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# On the presence of Silicon and Carbon in the pre-maximum spectrum of the Type Ia SN 1990N

## 1 Introduction

The distinguishing spectral feature of SNe Ia is the Si ii 6347, 6371Å line. This line is strong in all photospheric-epoch spectra of SNe Ia, appearing near 6000Å from before maximum to at least one month after maximum. Its strength suggested that a large fraction of the material ejected in a SN Ia explosion is in the form of Si and other so-called ’Intermediate Mass Elements’ (i.e. between CO and the Fe-group). These elements (mostly Si, S, and Ca) are synthesised in regions where thermonuclear burning of the progenitor Carbon-Oxygen white dwarf (WD) is incomplete, not leading to the production of 56Ni (Nomoto et al. 1984). Since this is only possible if the burning wave that disrupts the WD is subsonic (aka a deflagration wave), the identification of this line was an important step in understanding that burning must must proceed subsonically in a significant fraction of the WD. Explosion models based on this assumption could successfully reproduce the light curve and spectra of SNe Ia starting from a Chandrasekhar mass CO WD (e.g. the deflagration model W7, Nomoto et al. 1984, Branch et al. 1985; or various delayed detonation and pulsational deflagration models presented by Woosley & Weaver (1994) and Woosley (1997).

Fisher et al. (1997) (hereafter FBNB) re-analysed the earliest spectrum ever recorded of a SN Ia, that of SN 1990N on 26 June 1990, which is as early as 14 days before maximum $`B`$ light (Leibundgut et al. 1991). Using a simple but powerful parametrised LTE code, FBNB reproduced the UV-optical spectrum satisfactorily, but noticed that the broad and flat-bottomed profile of the ’Si ii’ line, observed near 6040Å, could not be reproduced using Si and an exponential radial dependence of the line optical depth. Other authors (Jeffery et al. 1992, Mazzali et al. 1993) encountered essentially the same problem, even though they used more sophisticated codes. As an alternative solution, FBNB showed that the line profile could be successfully modelled by a high velocity Carbon shell ($`26,000v35,000`$ km s-1). This proposed alternative identification is not in contradiction with the basic properties of successful explosion models, which usually have a layer of unburned progenitor material (CO in this case) at the top of the ejecta and hence expanding at the highest velocities. Such a layer would be most easily detectable for its effect on the spectrum when it is not yet very far removed from the momentary and receding photosphere, and therefore it is natural to expect that the very early spectrum of the normal SN Ia 1990N would be one of the best places to find evidence for it.

This suggestion has very interesting consequences, both because it sets some limit to the mixing taking place in the highest velocity part of the ejecta and because it points out a possible source of error in measures of very early spectra of SNe Ia, especially if the spectra are of poorer quality than that of SN 1990N, a typical situation for SNe at high redshift.

Independently of FBNB, we have been modelling the same UV-optical spectrum of SN 1990N in an effort to determine its epoch as accurately as possible so as to set some limits on the rise time to maximum, in view of the current debate about this parameter (Mazzali & Schmidt 2000, in prep.). We have used a Monte Carlo (MC) code based on that described in Mazzali & Lucy (1993), but modified to include an extended line list and photon branching (Lucy 1999, Mazzali 2000). Although we were trying to obtain a good overall fit of the spectrum, and did not pay much attention to small features, we noticed that in just about every synthetic spectrum we computed two rather weak features were always well reproduced as C ii lines: a small absorption near 6350Å, which is attributed to C ii 6578, 6583Å, and the absorption near 6900Å, attributed to C ii 7231, 7236Å with a contribution from O ii 7321Å to make the feature relatively broad. The strong absorption line near 6040Å was matched by the Si ii line, but the line profile was not reproduced correctly, as in all previous work. In all models the abundances were homogeneous above the photosphere. The model we finally selected had an epoch $`t=5`$ days (implying $`t(Max)=19`$ days), distance modulus $`\mu =32.00`$ mag, luminosity $`L=2.3010^{42}`$ erg and photospheric velocity $`v_{ph}=15750`$ km s-1. The synthetic spectrum is shown as the thin continuous line in Fig. 1. The velocity indicated by the two weak features in the red, if they are interpreted as C ii lines, is about 12000 km s-1, which is somewhat smaller than $`v_{ph}`$. In fact the synthetic C ii lines, especially that at 6350Å, fall at a somewhat shorter wavelength than the observed ones. Nevertheless, the coincidence was striking.

Thus we turned our attention to the FBNB paper. FBNB show fits to the entire spectrum using different compositions in their Fig.1, which was unfortunately printed too small to verify whether the two small features discussed above are reproduced as C ii. Nevertheless, in their Fig.2, where they show two different ways to reproduce the 6040Å feature - using Si and C, respectively, it is clear that neither the 6350Å feature nor the one at 6900Å are reproduced with the ‘high velocity C shell’ model. On the contrary, while in that model the C ii 6578, 6583Å doublet gives rise to the strong and flat-bottomed 6040Å absorption, a weaker, broad and also flat-bottomed absorption is also visible near 6500Å, which is not present in the observed spectrum. This is exactly where the C ii 7321, 7236Å doublet would fall if Carbon were located in a shell between 26,000 and 35,000 km s-1. The ratio of the equivalent widths of the two features is large, with a value of at least 10, which is larger than the observed ratio but may result from the assumption of LTE since the redder doublet comes from a more highly excited level (16.33 v. 14.45 eV). We therefore considered it worthwhile to tackle once more the problem of what might give rise to the observed 6040Å line using synthetic spectra. In the next sections we discuss various alternatives.

## 2 Can Carbon replace Silicon?

We have shown that a fully mixed model reproduces two weak C ii features, and gives a less-than-satisfactory fit of the 6040Å feature as Si ii. If we are to explain this feature as due to C ii instead, the first necessary step is to remove Silicon from the mixture (as FBNB did in the central panel of their Fig.1) and ascertain what influence this has on the synthetic spectrum. In Fig.1 we show two models obtained for a homogeneous composition: the dashed line is for a full W7 composition mix, including both Si and C, as discussed in the previous section. The peak at 3500Å, which is not reproduced by our synthetic spectrum, is in the MMT data. Since the calibration at the edge of the spectrum is tricky, the poor fit at this wavelength does not necessarily mean that the model is wrong.

The dotted line in Fig.1 is a model where Silicon has been removed and its abundance (0.2 by mass) is assigned to Carbon instead. In this model both C ii lines, but especially the 6580Å one, are too strong, and are not compatible with the observations. Removing Si, and not placing C in a high velocity shell, clearly destroys the fit of the 6040Å feature. Furthermore, removing Si has negative consequences elsewhere in the spectrum, which cannot be remedied by introducing C at high velocities: 1) the weak Si iii 4553, 4568Å line, observed near 4400Å, a typical feature of all but the coolest SNe Ia before and near maximum, is now lost; 2) the strong absorption near 4800Å has about equal contributions from Si ii 5041, 5056Å (falling near 4750Å) and Fe iii 5156 + Fe ii 5169 Å (falling near 4850Å) in the spectrum obtained for a W7 mix: when Si is removed, only the red part of the absorption is left, and this absorption is too weak to cause a strong re-emission peak, which is observed near 5100Å; 3) the shape of the spectrum near 5500Å is influenced mostly by Si iii 5740Å (near 5425Å) and Si ii 5979Å (near 5600Å), although the broader absorption extending to 5200Å is due to several lines of S ii. When Si is removed from the mixture, only the S ii lines are left and the absorption in the model is too far to the blue. These three points show clearly that Silicon cannot be completely removed from the relatively high velocity regions near the photosphere. But if Si is allowed in the mix, then the doublet 6347, 6371Å is the strongest Si line. Therefore, it appears unavoidable to conclude that Si ii contributes significantly to the 6040Å feature even at this early epoch.

## 3 A Carbon-shell model?

FBNB could fit the 6040Å feature placing Carbon at high velocity, but since they used a parametrised model they did not quantify the mass of C required to obtain such a strong synthetic line. Since the C ii lines are weak even in a fully mixed model, this is an interesting numerical experiment. The model shown as a dotted line in Fig.1, where Si had been replaced by C, had a Carbon abundance of 0.25 by mass. Since the total mass above the photosphere in this model is 0.072M, the C mass was 0.018M, and the strength of the C ii 6578, 6583Å line was comparable to that of the observed 6040Å feature, but the velocity was wrong. The velocity can be reconciled if C is enhanced only for velocities larger than $`v_{sh}=26000`$km s-1, as FBNB suggested. In our next synthetic spectrum we replaced Si with C only above this velocity, while between $`v_{ph}`$ and $`v_{sh}`$ we just redistributed the Si abundance among all elements, proportionally to their respective abundances (the composition is dominated by Oxygen). Because of the steeply falling density ($`\rho r^7`$), when C is confined to very high velocities its mass is reduced. This reduces the C mass to only $`10^3`$M. The result is shown in Fig.2 (thin continuous line): both C ii lines are so weak that they do not produce a noticeable feature in the spectrum. This calculation reproduces all essential features of the FBNB ’high velocity C shell’ model, and at the same time is consistent with the hydrodynamical model of a SN Ia: the result is that not only the synthetic spectrum does not reproduce the strong 6040Å feature, but the absence of Si creates the three problems listed in Sect.2, and the displacement of C in velocity space means that the two weak features which are attributed to C ii are not reproduced either.

Obviously, it must be possible to fit the 6040Å feature as C ii by increasing the C ii line opacity in the high velocity shells. We show this as the dashed line in Fig.2. The values by which we had to multiply the Sobolev optical depth to obtain this spectrum are an increasing function of velocity, ranging from 10 at 22500km s-1 to $`10^6`$ at 30000km s-1, the outer limit of the assumed ejecta distribution. Although these values do give a very good fit to the observed feature, they really have no physical basis. If the increased optical depth is attributed to the number of absorbing C ii ions, this would lead to a completely unrealistic C mass, more than 1M, at these large velocities. Furthermore, all the problems raised by the absence of Si remain, and the two small features are not fitted at all.

It is interesting to note that although we increased the optical depth for all C ii lines, we obtained a strong 6578, 6583Å line, but not a strong 7231, 7236Å line. This is because the latter doublet comes from a more highly excited level, whose population falls more steeply with radius, and so even larger factors would be required to enhance the line at very high velocities.

This test confirms that the 6040Å feature must be at least predominantly due to Si ii, and that placing Carbon in a high velocity shell does not give sufficient opacity, even if C dominates the composition.

## 4 A Silicon model?

We believe we have provided ample evidence that the 6040Å feature cannot be entirely - or even mostly - due to C ii lines. As an alternative solution, can the distribution of Silicon be modified so that a better fit to the line can be obtained? If we look back at Fig.1 we notice that the profile of the Si ii 6347, 6371Å line is too sharp, and that absorption is missing both in the blue (between 5800 and 5900Å) and in the red (between 6100 and 6200Å). These regions correspond to Si velocities of about 23000 and 10000km/s, respectively. Therefore, we can expect that we can produce more blue absorption by increasing Si at high velocity, but the velocity required to fit the red part of the absorption is significantly smaller than that of the photosphere.

In Fig. 3 we show a model where the Si abundance has been increased by a factor of 3 above 23000km s-1, at the expense of all other elements. This gives a reasonably good fit to the blue side of the line. Other Si ii lines are weaker, so they are not much affected by this change, and the rest of the spectrum is not very different from that of Fig.1. As regards the red part of the line though, setting the photospheric velocity at 15750 km s-1, imposes the constraint that the reddest wavelength of Si ii is about 6050Å. The velocity of the photosphere cannot be reduced to about 10000 km s-1 without changing the aspect of the synthetic spectrum completely (see Mazzali & Schmidt 2000, in prep.). Therefore we agree with FBNB that Si alone is unable to explain the observed width and profile of the 6040Å feature.

## 5 A possible solution: Silicon and Carbon

On the basis of the models presented above we suggest that Si is responsible for most of the 6040Å feature in SN 1990N, and in particular for its extended blue side, but an alternative origin must be found for the red part of the line. At the same time, we have shown that the small feature near 6300Å is most likely due to C ii at a near-photospheric velocity. Our line list, which was derived from that of Kurucz & Bell (1995) does not seem to offer any reasonably strong line with a rest wavelength of about 6450Å, which would naturally explain the red extension of the 6040Å feature by redshifting at the velocity of the photosphere. The nearest strong lines to the red of the Si ii doublet are indeed the C ii ones. A Carbon shell centred at about 20000km s-1 might explain the observations. The questions are can C be responsible for both the small absorption at 6300Å (via its near-photospheric distribution) and the red wing at $`6100`$Å (via an enhanced C abundance at $`v20000`$km s-1), and if so is the required C enhancement compatible with the hydrodinamical structure of a SN Ia?

The answer is shown in Fig.4. This is a model computed with the same parameters as the previous ones and the following distributions: Carbon: 0.05 by mass up to $`v=18500`$km s-1, then increasing smoothly and reaching a peak value 0.50 above $`v=21500`$km s-1; Silicon: 0.20 by mass up to $`v=21500`$km s-1, and then increasing to 0.5 above $`v=22500`$km s-1. The integration is limited to an outer velocity of 30000km s-1.

The model reproduces the observed profile reasonably well. The observed flat bottom of the line may require more ad hoc adjustments of the distribution of the elements. The ‘average’ positions of the near-photospheric and of the high velocity components of the synthetic C ii 6578, 6583Å absorption are marked in Fig.4. The near-photospheric component falls at a longer wavelength than the the observed 6300Å feature. The difference in velocity is about 3600km s-1. If the adopted photospheric velocity is correct, this offest is a puzzle. We have no alternative identification other than C ii to offer for that feature, since our line list offers only very weak Ti ii lines with rest wavelength of about 6700Å. But even if the 6300Å feature is not C ii, our conclusion regarding the origin of the 6040Å feature does not change.

The scenario we are faced with is then the following: a mixed W7 composition (C=0.05 and Si=0.20 by mass, respectively) holds out to $`v19000`$ kms, but outside that velocity a C-Si shell develops. The near-photospheric C abundance may be lower if the line at 6300Å is not C ii. With the exception of the Si shell, this is consistent with incomplete mixing in the SN ejecta. Maybe S ii lines are responsible for the extra absorption between 5800 and 5900Å, but our line data do not support that.

## 6 Conclusions

We have shown that the strong and broad absorption near 6040Å in the d -14 spectrum of SN 1990N must be predominantly due to Si ii 6347, 6371Å. If we reproduce the line as C ii, eliminating Si from the mixture as suggested by FBNB, other regions of the spectrum where Si lines are strong are not well reproduced. Also, the mass enclosed in the high velocity shell which could give rise to a blueshifted C ii line is very small, so that the synthetic line is much too weak, and the observed profile can only be reproduced if the optical depth of the C ii lines is increased by unrealistic factors (up to $`10^6`$). On the other hand, we have confirmed the result of FBNB that Si ii alone cannot reproduce the entire feature because the red edge of the line has a blueshift much smaller than that of the Si ii line at the velocity of the momentary photosphere.

As a possible contribution for that part of the feature we also suggest C ii in a high velocity shell, but unlike FBNB we enhance C in a shell between 19000 and 30000km s-1, which contains a small (0.04M), but nevertheless large enough mass to give rise to a rather strong line without resorting to artificially large departure coefficients to increase the line optical depth. The increased C abundance in this outer shell does not significantly affect the total mass of C in the ejecta. At the same time, mixed C at near-photospheric velocities gives rise to two weak synthetic absorptions at 6250 and 6900Å, which are a reasonable match for two observed features at 6300 and 6900Å. The blending of the Si ii and C ii lines may give rise to the flat bottom of the observed 6040Å feature, although our model does not reproduce that.

The implications of our result are that an outer zone where Carbon is not fully mixed does indeed appear to exist. This zone is narrow, and contains only a small mass, so the photosphere passes through it rapidly. Our models suggest that Si is also present there. Therefore, observing a SN Ia very early on, when the photosphere is still at $`v20000`$km s-1, would be very interesting. If both Si and C are present at high velocities, we do not expect that the feature should appear very different from what is observed in the spectrum of SN 1990N we have analysed in this paper. Alternatively, if only C were present, the ‘Si ii’ absorption would be much redder ($`\lambda 6150`$Å) and caused mostly by C ii. This would require observations very soon after the explosion, roughly 16 days before maximum, which this may not be so very difficult with SNe at high redshift, whose observed evolution is slowed down by the factor ($`1+z`$). Such observations would be extremely interesting because they would probe the outermost part of the ejecta and could thus clarify by direct observation to what extent mixing actually takes place. Finally, our findings must serve as a caveat against deriving SN Ia properties from the ‘Si ii’ line if the SN is observed very early on.

It is a pleasure to thank Brian Schmidt for providing the observed spectrum in a form a modeller can easily work with.


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# The Topology of Weak Lensing Fields

## 1 Introduction

Mapping the mass density field with weak gravitational lensing is a promising method to analyze large-scale structure in the universe. The statistical nature of the mass density field is directly predicted by theories of the early universe. For instance, most inflationary theories predict a random Gaussian initial mass density field, while structure formation by cosmic defects predicts a highly non-Gaussian field. As the density field evolves, gravitational clustering produces characteristic non-Gaussian features. Thus measuring the non-Gaussianity of the density field can be an important test of the origin and evolution of large-scale structure.

The genus statistic is known to be a useful topological discriptor of the the clustering pattern of the mass density field (Gott, Melott & Dickinson, 1986; Gott et al., 1989). The “genus curve”, which plots the measured genus versus the threshold for iso-density contours, has a universal shape for a random Gaussian field. Departures from this Gaussian shape reveal the mechanism of the formation of nonlinear structures. So far, the genus statistic has been applied to the distribution of galaxies, and of clusters (Moore et al., 1992; Rhoads, Gott & Postman, 1994; Canavezes et al., 1998). Since these tracers are affected by biasing, it is desirable to directly use the mass density field for the genus statistic. Fortunately, recent developments in measuring weak lensing in wide area surveys suggest that this may be feasible in the near future (van Waerbeke et al., 2000; Bacon, Refregier & Ellis, 2000; Wittman et al., 2000; Kaiser, Wilson & Luppino, 2000). As weak lensing maps of the convergence field, $`\kappa `$, cover larger areas with better signal-to-noise, statistical properties beyond just the second moment can be measured. It is therefore important to obtain theoretical predictions for the behavior of the genus statistic for the weak lensing field, which we present in this paper.

The linear-scale fluctuations of the mass density field preserves the Gaussianity of the initial state. However, measuring the linear-scale fluctuations is difficult due to sample variance, unless the area covered is extremely large. In forthcoming weak lensing surveys, the convergence field is likely to contain non-linear effects of gravitational clustering. The genus curve is distorted by the non-Gaussianity induced by gravitational evolution, which precludes a simple comparison of the observed genus with analytical predictions. Since this effect is dependent on the cosmological model, it is of interest to establish whether forthcoming surveys will allow for an adequate measurement of the non-Gaussian genus curve.

We show in this paper that the effects of gravitational clustering on the genus curve can be measured from high quality data. For this purpose, we analyze the ray-tracing numerical simulation of weak lensing developed by Jain, Seljak & White (2000). The noise due to the finite number of galaxies used to probe the weak lensing field reduces the signal-to-noise on very small scales. Therefore we have to balance sample variance on large scales with discreteness noise on small scales to find the best length-scales for measuring the genus. We study this issue by simulating the random noise expected in observational surveys.

This paper is organized as follows. §2 introduces the genus statistic. In §3 the main results of our analysis from ray tracing simulations are presented. The genus curves of simulated noise-free convergence fields are shown in §3.1 and those of noisy fields in §3.2. We conclude in §4.

## 2 Genus Statistics and Weak Lensing

We consider the local convergence field $`\kappa `$ and calculate genus statistics of this field. In the weak lensing regime, $`\kappa 1`$, an area in the lens plane is magnified by a factor $`1+2\kappa `$ compared to that in the source plane. The local convergence field can be reconstructed from the shear field (Kaiser & Squires, 1993). For a distant observer, under the Born approximation, the convergence along a line of sight can be expressed as a projection of the density perturbation $`\delta `$,

$`\kappa ={\displaystyle \frac{3H_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\mathrm{\Omega }_0}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^\chi }{\displaystyle \frac{d_\mathrm{A}(\chi ^{})d_\mathrm{A}(\chi \chi ^{})}{d_\mathrm{A}(\chi )}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta (\chi ^{})}{a(\chi ^{})}}𝑑\chi ^{},`$ (1)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is the present value of the mass density parameter, $`H_0`$ is the Hubble’s constant, $`a(\chi )`$ is the scale factor at the conformal lookback time $`\chi `$, $`d_\mathrm{A}(\chi )`$ is the comoving angular diameter distance, $`\chi `$ the comoving radial coordinate. If the radial distance is measured in units of $`H_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}`$, we can drop the $`H_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$ in the above equation. Integration is performed along the unperturbed light path. In this case, the statistics of the convergence field can be computed from the statistics of the density field.

To quantify the topology, we find contour lines of a threshold value labelled by $`\nu `$. For a Gaussian random field, the threshold $`\nu `$ is identified so that the field takes the value $`\kappa =\nu \sigma `$, where $`\sigma `$ is the rms of the field, $`\sigma ^2=\kappa ^2`$. The genus is defined as: (number of contours surrounding regions higher than the threshold value) - (number of contours surrounding regions lower than the threshold value) (Adler, 1981; Coles, 1988; Melott et al., 1989; Gott et al., 1990). The genus per unit area $`G_2(\nu )`$, as a function of the threshold is known as the genus curve.

The genus curve is analytically given by (Melott et al., 1989):

$`G_2(\nu )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^{3/2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^2}{2}}\nu e^{\nu ^2/2},`$ (2)
where $`k^2`$ is the square of the wave number $`k`$ averaged over the smoothed 2D power spectrum. Both sides of the above equation have dimensions of $`[\mathrm{steradian}]^2`$. If the 3D power spectrum is given by a power law with spectral index $`n`$, and a Gaussian window function $`W(r)e^{r^2/(2\theta _{\mathrm{f}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})}`$ is adopted, then $`k^2=(n+2)/(2\theta _{\mathrm{f}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})`$ for $`n>2`$.

The above analytic results are not expected to hold for ongoing weak lensing surveys because the survey areas are not large enough to probe the linear scales. However, it is known that the shape of the genus curve of mass density fields is not strongly affected by nonlinear gravitational evolution provided we use a rescaled labeling of $`\nu `$ (Gott, Weinberg & Melott, 1987; Weinberg, Gott & Melott, 1987; Melott, Weinberg & Gott, 1988). For a non-Gaussian field, the threshold is defined through the fraction of area $`f`$ on the high-density side of the contour lines, which is related to the corresponding values of $`\nu `$ for a Gaussian field as:

$`f={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }}}{\displaystyle _\nu ^{\mathrm{}}}e^{t^2/2}𝑑t.`$ (3)
For a Gaussian field, this definition gives the same result as specifying the threshold directly in units of $`\sigma `$. For a non-Gaussian field, it compensates for the horizontal shift of the genus curve due to the shift of the probability distribution function. We adopt this prescription for setting the threshold values of $`\kappa `$ in the results shown below.

## 3 Numerical Results

### 3.1 Genus without noise

We use maps of convergence fields from the ray-tracing simulations of Jain, Seljak & White (2000). The source galaxies are taken to be at $`z=1`$. We use two cold dark matter models: a “tau” model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$, and shape parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.21`$, and an open model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.21`$. The fields we use are $`166.28`$ arcminutes on a side for the tau model, and $`235.68`$ arcminutes for the open model, sampled with 2048x2048 grids (see Jain, Seljak, & White, 2000, for further details). Figure 1 shows a $`\kappa `$ map for the open model.

The genus curves are calculated using the CONTOUR2D code and related routines, which were kindly provided by David Weinberg (see Gott, Melott & Dickinson (1986) and Melott (1990) for details of the methods). The key relation used is a 2-dimesional analog of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which expresses the genus in terms of the integral of the curvature along a contour line, $`G_2=C𝑑s/2\pi `$, where $`C`$ is given by the inverse radius of curvature $`r^1`$, and is negative or positive, depending on whether a low or high density region is enclosed. For each model, genus curves are obtained for 7-10 realizations. The error bars on the genus curves shown in Figures 2 and 3 give the $`1\sigma `$ deviations among those realizations, and represent the $`1\sigma `$ error expected for surveys of our sample area.

In the left panels of each plot in Figure 2, the genus curves per steradian of the simulated convergence fields are plotted for the open and the tau models. Each plot has a different smoothing angle, $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=1^{},2^{},3^{},10^{}`$. In the plots, thin curves are the Gaussian predictions with normalizations fitted by minimizing chi-squares of the simulation data. The smoothing angle of $`10^{}`$ corresponds to a scale on which linear theory can be applied (e.g., see Fig. 3 of Jain & Seljak 1997). Within the sample variance error bars, the genus curves of the simulation data are consistent with Gaussian predictions on this linear scale.

On smaller, nonlinear scales of $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=1^{},2^{},3^{}`$, the genus curves of the convergence field show a “meatball shift”: a dominance of the number of isolated clusters over isolated voids. This shift is consistent with topological analyses of the galaxy distributions (Gott et al., 1989, 1992), and is a common feature of cold dark matter models (Springel et al., 1998). To quantify the degree of the meatball shift, we define a meatball-shift statistic, $`S=G_2(\nu )𝑑\nu /|G_2(\nu )|𝑑\nu `$, where the integration is limited from $`\nu =2`$ to $`+2`$. Likewise, the departure from Gaussianity can be quantified by a statistic like: $`S_2=|G_2(\nu )G_{\mathrm{gauss}}(\nu )|/|G_{\mathrm{gauss}}|`$. We discuss some results in the following sub-section.

The absolute values of the genus number of the high-convergence side ($`\nu >0`$) is larger for the open model, and smaller for the tau model. Since our open and tau models have the same initial power spectrum, the difference in the genus number is due to the difference in the nonlinear gravitational evolution, and, more importantly, in the space-time geometry. A volume factor $`V(z)`$ for a unit solid angle is larger in the open model than in the tau model. Nonlinear structures also form earlier in the open model. Both these effects cause the topology statistics for the open model to have different non-Gaussian features from the tau model.

### 3.2 Genus with realistic noise

The weak lensing fields in observational surveys contain noise due to the finite number of source galaxies with randomly oriented intrinsic ellipticities. We build simulated noisy maps of the convergence field by drawing each component of the intrinsic ellipticity of a galaxy from a Gaussian with variance (e.g., van Waerbeke, 2000)

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}={\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _ϵ^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}}{2N_g}},`$ (4)
where $`\sigma _ϵ`$ is the rms amplitude of the intrinsic ellipticity distribution and $`N_g`$ is the mean number density of source galaxies in each cell. In the following, the number density of source galaxies is $`30`$ per square arcminute, and their rms intrinsic ellipticity is $`\sigma _ϵ=0.2`$.

Figure 3 shows the genus measured from a $`\kappa `$ field reconstructed from pure Gaussian noise which corresponds to a map in which galaxies are randomly distributed with random ellipticities without weak lensing signals. In fact, any white noise has the same genus curve of equation (2) regardless of its variance. The agreement with the analytic curve for a random Gaussian field (Eq. 2) tests our reconstruction scheme and genus measurement. In Figure 2 the right panels in each plot show the genus curves of simulated signal+noise maps of the convergence fields.

For the large smoothing angle $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=10^{}`$, the genus curves are again consistent with the Gaussian predictions. For $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=3^{}`$, the noise effect is small, but the meatball shift is reduced from the noise-free maps. For $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=2^{}`$, the meatball shift is completely erased by noise except in the vicinity of $`\nu =0`$. For $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=1^{}`$, there are interesting features due to the noise. The relative effect of noise is stronger for the open model because the lensing signal is small \[see Eq. 1\]. The high-convergence region of $`\nu 2`$ is not much affected by the noise. This is because most of the high-convergence peaks come from strongly clustered regions. Around $`\nu 1`$, the noise contribution equals the signal. For the low-convergence region of $`\nu 1`$$`2`$ the genus is dominated by noise because relatively large areas of low-convergence (which corresponds to voids) have noise troughs superimposed on them. Such complex situations make the genus curve have larger amplitude than the Gaussian at negative $`\nu `$ for $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=1^{}`$–the opposite of the case for the noise-free maps. There is an interesting counterpart to this effect in the statistics of peaks studied by Jain, van Waerbeke (2000); they also found an increase in the number of negative peaks (relative to the Gaussian case) in the signal+noise maps.

These effects on the genus curve discussed above can be quantified using the statistics giving the meatball shift and departure from Gaussianity, $`S`$ and $`S_2`$. For the meatball shift statistic we find that the open model shows a significant negative (sponge-like) shift for $`\theta =1^{}`$: $`S=0.08\pm 0.01`$. It shows a positive (meatball) shift for large angles, e.g. for $`\theta =3^{}`$, $`S=0.06\pm 0.02`$. The tau model shows a similar trend but with lower amplitude. This is in contrast to the noise-free field, for which there is a positive meatball shift which decreases in amplitude with increasing angular scale.

## 4 Discussion

We have analyzed the genus curve of weak lensing convergence fields. On large angular scales, the genus curves are consistent with the random Gaussian prediction. On scales of a few arcminutes, nonlinear gravitational clustering produces a non-Gaussian “meatball” shift in the genus curve. Its non-Gaussianity also differentiates the open and flat cosmological model for a range of smoothing angles and threshold values. The noise dilutes the meatball shift but it does not change the genus curve to the random Gaussian one, even on the smallest scale $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=1^{}`$. Over the range of scales tested, $`\theta _\mathrm{f}=1^{}`$$`10^{}`$, the open and flat cold dark matter models can be distinguished even in the presence of noise.

We have analysed simulations of survey areas of about 10 square degrees. When survey areas approach 100 square degrees, the error bars shown in Fig. 2 should reduce by about a factor of three. Thus, provided systematic errors can be kept to below the level of the random noise modeled here, the genus statistic can provide a valuable means of measuring the non-Gaussian features of the lensing signal and distinguishing cosmological models. Further work to measure other topological statistics and simulate a wider set of cosmological models would be useful.

We are very grateful to David Weinberg for providing us useful routines to calculate the 2D genus curve and for stimulating discussions. We thank an anonymous referee for suggestions that helped improve the paper. T. M. acknowledges support from JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research Abroad. B. J. acknowledges support from NASA through grants NAG5-9186 and NAG5-9220.


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# Hybrid mesons from lattice QCD

(7 August 2000)

## Abstract

Recent lattice simulation studies of heavy-quark hybrid mesons in which the quark and antiquark are bound together by an excited gluon field are summarized.

Hybrid mesons are states in which a valence quark and an antiquark are bound by an excited gluon field. Interest in such states has been recently sparked by observations of resonances with exotic $`1^+`$ quantum numbers. In fact, the proposed Hall D at Jefferson Lab will be devoted to the search for hybrid mesons. Although our understanding of these states remains meager, recent lattice simulations have shed some light on their nature. In this talk, I focus on studies of hybrid mesons containing heavy quarks, although I conclude with brief comments on light-quark hybrid-meson simulations.

One expects that a heavy-quark meson can be treated similar to a diatomic molecule: the slow valence heavy quarks correspond to the nuclei and the fast gluon and light sea quark fields correspond to the electrons. First, the quark $`Q`$ and antiquark $`\overline{Q}`$ are treated as static color sources and the energy levels of the fast degrees of freedom are determined as a function of the $`Q\overline{Q}`$ separation $`r`$, each such energy level defining an adiabatic surface or potential. The motion of the slow heavy quarks is then described in the leading Born-Oppenheimer (LBO) approximation by the Schrödinger equation using each of these potentials. Conventional quarkonia are based on the lowest-lying potential; hybrid quarkonium states emerge from the excited potentials.

The validity of such a simple physical picture relies on the smallness of higher-order spin, relativistic, and retardation effects and mixings between states based on different adiabatic surfaces. Recently, it was demonstrated that retardation and mixing effects do not spoil the leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation for the (quenched) low-lying conventional and hybrid spectrum. In Ref. , the introduction of the heavy-quark spin was shown to lead to significant level shifts but not to significant mixings between states based on different potentials. In this talk, the leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation is described, the findings of Refs.  and  are summarized, and the expected (but currently unknown) impact of sea quark effects on the LBO spectrum calculation is discussed.

The spectrum of the fast gluon field in the presence of a static quark-antiquark pair has been determined in lattice studies. The three lowest-lying levels are shown in Fig. 1. Due to computational limitations, sea quark effects have been neglected in these calculations; their expected impact on the hybrid meson spectrum will be discussed later. The levels in Fig. 1 are labeled by the magnitude $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ of the projection of the total angular momentum $`𝐉_g`$ of the gluon field onto the molecular axis, and by $`\eta =\pm 1`$, the symmetry under the charge conjugation combined with spatial inversion about the midpoint between the $`Q`$ and $`\overline{Q}`$. States with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$ are denoted by $`\mathrm{\Sigma },\mathrm{\Pi },\mathrm{\Delta },\mathrm{}`$, respectively. States which are even (odd) under the above-mentioned $`CP`$ operation are denoted by the subscripts $`g`$ ($`u`$). An additional $`\pm `$ superscript for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ states refers to even or odd symmetry under a reflection in a plane containing the molecular axis. The potentials are calculated in terms of the hadronic scale parameter $`r_0`$; in Fig. 1, $`r_0^1=450`$ MeV has been assumed.

The LBO spectrum is obtained by solving the radial Schrödinger equation. Results for the LBO spectrum of conventional $`\overline{b}b`$ and hybrid $`\overline{b}gb`$ states are shown in Fig. 1. Below the $`\overline{B}B`$ threshold, the LBO results are in very good agreement with the spin-averaged experimental measurements of bottomonium states. Above the threshold, agreement with experiment is lost, suggesting significant corrections either from mixing and other higher-order effects or (more likely) from light sea quark effects. Note from the radial probability densities shown in Fig. 1 that the size of the hybrid state is large in comparison with the conventional $`1S`$ and $`1P`$ states.

The importance of retardation and leading-order mixings between states based on different adiabatic potentials can be tested by comparing the LBO level splittings with those determined from meson simulations using a leading-order non-relativistic (NRQCD) heavy-quark action. Such a test was carried out in Ref. . The NRQCD action included only a covariant temporal derivative and the leading kinetic energy operator (with two other operators to remove lattice spacing errors). The only difference between the leading Born-Oppenheimer Hamiltonian and the lowest-order NRQCD Hamiltonian was the $`𝒑\mathbf{}𝑨`$ coupling between the quark color charge in motion and the gluon field. The level splittings (in terms of $`r_0`$ and with respect to the $`1S`$ state) of the conventional $`2S`$ and $`1P`$ states and four hybrid states were compared (see Fig. 2) and found to agree within $`10\%`$, strongly supporting the validity of the leading Born-Oppenheimer picture. The meson operators used are listed in Table 1 and are described in much more detail in Ref. .

The question of whether or not quark spin interactions spoil the validity of the Born-Oppenheimer picture for heavy-quark hybrids has been addressed in Ref. . Simulations of several hybrid mesons using an NRQCD action including the spin interaction $`c_1𝝈\mathbf{}𝑩/2M_b`$ and neglecting light sea quark effects were carried out; the resulting splittings are shown in Fig. 3 for various values of the coupling $`c_1`$ (which is expected to be near unity) and are surprisingly large. However, the authors of Ref.  suggest that these splittings do not signal a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer picture. First, they claim that no significant mixing of their non-exotic $`0^+`$, $`1^{}`$, and $`2^+`$ hybrid meson operators with conventional states was observed; unfortunately, this claim is not convincing since a correlation matrix analysis was not used and the effective masses associated with these correlators were not shown. Secondly, the authors argue that calculations using the bag model support their suggestion. Contributions to the spin splittings in Fig. 3 from the three diagrams shown in Fig. 4 were estimated in the bag model. Graph (a) is a weak effect (producing level shifts of order 1 MeV or less) since it involves the $`Q\overline{Q}`$ wavefunction near the origin which is suppressed in hybrid states. Graph (b) is the dominant contribution (producing level shifts consistent with those shown in Fig. 3) since it depends on the quark wavefunction in the bulk; significant contributions from graph (b) do not necessarily spoil the Born-Oppenheimer picture. Graph (c) represents mixings between states based on different adiabatic surfaces and large contributions from such diagrams would signal a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer picture; however, bag model estimates of this mixing amplitude are very small of order $`10^4`$. These facts are not conclusive evidence that heavy-quark spin effects do not spoil the Born-Oppenheimer picture, but they are highly suggestive.

The dense spectrum of hybrid states shown in Fig. 1 neglects the effects of light sea quark-antiquark pairs. In order to include these effects in the LBO, the adiabatic potentials must be determined fully incorporating the light quark loops. Such computations using lattice simulations are very challenging, and to date, high precision results for these potentials for separations out to 2 fm are not yet available. For separations below 1 fm, the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_g^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_u`$ potentials change very little from the behavior shown in Fig. 1, suggesting that a few of the lowest-lying hybrid states may exist as well-defined resonances. However, for $`Q\overline{Q}`$ separations greater than 1 fm, the adiabatic surfaces should change dramatically from the behavior shown in Fig. 1; instead of increasing indefinitely, they should eventually level off since the static $`\overline{Q}gQ`$ state can undergo fission into two separate $`\overline{Q}q`$ color singlets, where $`q`$ is a light quark. The precise behavior of these potentials due to configuration mixing with $`\overline{B}B`$ mesons in the transition region is unknown; in fact, it is not even known if a fission barrier occurs. Clearly, such potentials cannot support the plethora of conventional and hybrid states shown in Fig. 1; the formation of bound states and resonances substantially extending over 1 fm seems unlikely. Whether or not the light sea quark-antiquark pairs spoil the Born-Oppenheimer picture is currently unknown. Future unquenched simulations should help to answer this question. I remain hopeful that the simple physical picture provided by the Born-Oppenheimer expansion for both the low-lying conventional and hybrid heavy-quark mesons will survive the introduction of the light sea quark effects. I should mention once again that the discrepancies of the spin-averaged LBO predictions with experiment above the $`B\overline{B}`$ threshold seen in Fig. 1 are possibly caused by our neglect of light sea quark-antiquark pairs.

A summary of recent light-quark and charmonium $`1^+`$ hybrid mass calculations is presented in Table 2. With the exception of Ref. , all results neglect light sea quark loops. The introduction of two flavors of dynamical quarks in Ref.  yielded little change to the hybrid mass, but this finding should not be considered definitive due to uncontrolled systematics (unphysically large quark masses, inadequate treatment of resonance properties in finite volume, etc.). All estimates of the light quark hybrid mass are near 2.0 GeV, well above the experimental candidates found in the range 1.4-1.6 GeV. Perhaps sea quark effects will resolve this discrepancy, or perhaps the observed states are not hybrids. Some authors have suggested that they may be four quark $`\overline{q}\overline{q}qq`$ states. Clearly, there is still much to be learned about these exotic QCD resonances.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In a recent paper, Kiritani *et al.* reported that a large number of vacancies were produced during high-speed heavy plastic deformation of thin foils of fcc metals (Kiritani et al. 1999). They observed a large density of stacking-fault tetrahedra but very low dislocation densities in the foils after deformation. As a possible explanation, they propose a dislocation-free deformation mechanism.

In this paper we use computer simulations to investigate, whether such a dislocation-free deformation mechanism becomes possible at very high strain rates, and we look for other possible explanations of the high rate of vacancy production. We have attempted to make the generation of dislocations as difficult as possible in order to favour such a dislocation-free deformation mechanism. We have therefore chosen to simulate systems that are initially dislocation free (i.e. without conventional dislocation sources such as Frank-Read sources). We have also chosen to simulate single crystals in order to avoid dislocation emission from grain boundaries. Simulations of high-speed deformation of polycrystalline (nanocrystalline) material have been reported elsewhere (Schiøtz et al. 1998, 1999, Van Swygenhoven and Caro 1998).

## 2 Simulation methods and setup

The simulations were performed using molecular dynamics. The interatomic interactions were described using the effective medium theory (Jacobsen et al. 1987, 1996) which gives a good description of the metals investigated here. The crystal is deformed at a constant strain rate, while keeping the stress in the transverse direction approximately constant, as described in details by Schiøtz et al. (1999). In all cases a strain rate of $`10^9s^1`$ was used (versus approximately $`10^5s^1`$ in the experiments). To keep the temperature of the system approximately constant during the simulation, Langevin dynamics are used, i.e. a friction and a fluctuating force are added to the equations of motion of the atoms (see e.g. Allen and Tildesley 1987). We use a timestep of 5 fs, safely below the value where the dynamics become unstable.

During the simulations, configurations were rapidly quenched and common neighbour analysis (Honeycutt and Andersen 1987, Faken and Jónsson 1994) was used to identify the local crystal structure. This was used to generate plots where all atoms except atoms at the dislocation cores were made invisible, allowing visualization of the dislocation structures.

Four different setups were used for the simulations.

### 2.1 System I.

The first system investigated was an fcc single crystal containing approximately 95 000 atoms. The system is approximately cubic with a side length of 105 Å. There are periodic boundary conditions along all three directions to emulate that the system is far from any surfaces. The crystal structure is perfect, apart from four randomly introduced vacancies. They were introduced in case the vacancies might participate in the proposed dislocation free deformation mechanism. The crystal is deformed along the  direction. This direction was chosen to avoid high-symmetry directions.

### 2.2 System II.

Similar to system I, but with free boundary conditions in the directions perpendicular to the pulling direction, i.e. the geometry is that of an infinite wire with square cross section.

### 2.3 System III.

A single fcc crystal with approximately 765 000 atoms. The system is approximately cubic with a side length of 210 Å. As in system I there are periodic boundary conditions in all three directions. The crystal is deformed along the \[$`\overline{\text{1}}`$05\] direction.

### 2.4 System IV.

As system III, but the periodic boundaries in one direction were replaced with free boundary conditions. This results in a “film” geometry, a thin film (thickness 210 Å) with free (512) surfaces, repeated infinitely in the two remaining directions. The film was deformed along the \[$`\overline{\text{1}}`$05\] direction.

As the preexisting vacancies in systems I and II did not participate in the deformation, no vacancies were introduced in the initial configuration of systems III and IV.

## 3 Results

Figure 1 illustrates the deformation of System I. The same deformation mode is seen in system III and (with a small modification, see below) in system IV.

In figure 1(b) the first dislocation activity is observed in the form of a few homogeneously nucleated dislocation loops. The loops expand rapidly. Due to the periodic boundary conditions the dislocations cannot disappear from the sample. They will continue to move, causing significant plastic deformation.

After some dislocation activity has occurred, we observe the first creation of vacancies in figure 1(c). A “sausage-like” string of vacancies have appeared in the middle of the system. As the deformation proceeds, the string of vacancies is broken up by the dislocation activity, and the vacancies are dispersed into single vacancies and smaller clusters. At the same time, more vacancies are being generated.

### 3.1 Dislocation nucleation.

Figure 2 shows the stress versus time and strain for the simulations. It is clearly seen that the deformation falls in two parts, an elastic and a plastic regime. In the elastic regime (below $`\epsilon 7.5\%`$), no dislocations are present in the sample, and no plastic deformation is possible. As there are no dislocation sources, dislocations cannot be nucleated until the stress is close to the theoretical shear stress, where (111) planes can glide with respect to each other. At this point thermal fluctuations are enough to nucleate dislocations. This is seen in figure 1b. A number of loops have been nucleated almost simultaneously. The first one to be nucleated is clearly seen, but a number of emerging loops are seen as well.

The loops consist of a single Shockley partial dislocations, and are thus faulted loops. The second partial is not being nucleated. This is because the barrier for nucleating the second partial is almost as high as the barrier for nucleating the first partial, but by the time the first partial is nucleated, it screens the stress field. The trailing partials are thus not nucleated. It should also be noted that the stacking fault energy in copper is relatively low, and furthermore the stacking fault energy in the simulation is approximately a factor of two below the experimental value (Schiøtz and Carlsson 2000). For similar reasons, only Shockley partial dislocations are seen in simulations of the mechanical deformation of nanocrystalline metals (Schiøtz et al. 1999).

The behavior in system I and III are very similar, as they only differ by the size of the system. In system IV, where free surfaces are present, the dislocations are (perhaps not surprisingly) nucleated at the surfaces. Since the surfaces are defect-free, they are not good sources for dislocations, and the dislocations are nucleated only marginally earlier than in the bulk simulations (see fig. 2). The dislocations are again nucleated as single Shockley partials in the form of a faulted half-loop. When the loop reaches the opposite surface the result is two dislocations that extend from one surface to the other. Such dislocations cannot run out of the sample due to the periodic boundary conditions, and again a large dislocation density is the result. See fig. 3.

In system II dislocations are nucleated at the corners of the system. Again, the lack of defects prevents dislocation nucleation until a very high stress is reached, even though the lower atomic coordination at the corners allows dislocation nucleation at a stress that is approximately 25% lower than in the bulk and film configurations. Unlike the other geometries, there is nothing to prevent the dislocations from moving out of the sample at the opposite surface, and this is indeed what happens. Initially, two dislocations are nucleated approximately simultaneously on opposite corner. Just before the dislocations reach the opposite corner new dislocations are nucleated, perhaps due to the local heating caused by the moving dislocation. This repeats itself a few times until the stress has been reduced. After the brief surge of dislocation activity, the sample is again dislocation free and the stress can build up again (fig. 2). No evidence is seen for kinematic generation of new dislocations near the rapidly moving dislocation. This has previously been seen in simulations under similar conditions except the temperature was close to zero Kelvin (Schiøtz et al. 1995). The reason appears to be that phonon drag at the temperature of the simulations presented here (450K) prevents the dislocations from reaching the Rayleigh velocity.

### 3.2 Vacancy production.

After some dislocation activity vacancies appear in the simulation. The vacancies initially appear in the form of short strings of vacancies. A closer look at the simulation shows how the vacancy structure appears. Dislocation interactions have created dislocations where segments are on different glide planes. When these dislocations meet, it is possible that two segments of edge dislocation with opposite signs annihilate. If the dislocations are not on the same slip plane, but on adjacent slip planes, a string of vacancies or interstitials is generated. In the simulations interstitial generation by this mechanism is never observed, probably because the energy of a string of interstitials is so high that the colliding dislocations pass by each other instead of annihilating. The vacancy formation mechanism is further discussed elsewhere (Schiøtz et al. 2000).

At the end of the simulation (figures 1(d) and 3) a large number of vacancies have been formed, apparently by this mechanism. The vacancy density at this point is of the order of $`210^4`$.

## 4 Discussion

The simulations presented here demonstrate that even in a situation where the generation of dislocations has been made as difficult as possible, dislocation nucleation does occur before any dislocation-free deformation mechanism is activated. Once dislocations are nucleated, they carry the plastic deformation, and no evidence of a dislocation free deformation mechanism is seen neither in bulk nor in thin film simulations.

The high vacancy concentration seen experimentally (Kiritani et al. 1999) is reproduced in the simulations. The vacancies are created by dislocation–dislocation interactions, which raises the question “why are a similar concentration of vacancies not seen in ordinary deformation experiments?” After all, the same number of dislocations must pass through the sample to give the same final strain, regardless of the strain rate. However, the number of dislocation-dislocation interactions is proportional not only to the number of dislocations passing through the sample, but also to the average dislocation density. The dislocation density is likely to be significantly larger under high-speed deformation, partly because more dislocation sources may be activated by the higher stresses reached during the high-speed deformation, partly because new dislocations are nucleated from the dislocation sources before the previous ones have time to reach a dislocation sink.

The vacancy density observed in the simulations ($`210^4`$) is in excellent agreement with the observed densities ($`10^4`$). To some extent this agreement is fortuitous, since the strain rate is much higher in the simulations than in the experiments, whereas the total strain is higher in the experiments. It is, however, important that the right order of magnitude is found for the vacancy density.

In the experiments presented by Kiritani et al. (1999) no (or very few) dislocations are seen in the sample after deformation — in constrast to the simulations, where a large dislocation density is seen (figure 3). However, the time scale of the experiment is much longer than the time scale of the simulations, giving ample time for the dislocations to disappear. It is clear that when the dislocation line goes from one surface to the other (as is the case of most of the dislocations in figure 3) they cannot simply move to the surface and disappear. In the reported experiments, the TEM micrographs were taken near the egde where the foils were torn apart since this is where the foil was sufficiently thin. In this case it must be assumed that the foil is wedge-shaped, and that the dislocations can leave the sample by moving to the edge where the foil broke. In *in-situ* TEM studies, where the foil is examined before it breaks (Kiritani 2000), the thinnest part of the film is examined. If there are no dislocation sources in this part of the film, the stress will increase until dslocations are nucleated at the surface. These dislocations will be accelerated to very high velocities and leave the region being studied by the TEM. They are not observed because of their high velocity. The phenomenon that dislocations are rapidly expelled from a region with a local stress concentration is well known from fracture mechanics, where a dislocation free zone (DFZ) is formed in front of the crack tip (Kobayashi and Ohr 1980, Chang and Ohr 1981, Ohr 1985). We propose that a similar DFZ is formed here, and that this explains why dislocations are not observed in the experiments.

Shimomura et al. (1999) have recently published simulations of high-speed deformation in Cu and Al (the interatomic potential used was not reported). They have used systems with 4000 atoms, and either full periodic boundary conditions (similar to system I) or with wire-symmetry (as system II). They report that the deformation occurs without dislocations, but by “tilting of atom rows”. However, this tilting is nucleated at one surface and proceeds through the specimen. Based on the published material, we are not able to see the difference between this mechanism and the propagation of a dislocation with screw character through the specimen.

In simulations of nanocrystalline metals a “dislocation-free” deformation mechanism is seen where the grain boundaries carry the deformation (Schiøtz et al. 1999, 1998). Such a mechanism can be ruled out in the experiments by Kiritani et al. (1999) as it only works when the density of grain boundaries is extremely high, i.e. at grain sizes below approximately 10 nm. Furthermore, no generation of vacancies is expected.

## 5 Conclusions

We have simulated high-speed deformation of copper in bulk and in thin films. In spite of not having included any dislocation sources in the initial configuration, dislocations are nucleated and the plastic deformation occur by the motion of dislocations. We thus find no evidence for the dislocation-free deformation mechanism proposed by Kiritani et al. (1999). Inelastic interactions between the dislocations results in the production of vacancies. After the deformation is complete, a very high vacancy density is seen, in agreement with the experimental observations. We propose that the reason why no dislocations are seen in the experiments is the formation of a “dislocation free zone” where the dislocations rapidly leave the part of the film where the stresses are largest.

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prof. Kiritani for fruitful discussions. The Center for Atomic-scale Materials Science (CAMP) is sponsored by the Danish National Research Foundation. This work was done as a collaboration between CAMP and the Engineering Science Center for Structural Characterization and Modelling of Materials at Materials Research Department, Risø. Parallel computer time was financed by the Danish Research Councils through grant no. 9501775. The authors are collaborating with the Academic Frontier Research Center for Ultra-high Speed Plastic Deformation at Hiroshima Institute of Technology.

## References


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# Untitled Document

Interpreting the time of decay measurement: phenomenological

significance of the Bohm model

A. S. Majumdar111e-mail:archan@boson.bose.res.in

S.N.Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences

Block-JD, Sector III, Salt Lake, Calcutta 700098, India.

Dipankar Home222e-mail:dhom@boseinst.ernet.in

Bose Institute, Calcutta 700009, India

## Abstract

We point out that the spreading of wave packets could be significant in affecting the analysis of experiments involving the measurement of time of decay. In particular, we discuss a hitherto unexplored application of the Bohm model in properly taking into account the nontrivial effect of wave packet spreading in the CP violation experiment.

PACS No. 03.65.Bz

In quantum mechanics, if a particle is represented by a wave packet which evolves according to the Schrodinger equation, an inevitable consequence is the spreading of such a packet. In most experiments the effect of wave packet spreading is negligible in considering the outcome of the measurement. However, there may exist situations where the magnitude of wave packet spreading, in spite of being small, could be nonnegligible when compared to the magnitude of delicate quantum effects being studied. In particular, the observations of minute quantum effects concerning the decay of unstable particles which are inferred from observing the times of decay could be affected by wave packet spreading. This is because the time of decay cannot be measured directly and has to be inferred from appropriate measurements on the decay products whose packets spread before reaching the relevant detectors. Such situations, for example, could occur in verifying CP violation , or verifying the departure from exponential decay of unstable nuclei for very short times . In this paper we focus on the CP violation experiment and analyse closely as to what extent the wave packet spreading affects the inference of CP violation from the performed measurements. We argue that, contrary to the usual belief, one does require to take into account the wave packet spreading in order to infer CP violation precisely. Our analysis also reveals an interesting application of the Bohm model in quantifying the effect of wave packet spreading in such experiments.

At the outset, let us note that the time of decay is not represented by any hermitian operator. However, in quantum mechanics, any standard measurement is described in terms of hermitian operators. Even for an observable for which there exist no directly corresponding hermitian operator, measurement of it can ulimately be reduced to the measurement of some hermitian operator. For example, when one measures the wavelength of light, one is actually measuring position corresponding to fringe spacing. Other quantities like mass are also finally measured in terms of positions noted from mass spectrograph. The usual textbook justification as to why a nonhermitian operator is not measurable is that its eigenvalues are, in general, complex. However, this is not an adequate argument because the real and/or imaginary components can be taken to correspond to observables. This occurs, for instance, in decay processes where the effective Hamiltonian is complex with its real and imaginary parts corresponding to mass and decay rate respectively. An example of particular relevance is the physics of the nonorthogonal $`|K_L>`$ (long-lived kaon) and $`|K_S>`$ (short-lived kaon) states which are eigenstates of a non-hermitian effective Hamiltonian. The experimentally measured distinction between these two states is crucial for the inference of CP-violation in weak interactions of particle physics. On the other hand, there is a theorem based on general quantum mechanical considerations that any measurement of a nonhermitian operator with nonorthogonal eigenstates would lead to superluminal signalling using the EPR-Bohm type nonlocal correlations .

Here we recall a simple general argument ruling out the measurability of a nonhermitian operator if a measurement process is describable by linear and unitary quantum mechanics. Let $`|\psi _1>`$ and $`|\psi _2>`$ be the eigenstates of an observable. The measured state is, say,

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }>=a|\psi _1>+b|\psi _2>`$ (1)
and the apparatus is in an initial state $`|A_0>`$. Linearity demands that the system-apparatus state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }>|A_0>`$ evolves by measurement interaction as

$`a|\psi _1>|A_0>a|\psi _1>|A_1>`$
$`b|\psi _2>|A_0>b|\psi _2>|A_2>`$ (2)
From unitarity, it then follows

$`a^{}b<\psi _1|\psi _2>=a^{}b<\psi _1|\psi _2><A_1|A_2>`$ (3)
Now, if the states $`\psi _1>`$ and $`\psi _2>`$ are nonorthogonal eigenstates of a nonhermitian operator, i.e., $`<\psi _1|\psi _2>0`$, then Eq(3) cannot be satisfied for any measurement in which the two distinguishable states $`|A_1>`$ and $`|A_2>`$ are orthogonal. Hence, according to standard quantum mechanics, nonhermitian operators cannot be measured if measurement processes are linear and unitary.

Now, turning to the particular case of measuring the time of decay, it has to be inferred from the measurement of an appropriate hermitian observable. Usually this involves measurement of position/momentum of decay products. In the theory of scattering and decay processes, one describes the decaying particles as well as the decay products in the asymptotic limit by plane waves. However, to be more realistic, one needs to use wave packets instead of plane waves. We shall now argue that the spreading of wave packets in such an experiment involving CP violation gives rise to considerable departures from the predicted coordinates of the decay products.

First, let us recapitulate a few basic features of CP-violation . C(charge conjugation) and P(parity) are two of the fundamental discrete symmetries of nature, the violations of which have not been empirically detected in phenomena other than weak interactions. If a third discrete symmetry T(time reversal) is taken into account, there exists a fundamental theorem of quantum field theory, viz., the CPT theorem which states that all physical processes are invariant under the combined operation of CPT. However, there is no theorem forbidding the violation of CP symmetry. In fact, there have been several experiments to date , starting from the pioneering observation of Christenson, Cronin, Fitch and Turlay , that have revealed the occurrence of CP violation through weak interactions involving the particles $`K^0`$ and $`\overline{K^0}`$. The eigenstates of strangeness $`K^0`$ $`(s=+1)`$ and its CP conjugate $`\overline{K^0}`$ $`(s=1)`$ are produced in strong interactions, for example, the decay of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ particles. Weak interactions do not conserve strangeness, whereby $`K^0`$ and $`\overline{K^0}`$ can mix through intermediate states like $`2\pi ,3\pi ,\pi \mu \nu ,\pi e\nu `$, etc. The observable particles, which are the long lived $`K`$-meson $`K_L`$, and the short lived one $`K_S`$, are linear superpositions of $`K^0`$ and $`\overline{K^0}`$, i.e.,

$`|K_L`$ $`=`$ $`(p|K^0q|\overline{K^0})/\sqrt{|p|^2+|q|^2}`$ (4)
$`|K_S`$ $`=`$ $`(p|K^0+q|\overline{K^0})/\sqrt{|p|^2+|q|^2}`$ (5)
which obey the exponential decay law $`|K_L|K_Lexp(\mathrm{\Gamma }_Lt/2)exp(im_Lt)`$ and analogously for $`|K_S`$, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_L`$ and $`m_L`$ are the decay width and mass respectively of the $`K_L`$ particle. It follows from (4) and (5) that

$`K_L|K_S={\displaystyle \frac{|p|^2|q|^2}{|p|^2+|q|^2}}`$ (6)
CP violation takes place if the states $`|K_L`$ and $`|K_S`$ are not orthogonal. Through weak interactions $`K_S`$ decays rapidly into channels such as $`K_S\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ and $`K_S2\pi ^0`$ with a mean lifetime of $`10^{10}s`$, whereas the predominant decay modes of $`K_L`$ are $`K_L\pi ^\pm e^\pm \nu `$ (with branching ratio $`39\%`$), $`K_L\pi ^\pm \mu ^\pm \nu (27\%)`$, and $`K_L3\pi (33\%)`$ . The CP violating decay mode $`K_L2\pi `$ is extremely rare (with branching ratio $`10^3`$) in the background of the other large decay modes. The momenta and locations of the emitted pions are important since the key experimental signature is to detect the $`2\pi `$ particles coming from the decay of $`K_L`$ and identify them as coming from $`K_L`$ and not from $`K_S`$.

In a typical experiment to detect CP violation, an initial state of the type

$`|\psi _i=(a|K_L+b|K_S)`$ (7)
is used which is a coherent superposition of the $`K_L`$ and $`K_S`$ states. Such a state is produced by the technique of ‘regeneration’  which is used in a large number of experiments . The common feature of all these experiments is the measurement of the vector momenta $`\stackrel{}{p_i}`$ of the charged decay products $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ or $`2\pi ^0`$ from the decaying pions. It is only the type of instrument used for actually measuring the momenta that varies from experiment to experiment.

We consider a single event in which the two emitted pions from a decaying kaon are detected by two detectors respectively along two different directions. From the measured momenta $`\stackrel{}{p_1}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{p_2}`$, the trajectories followed by the individual pions are retrodictively inferred assuming that they have followed classical trajectories. The point of intersection of these retrodicted trajectories is inferred to be the point from which the decay products have originated from the decaying system. In other words, what is technically known as the “decay vertex” is determined in this way. Then momentum of the decaying kaon is obtained by $`\stackrel{}{p_k}=\stackrel{}{p_1}+\stackrel{}{p_2}`$. Once the decay vertex and the kaon momentum are known, one estimates the time taken by the decaying kaon to reach the decay vertex from the source, again using at this stage the idea of a classical trajectory. If this time turns out to be significantly larger than the $`K_S`$ mean lifetime ($`10^{10}s`$), one infers that the detected $`2\pi `$ pair must have come from $`K_L`$ and not from $`K_S`$ which, as already mentioned, is the signature of CP violation.

It is thus evident from the above discussion that the assumption of a classical trajectory of a freely evolving particle (decaying kaon as well as pion) is a key ingredient in inferring CP violation in such experiments (see also an earlier paper , but there the point about the wave packet description and its spreading was not considered). Now, to consider the justification of such an assumption we note that within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, the very concept of a trajectory of a particle is regarded to be inadmissible. One possible argument could be to associate localized wave packets with the emitted pions and decaying kaons, and to use the fact that their peaks follow classical trajectories in the case of free evolutions. But then there would be inevitable spreading of these wave packets. It is thus important to consider a quantitative estimate of this behaviour for the experiment discussed here. Let us quantify the resulting error or fluctuation due to the spreading of a wave packet by taking into account the actual distances involved in the relevant experiments. This is particularly crucial in the present context because the CP violation effect is exceedingly small (branching ratio of the CP violating decay mode $`K_L2\pi `$ is $`10^3`$). We take dimension of the wave packet of the kaon at the time of its production to be typically of the order of $`1f`$, i.e., its initial spread $`\sigma _010^{13}cm`$. After a time $`t`$, its spread $`\sigma `$ is given by

$`\sigma =\sigma _0\left(1+({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}t}{2m\sigma _0^2}})^2\right)^{1/2}`$ (8)
After the kaon travels about $`300K_S`$ decay lengths $`(10m)`$, which is the usual distance involved in the relevant experiments, one obtains $`\sigma =10^5m`$ – an astonishingly large number ! One may attribute this to the nonrelativistic nature of the above analysis. However, the prediction of CP violation in the relevant experiments can be formally described adequately in terms of the Schroedinger equation (see  and references therein). Nevertheless, even if relativistic corrections alter the value of $`\sigma `$ by several orders of magnitude, $`\sigma `$ would still be too large for unambiguously inferring CP violation in such experiments. Surprisingly, in the analysis of none of the CP violation experiments performed to date, this point has been considered.

In order to take into account such an effect of wave packet spreading, the Bohm model (BM) can play a useful role in estimating accurately the position of decay vertex from the observed position/momentum of decay products. To explain this, we first briefly recapitulate the key elements of BM. BM provides an ontological and self-consistent interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics in terms of particle trajectories . Predictions of BM are in agreement with that of standard quantum mechanics. In BM a wave function $`\psi `$ is taken to be an incomplete specification of the state of an individual particle. An objectively real “position” coordinate (“position” existing irrespective of any external observation) is ascribed to a particle apart from the wave function. Its “position” evolves with time obeying an equation that can be derived from the Schroedinger equation (considering the one dimensional case)

$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{\psi }{t}}=H\psi {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}{\displaystyle \frac{^2\psi }{x^2}}+V(x)\psi `$ (9)
by writing

$`\psi =Re^{iS/\mathrm{}}`$ (10)
and using the continuity equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}(\rho v)+{\displaystyle \frac{\rho }{t}}=0`$ (11)
for the probability distribution $`\rho (x,t)`$ given by

$`\rho =|\psi |^2.`$ (12)
It is important to note that $`\rho `$ is ascribed an ontological significance by regarding it as representing the probability density of “particles” occupying actual positions. On the other hand, in the standard interpretation, $`\rho `$ is interpreted as the probability density of finding particles around certain positions. Setting ($`\rho v`$) equal to the quantum probability current leads to the Bohmian equation of motion where the particle velocity $`v(x,t)`$ is given by

$`v{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}{\displaystyle \frac{S}{x}}`$ (13)
The particle trajectory is thus deterministic and is obtained by integrating (13) for a given initial position.

Now let us examine the nature of Bohmian trajectories in the case of a wave packet. An ensemble of particles distributed over a wave packet possess different ontological positions. It can be shown that particles initially at the centre of the wave packet follow classical trajectories . But all particles with initial positions away from the centre of the wave packet follow nonclassical Bohmian trajectories. The position of any particle at a time $`t_2`$, denoted by $`X(t_2)`$, can be computed given its initial position $`X_0`$ and velocity $`v_0`$ at time $`t_1`$. The magnitude of departure from classical trajectories is embodied in the second term of the following relation (see Ref. )

$`X(t_2)=v_0(t_2t_1)+X_0\left(1+({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}(t_2t_1)}{2m\sigma _0^2}})^2\right)^{1/2}`$ (14)
In any experiment involving the measurement of time of decay, in particular, in the CP violation experiment, one could measure the set of times at which the vector momenta of the decay products are recorded by a set of detectors located at various positions. In terms of Eq.(14), the values of $`X(t_2)`$ are recorded for various $`t_2`$. Then inverting Eq.(14), it is possible to express $`X_0`$ as a function of $`t_1`$ for any particular $`t_2`$. Using the whole set of such data this exercise can be used to obtain an ensemble of retrodicted trajectories for the decay products. The various intersection points of these retrodicted trajectories correspond to various decay vertices of the corresponding subensembles of trajectories. In this way one can estimate a spread of decay vertices for the kaons. From this, it is possible to obtain the spread in decay times for the kaons by using the trajectory equation for kaons, knowing their origins.

We have thus shown that using BM one can retrodict the trajectories for the decay products and decaying kaons, given the measured vector momenta and arrival times of the decay products. This would then enable to calculate the spread in decay times for the decaying kaons. The nonclassical second term in the trajectory equation(14) is crucial in calculating this spread. On the other hand, within the standard framework, the best one can do is to describe the propagation of the peak of a wave packet by the classical equation. In the absence of any equation of motion for trajectories within standard quantum mechanics, it then remains a nontrivial issue to take into account consistently the effect of wave packet spreading for estimating accurately when the kaons have decayed into $`2\pi `$ pairs that originate only from $`K_L`$ and not from $`K_S`$. BM turns out to provide a convenient scheme for addressing this issue. It should be worthwhile to look for more such examples where BM can usefully supplement the standard framework for analysing the experimental results with more precision. An interesting area for such a study would be to analyse in terms of Bohmian trajectories the recently claimed experimental detection of minute departure from the exponential behaviour in quantum tunelling  which involves essentially the measurement of decay times.

The research of DH is supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India.

REFERENCES

\] For a review, see for instance, K.Kleinknecht, in “CP violation”, edited by C.Jarlskog, (World Scientific, Singapore, 1989) pp. 41 -104.

\] T. D. Nghiep, V. T. Hanh and N. N. Son, Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.) 66 (1998) 533.

\] E. J. Squires, Phys. Lett. A 130, 192 (1988).

\] J.H.Christenson, J.W.Cronin, V.L.Fitch and R.Turlay, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 138 (1964).

\] For eample, see, C.Geweniger et al., Phys. Lett. B 48 (1974) 487; V.Chaloupka et al., Phys. Lett. B 50 (1974) 1; W.C.Carithers et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 34 (1975) 1244; N.Grossmann, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 59 (1987) 18.

\] A.Pais and O.Piccioni, Phys. Rev. 100 (1955) 1487.

\] D. Home and A. S. Majumdar, Found. Phys. 29, 721 (1999).

\] D.Bohm, Phys. Rev. 85 (1952) 166; D.Bohm and B.J.Hiley, “The Undivided Universe”, (Routledge, London, 1993).

\] P.R.Holland, “The Quantum Theory of Motion”, (Cambridge University Press, London, 1993).

\] J.T.Cushing, “Quantum Mechanics - Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony”, (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994); D. Home, “Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Physics” (Plenum, NY, 1997).

\] S. R. Wilkinson et al., Nature 387 (1997) 575.


text:
# Behavior of the thermal gluon self-energy in the Coulomb gauge

## Abstract

We study, to one loop order, the behavior of the gluon self-energy in the non covariant Coulomb gauge at finite temperature. The cancellation of the peculiar energy divergences, which arise in such a gauge, is explicitly verified in the complete two point function of the Yang-Mills theory. At high temperatures, the leading $`T^2`$ term is determined to be transverse and nonlocal, in agreement with the results obtained in covariant gauges. The coefficient of the sub-leading $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ contribution, is non transverse but local and coincides (up to a multiplicative constant) with that of the ultraviolet pole term of the zero temperature amplitude.

In thermal field theory, one is often interested in the contributions which arise from the region where the loop momenta are of the same order as the temperature $`T`$, with $`T`$ much larger than all the masses and external momenta . Such hard thermal loop contributions determine the leading gauge invariant terms of the amplitudes at high temperature, which are important in resumming the QCD thermal perturbation theory . In general, the coefficients of these leading order terms are not directly related to the ultraviolet singular terms of the zero temperature amplitudes. In thermal QCD, for example, the $`n`$-gluon amplitudes at one-loop order behave like $`T^2`$ for high $`T`$, even though these amplitudes are ultraviolet finite, at zero temperature, for $`n>4`$. The hard thermal loop region is also relevant for determining the sub-leading, $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ behavior of the amplitudes. It has been argued that, in contrast to the behavior of the leading $`T^2`$ terms, the coefficients of the $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ terms are simply related to those of the ultraviolet pole terms of the zero temperature amplitudes .

These properties of the amplitudes at high temperature, which have been verified in covariant and axial gauges, were derived under the assumption that the integration over the loop energy $`q_0`$ is well defined. On the other hand, it is well known that, in the Coulomb gauge, there are spurious poles at $`\stackrel{}{q}=0`$, leading to divergent energy integrals simply because the denominators of some of the integrands may be independent of $`q_0`$. (For a discussion of this and other related aspects of the Coulomb gauge see, for example, ). Consequently, it is not clear, a priori, whether all the properties of the thermal amplitudes, derived in covariant and axial gauges, would continue to hold in the Coulomb gauge as well because of the ill defined energy integrals. At zero temperature, there is a proposal to regularize these singularities using a variant  of the conventional dimensional regularization . However, it has also been pointed out that, even though individual Feynman diagrams can have divergent energy integrals in the Coulomb gauge, such divergences might cancel when all the contributions to a given amplitude are added together. This has been checked, using the conventional dimensional regularization, in the case of the one-loop self-energy for the gluon at zero temperature .

In this Brief Report we verify explicitly, in one-loop QCD, that the cancellation of these ill defined terms takes place at finite temperature as well. As a consequence of this, we show that all the properties of the hard thermal loop amplitudes, alluded to earlier, continue to hold even in the Coulomb gauge. Thus, we show that the leading $`T^2`$ term in the gluon self-energy is nonlocal and is gauge invariant (namely, it is transverse and has the same value as in other gauges). The $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ term, on the other hand, is local but non transverse, with the coefficient coinciding (up to a factor) with that of the ultraviolet pole term of the zero temperature amplitude in the Coulomb gauge. This latter property allows us to determine directly, from the self-energy for the Coulomb field ($`00`$ component), the $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ correction to the effective coupling constant at high temperature. This simple behavior arises essentially because the Coulomb field is decoupled from the ghosts .

To carry out the computation at finite temperature, we use the analytically continued imaginary time formalism , where the integration over the loop energy is replaced by a summation over the discrete values $`q_0=2\pi ilT`$, where $`l`$ is an integer. The diagrams which contribute to the gluon self-energy, at one-loop, are shown in Fig. 1.

In the Coulomb gauge, the gluon propagator can be written as

$$D_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(q)=\frac{\delta ^{ab}}{q^2}\left[\eta _{\mu \nu }+\frac{n^2q_\mu q_\nu qn\left(q_\mu n_\nu +q_\nu n_\mu \right)}{\stackrel{}{q}^2}\right],$$
(1)
where $`n^\mu =(1,0,0,0)`$, while the ghost propagator has the form

$$D^{ab}(q)=\frac{\delta ^{ab}}{\stackrel{}{q}^2}.$$
(2)
This propagator is independent of energy and this is one of the reasons that divergent energy integrals arise.

Let us consider first the ghost loop contribution to the gluon self-energy shown in Fig. (1c). Using the appropriate ghost-gluon-ghost vertex in the Coulomb gauge, one finds that, at finite temperature, this graph leads to the contribution

$`\mathrm{\Pi }_{(ghost)}^{ij,ab}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta ^{ab}Ng^2T}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{q_0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^d\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^d}\frac{\left(2q^iq^j+k^iq^j+k^jq^i\right)}{\stackrel{}{q}^2\left(\stackrel{}{q}+\stackrel{}{k}\right)^2}}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\delta ^{ab}Ng^2\pi ^{\frac{d}{2}}}{2(2\pi )^d}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(1{\displaystyle \frac{d}{2}}){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^2(\frac{d}{2})}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(d)}}|\stackrel{}{k}|^{d4}T{\displaystyle \underset{q_0}{}}\left[\delta ^{ij}\stackrel{}{k}^2+(d2)k^ik^j\right]`$ (3)
Here $`g`$ is the gauge coupling constant, $`N`$ the color factor of SU($`N`$), $`d`$ the space dimension ($`=3`$ in four space-time dimensions) and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ denotes the gamma function . The divergence associated with the $`q_0`$ sum, in Eq. (Behavior of the thermal gluon self-energy in the Coulomb gauge), is now obvious. However, it is easy to check that all such terms cancel out when we take into consideration similar contributions which arise from the $`00`$ components of the internal gluon propagators in the other diagrams in Fig. 1. In fact, adding all such contributions, we obtain

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{(00)}^{ij,ab}+\mathrm{\Pi }_{(ghost)}^{ij,ab}=\frac{\delta ^{ab}Ng^2T}{2}\underset{q_0}{}\frac{\mathrm{d}^d\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^d}\frac{\left(k^ik^j+k^iq^j+k^jq^i\right)}{\stackrel{}{q}^2\left(\stackrel{}{q}+\stackrel{}{k}\right)^2}=0$$
(4)
which follows directly from using the standard dimensional regularization. Note that the cancellation between the ghost contribution and those from the unphysical components of the gluon field, occurs in any space dimension provided one uses systematically conventional dimensional regularization .

Since the ill defined terms cancel, we can now proceed with the standard method for evaluating the remaining finite temperature contributions, which is facilitated by the use of the relation

$`T{\displaystyle \underset{l=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}I(q_0=\pi ilT)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi i}}{\displaystyle _i\mathrm{}^{+i\mathrm{}}}dq_0\left[I(q_0)+I(q_0)\right]+`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle _{i\mathrm{}+\delta }^{+i\mathrm{}+\delta }}dq_0\left[I(q_0)+I(q_0)\right]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{exp}\left(q_0/T\right)1}}`$ (5)
Here $`I(q_0)`$ is given by an integral over the space components $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ and $`\delta 0^+`$. The first term on the right-hand side represents the zero-temperature part of the amplitude while the second term contains the thermal corrections which involve the Bose-Einstein distribution function. In the thermal part, the contour in the $`q_0`$ complex plane may now be closed in the right half-plane and the $`q_0`$ integration performed by evaluating the contributions from the poles of the gluon propagator. In this way, the second term in Eq. (Behavior of the thermal gluon self-energy in the Coulomb gauge) may be expressed in terms of forward scattering amplitudes of on-shell thermal particles with four momentum $`q^\mu =(|\stackrel{}{q}|,\stackrel{}{q})`$, as illustrated in Fig. 2 .

Denoting by $`A^{\mu \nu ,ab}(q,k)`$ the total forward scattering amplitude, where the sum over the polarizations and the color states of the thermal gluon is to be understood, we can write the thermal contributions in terms of a momentum integral of $`A^{\mu \nu ,ab}`$ as follows

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{thermal}^{\mu \nu ,ab}=\frac{\mathrm{d}^3\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{2|\stackrel{}{q}|}\frac{1}{\mathrm{exp}(|\stackrel{}{q}|/T)1}\left[A^{\mu \nu ,ab}(q,k)+A^{\mu \nu ,ab}(q,k)\right]_{q_0=|\stackrel{}{q}|}$$
(6)
where we have set the space dimension to $`d=3`$, which is the case of interest to us. Note that the temperature provides a natural ultraviolet cut-off for the thermal corrections. We may now extract from Eq. (6) a series of high-temperature contributions which arise from the region of large $`q`$. In the hard thermal region, we can use the expansion

$$\frac{1}{\left(q+k\right)^2}|_{q_0=|\stackrel{}{q}|}=\frac{1}{2qk}\frac{k^2}{\left(2qk\right)^2}+\frac{k^4}{\left(2qk\right)^3}+\mathrm{}$$
(7)
in the denominators of the forward scattering amplitude, and expand its numerator similarly in powers of $`k/q`$. One thus gets for $`A^{\mu \nu ,ab}`$ in Eq. (6) terms which are homogeneous in $`q`$ of degree $`1,0,1,2`$ and so on. The first term has a denominator of the form $`1/(qk)`$ and a numerator which is quadratic in $`q`$ and independent of $`k`$. Such odd terms cancel out in Eq. (6) by symmetry under $`qq`$. The next contributions are down by a power of $`k/q`$ and arise from the terms in $`A^{\mu \nu ,ab}`$ which are of zero degree in $`q`$. Such terms yield the leading $`T^2`$ contributions. The next non-vanishing contributions come from those terms in $`A^{\mu \nu ,ab}`$ which are of degree $`2`$ in $`q`$. By power counting, these give rise to the $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ contributions. Performing the integration over $`q`$, we determine the leading $`T^2`$ contribution to be

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{(T^2)}^{\mu \nu ,ab}=\frac{g^2N\delta ^{ab}}{48\pi }T^2d\mathrm{\Omega }\left(\frac{\widehat{q}^\mu k^\nu +\widehat{q}^\nu k^\mu }{\widehat{q}k}\frac{\widehat{q}^\mu \widehat{q}^\nu k^2}{(\widehat{q}k)^2}\eta ^{\mu \nu }\right)$$
(8)
where $`d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ denotes the integration over the directions of $`\widehat{q}=\stackrel{}{q}/|\stackrel{}{q}|`$ and $`\widehat{q}^\mu =(1,\widehat{q})`$. This contribution, which is clearly non local and manifestly transverse, agrees with the well known hard thermal loop result obtained in covariant and axial gauges . Such a gauge independent contribution has a physical interpretation in terms of plasma frequencies and screening lengths .

Furthermore, we have determined the $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ terms in the thermal part of the gluon self-energy to be

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{(\mathrm{ln}T)}^{\mu \nu ,ab}=\frac{g^2N\delta ^{ab}}{8\pi ^2}\left[k^\mu k^\nu k^2\eta ^{\mu \nu }+\frac{4}{3}\frac{kn}{n^2}\left(k^\mu n^\nu +k^\nu n^\mu \right)\frac{8}{3}\frac{k^2}{n^2}n^\mu n^\nu \right]\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{T}{\kappa }\right)$$
(9)
where $`n^\mu =(1,0,0,0)`$ and $`\kappa `$ is a typical external momentum scale. This expression which is local, but non transverse, coincides with the coefficient (up to a factor) of the ultraviolet pole term of the zero-temperature self-energy in the Coulomb gauge , as expected .

The above correspondence implies that the coefficient of $`\mathrm{ln}(T/\kappa )`$ in Eq. (9) must be the same as the coefficient of $`\mathrm{ln}(\kappa /\mu )`$ in the renormalized amplitude at zero temperature, where $`\mu `$ is the renormalization scale. This property allows us to determine, in a simple way, the $`\mathrm{ln}(T)`$ corrections in the running coupling constant at high temperature. To this end, we use the fact that the logarithmic contribution to the running coupling constant $`\overline{g}(\kappa /\mu )`$ at $`T=0`$, can be determined directly from the renormalized Coulomb field amplitude

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{(\mathrm{ln}\mu )}^{00,ab}=\delta ^{ab}\stackrel{}{k}^2\left[\frac{11Ng^2}{24\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\kappa }{\mu }\right)\right]$$
(10)
From the temperature dependent part of the $`00`$ amplitude in Eq. (9), we see that the $`\kappa `$ dependence cancels in the total amplitude so that the complete Coulomb thermal amplitude contains only a logarithmic factor $`\mathrm{ln}(T/\mu )`$. This term will then determine the logarithmic contribution to the running coupling constant $`\overline{g}(T/\mu )`$ at high temperature.

We would like to thank Professor J. C. Taylor for a helpful correspondence. This work was supported in part by U.S. Dept. Energy Grant DE-FG 02-91ER40685, NSF-INT-9602559 as well as by CNPq, Brazil.