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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The study of the two-step $`\gamma `$-cascades following thermal neutron capture in more than 50 nuclei of different types from $`{}_{}{}^{40}K`$ to $`{}_{}{}^{200}Hg`$ in Dubna, Riga and Řež allowed us to obtain unique information on properties of these nuclei in energy diapason from the ground state and, practically, to the neutron binding energy $`B_n`$. Analysis of this information provided the the following conclusions:

1. Experimental intensities of the cascades to the groups of low-lying levels $`E_f`$ cannot be reproduced in the calculation with the precision achieved in the experiment if one uses conventional model ideas of a nucleus. This cannot be done not only within the simplest models like “noon-interacting Fermi-gas” but also in the framework of modern enough generalized model of superfluid nucleus .

2. Reliable enough energy dependence of level density and radiative strength functions of dipole $`\gamma `$-transitions can be extracted only from the experimentally obtained dependencies of the cascade intensities on the energy of their primary transition $`E_1`$ (or energy of their intermediate level $`E_i=B_nE_1`$).

Practical possibility to solve this problem is determined by the following factors:

(a) Cascade intensity distribution (Fig. 1) is extracted  from the mass of $`\gamma \gamma `$ coincidences by means of the sum coincidence method. It contains some number of pairs of narrow enough  full-energy peaks corresponding to intense two-step cascades and a “noise line” with zero mean value formed by a number of low-intense cascades. The local specific deviations of the normal distribution of events in “noise line” can be partially or completely rejected numerically .

(b) main part (more than 95-99%) of intensity of cascades with $`E_1>0.5B_n`$ can be extracted from these spectra in form of energetically resolved pairs of peaks, quanta ordering in which is determined  with high reliability using the maximum likelihood method. But this requires modern enough  spectrometer for registration of coincidences.

Using only these data we determined (Fig. 2) most probable energy dependence of all two-step cascades terminating at the ground and first excited states of $`{}_{}{}^{118}Sn`$. This permits one to make according to method  quite unambiguous (in limits of existing notions and possibilities to study this process) conclusions about both density of the states excited at the thermal neutron capture and reduced probability of their population by $`\gamma `$-quanta.

## 2 Estimation of probable density $`\rho `$ of excited levels and radiative strength functions $`k`$ of cascade transitions

Radiative strength function $`k=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\lambda i}/(E_\gamma ^3\times A^{2/3}\times D_\lambda )`$ (here $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\lambda i}`$ is the partial width of $`\gamma `$-transition with the energy $`E_\gamma `$, $`A`$ is the nucleus mass and $`D`$ is the spacing between decaying levels $`\lambda `$) and level density $`\rho `$ determine the total radiative width of the compound state $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\lambda `$ and cascade intensity $`I_{\gamma \gamma }`$  obtained in the following way:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_\lambda =<\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\lambda i}>\times m_{\lambda i}$$
(1)
$$I_{\gamma \gamma }=\underset{\lambda ,f}{}\underset{i}{}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\lambda i}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\lambda }\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{if}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_i}=\underset{\lambda ,f}{}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\lambda i}}{<\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\lambda i}>m_{\lambda i}}n_{\lambda i}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{if}}{<\mathrm{\Gamma }_{if}>m_{if}}.$$
(2)
Here the values of the total and partial gamma-widths are set for the compound state $`\lambda `$ and cascade intermediate level $`i`$, respectively; $`m`$ is the total number of the excited levels, and $`n`$ is the number of excited levels in the energy interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ of averaging of cascade intensity.

These equations do not allow one to determine $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ unambiguously and independently. Some deviation of, for example, $`\rho `$ from a real value is inevitably compensated by deviation of strength functions of the corresponding magnitude and sign. As it was shown in , however, possible value of these deviations is small enough. Nevertheless, the results obtained in analysis  can be used for the verification of nuclear models and, if necessary, for the determination of the direction of the further development of these models. The main argument in favour of this statement is relatively week dependence of the final results on the initial values of $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ (even if they are absolutely unreal) in the iterative process . The most serious supposition of the described in  method for determination of $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ is the equality in energy dependence of radiative strength functions for the primary and secondary transitions. If it is not true, then the obtained values of $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ can have unknown and, probably, significant systematic error. In dependence on the sign of this error, discrepancy between the model and experimental values of $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ can decrease or even increase.

Although calculation of the total $`\gamma `$-ray spectra with the use of level density  and different (but, in principle, possible) radiative strength functions showed  that the main properties of level density are extracted with the high confidence and probable error decreases discrepancy between the experimental and model  values of $`k`$ and $`\rho `$, but independent complementary test of application of the method  for each concrete nucleus is required.

Some grounds to consider the $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ values, shown in figures 3 and 4, as reflecting the most common regularities of their energy dependences can be get from the comparison of the experimental and calculated within different ideas of intensities of cascades terminating at higher-lying levels (see Table). Taking into account that the $`k`$ and $`\rho `$ values shown in figures 3 and 4 allow simultaneous reproduction of:

(a) the total radiative width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\lambda `$ of the compound state;

(b) the energy dependence of the intensity $`I_{\gamma \gamma }`$ of cascades to the ground and first excited states of 118Sn; and

(c) the total intensity of the cascades to different final levels with the energy up to 2.8 MeV
one can consider the strength functions and level density obtained for 118Sn according to method  as the most probable. These data, of course, contain some systematic errors owing to errors in determination of $`I_{\gamma \gamma }`$ and incompleteness of the obtained information on the intensity of the two-step and larger multiplicity cascades.

The results of the analysis are compared with predictions of the level density models  and models of radiative widths . In the case of radiative strength functions, a comparison is performed in the following manner: the $`k(E1)`$ values calculated according to the models  and  (upper and lower curves in Fig. 3, respectively) are summed with $`k(M1)=const`$ which is normalized so that the ratio $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(M1)/\mathrm{\Gamma }(E1)`$ would be approximately equal to the experimental data at $`E_\gamma B_n`$.

A comparison of the results of the analysis with predictions of the models \[10-13\] (often used for this aim) shows that:

1. the energy dependence of $`k(E1)+k(M1)`$ for $`{}_{}{}^{118}Sn`$ differs strongly from predictions of the models  as in the case of even-even compound nuclei from the region of the $`4s`$-resonance of the neutron strength function;
2. the probable level density conforms to the picture obtained in previous experiments : up to the excitation energy $`3.5`$ MeV, our data do not contradict the exponential extrapolation of $`\rho (E_{ex})`$ predicted by the Fermi-gas back-shift model . Level density for $`E_{ex}>3`$ MeV is considerably less than that predicted by this model. Above $`E_{ex}5`$ MeV the level density, most probably, better corresponds to the predictions of the generalized model of the superfluid nucleus in its simplest form . The values of $`\rho ^{mod}`$ predicted by the last model decrease parameter $`\chi ^2=((\rho ^{mod}\rho ^{best})/\delta \rho ^{best})^2`$ by a factor of about 3 as compared with the predictions of model  for the interval $`E_{ex}4`$ MeV.

A very quick exponential increase in the level density above $`5`$ MeV says  about the probable dominant influence of the inner, many-quasi-particle type of excitations of these states.

## 3 Discussion

This conclusion is true only to a precision determined by existing (and included in analysis ) notions of properties of the excited states and dynamics of development of the cascade $`\gamma `$-decay process of neutron resonance.

The main of these notions consist in the following:

(a) the branching coefficients at depopulation of any level $`i`$ do not depend on mode of its population;

(b) all levels from a given excitation energy interval follow the sole statistic distribution. I.e., the mean reduced probability of their population by primary $`E1`$ and $`M1`$ transitions is equal for any level in the spin window determined by the selection rule and does nod depend on the structure of wave functions of neutron resonance and intermediate cascade level $`E_i`$.

Therefore, according to the theorem on the average any sum of the widths is represented in calculation of $`I_{\gamma \gamma }`$ by product of their number by the mean partial width (determined through corresponding wave function).

(c) energy dependence of $`k`$ (but not its absolute value) is equal for the primary and secondary transitions of cascades.

It is not known how the notions (a) and (b) of the $`\gamma `$-decay process of heavy nucleus are close to reality. This should be found from the experiment. Analysis of the excitation spectra of intermediate levels of the most intense cascades testifies to possibility of their equidistancy. Besides, it showes that the population of levels in $`{}_{}{}^{118}Sn`$ above $`3`$ MeV cannot be described in model calculation. These allow an assumtion about possible violation of, for example, notion (c). If interpretation of the results  as an existance of “vibrational bands” built on the states with complicated structure corresponds to reality, then the enhanced $`\gamma `$-transitions with the energy of some hundreds keV and higher inside these bands and between them are quite possible, as well. Discrepancy of the results obtained according  and shown in Fig. 4 to the estimation  of the number of omitted levels admits as one of possible explanations the violation of notion (c).

## 4 Conclusion

The results of a comparison between the experimental and calculated cascade intensities in this nucleus (and like in the nuclei studied earlier) indicate a necessity to modify model notions of the properties of the excited states of the heavy nuclei. In the framework of the modern theoretical notions the qualitative explanation of the obtained discrepancy between the experiment and calculation can be removed only within the more detailed accounting by the nuclear models  for co-existence and interaction of fermion and boson excitations of nuclear matter. Otherwise, an achievement of complete correspondence between the observed and calculated parameters of nuclear reactions, for instance, neutron-induced reaction is impossible. This concerns, partially, the total radiative widths of neutron resonances, $`\gamma `$-spectrum, and cross-sections of neutron interactions.

This work was supported by GACR under contract No. 202/03/0891 and by RFBR Grant No. 99-02-17863.
The authors are thankful to Ivo Tomandl for his contribution in the experiment carried out in Řež and for useful discussion.

References

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Table. Energies $`E_1+E_2`$ of cascades and their absolute intensities $`I_{\gamma \gamma }`$ (% per decay). $`E_f`$ is the energy of the cascade final level

| $`E_1+E_2`$, keV | $`E_f`$, keV | $`I_{\gamma \gamma }^{exp}`$ | $`I_{\gamma \gamma }^{mod}`$ | $`I_{\gamma \gamma }^{best}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 9326.30 | 0 | 16.0(34) | 6.7 | 15.7 |
| 8096.63 | 1230 | 15.3(11) | 7.2 | 15.5 |
| 7568.00 | 1758 | 2.4(7) | 1.1 | 2.5 |
| 7283.42 | 2042 | 3.3(16) | 2.4 | 5.5 |
| 7269.39 | 2057 | 2.8(9) | 0.8 | 1.7 |
| 7000.36 | 2325+2328 | 5.6(9) | 2.8 | 5.4 |
| 6923.08 | 2403 | 2.8(2) | 1.5 | 3.0 |
| 6829.42 | 2497 |  | 0.5 | 0.7 |
| 6648.95 | 2677 | \[1.5\] | 1.0 | 2.0 |
| 6588.29 | 2738 |  | 1.7 | 5.5 |
| sum |  | 55.8(43) | 25.7 | 57.5 |

Note: $`I_{\gamma \gamma }^{best}`$ is the calculated mean value for the ensembles of random parameters $`\rho `$ and $`k`$ (its mean value and dispersion is shown in Fig. 3,4 by points with bars) allowing reproduction  of the cascade intensity distribution (Fig. 2) with experimental precision. The mean-square scatter of each of these parameters for each final level of cascades equals 5 to 15%.


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# Nitrides as spintronic materials

## I Introduction

Semiconductor spintronics aims at developing material systems, in which novel mechanisms of control over magnetization in magnetic compounds or over individual spins in semiconductor nanostructures could lead to new functionalities in classical and quantum information hardware, respectively. Today’s spintronic research involves virtually all material families. However, particularly interesting appear to be ferromagnetic semiconductors, which combine complementary functionalities of ferromagnetic and semiconductor material systems. For instance, it can be expected that powerful methods developed to control the carrier concentration and spin polarization in semiconductor quantum structures could serve to tailor the magnitude and orientation of magnetization produced by the spins localized on the magnetic ions. This paper intends to supplement previous surveys on spintronics Spin  and ferromagnetic semiconductors Diet02  by presenting the current status of spintronics-related works involving group III nitrides. In particular, we will specify some unique properties of these compounds, which make them promising materials in the this context. We will then discuss results of relevant theoretical and experimental studies. It will be emphasized that the field is highly controversial, even in the case of the archetypical compound (Ga,Mn)N. In fact, divergent models reviewed in this paper concern such basic characteristics of this compound as: (i) the nature of electronic states associated with the presence of the magnetic constituent; (ii) character of the dominant spin-dependent interaction between the Mn spins; (iii) the origin of high-temperature ferromagnetic phase observed in this and related systems. We will also briefly describe experimental studies aiming at evaluating characteristic times of spin coherence and dephasing in GaN. On the other hand, in a sense spintronic light emitters, involving f-shells of rare earth elements, will not be discussed here.

## II Why nitride DMS?

There are specific properties of the nitride-based diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS), which can result in a particularly high value of the Curie temperature. First, the small lattice constant leads to large hybridization between the valence orbitals and the d shells of the magnetic ions. Hence, the spin dependent interaction between the valence band holes and the localized spins, which controls the strength of the carrier-mediated ferromagnetic coupling, can be especially large in the nitrides. Secondly, a destructive influence of the spin-orbit interaction on this ferromagnetism is reduced significantly in materials containing light anions. These considerations, supported by theoretical modelling within the mean-field Zener model, led to the prediction that the Curie temperature in the Mn-based nitrides should exceeds 300 K, provided that it will be possible to develop materials containing sufficiently high concentrations of both valence band holes and substitutional Mn ions in the d5 high spin configuration Diet00 , as shown in Fig. 1. The question of charge and spin states of magnetic impurities in the nitrides will be addressed in the next section. By contrast, we will not discuss the issue of p-type doping as certainly a number of papers in this volume addresses this question in detail. We remark only that the hole concentration can be enhanced by interfacial pyroelectric fields. Furthermore, there is some additional flexibility in pushing up solubility limits of both dopants and magnetic elements, as the epitaxial growth of cubic and hexagonal compounds involves, in general, different crystallographic surfaces.

## III Electronic states of transition metal impurities; GaN:Mn

According to the internal reference rule Lang88 ; Zung86 , the positions of states derived from magnetic shells do not vary across the entire family of the III-V compounds if the valence band offsets between different compounds are taken into account. In Fig. 2, adapted from Ref. Blin02 , the data for III-V DMS containing various transition metals are collected. The symbols D(0/+) and A(0/$``$) denote the donor and acceptor states, which correspond to the transformation of the triply ionized magnetic ions M3+ into M4+ and into M2+ ions, respectively. Obviously, the internal reference rule may serve only for the illustration of chemical trends and not for extracting the precise values of the ionization energies. Moreover, if the acceptor state lies below the top of the valence band, the ground state corresponds to a hydrogenic-like acceptor dN+1+h, not to the dN state. Importantly, band carriers introduce by such magnetic ions can mediate exchange interactions between the parent spins. Obviously, energies of hydrogenic-like states follow the band edges, and by no means are described by the internal reference rule. An example of an experimental study aiming at characterizing Mn states in GaN is shown in Fig. 3.

Figure 4 summarizes ionization energies of the Mn acceptor level (Mn3+/Mn2+) across the III-V family, as evaluated by various authors from measurements of optical spectra and activation energy of conductivity. According to the discussion above, the Mn atom, when substituting a trivalent metal, may assume either of two configurations: (i) d4 or (ii) d5 plus a bound hole, d5+h. The experimentally determined ionization energies correspond, therefore, to either d4/d5 or d5+h/d5 levels. It appears now to be a consensus that the Mn d states (t2 and eg symmetry) reside in the valence band of antimonides and arsenides. Thus, in these materials the substitutional Mn acts as an effective mass acceptor (d5+h). Such a view is supported by electron spin resonance, photoemission, optical studies as well as by relatively small Mn concentrations leading to the insulator-to-metal transition Diet02 . The ground state has the t2 symmetry, and its energy is determined by both Coulomb potential and "chemical shift". The latter results primarily from hybridization between Mn and neighboring anion states, which accounts for the valence band offset at high Mn concentrations.

In contrast to antimonides and arsenides, the situation is much more intricate in the case of phosphides and nitrides. There is a growing amount of optical data indicating that the Mn gives rise to the presence of a mid-gap electron trap in GaN Koro01 ; Graf02 , as shown in Fig. 3. However, it is still uncertain whether the relevant state has d4 ($`S=2`$) or d5+h ($`J=1`$) character. In particular, ESR measurements on GaN:Mn reveal only a line specific to d5 ($`S=5/2`$) Mn centers Graf02 ; Bara96 ; Zaja01  which are always present owing to a relatively high concentration of compensating donors. Even if the compensation is not overwhelming, the absence of other lines can be explained within either of the models, as both d4 and d5+h states contain an admixture of orbital momentum, which make the Zeeman splittings sensitive to local strains. Furthermore, a much greater optical cross section is observed Koro01 ; Graf02  for intra Mn3+ excitations comparing to the case of Mn2+ charge state. This is actually expected within both scenarios since in contrast to the d5 case, the transitions within d4 or d5+h multiplets becomes either spin or parity allowed. On the other hand, the d4 model appears to be supported by the ab initio computations within the local spin density approximation (LSDA), which points to the presence of the d-states in the gap of (Ga,Mn)N Gers01 ; Sato01 ; Schi01 ; Kula02 ; Kron02 ; Fili03 . However, the above interpretation has recently been call into question Diet02a . In has been noted that a semi-empirical LSDA+U approach is necessary to reconcile the computed and photoemission positions of states derived from the Mn 3d shell in (Ga,Mn)As Okab01 ; Park00 . This implies that the Mn d states reside presumably in the valence band of GaN despite the 1.8 eV valence band offset between GaN and GaAs, as shown in Fig. 2. Within this scenario, a large hole binding energy results from the exceptionally strong spin-dependent p-d hybridization in the nitrides. Interestingly, the resulting charge transfer state has a character of a small magnetic polaron, and it is reminiscent of the Zhang-Rice singlet in cuprate superconductors.

## IV Spin-spin interactions and origin of ferromagnetism

The status of experimental search for high $`T_\text{C}`$ ferromagnetic semiconductors has recently been reviewed Pear03 . Usually, epitaxy is employed but in Warsaw two methods for growth of bulk crystals Grze01 ; Szys01  and one yielding microcrystals Dwil98  are now being used in order to obtain (Ga,Mn)N and related materials. According to EXAFS spectra, the Mn occupies primarily substitutional position Soo01 . In general, magnetization of (Ga,Mn)N consists of paramagnetic and ferromagnetic components Kuwa01 ; Reed01 ; Over01 ; Sono02 ; Sasa02 ; Thal02 ; Baik03 ; Dhar03 ; Zaja03 ; Chit03 . Comprehensive studies of the former Zaja01a ; Dhar03a , such as those presented in Fig. 5, demonstrate the presence of antiferromagnetic spin-spin interactions, characterized by the nearest neighbor exchange integral $`|J_{NN}|2`$ K, about one order of magnitude smaller than that in Mn-based II-VI DMS Diet94 . The ferromagnetic component is not always present but in some samples it can involve up to about 20% of the Mn spins, and can persist up to temperatures as high as 940 K, according to data presented in Fig. 6. It has been detected in both wurzite Kuwa01 ; Reed01 ; Over01 ; Sono02 ; Sasa02 ; Thal02 ; Baik03 ; Dhar03  and cubic Chit03  films deposited by MBE as well as in (Ga,Mn)N microcrystals grown by ammonothermal method Zaja03 . Ferromagnetic ordering appears to result in the anomalous Hall effect Kim03  but not in the magnetic circular dichroism Ando03 . It should be emphasized at this point that the usefulness of ferromagnetic semiconductors requires the existence of a coupling between ferromagnetic and semiconducting properties, independently of the actual microscopic structure of the system. The room temperature ferromagnetic order has been reported also in the case of (Ga,Cr)N Hash02 ; Park02  and (Ga,Gd)N Tera02 , while (Ga,Fe)N shows indications of ferromagnetism below 100 K Akin00 .

At present, the above findings can be interpreted in a number of ways. In particular, it is known that in the case of (Ga,Mn)As DeBo96 ; More02  and (Ga,Mn)Sb Abe00 , magnetization may contain a contribution from ferromagnetic precipitates (MnAs and MnSb, respectively), whose relative role and magnetic properties depend on the growth conditions. By the same token, ferrimagnetic Mn4N Zaja03 ; Yang01  and related compounds are taken into consideration Rao02 . As shown in Fig. 7, the presence of some precipitates has indeed been detected in (Ga,Mn)N Dhar03 . Presumably, their chemical and magnetic properties will be soon determined, and it might become clear why the precipitates, despite their small size, exhibit ferromagnetic, not superparamagnetic behavior.

An interesting question then arises why the Ga1-xMnxN alloy itself shows rather antiferromagnetic than ferromagnetic properties. Within the Zener model, the absence of ferromagnetism can be assigned to a strong localization of the holes. However, within ab initio LSDA theories, the ferromagnetism driven by the double exchange is expected even if the holes occupy the d4 mid gap states Sato01 ; Schi01 ; Kula02 ; Kron02 ; Fili03 . Actually, it is possible that effects of the Mott-Anderson localization are underestimated within the LSDA and CPA and, accordingly, the role of the ferromagnetic double exchange is overestimated. Alternatively, a phenomenon of self compensation can be involved leading to the appearance of the Mn d5 states, for which no ferromagnetism is to be expected. In fact, this was the case of first (In,Mn)As layers, which remained paramagnetic and n-type up Mn concentration $`x=0.18`$ vonM91 . Similarly, it is now known that Mn interstitials act as double donors in (Ga,Mn)As, and reduce $`T_\text{C}`$ substantially in the regime of large Mn concentrations Yu02 ; Mase01 ; Blin03 . This leads us to still another scenario Diet02a , developed within the d5 \+ h model of the Mn gap states. If the compensation is not too strong, an overlap between the hole wave functions will result in the localization length of the holes greater than the distance between the Mn spins. Under such conditions, the Zener model becomes approximately valid, and can explain high values of $`T_\text{C}`$ without invoking precipitates of other compounds, as shown in Fig. 8 Diet02a ; Jung02 . However, in order to explain only partial participation of the magnetic constituent in the ferromagnetic order, we suggest the existence of a phase segregation, which does not change tetrahedral coordination. Furthermore, a double exchange Sato01  or ferromagnetic superexchange Blin96  can be involved in some cases, particularly in compounds containing other magnetic elements than Mn.

## V Quantum spintronic devices

It is known that weak spin decoherence and strong spin-spin coupling are required to fabricate functional quantum gates of semiconductor quantum dots. Owing to large energy gap and the weakness of spin-orbit interactions, especially long spin life times are to be expected in the nitrides. Figure 9 depicts results of time-resolved Faraday rotation, which has been used to measure electron spin coherence in n-type GaN epilayers Besc01 . Despite densities of charged threading dislocations of $`5\times 10^8`$ cm-2, this coherence yields spin lifetimes of about 20 ns at temperatures of 5 K, and persists up to room temperature. Importantly, this low decoherence rate is coupled in GaN with a small value of the dielectric constant. This enhances characteristic energy scales for quantum dot charging as well as for the exchange interaction of the electrons residing on the neighboring dots. In view of persisting advances in nitride-based device processing, we may witness a rapid progress in this field in a near future.

## Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank his co-workers, particularly F. Matsukura and H. Ohno in Sendai; J. Cibert and H. Mariette in Grenoble; P. Kacman, P. Kossacki, and M. Sawicki in Warsaw, A.H. MacDonald in Austin, and W. Wegscheider and D. Weiss in Regensburg for fruitful collaboration in studies of ferromagnetic semiconductors. Author’s research in Germany in 2003 was supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, while the work in Poland by State Committee for Scientific Research as well as by FENIKS project (EC G5RD-CT-2001-00535) within 5th Framework Programme of European Commission and Ohno Semiconductor Spintronics ERATO Project of Japan Science and Technology Corporation.


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# Magellan Echelle Spectroscopy of TW Hydrae Brown Dwarfs

## 1 Introduction

The recent identification of several groups of young stars within 100 parsecs of the Sun has generated widespread interest (Jayawardhana & Greene 2001). Given their proximity and age differences, these groups are ideally suited for detailed studies of the origin and early evolution of stars, brown dwarfs (BDs) and planets. Perhaps the most intensely studied among these groups is the TW Hydrae Association (TWA), which consists of $``$20 co-moving stars (Zuckerman et al. 2001) at a distance of 47–67 pc and dispersed over some 20 degrees on the sky. The members are mostly late-type (K and M) stars, and include several interesting multiple systems (Brandeker, Jayawardhana & Najita 2003, BJN03 hereafter, and references therein) and one A star. At an age of $``$10 Myr, the TWA fills a significant gap in the age sequence between $``$1-Myr-old T Tauri stars in molecular clouds like Taurus-Auriga and the $``$50-Myr-old open clusters such as IC 2391. That is particularly useful for deriving strong constraints on disk evolution timescales. Their diverse disk properties suggest that the TWA stars are at an age when disks are rapidly evolving, through coagulation of dust and dissipation of gas (Jayawardhana et al. 1999a; 1999b).

Lowrance et al. (1999) found a BD candidate $``$2″ from TWA 5A (CD -33 7795); TWA 5A and 5B are now confirmed as a common proper motion pair (BJN03 and references therein). Recently, Gizis (2002) reported two isolated substellar candidates from the 2-Micron All-Sky Survey that may be members of the TWA. Together, these three objects constitute a unique sample to explore the evolution of BD characteristics on a 10-Myr timescale. Here we report high-resolution optical spectroscopy that confirm the youth, group membership, and substellar status of these three objects. We also present a spectrum of the T Tauri multiple system TWA 5A, to which TWA 5B is bound. We use these spectra to investigate accretion, rotation and chromospheric activity.

## 2 Observations & Analysis

We obtained high resolution optical spectra using the Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle spectrograph (Bernstein et al. 2002) on the Baade 6.5-meter telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile in 2003 May. Consecutive spectra were obtained for the three BD candidate members: 3$`\times `$1200s for 2MASS 1207-3932 (May 8), 3$`\times `$1500s for 2MASS 1139-2649 (May 9), and 2$`\times `$1800s for TWA 5B (May 10). Additionally, we obtained two 600s exposures of TWA 5A, one each on May 8 and 10. The spectra of the 2MASS objects (from now on, 2M1207 and 2M1139) and the May 8 spectrum of TWA 5A were taken with a 1″-wide by 5″-long slit. The May 10 spectra of TWA 5A and 5B were obtained with a narrower 0.7″$`\times `$5″ slit. The separation between TWA 5A and 5B is $``$ 2″, and TWA 5B is $``$ 7 magnitudes fainter in the optical. To ensure no contamination of the 5B spectrum by 5A, therefore, we observed 5B with a narrower slit (0.7″), under optimal seeing conditions (better than 0.5″), with the slit positioned roughly perpendicular to the 5A-5B axis. The coverage obtained was $``$ 3200–4800Å in the blue, and $``$ 4800–8800Å in the red, with overlapping orders. The spectra are unbinned in wavelength, and binned by 2 pixels in the spatial direction. The 1″ slit yielded a spectral resolution of $`R`$19000 in the red, and 25000 in the blue; the 0.7″ slit resulted in $`R`$27000 and 36000 respectively. The data were reduced in standard fashion using IDL routines. We derive rotational velocities (v sini ) for our targets by cross-correlating with a ‘spun-up’ template of a slowly rotating standard. We used a combination of dwarf and giant spectra for the template (see Mohanty & Basri 2003). Radial velocities (vrad ) were found by cross-correlating against the M6 dwarf Gl 406 (vrad $``$19 km s-1 ). The v sini and vrad are listed in Table 1.

## 3 Results & Discussion

### 3.1 Membership & Substellar Status

All three TWA BD candidates have spectral types of $``$M8-M8.5 (Gizis 2002; Webb et al. 1999), consistent with the features in our high-resolution data (e.g., strong TiO bands). In all three, we detect LiI 6708 Å. They also exhibit narrow NaI ($``$ 8200Å) absorption profiles indicative of low gravity (intermediate between giants and dwarfs), and strong dMe-like $`H\alpha `$ emission (Fig. 1; equivalent widths –EW– for $`H\alpha `$ and LiI given in Table 1). In concert, these facts confirm the Pre-Main Sequence (PMS) status of TWA 5B, 2M1207 and 2M1139: we can confidently exclude field M dwarfs (no LiI), low-mass field BDs with undepleted Li (type $``$ L2 or later; gravity $``$ dwarfs values), Li-rich giants (much lower gravity; $`H\alpha `$ in absorption) and sub-giants (MS lifetime of M dwarfs too long for M-type subgiants to have formed yet).

For all three objects, our derived vrad are commensurate with those found for other, bona-fide members of the association (Torres et al. 2003). TWA 5B is also confirmed as a common proper motion companion to TWA 5A (BJN03 and references therein). Gizis (2002) has found a proper motion consistent with membership for 2M1207. In conjunction with our vrad measurements and confirmation of PMS status, these observations verify TWA membership for both TWA 5B and 2M1207. For 2M1139, Gizis (2002) found a proper motion apparently inconsistent with membership. However, he notes that the astrometric uncertainty is large. Therefore, given its PMS status and a vrad consistent with other members, we consider it likely that 2M1139 also belongs to the TWA. More precise astrometric measurents are required to verify this.

All objects with detected Lithium and T$`_{eff}`$ less than about 2800K are expected to be substellar, regardless of age (see Basri 2000). The M8-8.5 spectral type of 2M1207, 2M1139 and TWA 5B, which implies T$`_{eff}`$ $`<`$ 2800K (e.g., Luhman 1999), therefore ensures that they are BDs, since they all show Li. An age is required, however, to derive a mass. Since we confirm association membership for at least 2M1207 and TWA 5B, an age of $``$ 10 Myr is justified for them. Comparing to the evolutionary tracks of Chabrier et al. (2000) then yields $``$ 35 Jupiters for both. The same value is obtained for 2M1139, if it too is a member. Even if it is not, one can still use the fact of Li detection, and a T$`_{eff}`$ estimate ($``$2700K; Luhman 1999), to put upper limits on mass and age of $``$ 65 Jupiters and $``$ 250 Myr respectively, using the same models.

### 3.2 Accretion

At very low masses and weak accretion rates, usual accretion indicators (e.g., Stark broadening of $`H\alpha `$ wings, emission in OI and CaII) may disappear. Simultaneously, other lines commonly associated with accretion at higher masses (e.g., HeI, upper Balmer lines) may appear in non-accreting, chromospherically active low-mass objects due to the lowering of the photospheric continuum with decreasing $`T_{eff}`$ (e.g., Jayawardhana, Mohanty, & Basri 2003, hereafter JMB03). Consequently, it is difficult to distinguish between accretion and activity in weakly accreting low-mass objects.

Here we conservatively identify probable accretors based on asymmetric and broad $`H\alpha `$ (10% width $``$200km s-1 , following JMB03) and the detection of usual indicators of accretion at larger masses, such as HeI and upper Balmer lines, at a level higher than the average for a given spectral type (the same criteria adopted by Muzerolle et al. 2003). By these conditions, 2M1139 and TWA 5B are chromospherically active, but not accreting. 2M1207 and TWA 5A, however, do appear to be accretors, as discussed below.

2MASS 1207-3932: As Fig. 2 shows, significant emission is seen in HeI and in the upper Balmer series lines upto H$`ϵ`$ in this object. A perusal of the recent study by Muzerolle et al. (2003), meanwhile, shows that non-accreting M7-8.5 objects in their sample usually do not show HeI (at 6678Å, the only HeI line they include), or Balmer lines beyond $`H\beta `$. Next, in Fig. 3, we show the normalized $`H\alpha `$ profiles from our 3 consecutive spectra of 2M1207. A clear asymmetry is seen in the first and third profiles, with much enhanced emission blueward of line-center. In the second profile, the full-width at 10% of peak flux is $``$ 200 km s-1 : not unreasonable for very low-mass, low accretion-rate objects, and similar to that seen by JMB03 in a couple of mid- to late M accretors. In the first and last profiles, the width is slightly less, at $``$ 170 km s-1 . However, superimposing the three spectra (not shown) reveals that the line wings are exactly the same; the smaller 10% width in the first and last is artificially induced simply by the increase in peak flux. We therefore adopt $``$ 200km s-1 as the more robust value. By all our criteria, therefore, 2M1207 appears to be (weakly) accreting. Can the emission in this object simply be a result of enhanced activity compared to other, similar spectral type objects? While we cannot rule this out, the following argument makes this seem unlikely. In one of our high-resolution spectra of the field M7.5 dwarf LHS 2397A, taken during a flare, the $`H\alpha `$ EW is $``$ 30 Å (Mohanty & Basri 2003), i.e., almost exactly the same as observed in 2M1207. If the emission in 2M1207 were due to chromospheric activity, we would expect its line profiles to look very similar to those of LHS 2397A. given the nearly identical spectral types. The line profile comparison is shown in Fig.3. Clearly, the LHS 2397A $`H\alpha `$ profile much more symmetric compared to the first and last 2M1207 spectra, and significantly narrower in all three cases: 2M1207 exhibits broader $`H\alpha `$ line wings, as expected from accretion. The HeI line at 6678Å is also much stronger in 2M1207 than in LHS 2397A; since the spectral types (and hence the underlying continuum) are almost the same, the actual flux in HeI emission is thus also higher. This too indicates that the same physical process is not responsible for the emission in the two objects; in particular, excess HeI emission can arise from the very hot accretion-shock region. We suggest, therefore, that 2M1207 is a bona-fide accretor. However, our arguments against activity are not ironclad, and the presence of accretion needs to be checked through other diagnostics. The lack of a $`KL^{}`$ excess in 2M1207 (Jayawardhana et al. 2003) could be the result of a nearly edge-on disk inclination or grain growth.

If accretion in 2M1207 is confirmed, it would suggest that inner disk lifetimes of substellar objects can be comparable to those of their stellar counterparts, and further strengthen the case for a common formation mechanism for BDs and stars.

TWA 5A: The 10% full-width of the $`H\alpha `$ line in TWA 5A is $``$ 270 km s-1 , which is commensurate with accretion (e.g., JMB03). However, this object is known to be a triple, with a $``$ 0”.06 binary resolved by adaptive optics (BJN03) as well as a spectroscopic companion (Torres et al. 2003). To discount the possibility that the $`H\alpha `$ line is broadened to accretion-like widths simply due to blending of $`H\alpha `$ from the three stars, we compare our two spectra of TWA 5A, obtained two days apart. Fig. 4 shows that the spectra are exactly the same, except in lines that are accretion indicators. This implies that the spectral change is not due to variations in line-blending, but in the intrinsic parameters of (at least) one of the TWA 5A components. In particular, we see that the first spectrum (in black) shows excess red-shifted emission and blue-shifted absorption in $`H\alpha `$, HeI5876Å and Na D, as well as excess emission in \[OI6300\], compared to the second spectrum (in grey). Though $`H\alpha `$, NaD and HeI emission may conceivably arise from chromospheric activity, the blue-shifted absorption seen in these three lines strongly suggests accretion. Furthermore, \[OI6300\] is an excellent diagnostic of outflowing winds associated with accretion; it is often seen in accreting CTTs, but never in non-accreting WTTs (Muzerolle et al. 2003). All this supports ongoing accretion in the TWA 5A system. The fact that the two spectra differ significantly in the accretion diagnostics implies that the process is variable. Our results also suggest that inner disks can be long-lived even in close multiple systems.

### 3.3 Rotation & Activity

In field dwarfs down to $``$ M8, a saturation-type rotation-activity connection is seen: those rotating faster than $``$ 5 km s-1 exhibit saturated levels of chromospheric $`H\alpha `$ emission, while slower rotators show a range of smaller $`H\alpha `$ fluxes (Mohanty & Basri 2003). For our young sample, we will discuss this issue in more detail in a future paper, after deriving accurate T$`_{eff}`$ in order to convert the observed $`H\alpha `$ EWs to fluxes. However, we note here that the $`H\alpha `$ EW observed in our three M8 PMS objects are, at the very least, comparable to those seen in saturated field dwarfs of the same spectral type; this is in keeping with their moderately rapid rotation ($`>`$ 10km s-1 ). In 2M1207, the $`H\alpha `$ emission is far stronger than in merely saturated field dwarfs; as discussed above, the EW in this case is comparable to that in strongly flaring M8 dwarfs. Similar EWs have been seen in some other young, (apparently) non-accreting late-M objects, lending support to the idea that activity may be enhanced in young low-mass objects compared to field objects of similar spectral type (e.g., Jayawardhana, Mohanty, & Basri 2002, 2003). However, the $`H\alpha `$ profile in these cases is narrow and symmetric. If 2M1207 were a non-accretor, then the strong asymmetries seen in at least two of its $`H\alpha `$ profiles would be puzzling.

We are most grateful to Gibor Basri for insightful discussions. We thank the referee Jeff Valenti for a prompt review and the Magellan staff for their assistance. S.M. is indebted to the SIM-YSO group for the postdoctoral fellowship that made this research possible. This work was supported in part by NSF grant AST-0205130 and NASA grant NAG5-11905 to R.J.


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# The 2001 April Burst Activation of SGR 1900+14: Pulse Properties and Torque

## 1 Introduction

Soft Gamma Repeaters (SGRs) are a small class (4 known) of intriguing high-energy transient that emit anywhere from a handful to several hundred brief, intense bursts of soft gamma-rays when active (see Kouveliotou 2003 for a recent review). In quiescence, SGRs have been found to exhibit persistent X-ray luminosities of $``$1035 ergs s-1. Three SGRs emit coherent pulsations between 5 and 8 s (Kouveliotou et al. 1998; Hurley et al. 1999a; Kulkarni et al. 2003), and all are spinning down rapidly with time (Kouveliotou et al. 1998, 1999, Kulkarni et al. 2003). The spindown observed in two of these SGRs (1806$``$20 and 1900$`+`$14) is not constant. Furthermore, most of the spindown variations do not directly correlate with the bursting activity of the source (Woods et al. 2002).

The rapid spindown in SGRs has been interpreted (e.g. Kouveliotou et al. 1998) as magnetic braking of a strongly magnetized neutron star with $`B_{\mathrm{dip}}`$ $`10^{14}10^{15}`$ G, or magnetar (Thompson & Duncan 1995, 1996). The magnetar model postulates that the short duration SGR bursts are triggered by starquakes induced by magnetic stresses in the neutron star crust (Thompson & Duncan 1995) or perhaps magnetic reconnection events in the stellar magnetosphere (Lyutikov 2002). Persistent magnetospheric currents, driven by twists in the evolving magnetic field, and field decay in the stellar interior contribute to the quiescent flux from SGRs (Thompson & Duncan 1996; Thompson, Lyutikov & Kulkarni 2002).

Burst activity in SGRs occurs sporadically in time and the separation between successive events can vary from seconds to years. Epochs when SGRs are emitting several bursts or burst active phases vary in both intensity and duration. For example, SGR 1900$`+`$14 was discovered in 1979 when it was observed to burst only 3 times in 3 days (Mazets & Golenetskii 1981). In 1992, the source became active again for a few days and emitted a handful of events (Kouveliotou et al. 1993); it entered an unprecedented level of activity in 1998 (Hurley et al. 1999b) never before observed for any SGR. During the course of 9 months, more than 1000 bursts were recorded from this source with various instruments (Göğüş et al. 1999).

The pinnacle of the 1998 activity of SGR 1900$`+`$14 was realized on August 27 when a giant flare was recorded from this source (Hurley et al. 1999c; Mazets et al. 1999; Feroci et al. 1999, 2000). The event reached a peak luminosity of $``$4 $`\times `$ 1044 ergs s-1 and persisted for over $``$6 minutes releasing a total of $``$1044 ergs in gamma-rays $`>`$15 keV. The flare started with a spectrally hard, non-thermal initial spike that was followed by a softer tail which decayed in a quasi-exponential manner. Superimposed on the decaying tail were coherent 5.16 s pulsations whose shape evolved with time. Eighteen minutes after the termination of the gamma-ray emission, a bright X-ray tail from SGR 1900$`+`$14 was detected that decayed in time as a power-law (Woods et al. 2001). The change in pulse profile observed during the August 27 flare at gamma-ray energies was also evident in the persistent X-ray emission pulse profile seen before and after the flare (Woods et al. 2001; Göğüş et al. 2002). In addition, a transient radio outburst was seen for the first and only time from an SGR source, due to a sudden outflow of material associated with this flare (Frail, Kulkarni & Bloom 1999). Finally, there is strong circumstantial evidence which indicates that there was a brief, albeit substantial spin-down event ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$P = 5.72(14) $`\times `$ 10-4 s \[Woods et al. 1999b\]) within the hours following the flare (Palmer et al. 2001), due perhaps to this large outflow of material (Thompson et al. 2000).

On 2001 April 18, a burst was detected from SGR 1900$`+`$14 with a high energy ($``$1043 ergs) and long duration $``$40 s (Guidorzi et al. 2001). Unlike the August 27 flare, there was no intense, non-thermal emission episode at the onset of this event (Guidorzi et al. in preparation). The energy released by this flare was less than the giant flare of August 27, yet much larger than a typical SGR event and was consequently dubbed an “intermediate flare” (Kouveliotou et al. 2001). Several, more common SGR bursts were detected during the following weeks. We triggered a sequence of ToO observations of the source with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and the Satellite per Astronomia X (BeppoSAX) over the two weeks following the April 18 event. Here, we present pulse timing and profile results from these observations. The flux history during this epoch is discussed in the accompanying paper (Feroci et al. 2003).

## 2 Observations

The ToO observations of SGR 1900$`+`$14 with the RXTE Proportional Counter Array (PCA) began $``$34 hours after the intermediate flare and continued for the next two weeks. A total of 128 ks of data were collected during 13 pointings. A single monitoring observation (10 ks exposure time) of SGR 1900$`+`$14 was serendipitously performed on 2001 April 14, just 4 days prior to the flare.

We find no burst activity during the pre-flare observation on 2001 April 14. We performed a search through the data following the flare and found a total of 32 bursts that exceeded 5.5$`\sigma `$ above background (using a running mean) on the 0.125 s time scale. The last burst from SGR 1900$`+`$14 detected in the PCA data was recorded on 2001 May 1 at 04:00:22 UT. On 2001 April 28, we noted a sudden increase in the intensity of SGR 1900$`+`$14 between consecutive RXTE orbits. We determined that this flux increase was associated with another high fluence burst from SGR 1900$`+`$14 recorded by instruments aboard Ulysses and Konus while the source was Earth-occulted for RXTE. A detailed analysis of this event is presented elsewhere (Lenters et al. 2003).

Two observations of SGR 1900$`+`$14 were performed with the BeppoSAX Narrow Field Instruments (NFI) during the April 2001 activation of the source. The first commenced $``$8 hours after the intermediate flare and the second observation took place $``$12 days later. The source exposure times for the two Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (MECS) units were 34.8 and 57.3 ks, respectively. A more detailed account of the NFI observations are presented in Feroci et al. (2003).

## 3 Pulse Timing Analysis

The PCA data from each observation were first filtered to remove the 32 detected bursts by eliminating all data prior to and following each burst by 1 s. The data were then energy selected (2$``$5 keV) to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio and allow for a comparison to the BeppoSAX NFI data. The data were binned to 0.125 s time resolution and transformed to the Solar system barycenter using the ftool faxbary. Next, we generated Lomb-Scargle power spectra (Lomb 1976) to determine coarse frequencies for each set of observations.

The BeppoSAX MECS data were filtered for bursts by first binning the source region event times into a histogram having 0.5 s time resolution and calculating the normalized Poisson probabilities for each bin. Bins having probabilities less than 1 $`\times `$ 10-3 ($``$7 counts) were identified as bursts and events recorded during those times ($`\pm `$1 s) were removed from the subsequent analysis. As with the PCA data, we energy selected our event list to only include photons with energies 2$``$5 keV. The event times were transformed to the solar-system barycenter using the SAXDAS tool baryconv.

All data following the flare were folded on a single frequency determined by the highest peak in the Lomb-Scargle power spectrum and a phase was calculated for each set relative to a template profile (generated from a subset of PCA observations when the source was brightest). We found significant curvature in the phase residuals, indicative of spin-down. The phases were fit to a second order polynomial and a new template was generated from the full data set. This procedure was iterated and the final second-order polynomial fit yielded a $`\chi ^2=`$ 20.8 for 26 degrees of freedom. Using the combined RXTE and BeppoSAX data sets, we measure a frequency and frequency derivative of 0.193317095(15) Hz and $``$6.56(9) $`\times `$ 10-12 Hz s-1, respectively (epoch = 52023.0 MJD TDB). The combined data set spans the time range MJD 52017.68$``$52034.01 (Figure 1). The spindown rate measured here is more rapid than the spindown observed following the giant flare of 1998 August 27 (Woods et al. 1999b) by a factor $``$2.9.

We next extrapolated our fit to the time of the PCA observation that preceded the April 18 flare by four days. Using the full covariance matrix from our fit to the post-flare phases, the model uncertainty in the predicted phase at the time of the pre-flare observation is $`\pm `$0.027 cycles. We find that the relative phase measured for this observation is discrepant from the model ephemeris by $``$0.24 cycles or 4.1$`\sigma `$. The frequency during this brief observation, however, is poorly determined so we cannot rule out the existence of cycle slips between April 14 and April 18 which would only increase the phase discrepancy (e.g. the phase difference could be -1.76, -0.76, 0.24, 1.24, cycles, etc.). The disagreement of our phase measurement on April 14 suggests that the source suffered atiming anomaly, however, the absence of a precise frequency measurement on April 14 precludes us from determining the manner in which the spin evolution deviated. Therefore, it is not possible to place a meaningful quantitative limit on any hypothetical glitch coincident with or following the April 18 flare.

Palmer (2001) noted that the gamma-ray pulsations (15$``$150 keV) during the 1998 August 27 flare were $``$150 out of phase with the post-flare X-ray pulse ephemeris (2$``$10 keV) measured one day after the flare. He noted that this mis-alignment could be either due to a strong energy dependence of the pulse profile or the consequence of rapid spin-down during the minutes or hours following the flare as was deduced earlier from the spin history of the source (Woods et al. 1999). Using the GRBM data from BeppoSAX, we performed a similar analysis for the April 18 flare. The GRBM bin times were converted to the solar-system barycenter to within the absolute time accuracy of the GRBM clock ($``$10 ms or 0.002 cycles). Using the spin ephemeris determined above, we calculated the phase of each GRBM time bin. The model uncertainty in the phase at the time of the flare is 0.001 cycles. The detrended flare data are plotted along with the folded (2$``$5 keV) PCA X-ray profile (Figure 2). Unlike the August 27 flare, we find good agreement in the occurrence in phase of the peak in the pulse profile between the X-ray and gamma-ray bands.

We next quantified the alignment of the gamma-ray to X-ray pulsations. We chose not to cross-correlate the profiles as was done for the X-ray data alone due to the modest, yet significant differences in pulse shapes between the X-ray and gamma-ray bands. Instead, we chose to fit the peak of each pulse profile to a quadratic and compare the centroids of the gamma-ray pulsations to the X-ray pulse train. We fit the peak of the X-ray profile to the quadratic and measured its phase. Before centroid fitting the gamma-ray pulsations, we removed the burst envelope using a low-pass digital filter. We identified eight local maxima in the filtered gamma-ray lightcurve (labeled above and to the left of each maximum in Figure 2). We fit pulses 1 through 7 to the quadratic function and measured their phases relative to the X-ray profile. To check the validity of our filtering procedure, we fit the unfiltered pulse maxima and found that only peak 1 changed significantly. Peak 1 is found during the rapid and jagged rise of the flare where our filter could not reliably subtract the burst envelope from the pulse. We therefore omitted the phase measurement of pulse 1. The local maximum 8 occurs after the primary burst envelope (encompassing pulses 1$``$7) returns to background. We interpret this as a separate burst event, and not a pulse. The distinction between this event and the other pulses is more apparent when viewing the unfiltered lightcurve (Guidorzi et al. in preparation). We find that the six remaining gamma-ray pulsations arrive systematically earlier in phase between 0.041 and 0.093 cycles. The average phase lag is $``$0.063 cycles or 23 (denoted by the triangle in Figure 1). We conclude that there are only minor changes in the pulse profile with both energy (2$``$100 keV) and luminosity ($`10^{35}10^{42}`$ ergs s-1). Another consequence of the relatively good agreement between the X-ray ephemeris and the gamma-ray pulsations implies that there was no sudden spindown following the April 18 flare of the magnitude and type inferred for the August 27 flare.

## 4 Pulse Profile and Fraction

The X-ray pulse profile (2$``$5 keV) is quite simple showing a single, nearly sinusoidal peak. We investigated the evolution of the pulse shape with energy by extracting profiles in different energy bands. To expand the range to lower photon energies, we also included data from Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) observations (Kouveliotou et al. 2001) performed during this epoch. We find no significant energy dependence within the X-ray band (0.5$``$20 keV). Comparison of the X-ray profile with the gamma-ray profile seen during the burst shows that he pulse shapes are similar, but not identical. The primary gamma-ray peak is narrower than the X-ray pulse peak and a secondary maximum is seen at gamma-ray energies between peaks.

It was shown previously (Woods et al. 2001) that the dramatic change in pulse profile found within the gamma-ray tail of the August 27 flare manifested itself within the persistent X-ray pulse profile as well. We searched for changes in the X-ray pulse profile by comparing with observations from the PCA in the year 2000. The folded pulse profiles for the year 2000 and the April 2001 activation are shown in Figure 3. Comparing the two pulse shapes using a $`\chi ^2`$ test, we find that the profiles are different at a confidence level of 99.7%. Specifically, the rise to pulse maximum is faster in the year 2000 profile and the decline is faster in the April 2001 profile. We note that the phase discrepancy of April 14 ($``$0.24 cycles) cannot be accounted for by the difference in shape between these pulse profiles. A more detailed investigation of the energy and temporal dependence of SGR pulse profiles is presented in Göğüş et al. (2002).

We next measured the pulse fraction following the April 18 flare using the data from the two imaging telescopes, the BeppoSAX (SAX) MECS and Chandra (CXO) ACIS detectors. We measure 2$``$10 keV rms pulse fractions of 18.1(10)%, 16.3(11)%, 13.6(15)%, and 12.9(12)% for the respective epochs of MJD TDB 52018.113 (SAX), 52021.324 (CXO), 52029.591 (SAX), and 52030.092 (CXO). Note that the measured CXO pulse fractions differ slightly from those reported in Kouveliotou et al. (2001), who reported the pulse fractions in the 0.5$``$7.0 keV energy range. The pulse fraction of SGR 1900$`+`$14 increases significantly following the April 18 flare and during the subsequent 11 days, slowly declines, approaching its quiescent value.

We have also studied the pulse fraction evolution with energy. The known temporal evolution of the pulse fraction restricted our study to contemporaneous observations (i.e. we could only search for changes within individual observations). We find no significant evolution of the pulse fraction with energy (0.5$``$10 keV) within the individual BeppoSAX and Chandra observations, although our limits are not very strong ($``$ 25% at 95% confidence).

## 5 Discussion

We have observed a good phase alignment, and similarity in pulse morphology, between the bright gamma-ray emission ($`>`$15 keV) during the April 18 flare, and the much fainter X-ray emission (0.5$``$10 keV) following the flare. These observations have interesting implications for the source of the dissipation, and the mechanism that shapes the pulse profile, in these two very different states of SGR 1900+14 – which differ by more than a factor of 106 in luminosity.

The pulse maximum in these two states is apparently produced at the same geometric location on (or above) the surface of the neutron star. In the magnetar model, this means either that the bursting and persistent emission are emanating from the same region close to the star; or that the angular pattern of the X-ray/gamma-ray emission is being modified in a similar way by resonant (electron) cyclotron scattering high in the magnetosphere. By themselves, the observations of the 2001 April flare and post-flare pulsations cannot distinguish between these two models. However, the pulse profile of SGR 1900+14 showed significant changes during the 1998 burst activation. Combining these earlier observations with the measurements of the April 2001 activity, we can begin to constrain the underyling physics.

There were gross changes in both the gamma-ray pulse morphology at high luminosity during the 1998 August 27 flare, and in the much fainter X-ray pulsations observed before and after this flare. On that basis, we argued that the magnetic field of SGR 1900$`+`$14 was reconfigured during the August 27 flare (Woods et al. 2001). During the tail of that flare, the luminosity exceeded the Eddington luminosity by as much as a factor of 10,000, which allows a substantial optical depth to accumulate in material blown off the surface of the star (Thompson and Duncan 1995). It was argued that the outburst was driven by the relaxation of a non-axisymmetric magnetic field close to the star, which channeled the outflow of material and created anisotropies in the opacity high in the magnetosphere (Feroci et al. 2001; Thompson & Duncan 2001). The change in pulse profile during the flare was proposed to be due to the contraction and simplification in topology of a hot fireball powering the gamma-ray emission during the tail.

A corresponding simplification was observed in the persistent X-ray pulse profile – from a multi-peaked shape pre-flare to a nearly sinusoidal profile post-flare (Woods et al. 2001). In this much lower luminosity state, it was hypothesized that the external magnetic field of the star retains a significant non-potential component, and that the associated electrical currents power the continuing non-thermal X-ray emission (Thompson, Lyutikov & Kulkarni 2002). This model implies a significant optical depth to resonant cyclotron scattering, which is independent of frequency in the simplest case of a self-similar and axisymmetric magnetosphere. The optical depth to scattering has a maximum at the magnetic equator, and drops smoothly toward the magnetic pole. Resonant scattering of X-rays (2$``$10 keV) by electrons would take place far enough from the surface of a magnetar ($`510`$ R) that the poloidal magnetic field would be almost dipolar – hence the simplified X-ray pulse shape observed in all observations of the persistent emission since the August 27 flare. In the simplest case, this “scattering screen” was activated at the onset of the giant flare when most of the energy was deposited into the magnetosphere. Because the quiescent X-ray spectrum was non-thermal even before the flare, it was suggested that the outer magnetosphere of SGR 1900+14 was already twisted, and made a transition from a non-axisymmetric to an axisymmetric configuration during the flare (Thompson et al. 2002). It should be emphasized that, in this model, the mechanism for supplying the scattering screen is different in the high and low luminosity states. Moreover, the field geometry close to the star can remain quite complicated even after the flare.

We now consider the observations of the 2001 April activation of SGR 1900$`+`$14 within the framework of the model outlined above for the August 27 flare. The presence of a scattering screen in the outer magnetosphere provides a possible explanation for the phase alignment of the pulse maxima between outburst and quiescence. (The optical depth in the screen is smallest along the magnetic pole, which can be assumed to have a fixed orientation with respect to the body of the star.) However, the pulse profiles in the April 18 and August 27 flares are grossly different in the same energy band, in spite of having similar luminosities. During an outburst, the optical depth in the screen can be temporarily augmented by ionized matter blown off the surface of star and channeled along the magnetic field.111Only one part in $`10^{10}`$ of the energy of the August 27 flare need be expended to lift a scattering cloud that is optically thick at 10 keV at the electron cyclotron resonance. Similarly, one part in a million is enough to create a large optical depth to Thomson scattering at a similar radius. As a result, one must postulate that the flux of material reaching a distance of 50$``$100 km was much more irregular during the August 27 flare than it was during the April 18 flare (whose energy was an order of magnitude lower \[Guidorzi et al. 2001\]). Matter and radiation interact in a complicated way in the part of the magnetosphere where electrons and X-rays are resonantly coupled (Thompson et al. 2002), and more detailed work is required to determine if this supposition is reasonable.

An unattractive feature of this model is that the simplication in the pulse profile observed both during the August 27 flare, and in the persistent emission following the flare, is ascribed to two separate physical mechanisms. The electrical current flowing along extended field lines is hypothesized to have changed at the beginning of the flare, giving rise to the change in the persistent emission pulse shape. The pulse morphology evolution during the flare itself is ascribed to the passive cooling of a confined fireball, with the distribution of suspended matter undergoing a gradual simplification in response to the changing pattern of radiative intensity emerging from the contracting fireball. In addition, the persistent X-ray pulse profile observed before the flare had a similar morphology to the complicated four-peaked pulse shape observed during the intermediate stages of the August 27 flare (Woods et al. 2001) – and yet the mechanism for supplying the anisotropic scattering screen is different in the two cases. One requires a correlation between the current distribution flowing along extended field lines in the pre-flare state, and the energy release within the flare itself.

An extreme alternative to this model is that the entire external magnetic field of SGR 1900$`+`$14 was reconfigured into a simpler geometry over the duration of the August 27 flare (Woods et al. 2001). In this model, the magnetosphere is assumed to remain optically thin post-flare (i.e. no scattering screen). The similar morphology and good phase alignment of the burst and post-burst pulsations during the 2001 April 18 flare follow naturally if there is a common dissipative region. However, the reconfiguration of the field would have to progress on a timescale $``$107 times longer than the Alfvén crossing time of the magnetosphere ($``$30 $`\mu `$sec), and $`10^4`$ times longer than the corresponding timescale in the deep interior of the star (e.g. Thompson & Duncan 1995). Recently, Lyutikov (2003) argued that reconnection in the magnetosphere driven by a tearing mode instability would proceed on a longer timescale of order $``$10 ms. This timescale is consistent with the rise time of the more common SGR bursts (Göğüş et al. 2001), but still many orders of magnitude shorter than the timescale of the pulse profile change observed during the August 27 flare ($``$5 min).

A global magnetospheric reconfiguration during the August 27 flare has the advantage of providing the most straightforward explanation of the pulse morphology changes seen in SGR 1900$`+`$14, both in 1998 and 2001. However, there is still the challenge of explaining how the field would continue to reconfigure itself over a duration of $`400`$ seconds in a very smooth manner – without inducing secondary instabilities and reconnection events that would manifest themselves as sudden changes in the X-ray flux. A compromise between these models would involve a gradual simplication of the most extended magnetic field lines (those which extend out to the electron cyclotron resonance for soft gamma-rays up to $``$100 keV).

We have shown that the torque in the aftermath of the 2001 April 18 flare was a factor $``$3 larger than the torque measured immediately following the 1998 August 27 flare. In contrast, the burst activity following the August 27 flare was more intense and persisted longer than the activity following April 18. The torque measured following this intermediate flare is large as compared to the post-August 27 torque, but is not the largest measured for SGR 1900$`+`$14. Comparison of the burst activity and spindown in April 2001 with previous epochs in SGR 1900$`+`$14 strengthens our earlier conclusion (Woods et al. 1999b, 2002) that there exists no direct correlation between burst activity and torque in this system.

Our comparison of the gamma-ray pulse profile with the X-ray ephemeris has shown that there is no evidence for transient post-flare spindown of the magnitude and type inferred for the August 27 flare. This observation also lends credence to the interpretation of the phase mis-alignment in the August 27 flare as being due to a sudden spindown event (Palmer 2001; Woods et al. 1999b) rather than a strong energy dependence in the pulse profile. Although we can exclude a sudden spindown like that inferred for the August 27 flare, the fortuitous observation preceding the April 18 flare indicates that there was some timing anomaly near the epoch of the flare. Unfortunately, the exact manner in which the spin frequency of the star evolved leading up to and through both flares is not certain due to uncertainty in the pre-flare spin ephemerides. The value of precise pre-flare spin ephemerides is best illustrated in the recent SGR-like outburst from the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 2259$`+`$586 (Kaspi et al. 2003). In this case, the continuous monitoring of 1E 2259$`+`$586 leading up to this outburst allowed Kaspi et al. (2003) to detect a sudden spin-up or glitch that coincided with the burst activation. Since the onset of burst activity in SGRs is unpredictable, continuous monitoring of their spin ephemerides is required to quantify timing events such as the glitch detected in 1E 2259$`+`$586 coincident with bursts, and hence constrain the underlying physical mechanism responsible for the busts.

Acknowledgements – We thank the RXTE/SDC and the SAX/SDC for pre-processing the RXTE/PCA and BeppoSAX data, respectively. This work was funded through a NASA ADP grant (NAG 5-11608) for PMW and a Long Term Space Astrophysics program (NAG 5-9350) for both PMW and CK. MHF and EG acknowledge support from the cooperative agreement NCC 8-200.


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# Solar cycle variation in GONG and MDI data: 1995-2002

## 1 Introduction

Helioseismology has now been accepted as a powerful diagnostic tool to carry information from inside the sun at different depths. The basic data which enables to disseminiate this information are the global oscillation modes which are characterised by the eigenfrequencies. During the solar cycle 21, it was observed that mode frequencies change with the evolution of the solar cycle (Woodard and Noyce, 1985; Libbrecht and Woodard, 1989; Elsworth et al., 1990) which suggest that these changes are manifestation of the variation of the magnetic field with solar cycle. During the early stages of the current solar cycle 23, the frequency variation has also been shown to be strongly correlated with many other activity indices at the solar surface (e.g. Bhatnagar, Jain and Tripathy, 1999). With nearly 7 years of co-temporal helioseismic data from two different instruments from two different platforms, we are now in a stronger position to study the time variation of p-mode frequencies with changes in the levels of solar activity.

The solar oscillations are described as spherical waves which sense the spherical geometry of the sun. The angular frequencies are represented by spherical harmonics $`Y_m^{\mathrm{}}`$, where the degree $`\mathrm{}`$ is the total number of nodal lines on the spherical surface while $`m`$ is the number of nodes along the equator and is restricted between $`\mathrm{}m\mathrm{}`$; each mode with a given $`\mathrm{}`$ has $`2\mathrm{}+1`$ values of $`m`$ associated with it. The cyclic frequencies $`\omega _{n\mathrm{}m}`$ depends on the mode which is lebeled by the value of $`\mathrm{},m`$, and $`n`$; $`n`$ being the radial order which signifies the number of nodes in the radial direction (cf. Christensen-Dalsgaard, 1998). The frequencies of modes of oscillations are typically represented as a mean frequency $`\nu _n\mathrm{}`$ ($`\omega _{n\mathrm{}m}`$/$`2\pi `$) and frequency splittings $`\nu _{n\mathrm{}m}`$ $``$ $`\nu _n\mathrm{}`$ between modes in the same multiplet. The frequency splittings of the order $`m`$ are normally parametrised according to the formula

$$\nu _{n\mathrm{}m}=\nu _n\mathrm{}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{j=j_{max}}{}}a_j(n,\mathrm{})p_j^{\mathrm{}}$$
(1)
where the basis functions are polynomials related to the Clebsch-Gordon coefficients (Ritzwoller and Lavely, 1991). The coefficients $`a_j`$ are normally referred as the $`a`$ coefficients. The odd $`a`$ coefficients express the difference between prograde and retrograde mode frequencies caused by the solar rotation and can be used to calculate the solar rotation. The even $`a`$ coefficients sense longitudinally symmetric but spherically asymmetric properties–local variation in the sound speed or the asphericity or the magnetic field strength or a combination of the two.

## 2 Analysis and results

For the present study, we consider 68 overlapping GONG data sets (GONG month 2-69) derived from 108 day long time series but spaced in an interval of 36 days. These data sets cover a period from May 7, 1995 to March 30, 2002 and were produced through the standard GONG pipeline (Hill et al., 1996). Each set yields about 60,000 useful frequencies for individual $`n`$, $`\mathrm{}`$, $`m`$ modes for $`\mathrm{}`$ = 0 to 150 in about 1600 multiplets. Central frequencies $`\nu _n\mathrm{}`$ and $`a`$ coefficients up to $`a_9`$ are derived from these multiplets. The MDI data consists of 31 non-overlapping data sets starting at May 1, 1996 and ending on November 1, 2002 with interuptions between June 16 and October 22, 1998 due to the loss of contact with SOHO. All these data sets are 72 days long except those immediately before and after the break, which are shorter. Each data set consist of centroid p-mode frequencies up to $`\mathrm{}`$ $`200`$ and $`a`$-coefficients up to $`a_{18}`$ (Schou, 1999).

### 2.1 Frequency shifts

The mean shift $`\delta \nu `$ for a given $`\mathrm{}`$ and $`n`$ is calculated from the relation

$$\delta \nu (t)=\underset{n,\mathrm{}}{}\frac{\delta \nu _{n,\mathrm{}}(t)}{\sigma _{n,\mathrm{}}^2}/\underset{n.\mathrm{}}{}\frac{1}{\sigma _{n,\mathrm{}}^2},$$
(2)
where $`\delta \nu _{n,\mathrm{}}(t)`$ is the change in measured frequency for degree $`\mathrm{}`$ and radial order $`n`$ and $`\sigma _{n,\mathrm{}}`$ is the error in the observed frequency. Since the solar activity changes over the cycle, we have defined the change $`\delta \nu _{n,\mathrm{}}(t)`$ = $`\nu _{n,\mathrm{}}(t)`$ $``$ $`<\nu _{n,\mathrm{}}>`$ where the average is taken over all the available data sets instead of a particular reference set.

The frequency shift is well known to have a strong dependence on frequency and for a meaningful analysis, we have considered only those p-modes which are present in all GONG and MDI data sets in the frequency range of 1500–3500 $`\mu `$Hz. Figure 1(a) shows the temporal variation of mean frequency shift for MDI and non-overlapping GONG data sets and we clearly note that there is a systematic offset between the two shifts. This may have been caused either due to different analysis technique to derive the mode frequencies (Schou et al., 2002) or because of the different time series lengths over which avearges are taken to compute the frequency shifts (also see Jain and Bhatnagar, 2003). The mean frequency shift is correlated with various activity indices representing photospheric, chromospheric and coronal activities. In panel (b), we show the frequency shifts calculated from the overlapping GONG data sets along with the scaled activity index represented by 10.7 cm radio flux. It is evident that the change in frequency follows the change in solar activity very closely, the proximity being marginally higher during the ascending phase of the solar cycle. A similar result for the low-$`\mathrm{}`$ p-mode frequencies were reported by Chaplin et al. (2001). For a detailed investigation, we calculate the mean frequency shifts corresponding to four different frequency bins of 500 $`\mu `$Hz (Figure 2). The offset between GONG and MDI data sets is quite apparent in lower frequency bands and slowly decreases for higher frequency ranges. For the highest frequency band (3000-3500 $`\mu `$Hz), the offset is seen only when the activity level is high. In low frequency bands, deviations from the simple activity dependence is observed during the activity minimum period.

Since both GONG and MDI frequencies are obtained from time series spanning over a long period, these can be used to study the temporal evolution of a single ($`n`$,$`\mathrm{}`$) multiplet. The variation of the central frequency of two multiplets for $`n`$ = 6 and $`n`$ = 9 corresponding to $`\mathrm{}`$ = 60, along with the scaled activity index is shown in Figure 3. It is remarkable that even the frequency of a single mode of oscillation closely follows the changes in activity level. As mentioned earlier, a small offset between the absolute values for GONG and MDI frequencies at lower $`n`$ values corresponding to lower frequency range is clearly seen. However, the sensitivity to the activity level appears independent of the data sets used.

### 2.2 Variation in solar rotation rate

Early helioseismic results have confirmed that the surface differential rotation detected with Doppler Observations persists throughout the convection zone (e.g. Brown et al. 1989). The rotation rate in the convection zone along different latitudes is nearly constant, while at the base of the convection zone, a shear layer (the tachocline) separates the radiative interior which rotates almost like a solid body. In solar dynamo theories, it is generally believed that the rotation stretches the poloidal field lines near the tachocline and creates the toroidal fields, hence it is important to look for possible variations in rotation rate with time. There are two appraoches, the first one is an analytical approach (Morrow, 1988; Jain, Tripathy and Bhatnagar, 2000) which calculates the surface rotation rates at different latitudes by combination of the odd $`a`$ coefficients. In the second approach, one uses the inversion techniques which provides information both with latitude and depth.

Figure 4 shows the rotation rate as a function of latitude from different measurements and clearly displays the differential nature of the solar rotation, the maximum rate being at the equator and the minimum at the poles. It also shows that the rotation rate derived from the linear combination of the averaged GONG and MDI odd $`a`$’s are in good agreement with each other and also with those from surface Doppler measurements (Snodgrass, 1984). The residual in rotation rate contains the temporally varying component of the rotation and are best studied through inversion techniques. Inversions show that at low latitudes the bands of faster and slower regions (zonal flows) move towards the equator with time (Schou, 1999; Antia and Basu, 2000). These are analogous to the torsional oscillations seen at the solar surface (Howard and LaBonte, 1980) which are believed to arise from the nonlinear interactions between magnetic fields and differential rotation. At high latitudes, the bands seem to move toward the poles (Antia and Basu 2001; Ulrich 2001). The changing pattern of the zonal flows implies that the maximum and minimum velocities for each latitude occur at different times (Antia and Basu, 2003). However, its implication for solar dynamo theory is not well understood.

## 3 Conclusions

We have analysed the p-mode oscillation frequencies obtained from GONG and MDI instruments covering a period of seven years which includes the descending phase of solar cycle 22 and ascending phase of cycle 23. The frequencies show an increase with solar activity and changes are found to be well correlated with activity indices. There appears to be a small offset between the frequency shifts derived from the GONG and MDI data sets. A marginally higher correlation is seen for the higher frequencies in the ascending phase of the solar cycle. We also note that the residual rotation rate behaves differently at low and high latitudes.

## Acknowledgements

I wish to express my thanks to my collaborators Drs. A. Bhatnagar and Kiran Jain. This work utilises data obtained by the Global Oscillation Network Group project, managed by the National Solar Observatory, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The data were acquired by instruments operated by the Big Bear Solar Observatory, High Altitude Observatory, Learmonth Solar Observatory, Udaipur Solar Observatory, Instituto de Astrofísico de Canarias, and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. This work also utilises data from the Solar Oscillations Investigation/Michelcon Doppler Imager on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.


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# Spin lifetimes of electrons injected into GaAs and GaN

\[

## Abstract

The spin relaxation time of electrons in GaAs and GaN are determined with a model that includes momentum scattering by phonons and ionized impurities, and spin scattering by the Elliot-Yafet, D’yakonov-Perel, and Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanisms. Accurate bands generated using a long-range tight-binding Hamiltonian obtained from empirical pseudopotentials are used. The inferred temperature-dependence of the spin relaxation lifetime agrees well with measured values in GaAs. We further show that the spin lifetimes decrease rapidly with injected electrons energy and reach a local maximum at the longitudinal optical phonon energy. Our calculation predicts that electron spin lifetime in pure GaN is about 3 orders of magnitude longer than in GaAs at all temperatures, primarily as a result of the lower spin-orbit interaction and higher conduction band density of states.

\]

Spin-based electronics utilizes the previously unexploited spin degree of freedom in semiconductors for, potentially, improved non-volatile memories, low power electronics, high speed analog and digital systems, and quantum computing.1 For these applications, the spin polarized carriers can be created optically2 in the semiconductor or, preferably injected electrically3-5 from a ferromagnetic material. One of the key aspects of this technology is that the spin depolarization or relaxation lifetimes of these carriers is long in the semiconductor for spin device operation. These spin lifetimes can be many orders of magnitude longer than the characteristic times associated with conventional electronics, such as the transit time or minority carrier lifetime and can facilitate improvements in the device efficiency, sensitivity and/or speed. Despite the importance of this parameter, there is only a limited amount of data available on the spin lifetime of carriers in semiconductors. Experimentally, the spin lifetimes of low energy electrons in GaAs has been measured to vary from 100 ns at 5K to 1 ns at 300K.2 Spin relaxation lifetimes are expected to be shorter for high kinetic energy electrons and in defective material, but their exact energy dependence on these parameters has not been established. Since most traditional devices emit electrons over potential barriers, resulting in hot carrier injection into the device region, the information on energy-dependent lifetimes is essential. In addition, with a quantitative study, it may be possible to offset the decrease in the lifetimes expected at high energies by choosing a semiconductor material with smaller spin-orbit (SO) coupling.

In this Letter, we report the results of our bandstructure-based calculation of energy, temperature and doping-concentration dependent spin lifetimes in GaAs and GaN. The calculated spin lifetimes of low energy electrons are in reasonable agreement with measured values.2 We predict the spin lifetimes to decrease sharply with electron energy. In addition, because of the large conduction band density of states (DOS) and smaller SO interaction in pure GaN, the spin lifetimes are predicted to be three orders of magnitude longer than that in GaAs.

Spin relaxation by three mechanisms has been studied extensively in the literature.6-11 Elliot-Yafet (EY) scattering may be thought of as the coupling between the two spin channels of a Bloch state by the spin-orbit Hamiltonian. D’yakonov-Perel (DP) scattering, present in materials with spin-dependent conduction bands, is the interaction involving the SO Hamiltonian and another perturbation, most notably the phonon and impurity scattering. Finally, the Bir-Aronov-Pikus (BAP) mechanism is a process involving the recombination of an electron-hole pair; the photon is reabsorbed to create another electron-hole pair of the opposite spin. In our calculations, all three mechanisms have been included. The SO interaction is calculated from the well-known $`kp`$ formalism and treated as a perturbation to the tight-binding Hamiltonian, along with other spin-conserving scattering mechanisms such as impurity, longitudinal optical (LO) phonon, and deformation potential scattering. The spin relaxation time could then be expressed in terms of the momentum relaxation times.6-12

We studied the spin relaxation of electrons using accurate GaAs and zinc-blende GaN conduction bands generated with a long-range tight-binding Hamiltonian obtained from empirical pseudopotentials. We have successfully used this Hamiltonian to obtain bandstructures, momentum and velocity scattering rates and studied high field transport in many semiconductor compounds and alloys.13,14 Excellent agreement was found between results obtained with these scattering rates and those observed in GaAs hot electron transistors.15 Similar calculation of the momentum scattering time $`\tau _p`$ is carried out

for electrons injected into GaAs and GaN, as a function of dopant density and electron temperature. They are then used to calculate spin relaxation times limited by EY, DP, and BAP mechanisms.9 The spin scattering lifetimes by EY and BAP are proportional to the momentum scattering lifetime. Interestingly, in the states with shorter momentum scattering times, the electrons do not stay long enough for spin to precess, resulting in longer relaxation times for spin scattering by DP mechanism. At very low injection energies ($``$ 10 meV), the leading spin scattering is by EY (in n-doped) and BAP (in p-doped) material. However the p-doping must be at least 5 $`\times `$ 1017 cm-3 in GaN and 1 $`\times `$ 1018 cm-3 in GaAs for spin scattering by BAP to be comparable to that by EY. At higher energies, DP is the strongest mechanism for spin scattering in both GaAs and GaN. As the energy of the electrons is increased, the DOS available for scattering also increases. However, the momentum scattering rate decreases as k2 (for phonon scattering) and k4 (for impurity scattering). Consequently, the momentum scattering time increases with energy initially, then falls steeply once the threshold for phonon emission is reached. At even higher energy, the increase in DOS nearly compensates the decrease in the matrix element, resulting in a nearly-constant momentum relaxation time. The DP mechanism limited spin relaxation time $`\tau _s^{DP}`$, which varies as $`\tau _p`$/E$`{}_{}{}^{3}{}_{k}{}^{}`$, decreases for increased energy but reaches a local peak at the threshold energy for phonon emission. The product of $`\tau _s`$ and the group velocity, $`\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}\frac{E_k}{k}`$, at that energy gives the energy-dependent mean free path, $`\lambda _s`$ for the electrons. The calculated spin mean free path, $`\lambda _s`$, as a function of injection energy is plotted for two donor doping concentrations and temperatures in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 for GaAs and GaN respectively. For all energies above 10 meV, DP mechanism is dominant, and consequently, we see that spin scattering lifetimes are longer at higher temperature and higher doping density where momentum scattering life-

times are shorter. Also, the mean free path decreases rapidly with energy and reaches a local maximum at energy slightly above the LO phonon energy. Notice that mean free path of electrons with one LO energy is about 0.1 cm in GaAs and 1 cm in GaN. The longer mean free path of the injected electrons in GaN is primarily attributed to the small SO splitting (12 meV in GaN and 341 meV in GaAs), large band gap (of 3.4 eV in GaN and 1.5 eV in GaAs), and large DOS (effective mass of 0.2 m0 in GaN and 0.067 m0 in GaAs). At higher energies, the mean free path continues to decrease in spite of the increase in group velocity.

To determine the temperature dependence of the spin lifetime, a Fermi- Dirac distribution can be safely assumed because the phonon-limited momentum relaxation times ($``$ 50 ps at 5K in GaAs) is typically two orders of magnitude shorter than the time scale of the spin relaxation times ($`\mu `$s). An ionization energy for the donors in GaAs of 5.8 meV is used, a value commensurate with the SiGa defect.17 As the lattice temperature is reduced, fewer impurities are ionized, and the Fermi level (FL) is self-consistently obtained. An photo generated carrier density typically used in experiments,22 $`\times `$ 1014 cm-3, was added so that these results can be directly compared to Ref. 2. This last assumption only affects the low temperature ($``$ 10 K) result due to carrier freeze-out. Figure 3 shows the results obtained for GaAs and GaN. The calculated energy-dependent spin relaxation lifetimes can be used to compare with the measured lifetimes at low or zero magnetic field. Figure 3 compares the averaged spin lifetimes (solid lines) and the experimental values2 (dashed-dots) in the temperature range of 5 K to 145 K. We see that the predicted trend (and slope) is in good agreement with experiment, except at very low temperature ($`<`$10 K). For T $`>`$10 K, the absolute value of the calculated values are a factor of 2 to 3 smaller than experiment. At very low temperatures, the predicted lifetime decreases with T, whereas the measured lifetime appears

to reach a plateau. This difference may result from the presence of compensating defects in the experimental samples. The dopant density and low field mobility of the GaAs, reported in Ref. 2 at room temperature are 1016 cm-3 and 5400 cm2/v.s, respectively. Our calculations predict a mobility of 7100 cm2/v.s, in agreement with the values found for high purity samples.16 The lower mobilities measured in the experiment indicate that defects are present in the samples. The defect states would be expected to influence the FL and scattering times, particularly at low temperatures.

Assuming 5.8 meV of donor ionization energy for Si in zinc-blende GaN, the averaged spin lifetime calculations are carried out, and the values are also shown in Figure 3 (thick solid line). It is interesting to note the spin lifetimes in GaN are expected to be about three orders of magnitude larger than those in GaAs. The predicted enhancement is because of the combination of the dominance by DP mechanism, larger momentum scattering and smaller SO interaction. However, when the defect density is large, the defect-assisted EY mechanism which is dominant at low temperatures, severely limits the spin lifetimes. This is in agreement with the recent results in highly impure (with 5 $`\times `$ 108 cm-2) wurtzite-GaN where the measured lifetimes are an order of magnitude smaller than that in GaAs at T$``$ 50K.17 When the material quality is improved18-20 for much lower defect density ($`<10^6cm^2`$), a large increase in spin lifetimes is expected.

In summary, we have calculated the energy and temperature dependent spin lifetimes of electrons using full band structures of GaAs and GaN. The calculated spin lifetimes of low kinetic-energy electrons in GaAs are in reasonable agreement with measured values.2 We predict the spin lifetimes to decrease sharply with electron energy and reach a local maximum near one LO phonon energy at low T. In addition, because of the large conduction band DOS and smaller SO in GaN, the spin lifetimes are predicted to be three orders of magnitude longer than that in GaAs. When non-radiative recombination is not dominant, the mean free path for the electrons with an injected energy of 0.5 eV is predicted to be about 1 mm in high-purity GaN, suggesting GaN as more suitable materials for spin injection devices. The accuracy of the model will be enhanced by using parameter-free calculations in which the SO coupling is included in the Hamiltonian, and all other scattering processes (electron-phonon, electron-impurity) are considered as perturbations. Such calculations are in progress.

One of the authors (S.K) thanks Marcy Berding, Arden Sher, and Michael Flatte for useful discussions and Jay Kikkawa for providing the spin lifetimes data. This work was supported by the DARPA. (ONR contract # N00014-02-1-0598).