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# Measurement of Inclusive Momentum Spectra and Multiplicity Distributions of Charged Particles at √𝑠∼ 2 - 5 GeV

## 1 Introduction

Inclusive hadron production from $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilations is very valuable for testing Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Perturbative QCD (pQCD) can give quantitative analytical predictions based on the Modified Leading Logarithmic Approximation (MLLA)  under the assumption of Local Parton Hadron Duality (LPHD) . Many experimental results have been reported from high energy experiments  , which are in good agreement with pQCD predictions. However, hadron production has not been studied well at low energies due to insufficient data, particularly at the boundary region between pQCD and non-pQCD. It is therefore very interesting to test pQCD in this region with low energy $`e^+e^{}`$ data.

Here we study the inclusive momentum spectrum, the hadron multiplicity distribution, and the second binomial moment. The inclusive momentum spectrum is defined in terms of the variable $`\xi =\mathrm{ln}(2p/\sqrt{s})`$, where $`p`$ and $`\sqrt{s}`$ are the momentum of the charged particles and center-of-mass (c.m.) energy respectively. The second binomial moment , a measure of the strength of hadron-hadron correlations and a sensitive probe for higher order QCD or non-perturbative effects , is defined as $`R_2=n_{ch}(n_{ch}1)/n_{ch}^2`$, where $`n_{ch}`$ is the charged particle multiplicity. There has been a long standing discrepancy between the values of $`R_2`$ calculated to next to leading order (NLO) and those measured in $`e^+e^{}`$ experiments .

In this paper, we report measurements of the inclusive momentum spectra and multiplicity distributions of charged particles obtained with the upgraded Beijing Spectrometer (BESII) at the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC) with center-of-mass energies of 2.2, 2.6, 3.0, 3.2, 4.6 and 4.8 GeV. Results are compared with pQCD calculations, as well as those from high energy $`e^+e^{}`$, $`ep`$ and $`p\overline{p}`$ experiments.

## 2 Detector and trigger

The measurements were done using the data collected for the $`R`$ scan  with BESII, a conventional solenoidal magnet detector that is described in detail in Ref. . A vertex chamber comprising 12 tracking layers surrounds a beryllium beam pipe and provides input to the trigger system, as well as coordinate information. The primary tracking device is the cylindrical main drift chamber (MDC). It has 40 layers of sense wires and yields precise measurements of charged particle trajectories; it also provides $`dE/dx`$ information which is used for charged particle identification. Outside the MDC, there is a barrel time-of-flight system (BTOF) consisting of an array of 48 plastic scintillator counters that are read out at both ends by fine-mesh photomultiplier tubes. Electron and photon showers are detected in a sampling barrel shower counter (BSC) that covers $`80\%`$ of the total solid angle. It consists of 24 layers of self-quenching streamer tubes interspersed with lead; each layer has 560 tubes. The outermost component of BESII is a muon identification system consisting of three double layers of proportional tubes interspersed in the iron flux return of the magnet.

The triggers and the measurement of the trigger efficiencies for Bhabha, dimuon and hadronic events are the same as those described in Ref. . The efficiencies are measured by comparing the responses to different trigger requirements in special runs taken at the peak of the $`J/\psi `$ resonance, and are determined to be 99.96%, 99.33% and 99.76% for Bhabha, dimuon, and hadronic events, respectively. Their uncertainties are about $`\pm 0.5\%`$.

## 3 Hadronic event selection and background subtraction

The hadronic event samples are almost the same as those used for the measurement of $`R`$ values at these energies. Sources of background are cosmic rays, pair produced leptons, two-photon processes, and single-beam associated processes. First, clear Bhabha events are rejected from the sample. Next, hadronic events are selected. Special attention is paid to two-prong events, where cosmic ray and lepton pair backgrounds are especially severe, and additional requirements are imposed to provide extra background rejection .

The hadron selection proceeds by first selecting charged tracks and then selecting events. For the track-level selection, we require the track polar angle satisfy $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta |<0.80`$, the track must not be identified as an electron or a muon, and the distances of closest approach to the beam in the transverse plane and along the beam axis should be less than 2.0 and 18 cm, respectively. The following criteria are also used to define “good” charged tracks:

* $`p<E_{beam}+(5\times \sigma _p)`$, where $`p`$ and $`E_{beam}`$ are the momenta of the track and the beam energy, respectively, and $`\sigma _p`$ is the momentum resolution for charged tracks at $`p=E_{beam}`$;
* $`E<0.6E_{beam}`$, where $`E`$ is the energy in the BSC that is associated with the track;
* $`2<t<t_p+(5\times \sigma _t)`$ (in ns), where $`t`$ and $`t_p`$ are the time-of-flight for the track and a nominal time-of-flight calculated for the track assuming a proton hypothesis, and $`\sigma _t`$ is the BTOF time resolution.
* $`p_t`$ 0.08GeV, where $`p_t`$ is the transverse momentum.

The event-level selection requires at least two charged tracks with at least one “good” track satisfying the above requirements, the total deposited energy in the BSC should be greater than $`0.28E_{beam}`$, and the tracks selected should not all point along either the $`+z`$ or $`z`$ direction. These criteria help reject background. For two-prong events, cosmic-ray and lepton pair events are removed by requiring that tracks should not be back-to-back and that there should be at least two isolated neutral clusters with $`E>100`$ MeV and with the differences in azimuthal angle with charged tracks more than $`15^{}`$. This last requirement rejects radiative Bhabha events. The above selection procedures remove most backgrounds. Backgrounds from two-photon processes are negligible after hadron selection.

Residual background contributions from Bhabha processes and tau pair production are subtracted using a Monte Carlo analysis, e.g. for Bhabha events, the number of Bhabhas in the hadronic events is

$$N_{bb}=\frac{N_{bb}^{pass}}{N_{bb}^{gen}}\sigma _{bb},$$
(1)
where $`N_{bb}^{pass}`$ is the number of Bhabha events surviving hadronic event selection, $`N_{bb}^{gen}`$ is the total number of generated Bhabha events, $``$ is the integrated luminosity at each energy point, and $`\sigma _{bb}`$ is the total Bhabha cross-section calculated by the Monte Carlo program. A detailed comparison between data and Monte Carlo data shows that the maximum discrepancy in any momentum bin is 10%; hence the error due to the Monte Carlo simulation of Bhabha events and tau decays is less than 1% in any bin, far less than the 5-10% statistical uncertainty.

The beam-associated background is treated by fitting the distribution of event vertices along the beam direction with a Gaussian for real hadronic events and a second order polynomial for the background, as described in Refs. . Table 1 summarizes the background contributions to the hadron samples from Bhabhas, tau decays, and beam-associated events. The typical background is a few percent below $`\tau \tau `$ threshold and about $`15\%`$ above.

We do not subtract the contributions from the $`\psi (4040)`$, $`\psi (4160)`$, or the $`\psi (4415)`$ resonances to the high energy points. Using the resonance parameters from the Particle Data Group  and varying them within errors, the contribution to the 4.6 GeV point is expected to be below 2.2 %, while that at the 4.8 GeV point is less than 1 %.

## 4 Hadronic event generator and initial state radiative correction

Hadronic events are simulated by the JETSET7.4  and LUARLW  Monte Carlo programs. LUARLW is used for energies at 3 GeV or lower. JETSET with tuned parameters is used in the region from 3 to 4 GeV, and JETSET with default parameters is used for 4 GeV and higher energy points . The detector response is based on EGS for electromagnetic interactions, while for hadronic interactions, parameterizations are used. Above 3.77 GeV, the production of $`D,D^{},D_s,`$ and $`D_s^{}`$ is included in the generator according to the Eichten Model . A Monte Carlo event generator has been developed to handle decays of the resonances in the “radiative return” processes $`e^+e^{}\gamma J/\psi `$ or $`\gamma \psi (2S)`$ . Four distributions comparing experimental data and Monte Carlo data at 2.2 GeV are shown in Fig. 1. The data and Monte Carlo distributions agree reasonably well.

Initial state radiation effects are simulated by a Monte Carlo program which is based on the scheme described in Ref. . The error on the effective radiative correction factor $`(1+\delta _{obs})`$ is estimated to be less than $`3\%`$ by comparing different formalisms  and using different cuts.

## 5 $`\xi `$ spectrum

The charged particle inclusive hadron momentum spectrum can be expressed as a function of $`\xi =\mathrm{ln}(2p/\sqrt{s})`$. A purely analytical approach giving quantitative predictions for $`\xi `$ is a QCD calculation using MLLA  under the assumption of LPHD , expressed as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma _{had}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{d\xi }}=2K_{LPHD}\times f_{MLLA}(\xi ,\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff},N_c,n_f)`$ (2)
where $`K_{LPHD}`$ is an overall normalization factor describing hadronization, $`f_{MLLA}`$ is a complex function of $`\xi `$ and the effective scale parameter $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff}`$, $`N_c`$ is the color factor, and $`n_f`$ is the number of active quarks. Eq. 2 is only valid in the range $`0\xi \mathrm{ln}(0.5\sqrt{s}/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff})`$.

The $`\xi `$ spectrum at each center-of-mass energy is obtained using the following:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma _{had}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{d\xi _i}}=C(\xi _i){\displaystyle \frac{1}{N_{had}}}{\displaystyle \frac{N_{obs}(\xi _i)}{\mathrm{\Delta }\xi _i}},`$ (3)
where, $`N_{had}`$ is the total number of hadronic events observed, $`N_{obs}(\xi _i)`$ is the number of charged tracks in bin-$`i`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\xi _i`$ is the bin width chosen commensurate with the detector resolution to avoid significant migration between bins, and $`C(\xi )`$ is a multi-source correction factor including effects from the detector, ISR, and hadronic event selection. This correction is determined by two Monte Carlo samples: sample I (hadron level) includes neither initial state radiation (ISR) nor detector simulation and sample II (detector level) includes both ISR and detector simulation . Events of sample II are reconstructed in the same way as for data and subjected to the same selection criteria. Distributions at the hadron level are only from particles with a lifetime greater than $`3\times 10^{10}`$ s, which are considered as stable .

The correction factors $`C(\xi )`$ for each bin are given by

$`C(\xi _i)=({\displaystyle \frac{N_{gen}(\xi _i)}{N_{gen}^{total}}})/({\displaystyle \frac{N_{det}(\xi _i)}{N_{det}^{total}}})`$ (4)
where $`N_{gen}^{total}`$ is the total number of generated Monte Carlo events for sample I, $`N_{det}^{total}`$ is the number of events which pass the hadron selection in II, and $`N_{gen}(\xi _i)`$ and $`N_{det}(\xi _i)`$ are the number of entries in the ith bin, respectively. These correction factors are determined with the LUARLW and JETSET Monte Carlo simulations at 3 GeV, where both Monte Carlo generators are valid. Their differences are included as systematic errors for all center-of-mass energies. Other systematic errors include variations due to selection criteria changes, etc.

The measured $`\xi `$ spectra at the six energies between 2.2 and 4.8 GeV are shown in Fig. 2. For each point, we add the statistical and systematic errors in quadrature. These spectra are fitted with Eq. 2 in the range $`0.5\xi \mathrm{ln}(0.5\sqrt{s}/p_0)`$, where $`p_00.35`$ GeV. The solid lines in the plots indicate the actual fitting range while the dashed line (outside the fitted range) indicate the QCD calculations using the fitted parameters, $`K_{LPHD}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff}`$, which are shown in Table 2. At 2.2 GeV the fit range is very restricted and little of the peak region remains for comparison with MLLA; therefore this point is excluded. The fitted values of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff}`$ increase with decreasing $`E_{cm}`$. The differences from varying fitting ranges are included as systematic errors.

Eq. 2 has a maximum in each $`\xi `$ spectrum as shown in Fig. 2. Using the fitted parameters $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff}`$ from Table 2, the peak positions, $`\xi ^{}`$, can be determined directly from the limiting spectrum (Eq. 2).

The peak positions can also be obtained by fitting a Gaussian or distorted Gaussian  over a limited range of $`1/N_{event}\times dN/d\xi 0.6(1/N_{event}\times dN/d\xi )_{max}`$. We choose the Gaussian fit since the distorted Gaussian gives consistent results but with larger errors due to the larger number of free parameters. The changes found when the fitting range is varied are included as systematic uncertainties. Table 3 lists the fitted results. The results of the two methods (pQCD prediction of Eq. 2 and fitted Gaussian form) are consistent at higher energies, and the differences between the two methods are also included in the systematic uncertainties.

The measured peak positions from this work are plotted in Fig. 3, together with those of high energy $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`ep`$ data. MLLA/LPHD predicts the energy dependence of the peak position, $`\xi ^{}`$, as

$$\xi ^{}=0.5Y+\sqrt{cY}c,$$
(5)
where $`Y=\mathrm{ln}(0.5\sqrt{s}/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff})`$ and $`c`$ is 0.2915 (0.3190) for three (four) active flavors. By fitting our data to Eq. 5 , we obtain $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff}=262\pm 9`$ MeV. This value is consistent with the results from OPAL , ZEUS  and CDF , which are $`263\pm 4`$, $`251\pm 14(ep)`$, and $`256\pm 13(p\overline{p})`$ MeV, respectively. However, our value disagrees with L3  and the result of Ref. , which are $`200\pm 3`$ and $`232\pm 3`$, respectively. Figure 3 shows that $`\xi ^{}`$ is approximately linear in $`\mathrm{ln}\sqrt{s}`$. A straight line fit of the BES results to $`\xi ^{}`$ as a function of $`\sqrt{s}`$ gives a gradient of $`0.779\pm 0.122`$. The gradients reported by OPAL , ZEUS  and H1  are $`0.637\pm 0.016`$, $`0.650\pm 0.077`$, and $`0.75\pm 0.05`$, respectively. Our result is somewhat larger.

## 6 Momentum spectrum

In order to study the behavior of low momentum particles, MLLA/LPHD introduces a Lorentz invariant variable $`\frac{1}{\sigma _{tot}}E\frac{d\sigma }{dp}`$, where $`E^2=P^2+Q_0^2`$ and $`Q_0=0.27`$ GeV . The six BES Lorentz invariant, charged particle momentum spectra are plotted in Fig. 4, together with those measured by other experiments at higher energy, up to 130 GeV. The tendency of the spectra to approximately converge at lower momenta is cited as evidence that hadron production at very small momentum $`p0.1`$ GeV is approximately energy independent. . This behavior has been explained in Ref.  as the coherent emission of low energy (i.e. long wavelength) gluons by the total color current.

## 7 Charged particle multiplicity and the second binomial moment

According to a NLO QCD calculation, the second binomial moment $`R_2`$ is given by

$`R_2={\displaystyle \frac{11}{8}}\left[1c\sqrt{\alpha _s(\sqrt{s})}\right]`$ (6)
with $`c=0.55(0.56)`$ for five (three) active flavors.

The charged multiplicity distributions are obtained using a method which was first employed by TASSO  and modified by H1 . Three steps are used to correct the measured unnormalized charged multiplicity distribution $`N_{det}^{exp}(i)`$, where $`i`$ is the number of observed tracks. The first step is to correct for detector effects and selection criteria. It is performed using Monte Carlo sample II with its hadron level information. For each event, the number of observed tracks $`j`$ with distribution $`N_{det}^{MC}(j)`$ is compared to the number of generated $`k`$ tracks with distribution $`N_{gen}^{MC}(k)`$. Denoting $`N_{jk}`$ as the number of events generated with $`k`$ tracks when $`j`$ tracks are observed and $`N_j`$ as the number of observed events with $`j`$ tracks, the correction matrix $`M(k,j)`$ is expressed as

$$M(k,j)=N_{jk}/N_j.$$
(7)
This matrix relates $`N_{det}^{MC}(j)`$ to $`N_{gen}^{MC}(k)`$ by

$`N_{gen}^{MC}(k)={\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}M(k,j)N_{det}^{MC}(j)`$ (8)
The second step is to correct for the presence of QED initial state radiation which results in a reduction of the nominal c.m. energy and thus changes the charged multiplicity. Therefore another set of correction factors is calculated according to

$$C_F(k)=\rho _{NR}(k)/\rho _{gen}(k),$$
(9)
where $`\rho _{NR}(k)`$ is the normalized multiplicity distribution for events generated at fixed c.m. energy without detector simulation and $`\rho _{gen}(k)`$ is the distribution $`N_{gen}^{MC}(k)`$ after normalization. Finally, the corrected multiplicity distribution $`N_{exp}^{corr}`$ reads

$`N_{exp}^{corr}(k)=C_F(k){\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}M(k,i)N_{det}^{exp}(i).`$ (10)
The final step is done to reduce bias that might be introduced by the Monte Carlo generator used . An iterative procedure is used where the predicted multiplicity at the hadron level is reweighted using the previously unfolded multiplicity. This is repeated until convergence is reached.

The measured multiplicity distributions at different energies are shown in Fig. 5 along with the Monte Carlo predictions. Figure 6 shows the energy dependence of the mean multiplicity defined as $`n_{ch}=\underset{n_{ch}=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}n_{ch}P(n_{ch})`$, where $`P(n_{ch})`$ is the probability to have $`n_{ch}`$ tracks.

Based on the measured multiplicity distributions, we obtain the second binomial moments $`R_2`$, which are displayed in Fig. 7, together with both NLO calculations and published data at higher energies up to 100 GeV from other $`e^+e^{}`$ experiments. Our measured $`R_2`$ values, though with large errors, are consistent with other measurements at higher energies. The $`R_2`$ value predicted by leading order QCD is significantly higher than the measured data, and while the NLO calculation comes closer to the data, the remaining disagreement of about $`0.07`$ in $`R_2`$ may indicate that $`R_2`$ is a sensitive probe for higher order QCD or non-perturbative effects.

## 8 Summary

Using BESII $`R`$ scan data, we have measured the inclusive momentum spectra, multiplicity distributions, and the second binomial moments at $`\sqrt{s}`$ 2 - 5 GeV in the continuum. These results are compared with data from other experiments at higher energies, and with QCD model calculations.

The parameters $`K_{LPHD}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{eff}`$ obtained by fitting the limiting spectra are compatible with those of the ZEUS, CDF, and OPAL experiments. However, the deviations become larger at energies below $`3`$ GeV.

The second binomial moment $`R_2`$ determined by the BES experiment, though with large errors, are lower than what is predicted to NLO. This is consistent with the long standing discrepancy between the NLO calculation and high energy data from $`e^+e^{}`$ experiments .

To further reduce the uncertainties of our measurements and test QCD model calculations to a precision of a few percent, higher statistics data collected with a better detector are needed. This could be one of the interesting physics goals of the CLEOc and BESIII projects .

## 9 Acknowledgment

We thank the IHEP Accelerator, Computing and BES/BEPC Support divisions. We are especially grateful to Prof. W. Ochs for his help on MLLA/LPHD theory and providing the experimental $`e^+e^{}`$ data at high energy in Fig. 4.

This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contracts No. 19991480, No. 19805009 and No. 19825116; the Chinese Academy of Sciences under contract No. KJ 95T-03, No. E-01 (IHEP) and No. X-45 (IHEP); and by the Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FG03-93ER40788 (Colorado State University), DE-AC03-76SF00515 (SLAC), DE-FG03-94ER40833 (U Hawaii), DE-FG03-95ER40925 (UT Dallas).


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# Introduction

## Introduction

A spherical mirror Fabry-Perot interferometer in the confocal configuration has many advantages over plano-plano interferometers, such as easier construction and alignment. These interferometers are used in a variety of spectroscopic applications, including laser spectrum analysis and generating frequency markers for laser frequency scans. Here we describe how one can employ a spherical mirror interferometer to produce fringes with significantly smaller free spectral range ($`FSR`$=frequency interval between adjacent transmission peaks) by adjusting the mirror separation to specific values different from the confocal condition1. This is useful when closely- or variably-spaced frequency markers are required.

## Theory

Consider a symmetric optical resonator consisting of two spherical mirrors with radius of curvature $`R`$, separated by a distance $`L`$ in the $`\widehat{z}`$ direction2. The optical modes in this resonator are well approximated by the Hermite-Gaussian modes (in the paraxial approximation), with $`\widehat{x}`$ and $`\widehat{y}`$ direction transverse mode numbers $`n,m`$ corresponding to the number of null points in the transverse intensity profile (Fig. 1). In free space, a Gaussian beam with transverse mode numbers $`n,m`$ experiences an additional phase shift in passing through a focal region of $`(m+n+1)\pi `$ (the Gouy phase shift) relative to a plane wave. In a resonator, the beam is confined to a finite region around the focal point, so that the total Gouy phase shift is reduced. In this case, the phase shift experienced by the beam with wavelength $`\lambda `$ in a double pass (of distance $`2L`$) of the resonator is

$$\phi (k=m+n)=2\pi \frac{2L}{\lambda }2(k+1)\mathrm{arccos}\left[1\frac{L}{R}\right],$$
(1)
where the first term represents the phase shift that would be experienced by a plane wave, and the second term is the total Gouy phase shift inside the resonator. The resonance condition is that the round trip phase shift $`\phi (k)=2\pi q`$, where $`q`$ is an integer (the axial mode number). Substituting this condition into Eq. 1, gives the resonance frequencies:

$$\nu (q,k)=\frac{c}{2L}\left(q+\frac{k+1}{\pi }\mathrm{arccos}\left[1\frac{L}{R}\right]\right).$$
(2)
Without mode-matching (i.e. preferential coupling into a single mode), one typically excites many transverse modes of the interferometer. For example, for the interferometer used in the present work ($`R=2.5`$ cm, $`L2.5`$ cm, $`\lambda =780`$ nm), the size of the fundamental transverse mode on a mirror is $`w\left(L\lambda /\pi \right)^{1/2}0.1`$ mm. Since the width of higher transverse modes with index $`m`$ is roughly $`w\sqrt{m}`$, if we illuminate the input mirror with a laser beam, for example, of a width $`1`$ mm, we expect that transverse modes with $`m<m_{max}100`$ will be excited (and even higher modes if the beam is offset from the axis). Similarly, we have $`n<m_{max}`$ for the other transverse direction. As Eq. 2 indicates, the frequencies of the transverse modes generally do not coincide with those of the axial modes, producing a complex and irregular pattern of fringes at the output as a function of the input laser frequency. As the mirror separation is changed, the frequencies of the transverse modes move with respect to those of the axial modes (Fig. 2). In the confocal configuration (where $`L=R`$), every other transverse mode becomes degenerate with an axial mode, producing a pattern of fringes with half the axial spacing ($`FSR=c/(4L)`$). This removes the need for mode matching and is one of the reasons a confocal interferometer is particularly useful3.

If the mirror separation is adjusted away from the confocal condition, we can find higher-order degeneracies where every $`N^{th}`$ transverse mode is degenerate with an axial mode, i.e. $`\nu (q,k+N)=\nu (q+l,k)`$, where $`N,l`$ are integers. The output fringes in this case have smaller $`FSR=c/(2LN)`$. From Eq. 2, one obtains the resonance conditions

$$\frac{L}{R}=1\mathrm{cos}\left[\frac{l\pi }{N}\right];l,N\text{ mutually prime,}l<N.$$
(3)
The additional conditions are added to avoid double counting resonances with higher degeneracies.

The appearance of resonances corresponding to different values of $`N`$ may also be understood in the ray-tracing approach applied in Ref. 4. In that work, the relation of the extra cavity resonances to the appearance of closed ray paths and applications to laser resonators and absorption cells are discussed. For an arbitrary mirror separation, a light ray (coming into the cavity off-axis) never overlaps with its original location on the mirror. However, in the confocal configuration, the beam returns to its original position after traversing the cavity four times (Fig. 3). Two spots may usually be observed where the beam hits the output mirror and is partially transmitted. At certain mirror spacings (given by Eq. 3), different from the confocal separation, the beam returns to its original position after making more than four traversals. In this situation, $`N`$ spots are observed, where $`N`$ corresponds to the resonance number described above.

## Apparatus

In recent years, inexpensive home-made confocal devices have found broad application both in research and instruction laboratories. In our design5 (Fig. 4), the body of the interferometer is constructed of two fine-threaded metal pipes. One pipe threads into the other allowing accurate adjustment of the mirror separation. A standard concave mirror (intensity reflectivity $`=9598\%`$, radius of curvature $`R=2.5`$ cm) is glued directly to one of the pipes. The second identical mirror is glued to a piezo-ceramic hollow cylinder, which, in turn, is glued to the second metal pipe. Application of voltage between the walls of the piezo-ceramic tube displaces the mirror, providing frequency tuning of the interferometer, typically, by several free spectral ranges per 100 V. While scanning the interferometer and observing the transmission fringes, one adjusts the average mirror separation to achieve the confocal (or higher-order degeneracy) condition (tolerance $`10^2`$ mm), where the width of the observed transmission peaks is minimal and their amplitude is at a maximum. Once the desired separation between the mirrors is found, the spacing may be fixed by tightening the retaining nut.

## Experimental Results

We have investigated the properties of the device described above at mirror separations different from the confocal separation. Narrow-band light from a commercial diode laser at $`\lambda =780`$ nm was directed into the interferometer. The mirror separation was scanned by applying voltage to the piezo-ceramic cylinder, and the output fringes were observed. The average mirror separation was adjusted to values corresponding to resonances given by Eq. 3. We were able to produce well-resolved fringes with $`N`$ up to 15 (Fig. 5), and measured the mirror spacings corresponding to the resonances. Since a smaller number of modes are degenerate between each other for $`N>2`$ compared to the confocal case, the peak transmission of the interferometer is reduced, roughly as $`2/N`$. The widths of the transmission peaks corresponding to a given mode are mostly determined by the mirrors’ reflectivity and do not change with $`N`$. Thus, the effective finesse (the ratio of $`FSR`$ to the transmission peak width at half maximum) of the device also scales as $`2/N`$. However, the decrease in $`FSR`$ as $`N`$ increases results in fringes with small adjustable $`FSR`$, which allows the use of a single compact device in place of multiple interferometers of much greater length. The measured mirror separations corresponding to the resonances coincided with the prediction of the theory of Eq. 3 within experimental uncertainty of $`7`$ microns. The predicted and measured values of $`L/R`$ are shown in Fig. 6.

Examples of experimental transmission patterns of an interferometer with mirror separation in the vicinity of a confocal resonance and a resonance with $`N=15`$ are given in Figure 7. This Figure also shows the Doppler-limited absorption spectrum of the Rb D2 line (Fig. 7c). While the confocal fringes are adequate as frequency markers for the Doppler-broadened scan, the higher order fringes are useful for higher resolution scans, e.g. when a scan extends over just one of the four peaks shown in Fig. 7c. which is often the case in Doppler-free spectroscopy6,5.

This work has been supported by NSF, grant PHY-9733479 and by ONR, grant N00014-97-1-0214.

## REFERENCES

D. Budker, S. Rochester, and V. V. Yashchuk, Rev. Sci. Instr. 71(8), (2000).

In this discussion we follow the approach given by A. E. Siegman. Lasers, University Science Books, Mill Valley, California, 1986.

As the transverse mode number increases, the paraxial approximation breaks down. In order to limit the order of the transverse modes excited, we require that $`\rho ^4/R^3<\lambda /100`$, where $`\rho `$ is a typical size characterizing the width and offset from the axis of the input laser beam. This means that $`\rho `$ is limited to $`1mm`$ for the interferometers used in this work. Larger beam sizes and offsets lead to broader and asymmetric transmission peaks.

D. Herriott, H. Kogelnik, and R. Kompner, Appl. Opt. 3(4), 523(1964).

D. Budker, D. J. Orlando, and V. Yashchuk, Am. J. Phys. 67, 584 (1999).

W. Demtr$`\ddot{\mathrm{o}}`$der. Laser specroscopy, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New-York, 1998.


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# GMRT detection of HI 21 cm associated absorption towards the z=1.2 red quasar 3C 190

## 1 Introduction

It was suggested more than three decades ago that the study of HI 21 cm-line absorption at high redshifts would provide interesting and important information regarding the distribution and kinematics of neutral hydrogen at earlier epochs (Bahcall and Ekers 1969). The central regions of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are important in understanding many aspects of AGN phenomena like the fueling on to the accretion disk and the obscuration of the nuclei as proposed in the unified scheme. One way to study the central region in AGNs is to search for HI 21 cm-line absorption at the redshift of the AGN host galaxy against the radio source. The absorption can be due to a variety of phenomena like tori, outflows, the inter stellar medium (ISM), cold clouds and cold gas stirred up during merging of neighbors with the host galaxy (cf. Morganti et al. 2001).

The red quasars have generated interest particularly since the work of Webster et al. (1995) claiming that a large fraction ($``$ 80 %) of quasars could be missed from optical surveys due to dust extinction. It is believed that in this class of quasars, the extinction due to dust is higher (Webster et al. 1995); however, there are claims that red quasars are not necessarily dusty (eg: Benn et al. 1998). If the red quasars are dusty, then the number of high column density absorption-line systems seen towards optically selected quasars will also be an underestimate. Carilli et al. (1998; hereinafter C98) have searched for HI 21 cm-line absorption in a radio-loud red quasar subsample at moderate redshifts (z $``$ 0.7) to address whether the ’red’ AGNs are intrinsically red or reddened by dust. In their sample of five red quasars, four showed significant HI absorption, suggesting the presence of large amounts of gas and associated dust. Even though the number is small, this study showed that the success rate for detecting HI 21 cm-line absorption in radio-loud red quasars is higher (80 %) compared to an optically selected sample of radio-loud quasars with Mg II or Lyman alpha absorption (C98, Carilli et al. 1999). This opens up a new class of objects which can be studied in 21-cm absorption at higher redshifts, where the optically selected sample has strong bias against high column density systems with high dust-to-gas ratios (Fall and Pei 1993 1995).

We have started a program to search for HI 21 cm-line absorption in a sample of high redshift (z $`>`$ 1) radio-loud ’red’ quasars and galaxies with the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT, Swarup et al. 1991). At higher redshifts, the optical/IR morphologies of the host galaxies tend to be more complex, possibly due to ongoing merging activity leading to the formation of massive ellipticals at later epochs (Chambers and Miley 1990). Such activity (i) might enhance the probability of detecting HI 21 cm-line absorption (eg: Carilli and van Gorkom 1992) and (ii) could also contribute to reddening.

3C 190 is a compact steep spectrum (CSS) radio source. Its largest angular size is 4.0 arcsec and corresponding linear size is 33 kpc (assuming H=71kms-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ = 0.27 and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{vac}`$ = 0.73 ). The bright hotspots are separated by 2.6 arcsec, or a linear size of 22 kpc which means the hotspots may be just within the envelope of the host galaxy (Spencer et al. 1991). Compact steep spectrum sources and compact symmetric objects appear to show a high incidence of HI absorption (Conway 1996). High resolution radio observations of 3C 190 suggest one-sided jet-like structure towards the south-west of the core (Spencer et al. 1991). The large scale jet in this direction is also brighter. The core is self-absorbed at 608 MHz (Nan Rendong et al. 1991). There appears to be significant bending between the milli-arcsec scale jet and the kpc scale jet. The milli-arcsec scale jet is directed towards the west (Hough et al. 2002), while on larger scales the jet has bent towards south-west ending with multiple hotspots. The diffuse lobe in this direction is further towards south-west ($``$ 1.5 arcsec) and also misaligned (Spencer et al. 1991). This is suggestive of the presence of a dense inter stellar medium (ISM) causing the jet to bend. Recent detailed optical spectroscopy of this object showed narrow \[O II\], \[Ne III\] and C III\] emission lines, which provide a redshift of 1.1946$`\pm `$0.0005 (Stockton and Ridgway 2001). In addition, Mg I, Fe II and strong Mg II absorption has also been detected, but at a slightly higher redshift of 1.19565$`\pm `$0.00004, corresponding to an infall velocity of 145 kms-1 in the quasar frame (Stockton and Ridgway 2001). We adopt the redshift of 1.1946$`\pm `$0.0005 determined from narrow emission lines as the systemic redshift of the quasar. Its optical to infra-red continuum falls steeply, causing it to be classified as a ”red” quasar (Simpson and Rawlings 2000; Smith and Spinrad 1980). The presence of strong Mg II absorption close to the systemic redshift suggests the presence of intervening gas and dust, which may also be responsible for reddening the quasar spectrum and causing the bending of radio jets. Higher chance of detection of HI 21 cm-line absorption from 3C 190 was foreseen due to two factors: (i) it is a CSS radio source. Associated optical/UV absorption is most common in CSS quasars among radio-loud quasars (Baker et al. 2002), and CSS also shows higher chance of detecting HI 21 cm-line absorption (Conway 1996). (ii) it is also a ”red” quasar which again shows higher chance of detecting HI 21 cm-line absorption (C98).

In this paper, we report the detection of HI 21 cm-line absorption from the red quasar 3C190, which is blue-shifted with respect to the systemic redshift. In Section 2 observations and results are presented. The HI 21 cm-line absorption detected in 3C190 is discussed in Section 3. Conclusions are presented in Section 4.

## 2 Observations and Results

The observations were carried out using the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) during September 2001. The first set of observations adopted a bandwidth of 4 MHz centered at 647.5 MHz. Subsequently, two sets of observations each with a bandwidth of 8 MHz centered at 646.7 MHz and 648.7 MHz were repeated to confirm the detection from the first set of observations. The integration time on source was $``$ 3 hr in each set of observations. The velocity resolutions were $``$ 29 kms-1 and $``$ 14.5 kms-1 for bandwidths of 8 MHz and 4 MHz respectively. The flux densities were estimated by observing the standard primary calibrators 3C286 or 3C48. The bandpass calibrators 3C 48, 3C147 and 3C 286 were observed at the beginning as well as at the end of the observation in order to check for bandpass stability with time. Phase calibrators were observed for 10 minutes every 30 minutes.

The data obtained from the GMRT were converted to FITS and analysed using the Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS) following standard procedures. About 20 line-free channels were collapsed to obtain a continuum image. A few iterations of phase-only self-calibration were performed followed by amplitude and phase self-calibration. These calibrations were then applied to the spectral line data. The continuum flux density of 3C 190 at 647 MHz is 5.69 Jy. The continuum flux density for subtracting from the spectral data was obtained by averaging several line-free channels. The final spectral cube was made from this continuum subtracted data.

Initially, individual spectra were obtained from the two 8 and one 4 MHz observations to check for consistency. The individual spectra were then averaged to obtain the final spectrum which is presented in Figure 1. The systemic redshift and the relative velocity of the associated optical absorption system (Stockton and Ridgway 2001) are marked in Figure 1. The RMS noise in the averaged spectrum is $``$ 2 mJy/beam/channel. We have used the standard GIPSY package to fit Gaussians to the observed spectra. A minimum of 5 Gaussians were required to minimise the residuals. The estimated parameters of the fit are given in Table 1.

The most interesting finding from our observations is that most of the HI 21 cm-line absorption in 3C 190 is blue-shifted with respect to the systemic redshift (Figure 1). The peak of the absorption occurs at a velocity of $``$210 kms-1, but the overall absorption is very broad, extending from $`400`$ kms-1 to +200 kms-1. The velocity uncertainties in systemic redshift is 68 kms-1 and that of Mg II absorption system is 5.5 kms-1. The components 1, 2 and 3 are significantly blue-shifted with respect to the systemic redshift, while component 4 is within the uncertainty in the systemic redshift. Component 5 at 127 kms-1 is outside the uncertainty in the Mg II absorption system and the uncertainty in the systemic redshift. The three blue-shifted lines also have larger optical depths than lines 4 and 5. Component 1 at -293 kms-1 has an optical depth of $``$ 0.005 and the second component at -210 kms-1 has an optical depth of $``$ 0.01. The optical depth of component 3 is comparable to that of component 1, but FWHM is nearly half of component 1. Components 2 and 3 have comparable FWHM, but optical depth of component 3 is less than half of component 1. The FWHM of fifth component is comparable to component 1, with optical depth nearly half. Component 4 is well within uncertainty in the systemic redshift, and is broadest of all components with FWHM of 179 kms-1.

## 3 Discussion

A few cases of blue-shifted HI 21 cm-line absorption with respect to the systemic redshift are reported in the literature. A nearby CSS (z = 0.06393) PKS B1814$``$63, exhibits an HI absorption spectrum similar to that seen in 3C 190, viz, a broad shallow feature and blue-shifted deep absorption (Morganti et al. 2001). A similar absorption profile is also seen in the radio galaxy 4C 12.50 (Mirabel 1989) where the overall absorption extends over 900 kms-1. Another compact radio galaxy, 3C 459, also shows HI absorption blue-shifted with respect to systemic redshift, though weaker than PKS 1814$``$63 (Morganti et al. 2001). The authors suggest that the blue-shift could be due to outflow, possibly associated with the jet/lobes, and the shallow component seen at the systemic redshift is due to a circumnuclear disk. Significantly blue-shifted HI 21 cm-line absorption has also been seen in several Seyfert galaxies. In IC 5063, the HI 21 cm-line absorption is blue-shifted by more than 600 kms-1 (Oosterloo et al. 2000) with respect to the systemic redshift. They suggest that the HI 21 cm-line absorption could be occurring from the gas which has been shocked by the western radio jet. The moderate blue-shift of HI 21 cm-line absorption observed in NGC 1068 and NGC 3079 is suggested to be due to neutral gas participating in the outflow (Gallimore et al. 1994).

In the case of 3C 190, the striking aspect is that the HI 21 cm-line absorption is broad and complex and most of the absorption is blue-shifted with respect to systemic redshift (Figure 1). The total velocity extent is about 600 kms-1. The absorption is not against the core because the core is self-absorbed at this frequency. The flux limit for the core is $`<`$ 4 mJy (Nan Rendong et al. 1991), whereas the absorbed flux is up to 70 mJy. In the current observations, 3C 190 remains unresolved. In the arcsec resolution map of 3C 190, there are two hotspots in the south-west direction, and are brighter than the north-east hotspot (Spencer et al. 1991). The fluxes of individual hotspots are about a Jy and more at 608 MHz (Nan Rendong et al. 1991). The total projected extent of hotspots in the south-west and north-east is about 22 kpc, hence these hotspots may lie within the envelope of the host galaxy environment. At this linear scale, there is also evidence for diffuse radio emission (Pearson et al. 1985) which is mostly north of the radio core. Significant HI 21 cm-line absorption can occur against one or all of these. The diffuse lobe in the south west is further away (1.5 arcsec) from bright hotspots (Pearson et al. 1985), and may lie outside the host galaxy, hence it is less likely to expect HI 21 cm-line absorption against this diffuse lobe.

Even though it is not possible to say which absorption-line is towards which radio component, we can draw indirect conclusions from the known radio and optical morphologies and properties. From the radio image at arc-sec resolution, we see that the south-west diffuse lobe and the farthest hotspot in this direction are mis-aligned (Spencer et al. 1991). The immediate surroundings of 3C 190 have been studied in imaging as well as in spectroscopy in great detail using HST and Keck (Stockton and Ridgway 2001). The most interesting feature revealed from the HST observations is a linear knotty optical filament along north-west, very close to the quasar and overlapping (in projection) with the south-west hotspot. Spectroscopy of the linear filament reveals interesting features. The \[O II\] line profile clearly divides into low velocity dispersion ($`\sigma 40`$ kms-1) and high velocity dispersion ($`\sigma 200`$ kms-1) groups. The higher velocity dispersion indicates that the gas might have been shocked in some way by the interaction with the jet thereby increasing the turbulent velocity in this region significantly. In the radio map also, there is evidence for jet bending in this region (Stockton and Ridgway 2001), which indicates the presence of a dense medium.

Thus it appears that the overall environment under which the HI 21 cm-line absorption is occurring in 3C 190 appears to be similar to that of IC 5063, where neutral gas has been shocked by the radio jet. Velocities up to 500 kms-1 are expected from shocks (Dopita & Sutherland 1995). Due to shocks, the neutral gas could acquire significant bulk motion but the internal velocities might not increase significantly. Such clouds could produce reasonably narrow lines (FWHM $``$ 100 kms-1 or less), but significantly blue-shifted, such as the lines 1, 2 and 3 in 3C 190 (Table 1), where the FWHM is 115, 67 and 59 kms-1 respectively, but are blue-shifted by 293, 210 and 142 kms-1 with respect to the systemic redshift.

The optical linear filament which shows high velocity dispersion gas overlaps (in projection) with the south-west hotspot (Stockton and Ridgway 2001). This is suggestive of interaction of the jet with the dense ambient medium responsible for changing the direction of the jet. Thus we can expect that the three blue-shifted absorption-lines (1, 2 and 3) in 3C 190 could be arising from this region. Only one of the absorption-line component (component 4) in 3C 190 is very broad (FWHM of 179 kms-1). This component is well within the uncertainty in the systemic redshift and could be due to more turbulent gas near the region of interaction of radio jet with the ambient medium. Thus, we suggest that lines 1, 2, 3 and 4 are likely to be against the south-west hotspots. The fifth line has a velocity of 127 kms-1, which is outside the uncertainty of Mg II absorption system and the uncertainty in the systemic redshift. Since the FWHM of this line is not too narrow (115 kms-1), it could be from the ISM of the host galaxy.

## 4 Conclusions

We have reported the GMRT detection of HI 21 cm-line absorption in the z=1.1946 red quasar 3C 190. The absorption, with peak at $``$ 647.7 MHz, is broad and complex, spanning a velocity width of $``$ 600 kms-1. Most of the absorption is blue-shifted with respect to the systemic redshift. 3C 190 is unresolved with the present observations. Since the core is self-absorbed at this frequency the absorption must be towards the hotspots. Comparison of the radio and deep optical images reveal linear filaments in the optical which overlap with the brighter radio jet in the south-west direction. We therefore suggest that the blue-shifted HI 21 cm-line absorption could be occurring in the atomic gas shocked by the south-west jet.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Rajaram Nityananda, Jayaram Chengalur and Chris Carilli for comments on the manuscript. We thank the referee for meticulously reading the manuscript and for constructive suggestions. We thank the staff of the GMRT that made these observations possible. GMRT is run by the National Center for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).


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# An Optical Lattice of Ring Traps

\[

## Abstract

A new geometry of optical lattice is proposed, namely a lattice made of a 1D stack of ring traps. It is obtained though the interference pattern of two counterpropagating beams: one of the beam is a standard gaussian beam, while the other one is a hollow beam obtained through a setup with two conical lenses. The resulting lattice is shown to have a high filling rate and a good confinement, so that it could be loaded directly from a MOT with applications in the domain of quantum computing, or with a Bose-Einstein condensate, which would have in this case a 1D ring geometry.

\]

Optical lattices are obtained by dropping atoms in the interference pattern of coherent laser beams. Atoms undergo a force whose potential is proportionnal to the light intensity, so that cold atoms are located in confined sites, corresponding to the maximal (zero) intensity for bright (dark) lattices. By varying the shape of the interference pattern, atoms can be manipulated with an extreme precision and a relative ease: because of these possibilities, optical lattices have recently attracted increasing interest in various domains. Indeed, lattices may be loaded with atoms cooled in a magneto-optical trap (MOT), or with a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Several spectacular results have been obtained recently with the latter configuration, as e.g. the realization of a BEC coherent accelerator and multiphoton beam-splitter, and the experimental demonstration of the quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator. It is also possible to study more fundamental properties of the BEC, as e.g. their free expansion in a low-dimensionnal lattice, or their collective excitations. Another attractive research field concerns low-dimensional BEC. In particular, recent experiments have demonstrated the formation of bright solitons in a 1D BEC with attractive interactions. These experiments have been realized with simple waveguides, and thus a linear geometry of the BEC. Optical lattices could enable the use of more complex geometries, leading in particular to ring traps, in which BECs should exhibit new properties.

Optical lattices are also a key system in the realization of quantum computers with neutral atoms. The qubits are the two-level atoms trapped in the lattice sites, and the interaction occurs through a cold collision between two atoms in neighboring sites. This requires to produce a lattice with at least one atom by site, a good confinement of the atoms in each site and a decoherence as low as possible. When the lattice is loaded from a MOT, the first condition is not fulfilled, simply because of the relative weak atomic density in the MOT (typically 1011 atoms/cm3), as compared to the relative high density of sites in the lattice (typically 1013 sites/cm3 in a 3D square lattice). A possibility is to limit the number of sites by using a 1D lattice, but in this case, the other conditions are not fulfilled. Indeed, if a bright lattice is used, the interactions of the trapped atoms with the light field is maximal, and the coupling between atoms and light modifies, through different physical processes, the light field, and disturb the trapping and cooling mechanisms. Moreover, when such a lattice is near resonance, it induces decoherence, whereas at large detuning, the confinement of atoms, linked to the wavelength of light, decreases. In the same way, when a dark lattice is used, the atoms are not trapped, except in the particular situation of a lattice of toroidal trap. But in the proposed configurations, the radial confinement is low, of the order of the beam waist. Until today, the only lattices able to strongly confine atoms with fluorescence rates of the order of 1 s, were the 3D dark lattices. Therefore, a solution for a high filling rate is to increase the density of the atoms dropped in a 3D dark lattice, by using a BEC. However, note that in this case, the BEC is not use for its particular coherent properties, but only because it makes possible the access to higher atomic densities.

We propose here a new lattice geometry, where each site is a ring trap, while the site density is typically 108 sites/cm$`^3.`$ Thanks to its properties, in particular the high confinement of the sites, and to its great adaptability, many applications of such a lattice can be considered. In particular, it can be loaded with a BEC, and thus could produce a 1D ring BEC, but thanks to the low density of sites, it can also be loaded directly with a MOT. The paper is organized as follows: we first discuss the principle of the lattice of ring traps, then describe the experimental realization, and finally show basic results concerning atoms loaded in the lattice.

Each individual trap is a 3D dark ring, and the lattice is a 1D stack of such rings. Thus, the global shape of the potential is a bright full cylinder with a pile of ring wells inside. Such potentials can easily be obtained by making the interference of a standard gaussian beam with a counterpropagating hollow beam, as illustrated schematically in fig. 1a. Both beams have the same blue detuned frequency, so that the trapping sites correspond to the zero intensity sites. They propagate along the $`z`$ vertical axis with the same polarization, and the hollow beam has an inverse gaussian distribution along the radial direction $`r`$, with a zero intensity in its center. The interference pattern is shown on fig. 1b through the longitudinal evolution of the transverse distribution. When the two beams are out of phase (on the figure, in $`z=\lambda /4+n\lambda /2`$ with $`n`$ integer and $`\lambda `$ the wavelength), two zeros of intensity appear symmetrically on each side of the center. Because of the cylindrical symmetry, these zeros correspond to a unique ring along the azimutal direction. On the contrary, when the two beams have the same phase (in $`z=n\lambda /2`$), the intensity profile reaches its maximum. This interference pattern results in a potential $`U`$ which is, in the limit of weak saturation and large detuning, proportional to the light intensity $`I`$:

$$U=\frac{\mathrm{}}{8}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }}\frac{I}{I_S}$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the detuning, $`I_S`$ the saturation intensity and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ the width of the atomic transition. This potential is a stack of rings separated by $`\lambda /2`$. Each ring has a radius $`r`$ of the order of the waist $`w_0`$ of the gaussian beam, and a thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ also of the order of $`w_0`$. If $`z`$ is chosen as the vertical axis, the cylindrical symmetry of the potential is not broken by gravity.

In the context described above, two main properties of the lattice must be optimized: (i) the filling rate, and (ii) the confinement in the $`z`$ and $`r`$ directions. As the number of sites is fixed, the former is only linked to the number of atoms loaded in the lattice.. This number is of the order of the lattice volume, i.e. $`\pi r^2L`$, where $`L`$ is the fixed length of the lattice, corresponding to the diameter of the atomic cloud used to load it. Thus in order to increase the filling rate, $`r`$ must be chosen as large as possible. On the other hand, the confinement following the $`r`$ direction is linked to the radial thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ of the rings, which accordingly must be chosen as small as possible. Therefore, the simple example given in Fig. 1, appears not to be optimal for our lattice, as both $`r`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ are proportional to $`w_0`$, while they should on the contrary be independent, in order to be adjusted separately. Moreover, an inverse gaussian beam has the disadvantage to concentrate most of the energy in the sides of the beam, where it is not useful. To summarize, a good configuration should concentrate most of the light intensity in the vicinity of $`r`$, and make $`r`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ independent.

To obtain these properties, we use a hollow beam produced by a conical lens, as described in . The conical lens is an axicon, i.e. an optical system that produces a line focus rather than a point focus from incident collimated beam. Axicons are extensively used to produce Bessel-Gauss beams or annular beams. The standard construction to generate an annular hollow beam is a doublet made by a converging lens and a conical lens, as illustrated in fig. 2a: the incident gaussian beam is transformed in a ring, as each part of the beam is deviated towards the optical axis $`z`$. In fact, because of the diffraction on the lens vertex, the resulting beam exhibits, inside the main ring, secondary rings of lower intensity . However, these rings can be easily removed with a mask, leading to a resulting annular beam with typically 80% of the intensity of the initial gaussian beam distributed in the unique ring (Fig. 3a). A second conical lens is used to collimate the radius $`r`$ of the ring, so that after this second lens, $`r`$ becomes constant with $`z`$ (Fig. 2b). Note that the beam is not really collimated, as its waist, which is now the thickness of the ring, evolves following the usual rules of propagation. In particular, the lens L in Fig. 2b produces a beam with a minimum thickness in M, where the mask used to suppress the secondary rings is located. The resulting hollow beam has a radius $`r`$ essentially dependent on the distance between the two conical lenses, while its thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ depends on the focal length of L. Thus $`r`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ are adjustable independently.

The potential is obtained by focusing the gaussian beam and the counterpropagating hollow beam at the same point, so that the wave surfaces are planes perpendicular to the propagation axis. The resulting potential has a periodicity of $`\lambda /2`$, with a shape depending locally on the phase $`\varphi `$ between the two beams. It is illustrated through the theoretical plots of Figs. 3b and 4 where, for sake of simplicity, we used the parameters of experimental demonstration: the hollow and gaussian intensities are respectively $`I_A=30`$ mW and $`I_G=15`$ mW (fig. 3a), both beams are polarized $`\sigma ^+`$, with $`\mathrm{\Delta }/2\pi =250`$ GHz. Fig. 3b shows the potential transverse profile at the bottom of the wells. The geometry of the ring appears clearly, with a confinement of the order of $`r/10`$ for $`U<150E_r`$, and a height for the external barrier of $`650E_r`$. Secondary minima originating in the residual diffraction produced by the mask, appear inside the main ring, but because of their weak depth, they should not be annoying in most applications. A better understanding of the potential distribution can be obtained from Fig. 4, where $`U`$ is plotted in gray scale versus $`r`$ and $`z`$. The potential is constituted by an external barrier, the height of which varies with $`z`$. The minimum height $`U_A=650E_r`$, in point A of Fig. 4, occurs at the same $`z`$ as the zero (Fig. 3b). The internal barrier has a channel structure, with the lowest pass in point B (Fig. 4), at a height of $`U_B=110E_r`$, between two successive longitudinal sites. Atoms with low enough energy are confined in a torus with a half-ellipse cross-section with axes of the order of 0.1 $`\mu `$m and 10 $`\mu `$m. The diameter of the torus may be chosen of several hundreds of $`\mu `$m, leading to a large capture volume. For example, with $`r=100`$ $`\mu `$m (Fig. 4) and an initial cloud of diameter 1 mm, 6 % of the initial atoms are inside the external cylinder. Thus if the lattice is loaded with a cloud of $`10^7`$ atoms in 1 mm3, which are the typical characteristics obtained from a MOT, $`6\times 10^5`$ atoms are loaded in 2000 sites, leading to a filling rate much larger than 1. Thus the potential appears to hold the required properties, i.e. a 2D confinement and a high filling rate.

To test the feasibility of this lattice, we have implemented an experiment with the characteristics described above. Atoms of Cesium are initially cooled in a standard MOT with a detuning of $`3\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ from resonance. At time $`t=40`$ ms, the magnetic field is turned off, while at time $`t=30`$ ms, the detuning is increased to $`5\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the trap beam intensity is decreased: this sequence allows us to obtain at time $`t=0`$ a molasse with a temperature of 15 $`\mu `$K, corresponding to an energy of $`75E_r`$, and 107 atoms in typically 1 mm3.

The hollow and gaussian beams are produced by two diode lasers injected by a single master diode laser in an extended cavity, which ensure the same frequency for both beams. For this demonstration, the beams are tuned $`250`$ GHz above the atomic transition, and are $`\sigma ^+`$ polarized, in order to increase the depth of the potential wells. In these conditions, the power of the gaussian and hollow beam, which are respectively 15 and 30 mW, are sufficient to reach the needed potential depth of $`100E_r`$. The gaussian beam has a minimum waist, at the level of the MOT, of 140 $`\mu `$m. The axicon setup is mounted on an optical rail, to guarantee a good stability of the beam. The two conical lenses, with a vertex angle of 2, are separated by 146 mm. With an incident collimated beam waist equal to 645 $`\mu `$m and a L focal length of 500 mm, we obtain a hollow beam with $`r1`$ mm and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r100`$ $`\mu `$m. A telescope located just before the trap reduces these values to $`r100`$ $`\mu `$m and $`\mathrm{\Delta }r10`$ $`\mu `$m. We obtain in the MOT a transverse distribution of the hollow beam which is in excellent agreement with the theoretical one.

To load the cold atoms inside the lattice, the later is turned on at a time $`t<0`$, so that when the molasse is switched off, the atoms are already distributed inside the wells. At time $`t=0`$, the atoms start to fall under the effect of gravity, except for those which are trapped in the lattice. The free atoms needs typically $`35`$ ms to quit the lattice zone, so that for $`t>35`$ ms, only trapped atoms remain. To observe the atoms, we switch on during some ms the trap laser beams near resonance, and we used a low-noise cooled CCD camera to detect the fluorescence emitted by the atoms. A typical picture is shown in fig. 5: as the resolution of the imaging setup is larger than $`\lambda /2`$, individual rings cannot be distinguished, and so atoms appear to be distributed on a cylinder, with a diameter widening at its ends, due to the defocusing of the beams. The typical number of atoms obtained at $`t=100`$ ms is $`2\times 10^4`$, leading to a filling rate of several atoms by sites.

In conclusion, we propose here a new lattice geometry, namely a 1D stack of ring traps, enabling large filling rates and high confinement of atoms. A preliminary experiment allows us to realize such a lattice, loading it directly from a MOT, with a typical filling rate of 10 atoms per site. Several improvements are necessary before to make such a lattice useful to e.g. the realization of a quantum gate. In particular, the detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ should be increased, together with the intensities of lattice beams. The method to load the cold atoms from a MOT in the lattice should be optimized. To avoid too much losses in the number of atoms, we plan to make this operation in two steps: first, the hollow beam is switched on just after the trap beams are switched off, so that the atoms inside the beam are trapped and remain in the cylinder. Then, the gaussian beam is switched on progressively, so that the atoms are adiabatically pushed in the ring traps. This precaution prevents the atoms to be heated by a sudden increasing of the potential. An interesting alternative would be to load the lattice with a Bose-Einstein condensate, leading to 1D BEC with a ring geometry.

The Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Atomes et Molécules is “Unité Mixte de Recherche de l’Université de Lille 1 et du CNRS” (UMR 8523). The Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Lasers et Applications (CERLA) is supported by the Ministère chargé de la Recherche, the Région Nord-Pas de Calais and the Fonds Européen de Développement Economique des Régions.


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# High-Resolution Spectroscopy of Gamma-Ray Lines from the X-Class Solar Flare of 23 July, 2002

## 1 Introduction

We report the first high-energy-resolution measurements of nuclear de-excitation lines in a solar flare. These lines were detected by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) during the GOES X4.8-class solar flare of 23 July, 2002, which occurred at coordinates S13E72 on the solar disk ($`73^\mathrm{o}`$ heliocentric angle). The characteristics of this flare are reviewed in depth in Lin et al. (2003).

Gamma-ray lines from inelastic interactions of accelerated ions with ambient nuclei in solar flares (Lingenfelter & Ramaty, 1967) were first observed by Chupp et al. (1973). The de-excitation lines can be Doppler shifted due to the nuclear recoils from the ion interaction and the emission of the gamma ray. The line profiles thus reveal the angular distribution of the interacting ions (Ramaty and Crannell, 1976). Accelerated protons and $`\alpha `$-particles produce narrow lines while accelerated heavy ions produce broad lines which merge together to form an underlying nuclear continuum. Share et al. (2002) analyzed an ensemble of gamma-ray line flares from the Solar Maximum Mission Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (SMM/GRS). They found that narrow lines exhibit $``$ 1% redshift for flares at small heliocentric angles, but are not appreciably shifted near the limb of the Sun. Their measurements are consistent with a distribution of interacting particles which is isotropic in the downward hemisphere and zero in the upward hemisphere.

Although the SMM/GRS data yielded useful measurements of some nuclear-line redshifts and put constraints on the line widths, the energy resolution of that instrument was moderate, averaging around 4% FWHM over the nuclear-line range. RHESSI (Lin et al., 2002) was designed to provide high-resolution measurements of the shape and redshift of de-excitation lines using cryogenically cooled germanium detectors to achieve an energy resolution averaging around 0.2% FWHM from 1–6 MeV (Smith et al., 2002).

## 2 Analysis and Results

The RHESSI spectrometer consists of nine coaxial germanium detectors, each divided into a $``$1 cm upper segment (which stops most hard x-rays) and a $``$7 cm rear segment. Here we use only data from the rear segments, which have most of the efficiency for stopping gamma-rays above 300 keV (Smith et al., 2002). Detector #2, which is operated in an unsegmented mode and has degraded energy resolution, was not used. The spectra in Figure 1 were accumulated from 00:27:20 to 00:43:20 UT on 23 July, 2002, an interval that includes most of the high-energy emission from this flare (Lin et al., 2003).

The flare intensity is roughly half the background level above $``$1 MeV. The instrumental gamma-ray background is caused by the interactions of cosmic rays and protons trapped in the radiation belts with materials in the spacecraft and the atmosphere. Every 15 orbits (about one day), the geomagnetic coordinates of the spacecraft approximately repeat themselves, and therefore so do the cosmic and trapped particle fluxes. Thus we model the background during the flare with the average of two spectra, taken 15 orbits before and after the flare, each of which is the same length as the flare observation itself. Above 3 MeV, however, we replaced this background spectrum with a different one using a full day’s integrated data. In this high-energy band the background is simple in form and nearly free of lines, so that we can can get an accurate background estimate with small statistical fluctuations, regardless of the exact orbital parameters, simply by rescaling the full-day integration to match the intensity of the $`\pm `$ 15-orbit spectrum.

The full spectrum (shown in Lin et al. (2003)) from 250 keV to 8.5 MeV was fitted with six bright de-excitation lines (Table 1) plus a broken power-law representing electron bremsstrahlung (the index hardens from 2.77 to 2.23 at a break energy of 617 keV). It was also necessary to represent two other components of the spectrum: the very broad lines from interactions of accelerated heavy ions with ambient hydrogen, and the faint lines from other proton- and $`\alpha `$-induced lines that cannot be measured individually. Within the statistical limitations of the data, the sum of these components is well-represented by three very broad Gaussians centered at 1845, 4358 and 6575 keV. Bright narrow lines were included from positron annihilation (Share et al., 2003a) and neutron capture (Murphy et al., 2003) at 511 keV and 2223 keV, respectively. Finally, weak lines at 1263 keV and 6918 keV of intermediate width were also included, representing expected features which are compounds of more than one line.

The fitting was done with the Spectral Executive (SPEX) package (Schwartz, 1996), taking into account the full diagonal and off-diagonal response of the instrument (Smith et al., 2002). The spectra for the six bright de-excitation lines are shown in Figure 1 and the fit parameters are given in Table 1. The features at $``$840 keV in the upper left panel of Figure 1 and $``$1807 keV in the lower left panel may be the 844 keV and 1809 keV solar de-excitation lines of aluminum (Kozlovsky, Murphy & Ramaty, 2002), but if so are at a surprisingly high flux. The effect of the instrumental resolution (about 3.0 keV at 847 keV, 4.1 keV at 1779 keV, and $``$ 10 keV at 6129 keV) has been removed from the width measurements, but, except for the 56Fe line, it is negligible compared to the solar line widths. The best-fit Gaussians and their zero-redshift versions are also shown in Figure 1. Zero redshift is visibly inconsistent with the data for most lines.

The redshifts and widths from Table 1 are shown in Figure 2. Heavier nuclei will recoil less from a collision with a proton or $`\alpha `$-particle, and will thus show less redshift and broadening. This trend is clearly visible. The expected relation is not exactly linear, since the average energy of the accelerated particles interacting with each nucleus depends on the the cross section for excitation. The neon line, which appears to have a redshift below the trend in Figure 2, has the lowest threshold for excitation.

## 3 Discussion

The sum of the fluences in the narrow lines of Table 1 is 137 ph cm-2. Share & Murphy (1995) calculated the total fluence in narrow lines for 19 X-class flares observed by SMM/GRS. Estimating the contribution of fainter lines not in Table 1 by comparison with the flares studied by Share & Murphy (1995) gives a total line fluence of about 180 ph cm-2 for this flare, similar to the brighter events from SMM/GRS, which include flares from GOES class X2.8 to X15.0.

Table 1 and Figure 2 also show SMM/GRS results from Share et al. (2002) for the average of five flares close to a heliocentric angle of $`74^\mathrm{o}`$. The most striking difference is the lack of redshift in the lines from carbon and oxygen, in significant disagreement with our result for the 23 July 2002 flare. The null redshift and high broadening in the SMM/GRS neon line are in marginal disagreement with RHESSI as well. The advantage of high energy resolution is clear: the RHESSI results are more precise using a single flare than the SMM/GRS result for the average of five flares, even though RHESSI is a smaller instrument. With more flares observed at high resolution, we will be able to tell whether this disagreement between RHESSI and SMM/GRS is due to intrinsic variations between flares or to the limitations of SMM’s moderate-resolution spectroscopy.

We use the modeling code of Murphy, Kozlovsky & Ramaty (1988), which allows an arbitrary angular distribution of interacting particles about an axis at an arbitrary angle to the observer ($`\theta `$). For particles distributed with respect to a radial field line, $`\theta `$ is equal to the heliocentric angle, 73o for this flare. The simulation generates separate gamma-ray spectra for $`\alpha `$-particles and protons, and includes the effects of nuclear recoil both from the interaction and the emission of the gamma ray. Thus, even a purely downward beam of incident protons gives broadened lines due to the range of recoil angles.

We simulated two angular distributions for the interacting ions: 1) isotropic within the forward hemisphere and zero in the hemisphere toward the observer, and 2) beamed directly forwards. Since we will explore the possibility that the magnetic field is not perpendicular to the solar surface, we will use “forward” to mean along the magnetic field away from the observer and “downward” to mean perpendicular to the solar surface.

Distributions with no forward bias, such as a fan beam or a full isotropic distribution, give no redshift and thus disagree strongly with the redshift values in Table 1. For each of the distributions, the viewing angle $`\theta `$ was run at 0o, 30o, 45o, 52o, 60o, and 73o. Interpolations along cos($`\theta `$) gave line shapes for intermediate angles. The proton and $`\alpha `$-particle energy spectra were modeled as power laws with index –3.75, and the $`\alpha `$/proton ratio was fixed at 0.5, both consistent with results from SMM/GRS (Share & Murphy, 1995, 1998). Figure 3 shows the 20Ne line shape predicted by the forward-isotropic model for a viewing angle of 30o.

For both models and each viewing angle, we fitted the model lineshapes (e.g. Figure 3) to the data, allowing the line fluences and the underlying broad lines and continuum to vary to minimize $`\chi ^2`$. Figure 4 shows the relative $`\chi ^2`$ for the two angular distributions and all viewing angles. The forward isotropic model is clearly a much better fit, but it fits best with a viewing angle of 30–40o. If the field lines of the loop were perpendicular to the solar surface at their base, where the ions interact, the viewing angle would be the heliocentric angle of the flare, 73o. This is inconsistent with the data at greater than 99% confidence. RHESSI’s ability to image gamma rays allows us to be certain that the line emission comes from near the flare, i.e. near 73o (Hurford et al., 2003).

We have run further simulations with power-law indices from –1.75 to –4.75 and $`\alpha `$/proton ratios from 0.0 to 2.5. In all cases the best-fit viewing angle for the forward isotropic case is close to 30–40o and inconsistent with 73o. Note that even the forward beam, which produces the maximum possible redshift of any distribution, still fits best with a viewing angle smaller than the heliocentric angle. For spectral index –2.75 and harder, the forward beam can fit as well as the forward isotropic distribution.

A redshift could be caused either by recoil from an anisotropic distribution of interacting ions or by bulk motion away from the observer of the medium in which they interact. We believe the latter is not significant here for two reasons. First, in the case of bulk motion the percentage redshift is a constant, and not inversely proportional to the mass of the excited nucleus (Figure 2). Second, although downward flows in the chromosphere have been observed in impulsive flare events via red wings in H$`\alpha `$ line profiles, the velocities are only 20–50 km/s (e.g. Wülser, Canfield & Zarro, 1992), implying redshifts of no more than 0.007-0.017%, a trivial fraction of the total gamma-ray shifts.

Two explanations remain for the large redshifts: either the field lines in the loop legs are inclined toward us instead of being perpendicular to the solar surface, or else the angular distribution of the interacting particles is closer to a pure forward beam than a forward-isotropic distribution. Forward-isotropic or isotropic distributions of interacting $`\alpha `$-particles are strongly favored over a downward beam in a study of the lines at 0.429 and 0.478 MeV from $`\alpha `$$`\alpha `$ reactions in this flare (Share et al., 2003b) and in flares observed with SMM/GRS (Share & Murphy, 1997). Also, the low average redshifts of the 20Ne, 12C and 16O lines in all the flares seen by SMM/GRS (Share et al., 2002), including those used in Table 1, favored a downward isotropic distribution (or one with a slight additional upward component) to a downward beam.

If, on the other hand, magnetic loops containing accelerated ions are inclined from the perpendicular for this flare, it may help explain why the SMM/GRS widths are larger than ours in Table 1. Share et al. (2002) combined five flares to get their result near $`74^\mathrm{o}`$, and if these had a wider range of $`\theta `$ than of heliocentric angle, differing redshifts could combine to make a broader line. Solar active regions often do contain inclined loops, and the magnetic topology of regions such as this one (“$`\beta \gamma \delta `$”) that produce the largest flares also tend to be the most complex.

A more detailed analysis of nuclear de-excitation line shapes can constrain not only the angular distribution of the particles but also the $`\alpha `$/proton ratio (as can be seen from the different component shapes in Figure 3) and even the spectral index. The full power of the spectral analysis of gamma-ray lines, however, will be realized when the constraints imposed by the line shapes are combined with information from the gamma-ray line fluences and from other observations such as gamma-ray and x-ray imaging (Hurford et al., 2003), magnetograms and imaging at other wavelengths, and the decay profile of the neutron-capture line (Murphy et al., 2003).

The work at the University of California, Berkeley and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center was supported by NASA contract NAS5-98033, and that at the Naval Research Laboratory by NASA DPR W19746. We thank Hugh Hudson, Gordon Hurford, Brian Dennis, George Fisher, and Benzion Kozlovsky for useful discussions.