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# Gravitational Microlensing: A Tool for Detecting and Characterizing Free-Floating Planets

## 1 Introduction

High-precision radial velocity measurements of nearby stars resulted in the detections of more than 100 planetary systems (http:$`//`$cfa-www.harvard.edu/planets). Besides the radial velocity method, planets can also be detected and characterized by using various other methods. These methods include the pulsar timing analysis, direct imaging, accurate measurement of astrometric displacement, planetary transit, and microlensing (see the review of Perryman 2000).

However, all these methods except the microlensing method can be used to detect only planets which are gravitationally bound to their parent stars. Theories about the planet formation indicate that planets often do not stay in the same orbit where they were formed. Dynamical interactions with either a massive planetesimal disk (Murray et al., 1998; Trilling, Levine, & Benz, 2002) or the protoplanetary nebular gas (Ward, 1997) can result in inward migration of planets. On the other hand, gravitational interactions with other planet members (Levison, Lissauer, & Duncan, 1998) or neighboring stars (Sigurdsson, 1992) can result in the disruption of the planetary system and thus ejection of planets. The latter process could lead to a population of free-floating planets.

Microlensing can be occurred by a low-mass object and thus free-floating planets can be, in principle, searched for by detecting short-duration lensing-induced light variations of background stars caused by the planets. However, this method has not been used due to technical difficulties. These difficulties arise because of the rarity of lensing events combined with the short durations of planetary events. At any given time, only a few out of $`10^6`$ Galactic bulge stars undergo microlensing with their fluxes magnified enough for detection and a small fraction of those microlensed stars are expected to be lensed by planetary masses. In addition, events produced by planetary lenses last only a short duration of $`1`$ day even for an event caused by a giant planet (with a mass $`M10^3M_{}`$) and the duration decreases in proportional to the square root of the lens mass. Therefore, implementing the microlensing method to search for free-floating planets requires a massive survey for a large number of stars with a very high monitoring frequency. Several groups have been previously carried out and are currently performing lensing surveys (Alcock et al., 1993; Aubourg et al., 1993; Udalski et al., 1993; Alard & Guibert, 1997; Bond et al., 2002), but the typical monitoring frequency of these experiments is at most several times per day, which is far too low to detect events caused free-floating planets. To increase the monitoring frequency, the experiments are employing early warning systems (Alcock et al., 1996; Afonso et al., 2001; Bond et al., 2001; Udalski et al., 1994) to issue alerts of ongoing events detected in the early stage of lensing magnification and follow-up observation programs (Alcock et al., 1997; Rhie et al., 1999; Albrow et al., 1998; Yoo et al., 2003) to intensively monitor the alerted events hoping to detect short-duration planetary signals on the top of the lensing light curve produced by the parent star. However, planets detectable from this type of strategy are also bound planets like the ones detectable from other planet search methods.

However, the situation will greatly change with the advent of future lensing surveys with very high monitoring frequencies. Actually, several such experiments in space and on the ground were proposed. The space-based GEST mission, proposed to NASA by Bennett & Rhie (2002), is designed to continuously monitor $`10^8`$ Galactic bulge main-sequence stars with a frequency of several times per hour by using a 1–2 m aperture space telescope. Studies about the scientific outcome from a ground-based high-frequency lensing experiment using four 2 m-class telescopes located at good seeing sites around the world and equipped with large format CCD cameras are in progress (Gould, Gaudi, & Han, 2003). From detailed simulations of Galactic bulge events detectable from the space observation by using the GEST, Bennett & Rhie (2002) estimated that the total number of detections of events caused by free-floating planets during the life time of the GEST mission ($`3.7`$ yrs) would be $`(𝒪)10`$ for Earth-mass planets and $`(𝒪)10^2`$ for giant planets under the assumption that one planet was ejected for each star.

However, the microlensing method is seriously flawed by the fact that the detected planet’s mass cannot be uniquely determined. This defect arises because among the three lensing observables related to the physical parameters of the lens, the Einstein time scale $`t_\mathrm{E}`$, the angular Einstein ring radius $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, and the projected Einstein radius onto the plane of the observer $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$, only $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ is routinely measured from the lensing light curve. These three observables are related to the mass of the lens ($`M`$), relative source-lens parallax ($`\pi _{rel}=\mathrm{AU}/[D_l^1D_s^1]`$, where $`D_l`$ and $`D_s`$ are the distances to the lens and source, respectively), and proper motion ($`\mu _{rel}`$) by (Gould, 2000)

$$t_\mathrm{E}=\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{\mu _{rel}},\theta _\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\frac{4GM\pi _{rel}}{c^2\mathrm{AU}}},\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\frac{4GM\mathrm{AU}}{c^2\pi _{rel}}}.$$
(1)
Due to the fact that $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ results from the combination of $`M`$, $`\pi _{rel}`$, and $`\mu _{rel}`$, short durations of events do not guarantee the events are caused by planets because they can be produced by low-mass stars or brown dwarfs with exceptionally high proper motions or very small Einstein ring radii. As a result, even if a large number of short-duration events were detected by future lensing surveys, they could not be definitely identified as planetary events. To isolate events caused by free-floating planets and determine their masses, it is required to measure the other observables of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ (see § 2 for the detailed description about the methods to measure these quantities). Once $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ are measured, the lens mass is uniquely determined by

$$M=\frac{c^2}{4G}\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}\theta _\mathrm{E}.$$
(2)
Recently, Gould, Gaudi, & Han (2003) pointed out that the masses of bound Earth-mass planets could be measured by combining a GEST-type satellite with ground-based observations. They showed that the proper motions of these events can be measured by analyzing the planet-induced perturbations in lensing light curves observed from space. They also showed that if the satellite is placed in an L2 orbit, the Earth-satellite baseline is sufficient enough to measure lens parallaxes. In this paper, we show that a similar observational setup proposed by Gould, Gaudi, & Han (2003) can also be used for the mass determinations of free-floating planets, which are the population of planets that have not been previously probed.

The paper is organized as follows. In § 2, we describe the methods of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ measurements and explain the reasons for the difficulties in measuring these quantities for events caused by stellar mass lenses. In § 3, we illustrate the relative easiness of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ measurements for events caused by low-mass lenses such as free-floating planets. In § 4, we estimate the mass range over which the proposed mass determination method is sensitive by estimating the uncertainties of the recovered lens masses under the observational setup proposed by Gould, Gaudi, & Han (2003). In § 5, we briefly discuss several problems of the proposed observational setup. We conclude in § 6.

## 2 Mass Determinations of Gravitational Lenses

A microlensing event occurs when a compact massive object (lens) approaches very close to the observer’s line of sight toward a background star (source). Due to the lensing-induced magnification and the varying lens-source separation caused by the relative proper motion, the source star flux changes with time. For an event involved with a point source, the magnification of the source star flux varies with time by

$$A=\frac{u^2+2}{u\sqrt{u^2+4}};𝒖=\left(\frac{tt_0}{t_\mathrm{E}}\right)\widehat{𝒙}+u_0\widehat{𝒚},$$
(3)
where $`𝒖`$ represents the lens-source separation vector normalized by $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, $`u_0`$ is the closest lens-source separation in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ (impact parameter), $`t_0`$ is the time at that moment (time of maximum magnification), and $`\widehat{𝒙}`$ and $`\widehat{𝒚}`$ are the unit vectors parallel with and normal to the direction of the lens-source motion, respectively. Among the three lensing parameters of a point-source event ($`t_0`$, $`u_0`$ and $`t_\mathrm{E}`$), the first two tell nothing about the lens and the third is related to $`M`$, $`\pi _{rel}`$, and $`\mu _{rel}`$ in a complicated way presented in equation (1). To fully break the lens parameter degeneracy, two additional pieces of information of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ are needed.

The angular Einstein ring radius can be measured by scaling $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ against some known “standard angular rulers” on the source plane (the plane perpendicular to the line of sight toward the source at the position of the source). The most ubiquitous standard ruler is the source star itself. If the lens passes close enough to the source, the source star can no longer be approximated as a point source. In this case, different parts on the source star surface are magnified by different amounts due to the difference in separation from the lens, and the resulting light curve deviates from that of a point source event; finite source effect (Witt & Mao, 1994). By measuring the deviation caused by the finite source effect, one can measure the relative source size normalized by the angular Einstein ring radius, $`\rho _{}=\theta _{}/\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ (normalized source radius), where $`\theta _{}`$ is the angular radius of the source star. Since $`\theta _{}`$ can be estimated from the position of the source star on a color-magnitude diagram (CMD) relative to the center of red clump giants, whose dereddened and calibrated position on the CMD is well known (An et al., 2002; van Belle, 1999), the angular Einstein ring radius is determined by $`\theta _\mathrm{E}=\theta _{}/\rho _{}`$ (Gould, 1994a; Nemiroff & Wickramasinghe, 1994).

The projected Einstein ring radius can be measured by scaling $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ against some known “standard physical rulers” on the plane of the observer (the plane perpendicular to the line of sight toward the source at the position of the observer). Such a standard ruler is provided by observing an event at two different locations. If an event is seen by two observers located at different locations, the source star position with respect to the lens is different. The amount of the normalized difference between the source positions is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }𝒖=\frac{\stackrel{~}{𝒅}}{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}},$$
(4)
where $`\stackrel{~}{𝒅}`$ is the separation vector between the two observers projected onto the observer plane. Then, if $`\stackrel{~}{d}`$ is large enough, the light curves of the event seen from the two observers will exhibit noticeable differences; parallax effect (Refsdal, 1966; Gould, 1992). By measuring the difference in impact parameters, $`\mathrm{\Delta }u_0`$, and the difference in times of maximum magnification, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_0`$, between the light curves as seen from the two observers, one can measure $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒖=(\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E},\mathrm{\Delta }u_0)`$, and so $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ (with the known separation vector $`\stackrel{~}{𝒅}`$).

However, determining the lens masses by using the mentioned standard rulers for events caused by stellar mass lenses was not easy. This is because the Einstein ring radii of these events are much larger than the sizes of the rulers. For Galactic bulge events, the sizes of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ are

$$\theta _\mathrm{E}=1.26\mathrm{mas}\left(\frac{D_s}{D_l}1\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{D_s}{8\mathrm{kpc}}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{M}{M_{}}\right)^{1/2},$$
(5)
and

$$\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}=8.2\mathrm{AU}\left(\frac{D_s}{D_l}1\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{D_s}{8\mathrm{kpc}}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{M}{M_{}}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(6)
Noticeable light curve deviations caused by the finite source effect are produced only when the lens-source separation is equivalent to or less than the source radius (see Figure 2). However, the normalized source radius of a typical bulge event caused by a stellar mass lens with $`M0.3M_{}`$ located at $`D_l=6\mathrm{kpc}`$ is merely $`\rho _{}0.0018`$ for a main-sequence star (with a physical radius of $`R_{}1R_{}`$ and an angular size of $`\theta _{}0.6\mu `$arcsec at $`D_s8\mathrm{kpc}`$) and $`\rho _{}0.02`$ even for a clump giant star (with $`R_{}13R_{}`$ and $`\theta _{}7.6\mu `$arcsec). This implies that close lens-source approach enough to produce noticeable light curve deviations caused by the finite source effect occurs very rarely and thus one can measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ only for a very small fraction of events. In addition, the typical projected Einstein ring radius for these events is $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}7.6\mathrm{AU}`$, and thus measurement of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ is impossible with an Earth-scale baseline.111For an event with a very long time scale ($`t_\mathrm{E}100`$ days), it is possible to measure $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ because the location of the observer changes considerably during the event because of the orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun. One may think an appropriate baseline can be provided by a satellite with a heliocentric orbit. However, the problem of this solution is that transmission of a huge amount of data from the satellite is difficult with the current technology. In addition, even if the technical problem is resolved and events are observed from the Earth and the satellite, still $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ cannot be uniquely determined because of the inherent degeneracy in $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒖`$. This degeneracy arises because for a given pair of light curves observed from the two different locations there can be two possible values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$ depending on whether the source star trajectories as seen from the Earth and the satellite are on the same or opposite sides with respect to the lens, causing a two-fold degeneracy in the determined value of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ (Gould, 1994b). To lift this degeneracy, one needs a second satellite. As a result, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ have been measured for only a handful number of events each out of the more than 1000 events detected so far \[Alcock et al. (1997, 2000); Albrow et al. (1999, 2000, 2001); Afonso et al. (2000); Yoo et al. (2003) for $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ measurements and Alcock et al. (1995); Mao (1999); Soszyński et al. (2001); Bond et al. (2001); Mao et al. (2002); Bennett (2002) for $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ measurements\], and for only a single event both $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ have been measured (An et al., 2002).222We note that most of the events for which $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ are measured are caustic-crossing binary lens events, which comprise only a small fraction of the total number of events. We also note that all of the events with known parallaxes are very long time-scale events, which comprise also a small fraction of the total number of events.

## 3 Events Caused by Free-Floating Planets

Unlike events caused by stellar mass lenses, it is possible to measure both $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ for a substantial fraction of events caused by free-floating planets. This is because the Einstein ring radii of these events are much smaller than those of the events produced by stellar mass lenses. Then, the sizes of the angular and physical standard rulers on the source and observer planes compared to $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$, respectively, are no longer negligible, and thus the events are more susceptible to both the finite-source and parallax effects.

### 3.1 Parallax Effect

If an event caused by a free-floating planet is observed simultaneously from the Earth and a satellite located at a distance of $`d0.01`$ AU, corresponding to the distance to a satellite located in the L2 orbit, the expected displacement between the locations of the source caused by the parallax effect for a typical bulge event (with $`D_s8`$ kpc and $`D_s6`$ kpc) would be

$$\mathrm{\Delta }u=\frac{d\mathrm{cos}\psi }{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}0.02\mathrm{cos}\psi \left(\frac{M}{M_\mathrm{J}}\right)^{1/2},$$
(7)
where $`\mathrm{cos}\psi `$ is the projection factor. Although this shift is significantly larger than the shift expected from the event caused by a stellar mass lens, it is still small compared to $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. Then, one may question whether the light curves observed from the Earth and the satellite can exhibit noticeable differences with such a small displacement.

For high magnification events, however, the light curve difference induced by the parallax effect can be large even with a small amount of $`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$. The reason can be analytically explained as follows. Differentiating the expression of the magnification in equation (3) with respect to $`u`$ yields

$$\frac{dA}{du}=\frac{8}{u^2(u^2+4)^{3/2}}.$$
(8)
Then the fractional difference between the light curves seen from the Earth and the satellite is computed by

$$ϵ_\pi =\frac{A_{sat}A_{}}{A_{}}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }u}{A_{}}\left|\frac{dA_{}}{du}\right|=\frac{8\mathrm{\Delta }u}{u(u^2+2)(u^2+4)},$$
(9)
where $`A_{}`$ and $`A_{sat}`$ represent the magnifications measured from the Earth and the satellite, respectively. For a high magnification event ($`u0`$), equation (9) is simplified into the form

$$ϵ_\pi \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }u}{u}.$$
(10)
From equation (10), one finds that even with a small amount of $`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$, the deviation can be large for high magnification events. For example, the fractional difference between the light curves caused by the source star’s positional displacement of $`\mathrm{\Delta }u=0.02`$ is $`ϵ_\pi 5\%`$ for events with $`u_00.4`$, implying that the difference can be measured for a significant fraction of events caused by free-floating planets.

The feasibility of parallax measurements for high magnification events is illustrated in Figure 1, where we present light curves of an example planetary event observed from the Earth (solid curve) and a satellite (dotted curves). The event as seen from the Earth has an impact parameter of $`u_0=0.2`$ and the source position as seen from the satellite is slightly displaced by $`\mathrm{\Delta }u_0=0.02/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E}=0.02/\sqrt{2}`$ (and thus $`\mathrm{\Delta }u=\sqrt{(\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E})^2+\mathrm{\Delta }u_0^2}=0.02`$). The inset on the left corner of the upper panel shows the geometry of the lens system, where the dashed circle represents the Einstein ring and the solid and dotted straight lines represent the source star trajectories as seen from the Earth and the satellite, respectively, with respect to the lens (marked by a small filled dot at the center of the Einstein ring). The inset on the right corner shows the blowup of the region enclosed by a square in the left-side inset. The three dots represent the source locations at the moment when the magnification of the event seen from the Earth is maximum, i.e. $`t=t_0`$. The lower panel shows the fractional deviation $`ϵ_\pi `$. One finds that even with a very small displacement of the source trajectory, the deviation is as large as $`ϵ_\pi 10\%`$ as predicted by equation (10).

We note that the parallax of the event caused by a free-floating planet does not suffer from the degeneracy mentioned in § 2. This is because the source trajectory seen from the Earth and the satellite are nearly always located on the same side with respect to the lens due to the small value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$ expected for typical planetary events.

### 3.2 Finite Source Size Effect

High-magnification planetary events are susceptible not only to the parallax effect but also to the finite source effect. The light curve affected by the finite source effect is given by the intensity-weighted magnification averaged over the source flux. Under the assumption of a uniform source brightness, the magnification of an event affected by the finite source effect is expressed by

$$A_{fs}=\frac{1}{\pi \rho _{}^2}_0^{2\pi }𝑑\theta _0^\rho _{}𝑑\rho \rho A\left[\sqrt{(u_c+\rho \mathrm{cos}\theta )^2+(\rho \mathrm{sin}\theta )^2}\right],$$
(11)
where $`u_c`$ represents the normalized separation between the lens and the center of the source star, and $`𝝆`$ and $`\theta `$ represent the position vector and the position angle of a point on the source star surface with respect to the source star’s center, respectively. In the case of a high magnification event, for which the finite source effect is important, the magnification is approximated by

$$A\frac{1}{u}.$$
(12)
Using equations (11) and (12), one finds the expression for the ratio between the magnifications with and without the finite source effect, i.e.

$$\frac{A_{fs}}{A}B(z)=\frac{z^2}{\pi }_0^{2\pi }𝑑\theta _0^{1/z}𝑑\zeta \frac{\zeta }{\sqrt{\zeta ^2+2\zeta \mathrm{cos}\theta +1}},$$
(13)
where $`z=u/\rho _{}`$ (Gould, 1994a). Then, the fractional deviation caused by the finite source effect is expressed in terms of the function $`B(z)`$ as

$$ϵ_{fs}=\frac{A_{fs}A}{A}B(z)1.$$
(14)
In Figure 2, we present the fractional deviation caused by the finite source effect as a function of $`z`$. From the curve, one finds that if the lens approaches the source star closer than $`1.9`$ and $`2.7`$ times of the source star radius, the deviations become $`ϵ_{fs}5\%`$ and $`3\%`$, respectively. The normalized angular radius of a Galactic bulge main-sequence source star (with a physical size of $`R_{}1R_{}`$ and an angular size of 0.6 $`\mu `$arcsec at $`D_s8\mathrm{kpc}`$), which is the main monitoring target of the GEST mission, is $`\rho _{}0.032(M/M_\mathrm{J})^{1/2}`$. Then, with a detection condition of $`ϵ_{fs}3\%`$, the deviation can be detected for events with $`u_02.7\times 0.032(M/M_\mathrm{J})^{1/2}0.086(M/M_\mathrm{J})^{1/2}`$. Note that while one needs both light curves obtained from the Earth and the satellite for $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ measurement, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ can be measured from a single light curve obtained from space observation with exquisite photometry.

## 4 Sensitivity: Quantitative Analysis

As the mass of the lens decreases, the resulting event becomes more susceptible to the parallax effect for a given baseline and to the finite source effect for a given source radius. However, if the lens mass is too small, the detection efficiency of the deviation will sharply drop and the uncertainty of the determined lens mass will become large due to not-enough coverage of the deviation. In this section, we estimate the lens mass range over which the proposed method is sensitive. For this, we estimate the uncertainties of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ expected under the observational setup proposed by Gould, Gaudi, & Han (2003).

To determine the uncertainties of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, we first estimate the uncertainties of the lensing parameters. We estimate these uncertainties by computing the curvature matrix of $`\chi ^2`$ surface, $`c_{ij}`$. For the case of a microlensing light curve, the curvature matrix is defined by

$$c_{ij}=\underset{k}{\overset{N_{obs}}{}}\frac{F_{obs,k}}{p_i}\frac{F_{obs,k}}{p_j}\frac{1}{\sigma _k^2},$$
(15)
where $`N_{obs}`$ is the number of observations, $`F_{obs,k}(t)=A(t)F_s+F_b`$ is the observed flux for each measurement, $`p_i=(F_s,F_b,u_0,t_0,t_\mathrm{E},\rho _{})`$ are the lensing parameters, $`F_s`$ and $`F_b`$ are the fluxes of the lensed source star and blended light, and $`\sigma _k`$ is the photometric uncertainty of each measurement. We note that in addition to the lensing parameters of a point-source event, two additional parameters of $`F_b`$ and $`\rho _{}`$ are included to account for the blending and finite source effects. Then, the uncertainties of the individual lensing parameters correspond to the diagonal components of the inverse curvature matrix (covariance matrix $`b=c^1`$, where $`_kb_{ik}c_{kj}=\delta _{ij}`$), i.e.

$$\sigma _{p_i}=\sqrt{b_{ii}}.$$
(16)
The error analysis is done for events with a source and a lens located at 8 kpc and 6 kpc, respectively, and varying the lens mass and $`u_0`$. The assumed relative proper motion is $`\mu _{rel}=7.0`$ mas/yr (corresponding to the relative lens-source transverse speed of $`v_{rel}=200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). Then, the corresponding event time scale is $`t_\mathrm{E}=0.96\mathrm{days}(M/M_\mathrm{J})^{1/2}`$. The proposed GEST mission will take images of Galactic bulge main-sequence stars with 2 min exposure and coadd 5 images to yield 10 min exposure (Bennett & Rhie, 2002). Following the specification of the GEST mission, we assume that each combined image is obtained every 20 min (corresponding to a monitoring frequency of 72/day) considering the data readout time. We also assume a similar monitoring frequency for the ground observation. We assume each event is observed during $`2t_\mathrm{E}t_{obs}<2t_\mathrm{E}`$. For the photometric uncertainties, we assume 1% and 2% photometry for the space and ground observations, respectively. We also assume that blended light comprises 0% (no blending) and 30% of the observed flux for the space and ground observations, respectively. The source star is assumed to have a solar radius.

Once $`\sigma _{p_i}`$ expected from the space and ground observations are determined, the uncertainty of the source trajectory displacement ($`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$) is computed according to error propagation analysis by

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u}\frac{\left[\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E}}^2(\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E})^2+\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u_0}^2\mathrm{\Delta }u_0^2\right]^{1/2}}{\mathrm{\Delta }u},$$
(17)
where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E}}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u_0}`$ are the uncertainties of the differences between the $`t_0/t_\mathrm{E}`$’s and $`u_0`$’s measured from the two light curves obtained from the space and ground observations. To prevent confusion in notations, we note that “$`\sigma `$” is used to denote the measurement uncertainty, while “$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$” is used to denote the difference in lensing parameters determined from the light curves obtained from the space and ground observations. The uncertainties $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E}}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u_0}`$ are computed from $`\sigma _{p_i}`$’s estimated from curvature matrix analysis by

| $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E}}^2\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}}{t_\mathrm{E}}}\right)_{sat}^2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}}{t_\mathrm{E}}}\right)_{}^2\right]\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }t_0}{t_\mathrm{E}}}\right)^2,`$ |
| --- |
| $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u_0}^2(\sigma _{u_0})_{sat}^2+(\sigma _{u_0})_{}^2,`$ |

(18)
where the subscripts “sat” and “$``$” are used to denote uncertainties from space and ground measurements, respectively. The first relation in equation (18) is obtained under the assumption that the uncertainty of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t/t_\mathrm{E}}`$ is dominated by $`\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}`$, i.e. $`\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}\sigma _{t_0}`$. To account for the projection effect of the Earth-satellite separation, we assume $`\stackrel{~}{d}=d/2=0.005`$ AU and the displacement vector of the tested event is assumed to have equal $`x`$ and $`y`$ components, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_0/t_\mathrm{E}=\mathrm{\Delta }u_0=\mathrm{\Delta }u/\sqrt{2}`$. Since the normalized source star radius can be determined from the light curve observed from space alone, its uncertainty is given simply by

$$\sigma _\rho _{}=(\sigma _\rho _{})_{sat}.$$
(19)
Once $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u}`$ and $`\sigma _\rho _{}`$ are determined, the fractional uncertainties of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, and the resulting lens mass are obtained by

| $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}}{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}}`$ | $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }u}}{\mathrm{\Delta }u}},`$ |
| --- | --- |
| $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}}{\theta _\mathrm{E}}}`$ | $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _\rho _{}}{\rho _{}}},`$ |
| $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _M}{M}}`$ | $`\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}}{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}}\right)^2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}}{\theta _\mathrm{E}}}\right)^2\right]^{1/2}.`$ |

(20)
In Figure 3, we present the estimated uncertainties for $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ (upper panel), $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ (middle panel), and the lens mass (lower panel) as contours maps in the parameters space of $`(u_0,M)`$. In each map, contours are drawn at the levels of the fractional uncertainties of 10%, 30%, 50%, and 90%. From the figure, one finds that the proposed method is most sensitive to planets with masses ranging from $`M0.1M_\mathrm{J}`$ to several Jupiter masses. One also finds that while $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}`$ for a given value of $`u_0`$ decreases with the decrease of the lens mass until the lens mass is $`M0.01M_\mathrm{J}`$ (equivalent to the mass of an Earth-mass planet), at which the coverage of the deviation becomes less sufficient, the rapid increase of $`\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}`$ occurs at a substantially larger mass of $`M0.1M_\mathrm{J}`$. As a result, the uncertainty in the determined lens mass for planets with $`M1.0M_\mathrm{J}`$ is mostly dominated by $`\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}`$ rather than $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}`$. The uncertainty $`\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}`$ estimated from the numerical analysis is larger than the expectation based on analytic analysis in § 3.1. To track down the difference, we did the same curvature matrix analysis to determine $`\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}/\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ but not taking account the finite source effect (and thus $`\rho _{}`$ is excluded from the list of fitting parameters). From this, we find significant decrease of $`\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}/\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ with the decrease of the number of fitting parameters. We find a similar trend when the blending effect is not taken into consideration. We, therefore, conclude that the larger uncertainty $`\sigma _{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}/\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ obtained from the numerical analysis compared to the simple analytic analysis is due to the increase of the number of fitting parameters that are additionally included to account for the blending and the finite source effects (i.e. $`F_b`$ and $`\rho _{}`$).

## 5 Discussion

Considering the high sampling rate with a large format CCD camera, the total data rate of the space microlensing survey will be large, and thus the data transmission from the satellite even at the L2 position will be still a major concern. One way to alleviate the problem is putting a satellite in a highly elliptical orbit with a period of $`1`$ month as proposed by Gould, Gaudi, & Han (2003). Then, the satellite would spend majority of its time near $`2a0.005`$ AU and it could focus on data transmission during the brief perigee each month.

Another concern for the proposed satellite observation is the location of the Galactic bulge field in ecliptic coordinates, which are $`\lambda =266^{}.84`$ and $`\beta =5^{}.54`$. Then, while the physical distance to the L2 point is $`d0.01`$ AU, the projected separation is very small ($`\stackrel{~}{d}0.001`$ AU) around the time of summer solstice, when the terrestrial observation is optimal. Therefore, during this time of the year, it would be impossible to measure the lens parallax by using the proposed method. However, the bulge season lasts more than $`6`$ months and the survey can be initiated before spring equinox and can be extended after autumnal equinox, at which the projected Earth-satellite separation is maximized. Therefore, lens parallaxes can be measured for a large fraction of the observation time.

We note that the actual uncertainty of the mass measurements will be larger than our estimation because we did not include the uncertainty of the angular source size. There is no empirical calibration of stellar size for main-sequence stars because it is beyond the limit of current interferometric measurements and the available stellar size calibration for these stars are entirely based on theoretical stellar atmosphere calculations. In addition, the uncertainty of the distance to the source star will also contribute to the uncertainty of the mass determinations for free-floating planets.

## 6 Conclusion

We propose an observational setup that enables one to determine the masses of free-floating planets via gravitational microlensing. The setup is similar to the one of Gould, Gaudi, & Han (2003) proposed to resolve the mass degeneracy of the Earth-mass planets and requires a modest adjustment to the orbit of an already proposed microlensing planet-finder satellite combined with ground-based observations. The proposed method is most sensitive to planets with masses ranging from $`0.1M_\mathrm{J}`$ to several Jupiter masses. If realized, the proposed high-frequency lensing surveys will be able to play important roles in characterizing Galactic free-floating planets that have not been probed before.

We would like to thank B. S. Gaudi and A. Gould for making helpful comments. This work was supported by the Astrophysical Research Center for the Structure and Evolution of the Cosmos (ARCSEC”) of Korea Science & Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) through Science Research Program (SRC) program.


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# Star Formation in Transient Molecular Clouds

## 1 The star forming environment

The formation of stars in giant molecular clouds appears to be a very inefficient process. Global estimates of the star formation efficiency, based on the mass in molecular clouds and the Galactic star formation rate(Scalo 1986; Evans 1999), are of order a few percent while small-scale estimates for stellar clusters approach 50% (Lada 1992; Lada & Lada 2003). The dispersion in estimates can, to some extent, be decreased under the assumption that molecular clouds are long-lived entities that exist for many dynamical times, although this necessitates a supporting mechanism to balance gravity (McKee et al.1993).

As star formation from molecular gas involves the gravitational contraction through many orders in magnitude in size, it is commonly assumed that the largest scale objects associated with star formation, molecular clouds, are themselves bound. In this case, the problem is how does a large bound region ($`10^410^6`$ M) only permit a small fraction of its mass to undergo gravitational collapse. Various mechanisms, such as magnetic fields and feedback from young stars, have been evoked over the years in order to support molecular clouds and explain the low efficiency of star formation (Shu, Adams & Lizano 1987; Franco, Shore & Tenorio-Tagle 1994). In this letter, we explore an alternative scenario whereby molecular clouds are not bound on the large scale, circumventing the need for any additional supporting mechanisms.

In a recent paper, Elmegreen (2000) has collected observational evidence implying that GMCs are short-lived objects, with dispersal times comparable to their crossing times ($`t_{dyn}3\times 10^7`$years). The formation of stars would then have to occur in a short burst ($`t_{dyn}`$), as has been suggested from recent observations (Hartmann, Ballesteros-Paredes, & Bergin 2001; Hartmann 2002), rather than an ongoing process. This implies that molecular cloud formation is dynamical, and self-gravity need not play a dominant role. Such a scenario has recently been advanced by Pringle, Allen & Lubow (2001) where the passage of a spiral arm triggers the agglomeration of unbound molecular gas and the ensuing shock dissipates sufficient kinetic energy to allow self-gravity to (locally) form stars. The observed molecular clouds could then be transient structures with lifetimes comparable to their dynamical times (Elmegreen 2000; Pringle et al 2001; Larson 2003). In this picture it would seem likely that these regions are globally unbound and highly dynamic, with only a small fraction achieving gravitational instability before the cloud dissipates. This is possible if the internal bulk motions of the cloud are stronger than the self-gravity of the region. The supersonic nature of the motions produces shocks which dissipate kinetic energy, eventually leading to regions becoming gravitationally unstable. The efficiency of the star formation would then be governed by the strength of the internal kinetic energy at the point of the cloud’s formation, along with how much support can be removed in shocks. This would naturally lead to different clouds having different star formation efficiency and potentially explain the variance in the observed estimates.

Observational estimates of the mass, and therefore the energies, of the molecular gas is inherently difficult and uncertain. Heyer, Carpenter & Snell (2001) have investigated the dynamic stability of molecular regions in the outer Galaxy. Results suggest that the molecular material is unbound until the mass of the region approaches $`10^5`$M. It is however noted in the paper that obtaining a value for the hydrogen mass via measurements of CO flux involves the assumption that the gas is virialised. If the region in question is then unbound, the subsequently derived value for the mass of molecular hydrogen is an over-estimate of the region’s true mass. As a result, regions will appear more bound than they actually are. This places serious doubt on the generally accepted idea of globally bound GMCs.

The ability of turbulence to character the interstellar medium (ISM) along with its role in star formation in GMCs has been extensively studied by a number of authors. For a complete review we point the reader to the article by Mac Low & Klessen (2003). It is now well established that large scale turbulent motions can produce the filamentary structure that is commonly observed in star forming regions (Vázquez-Semadeni, Ballesteros-Paredes & Rodriguez 1997; Ostriker, Gammie & Stone 1998; Ballesteros-Paredes, Hartmann & Vázquez-Semadeni 1999; Padoan & Nordlund 1999) and that even MHD turbulence decays on a dynamical timescale (Mac Low et al 1998; Stone, Ostriker & Gammie 1998) such that a driving mechanism is required if the clouds are to exist for many dynamical times. These studies highlight that transient objects can form from large scale flows in the ISM, supporting the work of Elmegreen (2000) that star forming regions are short lived in nature. Recent work on subregions within GMCs has also shown that driven turbulence, and more importantly the scale of the driving, can effect the local efficiency of the star formation (Klessen, Heitsch & Mac Low 2000; Klessen 2001). The periodic boundary conditions in this last study make it difficult to find estimates of the global star formation efficiency of transient molecular regions, since the mean mass density cannot decrease. Any newly formed stars can thus continue to accrete mass indefinitely. Global calculations have tended to study clouds that are only marginally unbound and hence do not provide information on transient GMCs (Bate, Bonnell & Bromm 2003; Bonnell, Bate & Vine 2003)

It is the picture of GMC formation presented by Pringle et al (2001) that we use as the motivation for this letter. They suggest that molecular clouds are formed via the accumulation of small parcles of material. In this manner, we interpret the internal motions of the cloud as a result of the original random motions of the constituent parcles of gas. The internal motions therefore need not be turbulent in the strict definition and so we use the notion of “turbulence” loosely in this paper. The formation mechanism for molecular regions supported here is distinctly different from that proposed by Ballesteros-Paredes et al (1999). Since we are concerned with a transient object and one which is not part of some large scale flow, we do not require boundary conditions on our model. Futhermore, since the object in study is transient, we do not include any feedback effects into the internal motions as is consistent with the ideas presented by Elmegreen (2000).

We present here the first numerical simulation in which the turbulent gas is both initially unbound and free to expand, showing that this does result in star formation but with a relatively low efficiency. In section 2 we describe the details of the simulation technique with a discussion of the evolution and efficiency of the star formation given in section 3. We summarise and discuss the implications of this result in section 4.

## 2  The simulation

The simulation starts from a uniform sphere of mass 31.6M at 10K with a radius of 0.13pc. The material is modelled as an ideal gas of molecular hydrogen and the equation of state is isothermal. With these properties, the Jeans mass of the cloud is 1M and the Jeans number, $`J_o=(M/M_{Jeans})^{3/2}=E_{grav}/E_{thermal}=10`$. These conditions give an initial density of $`2.2\times 10^{19}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and hence the free-fall time, $`t_{ff}`$, is $`1.4\times 10^5`$ years. The gas is given turbulent support modelled by a Gaussian random field with a power spectrum $`P(k)k^4`$, where $`k`$ is the wavenumber of the velocity perturbations and corresponds to a Larson type law of $`\mathrm{\Delta }vL^{0.5}`$ (Larson 1981; Ostriker, Stone & Gammie 2001). The turbulent kinetic energy of this study is characterised by the parameter $`ϵ=E_{grav}/E_{kinetic}`$ and it is the unbound case of $`ϵ=0.75`$ which is presented here, resulting in a turbulent Mach number (as calculated from the kinetic energy) of $`5.5(c_s0.2\mathrm{kms}^1)`$.

The fluid was modelled using the Lagrangian method of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Gravitational forces are calculated using a tree structure (Benz et at 1990). The code includes the modification by Bate et al (1995) which replaces dense bound regions of the gas with point masses, or ‘sink particles’. These sinks allow the code to model the dynamical evolution of accreting protostars, without integration times becoming prohibitively small. Sink-particle creation occurs when the densest gas particle (at a given time) and its 50-100 neighbours are self-gravitating, subvirial and occupy a region smaller than the sink-radius. In this calculation we used a sink radius of 48AU with the sinks being formed at a density of $`1\times 10^{14}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$. To minimise computational expense, we smooth the gravitational forces between stars at a distance of 33AU. We use 204800 SPH particles to model the gas and are hence able to resolve self-gravitating objects as small as 0.015M (Bate & Burkert 1997).

At the end of the simulation 4 protostars were formed containing roughly 17% of the mass of the original cloud. The formation of a tight binary with a separation of 134AU, considerably reduced the time step of the integration making it computationally expensive to run the simulation for longer than $`6.5t_{ff}`$. Unfortunately, this prevented satisfactory examination of the outer regions in the cloud, which evolve on much longer time-scales than the material near the stellar system. Replacing the binary with a point mass, we were able to run the simulation much further, allowing a better examination of the evolution of the outer regions. The results of this part of the simulation are represented by the dashed radii curves in figure 1. It must be noted here that for a radius of less that $`3\times 10^{17}`$cm from the protostars the results for the accretion are not as accurate as the original simulation due to the large accretion radius of the point mass, but this does not affect the results outside this region. All calculations of kinetic energies and radii in this letter are obtained from the centre of mass of material that will eventually end up in the stars, rather than the centre of mass of the entire cloud. The Lagrangian particle nature of SPH makes this possible. This gives a picture of the star formation process as seen by the material that is actually involved and allows for a better estimate of the star formation efficiency.

## 3 Evolution

### 3.1 General Properties

The evolution of this cloud can be split roughly into three phases: turbulent compression, general expansion of the gas, and a final gravitational collapse for a subset of the material. Column density snapshots from the simulation can be seen in figure 2, showing the effect of the turbulent motions and how the gas eventually evolves to form a small stellar system.

The simulation starts with a uniform sphere of gas with a turbulent energy field. The large random motions quickly dominate with shocks producing the filamentary structure typical of turbulent regions. Densities at the centre of these filaments reach $`25`$ times the initial density of the cloud. Despite this increase in density, they are not self-gravitating structures. In fact they are highly transitory, existing for only a few tenths of a free-fall time. The turbulent motions lead to essentially one dimensional compression which does not produce a decrease in the local Jeans mass (Doroshkevich 1980; Lubow & Pringle 1993; Clarke 1999) and hence the gas is generally unbound. A 1-D compression does not decrease the effective gravitational radius of an unbound parcel of gas. Thus, it cannot alter the boundness of a clump unless it decreases its thermal energy content. Significantly, these transitory structures provide the seeds for the fragmentation that occurs during the later collapse phase.

Figure 1 shows the Lagrangian radii that contain fixed fractions of the cloud’s mass, and how these change with time. The global expansion is readily apparent from the figure, as is the extent of the expansion by the onset of star formation. The initial turbulence decreases during the first free-fall time, leading to a general expansion of the cloud. After the random motions have been damped out in the shocks, expansion is the main component of the velocities. During this phase, most of the detailed filamentary structure is erased, with only one large elongated body of gas remaining.

Around $`t=2t_{ff}`$, the expansion for a small fraction of the material, up to roughly 5%, stops and this gas starts to fall back in. As the Lagrangian radii show, this is an inside out process. The inner 5% starts contracting before the outer layers and in-fall occurs progressively later as we move away from the centre. It does differ however from the classic inside-out process described by Shu (1977), since the system is not collapsing from a static starting point, but rather from the re-contraction of an initially expanding medium. The inner 5% corresponds roughly to a thermal Jeans mass and is able to collapse once the kinetic energy has been dissipated. Gravitational contraction forms a small dense core which becomes the natal site for a stellar system. The highly aspherical form of the core allows fragmentation to occur, preventing the formation of a single star. The gas splits into four protostars, arranging themselves in two tight binaries. This system then decays with one star being ejected and the remaining 3 left in a hierarchical triple system. At the end of the initial simulation, the protostars contain roughly 17% of the original mass of the system, and a further 5% is incorporated into the various circumbinary/stellar discs. The inner binary is composed of protostars of mass 0.95 and 1.79M. The third protostar that makes up the bound triple system is 2.13M and the escaper is the lightest member at 0.37M.

### 3.2 Star formation efficiency

The most significant feature of this simulation is that a large fraction of the gas is expelled from the cloud, resulting in a naturally low star formation efficiency. Escaping gas arises due to excess and undamped energy in the cloud. The mass that is bound therefore represents an upper limit to the possible final system mass. In principle, the most reliable method of determining the star forming efficiency of the cloud is to let the simulation run until all gas has either escaped or been accreted. Obviously this is unpractical with current computational methods, so we must look to other methods to obtain our results. Unfortunately, simply calculating the energy of each SPH particle at the end of simulation does not unambiguously yield a value for the efficiency. The long-range nature of gravity is such that unbound material contributes to the potential energy of the entire cloud. Consequently, material that appears to be bound might actually become unbound once the escaping regions have blown away. Fortunately, the fraction of unbound material, and thus escaping mass, yields an accurate upper limit to the amount of material available for star formation.

The evolution of the unbound fraction is followed in figure 3. We see a sharp fall in this fraction during the first free-fall time. This is simply a result of the decaying turbulent energy field, as kinetic energy is dissipated in shocks. After $`t=t_{ff}`$, the unbound fraction remains roughly constant for the remainder of the simulation. At the point of star formation, at least 40% of the cloud is unbound, thereby placing an upper limit of the star formation efficiency at 60%.

The Lagrangian radii in figure 1 give another estimate for the star formation efficiency. The dashed lines, obtained from the period in the simulation where the close binary is merged into a single protostar, reveal that radius containing 50% of the mass appears to have reached a constant value. This indicates that the 50% fraction is the boundary between in-falling and expanding matter. This suggests a slightly lower value for the efficiency than we obtained by looking at the energy. In fact the Lagrangian radii containing 60% of the cloud shows no sign of recontracting.

Although turbulence does not directly induce fragmentation in the cloud for the reasons given in the previous section, it does play an important role in determining the mass that gets converted into stars. The fraction of mass with a decreasing potential energy represents the material that is actively involved in compression. From figure 3 we see that this fraction undergoes a sharp initial rise and a gentler fall during the first free-fall time. Again this is just a consequence of the turbulent compression and creation of transient filamentary structure. During this phase, just over 40% of the mass is involved in these shocks and as a result loses kinetic energy. Having lost this energy, the gas is able to contribute to star formation. At the end of the simulation all the mass contained in the protostars and the circumbinary disc had originally been involved in shocks during the turbulent phase. The turbulent compression in this simulation is therefore linked to the fraction of the mass which is involved in the star formation process.

It must be noted here that in reality the tenuous outer layers of the cloud, are unlikely to be able to find their way onto the stellar system. Clouds like the one presented here, or cores as they are known at this scale, do not exist in isolation but commonly in crowded regions (Motte, André, Neri, 1998; Testi & Sargent 1998). In such an environment, tidal forces can have an important effect on the dynamics of gas, stripping away loosely bound material. As well as contending with tidal effects the low density regions outside dense cores are associated with high velocity flows (Larson 1981; Padoan et al 2001), providing a hostile environment for quiescent, tenuous gas.

## 4 Implications for the star forming process

The results presented here follow the evolution of a molecular cloud containing a supersonic turbulent velocity field which has greater energy than that of the cloud’s self-gravity. Despite the globally unbound nature of the cloud, the freely decaying turbulence (from shocks) results in dynamically quiescent regions where gravity is able evoke collapse and subsequent star formation. Since not all of the cloud is involved in the shocks, less than half the mass is able to undergo star formation, with the remaining material escaping the self-gravity of the system. Four protostars are produced by the gravitational fragmentation, three of which are in a triple system which is formed by the ejection of the fourth body.

The fact that bound structure formed from a dynamically unbound cloud, has important implications for the star formation process. This illustrates that GMCs need not be globally bound in order to produce their observed stellar populations, although more detailed calculations at the correct scale are needed to confirm this. Internal turbulent motions are able to dissipate enough kinetic energy in supersonic shocks to leave coherent regions where gravitational forces can dominate. The rest of the cloud can then escape, allowing GMCs to dissolve of their own accord instead of requiring some unbinding mechanism. The end result is a GMC that is naturally inefficient at forming stars. This supports a large scale picture of star formation in which GMCs are formed dynamically from the accumulation of molecular gas (Pringle et al 2001; Elmegreen 2001). Self-gravity need play no role in the formation and evolution of GMCs upto the point of star formation.

Star formation from globally unbound giant molecular clouds is able to provide a simple and interesting alternative to the efficiency problem that is normally attributed to a combination of magnetic fields and feedback processes. All gas which is able to dissipate enough kinetic energy to become bound will be involved in the star forming process. The ruling factor on the efficiency is therefore the amount of gas that is involved in shocks, which is in turn linked to the strength and power spectrum of the turbulent field (Klessen et al 2000). More simulations will be needed to investigate how the efficiency is linked to both the initial Jeans number and the Mach number of the turbulence.

## Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Jim Pringle, Bruce Elmegreen, Richard Larson, Ken Rice and Steve Vine for helpful discussion and comments which greatly improved the paper.


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# Three-Dimensional Adaptive Mesh Refinement Simulations of Point-Symmetric Nebulae

## 1. Introduction

The interaction between a slow disk-shaped inner AGB nebula and a fast stellar wind as a mechanism to produce bipolar bubbles is by now well established. In this generalized interacting stellar winds model (see Balick & Frank 2002 for a review) the shape of the dense gas around the star is assumed to be a disk or a toroid. Analytical (Icke 1988; Icke et al. 1989) and numerical (e.g. Soker & Livio 1989; Icke et al. 1992; Mellema et al. 1991) work shows that this mechanism works very well.

However, many circumstellar nebulae have a multipolar or point-symmetric shape (Schwarz 1993; Sahai & Trauger 1998). Icke (2003, this volume) proposed that these nebulae are formed in a wind-disk interaction where the disk confining the fast wind is warped. One can produce such a warp around a single star, from the combined effects of irradiation and cooling (e.g. Pringle 1996; Maloney et al. 1996).

Whereas Icke’s computations were restricted to a two-dimensional proof-of-principle, we now present a first series of fully three-dimensional hydrodynamic computations of such a wind-disk interaction.

## 2. Radiation driven warping

When an accretion disk is subject to external torques, it may become unstable to warping and when irradiated by a sufficiently luminous central star even an initially flat disk will warp (e.g. Pringle 1996; Maloney et al. 1996). For this mechanism to work, it is essential that the disk is optically thick for the stellar radiation and for its own cooling flux. This restricts the disks in our model to a specific subclass with relatively high density and low temperature.

For a PN the luminosity of the central star alone is sufficiently high to induce a radiation driven warp. Following Pringle (1997), an expression for the radius $`R_{crit}`$ beyond which the disk is unstable to radiation driven warping is found:

$$R_{crit}=(2\pi /A)^2,$$
(1)
with the contant $`A`$ defined by $`A^21/4c^2G^1M_{}^1L_{}^2\eta ^2\dot{M}_{acc}^2`$. Here $`c`$ is the speed of light, $`G`$ the gravitational constant, $`\eta \nu _2/\nu _1`$ is the ratio of the azimuthal to the radial viscosity, $`M_{}`$ is the mass and $`L_{}`$ the luminosity of the central star and $`\dot{M}_{acc}`$ is the disk’s accretion rate. We assumed a surface density $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_d=\dot{M}_{acc}/(3\pi \nu _1)`$ (e.g. Pringle 1981).

In a cartesian coordinate system, the warped disk surface is given by

$$𝐱(R,\varphi )=R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \mathrm{cos}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\gamma & +& \mathrm{sin}\varphi \mathrm{cos}\gamma \mathrm{cos}\beta \hfill \\ \hfill \mathrm{cos}\varphi \mathrm{cos}\gamma & +& \mathrm{sin}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\gamma \mathrm{cos}\beta \hfill \\ & & \mathrm{sin}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\beta \hfill \end{array}\right),$$
(2)
with local disk tilt angle $`\beta (R,\varphi )`$, and orientation angle of the line of nodes $`\gamma (R,\varphi )`$. Here, $`R`$ and $`\varphi `$ are the non-orthogonal radial and azimuthal coordinates, respectively, pointing to the surface of the disk (Pringle 1996). In our model calculations we adopt the case of a steady precessing disk with no growth and zero torque at the origin. This gives $`\gamma =A\sqrt{R}`$ and $`\beta =\mathrm{sin}\gamma /\gamma `$ (Maloney et al. 1996) in the precessing frame.

## 3. 3D AMR Simulations

We used the three-dimensional hydrocode Flash (Fryxell et al. 2000) to model the interaction between a spherical wind and a warped disk. This parallelized code implements block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) initially developed by Berger & Oliger (1984) and a PPM type hydrosolver (Woodward & Colella 1984).

To construct the warped disk, Eq.(1) was combined with a constant ‘wedge angle’ $`\theta _d`$ and a proper value for $`A`$, i.e. $`R_d`$ was taken to be a few times $`R_{crit}1\mathrm{AU}`$, see Eq. (2). This disk was given a constant density which, through the density contrast $`\chi `$, resulted in a value for the environment density $`n_e`$. The spherical wind was implemented as an inner boundary condition and given a $`1/r^2`$ density profile and a constant wind velocity $`v_w`$. The pressure was calculated from an equation of state with a constant Poisson index $`\gamma =1.1`$, resulting in a highly compressible, momentum-driven flow.

To test our code we ran a number of two-dimensional simulations, an example of which is shown in Fig.1.

After this we ran wind-disk simulations in three dimensions on a cartesian grid with an effective resolution of up to $`512^3`$ cells using five levels of refinement. We used the following parameters: $`n_e=10^9\mathrm{cm}^3`$, $`\chi =100`$, $`\theta _d=5^o`$, and $`v_w=200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. In Fig.2 we present a visualization of the three-dimensional shape of the swept up shell through isosurfaces at different viewing angles. We also derived the corresponding synthesized $`H\alpha `$ images by projecting the three-dimensional data cube onto the plane of the sky. For this, we simply integrated the density squared along the line of sight and used this as a rough estimate for the emission. The images show that the interaction of a spherical stellar wind with a warped disk results in a wide variety of point-symmetric shapes. Movies of these simulations can be found at http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/AstroHydro3D/.

### Acknowledgments.

V.I. expresses his gratitude to Raghvendra Sahai and Hugo Schwarz for lively discussions that were the primary cause for taking up this subject.

The research of G.M. has been made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The software used in this work was in part developed by the DOE-supported ASCI/Alliance Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes at the University of Chicago.

Our work was sponsored by the National Computing Foundation (NCF) for the use of supercomputer facilities, with financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), under grant number $`\mathrm{614.021.016}`$.

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# Tracing the relation between black holes and dark haloes

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# Hadronic Multi-Particle Final State Measurements with CLAS at Jefferson Lab

## 1 Introduction

Neutrino physics has evolved over the past three decades from a niche area with limited experimental exposure to a forefront field having important applications to numerous fundamental studies. The impact of the observation of neutrino oscillations has been profound, since it is a clear example of physics that may be unknown to the Standard Model. The modern revolution in astrophysics has been powerfully shaped by neutrinos as their potential role in supernovae and dark matter has clarified. These points of progress have stimulated intensive improvements in neutrino experiments, such as high rate, long-baseline experiments designed to characterize neutrino oscillations.

A concomitant of achieving high fluxes, however, is that the understanding of systematic uncertainties in the measurements must be revisited. In particular, since most experiments use nuclear targets as a partial means of attaining higher rates, a better understanding of the lepto-nuclear response becomes critical in interpreting statistically precise data from neutrino detectors. Symbiotically, an improved understanding of leptonuclear physics in the neutrino sector is likely to emerge, particularly in combination with data from *electro-nuclear* experiments.

Electron scattering experiments have exerted an important influence on nuclear and particle physics for over half a century. From the discovery in the 1950’s that protons are not pointlike, to the discovery of ’scaling’ in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) that pointed to the existence of quarks, to the precise mapping of form factors of nuclei and nucleons, to the understanding of the spin structure of the proton, electron scattering has been the ’microscope of choice’ for understanding the structure of composite systems.

However, these achievements have been based on inclusive measurements, detecting only the scattered electrons. Studies of other particles emerging from the interactions has historically been badly hampered by low rates relative to hadron beams, which have much higher cross sections. The essential technical limitation on rates was the very low duty factor of accelerating cavities operating at high gradient, due to thermal limitations; experimental rates were therefore constrained by peak pulse intensities. The breakthrough technology of superconducting accelerating structures has removed this limitation, bringing the advent of accelerators with 100% duty cycle (’continuous wave’, or ’cw’). The first institution to implement a large-scale cw accelerator was the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in Newport News, Virginia, USA, which houses the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). CEBAF began operation in 1995.

CEBAF provides a 100 micron diameter electron beam of more than 100 microamperes with energies in the range 0.5-5.7 GeV to three experimental areas simultaneously. Beam bunches arrive at the targets every two nanoseconds, permitting high-luminosity coincidence measurements. Of the three experimental areas, Hall A and Hall C provide multiple high-resolution magnetic spectrometers with momentum acceptances ranging from 5% to 20% and angular acceptances ranging from 5 to 10 millisteradians, while Hall B houses a moderate resolution, large acceptance spectrometer. This instrument, the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) in Hall B, is capable of detecting multiple final-state charged and neutral hadrons over a wide range of angles and momenta. In the following sections, a description of the experimental capabilities of CLAS and its potential role in interpreting data from neutrino facilities is presented.

## 2 Description of CLAS

The primary instrument in Jefferson Lab’s Hall B, CLAS was constructed by the CLAS collaboration, an international alliance of 160 scientists from 39 academic institutions. Data taking began at the end of 1997. The scientific program centered around CLAS is exceptionally broad in scope, including:

* a comprehensive investigation of the properties of excited nucleons, with emphasis on searching for new resonances
* an epic study of the neutron magnetic form factor
* polarized structure functions of the proton and deuteron
* deep virtual Compton scattering and its connection to generalized parton distributions
* quark/hadron propagation through nuclear systems
* semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering on nucleons and nuclei
* exotic meson searches
* elementary and nuclear hyperon production
* two-nucleon correlations in light nuclei

The experimental requirements to satisfy this broad program include a few common elements that mandate employing a large acceptance spectrometer. These elements include the capability of measuring final states with multiple, nearly uncorrelated particles; or measurements that intrinsically require low beam current. Examples of the latter include polarized target experiments, and photon beam experiments using Bremsstrahlung photons that are energy-tagged by the associated electron.

The technical solution chosen to achieve large acceptance in an electron beam environment was a toroidal magnetic field, where the incident electron beam is directed along the toroidal axis of symmetry. This field configuration offers several advantages over solenoid or dipole fields: for instance, it has full acceptance over a wide range in scattering angle, and is field-free at the target location, which is critical for polarized target operation. A three-dimensional view of CLAS is depicted in Fig. 1, where the cutaway reveals details of the inner detector configuration. The field is produced by six kidney-shaped superconducting magnet coils sheathed in six thin stainless steel cryostats. This choice naturally segments the detector volume into six sectors. Three drift chamber layers sample the charged particle trajectory before, during, and after the bend in the magnetic field. In the forward direction, electron identification is obtained at the trigger level by a combination of gas Cerenkov counters and an electromagnetic shower calorimeter, which subtend scattering angles from 8 to 45 degrees from the nominal target location, while the drift chambers span the range 8 to 142 degrees in scattering angle. This angular range is matched by an array of 5 centimeter thick scintillators which are optimized for precision time measurements; for many of the charged hadrons of interest, the time-of-flight technique can determine the hadron mass, thus distinguishing charged pions, kaons, protons, and deuterons. There are also calorimeters at larger angles in two sectors. In addition to electron and positron detection and pion rejection, all calorimeters are used for neutron and neutral pion detection. Two-dimensional ’slices’ through the detector are shown in Fig. 2. In the upper panel, the electron beam is incident from the left; the trajectories of charged particles may be seen through the drift chambers and magnetic field volume. The electron track can also be seen to interact with the forward electromagnetic shower calorimeter. In the lower panel of this figure, the acceptance in the azimuthal angle for this four-track event is evident.

The field-free central region of the spectrometer offers great flexibility in the selection of targets. Cryogenic liquid hydrogen, deuterium, 3He and 4He have all been used, as well as solid targets of carbon, iron, and lead. Cryogenic polarized solid NH3 and ND3 targets with superconducting Helmholtz coils have also been used for double polarization measurements.

## 3 Description of CLAS Data

For electron beam experiments, the spectrometer is usually operated at its design luminosity of $`10^{34}cm^2s^1`$; this produces nominally a megahertz rate of hadronic interactions and a gigahertz rate of Møller electrons. The drift chambers are protected from the latter by a small toroidal magnetic shield produced by a normal-conducting magnet located inside the innermost drift chamber. A highly-configurable fast trigger preferentially selects events where a scattered electron intercepts all three drift chambers, reducing the accepted event rate to 3-4 kilohertz. More restrictive triggers are used occasionally for specialized measurements. The data transfer rate can exceed 20 megabytes per second, or approximately a terabyte per day when operational efficiencies are taken into account. Depending on the experiment configurations, from 10 to 30 billion triggers are collected annually.

In distinction to traditional electron scattering measurements, in CLAS a wide range of angles and momenta are reconstructed simultaneously at given beam energy. As a result, continuous spectra are obtained for 4-momentum transfer squared ($`Q^2`$), invariant mass of the hadronic system ($`W`$), and hadron kinematic variables. An example is shown in Fig. 3, which illustrates the range of $`Q^2`$ and $`W`$ obtained from a 4 GeV beam.

A typical event reconstruction begins by identifying the scattered electron for a given event using information from the Cerenkov detector and the electromagnetic shower calorimeter. Subsequently, hadrons are identified by calculating the time-of-flight (TOF) of other charged tracks in the event and deriving their mass from the TOF and the measured momentum. Neutral particles can be measured directly, or can also be inferred using the missing mass technique. As an example, in the reaction $`e+pe^{}+p+X`$ where a scattered electron and proton are measured, the mass of the unmeasured system X can be calculated. With the typical resolution of 10-20 MeV, missing hadrons can easily be identified. An illustration of this can be seen in Fig. 4, in which W is plotted against missing mass. Here the decay of resonances with masses in the range 1.2-2.2 GeV into $`\pi ^0`$, $`\eta `$, and $`\omega `$ mesons is easily identified. A further illustration of this technique applied to successively more complex events is shown in Fig. 5, where up to four hadrons are measured in addition to the scattered electron.

## 4 Neutrino Connection

Now that the basic phenomenon of neutrino oscillations has been established, a program of measurements is needed for its characterization.

For instance, determination of the mass differences and elements of the mixing matrix can be carried out with a combination of high-statistics, accelerator-based long-baseline experiments; such experiments are planned in the U. S. and Japan. The maximal probability of observing neutrino oscillations for the relevant experiments occurs for neutrino energies ranging from 0.5 - 3.0 GeV.

Neutrino and electron interactions with hadronic matter in this energy range typically produce multi-hadron final states via complex interaction mechanisms. The elementary production mechanisms on protons and neutrons include elastic scattering, resonance production, and deep inelastic scattering. These mechanisms are modulated in lepto*nuclear* interactions by Fermi motion, Pauli blocking, coherent pion production, hadron absorption and propagation through nuclei, nuclear form factors, and hadron formation length effects. While some of these topics have been thoroughly studied in the electron sector, much less is known from neutrino measurements. Because neutrino detectors are of necessity based on simple, integrating measurement schemes, such as Cerenkov light emission in water, the precise details of the final state are unknown and must be simulated. The complexity of the neutrino-nuclear response, coupled to integrating detection technologies, translates into uncertainties in the interpretation of neutrino data.

However, electron scattering and neutrino scattering are closely connected. The differences in the lepton tensor are trivial, and much is known about the relationships between the hadronic currents interacting with the two types of probes. A systematic theoretical treatment that describes hadron production in electro-nuclear interactions can in turn be used to predict hadron production in neutrino-nuclear interactions, beginning with the elementary production, and continuing with nuclear targets. Because CLAS offers multi-hadron final state measurements for few-GeV electrons that can constrain such a theoretical effort, a new and unique opportunity for a cross-disciplinary study of leptonuclear physics now exists for the first time.

A full program of this type would involve developing or adapting models to describe the elementary reactions on protons and neutrons. The models should be designed so that they can describe both electron beam and neutrino beam interactions. These could be tested against the large body of existing CLAS data for hydrogen and deuterium targets. This data has been acquired for a number of beam energies and experimental conditions; elastic, resonance, and DIS data are essentially always taken together in the same dataset, although the high W cutoff varies slightly depending on trigger thresholds. While there already exist models for such interactions, the requirements here are somewhat different than the typical purpose for developing descriptions of the data, and will therefore involve different choices. For instance, the specification of the higher resonance contributions may be adequate at a more phenomenological level than would be true of, e.g., a search for small contributions from missing resonances, a typical motivation for CLAS measurements. At the same time, attaining a good description of the data over a wider range in W may be more critical for neutrino studies than, for instance, studying the properties of a particular resonance in exhaustive detail, another typical motivation of CLAS measurements. Above the two-pion threshold, the multi-hadron production mechanisms for resonances may have to be treated with a more phenomenological approach because of the complexity involved, but the many-fold differential cross sections can be constrained well by testing against CLAS data, even for two and three pion production.

Once the models for elementary interactions are constructed and tested, they can be turned to predict the interactions with nuclear systems. Here a host of new effects must be considered, as were listed above. At low energies and low momentum transfers, Pauli blocking, coherent pion production, and nuclear form factors will measurably alter the observed hadron yields. In the DIS regime, the formation lengths of hadrons will come into play; the determination of these formation lengths is a subject of one CLAS program involving nuclear targets. The effects of hadron absorption and propagation through nuclei, as well as Fermi motion, have a strong impact on the data at all relevant energies. Existing CLAS data on carbon and iron targets, as well as $`{}_{}{}^{2}H`$, $`{}_{}{}^{3}He`$, and $`{}_{}{}^{4}He`$, can be used to study the A dependence of these effects; to access kinematic regions not yet measured in CLAS, new data can be acquired. A particularly important effect is the final state interaction influencing the reaction products in the nucleus; since this large effect is nearly identical for neutrino beams and electron beams, it can be predicted with confidence for neutrinos once the electron beam data is well-described. Needless to say, there are excellent prospects, not only for studying neutrino-nucleus interactions, but also for improving our understanding of the nuclear physics involved at a more fundamental level. This cross-disciplinary, symbiotic motivation holds the promise to involve a wider pool of talent and expertise in these compelling studies.

## 5 Conclusions

The advent of cw electron-beam accelerators, together with advances in detector and magnet technology, now permit measurements of multi-hadron final states with high statistical precision in many-fold differential cross sections. The combination of electron beam data from CLAS and a broad-based theoretical effort connecting these data to neutrino scattering holds great promise for advances in both neutrino science and in nuclear physics. This new work will enable precision determinations of fundamental quantities such as the neutrino mixing matrix elements in detailed studies of neutrino oscillations.