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# Crossover from 2-dimensional to 1-dimensional collective pinning in NbSe3

## Abstract

We have fabricated NbSe3 structures with widths comparable to the Fukuyama-Lee-Rice phase-coherence length. For samples already in the 2-dimensional pinning limit, we observe a crossover from 2-dimensional to 1-dimensional collective pinning when the crystal width is less than 1.6 $`\mu `$m, corresponding to the phase-coherence length in this direction. Our results show that surface pinning is negligible in our samples, and provide a means to probe the dynamics of single domains giving access to a new regime in charge-density wave physics.

charge density wave; weak pinning; NbSe3; Fukuyama Lee Rice; nanowire, mesoscopic

Quasi-one-dimensional compounds comprised of metallic chains often undergo a phase transition to a charge-density wave (CDW) state. The charge density is periodically modulated in space:peierls

$$\rho (\stackrel{}{r})=\rho _0+\rho _1\mathrm{cos}[\stackrel{}{Q}\stackrel{}{r}+\varphi (\stackrel{}{r})],$$
(1)
where $`\rho _1`$ is the CDW amplitude and $`\stackrel{}{Q}=2\stackrel{}{k}_F`$ is the CDW wave vector, where $`\stackrel{}{k}_F`$ is the Fermi wavevector. The CDW phase $`\varphi `$ describes the local position of the CDW with respect to the underlying lattice. Under the influence of an electric field the CDW can slide with respect to the lattice.frohlich  However, impurities and defects in the lattice pin the CDW so that depinning occurs only above a threshold electric field $`E_T`$.

Another consequence of pinning is that the CDW’s phase $`\varphi `$ varies on a characteristic length $`l_\varphi `$, known as the Fukuyama-Lee-Rice length (and analogous to the Ovchinnikov-Larkin length in pinned vortex lattices.) In clean CDW materials like NbSe3 this length can be micrometers, allowing study of finite-size effects.ETsizeeffect  Previous studies by McCarten et al.McCarten  showed a crossover from 3-dimensional (3D) to 2-dimensional (2D) collective pinning in NbSe3 when the crystal thickness (crystallographic a\*-axis) was smaller than the phase correlation length $`l_\varphi `$ in that direction. Finite-size effects play a key role in understanding CDW physics, since nearly all properties of pinned and moving CDWs depend on the dimensionality of CDW pinning and dynamics and thus on crystal size.

The width (crystallographic c-axis) of ribbon-shaped NbSe3 crystals is almost always much larger than $`l_\varphi `$ in this direction, so previous work has focussed on the 2D limit. Here, we have prepared structures of varying widths both larger and smaller than $`l_\varphi `$. We observe a crossover from 2-dimensional to 1-dimensional (1D) pinning for the first time, and use this crossover to deduce the value of the CDW’s phase-phase correlation length in the width direction. The 1D limit provides new opportunities for studying CDW physics, such as the effect of a single phase coherent domain on the dynamics of the CDW.mantel

The depinning of a CDW is described by the model of Fukuyama, Lee and Rice (FLR).fukuyama ; lee  They consider the CDW as an elastic medium that deforms to adjust its phase in the presence of impurities. The FLR Hamiltonian is

$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}K{\displaystyle 𝑑\stackrel{}{r}\left(\stackrel{}{}\varphi \right)^2}+V_0\rho _1{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mathrm{cos}[\stackrel{}{Q}\stackrel{}{R_i}+\varphi (\stackrel{}{R_i})]`$
$`+{\displaystyle 𝑑\stackrel{}{r}\frac{\rho _{eff}\varphi }{Q}}.`$ (2)
The first term describes the elastic energy, where $`K`$ is the elastic force constant of the CDW; the second term describes the interaction with impurities located at $`\stackrel{}{R_i}`$, where $`V_0`$ is the impurity potential; and the third term describes the coupling of the CDW phase to an electric field $``$, where $`\rho _{eff}`$ is an effective condensed-charge density.

Although “strong” impurities can locally pin the phase at low temperatures and require amplitude collapse for local phase motion,Larkin and Brazovskii  on larger scales the CDW is collectively pinned by elastic deformations of its phase on lengths $`l_\varphi `$ larger than the impurity spacing $`l_i=\sqrt[3]{1/n_i}`$, where $`n_i`$ is the impurity concentration. These deformations allow the CDW to gain pinning energy by taking advantage of fluctuations in the interaction with randomly distributed impurities on that length scale. The elastic-energy cost of these deformations is balanced by the impurity-energy gain within a phase coherent volume. The elastic-energy cost has an upper limit, because $`\varphi `$ does not exceed $`\pi /l_\varphi `$ within a phase coherent domain. For simplicity, we consider the case where $`l_\varphi `$ is isotropic; the appropriate scaling for the anisotropic case is described in Refs. McCarten,  and lee, .

In 3D, the pinning-energy gain of a phase coherent volume is $`V_0\rho _1\sqrt{n_il_\varphi ^3}`$. Minimizing the total energy (the elastic energy plus the pinning-energy gain) per unit volume of size $`l_\varphi ^3`$ yields

$$l_\varphi =\left(\frac{2\pi ^2K}{3V_0\rho _1\sqrt{n_i}}\right)^2.$$
(3)
The threshold electric field $`E_T`$ is determined from the electrical energy needed to overcome the total energy per unit volume:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _{eff}E_T\varphi _T}{Q}}=V_0\rho _1\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{n_i}{l_\varphi ^3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{K}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{l_\varphi }}\right)^2,`$ (4)
where $`\varphi _T`$ is the angle through which the CDW has to evolve before it depins.

When the CDW is confined to a thickness $`t`$ less than the 3D phase correlation length in that direction, the CDW does not deform in that direction and the optimization of the pinning energy occurs in 2D, that is in the width and along the chains. The pinning energy changes to $`V_0\rho _1\sqrt{n_il_\varphi ^2t}`$ and again minimizing the total energy results in a depinning field proportional to $`1/t`$. When the CDW is only confined in the width direction, $`E_T`$ has the same form with $`t`$ replaced by the width $`w`$.

When the CDW is confined in both thickness and width, phase deformations occur along the chains (1D), and the pinning energy becomes $`V_0\rho _1\sqrt{n_il_\varphi wt}`$ resulting in a threshold field proportional to $`(1/wt)^{2/3}`$.

These results assume that there is no surface pinning so that the elastic energy per unit volume is unchanged from the 3D case. Table 1 summarizes results for the phase correlation length $`l_\varphi `$ and the depinning field $`E_T`$ in the 3D, confined 2D and confined 1D cases.

To probe width-dependent pinning and the 2D to 1D crossover we have fabricated small NbSe3 structures using two techniques. In the first, a crystal is placed on top of a gold contact pattern. The crystal width is then reduced by using either a focused-ion beam (FIB) or by reactive-ion (SF6) etching. The crystal width can be controllably reduced to $``$ 200 nm, provided that the thickness is comparable to or smaller than the final width. Measurements are then performed in a 4-point configuration. A full description of the fabrication process can be found in Refs. Kevin Ecrys,  and Erwin Ecrys, . In all cases, the initial crystals were thinner than the corresponding phase correlation length so that the pinning was initially in the 2D limit.

The second technique does not use etching to reduce the crystal size. Instead, bulk NbSe3 crystals are mixed into pyridine and then shaken in an ultrasonic bath. The ultrasound cleaves the crystals, producing a suspension of NbSe3 nanowires with typical cross sections $`(t\times w)`$ of 50 nm$`\times `$100 nm and lengths of 20 $`\mu `$m. A drop of this suspension is put on a Si substrate coated with insulating SiO2 and left to evaporate. The position of the nanowires is determined with respect to predefined makers on the substrate, and e-beam lithography followed by Ti and Au depositions are used to define a contact pattern on top of the wires. Both 2-point and 4-point structures are made with typical contact separations of 2 to 5 $`\mu `$m. The two fabrication techniques complement each other, producing samples with cross sections varying by nearly 5 orders of magnitude from 500 nm2 to 20 $`\mu `$m2.

The depinning field $`E_T`$ was determined from differential resistance (d$`V`$/d$`I`$) measurements in a helium flow cryostat using a standard lock-in amplifier technique. To characterize current homogeneity within the samples, we have applied large amplitude ac signals to mode lock the internal CDW “washboard” frequency to multiples of the applied frequency. We have observed complete mode locking on samples prepared by both fabrication techniques, indicating homogeneous current flow and that the fabrication techniques do not reduce the high quality of the crystals. From the distance between mode-locked steps, we have determined the sample cross sectional areas and these agree to within 10% with cross sections determined from the room-temperature resistance. Similar results are obtained by comparing the 2- and 4-point resistances, indicating that contact resistances are less than 10% of the nanowire resistance. Data presented here were obtained at $`T=120`$ K, where contributions to the measured voltage due to the current conversion process at current contacts are minimal.

Figure 1 shows the threshold field $`E_T`$ as a function of $`R/L`$ for the FIB and SF6 etched samples as well as for the much smaller sonicated samples. $`R/L`$ is the room-temperature resistance between voltage probes, and with the good assumption that the room-temperature resistivity is independent of sample size, $`R/L`$ is inversely proportional to the cross section $`A=wt`$. When $`R/L`$ is less than $``$ 1 $`\mathrm{\Omega }/\mu `$m corresponding to a cross-sectional area larger than 2 $`\mu `$m2, $`E_T`$ does not depend on the cross section. For $`R/L>1\mathrm{\Omega }/\mu `$m, $`E_T`$ increases strongly with decreasing cross section. On the log-log plot of Fig. 1, $`E_T`$ follows the solid line with a slope of 2/3 over more than two decades.

Figure 2 shows the d$`V`$/d$`I`$ curves for four nanowires. The $`R/L`$ values are shown next to each curve. For low $`R/L`$ values, the threshold for sliding is easy to determine visually by a sharp decrease of the differential resistance. As the cross section decreases the threshold for sliding is more gradual and harder to determine due to thermal rounding.McCarten ; rounding  This contributes to the increased scatter in the data of Fig. 1 for very small crystals ($`R/L>1`$ k$`\mathrm{\Omega }/\mu `$m). For nanowires with $`R/L>10`$ k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$/$`\mu `$m, the threshold for sliding could not be determined at $`T=120`$ K.

We have also investigated $`E_T`$ at temperatures of 130 K to 100 K. We have obtained plots where $`E_T`$ increases with $`R/L`$ following a straight line on a log-log scale similar to Fig. 1. The exponents at $`T=130`$ K and $`T=120`$ K are 0.67, and increase when decreasing temperature further to a value of 0.76 at $`T=100`$ K. This increase may be due to larger contributions to $`E_T`$ from phase slip processes at lower temperatures.

What is the origin of $`E_T`$’s size dependence in small crystals? The CDW in the crystal larger than 2 $`\mu `$m2 in Fig. 1 begins in the 2D collective pinning regime where $`E_T1/t`$, and where pinning related CDW deformations are cut off by the crystal thickness. The crossover to a width-dependent $`E_T`$ as the crystal is etched to small widths is due to a crossover from 2D to 1D collective pinning, in which transverse CDW deformations are cut off by both the thickness and width. This is strongly supported by the measured exponent $`E_TA^{2/3}`$ for crystals ranging over three orders of magnitude in cross section, which corresponds with the prediction for 1D collective pinning in Tab. 1. The crossover width depends on the thickness of the crystal as $`\sqrt{t}`$ and is smaller for thinner crystals.comment  The crossover width of the sample represented by the squares in Fig. 1 is 1.6 $`\pm `$ 0.2 $`\mu `$m. This value is a factor of two larger than the bulk (3D) CDW correlation length in the c\*-axis of 0.75 $`\mu `$m measured by X-ray diffraction.xray  This provides strong additional support for a 2D to 1D pinning origin.

An increase of $`E_T`$ with decreasing crystal cross section could also arise due to pinning by crystal surfaces.ETsizeeffect  In this case $`E_T`$ is determined by the crystal surface-to-volume ratio. For thin but wide ($`w1`$ $`\mu `$m) crystals, $`E_T1/t`$ for both surface pinning and 2D collective pinning, making these mechanisms difficult to distinguish.McCarten  But in crystals where the CDW is confined in both width and thickness, $`E_T`$ due to surface pinning is proportional to $`(w+t)/wt`$. Since the width-to-thickness ratio $`w/t`$ shows only a small sample-to-sample variation compared with the three orders of magnitude variation of cross-sectional area in Fig. 1, this simplifies to $`E_TA^{1/2}`$. This differs from the 1D collective pinning prediction $`E_TA^{2/3}`$. As indicated by the dashed line in Fig. 1, $`E_TA^{1/2}`$ is clearly inconsistent with experiment. The results for $`E_T`$ with $`R/L>1`$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }/\mu `$m clearly show that surface pinning can be excluded.

In the 1D limit, the total energy of a phase coherent domain is proportional to (wt)2/3. Accounting for NbSe3’s anisotropy and using $`K=3.5`$ meV/Å, $`V_0\rho _1=4`$ meV and $`n_i=2.5\times 10^{16}`$ cm-3 taken from Refs. McCarten,  and serge impurity, , we estimate the total energy of a 1D domain in a crystal with $`R/L=2`$ k$`\mathrm{\Omega }/\mu `$m to be only $`4.5`$ kT at $`T=120`$ K, compared with bulk 3D values of $`10^5`$ K. This small energy explains the pronounced thermal rounding in the depinning transition visible in the d$`V`$/d$`I`$ for these small crystals in Fig. 2.

The number of pinning centers per unit length decreases with decreasing cross-sectional area. Eventually the separation between pinning centers is comparable to the phase-coherence length along the length. This changes pinning for samples with small cross-sectional areas. The separation of pinning centers for our smallest sample is estimated to be 100 nm (using $`n_i=2.510^{16}`$ cm-3 and $`wt=400`$ nm2), while the predicted 1D phase-coherence length, taken from Table 1, is 350 nm for the smallest sample. This means that for all samples shown in Fig. 1 the phase-coherence length is larger than the separation between pinning centers. Thus the weak pinning limit applies to all our samples.

In summary, we have shown a dimensionality crossover from 2-dimensional to 1-dimensional weak pinning in NbSe3. 1D pinning is observed when both the width and thickness are smaller than the CDW’s bulk phase coherence length in these directions. The observation of 1D pinning behavior is not an artefact of the fabrication technique, since it is observed for samples prepared using three different methods. From the width dependence of $`E_T`$ we estimate the CDW’s phase correlation length in that direction to be 1.6 $`\mu `$m, comparable to the value obtained by X-ray diffraction.xray

The ability to reach the 1D limit should provide new opportunities for studying CDW physics. For example, in ordinary size crystals the cross section contains a large number of phase correlated domains in the pinned state and of dynamically correlated domains in the depinned state. In 1D crystals, the cross section will contain a single domain in both the pinned state and in the depinned state at modest fields, and the length of the domain will be $``$ 10 $`\mu `$m. This will allow the detailed dynamics on the scale of a single domain to be explored with nanofabricated probes spaced along the crystal.mantel ; adelman 1995 prb  Large-scale numerical simulations by Matsukawamatsukawa  suggest that the CDW’s dynamical correlation length should be larger or comparable to the pinned correlation length out to at least a few times $`E_T`$. Theoretically, the size of the critical regime near the depinning transition should be larger in 1D,fisher 1983 ; middleton ; myers  and may finally make it experimentally accessible, although equally interesting finite-size effects in the dynamicsmiddleton ; myers  should also be more important.

###### Acknowledgements.

We appreciate useful discussions with P. H. Kes and we thank S. V. Zaĭtsev-Zotov and M. A. Holst for work on the nanowires. This work was supported by the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental research on Matter (FOM), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), INTAS (Project 01-0474) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (DMR 0101574 and INT 9812326). K. O’Neill was supported by a U. S. Department of Education Fellowship. Nanofabrication work was performed at DIMES in Delft and at the Cornell Nano-Scale Science & Technology Facility, supported by the NSF (ECS-9731293).


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# Element stratification in main sequence stars and its effect on stellar oscillations

## 1.  Introduction

It is clearly admitted nowadays that the element abundances observed in stellar outer layers by spectroscopy do not necessarily reflect the chemical composition inside the stars. This composition may be altered by microscopic diffusion or by accretion, modulated by the macroscopic motions which may occur below the outer convective zones, namely rotation-induced mixing, internal waves or mass motions induced by stellar winds

The importance of element settling inside stars (also called “microscopic diffusion”) was first recognized as an explanation for the so-called“chemically peculiar stars” (Michaud 1970, Michaud et al. 1976 , Vauclair et al. 1978a and b). At that time, it was presented as “the diffusion hypothesis”, which appeared as a special process added in some cases to account for stellar abundance peculiarities. The fact that element settling is a fundamental process which must occur in most stars, including the so-called “normal” stars, has been proved by helioseismic investigations (Gough et al 1996). It was known for a long time that helium and metals should have diffused by about $`20\%`$ down from the solar convective zone since the birth of the Sun up to now (Aller and Chapman 1960). Comparisons between the sound velocity inside the Sun as computed in the models and as deduced from the inversion of seismic modes, confirmed that this settling really occurred.

Element settling is now introduced in most computations of stellar models as a “standard process”. A star is a self-gravitational gaseous sphere, composed of a mixture of various gases with different partial pressures, masses and atomic spectra. Due to the pressure and thermal gradients and to the selective radiative transfer, individual elements diffuse one with respect to the other, leading to a slow but effective restructuration. It is more difficult, in this framework, to understand why the consequences of diffusion processes are not seen in all the stars than to explain abundance anomalies. It is also not easy to account for the fact that, in chemically peculiar stars, the observed anomalies are not as strong as predicted by the theory of pure microscopic diffusion : these questions are related to the hydrodynamical processes which occur in stellar radiative zones and compete with element settling, thereby increasing the time scale of abundance variations.

In the following sections, I will discuss the interaction between element settling and stellar oscillations in two parts : 1) element settling as a stabilizing or an exciting process for triggering stellar oscillations ; 2) asteroseismology as a test of element settling inside stars.

## 2. Element settling as a stabilizing or an exciting process for triggering stellar oscillations

The variations of the chemical composition inside the stars, which result from element settling, can in some cases lead to the stabilization of layers which would otherwise trigger oscillations (e.g. helium depletion in Am stars). In other cases it can help destabilizing a star which would otherwise be stable against pulsations (e.g. iron accumulation in some peculiar stars, or helium diffusion in roAp stars).

### 2.1.  Generalities about element settling and radiative accelerations

Inside the convective regions, the rapid macroscopic motions mix the gas components and force their abundance homogenization. The chemical composition observed in the external regions of cool stars is thus affected by the settling which occurs below the outer convective zones, while in hot stars diffusion occurs directly in the atmosphere, which may lead to abundance gradients or “clouds” in the spectroscopically observed region. As the settling time scales vary, in first approximation, like the inverse of the density, the expected variations are smaller for cooler stars, which have deeper convective zones. While some elements can see their abundances vary by several orders of magnitude in the hottest Ap stars, the abundance variations in the Sun are not larger than a few $`10\%`$.

While gravitational settling and thermal diffusion lead to a downward motion of all the elements other than hydrogen, selective radiative transfer may push some elements upwards. This is due to the fact that the elements absorb photons which basically come from the internal layers of the star and re-emit these photons in an isotropic way, thereby gaining a net momentum upwards. This absorption may take place through the continuum (ionization) or through the lines (excitation of the ions). In practice the line process is much more significant than the continuum.

Radiative accelerations on individual ions strongly depend on their atomic characteristics, which have to be precisely known. They also depend on the sharing of the photon flux with the other elements. It represents the same kind of problems as those encountered for the computations of stellar opacities. This is the reason why the most precise computations presently done on radiative accelerations are the result of collaborations between stellar physicists specialists of diffusion processes and atomic physicists specialists of opacity computations.

The importance of the radiative accelerations on individual elements increase with the effective temperature (Michaud et al 1976). While it is negligible for the Sun (Turcotte et al 1998), it becomes larger than the gravity for most elements in hotter stars (Alecian, Michaud, Tully 1993, Turcotte, Richer and Michaud 1998, Richer et al 1998, Turcotte et al 2000). The Montreal models are presently the only ones which include step by step in the computations the modification of the stellar internal structure induced by the abundance variations. Approximation formulae for the general computations of radiative accelerations have been derived by Alecian and LeBlanc 2000 and 2002.

The radiative accelerations on the elements vary with depth, according to their ionization stage. It may happen to be smaller than gravity at some depth and larger than gravity below. In this case there is an accumulation of the considered element at that special depth, even if it is depleted in the outer layers. This is the case, for example, for iron inside B, A and F stars (Richard, Michaud, Richer 2001, Richard et al 2002). It is then possible that a new convective zone, due to this iron accumulation, takes place inside the star, thereby changing the way diffusion processes behave. Note that the same phenomenon occurs in horizontal branch stars and is supposed to be the reason for the oscillations of “SDB stars” (Charpinet et al 1997).

### 2.2. Am versus $`\delta `$-scuti stars

Among the main sequence stars which lie inside the instability strip, many chemically peculiar stars are found. The magnetic stars will be discussed below. Here I focus on the so-called Am stars, which are found in the H.R. diagram at the same place as the $`\delta `$-scuti stars. Generally speaking, the former ones show abundance peculiarities, namely a general overabundance of metals (except calcium and scandium), but no oscillations, while the later ones are pulsating but chemically normal. As discussed by Turcotte et al (2000), in A-type stars, almost $`70\%`$ of non chemically peculiar stars are $`\delta `$-scuti variables at current levels of sensitivity while most non-variable stars are Am stars. Furthermore, Am stars are slower rotators than $`\delta `$-scuti stars. This lead Baglin (1972) to suggest a dichotomy between the two kinds of stars. In this region of the H.R. diagram, the stars display two different convective zones in their outer layers : the upper one due to the HI and HeI ionisations and the lower one to the HeII ionisation. The $`\delta `$-scuti pulsate due to a $`\kappa `$-mechanism which takes place in the second convective zone. When microscopic diffusion occurs, this convective zone disappears due to helium depletion and the $`\kappa `$-mechanism cannot take place anymore (Vauclair, Vauclair and Pamjatnikh 1974).

More recently however, some oscillating Am stars have been discovered (Kurtz 1989, Kurtz et al 1995, Martinez et al 1999, Joshi et al 2002), which challenge the previously accepted theory. Richer, Michaud and Turcotte (2000) and Turcotte et al (2000) computed models of Am stars in the framework of the Montreal models. They found that, due to the iron accumulation in the radiative zone below the H and He convective zone, a new convective region appears which increases the diffusion time scales compared to the previous models. In these new models, helium is still substantially present in the helium convective zone at the ages of the considered stars. They claim that it is possible to account for the existence of oscillating Am stars close to the cool boundary of the instability strip. In all these computations, the different convective zones are assumed to be completely connected by overshooting. This assumption, first proposed by Latour et al 1976 and Toomre et al 1976, is still supported by recent numerical computations (Toomre, private communication).

### 2.3. Rapidly oscillating Ap stars

Rapidly oscillating Ap stars are very complex objects, due to their magnetic structure (Kurtz 2000). The models which have been proposed up to now are much too simple to be able to account for all their features. Dolez, Gough and Vauclair (1988) and Vauclair, Dolez and Gough (1991) proposed that the oscillations in roAp stars could be driven by $`\kappa `$-mechanism in the HeII ionisation zone. As helium is always depleted by diffusion, the idea was that a wind could exist at the magnetic poles, creating a helium overabundance. This model was supposed to be the continuation for cool stars of the model proposed by Vauclair (1975) to account for helium rich stars. In cooler stars, the accumulation should not be visible in the atmosphere, but it should still occur at the place where helium becomes neutral (first ionisation zone). As the $`\kappa `$-mechanism is driven by the second ionisation zone, the helium accumulation could be efficient only if it was large enough so that its downward wing could appreciably extent down to this region.

This model for roAp stars has been challenged by Balmforth et al. (2001), who computed the driving of the modes with different helium profiles at the magnetic poles and equator. They found that, contrary to what was assumed before, a helium accumulation induced by diffusion in a wind does not help driving the pulsations. On the contrary, the excitation of the modes is more important when there is less helium in the atmosphere, the basic driving mechanism being induced by hydrogen ionization (this was already suggested by Dziembowski and Goode 1996). Meanwhile the magnetic equator damps the oscillations due to energy loss by turbulence in the remaining convection zone : this could explain why oscillations aligned with the magnetic axis are preferentially excited in these stars. In this respect, recent spectroscopic observations which show evidences of abundance stratification in roAp stars which are not seen in noAp stars may give interesting clues (Gelbmann et al 2000, Ryabchikova et al 2002).

## 3.  Asteroseismology as a test of element settling inside stars

### 3.1. The solar case

Owing to helioseismology, the sound velocity inside the Sun is known with a precision of $`0.1\%`$ and gives evidence of the occurrence of helium settling as predicted by diffusion computations. Solar models computed in the old “standard” way, in which the element settling is totally neglected, do not agree with the inversion of the seismic modes. This result has been obtained by many authors, in different ways (see Gough et al 1996 and references therein). There is a characteristic discrepancy of a few percent, just below the convective zone, between the sound velocity computed in the models and that of the seismic Sun. Introducing the element settling considerably improves the consistency with the seismic Sun, but some discrepancies do remain, particularly below the convective zone where a peak appears in the sound velocity. The reason of this peak is probably due to the steepness of the $`\mu `$-gradient induced by pure microscopic diffusion (Richard et al 1996). The helium profiles directly obtained from helioseismology (Basu 1997 and 1998, Antia and Chitre 1998) show indeed a helium gradient below the convective zone which is smoother than the gradient obtained with pure settling. Introduction of macroscopic motions in competition with the settling slightly smoothes down the helium gradient, and may rub out the peak, although some differences still remain between the models and the seismic inversion results (Brun, Turck-Chièze, Zahn 1999, Richard, Théado and Vauclair 2002).

Such motions are also needed to reproduce the observed abundances of light elements, namely a lithium depletion by about 140 compared to the protosolar value while beryllium is normal (Balachandran and Bell 1998). Furthermore, observations of the 3He/4He ratio in the solar wind and in the lunar rocks (Geiss and Gloecker 1998) show that this ratio may not have increased by more than $`10\%`$ during the past 3 Gyr in the Sun. While the occurrence of some mild mixing below the solar convective zone is needed to explain the lithium depletion and helps for the conciliation of the models with helioseismological constraints, the 3He/4He observations put a strict constraint on its efficiency. The effect of $`\mu `$-gradients on the mixing processes has to be invoked to explain these observations in a consistent way.

### 3.2. Solar type stars

Oscillations of solar type stars have already been observed from ground based instruments (Bouchy and Carrier 2003). Future space missions like Corot and Eddington will hopefully bring important new data. We have begun to study the oscillations of stellar models including or not diffusion or metal accretion, with the aim to test special signatures of these processes. The models are iterated so that their external parameters ( $`T_{eff}`$, $`L`$, log $`g`$, metallicity) are the same while their past history, and accordingly their present internal structure, are different. Complete results will be presented elsewhre (Théado et al 2004, Bazot and Vauclair 2004). Here we show some preliminary results : Figure 1 displays evolutionary tracks for 1.2 M stars, with and without diffusion, iterated so that the outer stellar parameters remain quite similar (Castro 2003). Oscillation frequencies have been computed for the models corresponding to the crossing point, which have the same luminosity and temperature : log$`(L/L_{})=0.388`$ and log$`(T_{eff})=3.8`$ . Figure 2 displays, for the two models, the “second differences”, namely $`\nu _{n+1}+\nu _{n1}2.\nu _n`$. As pointed out by Gough 1989, these “second differences” present characteristic oscillations due to the partial reflexion of the sound waves on the regions of rapid variations of the sound velocity. Figure 2 shows clearly that they differ in the two models. Detailed analysis of all these effects is presently underway.

From these preliminary results, we may expect that the detailed observations and analysis of the oscillations of solar type stars will give clear signatures of diffusion processes in their interiors.

A fascinating new era is now opening in asteroseismology and stellar physics!


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# A granular fluid modeled as a driven system of elastic hard spheres

## I Introduction

The simplest model of a granular fluid in the rapid flow regime consists of a gas of (smooth) inelastic hard spheres (IHS) characterized by a constant coefficient of normal restitution $`\alpha `$ C90 . The inelasticity of collisions produces a decrease of the mean kinetic energy (or granular temperature) with a cooling rate $`\zeta 1\alpha ^2`$. Interestingly, a cooling effect can also be generated in a gas of elastic hard spheres (EHS) by the application of an effective drag force with a friction coefficient $`\frac{1}{2}\zeta `$. At a macroscopic level of description, the hydrodynamic balance equations of mass, momentum, and energy for the IHS gas are (formally) identical to those for the frictional EHS gas. However, the microscopic dynamics is physically quite different in both systems: in the IHS gas (a) the particles move freely between two successive collisions but (b) each colliding pair loses energy upon collision; in the EHS case (a) the particles lose energy between collisions due to the action of the drag force but (b) energy is conserved by collisions. This implies that during a certain small time step, only the small fraction of colliding particles are responsible for the cooling of the system in the IHS case, whereas all the particles contribute to the cooling in the EHS case. Therefore, there is no reason in principle to expect that the relevant physical properties (e.g., the velocity distribution function) are similar for IHS and frictional EHS under the same conditions. For instance, in the so-called homogeneous cooling state the solutions to the respective Boltzmann equations for IHS and EHS differ: while the distribution function is a (time-dependent) Gaussian for EHS GSB90 , deviations from a Gaussian (as exemplified by a nonzero kurtosis and by an overpopulated high energy tail) are present in the case of IHS vNE98 . Notwithstanding this, the differences between the homogeneous solutions for IHS and EHS are not quantitatively important in the domain of thermal velocities and so it is still possible that both systems exhibit comparable departures from equilibrium in inhomogeneous states where transport of momentum and/or energy is the relevant phenomenon. The investigation of this possibility is the main aim of this work.

## II Model of driven elastic hard spheres

The Boltzmann equation for a gas of inelastic hard spheres (IHS) is GS87 ; BDS97

$`\left(_t+𝐯\right)f(𝐯)`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma ^{d1}{\displaystyle \text{d}𝐯_1\text{d}\widehat{𝝈}\mathrm{\Theta }(𝐠\widehat{𝝈})(𝐠\widehat{𝝈})\left[\alpha ^2f(𝐯^{})f(𝐯_1^{})f(𝐯)f(𝐯_1)\right]}`$ (1)
$``$ $`J^{(\alpha )}[f,f].`$
In this expression $`f(𝐫,𝐯;t)`$ is the one-particle distribution function, $`\sigma `$ is the diameter of a sphere, $`d`$ is the dimensionality of the system, $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the Heaviside step function, $`\widehat{𝝈}`$ is a unit vector directed along the centers of the two colliding spheres at contact, $`𝐠=𝐯𝐯_1`$ is the relative velocity, and $`\alpha `$ is the coefficient of normal restitution. The precollisional or restituting velocities $`𝐯^{}`$ and $`𝐯_1^{}`$ are given by

$$𝐯^{}=𝐯\frac{1+\alpha }{2\alpha }(𝐠\widehat{𝝈})\widehat{𝝈},𝐯_1^{}=𝐯_1+\frac{1+\alpha }{2\alpha }(𝐠\widehat{𝝈})\widehat{𝝈}.$$
(2)
The collision operator for elastic hard spheres (EHS), $`J^{(1)}[f,f]`$, is obtained from eqs. (1) and (2) by setting $`\alpha =1`$.

The first $`d+2`$ moments of the distribution function define the number density $`n`$, the nonequilibrium flow velocity $`𝐮`$ and the granular temperature $`T`$. The most important properties of $`J^{(\alpha )}[f,f]`$ are those that determine the form of the macroscopic balance equations for mass, momentum and energy, namely

$$\text{d}𝐯\{1,𝐯,mV^2\}J^{(\alpha )}[f,f]=\{0,\mathrm{𝟎},dnT\zeta \},$$
(3)
where $`m`$ is the mass of a particle, $`𝐕(𝐫,t)𝐯𝐮(𝐫,t)`$ is the peculiar velocity and $`\zeta (𝐫,t)`$ is the cooling rate due to the inelasticity of the collisions. Although it is a nonlinear functional of the distribution function $`f`$ BDS97 ; BDS99 , a simple estimate $`\zeta \zeta _0`$ is obtained by replacing the actual distribution function $`f`$ by the local equilibrium distribution $`f_0=n(m/2\pi T)^{d/2}\mathrm{exp}(mV^2/2T)`$. The result is BDS99 ; BDKS98

$$\zeta _0(𝐫,t)=\nu _0(𝐫,t)\frac{d+2}{4d}(1\alpha ^2),\nu _0\frac{8\pi ^{(d1)/2}\sigma ^{d1}}{(d+2)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(d/2\right)}n\left(\frac{T}{m}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(4)
According to the arguments of section I, our model consists of the replacement

$$J^{(\alpha )}[f,f]\beta (\alpha )J^{(1)}[f,f]+\frac{1}{2}\zeta _0(\alpha )\frac{}{𝐯}\left(𝐕f\right),$$
(5)
where $`\beta (\alpha )`$ is a positive constant to be determined. The model (5) complies with the properties (3), except that the true cooling rate is replaced by the local equilibrium estimate (4). According to eq. (5), the gas of inelastic hard spheres is replaced by an “equivalent” gas of elastic hard spheres subjected to the action of a drag force $`𝐅_{\text{drag}}=(m\zeta _0/2)𝐕`$ proportional to the peculiar velocity with a friction constant that depends on the local density and temperature. This drag force mimics the cooling effect due to dissipative collisions in the underlying granular system. The parameter $`\beta `$ accounts for the fact that, in principle, the gas of EHS that more efficiently succeeds in capturing the main properties of the granular gas is made of particles with a diameter $`\sigma ^{}=\beta ^{1/(d1)}\sigma `$ that does not necessarily coincide with the diameter $`\sigma `$ of the inelastic spheres. Alternatively, we can view $`\beta `$ as a correction factor to modify the collision rate of the equivalent system of EHS. A comparison between the transport coefficients of IHS BDKS98 ; BC01  and those of the “equivalent” EHS AS03  suggests the choice

$$\beta (\alpha )=\frac{1}{2}(1+\alpha ).$$
(6)
## III Simulations

In order to test the model (5) in inhomogeneous states far from equilibrium, we have carried out computer simulations of the Boltzmann equation by means of the DSMC method B94  in both systems (IHS and EHS) for the simple shear flow problem. In the simple shear flow C90 ; GS03 , the gas is enclosed between two infinite parallel plates located at $`y=\pm L/2`$ and moving with velocities $`\pm U/2`$ along the $`x`$-axis. When a particle crosses one of the plates it is reentered through the opposite plate by applying the standard Lees–Edwards boundary conditions LE72 . This produces a viscous heating effect that tends to increase the temperature of the system, whereas the inelastic cooling (in the IHS system) or the drag force (in the EHS system) tend to decrease the temperature. Eventually, a nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) is reached when both effects cancel each other. If the size of the system is large enough as to avoid clustering effects, the NESS is characterized by uniform density and temperature, and a linear velocity profile $`u_x(y)=ay`$, where $`a=U/L`$ is the constant shear rate.

As a test case, we have considered three-dimensional systems with $`L=2.5\lambda `$, where $`\lambda =(\sqrt{2}\pi \overline{n}\sigma ^2)^1`$ is the average mean free path of the IHS gas ($`\overline{n}`$ being the average density), and $`U=10v_0`$, where $`v_0=\sqrt{2T_0/m}`$ is the initial thermal velocity ($`T_0`$ being the initial temperature). The shear rate is then $`a=4\tau _0^1`$, where $`\tau _0=\lambda /v_0`$ is the initial mean free time of the IHS gas. The coefficient of restitution for the IHS gas has been taken as $`\alpha =0.9`$. As for the EHS gas, its collision rate has been reduced by a factor $`\beta =0.95`$, in agreement with eq. (6). In both cases the viscous heating effect dominates during the transient regime until the NESS is reached. In the simulations we have considered a number $`N=10^4`$ of simulated particles, a width layer $`\delta L=0.05\lambda `$ and a time step $`\delta t=10^3\tau _0\sqrt{T_0/T}`$.

Figure 1(a) shows the velocity and temperature profiles at times $`t/\tau _0=0.13,0.5,1,1.5,2`$ for both systems, starting from an initial condition of total equilibrium. By time $`t=2\tau _0`$ (what corresponds to about 2.4 collisions per inelastic particle) the velocity profile is practically linear and the temperature profile is almost uniform. However, the global temperature keeps growing in time until it reaches a stationary value $`T146T_0`$ for $`t10\tau _0`$ (i.e. after about 48 collisions per inelastic particle). The time evolution of $`T/T_0`$ and of $`P_{xy}/nT_0`$ (where $`P_{xy}`$ is the shear stress) is shown in fig. 1(b) for an initial condition of local equilibrium, so that the system is initially prepared with a linear velocity profile. The NESS value of the shear stress represents an effective shear viscosity about 14% smaller than the Navier–Stokes value corresponding to $`\alpha =0.9`$. Figure 1, along with a more comprehensive comparison that will be reported elsewhere AS03 , shows that the equivalent EHS system succeeds in capturing the main nonequilibrium transport properties of the underlying IHS system.

## IV Kinetic modeling

### IV.1 BGK and ES models

The mapping IHS$``$EHS allows one to take advantage of the existence of simple kinetic models for EHS to extend them straightforwardly to IHS. For instance, consider the so-called ellipsoidal statistical (ES) model GS03 ; Cer90

$$J^{(1)}[f,f]\nu _0(1ϵ)(ff_ϵ),$$
(7)
where

$$f_ϵ(𝐯)=n\left(\frac{mn}{2\pi }\right)^{d/2}\left(det𝖱\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{mn}{2}𝖱^1:\mathrm{𝐕𝐕}\right),𝖱=\frac{1}{1ϵ}\left(p𝖨ϵ𝖯\right),$$
(8)
$`𝖯`$ being the pressure tensor. The parameter $`ϵd^1`$ can be freely chosen. The choice $`ϵ=d^1`$ makes the ES model reproduce the correct value $`\text{Pr}=(d1)/d`$ of the Prandtl number. The simplest choice, however, is $`ϵ=0`$, in which case $`𝖱=p𝖨`$, the reference function $`f_ϵ=f_0`$ becomes the local equilibrium distribution and the ES model reduces to the well-known BGK model.

In the spirit of (5), the extension of the ES model to IHS is

$$J^{(\alpha )}[f,f]\beta (\alpha )\nu _0(1ϵ)(ff_ϵ)+\frac{1}{2}\zeta _0(\alpha )\frac{}{𝐯}\left(𝐕f\right).$$
(9)
In particular, setting $`ϵ=0`$ we get a simplified version of the BGK-like model for IHS that was proposed in ref. BDS99 . This BGK model is easy to solve for the simple shear flow problem considered in section III. The thin solid lines in fig. 1(b) represent the evolution of the temperature and the shear stress according to such a solution. As can be observed, the BGK solution exhibits an excellent agreement with the DSMC results for both IHS and EHS.

### IV.2 Mixtures

The same idea behind (5) can be extended to a multi-component granular gas AS03 . In the special case where all the species have the same flow velocity ($`𝐮_i=𝐮`$), our model becomes

$$J_{ij}^{(\alpha _{ij})}[f_i,f_j]\beta _{ij}(\alpha _{ij})J_{ij}^{(1)}[f_i,f_j]+\frac{1}{2}\zeta _{ij}(\alpha _{ij})\frac{}{𝐯}\left[\left(𝐯𝐮_i\right)f_i\right]$$
(10)
with

$$\beta _{ij}=\frac{1+\alpha _{ij}}{2},\zeta _{ij}=\frac{\sqrt{2}\pi ^{(d1)/2}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+d/2)}n_j\mu _{ji}^2\sigma _{ij}^{d1}\left(\frac{T_i}{m_i}\right)^{1/2}\left(1+\frac{m_iT_j}{m_jT_i}\right)^{3/2}\left(1\alpha _{ij}^2\right),$$
(11)
where $`T_i`$ is the granular temperature of species $`i`$ and $`\mu _{ji}(1+m_i/m_j)^1`$. The model (10) preserves the first $`d+2`$ collision integrals of IHS in the leading Sonine approximation with $`𝐮_i=𝐮`$. The important point is that the approximation (10) allows one to transfer any given kinetic model

$$J_{ij}^{(1)}[f_i,f_j]K_{ij}^{(1)}$$
(12)
for elastic mixtures GS03  into an equivalent model for inelastic mixtures:

$$J_{ij}^{(\alpha _{ij})}[f_i,f_j]K_{ij}^{(\alpha _{ij})}=\frac{1+\alpha _{ij}}{2}K_{ij}^{(1)}+\frac{\zeta _{ij}}{2}\frac{}{𝐯}\left[\left(𝐯𝐮_i\right)f_i\right].$$
(13)
## V Conclusion

In summary, we have shown that the nonequilibrium transport properties of a Boltzmann gas of inelastic hard spheres can be satisfactorily captured by an equivalent gas of elastic hard spheres driven by a dissipative drag force $`𝐅_{\text{drag}}=(m\zeta _0/2)𝐕`$, where $`\zeta _0(\alpha )`$ is the (local equilibrium) cooling rate. Besides, the elastic particles must reduce their collision rate by a factor $`\beta (\alpha )\frac{1}{2}(1+\alpha )`$ in order to “disguise” as a granular gas. While the “equivalent” system of EHS does not retain finer details of the true IHS gas (e.g., high energy tails, velocity correlations, …), it is able to account for those phenomena (e.g., inelastic clustering) that can be described at a hydrodynamic level. Finally, we have exploited the possibility of reverting the mapping IHS$``$EHS to construct kinetic models for granular gases as natural extensions of known kinetic models originally proposed for elastic particles.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain) through grant No. BFM2001-0718. A.A. is grateful to the Fundación Ramón Areces for a predoctoral fellowship.


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# Extragalactic water masers in bright IRAS sources

## 1. Introduction

To date, there is evidence for a total of three distinct classes of extragalactic H2O masers: i) H2O megamasers (with isotropic luminosities Liso $`>`$ 10 L) associated with accretion disks in active galaxies (e.g. NGC 4258, Miyoshi et al. 1995) ii) H2O megamasers resulting from an interaction between the nuclear radio jet and an encroaching molecular cloud (e.g. Mrk 348, Peck et al. 2001, 2003) iii) weaker H2O masers, the ‘kilomasers’ (with Liso $`<`$ 10 L), often associated with prominent star forming regions in large scale galactic disks, and, thus far found in galaxies containing bright IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) point sources (e.g. NGC 2146, Tarchi et al. 2002b).

We have undertaken deep searches optimized to detect emission arising from the last class of sources. The sample (hereafter ‘FIR-maser’ sample) is comprised of all galaxies with declination $`>`$–30, known velocity, and IRAS point source flux densities of $`S_{100\mu \mathrm{m}}`$$`>`$50 Jy (e.g. IRAS 1989). There is a total of 45 sources.

## 2. Observations

The target sources of the sample were measured in the $`6_{16}5_{23}`$ line of H2O (rest frequency: 22.23508 GHz) with the 100-m telescope of the MPIfR at Effelsberg on various occasions between April 2001 and September 2002. The full width at half power beamwidth was $``$40′′ and the pointing accuracy was always better than 10′′. The autocorrelator backend was split into eight bands of width 40 or 80 MHz and 512 or 256 channels each. This yielded channel spacings of $``$1 or $``$4 km s-1.

## 3. Results

Including the early part of our survey (Tarchi et al. 2002a, b), from the FIR–sample, we have detected three new kilomasers (IC 342, NGC 2146, and NGC3556) and a new megamaser (Arp 299). Line profiles are shown in Fig. 1. Properties of the individual sources are discussed below.

### 3.1. Recent detections

IC 342: We have obtained the first definite detection of water maser emission in the nearby spiral galaxy IC 342 (at a distance $`D`$ = 1.8 Mpc). The maser arises from a location 10–15′′ to the west of the centre of the galaxy111The position has been derived from an Effelsberg map we have produced taking advantage of the high line intensity and good weather conditions and is associated with a powerful star forming region at a projected distance of $``$ 100 pc from the nucleus. Time variability (see Fig. 1a), if intrinsic, yields a maser size of $`<1.5\times 10^{16}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and a brightness temperature $`>10^9\mathrm{K}`$.

NGC 2146: The one detected toward the starburst galaxy NGC 2146 ($`D`$ = 14.5 Mpc) is the most luminous and distant H2O kilomaser detected so far (see Fig. 1b). Interferometric observations with the Very Large Array (VLA) show that a part of the emission originates from two prominent sites of star formation that are associated with compact radio continuum sources, likely ultra-compact Hii regions.

NGC 3556: is a nearby spiral galaxy located at a distance of $``$12 Mpc. Its FIR luminosity, $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ $``$ 1010 L, is similar to that of the Milky Way. The detected H2O maser line initially had a central velocity of $``$738 km s-1. With a peak flux of 20–40 mJy, the maser had an isotropic luminosity of $``$1 L. More recently, the maser feature disappeared and another weaker component, at $``$708 km s-1, was detected in September 2002. The profiles are shown in Fig. 1c.

Arp 299: is a merging system composed of three main regions of activity: the nuclear regions of IC 694 in the east, NGC 3690 in the west, and the interface where IC 694 and NGC 3690 overlap, located approximately 10′′ north of NGC 3690. In Arp 299, the water maser profile is extremely broad ($``$200 km s-1), with a peak flux density of 30 mJy (Fig. 1d). Adopting a distance of 42 Mpc, the total isotropic luminosity is $``$250 L, placing the object among the more luminous H2O megamaser sources. The maser line is centered at a velocity of 3100 km s-1, i.e. very close to the systemic velocity of the entire complex of sources which constitute Arp 299.

## 4. Discussion and Conclusions

More than 700 active galaxies have been observed in water vapor maser surveys to date. In order to search for a large number of sources, these surveys were not very sensitive and had a low detection rate, between zero (e.g. Henkel et al. 1998) and a few percent (e.g. Henkel et al. 1984; Braatz, Wilson, & Henkel 1996, Greenhill et al. 2002).

We detected with IC 342, NGC 2146, NGC 3556 and Arp 299 four new H2O masers. The new detections are a consequence of higher sensitivity (noise levels of $``$ 10 mJy for a 1 km s-1 channel), more stable continuum sampling over large bandwidths (i.e. improved baselines), and luck (in the case of the short-lived flare observed toward IC 342). Including all previously detected sources in the complete FIR–sample, we find a detection rate of 10/45 (or 22%).

The high rate of maser detections in our sample of galaxies strongly suggests that a relationship between FIR flux density and maser phenomena exists, consistent with the assessment by Henkel, Wouterloot, & Bally (1986). Fig. 2 shows the cumulative detection rate above a given 100$`\mu `$m IRAS Point Source Catalog flux for the parent galaxy. The detection rate strongly declines with decreasing FIR flux. For fluxes $``$1000 Jy, 100–300 Jy, and 50–100 Jy, we find detection rates of 2/2 (or 100%), 5/17 (or 29%), and 3/26 (or 12%). This indicates that an extension of the sample to lower fluxes would be worthwhile.

It appears that $`S_{100\mu \mathrm{m}}`$ (and thus also the FIR luminosity, $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$) and H2O peak fluxes are roughly proportional, as was already suggested by Henkel et al. (1986) on the basis of a smaller number of detected sources.

The possibility that a correlation between $`L_{\mathrm{IR}}`$ and $`L_{\mathrm{H}_2\mathrm{O}}`$, similar to that found by Genzel & Downes (1979) for galactic star forming regions, exists is under investigation.

## References

Braatz, J. A., Wilson, A. S. & Henkel, C. 1996, ApJS, 106, 51

Genzel, R. & Downes, D. 1979, A&A, 72, 234

Greenhill. L.J., Ellingsen, S. P., Norris, R. P. et al. 2002, ApJ, 565, 836

Henkel, C., Güsten, R., Downes, D., et al. 1984, A&A, 141, L1

Henkel, C., Wouterloot, J. G. A., & Bally, J. 1986, A&A, 155, 193

Henkel, C., Wang, Y. P., Falcke, H., Wilson, A. S. & Braatz, J.A. 1998, A&A, 335, 463

IRAS 1989, Cataloged Galaxies and Quasars Observed in the IRAS Survey, Version 2, L. Fullmer & C. Lonsdale, JPL D-1932

Miyoshi, M., Moran, J., Herrnstein, J., et al. 1995, Nature, 373, 127

Peck, A. B., Henkel, C., Ulvestad, J. S., et al. 2003, ApJ, 590, 149

Tarchi, A., Henkel, C., Peck, A. B. & Menten, K. M. 2002a, A&A, 385, 1049

Tarchi, A., Henkel, C., Peck, A. B. & Menten, K. M. 2002b, A&A, 389, L39


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# Excitation of oscillation modes by tides in close binaries: constraints on stellar and orbital parameters

## 1 Introduction

In close binaries with non-synchronously rotating components, each star experiences the time-dependent tidal force exerted by its companion. The tidal force gives rise to forced nonradial oscillations with frequencies that are determined by the orbital period and the rotation rates of the component stars. The forcing frequencies may, at any time, come close to the eigenfrequencies of the stars’ free oscillation modes because of secular changes in the orbital parameters due to orbital and rotational angular momentum losses or because of changes in the eigenfrequencies due to stellar evolution. Such resonances lead to an enhanced tidal action and result in the excitation of the oscillation mode involved in the resonance.

The resonant excitation of free oscillation modes by the tidal action of a companion was first suggested in a seminal paper by Cowling (1941). Since then, various authors have approached the problem from both an analytical and a numerical point of view with the aim to explain some of the evolutionary aspects and the observational characteristics of binary stars (e.g. Zahn 1970, 1975; Savonije & Papaloizou 1983, 1984; Willems, Van Hoolst & Smeyers 2003, and references therein). The subject recently received a new impetus, first from the discovery of giant planets in close orbits around solar-type stars (see Willems et al. 1997, and references therein), and subsequently from the increasingly accurate large-scale surveys of pulsating stars in close binaries (e.g. Harmanec et al. 1997, Aerts et al. 1998, Aerts et al. 2000). The potential of tides as an excitation mechanism was furthermore found to be particularly promising for the excitation of gravity modes in hot B subdwarfs by Fontaine et al. (2003). Existing and upcoming space missions such as WIRE, MOST, MONS, COROT, and Eddington are likely to contribute even further to the rising interest in tidally excited oscillation modes.

The occurrence of resonances and their effects on the evolution and the observational properties of a binary depend on the period and the eccentricity of the orbit, on the masses and the radii of the component stars, and on the properties of the oscillation mode involved in the resonance. The latter in turn depend sensitively on the internal stellar structure of the tidally distorted star. The multitude of these dependencies and the complexity of their interaction with each other make it difficult to form a concise intuitive picture on the possibility of exciting nonradial oscillations by tides in close binaries. A systematic study unravelling the role of the different stellar and orbital parameters would therefore provide a valuable addition to the theory of tidally induced oscillations as well as to observational campaigns dedicated to the search of free or forced oscillations in binary stars.

In this paper, we set a first step in an attempt to understand the parameter space of stellar and orbital parameters for which the circumstances for the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes are favourable. The primary aim is to clarify the qualitative behaviour of the acting parameters and the interaction between them without detailed calculations involving the numerical integration of the systems of differential equations governing free and forced oscillations in close binary components. The results of this study are then to serve as a starting point for detailed numerical calculations which will be presented in a follow-up investigation.

The plan of the paper is as follows. In Section 1, we present the basic assumptions and the basic ingredients of the theory of forced oscillations in close binaries. Some particular attention is paid to the Fourier decomposition of the tide-generating potential, which plays a crucial part in the investigation. In Section 2, we present a detailed analysis of the Fourier coefficients as functions of the orbital eccentricity. In Section 3, we examine the ratio of the tidal force to the gravity at the star’s equator. In Section 4, the results of the preceding sections are used to constrain the range of forcing frequencies that is favourable for the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes by dynamic tides in close binaries. In the final section, we summarise our results and present some concluding remarks.

## 2 Basic concepts and assumptions

Consider a close binary system of stars orbiting each other under the influence of their mutual gravitational force. Let $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$ be the orbital period, $`a`$ the semi-major axis, and $`e`$ the orbital eccentricity. The first star, with mass $`M_1`$ and radius $`R_1`$, is assumed to be a uniformly rotating main-sequence star with a rotation axis perpendicular to the orbital plane. The magnitude of the rotational angular velocity $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ is assumed to be small in comparison to the inverse of the star’s dynamical time scale:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}}\left(\frac{GM_1}{R_1^3}\right)^{1/2},$$
(1)
where $`G`$ is the Newtonian constant of gravitation. The second star, with mass $`M_2`$, is treated as a point mass.

Furthermore, let $`\stackrel{}{r}=(r,\theta ,\varphi )`$ be a system of spherical coordinates with respect to an orthogonal frame of reference that is corotating with the star, and let $`\epsilon _TW(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ be the potential giving rise to the tidal force. Here, $`\epsilon _T`$ is a small dimensionless parameter which is proportional to the ratio of the tidal force to the gravity at the star’s equator and is defined as

$$\epsilon _T=\left(\frac{R_1}{a}\right)^3\frac{M_2}{M_1}$$
(2)
(e.g. Tassoul 1987).

The tide-generating potential can be expanded in terms of unnormalised spherical harmonics $`Y_{\mathrm{}}^m(\theta ,\varphi )`$ and in Fourier series in terms of multiples of the companion’s mean motion $`n=2\pi /P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$ as

$`\epsilon _TW(\stackrel{}{r},t)=\epsilon _T{\displaystyle \frac{GM_1}{R_1}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}=2}{\overset{4}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}`$ (3)
$`c_{\mathrm{},m,k}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r}{R_1}}\right)^{\mathrm{}}Y_{\mathrm{}}^m(\theta ,\varphi )\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{i}\left(\sigma _Ttkn\tau \right)\right],`$
where $`\sigma _T=kn+m\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a forcing angular frequency with respect to the corotating frame of reference and $`\tau `$ is a time of periastron passage. The Fourier coefficients $`c_{\mathrm{},m,k}`$ are determined by

$`c_{\mathrm{},m,k}={\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{}|m|)!}{(\mathrm{}+|m|)!}}P_{\mathrm{}}^{|m|}(0)\left({\displaystyle \frac{R_1}{a}}\right)^\mathrm{}2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left(1e^2\right)^{\mathrm{}1/2}}}`$ (4)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }(1+e\mathrm{cos}v)^\mathrm{}1\mathrm{cos}(kM+mv)𝑑v,`$
where $`P_{\mathrm{}}^{|m|}(x)`$ is an associated Legendre polynomial of the first kind, and $`M`$ and $`v`$ are respectively the mean and the true anomaly of the companion in its relative orbit (e.g. Polfliet & Smeyers 1990; Smeyers, Willems & Van Hoolst 1998). The Fourier coefficients obey the property of symmetry $`c_{\mathrm{},m,k}=c_{\mathrm{},m,k}`$ and are different from zero only for even values of $`\mathrm{}+|m|`$. In the particular case of a binary with a circular orbit they are different from zero only for $`k=m`$.

It follows that, for each degree $`\mathrm{}`$ of the spherical harmonics $`Y_{\mathrm{}}^m(\theta ,\varphi )`$, the tide-generating potential generates an infinite number of partial dynamic tides with forcing angular frequencies $`\sigma _T0`$. When one of these forcing frequencies is close to the eigenfrequency of a free oscillation mode, the tidal action exerted by the companion is enhanced and the oscillation mode is resonantly excited. The occurrence of resonances between partial dynamic tides and free oscillation modes is particularly relevant for the excitation of free oscillation modes $`g^+`$ since, for binaries with short orbital periods, their eigenfrequencies may be in the range of the forcing frequencies induced by the companion.

Since the terms associated with the third- and fourth-degree spherical harmonics in the expansion of the tide-generating potential contain an additional small factor $`R_1/a`$ or $`\left(R_1/a\right)^2`$ with respect to the second-degree terms, the latter ones are usually dominant. For the remainder of the paper, we therefore restrict ourselves to the terms associated with $`\mathrm{}=2`$. The only non-zero Fourier coefficients in Expansion (3) of the tide-generating potential are then the coefficients $`c_{2,2,k}`$, $`c_{2,0,k}`$, and $`c_{2,2,k}`$. These coefficients are independent of the ratio $`R_1/a`$ so that they are solely determined by the orbital eccentricity $`e`$. Since they also obey the symmetry property $`c_{2,m,k}=c_{2,m,k}`$, it is furthermore sufficient to consider positive values of $`k`$ only.

The effects of resonant dynamic tides on the evolution and the observational characteristics of a binary depend on the strength of the tide and on the properties of the oscillation mode involved in the resonance (e.g. Smeyers et al. 1998, Willems et al. 2003). The strength of the tide is determined by the mass ratio $`q=M_2/M_1`$ and the orbital separation $`a`$ via the dimensionless parameter $`\epsilon _T`$, and by the orbital eccentricity $`e`$ via the Fourier coefficients $`c_{\mathrm{},m,k}`$. The properties of the oscillation mode contribute to the effects of the resonance via the so-called overlap-integral which is proportional to the ratio of the work done by the tidal force to the mode’s kinetic energy (for a precise definition see, for example, Press & Teukolsky 1977, Kumar, Ao & Quataert 1995, Smeyers et al. 1998). For main-sequence stars, the behaviour of the overlap-integral is such that the coupling between the oscillation mode and the tidal force generally weakens with increasing radial order of the mode.

In the following sections, we focus on the role of the stellar and orbital parameters affecting the strength and the frequency of the tides. The role of the internal structure of the star and the properties of the oscillation modes will be the subject of a forthcoming investigation.

## 3 The orbital eccentricity

The orbital eccentricity contributes to the determination of the strength of the partial dynamic tides through the Fourier coefficients $`c_{2,m,k}`$. For a given eccentricity, the coefficients generally decrease with increasing values of $`k`$, but the decrease is slower for higher orbital eccentricities. In addition, for a given value of $`k`$, the coefficients $`c_{2,m,k}`$ generally increase with increasing values of $`e`$. Hence, there is a finite number of non-trivially contributing terms in the expansion of the tide-generating potential which increases with increasing orbital eccentricities.

In order to estimate the value of $`k`$ beyond which the contributions to the expansion of the tide-generating potential become negligible as a function of the orbital eccentricity, the logarithms of the absolute values of the non-zero coefficients $`c_{2,m,k}`$ are displayed in the left-hand panels of Figs. 13 as a two-dimensional function of $`k`$ and $`e`$. For clarity, lines for which $`|c_{2,m,k}(e)|10^2,10^3,10^4`$ are added to the left-hand panels of the figures and one-dimensional variations of the coefficients $`c_{2,m,k}`$ as a function of $`k`$ are shown in the right-hand panels in the case of the orbital eccentricities $`e=0.4,0.6`$, and $`0.8`$. The smallest Fourier coefficients considered have absolute values of the order of $`10^{11}`$.

As mentioned in the beginning of this section, the general tendency of the coefficients $`c_{2,m,k}`$ is to decrease rapidly with increasing values of $`k`$. The behaviour is slightly more complex for the coefficients $`c_{2,2,k}`$ for which, depending on the value of the orbital eccentricity, a local minimum and a local maximum may occur prior to the rapid decrease with increasing values of $`k`$111Note that the local maximum occurs at values of $`k`$ close to those for which $`kn\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{P}`$, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{P}=n\left[\left(1+e\right)/\left(1e\right)^3\right]^{1/2}`$ the orbital angular velocity at the periastron of the relative orbit.. This is particularly clear in the cross sections shown in the right-hand panel of Fig. 1. A similar behaviour is observed for the coefficients $`c_{2,2,k}`$, albeit somewhat less pronounced. For a given value of the orbital eccentricity $`e`$ and sufficiently large values of the Fourier index $`k`$, the largest contributions to the expansion of the tide-generating potential usually stem from the terms associated with the coefficients $`c_{2,2,k}`$, while the contributions of the terms associated with the coefficients $`c_{2,2,k}`$ are usually negligible. For large orbital eccentricities and small values of $`k`$, the dominant contributions generally stem from the terms associated with the coefficients $`c_{2,0,k}`$.

Although the value of $`k`$ beyond which the contributions to the expansion of the tide-generating potential are considered to become negligible depends on the desired accuracy of the Fourier decomposition, a reasonable estimate for a cut-off value can be obtained by observing the rapid decrease of the absolute value of the Fourier coefficients from values of the order of $`10^2`$ to values of the order of $`10^4`$. If we focus on the coefficients associated with $`m=2`$, the maximum $`k`$-value that needs to be considered increases from $`k510`$ in the case of the orbital eccentricity $`e=0.2`$ to $`k2545`$ in the case of the orbital eccentricity $`e=0.6`$. In the latter case there are thus up to 5 times more forcing frequencies induced in the star which may be resonant with the star’s free oscillation modes $`g^+`$.

## 4 The parameter $`\epsilon _T`$

The small dimensionless factor $`\epsilon _T`$ in the definition of the tide-generating potential can be used as a first estimate for the order of magnitude of the tidal force exerted on a binary component by its companion. In particular, the largest term in Expansion (3) of the tide-generating potential, evaluated at the star’s surface, is of the order of

$$\epsilon _T\frac{GM_1}{R_1}\underset{m,k}{\mathrm{max}}|c_{2,m,k}(e)|,$$
(5)
where the maximum is taken over all admissible values of $`m`$ and $`k`$. For orbital eccentricities less than or equal to 0.8 the maximum takes values between 0.5 and 2.5 \[see Eq. (4) and Figs. 13\]. The eccentricity therefore affects the order of magnitude by less than a factor of 2.5.

Definition (2) of the small parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ can be rewritten by means of Kepler’s third law as

$$\epsilon _T=\frac{4\pi ^2}{P_{\mathrm{orb}}^2}\frac{R_1^3}{GM_1}\frac{q}{1+q}.$$
(6)
The parameter is thus proportional to the square of the star’s dynamic time scale and inversely proportional to the square of the orbital period. In addition, it depends on the mass ratio $`q`$ by the factor $`q/(1+q)`$ which is always smaller than 1. In the case of a binary consisting of two $`10M_{}`$ zero-age main-sequence stars with an orbital period of 6 days, the parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ is of the order of $`10^3`$.

For detached binaries, an upper limit for $`\epsilon _T`$ can be derived from the requirement that the radius of the star must be smaller than the volume equivalent radius of its Roche lobe. The latter may be approximated by means of Eggleton’s (1983) fitting formula

$$\frac{R_{\mathrm{L},1}}{a}=\frac{0.49q^{2/3}}{0.6q^{2/3}+\mathrm{ln}\left(1+q^{1/3}\right)},$$
(7)
where $`q=M_2/M_1`$. The relative error of the approximation is smaller than 2% for $`0<q<\mathrm{}`$. By means of Definition (2) and Eq. (7), one then derives the inequality

$$\epsilon _T<\frac{0.12}{q\left[0.6q^{2/3}+\mathrm{ln}\left(1+q^{1/3}\right)\right]^3}.$$
(8)
Taking into account the 2% uncertainty in the fitting formula given by Eq. (7), it follows that $`0<\epsilon _T<0.13`$.

Equation (7) for the Roche-lobe radius of a binary component is strictly speaking only valid for binaries with circular orbits. In the case of a binary with an eccentric orbit, the radius of the Roche lobe varies periodically in time, with the smallest value being reached when the companion passes through the periastron of its relative orbit. An instantaneous estimate for the Roche-lobe radius at a time of periastron passage is obtained by replacing the semi-major axis $`a`$ in Eq. (7) with the periastron distance $`r_p=a(1e)`$. The requirement that the star fits within its Roche-lobe when the companion is located in the periastron of its relative orbit then yields

$$\epsilon _T<\frac{0.12(1e)^3}{q\left[0.6q^{2/3}+\mathrm{ln}\left(1+q^{1/3}\right)\right]^3}.$$
(9)
The variation of the right-hand member of this inequality as a function of the mass ratio $`q`$ is illustrated in Fig. 4 for orbital eccentricities ranging from 0.0 to 0.6. It follows that, for a given value of $`e`$, the parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ takes values in the range $`0<\epsilon _T<0.13(1e)^3`$. The maximum value of $`\epsilon _T`$ that can be reached by detached binaries decreases by approximately one order of magnitude when $`e`$ increases from 0 to 0.5, and by approximately two orders of magnitude when $`e`$ increases from 0 to 0.8.

Equations (6) and (9) can furthermore be combined to derive the shortest orbital period for which a binary is still detached when the components are located at the periastron of their relative orbit. The resulting critical orbital periods separating detached from semi-detached systems are displayed in Figs. 5 and 6 for $`220M_{}`$ main-sequence stars at the beginning (ZAMS) and at the end (TMS) of the main sequence, respectively. The dashed lines represent the critical orbital periods in the case of the binary mass ratio $`q=0.1`$, while the solid lines represent the critical orbital periods in the case of the binary mass ratio $`q=1`$. The grey-shaded region in between the lines associated with the two mass ratios only serves as a visual aid to identify the lines associated with the same orbital eccentricity. We furthermore note that, for brevity, we here neglect the short phase of core contraction that takes place between the exhaustion of hydrogen in the core and the start of the Hertzsprung gap, and we refer to the stage where hydrogen is exhausted in the core as the end of the main sequence. The ZAMS and TMS stellar radii appearing in Eq. (6) are determined by means of the analytic approximation formulae derived by Hurley, Pols & Tout (2000).

Since the critical orbital periods separating detached from semi-detached systems are proportional to the star’s dynamical time scale \[see Eqs. (6) and (9)\], they increase with increasing mass of the star. For a given orbital eccentricity and a given mass ratio, the same dependency yields longer orbital periods for stars on the TMS than for stars on the ZAMS. In addition, the critical orbital periods increase with increasing values of the mass ratio $`q`$ because the inner Lagrangian point $`L_1`$ moves closer to the star with mass $`M_1`$. In the next section, we will use the behaviour of the critical periods to constrain the range of forcing frequencies induced by the tidal force exerted by the companion.

## 5 The forcing frequencies

In order for a free oscillation mode $`g^+`$ to be resonantly excited by a dynamic tide, the forcing frequency of the tide must be close to the mode’s eigenfrequency. Since the forcing frequencies depend on the orbital period and the rotational angular velocity of the tidally distorted star, the requirement that the forcing frequencies be in the range of the eigenfrequencies of the lower-order $`g^+`$-modes imposes constraints on the parameter space available for the occurrence resonances.

The eigenfrequencies of the lower-order second-degree $`g^+`$-modes in $`2M_{}`$ and $`20M_{}`$ main-sequence stars at the beginning and at the end of the main sequence are shown in Fig. 7, in units of the inverse of the star’s dynamical time scale. The stellar models consist of a convective core and a radiative envelope and have a ZAMS chemical composition $`(X,Z)=(0.7,0.02)`$. Since, for main-sequence stars, the influence of nonadiabatic effects on the oscillation frequencies is known to be small (e.g. Unno et al. 1989), the eigenfrequencies are determined in the isentropic approximation.

The frequencies of the lower-order $`g^+`$-modes typically range from $`0.1\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ to $`10\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$, so that the condition that the forcing frequencies be in the range of the eigenfrequencies can be expressed as

$$kn+m\mathrm{\Omega }f\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1$$
(10)
with $`0.1f10`$. For rotational angular velocities $`\mathrm{\Omega }\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$, the $`k`$th harmonic in the expansion of the tide-generating potential may thus give rise to resonances with lower-order $`g^+`$-modes for orbital periods

$$P_{\mathrm{orb}}\frac{2\pi k}{f}\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}.$$
(11)
In order to constrain the forcing frequencies leading to significant resonances between dynamic tides and free oscillation modes, we consider Eq. (11) in the cases where $`f=0.5`$ and $`f=5.0`$. The former choice represents the bulk of the lower-order $`g^+`$-modes displayed in Fig. 7, while the latter choice represents an upper limit on the frequency range of the $`g^+`$-modes. For presentation purposes, the two values of $`f`$ are conveniently chosen to differ by a factor of 10. The choice is convenient because, for a given stellar model, the orbital periods associated with $`k`$ and $`f`$ are equal to those associated with $`10k`$ and $`10f`$. The variations of the resulting orbital periods as a function of the stellar mass are displayed by the solid lines in Figs. 8 and 9, for stars at the beginning and at the end of the main sequence, respectively. The value of $`k`$ corresponding to each line is indicated in the tables on the right-hand side of the figures. It follows that, for ZAMS stars in binaries with orbital periods of the order of a few days, the lower-order harmonics in Expansion (3) of the tide-generating potential give rise to forcing frequencies of the order of $`0.5\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$, while higher-order harmonics give rise to forcing frequencies of the order of $`5.0\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$. For stars on the TMS, the corresponding orbital period range increases to a few tens of days due to the longer dynamical time scales associated with these stars.

Since the small parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ appearing in the definition of the tide-generating potential is inversely proportional to the square of the orbital period, the tidal force decreases rapidly with increasing orbital separations. From Eqs. (6) and (11), one derives that the values of $`\epsilon _T`$ associated with the orbital periods represented by the solid lines in Figs. 8 and 9 are given by

$$\epsilon _T=\frac{f^2}{k^2}\frac{q}{1+q}.$$
(12)
For binaries with mass ratio $`q=1`$, the parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ takes the value $`10^2`$ when $`f=0.5`$ and $`k34`$ (or $`f=5.0`$ and $`k3536`$) and decreases to $`10^3`$ when $`f=0.5`$ and $`k1112`$ (or $`f=5.0`$ and $`k111112`$). Smaller mass ratios yield smaller values of $`k`$.

As discussed in Section 3, the rapid decrease of the Fourier coefficients $`c_{2,m,k}`$ in the expansion of the tide-generating potential puts an upper limit on the maximum value of $`k`$ that needs to be considered for a given value of the orbital eccentricity $`e`$. Vice versa this implies that for each value of $`k`$ there is a minimum orbital eccentricity for which the term associated with the Fourier coefficient $`c_{2,m,k}`$ provides a non-negligible contribution to the expansion of the tide-generating potential. We determined this minimum value for each value of $`k`$ listed in the tables on the right-hand side of Figs. 8 and 9. To this end, we restricted ourselves to the terms associated with the azimuthal number $`m=2`$ since they generally provide the largest contributions. We furthermore adopted two different thresholds to separate contributing from non-contributing terms: $`|c_{2,2,k}(e)|10^2`$ and $`|c_{2,2,k}(e)|10^4`$ (cfr. the solid lines in Fig. 1). The resulting values of $`e`$ are listed in the columns labelled $`e_2`$ and $`e_4`$, respectively. The table shows, for example, that the minimum orbital eccentricity required for the absolute value of the Fourier coefficient $`c_{2,2,5}`$ to be larger than or equal to $`10^2`$, and thus for the associated term in the expansion of the tide-generating potential to be non-negligible, is $`e=0.17`$. When the absolute value of the Fourier coefficient $`c_{2,2,5}`$ is required to be larger than or equal to $`10^4`$, the condition on the orbital eccentricity is relaxed to $`e0.04`$.

The high-order harmonics required to reach forcing frequencies of the order of $`5.0\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ need very high orbital eccentricities in order for the associated terms to contribute non-trivially to the tide-generating potential. These high orbital eccentricities in combination with short orbital periods yield small periastron distances which may cause the star to overflow its Roche-lobe when it passes through the periastron of its relative orbit. The critical orbital periods separating detached from semi-detached systems were derived in Section 4 and presented in Figs. 5 and 6 for different combinations of the binary mass ratio $`q`$ and the orbital eccentricity $`e`$. For illustration, the orbital periods leading to semi-detached systems in the case of the binary mass ratio $`q=1`$ and the orbital eccentricity $`e=0.5`$ are displayed in Figs. 8 and 9 by means of the grey-shaded background. In this example, the critical orbital periods separating detached from semi-detached systems increase from $`1.5`$ days for a $`2M_{}`$ ZAMS star to $`3`$ days for a $`20M_{}`$ ZAMS star, and from $`5`$ days for a $`2M_{}`$ TMS star to $`20`$ days for a $`20M_{}`$ TMS star. The minimum orbital eccentricity $`e=0.52`$ required to have a non-negligible contribution to the tide-generating potential from the terms associated with $`k`$-values up to 30 can therefore not be reached by short-period systems without becoming semi-detached at the periastron. From Figs. 5 and 6, it follows that the same holds true for the other high-order harmonics required to reach forcing frequencies of the order of $`5.0\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$. The situation improves somewhat for binaries with mass ratios $`q`$ smaller than unity, but even for $`q=0.1`$ the systems can barely avoid a semi-detached state when the stars are located at the periastron of their relative orbit.

Next, we turn our attention to the forcing frequencies of the order of $`0.5\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ associated with the lower-order harmonics in Expansion (3) of the tide-generating potential. These harmonics provide non-negligible contributions to the tidal potential for low to moderate values of the orbital eccentricity, so that the occurrence of Roche-lobe overflow at the periastron is less of an issue.

In Section 4, we have shown that the order of magnitude of any given term in the expansion of the tide-generating potential is not only determined by the orbital eccentricity $`e`$, but also by the parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ which is proportional to the ratio of the tidal force to the gravity at the star’s equator. Since the parameter $`\epsilon _T`$ is the dominant factor in binaries with low to moderate orbital eccentricities, we neglect the role of the eccentricity in what follows and, somewhat arbitrarily, set the limit of what we consider as favourable conditions for the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes to $`\epsilon _T10^3`$. In the case of a binary consisting of two $`5M_{}`$ ZAMS stars, this corresponds to an upper limit on the orbital period of $`5`$ days. A similar upper limit for the occurrence of noticeable resonances between dynamic tides and free oscillation modes is inferred from the tidally induced radial-velocity variations presented by Willems & Aerts (2002) and the apsidal-motion calculations performed by Smeyers & Willems (2001).

The maximum value of $`k`$ for which the orbital periods represented by the solid lines in Figs. 8 and 9 give rise to forcing frequencies of the order of $`0.5\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ and for which $`\epsilon _T10^3`$ are obtained from Eq. (12) as

$$k_{\mathrm{max}}15.8\left(\frac{q}{1+q}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(13)
The corresponding orbital periods are

$$P_{\mathrm{orb},\mathrm{max}}198.7\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}\left(\frac{q}{1+q}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(14)
In the case of a binary with a mass ratio $`q=1`$, the upper limits take the values $`k_{\mathrm{max}}11`$ and $`P_{\mathrm{orb},\mathrm{max}}140\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}`$. They change by less than a factor of $`\sqrt{2}`$ when $`1/3<q<\mathrm{}`$, but decrease rapidly for binary mass ratios smaller than $`1/3`$. The minimum orbital eccentricity required for the terms associated with $`k11`$ to provide a non-negligible contribution to the tide-generating potential is $`e0.250.4`$. The longest orbital periods thus still require substantial orbital eccentricities in order to be able to excite oscillation modes with eigenfrequencies of the order of $`0.5\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$.

The results shown in Figs. 8 and 9 can furthermore be extrapolated to resonances between dynamic tides and free oscillation modes with eigenfrequencies smaller than $`0.5\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$. From Eq. (11) it follows that the orbital periods giving rise to such resonances increase with decreasing order of magnitude of the eigenfrequencies, so that the condition $`\epsilon _T10^3`$ becomes more and more stringent until it can no longer be fulfilled for any value of $`k`$ and $`q`$. The smallest multiple $`f`$ of the star’s dynamical time scale for which the orbital periods resulting from Eq. (11) yield values of $`\epsilon _T`$ larger than $`10^3`$ is given by

$$f_{\mathrm{min}}0.03\left(\frac{1+q}{q}\right)^{1/2}$$
(15)
\[see Eq. (12)\]. For binaries with a mass ratio $`q=1`$, this imposes a lower limit of $`0.05\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ on the frequency range favourable for resonances between dynamic tides and free oscillation modes. In the case of a binary with a mass ratio $`q=0.1`$, the lower limit increases to $`0.1\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$. The conditions for the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes $`g^+`$ thus rapidly become less favourable with decreasing order of magnitude of the involved frequencies.

So far, we only considered slowly rotating stars for which $`\mathrm{\Omega }\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$. In more rapidly rotating stars the rotational angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ may significantly affect the determination of the forcing angular frequencies induced by the companion. Resonances with eigenfrequencies of the order of $`f`$ times the inverse of star’s dynamical time scale then occur for orbital periods

$$P_{\mathrm{orb}}\frac{2\pi k}{fm\mathrm{\Omega }\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}}\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}.$$
(16)
For $`m=0`$, the equation reduces to Eq. (11) so that the results presented in Figs. 8 and 9 generally remain valid. However, since the coefficients $`c_{2,0,k}`$ decrease more rapidly with increasing values of $`k`$ than the coefficients $`c_{2,2,k}`$ the associated terms in the expansion of the tide-generating potential require a higher orbital eccentricity in order to provide a non-negligible contribution. For $`m=2`$, on the other hand, the periods represented by the solid lines in Figs. 8 and 9 decrease with increasing rotational angular velocities $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Consequently, for both $`m=0`$ and $`m=2`$, the upper limit of $`5.0\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ on the frequency range that is favourable for the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes becomes even more stringent for rapidly rotating stars than it was for more slowly rotating stars. The upper limit on the range of orbital periods favourable for the resonant excitation of oscillation modes with eigenfrequencies of the order of $`0.5\tau _{\mathrm{dyn}}^1`$ is not affected by the rotational angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, although the value of $`k`$ for which the upper limit is reached increases with increasing values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Our qualitative results thus remain valid for rotation rates that are somewhat higher than implied by Eq. (1). In the case of very fast rotators, the situation becomes significantly more complicated since the forcing frequencies may take negative as well as positive values. We refer to Willems & Claret (2003) for a more detailed account on the behaviour of the forcing frequencies in such stars.

Finally, we note that for a rotating star the frequencies and properties of $`g^+`$-modes with eigenfrequencies of the order of the rotational angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ may be significantly altered with respect to those of a non-rotating star. In particular, stellar rotation lifts the degeneracy of the eigenfrequencies with respect to the azimuthal number $`m`$, so that more modes become available which may be resonantly excited (e.g. Unno et al. 1989). Stellar rotation furthermore induces additional low-frequency modes known as inertial modes and $`r`$-modes which have frequencies of the order of the star’s rotational angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The resonant excitation of these modes may lead to comparably important effects as the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes $`g^+`$ (Rocca 1982, Savonije & Papaloizou 1997, Papaloizou & Savonije 1997).

## 6 Concluding remarks

In this paper, we initiated a systematic study aimed at exploring the range of stellar and orbital parameters leading to favourable conditions for the resonant excitation of $`g^+`$-modes by tides in close binary components. We considered slowly rotating stars with masses between 2 and $`20M_{}`$, and evolutionary stages at the beginning and at the end of the main sequence.

A crucial ingredient in the investigation is the expansion of the tide-generating potential in Fourier series in terms of the mean Keplerian motion. The expansion induces an infinite number of forcing frequencies in the star which may be close to the eigenfrequencies of the star’s free modes of oscillation. In practice, the rapid decrease of the Fourier coefficients limits the number of forcing frequencies to a finite number which increases with increasing values of the orbital eccentricity. The number can be derived from the variations of the dominant Fourier coefficients shown in Figs. 13.

For given orbital and rotational periods, the finite number of non-trivial terms in the expansion of the tide-generating potential associated with a given value of the orbital eccentricity puts an upper limit on the forcing frequencies induced in a star, which in turn puts an upper limit on the eigenfrequencies of the oscillation modes that may be resonantly excited. The limit is of the order of five times the inverse of the star’s dynamical time scale and is particularly stringent for the $`f`$-mode and the lowest-order $`g^+`$-modes in evolved low-mass main-sequence stars (see Fig. 7). It also contributes to the difficulties to excite $`p`$-modes by tides in close binaries (see also Uytterhoeven et al. 2003, in preparation).

Resonances between dynamic tides and $`g^+`$-modes with frequencies of the order of half the inverse of the star’s dynamical time scale on the other hand are constrained by the rapid decrease of the strength of the tidal force with increasing orbital separations. When the limit separating favourable from less favourable conditions is set at $`\epsilon _T10^3`$, where $`\epsilon _T`$ is a measure for the ratio of the tidal force to the gravity at the star’s equator, the highest order harmonics in the expansion of the tide-generating potential that may give rise to such resonances are given by Eq. (13). This corresponds to an upper limit on the orbital period given by Eq. (14). For oscillation modes $`g^+`$ with eigenfrequencies much smaller than half the inverse of the star’s dynamical time scale, the conditions for resonant excitation quickly become less favourable. However, these very low frequencies are only reached by $`g^+`$-modes of very high radial order, so that this behaviour does not impose severe constraints on the parameter space available for the resonant excitation of free oscillation modes.

## Acknowledgements

I express my sincere thanks to Antonio Claret for providing a set of theoretical stellar models and to Jarrod Hurley, Onno Pols, and Chris Tout for sharing their SSE software package. The anonymous referee is acknowledged for useful remarks which led to an improvement of the paper. This research was supported by the British Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.