text:
# Observing H2 Emission in Forming Galaxies

## 1 Introduction

In the last decade, observational studies on primeval galaxies has made great progress. For example, deep surveys in the optical (Williams et al. 1996), near-infrared (Maihara et al. 2001) and mid-infrared (Taniguchi et al. 1997) wavelengths have revealed early evolution of galaxies.

Since galaxies in the earliest phase consist mostly of gas, knowledge on interstellar medium in forming galaxies is valuable for understanding galaxy formation process. Molecular line observation has been a powerful tool in diagnosing the physical conditions in local star-forming regions (e.g., Dyson & Williams 1997). Recently, molecular line emission has also been found to emanate from high-redshift galaxies and the number of detected sources has been increasing rapidly (e.g., Ohta et al. 1996; Omont et al. 1996; Combes 1999). Among theoretical studies, Spaans & Silk (1997) investigated CO line emission from protogalaxies. However, the detection of metal lines depends on the degree of metal enrichment and thus preceeding star formation is required.

Can we detect molecular lines in primordial pristine gas clouds? The possibility of detecting H2 line emission from forming galaxies was discussed as early as the firm establishment of the Big-Bang cosmology (Saslaw & Zipoy 1967). Other pioneering work includes that by Izotov & Kolesnik (1984) and Shchekinov & Éntél’ (1985), which treats the H2 emission from proto-clusters of galaxies, i.e, the so-called “Zel’dovich pancakes”. More recently, Ciardi & Ferrara (2001) investigated the H2 emission from the super-shells created in the intergalactic medium as a result of multiple SN explosions in PopIII objects. They concluded that about 10 per cent of the SN mechanical energy is carried away by the H2 1-0S(1) rovibrational line. Stimulated by the recent theoretical understanding of the first star-forming regions (e.g., Omukai & Nishi 1998; Abel, Bryan, & Norman 2002; Bromm, Coppi, & Larson 2002; Omukai & Palla 2001, 2003), research has been vigorously carried out on the radiation from individual star-forming cores. Flower & Pineau des Forêts (2001) calculated H2 emission from a J-type shock expected to appear in the prestellar collapse. Kamaya & Silk (2002) studied the H2 emission from a collapsing prestellar core using a simplified model, and pointed out that the 0-0S(3) line is the strongest during the prestellar collapse phase. Ripamonti et al. (2002) arrived at similar conclusions by a more refined calculation. Shibai et al. (2001) studied the detectability of H2 absorption lines in high-redshift objects. All these studies, however, suggest that the prospect for direct detection of H2 emission from forming galaxies is rather dim, though not rejected, even with next generation facilities.

On the other hand, Ly$`\alpha `$ emitting galaxies in high-redshifts have been observed (e.g., Hu, Cowie, & McMahon 1998; Steidel et al. 2000; Kodaira et al. 2003). Stimulated by these findings, some authors have investigated the Ly$`\alpha `$ cooling radiation from protogalaxies by semi-analytical modeling (Haiman, Spaans, & Quataert 2000) or by numerical simulations (Fardal et al. 2001). They concluded that the greater part of the gravitational energy is indeed emitted by the H Ly$`\alpha `$ line emission. In their model, however, H2-line cooling is not included, and the temperature in protogalaxies thus remains above $`10^4`$ K, below which atomic cooling is strongly suppressed. Although this is a fair assumption for the massive objects that they considered (see §3 below), for smaller objects with total mass $`<10^{11}M_{\mathrm{}}`$, sufficient H2 can be formed as a result of enhanced ionization degree by virialization shock and its delayed non-equilibrium recombination (Shapiro & Kang 1986; Susa et al. 1998; Oh & Haiman 2002). By this mechanism, the temperature drops further below $`10^4`$ K due to H2 line cooling. Therefore, the greater part of gravitational energy liberated by contraction will be available for the H2 cooling radiation. In this paper, we study the H2 cooling radiation from those forming galaxies and discuss the prospect for observing such sources. Our result is quite encouraging, suggesting that H2 emission is indeed observable by the future infrared satellite mission $`\mathrm{𝑆𝐴𝐹𝐼𝑅}`$ from sources as high as $`z=8`$.

The organization of the rest of this paper is as follows: In §2, the method of calculation is described. In §3, the prediction for the H2 emission from forming galaxies and its observability is discussed. Finally in §4, a brief summary and discussions are presented. Throughout the paper, we adopt a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology in accordance with the WMAP data (Spergel et al. 2003): $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{B},h,\sigma _8)=(0.3,0.7,0.05,0.7,0.9)`$.

## 2 Model

### 2.1 H2 emission from forming galaxies

In this section, we describe our model for evaluating H2 line emission. We use a simplified evolution model where a forming protogalaxy is treated as a uniform cloud.

As the initial state, we take an instance of virialization. We use the analytic formula for the density at virialization

$$\rho _{\mathrm{vir}}=\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{c}$$
(1)
where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{c}=18\pi ^2+82x39x^2,x=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\mathrm{\Omega }_0(1+z_{\mathrm{vir}})^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }},$$
(2)
which has been found to provide a good description of the numerical results (Bryan & Norman 1998).

The critical density at $`z=z_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ can be written as

$$\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}=\rho _{\mathrm{crit},0}[\mathrm{\Omega }_0(1+z_{\mathrm{vir}})^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }],$$
(3)
where $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit},0}`$ is the present-day critical density.

The radius and temperature of objects of total mass $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ in this instance are

$$R_{\mathrm{vir}}=\left(M_{\mathrm{tot}}/\frac{4}{3}\pi \rho _{\mathrm{vir}}\right)^{1/3},$$
(4)
and

$$T_{\mathrm{vir}}=\frac{G\mu m_\mathrm{H}}{5k_\mathrm{B}R_{\mathrm{vir}}}M_{\mathrm{tot}},$$
(5)
respectively.

We first describe the dissipationless case and later describe the prescription for the dissipation of kinetic energy. For the sake of simplicity, the dark matter density is assumed to be constant after the virialization. The evolution of gas density is computed by solving the virial equation for a spherical object

$$\frac{d^2R}{dt^2}=\frac{GM}{R^2}\left(1\frac{T}{T_{\mathrm{vir}}(R)}\right)$$
(6)
where

$$T_{\mathrm{vir}}(R)=\frac{G\mu m_\mathrm{H}}{5k_\mathrm{B}R}M(R),$$
(7)
and $`M(R)`$ is the mass enclosed within a spherical shell of radius $`R`$.

The thermal evolution is computed by solving the energy equation

$$\frac{de}{dt}=p\frac{d}{dt}\left(\frac{1}{\rho }\right)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{rad}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{chem}},$$
(8)
where $`e`$ is the specific thermal energy

$$e=\frac{1}{\gamma _{\mathrm{ad}}1}\frac{k_\mathrm{B}T}{\mu m_\mathrm{H}},$$
(9)
and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{rad}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ are the radiative and chemical cooling rates per unit mass, respectively.

The radiative cooling rate includes H2 line emission, HD line emission, atomic emission by H and He, and Compton cooling. The H2 line cooling is treated as in Omukai (2001), where the effect of CMB is taken into account and the ortho-para ratio of 3:1 is assumed. For the HD cooling, the cooling function by Galli & Palla (1998) is used. The effect of CMB for HD cooling is treated approximately by replacing the cooling rate by HD line $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{HD}}(T)`$ by $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{HD}}(T)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{HD}}(T_{\mathrm{rad}})`$ (e.g., Tegmark et al. 1997). The atomic emission includes collisional excitation cooling, recombination cooling, and bremsstrahlung of H and He. The coefficients given by Anninos et al. (1999) are used.

The above formulation neglects dissipation of kinetic energy of contracting gas; after the initial thermal energy is carried away by radiation, essentially all the gravitational energy liberated by contraction contributes to accelerating the gas infall. If the gas, however, settles into a Kepler rotation disk, the kinetic energy is reduced by a factor of 2 compared to the free-falling sphere with the same radius, i.e. half of the kinetic energy must be dissipated away. Such dissipation may proceed through the thermalization of kinetic energy by turbulent motion induced by the non-spherical nature of the collapse. To mimic this effect, we add a dissipation term in equations of motion and of energy;

$$\frac{d^2R}{dt^2}=\frac{GM}{R^2}\left(1\frac{T}{T_{\mathrm{vir}}(R)}\right)+D_{\mathrm{trb}}$$
(10)
and

$$\frac{de}{dt}=p\frac{d}{dt}\left(\frac{1}{\rho }\right)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{rad}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{chem}}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{trb}},$$
(11)
where $`D_{\mathrm{trb}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{trb}}`$ are the drag and heating terms due to dissipation of kinetic energy. To compute these quantities, we assume that a fraction $`f_{\mathrm{trb}}`$ of kinetic energy is thermalized during the collapse. Specifically, we first evaluate at each timestep the increment of kinetic energy in the dissipationless case $`\mathrm{\Delta }K_0`$ using equations (6) and (8). We then solve equations (10) and (11) assuming that $`f_{\mathrm{trb}}\mathrm{\Delta }K_0=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{turb}}\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ is injected as heat and the actual increment of kinetic energy is $`\mathrm{\Delta }K=(1f_{\mathrm{trb}})\mathrm{\Delta }K_0`$. In reality, the value of $`f_{\mathrm{trb}}`$ is likely to lie between $`0.5`$ (for the Kepler rotating disk) and $`0`$ (for the spherical collapse). We adopt $`f_{\mathrm{trb}}=0.25`$ as our fiducial value, while we also study the dissipationless case ($`f_{\mathrm{trb}}=0`$) for comparison.

The freeze-out values of chemical abundances are used for the initial abundances for the computation: $`y_e=3\times 10^4,y_{H_2}=1\times 10^6`$ and $`y_{HD}=1\times 10^9`$ (Galli & Palla 1998). The chemical reactions between H, and He compounds are solved following Omukai (2000; reactions 1-22), with HD-bearing reactions of D3, D4, D8,and D10 in Galli & Palla (1998) added. We find, however, that HD cooling is not important in all cases we studied.

The cloud collapse is followed from the virialization until either the local Hubble time

$$t_\mathrm{H}(z)=\frac{2}{3H_0}(1\mathrm{\Omega }_0)^{1/2}\mathrm{sinh}^1\left[\frac{(1\mathrm{\Omega }_0)^{1/2}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{1/2}(1+z)^{3/2}}\right]$$
(12)
elapses or the radius reaches the rotation barrier

$$R_{\mathrm{rot}}=0.06\left(\frac{f_{\mathrm{gas}}}{0.17}\right)^1\left(\frac{\lambda _{\mathrm{turn}}}{0.05}\right)^2R_{\mathrm{vir}},$$
(13)
where $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ is the mass fraction of gas. We adopt a median value 0.05 for the dimensionless spin parameter at turn-around $`\lambda _{\mathrm{turn}}`$ (Barns & Efstathiou 1987) and the gas density enhances by a factor of $`5000`$ between $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{rot}}`$. The duration of emission is therefore

$$t_{\mathrm{em}}(M,z)=\mathrm{min}[t_\mathrm{H}(z),t_{\mathrm{rot}}(M,z)],$$
(14)
where $`t_{\mathrm{rot}}(M,z)`$ is the time taken to reach $`R_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ from $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$.

### 2.2 Merger probability of protogalaxies

In predicting the luminosity and the abundance of protogalaxies, we also take into account explicitly hierarchical clustering and mergers of these objects. This is of particular importance at high redshift, say $`z\stackrel{>}{}8`$, where a significant fraction of galaxy-scale halos merges into larger halos before the free-fall time is reached. For such halos, the duration of emission will be shorter than that estimated in Sec 2.1.

We incorporate the variations in the emission times by defining the “merger probability weighed average luminosity” of a protogalaxy with total mass $`M`$ at redshift $`z`$ as

$`L_{\mathrm{line}}(M,z)={\displaystyle \frac{_{t(z)t_{\mathrm{em}}(M,z)}^{t(z)}L_{\mathrm{line}}^{\mathrm{int}}(M,z,z_f)\frac{dp(M,z,z_f)}{dz_f}\left|\frac{dz_f}{dt_f}\right|𝑑t_f}{_{t(z)t_{\mathrm{em}}(M,z)}^{t(z)}\frac{dp(M,z,z_f)}{dz_f}\left|\frac{dz_f}{dt_f}\right|𝑑t_f}}`$ (15)
where $`L_{\mathrm{line}}^{\mathrm{int}}(M,z,z_f)`$ is the intrinsic line luminosity at $`z`$ of the galaxy virialized at $`z_f`$, corresponding to the cosmic time $`t_ft(z_f)`$, and $`dp(M,z,z_f)/dz_f`$ is the probability distribution of formation epochs of virialized halos. The former quantity is computed using the model described in Sec 2.1. Since $`t_{\mathrm{em}}(M,z)`$ is typically an order of magnitude smaller than $`t(z)`$, we neglect the changes in $`\rho _{\mathrm{vir}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ between $`z`$ and $`z_f`$. For the latter we adopt the prescription of Lacey & Cole (1993) as described in Kitayama & Suto (1996); the formation epoch $`z_f`$ is defined as the time at which a halo assembles at least half of its final mass. In the rest of this paper, unless otherwise stated, we simply refer as “luminosity” to that given in equation (15).

The number density of protogalaxies in accord with the above definition of average luminosity is

$$\frac{dn(M,z;L_{\mathrm{line}})}{dM}=\frac{dn_{\mathrm{PS}}(M,z)}{dM}_{t(z)t_{\mathrm{em}}(M,z)}^{t(z)}\frac{dp(M,z,z_f)}{dz_f}\left|\frac{dz_f}{dt_f}\right|𝑑t_f,$$
(16)
where $`dn_{\mathrm{PS}}(M,z)/dM`$ is the Press-Schechter (1974) mass function.

If strong bias is present in such high redshift we consider here, namely $`z1020`$, the number of observable objects increases remarkably. In this sense, our result, which corresponds to the no bias case, can be regarded as the lower bound on the number of objects.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 H2 emission from individual objects

In the following, we consider two epochs in the early universe, $`z=`$20 and 8. The former corresponds to the typical epoch for the first star formation (e.g., Abel et al. 2002). The latter is believed to be shortly before the completion of the cosmic reionization from the observation of high-redshift quasars (e.g., Becker et al. 2001). Direct observation of objects forming in this epoch is therefore intersting for understanding the reionization process.

The total luminosity in H2 lines is shown in Figure 1 as a function of the total mass of the objects, along with the Ly$`\alpha `$ luminosity for the virial redshift (a)$`z_{\mathrm{vir}}=`$20 and (b)$`z_{\mathrm{vir}}=`$8. The corresponding virial temperature and the observed flux are indicated in the top and right axes. The observed flux in a line is calculated using the usual relation

$$S_{\mathrm{line}}=L_{\mathrm{line}}/4\pi d_L(z)^2,$$
(17)
where $`d_L(z)`$ is the luminosity distance to the source at redshift $`z`$. The contribution to the total H2 luminosity from each line is shown in Figure 2 for the fiducial case ($`f_{\mathrm{trb}}=0.25`$) and in Figure 3 for the dissipationless case ($`f_{\mathrm{trb}}=0`$). Important lines are listed in Table 1 (for $`z=20`$) and 2 (for $`z=8`$) for the fiducial case.

We first focus on the fiducial case $`f_{\mathrm{trb}}=0.25`$. From the H2 emission property, the protogalactic clouds can be categorized into the following four mass ranges. The temperature evolution for typical cases in these regimes is shown in Figure 4 for $`z=20`$.

* Pop III objects ($`M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^8M_{\mathrm{}}`$)

Small objects whose virial temperature $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}10^4`$K cannot excite atomic hydrogen, and cool only by H2 lines. Thus both the thermal energy at virialization and the gravitational energy liberated by the collapse are converted to H2 emission. The dominant lines are the lowest excitation ones, e.g., 0-0S(0) at 28 $`\mu `$m and 0-0S(1) at 17 $`\mu `$m (see Figure 2).
* dwarf galaxies ($`10^8M_{\mathrm{}}M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{11}M_{\mathrm{}}`$)

Clouds with a virial temperature exceeding $`10^4`$K can cool by Ly$`\alpha `$ radiation. As we can see in Figure 4, the temperature first drops rapidly from the virial temperature to that appropriate for H2 cooling ($`10^3`$K). The initial thermal energy is radiated away by the atomic radiation processes including the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission ($`T10^4`$K) and by the H2 line emission ($`T10^4`$K). The collapse proceeds quasi-isothermally thereafter due to the H2 line emission. This can be observed in Figure 1 as the emergence of Ly$`\alpha `$ luminosity. At the same time, the slope of the increase of the H2 line luminosity toward higher mass flattens slightly around $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}10^4`$K. The low excitation lines, e.g. 0-0S(1) at 17 $`\mu `$m and 0-0S(3) at 9.7 $`\mu `$m, are still dominant (Figure 2).
* giant galaxies ($`10^{11}M_{\mathrm{}}M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{12}M_{\mathrm{}}`$)

Since the available gravitational energy increases toward massive objects, the heating rate by the dissipation of kinetic energy also increases. For objects $`>10^{11}M_{\mathrm{}}`$, the heating becomes so great that the temperature does not fall below $`10^4`$K. These objects collapse isothermally at $`10^4`$K, after initial rapid cooling (see Figure 4 a). During this isothermal collapse, a large fraction of energy is emitted in the Ly$`\alpha `$ radiation. Then the Ly$`\alpha `$ luminosity exceeds the H2 luminosity (Figure 1) for those objects. Despite the high temperature, a small amount of H2 is present. Only a small fraction of gravitational energy is emitted in the H2 lines. This can be observed as a plateau in the H2 luminosity in Figure 1, as the larger mass compensates for the lower H2 emissivity. Corresponding to the abrupt change in thermal property, the dominant lines are altered (see Figure 2). Because the collapse proceeds with high temperature, high excitation lines become more important. The strongest line is 0-0S(3) at $`9.7\mu `$m. Although 0-0S(1) is still in the second place, the vibrational line 1-0S(3) at $`2.0\mu `$m also becomes important. These objects are the brightest ones in H2 emission and the H2 luminosity reaches about $`3\times 10^{41}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Note that these are also most luminous in Ly$`\alpha `$ emission.
* no-cooling objects ($`M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{12}M_{\mathrm{}}`$)

For these massive objects, both Ly$`\alpha `$ and H2 luminosities decline rapidly, because, in the redshift range we are considering, such massive objects cannot cool within the merging timescale and then remain in the virialization state (Silk 1977; Rees & Ostriker 1977).

We stress the importance of the dissipation of kinetic energy. Early studies by Saslow & Zipoy (1967) and by Izotov & Kolesnik (1984) did not take the dissipation into account. As we can see in Figure 1, the maximum H2 luminosity would be smaller by an order of magnitude without the dissipation of kinematic energy. In this case, only the portion of the initial thermal energy below 104K would be available for H2 emission, with most gravitational energy being converted into kinetic energy. The discrepancy in emitted energy increases toward higher mass because of the larger gravitational energy to be released during the collapse; in the dissipationless case, the H2 luminosity increases only linearly in mass, while in the dissipational case it increases approximately as $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}^{1.5}`$.

### 3.2 Number counts of H2 emitters and their contribution to the far-IR background light

H2-line photons emitted at $`z10`$ have been red-shifted to the far-infrared (FIR) wavelength today. The future space telescope, the Single Aperture Far-Infrared Observatory111http://safir.jpl.nasa.gov/index.asp (SAFIR), is planned to have unprecedented sensitivity at the FIR and submillimeter wavelengths, with the limiting flux of $`10^{19}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ in FIR. With this limiting flux, brightest sources at $`z=8`$ can be observable by the 0-0S(3) 9.7$`\mu `$m line (Figure 2 b), while at redshift $`z=20`$, even the brightest H2 emitters are below this threshold (Figure 2 a).

Figure 5 shows the number of sources per unit solid angle above the limiting flux of (a) $`10^{19}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ and (b) $`10^{20}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ whose emission redshift is larger than $`z`$. For the limiting flux $`10^{19}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$, which is the planned limit for SAFIR, although the number of sources with their H2 total flux exceeding this limit is about 10$`{}_{}{}^{6}\mathrm{str}_{}^{1}`$ as early as $`z=10`$, even the strongest line 0-0S(3) 9.7 $`\mu `$m cannot be observed until $`z=8`$ (see Figure 5 a). We can understand this from Figure 2 (b); at $`z=8`$, although the maximum total H2 flux exceeds $`10^{19}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ by some factor, even the most dominant line 0-0S(3) 9.7$`\mu `$m barely reaches this limiting flux because of sharing the luminosity with other lines.

For the limiting flux $`10^{20}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$, the brightest objects at $`z=20`$ could be visible by the 0-0S(3) 9.7$`\mu `$m line and the 0-0S(1) 17$`\mu `$m line (Figure 2 a), although such massive objects are still very rare at $`z=20`$ (Figure 5 b). For this limiting flux, the number of sources observable by these lines exceeds $`100`$ str-1 at $`z\stackrel{<}{}15`$.

Figure 6 further illustrates the number of H2 emitters for each line above the limiting flux per unit redshift range at $`z=8`$. At the limiting flux of SAFIR, $`10^{19}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$, observable lines are 0-0S(3) 9.7$`\mu `$m, and possibly 0-0S(1) 17$`\mu `$ m, although the latter slightly falls short of $`10^{19}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$. If the limiting flux were an order of magnitude deeper, some vibrational lines including 1-0Q(1) 2.4 $`\mu `$m and 1-0S(1) 2.1$`\mu `$m could also be detected.

Finally, Figure 7 displays the contribution of these H2 emitters to the extragalactic FIR background radiation. Also plotted for reference is the FIR background spectrum detected by COBE/FIRAS (Fixsen et al. 1998). The H2 line emission from forming galaxies makes only a negligible contribution to the background light, being smaller than the COBE/FIRAS result by several orders of magnitude.

## 4 Summary and Discussion

We have evaluated the amount of H2 line radiation from forming galaxies. The H2 line luminosity reaches the maximum value of about $`3\times 10^{41}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for protogalaxies of total mass $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{11}M_{\mathrm{}}`$. Below this mass scale, all the gravitational energy is emitted by H2 line radiation, while above this scale, a large part of the energy is emitted by Ly$`\alpha `$ radiation. Such brightest objects at $`z8`$ are detectable by the next generation telescope SAFIR via the 0-0S(3) 9.7$`\mu `$m line emission and marginally detectable also via the 0-0S(1)17$`\mu `$m line. The cosmic FIR background radiation by the H2 emission is several orders of magnitude below the detected value of COBE/FIRAS, and can be safely neglected.

The H2 luminosity from a protogalactic cloud has also been studied by Shchekinov (1991). Assuming that a protogalactic cloud consists of subclumps and that the luminosity is given by the sum of luminosity from each subclumps, he evaluated $`L_{\mathrm{H}_2}10^{42}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{sec}`$ from a protogalactic cloud with gas mass $`10^{11}M_{\mathrm{}}`$ corresponding to total mass $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{12}M_{\mathrm{}}`$. On the other hand, in our model the large protogalaxies of $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{12}M_{\mathrm{}}`$ has no time to cool and then emit only weak H2 radiation (total H2 luminosty $`L_{\mathrm{H}_2}10^{40}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{sec}`$). This is because such inhomogenous clouds are regarded as a cluster of protogalactic clouds rather than a single cloud in our scheme. In fact, the sum of luminosity from a cluster with total mass of $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}10^{12}M_{\mathrm{}}`$ gives a similar value as that of Shchekinov (1991). For example, the luminosity of a protogalactic cloud of $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}=10^8M_{\mathrm{}}`$ collapsing at $`z=20`$ is $`L_{\mathrm{H}_2}10^8\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{sec}`$ (Fig. Observing H2 Emission in Forming Galaxies a). Then the H2 luminosity of a cluster consisting of 104 such clouds is $`10^{12}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{sec}`$. Note that in order for this value to be the actual luminosity from the cluster, the collapse of the subclumps must be simultaneous. Since this is probably a rare occurence, this possibility is not considered in this paper.

As we mentioned in §3, the brightest H2 sources, “giant galaxies”, are even more luminous in the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission. This has been pointed out also by Shchekinov (1991). who investigated pancaking shock of primordial clouds. Consequently, the most efficient way of finding H2 emitters is to look at the already detected Ly$`\alpha `$ emitters, rather than looking for them in a blank field. The origin of Ly$`\alpha `$ emitters found at high-redshift is still in dispute. If Ly$`\alpha `$ emitters are originating in the cooling radiation, they might be bright as well as in the H2 emission. On the other hand, the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission might be originating in the recombination radiation due to stellar ionization (Partridge & Peebles 1967). In this case, there is no reason to expect bright H2 emission from those sources. Nonetheless, since H2 is vulnerable to photodissociation by stars as we will discuss below, even if the H2 emission will not be detected, this will not demonstrate the recombination origin for the Ly$`\alpha `$ radiation.

Here, we discuss some effects that can alter the amount of the H2 luminosity from forming galaxies. The density contrast inside the clouds, in particular higher density than average in the inner region, results in luminosity higher by some factor, reducing the collapse timescale compared to the merging timescale. On the other hand, the following effects reduce the H2 luminosity: First, molecular hydrogen is vulnerable to photodissociation by stars. According to the recent WMAP results, the reionization epoch of the universe could be as early as $`z17\pm 5`$ (Spergel et al. 2003). At least below this redshift, protogalaxies are irradiated by the UV background radiation. According to our study, objects most luminous in H2 emission are massive ones whose mass is about 10% of $`L_{}`$ galaxies today. Such massive objects are not vulnerable to photodissociation by UV background radiation. Therefore, our results remain unchanged except for “PopIII objects”, for which the feedback effect is significant (Haiman, Rees, & Loeb 1997; Omukai & Nishi 1999; Ciardi et al. 2000; Kitayama et al. 2001; Ricotti et al. 2002). Although “giant galaxies” are not affected by the UV background radiation, an internal UV field created by local star formation might photodissociate molecular hydrogen and then reduce the amount of the H2 emission. Another possibility for reducing the H2 emissivity is by metal enrichment; with metals, the energy budget for H2 emission is reduced by the cooling via metal fine-structure and metastable lines (e.g., Dalgarno & McCray 1972). For the metallicity $`Z>10^2Z_{\mathrm{}}`$, the metal line cooling dominates over the H2 line cooling (e.g., Fall & Rees 1985). Below this metallicity, the H2 cooling dominates and thus the effect of metal lines in reducing the H2 luminosity can be neglected. Further study of the influence of stellar feedback and metal enrichment on the H2 emission will be interesting.

We are grateful for helpful discussions with H. Matsuo, H. Susa, and M. Umemura. This work is supported in part by the Research Fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists (6819, KO), and the Grants-in-Aid by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan (14740133, TK).
Figures


format: text

text:
# Short time-scale X-ray variability of Active Galactic Nuclei

## 1 Introduction

Short time-scale X-ray variability from dozen of seconds to hours in AGNs is explained as a result of different kinds of processes, which happen close to the central engine. The possible origins are changes of the accretion rate, flares in accretion disk, motion of the hot spots around black hole and, for longer time-scales, the motion of hydrogen clouds, which obscure the central source.

Here we present results of investigations of short time-scale variability of active galactic nuclei using as an example Chandra observations of two bright Seyfert type galaxies NGC 4051 and NGC 4388. Both archive data sets (3144 and 2983) respectively were processed using CIAO version 2.3 package.

## 2 Flux variability of NGC 4051

Chandra observations of NGC 4051 were made at HRC LETG mode with exposure of approximately 92 ksec on January 01, 2002. To study fast flux variability we extracted only zeroth order image of NGC 4051. For a source and background extracting and making of the light curve we have used dmextract utility of CIAO package.

The resulting light curve is shown in the Fig.1. During these observations, NGC 4051 was very active with very strong high amplitude variability. In order to investigate a character of variability we have used wavelet method, which is excellent for detection of the non-coherent or weakly coherent variations. Many papers are devoted to an application of the wavelet method to periodic or multiperiodic processes (). The long-term variations have

been smoothed by using the method of running parabola (). The optimal value of the filter half–width $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.217d`$ has been determined from maximization of the “signal-to-noise” ratio. To avoid apparent effects of low–frequency trends on the test–functions at high frequencies, the original data have been detrended, i.e. the running parabola fit was subtracted from the observations. For these detrended time series, the test functions have been computed using the code described by . For visualization, we have used the Weighted Wavelet Z-transform (WWZ) test-function , which is characterized as having the best contrast among other test functions.

The resulting wavelet map one can see in the Fig. 2. It is clear an existence of the QPOs with different time-scales. The QPOs are coexistent with flares and it is very difficult to distinguish them. One can see that after powerful outburst QPOs almost disappeared.

To check the presence of the typical frequency we have computed the power spectrum (using the method of Fourier analysis, which was described by . The power spectrum one can see in the Fig.3. There is very significant peak which corresponds to period 3922 $`\pm `$ 17 sec. The phase folded curve for this period one can see in the Fig.4.

To check the existence of the same frequency in another runs, we have used the archival observations of Chandra obtained with ACIS detector in April 2000 (archive number 859, ). In the power spectrum for this run we have found also significant but less pronounced peak 3950 $`\pm `$ 68 sec. Probably, this time-scale corresponds to the orbital period of the inner parts of accretion disk. Assuming the distance of about 10 $`R_g`$ we can estimate black hole mass as $`1.4\times 10^6M_{}`$.

## 3 Investigations of the spectral variability of NGC 4388 using “Moving Fit” method

Rapidly growing sensitivity of X-ray detectors allows to investigate the spectral variability with relatively short time-scales. In order to improve our capabilities in this area we have made the package of the programs, which performed for analysis of the trailed X-ray spectra (Fig.5). This package includes some capabilities of XSPEC and XRONOS packages. It was written using C++ language with CFITSIO and PGPLOT libraries. In the future we are going to make C++ module plus Tcl script for XSPEC for processing of the trailed X-ray spectra.

In the present version of the package as an input parameter were chosen binned both in time and energy scale data presented as an FITS image, which we can obtain using dmextract utility in the case of Chandra observations. A detector response matrix file (“rmf”) and an auxilliary response file (“arf”) are also necessary. The present version of our package makes spectral fit with limited number of models like as power law, absorption cut-off, Compton reflection component, gaussian-profile emission lines and some elementary mathematical functions. For minimizing of the $`\chi ^2`$ statistics a genetic algorithm-based optimization was performed.

The primary idea of “Moving Fit” method is building of the models for a located in time slice of the spectral data and the data from the neighbor time bins taken with some additional weights (the implementation of the “weighted moving average” method for each spectral channel). It is possible to use of different kinds of kernels like as simple rectangular box, gaussian, etc.

Our package also has additional capabilities for complicated 2D fitting, for example, fitting of the emission line behaviour by sine or any other function.

In the present work we have used this package for investigations of the spectral variability of obscured Seyfert type galaxy NGC 4388. Observations (dataset 2983) were obtained on March 6, 2002 with Chandra ACIS detector in the LETG mode. Light curve for this AGN one can see in the Fig.6. Time&energy binned image and “rmf” and “arf” files were created with dmextract utility and psextract script of CIAO package only for the zeroth order image.

Time bin was chosen as 4 ksec. The resulting low energy resolution image was fitted with power law, gaussian $`FeK\alpha `$ line near 6.4 keV and photoelectric absorption calculated following . A power law photo-index was fixed equal to $`1.92\pm 0.11`$ as we have derived for full data set using the same set of models in XSPEC package.

As a smoothing function we have used simple rectangular box with half-width 10 ksec. Resulting curves for hydrogen column, power low normalization index and $`FeK\alpha `$ parameters are presented in the Fig.7. The error bars are 99 % confidence intervals.

First of all the curve for power law normalization parameter is practically identical to the light curve (Fig.6). There is also some possibility for smooth changes of the hydrogen column with time-scale about 40 ksec. The curve for the $`FeK\alpha `$ line central intensity shows flare during which $`\sigma _{K\alpha }`$ and $`E_{K\alpha }`$ were probably suppressed.

So you can see, that this method allows to investigate rapid X-ray spectral variability and could be implemented for different kinds of objects.

Acknowledgements. Author is thankful to prof. Ivan Andronov for helpful discussions and to Alina Streblyanskaya, who stimulated an appearance of this work.


text:
# THE 𝑞-DEFORMED WIGNER OSCILLATOR IN QUANTUM MECHANICS

## 1 Introduction

###

In 1989, independently, Biedenharn and Macfarlame , introduced the $`q`$-deformed harmonic oscillator and constructed a realization of the $`SU_q(2)`$ algebra, using a $`q`$-analogue of the harmonic oscillator and the Jordan-Schwinger mapping. The $`q`$-deformation of $`SU(2),`$ denoted by $`SU_q(2),`$ is one of the simplest examples of a quantum group.

The deformation of the conventional quantum mechanical laws has been implemented via different definitions and studied by several authors in the literature . Also, recently Palev et al. have investigated the 3D Wigner oscillator .

The main purpose of this work is to set up a realization of the $`q`$-deformed Wigner oscillator .

## 2 The $`q`$-deformed usual harmonic oscillator

###

In this section, we consider the $`q`$-deformed ladder operators of the harmonic oscillator, $`a^{}`$ and its adjoint $`a^+,`$ acting on the basis $`n>,n=0,1,2,\mathrm{},`$ as  $`a_q^{}0>=0,n>=\frac{(a_q^+)^n}{([n]!)^{\frac{1}{2}}}0>`$ where $`[n]!=[n][n1]\mathrm{}[1].`$ The classical limit $`q1`$ yields to the conventional ladder boson operators $`a^\pm ,`$ which satisfies $`[a^{},a^+]=1,a^{}|n>=\sqrt{n}|n1>,a^+|n>=\sqrt{n+1}|n+1>.`$

On the other hand, $`su(1,1)`$ algebra satisfies the following commutation relations $`[K_0,K_\pm ]=\pm K_\pm ,[K_+,K_{}]=2K_0`$ and the Casimir operator is given as $`C=K_0(K_01)K_+K_{},`$ where $`K_0|0>=k_0|0>`$ and $`K_{}|0>=0.`$ A usual representation for this algebra is given in terms of the ladder operators $`a^{}=(x+ip)/\sqrt{2},a^+=(xip)/\sqrt{2}.`$ The $`su(1,1)`$ generators are given as $`K_0=\frac{1}{2}\left(N+\frac{1}{2}\right),K_+=\frac{1}{2}(a^+)^2`$ and $`K_{}=\frac{1}{2}(a^{})^2,`$ where $`N=a^+a.`$ Thus, the Casimir operator is given by $`C=\frac{3}{16}.`$ This system has two different representations whose $`k_0`$ is $`\frac{1}{4}`$ and $`\frac{3}{4}`$.

Its $`q`$-deformation, $`su_{q^2}(1,1),`$ is given  as

$$[\stackrel{~}{K}_0,\stackrel{~}{K}_\pm ]=\pm \stackrel{~}{K}_\pm [\stackrel{~}{K}_+,\stackrel{~}{K}_{}]=[2\stackrel{~}{K}_0]_{q^2},[x]_\mu (\mu ^x\mu ^x)/(\mu \mu ^1).$$
(1)
In Ref.  was found a realization of the $`su_{q^2}(1,1)`$ in terms of the generators of $`su(1,1)`$. The $`q`$-deformed ladder operators satisfy

$$a_q^{}a_q^+=[N+1],a_q^+a_q^{}=[N],$$
(2)
where $`N`$ is the number operator which is positive semi-definite. The q-analogue operators can be found in terms of the usual ladder boson operators $`a^{}`$ and $`a^+`$.

Note that we can write $`n>=\frac{a_q^+}{\sqrt{[n]!}}\frac{(a_q^+)^{n1}}{([n1]!)^{\frac{1}{2}}}0>=\frac{a_q^+}{\sqrt{[n]!}}n1>`$ so that we obtain

$$a_q^+n1>=[n]^{\frac{1}{2}}n>a_q^+n>=[n+1]^{\frac{1}{2}}n+1>.$$
(3)
Also, from (2) and $`a_q^{}a_q^+n>=[n+1]^{\frac{1}{2}}a_q^{}n+1>`$ we get

$$a_q^{}n>=[n]^{\frac{1}{2}}n1>.$$
(4)
It’s easy to verify that $`[N,a_q^+]=a_q^+,[N,a_q^{}]=a_q^{},[N,q^N]=[a_q^{}a_q^+,q^N]=0,a_q^{}a_q^+qa_q^+a_q^{}=q^N.`$ We will show that a structure of this type exists for the Wigner oscillator.

## 3 The q-deformed Wigner Oscillator

###

The one-dimensional Wigner super-oscillator Hamiltonian in terms of the Pauli’s matrices ($`\sigma _i,`$ i=1,2,3) is given by

$$H(\lambda +1)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}H_{}(\lambda )& 0\\ 0& H_+(\lambda )\end{array}\right),H_{}(\lambda )=\frac{1}{2}\left\{\frac{d^2}{dx^2}+x^2+\frac{1}{x^2}\lambda (\lambda +1)\right\},$$
(5)
where $`H_+(\lambda )=H_{}(\lambda +1).`$ The even sector $`H_{}(\lambda )`$ is the Hamiltonian of the oscillator with barrier or isotonic oscillator or Calogero interaction.

Thus, from the super-realized Wigner oscillator, its first order ladder operators given by  $`a^\pm (\lambda +1)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left\{\pm \frac{d}{dx}\pm \frac{(\lambda +1)}{x}\sigma _3x\right\}\sigma _1,`$ the Wigner Hamiltonian and the Wigner-Heisenberg(WH) algebra ladder relations are readily obtained as

$$H(\lambda +1)=\frac{1}{2}[a^+(\lambda +1),a^{}(\lambda +1)]_+,[H(\lambda +1),a^\pm (\lambda +1)]_{}=\pm a^\pm (\lambda +1).$$
(6)
Equations (6) and the commutation relation

$$[a^{}(\lambda +1),a^+(\lambda +1)]_{}=1+2(\lambda +1)\sigma _3$$
(7)
constitutes the WH algebra  or deformed Heisenberg algebra .

Let us consider an extension of the $`q`$-deformed harmonic oscillator commutation relation,

$$a_W^{}a_W^+qa_W^+a_W^{}=q^N(1+c\sigma _3),c=2(\lambda +1)$$
(8)
as a $`q`$-deformation of the Wigner oscillator commutation realization. These operators may be written in terms of the Wigner oscillator ladder operators, viz.,

$$a_W^{}=\beta (N)a^{}(\lambda +1),a_W^+=a^+(\lambda +1)\beta (N),N=a^+(\lambda +1)a^{}(\lambda +1).$$
(9)
Acting the ladder operators of the WH algebra in the Fock space, spanned by the vectors

$$a^{}(\lambda +1)|2m>_c=\sqrt{2m}|2m1>_c,$$

$$a^{}(\lambda +1)|2m+1>_c=\sqrt{2m+c+1}|2m>_c,$$

$$a^+(\lambda +1)|2m>_c=\sqrt{2m+c+1}|2m+1>_c,$$

$$a^+(\lambda +1)|2m+1>_c=\sqrt{2(m+1)}|2m+2>_c,$$

we obtain a recursion relation given by

$$(2m+2c)\beta ^2(2m+1)q(2m+1+c)\beta ^2(2m)=q^{(2m+1)}(1c).$$
(10)
This has, for the odd quanta and $`c=0,`$ the following solution

$$\beta (2m+1)=\sqrt{\frac{1}{2m+2}\frac{q^{2m+2}q^{(2m+2)}}{qq^1}}\beta (N)=\sqrt{\frac{[N+1]}{N+1}}.$$
(11)
Thus, the $`q`$-deformed Wigner Hamiltonian and the commutator $`[a_W^{},a_W^+]`$, for $`c=0`$ become the q-deformed harmonic oscillator

$$H_W=\frac{1}{2}[a_W^{},a_W^+]_+=H_b=\frac{1}{2}([N+1]+[N]),[a_W^{},a_W^+]=[N+1][N].$$
(12)
Also, from even quanta this same result is readily found for $`c=0.`$

## 4 Conclusion

###

In this work, we firstly presented a brief review on the $`q`$-deformation of the conventional quantum mechanical laws for the unidimensional harmonic oscillator. We have also implemented a new approach for the WH algebra. Indeed, the $`q`$-deformations of WH algebra are investigated via the super-realization introduced by Jayaraman-Rodrigues .

Also, we do not assume the relations of operators $`a_W^+a_W^{}`$ and $`a_W^{}a_W^+`$. They are derived from our defining set of relations $`a_W^{}=a_q^{}=\sqrt{\frac{[N+1]}{N+1}}a^{}`$ and $`a_W^+=a_q^+=a^+\sqrt{\frac{[N+1]}{N+1}},`$ for vanish Wigner parameter $`(c=0)`$ given by Eq. (2). The case with $`c0`$ will be presented in a forthcoming paper.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by CNPq (Brazilian Research Agency). RLR wish to thanks the staff of the CBPF and DCEN-CFP-UFCG for the facilities. The author would also like to thank V. B. Barbosa and M. A. Rego-Monteiro by discussions. The author is also grateful to the organizing committee of the Brazilian National Meeting on Theoretical and Computational Physics, April 6 to 9, 2003, Brasilia-DF, Brazil.


text:
# Topological susceptibility with the improved Asqtad action

## I Introduction

Chiral perturbation theory predicts the behavior of the topological susceptibility in the limit of small quark mass. For improved fermion actions such as Asqtadref:asqtad  that lack complete chiral symmetry at nonzero lattice spacing, reproducing this prediction is a particularly challenging test.

The Asqtad improvement adds local three-, five-, and seven-link terms to the standard staggered fermion action to eliminate tree-level lattice artifacts to order $`a^2`$ ref:asqtad . Here we use it in conjunction with the one-loop improved Symanzik gauge action. This action has proven to be highly successful in determining the masses of the light hadrons ref:asqtadspectrum  and a variety of quarkonium masses and meson decay parameters ref:precision . It appears that the most satisfactory agreement with experimental values is achieved so far for those quantities that are well behaved in the chiral limit.

Whether improvement is successful in reducing lattice artifacts clearly depends on the observable. The Asqtad quark-gluon vertex is not as smooth as that of the more elaborate HYP action ref:HYP  and zero modes are not treated as rigorously as with the more expensive domain wall and overlap actions ref:domain ; ref:overlap . Through a rougher vertex, quark propagation might be influenced by small instanton-like dislocations. With imprecise zero modes, at small quark mass the fermion determinant may fail to suppress adequately configurations with nonzero topological charge.

The gluonic measurement of topological charge by summing the charge density is sensitive to the choice of both the discretization of the charge density operator and the smoothing or cooling method. Consequently, we found it instructive to compare three methods for measuring the charge:

1. the Boulder definition of the topological charge density ref:DHK.SU2  with smoothing through hypercubic blocking ref:HYPblock
2. the more traditional combination of measuring the charge density through the twisted plaquette operator and cooling by minimizing the Wilson action ref:twplq ; ref:Wilsoncool , and
3. measuring the charge density with the five-loop improved operator and cooling with a five-loop improved gauge action ref:fiveLi .

Throughout, we shall abbreviate these methods with “Boulder/HYP”, “TwPlaq/Wilson”, and “5Li/5Li”, respectively.

No previous study of the topological susceptibility has shown satisfactory agreement with the predictions of chiral perturbation theory at quark masses much smaller than the strange quark mass. Until recently ref:CPPACS2001 ; ref:Anna2001 ; ref:HT2001 , even the expected suppression of the susceptibility at small dynamical quark mass has been difficult to detect ref:previous ; ref:kovacs2001 . We argue that a combination of improvements in the lattice action, the smoothing (cooling) technique, the topological charge operator, and an $`O(a^2)`$ extrapolation to the continuum lead to plausible agreement with lowest order chiral perturbation theory for small quark masses.

This article is organized as follows. In Sec. II we introduce notation and review the predictions of chiral perturbation theory. Three methods for measuring the topological charge are compared and discussed in Sec. III. Results are presented in Sec. IV and discussed in Sec. V and conclusions are given in Sec. VI.

Preliminary results of this study were reported at the Lattice 2002 conference ref:suscept02 .

## II Topological Susceptibility

The topological charge $`Q`$ is the integral of the topological charge density $`\rho `$, which is in turn defined in terms of the Euclidean color gauge field $`F_{\mu \nu }^a`$ and its dual $`\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }^a`$, through

$$Q=\rho d^4x=\frac{1}{32\pi ^2}F_{\mu \nu }^a\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }^ad^4x.$$
(1)
On a lattice of Euclidean space-time volume $`V`$ the topological susceptibility is the mean fluctuation in the topological charge,

$$\chi =\frac{Q^2}{V}$$
(2)
Chiral perturbation theory predicts ref:topochiral ; ref:LS1992  that at large $`Q^2`$ (i.e. large values of $`mV\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, the product of the lightest quark mass, the lattice volume, and the chiral condensate parameter), and at sufficiently small quark masses, the topological susceptibility is related to the quark masses through

$$\chi =\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\left(1/m_u+1/m_d+1/m_s\right)}.$$
(3)
For three flavors with $`m_u=m_d=m_{u,d}`$ we may use the PCAC relation between the up and down quark mass, pion decay constant, and the chiral condensate to write the susceptibility as

$$\chi =\frac{f_\pi ^2m_\pi ^2}{4(1+m_{u,d}/2m_s)},$$
(4)
showing that it vanishes linearly in the square of the pion mass in the chiral limit.

At infinite quark mass (lattice quenched approximation) the susceptibility is finite, requiring negative curvature corrections in Eq (4), leading asymptotically to a constant ref:LS1992 ; ref:HT2001 ; ref:Durr . Chiral perturbation theory, however, is not expected to converge for masses greater than $`m_s`$, so it provides no guidance there.

We test Eq (4) against our measured susceptibility, pion mass ref:spectlat02 , and pion decay constant ref:precision  over a range of light quark masses.

## III Measuring the Topological Charge on the Lattice

In this section we compare three methods for measuring the topological charge. All three methods first smooth out ultraviolet fluctuations and then measure the topological charge density with a local discretized operator. All are equivalent in the continuum limit. However, some perform better at nonzero lattice spacing. To understand the comparison it is first useful to briefly review the effects of discretization on the topological susceptibility.

### III.1 Discretization effects

The topological susceptibility measured on the lattice differs from the continuum value because of discretization errors in the measurement process and in the lattice action itself. The principal errors introduced in the measurement process are these:

1. Instantons with a core size of the order of or less than the lattice spacing are excluded altogether,
2. Small instantons shrink and are erased by prolonged smoothing,
3. Intermediate sized instantons have a topological charge less than unity, owing to the discretization of the charge density operator,
4. There are ‘dislocations’ on the lattice: ultraviolet fluctuations that masquerade as topological charges,

The principal errors introduced by the action are these:

1. For unquenched gauge configurations the staggered Dirac matrix has inexact zero modes so fails to fully “see” and suppress topological fluctuations adequately, and
2. Lattice artifact flavor (taste) symmetry breaking fails to account for light quark flavors correctly.

### III.2 Comparison of operators and smoothing methods

We consider the following topological charge density operators:

1. TwPlaq: The original twisted plaquette operator, defined as an eight-link path with a displacement sequence $`\{x,y,x,y,z,t,z,t\}`$ plus rotations.
2. 5Li: The five-loop improved operator of de Forcrand, Perez, and Stamatescu ref:fiveLi , built from a linear combination of five operators in the form of the twisted plaquette, but with the plaquettes replaced by various $`m\times n`$ rectangular Wilson loops.
3. Boulder: The lattice approximation developed for SU(2) by DeGrand, Hasenfratz, and Kovacs ref:DHK.SU2  and refined for SU(3) by Hasenfratz and Nieter ref:HN.SU3 . It involves a combination of two contorted Wilson loop operators in the fundamental and adjoint representations of SU(3), both defined on closed ten-link paths described by unit lattice vector displacements in the sequence $`\{x,y,z,y,x,t,x,t,x,z\}`$ and $`\{x,y,z,x,t,z,x,t,x,y\}`$ plus rotations and cyclic permutations. This operator was optimized to reduce lattice corrections for small instantons with radii close to the lattice spacing $`Ra`$.

All three operators are equivalent in the continuum limit, but they are subject to different discretization effects. Reference ref:HetrickLat02  makes a comparison of methods 2 and 3.

We first investigate how these operators perform with artificial instantons. We created a series of gauge configurations containing a single instanton of varying radius and measured the topological charge with each operator. Results are plotted in Fig. 1. As expected ref:DHK.SU2  the twisted plaquette operator tends to underestimate the topological charge for small instantons. The 5Li operator does better. The optimization of the Boulder operator is apparent.

Traditional cooling methods include minimizing the Wilson action ref:Wilsoncool  and minimizing improved actions, such as the 5Li action ref:fiveLi , that provide better scaling as a function of instanton radius, so are less likely to erase small instantons. Minimization is done through a series of standard heatbath updates (cooling sweeps) at small gauge coupling. Hypercubic smoothing ref:HYPblock  was designed to be gentle and local so as to produce a smooth configuration with minimal distortion of the topology ref:HYPpreserve . The smoothing process involves a series of APE blocking steps ref:APEblock , constrained to lie entirely inside the hypercubes connected to the link being smoothed. We use the smoothing coefficients optimized in Ref. ref:HN.SU3 .

To see how cooling or smoothing affects the artificial instantons, we processed them using these methods. For the twisted plaquette operator we cooled with ten Wilson gauge action updates, for the 5Li operator, ten 5Li updates. For the Boulder operator we smoothed with three hypercubic blocking sweeps. The number of smoothing steps in each case was chosen for stability of $`\chi `$ under further smoothing, as we shall discuss below. Results are shown in Fig. 2. It is evident that small instantons preserve their topological charge best with the Boulder/HYP method.

Next we examine how the three methods perform on one of the gauge ensembles in our study, namely the $`20^3\times 64`$ $`a=0.12`$ fm set with quark masses $`am_{u,d}=0.01`$ and $`am_s=0.05`$ ref:dataset . We measured the topological susceptibility as a function of cooling or smoothing step and compared the results in Fig. 3. We see that it is reasonable to read off the Boulder/HYP susceptibility after three HYP sweeps and the TwPlaq/Wilson and 5Li/5Li susceptibilities after ten cooling sweeps. We made these arbitrary choices in an effort to compromise between preserving small instantons and reaching stability in the observable. We have tested these choices in a few cases and find within statistical errors that our results are insensitive to increasing these values by a factor of two or three. See also Ref. ref:HetrickLat02 .

It is clear that at this lattice spacing the TwPlaq/Wilson method gives a lower susceptibility than the other methods. The 5Li/5Li result is closer to but still lower than the Boulder/HYP result. To determine to what extent the difference in TwPlaq/Wilson is attributable to the observable and what to the cooling method, we also measured the TwPlaq susceptibility on HYP smoothed lattices. The result (TwPlaq/HYP) shown in Fig. 3 is quite close to the TwPlaq/Wilson result. So the choice of operator appears to account for the largest discrepancy.

We have also measured the topological susceptibility on the companion quenched $`20^3\times 64`$ $`a=0.12`$ fm ensemble using three methods and found similar inequalities: TwPlaq/Wilson gave $`\chi r_0^4=0.036(2)`$; 5Li/5Li, 0.051(3); and Boulder/HYP, 0.054(3).

Finally we considered the entire $`20^3\times 64`$ dataset with $`a0.12\text{ fm}`$ tabulated in Table 1. Taking ten cools and three HYP sweeps for the comparison, we plot the result in Fig. 4. Throughout the entire mass range the TwPlaq/Wilson susceptibility is about 2/3 the Boulder/HYP value.

Since all three methods are expected to give the same continuum limit, as they do for quenched QCD with the Wilson plaquette action ref:TeperLat99 , the discrepancy we observe at lattice spacing $`a=0.12`$ fm must be due lattice artifacts. To decide what the continuum limit is and which method is closer to it, one should do a detailed scaling study. We present results of a partial study in Sec. IV, but here attempt to interpret the differences based on our observations on smooth artificial instantons:

These discrepancies are of a magnitude that would be expected from our measurements of the charge of artificial instantons of intermediate size. The average instanton radius is expected to be approximately 0.3 fm ref:ShuryakSchafer  or 2.3a on these $`a=0.12`$ fm lattices with significant contributions from radii as small as one lattice unit. From Fig. 2 where ideally $`Q=1`$ we see that the TwPlaq/Wilson method underestimates the charge by $`Q(2.3a)=0.85`$ after cooling, so one would expect an underestimate of about $`0.85^2=0.7`$ in the susceptibility for the average instanton. For smaller instantons the TwPlaq/Wilson method gives $`Q^2(1.5a)=0.03`$ after cooling, instead of one. From Fig. 3, we find a ratio of 0.58(4) between the TwPlaq/Wilson10 and Boulder/HYP3 susceptibilities at $`(m_\pi r_0)^2=0.738`$. The ratio is approximately the same throughout the entire mass range. For the 5Li method we have $`Q^2(2.3a)=0.96`$ and $`Q^2(1.5a)=0.80`$. By comparison the ratio 5Li/5Li to Boulder/HYP3 is 0.87(7) at $`(m_\pi r_0)^2=0.738`$. Consequently, one may wonder whether the apparent agreement at $`a=0.12`$ fm between the TwPlaq/Wilson method and chiral perturbation theory at $`2(m_\pi r_0)^23`$ is the result of compensating errors.

## IV Results

We measured the topological susceptibility using the the Boulder/HYP method on two sets of gauge configurations generated with three flavors of light Asqtad quarks of varying masses, one set with lattice spacing approximately 0.12 fm throughout and the other, 0.09 fm ref:dataset . The corresponding matched quenched configurations are also included. The data sample is tabulated in Table 1.

Besides measuring the susceptibility on the entire lattice volume, we increased our statistics by measuring on smaller subvolumes. The probability distribution follows a Gaussian in $`Q`$ with width proportional to the volume. The width is decreased as the volume is decreased, leading to the same relative error in the determination of the susceptibility for the same sample size on the smaller volume. To the extent that the subvolume measurements are uncorrelated, the sample is effectively increased by a factor equal to the number of subdivisions, so the error should decrease by the square root of this number. This process cannot be continued indefinitely, since we should eventually discover strong correlations among adjacent subvolumes.

Measuring the susceptibility on subvolumes may even be indicated for actions and updating algorithms that give persistent global charge, but fluctuating local charge densities.

Accordingly, we divided the lattices along the time dimension into three hypercubic subvolumes mostly separated by a small unused space. For the $`28^3\times 96`$ lattices these subvolumes of size $`28^4`$ were constructed from imaginary time ranges $`[0,27]`$, $`[32,59]`$, and $`[64,91]`$, and for the $`20^3\times 64`$ lattices, of size $`20^4`$ from time ranges $`[0,19]`$, $`[22,41]`$, and $`[44,63]`$. Since the boundary condition on the subvolume is not periodic, this practice splits instantons. However, the rms charge in the subvolumes (in the range $`4<|Q|<7`$) seems large enough to ensure that the boundary effects are not significant.

We measured the correlations in the topological charge history between charges in different subvolumes. That is, if we denote by $`Q_{uk}`$ the charge measured in subvolume $`u`$ on gauge configuration $`k`$ in a data sample with $`N`$ gauge field configurations, we define the correlation coefficient to be

$$c_{uv}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{k}{}Q_{uk}Q_{vk}/(|Q_u||Q_v|)$$
(5)
where $`|Q_u|=\sqrt{Q_u^2}`$ is the rms charge on the subvolume $`u`$. The 33 correlation coefficients for our entire data set are roughly Gaussian distributed about zero with a mean of $`0.004`$ and width of 0.09. Thus we feel confident that we may treat the subvolume measurements as statistically independent observations.

The measurements are clearly correlated in Monte Carlo time. The Asqtad dynamical lattices were saved every sixth molecular dynamics trajectory. The $`20^3\times 64`$ quenched lattices were saved every tenth quasi-heatbath sweep and the $`28^3\times 96`$ every fiftieth. We made charge measurements on all available lattices. A particularly striking example is given by the time history for the total charge on the $`28^3\times 96`$ lattice with three degenerate quark masses $`am_{u,d}=am_s=0.31`$, as shown in the upper panel of Fig. 5 ref:suscept02 . The horizontal scale counts molecular dynamics trajectories. Time histories for the subvolume charges for the same dataset are shown in Fig. 6 where the prominent oscillations are much less evident. Other time histories shown in the lower two panels of Fig. 5 do not show such a striking effect. On the $`28^3\times 96`$ datasets the autocorrelation length, measured on the subvolumes by summing the autocorrelation coefficient, ranges from approximately 10 trajectories for $`am_{u,d}=0.0062`$ to 35 trajectories at $`am_{u,d}=0.031`$. Charge measurements on the corresponding quenched lattices are only slightly correlated. On the coarser $`20^3\times 64`$ lattices we find weaker autocorrelation, but still roughly monotonically increasing with quark mass from fewer than six trajectories at $`am_{u,d}=0.007`$ to ten trajectories at $`am_{u,d}=0.050`$. This trend appears to be contrary to some expectations ref:Boyd .

The autocorrelations in topological charge found with the Asqtad action and $`2+1`$ flavors of quarks appear to be longer than those found with the conventional thin link staggered fermion action and two flavors. Shown in Fig. 7 is a comparison of the topological charge history from the ensemble of Fig. 5b and an ensemble generated with the conventional unimproved thin-link staggered fermion algorithm ref:thin . These simulations were done at approximately the same value of $`(m_\pi r_0)^2`$ (unimproved 1.06, improved 1.23) and lattice spacing (unimproved 0.10 fm, improved 0.09 fm). It is apparent that the configurations decorrelate less rapidly with the improved action and extra flavor.

Statistical errors in the topological susceptibility are determined by taking the larger of the error corrected for autocorrelations and the error obtained by extrapolating to infinite bin size.

We have measurements of the topological susceptibility at two lattice spacings. Thus we may venture an extrapolation to the continuum limit. This is done by first interpolating in $`(r_0m_\pi )^2`$ the topological susceptibility on the coarse lattice to the three pion mass values where we have measurements on the finer lattice. We then do a linear extrapolation at fixed $`(m_\pi r_0)^2`$ to zero $`a^2/r_0^2`$ as shown in Fig. 8. We see that the quenched susceptibility rises with decreasing lattice spacing, but falls for the unquenched lattices with a slope that increases with quark mass.

We have done a comparable extrapolation using the TwPlaq/Wilson method, but with only one of the $`a=0.09`$ fm dynamical ensembles. Results are also shown in Fig. 8. Within the limitations of these few points, we find satisfactory agreement between the extrapolated values found with both methods.

Our main results for the topological susceptibility are summarized in Table 1 and Fig. 9. We see that within errors the continuum extrapolation gives reasonable agreement with the prediction of leading order chiral perturbation theory, Eq (4).

## V Discussion

The combined effect of the discretization artifacts discussed in subsection III.1 is that, depending on the method of measurement, the lattice topological susceptibility $`\widehat{\chi }`$ is both additively and multiplicatively renormalized relative to the continuum value, $`\chi `$ ref:twplq ; ref:kronfeld :

$$\widehat{\chi }(a,m_q)=M(a,m_q)^2\chi (m_q)+A(a,m_q),$$
(6)
where we understand the susceptibilities to be expressed in some appropriate choice of physical units. Having some indication of the scaling behavior of these methods, we suggest a scenario for the behavior of the functions $`M`$ and $`A`$ in Eq. (6).

To suppress the ultraviolet fluctuations prior to measuring the topological charge, it is necessary to smooth the gauge configurations. In the quenched theory, smoothing eventually drives $`A`$ to 0. However, since fluctuations involving instantons of sizes at or below the cutoff are always missed, one expects $`M<1`$, at least for operators that do not overestimate the charge of small instantons. Therefore, $`\widehat{\chi }^{\text{(qu)}}<\chi ^{\text{(qu)}}`$. Indeed, we see from Fig. 4 and the continuum extrapolation in Fig. 8 that at $`a=0.12`$ fm all three methods underestimate the quenched susceptibility.

In full QCD the virtual fermions screen the topological charge, but they screen everything they see, including dislocations. Smoothing removes dislocations and small instantons; those that are not involved in the screening of more extended topological charges do not cause trouble, but those that are leave behind the more extended (and now less screened) charges that are relatively stable under smoothing. This effect increases the susceptibility and shows up as an anomalous $`A`$ that does not vanish with continued smoothing.

As we take the continuum limit in full QCD, we expect $`M1`$, as in the quenched case, and also $`A0`$, as the lattice action, combined with smoothing, gradually suppresses dislocations. The two trends act in opposite directions; to decide which dominates, we must consider the quark mass dependence. There are two regimes. The first is for large $`m_q`$, where $`M`$ dominates and $`A`$ is small. In this “instanton-dominated” region, the behavior is similar to the quenched theory, and discretization effects lead to an underestimate $`\widehat{\chi }(a,m_q)<\chi (m_q)`$ at nonzero $`a`$. On the other hand, at small quark mass the continuum susceptibility is small. The factor $`M`$ is expected to depend only weakly on $`m_q`$, so the lattice measurement is dominated by $`A`$. In this “dislocation-dominated” regime there is likely to be an enhancement $`\widehat{\chi }(a,m_q)>\chi (m_q)`$ at nonzero $`a`$. Indeed, from Fig. 4 and the continuum extrapolations at $`(m_\pi r_0)^2=0.646`$ and infinity in Fig. 8 we see that at $`a=0.12`$ fm all three methods overestimate the susceptibility expected at the nearby point $`(m_\pi r_0)^2=0.738`$ and underestimate it at infinite quark mass. With the Boulder/HYP method, our results suggest that the scaling slope decreases as the quark mass is increased.

Given that the mean gauge action decreases by orders of magnitude under smoothing at $`a0.1\text{ fm}`$, it is reasonable to assume that dislocations are abundant and participate significantly in screening more extended topological charges. Erasing them then contributes to $`A`$. The number of instantons is not a strong function of quark mass. (The Wilson gauge action after twenty cooling sweeps is dominated by instantons, so gives a measure of their number. We find that the mean action density on the coarse lattices varies by less than 10% across the dynamical and quenched ensembles in this study). We thus expect $`A`$ to vary at most weakly with the quark mass in the dislocation-dominated region of quark mass. Our results for the $`a=0.12`$ fm lattices plotted in Fig. 4 show that for all methods the susceptibility levels off below $`(m_\pi r_0)^22`$.

But leveling off can also be attributed to shortcomings of the lattice fermion formulation itself. The would-be zero modes of the staggered lattice Dirac matrix are not at exactly zero. If the deviation is comparable to the virtual quark mass, some of the topological modes are not properly screened. Consequently, $`\widehat{\chi }(a,m_q)`$ does not vanish as it should as the quark mass is reduced. The chiral limit is then governed by the dependence of $`A`$ on $`m_q`$.

## VI Conclusions

We have measured the topological susceptibility on lattices generated with Asqtad improved staggered fermions of varying mass and two lattice spacings, $`a=0.12`$ fm and $`a=0.09`$ fm. We have compared three methods for measuring the topological charge on these lattices and selected the Boulder method with hypercubic blocking, since it appears best capable at these lattice spacings of preserving small instantons. We show in one comparison at $`a=0.12`$ fm that the largest difference between the Boulder/HYP and TwPlaq/Wilson methods can be attributed to the operator, rather than the smoothing method. We find that at both lattice spacings there is clear evidence that dynamical quarks suppress topological fluctuations and the suppression increases with decreasing quark mass and with decreasing lattice spacing. However, at fixed nonzero lattice spacing, lattice artifacts at small quark masses are still substantial, and the susceptibility does not decrease as expected from chiral perturbation theory at small quark masses. Nevertheless, an $`O(a^2)`$ extrapolation of our data to zero $`a`$ gives results that are consistent with the leading order prediction. Within the limitations of our statistics, this is the first study to show satisfactory agreement with the predictions of chiral perturbation theory at quark masses much smaller than the strange quark mass.

## Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Philippe de Forcrand for providing us his computer code for the 5Li/5Li measurements. Computations were performed at LANL, NERSC, NCSA, ORNL, PSC, SDSC, FNAL, the CHPC (Utah), the Indiana University SP and the Netra cluster (University of the Pacific). This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grants PHY01-39929 and PHY00-98395 and the U.S. Department of Energy under contracts DE-FG02-91ER-40628, DE-FG03-95ER-40894, DE-FG02-91ER-40661, and DE-FG03-95ER-40906. A.H. is supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.


text:
# Jets and high 𝑝_𝑇 hadrons in dense matter: recent results from STAR

## 1 Introduction

High energy partons propagating through matter are predicted to lose energy via induced gluon radiation, with the magnitude of the energy loss depending linearly on the color charge density of the matterEnergyLoss . This phenomenon may provide a sensitive probe of the medium generated in high energy heavy ion collisions, where a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is expected to form if sufficiently high energy density is achieved. The high energy partons in such collisions result from the hard scattering of quarks or gluons from the incoming nuclei and are observed experimentally as correlated “jets” of hadrons having large transverse momentum ($`p_T`$) with respect to the beam direction. The experimental challenge is to measure partonic energy loss (“jet quenching”) in the extremely complex environment of high energy nuclear collisions.

In these talks we discuss recent progress towards the measurement of jet quenching in high energy nuclear collisions by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. At the values of jet $`E_T`$ accessible at RHIC energies with the currently achieved integrated luminosities, full jet reconstruction with good energy resolution is difficult. We therefore utilize known features of jet fragmentation to study jet quenching, in particular the inclusive spectrum of high $`p_T`$ (“leading”) hadrons and the angular correlation of pairs of high $`p_T`$ hadrons. We compare their distributions in centrality-selected Au+Au collisions to those in d+Au and non-singly diffractive (NSD) p+p collisions, all at $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}`$=200 GeV. Unless otherwise specified, the results reported here are for unidentified charged hadrons, measured in the large cylindrical STAR Time Projection Chamber with a 0.5T solenoidal magnetic fieldSTARNIM . Related results from STAR are discussed in Miller ; Tang .

## 2 Suppression of inclusive charged hadrons

Jets occasionally fragment with a single hadron carrying a large fraction of the total jet energy. The resulting inclusive hadron distributions exhibit power-law ($`1/p_T^n`$) shapes characteristic of the underlying perturbative QCD (pQCD) processes. Figure 1 shows the event-normalized invariant inclusive charged hadron distributions as a function of $`p_T`$ for NSD p+p and centrality-selected Au+Au and d+Au collisionsSTARHighpt200 ; STARdAu . The centrality bins correspond to the indicated percentiles of the total cross section: 0-5% for Au+Au indicates the most central and 60-80% the most peripheral collisions. Power-law shapes are clearly observed in all cases.

Nuclear effects on hadron production in d+Au and Au+Au collisions are measured through comparison to the p+p reference spectrum using the ratio

$$R_{AB}(p_T)=\frac{d^2N/dp_Td\eta }{T_{AB}d^2\sigma ^{pp}/dp_Td\eta },$$
(1)
where $`d^2N/dp_Td\eta `$ is the differential yield per event in the nuclear collision $`A+B`$, $`T_{AB}`$=$`\mathrm{N}_{\mathrm{bin}}`$/$`\sigma _{inel}^{pp}`$ describes the nuclear geometry, and $`d^2\sigma ^{pp}/dp_Td\eta `$ for p+p inelastic collisions is determined from the p+p measurement. $`\mathrm{N}_{\mathrm{bin}}`$ is the mean number of binary NN interactions for the given centrality class of $`A+B`$ collisions. In the absence of nuclear effects such as shadowing, the Cronin effect, or gluon saturation, hard process rates are expected to scale with $`\mathrm{N}_{\mathrm{bin}}`$, and $`R_{AB}(p_T)`$=1.

Figure 2, left panel, shows $`R_{AB}(p_T)`$ for centrality-selected Au+Au relative to p+p collisions. The error bars indicate the statistical and systematic uncertainties of the spectra, while the bands indicate the uncertainty due to the geometrical scaling factor $`T_{AB}`$. At the highest $`p_T`$, hadron suppression of approximately a factor 5 is observed for the most central collisions: inclusive hadron production is strongly suppressed at high $`p_T`$ in central Au+Au collisions. For the most peripheral collisions $`R_{AB}(p_T)`$ is consistent with unity, while intermediate centralities interpolate smoothly between the extremes.

Figure 2, right panel, shows the related quantity $`R_{CP}(p_T)`$, the $`\mathrm{N}_{\mathrm{bin}}`$-scaled ratio of particle yields in central relative to peripheral collisions, which also exhibits large suppression of inclusive hadron production in central collisions. Figure 2 also shows the results of three theoretical calculations: two models based on pQCD incorporating shadowing, the Cronin effect and jet quenching in dense matter (pQCD-IpQCDI , pQCD-IIpQCDII ), and a model incorporating gluon saturation in the incoming Au nucleiKLM . The pQCD-based calculations contain one free parameter, the energy density for central collisions, which is fit to the data, yielding an initial density 30-50 times that of cold nuclear matter pQCDI ; pQCDII . These calculations then successfully describe the $`p_T`$ and centrality dependence of the inclusive suppression for $`p_T`$$`>`$5 GeV/c. The saturation model also describes the suppression and its $`p_T`$-dependence for the 0-5%/40-60% ratio for $`p_T`$$`>`$5 GeV/c. These precision STAR data on inclusive charged hadron suppression, covering wide centrality and kinematic range, are well-described by widely differing models which attribute the suppression either to jet quenching in dense matter in the final state or to gluon saturation in the initial state.

In order to elucidate the particle-species dependence of the suppression, Fig. 3 shows $`R_{CP}(p_T)`$ for $`K_s^0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$+$`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$
citeSTARStrangeRCP compared to the charged hadron $`R_{CP}(p_T)`$ already shown in Fig. 2. The mesons scale approximately as the charged hadrons throughout, while the baryons exhibit a pronounced enhancement in the region 2$`<`$$`p_T`$$`<`$4 GeV/c. The origin of this behavior is at present not understood, though speculations include the Cronin effect and non-perturbative mechanisms such as baryon junctions. At $`p_T`$=5 GeV/c, all particle species are strongly suppressed by the same amount in central collisions.

## 3 Correlations

The angular correlations of pairs of high-$`p_T`$ charged particles can be used to study jets in the complex environment of heavy ion collisionsMiller . Figure 4 shows the two-particle azimuthal distribution $`D(\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi )`$, defined as

$$D(\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi )\frac{1}{N_{trigger}}\frac{1}{ϵ}\frac{dN}{d(\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi )},$$
(2)
for peripheral (left panel) and central (right panel) Au+Au collisions and for p+p collisions (both panels). Only particles within $`|\eta |<0.7`$ are included in the analysis. $`N_{trigger}`$ is the number of particles within 4$`<`$$`p_T`$(trig)$`<`$6 GeV/c, referred to as trigger particles. The distribution results from the correlation of each trigger particle with all associated particles in the same event having $`2<p_T<p_T`$(trig), where $`ϵ`$ is the tracking efficiency of the associated particles. The normalization uncertainties are less than 5%.

In order to compare correlations in Au+Au with p+p, the p+p correlations are scaled up to the same pedestal value at $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi |\pi /2`$ as Au+Au and superposed with a $`\mathrm{cos}(2\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi )`$ term that characterizes the azimuthal anisotropy in non-central Au+Au collisions (elliptic flow Tang ). The magnitude of this additional correlation is measured independently and is given by the second coefficient $`v_2`$ of a Fourier expansion of the azimuthal distribution relative to the orientation of the reaction plane of the event, for particles having $`p_T`$$`<`$2 GeV/c STARv2 . Figure 4 shows that the correlation strength at small relative angle ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi 0`$) in peripheral and central Au+Au and at large relative angle ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi \pi `$) in peripheral Au+Au are very similar to the scaled correlations in p+p collisions.

The near-side peaks ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi 0`$) in all three collision systems are characteristic of jet fragmentation. The away-side peak ($`|\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi |\pi `$) from the back-to-back partner jet, apparent in p+p and peripheral Au+Au collisions is strongly suppressed in central Au+Au collisions. These observations, together with the strong suppression of inclusive production and large elliptic flow at high $`p_T`$ Tang , suggest a picture in which jets traversing the bulk of the medium produced in Au+Au collisions are absorbed (strong jet quenching), and the observed jets are biased towards those generated on the surface and heading outwards. However, other explanations, in particular the gluon saturation picture, may also account for some or all of the observed phenomena. Experimentally, these very different scenarios can be discriminated through measurements of d+Au collisions, where initial state effects in the Au nucleus remain but no final state dense medium is generated.

## 4 d+Au collisions

pQCD-based models predict an enhancement in the production of high-$`p_T`$charged hadrons in d+Au collisions relative to binary-scaled p+p collisions and little change in the back-to-back correlation strengthVitevdAu ; WangdAu , while one version of the saturation modelKharzeevdAu  predicts an inclusive suppression in d+Au of about 30% and possibly also suppression of the back-to-back strength due to a mono-jet contribution BtoBsaturation .

Figure 5 shows $`R_{AB}(p_T)`$(left) and the pedestal subtracted two-particle azimuthal distributions (right) measured by STAR in minimum bias and central d+Au collisionsSTARdAu . $`R_{AB}(p_T)`$ exceeds unity for 2$`<`$$`p_T`$$`<`$7 GeV/c, consistent with expectations from the Cronin effect. However, no additional enhancement over p+p is observed for central relative to minimum bias d+Au collisions. In the top right panel, the azimuthal distributions are characterized by a fit to the sum of near-side and back-to-back Gaussian peaks plus a constant. The only significant difference between the p+p and d+Au correlations is the growth in the pedestal value Miller . The lower right panel shows the pedestal- and flow-subtracted azimuthal distribution from central Au+Au collisions along with the pedestal-subtracted distributions from central d+Au and p+p. The near-side peak is similar in all three collision systems, while the away-side peak is suppressed only in central Au+Au collisions.

## 5 Summary

The strong suppression at high $`p_T`$ of the inclusive hadron yield and back-to-back correlations in central Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}`$=200 GeV are not observed in d+Au collisions. The inclusive yield in d+Au collisions is enhanced relative to binary-scaled p+p, consistent with expectations from the Cronin effect, and the back-to-back correlations show little variation relative to p+p. These results demonstrate conclusively that the striking suppression phenomena observed in central Au+Au collisions are due to the interaction of high energy partons or their fragmentation products in the dense medium created in such collisions.