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# Strain, size and composition of InAs Quantum Sticks, embedded in InP, by means of Grazing Incidence X-ray Anomalous Diffraction

(22/09/03, submitted)

## Abstract

We have used x-ray anomalous diffraction to extract the x-ray structure factor of InAs quantum stick-like islands, *embedded* in InP. The average height of the quantum sticks (QSs), as deduced from the width of the structure factor profile is 2.54nm. The InAs out of plane deformation, relative to InP, is equal to 6.1%. Diffraction Anomalous Fine Structure provides a clear evidence of pure InAs QSs. Finite Difference Method calculations reproduce well the diffraction data, and give the strain along the growth direction. Chemical mixing at interfaces is at most of 1ML

PACS : 68.65.La 61.10.Nz

Band structure gives the optical and electronic properties of materials. It can be strongly modified by reducing the size of semiconductor material down to a length scale comparable to the effective wave-length of the carriers, i.e. in the order of several nanometers, leading to discrete energy levels Bimberg et al. (1999). Much study has been done on InAs quantum structures such as Quantum Wires (QWrs) and Quantum Dots (QD). With an emission wavelength which can be around 1.55$`\mu `$m, such nanostructures are of interest for the next generation of integrated circuits (telecommunication relevant range of 1.3-1.6$`\mu `$m). The nano-objects we are interested in are grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and obtained via the Stranski-Krastanov growth. The lattice mismatch $`\frac{a_{InAs}a_{InP}}{a_{InP}}`$ is about 3.2%. Recent studies González et al. (2000) have shown that a strong stress anisotropy appears during the growth deposition leading to a higher stress along the  direction than along the $`[1\overline{1}0]`$. The stress is released first in the  direction leading to the QWrs formation. To be suitable for devices, the nanostructures are encapsulated with InP or embedded in a superlattice, they must be homogeneous in size, shape and composition, to provide well defined emission wavelengths. The knowledge of strain field, chemical gradients, chemical mixing at the interface, is of great importance to understand the growth dynamics as well as the electronic and optical properties of the nanostructures.

We report on an x-ray study of InAs stick-like islands embedded in InP with 10 nm thick capping layer. These samples are obtained by optimisation of the MBE growth parameters to minimize the As/P exchange and reduce the height dispersion of the InAs islands Monat et al. (2002); Gendry et al. (2003). The width of photoluminescence (PL) peaks reveals a very good height homogeneity Salem et al. (2002), as confirmed by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) measurements. The InAs islands obtained with a nominal deposition thickness of 4ML are 50 to 200nm long along the $`[1\overline{1}0]`$ direction (1a). As shown by cross-section TEM image the QSs exhibit a truncated triangle side shape with typical width of 22.5 $`\pm `$ 0.12 nm and homogeneous height, of 2.4 nm (figure 1b).

In the present paper we show that the structure factor of embedded nanostructures can be directly determined by means of grazing incidence anomalous x-ray diffraction, allowing to recover the average height and strain of the QSs, to determine their composition and check the As/P exchange. As a matter of fact, strain of buried nanostructures is not directly related to composition (Vegards’s law), but it also depends on size, morphology, and cap layer thickness. Then, tuning the x-ray energy near an absorption edge of atoms that belong to the nanostructures is a way to modify their scattering power and to enhance the chemical sensitivity of diffraction. Previous studies have shown the interest of using anomalous diffraction to determine strain and composition in InAs QWrs grown on InP Grenier et al. (2002) or large Ge dots grown on Si Magalhaes-Panagio et al. (2002); Schülli et al. (2003). We report on a general method that takes advantage of the full capability of anomalous diffraction Hodeau et al. (2001) and can be applied to the very interesting and challenging case of *small size* *embedded* nanostructures, the x-ray scattering yield of which is overwhelmed by the dominant matrix contribution, whatever the momentum transfer is.

Grazing incidence anomalous diffraction intensity, can be written in the frame of the Distorted Wave Born Approximation Dosch (1992); Proietti et al. (1999) :

$$I(\stackrel{}{Q},E)T_i(\alpha _i,E)^2F_T(\stackrel{}{Q})^2\left[\left(\mathrm{cos}(\phi _T\phi _A)+\beta f_{As}^{}\right)^2+\left(\mathrm{sin}(\phi _T\phi _A)+\beta f_{As}^{\prime \prime }\right)^2\right]$$
(1)
where $`F_T`$ is a complex structure factor of phase $`\phi _T`$ which includes the overall contribution of non anomalous atoms and the Thomson scattering of all anomalous atoms, $`\beta =\frac{F_A}{f_{As}^0F_T}`$ where $`F_A`$ is a complex structure factor of phase $`\phi _A`$ which includes the Thomson scattering of all anomalous atoms (i.e. As atoms). $`T_i(\alpha _i,E)^2`$ is the incidence transmittivity, and $`\alpha _i`$ is the incidence angle that is close to the critical angle $`\alpha _c`$. In the following, the exit angle is much larger than the critical angle, then the exit transmittivity $`T_f(\alpha _f,E)^2=1`$ and the scattering length ($`100nm`$) is much larger than the epilayer thickness. The As scattering factor writes $`f_{As}=f_{As}^0+f_{As}^{}+if_{As}^{\prime \prime }`$, where $`f_{As}^{}`$ and $`f_{As}^{\prime \prime }`$ are the real and imaginary resonant scattering of As atoms. Equation 1 shows that diffraction measurements at various energies (at least 3) at the As K-edge, allow to recover a quantity that is proportional to the $`F_T`$ modulus, the $`\beta `$ ratio and the phase difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }\phi =\phi _T\phi _A`$. The knowledge of $`F_A`$and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\phi `$ readily gives information about the average size and strain of the nanostructures and chemical mixing at interface.

Grazing incidence Anomalous diffraction at the As K-edge (11.867 KeV) was performed at the French Collaborative Research Group beamlines BM32 and BM2 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, using a Si(111) double crystal monochromator to select energies and mirrors to reject harmonics. Grazing incidence was used to minimize the substrate contribution. We recorded the scattering intensity in the vicinity of the (442) substrate reflection, at several energies across the As K-edge. We chose a weak reflection (h+k+*l*=4n+2) for which the anomalous diffraction contrast is maximum; it lies in the mirror plane defined by the  and  directions to benefit from symmetry in the reciprocal space. Figure 2 shows the diffraction intensity map recorded at 11.840 keV and at a grazing incidence angle equal to the critical angle ($`\alpha _i=\alpha _c=0.2\mathrm{°}`$) to maximize the diffraction intensity. For that reflection the exit angle $`\alpha _f`$ is about 20°. A large amount of information can be drawn from such a map : the spreading of scattering in the  direction is due to both short range correlation and lattice strain in the corresponding direction in the real space () whereas, in the  direction it is due to the sharp strain evolution. Figure 2 shows correlation satellites on both sides of the (442) (S1 and S2 ) their positions relative to the substrate peak give a qualitative estimation of the mean correlation distance between the wires. We find a value of $`20.7nm`$, that is in agreement with the TEM.

The markable result in this map, is the clear asymmetry of the S1 and S2 satellites ; S1 exhibits a broad and twin feature along the  direction, with a sharp splitting at *l*=2, whereas S2 is a single feature centered approximately at *l*=2. S1 corresponds to regions stretched along the  direction (tensile strain), i.e. to InAs sticks and InP regions located below and above the sticks. S2, instead, corresponds to InP which is compressed in between of the sticks. Indeed, anomalous diffraction measurements at the As K-edge show no significant intensity variations of satellite S2 as a function of the energy, confirming that the InP contribution is the dominant one. Furthermore, these measurements also show firstly, that the transmittivity corrections can be neglected, secondly, that the wetting layer, if it exists, must be very thin, at most one ML. Cutoff fringes are clearly observed in the *l* direction around the substrate Bragg peak position and give the total thickness of both the InAs QSs and the InP capping, that is equal to $`11\pm 0.3nm`$.

We performed *l*-scans (*h*=*k*=3.98) accross the satellite S1, at nine different energies close to the As K-edge including those corresponding to the minimum of $`f_{As}^{}`$ and the white line of $`f_{As}^{\prime \prime }`$. A weak fluorescence background was substracted and the data were normalized to *l*-scans across the satellite S2, measured at the same energies. Then $`F_A(\stackrel{}{Q})`$, $`F_T(\stackrel{}{Q})`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\phi (\stackrel{}{Q})`$ were extracted by fitting equation 1 to the energy dependent experimental intensities.

Figure 3a) shows the experimental modulus of $`F_A(\stackrel{}{Q})`$, $`F_T(\stackrel{}{Q})`$. The QSs height average value ($`H`$) can be estimated from the Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) of $`F_A`$ , $`H=\frac{c_{InP}}{0.9\times (\mathrm{\Delta }F_A)_{FWHM}}=2.54nm`$, that is very near of the value measured with TEM. In order to determine the QSrs composition and the local strain accomodation, Grazing Incidence Diffraction Anomalous Fine Structure spectrum was measured at the maximum of $`F_A`$ *(h*=*k*=3.98 and *l*=1.9) at the As K-edge. Figure 3b) shows the experimental DAFS spectrum and the simulation calculated with the crystallographic structure of InAs1-xPx and the anomalous scattering factors $`f_{As}^{}`$ and $`f_{As}^{\prime \prime }`$of bulk InAs. A scale factor, the detector efficiency as a function of the energy and the As occupation factor ($`1x`$) were refined. The best fit curve, shown on figure 3b) corresponds to a value of ($`1x`$) equal to 1.03, i.e. the QSs composition is *pure* InAs. GIDAFS oscillations, in the energy range above the edge, will give also direct information on the local composition and on strain accomodation inside the sticks. Detailed analysis of these oscillations will be reported elsewhere.

Finite Difference Method simulations were performed to map the strain produced by InAs QSs embedded in InP and compare its Fourier Transform to experimental diffraction intensity maps. We assumed a coherent growth of InAs on InP (supported by the lack of dislocations seen in TEM micrography). We performed Finite Difference Method calculations Niquet et al. (1998), in a 2D periodic frame, in the plane determined by the  and  crystal axis, i.e. the wires have infinite length along $`[1\overline{1}0]`$ and a periodic structure along the . The QSs length is finite and rather short (50-200nm), meaning 2D calculations slightly overestimate the strain, the relaxation along  being not permitted. We chose an FDM cell with a size of $`\frac{\sqrt{2}a}{4}\times \frac{a}{4}`$. Then, atoms are placed inside the crystallographic cell according to Cubic Face Centered Zinc-blende structure, taking into account elastic deformation. Starting from atomic positions, diffraction intensity is then calculated using the Distorted Wave Born Approximation Dosch (1992). No structural disorder has been taken into account. The P and In anomalous scattering factors were obtained from theoretical values, whereas experimental values for As in bulk InAs were used.

Figures 4a) and 4b), show the deformation maps with respect to InP lattice parameter, obtained with a model of embedded InAs QWrs as deduced from TEM images (fig. 1b), that well reproduces the diffraction data. The QWrs side shape is a truncated triangle as shown by TEM. The total thickness of the QWrs and the capping is equal to $`11`$nm, as reported above. Figure 4b) shows a map of deformations along the  direction ($`\epsilon _{zz}`$), which emphasizes the morphology of the wires. Indeed the wires are compressed along  (with partial relaxation shown in fig. 4a), thus expanded along . This explains the sharp contrast of lattice strain shown in figure 4b) ($`\epsilon _{zz}`$). Figure 4a) shows the relative strain $`\epsilon _{xx}`$ along , here it is impossible to disentangle InAs from InP regions under and on the top of the wires, since the in-plane lattice strain is continuous at the interface. On figure 3a) are shown the best calculated curves of $`F_A`$ and $`F_T`$, obtained by optimizing the height and width of the wires, as well as As/P intermixing at the InAs/InP interface. The splitting of $`F_T`$ is well reproduced by the simulation and is due to a scattering phase shift between InP cells above and below the wires. The overall wire thickness and width are found to be 9 MLs and 22nm, respectively. The simulated ratio $`\beta =\frac{F_A}{f_{As}^0F_T}`$ at the maximum of $`F_A`$ is equal to 0.113, i.e close to the experimental value of 0.124 deduced from the GI-DAFS spectrum (figure 3b). Note that FDM simulation well reproduces the relative positions of $`F_A`$ and $`F_T`$, with a strain $`\epsilon _{zz}`$ of about 6.3% in the inner part of the wire. For comparison, the strain of a pseudomorphic InAs thin film grown on InP, as foreseen by the elastic theory, is 6.7%. The $`\epsilon _{zz}=\frac{cc_{InP}}{c_{InP}}=\frac{l_{InP}l_{F_A}}{l_{F_A}}`$ value, deduced directly from the reciprocal lattice position $`l_{F_A}`$ of the maximum of $`F_A`$ (fig. 3a) is equal to 6.1$`\pm 0.25`$%, i.e., within the uncertainty, equal to the value simulated with FDM. Regarding composition, our FDM simulations show that the QSs inner part is pure InAs. The experimental curves ($`F_A`$ and $`F_T`$) are compatible with a weak As/P intermixing at the InP interface, that would spread over one ML. Indeed, improving the signal-to-noise ratio together with a 2D data treatment, would allow to fully exploit the technique sensitivity to map the composition at the ML scale.

In conclusion, we have shown that anomalous diffraction can be used to extract the structure factor of small size InAs nanostructures *embedded* in InP matrix. This study is a first step towards a 2D and 3D analysis of anomalous diffraction maps and Grazing Incidence DAFS data to recover the strain, size, shape and composition of *embedded* nanostructures.

We are very grateful to F. Né, J.S Micha, S. Arnaud, B. Caillot and J.F. Bérar for help during the experiments at the beamlines BM32 and BM2 at the ESRF. M.G.P and H.R. Acknowledge the support of Egide and Aciones Integradas Programmes (grant ref. HF2002-78) of the French and Spanish ministries of Research and Education.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Recently a new method was proposed  to study the equation of state (EoS) of the matter created at the early stage of nucleus–nucleus (A+A) collisions. It was suggested to analyze the collision energy dependence of the ratio of properly filtered multiplicity and energy fluctuations. It was shown that the fluctuation ratio measured at the final state may be directly dependent on the ratio of pressure to energy density at the early stage. In the present paper we make a next step within the same framework and consider strangeness fluctuations. A new observable connected with the fluctuations of the strange hadron yield is proposed. We derive the quantitative predictions of the Statistical Model of the Early Stage (SMES)  concerning the fluctuation of the number of strange hadrons. We find a non-monotonic dependence on the collision energy: the ratio of the relative multiplicity fluctuations of strange hadrons to those of negatively charged hadrons has a minimum in the domain where the onset of deconfinement occurs.

The paper is organized as follows. The basic relevant assumptions of the SMES are presented in Sect. 2. The role of dynamical fluctuations in the study of EoS at the early stage is stressed in Sect. 3. The energy dependence of the dynamical strangeness fluctuations is derived within SMES and discussed in Sect. 4. Summary and conclusions close the paper, Sect. 5.

## 2 Statistical Model of the Early Stage

Since we are going to discuss the collision energy dependence of the fluctuations within the SMES , let us present its basic assumptions. The volume, $`V`$, where the matter in confined, mixed or deconfined state is produced at the collision early stage, is given by the Lorentz contracted volume occupied by wounded nucleons. For the most central collisions the number of wounded nucleons is $`N_W2A`$. The net baryon number of the created matter equals to zero. Even in the most central A+A collisions only a fraction $`\eta <1`$ of the total collision energy is used for a particle production. The rest is carried away by the baryons which contribute to the baryon net number. The main postulates of the SMES  are the following:

* New particles are created at the early stage of A+A collision in a state of the global statistical equilibrium.
* The model assumes that the created matter is described in the grand canonical ensemble with all chemical potentials equal to zero. The EoS is chosen in the form of relativistic ideal gas with an additional bag–term contribution in the deconfined phase.
* The basic constituents of the deconfined phase are the light $`u`$ and $`d`$ (anti)quarks ($`m_um_d0`$), the strange (anti)quarks ($`m_s175`$ MeV) and gluons.
* The total entropy and strangeness created at the early stage are supposed to be approximately conserved during the expansion, hadronization and freeze-out.

We describe the system’s EoS in terms of the pressure as a function of temperature: $`p=p(T)`$. For an ideal gas of particles ‘$`j`$’ with zero chemical potential one finds ($`m_j`$ is a particle mass, $`g_j`$ is a number of internal degrees of freedom):

$$p_j(T)=\frac{g_j}{6\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}k^2𝑑k\frac{k^2}{\sqrt{k^2+m_j^2}}\left[\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\sqrt{k^2+m_j^2}}{T}\right)\pm 1\right]^1,$$
(1)
where $`+1`$ is used for fermions and $`1`$ for bosons. The total pressure $`p(T)`$ is a sum of partial pressures $`p_j(T)`$ over all particle species ‘$`j`$’. The energy density $`\epsilon (T)`$ and entropy density $`s(T)`$ for the system with zero chemical potentials are calculated from the thermodynamical identities: $`\epsilon =Tdp/dTp`$ and $`s=dp/dT`$. For massless particles one obtains: $`p(T)=\sigma /3T^4,\epsilon (T)=\sigma T^4,s(T)=4\sigma /3T^3,`$ where $`\sigma =(g^b+7g^f/8)\pi ^2/30`$ with $`g^b`$ and $`g^f`$ being respectively the total number of degrees of freedom for bosons and fermions. In the quark gluon plasma (QGP) we have $`g_Q^b=28=16`$ and $`g_Q^f=2223=24`$ massless degrees of freedom which correspond to the gluons and non-strange (anti)quarks, respectively. The pressure of strange quarks and anti-quarks is given by Eq. (1) with the degeneracy factor $`g_Q^s=223=12`$ and quark mass $`m_s=175`$ MeV. We use the bag–model EoS for the QGP : $`p_Q=p_{id}B`$, $`\epsilon _Q=\epsilon _{id}+B`$, i.e. the constant term $`B>0`$ is subtracted from the total ideal gas pressure and is added to the total ideal gas energy density.

In the confined (hadron) phase we assume the effective degeneracy factor $`g_H^{ns}`$ for massless non-strange degrees of freedom and $`g_H^s`$ for strange degrees of freedom (the strange effective degrees of freedom are assumed to be massive with mass $`m_H`$ close to the kaon mass). These parameters of the confined phase are obtained in Ref.  from fitting the data on multiplicities of strange and non-strange hadrons in Au+Au collisions at the AGS energies.

The temperature of the phase transition, $`T_c`$, is defined by the Gibbs criterion of equal pressures: $`p_H(T_c)=p_Q(T_c)`$. At $`T=T_c`$ the system stays in the mixed phase and its energy density equals to:

$$\epsilon =(1\xi )\epsilon _H(T_c)+\xi \epsilon _Q(T_c),$$
(2)
where $`0\xi 1`$ is the part of the system occupied by the Q-phase.

For the total strange particle number density in the $`H`$, $`Q`$ and mixed phases we have, respectively:

$`n_H^s(T)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_H^s}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}k^2𝑑k\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{k^2+m_H^2}}{T}}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{g_H^s}{2\pi ^2}}m_H^2TK_2\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_H}{T}}\right),`$ (3)
$`n_Q^s(T)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_Q^s}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}k^2𝑑k\left[\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{k^2+m_s^2}}{T}}\right)+1\right]^1,`$ (4)
$`n_{mix}^s(\epsilon )`$ $`=`$ $`(1\xi )n_H^s(T_c)+\xi n_Q^s(T_c).`$ (5)
## 3 Statistical and Dynamical Fluctuations

Various values of the energy $`E`$ and volume $`V`$ of the initial equilibrium state lead to different, but uniquely determined, initial entropies $`S`$. When the collision energy is fixed, the energy, which is used for particle production still fluctuates. These fluctuations of the inelastic energy are caused by the fluctuations in the dynamical process which leads to the particle production. They are called the dynamical energy fluctuations . Clearly the dynamical energy fluctuations lead to the dynamical fluctuations of any macroscopic parameter of the matter. In Ref.  the dynamical entropy fluctuations were considered and related to the dynamical energy fluctuations and EoS as:

$$R_e\frac{(\delta S)^2/S^2}{(\delta E)^2/E^2}=\left(1+\frac{p}{\epsilon }\right)^2,$$
(6)
providing the volume fluctuations were absent $`\delta V=0`$. The ratio $`p/\epsilon `$ reaches a minimum – the so called ‘softest point’  of the EoS – at the boundary between the mixed phase and the QGP. Thus, we expect a non-monotonic energy dependence of $`R_e`$ with a maximum at this boundary point. The numerical results for the ratio $`R_e`$ (6) calculated within the SMES in Ref.  are shown in Fig. 1.

The early stage energy and entropy are not directly measurable. In an experiment only momenta and energies of final state particles in a limited acceptance are reconstructed. Thus, the question arises whether the early stage fluctuations can be reconstructed from the experimentally accessible information. In Ref.  we argued that this may be possible in the case of entropy, provide that the distortions caused by final state correlations and statistical noise are removed. The distortions can be minimized by a proper choice of the studied observables. For instance in the case of study of dynamical entropy fluctuations it is better to extract them from the fluctuations of negatively charged hadrons than from all charged hadrons, as the latter is influenced by correlations due to resonance decays and global charge conservation. As a method to extract the dynamical fluctuations from the statistical noise the so-called sub-event method  can be used. In this method the fluctuations are measured in two different non-overlapping but dynamically equivalent regions of the phase space (see Ref.  for further details).

The idea to study the EoS of the matter created at the early stage of collisions by an analysis of the dynamical fluctuations, proposed originally for entropy , can be extended for strangeness. This subject is discussed in the next section. We note that among different macroscopic parameters of the system the entropy and strangeness content are of special importance : they are created at the early stage of A+A collisions, they are sensitive to the EoS of the matter and they are approximately conserved during the system expansion, hadronisation and freeze-out.

## 4 Fluctuations of Strangeness

In this central section of the paper we study within the SMES the energy dependence of the dynamical strangeness fluctuations caused by the dynamical energy fluctuations. We define strangeness $`N_s`$ as a total number of all strange and anti-strange particles and consider the fluctuation ratio defined as:

$$R_s=\frac{(\delta \overline{N}_s)^2/\overline{N}_s^2}{(\delta E)^2/E^2}.$$
(7)
As in the case of entropy fluctuations we assume that experimental procedure allows to eliminate the event–by–event fluctuations of the initial volume $`V`$. Since $`\overline{N}_s=n^sV`$, the dynamical fluctuations of $`\overline{N}_s`$ are defined by that of the strangeness density: $`\delta \overline{N}_s/\delta E=\delta n^s/\delta \epsilon `$ and consequently $`R_s=(\delta n^s/\delta \epsilon )^2(\epsilon /n^s)^2`$.

The strangeness density depends on $`T`$ in the pure confined and deconfined phases according to Eqs. (3) and (4), respectively. One has therefore to calculate the fluctuations of $`n^s`$ due to the fluctuations of temperature and then the fluctuations of $`T`$ due to those of $`\epsilon `$:

$$\frac{\delta n_{(H,Q)}^s}{\delta \epsilon }=\frac{dn_{(H,Q)}^s}{dT}\frac{dT}{d\epsilon }.$$
(8)
In the mixed phase region, $`\epsilon _H(T_c)<\epsilon <\epsilon _Q(T_c)`$, the strangeness dynamical fluctuations can be found from Eqs. (2) and (5):

$$\frac{\delta n_{mix}^s}{\delta \epsilon }=\frac{n_Q^s(T_c)n_H^s(T_c)}{\epsilon _Q(T_c)\epsilon _H(T_c)}.$$
(9)
We note that the fluctuation ratio (9) does not depend on the energy density $`\epsilon `$.

Let us first find the asymptotic behavior of $`R_s`$ at high and small $`T`$. When $`T\mathrm{}`$ the system is in the QGP phase. The strange (anti)quarks can be considered as massless and the bag constant can be neglected. Then $`\epsilon T^4`$ and $`n^sT^3`$ and consequently $`d\epsilon /\epsilon =4dT/T`$ and $`dn^s/n^s=3dT/T`$, which result in $`R_s=(3/4)^20.56`$. In the confined phase, $`T<T_c`$, the energy density is still approximately given by $`\epsilon _HT^4`$ due to the dominant contributions of non-strange hadron constituents. However, the dependence of strangeness density on $`T`$ is dominated in this case by the exponential factor, $`n_H^s\mathrm{exp}(m_H/T)`$, as $`T<<m_H`$. Therefore, at small $`T`$ one finds $`d\epsilon _H/\epsilon _H4dT/T`$ and $`dn_H^s/n_H^sm_HdT/T^2`$, so that the ratio $`R_sm_H/(4T)`$ decreases with increasing temperature (energy density). The strangeness density $`n_H^s`$ is small and goes to zero at $`T0`$, but the fluctuation ratio $`R_s`$ (7) is large and goes to infinity at zero temperature limit.

The results of numerical calculations for the collision energy dependence of $`R_s`$ (7) within SMES are presented in Fig. 2. As expected the fluctuation ratio $`R_s`$ is independent of energy and equals approximately 0.56 at high collision energies when the initial state corresponds to the hot QGP. $`R_s`$ rapidly decreases at small collision energies. A pronounced minimum-structure is observed in the dependence of $`R_s`$ on the collision energy. It is located in the collision energy region $`30÷60`$ A$``$GeV, where the mixed phase is created at the early stage of A+A collision.

The ratio $`R_s`$ (7) is defined above for the infinitesimal energy fluctuations. From Fig. 2 one observes the ‘discontinuities’ of $`R_s`$ at the boundaries of the pure hadron and QGP phases with the mixed phase. It is easy to understand this result, as we have used different equations for $`n^s`$ and $`\epsilon `$ in each separate phase: the function $`n^s`$ does not have discontinuities, but its derivative $`\delta n^s/\delta \epsilon `$ does. In fact, the dynamical energy fluctuations are not infinitesimal. Even more, the dynamical fluctuations should be not too small to separate them safely from the statistical fluctuations. The quantitative analysis presented below demonstrates that by introducing the finite size of the energy fluctuations we avoid the artificial discontinuities in the $`R_s`$ ratio.

We denote by $`E`$ an average energy of the created matter at fixed collision energy. We further assume that event-by-event values of energy $`E^{}`$ vary around $`E`$ according to the Gauss distribution:

$$P(E^{},E)=C\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(EE^{})^2}{2\sigma ^2}\right],$$
(10)
where $`\sigma =aE`$ with $`a=const`$, and $`C(2\pi \sigma ^2)^{1/2}`$ is defined by the normalization condition $`_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E^{}P(E^{},E)=1.`$ The dynamical averaging of any observable $`f(E^{})`$ can be defined now as:

$$f=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E^{}P(E^{},E)f(E^{}).$$
(11)
The ratio $`R_s`$ for the finite energy fluctuations (10) is given by

$$R_s\frac{(\delta N_s)^2/N_s^2}{(\delta E)^2/E^2},$$
(12)
where $`(\delta X)^2(XX)^2`$. Providing $`E>>\sigma `$ one gets $`E_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E^{}P(E^{},E)E^{}E`$ and $`(\delta E)^2=E^2E^2(\sigma )^2`$, and consequently $`(\delta E)^2/E^2=(\sigma /E)^2=a^2`$, i.e. for distribution (10) the relative fluctuations are independent of the collision energy.

The function $`N_s(E^{})`$ needed to calculate $`N_s`$ and $`N_s^2`$ is defined by Eqs. (3-5) with $`\epsilon E^{}/V`$. The results of numerical calculations of $`R_s`$ (12) with $`\sigma /E=a=0.1`$ are shown in Fig. 2. The qualitative features of the $`R_s`$ dependence on the collision energy are not changed by the introduction of finite energy fluctuations (very similar plots are obtained for $`a=0.05`$ and $`a=0.2`$). The main difference is the disappearance of the sharp edges characteristic for infinitesimal fluctuations.

We apply now our procedure of averaging over finite energy fluctuations to the ratio $`R_s`$ (6). The calculations are done according to Eq. (11) with $`S(E^{})=V(\epsilon +p)/T`$:

$$S^n=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E^{}P(E^{},E)S^n(E^{}),n=1,2;(\delta S)^2=S^2S^2.$$
(13)
The dependence of $`R_e`$ on the collision energy for distribution (10) with $`\sigma /E=a=0.1`$ is shown in Fig. 1 by dashed line. Again, as in the case of $`R_s`$, the averaging procedure does not change the basic features of the dependence.

Both the entropy and strangeness fluctuation measures, $`R_e`$ and $`R_s`$, show ’anomalous’ behavior in the transition region: the maximum is observed for $`R_e`$ and the minimum for $`R_s`$. Consequently, even stronger anomaly is observed in the ratio:

$$R_{s/e}\frac{R_s}{R_e}=\frac{(\delta N_s)^2/N_s^2}{(\delta S)^2/S^2}\frac{(\delta N_s)^2/N_s^2}{(\delta N_{})^2/N_{}^2}.$$
(14)
Its dependence on the collision energy is shown in Fig. 3 for infinitely small energy fluctuations and for $`\sigma /E=a=0.1`$. Experimental measurements of $`R_{s/e}`$ may be easier than the measurements of $`R_e`$ or $`R_s`$ because the ratio $`R_{s/e}`$ requires measurements of particle multiplicities only, whereas both $`R_e`$ and $`R_s`$ involve also measurements of particle energies. Finally we note that the relative dynamical fluctuations of strangeness and entropy are approximatelly equal (see ) to the corresponding fluctuations of $`K^+`$ meson and negatively charged hadron multiplicities, respectively. Thus the $`R_{s/e}`$ fluctuation ratio can be expressed by the measurable quantities as:

$$R_{s/e}\frac{(\delta N_{K^+})^2/N_{K^+}^2}{(\delta N_{})^2/N_{}^2}.$$
(15)
## 5 Conclusions

We have considered strangeness fluctuations as a potential probe of the equation of state and microscopic content of the strongly interacting matter created at the early stage of high energy nucleus–nucleus collisions. In order to quantify the fluctuations we have introduced a new measure $`R_{s/e}`$ (14) constructed from fluctuations of strange and non–strange hadron multiplicities. We have predicted, within statistical model of the early stage , the energy dependence of the $`R_{s/e}`$ measure and we have shown that it is strongly sensitive to the form of matter created at the early stage of nucleus–nucleus collisions. In particular, a “tooth” structure (see Fig. 3) is expected in the collision energy domain $`30÷60`$ A$``$GeV in which deconfinement phase transition is located.

## Acknowledgments.

Partial support by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (M. G.) and by Polish Committee of Scientific Research under grant 2P03B04123 (M. G.) and by DAAD scholarship under Leonhard-Euler-Stipendienprogramm (O.S.Z.) is acknowledged.


text:
# Short-range spin- and pair-correlations: a variational wave-function

## 1 Introduction

The large variety of phenomena due to correlations between electrons in solids is one of the major challenges of contemporary physics. Over the past 80 years this subject has formed the arena of many new developments in theoretical physics. The most common approach to the many-body problem is, to define in the first step a model defined as a Hamiltonian, Lagrangian, or action, describing the most important interactions of the system one tries to understand. In the second step one tries to solve the corresponding equations of motion. Apart from a few special cases, no exact solution is known of the Schrödinger equation of a large number of interacting particles. To circumvent this problem two different approaches are most frequently used, often in combination with each other: One is to device an analytical approximation scheme, which ultimately may provide an approximate solution. The other is to use computational techniques for a finite size cluster.

An alternative approach, which has sometimes been quite successful, is to start with designing a variational many-body ground-state wave-function with the desired characteristics of (for example) the pair-correlation function, spin-polarization, etcetera. One can than subsequently try to find a model Hamiltonian which will produce (i) the aforementioned many-body wave-function as it’s ground-state, and (ii) the low energy excitations which are important for determining the thermal properties and the various spectral functions all of which can be measured experimentally.

The variational wave-function approach has been used with great success for superconductivity, the fractional quantum Hall effect, and the resonating valence bond. Other striking examples of this ’bottom-up’ approach are the Affleck-Marsten flux-phase, or d-density wave, the mixed anti-ferromagnetic/superconducting state, and the Gossamer superconducting wavefunction.

Here we use the many-body wave-function approach to explore the possibility of (anti)-ferromagnetism, superconductivity, and local pairs within the same phase-diagram. Our ansatz for the many-body wavefunction is

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=C\mathrm{exp}\{\underset{G}{}\underset{k}{}f(k,G)c_k^{}c_{k+G}^{}\}|0$$
(1)
where $`C`$ is a normalization constant. The function $`f(k,G)`$ is a distribution function of the center of mass momentum ($`G`$) and the relative momentum ($`2k`$) of pairs of electrons. Below we will see, that $`f(k,G)`$ represents several types of different correlations within the interacting electronic system. Moreover Eq. 1 is sufficiently general to capture, besides less familiar states of matter, several well known states of matter, such as superconductivity, anti-ferromagnetism, resonating valence bond states, and the non-interacting electron gas. It therefor may be a useful starting point for the rich phase-diagram of the high-Tc cuprates, and of the heavy-fermion superconductors. In the subsequent discussion we will frequently refer to the projection of Eq.1 on the subspace with $`2N`$ electrons

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{2N}=C\{\underset{G}{}\underset{k}{}f(k,G)c_k^{}c_{k+G}^{}\}^N|0$$
(2)
This expression is a generalization of the many-body wavefunction describing the simultaneous occurrence of superconductivity and anti-ferromagnetism to arbitrary distributions, $`f(k,G)`$, of the center of mass momentum $`G`$.

## 2 Superconductivity

Let us first consider the special case, that the distribution function $`f(k,G)`$ is a Dirac $`\delta `$-function of the center-of-mass momentum: $`f(k,G)=\delta (G,0)\psi _k`$.

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{2N}=C\widehat{P}_{2N}\mathrm{exp}\{A_0^{}\}|0$$
(3)
where $`\widehat{P}_{2N}`$ is the projection on states with $`2N`$ electrons, and

$$A_0^{}\underset{k}{}\varphi _kc_k^{}c_k^{}$$
(4)
creates a pair of electrons with zero center-of-mass momentum. The exponential function of $`A_0^{}`$ appearing in Eq.3, can be expanded in a Taylor’s series. The term containing $`2N`$ electrons

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{2N}=\{A_0^{}\}^N|0$$
(5)
is similar to a Bose-Einstein condensate of $`N`$ composite bosons, each consisting of a pair of electrons. In a superconductor this state is realized if we cool an isolated lump of material with known number of electrons below the phase transition. Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer considered a phase-coherent superposition of states containing different numbers of pairs:

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_\varphi =C\underset{N}{}e^{i\varphi N}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{2N}$$
(6)
which can be shown to be equivalent to the state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_\varphi =\underset{k}{}\left(u_k+e^{i\varphi }v_kc_k^{}c_k^{}\right)|0$$
(7)
where $`\psi _k=v_k/u_k`$, and $`|v_k|^2+|u_k|^2=1`$. In the limit case, where $`|v_k|^21`$ for $`|k|k_F`$ and $`|v_k|^20`$ for $`|k|>k_F`$, this product is just the ground-state of the non-interacting electron gas

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_0=\underset{k,\sigma }{}\theta _k^Fc_{k\sigma }^{}|0$$
(8)
where the occupation number $`\theta _k^F`$ is 0 or 1 depending on whether the state is above or below the Fermi level respectively.

## 3 Anti-ferromagnetism

Another well-documented limit of Eq. 2 is presented by the anti-ferromagnetic state. To be specific, we consider a square lattice in two space-dimensions, with site-alternating up- and down polarization. The anti-ferromagnetic Bragg vector is Q=$`(\pi ,\pi )`$ in this case, and the operators which create an electron on the two sublattices are

$$\begin{array}{c}a_{k\sigma }^{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(c_{k\sigma }^{}c_{k+Q\sigma }^{}\right)\hfill \\ b_{k\sigma }^{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(c_{k\sigma }^{}+c_{k+Q\sigma }^{}\right)\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)
respectively. The single particle operators of the anti-ferromagnetic state are

$$\begin{array}{cccccc}ϵ_k^{}:\hfill & \alpha _k^{}=\hfill & \mu _kc_k^{}\nu _kc_{k+Q}^{}\hfill & \text{and}\hfill & \beta _k^{}=\hfill & \hfill \nu _kc_k^{}+\mu _kc_{k+Q}^{}\\ ϵ_k^+:\hfill & \beta _k^{}=\hfill & \nu _kc_k^{}+\mu _kc_{k+Q}^{}\hfill & \text{and}\hfill & \alpha _k^{}=\hfill & \hfill \mu _kc_k^{}\nu _kc_{k+Q}^{}\end{array}$$
(10)
where the coefficients satisfy $`\mu _k=\mu _k`$, $`\nu _k=\nu _k`$, $`\mu _{k+Q}=\nu _k`$, $`\nu _{k+Q}=\mu _k`$, and $`|\mu _k|^2+|\nu _k|^2=1`$. The energies $`ϵ_k^\pm `$ are determined by the details of the energy-momentum dispersion of the $`c_{k\sigma }^{}`$-operators and by the interactions giving rise to the anti-ferromagnetism. For simplicity we consider here the case where only one of the two sub-bands is occupied, which assumes that the anti-ferromagnetic splitting is very large. The ground-state wave-function is obtained by partially or fully occupying the lowest band

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{AF}=\underset{k}{}\theta _k^F\alpha _k^{}\beta _k^{}|0$$
(11)
The states with momentum $`k`$ and $`k`$ are degenerate, so we may replace $`\alpha _k^{}\beta _k^{}`$ with $`\alpha _k^{}\beta _k^{}`$ in the above product. Because each electron-state can only be created once, this is equivalent to

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{AF}=\{2^{1/2}\underset{k}{}\theta _k^F\alpha _k^{}\beta _k^{}\}^N|0$$
(12)
The derivation of Eq. 12 employs the property that $`\alpha _k^{}`$ and $`\beta _k^{}`$ are orthogonal to each other, consequently all two-particle operators under the summation commute with each other. In the first (reduced) Brillouin-zone of the anti-ferromagnetic state the occupation function $`\theta _k^F`$ is either 1 or 0. In Eq. 12 and in later similar expressions the summation over $`k`$ refers to the paramagnetic (extended) Brillouin-zone. The factor $`2^{1/2}`$ compensates for the double counting. However, $`\alpha _{k\sigma }^{}=\alpha _{k+Q\sigma }^{}`$ and $`\beta _{k\sigma }^{}=\beta _{k+Q\sigma }^{}`$. To avoid the complete cancellation of terms originating from the first and second reduced Brillouin-zone, it is therefor important to define $`\theta _{k+Q}^F=\theta _k^F`$ for $`k`$ in the second reduced Brillouin-zone.

To see the relation with Eq. 2 we substitute for $`\alpha _k^{}`$ and $`\beta _k^{}`$ the original $`c_{k\sigma }^{}`$-operators in the paramagnetic Brillouin-zone using Eq. 10. We then decompose the summation over $`k`$ in separate terms corresponding to different quantum numbers for the spin and the center-of-mass momentum

$$\begin{array}{c}_k\theta _k^F\alpha _k^{}\beta _k^{}=2_k\theta _k^F\left(\mu _k\nu _kc_k^{}c_k^{}+\mu _k^2c_k^{}c_{k+Q}^{}\right)\hfill \\ =_kf_0^e(k)c_k^{}c_k^{}+_k^{}(g^e(k^{})+g^o(k))c_{k^{}+Q/2}^{}c_{k^{}+Q/2}^{}\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
where

$$\begin{array}{ccc}& f_0^e(k)=\hfill & \theta _k^F\left(2\mu _k\nu _k\right)\hfill \\ & g^e(k^{})=\hfill & \theta _{k^{}+Q/2}^F\left(\mu _{k^{}+Q/2}^2\nu _{k^{}+Q/2}^2\right)\hfill \\ & g^o(k^{})=\hfill & \theta _{k^{}+Q/2}^F\hfill \end{array}$$
(14)
This concludes the proof, that Eq. 2 is sufficiently general to also contain the anti-ferromagnetic state as one of the possibilities. The distribution-function of the center-of-mass momentum, $`f(k,G)`$, is a superposition of two $`\delta `$-functions: The first at $`G=0`$ is an even function of $`k`$ and therefor creates a pair with spin quantum number zero. The second $`\delta `$-function at the anti-ferromagnetic Bragg-vector $`G=(\pi ,\pi )`$ contains two contributions with different spin quantum-numbers. Since $`\theta _{k^{}+Q/2}=\theta _{k^{}Q/2}=\theta _{k^{}+Q/2}`$, and $`\mu _{k^{}+Q/2}^2=\mu _{k^{}Q/2}^2=\nu _{k^{}+Q/2}^2`$, the functions $`g^e(k^{})`$ and $`g^o(k^{})`$ are even and odd functions of $`k^{}`$ respectively. Hence the first of the two terms with center-of-mass momentum $`Q`$ corresponds to a S=0 state. The other term, because it is an odd function of $`k^{}`$, corresponds to the $`m_S=0`$ member of the ($`S=1`$) spin-triplet.

A well-known property of the anti-ferromagnetic state is the broken SU(2) symmetry. This symmetry breaking is illustrated by the fact, that Eq. 13 corresponds to a superposition of pair-states with different spin quantum numbers (i.e. S=0 and S=1). Eq. 13 is also a superposition of pair-states with different center-of-mass quantum numbers, and this illustrates the fact that the anti-ferromagnetic state also breaks the discrete translational invariance of the lattice.

The spin-polarization depends on the value of $`\mu _k^2=1\nu _k^2`$. For example $`\mu _k=\nu _k=1/\sqrt{2}`$ corresponds to full spin-polarization, where the electrons move either completely in sublattice $`a`$ with spin $``$, or in sublattice $`b`$ with spin $``$. From Eq. 14 we see that the fully polarized anti-ferromagnetic state can be regarded as a simultaneous condensation in a singlet state with momentum $`G=0`$ and a triplet with momentum $`G=(\pi ,\pi )`$, both having the same amplitude.

## 4 Superconductivity and anti-ferromagnetism

The results of this section and the previous one can be summarized by a diagram displaying the center-of-mass distribution function $`f(k,G)`$ averaged over the relative coordinate $`k`$, $`F(G)_k|f(k,G)|^2`$. In Fig. 1 this function is displayed for the superconducting state and the anti-ferromagnetic state.

We point out two important aspects of the BCS-wavefunction of the superconducting state:

1) The internal structure of the Cooper-pairs (i.e. the pairing symmetry and the degree of localization of the pairs) is completely determined by $`v_k`$ and $`u_k`$ in Eqs. 6 and 7: The function $`\psi _k=v_k/u_k`$ is the Fourier-transform of the wavefunction describing the relative coordinate of the electrons forming a Cooper-pair.

2) All pairs are condensed in a state with zero center-of-mass momentum $`G=0`$, regardless of the details of the internal structure of the pairs.

Although the long-range anti-ferromagnetic state is characterized by two $`\delta `$-functions for the center-of-mass momentum $`G`$, Eq.13 does not correspond to a true superconducting state, because the occupation function $`\theta _k^F`$ has a sharp cut-off at the Fermi-momentum.

### 4.1 Superconductivity in the background of anti-ferromagnetism

We first consider the situation, where the anti-ferromagnetism has been stabilized on a high energy scale, and superconductivity is a relatively weak phenomenon. Under those conditions it is a good approximation to assume that the onset of superconductivity does not affect the anti-ferromagnetic order parameter. The simultaneous occurrence of superconductivity and anti-ferromagnetism requires that $`\theta _k^F`$ is replaced with the smooth function $`v_k/u_k`$, as usual in a BCS-type superconductor. In principle this smooth function may be different for the three different terms with differing quantum numbers, and the corresponding many-body wavefunction was described by Chen et al., but in the fully polarized anti-ferromagnet we expect a single distribution function, so that the superconducting/anti-ferromagnetic wavefunction can be transformed to up- and down-spin sublattice-operators using Eq. 9

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{AF}=\underset{k}{}\frac{v_k}{u_k}a_k^{}b_k^{}|0$$
(15)
Interestingly in this example the Cooper-pairs are a superposition of an S=0 and an S=1 spin-state with equal amplitudes for the S=0 and S=1 contributions. In other words, the superconducting state of a fully polarized anti-ferromagnet is a condensate with a broken SU(2) symmetry, with Cooper-pairs which have one spin-up electron on sublattice a, and one spin-down electron on sublattice b. In the partially polarized anti-ferromagnet the amplitude of the S=1 contribution is different from the S=0 weight a $`Q=(\pi ,\pi )`$. The degree of polarization of the Cooper-pairs depends on the details of the pairing-mechanism and the degree of polarization of the underlying anti-ferromagnetic state. For vanishing spin-polarization SU(2)-symmetry should be restored, and the Cooper-pairs are either in an S=1 state or in an S=0 state, depending on the parity of $`v_k/u_k`$.

## 5 Supersymmetric rotations and SO(5)

A different situation arises, when the anti-ferromagnetic correlations and the superconducting correlations are stabilized on comparable energy scales. In this case the anti-ferromagnetism can be partially or totally suppressed when superconducting order sets in and vice-versa. An elegant approach to this phenomenon is the group-theory, which uses the super-symmetric SO(5) extension of the direct product of U(1) corresponding to the superconducting phase, and of SO(3) corresponding to the anti-ferromagnetic order parameter. In this so-called SO(5) theory, the anti-ferromagnetic state and the d-wave superconducting state are regarded as two different projections of a generalized higher dimensional order parameter. It is tempting to regard Eq. 13 as a manifestation of precisely this SO(5) symmetry, namely, that the d-wave superconducting condensate can be transformed into anti-ferromagnetic state by adiabatically adding the additional triplet condensate at $`G=(\pi ,\pi )`$. However, in Eq. 13 the singlet at $`G=0`$ has s-wave symmetry if the anti-ferromagnetic state is of the conventional variety. Hence, although our wave-function does support a super-symmetric rotation from anti-ferromagnetism to s-wave pairing by mixing in a triplet-condensate at $`G=(\pi ,\pi )`$, a similar construction connecting d-wave pairing to conventional anti-ferromagnetism appears to be absent. In principle we could postulate an unconventional anti-ferromagentic order parameter $`\mu _k`$ which has a d-wave symmetry with nodes along the diagonal directions. Such an order parameter transforms to a d-wave superconducting order parameter if we reduce the singlet and triplet condensates at $`G=(\pi ,\pi )`$ to zero.

## 6 Local pairs

It has often been speculated that a remnant of the Cooper-pairs may exist even if the material is not superconducting. This would require that those pairs are not condensed in the same state. The variational wave-function proposed by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer does not include this possibility. On the other hand the situation sketched in Fig. 1a can be easily generalized to describe a paired state with no long range superconducting order, by replacing the Dirac $`\delta `$-function of the center-of-mass coordinate with the Lorentzian $`1/(1+l^2|G|^2)`$. The width of this distribution, $`1/l`$ then corresponds to the inverse of length over which the pairs maintain the phase-coherence. A transition to the superconducting state as a function of temperature, or another control parameter, is in this scenario characterized by the appearance of the Dirac $`\delta `$-function at the origin. Note, that for the existance of superconductivity it is not necessary that the entire distribution collapses into the $`\delta `$-function, not even at $`T=0`$. This scenario, depicted in Fig. 2, is reminiscent of the experiments with Bose-Einstein condensation. Yet, the pairs in this wave-function are not real bosons. In principle it is not even required that they are strongly localized in space, although the conditions giving rise to this type of phase transition would typically cause the pairs to be rather small.

States of the type displayed in Fig. 2a have a simple representation in real space. Starting from Eq.2, we insert the real-space representation of the creation operators $`c_{k\sigma }^{}=_𝐑e^{ikR}c_{j\sigma }^{}`$, and obtain

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{2N}=C\{\underset{m,n}{}\stackrel{~}{f}(r_m,r_n)c_m^{}c_n^{}\}^N|0$$
(16)
where $`\stackrel{~}{f}(r_m,r_n)_{k,G}e^{i(k(r_mr_n)+Gr_n)}f(k,G)`$ is the double Fourier-transform of the momentum distribution function. A state with near-neighbor resonating bonds is constructed by defining

$$\stackrel{~}{f}(r_m,r_n)=e^{|r_m+r_nR_0|/(2l)}\delta _{<m,n>}\left\{(x_mx_n)+i(y_my_n)\right\}^L$$
(17)
where $`l`$ measures the range of the RVB correlations measured from an arbitrary reference point ($`R_0`$) where the correlations are maximal, $`\delta _{<m,n>}`$ selects out nearest-neighbour bonds, and the last factor selects the state with relative angular momentum L. A Gutzwiller projection is still required if we want to exclude the doubly occupied sites. The representation in k-space is

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{2N}C\widehat{P}\left\{\underset{G,k}{}e^{i\varphi (G)}\frac{\mathrm{cos}(k_x)\pm \mathrm{cos}(k_y)}{1+l^2|G|^2}c_{k+G/2}^{}c_{k+G/2}^{}\right\}^N|0$$
(18)
where the $`+/`$ sign refers to $`L=0`$ or $`L=2`$ angular momentum states respectively, $`\varphi (G)`$ is a random phase, and $`\widehat{P}`$ is the Gutzwiller projection operator. The true RVB state corresponds to taking the limit $`l\mathrm{}`$ in the above expression. In this limit this state becomes equivalent to a BCS-type superconducting wave-function with either extended s-wave symmetry or d-wave symmetry, with the two paired holes on a nearest-neigbour distance. In a superconductor with a small gap, the $`k`$-dependent factor inside the curly brackets has a strong k-dependence, corresponding to singlet-bonds on a range much longer than a nearest neighbor distance in $`\stackrel{~}{f}(r_m,r_n)`$.

## 7 Finite range magnetic correlations

Likewise a wavefunction corresponding to a state of short-range magnetic correlations can be easily constructed by replacing the Dirac $`\delta `$-functions in Fig. 2b with distribution functions with a finite width. The corresponding structure sketched in Fig. 3a corresponds to the magnetic structure-factor measured with neutron scattering, and the width of the distribution is inversely proportional to the anti-ferromagnetic correlation length. Like for the superconducting state, long-range anti-ferromagnetic order is characterized by the condensation of part of the spectral weight into the $`\delta `$-function at $`G=(\pi ,\pi )`$.

By shifting the peak in the distribution function from $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ to another value of the wavevector $`G`$, the formalism can be used to describe short- or long-range incommensurate spin-density waves.

## 8 Summary and conclusions

We have generalized earlier expressions of the many-body wavefuction to a formula, Eq.1, which envelopes many known or suspected types of spin- and pairing order of the high Tc cuprates and of some of the heavy fermion superconductors. We have used this approach to show that anti-ferromagnetism can be regarded as the simultaneous condensation of S=0 singlets at $`G=0`$ and $`G=Q`$, and of S=1 triplets at $`G=Q`$ where $`Q`$ is the anti-ferromagnetic Bragg-vector. The possibility of superconductivity and anti-ferromagnetism occurring simultaneously can be easily described this way. In principle the calculation of matrix-elements of the Hamiltonian, as well as most operators corresponding to experimentally measurable quantities, is unproblematic at least in the examples where the center-of-mass momentum, $`G`$, has a single discrete value. The general case presented by the proposed wave-function allows $`G`$ to be distributed over a finite range of $`k`$-space. In the latter case it appears to be more problematic to obtain analytical expressions of the aforementioned matrix-elements. The latter forms, as yet, the main obstacle for using Eq. 1 in a variational calculation of the ground state and the excitation spectrum. If this obstacle can be taken, this could offer a straightforward analytical approach to the rich phase diagram of the high Tc cuprates.

The work presented in this paper was developed during a long term collaboration with M. J. Rice. His pedagogical teachings have largely influenced the present paper, written in his memory. It has been a great privilege to collaborate with Michael.


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# 0103-72.6: A New Oxygen-Rich Supernova Remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud

## 1  INTRODUCTION

Identifying the explosion type of a supernova remnant (SNR), largely between the thermonuclear (Type Ia) and the core-collapse (Type II or Ib/Ic) explosions, is difficult, yet important for understanding how heavy elements are synthesized and distributed into interstellar space. A small number of SNRs are known to exhibit emission from SN ejecta material which is enhanced in O, Ne, and Mg. Based on the nucleosynthesis products of such explosions, these “oxygen-rich” SNRs result from the core-collapse of massive progenitor stars. The O-rich SNRs thus provide a useful test-ground for the studies of SN nucleosynthesis. The number of known O-rich SNRs is small, however: there are three in the Galaxy (Cassiopeia A, Puppis A, and G292.0$`+`$1.8), two (N132D and 0540$``$69.3) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and merely one (0102.2$``$7219) in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Although these SNRs are all classified as O-rich SNRs by virtue of the presence of ejecta material enriched in O, the nature of the individual objects varies significantly from one to another. The detection of more such SNRs is thus required for unbiased, systematic investigations of this interesting class of SNRs.

0103$``$72.6 is the second brightest X-ray SNR in the SMC (Seward & Michell, 1981; Haberl et al., 2000). The X-ray images taken with the ROSAT/HRI showed a centrally-peaked morphology and a faint outer shell with an $``$3 diameter (Yokogawa et al., 2002). The radio data indicated only a faint shell-like feature roughly along the X-ray shell (Mills et al., 1982; Yokogawa et al., 2002). In the optical band, 0103$``$72.6 is very faint, probably elliptical, and ring-like with nearly the same angular size as the X-ray and the radio remnant (Mathewson et al., 1983). Although the large angular size was suggestive of a relatively old age ($``$104 yr), the ASCA data suggested elevated metal abundances (Yokogawa et al., 2002). The chemical compositions of the overabundant material were consistent with a core-collapse Type II SN nucleosynthesis model. This result was also supported by the SNR’s location within an HII region (DEM S125) (e.g., Filipović et al. 1998 and references therein), which is consistent with a massive progenitor.

We report here on the results from our observation of 0103$``$72.6 with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The high resolution Chandra data unambiguously resolve the SNR into a limb-brightened circular shell surrounding bright, clumpy central emission. The central regions are enriched in O and Ne whereas the outer shell is dominated by emission from the swept-up SMC ISM with low elemental abundances. Based on these results, we propose that 0103$``$72.6 is a new O-rich SNR in the SMC.

## 2  OBSERVATION & DATA REDUCTION

We observed SNR 0103$``$72.6 with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) on board the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on 2002 August 27 as part of the Guaranteed Time Observation program. The ACIS-S3 chip, with very faint (VFAINT) mode, was chosen. We screened the raw data in order to utilize the VFAINT mode and then filtered by the flight timeline filter. We corrected the charge transfer inefficiency (CTI; Townsley et al. 2000) with the methods developed by Townsley et al. (2002a). The data were then screened by the standard filtering with status and grade. We inspected the overall lightcurve for any background flares. We found no significant variations of the lightcurve for the $``$3 diameter source region. After this data reduction, the effective exposure was $``$49 ks with $``$45000 photons in the 0.3$``$3 keV band. The overall spectrum of 0103$``$72.6 is very soft and all source photons are detected at $`E`$ $`<`$ 3 keV.

## 3  X-RAY IMAGES

Figure 1 is a “true-color” image of SNR 0103$``$72.6. The high resolution ACIS images clearly resolve the bright central emission and the limb-brightened outer shell. The outer shell is remarkably circular and dominated by soft X-ray emission, indicated in red. The morphological and spectral features of the circumferential shell are typical of X-ray emission from ISM swept-up by the blast wave shock front. In contrast, the central regions are bright in all colors and show a complex mixture of X-ray emitting knots. These features are qualitatively consistent with a Sedov picture.

We explored the angular distributions of the X-ray line emission by constructing equivalent width (EW) images for the detected elemental species, following the method of Park et al. (2002). We generated EW images for O and Ne by selecting photons around the broad line features. We present the O EW image in Figure 2. The O EW image clearly reveals enhancements in O line emission in the central regions of 0103$``$72.6. In contrast, the circumferential shell is fairly featureless in the O EW image. These overall features are also consistent in the Ne EW image. These EW features support our conjecture regarding the overall characteristics of the SNR based on the color images: i.e., the central regions are emission from metal-rich ejecta heated by the reverse shock, and the outer shell is the emission from the forward shock sweeping through the ambient ISM.

## 4  X-ray Spectra

The high resolution ACIS images allow us to perform a spatially-resolved spectral analysis of 0103$``$72.6. For the spectral analysis, we use detector response matrices, as generated by Townsley et al. (2002b), appropriate for our CTI-corrected data. The low energy ($`E`$ $`<`$ 1 keV) quantum efficiency (QE) of the ACIS has degraded because of molecular contamination on the optical blocking filter. We corrected this time-dependent QE degradation by modifying the ancillary response function for each extracted spectrum, utilizing the IDL ACISABS software111For the discussion on this instrumental issue, see http://cxc.harvard.edu/cal/Acis/Cal\_prods/qeDeg/index.html. The software was developed by George Chartas and is available at http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/chartas/xcontdir/xcont.html..

The presence of the limb-brightened shell, which is remarkably circular around the centrally-bright emission, indicates a significant contribution from the foreground/background swept-up ISM to the central excess emission. In order to characterize this projected emission from the heated ISM, we first extracted spectra from the bright parts of the limb-brightened circumferential shell (“SW shell” and “SE shell” regions in Figure 3). This outer shell is most likely dominated by emission from the blast wave shock front. We thus fitted these spectra simultaneously with a nonequilibrium ionization (NEI) plane-parallel shock model (Borkowski et al., 2001) (Figure 4). Only the normalization was varied freely for each individual regional spectrum. These outer shell spectra can be best-fitted with $`kT`$ $``$ 0.25$``$0.30 keV, depending on the implied foreground column, which is poorly constrained ($`N_H`$ $`<`$ 1.2 $`\times `$ 1021 cm-2). The fitted metal abundances are low ($``$0.1 solar), which is in agreement with typical SMC ISM (Russell & Dopita, 1992).

We then extracted spectra from the east and the west side of the central excess emission, interior to the outer shell (i.e., “east” and “west” regions in Figure 3). We simultaneously fitted these spectra with an NEI Sedov model assuming that the electron temperature immediately behind the shock is $`kT`$ $``$ 0.25$``$0.3 keV as obtained from the outer shell spectrum. Only the normalizations were allowed to vary independently. While the Sedov model corresponds to the full temperature and density distribution of the swept-up component of an entire SNR, we use this model as a first-order approximation to account for the expected temperature distribution for the plasma in the SNR’s interior. The goal of these fits is to describe the projected blast wave emission seen in the central region in combination with the ejecta component. These spectra can be described by $`kT`$ $``$ 0.26 keV and low SMC-like abundances of 0.12$`{}_{0.04}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.08}`$ solar (Figure 4; Table 1).

The central region spectrum has been extracted from the “center” region (Figure 3). We fitted this spectrum with a two-component model: i.e., a Sedov component for the projected emission from the swept-up ISM, and a plane-shock model for the central ejecta component (Figure 5). We fixed the Sedov component parameters at the best-fit values obtained above. This Sedov component for the projected emission from the swept-up ISM comprises $``$15% of the observed flux for the “center” region. The best-fit ejecta electron temperature ($`kT`$ $``$ 0.53 keV) is higher than that of the blast wave shock front as measured from the outer shell (Table 1). The elemental abundances for the ejecta component were varied freely for O, Ne, Mg, Si and Fe while others are fixed at the SMC values (Russell & Dopita, 1992). The fitted abundances are also higher than those of the SMC: particularly, O and Ne abundances are 4$``$6 times higher than typical SMC abundances. Mg and Si are moderately elevated ($``$1.5 times the SMC), and Fe abundance ($``$0.3 times the SMC) is very low. The S abundance is unconstrained with the current data and thus fixed at the SMC abundance. The improvement made by fitting the S abundance is statistically negligible.

## 5  DISCUSSION

The X-ray spectrum from the bright central region of 0103$``$72.6 indicates the presence of ejecta material which is particularly enriched in O and Ne. We thus propose that 0103$``$72.6 is a new O-rich SNR, based on the results of our X-ray spectral analysis. 0103$``$72.6 is then the second member of this class in the SMC in addition to SNR 0102.2$``$7219 (Dopita & Tuohy, 1984). The O- and Ne-dominated nature of the ejecta of 0103$``$72.6, with the relative absence of high-Z species, particularly Fe, is similar to that of 0102.2$``$7219 (Blair et al., 2000; Sasaki et al., 2001) and the Galactic O-rich SNR G292.0+1.8 (Park et al. 2003a, ). This abundance distribution however differs from that of Cas A, which shows significant Si-, S-, and Fe-rich ejecta (Hughes et al. 2000a, ). The physical location within an HII region and the detected O-rich nature are typical signatures of a core-collapse origin for 0103$``$72.6. We thus compare the measured elemental abundances of 0103$``$72.6 with a Type II SN nucleosynthesis model (Table 2). Although the measured elemental abundances have systematic uncertainties depending on the embedded contribution from the background swept-up ISM component, the quoted abundance ratios are nearly independent of these uncertainties. The measured abundance ratios are in plausible agreement with a Type II nucleosynthesis model for an 18 M progenitor star.

Assuming that 0103$``$72.6 is in the Sedov phase, we may derive the SNR parameters by taking advantage of the spatial information obtained by the high-resolution ACIS images. Based on the best-fit volume emission measure ($`EM`$ = 5.4 $`\times `$ 1058 cm-3 by combining four fitted shell regions; Table 1), we derive the postshock electron density, $`n_e`$ = 0.79 cm-3 for the blast wave shock front. In this estimation, we have assumed that the average outer radius of the SNR is $`R`$ $``$ 85′′ (corresponding to $``$24.7 pc at $`d`$ = 60 kpc) and that the blast wave shell is $``$20′′ thick, based on the ACIS image. The average depth through our shell regions is then $``$23 pc which implies a total volume for the four shell regions of $``$1 $`\times `$ 1059 cm3. The pre-shock hydrogen density is then $`n_0`$ $``$ 0.16 cm-3 assuming a factor of 4 density compression behind shock and a mean charge state of $`n_e`$ = 1.2 $`n_H`$. Assuming uniform density for the ambient ISM, we estimate the mass swept-up by the blast wave to be $`M_{swept}`$ $``$ 570 M. The best-fit electron temperature of the shock front ($`kT`$ = 0.3 keV) corresponds to a shock velocity of $`v`$ $``$ 480 km s-1, under the assumption of electron-ion temperature equilibration. We then derive the SNR age of $`t`$ $``$ 1.8 $`\times `$ 104 yr and the SN explosion energy of $`E_0`$ $``$ 1.2 $`\times `$ 1051 ergs based on the Sedov solution. 0103$``$72.6 thus appears to be the oldest known example of an O-rich SNR. The detection of significant amounts of ejecta material in 0103$``$72.6 adds yet another such an example of the growing number of middle-aged SNRs with observable ejecta (e.g., Park et al. 2003b and references therein).

We make a brief morphological comparison between the two SMC O-rich SNRs, 0103$``$72.6 and 0102.2$``$7219. 0102.2$``$7219 is a young SNR ($``$103 yr) with a small angular size of $``$44′′ diameter, and the X-ray morphology shows a bright ring-like structure embedded in a relatively faint diffuse emission extending beyond the bright ring (Gaetz et al., 2000). This morphology was interpreted as the reverse shock front heating the central O-rich ejecta material (i.e., the sharp inner boundary of the bright ring) and the blast wave shock front propagating into the ambient ISM (i.e., the outer boundary of the faint extended diffuse emission) (Gaetz et al., 2000). In comparison, as we have just determined, 0103$``$72.6 has a larger angular size (190′′) and is significantly older (1.8 $`\times `$ 104 yr). The reverse shock-heated ejecta material shows a relatively well-defined, but complex structure near the center of the SNR. The blast wave shock front is represented by the limb-brightened, soft shell-like feature surrounding the central ejecta. It appears that the reverse shock has reached the center of the SNR in 0103$``$72.6, while it has reached only $``$60% of the current blast wave shock radius in 0102.2$``$7219 (Gaetz et al., 2000). The blast wave shock front of 0103$``$72.6 has swept up significant amounts of ambient ISM and slowed down ($`v`$ $``$ 480 km s-1) to produce a limb-brightened soft X-ray shell, whereas 0102.2$``$7219 shows a high velocity ($`v`$ $``$ 6000 km s-1; Hughes et al. 2000b) shock front without significant limb-brigtening and presumably less swept-up ISM. Both of the SNRs have a remarkably circular outer boundary, and thus likely uniform surrounding ISM distributions. The morphological characteristics of these two SMC SNRs then appear to be primarily caused by the substantial difference in the ages ($``$103 yr vs. $``$104 yr): i.e., 0103$``$72.6 appears to be a more evolved version of 0102.2$``$7219.

This work has been supported in parts by NASA contract NAS8-01128. JPH was supported by Chandra grants GO2-3069X and GO3-4086X. POS was supported by NASA contract NAS8-39073.


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# Detection of Close-In Extrasolar Giant Planets Using the Fourier-Kelvin Stellar Interferometer

## 1 Introduction

The number of known extrasolar giant planets is now over 100 (Marcy et al., 2003), almost all of which have been detected indirectly, using the radial velocity method. Direct detections of extrasolar giant planets are now becoming possible. For example, Charbonneau et al. (2002) detected the atmosphere of the ‘transiting planet’ HD 209458b using transit spectroscopy (Seager & Sasselov, 2000). In the case of planets which do not transit, other techniques of direct detection are being developed, such as visible coronagraphic imaging (Kuchner & Spergel, 2003), and nulling infrared (IR) interferometry (Bracewell, 1978; Angel & Woolf, 1997). A conventional view is that the ‘inner working angle’ (IWA) of a nulling interferometer is the angular distance to the first fringe maximum, i.e. $`\lambda /2B`$, where $`B`$ is the interferometer baseline and $`\lambda `$ is wavelength. In this Letter, we show that, when the likely IR intensities of the extrasolar planets are factored in, nulling IR interferometers having $`B40`$ m, are most sensitive to extrasolar giant planets (EGPs) well inside the conventional IWA, i.e. ‘inside the null’. A substantial number of the known extrasolar planets are directly detectable using interferometry with modest baselines, e.g., the $`12.5`$ m baseline of the minimum configuration of FKSI (Danchi et al., 2002, 2003).

## 2 Interferometric Detection ‘Inside the Null’?

Simple arguments suggest that interferometric detection can occur for close-in extrasolar giant planets (CEGPs) not fully resolved spatially by the interferometer. First, it is well known that a significant source of noise for a spaceborne nulling interferometer will be photon noise from the leakage of stellar radiation around the ‘edges’ of the null fringe, due to the finite angular radius of the star. If leakage from one stellar radius is a significant noise source, the IR signal from the closest CEGPs, at tens of stellar radii, will also leak through the null fringe. Second, we note that ground-based studies of the CEGPs (Richardson, Deming & Seager, 2003) are beginning to achieve the sensitivity needed to detect the planets in combined light, with no spatial resolution whatsoever.

For a given interferometer baseline, at what angular separation does the transmitted IR signal from an extrasolar planet peak? For decreasing angular separation from the star, the fringe transmission decreases, but the planet’s thermal equilibrium temperature in the stellar radiation field increases, so the signal transmitted through the null fringe can remain significant. Distant planets will be observed with fringe transmission of unity, but they will be colder. Figure 1 shows the product of the Planck function at a wavelength of $`5\mu `$m, times the fringe transmission ($`\mathrm{sin}^2(\pi \theta B/\lambda )`$) for baselines of 8, 12, 20 and 40 m. The extrasolar system was assumed to be at 10 pc distance, and the planet was assumed to emit as a blackbody in thermal equilibrium with a Bond albedo of 0.4. These ‘interferometer contribution functions’ were normalized to unity for the peak signal at the 40-m baseline. The asterisks on each curve mark the nominal IWA at $`\lambda /2B`$.

Figure 1 shows that, even for the longest (40-m) baseline, the peak signal occurs inside the nominal IWA at $`\lambda /2B`$. For the shorter baselines the peak occurs quite far inside the IWA. For example, the 12-m peak signal occurs for planets near 0.1 AU, a factor of 4 below $`\lambda /2B`$. For all baselines, the decrease in signal at the greatest distances occurs because of the lower planetary temperatures. Although the peak signal for the 12-m baseline occurs near 0.1 AU, this signal is reduced by about an order of magnitude from the 40-m case. Figure 1 suggests that the sensitivity of a 12-m interferometer working ‘inside the null’ may be sufficient to allow detection and characterization of some of the known extrasolar giant planets.

## 3 A Two-color Method

Using a simple analytical model of the nulling interferometer we demonstrate that the ratio of the intensity at the output of the nuller at two wavelengths is insensitive to the residual pathlength fluctuations, provided they are small compared to the wavelength. A nulling interferometer operates like a conventional stellar interferometer except that an achromatic $`\pi `$ phase shift is applied to the beam coming from one element of the interferometer and that the beams are symmetrically and achromatically combined. The equation for the normalized intensity, $`N(\lambda _1)`$, is:

$$N(\lambda _1)=1/2[1|V(\lambda _1)|\mathrm{cos}\varphi (\lambda _1)]$$
(1)
where $`\lambda _1`$ is the first wavelength, $`|V(\lambda _1)|`$ is the modulus of the visibility of the source, and $`\varphi (\lambda _1)=2\pi \sigma _N/\lambda _1`$ is the rms phase error caused by residual pathlength fluctuations, $`\sigma _N`$ in the system. For a point source and no pathlength fluctuations, Eq. 1 reduces to the usual $`\theta ^2`$ null of the classical Bracewell interferometer. A similar equation holds for the output of the same nuller at a second wavelength, $`\lambda _2`$. Using these assumptions,

$$|V(\lambda _1)|1\frac{\pi ^2}{16}\left(\frac{\theta _{star}}{\lambda _1/B}\right)^2$$
(2)
where $`\theta _{star}`$ is the angular diameter of the star and B is the baseline length, and similarly expanding the term for the phase fluctuations:

$$\mathrm{cos}\varphi (\lambda _1)1\varphi (\lambda _1)^2/2=12\pi ^2\left(\sigma _N/\lambda _1\right)^2$$
(3)
Substituting these equations into (1) and using similar equations for the second wavelength, $`\lambda _2`$, it is easy to show that:

$$\frac{N(\lambda _1)}{N(\lambda _2)}\left(\frac{\lambda _2}{\lambda _1}\right)^2$$
(4)
Hence the stellar leakage and pathlength fluctuations cancel out.

This result is valid for the case when the interferometer is not rotating about the line of sight or when the residual pathlength fluctuations occur at much higher frequencies than the rotation frequency about the line of sight. The cancellation occurs in the leakage signal variations which accompany instability in the null fringe (not in the photon noise), and which would otherwise overwhelm the planetary signal. This technique is expected to work best when the two wavelengths $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\lambda _2`$ are reasonably close together, avoiding higher order effects.

## 4 An Interferometer Simulation Code

We have written a simulation code to compute the signal from the known extrasolar giant planets, as observed by a rotating 2-aperture nulling interferometer, following the principle of Bracewell (1978), and treating the output signal as a ratio, exploiting the rationale given above. The code uses the interferometer parameters for FKSI as listed in Table 1. The modeled fringe pattern of the interferometer includes path difference errors, based on the current FKSI error budget. Shot-noise is computed from the total signal, including the stellar leakage, the extrasolar zodiacal background, and the instrument thermal background. Dark current and read noise from the detection system are also included. The stellar spectrum is assumed to be a blackbody, but wavelength-dependent limb darkening is imposed on the disk, based on the solar observations of Pierce et al. (1950). The stellar temperature and radius are estimated from the spectral type. The planet is modeled as a blackbody spectrum with superposed molecular band spectral structure. The planet’s blackbody equilibrium temperature is computed assuming a Bond albedo of 0.4; the planetary radius is taken to be 35% greater than Jupiter, based on HD 209458b (Brown et al., 2001). The planetary spectral structure was included by interpolating in the ‘cloudless’ sequence computed by Sudarsky, Burrows & Hubeny (2003). The planetary spectrum is currently assumed to be independent of orbital phase and inclination to the line of sight. Orbital motion of the planet is included, using orbital elements from the Doppler observations, and a nominal inclination of $`45^{}`$. The zodiacal background is calculated including contributions from both scattered light and thermal radiation (Kuchner, 2002). Since younger stars will have more massive zodiacal disks, we scaled the mass of the disk as the -1.76 power of the stellar age (Spangler et al., 2001). Ages for stars hosting extrasolar planets were taken from Laws et al. (2003). The inclination of the zodiacal disk is also included (nominally $`45^{}`$ to the plane of the sky), since the asymmetry from the inclined disk produces a significant signal as the interferometer rotates.

## 5 Example of an FKSI Detection

We have simulated observations by FKSI of all known extrasolar planetary systems using the code. An example is shown in Fig. 2, which illustrates the detection of 55 Cancri b. Figure 2a shows the number of photons detected versus wavelength, at the FKSI spectral resolving power ($`\lambda /\delta \lambda =20`$), in one 300-s integration. The calculated wavelength range in Fig. 2 extends longward of the nominal wavelength limits of FKSI. The dominant source of photons is stellar leakage, with planetary radiation second. The zodiacal radiation falls below the planetary intensity for this old, and dust-poor system (Jayawardhana et al., 2002). The dominant source of noise depends on wavelength, but is due to stellar leakage shot noise at the shortest wavelengths, thermal background radiation noise at the longest wavelength ($`8\mu `$m), and dark current and read noise at intermediate wavelengths. Since the anticipated total integration time during an observational ‘campaign’ for a given planetary system can be many days, planets whose photon counts fall well below the noise level in a single 300-s integration will nevertheless be detectable. But for 55 Cancri b, the planetary signal photon counts are comparable to the noise photons in a single 300-s integration, for wavelengths $`>3\mu `$m. This planet is strongly detectable, and more extensive spectral information could also be extracted.

In the original Bracewell concept, the rotation of the interferometer modulates the planetary signal, and we have included this process in the simulation code. Figure 2b (lower panel) shows a power spectrum from a signal time series of 55 Cancri b. As per our two-color method, the Fourier-transformed signal in this case was the intensity integrated over wavelengths $`6\lambda 3\mu `$m, ratioed to the intensity integrated over $`\lambda <3\mu `$m. The denominator in this ratio is dominated by the stellar leakage at the shortest wavelengths, and contains minimal planetary signal. The planet peaks at the longer wavelengths in the numerator. The greater null depth at long wavelengths enhances this separation of planet and stellar signals.

The interferometer was rotated slowly, about 15 hours per rotation, and the simulated campaign lasted about 35 days (50 rotations). The zodiacal signal appears in the Fig. 2b power spectrum at twice the interferometer rotation frequency, i.e. at 37 microHz ($`\mu `$Hz), and the planetary signal also contributes at this frequency. Because of the planet’s orbital motion, the planetary signal appears primarily at a different frequency (see caption), slightly displaced, and resolved from the zodiacal signal. Moreover, because the planet is inside the null, no overtones are caused by transmission through higher-order fringes. Note also that, as the signal from the planet goes in- and out-of-phase with the zodiacal signal, the envelope of this modulation is seen in the low-frequency region of the power spectrum as a peak at 1.6 $`\mu `$Hz, twice the orbital frequency of the planet.

## 6 Discussion

Our simulations show that a significant number of known extrasolar planets will be detectable using FKSI, and that spectral information can be derived in several of the most favorable cases. These simulated detections are robust in the sense that the few most favorable planetary systems are detectable with almost any reasonable instrumental configuration (baseline, aperture size, etc.) or choice of long-wavelength cutoff. However, detections for the fainter systems depend significantly on the instrumental parameters and wavelength range, as well as on the properties of the detectors (dark current, read noise).

Figure 3 illustrates the distances and orbital semi-major axes for many of the known planetary systems, with those systems detectable by FKSI (using Table 1 parameters) plotted as filled symbols. The $`\pm 20^{}`$ field-of-regard (FOR) holds seven detectable planets, and an additional six planets are within a $`\pm 40^{}`$ FOR. The conventional IWA resolutions for baselines of 40, 20, 12, and 8 m are overplotted. It can be seen that the detectable planets are essentially the CEGP systems closest to earth, with essentially no dependence on the angular resolution limits (IWA lines).

Our results show that planets can be detected much closer to stars than expected based on the concept of the inner working angle, computed from the nominal resolution of the interferometer, i.e., $`\lambda /2B`$. This resolution estimate is essentially the same as the Rayleigh criterion for conventional telescopes, which is the angular separation of two stars of equal intensity in which one star is placed at the first zero of the Airy pattern of the second star. The Rayleigh criterion is well known to be a very conservative estimate of resolution, and sources can be resolved that are substantially closer than this, using super-resolution techniques such as the pixon method (Pina & Puetter, 1993). Similar considerations hold for interferometers as CLEAN, MEM, and other methods have provided images with effective angular resolutions much better than nominally expected (Cobb & Fix, 1987).

For a wavelength of 5 $`\mu `$m, the resolution of the FKSI is $`\lambda /2B`$ 41 milli-arcsec (mas). But our simulations demonstrate an ‘effective resolution’ of approximately 1 mas. Our results are consistent with the working resolution of the interferometer being determined by the ratio of the rms pathlength fluctuation to the baseline, $`\sigma _N/B`$, which for the parameters in this paper, is 0.2 mas. This is not as surprising as it may seem at first, since the pathlength stability requirement to achieve a $`10^4`$ null or better is essentially that of an interferometer with extremely high phase stability.

The work presented here has important implications for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission (Beichman, Woolf, & Lindensmith, 1999), because angular resolution is often emphasized over sensitivity. The desire for a nulling interferometer using free flyer telescopes is based on the resolution needed to search more than 150 F, G, and K stars for earth-like planets in the habitable zone (Lunine et al., 2003). Given that the actual IWA can be significantly smaller than previously thought, means that it may be possible to achieve the basic goals of TPF with a structurally connected interferometer having a modest baseline in the range of 20 to 30 m.

## 7 Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. R. Allen, D. Benford, D. Gezari, D. Leisawitz, J. Monnier, M. Mumma, L. Mundy, C. Noecker, and W. Traub, for their contributions to the FKSI mission concept.


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# Intergalactic Globular Clusters

## 1. Introduction

There are several reasons to believe that a population of intergalactic globular clusters (IGCs) should exist outside of galaxies:

(1) The Jeans mass at recombination was $`10^510^6`$ solar masses, and hence globular cluster sized objects could have formed wherever the local density of matter was high enough.

(2) Many galaxies may have met their demise over a Hubble time as a result of collisions and tidal disruption. Globular clusters are likely to survive the disruption of their parent galaxy, resulting in the gradual accumulation of a population of IGCs. Intergalactic stars, planetary nebulae, supernovae and HII regions have already been found; it would be surprising if there were no IGCs.

(3) The existence of IGCs might explain high specific frequencies, bimodal globular cluster metallicity distributions and other current puzzles in the study of globular cluster systems.

Jordán et al. (2003) reported a tentative detection of IGCs in the center of the rich galaxy cluster A1185 ($`z=0.032`$) based on $`I`$-band images obtained with WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope.

## 2. What’s New?

We (Côté, Jordán, Marzke, West) recently obtained very deep, multicolored ($`V`$ and $`I`$) images of the same A1185 field using HST with the new ACS. The goals of these new observations are to 1) detect the peak of the assumed universal Gaussian-like globular cluster luminosity function (which should occur at $`I27.3`$ at A1185’s distance) and thereby confirm that these candidate IGCs are bona fide globular clusters and 2) use color information to infer their metallicities. Preliminary analysis indicates that we are reaching sufficiently faint magnitudes to reliably detect the luminosity function turnover. The number and colors (metallicities) of IGCs will provide constraints on the number and types of galaxies that have been destroyed or stripped over a Hubble time.

Using the Keck telescope, we (Ferguson, Gregg, Tanvir, von Hippel, West) recently measured the redshift of a candidate IGC in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster that was found serendipitously on an HST image obtained for another project. Preliminary data reductions show that this object, which is slightly resolved in the HST image and appears to be a distant globular cluster, has a recessional velocity of $`470`$ km/s, and hence is most likely in the Virgo cluster. Its apparent magnitude, $`m_V21.2`$, is consistent with it being a bright globular cluster. Using telescopes on Mauna Kea we have since obtained optical and NIR colors of this object, as well as a medium-resolution spectrum that should yield its velocity dispersion. These data are presently being analyzed.

### Acknowledgments.

MJW acknowledges support from NSF grant AST 02-05960 and HST grant HST-GO-09438.01-A.

## References

Jordán, A., West, M.J., Côté, P. & Marzke, R.O. et al. 2003, AJ, 125, 1642