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# New effective interactions in RMF theory with non-linear terms and density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling 1footnote 11footnote 1Supported partly by the Major State Basic Research Development Program under Contract Number G2000077407 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 19847002 and 19935030.

## I Introduction

In the past decade, the development of unstable nuclear beams Tanihata (1995); Mueller (2001) has extended our knowledge of nuclear physics from the stable nuclei and those nearby to the unstable nuclei far from the stability line. Intense research in this area shows that there exist lots of unexpected phenomena: strange nuclear structure like neutron halo (skin) and proton halo (skin) Tanihata et al. (1985, 1988); Warner et al. (1995); Chulkov et al. (1996); Meng and Ring (1996, 1998); Meng et al. (1998a, 2002a), soft excitation modes Kobayashi et al. (1989); Kobayashi (1992), the enhancement of fusion cross sections induced by the extended matter distributions Alm et al. (1995); Yoshida et al. (1995) etc.. With further developments, many other new features will be found. It also becomes very important to find a reliable theory and improve the reliability for predicting the properties of even more exotic nuclei out to the proton and neutron drip lines.

Relativistic mean field (RMF) Walecka (1974); Serot and Walecka (1986) theory has received wide attention because of its successful description of many nuclear phenomena during the past years. With a very limited number of parameters, RMF theory is able to give a satisfactory description for the ground state properties of spherical Reinhard (1989) and deformed nuclei Ring (1996) at and away from the stability line. The recent reviews on RMF theory can be seen in Serot and Walecka (1986); Reinhard (1989); Ring (1996). In the simplest version of RMF theory, the mesons do not interact among themselves, which results in a too large incompressibility for nuclear matter. Boguta and Bodmer Boguta and Bodmer (1977) therefore proposed to include a nonlinear self-coupling of the $`\sigma `$-field, a concept which has been used in almost all the recent applications. The meson self-coupling introduces a new density dependence into the Lagrangian and consequently, the nuclear matter incompressibility can be lowered to reasonable values. As an implement, in 1994 the nonlinear self-coupling of the $`\omega `$-field is introduced by Sugahara and Toki Sugahara and Toki (1994). In this paper we will introduce the nonlinear self-coupling for the $`\rho `$-field. Recently RMF theory with density-dependent (DD) meson-nucleon couplings Lenske and Fuchs (1995); Fuchs et al. (1995); Typel and Wolter (1999); Nik$`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{s}}`$i$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{c}}`$ et al. (2002) was developed by various authors.

Till now the two versions (the nonlinear self-coupling of meson fields and the DD meson-nucleon couplings) of RMF theory have been successfully applied to describe the nuclear properties, including binding energies, nuclear matter distribution, single-particle spectra, magnetic moments, collective excited states, dipole sum rule, shell effects in finite nuclei, pseudospin symmetry, rotating nuclei, superdeformed bands, etc. In particular, the halo phenomena can be understood self-consistently in this microscopical model after the proper treatment of the continuum effect Meng and Ring (1996); Meng (1998). Combining with Glauber model, the charge-changing cross sections for C, N, O and F isotopes are calculated and good agreement with the data has been achievedMeng et al. (1998a, 2002a). The long existing problem for the origin of pseudo-spin symmetry in nuclei is given naturally as a relativistic symmetry Ginocchio (1997); Meng et al. (1998b, 1999). Good agreement with experimental data has also been found recently for magnetic rotation Madokoro et al. (2000), collective excitations such as giant resonances Ma et al. (2002) and for twin bands in rotating super-deformed nuclei König and Ring (1993). It is also noted that cranked RMF theory provides an excellent description of superdeformed rotational bands in the A=140-150 region Afanasjev et al. (1996a), in the Sr region Afanasjev et al. (1996b) and in the Hg region König and Ring (1996).

Among the existing parametrizations for RMF theory, the most frequently used are NL1 Reinhard et al. (1986), PL-40 Reinhard (1988), NL-SH Sharma et al. (1993), TM1 Sugahara and Toki (1994) and NL3 Lalazissis and Ring (1997) with nonlinear self-coupling of mesons, and TW99 Typel and Wolter (1999) and DD-ME1 Nik$`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{s}}`$i$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{c}}`$ et al. (2002) with DD meson-nucleon coupling. The effective interactions NL1, NL3, TM1,NL-SH and TW99, DD-ME1 give good results in most of the cases.

Along the beta stability line NL1 gives excellent results for binding energies and charge radii, in addition it provides an excellent description of the superdeformed bands Afanasjev et al. (1996a, b). However, in going away from the stability line the results are less satisfactory. This can be partly attributed to the large asymmetry energy $`J`$ 44 MeV predicted by this force. In addition, the calculated neutron skin thickness shows systematic deviations from the experimental values for the set NL1.

In the effective interaction NL-SH this problem was treated in a better way and the improved isovector properties have been obtained with an asymmetry energy of $`J`$ 36 MeV. Moreover, NL-SH seems to describe the deformation properties in a better way than NL1. However, the NL-SH parametrization produces a slight over-binding along the line of beta-stability and in addition it fails to reproduce successfully the superdeformed minima in Hg-isotopes in constrained calculations for the energy landscape. A remarkable disagreement between the two parametrizations are the quite different values predicted for the nuclear matter incompressibility. NL1 predicts a small value ($`K`$ = 212 MeV) while with NL-SH a very large value ($`K`$ = 355 MeV) is obtained. Both forces fail to reproduce the experimental values for the isoscalar giant monopole resonances for Pb and Zr nuclei. The NL1 parametrization underestimates the empirical data by about 2 MeV while NL-SH overestimates it by about the similar values. As an improvement, the effective interactions, NL3 and TM1, provide reasonable compression modulus ($`K_{\text{NL3}}=268.0\text{MeV},K_{\text{TM1}}=281.16\text{MeV}`$) and asymmetry energy ($`J_{\text{NL3}}=36.56\text{MeV},J_{\text{TM1}}=36.89\text{MeV}`$) but fairly small baryonic saturation density ($`\rho _{\text{NL3}}=0.145,\rho _{\text{TM1}}=0.145`$). In order to improve the description of these quantities, we developed two nonlinear self-coupling parametrizations called as PK1 with nonlinear $`\sigma `$\- and $`\omega `$-meson nonlinear self-coupling, and PK1R with nonlinear $`\sigma `$-, $`\omega `$\- and $`\rho `$-meson nonlinear self-coupling.

RMF theory with DD meson-nucleon couplings Lenske and Fuchs (1995); Fuchs et al. (1995) is an alternative approach to the description of nuclear matter and finite nuclei as compared to the model with the nonlinear self-interactions of mesons. There exist two representative parametrizations, TW99 Typel and Wolter (1999) and DD-ME1 Nik$`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{s}}`$i$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{c}}`$ et al. (2002) for the density-dependence of meson-nucleon coupling. They are able to describe quantitatively properties of nuclear matter and finite nuclei with similar quality as the parametrizations of the nonlinear self-coupling. As a comparison with the nonlinear self-coupling, we also developed a parametrization named as PKDD with DD meson-nucleon couplings.

In all previous nonlinear self-coupling parametrizations as mentioned above, the center-of-mass correction is made by a phenomenological way. In the present parametrizations, the PK-series, the contribution from the center-of-mass motion is treated in a microscopic way Bender et al. (2000). The systematic behavior of the center-of-mass correction on nuclear masses is shown in Fig. 1. From this graph, we can see that it is essential to choose a proper method to treat the center-of-mass motion for both light and heavy nuclei. Obviously, the microscopic method provides more reasonable and reliable results for the center-of-mass motion (for the details, see Sec. III).

In section II, we will present a short summary of RMF theory with the nonlinear self-coupling of meson fields and with DD meson-nucleon coupling and the relationship between them. The details of our parametrizations are given in section III. In section IV and V, we study the bulk properties of nuclear matter and spherical nuclei with the newly obtained effective interactions. The detailed microscopic structure of doubly magic nuclei is also investigated in the end of section V. Finally conclusions are given in section VI.

## II RMF Theory with Nonlinear Self-coupling and Density-dependent Meson-nucleon Coupling

The basic ansatz of the RMF theory Serot and Walecka (1986) is a Lagrangian density whereby nucleons are described as Dirac particles which interact via the exchange of various mesons and the photon. The mesons considered are the scalar sigma ($`\sigma `$), vector omega ($`\omega `$) and iso-vector vector rho ($`\stackrel{}{\rho }`$). The latter provides the necessary isospin asymmetry. The Lagrangian then consists of the free baryon and meson parts and the interaction part with minimal coupling, together with the nucleon mass $`M`$ and $`m_\sigma `$ ($`g_\sigma `$), $`m_\omega `$ ($`g_\omega `$) and $`m_\rho `$ ($`g_\rho `$) the masses (coupling constants) of the respective mesons:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill =& \overline{\psi }\left[i\gamma ^\mu _\mu Mg_\sigma \sigma g_\omega \gamma ^\mu \omega _\mu g_\rho \gamma ^\mu \stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{\rho }_\mu e\gamma ^\mu \frac{1\tau _3}{2}A_\mu \right]\psi \hfill \\ & +\frac{1}{2}^\mu \sigma _\mu \sigma \frac{1}{2}m_\sigma ^2\sigma ^2\frac{1}{3}g_2\sigma ^3\frac{1}{4}g_3\sigma ^4\frac{1}{4}\omega ^{\mu \nu }\omega _{\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}m_\omega ^2\omega ^\mu \omega _\mu +\frac{1}{4}c_3\left(\omega ^\mu \omega _\mu \right)^2\hfill \\ & \frac{1}{4}\stackrel{}{\rho }^{\mu \nu }\stackrel{}{\rho }_{\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}m_\rho ^2\stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu \stackrel{}{\rho }_\mu +\frac{1}{4}d_3\left(\stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu \stackrel{}{\rho }_\mu \right)^2\frac{1}{4}A^{\mu \nu }A_{\mu \nu },\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
where the tensor quantities are

$`\omega ^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`^\mu \omega ^\nu ^\nu \omega ^\mu `$ (2a)
$`\stackrel{}{\rho }^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`^\mu \stackrel{}{\rho }^\nu ^\nu \stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu +g_\rho \stackrel{}{\rho }^\mu \times \stackrel{}{\rho }^\nu `$ (2b)
$`A^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`^\mu A^\nu ^\nu A^\mu .`$ (2c)
In this paper we use arrow for isospin vectors and bold type for space vectors, respectively. There are 11 parameters in the Lagrangian density (1), i.e., 4 masses ($`M,m_\sigma ,m_\omega ,m_\rho `$), 3 nucleon-meson coupling constants ($`g_\sigma ,g_\omega ,g_\rho `$), and 4 self-coupling constants ($`g_2,g_3,c_3,d_3`$). Generally, the nucleon mass $`M`$ and $`\rho `$-meson mass $`m_\rho `$ ( also sometimes the mass of $`\omega `$-meson in some parameterizations ) are fixed to their free values and the nonlinear coupling coefficients $`c_3`$ and $`d_3`$ are taken as zeros. Then the remaining 6$``$7 parameters are determined by the fitting to the experimental observables.

Different from the nonlinear self-coupling version, the meson-nucleon interactions are described as density-dependent in the DD meson-nucleon coupling RMF theory Typel and Wolter (1999); Nik$`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{s}}`$i$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{c}}`$ et al. (2002). The meson-nucleon coupling constants $`g_\sigma ,g_\omega ,g_\rho `$ become functions of the baryonic density $`\rho _v`$, $`\rho _v=\sqrt{j_\mu j^\mu }`$ where $`j^\mu =\overline{\psi }\gamma ^\mu \psi `$ and the nonlinear self-coupling constants $`g_2,g_3,c_3,d_3`$ are set to zero in the Lagrangian density (1).

For $`\sigma `$ and $`\omega `$-meson, the baryonic density-dependence of the coupling constants is adopted as

$$g_i(\rho _v)=g_i(\rho _{\text{sat.}})f_i(x)\text{ for }i=\sigma ,\omega $$
(3)
where

$$f_i(x)=a_i\frac{1+b_i(x+d_i)^2}{1+c_i(x+d_i)^2}$$
(4)
is a function of $`x=\rho _v/\rho _{\text{sat.}}`$, and $`\rho _{\text{sat.}}`$ denotes the baryonic saturation density of nuclear matter.

For the $`\rho `$ meson, an exponential dependence is utilized as

$$g_\rho =g_\rho (\rho _{\text{sat.}})\mathrm{exp}[a_\rho (x1)]$$
(5)
For the functions $`f_i(x)`$, one has five constraint conditions $`f_i(1)=1,f_\sigma ^{\prime \prime }(1)=f_\omega ^{\prime \prime }(1)`$ and $`f_i^{\prime \prime }(0)=0`$. Then 8 parameters related to density dependence for $`\sigma `$-N and $`\omega `$-N couplings are reduced to 3 free parameters. As mentioned above, the masses of nucleon and $`\rho `$-meson are fixed in general and the nonlinear self-coupling constants $`g_2,g_3,c_3`$ and $`d_3`$ are set to zero. With 4 free parameters for density dependence, there totally are 8$``$9 parameters left free in the Lagrangian density (1) for the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling RMF theory.

The single-nucleon Dirac equation is derived by the variation of the Lagrangian density (1) with respect to $`\overline{\psi }`$,

$$\left[i\gamma ^\mu _\mu (M+\mathrm{\Sigma }_S)\gamma ^\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu \right]\psi =0$$
(6)
with the nucleon self-energies $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu `$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_S`$ defined by the following relations:

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_S`$ $`=`$ $`g_\sigma \sigma `$ (7a)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`g_\omega \omega _\mu +g_\rho \stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{\rho }_\mu +e{\displaystyle \frac{1\tau _3}{2}}A_\mu +\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu ^R`$ (7b)
where the rearrangement term $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu ^R`$ comes from the density-dependence of the meson-nucleon coupling constants,

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^\mu =\frac{j^\mu }{\rho _v}\left(\frac{g_\omega }{\rho _v}\overline{\psi }\gamma ^\nu \psi \omega _\nu +\frac{g_\rho }{\rho _v}\overline{\psi }\gamma ^\nu \stackrel{}{\tau }\psi \stackrel{}{\rho }_\nu +\frac{g_\sigma }{\rho _v}\overline{\psi }\psi \sigma \right)$$
(8)
which is reduced to zero in RMF theory with the nonlinear self-coupling.

The Klein-Gordon equations for mesons are obtained by the variation of the Lagrangian density (1) with respect to the corresponding meson field operators

$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\sigma \right]\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`g_\sigma \rho _sg_2\sigma ^2g_3\sigma ^3`$ (9a)
$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\omega \right]\omega `$ $`=`$ $`g_\omega \rho _bc_3\omega ^3`$ (9b)
$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\rho \right]\rho `$ $`=`$ $`g_\rho \left[\rho _b^{(n)}\rho _b^{(p)}\right]d_3\rho ^3`$ (9c)
For the RMF theory with the nonlinear self-coupling, the self-coupling of mesons can be expressed into the density-dependence of meson-nucleon coupling by redefining the coupling constants,

$`g_\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`g_\sigma +\left[g_2\sigma ^2+g_3\sigma ^3\right]/\rho _s`$ (10a)
$`g_\omega `$ $`=`$ $`g_\omega c_3\omega ^3/\rho _b`$ (10b)
$`g_\rho `$ $`=`$ $`g_\rho d_3\rho ^3/\left[\rho _b^n\rho _b^p\right]`$ (10c)
The behaviors of the coupling constants with respect to the baryonic density are shown in Fig. 2.

In order to compare with the experimental mass of a nucleus, the calculated nuclear mass

$$M=M_{\text{rmf}}+E_{\text{c.m.}}+E_{\text{pair}}$$
(11)
is obtained from the mean field contribution by adding corrections due to the center-of-mass motion and pairing effects for open shell nuclei. The mean field contribution $`M_{\text{rmf}}`$ is derived from a spatial integration of the ”00” component of the energy-momentum tensor. In the nonlinear (N.L.) self-coupling case, it reads

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill M_{\text{rmf}}^{\text{N.L.}}=& \underset{a=1}{\overset{A}{}}\epsilon _a\overline{\varphi }_a\gamma ^0\varphi _a+_Vd^3r\left\{\frac{1}{2}g_\sigma \sigma \rho _s\frac{1}{6}g_2\sigma ^3\frac{1}{4}g_3\sigma ^4\right\}\hfill \\ & +_Vd^3r\left\{\frac{1}{2}g_\omega \omega \rho _b+\frac{1}{4}c_3\omega ^4\frac{1}{2}g_\rho \rho \rho _b^{(3)}+\frac{1}{4}d_3\rho ^4\frac{1}{2}eA_0\rho _b^p\right\}\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
where $`\varphi _a`$ denotes the single-particle spinor in the nucleus. In the density-dependent (D.D.) case, the high-order($`3`$) terms of mesons in (12) are replaced by a ”rearrangement” term,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill M_{\text{rmf}}^{\text{D.D.}}=& \underset{a=1}{\overset{A}{}}\epsilon _a\overline{\varphi }_a\gamma ^0\varphi _a+_Vd^3r\left\{\frac{1}{2}g_\sigma \sigma \rho _s\frac{1}{2}g_\omega \omega \rho _b\frac{1}{2}g_\rho \rho \rho _b^{(3)}\frac{1}{2}eA_0\rho _b^p\mathrm{\Sigma }_R\rho _b\right\}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
where

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_R=\frac{1}{\rho _{\text{sat.}}}\left[g_\omega (\rho _{\text{sat.}})f_\omega ^{}(x)\rho _0\omega a_\rho g_\rho (\rho _{\text{sat.}})e^{a_\rho (x1)}\rho _0^{(3)}\rho _3+g_\sigma (\rho _{\text{sat.}})f_\sigma ^{}(x)\rho _s\sigma \right]$$
(14)
is the time-component of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^\mu `$ (see (8)).

The correction from the center-of-mass motion is calculated from the projection-after-variation in first-order approximation Bender et al. (2000):

$$E_{\text{c.m.}}^{\text{mic.}}=\frac{1}{2MA}𝐏_{\text{c.m.}}^2$$
(15)
where the center-of-mass momentum $`𝐏_{\text{c.m.}}=_i^A𝐩_i`$ and the expectation value of its square $`\widehat{𝐏}_{\text{c.m.}}^2`$ reads

$$𝐏_{\text{c.m.}}^2=\underset{a}{}v_a^2p_{aa}^2\underset{a,b}{}v_a^2v_b^2𝐩_{ab}𝐩_{ab}^{}+\underset{a,b}{}v_au_av_bu_b𝐩_{ab}𝐩_{\overline{a}\overline{b}}$$
(16)
with occupation probabilities $`v_a^2`$ and $`u_a^2=1v_a^2`$ accounting for pairing effects, where $`a,b`$ denote the BCS states (see below).

The contribution from the pairing correlations $`E_{\text{pair}}`$ are treated in the BCS approximation

$$E_{\text{pair}}=\mathrm{\Delta }\underset{a}{}v_au_a$$
(17)
with the pairing gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ taken from the calculation of relativistic continuum Hartree-Bogoliubov (RCHB) theory with zero-range pairing interaction Meng (1998).

For the nuclear radii, the effects from the center-of-mass motion are also taken into account as follows. Because of its fairly small effects, a rather rough correction is adopted for protons

$$\delta R_p^2=\frac{2}{Z}\underset{a}{\overset{A}{}}\varphi _a\left|𝐑_{\text{c.m.}}\underset{i}{\overset{Z}{}}𝐫_i\right|\varphi _a+\underset{a}{\overset{A}{}}\varphi _a\left|𝐑_{\text{c.m.}}^2\right|\varphi _a$$
(18)
where the center-of-mass coordinate $`𝐑_{\text{c.m.}}=1/A_i^A𝐫_i`$. Then we get

$$\delta R_p^2=\frac{2}{A}R_p^2+\frac{1}{A}R_M^2$$
(19)
where $`R_p`$ and $`R_M`$ denote the proton and matter radii. Here we only consider the direct-term contributions in (18) to keep with the spirit of RMF theory. For the neutron radii, we use the same procedure as for protons. The charge radius is obtained from the proton radius combining with the proton and neutron size and the center-of-mass correction (19) is included in $`R_p^2`$ Sugahara and Toki (1994)

$$R_{\text{ch}}^2=R_p^2+(0.862\text{fm})^2(0.336\text{fm})^2N/Z$$
(20)
## III Parametrization of Effective Lagrangian and Numerical Details

The aim of the present investigation is to provide new improved effective interactions for the Lagrangian density (1) with the nonlinear self-coupling and density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling in RMF theory. A multi-parameter fitting was performed with the Levenberg-Marquardt method Press et al. (1992). Two nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions have been obtained, PK1 with $`\sigma `$\- and $`\omega `$-meson self-coupling, and PK1R with $`\sigma `$-, $`\omega `$\- and $`\rho `$-meson self-coupling (see Table 2). A density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interaction has also been obtained with PKDD (see Table 2 and 2). In our parametrization, the masses of neutron and proton are fixed to their free values: $`M_n=939.5731\text{MeV},M_p=938.2796\text{MeV}`$, and the mass of $`\rho `$-meson is fixed to its experimental value $`763.0\text{MeV}`$. The mass of $`\omega `$-meson is slightly adjusted in obtaining the effective interactions PK1 and PK1R while fixed to $`783.0\text{MeV}`$ for the effective interaction PKDD.

The masses of the spherical nuclei <sup>16</sup>O, <sup>40</sup>Ca, <sup>48</sup>Ca, <sup>56</sup>Ni, <sup>68</sup>Ni, <sup>90</sup>Zr, <sup>116</sup>Sn, <sup>132</sup>Sn, <sup>194</sup>Pb and <sup>208</sup>Pb are fitted to give the effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD. The experimental inputs for finite nuclei used in the fitting procedure are shown in Table 3. These inputs have been used to minimize the least square error:

$$\chi ^2(𝒂)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\left[\frac{y_i^{exp}y(x_i;𝒂)}{\sigma _i}\right]^2$$
(21)
where $`𝒂`$ is the ensemble of parameters to be fitted, $`y_i^{exp}`$ and $`\sigma _i`$ are the experimental observable and corresponding weight.

In the fitting procedure, only the masses of the spherical nuclei mentioned above and the compression modulus $`K`$, the baryonic density at saturation $`\rho _{\text{sat.}}`$ and the asymmetry energy $`J`$ of nuclear matter are included. Here, we should mention that the radii are excluded because we found that the values of the compression modulus and baryonic saturation density are essential to give a good description of the masses and radii. For a fixed value of compression modulus, a large baryonic saturation density will give a small charge radius. By this way, we can choose the appropriate value for these two quantities to give a proper description for both mass and charge radius of the chosen nuclei. To give a fairly precise description on the masses, the center-of-mass correction is essential for both light and heavy nuclei. As it can be seen in Fig. 1, the deviation between the microscopic and phenomenological results is considerably large not only for the light nuclei but also for the heavy ones. We also find that there exist very remarkable shell effects in the microscopic results which are impossible to obtain with the phenomenological methods. Hence, we choose the microscopic center-of-mass correction Bender et al. (2000) to deal with the center-of-mass motion.

The numerical procedure in obtaining the parameter set PK1 is as follows.

1. First, we start from an initial effective interaction and fix the mass of $`\omega `$-meson, let the other parameters to be adjusted by the Levenberg-Marquardt method Press et al. (1992).
2. Basing on the binding energies and charge radii of the selected nuclei obtained in the first step, we do some adjustment on the expectation of compression modulus and baryonic saturation density to improve the description on the spherical nuclei. Also, the weights of the observables would be slightly adjusted to improve the parametrization.
3. Choose another initial effective interaction and take the same procedure as in step 2. Then, taking the average of these two obtained interactions as the new initial effective interaction, we do the minimizing procedure under the new weights which come from the previous results.
4. Introduce the adjustment on the mass of $`\omega `$-meson to obtain the effective interaction PK1.

Because the contribution to the nuclear mass from the nonlinear $`\rho `$-meson term is fairly small, we fix the nonlinear self-coupling constant $`d_3`$ to 350.0 and adjust other parameters to obtain the effective interaction PK1R.

To obtain the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interaction PKDD, we leave the density-dependent parameters $`a_\sigma ,d_\sigma `$ and $`d_\omega `$ to be adjusted and the five others to be determined by the constrain conditions on the functions $`f_i(x),i=\sigma ,\omega `$. The mass of $`\omega `$-meson is fixed to 783.0MeV.

Thus obtained parameter sets are shown in Table 2 and 2 in comparison with other effective interactions TM1 Sugahara and Toki (1994), NL3 Lalazissis and Ring (1997), TW99 Typel and Wolter (1999) and DD-ME1 Nik$`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{s}}`$i$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{c}}`$ et al. (2002). In Table 3 and 4 we respectively list the masses and charge radii of finite nuclei which have been used in obtaining these seven effective interactions. Compared with other effective interactions, our newly obtained ones reproduce well the experimental masses Audi and Wapstra (1995). For these new effective interactions, only 4$``$5 nuclear massed deviate by more than $`1\text{MeV}`$ (see Table 3). The new effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD also well describe the charge radii for these nuclei, especially for Pb isotopes. One can get a clear idea about the improvement of the new parameter sets on the description of bulk properties for finite nuclei from the root of relative square (rrs) deviation $`\delta `$. In the last row of Table 3 (4), the rrs deviation of the calculated total binding energy (charge radius) from the data is given. For the total binding energy, the rrs deviations from the new parameter sets are much smaller than those from old ones. For the charge radius, the rrs deviations from the new interactions are comparable with those from NL3 and DD-ME1, but a bit smaller than those from TM1 and TW99.

Table 5 lists the nuclear matter quantities calculated with the newly obtained effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD, in comparison with other interactions. All the new effective interactions give proper value of the compression modulus $`K`$. Compared with the nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions TM1 Sugahara and Toki (1994) and NL3 Lalazissis and Ring (1997), the new ones give more reasonable baryonic saturation density.

## IV Description of Nuclear Matter

We first discuss properties of nuclear matter obtained with PK1, PK1R and PKDD. In Table 5 we compare the bulk properties of nuclear matter with the results calculated using TM1, NL3, TW99 and DD-ME1. In Fig. 3, the behavior of the binding energy per particle $`E/A`$ as a function of the baryonic density $`\rho `$ is shown. We can see that all density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interactions give softer results than the nonlinear self-coupling ones. The behaviors predicted by PK1, PK1R are much softer than by NL3 and a little harder than by TM1. The results from PKDD are slightly softer than that from DD-ME1 and much harder than that from TW99 at high density. All these behaviors can be explained in the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling framework.

As we have mentioned in expressions (10), the meson-nucleon coupling constants in the nonlinear self-coupling of mesons can be expressed as some kind of density-dependence. Fig. 2 shows this density-dependence for the nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions and the results for the density-dependent version are also given for comparison. We can see that almost all the density-dependent coupling constants decrease with increasing density except for $`g_\sigma `$ of NL3, which has a strong $`\sigma `$ self-coupling($`g_3=28.8851`$). On the other hand, the coupling constants $`g_\sigma `$ and $`g_\omega `$ of TM1, which has relatively weak $`\sigma `$ self-coupling ($`g_3=0.6183`$) and strong $`\omega `$ self-coupling ($`c_3=71.3075`$), are smaller than the others, which means that TM1 provides relatively weaker scalar and vector potentials. This is the reason why TM1 presents the softer behavior than other nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions. In Fig. 3, TW99 predicts the softest results because of its relatively small $`g_\omega `$ as compared with DD-ME1, PKDD and NL3, large $`g_\sigma `$ as compared with PK1, PK1R and TM1 in Fig. 2. As we know, the repulsive potential would be dominant at high density. In Fig. 3, NL3 gives the hardest results because of its constant and large $`g_\omega `$ even though its $`\sigma `$-N coupling constant $`g_\sigma `$ increase with the density. For the new parameter sets PK1, PK1R and PKDD, which present the mid soft behaviors in Fig.3, the coupling constants also lie between the largest and the smallest in Fig. 2. For the parameter set PK1R, the density-dependence of the $`g_\rho `$ is fairly weak as compared with that of the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interactions. It can be explained by a very weak $`\rho `$-field, which generate neutron-proton symmetry field. The behavior of $`g_\rho `$ with respect to the neutron-proton ratio is shown in Fig.4. As one can expect, the behavior is symmetric with respect to $`\mathrm{ln}(N/Z)`$ and the density-dependence becomes more remarkable with the increase of the baryonic density and the neutron-proton asymmetry.

## V Description of Spherical Nuclei

### V.1 Binding Energy and Two-neutron Separation Energy

We calculate the even-even nuclei of Pb and Sn isotopic chains with the newly obtained parameter sets. In Table 6, we compare the masses calculated with PK1, PK1R, and PKDD with the other effective interactions and with experimental values Audi and Wapstra (1995). Shown in Fig. 5 are the deviations of the masses of Pb isotopes from the data Audi and Wapstra (1995). The results for Sn isotopes are shown in Fig. 6. In Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 we also give the results obtained with TM1, NL3, TW99 and DD-ME1 for comparison. All results are calculated using the RCHB theory Meng (1998) where the pairing correlations are treated self-consistently by a zero-range $`\delta `$-force. The box radius is $`20\text{fm}`$ and the pairing strength of the zero-range $`\delta `$-force is $`650\text{MeV}`$. The microscopic center-of-mass corrections (15) and (16) are used in all the calculations.

As we can see in Table 6, Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, the newly obtained effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD provide good descriptions on the masses of both two isotopic chains. In Fig. 5, all the effective interactions overestimate the binding energy in the beginning of the isotopic chain. However, from <sup>190</sup>Pb to <sup>210</sup>Pb, the newly obtained interactions give better descriptions than all the others. For the Sn isotopes, the density-dependent effective interaction DD-ME1 reproduces the data very well since 4 Sn isotopes were used in its parametrization Nik$`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{s}}`$i$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{c}}`$ et al. (2002). From <sup>116</sup>Sn to <sup>132</sup>Sn, the new effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD slightly underestimate the binding energy (less than 1 MeV). Compared with the others, the new ones still provide better description. There exist however systematic deviations out of the neutron magic numbers, e.g., in <sup>134</sup>Sn and <sup>214</sup>Pb. For the older effective interactions, the deviations in <sup>214</sup>Pb are smaller but fairly large in <sup>208</sup>Pb.

From the binding energies we can extract the systematics in two-neutron separation energies $`S_{2n}=E_B(N,Z)E_B(N2,Z)`$. Figs. 7-9 exhibit two-neutron separation energies predicted by the nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions PK1, PK1R and the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling one PKDD. In comparison, the results obtained with TM1, NL3, TW99 and DD-ME1 and the experimental values extracted from Ref. Audi and Wapstra (1995) are also given. In Fig. 10, the systematic behaviors of two-neutron separation energies with respect to neutron number, predicted by the new effective interactions PK1 and PKDD, are shown. From these figures one can see that the newly obtained interactions give a fairly good description on the systematic behaviors in two-neutron separation energies. In Fig. 8, we can see that the deviations of theoretical results from experiment are rather large for Ni isotopes with $`N`$ = 30-42 and for Sn isotopes with $`N`$ = 52-58. Here it should be mentioned that all the theoretical results are extracted from the calculation of the spherical RCHB calculations Meng (1998) where deformation effects are not included while they can play a significant role in these nuclei. Furthermore, in Fig. 10 we can see some unusual phenomena along the neutron drip line which will be discussed in the next section.

From the plots for two-neutron separation energies (Figs. 7-10), the position of the neutron-drip line for each element seems to be determined delicately. For the new effective interaction PK1, it predicts the neutron-drip number $`N`$ = 50 for Ca, 70 for Ni, 96 for Zr and 126 for Sn. In general, the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interaction PKDD predicts smaller neutron number of the neutron-drip nucleus except for Ni. This may be due to its fairly small effective mass (see Table 5), which reduces the strong attractive potential in the core and makes the coupling between the core and valence orbital weaker. As for the density-dependent effective interactions, TW99 predicts smaller neutron numbers of neutron-drip nucleus for Ca, Ni and Zr while DD-ME1 gives smaller ones for Ca and Sn. Another reason for the deviations among the effective interactions is that the density-dependent effective interactions give relatively large $`\rho `$-N coupling at lower densities (see Fig. 2).

### V.2 Charge Radius and Isotope Shift in Pb isotopes

Although the radii are not included in our fitting procedure, the newly obtained effective interactions reproduce the charge radii of stable nuclei fairly well (see Table 4). The comparison between experimental data Fricke et al. (1995); Dutta et al. (1991) and theoretical results for the charge radii (20) of Pb isotopes are shown in Table 7. We can see that the new effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD reproduce better the experimental values, as compared to overestimations by TM1, NL3 and DD-ME1 and underestimations by TW99. We also calculate the isotope-shift of charge radii for Pb isotopes with these effective interactions. The results are shown in Fig. 11. The kink around <sup>208</sup>Pb is well reproduced by all the interactions. The inset of Fig. 11 shows that the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interactions represent more reasonable agreement with the experimental values than the nonlinear self-coupling ones. The new parameter sets PK1 and PK1R give slightly better results than TM1 and NL3.

Besides the charge radii, we have also used the new effective interactions to investigate the systematic behavior of the neutron skin (the difference between neutron and proton radii) along the isotope chains: O, Ca, Ni, Zr, Sn and Pb. Fig. 12 shows the radii difference $`r_nr_p`$ calculated with the new sets PK1 and PKDD. As we have seen in Fig. 10, there are several weakly-bound nuclei near the neutron drip line of Ca, Ni, Zr and Sn, whose two-neutron separation energies stay around zero over a range of numbers. This is in general a kind of signal for the existence of a neutron skin or halo. However from Fig.12 one can see that the difference $`r_nr_p`$ tends to be a constant near the drip line for the Ni and Sn isotopes thus indicating a neutron skin rather than a neutron halo. On the other hand, the results support the existence of a neutron halo in Ca isotopes Meng et al. (2002b) and a giant neutron halo in Zr isotopes Meng and Ring (1998) because their neutron distributions tend to be more dispersive and $`r_nr_p`$ keeps increasing rapidly.

### V.3 Single-Particle Energy and Spin-orbit Splitting

The RMF theory is a microscopic theory with a limited number of parameters. It can give the detailed microscopic structure of nuclei. Figs. 13 to 16 show the single-particle energies of the doubly magic nuclei calculated with the newly obtained parameter sets PK1, PK1R and PKDD. In Figs. 13 and 14 the results obtained with TM1, NL3, TW99 and DD-ME1 are also given for comparison. As we know, it is not straightforward to compare with the experimental results away from Fermi energies because of dynamical coupling not included in RMF. Here, the experimental values are extracted from one-nucleon separation energies Audi and Wapstra (1995) and resonance energies nud (http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/nndc/nudat/). In these plots, we find systematic agreements with the experimental results. The single-particle energies near the magic numbers agree well with the experimental values. For levels far away from the Fermi energies systematic deviations appear. The states below the Fermi energy seems to be too strongly bound, whereas the states above the Fermi energy show underbinding as compared to the experimental values. In fact, the experimental resonances are not simply single particle states. The coupling with core excitations through the residual interaction, which is obviously not included in the mean field model, leads in general to a shift of the resonance energies in the direction to the Fermi energy. In these plots of single-particle energies, the ordering of levels is well described by the new effective interactions except for somewhat different ordering of neutron levels in <sup>132</sup>Sn and <sup>208</sup>Pb, a common feature of all the effective interactions.

From the single-particle energies mentioned above, we can extract the spin-orbit splittings. Table 8 shows the spin-orbit splitting calculated with the newly obtained effective interactions in the doubly magic nuclei. The experimental values and the results calculated with other interactions are also given for comparison in Table 8. The new effective interactions reproduce well the spin-orbit splittings. For the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interaction PKDD, the spin-orbit splitting turns out to be larger than the experimental values (except for the neutron 2p in <sup>48</sup>Ca and the neutron 3p in <sup>208</sup>Pb). The nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions PK1 and PK1R predict smaller splitting and improve the agreement with the experiment. The behavior can be explained by the relatively large self-energies predicted in our parametrization, which determine the strength of spin-orbit splitting. As shown in Table 5, the nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions predict a larger effective mass than the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling ones: the smaller the effective mass, the larger the spin-orbit splitting. This is also the reason why TM1 gives the smallest splitting and TW99 the largest.

## VI Summary

In this work, we have searched for new effective interactions to describe both stable and unstable nuclei in the relativistic mean field (RMF) theory with nonlinear self-coupling or density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling. In order to give a more precise description on the mass of nuclei, the microscopic center-of-mass correction is introduced, which makes it possible to give a unified description with one effective interaction for the nuclei from the light area to heavy area. As an elicitation from the density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling RMF theory, we introduce the nonlinear self-coupling for $`\rho `$-field. We obtain three new effective interactions: PK1 with nonlinear self-coupling of $`\sigma `$-field and $`\omega `$-field, PK1R with nonlinear self-coupling of $`\sigma `$-field, $`\omega `$-field and $`\rho `$-field and PKDD with density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling.

With the newly obtained parameter sets, we investigate the behavior of the binding energy per particle and the meson-nucleon coupling constants with respect to the baryonic density in nuclear matter. The new sets PK1, PK1R and PKDD provide an appropriate description. Compared with TM1 and NL3, the new ones give a more reasonable baryonic saturation density.

We then calculated the usual reference nuclei and Pb, Sn isotope chains and compared the masses with the available data. The nonlinear self-coupling effective interactions PK1, PK1R and density-dependent meson-nucleon coupling effective interaction PKDD reproduce well the data. As compared with other existing effective interactions, the new ones also provide a good description of the charge radii of the usual stable nuclei and Pb isotopes.

We have also studied the systematics of two-neutron separation energies and neutron skin in isotopic chains. The two-neutron separation energies provided by the new interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD are in good agreement with the experiment. We have also investigated the behavior of two-neutron separation energies and neutron skin near the neutron-drip line and given a reasonable interpretation of the formation of neutron halos.

The single-particle energies and spin-orbit splittings in doubly magic nuclei predicted by the new parameter sets are compared with the experimental values and with other effective interactions. The new effective interactions PK1, PK1R and PKDD give a reasonable description of spin-orbit splittings and single-particle energies as compared with the experimental results. The systematic behavior of the spin-orbit splitting is interpreted in comparison with other effective interactions.

Combining with the above information, we come to a conclusion that the new parameter sets PK1, PK1R and PKDD give better description for finite nuclei than other effective interactions.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is partly supported by the Major State Basic Research Development Program Under Contract Number G2000077407 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10025522, 10047001, 10221003 and 19935030.


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# A unique small–scale gravitational arc in Abell 12011

## 1 Introduction

Galaxy clusters are important laboratories in which to study physical processes that are generally inaccessible in other environments. For example the radial density profile and the projected ellipticity of clusters on the sky may offer valuable clues into the nature of dark matter (e.g., Spergel & Steinhardt 2001; Sand et al. 2002; 2003; Miralda-Escudé 2002; Arabadjis et al. 2002). Complications often arise in cluster–based studies of dark matter due to the presence of baryons (e.g., Allen 1998; Smith et al. 2001; Lewis et al. 2003). However, from a broader perspective such complications provide us with important clues into the physics of gas cooling, and inter–play between baryons and dark matter, both of which are central to attempts to understand the physics of galaxy formation (e.g., Cole et al. 2000).

Progress towards these goals requires detailed study of the distribution of mass in clusters. Strong gravitational lensing offers a direct and precise probe of cluster mass distributions (e.g., Kneib et al. 1996; Smith 2002; Smith et al. 2003). Complementary constraints can also be obtained from X–ray observations (e.g., Allen et al. 2002), weak lensing (e.g., Kneib et al. 2003) and the three–dimensional distribution of cluster galaxies (e.g., Czoske et al. 2002). A combination of these techniques is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of mass in clusters. Armed with the results from such multi–wavelength studies, robust constraints on the dark matter particle and gas cooling may ultimately flow.

We have conducted a snapshot survey of 55 X–ray luminous galaxy clusters with the WFPC2 camera on–board *HST* (PID’s 8301 & 8719; PI Edge). A key goal of this survey is to uncover new cluster lenses with which to explore the questions outlined above. The snapshot observing strategy is well–suited to identifying clusters containing rare and powerful constraints such as radial arcs (e.g., RXJ 1133 – Sand et al. 2003).

In this letter we present an *HST* observation of A 1201 ($`z=0.169`$; $`(\alpha ,\delta )=11^h13^m01.1^s+13^{}25^{}40^{\prime \prime }`$ \[J2000\]; $`L_X=(3.7\pm 0.8)\times 10^{44}`$ erg/s \[0.1–2.4 keV\] – Ebeling et al. 1998). These data reveal a tangential arc $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ from the optical centroid of the BCG. Spectroscopic observations at the Keck Observatory confirm that the arc is a gravitationally–lensed galaxy at $`z=0.451`$ (§2). The best–fit gravitational lens model faithfully reproduces the arc morphology, however the total matter distribution of this model appears to be much more elongated than the optical isophotes of the BCG (§3). We also discuss the uniqueness of this small–scale gravitational arc by comparing it with other known cluster lenses, and outline how follow–up optical and X–ray observations will help to fully exploit this powerful new constraint on the matter distribution in cluster cores (§4). We assume $`H_0=65\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$. In this cosmology, $`1^{\prime \prime }3.1\mathrm{kpc}`$ at $`z=0.169`$ and $`1^{\prime \prime }6.2\mathrm{kpc}`$ at $`z=0.451`$.

## 2 Observational Data and Analysis

### 2.1 *Hubble Space Telescope* Imaging

A 1201 was observed through the F606W filter with *HST* using the WFPC2 camera on April 7, 2001. We combined the $`2\times 400`$–sec exposures into a single mosaic using standard iraf tasks, and present in Fig. 1 the region of the WF3 chip ($`5^{\prime \prime }\times 5^{\prime \prime }`$) that contains the central galaxy. This frame reveals a tangentially distorted arc at a radius of $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ from the optical centroid of the BCG. We interpret this arc as arising from the gravitational distortion of a background galaxy by the foreground cluster potential.

### 2.2 Keck–ESI Spectroscopy

The arc was observed with the Echelle Imaging Spectrograph (ESI – Sheinis et al. 2002) on the Keck–II 10–m telescope on the night of April 12, 2002, in $`0.6^{\prime \prime }`$ seeing. These observations and the reduction of the data are described in detail by Sand et al. (2003). In summary, a $`1.25^{\prime \prime }\times 20^{\prime \prime }`$ slit was centered on the BCG, oriented to intersect the portions of the arc labeled A1b and A1c in Fig. 1. The total integration time was 7.2–ksec. The final reduced spectrum covers the wavelength range $`5300\lambda _{\mathrm{obs}}9800`$Å, and contains \[oii (3726,3729)\], H$`\beta `$, \[oiii (4959,5007)\] and H$`\alpha `$ at $`\lambda _{\mathrm{obs}}=(5406.7,5410.8)`$, 7053.5, (7195.3,7264.7), 9523.1Å respectively, in addition to numerous other emission and absorption features. From these spectral features, we derive a redshift of $`z=0.451`$ for the arc, thus confirming the gravitational lensing interpretation.

### 2.3 Multiple–image Interpretation

We label the different segments of the arc (A1) in Fig. 1, together with the faint feature that lies within $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ of the lower end of the arc (A2). The relatively high surface brightness of A1b/c and the dip in surface brightness between this pair implies that they are a pair of fold images arising from a portion of the galaxy that straddles the $`z=0.451`$ caustic in the source–plane. The de–magnified counter–image of this pair would then most likely be A1f. The position angle break between A1d and A1e probably arises from a combination of the source–plane morphology of the lensed galaxy and its orientation relative to the caustic curve. The emission from these two regions has insufficient signal–to–noise to support definitive statements regarding the multiple–image interpretation of A1d/e and indeed A1a. However given their similarities in surface–brightness, it is plausible that A1a/d/e are three images of the same portion of the galaxy.

## 3 Gravitational Lens Modeling

### 3.1 A simple “relaxed” model

We construct a model of the projected mass distribution in A 1201 using the lenstool software developed by Kneib (1993; see also Kneib et al. 1996). The model consists of a single lens plane at $`z=0.169`$, comprising two mass components (cluster–scale dark matter halo and BCG) that we parametrize as truncated pseudo–isothermal elliptical mass distributions (PIEMD – Kassiola & Kovner 1993). The projected cluster mass distribution is therefore described by fourteen parameters: $`x_\mathrm{c},y_\mathrm{c},ϵ,\theta ,r_{\mathrm{core}},r_{\mathrm{cut}},\sigma _0`$ for each of the two mass components. We match the central coordinates $`(x_\mathrm{c},y_\mathrm{c})`$ for each component to the optical centroid of the BCG, as measured from the *HST* frame. We also match the ellipticity ($`ϵ=0.23\pm 0.03`$) and position angle ($`\theta =(21\pm 1)^{}`$) of these two mass components to that of the observed light distribution measured at $`R=2^{\prime \prime }`$. Typical values of $`r_{\mathrm{core}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ for cluster–scale mass components are 50–$`100\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$ and $`>500\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$ respectively (Smith 2002) – i.e. well beyond the physical scales probed by the arc in this cluster. We therefore fix these two parameters at $`75\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$ and $`1000\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$ respectively – we find that none of the results described below are sensitive to these choices. This leaves just four free parameters: the central velocity dispersion $`(\sigma _0)`$ of the cluster and the core radius, cut–off radius and central velocity dispersion $`(r_{\mathrm{core}},r_{\mathrm{cut}},\sigma _0)`$ of the BCG.

We first constrain these parameters using the image pair A1b/c and the location of the $`z=0.451`$ critical line that bisects these images. This model is an acceptable fit to these constraints ($`\chi ^2/\mathrm{dof}1`$ – see Smith 2002 for a detailed explanation of how goodness–of–fit is estimated for such lens models), however it predicts that the counter–image of A1b/c lies $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$ closer to the center of the lens than the observed location of the candidate counter images (i.e. A1e and A1f). When A1f is added to the model constraints, the fit deteriorates significantly ($`\chi ^2/\mathrm{dof}100`$). The most straight–forward way to improve the quality of this fit is to make the mass distribution more elliptical. We therefore include the ellipticity of the cluster–scale dark matter halo as a free parameter in the fit. This yields an acceptable fit for values of $`ϵ_{\mathrm{DM}}0.7`$. This lower limit on the cluster ellipticity is insensitive to whether A1e or A1f are adopted as the third counter image of A1b/c. We also experiment with holding the ellipticity of the dark matter fixed at $`ϵ_{\mathrm{DM}}=0.23`$, and fitting for the ellipticity of the BCG, obtaining $`ϵ_{\mathrm{BCG}}0.7`$. Fixing $`ϵ_{\mathrm{DM}}=ϵ_{\mathrm{BCG}}`$ and fitting for the ellipticity of the total matter distribution, we obtain $`ϵ_{\mathrm{DM}}=ϵ_{\mathrm{BCG}}0.5`$. In summary, the underlying cluster total mass distribution appears to be significantly more elliptical than the spatial distribution of stars in the BCG.

### 3.2 Is A 1201 Bi-modal?

We also explore the possibility that A 1201 is bi–modal, and examine the *HST* data for evidence of a second cluster–scale mass clump. An $`L^{}`$ cluster galaxy lies on the WF2 chip in the same direction as the position angle of the cluster mass distribution, suggesting that a second mass clump may be associated with this galaxy. However, there are no other bright cluster members in this vicinity, indicating that this scenario is quite unlikely (Smith et al. 2002). Weak shear maps may also be used to infer the likely morphology of cluster mass distributions (e.g., Kneib et al. 1996), however the short exposure time of these *HST* data preclude such an analysis for A 1201 (we estimate that just $`100`$ suitable faint galaxies are available across the entire WFPC2 field of view). Despite the weak evidence for its existence, we quantify how massive a second cluster–scale dark matter halo would have to be in order to explain the observed multiple–images. We fix the ellipticity of the central dark matter halo and BCG at $`ϵ=0.23`$ and add a circular dark matter halo at the position of the bright cluster galaxy noted above. The best–fit velocity dispersion of this dark matter halo is $`\sigma _o=1000\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$ (with $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{core}}`$ held fixed at $`1\mathrm{M}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$ and $`50\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$ respectively). In this bimodal model, the velocity dispersion of the central dark matter halo is $`750\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}`$, suggesting that if A 1201 is bimodal, then the dominant mass component would not be coincident with the BCG.

In summary, although a bi–modal mass distribution is allowed by the current shallow *HST* data, we suggest that an elliptical mass distribution is the more likely explanation of the strong lensing signal in this cluster. We also note that our forthcoming *Chandra* observations (PID: 04800980, PI: Edge) will be the first pointed X–ray observations of this cluster. The X–ray pass–band therefore currently offers no clues on the cluster mass distribution.

### 3.3 The Fiducial Model

We adopt the model described in §3.1 in which $`ϵ_{\mathrm{BCG}}=0.23`$ and $`ϵ_{\mathrm{DM}}0.7`$ as the fiducial lens model and list the relevant parameters in Table 1. We ray–trace each portion of the arc through the fiducial model back to the source–plane to double check our interpretation of the multiple–images. We summarize this exercise with the white ellipse in Fig. 1 which shows the position, size and orientation of the galaxy in the source–plane. A1 therefore appears to be an elongated galaxy, possibly an edge–on star–forming disk galaxy. The observed morphology of the arc may therefore be explained by a combination of the elongated source–plane morphology and the orientation of this galaxy relative to the caustic which we over–plot as the white astroid in Fig. 1. Integral field unit spectroscopic observations of this arc (e.g., Swinbank et al. 2003) would help to confirm our interpretation of the arc as arising from an edge–on galaxy.

We also use the fiducial model to measure the projected mass enclosed within the $`z=0.451`$ tangential critical curve, obtaining $`M(R2^{\prime \prime })=(5.9_{0.7}^{+0.9})\times 10^{11}\mathrm{M}_{}`$, where the uncertainty is estimated from a family of lens models that satisfy $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^21`$. We identify these models by exploring the five–dimensional parameter space defined by the free parameters in the fiducial best–fit model. The observed magnitude of the BCG in the same aperture is $`V_{606}(R2^{\prime \prime })=17.5\pm 0.1`$. Correcting to the observed $`V`$–band and applying both $`k`$–correction and galactic extinction (Sand et al. 2003) we obtain $`M_V(R2^{\prime \prime })=22.2\pm 0.2`$. The total mass–to–light ratio of A 1201 on the scales probed by the tangential arc projected along the line of sight is therefore $`M_{\mathrm{tot}}/L_V=9.4_{2.1}^{+2.4}(\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{L})_{}`$. This number is larger than values typical of stellar populations of early–type galaxies (e.g., Gerhard et al. 2001). Indeed, the joint lensing and dynamical analysis of this cluster by Sand et al. (2003) yields a stellar mass–to–light ratio of $`M_{}/L_V=3.8\pm 0.3(\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{L})_{}`$. We therefore conclude that $`60\%`$ of the mass within the cylinder of radius $`2^{\prime \prime }`$, i.e. $`15\%`$ of the effective radius, is in the form of dark matter (i.e. the ratio of stellar to total mass to light ratios).

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

### 4.1 Is A 1201 Unique Among Cluster Lenses?

A 1201 is drawn from a sample of $`55`$ X–ray luminous clusters observed with *HST* in the Edge et al. (PIDs: 8301 & 8719) snapshot survey of BCGs. This snapshot survey doubles the number of clusters that have been observed to date with either the WFPC2 or ACS cameras. Among these $`100`$ clusters, A 1201 is the only system with a tangential arc on scales as small as $`R=2^{\prime \prime }`$. This rarity underlines the importance and efficiency of snapshot surveys with *HST* to discover such small–scale probes of the mass distribution in clusters.

We also investigate the uniqueness of the tangential arc in A 1201 among multiple–image systems in spectroscopically confirmed cluster lenses. The deflection angle of a gravitational lens depends on the angular diameter distance ratio $`D_{\mathrm{LS}}/D_{\mathrm{OS}}`$ where $`D_{\mathrm{LS}}`$ is the distance from the lens to the source and $`D_{\mathrm{OS}}`$ is the distance from the observer to the source. We plot the distribution of distance ratios for known multiple–image systems in Fig. 2, based on an extensive review of the *HST* archive and the published literature (see Sand et al. 2004, in prep. for more details). The cluster sample upon which this histogram is based is heterogeneous. We therefore also plot (as the dashed histogram) the distribution of distance ratios for the multiple–image systems identified thus far in a well–defined sample of X–ray luminous clusters at $`z=0.21\pm 0.04`$ by Smith (2002; see also Smith et al. 2001, 2002; Kneib et al. 2003, in prep.; Smith et al. 2003, in prep.). A 1201 lies at the lower envelope of both multiple–image samples, with a value of $`D_{\mathrm{LS}}/D_{\mathrm{OS}}=0.597`$. From a lens geometry perspective, A 1201 is therefore unusual but not unique among the multiple–image systems discovered to date. Other low $`D_{\mathrm{LS}}/D_{\mathrm{OS}}`$ systems include famous lensing clusters, for example the giant arc ($`z=0.724`$; Soucail et al. 1988) in A 370 ($`z=0.370`$). However, the higher redshift of this, and other clusters with low distance ratios renders the observed deflection angle ($`10`$$`20^{\prime \prime }`$) and the physical scales probed ($`60`$–120 kpc) much larger than that relevant to A 1201 ($`R=6`$kpc). A 1201 is therefore unique in the small physical scales probed by its tangential arc.

### 4.2 Summary and Outlook

*HST* snapshot imaging of A 1201 ($`z=0.169`$) with the WFPC2 camera reveals a tangential arc 2–arcsec from the center of this cluster. Spectroscopy obtained with ESI on the Keck–II telescope confirms the gravitational nature of the arc, and places the source galaxy at $`z=0.451`$. We construct a gravitational lens model that is able to reproduce the observed arc morphology. The key feature of this model is that the total matter distribution is significantly more elongated ($`ϵ_{\mathrm{total}}0.5`$) than the light distribution of the BCG on $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ scales ($`ϵ_{\mathrm{BCG}}=0.23\pm 0.03`$). With the current data we are unable to determine whether the matter distribution really is more elongated than the stellar distribution, or if there is a significant amount of mass whose center of mass does not coincide with the BCG. This could indicate that the cluster is dynamically less mature than the optical data suggest.

The proximity of the arc to the center of this cluster is unique among cluster lenses, and provides an important constraint on the mass of the cluster on very small physical scales. We measure the projected mass within the tangential arc to be $`M(R2^{\prime \prime })=(5.9_{0.7}^{+0.9})\times 10^{11}\mathrm{M}_{}`$, and the $`V`$–band mass–to–light ratio to be $`M/L(R2^{\prime \prime })=9.4_{2.1}^{+2.4}(\mathrm{M}/\mathrm{L})_{}`$, the angular scale of $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ corresponding to a physical scale of 6 kpc. This constraint, in conjunction with complementary high–resolution space–based data from *Chandra* and multi–color follow–up with *HST*/ACS will lead to substantial progress in understanding the distribution of mass in this cluster. Extending the unique small–scale (6 kpc) mass constraint out to larger scales ($`50`$–500 kpc) also promises an important role for A 1201 in the quest to understand the physical processes at play in galaxy cluster cores.

## Acknowledgments

GPS thanks Jean–Paul Kneib for sharing his lenstool ray–tracing code and Chuck Keeton for discussions about lens statistics. We also thank Richard Ellis for assistance with the Keck observations. We are grateful for financial support from the Royal Society (ACE, SWA) and NASA (DJS, TT) through grant HST–AR–09527. TT acknowledges support from NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HF-01167.01.


text:
# Spin orientation of supermassive black holes in active galaxies

## 1 Introduction

Mass and spin of the central black holes in galaxies as well as geometry and kinematics of their immediate stellar and gaseous surroundings are of fundamental interest for understanding the origin of the enormous energies emitted in the nuclear regions of active galaxies (e.g. Blandford & Begelman blandford99 (1999), Murray & Cheng murray97 (1997)). Furthermore, the central black hole masses and their evolution might be connected to the general properties of their host galaxies. The black hole mass has been estimated in some active galaxies by reverberation mapping (e.g. Wandel et al. wandel99 (1999)). A basic assumption of this method is that the broad emission line gas is gravitationally dominated by the central black hole. Here a major uncertainty is introduced by the geometry and orientation of the line-emitting gas. An independent mass determination of the central black hole can be obtained by the gravitational redshift effect in the optical emission lines of active galaxies. However, in this respect only the detection of a gravitationally redshifted Fe K$`\alpha `$ X-ray line has been reported in a few active galaxies (Tanaka et al. tanaka95 (1995), Fabian et al. fabian00 (2000)).

## 2 Observations and data reduction

We selected the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 110 as our primary target to determine the central black hole mass independently both by reverberation mapping and by gravitational redshift effects. From earlier long term campaigns we knew of the extreme continuum and line intensity variations in this galaxy (Bischoff & Kollatschny bischoff99 (1999), Peterson et al. peterson98 (1998)). We carried out our optical variability campaign with the 9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory. We took 26 spectra of Mrk 110 between 1999 November 13 and 2000 May 14. All observations were made under identical conditions with exactly the same instrumentation at the HET. The spectra cover a wavelength range from 4200Å to 6900Å with a resolving power of 650. The data were reduced in a homogeneous way with IRAF reduction packages. In most cases we reached a S/N $`>`$ 100 per pixel in the continuum. Great care was taken of a very accurate internal calibration of the spectra with respect to wavelength and flux (Kollatschny et al.kollatschny01 (2001)).

## 3 Results and discussion

### 3.1 Mean and rms line profiles

We determined mean and rms emission line profiles of the most intense lines H$`\alpha `$, H$`\beta `$, HeI$`\lambda `$5876, and HeII$`\lambda `$4686 from our variability campaign. The rms profiles are a measure of the variable component of the line profile. The profiles shown in Fig. 1 are plotted in velocity space and normalized to the same maximum intensity.

The fraction of the variable component in these lines amounts to 9, 12, 14, and 39% , respectively. The line widths (FWHM) of the rms profiles are listed in Table 1.

### 3.2 Virial mass of the central black hole

We calculated the characteristic distances of the line emitting regions by cross-correlating the light curves of the emission lines with the optical continuum light curve. The broader emission lines originate systematically closer to the galaxy center in Mrk 110 (see Table 1) (Kollatschny et al. kollatschny01 (2001), Kollatschny kollatschny03 (2003)). The fraction of the variable line component is correlated with the distance of the line emitting region from the black hole. The distances of the line emitting regions we determined from the cross-correlation function (CCF) analysis correspond to the widths of the rms profiles (Table 1). The non-variable components of the emission lines originate at larger distances from the black hole. We determined the central black hole mass assuming Keplerian orbits of the line emitting clouds:

$$M_{\mathrm{orbital}}=fv^2G^1R.$$

where v is the characteristic emission-line velocity (rms line width), $`G`$ is the gravitational constant, and $`R=\tau `$c is the distance of the line emitting region ($`\tau `$ = calculated cross-correlation lag of line emitting region). The derived black hole mass in Mrk 110 is

$$M_{\mathrm{orbital}}=1.8\pm 0.4\times 10^7M_{}.$$

The dimensionless factor $`f`$ depends amongst other things on the geometry and (unknown) orientation of the BLR. We could show that the velocities in the broad emission line region are not randomly oriented as for instance in a turbulent flow but that the lines are formed in an accretion disk (Kollatschny et al. kollatschny02 (2002), Kollatschny kollatschny03 (2003)). The line widths of the rms spectral lines are interpreted as the line-of-sight Doppler widths. We observe only the projected velocity $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ of the rotating accretion disk. Thus, the derived mass is a lower limit. The systematic errors in the estimation of black hole masses by reverberation mapping have been discussed by Krolik (krolik01 (2001)). He pointed at a systematic underestimate of the central AGN mass caused by the possible inclination of the line emitting region.

### 3.3 Emission line shifts

We determined from the spectra in Fig. 1 the shift of the rms line centers (uppermost 20%). It is a known effect that rms line profiles sometimes show narrow forbidden line residuals that are caused by variable seeing and small shifts in wavelength calibration (e.g. Kaspi et al. kaspi00 (2000)). The degree of this contamination is strongest in the HeI$`\lambda `$5876 line which is the weakest one. The redshift ($`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$) of the rms profiles with respect to the narrow emission lines increases as a function of line width and ionization potential as seen in Fig. 1. The correlation of rms line width with observed central line shift is shown in Fig. 2.

High-ionization broad emission lines originate closer to the central supermassive black hole than the low-ionization ones (e.g. Peterson & Wandel peterson99 (1999), Kollatschny et al. kollatschny01 (2001)). The redshifts derived from different integrated emission lines in AGN often do not agree with each other. High-ionization broad emission lines are sometimes blueshifted with respect to the low-ionization broad emission lines and narrow emission lines (Gaskell gaskell82 (1982), Sulentic et al. sulentic00 (2000)). Therefore, the shift of the integrated broad line profiles cannot be explained by gravitationally redshift effects. But is has been demonstrated recently that the observed blueshift in the highly ionized lines is mimicked by absorption in the red line wings (Richards et al. richards02 (2002)). This effect is more pronounced in the higher ionized lines. Additionally, one has to consider that the integrated emission lines originate at distances of light weeks to light years from the black hole. A verification of a gravitational redshift in these lines is beyond the detection limit.

### 3.4 Central black hole mass derived from gravitational redshift

The variable broad line components originate far more closely to the central black hole than the constant line components. A gravitational redshift effect in this variable component might thus be present. We measured the differential shifts $`\mathrm{\Delta }v=\mathrm{\Delta }zc`$ of the strongest rms emission profiles with respect to their mean line profiles (Fig. 1, Table 1). The observed shifts of the rms profiles are identified as gravitational redshifts. The mean profiles of the strongest broad emission lines are not shifted with respect to the forbidden narrow lines on the other hand. Therefore, the differential shifts of the rms profiles with respect to the narrow lines are identical to their shifts with respect of the mean profiles.

We calculated the central black hole mass $`M_{\mathrm{grav}}`$ in Mrk 110 using the formula (e.g. Zheng & Sulentic zheng90 (1990))

$$M_{\mathrm{grav}}=c^2G^1R\mathrm{\Delta }z.$$

The distances $`R`$ ($`R=c\tau `$) of the individual line emitting regions are known from the cross-correlation analysis (Table 1). We determined a black hole mass $`M_{\mathrm{grav}}`$ of $`12\pm 4`$ to $`17\pm 4\times 10^7M_{}`$ with a mean value of

$$M_{\mathrm{grav}}=14\pm 3\times 10^7M_{}.$$

from the line shifts. The rms line profile shifts are shown in Fig. 3 as a function of distance to the center.

The internal shifts of all four emission lines (H$`\alpha `$, H$`\beta `$, HeI$`\lambda `$5876, and HeII$`\lambda `$4686) are different. They depend on the distance of the line emitting region from the center. It is intriguing that the black hole masses we derived from the four different line shifts are identical within the error limits. This verifies our interpretation of the observed differential line shifts as gravitaional redshifts.

The dotted and dashed lines represent theoretical models. They show the correlation between distance (i.e. cross-correlation lag $`\tau `$) and gravitational redshift $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ for different central black hole masses $`M_{\mathrm{grav}}`$ of 5.0, 10.0, 13.5, 17.0, and $`22.0\times 10^7M_{}`$, respectively.

Other evidence for the detection of a gravitational redshift has been shown before in the spectra of the Seyfert galaxy NGC4593 (Kollatschny et al. kollatschny97 (1997)). In this galaxy the Balmer lines originate at distances of 2 to 4 light days only. On the other hand, the quality of the spectra in the NGC4593 variability campaign was not as good as in Mrk110. The derived black hole mass $`M_{\mathrm{grav}}=2.3\times 10^7M_{}`$ in NGC4593 was by a factor of 1.6 higher in comparison to the mass $`M_{\mathrm{orbital}}`$ derived from the line widths. An additional hint for a gravitational redshift can be seen in the HST spectra of the NGC5548 variability campaign. The line center of the rms CIV$`\lambda `$1550 profile is redshifted with respect to the mean profile by about 10Å (see Fig. 4 in Peterson peterson01 (2001)).

### 3.5 Inclination angle of central accretion disk

The determination of black hole masses in AGNs through their gravitational redshift effect has clear advantages. The derived central black hole mass $`M_{\mathrm{grav}}`$ is not affected by the orientation of the central accretion disk in contrast to the mass $`M_{\mathrm{orbital}}`$ derived from the emission line widths. It has been mentioned before that only an accretion disk model of the BLR in Mrk 110 can reproduce the observed line profile variations (Kollatschny et al. kollatschny01 (2001), Kollatschny kollatschny03 (2003)). The mutual comparison of both mass estimates gives us information on the orientation angle $`i`$ of the accretion disk: $`M_{\mathrm{orbital}}/M_{\mathrm{grav}}=\mathrm{sin}^2i`$. For the narrow line Seyfert galaxy Mrk 110 we derive a nearly pole-on line-of-sight of the central accretion disk. The inclination angle $`i`$ amounts to $`21\pm 5\mathrm{deg}`$. A disk inclination angle of $`30\pm 20\mathrm{deg}`$ has been previously estimated from line profile variations (Kollatschny kollatschny03 (2003)). This confirms independently the nearly pole-on view of the accretion disk in Mrk 110.

The variable HeII line component originates at a mean distance of 3.9 light-days ($`\stackrel{}{=}9.8\times 10^{15}`$ cm) only. This distance corresponds to 230 Schwarzschild radii $`r_\mathrm{s}`$ ($`r_\mathrm{s}=2GM_{\mathrm{grav}}/c^2`$) for a central black hole mass of $`14\pm 3\times 10^7M_{}`$. It is very plausible that the rotation axis of the inner accretion disk is oriented parallel to the spin axis of the central black hole. Altogether, the black hole mass $`M_{\mathrm{grav}}`$ derived from the gravitational redshift is not only more reliable: a comparison with the black hole mass $`M_{\mathrm{orbital}}`$ deduced from the line widths opens up the possibility to determine the orientation of the central black holes in radio-quiet AGN. A good test of the method proposed here would be to check the inclination of optical broad emission line regions with that of radio/optical jets in radio-loud objects.

###### Acknowledgements.

WK thanks the UT Astronomy Department for warm hospitality during his visit. He thanks K. Bischoff and M. Zetzl for valuable comments. Part of this work has been supported by the *Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG* grant KO 857/24 and DAAD.


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# Pion Form Factor Phase, 𝜋𝜋 Elasticity and New 𝑒⁺𝑒⁻ Data

and

## Abstract

New precise data on the low energy $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation into hadrons from Novosibirsk are used to obtain bounds on the elasticity parameter and the difference between the phase of the pion form factor and that of the $`\pi \pi `$ scattering.

Pion form factor and its relation to $`\pi \pi `$ scattering have been extensively studied for many years (see  and references therein). Although the form factor phase naturally appears in any model of the pion form factor , it is well known that only the absolute value of the form factor can be usually measured while information on the phase can be gained from sophisticated interference experiments. However, as shown long ago, there is an interesting possibility to obtain bounds on the elasticity parameter of the P-wave $`\pi \pi `$ scattering, $`\eta _1`$, and the difference between the phase of the pion form factor $`\psi `$ and that of the $`\pi \pi `$ scattering $`\delta _1`$ in a model-independent way under very general assumptions . Namely, the following inequality has been obtained there111A factor $`|F|^2`$ was unfortunately omitted on l.h.s. of formula (5a) in Ref. . All other relations in Ref.  are correct.:

$$(\frac{1\eta _1}{2})^2+\eta _1\mathrm{sin}^2(\psi \delta _1)\frac{1\eta _1^2}{4}r,0\eta _11$$
(1)
or, equivalently,

$$|a(\eta _1,\psi \delta _1)|^2\frac{1\eta _1^2}{4}r$$
(2)
with $`a(\eta ,\alpha )(\eta \mathrm{exp}2i\alpha 1)/2i`$. Here $`r`$ is the following ratio:

$$r=\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}}^{\mathrm{I}=1}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}}}1=\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{non}2\pi }^{\mathrm{I}=1}+\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}}}1=\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{non}2\pi }^{\mathrm{I}=1}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}}},$$
(3)
where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}}^{I=1}`$ is the total cross section of $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation into hadrons with isospin 1, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{non}2\pi }^{\mathrm{I}=1}`$ are the cross section of the process $`e^+e^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ and that of $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation into hadronic states with I=1 other than $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$, respectively. In the energy region $`\sqrt{s}<4m_\pi `$, where $`\sqrt{s}`$ is the $`e^+e^{}`$ c.m. energy, $`\eta _11`$ and the inequality above just reduces to the Watson theorem: $`\psi =\delta _1`$. At higher energies, when $`\sqrt{s}>4m_\pi `$, it is a generalization of the Watson theorem, so that at any fixed energy a relation constraining $`\eta _1`$ and $`|\psi \delta _1|`$ can be obtained from Eq. (1) using the corresponding value of $`r`$. Once some reliable analysis of $`\pi \pi `$ scattering yields $`\eta _1`$ and $`\delta _1`$, the inequality (1) provides us with bounds on possible values of the pion form factor phase $`\psi `$, such bounds may be of importance for theoretical models of the form factor  and may serve as an estimate of the feasibility of future interference type measurements of the phase. These bounds will be discussed further in this letter and now we will discuss constraints imposed by $`e^+e^{}`$ experiments only. Let us notice that the following consequences of the relation (1) can be derived at $`r<1`$:

$$\eta _1\frac{(1r)}{(1+r)},$$
(4)
and for the phase difference

$$sin^2(\psi \delta _1)\frac{1}{2}[1\sqrt{1r^2}].$$
(5)
In 1973, when these bounds appeared, studies of $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation into hadrons only started. Now, thirty years later, we can quantify these bounds using experimental information accumulated since that time, particularly recent data on the I=1 final states from the VEPP-2M collider in Novosibirsk .

For the $`2\pi `$ channel there is a new high precision measurement between 0.61 and 0.96 GeV from CMD-2 in which the pion form factor was determined with a systematic uncertainty of 0.6% . At higher energies one can use the older data set from OLYA . Channels with non-2$`\pi `$ hadronic production below 1 GeV or more precisely, below the threshold of kaon pair production, $`\sqrt{s}2m_K`$, are saturated by $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation into the $`2\pi ^+2\pi ^{},\pi ^+\pi ^{}2\pi ^0`$ and $`\omega \pi `$ final states. For the two former there exist CMD-2 measurements  whereas for the latter independent results from CMD-2  and SND  are available. Since the dominant decay mode $`\omega \pi ^+\pi ^{}\pi ^0`$ is already taken into account in the cross section of the process $`e^+e^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}2\pi ^0`$, to avoid double counting one should take only a part of the cross section of the process $`e^+e^{}\omega \pi ^0`$, namely the one corresponding to the $`\omega \pi ^0\gamma `$ and $`\omega \pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ decays with the branching ratios from .

The situation is more complicated at energies above the threshold of kaon pair production. The measured cross sections of $`e^+e^{}K_SK_L`$  and $`e^+e^{}K^+K^{}`$  contain both isovector and isoscalar components that are usually separated within some specific model only. Since we are mostly interested in the energy range where $`r<`$ 1, or $`\sqrt{s}1.15`$ GeV, one can assume that the isoscalar component dominates due to the closeness of the $`\varphi `$ meson. This assumption is confirmed by a simple SU(3) based estimate of the I=1 part of the kaon cross section :

$$\sigma _{K\overline{K}}^{I=1}(s)=\sigma _{\pi \pi }(s)\frac{\beta _{K^0}^3+\beta _K^{}^3}{4\beta _\pi ^{}^3},$$
(6)
where

$$\beta =\sqrt{14m_X^2/s},X=\pi ^{},K^0,K^{}.$$
(7)
The estimate shows that this cross section is numerically less than 5% of the total cross section with I=1 at the highest energy considered and negligible close to the threshold. For safety, it is added to $`\sigma _{\mathrm{non}2\pi }^{\mathrm{I}=1}`$. For two four-pion and $`\omega \pi `$ channels above 1 GeV we use the data from the CMD-2  and SND . Above 1.25 GeV one should also add the contribution of the $`\eta \pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ final state using the results of ND  and CMD-2 . The final states with six pions are known to have small cross sections below 1.4 GeV . Summing the contributions from different channels mentioned above and averaging results from different groups in the overlapping energy ranges one finally obtains the quantity $`r`$ as a function of energy shown in Table 1 and Fig. 1. For convenience we also separately present in Table 1 the 2$`\pi `$ and non-$`2\pi `$ parts of the cross section. All errors correspond to the statistical and systematic uncertainties combined in quadrature. It can be seen that the non-2$`\pi `$ cross section grows fast and at the c.m. energy $`\sqrt{s}`$ 1.15 GeV becomes larger than the 2$`\pi `$ one so that $`r>1`$ and the inequalities (4) and (5) no longer contain non-trivial information. The accuracy with which we currently know the quantity $`r`$, is limited at $`\sqrt{s}0.95`$ GeV by poor precision of the non-2$`\pi `$ cross section, whereas it is the 2$`\pi `$ cross section which limits the accuracy at $`\sqrt{s}>1.1`$ GeV since at the moment it is based on the old measurement with the OLYA detector . We do not show in Table 1 energies above 1.4 GeV where data suffer from large uncertainties . As we will see, this energy region is not practically interesting since at large $`r`$ the inequalities discussed are not constraining the inelasticity and phase difference any longer.

In Figs. 2a and 2b we present the results of applying the inequalities (4) and (5), respectively. In Fig. 2a the allowed range for the elasticity extends from the lower limit given by the points with errors recalculated from (4) to its maximum possible value equal to 1. It can be seen that this range is rather narrow and provides strict constraints at low energies when the process $`e^+e^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ dominates the isospin 1 cross section of $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation. With the fast growth of the non-2$`\pi `$ cross section above 1 GeV the constraints provided by the relation (4) become rather loose.

In Fig. 2b the allowed range for the phase difference extends from $`0^{}`$ to its maximum possible value given by points recalculated from (5). Similarly to the previous case, strict bounds are obtained at low energies. It can be seen that up to $``$ 0.95 GeV the phase difference is close to zero. When energy grows, the maximum phase difference also becomes larger and tends to 45 at $`r=1`$ or $`\sqrt{s}`$ 1.15 GeV. Note that the maximum value of the phase difference derived from the inequality (5) can be determined up to $`\pm k\pi `$, where $`k`$ is integer.

The general relation (1) bounding both $`\eta _1`$ and $`|\psi \delta _1|`$ holds at any positive $`r`$. Figure 3 illustrates that non-trivial constraints are imposed by (1) for the whole range of $`r`$ values from Table 1. For each fixed $`r>1`$ (Fig. 3a) the following pattern is observed: below certain value of the elasticity $`\eta _1^c`$ the phase difference can vary from 0 to its maximum of 90. At larger $`\eta _1`$ the maximum allowed value of the phase difference starts decreasing and falls down to $`0^{}`$ at $`\eta _1=1`$. The larger is $`r`$, the larger is the $`\eta _1^c`$. At $`r25`$ the value of $`\eta _1^c`$ is very close to 1, i.e. the whole plane of $`\eta _1`$ and $`|\psi \delta _1|`$ is allowed. Because of that we do not consider the energy range above 1.4 GeV where the value of $`r`$ is even larger. The behaviour is different at $`r1`$. At $`r=1`$ the curve of maximum phase difference goes down monotonously from 45 at $`\eta _10`$ to $`0^{}`$ at $`\eta _1=1`$. At any $`r<1`$ it starts from $`0^{}`$ at some minimal $`\eta _1`$, grows with $`\eta _1`$, reaches its maximum ($`<45^{}`$) at some $`\eta _1`$ and then falls to zero at $`\eta _1=1`$. As above, the area under the curve is allowed.

It is tempting to check the efficiency of the inequality (1) by using additionally the results of the analysis of the $`\pi \pi `$ scattering by the CERN-Munich group . By simply rewriting (1), one can obtain an upper bound for $`|\psi \delta _1|`$ as a function of $`r`$ and $`\eta _1`$. Using the results of the CERN-Munich group for the elasticity  and our results for $`r`$ from Table 1, we calculate the bound as shown in Table 2. Now, when the bound is determined, one can solve the inequality (1) and obtain the allowed range for the form factor phase $`\psi `$ also presented in Table 2. The width of this range was enlarged in both directions by one standard deviation calculated by combining the uncertainty of the bound above and that of $`\delta _1`$ from Refs.  in quadrature.

One can see that at low enough energies the bound following from the inequality (1) is really robust and allows a meaningful estimate of the pion form factor phase. This is true until approximately 1.2 GeV. At higher energies the central value of the bound as well as its error become too large and no longer provide a good estimate of the phase $`\psi `$. In Fig. 4 we show the allowed range for the phase as a function of energy.

The inequalities discussed above were originally obtained for a general case of any reactions involving a weakly interacting channel; see, e.g., their application to the case of $`\gamma \gamma \pi \pi `$ scattering . Similar relations were obtained in a coupled-channel approach in Ref. .

In conclusion, we would like to emphasize that the bounds using information on $`e^+e^{}`$ hadrons alone already yield quite stringent limitations exhibited in Figs. 2a,b. In particular, the solution A of Ref.  for the $`\pi \pi `$ elasticity $`\eta _1`$ yielding the value of $`1\eta _1`$ at the level of a few % in the vicinity of the $`\rho `$ meson resonance can be ruled out by $`e^+e^{}`$ data, see Fig. 2a. There is also a permanent question how far the Watson equality ($`\psi =\delta _1`$) is valid, see, e.g., Ref. . Our Fig. 2b gives bounds on deviations from the Watson equality for energies well above 4$`m_\pi `$.

One can hopefully further elaborate the obtained bounds after the analysis of high statistics data samples in Novosibirsk is completed .

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the University of Siegen, Germany where they met and discussed for the first time the possibility of this work. They are indebted to P.P. Krokovny for his help while preparing a manuscript. L.Ł. was supported in part by the European Community’s Human Potential Programme under contract HPRN-CT-2002-00311 EURIDICE. S.E. was supported in part by the grant RFBR-03-02-16843. S.E. is grateful to the Institute for Nuclear Studies, Świerk, Poland for its hospitality during the time when this work was completed.