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# 1 INTRODUCTION

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Given statements emanating from some cosmologists today one could be forgiven for assuming that the solution to some of the great problems of the subject, even “the origin of the Universe” lie just around the corner. As an example of this triumphalist approach consider the following conclusion from Hu et al.  to a preview of the results they expect from spacecraft such as MAP and PLANCK designed to map the Cosmic Background Radiations: “…we will establish the cosmological model as securely as the Standard Model of elementary particles. We will then know as much, or even more, about the early Universe and its contents as we do about the fundamental constituents of matter”.

We believe the most charitable thing that can be said of such statements is that they are naive in the extreme and betray a complete lack of understanding of history, of the huge difference between an observational and an experimental science, and of the peculiar limitations of cosmology as a scientific discipline. By building up expectations that cannot be realised, such statements do a disservice not only to astronomy and to particle physics but they could ultimately do harm to the wider respect in which the whole scientific approach is held. As such, they must not go unchallenged.

It is very questionable whether the study of any phenomenon that is not repeatable can call itself a science at all. It would be sad however to abandon the whole fascinating area to the priesthood. But if we are going to lend this unique subject any kind of scientific respectability we have to look at all its claims with a great circumspection and listen to its proponents with even greater scepticism than is usually necessary. This is particularly true when the gulf between observers and theoreticians is as wide as it usually is here. Either side may be more inclined to accept the claims of the other than they should. As an extra-galactic observer addressing a mostly theoretical audience I want to emphasise the very many caveats that should always be attached to the observational side of this field. I do so as a friend and admirer of George Ellis who has one of the few minds capable of bridging the gulf.

## 2 THE OBSERVATIONS WHICH BEAR ON COSMOLOGY

The observations which bear on cosmology are, for such a grandiose subject, extremely sparse. I count only about a dozen which probably bear - most of them stumbled upon by accident (see Table 1). And they are observations not controlled experiments which therefore means that they cannot compare with the thousands of particle physics experiments upon which the Standard Model is based.

Table 1

ALL THE OBSERVATIONS WHICH BEAR ON COSMOLOGY

| 1. | The dark sky background.\* |
| --- | --- |
| 2. | Isotropy of galaxy counts. |
| 3. | Magnitude-Redshift diagram for galaxies.\* |
| 4. | Approx equivalence between 1/H0 and $`\tau _{\mathrm{stars}}`$, $`\tau _{\mathrm{elements}}`$.\* |
| 5. | Existence of CBR.\* |
| 6. | Isotropy of CBR.\* |
| 7. | BB spectrum of CBR. |
| 8. | Measured fluctuations in CBR? |
| 9. | Abundance of Helium.\* |
| 10. | Abundance of Deuterium.\* |
| 11. | Magnitude-redshift diagram for supernovae. |
| 12. | Existence of walls and voids in LSS.\* |
| 13. | Radio source-counts.\*? |

\*Serendipitous. ? = of questionable relevance.

## 3 THE SPECIFIC DIFFICULTIES OF COSMOLOGY

Table 2 lists some of the special difficulties which cosmology has to face as a science. They are mostly obvious but it is worth emphasising one or two:

Table 2

PARTICULAR DIFFICULTIES FOR COSMOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

| 1. | Only one Universe. |
| --- | --- |
| 2. | Universe opaque for 56/60 decades since Planck era. |
| 3. | Need to extrapolate physics over huge distances. |
| 4. | Need to work with what we can currently detect. \[But …\] |
| 5. | Local background very bright. |
| 6. | Distances very hard to determine (standard candles). |
| 7. | Observational Selection insidious. |
| 8. | Distant galaxies hard to measure and interpret unambiguously. |
| 9. | Luminosity Functions unreliable. |
| 10. | Geometry, astrophysics and evolution often entangled. |
| 11. | Physics of early Universe unknown (and unknowable?) |
| 12. | Human time-frame so short compared to cosmic. |
| 13. | Origin of inertia. |
| 14. | The singularity. |

1. There is only one Universe! At a stroke this removes from our armoury all the statistical tools that have proved indispensable for understanding most of astronomy.
2. The Universe has been opaque to electromagnetic radiation for all but 4 of the 60 decades of time which stretch between the Plank era ($`10^{43}`$ sec) and today ($`10^{17}`$ sec). Since as much interesting physics could have occurred in each logarithmic decade, it seems foolhardy to claim that we will ever know much about the origin of the cosmos, which is lost too far back in the logarithmic mists of Time. Even the Large Hadron Collider will probe the microphysics back only as far as $`10^{10}`$ secs). .
3. Cosmology requires us to extrapolate what physics we know over huge ranges in space and time, where such extrapolations have rarely, if ever, worked in physics before. Take gravitation for instance.. When we extrapolate the Inverse Square Law. ( - dress it up how you will as G.R.) from the solar system where it was established, out to galaxies and clusters of galaxies, it simply never works. We cover up this scandal by professing to believe in “Dark Matter” - for which as much independent evidence exists as for the Emperor’s New Clothes.
4. Objects at cosmologically interesting distance are exceedingly faint, small and heavily affected by factors such as redshift-dimming and k-corrections, so it will obviously be very difficult, if not impossible, to extract clear information about geometry, or evolution, or astrophysics - all of which are tangled up together.
5. Observational astronomy is all about the contrast between an object and its background  - both the background of the local Universe and the background noise in our instruments, which are never perfect. Almost all the galaxies we know of are just marginally brighter than the terrestrial sky - either extraordinary good fortune, or more likely a signal that far more are hidden beneath it . In other words we are in this, as in all other facets of observational astronomy, hapless victims of “Observational Selection” - an area in which George Ellis has done some brilliant work . The sky isn’t dark. Even at the darkest site of Earth the unaided eye can pick up 50,000 photons a second coming from an area of “dark sky” no larger than the full moon. Bigger telescopes are all very well - but they pick up more unwanted foreground light, as well as background signal. When you think that the galaxies at a redshift z of 2 should be dimmer by $`(1+z)^4100`$, and by another large but uncertain factor for the k-correction \[i.e. band-pass shifting\], it is more than a wonder to me that we can see anything of them at all. Ordinary galaxies at that redshift should be hundreds of times dimmer per unit area than our sky! It is also sobering to realise that only one per cent of the light in the night sky comes from beyond our Galaxy.
6. The tragedy of astronomy is that most information lies in spectra, and yet you need to collect between 100 and 1000 times more radiation to get a spectrum than to see an image. Thus most of the faint galaxies which may have cosmological stories to tell must remain, in spectroscopic terms, tantalisingly out of earshot. If history is anything to go by little good will come of the thousands of nights of big-telescope time now being lavished on the intriguing objects first seen with the Space Telescope, and made famous through the Hubble Deep Field. We will probably learn more cosmology from studying the surprising and diverse histories of star-formation that Hubble is finding among galaxies in the Local Group .

In summary we have very few observations, most of them were accidently made, and all are subject to observational selection. It is therefore outrageous to claim a comparison with all the carefully controlled experiments made by particle physicists. And even if we do get a perfect map of the Cosmic Background Radiation it will only be a map of a moment in time. Celestial mechanics is very precise - but it doesn’t tell us how the solar system was formed.

## 4 THEORY AND OBSERVATIONS

Martin Harwit  has argued that we cannot have made more than ten per cent of the crucial discoveries in Astronomy. He uses what John Barrow aptly calls ‘the proof-readers argument’. If two independent readers look at a manuscript then it is possible to estimate, by comparing their different results, how many errors there must be in total, including those not identified. In an analogous way two independent astronomical channels (say optical and X-ray) can be used to examine the Universe and a comparison of their separate key discoveries will yield an estimate of the numbers still to be found.

In any case with so little data to work on it shouldn’t be too difficult to devise a plausible theory to account for them. It is, however, sobering to compare the cosmological situation with the history of other sciences.

Take geology. Men were living on the earth for millions of years, and quarrying rock, digging mines and canals and puzzling over its fossils for thousands of years, before unexpected palaeomagnetic patterns revealed for certain the key idea of Continental Drift.

In stellar physics two thousand years elapsed between Hipparcos’s speculations and Bessel’s first measurement of a stellar distance. Seventy years later the statistical patterns in the H-R diagram led to our understanding of stellar structure.

However the closest comparison comes from my own field of galaxy astronomy which is, as an observational science, almost exactly contemporary with cosmology. Although we now have good spectra and images of thousands of galaxies the list of fundamental things we don’t know about them (Table 3) is far more striking that the list of things we do.

Table 3

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT GALAXIES

| 1. | How our knowledge is warped by Selection Effects. |
| --- | --- |
| 2. | What they are mostly made of. (Dark Matter?) |
| 3. | How they formed - and when. |
| 4. | How much internal extinction they suffer from. |
| 5. | What controls their global star-formation rates. |
| 6. | What parts their nuclei and halos play. |
| 7. | If there are genuine correlations among their global properties. |
| 8. | How they keep their gas/star balances. |

Of course these are only arguments by analogy. The optimistic cosmologist can always counter argue \[I don’t know how\] that the Universe in the large is a great deal simpler than its constituent parts.

## 5 THE COSMOLOGIST’S CREDO

The cosmologist, who would also be a scientist, must surely subscribe to at least the following assumptions:

1. “Speculations are not made which cannot, at least in principle, be compared with observational or experimental data, for tests” \[the NON-THEOLOGICAL assumption\].
2. “The portion of the Universe susceptible to observation is representative of the cosmos as a whole”. \[The ‘GOOD LUCK’ assumption\].
3. “The Universe was constructed using a significantly lower number of free parameters than the number of clean and independent observations we can make of it”. \[The ‘SIMPLICITY’ assumption\].
4. “The Laws of Physics which have significantly controlled the Universe since the beginning are, or can be, known to us from considerations outside cosmology itself i.e. we can somehow know the laws which operated during the 56/60 electromagnetically opaque decades”. \[The ‘NON-CIRCULARITY’ assumption\].

Finally the really wishful cosmologist who believes the final answers are just around the corner must confess to the following extra creed:
5. “We live in the first human epoch which possesses the technical means to tease out the crucial observations”. (As opposed to Hipparcos and parallax, Helmholz and the age of the Earth, Wegener and palaeomagnetic drift) \[The ‘FORTUNATE EPOCH’ assumption.\]

I can see very little evidence to support any of the last 4 assumptions while it is dismaying to find that some cosmologists, who would like to think of themselves as scientific, are quite willing to abrogate the first.

## 6 THE PATHOLOGIES OF COSMOLOGY

1. Cosmology must be the slowest moving branch of science. The number of practitioners per relevant observation is ridiculous. Consequently the same old things have to be said by the same old people (and by new ones) over and over and over again. For instance “Cold Dark Matter” now sounds to me like a religious liturgy which its adherents chant like a mantra in the mindless hope that it will spring into existence. Much of cosmology is unhealthily self-referencing and it seems to an outsider like myself that cosmological fashions and reputations are made more by acclamation than by genuine scientific debate.
2. There is a serious problem with the cost of astronomical spacecraft. An instrument capable of cosmologically interesting observations may cost half a billion dollars or more. There is therefore an insidious temptation to overclaim what they will see . This, however, is a dangerous game which can blow up in your face, as proponents of the Supercollider were to find out.
3. There is something beguiling and yet fallacious about working on “the faintest objects ever observed” even though, by definition, they contain “the least information ever detected”. During my working life a major fraction of the prime time on all large telescopes has been devoted to the study of objects right at the horizon, with, or so it seems to me, very little result. To be rude about it, statistical studies of faint objects can keep a career going for ages without the need for a single original thought \- or indeed a genuinely clear result. The jam is always just around the next corner.
4. As particle physics has become paralyzed by its escalating cost many particle theorists have ‘moved over’ into cosmology, wishfully thinking of the Universe as ‘The great Accelerator in the Sky’. Alas they are mostly not equipped with the astronomical background to appreciate how ‘soft’ an observational, as opposed to an experimental science, has to be. But they have only to look at the history of astronomy and at some of the howlers we have made (Table 4) to find out.

Table 4

SOME HISTORICAL MISTAKES IN COSMOLOGY

| 1. | ‘Early’ cosmologies - e.g. Genesis, Hindu, … |
| --- | --- |
| 2. | Many unsound explanations for dark sky (up to 1960). |
| 3. | Assumption of a static Universe. |
| 4. | Original expansion claim based on unsound statistics (Hubble). |
| 5. | H0 wrong by factor $`10`$ for 25 years. |
| 6. | Universe measured to be younger than stars. |
| 7. | CBR not recognised for 25 years \[McKellar 1942, Gamov… |
| 8. | Radio-source counts misinterpreted due to use of fallacious statistics. |
| 9. | Mass of neutrinos forgotten/ignored for 40 years. |
| 10. | Sandage’s “search for 2 numbers” forgot evolution. |
| 11. | Horizon/flatness problems virtually ignored before a possible solution appeared. |
5. Despite our intuitions very many Inverse Problems (and astronomy is very largely an Inverse Problem) are not well posed. . For example when the HST was found to be spherically aberrated half the astronomical community claimed that the images could be restored by mathematical ‘deconvolution’. But they could not be - because the problem is ill posed; the highest resolution information will be swamped by the highest frequency noise during the inversion - it is a fundamental property of numerical differentiation. Only very high signal-to-noise data (a luxury astronomers rarely enjoy) can be deconvolved successfully. Likewise, I suspect that the multiparticle simulations beloved of certain numerical cosmologists are extremely ill-posed. They start off with a whole lot of CDM ‘dots’, the dots apparently form filaments under the force of gravity - as they are bound to do according to Zeldovich’s simple back-of-the-envelope analysis, and we are supposed to admire the result. What result? That to me is the question. Presumably we are supposed to compare the dots with real structures and infer some properties of the physical Universe. In my opinion it is nothing more than a seductive but futile computer game. What about the gas-dynamics, the initial conditions, the star-formation physics, evolution, dust, biasing, a proper correlation statistic, the feedback between radiation and matter …? Without a good stab at all these effects ‘dotty cosmology’ is no more relevant to real cosmology than the computer game ‘Life’ is to evolutionary biology.
6. However, the most unhealthy aspect of cosmology is its unspoken parallel with religion. Both deal with big but probably unanswerable questions. The rapt audience, the media exposure, the big book-sale, tempt priests and rogues, as well as the gullible, like no other subject in science. For that reason alone other scientists simply must treat the pretensions of cosmology, and of professional cosmologists, with heightened scepticism, as I am attempting to do here.

## 7 COSMOLOGY IN PERSPECTIVE

Of course we would all love to know of the fate of the Universe, just as we’d love to know if God exists. If we expect science to provide the answers though, we may have to be very patient - and literally wait for eternity. Alas professional cosmologists cannot afford to wait that long. For that reason the word ‘cosmologist’ should be expunged from the scientific dictionary and returned to the priesthood where it properly belongs.

I’m not suggesting that cosmology itself should be abandoned. Mostly by accident it has made some fascinating, if faltering progress over the centuries. And if we are patient and build our instruments to explore the Universe in all the crevices of parameter space, new clues will surely come to hand, as they have in the past, largely by accident. But we should not spend too many of our astronomical resources in trying to answer grandiose questions which may, in all probability, be unanswerable. For instance we must not build the Next Generation Space Telescope as if it was solely a cosmological machine. We should only do that if we are confident of converging on “the truth”. If we build it to look through many windows we may yet find the surprising clues which lead us off on a new path along the way.

Above all we must not overclaim for this fascinating subject which, it can be argued, is not a proper science at all. Rutherford for instance said “Don’t let me hear anyone use the word ‘Universe’ in my department”. Shouldn’t we scientists be saying something like this to the general public:

“It is not likely that we primates gazing through bits of glass for a century or two will dissemble the architecture and history of infinity. But if we don’t try we won’t get anywhere. Therefore we professionals do the best we can to fit the odd clues we have into some kind of plausible story. That is how science works, and that is the spirit in which our cosmological speculations should be treated. Don’t be impressed by our complex machines or our arcane mathematics. They have been used to build plausible cosmic stories before - which we had to discard afterwards in the face of improving evidence. The likelihood must be that such revisions will have to occur again and again and again.”

I apologise for such a highly opinionated attack, but it does appear to me that the pendulum has swung much too far the other way. Surely the ‘burden of proof’ ought to rest squarely on the proponents of what will always be a fascinating but suspect subject.

## REFERENCES

1. Hu, W., Sugiyama, N. And Silk, J., 1997, Nature, 386, 37.
2. Rees, M., 1995, Perspectives in Astrophysics Cosmology, CUP, 109.
3. Condon, J., 1998, IAU Symposium 179, (Kluwer), p19.
4. Disney, M. J., 1976, Nature, 263, 573.
5. Impey, C. And Bothun, G., 1998, Ann. Revs. Astron. Astrophys.
6. Disney, M. J., 1998, IAU Colloquium 171, (Kluwer), p11.
7. Ellis, F. G. R., Perry, J. J., And Sievers, A. W., 1984, AJ, 89, 1124
8. Mateo, M. G., 1998, Ann. Revs. Astron. Astrophys., p435
9. Harwit, M., 1981, Cosmic Discovery, Harvester Press UK, p231.
10. Craig and Brown, 1986, Inverse Problems in Astronomy (Adam Hilger; Bristol).


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# Log N – Log S distributions of accreting and cooling isolated neutron stars

## 1. Introduction

Despite intensive observational campaigns, no irrefutable identification of an isolated accreting neutron star (NS) has been presented so far. Six soft sources have been found in ROSAT fields which are most probably associated to isolated radioquiet NSs. Present X-ray and optical data however do not allow an unambiguous identification of the physical mechanism responsible for their emission. These sources can be powered either by accretion of the interstellar gas onto old ($`10^{10}`$ yr) NSs or by the release of internal energy in relatively young ($`10^6`$ yr) cooling NSs (see Treves et al. t2000 (2000) and Motch motch2000 (2000) for recent reviews). The ROSAT candidates, although relatively bright (up to $`1\mathrm{ct}\mathrm{s}^1`$), are intrinsically dim and their inferred luminosity ($`L10^{31}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$) is near to that expected from either a close-by cooling NS or from an accreting NS among the most luminous. Their X-ray spectrum is soft and thermal, again as predicted for both accretors and coolers (Zane, Turolla & Treves zzt2000 (2000); Treves et al. t2000 (2000)). Up to now only two optical counterparts have been identified (RXJ 1856, Walter & Matthews wm97 (1997), for which a distance estimate of $`60`$ pc has been very recently obtained, Walter w2000 (2000), and RXJ 0720, Kulkarni & Van Kerkwick kk98 (1998)). In both cases an optical excess over the low-frequency tail of the black body X-ray spectrum has been reported. While detailed multiwavelength observations with next-generation instruments may indeed be the key for assessing the true nature of these sources, other, indirect, approaches may be used to discriminate in favor of one of the two scenarios proposed so far.

In this Letter we compute and compare the $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ distribution of both accreting and cooling NSs, to establish the relative contribution of the two populations to the observed number counts. Previous studies derived the $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ distribution of accretors (Treves & Colpi tc91 (1991); Madau and Blaes mb94 (1994); Manning et al. mann96 (1996)) assuming a NSs velocity distribution rich in slow stars ($`v100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). More recent measurements of pulsar velocities (e.g. Lyne & Lorimer ll94 (1994); Hansen & Phinney hp97 (1997)) and upper limits on the observed number of accretors in ROSAT surveys (Danner 1998a , b ) point, however, to a larger NS mean velocity (see Treves et al. t2000 (2000) for a critical discussion). Recently Neühauser & Trümper (nt99 (1999), NT99 hereafter) compared the number count distribution of the ROSAT isolated NS candidates with those of accretors and coolers. Here we address these issues in greater detail, also in the light of the latest contributions to the modeling of the evolution of Galactic NSs (Popov et al. p2000 (2000), P2000 hereafter). In $`\mathrm{\S }2`$ we use a population synthesis model, developed in P2000, to trace the properties of the NS spin, magnetic field and accretion luminosity in the Galactic potential using a detailed map of the interstellar medium (ISM). Cooling NSs are explored separately in $`\mathrm{\S }3`$ within a simpler model of local sources. Results are discussed in $`\mathrm{\S }4`$.

## 2. Accreting Isolated Neutron Stars

The census model adopted here follows closely that developed in P2000. All NSs are born in the Galactic plane, their birth rate is taken to be proportional to the square of the ISM density and is constant in time. Initially a NS has a circular velocity fixed by its position in the Galactic plane and determined by the Galactic potential. To this, an additional kick velocity with random orientation and modulus selected from a Maxwellian distribution is imparted.

Time resolution is adapted to follow in detail the different evolutionary phases the star experiences. NSs are born in the ejector (E) phase and then, as braking due to electromagnetic torques increases the period, come to the propeller (P) phase. Further spin-down, produced by accretion torques, may drive the star in the accretion (A) phase when matter can penetrate the magnetosphere reaching the stellar surface (see e.g. Lipunov l92 (1992)). Accretion is then assumed to proceed at the local Bondi rate and the large scale ISM distribution is mapped as in P2000. The small scale structure of the ISM ($`100`$AU-1 pc, see e.g. Meyer & Lauroesh ml99 (1999); Treves et al. t2000 (2000)), has not been taken into account as it would produce an unacceptable increase of the computing time, leading to a worse statistics. A detailed mapping of the ISM on all scales is fundamental in assessing the observability of single, luminous sources (see Zane et al. za96 (1996)), but the effects produced by its multiphase structure on the evolution of the entire NS population are likely to average out.

Here we consider only the simplest picture, where the star magnetic field is constant and the dipole moment $`\mu `$ has a log-gaussian distribution, similar to that observed in radiopusars ($`\mathrm{log}\mu =30.06`$, $`\sigma =0.32`$ in CGS units).

The magneto-rotational evolution is followed using essentially the same approach as in P2000. In particular, the typical values of the transition periods are $`25`$ s and $`1500`$ s for E$``$ P and P$``$ A transitions, respectively. As soon as the star enters the accretor stage, the period is set to the value typical of an accretor embedded in a turbulent medium (Lipunov & Popov lp95 (1995); Konenkov & Popov kp97 (1997)).

The statistics of accretors was improved by a factor $`>10`$ relative to P2000 by evolving only stars from the low-velocity tail ($`v<100`$ km s-1) of a Maxwellian with $`v=300`$ km s-1. This assumption appears justified since the time spent in the ejector phase increases with velocity, $`t_E10^{10}\mu _{30}^1n^{1/2}v_{100}\mathrm{yr}.`$ The present choice for $`v`$ follows from radiopulsar observations and current limits on the detection of accreting NSs (P2000). Results can be easily scaled to any $`v>200`$ km s-1.

Nearly all highly magnetized isolated NSs in the velocity range considered here become accretors, and in calculating the $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ distribution we obtain good statistics for fluxes $`<10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. At larger fluxes the number of sources is too small to give reliable counts, but the extrapolation $`\mathrm{log}N(3/2)\mathrm{log}S`$ can be safely used for $`\mathrm{log}S11`$.

Our main results are presented in Figures 2 and 4, and refer to a total of $`10^9`$ NSs in the Galaxy. The $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ distribution of accretors is computed for sources within a distance of 5 kpc, together with the distributions of velocity, accretion rate and effective temperature (calculated adopting as effective surface the polar cap area). Isolated NSs with fields $`<0.5\times 10^{11}`$ G never appear as accretors in any run. The brightest accretors have luminosities $`10^{32}`$ erg s-1, but for the majority of them $`L10^{29}10^{30}`$ erg s-1. Our sources are relatively hot, with a mean effective temperature 300-400 eV and for them absorption can be neglected. We predict, on average, about 1 source per square degree, in the energy range 0.5-2 keV, for limiting fluxes about $`10^{16}`$$`10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. This implies $`3\times 10^4`$ sources in the whole sky. Note that they are significantly concentrated toward the Galactic plane with a center-anticenter asymmetry.

## 3. Cooling Neutron Stars

Soon after their birth in a type II supernova event, cooling NSs emit X-ray luminosities as high as $`10^{34}`$ erg s-1 for a few thousands years. Before disappearing from the X-ray sky, they shine as faint soft sources ($`L10^{32}`$ erg s-1) for about a million year (e.g. Yakovlev et al. yak99 (1999)).

In the determination of the log$`N`$-log$`S`$, the cooler sample should in principle be drawn from the same parent population as accretors. However, as their total number is quite low ($`10^4`$ of the total number of NS in the Galaxy) owing to the short duration of the cooling phase, the results would be affected by the very poor statistics. Notice however that coolers can travel only a distance $`400`$ pc during their lifetime and have softer spectra than accretors, so they appear mostly as a local population of sources (due to interstellar absorption).

For this reason, we prefer to approximate their spatial distribution around the sun as homogeneous with a scale height of $`450`$ pc. We take cooling NSs as “standard candles” with $`L=10^{32}`$ erg s-1, giving off a black-body spectrum with effective temperature $`50`$ eV. The duration of the cooling phase is taken to be $`10^6`$ yr, according to the “slow cooling” scenario (see NT99). We used two typical values for the total NS spatial density: $`0.33\times 10^3\mathrm{pc}^3`$ and $`3.3\times 10^3\mathrm{pc}^3`$. The former estimate follows from radiopulsar statistics and was used by NT99, while the latter corresponds to a total population of $`10^9`$ NSs, as implied by constraints on nucleosynthetic yields and historic supernova rates (Arnett et al. ar89 (1989); van den Bergh & Tammann vdbt91 (1991)). Accordingly, coolers have a mean density of $`0.333.3\times 10^7\mathrm{pc}^3.`$

The ISM structure is treated in a very simple way. The ISM density inside the Local Bubble of radius $`r_l=140\mathrm{pc}`$ (Sfeir et al. sfeir99 (1999)) is $`n=0.07`$ cm-3. At larger distances the interstellar gas is assumed to be uniformly distributed in a disk of half-thickness 450 pc with $`n=1`$ cm-3.

Results are shown in Figure 3, where we compare the observed distribution of ROSAT candidates with that of coolers, as predicted by the present model (including absorption) and by NT99, the latter obtained for a total NS number $`N_{tot}=2\times 10^8`$. As it is apparent, coolers dominate over accretors at large fluxes (for the same $`N_{tot}`$), essentially because of their much higher luminosity ($`10^{32}`$ vs. $`10^{29}10^{30}`$ erg s-1).

This simple model reproduces the most important feature, the “flattening” of the $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ distribution outside the Local Bubble. Such strong flattening can help to explain the observed data, if one assumes that most of the brightest isolated NSs are identified (Schwope et al. setal99 (1999)).

The value of the flux at which the distribution flattens out (the “knee”) depends on the size of the Local Bubble $`r_l.`$ The ISM densities and the duration of the cooling time affect instead the number of sources. Since the cooling time can be an important parameter, the comparison of theoretical and observed distributions could, in principle, help in discriminating between “fast” and “slow” cooling models.

## 4. Discussion

The statistical analysis presented in the previous sections shows that both scenarios, accretors and coolers, have difficulties in explaining, under usual assumptions, the observed properties of isolated NS ROSAT candidates. The main problem is to produce enough sources that are, at the same time: i) relatively bright (high count rates, $`0.1`$ cts s-1); ii) close (low absorption $`N_H10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$); iii) soft ($`T_{eff}50100`$ eV); iv) slowly rotating (for two candidates, RX J0720 and RX J0420, the detected periods are 8.4 and 22.7 s).

Polar cap accretion for a non-decaying magnetic field, $`B10^{12}`$ G, cannot produce enough bright sources and the emitted spectrum is likely to be harder, see Figure 2. Moreover, accretors are expected to have much larger periods, $`P10^3`$ s. On the other hand, relatively young cooling NSs can be spun down to periods $`20`$ s in $`<10^6`$ yrs (when they are still hot) only for $`B10^{14}`$ G, since $`P15B_{14}(t/10^6\mathrm{yr})^{1/2}\mathrm{s}`$ for dipole losses. If all NSs experience an initial radiopulsar phase, their total number in the Galaxy would be about $`(13)\times 10^8`$ (Lyne et al. ll98 (1998)). In this case there will be not bright enough isolated NSs in the Solar vicinity in both scenarios.

If $`N_{tot}10^9`$, coolers can explain the large number of bright close-by sources and their typical temperatures (see Figure 3). However, the problem of reproducing the observed periods still remains, unless the progenitors of the ROSAT pulsating candidates are NSs born with long periods, which never passed through the pulsar phase; alternatively they could be magnetars with ultra-high fields, as suggested by Heyl & Kulkarni (hk98 (1998)). If proved correct, the “fast” cooling scenario, in which the duration of the active X-ray phase is shorter, would make again problematic to account for the observed bright sources.

In the accretion scenario, increasing the total number of NSs is also a need. As already shown by Livio et al. (lxf98 (1998)) and Colpi et al. (elu98 (1998)), magnetic field decay can explain the low temperatures and periods. Decay can both increase and decrease number of accreting isolated NSs (Popov, & Prokhorov pp2000 (2000)). But a complete statistical analysis is still to come.

In any case, using “standard” assumptions on the velocity, spin period and magnetic field parameters, the accretion scenario can not explain the observed properties of the six ROSAT candidates.

Note that the number of accretors (of all luminosities) in the Galaxy is found to be about two orders of magnitude larger than the number of young coolers: few percents versus 0.01% of the total number of isolated NSs. But on average accretors are 3 orders of magnitude fainter than a typical cooler. A key result of our statistical analysis is that accretors should eventually become more abundant than coolers at fluxes below $`10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. This is illustrated in Figure 4 in which we summarize the main outcome of our simulations.

## Acknowledgments

We wish to thank J. Lattimer, E. van den Heuvel, V.M. Lipunov, and S. Campana for useful discussions. SBP and MEP also thank the University of Insubria for financial support and the Universities of Milano-Bicocca, Padova and the Brera Observatory (Merate) for their kind hospitality. The work of SBP and MEP was supported through grant RFBR 00-02-17164 and NTP Astronomy grants 1.4.4.1. and 1.4.2.3. Support from the European Commission under contract ERBFMRXCT98-0195 and from MURST under contract COFIN98021541 is acknowledged.


text:
# Comment on the paper “Decoherence and the theory of continuous quantum measurements”, by M. B. Mensky, Phys. Usp. 41, 923 (1998), arXiv:quant-ph/9812017 v2

Quantum measurements have attracted a renewed attention in the last decades due to the improvements in the sensitivity of various devices operating close to their quantum limit. A formalism to deal with continuous quantum measurements, the restricted path integral (RPI) approach, has been developed by Mensky  and applied, among the others, by us and collaborators to various phenomenological contexts, for instance the quantum Zeno effect in atomic spectroscopy .

In a recent paper  Mensky reviewed our application of the RPI approach to energy measurements. He wrote: The approach based on RPI and complex Hamiltonians was first applied to the measurement of energy in a two-level system in Refs.  (Refs.  of this Comment). It was demonstrated that if the energy is measured with a high enough accuracy, then the system becomes frozen, and the transitions between the levels are no longer possible (the Zeno effect). The alternative regimes of measurements have not been (and could not have been) studied in these works because of a serious methodological error. The authors assumed that the result of a continuous measurement is expressed by the function $`E(t)`$, which does not change and coincides with one of the energy levels of the system. …This error was corrected in Ref.  (Ref.  of this Comment), which has made it possible to carry out a detailed analysis of a moderately accurate continuous quantum measurement of the energy, and propose an entirely new type of measurement - monitoring of a quantum transition.

In this Comment we point out that Mensky’s assessment of our results is incorrect. Our claim is simply based on the actual reading of the papers quoted by Mensky himself , as well as on commenting results from a paper surprisingly ignored by him in this context .

In Ref.  at page 136 (bottom) we explicitly wrote: …the measurement result. This last is not necessarily an eigenvalue $`E_n`$ of the unmeasured system due to the classical uncertainty of the meter (for a detailed discussion of the classical properties of the meter see ref. ).

In Ref.  from Eq. (1) to Eq. (15) the measurement result is represented by a generic time-dependent function $`E(t)`$. In order to obtain a simple solution of the system of differential equations (15), we then assume $`E`$ constant but with an arbitrary value. Only at the end of Section II we consider the special case, $`E=E_n`$, of a measurement result coincident with a system eigenvalue. Analogous considerations hold for the two-level system analyzed in Section IV of . The soundness of our approach is (perhaps unintentionally) confirmed by Mensky himself who, in , later rewrites exactly the equations in  (compare Eq. 69 onward in Section 4.1 of  to Eq. 1 onward of Section II of ).

Some related considerations on the difference between a posteriori and a priori selective measurements are also in order. In Refs.  we considered the case of a posteriori selective measurements, i.e. measurement processes analyzed at the end of the measurement when a particular result $`E(t)`$ has been realized (selected). A probability $`P[E]`$ associated to each measurement result $`E(t)`$ has to be taken into account to describe a selective measurement a priori during its evolution. This is what Audretsch and Mensky did in their paper  by considering a probability-dependent RPI. However, a detailed analysis of the differences between a priori and a posteriori selective measurements had been previously given in . In the a posteriori analysis the RPI is described by a Schrödinger equation with a deterministic anti-Hermitian term representing the effect of the known measurement result. In the a priori analysis the same equation becomes a stochastic nonlinear equation in which the wave function and the measurement result are evaluated at the same time considering their mutual influence.

In Ref.  we also introduced the concept of non-selective measurements corresponding to a probabilistic description of the system during a continuous measurement independently of the result of the measurement itself. In particular, the RPI approach for selective measurements was shown to be equivalent, in the case of non-selective measurements, to a Lindblad semi-group equation for the density matrix of the measured system. As in the case of selective measurements, the Lindblad equation describing non-selective processes contains a phenomenological parameter. This last can be arbitrarily varied to represent highly or moderately accurate measurements. The Lindblad equation was used in Section 4 of  to analyze the appearance of the quantum Zeno effect in a two-level system. The corresponding results are in qualitative agreement with the different selective analysis done in  and compare rather well for a sufficiently high value of the meter accuracy with an actual non-selective measurement, namely the atomic spectroscopy data of the landmark experiment described in .

In conclusion, an unbiased reading of the papers  shows that there is no serious methodological error in them and that the developed formalism holds for generic, time-dependent measurements of energy. Furthermore, what Mensky considers an entirely new type of measurement - monitoring of a quantum transition  was already introduced and discussed in . We hope that this Comment may contribute to reconstruct a fair perspective on the issue of continuous energy measurements, correcting the misrepresentation made in the review paper .


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# Measurement theory for spinor condensates

## 1 Introduction

With the introduction of the optical trap in the experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation, simultaneous confinement of atoms in several angular momentum states is now feasible . The atomic spins interact in spin-exchange collisions, which gives rise to collective many-spin states. Energy differences between several conceivable ground states of the spinor condensate  have turned out to be small, so that it need not be obvious which one gets prepared in an experiment.

On the other hand, resolving the contradicting opinions of the past , recent analyses have shown  that a Bose-Einstein condensate may display signatures of spontaneously broken gauge symmetry, such as interference of two independently prepared condensates  or the Josephson effect, even if the gauge symmetry of the state is in fact not broken. The lesson is that the relation between the state of the system and the measurement results may be conditioned as much by the experiment as by the state itself. How to distinguish experimentally between the proposed states of the spinor condensate  is therefore a nontrivial question in its own right.

In this paper we study the experimental signatures of a spin-1 condensate for three different initial states, “coherent state” with spontaneous alignment , “fragmented state” in which there are two macroscopically occupied spin states , and rotationally invariant “singlet state” . Our main tool is quantum trajectory simulations  of repeated Stern-Gerlach experiments. Once more , the interplay between state and measurement is evident. It appears that the coherent and fragmented states are experimentally indistinguishable, but can be distinguished easily from the singlet state. We also present a testable prediction for the distribution of the outcomes of the Stern-Gerlach experiments that probes the statistic of spin projections to all orders, not just averages and standard deviations. Finally, as an important by-product of our development we note that, while the simulations at first sight only apply to a quite artificial experimental scheme, they implement what we believe is a universal theory for spin measurements on a condensate.

## 2 States of spinor condensate

We consider putative ground states for the spinor condensate in the case when the spin species do not separate, but the atoms with the three angular momentum projections $`m=\pm 1`$ and $`m=0`$ commingle with identical spatial wave functions. We assume scattering lengths such that the interaction between the spins is effectively antiferromagnetic. For brevity we assume zero magnetic field. Nonetheless, we still pick a quantization axis $`z`$. We write the annihilation operators for the atoms with the three spin components along the quantization axis as $`a_\pm `$ and $`a_0`$. For notational simplicity, we take the total number of atoms $`N`$ to be even.

The coherent state is arrived at via the semiclassical argument, which treats the annihilation operators $`a_\pm `$ and $`a_0`$ as $`c`$ numbers . The $`c`$ numbers come with phases that are not uniquely determined by minimization of energy. Assigning a value for the phases is tantamount to inserting by hand a form of spontaneous symmetry breaking. The corresponding quantized ansatz for the state of the spinor condensate reads

$$|C=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^NN!}}\left(e^{i\chi }a_{}^{}+e^{i\chi }a_+^{}\right)^N|\mathrm{vac}.$$
(1)
Positing the state $`|C`$ is analogous to assuming that a single-component condensate is in a coherent state, as opposed to, say, a number state of the atoms . $`\chi `$ is an angle that characterizes the symmetry breaking. It selects preferred directions in the $`xy`$ plane.

The fragmented or “coherent-fragmented state”  is just a number state with half of the spins in the state $`+`$ and half in the state $``$,

$$|F=|N/2,0,N/2.$$
(2)
The arguments give the numbers of atoms with the $`z`$ components of the angular momentum equal to $`1`$, $`0`$, and $`+1`$. In the thermodynamic limit the state $`|F`$ should model the ground state in the presence of even the most minute magnetic field in the $`z`$ direction . While this state could behave differently in the $`x`$ and $`z`$ directions, it has no built-in structure in the $`xy`$ plane.

The singlet state of  is of the form

$$|S=\underset{k=0}{\overset{N/2}{}}A_k|k,N2k,k.$$
(3)
The coefficients $`A_k`$ satisfy the recursion relation

$$A_k=\sqrt{\frac{N2k+2}{N2k+1}}A_{k1},$$
(4)
and are then fixed by normalization, except for an arbitrary overall phase. The state $`|S`$ is the unique ground state for exactly zero magnetic field. It has the same form in all rotated frames, and thus possesses no intrinsic direction.

## 3 Measurements on spins

In our model for the measurements, we assume for the time being that one atom at a time is removed from the condensate and is subject to a Stern-Gerlach experiment that probes the spin component in the $`xy`$ plane in a fixed direction at an angle $`\phi `$ with respect to the $`x`$ axis. The observed sequence of spin projections is recorded and analyzed. All measurements are supposed to be completed in a time shorter than the evolution time scale of the spins in the condensate owing to spin-spin interactions.

From angular momentum algebra it is easy to see that the annihilation operators for the spin states in the direction $`\phi `$ are given in terms of the original quantization axis operators as

$`a_\pm (\phi )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\phi }}{2}}a_{}\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}a_0+{\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\phi }}{2}}a_+,`$ (5)
$`a_0(\phi )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\phi }}{\sqrt{2}}}a_{}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\phi }}{\sqrt{2}}}a_+.`$ (6)
We carry out conventional quantum trajectory simulations of the measurement sequence  numerically. Thus, suppose that, entering the $`n`$th measurement, the normalized state of the spins is $`|\psi _n`$. We first calculate the probabilities for each spin projection,

$$P_m^{(n)}=\frac{\psi _n|a_m^{}(\phi )a_m(\phi )|\psi _n}{Nn}$$
(7)
for $`m=1`$, $`0`$ and $`+1`$. Second, we use a random number generator to pick one of the $`m`$ values in such a way that the probability for choosing $`m`$ equals $`P_m^{(n)}`$. Third, we reduce the wave packet according to the selected value of $`m`$, so that the state vector for the $`(n+1)`$th measurement is

$$|\psi _{n+1}=\frac{a_m(\phi )|\psi _n}{\sqrt{\psi _n|a_m^{}(\phi )a_m(\phi )|\psi _n}}.$$
(8)
The choices of the spin projection $`m`$ for each measurement $`n`$ constitute the data.

We first consider the coherent state, $`|\psi _0=|C`$. It turns out that, except for an inconsequential overall phase, and independently of the past choices of the spin projections, the state vector $`|\psi _n`$ is always a coherent state of the same form as $`|C`$, except that of course the total number of atoms is $`Nn`$ not $`N`$. Furthermore, the probabilities for the outcomes of the Stern-Gerlach experiment are always the same,

$$P_\pm ^{(n)}=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{cos}^2(\phi \chi ),P_0^{(n)}=\mathrm{sin}^2(\phi \chi ).$$
(9)
Successive Stern-Gerlach experiments are therefore uncorrelated. The nature of the symmetry breaking is alignment. Namely, in the measurement directions $`\phi =\chi \pm \frac{1}{2}\pi `$ one only sees the result $`m=0`$, whereas in the directions $`\phi =\chi `$ and $`\phi =\chi +\pi `$ one finds $`m=\pm 1`$ with equal probabilities, and no $`m=0`$.

Now, according to the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking, the angle $`\chi `$ varies at random from one spinor condensate to the next, and the experimenter has no a priori way of knowing it. As the observed frequencies of spin projections $`N_0`$, $`N_\pm `$ vary wildly with the angle $`\chi `$, measurements on just a single condensate do not seem to make a particularly discriminating test for or against the state $`|C`$.

To gather more incisive data, we imagine repeating the experiment with a large number of identically prepared condensates. In principle we should discuss the frequencies of the observed spin projections, but in our simulations we have access to the probabilities $`P_0^{(n)}`$ and $`P_\pm ^{(n)}`$ as well. For brevity, here we often pick a particular measurement $`n`$, and focus on the combination of the probabilities

$$P=P_{}^{(n)}+P_+^{(n)}P_0^{(n)}.$$
(10)
For a given condensate in the coherent state $`|C`$ this has the value $`P=\mathrm{cos}^2(\phi \chi )\mathrm{sin}^2(\phi \chi )`$, but the angle $`\chi `$ is unknown. Nonetheless, if the angle $`\chi `$ is evenly distributed over the unit circle $`[0,2\pi )`$, we may calculate the probability density $`f(P)`$ for the values of $`P`$. The result is

$$f(P)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{\pi \sqrt{1P^2}},\hfill & P(1,1);\hfill \\ 0,\hfill & \mathrm{otherwise}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(11)
Thus, we envisage using a large number of condensates. For each condensate one extracts the combination of probabilities $`P`$, in our numerical experiments using (10) for some given measurement $`n`$, and in real experiments by estimating the probabilities using the observed frequencies of spin projections for each condensate. Finally one compares the distribution of the numbers $`P`$ with predictions such as (11). In the case of the coherent state $`|C`$, the numerical experiments simply amount to testing of our algorithms.

We next move on to the fragmented state $`|F`$. In figure 1(a) we plot the numerically simulated probabilities $`P_0^{(n)}`$ and $`P_\pm ^{(n)}`$ as a function of the measurement number $`n`$ for a sample condensate with $`N=1000`$ atoms, and figure 1(b) gives the corresponding cumulative frequencies $`N_0`$, $`N_\pm `$. Notably, after an initial transient, the probabilities approximately stabilize at values compatible with the observed relative frequencies of the spin components.

The expectation values for the numbers of spins with given projections are $`a_\pm ^{}(\phi )a_\pm (\phi )=\frac{1}{4}N`$, $`a_0^{}(\phi )a_0(\phi )=\frac{1}{2}N`$. One might naively expect that, even in a single condensate, one would find the spins approximately in the ratios $`N_{}:N_0:N_+=1:2:1`$. This clearly is not the case. In figure 1(b) the ratios rather are 2:1:2. Moreover, the observed ratios vary at random from one condensate to another.

The measurements are correlated; the outcome of an observation of the projection of a spin affects the state, which in turns affects the outcome of future observations. The correlations work out in an interesting way. In the first measurement the probabilities are $`\frac{1}{4}:\frac{1}{2}:\frac{1}{4}`$, but then they quickly drift away and stabilize at some other values. Once the probabilities have stabilized, Stern-Gerlach measurements seem to be approximately independent repetitions of one another. However, the apparent state that is being repeatedly measured varies at random from one condensate to the other. Measurements on the fragmented state $`|F`$ in an individual condensate behave remarkably like measurements on the symmetry-broken coherent state $`|C`$.

It is legitimate to ask if the states $`|F`$ and $`|C`$ can be distinguished at all. We address this question further in figure 2. We take 1000 spinor condensates, each with $`N=500`$ atoms. For each condensate we record the quantity $`P`$ of (10) for the Stern-Gerlach measurement number $`n=101`$. We then bin the results into 40 equally wide slots of $`P`$, and draw the histogram as circles. Also shown as the solid line is the prediction for the histogram if the probability distribution for the values of $`P`$ is given by (11), as appropriate for the coherent state $`|C`$. Given the statistical fluctuations, we cannot tell the states $`|F`$ and $`|C`$ from one another.

The situation is remarkably similar to the one that was encountered earlier with a single-component condensate when it came to the question of a number state, versus a coherent state whose phase arises from spontaneously broken gauge symmetry . When detection of the atoms is explicitly considered, it turns out that both states lead to interference between independently prepared condensates, even though the number state seemingly does not provide any phase for the interference . Both coherent-state and number-state condensates even exhibit the Josephson effect . It is possible in principle to tell the difference between a coherent state and a number state by studying atom statistics for a small number (at most tens) of atoms , but an experiment discriminating between coherent and number states is yet to be carried out in a condensate of any size. We believe that, analogously, there would be little or no practical difference between the states $`|C`$ and $`|F`$ of the spinor condensate.

Let us finally consider the singlet state $`|S`$. The expectation values of the spin components are all $`a_\pm ^{}(\phi )a_\pm (\phi )=a_0^{}(\phi )a_0(\phi )=\frac{1}{3}N`$. However, just like in the case of the fragmented state $`|F`$, in a single condensate both the simulated probabilities and the frequencies stabilize at values that may be completely different from $`N_{}:N_0:N_+`$ = $`1:1:1`$. One may, of course, draw a histogram such as in figure 2 also for the state $`|S`$, which we have done in figure 3. The discrepancy with the prediction of the coherent state $`|C`$ is evident even without any statistical analysis.

Drawing the histogram for the state $`|S`$ might already have been be a case of overkill. While the frequencies for spin projections are seemingly random for a single condensate, we have found that they behave as expected when averaged over many condensates: $`1:2:1`$ for the states $`|C`$ and $`|F`$, $`1:1:1`$ for the state $`|S`$. The singlet $`|S`$ should be experimentally distinguishable from the other two states simply by averaging the frequencies of spin projections over many condensates.

## 4 Comparing schemes for Stern-Gerlach experiments

Up to now we have envisaged picking one atom at a time out of the condensate. In reality one might rather do an en masse Stern-Gerlach experiment, subjecting the entire spinor condensate at once to a gradient of the magnetic field. The spin projections then separate in space, and can be counted by counting atoms.

We assume that the detection is in principle still one atom at a time, as if the atoms fell on small detectors like photons hitting silver bromide grains on a photographic film. It is known from the theory of photon detectors  that the joint counting rate of an array of absorbing broadband detectors is proportional to normally ordered correlation functions of electric field operators. Analogously, we conjecture that the joint probability of seeing a sequence of spin projections $`m_1,m_2,\mathrm{},m_N`$ is given by

$$P(m_1,\mathrm{},m_N)=Ka_{m_1}^{}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_N}^{}(\phi )a_{m_N}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_1}(\phi ),$$
(12)
where $`K`$ is the normalization constant needed to make the sum of all probabilities equal to unity. In photon detection theory the electric field operators are in time order as well, but inasmuch as we assume that we may ignore the reversible evolution of the spins during the measurement, the annihilation (creation) operators in (12) are taken at the same time and commute. The joint probabilities are then independent of the order of the indices $`m_1,\mathrm{},m_N`$, i.e., independent of the order in which the atoms are detected.

Suppose that the spin system starts out with the state vector $`|\psi _0`$, and consider the correlation functions as in (12). We may, of course, write

$`\psi _0|a_{m_1}^{}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_N}^{}(\phi )a_{m_N}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_1}(\phi )|\psi _0`$
$`=\left[\psi _0|a_{m_1}^{}(\phi )\right]a_{m_2}^{}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_N}^{}(\phi )a_{m_N}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_2}(\phi )\left[a_{m_1}(\phi )|\psi _0\right].`$ (13)
Trivial as this rewrite is, it immediately leads to two crucial observations. First, in (12) the probabilities for the various outcomes $`m_1`$ are precisely as given by (7) for $`n=1`$. Second, once any particular value $`m_1`$ has been picked, the process starts over; we are left with the correlation functions

$$\psi _1|a_{m_2}^{}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_N}^{}(\phi )a_{m_N}(\phi )\mathrm{}a_{m_2}(\phi )|\psi _1$$

where the new state $`|\psi _1`$ is the $`n=1`$ version of (8). We have thus shown that our quantum trajectory simulations produce spin sequences $`m_1,\mathrm{},m_N`$ that have the probabilities predicted by (12). A fortiori, the results from quantum trajectory simulations agree with the predictions of (12).

Our simulations were seemingly for a scheme in which one atom at a time is subject to a Stern-Gerlach experiment. We did not offer any concrete suggestions on how to carry out such experiments, but neither did we have to. Inasmuch as our reasoning leading to (12) is correct, our simulations also model the usual  Stern-Gerlach measurements on the spinor condensate.

One might also study the number operators for different spin projections, such as $`n_0(\phi )=a_0^{}(\phi )a_0(\phi )`$, in total disregard of the measurement process. As far as we can tell, our quantum trajectory simulations averaged over many condensates give the same qualitative and semi-quantitative results that one would expect on the basis of elementary quantum mechanics with the operators $`n_0(\phi )`$, $`n_\pm (\phi )`$.

As a qualitative example, the fluctuations of $`n_0(\phi )`$ in the state $`|F`$ are large, $`\mathrm{\Delta }n_0\sqrt{\frac{1}{8}}N`$. In quantum trajectory simulations one correspondingly sees wildly varying ratios in the frequencies of spin projections between individual condensates. From this viewpoint, measurement-induced alignment is the reason for the large fluctuations in $`n_0(\phi )`$ \[and $`n_\pm (\phi )`$\]. More quantitatively, one may compute the expectation value and the standard deviation for the number of atoms with a given spin projection in a condensate either by using quantum mechanics with the operators $`n_0(\phi )`$, etc., or by averaging over quantum trajectory simulations of a large number of condensates. We have found that, for large $`N`$, the results agree.

## 5 Concluding remarks

Both quantum trajectory simulations and (12) give seemingly sensible predictions for the frequencies of spin projections and their fluctuations even for the en masse Stern-Gerlach experiment. But they do a lot more, too. For instance, a histogram such as in figure 2 may be prepared for the results of en masse experiments and compared with the predictions of quantum trajectory simulations. Such a histogram probes the spin statistics in principle to all orders, beyond average and standard deviation. We thus have a nontrivial prediction from (12) that may be contrasted with experiments. Another possible extension of our method is time evolution, as in the Josephson effect  or in the time dependence of spin correlations. We may straightforwardly incorporate time ordering and time evolution of the annihilation operators into (12). In contrast, an approach in terms of the number operators $`n_0(t)`$, $`n_\pm (t)`$ without an explicit consideration of the measurements probably makes a subtle affair .

It would seem worthwhile to derive (12) from microscopic arguments , along the lines of earlier work on photons . To the extent that this can be done, our quantum trajectory simulations would be proven to be a universal method for the studies of the detected properties of a spinor condensate. More generally, coherence theory of light is built entirely on the theory of photon detection, so it appears plausible that the eventual coherence theory for Bose-Einstein condensates is based on detection theory as well. The combination of measurement theory and accompanying quantum trajectory simulations is at present our best bet for a general approach to the coherence properties of a condensate.

In sum, we have laid down a measurement theory and the accompanying quantum trajectory simulations for a spinor condensate, and proposed a nontrivial experiment in which our approach may be tested. The main result thus far is that the state of the spinor condensate and measurements thereof are intertwined to the extent that it is probably impossible to distinguish experimentally between the symmetry-broken coherent state and the fragmented state of the condensate. In the process we have uncovered new aspects of measurement theory which should prove fruitful in future discussions of the coherence properties of a condensate.

This work is supported in part by NSF, Grant No. PHY-9801888, and by NASA, Grant No. NAG8-1428.

## References


text:
# References

Inertial Mass and Vacuum Fluctuations
in Quantum Field Theory

Giovanni Modanese California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics
366 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306 and University of Bolzano – Industrial Engineering
Via Sernesi 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy E-mail address: giovanni.modanese@unibz.it

## Abstract

Motivated by recent works on the origin of inertial mass, we revisit the relationship between the mass of charged particles and zero-point electromagnetic fields. To this end we first introduce a simple model comprising a scalar field coupled to stochastic or thermal electromagnetic fields. Then we check if it is possible to start from a zero bare mass in the renormalization process and express the finite physical mass in terms of a cut-off. In scalar QED this is indeed possible, except for the problem that all conceivable cut-offs correspond to very large masses. For spin-1/2 particles (QED with fermions) the relation between bare mass and renormalized mass is compatible with the observed electron mass and with a finite cut-off, but only if the bare mass is not zero; for any value of the cut-off the radiative correction is very small.

PACS: 03.20.+i; 03.50.-k; 03.65.-w; 03.70.+k 95.30 Sf

Key-words: Inertial mass, Quantum Electrodynamics, Radiative corrections

In modern physics each elementary particle is characterised by a few parameters which define essentially its symmetry properties. Mass and spin define the behavior of the particle wavefunction with respect to spacetime (Poincaré) transformations; electric charge, barion or lepton number etc. define its behavior with respect to gauge transformations. These same parameters also determine the (gravitational or gauge) interactions of the particle.

Unlike spin and charge, mass is a continuous parameter which spans several magnitude orders in a table of the known elementary particles. In spite of several attempts, there is no generally accepted way of expressing these masses, or at least their scale, in terms of fundamental constants. In the standard model particles acquire a mass thanks to the Higgs field, but the reproduction of the observed spectrum is only possible by choosing a different coupling for each particle.

Inertia in itself is not really explained by quantum field theory; rather, it is incorporated in its formalism as an automatic consequence of the spacetime invariance of the classical Lagrangians. In turn, these Lagrangians are essentially a generalization of Newtonian dynamics. In the equations for quantum fields, like in the wave equations for single particles or in their classical limits, mass appears as a free parameter which can take zero or positive values.

Therefore it is not surprising that several works in the last years (for a discussion and a list of references see for instance ) have been devoted to the search of a possible fundamental explanation of the inertial properties of matter. Some of these works look for the source of inertia in the interaction between charged particles and the electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations, exploring analogies with the dynamical Casimir forces on an accelerated cavity  or with the unbalanced radiation pressure in the Davies-Unruh thermal bath seen in accelerated frames . The possibility was also investigated, in connection with astrophysical problems, that Newton law does not hold true for very small acceleration .

In this work, we try to clarify whether some of the proposals contained in the mentioned papers can be implemented, or at least partially analysed, within the standard formalism of quantum field theory–perhaps leading to a more satisfactory inclusion of the concept of mass. Of course, the idea of dynamical mass generation induced by vacuum fluctuations is already familiar in quantum field theory , but it is usually connected to phenomena of spontaneous symmetry breaking, where a quantum field acquires a non-zero vacuum expectation value. Here, on the other hand, we are interested only into the effects of the fluctuations.

One should also keep in mind that the mass of a particle can come into play, in quantum field theory, in different equivalent forms, namely as (a) the response to the coupling with an external field; (b) a parameter in the dispersion relation $`E(k)`$; (c) the pole in the particle propagator and in its creation/annihilation cross section.

The pragmatic attitude of quantum field theory towards the origin of mass curiously seems to disappear only at one point, namely when in the mass renormalization procedure the “bare” mass $`m_0`$ is assumed to be infinite. What happens if we introduce finite cut-offs in the field theoretical expressions for the radiatively induced mass shift $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, and set $`m_0=0`$? One finds that the result depends much on the spin of the particles. For scalar particles, it is possible to introduce a cut-off in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, set the bare mass to zero and interpretate somehow the physical mass as entirely due to vacuum fluctuations–except for the problem that the “natural” cut-offs admitted in quantum field theory (supersymmetry scale, GUT scale, Planck scale) all correspond to very large masses. For spin-1/2 particles (QED with fermions) one obtains a relation between bare mass and renormalized mass which is compatible with the observed electron mass and with a finite cut-off, but only if the bare mass is not zero. Below we shall give the explicit expressions for the scalar and spinor case. Before that, however, it is useful to consider a semiclassical approximation, which turns out to contain much of the physics of the problem.

Let us consider charged particles with bare mass $`m_0`$ immersed in a thermal or stochastic background $`A_\mu (x)`$. For scalar particles described by a quantum field $`\varphi `$, the Lagrangian density is of the form

$$L=\frac{1}{2}\varphi ^{}(P^\mu eA^\mu )\varphi (P_\mu eA_\mu )\frac{1}{2}m_0^2|\varphi |^2$$
(1)
and contains a term $`e^2\varphi ^{}A_\mu A^\mu \varphi `$, which after averaging on $`A_\mu `$ can be regarded as a mass term for the field $`\varphi `$. Take, for instance, the Coulomb gauge: The effective squared mass turns out to be equal to $`m^2=m_0^2+e^2|𝐀(𝐱)|^2`$.

For homogeneous black body radiation at a given temperature $`T`$, the average is readily computed. One has

$$|𝐀|^2=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\omega \frac{u_\omega }{\omega ^2}$$
(2)
where $`u_\omega `$ is the Planck spectral energy density. By integrating one finds that the squared mass shift is given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2=const.\sqrt{\alpha }k_BT`$ (the constant is adimensional and of order 1). This mass shift can be significant in a hot plasma, but only for spin-zero particles, not for fermions. In fact, the Dirac Lagrangian is linear with respect to the field $`A_\mu `$, therefore it is impossible to obtain a mass term for spinors by averaging over the electromagnetic field. One expects that a mass shift for fermions will only appear at one-loop order. This is in fact confirmed by the full calculation in thermal quantum field theory  and by experimental evidence (no relevant mass shifts are observed in the Sun). Note that although a second-order formalism for Dirac fermions in QED exists, it has been used until now for calculations with internal fermion lines only . The result above seems to confirm that a proper treatment of on-shell fermions intrinsically requires a first-order lagrangian.

Eq. (2) can also be applied to the Lorentz-invariant frequency spectrum of the zero-point field in Stochastic Electrodynamics, namely $`u_\omega =\omega ^3`$ . In this case the integral diverges, unless we introduce either a cut-off, or a resonant coupling of the zero-point field to the particle at a certain frequency $`\omega _0`$–which therefore defines the mass of the particle . This could be viewed as an alternative to mass generation by coupling to the Higgs, but, again, only for scalar particles.

Turning now to scalar QED, one can consider the Feynman mass renormalization condition $`m_0^2+\mathrm{\Sigma }(m^2)=m^2`$, set $`m_0=0`$, impose a physical cut-off $`M`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and compute $`m`$ as a function of $`M`$. One finds in this way, as mentioned, that $`m`$ is of the order of the cut-off. Actually, scalar QED only describes particles like pions or other charged mesons which are not regarded as fundamental. Better known and physically more relevant is spinor QED, i.e. the quantum electrodynamics of spin $`1/2`$ charged particles. Perturbative expansions in spinor QED lead to some divergences in the radiative corrections, but such divergences are usually mild ones. Starting in the Sixties, the limit in which spinors have zero bare mass has been studied in great detail, and some general theorems were proven. Novel infrared divergences appear in this limit, but as first shown in , under certain physical conditions all transition matrix elements are finite. The zero mass limit is furthermore important because it corresponds to the limit in which the charged particles are not massless, but interaction energies are very large compared to the mass scale . This ultraviolet limit is governed by Weinberg theorem , which predicts the behaviour of transition amplitudes in the limit of large external momenta.

The authors of  wondered if charged particles can have zero mass. From the classical point of view this looks impossible, because the energy of the electric field generated by a particle bears a mass–the well known electromagnetic mass of the electron. In the quantum theory, however, this is not obvious a priori. An analysis of the renormalization of radiative corrections to the self mass is required. The first step in this direction was taken by the authors of , who investigated whether, more generally, a finite electron mass could be generated by radiative corrections starting from zero bare mass and found that a full radiatively-generated mass was possible, provided the photon wave function renormalization constant $`Z_3`$ was finite. Later, they established the fact that $`Z_3`$ has, perturbatively, logarithmic divergences to all orders . They concluded that the only way to arrive at a finite $`Z_3`$ is to make the prefactor of this logarithm vanish, i.e. in modern language, to find a nontrivial zero of the QED beta function. Up to now, however, there are no hints of the existence of such a zero.

In the modern picture of elementary particles the historical results of spinor QED are generalized to include those of unified electroweak theory and, in principle, the strong interactions for hadrons (which, however, do not admit a perturbative treatment except in special cases). Disregarding quark-gluons interactions and without going into details which fall outside the scope of this work, we just observe here that the masses of all fermions in the electroweak theory are subjected to radiative corrections due to the electromagnetic field and to the field of the W and Z vector bosons. Being vector bosons massive, their radiative corrections are far less divergent; in particular, they are compatible with zero mass neutrinos.

All the above refers to quantum field theory renormalized in the usual sense, i.e. in the limit where all energy cut-offs tend to infinity. This approach has been highly successful in explaining the phenomenology of elementary particles. Renormalizability of the theory implies that phenomena occurring at very high energies do not affect results at the energy scale of interest. In matters of principle, however–like the origin of inertia considered in this paper–one can take a different attitude. One can admit that an intrinsic high-energy cut-off for quantum field theory exists, due to some more general high energy theory or to quantum gravity (the Planck scale). It is therefore interesting to see what QED predicts in this case. Let us consider the simplest radiative correction to the self mass, namely the one-loop self energy diagram, and the corresponding expression for the mass renormalization condition, that is

$$mm_0=\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }(p^2,M)\right]_{\sqrt{p^2}=m}=m_0\frac{3\alpha }{4\pi }\left(\mathrm{ln}\frac{M^2}{m_0^2}+\frac{1}{2}\right)$$
(3)
Inserting $`m_0=0`$ we find that the radiatively corrected mass $`m`$ is zero, too. A charged massless particle could then exist, under the assumption of a finite cut-off, thanks to the mild logarithmic divergence. If we set $`m_0>0`$ instead, we obtain a radiative correction which even for very large values of the cut-off is much smaller than the electron scale. In fact, let us parametrize the cut-off as $`M=10^\xi `$, set $`m/m_0k>1`$ (i.e., vacuum fluctuations increase the mass by a factor $`k`$), solve eq. (3) for $`\xi `$ and plot the inverse function $`k(\xi )`$ (Fig. 1). We see that even for very large values of the cut-off, the renormalization effect is quite moderate.

In conclusion, in the framework of quantum field theory it is impossible to interpret the observed mass of the electron as due to radiative corrections. Namely

(1) in the renormalized theory, the radiative corrections to mass are divergent if the bare mass is zero;

(2) in the presence of a large but finite energy cut-off, the one-loop radiative correction vanishes for zero mass and is otherwise irrelevant.

Acknowledgments \- This work was supported in part by the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics via grant CIPA-MG7099. I am grateful to V. Hushwater, V. Savchenko and A. Rueda for useful discussions. I also thank C. Schubert for bringing to my attention ref.s ,  and their meaning in terms of the renormalization group equation.

Figure caption

Fig. 1 - Ratio between renormalized mass and bare mass in QED with an UV cut-off. The graph is obtained by solving eq. (3) numerically.