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# Starbursts and Extra-planar H𝛼 from SINGG

## 1. Introduction to SINGG

Here I present preliminary morphological results from SINGG \- the Survey for Ionization in Neutral Gas Galaxies. SINGG is an approved and ongoing survey project of the National Optical Astronomy Observatoryical (NOAO). It is a follow-up survey to HIPASS - the H i Parkes All Sky Survey (Staveley-Smith et al. 1997). HIPASS has surveyed the entire southern sky for neutral hydrogen emission out to nearly 13000 km s-1. SINGG is intended to look for star formation, as traced by H$`\alpha `$ emission, in this H i selected sample.

The primary motivation for SINGG is to measure the star formation rate density of the local universe, $`\dot{\rho }_{\mathrm{SFR}}(0)`$. The selection by 21cm emission bypasses all the common optical selection biases (e.g. dust content and surface brightness), which should allow a more complete and representative survey of local star formation. The planned incorporation of ultraviolet data from GALEX and infrared data from IRAS and SIRTF will allow a multi-wavelength determination of $`\dot{\rho }_{\mathrm{SFR}}(0)`$, addressing issues of dust extinction and the initial mass function. SINGG is also intended to examine the H ii region luminosity function, determining how it varies as a function of morphology and H i mass, $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$.

In this paper I address some of the morphological questions that motivate SINGG. In particular (1) What fraction of gas rich galaxies are dormant? That is, what fraction contains no detectable star formation? (2) How common are starbursts? And, (3) how common are galactic winds? Addressing these questions will give us a better understanding of the life-cycle of star formation, and how star forming galaxies enrich the inter-galactic medium.

After presenting a few more details of the SINGG survey in §2, I discuss the H$`\alpha `$ detectability of HIPASS sources in §3. In §4 I present plans for making an objectively defined starburst sample and estimate the starburst incident rate. In §5 I summarize a morphological survey for extra-planar H$`\alpha `$. Finally §6 summarizes these preliminary results.

## 2. The SINGG survey: more details

The SINGG sample is selected from the HIPASS survey completely blind to the UV through infrared properties of the sources. A total of 471 targets with a peak H i flux density $`f_\nu 0.05`$ Jy in the Parkes 21cm spectrum were chosen by $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ so as to have a flat distribution in log($`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$). This is impossible at the lowest and highest masses, where the HIPASS sample is volume limited. Otherwise, we have preferentially selected the nearest galaxies in each $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ bin so as to better resolve H ii regions. Figure 1 shows the $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ distribution of the final sample.

The observations with the CTIO 1.5m typically comprise three exposures in a narrow band filter (matched to the wavelength of H$`\alpha `$ at the target’s velocity) and a broad band $`R`$ filter, for total exposure times of 30 and 6 minutes respectively. We use specialized software from the high-$`z`$ supernova group to align the images, combine the images within each filter and subtract the scaled $`R`$-band image to produce the net H$`\alpha `$ image. The final images typically have 1.5′′ seeing. The $`5\sigma `$ point source detection limit is typically $`F_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }4\times 10^{16}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. On scales $`>15^{\prime \prime }`$ the images are typically flat to better than 1% of the sky level allowing large scale features with $`S_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }>3\times 10^{18}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{arcsec}^2`$ (0.6 Rayleigh) to be discerned at the $`5\sigma `$ level after sufficient smoothing.

## 3. Star formation in H i selected galaxies

We find that all extra-galactic HIPASS targets display H$`\alpha `$ emission. This result is based on data from four observing runs, comprising 90 extra-galactic HIPASS targets (this excludes two frames which targeted High Velocity Clouds and one frame strongly affected by twilight sky). The result is summarized in Fig. 2. All HIPASS targets are comprised of at least one H$`\alpha `$ emitting galaxy, defined as a spatially extended and distinct source in the H$`\alpha `$ and/or $`R`$ image having readily detected net H$`\alpha `$ emission. In all cases, much of the H$`\alpha `$ emission is organized into knots or high surface brightness concentrations – H ii regions or starbursts. Hence, all targets are undergoing some star formation.

While extra-galactic H i imaging surveys often turn up sources that were previously uncataloged in optical surveys, free-floating H i sources with no optical counterpart are rare (Zwaan et al. 1997; Ryan-Weber et al. 2002). One possible exception is HIPASS J1712-64 (Kilborn et al. 2000). However, even in this case the possibility that this may be an extreme version of an HVC bound to our galaxy has not been ruled out. The dearth of free-floating extra-galactic H i may be due to the fact that when there is sufficient H i for a gas cloud to be self gravitating, it is gravitationally unstable until some stars form so that they can heat the ISM enough to arrest further star formation. Low mass H i clouds that are not self-gravitating would have low column density and are susceptible to ionization by the UV background (Zwaan et al. 1997). So H i is either associated with stars or destroyed.

Our results allow a stronger statement - dormant galaxies are rare or do not exist. That is, if a galaxy has an ISM with $`_{\mathrm{HI}}>3\times 10^7_{}`$ it also has recently (within 10 Myr) formed high mass stars. The gravitational instability in the ISM is not halted by feedback from evolved stellar populations. Instead new stars continue to form, including the massive stars that ionize H ii regions.

While some star formation is always found, the range of star formation morphologies wide. We find low surface brightness dwarfs with a few faint H ii regions, giant spirals with morphologies ranging from flocculent to grand-design, high central surface brightness starbursts (discussed below), and residual star formation in early type disk galaxies. SINGG also finds many multiple sources, particularly for $`_{\mathrm{HI}}>10^{9.5}_{}`$ (Fig 2a.). The higher multiplicity fraction, may in part be due to the generally larger distance of the highest mass sources and thus larger projected field. In many cases the companions are obvious, having similar angular extent and a merging, colliding or interacting morphology. In other cases the companions are less obvious small sources, easily mistaken for field galaxies, save for their H$`\alpha `$ emission. I conclude that narrow band imaging is an effective means to locate companion galaxies.

The SINGG images also frequently reveal unresolved emission line sources projected far from the primary H$`\alpha `$ source on the frame. The images alone are incapable of discriminating what these emission line dots, or “ELdots” are. Possibilities include outer disk or halo H ii regions (Ferguson, et al. 1998), very faint companion galaxies (e.g. similar to those proposed by Blitz et al. 1999), or background emission line galaxies (Boroson, Salzer & Trotter 1993). In her contribution, Emma Ryan-Weber presents results from our first spectroscopic follow-up observations of ELdots.

## 4. Starbursts with SINGG

Starburst galaxies are systems which are experiencing a short duration episode of intense star formation. Beyond this statement the term starburst is not really well defined in the literature. The SINGG sample selection has netted many well known galaxies which have been called starbursts. These include M83, NGC 1705, NGC 1808, and NGC 5253. All have high central surface brightness, and frequently have a galactic wind morphology.

One goal of SINGG is to provide an objectively defined starburst sample. We will look at three quantities often used to define starbursts: H$`\alpha `$ equivalent width, $`EW(\mathrm{H}\alpha )`$, effective H$`\alpha `$ surface brightness, $`S_e(H\alpha )`$, and gas consumption timescale, $`\tau _{\mathrm{gas}}`$. A high $`EW(\mathrm{H}\alpha )`$ indicates a large SFR compared to the past average. High values of $`S_e(H\alpha )`$ indicates currently intense star formation. A short $`\tau _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ indicates that star formation can not continue for long at its present rate. Hence the three measures of star formation are complementary. Our plan is to use the well known starbursts in the sample as a training set to determine the best cuts in these quantities for our objectively defined starburst sample.

Currently we have defined a sample of starbursts by $`S_e(H\alpha )`$. The incidence of these starbursts as a function $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ is given in Fig. 2b. The sample includes well known starbursts, and sources selected to have similar surface brightness. This yields a a first pass starburst incidence rate of $`13/9015`$% of SINGG targets containing at least one starburst galaxy.

## 5. Extra-planar H$`\alpha `$

To address the incidence rate of extra-planar H$`\alpha `$, or outflows, we have compiled a database of the largest possibly expanding structures in each galaxy. These have morphologies including bubbles, rays or chimneys, and edge-brightened and filled fans with or without caps. The database notes whether the source is in the center (i.e. a galactic wind) or outer regions (e.g. a fountain or chimney) of the galaxy, the source’s radius $`r`$ and orientation relative to the host’s minor axis, its morphology and finally whether the source is seen in H$`\alpha `$ emission (almost all cases) or continuum absorption (just a few cases). In order to focus on extra-planar ISM we limited ourselves to structures with a minor axis extension, and with hosts having axial ratio $`a/b>2`$. We considered two samples, structures having $`r>0.5`$ Kpc, and those with $`r>1.0`$ Kpc. We limit ourselves to sources with $`r>5^{\prime \prime }`$ so that the structures are well resolved, hence the two samples are distance limited to within 21 and 42 Mpc respectively ($`H_0=70\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$).

Figure 3a and 3b show $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ histograms of the H$`\alpha `$ emitting galaxies meeting the distance and $`a/b`$ cuts for the two samples. Sources are distinguished by whether the largest expanding structure is central or in the outer regions of the galaxy. Nearly half of the hosts have extra-planar structures with $`r>0.5`$ kpc, while about a quarter have structures larger than 1.0 Kpc. The galaxies with extra-planar H$`\alpha `$ are not all starbursts. This is true even if we limit ourselves to just the cases with central outflows, which are also found in galaxies with modest values of $`S_e(H\alpha )`$.

The histograms imply that the central outflows tend to be in lower $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ hosts, while larger mass systems tend to host fountains. However, we have found high H i mass H$`\alpha `$ emitting galaxies that have strong galactic winds that just don’t quite make our distance and $`a/b`$ cuts. One case is the well known central starburst in NGC 1808 ($`\mathrm{log}(_{\mathrm{HI}}/_{})=9.4`$) which is one of the two cases where the outflow is best traced by dust lanes. However, its $`a/b1.5`$, is too round to make our selection. The three galaxies with the largest galactic winds ($`r=6`$ to 12 Kpc) seen in the database are all contained within a single Hickson Compact Group (HCG 16, combined $`\mathrm{log}(_{\mathrm{HI}}/_{})=10.3`$). However, with $`D=54`$ Mpc, it does not make our distance cut. These examples show that there are indeed high mass systems with central galactic winds, however we need a larger sample to find them in statistically significant quantities.

## 6. Summary

The strategy of SINGG is to survey for star formation in the galaxies known to contain its essential ingredient, interstellar hydrogen, i.e. we know where the fuel is; that’s where to look for the fire. This has proven to be a very effective approach, since we find that there are no dormant galaxies: when a galaxy has $`_{\mathrm{HI}}>3\times 10^7_{}`$ it is observed to be undergoing some star formation. The amount of H i does not prove to be a good predictor of star formation morphology which varies greatly at fixed $`_{\mathrm{HI}}`$. About 15% of H i selected galaxies are starbursts. Extra-planar H$`\alpha `$ also appears to be a common phenomenon with half of edge-on galaxies having features with a radius $`0.5`$ Kpc, and about a quarter having a radius $`1`$ Kpc.

### Acknowledgments.

I thank the other members of the SINGG collaboration for their contribution to the survey. They are Harry Ferguson, Rachel Webster, Michael Frinkwater, Ken Freeman, Dan Hanish, Tim Heckman, Rob Kennicutt, Virginia Kilborn, Patricia Knezek, Bärbel Koribalski, Martin Meyer, Sally Oey, Mary Putman, Emma Ryan-Weber, Chris Smith, Lister Staveley-Smith and Martin Zwaan. I am particularly grateful to Dan Hanish for doing much of the data reduction and to Patricia Knezek to reading this manuscript and suggesting improvements.

## References

Blitz, L., Spergel, D.N, Teuben, P.J., Hartmann, D., & Burton, W.B. 1999, ApJ, 514, 818

Boroson, T.A., Salzer, J.J., & Trotter, A. 1993, AJ, 412, 524

Ferguson, A.M.N., Wyse, R.F.G., Gallagher, III, J.S., & Hunter, D.A. 1998, ApJ 506, L19.

Kilborn, V., et al. 2000, AJ, 120, 1342

Ryan-Weber, E. et al., 2002, AJ, 2002, 124, 1954

Staveley-Smith, L. 1997, PASAu, 14, 111

Zwaan, M.A., Briggs, F.H., Sprayberry, D., & Sorar, E. 1997, ApJ, 490, 173


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# A Review of X-ray Observations of Supernova Remnants

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Although radio and optical observations have played an important role in identifying and characterizing supernova remnants (SNRs), most of the shock heated material is primarily visible in X-rays, having temperatures of typically $`10^610^7`$ K. The emission mechanisms are bremsstrahlung and line radiation, but a number of remnants are now known to emit X-ray synchrotron radiation from ultra-relativistic electrons, as well. This was already known for pulsar wind nebula dominated, or Crab-like remnants, which fall outside the scope of this review, but also shell-type remnants like SN 1006 emit synchrotron radiation from electrons accelerated by the blast wave .

The X-ray line emission of SNRs is in particular interesting, as it allows the study of the most abundant metals, the so called $`\alpha `$-elements, which prominently feature in the X-ray spectra of young SNRs like Cas A, Tycho (SN 1576) and Kepler (SN 1064). This line emission, and mass estimates based on the X-ray emission, give important information on the nucleosynthesis yields of the explosions, which can then be compared to theoretical supernova (SN) models .

The line and bremsstrahlung emission give us a window on the past of the SNR: its progenitor and the SN explosion. X-ray synchrotron radiation, on the other hand, is interesting as it provides a window on cosmic ray shock acceleration. SNRs are thought to be the primary source of cosmic rays up to, and possibly beyond, energies of $`10^{15.5}`$ eV, at which energy the spectrum has a break, usually referred to as “the knee”, However, direct evidence for a SNR origin for cosmic ray particles other than electrons is lacking. For a long time the observational support for a SNR origin of cosmic rays was the detection of radio synchrotron emission from SNRs, revealing the presence of cosmic ray electrons up to energies of a few GeV. Recently the detection of X-ray synchrotron radiation from SNRs have substantially extended this to $`100`$ TeV .

In this review I will discuss recent findings concerning both the study of fresh nucleosynthesis and cosmic ray acceleration in SNRs, emphasizing the role of X-ray observations, including results based on BeppoSAX observations.

## 2 SUPERNOVA REMNANTS AND THEIR PROGENITORS

Two recent astrophysical developments have boosted the interest in supernovae (SNe): the use of Type Ia SNe as standard candles to study the geometry of the Universe (e.g. ), and the discovery that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) may be associated with Type Ib/c SNe (e.g. ).

Type Ia and Type Ib/c SNe are very different objects (see Fig. 1): Type Ia SNe are probably caused by the thermonuclear disruption of a C-O white dwarf following mass accretion, but the nature of the binary system, nor the disruption mechanism (detonation, deflagration, delayed detonation) are yet known . Type Ib/c and Type II SNe, on the other hand, are core collapse SNe of massive stars, i.e. $`>8`$ M while on the main sequence (MS). The classification is for historical reasons confusing. Only since two decades are Type Ib/c recognized as a special subclass, like Type Ia their optical spectra show no H absorption, but for Type Ibc the likely reason is the loss of the hydrogen envelope of a massive star, either due to binary mass transfer or due to a strong stellar wind.

The energy source for the explosion of core collapse SNe is the gravitational collapse of the stellar core. The stellar core itself will leave a neutron star or black hole behind, and the energy for the explosion comes from the release of gravitational binding energy. The energy is primarily released in the form of neutrinos, but to order 1% is kinetic energy. The SN-GRB connection has led to a new interest in the explosion mechanism itself. A large fraction of the GRB energy must be in the form of jets, and a natural question then is how these jets are formed and whether jet-formation plays a role in the explosion of core-collapse SNe in general.

### 2.1 Core collapse remnants

Both core-collapse and Type Ia SNe release $`10^{51}`$ erg in kinetic energy. It is therefore sometimes difficult to distinguish remnants from both types of explosions. However, the presence of a pulsar clearly identifies a remnant as a core collapse remnant. In other cases we have to rely on abundance patterns, if relatively unmixed ejecta are present, and circumstantial evidence such as the proximity of an OB association. Clearly identifiable ejecta are found in young remnants, but have also been found in SNRs of several thousand years old; e.g. the fast moving ejecta fragments associated with the Vela remnant , or Si-rich, X-ray emitting material from the center of the Cygnus Loop .

Younger remnants are useful to obtain a more complete understanding of nucleosynthesis yields. Especially the so called O-rich SNRs are important, as they are likely to be remnants of the most massive stars, which have a higher O yield. These remnants are therefore possibly remnants of Type Ib/c SNe. Among them are the young SNRs Cas A, G292.0+1.8 (MSH11-54) and E0102-7219 (Fig. 2). Initially their identification as O-rich was based on optical line emission, but X-ray spectroscopy confirms that they are O-rich. Interestingly, although they are probably remnants of very massive stars, which are thought to produce black holes rather than neutron stars , G292.0+1.8 harbors a 135 ms pulsar  and Cas A a neutron star candidate in the form of a non-pulsating point source, similar to another O-rich remnant, Puppis A . Cas A may have been a 18-25 M MS star, consistent with the presence of a neutron star, but a recent analysis of Chandra data of G292.0+1.8 led  to the conclusion that it is the remnant of a 30-40 M MS star, which according to  should have produced a black hole.

Cas A is the youngest galactic remnant, and one of the best studied ones (, for a review). It is also the remnant that was observed very extensively with BeppoSAX . One remarkable feature observed with BeppoSAX was the fact that the Fe-K line emission peaked in the southeast, outside the main Si-rich ejecta shell . Chandra has revealed that the Fe-K emission is not coming from shock heated circumstellar material, but from Fe-rich ejecta knots . This is quite remarkable, because, according to standard SN models, the Fe-rich shell lies inside the Si and O-rich shells. Some of the knots seem to be almost pure Fe, and have been identified as $`\alpha `$-rich freeze-out products . This process arises if during the explosion very hot material, $`5\times 10^9`$ K, rapidly expands. In the northern part of Cas A other Fe-rich material is found inside the main shell, but an X-ray Doppler study, based on XMM-Newton observations, reveals that the Fe in this region is moving faster than Si and S. The position of Fe inside the northern shell is therefore likely to be a projection effect .

The XMM-Newton study also confirms the large deviations from spherical symmetry in the expansion of Si, S and Fe, with the southeastern part having a bulk redshift and the northern part a bulk blueshift. The asymmetries are likely due to explosion asymmetries in the kinematics of the ejecta from the core as the forward shock, which is more indicative of the circumstellar medium and is marked by a narrow X-ray synchrotron emitting filament , is remarkably circular. An aspherical ejecta expansion has also been found for the SMC O-rich SNR E0102-7219 with Chandra-HETG high resolution spectroscopy .

Keeping in mind the GRB jets, one may wonder wonder whether the asymmetries in these likely Type Ib systems are related to the asymmetries in the much more energetic GRBs. Cas A has an interesting jet-like structure in the northeast, with a possible weaker counterpart in the west . However, it consists of Si-rich material, and is therefore unlikely to have formed close to the collapsing core. The Fe-rich core material on the other hand is clearly aspherical, but its kinematics do not reveal any bipolarity. This is not necessarily in disagreement with a scenario in which a SN explodes with a collapsar-like mechanism, i.e. an accretion powered SN, because collapsar models show that 56Ni, which decays to Fe, is not produced in the jets but in a “wind” in between the jets and the accretion disk . On the other hand the latest numerical simulations of a conventional core collapse also indicates the formation of high velocity Ni-rich material .

56Ni nucleosynthesis in an environment in which the density drops rapidly due to expansion gives rise to $`\alpha `$-rich freeze out . The synthesis of radio-active 44Ti is a very characteristic byproduct of this process. 44Ti decays in $`85`$ yr into 44Sc, which decays to 44Ca (Fig. 3). Interestingly, Cas A is one of only two objects in which 44Ti has been detected . The characteristic 44Ca at 1157 keV was detected by CGRO-Comptel  with a flux of $`7\times 10^5`$ ph cm-2s-1. For some time, however, this detection was not consistent with the non-detection of the 44Sc lines at 68 keV and 78 keV by CGRO-OSSE and the high energy experiments on board RXTE, and BeppoSAX . Finally, however, a 500 ks BeppoSAX observation of Cas A resulted in a better than 3$`\sigma `$ detection of those lines (Fig. 3)  with a flux of $`(3.3\pm 0.3)\times 10^5`$ ph cm-2s-1, with some uncertainty due to the uncertain shape of the hard X-ray continuum. Assuming an age for Cas A of 320 yr and a distance of 3.4 kpc , the combined CGRO-Comptel and BeppoSAX detections translate into an initial 44Ti mass of $`(1.8\pm 0.3)\times 10^4`$ M. This is higher than expected based on the standard nucleosynthesis models , but consistent with either large scale explosion asymmetries or a higher explosion energy ($`2\times 10^{51}`$ erg instead of $`10^{51}`$ erg, see also ). The detection of 44Ti, together with reasonably reliable yields of other elements , make Cas A one of the best examples of how X-rays helps us to form a better picture of core collapse SNe.

### 2.2 Type Ia remnants

In order for a C-O white dwarf to be disrupted and eject material with a high velocity more than 0.5 M of C-O has to be burned into 56Ni. One can therefore expect that young Type Ia SNRs copiously emit Fe line emission, either Fe-L emission in the energy range from 0.8-1.2 keV (Fig. 4), or Fe-K emission from 6.4-7 keV.

The Fe-L emission consists of many lines giving rise to a bump in X-ray spectra observed with CCD detectors such as found on ASCA, XMM-Newton, and Chandra. In  it was observed that LMC remnants fall into two classes, those with prominent Fe-L emission and those without. The Fe-L dominated remnants are likely Type Ia remnants. However, one should be careful in applying this method. For example, Kepler’s remnant would be accepted as a Type Ia remnant, whereas optical spectroscopy of Kepler shows the presence of N overabundance suggesting a core collapse remnant . Another example is SNR Tycho (SN 1572), which is generally accepted to be a Type Ia remnant, but it lacks prominent Fe-L emission. However, Tycho’s X-ray spectrum does show Fe-K emission, which peaks at a smaller radius than the spectral lines of other elements. This clearly indicates that there is an elemental stratification, just as expected for Type Ia remnants, with an inner ejecta layer consisting of Fe and the outer ejecta of mid-Z elements . The lack of Fe-L emission from Tycho can be attributed to the low ionization age of the plasma.111 SNR plasmas are often out of ionization equilibrium, due to a combination of a low electron density, $`n_\mathrm{e}`$, and a short time, $`t`$, since the plasma was heated.

A similar lack of Fe-L emission from another historical Type Ia remnant, SN 1006 (Fig. 2), can also be attributed to the low ionization age of $`n_\mathrm{e}t`$$`2\times 10^9`$ cm-3s . An overabundance of Fe was reported in  and  but high resolution spectroscopy with the XMM-Newton RGS instruments did not reveal any signatures of Fe-L emission . Abundance determinations for SN 1006 of O, Ne, Mg, and Si are more reliable, as those lines are clearly visible in CCD spectra. So any low spectral resolution X-ray Fe abundance measurements of SN 1006 should be regarded with caution, especially since Fe is in an ionization stage ($`<`$ Fe XVII), which produces almost no Fe-L emission. Another reason to distrust Fe abundance measurements in SN 1006 is that optical absorption spectra toward a bright UV background star reveals that the reverse shock has probably not yet reached the Fe-rich ejecta . SN 1006 is in that sense both dynamically and spectroscopically younger than Tycho’s remnant, a result of its evolution in a low density environment.

In order to see all Fe one has to observe dynamically older remnants, in which the reverse shock has heated almost all ejecta. A good example is Dem L71 . Chandra images in the energy bands of O and Fe-L show that most of the O VII/VIII emission comes from a narrow shell, but most Fe-L line emission comes from the center of the remnant (green in Fig. 2, see also Fig. 4). In fact, assuming that the plasma inside the shell consists of pure Fe, the estimated Fe mass is $``$0.8 M, consistent with Type Ia nucleosynthesis models . In general, assuming that a plasma consists of a pure metal plasma, with no or little H, will give rise to a lower overall mass estimate and a higher mass estimate for that particular metal. Critical to this calculation is the source of the exciting electrons. Although, most of the Fe ejecta seems to be shocked, Dem L71 is less suitable for obtaining the overall ejecta abundances, as the outer C-O, and Si layers are likely to be mixed with the ISM. Therefore, advances in our understanding of Type Ia SNe should probably come from combining studies of young and old Type Ia remnants.

## 3 SUPERNOVA REMNANTS AND COLLISIONLESS SHOCK PHYSICS

Supernovae drive shock waves through the ISM that remain visible for 10,000’s of years in the form of SNRs. As the ISM is very tenuous, the particle mean free path is larger than the typical shock width. That a shock forms at all is due to the fact that heating occurs not through two body interaction, but due to the coupling of particles with self-generated plasma waves. These so-called collisionless shocks are interesting from a physical point of view, since the detailed shock heating process is unknown, and the process can only be studied in the rarefied media in space.

### 3.1 Shock heating

One question considering collisionless shocks is whether they heat each particle species according to its own Rankine-Hugoniot equation222$`kT_i=3/16m_iv_s^2`$, for high Mach number shocks and species $`i`$, without additional energy sinks, such as CR acceleration., or whether different particles are quickly equilibrated by the collisionless heating process (i.e. $`kT_\mathrm{e}=kT_\mathrm{H}=kT_{\mathrm{He}}`$, etc.). The first evidence for non-equilibration of temperatures was that UV line emission from SN 1006 indicates that H, C, and O have approximately the same line width, instead of a line width inversely proportional to the particle mass, as can be expected for an equilibrated shock . Other evidence came from modeling the width of H$`\alpha `$ line emission in comparison with the narrow to broad line H$`\alpha `$ ratio observed in a number of SNRs, which seem to indicate that low Mach number shocks are fully equilibrated, whereas high Mach number shocks are not . A recent measurement of the O VII line widths of a compact knot in SN 1006 indicate a high O VII temperature of $`350700`$ keV compared to an electron temperature of $`1.5`$ keV (Fig. 5, 2) .

A remaining question is whether the shock heating process does always produce a Maxwellian particle distribution and what the influence is of cosmic ray acceleration on the temperature(s), as cosmic rays provide an additional heat sink, or even lead to heat loss as a result of CR escape. This process may have been observed in E0102-7219, which showed an electron temperature too cold compared to the observed expansion velocity, even if the non-equilibration of electron and proton temperature was taken into account .

### 3.2 Particle acceleration

SNRs are considered to be the dominant source of cosmic rays up to the “knee”. The reason is that the likely galactic SN rate of 1-2 per century is sufficient to maintain the observed cosmic ray density in the galaxy, provided that up to 10% of the available SN kinetic energy is used to accelerate particles. The energetic cosmic rays observed on earth are primarily nuclear cosmic rays, unfortunately observations of SNRs lead primarily to the detection of electron cosmic rays due to synchrotron or inverse Compton radiation. In principle, nuclear cosmic rays can be detected, as collisions of energetic heavy particles with background matter leads to the production of pions. The neutral pions decay emitting two photons, which can be detected by gamma-ray satellites such as the future GLAST mission or by TeV C̆erenkov telescopes. Several SNRs, such as SN 1006, Cas A , and RXJ 1713.7-3946 , have been detected with Cherenkov telescopes, but it is not clear whether the observed emission is due to inverse Compton emission from electrons or pion decay due to nuclear cosmic rays.

The recent discovery of X-ray synchrotron emission from a number of SNRs, SN 1006333 See the green-blueish color in the XMM-Newton image of SN,1006, Fig. 2 bottom left. , Cas A , RCW 86 , RXJ 1713.7-3946, and G266.2-1.2 (“Vela jr”) , have extended the observed electron energies from the GeV range (from radio observations) to 10-100 TeV energies. Although this is additional proof that electrons are accelerated to high energies, the observed energy range falls short of the “knee” energy . Interestingly this list includes all remnants detected at TeV energies.

The identification of the TeV emission as either pion decay or inverse Compton radiation depends on the magnetic field strength, which is needed to convert the observed X-ray photon energies into electron energies. This dependency can be used to infer the magnetic field strength assuming that the TeV emission is inverse Compton radiation , or, if a field strength is estimated, to identify the nature of the TeV emission .

One usually assumes that the post shock magnetic field strength is compressed by the shock and is at most a factor 4 times the canonical galactic field value of $`B5\mu `$G. However, the spatial resolution of Chandra has lead to resolving the narrow X-ray synchrotron structures at the shock fronts of Cas A and SN 1006 , from which one can infer the interior magnetic fields close to the shock front, if one has an estimate of the shock velocity , as illustrated in Fig. 6. For both remnants the post shock magnetic field turns out to be around 100 $`\mu `$G . If correct this would mean that the TeV gamma-ray emission from SN 1006 is due to pion decay , whereas for Cas A pion decay is likely, but inverse Compton emission cannot be excluded .

The large magnetic fields found in Cas A and SN 1006 provide additional support for the idea that SNRs can accelerate nucleons up to the “knee” energy, as the X-ray observations indicate that the electron maximum energy is bound by synchrotron losses, not by acceleration time. If the latter were the case then the maximum nucleon energy would be comparable to the maximum electron energy, i.e. $`<100`$ TeV. A higher magnetic field allows for the possibility that nucleons are accelerated to higher energies, and, moreover, higher magnetic fields increase the acceleration efficiency.

The detection of X-ray synchrotron emission from shell-type SNR has advanced our knowledge of cosmic ray acceleration. However, one should approach its detection with some caution. So far the identification of X-ray synchrotron emission has been based on a power law continuum shape, and the (near) absence of (thermal) line emission. For Cas A the detection of X-ray synchrotron emission was based on the presence of hard X-ray continuum . Its nature is, however uncertain. XMM-Newton images of emission around 10 keV show that emission is still coming from the interior of Cas A, whereas one does not expect X-ray synchrotron emission from the inside, as synchrotron losses due to the high interior magnetic field of $`>0.5`$ mG  make it unlikely that a very energetic electron population can be maintained. An alternative mechanism for the X-ray continuum in terms of non-thermal bremsstrahlung from electrons accelerated by lower hybrid waves has been proposed  and model spectra fit the BeppoSAX data well  (Fig. 3). Also for the hard X-ray emission from IC 443 has a non-thermal bremsstrahlung origin been proposed . This emission may arise from an interaction of the SNR with molecular clouds or from fast moving ejecta fragments .

Another case where there has been a controversy about the nature of the X-ray continuum emission concerns the X-ray continuum from RCW 86, a 40 sized SNR (Fig. 2). ASCA and BeppoSAX data showed that the soft X-ray emission, dominated by line emission, has a very different morphology than the continuum emission, which manifests itself most clearly above 2 keV  (Fig. 2). This was taken as evidence for X-ray synchrotron emission , in analogy with SN 1006. However, the hard X-ray continuum is not entirely featureless, since Fe-K line emission has been solidly detected and seems to come from the hard X-ray emitting regions. So an alternative theory for the hard X-ray emission is that it is due to (non-thermal) bremsstrahlung from electrons with energies up to 100 keV, which are also responsible for the Fe-K emission . Additional evidence for questioning the synchrotron hypothesis is the lack of radio synchrotron emission from hard X-ray producing regions (Fig. 7). The Fe-K emission has an energy of 6.4 keV, indicating that is caused by low ionization stages of Fe, i.e. either from a cold or a severely underionized plasma. The problem with the bremsstrahlung hypothesis is that the presence of the bremsstrahlung producing electrons has to heat up the background material, which should manifest itself in line emission of O VII . The synchrotron hypothesis, on the other hand, needs the presence of an additional hot, but very underionized pure Fe plasma, in order to explain the Fe-K emission . This debate will be helped by deeper Chandra and XMM-Newton observations. Especially observing the spatial morphology in Fe-K emission is important, because the bremsstrahlung hypothesis predicts a morphology similar to the continuum emission, and the synchrotron plus hot pure Fe hypothesis predicts patches of Fe-K emission and spatially uncorrelated, diffuse X-ray continuum emission.

Whatever the outcome it will either give new insights in the acceleration of electrons at the low end, or at the high end of the electron cosmic ray spectrum. Moreover, if the Fe-K is indeed from pure Fe this may have interesting consequences for our understanding of RCW 86’s progenitor.

## 4 Concluding remarks

The last paragraph shows that to some extent the issue of cosmic ray acceleration and explosive nucleosynthesis are intertwined. In order to assess abundance patterns an understanding of the radiation processes, bremsstrahlung, line emission, and synchrotron emission is needed. The possible presence of synchrotron emission in a line dominated spectrum has consequences for the mass estimates . The discovery of X-ray synchrotron radiation from shell-type remnants have complicated the analysis of their X-ray emission, but has given unexpected new insights in the particle acceleration properties of supernova remnants.

These advances in our understanding have been made possible by the emergence of spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, first with ASCA and BeppoSAX, and now fruitfully continued with Chandra and XMM-Newton.

I thank Kurt van der Heyden for generating Fig. 4. This work was supported by NASA’s Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship Award No. PF0-10011 issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the SAO under NASA contract NAS8-39073.


text:
# Quantum Shot Noise Suppression in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

thanks: Corresponding author.thanks: also at NTT Basic Research Laboratories, 3-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya Atsugi, Kanagawa, 243-01 Japan (November 19, 2003)

## Abstract

We study the low frequency current correlations of an individual single-walled carbon nanotube at liquid He temperature. We have distinguished two physical regimes – zero dimensional quantum dot and one dimensional quantum wire – in terms of an energy spacing from the finite tube length in both differential conductance and shot noise measurements. In a one dimensional wire regime, we observed a highly suppressed shot noise from all measured tube devices, suggesting that electron-electron interactions play an important role.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have been an attractive material for over a decade due to their unique chemical, mechanical and electronic properties. They are molecular quantum wires Dekker99 , an ideal system to probe low-dimensional physics. Since SWNTs have both spin and orbital degeneracy, conductance with ideal contacts yield two times of spin-degenerate quantum unit of conductance, $`2(2e^2/h)`$. Conductance measurements of SWNTs coupled to metal electrodes have demonstrated remarkable electrical transport properties: Coulomb blockade oscillation Bockrath97 , the Kondo effect Nygard00 , ballistic quantum interference Liang01 ; Kong01 , and Luttinger-liquid behavior Bockrath99 .

Noise experiments in carbon nanotubes, however, are relatively recent for two main reasons: the difficulty to fabricate nearly-ohmic contacted SWNT devices Javey03 , and a technical obstacle to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio because of a weak excess-noise signal embedded in the prevalent background noise. Only a few groups, in fact, have reported $`1/f`$ noise of SWNTs and multi-walled nanotubes Collins00 , and shot noise measurements on an ensemble of SWNTs Rouche02 .

Shot noise refers to the non-equilibrium current fluctuations resulting from the stochastic transport of quantized charge carriers. When electron transport is governed by Poisson statistics as in the random emission of electrons from a reservoir electrode, the spectral density of the current fluctuations reaches full shot noise $`S_I=2e\overline{I}`$, where $`e`$ is the electron charge and $`\overline{I}`$ is the average current. In a mesoscopic conductor, quantum shot noise occurs due to the random partitioning of electrons by a scatterer. If the noiseless incoming electrons from a Fermi-degenerate reservoir at zero temperature are scattered into the outgoing states with a transmission probability $`T`$, the transmitted electrons carry partition noise $`S_I=2e\overline{I}(1T)`$. $`T`$ is the ratio $`T\frac{G}{G_Q}`$ between the spin-degenerate quantum unit of conductance $`G_Q=(2e^2/h)(12.5\text{k}\mathrm{\Omega })^1`$ and the measured DC conductance $`G`$ for a ballistic conductor Buttiker92 . Noise in a quantum system is quantified with the Fano factor $`F\frac{S_I}{2e\overline{I}}`$.

Quantum shot noise has been observed with quantum point contacts (QPCs) in two-dimensional electron gas systems Liu98 ; Oliver99 . Recently proposed detection schemes for entangled electrons have uitilized the analysis of shot noise correlations Maitre00 ; Burkard00 ; Samuelsson03 . Moreover, shot noise measurements allow one to observe the effective charge $`Q`$ of quasiparticles along fractional quantum Hall edge states Picciotto97 ; Comforti02 , yielding $`S_I=2Q\overline{I}(1T)`$ and $`F\frac{(1T)Q}{e}`$. Electron-electron interactions in one-dimensional edge states result in fractionally charged carriers. This strongly correlated 1D system is modelled as a “Luttinger liquid” (LL).

A LL exhibits power-law scaled conductance ( in terms of temperature and applied voltage), spin-charge separation, and charge fractionalization Voit94 . Quantum Hall edge states are an example of a chiral LL, in which the forward and back-scattered electrons move along spatially separate paths. In contrast, the forward and backward propagating electrons coexist along a non-chiral LL, such as a SWNT. While noise measurements on a chiral LL examined directly the effective charge of quasiparticles, to date there is no noise data for a non-chiral LL. When electrons travel through a SWNT, an important question is whether electron-electron interactions in a non-chiral LL are manifest as a fractional charge. This remains an open question among theorists Bena01 ; Trauzettel02 ; Pham02  in the absence of experimental results. In this Letter, we present the first experimental results from quantitative, two-port shot noise measurements of a single isolated SWNT at 4 K, which may help to clarify this issue.

An SWNT was synthesized as reported previously Soh99 : An individual SWNT was grown by Alumina-based chemical vapor deposition method onto a 500 $`\mu `$m -thick SiO2 layer which was thermally grown on a heavily doped Si substrate. The Si substrate was used as the back gate. The metal electrodes were patterned by electron beam lithography, defining a device length between 200 and 600 nm (Inset of Fig. 1). Ti/Au or Ti-only metal electrodes featured good contacts for low resistance SWNT devices. Atomic force microscopy imaging enabled us to select the device consisting of a single isolated SWNT which was 1-3 nm diameter and 200 - 600 nm long. We first measured conductance as a function of gate voltage ($`V_g`$) to classify the tube as metallic or semi-conducting. The metallic tubes were chosen for noise measurements. Resistances of the selected devices were typically 15 $``$ 50 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at room temperature and about 12.2 $``$ 25 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at 4 K.

Predictions White98 ; McEuen99  and experiments Bockrath97 ; Liang01 ; Kong01 ; Tans98  have shown that both the elastic and the inelastic mean free path are at least on the order of microns in metallic nanotubes at low temperatures. Electron transport within $`200600`$ nm-long SWNTs is believed to be ballistic Liang01 ; Kong01 . We have observed a quantum interference pattern in the differential conductance $`dI/dV_{ds}`$ (where $`V_{ds}`$ is the drain-source voltage) as a function of $`V_{ds}`$ and $`V_g`$ at 4K as shown in Fig. 2(a). The diamond structures are determined by the finite length of the tube between the metal electrodes. The sample is 360 nm-long, and the corresponding energy spacing is roughly 10 meV. The size of the pattern is consistent with the energy spacing. The interference structure continues until approximately $`V_{ds}20`$ mV, above which it fades away (Fig. 2(b)). This interference pattern can be explained by a resonant tunnelling model with quantized energy levels due to finite reflection at the electrode-SWNT interfaces (Fabry-Perot cavity effect) Liang01 .

We consider a simple model to understand the behavior of $`dI/dV_{ds}`$. Suppose the interfaces act as potential barriers with constant transmission probability $`T_L`$ and $`T_R`$ . The energy dependent overall transmission probability $`T(E)`$ is written for a double-barrier structure as

$$T(E)=\frac{T_LT_R}{1+(1T_L)(1T_R)2\sqrt{(1T_L)(1T_R)}\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Theta }(E)},$$

where $`\mathrm{\Theta }(E)`$ is the phase accumulation caused by multiple reflections and a function of $`V_{ds}`$ and $`V_g`$. This simple model fits well the experimental $`dI/dV_{ds}`$ data for a small $`V_{ds}`$ energy, but deviates significantly as $`V_{ds}`$ increases (Fig. 2(c)). We can interpret this conductance behavior in terms of the tube length $`L`$ and $`V_{ds}`$. The quantum state energy spacing ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ ) from the longitudinal confinement is inversely proportional to $`L`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }E\frac{hv_F}{L}`$, where $`v_F=8\times 10^5`$ m/s is the Fermi velocity. When $`V_{ds}`$ is smaller than $`\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }E}{e}`$, the coherence length of electron wavepackets is longer than L. In this region, the SWNT operates as an isolated zero-dimensional quantum dot between two leads. For $`V_{ds}>\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }E}{e}`$, the coherence length of electron wavepackets is shorter than the tube length. In this limit, each wavepacket passes through the one-dimensional conductor, and the oscillating period apparently increases. This phenomenon may indicate the correlated electrons Peca03 .

The two-terminal shot noise measurements were implemented by placing two current noise sources in parallel: one is a weakly coupled light emitting diode (LED) and photodetector (PD) pair, and the other is a SWNT. The LED/PD pair, whose coupling efficiency from the LED input current to the PD output current was 0.1 $`\%`$ at 4 K, served as the full shot noise source. The high signal-to-noise-ratio was achieved by implementing an AC modulation lock-in technique and a resonant circuit together with a home-built cryogenic low-noise preamplifier Liu98 ; Oliver99 . The input-referred voltage noise was approximately $`2.2`$ nV$`/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}`$ at 4 K with a resonance frequency $`15`$ MHz. The signal was fed into a $`9`$ MHz bandpass filter followed by a square-law detector and a lock-in amplifier. The Fano factor $`F(I_0)\frac{S_{SWNT}}{S_{PD}}`$ was obtained from the ratio of the tube noise ($`S_{SWNT}`$) and the full shot noise ($`S_{PD}`$) at various currents $`I_0`$. The current noise generated in the LED/PD pair was measured while the SWNT was voltage-biased at an un-modulated DC current $`I_0`$ . Figure 3 presents typical data of the measured LED/PD and SWNT shot noise and Fano factor. Two distinct regimes are noticeable depending on the bias voltage $`V_{ds}`$. At a low bias voltage ($`0<V_{ds}<10`$ mV), $`F`$ and $`g`$ oscillates as a function of $`V_{ds}`$. For a high bias voltage ($`V_{ds}>10`$mV), $`F`$ and $`g`$ reach saturated values.

The SWNT current fluctuations show many features and can be divided into two distinct regimes according to $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$. A non-interacting electron model predicts that an expected Fano factor is $`1T(I_0)`$ at a net transmission probability $`T(I_0)`$. This simple picture, however, does not match the measured $`F(I_0)`$ over the entire $`V_{ds}`$ range. In a low $`V_{ds}`$, $`F(I_0)`$ deviates from the non-interacting prediction in a complicated way; the suppressed shot noise around zero $`V_{ds}`$ becomes enhanced. Enhanced noise would be a consequence of correlated resonant tunnelling Safonov03 . Currents through coherent resonant states may be affected by weak localized states within the system such that additional noise occurs due to interaction. While conductance does not reflect this effect, the shot noise manifests it sensitively.

The SWNT noise in a one-dimensional wire regime is suppressed far below the non-interacting electron prediction. For instance, the tube in Fig. 3 has $`R`$ 14.3k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at $`V_{ds}=`$ 40 mV corresponding to $`T0.45`$ and $`1T0.55`$; however, the observed $`F`$ value at $`V_{ds}=40`$ mV is 0.16. Defining this shot noise suppression $`g=F/(1T)`$, the SWNT noise is then written by $`S_I=2e\overline{I}g(1T)`$. The suppression factor $`g`$ (red in Fig. 3.) falls between 0.2 and 0.3 for a large $`V_{ds}`$, which matches the theoretical value of the Luttinger parameter in SWNTs Egger97 ; Kane97 .

Figure 4 summarizes the Fano factors of five different metallic SWNTs (samples 1-5) as a function of the transmission probability $`T`$. All values are extracted from the one-dimensional wire regime. For each device, the shot noise measurements were performed by varying $`V_g`$. All five tubes manifested both a strong suppression and a consistent $`g`$ value. Surprisingly, even a highly resistive tube also showed a similar suppression (sample 5).

Two different models are considered in an attempt to explain the results. First is the coherent scattering theory (Landauer-B ttiker formalism) Buttiker92  of the non-interacting electrons. $`F`$ in this picture (the blue solid line in Fig. 4) clearly mismatches the experimental result. As the other model, we regard the suppressed shot noise in the context of a Luttinger-liquid model. Although an exact model for the current noise in a non-chiral LL is absent, we phenomenologically combine the partition noise expected from the non-interacting picture with a Luttinger parameter. The Luttinger parameter is predicted to have a value $`g`$ \[0.2, 0.3\] in carbon nanotubes Egger97 ; Kane97  and, indeed, it was experimentally determined to be $`0.260.28`$ from a power-law fit of the conductance in tubes weakly coupled to Fermi reservoirs Bockrath99 . We plotted two linear lines by identification of $`Q=ge`$, i.e. $`F=0.2(1T)`$ and $`F=0.3(1T)`$ based on the limiting g values in Fig. 4. Most data points fall between the two lines. In order to test the universality of the additional shot noise reduction factor, the further studies should be needed, for example, the effect of the metal electrode material, the interface between electrodes and tubes and the growth condition of SWNTs.

We would like to point out that $`F`$ of SWNTs increases as $`T`$ decreases in a similar manner to the ballistic conductor except with the additional suppression, which might be related to the electron-electron interactions within the tube. All Fano factors in Fig. 4 were taken at the high $`V_{ds}\frac{hv_F}{eL}`$ . The non-equilibrium noise in an interacting system has not been studied theoretically in this high-energy excitation regime to our best knowledge. A rigorous theoretical work is now in demand to explain the shot noise in individual SWNTs.

We acknowledge Prof. Quate for his encouragement and atomic force microscopes for imaging the SWNT devices and thank the ARO-MURI grant DAAD19-99-1-0215 for support.


text:
# 1 Introduction.

## 1 Introduction.

The basic defining feature of any standard supersymmetric system is double degeneracy of all excited states. This follows from the minimal supersymmetry algebra

$`Q^2=\overline{Q}^2=0,\{Q,\overline{Q}\}_+=2H,`$ (1)
where $`Q`$ is a complex conserved \[this is a corollary of Eq.(1)\] supercharge. If the superalgebra describing symmetries of the system includes (1) as a subalgebra, double degeneracy of all excited levels (if supersymmetry is spontaneously broken, also the ground state is doubly degenerate) follows.

An interesting question is whether some other “weak” supersymmetric algebras involving Poincare generators and conserved supercharges, but not including (1) as subalgebra, are possible. At the algebraic level, the answer is trivially positive. It is easy also to construct Lagrangians enjoying weak supersymmetry. Indeed, the Lagrangian

$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(_\mu \varphi \right)^2+i\overline{\psi }\sigma _\mu _\mu \psi `$ (2)
($`\varphi `$ is a real scalar and $`\psi `$ is a Weyl spinor) is invariant with respect to supersymmetry transformations 222We use the standard Weyl notation where the dotted and undotted indices are raised and lowered with $`ϵ^{\alpha \beta }(ϵ^{\dot{\alpha }\dot{\beta }})`$ and $`ϵ_{\alpha \beta }(ϵ_{\dot{\alpha }\dot{\beta }})=ϵ^{\alpha \beta }(ϵ^{\dot{\alpha }\dot{\beta }})`$; $`\overline{\psi }^{\dot{\alpha }}=(\psi _\alpha )^{}`$ and $`\overline{\psi }_{\dot{\alpha }}=(\psi ^\alpha )^{}`$; $`\psi ^2=\psi _\alpha \psi ^\alpha `$ and $`\overline{\psi }^2=\overline{\psi }^{\dot{\alpha }}\psi _{\dot{\alpha }}`$; $`\sigma _\mu =(1,𝝈)`$ and $`\sigma _\mu ^{}=(1,𝝈)`$.

$`\delta \varphi =ϵ^\alpha \psi _\alpha \overline{\psi }^{\dot{\alpha }}ϵ_{\dot{\alpha }},`$
$`\delta \psi _\alpha =i\left(\sigma _\mu ^{}\right)_\alpha ^{\dot{\beta }}\overline{ϵ}_{\dot{\beta }}_\mu \varphi ,`$
$`\delta \overline{\psi }^{\dot{\alpha }}=iϵ_\beta \left(\sigma _\mu ^{}\right)_\beta ^{\dot{\alpha }}_\mu \varphi .`$ (3)
The corresponding supercharges are

$`Q_\alpha ={\displaystyle d^3x\left(\sigma _\mu ^{}\sigma _0\psi \right)_\alpha _\mu \varphi },`$
$`\overline{Q}^{\dot{\alpha }}={\displaystyle d^3x\left(\overline{\psi }\sigma _0\sigma _\mu ^{}\right)^{\dot{\alpha }}_\mu \varphi }.`$ (4)
Now, $`Q_\alpha `$ and $`\overline{Q}^{\dot{\alpha }}`$ are conserved, but their anticommutators involve besides $`P_\alpha ^{\dot{\alpha }}`$ also extra terms. In particular, $`\{Q_\alpha ,Q_\beta \}0`$. The resulting superalgebra does not include the subalgebra (1) and the number of bosonic and fermionic 1–particle states might be different. And it is: the Lagrangian (2) describes a free real boson (one state $`|B`$ for each 3–momentum $`𝐩`$) and a free Weyl fermion (two states $`|F_\pm `$). It is interesting (and important !) that, in the sector with given $`𝐩`$, the state pairing is restored for two-particle excitations and higher. Thus, at the two–particle level, there are two boson states $`|BB`$ and $`|F_+F_{}`$ and two fermion states $`|BF_+`$ and $`|BF_{}`$. Actually, any Lagrangian involving some number of free bosonic and some number of free fermionic fields is supersymmetric. There are a lot of such supersymmetries: each bosonic field can be mixed with each fermionic field independently of others. 333One of the consequencies of this is the presence of the so called quasigoldstino branch in the spectrum of collective excitations in quark–gluon plasma .  However, this is only true for free theory. As soon as the interaction is switched on, supersymmetry (strong or weak) is broken. Indeed, nonvanishing $`\{Q_\alpha ,Q_\beta \}`$ implies the presence of an extra conserved bosonic charge in the representation $`(1,0)`$ of the Lorentz group. It is none other than the self-dual part of the fermion spin operator $`S_{\alpha \beta }`$. Spin is not conserved, however, in interacting theories. Actually, in any theory involving mass gap 444For massless theories, Poincare group can be extended to conformal and super-Poincare — to superconformal. and a nontrivial S–matrix, the presense of extra nonscalar conserving charges is ruled out by the Coleman–Mandula theorem . Interacting supersymmetric theories can only involve, besides the Poincare generators $`P_\mu `$, $`M_{\mu \nu }`$ and supercharges $`Q^i`$, central charges commuting with everything and some extra global symmetry generators, which can have nontrivial commutators with $`Q`$ and between themselves, but they cannot appear in this case in the anticommutators of supercharges .

This is true if the dimension of space-time is 3 or more. In two dimensions, where scattering can be only forward or backward, the theorems  do not apply. In particular, one can have an infinite number of conserved bosonic charges (like, e.g., it is the case in the Sine–Gordon model). Seemingly, nothing prevents one to have an interacting 2d theory enjoying a version of weak supersymmetry.

We tried to construct one, but failed. Probably, one should try harder. What we were able to construct is a weakly supersymmetric quantum mechanical system. It has two complex conserved supercharges with nontrivial anticommutators involving besides $`H`$ four other bosonic generators which are not central charges — their commutators with supercharges and between themselves do not vanish. The boson-fermion degeneracy is there starting from the second excited level. But not for the first excited level and not for vacuum.

In Sect. 2, we describe a simplest such system — the weak supersymmetric oscillator. In Sect. 3, we present a nontrivial weak supersymmetric Hamiltonian. We find that previously studied quantum systems with so-called “2–fold supersymmetry”  are in fact weak supersymmetric systems in disguise. We briefly discuss their relationship to quasi-exactly solvable models . Sect. 4 describes our failed attempt to generalize our QM construction to $`d=2`$. This experience might be useful in future studies. Sect. 5 is reserved for discussion, conclusions, and acknowledgements.

## 2 Weak supersymmetric oscillator

Consider the Lagrangian

$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{x}^2+i\overline{\psi }^\alpha \dot{\psi }_\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{m^2}{2}}x^2{\displaystyle \frac{m}{2}}(\overline{\psi }^\alpha \overline{\psi }_\alpha +\psi _\alpha \psi ^\alpha ),`$ (5)
$`\alpha =1,2`$. It can be obtained out of the massive version of the free field theory Lagrangian (2) by dimensional reduction. It is invariant with respect to supersymmetry transformations

$`\delta x`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{ϵ}\psi +\overline{\psi }ϵ,`$
$`\delta \psi _\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`iϵ_\alpha \dot{x}+\overline{ϵ}_\alpha mx,`$
$`\delta \overline{\psi }^\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`i\overline{ϵ}^\alpha \dot{x}ϵ^\alpha mx.`$ (6)
The corresponding supercharges are

$`Q_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`p\psi _\alpha +imx\overline{\psi }_\alpha ,`$
$`\overline{Q}^\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`p\overline{\psi }^\alpha +imx\psi ^\alpha ,`$ (7)
where $`p=\dot{x}`$ is the bosonic canonical momentum. The canonical Hamiltonian is

$`H={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}p^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m^2x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{m}{2}}(\overline{\psi }^\alpha \overline{\psi }_\alpha +\psi _\alpha \psi ^\alpha ).`$ (8)
The quantum Hamiltonian can be written by replacing $`p`$ by $`i/x`$ and $`\overline{\psi }^\alpha `$ by $`/\psi _\alpha `$. Supercharges commute with the Hamiltonian. On the other hand,

$`\{Q_\alpha ,Q_\beta \}`$ $`=`$ $`Z_{\alpha \beta },`$
$`\{Q_\alpha ,\overline{Q}^\beta \}`$ $`=`$ $`\delta _\alpha ^\beta \left(2HY\right),`$ (9)
where

$`Z_{\alpha \beta }`$ $`=`$ $`m(\psi _\alpha \overline{\psi }_\beta +\psi _\beta \overline{\psi }_\alpha ),`$
$`Y`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m}{2}}(\overline{\psi }^\alpha \overline{\psi }_\alpha +\psi _\alpha \psi ^\alpha ).`$ (10)
The operators $`Z_{\alpha \beta }`$ and $`Y`$ commute with $`H`$ and with each other, but the commutators

$`[Q_\alpha ,Z_{\beta \gamma }]`$ $`=`$ $`m\left(ϵ_{\alpha \beta }Q_\gamma +ϵ_{\alpha \gamma }Q_\beta \right),`$
$`[\overline{Q}_\alpha ,Z_{\beta \gamma }]`$ $`=`$ $`m\left(ϵ_{\alpha \beta }\overline{Q}_\gamma +ϵ_{\alpha \gamma }\overline{Q}_\beta \right),`$
$`[Q_\alpha ,Y]`$ $`=`$ $`m\overline{Q}_\alpha ,`$
$`[\overline{Q}_\alpha ,Y]`$ $`=`$ $`mQ_\alpha `$ (11)
and also

$`[Z_{\alpha \beta },Z_{\gamma \delta }]=m\left(ϵ_{\beta \gamma }Z_{\alpha \delta }+ϵ_{\alpha \gamma }Z_{\beta \delta }+ϵ_{\beta \delta }Z_{\alpha \gamma }+ϵ_{\alpha \delta }Z_{\beta \gamma }\right)`$ (12)
are nontrivial. The algebra can be presented in a little bit more convenient form if introducing $`S_\alpha =Q_\alpha \overline{Q}_\alpha ,\overline{S}^\alpha =Q^\alpha +\overline{Q}^\alpha `$. Then

$`\{S_\alpha ,\overline{S}^\beta \}`$ $`=`$ $`4H\delta _\alpha ^\beta 2Y\delta _\alpha ^\beta +2Z_\alpha ^\beta ,`$
$`[S_\alpha ,Z_{\beta \gamma }]`$ $`=`$ $`m\left(ϵ_{\alpha \beta }S_\gamma +ϵ_{\alpha \gamma }S_\beta \right),`$
$`[\overline{S}^\alpha ,Z_{\beta \gamma }]`$ $`=`$ $`m\left(\delta _\beta ^\alpha \overline{S}_\gamma +\delta _\gamma ^\alpha \overline{S}_\beta \right),`$
$`[S_\alpha ,Y]`$ $`=`$ $`mS_\alpha ,`$
$`[\overline{S}^\alpha ,Y]`$ $`=`$ $`m\overline{S}^\alpha ,`$ (13)
to which the commutator (12) should be added. The subalgebra (12) is none other than $`sl(2)`$ , which can be readily seen by identification

$$Z_{11}2im\sigma _+,Z_{22}2im\sigma _{},Z_{12}=Z_{21}m\sigma _3.$$

All other commutators and the anticommutator $`\{S_\alpha ,S_\beta \}`$ vanish.

It is not difficult to find the spectrum of $`H`$. The eigenstates are

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\pm ^n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}|n\left(1\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\psi _\alpha \psi ^\alpha \right);\mathrm{\Phi }_\alpha ^n=\psi _\alpha |n,`$ (14)
where $`|n`$ are the bosonic oscillator eigenstates. Their energies are

$`E_{}^n=\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+n\right)m,E_\alpha ^n=\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+n\right)m,E_+^n=\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}+n\right)m.`$ (15)
The spectrum is drawn in Fig. 1. We see that there is one vacuum state (its energy can be brought to zero by adding the constant $`m/2`$ to the Hamiltonian, but for the weak supersymmetric systems with algebra (2), $`E_{\mathrm{vac}}=0`$ is an option rather than requirement). There are three first excited states: a bosonic and two fermionic. Starting from the second excited state, there are 2 bosonic and 2 fermionic states at each level.

The eigenvalues of the operator $`Y`$ is $`m`$ for the leftmost tower, 0 for two central and $`+m`$ for the rightmost one. In other words, the operator $`Y/m`$ (or rather $`Y/m+1`$) plays the role of the fermionic charge. The operators $`Z_{\alpha \beta }`$ annihilate the states $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\pm ^n`$ while the states $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\alpha ^n`$ form doublet representations of the $`sl(2)`$ algebra (12).

To acquire further insights, it is instructive to write the action of the operators $`S_\alpha ,\overline{S}^\alpha `$ on the states (14):

$`S_\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_{}^n=2\sqrt{mn}\mathrm{\Phi }_\alpha ^{n1},S_\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n=2\sqrt{mn}ϵ_{\alpha \beta }\mathrm{\Phi }_+^{n1},S_\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_+^n=0,`$
$`\overline{S}^\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_{}^n=0,\overline{S}^\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n=2\sqrt{m(n+1)}\delta _\beta ^\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_{}^{n+1},\overline{S}^\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_+^n=2\sqrt{m(n+1)}ϵ^{\alpha \beta }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{n+1}.`$ (16)
We see that $`S_\alpha `$ annihilates the states from the rightmost column and brings the states from the left columns to the right. The action of $`\overline{S}^\alpha `$ is opposite.

Now, one can divide all eigenstates in two sets: (i) the states $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{}^n`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1^n`$ and (ii) the states $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2^n`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_+^n`$. The states from the subset (i) form the Hilbert space of the $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetric oscillator, with $`S_1`$ playing the role of the supercharge. The same applies to the subset (ii) with the supercharge $`S_2`$. For ordinary $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric quantum mechanics, the Hilbert space can also be divided into two $`𝒩=1`$ subspaces, but the specifics of a weak supersymmetric system is that two sets of states are shifted with respect to each other, i.e. the Hamiltonian for the right subset differs from the Hamiltonian for the left subset by a constant.

## 3 A class of interactive weak supersymmetric systems.

Consider the Lagrangian

$`={\displaystyle \frac{\dot{x}^2}{2}}+i\overline{\psi }^\alpha \dot{\psi }_\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{V^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{V^{}}{2}}\left(\psi ^2+\overline{\psi }^2\right){\displaystyle \frac{B^{}}{2}}\psi ^2\overline{\psi }^2,`$ (17)
$$B=\frac{V^{}C}{2V},$$

where $`V(x)`$ is an arbitrary function and $`C`$ is an arbitrary constant. One can observe that the corresponding action is invariant with respect to the supersymmetry transformations

$`\delta x`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{ϵ}\psi +\overline{\psi }ϵ,`$
$`\delta \psi _\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`iϵ_\alpha \dot{x}+\overline{ϵ}_\alpha (V+B\psi ^2)2B\left[(\overline{\psi }\psi )ϵ_\alpha +(\overline{\psi }ϵ)\psi _\alpha \right],`$
$`\delta \overline{\psi }^\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`i\overline{ϵ}^\alpha \dot{x}ϵ^\alpha (V+B\overline{\psi }^2)2B\left[\overline{ϵ}^\alpha (\overline{\psi }\psi )+\overline{\psi }^\alpha (\overline{ϵ}\psi )\right].`$ (18)
When $`V(x)=mx`$ and $`C=m`$, Eq.(17) is reduced to the oscillator Lagrangian (5) considered above. The first four terms in Eq.(17) represent a rather natural generalization of Eq.(5), like in Witten’s supersymmetric quantum mechanics . In our case, we are obliged to add also a 4-fermion term in the Lagrangian and extra nonlinear terms in the transformation law.

The canonical classical supercharges and Hamiltonian are

$`Q_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`p\psi _\alpha +iV\overline{\psi }_\alpha +iB\psi ^2\overline{\psi }_\alpha ,`$
$`\overline{Q}^\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`p\overline{\psi }^\alpha +iV\psi ^\alpha +iB\overline{\psi }^2\psi ^\alpha ,`$ (19)
$`H^{\mathrm{cl}}={\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V^{}}{2}}\left(\psi ^2+\overline{\psi }^2\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{B^{}}{2}}\psi ^2\overline{\psi }^2.`$ (20)
The Poisson brackets $`\{Q_\alpha ,H\}_{\mathrm{P}.\mathrm{B}.}`$ and $`\{\overline{Q}^\alpha ,H\}_{\mathrm{P}.\mathrm{B}.}`$ vanish. A certain care is required when quantizing this theory. We want to fix the ordering ambiguities in $`Q`$ and $`H`$ such that classical supersymmetry were not spoiled at the quantum level. An experience acquired by fiddling with supersymmetric $`\sigma `$–models and gauge theories  teaches us that proper quantum supercharges should be obtained by Weyl ordering procedure from the classical expressions (3). In other words, (3) should be Weyl symbols of the quantum supercharges. This does not necessarily apply to the Hamiltonian. Indeed, if choosing the quantum Hamiltonian such that (20) represents the Weyl symbol of $`\widehat{H}^{\mathrm{qu}}`$, the Weyl symbol of the commutator $`[\widehat{Q}_\alpha ,\widehat{H}]`$ would be given by the Moyal bracket  of $`Q_\alpha ^{\mathrm{cl}}`$ and $`H^{\mathrm{cl}}`$,

$`[\widehat{Q}_\alpha ,\widehat{H}]_W=\{Q_\alpha ,H\}_{\mathrm{M}.\mathrm{B}.}=`$
$`2\mathrm{s}\mathrm{h}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{^2}{\mathrm{\Psi }_\alpha \overline{\psi }^\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{^2}{\psi _\alpha \overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}^\alpha }}+i\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2}{qP}}{\displaystyle \frac{^2}{Qp}}\right)\right]\right\}`$
$`Q_\alpha ^{\mathrm{cl}}(\overline{\psi },\psi ;p,q)H^{\mathrm{cl}}(\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }},\mathrm{\Psi };P,Q)|_{\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}=\overline{\psi },\mathrm{\Psi }=\psi ;P=p,Q=q}=iBB^{}\psi _\alpha 0.`$ (21)
To compensate that, we should add to $`H^{\mathrm{cl}}`$ the term $`B^2/2`$. The quantum supercharges and Hamiltonian thus obtained are

$`\widehat{Q}_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`p\psi _\alpha +iV\overline{\psi }_\alpha +iB\left(\psi ^2\overline{\psi }_\alpha +\psi _\alpha \right),`$
$`\widehat{\overline{Q}}^\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`p\overline{\psi }^\alpha +iV\psi ^\alpha +iB\left(\psi ^\alpha \overline{\psi }^2\overline{\psi }^\alpha \right)`$ (22)
and

$`\widehat{H}={\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V^{}}{2}}\left(\psi ^2+\overline{\psi }^2\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{B^{}}{2}}\left(\psi ^2\overline{\psi }^22\psi \overline{\psi }+1\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{B^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{C}{2}},`$ (23)
where we added for convenience the constant $`C/2`$ in the Hamiltonian. Direct calculation of the commutators (or, which is simpler, of the Moyal brackets of the classical expressions) leads to a remarlable conclusion: the algebra (2, 12) derived for the oscillator is valid also in the interactive case, with $`mC`$, $`HHC/2`$ and $`Z_{\alpha \beta },Y`$ having the same form (2) as before.

As earlier, the quantum states can be divided into three classes: (i) the states $`|1\psi ^2/2`$, (ii) the states $`|\alpha \psi _\alpha `$ (they are present in two copies as the Hamiltonian (23) does not feel the index $`\alpha `$) and (iii) the states $`|+1+\psi ^2/2`$. These states are characterized by a definite value of the “fermion charge” $`Y`$ : $`Y_\pm =\pm m`$ and $`Y_\alpha =0`$. In each such sector, we have an ordinary Schrödinger equation with the potentials

$`U_{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(W_{}^2W_{}^{}),`$
$`U_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(W_{}^2+W_{}^{})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(W_+^2W_+^{})+C,`$
$`U_+`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(W_+^2+W_+^{})+C,`$ (24)
where

$`W_\pm =V\pm B.`$ (25)
It is clear now that we are dealing with two superimposed ordinary Witten’s SQM systems. The states $`|`$ and $`|1`$ are described by such system with superpotential $`W_{}`$ and the states $`|2`$ and $`|+`$ \- by the system with superpotential $`W_+`$, with the constant $`C`$ added to the Hamiltonian. Excited states are mostly 4-fold degenerate as for usual $`𝒩=2`$ SQM.

The ground state is not necessarily degenerate. If $`\mathrm{exp}\{W_{}(x)𝑑x\}`$ is normalizable, this (being multiplied by $`1\psi ^2/2`$) determines the wave function of the unique vacuum state. With the chosen normalization of the Hamiltonian \[the term $`C/2`$ in Eq.(23) !\] it has zero energy. Further, if $`\mathrm{exp}\{W_+(x)𝑑x\}`$ is normalizable, there is also a unique zero-energy ground state for Witten’s Hamiltonian with superpotential $`W_+`$. Thus, we obtain a state in the sector $`|2`$ with energy $`C`$. Due to $`|2|1`$ and $`|1|`$ degeneracies, we have altogether three states with energy $`C`$ at the first excited level, and the picture is the same as for the oscillator (see Fig.1).

We have obtained free of charge a wide class of quasi-exactly solvable  potentials $`U_{}(x)`$ for which the energy of the ground state ($`E_0=0`$) and of the first excited state $`E_1=C`$ are exactly known. They depend on an arbitrary function $`V(x)`$ and an arbitrary constant $`C`$ with a certain restriction: both $`\mathrm{exp}\{W_{}(x)𝑑x\}`$ and $`\mathrm{exp}\{W_+(x)𝑑x\}`$ should be normalizable. Probably, the simplest nontrivial choice is $`V(x)=mx+\alpha x^3`$ with $`C=m`$ ($`m,\alpha >0`$). Note that the potential $`U_{}(x)`$ is not polynomial in this case.

The potentials $`U_\pm `$ in Eqs.(3, 25) were discussed before (see Eq.(4.18) in Ref. and Eq.(50) in Ref. ) in association with the so called 2–fold supersymmetry construction developped in . $`N`$–fold supersymmetry is a supersymmetry where supercharges are not linear in momentum, but present polynomials of power $`N`$. In our case, one can define the quadratic in $`p`$ operator

$`𝒬=S_1S_2`$ (26)
with the action $`𝒬|+=𝒬|\alpha =0`$ and $`𝒬|=|+`$. $`\overline{𝒬}`$ acts in the opposite direction: $`\overline{𝒬}|+=|,\overline{𝒬}|\alpha =\overline{𝒬}|=0`$. The operators $`𝒬,\overline{𝒬}`$ commute with $`H`$ (as $`S_{1,2}`$ and $`\overline{S}^{1,2}`$ do). If disregarding the states $`|\alpha `$ annihilated by both $`𝒬`$ and $`\overline{𝒬}`$ and considering only the sectors $`|+`$ and $`|`$, one can deduce

$`\{𝒬,\overline{𝒬}\}=16H(HC).`$ (27)
The quadratic polynomial of $`H`$ appearing on the right side is characteristic of 2–fold supersymmetry. The full algebra of the weak supersymmetry (12, 2) displays itself only if the “central” sector $`|\alpha `$ is brought into consideration.

## 4 A generalization that failed.

As was discussed in the Introduction, it would be very interesting to construct a nontrivial $`2D`$ weak supersymmetric model. In this section, we explain why a naive generalization of the model (17) to the $`2D`$ case fails. Let us consider only the fermion part in (17) and assume $`x`$ to be constant. Such a restricted action is still invariant with respect to $`\delta \psi _\alpha =\mathrm{},\delta \overline{\psi }^\alpha =\mathrm{}`$ as dictated by Eq.(3) Consider only the part in $`\delta `$ involving the time derivatives $`\dot{\psi }_\alpha `$ and $`\dot{\overline{\psi }}^\alpha `$ and cubic in $`\psi `$. It is determined by the variation of the kinetic term $`i\overline{\psi }^\alpha \dot{\psi }_\alpha `$ coming from the bits in $`\delta \psi _\alpha `$ and $`\delta \overline{\psi }^\alpha `$ that are quadratic in $`\psi ,\overline{\psi }`$. Such a variation represents a total time derivative as it should.

Let us now try to generalize this to $`d=2`$. Consider the fermion kinetic term 555The convention in this section is $`\overline{\psi }=\psi ^{}\gamma ^0,\gamma _\mu \gamma _\nu =g_{\mu \nu }ϵ_{\mu \nu }\gamma ^5`$ (e.g. $`\gamma _0=\sigma ^1,\gamma _1=i\sigma ^2,\gamma _5=\sigma ^3`$).

$`_f=i\overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu _\mu \psi `$ (28)
and let us require it to be invariant up to a total derivative with respect to the transformation

$`\delta \psi _\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`(\overline{\psi }ϵ)\psi _\alpha +A(\overline{\psi }\gamma _5ϵ)(\gamma _5\psi )_\alpha +B(\overline{\psi }\gamma _\nu ϵ)(\gamma _\nu \psi )_\alpha ,`$
$`\delta \overline{\psi }^\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`D\overline{\psi }^2ϵ^\alpha `$ (29)
with arbitrary constants $`A,B,D`$ (only the terms $`ϵ`$ are displayed, the terms $`\overline{ϵ}`$ to be restored by hermiticity). Consider the terms $`_\mu \overline{\psi }`$ in $`\delta _f`$:

$`\delta _f(\overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu \psi )(_\mu \overline{\psi }ϵ)+A(\overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu \gamma _5\psi )(_\mu \overline{\psi }\gamma _5ϵ)+B(\overline{\psi }\psi )(_\mu \overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu ϵ)`$
$`Bϵ_{\mu \nu }(\overline{\psi }\gamma _5\psi )(_\mu \overline{\psi }\gamma _\nu ϵ).`$ (30)
Introduce the charge congugation matrix $`C=i\sigma ^2`$ satisfying the properties

$`C^T=C,C^2=1,C\gamma _\mu =\gamma _\mu ^TC`$ (31)
and rewrite Eq.(4) in terms of the structures $`\overline{\psi }C_\mu \overline{\psi },\overline{\psi }\gamma _\nu C_\mu \overline{\psi }`$ and $`\overline{\psi }\gamma _5C_\mu \overline{\psi }`$ using the Fierz identity

$`\overline{\psi }_\alpha _\mu \overline{\psi }_\gamma ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[C_{\alpha \gamma }(\overline{\psi }C_\mu \overline{\psi })+(C\gamma _\nu )_{\alpha \gamma }(\overline{\psi }\gamma _\nu C_\mu \overline{\psi })+(C\gamma _5)_{\alpha \gamma }(\overline{\psi }\gamma _5C_\mu \overline{\psi })\right].`$ (32)
If we wish the variation (4) to be a total derivative, only the structure $`\overline{\psi }C_\mu \overline{\psi }=\frac{1}{2}_\mu [\overline{\psi }C\overline{\psi }]`$ in $`\delta _f`$ is allowed while the coefficients of the structures $`\overline{\psi }\gamma _\nu C_\mu \overline{\psi }`$ and $`\overline{\psi }\gamma _5C_\mu \overline{\psi }`$ should vanish — the matrices $`\gamma _\nu C`$ and $`\gamma _5C`$ are symmetric and $`\overline{\psi }\gamma _\nu C\overline{\psi }`$ and $`\overline{\psi }\gamma _5C\overline{\psi }`$ vanish identically.

The statement is that it is not possible to suppress unwanted structures with any choice of the constants $`A,B`$.

## 5 Discussion.

Our original motivation was the quest for nontrivial supersymmetric systems with mismatch between bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom. Let us note here that, while it is difficult to find such field theory systems, their presence in quantum mechanics was known for a long time. Most popular SQM systems (Witten’s quantum mechanics, standard supersymmetric $`\sigma `$ models, etc) have an equal number of bosonic and fermionic phase space coordinates. But the SQM system describing planar motion in transverse magnetic field involves two pairs of bosonic variables and only one pair of fermionic variables. A class of nonstandard “symplectic” $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetric $`\sigma `$ models involving $`3r`$ bosonic variables and $`2r`$ fermionic variables ($`r`$ is an integer) was constructed in Ref.. The Diaconescu-Entin $`𝒩=4`$ symplectic $`\sigma `$ model  generalized in  involves $`5r`$ bosonic and $`4r`$ fermionic variables. An industrial method to construct SQM models where the number of bosonic variables is less than the number of fermionic ones was suggested in . In SQM, an equal number bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom is not required by supersymmetry. What is required is the equal number of bosonic and fermionic quantum states. But in field theory, any bosonic or fermionic dynamical field correspond to an asymptotic state (a particle), and bosons and fermions should normally be matched.

We notice that this matching can be absent if relaxing the requirement that the anticommutator of supercharges involves only the Hamiltonian, momentum, and central charges. A lot of free weak supersymmetric models can be written, but, for $`d>3`$, interactive weak supersymmetric theories do not exist. This follows from the Haag–Lopuszanski–Sohnius theorem. This theorem does not apply to 2 dimensions, however, and the existence of interactive weak supersymmetric theories cannot be ruled out. The fact that our quest was not successful leaves two options:

* Maybe one should just try harder and such systems will eventually be found. Pehaps, it is reasonable to look at supersymmetric generalizations of exactly solvable $`2D`$ models with an infinite number of conservation laws (such bosonic systems do not exist for $`d>3`$ due to Coleman-Mandula theorem, which is relative to the HLS theorem). However, in known such supersymmetric generalizations , there is no mismatch.
* Maybe such models do not exist, indeed, in which case one should be able to prove a strong version of the Haag–Lopuszanski–Sohnius theorem.

Both possibilities look very interesting and only future studies will show which of them is realized.

The main positive result of this paper is the system (17) which enjoys a weak supersymmetry algebra (12), (2). It describes quantum systems which were studied before, but from a different perspective. It would be interesting to construct and study other, more complicated weak supersymmetric models, especially the models involving several bosonic degrees of freedom. This would allow one to construct new examples of multidimensional quasi-exactly solvable models.

## Acknowledgements

I am indebted to N. Dorey, M. Henneaux, N. Nekrasov, M. Plyushchay, M. Shifman, and A. Vainshtein for illuminating discussions and correspondence.


text:
# Astrochemistry and Observations

## 1 Introduction

The past few years has seen dramatic improvements in our ability to extract chemical information from molecular line observations. These advances have been driven by new observational platforms and techniques. In the following I will outline the various methods and uncertainties in computing chemical information from observations across the spectrum of star formation activity (from diffuse clouds, to star-forming cores, to molecular outflows). I will show how improved chemical knowledge can be used to place stronger constraints on theoretical astrochemical models, but also open new avenues in the use of molecular emission to examine the physics of molecular clouds and star formation.

## 2 Diffuse Cloud Chemistry

Diffuse clouds are transition objects between the low density atomic medium and the higher density molecular phase. The allure of diffuse clouds is twofold. First they are generally, but not exclusively, studied via absorption lines. For absorption lines the conversion of equivalent width to column density is fairly straightforward and requires little information regarding source structure. In contrast, knowledge of the density and temperature structure is often needed to obtain column densities from emission lines. Thus chemical abundances derived from absorption lines can be considered more reliable. Second, these objects present rather simple laboratories to study basic physical and chemical processes.

Over the past decade studies of diffuse cloud chemistry through absorption lines has received significant attention in a series of papers by Lucas and Liszt (see Liszt & Lucas 2002 and references therein). In Figure 1 I provide a sample of this work showing detections of HCO+ (J=1$``$0) and CS (J=2$``$1) in absorption in several line of sight clouds. To study basic chemical processes these investigations are able to observe the various species that constitute simple self-contained chemical networks. For instance, the network that creates CO in diffuse gas is believed to be: C+ $`+`$ OH $``$ HCO+, followed by HCO+ $`+`$ e $``$ CO $`+`$ H. Lucas & Liszt (2000) find that the column density of HCO+ is capable of accounting for the observed column density of CO. However, the measured abundances of C+ and OH are not high enough to account for observed HCO+. Thus either our understanding of ion-molecule gas phase chemistry is incorrect or diffuse clouds are not just “simple” laboratories. Indeed other more exotic non-thermal chemical processes have been invoked to overcome these failings (Zsargo & Federman 2003; Flower & Pineau des Forêts 1998).

## 3 Chemistry and Star Formation

The most significant recent advance in astrochemical studies of star-forming cores is the development of new techniques that move beyond line of sight average abundances, towards an examination of chemical structure as a function of depth. This is possible via new instrument capabilities which have provided images of the dust continuum emission, or information regarding the spatial distribution of dust absorption. This information has been gleaned through a variety of methods extending from 1.3mm and sub-mm continuum emission images (low-mass star-forming cores: André et al. 2000, Shirley et al. 2001; high-mass star-forming cores: van der Tak et al. 2000, Hatchell and van der Tak 2003), to images of dust absorption against the galactic mid-IR background (Bacmann et al. 2000), and near-IR extinction mapping (Alves, Lada, & Lada 2001).

Since the dust column density and mass is correlated with the H2 column density and mass (Hildebrand 1983; Gordon 1995), these observations provide the clearest information to date on the column and volume density distribution of H2 molecules. This significantly aids the molecular observations in two ways. (1) By indirectly confirming the location of the H2 density and column density peak and, (2) by providing the density profile which helps to unravel the similar effects of density and abundance on excitation.

In Figure 2 we present a flow chart that outlines this new iterative method to derive abundances. A key to this process is that spatial information is important for observations of both dust and gas. The first phase involves using dust observations to constrain core physical properties, typically the radial density profile.111For cores with embedded stars the dust spectral energy distribution is used to estimate the radial temperature profile. At this point there are 2 methods that can be used to examine the abundance structure; both adopting spherical geometry.

(1) In the first method the density and temperature profile222Along with assumed profiles for radial velocity gradient and velocity dispersion., and an assumed abundance profile are used as inputs to a radiative transfer model. The radiation transfer codes adopt either accelerated lambda iteration or Monte-Carlo methods. The results from this process are predictions of the emission spectra as a function of position, which can be compared directly to observations. An iterative procedure then determines the abundance profile (see van der Tak et al. 2000; Schreyer et al 2002; Tafalla et al 2002, 2003; Caselli et al 2002; Jorgensen et al. 2002; di Francesco et al. 2003; and Lee et al 2003). (2) The second method uses a chemical model (using the same density profile for the chemical and radiative transfer models) to predict the abundance profile. The abundance profile is then used as input to the radiative transfer producing observable quantities, which can be iterated by changing the parameters in the chemical model or by looking at the time-dependence (Bergin et al. 2002; Doty et al. 2002).

In the following we briefly discuss examples for pre-stellar cores and for sources which contain embedded sources.

### 3.1 Chemistry in Pre-Stellar Cores

A representative pre-stellar core is the dark cloud B68 where the centrally concentrated H2 distribution is traced through a map of dust visual extinction (Alves, Lada, and Lada 2001). In Figure 3 we present the B68 AV map along with a series of molecular emission maps. In this core we see that the N2H+ emission peaks in a shell partially surrounding the peak of dust extinction. Moreover, the N2H+ peaks inside the much larger C18O emission hole, which itself lies inside the CS emission depression.

Figure 4 presents the analysis of the N2H+ and C18O emission, which used a gas-grain chemical model linked to a Monte-Carlo radiative transfer code (Bergin et al. 2002). If the emission is in LTE and optically thin then the integrated emission from a source with constant abundance would appear as a straight line in this diagram. Clearly the C18O-AV relation deviates from a straight line at high extinctions and N2H+ deviates at both high and low AV. Such structure in this relation could be due to freeze-out/depletion or high opacities (observations of a lesser abundant isotope confirm freeze-out for CO). The various solid and dashed lines show emission profiles predicted by the chemical model for various times. As time proceeds the C18O emission declines via freeze-out; in contrast the N2H+ emission increases (as a result of CO freeze-out). The dotted line is the “best fit” radial abundance profile which reproduces the emission profile shown as a solid line. For C18O the observations require significant freeze-out and also an abundance reduction at low extinction due to photo-dissociation. In the case of N2H+ an abundance reduction at low extinction is also required.333This is due to freeze-out of N2.

B68 is just one example of a core where, using new techniques, we are inferring significant freeze-out in the early stages of star formation. Other examples can be found in the work of Tafalla et al. (2002) and references in §3. One possibility that cannot be discounted at present is that nearly all typically used molecular tracers are absent from the gas in the innermost regions of these cores (Bergin et al. 2002); this may hinder our ability to study the earliest stages star formation. However, these sources still offer great promise as new and more precise laboratories for testing chemical theory than previous work in template sources such as TMC-1 and L134N.

### 3.2 Chemistry in Star-Forming Cores

The chemistry in star-forming cores overlaps with the chemical studies of hot cores. Hot cores are molecular condensations directly associated with young embedded massive stars. Stellar birth leads to the creation of sharp temperature gradients and higher temperatures lead to the release of frozen ices from grain surfaces. As a result hot cores have quite different chemical composition, extending to very complex molecular species, than typically observed in quiescent gas. While these regions are associated with massive stars it is clear that low-mass stars also can produce similar “warm” cores (Cazaux et al. 2003). The reader is referred to the following references for additional discussions (Millar 2001; van der Tak 2003).

Examples of the new iterative method to derive abundances use so-called “jump” models where abundances are enhanced in the inner core via grain surface evaporation and are lower in the outer layers. The jump transition is set by the evaporation temperature (see van der Tak 2003). Models where chemical networks are directly linked to the radiation transport code are exemplified by the work of Doty et al. (2002) and Boonman et al. (2003).

A generic result is that enhanced abundances of numerous molecules are required in the center. A key goal for hot core studies is to probe the extent of grain surface chemistry via observations of trace complex species in the gas. Grain mantles can be observed directly via vibrational modes absorbing background IR radiation, but this method lacks sensitivity for all but the most abundant ices. Thus, gas-phase observations can be used to probe the extent of grain surface chemistry beyond the production of H2O, CH4, and NH3. The problem is that when molecules are released from the grain they might react in the gas (Charnley, Tielens, & Millar 1992). To draw upon a parallel to cometary observations, the products of these reactions would be ion-molecule daughter products as opposed to parent molecules that have directly evaporated from the grain surface. This is further complicated by the potential presence of high temperature gas-phase chemistry. Advances in our understanding will require continued close coupling of chemical models to observations.

## 4 Shock Chemistry

Another area of observational astrochemistry is the evidence for shock chemistry detected in molecular outflows. The primary example is found in the highly collimated L1157 molecular outflow, which has been subjected to a detailed chemical survey (Bachiller et al 2001). This study has shown that some species have enhanced abundances in outflow lobes (SiO, CH3OH, HCN) while others (N2H+, DCO+) are absent from the flow. Another collimated outflow, BHR71, has recently been the focus of an extensive chemical survey (shown in Figure 5). In this source the abundance trends are quite similar to L1157 in regards to the presence or absence of enhancements for most species. However, clear differences are found in the magnitude of the abundance enhancements (Bourke et al. 2004). It is not clear whether the differences are intrinsic or due to assumptions in the analysis.

Abundance enhancements are typically attributed to grain mantle core and mantle release via sputtering and/or high temperature chemistry. The effects of the latter have not been observationally explored and more attention needs to be paid to models in the literature (see series by Pineau des Forêts and collaborators). Moreover if shocks are truly liberating mantles then outflows should show high levels of deuteration as seen in hot cores. This also needs to be explored.

## 5 Conclusions

It is clear we are at the beginnings of a new era in astrochemistry where we will obtain more precise information regarding the abundances of molecular species, but also set limits on the abundance profile and on basic theory. In Figure 6 we present a schematic that shows a rough outline of our current understanding of the chemical structure in star forming cores. An important point here is that these zones will be different for various species (depending on the evaporation temperature, photo-dissociation cross-sections, depletion rate, etc.). Since molecular emission is the only way to probe gas kinematics, one can use improved chemical information as a tool. Thus, with careful choice of tracers, and knowledge of the chemistry, one can selectively probe motions from different gas along a given line of sight. This will be an important key to unraveling the star formation puzzle. In all, new observations are leading to crucial tests of chemical theory, but also presenting a completely new approach to star formation studies, bringing astrochemistry into wider application as a potent tool.

## Index