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# How the Sun Shines*footnote **footnote *Published in the Nobel e-Museum, http://www.nobel.se/physics/articles, June, 2000.

## I The Age of the Sun

How old is the sun? How does the sun shine? These questions are two sides of the same coin, as we shall see.

The rate at which the sun is radiating energy is easily computed by using the measured rate at which energy reaches the earth’s surface and the distance between the earth and the sun. The total energy that the sun has radiated away over its lifetime is approximately the product of the current rate at which energy is being emitted, which is called the solar luminosity, times the age of the sun.

The older the sun is, the greater the total amount of radiated solar energy. The greater the radiated energy, or the larger the age of the sun, the more difficult it is to find an explanation of the source of solar energy.

To better appreciate how difficult it is to find an explanation, let us consider a specific illustration of the enormous rate at which the sun radiates energy. Suppose we put a cubic centimeter of ice outside on a summer day in such a way that all of the sunshine is absorbed by the ice. Even at the great distance between the earth and the sun, sunshine will melt the ice cube in about $`40`$ minutes. Since this would happen anywhere in space at the earth’s distance from the sun, a huge spherical shell of ice centered on the sun and 300 million km ($`200`$ million miles) in diameter would be melted in the same time. Or, shrinking the same amount of ice down to the surface of the sun, we can calculate that an area ten thousand times the area of the earth’s surface and about half a kilometer ($`0.3`$ mile) thick would also be melted in $`40`$ minutes by the energy pouring out of the sun.

In this section, we shall discuss how nineteenth-century scientists tried to determine the source of solar energy, using the solar age as a clue.

### A Conflicting Estimates of the Solar Age

The energy source for solar radiation was believed by nineteenth-century physicists to be gravitation. In an influential lecture in 1854, Hermann von Helmholtz, a German professor of physiology who became a distinguished researcher and physics professor, proposed that the origin of the sun’s enormous radiated energy is the gravitational contraction of a large mass. Somewhat earlier, in the 1840’s, J. R. Mayer (another German physician) and J. J. Waterson had also suggested that the origin of solar radiation is the conversion of gravitational energy into heatvon Helmholtz and Mayer were two of the codiscoverers of the law of conservation of energy. This law states that energy can be transformed from one form to another but the total amount is always conserved. Conservation of energy is a basic principle of modern physics that is used in analyzing the very smallest (sub-atomic) domains and the largest known structure (the universe), and just about everything in between. We shall see later that Einstein’s generalization of the law of conservation of energy was a key ingredient in understanding the origin of solar radiation. The application of conservation of energy to radioactivity revealed the existence of neutrinos..

Biologists and geologists considered the effects of solar radiation, while physicists concentrated on the origin of the radiated energy. In 1859, Charles Darwin, in the first edition of On The Origin of the Species by Natural Selection, made a crude calculation of the age of the earth by estimating how long it would take erosion occurring at the current observed rate to wash away the Weald, a great valley that stretches between the North and South Downs across the south of England. He obtained a number for the “denudation of the Weald” in the range of $`300`$ million years, apparently long enough for natural selection to have produced the astounding range of species that exist on earth.

As Herschel stressed, the sun’s heat is responsible for life and for most geological evolution on earth. Hence, Darwin’s estimate of a minimum age for geological activity on the earth implied a minimum estimate for the amount of energy that the sun has radiated.

Firmly opposed to Darwinian natural selection, William Thompson, later Lord Kelvin, was a professor at the University of Glasgow and one of the great physicists of the nineteenth century. In addition to his many contributions to applied science and to engineering, Thompson formulated the second law of thermodynamics and set up the absolute temperature scale, which was subsequently named the Kelvin scale in his honor. The second law of thermodynamics states that heat naturally flows from a hotter to a colder body, not the opposite. Thompson therefore realized that the sun and the earth must get colder unless there is an external energy source and that eventually the earth will become too cold to support life.

Kelvin, like Helmholtz, was convinced that the sun’s luminosity was produced by the conversion of gravitational energy into heat. In an early (1854) version of this idea, Kelvin suggested that the sun’s heat might be produced continually by the impact of meteors falling onto its surface. Kelvin was forced by astronomical evidence to modify his hypothesis and he then argued that the primary source of the energy available to the sun was the gravitational energy of the primordial meteors from which it was formed.

Thus, with great authority and eloquence Lord Kelvin declared in 1862:

> That some form of the meteoric theory is certainly the true and complete explanation of solar heat can scarcely be doubted, when the following reasons are considered: (1) No other natural explanation, except by chemical action, can be conceived. (2) The chemical theory is quite insufficient, because the most energetic chemical action we know, taking place between substances amounting to the whole sun’s mass, would only generate about 3,000 years’ heat. (3) There is no difficulty in accounting for 20,000,000 years’ heat by the meteoric theory.

Kelvin continued by attacking Darwin’s estimate directly, asking rhetorically:

> What then are we to think of such geological estimates as \[Darwin’s\] $`300,000,000`$ years for the “denudation of the Weald”?

Believing Darwin was wrong in his estimate of the age of the earth, Kelvin also believed that Darwin was wrong about the time available for natural selection to operate.

Lord Kelvin estimated the lifetime of the sun, and by implication the earth, as follows. He calculated the gravitational energy of an object with a mass equal to the sun’s mass and a radius equal to the sun’s radius and divided the result by the rate at which the sun radiates away energy. This calculation yielded a lifetime of only $`30`$ million years. The corresponding estimate for the lifetime sustainable by chemical energy was much smaller because chemical processes release very little energy.

### B Who was right?

As we have just seen, in the nineteenth century you could get very different estimates for the age of the sun, depending upon whom you asked. Prominent theoretical physicists argued, based upon the sources of energy that were known at that time, that the sun was at most a few tens of million years old. Many geologists and biologists concluded that the sun must have been shining for at least several hundreds of millions of years in order to account for geological changes and the evolution of living things, both of which depend critically upon energy from the sun. Thus the age of the sun, and the origin of solar energy, were important questions not only for physics and astronomy, but also for geology and biology.

Darwin was so shaken by the power of Kelvin’s analysis and by the authority of his theoretical expertise that in the last editions of On The Origin of the Species he eliminated all mention of specific time scales. He wrote in 1869 to Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection, complaining about Lord Kelvin:

> Thompson’s views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

Today we know that Lord Kelvin was wrong and the geologists and evolutionary biologists were right. Radioactive dating of meteorites shows that the sun is $`4.6`$ billion years old.

What was wrong with Kelvin’s analysis? An analogy may help. Suppose a friend observed you using your computer and tried to figure out how long the computer had been operating. A plausible estimate might be no more than a few hours, since that is the maximum length of time over which a battery could supply the required amount of power. The flaw in this analysis is the assumption that your computer is necessarily powered by a battery. The estimate of a few hours could be wrong if you computer were operated from an electrical power outlet in the wall. The assumption that a battery supplies the power for your computer is analogous to Lord Kelvin’s assumption that gravitational energy powers the sun.

Since nineteenth century theoretical physicists did not know about the possibility of transforming nuclear mass into energy, they calculated a maximum age for the sun that was too short. Nevertheless, Kelvin and his colleagues made a lasting contribution to the sciences of astronomy, geology, and biology by insisting on the principle that valid inferences in all fields of research must be consistent with the fundamental laws of physics.

We will now discuss some of the landmark developments in the understanding of how nuclear mass is used as the fuel for stars.

## II A Glimpse of the solution

The turning point in the battle between theoretical physicists and empirical geologists and biologists occurred in 1896. In the course of an experiment designed to study x-rays discovered the previous year by Wilhelm Roentgen, Henri Becquerel stored some uranium-covered plates in a desk drawer next to photographic plates wrapped in dark paper. Because it was cloudy in Paris for a couple of days, Becquerel was not able to “energize” his photographic plates by exposing them to sunlight as he had intended. On developing the photographic plates, he found to his surprise strong images of his uranium crystals. He had discovered natural radioactivity, due to nuclear transformations of uranium.

The significance of Becquerel’s discovery became apparent in 1903, when Pierre Curie and his young assistant, Albert Laborde, announced that radium salts constantly release heat. The most extraordinary aspect of this new discovery was that radium radiated heat without cooling down to the temperature of its surroundings. The radiation from radium revealed a previously unknown source of energy. William Wilson and George Darwin almost immediately proposed that radioactivity might be the source of the sun’s radiated energy.

The young prince of experimental physics, Ernest Rutherford, then a professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, discovered the enormous energy released by alpha particle radiation from radioactive substances. In 1904, he announced:

> The discovery of the radio-active elements, which in their disintegration liberate enormous amounts of energy, thus increases the possible limit of the duration of life on this planet, and allows the time claimed by the geologist and biologist for the process of evolution.

The discovery of radioactivity opened up the possibility that nuclear energy might be the origin of solar radiation. This development freed theorists from relying in their calculations on gravitational energy. However, subsequent astronomical observations showed that the sun does not contain a lot of radioactive materials, but instead is mostly hydrogen in gaseous form. Moreover, the rate at which radioactivity delivers energy does not depend on the stellar temperature, while observations of stars suggested that the amount of energy radiated by a star does depend sensitively upon the star’s interior temperature. Something other than radioactivity is required to release nuclear energy within a star.

In the next sections, we shall trace the steps that led to what we now believe is the correct understanding of how stars shine.

## III The Direction Established

The next fundamental advance came once again from an unexpected direction. In 1905, Albert Einstein derived his famous relation between mass and energy, $`E=mc^2`$, as a consequence of the special theory of relativity. Einstein’s equation showed that a tiny amount of mass could, in principle, be converted into a tremendous amount of energy. His relation generalized and extended the nineteenth century law of conservation of energy of von Helmholtz and Mayer to include the conversion of mass into energy.

What was the connection between Einstein’s equation and the energy source of the sun? The answer was not obvious. Astronomers did their part by defining the constraints that observations of stars imposed on possible explanations of stellar energy generation. In 1919, Henry Norris Russell, the leading theoretical astronomer in the United States, summarized in a concise form the astronomical hints on the nature of the stellar energy source. Russell stressed that the most important clue was the high temperature in the interiors of stars.

F. W. Aston discovered in 1920 the key experimental element in the puzzle. He made precise measurements of the masses of many different atoms, among them hydrogen and helium. Aston found that four hydrogen nuclei were heavier than a helium nucleus. This was not the principal goal of the experiments he performed, which were motivated in large part by looking for isotopes of neon.

The importance of Aston’s measurements was immediately recognized by Sir Arthur Eddington, the brilliant English astrophysicist. Eddington argued in his 1920 presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science that Aston’s measurement of the mass difference between hydrogen and helium meant that the sun could shine by converting hydrogen atoms to helium. This burning of hydrogen into helium would (according to Einstein’s relation between mass and energy) release about $`0.7`$% of the mass equivalent of the energy. In principle, this could allow the sun to shine for about a 100 billion years.

In a frighteningly prescient insight, Eddington went on to remark about the connection between stellar energy generation and the future of humanity:

> If, indeed, the sub-atomic energy in the stars is being freely used to maintain their great furnaces, it seems to bring a little nearer to fulfillment our dream of controlling this latent power for the well-being of the human race—or for its suicide.

## IV Understanding the Process

The next major step in understanding how stars produce energy from nuclear burning, resulted from applying quantum mechanics to the explanation of nuclear radioactivity. This application was made without any reference to what happens in stars. According to classical physics, two particles with the same sign of electrical charge will repel each other, as if they were repulsed by a mutual recognition of ‘bad breath’. Classically, the probability that two positively charged particles get very close together is zero. But, some things that cannot happen in classical physics can occur in the real world which is described on a microscopic scale by quantum mechanics.

In 1928, George Gamow, the great Russian-American theoretical physicist, derived a quantum-mechanical formula that gave a non-zero probability of two charged particles overcoming their mutual electrostatic repulsion and coming very close together. This quantum mechanical probability is now universally known as the “Gamow factor.” It is widely used to explain the measured rates of certain radioactive decays.

In the decade that followed Gamow’s epochal work, Atkinson and Houtermans and later Gamow and Teller used the Gamow factor to derive the rate at which nuclear reactions would proceed at the high temperatures believed to exist in the interiors of stars. The Gamow factor was needed in order to estimate how often two nuclei with the same sign of electrical charge would get close enough together to fuse and thereby generate energy according to Einstein’s relation between excess mass and energy release.

In 1938, C. F. von Weizsäcker came close to solving the problem of how some stars shine. He discovered a nuclear cycle, now known as the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle (see Appendix A), in which hydrogen nuclei could be burned using carbon as a catalyst. However, von Weizsäcker did not investigate the rate at which energy would be produced in a star by the CNO cycle nor did he study the crucial dependence upon stellar temperature.

By April 1938, it was almost as if the scientific stage had been intentionally set for the entry of Hans Bethe, the acknowledged master of nuclear physics. Professor Bethe had just completed a classic set of three papers in which he reviewed and analyzed all that was then known about nuclear physics. These works were known among his colleagues as “Bethe’s bible.” Gamow assembled a small conference of physicists and astrophysicists in Washington, D. C. to discuss the state of knowledge, and the unsolved problems, concerning the internal constitution of the stars.

In the course of the next six months or so, Bethe worked out the basic nuclear processes by which hydrogen is burned (fused) into helium in stellar interiors. Hydrogen is the most abundant constituent of the sun and similar stars, and indeed the most abundant element in the universe.

Bethe described the results of his calculations in a paper entitled “Energy Production in Stars,” which is awesome to read. He authoritatively analyzed the different possibilities for reactions that burn nuclei and selected as most important the two processes that we now believe are responsible for sunshine. One process, the so-called $`pp`$ chain (see Appendix B), builds helium out of hydrogen and is the dominant energy source in stars like the sun and less massive stars.

The CNO cycle, the second process which was also considered by von Weizsäcker, is most important in stars that are more massive than the sun. Bethe used his results to estimate the central temperature of the sun and obtained a value that is within $`20`$% of what we currently believe is the correct value ($`16`$ million degrees Kelvin)According to the modern theory of stellar evolution, the sun is heated to the enormous temperatures at which nuclear fusion can occur by gravitational energy released as the solar mass contracts from an initially large gas cloud. Thus Kelvin and other nineteenth-century physicists were partially right; the release of gravitational energy ignited nuclear energy generation in the sun. . Moreover, he showed that his calculations led to a relation between stellar mass and stellar luminosity that was in satisfactory agreement with the available astronomical observations.

In the first two decades after the end of the second world war, many important details were added to Bethe’s theory of nuclear burning in stars. Distinguished physicists and astrophysicists, especially A. G. W. Cameron, W. A. Fowler, F. Hoyle, E. E. Salpeter, M. Schwarzschild, and their experimental colleagues, returned eagerly to the question of how stars like the sun generate energy. From Bethe’s work, the answer was known in principle: the sun produces the energy it radiates by burning hydrogen. According to this theory, the solar interior is a sort of controlled thermonuclear bomb on a giant scale§§§The sensitive dependence of the Gamow factor upon the relative energy of the two charged particles is, we now understand, what provides the temperature “thermostat” for stars.. The theory leads to the successful calculation of the observed luminosities of stars similar to the sun and provides the basis for our current understanding of how stars shine and evolve over time. The idea that nuclear fusion powers stars is one of the cornerstones of modern astronomy and is used routinely by scientists in interpreting observations of stars and galaxies.

W. A. Fowler,Willy as he was universally known, led a team of colleagues in his Caltech Kellogg Laboratory and inspired physicists throughout the world to measure or calculate the most important details of the $`pp`$ chain and the CNO cycle. There was plenty of work to do and the experiments and the calculations were difficult. But, the work got done because understanding the specifics of solar energy generation was so interesting. Most of the efforts of Fowler and his colleagues M. Burbidge, G. R. Burbidge, F. Hoyle, and A. G. W. Cameron) soon shifted to the problem of how the heavy elements, which are needed for life, are produced in stars.

## V Testing the Hypothesis of Nuclear Burning

Science progresses as a result of the clash between theory and experiment, between speculation and measurement. Eddington, in the same lecture in which he first discussed the burning of hydrogen nuclei in stars, remarked:

> I suppose that the applied mathematician whose theory has just passed one still more stringent test by observation ought not to feel satisfaction, but rather disappointment—“Foiled again! This time I had hoped to find a discordance which would throw light on the points where my model could be improved.”

Is there any way to test the theory that the sun shines because very deep in its interior hydrogen is burned into helium? At first thought, it would seem impossible to make a direct test of the nuclear burning hypothesis. Light takes about ten million years to leak out from the center of the sun to the surface and when it finally emerges in the outermost regions, light mainly tells us about the conditions in those outer regions. Nevertheless, there is a way of “seeing” into the solar interior with neutrinos, exotic particles discovered while trying to understand a different mysteryThe existence of neutrinos was first proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in a 1930 letter to his physics colleagues as a ”desperate way out” of the apparent non-conservation of energy in certain radioactive decays (called $`\beta `$-decays) in which electrons were emitted. According to Pauli’s hypothesis, which he put forward very hesitantly, neutrinos are elusive particles which escape with the missing energy in $`\beta `$-decays. The mathematical theory of $`\beta `$-decay was formulated by Enrico Fermi in 1934 in a paper which was rejected by the journal Nature because “it contained speculations too remote from reality to be of interest to the reader.” Neutrinos from a nuclear reactor were first detected by Clyde Cowan and Fred Reines in 1956..

### A Discovery, Confirmation, and Surprise

A neutrino is a sub-atomic particle that interacts weakly with matter and travels at a speed that is essentially the speed of light. Neutrinos are produced in stars when hydrogen nuclei are burned to helium nuclei; neutrinos are also produced on earth in particle accelerators, in nuclear reactors, and in natural radioactivity. Based upon the work of Hans Bethe and his colleagues, we believe that the process by which stars like the sun generate energy can be symbolized by the relation,

$$4\text{1}\text{H}\text{4}\text{He}+2e^++2\nu _e+\mathrm{energy},$$
(1)
in which four hydrogen nuclei (1H, protons) are burned into a single helium nucleus (4He, $`\alpha `$ particle) plus two positive electrons ($`e^+`$) and two neutrinos ($`\nu _e`$) plus energy. This process releases energy to the star since, as Aston showed, four hydrogen atoms are heavier than one helium atom. The same set of nuclear reactions that supply the energy of the sun’s radiation also produce neutrinos that can be searched for in the laboratory.

Because of their weak interactions, neutrinos are difficult to detect. How difficult? A solar neutrino passing through the entire earth has less than one chance in a thousand billion of being stopped by terrestrial matter. According to standard theory, about a hundred billion solar neutrinos pass through your thumbnail every second and you don’t notice them. Neutrinos can travel unaffected through iron as far as light can travel in a hundred years through empty space.

In 1964, Raymond Davis Jr. and I proposed that an experiment with $`100,000`$ gallons of cleaning fluid (perchloroethylene, which is mostly composed of chlorine) could provide a critical test of the idea that nuclear fusion reactions are the ultimate source of solar radiation. We argued that, if our understanding of nuclear processes in the interior of the sun was correct, then solar neutrinos would be captured at a rate Davis could measure with a large tank filled with cleaning fluid. When neutrinos interact with chlorine, they occasionally produce a radioactive isotope of argon. Davis had shown previously that he could extract tiny amounts of neutrino-produced argon from large quantities of perchloroethylene. To do the solar neutrino experiment, he had to be spectacularly clever since according to my calculations, only a few atoms would be produced per week in a huge Olympic-sized swimming pool of cleaning fluid.

Our sole motivation for urging this experiment was to use neutrinos to:

> enable us to see into the interior of a star and thus verify directly the hypothesis of nuclear energy generation in stars.

As we shall see, Davis and I did not anticipate some of the most interesting aspects of this proposal.

Davis performed the experiment and in 1968 announced the first results. He measured fewer neutrinos than I predicted. As the experiment and the theory were refined, the disagreement appeared more robust. Scientists rejoiced that solar neutrinos were detected but worried why there were fewer neutrinos than predicted.

What was wrong? Was our understanding of how the sun shines incorrect? Had I made an error in calculating the rate at which solar neutrinos would be captured in Davis’s tank? Was the experiment wrong? Or, did something happen to the neutrinos after they were created in the sun?

Over the next twenty years, many different possibilities were examined by hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of physicists, chemists, and astronomersPerhaps the most imaginative proposal was made by Stephen Hawking, who suggested that the central region of the sun might contain a small black hole and that this could be the reason why the number of neutrinos observed is less than the predicted number.. Both the experiment and the theoretical calculation appeared to be correct.

Once again experiment rescued pure thought. In 1986, Japanese physicists led by Masatoshi Koshiba and Yoji Totsuka, together with their American colleagues, Eugene Beier and Alfred Mann, reinstrumented a huge tank of water designed to measure the stability of matter. The experimentalists increased the sensitivity of their detector so that it could also serve as a large underground observatory of solar neutrinos. Their goal was to explore the reason for the quantitative disagreement between the predicted and the measured rates in the chlorine experiment.

The new experiment (called Kamiokande) in the Japanese Alps also detected solar neutrinos. Moreover, the Kamiokande experiment confirmed that the neutrino rate was less than predicted by standard physics and standard models of the sun and demonstrated that the detected neutrinos came from the sun. Subsequently, experiments in Russia (called SAGE, led by V. Gavrin), in Italy (GALLEX and later GNO led by T. Kirsten and E. Belotti, respectively), and again in Japan (Super-Kamiokande, led by Y. Totsuka and Y. Suzuki), each with different characteristics, all observed neutrinos from the solar interior. In each detector, the number of neutrinos observed was somewhat lower than standard theory predicted.

What do all of these experimental results mean?

Neutrinos produced in the center of the sun have been detected in five experiments. Their detection shows directly that the source of the energy that the sun radiates is the fusion of hydrogen nuclei in the solar interior. The nineteenth century debate between theoretical physicists, geologists, and biologists has been settled empirically.

From an astrophysical perspective, the agreement between neutrino observations and theory is good. The observed energies of the solar neutrinos match the values predicted by theory. The rates at which neutrinos are detected are less than predicted but not by a large factor. The predicted neutrino arrival rate at the earth depends approximately upon the 25th power of the central temperature of the sun, $`T\times T\times \mathrm{}T`$ (25 factors of the temperature $`T`$). The agreement that has been achieved (agreement within a factor of three) shows that we have empirically measured the central temperature of the sun to an accuracy of a few percent. Incidentally, if someone had told me in 1964 that number of neutrinos observed from the sun would be within a factor of three of the predicted value, I would have been astonished and delighted.

In fact, the agreement between normal astronomical observations (using light rather than neutrinos) and theoretical calculations of solar characteristics is much more precise. Studies of the internal structure of the sun using the solar equivalent of terrestrial seismology (i. e., observations of solar vibrations) show that the predictions of the standard solar model for the temperatures in the central regions of the sun are consistent with the observations to an accuracy of at least $`0.1`$%. In this standard model, the current age of the sun is five billion years, which is consistent with the minimum estimate of the sun’s age made by nineteenth-century geologists and biologists (a few hundred million years).

Given that the theoretical models of the sun describe astronomical observations accurately, what can explain the disagreement by a factor of two or three between the measured and the predicted solar neutrino rates?

### B New physics

Physicists and astronomers were once again forced to reexamine their theories. This time, the discrepancy was not between different estimates of the sun’s age, but rather between predictions based upon a widely accepted theory and direct measurements of particles produced by nuclear burning in the sun’s interior. This situation was sometimes referred to as the Mystery of the Missing Neutrinos or, in language that sounded more scientific, the Solar Neutrino Problem.

As early as 1969, two scientists working in Russia, Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov, proposed that the discrepancy between standard theory and the first solar neutrino experiment could be due to an inadequacy in the textbook description of particle physics, rather than in the standard solar model. (Incidentally, Pontecorvo was the first person to propose using a chlorine detector to study neutrinos.) Gribov and Pontecorvo suggested that neutrinos suffer from a multiple personality disorder, that they oscillate back and forth between different states or types.

According to the suggestion of Gribov and Pontecorvo, neutrinos are produced in the sun in a mixture of individual states, a sort of split personality. The individual states have different, small masses, rather than the zero masses attributed to them by standard particle theory. As they travel to the earth from the sun, neutrinos oscillate between the easier-to-detect neutrino state and the more difficult-to-detect neutrino state. The chlorine experiment only detects neutrinos in the easier-to-observe state. If many of the neutrinos arrive at earth in the state that is difficult to observe, then they are not counted. It is as if some or many of the neutrinos have vanished, which can explain the apparent mystery of the missing neutrinos.

Building upon this idea, Lincoln Wolfenstein in 1978 and Stanislav Mikheyev and Alexei Smirnov in 1985 showed that the effects of matter on neutrinos moving through the sun might increase the oscillation probability of the neutrinos if Nature has chosen to give them masses in a particular range.

Neutrinos are also produced by the collisions of cosmic ray particles with other particles in the earth’s atmosphere. In 1998, the Super-Kamiokande team of experimentalists announced that they had observed oscillations among atmospheric neutrinos. This finding provided indirect support for the theoretical suggestion that solar neutrinos oscillate among different states. Many scientists working in the field of solar neutrinos believe that, in retrospect, we have had evidence for oscillations of solar neutrinos since 1968.

But, we do not yet know what causes the multiple personality disorder of solar neutrinos. The answer to this question may provide a clue to physics beyond the current standard models of sub-atomic particles. Does the change of identity occur while the neutrinos are traveling to the earth from the sun, as originally proposed by Gribov and Pontecorvo? Or does matter cause solar neutrinos to “flip out”? Experiments are underway in Canada, Italy (three experiments), Japan (two experiments), Russia, and the United States that are attempting to determine the cause of the oscillations of solar neutrinos, by finding out how much they weigh and how they transform from one type to another. Non-zero neutrino masses may provide a clue to a still undiscovered realm of physical theory.

## VI Nature: a wonderful mystery

Nature has written a wonderful mystery. The plot continually changes and the most important clues come from seemingly unrelated investigations. These sudden and drastic changes of scientific scene appear to be Nature’s way of revealing the unity of all fundamental science.

The mystery begins in the middle of the nineteenth century with the puzzle: How does the sun shine? Almost immediately, the plot switches to questions about how fast natural selection occurs and at what rate geological formations are created. The best theoretical physics of the nineteenth century gave the wrong answer to all these questions. The first hint of the correct answer came, at the very end of the nineteenth century, from the discovery of radioactivity with accidentally darkened photographic plates.

The right direction in which to search for the detailed solution was revealed by the 1905 discovery of the special theory of relativity, by the 1920 measurement of the nuclear masses of hydrogen and helium, and by the 1928 quantum mechanical explanation of how charged particles get close to each other. These crucial investigations were not directly related to the study of stars.

By the middle of the twentieth century, nuclear physicists and astrophysicists could calculate theoretically the rate of nuclear burning in the interiors of stars like the sun. But, just when we thought we had Nature figured out, experiments showed that fewer solar neutrinos were observed at earth than were predicted by the standard theory of how stars shine and how sub-atomic particles behave.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we have learned that solar neutrinos tell us not only about the interior of the sun, but also something about the nature of neutrinos. No one knows what surprises will be revealed by the new solar neutrino experiments that are currently underway or are planned. The richness and the humor with which Nature has written her mystery, in an international language that can be read by curious people of all nations, is beautiful, awesome, and humbling.

## Bibliography

## A The CNO cycle

For stars heavier than the sun, theoretical models show that the CNO (carbon-nitrogen-oxygen) cycle of nuclear fusion is the dominant source of energy generation. The cycle results in the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei (1H, protons) into a single helium nucleus (4He, alpha particle), which supplies energy to the star in accordance with Einstein’s equation. Ordinary carbon, 12C, serves as a catalyst in this set of reactions and is regenerated. Only relatively low energy neutrinos ($`\nu `$)are produced in this cycle. The figure is adapted from J. N. Bahcall, Neutrinos from the Sun, Scientific American, Volume 221, Number 1, July 1969, pp. 28-37.

## B The $`pp`$ chain reaction

In theoretical models of the sun, the $`pp`$ chain of nuclear reactions illustrated here is the dominant source of energy production. Each reaction is labeled by a number in the upper left hand corner of the box in which it is contained. In reaction 1, two hydrogen nuclei (1H, protons) are fused to produced a heavy hydrogen nucleus (2H, a deuteron). This is the usual way nuclear burning gets started in the sun. On rare occasions, the process is started by reaction 2. Deuterons produced in reactions 1 and 2 fuse with protons to produce a light element of helium (3He). At this point, the $`pp`$ chain breaks into three branches, whose relative frequencies are indicated in the figure. The net result of this chain is the fusion of four protons into a single ordinary helium nucleus (4He) with energy being released to the star in accordance with Einstein’s equation. Particles called ‘neutrinos’ ($`\nu `$) are emitted in these fusion processes. Their energies are shown in the figure in units of millions of electron volts (MeV). Reactions 2 and 4 were not discussed by Hans Bethe. This figure is adapted from J. N. Bahcall, Neutrinos from the Sun, Scientific American, Volume 221, Number 1, July 1969, pp. 28-37.


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# GLUEBALLS, HYBRID AND EXOTIC MESONS AND STRING BREAKING

## 1 Introduction

The most systematic approach to non-perturbative QCD is via lattice techniques. Lattice QCD needs as input the quark masses and an overall scale (conventionally given by $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$). Then any Green function can be evaluated by taking an average of suitable combinations of the lattice fields in the vacuum samples. This allows masses to be studied easily and matrix elements (particularly those of weak or electromagnetic currents) can be extracted straightforwardly. Unlike experiment, lattice QCD can vary the quark masses and can also explore different boundary conditions and sources. This allows a wide range of studies which can be used to diagnose the health of phenomenological models as well as casting light on experimental data.

One limitation of the lattice approach to QCD is in exploring hadronic decays because the lattice, using Euclidean time, has no concept of asymptotic states. One feasible strategy is to evaluate the mixing between states of the same energy - so giving some information on on-shell hadronic decay amplitudes.

For comparison with models and for ease of computation, the special case of infinitely heavy sea quarks (namely neglect of quark effects in the vacuum: the quenched approximation) is often used. We shall also present results from including sea quark effects - usually two flavours of degenerate sea quark of mass equivalent to strange quarks or heavier.

The quark model gives a good overall description of hadronic spectra. Here I will discuss lattice results for states which go beyond the quark model: glueballs, exotic mesons and hybrid mesons. I also discuss the related phenomenon of string breaking.

## 2 Glueballs

Glueballs are defined to be hadronic states made primarily from gluons. The full non-perturbative gluonic interaction is included in quenched QCD. In the quenched approximation, there is no mixing between such glueballs and quark - antiquark mesons. A study of the glueball spectrum in quenched QCD is thus of great value. This will allow experimental searches to be guided as well as providing calibration for models of glueballs. A non-zero glueball mass in quenched QCD is the “mass-gap” of QCD. To prove this rigourously is one of the major challenges of our times. Here we will explore the situation using computational techniques.

In principle, lattice QCD can study the meson spectrum as the sea quark mass is decreased towards experimental values. This will allow the unambiguous glueball states in the quenched approximation to be tracked as the sea quark effects are increased. It may indeed turn out that no meson in the physical spectrum is primarily a glueball - all states are mixtures of glue, $`q\overline{q}`$, $`q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$, etc. We shall later discuss lattice results on the mixing of glueballs and scalar mesons (ie $`q\overline{q}`$ states).

In lattice studies, dimensionless ratios of quantities are obtained. To explore the glueball masses, it is appropriate to combine them with another very accurately measured quantity to have a dimensionless observable. Since the potential between static quarks is very accurately measured from the lattice, it is now conventional to use $`r_0`$ for this comparison. Here $`r_0`$ is implicitly defined by $`r^2dV(r)/dr=1.65`$ at $`r=r_0`$ where $`V(r)`$ is the potential energy between static quarks which is easy to determine accurately on the lattice. Conventionally $`r_00.5`$ fm.

Theoretical analysis indicates that for Wilson’s discretisation of the gauge fields in the quenched approximation, the dimensionless ratio $`mr_0`$ will differ from the continuum limit value by corrections of order $`a^2`$. Thus in fig. 1 the mass of the $`J^{PC}`$=$`0^{++}`$ glueball is plotted versus the lattice spacing $`a^2`$. The straight line then shows the continuum limit obtained by extrapolating to $`a=0`$. As can be seen, there is essentially no need for data at even smaller $`a`$-values to further fix the continuum value. The value shown corresponds to $`m(0^{++})r_0=4.33(5)`$. Since several lattice groups  have measured these quantities, it is reassuring to see that the purely lattice observables are in excellent agreement. The publicised difference of quoted $`m(0^{++})`$ from UKQCD  and GF11  comes entirely from relating quenched lattice measurements to values in GeV.

In the quenched approximation, different hadronic observables differ from experiment by factors of up to 10%. Thus using one quantity or another to set the scale, gives an overall systematic error. Here I choose to set the scale by taking the conventional value of the string tension, $`\sqrt{\sigma }=0.44`$ GeV, which then corresponds to $`r_0^1=373`$ MeV. An overall systematic error of 10% is then to be included to any extracted mass. This yields $`m(0^{++})=1611(30)(160)`$ MeV where the second error is the systematic scale error. Note that this is the glueball mass in the quenched approximation - in the real world significant mixing with $`q\overline{q}`$ states could modify this value substantially.

In the Wilson approach, the next lightest glueballs are  the tensor $`m(2^{++})r_0=6.0(6)`$ (resulting in $`m(2^{++})=2232(220)(220)`$ MeV) and the pseudoscalar $`m(2^{++})r_0=6.0(1.0)`$. Although the Wilson discretisation provides a definitive study of the lightest ($`0^{++}`$) glueball in the continuum limit, other methods are competitive for the determination of the mass of heavier glueballs. Namely, using an improved gauge discretisation which has even smaller discretisation errors than the $`a^2`$ dependence of the Wilson discretisation, so allowing a relatively coarse lattice spacing $`a`$ to be used. To extract mass values, one has to explore the time dependence of correlators and for this reason, it is optimum to use a relatively small time lattice spacing. Thus an asymmetric lattice spacing is most appropriate. The results  are shown in fig. 2 and for low lying states are that $`m(0^{++})r_0=4.21(11)(4)`$, $`m(2^{++})r_0=5.85(2)(6)`$, $`m(0^+)=6.33(7)(6)`$ and $`m(1^+)r_0=7.18(4)(7)`$. Another recent study  has used an improved discretisation based on the perfect action approach (without a space-time asymmetry) and obtains results consistent with earlier work.

One signal of great interest would be a glueball with $`J^{PC}`$ not allowed for $`q\overline{q}`$ \- a spin-exotic glueball or oddball \- since it would not mix with $`q\overline{q}`$ states. These states are found  to be high lying: considerably above $`2m(0^{++})`$. Thus they are likely to be in a region very difficult to access unambiguously by experiment.

Within the quenched approximation, the glueball states are unmixed with $`q\overline{q},q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$, etc. Furthermore, the $`q\overline{q}`$ states have degenerate flavour singlet and non-singlet states in the quenched approximation. Once quark loops are allowed in the vacuum, for the favour-singlet states of any given $`J^{PC}`$, there will be mixing between the $`s\overline{s}`$ state, the $`u\overline{u}+d\overline{d}`$ state and the glueball. One way to explore this is to measure directly the scalar mass eigenstates in a study with $`N_f=2`$ flavours of sea-quark. Most studies show no significant change of the glueball spectrum as dynamical quark effects are added - but the sea quark masses used are still rather large . A recent study , however, does find evidence for a reduced mass, albeit with a rather large lattice spacing, see fig. 1. This effect could be due to mixing of scalar mesons and glueballs, as we discuss below, or might just be a sign of an enhanced order $`a^2`$ correction at the relatively large lattice spacing used.

Let us now discus the mixing of the scalar glueball and scalar mesons. The mass spectrum of $`q\overline{q}`$ states has been determined on a quenched lattice and the scalar mesons are found to lie somewhat lighter than the tensor states . These $`2^{++}`$ mesons are experimentally almost unmixed and so will be quite close to the quenched mass determination. This suggests that the quenched scalar masses from the lattice are at around 1.2 GeV and 1.5 GeV (for $`n\overline{n}`$ and $`s\overline{s}`$ respectively). An independent study  suggests that the scalar $`s\overline{s}`$ state is about 200 MeV lighter than the glueball which is a broadly compatible conclusion. Thus the glueball, at around 1.6 GeV, lies heavier than the lightest $`q\overline{q}`$ scalar states. This information can then be combined with mixing strengths to give the resulting scalar spectrum.

It is possible to measure the mixing strength on a quenched lattice even though no mixing actually occurs. On a rather coarse lattice ($`a^11.2`$ GeV), two groups have attempted this . Their results expressed as the mixing for two degenerate quarks of mass around the strange quark mass are similar, namely $`E0.3`$ GeV  and 0.5 GeV . From this evaluation of the mixing strength, one can use a mass matrix to estimate the mass shift induced in the glueball and scalar meson. The relevant mass matrix is (in a glueball, $`q\overline{q}`$ basis in GeV units):

$`\left(\begin{array}{cc}1.2& 0.5\\ 0.5& 1.8\end{array}\right)`$

which would give a downward shift of the glueball mass by 20%. This is in qualitative agreement with our direct determination with $`N_f=2`$ flavours of sea-quark that the lightest scalar mass is reduced significantly at this lattice spacing as shown in fig. 1.

Note that at this coarse lattice spacing the quenched glueball mass is reduced (see fig. 1) below the canonical value of 1.6 GeV. Thus a study at smaller lattice spacing is needed. An exploratory attempt to extrapolate to the continuum  gave a very small mixing of 86(64) MeV, while the other determination  uses clover improvement so order $`a`$ effects in the extrapolation to the continuum are suppressed and one would not expect a significant decrease in going to the continuum limit. What this discussion shows is that precision studies of the mixing on a lattice have not yet been achieved.

As well as this mixing of the glueball with $`q\overline{q}`$ states, there will be mixing with $`q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$ states which will be responsible for the hadronic decays. A first attempt to study this  yields an estimated width for decay to two pseudoscalar mesons from the scalar glueball of order 100 MeV. A more realistic study would involve taking account of mixing with the $`n\overline{n}`$ and $`s\overline{s}`$ scalar mesons as well.

## 3 Exotic states

By exotic state we mean any state which is not dominantly a $`q\overline{q}`$ or $`qqq`$ state. Such examples have been known for a long time: the deuteron is a proton-neutron molecule for example. It is very weakly bound (2 MeV) and is quite extended. Similar molecular states involving two mesons have been conjectured.

One case which is relatively easy to study is the $`BB`$ system, idealised as two static quarks and two light quarks. Then a potential as a function of the separation $`R`$ between the static quarks can be determined. Because the static quark spin is irrelevant, the states can be classified by the light quark spin and isospin. Lattice results  (using a light quark mass close to strange) have been obtained for the potential energy for $`I_q=0,1`$ and $`S_q=0,1`$. For very heavy quarks, a potential below $`2M_B`$ will imply binding of the $`BB`$ molecules with these quantum numbers and $`L=0`$. For the physically relevant case of $`b`$ quarks of around 5 GeV, the kinetic energy will not be negligible and the binding energy of the $`BB`$ molecular states is less clear cut. One way to estimate the kinetic energy for the $`BB`$ case with reduced mass circa 2.5 GeV is to use analytic approximations to the potentials found. For example the $`I_q,S_q`$=(0,0) case shows a deep binding at $`R=0`$ which can be approximated as a Coulomb potential of $`0.1/R`$ in GeV units. This will give a di-meson binding energy of only 10 MeV. For the other interesting case, $`(I_q,S_q)`$=(0,1), a harmonic oscillator potential in the radial coordinate of form $`0.04[1(r3)^2/4]`$ in GeV units leads to a kinetic energy which completely cancels the potential energy minimum, leaving zero binding. This harmonic oscillator approximation lies above the estimate of the potential, so again we expect weak binding of the di-meson system.

Because of these very small values for the di-meson binding energies, one needs to retain corrections to the heavy quark approximation to make more definite predictions, since these corrections are known to be of magnitude 46 MeV from the $`B`$, $`B^{}`$ splitting. It will also be necessary to extrapolate the light quark mass from strange to the lighter $`u,d`$ values to make more definite predictions about the binding of $`BB`$ molecules.

Models for the binding of two $`B`$ mesons involve, as in the case of the deuteron, pion exchange. The lattice study  is able to make a quantitative comparison of lattice pion exchange with the data described above and excellent agreement is obtained at larger $`R`$ values, as expected.

## 4 Hybrid Mesons

By hybrid meson, I mean a meson in which the gluonic degrees of freedom are excited non-trivially. I first discuss hybrid mesons with static heavy quarks where the description can be thought of as an excited colour string. I then summarise the situation concerning light quark hybrid mesons.

Consider $`Q\overline{Q}`$ states with static quarks in which the gluonic contribution may be excited. We classify the gluonic fields according to the symmetries of the system. This discussion is very similar to the description of electron wave functions in diatomic molecules. The symmetries are (i) rotation around the separation axis $`z`$ with representations labelled by $`J_z`$ (ii) CP with representations labelled by $`g(+)`$ and $`u()`$ and (iii) C$``$. Here C interchanges $`Q`$ and $`\overline{Q}`$, P is parity and $``$ is a rotation of $`180^0`$ about the mid-point around the $`y`$ axis. The C$``$ operation is only relevant to classify states with $`J_z=0`$. The convention is to label states of $`J_z=0,1,2`$ by $`\mathrm{\Sigma },\mathrm{\Pi },\mathrm{\Delta }`$ respectively. The ground state ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+g`$) will have $`J_z=0`$ and $`CP=+`$.

The exploration of the energy levels of other representations has a long history in lattice studies . The first excited state is found to be the $`\mathrm{\Pi }_u`$. This can be visualised as the symmetry of a string bowed out in the $`x`$ direction minus the same deflection in the $`x`$ direction (plus another component of the two-dimensional representation with the transverse direction $`x`$ replaced by $`y`$), corresponding to flux states from a lattice operator which is the difference of U-shaped paths from quark to antiquark of the form $``$.

Recent lattice studies  have used an asymmetric space/time spacing which enables excited states to be determined comprehensively. These results confirm the finding that the $`\mathrm{\Pi }_u`$ excitation is the lowest lying and hence of most relevance to spectroscopy.

From the potential corresponding to these excited gluonic states, one can determine the spectrum of hybrid quarkonia using the Schrödinger equation in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. This approximation will be good if the heavy quarks move very little in the time it takes for the potential between them to become established. More quantitatively, we require that the potential energy of gluonic excitation is much larger than the typical energy of orbital or radial excitation. This is indeed the case , especially for $`b`$ quarks. Another nice feature of this approach is that the self energy of the static sources cancels in the energy difference between this hybrid state and the $`Q\overline{Q}`$ states. Thus the lattice approach gives directly the excitation energy of each gluonic excitation.

The $`\mathrm{\Pi }_u`$ symmetry state corresponds to excitations of the gluonic field in quarkonium called magnetic (with $`L^{PC}=1^+`$) and pseudo-electric (with $`1^+`$) in contrast to the usual P-wave orbital excitation which has $`L^{PC}=1^{}`$. Thus we expect different quantum number assignments from those of the gluonic ground state. Indeed combining with the heavy quark spins, we get a degenerate set of 8 states with $`J^{PC}=1^{}`$, $`0^+`$, $`1^+`$, $`2^+`$ and $`1^{++},0^+,1^+,2^+`$ respectively. Note that of these, $`J^{PC}=1^+,0^+`$ and $`2^+`$ are spin-exotic and hence will not mix with $`Q\overline{Q}`$ states. They thus form a very attractive goal for experimental searches for hybrid mesons.

The eightfold degeneracy of the static approach will be broken by various corrections. As an example, one of the eight degenerate hybrid states is a pseudoscalar with the heavy quarks in a spin triplet. This has the same overall quantum numbers as the S-wave $`Q\overline{Q}`$ state ($`\eta _b`$) which, however, has the heavy quarks in a spin singlet. So any mixing between these states must be mediated by spin dependent interactions. These spin dependent interactions will be smaller for heavier quarks. It is of interest to establish the strength of these effects for $`b`$ and $`c`$ quarks. Another topic of interest is the splitting between the spin exotic hybrids which will come from the different energies of the magnetic and pseudo-electric gluonic excitations.

One way to go beyond the static approach is to use the NRQCD approximation which then enables the spin dependent effects to be explored. One study  finds that the $`L^{PC}=1^+`$ and $`1^+`$ excitations have no statistically significant splitting although the $`1^+`$ excitation does lie a little lighter. This would imply, after adding in heavy quark spin, that the $`J^{PC}=1^+`$ hybrid was the lightest spin exotic. Also a relatively large spin splitting was found  among the triplet states considering, however, only magnetic gluonic excitations.

Confirmation of the ordering of the spin exotic states also comes from lattice studies with propagating quarks  which are able to measure masses for all 8 states. We discuss this evidence in more detail below.

Within the quenched approximation, the lattice evidence for $`b\overline{b}`$ quarks points to a lightest hybrid spin exotic with $`J^{PC}=1^+`$ at an energy given by $`(m_Hm_{2S})r_0`$ =1.8 (static potential ); 1.9 (static potential , NRQCD ); 2.0 (NRQCD ). These results can be summarised as $`(m_Hm_{2S})r_0=1.9\pm 0.1`$. Using the experimental mass of the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(2S)`$, this implies that the lightest spin exotic hybrid is at $`m_H=10.73(7)`$ GeV including a 10% scale error. Above this energy there will be many more hybrid states, many of which will be spin exotic. A discussion of hybrid decay channels has been given .

The excited gluonic static potential has also been determined including sea quarks ($`N_f=2`$ flavours) and no significant difference is seen \- see fig. 3. Thus the quenched estimates given above are not superseded.

I now focus on lattice results for hybrid mesons made from light quarks using fully relativistic propagating quarks. There will be no mixing with $`q\overline{q}`$ mesons for spin-exotic hybrid mesons and these are of special interest. The first study of this area was by the UKQCD Collaboration  who used operators motivated by the heavy quark studies referred to above to study all 8 $`J^{PC}`$ values coming from $`L^{PC}=1^+`$ and $`1^+`$ excitations. The resulting mass spectrum gives the $`J^{PC}=1^+`$ state as the lightest spin-exotic state. Taking account of the systematic scale errors in the lattice determination, a mass of 2000(200) MeV is quoted for this hybrid meson with $`s\overline{s}`$ light quarks. Although not directly measured, the corresponding light quark hybrid meson would be expected to be around 120 MeV lighter.

A second lattice group has also evaluated hybrid meson spectra with propagating quarks from quenched lattices. They obtain  masses of the $`1^+`$ state with statistical and various systematic errors of 1970(90)(300) MeV, 2170(80)(100)(100) MeV and 4390(80)(200) MeV for $`n\overline{n}`$, $`s\overline{s}`$ and $`c\overline{c}`$ quarks respectively. For the $`0^+`$ spin-exotic state they have a noisier signal but evidence that it is heavier. They also explore mixing matrix elements between spin-exotic hybrid states and 4 quark operators.

A first attempt has been made  to determine the hybrid meson spectrum using full QCD. The sea quarks used have several different masses and an extrapolation is made to the limit of physical sea quark masses, yielding a mass of 1.9(2) GeV for the lightest spin-exotic hybrid meson, which again is found to be the $`1^+`$. In principle this calculation should take account of sea quark effects such as the mixing between such a hybrid meson and $`q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$ states such as $`\eta \pi `$, although it is possible that the sea quark masses used are not light enough to explore these features.

The three independent lattice calculations of the light hybrid spectrum are in good agreement with each other. They imply that the natural energy range for spin-exotic hybrid mesons is around 1.9 GeV. The $`J^{PC}=1^+`$ state is found to be lightest. It is not easy to reconcile these lattice results with experimental indications  for resonances at 1.4 GeV and 1.6 GeV, especially the lower mass value. Mixing with $`q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$ states such as $`\eta \pi `$ is not included for realistic quark masses in the lattice calculations. This can be interpreted, dependent on one’s viewpoint, as either that the lattice calculations are incomplete or as an indication that the experimental states may have an important meson-meson component in them.

## 5 String breaking

Although not directly related to exotic states as such, a discussion of string breaking is relevant to a study of the confinement mechanism. Here I concentrate on the situation of a static quark and antiquark at separation $`R`$ with a gluonic field in a given representation labelled by $`J_z`$ and $`CP`$ where the separation axis is $`z`$. The ground state gluonic configuration has $`J_z=0`$ and $`CP=+`$ (also $`C=+`$, see discussion above).

If a light quark and antiquark are to be produced, they must respect these symmetries. When these light quarks have no angular momentum about the separation axis, they will either be in a singlet state ($`S_z=0,CP=`$) or a triplet state ($`S_z=0\mathrm{or}S_z=1,CP=+`$). Thus the only possible transition is to the $`S_z=0`$ triplet state. This is known as the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ model, although here it is exact. Having established the allowed transitions, I now discuss their strength.

Consider the energy of a static $`Q\overline{Q}`$ versus $`R`$ for two different situations: (i) a gluonic flux in the ground state (this is the static potential $`V(R)`$) and (ii) the energy of two ground state mesons ($`Q\overline{q}`$ plus $`\overline{Q}q`$) at separation $`R`$ (ie as $`B`$ and $`\overline{B}`$ mesons but with static heavy quark). We expect (i) to be lowest lying at small $`R`$ and (ii) to be lowest lying at large $`R`$. Where these energies become degenerate is the string-breaking separation $`R_B`$. This is around 1.2 fm - see fig. 3. As has been emphasised in a study of adjoint string breaking , the lattice enables string breaking to be studied as a mixing phenomenon.

In the quenched approximation there will be no string breaking but the matrix element can be estimated. In full QCD studies with sea quarks, string breaking is enabled and there will be mixing between these states. If this mixing were substantial, the “potential energy” determined from Wilson loops should show a saturation at energy $`V(R)=2m_{Q\overline{q}}`$ for $`R>R_B`$. Unfortunately, this effect has not yet been seen directly in lattice studies.

A comprehensive lattice study  has been made with static quarks and light quarks of mass around the strange mass. This study finds that observation of the direct splitting at $`RR_B`$ has errors too large to be conclusive. The magnitude of the mixing matrix element can, however, be evaluated with adequate accuracy. This suggests that indeed the mixing is weak (energy mixing strength of a few tens of MeV only). Such a weak mixing would explain why no direct evidence has been seen for string breaking from lattice studies of Wilson loops.

This discussion of string breaking can be extended  to cover hybrid meson decays as well.

## 6 Conclusions

Quenched lattice QCD is well understood and accurate predictions in the continuum limit are increasingly becoming available. The lightest glueball is scalar with mass $`m(0^{++})=1611(30)(160)`$ MeV where the second error is an overall scale error. The excited glueball spectrum is known too. The quenched approximation also gives information on quark-antiquark scalar mesons and their mixing with glueballs. This determination of the mixing in the quenched approximation also sheds light on results for the spectrum directly in full QCD where the mixing will be enabled. There is also some lattice information on the hadronic decay amplitudes of glueballs.

Evidence exists for a possible $`B_sB_s`$ molecular state.

For hybrid mesons, there will be no mixing with $`q\overline{q}`$ for spin-exotic states and these are the most useful predictions. The $`J^{PC}=1^+`$ state is expected at 10.73(7) GeV for $`b`$ quarks, 2.0(2) GeV for $`s`$ quarks and 1.9(2) GeV for $`u,d`$ quarks. Mixing of spin-exotic hybrids with $`q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$ or equivalently with meson-meson is allowed and will modify the predictions from the quenched approximation.

String breaking at a separation of 1.2 fm has been studied and the breaking matrix element is found to be weak.

## References


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# Do clusters contain a large population of dwarf galaxies?

## 1 Introduction

The galaxy luminosity function is one of the most direct observational probes of galaxy formation theories. Hierarchical clustering models generically predict a steep mass function of galactic halos that is in conflict with the field galaxy luminosity function (e.g. Kauffmann et al. 1993, Cole et al. 1994). The discrepancy is resolved by invoking feedback mechanisms to suppress star-formation and darken dwarf galaxies. Clusters of galaxies provide the ideal systems with which to measure the galaxy luminosity function down to very faint magnitudes due to the large numbers of galaxies at the same distance that can be observed within a small area on the sky (Schechter 1976).

Measuring the faint end luminosity function (hereafter LF) of galaxies in clusters has been the subject of many detailed research papers in the last few years (e.g. Sandage, Binggeli & Tammann 1985; Driver et al. 1994, De Propris et al. 1995; Gaidos 1997; Lobo et al. 1997; Lumsden et al. 1997; Lopez-Cruz et al. 1997; Valotto et el. 1997; Wilson et al. 1997; Smith et al. 1997; Gaidos 1998, Trentham 1998a; Trentham 1998b; Driver et al. 1998; Garilli et al. 1999). In most of these studies, these and other authors have demonstrated using background subtraction procedures that galaxy clusters are dominated in number by a large population of faint galaxies. In terms of the faint end slope of the luminosity function, $`\alpha `$ lies in the range -1.4 to -2.0. The nature of these galaxies, their origin and evolution have important consequences for our current understanding of galaxy formation and the importance of environment in driving morphological evolution.

These results are at odds with observations of the field galaxy luminosity function (e.g. Loveday et al. 1992; Lin et al. 1997; Marzke et al. 1997; Bromley et al. 1998, Muriel et al. 1998) which ubiquitously give a flat faint end slope with $`\alpha 1.0\pm 0.1`$. In other recent works, steeper LF are found ($`\alpha 1.2`$) Zuca et al. 1997, Folkes et al. 1999, although significantly flatter than the determinations in clusters. Moreover, galaxies within the Local Group can be observed to more than 10 magnitudes below $`L_{}`$, the characteristic break in the Schechter luminosity function (Schechter 1976). Surveys of Local Group galaxies are essentially complete (Mateo 1998) and there is no evidence for a large population of faint dwarfs - the luminosity function is flat to $`L_{}/10000`$ (van den Bergh 1992, Pritchet & van den Bergh 1999). The probability that the faint end slope in the Local Group is as steep as 1.3 is less than 1%. Similarly, redshift surveys of nearby loose groups (Ferguson & Sandage 1990), compact groups (Hunsberger et al. 1998) and isolated ellipticals (Mulchaey & Zabludoff 1999) also show evidence for flat faint end slopes (but see also Morgan et al. 1998).

The paradox is clear. In the hierarchical universe, clusters form relatively recently from the accretion of systems similar to the Local Group. Dynamical processes that operate in clusters are destructive. Ram pressure stripping (Gunn & Gott 1972, Abadi, Moore & Bower 1999) and gravitational tides/galaxy harassment (e.g. Moore et al. 1996) both conspire to fade galaxies by removing gas or stripping stars. These process are most effective for smaller, less bound galaxies, which should manifest itself as a flattening of the faint end slope rather than the observed steepening.

Surface brightness selection effects complicate these issues. Apart from the Local Group, all of the above surveys are sensitive only to high surface brightness galaxies. Decreasing the limiting isophote for galaxy detection to $`\mu __B27`$ mag arcsec-2 uncovers a host of previously undetected galaxies (Impey & Bothun 1997). Within nearby clusters, such as Virgo and Fornax, a divergent exponential tail to the galaxy luminosity function cannot be ruled out (Impey etal 1988, Bothun etal 1991). A similar situation arises in the field surveys where we know comparatively little about the abundance of low surface brightness objects. The observational motivation for this paper are the observations of high surface brightness galaxies, but our results will be applicable to any survey where the clusters are selected from 2 dimensional data.

Unlike clusters which provide a large sample of galaxies at the same distance, the field galaxy luminosity function must be determined using redshift information. Even with the advent of large multi-fibre instruments, the luminosity function of cluster galaxies has not been measured out to the virial radius, nor has it been measured to faint enough magnitudes to constrain the faint end slope - both vital for comparison with cosmological models. The lack of large compilations of redshifts of faint galaxies imply that most estimates of galaxy luminosity functions in clusters rely critically on background subtraction. The accuracy of this procedure depends on the statistical assumption that galaxy clusters correspond to density enhancements unbiased with respect to the distribution of foreground or background galaxies.

In spite of the lack of deep redshift surveys free from incompletness and selection effects several groups have attempted to determine the shape of the galaxy luminosity function from spectroscopic data in cluster fields. By inspection of these papers, it is apparent that flatter faint end slopes are found over the range of magnitudes where the redshift samples are complete. For instance, spectroscopic analysis of the central region of the Coma cluster shows a flat faint end galaxy LF ($`\alpha 1.1`$) for a single Schechter function fit, with the additional claim of a failure of a single Schechter fit at brighter magnitudes $`M18`$ to $`17.3`$ (Biviano et al. 1995). Similarly, Koranyi et al. (1998) have analyzed a redshift survey in the field of the poor cluster AWM 7. In this case, the galaxy LF shows a steeper faint end ($`\alpha =1.37\pm 0.16`$), although this value is based on a correction to the redshift data that entirely dominates the results at faint magnitudes.

A similar analysis of A2626 and A2440 by Mohr, Geller and Wegner (1996) gives faint end slopes $`\alpha =1.16_{0.16}^{+0.18}`$ and $`\alpha =1.30_{0.20}^{+0.26}`$ (90% confidence limits) respectively. The study of A576 by Mohr et al (1996) also gives a flat galaxy LF in the range of magnitudes where the redshift survey is complete, however it steepens significantly at fainter magnitudes where a background correction is applied. The most complete published redshift survey of a cluster has been published by Durret et al. (2000) for A496. These authors show that the LF flattens at $`M_R20.5`$, where the sample is complete, and at fainter magnitudes ($`20.5<M_R<18`$), a Schechter function with $`\alpha 1.2`$, provides a suitable fit to the LF with $`79\%`$ redshift completness. In a study of the galaxy LF from the Norris Survey of the Corona Borealis and A2069 supercluster regions with spectroscopic information, Small et al. (1997) derive a flat faint end LF ($`\alpha 1.1`$) consistent with the field determination. Finally, Adami et al. (1999) analysis of spectroscopic data in the core of Coma cluster imply that the number of low luminosity galaxies is smaller than expected from previous estimates (Biviano et al. 1995), suggesting a flat faint end galaxy LF.

To summarise, galaxy LF determinations using spectroscopic data suggest that the steep faint end slope derived from background subtraction procedures should be taken with caution. However, the spectroscopic surveys are only complete to approximately 2 magnitudes fainter than M\* whereas the photometric surveys can probe 7 magnitudes fainter than M\*.

Significant projection effects are found in Abell clusters (e.g. Lucey 1983, Sutherland 1988, Frenk et al. 1990) that can systematically bias the observed correlation function and the mass function of these systems. In fact, van Haarlem et al. (1998) find that a third of Abell clusters are not real physically bound systems but simply projections of galaxies and groups along the line of sight. In this paper we use 3 dimensional mock galaxy catalogues to construct samples of rich clusters using just 2 dimensional information. Observing these clusters in the same way as published works allows us to quantify how well we can recover the true luminosity function. We will explore the biases due to foreground and background contamination, the dependence of the results on cluster richness, and the effects of the extended halos of clusters.

## 2 Results

### 2.1 The Mock Catalogue

Mock galaxy catalogues constructed from large N-body simulations provide ideal data-sets with which to examine selection biases since the full 3d positional and velocity information is available. We have used a deep galaxy catalogue kindly constructed by Shaun Cole that is a mock realisation of the APM catalogue. The N-body simulation and techniques used to construct the catalogues are discussed in detail in Cole et al. (1998), here we just review some of the most relevant details. The N-body simulation follows a universe dominated with a closure density of cold dark matter within a periodic box of 345.6 $`h^1`$ Mpc per side (where $`H_0=100h`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 throughout). The simulation is normalised to match the observed number density of rich galaxy clusters such that $`\sigma _8=0.55`$. “Galaxies” are drawn from the mass distribution according to a two parameter biasing model normalised to fit the observed r.m.s. fluctuations in the APM catalogue in cubes of side 5 and 20 Mpc/h.

Thus, even though the initial N-body simulation is not the currently favoured cosmological model, both the amplitude and slope of the “galaxy” correlation function provide a close match to that obtained from the APM survey. Therefore, we do not expect our results to change if the cosmological model included a lambda term, as currently favoured. This is of course an important point since projection effects may depend on the degree of galaxy clustering present in the mock catalogue. Moreover, since the correlations between cluster and galaxy positions are crucial in the present discussion, we have computed the cross-correlation function for clusters and ”galaxies” in the mock catalogs as well as the cluster autocorrelation function. The results show reasonable agreement with the observations, Lilje & Efstathiou (1988), Croft et al. (1999), Dalton, Abadi, Muriel Lambas (1998)

($`\xi _cgsimeq(r/9.4)^{1.86}`$ ($`\xi _ccsimeq(r/14.5)^{1.96}`$ ) indicating that the statistical properties of the galaxy distribution around the clusters in the mock catalog are in good agreement with the observations. Thus, for the purpose of our analysis the mock catalog used provides a suitable representation of the real universe so that the results derived in this section are robust and not expected to change with other cosmological models that match the observations.

The luminosities of the galaxies are drawn at random according to a Schechter function (Schechter 1976), unbiased with respect to environment:

$$\varphi (M)=(0.4\mathrm{ln}10)\varphi ^{}[10^{0.4(M^{}M)}]^{1+\alpha }\mathrm{exp}[10^{0.4(M^{}M)}].$$
(1)
We adopt the values $`\varphi ^{}=0.014\mathrm{h}^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$, $`M^{}`$=-19.5 and $`\alpha `$=-0.97 corresponding to the luminosity function of high surface brightness field galaxies (Loveday et al. 1992). The limiting apparent magnitude for the mock catalogue (which subtends $`1300`$ square degrees) is $`B_j=21.5`$ and the final catalogues contain $`1.7\times 10^6`$ comparable to those in the APM Galaxy Survey (Maddox et al. 1990a, 1990b) and Edinburgh/Durham Southern Galaxy Catalogue (Heydon-Dumbleton, Collins, & MacGillivray 1989).

### 2.2 Cluster selection

We have selected the clusters from the mock catalogue applying a similar procedure as Lumsden et al. (1992) in the construction of the Edinburgh-Durham cluster catalogue (EDCC). This corresponds closely to Abell’s original criteria (Abell 1958).

First, we project the galaxy catalogue on the sky and find cluster centers by searching for galaxy overdensities. The redshift distance of the cluster candidate is measured using the real velocities of the brightest galaxies in the apparent cluster. We then adopt a $`1.5h^1`$ Mpc search radius around these centers and we consider galaxies within this radius in the range of magnitudes $`m_3`$ to $`m_3+2`$ to define cluster richness in a similar way to Abell and EDCC cluster identification procedures. (Note that using this method to determine cluster richness and distances reflects current techniques, rather than Abell’s original method that assumed the apparent magnitude of the 10th brightest cluster galaxy was a standard candle.) The final sample of clusters for our analysis comprises 140 objects with redshifts $`z<0.15`$.

We find that the typical redshift distributions in the field of the identified clusters in the simulations are visually comparable to the observed distribution of radial velocities measured for clusters. An example is shown in Figure 1 where we compare the redshift distribution of a typical cluster selected in two dimensions, panels (a) and (c), with the redshift distribution of galaxies in the field of a cluster selected in three dimensions with no two dimensional counterpart (see section 2.5). Both contain a significant peak of galaxies at one distance that corresponds to a real cluster, but in the 2-dim case smaller peaks are found at disparate redshifts that are simply groups of galaxies that lie in projection along the line of sight to the cluster. In the absence of redshifts for all the galaxies in the field, these groups provide a significant source of contamination for the cluster membership.

### 2.3 Luminosity function determination

We estimate the mean galaxy luminosity function for the total sample of clusters using only the apparent magnitudes of galaxies and mean cluster redshifts – the same as published observational studies. For a galaxy of apparent magnitude $`m`$ associated with a cluster at redshift $`z`$, we neglect curvature and assign an absolute magnitude $`M=m255\mathrm{log}(D)`$ where D is $`D=zc/H_0`$. The algorithm to determine the composite luminosity function (Valotto et al. 1997, Lumsden et al. 1997, Muriel et al. 1998) in the absence of galaxy radial velocities is based on a background subtraction procedure:

$$𝒩(M)=\frac{1}{n_{clus}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n_{clus}}{}}\frac{N_i(M)}{R_i}$$
(2)
where $`𝒩()`$ is the composite luminosity function in the magnitude bin centered in $`M`$ and $`N_i(M)`$ is the background-corrected number of galaxies with magnitude $`M`$ of the ith cluster. $`R_i`$ is the richness count of the ith cluster in the range of magnitudes $`21<M<19`$ within the projected radius $`r=1.5`$ h-1Mpc and $`n_{clus}`$ is the number of clusters contributing to the composite luminosity function.

In order to explore the galaxy LF at faint absolute magnitudes we compute the composite LF for the nearest 22 clusters with redshift $`z_{clus}<0.07`$, using galaxies brighter than $`M_{lim}=15`$. The background de-contamination is performed by considering a mean local background around each cluster defined as the number of galaxies in a ring at projected radius $`r_1<r_p<r_2`$. The results shown in Figure 2 correspond to $`r_1=4`$ Mpc and $`r_2=6`$ Mpc.

Figure 2 shows the resulting galaxy luminosity function in the simulated clusters, the solid lines correspond to a best fitting Schechter function estimated using a minimum $`\chi ^2`$ method. The dotted lines correspond to the imposed Schechter function (equation 1). The errors bars are calculated according to Poisson statistics. The estimated galaxy LF is significantly steeper $`\alpha =1.41\pm 0.11`$ and $`M=20.0\pm 0.1`$ than the actual LF $`\alpha =0.97`$ and $`M=19.5`$. When we take a deeper sample of clusters surveyed to fainter magnitudes ($`M_{lim}=16`$) we find an even steeper faint end slope $`\alpha =1.52\pm 0.07`$ and $`M=20.0\pm 0.2`$.

### 2.4 Radial and richness dependence

Can we detect any trends in how the recovered luminosity function depends on the limiting radius used to identify clusters or the cluster richness? Smaller radii would probe higher overdensities and would reduce the chance of background contamination. In Figure 3 we show the results corresponding to model 1 for $`r=0.5`$ h-1Mpc, $`r=0.75`$ h-1Mpc and $`r=1.0`$ h-1Mpc. This Figure shows a similar behavior, with steeper faint end slopes than expected, although fits to a Schechter function show a tendency for lower values of $`\alpha `$ with decreasing cluster radius (c.f. Table 1).

In order to examine any possible dependence of the results with cluster richness we have divided the cluster samples according to their richness counts, $`R`$, defined in equation 2. In Figure 4 we show the results for the samples of different $`R`$ and we detect a trend of increasing negative slope as poorer clusters are included.

### 2.5 Analysis of projection effects

For each cluster we have considered galaxies within 1000 kms-1 of the cluster mean radial velocity from the mock catalogue to compute the galaxy LF. Since in this case we eliminate any projection effects, this tests the procedures adopted to obtain the LF. The results for model 1 are shown in panel (c) of Figure 5, where for comparison we plot the imposed LF. The agreement between the input data and the sample of real cluster galaxies is, as expected, very good (see Table 1).

We can easily examine if the systematic rise in the derived galaxy LF shown in Figure 2 is mainly due to foreground or to background contamination. We split the sample of cluster galaxies (identified in projection from model 1) into two: a) for each cluster we consider only galaxies with radial velocities $`V_{gal}<V_{clus}+1000kms^1`$ (thus considering only foreground contamination) and b) $`V_{gal}>V_{clus}1000kms^1`$ (thus considering only background contamination). When we repeat the procedure to recover the LF, i.e. applying the same de-contamination procedures described to the foreground case $`V_{gal}<V_{clus}+1000kms^1`$, we find a flat galaxy LF, entirely consistent with that originally imposed to create the galaxy catalogue. On the other hand, a significantly steeper LF is derived by considering galaxies with $`V_{gal}>V_{clus}1000kms^1`$ ($`\alpha =1.5`$) consistent with that obtained from the total mock catalogue (see Figure 2 and Table 1). The results of these tests are shown in Figure 5, which demonstrate that the artificial steep faint end slopes arises entirely due to projection of background galaxies into the field of view of the cluster.

The observed distribution of galaxies closely matches the clustering pattern of galaxies in our mock catalogues. We can therefore test the role of large scale correlations and the filamentary structure of the galaxy distribution in creating projection effects. We construct a spherically symmetric model cluster that resembles real bound objects in the mock catalogue. Thirteen clusters are added to the galaxy catalogue but place in random positions with distances drawn from the same the redshift distribution and with $`z_{clus}<0.06`$. These clusters are therefore uncorrelated with the large scale structure. We repeat the procedure to estimate the LF using the fake clusters and we show the results in Figure 6. Remarkably, for these clusters we recover the input luminosity function with good precision, again demonstrating that projection effects are dominating the bias.

We have identified clusters in 3 dimensions using the real space positions of galaxies in the mock catalogues of the two models. We consider galaxies limited in apparent magnitude $`m=21.5`$ within a radial distance of $`210h^1`$ Mpc which corresponds to a complete sample brighter than $`M=15`$. To identify clusters in this three dimensional catalogue, we use a friends-of-friends algorithm with linking length $`l=1.7d_c=0.5h^1`$ Mpc. We select the most massive systems corresponding to a mean number density of $`2.210^5\mathrm{h}^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$, roughly the abundance of $`R>1`$ Abell clusters. We compute the galaxy LF in these samples of clusters using the same background subtraction procedures as in section 2.3. The results are shown in Figure 7 demonstrating that the clusters selected in 3d can be used to recover the input luminosity function. The Schechter fit of the galaxy LF of the 3 dim cluster sample has parameters, $`\alpha =1.08\pm 0.09`$ and $`M^{}=19.3\pm 0.2`$ (table 1).

When we compare the richness of the 2d selected clusters with the largest physically selected 3d cluster along the same line of sight we find a large scatter, with the richness count typically in error by a factor of 2.

### 2.6 Quantifying the effects of extended halos

In the previous sections we have demonstrated the importance of the correlation between cluster and galaxy positions in the determination of the galaxy LF parameters in these systems. Taking into account these results we now consider the effects of the extended halos of clusters on the background subtraction procedure. The virialised halos of clusters extend to several Mpc and the turnaround region is much larger than this. This produces an excess of galaxies near to the cluster that appear in projection, on the cluster core. A “Malmquist” like bias will cause foreground galaxies to be preferentially “observed in the cluster”.

The estimated luminosity function $`\psi (M^{})`$ satisfies:

$$\psi (M^{})_0^{\mathrm{}}\varphi (M)\xi _{cg}(r)R^2𝑑R$$
(3)
where $`M^{}`$ is the absolute magnitude of each galaxy assumed to be at the mean cluster redshift. The distances in the calculation satisfy:

$$r^2=R^2+R_o^2\frac{R}{R_0}(Rr_p^2/R_o)$$

where $`r`$ is the distance between the galaxy to the cluster center, $`R`$ is the distance of the galaxy to the observer, $`R_0`$ is the distance of the cluster to the observer and $`r_p`$ is the projected distance galaxy-cluster center. $`\varphi (M)`$ is the true galaxy luminosity function for which we adopt a Schechter function with the same parameters as for our mock catalogue and $`\xi _{cg}(r)`$ is the cluster-galaxy cross-correlation function.

We adopt a power-law model for the cluster-galaxy cross-correlation function with parameters $`r_0=10h^1`$ Mpc, $`\gamma =2.0`$ and an effective cutoff at $`r_{max}=40h^1`$ Mpc which provides a reasonable fit to the observations (Lilje & Efstathiou 1988, Merchan et al. 1998).

The results for a typical cluster at $`R_0=100h^1`$ Mpc and $`m_{lim}=21.5`$ are $`\alpha =1.0`$ and $`M^{}=21.8`$ indicating that the extended cluster halos of clusters do not bias the resulting LF at the faint end. This calculation shows that the effect of extended halos is mainly to increase the estimated value of $`M^{}`$ by the inclusion of foreground galaxies.

## 3 Conclusions

We have analyzed several sources of systematic effects present in observational determinations of the galaxy luminosity function in clusters. We use a deep mock catalogue derived from a numerical simulation of a hierarchical universe models dominated by cold dark matter to identify clusters of galaxies in two dimensions. Galaxies and clusters in the mock catalog have auto-correlations and cross-correlation functions in agreement with the observations so that the distribution of galaxies and clusters relative to the position of clusters resemble those actually observed. This fact provides confidence that our analyses on the mock catalog gives reliable results that apply to the real universe. The clusters are identified in projection from the galaxy distribution in a similar way as performed to create the EDDC and Abell catalogues. The galaxy LF in the clusters is obtained by performing a background subtraction procedure identical to that applied to observational data. Our results are summarised here:

$``$ Clusters identified in projection suffer from projection effects that conspire to produce artificially steep faint end slopes, mimicking the presence of a large population of dwarf galaxies. With an input Schechter function with a slope $`\alpha =0.97`$ we recover $`\alpha 1.5`$.

$``$ We show that the projection effects result almost entirely from background galaxies - many of the clusters selected in 2d have no significant counterpart in 3d and most suffer from massive amounts of projection that is responsible for the steep faint end slopes.

$``$ Unbiased estimates of mean galaxy luminosity function in clusters may be obtained with background subtraction methods only for samples of clusters selected in three dimensions, such as may be obtained from an X-ray or lensing selected sample.

$``$ We examined the effects of the extended halos and infall regions surrounding clusters on the background subtraction procedure. Neglecting these effects leads to a bias in the determination of $`M^{}`$ to brighter magnitudes, but do not affect the estimation of the faint end slope $`\alpha `$.

These results indicate that caution should be taken when interpreting the observed steep faint end of the LF with a large population of faint galaxies associated with cluster environments - radial velocity data for cluster galaxies are crucial for analyzing their faint galaxy populations and typically half of the apparent cluster galaxies will be background objects.

We note that Abell, EDCC, and APM clusters exhibit on average a steep galaxy LF with $`\alpha 1.4`$ to $`1.8`$, (Valotto et al. 1997; Lumsden et al. 1997), showing that the particular choice of cluster finding algorithms in two dimensional catalogues is not biasing the resulting LF. On the other hand, the observed mean galaxy LF of groups that avoid cluster neighborhoods is found to be quite flat (Muriel, Valotto and Lambas 1998) which suggest that either clusters have a contaminated galaxy LF or that the relative excess of faint galaxies arises at very high densities. We also note here that the galaxy LF is steep in irregular systems (Lopez-Cruz et al. 1997) and flat in dense relaxed clusters, a result supported by recent spectroscopic observations in the Coma cluster core (Adami et al. 1999). The mounting evidence of flat galaxy LF results from spectroscopic surveys with reasonable completeness adds to the above considerations, and we suggest that irregular clusters may owe their irregularity to projection effects which bias the LF to steeper slopes. Our results support the idea of a similar galaxy luminosity function in clusters and the field.

## 4 Acknowledgments

The authors are especially grateful to S. Cole for providing the deep mock catalogues. This research was supported by grants from CONICET, CONICOR, Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica, Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and Fundación Antorchas, Argentina. BM is supported by the Royal Society.