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# Exact diagonalization Studies of Two-dimensional Frustrated Antiferromagnet Models

## I INTRODUCTION

Exact diagonalizations are restricted to small spin systems (up to about $`N=36`$ spins with the present day computers). Some problems as the study of critical regimes are out of reach of such an approach, on the contrary we think that this approach might help in answering other subtle questions as for example symmetry breaking, order out of disorder, qualitative nature of the ground-state and of the first excitations of two-dimensional (2d) spin-1/2 magnets.

We have used it extensively to study the competition of long range order (LRO) versus ”quantum disorder” at $`T=0`$. Up to now, by looking to the spectra of model spin systems, we have been able to characterize four kinds of behavior: Néel LRO (collinear or not), dimer LRO and two different Spin-Liquids. In this paper we will give a brief picture of these four generic cases of 2d magnetism, underline the more efficient numerical criteria to determine the nature of a given unknown system and try to extract from the present numerical knowledge what are the conditions for the appearance of the four different phases. The key point of our approach is the analysis of the symmetries and finite size scaling of the low lying eigen-levels of a given hamiltonian on small samples with periodic (or eventually twisted) boundary conditions. The evolution of the spectrum with the size and shapes of the sample has to be thoroughly understood before conclusion: it may be a lengthy and sometimes subtle process but it is usually quite valuable. Some examples will be quoted in the following sections.

## II Néel Long range Order

There is no mathematical proof that Néel long range order exists at $`T=0`$ in 2d spin-1/2 systems. But there is a very large consensus that it should be the case for the Heisenberg nearest neighbor hamiltonian on bipartite lattices . Exact diagonalizations and/or Monte-Carlo calculations were performed for the Heisenberg model on the square lattice, on the triangular lattice and on the honeycomb lattice. On each of these lattices the Heisenberg model displays long range order with a sublattice magnetization reduced to $`60\%`$ of the classical value on the square lattice ($`40\%`$ on the triangular lattice, $`44\%`$ on the honeycomb lattice). These values of the order parameter might be in error by a few percent: in these antiferromagnets with linear Goldstone modes, the scaling law for the magnetization of samples of linear size $`LN^{1/d}`$ is an expansion in $`1/L`$ (i.e. $`1/N^{1/2}`$ in 2d). For the sizes encountered in exact diagonalizations, the asymptotic $`1/N^{1/2}`$ law is never reached  and the extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit remains uncertain: nevertheless the agreement between the scaling behaviors of diagonalization results and spin wave results gives a strong support to the above-mentioned conclusions.

A stronger confirmation of Néel LRO is obtained by the scaling of the spectrum itself, which is an illuminating illustration of the mechanism of symmetry breaking. In order to understand in a simple way how a continuous symmetry breaking manifests itself on finite size spectra, let us consider a piece of solid. Our experience of the macroscopic solid is the following: it breaks the translation symmetry and its center of mass (c.o.m.) is localized in space. On the other hand, we can sort its degrees of freedom in two parts: first the c.o.m. coordinates and the internal variables. The hamiltonian of such a problem breaks in two commuting parts: the c.o.m. kinetic energy and the hamiltonian of the internal degrees of freedom ( in a solid, in a first approximation this second part is a phonon hamiltonian). For a finite size sample of N atoms, with mass m, this reads:

$$H_{tot}=\frac{𝐏^2}{2mN}+h_{phonons}.$$
(1)
The total hamiltonian does not break translation symmetry, the total momentum $`𝐏`$ is a constant of the motion and its eigenvalues good quantum numbers. Due to the commutation property of the sub-parts of the hamiltonian, the eigenstates are direct products of eigenstates of the c.o.m. kinetic energy and phonons eigenstates. From these very simple observations it follows that the spectrum of Eq. 1 as a function of the eigenvalues of the square of the momentum has the appearance described in Fig. 1. A straight line is drawn across the eigen-energies of the c.o.m. hamiltonian with $`0`$ phonon (respectively $`1`$ phonon…). Let us first concentrate on the vacuum of phonons: the associated eigen-levels collapse to the absolute ground-state as $`1/N`$ when N goes to infinity. Let us now consider the eigenlevels immediately above this family: they correspond to the softest phonon excitation and are distant from the vacuum family by the energy of this phonon, that is an energy $`𝒪(1/L)`$ ***This energy has to be measured along the arrow in Fig 1: this takes care of the momentum of the phonon.. When the size goes to infinity, if the dimension of the solid is equal or larger than two, the levels forming the vacuum of phonons collapse to the absolute ground-state faster than the softest phonon! This allows to form a wave packet out of these levels and localize the c.o.m. with a cost in energy lower than the softest phonon: the solid phase with its specific macroscopic properties (symmetry breaking and stiffness) can exist in 2d (at $`T=0`$), whereas it cannot exist quantum mechanically in 1d.

Let us now turn to the Néel ordered magnet. For simplicity we will first consider a collinear magnet: the macroscopic state of the magnet at $`T=0`$ is defined by the Euler angles of the order parameter. They are the equivalent of the c.o.m. coordinates in the solid problem. The conjugate variables of these Euler angles are the components of the total spin and their free precession is described by the Hamiltonian:

$$H_{coll.var.}=\frac{𝐒^2}{2\chi N}$$
(2)
This is the equation of motion of a rigid rotor. The moment of inertia of this rotor is written here in terms of the intensive homogeneous spin susceptibility $`\chi `$, $`N`$ is the number of spins. If the system has LRO and rigidity, the motion of the internal variables is governed by an hamiltonian of (antiferromagnetic ) magnons and the total hamiltonian reads:

$$H_{tot}=\frac{𝐒^2}{2\chi N}+h_{magnons}.$$
(3)
When $`H_{tot}`$ is $`SU(2)`$ invariant, $`𝐒^2`$ is a constant of motion and its eigenvalues $`S(S+1)`$ are good quantum numbers. It is thus interesting to display the spectrum of this ordered antiferromagnet as a function of $`S(S+1)`$. Its generic appearance is shown in Fig. 2. One recognizes the (Pisa-)tower of states associated with the vacuum of magnons $`|0`$ (these states are called QDJS for Quasi Degenerate Joint States in refs. ), and the tower of states associated with the softest magnon $`|1`$. The semi-classical Néel ground-state with an order parameter pointing in the $`(\theta ,\varphi )`$ direction is a wave packet of eigen-levels with different total spin belonging to the QDJS $`|0`$. Mixing different S values up to $`\sqrt{N}`$ allows the localization of the order parameter. If the levels of the $`|0`$ family collapse to the ground-sate faster than the softest magnon, the classical picture survives to quantum fluctuations and the system exhibits LRO: as for the solid, that might be the case at $`T=0`$ for 2d magnets. For $`T0`$, thermal fluctuations destroy the order (Mermin-Wagner theorem). Notice that the entropy of the semi-classical ground-state scales as $`Ln(N^2)`$, and the entropy per spin of the ordered ground-state is zero in the thermodynamic limit.

The levels associated to the vacuum of magnons have special properties with respect to the lattice symmetry group: these properties reveal the space symmetry breaking of the Néel state. Let us take as an example the collinear order on the honeycomb lattice (Fig. 3): it does not break the translational symmetry of the Bravais lattice (thus only the $`𝐤=\mathrm{𝟎}`$ momentum appears in the QDJS). But it breaks both the inversion symmetry with respect to the center of an hexagon and the reflexion with respect to an axis going through nearest neighbor hexagon centers, and it is invariant in the product of these two symmetries. Thus both the even and odd irreducible representations of these two symmetry groups appear in the QDJS (symbols $`R_\pi =\pm 1`$, $`\sigma =\pm 1`$), but they are always associated so that

$$R_\pi .\sigma =+1$$
(4)
which insures the invariance in the product of the two symmetries, and

$$\sigma .(1)^S=+1$$
(5)
which insures the invariance of the semi-classical ground-state in the product of a reflexion times a spin-flip. This is the simplest situation for an antiferromagnet. On the square lattice (which is equally bipartite) Néel order is collinear and Eq. 3 remains valid, but as the translation symmetry is broken, both the $`𝐤=(0,0)`$ and $`𝐤=(\pi ,\pi )`$ vectors appear among the QDJS.

A more complex order parameter implies a richer structure of the QDJS: in the case of the Heisenberg model on the triangular lattice the order parameter is no longer a vector but a trihedron (or equivalently a rotation matrix). Eq.3 is then more complex, involving both the in-plane and out of plane susceptibilities, and there is an internal generation of an extra quantum number (the projection of the total spin on the helicity of the magnet). The free precession hamiltonian is that of a symmetric top  and $`𝒪(N^3)`$ states collapse to the ground-state in the thermodynamic limit. (Quantum mechanically the QDJS associated to p-sublattice Néel order are adiabatically connected to the states obtained by addition of p spins of size $`\frac{N}{2p}`$.) A thorough analysis of the symmetry breaking associated to Néel order on the triangular lattice is done in .

Unexpectedly the mechanism of ”order by disorder” can be detected by looking at the finite size scaling of relatively small samples . We investigated this mechanism in the $`J_1J_2`$ model on the triangular lattice. For $`1/8<J_2/J_1<1`$ the classical ground-state exhibits a large degeneracy associated to different kinds of 4-sublattice Néel order. For small sizes ($`N=16`$) the quantum fluctuations are weak and the vacuum of magnons involve all the levels associated with addition of four momenta. In the $`N=28`$ sample quantum fluctuations are already strong enough to lift the degeneracy of this family: the levels characteristic of the 2-sublattice Néel order remain the lowest ones in the spectrum, the other ones drift towards the continuum of excitations. It is a nice illustration of the fact that long wave length quantum fluctuations tend to restore the symmetries of the original hamiltonian. The quantum ground-state is more symmetric than the classical one.

Order parameters, spin susceptibilities , stiffnesses can be extracted from the numerical data: they are interesting pieces of data to be compared to the spin waves calculations at finite sizes, but as it has been discussed in the beginning of this section, the leading term of their finite size scaling is $`𝒪(N^{\frac{1}{2}})`$ and therefore it is more significant to look to the tower of QDJS which collapse as $`𝒪(N^1)`$. It is also simpler to look at the symmetries of the low lying levels and deduce the symmetry of the order parameter than to determine it by direct computations. As a consequence when looking at the disappearance of Néel LRO due to extra frustration or quantum fluctuations it is preferable to pinpoint the range of parameters where the tower of states is destroyed than search for the vanishing of the order parameter.

## III  Dimer Long Range Order and Valence Bond Crystals

The second class of long-range ordered systems does not imply $`SU(2)`$ symmetry breaking but only space symmetry breaking. We will call these systems Valence Bond Crystals (VBC) The name Valence Bond Solid is already ”registered” by Affleck, Kennedy Lieb and Tasaki  for very specific systems where the individual spins obey the relation $`2S=z`$ (with z the coordination number of the lattice). In such circumstances there exists a whole class of Hamiltonians which have a unique highly symmetric ground-state where each site shares a singlet with any neighbor connected to it.: their ground-states are characterized by regular arrays of singlet states on simple bonds or more complicated subsets (4-site plaquettes…). In the thermodynamic limit the ground-state of a VBC is degenerate, with a finite degeneracy directly related to the symmetry breaking. The VBC on the $`J_1J_2`$ chain (for $`\frac{J_2}{J_1}>0.2411\mathrm{}`$) is doubly degenerate (it breaks the one-step translation symmetry of the lattice). The simplest VBCs that could be encountered on a triangular lattice have a 12-fold degeneracy (a factor 4 comes from the translation symmetry breaking and a factor 3 from the breaking of $`C_3`$). It is a common belief that a VBC has a gap to all excitations (except indeed at critical points).

In 2d, the more convincing evidence of such a phase, with a spontaneous discrete symmetry breaking has been seen on the $`J_1J_2`$ model on the square lattice (see  and refs. therein). In that case the VBC breaks translational symmetry but probably not $`C_4`$: it is probably a long range order of $`S=0`$ plaquettes.

We have a new example of a VBC in the spectrum of the $`J_1J_2`$ model on the honeycomb lattice. When the second neighbor coupling is strong enough the frustration destroys the collinear Néel long range order and gives birth to a pattern of valence bonds (with a $`Z_3`$ symmetry breaking associated to the three spatial directions for the dimerized bonds). Our predictions is based on the scaling of the low lying singlets of the spectra, it is in agreement with the dimer-dimer correlations functions measured in the first singlet levels supposed to be degenerate in the thermodynamic limit.

The nature of the first excitations of these models (coherent or incoherent magnons) remains to be elucidated.

## IV Fully gapped Spin-Liquids

Besides these situations with symmetry breaking and LRO in a local observable, we have found two other behaviors, probably generic, with no obvious symmetry breaking, no long range order in a local order parameter. We call these situations ”Spin-Liquids” and will successively describe both of them.

Let us first describe very quickly the simplest one which has the following properties (an extensive description of the properties of this phase is given in ):

* A gap to any excitations
* All spin-spin correlations are short ranged
* A four-fold degeneracy of the ground-state on a 2-torus

We have observed this phase for the first time in the multiple-spin exchange problem. This effective hamiltonian has been introduced by Eyring and Thouless to describe the magnetism of quasi localized fermions (electrons in the Wigner Crystal on one hand, $`{}_{}{}^{3}He`$ atoms in solid phase on the other). The Hamiltonian of the multiple-spin exchange model is given by

$$H=\underset{n}{}(1)^nJ_n(P_n+P_n^1),J_n>0,n2$$
(6)
where $`J_n`$ are the $`n`$-spin exchange tunneling probabilities (exchange coefficients), $`P_n`$ and $`P_n^1`$ are the $`n`$-spin permutation operators and their inverse. The alternate sign in the summation over $`n`$ in Eq. 6 comes from the permutation of fermions. In general, the exchange coefficients decrease with increasing $`n`$. The two-spin exchange term gives the Heisenberg Hamiltonian up to a constant:

$$P_2=2𝐒_i𝐒_j+\frac{1}{2}$$
(7)
where $`𝐒_i`$ and $`𝐒_j`$ are spins localized at site $`i`$ and $`j`$, respectively. The three-spin exchange operator is equal to a sum of two-spin exchange operators . Thus, the two and three-spin exchange terms are described (up to a constant) by an Heisenberg hamiltonian with an effective coupling constant $`J_2^{\mathrm{eff}}=J_22J_3`$. Cyclic four-spin exchange gives birth to new physics: it is quartic in spin operators and has built-in frustration. As a result the ground-state of this 4-spin exchange hamiltonian on a single plaquette is doubly degenerate with total spin $`S=0`$ and $`1`$! At the classical level this hamiltonian displays various antiferromagnetic phases, which are wiped out by quantum fluctuations, leading in a large range of parameters to the Spin-Liquid with the above-mentioned properties .

The four-fold degeneracy of the ground-state on a 2-torus is a topological property which was predicted more than ten years ago. Contrarily to Oshikawa we do not think that it is the signature of long range order in a local order parameter (see discussion in Misguich).

Very few things are clearly stated on the excitations of this Spin-Liquid:

* Plateaus are expected in the magnetization curves both for zero and half the saturation magnetization.
* From the finite size spectra it might be suspected that the triplet excitations form a ”continuum” above the spin-gap and that an $`S=0`$ bound-state exists just below the spin-gap. Up to now, a clear signature of deconfined spinons has not been found in this Spin-Liquid. Futher investigations appear necessary.

As a further hint that might be of importance: short range correlations are slightly ferromagnetic. In fact this Spin-Liquid phase appears in the vicinity of a ferromagnetic instability, as can be seen both in the case of the multiple-spin exchange Hamiltonian on the triangular lattice, but also for the $`J_1J_2`$ model on the honeycomb lattice.

Experimentally, this phase might be observed in the low density 2d layers of solid $`{}_{}{}^{3}He`$ where there is evidence that the coupling constants might be in the good range (see  and references therein) and possibly in the Wigner crystal.

## V  Kagomé-like Spin-Liquids

The last situation that we will now discuss is by some details more puzzling. It has been obtained by depleting the triangular lattice, removing one spin out of four: the lattice which is obtained is called the kagomé lattice. Some possible physical realizations are $`SrCrGaO`$ or various jarosites . The model has been extensively studied in the classical limit  and it displays an extensive local degeneracy (i.e. an extensive number of modes of zero energy). Some authors have pleaded in favor of a selection of a particular ground-state by the ”order out disorder” mechanism  but the finite size scaling of spin-1/2 spectra contradicts this assumption . The system is certainly a Spin-Liquid in the following sense:

* all the correlations (spin-spin, dimer-dimer, chiral-chiral, …) are very small and decay with distance .
* the system has a gap for magnetic excitations. Even if it is not sure that the largest size (N=36) is much larger than all correlation lengths The spin-gap of the $`N=21,27,36`$ samples seems to be in a cross-over regime of scaling, but the energy per spin still evolves as $`N^{3/2}`$! , the finite size scaling studies point to a small spin-gap: probably of the order of one tenth of the coupling constant and quite likely larger than one twentieth of the coupling constant .
* the spin-gap is filled by a continuum of singlets and the number of these singlets increases exponentially with the system size $`N`$  as shown in Fig.4.

The understanding of the low lying continuum of singlets is still incomplete but important progresses have been done recently . Mambrini and Mila  have shown that the low lying singlet levels could be related to a family of short range dimer coverings of the lattice. It must be emphasized that short range dimer coverings on this lattice is not necessarily synonymous with exponential decreasing correlations and gapful excitations: the recent results of Mambrini and Mila prove that this is indeed not the case and the comparison between these results and those of Zeng and Elser  point to the fact that the non-orthogonality of the dimer coverings plays a major role in this respect. This is an important step forward and we would like now a simple picture of the first excitations.

Ten years ago, Rokhsar and Kivelson have studied a model of hard-core dimers on the square lattive . The phase diagram of their model displays two VBC phases separated by a critical point. At the transition point between the two phases the spectrum of excitations becomes gapless. The low lying modes are the Goldstone modes associated to a quasi LRO in the orientation of the dimers. Let us assume that this hypothesis is qualitatively valid on the kagomé lattice and derive its consequences for the number of states below the spin-gap. Assuming that these Goldstone modes are non-interacting, it is easy to extract from their dispersion law ($`ϵ(k)=k^n`$), the internal energy and entropy versus temperature and thus the number of states below the first triplet excitation. The logarithm of this number of states scales as $`N^{\frac{n}{n+2}}`$. In Fig.4 we compare the numerical results with this predicted law (assuming $`n=1`$ or $`2`$). Fixing the unknown constants from the measured value for $`N=12`$, we see that the prescription is an order of magnitude off at $`N=36`$: the $`n=1`$ mode description gives $`20`$ singlet levels in the spin-gap, whereas their real number is $`210`$ §§§ This number is slightly larger than the one quoted in  (some degeneracies were incorrectly numbered).! With the present pieces of information we must conclude that the description of the low lying singlets as Goldstone modes associated to a quasi LRO in the dimer covering is not supported by the numerics A second check has been done on the density of states versus E for $`N=36`$. Due to the intrinsic quantum noise of the numerical density of states, it is impossible with this last criterium to really discriminate between the different hypotheses, but the density of states implied by a mode description $`exp(aE^{\frac{2}{n+2}})`$ seems less probable than a pure exponential or power law ( the $`\chi ^2`$ criterium is approximately twice as large).. A simple picture of these first excitations is still lacking!

On the other hand, the exponential increase in the number of eigenlevels in a finite band of energy implies a finite entropy per spin at T=0. The same phenomena appearing in each spin sector might be at the origin of the anomalous glassy behavior ”without chemical disorder” seen in various compounds (see  and refs therein).

Less speculative, the presence of a finite entropy in the singlet channel at low temperature is consistent with the observation of Ramirez and coworkers that the low temperature specific heat of $`SrCrGaO`$ is essentially insensitive to large magnetic fields (much larger than the temperature). This picture is also compatible with the muons experiments of Uemura et al  and the elastic spin diffusion measurement of Lee et al .

To conclude we must add that these systems seem able to support unconfined spinons excitations with non zero Chern numbers.

Up to very recently, we were thinking that this second kind of Spin-Liquid was associated to special lattices as the kagomé or pyrochlore lattices, which at the classical level display an infinite local degeneracy. Some recent results bring new pieces of information: we have observed kagomé-like spectra on the triangular lattice when the 3-sublattice Néel order is destabilized by a frustrating 4-spin exchange and we have no evidence of an infinite local degeneracy at this point. We now conjecture that the interesting feature common to these two cases is the appearance of the ”kagomé-like” phase after destabilization of a non-collinear long-range order (either due to quantum fluctuations -when going from the triangular to the kagomé lattice by weakening of bonds-, or to competing frustrating interactions in the multiple-spin exchange problem). Contrarily, destabilization of a collinear order (like in section II) leads to dimer LRO.

Is this ”kagomé-like behavior” representative of a true new phase or of a quantum critical point? This remains an open question. In the two studied cases we found these characteristics in a rather wide range of parameters: It is nevertheless impossible to exclude a finite size effect. If criticality is to be viewed as a situation where there is no intrinsic length scale nor energy scale and a slowing down of all dynamics, it remains unclear if the proliferation of low lying singlets in this model could not be a signature of criticality (and the above assumption on the scaling of the density of states much too naive!).

## VI  Miscellaneous remarks and conclusion

As a last remark we would like to discuss some questions around the words and concepts of order and disorder. The established expression of ”order by disorder” (or ”order out of disorder”) expresses the fact that quantum fluctuations (as well as thermal fluctuations for which it was primarily introduced by Villain) stabilize the simpler and the more symmetric ordered state amongst the allowed $`T=0`$ classical ground-states. But more generally the effect of long wave-length quantum fluctuations on a (semi-)classical ground-state might lead to still simpler and more symmetric situations which do not break $`SU(2)`$ (section III) and even any space symmetries (sections IV and V). In such an issue the word ”quantum disorder” has been used (by opposition to Néel long range order) but indeed it should be used with great caution: the ground-state of the Spin-Liquid of Section IV is highly symmetric and very far from a disordered system. Only the ”kagomé-like” state might be qualified as ”quantum disordered” (section V). To measure this delicate issue one may look at the $`T=0`$ entropy per spin of the ground-state. In the thermodynamic limit, this quantity scales as $`𝒪\left(pLn(N)/N\right)`$ for a Néel ordered state with $`p`$ sublattices, as $`𝒪(1/N)`$ in the Valence Bond Crystals (Sec. III) and in the fully gapped Spin-Liquid (Sec. IV), and it is $`𝒪(1)`$ in the ”kagomé-like” Spin-Liquids.

In conclusion exact diagonalizations have allowed a characterization of 4 different and (probably ) generic ground-states of quantum antiferromagnets in 2d. The two kinds of Spin-Liquids conjectured by P.W. Anderson in 1973 have been found (the second with the continuum of singlets seems nevertheless rather different from the initial conjecture). Possible physical realizations of these Spin-Liquids exist. There remain many questions on the first excitations of these Spin-Liquids. Some progress on this subject can probably be done in computing dynamical structure functions with exact diagonalizations schemes, but it would also be useful to devise new analytical approximate tools to look at these questions: exact results on the ground-state and low lying levels of the spectra may hopefully help in achieving this goal!


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# Shape deformations and angular momentum transfer in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates

## Abstract

Angular momentum can be transferred to a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate by distorting its shape with an external rotating field, provided the rotational frequency is larger than a critical frequency fixed by the energy and angular momentum of the excited states of the system. By using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and sum rules, we explore the dependence of such a critical frequency on the multipolarity of the excitations and the asymmetry of the confining potential. We also discuss its possible relevance for vortex nucleation in rotating traps.

It is well known that in order to create excitations in a superfluid by moving an impurity one has to overcome some critical velocity, which is fixed by the spectrum of the excited states of the system. In the case of a rectilinear motion of a heavy object, conservation of energy and momentum yields the critical velocity $`v_c=\mathrm{min}[ϵ(p)/p]`$, where $`ϵ(p)`$ is the energy of an excitations carrying momentum $`p`$; this is known as Landau criterion . The external perturbation can also be a moving boundary, like the wall of a container, which produces excitations through its roughness. In liquid helium such a critical velocity has been the object of a longstanding investigation, involving the structure of the phonon-roton branch and the nucleation and dynamics of quantized vortex lines and rings. The existence of similar critical velocities in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates of alkali atoms is currently under study. In Ref.  an external potential (a laser beam) is used to produce a hole in the condensate and this hole is moved back and forth at variable velocity, playing the role of a massive impurity. Theoretical interpretations in terms of the Landau criterion have been already presented in Refs. . Here we consider the analog process in which the perturbation acts at the surface of the condensate, producing a rotating shape deformation. This kind of perturbation has been recently implemented in  to excite quadrupole and octopole modes, but the analysis is also relevant for rotating traps, like the one used in Ref.  to produce quantized vortices. The similarity with liquid helium is again worth stressing; in that case, when the liquid fills a rotating bucket, the roughness of the wall can transfer angular momentum to the superfluid, favoring the occurrence of quantized vorticity above some critical angular velocity . However, since the crucial length scales (healing length, surface thickness, interatomic distance, etc.) in liquid helium and trapped condensates are different, the role of surface excitations on the Landau criterion is also very different. In particular, surface modes can be ignored in the analysis of the experiments with helium in rotating vessels, while they might be crucial for gases of alkali atoms in rotating traps, as discussed below.

Let us consider a condensate which is initially in its ground state in an axially symmetric trap, with trapping frequencies $`\omega _{}`$ and $`\omega _z=\lambda \omega _{}`$, where $`\lambda `$ is the anisotropy parameter of the harmonic confining potential. Then, let us imagine a small distortion of the condensate caused by an external perturbation which rotates around the $`z`$-axis at angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. This perturbation may be a modulation of the confining potential, a rotating laser beam, or something else; we only assume here that the consequent distortion of the condensate is indeed a shape deformation, coupled to the surface modes of the system (ripplon-like waves). Let us consider the process in which the external probe produces a single excited state, corresponding to a surface wave with energy $`\mathrm{}\omega (\mathrm{})`$ and angular momentum $`\mathrm{}`$ along $`z`$ (azimuthal quantum number $`m=\mathrm{}`$). One can assign a moment of inertia $`I`$ to the rotating perturbation and write the conservation laws for energy and angular momentum, letting $`I\mathrm{}`$ at the end. The simple result is that the conservation laws are both satisfied only if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is larger than the critical angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c=\mathrm{min}[\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}]`$. This is the analog of the Landau criterion. If the rotation is slower than $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c`$, the condensate simply adjusts its shape to the rotating perturbation by moving as an irrotational and nondissipative fluid. Conversely, if the rotation is faster than $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c`$, the external perturbation can excite surface modes in a continuous way, transferring energy and angular momentum to the condensate.

The excitation spectrum of a condensate can be accurately evaluated by solving the linearized Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation, also known as Bogoliubov’s equations . The theory provides the energy of the excited states at zero temperature in terms of the relevant quantum numbers (number of radial nodes and angular momentum). For our purposes what matters is the energy $`\mathrm{}\omega (\mathrm{})`$ of the surface modes, i.e., the ones with no radial nodes. In a previous work, we already presented some results for the critical angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c`$ in a spherical condensate . Here we discuss more systematically the consequences of this critical behavior and provide results for nonspherical traps.

We avoid the complication of solving the Bogoliubov’s equations for axially symmetric condensates by using sum rules. As already shown in , the sum rule approach provides rigorous upper bounds to the dispersion $`\omega (\mathrm{})`$ using the ground state density, solution of the stationary GP equation, as main ingredient. The key quantities are the $`k`$-energy weighted moments, $`m_k=_0^{\mathrm{}}S_F(E)E^k𝑑E`$ of the dynamic structure factor, $`S_F(E)=_j|j|F|0|^2\delta (EE_{j0})`$, associated with a given excitation operator $`F`$, where $`E_{j0}=(E_jE_0)`$ is the excitation energy of the eigenstate $`|j`$ of the Hamiltonian. The $`m_1`$ and $`m_3`$ moments can be written as expectation values of commutators, $`m_1=(1/2)0|[F^{},[H,F]]|0`$ and $`m_3=(1/2)0|[[F^{},H],[H,[H,F]]]|0`$, and the ratio $`(m_3/m_1)^{1/2}`$ gives the desired upper bound to the energy of the states excited by the operator $`F`$. In order to select the surface modes, one chooses the excitation operator in the form $`F=_{i=1}^Nr_i^{\mathrm{}}Y_{\mathrm{}\mathrm{}}(\theta _i,\varphi _i)`$, with $`\mathrm{}0`$, where $`N`$ is the number of atoms in the condensate. The explicit calculation of the ratio $`(m_3/m_1)`$ with this operator gives the dispersion law

$$\omega ^2(\mathrm{})=\omega _{}^2\mathrm{}[1+(\mathrm{}1)\beta _{\mathrm{}}],$$
(1)
where

$$\beta _{\mathrm{}}=\frac{𝑑𝐫(_{}\sqrt{n})^2r_{}^{2\mathrm{}4}}{𝑑𝐫nr_{}^{2\mathrm{}2}}$$
(2)
and $`r_{}=(x^2+y^2)^{1/2}`$. Here $`n(r_{},z)`$ is the ground state density of the condensate which can be calculated by solving the stationary GP equation. The sum rule estimate is close to the exact Bogoliubov’s spectrum whenever the state excited by $`F`$ is highly collective, with a strength which almost exhausts the dynamic structure factor. This is true for shape deformations of low multipolarity, which are the important ones for the present analysis. The dynamic structure factor associated with large $`\mathrm{}`$ excitations is expected to be more and more fragmented and, consequently, the sum rule upper bound becomes less accurate.

The surface state with lowest energy is the quadrupole mode. The sum rule estimate is easily obtained by inserting $`\mathrm{}=2`$ into Eqs. (1)-(2). One finds

$$\omega ^2(\mathrm{}=2)=2\omega _{}^2\left(1+\frac{(E_{\mathrm{kin}})_{}}{(E_{\mathrm{ho}})_{}}\right)$$
(3)
where $`(E_{\mathrm{kin}})_{}`$ and $`(E_{\mathrm{ho}})_{}`$ are the radial contributions to the kinetic and external potential energies, respectively. For noninteracting particles these two energies are equal and one gets $`\omega =2\omega _{}`$. The other interesting limit is $`N\mathrm{}`$ (Thomas-Fermi limit), when the kinetic energy in the ground state is much smaller than both the atom-atom interaction energy and the trapping potential. In this limit Eq. (3) gives $`\omega =\sqrt{2}\omega _{}`$. The latter result can also be obtained by solving the hydrodynamic equations of a superfluid , which provide the general dispersion law $`\omega (\mathrm{})=\sqrt{\mathrm{}}\omega _{}`$ for the surface modes with $`m=\pm \mathrm{}`$. The hydrodynamic approach, however, is accurate only for the lowest multipoles when one can completely neglect the contribution of the quantum pressure term in the GP equation; for the values of $`N`$ which are relevant in the current experiments, the hydrodynamic dispersion becomes soon inaccurate as $`\mathrm{}`$ increases. This has an important consequence for the evaluation of the critical frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c=\mathrm{min}[\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}]`$, since the hydrodynamic dispersion gives $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}=\omega _{}/\sqrt{\mathrm{}}`$ and hence $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c=0`$; conversely, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c`$ always exhibits a minimum, even for very large $`N`$, when calculated with Bogoliubov’s equations or using the sum rule results (1)-(2).

In Fig. 1 we show typical results for $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$, in units of $`\omega _{}`$, obtained by inserting in Eqs. (1)-(2) the ground state density of three different condensates of 87Rb atoms (we use $`a=100a_0`$ for the scattering length, where $`a_0`$ is the Bohr radius). The stationary GP equation has been solved numerically as in Ref. . The condensates have the same number of atoms, $`N=10^5`$, and the same average trapping frequency, $`\omega _{\mathrm{ho}}=(\omega _x\omega _y\omega _z)^{1/3}=\lambda ^{1/3}\omega _{}=2\pi (20\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z})`$, but different asymmetry parameter: $`\lambda =0.1`$ (prolate), $`\lambda =1`$ (spherical) and $`\lambda =10`$ (oblate). The $`N`$-dependence of $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$ is instead given in Fig. 2, where we plot the curves for condensates with different $`N`$ but the same prolate geometry: $`\lambda =0.06`$ and $`\omega _{\mathrm{ho}}=2\pi (82.5\mathrm{Hz})`$, close to the values of Ref. . In order to test the accuracy of the sum rule approach, we have also solved numerically the Bogoliubov’s equations for a spherical condensate. The results are shown as open circles in Fig. 1 and can be compared with the sum rule results for $`\lambda =1`$ (solid circles). As one can see, the accuracy of the sum rule approach is very good for the lowest values of $`\mathrm{}`$, remaining of the order of $`10`$% up to $`\mathrm{}=10`$. This is enough for our purposes. Finally, the hydrodynamic prediction is also shown as a dashed line in both figures.

In Table I we summarize the situation for three different condensates. The parameters of the first (prolate) and the second (spherical) are close to the ones of current experiments at ENS-Paris  and JILA-Boulder , respectively. The third one (oblate) is presented in order to stress the dependence of the critical frequencies on the geometry of the trap. Actually, the critical frequencies $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$ for the lowest multipoles ($`\mathrm{}=2,3,4`$) turn out to be rather independent of the shape of the condensate and are well described by the hydrodynamic dispersion, which is independent of $`\lambda `$. For the quadrupole mode, for example, it is very well reproduced by the hydrodynamic value $`\omega _{}/\sqrt{2}=0.707\omega _{}`$. The minimum of $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$ instead depends on $`\lambda `$ in a more significant way, since it involves higher $`\mathrm{}`$’s, especially for the oblate geometry.

The frequencies $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$ in Table I are thresholds for the transfer of angular momentum to a condensate through shape deformations. The values of $`\mathrm{}`$ actually involved in a given experiment depend on the type of process used. For instance, a laser beam which makes a rotating hollow on the surface of the condensate might excite a bunch of states with several $`\mathrm{}`$’s, just as happens for a hole moving through the fluid and exciting phonon-like excitations with several momentum components. Conversely, the stirred confining potential of Ref., with a rotating quadrupole deformation, is expected to excite mostly quadrupole excitations. What really happens just above, or close to the threshold can not be described only in terms of elementary excitations. In fact, once a threshold is reached, the rotating perturbation can pump many excitations into the condensate, bringing it far from the linear regime. A wider configuration space is made available and the system can find new rotating equilibrium states, like the stationary deformed configurations discussed in , or jump into states with quantized vorticity.

Concerning vortices, an important frequency scale is fixed by the difference between the energy per particle of a condensate with and without vortex calculated in the rotating frame, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v=(1/\mathrm{})[(E/N)_v(E/N)_g]`$. This corresponds to the ratio between the ‘excitation’ energy of the vortex in the rest frame, $`(E_vE_g)`$, and its angular momentum $`N\mathrm{}`$. When the rotation frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is equal to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$ the energies of the configurations with and without vortex are equal in the rotating frame and, above $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$, the vortex state becomes the global energy minimum. In this sense, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$ is analog to $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$, since the latter represents the frequency above which a surface state of angular momentum $`\mathrm{}`$ has negative energy in the rotating frame . A crucial difference, however, is that in order to transfer $`N\mathrm{}`$ angular momentum and nucleate a vortex above $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$ one has to overcome an energy barrier, while no barrier is found above $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$ for the creation of quanta of angular momentum through surface excitations.

The quantity $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$ can be obtained from the solution of the stationary Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the ground state and the state with a vortex line along $`z`$. We have already presented some numerical results for this quantity in . By repeating the same kind of calculation for the three condensates in Table I we find the values given in the last column . It has been noted in Ref.  that the experimental result for the frequency at which vortices occur is significantly larger than $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$. The critical frequency in the experiment turns out to be about $`0.67\omega _{}`$, to be compared to the value $`0.35\omega _{}`$ given in the first row of Table I. This is likely to be the consequence of the above mentioned energy barrier, which prevents the nucleation of vortices even above $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$. If one tries to impart a rotation to the condensate by rotating a slightly asymmetric external field, the crucial question is how angular momentum is actually transferred to the system. Our analysis suggests that, if the transfer mechanism is the creation of surface excitations of multipolarity $`\mathrm{}`$, the relevant threshold is $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$, which can be significantly larger than $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$, as shown in Table I. This argument might be used to interpret the fact that the experimental critical frequency of Ref.  turns out to be closer to the quadrupole value $`\omega (2)/2\omega _{}/\sqrt{2}`$ than to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$. Were this true, one should find almost the same critical frequency by repeating the experiment in spherical or oblate condensates. This clearly suggest that the $`\lambda `$-dependence could discriminate between alternative descriptions for vortex nucleation and stability (see, for instance, Refs.  and references therein). Another important signature of the suggested threshold mechanism would be the observation of strongly deformed configurations in the initial stage of the vortex nucleation. Preliminary evidence for such deformations has already emerged . Finally, the threshold behavior here discussed would imply a significant hysteresis when the rotation frequency is first speeded up to produce vortices and then slowed down again, since one expects different mechanisms for the two processes: the nucleation of the vortex state at relatively high rotation frequency and the destabilization of the vortex at lower frequency (for an extensive discussion about the destabilization of vortices see ). The hysteresis mechanism of the vortical configurations has some similarity with the behavior of superfluid helium. In that case, however, vortex nucleation is associated with the pinning of vortex lines at the walls of the container . Trapped condensates have no rough surfaces or, in other words, they have an adjustable “roughness”; in this sense, they offer a novel and complementary tool for understanding nucleation processes of quantized vorticity in superfluids.

This work has been supported by the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica. F.D. would like to thank the Dipartimento di Fisica di Trento for hospitality.

| Condensate | $`\frac{\omega (2)}{2}`$ | $`\frac{\omega (3)}{3}`$ | $`\frac{\omega (4)}{4}`$ | $`\mathrm{min}[\frac{\omega (\mathrm{})}{\mathrm{}}]`$ | $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| prolate | $`0.72`$ | $`0.61`$ | $`0.56`$ | $`0.53`$ | $`0.35`$ |
| $`\lambda =0.0058`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| $`\nu _{}=175\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| $`N=2.5\times 10^5`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| spherical | $`0.71`$ | $`0.59`$ | $`0.53`$ | $`0.44`$ | $`0.24`$ |
| $`\lambda =1`$ | $`(0.71)`$ | $`(0.59)`$ | $`(0.52)`$ | $`(0.41)`$ |  |
| $`\nu _{}=7.8\mathrm{Hz}`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| $`N=3\times 10^5`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| oblate | $`0.71`$ | $`0.58`$ | $`0.50`$ | $`0.33`$ | $`0.12`$ |
| $`\lambda =10`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| $`\nu _{}=10\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$ |  |  |  |  |  |
| $`N=3\times 10^5`$ |  |  |  |  |  |

Table I. Critical frequencies for shape deformations in different condensates. First column: type of condensate. Next four columns: critical frequency $`\omega (\mathrm{})/\mathrm{}`$, in units of the radial trapping frequency $`\omega _{}=2\pi \nu _{}`$, obtained with the sum rule expressions (1)-(2) for $`\mathrm{}=2,3,4`$ and for its minimum value. The numbers in brackets are the exact results of Bogoliubov’s equations in the spherical case. The last column is the quantity $`\mathrm{\Omega }_v=(1/\mathrm{})[(E/N)_v(E/N)_g]`$ (see text).


text:
# Modelling Tools: Population and Evolutionary Synthesis

## 1. Introduction

For local group galaxies that can be resolved into individual stars with HST, we have seen impressively, e.g. in Carme Gallart’s contribution, how the comparison of deep color magnitude diagrams with isochrones calculated from stellar evolutionary tracks allows to trace back their Star Formation History (SFH) over the last 1 – 3 or even more Gyr. Accessing earlier phases becomes increasingly difficult since stars on the Main Sequence are at or beyond the faint limits of these observations. Galaxies beyond the local group remain inaccessible for those techniques even with 10 m telescopes.

In this contribution, we now turn to unresolved galaxies and to attempts to derive information from their integrated light about their present star, gas, and dust content as well as about their evolutionary path to this present state.

Modelling techniques are presented in Sect. 2 for the description of the stellar light including absorption and emission effects of gas and dust. In Sect. 3, I present first attempts to consistently account for the physical links between those 3 components in galaxy models and I present a brief selection of recent results in Sect. 4. Sect. 5 concludes with a brief outlook.

## 2. Modelling Techniques

### 2.1. Basic Principles

Two fundamentally different approaches have been developed for the interpretation of integrated spectrophotometric properties of galaxies: Population Synthesis (PS) and Evolutionary Synthesis (ES). Both of them need a complete input library in terms of (observed or model atmosphere) stellar spectra, star cluster or isochrone spectra. A long wavelength basis is required if information about the SFH over cosmological timescales is to be obtained.

While in the PS approach, a minimisation algorithm selects a linear combination of input spectra that best fits the observed spectrum of a local galaxy or a galaxy at known redshift z. Codes may give particular weight to wavelength regions more sensitive than others to age or metallicity and include physical boundary conditions like some IMF or reasonable number ratios of stars in different evolutionary stages (cf. Whipple 1935, Alloin et al. 1971ff, Faber 1972ff, O’Connell 1976ff, Pickles 1985ff, Bica & Alloin 1986ff, …). Advantages of PS are that very good spectral fits are possible and unexpected or discontinuous SFHs can be discovered. The basic shortcoming of this approach is that it only provides a status quo description without information about the evolutionary path. There is still debate about the uniqueness of PS solutions.

ES starts from a gas cloud of given initial mass and chemical composition, specifies an IMF and a SFH to successively build up the stellar population of a model galaxy. The code basically is a book-keeping algorithm that – on the basis of a complete set of stellar evolutionary tracks – follows the evolution of the stellar population through the HR diagram. Assigning photometric properties like luminosities, colors, and absorption features, or spectra to every point or cell in the HR diagram allows to follow the photometric or spectral evolution, respectively, of the model galaxy from the onset of SF over a Hubble time (cf. Tinsley 1972ff, Searle, Sargent & Bagnuolo 1973, Huchra 1977, Bruzual 1982ff, Arimoto & Yoshii 1986ff, Rocca-Volmerange & Guiderdoni 1987ff, Buzzoni 1989, F.-v.A. 1989ff, Charlot & Bruzual 1991ff, Worthey 1994, Poggianti 1997, Leitherer et al. 1999). Advantages of ES are that it directly desribes the time evolution to and after the present state. Evolutionary consistency is guaranteed and models feature a large analytical potential. Luminosity contributions at any wavelength from stars of different masses, spectral types, luminosity classes, and evolutionary phases are given in their time evolution. The ES approach allows for combination with a cosmological model characterised by its parameters ($`\mathrm{H}_\mathrm{o},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{o},\mathrm{\Lambda }_\mathrm{o}`$) and an assumed redshift of galaxy formation $`\mathrm{z}_\mathrm{f}`$. Major shortcomings of ES are the facts that good fits to observed galaxy spectra are more difficult to obtain than with PS and that unexpected SFHs are difficult to discover. This points out the complementary characters of the ES and PS approaches. While for normal undisturbed galaxies average type specific SFHs are known, for disturbed or peculiar galaxies PS may provide a first guess for their stellar content. To explore their evolutionary past and future and to allow for cosmological considerations, the PS solution provides a useful guide for follow-up ES modelling. For a more extensive review on synthesis techniques see F.-v.A. 1994.

In 1996, a workshop devoted to the comparison of various ES and PS codes showed broad agreement in general and a number of discrepancies in detail. The latter turned out to be largely due to differences in the input physics used. Of prime importance is the completeness of the stellar tracks up to the latest evolutionary phases, e.g. the thermal pulsing AGB phase (cf. Leitherer et al. 1996).

### 2.2. Inclusion of Gas

Both PS and ES models, as far as presented above, describe the integrated light of the stellar component of galaxies, i.e. they yield absorption line spectra. Emission lines observed in the spectra of SFing galaxies are evidence for the sometimes very strong contribution of an ionised gas component (HII regions).

2.2.1. Gaseous emission
Gaseous emission in terms of lines and continuum is readily included into ES and PS models on the basis of the number of Lyman continuum photons emitted by all the hot O- and B-stars present in a model galaxy at a certain time (e.g. Huchra 1977, Mas-Hesse & Kunth 1991, Rocca-Volmerange & Guiderdoni 1988, Krüger et al. 1991, 1994, 1995, Leitherer & Heckman 1995). Ionisation-recombination equilibrium in ionisation-bounded Strömgren spheres that are optically thick in the Lyman lines is assumed as well as values for the electron temperature and density. Then the continuous emission from free-free transitions and recombination of H+, He+, He++ is obtained from atomic physics are the fluxes in the hydrogen lines. Other important lines are calculated from the flux in Hβ using line ratios either from photoionisation models or from observations. These metal-to-hydrogen-line flux ratios, of course, severely depend on the metallicity of the gas. A recent redetermination of the number of Lyman continuum photons emitted by hot stars including line-blanketing, non-LTE and wind effects is given by Schaerer & deKoter 1997.

2.2.2. Effects on the broad band photometry
In models for galaxies with a starburst superimposed on an undisturbed galaxy’s normal SFR, gaseous emission is seen to significantly affect broad band colors. As shown in Krüger et al. 1995, in bursts increasing the stellar mass of a galaxy by 10 %, gaseous line emission accounts for $`50`$ % of the broad band fluxes in the optical (UBVRI), while gaseous continuum emission makes up $`20`$ % of the NIR (JHK) fluxes. Moreover, starburst galaxy models show that there is a time delay of order 40 Myr until the maximum flux in the gaseous emission is reached. For dwarf galaxies with their typical burst durations of order $`10^6`$ yr the SFR has already declined to $`20`$ % of its original value by the time until the maximum Hα luminosity is reached. Implications for a determination of the SFR from $`\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{H}_\alpha }`$ in these cases are profound.

2.2.3. Gaseous absorption
Within a gas rich SFing galaxy, the flux of the stellar component is largely selfabsorbed below the Lyman limit at 912 Å by intrinsic HI, producing a pronounced break in the spectrum that for galaxies at redshifts z $`>2`$ is redshifted into the optical. Intergalactic HI, mostly in the form of Ly$`\alpha `$ clouds stochastically distributed along sightlines to distant galaxies, provides additional absorption of the emitted galaxy light below rest-frame Ly$`\alpha `$ at 1216 Å. The longer the sightline to a galaxy, the stronger becomes this attenuation (Madau et al. 1996). For galaxies at z $`\mathrm{}>2.5,3.5,4.5,...`$, the Lyman Break is shifted longwards of the U, B, V, … filters, respectively. This causes galaxies to drop out of deep short wavelength exposures while visible in longer wavelength bands. It hence provides a powerful tool to select promising galaxy candidates at high and very high redshifts from deep multiband imaging (cf. Steidel et al. 1995). Spectroscopy of an appreciable number of those Lyman Break galaxies has confirmed their redshift estimates.

### 2.3. Inclusion of Dust

Now that we have seen the effects of gas absorption and emission on the integrated galaxy light, we turn to the effects of dust which, as well, come both in absorption and emission. For many years, galaxy modelers used to ask observers to deredden their galaxy spectra with respect to both foreground and internal extinction. Comprehensive galaxy models by today, however, attempt to include dust and study its effects over a long wavelength range.

2.3.1. Dust absorption
With a given dust content, expressed e.g. in terms of a value for $`\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}}`$ and an assumped extinction law, the effect of dust absorption is accounted for in synthetic galaxy spectra via $`\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{gal}}^{\mathrm{dust}}(\lambda )=\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{gal}}(\lambda )10^{0.4\mathrm{A}_\lambda }`$ with $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}=\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}}`$ and $`\mathrm{A}_\lambda /\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ given by the extinction/absorption law. Many details and a wealth of interesting physics are ignored in this zero-order approach, as e.g. the geometry of the distributions of old and young stars and dust, the physical relation between gas content, metallicity and dust, the temperature, chemical composition, grain sizes of the dust, etc. Tying the amount of extinction to the evolving gas and metal content, Fioc & Rocca – Volmerange 1997 and Möller et al. 1999 present ES models with dust absorption for various galaxy types. Their present-day values for $`\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}}`$ are in agreement with observed local averages for the different galaxy types (Goudfrooij et al. 1994, Ferrari et al. 1999 for E/S0s, Gonzalez et al. 1998 for spirals). Individual galaxies show considerable scatter around these average values. Only on a long wavelength basis may a comparison between models and observations provide conclusive information about the amount of dust absorption. Extrapolation of this approach into the Early Universe with its intense radiation field remains uncertain.

2.3.2. Dust emission
Energy conservation requires the total amount of flux absorbed in the UV and optical to be reemitted at long wavelengths (FIR and submm)

$`\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{FIR}\mathrm{submm}}_{90\mathrm{\AA }}^{2\mu }(\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{gal}}(\lambda )\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{gal}}^{\mathrm{dust}}(\lambda ))d\lambda `$

Thermal emission of dust, eventually heated by young stars or shocks, produces a blackbody spectrum for the appropriate temperature(s) of the dust (phases) plus characteristic line and (PAH-)band contributions (cf. Sturm et al. 2000). Models including dust emission are e.g. presented by Franceschini et al. 1994, Silva et al. 1998, Devriendt et al. 1999.

## 3. Links between Stars, Gas, and Dust

### 3.1. Chemically consistent models

As first described quantitatively by B. Tinsley in the 70s, the gas in galaxies is continuously enriched by metals produced in stars and set free towards the end of their lifes by stellar winds, planetary nebulae or supernovae. Hence, in galaxies that always have SF extending over timescales that are long compared to stellar lifetimes, successive generations of stars will be born with increasing initial metallicities. This is observed in the extended metallicity distributions of stars in elliptical galaxies and bulges – covering more than a factor 10 in metallicity Z with $`\mathrm{Z}\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Z}_{}`$ (McWilliam & Rich 1994, Sadler et al. 1996, Ramirez et al. 2000) – and of G-, K-, and M-dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood – also covering a factor 10 in Z with $`\mathrm{Z}0.7\mathrm{Z}_{}`$ (Rocha – Pinto & Maciel 1996).

In principle, PS using a star cluster library covering the full range of ages and metallicities and extending over a long enough wavelength range should be able to recover the intrinsic metallicity distribution of the stars in its best fit solution to an integrated galaxy spectrum (cf. Bica et al. 1988).
With the availability of complete sets of input physics for various metallicities, we developed Chemically Consistent Evolutionary Synthesis (CCES) models in Göttingen. They follow the enrichment of the gas and account for the increasing initial metallicity of successive generations of stars by using several sets of input physics – stellar evolutionary tracks, stellar yields, model atmospheres, color and index calibrations – for metallicities in the range $`0.0001\mathrm{Z}0.05`$ and yield stellar metallicity distributions for elliptical and Sb galaxies in agreement with observations.
For the CCES models average galaxy wide SFHs are determined by the requirement that after $`12`$ Gyr of evolution they agree with observations of nearby galaxies in terms of colors, luminosities, absorption features (for E/S0s), emission line strengths (spirals), and template spectra from UV to NIR. In order to reach the observed galaxy colors and luminosities despite the contributions from intrinsically bluer and more luminous lower metallicity subpopulations, CCES models have to use SFHs somewhat different from those in models using solar metallicity input physics only. This causes a difference in the evolution of galaxies that increases with lookback time, even for those types which by today reach close to solar average abundances.

The well-known age – metallicity degeneracy (Worthey 1994) describes the fact that two single age single metallicity stellar populations, one of which is younger by a factor 2 and more metal rich by a factor 3 than the other, are indistinguishable in terms of optical broad band colors and spectral continuum shape. To resolve this ambiguity less age dependent NIR colors or absorption features specifically sensitive to age (like $`\mathrm{H}_\beta `$) or metallicity (like Fe5270 or Fe5335) have to be considered. CCES models show that in normal Hubble types of galaxies which, in this respect, are well approximated by closed box models, age and metallicity of the stellar population are coupled and the coupling depends on the SFH (cf. F.-v.A. 2000).

## 4. Results from CCES models

### 4.1. Chemically Consistent Spectrophotometric Evolution

The fact that stellar subpopulations of different ages have different metallicities and dominate different regions of the spectrum causes galaxies to feature different metallicities at different wavelengths. In Möller et al. 1997 we present a quantitative analysis of this wavelength dependence of luminosity weighted metallicities in ellipticals and spirals.
CCES models can be combined with a cosmological model (e.g. $`\mathrm{H}_\mathrm{o}=50,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{o}=1`$) to study the redshift evolution of galaxy colors and luminosities. Comparison with solar metallicity models shows that cc spiral models become brighter by $`1`$ ($`>0.5`$) mag in B (K) at redshifts $`\mathrm{z}\mathrm{}>0.5`$. We thus expect higher numbers of early and even late-type spirals to contribute to faint galaxy counts and, hence, less of a Faint Blue Galaxy Excess (cf. F.-v.A. 1999, Möller et al. in prep). CCES models for spirals show good agreement both in terms of luminosity and color evolution and in SFRs with the first set of spectroscopically confirmed Lyman Break Galaxies from the HDF (Lowenthal et al. 1997) over the redshift range from $`\mathrm{z}2`$ to $`\mathrm{z}3.5`$. On the basis of our 1-zone models, it cannot be decided, however, if this SF occurs in the bulges or all over the disks of those young spirals. From the weakness of O-, B-stellar wind lines in KECK HIRES spectra Trager et al. 1997 derive metallicities for Lyman Break Galaxies at $`\mathrm{z}34`$ around $`\frac{1}{10}\mathrm{Z}_{}`$ in agreement with the predictions of our CCES models for bright early type spirals.

### 4.2. Chemically Consistent Chemical Evolution

Stellar yields for individual chemical elements $`\mathrm{X}_\mathrm{i}`$ show a very complex behaviour as a function of metallicity and stellar mass (cf. Figs 1, 2 in Lindner et al. 1999). SFHs that after a Hubble time gave agreement of our spectrophotometric CCES models with observations immediately produced absolute oxygen abundances in good agreement with observed characteristic HII region abundances (i.e. measured at $`1\mathrm{R}_\mathrm{e}`$) of the respective spiral types without any additional free parameters or scaling. The redshift evolution of abundances in CCES models differs from that in models using solar metallicity input physics only in a way characteristic for every element.

Damped Ly$`\alpha `$ Absorption is caused by intervening high column density gas (log N(HI) $`20.3\mathrm{cm}^2`$) along our lines of sight to distant quasars. The radiation damped Ly$`\alpha `$ lines are always associated with a number of low ionisation lines of elements like Al, Si, S, Fe, Ni, Mn, Cr, Zn at the same redshift. High resolution spectra resolving the velocity structure in these lines (typically $`510\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) allow for precise abundance determinations. In recent years, those have become available for a large number of absorbers over the redshift range from $`\mathrm{z}0`$ to $`\mathrm{z}>4.4`$, i.e. over more than 90 % of the age of the Universe (e.g. Pettini et al. 1999). Conventionally, DLA absorption was thought to arise in (proto-)galactic disks (Wolfe 1995). Line profile shapes are consistent with this view and indicate that DLA disks at $`\mathrm{z}23`$ already have rotation velocities and, hence, masses comparable to those of local spiral disks (Prochaska & Wolfe 1997ff). Nevertheless, other possible origins for DLA systems are discussed like starbursting dwarf or low surface brightness galaxies at low z (Matteucci et al. 1997, Jimenez et al. 1999) and subgalactic fragments bound to merge at high z (Haehnelt et al. 1998).

In Lindner et al. 1999, we compare our CCES models for spirals (including SNIa contributions from carbon deflagration in white dwarf binaries) to DLA abundances. The basic result from the comparison of all 8 elements with significant numbers of abundance determinations is that over the full redshift range from $`\mathrm{z}\mathrm{}>4.4`$ to $`\mathrm{z}0`$ cc spiral models are well consistent with the DLA data. Hence, from the point of view of abundance evolution, DLA absorption may well be caused by normal spiral galaxies, allthough other possible origins are not excluded. DLA abundances at high redshift are in evolutionary consistency with present-day HII region abundances. The decreasing gas content explains the lower rate of incidence of DLA galaxies at low redshift as compared to expectations from high redshift and it causes a change in the DLA absorber population with redshift. While at high z all spiral types from Sa through Sd seem to contribute to the DLA population, the gas poor and high metallicity Sa and Sb galaxies seem to drop out of DLA samples towards lower redshift. This change with redshift that we predict for the DLA absorber population is consistent with and makes us understand the non-detection of many DLA absorbers in deep searches. The luminosities that our CCES models predict ($`\mathrm{B}25`$, $`25`$, $`\mathrm{K}22`$ mag, cf. F.-v.A. et al. 1999) make DLA galaxies challenging targets for 10 m telescopes.

The ISM abundance evolution as a function of redshift given by our spiral models can be used to predict metallicities of stars, star clusters, and Tidal Dwarf Galaxies forming in the course of mergers and the starbursts they can trigger (F.-v.A. & Gerhard 1994a, b). Spectroscopy of those objects, in turn, provides an independent cross check of their parent galaxies’ abundance evolution and has confirmed our predictions in several cases (Schweizer & Seitzer 1998, Duc & Mirabel 1998). The metallicity of all these objects is crucial for age-dating, mass-to-light ratios and for their future luminosity and color evolution (F.-v.A. & Burkert 1995, F.-v.A. 1998, 1999).

### 4.3. SSP Models

Having available the input physics for different metallicities, not only galaxy but also single burst single metallicity models ($`=`$ Simple Stellar Population models) can be calculated (Kurth et al. 1999). Those not only provide the luminosity, color and absorption index evolution directly comparable to star cluster data but also a useful tool for the implementation into any kind of dynamical or cosmological galaxy formation and evolution model if only it contains a SF criterion. Any kind of composite stellar population, no matter how complex its SFH may be, is readily expanded into a series of SSPs and its luminosity evolution is obtained from a superposition of those of the respective SSPs. In Contardo et al. 1998 we present a first attempt to supplement the hydro-cosmological formation and evolution of a protogalaxy with observables using SSP results. We have recently completed a new set of SSP models including the detailed spectral evolution (Schulz et al. , in prep.). They are based on Padova isochrones that extend the stellar evolutionary tracks used by Kurth et al. to include the thermal pulsing AGB phase.

## 5. Outlook

Contrasting the two basic approaches to model galaxy spectra – evolutionary and population synthesis – I pointed out their respective advantages and shortcomings as well as their complementary character when dealing with complex or unexpected star formation histories. Originally, both approaches describe the stellar content. Contributions of gas and dust, both in emission and absorption, are now being included by various groups. Very first attempts are reported to consistently account for the physical links between these 3 galaxy components. They still are restricted to very simplified 1-zone closed box models with only one gas phase to keep the number of parameters restrictable. Observations allowing by today to resolve galaxies out to large distances call for spatially resolved models that include the dynamics of all components and phases and also include effects of environment or even embed a galaxy into its cosmological context. The increasing number of parameters in those kinds of models can only be balanced by comprehensive observations of spectral, chemical and dust properties at all wavelengths.

#### Acknowledgments.

It’s a pleasure to thank the organisers for a very stimulating conference and I gratefully acknowledge partial travel support from ESO.

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