability of services and international collaborations on software development are of major importance for EDG as well as other Grid projects in Europe, the U.S. etc., the first set of data management tools (i.e. replication tools) provided and presented here, are based on established de-facto standards in the Grid community. In addition, for parts of the software presented here, EDG has development and deployment collaborations with partner projects like PPDG PPDG , DataTAG datatag  and LCG lcg .

In this article, we present our first set of replication tools that have been deployed on the European DataGrid testbed. These tools are included in release 1.4 of the EDG software system and are thus regarded as the first prototype of the data management software system. Details about the architecture, software features and experience is given.

The article is organised as follows. In Section II we first outline briefly the data management challenge and present the architecture that we established for EDG release 1.4. The replication tools GDMP (Grid Data Mirroring package) and edg-replica-manager are presented in the context of the data management architecture. Implementation details of these tools and a detailed discussion on their differences in design and usage are presented in Section III. Their deployment in several testbeds and some historical background about the deployment is given in Section IV. Since these replication tools are supposed to be replaced by second generation replication tools, we briefly introduce them in Section V since the experience that has been gained deploying EDG release 1.4 provided vital input for this new development.

## II Problem Domain, Requirements, Architecture

In the following section we first describe the data management domain with its requirements and then a simplified architecture for our first generation replication tools, i.e. the ones deployed in EDG release 1.4. More details on EDG releases is given in Section IV.

### II.1 Basic Requirements

In this section we outline the main design features that we have chosen to meet the requirements of particular data intensive application domains. We first start with a basic example and then summarise the basic requirements that are tackled by our replication tools.

In a typical Data Grid, large amounts of data that are stored in read-only files need to be replicated in a secure and efficient way GDMP1 . As a basic file replication example we consider a Data Grid that consists of four sites (CERN in Switzerland, Fermilab in the U.S., Italy and France) as depicted in Figure 1. In the example, new files have been created at the site “Fermilab” and are now ready to be replicated to remote sites. Several remote sites (e.g. the site CERN) is interested in having files locally and thus would like to replicate the newly created files to its local data store. End-users can then access replicas at both sites and might want to retrieve files with the lowest access latency.

Note that for simplicity we deal with read-only files and leave the update-synchronisation problem open for future work as pointed out in Duellmann2001 .

In the following list the major data management and replication requirements are summarised and the need for a specific software solution is outlined. Most of these solutions are covered by our replication tools discussed in the article.

* Files need to be transferred (copied) between several large data stores that reside at distributed sites. - *need for secure and efficient file transfer mechanism* (e.g. GridFTP or equivalent)
* Since replication implies that identical file copies exist, replicas need to be uniquely identified through logical and physical filenames. - *need for Replica Catalogue for naming and locating replicas*
* Combine file transfer with file cataloguing and present it as an atomic transaction to the user. - *need for replica management service*
* Large data stores use secondary and possibly tertiary storage devices, i.e. disk and tape systems, respectively. - *need for interaction between replica management service and storage service*, i.e. mass storage interface

More detailed requirements of Data Grids (in particular data intensive scientific domains like High Energy Physics) and the data distribution problem are presented elsewhere Hoschek00 ; GDMP1 .

### II.2 Basic Terminology

In the remainder of this article, we use the following EDG terminology:

* *Storage Element (SE)*: a Storage Element is a data store that provides secondary and/or tertiary storage devices as well as a data transfer mechanism that allows for file transfers between several Storage Elements connected via wide-area network links
* *Computing Element (CE)*: a computing Element can be regarded as a gateway to several Worker Nodes (WN) that are responsible for the execution of a user job. It is important to note that data that has been produced on Worker Nodes needs to be stored on Storage Elements in order to be accessible for subsequent user jobs.
* *User Interface (UI)*: a User Interface node is a machine where application users can log on and have access to the EDG software tools. In principle, the UI contains client software tools.
* *Logical File Name (LFN)*: an LFN uniquely identifies a set of identical replicas.
* *Physical File Name (PFN)*: identifies one file (replica) of a set of identical replicas. Note that the terminology changes from time to time but it is important to note that the PFN identifies a real data file in a Storage Element or a Computing Element (Worker Node).

### II.3 Architecture of the Data Management Services

The architecture of our replication tools is based on a typical topology of Storage Elements, Computing Elements (i.e. Worker Nodes) and User Interface nodes (UI) as outlined below. This topology is also realised in the EDG testbed as illustrated in Figure 2.

File transfer is mainly done between Worker Nodes (of Computing Elements) and Storage Elements where files are permanently kept and registered with a Replica Catalogue (RC). In order to introduce new files to the Grid, they can also be transferred from a UI node to a Worker Node or directly to the Storage Element. All these use cases have the following in common: a client-server architecture is required where client tools have to be available on the User Interface as well as on Worker Nodes. Server software is mainly required on the Storage Elements.

In order to meet the requirements outlined in Section II.1, we have developed replica management tools in two steps:

* GDMP (Grid Data Mirroring Package) GDMP1 ; GDMP2  for replication (mirroring) of file sets between several Storage Elements. This was the first replication tool that was developed in collaboration between the European DataGrid project and the Particle Physics Data Grid (PPDG) PPDG  (refer to Section IV for more details on release dates). This replication tool also provides a simple interface to Mass Storage Systems (MSS).
* edg-replica-manager was developed in the second year of the DataGrid project. It provides some added replication functionality that meets additional user requires that were identified during the deployment of GDMP in the EDG testbed. In this way, both tools complement each other and provide the basic replication functionality of the first generation replication tools.

Both, GDMP and edg-replica-manager are part of the current (as of March 2003) EDG software release 1.4.

Both, GDMP and edg-replica-manager use components of the Globus Toolkit 2 (TM) and thus are based on the current de-facto standard in Grid computing. Although GDMP and edg-replica-manager are architecturally different (client-server architecture versus client side tool only - details are given in Section III) - they have the following architectural components in common:

* GridFTP Allcock2001  for efficient and secure file transfer.
* Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI) for secure communication (for message passing as well as file transfer)
* Replica Catalogue (both LDAP based RC as well as RLS RLS )

Since GDMP has a much richer set of functionality, additional features of Globus are used (e.g. Globus IO for client-server communication).

## III Implementation Details and Comparison

After some general architectural introduction, we now go more into detail with the features of GDMP and edg-replica-manager and how the tools are used in the EDG testbed. For each of the two software tools we give advantages and disadvantages and thus a critical discussion. Finally, we compare the two tools directly and point out for which use case they can be used in a most efficient way.

### III.1 Replica Catalogue Interaction

Since both our main replication tools GDMP and edg-replica-manager use a replica catalogue to identify and locate file replicas, we first explain the replica catalogue interaction and its usage.

In the Globus Toolkit, a simple, centralised replica catalogue is provided that is based on LDAP technology for storing and retrieving replica information Allcock2001 . In EDG, we developed a wrapper around the Globus C API and provided a C++ API as well as a simple command line tool.

On the EDG testbed, this LDAP based Replica Catalogue has been used but it showed several limitations as outlined in the list below.

* *Performance deterioration with number of entries*: Due to the way how the LDAP schema has been chosen for the replica catalogue, we experienced low response times (in the order of 30 seconds to a few minutes) for inserts into the Replica Catalogue with the number of entries. If the filenames (LFNs) are short (in the order to 10 characters), this problem does not occur too often but with long filenames (in the order of 50 to 100 characters per LFN), there were severe limitations. This is also partly due to the overhead of the C++ wrapper.
* *Centralised, non-scalable*: The LDAP based replica catalogue is hosted by a single LDAP server and thus is a single point of failure. Based on the previous item, it was identified that the catalogue did not easily scale to large amounts of file entries. Thus, we needed to impose restrictions on the users to limit the amount of inserts within a certain time window.
* *No high level user command line tool for browsing*: There exist a few command line tools provided by Globus and EDG to query the catalogue but there are no high level tools for browsing. An alternative is a simple Graphical User Interface provided by EDG but not deployed on the EDG testbed. Another option is a simple LDAP browser.
* *Schema not flexible*: the LDAP based schema that is organised in collections, locations and logical files etc. does not allow for a simple extension.
* *LFN sub-set of PFN*: there is a severe limitation on file naming since the LFN always needs to be a sub-set of the physical file name. Thus, all Storage Elements need to have a similar directory structure of replicas. This can be a limitation since it imposes specific and global configurations of SEs (i.e. all SEs need to be configured in a similar way).

The based Replica Catalogue tool provided by Globus did not provide GSI authentication. This was added by our partners in NorduGrid and then integrated into the Replica Catalogue server (edg-rc-server) and the Replica Catalogue API/CLI. However, it was not deployed on the testbed due to the way the GSI support was added and the low flexibility offered by LDAP in terms of configuration options.

EDG and Globus have identified and discussed all issues above and thus provided a new solution known as Replica Location Service (RLS) RLS . In later versions of both GDMP and edg-replica-manager, interfaces to the RLS have been provided and most of the issues outlined above were eliminated. However, on the EDG testbed only the LDAP based RC was deployed up to now. RLS will be part of EDG release 2.0.

### III.2 Mass Storage System Interaction

Basic file transfer mechanisms like GridFTP allow for secure and efficient file transfer from one disk server to another. However, since large amounts of files are not only stored on disks but also on Mass Storage Systems (MSS) like Castor or HPSS, file replication tools need to provide a mechanism to transfer files between Storage Elements, regardless of storage method used (disk or tape drives managed by a Mass Storage System).

Originally, when we designed and developed GDMP, there was no direct Grid-enabled interface that allowed for such a file transfer. Thus, the following solution was applied - primarily to applications in the High Energy Physics community: a large disk (or a disk pool) is considered as a first cache and all wide-area transfers are done from disk to disk. An additional file transfer is then required between the disk (pool) and the Mass Storage System. Thus, a file replication step includes a wide-area file transfer as well as a local staging to/from the Mass Storage System. Such staging interfaces are provided by GDMP. For further details refer to GDMP1 .

In EDG release 1.4, GDMP’s interface has been deployed for systems like Castor and HPSS.

Obviously, such an additional file copy step can be avoided if the Mass Storage System provides a direct Grid-enabled interface supporting security (GSI), GridFTP, virtual organisations and space management. The Storage Resource Manager (SRM) interface as described in SRM  provides part of that. Several solutions are currently under development within several projects and are supposed to be included into EDG release 2.x.

### III.3 GDMP - Grid Data Mirroring Package

GDMP was a pioneer effort that started initially in the CMS collaboration (driven by the High Energy Physics community) and it was originally designed to support file replication in High Level Trigger studies. Later, it became a joint project between EDG and PPDG. It allows for mirroring of data between Storage Elements through a host subscription method. The basic interaction is outlined in Figure 5.

GDMP has been enhanced and improved for several years (see Section IV.1), also based on lots of feedback from application users in the EDG testbed. Below we list the pros and cons of GDMP that we and our users experienced in the deployment of GDMP.

#### III.3.1 GDMP Advantages

* *stable and scalable architecture*: GDMP’s architecture has proven to be stable and scalable to the needs of the basic file replication sites.
* *Reliable and robust replication*: the transfer mechanisms are reliable and robust although we faced a few problems with earlier implementations of the GridFTP library.
* *Retries on error*: if files are not available at the time of transfer, the GDMP server takes care of multiple retries and thus initiating the file transfer at a later point in time.
* *File check summing after file transfer*: CRC check summing is used to compare the file contents at the beginning and the end of a file transfer.
* *Complex server side logging*: the GDMP server takes care of logging all possible events in the file transfer process (including staging, subscription etc.). This also allows for debugging of file transfers in case of failures.
* *Users can control file transfer via local catalogues*: import, export and local file catalogues can be used to filter files and thus reduce the replication process to a specific set of files.
* *back-ends available for actions to be performed on replication* Mass Storage System hooks , automatic replication, post replication actions, etc. are provided by the GDMP server.
* *Mass Storage System interface*: basically for Castor, HPSS or equivalent

#### III.3.2 GDMP Disadvantages

* *Designed for site rather than point-to-point replication*: GDMP was designed to handle mirroring among sites and not for point-to-point replication. Point-to-point replication was another requirement that appeared during the usage of GDMP in the EDG testbed. In order to respond to this request, the edg-replica-manager has been provided.
* *Several steps involved for replication*: due to the fact that GDMP can mirror entire directories with their files based on a subscription model, three commands need to executed in order to register files in a local catalogue, get them published to remote sites and then replicate them. Several users thought that this involved too many steps: this has again been addressed in the edg-replica-manager at the cost that no subscription is available.
* *Difficult configuration*: since GDMP has a rather complex set of features and offers support for multiple VOs on one server, the configuration is rather complex (“difficult”). Some improvements could be made as regards the configuration and user authentication mechanism.
* *No space management provided*: space management is beyond the scope of GDMP and is the responsibility of the Storage Element service (or SRM).
* *Error messages not always clear*
* *Errors recovery requires sometimes manual intervention*

For more background on GDMP, we refer the reader to GDMP1 ; GDMP2 .

### III.4 edg-replica-manager

The edg-replica-manager edg-rm  extends the replica management library in Globus Toolkit (TM) 2.0 and is a client side tool rather than a client-server system. It allows for replication and registration of files in a Replica Catalogue and works with the LDAP based Globus Replica Catalog as well as the Replica Location Service (available in VDT 1.1.7 or higher vdt ). In addition, it uses GDMP’s staging interface to stage files to a Mass Storage System. The edg-replica-manager uses the EDG Replica Catalogue API (in C++).

The edg-replica-manager uses the information service (Globus’ MDS is used in EDG release 1.4) to find out storage locations on a given Storage Element. It is assumed that basic account management on a Storage Element is done via tools provided by the GDMP configuration part. Thus, the edg-replica-manager takes this into account and finds out where to store files of the particular virtual organisation a user belongs to. In this way, an end-user only needs to specify the host name of a given Storage Element and the edg-replica-manager then takes care of finding the exact source and destination as well as triggering a staging operation to/from a Mass Storage System.

The basic interaction is outlined in Figure 6. Note that this tool can be used to transfer files from any of the nodes in the EDG testbed (i.e. User Interface machine, Worker Node, Storage Element). A simple command line interface as well as a C++ interface are provided edg-rm .

Similar to GDMP, we list the pros and cons of the edg-replica-manager in the following two subsections.

#### III.4.1 edg-replica-manager Advantages

* *User friendly interface*: since the replica manager has a rather small amount of features and initial feedback from our user community has been gathered through GDMP, this tool provides a user friendly interface.
* *Functional*: the basic requirement of a replication tool is satisfied including that it hides several details of storage locations, i.e. detailed storage locations are not required for storing and retrieving files - only the LFN is required rather than full PFNs.
* *Third party transfer available*: using the features of GridFTP, a third-party transfer can be triggered from any node where the edg-replica-manager client is installed.
* *GSI authorisation available for Replica Catalogue*: due to our modifications to the LDAP based Replica Catalogue server, we also enabled GSI authentication for the edg-replica-manager. For RLS, GSI authentication is the default option.
* *Easy configuration*: only a few client side parameters need to be set in order to configure the interaction with the Replica Catalogue and the Mass Storage System (i.e. GDMP’s interface to the MSS).

#### III.4.2 edg-replica-manager Disadvantages

* *Error messages not always clear*
* *no roll-back; no transactions*: since edg-replica-manager does not have a corresponding server (as it is the case for GDMP), no roll-back or transactions are implemented. In addition, there is no file checksumming nor centralised logging. In summary, the added value that one has with a client-server tool is not gained here.
* *No complete interface to replica catalogue schema*: logical file information like file size or CRC checksumming are not supported directly. One needs to use the EDG C++ interface to the Replica Catalogue.

For more details on the user interface of the edg-replica-manager, refer to the documentation at edg-rm .

### III.5 Comparison GDMP - edg-replica-manager

A schematic comparison of the two replication tool is given in Table 1 and shall assist in choosing which tool to use for a particular replication requirement.

To sum up, the main difference between the “older” GDMP and the “younger” edg-replica-manager is that the former is a client-sever tool with a reach set of functionality whereas the later is newer client side tool only with more stream-lined but smaller set of functionality.

## IV Deployment Experience in Several Testbeds

Our replication software tools have been deployed in various testbeds as we point out below. The software itself is mainly distributed as part of the European DataGrid software release, also referred to as *EDG release* repository . The EDG release contains all EDG software, ranging from workload, data, information, fabric and mass storage management, i.e. it includes all our replication tools as well as other software. The latest version that has been deployed on the EDG testbed is EDG release 1.4, our main reference point in the discussion in this article.

### IV.1 History of Replication Tool Development

Within the last three years, we gained lots of experience with data replication tools in a Grid environment. For a complete history of the development and the basic features that have been included in each release of the software, we illustrate the replication tool life cycle in Table 2. Note that this table also shows when we stared the edg-replica-manager releases.

Note that Globus 2.2.x does not support the replica catalog nor the replica management libraries. Therefore, edg-replica-manager has not been completely ported to Globus 2.2.4 but we succeeded with GDMP since there is only the dependency to globus-replica-catalog and EDG provided a special version of that library.

### IV.2 Deployment in Several Testbeds

Our replication tools were not only used and deployed in the EDG testbed, but also in a few other environments as we point out below. Note the GDMP was also part of an early VDT release vdt .

GDMP was first used for High Level Trigger studies (“production”) of HEP experiments in 2000/2001 (replication between SEs). In this environment, we gained our first experience and used the tool in a “production like” environment.

Later, GDMP was introduced to the European DataGrid testbed which was originally set up in autumn 2001. This also resulted in some changes of user requirements: all user commands needed to be executed from a User Interface machine or from Worker Nodes of a Computing Element. This caused some redesign of the GDMP architecture.

Both tools (GDMP and edg-replica-manager) are used in European and U.S. testbeds:

* EDG: ATLAS, CMS, Alice and LHCb stress tests
* WorldGrid: WorldGrid is the first transatlantic testbed where inter-operable between European and U.S. Grid tools has been demonstrated worldgrid ; demos .

As regards the our replication tools: edg-replica-manager was used by both CMS and ATLAS applications to move and replicate files between U.S. and European sites. GDMP was used as part of the CMS MOP environment to replicate set of files produced at several sites.
* LCG-0: deployed and inter-operable with WorldGrid and GLUE testbeds as has been shown in lcg-0 .

## V Conclusion and Future Work

Within the last three years, we gained lots of experience in developing and deploying replication tools in a Data Grid environment. Our first generation tools (GDMP, edg-replica-manager, API and command line interface replica catalogue) have been successfully used in some “production like” environments as well as in several testbeds in Europe and in the U.S. All the tools are included in EDG release 1.4 where they are currently deployed on the EDG application testbed.

The tools we designed and developed cover client-server as well as client side tools and thus provide a wide range of possible design choices. Whereas a client-server tool allows for complex functionality (including fault tolerance, retries, server side logging, server side file processing etc.), the configuration is comparably more complex than for simple client tools like the edg-replica-manager. The tradeoff in such client-side-only solutions is that many features that one might want to have for fault tolerance and reliability are missing. We also gained experience with providing configuration options to our software tools: in a complex testbed it is of major importance to keep the configuration as simple as possible. In the current release, users experience some difficulties with relative complex configuration options.

The experience we gained from our first generation tool is used in the development for the second generation replication tools that will be provided by EDG in release 2.0. In particular, new services like a Replica Location Service + Replica Metadata Catalogue, an Optimization service etc. will be added to the basic functionality of the second generation tools.

###### Acknowledgements.

Special thanks to Asad Samar (one of the co-founders of GDMP) and Aleksandr Konstantinov who participated to the code development of GDMP. We also thank our user community and our colleagues for valuable feedback and input. This work was partially funded by the European Commission program IST-2000-25182 through the EU DataGrid Project.