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# The UV luminosity function of nearby clusters of galaxies

## 1 Introduction

The study of the galaxy luminosity function (hereafter LF) provides us with a fundamental tool for testing theories of galaxy formation and for reconstructing their evolution to the present. Accurate measurements of the LF in the local field, in nearby clusters and in clusters at progressively high redshift can improve our knowledge of galaxy evolution and on the role played by the environment in regulating the star formation activity of galaxies. Recent studies, based on H$`\alpha `$ (Iglesias-Paramo et al. jorge02 (2002)) and B band observations (De Propris et al. depropris (2003)), find no significant differences between the LF of star forming galaxies in the field and in clusters.
An excellent tool to identify and quantify the star formation activity is represented by the ultraviolet emission. Although the shape of local field UV LF (Sullivan et al. sullivan (2000)) is well determined, there is still a fair amount of uncertainty on the UV luminosity function of clusters. Its slope is undetermined due to the insufficient knowledge of the background counts (Cortese et al. cortese (2003)). Andreon (andreon (1999)) proposed a very steep faint end ($`\alpha 2.0,2.2`$), significantly different from the field LF ($`\alpha 1.5`$). However Cortese et al.(cortese (2003)) pointed out that this steep slope is likely caused by an underestimation of the density of background galaxies and proposed a flatter faint-end slope ($`\alpha 1.35\pm 0.20`$). Unfortunately the statistical uncertainty was too high for making reliable comparisons between the cluster and the field LFs. In this paper we re-compute the cluster UV luminosity function with two major improvements over previous determinations. We increase the redshift completeness of the UV selected sample using new spectroscopic observations of Coma and Abell 1367 (Cortese et al., in preparation), and compute for the first time the UV LF of the Virgo cluster. These improvements are not sufficient to constrain the LF of each individual cluster, however the UV composite luminosity function, constructed for the first time in this paper can be significantly compared with that of the field. Doing so we try anticipating one of the main goals of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) which, within one year, will shed light on the UV properties of galaxies and their environmental dependences.
We assume a distance modulus $`\mu `$= 31.15 for the Virgo cluster (Gavazzi et al. 1999a ), $`\mu `$=34.80 for Abell 1367 and $`\mu `$=34.91 for the Coma cluster (Gavazzi et al. 1999b ), corresponding to a Hubble constant $`H_0=75\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$.

## 2 The Data

The sample analyzed in this work comprises the UV sources detected in Virgo, Coma and Abell 1367 clusters by the FOCA (Milliard et al. milliard (1991)) and FAUST (Lampton et al. lampton (1990)) experiments. The FOCA balloon-borne wide field UV camera ($`\lambda =2000\mathrm{\AA }`$; $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =150\mathrm{\AA }`$) observed $``$ 3 square degrees ($`8\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$) in the Abell 1367 (unpublished data) and Coma clusters (Donas et al. donas95 (1995)) and $``$ 12 square degrees ($`1\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$) in the Virgo cluster (data are taken from the extragalactic database GOLDMine, Gavazzi et al. gavazzi03 (2003)). The FOCA observations of Virgo are not sufficient to compile a complete catalog: no sources brighter than $`m_{\mathrm{UV}}12.2`$ were detected due to the small area covered. We thus complement the UV database with the wide field observations performed by the FAUST space experiment ($`\lambda =1650\mathrm{\AA }`$; $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =250\mathrm{\AA }`$) in the Virgo direction (Deharveng et al. deharveng94 (1994)), covering $``$ 100 square degrees ($`8.8\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$). The FAUST completeness limit is $`m_{\mathrm{UV}}12.2`$ (Cohen et al. cohen (1994)), significantly lower than the FOCA magnitude limit: $`m_{\mathrm{UV}}18.5`$. However combining the two UV catalogs we hope to constrain the shape of the UV luminosity function across 7 magnitudes. We use the FAUST observations for $`m_{\mathrm{UV}}<12.2`$ and the FOCA observations for $`m_{\mathrm{UV}}12.2`$. To account for the different response function of FAUST and FOCA filters we transform the UV magnitudes taken by FAUST at $`1650\mathrm{\AA }`$ assuming a constant color index: UV(2000) = UV(1650) + 0.2 mag (Deharveng et al. deharveng94 (1994), deharveng (2002)). We think however that this difference does not bias the galaxy populations selected by the two experiments. The estimated error on the UV magnitudes is 0.3 mag in general, but it ranges from 0.2 mag for bright galaxies, to 0.5 mag for faint sources observed in frames with larger than average calibration uncertainties. The UV emission associated with bright galaxies is generally clumpy, thus it has been obtained integrating the flux over the galaxy optical extension, determined at the surface brightness of 25 $`\mathrm{mag}\mathrm{arcsec}^2`$ in the B-band. The spatial resolution of the UV observations is 20 arcsec and 4 arcmin for FOCA and FAUST respectively. The astrometric accuracy is therefore insufficient for unambiguously discriminating between stars and galaxies. To overcome this limitation, we cross-correlate the UV catalogs with the deepest optical catalogs of galaxies available: the Virgo Cluster Catalog (VCC, Binggeli et al. binggeli (1985)), complete to $`m_\mathrm{B}18`$, for the Virgo cluster and the $`r^{}`$ band catalog by Iglesias-Paramo et al. (jorge03 (2003)), complete to $`m_\mathrm{r}^{}20`$, for Coma and Abell 1367. We used as matching radius the spatial resolution of each observation. In case of multiple identifications we select the galaxy closest to the UV position. The resultant UV selected sample is composed of 156 galaxies in Virgo, 140 galaxies in Coma and 133 galaxies in Abell 1367.

## 3 The UV luminosity functions

Contrary to the VCC catalog, the Coma and A1367 $`r^{}`$ catalogs used for star/galaxy discrimination do not cover all the area observed by FOCA but only the cluster cores. This reduces our analysis to an area of $``$ 1 square degrees ($`2.6\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$) in Coma and $``$ 0.7 square degrees ($`1.8\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$) in Abell 1367.
Including new spectroscopic observations (Cortese et al., in preparation), the redshift completeness of the UV selected sample reaches the 65% in Abell 1367, the 79% in Coma and the 83% in Virgo. The redshift completeness per bin of magnitude of each cluster is listed in Table 1.

We remark that for $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}16.5`$ (corresponding to the FOCA magnitude limit in Coma and Abell1367), the redshift completeness of the Virgo cluster sample is 98%.
As discussed by Cortese et al. (cortese (2003)), the general UV galaxy counts (Milliard et al. milliard92 (1992)) are uncertain and cannot be used to obtain a reliable subtraction of the background contribution from the cluster counts. Therefore, in order to compute the cluster LF, we use the statistical approach recently proposed by De Propris et al.(depropris (2003)) and Mobasher et al.(mobasher (2003)). We assume that the UV spectroscopic sample is ’representative’, in the sense that the fraction of galaxies that are cluster members is the same in the (incomplete) spectroscopic sample as in the (complete) photometric sample. For each magnitude bin $`i`$ we count the number of cluster members $`N_M`$, the number of galaxies with a measured recessional velocity $`N_Z`$ and the total number of galaxies $`N_T`$. The completeness-corrected number of cluster members in each bin is:

$$N_i=\frac{N_MN_T}{N_Z}$$
(1)
$`N_T`$ is a Poisson variable, and $`N_M`$ is a binomial variable (the number of successes in $`N_Z`$ trials with probability $`N_M`$/$`N_Z`$). Therefore the errors associated with $`N_i`$ are given by:

$$\frac{\delta ^2N_i}{N_i^2}=\frac{1}{N_T}+\frac{1}{N_M}\frac{1}{N_Z}$$
(2)
The completeness-corrected number of cluster members obtained from (1) are given in Table 2 and the luminosity functions for the four studied samples are shown in Fig.1. The two different datasets used for the Virgo cluster have only one magnitude bin ($`M_{\mathrm{UV}}=18.75`$) overlap. In this bin the two LFs are in agreement and there is no indication that a change of slope occurs. We thus feel comfortable combining them into a composite Virgo UV luminosity function across 7 magnitudes.
In order to determine whether the LFs of the three clusters are in agreement we perform a two-sample $`\chi ^2`$ test. We obtain $`P(\chi ^2\chi _{\mathrm{obs}}^2)`$82% for the Virgo and Abell1367 LFs, $`P(\chi ^2\chi _{\mathrm{obs}}^2)`$87% for the Virgo and the Coma cluster LFs and $`P(\chi ^2\chi _{\mathrm{obs}}^2)`$98% for the Coma and Abell1367 LFs, pointing out that the three LFs are in fair agreement within their completeness limits.

### 3.1 The composite cluster luminosity function

The uncertainties of each individual cluster luminosity function are too large to fit a complete Schechter (schechter (1976)) function to the data and compare it with the field UV LF. However combining the three data-sets analyzed in this paper we compute the UV composite luminosity function of 3 nearby clusters. The composite LF is obtained following Colless (colless (1989)), by summing galaxies in absolute magnitude bins and scaling by the area covered in each cluster. The number of galaxies in the $`j`$th absolute magnitude bin of the composite LF ($`N_{cj}`$) is given by:

$$N_{cj}=\frac{1}{m_j}\underset{i}{}\frac{N_{ij}}{A_i}$$
(3)
where $`N_{ij}`$ is the completeness-corrected number of galaxies in the $`j`$th bin of the $`i`$th cluster, $`A_i`$ is the area surveyed in the $`i`$th cluster and $`m_j`$ is the number of clusters contributing to the $`j`$th bin. The errors in $`N_{ij}`$ are computed according to:

$$\delta N_{cj}=\frac{1}{m_j}\left[\underset{i}{}\left(\frac{\delta N_{ij}}{A_i}\right)^2\right]^{1/2}$$
(4)
where $`\delta N_{ij}`$ is the error in the $`j`$th bin of the $`i`$th cluster determined in (2). The weight associated to each cluster is computed according to the surveyed area, instead of the number of galaxies brighter than a given magnitude, as used by Colless (colless (1989)).
The UV composite luminosity function is given in Fig.2 in the full magnitude range. However since for magnitudes fainter than $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}16.5`$ the only available data are the Virgo FOCA observations, we fit the composite luminosity function with the Schechter functional form (Schechter schechter (1976)):

$$\varphi (M_{\mathrm{UV}})=0.4\mathrm{ln}10\varphi ^{}10^{0.4(M^{}M_{\mathrm{UV}})(\alpha +1)}e^{10^{0.4(M^{}M_{\mathrm{UV}})}}$$

only for $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}16.5`$, that is the completeness limit in Coma and Abell 1367. The resulting Schechter parameters are $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}^{}`$ = $``$20.75 $`\pm `$ 0.40 and $`\alpha `$ = $``$1.50 $`\pm `$ 0.10. The faint-end slope is consistent within 1 $`\sigma `$ with the lower limit for Coma and A1367 recently proposed by Cortese et al.(cortese (2003)), but significantly flatter than the slope $`\alpha 2.0,2.2`$ found for Coma by Andreon (andreon (1999)), suggesting that this very steep luminosity function was due to an underestimate of the density of background galaxies.

## 4 Discussion

Although the UV($`2000\mathrm{\AA }`$) radiation is dominated by young stars of intermediate masses (2$`<`$M$`<`$5$`M_{\mathrm{}}`$, Boselli et al. boselli (2001)), it is frequently detected also in early-type galaxies with no recent star formation episodes (Deharveng et al. deharveng (2002)). Unfortunately we have no morphological (or spectral) classification for all the UV selected galaxies in order to separate the contribution of late and early type galaxies. However, based on the spectral energy distributions computed by Gavazzi et al.(gav02 (2002)), we can use the total color $`\mathrm{UV}\mathrm{B}`$, available for the 94% of galaxies in our sample, to discriminate between red elliptical ($`\mathrm{UV}\mathrm{B}>2`$) and blue spiral ($`\mathrm{UV}\mathrm{B}<2`$) galaxies. B magnitudes are taken from the VCC (Binggeli et al. binggeli (1985)), the Godwin et al. (godwin83 (1983)) catalog and the Godwin & Peach (godwin82 (1982)) catalog for Virgo, Coma and Abell 1367 respectively.
The bi-variate composite luminosity function derived for galaxies of known $`\mathrm{UV}\mathrm{B}`$ color is shown in Fig.3. It shows that the star forming galaxies dominate the UV LF for $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}18`$, as Donas et al. (donas91 (1991)) concluded for the first time. Conversely, for $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}17.5`$, the number of red and blue galaxies is approximately the same, pointing out that, at low luminosities, the UV emission must be ascribed not only to star formation episodes but also to Post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (PAGB) low mass stars in early type galaxies (Deharveng et al. deharveng (2002)). Similarly, if we restrict the analysis to the fraction ($`50`$ %) of objects with known morphological type, we find that late-types (Sa or later) dominate at bright UV luminosities, while early-type objects contribute at the faint UV levels. Since Virgo and Abell1367 are spiral-rich clusters while Coma is spiral-poor, one might expect that the LFs of the three clusters obtained combining all types should have different shapes, contrary to the observations. The point is that the combined LF of the two types is dominated, at high UV luminosity by the spiral component, while at low luminosity early- and late-type galaxies contribute similarly. The UV LF of the spiral component are similar in the three clusters. At faint UV luminosities also the number density of early-type galaxies is approximately the same in the three clusters. Only at relatively high UV luminosity the number density of early-type galaxies in the Coma cluster exceeds significantly that of the other two clusters, but it is still much lower than the one of the late-type component. Therefore the LF obtained by combining early- with late-type galaxies results approximately the same in the three clusters.
The cluster composite luminosity function has identical slope and similar $`M^{}`$ as the UV luminosity function computed by Sullivan et al. (sullivan (2000)) for the field: $`M_{\mathrm{UV}}^{}`$ = $``$21.21 $`\pm `$ 0.13, $`\alpha `$ = $``$1.51 $`\pm `$ 0.10, as shown in Fig. 4. This result points in the same direction as recent studies of cluster galaxies carried out in $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ (Iglesias$``$Paramo et al. jorge02 (2002)) and B-bands (De Propris et al. depropris (2003)). They find that the LFs of star forming galaxies in clusters and in the field have the same shape, contrary to early type galaxies in clusters that have a brighter and steeper LF than their field counterparts (De Propris et al. depropris (2003)). This indicates that, whatever mechanism (i.e. ram pressure, tidal interaction, galaxy harassment) quenches/enhances the star formation activity in late-type cluster galaxies, it influences similarly the giant and the dwarf components, so that the shape of their LF results unchanged and only the normalization is modified.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work could not have been completed without the use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech under contract with NASA. We also made use of the GOLDmine Database, operated by the Universitá degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.


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# On gamma-ray bursts and their biological effects : a case for an extrinsic trigger of the Cambrian explosion ?

## 1 Introduction

A breakthrough in GRB astrophysics has been achieved by the observation of afterglows located $``$ few hours after the event with unprecedented positional accuracy (). The presence of absorption lines () in some of these afterglows has convinced most researchers that most (if not all) of the GRBs are extragalactic, although a through comprehension of the bursts is still far away since the sources have yet to be identified and the physics of the afterglows addressed (see, for example, ). Nevertheless, we may now assert that a distance scale (and hence an energy scale) is available for ”classical” bursts. Regardless of the specific source, it is now clear that the evidence points out to $`E_\gamma `$ as high as $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{53}erg`$ for the most energetic bursts () if the gamma emission is isotropic. Given that such an extreme energy is quite difficult to obtain, and some convincing observational features have accumulated, the idea of a strongly beamed gamma flux has gained acceptance. A ”standard reservoir” of $`10^{51}erg`$ has been advocated by Frail et al.  in a recent analysis.

While the study of distant, frequent bursts continues, the observations have undoubtedly risen a number of questions related to the occurrence of GRBs in the local universe. Thorsett  has discussed the effects of a close GRB on the earth’s biosphere (see also  for a related discussion). The issue is timely since it has been shown that a burst must occur as often as ($`0.340`$) $`Myr`$ per $`L_{}`$, depending on the evolution of the sources (). Loeb and Perna  have further suggested that most of the HI supershells could be the remnants of GRBs. In fact some remnants must be found in a given normal galaxy, since they should not dissipate before $``$ tens of $`Myr`$. The two gigantic shells reported in  in NGC 4631 are perhaps the most clear examples that $``$ kpc-sized shells requiring $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{54}erg`$ of input energy are real since their identification is neater in external galaxies. The incidence of gamma rays from a GRB should be then seriously considered.

## 2 Gamma ray fluxes onto the earth and the ozone layer

Consider the case of the simplest, ”standard candle” scenario for GRBs. We may estimate immediately the flux of gamma-rays at the typical band 30-2000 keV at the top of the atmosphere $`\varphi `$ for an assumed energy in gamma-rays of $`E_\gamma =\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{51}erg`$. Since the true luminosity distribution function is still an unsettled question and there might be a considerable spread between the events, other possibilities should be considered.

Thorsett  pointed out that GRBs this close would (because of the huge gamma fluxes) should have produced deep effects on the biosphere. The destruction of a substantial amount of the ozone layer along a $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}s`$ typical burst duration is the most obvious one, and seems inescapable since the $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^7ergcm^2`$ gamma fluxes are in fact larger than the equivalent total chemical energy of the fragile ozone layer.

As discussed by Schramm and Ellis  (see  for the first discussion of a closely related event), several general features of the incidence of a huge gamma flux can be worked out with some confidence. For example, it is well established that the production of large concentrations of odd nitrogen $`NO_x`$ is very harmful for the fragile ozone layer shielding the earth from solar UV radiation. The dominating catalytic reactions are

$$NO+O_3NO_2+O_2$$
(1)
$$NO_2+ONO+O_3,$$
(2)
since their efficiency of ozone destruction is high. The additional $`NO`$ produced by the ionizing gamma flux will greatly enhance the penetration of solar UV because the former is expected to be much higher than the steady production by normal cosmic rays. The rate of production of $`NO`$ (in $`mol/cm^2`$) is

$$\xi =\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{17}\varphi _7\left[\frac{13}{10+y}\right],$$
(3)
where $`\varphi _7(\varphi /10^7ergcm^2)`$ is the incident gamma flux scaled to a reference value, and the factor in brackets is the ratio of efficiencies of the steady production to the GRB flash in the stratosphere. Dividing $`\xi `$ by the stratospheric column density and converting to parts per billion, we derive the abundance of $`NO`$ produced by the GRB flash as the physical solution of a quadratic equation, very well approximated by

$$y_{flash}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}51}\varphi _7^{1/2}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}.$$
(4)
Thus, the ratio of produced $`[NO]`$ to the present ambient $`[NO]_0`$ is given by $`X=(3+y_{flash})/3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}16}\varphi _7^{1/2}`$. Such a great abundance of $`NO`$ would remain in the stratosphere for a mean residence time of $`<\tau >=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}yr`$, which is much larger than the homogenization time of the atmosphere. Thus, once produced by the flash the ozone layer would be affected for a period at least as large as the mean residence time of the catalyzer.

The approximate formula employed in  and  to estimate that reduction is

$$\frac{[O_3]}{[O_3]_0}=\frac{(16+9X^2)^{1/2}3X}{2},$$
(5)
expected to be accurate to within a numerical factor. It must be noticed that, according to the Ruderman-Schramm-Ellis results, the ozone destruction curve rises very rapidly with the gamma flux, presenting a ”catastrophic” destruction which kills at least $`90\%`$ of the present $`O_3`$ layer through $`NO`$ enhancement for a fluence $`\varphi \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.7}\times 10^7ergcm^2`$. Actually it is highly likely that $``$ tens percent $`O_3`$ destruction would already trigger massive biological death. Recent work by Gherels et al.  using a detailed radiative transport code arrives to a much lower figure of $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^8ergcm^2`$ for a $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}35}\%`$ ozone depletion. Nevertheless, the important point to stress is that a large flux like this figure is actually expected from a galactic beamed burst which pointed to the earth if that ever happened.

In order to estimate some of the effects onto the biota we shall begin by calculating, using a simple attenuation model, the killing timescale of a marine unicellular organism population exposed to the UVB (260-320 $`nm`$) radiation immediately after the burst. After a huge reduction of $`O_3`$ like the one discussed above one may assume the solar flux density to be essentially the value measured at the top of the atmosphere, some $`0.2Wcm^2\mu m`$ on average. The mortality of single-cell organisms by UBV photons can be described () by

$$\frac{N}{N_0}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\left(1\mathrm{exp}(\kappa D)\right)^m$$
(6)
where $`N_0`$ is the original population, $`m`$ is the number of absorbed photons needed to kill the cell, $`\kappa `$ is a constant depending of the species and $`D`$ is the dose here defined as $`F_\lambda 𝑑\lambda `$. This model can be immediately applied to a marine population assumed to be distributed exponentially with a fixed depth scale $`z_0`$ (i.e. without considering day-night circulation) and having a spontaneous reproduction rate $`\eta `$. If $`N_s`$ is the number of organisms at $`z=z_0`$ and the coefficient of attenuation for UVB photons in marine water is $`z_1`$ we find that the temporal evolution of this population at any depth will be given by

$$N(z,t)=N_s\mathrm{exp}(z/z_0)\mathrm{exp}[(\eta \xi (z))t]$$
(7)
with $`\xi (z)\kappa F_{\lambda 0}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda \mathrm{exp}(z/z_1)`$. Now we may ask which is the time for killing $`90\%`$ of these organisms once the UVB flux starts to impact onto the sea surface, denoted as $`\tau _{90}`$. If we normalize the mortality curve using the data from modern bacteria (i.e. Escherichia Coli), for which plenty of data is available, we obtain for this time $`\tau _{90}=0.4\mathrm{exp}(z/z_1)s`$. Therefore, it is concluded that simple marine organisms, and especially those capable of photosynthesis, will be killed almost instantaneously unless they can ”hide away” at several tens of $`z_1`$, in practice $`100m`$ for a time as long as the healing of the ozone layer, which is certainly larger than most of the small marine organisms considered. Terrestrial organism behavior is much more difficult to model, although it has been known for fifty years that mammals would not survive longer than $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}s`$ without ozone. Even though simple models may be oversimplified (they ignore all the detailed DNA repairing mechanisms and assume an unimpeded single value of the solar UV flux following the event), we believe that the essential points of a mass extinctions by a GRB are adequately illustrated and quantified beyond any reasonable doubt.

The gamma shower would have produced other rather unique catastrophes as well, all them contributing to the extinction of living beings. The production of $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^9tons`$ of $`NO_x`$ enhancing the acid rains and the screening effects of $`NO_2`$ to the sunlight (with possible dramatic cooling effects, see ) are just two of them. To address these issues properly, the actual possibility of a close GRB calls for a through study of the dynamical response of the biosphere to a large perturbation, since all the effects are deeply interwoven and it is quite difficult to isolate them due to their non-linear character.

## 3 A tentative association of a GRB with the Cambrian explosion

According to the picture above, it seems quite clear that the incidence of a gamma-ray burst beam onto the atmosphere would trigger a quite remarkable biological evolution pattern, yet to be precisely characterized. The natural question is whether we may associate a definite event to such an external cause, based on the existing evidence and a bit of extrapolation. As discussed above, the extinction of a large number of living species due to UVB action is, of course, a first necessary feature, but there are a few more related effects to consider. One is the fate of the surviving populations, since they are likely to be exposed to a large ultraviolet flux on average, a powerful force driving their further evolution through its action on the genetic material (hypermutation?). It is also important to have in mind that the surviving populations may be physically isolated from each other in relatively small ecosystems, a scenario that can be justified by the very nature of the catastrophic event. This situation is known to be favorable for rapid speciation, although it is not as certain whether a hypermutation rate drives an accelerated evolution . The exposure of bacteria to UV light is known to have dramatic effects by exploding the cell and releasing bacteriophage genes, another feature that could have suddenly boosted the genetic exchange and cleared the ecosystem from very abundant, well-adapted organisms at the same time.

We suggest that the celebrated Cambrian explosion, $`544`$ Myr ago may grossly match these features. It is now established that the oxygen levels were high enough at that epoch, and it is fair to assume an ozone layer essentially equal to the modern one. At the Proterozoic-Cambrian boundary and before the explosion itself, simple animals pertaining to the diploblastic Ediacaran fauna were suddenly extinct on a very short timescale; and the emergence of an extremely diversified fauna followed, suggesting some global event that could have triggered genetic experiments eventually leading to an exponential growth of the number of species during the early Cambrian age. While several intrinsic causes have been advanced to justify this rising (see  for a review), it is intriguing to consider the rather strong evidence for the explosion being analogous to the case of the K/T boundary. In the former, simple Ediacaran organisms played the role of ”dinosaurs”, as emphasized by Knoll and Carroll (), then followed by an enormous diversification of the species. Contrary to the K/T case, however, the postulated external trigger (illumination by a GRB) would not leave an obvious signature like the famous iridium layer, and thus subtle evidence should be searched for carefully. In particular, the large and short-lived negative excursion in the carbon-isotopic composition of surface seawater (also present but with a smaller amplitude in the Permo-Triassic extinction) may hold the clue for understanding the likelihood of a large environmental perturbation. An explicit modelling of the dynamics of the populations subject to such a large perturbation (just underway) would shed some light onto this (yet speculative) association.

## 4 Conclusions

We have shown that a local GRB gamma flux onto the earth should correlate with a massive extinctions of life in the past. We are still exploring the possible role of GRBs as punctuating agents of the biological evolution, and the purpose of this paper has been to show and quantify some of these effects. As discussed in the previous section, we believe that the Cambrian explosion could be a major example of the GRB role. Arguments for extrinsic perturbation associated with an extinction event have been also presented by Benítez, Maíz-Apellaniz and Canelles  (a close supernova event) and Melott et al.  (a tentative GRB-Ordovician extinction). An earlier version of the present work, focused on the issue of a hypernova-supershell connection has been released as a preprint . It is interesting (but perhaps not significative) to note that some HI supershells (tentatively associated with GRBs as their putative remnants , like GSH 139-03-69 should have been almost simultaneous with the Priabonian extinction around 35 Myr ago where cool-temperature-intolerant organisms gradually died, whereas GSH 242-03+37 has a characteristic age of 7.5 Myr where even $`{}_{}{}^{10}Be`$ marine sediments could be used for testing purposes (). Independently of this, major extinction events older than $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}Myr`$ would not obviously correlate with supershells or other similar structure which should be long dissipated

As stated above, detailed calculations of the response of atmospheres to gamma rays have been recently published . In particular, the model of Ruderman-Schramm-Ellis has been found to provide an overestimate of the ozone destruction. This is just an example of the type of uncertainties one encounters when dealing with this formidable problem. Clearly, much work is needed before we pinpoint and understand the nature and consequences of these events for the ISM and biological activity with confidence.

## 5 Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge E. Reynoso for useful advice on HI observations. We are also grateful to E. M. G. Dal Pino, G. Lugones and G.A Medina Tanco for encouragement and discussions on these subjects. This work has been supported by FAPESP Foundation (São Paulo, Brazil). Steward Observatory colleagues and staff are acknowledged for creating a stimulating working atmosphere during the early realization of this work.


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# Quasar Radio Dichotomy: Two Peaks, or not Two Peaks, that is the Question

## 1. What Statistics to Use?

There is controversy in the literature about the existence of a bimodality in the distribution of radio-to-optical flux ratio, $`R`$, for quasars (the so-called quasar radio dichotomy). For example, White et al. (2000) suggested that previous detections of radio dichotomy were caused by selection effects. On the other hand, Ivezić et al. (2002, hereafter I02) claimed that a sample of quasars detected by the SDSS and FIRST surveys supports the existence of a radio dichotomy. The latter result was recently questioned on statistical grounds by Cirasuolo et al. (2003, hereafter C03). I02 determined the distribution of $`R_i=0.4(it)`$ for narrow regions in the $`t`$ (radio AB magnitude) vs. $`i`$ (optical magnitude) plane that were oriented perpendicular to the $`R_i`$=const. lines (see top left panel in Figure 1). In other words, the quasar density in the $`t`$ vs. $`i`$ plane, $`\rho (i,t)`$, was found to be a separable function $`\rho (i,t)=f(R_i)g(i+t)`$. The $`R_i`$ distribution, $`f(R_i)`$, determined this way has a strong maximum at $`R_i2`$, and declines towards smaller $`R_i`$ (bottom left panel in Fig. 1). Since a large majority ($`90\%`$) of quasars undetected by FIRST form another peak at $`R_i<0`$, the local minimum at $`R_i`$ 0–1 implies the existence of a radio-dichotomy.

C03 claimed that a more meaningful quantity is the conditional probability distribution $`p(R_i|i)`$, that is, the $`R_i`$ distribution for a given (narrow range of) $`i`$, with $`\rho (i,t)=p(R_i|i)n(i)`$. Here $`n(i)`$ is the differential $`i`$ distribution (“optical counts”). For comparison with their work, in this contribution we analyze the behavior of $`p(R_i|i)`$. In the top right panel in Figure 1, we show the $`R_i`$ vs. $`i`$ distribution for $``$10,000 quasar candidates detected by both SDSS and FIRST (for more details see York 2000, I02, Schneider et al. 2003, and references therein). The corresponding $`p(R_i|i)`$ displayed in the bottom right panel does not decrease smoothly with $`R_i`$; rather, it suggests a possible local minimum around $`R_i1.2`$, and a local maximum around $`R_i1.8`$. This distribution is consistent with the C03 best-fit shown by the dashed line in the lower right panel (the latter is in fact a bimodal function). Note that, given the FIRST flux limit shown as the diagonal dot-dashed line in the top right panel, only quasars brighter than $`i19`$ can be used to directly constrain the position of the local minimum in $`p(R_i|i)`$, and thus a large area optical survey such as SDSS is required (as opposed to a deeper survey of a smaller area).

x

## 2. To K-correct, or not?

x

When analyzing the $`R_i`$ distribution, it is important to realize that the scatter due to K-corrections and quasar variability is much larger than the measurement errors. The uncertainty in $`R_i`$ ($``$0.2-0.3) is mostly due to optical and radio flux K-corrections, and optical variability. Even if the intrinsic $`R_i`$ were the same for all quasars (i.e. a $`\delta `$-function), its observed distribution would still have a finite width because of this uncertainty. In practice, this effect smears any features in $`R_i`$ distribution and would reduce any bimodality, if not taken into account.

The need to account for the K-correction can be inferred from the improved agreement between different $`R_i`$ histograms when the sample is divided into redshift bins. We compared the $`p(R_i|i)`$ distributions in different redshift bins using the uncorrected $`R_i`$, and found them to be systematically different. Furthermore, the differences between the $`p(R_i|i)`$ distributions for different $`i`$ bins in a given narrow redshift bin are smaller than when the whole redshift range is considered. This systematic behavior disappears when a proper K-correction for $`R_i`$ is applied.

We determined the K-correction for $`R_i`$, such that $`R_i^{corr}=R_i^{obs}+\mathrm{\Delta }R_i`$, as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }R_i=(\alpha _{radio}\alpha _{optical})\mathrm{log}(1+z),$$
(1)
where $`\alpha _{radio}`$ and $`\alpha _{optical}`$ are radio and optical spectral slopes, respectively ($`F_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$). We use the difference between $`gi`$ color for a particular source and the median $`gi`$ color at the redshift of that source to estimate the optical spectral slope (Richards et al. 2003). For radio spectral slope we assume $`\alpha _{radio}`$ = -0.5, which is the median value of radio spectral index for a sample of $``$400 quasars with SDSS, GB6, FIRST, NVSS and WENSS detections (Ivezić et al., in prep.).

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## 3.  Evidence for Quasar Radio Dichotomy

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Figure 2 compares the distribution of SDSS-FIRST quasars with redshifts in the range 0.5–2.5 in the $`R_i`$ vs. $`i`$ plane when $`R_i`$ is not K-corrected (left), and when $`R_i`$ is K-corrected using eq. 1 (right). As evident in the bottom panels, accounting for K-correction increases the significance of the detected bimodality. It is important to use an estimate of the optical spectral slope on an object-by-object basis – it is insufficient to use a mean slope as obtained from e.g. a composite quasar spectrum.

x x

The dashed line in the bottom right panel in Figure 2 is the best-fit using the same functional form proposed by C03 (a double Gaussian). It has a local minimum at $`R_i1.2`$ and a local maximum at $`R_i1.9`$, with the maximum-to-minimum ratio of $``$2. As reported by Ivezić et al. (2002), the fraction of sources with $`R_i>1`$ is 8$`\pm `$1 %. The remaining 92% of quasars, most of which are not detected by FIRST, are responsible for the steep rise of $`p(R_i|i)`$ for $`R_i<1`$.

We conclude that accurate optical and radio measurements for a large and homogeneous sample of radio quasars obtained by SDSS and FIRST provide conclusive evidence for the existence of the quasar radio-dichotomy.

x

Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.  x

## References

x

Cirasuolo, M., et al. 2003, astro-ph/0306415

Ivezić, Ž, et al. 2002, AJ, 124, 2364

Richards, G.T., et al. 2003, AJ, 126, 1131

Schneider, D.P., et al. 2003, AJ, in press, astro-ph/0308443

White, R.L., et al. 2000, ApJS, 126, 133

York, D.G., et al. 2000, AJ, 120, 1579


text:
# Phases intermediate between the two dimensional electron liquid and Wigner crystal

## I  Mean-Field Phase Diagram

Two dimensionless parameters determine the physics of the 2DEG in a MOSFET, $`r_s`$ (defined above) and $`a_B/d`$. Let us start with a discussion of the zero temperature mean-field phase diagram of this system, assuming only uniform states. If $`nd^21`$, the free-energy per unit area can be represented by the sum $`f(n)=f^{(C)}+f^{(el)}`$ of the energy density of a capacitor $`f^{(C)}=(en)^2/2C`$ and the internal free-energy density of the electron liquid $`f^{(el)}`$. Here $`C=(ϵd)^1`$ is the capacitance per unit area. At high electron densities, $`r_s1`$, the kinetic energy of the electrons is much larger than their potential energy, so the system forms a Fermi liquid. At small densities $`r_s1`$ (but still $`nd^21`$) the Coulomb energy of the electrons is much larger than the kinetic energy, so the ground state is crystalline.

However, at even smaller densities when $`nd^21`$, the electrons interact only via dipole interactions, so the kinetic energy is larger than the potential, and the system again has a Fermi liquid groundstate. (See discussion surrounding Eq. 12.) For $`d/a_B1`$, this implies that the phase diagram of the system has reentrant transitions as a function of $`n`$ (along the dashed-dotted trajectory in Fig. 1) from a Fermi liquid phase for $`n>n_cr_c^2(\pi a_B^2)^1`$ to a Wigner crystal phase for $`n_c>n>n_{c1}(\pi d^2)^1`$, to a Fermi liquid phase for $`n_{c1}>n`$. With decreasing $`d/a_B`$, $`n_{c1}`$ and $`n_c`$ move toward each other, until for $`d<d_cr_ca_B`$, the Wigner-crystal phase disappears entirely. This is represented by the dashed line in Fig. 1.

As a next step, we improve this phase diagram by allowing for the possibility of inhomogeneous states. There is a range of forbidden densities about the critical density in which macroscopic phase separation into regions of high and low density phase has lower free energy than the uniform state.

Let us briefly review the salient features of the Maxwell construction for phase coexistence, as applied in the present context. For given average density, $`n`$, we consider a state in which a fraction, $`x`$, of the system is at a higher than average density, $`n_+>n`$, and a fraction $`(1x)`$ is at a lower than average density, $`n_{}<n`$, such that $`xn_++(1x)n_{}=n`$. We then minimize the total free energy with respect to $`n_+`$ and $`n_{}`$. The result of this minimization is an implicit expression for the densities of the two coexisting phases,

$$\mu _++\frac{n_+}{C}=\mu _{}+\frac{n_{}}{C}=\frac{[f(n_{})f(n_+)]}{\mathrm{\Delta }n},$$
(2)
where $`\mu _\pm =f^{(el)}(n_\pm )/n_\pm `$ are the chemical potentials in the two phases, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }n[n_+n_{}]`$. Phase coexistence occurs for $`n_{}<n<n_+`$, where the fraction of the two phases is determined by the lever rule,

$$x=(nn_{})/\mathrm{\Delta }n.$$
(3)
Eq. 2 is somewhat complicated, but it can be greatly simplified when the forbidden region is relatively small ($`\mathrm{\Delta }nn_c`$); in this case, we can linearize the density dependence of the free energy about the critical density,

$$f^{(el)}(n_\pm )=f^{(el)}(n_c)\mu _\pm (n_\pm n_c)+\mathrm{}$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{}`$ represents higher order terms in powers of $`(n_\pm n_c)`$. To this level of approximation,

$$n_\pm =n_c\pm \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }n}{2};\mathrm{\Delta }n=\frac{(\mu _{}\mu _+)ϵ}{e^2d}.$$
(5)
The discontinuity of the chemical potential, $`(\mu _{}\mu _+)>0`$, is determined by microscopic physics, and is only small to the extent that the putative transition is weakly first order. Whether or not the transition is strongly first order, for $`d`$ large, $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ is self-consistently small.

The validity of the Maxwell construction rests on the implicit assumption that the interface energy between the coexisting phases is positive, so the amount of interface is minimized. As we have seen, in the dipolar case this assumption is invalid. We can construct a state with lower free energy by making an inhomogeneous mixture of the two coexisting phases to increase the amount of interface. To complete the mean field analysis, one should minimize Eq. 1 with respect to the shape of the minority phase regions at given area of the phase - the area being given, to first approximation, by the Maxwell rule.

### I.1 Stripe Phases

To begin with, let us consider only striped phases. This is fully justified in the case of strong anisotropy of the surface energy. (As we will see letter even in the opposite case when $`\sigma (\widehat{\theta })`$ is isotropic, there are regions in the phase diagram where this assumption is relevant.) The interfacial free energy density for a striped phase is easily computed from Eq. 1 to be

$$f_\sigma =L^1\left\{2\sigma _04\sigma _1\mathrm{ln}[L_+L_{}/dL]\right\},$$
(6)
where $`L_\pm `$ are the widths of the high and low density regions, respectively, and $`L=L_++L_{}`$ is the period of the stripe structure. Minimizing Eq. 6 at fixed areal fraction of the high density phase, $`xL_+/L`$, we get

$$L_{}=\frac{d}{x}e^{1+\gamma };L_+=\frac{d}{(1x)}e^{1+\gamma }$$
(7)
with $`\gamma =\sigma _0/2\sigma _1`$. It is important to note that as $`x0`$, the stripes of the high density phase approach a finite limiting width, $`L_+L_0=de^{1+\gamma }`$, although the spacing between stripes, $`L_{}`$, diverges in proportion to $`1/x`$. Also, because the minimized value of $`f_\sigma =4\sigma _1/L`$ is negative, the region of stability of the striped phase in fact extends somewhat beyond the edges ($`n_{}`$ and $`n_+`$) of the two-phase region derived from the Maxwell construction.

Finally, it is necessary to estimate the magnitude of $`\gamma `$; if it is of order 1, then $`L_0d`$, but if $`\gamma 1`$, then $`L_0`$ is exponentially larger than atomic lengths. So long as the stripe phase occurs in a relatively narrow range of $`n`$, we can use Eq. 5 to estimate $`\sigma _1`$, with the result that $`\gamma \sigma _0e^2/ϵ[\mu _+\mu _{}]^2`$, which is a ratio of microscopic electronic energies. Thus, except under special circumstances, we expect that $`\gamma 1`$, and hence that $`L_0d`$. However, so long as $`nd^21`$, the stripe widths are still large compared to the spacing between electrons, which validates the macroscopic approach taken here.

In short, at mean field level, as a function of decreasing density the system evolves from the Fermi liquid phase, through intermediate stripe phases, to the Wigner crystal, as summarized in Fig. 2a:

* 1) Starting in the uniform Fermi liquid phase, as the density is varied across $`n_+`$, the system undergoes a transition to a stripe phase, consisting of a periodic array of far separated stripes of Wigner crystal, with characteristic width $`L_0`$. This transition is analogous to a Lifshitz transition, in that the period of the ordered phase diverges at the transition lifshitz . Thus, the argumentsbrazovskii  that fluctuations will generally drive an otherwise continuous freezing transition first order do not apply; the continuous character of this transition is robust.
* 2) There is, of course, some coupling between the translational motion of the crystalline order in neighboring stripes, so at mean-field level the crystalline order will be locked from stripe to stripe. Consequently, the stripe ground-state breaks translation symmetry not only in the direction perpendicular to the stripes, but along the stripe direction as well. However, near the transition, where $`x1`$, the spacing between stripes is large compared to $`L_0`$, so this coupling is exponentially small; consequently, this locking can be neglected for all practical purposes. Therefore, this phase should operationally be classified as an electron smecticnature , in which translation symmetry is unbroken along the stripe direction. (There remains the interesting academic question of principle whether or not quantum fluctuations are able to truly stabilize this smectic phase at $`T=0`$ \- this is closely related to the issue of whether “floating phases” are stable in quasi-1D electronic systems.nature ; floating ).
* 3) Near $`x=1/2`$, the stripes of Wigner crystal and the intervening Fermi liquid are comparable in width. As $`x1`$, the system is better thought of as stripes of Fermi liquid separated by broad regions of Wigner crystal. At some point, the crystalline order becomes so rigid that the coupling across the liquid stripes is no longer negligible. At this point, the striped state is fully crystalline, in the sense that translation symmetry is broken in both directions, and the structure factor contains Bragg peaks. However, this phase is still qualitatively distinct from the Wigner crystal. Since generally speaking the Fermi wave vector is unrelated to the Bragg vectors of the Wigner crystal, the liquid in the stripe “rivers” can still conduct current in the stripe direction. For want of a better name, we christen this state a striped “conducting crystalI.” (See Fig.2).
* 4) At $`x=1`$, the transition from the conducting to Wigner crystal mirrors the smectic to Fermi liquid transition; it is also a Lifshitz transition at which the period of the stripe order diverges.

### I.2 Bubble Phases

So far, this analysis ignores the possibility of bubble phases. Whether or not there is a regime in which the lowest energy mean-field state is a bubble phase depends, as we mentioned before, on the degree of anisotropy of the microscopic surface tension, $`\sigma _0(\widehat{\theta })`$. It may happen, due to the anisotropy of the Wigner crystal, that $`\sigma _0(\widehat{\theta })`$ is sufficiently anisotropic that bubble phases never intrude upon the phase diagram. It is also possible to force the issue by artificially enhancing the anisotropy of $`\sigma _0(\widehat{\theta })`$. This can be done by explicitly breaking the rotational symmetry of the 2DEG, for instance by applying an in-plane magnetic field or by using a sufficiently anisotropic surface in the construction of the MOSFET. In this case, no more need be said.

However, the Wigner crystal is generally thought to be triangular. In this case the surface energy is sufficiently isotropic that for $`x`$ near 0 or 1, there will be a range of $`x`$ in which bubble phases have lower energy than the stripe phase; for $`x`$ near 0, such a phase consists of far separated crystallites in a metallic sea, while for $`x`$ near 1, it is far separated bubbles of fluid in a Wigner crystalline host. We will call these phases Bubble Crystals I and II, respectively. (See Fig.2d) As $`x0`$ or $`x1`$, the period of the bubble crystals diverge, leading at mean-field level to another Lifshitz transition, much as in the stripe case. (However, fluctuation effects are much different near these transition in the bubble and stripe cases, as we will discuss in the next sections.)

However, this is not the end of the story. The stripe phase is always the lower energy one near $`x=1/2`$, so if a bubble phase occurs for small $`x`$, there must be a critical value of $`x=x_c`$ at which the energy of the bubble and stripe phases cross, seemingly implying a first order transition. Since we have proven in general that first order transitions are forbidden, this first order transition, too, must be replaced by a regime of intermediate phases consisting of a mixture of bubble and stripe phases spivakPS . Now, however, because of the large anisotropy of the stripe phase, the surface tension between these two phases must be highly anisotropic. Thus, this intermediate phase will most probably be of the form of alternating mega-stripes of bubble and stripe phase regions. These regions are shown in Fig.2d by hatched boxes.

## II  Thermal Effects.

### II.1 The Pomaranchuk Effect

The most dramatic effect of finite $`T`$ is its effect on the balance between the liquid and Wigner-crystalline phases - the fraction of the Wigner crystal phase grows as the temperature increases spivakPS ! This phenomenon is similar to the Pomeranchuk effect in $`He^3`$ and has the same origin: the spin entropy of the crystal phase is substantially larger than that of the liquid state. The same considerations lead, as well, to the conclusion that the crystalline phase is preferred relative to the liquid in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field, $`H_{}`$.

Due to the Pauli exclusion principle, an effective exchange energy of order the Fermi energy, $`E_F^{}\mathrm{}^2n/2m^{}`$ quenches the spin entropy in the liquid phase. In contrast, the exchangeexchange  energy in the Wigner crystal is exponentially small, $`J\mathrm{exp}[\alpha \sqrt{r_s}]`$ where $`\alpha `$ is a number of order 1. For example an estimate made in kiv  yields $`J10^7Ry^{}`$ where $`Ry^{}=e^4m^{}/2\mathrm{}^2e`$ is the effective Rydberg. Thus a combination of the quantum character of the liquid and the smallness of exchange processes in the solid imply that the solid phase is stabilized by non-zero $`T`$ relative to the liquid phase - for $`n`$ near $`n_c`$, the 2DEG freezes upon heating! In the present context, this means that for fixed $`n`$, the relative fraction of Wigner crystalline regions increases with increasing $`T`$ or $`H_{}`$. A simple estimate of the magnitude of this effect can be made for the range of temperatures $`JTE_F^{}=Ry^{}/\pi (r_s)^2`$ and $`\mathrm{}\mu _BH_{}E_F^{}`$, where the entropy of the liquid is negligible, as are the subtleties of the ground-state magnetic structure of the Wigner crystal. In this case,

$`f(n_{},T,H_{})`$ $`f(n_{},0,0)`$
$`k_BTn_{}\mathrm{ln}\left[2\mathrm{cosh}(\mathrm{}\mu _BH_{}/k_BT)\right]`$
and $`f(n_+,T,H_{})f(n_+,0,0)`$. The fact that temperature and magnetic field stabilize the Wigner crystal in qualitatively similar fashion is one of the striking aspects of this relation: For $`T\mathrm{}\mu _BH_{}`$, $`f(n_{},T,H_{})f(n_{},0,0)k_BTn_{}\mathrm{ln}[2]`$ while for $`T\mathrm{}\mu _BH_{}`$, $`f(n_{},T,B)f(n_{},0,0)\mathrm{}\mu _BH_{}n_{}`$.

Of course, at high enough temperatures, all tendencies to ordered states are suppressed. This occurs above the characteristic temperature at which the Wigner crystal melts. In the limit of very large $`r_s`$, this occurs at the classical melting temperature of the Wigner crystal, which has been estimated in accurate numerical experimentssudipold  to be

$$T_{melt}=A(e^2/ϵ)\sqrt{\pi n}=2ARy^{}/r_s$$
(9)
where $`A=1/125[1\pm 0.04]`$. However, at smaller $`r_s`$, where $`E_F`$ of the competing fluid phase is larger than the putative classical melting temperature, the implied reduction of the entropy of the fluid state means that the melting temperature is set, by $`T_{melt}E_F`$. Far from the Lifshitz points, the melting temperatures of the various microemulsion phases are determined by these same considerations, and are of similar magnitude. Here, the fraction of the system that is crystalline is a non-monotonic function of $`T`$, first increasing and then dropping to zero at $`T_{melt}`$. Near the Lifshitz points, more delicate considerations determine the melting point.

### II.2 Thermal fluctuations in the stripe phases

Let us now consider the role of thermal fluctuations on the stripe phases. We distinguish two cases: 1) If the Hamiltonian is rotationally invariant, then the smectic phase is unstable at any non-zero temperature to the proliferation of dislocations. Thus,

the mean-field smectic phase is replaced by a nematic phase, which, in keeping with the Mermin-Wagner theorem, does not actually break rotational symmetry, but rather has power-law orientational order. A free dislocation has a logarithmically divergent energy in both the Wigner and conducting crystal phases, so they are robust against thermal fluctuations at low temperatures, although with power-law rather than long-range crystalline order. The resulting phase diagram is shown schematically in Fig. 2b. 2) If, however, the Hamiltonian has a preferred axis, for instance if we consider the 2DEG in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field, the effects of low temperature thermal fluctuations are much less severe. Here, the smectic and both crystalline phases remain well defined at non-zero $`T`$, although again with power law spatial correlations rather than with true long-range order, as shown schematically in Fig. 2c.

Because first order transitions are forbidden, the transition between the isotropic fluid and the nematic phase must be of the Beresinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) type. Near the mean field Lifshitz point we can estimate this transition temperature as follows: The distance between stripes is large so the stripes of minority phase evaporate when the energy to break off a piece, $`\sigma _0L_0`$, is less than the the configurational entropy of a state where rare droplets of the minority phase are distributed randomly. Equating these two free energies leads to the estimate

$$T_c|\mathrm{ln}[x(1x)]|\sigma _0L_0.$$
(10)
In the presence of an in-plane magnetic field, there is no sharply defined nematic phase, since rotational symmetry is explicitly broken. However, by the same token, free dislocations in the smectic state have a logarithmically divergent energy, so a power-law smectic phase exists at non-zero $`T`$. With increasing temperature, the smectic to liquid phase transition is also of the BKT type. Indeed, so long as the symmetry breaking term in the Hamiltonian is small, the transition temperature is roughly the same as in Eq. 10, above.

### II.3 Thermal fluctuations in the bubble phases

We now consider the effect of thermal fluctuations on bubble phases. As can be seen from Eq. 1, the interaction energy between far separated bubbles decreases at large $`r_0`$ as

$$V_{bubble}\sigma _1L_0^4/r_0^3,$$
(11)
where $`L_0`$ and $`r_0`$ are the radius of and distance between bubbles. Thus, where the bubbles are far separated, because of the screening by the ground-plane the BKT melting temperature will tend to rapidly to zero, $`T_{BKT}[(1x)x]^{3/2}`$, as the spacing between bubbles increases. The result is that, near the mean filed Lifshitz point the bubble phase is always melted by the thermal fluctuations. On the other hand, at smaller $`r_0`$ the bubble phase survives thermal fluctuations in the usual sense that the correlations of bubble positions exhibit power-law decay.

The nature of the transition between the bubble phase and the uniform phase is not, presently, settled. Of course, a direct first order transition is forbidden. One possibility is that there is a sequence of two BKT transitions, as in the Halperin-Nelson theoryHalperinNelson  of melting, with an intermediate hexatic phase. Alternatively, there may be a further set of hierarchical microemulsion phases.

## III Quantum Fluctuations

### III.1 Stripe Phases

So long as $`nL_0^21`$ ($`nd^21`$), the stripes are many electrons wide, so quantum fluctuations of their positions are intrinsically small; $`1/nL_0^2`$ is a small parameter in the problem, which permits an asymptotically exact treatment of quantum fluctuation effects. At zero temperature, the conducting-crystal phase is clearly stable in the presence of small quantum fluctuations, although, as mentioned previously, the jury is still out on whether the smectic phase is unstable to crystallizationnature ; floating . Only where the stripe width is of order of the interelectron distance ( i.e., when $`nL_0^21`$), quantum fluctuations become very significant. This applies to the hatched region in Fig. 1, where the quantum properties of the system are still uncertain.

The quantum nature of the system near the Lifshitz points is determined by the quantum nature of the interface between the crystal and the liquid – a problem which itself is still unsolved. This interface may be quantum rough or quantum smooth. If it is smooth, the Lifshitz transition from the uniform fluid to smectic phase is not fundamentally affected by quantum fluctuations, provided the width of the stripes is large enough. However, if an isolated interface is rough, the stripe order in the vicinity of the mean- field Lifshitz point is quantum melted; in this case, for the rotationally invariant system, the proscription against first order transitions implies that there must be an intermediate zero temperature nematic phase between the isotropic and the stripe ordered phases. It was recently shownvadim  that a nematic Fermi fluid is necessarily a non-Fermi liquid in the sense that quasiparticles are not well defined elementary excitations. We believe that, depending on microscopic details and on the the value of $`nd^2`$, both scenarios are possible.

It is worth mentioning why the quantum nature of the crystal-liquid interface is so subtle. Consider the motion of a step in the interface. Quantum-mechanically, an isolated step might be expected to propagate along the interface andreev . Because the steps interact by a short-range dipolar interaction, the steps should then form a delocalized 1D quantum liquid along the interface. However, because of the density mismatch between the solid and liquid, the situation is more complicated. Motion of the step requires a flux of mass into the liquid of a magnitude proportional to the density difference between the solid and liquid and to the step’s velocity. In a Fermi liquid this flux of mass is carried by quasiparticles, making the step motion highly dissipative. Thus, characterizing the interface involves interesting, but as far as we know unsolved issues in dissipative quantum mechanics.

### III.2 Bubble Phases

In contrast to stripe phases, quantum fluctuations always melt the bubble phases when the bubbles are sufficiently dilute. To see this, we can estimate the characteristic potential energy of a bubble crystal as in Eq. 11, and can make a corresponding dimensional estimate of the bubble kinetic energy $`K_{bubble}\mathrm{}^2/r_0^2m^{}`$ where $`m^{}`$ is the bubble effective mass. Therefore the ratio of these energies is

$$\frac{V_{bubble}}{K_{bubble}}\left(\frac{\sigma _1L_0^4m^{}}{\mathrm{}^2}\right)\frac{1}{r_0}$$
(12)
vanishes as $`r_0\mathrm{}`$. This analysis fleshes out the same argument mentioned in the introduction that leads to the conclusion that there is no stable Wigner crystal phase at small $`d`$. However, whereas in that case, the proportionality constant is $`a_B^{}`$, in the present case the same constant is parametrically large, both due to the explicit factors of $`L_0`$ and due to the fact that $`m^{}`$ increases with increasing $`L_0`$ (in a way that depends on whether the interface is quantum rough or smooth). The result is that, for large $`nd^2`$, the regime in which the bubble crystal is quantum melted is extremely small. However, if $`nd^21`$ quantum melting is a significant phenomenon.

The character of the bubble liquid phase is different depending on the character of the minority phase. When the majority phase is Wigner-crystalline with dilute inclusions of liquid, the melting of the bubble crystal results in a type of “conducting crystal”spivakPS . In this state, crystalline long-range order coexists with fluid-like conductivity, but in this case the conductivity is associated with the motion of the bubbles themselves. Phenomenologically this state is similar to the “supersolid” phase which has been discussedandreev1  in the context of $`He^4`$. In both cases the number of electrons (or aroms) is not equal to the number of the crystalline sites. comparisonAndr . The difference is that unlike the case of $`He^4`$ where vacancies are bosons, in our case the statistics of the droplets is not known, and hence the liquid state may not be a superfluid. Therefore, we refer to this state as a ”Conducting Crystal II” in Fig.2d to distinguish it from the highly anisotropic conducting crystal (See Fig.2a,d) which originates from the existence of stripes.

When the Fermi liquid is the majority phase, with a fluid of “icebergs” floating in it, no spatial symmetries need be broken. However, elementary excitation spectrum is likely to be different from that of a conventional Fermi liquid.

Since the majority phase already brakes rotational symmetry, the bubble crystallization transition which transforms the system from the conducting crystal to the insulating bubble crystal phase can be a simple continuous transition. However, the freezing of the icebergs into a triangular crystal of Wigner-crystalline bubbles is more problematic. As with the thermal transition, there may be a two-step freezing transition, with an intermediate quantum hexatic phasevadim , or another hierarchy of microemulsion phases. The sequence of the phases at $`T=0`$ is shown in Fig.2d.

## IV  Experimental Consequences

Obviously, there are many experimental consequences of the existence of intermediate phases, of which we here list only a few. It should be kept in mind that macroscopic spatial symmetry breaking, the sort which precisely characterizes the various phases we have discussed, does not truly occur in 2D in the presence of quenched disorder. This complicates the actual observation of various phenomena.

The majority of industrially produced Si MOSFET’s have gates relatively close to the 2DEG, $`dd_c`$, so the electron liquid is weakly interacting at all $`n`$. However, a small number of high mobility Si MOSFET’s (For a review, see rmp .) and p-type of GaAs double layers Pillarisetty  with large $`d1000\AA `$ have been studied in the past few years, and found to exhibit transport anomalies that have been interpreted as evidence for an unexpected metal-insulator transition. While these devices certainly are not ideal, in the sense that they have non-zero quenched disorder, we would like to propose that a natural explanation of these phenomena is that they reflect the existence in the zero disorder limit of the electronic microemulsion phases identified in the present paper.

One robust consequence of two-phase coexistence is that the conductivity is a decreasing function of the volume fraction of Wigner crystal. This volume fraction, in turn, is strongly temperature and magnetic field dependent due to the Pomeranchuk effect, as explained above. As a result, the fraction of crystal grows with temperature and magnetic field, leading to a corresponding increase of the resistivity. As has been pointed out previouslyspivakPS , this basic physics may underly the transport anomalies observed in large $`d`$ Si MOSFETs. In particular, it offers a candidate explanation of the anomalous metallic ($`d\rho /dT>0`$) temperature dependence and large positive magneto-resistance observed in these systems despite the fact that the resistivity, itself, exceeds the Ioffe-Regel limit. (Ideally, one might want to explore the scaling relation between the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the resistivity implied by the thermodynamic relation in Eq. II.1.)

Of course, each new phase has different patterns of spatial symmetry breaking, and hence has new collective modes and modified hydrodynamics. Even when the effects of quenched disorder or thermal fluctuations restore the symmetry at macroscopic distances, the existence of these collective modes can have readily detectable consequences for the dynamical responses of the system. Small explicit symmetry breaking fields can be used to overcome the destructive effects of quenched disorder and reveal the true tendency to symmetry breaking. For instance, an in-plane magnetic field explicitly breaks rotational symmetry; where some form of stripe or nematic phase exists in the absence of quenched disorder, the small symmetry breaking produced by such a field can give rise to a large resistivity anisotropy, as has been seen for the analogous states in quantum Hall deviceseisenstein .

## V  Extensions

We end with some speculative observations concerning intermediate phases of the 2DEG.

Spin physics: Other than the Pomeranchuk effect, we have largely ignored the physics of the electron spins. The exchange interactions in the Wigner crystal phase are generally found to be very smallexchange , and so are only important at very low temperatures. At $`T=0`$, however, the fact that the magnetic Hamiltonian is highly frustrated and may have important multispin ring exchange interactions, can lead to a variety of possible magnetic phases, and this complexity could be inherited, to some degree, by the intermediate phases discussed here. Moreover, at a liquid-crystalline interface, the quantum dynamics of the interface itself (mentioned above) can produce effective exchange interactions, likely with much larger energy scales than in the bulk Wigner crystal. There is thus the very real possibility that the magnetic structure of the interfaces is very rich, and characterized by substantial energy scales.

Superconductivity: The parallels between the 2DEG in a MOSFET and Coulomb frustrated phase separation in a doped Mott insulator naturally lead one to speculate concerning the possibility of superconductivity in the present system. In the bubble related conducting crystal phase, each bubble has a fixed number of electrons; when that number is even, the bubbles are likely bosonic and a supersolid phase with low superfluid density is possible spivakPS ; andreev1 . In the hatched region of the phase diagram, where quantum effects are most severe, a more robust mechanism is possible, based on the “spin-gap proximity effectzachar ”: Small clusters of Wigner crystal (be they stripe or bubble like) will often have a spin-gap. (Near the cluster edge, this gap may be larger than in the bulk.) Where this gap is large enough, it suppresses single-particle exchange between the crystal clusters and the surrounding Fermi fluid, but pair-exchange is still permitted. When this dominates, it induces global superconductivity by a process analogous to the conventional proximity effect.

Double Layers: In a double layer system, with two nearby 2DEG’s, the two layers screen each other in much the same way as the metal layer screens the 2DEG in a MOSFET. However, here the types of phases, and the available experiments are still richer. One particularly interesting point is that the conductivity measured in drag can explore the nature of the interlayer screening. The presence of a crystalline component of an electron fluid has the potential to greatly increase the drag conductivity relative to a Fermi liquid; in particular, whereas the drag conductivity vanishes as $`T0`$ in a Fermi liquid, we believe it can approach a non-zero constant in some of the intermediate phases we have explored.

Other Applications: The present ideas are pretty clearly applicable in a host of additional physical contexts. What is needed is short-range tendency to phase separation, i.e. a concave local free energy, opposed by dipolar forces. Under appropriate circumstances, this situation may pertain in the 2DEG at higher densities, $`r_s<r_c`$, and it certainly applies in various regimes to the physics of lipid films and planar ferromagnets.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Contracts No. DMR-01-10329 (SAK) and DMR-0228104 (BS).


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# Between Cool Stars and Hot Planets: Origins of Brown Dwarfs

## 1. Introduction

The past several years have seen the identification of a large number of sub-stellar objects in the solar neighborhood and in star-forming regions. Yet their origin remains a mystery. One possibility is that they form like stars do as a result of the turbulent fragmentation and collapse of molecular cloud cores (e.g., Padoan & Nordlund 2003). Another scenario which has gained popularity in recent times is that brown dwarfs are stellar embryos ejected from multiple proto-stellar systems (Reipurth & Clarke 2001; Bate, Bonnell & Bromm 2002).

There are few observational constraints on the formation and early evolution of sub-stellar objects. Since studies of young brown dwarfs could provide valuable clues to their origin(s), we have commenced a multi-faceted program to investigate the physical properties of brown dwarfs in star-forming regions and compare them to the much better studied low-mass pre-main sequence stars. We have employed many of the methods developed in the study of T Tauri stars to address the key question of whether young sub-stellar objects undergo a T Tauri-like phase.

## 2. Disk Excess

Using the ESO Very Large Telescope, Keck I and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, we have carried out a systematic study of infrared $`L^{}`$-band (3.8$`\mu `$m) disk excess in a large sample of spectroscopically confirmed objects near and below the sub-stellar boundary in several nearby star-forming regions (Jayawardhana et al. 2003).

We find disk fractions of 40%–60% in IC 348, Chamaeleon I, Taurus and Upper Scorpius regions, using a conservative criterion of $`KL^{}>`$ 0.2 for the presence of optically thick disks. ChaH$`\alpha `$ 2, which shows a large $`KL^{}`$ excess (0.97 mag) in our data is a probable close ($``$0.2”) binary with roughly equal-mass companions (Neuhäuser et al. 2002). It is possible that a few of our targets harbor infrared companions that contribute to the measured excess, but this is unlikely in most cases. In IC 348, our disk fraction is comparable to that derived from H$`\alpha `$ accretion signatures in high-resolution optical spectra (Jayawardhana, Mohanty & Basri 2003). However, in Taurus, Cha I and Upper Sco, which may be slightly older at $``$2-5 Myrs, we find $`KL^{}`$ excess in $``$50% of the targets whereas accretion-like H$`\alpha `$ is seen in a smaller fraction of objects (Jayawardhana, Mohanty & Basri 2002; 2003). This latter result suggests that dust disks may persist after accretion has ceased or been reduced to a trickle, as also suggested by Haisch, Lada & Lada (2001). In the somewhat older ($``$5 Myr) $`\sigma `$ Orionis cluster, only about a third of the targets show infrared excess. Neither of the two TW Hydrae brown dwarfs (age $``$ 10 Myr) in our sample shows excess.

Our results, and those of Muench et al. (2001), Natta et al. (2002), and Liu, Najita & Tokunaga (2003) show that a large fraction of very young brown dwarfs harbor near- and mid-infrared excesses consistent with dusty disks. While the samples are still relatively small, the timescales for inner disk depletion do not appear to be vastly different between brown dwarfs and T Tauri stars. Far-infrared observations with the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility and/or the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy will be crucial for deriving the sizes of circum-sub-stellar disks and providing a more definitive test of whether brown dwarf disks are truncated as predicted by the ejection scenario.

## 3. Accretion Signatures

The shape and width of the H$`\alpha `$ emission profile is commonly used to discriminate between accretors and non-accretors among T Tauri stars (TTS). Stars exhibiting broad, asymmetric H$`\alpha `$ lines with equivalent width larger than 10 Å are generally categorized as classical TTS (CTTS), although this threshold value varies with spectral type. We find that in very low mass (VLM) accretors, the H$`\alpha `$ profile may be somewhat narrower than that in higher mass stars. We propose that low accretion rates combined with small infall velocities at very low masses can conspire to produce this effect, and adopt $``$ 200 kms-1 as a more appropriate, yet conservative, threshold (see Jayawardhana, Mohanty & Basri 2003 for further discussion).

We obtained high-resolution Keck and Magellan optical spectra of $``$45 objects spanning the range of M5–M8 in several nearby star-forming regions. The vast majority of VLM objects in $`\rho `$ Ophiuchus were inaccessible to our optical spectroscopy because of significant extinction, presumably due to circumstellar as well as interstellar material. However, at least one of our four $`\rho `$ Oph targets, GY 5, shows an accretion-like H$`\alpha `$ profile. We also find evidence for accretion in 5/10 objects in IC 348 (Fig. 2), 3/14 in Taurus, 1/12 in Cha I, and 1/11 Upper Scorpius (Jayawardhana, Mohanty & Basri 2002, 2003). Perhaps somewhat suprisingly, one of the three known brown dwarfs in the 10-Myr-old TW Hydrae association also exhibits a broad, asymmetric H$`\alpha `$ line. If confirmed, this detection suggests that accretion, albeit at very low rates, could last a fairly long time in some brown dwarfs (Mohanty, Jayawardhana & Barrado y Navascués 2003).

## 4. Evidence of an Outflow?

We have recently obtained Magellan low-, medium-, and high-resolution optical spectra of a particularly intriguing young VLM object named LS-RCrA 1, identified by Fernández and Comerón (2001). We confirm both pre-main sequence status and membership in the RCrA region for this object, through the detection of Li I, presence of narrow K I indicative of low gravity, and measurement of radial velocity. The H$`\alpha `$ emission profile is very broad, with a 10% full width of 316 kms-1 at high-resolution, implying the presence of ongoing accretion. Our spectra also exhibit many forbidden emission lines indicative of mass outflow (Fig. 3), in agreement with the Fernández and Comerón results (Barrado y Navascués, Mohanty, & Jayawardhana 2003).

Our optical veiling measurements yield a mass accretion rate between 10-10 and 10-9 solar masses per year. The presence of prominent outflow signatures at these low accretion rates is initially puzzling. We consider, and discard as improbable, the possibility that these signatures arise in a line-of-sight Herbig-Haro knot unassociated with LS-RCrA 1 itself. However, if LS-RCrA 1 possesses an edge-on disk, a natural outcome would be the enhancement of any outflow signatures relative to the photosphere; we favor this view. A low accretion/outflow rate, combined with an edge-on orientation, is further supported by the absence of high-velocity components and any significant asymmetries in the forbidden lines. An edge-on geometry is also consistent with the lack of near-infrared excess in spite of ongoing accretion, and explains the relatively large H$`\alpha `$ 10% width compared to other low-mass objects with similar accretion rates as well as the apparent sub-luminosity of LS-RCrA 1 given its spectral type, distance and age. It would be extremely interesting to confirm the presence of an edge-on disk and a jet/outflow in this system with high-angular-resolution imaging.

## 5. Conclusion

We have found compelling evidence, in the form of disk excesses and spectroscopic accretion signatures, that young brown dwarfs undergo a T Tauri phase similar to that of solar-mass stars. In one case, there is also a hint of possible mass outflow from a young sub-stellar object; if confirmed, this would further strengthen the analogy with T Tauri stars.

### Acknowledgments.

I am most grateful to my collaborators in the study of young brown dwarfs: Subhanjoy Mohanty, Gibor Basri, Beate Stelzer, David Barrado y Navascués, David Ardila, Karl Haisch, and Diane Paulson. This work was supported in part by the NSF grant AST-0205130.

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# Chemical Abundances and the Hierarchical Clustering

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