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# The Princeton Variability Survey

## 1 Introduction

Amateur astronomers have long been involved in the study of variable stars. Organizations like the AAVSO (http://www.aavso.org) and the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (http://www.astro.bio2.edu/cba) have promoted the study of a variety of phenomena by amateurs and overseen the collection of many years of high quality data. As technology, particularly the CCD, has become accessible to a wider ranger of enthusiasts, the opportunities for the amateur astronomer to conduct or lead scientific inquiry have grown tremendously. Recent projects such as TASS (http://stupendous.rit.edu/tass/tass.shtml) and HCRT (http://www.mtco.com/~jgunn) have begun to make significant contributions along these lines. The importance of a comprehensive knowledge of variability across the entire sky has been outlined by Paczyński (2001) and explored experimentally through projects such as ASAS (Pojmanski 1997, 1998). Approximately $`90\%`$ of all bright, existing variable stars are thought to be yet undiscovered, with ASAS finding that approximately $`3\%`$ of a set of 140,000 monitored stars turned out to be newly discovered variables with a wide range of periodicities, as discussed by Eyer & Blake (2001). The potential contribution from the study of a set of several thousand stars, even for just a few nights, is enormous. The ultimate goal of the PVS has been to design a system to be utilized for just this purpose. In order for the desired scientific results to be achieved in as simple a manner as possible, a number of criteria must be met. Availability of components, ease of implementation, and reproducibility of results were all key concerns during the development of the PVS system.

Today, a wide array of advanced devices are available to the savvy amateur and when these devices are combined with powerful and inexpensive computational resources, the ability to survey the sky from a backyard is shown to be well within reach. The optical and electronic components of the PVS are easily available through mail order, or even a local retailer, and products already widely owned by amateurs were integrated whenever possible. Though the commercial hardware systems utilized in the PVS are shown to perform well, the power of the PVS design is derived from the software that controls all aspects of data collection and actively compensates for mechanical and electronic shortcomings in the hardware components. This collection of commercially available software products, all adhering to a set of inter-program cooperation guidelines called ASCOM (http://ascom-standards.org), work together on a PC, under Microsoft Windows, to control a telescope, camera, and, if required, a telescope dome. These programs allow simple procedures to be controlled from a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and for complex observing sessions and data reductions to be scripted in Perl, Visual Basic Script, or C++ languages. This paper provides descriptions of the hardware and software utilized in the PVS so that a similar system may be constructed by interested parties. Examples are presented of the type and quality of results that may be expected.

## 2 Hardware

### 2.1 Telescope

The PVS optical system centers around the popular Meade LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (http://www.meade.com). This telescope is well known for its low price and ease of use, and was found to be of more than adequate optical and mechanical quality for the purposes of the PVS. Here, the 12” aperture model was utilized, with the standard f/10 to f/6.3 focal reducer, yielding a working plate scale of 82”/mm. In practice, any of the Meade LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes could be used. The PVS LX200 is permanently mounted on a pier in equatorial configuration. Care was taken to ensure that the telescope base was level and properly aligned with north celestial pole, following the instructions in the Meade manual. Although the instrument can be operated in an ALT/AZ configuration, field rotation would be problematic. The telescope comes standard with the ability to communicate with a nearby PC via an RS-232 to serial port connector, facilitating the development of a robotic system. This communications cable can be easily assembled following instructions in the appendix of the Meade manual and requires a four-wire RJ11 standard phone cable and an RJ11 to DB9 (9 pin serial) adapter. The voltages associated with this RS232 signal are very low, so it was found necessary to utilize a high quality shielded twisted pair phone cable, available at computer stores as a high speed modem cable. With this connection, encoders on both axes can be read out to the computer and dual axis motors actuated in response. The LX200 makes use of a large Right Ascension gear of 180 teeth with a period of approximately 8 minutes. The periodic error of this gear was found to prohibit unguided exposures of over 60 seconds in length, with peak to peak deviations of approximately $`20\mathrm{}`$. The telescope does have the ability to actively compensate by ”learning” these errors through a training process during which an observer manually maintains the position of a guide star while the telescope’s small integrated computer records these adjustments. The periodic error of the LX200 was not found to be reproducible between pointing positions or nights, and random tracking errors of $`10\mathrm{}`$ remained even after training. An autoguider was utilized to compensate for these tracking errors during exposures at a rate of approximately 1Hz, resulting in tracking accurate to the pixel level. The necessity of an autoguider does impose a limit on the percentage of the entire sky that is observable by PVS. Since a reasonably bright guide star is required and in general a rotation of the camera is not possible during observations, only fields a fixed distance away from bright stars were observable. It was found that stars bright enough for guiding were abundant enough so that $``$1/3 of all blind pointings happened to produce a usable guide star.

When permanently mounted in equatorial mode, the LX200 requires only one alignment star in order to determine position. Once the instrument is aligned to a bright star of known coordinates, the encoders will keep track of the telescope’s Right Ascension and Declination with reasonable accuracy for the duration of the night’s observations. Through the RS-232 connection, the controlling PC can slew the telescope toward any set of coordinates. Pointings across the entire sky were found to be accurate to within $`8\mathrm{}`$, placing the desired object well within the field of view of the CCD camera used by PVS. Locally, the pointings were further enhanced to much higher accuracy. With the assistance of software, pointings to within a few arcseconds were routinely achieved during the data taking process. An important benefit resulting from the popularity of the Meade LX200 model is the Meade Advanced Products Users Group (http://www.mapug.com), an on-line reference where hundreds of technically minded amateur astronomers have posted their experiences and insights into LX200 usage, design, and enhancement. One major problem with the LX200 optical design is the focusing mechanism. The focus is controlled through movement of the primary mirror, resulting in perceptible image shift and very poor focus repeatability. A new focuser, model NGF-2 manufactured by Jim’s Mobile Instruments (http://www.jimsmobile.com), was added to remedy this problem. This motorized focuser, with an analog focus micrometer, was found to be very rigid and reliable. This addition adds several centimeters to the optical path length, resulting in slight vignetting at a level $`<10\%`$. Optical filters of the 50mm round variety were inserted into the optical path inside the focuser, as opposed to closer to the CCD chip, in order to help reduce vignetting effects and to ensure that any blemishes on the filter surface were well out of focus. Optical filters manufactured by Omega Optical (http://www.omegafilters.com) were utilized. The system accommodates only a single filter at a time, but the filters may be easily switched by removing the CCD camera from the focuser. The focuser was attached to the rear cell of the telescope using a special wide aperture adapter plate purchased from Jim’s Mobile Instruments. To the front of the focuser was attached the focal reducer, and finally the camera was affixed with a T-thread adapter to the focal reducer. Care was taken to ensure that the camera was aligned as closely as possible with the axes of the telescope in order to simplify guiding by aligning the rows and columns of the CCD chip with North, South, East, and West.

### 2.2 CCD Camera

The advent of the low cost CCD camera has revolutionized amateur astronomy. Technology once available only at professional observatories is today within the reach of many dedicated home observers. Several companies manufacture such CCD systems, but SBIG (http://www.sbig.com) was chosen as a result of experiences with cameras from a variety of makers and as a result of SBIG’s reputation for innovation, quality, and good customer service. The model ST-8E was selected as a reasonably priced, large format camera accessible to amateurs and schools. The 16-bit ST-8E uses a Kodak KAF-1602E CCD chip with an area of 1530 by 1020 pixels, each $`9\mathrm{\mu m}^2`$. This chip reaches a peak quantum efficiency of $`70\%`$ at a wavelength of 575nm and slowly loses QE to $`10\%`$ at $`1\mathrm{\mu m}`$ wavelength. An effort was made to calculate the throughput of the PVS system by observing the Vega-like star HIP 25593 (AOV, $`m_V=10.55`$). A result was obtained comparable to an estimate based on the efficiencies reported by the manufacturers of the telescope, CCD, and filter. Based on a calculated extinction coefficient of 0.09 mag/airmass in the I band, the Vega flux standard at 555.6nm of $`3.4410^9ergs/s/cm^2/\mathrm{\AA }`$ from Hayes (1985), and an assumed blackbody spectrum for HIP 25593, the total system efficiency was calculated to be $`9.95\%`$. Using the published efficiencies of the CCD, telescope, and optical filter, and assuming the unknown efficiency of the focal reducer to be $`80\%`$, a total system efficiency of $`10.7\%`$ was estimated.

Located adjacent to the imaging CCD on the same focal plane, is a smaller TI TC-211 chip used for autoguiding. Both chips are cooled with a single stage thermoelectric device to approximately $`25\mathrm{°}`$C below ambient. At a chip temperature of $`0\mathrm{°}`$C, the dark current is measured to be $`1e^{}/pixel/s`$. The camera is mechanically shuttered, so the full Kodak CCD is used for imaging at all times. The ST-8E comes with the option of antiblooming circuitry which helps to lessen the effects of bleeding caused by an overexposed stellar image. Many amateur astronomers choose this option since it is helpful in deep sky imaging. Unfortunately, the antiblooming reduces the full well capacity of the CCD from $`100,000e^{}`$ to $`50,000e^{}`$ and may also be responsible for non-linear effects that are seen to occur as a pixel nears full well capacity. For use with the PVS, a non-antiblooming version of the camera was chosen. The ST-8E reads out to the controlling PC via a parallel port interface in approximately 52 seconds, with a read noise of $`15e^{}`$RMS. In conjunction with the previously described PVS optical system, the ST-8E yields a field of view of approximately $`23\mathrm{}`$ by $`15.5\mathrm{}`$ at a plate scale of $`0.91\mathrm{}/pixel`$ with the use of the 0.63x focal reducer. All electronics are integrated into the head of the camera unit, so its total dimension is approximately 12cm round with a total weight of 0.9Kg. This weight is positioned several centimeters from the rear of the optical tube, and must be balanced with a counterweight placed near the front of telescope.

## 3 Astronomy Common Object Model software

The computer control systems for the PVS instrument were all run and developed under Microsoft Windows 2000. Windows was chosen since it is far more accessible to the majority of amateur astronomers. The programs used by the PVS are all commercially available products that adhere to the guidelines of the Astronomy Common Object Model (ASCOM, Medkeff 2000). ASCOM is a new and extremely powerful software concept that utilizes Windows ActiveX objects each representing an instrument component or a mathematical manipulation, in order to integrate the functions of a variety of independent software packages and facilitate the automation of an observing system. With products that incorporate ASCOM, complex scripts may be written that may control an entire night of observations with data handling and control of the telescope, CCD, and dome. The ASCOM products also have the advantages of open source, since scripts with differing functions can be easily written and traded between observers. It was felt that the ASCOM initiative represented a new direction in amateur astronomy, and much of the PVS was designed around the usage of ASCOM compliant products. While ASCOM products were used here to control a Meade telescope and SBIG camera, the same programs and scripts may be used with a variety of different CCD cameras and telescope mounts. The telescope control software ACPv2.0 (http://acp.dc3.com) was chosen to oversee telescope motion and pointing as well as coordinate and time transformations. The astrometric software PinPointv3.0 (http://pinpoint.dc3.com) was selected to manage all astrometric calculations. A wide variety of CCD camera control products are currently available, but MaximDL/CCDv2.12 (http://www.cyanogen.com) was found to be generally superior. MaximDL/CCD was used to control the camera and manipulate FITS data. Since all three of these products are ASCOM compliant, scripts may be prepared that utilize functions from each in order to carry out observations or analysis. A variety of languages may be used to prepare such scripts, but Visual Basic Script was selected as the PVS language since it is relatively easy to learn and is an integrated feature of Microsoft Windows. Scripts may be prepared as plain text documents in Notepad and executed with Microsoft Internet Explorer or from within the GUI of ACP. The data taking procedure was managed by a master script that incorporated elements from all three software components. ACP was used to send movement commands to the telescope, calculate topocentric coordinates for objects based on USNO calibrated UTC time and the telescope latitude, longitude, and elevation. ACP also handles issues related to time, such as Julian date calculations. PinPoint created full World Coordinate System (WCS, Calabretta & Greisn 2000) astrometric solutions for CCD data images based on best guess center-of-frame coordinates from ACP and a CDROM version of the USNOSA2.0 star catalog. These fits had typical residuals of less than a pixel, and were utilized to update the exact pointing of the telescope in near real time. Once the telescope was positioned close to a desired set of coordinates by ACP, an image was taken, the exact pointing was calculated by PinPoint, and then the telescope was moved to compensate for the error (up to a several arcminutes) in the initial pointing. This entire process of point-image-solve-repoint takes approximately 20 seconds when a 3x3 binned image is used for the test pointing and the process is executed on a computer with an 800Mhz Celeron CPU. On this same computer, PinPoint is able to solve a full resolution 1530 by 1020 image in $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}15}`$ seconds.

The CCD camera itself was controlled through the program MaximDL/CCD. This program sends commands to the camera and writes out standard 16-bit FITS files with headers containing the usual information, as well as the WCS astrometric structures prepared by PinPoint. MaximDL/CCD also controls the autoguiding by downloading images of a bright ($`<10m_I`$) star placed on the secondary CCD chip, located adjacent to the main chip, and sends small positioning corrections directly to the telescope mount at rates of up to a few times per second. These corrections were adequate to alleviate most of the periodic error in the Right Ascension gear of the telescope. The coordinates of guide stars were provided in the PVS scripts and with the known offset from the center of the main CCD to the center of the guide CCD, ACP and PinPoint were used to place the guide star in the center of the guide CCD. At the beginning of the night the script incorporated a guider calibration, whereby the exact alignment of the CCD pixels with the directions of movement of the telescope, and the speeds of those movements, are determined. As long as the camera was not removed from the telescope, this calibration was adequate for the night with small adjustments as a function of Declination being automatically calculated by MaximDL/CCD. Lastly, attempts were made to use MaximDL, in conjunction with ACP, to automatically estimate and control focus values. This was done by taking a series of 8 exposures of a bright star and attempting to minimize the stellar FWHM while ACP slowly changes focus in steps of 0.005cm. In practice, the large stellar FWHM and highly variable seeing made reliable focus determination very difficult. While the PVS system was being developed, a wide range of ambient temperatures were encountered, but the air temperatures during the time when the variable star data was taken remained fairly constant. The air temperature outside of the dome typically fell by $`6\mathrm{°}`$C during the night, resulting in a focus change of $`0.003cm/\mathrm{°}C`$. This rate was calculated during very stable observing conditions. On a more typical night, the focus values were found to be repeatable at the +/-0.005cm level, meaning adjustments were only practical when large changes in the outside temperature were encountered. After much experimentation, it was found that it was generally most efficient to focus once per night, at about 3 hours after sunset, using ACP and MaximDL to automatically estimate the best nightly focus value.

## 4 PVS Implementation

### 4.1 Site Description

The PVS data was taken from a dome located on top of Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. This suburban locale provided less than ideal observing conditions, but conditions typical of those endured by many amateur astronomers. Although the sky was seldom, if ever, photometric, and seeing averaged approximately $`5\mathrm{}`$, such conditions may still produce accurate differential photometry. The most significant limitations to the observations were sky brightness and poor seeing. Since the sky above Princeton is light polluted, observations were taken in the Bessel I band. This bandpass is red enough to be free from much of the light produced by nearby academic buildings and major metropolitan centers as well as much of the light from the moon and falls on an area of high CCD efficiency.

Sky brightness in I band is related to atmospheric glow rather than man made light pollution. In I band, the sky brightness above the PVS observing sites was found to average 17.7 mag/arcsecond2. Teare (2000) compiled sky brightness for a number of sites. For comparison, the measured brightness at Mt.Wilson, California, located above the Los Angeles basin and its millions of inhabitants, is reported to be 18.8mag/arcsecond2 in the direction of the city. The sky brightness at CTIO, Chile, is reported at 19.9 mag/arcsecond2 in I band. The average I band sky brightness for Princeton, Mt.Wilson, and CTIO are found to be more similar than the average sky brightness in other bands, indicating that the I band sky is less dependent on man made light pollution than other bands. The Princeton site is brighter in I band than Mt.Wilson probably as a result of the differences in altitude and atmospheric moisture between the two sites. Figure 1 presents a histogram of sky brightness at the PVS site over a month of observations. With exposure durations reasonable for a survey ( up to a few minutes in length), the limiting magnitude with the PVS 12” telescope at Peyton Hall was found to be approximately 16 in I band . The atmospheric conditions in Princeton were also observed and found to be notably poor. As a result of a combination of dome seeing and atmospheric turbulence, compounded by guiding errors, the image FWHM was found to routinely be greater than $`6\mathrm{}`$. Figure 2 presents a histogram of image FWHM values during a month of PVS observations. Scintillation effects were severe, and caused large amplitude (up to $`30\%`$) variations in image FWHM on frequency scales up to the 5Hz. At least a portion of the seeing effects were attributable to heat rising up into and around the telescope dome from Peyton Hall below, but similarly bad seeing conditions are reported from other observatories in the area. As an example, it was found that seeing was often $`1\mathrm{}2\mathrm{}`$ worse than average on the coldest nights, when the heating system of Peyton Hall was activated. To this end, great care was taken to ensure that the dome was adequately ventilated and temperature equalized with the outside. While the use of large fans to helped to improve the results obtained during the first hour of observations, the average seeing values achieved during the middle of the observing night were found to be unaffected by efforts to increase the efficiency of temperature equalization in the dome. The performance of the PVS system as tested in Princeton is limited by poor conditions, and thus, in a better climate the capabilities of this instrument might be considerably extended.

### 4.2 Data Collection

With the objective of monitoring several hundred stars, an area of the sky was chosen near the galactic equator, in the constellation Auriga, which would be visible for many hours during the period of the PVS observations. Sections of sky near the Milky Way should in theory yield the highest number of stars per image, but any area of the sky could, in principle, be studied. A strip of 5 pointings, amounting to a total field of view of $`0.5\mathrm{°}^2`$, was selected near the intersection of the galactic plane and the ecliptic. One of these pointings contained the open star cluster NGC 1912. This rich cluster, with $`300`$ members, has an HR diagram from the observations of Subramaniam & Sagar (1999), which indicates that it may contain lower instability strip variable stars at magnitudes accessible to the PVS instrument. A nearby open cluster of similar age and metallicity, NGC 2516, was studied by Zerbi et al. (1998) and was found to have several short period intrinsic variable stars. The other four fields, all within a few tens of arcminutes, were picked to be fields with many stars from digitized sky survey plates. Eyer & Blake (2001) analyzed the variable star catalog produced by ASAS and found that the histogram of periods below 50 days peaked at periods a bit longer than 1d. As a result, it was not critical that the PVS data be time sampled at rates of more than two or three times per hour. For example, 15 data points per night over several nights would yield frequency sampling perfectly adequate for accurate determinations of the periods of many intrinsic (Cepheid, RR Lyrae, dwarf Cepheid,Gamma Doradus) and extrinsic (contact binaries, eclipsing binaries) variable stars.

Based on the conditions in Princeton, each of the five fields observed by PVS was allotted 240 seconds per observation. This amounts to 150 seconds of integration, 50 seconds for image read out, and 40 seconds for overhead associated with astrometric analysis and pointing. The 150 seconds for integration time was found to balance the faint limit imposed by sky brightness and the saturation of bright ($`m_I<8`$) stars. The telescope was parked at the end of the evening at a prescribed Altitude and Azimuth so that the next night, with accurate local time and telescope latitude and longitude, a reasonable estimate could be made of initial telescope Right Ascension and Declination. The night’s initial alignment of the telescope with a bright star was therefore automated. After the power was turned on, a script wasexecuted and the remainder of the night’s observations were completed robotically. Images of the five fields were taken in series for a prescribed number of hours. For example, with five fields to be observed, the telescope system would automatically cycle between the fields in the pattern A,B,C,D,E,A,B… until morning twilight is reached. This strategy resulted in up to 20 images of each field per night. The images were not intentionally dithered. Instead it was intended that each each exposure of a given field place the stars near the same pixels. A master script initialized the camera, began the camera cool down, executed the initial telescope alignment, moved the telescope with high accuracy to pre-determined coordinates, began guiding, and gathered data exposures. Unfortunately, this script did not include dome automation for the results presented here. The cost of automating the pre-existing dome at Peyton Hall was prohibitive, so the dome was moved by hand every hour or so. There are several commercially available robotic dome systems that utilize ASCOM compliant software, and as a result, dome control may be integrated seamlessly into PVS scripts in the future. Sets of five dark frames were taken each night and used during data reduction to subtract both the dark current and bias from the data images. Sets of 10 flat field exposures were taken from the evening sky following sunset and from an evenly illuminated flat screen inside the dome and were used to compensate for pixel to pixel variations in system light sensitivity. Exposure times for the flat fields were set so that the CCD chip was filled to approximately half of full well capacity. Experience with both sky and dome flat fields showed that the increased flexibility of taking flats inside the dome, as opposed to off of the twilight sky, made this method advantageous. While the sky flats were taken, it was the dome flats which were later utilized for the image reduction since they were found to be more repeatable and could always be produced, even if weather limited observations to only a small number of hours during the middle of the night. A test was done to determine the quality of the dome flats, as compared to the sky flats, by reducing and photometering a small image section time series with both types of flats. The differences in the flat fields was found to have a negligible effect on the resulting photometry. The contribution from the flat fields to the final photometric errors was estimated to be $`<0.5\%`$.

### 4.3 Data Reduction

As a result of the limiting magnitude at the PVS test site, the data images were not considered crowded. Typically, average star densities on the CCD frames were on the order of 3,000 pixels per star. In this regime, a number of different photometry techniques are applicable (Alard 2000, Alard & Lupton 1998). Though simple aperture photometry could be utilized, the technique of differential image analysis was applied in order to gain experience with this method for the time when a better observing site might produce CCD images sufficiently dense to warrant this advanced treatment of the data. This method has several other advantages, including high accuracy, no need for identification of individual comparison stars to produce differential magnitudes, and an ability to deal with the highly variable PSFs found in the PVS data. Image subtraction has been shown by Wozniak (2000) to produce photon noise limited photometry and thus could be expected to yield the best possible results for the PVS data. Data reduction tasks such as flat fielding, dark subtraction, and cosmic ray removal were carried out within the Interactive Data Language (IDL) environment.

There are numerous publicly available IDL codes to manage FITS file I/O (http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/homepage.html) as well as a wide variety of mathematical and image analysis routines. Each night’s flat fields were read into an image cube, individually normalized by dividing by the sigma-clipped image mean, and then the normalized images were averaged, with sigma clipping, to produce a robust nightly flat field. While there were enough counts in the flat fields to limit the statistical noise from the flat to much less than the statistical noise from the sky background in the images, systematic effects were visible in the flat fields as subtle structural changes between images. Fortunately, star centroids remained quite close to the same pixels throughout each night, so large scale, high amplitude gradients and inconsistencies in the flat fields were effectively rendered null for differential photometry. The dark frames were also read into a data cube and averaged, in order to help eliminate cosmic ray hits, and a nightly dark frame is created. The dark current of the CCD camera is a function of chip temperature, so it is important to prepare a separate dark frame for each night’s observations. Similarly, changes in the optical surfaces and focus require that a separate flat field be prepared for each night. The dark frame was subtracted from the image frame and the result divided by the flat field. Finally, cosmic ray hits were removed from the data images. There are several available IDL codes to do this, but LACOSMIC (van Dokkum 2001) was found to be most effective. New FITS files with with the reduced data and full header, including WCS information, were written. A file called $`\mathrm{𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠}`$ and containing the image names, Julian date times of observations, and seeing values was also written out to be later referenced during the photometry. The seeing, or image FWHM, was calculated by fitting a simple Gaussian to the profiles of isolated stars. The reduced image FITS files and the $`\mathrm{𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠}`$ file were then used with the image subtraction code to produce photometric data.

The image subtraction algorithms were implemented with the ISIS2.1 package prepared by Christophe Alard (http://www.iap.fr/users/alard/package.html). The first step in the analysis was the sub-pixel image alignment, which is required prior to image convolution. Since the CCD camera was occasionally removed and re-attached to the telescope, it was necessary to use the 2nd degree image interpolation option so that translations, as well as small rotations, could be corrected for. The image to which all others were aligned, called REFERENCE in the ISIS configuration file, was chosen to be the image with the best seeing. It was important that this fiducial image be of high quality so that the alignment would be sufficiently accurate. ISIS created a file called $`\mathrm{𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑝}`$ which tabulates the average residuals for each alignment with which the sub-pixel residuals were verified. Any image that failed to align to the reference image would be flagged in the log file and would therefore be removed from list of data images to be analyzed. Once the images were well aligned, a new reference image of high signal to noise was created. To do this the 10 best images were combined using the $`\mathrm{𝑆𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑓}`$ procedure. The 2nd degree spatial kernel variation option along with 1st degree background variation fitting were used in order to help compensate for the visually obvious variations in PSF and background across the frames. The images were not sub-divided prior to analysis as was done by some users of the image subtraction method. The reference image was convolved to match the PSF within each data image and then the two were subtracted to determine differences in flux. The subtraction was carried out by the $`\mathrm{𝑆𝑢𝑏𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡}`$ script and produced subtracted images that were nearly devoid of stars. The entire process is computationally intensive and may take several hours, depending on the number of data images. Using the ISIS package on a Linux PC, the production of fluxes from approximately 100 images required just less than 1 hour of computational time on a 1.0GHz Pentium III work station with 1GB of RAM. The errors in the subtraction photometry were found to be small and well-behaved. Strictly speaking, variance in the subtracted images should be the sum of the Poisson deviations in the reference and data images. In practice, it was found that bright but not saturated stars often have convolution residuals several times those expected from photon noise. This effect, due to seeing variations, is explained by Alard and Lupton (1998). The image subtraction methods were found to work extremely well for the PVS data. Figure 3 shows the histogram of the residuals of a subtracted image normalized by the Poisson errors expected from the reference and data image. This figure demonstrates that there was very little residual starlight in the subtracted images. The idealized distribution of the residuals, N, is overplotted with the dashed line. The actual residuals fall into a N\[0.005,0.98\] distribution, indicating that the image subtraction techniques worked quite well and that accuracies at the limit of the sky noise should be achieved.

In order to detect variability, the subtracted images, normalized by the gain adjusted sums of the Poisson deviations of the reference and data images, were squared and coadded. The resulting variance image made variable objects easily identifiable both visually and by a simple detection script. Variable sources, which have variance well above that expected from just photon noise, were photometered with basic aperture photometry on the individual subtracted images in order to determine how stellar flux changed with time. False detections were found to occur for bright and nearly saturated stars as well as for stars near the edges of the frames where drift in the image centroid during a night may cause stars to come in and out of the field of view. The errant bright star detections, in this case for stars brighter than about 8th magnitude, were generally disregarded. In practice, this amounted to very few stars, and considering that many of the stars this bright would have been previously studied by other programs, the loss is considered negligible. The photometric errors were found to be quite small for all stars. Figure 4 shows average errors in magnitudes for a star of a given I band magnitude. Overplotted on these points is the line indicating the magnitude errors from sky noise that would be expected in the aperture photometry of a subtracted image with average seeing and sky brightness. For stars fainter than approximately $`m_I=11`$, the photometric accuracy was nearly sky limited. The contribution from scintillation noise was calculated according to the formula of Young (1974) and was found to be $`0.002`$mag for 150s integrations and the low elevation of the PVS site.

A master list of stars for each frame was prepared from the averaged reference image using the DAOPHOT FIND routine with detection thresholds determined by Poisson statistics, as outlined in appendix B of the DAOPHOT II manual. The fluxes, as measured from the subtracted images of all of the stars in the master list, were searched for periodic signals using the Lomb Periodogram algorithm described by Lomb (1976). This algorithm produces a probability statistic that the fluctuations of a given star are due to noise. A list of the 10 most likely variables in each field was prepared so that these stars could be inspected visually. Fluxes were converted to magnitudes by attempting to find stars of known I band magnitude in each frame in order to set a frame zero point. The comparison stars for each frame were chosen by searching the SIMBAD database (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fid.pl) for stars with known spectral type and magnitude. A total of 5 stars with $`m_I<11`$ and spectral type A to F were found within the observed fields and used to set the magnitude zero points. Since here the absolute zero points of the stellar magnitudes are less important than the differential magnitudes and cataloged stars with accurate I band magnitudes were difficult to find, only these simple steps were taken to tie the PVS magnitudes to the standard magnitude scale. This process does introduce errors in the zero point magnitudes of all the stars, but it in no way affects the differential photometry. Since change in flux is being studied here, rather than average flux, these errors are considered acceptable.

## 5 Results

Observations totaling about 30 hours were carried out during the month of 2001 December. Data was taken under a variety of conditions, including partial cloud, since differential magnitudes are known to be relatively robust to poor observational conditions. Even during the best hours of atmospheric transparency and stability, the conditions were found to be relatively poor. Seeing and sky brightness combined to produce a limiting magnitude, at which expected photometric errors due to sky noise just exceed $`10\%`$, of approximately 15.5 in I-band. The poor conditions also caused occasional high amplitude scintillation affects that, when combined with residual mechanical guiding errors, caused jumps in the guide star centroid that were unrecoverable by the autoguider. As a result, approximately 10% of data images were smeared and not useful. These images were rejected by the astrometric fitting routines. The total number of stars observed was approximately 3,000 over the five fields, with approximately 1,000 of these stars being bright enough to have S/N such that photometric errors are $`<10\%`$. With a baseline of 30 days and data sampled at a incidence of 3 measurements per hour over portions of 10 separate nights, many types of variable stars would be detected when enough stars are measured with sufficient accuracy. Experience with ASAS has shown that the rate of short period eclipsing binaries is high enough that several may have been expected in the PVS fields. As a result of sky brightness and seeing, the data images are unfortunately not deep enough or of high enough signal to noise to produce these results. Further more, many of the variables discovered by ASAS ($`3\%`$ of observed stars) vary on time scales longer than these observations, so they were not detected with PVS. As a result of these factors, only one new variable star could be positively identified at the several sigma level. This new variable, previously designated $`BD+35\mathrm{\_}1114`$, is a 9.5 magnitude O or B type star in the constellation Auriga, with J2000 coordinates $`05\stackrel{\mathrm{h}}{\mathrm{.}}28\stackrel{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{.}}09.6\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}+35\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}16\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}56\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$ The period was found to be 0.81d and the amplitude 0.34 mag. The phased light curve is shown in figure 5.

## 6 Conclusions

The design of a robotic photometric telescope, built out of commercially available and inexpensive components, is outlined. Results from one month of observations with the PVS instrument are presented, and it is demonstrated that the instrument produces high quality photometric results, even from a location with extremely bad atmospheric conditions. The discovery of a new short period variable star is presented. Though the system performed as well as could be expected given the atmospheric conditions at the Princeton, New Jersey, site, the full potential of the PVS design cannot be determined until it is tested at a site with better conditions. A decrease in sky brightness by 1 magnitude, an improvement of mean seeing to 3”, and a higher percentage of clear nights would result in a tremendous increase in the number of variable stars that could be discovered by the PVS system. Many suitable sites exists, including ones, such as Mt.Wilson, within easy reach of major metropolitan areas of the American South West. Instrumental and computational techniques are developed and tested here so that a system could be efficiently and economically installed and operated at a better site.

The author would like to thank Bohdan Paczyński for his tireless support, guidance, encouragement, and patience while this research was carried out, William Golden for his generous support of this work, and Bruce Draine for many hours of assistance and discussions. Thanks also to Bob Denny, the developer of the ASCOM standard. It is a pleasure to thank the referee, Michael Richmond, for his extremely detailed and helpful comments on this work and for his assistance in making important improvements to the original manuscript.


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# Extended Gauge Sectors at Multi-TeV 𝑒⁺𝑒⁻ Colliders

## I Introduction

There are many models that approximate the standard model (SM) at present collider energies but that have a much richer particle spectrum above 100 GeV. A class of models that extends the SM in a natural way are extended gauge sectors ghp ; c-g ; dnr ; e6 . These come in different varieties; Grand Unified Theories (GUTS) such as $`E_6`$ and $`SO(10)`$ (and their Supersymmetric versions) in which the subgroups of the SM are embedded into one larger group, of which an interesting variant is the Left-Right symmetric model embedded in a GUT, $`E_6/SO(10)SU(3)_c\times SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R\times U(1)`$ e6 . There are also numerous non-GUT models of extended gauge sector in the literature; the Un-unified model, horizontal gauge models, and topcolour, to name but a few. The point is that numerous possibilities exist that give rise to rich phenomenologies. To distinguish among the many possibilities and reveal the underlying theory we will need to elucidate the TeV particle spectrum.

There are many new types of particles; Extra $`Z^{}`$’s and $`W^{}`$’s bosons c-g ; leike ; godfrey ; riemann , New fermions of various types dnr  such as mirror fermions which are $`SU(2)_R`$ doublets and $`SU(2)_L`$ singlets, vector fermions which are both $`SU(2)_R`$ and $`SU(2)_L`$ doublets, and $`SU(2)`$ singlets like massive neutrinos, and Leptoquarks, Diquarks and Bileptons. Finally, an extended Higgs sector is probably the most obvious extension of the SM. Establishing any extension of the standard will require two steps; Discovery and Identification. For the former it is necessary to identify a signal that can be distinguished from background. For identification there are many tools that can be used — cross sections, angular distributions, decay signatures such as widths and branching ratios, and polarization observables.

It will not be possible to discuss these topics in detail in this brief contribution so I will limit myself to brief comments on $`W^{}`$’s and $`LQ`$’s and refer the interested reader to more detailed accounts elsewhere ghp ; c-g ; dnr ; e6 ; leike .

## II Extra Gauge Bosons

Extra gauge bosons, both charged ($`W^{}`$) and/or neutral ($`Z^{}`$), are a feature of many models of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) c-g ; leike . A few models that have received attention recently and that we consider are the Left-Right symmetric model (LRM) based on the gauge group $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R\times U(1)_{BL}`$, which has right-handed charged currents and restores parity at high energy, the Un-Unified model (UUM) based on the gauge group $`SU(2)_q\times SU(2)_l\times U(1)_Y`$ where the quarks and leptons each transform under their own $`SU(2)`$, a Third Family Model (3FM) based on the gauge group $`SU(2)_h\times SU(2)_l\times U(1)_Y`$ where the quarks and leptons of the third (heavy) family transform under a separate group and the KK model (KK) which contains the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the SM gauge bosons that are a possible consequence of theories with large extra dimensions. We also consider a $`W^{}`$ with SM couplings (SSM). In studying extra gauge bosons, we are interested in two issues; the sensitivity to $`Z^{}`$ and $`W^{}`$ discovery and the measurement of their couplings to determine the underlying theory.

### II.1 $`Z^{}`$ Search and Identification

In $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions, the $`Z^{}`$ contributes to the cross section via an s-channel propagator. For $`\sqrt{s}=M_Z^{}`$ the resonance cross section is rather large, several orders of magnitude above the SM cross section, and the existence of a $`Z^{}`$ would be obvious. In this case detailed studies could be performed and the properties of the $`Z^{}`$ could be extracted to high precision. Off resonance, the $`Z^{}`$ propagator interferes with that of the $`\gamma `$ and SM $`Z^0`$ leading to deviations from the SM expectations. By combining the numerous available observables, a sensitivity to $`Z^{}`$’s with masses several times $`\sqrt{s}`$ can be achieved. Depending on the mass of the $`Z^{}`$ one can also constrain its properties, such as it’s couplings to different fermions. Numerous studies exist in the literature c-g ; leike ; godfrey ; riemann  and as we have nothing new to add at this point, we will not discuss $`Z^{}`$’s further.

### II.2 $`W^{}`$ Search and Identification

Until recently, $`W^{}`$ searches in the literature consisted of the $`W`$ pair production process $`e^+e^{}W_R^+W_R^{}`$ and single $`W`$ production in $`e^\pm \gamma W_R^\pm N`$. In both cases the search limits are close to the kinematic limit which is $`\sqrt{s}/2`$ in the former case and $`\sqrt{s_{e\gamma }}`$ in the latter case. The exact limits will depend on the parameters of the model.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that limits greater than $`\sqrt{s}`$ can be achieved by considering the interference effects from t-channel $`W^{}`$ exchange in the processes $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$ and $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$. Here we give a brief summary of recent work on the subject and refer the interested reader to the more detailed presentations of the process $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$ in Ref. wp1  and of the process $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$ in Ref. wp2 .

In the process $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$ wp1 , the signal is an energetic photon. The kinematic variables of interest are the photon’s energy, $`E_\gamma `$, and its angle relative to the incident electron, $`\theta _\gamma `$, both defined in the $`e^+e^{}`$ centre-of-mass frame. To take into account finite detector acceptance we imposed the constraints on the kinematic variables: $`E_\gamma 10`$ GeV and $`10^o\theta _\gamma 170^o`$. Several backgrounds should be taken into account. The most dangerous is radiative Bhabba-scatter with the $`e^+`$ and $`e^{}`$ go undetected down the beam. This can be eliminated by restricting the photon’s transverse momentum to $`p_T^\gamma >\sqrt{s}\mathrm{sin}\theta _\gamma \mathrm{sin}\theta _v/(\mathrm{sin}\theta _\gamma +\mathrm{sin}\theta _v)`$ where $`\theta _v=25`$ mrad and is the minimum angle to which the veto detectors may observe electrons or positrons. There are also higher order backgrounds which cannot be suppressed, such as $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\nu ^{}\overline{\nu }^{}\gamma `$, which must be included in the SM cross section but are fully calculable. The low $`E_\gamma `$ region is most sensitive to the $`Z^{}`$. The best limits are obtained by implementing a kinematic cut on $`E_\gamma `$ to eliminate the radiative return to the SM $`Z^0`$-pole. The statistical significance can be increased by binning the $`E_\gamma `$ distribution and calculating the $`\chi ^2`$. The limits obtained by binning the $`E_\gamma `$ distribution and calculating the $`\chi ^2`$ with and without a 2% systematic error added in quadrature with the statistical error are given in Table I. The limits were obtained using $`e_L^{}`$ except for the LRM where $`e_R^{}`$ was used. In general, the limits are highly model and machine dependent.

$`W^{}`$ couplings can also be constrainted using $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$. If a $`W^{}`$ exists such that $`M_W^{}`$ is much lower than the search limit, we would expect it to be discovered at the LHC in which case we would want to measure its couplings. In Fig. 1 we show constraints for $`W^{}`$ couplings that could be obtained using $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$.

The processs $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$ is also sensitive to $`Z^{}`$’s. Although this process is not as sensitive as other final states to $`Z^{}`$’s, it offers a means of measuring the $`Z^{}\nu \overline{\nu }`$ coupling which could be useful in determining the $`Z^{}`$’s origin wp1 .

The sensitivity of the process $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$ to $`W^{}`$’s was also studied wp2  where the $`W^{}`$’s enter via t-channel exchange. We considered two cases; the backscattered laser case and the Weizacker-Williams photon distribution which applies to $`e^+e^{}e^+\nu q+X`$. Starting with the subprocess $`e\gamma \nu q\overline{q}`$ the $`W^{}`$ contributions can be enhanced by imposing the kinematic cut that either the $`q`$ or $`\overline{q}`$ is collinear to the beam axis. In this kinematic region the process $`e\gamma \nu q\overline{q}`$ is approximated quite well by the simpler process $`eq\nu q^{}`$ where the quark is described by the quark parton content of the photon, the so-called resolved photon approximation. The process $`eq\nu q^{}`$ was used to obtain limits as it is computationally much faster and free of sensitivity to the quark masses and collinearity cuts.

As usual, kinematic cuts were included to reflect finite detector acceptance; the angle of the outgoing $`q(\overline{q})`$ was restricted to the range $`10^o\theta _{q(\overline{q})}170^o`$. We included $`u`$, $`d`$, $`s`$, and $`c`$-quark contributions and used the leading order GRV distributionsgrv . The search limits are fairly insensitive to the specific choice of distribution. The kinematic variable most sensitive to $`W^{}`$ is the $`p_{T_q}`$ distribution. $`\sigma _R`$ was only found to be sensitive to the LR model but even small $`e_L`$ pollution swamps $`\sigma _R`$.

As always, it is necessary to consider and eliminate serious backgrounds. The dominant backgrounds are two jet final states comprised of $`\gamma \gamma q\overline{q}`$, the once resolved reactions $`\gamma gq\overline{q}`$ and $`\gamma qgq`$, and the twice resolved reactions $`ggq\overline{q}`$, $`q\overline{q}q\overline{q}`$, $`qgqg`$, $`gggg`$, $`qqqq`$ …, where one of the jets goes down the beam pipe and is not observed. These backgrounds can be effectively eliminated by imposing the constraint $`p_{T_q}>40,75,100`$ GeV for $`\sqrt{s}=0.5,1.0,`$ and 1.5 TeV, respectively. Discovery limits were obtained by binning the $`p_{T_q}`$ distribution and calculating the $`\chi ^2`$ for an assumed integrated luminosity. As before, a 2% systematic error was included in quadrature with the statistical error. The discovery limits using the backscattered laser spectrum are given in Table I. In all cases, the limits from the backscattered laser are better than those from the Weizsacker Williams process due to the harder photon spectrum of the former. Again, the limits are given for unpolarized beams. Electron beam polarization was not found to yield significantly improved results for this process.

The limits from the process $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$ compare favourably with those from $`e^+e^{}\nu \overline{\nu }\gamma `$ in all models other than the LRM. In that case, the limits are comparable for the two processes. The LHC is expected to detect $`W^{}`$’s up to a mass of about 5.9 TeV lhc , although that number is also highly model dependent. Hence the process $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$ shows promise even compared with the reach of the LHC. Therefore, a more detailed consideration of the exact process, rather than the resolved photon approximation given here, and including radiative corrections, is motivated.

In Fig. 2 we show the contraints on $`W^{}`$ couplings that can be obtained from the process $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$. We assume that a $`W^{}`$ has been discovered elsewhere and its mass is known. The contours are based on the $`p_{T}^{}{}_{q}{}^{}`$ distribution.

## III Leptoquarks

Leptoquarks appear in many theories, from GUTS to technicolour to composite models. Leptoquarks are colour triplets or antitriplets that carry both baryon and lepton quantum numbers and can have either spin 0 or 1. According to the Buchmuller-Ruckl-Wyler classification there are 10 distinct types of LQ’s. At the LHC, with $`L_{\mathrm{int}}=100`$ fb<sup>-1</sup>, LQ’s can be discovered up to $`M_{LQ}=1.4`$ TeV and 2.2 TeV for scalar and vector LQ’s respectively.

We consider LQ production via the quark content of the photon in $`e\gamma `$ collisions lq . The quark fuses with the electron to produce a LQ and the $`\sigma (eqLQ)`$ cross section is convoluted with the quark distribution inside the photon which is subsequently convoluted with the photon distribution function. Cross sections for LQ production for the $`e\gamma `$ case using a backscattered laser and for the $`e^+e^{}`$ case with Weizacker-Williams photons are shown in Fig. 3. In addition to direct production one can also obtain indirect limits via t-channel LQ exchange in $`e^+e^{}q\overline{q}`$ hr-lq .

For the luminosities envisaged at future $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders such as the LC and CLIC, LQ’s can be discovered almost up to the kinematic limit. Discovery limits are given in Table II. The limits for $`q=1/3`$ and $`5/3`$ LQ’s are slightly larger than for $`q=4/3`$ and $`2/3`$ LQ’s because of the higher u-type quark content of the photon compared to the d-type quark content. The vector LQ’s have slightly higher limits compared to scalar LQ’s because of vector vs scalar couplings to fermions. Finally, it turns out that for some cases $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders yield higher limits than $`e\gamma `$ colliders because for $`e\gamma `$ colliders the maximum $`\sqrt{s_{e\gamma }}`$ is less than that of an $`e^+e^{}`$ collider and the high luminosities more than compensate for the softer photon spectrum. It should be noted that this search strategy has been employed by the OPAL opal  and DELPHI delphi  collaborations to obtain LQ limits.

If leptoquarks were discovered their production in $`e\gamma `$ collisions could be used to identify them which would be crucial for determining their theoretical origin. Their decay distributions can be used to determine whether they are scalar or vector and electron polarization asymmetries can be used to determine the chirality of their couplings to fermions. Finally, the cross sections of the different LQ’s are different enough that they can be separated on this basis to relatively high masses.

## IV Summary and Outlook

Extended gauge sectors give rise to a very rich phenomenology. In this brief report we only touched the surface, neglecting many important topics such as extra fermions, bileptons and diquarks.

A considerable body of work exists on $`Z^{}`$’s and a large effort continues to be applied to the topic. The exclusion limits that can be obtained at TeV linear colliders are similar to, or exceed, the discovery limits of the LHC. If a $`Z^{}`$ is discovered at the LHC, the LC would be an important tool for its identification. Recently, indirect effects of $`W^{}`$’s in $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`e\gamma `$ collisions have also been studied and it was found that measurements at $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders are sensitive to $`W^{}`$ bosons considerably higher in mass than their centre-of-mass energy. For some models, the reach that can be obtained at a LC is competitive with that of the LHC, particularly in the case of the process $`e\gamma \nu q+X`$. If a $`W^{}`$ were discovered at the LHC the LC would be an important tool in measuring their properties. However, there have only been a few such studies and there is room for new ideas. The studies of both $`Z^{}`$’s and $`W^{}`$’s need to be updated to include the energies relevant to CLIC and to take into account the higher luminosities now envisaged. Leptoquarks could be discovered for masses up to almost $`\sqrt{s}`$. If LQ’s are discovered, $`e\gamma `$ could make significant contributions to their understanding.

To conclude, high energy $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders have considerable potential for the discovery of the particles expected in extended gauge theories. But more than that, they could play a crucial role in measuring the properties of new particles, and hence unravel the underlying theory.


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# TWO-PARTICLE RESONANT STATES IN A MANY-BODY MEAN FIELD

## Abstract

A formalism to evaluate the resonant states produced by two particles moving outside a closed shell core is presented. The two particle states are calculated by using a single particle representation consisting of bound states, Gamow resonances and scattering states in the complex energy plane (Berggren representation). Two representative cases are analysed corresponding to whether the Fermi level is below or above the continuum threshold. It is found that long lived two-body states (including bound states) are mostly determined by either bound single-particle states or by narrow Gamow resonances. However, they can be significantly affected by the continuum part of the spectrum.

The prospect of reaching and measuring very unstable nuclei, as is materializing now, opens the possibility of studying spectroscopic processes occuring in the continuum part of nuclear spectra. Much work has already been done in this subject, particularly regarding halo nuclei . Still, the role played by single-particle resonances and of the continuum itself upon particles moving in the continuum of a heavy nucleus is not fully understood. For instance, one may wonder whether two particles outside a core where the Fermi level is immersed in the continuum may produce a quasibound state and, in this case, whether that state is built upon narrow single-particle resonances or by an interplay between the two-particle interaction and the continuum, or by a combination of these mechanisms, as it happens in typical halo nuclei. To answer such questions is a difficult undertaking, particularly because the resonances on the real energy axis do not correspond to a definite state. A way of approaching this problem is by solving the Schrödinger equation with outgoing boundary conditions. One thus obtains the resonances as poles of the S-matrix in the complex energy plane. These poles (Gamow resonances) can be considered discrete states on the same footing as bound states (see Ref.  and references therein). However, in this case one finds that physical quantities, like energies and probabilities, become complex. One may attempt to give meaning to these complex quantities. Thus, it is usually assumed that the imaginary part of the energy of a decaying resonance is (except a minus sign) half the width. Other examples are the interpretation of complex cross sections done by Berggren  or the widely used radioactive decay width evaluated by Thomas as the residues of the S-matrix . All these interpretations are valid only if the resonances are isolated and, therefore, narrow. In this case the residues of the S-matrix becomes real. One may thus apply this theory and evaluate all resonances, giving physical meaning to the narrow ones only. To achieve this goal a representation consisting of bound states, Gamow resonances and the proper continuum was proposed some years ago  (Berggren representation). One chooses the proper continuum as a given contour in the complex energy plane and forms the basis set of states (the representation) as the bound states plus the Gamow resonances included in that contour plus the scattering states on the contour .

Using the Berggren representation one can evaluate any one-particle quantity in the complex energy-plane, e. g. the eigenstates of a deformed potential in terms of the Berggren states provided by a spherical basis. One may thus think that the Berggren representation can also be used straightaway to evaluate many-particle quantities, as one does with the shell-model using bound representations. Unfortunately this is not the case. The root of the problem is that the set of energies of the two-particle basis states may cover the whole complex energy plane of interest. To show this we will analyse the relatively simple case of two particles outside a core in terms of the Green function. For clarity of presentation we will give here the main points of the derivations leading to the Berggren representation.

The single-particle Green function in the complex energy plane can be written as

$$g(r,r^{^{}};E)=\underset{n=1}{\overset{N_d}{}}\frac{w_n(r)w_n(r^{^{}})}{Eϵ_n}+_{L^+}𝑑ϵ\frac{u(r,ϵ)u(r^{^{}},ϵ)}{Eϵ}$$
(1)
where $`L^+`$ is an integration path on the complex energy plane and $`u(r,ϵ)`$ is the corresponding scattering function. The index $`n`$ labels the bound states and Gamow resonances which lie between the real energy axis and the integration path and $`w_n(r)`$ are the corresponding wave functions, i. e. the outgoing solutions of the Schrödinger equation. The total number of bound plus Gamow states, i. e. of discrete states, is $`N_d`$. Notice that the Berggren metric in Eq. (1) corresponds to the product of a function times itself, and not times its complex conjugate. This induces the complex probabilities mentioned above. But on the real energy axis (where the scattering functions can be chosen to be real) the Berggren and Hilbert internal products coincide. Therefore, since this formalism is based upon a Cauchy transformation to the complex energy plane, it should provide at the same time the physical complex quantities mentioned above plus the real ones as evaluated by using bound representations, e. g. within the shell model. This is a strong constraint that will help us to probe the formalism and check the computer codes.

The numerical evaluation of the integral requires the discretization of the complex energy $`ϵ`$ along the integration contour. We will use the Gauss integration method with a total number of integration points $`N_g`$ and weights $`h_p`$. This defines the Berggren representation, i. e. the set of orthonormal (in the Berggren metric) basis vectors $`\{|\phi _j\}`$ given by the set of bound and Gamow states $`\{\phi _p(r)\}=\{w_p(r)\}`$ and the discretized scattering states $`\{\phi _p(r)\}=\{\sqrt{h_p}u(r,ϵ_p)\}`$. The single particle Green function can then be written as

$$g(r,r^{^{}};E)=\underset{p=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\phi _p(r)\phi _p(r^{^{}})}{Eϵ_p}$$
(2)
where $`N=N_d+N_g`$.

The two-particle Green function is ,

$$G(r,r^{^{}};E)=G_0(r,r^{^{}};E)+𝑑r_1𝑑r_2G_0(r,r_1;E)V(r_1r_2)G(r_2,r^{^{}};E)$$
(3)
where $`G_0`$ is the bare (zeroth-order) two-particle Green function which within the Berggren representation reads,

$$G_0(r,r^{^{}};E)=\underset{ij=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\phi _i(r)\phi _j(r)\phi _i(r^{^{}})\phi _j(r^{^{}})}{E(ϵ_i+ϵ_j)}$$
(4)
As seen from Eq. (3), in order to obtain the poles and residua (i. e. energies and wave functions) of the correlated two-particle Green function one has to assume that they do not coincide with those in the zeroth-order Green function . But by choosing an arbitrary path for the one-particle scattering states in the complex energy plane, one may obtain a continuum plane of zeroth-order poles corresponding to the sum $`ϵ_i+ϵ_j`$. Therefore, in this plane one would not be able to evaluate any two-particle pole.

As an illuminating example we show in Fig. 1(a) a rectangular one-particle contour without any discrete state. From Eq. (4) one sees that in the complex two-particle energy plane the zeroth-order energies are given by the geometrical sum of a point $`i`$ on the one-particle contour (corresponding to the complex energy $`ϵ_i`$) plus another point $`j`$ on that contour, such that $`ij`$. These energies are located in the two-particle complex energy plane as shown in Fig. 1(b). For example, the dashed region located between $`a`$ and $`2a`$ on the real energy axis is produced by one of the particles lying in the first segment of the one-particle contour, i. e. with energy $`ϵ_i=(x,0)`$ such that $`0<x<a`$, and the second particle in the segment with energy $`ϵ_j=(a,y)`$ such that $`c<y<0`$. Therefore the zeroth-order two-particle energy is $`ϵ_i+ϵ_j=(x+a,y)`$, which covers the region mentioned above. The rest of the dashed plane in Fig. 1(b) is produced in the same fashion, with the energies of the particles on different segments of the one-particle contour.

We thus see that if $`2a<b`$ then there is a region in the two-particle complex energy plane which is free from any uncorrelated solution. Therefore, in this region one can search for resonant states of the interacting two-particle system. By choosing the real energies $`a`$ and $`b`$ conveniently, i. e. such that $`2a<b`$ as in Fig. 1(b), one can study two-particle resonances lying in any reasonable energy region. We will call this the ”allowed” energy region.

The allowed region in the two-particle complex energy plane plays a role similar to the contour in the one-particle energy plane. That is, only those one-particle resonances with complex energies that lie between the real energy axis and the contour can be evaluated by using the Berggren representation . In the same fashion, only those two-particle resonant states with complex energies contained in the allowed region can be evaluated within that representation.

The allowed region can be determined by fulfilling some physically meaningful requirements. Thus, one expects that the single-particle resonances and the continuum scattering states closest to threshold would play an important role in the building up of correlated low lying two-particle states. Therefore they should be included in the basis, which implies that the one-particle contour of Fig. 1(a) should correspond to small values of $`a`$ and large values of $`b`$, as indeed is the case in Fig. 1(b).

Using the Berggen representation one can obtain the two-particle TDA equations in a standard fashion. We will use in our derivations separable forces so that those equations convert into the usual dispersion relation , i. e.

$$1/G_\lambda =\underset{ij}{}\frac{C^2(ij,\lambda )}{Eϵ_iϵ_j}$$
(5)
where $`E`$ is the complex energy of the two-particle states carrying angular momenta $`\lambda `$, $`C(ij,\lambda )`$ is the $`\lambda `$-multipole component of the interaction while $`i`$ and $`j`$ label the single-particle states with complex energies $`ϵ`$ corresponding to our Berggren representation. For a detailed expression of the coefficient $`C(ij,\lambda )`$ see, e. g., Eq. (32) of Ref. . It contains the matrix element of the radial field $`f_\lambda (r)`$ in the separable interaction, i. e. $`r^2𝑑r\phi _i(r)f_\lambda (r)\phi _j(r)`$ Notice again the Berggren metric in the radial internal products and that it is the square (and not the absolute value square) of the matrix elements that appear in the dispersion relation.

To generate the single-particle states we will use a Woods-Saxon potential (WS). The field $`f_\lambda `$ is the derivative of the WS. It may be argued that this interaction is too simple to describe the motion of the particles in the continuum and that a more realistic force should be used, as it was done, e. g., in Ref. . However, our purpose here is not to explain in detail processes happening in the continuum, but rather to understand the role played by the various ingredients entering into the two-particle quasibound state that may be built as a result of the interplay among those ingredients. We assume that this process occurs near the nuclear surface and, therefore, our separable force should be suitable for the analysis that we intend to carry out.

We will apply the formalism presented here to analyse neutron excitations in a nucleus that would lie on or even beyond the drip line. That is, the Fermi level may be close to or even immersed in the continuum. We will analyse these two possibilities separately.

The calculation of the bound states and the Gamow resonances will be performed by using an updated version of the compute code GAMOW  while the scattering waves on the complex contour of Fig. 1(a) will be evaluated by using the computer code ZSCAT .

The WS to be used correspond to the double closed shell nucleus 78Ni. The parameters for the volume part of the interaction are $`V_0=40MeV,r_0=1.27fm,a=0.67fm`$. The spin-orbit interaction has the same values of $`r_0`$ and $`a`$, but the depth of the potential is $`V_{so}=21.43MeV`$. With these parameters one obtains the single-particle states shown in Table I under the label $`WS1`$. They are quite similar to the ones given by a Skyrme-HF calculations . The shell $`N=50`$ is well defined, since there is a gap of about 3.6 MeV between the lowest particle state, which here is $`1d_{5/2}`$, and the highest hole state, i. e. $`0g_{9/2}`$.

We will also evaluate a case where no bound single-particle states are present. For this, we reduced the value of the depth of the WS to $`V_0=37MeV`$. The corresponding single-particle states are shown under the column WS2 in Table I. One sees that with this rather shallow potential the gap corresponding to $`N=50`$ is still present, given credibility to our TDA calculation. It is also to be noticed that the particle state $`2s_{1/2}`$ has disappeared, as expected for neutron excitations.

We will here present two-particle states with angular momentum $`\lambda =0`$, for which the separable force is known to reproduce well experimental data when available. We will first analyse the case where there are bound single-particle states, i. e. the case $`SW1`$ in Table I. To determine the strength of the separable force we will follow the standard procedure of adjusting $`G_\lambda `$ by fitting the energy of a two-particle state, which usually is experimentally known. In our case we will assume that such state, which would be the ground state of 80Ni, exists below twice the energy of the lowest single particle state, i. e. below 2$`ϵ_{1d_{5/2}}`$. This energy gap, i. e. the correlation energy, is more than 1 MeV in well established normal nuclei, like 208Pb (where it is 1.244 MeV) and 56Ni (1.936 MeV). However in our case the bound states are so few and so slightly bound that such high energy gaps do not seem to be reasonable. Since there is not any experimental data which could guide us, and since our intention is just to see how the strength of the force affects the results, we will vary the gap from a value of only 300 keV to the rather large value of 1.7 MeV to examine the differences.

The values of $`G_\lambda `$ thus obtained depends upon the number of states included in the basis, as can be seen from Eq. (5). In the calculations to be presented here we used a rectangular contour with the vertices as in Fig. 1(a) with a=0.5 MeV, b=9 MeV, c=-4 MeV and d=20 MeV. We thus include in the Berggren basis all the bound and Gamow states shown in Table I (except, of course, the hole state $`0g_{9/2}`$). The allowed region, therefore, comprises the two-particle energy plane with complex energies $`(E_r,E_i)`$ such that $`1MeV<E_r<9MeV`$ and $`4MeV<E_i<0MeV`$.

As in Ref.  we use a Gaussian method of integration over the contour. The corresponding Gaussian points provide the scattering waves constituting the basis elements on the continuum. We have found that in order to obtain convergence within six digits in the evaluated quantities, one has to include 10 Gaussian points for each MeV on the lines of the contour, except for the last segment (the one going from (b,0) to (d,0)) where 5 points for each MeV is enough. We arrive to this conclusion by always choosing the contour such that the resonances lie at least 300 keV from the borders of the contour. The number of scattering states thus included in the basis is $`N_g`$=225. In Table II we show the convergence of the results as a function of $`N_g`$ as well as the influence of the continuum upon the calculated states. We will come back to this point below.

One can check the reliability of the results by performing a calculation over the real energy axis only . The real (bound) energies thus obtained, which we call ”exact”, should coincide with those evaluated by using any contour. Moreover, the value of $`G_\lambda `$ should, in all cases, be a real quantity. All these requirements are indeed fulfilled in our calculations.

In Fig. 2 we present all the calculated energies which we found inside the allowed region of the complex two-particle plane. The strength of the separable force was evaluated assuming that the energy gap is 1.4 MeV, i. e. the ground state energy is -3 MeV.

The first feature that strikes the eye in this figure is the straight line pattern that follow most of the energy points. These lines correspond to basis states where one of the particles moves in a bound or Gamow state and the other in a fragment of the one-particle contour. For instance, the straight line at a real energy of 3.796 MeV corresponds to a particle in the Gamow state $`0h_{11/2}`$, with an energy (3.296,-0.013) MeV (as seen in Table I), while the other is in the $`h_{11/2}`$ scattering states lying on the border at a=0.5 MeV in the contour of Fig. 1(a). The sum of both single-particle energies yields a real part of 3.796 MeV, which shows that these states are in fact poles of the zeroth-order Green function. Similar structures are found for all the straigth lines in this figure, with the single-particle quantum numbers as indicated in the end of the lines. Thus, the horizontal segment at -0.479 MeV corresponding to the configuration $`d_{3/2}^2`$ is produced by a particle in the Gamow state $`1d_{3/2}`$ while the other is on the scattering states belonging to the segment of the contour on the real energy axis between 0 and a=0.5 MeV. This horizontal segment does not appear in the lines labelled $`d_{5/2}^2`$ and $`s_{s/2}^2`$ in Fig. 2 because this lines are generated by the bound single-particle states coupled to the scattering states on the border of the countour lying between (b,0) and (b,-c) in Fig. 1(a).

We found that all the lines in Fig. 2 correspond to zeroth-order poles. Therefore the states on the lines are solutions of both the correlated and the uncorrelated two-particle Hamiltonian. They do not describe the physical resonances that we are searching and can be considered spurious states. This peculiar feature of the continuum is also found in the one-particle case, where the states lying on the contour are solutions of both the correlated and the uncorrelated one-particle Hamiltonian, as it was shown in Ref. .

Besides these peculiar lines the only two-particle states inside the allowed region are those indicated by open circles. These states include the two bound states at -3 Mev and -0.653 MeV as well as a number of resonances. They are mainly generated by configurations where both particles occupies bound states and/or Gamow resonances. To show the effect of the interaction upon these states, which are the physical ones, we present in Fig. 3 the corresponding energies as a function of the energy gap that defines $`G_\lambda `$. The surprising feature in this figure is that all the states become narrower as the interaction increases, except the state that in zeroth-order is the narrowest one, i. e. $`h_{11/2}^2`$.

The wave function amplitude corresponding to a given configuration is in our case proportional to the degeneracy of the configuration. Therefore the configuration $`h_{11/2}^2`$ should be decisive in the building up of narrow two-particle resonances, both because it is the one with largest degeneracy and also because in zeroth-order it is the narrowest state. Another feature of our separable force is that that wave function amplitude becomes more important as the correlated energy approaches the configuration (zeroth-order) energy. This indeed happens in our case, as can be seen in Table III, where the value of the wave function amplitude $`X((0h_{11/2})^2;E)`$ is given for the resonances in Fig. 3. One sees that as the states become narrower the shell $`0h_{11/2}`$ becomes more important in the corresponding wave functions. And the other way around: the states labelled $`h_{11/2}^2`$ becomes wider as the interaction increases while the shell $`0h_{11/2}`$ becomes less important.

An important conclusion that can be drawn from Fig. 3 is that due to the two-particle interaction wide resonances can give rise to narrow ones. This is shown by the states $`g_{7/2}^2`$ and $`d_{3/2}^2`$, although here one sees that the width of the resonance diminishes to reach a minimum value at $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ = 1.4 MeV and after that it starts to increase again. Even the states $`g_{7/2}^2`$ and $`f_{7/2}^2`$ reach a point where increasing $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ does not affect the energies much. A result of this is that the corresponding wave function components $`X((0h_{11/2})^2;E)`$ also remain unchanged, as seen in Table III. The bound states behave in a standard shell model fashion, as expected for bound states. In particular the states labelled $`s_{1/2}^2`$, where the low degenaracy shell $`2s_{1/2}`$ is dominant, are weakly affected by the interaction.

Although the physical states presented above are mainly determined by discrete states, the continuum part of the spectrum plays also an important role. In particular, one can see in Table II that the energies evaluated by excluding the scattering states do not fit well the correct results. It is also important to mention that in our calculations we require the Hamiltonian to be Hermitian, which implies that the strength $`G_\lambda `$ has to be a real quantity.***Due to the Berggren metric the matrix representation of the Hamiltonian is not Hermitian in the complex energy sector. But by fitting the energy of 80Ni(gs) to the value -3 MeV (i. e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ = 1.4 MeV) and excluding the continuum, $`G_\lambda `$ becomes complex. By taking the corresponding real part only, as was done in Table II, that ground state energy acquires the unphysical value (-2.856,0.359) MeV. Even the energy of the (bound) first excited state $`E_1`$ is unphysical since its energy is not real and the first resonance, i. e. $`E_2`$, is unphysical because the imaginary part of the energy is positive. But, as seen in this table, a rather small number of scattering states is enough to obtain reasonable values for the energies. Thus, at $`N_g`$ = 35 one already reaches a presicion of the order of a few keV.

We have also performed similar calculations by using the single-particle states labelled WS2 in Table I, where the Fermi level is immersed in the continuum. Since the resonances are wider than before we used here a different one-particle contour, namely a=0.1 MeV, b=13 MeV, c=-6 MeV and d= 26 MeV.

The straight lines discussed above appear also in this case with the same characteristics as before. The remaining physical two-particle energies are shown in Fig. 4. The strengths $`G_\lambda `$ in the figure are 10 % larger than the corresponding ones in the previous case.

The general features of the states in the continuum in this figure are similar to those in the previous one, as expected since these states are determined mainly by the Gamow resonances and the continuum background. In fact there is not any essential difference between the two calculations since within this formalism all states (including the continuum states) are treated on the same footing, indepedently of the location of the Fermi level. But due to the different single-particle states that enter in the calculation the bound states show an striking difference with the previous case. Thus, since there is not any bound single-particle state and the state $`2s_{1/2}`$ is not present in this case, there is only one two-particle bound state which materializes only when the interaction is large enough. This occurs in the figure at $`G=`$ 0.023 MeV, where that bound state appears at an energy of -0.104 MeV. The main components of the corresponding wave function are $`(0.95,0.03)(1d_{5/2})^2+(0.21,0.00)(0h_{11/2})^2+(0.17,0.07)(1d_{3/2})^2+(0.13,0.01)(0g_{7/2})^2+(0.11,0.05)(1f_{7/2})^2`$. The interesting point is that this wave function does not change much as the interaction is increased, which shows the role played by the Gamow states in building up the bound states. The importance of these resonances is related to their widths. The wider the Gamow resonance the smaller is their influence. However, one cannot conclude from this that only Gamow resonances would be enough to describe the two-particle states of interest, since the inclusion of the complex contour is important to obtain even the narrow resonances and the bound states. In particular, without the contour the imaginary part of the energy corresponding to bound states becomes large, as it happened in the previous example.

In conclusion we have presented in this paper a method to perform shell model calculations in the continuum. We have shown that wide resonances and even the continuum background can be important to describe narrow two-particle resonances. We thus think that we have solved the old problem of describing microscopically resonances induced by a two-body interaction in the background of a many-body mean field.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been supported by FOMEC (Argentina), by the Hungarian OTKA fund Nos. T26244 and T29003, by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) and by the Swedish Institute.