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# A new screening function for Coulomb renormalization

## Abstract

We introduce a new screening function which is useful for the few-body Coulomb scattering problem in “screening and renormalization” scheme. The new renormalization phase factor of the screening function is analytically shown. The Yukawa type of the screening potential has been used in several decades, we modify it to make more useful. As a concrete example, we compare the proton-proton scattering phase shifts calculated from these potentials. The numerical results document that high precision calculations of the renormalization are performed by the new screening function.

When one considers the system of few charged particles, one faces, as is well known, serious difficulties in the calculation of scattering processesalt-text . This is caused by the long range nature of the Coulomb potential in coordinate space, or, equivalently, its singularity in momentum space.

In order to overcome these difficulties, we would like to mention two approaches. One approach is a modified time-dependent scattering theorydollard64  and another approach is a “screening and renormalization” method. Many investigations have been done in few-body systems by the latter approach. For example, Alt et. al. alt2002  have calculated three-body scattering with charged particles by the screening and renormalization scheme. Their calculations worked out successfully. However, the screening radius $`R`$ used in their calculation is about 600 fm. At such a large R-value the screened Coulomb potential is no longer smooth requiring a careful treatment and increased computer resource in memory and elapsed time. Therefore, it would be desirable to work with a smaller R-value. The purpose of this letter is to investigate a new screening function different from the one used in Alt et. al. which leads to precise results even at small R-values.

Before we discuss the new screening function, we would like to point out the significance of the renormalization. If one considers a bound state numerical calculations can be performed by the screening method with an appropriately large R-value and the result will be independent of the choice of R. However, for a scattering state the situation is completely different. The limit of solutions achieved with screened Coulomb potentials for increasing R-values will not agree with the solutions for a pure Coulomb potential. The reason lies in the wrong asymptotic boundary conditions going with a screened Coulomb potential. A renomalization method, like the one introduced by Taylor taylor74  is necessary.

Alt et. al. used the Yukawa type screened Coulomb potential with the screening radius $`R`$:

$`V^R(r)=e^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[(r/R)]}{r}}.`$ (1)
Here in this paper we have proton-proton scattering in mind, therefore, $`e`$ represents the charge of the proton. Now we introduce the new screening functions:

$`V_n^R(r)=e^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[(r/R)^n]}{r}}.`$ (2)
Note that eq.(2) reduces to the Yukawa type potential for $`n=1`$ and is also going to a sharply truncated potential for $`n\mathrm{}`$,

$`\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}V_n^R(r)={\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{r}}\theta (Rr),`$ (3)
where $`\theta (r)`$ is the $`\theta `$-function. The pure and the screened Coulomb potentials for $`n`$ = 1 to 5 at $`R`$ = 50 fm are shown in Fig. 1. This figure reveals that with large n there develops a sharper cut-off and the pure Coulomb potential is better represented in the inner region.

Next, we evaluate the phase shift for pp scattering in the state $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$. As a typical NN force we take the Reid Soft Core potentialreid68  in addition to the Coulomb potential. There exists the following relationtaylor74  among various phase shifts, which can be gained by regarding the asymptotic behavior of the wave function:

$`\delta ^C=\delta ^R\sigma _0+\varphi _R+0(1/R)`$ (4)
Here $`\delta ^C`$ is the phase shift to the strong and pure Coulomb potential, $`\delta ^R`$ to the strong and screened Coulomb potential, $`\sigma _0`$ the standard Coulomb phase shift obtained from $`\mathrm{arg}\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+i\eta )`$ and $`\varphi _R`$ the renormalization phase. Further, $`\eta =e^2m/2p`$ is Sommerfeld parameter with $`m`$ the nucleon mass and $`p`$ the relative momentum. According to Taylor the renormalization phase $`\varphi _R(p)`$ is given as

$`\varphi _R(p)`$ $``$ $`\eta {\displaystyle _{(2p)^1}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[(r/R)^n]}{r}}𝑑r`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`\eta {\displaystyle _0^r}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[(r/R)^n]1}{r}}𝑑r\eta \mathrm{ln}(2pr)`$
$`+0(1/R^n)`$
$`=`$ $`\eta \left[\mathrm{ln}(2pR){\displaystyle \frac{\gamma }{n}}\right]+0(1/R^n),`$
where $`\gamma `$ is the Euler number $`(0.5772\mathrm{})`$. The last line in Eq. (5) results using the substitution $`\left(r/R\right)^n=s/R`$. For n=1 this is the result used by Alt et.al.. For $`n\mathrm{}`$ one obtains $`\varphi _R=\eta \mathrm{ln}(2pR)`$, which is the expression related to a sharp cut-off. Note that the definition of $`\varphi _R(p)`$ suffer from the uncertainty of $`0(1/R)`$ in eq. (4)

The phase shifts $`\delta ^C`$, $`\delta ^R`$ and $`\varphi _R`$ are shown in Fig.2. In the evaluation of the phase shifts one has to study the dependencies of the c.m. energy $`E_{cm}`$, the screening radius R and the power n in our new screening function. As a measure for the quality of the new screening function we introduce

$`|\mathrm{\Delta }\delta ||\delta ^C\delta ^R\eta [\gamma /n\mathrm{ln}(2pR)]|`$ (6)
This quantity is plotted in Figs.4-8. In Fig.4 and Fig.4 we show the $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\delta |`$-dependence of $`E_{cm}`$ for $`R`$ = $`50`$ fm and $`500`$ fm, respectively. $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\delta |`$ decreases strongly with $`E_{cm}`$. These figures clearly show that the calculations for $`n2`$ are more precise than for n=1. In view of Fig. 1 we have to conjecture that this is due to the better approach of the pure Coulomb potential by the screened Coulomb potential in the inner region if n is larger than 1.

In Figs. 5 - 6, we illustrate the R-dependence of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\delta |`$ for two fixed $`E_{cm}`$-values of 10 and 100 MeV. Trivially, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\delta |`$ decreases with increasing R but again the error is significantly smaller if n is larger than 1 in comparison to n=1.

Finally Figs. 7 and 8 give the n-dependence of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\delta |`$ for fixed $`E_{cm}`$ and various R’s at $`E_{cm}`$= 10 and 100 MeV, respectively. It is seen that R = 50 fm and n=2 is a good enough choice to perform the calculations.

In summary, we generalized the Yukawa type screening potential adopted by Alt et al. alt2002  to the form given in Eq. (2). Already for n=2 the screened Coulomb potential is closer to the pure Coulomb potential in the inner region. The new expression for the renormalization phase $`\varphi _R`$ is just a bridge between the Yukawa type and sharp cut-off potential. The numerical results document that high precision calculations can be performed by the new screening function for $`n2`$ and a screening radius as small as R=50 fm.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors would like to thank Prof. W. Glöckle for critically reading the manuscript. One of Authors (M.Y.) acknowledges the supports of the Theory Group of Research center for Nuclear Physics in Osaka University.


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# Can Quantum Cryptography Imply Quantum Mechanics?

## I Lockbox Models

I will consider a class of toy models whose basic unit of matter is the lockbox. A lockbox in general is an object akin to a physical box that can contain bit strings and cannot be opened except when the correct conditions exist to open the box. Depending on the model the box might be opened with a combination, a physical key, or something else. A lockbox may also perform other functions on the data within it depending on various inputs. Such boxes need not be allowed by physics, but instead are the building block of toy theories.

For example, consider a lockbox with a combination lock, that can contain a bit value $`b`$. The value cannot be read out of the lockbox except if a particular string of bits $`C`$—the combination—is presented to it. The bit $`b`$ and combination $`C`$ are chosen by the lockbox’s creator at the time of its creation. If the lockbox is presented with an incorrect combination, the bit value is destroyed.

It can be helpful to think of such a lockbox as a physical box, that one could made of brass or steel, but it must be stressed that this can only be an approximation. The bit value in the lockbox by definition cannot be read out by any means other than using the correct combination, whereas a brass or steel box can always be drilled or blown open with explosives if enough effort is expended.

A true lockbox cannot exist in classical mechanics. It is often said that one way in which quantum mechanics differs from classical mechanics is that it cannot be represented by a local hidden variable theory. This statement hides a common oversight about classical mechanics. Classical mechanics also is not correctly represented by a local hidden variable theory, but by a local unhidden variable theory—in principle every possible property of a classical system can be measured perfectly exposed  whereas the contents of a lockbox are unconditionally protected. Our example lockbox also differs from both classical and quantum theory in that its behavior when the wrong combination is applied is irreversible—the bit value is destroyed and cannot be recovered note1 . Thus a lockbox explicitly mimics the quantum property that unknown nonorthogonal states cannot be cloned (copied) WZ ; Dieks  or even measured without disturbance BBM . A lockbox also cannot be broadcast, since in order for the copies to have the correct marginal behavior they each must have the right combination, and there is no way of reliably determining the combination.

It is straightforward to implement secure key distribution using lockboxes of this type. As in quantum key distribution, two parties (Alice and Bob) are assumed to share an ordinary classical channel, which is unjammable and authenticated, and to have the ability to prepare systems, in this case lockboxes, and send them, to each other. Eve, the eavesdropper, is assumed to have full physical access to the lockboxes while they are in transit, meaning she can manipulate them at will, subject only to the constraints imposed by the physical theory. In particular, she is unable to reliably open the boxes if she does not know $`C`$.

The protocol is as in Bennett and Brassard’s 1984 quantum key distribution paper BB84  (BB84), but simplified: Alice picks $`N`$ random bits and prepares $`N`$ lockboxes with random combinations. She sends the lockboxes to Bob. Once Bob has received them, he tells Alice they have arrived and then she sends the combinations to him over the classical channel. He can now open the lockboxes and extract the bits. They then test some number $`m`$ of the bits to see if they are what Alice put into the lockboxes in the first place. Since Eve would likely have destroyed the contents of any lockbox she tried to open, the correctness of the tested bits assures Alice and Bob that Eve could not have opened very many of the lockboxes. They can then do privacy amplification PA  and reduce Eve’s information to much less than one bit.

On the other hand, lockboxes as proposed fail to exclude the possibility of bit commitment. In fact, they essentially are the embodiment of the simplest possible form of bit commitment. Alice puts a bit in the lockbox and gives it to Bob, who cannot open it. She opens the commitment by telling him $`C`$. Alice cannot cheat using an EPR attack as in mayersbit ; lochau  because the physics does not allow for entanglement at all. Clearly we need a more sophisticated lockbox.

One simple modification to the lockboxes that appears to eliminate bit commitment fails, but the reason is interesting: Suppose every lockbox is given a second combination which instead of revealing $`b`$ reveals the complement $`\overline{b}`$—call this $`\overline{C}`$ (note this is not necessarily the bitwise NOT of $`C`$). Now in the above bit-commitment scheme Bob has no way of knowing if Alice told him the real combination $`C`$ or the complementary combination $`\overline{C}`$. Since Alice can open the commitment to either $`b`$ or $`\overline{b}`$ this is no commitment at all. It would seem evident that in any bit-commitment protocol such a lockbox is useless, since it essentially a bit controlled utterly by its creator. The creator can cause it to become either a zero or a one and can prevent anyone else from learning even this noninformation until such time as either $`C`$ or $`\overline{C}`$ is announced. But, as pointed out by Aram Harrow harrowprivate , by using more than one lockbox, bit commitment can be achieved. Alice prepares many lockboxes, all with different combinations. To commit to a zero, she makes the numerically lower combination open the bit as a zero for all of them. To commit to a one, she makes it so the numerically higher combination opens the bit as a zero. She gives all the boxes to Bob. To open the commitment, Alice tells Bob all the combinations. Bob can check her truthfulness about the commitments and combinations by opening each box randomly using either its lower or higher combination.

It is the ordering property of classical numbers that allows this version of bit commitment to work, and I conjecture this will be the case with any scheme based on classical combinations securing lockboxes. However, this problem suggests its own solution: Instead of a classical combination, what is needed are boxes secured by physical keys. If a key has a button on it which causes the secured bit to flip without having any physically detectable effect on either the key or the lockbox, it is immune to the ordering to which classical combinations are subjected.

## II A lockbox theory satisfying the axioms

Such a lockbox-key pair still is not able to avoid bit commitment without further modification. The asymmetry between boxes and keys could lead to a protocol where Bob gets to hold onto the keys and Alice holds the boxes, preventing Alice from changing the concealed bits. So we will add buttons to the lockboxes as well, which also flip the bit inside. Notice that now the keys and boxes are interchangeable—someone in possession of either one can flip the bit, and both are needed to reveal the bit. So we may as well consider them as symmetric lockbox pairs.

To formalize a lockbox pair (LBP) we write its state as a vector

$$B=(b,s,x_1,x_2,p_1,p_2)$$
(1)
where $`b`$ is the value stored in the pair, $`s`$ is a classical label unique to each pair, $`x_1`$ and $`x_2`$ are the position coordinates of each box of the pair and $`p_1`$, $`p_2`$ are their momenta. The $`x`$’s and $`p`$’s transform as usual classical coordinates. This actually encompasses quite a bit, for in a cryptographic setting one cannot simply talk about an operator which changes the momentum of a particle, one needs to make clear that only the party in possession of a particle can perform such an operator. In the following we make this explicit with respect to the position variables but omit the momenta. It is to be understood that the boxes can be moved from place to place with some finite velocity as classical objects.

There are two types of measurements allowed on an LBP. First is the $`\mathrm{\#}`$ operator, which reads out the serial number of the pair:

$$\mathrm{\#}_x(B)=s(\delta _{x,x_1}+\delta _{x,x_2}\delta _{x_1,x_2})$$
(2)
An important feature is that no two pairs have the same serial number, nor can anyone create another pair with a given serial number. This, perhaps unappealing, feature can be resolved most simply by having all the pairs created with their unique serial numbers at the time of the creation of the universe, after which they are conserved cosmology . This is not so unusual in that traditional physical theories have finite conserved resources like angular momentum and energy.

The other measurement is the value operator $`V`$ which reads out the value $`b`$ contained in the pair:

$$V_x(B)=(1+b)\delta _{x,x_1}\delta _{x,x_2}$$
(3)
Each operator has an $`x`$ subscript, representing where the party performing the operation is located. The $`\mathrm{\#}`$ operation can be performed by a party possessing one or both of the boxes in a pair, the $`V`$ operator only works if the party is colocated with both boxes. Note that $`V`$ is a three-outcome measurement, resulting in a zero if the boxes and measurer are not all together, and in $`1+b`$ if they are.

There is also the flip operation, which is not a measurement, but rather a transformation on the state $`B`$. It flips the bit value of the state when it is applied in the location of either or both halves of the pair:

$$F_x(B)((b\delta _{x,x_1}\delta _{x,x_2}\delta _{x_1,x_2}),s,x_1,x_2)$$
(4)
There is a trivial no-go theorem for broadcasting for LBPs. No two LBPs have the same serial numbers, so no copy can have the right properties.

LBPs can be used for key distribution: Alice puts a bit into the pair, sends one of the boxes to Bob, who tells her when it has been received. Only then does she send the other box of the pair, allowing Bob to reveal the bit. Eve cannot substitute a box of her own due to the serial numbers unique to each LBP.

Bit commitment is excluded by the following argument. For each LBP in a protocol, during the committed phase either Bob has both boxes or else Alice has at least one of them. If Bob has both, he can read the bit. If Alice has at least one of the boxes, she can change the bit.

Furthermore, the LBPs are a purely local theory. The formal rules mask this somewhat, as it appears that the flip operator allows changing the bit value at a distance, but since the bit can only be read once the boxes are brought together this isn’t a problem. Each box merely has to remember locally whether or not to flip the bit when brought together. The LBP theory is equivalent to the following, where each box is individually represented by a vector:

$$B_1=(b_1,s,x_1),B_2=(b_2,s,x_2)$$
(5)
$$\mathrm{\#}_x(B_i)=s\delta _{x,x_i}$$
(6)
The value operator now acts on pairs of boxes:

$$V_x(B_i,B_j)=[1+(b_ib_j)]\delta _{x,x_i}\delta _{x,x_j}$$
(7)
and the flip operator is

$$F_x(B_i)(b_i\delta _{x,x_i},s,x_i).$$
(8)
This is clearly a local hidden variable theory describing LBPs. So we are faced with a theory that is compatible with all the axioms but which is incompatible with quantum mechanics (and therefore cannot imply quantum mechanics).

## III Another axiom and more models

This leaves us with the question of what additional axioms are needed to imply quantum mechanics. One suggestion, due to Jeffrey Bub bubprivate , is the additional ability of quantum mechanics to perform key storage. Key storage is similar to key distribution but the key is distributed across time rather than space. Alice and Bob do some quantum communication, then open their labs up to Eve, who can look around all she likes, and can even measure, modify, or replace any quantum states she finds stored there. After some period of time Alice and Bob communicate classically, and are still able to generate secure key. (Eve cannot be allowed to actually play with their equipment while she is there. If she replaces everything in the labs with her own Trojan lab racks then there isn’t much of anything Alice and Bob can trust. Some work on such Trojans has been done by Mayers mayerstrojan .) The quantum key distribution protocol of Ekert ekert  which uses EPR pairs rather than the unentangled states of BB84 is also a key storage protocol. The protocol is for Alice and Bob to first share EPR pairs and later, when they wish to create key, measure them in random bases, which they only then agree upon over a non-secret classical channel. By revealing the results of some of the measurements they can ensure that Eve has not tampered with the EPR pairs.

Such a protocol appears to be impossible with LBPs. Whatever Alice and Bob do, once they leave Eve alone with the lockboxes Eve could just read out their contents using the value operator and by Alice and Bob would be none the wiser. However, key storage using EPR pairs, as well as all forms of key distribution, relies on a peculiar assumption. These protocols all depend on the existence of an authenticated public channel between Alice and Bob to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack. Such an assumption is anathema to a cryptographer, especially when there exist provably secure classical authentication protocols wegman . These all rely on Alice and Bob having a shared secret, which in a sense obviates key distribution, since this secret is a key. The difference is that the shared secret can be very small, indeed a constant amount of key can authenticate any sized classical message. So more correctly quantum key distribution and storage protocols should be thought of as expanding the existing key rather than generating one from nothing.

With that in mind, we can find protocols for key storage using a slightly modified form of LBP. Consider an LBP which is “set and read-once”—one can initially store a bit value in the pair after which the value operator can be applied only once. After that it always returns null. These can be used to store secrets as follows: Alice makes many LBPs, the values of which are the secret. She keeps these entirely in her own lab. Bob does likewise. What they must remember even when Even is granted access to their labs are the serial numbers of some subset of the pairs. If Eve were to read the values of those pairs the value operator would cease to function on them, a condition which Alice and Bob would notice upon their return. They can therefore estimate how many pairs Eve might have measured, and then perform traditional privacy amplification to increase the security of the bits encoded by the remaining LBPs. Oddly, the extra information Alice and Bob need to keep secret from Eve during her intrusion need not be a shared secret between them, but only private secrets about the LBPs in their own labs.

Another protocol would be for Alice and Bob to remember the serial numbers of all the pairs. If Eve applies the value operator to any of the pairs Alice and Bob will notice. This is really a slightly different case than we have discussed before—the amount of information Alice and Bob need to remember is much larger than before, but does not need to be kept secret, only secure from alteration.

Each of these cases still differs from the quantum case using EPR pairs in an interesting way: With the EPR pairs the needed small authentication key could be shared at the time of the key generation (through a low-capacity secure channel, or in person for example)—Alice and Bob need only be sure they are talking to each other. In the LBP schemes they need to have remembered something about the actual boxes. This is a subtle but inescapable difference: If neither Alice nor Bob remembers anything about the LBPs themselves nothing can prevent Eve from replacing them all with her own, whose contents she knows but which otherwise would appear to Alice and Bob to obey all the rules of their protocol. The EPR pairs provide, due to their odd nonlocal nature, a way around this problem. In a quantum-mechanical world only true EPR pairs can pass all the tomographic tests tomography  that Alice and Bob could perform knowing only that they are supposed to be EPR pairs. Once assured that they really share EPR pairs, Alice and Bob can generate secure key.

This suggests a third kind of toy model, which I call the random correlated pair (RCP). Like the LBP these come in pairs, each member having an identical serial number, distinct from that of all other RCPs, and each having an enclosed bit value. RCPs can, however, be opened revealing their bit value even when the two members of a pair are separated, and each member has the same bit value as its twin. RCPs are read-once, and the bit value of an RCP is unknown to anyone before either box of a pair is read. These behave like like EPR pairs with respect to key storage, in that Alice and Bob can easily check if what they have is really an RCP pair—merely having a pair with matching serial numbers is sufficient to ensure Eve has not tampered with them, as she cannot control the bit value in a pair, nor read the bit value without using up at least one member of the pair.

## IV Discussion

I have been careful to consider both the no broadcasting and the key distribution properties of all these toy models. This is because there is a trivial theory that satisfies the other axioms. Namely, a theory with only one type of element, a box with a unique serial number and no bit value inside at all. Such a box cannot be cloned or broadcast, due to the serial number, cannot communicate superluminally, and cannot be used for bit commitment. On the other hand, it is also useless for distributing key, thus I maintain that key distribution is a necessary axiom to make this question meaningful.

One objection which has been raised is that lockboxes don’t capture the true flavor of an information-disturbance tradeoff—a quantum measurement on nonorthogonal states can reveal partial information, while the lockboxes are all or nothing. In fact, Brassard and Fuchs brassardfuchs  specifically mentioned lockboxes as something which they did not want used to refute their conjecture. Leaving aside the issue of whether it is fair to directly exclude the embodiment of one’s axioms, I believe this is not a real failing of the lockboxes. It should be possible to modify them to reveal varying amounts of information under certain conditions without affecting their ability to satisfy the CBH axioms. I expect that proofs using such systems will likely be more difficult, for relatively little gain in insight.

All of the toy models herein that satisfy the CBH axioms employ unique serial numbers, primarily as a way of ensuring no broadcast (though this is also useful in excluding some bit commitment strategies which may be insecure, but for which this is difficult to prove). The original combination lockboxes have the no broadcast property for a different reason, but fail to avoid bit commitment. It would appear that something deep comes from the distinguishability implicit in serial numbers. However, recently Spekkens spekkens  has invented another toy model which appears to satisfy all the CBH axioms (as well as key distribution) and does not have a distinguishability property. Like the lockbox models, it is based on certain information being assuredly inaccessible to any observer, and is a local hidden variable theory. Unlike them, the Spekkens theory has a composability lockbox models lack. His model defines what happens in measurement on multiple systems in a nontrivial way, whereas all the models presented in this note are explicitly noninteracting. This makes the Spekkens model much more like quantum mechanics than any lockbox model without being quantum mechanics. It will be the subject of future work to flesh out the connections between these different kinds of models. Understanding the differences may lead us to a better understanding of just what, in addition to the CBH axioms, is needed to get us to a theory with the full richness of quantum mechanics.

Acknowledgments: Many thanks to C.H. Bennett, J. Bub, C.A. Fuchs, D. Leung, A. Harrow and A.V. Thapliyal for helpful discussions and advice, and A. Khrennikov and the organizers of the conference Quantum Theory: Reconsideration of Foundations, June 2001 for a fine conference and financial support. I am grateful for the support of the National Security Agency and the Advanced Research and Development Activity through Army Research Office contract numbers DAAG55-98-C-0041 and DAAD19-01-C-0056.


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# Time and length scales in supercooled liquids

## Abstract

We numerically obtain the first quantitative demonstration that development of spatial correlations of mobility as temperature is lowered is responsible for the “decoupling” of transport properties of supercooled liquids. This result further demonstrates the necessity of a spatial description of the glass formation and therefore seriously challenges a number of popular alternative theoretical descriptions.

Transport coefficients in liquids approaching the calorimetric glass transition change by many orders of magnitude review . It was discovered about a decade ago that conventional hydrodynamic relations are not valid in supercooled liquids in the sense that various transport properties “decouple” from one another zphys ; jl . In a standard liquid the viscosity, $`\eta `$, translational diffusion coefficient, $`D`$, and temperature, $`T`$, are linked by the hydrodynamic Stokes-Einstein relation, $`D\eta T`$, which breaks down for supercooled liquids. The product $`D\eta `$ can be orders of magnitude larger than its hydrodynamic expectation at the glass transition, a puzzling observation which has received considerable interest in the last decade zphys ; jl ; exp ; theo ; hetero .

We have numerically obtained the first quantitative link between this decoupling phenomenon and the existence of spatial correlations in the dynamics of supercooled liquids, also called “dynamic heterogeneity” hetero . We define here dynamic heterogeneity as expressing the fact that local dynamics of the liquid becomes spatially more correlated as $`T`$ decreases juanpe . This naturally implies the existence of a wide distribution of relaxational time and length scales juanpe ; BG1 . Decoupling results because different transport coefficients correspond to different averages over those broad distributions theo .

Increasing heterogeneity was previously reported in a number of numerical works glo , but its direct relevance to transport was not established. On the other hand, experiments have quantified decoupling zphys ; exp ; hetero , but spatial correlations were only indirectly measured hetero ; explength  because they are presently inaccessible to scattering experiments since neutrons/light probe too small/large length scales, and no obvious temperature dependence was found hetero ; ed . The novelty of this work is therefore to reconcile in a direct manner two facets of the slow dynamics of supercooled liquids. Our results demonstrate the correctness of the widely shared belief that decoupling is most naturally interpreted in terms of heterogeneous dynamics, a result which has been actively seeked in the last decade and has deep theoretical implications.

Our argument shall be presented in three steps. In large scale numerical simulations of a well-characterized liquid model walter , we first quantify dynamic heterogeneity, then decoupling, to finally establish in a third step the quantitative connection between these two aspects. We finally discuss the important theoretical consequences of our findings.

We investigate the binary Lennard-Jones mixture proposed in Ref. walter  with $`N_A=1097`$ particles of type $`A`$ and and $`N_B=275`$ particles of type $`B`$ at density $`\rho =1.2`$. The $`N=N_A+N_B`$ particles interact via a Lennard-Jones potential $`V(𝐫_{\alpha \beta })=4ϵ_{\alpha \beta }\left[(\sigma _{\alpha \beta }/r_{\alpha \beta })^{12}(\sigma _{\alpha \beta }/r_{\alpha \beta })^6\right]`$, with $`\alpha ,\beta =A,B`$. Time, energy and length are measured in units of $`\sigma _{AA}`$ and $`ϵ_{AA}`$, and $`\sqrt{m_A\sigma _{AA}^2/ϵ_{AA}}`$, respectively. Other parameters are $`ϵ_{AB}=1.5`$, $`ϵ_{BB}=0.5`$, $`\sigma _{BB}=0.88`$, $`\sigma _{AB}=0.8`$. Newton equations are integrated via a leapfrog algorithm with time step 0.01. Velocity rescaling is used to thermalize the system. We study the system at equilibrium for a wide range of temperatures, $`T[0.42,2.0]`$. Since we measure fluctuations of local dynamical quantities, extremely long simulations are necessary to ensure not only thermal equilibrium, but also that sufficient statistics is recorded. We use the parallelized algorithm developed by Plimpton plim , and at all $`T`$ runs of length at least $`100\tau _\alpha `$ are performed. Our computer capabilities fix the lowest studied temperature. Characteristic temperatures for this system are the onset of slow dynamics, $`T_o1.0`$, and $`T_c0.435`$, the location of the mode-coupling singularity in the analysis of Ref. walter .

First, we measure the temperature dependent coherence length, $`\mathrm{}(T)`$, associated with the ordering of the liquid’s dynamics by measuring spatial correlations between individual particle relaxations glo . We use

$$F_𝐤(𝐫,t)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\delta (𝐫_j(0)𝐫)\mathrm{cos}\left(i𝐤\left[𝐫_j(t)𝐫_j(0)\right]\right)$$
(1)
as a natural local indicator of the dynamics, since $`F_s(𝐤,t)=F_𝐤(𝐫,t)`$ is the real part of the standard self-intermediate scattering function; $`\mathrm{}`$ stands for an ensemble average at temperature $`T`$, while $`𝐫_j(t)`$ is the position of particle $`j`$ at time $`t`$. In our definition, dynamic heterogeneity implies that $`F_𝐤(𝐫,t)`$ becomes long-ranged correlated as $`T`$ is lowered fss , as can clearly be observed in the snapshots of Fig. 1.

The measurement of the mean size of the dynamic clusters shown in Fig. 1 involves the study of a two-point, two-time correlation function as already discussed in several papers juanpe ; glo ; steve ; fss ; reviewglo . We extract $`\mathrm{}(T)`$ from the wavevector dependence of the Fourier transform of the correlator $`C_𝐤(𝐫)`$:

$$C_𝐤(𝐫)=\frac{F_𝐤(\mathrm{𝟎},\tau )F_𝐤(𝐫,\tau )F_𝐤(𝐫,\tau )^2}{F_𝐤(𝐫,\tau )^2F_𝐤(𝐫,\tau )^2},$$
(2)
where $`\tau =\tau (k=|𝐤|,T)`$ is the relaxation time defined in a standard way from the time decay of $`F_s(𝐤,t)`$ walter . The shape of $`C_𝐤(𝐫)`$, the temperature dependence of $`\mathrm{}(T)`$, and their theoretical interpretation in the context of a renormalization group analysis are the main object of Ref. steve , so that we only report the data for $`\mathrm{}(T)`$ in Fig. 2 without discussing them further in the present report. Note that this first step is also the most demanding in terms of numerical resources.

Secondly, to probe decoupling, we measure with a great precision the temperature and wavevector dependences of the relaxation time $`\tau (k,T)`$ defined above. Our results are presented in Fig. 3. We find that the temperature dependence of $`\tau (k0,T)`$ is the same as the inverse diffusion constant $`D^1`$, as expected in a diffusive regime, while for wavevectors close to the first peak of the static structure factor, $`k_07.2`$, the temperature dependence is stronger, and follows that of the viscosity, establishing decoupling in our model system. This finding has already been reported in several numerical works jl ; walter ; glo ; onuki , and is not unexpected in a system characterized by broad distributions of time scales.

We can now establish our main result which is the link between decoupling and dynamic heterogeneity. It stems from intermediate wavevectors, $`0<k<k_0`$, for which a crossover is observed in the temperature evolution of $`\tau (k,T)`$, uniquely governed by the value of the scaling variable $`k\mathrm{}(T)`$. We find that $`\tau (k,T)`$ follows $`D^1`$ when $`k\mathrm{}<1`$, or $`\eta `$ for $`k\mathrm{}>1`$. It is therefore useful to define the following ratio,

$$X(k,T)=\frac{\tau (k,T)D(T)}{\tau (k,T_o)D(T_o)},$$
(3)
since $`X(k,T)`$ is wavevector independent through the denominator, and is temperature independent if $`\tau (k,T)D^1(T)`$, so that by definition $`X(k,T)=1`$ if no decoupling occurs.

Instead we find that time scales $`\tau (k,T)`$ spanning 7 orders of magnitude can be collapsed on a unique, nontrivial curve, as shown in Fig. 4, so that

$$X(k,T)𝒳[k\mathrm{}(T)].$$
(4)
We find that $`𝒳(x)=1+x^\beta `$ with $`\beta 1.6`$ represents the numerical data quite well, so that the diffusive regime is limited to small values of the scaling variable $`k\mathrm{}`$. Note that this scaling extends from the onset temperature $`T_o`$ to well below the mode-coupling temperature $`T_c`$. From the scaling behaviour (4), our main conclusion is therefore that dynamic heterogeneity emerging at $`T_o`$ and increasing when $`T`$ is lowered is directly responsible for decoupling.

Decoupling phenomena have been experimentally characterized close to the calorimetric glass transition where they are more pronounced, as can be understood from Fig. 4. We believe, however, that the behaviour is qualitatively similar to our numerical investigations because even an increase of several decades in time scales corresponds to a very modest change of the coherence length $`\mathrm{}(T)`$, which is the key quantity of the problem. Experiments report moreover that $`D\eta \eta ^\alpha `$ with $`1>\alpha >0`$ zphys ; exp ; hetero . We find similarly that, at fixed $`k`$, $`\tau D\mathrm{}^\beta `$. The dynamic scaling discussed in Ref. steve , $`\mathrm{}\tau ^{1/z}`$, yields indeed the observed power law,

$$D\eta \eta ^{\beta /z},$$
(5)
with an exponent $`\beta /z0.35`$. Various values for this exponent have been reported from experiments hetero ; andreozzi  and a precise characterization of all these exponents for various liquids on a wide range of length scales would be most useful. Note that the use of the crossover scaling function $`𝒳(x)`$ in Eq. (5) would automatically yield a smaller effective value of the exponent $`\beta /z`$ on a restricted time window.

Finally, we discuss the theoretical interpretations and consequences of Fig. 4. These results constitute the first direct demonstration that, much as in ordinary critical phenomena, large spatial correlations not only accompany but also influence the properties of supercooled liquids, and therefore the glass formation itself. Thus, they are a striking confirmation that spatial approaches are necessary to understand the formation of glasses, and several such quantitative approaches can be found in the literature steve ; 0T ; juanpe2 ; tarjus ; wolynes .

When a growing length scale for dynamic heteroheneity is included, our results are very naturally explained, just as the decoupling phenomenon is theo . Tuning the wavector in (1) amounts to probing the dynamics on different length scales, smoothly interpolating between $`D^1`$ ($`k0`$) and $`\eta `$ ($`kk_0`$), as is observed in Fig. 4 which clearly demonstrates that the crossover, $`k\mathrm{}(T)1`$, is ruled by the increasing correlation length of dynamic heterogeneity.

Our findings also confirm that dynamic heterogeneity is a central aspect of the dynamics of supercooled liquids in that time and length scales are intimately connected juanpe ; 0T . This is at odds with the opposite belief that slow dynamics emerges because of the local blocking of the particles without any relevant length scale beyond the interparticle distance, the famous “cage effect” MCT . Our results make it clear that the alpha-relaxation is instead a cooperative phenomenon where single particle dynamics are coherent on the length scale $`\mathrm{}(T)`$ much larger than $`k_0^1`$, which is in turn directly responsible for the temperature behaviour of the time scales. Moreover, $`\mathrm{}(T)`$ starts to grow significantly and connects to time scales even in the regime $`T_c<T<T_o`$ where a mode-coupling analysis supposedly applies walter ; MCT . This confirms that heterogeneous dynamics, decoupling and activated dynamics set in at the onset temperature $`T_o`$ which is therefore the key temperature scale of the problem, as opposed to $`T_c`$ where no significant change of mechanism takes place 0T ; reich . We note that the absence of non-trivial spatial correlations franz , the incorrect identification of $`T_c`$ as a key temperature scale, and the absence of decoupling in the present formulation of the mode-coupling theory represent major failures of this approach.

Our results constitute therefore a sharp new test to discriminate between the many theoretical approaches to the glass transition problem review . Indeed, any theory in which time scales do not directly follow from the existence of spatial correlations growing when $`T`$ is decreased below the onset temperature $`T_o`$ is seriously challenged by the present work. Quite importantly, this includes a number of approaches which have been nonetheless much applied to describe experimental results free ; MCT ; landscape .

Our conclusions are drawn from a scaling relation discovered for a specific, yet paradigmatic, model system. Although we believe they are generic to supercooled liquids, the absence of any data on different systems emphasizes both the novelty of this work and the need for further detailed investigations of the slow dynamics of various supercooled liquids. It is clear, for instance, that the precise experimental characterization of $`\mathrm{}(T)`$ should become a central goal for future investigations, and the present work therefore suggests a new way to access physically relevant length scales.

I thank S. Whitelam and J.P. Garrahan for a fruitful collaboration steve  and discussions, J.-L. Barrat, J.-P. Bouchaud and G. Tarjus for useful correspondence. This work is supported by CNRS (France), E.U. (Marie Curie Grant No. HPMF-CT-2002-01927), Worcester College Oxford (UK), and Oxford Supercomputing Centre at Oxford University (UK).


text:
# Mergers and Non-Thermal Processes in Clusters

## 1. Introduction

Major cluster mergers are the most energetic events in the Universe since the Big Bang. In these mergers, the subclusters collide at velocities of $``$2000 km/s, releasing gravitational binding energies of as much as $`>`$$`10^{64}`$ ergs. Figure 1a shows the Chandra image of the merging cluster Abell 85, which has two subclusters merging with the main cluster (Kempner, Sarazin, & Ricker 2002). The relative motions in mergers are moderately supersonic, and shocks are driven into the intracluster medium. In major mergers, these hydrodynamical shocks dissipate energies of $`3\times 10^{63}`$ ergs; such shocks are the major heating source for the X-ray emitting intracluster medium. Mergers shocks heat and compress the X-ray emitting intracluster gas, and increase its entropy. We also expect that particle acceleration by these shocks will produce nonthermal electrons and ions, and these can produce synchrotron radio, inverse Compton (IC) EUV and hard X-ray, and gamma-ray emission.

## 2. Thermal Effects of Mergers

Mergers heat and compress the intracluster medium. Shocks associated with mergers also increase the entropy of the gas. Mergers can help to mix the intracluster gas, possibly removing abundance gradients. Mergers appear to disrupt the cooling cores found in many clusters; there is an anticorrelation between cooling core clusters and clusters with evidence for strong ongoing mergers (e.g., Buote & Tsai 1996). The specific mechanism by which cooling cores are disrupted is not completely understood at this time (e.g., Ricker & Sarazin 2001).

The heating and compression associated with mergers can produce a large, temporary increase in the X-ray luminosity (up to a factor of $``$10) and the X-ray temperature (up to a factor of $``$3) of the merging clusters (Figure 1b; Ricker & Sarazin 2001; Randall, Sarazin, & Ricker 2002). Very luminous hot clusters are very rare objects in the Universe. Although major mergers are also rare events, merger boosts can cause mergers to strongly affect the statistics of the most luminous, hottest clusters. Simulations predict that many of the most luminous, hottest clusters are actually merging systems, with lower total masses than would be inferred from their X-ray luminosities and temperatures (Randall et al. 2002). Since the most massive clusters give the greatest leverage in determining $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and $`\sigma _8`$, these values can be biased by merger boosts.

One of the most dramatic results on clusters of galaxies to come from the Chandra X-ray observatory was the discovery of sharp surface brightness discontinuities in the images of merging clusters (Figure 1a). These were first seen in Abell 2142 (Markevitch et al. 2000) and Abell 3667 (Vikhlinin, Markevitch, & Murray 2001b). Initially, one might have suspected these features were merger shocks, but X-ray spectral measurements showed that the dense, X-ray bright “post-shock” gas was cooler, had lower entropy, and was at the same pressure as the lower density “pre-shock” gas. This would be impossible for a shock. Instead, these “cold fronts” are apparently contact discontinuities between gas which was in the cool core of one of the merging subclusters and surrounding shocked intracluster gas (Vikhlinin et al. 2001b). The cool cores are plowing rapidly through the shocked cluster gas, and ram pressure sweeps back the gas at the front edge of the cold front. In a few cases (e.g., 1E0657-56; Markevitch et al. 2003), bow shocks are seen ahead of the cold fronts.

Cold fronts and merger shocks provide a number of classical hydrodynamical diagnostics which can be used to determine the kinematics of the merger (Vikhlinin et al. 2001b; Sarazin 2002). Most of these diagnostics give the merger Mach number $``$. The standard Rankine-Hugoniot shock jump conditions can be applied to merger shocks; for example, the pressure discontinuity is

$$\frac{P_2}{P_1}=\frac{2\gamma }{\gamma +1}^2\frac{\gamma 1}{\gamma +1},$$
(1)
where $`P_1`$ and $`P_2`$ are the pre- and post-shock pressure, and $`\gamma =5/3`$ is the adiabatic index of the gas. For bow shocks in front of cold front, the shock may be conical at the Mach angle, $`\theta _m=\mathrm{csc}^1(_1)`$. The ratio of the pressure at the stagnation point in front of a cold front to the pressure well ahead of it is given by

$$\frac{P_{\mathrm{st}}}{P_1}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(1+\frac{\gamma _{}1}{2}^2\right)^{\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}},& 1,\hfill \\ ^2\left(\frac{\gamma +1}{2}\right)^{\frac{\gamma +1}{\gamma 1}}\left(\gamma \frac{\gamma 1}{2^2}\right)^{\frac{1}{\gamma 1}},& >1.\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
If the motion of the cold front is supersonic, the stand-off distance between the cold front and the bow shock varies inversely with $``$. For major mergers, these kinematic diagnostics generally indicate that mergers are mildly transonic $`2`$, corresponding to merger velocities of $``$2000 km/s.

Mergers also provide a useful environment for testing the role of various physical processes in clusters. For example, the very steep temperature gradients at cold fronts imply that thermal conduction is suppressed by a large factor ($``$$`10^2`$; Ettori & Fabian 2000; Vikhlinin, Markevitch, & Murray 2001a), presumably by magnetic fields. The smooth front surfaces of some cold fronts suggest that Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities are being suppressed, also probably by magnetic fields. Recently, Markevitch et al. (2003) have used the relative distributions of dark matter, galaxies, and gas in the dramatic merging cluster 1E0657-56 (Figure 1b) to argue that the collision cross-section per unit mass of the dark matter must be low, $`\sigma /m<1`$ cm2/g, which excludes most of the self-interacting dark matter models invoked to explain the mass profiles of galaxies.

## 3. Non-Thermal Effects of Mergers

High speed astrophysical shocks in diffuse gas generally lead to significant acceleration of relativistic electrons. For example, typical supernova remnants have blast wave shock velocities of a few thousand km/s, which are comparable to the speeds in merger shocks. (However, the Mach numbers in merger shocks are much lower.) The ubiquity of radio emission from Galactic supernova remnants implies that at least a few percent of the shock energy goes into accelerating relativistic electrons, with more probably going into ions. If these numbers are applied to strong merger shocks in clusters, one would expect that relativistic electrons with a total energy of $`E_{\mathrm{rel},\mathrm{e}}10^{62}`$ erg would be accelerated, with even more energy in the relativistic ions. Thus, merging clusters should have huge populations of relativistic particles.

Clusters should also retain some of these particles for very long times. The cosmic rays gyrate around magnetic field lines, which are frozen-in to the gas, which is held in by the strong gravitational fields of clusters. Because clusters are large, the timescales for diffusion are generally longer than the Hubble time. The low gas and radiation densities in the intracluster medium imply that losses by relativistic ions are very slow, and those by relativistic electrons are fairly slow. Figure 2a shows the loss timescale for electrons under typical cluster conditions; electrons with Lorentz factors $`\gamma 300`$ and energies of $``$150 MeV have lifetimes which approach the Hubble time, as long as cluster magnetic fields are not too large ($`B<3`$ $`\mu `$G). As a result, clusters should contain two populations of primary relativistic electrons (Figure 3a): those at $`\gamma 300`$ which have been produced by mergers over the lifetime of the clusters; and a tail to higher energies produced by any current merger.

The lower energy electrons will mainly be visible in the EUV/soft X-ray range (Figure 3b). Such emission has been seen in clusters, although its origin is uncertain and may well be thermal, as Jonathon Mittaz described in this session. More energetic electrons, with energies of many GeV, produce hard X-ray IC emission and radio synchrotron emission. Diffuse radio sources, not associated with radio galaxies, have been observed for many years in merging clusters. Centrally located, unpolarized, regular sources are called “radio halos”, while peripheral, irregular, polarized sources are called “radio relics”. Recent Chandra observations seem to show a direct connection between radio halos and merger shocks in clusters (Markevitch & Vikhlinin 2001). The same higher energy electrons will produce hard X-ray IC emission. Recently, such emission appears to have been detected with BeppoSAX and RXTE, although the detections are relatively weak and controversial \[see Rossetti & Molendi (2003) and the poster by Fusco-Femiano et al. in this session\].

I believe one of the most exciting possibilities for the future is the detection of clusters in hard gamma-ray radiation (Figure 2b). Essentially, all models for the nonthermal populations in clusters predict that they should be very luminous gamma-ray sources, particularly at photon energies of $``$100 MeV (Sarazin 1999b; Blasi & Gabici 2003). The emission at these energies is partly due to electrons with energies of 150 MeV, which should be ubiquitous in clusters. One nice feature of this spectral region is that emission is produced both by relativistic electrons (bremsstrahlung and IC) and relativistic ions (through the production of $`\pi ^o`$ particles which decay into gamma-ray photons; see Figure 2b). Thus, one can determine both population is clusters. Models suggest that GLAST and AGILE will detect $``$40 nearby clusters.

### Acknowledgments.

This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Chandra Award Numbers GO1-2123X, GO2-3159X, and GO3-4160X, and XMM/Newton Award Numbers NAG5-10075 and NAG5-13088.

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Markevitch, M., et al., 2003, ApJ, submitted (astro-ph/0309303)

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Sarazin, C. L. 1999b, in Diffuse Thermal and Relativistic Plasma in Galaxy Clusters, ed. H. Böhringer, L. Feretti, & P. Schuecker (Garching: MPE Rep. 271), 185

Sarazin, C. L. 2002, in Merging Processes in Clusters of Galaxies, ed. L. Feretti, I. M. Gioia, & G. Giovannini (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 1

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text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The dominant ($``$ 90%) component of the mass budget of the Universe may consist in Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which could be the Lightest Supersymmetric Particles (neutralinos in most models)111 See e.g.  for a review.. WIMPs would be present at the galactic scale as a halo of mass typically ten times larger than the visible part of the galaxy. The EDELWEISS collaboration has developped heat-and-ionisation Ge detectors  to measure recoils induced by elastic scattering of galactic WIMPs on a target nucleus. Constraints on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-section in the framework of the Minimal SuperSymmetric Model (MSSM) have been derived from the nuclear recoil rate measured with the EDELWEISS detectors , . We present in this paper the experimental details of these measurements. In Section 2, we describe briefly the experimental setup and the method of detection of an energy deposit in the target. We then show the calibration procedure for the heat and ionisation signals (Section 3), the trigger threshold determination (Section 4) and the tagging of the nuclear recoils (Section 5). We finally present an original method to determine the fiducial volume of the detectors (Section 6).

## 2 The EDELWEISS detectors

### 2.1 Experimental setup

The experimental setup of the EDELWEISS-I experiment is described in  and . We simply recall that up to three detectors can be housed in a low background dilution cryostat working at a regulated temperature (27 mK in  and 17 mK in ). The EDELWEISS detectors are made of a germanium absorber (target for the incident particles) equiped with a thermal sensor and with metallic electrodes for charge collection. The simultaneous measurement of both phonons and charges created by a single interaction is therefore possible.
The main characteristics of the detectors studied in this article are given in Table 1. For all of these detectors, the absorber is a $``$320 g Ge cylindrical crystal ($``$70 mm diameter and 20 mm thickness). Their edges have been beveled at an angle of 45o (Fig. 1). The electrodes for ionisation measurement are made of 100 nm Al layers sputtered on the surfaces after etching. The top electrode is divided in a central part and a guard ring, electrically decoupled for radial localization of the charge deposition. The bottom electrode is the common reference. For the GGA1 and GGA3 detectors (GSA1 and GSA3), a 60 nm hydrogenated amorphous germanium (silicon) layer was deposited under the electrodes in order to reduce the charge collection problems associated with events where the energy is deposited close to the detector surface. It has indeed been shown that the probability that charge carriers be collected on the same-sign electrode during the diffusion phase which preceeds the charge collection (dead layer problem) is reduced for this type of detectors .
The thermal sensor consists of a Neutron Transmutation Doped germanium crystal (NTD)222The NTD thermal sensors have been produced by Torre and Mangin for GeAl6 and by Haller-Beeman Associates for the other detectors., close to the metal-insulator transition. It is glued on a sputtered gold pad near the edge of the bottom Al electrode (Fig. 1). The resistance of the DC-polarized GeAl6 sensor was chosen to be $``$ 3 M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for GeAl6 ($`T_{running}`$27 mK), and ranged from 3 M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to 6 M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at 17 mK for the other detectors. Reliable electrical contacts and heat links have been achieved by the ultrasonic bonding of gold wires (diameter 25 $`\mu `$m) on gold pads. The thickness of these pads has been chosen to minimize the production of dislocations in the absorber caused by the bonding. A thermal analysis of the detectors will be published in Ref. .

### 2.2 Detection method

The rise in temperature due to an energy deposit in the absorber gives rise to a variation $`\mathrm{\Delta }R`$ of the thermal sensor resistance. When the sensor is polarized by a constant current $`I`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }R`$ then induces a voltage fluctuation $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ across the resistor, which corresponds to the heat signal:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }V=\mathrm{\Delta }R\times I$$
(1)
The ionisation signal is obtained by collection of the electron-hole pairs created by the interaction in the germanium crystal polarized through a bias voltage applied to the electrodes. A low bias voltage333 During the data takings, the bias voltage applied to the top electrode varied from $`\pm `$ 3 V to $`\pm `$ 9 V depending on the detector. is required to limit the heating of the cristal due to the drift of the charge carriers, known as the Neganov-Luke effect .
The energy $`E_R`$ deposited by a particle interacting in the detector can be determined by subtracting the Neganov-Luke effect from the heat signal :

$$E_R=\left(1+\frac{V}{\epsilon _\gamma }\right)E_H\frac{V}{\epsilon _\gamma }E_I$$
(2)
where V is the bias voltage and $`\epsilon _\gamma =3`$ V the mean electron-hole pair creation potential in germanium for $`\gamma `$-ray interactions (electron recoils). The variables $`E_H`$ and $`E_I`$ stand respectively for the heat and ionisation signal amplitudes calibrated for $`\gamma `$-ray interactions following the procedure described in Section 3.1.
We define the quenching variable Q as:

$$Q=\frac{E_I}{E_R}$$
(3)
This variable is of particular interest in the case of WIMP search since nuclear and electronic recoils correspond to different ionisation efficencies. As $`E_I`$ and $`E_H`$ are calibrated using $`\gamma `$-rays, $`Q=1`$ for electronic interactions by definition. In the case of nuclear recoils (such as those that would be produced by WIMP interactions), this ratio is much lower: $`Q0.3`$. The simultaneous measurement of heat and ionisation therefore provides an event-by-event identification of the type of recoils and thus gives an efficient method to reject the dominant $`\gamma `$-ray background. The precise definition of the rejection criteria is discussed in Section 5.

## 3 Calibration and resolution of heat and ionisation signals

### 3.1 Calibration of heat and ionisation channels

The ionisation signal $`E_I`$ is calibrated using a 57Co source that can be inserted in the liquid He bath of the cryostat to a distance of $``$ 10 cm from the detectors, with only a $``$ 0.5 cm thick copper shielding layer between the source and the detectors. The 122 and 136 keV peaks are clearly visible on the spectra (Fig. 2c), allowing a precise calibration of the ionisation signal. The linearity of the signal amplitude has been verified using the 46.52 keV line from 210Pb (Fig. 2b) in the detector environment and the 8.98 and 10.37 keV lines from the decay of cosmic-ray induced long life isotopes 65Zn and 68Ge in the detector. The calibration factor is observed to be stable within a fraction of percent over periods of months. Because of the parasite capacitance between the centre and guard electrodes, a charge fully collected on an electrode also induces a signal on the other. This cross-talk of a few percents is purely linear and remains constant in time for a given detector. It can thus be easily corrected off-line (Fig. 3). The ionisation signal $`E_I`$ is defined as the sum of the guard ring and center electrode signal amplitudes after correction of the cross-talk and calibration of the two channels.
The heat signal amplitude $`E_H`$ is periodically calibrated using the same 57Co source. In contrast with ionisation, the heat signal appears to be very sensitive to long term drifts of the NTD temperature. It may for example vary by a few percent during several hours after transfers of cryogenic fluids. Between two 57Co calibrations, the heat signal is therefore monitored on a continuous basis using the data from the low-background physics runs themselves by setting the average value of the $`Q`$ ratio to 1 for electron recoils. The 46.52 keV line from 210Pb and the 8.98 and 10.37 keV lines associated with cosmogenesis activation of 65Zn and 68Ge in the detector (Fig. 2a) are used to check the quality of the calibration of the heat signal.
It should be stressed again at this point that the heat and ionisation signals are calibrated using $`\gamma `$-ray sources, which induce electron recoils. The $`E_I`$ and $`E_H`$ values thus correspond to the actual energy deposit for this type of interactions only, and are therefore expressed in keV electron equivalent (keVee).

### 3.2 Resolution of heat and ionisation channels

For each detector, the baseline resolutions of the heat and the two ionisation channels are regularly controlled through runs with an automatic random trigger. These runs show that the noises of the three channels are not correlated. The ionisation baseline resolution can therefore be written as :

$$\left(\sigma _I^0\right)^2=\left(\sigma _{center}^0\right)^2+\left(\sigma _{guard}^0\right)^2$$
(4)
The 57Co calibrations give a measurement of the resolutions for the ionisation and heat signals at 122 keV. Typical values obtained for the detectors studied here are given in Table 2.
We parametrize the heat and ionisation signals resolutions at a given electron-equivalent energy E as :

$$\sigma _{I,H}(E)=\sqrt{\left(\sigma _{I,H}^0\right)^2+\left(a_{I,H}E\right)^2}$$
(5)
where the factors $`a_I`$ and $`a_H`$ are deduced from the resolution of the ionisation and heat signals at 122 keV. The resolutions of the 10.37 and 46.52 keV peaks observed in low-background physics runs fit well with the expressions $`\sigma _{I,H}(E)`$ from Eq. (5) (Fig. 2d). It can be noted that the resolutions at $`E_I`$10 keVee -an energy below which most of the WIMPs signal is expected- is dominated by the baseline resolutions $`\sigma _I^0`$ and $`\sigma _H^0`$.
Finally, the recoil energy resolution can be computed from the heat and ionisation signal resolutions using Eq. (2). The noises of both signals being uncorrelated, this resolution can be written as:

$$\sigma _{E_R}=\sqrt{\left(1+\frac{V}{\epsilon _\gamma }\right)^2\left(\sigma _{E_H}\right)^2+\left(\frac{V}{\epsilon _\gamma }\right)^2\left(\sigma _{E_I}\right)^2}$$
(6)
In the case of GeAl6, and for the bias voltage applied during the low-background physics run ($`V`$=6 V), the resolution values displayed in Table 2 lead to $`\sigma _{E_R}`$ 8 keV FWHM around 30 keV. This value is reduced to 4 keV FWHM in the condition of the low-background physics run recorded with GGA1 ($`V`$=4 V) .

## 4 Threshold

The ionisation and heat channel data are continuously digitized and filtered at a rate of 200 kHz and 2kHz, respectively. When a filtered ionisation value exceeds a fixed threshold value, data samples in all detectors are stored to disk. The trigger is defined by requiring a minimum threshold on the absolute value of any of the filtered ionisation channels. For each event, the list of all detectors having triggered is stored as a bit pattern.

The ionisation threshold value, $`E_{I,th}`$ is defined as the ionisation energy (in keVee) at which the trigger efficiency reaches 50%. It is the most important parameter governing the recoil energy dependence of the efficiency. Its value is measured using two different techniques: one is based on the Compton plateau observed with a $`\gamma `$-ray source, and the other on coincidence neutron data.

In the first one, a $`\gamma `$-ray spectra is recorded using a source producing a important Compton plateau, such as 60Co or 137Cs. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that the shape of the plateau above 10 keV can be linearly extrapolated to lower energy. The efficiency as a function of $`E_I`$, $`ϵ(E_I)`$, is thus obtained by dividing the measured rate by the straight line extrapolated from the rate above 10 keV. The resulting $`ϵ(E_I)`$ data is fitted by a integral of a gaussian (erf), yielding the experimental value of $`E_{I,th}`$. However, this method is limited by the large data sample necessary to obtain a significant number of events in the threshold region.

The second technique was made possible by the simultaneous operation of three detectors with a 252Cf neutron source (and thus could not be applied to the GeAl6 detector). Neutron scattering induces a large number of coincidence events where at least two detectors are hit. The upper pannel of Fig. 4 shows the $`E_I`$ distribution recorded in one detector with the condition that any of the other two detector triggered (unfilled histogram). Despite that the detector under study is not requested in the trigger pattern, the peak at $`E_I`$=0 due to baseline noise is not overwhelmingly large, due to the importance of the coincident rate. An unbiased sample of events with $`E_I`$ $`>2`$ keV is thus obtained. When in this sample it is further requested that the detector under study be present in the trigger pattern, the shaded histogram is obtained. The ratio of the two distributions shown in the lower pannel of Fig. 4 correspond to the efficiency $`ϵ(E_I)`$. This interpretation is valid in the region close to $`E_{I,th}`$ and above because in that energy range the contribution of the peak due to baseline events is negligible and because the slope of the unbiased distribution is reasonnably small compared to the experimental resolution on $`E_I`$. Indeed, applying this method to a distribution $`N(E_I)`$ proportionnal to $`\mathrm{exp}(E_I/\tau )`$ and smeared with an experimental r.m.s. resolution $`\sigma `$, this method would result in a shift of $`\sigma ^2/\tau `$ of the deduced value of $`E_{I,th}`$ relative to the true value. In the present case, where the range of exponential slopes and resolution are 3 $`<`$ $`\tau `$ $`<`$ 8 keV and 1 $`<`$ 2.35$`\sigma `$ $`<`$ 2 keV, the shift should not exceed 0.2 keV.

Both Compton and neutron coincidence techniques give consistent ionisation threshold measurements. The coincidence measurements are the most precise, as the neutron source has the advantage of yielding a maximum rate at the lowest energy, and in addition, the quenching of ionisation for nuclear recoils ensure that the stability of the measurement can be tested by imposing a cut on the heat signal $`E_H`$ without affecting the ionisation signals with $`E_I`$ above $`E_H/2`$. The measured $`E_{I,th}`$ values for the different ionisation channels of the detectors under study are listed in the last column of Table 2.

## 5 Nuclear recoil band

Figure 5 shows a ($`E_R`$, $`Q`$) distribution from the data recorded with a 252Cf source emitting $`\gamma `$-rays and neutrons. Experimentally, the $`Q`$ variable appears to follow a gaussian distribution at the $`2\sigma `$ level for both nuclear and electron recoils populations (Fig. 6). We therefore parametrize the region of 90% acceptance for the nuclear recoils by the following cut:

$$|Q<Q_n>|1.65\sigma _{Q_n}$$
(7)
where $`<Q_n>`$ and $`\sigma _{Q_n}`$ are the average value and the standard deviation of the $`Q`$ distribution for nuclear recoils, both variables being determined for each detector from 252Cf calibration data under the same experimental conditions as the low-background physics runs.

### 5.1 Neutron line

The neutron line is the average $`Q`$ value for the nuclear recoils population. It is parametrized from 252Cf calibration data by :

$$<Q_n>(E_R)=a\left(E_R\right)^b$$
(8)
The $`a`$ and $`b`$ values resulting from the fit of the experimental data for each EDELWEISS detector are statistically consistent with the values $`a=0.16`$ and $`b=0.18`$ quoted in . The biases on the determination of $`<Q_n>`$ due to experimental calibration uncertainties, heat quenching effects , and multiple scatterings are globally taken into account with this measurement.

### 5.2 Electron and nuclear recoils zones standard deviations

The standard deviation of the electronic and nuclear recoil distributions, respectively noted $`\sigma _{Q_\gamma }`$ and $`\sigma _{Q_n}`$, can be calculated with Eqs. (2) and (3) by propagation of the experimental values $`\sigma _I`$ and $`\sigma _H`$:

$`\sigma _{Q_\gamma }(E_R)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1+V/3)}{E_R}}\sqrt{\sigma _I^2+\sigma _H^2}`$ (9)
$`\sigma _{Q_n}^0(E_R)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{E_R}}\sqrt{\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{V}{3}}<Q_n>\right)^2\sigma _I^2+\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{V}{3}}\right)^2<Q_n>^2\sigma _H^2}`$ (10)
In the case of 60Co, 252Cf calibrations and low-background physics runs, the experimental values of $`\sigma _{Q_\gamma }`$ at high energy are significantly larger (up to $``$+30% at 122 keV) than those calculated from the resolutions given in Table 2 with Eqs. (4), (5) and (9) (Fig. 7a). A dependance of the heat signal amplitude on the position of the interaction provides an explanation for this discrepency. This hypothesis is consistent with the $`1`$% heat signal amplitude difference observed between center and guard events in 57Co calibrations. We therefore enlarge the $`a_H`$ coefficient in Eq. (5) so that the analytic expression given in Eq. (9) for $`\sigma _{Q_\gamma }(E_R)`$ actually follows the experimental distribution for 60Co, 252Cf and low-background physics runs. We have checked that 90% of the experimental events then fall inside the electron recoil zone defined in this way.
Even after correcting the $`a_H`$ value, the nuclear recoils $`Q`$ distribution of 252Cf calibration data is broader at high energy than what is expected from Eq. (10) (Fig. 7b). Atomic scattering processes , fluctuations in the number of charges created by a nuclear recoil  and multiple scattering (see Section 5.3) are in particular expected to give an intrinsic width to the $`Q`$ distribution for nuclear recoils and thus explain this behavior. The experimental $`\sigma _{Q_n}`$ dependance on recoil energy is properly described when a constant $`C`$ is quadratically added to the term associated with the experimental resolution. The equation (10) is thus re-written as follows:

$`\sigma _{Q_n}(E_R)=\sqrt{\sigma _{Q_n}^0(E_R)+C^2}`$ (11)
Typical values of $`C`$0.040 are determined for each EDELWEISS detector by fitting the experimental $`\sigma _{Q_n}`$ points using Eq. (11). With this definition, we have checked for each detector that 90% of nuclear recoils induced by 252Cf calibrations are inside the nuclear recoil zone defined in Eq. (7).

### 5.3 Effect of multiple scattering

The nuclear recoil zone is determined through neutron calibrations, for which the proportion of multiple interactions is around 40% between 20 and 200 keV. This is of particular importance because in contrast to neutrons, WIMPs are expected to interact only once in the detector, and the $`Q`$ variable is in this case larger than when the same energy is deposited in multiple nuclear interactions, as can be deduced from Eq. (8).
We therefore evaluated quantitatively the effect of multiple interactions using a GEANT  simulation of 252Cf calibrations of the EDELWEISS detectors. The $`Q`$ variable has been calculated for the simulated nuclear events by associating with Eq. (8) an ionisation signal of amplitude $`e_I=0.16\left(e_R\right)^{1.18}`$ to an energy deposit $`e_R`$ in a single interaction, and summing each individual $`e_I`$ to obtain the total $`E_I`$ energy for a given neutron. The effect of multiple interactions has then been evaluated with these simulated data by smearing the resulting $`Q`$ distribution with the experimental resolution given in Eq. (10), and then by comparing the distributions obtained when selecting or not single interactions events (Fig. 8).
Although multiple interactions tend to lower $`<Q_n>`$, this effect remains weak, and the $`Q`$ distribution associated with single interactions events is only slightly narrower and completely included in the wider band. The nuclear recoils zone determined through 252Cf calibrations has therefore been conservatively used for the low-bakground physics run analysis.

### 5.4 Analysis energy range

Equations (9) and (10) predict that the discrimination between electronic and nuclear interactions is deteriorated at low energies (see also Fig. 5). Rejection of the $`\gamma `$-ray background at a given level therefore defines a lower bound for the analysis energy range.
Secondly, the detection efficiency has to be as close to 100% as possible in the analysis window in order to insure a good quality for the data set. The trigger threshold is therefore another factor which has to be taken into account for the definition of the analysis lower energy bound. For both 2000  and 2002  runs, the choice of the analysis lower bound has mainly been driven by this last factor. The threshold values of 5.7 and 3.5 keVee for the ionisation signal indeed correspond respectively to recoil energies of 30 and 20 keV for a 100% detection efficiency, and 90% efficiency when the nuclear recoil zone is taken into account.
Extensive $`\gamma `$-rays and neutron calibrations are performed before the physics data taking is initiated in order to fix the lowest recoil energy value corresponding to acceptable levels of $`\gamma `$-ray background rejection and detection efficiency. This ensures that the lower limit of the analysis window is not influenced by the possible presence of events in the final data set. The definition of the upper bound of the analysis window is described in .

## 6 Fiducial volume

### 6.1 Modelisation of the collection process

The segmentation of the upper charge collection electrode in a central part and a guard ring leads to the definition of a fiducial volume. This volume is shielded against a significant amount of the radioactivity of the detector environment by the peripherical volume, as shown in . To allow for the experimental resolution on the ionisation signals, the fiducial cut is defined as corresponding to a fraction of 3/4 of the charge collected on the center electrode. In order to give a robust and precise estimation of the detector volume associated with this fiducial cut, it is necessary to relate a given ratio of the two ionisation signal amplitudes to a given volume inside the detector. This is not a straightforward process: first, for non-WIMP interactions, multiple interactions have to be taken into account, and furthermore, interactions between charges may play a crucial role in the collection process. In particular, the important proportion of events with a charge signal shared between the two channels observed in each detector for 60Co calibrations (see e.g. Fig. 3) hints to the importance of these charge interactions processes.
In order to test their influence on the determination of the fiducial volume, we choose to model the collection process with the simplified phenomenological description of charge collection given in Ref. , associated with the hypothesis of a plasma effect before charge drift. We will see that, even if some of our results cannot be explained in the framework of this very simplified model (Section 6.2), it provides a good empirical tool to determine the fiducial volume and estimate systematic errors on its value (Section 6.3). The model used here assumes the distribution of the charges in a sphere with uniform density, extending to a maximal radius $`r_b`$ before the charge is fully collected. Charges are distributed among the two electrodes depending on the position of the interaction relative to the surface corresponding to the separation between drift lines going to the center and guard rings. Here, we assume for simplicity that this surface is parametrized by a cylinder of radius $`R_C`$ (Fig. 11). For an interaction at the radius $`R>R_C+r_b`$ in the crystal, the whole charge is fully associated with the guard ring. If $`R<R_Cr_b`$, then the charge has to be associated with the center electrode. Finally, if $`R_C+r_b>R>R_Cr_b`$, then the charge is splitted among the two electrodes, with a relative proportion associated with the center electrode corresponding to the fraction of the sphere inside the cylinder of radius $`R_C`$. For given values of $`r_b`$ and $`R_C`$, the fiducial volume is determined in this model by the following expression of the fiducial radius:

$$R_{fid}=R_C+2\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{13\pi }{9}\right)r_b$$
(12)
A fraction of 1/4 of the total volume of a sphere of radius $`r_b`$ centered on $`R_{fid}`$ is inside the cylinder of radius $`R_C`$. In the framework of our model, interactions inside the cylinder of radius $`R_{fid}`$ thus correspond to a charge collection equal or greater than 3/4 of the total charge.

### 6.2 Validity and limits of the modelisation

In order to test its ability to reproduce the distribution of charge amplitudes, ionisation signals are simulated in the framework of this simple model, using the program GEANT  for 60Co and 252Cf calibrations, as described in Section 5.3. The parameters $`r_b`$ and $`R_C`$ of the simulated data are then adjusted to match the experimental distribution of the $`Y`$ variable on a given energy range, the $`Y`$ variable being defined as the normalized difference of the ionisation signals:

$$Y=\frac{E_{guard}E_{center}}{E_{guard}+E_{center}}$$
(13)
The result of this optimisation is shown in Fig. 9 in the case of a 60Co calibration of the GeAl6 detector under 6.3 V bias voltage. The shape of the simulated distribution closely follows that of the experimental data, while a simulation using an alternative model (linear distribution of the charge, detailed in ) clearly exhibits a different pattern.
We have also studied the evolution of the ($`r_b`$, $`R_C`$) parameters as a function of bias voltage for the GeAl6 detector . $`R_C`$ should not depend on the value and sign of the bias voltage, since it is related to the static field distribution only, while $`r_b`$ should increase with decreasing bias voltage: as the field increases, the less time there is for diffusion processes. The values of the parameters $`r_b`$ and $`R_C`$ determined for 60Co and 252Cf calibrations of the GeAl6 detector versus the applied field are displayed in Fig. 10. The $`r_b`$ and $`R_C`$ values follow the expected behavior. Moreover, the mean measured value of $`R_C`$ ($`<R_C>=24.45\pm 0.05`$ mm) is statistically compatible with the value $`R_{electro}=24.4`$ mm expected from numerical calculations of the electric potential inside this detector (see Table 1).
The very large $`r_b`$ values are a clear sign that macroscopic charge extension perpendicular to the drift direction occurs before the charge collection is completed. However the data does not support that this expansion is driven by the plasma effect invoqued in Ref. : a charge cloud size of the order or above a millimeter is indeed not compatible with results of studies on the dead layer . Furthermore, Fig. 10 shows that $`r_b()<<r_b(+)`$ and that the values of $`r_b`$ for 60Co and 252Cf calibrations do not differ significantly for a same bias voltage. These two experimental results are also in strong disagreement with the predictions derived from the hypothesis of a plasma effect: firstly, the observed asymmetry for $`r_b`$ values between positive and negative bias voltage does not find any explanation in the framework of the plasma model, and secondly, the plasma effect should be weaker in the case of 60Co calibrations than for 252Cf (and thus $`r_b`$ values much smaller), since $`\gamma `$-rays induce much lower charge densities than neutrons. These are strong indications that the simple model presented here does not provide a proper description of the dynamics of the charge drift and collection. Charge repulsion during drift, not taken into account here, could for example play an important role in the collection process. A more detailed study, with dedicated detectors, has been initiated in the EDELWEISS collaboration in the aim of better understanding the collection process .

### 6.3 Measurement of the fiducial volume

Our results clearly point out the limits of the modelisation presented in Section 6.1. Still, it has to be stressed that this model reproduces correctly the distribution of charges among the electrodes (Fig. 9), which represents the net effect of the charge collection process. It is therefore sufficient to give a precise determination of the fiducial volume and evaluate possible systematic errors, before a better, physically motivated model replaces it.
We have calculated $`R_{fid}`$ with Eq. (12) and the $`r_b`$ and $`R_C`$ values determined from 252Cf calibrations under the same bias voltage as that of the low-background physics run for each detector. For all detectors except GeAl10, the $`R_C`$ values are compatible with those expected from the geometry of the electrodes and from numerical simulations of the electric potential inside the detectors. The values determined for $`R_{fid}`$ for the detectors are summarized in Table 3. The systematic error associated with the uncertainty on the exact mechanism producing the charge expansion is evaluated by taking the difference between the fiducial volume value deduced using the linear model and the one presented in Section 6.1. Despite the poor description of the charge distribution by the linear model (see Fig. 9), this difference is only 1%. The variation of the energy range used to determine the values of $`r_b`$ and $`R_C`$ through comparison of the experimental and simulated $`Y`$ distributions proved to be a minor contribution to this systematic error.
An alternative evaluation of the fiducial volume is the fraction of cosmic activation events at 8.98 and 10.37 keV (see Fig. 2) selected by the fiducial volume cut. Such events are expected to be evenly spread inside the detector, and are observed at rates varying between 3 to 15 events per detector per day. In the few days following a neutron calibration, the 10.37 keV rate is also enhanced due to $`{}_{}{}^{71}Ge`$ activation ($`T_{1/2}`$ = 2.7 d), a population that is also expected to be evenly spread inside the detector. The measured fractions, directly interpreted as $`V_{fid}`$ values, are listed in the last column of Table 3. They are compatible within statistics with the values derived from the neutron calibration data and the collection process modelisation. The cosmic activation data is however less precise due to statistics, but this measurement is a good cross-check for the determination of the fiducial volume, and validates the use of the model presented in Section 6.1 to determine the fiducial volume.

## 7 Conclusion

We have described in the present work the calibration aspects of the data analysis in the EDELWEISS experiment. In particular, the nuclear recoil zone and fiducial volume have been estimated using several methods, allowing to define a conservative value of these important parameters. A simple parametrization allows us to reproduce accurately the distribution of the charges between the centre and guard electrodes associated with 60Co and 252Cf calibrations, making possible the systematic studies necessary to establish the robustness of the determination of the fiducial volume of the detectors.