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# Positive Parity Pentaquarks Pragmatically Predicted

## I Introduction

The existence of an exotic baryon state containing an antiquark in its lowest Fock component has been verified by the observations at a number of laboratories of a strangeness $`+1`$ baryon at $`1540`$ MeV with a narrow width nakano ; barmin ; stepanyan ; barth ; kubarovsky ; asratyan . In distinction to all previously discovered baryons, such a state must have four quarks and an antiquark in its minimal Fock component. The present example, which has quark content $`udud\overline{s}`$, was known as $`Z^+`$ during its advent, and now seems generally called $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ (e.g., stepanyan ; barth ; kubarovsky ; asratyan ).

There are a number of pre-discovery theoretical studies of pentaquarks hogaasen ; strottman ; roiesnel ; oh ; diakonov , some including heavy quarks in the pentaquark state heavyexamples ; leandri . Of particular note is diakonov , which, though it has been criticized weigel ; coheneinz , advanced the field by predicting in the context of a chiral soliton model a narrow pentaquark only 10 MeV away from the discovery mass. Since the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ discovery, there has been a flurry of papers studying pentaquark properties in constituent quark models cqm ; stancu ; jaffew ; us ; jennings , other aspects of pentaquarks in soliton models coheneinz ; csm , production of pentaquarks, including in heavy ion collisions hi , non-observance of pentaquarks in earlier hadronic experiments hr , pentaquarks in the large $`N_c`$ limit cohenzwei , and other pentaquark topics leftovers ; sugiyama .

At present, the spin and parity of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ are experimentally unknown. A majority of the theoretical papers, including all the chiral soliton papers, treat the state as positive parity. A minority, including an earlier work by the present authors us , have considered the possibility of negative parity sugiyama . All theory papers, to our knowledge, consider the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ to be spin-1/2. Regarding the isospin, a $`\mathrm{\Theta }^{++}`$ signal has been sought and not found barth , so that the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ appears to be isoscalar and hence a member of a pentaquark flavor antidecuplet.

In the present work, we focus on understanding how a positive parity state could emerge as the lightest pentaquark, in the context of a constituent quark model stancu ; glozman ; jennings . We explore the consequences of the ensuing picture for other states in the pentaquark antidecuplet. Positive parity pentaquarks in a constituent quark model require a negative-parity spatial wave function, obtained by putting one quark in the lowest P-state of a suitable collective potential. One could entertain more complicated excited state scenarios also (e.g., jaffew ). Here we discuss a plausible mechanism that changes the level ordering so that a state with an excited wave function becomes the lightest one. In this approach, the positive parity of the state is a consequence of the quark-quark pairwise potential and the chosen symmetry structure of the flavor-spin wave function.

Insight comes from studies of three-quark baryons gr , where the level ordering of the first excited positive and negative parity states is reproduced correctly in an effective theory where the dominant pairwise interaction is flavor-spin dependent. One-gluon exchange gives only a color-spin dependent force. Flavor-spin dependent interactions can be pictured as arising from the interchange of quark-antiquark pairs with the quantum numbers of pseudoscalar mesons. However, the effective theory viewpoint does not require that one commit to a specific model for the underlying physics. Skyrmion or instanton induced interactions could be described equally well by the effective field theory introduced below.

In the next section, we demonstrate how effective flavor-spin interactions lead to the correct $`q^3`$ mass spectrum, and in particular rectify the level order of the Roper and negative parity resonances. We also discuss semiquantitatively the consequences of the flavor-spin interaction for the pentaquark system. Section III includes a more detailed numerical analysis, taking into account the breaking of SU$`(3)_F`$ symmetry. We give predictions which are new in the effective theory context for the mass and decays widths of other members of the pentaquark antidecuplet, particularly the exotic cascade states $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$. In a constituent quark model with flavor independent spin-splittings, the difference between the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ masses is just that obtaining from an additional strange quark, about 150 MeV us ; jaffew . We find that the flavor symmetry breaking stretches out this mass gap considerably, pushing the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$ mass to about 1900 MeV. This is nonetheless much smaller than the mass gap predicted in the chiral soliton model in diakonov . The predicted width of a 1900 MeV $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$ is still narrow, which suggests that the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$ should be distinguishable from background.

## II Framework

A key feature of the flavor-spin interaction is that it is most attractive for states that have the most symmetric flavor-spin wave functions. If the interaction has exact SU$`(3)_F`$ flavor symmetry (which may not be the case and which we do not assume later), then the mass shift is given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M_\chi =C_\chi \underset{\alpha <\beta }{}\left(\lambda _F\sigma \right)_\alpha \left(\lambda _F\sigma \right)_\beta ,$$
(1)
where the sum is over all $`qq`$ and $`q\overline{q}`$ pairs $`(\alpha ,\beta )`$, the $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_\alpha `$ are Pauli spin matrices for quark or antiquark $`\alpha `$, and $`\stackrel{}{\lambda }_{F\alpha }`$ are flavor Gell-Mann matrices. Coefficient $`C_\chi `$ is a positive number. Let us focus on states or components of states that contain quarks only. If the flavor-spin state is symmetric overall, then one may write the wave function as a sum of terms in which a given pair of quarks is singled out and in which the individual spin and flavor wave functions of the given pair are either both symmetric or both antisymmetric. In either case, the expectation values of $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_\alpha \stackrel{}{\sigma }_\beta `$ and $`\stackrel{}{\lambda }_{F\alpha }\stackrel{}{\lambda }_{F\beta }`$ for that pair have the same sign and yield maximal attraction.

The most significant contribution to Eq. (1) in a pentaquark state comes from the sum over the $`q^4`$ component. Let us compare the situation of four quarks in S-states \[$`S^4`$\] to one where one quark is in a P-state and three are in S-states \[$`S^3P`$\]. The color state of the $`q^4`$ must be a $`\mathrm{𝟑}`$, which for four quarks is a mixed symmetry state. If all quarks are in the same spatial state, then of necessity the flavor-spin state must also be of mixed symmetry. However, for the $`S^3P`$ combination, one can have a mixed-symmetry spatial state and a color-orbital state that is totally antisymmetric. The flavor-spin wave function is then totally symmetric, and leads to the most attractive possible flavor-spin interaction. We will compute below the numerical lowering of the $`S^3P`$ binding energy relative to the $`S^4`$, and show that it is dramatically large, more than enough to balance the extra energy associated with the orbital excitation. This gives a semiquantitative understanding of the numerical results that we present in section III.

It is useful to recall how flavor-spin interactions work in the ordinary $`q^3`$ baryon systems, both to motivate our framework and to estimate numerical values for the parameters involved. The dramatic problem that is solved is the level ordering of the $`N^{}(1440)`$, the positive parity S-state excitation of the nucleon also known as the Roper resonance, and the $`N^{}(1535)`$, the lightest spin-1/2 negative parity resonance, which we refer to as the $`S_{11}`$.

In the Bag model and in linear or harmonic oscillator confining potentials, the first excited S-state lies above the lowest P-state, making the predicted Roper mass heavier than the lightest negative parity baryon mass. Pairwise spin-dependent interactions must reverse the level ordering. As mentioned earlier, color-spin interactions fail in this regard friends , while flavor-spin interactions produce the desired effect. Since the $`q^3`$ color wave function is antisymmetric, the flavor-spin-orbital wave function is totally symmetric. For all quarks in an S-state, the flavor-spin wave function is totally symmetric all by itself and leads to the most attractive flavor-spin interaction. If one quark is in a P-state, the orbital wave function is mixed symmetry and so is the flavor-spin wave function, and the flavor-spin interaction is a less attractive . In the SU$`(3)_F`$ symmetric case, Eq. (1), one obtains mass splittings

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M_\chi =\{\begin{array}{cc}14C_\chi & N(939),N^{}(1440)\hfill \\ 4C_\chi & \mathrm{\Delta }(1232)\hfill \\ 2C_\chi & N^{}(1535)\hfill \end{array}.$$
(2)
Here we have approximated the $`N^{}(1535)`$ as a state with total quark spin-1/2.

The scenario is shown in Fig. 1. Relative to some base mass, one first has the 2S–1S and 1P–1S splittings for the Roper and the $`S_{11}`$. Then the flavor-spin pairwise interactions further split the spectrum into its final form, placing the Roper below the mass of the negative parity baryon. We have worked with a small number of states to illustrate clearly how the mechanism works. More extensive evidence that flavor-spin splitting is significant in the baryon spectrum is found in gr ; cclg ; hael ; carlos ; myhrer .

Returning to pentaquarks, the presence of a P-state now allows for a more rather than a less symmetric $`q^4`$ flavor-spin wave function. The net result is that pentaquarks with $`S^3P`$ four-quark components are lighter than the corresponding states with all quarks in the ground state. One can estimate the advantage of this configuration as follows. For the $`q^4`$ part of the state, the mass splitting of Eq. (1) evaluates to,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M_\chi =C_\chi \left\{4C_6(R)8N\frac{4}{3}S^22F^2\right\},$$
(3)
where $`C_6(R)`$ is the quadratic Casimir of the $`SU(6)`$ flavor-spin representation $`R`$, $`N`$ is the number of quarks, and $`S^2`$ and $`F^2`$ are the spin and flavor quadratic Casimirs of the state. (We normalize generators $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_A`$ so that Tr $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_A\mathrm{\Lambda }_B=(1/2)\delta _{AB}`$. A representation $`R`$ can be specified by its Young diagram, and a useful expression for the quadratic Casimir of representations of $`SU(Q)`$ is found in djm95 ,

$$C_Q(R)=\frac{1}{2}\left(NQ\frac{N^2}{Q}+r_i^2c_i^2\right)$$
(4)
where $`r_i`$ is the number of boxes in the $`i^{th}`$ row of the Young diagram, $`c_i`$ is the number of boxes in the $`i^{th}`$ column, and $`N`$ is the total number of boxes.) For the present situation,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M_\chi =\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{28}{3}C_\chi & S^4\hfill \\ 28C_\chi & S^3P\hfill \end{array}.$$
(5)
To make a $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$, all four quarks are non-strange and the state is isospin-0. Fermi symmetry requires the $`S^4`$ state to be spin-1. The $`S^3P`$ state can be spin-0, and we take it so. Thus

$$M(S^3P)M(S^4)=\mathrm{}\omega \frac{56}{3}C_\chi 310\mathrm{MeV}.$$
(6)
For the numerical evaluation of Eq. (6), we have assumed the $`1P`$$`1S`$ level splitting of a harmonic oscillator potential, with $`2\mathrm{}\omega `$ estimated from the nucleon-Roper mass difference; the coefficient $`C_\chi `$ is fixed by the nucleon-$`\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)`$ mass splitting. Adding the strange antiquark to the spin-0 $`S^3P`$ state gives no further spin-dependent mass shift. Adding the $`\overline{s}`$ to the spin-1 $`S^4`$ state does give a spin-dependent splitting can lower the mass, but not decisively. Thus, the pentaquark state with an $`S^3P`$ four-quark state is the lightest by a wide margin.

A key concern is the location of the other pentaquark states. Particularly interesting are the other exotic members of the pentaquark antidecuplet, namely the isospin-3/2 pentaquark $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$, or cascade, states. To more accurately predict the masses and widths of these strangeness $`2`$ states, or of other states of varying flavor, we should consider the effects of flavor symmetry breaking in the flavor-spin interaction. Certainly one knows that isolated quark-antiquark pairs bind into states with flavor-dependent masses. With flavor symmetry breaking we write the isospin-conserving, spin-dependent interaction as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M=C_{SI}\underset{\alpha <\beta }{}(\tau \sigma )_\alpha (\tau \sigma )_\beta C_{47}\underset{\alpha <\beta ,i=4}{\overset{7}{}}(\lambda ^i\sigma )_\alpha (\lambda ^i\sigma )_\beta C_8\underset{\alpha <\beta }{}(\lambda ^8\sigma )_\alpha (\lambda ^8\sigma )_\beta .$$
(7)
The $`\tau _\alpha ^i`$ are the isospin matrices for quark $`\alpha `$, the same as $`\lambda _\alpha ^i`$ for $`i=1,2,3`$. We find the coefficients by studying the mass splitting in the three-quark sector, as is reported in the next section. Matrix elements of Eq. (7) in the pentaquark states (summing over all 5 constituents) are also presented, so that the splittings within the pentaquark antidecuplet are easily obtained.

## III Fits and Predictions

In the previous section, the significance of the flavor-spin interactions in establishing the correct level ordering for the Roper and N(1535) resonances was pointed out. Here we will focus on the effects of flavor-spin interactions in the case where SU$`(3)_F`$ is broken both by the strange quark mass and by the flavor-spin interactions when $`C_{SI}`$, $`C_{47}`$, and $`C_8`$ in Eq. (7) are unequal. We consider three quark systems first to determine the relevant parameters.

We obtain the values for coefficients in Eq. (7) by fitting the mass spectrum of the low-lying octet and decuplet baryons. For a specific $`q^3`$ state the mass $`M`$ is given by

$$M=M_0^{(3)}+x_1C_{SI}+x_2C_{47}+x_3C_8+n_s\mathrm{\Delta }m_s,$$
(8)
where $`M_0^{(3)}`$ is a base mass, $`x_1`$, $`x_2`$, and $`x_3`$ are matrix elements of the operators in Eq. (7), $`n_s`$ is the number of strange quarks, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_s`$ is the mass increase due to the presence of a strange quark.

We fit $`M_0^{(3)}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_s`$, $`C_{SI}`$, $`C_{47}`$ and $`C_8`$ to the well-known masses of the baryons listed in Table 2. The experimental masses given are isospin averages. The results are:

$`M_0^{(3)}`$ $`=`$ $`1340.5\pm 5.3\mathrm{MeV},\mathrm{\Delta }m_s=136.3\pm 2.5\mathrm{MeV}`$
$`C_{SI}`$ $`=`$ $`28.2\pm 0.5\mathrm{MeV},C_{47}=20.7\pm 0.5\mathrm{MeV},C_8=19.7\pm 1.2\mathrm{MeV}.`$ (9)
An error of 5 MeV is assumed for each of the baryon masses, to take into account theoretical uncertainties. Thus, moving any of the parameters to the edge of the quoted error limits changes the predicted baryon masses by about 5 MeV. With these parameters, and the Roper fixed at 1440 MeV, the S11 mass is predicted to be 1526 MeV.

Applying the same approach to the pentaquark antidecuplet, we obtain a mass $`M`$ for each state given by:

$$M=M_0^{(5)}+x_1C_{SI}+x_2C_{47}+x_3C_8+n_s^{eff}\mathrm{\Delta }m_s.$$
(10)
$`M_0^{(5)}`$ is the base mass for 5-quark bound states and should be different from $`M_0^{(3)}`$ found earlier. The values for model parameters given in Eq. (8) can change in going from q3 system to $`q^4\overline{q}`$ system. We anticipate that the largest change in the model parameters will occur in $`M_0`$, while we expect the other parameters to have a less marked dependence on the number of quarks. Therefore we proceed by eliminating $`M_0^{(5)}`$ from the mass formula by the use of the experimentally measured mass of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$, $`M_\mathrm{\Theta }`$=1542 MeV nakano ; barmin ; stepanyan ; barth ; kubarovsky . The number $`n_s^{eff}`$, is the expectation value of the number of strange quarks plus strange antiquarks in each state, taking due account of hidden strangeness components, which were shown to be significant in us . The necessary matrix elements may be evaluated using the pentaquark maximally symmetric flavor-spin wave function, which can be written as111 The four-quark part of this state is totally antisymmetric, as it should be. A diquark-diquark state, such as in jaffew , has antisymmetry within each diquark, but antisymmetry when exchanging quarks between different diquarks is not enforced. This can be viewed as an approximation that is valid if the diquarks are much smaller than the overall state. In a absence of a mechanism that compresses the diquarks, a diquark-diquark state violates Fermi-Dirac statistics.

$$|(\overline{\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}},1/2)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|(\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}},0)(\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}},0)_{\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}},0}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|(\mathrm{𝟔},1)(\mathrm{𝟔},1)_{\overline{\mathrm{𝟔}},0},$$
(11)
where the pair of numbers in parentheses refer to the flavor and spin. On the right hand side, the first (second) pair of numbers refers to the first (second) pair of quarks, and the quantum numbers of the antiquark $`(\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}},1/2)`$ are the same in each term and have been suppressed. The numerical values of the matrix elements in Eq. (10) are given in Table 3.

Using the wave function given by Eq. (11), and the mass formula expressed in Eq. (10), we find the following masses for the members of the baryon antidecuplet: $`M(N_5)=1665`$ MeV, $`M(\mathrm{\Sigma }_5)=1786`$ MeV and $`M(\mathrm{\Xi }_5)=1906`$ MeV. To complete our predictions, we use the predicted mass spectrum and SU$`(3)_F`$ symmetry for the decay matrix elements to estimate widths of the decay modes of the highest isospin members of the antidecuplet. Table 4 lists our predictions.

It should be stressed that we view the mass and decay predictions of the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_5`$ states to be most reliable due to the absence of substantial mass mixing with nearby states. While we provide predictions for the $`N_5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_5`$ for the sake of completeness, these may be subject to large corrections due to mixing with octet pentaquarks. Whether such effects could be reliably evaluated is an interesting question which is beyond the scope of the present work.

## IV Conclusions

We have considered the possibility that the lightest strangeness one pentaquark state is positive parity, with one unit of orbital angular momentum. In this case, it is possible to construct states with totally symmetric spin-flavor wave functions. Spin-flavor exchange interactions, if dominant, render these states lighter than any pentaquark with all its constituents in the ground states. We assume such spin-flavor exchange interactions in an effective theory, including flavor SU(3) breaking effects in operator coefficients and in the quark masses. The general form of these multi-quark interactions is consistent with a number of possible models of the underlying dynamics, including pseudoscalar meson exchange, skyrmions, and instanton-induced effects. In our approach, however, we need not commit ourselves to any specific dynamical picture. We believe that the theoretical uncertainty in using such a streamlined (yet pragmatic) approach is no greater than the spread in predictions between different specific models. Use of effective spin-flavor exchange interactions is well motivated given its success in explaining the lightness of the Roper resonance relative to the negative parity N(1535), as we demonstrated in Section II. Simple quark models without dominant spin-flavor exchange interactions simply get the ordering of these states wrong. Fitting our operator coefficients, a mean multiplet mass, and a strangeness mass contribution to the masses of the ground state octet and decuplet baryons, we then predict mass splittings in the parity even pentaquark antidecuplet. In particular, our approach allows us to predict the mass of the strangeness $`2`$ cascade states at $`1906`$ MeV, with a full width approximately $`2.8`$ times larger than that of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$. The cascade states do not mix with any other pentaquarks of comparable mass, which makes these prediction particularly robust. Discovery of cascade pentaquarks around $`1906`$ MeV would therefore provide an independent test of the importance of spin-flavor exchange interactions in the breaking of the approximate SU(6) symmetry of the low-lying hadron spectrum.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Leonid Glozman and Josef Speth for useful comments. We thank the NSF for support under Grant Nos. PHY-0140012, PHY-0243768 and PHY-0245056.


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# EVOLUTION IN THE COLORS OF LYMAN–BREAK GALAXIES FROM 𝑍∼4 TO 𝑍∼3Based on observations taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) under NASA contract NAS5–26555, and based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Chile (ESO Programmes 168.A-0485, 64.O-0643, 66.A-0572, 68.A-0544).

## 1. Introduction

Current investigations of high–redshift ($`z2`$) galaxies have been focusing on the properties of these objects as a global population. Many surveys identify these galaxies by their strong emission at rest–frame UV wavelengths (observed–frame optical) and spectral breaks at Lyman $`\alpha `$ and the Lyman limit (so–called Lyman–break galaxies \[LBGs\]; e.g., Giavalisco 2002). These galaxies are generally dominated by the light from OB stars, and have properties that are similar to local starburst galaxies (e.g., Shapley et al., 2003). Near–infrared (NIR) photometry of galaxies at $`z2`$ extends the observations to rest–frame optical wavelengths, probing the light from A– and later–type stars. Several studies have used NIR observations to constrain the properties of the stellar populations of $`z23`$ galaxies (e.g., Sawicki & Yee 1998; Papovich, Dickinson, & Ferguson 2001; Shapley et al. 2001; Labbé et al. 2003; Franx et al. 2003), and to estimate the evolution of the global stellar–mass density for $`0<z3`$ (e.g., Dickinson et al., 2003).

At present, some of the constraints on the parameters of the galaxies’ stellar–population models are uncertain by more than an order of magnitude (Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001). Even so, the stellar–population ages and star–formation histories of the models have broad implications for galaxy evolution at higher redshifts (see Ferguson, Dickinson, & Papovich 2002). The galaxies’ spectral–energy distributions (SEDs) contain the integrated record of their past and current star formation. Thus, comparing galaxy SEDs at different redshifts allows us to improve the constraints on the star–formation histories of these galaxies.

In this Letter, we study galaxies at $`z4`$ selected from deep imaging with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and augmented with NIR observations from the ground (§ 2), and we compare these to similar rest–frame colors for color–selected galaxies at $`z3`$ from the Hubble Deep Fields, North and South (HDF–N and –S; § 3). We then discuss the SEDs of the luminosity density generated by these galaxies, and we consider the implications on the galaxies’ star–formation histories (§ 4). Throughout this Letter, we use a flat cosmology with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, a Hubble constant of 70 km s-1 Mpc-1, and we use AB magnitudes, $`m_{\mathrm{AB}}=48.62.5\mathrm{log}(f_\nu /1\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{Hz}^1)`$.

## 2. The Observations and Galaxy Sample

The HST data used in this letter stem from the first three epochs of ACS imaging of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF–S) as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) program. These data provide imaging in the $`B_{435}`$, $`V_{606}`$, $`i_{775}`$, and $`z_{850}`$–bands covering a field of view of $`10\mathrm{}\times 16.5\mathrm{}`$. The dataset, its reduction procedures, and object cataloging are described in Giavalisco et al. (2003a).

The ACS data only probe rest–frame UV wavelengths for galaxies at $`z1.2`$. To study the rest–frame optical light from higher redshift galaxies we combined the ACS data with VLT/ISAAC imaging in the $`JHK_s`$ bands obtained as part of GOODS (Giavalisco et al., 2003a). Currently, we use eight individual ISAAC tiles covering a total area of 50 arcmin2.

We have analyzed the ISAAC $`JHK_s`$ images to extract optimal photometry matched to the ACS $`z_{850}`$–selected catalog. In brief, we use the $`z_{850}`$–band data to create two–dimensional templates for each object, convolve these to match the point–spread function (PSF) of the ground–based data, and scale and fit the convolved templates to the $`JHK_s`$–band images to extract object fluxes (see C. Papovich et al. in preparation; Fernández-Soto, Lanzetta, & Yahil 1999). The advantage of this method as applied to faint galaxies is that it reduces concerns about PSF– and aperture–matching effects on the relative photometry and permits deblending of objects partially merged by the terrestrial seeing.

We identified high–redshift galaxies whose SEDs reveal a spectral discontinuity at the observed Lyman limit, which arises from H I absorption systems along the line of sight (e.g., Madau, 1995). We selected “$`B`$–dropout” galaxies with, $`B_{435}V_{606}1.1+(V_{606}z_{850})`$, $`B_{435}V_{606}1.1`$, and $`V_{606}z_{850}1.6`$ (see Giavalisco et al., 2003b). Using these colors, we are able to reject most lower–redshift interlopers while detecting galaxies at $`z4`$ with bright rest–frame UV spectra (which is indicative of ongoing star formation; Leitherer et al. 1999). Indeed, using the $`1400`$ spectroscopic redshifts available for GOODS objects, we observe no contamination from stars or galaxies at $`z<3`$. Our modeling indicates that these criteria identify galaxies with an expected redshift distribution that peaks at $`\overline{z}=3.9`$ and tapers to higher and lower redshifts, with 50% completeness limits of $`3.4z4.5`$.

## 3. UV–Optical Colors of High–Redshift Galaxies

In the left panel of figure 1, we show the $`i_{775}K_s`$ versus $`K_s`$ color–magnitude diagram for the $`B`$–dropout galaxies. For $`z4`$, these colors correspond approximately to rest–frame $`m(1600\text{Å})m(4400\text{Å})`$. Although most of the $`B`$–dropout galaxies have relatively blue rest–frame UV–to–optical colors, the brightest galaxies in $`K_s`$ have redder optical–infrared colors with a fairly well–defined “blue–envelope”. Because this sample is selected in the $`z_{850}`$–band, there is no reason to expect that the lack of bright galaxies ($`K_s24`$) with blue colors is due to some selection effect. At fainter magnitudes, part of this trend may be due to increasing photometric uncertainties. However, the trend among the $`B`$–dropouts is apparent even at bright magnitudes where the photometric errors are small, and exists for the $`U`$–dropouts (see below), where the optical and IR data are much deeper than the GOODS data.

A similar blue–envelope exists for the colors of galaxies at $`z3`$. The right panel of figure 1 shows the $`V_{606}H`$ versus $`H`$–band color–magnitude diagram for $`U`$–dropout galaxies from the WFPC2 and NICMOS data of the HDF–N (Papovich et al. 2001; M. Dickinson et al. in preparation) and from the WFPC2 and VLT/ISAAC data of the HDF–S (Labbé et al., 2003), and using the color–selection of Steidel et al. (1999). The $`U`$–dropout criteria identify galaxies with a mean redshift, $`\overline{z}2.6`$, and 50% completeness limits of $`2.0z3.3`$. Although the galaxy samples for the HDF–N and –S are originally detected in NIR data, our tests using an $`I`$–band–selected sample for the HDF–N yield essentially no change in the number of selected $`U`$–dropout galaxies nor in the number and luminosity densities derived below. The advantage of using these data is that they provide band–matched catalogs from optical–to–NIR wavelengths that are comparable to the data for the $`B`$–dropout galaxies.

For the $`z3`$ galaxies, the $`V_{606}H`$ color corresponds to nearly identical rest–frame colors as $`i_{775}K_s`$ for the galaxies at $`z4`$. The color–magnitude trends at $`z3`$ and 4 are strikingly similar. Thus, the LBGs at both $`z3`$ and $`z4`$ seem to require that either (or likely some combination of) the mean stellar population age, metallicity, and/or dust opacity increase with optical luminosity. Furthermore, we also note that the $`U`$–dropout galaxies have slightly redder rest–frame $`m(1600\text{Å})m(4400\text{Å})`$ colors as evidenced by the fact that the “blue–envelope” shifts by $`0.2`$ mag. This reddening seems to imply that the mean ages, metallicity, and/or dust opacity are actually increasing from $`z4`$ to 3.

## 4. The Integrated SEDs of High–Redshift Galaxies

To measure the number and luminosity densities, we require the redshift distribution and effective volumes probed by the $`U`$– and $`B`$–dropout criteria. For the $`U`$–dropout galaxies, we have used the effective volume derived by Steidel et al. (1999). For the $`B`$–dropout galaxies, we have simulated artificial LBGs in the GOODS data with a distribution of colors and sizes that match the observed $`B`$–dropout properties (see Ferguson et al. 2003). We then measure photometry for the simulated galaxies and apply our color–selection criteria to derive the probability that a LBG with given magnitude and redshift is detected in the data, $`p(m,z)`$. This technique accounts for incompleteness due to magnitude and surface–brightness effects as well as the color–selection process. We then compute the effective volumes, $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(m)=𝑑zp(m,z)𝑑V(z)/𝑑z`$. Because these selection criteria are insensitive to heavily obscured galaxies and to galaxies with passively evolving, older stellar populations, our estimates of galaxy densities are strictly lower limits, derived from the UV–bright population alone.

To calculate the galaxy densities we consider galaxies brighter than $`m^{}+1`$ mag, where $`m^{}()=24.20`$ for the $`U`$–dropouts (Steidel et al. 1999; where $`(V_{606}+I_{814})/2`$, and $`m^{}`$ has been adjusted slightly to account for differences in cosmology and the mean redshifts of the samples here and those of Steidel et al.), and $`m^{}(I)=24.70`$ for the $`B`$–dropouts (Giavalisco et al. 2003b). We derive specific luminosity densities by integrating the flux densities in each bandpass to $`m^{}+1`$ mag (where the $`B`$–dropout galaxies are well–detected in both the ACS and ISAAC data, see figure 1): $`\rho _\nu =𝑑L_\nu (m)n(m)L_\nu (m)/V_{\mathrm{eff}}(m)`$, where $`n(m)`$ is the observed number density, $`L_\nu (m)=10^{0.4(48.6+m)}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}\pi d_L^2(1+z)^1`$, and $`d_L`$ is the luminosity distance. We plot the measured values in figure 2 along with uncertainties from a bootstrap resampling. Note that we have made no correction for fainter galaxies.

The area of the HDFs and the portion of the GOODS field with ISAAC imaging are fairly small, and cosmic variance may be a substantial source of uncertainty (see Somerville et al. 2003). To limit this effect on our results, we have normalized the luminosity densities of both the $`U`$– and $`B`$–dropout samples such that they match the rest-frame UV values of Steidel et al. (1999) and Giavalisco et al. (2003b), respectively, while preserving the measured “color” between the rest–frame UV and other wavelengths. These surveys average over more area and sightlines than considered here, which significantly reduces the uncertainties from cosmic variance. Cosmic variance may still be a factor for the $`B`$–band luminosity densities. The luminosity weighted mean rest-frame $`m(1600\text{Å})m(4400\text{Å})`$ colors of the $`U`$–dropout galaxies in the HDF–N and -S vary by $`0.15`$ mag, which provides an estimate on the uncertainty in the typical luminosity–density colors of LBGs in single HDF-sized fields. Future studies using the entire GOODS dataset (with full $`U`$–band and NIR observations of both fields) will substantially increase the sample size of both the $`U`$– and $`B`$–dropouts by roughly a factor of $`25`$ and 10, respectively, and should strengthen our results.

The fact that the rest–frame 1600 Å luminosity density is roughly unchanged (to within $`10`$%) implies that the star–formation rate (SFR; at least of massive, OB stars) is roughly constant (see, e.g., Madau, Pozzetti, & Dickinson 1998). However, we observe marginal evidence for a steepening of the UV continuum ($`15002500`$ Å), and strong evidence ($`98`$% confidence) that the average $`m(1600\text{Å})m(4400\text{Å})`$ color becomes redder for the $`U`$–dropouts relative to those for the $`B`$–dropouts. In particular, the luminosity density at rest–frame 4400 Å grows from $`2.1\pm 0.3\times 10^{26}`$ erg s-1 Hz-1 Mpc-3 at $`z4`$ to $`2.8\pm 0.3\times 10^{26}`$ erg s-1 Hz-1 Mpc-3 at $`z3`$. Based on the observed color distribution of LBGs (to fainter magnitude limits than our samples here), our simulations suggest that this result is unlikely to be biased significantly by the color–selection of these galaxies. This change in the mean color suggests that the mean stellar mass–to–light ratio of these galaxies is also increasing. Therefore, the total stellar mass density of this population is presumably growing by more than the $`33`$% increase seen in the rest–frame $`B`$–band optical light. Dickinson et al. (2003) found evidence for a substantial build–up in the global stellar mass density from $`z3`$ to $`z1`$. The present results extend that trend to still higher redshifts.

The luminosity densities constrain the global, average star–formation histories of galaxies at $`z34`$. One possible scenario is a roughly constant SFR with an unchanging dust content. This would produce approximately equal $`\rho _\nu (1600\text{Å})`$ at $`z3`$ and 4, and build up the global stellar mass with time, which would redden the average galaxy SED from $`z4`$ to $`z3`$ as the $`B`$–band light increases. We note that the Universe ages by $`50`$% from $`z4`$ to 3, and may imply that galaxies formed stars at a near–constant rate from $`z6`$ to 3. An alternative scenario is a rising SFR from $`z4`$ to 3 with an increasing dust content that is tuned to produce a roughly constant $`\rho _\nu (1600\text{Å})`$, and is consistent with the suggestion that the UV continuum is redder at $`z3`$. The fractional stellar–mass build-up in this scenario would be still greater than that with constant SFR and an unchanging dust content.

Both of the above scenarios invoke a SFR that is either constant or growing in time. However, the stellar populations observed in $`z3`$ galaxies appear to be young (a few $`\times 10^8`$ yr for simple, monotonic star–formation histories; Sawicki & Yee 1998; Papovich et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2001), which implies that these stars had not formed by $`z4`$. Galaxies at these redshifts probably have star–formation histories that are more complex (with multiple formation episodes) than those described by the simple models (see Ferguson et al. 2002). However, even though the star–formation histories for individual galaxies may be fairly stochastic, the global, average SFR at high redshift must be roughly constant in order to explain the evolution in the UV and optical luminosity densities.

Although the increase in the observed optical luminosity density from $`z4`$ to $`z3`$ appears robust, the uncertainties due to cosmic variance and other systematics are non-negligible. If there is, in fact, no evolution in the optical luminosity density then this could imply that stars formed in the $`B`$–dropout galaxies are not present within the $`U`$–dropout galaxies, and that at some point the $`z4`$ galaxies cease forming stars and evolve beyond the $`U`$–dropout selection criteria. This would have interesting implications for constraints on the sources of reionization and/or on the IMF at higher redshifts (see, e.g., Ferguson et al. 2002). However, this would likely be inconsistent with the low number density of red, $`z2`$ objects (Franx et al., 2003). Moreover, the majority of galaxy evolution models predict growth in the stellar–mass density by amounts consistent with our observations (although specific predictions vary from model to model; see Dickinson et al. 2003, and references within), and this suggests that much of the stellar–mass assembly at high–redshifts does occur in these UV–bright galaxies.

## 5. Summary

We have compared the rest–frame UV–optical colors of color–selected galaxies at $`z4`$ to those of similarly selected galaxies at $`z3`$. We find a great degree of similarity in the rest–frame $`m(\mathrm{UV})B`$ versus $`B`$ diagram for galaxies from $`z34`$. However, although the rest–frame UV luminosity densities at $`z4`$ and $`z3`$ are comparable, there is evidence that the rest–frame $`B`$–band luminosity density grows by $`33\pm 16`$%. Even though the star–formation histories of individual galaxies may involve complex and stochastic processes, the evolution of the luminosity density corresponds to a globally average SFR that is constant or increases with time. This implies that the average stellar-mass–to–light ratio of galaxies is also increasing over this redshift range and that the global stellar–mass density grows by more than $`33`$% over the $`1`$ Gyr interval that elapses between $`z4`$ and 3.

By selecting in the rest–frame UV, we are likely to miss galaxies without ongoing, relatively unobscured star formation. For example, Franx et al. (2003) have used deep NIR images of the HDF–S to identify red galaxies which may have evolved, massive stellar populations at $`z2`$, and may contribute significantly to the global stellar mass density. Such objects would be missing from the samples here, leading to an underestimate of the total density. Logically, the number and mass content of these red galaxies should grow as the Universe ages. Therefore, the apparent increase in stellar mass density from $`z4`$ to 3, as traced here by the UV–bright population, would only be strengthened if red, UV–faint objects were also considered. Ultimately, the full GOODS dataset will permit more direct tests of the star–formation histories of the distant galaxy population, as will future observations with the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and the James Webb Space Telescope.

We wish to thank our colleagues for stimulating conversations, and the entire GOODS team for their concerted effort. Support was provided by NASA through grant GO09583.01-96A from STScI, which is operated by the AURA, under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. Support for this work, part of the SIRTF Legacy Science Program, was provided by NASA through Contract Number 1224666 issued by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, under NASA contract 1407. PM acknowledges support by NASA through grant NAG5-11513.


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# The Anomaly in the Candidate Microlensing Event PA-99-N2

## 1 Introduction

The POINT-AGAPE111Pixel-lensing Observations on the Isaac Newton Telescope - Andromeda Galaxy Amplified Pixels Experiment collaboration is a part of a wider group of investigators monitoring M31 (e.g., Ansari et al., 1997; Calchi Novati et al., 2002, 2003) for the purpose of discovering microlensing events, and, in particular, gradients in the rate of events that should be induced by the high inclination of the M31 disk (Crotts, 1992; Baillon et al., 1993), so as to infer the presence of dark compact objects in the M31 halo. Recently, the POINT-AGAPE collaboration announced the discovery of four high signal-to-noise ratio candidate events in the data taken during 1999 and 2000 seasons(Paulin-Henriksson et al., 2003, see also Aurière et al. 2001 and Paulin-Henriksson et al. 2002). The MEGA222Microlensing Exploration of the Galaxy and Andromeda collaboration has also reported provisional events (de Jong et al., 2003).

This paper studies one of the candidate events, PA-99-N2, which was reported to exhibit an anomaly in its lightcurve. Provided that this is not due to any small but systematic photometric error, some physical mechanism behind this behavior must be sought. This is a productive avenue to explore as it is possible to infer some properties of the lens or source from the deviations from the standard Paczyński form. Here, we show that the observed deviations are consistent with being due to the close approach to a caustic in a binary lens. We calculate the parameters of the best fit binary solutions and discuss their implications.

## 2 The Anomaly

### 2.1 The Data

The POINT-AGAPE collaboration has acquired M31 imaging data for three seasons using the Wide Field Camera on the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope located at La Palma, the Canary Islands, Spain. The full analysis of this data set is in progress. Paulin-Henriksson et al. (2003) reported four microlensing candidate events in the first two seasons of data with full-width half-maximum timescales less than 25 days and with flux variations greater than that of a 21st magnitude star (in $`R`$ band). Among them is PA-99-N2, which is the second event identified in the northern field with a maximum during the 1999 season. It is a very bright event (at maximum) with high signal-to-noise ratio, lying at 22′03″ ($``$5 kpc in projected distance) from the center of M31. Other characteristics are listed in Table 1 of Paulin-Henriksson et al. (2003). The event was observed in three bands, close to the Sloan $`g^{}`$, $`r^{}`$ and $`i^{}`$ filters. As are all POINT-AGAPE observations, the data have been reduced and analyzed using the superpixel method (Calchi Novati et al., 2002; Paulin-Henriksson et al., 2003). The transformation to (Johnson/Cousins) $`VRI`$ is derived from the observations of Haiman et al. (1994).

Figure 1 shows the lightcurve of PA-99-N2 resulting from the analysis based on the superpixel method in all three bands for the 1999 season. In Figure 2, we also present the residuals from the best fit standard Paczyński lightcurve (PL). There are 65 datapoints in $`g^{}`$, 102 in $`r^{}`$ and 45 in $`i^{}`$. The lightcurve is flat during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. Visual inspection of the lightcurve shows that there are systematic deviations around JD 65, which have the same pattern in the $`g^{}`$ and $`r^{}`$ bands at the same times (there were no $`i^{}`$ observations made at the time of anomaly). Henceforth, JD denotes the Julian Date minus 2451392.5. In Figure 3, we plot the daily averaged $`g^{}`$ datapoints against the daily averaged $`r^{}`$ datapoints whenever those two band observations are available for the same night. The excellent linear correlation between them confirms the achromaticity of the variable fluxes including the anomalies in the lightcurve. The standard Paczyński fit to daily averaged datapoints gives a $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom of 3.1 (Paulin-Henriksson et al., 2003), which indicates that the deviations are statistically significant.

The photometric recalibration (Calchi Novati et al., 2002; Paulin-Henriksson et al., 2003) of the superpixel method may lead to some concern that the deviations are an artifact of the reduction pipeline. We find a statistical correlation between the seeing and residuals of the superpixel flux with respect to the best fit Paczyński curve for the datapoints taken during the deviation (Fig. 4). This raises the concern that the anomaly may be just an artifact due to seeing variations, and that the superpixel method does not make the proper recalibration. Although we emphasize that there exists no such correlation for all other datapoints (Fig. 4), it is still worrisome as the superpixel method was not devised for the photometry of bright resolved sources, for which the apparent correlations take place.

To examine the hypothesis that the deviations can be ascribed solely to seeing variations, we model the reported superpixel flux $`f`$, when the source is resolved, by

$$f=f_{\mathrm{true}}[1+\eta (\theta \theta _0)]$$
(1)
where $`f_{\mathrm{true}}`$ is the true flux, $`\theta `$ is the seeing, and $`\eta `$ and $`\theta _0`$ are fit parameters, while $`f=f_{\mathrm{true}}`$ (i.e., $`\eta =0`$) for all the other datapoints. Note that this provides a simple way of describing the correlation of flux with seeing found in Figure 4. When we fit for $`\eta `$ and $`\theta _0`$ by requiring the behavior of the true flux to be described by a Paczyński curve, this results in significant detections of nonzero $`\eta `$’s ($`\eta _g^{}=0.020\pm 0.003`$, $`\eta _r^{}=0.043\pm 0.003`$, $`\eta _i^{}=0.06\pm 0.01`$) with an overall better fit to the Paczński curve, as the $`\chi ^2`$ decreases from 824.7 (700.9) to 438.1 (321.1). Here, the first number is from the data for 1999-2000 seasons (488 datapoints), while the second number is from the 1999 season data only (212 datapoints). Figure 5 shows the residuals for this fit. While there is no visible anomaly any more around JD 65, close inspection reveals that the lightcurve is still not entirely consistent with Paczyński curve; the datapoints lie systematically below the rising parts of the model lightcurve (in particular, $`55<\text{JD}^{}<67`$) and the datapoints lie above the model in the falling side wing.333The pattern of the deviations is reminiscent of the parallax effect and this possibility is explored in Appendix B. In other words, although there is a correlation between flux residuals and seeing, this by itself is not enough to explain the shape of the lightcurve.

One way of testing whether the correlation found in Figure 4 is purely statistical or betrays a causal relation is to derive a second lightcurve which makes different assumptions as to the effects of seeing variation on the photometry. We perform fixed-aperture relative photometry of PA-99-N2 on the raw $`r^{}`$ frames with respect to stable stars nearby. This is possible for 31 frames near the peak of the event. In fixed-aperture photometry, the same fraction of flux from the source star enters the aperture irrespective of the brightness of the star, for given seeing. The ratio of flux within the aperture between two stars is therefore the same as the intrinsic ratio, regardless of seeing. The linear regression shown in Figure 6 shows consistency between the superpixel and fixed aperture lightcurves, with no outlier worse than 2$`\sigma `$. The residuals versus seeing shown in the inset suggest there is no correlation when seeing is better than 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$8 although the superpixel flux is lower compared to the fixed aperture photometry when seeing is worse than 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$8, which corresponds to the worst outliers at JD 63 and JD 69. At outset, we might expect the outliers to have little influence on any fitting result, as the errorbars are large. This is confirmed by adjusting the datapoints with seeing worse than 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$8 to correspond to the fixed-aperture photometry and checking that any results do not change qualitatively. In particular, the measured parameters change by less than the quoted uncertainty. In Figure 7, we present the residuals from a standard Paczyński fit of the fixed-aperture lightcurve. Again, the discrepancy from the Paczyński fit is $``$10%, which is larger than the formal error.

The MEGA collaboration (de Jong et al., 2003) have recently published a lightcurve for the same event, derived from a difference image analysis. They plot only the daily-averages for epochs of good seeing. We find that their lightcurve is consistent with the superpixel lightcurve 444This was judged from a comparison between our superpixel data and their data as read from the lightcurve presented in de Jong et al. (2003).

The seeming consistency of the three methods makes it unlikely that the deviations are caused by the data reduction. Although it is still possible that some unknown systematic problem with the data taking itself could cause such a spurious effect, we have no reason to suspect this at the moment.

### 2.2 Possible Causes

There are a number of possible origins for the bump in the lightcurve, including (i) intrinsic variability due to either the source star or another neighbouring star, (ii) a close approach to a lensing caustic (Albrow et al., 2002), or (iii) perturbations caused by a binary source (Griest & Hu, 1992; Han & Gould, 1997, see also Dominik 1998). Parallax effects can also cause perturbations (see also Smith et al. 2002; Gould, 1992; Gould, Miralda-Escudé & Bahcall, 1994, Appendix B), but the timescale of deviations is typically $`0.25\text{yr}`$, much longer than that of the bump in PA-99-N2. Hence, we discount this possibility.

Plots of the rms variation on each pixel of $`r^{}`$ band images taken during 2000 and 2001 seasons show no evidence of any additional variable source within the 7$`\times `$7 superpixel. There is also no evidence for any variation in the light centroid during the course of the event, which might be expected if the lightcurve is being polluted by a nearby variable. This provides good evidence that the bump is not caused by a nearby variable. It is possible that the source itself is variable, but this is not particularly favored because the deviations are achromatic and because the lightcurve during 2000 and 2001 seasons appears to be flat to good accuracy.

A binary source is somewhat disfavored on the grounds that the perturbations to the lightcurve are usually almost periodic. However, this possibility cannot be definitely ruled out.

In the following, we assume that the deviations are caused by a binary lens. We find that there are physically reasonable binary lens models that are consistent with the available photometric data of PA-99-N2 to a high statistical significance.

## 3 Binary Lens Model

The most straightforward way of generating fold caustics is with binary lenses. The simplest cases of binary lens lightcurves – a point source in uniform rectilinear motion lensed by a static binary lens – are characterized by six parameters: the ratio of the two masses $`q`$, the projected separation in terms of the Einstein ring radius $`d`$, the angle at which the source motion crosses the binary axis $`\alpha `$, the time $`t_0`$ and the distance $`u_0=u(t_0)`$ of the closest approach to a fixed reference point555Following Albrow et al. (2002), the reference point is chosen to be either the center of the mass if $`d1`$, or the primary-lens position shifted toward the secondary by the zeroth order correction, $`[(1+q^1)d]^1`$ if $`d1`$. and the Einstein timescale $`t_\mathrm{E}`$. The best fit binary lens lightcurve of PA-99-N2 can be found by searching for the $`\chi ^2`$ minimum in this six-dimensional parameter space using any standard minimization technique. Note that, while two further parameters for each passband are required to relate the lensing magnifications to the observed fluxes, these parameters enter linearly into the fit, and thus, this part of the problem can be decoupled from the rest of the problem and solved directly by separate matrix inversion.

We have carried out this minimization with the first two seasons of data. There are 212 datapoints (65 in $`g^{}`$, 102 in $`r^{}`$ and 45 in $`i^{}`$) from the 1999 season and 276 datapoints (146 in $`r^{}`$ and 130 in $`i^{}`$) from the 2000 season.666The difference of the quoted number of datapoints between Paulin-Henriksson et al. (2003) and this paper is because Paulin-Henriksson et al. (2003) used daily averaged datapoints while here we use a single point for each nonfaulty frame. We have found a number of possible binary lens models, and their parameters are listed in Table 1. For the formally best fit model (C1), the lightcurve residuals are shown in Figure 8. We find that there exist several binary lens models that lie at a local $`\chi ^2`$ minimum for which the $`\chi ^2`$ difference with respect to the global minimum is quite small. In particular, the two best fit models, C1 and W1, are essentially indistinguishable in terms of their values of $`\chi ^2`$. Some of these degeneracies would have been broken if the $``$20-day observation gap between JD 72 and JD 91 had been regularly covered (for example, Model C2 predicts a cusp grazing near JD 74 and Model W1 shows a second bump around JD 77) while others are much more difficult to discriminate.

From Table 1, the timescale of the two best fit binary models are $`125.0\pm 7.2\text{days}`$ (C1) and $`132.3\pm 7.2\text{days}`$ (W1). In either case, the timescale is larger than $``$92 days reported by Paulin-Henriksson et al. (2003) under the assumption of a single point mass lens. This may be expected from the fact that the binary fit possesses a higher maximum amplification. Examination of images taken well after the event shows no resolved star in the vicinity of PA-99-N2. On the other hand, a barely resolved nearby star at this approximate location in our $`r^{}`$ band image is measured to have a flux of 7 ADU s-1 (Paulin-Henriksson, 2002). However, the best estimate of the $`r^{}`$ band source flux of PA-99-N2 from the Paczyński fit is $`7.90\pm 0.42\text{ADU s}\text{-1}`$ and thus nominally inconsistent with it being unresolved at baseline at the 2$`\sigma `$ level. This problem is ameliorated with the binary fit, as the source is predicted to be fainter, namely $`4.76\pm 0.34\text{ADU s}\text{-1}`$ (C1) or $`4.55\pm 0.33\text{ADU s}\text{-1}`$ (W1), well below the detection limit of a resolved star.

Using the transformation of Paulin-Henriksson (2002), the baseline source flux is calculated as $`V=23.44\pm 0.09`$, which is the average of the results for the two best fit models. The source color is determined from the achromaticity of the lightcurve – the slope of the linear regression line in Figure 3 is directly related to the instrumental $`g_\mathrm{I}^{}r_\mathrm{I}^{}`$ color, which, in turn, can be translated into $`VR=0.983\pm 0.013`$. Similarly, the linear regression involving $`i^{}`$ band flux provides the second color $`VI=2.233\pm 0.020`$. These colors are roughly consistent with that of an early M giant (Bessell & Brett, 1988) with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}3700\text{K}`$ and $`\mathrm{log}g1`$ (Lejeune, Cuisinier & Buser, 1997), although secure identification is subject to uncertainties due to unknown reddening, metallicity, and mass of the source. In principle, one can estimate the reddening from two color measurements, provided that we know the intrinsic relation between the two colors and the proper reddening law. Here, if we assume that the local M giants sample of Fluks et al. (1994) defines an intrinsic $`(VR)`$-$`(VI)`$ relation and that the redding law is described by Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis (1989) with $`R_V=3.1`$, then we get the extinction, $`A_V=0.54\pm 0.21`$ and the dereddened colors of the source, $`(VR)_0=0.85\pm 0.05`$ and $`(VI)_0=1.95\pm 0.11`$. While the estimated extinction appears to be rather large, it is not unreasonable considering that the Galactic foreground extinction towards M31 is estimated to be $`A_V=0.20.25`$ (Burstein & Heiles, 1982; Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis, 1998). With the distance modulus of M31 $`(mM)_{\mathrm{M31}}=24.47`$ (Holland, 1998; Stanek & Garnavich, 1998), the absolute magnitude of the source is then $`M_V1.6`$, which, combined with its intrinsic color, locates the source on the color-magnitude diagram as a member of the asymptotic giant branch or the red giant branch of metal-rich populations. This suggests that the source probably lies in the M31 disk rather than the metal-poor spheroid.

The color and the magnitude of the source can be combined to provide an estimate of the angular source radius $`\theta _{}`$. This can be done using an empirical calibration of the color with the surface brightness, such as that of van Belle (1999). For the source star of PA-99-N2, the calibration of van Belle (1999), combined with the $`(VI)`$-$`(VK)`$ correlations of Bessell & Brett (1988), provides the measurement of its angular radius $`\theta _{}=0.51\pm 0.06\mu \text{as}`$. We note that the result is insensitive to the extinction estimate unless the reddening law through the line of sight is abnormal. That is,

$$\frac{(\delta \theta _{})_{\delta A_V}}{\theta _{}}=\frac{\mathrm{ln}10}{5}\left[11.115\frac{d(VK)}{d(VI)}\frac{E(VI)}{A_V}\right]\delta A_V,$$
(2)
and so, with $`d(VK)/d(VI)1.67`$ (Bessell & Brett, 1988) and $`R_{VI}=1.92`$ (Cardelli et al., 1989), even if $`A_V`$ were mismeasured by $``$0.4 mag, the resultant error in $`\theta _{}`$ would be only $``$0.5%.777The effect of extinction is somewhat larger if the reddening law follows $`R_{VI}=2.41`$ (Schlegel et al., 1998), that is, $`\delta \mathrm{ln}\theta _{}/\delta A_V0.1`$. We also check the result with a different calibration based on $`VI`$ (Beuermann, Baraffe & Hauschildt, 1999), and get a consistent answer $`\theta _{}=0.51\pm 0.05\mu \text{as}`$. The corresponding linear radius of the source is $``$85 R, and the implied surface gravity

$$\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{g}{\text{cm s}\text{-2}}\right)=0.566+\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{}{_{\mathrm{}}}\right)2\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{\theta _{}}{0.51\mu \text{as}}\right)0.4\left[(mM)_{\mathrm{M31}}24.47\right],$$
(3)
is also consistent with the source being a giant. There is some evidence for the presence of finite source size effects in the lightcurve and this, combined with the above estimate of the angular source size, allows us to infer further properties of the source. This is explored in Appendix A.

## 4 The Nature of the Lens

The optical depths of different lens populations may be used to assess the likely nature of the lens. The advantage of using the optical depths for this purpose is that they are reasonably robust. Analysis of the timescale or other parameters when available can give further clues as to the nature of the lens, although this is usually more model-dependent. Here, we provide the assessment of the most probable lens population using the optical depth, the observed event duration and the constraints on the lens-source relative proper motion. Each level of assessment exploits more of the available information but requires more model assumptions.

Optical depth evaluations require an assumed spatial distribution for the lenses and sources. We consider the M31 disk and spheroid to be plausible locations for the source and for a stellar lens. We consider massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) in the M31 and the Milky Way dark haloes to be additional possibilities for the lens. The M31 disk is taken to have a double-exponential density profile with a scale length of 5.8 kpc, scale height of 0.4 kpc and central density of $`0.4_{\mathrm{}}\text{ pc}\text{-3}`$ (e.g., Hodge, 1992; Kerins et al., 2001). For the spheroid, we adopt the flattened power-law distribution of Reitzel, Guhathakurta & Gould (1998) with a core radius of 1 kpc and central density of $`5_{\mathrm{}}\text{ pc}\text{-3}`$. The M31 and Milky Way haloes are taken to be near-isothermal spheres as in Kerins et al. (2001), with both haloes truncated at 100 kpc. We assume that the MACHOs comprise 20% of the total halo mass (Alcock et al., 2000). The combined mass distribution of the M31 populations provide a good fit to the rotation curve (Kent, 1989) and to the radially-averaged $`R`$-band surface brightness profile (Walterbos & Kennicutt, 1987) for reasonable stellar mass-to-light ratios.

Table 2 lists the optical depth $`\tau `$ for the various combinations of lens and source populations. To compute the relative likelihood of the lens and source combinations, the relative density of the spheroid and disk source populations must be taken into account. At the location of PA-99-N2, the disk surface luminosity density is 4.8 times larger than that of the spheroid for our assumed model. (Strictly speaking, the proper ratio of the source density should be that of the specific surface density constrained by the observed source color and magnitude. Due to the lack of a proper local population model of the disk and spheroid stars at the position of PA-99-N2, we ignore the source magnitude and color measurement.) After factoring in the relative source densities, we find the most likely scenario for PA-99-N2 is a source star in the M31 disk and a lens in the M31 halo, (with probability $`P=0.35`$) followed by the disk self lensing ($`P=0.2`$) and lensing of a disk star by a spheroid star ($`P=0.18`$). A MACHO is the more likely alternative for the lens than a star, provided that MACHOs comprise no less than 15% of the total halo mass. However, if we accept that the metal-rich nature of the source implies a denizen of the M31 disk, then the scenario of a lens in the M31 halo becomes slightly more probable ($`P=0.40`$).

To utilize the information on the timescale measurement, further assumptions are required as to the lens and source velocity distributions, as well as the lens mass function. We assume random velocities to be characterised by a Maxwellian distribution with a one-dimensional dispersion $`\sigma =`$ 40, 100, 166 and 156 km s-1 for the M31 disk, spheroid, halo and Milky Way halo, respectively. In addition, we include rotational velocity components of 235 and 30 km s-1 for the M31 disk and spheroid, respectively. M31 stars are assumed to follow the Solar-neighborhood mass function, specifically a broken power law where $`dn/dmm^{1.4}`$ between 0.01 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$ and 0.5 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`dn/dmm^{2.2}`$ above 0.5 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$, with continuity enforced at the knee (Gould, Bahcall & Flynn, 1997). For disk stars the upper mass cut-off is 10 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$, while for spheroid lenses we assume a 1-$`_{\mathrm{}}`$ cut-off. The MACHO mass function is assumed to be a Dirac delta function at 0.5 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$ (Alcock et al., 2000).

It should be stressed that, while we are not in the classical microlensing regime, we can use the classical microlensing rate to compare relative likelihoods. This is because the Einstein timescale is uniquely specified from the fit, and so the pixel-lensing detection efficiency is the same unknown constant for all potential lens populations and can therefore cancels out in any comparison. Similarly, the source magnitude is also specified by the fit, and we therefore do not need to make any assumptions regarding the M31 stellar luminosity function.

Table 2 then shows the differential microlensing rate per source, $`d\Gamma /dt_\mathrm{E}`$, evaluated at $`t_{\mathrm{E},0}=125.0\pm 7.2\text{days}`$. The most likely scenario for this case is an M31 MACHO lensing a disk star ($`P=0.41`$), followed by a disk source lensed by a Milky Way MACHO ($`P=0.27`$) and then disk self lensing ($`P=0.11`$). While this result is broadly consistent with those derived from the optical depth values, the observed timescale lends greater preference to MACHOs as a probable lens population for our assumed model. Note too that if we use differential rates to make the judgement on the origin of the lens, then a MACHO is more likely than a stellar lens provided MACHOs comprise more than 5% of the M31 and Milky Way haloes.

Figure 9 shows the posterior probability for the lens mass for each combination of lens and source when the timescale information is considered. Here, for the case of MACHO lenses, we relax the assumption of a MACHO being 0.5 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$. But, MACHOs are still assumed to be a population with a unique characteristic mass. If the lens is a MACHO in the Milky Way halo, the corresponding 95% confidence interval on its mass is 0.04-13 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$. Similarly, if a compact object in the M31 halo is responsible for the event, its mass is predicted to lie between 0.09-32 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$ (95% confidence; the disk source) or 0.06-30 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$ (95% confidence; the spheroid source). While both of these mass ranges are quite broad, they tend to favor an interpretation of the MACHO as a stellar remnant or primordial black hole. On the other hand, if PA-99-N2 is a disk self-lensing event, the most probable lens mass is 0.5 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$(which is at the break of the mass function), and the associated 95% confidence interval is 0.02-3.6 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$. In this case, the mass of the primary is consistent with it being a typical low mass disk star, and the mass of the secondary lies below the hydrogen-burning limit at better than the 95% confidence limit. The case of a spheroid source and a disk lens leads to a similar mass estimate (0.02-4.7 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$), while a spheroid lens results in a somewhat narrower mass range (0.02-1 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$) due to the lowering of the upper mass cut-off compared with the disk mass function.

## 5 Conclusions

We have studied the anomaly in the lightcurve of PA-99-N2. Although there are other possibilities, the assumption of a binary lens provides the most economical explanation of the data. The lens may lie either in the M31 disk/spheroid or the Milky Way/M31 haloes. If the lens lies in the disk/spheroid, the primary is a low mass star. Its companion lies below the hydrogen burning limit with 95% confidence. This would makes it the most distant brown dwarf so far discovered. If the lens lies in the halo, then the primary is most probably a stellar remnant and its companion either a brown dwarf or low mass star.

Work by JA has been supported through a grant from the Leverhume Trust Foundation. NWE acknowledges financial support from the Royal Society (UK). SCN was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and by the Tomalla Foundation. Work by AG was supported by the grant AST 02-01266 from the National Science Foundation (US).

## Appendix A The Finite Source Effect and the Proper Motion Constraint

When a caustic passes close to a source star, the point-source approximation is sometimes no longer valid. If this “finite source” effect is large enough, the lightcurve can be analyzed to derive an additional parameter $`\rho _{}=\theta _{}/\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, where $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ is the angular Einstein ring radius. However, we see that the point-source approximation is already good for the lightcurve of PA-99-N2, and so the finite source effect is not expected to be detected with a high statistical significance. Hence, we do not perform a full search for the best fit finite-source binary-lens model in the seven-dimensional parameter space. Instead, we check whether the deviations of finite-source lightcurves near the best fit binary-lens model are consistent with the observations.

In fact, we find a marginal improvement of the fit by incorporating the finite source effect. A restricted search around the best fit point-source model C1 yields a model (FS in Tab. 1) with a smaller $`\chi ^2`$ than that of C1 by 4.9. We note that, while the geometry of the binary lens – $`d`$ and $`q`$ – has been driven to move along the principal conjugate direction (towards the smaller $`q`$), the measurements of most other parameters are only minimally affected by the incorporation of the finite source effect. In particular, the timescale and the source flux are changed only by $`0.5\%`$, which is an order of magnitude smaller than their associated uncertainties. The limiting value when the finite source fit is no better than the point source fit is $`\rho _{}<2.06\times 10^2`$ (formally corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2<4.9`$). Combining this with the measurement of $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\theta _{}`$ (see § 3) provides us with the constraint on the angular Einstein ring size $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and the lens-source relative proper motion $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$;

$$\theta _\mathrm{E}(=\theta _{}\rho _{}^1)25\mu \text{as}$$
(A1a)
$$\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}(=\theta _\mathrm{E}t_\mathrm{E}^1)0.20\mu \text{as day}\text{-1}=3.4\times 10^2\text{km s}\text{-1}\text{ Mpc}\text{-1}.$$
(A1b)
Caution should be used in interpreting these limits, as the uncertainties may not properly include systematic effects such as uncertainty in the color transformations or any possible problems in the photometry for the critical three nights data over which finite source effects are detected. For this reason, we distinguish these from other more robust results and have first presented an analysis without any constraint on the proper motion. Nonetheless, we note that, if we combine the limit on the angular Einstein radius with the distance to M31, the implied separation of the two binary lens components (for M31 lenses) is $`10\text{AU}`$.

We incorporate the lens-source relative proper motion information into the assessment of the nature of the lens by deriving the differential microlensing rate per source, $`d\Gamma /(dt_\mathrm{E}d\mu _{\mathrm{rel}})`$, averaged over the probability distribution of $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ inferred from the finite source effect on the observed lightcurve. Here, the differential microlensing rate per source can be found for the case of Maxwellian lens and source random velocity distributions by

$$\frac{d^2\Gamma }{dt_\mathrm{E}d\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}}=\frac{4\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}^3}{\sigma _\mathrm{T}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{S}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{v_\mathrm{S}^2}{2\sigma _\mathrm{T}^2}\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}^2D_\mathrm{L}^2}{2\sigma _\mathrm{T}^2}\right)I_0\left(\frac{\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}D_\mathrm{L}v_\mathrm{S}}{\sigma _\mathrm{T}^2}\right)\frac{D_\mathrm{L}^7}{D_\mathrm{S}(D_\mathrm{S}D_\mathrm{L})}\rho _\mathrm{S}(D_\mathrm{S})\rho _\mathrm{L}(D_\mathrm{L})\psi (m)𝑑D_\mathrm{S}𝑑m,$$
(A2)
where $`D_\mathrm{S}`$ is the distance to the source, $`\rho _\mathrm{L}`$ and $`\rho _\mathrm{S}`$ are the lens and source mass densities, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{S}`$ is the source surface mass density, $`\psi (m)=\rho _\mathrm{L}^1(dn/dm)`$ is the lens mass function normalized to the lens mass density, and $`I_0(y)`$ is the Modified Bessel function of order zero. Also note that the distance to the lens, $`D_\mathrm{L}`$ is in fact a function of $`D_\mathrm{S}`$ and the lens mass $`m`$ for a fixed $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$. Equation (A2) has been derived by attributing all random velocities to the lens and all rotational motions to the source. The velocity dispersion $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$ is therefore a combination of the lens velocity dispersion $`\sigma _\mathrm{L}`$ and source velocity dispersion $`\sigma _\mathrm{S}`$ projected at the lens location, while $`v_\mathrm{S}`$ is the transverse component of the difference between source and lens rotation speeds. For Milky Way lenses $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}\sigma _\mathrm{L}`$, while for M31 lenses $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}(\sigma _\mathrm{L}^2+\sigma _\mathrm{S}^2)^{1/2}`$.

In Table 2, we list this averaged differential rate for the same various combinations of the lens and source populations. Note that the absolute normalization of the probability density for $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is unknown, and so we have effectively integrated $`d^2\Gamma /(dt_\mathrm{E}d\mu _{\mathrm{rel}})`$ over $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ weighted by its relative probability. Hence, the numerical values of the differential rates are essentially normalized by the peak value of the probability density for $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$. We find that the derived proper motion constraint overwhelmingly favors an M31 MACHO lens with either a disk or spheroid star being a source. In fact, an M31 halo with a MACHO fraction as small as 1% produces a comparable event rate as that of the stellar lenses.

## Appendix B Seeing Correction Plus Parallax Effects

We have already shown in § 2 that the bump in the lightcurve of PA-99-N2 can be removed by correlated variations with the seeing, but that the resulting lightcurve is still anomalous. Here, we explore the possibility that the remaining anomaly is due to some physical effect. An asymmetry between the rising and falling side of the lightcurve is characteristic of a non-uniform lens motion with respect to the source. The most common cause of this is the Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun, referred to as the parallax effect.

We fit the data of PA-99-N2 to equation (1) with $`f_{\mathrm{true}}`$ as the lightcurve of a parallax event. The deviation is consistent with the parallax effect and there are at least four degenerate solutions, listed in Tables 3 and 4. (This arises because it is only an acceleration with respect to the instantaneous relative velocity of the lens that is detected.) However, we regard this as a less likely alternative than the hypothesis of a binary lens, even more so than suggested on purely statistical grounds by the $`\chi ^2`$ difference.

First, using the data in Table 4, the projected velocity of the lens on the observer plane ($`\stackrel{~}{v}`$) is $``$20 km s-1. We note that this is an upper limit to the lens-source relative velocity. Already this makes it extremely unlikely that the lens resides in the haloes of either the Milky Way or M31. Only Milky Way disk stars are likely to have such a small relative velocity. The distance to the lens belonging to the Milky Way can be estimated from the parallax, assuming $`D_\mathrm{L}D_\mathrm{S}`$, that is,

$$D_\mathrm{L}D_\mathrm{L}\left(1\frac{D_\mathrm{L}}{D_\mathrm{S}}\right)^1=\frac{c^2\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}^2}{4G}=0.1227\text{kpc}\left(\frac{}{_{\mathrm{}}}\right)^1\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}{\text{AU}}\right)^2.$$
(B1)
For a typical lens mass of $``$0.5 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$, then the lens distance is $``$2 kpc. This corresponds to a vertical height above the Galactic plane of $``$700 pc. This is uncomfortably high, as it is twice the scale-height of the thin disk. The location of the lens can be brought within the scaleheight of the thin disk by increasing its mass to $``$1 $`_{\mathrm{}}`$, but such an object would surely be directly imaged if it were a normal star. The only possibility that seemingly remains is a disk white dwarf.

In addition to the *a priori* low probability of lensing by a disk white dwarf, the further objection to this scenario – seeing variation plus parallax effect models – is that it is not consistent with the fixed aperture photometry described in § 2. This is evident on inspection of Figure 7, which shows residuals of the fixed aperture photometry together with a number of the models discussed in the text. The best fit binary lens model (C1) clearly describes best the pattern of deviations among various alternatives.


text:
# 1 Two–pion contribution to the isovector nucleon form factors. On the left side, the exact representation based on unitarity is shown, whereas the triangle diagram on the right side leads to the strong enhancement of the isovector spectral functions close to threshold. Also shown is the dominant 𝜌–meson contribution.

HISKP-TH-03/21

On the pion cloud of the nucleon

H.-W. Hammer⋆,#1#1#1email: hammer@itkp.uni-bonn.de,#2#2#2Address after Jan. 1st, 2004: Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1550, USA., D. Drechsel†,#3#3#3email: drechsel@kph.uni-mainz.de, and Ulf-G. Meißner⋆,‡,#4#4#4email: meissner@itkp.uni-bonn.de

Universität Bonn, Helmholtz–Institut für Strahlen– und Kernphysik (Theorie)
Nußallee 14-16, D-53115 Bonn, Germany

Universität Mainz, Institut für Kernphysik, J-J.-Becher Weg 45, D-55099 Mainz, Germany

Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institut für Kernphysik (Theorie)
D-52425 Jülich, Germany

## Abstract

We evaluate the two–pion contribution to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors by use of dispersion analysis and chiral perturbation theory. After subtraction of the rho–meson component, we calculate the distributions of charge and magnetization in coordinate space, which can be interpreted as the effects of the pion cloud. We find that the charge distribution of this pion cloud effect peaks at distances of about 0.3 fm. Furthermore, we calculate the contribution of the pion cloud to the isovector charges and radii of the nucleon.

1. That the pion plays an important role in the long–range structure of the nucleon is known since long. This can for example be deduced from the phenomenological analysis of the nucleon electromagnetic form factors (for an early attempt within meson theory see e.g. ). However, only with the advent of QCD and its spontaneously broken chiral symmetry, in which the pions emerge as pseudo–Goldstone bosons, this concept could be put on a firmer basis. Exploiting the chiral symmetry of QCD, the long-range low–momentum structure of the nucleon can be calculated within chiral perturbation theory (CHPT), which is the low-energy effective field theory of the Standard Model. For calculations of these form factors within CHPT, see -. Furthermore, since vector mesons play an important role in the electromagnetic structure of the nucleon, see e.g. -, care must be taken in attributing a certain size or length scale to the various contributions (this is discussed in some detail in section 2 of ). A new twist to this picture was given in the recent paper of Ref. , where an interpretation of the form factor data was given in terms of a phenomenological fit with an ansatz for the pion cloud based on the old idea that the proton can be thought of as virtual neutron-positively charged pion pair. A very long–range contribution to the charge distribution in the Breit–frame extending out to about 2 fm was found and attributed to the pion cloud. While naively the pion Compton wave length is of this size, these findings are indeed surprising if compared with the “pion cloud” contribution due to the two–pion contribution for the isovector spectral functions of the nucleon form factors, which can be obtained from unitarity or chiral perturbation theory. As it will turn out these latter contributions to the long–range part of the nucleon structure are much more confined in space and agree well with earlier (but less systematic) calculations based on chiral soliton models, see e.g. . Therefore it remains to be shown how to reconcile the findings of Ref. , based on a global fit to all nucleon form factors, with the results of dispersion analysis and chiral perturbation theory.

2. First, we must collect some basic definitions. The nucleon electromagnetic form factors are defined by the nucleon matrix element of the quark electromagnetic current,

$$N(p^{})|\overline{q}\gamma ^\mu 𝒬q|N(p)=\overline{u}(p^{})\left[\gamma ^\mu F_1(q^2)+\frac{i}{2m}\sigma ^{\mu \nu }(p^{}p)_\nu F_2(q^2)\right]u(p),$$
(1)
with $`q^2=(p^{}p)^2=t`$ the invariant momentum transfer squared, $`𝒬`$ the quark charge matrix, and $`m`$ the nucleon mass. $`F_1(q^2)`$ and $`F_2(q^2)`$ are the Dirac and the Pauli form factors, respectively. Following the conventions of , we decompose the form factors into isoscalar ($`S`$) and isovector ($`V`$) components,

$$F_i(q^2)=F_i^S(q^2)+\tau _3F_i^V(q^2),i=1,2,$$
(2)
subject to the normalization

$$F_1^S(0)=F_1^V(0)=\frac{1}{2},F_2^{S,V}(0)=\frac{\kappa _p\pm \kappa _n}{2},$$
(3)
with $`\kappa _p(\kappa _n)=1.793(1.913)`$ the anomalous magnetic moment of the proton (neutron). We will also use the Sachs form factors,

$$G_E^I(q^2)=F_1^I(q^2)+\frac{q^2}{4m^2}F_2^I(q^2),G_M^I(q^2)=F_1^I(q^2)+F_2^I(q^2),I=S,V.$$
(4)
These are commonly referred to as the electric and the magnetic nucleon form factors. The slope of the form factors at $`q^2=0`$ can be expressed in terms of a nucleon radius

$$r^2_i^I=\frac{6}{F_i^I(0)}\frac{dF_i^I(q^2)}{dq^2}|_{q^2=0},i=1,2,I=S,V,$$
(5)
and analogously for the Sachs form factors. The analysis of the nucleon electromagnetic form factors proceeds most directly through the spectral representation given by#5#5#5We work here with unsubtracted dispersion relations. Since the normalizations of all the form factors are known, one could also work with once–subtracted dispersion relations. For the topic studied here, this is of no relevance.

$$F_i^I(q^2)=\frac{1}{\pi }_{(\mu _0^I)^2}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\sigma _i^I(\mu ^2)d\mu ^2}{\mu ^2q^2},i=1,2,I=S,V,$$
(6)
in terms of the real spectral functions $`\sigma _i^I(\mu ^2)=\mathrm{Im}F_i^I(\mu ^2)`$, and the corresponding thresholds are given by $`\mu _0^S=3M_\pi `$, $`\mu _0^V=2M_\pi `$. Since the isovector spectral function is non–vanishing for smaller momentum transfer (starting at the two–pion cut) than the isoscalar one (starting at the three–pion cut), we will mostly consider the isovector spectral functions in what follows. We consider the nucleon form factors in the space-like region. In the Breit–frame (where no energy is transferred), any form factor $`F`$ can be written as the Fourier–transform of a coordinate space density,

$$F(𝐪^2)=d^3𝐫\mathrm{e}^{i𝐪𝐫}\rho (r),$$
(7)
with $`𝐪`$ the three–momentum transfer. In particular, comparison with Eq. (6) allows us to express the density $`\rho (r)`$ in terms of the spectral function

$$\rho (r)=\frac{1}{4\pi ^2}_{\mu _0^2}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\mu ^2\sigma (\mu ^2)\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\mu r}}{r}.$$
(8)
Note that for the electric and the magnetic Sachs form factor, $`\rho (r)`$ is nothing but the charge and the magnetization density, respectively. For the Dirac and Pauli form factors, Eq. (8) should be considered as a formal definition. This equation expresses the density as a linear combination of Yukawa distributions, each of mass $`\mu `$. The lightest mass hadron is the pion, and from Eq. (8) it is evident that pions are responsible for the long–range part of the electromagnetic structure of the nucleon. This contribution is commonly called the “pion cloud” of the nucleon and in fact this long–range low–$`q^2`$ contribution to the nucleon form factors can be directly calculated on the basis of chiral perturbation theory, as will be discussed later.

3. Next, we wish to evaluate the two–pion contribution in a model–independent way and draw some conclusions on the spatial extent of the pion cloud from that. As pointed out long ago  and further elaborated on , unitarity allows us to determine the isovector spectral functions from threshold up to masses of about 1 GeV in terms of the pion charge form factor $`F_\pi (t)`$ and the P–wave $`\pi \pi \overline{N}N`$ partial waves, see Fig. 1. We use here the form

$`\mathrm{Im}G_E^V(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q_t^3}{m\sqrt{t}}}\left|F_\pi (t)\right|^2J_+(t),`$
$`\mathrm{Im}G_M^V(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q_t^3}{\sqrt{2t}}}\left|F_\pi (t)\right|^2J_{}(t),`$ (9)
where $`q_t=\sqrt{t/4M_\pi ^2}`$. The functions $`J_\pm (t)`$ are related to the $`t`$–channel P–wave $`\pi `$N partial waves $`f_\pm ^1(t)`$ via $`f_\pm ^1(t)=F_\pi (t)J_\pm (t)`$ in the conventional isospin decomposition, with the tabulated values of the $`J_i(t)`$ from . For the pion charge form factor $`F_\pi `$ we use the standard Gounaris-Sakurai form .

We stress that the representation of Eq. (9) gives the exact isovector spectral functions for $`4M_\pi ^2t16M_\pi ^2`$ but in practice holds up to $`t50M_\pi ^2`$. It has two distinct features. First, as already pointed out in , it contains the important contribution of the $`\rho `$ meson (see Fig. 1) with its peak at $`t30M_\pi ^2`$. Second, on the left shoulder of the $`\rho `$, the isovector spectral functions display a very pronounced enhancement close to the two–pion threshold. This is due to the logarithmic singularity on the second Riemann sheet located at $`t_c=4M_\pi ^2M_\pi ^4/m^2=3.98M_\pi ^2`$, very close to the threshold. This pole comes from the projection of the nucleon Born graphs, or in modern language, from the triangle diagram also depicted in Fig. 1. If one were to neglect this important unitarity correction, one would severely underestimate the nucleon isovector radii . In fact, precisely the same effect is obtained at leading one–loop accuracy in chiral perturbation theory, as discussed first in . This topic was further elaborated on in the framework of heavy baryon CHPT  and in a covariant calculation based on infrared regularization . Thus, the most important two–pion contribution to the nucleon form factors can be determined by using either unitarity or CHPT (in the latter case, of course, the $`\rho `$ contribution is not included).

We now want to separate the (uncorrelated) pion contribution from the $`\rho `$–contribution in the isovector spectral functions, that is we decompose the isovector spectral functions as

$$\mathrm{Im}G_I^V(t)=\mathrm{Im}G_I^{V,2\pi }(t)+\mathrm{Im}G_I^{V,\rho }(t),I=E,M,$$
(10)
and analogously for Im $`F_{1,2}^V(t)`$. Using Eq. (8), we can then calculate the pion cloud contribution to the charge and magnetization density in the Breit–frame. The $`\rho `$–contribution in Eq. (10) can be well represented by a Breit–Wigner form with a running width ,

$$\mathrm{Im}G_I^{V,\rho }(t)=\frac{b_IM_\rho ^2\sqrt{t}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\rho (t)}{(M_\rho ^2t)^2+t\mathrm{\Gamma }_\rho ^2(t)},I=E,M,$$
(11)
with the mass $`M_\rho =769.3`$MeV and the width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\rho (t)=g^2(t4M_\pi ^2)^{3/2}/(48\pi t)`$, where the coupling $`g=6.03`$ is determined from the empirical value $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\rho (M_\rho ^2)=150.2`$ MeV, and the parameters $`b_I`$ can be adjusted to the height of the resonance peak. The corresponding expressions for the imaginary parts of the Dirac and Pauli form factors can be obtained from Eq. (4). It is clear that the separation into the (uncorrelated) pion contribution and the $`\rho `$–contribution introduces some model–dependence. To get an idea about the theoretical error induced by this procedure, we perform the separation in three different ways:

* The two–pion contribution can be directly obtained from the two–loop chiral perturbation theory calculation of . Together with the $`\rho `$–contribution of Eq. (11), this calculation gives a very good description of the empirical spectral functions.#6#6#6Note that on the right side of the $`\rho `$, the two–loop representation is slightly larger than the empirical one, so that we expect to obtain an upper bound by employing this procedure. We will use the analytical formulae given in  where the low–energy constant $`c_4`$ was readjusted to avoid double counting of the $`\rho `$–contribution (see ).
* A lower bound on the two–pion contribution can be obtained by setting $`F_\pi (t)=1`$ in Eq. (9). This prescription does not only remove the $`\rho `$–pole but also some small uncorrelated two–pion contributions contained in the pion form factor.
* To obtain the two–pion contribution, we can also subtract Eq. (11) from the spectral function Eq. (9) including the full pion form factor.#7#7#7A similar procedure was performed in  to extract scalar meson properties from the scalar pion form factor. The parameters $`b_E=1.512`$ and $`b_M=5.114`$ are determined such that the two–pion contribution at the $`\rho `$–resonance matches the two–loop chiral perturbation theory calculation of . Variation of the $`b_I`$ around these values gives an additional error estimate.

Using these three methods, we obtain a fairly good handle on the theoretical accuracy of the non-resonant two–pion contribution.

4. We have now collected all pieces to work out the density distribution of the two–pion contribution to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors. Before showing the results, some remarks are in order. As stated above, the spectral functions are determined by unitarity (or chiral perturbation theory) only up to some maximum value of $`t`$, denoted $`t_{\mathrm{max}}`$ in the following. Thus, we have simply set the spectral functions in the integral Eq. (8) to zero for momentum transfers beyond the value $`t_{\mathrm{max}}=40M_\pi ^2`$.

In Fig. 2, we show the resulting densities for the isovector form factors weighted with $`4\pi r^2`$. The contribution of the “pion cloud” to the total charge or magnetic moment is then simply obtained by integration over $`r`$. The bands reflect the theoretical uncertainty in the separation. For all form factors, the lower and upper bounds are given by methods (b) and (a), respectively. Method (c) generally yields a result between these bounds, except for the Dirac form factor where it gives the upper bound. The weighted densities for the isovector Dirac and Pauli form factors are shown in the left panel of Fig. 2. We see that these charge distributions show a pronounced peak around $`r0.3`$fm, quite consistent with earlier determinations (see e.g. ), and fall off smoothly with increasing distance. In the right panel of Fig. 2, we show the densities (again weighted with $`4\pi r^2`$) for the electric and magnetic Sachs form factors which come out very similar to the case of the Dirac and Pauli form factors. In comparison with Ref. , we generally obtain much smaller pion cloud effects at distances beyond 1 fm, e.g., by a factor 3 for $`\rho _E^V(r)`$ at $`r=1.5`$ fm.#8#8#8Note that our results are not in disagreement with the recent Jefferson Lab data on the ratio of the proton electromagnetic form factors . The effect observed there occurs at momentum transfers beyond 1 GeV2 and is thus not related to the pion cloud.

We have also studied the sensitivity of our results to the cut–off $`t_{\mathrm{max}}`$. While this may increase the value of the “pion cloud” contribution, it leaves the position of the maximum essentially unchanged. However, it is obvious from Eq. (8) that masses beyond 1 GeV and corresponding small–distance phenomena ($`r0.2`$ fm) should not be related to the pion cloud of the nucleon. Finally, we show the corresponding two–pion contribution to the charges and radii for the various nucleon form factors in Table 1. The contribution of the pion cloud to the isovector electric (magnetic) charge is 20% (10%) in the model of Ref. . This is consistent with our range of values for the electric charge but a factor of 1.5 smaller than our lower bound for the magnetic one, see Table 1. Furthermore, note that the pion cloud gives only a fraction of all form factors at zero momentum transfer. Normalized to the contribution of the pion cloud, the corresponding radii are of the order of 1 fm. In the model of , these radii are considerably larger, of the order of 1.5 fm. Note that if one shifts all the strength of the corresponding spectral functions to threshold, one obtains an upper limit $`r_{\mathrm{max}}=\sqrt{3/2}M_\pi ^11.7`$fm, assuming that the spectral functions are positive definite.

5. In this letter, we have considered the two–pion contribution to the nucleon isovector form factors. The corresponding spectral functions can be obtained from unitarity or chiral perturbation theory from threshold $`t_0=4M_\pi ^2`$ up to $`t_{\mathrm{max}}40M_\pi ^2`$ in a model–independent way. Subtracting the contribution from the dominant $`\rho `$–meson pole, we have constructed the uncorrelated two–pion component (loosely spoken the dominant effects of the nucleons’ pion cloud). To obtain an estimate about the theoretical error of such a procedure, we have performed this subtraction in three different ways. The corresponding charge densities obtained by Fourier transforming the spectral functions peak at distances of about 0.3 fm and show no structure at the larger distances.

Acknowledgements
We thank J. Friedrich and Th. Walcher as well as N. Kaiser for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 443).