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# On the origin of ionising photons emitted by T Tauri stars

## 1 Introduction

The evolution and eventual dispersal of discs around young stars is an important area of study, as it provides constraints on theories of both star and planet formation. It is now well established that the majority of young stars at ages of $`10^6`$yr have circumstellar discs which are optically thick at optical and infrared wavelengths (Strom et al., 1989; Kenyon & Hartmann, 1995; Haisch, Lada & Lada, 2001). These discs are relatively massive, with masses of the order of a few percent of a solar mass (Beckwith et al., 1990; Eisner & Carpenter, 2003). However by an age of $`10^7`$yr most stars are no longer seen to have such massive discs, although low-mass “debris discs” may remain (eg. Mannings & Sargent 1997; Wyatt, Dent & Greaves 2003). The mechanism by which these discs are dispersed remains an important unsolved question.

One fact which is clear, however, is that a large fraction of the mass from the disc will eventually be accreted on to the central (proto)star. The inner edge of the accretion disc is typically truncated by the magnetosphere at a radius of around 5$`R_{}`$ (Meyer, Calvet & Hillenbrand, 1997; Calvet & Gullbring, 1998) and so material falling from the disc on to the central star can attain an extremely high velocity, resulting in a so-called “accretion shock” when this material impacts upon the stellar surface. Existing models of the accretion shock (Calvet & Gullbring, 1998; Gullbring et al., 1998; Lamzin, 1998; Gullbring et al., 2000) have paid a great deal of attention to the emission in the ultraviolet (1000-3000Å) and visible (3500-7000Å) wavebands, comparing theoretical predictions to observed spectra. Extremely good models have been constructed, and these emission spectra are now well understood. However, very little attention has been paid to the emission shortward of the Lyman break ($`<`$ 912Å), primarily because absorption by interstellar Hi makes it impossible to observe young stars in this wavelength regime. Recent theoretical studies (Clarke, Gendrin & Sotomayor, 2001; Matsuyama, Johnstone & Hartmann, 2003; Armitage, Clarke & Palla, 2003) have suggested that photoionisation by the central object may play an important role in disc dispersal, and so the emission shortward of the Lyman break has become important.

Currently the origin of photoionising radiation from young stars such as T Tauri stars is unclear, and even the magnitude of such emission is poorly constrained (Gahm et al., 1979; Imhoff & Appenzeller, 1987). To date, models of disc photoionisation have used either a constant ionising flux (eg. Hollenbach et al. 1994; Clarke et al. 2001), assumed to be chromospheric in origin, or modelled the accretion-driven flux simply as a constant temperature hotspot on the stellar surface, emitting as a blackbody (Matsuyama et al., 2003). The latter produces an ionising flux which is proportional to the mass accretion rate, thus decreasing dramatically with time as the accretion rate falls, and so naturally the models of Clarke et al. (2001) and Matsuyama et al. (2003) have produced markedly different results. These models (Hollenbach et al., 1994; Richling & Yorke, 1997; Hollenbach, Yorke & Johnstone, 2000) also find that the mass-loss rate scales approximately with the square root of the ionising flux, and so very high ionising fluxes are required to influence disc evolution significantly: an ionising flux of $`10^{41}`$photons s-1 will drive mass-loss from the disc at around the $`10^{10}`$$`M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ level.

In this paper we study the issue of the ionising flux generated by an accretion shock. The simplified model of the accretion shock adopted by Matsuyama et al. (2003) neglects two key points, which we address in turn. Firstly, it seems likely that the Lyman continuum emission from such a hotspot would resemble a stellar atmosphere rather than a blackbody; whilst the two are almost identical at longer wavelengths, photo-absorption by Hi provides a strong suppression of the flux shortward of 912Å. Secondly, the photons emitted by the accretion shock must pass through the column of material accreting on to it in order to interact with material in the disc, and again we would expect photo-absorption by Hi in the column to supress the Lyman continuum significantly. In order to address these issues we have modelled this process in some detail. In section 2 we investigate the effect of replacing the blackbody hotspot with a more realistic stellar atmosphere. In section 3 we investigate the effect of passing these photons, from both the blackbody and the stellar atmosphere, through a column of accreting material. In section 4 we discuss our results and the limitations of our analysis, and in section 5 we summarise our conclusions.

## 2 Stellar atmospheres

The photoionisation models of Matsuyama et al. (2003) model the ionising photons as follows. They assume that the flux from the accretion shock can be modelled as a constant temperature hotspot, and adopt a blackbody spectral energy distribution at a temperature of $`T=15,000`$K. They assume that half the accretion luminosity is radiated by this hotspot, and so for a star of mass $`M_{}`$ and radius $`R_{}`$ the accretion shock luminosity $`L`$ is given by:

$$L=\frac{GM_{}\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}}{2R_{}}=A\sigma _{\mathrm{SB}}T^4$$
(1)
where $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}`$ is the rate of mass accretion from the disc, $`A`$ is the area of the hotspot, and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{SB}}`$ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. As the temperature is constant the rate of ionising photons $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{a}`$ is simply proportional to the accretion rate $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}`$. In addition, Matsuyama et al. (2003) add a further contribution to the ionising flux from the stellar photosphere, neglecting the poorly-constrained chromospheric contribution, at a constant rate of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{p}=1.29\times 10^{31}`$photons s-1, with the total ionising photon rate given by $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{a}+\mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{p}`$. Our assertion is that, given the high density of atomic hydrogen, it is extremely unlikely that such a hotspot would radiate as a blackbody. A spectrum akin to a stellar atmosphere, showing a significant “Lyman edge”, seems much more likely. As a result, we first consider the strength of this effect.

### 2.1 Constant temperature

Our first models simply involve substituting model stellar atmospheres in place of the blackbody emission in equation 1. We have adopted the same stellar parameters as Matsuyama et al. (2003) ($`R=1R_{}`$, $`M=1M_{}`$), and similarly adopted a constant hotspot temperature of 15,000K. The luminosity $`L`$ scales with $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}`$ in the same manner as in equation 1. We have utilised the Kurucz model atmospheres (Kurucz, 1992) (which have been incorporated into the cloudy code) for this temperature and surface gravity. The model atmospheres do not deviate significantly from the blackbody at longer wavelengths, but are some 3 orders of magnitude less luminous than the corresponding blackbody at wavelengths shortward of the Lyman limit at 912Å, due to absorption by Hi. Fig. 1 compares the blackbody and Kurucz spectra. (The apparent lack of emission lines in Fig 1 is an artefact of the relatively large bin-width used within the code. The use of such large wavelength bins results in line fluxes which are negligible in comparison to the continuum.) Fig.2 plots the ionising fluxes as a function of accretion rate, and we see that the stellar atmosphere hotspot produces ionising photons at a rate that is a factor of 1100 less than that obtained from the blackbody model.

### 2.2 Constant area

Another consideration is that of the hotspot area. The Matsuyama et al. (2003) blackbody formulation described in equation 1 uses a hotspot temperature which remains constant for different mass accretion rates, implying a hotspot size which decreases as the accretion rate drops. The accreting material is thought to be channelled on to the magnetic poles as it falls on to the stellar surface, and unless the topology of the magnetic field varies systematically wth the accretion rate, the hotspot area should remain approximately constant with time. If the hotspot area $`A`$ is constant then we would expect, from equation 1, the hotspot temperature to vary as $`T\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}^{1/4}`$ The total luminosity of a model atmosphere is very similar to that of a blackbody, and so we adopt this relationship for the stellar atmospheres also. We re-evaluated the model atmospheres described in section 2.1, keeping the scaling luminosity proportional to $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}`$, but now with the temperature given by:

$$T=\left(\frac{GM_{}}{2R_{}A\sigma _{\mathrm{SB}}}\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}\right)^{1/4}$$
(2)
The result of this is shown in Fig.2; the drop-off in the ionising photon rate is much more precipitous than in the constant temperature case, with only very high mass accretion rates, greater than $`10^7`$$`M_{}`$yr-1, producing ionising photons at greater than the photospheric rate. In fact, the relationship between the hotspot area and the mass accretion rate is not well understood, and Calvet & Gullbring (1998) even found observational evidence for a hotspot area which increases with $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}`$ (which would imply an even steeper decline in the ionising flux). However, we go on to show that the presence of an accretion column above the hotspot is by far the dominant factor in controlling the ionising photon rate, and so the exact details of the hotspot area are not of great significance.

## 3 Accretion Columns

The other issue which affects the emitted ionising flux is the assumed presence of a column of accreting material directly above the hotspot. This material will absorb Lyman continuum photons through photoionisation of Hi, and so a large attenuation of the ionising flux is expected. Adopting the photoionisation cross-section from Cox (2000) of $`\sigma _{13.6\mathrm{eV}}=6.3`$$`\times `$$`10^{18}`$cm2, indicates that any column density greater than 5$`\times `$$`10^{18}`$cm-2 will result in an attenuation of the incident flux by a factor of $`>10^{13}`$, enough to reduce any incident ionising photon rate to below photospheric levels. The density of the infalling material is of order 5$`\times `$$`10^{12}`$cm-3 (Calvet & Gullbring, 1998) and so this results in an attenuation length of order 106cm (10-5$`R_{}`$). As a result, the only Lyman continuum photons which can be emitted, at any significant rate, by an accretion column must be due to radiative recombination of hydrogen in the column, the so-called diffuse continuum.

In order to investigate this effect further we have constructed models of the accretion column using the cloudy photoionisation code (Ferland, 1996). These models consist of a uniform central source, radiating either as a blackbody or a stellar atmosphere, and an accretion column. The central source emits in the radial direction only, and the accretion column covers a constant solid angle. Thus, by a simple linear subtraction of the emission not incident on the column we can treat the column as if it were illuminated solely by a hotspot at its base with a flux in the radial direction. In reality such a hotspot would produce some lateral component of flux near to its edges: this is discussed in section 4. The accretion column has a solar chemical composition (although as the dominant effect is photoionisation of Hi there is almost no dependence on chemical composition) and covers a small fraction $`f`$ of the stellar surface. Following Calvet & Gullbring (1998) we adopt a “free-fall” scaling density of the form:

$`n_\mathrm{H}(0)=5.2\times 10^{12}\mathrm{cm}^3\left({\displaystyle \frac{\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}}{10^8M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_{}}{0.5M_{}}}\right)^{1/2}`$
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{R_{}}{2R_{}}}\right)^{3/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{f}{0.01}}\right)^1`$ (3)
The radial behaviour of the density is obtained by assuming that the material falls along magnetic field lines, in a manner consistent with standard magnetospheric accretion models (eg. Ghosh & Lamb 1978). Therefore at a given radius the product of the field strength and the column cross-sectional area is a constant. Assuming a dipole magnetic field we have $`BR^3`$, and therefore the cross-sectional area is proportional to $`R^3`$. For a column with cross-sectional area $`A^{}`$ and mass density $`\rho `$, mass conservation requires that:

$$\rho A^{}v_{\mathrm{ff}}=\mathrm{constant}$$
(4)
The number density $`n_\mathrm{H}\rho `$, and the free-fall velocity $`v_{\mathrm{ff}}R^{1/2}`$, and so we have a density scaling law of:

$$n_\mathrm{H}R^{5/2}$$
(5)
with the condition in equation 3 used to fix the scaling constant.

cloudy allows us to evaluate the continuum and line emission from the top of the accretion column, which is a combination of the continuum incident on the bottom of the column, attenuated by the column, and the diffuse emission from the heated column. It does not allow direct evaluation of the emission from the “sides” of the accretion column, which may be significant and is discussed in section 4.

Again, we have adopted $`R=1R_{}`$ and $`M=1M_{}`$, and have constructed models of these accretion columns for a broad range of accretion rates, hotspot areas and column heights. Initially both the blackbody and stellar atmosphere hotspot formulations were used, with the “constant temperature” formalism used as it provides the greatest ionising flux to the column and can be treated as a limiting case. However, as discussed above, the incident Lyman continua from both are extinguished over a very short length scale, and so the only Lyman continuum emission which emerges from the columns is the so-called “diffuse” emission due to the radiative recombination of atomic hydrogen. As seen in Fig.1, the Lyman continua emitted by the columns are identical in both cases, and depend only the nature of the column rather than the spectrum of the illuminating hotspot, as both hotspot spectra have the same bolometric luminosity. As a result, only the more realistic stellar atmosphere models were used for the remainder of the cases.

### 3.1 Results

The results of the simulations described above are presented in Figs.3 & 4. Fig.3 shows the incident and transmitted spectra for a typical case at a variety of different column heights, and Fig.4 shows the dependence of the emergent ionising flux on column height. cloudy is only valid for temperatures greater than $``$3000K - for temperatures lower than this the thermal solutions are no longer unique - and for large column heights or cases with little heating (ie. low accretion rates) the temperature dropped below this critical value. The models were not pursued beyond this point, with 3000K used as the temperature limit of the calculations. As seen in Fig.4, the emergent ionising flux, as expected, decreases with both decreasing accretion rate and with increasing column height. Smaller hotspots result in higher density of material in the accretion column for a given accretion rate, and so tend to produce slightly larger ionising fluxes. However these variations are small relative to those due to variations in column height or accretion rate.

The most important point, however, is that the emergent ionising photon rates for all of the columns are less than the photospheric value of 1031photons s-1. Further, the photospheric value is itself some 10 orders of magnitude lower than the rate required to influence disc evolution significantly. This means that the accretion columns we have modelled cannot emit ionising photons at a rate that will be significant in disc photoionisation models, for any choice of parameters.

## 4 Discussion

There are obvious caveats to these models. The first, and most significant, is that the cloudy code is only completely reliable at densities less than $`10^{13}`$cm-3; it is prone to numerical problems at higher densities, and for cases of high $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}`$ and small $`f`$ the density in our models can exceed this value. However, the main uncertainties at these densities are regarding the treatment of heavy elements. The dominant effects in the regime in which we are interested are photoionisation and recombination of atomic hydrogen, and these processes are treated reliably by the code. However in order to compensate for this numerical problem we were forced to limit the density artificially to have a maximum value of $`5\times 10^{13}`$cm-3. This affected the 3 models with the highest densities ($`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}=1\times 10^7`$$`M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$, $`f=0.01,0.05`$ and $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}=5\times 10^8`$$`M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$, $`f=0.01`$), and the reduction in density results in these models under-estimating the ionising flux somewhat. This does introduce some uncertainty into our models, but we consider the effect to be small relative to the gross effects which dominate the calculations.

A further caveat regards the issue of non-radial emission, both from the hotspot and from the “sides” of the column, as mentioned in section 3. The ionising photon rates from our models are those emitted from the top of the accretion columns only, and neglect emission from the sides of the columns. Further, the incident flux from the hotspot is assumed to be purely radial. The Lyman continuum emission in which we are interested arises from the radiative recombination of hydrogen atoms, an intrinsically isotropic emission process, and so emission from the sides of the column could be significant. However, as the recombination process is isotropic it is reasonable to assume that the Lyman continuum emitted from the sides of a column will be comparable to that emitted from the top of a column that is truncated at a height equal to its diameter. Fig.4 shows that the diffuse Lyman continuum from the top of the column decreases dramatically as the column height increases (and the density decreases). Consequently the Lyman continuum emission from the sides of the column will only be significant over a distance comparable to the hotspot diameter: the sides of the column only produce a significant Lyman continuum near to the stellar surface.

As noted in section 3, Lyman continuum photons incident on the columns will be attenuated by a factor of $`10^{13}`$ over a distance of approximately 10-5$`R_{}`$. As a result of this, the majority of the non-radial Lyman continuum photons emitted by an isotropically emitting hotspot will be absorbed by the column. The only such photons not absorbed will be those emitted within a fraction of an attenuation length of the edge of the hotspot, in a direction away from the centre of the hotspot. A hotspot covering 1% of the stellar surface has a radius of 0.2$`R_{}`$, so less than $`10^5`$ of the hotspot photons are emitted within 10-5$`R_{}`$ of the hotspot edge. Given this fact, and also the behaviour of the “raw” hotspot emission described in Fig.2, we neglect this effect.

The net result of these two simplifications is that in reality the emission from the bottom of any accretion column will dominate the Lyman continuum emitted by the column, and accretion columns of any height will emit ionising photons at a rate comparable to that provided by the lower part of the column (the left-hand end of the curves in Fig.4). This will increase the largest calculated ionising photon rates by a small geometric factor but still cannot increase their flux to significantly greater than 1031photons s-1; the photospheric emission will still dominate the overall Lyman continuum. More importantly, much higher ionising fluxes (of the order of 1041photons s-1) are required to have a significant effect on disc evolution (Clarke et al., 2001; Matsuyama et al., 2003), and the uncertainties caused by the approximations we have made are negligible compared to this 10 orders-of-magnitude difference.

Further simplifications used in our models regard the geometry of the accretion column. Our models use a column with a constant covering factor - essentially a truncated radial cone - and so the area of the outer surface at a given radius $`R`$ is proportional to $`R^2`$. However in reality the column is channelled by the magnetosphere and, as explained in section 3, has an area proportional to $`R^3`$; our model accretion columns are somewhat less flared than we would expect to see in reality. However the difference between the two is only significant at large radii; small column heights, which provide the highest ionising fluxes, will not show significant deviation between the two cases. Again, the net result of this is that we probably under-estimate the ionising flux by a small factor, but not by enough to alter the results significantly.

As our accretion columns are radial cones they do not bend to follow the magnetosphere, as expected in more realistic magnetospheric accretion models (eg. Ghosh & Lamb 1978). In such a model the column would bend over to meet the accretion disc, with a curvature dependent on both the latitude of the hotspot and the strength of the magnetosphere. However, as discussed above, the emission from the bottom part of the accretion column dominates over that from the upper parts (those affected by this curvature), so this simplification will not affect our results significantly.

There is also the issue of an infall velocity, which our models do not address. In reality the accretion column will be falling towards the stellar surface at close to the free-fall velocity, which can be several hundred kms-1, and so this could modify the absorbing effect of the cloud. However the infall velocity is much less than the speed of light, and there are no strong emission lines near to the Lyman break, and so we consider the impact of this effect on the emitted Lyman continuum to be negligible.

It should be noted that our model makes no predictions as to the behaviour of the photons emitted at wavelengths longward of the Lyman break. As shown in Fig.1, the emission from the top of the column longward of the Lyman break is essentially identical to that from the hotspot at the base of the column. We approximate the accretion shock crudely, and so are not able to fit our models to observed spectra in a manner similar to Calvet & Gullbring (1998) or Johns-Krull, Valenti & Linsky (2000). However the Lyman continuum emitted by our columns is insensitive to variations in the hotspot spectrum, due to the high optical depth of the columns to Lyman continuum photons. Consequently we find that any reasonable accretion-shock model will produce a similar Lyman continuum, and that this Lyman continuum is independent of the emission at longer wavelengths.

We have adopted stellar parameters of $`R=1R_{}`$ and $`M=1M_{}`$ to provide direct comparisons with the models of Clarke et al. (2001) and Matsuyama et al. (2003). However in the case of T Tauri stars a radius of $`2R_{}`$ and a mass of $`0.5M_{}`$ would be more realistic (Gullbring et al., 1998). The result of this will be that our models over-estimate the ionising flux somewhat, due to both reduction in the energy released by accretion on to the stellar surface and also due to a reduction in the star’s surface gravity. Once again, however, it is unlikely that these factors are significant in comparison to the gross effects we have already considered. Similarly, the use of the “constant temperature” hotspot to heat the column probably over-estimates both the ionising flux and heating provided by the hotspot, and thus over-estimates the diffuse Lyman continuum. In effect we have constructed a “best-case” model, designed to produce the maximum ionising flux, and still found the ionising flux to be less than that emitted by the stellar photosphere. It seems extremely unlikely that any conceivable accretion column could produce ionising photons at a rate significantly greater than this.

## 5 Summary

In an attempt to provide some constraints on the nature and magnitude of the ionising continuum emitted by T Tauri stars, we have constructed models which treat the accretion shock as a hotspot on the stellar surface beneath a column of accreting material. We have modelled these columns for a variety of different accretion rates, hotspot sizes and column heights, and have found that:

* A hotspot radiating like a stellar atmosphere radiates ionising photons at a rate some 3 orders of magnitude less than the corresponding blackbody.
* A constant area hotspot radiating like a stellar atmosphere can only emit ionising photons at greater than photospheric rates for mass accretion rates greater than $`10^7`$$`M_{}`$yr-1. Such accretion rates are near the upper limit of the rates derived from observations (Hartmann et al., 1998; Johns-Krull et al., 2000).
* Photoionisation of neutral hydrogen in the accretion column attenuates the Lyman continuum from any hotspot to zero over a very short length scale. The ionising photons which do emerge are due to radiative recombination of hydrogen atoms in the column, and the rate of ionising photon emission is less than the photospheric level for all of the accretion columns we have modelled.

In short, we find that accretion shocks and columns are extremely unlikely to produce Lyman continuum photons at a rate significantly greater than that expected from the stellar photosphere. The photospheric level itself is some 10 orders of magnitude below the rates required for photoionisation to affect disc evolution significantly, and so it seems that the Lyman continuum emitted by an accretion shock will not be large enough to be significant in disc photoionisation models. These models have provided an attractive explanation of some observed disc properties (eg. Clarke et al. 2001; Armitage et al. 2003) but we have shown, as suggested by Clarke et al. (2001), that they must be powered by something other than the accretion-shock emission. In order to produce ionising photons at a rate large enough to enable photoionisation models to provide a realistic means of disc dispersal, the central objects must sustain a source of ionising photons that is not driven by accretion from the disc.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Bob Carswell for useful discussions and advice on the use of the cloudy code. RDA acknowledges the support of a PPARC PhD studentship. CJC gratefully acknowledges support from the Leverhulme Trust in the form of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments which improved the clarity of the paper.


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# Charged-particle decay and suppression of small-scale power

## Abstract

We study the suppression of the small-scale power spectrum due to the decay of charged matter to dark matter prior to recombination. Prior to decay, the charged particles couple to the photon-baryon fluid and participate in its acoustic oscillations. However, after decaying to neutral dark matter the photon-baryon fluid is coupled only gravitationally to the newly-created dark matter. This generically leads to suppression of power on length scales that enter the horizon prior to decay. For decay times of $``$$`3.5`$ years this leads to suppression of power on subgalactic scales, bringing the observed number of Galactic substructures in line with observation. Decay times of a few years are possible if the dark matter is purely gravitationally interacting, such as the gravitino in supersymmetric models or a massive Kaluza-Klein graviton in models with universal extra dimensions.

The standard inflation-inspired cosmological model, with its nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of primordial perturbations, is in remarkable agreement with observation. It predicts correctly the detailed pattern of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) CMB , and accurately describes the large scale clustering of matter in the Universe LSS . However, on subgalactic scales there are possible problems with the standard cosmology that warrant further investigation. Namely, the model overpredicts the number of subgalactic halos by an order of magnitude compared to the 11 observed dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way excessCDMpower . Several possible resolutions have been proposed to this apparent discrepancy, ranging from astrophysical mechanisms that suppress dwarf-galaxy formation in subgalactic halos (see, for example, Ref. AstroSol ) to features in the inflaton potential that suppress small-scale power and thus reduce the predicted number of subgalactic halos Kamion2000 .

In this *Letter*, we show that if dark matter is produced by the out-of-equilibrium decay of a long-lived charged particle, then power will be suppressed on scales smaller than the horizon at the decay epoch. Unlike some other recent proposals, which suppress small-scale power by modifying the dark-matter particle properties OtherMods , ours modifies the dark-matter production mechanism. In the model we discuss here, prior to decay, the charged particles couple electromagnetically to the primordial plasma and participate in its acoustic oscillations. After decay, the photon-baryon fluid is coupled only gravitationally to the neutral dark matter. This generically leads to suppression of power for scales that enter the horizon prior to decay. This suppression, reduces the amount of halo substructure on galactic scales while preserving the successes of the standard hierarchical-clustering paradigm on larger scales. Apart from the changes to the model due to the decay process, we adopt the standard flat-geometry $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmological model with present-day dark-matter density (in units of the critical density) $`\mathrm{\Omega }_d=0.25`$, baryon density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.05`$, cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.70`$, Hubble parameter $`H_0=72\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, and spectral index $`n=1`$.

In the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model the initial curvature perturbations of the Universe, presumably produced by inflation or some inflation-like mechanism, are adiabatic (perturbations in the total density but not the relative density between species) and Gaussian with a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of amplitudes. These initial perturbations grow and react under the influence of gravity and other forces, with the exact nature of their behavior dependent upon the species in question. Because dark-matter particles are, by assumption, cold and collisionless the fractional dark-matter-density perturbation $`\delta _d\delta \rho _d/\rho _d`$ can only grow under the influence of gravity. The baryonic species, being charged, are tightly coupled by Coulomb scattering to the electrons, which are themselves tightly coupled to the photons via Thomson scattering. The baryons and photons can thus be described at early times as a single baryon-photon fluid, with the photons providing most of the pressure and inertia and the baryons providing only inertia. Gravity will tend to compress this baryon-photon fluid, while the radiation pressure will support it against this compression. The result is acoustic oscillations, and the baryon density perturbation $`\delta _b\delta \rho _b/\rho _b`$ and photon density perturbation $`\delta _\gamma \delta \rho _\gamma /\rho _\gamma `$ will oscillate in time for length scales inside the horizon (on length scales larger than the horizon the pressure can have no effect). At early times these perturbations are very small and linear perturbation theory can be applied. This allows an arbitrary density field to be decomposed into a set of independently evolving Fourier modes, labeled by a wavenumber $`k`$. Fig. 1 shows the growth of dark-matter perturbations under the influence of gravity, and the oscillatory behavior of the baryon perturbation for the same wavenumber.

We choose to work in the synchronous gauge where the time slicing is fixed to surfaces of constant proper time so that particle decays proceed everywhere at the same rate. In the synchronous gauge the standard linearized evolution equations for perturbations in Fourier space are (e.g., Ma95 )

$`\dot{\delta }_d=\theta _d{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{h},\dot{\theta }_d={\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\theta _d,`$ (1)
$`\dot{\delta }_b=\theta _b{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{h},`$ (2)
$`\dot{\theta }_b={\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\theta _b`$ $`+c_s^2k^2\delta _b+{\displaystyle \frac{4\rho _\gamma }{3\rho _b}}an_e\sigma _T(\theta _\gamma \theta _b),`$ (3)
$`\dot{\delta }_\gamma ={\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}\theta _\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\dot{h},`$ (4)
and

$`\dot{\theta }_\gamma =k^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\delta _\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }_\gamma \right)+an_e\sigma _T(\theta _b\theta _\gamma ),`$ (5)
where $`\theta _b`$, $`\theta _d`$, and $`\theta _\gamma `$ are the divergence of the baryon, dark-matter, and photon fluid velocities respectively and an overdot represents a derivative with respect to the conformal time $`\eta `$. Here $`h`$ is the trace of the spatial metric perturbations $`h_{ij}`$. Its evolution is described by the linearized Einstein equations, which close this system of linearized equations. The last terms on the right-hand-sides of Eqs. (3) and (5) account for Thomson scattering between baryons and photons, and are responsible for keeping them tightly coupled in the early Universe. In these equations $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson cross section, $`n_e`$ is the electron number density, and $`c_s`$ is the intrinsic sound speed of the baryons. During tight coupling the second moment $`\mathrm{\Theta }_\gamma `$ of the photon distribution and other higher moments can be neglected, and the radiation can reliably be given the fluid description described above.

We now show how Eqs. (1)–(5) are modified by the decay of a long-lived metastable charged particle to dark matter in the early Universe. We assume that the decay is of the form $`q^\pm \mathrm{}^\pm d`$, so the decay of each charged particle $`q^\pm `$ produces a dark-matter particle $`d`$ and a charged lepton $`\mathrm{}^\pm `$. Denoting the decaying charged component by the subscript ‘$`q`$’, the background density $`\rho _q`$ evolves according to the equation,

$`\dot{\rho }_q=3{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\rho _q{\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}\rho _q,`$ (6)
where $`\tau `$ is the lifetime of $`q^\pm `$. The first term just accounts for the normal $`a^3`$ scaling of non-relativistic matter in an expanding universe, while the second leads to the expected exponential decay of the comoving density. For the dark matter we have

$`\dot{\rho }_d=3{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\rho _d+\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}\rho _q,`$ (7)
where $`\lambda =m_d/m_q`$ is the ratio of the masses of dark matter particle the charged particle. The energy density in photons evolves according to

$`\dot{\rho }_\gamma =4{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\rho _\gamma +(1\lambda ){\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}\rho _q.`$ (8)
This last equation follows from the assumption that the produced lepton initiates an electromagnetic cascade which rapidly (compared to the expansion timescale) thermalizes with the photon distribution. In practice the last term on the right-hand-side of Eq. (8) is negligibly small because the decay takes place during the radiation dominated era when $`\rho _\gamma \rho _q`$. Furthermore, limits on the magnitude of $`\mu `$-distortions to the blackbody spectrum of the CMB constrain $`|1\lambda |`$ to be a small number, as we discuss below.

Using covariant generalizations of Eqs. (6)–(8) we can derive how Eqs. (1)–(5) are modified by the transfer of energy and momentum from the ‘$`q`$’ component to the dark matter during the decay process. Since the charged ‘$`q`$’ component and the baryons are tightly coupled via Coulomb scattering they share a common velocity $`\theta _\beta =\theta _b=\theta _q`$. This makes it useful to describe them in terms of a total charged-species component with energy density $`\rho _\beta =\rho _b+\rho _q`$, which we denote here by the subscript ‘$`\beta `$’. Because in the synchronous gauge the decay proceeds everywhere at the same rate this description is even more useful as $`\delta _\beta =\delta _b=\delta _q`$ is maintained at all times for adiabatic initial conditions. In terms of these ‘$`\beta `$’ variables, then, we have

$`\dot{\delta }_d=\theta _d{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{h}+\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{\rho _q}{\rho _d}}{\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}(\delta _\beta \delta _d),`$ (9)
$`\dot{\theta }_d={\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\theta _d+\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{\rho _q}{\rho _d}}{\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}(\theta _\beta \theta _d),`$ (10)
$`\dot{\delta }_\beta =\theta _\beta {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{h},`$ (11)
$`\dot{\theta }_\beta ={\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\theta _\beta `$ $`+c_s^2k^2\delta _\beta +{\displaystyle \frac{4\rho _\gamma }{3\rho _\beta }}an_e\sigma _T(\theta _\gamma \theta _\beta ),`$ (12)
$`\dot{\delta }_\gamma ={\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}\theta _\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\dot{h}+(1\lambda ){\displaystyle \frac{\rho _q}{\rho _\gamma }}{\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}(\delta _\beta \delta _\gamma ),`$ (13)
and

$`\dot{\theta }_\gamma =k^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\delta _\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }_\gamma \right)`$ $`+an_e\sigma _T(\theta _\beta \theta _\gamma )`$
$`+(1\lambda ){\displaystyle \frac{\rho _q}{\rho _\gamma }}{\displaystyle \frac{a}{\tau }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}\theta _\beta \theta _\gamma \right).`$ (14)
We now describe how small-scale modes that enter the horizon prior to decay are suppressed relative to those modes that enter the horizon after decay. Due to the Thomson collision terms the ‘$`\beta `$’ component and the photons will be tightly coupled as a ‘$`\beta `$’-photon fluid at early times and this fluid will support acoustic oscillations. Furthermore, Eqs. (9) and (10) show that the dark-matter perturbations are strongly sourced by the perturbations of the ‘$`\beta `$’ component prior to decay, when the ratio $`\rho _q/\rho _d`$ is large. Dark-matter modes that enter the horizon prior to decay will thus track the oscillations of the ‘$`\beta `$’-photon fluid rather than simply growing under the influence of gravity. After decay, when the ratio $`\rho _q/\rho _d`$ is small, the source term shuts off and dark-matter modes that enter the horizon undergo the standard growing evolution. In Fig. 2 we follow the evolution of the dark-matter perturbations through the epoch of decay. We modified CMBFAST CMBfast  to carry out these calculations.

In order to suppress power on subgalactic scales the decay lifetime must be roughly the age of the Universe when the mass enclosed in the Hubble volume is equal to a galaxy mass; this occurs when $`\tau `$ years. In Fig. 3 we plot the linear power spectrum of matter density fluctuations at the present day for a charged-particle lifetime $`\tau =3.5\mathrm{yr}`$ assuming a scale-invariant primordial power spectrum. We see that power is suppressed on scales smaller than $`k^10.3\mathrm{Mpc}`$ relative to the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM power spectrum. Suppression of power on these length scales reduces the expected number of subgalactic halos, bringing the predictions in line with observation Kamion2000  without violating constraints from the Lyman-alpha forest White2000 . Of course, the model reproduces the successes of the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model on larger scales and in the CMB.

The requirements of the charged-particle species are that it have a comoving mass density equal to the dark-matter density today and have a lifetime of $`\tau `$ 3.5 yr. In order to satisfy the constraint to the CMB chemical potential Fixsen1996 , the fractional mass difference between the charged and neutral particles must be $`\mathrm{\Delta }m/m<3.6\times 10^3`$, and in order for the decay to be allowed kinematically the mass difference must be greater than the electron mass. One possibility is the SuperWIMP scenario of Ref. Feng2003  in which a charged particle may decay to an exclusively gravitationally interacting particle. For example, in supersymmetric models, the decay of a selectron to an electron and gravitino $`\stackrel{~}{e}e\stackrel{~}{G}`$ with $`m_{\stackrel{~}{e}}m_{\stackrel{~}{G}}>122\mathrm{TeV}`$ would satisfy these constraints, as would the decay of a KK-electron to an electron and KK-graviton $`e^1eG^1`$ with $`m_{e^1}m_{G^1}>72\mathrm{TeV}`$ in the case of the single universal extra dimension Kaluza-Klein (KK) model discussed in Refs. Appel2001 ; Feng2003 . Such masses are larger than the unitary bound for thermal production Griest1990 , but might be accommodated through nonthermal mechanisms or if the next-to-lightest partner is a squark which might then interact more strongly and thus evade this bound. There may also be viable scenarios involving nearly-degenerate charged and neutral higgsinos.

It should be noted that the recent WMAP evidence for early star formation Kogut2003  argues against the suppression of small-scale power, but these results are not yet conclusive. If it does turn out that traditional astrophysical mechanisms can explain the dearth of dwarf galaxies, then our arguments can be turned around to provide constraints to an otherwise inaccessible region of the parameter space for decaying dark matter SigKam . Finally, if the mechanism we propose here is realized in nature, then the dearth of small-scale power, along with the detection of a non-zero CMB chemical potential, would be a powerful probe of the particle spectrum of the new physics responsible for dark matter.

###### Acknowledgements.

KS acknowledges the support of a Canadian NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship. This work was supported in part by NASA NAG5-9821 and DoE DE-FG03-92-ER40701.


text:
# Supersymmetric Higgs production at the Large Hadron Collider

## 1 Introduction

There has been significant progress in controlling the theoretical predictions for Standard Model Higgs production cross sections at the LHC over the past few years. The Higgs sector may play a crucial role for the discrimination among the Standard Model and various extended theories at the LHC. In the following, we discuss the status of theoretical predictions for supersymmetric Higgs production, focussing on the CP-even neutral Higgs bosons, generically denoted by $`H`$.

## 2 Gluon fusion

For the SM and most of its extensions, gluon fusion is the dominant production mode for a neutral Higgs boson at hadron colliders. A generic LO diagram is shown in Fig. 1$`(a)`$. The coupling of the gluons to the Higgs boson is a pure quantum effect: In the SM, it is mediated predominantly by top quarks, while the contribution of other fermions $`f`$ is suppressed by $`m_f/m_t`$.

In the MSSM, the contribution from virtual bottom quarks can be significantly enhanced through large values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Furthermore, top squarks can give a sizable contribution if their masses are of the order of $`m_t`$. We thus write the total cross section from gluon fusion as

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \sigma =\sigma _t+\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _b+\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{t}}+\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{b\stackrel{~}{t}},\end{array}$$
(1)
where $`\sigma _t`$ denotes the pure top quark contribution, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _b`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{t}}`$) the additional effects due to the presence of bottom quarks (top squarks). The term $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{b\stackrel{~}{t}}`$ which arises from the interference of bottom quarks and top squarks, will not be considered any further in this paper. Note that we also neglect effects from bottom squarks which are suppressed by $`(m_b/m_{\stackrel{~}{b}})^2`$, modulo a possible enhancement due to large values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Furthermore, we define

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \sigma _{ti}\sigma _t+\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _i,i\{b,\stackrel{~}{t}\}.\end{array}$$
(2)
### Top quark loops, Effective theory approach.

Apart from an overall factor $`f(\beta )`$, the pure top quark contributions $`\sigma _t`$ to the Higgs production cross section in the MSSM and the SM are identical to all orders in QCD. Higher orders are described extremely well by the “heavy-top limit” nlo  which, for this particular case, is defined as follows:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \sigma _\theta ^{\mathrm{}}& =\kappa _\theta \sigma _\theta ^{(0)},\kappa _\theta =\frac{\sigma _\theta (m_\theta \mathrm{})}{\sigma _\theta ^{(0)}(m_\theta \mathrm{})},\hfill \end{array}$$
(3)
where $`\theta =t`$. Here, $`\sigma _\theta ^{(0)}`$ denotes that part of $`\sigma _\theta `$ where all higher order corrections to the partonic process are dropped (they are kept in the parton densities and the running of $`\alpha _s`$). Fig. 2 shows that the difference between $`\sigma _t^{\mathrm{}}`$ and the exact result $`\sigma _t`$ is less than 2% for $`M_H<2m_t`$ at next-to-leading order. This should be compared to the NLO uncertainty of $`\pm 15\%`$ nlo  as estimated from varying the renormalization and factorization scales $`\mu _R`$ and $`\mu _F`$. It was therefore well justified to apply the heavy-top limit at NNLO Harlander:2000mg ; gghnnlo 111For resummation effects, see Ref. gghresum . in order to obtain a theoretical prediction for the total cross section that is competitive with the expected experimental uncertainty.

### Bottom quark loops.

As was mentioned above, the gluon-Higgs coupling gets significant contributions from bottom quark loops for large values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Since the “heavy-top limit” works at the 10% level even for very large Higgs boson masses (see Fig. 2), it is tempting to apply a formal “heavy-bottom approach”, defined by Eq. (3) with $`\theta =tb`$ and $`m_{tb}\{m_t,m_b\}`$. At NLO, it is $`\kappa _{tb}=\kappa _t`$. Fig. 3 shows the deviation of $`\sigma _{tb}^{\mathrm{}}`$ from the exact result at NLO Spira:1995rr ; higlu  for various values of the ratio $`g_b/g_t`$, where $`g_{b,t}`$ are the Yukawa couplings of the bottom and top quark relative to their SM values. Note that the solid/red curves (Standard Model) of Figs. 3 and 2 are identical.

The curves in Fig. 3 show that the effect of the exact NLO bottom contribution stays below 40% even for very large bottom Yukawa couplings. For large Higgs boson masses, the curves approach the Standard Model value (solid/red curve).

### SUSY loops.

The contribution of squarks to the total Higgs production cross section goes like $`(m_q/m_{\stackrel{~}{q}})^2`$. Thus, as shown in Fig. 4, only top squarks with $`m_{\stackrel{~}{t}}400`$ GeV give a sizable effect.

The SUSY relation between the top and stop Yukawa coupling requires to include also gluino effects at higher orders in $`\alpha _s`$ to arrive at finite results. A sample diagram with top quark, top squark, and gluino is displayed in Fig. 1$`(b)`$.

The NLO corrections (evaluated through Eq. (3) with $`\theta =t\stackrel{~}{t}`$ and $`m_{t\stackrel{~}{t}}\{m_t,m_{\stackrel{~}{t}},m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\}`$) were found to be very similar to the Standard Model case Harlander:2003bb  (see also Ref. Dawson:1996xz , so that the tree-level ratios shown in Fig. 4 hardly change at NLO. In this first study, squark mixing effects had been neglected, but more detailed investigations are under way.

The dominant corrections to the Higgs production cross section originate from real gluon emission gghsoft . Thus, it is possible to derive a rather precise estimate of the NNLO terms based on the NNLO result in the SM gghnnlo  and the NLO effective Higgs-gluon coupling Harlander:2003bb . In this way, the reduced scale uncertainty of the NNLO in the SM directly carries forward to the supersymmetric case. The result is shown in Fig. 5, details can be found in Ref. Harlander:2003kf .

## 3 Associated production with bottom quarks

A large value of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ (i.e., $`\mathrm{tan}\beta m_t/m_b35`$) not only leads to a significant contribution of virtual bottom quarks to the gluon-Higgs coupling; it also brings in a new Higgs production mechanism, namely $`ppb\overline{b}H`$. The relative importance of both processes is shown in Fig. 6 as a function of the bottom Yukawa coupling.

The LO partonic Feynman diagram would be $`ggb\overline{b}H`$, Fig. 7$`(b)`$. However, integration over small transverse momenta $`p_{T,b}`$ of the bottom jets leads to collinear logarithms $`\mathrm{ln}(m_b/M_H)`$. Resummation of these logarithms can be achieved by introducing bottom quark densities for the initial state hadrons, and using $`b\overline{b}H`$ as the LO partonic process (the two final state bottom jets remain unobserved). The LO contribution in this approach neglects contributions from large $`p_{T,b}`$; but they are re-introduced through higher order QCD corrections. In fact, a NNLO calculation Harlander:2003ai  consistently combines the all-order resummation of the low-$`p_{T,b}`$ region with the LO contributions from large $`p_{T,b}`$. This is plausible because the diagrams for $`ggb\overline{b}H`$ are naturally part of the NNLO contribution to the process $`b\overline{b}H`$ (see Fig. 7).

The NNLO result depends only very weakly on the renormalization and factorization scales, thus providing a very precise prediction of the inclusive rate. In addition, it supports the analyses of Ref. bbhnlo  which suggest that the “central” choice of the factorization scale for this process should be $`\mu _F=M_H/4`$.

Recently, the NLO corrections for the exclusive process became available Dittmaier:2003ej . In this case, the LO partonic process is indeed $`ggb\overline{b}H`$. When integrated over all bottom quark transverse momenta, the cross section is in good agreement with the result from the bottom density approach Harlander:2003ai , be it with much larger error bars.

### Conclusions.

The recent NNLO results for Higgs production at hadron colliders have brought confidence into the theoretical predictions222Unfortunately, we could not include recent NNLO results on pseudo-scalar Higgs production pseudo  and Higgs-Strahlung Brein:2003wg .. The reduced uncertainties now have to be achieved also in extended models. First steps have been done, but there are still many problems to be solved that ask for technical progress and new ideas.

### Acknowledgments.

It is a pleasure to thank Bill Kilgore and Matthias Steinhauser for collaboration on many of the subjects discussed in this paper. Furthermore, I would like to thank Michael Spira for clarifying discussions.


text:
# Spectroscopic [Fe/H] for 98 extra-solar planet-host starsBased on observations collected at the La Silla Observatory, ESO (Chile), with the CORALIE spectrograph at the 1.2-m Euler Swiss telescope and the FEROS spectrograph at the 1.52-m and 2.2-m ESO telescopes, with the VLT/UT2 Kueyen telescope (Paranal Observatory, ESO, Chile) using the UVES spectrograph (Observing run 67.C-0206, in service mode), with the TNG and William Herschel Telescopes, both operated at the island of La Palma, and with the ELODIE spectrograph at the 1.93-m telescope at the Observatoire de Haute Provence.

## 1 Introduction

The discovery of now more than 115 giant planets orbiting solar-type stars111See e.g. table at http://obswww.unige.ch/Exoplanets for a continuously updated version has lead to a number of different studies on the formation and evolution of the newly found planetary systems (for a recent review see e.g. Mayor (2003) or Santos et al. (2003b)). With the numbers increasing, current analyses are giving us the first statistically significant results about the properties of the new systems (e.g. Jorissen et al. 2001; Zucker & Mazeh 2002; Udry et al. 2003; Santos et al. 2003a; Eggenberger et al. 2003). Amongst these, some deal with the planet-host stars themselves: they were found to be significantly metal-rich with respect to the average field dwarfs (e.g. Gonzalez 1997; Fuhrmann et al. 1998; Gonzalez 1998; Santos et al. 2000, 2001; Gonzalez et al. 2001; Reid 2002; Santos et al. 2003a; Laws et al. 2003).

Current studies seem to favor that this “excess” metallicity has a primordial origin, i.e., that the high metal content of the stars was common to the cloud of gas and dust that gave origin to the star-planet system (Pinsonneault et al. 2001; Santos et al. 2001, 2003a). Furthermore, it has been shown that the frequency of planetary companions is a strong function of the metal content of the star (Santos et al. 2001, 2003a; Reid 2002; Santos et al. 2003a): it is much easier to find planets around metal-rich objects. Overall, the results suggest that the formation of giant planets (or at least of the kind we find now) is very dependent on the grain content of the disk, a result that has important consequences for theories of planetary formation (Pollack et al. 1996; Boss 2002; Rice & Armitage 2003).

During the last few years we have gathered spectra for planet host stars, as well as of a sample of objects not known to harbor any planetary companion. The main results of our uniform study, concerning the metallicity of planet host stars, have been presented in Santos et al. (2000), Santos et al. (2001), and Santos et al. (2003a) (hereafter Papers I, II, and III, respectively).

Most groups working on exoplanets are now convinced that planet host stars are really more metal-rich than average field dwarfs. This result is clearly independent of the kind of analysis done to obtain the stellar metallicity (e.g. Giménez 2000; Gonzalez et al. 2001; Santos et al. 2001; Murray & Chaboyer 2002; Martell & Laughlin 2002; Heiter & Luck 2003), and in Paper III we showed that this result is not due to any observational bias. However, some authors have questioned the quality of the spectroscopic analyses we (and others) have been publishing. In particular, the relatively high surface gravities derived in our preceding papers led to some criticism regarding this matter.

In order to address this problem, in this paper we present a revised spectroscopic analysis for all the stars presented in Papers II and III. The new derived surface gravities are now compatible with the ones obtained by other authors, and with trigonometric gravities derived using Hipparcos parallaxes (ESA 1997). Other stellar parameters (Teff and \[Fe/H\]) are also similar to the ones presented elsewhere in the literature, and not particularly different from the ones derived in Papers II and III.

Furthermore, we have derived stellar parameters for 18 planet host stars not analyzed before, increasing to 98 the number of these objects for which we have precise spectral information. The new results unambiguously confirm the previously presented trends: stars with planetary companions are more metal-rich than average field dwarfs.

## 2 The data

Most of the spectra for the planet-host stars analyzed in this paper were studied in Papers I, II, and III. We refer the reader to these for a description of the data.

During the last year, however, we have obtained spectra for 18 more planet host stars. Most of the spectra were gathered using the FEROS spectrograph (2.2-m ESO/MPI telescope, La Silla, Chile), on the night of the 12-13 March 2003 (for HD 47536, HD 65216, HD 72659, HD 73256, HD 73526, HD 76700, HD 111232, and HD 142415) and with the SARG spectrograph at the TNG telescope (La Palma, Spain) on the nights of the 9-10 October 2003 (for HD 3651, HD 40979, HD 68988, HD 216770, HD 219542B, and HD 222404). In these runs we have also gathered spectra for HD 30177, HD 162020 (FEROS), and HD178911B (SARG), already previously analyzed. The FEROS spectra have S/N ratios above 300 for all targets at a resolution of about 50 000, and were reduced using the FEROS pipeline software. The SARG spectra have a resolution of about 57 000, and were reduced using the tasks within the IRAF echelle package222IRAF is distributed by National Optical Astronomy Observatories, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under contract with the National Science Foundation, U.S.A.. Finally, a spectrum of HD 70642 with a S/N$``$150 was obtained using the CORALIE spectrograph (R=50 000), at the 1.2-m Euler Swiss telescope (La Silla, Chile), on the night of the 21-22 October 2003.

Equivalent Widths (EW) were measured using a Gaussian fitting procedure within the IRAF splot task. For HD 178911 B, we also used the EW measured by Zucker et al. (2001) from a Keck/HIRES spectrum (S. Zucker & D. Latham, private communication). Given that only 16 Fe i and 2 Fe ii lines were measured from this spectrum, the parameters derived are only listed as a test of consistency, but are not used in rest of the paper. Other previously obtained, but not used, spectra (see Paper III for the instrument description) were also analyzed for HD 89744 and HD 19994 (WHT/UES), HD 120136 (VLT/UVES), HD 49674 (TNG/SARG).

Besides the planet host stars, we also re-analyzed here our comparison sample of stars not known to harbor any planetary companion. This volume-limited sample, that represents a sub-sample of the CORALIE planet search program stars (Udry et al. 2000), is described in Paper II. Since 2001, however, 2 of the stars in the original list have been found to harbor planetary-mass companions: HD 39091 (Jones et al. 2002) and HD 10647 (Mayor et al. 2003). These are thus considered now as planet hosts, adding to HD1237, HD 13445, HD 17051, HD 22049, HD 217107, also belonging to our original volume limited sample, but known as planet hosts by the time Paper II was published. These stars should, however, be taken into account for completeness.

## 3 Spectroscopic analysis and stellar parameters

For the past three years we have been deriving stellar parameters for planet-host stars and for a comparison sample of stars with no detected planetary companions (Papers I, II and III). However, the stellar parameters presented in our previous studies were not completely satisfactory. In particular, the derived surface gravities were systematically higher than the ones obtained by other authors (see e.g. Gonzalez et al. 2001) by $``$0.15 dex. While this fact was clearly not producing an important shift in the final metallicities (see e.g. Santos et al. 2003a; Laws et al. 2003), this lead some authors to suggest that the metallicity excess observed was not real (G. Wuchterl, private communication).

To solve this problem we have carried out a new spectroscopic analysis of all the program stars. The stellar parameters were derived using the same technique as in the previous papers, based on about 39 Fe i and 12 Fe ii lines (see Table 1), and the spectroscopic analysis was done in LTE using the 2002 version of the code MOOG (Sneden 1973)333The code MOOG2002 can be downloaded at http://verdi.as.utexas.edu/moog.html. However, 2 main changes have been done. Firstly, we have adopted new $`\mathrm{log}gf`$ values for the iron lines. These were computed from an inverted solar analysis using solar EW measured from the Kurucz Solar Atlas (Kurucz et al. 1984), and a Kurucz grid model for the Sun (Kurucz 1993) having (Teff,$`\mathrm{log}g`$,$`\xi _\mathrm{t}`$,$`logϵ_{Fe}`$)=(5777K,4.44 dex,1.00 km s-1,7.47 dex). This differs from our previous analysis where we always used $`\mathrm{log}gf`$ values taken from Gonzalez et al. (2001) (and references therein). Secondly, we have now used a van der Walls damping based on the Unsold approximation, but multiplied by a factor as suggested by the Blackwell group (option 2 in the damping parameter inside MOOG).

We also note that our previous analysis was done using an older version of MOOG. A comparison showed that for some cases there were slight differences in the derived stellar metallicities, but never exceeding 0.01 dex.

As a test, we computed the Solar parameters and iron abundances based on iron EW measured using a Solar spectrum taken with the HARPS spectrograph (courtesy of the HARPS team, Mayor et al.). The resulting parameters were Teff=5779$`\pm `$23, $`\mathrm{log}g`$=4.48$`\pm `$0.07, $`\xi _\mathrm{t}`$=1.04$`\pm `$0.04, and \[Fe/H\]=0.00$`\pm `$0.03, very close (and within the errors) to the “expected” solution (there are almost no differences in average between the solar EW derived from the Kurucz Atlas compared to the ones derived from the HARPS spectrum).

The atmospheric parameters for our program stars were obtained from the Fe i and Fe ii lines by iterating until the correlation coefficients between $`\mathrm{log}ϵ`$(Fe i) and $`\chi _l`$, and between $`\mathrm{log}ϵ`$(Fe i) and $`\mathrm{log}(W_\lambda /\lambda )`$ were zero, and the mean abundance given by Fe i and Fe ii lines were the same. To simplify this analysis, we built a Fortran code that uses a Downhill Simplex Method (Press et al. 1992) to find the best solution in the (stellar) parameter space (which happens in most of the cases after a few minutes). The results are thus obtained in a fast and automatic way, once the EW are measured.

The final stellar parameters and masses are presented in Tables 2 through 5, for planet-host stars and for our comparison sample objects444These tables are also available in electronic form at CDS. The errors were derived as described in Paper I, and are of the order of 50 K in Teff, 0.12 dex in $`\mathrm{log}g`$, 0.08 km s-1 in the microturbulence, and 0.05 dex in the metallicity. Stellar masses were computed by interpolating the theoretical isochrones of Schaller et al. (1992), Schaerer et al. (1993) and Schaerer et al. (1992), using $`M_V`$ computed using Hipparcos parallaxes (ESA 1997), a bolometric correction from Flower (1996), and the Teff obtained from the spectroscopy. We adopt a typical relative error of 0.05 M for the masses. In some cases, no mass estimates are presented, since these involved large extrapolations of the isochrones. A comparison with other works shows that (on average) there are almost no differences to the masses derived in the study of Laws et al. (2003), although these authors used a different set of theoretical isochrones; a small difference of 0.03 M is found with respect to the analysis of Allende Prieto & Lambert (1999).

For comparison, we have also computed the surface gravities based on Hipparcos parallaxes (trigonometric gravities). Using the well known relations $`g=\frac{GM}{R^2}`$, and $`L=\frac{4}{3}\pi R^2T_{\mathrm{eff}}^4`$, we can obtain:

$`\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{g}{g_{\mathrm{}}}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{M}{M_{\mathrm{}}}}+4\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{eff}}}{T_{\mathrm{eff}\mathrm{}}}}+2\mathrm{log}\pi `$
$`+0.4(V_0+BC)+0.11`$
where BC is the bolometric correction, V0 the visual magnitude, and $`\pi `$ the parallax. Here we used a solar absolute magnitude Mv=4.81 (Bessell et al. 1998) and, for consistency, we took the bolometric correction derived for a solar temperature star ($``$0.08) using the calibration of Flower (1996)555We can find some differences in the literature regarding these values (see e.g. Bessell et al. 1998; Bergbusch & Vanderberg 1992), which can introduce systematic errors in the resulting trigonometric parallaxes. In particular, there seems to be a large discrepancy regarding the solar BC derived using Kurucz models (see Bessell et al. 1998). This method was already successfully used by other authors, namely Allende Prieto et al. (1999) and Nissen et al. (1997), in obtaining surface gravities for stars with precise parallax estimates. Given the proximity of our targets (typical values of $`\sigma (\pi )/\pi `$ are lower than 0.05, and always lower than 0.10 except for HD 80606), the derived trigonometric surface gravities are reasonably free from the Lutz-Kelker effect (Lutz & Kelker 1973; Smith 2003). In the next section we will present the results of a comparison between our spectroscopic and trigonometric gravities.

Finally, for a few stars we have stellar parameters and metallicities derived using different sets of spectra. A simple inspection of Tables 2, 3, and 4 shows that the parameters derived from these different spectra are perfectly compatible with each other, within the errors.

### 3.1 Comparison with other works

To verify the quality of our results we have made a comparison with a number of different studies. In particular, we have compared the presented stellar parameters with the ones derived in our previous works (Papers II and III). This comparison reveals one main difference: the derived values for the surface gravity are now lower by about $``$0.1 dex (on average). However, for both the effective temperatures and metallicities, the differences are very small, not exceeding $``$10 k and 0.01 dex, respectively. In other words, the new parameters do not differ considerably in the main goal of our studies: the derivation of precise \[Fe/H\]. The changes we have made have not produced much of a difference in the obtained metallicities. This conclusion was expected, as it is well known that for solar-type dwarfs the abundances derived from the Fe i lines are mostly sensitive to the effective temperature (that did not vary much from our previous analysis to the current one) and are almost not dependent on surface gravity variations (see e.g. Paper I).

To verify this case we have performed a test where we used the solar equivalent widths (used to derive the $`\mathrm{log}gf`$ values) to obtain the effective temperature, microturbulence parameter, and metallicity for the Sun based only on the Fe i lines, and forcing the $`\mathrm{log}g`$ to a value of 4.54 dex, i.e., 0.1 dex above solar. The results were (Teff, $`\xi _\mathrm{t}`$, \[Fe/H\])=(5755 K, 0.94 kmṡ-1, $``$0.01 dex), not very different to the “expected” solar values. Similar or lower differences were obtained on a test done for the hotter dwarfs HD 82943 and HD 84177.

A clear conclusion of this analysis is that the method we used to derive stellar metallicities is not very dependent on errors in $`\mathrm{log}g`$.

#### 3.1.1 Effective Temperatures

We have further compared our stellar parameters with the ones derived by other authors for the stars in common.

For the Teff we have found that our values are only $`+`$18 k in excess of those derived in the works of Fuhrmann et al. (1997), Fuhrmann (1998), and Fuhrmann et al. (1998), who used a Hα and Hβ line-fitting procedure to derive the effective temperatures (we have 12 stars in common) – see Fig. 1. Similarly, a small average difference of $`+`$25 k is found to the studies of Gonzalez et al. (2001), Laws et al. (2003), and references therein (57 stars; using a similar technique to ours), of $`+`$16 K to Edvardsson et al. (1993) (12 stars; Teff derived from photometry), and of $``$2 K to Allende Prieto & Lambert (1999) (90 stars; these authors used an evolutionary model-fitting procedure to derive the stellar parameters). An insignificant average difference of 3 K is also found when comparing our results with the values obtained by Ribas et al. (2003), based on IR photometry.

#### 3.1.2 Surface gravities

For surface gravities, we have also found small differences to the other studies, (when compared with the individual errors or the order of 0.12 dex) – see Fig. 2. In particular, our $`\mathrm{log}g`$s are only $``$0.05 dex (on average) above the ones derived by Gonzalez et al. (2001), Laws et al. (2003), and references therein, and 0.08 dex above the results of Allende Prieto & Lambert (1999), and Edvardsson et al. (1993) (i.e., differences of the order of 1-2%). This difference is even smaller (below 0.04 dex, when compared with the results of the Gonzalez group) if we do not consider the most evolved stars. A slightly higher difference of about $`+`$0.10 dex is also found to the works of Fuhrmann et al. (1997), Fuhrmann (1998) and Fuhrmann et al. (1998); these authors had already found that their spectroscopic gravities were lower than trigonometric-based parallaxes by about 0.03 dex.

If we compare the spectroscopic surface gravities with the $`\mathrm{log}g`$ computed using the derived stellar masses (Fig. 3), the spectroscopic effective temperatures and the Hipparcos parallaxes (see above), the average difference we obtain is $``$0.03 dex (spectroscopic gravities being higher), i.e. about 1% – see Fig. 3666Such differences are equivalent to errors of 7% in the stellar mass, of 3% in the distance, or of 1-2% in the effective temperature.. This difference is slightly higher for lower metallicity stars (\[Fe/H\]$`<`$$``$0.2 dex), reaching 0.06 dex, and smaller for the remaining objects (around 0.02 dex). The same “gradient” is seen if we analyze planet hosts and comparison sample stars separately. Such a difference might in fact reflect non-LTE effects on Fe i lines (Thévenin & Idiart 1999), and will be explored in more detail in a future paper.

Interestingly, however, planet hosts have higher $`\mathrm{log}g_{spec}\mathrm{log}g_{hipp}`$ (by $``$0.04 dex), even though they are on average more metal-rich by $``$0.25 dex. This same result was also noticed by Laws et al. (2003), and is opposite to the effect expected if the excess metallicity observed for planet host stars were of external origin (Ford et al. 1999).

An explanation for this latter inconsistency might be related to the fact that planet-host stars are, on average, hotter than our comparison sample objects by about 200 K. Indeed, an analysis of our results shows a trend, of the order of 0.1 dex/1000 K, in the sense that higher Teff stars also have higher than average $`\mathrm{log}g_{spec}\mathrm{log}g_{hipp}`$. A comparison of our surface gravities with the ones of Laws et al. (2003) and Allende Prieto & Lambert (1999) does not reveal such a clear slope, while a comparison of the values of the $`\mathrm{log}g_{spec}`$ and $`\mathrm{log}g_{evol}`$ derived by Laws et al. (2003) also shows the very same trend with effective temperature. These results suggest that the problem might be related to the determination of the trigonometric $`\mathrm{log}g`$ values (or else, all the three works have the same bias). Sources of errors might include systematics in the bolometric corrections, perhaps related to the fact that the calibration of Flower (1996) used does not include a metallicity dependence (see e.g. Cayrel et al. 1997), or errors in the isochrones used to compute the stellar masses (see e.g. Lebreton et al. 1999)777Errors in the bolometric correction should not have a significant influence on the derived stellar masses. The trend could also reflect NLTE errors (although we caution that differential NLTE effects for stars with different temperature should not be very important for solar-type dwarfs (see e.g. Bensby et al. 2003)), erroneous atomic line parameters, or problems in the stellar atmosphere models for different effective temperatures.

Since the derived \[Fe/H\] values are not very sensitive to the obtained $`\mathrm{log}g`$ (see above), this result does not affect the derivation of accurate stellar metallicities.

#### 3.1.3 \[Fe/H\]

Finally, and most importantly, we have compared our spectroscopic metallicities with the ones listed in all the studies mentioned above (Fig. 4). The average differences found are always between $``$0.01 and $`+`$0.01 dex, being higher only for the study Edvardsson et al. (1993) (0.06 dex, our results being above). In general, this difference is also not a function of the metallicity of the stars, i.e., within the errors it represents a uniform shift. The only marginal trend appears when comparing our metallicities with the ones derived by Fuhrmann et al., in the sense that their estimates are above ours for the more metal-rich stars, and below for the metal-poor objects.

The results we have obtained are thus perfectly compatible with other precise published values.

## 4 Other planet-host stars

For a few planet-host stars (BD$-$10 3166, HD 41004A, HD 104985B, and GJ 876) we could not gather spectra and derive our own metallicities and stellar parameters. We have thus tried to find values of the metallicities for these stars in the literature. For HD 41004A, however, there were no published spectroscopic metallicity estimates available, and we have decided to obtain stellar metallicities using another technique.

As used by several authors (e.g. Mayor 1980; Pont 1997; Santos et al. 2002), the surface of the Cross-Correlation Function (CCF) yields precise metallicity estimates of a star. Santos et al. (2002) (see their Appendix) have used this method to derive a relation between \[Fe/H\], $`BV`$, and the surface of the CCF of the CORALIE spectrograph (hereafter $`W_{\mathrm{fit}}`$). This relation is now revised to take into account the slight change in the metallicity scale introduced here, as well as metallicity estimates for new stars. The result gives:

$`[Fe/H]`$ $`=`$ $`2.7713+4.6826\mathrm{log}W_{\mathrm{fit}}8.6714(BV)`$
$`+3.8258(BV)^2`$
a calibration valid for dwarfs with $`0.52<BV<1.09`$, $`1.26<W_{\mathrm{fit}}<3.14`$, and $`0.52<[Fe/H]<0.37`$. We note that the use of this relation to obtain values of metallicities for stars that are out of the domain of this calibration (by a small amount) should not be of much concern, since it is expected to be a linear function of Wfit. On the other hand, we believe it is not wise to extrapolate this relation for other spectral types, as the dependency in Teff is much stronger and unpredictable. This calibration has an rms of only 0.06 dex (N=92), similar to the typical errors of the spectroscopic estimates of \[Fe/H\]. We refer the reader to Santos et al. (2002) for more details regarding this technique.

HD 6434 was earlier reported by Laws et al. (2003) to occupy a strange position in the HR diagram. Curiously, when calibrating the relation expressed in Eqn. 4, HD 6434 was not included, as it was the only star falling significantly out of the trend in the residuals of the fit. Preliminary results of a recent adaptative optics survey did not show the presence of any close companion to this star (A. Eggenberger, private communication). We do not have any explanation for the observed discrepancy.

In Table 6 we list the stellar metallicities gathered for the stars referred above, together with their sources. For GJ 876 alone we could not find precise metallicity estimates, as this star is an M-dwarf.

We caution that only for BD$-$10 3166, whose parameters were taken from the works of the Gonzalez team, can we be sure that the \[Fe/H\] values are in the same scale as ours. The same is true for HD 41004A, whose \[Fe/H\] value was derived from Eqn. 4. For different reasons we have chosen not to include any of these in our further analysis: BD$-$10 3166 because it was searched for planets due to its high metal content and HD 41004A because its spectrum is a blend of a K and M dwarfs (Santos et al. 2002), and thus its derived metallicity must be taken as an approximate value.

## 5 Confirming the metal-rich nature of planet-host stars

Having gathered metallicities for almost all known exoplanet hosts, we will now review the implications of the available sample for the the study of the metallicities of planet-host stars. For an extensive discussion about the subject we point the reader to our previous Papers II and III. The main difference between the current results and the ones published in these papers are quantitative; the qualitative results are similar.

### 5.1 The global trend

In the upper panels of Fig. 6 we present a comparison between the metallicity distributions for our volume-limited comparison sample of stars (Table 5) and for the planet-host stars with available detailed spectroscopic metallicities. For this latter sample, we have excluded those stars that were searched for planets based on their high metallicity (we refer to Paper III for more details and references). We are left with 41 stars in our comparison sample, and with 93 planet-hosts.

A look at the two upper panels clearly shows that planet-hosts are considerably metal-rich compared to the comparison sample stars by, on average, 0.25 dex. According to a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, these two samples have a probability of only 1.6$``$10-9 of belonging to the same population. The results obtained with the new spectroscopic analysis strongly confirm all the most recent results on this subject (e.g. Santos et al. 2001; Gonzalez et al. 2001; Reid 2002; Santos et al. 2003a; Laws et al. 2003), that show that stars with planets are more metal-rich that average field dwarfs.

An analog of Fig. 5 (where we plot the stellar metallicity as a function of Teff) was used by several authors (e.g. Pinsonneault et al. 2001; Santos et al. 2001; Gonzalez et al. 2001; Santos et al. 2003a) to try to decide whether the excess metallicity observed in planet-host stars is of “primordial origin” (corresponding to the metallicity of the cloud that formed the star/planet system) or of external origin (reflecting the infall of iron-rich planetary material into the stellar convective envelope). Although here we will not discuss this in much detail (we refer to Paper III, Israelian et al. (2003), and (Gonzalez et al. 2003) for a comprehensive discussion), the plot of Fig. 5, showing that the excess metallicity found for planet hosts is real and “constant” for all the Teff regimes, seems to support the former scenario. We should mention, however, that recent results by Vauclair (2003) suggest that this conclusion might not be straighforward; other evidence exist, however, supporting the promordial origin of the metallicity excess observed – see Papers II and III.

As already noted e.g. in Papers II and III, a look at this figure also shows that the upper envelope of the planet-host metallicities is a slight decreasing function of the stellar effective temperature. Although not clear, this result may be related to the presence of NLTE effects on iron lines for stars at different effective temperatures (Thévenin & Idiart 1999), but differential NLTE effects on iron lines might be relatively small in this temperature interval (Bensby et al. 2003).

### 5.2 Planet frequency as a function of stellar metallicity

In Fig. 6 (lower-left panel) we compare the metallicity distribution of the 48 planet-host stars that were found amid the dwarfs in the CORALIE (volume-limited) planet search sample888These include the stars listed in footnote 7 of Paper III plus HD 10647, HD 65216, HD 70642, HD 73256, HD 111232, and HD 142415, HD 216770. (Udry et al. 2000) with the \[Fe/H\] distribution for the objects in the CORALIE sample for which we have gathered at least 5 radial-velocity measurements (solid line histogram). The metallicities for this large sample have been obtained using Eqn. 4, and are thus in the same scale as the values obtained with our detailed spectroscopic analysis. This sub-sample is built up of stars for which we should have found a giant planet, at least if it had a short period orbit.

This “comparison” distribution give us the opportunity to derive the frequency of planets as a function of stellar metallicity for the stars in the CORALIE sample. Such a result is presented in Fig. 6 (lower-right panel). The figures tells us that the probability of finding a planet is a strong function of the stellar metallicity. About 25-30% of the stars with \[Fe/H\] above 0.3 have a planet. On the other hand, for stars with solar metallicity this percentage is lower than 5%. These numbers thus confirm previous qualitative results on this matter (see Papers II and III, and articles by Reid (2002) and Laws et al. (2003); similar results were also recently presented by D. Fischer at the IAU219 symposium, regarding an analysis of the Lick planet survey sample). We note that in Paper III, the percentage values in Fig. 2 are wrong by a constant factor; however, the results are qualitatively the same – see also Paper II.

The exact percentages discussed above depend mainly on the sub-sample of stars in the CORALIE survey used to compute the frequencies. Current values can only be seen as lower limits, and the true numbers will only be known when the survey is closer to the end (although the order of magnitude is probably the one presented here). Only then will we also be able to provide plots regarding e.g. stars having planets with different orbital properties and masses (e.g. orbital period). But present day results suggest that there are no strong and clear correlations between stellar metallicity and the planetary parameters (see e.g. Paper III).

The main interest here resides in the qualitative, rather than in the quantitative result. The crucial conclusion is that more metal-rich stars seem to form planets more easily (and/or more planets?) than their lower-\[Fe/H\] counterparts. The dependence seems to be very steep, as illustrated in Fig. 6. The probability of forming a planet seems to be a strong function of the metallicity of the proto-planetary disk. This result, valid at least for the kind of planets that are now being discovered, has enormous implications for the theories of planetary formation and evolution (see Paper III for an extensive discussion on this subject), as well as on studies of the frequency of planets in the galaxy (e.g. Lineweaver 2001).

### 5.3 A flat metallicity tail?

In Fig. 6 (lower-right panel), for \[Fe/H\]$`<`$0.0 dex (Z$`<`$0.02), we have the impression that the corrected distributions are rather flat (see also Fig. 7). Although it is probably too early to make a definite conclusion, if confirmed this could imply that the probability of forming a planet is reasonably constant for metallicities up to about the solar value, and only then, there is some kind of “runaway” process that considerably enhances the efficiency of planetary formation.

In Fig. 7 we plot the percentage of known planets as a function of stellar Z (the mass fraction of heavy elements). The plot also reflects the flatness of the distribution for metallicities below solar (Z$`<`$0.02), and an increase for higher values. Curiously, for Z$`>`$0.02 the percentages seem to be linearly related to Z, with a slope of $``$16% for each $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Z=0.01.

One possibility to explain these trends would be to consider that these reflect the presence of two distinct populations of exoplanets (something already discussed in Paper III and Gonzalez et al. 2003), formed by different processes: one of them not dependent on the metallicity (e.g. disk instability – Boss 2002; Mayer et al. 2002), producing a constant minimum number of planets as a function of \[Fe/H\], together with another very metallicity-dependent (a process such as core accretion - Pollack et al. 1996). In this context, we have searched for possible differences in the properties of the planets orbiting stars in different metallicity regimes (eccentricity, period, masses). Nothing statistically significant is found (see Paper III and Laws et al. 2003). In particular, no clear differences in the mass distributions for the planetary companions seem to exist regarding stars with \[Fe/H\]$`<`$0.0 and \[Fe/H\]$`>`$0.0. If indeed we were seeing two different populations of planets, such differences could be expected, as disk instability processes should be able to form preferentially higher mass planets (opposite to the core-accretion) – (see e.g. Rice et al. 2003). We note, however, that a slight trend in the opposite sense is found (see Paper III), i.e., lower metallicity stars seem to harbor preferentially lower mass planets.

A recent work by Rice & Armitage (2003) has pointed out that giant planets might be formed in relatively metal-poor disks by the traditional core-accretion model (although at lower probabilities), in a timescale compatible with the currently accepted disk lifetimes. Indeed, core-accretion models have been usually criticized because they predict that the formation of a giant planet could take longer than the estimated lifetimes of T-Tauri disks (e.g. Haisch et al. 2001). Recent developments have, however, put new constraints on the disk lifetimes that may be considerably longer than previously predicted (Bary et al. 2003). Furthermore, according to Rice & Armitage (2003) the disk lifetimes might not be a problem at all. The key to this are turbulent fluctuations in the protoplanetary disk, inducing a “random walk” migration, that accelerates the formation of the giant planet (Rice & Armitage 2003). If true, this result might explain the existence of giant planets around mildly metal-poor stars, as observed. However, the work of Rice & Armitage does not tell us much about the observed trends, and in particular about the possible flatness observed in the corrected metallicity distribution for values below about solar. Instead, it implies that disk-instability models are probably not needed to explain the presence of giant planets around the most metal-poor stars in our sample.

Note that the lowest metallicity bin of the plots is based on only one planet-host, and is thus not statistically significant.

## 6 Concluding remarks

In this paper we have derived stellar metallicities from a detailed spectroscopic analysis of a sample of 98 stars known to be orbited by planetary mass companions, as well as for a volume-limited sample of stars not known to host any planets. The main results are:

* The obtained stellar parameters (Teff, $`\mathrm{log}g`$, \[Fe/H\], and stellar masses) are compatible, within the errors, with the values derived by other authors using similar or different techniques. In particular, the derived surface gravities are only on average $``$0.03 dex different to trigonometric estimates based on Hipparcos parallaxes.
* We confirm the previously known trends that stars with planets are more metal-rich than average field dwarfs. The average difference is of the order of 0.25 dex.
* We confirm previous results (e.g. Papers II and III) that have shown that the frequency of stars having planets is a strong rising function of the stellar metallicity. About 25-30% of dwarfs in the CORALIE planet search sample having \[Fe/H\]$`>`$0.3 harbor a planetary companion. This number falls to $``$3% for stars of solar metallicity. The Sun is in the tail of this distribution, that seems to be rather flat for \[Fe/H\]$`<`$0.0 (i.e. for mass fractions of heavy elements Z$`<`$0.02), but increasing (maybe linearly) as a function of Z for higher values. Possible implications of these results are discussed.

The main conclusions of this paper agree with previous results that have investigated the striking role that stellar metallicity seems to be playing in the formation of giant planets, or at least in the formation of the kind of systems “planet-hunters” are finding now. However, it is crucial that this kind of analysis is done on a continuous basis as new planets are added to the lists. In particular, the question of knowing whether the the Solar System is typical is particularly troubling, as the Sun falls in the tail of the \[Fe/H\] distributions of planet-host stars.

## Appendix A A calibration of Teff as a function of $`BV`$ and \[Fe/H\]

We have used the derived spectroscopic Teff and \[Fe/H\] as well as Hipparcos $`BV`$ colors (ESA 1997) to derive a new calibration of the effective temperature as a function of $`BV`$ and \[Fe/H\]. The result, also illustrated in Fig. 8, is:

$`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`=`$ $`84234736(BV)+1106(BV)^2`$
$`+411[Fe/H]`$
valid for stars with $`\mathrm{log}g>4.0`$ in the range of $`0.51<BV<1.33`$, $`4495<T_{\mathrm{eff}}<6339`$ K, and $`0.70<[Fe/H]<0.43`$. The rms of the fit is only of 43 K, illustrating the quality of the relation. We can use this calibration to derive reliable temperatures for our stars, whenever a detailed spectroscopic analysis is not possible, with the guarantee that the resulting values will be in the same Teff scale.

In Fig. 9 we compare the effective temperatures derived from Eqn. A with the ones obtained from a similar calibration presented by Alonso et al. (1996) for all the stars in our sample. A fit to the data gives:

$`T_{\mathrm{eff}}^{Alonso}`$ $`=`$ $`0.9994T_{\mathrm{eff}}^{Thiswork}139`$ (4)
Except for the presence of a constant offset (reflecting different temperatures scales), the fit is remarkably good, having a dispersion of only 21 K.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Nami Mowlavi for the important help in determining the stellar masses, David James for obtaining spectra for 3 of our targets, as well as to P. Bartholdi, S. Udry, F. Pont, D. Naef, and S. Jorge for fruitful discussions. We wish to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation (Swiss NSF) for the continuous support for this project. Support from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal) to N.C.S. in the form of a scholarship is gratefully acknowledged.


text:
# Central DM density cuspiness in LSB’s: a stellar kinematics approach.

## 1. Observations and results

We obtained long-slit spectroscopic data with the VLT FORS2 spectrograph ($`\sigma _{instrument}=45km/s`$) in the Hβ, \[OIII\]5007Å, MgII and Fe region for 11 LSBs with the aim of constructing dynamical mass models based on both the stellar and ionized gas kinematics to constrain their DM density radial profiles, in particular in their nuclear regions. This part of the work is still in progress. However, we should already stress the following two important observational results: 1) The ionized gas is subject to non-circular motion in the majority of our sample galaxies. 2) The stellar kinematics is generally very regular. The high degree of symmetry of the stellar velocity and velocity dispersion curves and the small scatter between the points allows to derive the stellar kinematical profiles with small error-bars and without applying any smoothing to the data. This is not always true for the gas kinematics. Such precise kinematical measurement are therefore very encouraging for the forthcoming dynamical mass models. In Fig.1a we plot the velocity and velocity dispersion radial profiles of ESO 189-07: Left and right panels represent the stellar and ionized gas kinematics respectively. The lower and upper panels represent the major and minor axis respectively. The curves have been folded around the kinematical center and the two symbols refer to the two side of the galaxy (with the exception of the gaseous minor axis which has not been folded). Deprojected velocities and radii in Kpc are also shown. The remarkable degree of symmetry of the stellar kinematics also allows to check the positioning of the slit and an accurate determination of the kinematical center. Conversely, the ionized gas kinematics is much less defined and such operations would be less reliable if based on it.

Following the scheme indicated by previous authors (de Blok et al 2001, Swaters et al. 2003) we derived the central mass density radial profile directly from the major axis ionized gas velocity curve with the only assumption of spherical mass distribution. We took the major axis velocities, deprojected, smoothed and derived the density $`\rho (r)`$. The resulting radial density profiles are plotted in Fig.1b. In the figure we show the value of $`r_{in}`$ (in parsec) defined as the innermost radius at which we can derive a reliable density value (i.e. the velocity measurement in not affected by seeing smearing or pixel size). The inner line is the density profile $`\rho r^1`$ passing through $`r_{in}`$. We also show as a more external line the density $`\rho r^\alpha `$ fit in the external regions adiacent to $`r_{in}`$ as comparison. From the figure it is possible to see that we find both galaxies showing a density radial profile less peaked or as peaked as $`\rho r^1`$ in the center. It is also evident that there are cases as ESO4460170 or ESO2340130 where the density decreases inward in the center. This is an artifact due to the presence of ionized-gas non-circular motions in the core region, motions that we can not see from the major axis alone but we know are present since we have minor axis kinematical information. But is the gas the best tracer of the potential in the core region ?

## References

de Blok, W. J., McGaugh, S., Bosma, A., & Rubin, V. C. 2001, ApJ, 552, L26
Swaters, R. A., Madore, B. F., van den Bosch, Frank C., & Balcells, M. 2003, ApJ, 583, 732