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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In this note, we study the charges and tensions of Dirichlet branes and orientifold planes in plane wave backgrounds . In a general curved spacetime, the effective brane tension that is measured from the interaction energy of two widely separated branes is expected to receive $`\alpha ^{}`$ corrections. From the point of view of sigma model perturbation theory, these corrections will be governed by the $`\alpha ^{}`$ corrections to the low energy DBI action and will be given in terms of invariants constructed from the background curvature, field strengths, and the geometric data of the D-brane embedding . Typically, one would also expect corrections that are nonperturbative in $`\alpha ^{}`$. From the point of view of the boundary conformal field theory, the tension of a D-brane is related to the regularized dimension of the state space of the CFT . When formulating string theory in a curved background, it is an important consistency check whether the Dirac quantization condition for the RR charges is satisfied (see  for a discussion in the case of branes in group manifolds). The pp-wave background provides another simple example of a background with a nontrivial metric and Ramond-Ramond fields where exact worldsheet computation of the D-brane interaction energy is possible.

We find that the brane tensions for half-BPS D-branes in pp-wave backgrounds are identical to their values in Minkowski space. This nonrenormalization is in accordance with the expectation based on the symmetry and the geometry of the plane wave background but the reasons are different for ‘time-like’ branes that are longitudinal to the light-cone directions $`x^+,x^{}`$ and for ‘space-like’ branes that are transverse to the light-cone directions.

Time-like branes have translation invariance along $`x^{}`$ which implies that the D-brane interacts only with those closed string states that have vanishing $`p_{}`$. For these modes, the metric reduces to the Minkowski metric and the background appears flat. Note that this holds for the full interaction potential and not only for widely separated branes. In other words, the one point functions of all closed string modes and not just the massless ones are the same as in Minkowski space. The same result holds for orientifold planes and their interactions with D-branes. It follows that for general orientifolds of the pp-wave background, the orientifold gauge group is the same as in flat space (a particular case was worked out in ).

Space-like branes are not translationally invariant along the light-cone directions. In this case, the nonrenormalization follows instead from the special properties of the pp-wave geometry and the fact that the half-BPS branes that we consider here are totally geodesic . In the pp-wave background, all local coordinate invariants constructed out of the background fields vanish. This is essentially because the only nonvanishing components of the background fields have a lower + index and there is no $`g^{++}`$ to contract them. Furthermore, for embeddings that are totally geodesic, the second fundamental form vanishes. Using the Gauss-Codazzi equations one can then conclude that all local invariants constructed using the background fields and the embedding geometry also vanish. Hence all $`\alpha ^{}`$ corrections to charge and tension are expected to vanish in this background. This can be checked explicitly to leading order in $`\alpha ^{}`$ using the corrections to the DBI action worked out in  and is expected to be true to all orders. Note that this argument depends on supersymmetry somewhat indirectly and only to the extent that the embedding of the worldvolume of these branes is required to be totally geodesic in order to preserve half the supersymmetries. Even if the corrections vanish to all order in $`\alpha ^{}`$, there remains the possibility of corrections that are nonperturbative in $`\alpha ^{}`$, but the plane wave geometry is topologically trivial and we do not expect any instanton corrections. It is neverthless important to verify this expectation by an explicit worldsheet computation because the pp-wave background is not a small deformation of Minkowski space in any sense. It is not asymptotically flat and one cannot smoothly interpolate between flat space and the pp-wave by varying a parameter. The dimensionful parameter $`\mu `$ that is often introduced can be absorbed in a coordinate redefinition and is not a physical parameter of the background. An exact worldsheet computation is therefore desirable to compare the brane tensions in these completely different backgrounds.

We compute the interaction potentials between a pair of branes and a brane and an anti-brane in the pp-wave limit of $`AdS_5\times S_5`$ (henceforth denoted by $`PP_{10}`$) and $`AdS_3\times S_3\times R^4`$ (henceforth denoted by $`PP_6\times R^4`$). Strings moving in these backgrounds can be quantized in the light-cone Green-Schwarz formalism . D-branes in these backgrounds have been constructed in  and aspects of their interactions were discussed in . The branes we consider here all preserve half of the kinematical and half of the dynamical supersymmetries and can be either spacelike or timelike. We calculate the contribution from the exchange of masssless supergravity modes from the low energy supergravity and DBI action and find that it agrees with the string result to all orders in the parameter $`\mu `$ provided that the charges and tensions take the same values as in Minkowski space111In , a calculation to leading order in $`\mu `$ was performed for the D-instanton in $`PP_{10}`$ .. In agreement with , we find that the force between two parallel spacelike D-branes in $`PP_{10}`$ does not vanish. For spacelike branes in $`PP_6\times R^4`$ however, the brane-brane potential is zero. This can be understood from the fermionic zero modes in the open string description.

The computation of interaction energy is of interest also from the point of view of the dual gauge theory. In the dual description, a single D-brane corresponds to a defect conformal field theory (dCFT) . The interaction energy between two D-branes is expected to correspond to the Casimir energy between the two defects. The precise value of the interaction energy from the string computation thus gives a prediction for the corresponding quantity in the dual theory. Factorizing the string cylinder diagram in the closed string channel gives one point functions of off-shell closed string states emitted from the D-brane. These correspond to one-point functions of various ambient operators in the dCFT. It would be interesting to compare some of these predictions by a gauge theory computation. For timelike branes, the vanishing of the one point functions for closed string states with nonzero $`p_{}`$ corresponds to the vanishing of one point functions of ambient gauge theory operators with nonzero $`J`$ charge as a consequence of conservation of $`J`$ charge in the dCFT. To compare with the nonzero tadpoles of offshell gravitons with vanishing $`p_{}`$ however would require a nontrivial computation in the dCFT and we leave this problem for future work.

This note is organized as follows. Space-like branes are discussed in sections $`\mathrm{\S }`$2 and $`\mathrm{\S }`$3 and time-like branes are discussed in $`\mathrm{\S }4`$. The details of the supergravity calculation of the massless exchanges are given in appendix A. The supergravity calculation requires the knowledge of the exact propagators for the tensor mode fluctuations in this background which we derive explicitly in the light-cone gauge.

## 2 Spacelike branes in $`PP_{10}`$

The $`PP_{10}`$ background is given by (see appendix A.1 for more details on our conventions):

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`2dx^+dx^{}\mu ^2x^Ix^I(dx^+)^2+dx^Idx^I`$
$`R_{I++J}`$ $`=`$ $`\mu ^2\delta _{IJ}R_{++}=8\mu ^2`$
$`F_{+1234}`$ $`=`$ $`F_{+5678}=4\mu `$ (2.1)
where $`I=1\mathrm{}8`$. The Ramond-Ramond background breaks the $`SO(8)`$ acting on the $`x^I`$ to $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$, the first factor acting on $`x^i,i=1\mathrm{}4`$ and the second one acting on $`x^i^{},i^{}=5\mathrm{}8`$. Denoting a spacelike D-brane with $`m`$ worldvolume directions along the $`x^i`$ and $`n`$ worldvolume directions along the $`x^i^{}`$ by $`(m,n)`$, the branes preserving half of the kinematical and half of the dynamical supersymmetries are of the type $`(m,m+2)`$ (or, equivalently, $`(m+2,m)`$) with $`m=0,1`$ or $`2`$ . Hence we are to consider D1, D3 and D5-branes. These are to be placed at the origin of the $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ directions in order to preserve the aformentioned supersymmetries. We will calculate the interaction energy between pairs of (anti-) D-branes separated along the $`x^+,x^{}`$ directions.

### 2.1 String calculation

The string theory calculation of the interaction energy between a pair of D-branes of the same dimension was performed in ; we will briefly review it here in order to extract the contribution from the lowest lying string modes.

We would like to perform the string calculation in the open string loop channel to get a correctly normalized amplitude. However, in the standard light-cone gauge $`X^+=p_{}\tau `$, $`X^\pm `$ are automatically Neumann directions. We can remedy this by using a nonstandard light-cone gauge for the open string  in which $`X^\pm `$ are Dirichlet directions. Here, one quantizes the open strings stretching from one brane to the other in the gauge

$$X^+=\frac{r^+}{\pi }\sigma $$

where $`r^+`$ is the brane separation along the $`x^+`$ coordinate and $`\sigma `$ is the worldsheet coordinate, $`\sigma [0,\pi ]`$. The Virasoro constraints then determine $`X^{}`$ to be a Dirichlet direction as well222Note that this gauge is consistent with the Virasoro constraints only if the worldsheet is Euclidean .. In this gauge, the worldsheet action contains eight massive bosons and fermions with mass

$$\mathrm{m}=\frac{\mu r^+}{\pi }.$$

The interaction energy between branes can be written as

$`ET`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}i\mathrm{Tr}(1)^{F_s}\mathrm{ln}(L_0iϵ)`$ (2.2)
$`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{ds}{s}}\mathrm{Tr}(1)^{F_s}e^{i(L_0iϵ)s}`$
where $`F_s`$ is the spacetime fermion number and the trace is taken in the space of open string states stretching between the branes. $`L_0`$ is the generator of worldheet time translations and can be written as $`L_0=p_{}H^{lc}`$ with $`H^{lc}`$ the light-cone Hamiltonian. In writing (2.2), we chose to work in Lorentzian signature for spacetime with a suitable $`iϵ`$ prescrition .

For a Dp-brane interacting with an anti-Dp-brane, $`L_0`$ receives a contribution from the separation from the strings being stretched along the transverse directions $`x^+,x^{}`$ and contributions from harmonic oscillators with frequencies $`\omega _k=\mathrm{sign}(k)\sqrt{k^2+\mathrm{m}^2}`$, where $`k`$ is integer for the bosonic oscillators and half-integer for the fermionic ones. The resulting interaction energy is

$$E_{Dp\overline{D}p}=i_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dse^{ϵs}}{s}e^{2\pi is\left(\frac{2r^+r^{}}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}\right)}(2i\mathrm{sin}\pi \mathrm{m}s)^{3p}\left(\frac{f_4^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)}{f_1^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)}\right)^8,$$
(2.3)
where we have defined modified $`f`$-functions as in :

$`f_1^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`q^{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}}(1q^\mathrm{m})^{\frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(1q^{\sqrt{\mathrm{m}^2+n^2}}\right),`$ (2.4)
$`f_2^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`q^{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}}(1+q^\mathrm{m})^{\frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(1+q^{\sqrt{\mathrm{m}^2+n^2}}\right),`$ (2.5)
$`f_3^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`q^{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}^{}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(1+q^{\sqrt{\mathrm{m}^2+(n1/2)^2}}\right),`$ (2.6)
$`f_4^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`q^{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}^{}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(1q^{\sqrt{\mathrm{m}^2+(n1/2)^2}}\right),`$ (2.7)
and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}^{}`$ are defined by

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{p=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑se^{p^2s}e^{\pi ^2\mathrm{m}^2/s},`$ (2.8)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{m}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{p=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^p{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑se^{p^2s}e^{\pi ^2\mathrm{m}^2/s}.`$ (2.9)
For two parallel Dp-branes, the harmonic oscillator frequencies are $`\omega _k`$ with $`k`$ integer for both the bosons and fermions. The fermionic “zero-modes” have frequency $`\mathrm{m}`$ and give a nonzero contribution to the interaction energy. The result is

$$E_{DpDp}=i_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dse^{ϵs}}{s}e^{2\pi is\left(\frac{2r^+r^{}}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}\right)}(2i\mathrm{sin}\pi \mathrm{m}s)^{3p}$$
(2.10)
The large distance behaviour of (2.3) and (2.10) comes from the leading behaviour of the integrand for small $`s`$. This can be extracted using the modular transformations

$$f_1^{(\mathrm{m})}(s)=f_1^{(\widehat{\mathrm{m}})}(1/s),f_2^{(\mathrm{m})}(s)=f_4^{(\widehat{\mathrm{m}})}(1/s),f_3^{(\mathrm{m})}(s)=f_3^{(\widehat{\mathrm{m}})}(1/s),$$
(2.11)
where

$$\widehat{\mathrm{m}}=i\mathrm{m}s.$$
(2.12)
This gives the leading behaviour

$`E_{Dp\overline{D}p}`$ $`=`$ $`(4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{3p}(2\pi r^{})^{p3}\mu ^{3p}\mathrm{cot}^4\mu r^+\mathrm{\Gamma }(3p)+\mathrm{}`$
$`E_{DpDp}`$ $`=`$ $`(4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{3p}(2\pi r^{})^{p3}\mu ^{3p}\mathrm{\Gamma }(3p)+\mathrm{}`$ (2.13)
The expression in the first line diverges in the flat space limit $`\mu 0`$; this is the standard divergence due to the infinite volume of the brane. We can separate out the volume factor by rewriting the result in terms of the integrated propagator $`I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})`$ over the worldvolume directions with the remaining transverse pp-wave coordinates set to zero (see in (A.12)):

$`E_{Dp\overline{D}p}`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{3p}\mathrm{cos}^4\mu r^+I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})+\mathrm{}`$
$`E_{DpDp}`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{3p}\mathrm{sin}^4\mu r^+I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})+\mathrm{}.`$ (2.14)
One recovers the correct flat space expression  as $`\mu 0`$ taking into account that, from (A.8),

$$\underset{\mu 0}{lim}I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})=V_{p+1}G_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})$$

where $`V_{p+1}`$ is the divergent D-brane volume and $`G_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})`$ stands for the Minkowski space scalar propagator integrated over the worldvolume directions.

### 2.2 Field theory calculation

We will presently see how the long-range potentials (2.14) are reproduced exactly from the type IIB supergravity action (A.1) supplemented with D-brane source terms

$$S_p=T_pd^{p+1}x\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{g}}e^{\frac{p3}{4}\mathrm{\Phi }}+\mu _pA_{[p+1]}$$
(2.15)
where $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ stands for the induced metric on the worldvolume and $`T_p`$ and $`\mu _p`$ are the brane tension and RR charge respectively. In appendix A.1 we expand the bulk action to quadratic order in the fluctuations around the $`PP_{10}`$ background, adopting the light-cone gauge for the fluctuations. The resulting action is a sum of decoupled terms characterized by an integer $`c`$:

$$S_\psi =\frac{1}{4\kappa ^2}d^{10}x\psi ^{}(\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }2i\mu c_{})\psi .$$
(2.16)
In general, $`\psi `$ is in a tensor representation of $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ and a contraction of tensor indices is understood. The decoupled fields $`\psi `$, their values of $`c`$ and their $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ representations are given in the appendix in table 1. Expanding the source action (2.15) to linear order in the fluctuations we get source terms for the components $`\psi _\alpha `$ of the form

$$S_{\mathrm{source}}=d^{10}x\delta ^{9p}(xx_0)k(\psi _\alpha +ϵ\overline{\psi }_\alpha )$$
(2.17)
where $`k`$ is a constant proportional to either $`T_p`$ or $`\mu _p`$ and $`ϵ=\pm 1`$. The contribution of such a mode to the interaction energy can then be written in terms of the integrated propagator and the constants $`(c,k,ϵ)`$. For example, if $`\psi `$ is an $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ singlet one gets a contribution to the interaction energy

$$E_{(c,k,ϵ)}=8ϵ\kappa ^2k^2\mathrm{cos}\mu cr^+I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{}).$$
(2.18)
When $`\psi `$ is in a tensor representation $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$, this expression can get an extra overall factor from the fact that one has to use a propagator with the right symmetry properties.

#### 2.2.1 D1-brane

We can take the worldvolume along the directions $`x^1,x^2`$. The source terms are given by

$`_{\mathrm{source}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{2}}(h_{11}+h_{22}\varphi )\pm \mu _1a_{12}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{\sqrt{2}}}(h_{11}^{}+h_{22}^{})+{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{4}}(H+\overline{H}){\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{2}}\varphi +{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{4}}h\pm {\displaystyle \frac{\mu _1}{\sqrt{2}}}(G_{12}+\overline{G}_{12})`$
where the upper (lower) sign applies to a brane (antibrane) source. The factors of $`i`$ multiplying the tension arise because $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ is negative for spacelike branes. The trace $`h`$ doesn’t propagate in the light-cone gauge. The constants $`(c,k,ϵ)`$ for the other source terms are summarized in the following table:

| $`\psi `$ | $`h_{11}^{},h_{22}^{}`$ | $`H`$ | $`\varphi `$ | $`G_{12}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`(c,k,ϵ)`$ | $`(0,\frac{iT_1}{2\sqrt{2}},1)`$ | $`(4,\frac{iT_1}{4},1)`$ | $`(0,\frac{iT_1}{4},1)`$ | $`(2,\frac{\pm \mu _1}{\sqrt{2}},1)`$ |

Summing up all contributions to the interaction energy gives

$$E=4\kappa ^2\left[\frac{T_1^2}{8}\mathrm{cos}4\mu r^++\frac{3}{8}T_1^2\frac{\mu _1^2}{2}\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^+\right]I_0^8(r^+,r^{})$$
(2.19)
where the upper (lower) sign applies to the brane-brane (brane-antibrane) system.

#### 2.2.2 D3-brane

We take the worldvolume directions to be $`x^1,x^2,x^3,x^5`$. The source terms are

$`_{\mathrm{source}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{2}}(h_{11}+h_{22}+h_{33}+h_{55})+\mu _3a_{1235}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{\sqrt{2}}}(h_{11}^{}+h_{22}^{}+h_{33}^{}+h_{55}^{})+{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{4}}(H+\overline{H})+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}h{\displaystyle \frac{i\mu _3}{2}}(H_{45}\overline{H}_{45})`$
These give the following interaction energy contributions

| $`\psi `$ | $`h_{11}^{},h_{22}^{},h_{33}^{},h_{55}^{}`$ | $`H`$ | $`H_{45}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`(c,k,ϵ)`$ | $`(0,\frac{iT_3}{2\sqrt{2}},1)`$ | $`(4,\frac{iT_3}{4},1)`$ | $`(2,\frac{i\mu _3}{2},1)`$ |

The total is

$$E=4\kappa ^2\left[\frac{T_3^2}{8}\mathrm{cos}4\mu r^++\frac{3T_3^2}{8}\frac{\mu _3^2}{2}\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^+\right]I_0^6(r^+,r^{})$$
(2.20)
#### 2.2.3 D5-brane

The calculation is the same as for the D1-brane due to S-duality invariance of the type IIB supergravity action and the fact that the $`PP_{10}`$ background is also S-duality invariant. The end result is again

$$E=4\kappa ^2\left[\frac{T_5^2}{8}\mathrm{cos}4\mu r^++\frac{3T_5^2}{8}\frac{\mu _5^2}{2}\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^+\right]I_0^4(r^+,r^{})$$
(2.21)
#### 2.2.4 D-brane charges and tensions

Comparing the string calculation (2.14) with the field theory results (2.19, 2.20, 2.21) we find agreement only if the charges and tensions are equal and their numerical value is the same as in Minkowski space :

$$T_p^2=\mu _p^2=\frac{\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{(3p)}}{\kappa ^2}p=1,3,5.$$
(2.22)
To see this, one has to use the trigonometric identities

$`\mathrm{cos}^4x`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\mathrm{cos}4x+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{cos}2x`$
$`\mathrm{sin}^4x`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\mathrm{cos}4x+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{cos}2x.`$ (2.23)
These identities in a sense encode the equivalence between the open- and closed string descriptions and were instrumental in proving Cardy’s condition for boundary states in .

## 3 Spacelike branes in $`PP_6\times R^4`$

Our conventions for the $`PP_6\times R^4`$ coordinates and background fields are (see appendix A.3 for more details)

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`2dx^+dx^{}\mu ^2(z\overline{z}+w\overline{w})(dx^+)^2+dzd\overline{z}+dwd\overline{w}+dx^adx^a`$
$`R_{z++\overline{z}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mu ^2R_{w++\overline{w}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mu ^2R_{++}=4\mu ^2`$
$`F_{+z\overline{z}}`$ $`=`$ $`F_{+w\overline{w}}=i\mu `$ (3.1)
The allowed D-branes in $`PP_6\times R^4`$ were classified in . Here, we restrict attention to spacelike branes with worldvolumes lying in the $`PP_6`$ part of the geometry. Branes with worldvolume directions along the $`R^4`$ (and their tensions) can be obtained by applying T-duality along the $`R^4`$ directions. Denoting by $`(m,n)`$ a brane with $`m`$ directions along the $`U(1)`$ and $`n`$ directions along $`U^{}(1)`$, the branes preserving half the kinematical and half the dynamical supersymmetries are of the type $`(m,m)`$ with $`m=1,2`$. This leaves the D1 and D3 branes to be considered. Supersymmetry requires that the D1-brane be placed at the origin of the transverse $`U(1)\times U^{}(1)`$ directions.

### 3.1 String calculation

The string theory calculation of the interaction energy proceeds as in the $`PP_{10}`$ case. After fixing a non-standard light-cone gauge, the worldsheet action for strings stretching between branes contains four massive bosons and fermions with mass

$$\mathrm{m}=\frac{\mu r^+}{\pi }$$

as well as four massless bosons and fermions. The interaction energy between a Dp-brane and an anti-Dp-brane is given by the open string one-loop amplitude

$$E_{Dp\overline{D}p}=i_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dse^{ϵs}}{s}e^{2\pi is\left(\frac{2r^+r^{}+r^ar^a}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}\right)}(2i\mathrm{sin}\pi \mathrm{m}s)^{1p}\left(\frac{f_4^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)}{f_1^{(\mathrm{m})}(q)}\right)^4\left(\frac{f_4^{(0)}(q)}{f_1^{(0)}(q)}\right)^4$$
(3.2)
The leading contribution comes from massless exchanges and is given by

$$E_{Dp\overline{D}p}=4\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{3p}\mathrm{cos}^2\mu r^+I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{},r^a)$$
(3.3)
where $`I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ stands for the scalar propagator integrated over $`p+1`$ longitudinal D-brane directions with the remaining transverse pp-wave coordinates set to zero (see (A.20)). We again observe that (3.3) reduces to the correct flat-space expression  as $`\mu 0`$.

Contrary to the $`PP_{10}`$ case, the interaction energy between two parallel branes in $`PP_6\times R^4`$ is zero:

$$E_{DpDp}=0.$$
(3.4)
This follows immediately from the fact that an open string stretching between the branes has four actual (meaning zero-frequency) fermionic zero modes.

### 3.2 Field theory calculation

In appendix A.3 we expand the bosonic type IIB action around the $`PP_6\times R^4`$ background and identify the independent fluctuations. The field theory calculation of the interaction energy again reduces to a sum of contributions of the form (2.18), characterized by constants $`(c,k,ϵ)`$ which can be read off by writing the D-brane source terms in terms of the decoupled fields listed in table 2 of the appendix.

#### 3.2.1 D1-brane

We take the worldvolume directions to be $`x^1,x^3`$. Expressing the D-brane sources in terms of the decoupling fields in table 2 one gets the worldvolume Lagrangian

$`_{\mathrm{source}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{2}}(h_{11}+h_{33}\varphi )\pm \mu _1a_{13}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{4}}(\stackrel{~}{h}_{zz}+\stackrel{~}{h}_{\overline{z}\overline{z}}+\stackrel{~}{h}_{ww}+\stackrel{~}{h}_{\overline{w}\overline{w}}+H+\overline{H}+H^{}+\overline{H}^{})+{\displaystyle \frac{iT_1}{4}}h`$
$`\pm `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _1}{4}}(H_{zw}^++H_{\overline{z}\overline{w}}^+H_{zw}^{}H_{\overline{z}\overline{w}}^{}+H_{z\overline{w}}^++H_{\overline{z}w}^+H_{z\overline{w}}^{}H_{\overline{z}w}^{}).`$
where the upper sign refers to a brane and the lower one to an anti-brane. The trace $`h`$ does not propagate in the light-cone gauge. The other fields give contributions of the form (2.18) to the interaction energy. These are summarized in the following table:

| $`\psi `$ | $`\stackrel{~}{h}_{zz},\stackrel{~}{h}_{ww}`$ | $`H,H^{}`$ | $`H_{zw}^+,H_{zw}^{}`$ | $`H_{z\overline{w}}^+`$ | $`H_{z\overline{w}}^{}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`(c,k,ϵ)`$ | $`(0,\frac{iT_1}{4},1)`$ | $`(2,\frac{iT_1}{4},1)`$ | $`(0,\frac{\pm \mu _1}{4},1)`$ | $`(2,\frac{\pm \mu _1}{4},1)`$ | $`(2,\frac{\pm \mu _1}{4},1)`$ |

where the upper sign applies to the brane-brane system and the lower sign applies to the brane-antibrane configuration. Summing all contributions, one gets the total interaction energy

$`E`$ $`=`$ $`2\kappa ^2\left[T_1^2(\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^++1)\mu _1^2(\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^++1)\right]I_0^8(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ (3.5)
$`=`$ $`2\kappa ^2[T_1^2\mu _1^2]\mathrm{cos}^2\mu r^+I_0^8(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ (3.6)
#### 3.2.2 D3-brane

The worldvolume directions are $`x^1,x^2,x^3,x^4`$. The source terms are

$`_{\mathrm{source}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{2}}(h_{11}+h_{22}+h_{33}+h_{44})\pm \mu _3a_{1234}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{4}}(H+\overline{H}+H^{}+\overline{H}^{})+{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{\sqrt{2}}}H_0+{\displaystyle \frac{iT_3}{2}}h`$
$`\pm `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _3}{2\sqrt{2}}}(G+\overline{G})\pm {\displaystyle \frac{\mu _3}{\sqrt{2}}}G_0.`$
The contributions to the interaction energy are summarized in the following table:

| $`\psi `$ | $`H,H^{}`$ | $`H_0`$ | $`G,G^{}`$ | $`G_0`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`(c,k,ϵ)`$ | $`(2,\frac{iT_3}{4},1)`$ | $`(0,\frac{iT_3}{2\sqrt{2}},1)`$ | $`(2,\frac{\pm \mu _3}{2\sqrt{2}},1)`$ | $`(0,\frac{\pm \mu _3}{2\sqrt{2}},1)`$ |

Summing all contributions, one gets the total interaction energy

$`E`$ $`=`$ $`2\kappa ^2\left[T_3^2(\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^++1)\mu _3^2(\mathrm{cos}2\mu r^++1)\right]I_0^6(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ (3.7)
$`=`$ $`2\kappa ^2[T_3^2\mu _3^2]\mathrm{cos}^2\mu r^+I_0^6(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ (3.8)
Again, the upper sign applies to the brane-brane system and the lower sign applies to the brane-antibrane configuration.

### 3.3 D-brane charges and tensions

Comparing the results (3.3) and (3.4) of the string calculation with the field theory results (3.6) and (3.8), we find the value of the D-brane charge and tension:

$$T_p^2=\mu _p^2=\frac{\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{(3p)}}{\kappa ^2}p=1,3.$$
(3.9)
These values are again the same as in Minkowski space.

## 4 Timelike Branes

In this section we will argue that interactions between timelike D-branes that extend along the $`x^+,x^{}`$ directions in a plane wave geometry are the same as in Minkowski geometry. This is a consequence of the fact that these branes preserve translation invariance in the $`x^{}`$ direction. Similar results hold for orientifold planes.

For definiteness, we illustrate this in the $`PP_6\times R^4`$ background and comment on the generalization to other pp-wave backgrounds at the end of this section. Let us consider a brane-brane or a brane-anti-brane pair in this background separated along the $`R^4`$ directions. From the point of view of the low-energy effective field theory, the long-range interaction potential comes from the exchange of massless modes between the branes. The Feynman propagator $`G_c(x_1,x_2)`$ of such modes is given by (see (A.17))

$$\underset{𝐧}{}\frac{dp_+dp_{}d^4p_a}{(2\pi )^6}\frac{e^{i\left(p_+(x_1^+x_2^+)+p_{}(x_1^{}x_2^{})+p_a(x_1^ax_2^a)\right)}\psi _𝐧^{(\mu p_{})}(x_1^A)\psi _𝐧^{(\mu p_{})}(x_2^A)}{2p_+p_{}+\mu p_{}_I(n_I+\frac{1}{2})+2c\mu p_{}+p_ap_aiϵ}.$$

In calculating the interaction energy between a pair of branes, we have to integrate (A.8) over the worldvolume directions which include $`x_1^{},x_2^{}`$. This gives a delta function for $`p_{}`$, hence the result is independent of $`\mu `$. We recover the flat space result for the interaction energy (times the interaction time):

$$ET=2\kappa ^2(T_p^2\mu _p^2)G_{9p}(r^a)V_{p+1}.$$
(4.1)
A similar argument can be made for the exchange of massive modes, which shows that the full brane-antibrane interaction potential is the same as in Minkowski space. In the language of boundary states333 The only subtlety here is that one has to quantize the closed string in a nonstandard light-cone gauge in order for the coordinates $`X^\pm `$ to have the right boundary conditions ., The interaction energy, say, between a brane and an anti-brane is given by the overlap $`D\overline{p}|\mathrm{\Delta }|Dp`$ where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the closed string propagator and $`|Dp,|D\overline{p}`$ are the boundary states. Since the boundary states satisfy $`p_{}|Dp=p_{}|D\overline{p}=0`$, the closed string propagator is projected on the $`p_{}=0`$ subspace and these states propagate as in flat space.

It is instructive to see how the same conclusion follows from a calculation in the open string picture. This, in some sense, is the natural picture to use for timelike branes since the open strings can be quantized in the usual light-cone gauge $`X^+=p_{}\tau `$. In this gauge, the coordinates $`X^\pm `$ automatically obey Neumann boundary conditions . The brane-antibrane interaction energy is given by

$$ET=iV_+_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dse^{ϵs}}{s}\frac{dp_+dp_{}}{(2\pi )^2}e^{4\pi \alpha ^{}isp_+p_{}}Z(s,\mu p_{})$$
(4.2)
where

$`Z(s,\mu p_{})`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}(1)^{F_s}q^{\alpha ^{}p_{}H^{\mathrm{lc}}}`$ (4.3)
$`=`$ $`q^{\frac{r^ar^a}{(2\pi )^2\alpha ^{}}}(2i\mathrm{sin}\pi \mu p_{}s)^{3p}\left({\displaystyle \frac{f_4^{(\mu p_{})}(q)f_4^{(0)}(q)}{f_1^{(\mu p_{})}(q)f_1^{(0)}(q)}}\right)^4.`$
The function $`Z(s,\mu p_{})`$ is the partition function for a combined system of four massive scalars and fermions with mass $`\mu p_{}`$ and four massless scalars and fermions, with appropriate boundary conditions. Returning to (4.2), we see that the $`p_+`$ integral yields a delta function. Integrating over $`p_{}`$ we find

$$ET=iV_+_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dse^{ϵs}}{8\pi ^2\alpha ^{}s^2}Z(s,0).$$
(4.4)
In particular, using a modular transformation to extract the small $`s`$ behaviour of the integrand, one finds the dominating contribution for widely separated branes

$$ET=4\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{(3p)}V_{p+1}G_{9p}(r^a)+\mathrm{}.$$
(4.5)
Comparing with (4.1) we find

$$T_p^2=\mu _p^2=\frac{\pi (4\pi ^2\alpha ^{})^{(3p)}}{\kappa ^2},$$
(4.6)
which is indeed the flat-space value .

Similar results hold for the interactions between timelike orientifold planes, and between orientifold planes and D-branes in $`PP_6\times R^4`$ . This can be argued from the fact that the crosscap state is annilated by $`p_{}`$ or, in the open string picture, from the fact that the interaction energy is again of the form (4.2) but with a different function $`Z(s,\mu p_{})`$ . Hence the tadpole cancellation conditions for timelike orientifolds in $`PP_6\times R^4`$ are the same as in Minkowski space. The above argument shows that not only the massless tadpoles but the one point functions on a disk of even the massive string modes take the same value as in Minkowski space.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Kostas Skenderis and Marika Taylor for very useful discussions and comments.

## Appendix A Massless modes and propagators in $`PP_6`$ and $`PP_{10}`$

In this appendix we obtain the Lagrangian and the propagator for the bosonic massless supergravity modes in the pp-wave background. The starting point is the bosonic part of the type IIB action in the Einstein frame:

$`S`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle d^{10}x\sqrt{g}\left[R\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{\Phi })^2\frac{H_{[3]}^2}{23!}\frac{1}{2}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}F_{[1]}^2\frac{e^\mathrm{\Phi }\stackrel{~}{F}_{[3]}^2}{23!}\frac{\stackrel{~}{F}_{[5]}^2}{45!}\right]}`$ (A.1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle A_{[4]}}H_{[3]}F_{[3]}`$
where $`F_{[2n+1]}dA_{[2n]},H_{[3]}dB_{[2]}`$ and

$`\stackrel{~}{F}_{[3]}`$ $``$ $`F_{[3]}A_{[0]}H_{[3]}`$
$`\stackrel{~}{F}_{[5]}`$ $``$ $`F_{[5]}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}A_{[2]}H_{[3]}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_{[2]}F_{[3]}`$ (A.2)
In the following we will expand the action around the $`PP_6`$ and $`PP_{10}`$ backgrounds to quadratic order in the fluctuations

$`g_{\mu \nu }`$ $``$ $`g_{\mu \nu }+h_{\mu \nu }`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }+\varphi `$
$`B_{[2]}`$ $``$ $`B_{[2]}+b_{[2]}`$
$`A_{[2n]}`$ $``$ $`A_{[2n]}+a_{[2n]}.`$ (A.3)
It’s convenient to split the metric fluctuations into a trace part $`h`$ and a traceless tensor $`h_{\mu \nu }^T`$. We adopt the light-cone gauge for the fluctuations:

$$h_\mu =b_\mu =a_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _{2n1}}=0.$$
(A.4)
In this gauge, after shifting the fields with a + index, one finds that $`h,h_{+\mu }^T,b_{+\mu }`$ and $`a_{+\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _{2n1}}`$ decouple. This situation is familiar from the light-cone gauge in Minkowski space (see e.g. ). Hence the only propagating fields are the transverse modes $`h_{IJ},b_{IJ},a_{I_1\mathrm{}I_{2n}};I,J,\mathrm{}=1\mathrm{}8`$. In the presence of general sources, the gauge-fixed Lagrangian contains Coulomb-like terms as a result of shifting the fields. In the cases we consider, these are absent because spacelike branes do not provide a source for the fields with a + index.

### A.1 Massless modes in $`PP_{10}`$

We use the following index conventions:

$`\mu ,\nu ,\mathrm{}=0,\mathrm{},9`$ $`\mathrm{SO}(9,1)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`I,J,\mathrm{}=1,\mathrm{}8`$ $`\mathrm{SO}(8)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`i,j,\mathrm{}=1,\mathrm{}4`$ $`\mathrm{SO}(4)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`i^{},j^{},\mathrm{}=5,\mathrm{}8`$ $`\mathrm{SO}^{}(4)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$ (A.5)
The nonvanishing $`PP_{10}`$ background fields are given by

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`2dx^+dx^{}\mu ^2x^Ix^I(dx^+)^2+dx^Idx^I`$
$`R_{I++J}`$ $`=`$ $`\mu ^2\delta _{IJ}R_{++}=8\mu ^2`$
$`F_{+1234}`$ $`=`$ $`F_{+5678}=4\mu `$ (A.6)
In light-cone gauge, the $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ subgroup of the background symmetry group is manifest with $`x^i`$ and $`x^i^{}`$ transforming as vectors under $`SO(4)`$ and $`SO^{}(4)`$ respectively.. Expanding the action (A.1) around this background to quadratic order one can organize the fluctuations into (complex) decoupled fields $`\psi `$ which transform in irreducible representations of $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ . We choose our normalizations so that each field $`\psi `$ contributes a term to the Lagrangian density of the form

$$=\frac{1}{4\kappa ^2}\overline{\psi }(\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }2i\mu c_{})\psi $$
(A.7)
where contractions of the $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$ indices are implied where appropriate and the bar denotes complex conjugation. The operator $`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }=2_+_{}+\mu ^2x^Ix^I_{}^2+_I_I`$ is the scalar Laplacian in $`PP_{10}`$ and $`c`$ is an integer. The results needed for the calculation of the D-brane tensions are summarized in table 1. It displays the fields $`\psi `$, their definition in terms of the original fluctuations (A.3), their value of $`c`$ and their irrep of $`SO(4)\times SO^{}(4)`$.

### A.2 Massless propagators in $`PP_{10}`$

We will also need the Feynman propagator $`G_c(x_1,x_2)`$ corresponding to the operator $`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }2i\mu c_{}`$. It can be written as

$$G_c(x_1,x_2)=i\underset{𝐧}{}\frac{dp_+dp_{}}{(2\pi )^2}\frac{e^{i\left(p_+(x_1^+x_2^+)+p_{}(x_1^{}x_2^{})\right)}\psi _𝐧^{(\mu p_{})}(x_1^I)\psi _𝐧^{(\mu p_{})}(x_2^I)}{2p_+p_{}+\mu p_{}_I(n_I+\frac{1}{2})+2c\mu p_{}+p_Ip_Iiϵ}$$
(A.8)
Here, $`𝐧=(n_1,n_2,\mathrm{},n_8)`$, and $`\psi _𝐧^{(\mathrm{m})}`$ is a product of normalized harmonic oscillator eigenfunctions satisfying $`(_I_I+\mathrm{m}^2)\psi _𝐧^{(\mathrm{m})}=2\mathrm{m}(_In_I+1/2)\psi _𝐧^{(\mathrm{m})}`$. Introducing a Schwinger parameter $`s`$ and performing the discrete sums and the $`p_+,p_{}`$ integrals one gets

$$G_c(x_1,x_2)=e^{ic\mu r^+}G_0(x_1,x_2)$$

with

$$G_0(x_1,x_2)=i\left(\frac{\mu r^+}{\mathrm{sin}\mu r^+}\right)^4_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{ds}{(4\pi is)^5}e^{\frac{\sigma +iϵ}{4is}}$$
(A.9)
with

$$\sigma =2r^+r^{}+\frac{\mu r^+}{\mathrm{sin}\mu r^+}\left((x_1^Ix_1^I+x_2^Ix_2^I)\mathrm{cos}\mu r^+2x_1^Ix_2^I\right).$$
(A.10)
and we have defined $`r^\mu x_1^\mu x_2^\mu `$. The quantity $`\sigma `$ is proportional to the invariant distance squared $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$:

$$\sigma =\frac{\mu r^+}{\mathrm{sin}\mu \rho ^+}\mathrm{\Phi }$$

The integral in (A.9) can be performed to give

$$G_0(x_1,x_2)=\frac{3}{2\pi ^5(\mathrm{\Phi }+iϵ)^4}$$

in agreement with . The limit $`\mu 0`$ yields the Feynman propagator in Minkowski space. In the calculation of D-brane interaction energies, we will need the integrated propagator $`I_c^{9p}(r^+,r^{})`$ over $`p+1`$ longitudinal $`x^I`$ directions with the transverse $`x^I`$ set to zero. From (A.9) one gets

$`I_c^{9p}(r^+,r^{})`$ $`=`$ $`e^{ic\mu r^+}I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{})`$ (A.11)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}e^{ic\mu r^+}{\displaystyle \frac{(2\pi r^{})^{p3}\mu ^{3p}}{\mathrm{sin}^4\mu r^+}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(3p).`$ (A.12)
### A.3 Massless modes in $`PP_6\times R^4`$

We use the following index conventions:

$`\mu ,\nu ,\mathrm{}=0,\mathrm{},9`$ $`\mathrm{SO}(9,1)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`I,J,\mathrm{}=1,\mathrm{}8`$ $`\mathrm{SO}(8)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`i,j,\mathrm{}=1,2`$ $`\mathrm{U}(1)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`i^{},j^{},\mathrm{}=3,4`$ $`\mathrm{U}^{}(1)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$
$`a,b,\mathrm{}=5,\mathrm{},8`$ $`\mathrm{SO}(4)\mathrm{vector}\mathrm{indices}`$ (A.13)
It is convenient to work with complex coordinates $`z,w`$ instead of $`x^i`$ and $`x^i^{}`$ :

$`z`$ $`=`$ $`x^1+ix^2`$ (A.14)
$`w`$ $`=`$ $`x^3+ix^4`$ (A.15)
The nonvanishing $`PP_6\times R^4`$ background fields are then given by

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`2dx^+dx^{}\mu ^2(z\overline{z}+w\overline{w})(dx^+)^2+dzd\overline{z}+dwd\overline{w}+dx^adx^a`$
$`R_{z++\overline{z}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mu ^2R_{w++\overline{w}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mu ^2R_{++}=4\mu ^2`$
$`F_{+z\overline{z}}`$ $`=`$ $`F_{+w\overline{w}}=i\mu `$ (A.16)
In light-cone gauge, the $`U(1)\times U^{}(1)\times SO(4)`$ subgroup of the background symmetry group is manifest with $`z`$ and $`w`$ carrying charge -1 under $`U(1)`$ and $`U^{}(1)`$ respectively and $`x^a`$ transforming as a vector under $`SO(4)`$. We can again organize the massless modes into decoupled fields $`\psi `$ which transform in irreps of $`U(1)\times U^{}(1)\times SO(4)`$ and whose contribution to the action is characterized by an integer $`c`$ as in (A.7), where the scalar Laplacian is now $`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }=2_+_{}+\mu ^2(z\overline{z}+w\overline{w})_{}^2+4_z_{\overline{z}}+4_w_{\overline{w}}+_a_a`$. The results of this heartwarming calculation are summarized in table 2. It displays the fields $`\psi `$, their definition in terms of the original fluctuations (A.3), their value of $`c`$ and their irrep of $`U(1)\times U^{}(1)\times SO(4)`$. We use the notation $`𝐝_{(𝐪,𝐪^{})}`$ for the $`d`$-dimensional representation of $`SO(4)`$ with charges $`(q,q^{})`$ under $`U(1)\times U^{}(1)`$.

### A.4 Massless propagators in $`PP_6\times R^4`$

The Feynman propagator $`G_c(x_1,x_2)`$ corresponding to the operator $`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }2i\mu c_{}`$ can be written as

$$i\underset{𝐧}{}\frac{dp_+dp_{}d^4p_a}{(2\pi )^6}\frac{e^{i\left(p_+(x_1^+x_2^+)+p_{}(x_1^{}x_2^{})+p_a(x_1^ax_2^a)\right)}\psi _𝐧^{(\mu p_{})}(x_1^A)\psi _𝐧^{(\mu p_{})}(x_2^A)}{2p_+p_{}+\mu p_{}_A(n_A+\frac{1}{2})+2c\mu p_{}+p_ap_aiϵ}$$
(A.17)
Here, $`A=1\mathrm{}4`$, $`𝐧=(n_1,n_2,n_3,n_4)`$ and $`\psi _𝐧^{(\mathrm{m})}`$ is a product of harmonic oscillator eigenfunctions satisfying $`(_i_i_i^{}_i^{}+\mathrm{m}^2)\psi _𝐧^{(\mathrm{m})}=2\mathrm{m}(_An_A+1/2)\psi _𝐧^{(\mathrm{m})}`$. Introducing a Schwinger parameter $`s`$ and performing the discrete sums and the $`p_+,p_{},p_a`$ integrals one gets

$$G_c(x_1,x_2)=e^{ic\mu r^+}G_0(x_1,x_2)$$

with

$$G_0(x_1,x_2)=i\left(\frac{\mu r^+}{\mathrm{sin}\mu r^+}\right)^2_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{ds}{(4\pi is)^5}e^{\frac{\sigma +iϵ}{4is}}$$
(A.18)
with

$`\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`2r^+r^{}+r^ar^a`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu r^+}{\mathrm{sin}\mu r^+}}\left((x_1^ix_1^i+x_1^i^{}x_1^i^{}+x_2^ix_2^i+x_2^i^{}x_2^i^{})\mathrm{cos}\mu r^+2(x_1^ix_2^i+x_1^i^{}x_2^i^{})\right)`$
and we have defined $`r^\mu x_1^\mu x_2^\mu `$. In the calculation of D-brane interaction energies, we need the integrated propagator, denoted by $`I_c^{9p}`$, over $`p+1`$ longitudinal D-brane directions (which we take be a subset of the pp-wave directions $`x^1,\mathrm{}x^4`$) and with the remaining pp-wave coordinates set to zero:

$`I_c^{9p}(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{ic\mu r^+}I_0^{9p}(r^+,r^{},r^a)`$ (A.19)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}e^{ic\mu r^+}{\displaystyle \frac{\left(\pi r^2\right)^{p3}(\mu r^+)^{1p}}{\mathrm{sin}^2\mu r^+}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(3p)`$ (A.20)
where $`r^22r^+r^{}+r^ar^a`$.


format: text

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# Pseudogaps in Nested Antiferromagnets

## Abstract

We analyze the fluctuation corrections to magnetic ordering in the case of a 3D antiferromagnet with flat Fermi surfaces, as physically realized in the case of chromium, and find that they are insufficient to produce a quantum critical point. This implies that the critical point observed in vandium doped chromium is due to a loss of nesting. We also derive the fermion self-energy in the paramagnetic phase and find that a pseudogap exists, though its magnitude is significantly reduced as compared to the spectral gap in the ordered state in the limit where the latter is small in comparison to the Fermi energy.

The subject of magnetic quantum critical points has sparked much interest in the physics community. In the case of heavy fermion metals, this interest has largely been motivated by the observation that Fermi liquid theory breaks down in the vicinity of such critical points GREG . At present, the theory behind this breakdown is not well understood because of the strong coupling nature of the Kondo lattice problem JPCM .

Recently, Yeh et al.YEH  have studied the more straightforward case of vanadium doped chromium. Chromium is the classic example of a spin density wave magnet driven by Fermi surface nesting RMP . Upon doping with vanadium, the Néel temperature, $`T_N`$, is rapidly suppressed to zero. Motivated by the speculation that the Hall number may jump at a magnetic quantum critical point due to Fermi surface rearrangement JPCM , the authors of Ref. YEH,  studied the Hall conductivity and indeed identified such a jump. Moreover, they found a strong temperature dependence of the Hall number, which they speculated was due to the presence of a pseudogap near the critical point. The corresponding signature of this pseudogap has been looked for as a spin gap in the dynamic susceptibility, but so far results are inconclusive HAYDEN .

The simplicity of the case of vanadium doped chromium obviously begs for a theoretical treatment. Recently, it has been shown that the jump of the Hall number can be understood as due to the sudden removal of flat parts of the Fermi surface upon magnetic ordering HALL . The presence of flat Fermi surfaces obviously points to the possibility of a pseudogap, given the quasi-1D nature of the fermion dispersion LEE .

In this paper, we consider the flat Fermi surface model of chromium originally proposed by Shibatani et al.FLAT  where the Fermi surface is approximated as a cube. We find, in agreement with earlier work HASE , that fluctuation corrections are less singular than in a non nested antiferromagnet, and thus are insufficent to drive the Néel temperature to zero. Rather, the critical temperature must be driven to zero by loss of Fermi surface nesting RICE . This is consistent with recent pressure data NEW , which indicate scaling exponents near the critical point for the Néel temperature and Hall number in agreement with analytic results based on a curved Fermi surface HALL . Moreover, we evaluate the fermion self-energy in the paramagnetic phase, and indeed find a pseudogap in the spectral function. This pseudogap, though, scales as $`T_N^3/E_F^2`$ for $`T_NE_F`$, where $`E_F`$ is the Fermi energy, and thus is likely to be too small to be responsible for the strong temperature variation of the Hall number YEH . Instead, the observed variation may be due to the temperature dependence of the inelastic scattering rate, as observed in other transition metals PA2 . On the other hand, for more strongly correlated systems where $`T_NE_F`$, then the pseudogap does scale as $`T_N`$.

The polarization bubble for the flat case is identical to that of the BCS theory for superconductivity MAKI . That is,

$$\chi _0=N[\mathrm{ln}(1.14D/T)\xi ^2q^2+i\alpha \omega ]$$
(1)
where $`D`$ is the ultraviolet cut-off (bandwidth) and $`N`$ the density of states. The expansion coefficient $`\xi `$ is isotropic for the commensurate case ($`Q=2\pi /a`$ for chromium), and weakly anisotropic for the incommensurate case MAKI  ($`q`$ is defined relative to the ordering wavevector, $`Q`$). In linear response theory, the interacting susceptibility is

$$\chi _{MF}=\chi _0/(1g\chi _0)$$
(2)
where $`g`$ is the exchange interaction. The zero of this denominator defines the mean field transition temperature, $`T_{MF}=1.14De^{1/gN}`$. The mean field inverse susceptibility is then

$$\chi _{MF}^1=\frac{Ng}{\chi _0}[\mathrm{ln}\frac{T}{T_{MF}}+\xi ^2q^2i\alpha \omega ]$$
(3)
Fluctuation corrections in the Hartree approximation give a true inverse susceptibility of LT

$$\chi ^1=\chi _{MF}^1+b<M^2>,$$
(4)
with $`b`$ diverging as $`1/T^2`$, $`\alpha `$ as $`1/T`$, and $`\xi `$ as $`1/T`$. The system undergoes a transition towards antiferromagnetic order at a temperature $`T_N`$ for which $`\chi ^1(\omega =0,q=0)=0`$. The important difference of the nesting case to a normal 3D antiferromagnet is the temperature dependence of the expansion coefficients. Because of this, spin fluctuations become relatively less important as the temperature is lowered, and thus fluctuation effects are less singular HASE .

To see this, we approximate $`<M^2>`$, the fluctuating staggered moment, by its classical value ($`\omega T`$)

$$<M^2>=\frac{T}{2}\frac{d^3q}{(2\pi )^3}\chi (q,0)=\frac{Tq_c\chi _0}{4\pi ^2Ng\xi ^2}$$
(5)
The latter equality assumes that $`T=T_N`$. If $`q_c`$, the classical cut-off, is assumed to satisfy the condition $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(q_c)=T`$, then one can show that the classical value is approximately equal to the true quantum mechanical value for $`<M^2>`$ LT . Here, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the frequency half width of the dynamic susceptibility, which, at $`T=T_N`$ is $`q_c=\sqrt{\alpha T}/\xi `$. Using this, $`<M^2>`$ reduces to

$$<M^2>=\frac{T^4\sqrt{\alpha ^{}}\chi _0}{4\pi ^2Ng\xi ^3}$$
(6)
where $`\alpha ^{}=\alpha T`$ and $`\xi ^{}=\xi T`$ are temperature independent constants. Recognizing that $`b^{}=bT^2`$ is also a temperature independent constant, $`\chi ^1(0,0)`$ reduces to

$$\chi ^1(0,0)=\mathrm{ln}\frac{T}{T_{MF}}+\frac{b^{}\sqrt{\alpha ^{}}T^2\chi _0^2}{4\pi ^2N^2g^2\xi ^3}$$
(7)
That is, the correction to $`T_{MF}`$ goes as $`T^2\mathrm{ln}^2T`$, which is less singular than the $`T^{3/2}`$ correction for an ordinary 3D antiferromagnet MORIYA . Our result agrees with earlier results of Hasegawa HASE , though our derivation is more straightforward.

Since $`T_N`$ can never be driven to zero for a perfectly flat Fermi surface (due to the logarithmic divergence of $`\chi _0`$), then one might think that the quantum critical point is probably not controlled by fluctuations FOOT1 . Rather, loss of nesting is the likely cause of the quantum critical point. This is consistent with band theory results HALL , which find an increasing mismatch of the electron and hole octahedral surfaces as the hole doping is increased. Such warping corrections will cause the fluctuation corrections to cross over to the standard 3D antiferromagnetic result near the critical point.

Having addressed the question of fluctuations, we now turn to the question of the pseudogap. Postulating a pseudogap in the case of nesting is quite natural given the quasi-1D nature of the fermion dispersion. On the other hand, as we have seen above, despite this quasi-1D behavior, the spin fluctuation spectrum is still 3D-like, and this raises questions about how strong the pseudogap effect will be. To address this, we derive the fermionic self-energy to lowest order. We note that this is given by a convolution of an effective interaction $`V`$ with the fermion Greens function, where BERK

$$V=g+g^2\chi +g^2\chi /(1+g\chi _0)(3g/2)\chi /\chi _0$$
(8)
with the first term the bare interaction, the second one from summing a ladder series, and the third from summing a bubble series. The most singular part of the fermionic self-energy comes from the classical fluctuations, and can be approximated as VILK

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{3T}{2N}\frac{d^3q}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{A+\xi ^2q^2}\frac{1}{\omega ϵ_{k+Q+q}}$$
(9)
where $`ϵ`$ is the fermionic dispersion and $`A=\mathrm{ln}\frac{T}{T_{MF}}+\frac{b\chi _0}{Ng}<M^2>`$. In the flat case, $`ϵ_{k+Q+q}=ϵ_kvq_{}`$, where $`v`$ is the Fermi velocity and $`q_{}`$ is normal to the flat surface. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ now becomes

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{3T}{2N}\frac{dq_{}d^2q_{}}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{A+\xi ^2(q_{}^2+q_{}^2)}\frac{1}{\omega +ϵ_k+vq_{}}$$
(10)
The integral over $`q_{}`$ gives ($`\xi ^2q_c^2=\alpha T`$)

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{3T}{8\pi N\xi ^2}\frac{dq_{}}{2\pi }\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{A+\xi ^2q_{}^2+\alpha T}{A+\xi ^2q_{}^2}\right)\frac{1}{\omega +ϵ_k+vq_{}}$$
(11)
The $`q_{}`$ integral is convergent, and the cut-off can be taken to infinity. The result is

$$Re\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{3T}{8\pi Nv\xi ^2}\left(\mathrm{tan}^1\frac{\xi (\omega +ϵ_k)}{v\sqrt{A}}\mathrm{tan}^1\frac{\xi (\omega +ϵ_k)}{v\sqrt{A+\alpha T}}\right)$$
(12)
$$Im\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{3T}{16\pi Nv\xi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{A+(\xi /v)^2(\omega +ϵ_k)^2+\alpha T}{A+(\xi /v)^2(\omega +ϵ_k)^2}$$
(13)
To understand these expressions further, we assume that $`T=T_N`$ ($`A`$=0) where the pseudogap effect should be most pronounced. This yields

$$Re\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}^2}{2.7T_N}\left(\frac{\pi }{2}sgn(\omega +ϵ_k)\mathrm{tan}^1\frac{\omega +ϵ_k}{2.7T_N}\right)$$
(14)
$$Im\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}^2}{5.4T_N}\mathrm{ln}(1+(\frac{2.7T_N}{\omega +ϵ_k})^2)$$
(15)
where a typical energy scale $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ is defined as

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}^2=8.1T_N^4/(8\pi Nv\xi ^2)$$
(16)
These were obtained by noting that for the flat case HASE , $`\alpha ^{}=\pi /8`$ and $`\xi ^{}=v\sqrt{7\xi (3)/(16\pi ^2)}`$, where $`\xi (3)=1.202`$. We note that $`2.7T_N`$ is the natural frequency scale of the problem, and that $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ has units of energy.

The fermion spectral function is given as

$$𝒜(k,\omega )=\frac{1}{\pi }\frac{Im\mathrm{\Sigma }}{(\omega ϵ_kRe\mathrm{\Sigma })^2+(Im\mathrm{\Sigma })^2}$$
(17)
In Fig. 1, we show the spectral function at the Fermi surface for two cases, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}=2.7T_N`$ and $`0.27T_N`$. In the first case (strong coupling limit), the spectral gap is approximately equal to $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$. In the second case (more appropriate for chromium as will be seen below), the spectral gap is significantly smaller than $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$. In Fig. 2, we plot the spectral gap obtained from half the spectral peak to peak separation in Fig. 1 versus $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$. For large $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ (comparable to $`T_N`$), the spectral gap scales with $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$, whereas for small $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$, the spectral gap scales quadratically with $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$.

To understand these results analytically, we note that the pole of the fermion Greens function on the Fermi surface is given by the condition $`\omega Re\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )=0`$. Let us first assume this pole energy is of order $`2.7T_N`$. Then under these conditions, $`Re\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ in Eq. 12 can be approximated as (high frequency expansion)

$$Re\mathrm{\Sigma }_{high}=\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}^2}{\omega }$$
(18)
This expression is identical to the BCS expression for the self-energy, and the pole can easily be seen to occur at an energy $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$. That is, there is a spectral gap equal to $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$, and this explains the behavior for large $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ in Fig. 2. By noting that the density of states for the flat case, $`N`$, is $`1/(2\pi va^2)`$, then

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}=6.2T_N^2a/v$$
(19)
Since $`v/aE_F`$ ($`a`$ is the lattice constant), this would imply that $`T_N`$ must be of order the Fermi energy, $`E_F`$, for this high frequency approximation to be valid. This is not satisfied for chromium, since $`T_NE_F`$ in that case.

In the other limit, one expands the self-energy for small $`\omega `$, obtaining (low frequency expansion)

$$Re\mathrm{\Sigma }_{low}=\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}^2}{2.7T_N}(\frac{\pi }{2}sgn(\omega )\frac{\omega }{2.7T_N})$$
(20)
The pole energy is then given approximately by $`\frac{\pi }{2}\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}^2/(2.7T_N)`$. Therefore, for the case where $`T_NE_F`$, then the spectral gap scales as $`T_N^3/E_F^2`$.

Pure chromium exhibits a classic mean field transition as far as specific heat measurements are concerned RMP . This implies that it is in the weak coupling limit, consistent with the small ratio of $`T_N`$ to $`E_F`$. We can quantify this by using parameters extracted from neutron scattering data. In Ref. HAYDEN, , the authors use a form for the susceptibility identical to the one employed here

$$\chi (q,\omega )=\frac{\chi _Q}{1+q^2/\kappa _0^2i\omega /\omega _{sf}}$$
(21)
By comparing to our expressions, we see that $`\kappa _0^2=A/\xi ^2`$ and $`\omega _{sf}=A/\alpha `$. Using this, the prefactor outside the parenthesis in Eq. 12 becomes $`6T^2\kappa _0^2a^2/(\pi \omega _{sf})`$ and the quantities dividing $`(\omega +ϵ_k)`$ in the $`\mathrm{tan}^1`$ functions in Eq. 12 are $`2.7\sqrt{\omega _{sf}T}`$ and $`2.7\sqrt{\omega _{sf}T+T^2}`$ respectively. For Cr-V 5%, $`\kappa _0=0.11\AA ^1`$ and $`\omega _{sf}=88meV`$ for T=12K ($`a=2.88\AA `$). We plot the resulting self-energy from Eqs. 12 and 13 in Fig. 3. Though the $`\omega `$ structure of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is reasonable (looking like a damped version of Eq. 18 with a maximum in Re$`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ at 26 meV), the value of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ itself (nanovolts) is far too small to cause a pseudogap.

Based on this, we expect only weak pseudogap effects, even in the magnetically ordered part of the phase diagram. We note that our derivation of the self-energy assumes that the spin structure factor is quasi-static, a property of the renormalized classical regime VILK . That is, we would not necessarily expect pseudogap effects in the quantum critical regime. This conclusion is bolstered by our evalulation of quantum corrections to the self-energy, which we do not find to be singular.

On the other hand, in the flat model, $`T_{MF}`$ never vanishes as a function of doping. It is a loss of nesting which leads to the quantum critical point. Therefore, it is possible that a pseudogap exists for all dopings which satisfy $`T_N<T<T_{MF}`$ . This is illustrated in Fig. 4. Still, we expect that although pseudogap effects are possible near the quantum critical point of vanadium doped chromium, they are likely to be weak. They could perhaps be best searched for by photoemission, which sees the spectral gap quite easily in pure chromium ARPES .

This begs the question of what is responsbile for the strong temperature dependence of the Hall number observed by Yeh et al.YEH  which occurs even for dopings far beyond the quantum critical point. The Hall number is temperature dependent in transition metals such as Cu, which can be attributed to the temperature dependence of the electron-phonon scattering rate PA2 . For the vanadium doped chromium case, this would be consistent with the $`T^3`$ dependence of the resistivity YEH , which points to the prevalence of electron-phonon effects. Moreover, the experimental Hall number YEH  is in excess of the paramagnetic band theory value HALL  for temperatures above 150 K, again indicating the presence of an inelastic scattering contribution (which could be of magnetic origin as well). Calculation of the $`T`$ dependence of the Hall number, though, is technically challenging PA2  since it involves going beyond the Boltzmann approximation, so we do not consider this further here.

On the other hand, our results do indicate a large pseudogap in the strong coupling limit. We note that there are examples of quantum critical points where Fermi liquid theory is known to break down, and where nesting may be playing an important role, such as in the case of the bilayer ruthenate $`Sr_3Ru_2O_7`$ SRO . Moreover, magnetic incommensurability is seen in most quantum critical heavy fermion systems, such as Au doped $`CeCu_6`$ SCHR . It is possible that the results presented here, which were derived for the case where a strong Fermi surface rearrangment takes place at the quantum critical point, are quite relevant for these systems. Based on this, we suggest that pseudogap effects be searched for in heavy fermion quantum critical systems.

We would like to thank the authors of Ref. YEH, , particularly Tom Rosenbaum, for communicating their work to us prior to publication. This work was supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science, under Contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38. CP would like to thank the hospitality of ANL, and MN that of the SPhT, while this work was in progress.


text:
# Deconfinement transition in 2+1-dimensional SU(4) lattice gauge theory

## 1 FRAMEWORK

The $`SU(4)`$ Yang-Mills theory in $`(2+1)`$ dimensions has a special status: its critical exponents at the finite temperature deconfinement transition are not specified by the Svetitsky-Yaffe (S-Y) conjecture . By measuring them, we can learn about the couplings of the equivalent spin model, i.e. of the effective Polyakov loop model.

The S-Y conjecture says that, if the deconfinement transition of the gauge theory is second-order, then it is in the same universality class as the spin model having the symmetry-breaking pattern of the Polyakov loop.

Assume that the $`(2+1)d`$ $`SU(4)`$ deconfinement transition is second-order – we will investigate this issue numerically next. Then the equivalent $`2d`$ spin model has $`Z(4)`$ spins, with orientation $`\{0,\pm \frac{\pi }{2},\pi \}`$ corresponding to the 4 Polyakov loop sectors and the 4 perturbative vacua of the gauge theory. A nearest-neighbour Hamiltonian, which gives the same critical properties as the $`SU(4)`$ theory according to S-Y, will have 3 possible energy levels for each link: $`E_0`$ for parallel spins $``$, $`E_1`$ for perpendicular spins $``$, and $`E_2`$ for anti-parallel spins $``$. Remarkably, the critical exponents of this spin system are known to vary continuously with the ratio $`\rho \frac{E_2E_1}{E_1E_0}`$ and the corresponding couplings of the Hamiltonian. Therefore, the S-Y conjecture does not tell us what the $`SU(4)`$ critical exponents are. Measuring them fixes the couplings of the effective Hamiltonian.

A $`Z(4)`$ spin model with 3 energy levels per link is called a symmetric Ashkin-Teller model . It is the symmetric case $`J=J^{}`$ of the Ashkin-Teller model, which describes 2 coupled Ising systems $`\{\sigma _i,\tau _i\}`$ on a square lattice, with Hamiltonian:

$$H=J\underset{<ij>}{}\sigma _i\sigma _jJ^{}\underset{<ij>}{}\tau _i\tau _jK\underset{<ij>}{}\sigma _i\tau _i\sigma _j\tau _j$$
(1)
When $`J=J^{}`$, it can be rewritten

$$H=2J\underset{<ij>}{}\mathrm{cos}(\theta _i\theta _j)K\underset{<ij>}{}\mathrm{cos}(2(\theta _i\theta _j))$$
(2)
where now $`\theta _i=\{0,\pm \frac{\pi }{2},\pi \}`$ represents the orientation of an $`SU(4)`$ Polyakov loop. The ratio of excitation energies mentioned above, $`\rho \frac{E_2E_1}{E_1E_0}`$, is then equal to $`\frac{JK}{J+K}`$. Two special cases arise:
$``$ the 4-state Potts case: $`K=J\rho =0`$. No additional energy is needed to make an orthogonal spin pair anti-parallel.
$``$ the Ising2 case: $`K=0\rho =1`$. It takes twice as much energy to flip one spin in an aligned pair, as to make it orthogonal. The name comes from the equivalent description as two decoupled Ising systems in Eq.(1).
On physical grounds, one expects $`0\rho 1`$, so that the two cases above are limiting cases. As $`\rho `$ varies in the interval, the critical exponents also do, between the following limits:

|  | $`\gamma /\nu `$ | $`\gamma ^{}/\nu `$ | $`\beta /\nu `$ | $`\beta ^{}/\nu `$ | $`\alpha /\nu `$ | $`\nu `$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Potts | 7/4 | 7/4 | 1/8 | 1/8 | 1 | 2/3 |
| Ising2 | 7/4 | 3/2 | 1/8 | 1/4 | 0 | 1 |

where $`\gamma ^{}`$ and $`\beta ^{}`$ are susceptibility and magnetization exponents for spins $`e^{2i\theta }`$. Since $`\gamma /\nu `$ and $`\beta /\nu `$ are independent of $`\rho `$, these known exponents provide crosschecks on our systematic errors. This is particularly valuable here, because of large, logarithmic finite-size corrections known to make the numerical extraction of Ashkin-Teller exponents quite challenging .

## 2 NUMERICAL STUDY

We simulate the $`(2+1)d`$ $`SU(4)`$ gauge theory using the Wilson plaquette action on a cubic grid of size $`L^2\times N_t`$, with $`N_t=2,3,4`$ and $`L`$ up to 40. To accelerate Monte Carlo evolution, we use as elementary update a mixture of pseudo-heatbath (in all 6 $`SU(2)`$ subgroups) and overrelaxation in the full $`SU(4)`$ group . The latter requires a similar amount of work to 6 $`SU(2)`$ overrelaxation steps, but gives a larger step size. As a result, the number of sweeps needed to decorrelate the Polyakov loop is reduced by a factor $`3`$. Up to $`10^6`$ sweeps are performed on each volume. We analyze results for various couplings $`\beta `$ near criticality together with multihistogram reweighting.

This model gives a clear first-order transition on $`N_t=1`$ lattices. On $`N_t=2`$, an old Monte Carlo study found a second-order deconfinement transition . Unfortunately, the larger sizes which we simulated revealed that the transition is in fact first-order. Distortions of the plaquette distribution towards a double-peak structure appear in Fig. 1 for our largest sizes. Also, the Binder cumulant $`1\frac{𝒪^4}{3𝒪^2^2}`$ for the plaquette extrapolates as $`L\mathrm{}`$ to a value below 2/3. A likely explanation of these first-order transitions is the vicinity of a sharp, bulk crossover at $`\beta 13.5`$, whereas the $`N_t=1`$ and $`2`$ transitions occur at $`\beta _c8.67`$ and $`14.87`$ respectively.

This forced us to consider $`N_t=3`$ lattices, with correspondingly higher $`\beta _c`$. No double-peak structure is visible on the largest size considered ($`L=32`$). However, the $`L\mathrm{}`$ extrapolation of the Binder cumulant still misses 2/3 by a small but somewhat significant amount. It may well be that the transition is still weakly first-order. Our current $`N_t=4`$ results are consistent with a second-order transition, but do not reach as large volumes yet. Therefore, we present the critical exponents analyzed from the $`N_t=3`$ data.

The effect of logarithmic corrections to scaling can be seen in Fig. 2. They limit the usefulness of accurate, small-size data.

The bulk crossover at $`\beta 13.5`$ has a more pernicious effect. It dominates the behaviour of the specific heat over the singular piece, leading to an exponent $`\alpha 0`$ (Fig. 3 left). We subtracted the bulk specific heat, measured on a $`4^4`$ lattice, to isolate the singular contribution. The exponent then becomes consistent with the Potts case (Fig. 3 right).

All other exponents also favor the Potts case. Fig. 4 shows the scaling of $`\frac{dU}{d\beta }`$, where $`U`$ is the Polyakov loop Binder cumulant. $`\nu `$ remains consistent with the Potts value $`2/3`$, even allowing for a large ($`>2\sigma `$) variation of $`\beta _c`$ by $`\pm 0.01`$ and logarithmic finite-size corrections.

Agreement among all observables is shown in Fig. 5. The pseudo-critical $`\beta `$’s obtained on various volumes all extrapolate to a common thermodynamic value $`\beta _c=20.4356(41)`$, with corrections of the form $`aL^{\frac{1}{\nu }}(1+b/L)`$, and $`\nu =2/3`$, the Potts value.

## 3 CONCLUSION

The unexpected $`N_t=2`$ first-order transition, together with expected but unwelcome logarithmic finite-size corrections, have turned this simple problem into a numerically challenging one.

Our results need to be made more precise, by simulating larger volumes. They also must be confirmed on a finer lattice, $`N_t4`$, where the transition presumably is second-order. In practice, we can never exclude a weak first-order transition. What we want is to reach physical volumes large enough to reliably determine effective critical exponents, but small enough compared to the possibly finite correlation length at criticality.

At this stage, the set of measured exponents favors the Potts case, which would be perhaps the most naive guess.

Obviously, much remains to be done. The effort is worthwhile because of the insight gained from this simple case. Interest in Polyakov loop models has been growing, because they can supplement dimensional reduction and provide an effective description at temperatures nearer to $`T_c`$ than the latter. The difficulty is to determine their many couplings, especially for large$`N`$ $`SU(N)`$ theories. Lessons learnt here for $`SU(4)`$ may help choose among the simplest $`SU(N)`$ generalizations, like $`N`$states Potts or $`Z(N)`$ clock models. In that respect, our preliminary result is perhaps surprising, because an effective $`N`$-state Potts model for $`(3+1)d`$ $`SU(N)`$ would lead to $`k`$-string tensions independent of $`k`$ at $`T_c`$.


text:
# XMM-Newton Observations of the Perseus Cluster II: Evidence for Gas Motions in the Core

## 1 Introduction

The X-ray emission of the hot gas in galaxy clusters is usually modeled as emission by an optically thin plasma. The assumption that the cluster gas is optically thin is certainly valid for the continuum emission, but for the strongest resonant lines the cluster can be moderately thick (e.g. Gilfanov, Sunyaev & Churazov, 1987). Resonant scattering causes changes in line intensities relative to the continuum, thus affecting measurements of the heavy element abundances (Gilfanov et al. 1987, Shigeyama 1998), and producing polarization of the line flux at the level of $``$10% (Sazonov, Churazov & Sunyaev, 2002). For a typical rich cluster one can expect the resonant scattering to be especially important for the He-like iron $`K_\alpha `$ line at 6.7 keV. It is most convenient to search for resonant scattering effects by comparing the flux from this line with the flux of the He-like iron $`K_\beta `$ line at 7.9 keV. In particular, for the Perseus cluster, Molendi et al. (1998) and Akimoto et al. (1997,1999) argued that an anomalously high ratio of the He-like iron $`K_\beta `$ and $`K_\alpha `$ lines hints at the importance of resonant scattering. The 7.9 keV line of iron is however blended with the He-like nickel $`K_\alpha `$ line and the anomalous line ratio may be interpreted as evidence for an enhanced Ni abundance (Dupke & Arnaud, 2001). The role of resonant scattering also has been discussed for other objects, in particular M87 (Böhringer et al. 2001, Mathews, Buote and Brighenti 2001, Matsushita, Finoguenov & Böhringer 2003) and NGC 4636 (Xu et al., 2002).

Below we use an XMM-Newton 50 ksec observation of the Perseus cluster to assess the possible role of resonant scattering. The detailed description of the data and the analysis procedure are given in Churazov et al. (2003).

The structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 2 we simulate the effect of resonant scattering on the radial profiles of the line intensities. In Section 3 we compare the results of the observations with the simulations. In Section 4 we set a lower limit on the level of gas turbulence, which in the context of this paper means differential gas flows on scales smaller than $``$100 kpc. In Section 5 we briefly argue that the central abundance decrement may not be a strong argument in favor of resonant scattering. Implications of turbulent motions on the thermal balance of the gas are discussed in Section 6. The last section summarizes our findings.

Throughout the paper we use $`H_0=70km/s/Mpc`$.

## 2 Resonant scattering

The radial dependence of the electron density $`n_e`$ and temperature $`T_e`$ of the gas in the Perseus cluster is taken from Churazov et al. (2003), rescaled to $`H_0=70km/s/Mpc`$, namely

$`n_e={\displaystyle \frac{4.6\times 10^2}{[1+(\frac{r}{57})^2]^{1.8}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{4.8\times 10^3}{[1+(\frac{r}{200})^2]^{0.87}}}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ (1)
and

$`T_e=7{\displaystyle \frac{[1+(\frac{r}{71})^3]}{[2.3+(\frac{r}{71})^3]}}\mathrm{keV},`$ (2)
where $`r`$ is measured in kpc.

For abundances we consider three possible radial behaviors – a) constant abundance, b) abundance declining with radius and c) abundance peaking at the radius of $``$50 kpc and declining both towards smaller or larger radii as shown in Fig. 1. The last functional form is closest to the radial abundance profile derived from deprojection analysis of the Chandra and XMM-Newton observations (Schmidt, Fabian & Sanders 2003, Churazov et al. 2003) under the assumption of a single temperature optically thin plasma emission model. The abundance ratios used are those of Anders & Grevesse (1989). Using these data we calculated an optical depth from the center of the cluster up to a radius of 1 Mpc $`\tau =n_i\sigma _0𝑑r`$, where $`n_i`$ is the ion concentration and the cross section for a given ion is

$$\sigma _0=\frac{\sqrt{\pi }hr_\mathrm{e}cf}{\mathrm{\Delta }E_\mathrm{D}},$$
(3)
where

$`\mathrm{\Delta }E_\mathrm{D}`$ $`=`$ $`E_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{2kT_e}{Am_\mathrm{p}c^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V_{\mathrm{turb}}^2}{c^2}}\right)^{1/2}`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`E_0\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2kT_e}{Am_\mathrm{p}c^2}}(1+1.4AM^2)\right]^{1/2}.`$
In the above equations $`E_0`$ is the energy of a given line, $`A`$ is the atomic mass of the corresponding element, $`m_\mathrm{p}`$ is the proton mass, $`V_{\mathrm{turb}}`$ is the characteristic turbulent velocity, $`M`$ is the corresponding Mach number, $`r_\mathrm{e}`$ is the classical electron radius and $`f`$ is the oscillator strength of a given atomic transition. The wavelengths and absorption oscillator strengths are taken from the compilation of Verner, Verner & Ferland (1996). The ionization equilibrium is that of Mazzotta et al. (1998). The set of Fe lines with an optical depth larger than 0.2 (for $`M=0`$) is given in Table 1. From this table it is clear that i) the 6.7 keV line of He-like iron is by far the most optically thick line for the case of pure thermal broadening and ii) strong turbulence makes resonant scattering effects negligible for all lines as was emphasized by Gilfanov et al. (1987). For other types of abundance profiles, the main result is the same – the 6.7 keV line has an optical depth of order 3 and accounting for turbulence reduces the optical depth to values smaller than 1.

The resonant scattering has been modeled using a Monte-Carlo approach. The cluster has been divided into concentric shells and line emissivities have been assigned to each shell using the APEC v1.3.0 results (Smith et al. 2001). The scattering of photons was accounted for by assuming a complete energy redistribution and dipole scattering phase matrix. The latter assumption is motivated by the fact that we are interested primarily in the He-like iron resonant line, which has a pure dipole scattering phase matrix (see discussion in Sazonov et al. 2002). The escaping photons are accumulated into separate bins, according to their projected distance from the cluster center. The modification of the 6.7 keV line radial brightness profile due to resonant scattering (for the case of a flat abundance profile) is shown in Fig. 2. As expected, resonant scattering suppresses the line intensity in the core and raises the line intensity in the cluster outskirts. More illustrative is the ratio of the profiles with and without resonant scattering taken into account, which we show in Fig. 3 for all three abundance profile models. Inspite of the different abundance distributions, this plot shows that the net effect is very similar for all three cases – the flux in the line is suppressed by a factor of up to $``$2 within the inner 100 kpc region and is enhanced by $``$10-20% outside this region.

## 3 Spectra

Obviously the easiest way to reveal the effect of resonant scattering is to derive the line ratios for the central region. The He-like iron $`K_\alpha `$ and $`K_\beta `$ lines are ideally suited for that purpose since both lines are due to the same ion of iron. Guided by Fig. 3 we accumulated MOS spectra for two annuli $`0.5^{}2^{}`$ and $`2^{}4^{}`$ centered on NGC 1275. The inner $`0.5^{}`$ region was excluded in order to avoid possible contamination from the NGC 1275 nucleus. The spectrum from 5 to 9 keV was fitted with the APEC (Smith et al. 2001) and MEKAL \[Mewe et al. 1986, Mewe et al. 1986, Kaastra 1992, Liedahl et al. 1995\] models in XSPEC v.11.2 (Arnaud 1996) and is shown in Fig. 4. Temperature, heavy metal abundances (with the abundance ratios of Anders & Grevesse, 1989) and redshift were free parameters of the models. One can see that for the MEKAL model there is a clear excess on the left wing of the He-like iron $`K_\beta `$ line, where the He-like nickel $`K_\alpha `$ line(s) is blended with the iron line. In order to remove this discrepancy one has to either raise the nickel abundance above the standard Ni to Fe ratio (Anders & Grevesse, 1989) by a factor $``$2 or assume that the 6.7 keV complex is suppressed by resonant scattering, thus causing peculiarities in the observed line ratio. On the other hand, the most recent APEC v1.3.0 model provides an almost perfect fit to the whole 5-9 keV portion of the spectrum. A very similar situation is seen for the spectrum of the $`2^{}4^{}`$ annulus. In what follows we assume that we can rely on the predictions of the newest APEC model, which has a significantly richer set of lines in the region of interest. The best fit temperature and abundance values for the two annuli are $`T_e=4.29\pm 0.05`$ keV, $`Z=0.501\pm 0.007`$ relative to the solar abundance (Anders & Grevesse, 1989) and $`T_e=5.18\pm 0.06`$, $`Z=0.446\pm 0.007`$. The values of temperature are somewhat higher than one would infer from fitting a broader 0.5-9 keV spectral band, which is expected for projected spectra, given the radial dependence of the temperature in the Perseus cluster (see eq. 2).

The best fit value of the abundance for the 5-9 keV spectrum is of course dominated by the contribution of the 6.7 keV line. We fixed all parameters (except abundance) at their best fit values and recalculated the abundance first ignoring part of the spectrum containing the 6.7 keV complex and second ignoring the part containing 7.9 keV complex. Since only 6.7 keV complex is affected by resonant scattering the different values of abundance in two fits would indicate an important role for scattering. The ratio of abundances calculated this way is shown in Fig. 5 with two crosses (for two annuli). Resonant scattering is expected to increase the ratio of abundances well above unity for the inner annulus. However, the observed ratio is consistent with unity, indicating that any effects from resonant scattering are small.

Finally we demonstrated that projection effects do not significantly affect the determination of the spectral parameters by using the outer $`2^{}4^{}`$ annulus as a background for the inner $`0.5^{}2^{}`$ annulus. The resulting spectrum has a somewhat lower best fit temperature $`3.8`$ keV, as one would expect, but the line flux ratio again does not show any obvious anomalies.

## 4 Role of gas motions

The resonant $`K_\alpha `$ He-like iron line contribution to the 6.7 keV (6.6-6.8 keV) complex varies from 40 to 52% for the gas temperature range from 3 to 5 keV. Therefore suppression of the resonant line flux in the inner regions due to resonant scattering would strongly affect the intensity of the whole complex. On the other hand, the 6.9 and 7.9 keV complexes can be treated as effectively optically thin. The good fit of the spectra with the APEC model of an optically thin plasma with the solar mix of heavy elements can be considered as an indication that the resonant scattering effects are suppressed. As is noted by Gilfanov et al. (1987) turbulent motions of the gas may significantly reduce the optical depth of the lines. The effect is especially strong for heavy elements, which have thermal velocities much smaller than the sound velocity of the gas. For example, for the 6.7 keV iron line, the inclusion of turbulent motions (parametrized through the effective Mach number in eq. 4) would reduce the optical depth to $``$0.4 for a Mach number of 1. In Fig. 5, we show the simulated ratios of the radial profiles of the 6.7 keV line with and without the effect of resonant scattering for Mach numbers of 0, 0.25, 0.5 and 1.

## 5 Central abundance hole

Single temperature fits to the azimuthly averaged projected spectra of the Perseus cluster yield an abundance “hole” in the very core (central $`1^{}`$) of the cluster (e.g. Schmidt et al., 2002, Churazov et al. 2003). It is of course attractive to attribute this decrease in abundance to resonant scattering, since abundance measurements are mostly affected by the strongest lines which typically have the largest optical depths. The high signal-to-noise ratio accumulated during the XMM-Newton observations of the Perseus cluster allows one to make a two-dimensional map of the 6.7 keV line intensity. Shown in Fig. 6 (left panel) is the projected map of the 6.7 keV line equivalent width. The 5-8 keV band of the projected spectra was approximated as a linear combination of three components - two bremsstrahlung spectra with temperatures of 2 and 6 keV and a Gaussian line at 6.7 keV (redshifted to the cluster distance). The very central region (the circle with $`20^{\prime \prime }`$ radius centered at NGC 1275) has been excised from the analysis to avoid contamination by the AGN flux. The equivalent width of the line was calculated by applying similar adaptive smoothings to the intensities of the line and the continuum (sum of two bremsstrahlung components) and calculating the ratio. The size of the smoothing window was chosen to provide an effective signal to noise ratio of 80, calculated using the total number of counts from 5-8 keV. The image shows (i) an overall increase in the equivalent width towards the center of the cluster, (ii) a decrease in the equivalent width in the central $`1^{}`$ region and (iii) a low equivalent width horse-shoe shaped region to the West. Since the equivalent width of the line is temperature dependent, we have calibrated this dependence using a set of simulated APEC spectra with different temperatures and a fixed heavy element abundance and applying a similar procedure for equivalent width determination. Using the resulting conversion factor (from equivalent width to abundance) and the temperature map calculated with the same adaptive smoothing procedure, we converted the equivalent width map into an abundance map - Fig. 6 (right panel). The low equivalent width region to the West of the cluster center is apparently the result of higher gas temperature in this region (see Churazov et al. 2003), since in the abundance map this feature is absent. The central “hole” is present both in the equivalent width and the abundance map, although detailed structures are different in the two maps, because of the complicated temperature structure of the inner region.

The central part ($`8^{}\times 8^{}`$) of the abundance map is shown in Fig. 7 along with the surface brightness image of the same region. Contours in both images show the abundance at the level of 0.4 Solar. One can see that the inner part of the abundance hole roughly traces the region occupied by the inner radio lobes (Böhringer et al. 1993, Fabian et al. 2000) which correspond to areas of low X-ray surface brightness to the North and South of the nucleus. This morphological similarity suggests that the abundance “hole” is related to the activity of the AGN rather than to resonant scattering. For instance radio lobes may push the gas with the highest abundance away from the nucleus forming a shell-like distribution of highly enriched gas. The details of the abundance distribution in this region and discussion of realistic models are beyond the scope of this paper. Given that the size of the region is rather small and there is a bright AGN at the very center, long Chandra observations would provide better data for careful study of the abundance distribution. We conclude however that a central abundance hole is not a reliable indication that resonant scattering is important in Perseus and it is likely that other physical mechanisms play a role.

## 6 Discussion

With our parameterization of the turbulence through the effective Mach number in eq. 4, the energy in turbulent motions is approximately related to the thermal energy of the gas as $`ϵ_{turb}0.7M^2ϵ_{th}`$. A lack of visible effects of resonant scattering suggests that $`M`$ is at least 0.5. Therefore turbulent motions contain at least 20% of the thermal energy of the gas. Subsonic turbulence is not very efficient in generating sound waves (e.g. Landau & Lifshitz 1963) and one can assume that a significant fraction of this energy will be dissipated locally and will go into heat. The dissipation time scale can be estimated as the eddy turn-around time times a factor $`f`$ of order a few. Thus a rough estimate of the heating rate due to dissipation of turbulence can be written as:

$$\frac{ϵ_{turb}}{f\frac{l}{Mc_s}}\frac{0.7}{f}M^3\frac{ϵ_{th}}{l/c_s}\frac{ϵ_{th}}{210^8yr},$$
(5)
where $`l`$ is the characteristic eddy size, $`c_s`$ is the sound velocity. For estimates we set $`l=10`$ kpc, $`M=0.5`$ and $`f=3`$. This value can be compared with the cooling rate which is set by the thermal energy and the cooling time which is of the order of 0.5 Gyr for the gas density and temperature typical of the Perseus core. Thus if the characteristic spatial scale of turbulent eddies is comparable to or less than $``$10 kpc, then the present level of turbulent dissipation should be sufficient to compensate for the gas cooling losses.

There are at least two obvious sources of turbulence – mergers and the activity of the central supermassive black hole. The numerical simulations have shown that mergers can induce long lived (of order of Gyr) eddies (e.g. Norman & Bryan 1999) even in cluster cores. The surface brightness and gas temperature structures in Perseus suggest recent merger activity (e.g. Furusho et al., 2001). The scale of merger induced eddies is probably rather large and this reduces the dissipation rate. On the other hand, activity of the supermassive black hole can induce turbulence on a smaller scales through the mechanical action of the outflows (Churazov et al. 2001,2002, Reynolds, Heinz & Begelman 2002, Brüggen & Kaiser 2002). Judging from the size of the observed radio lobes in the Perseus cluster (Böhringer et al. 1993, Fabian et al. 2000) one can expect the size of the generated eddies to be of order 10 kpc, i.e. sufficiently small to dissipate their energy quickly (compared to the timescale for radiative cooling).

The above analysis is simplified by the assumption that the same level of turbulence, expressed through the effective Mach number, is applicable to all radii. We cannot prove however with the present data that the gas velocities indeed vary on spatial scales as small as 10 kpc, nor is it possible to show that the velocity field can be characterized as turbulent motion. The conservative conclusion is therefore that the data are consistent with small scale turbulence characterized by a velocity of order half the sound speed, although larger spatial scale velocity variations (up to $``$50-100 kpc) cannot be excluded. Comparable gas velocities are found in the numerical simulations of cluster formation (e.g. Frenk et al. 1999), although the central parts of clusters with cool cores may have properties different from the bulk of the cluster gas. The profile of a resonant line, broadened by large scale motions and the turbulent cascade, has been recently calculated by Inogamov & Sunyaev (2003). While the profile differs from a simple Gaussian shape, the net effect on the optical depth in the line core is comparable. We note also that pure radial differential motions (e.g. sound waves coming from the very central region as in the picture suggested by Fabian et al. 2003) also would produce a similar reduction in the optical depth of the lines. The dissipation rate for this (predominantly radial) motion crucially depends on the viscosity of the gas (Fabian et al. 2003). For less regular motion patterns, eq. 5 gives a resonable estimate of the dissipation time scales for all values of the viscosity below a certain value (in the limit of large Reynolds numbers). For very high viscosities (low Reynolds numbers) the time scale for dissipation will be even shorter.

Assuming that the gas velocities do vary randomly on spatial scales of order 10 kpc, one can estimate the impact of these motions on the radial distribution of heavy elements. In the simplest approximation one can estimate the turbulent transport of heavy elements via the diffusion coefficient on spatial scales larger than the characteristic size of the eddies:

$`D{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}v_tl={\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}Mc_sl`$ (6)
The characteristic time for diffusion over regions of size $`X`$ e.g. 100 kpc is:

$`t{\displaystyle \frac{X^2}{D}}=`$
$`6\times 10^9\left({\displaystyle \frac{X}{100kpc}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{l}{10kpc}}\right)^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{Mc_s}{500km/s}}\right)^1yr`$ (7)
Thus for our choice of typical eddy size and turbulent velocity, the metals are not transported outside a region much larger than 100 kpc during the lifetime of the cluster. The central abundance (adopting the abundance profile with a maximum at the center as shown in Fig. 1), however, does drop substantially on time scales of approximately 1-2 Gyr and has to be replenished by some mechanism (see Böhringer et al. (2003) for implications of abundance gradients on the properties of the cool core clusters). Given the different dependence of the turbulent diffusion coefficient (eq.7) and the rate of dissipation (eq.5) on the spatial scales of eddies and characteristic velocities, the importance of these two processes will differ. For some combinations of parameters (in particular for small eddies), the heating rate is high while the impact of turbulent transport may be limited. Since at present these values are highly uncertain, it is difficult to prove that such a situation is indeed taking place in Perseus.

The are several additional caveats associated with the above analysis which are necessary to mention. First of all there are still issues to be resolved in the plasma emission models, in particular near the He-like Ni $`K_\alpha `$ line. Compared to the MEKAL version included in XSPEC (version 11.2.0), the APEC code has an updated set of major line energies and atomic physics (Smith et al. 2001, see also http://cxc.harvard.edu/atomdb). For the MEKAL model, however, the best description of the spectra are obtained when Ni is overabundant (Dupke & Arnaud, 2001, Gastaldello & Molendi, 2003) rather than by effects of resonant scattering. It seems therefore that even although the predictions of two codes differ, both codes favor a minimal role for resonant scattering. Second, the presence of multi-temperature plasma in the Perseus core and projection effects make the straightforward interpretation of simple single temperature fits to the projected spectra questionable. Finally, the XMM-Newton observation of the Perseus cluster was affected by increased background (see Churazov et al. 2003 for details) which might slightly affect the spectral parameters. We believe however that all these problems should not affect our estimate that the random gas velocities in the Perseus cluster core are a substantial fraction of the gas sound speed.

The presence of differential motions and the role of the resonance scattering in the Perseus core can be verified in future X-ray observations. The most straightforward way would be the measurements of the line width with calorimeters (ASTRO-E2, Constellation-X, XEUS). Resonant lines are broadened both by the resonant scattering (e.g. Gilfanov et al., 1987) and the differential motions (e.g. Inogamov and Sunyaev 2003; Sunyaev, Norman and Bryan 2003), while the width of the forbidden or intercombination lines is affected only by differential motions. Comparison of the lines width would provide an important test on the contribution of the resonant scattering. At the temperature of 4 keV the pure Doppler width of the iron 6.7 keV resonant line is of order of 4 eV (FWHM) or $``$200 km/s. Resonant scattering (for an optical depth of order of 3) would double the width of the resonant line (Gilfanov et al., 1987). These values are comparable with the ASTRO-E2 energy resolution and could be measured. Shape of the line and mapping of the line centroid energy over the central region will help to identify characteristic size of the eddies (e.g. Inogamov and Sunyaev 2003).

A more demanding test for the presence of resonant scattering would be the measurements of the polarization of the line flux (Sazonov et al., 2002). The expected degree of polarization for the central region is however small (at the level of few per cents) which makes a detection or meaningful upper limits problematic for future polarimetric projects.

The third possibility is related to $`H_\alpha `$ filaments observed in the core of the Perseus cluster. If the filaments are constructed from an extremely small clouds as suggested by Fabian et al. 2003 which are dragged by the flow of the hot gas then one can get a direct estimate of the gas velocity spread $`300km/s`$ (e.g. Conselice, Gallagher & Wyse, 2001) and the characteristic scales of the eddies ($`10`$ kpc) from the optical data. We note that if individual clouds are not very small, have a temperature of $`10^4`$ K and are in pressure equilibrium with the ambient hot gas at $`310^7`$ K then the density contrast of $`c3000`$ will make them insensitive to the varying gas velocity field on the spatial scales smaller than $`c\times x`$, where $`x`$ is the size of the cloud. For instance if the size of the typical cloud is $`1`$ pc, then it has to travel $`3`$ kpc through the ambient gas before ram pressure will accelerate it to the velocity comparable with the gas velocity.

## 7 Conclusions

The Perseus cluster spectrum from 5 to 9 keV measured by XMM-Newton can be well described as emission from an optically thin plasma with solar ratios of elemental abundances, provided that the most recent version (1.3) of the APEC code is used.

The lack of any visible suppression of the He-like iron 6.7 keV line in the inner region of the Perseus cluster core implies that the optical depth of the cluster gas is significantly reduced by gas motions with velocities of order half the gas sound velocity. Dissipation of these motions may provide enough heat to replenish the energy lost from radiative cooling if the spatial scales of velocity variations are small enough (e.g. comparable to the size of AGN-inflated relativistic plasma bubbles).

## 8 Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Randall Smith for useful discussions. We thank the editor and the referee for important comments and suggestions. W. Forman and C. Jones thank MPA for its hospitality during their summer 2002 visits, as well as the Smithsonian Institution and Chandra Observatory for support (NASA contract NAS8-39073). This work is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA).