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# Comment on: A minimal model for beta relaxation in viscous liquids, by Jeppe C. Dyre and Niels Boye Olsen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 155703 (2003)

(October 23, 2003)

Dyre and Olsen dyre  report a key experiment for the understanding of the glass transition, separating for the first time the influence of the real temperature $`T`$ (the phonon bath temperature) and the fictive temperature $`T_f`$ (the temperature characterizing the thermodynamic state of the system) on the Johari-Goldstein relaxation peak of a molecular glass former. They find two surprising results: (i) an instantaneous increase of the damping at the peak on heating, indicating a strong asymmetry $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of the potential minima of the relaxing units (ii) a decrease of the peak frequency on the subsequent equilibration, indicating an increase of the potential barrier between the minima with increasing fictive temperature.

But one can also understand the experiment without these counterintuitive assumptions of strong asymmetry and barrier increase. A a recent model by one of us kvf  attributes the damping to relaxing units distributed around the asymmetry zero with a probability proportional to the Boltzmann factor $`\mathrm{cosh}(\mathrm{\Delta }/2k_BT_f)`$.

In order to obtain the barrier density $`f_0(V)`$ at the barrier height $`V`$, one has to integrate over the asymmetry with the weight factor $`1/\mathrm{cosh}^2(\mathrm{\Delta }/2k_BT)`$. It is easy to convince oneself that the above probability leads to $`f_0(V)T`$ at constant $`T_f`$, at least as long as $`T`$ is not too different from $`T_f`$.

In addition, the model takes the elastic dipole interaction between different relaxing entities into account. Combining eqs. (6) and (7) of kvf

$$f(V)=\frac{f_0(V)}{\left[13_0^Vf_0(v)𝑑v\right]^{2/3}}.$$
(1)
The enhancement of the measured barrier density $`f(V)`$ over the true density $`f_0(V)`$ is due to all barriers lower than $`V`$. It increases with increasing barrier height, and thus shifts the Johari-Goldstein peak to higher barriers, as shown in Fig. 1. Both the enhancement and the peak shift - this is the main point of the Comment - increase with increasing relaxator density $`f_0(V)`$.

We model the experiment dyre  by a Johari-Goldstein peak in $`f_0(V)`$. Since the damping is $`Tf(V)`$ and $`f_0(V)`$ is proportional to temperature at constant $`T_f`$, the damping $`T^{2+\delta }`$, where $`\delta `$ comes from the enhancement factor in eq. (1). From experiment, $`\delta =0.6`$. One fits this requirement by the lorentzian in $`f_0(V)`$ shown in Fig. 1, thus explaining the first surprising feature of the experiment.

The second surprising feature - the decrease of the relaxation peak frequency on equilibration to a higher fictive temperature - is explained by the increase of the damping, which shifts the peak in $`f(V)`$ to higher barriers. As it turns out, $`f_0(V)T_f^{7.9}`$ describes both the long-time damping increase (Fig. 1 (b) of dyre ) and the long-time peak frequency shifts (Fig. 3 of dyre ).

This explanation does not require any unexpected properties of the energy landscape. One only needs the theoretical concept of independent relaxing entities, weakly coupled by the elastic dipole interaction.


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# GAMMA RAY BURSTS AND RADIO LOUD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Radio loud Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) and Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) have very little in common, at first sight. GRB are flashes of $`\gamma `$–ray radiation, likely flagging the birth of a stellar size black hole, while radio–loud AGNs, even if remarkable for their rapid variability, live for hundreds millions years, producing spectacular and Mpc–size jets and radio lobes, and are powered by supermassive black holes. On the other hand, in both classes the emitting plasma is moving at relativistic bulk speeds, and the radiation we see is likely the result of the transformation of part of this well ordered kinetic energy into random energy and then into radiation. Furthermore, there are strong evidences that also GBRs have collimated jets. And finally, consider that the dynamical timescale for a GRB should be of the order the light travel time to cross the gravitational radius, i.e. $`R_\mathrm{g}/c10^4M_1`$ seconds, where $`M_1`$ is the mass of the black hole in units of tens of solar masses. A burst with a duration of 10 seconds therefore lasts for $`10^5`$ dynamical times: it can be a quasi steady process (for a $`10^9`$ solar mass black hole, this time is equivalenth to 30 years). What we naively consider an “explosion” is instead a long event.

In both classes of sources we have non–thermal particles and magnetic field, suggesting that non–thermal radiation processes are the main contributors to the radiation we see. This radiation, being produced by plasma in relativistic motion, is strongly beamed in the velocity direction, and we have evidences that also in GRBs the emitting fireball is collimated in a cone, i.e. a “jet”. For these reasons it is instructive to compare them looking for similarities and differences, to see if their physics is similar. In the following I will briefly discuss some of the basic facts of blazars and GRBs, and discuss the possibility that, at the origin of their phenomenology, there is a common engine.

## 2 Blazars

Bulk Lorentz factor — The best evidences for bulk relativistic motion in blazars come from VLBI observations of knots of radio emission moving superluminally. Apparent speeds up to $`\beta _{\mathrm{app}}=30h^1`$ are measured (see e.g. Jorstad et al. 2001), at least in those blazars that are powerful $`\gamma `$–ray emitters, indicating even larger Lorentz factors $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ (note that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ must always be larger than $`\beta _{\mathrm{app}}`$). Indications of a large degree of beaming come also from spectral fitting, especially of low powerful, TeV emitting, blazars where beaming factors $`\delta >20`$ are derived (Tavecchio et al. 1998). There are also indications that the jet could be structured, with a fast “spine” surrounded by a slower “layer” (Laing 1993; Chiaberge et al. 2001; Giroletti et al. 2003), explaining for example why the non–thermal radiation of the core of radio–galaxies is not as faint as predicted if the plasma is moving at the same large speed and if they are observed at large angles with respect to the jet axis.

The blazar sequence — Fossati et al. (1998), collecting data from three complete sample of blazars, demonstrated that the SED is controlled by the bolometric observed luminosity, with both peaks shifting at smaller frequences when increasing the luminosity (see Fig. 1). Furthermore, the dominance of the high energy peak increases when increasing the bolometric luminosity (but this latter inference was based on the few low power BL Lacs detected by EGRET). This “blazar sequence” can be explained by a different degree of radiative cooling: in powerful blazars electrons cool faster, producing a break in the electron distribution functions at smaller and smaller energies when increasing the total (radiation plus magnetic) energy density in the comoving frame (Ghisellini et al. 1998).

Jet power — The radio lobes of radio–galaxies and blazars are a sort of calorimeter: the power required to feed them can be calculated dividing the total energy of a radio lobe by its lifetime (estimated from spectral aging or from advance motion). This estimate has been done, among others, by Rawling & Saunders (1991): they find an average power ranging from $`10^{43}`$$`10^{44}`$ erg s-1 for FR I radiogalaxies to $`10^{46}`$$`10^{47}`$ erg s-1 for FR II radiogalaxies and radio–loud quasars.

One can also calculate the power carried by the jet by inferring its density through modeling the observed SED and requiring that the jet carries at least the particles and the magnetic field necessary to make the radiation we see. This has been done on the pc scale by Celotti & Fabian (1993), on sub–pc scale (the $`\gamma `$–ray emitting zone) by Celotti & Ghisellini (2003, see also Ghisellini 2003), and on the hundreds of kpc scale (the X–ray jets seen by Chandra) by Celotti, Ghisellini & Chiaberge (2001) and Tavecchio et al. (2000). These studies suggest large values of the power transported by the jet and require the presence of a dynamically dominating proton component (see also arguments by Sikora & Madejski 2000).

## 3 GAMMA RAY BURSTS

The main breaktrough in GRB science was the precise localization of some of them made possible by the coded mask of the wide field camera of BeppoSAX, which in turn made possible the prompt follow up in X–rays, optical and radio. Then it was possible to measure the redshift and end a decade long discussion about the galactic or cosmological origin of GRBs. Up to now, about 30 redshifts of GRBs have been measured. Apart from the controversial case of GRB 980425, possibly associated with the nearby SN 1998bw (at $`z0.008`$), all other redshifts are within the 0.17–4.5 range. A particularly useful updated link with all the relevant information about bursts with good localization is maintained by Jochen Greiner at: www.aip.de/$``$jcg/grbgen.html .

Duration — The majority of GRBs lasts for more than 2 seconds, while about one third is shorter. All information derived from the precise localization of GRBs refer to long bursts. The bimodality of the distribution of their duration is confirmed by the associated spectral shape, since short bursts, on average, appear harder than long GRBs. The light curve of GRBs is erratic and sometimes highly variable: spikes as short as a fraction of a millisecond have been detected (see Shaefer & Walker 1999). The extremely short timescales we observe demand large Lorentz factors, and the fact that the spikes at early and late times of the prompt emission have similar timescales (i.e. their duration does not increase) are major proofs against external shocks (see below) causing the prompt emission of GRBs (Fenimore, Ramirez–Ruiz & Wu 1999).

Spectra of the prompt emission — The spectra of GRBs are very hard, with a peak (in a $`E`$$`EF_E`$ plot) at an energy $`E_{peak}`$ of a few hundreds keV. Some bursts have been detected at very large $`\gamma `$–rays energies ($`>`$ 100 MeV) by the EGRET instrument (see the review by Fishman & Meegan 1995, and references therein).

The GRB–Supernova connection — GRB 030329 is certainly associated with the supernova 2003dh (see e.g. Stanek et al. 2003). This burst, exceptionally bright because close by ($`z`$0.17), will probably be a Rosetta stone for GRB science. We now have quite a secure confidence that the progenitors of GRBs are massive stars, most likely exloding as SN Ic. What remains to do is to find if there is a lag between the SN and the GRB explosion in some bursts, as envisaged by the SupraNova scenario (Vietri & Stella 1998).

Iron lines — For a few bursts, there are evidence for large amounts of X–ray line emitting material around the site of the explosion. The detection of emission features (albeit with relatively low significance) in the afterglow spectra of GRBs some hours after the GRB event poses strong constraints on the properties of the line–emitting material (see Lazzati 2003 for a recent review).

Jet breaks — Assume that the burst is collimated within a cone of semiaperture $`\theta `$. Assume also that, initially, the bulk Lorentz factor of the fireball is such that $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma }<\theta `$. Because of relativistic aberration, the observer (which is within the cone defined by $`\theta `$) will receive light only from a cone of aperture angle $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. This leads to the estimate of how the received flux varies in time. If the fireball is spherical, this will continue as long as the motion is relativistic. But if the fireball is collimated, there is a time when $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ becomes comparable to $`\theta `$. After this time the observed solid angle will remain constant, and then there will be a change in the slope of the light curve. An achromatic break is predicted (“jet break”), This break allows to estimate $`\theta `$ and then to correct the isotropic values of the energetics of GRBs. Frail et al. (2001) in this way obtain the remarkable result that despite the “isotropic” energy values differ by some orders of magnitude, the corrected values are all very similar and cluster around a value of a few times $`10^{51}`$ erg.

Polarization — GRB 021206 was serendipitously observed by RHESSI (a satellite for solar studies), showing a prompt emission (in the hard X–rays) linearly polarized at the extraordinary level of $`(80\pm 20)`$% (Coburn & Boggs 2003). Polarimetric observations were performed for several afterglows in the optical, finding always a moderate (but non–zero) linear polarization at the 1–3% level (see Covino et al. 2003).

Bulk Lorenz factors — If the source is moving relativistically, then the observed photon energies are blueshifted, and the typical angles (as observed in the lab frame) between photons are smaller, decreasing the probability for them to interact. Bulk Lorentz factors $`\mathrm{\Gamma }>100`$ are required to avoid strong suppression of high energy $`\gamma `$–rays due to photon–photon collisions.

There is a second argument demanding for strong relativistic motion, concerning the very fast observed variability. In fact the size associated with one millisecond is $`R3\times 10^7`$cm, which is much too small to be optically thin. To match the observed timescales with the size at which the fireball becomes transparent ($`R_t10^{13}`$ cm) we need a Doppler contraction of time given approximately by $`ct_{var}R_t(1\beta )`$, yielding $`\mathrm{\Gamma }400`$.

### 3.1 The fireball

If there is a huge release of energy in a small volume, no matter in which form the energy is initially injected, a quasi–thermal equilibrium (at relativistic temperatures) between matter and radiation is reached, with the formation of electron–positron pairs accelerated to bulk relativistic speeds by the high internal pressure. This is a fireball (Cavallo & Rees 1978). See Fig. 2. When the temperature of the radiation (as measured in the comoving frame) drops below $``$50 keV the pairs annihilate faster than the rate at which they are produced. But the presence of even a small amount of barions, corresponding to only $`10^6M_{}`$, makes the fireball opaque to Thomson scattering: the internal radiation thus continues to accelerate the fireball until most of its initial energy has been converted into bulk motion. After this phase the fireball expands at a constant speed and at some point becomes transparent.

If the central engine does not produce a single pulse, but works intermittently, it can produce many shells (i.e. many fireballs) with slightly different Lorentz factors. Late but faster shells can catch up early slower ones, producing shocks which give rise to the observed burst emission. In the meantime, all shells interact with the interstellar medium, and at some point the amount of swept up matter is large enough to decelerate the fireball and produce other radiation which can be identified with the afterglow emission observed at all frequencies.

This is currently the most accepted picture for the burst and afterglow emission, and it is called the internal/external shock scenario (Rees & Mészáros 1992; Rees & Mészáros 1994; Sari & Piran 1997). According to this scenario, the burst emission is due to collisions of pairs of relativistic shells (internal shocks), while the afterglow is generated by the collisionless shocks produced by shells interacting with the interstellar medium (external shocks).

## 4 Internal shocks for blazars

Rees (1978) was the first to propose the internal shocks idea to transport energy from the nucleuos to the outer jet of M87 (a famous AGN). As mentioned above, this idea then became “standard” for GRBs. But it can work equally well, if not better, for blazars. For powerful blazars, in fact, we require that most of the power is not dissipated and transformed into radiation, but kept to feed the huge radio lobes. Internal shocks are not very efficient in transforming bulk into random energies (the shells are both relativistic: it is only the relative kinetic energy that can be dissipated). This is a problem for GRBs, due to the theoretical desire to limit the total energetic amount of GRBs, but it is welcome in the blazar field. Therefore Ghisellini (1999) and Spada et al. (2001) applied these ideas to blazars, finding that the SED and the general behavior of blazars could be well reproduced by this scenario. In addition, one can find a simple explanation of why the jet is dissipationless in its first $`100`$ Schwarzchild radii: this is the minimum distance required by a shell to catch up the previous one.

With respect to GRBs, there is an important difference: in the case of blazars the shell cannot be accelerated, initially, by its internal radiation pressure: this would cause some visible effects on their SED, which are not observed: the shells must be initially cold.

## 5 Matter or magnetically dominated jets?

The internal shock scenario requires the jets to be matter dominated. The role of the Poynting flux, at the scales of the dissipation regions, should be minor. On the other hand Blandford (2003) and Lyutikov & Blandford (2003) propose an alternative scenario both for GRBs and radio loud AGNs, in which the jet is magnetically dominated at all scales. The radiation could be produced, in this case, by reconnection. Since the magnetic field is the dominant jet energy carrier, in this scenario the matter is less important, and the jet could even be made by electron–positron pairs required to produce the radiation we see, with a negligible proton component.

We have seen above that the bolometric luminosity of blazars is often dominated by the high energy peak: if this is due to the inverse Compton process, then the relative importance of the synchrotron component must be minor. Therefore this “Compton dominance” implies a modest role of the magnetic field in the emitting region, to limit the synchrotron emitted power. This conclusion relies on the assumption that the high energy peak of blazars is due to inverse Compton. It could be, instead, again due to the synchrotron process, by ultrarelativistic electrons and positrons, resulting from electromagnetic cascades involving relativistic protons. But in this case the cascading process would result also in an overproduction of X–rays, at the “valley” between the two peaks (see Ghisellini 2003).

For GRBs the issue is much more controversial (and interesting) because of two recent observational results: 1) in some burst the spectrum of the prompt emission can be fitted by a blackbody, at least for the first seconds (Ghirlanda et al. 2003); 2) the prompt emission of GRB 021206 was strongly linearly polarized (Coburn & Boggs 2003). Some blackbody radiation is expected in the standard, hot fireball, scenario: the radiation responsible for the acceleration of the fireball can escape when the fireball becomes transparent, and it can well be blackbody in shape, in close analogy with the fossil cosmic background radiation. But the very large polarization, instead, would point towards a very important, dominant, and very well ordered magnetic field.

## 6 The same engine?

The primary energy source of GBRs and blazars could well be the same. The main store of energy is the spin of the black hole: for a maximally rotating Kerr hole, one can extract the 29% of its total mass–energy, amounting to $`5\times 10^{53}M/M_{}`$ erg. The problem is how to extract this energy sufficiently fast (especially in the case of GRBs). One promising way to extract this energy is the Blandford & Znajek (1977) process, in which the rotational energy of a Kerr black hole can be extracted by a magnetic field surrounding the hole providing a source of power:

$$L_{\mathrm{BZ}}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{51}\left(\frac{a}{m}\right)^2\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{10M_{}}\right)^2\left(\frac{B}{10^{14}\mathrm{G}}\right)^2\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\left(\frac{a}{m}\right)^2(3R_s)^2U_Bc$$
(1)
where $`(a/m)`$ is the specific black hole angular momentum ($`1`$ for maximally rotating black holes), $`R_s`$ is the Schwarzchild radius and $`U_B=B^2/(8\pi )`$. The duration of a typical GRB could be associated to the duration of the accretion process (a few seconds for long bursts). To sustain such large magnetic fields, the torus surrounding them should be very dense, but this is only natural, given the fact that it is the core of the progenitor star not yet collapsed into the hole.

Even if this mechanism is purely magnetic, suggesting that the shells are born “cold” also in GRBs, it is not clear if the shell can remain cold: the shell could be initially purely magnetic and cold, but soon a fraction of the transported energy could be converted into hot pairs and trapped radiation, forming a classical hot fireball. On the other hand, for blazars, we do have observational contraints suggesting that this does not occur, but we also have other convincing evidence that the shells in blazars have magnetic fields below equipartition. The situation is rather puzzling, and this is an open issue.

One should also consider that short GRBs could be powered by the same basic mechanism even if their progenitors are two merging neutron stars (with the possible help of $`10^{51}`$ ergs in neutrinos).

## 7 CONCLUSIONS

GRBs last for tens of thousands of dynamical times, and are not single explosions, as supernovae, even if the association between GRBs and supernovae is now certain. It is very likely that they are collimated, and their radiation is certainly beamed. Their power can exceed $`10^{50}`$ erg s-1 in $`\gamma `$–rays even accounting for collimation, and the total emitted energy is of the order of $`10^{52}`$ ergs. Being so luminosus, albeit for a short time, they are the best torchlights we have to illuminate the far universe. Since they are associated with massive stars, there is the hope to study, through them, Pop III stars and the re–ionization phases of the universe, at redshifts as large as 15–20. The basic physics of GRBs may be similar to the physics of relativistic jets in general, and therefore share many aspects with blazars, even if they are obviously more extreme. For both classes of sources we may see, at action, the more efficient engine that nature invented to produce radiation, more efficient than accretion. That this is the case is already clear considering those blazars that although having powerful jets, do not show any sign of thermal emission coming from accretion, such as lineless BL Lacs. But that jets can be orders of magnitude more powerful than accretion becomes dramatically evident with GRBs.


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# Singularity structure in mean curvature flow of mean convex sets

(Date: October 15, 2003)

## Abstract.

In this note we announce results on the mean curvature flow of mean convex sets in 3-dimensions. Loosely speaking, our results justify the naive picture of mean curvature flow where the only singularities are neck pinches, and components which collapse to asymptotically round spheres.

THC was supported by NSF grant DMS 0104453.  BK was supported by NSF grant DMS-0204506.

In this note we announce results on the mean curvature flow of mean convex sets; all the statements below have natural generalizations to the setting of Riemannian $`3`$-manifolds, but for the sake of simplicity we will primarily discuss subsets of $`^3`$ here. Loosely speaking, our results justify the naive picture of mean curvature flow where the only singularities are neck pinches, and components which collapse to asymptotically round spheres. Recall that a one-parameter family of smooth hypersurfaces $`\{M_t\}^{n+1}`$ flows by mean curvature if

(1)
$$z_t=𝐇(z)=\mathrm{\Delta }_{M_t}z,$$

where $`z=(z_1,\mathrm{},z_{n+1})`$ are coordinates on $`^{n+1}`$ and $`𝐇=H𝐧`$ is the mean curvature vector. The papers \[ES91\] and \[CGG91\] defined a level set flow for any closed subset $`K`$ of $`^n`$. This is a $`1`$-parameter family of closed sets $`K_t^n`$ with $`K_0=K`$ (when $`K`$ is a domain bounded by a smooth compact hypersurface then the evolution of $`K`$ for a short time interval coincides with the classical mean curvature evolution). Following \[Whi00\], we say that a compact subset $`K^n`$ is mean convex if $`K_t\mathrm{Int}(K)`$ for all $`t>0`$. In this case there is also an associated Brakke flow $`:tM_t`$ of rectifiable varifolds \[Bra78, Ilm94, Whi00\], and the pair $`(,𝒦)`$, where

$$𝒦:=\underset{t0}{}K_t\times \{t\}^n\times $$

is called a mean-convex flow, \[Whi03\]. The fundamental papers \[Whi00, Whi03\] developed a far-reaching partial regularity theory for mean curvature flow of mean convex subsets of $`^n`$. Our results build on \[Whi00, Whi03\], giving finer understanding of the singularities in the $`3`$-dimensional case. Recall that the main result of \[Whi00\] asserts that the space time singular set of the region swept out by a mean–convex set in $`^{n+1}`$ has parabolic Hausdorff dimension at most $`(n1)`$, and \[Whi03\] proved a structure theorem for blow–ups of mean–convex flows; cf. also \[HS99b, HS99a\]. We expect that the more refined description of singularities given here will open the way for applications of mean convex flow to geometric and/or topological problems involving mean convex surfaces.

When $`(,𝒦)`$ is a mean convex flow in $`^3`$, then for almost every time $`t`$ the time slice $`K_t`$ is a domain with smooth boundary, \[Whi00, Corollary to Theorem 1.1\]. Our first result shows that the high curvature portion of such smooth time slices has standard local geometry:

###### Theorem 2.

For all $`ϵ>0`$ there is a number $`h_0=h_0(ϵ)`$ with the following property. If $`(,𝒦)`$ is a mean convex flow in $`^3`$ and $`K_t`$ is a regular time slice of $`𝒦`$ for some $`t>0`$, then there is a decomposition $`K_t=G_tB_t`$, such that

* For all $`xG_t`$, and after rescaling by the factor $`\frac{h_0}{d(x,K)}`$ the pointed subset $`(K_t,x)`$ is $`ϵ`$-close to some pointed half-space $`(P,p)`$ in the pointed $`C^{\frac{1}{ϵ}}`$-topology.
* Each component of $`B_t`$ is diffeomorphic to the $`3`$-ball or a solid torus, and for all $`xK_tB_t`$, the pointed subset $`(K_t,x)`$ becomes, after rescaling by the factor $`H(x)`$, $`ϵ`$-close to a pointed convex model subset $`(V,v)`$ in the pointed $`C^{\frac{1}{ϵ}}`$-topology. Here $`V^3`$ is a convex set whose tangent cone at infinity is either a point, a line, or a ray, and $`V`$ looks like a round cylinder near infinity, in the following sense: for every $`\delta >0`$ there is a compact set $`KV`$, such that for every $`v^{}V`$ lying outside $`K`$, if we rescale $`V`$ by $`H(v^{})`$, the resulting pointed subset $`(V,v^{})`$ is $`\delta `$-close to a round cylinder in the pointed $`C^{\frac{1}{\delta }}`$-topology.

Note that the bounds on the geometry deteriorate as one approaches $`K`$; this is by necessity since no regularity condition has been imposed on $`K`$. If $`K`$ happens to be smooth, then standard estimates for smooth mean curvature flow control the geometry of $`K_t`$ when $`t\sqrt{r}`$, where $`r`$ is the normal injectivity radius of $`K`$. Theorem 2 may be compared with the recent work of Huisken-Sinestrari \[HS\], where a similar geometric description was obtained for mean curvature flow of smooth hypersurfaces in $`^n`$ where the sum of the first two principal curvatures is positive. The results in \[Per02, sections 11, 12\] are also in a similar spirit. Note that their results only apply to the evolution prior to the formation of the first singularity, whereas our results, like those in \[Whi00, Whi03\], apply even after the formation of a singularity. (In fact, the methods yield a decomposition of arbitrary time slices, which we omit for the sake of simplicity.)

It follows from the strong maximum principle and compactness that the sets $`K_t`$ for $`t0`$ are disjoint, and define a “singular foliation” of the original set $`K`$. Our next theorem proves Hölder regularity of the singular set of the foliation $`K_t`$.

###### Theorem 3.

The foliation defined by the sets $`K_t`$ is smooth on the complement of a closed subset $`SK`$ which satisfies the following Reifenberg-type condition: for all $`ϵ>0`$ there is an $`r_0=r_0(ϵ)`$ such that if $`r<r_0`$ and $`xS`$, then there is a line $`A^3`$ such that $`SB(x,r)`$ is contained in the tubular neighborhood $`N_{ϵr}(A)`$. In particular, $`S`$ lies in a $`1`$-dimensional topological submanifold $`\gamma K`$ which admits a $`C^\alpha `$-biHölder parametrization for all $`\alpha <1`$. Furthermore, the mean curvature defines a proper function on $`KS`$.

After passing through a singularity the topological type of a surface flowing by mean curvature can change. In \[Whi95\] White proved some results comparing the homology of the surface before and after such a singularity. Our next theorem shows that the region between two regular time slices is obtained from the earlier time slice by attaching $`2`$ and $`3`$–handles. Recall that attaching a $`k`$–handle to the boundary of an $`n`$-manifold $`N`$ is essentially just the process of attaching a fattened-up $`k`$–disk to $`N`$ along the $`(k1)`$–sphere, i.e. one glues $`D^k\times D^{nk}`$ to $`N`$ along $`D^k\times D^{nk}`$.

###### Theorem 4.

If $`0t<t^{}`$ and $`K_t,K_t^{}`$ are regular time slices, then $`K_t\mathrm{Int}(K_t^{})`$ is a compact $`3`$-manifold with boundary which may be obtained from $`K_t`$ by attaching $`k`$-handles for $`k=2,3`$.

Our final theorem deals with mean convex flow in a general $`3`$-manifold, where the flow may converge as time tends to infinity to a set $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$ with nonempty interior.

###### Theorem 5.

Let $`M`$ be a compact Riemannian $`3`$-manifold, and $`KM`$ a mean convex subset with smooth boundary. Then as $`t\mathrm{}`$, the intersection of the sets $`K_t`$ converges to a (possibly empty) domain $`K_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{Int}(K)M`$, where each boundary component of $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$ is a smooth, weakly stable minimal surface, and $`\mathrm{genus}(K_{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{genus}(K)`$. Furthermore, any compact minimal surface in $`K\mathrm{Int}(K_{\mathrm{}})`$ is contained in $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$; in particular $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$ is homologically minimizing in the domain $`K\mathrm{Int}(K_{\mathrm{}})`$.


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# First-principles extrapolation method for accurate CO adsorption energies on metal surfaces

## I Introduction

The chemisorption of carbon monoxide on transition metal surfaces is regarded as a prototypical system for the study of molecule-surface interactions and has been intensely studied theoretically and experimentally Ge et al. (2000). For first-principles theoretical studies, density functional theory (DFT) with the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) to the exchange-correlation functional has emerged as the method of choice, and DFT-GGA studies have significantly advanced understanding of surface phenomena Gross (2003); Greeley et al. (2002).

Despite these successes, two of the most basic properties of CO-metal surface interactions – the chemisorption energy and the preferred adsorption site, cannot be reliably predicted by DFT calculations. Theoretical CO chemisorption energies obtained by the widely used PW91 Perdew et al. (1992) and PBE Perdew et al. (1996) functionals are significantly higher than experimental values, sometimes by as much as 0.4 eV Hammer et al. (1999) (30$`\%`$). The RPBE functional Hammer et al. (1999) does improve the adsorption energetics, but at the expense of lower accuracy in metal lattice constants and a severe underestimation of surface energies. Even more importantly, neither PBE nor RPBE calculations can correctly predict the relative energetics of the high symmetry sites, favoring the more coordinated bridge and hollow sites over the top site, and resulting in a wrong site preference in a number of systems. This was first discussed by Feibelman et al. Feibelman et al. (2001) where a variety of DFT-GGA methodologies and codes predicted adsorption at the fcc or hcp hollow site to be preferred over the experimentally preferred top site adsorption on the Pt(111) surface at low coverage. Since then this “puzzle” has been addressed Grinberg et al. (2002); Olsen et al. (2003); Gil et al. (2003); Kresse et al. (2003) and the DFT-GGA inaccuracy traced to the incorrect description of CO electronic structure and bond-breaking.

Grinberg et al. showed that the inaccuracy in site preference was due to the poor treatment of CO bond breaking by GGA functionals. Analyzing the CO electronic structure, Gil et al. found that PBE and B3LYP Becke (1993); Lee et al. (1988) functionals place the unfilled CO 2$`\pi `$* orbital too low in energy. This makes it too close in energy to the metal $`d`$-band, which results in an unrealistic strengthening of the 2$`\pi `$\*- $`d`$-band bonding interaction. More recently, Kresse and co-workers Kresse et al. (2003) used DFT calculations of varying accuracy and showed that a linear relationship exists between the difference of top and hollow site chemisorption energies for CO on Pt(111) and the gas-phase energy of the CO 2$`\pi `$* orbital.

By using a GGA + U type functional, Kresse et al. Kresse et al. (2003) were able to adjust the energetic position of the gas-phase CO 2$`\pi `$* orbital, restoring the correct prediction that top site adsorption is preferred on Pt(111). However, the “correct” value of U is not known a priori. Furthermore, they studied adsorption on Pt(111) and did not address CO on other metal surfaces. In this paper, we demonstrate that a linear relationship exists between the CO chemisorption energy and the CO singlet-triplet excitation energy for the top, bridge and hollow sites on a variety of metal surfaces. Unlike the energetic position of the 2$`\pi `$* orbital, the CO singlet-triplet excitation energy is rigorously well-defined and is accurately computed by coupled-cluster Zeimen et al. (2003) and configuration interaction (CI) quantum chemical calculations Talbi and Chandler (2000). Extrapolation of $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ values to the correct CO singlet-triplet excitation energy relies only on first-principles calculations, and yields chemisorption and site-preference energies in excellent agreement with experiment for all systems studied.

## II  Methodology

Calculations are carried out using the PBE GGA exchange-correlation functional Perdew et al. (1996) and norm-conserving optimized pseudopotentials Rappe et al. (1990) with the designed nonlocal method Ramer and Rappe (1999) for metals. All pseudopotentials were constructed using the OPIUM pseudopotential package Opi . CO chemisorption is modeled at 1/4 monolayer coverage on five layer slabs, separated by vacuum, with allowed relaxation in the top two layers. All calculations are done, and tested to be converged, using a $`4\times 4\times 1`$ grid of Monkhorst-Pack $`k`$-points Monkhorst and Pack (1976). The Kohn-Sham orbitals are expanded in a plane-wave basis set truncated at either 81 or 50 Ry, the higher cutoff being required in calculations using C and O pseudopotentials with small real-space cutoffs. We calculate the chemisorption energy for CO adsorbed on the (111) and (100) surfaces of Pt, Rh, Pd, and Cu, in three high symmetry sites: top, bridge, and hollow. On the (111) surfaces, adsorption at the fcc hollow site is not reported, since it is well known that differences between calculated fcc and hcp hollow site adsorption are negligible Koper et al. (2000); Loffreda et al. (1999).

We repeat these calculations using different sets of C and O pseudopotentials described in Table I. We use three sets of C and O pseudopotentials to calculate $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ at each site on each surface. To evaluate whether three data points are adequate to describe trends in the chemisorption energies, we expand the number of C and O pseudopotential sets to five, and repeat the calculations for the hollow site on Pt(111). The slope for $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ versus $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ is unchanged on going from three points to five, as is the goodness of fit. Based on this, the remainder of our results use the first three pseudopotential sets.

## III  Results

For CO on Pt(111), our calculations show a linear relationship between $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{hcp}}`$ and CO $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ excitation energy (Figure 1), similar to the linear relationship between CO/Pt(111) $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{top}\mathrm{fcc}}`$ site preference energy and the energy of the CO 2$`\pi `$* for the Pt(111) adsorption observed by Kresse and coworkers Kresse et al. (2003). A linear fit also describes well the behavior of chemisorption energies on the seven other substrates included in the present work. Since the CO triplet state is produced by an excitation of an electron from the 5$`\sigma `$ orbital to the 2$`\pi `$* orbital, the singlet-triplet excitation energy is closely related to the 5$`\sigma `$-2$`\pi `$* gap and to the position of the 2$`\pi `$* orbital. This gives rise to a similar linear dependence of $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ on the energy of CO 2$`\pi `$* orbital and on $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$.

Coupled-cluster Zeimen et al. (2003) and CI Talbi and Chandler (2000) quantum chemical calculations accurately reproduce the experimental $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ of 6.095 eV Herzberg (1966). On the other hand, regardless of the pseudopotential set, our DFT-GGA calculations always predict a $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ that is too small. The correct chemisorption energy $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{corr}}`$ can be obtained by using the relationship between $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ and extrapolating to the CI $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ value:

$`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{corr}}=E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}+(\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{CI}}\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}){\displaystyle \frac{\delta E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}}{\delta \mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}}},`$ (1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{CI}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ are respectively the CI and GGA CO singlet-triplet excitation energies, and $`\delta E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ / $`\delta \mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ is the slope of the fit of $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ versus $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$.

A universal feature of the corrected chemisorption energies in Table II is that they all indicate weaker chemisorption than the corresponding uncorrected values, with the $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{corr}}`$ values for the preferred site demonstrating much better agreement with experimentally determined adsorption energies. For example, the $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ for the experimentally seen CO/Pd(111) hollow site is 1.96 eV, as compared to 1.47-1.53 eV obtained by temperature programmed desorption (TPD) measurements Conrad et al. (1974). This rather large 0.46 eV error is eliminated by the use of the extrapolation, with $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{corr}}`$ of 1.60 eV, in very close agreement with experimental results. For the experimentally observed top site on Cu(111) the results are less dramatic but still noticeable, with $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ of 0.746 eV changed to $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{corr}}`$ of 0.621 eV in better agreement with the experimental value of 0.49 eV Kirstein et al. (1986). Overall, comparison of PBE and corrected results shows an improvement from 0.38 eV (30$`\%`$) average overestimation for the PBE functional to 0.16 eV (13$`\%`$) average error for our corrected results.

Examination of the data in Table II shows that there is a strong correlation between the magnitude of the correction and the chemisorption site. This is due to the different strengths of the metal-CO interactions in different local geometries. While the chemisorption bond is formed through both $`\sigma `$ donation and $`\pi `$* back-donation, the contribution of $`\pi `$* back-donation to the adsorption bonding in the systems considered here is dominant because the fillings of the late transition metals studied here are greater than half Hammer et al. (1996). The back-donation mechanism is strongly enhanced by going from top site to polycoordinated adsorption sites Illas et al. (1995); Koper et al. (2000); Kresse et al. (2003); Blyholder (1964). Accordingly, the incorrect DFT-GGA $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ (or the incorrect placement of the 2$`\pi `$* orbital) will require the smallest correction for $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ of the top site, followed by the bridge site, the three-fold hcp hollow site on the (111) surfaces and the four-fold hollow on the (100) surfaces. This ranking is evident in the tabulated results. In the chemical language, the CO bond weakening is smallest for the top site and largest for the four-fold hollow site.

The DFT-GGA errors in the prediction of the preferred site are a direct outcome of the unequal treatment of the CO bond weakening at the top and hollow sites due to the unrealistically small $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}`$ and low 2$`\pi `$* energy. Using our first-principles extrapolation to eliminate the CO bond weakening errors, our corrected DFT results give the highest value of $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{corr}}`$ for the experimentally observed sites in all cases. For Pt(111), our raw DFT data show an incorrect site preference with an energy of 0.076 eV. The corrected energies agree with experimental site preference Ertl et al. (1977); Steining et al. (1982); Yeo et al. (1996) with an energy difference of 0.163 eV. Likewise, our raw DFT data for Rh(111) is disparate with experimental site preference Peterlinz et al. (1991); Hopstaken and Niemantsverdriet (2000) while our corrected energies are in agreement. For Cu(111) the use of the correction gives the experimental site preference Hollins and Pritchard (1979); Kirstein et al. (1986), though the corrected DFT results predict small ($``$ 0.1 eV) differences between the top, bridge and hollow sites. Both the raw DFT and the corrected results for Pd(111) agree with the site preference observed by experiment Rose et al. (2002); Guo and Jr. (1989); Conrad et al. (1974). Our corrected results for the (100) surfaces agree with experimentally observed preferred adsorption sites for Pt Curulla et al. (2000); Thiel et al. (1983); Yeo et al. (1997), Rh Kose et al. (1999); Medvedev et al. (1997), Pd Yeo et al. (1997); Tracy and Palmberg (1969), and Cu Tracy (1972); Thruong et al. (1992).

A less exact but simpler correction can be extracted from our data and applied to any CO/metal surface system. The data in Table II show that for any given site the $`\delta E_{\mathrm{chem}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ / $`\delta \mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{GGA}}`$ values and the consequent correction energy are fairly constant with scatter of about 0.1 eV across a range of systems.

As discussed above, the similarities for the same site and the differences among the sites are consequences of the different degrees of CO bond weakening. The degree of CO bond weakening can be estimated from the frequency shift of adsorbed CO relative to the gas phase CO molecule, which can be easily calculated for any system. Then the frequency can be compared to those of top (typically 2000-2100 cm-1), bridge (1850-1950 cm-1), hcp (1750-1800 cm-1) or four-fold hollow (1600-1700 cm-1) sites and a corresponding correction applied.

For example, for CO adsorption on Ni(111), DFT-GGA calculations with PBE or PW91 functionals find the preferred site to be hcp or fcc Eichler (2003), in agreement with experimental results Davis et al. (1996). However, the $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ are in 1.9-2.0 eV range, in contrast to experimental $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ of 1.12-1.55 eV. Since the hollow site CO/Ni(111) stretch frequency of 1800 cm-1 Eichler (2003) is similar to the 1830 cm-1 frequency for CO on Pd(111) hollow site Loffreda et al. (1999), we expect the $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ error to be similar, and the corrected value of $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ is about 1.55 eV, in much better agreement with experimental results. A graphical representation of the suggested correction to $`E_{\mathrm{chem}}`$ as a function of CO stretch frequency is given in Figure 2.

## IV  Conclusion

We have shown that the chemisorption energies of CO adsorbed on metal surfaces depend linearly on gas-phase CO singlet-triplet splitting. The difference between the high level quantum chemistry coupled-cluster/CI and DFT-GGA singlet-triplet excitation energies can then be used to extrapolate to chemisorption energies with the CO error removed. The corrected values are in good agreement with experimental results. The correction also eliminates the GGA errors in site preference. We find a strong correlation between the amount of CO bond breaking and the correction magnitude. This suggests that an estimate of the GGA error due to the incorrect description of CO electronic structure can be readily obtained through the frequency shift of adsorbed CO at any site on a metal surface. The demonstrated method should be applicable to various adsorption systems where the charge transfer responsible for chemisorption is sensitive to the adsorbate electronic structure.

## V  Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Materiel Command, USAF, under grant number F49620–00–1–0170, and the NSF MRSEC Program, under Grant DMR00-79909. AMR acknowledges the support of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Computational support was provided by the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the High-Performance Computing Modernization Office of the Department of Defense.


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# Spatially resolved X-ray emission of EQ Pegasi

## 1 Introduction

X-ray observations with the Einstein Observatory and ROSAT have shown the ubiquitous occurrence of coronae around most classes of stars. ROSAT studies of volume-limited complete samples of cool stars in the immediate solar neighborhood have shown coronal formation around late-type cool dwarf stars with outer convection zones to be universal; all stars investigated with sufficient sensitivity were found to be surrounded by X-ray emitting coronae (Schmitt et al., 1995; Schmitt & Liefke, 2003). Interestingly, fully convective M dwarfs have also been found to be very active with frequent flares.

EQ Peg is a nearby (6.25 pc) visual binary (period $`180`$ yr, separation 5.2″) consisting of two M dwarfs of spectral type M3.5 and M4.5. It was first observed photoelectrically to flare by Roques (1954), and Owen et al. (1972) found both components of the system to be flare stars.

EQ Peg has been observed at radio, optical, EUV, and X-ray wavelengths. Observations in the optical focused on the flare nature of EQ Peg and marked emission line variability during photometric quiescence was found (Bopp, 1974) as well as frequent optical flares on both components (Rodonò, 1978). A VLA map of EQ Peg at 6 cm was presented by Topka & Marsh (1982). They resolved both components and interpreted the radio emission as “quiescent” since they found it unlikely that both components flared at the same time. The radio emission was confined to each component and Topka & Marsh (1982) concluded that radio production mechanisms do not depend on binary interaction (which is plausible due to the separation of $`25`$ AU).

EQ Peg was observed by all major previous imaging X-ray missions and again found to flare frequently. EQ Peg was observed with the Einstein Observatory (Vaiana et al., 1981) and is contained in the ESS (Einstein Slew Survey) (Elvis et al., 1992). EXOSAT detected an intense long duration flare during a coordinated observation with the VLA (Pallavicini et al., 1986); a detailed modelling of these flares and the underlying physical properties is presented by Polotto et al. (1988). EQ Peg was also detected in the ROSAT all-sky survey (Hünsch et al., 1999) and rapid flaring was simultaneously observed at optical and X-ray wavelength with MEKASPEC and ROSAT (Katsova et al., 2002), where the source brightened in X-rays by a factor of $``$ 15. A coordinated VLA, optical, EUVE, and RXTE monitoring of EQ Peg was carried out by Gagné et al. (1998). They found a classic stellar flare with a rapid impulsive phase (radio burst) followed by rapid chromospheric heating and cooling (U-band) and more gradual coronal cooling (X-ray and extreme-UV). In addition they found atypical flares with either highly polarized emission with no counterparts at shorter wavelengths or moderately polarized flares that often have shorter-wavelength counterparts.

EQ Peg was also observed with XMM-Newton. In Sect. 2 we describe the observations and the methods used for data analysis. Here we focus on the data from the EPIC instruments in order to obtain spatial and temporal information on the two components of EQ Peg. In Sect. 3 we present the results followed by a summary and discussion in Sect. 4.

## 2 Observation and data analysis

EQ Peg A/B (V=10.32 mag/12.4 mag) was observed on 2000 July 9 (MJD=51734) with XMM-Newton. The 15 ksec observation of EQ Peg (see Tab. 1) provided useful data in all EPIC (European Photon Imaging Camera) detectors. The EPIC instrument consists of three CCD cameras with two different types of CCD design, resp. two MOS (Metal Oxide Semi-conductor CCDs) and one PN (pn CCDs), providing imaging and spectroscopy. The EPIC cameras offer the possibility to perform extremely sensitive imaging observations over the telescope’s field of view of 30 $`\mathrm{}`$ and in the energy range from 0.15 to 15 keV with good angular and moderate spectral resolution. A detailed description of the XMM instruments can be found in Ehle et al. (2003). All EPIC instruments (MOS/PN) operated in the full frame mode with the thick filter inserted. Unless otherwise indicated we used for our purposes the full energy bandpass of the EPIC instruments, resp. 0.15 keV to 12.0/15.0 keV.

The data were reduced with the standard XMM-Newton Science Analysis System (SAS) software, version 5.4.1. Light curves and images were produced with standard SAS tools and standard selection criteria were applied for filtering the data. In Fig. 1 we show the image obtained with the MOS1 detector. The image looks elongated and it is reasonable to assume the elongation is due to emission from both components of EQ Peg. The image elongation can be seen clearly in MOS1, but not in MOS2 and PN due to the triangular shape of the point spread function (PSF) for MOS2 and the bigger pixel size in PN.

For a quantitative analysis of the MOS1 image we developed a fitting procedure applicable to the measured event distribution in order to confirm the detection of the two components of EQ Peg and to determine accurate source positions and count rates. For this procedure we optimize a set of parameters describing the modelled event distribution on the sky plane. The modelled event distribution is constructed on the basis of the PSF (Kirsch, 2002), which is composed of a King component plus background

$$\mathrm{PSF}=\frac{A}{(1+(\frac{r}{r_c})^2)^\alpha }+\mathrm{BKG}$$
(1)
with the core radius $`r_c`$, the slope $`\alpha `$ (model parameters), the distance to the peak position $`r`$, and the amplitude $`A`$ (source parameters). The background flux BKG was determined from source free regions in the detector and is kept as a fixed model parameter. We place two such King components near the positions of the two sources and apply an optimization algorithm seeking best-fit values for the amplitudes $`A_1`$ and $`A_2`$ and the positions $`r_1=(x_1,y_1)`$ and $`r_2=(x_2,y_2)`$ of each component. We thus determine the model counts in the spatial bin $`(i,j)`$

$$𝐧_{𝐢,𝐣}=\frac{A_1}{(1+(\frac{r_1r_{i,j}}{r_c})^2)^\alpha }+\frac{A_2}{(1+(\frac{r_2r_{i,j}}{r_c})^2)^\alpha }+\mathrm{BKG}$$
(2)
and apply Powell’s algorithm (Press et al., 1999), a robust multi-dimensional minimizing routine, in order to minimize the likelihood function

$$=2\underset{i,j}{}\mathrm{log}(𝐧_{i,j}𝐜_{i,j}𝐧_{i,j})$$
(3)
with the measured counts $`𝐜_{i,j}`$ and model counts $`𝐧_{i,j}`$. The model counts $`𝐧_{i,j}`$ are constrained to conserve the total number of counts, i.e., $`_{i,j}𝐧_{i,j}=_{i,j}𝐜_{i,j}`$.

The mean PSF-parameters ($`r_c`$ and $`\alpha `$) as determined by in-flight calibration (Ghizzardi, 2001) did not lead to good fit results for our EQ Peg data. It turned out that especially for the value of the core radius ($`r_c`$) binning and pile-up effects have to be considered, while the variation of the slope $`\alpha `$ is only moderate. In order to find a better representation for the shape of the PSF we carried out a parameter study for our data from EQ Peg and for XMM-Newton observations of single point sources, e.g., $`ϵ`$ Eri with a comparable detector configuration and pile-up level. From this study we found a slope of $`\alpha =1.45`$, which agrees with the calibration value, and a value for the core radius of $`r_c=4.45`$, i.e., a reduction of $`20\%`$, to be better suited to model our data.

With the redetermined PSF parameters we modelled the event distribution. In Fig. 2 we show a one-dimensional representation of our fit results for the EQ Peg observation. For this purpose we integrated along the declination axis, which almost matches the main axis of the EQ Peg system and binned the data into a histogram. As can be seen in Fig. 2, the model describes the data very well.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Determination of exact source positions

A first inspection of Fig. 1 suggests the presence of two sources. Since the angular resolution of the MOS1 detector is of the same order as the separation of the two components of EQ Peg ($`5\mathrm{}`$), it is clear that we are operating at the limit of the spatial resolving power of the MOS1 detector. We applied our PSF algorithm to the EQ Peg dataset to determine precise source positions. We use the MOS1 data from a 50x50 $`\mathrm{}`$ field centered on the position of the EQ Peg system. The calculated source positions as listed in Table 2 agree well within the errors with the optical positions taken from literature (Perryman et al., 1997). Here proper motion corrections were not applied since they are small because the observation took place in July 2000. We therefore conclude that we indeed identified the two X-ray sources with the optical counterparts.

The algorithm was also used to determine the absolute number of counts per source and the count ratio of the sources. EQ Peg A was on average a factor of $`3.5`$ brighter than EQ Peg B during the total observation.

### 3.2 Identification of flare activity

From the image obtained with MOS1 the two components of EQ Peg can be separated. In Fig. 3 we plot the light curves for the EQ Peg system as observed with the different EPIC detectors. Inspection of the total light curves in Fig. 3 shows that the EQ Peg system stayed more or less quiet during the first 8 ksec, afterwards a rise in count rate is detected in all three detectors. We therefore divided the data set into two parts separated at t=7.86 ksec where we consider the first part the quiescent phase and the second part the flaring phase.

In Fig. 4 we display the event distributions of these two subsets; the histograms were created in the same way as in Fig. 2 and are corrected for the different integration times. Here EQ Peg A is the X-ray brighter component on the right, EQ Peg B corresponds to the weaker component on the left edge of the event-distribution. In the quiescent phase EQ Peg A dominates the emission and the second component is only marginally visible, while during the flaring phase EQ Peg B brightens up and becomes more clearly visible.

The analysis of the X-ray images as carried out for the total observation (Sect. 3.1) can be repeated for the different phases of activity. Application of our PSF algorithm to the two subsets with variation of only the amplitude parameters returned the count rate of EQ Peg A to be a factor $`4`$ higher than for EQ Peg B in the quiescent phase, while in the flaring phase the ratio was $`3`$. The results of the fitting procedure for the EQ Peg observation are summarized in Table 2.

### 3.3 Reconstruction of individual light curves

Having found that the major flaring activity is due to EQ Peg B, we decided to carry out a systematic light curve analysis of both components of the EQ Peg system. As a first approach we extracted two different light curves from the MOS1 data by placing a circular region with 2.5$`\mathrm{}`$ radius around each component, concentrating on the core of the PSF.

In Fig. 5 we show these light curves binned into 7.5 min bins. Again, EQ Peg B is more variable and its count rate rises by a factor of $`2`$ at the peak of the flare while EQ Peg A shows only marginal brightening compared to the quiescent emission level. Clearly, the extraction regions used do contain photon contamination from the respective other component due to the wings of the PSF. Nevertheless, the individual light curves also suggest uncorrelated variability between the A and B components. In particular, the flaring at the end of the observations (e.g, t$`11`$ ksec) seems to originate from the A component.

For a more detailed quantitative treatment we utilize our PSF algorithm in order to reconstruct the individual light curves. We divide the dataset into seven time intervals covering the various phases of activity as shown in the upper panel of Fig. 6. From our PSF algorithm a count ratio for each time interval can be determined and in the bottom panel of Fig. 6 we show the development of this count ratio. While the main flaring activity is located on EQ Peg B (indicated by the decrease of the A/B count ratio after $`5`$ ksec) there is also some activity on EQ Peg A especially during the later phase of the observation.

From these ratios we calculated light curves for each individual component, which are shown in Fig. 7. Although the light curves consist of rather large time bins the main features visible in Fig. 5 are also present, i.e., a flare on EQ Peg B around 10 ksec and the flaring activity on EQ Peg A towards the end of the observation. The rise in count rate associated with the flare activity on both components is nearly equally strong, i.e., $`0.2`$ counts/s, however, the relative change in count rate is much higher on EQ Peg B.

### 3.4 Development of the spectral hardness

In order to quantify eventual changes in the physical conditions accompanied by rising count rates we calculate a spectral hardness ratio for the sum of both components in two energy bands, resp. $`0.20.5`$ keV (soft) and $`1.010.0`$ keV (hard). The hardness ratio was calculated from PN data which were cleared for pile-up effects.

In Fig. 8 we show the spectral hardness ratio (hard/soft) for this observation binned every five minutes vs. the measured count rate. The hardness ratio increases during the times where we also observe increases in count rate. We calculated a linear correlation coefficient and found a correlation probability of 99.9 %. We therefore interpret the simultaneous increase in count rate and hardness of the emission as flare heating of the coronal plasma. When comparing the calculated average hardness ratios during the time intervals defined in Sect. 3.2 as the quiescent phase and the flaring phase we find an increase in hardness by 12$`\pm `$2 % from the quiescent phase into the flaring phase, whereas the increase during individual flares is substantially stronger.

The average X-ray luminosity between 0.2 keV and 10.0 keV was calculated to be $`4.2\times 10^{28}`$ ergs/s from application of spectral models. We compared the X-ray luminosities obtained from a number of different reasonable models and find consistent results. In comparison with previous measurements the energy flux during this observation was $`20\%`$ above the flux obtained with ROSAT (Hünsch et al., 1999) and $`50\%`$ below the values obtained with Einstein (Vaiana et al., 1981) in the respective energy bands.

## 4 Summary and Discussion

Our analysis of EQ Peg is another example of how the high-resolution X-ray telescopes Chandra and XMM-Newton allow to resolve sources down to a unprecedented spatial resolution (for other examples see Stelzer & Burwitz (2003) and Audard et al. (2003)).

With the XMM-Newton observation of the EQ Peg system we were able to separate the two components for the first time in X-rays. Using a PSF model fit procedure we can reconstruct the source positions and show that both components are flaring X-ray emitters. On average, we found the A component brighter by a factor $`3.5`$ for the total observation.

During this observation a series of medium flares was detected. We were able to determine count ratios for EQ Peg A/B for the different phases of activity. During the early (quiescent) phase of the observation the emission is strongly dominated by EQ Peg A, which is a factor of $`45`$ brighter than EQ Peg B. Comparison of the quiescent and active phases made it possible to associate most of the flaring with EQ Peg B, which nearly doubled it’s X-ray brightness during the peak of the flare. The count ratio during the peak of the flare on EQ Peg B dropped to $`2.53`$. We also found evidence for flaring activity on EQ Peg A towards the end of the observation, consistent with previous findings that both stars exhibit flaring behavior (e.g., Rodonò, 1978). In fact, the relative brightening during the flares is much stronger for EQ Peg B, but the absolute increase in flux is comparable for both stars. The energy released by these flares is obviously very similar, although the quiescent emission level is quite different. The flaring X-ray emission of the EQ Peg system shows the typical hardening in the spectral energy distribution as expected for stellar flares.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA).
J.R. and J.-U.N. acknowledge support from DLR under 50OR0105.


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# Composite Fermions and the Fermion-Chern-Simons Theory

## 1 Introduction

In the 23 years since Klaus von KIitzing discovered the integer quantized Hall effect, experiments on quantum Hall systems have produced a myriad of surprising results. To understand these, we have needed to introduce a number of new theoretical tools and concepts. The composite fermion picture, and the related Fermion-Chern-Simons theory have been among the most successful of these tools, particularly for understanding electrons in the lowest Landau level, when it is partially full.. The general approach has been useful for describing both incompressible fractional quantized Hall states and compressible unquantized quantum Hall states.

The composite fermion picture was introduced by Jain in 1989, in the form of trial wavefunctions for the groundstates and quasiparticle excitations in the principal quantized Hall states, such as 1/3, 2/5, 3/7, 4/9, states which have filling fractions of the form $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$, where $`p`$ is an integer. The composite fermion picture correctly predicted the most prominent observed fractional quantized Hall states, and Jain showed that the trial wavefunctions had excellent overlap with the exact wavefunctions for small numbers of particles on a sphere, for the appropriate filling fractions, with, e.g. Coulomb interactions between the electrons.

The Fermion-Chern-Simons (FCS) theory was first applied to Jain’s fractional quantized Hall states by Lopez and Fradkin. It was used by Moore and Read, and Greiter, Wen and Wilczek, to gain insight into possible wavefunctions for observed even-denominator quantized Hall states at $`\nu =5/2`$ in a single layer system, and $`\nu =1/2`$ in certain bilayer systems. The approach was applied to unquantized fractions, such as $`\nu =1/2`$ in single layer systems, by Halperin, Lee and Read , and by Kalmeyer and Zhang . The FCS theory was particularly useful for understanding dynamic properties of the quantum Hall systems, such as linear response functions and transport properties, as well as the dispersion of collective excitations. Similar mathematical methods had been used earlier, before the first applications to quantum Hall systems, by Laughlin and others, in order to explore properties of systems of “anyons”, advanced as a model for high-temperature superconductivity. A Boson-Chern-Simons approach had also been used to develop an analogy between quantized Hall states and superfluidity, and to describe the dynamics of quantized Hall states.

In this article, I shall briefly review the FCS theory and some of its key predictions. I will then say a few word about what is a composite fermion, contrasting the bare FCS particles with the low-energy quasiparticles that emerge from the theory. I shall also discuss some attempts to formulate a Fermi-liquid like description directly in terms of the low-energy quasiparticles, at compressible fractions such as $`\nu =1/2`$. I will not say much about the trial wavefunction approach here, as this will be the subject of Jainendra Jain’s presentation.

## 2 Fermion-Chern-Simons theory.

The FCS approach begins with an exact unitary transformation of the electron problem to a system of “bare‘composite fermions”, which interact with each other via a fictitious gauge field $`𝐚(𝐫)`$, known as the Chern-Simons gauge field, as well as through the usual Coulomb potential. As a next step, one makes a mean-field approximation on the transformed Hamiltonian. Finally, one tries to calculate corrections to the mean field results using perturbation theory methods, such as the Random Phase Approximation, Feynman diagram expansions, etc.

The nature of the Chern-Simons gauge field is that there are an even integer number $`m`$ of flux quanta of the Chern-Simons magnetic field, $`b\times 𝐚`$, attached to each fermion. (By choosing $`m`$ to be an even integer, one preserves the antisymmetry of the wavefunction under interchange of two particles.) For the purpose of this presentation, I will confine myself to the case $`m=2`$. I will also assume that the electron spins are completely aligned by the Zeeman field.

If we make a mean field approximation, (more precisely, a Hartree approximation) to the transformed FCS Hamiltonian, we replace the true Chern-Simons magnetic field $`b`$, which depends on the position of every particle, by its average value $`<b>`$. For a system with a uniform electron density $`n_e`$, in units where the flux quantum is $`2\pi `$, one finds that $`<b>=2\pi mn_e`$ . In the Hartree approximation, one also replaces the Coulomb interaction of the electrons, with each other and with the positive background, by its average value, which is just a constant for a uniform system. Thus the mean field version of the FCS problem describes a collection of non-interacting fermions in a uniform effective magnetic field

$$B_{\mathrm{eff}}=B2m\pi n_e.$$
(1)
Recalling that the Landau-level filling factor for electrons is defined by $`\nu =2\pi n_e/B`$ , we may define an effective filling factor $`p`$ for the composite fermions by $`p=2\pi n_e/B_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. It follows that $`p^1=\nu ^1m`$. For $`m=2`$, we then find that $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$. If $`p`$ is an integer, the mean-field theory for the composite fermions is an integer quantized Hall state with an energy gap, so we may hope that the interacting electron state will also have an energy gap and be incompressible. Of course, the corresponding values of $`\nu `$ are precisely the Jain fractions, which are the most prominant fractional quantized Hall states.

Let us now consider the case where the electron filling factor is $`\nu =1/2`$, so that there are precisely two quanta of magnetic flux for each electron in the system. The external magnetic field is then precisely canceled by the mean Chern-Simons field $`<b>`$, so that the effective magnetic field seen by the composite fermions is $`B_{\mathrm{eff}}=0`$. The mean-field solution in this case is then a filled Fermi sea, with a Fermi wavevector $`k_F=(4\pi n_e)^{1/2}`$, appropriate for a system of spin-aligned fermions in two dimensions. This suggests that the groundstate for the interacting electron system should have no energy gap, and therefore should be compressible. In the presence of scattering due to impurities, we would expect there to be a finite, non-zero value of the electrical resistivity, $`\rho _{xx}`$. (We ignore here interaction-corrections to the resistivity, which are predicted to diverge logarithmically at very low temperatures, but are negligible in practice.) Furthermore, if the theory is correct, we should be able to understand properties of the electron system near $`\nu =1/2`$ by using perturbation theory, starting from the Hartree ground state, and putting in the Coulomb interaction and the fluctuating Chern-Simons gauge field as perturbations. There is reason to hope that this approach will work, even though the mean field solution is not protected by an energy gap, because the filled Fermi sea has a very low density of states for multiple particle-hole excitations with low total energy. (We contrast this with the original electron problem, before the unitary transformation, where the partially full Landau level has an infinitely degenerate ground state before interactions are turned on.) On the other hand, there is no small parameter in the perturbation theory, as the coupling to the fluctuating gauge field is not small. Hence, quantitative predictions are only possible when one can argue that a certain result is correct to all orders in perturbation theory.

For dynamic calculations, the Hartree approximation is not by itself satisfactory. However, reasonable results are obtained if one employs the Random Phase Approximation, or a Time-Dependent Hartree Approximation. Here the fermions respond to a self consistent field which includes, in addition to any external driving potentials, the self-consistent Chern-Simons magnetic field $`\delta B`$ produced by fluctuations in the particle density $`<\delta n>`$, and a Chern-Simons electric field, given by

$$𝐞=2\pi m\widehat{z}\times 𝐣,$$
(2)
where $`𝐣`$ is the induced current density.

The FCS approach has several strengths and weaknesses, compared to the composite fermion trial wavefunction approach. A great strength of the FCS approach is that it can address, analytically, the low energy behavior at compressible filling fractions, such as $`\nu =1/2`$. It can also address the asymptotic behavior of quantized Hall systems *close* to $`\nu =1/2`$; for example, it makes non-trivial predictions for the behavior of the energy gaps and for the low-energy collective modes in fractional quantized Hall states of the form $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$, in the limit $`p\mathrm{}`$. However, the FCS approach is not very good for calculating the absolute value of energy gaps or of the effective mass for quasiparticles at compressible filling factors. These are properties which depend on an accurate description of short distance behavior, that are not readily obtained using the FCS perturbation expansion. As an example, with the FCS approach, it is not apparent that the energy gaps at fractional quantized Hall states are proportional to the strength of the electron-electron interaction, and must vanish if the interaction goes to zero while the electron mass is held fixed. In the trial wavefunction approach, this property is guaranteed by projection onto the lowest Landau level, so that the kinetic energy is automatically a constant, and the differences in energy levels arise only from the interactions. Of course, accurate evaluations of energies using trial wavefunctions still require complicated numerical calculations and extrapolations to infinite systems.

## 3 Predictions at $`\nu =1/2`$.

Let us summarize some of the interesting predictions of the FCS theory for the case of a compressible fraction, such as $`\nu =1/2`$, at zero temperature, in the absence of disorder. The first prediction is that the system is in fact compressible, i.e., that the energy cost of a small long-wavelength fluctuation in the density is quadratic in the density fluctuation, and independent of the wavelength, if the singular potential energy due to the long-range Coulomb interaction is subtracted. (Strictly speaking, the limit should be taken in which the size of the density fluctuation goes to zero while the wavelength is fixed, and then the wavelength goes to infinity.)

Dynamically, one finds that in the absence of disorder, the longitudinal electrical conductivity vanishes linearly with the wave vector $`q`$ in the limit $`q0`$, with a coefficient that can be calculated analytically. Specifically, at $`\nu =1/2`$, for $`𝐪\widehat{x}`$, one finds

$$\sigma _{xx}(𝐪)=\frac{e^2q}{8\pi \mathrm{}k_F}.$$
(3)
This implies that fluctuations in the electron density relax very slowly at long wavelengths. In the case of long-range Coulomb interactions, the relaxation rate $`\gamma (q)`$ is proportional to $`q^2`$, and is given (in cgs units) by

$$\gamma (q)=\frac{q^2e^2}{4\mathrm{}k_Fϵ},$$
(4)
where $`ϵ`$ is the dielectric constant of the background semiconductor. In the case of short-range interactions, one finds even slower relaxation, $`\gamma (q)q^3`$ for $`q0`$.

The longitudinal conductivity $`\sigma _{xx}(q)`$ is of direct experimental interest, as it is reflected in the attenuation and velocity shift in a surface acoustic wave (SAW) experiment. The wavevector $`q`$ is the wavevector of the SAW, and we use the zero-frequency limit of $`\sigma _{xx}(q)`$, because we are assuming that the sound velocity is smaller that the effective Fermi velocity of the composite fermions. This gives an explanation for the anomaly in SAW propagation at $`\nu =1/2`$ that was first observed by Willett and coworkers in 1990. For an SAW of sufficiently high frequency, such that the wavelength is shorter than the mean-free-path of quasiparticles due to disorder scattering, the conductivity is enhanced at $`\nu =1/2`$, proportional to $`q`$, as predicted by FCS theory for a clean system. By contrast, at lower frequencies, where the SAW wavelength is long compared to the mean-free-path, one sees the ordinary dc conductivity, which shows no anomaly a $`\nu =1/2`$.

## 4 Slightly away from $`\nu =1/2`$.

At $`\nu =1/2`$, the composite fermions see zero effective magnetic field, and travel in straight lines until they are scattered by an impurity. Slightly away from $`\nu =1/2`$, they see a small $`B_{\text{eff}}`$, given by the difference between $`B`$ and the field corresponding to $`\nu =1/2`$. Then the composite fermions will move in circular orbits, with radius

$$R_c^{}=\frac{\mathrm{}k_F}{e|B_{\mathrm{eff}}|}.$$
(5)
The orbit diameter $`2R_c^{}`$ has been measured in geometric resonance experiments with density modulations created by superimposed periodic structures, as well as in SAW experiments, and in magnetic focusing experiments. The results agree well with the theoretical prediction, with measured values of $`2R_c^{}`$ which are as large as $`1\mu `$m. This length is of order 100 times larger than the actual cyclotron radius for the electrons in the lowest Landau level.

In Figure 1, we show results of Willett et al., comparing measurements of the shift in SAW velocity near $`\nu =1/2`$, at a frequency of 8.5 GHz, with predictions of the FCS theory of Halperin, Lee and Read. The theoretical curve is broadened by 1.5% (FWHM) to account for sample inhomogeneities, and there is an adjustment to the overall conductivity scale of the theory. The theory is essentially an RPA calculation of $`\sigma _{xx}(q)`$ as a function of magnetic field. The results are quite different from what one would have obtained if one had ignored the self-consistent Chern-Simons electric field. The minima in the sound velocity occur when $`2R_c^{}`$ is equal to 5/4 times the wavelength of the sound wave, or when the deviation of $`B`$ from the value at $`\nu =1/2`$ is equal to $`3.83\mathrm{}cqk_F/e`$. Thus, the fact that the minima coincide in the theoretical and experimental curves is a confirmation that the Fermi momentum of the composite fermions is the same as that for spin-aligned electrons in zero magnetic field.

Experiments which combine SAW propagation and a static density modulation induced by a superimposed gate array  show additional peculiar features, which have been explained, at least in part, using FCS theory.

The peculiar wavevector-dependent conductivity (3) has implications for experiments in which one tunnels an electron into the center or the edge of a compressible quantum Hall system, and also for drag experiments, where one measures the transresistance in a system of two separated layers, each near $`\nu =1/2`$. The FCS theory has been applied, with some success, to such experiments.

## 5 Beyond RPA.

Other interesting predictions of the FCS theory go beyond the mean field approximation and the RPA. For example, it was found by Halperin, Lee and Read that at $`\nu =1/2`$ the effective mass of the quasiparticles should diverge as the energy approaches the Fermi energy. For unscreened Coulomb interactions this divergence is only logartihmic, and is not a large effect in the range accessible to experiments, but it poses some interesting questions of principle. The divergence in the effective mass does not affect the long-wavelength linear response functions, as it is cancelled by interaction effects in the Fermi liquid theory. Thus the results of Eqs. (3) and (4), which do not involve the quasiparticle effective mass, are expected to remain correct beyond the RPA approximation. The divergent effective mass should be reflected, however, in the energy gaps for the fractional quantized Hall states at $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$, in the limit $`p\mathrm{}`$. For the case of unscreened Coulomb interactions, the prediction is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_p\frac{\pi e^2}{2ϵl_0}\frac{1}{(2p+1)[\mathrm{ln}(2p+1)+C^{}]},$$
(6)
where $`l_0`$ is the magnetic length, and $`C^{}`$ is a constant that depends on the short-range part of the electron-electron interaction and cannot be calculated within the FCS theory. However, it is believed that the coefficient of the logarithmic term in the denominator of Eq. (6) is exact, even though there is no small parameter in the FCS perturbation theory.

In Figure 2, we show results from a recent paper by Morf, d’Ambrumenil and Das Sarma, who have performed calculations of the energy gap for finite systems of up to 18 electrons on a sphere, and have carefully extrapolated to the limit of an infinite system, at filling fractions $`\nu =1/3,2/5,3/7,4/7`$, corresponding to $`p=1,2,3,4`$. They find that with a proper choice of $`C^{}`$, the gaps fit well to Eq. (6), and that the fit is better than would be obtained without the logarithmic correction. However, it is not clear a priori that the asymptotic formula (6) should apply for such small values of $`p`$.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions about the intrinsic energy gaps from existing experiments. In order to compare experiments with theoretical predictions, it has been customary to subtract a large constant $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ from the experimental gaps, in order to account for effects of impurities. This constant varies from sample to sample, but has been generally taken to be independent of the $`p`$, and thus of precise filling fraction. Recently, Morf and d’Ambrumenil  have proposed an alternative correction, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ varying inversely with $`p`$, which seems to give better agreement between theory and experiment. However, there is still no satisfactory basic understanding of the effects of impurities on energy gaps extracted from transport measurements when the corrections to the gaps are large.

## 6 Bare composite fermions and low energy quasiparticles.

There are some important distinctions between the bare composite fermions which enter the FCS theory, and the low energy quasiparticles which emerge from the theory. The bare fermions have charge $`e`$ at all filling fractions. The low-energy quasiparticles have a reduced charge $`e^{}`$, which in the case of the quantized Hall fractions $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$ is given by

$$e^{}=\frac{e}{2p+1}.$$
(7)
At $`\nu =1/2`$, or the limit $`p\mathrm{}`$ this becomes $`e^{}=0`$, but the quasiparticles have an electric dipole moment, $`𝐝`$, related to the quasiparticle momentum $`𝐤`$, by

$$𝐝=el_0^2\widehat{z}\times 𝐤.$$
(8)
It is also known that the quasiparticles at fractional quantized Hall states are not properly fermions, but rather are anyons, with a statistical angle given by $`\theta =\pi (2p1)/(2p+1)`$. At $`\nu =1/2`$, however, the statistical angle becomes $`\theta =\pi `$, corresponding to fermions.

At filling fraction $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$, the effective field seen by a composite fermion is related to the external magnetic field by $`B_{\mathrm{eff}}=B/(2p+1)`$. Thus we see that the cyclotron radius for a quasiparticle of charge $`e^{}`$ given by (7) in the external field $`B`$ is the same as the effective cyclotron radius given by (5), provided one uses the same value of the Fermi momentum $`k_F`$.

As the low-energy quasiparticles at $`\nu =1/2`$ are indeed fermions, it should be possible to construct something like a Landau Fermi liquid theory description directly in terms of low-energy neutral, dipolar quasiparticles, as first proposed by Shankar and Murthy. Various methods for constructing such a description have been explored by several groups of researchers. When done properly, these descriptions all lead to the same predictions as the FCS theory for low energy observable properties, such as the response functions for electrons. However, the Fermi liquid itself has some rather peculiar properties, as emphasized by Stern et al.

One peculiar property of the Fermi liquid at $`\nu =1/2`$ is that energy is unchanged if a constant $`𝐊`$ is added simultaneously to the momentum of every quasiparticle (i.e., the Fermi surface is displaced by $`𝐊`$). Within Landau Fermi liquid theory this is equivalent to assuming a Landau interaction parameter $`F_1=1`$ for the $`l=1`$ angular momentum channel. With an appropriate normalization for $`F_l`$, the energy cost of displacing the Fermi surface by $`𝐊`$ is given by

$$\delta E=\frac{n_eK^2}{2m^{}}(1+F_1),$$
(9)
where $`m^{}`$ is the quasiparticle effective mass.

A second peculiarity of the Fermi liquid description is that the local electron density $`\rho _e(𝐫)`$ is related to the *momentum* density of quasiparticles $`𝐠(𝐫)`$ by

$$\rho _e=l_0^2\times 𝐠.$$
(10)
This relation has a simple interpretation. Comparing it with Eq. (8), we see that the electron charge density is given by the divergence of the polarization density of the dipolar quasiparticles.

The density of quasiparticles is also constrained to be equal to a constant times $`\times 𝐠`$. The equations of motion for the quasiparticles are necessarily consistent with this constraint.

Another way of describing the independence of the energy under a constant momentum displacement is that the neutral quasiparticles have a strong momentum-dependent interaction, which cancels their bare kinetic energy in this situation. There is no Chern-Simons vector potential in this Fermi liquid description, as it has already been eliminated in constructing the neutral quasiparticles.

Murthy and Shankar have calculated many properties of quantum Hall systems using a Hamiltonian approach for describing composite fermions, which begins with the FCS theory, and proceeds through several additional mathematical transformations and additional approximations. The objects described by their Hamiltonian, at $`\nu =1/2`$, are the neutral quasiparticles and high energy oscillator modes, describing inter-Landau-level excitations. Although the correct behavior at low energies is not immediately apparent in the Murthy-Shankar approach, their method does allow them to obtain relatively simple analytic estimates of quantities such as the energy gaps at fractional quantized Hall states, or the energy cost for partial spin polarization of the electrons at $`\nu =1/2`$, which cannot be obtained from the original FCS theory. These estimates generally agree at the level of $`\pm 10\%`$ with results from numerical calculations using trial wavefunctions, which are much more difficult to carry out. The reader is referred to a detailed review article by Murthy and Shankar, which describes their approach.

## 7 Conclusion

As indicated above, the composite fermion picture and the FCS theory have been particularly successful in understanding properties of single layer quantum Hall systems with electrons in the lowest Landau level. For electrons above the second Landau level (i.e., for $`\nu >4`$), the composite fermion picture has not, so far, proven useful. It appears that the system is better described by the ordinary Hartree-Fock theory, where the partially filled Landau level forms inhomogeneous structures such as charge-density waves or crystals. For electrons in the second Landau level the system is more delicate. It appears  that the quantized Hall states observed at $`\nu =5/2`$ and $`\nu =7/2`$ are well-described by the Moore-Read Pfaffian state, which can be understood in the context of FCS theory as a state where a gap is opened at the Fermi surface of composite fermions due to a $`p`$-wave BCS pairing. However, numerical calculations on finite systems indicate that these states are close to an instability, and small changes in the electron-electron interaction at short distances can drive the system into an anisotropic charge-density-wave state similar to those in higher Landau levels. Experimentally, it appears that application of a magnetic field parallel to the electron layer can drive this transition. Away from $`\nu =5/2`$ and $`7/2`$, at other filling fractions in the second Landau level, alternations have been observed in a perpendicular magnetic field, between fractional quantized Hall states consistent with the composite fermion picture, and insulating states suggestive of a straightforward Hartree-Fock state.

The FCS theory has been applied, with some success to bilayer systems in the lowest Landau level, but a proper discussion of bilayer systems is beyond the scope of this article. Other topics omitted from this article, where FCS theory has been applied, include transitions between states with different spin polarizations, effects of disorder on transport properties in compressible states, and transitions between different fractional quantized Hall plateaus in the presence of disorder.

The author has benefited from conversations with many researchers in the course of his work on quantum Hall systems. Special thanks are due to his collaborators in various works most pertinent to this article, particularly Ady Stern, Steve Simon, Felix von Oppen, Rudolf Morf, Nicholas Read, and Patrick Lee. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by NSF grant DMR-02-33773.

FIGURE CAPTIONS

Figure 1. Experimental results and theoretical prediction of the shift in surface acoustic wave velocity, as a function of magnetic field, in a GaAs sample with a two-dimensional electron gas below the surface, near filling fraction $`\nu =1/2`$. The theoretical curve is the fermion-Chern-Simons prediction of Ref. , broadened to account for sample inhomogeneity, with an adjustment to the overall scale of the conductivity. The SAW frequency is 8.5 GHz. From Ref. .

Figure 2. Energy gaps at quantized Hall fractions of the form $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$. Dots are obtained exact calculations on systems of up to 18 electrons on a sphere, extrapolated to infinite system size. The dot-dashed curve is a fit to the form expected for non-interacting composite fermions with a constant effective mass; the solid curve includes the logarithmic correction predicted by FCS theory. Each curve has one adjustable constant, chosen to fit the data point at $`\nu =1/3`$. From Ref. .

Figure 1. B. I. Halperin

Figure 2. B. I. Halperin