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# The Angular Momentum of Gas in Proto-Galaxies: I – Implications for the Formation of Disk Galaxies

## 1 Introduction

Understanding the structure and formation of disk galaxies is intimately linked to understanding the origin of its angular momentum. In hierarchical structure formation scenarios the luminous parts of galaxies form from gas that is cooling and condensing within dark matter (DM) halos and these merge to build larger and larger objects (White & Rees 1978). Within this picture, the current paradigm for disk formation contains three important ingredients: (i) the angular momentum originates from cosmological torques (Hoyle 1953), (ii) the gas and dark matter within virialized systems have initial angular momentum distributions that are identical (Fall & Efstathiou 1980), and (iii) the gas conserves its specific angular momentum when cooling (Mestel 1963).

It is well established that cosmological torques impart angular momentum to dark matter halos. Many studies have investigated the resulting angular momenta of dark matter halos using either tidal torque theory (e.g., Peebles 1969; Doroshkevich 1970; White 1984; Catelan & Theuns 1996) or N–body simulations (e.g., Barnes & Efstathiou 1987; Warren et al. 1992; Bullock et al. 2001). The specific angular momentum of halos is typically parameterized by the dimensionless spin parameter

$$\lambda \frac{|𝐉||E|^{1/2}}{GM^{5/2}},$$
(1)
with $`G`$ the gravitational constant and $`𝐉`$, $`E`$, and $`M`$ the total angular momentum, energy and mass of the object, respectively (Peebles 1969). Under the assumptions (ii) and (iii) disks have scale lengths $`R_d\lambda R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. Given the distributions of halo spin parameters and of halo virial radii $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, the implied distribution of disk scale lengths is in excellent agreement with observations (e.g., Dalcanton, Spergel & Summers 1997; Mo, Mao & White 1998; de Jong & Lacey 2000). This success has prompted many detailed studies of disk galaxy formation, always under the three assumptions listed above (van den Bosch 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002; Jimenez et al. 1998; Natarajan 1999; Heavens & Jimenez 1999; Firmani & Avila-Reese 2000; Avila-Reese & Firmani 2000; Buchalter, Jimenez & Kamionkowski 2001).

The standard picture of disk formation that has emerged from these studies has been remarkably successful in explaining a wide variety of observational properties of disk galaxies. However, two significant problems, both related to the angular momentum, have come to light. First of all, detailed hydro-dynamical simulations of disk formation in a cold dark matter (CDM) Universe yield disks that are an order of magnitude too small (Navarro & Benz 1991; Navarro & White 1994; Steinmetz & Navarro 1999; Navarro & Steinmetz 2000). This problem, known as the angular momentum catastrophe, is a consequence of the hierarchical formation of galaxies which causes the baryons to lose a large fraction of their angular momentum to the dark matter. It is unclear whether this is a problem for the theory or merely for the particular way in which feedback processes are implemented (or ignored) in the simulations (e.g., Navarro & White 1994; Weil, Eke & Efstathiou 1998; Sommer-Larsen, Gelato & Vedel 1999; Thacker & Couchman 2001).

The second problem concerns the actual density structure of galaxy disks. Assuming detailed angular momentum conservation, this structure is a direct reflection of the distribution of specific angular momentum in the proto-galaxy. Bullock et al. (2001) determined the angular momentum distributions of individual dark matter halos, which according to assumption (ii) should also reflect the angular momentum distribution of the gas that forms the disk. However, these distributions seem to have far too much low angular momentum material to be consistent with the typical exponential density distributions of disk galaxies (Bullock et al. 2001; van den Bosch 2001; van den Bosch, Burkert & Swaters 2001). Knebe et al. (2002) and Bullock, Kravtsov & Colín (2002) investigated the angular momentum profiles of warm dark matter (WDM) halos. Except for a slight difference in the average spin parameter, CDM and WDM halos have very similar angular momentum distributions, implying that this particular problem cannot be solved by invoking WDM instead of CDM. A more promising solution has recently been suggested by Maller & Dekel (2002). In their picture halo angular momentum originates from the orbital angular momentum of merging satellites, rather than from pure tidal torques (see also Maller, Dekel & Somerville 2001). Combining this picture with a simple model for feedback and tidal stripping Maller & Dekel are able to explain the angular momentum profiles of dwarf galaxies measured by van den Bosch et al. (2001).

These angular momentum problems seem to imply that assumptions (ii) and (iii) listed above, and which have been essential ingredients of our standard paradigm for the formation of disk galaxies, may be incorrect. Remarkably, despite many papers that have investigated the angular momentum distributions within dark matter halos, to the best of our knowledge, no study so far has addressed the spin distribution of the gas in these halos in order to test whether the ansatz that the gas and dark matter have similar initial distributions of specific angular momentum is correct. In fact, it seems plausible that they may not. Gas and dark matter suffer different relaxation mechanisms during halo collapse: Whereas the dark matter undergoes collisionless virialization through violent relaxation, the gas attempts to achieve a hydrostatic equilibrium through shocks. In order to test whether the initial angular momentum distributions of gas and dark matter are indeed similar, we perform numerical simulations of structure formation in a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology including both dark matter and a non-radiative gas. After presenting our simulations and outlining our analysis methods (Section 2), we present various statistics of the angular momentum distributions (Section 3). In Section 4 we discuss the implications of our results for the theory of disk galaxy formation, and we summarize our results in Section 5.

## 2 Method

### 2.1 Numerical Simulations

We use the public version of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code GADGET developed by V. Springel (1999) and described in Springel, Yoshida & White (2000). The chosen flat cosmology is vacuum energy dominated with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ and matter content $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ with a baryon density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.021h^2`$ and a Hubble constant of $`67\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ (i.e., $`h=0.67`$). We choose a relatively small box of $`10h^1`$ comoving Mpc and evolve it from redshift 59 down to redshift three. We use identical power-spectra for baryons and dark matter given by the fitting formula of Efstathiou, Bond & White (1992) and use $`128^3`$ particles each for the gas and the dark matter component. The power spectrum is normalized to have a typical mean overdensity of $`\sigma _8=0.9`$ at redshift zero in a top hat sphere of $`8h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$. Gas and dark matter particles have masses of $`m_{\mathrm{gas}}=6.26\times 10^6h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`m_{\mathrm{DM}}=3.34\times 10^7h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$, respectively. The gravitational softening lengths for both the gas and the dark matter were chosen to be $`4h^1\mathrm{kpc}`$ (comoving). The gas has an initial entropy corresponding to a temperature of $`2\times 10^4\mathrm{K}`$ for a mean molecular weight of one proton mass. An artificial temperature floor at $`10^4\mathrm{K}`$ (for the same molecular weight) is introduced to mimic the heating effects from re-ionization. Both this temperature floor and the initial temperature are too low to play a significant role in the simulated dynamics because they are significantly lower than the virial temperatures of the halos we analyze. This is evident in our analysis as the reported results do not depend on the mass of the halos studied. All results presented below correspond to the final output at $`z=3`$.

The robustness of our results with respect to resolution, simulation box size, and the redshift of analysis is addressed in Section 3.3.

### 2.2 The Halo Identification Algorithm

We start by using the publicly available group finder HOP, written by Eisenstein & Hut (1998), to identify overdensity peaks in the dark matter distribution using a threshold density of 20 times the mean dark matter density. In each group we identify the densest particle, and we determine the virial radius $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ of the spherical volume, centered on this densest particle, inside of which the average dark matter density is $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{vir}}(z)`$ times the critical density $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}(z)`$. For our adopted cosmology and at the redshift of the output analyzed $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{vir}}=174.7`$ (Bryan & Norman 1998). Next we compute the center-of-mass of all dark matter particles inside this spherical volume which we associate with the new center of the halo. We compute the new $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ around this new halo center, as well as the associated new center-of-mass. This procedure is iterated until the distance between the center-of-mass and the adopted halo center is less than one percent of the virial radius $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. Typically this requires of the order of 2 to 5 iteration steps.

All dark matter and gas particles inside the resulting spherical volume with radius $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ are considered halo members. Although our iterative method assures that the center-of-mass of the dark matter component is similar to the adopted halo center, the same is not necessarily true for the gas component. We therefore remove all halos from our sample for which the distance between the halo center and the center-of-mass of the gas particles is larger than $`10`$ percent of $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. We checked that none of our results correlate with the offset between the centers of mass of the gas and dark matter. In addition, we repeated the entire analysis adopting the position of the most bound particle as halo center and found very simular results.

In order to allow sufficiently accurate measurements of the angular momentum vectors of the gas and dark matter we only accept halos that have more than $`100`$ gas particles and more than $`100`$ dark matter particles. In addition, if any two halos overlap, i.e., the distance between the halo centers is less than the sum of their virial radii, we remove the least massive halo from our sample. This leaves a total of 378 halos of which 259 are isolated in that they have no subgroups detected, and they do not overlap with any other halo. Of these 378 halos 23 have more than 5000 particles (in total), and are used for a more detailed analysis of the distribution of specific angular momentum (see Section 3.2).

### 2.3 Theoretical Background

Our main goal is to compare the angular momentum distributions of the gas and dark matter components. However, one cannot do so by simply computing angular momentum distributions from the velocities of the gas and dark matter particles. Both the dark matter and the gas are fluids, for which the velocity of each microscopic particle can be written as $`𝐯=𝐮+𝐰`$. Here $`𝐮`$ is the mean streaming motion at the location $`𝐱`$ of the microscopic particle, and $`𝐰`$ is the particle’s random motion. The macroscopic, collisionless dark matter particles in $`N`$-body simulations can be considered a Monte Carlo realization of the phase-space distribution function of all microscopic particles. The velocities of these particles in the simulation correspond to $`𝐯`$ and are computed by solving Newton’s equations of motion. In the case of the gas, however, the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) approach is used, which yields the streaming motions $`𝐮`$ of the gas particles by solving the Euler equations (with some artificial viscosity to take account of shocks). Information about the random motion of the gas particles is provided by the internal energy of each particle.

Thus the velocities of the dark matter particles and gas particles in the simulation correspond to different motions. This must be taken into account before comparing their angular momentum distributions. This is most easily achieved by computing the velocities $`𝐯`$ of the gas particles from their streaming motions and their (isotropic) velocity dispersion tensor. For each gas particle we randomly draw $`100`$ random velocities $`𝐰`$ which we add to the particle’s streaming motion $`𝐮`$. For each of the three Cartesian components of $`𝐰`$ we draw a velocity from a Gaussian with a standard deviation given by

$$\sigma =\sqrt{\frac{kT}{\mu }}=\sqrt{\frac{2U}{3}}$$
(2)
Here $`U`$ and $`T`$ are the internal energy per unit mass and temperature of the gas particle, respectively, $`k`$ is Boltzmann’s constant, and $`\mu `$ is the mean molecular weight of the gas. After this ‘thermal broadening’ we find that the rms velocities $`|𝐯|^2`$ of the gas and dark matter particles are, for the vast majority of our halos, very similar, indicating that the halos are, to a good approximation, in hydrostatic equilibrium.

We thus use the velocities $`𝐯`$ to compare the angular momentum distributions of the gas and dark matter. However, the distribution that is of interest for galaxy formation is the angular momentum distribution based on the streaming motions $`𝐮(𝐱)`$. After all, when the gas cools $`𝐯𝐮`$, i.e., the typical random motions become negligible, at least in sufficiently massive halos. Under the assumption that the gas conserves its specific angular momentum, the resulting disk will thus have an angular momentum distribution related to its streaming motions $`𝐮`$. Ideally one would therefore like to compare the angular momentum distributions computed from the streaming motions $`𝐮(𝐱)`$. However, this requires estimating the streaming motions of the dark matter. In principle this could be achieved by smoothing the dark matter velocities $`𝐯`$, but it is unclear what smoothing scale to use and resolution issues are likely to play an important role. We therefore do not attempt to compute the dark matter streaming motions, but instead use the velocities $`𝐯`$ of the dark matter and gas particles when comparing their angular momentum distributions. However, the streaming motions of the gas are available, and we present a detailed comparison of the angular momentum distributions of the gas based on $`𝐯`$ and $`𝐮`$ in Section 3.2.

### 2.4 Analysis

For each halo we compute the total angular momenta of the gas and the dark matter particles, using,

$$𝐉_{\mathrm{gas},\mathrm{DM}}=m_{\mathrm{gas},\mathrm{DM}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_{\mathrm{gas},\mathrm{DM}}}{}}𝐫_i\times (𝐯_i\overline{𝐯}_{\mathrm{com}}).$$
(3)
Here $`\overline{𝐯}_{\mathrm{com}}`$ is the mean (bulk) velocity of the entire halo (dark matter plus gas) and $`𝐫_i`$ is the radial vector with respect to the halo center. We follow Bullock et al. (2001) and define the following modified spin parameters

$$\lambda _{\mathrm{gas},\mathrm{DM}}^{}=\frac{|𝐣_{\mathrm{gas},\mathrm{DM}}|}{\sqrt{2}R_{\mathrm{vir}}V_{\mathrm{vir}}}.$$
(4)
Here $`𝐣_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ and $`𝐣_{\mathrm{DM}}`$ are the specific angular momenta of the gas and dark matter, respectively, and $`V_{\mathrm{vir}}=\sqrt{G(M_{\mathrm{gas}}+M_{\mathrm{DM}})/R_{\mathrm{vir}}}`$ is the circular velocity at the virial radius $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. This definition of the spin parameter has the advantage that it does not depend on the energy content of the halo which can be difficult to estimate reliably. In what follows we always adopt the spin parameter definition of equation (4), and we drop the prime.

In addition to the spin parameters of the dark matter and the gas we also compute the angle

$$\theta =\mathrm{cos}^1\left[\frac{𝐉_{\mathrm{gas}}𝐉_{\mathrm{DM}}}{|𝐉_{\mathrm{gas}}||𝐉_{\mathrm{DM}}|}\right]$$
(5)
between the angular momentum vectors of the two components. After rotating the coordinate frame such that the $`z`$-axis is aligned with the angular momentum vector of either the dark matter or the gas, we also compute the fractions of dark matter and gas particles with negative angular momentum about their respective $`z`$-directions. These fractions are denoted by $`f_{\mathrm{DM}}`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$, respectively, and give an indication of the amount of disordered motion relative to the ordered motion.

Note that since at each position the expectation value of $`𝐰`$ is, by definition, the null vector, the values of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$, $`\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$ and $`\theta `$ are independent of whether one considers the streaming motions $`𝐮`$ or the microscopic velocities $`𝐯`$. However, the angular momentum distributions may be quite different. In order to distinguish these two cases we label the appropriate quantities with the superscript $`v`$ whenever the microscopic velocities $`𝐯`$ are used. Thus a particle’s specific angular momentum is given by either $`𝐣=𝐫\times 𝐮`$ or $`𝐣^v=𝐫\times 𝐯`$.

## 3 Results

Figure 1 plots the histograms of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$ and $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ for all 378 halos in our sample. Both distributions are well fit by a log-normal distribution

$$p(\lambda )\mathrm{d}\lambda =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma _\lambda }\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{ln}^2(\lambda /\overline{\lambda })}{2\sigma _\lambda ^2}\right)\frac{\mathrm{d}\lambda }{\lambda }.$$
(6)
For the dark matter we find $`\overline{\lambda }_{\mathrm{DM}}=0.040`$ and $`\sigma _{\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}}=0.56`$, while for the gas $`\overline{\lambda }_{\mathrm{gas}}=0.039`$ and $`\sigma _{\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}}=0.57`$. Clearly, the distributions of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ and $`\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$ are indistinguishable. If we only consider the 259 isolated halos we obtain very similar distributions both for the dark matter and for the gas.

In the upper left panel of Figure 2 we plot $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ versus $`\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$. Although $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ and $`\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$ are well correlated, with a Spearman rank coefficient $`r_s=0.67`$, which has a probability of virtually zero to occur under the null hypothesis of no correlation, the scatter is relatively large. The average of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$ is $`0.001`$ with a standard deviation of $`0.020`$, which confirms once again that on average the spin parameters of the gas and dark matter are very similar. However, on a one-to-one basis the two components can have quite different specific angular momenta; i.e., the average (median) of $`|\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}|`$ is $`0.015`$ ($`0.011`$). We find no significant trend between $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ (see upper left panel of Figure 4) indicating that the scatter is real, and not an artifact of discreteness noise.

The upper right panel of Figure 2 plots $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$ versus $`f_{\mathrm{DM}}^v`$. With $`f_{\mathrm{DM}}^v/f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v=0.97\pm 0.10`$ the two mass components have very similar mass fractions with negative specific angular momentum. The middle panels of Figure 2 show that the values of $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{DM}}^v`$ are strongly anti-correlated with their respective spin parameters. A similar anti-correlation is also present for the gas when $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$, is used instead of $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$ (lower left panel). Again, none of these results change if we only focus on the 259 isolated halos. These anti-correlations indicate that it is the amount of ordered motion that is directly responsible for the amplitude of the total specific angular momentum.

Finally, the lower right panel of Figure 2 plots $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ versus $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$. For all halos $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}<f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$, illustrating the trivial result that the streaming motions of the gas are more ordered than their microscopic motions. Note, however, that there is not simply a constant offset between $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$. Rather, the difference between $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$ is larger for halos with larger $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$, and the distribution of $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ is much broader than that of $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}^v`$. All these results have implications for the formation of disk galaxies, as we discuss in more detail in Section 4.

### 3.1 Misalignment of Angular Momentum Vectors

Figure 3 plots the distribution of the misalignment angle $`\theta `$ (in degrees) between the total angular momentum vectors of the dark matter and the gas. The mean ($`36^\mathrm{o}`$) and median ($`27^\mathrm{o}`$) of the distribution are similar for the entire sample and for the subsample of isolated halos.

Contrary to what one might expect, there is no correlation between the misalignment angle $`\theta `$ and the absolute difference between $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ and $`\lambda _{\mathrm{DM}}`$. This is evident from the upper right panel of Figure 4. The solid lines indicate the mean and the 68 percent interval of $`\theta `$. We do, however, find a small trend that the average misalignment angle increases with decreasing halo mass and spin parameter (see lower panels of Figure 4). We stress that there is no correlation between $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ and $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ so that these are two independent trends. Both are likely due to discreteness effects, in that the direction of the angular momentum vectors can be more accurately determined if either the total angular momentum or the number of halo particles is larger. However, since both trends are weak and the average misalignment angle is still significantly different from zero even for the most massive halos and for the ones with the largest spin parameters, we conclude that there is a true misalignment between the angular momenta of the gas and the dark matter (e.g., see column (9) of Table 1).

This misalignment may have important implications for galaxy spin correlation statistics. In the past, both tidal torque theory (Crittenden et al. 2001; Heavens, Refegier & Heymans 2000; Natarajan et al. 2001) and pure N–body simulations (Croft & Metzler 2000) have been used to calculate the possibility of intrinsic alignments of galaxy shapes, which may be responsible for part of the measured weak lensing signal (e.g. van Waerbecke et al. 2000; McKay et al. 2001), and may be used to reconstruct the shear field (Lee & Pen 2000, 2001). In these studies the assumption is made that the angular momentum vectors of the galaxies are aligned with those of the dark matter halos. The relatively large misalignment angles found here, however, may diminish any alignment of galaxy shapes that one might expect based on tidal torque theory. We emphasize, however, that simulations of higher resolution are required to reduce the possible impact of discreteness effects on the distribution of misalignment angles.

### 3.2 The Distribution of Angular Momentum

Although $`100`$ particles is enough to obtain a reliable estimate of the spin parameter, many more particles are required to determine angular momentum distributions (hereafter AMDs) within individual haloes. We therefore limit ourselves here to halos with more than 5000 particles in total, of which there are 23 in our sample.

We define the normalized specific angular momentum $`lj/(R_{\mathrm{vir}}V_{\mathrm{vir}})`$ and compute separate distributions $`p(l)`$ for dark matter particles and for gas particles. Here and in what follows $`j`$ refers to the specific angular momentum along the $`z`$-axis. Note that $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}V_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ is the maximum specific angular momentum that a halo particle can have (i.e., $`l[1,1]`$). We normalize $`p(l)`$ to unity so that

$$\lambda =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}_1^1p(l)ldl$$
(7)
In Figure 5 we plot $`p(l^v)`$ both for the gas (dashed lines) and for the dark matter (solid lines) of $`20`$ halos that are selected randomly from the sample of $`23`$. Some global parameters of these $`20`$ halos are listed in Table 1. As can be seen, the AMDs of the two mass components are remarkably similar. The fact that the $`p(l^v)`$ of the gas appear less noisy than for the dark matter is a consequence of the fact that because of the ‘thermal broadening’ of the gas velocity field we effectively have on average 100 times more gas particles per halo than dark matter particles (see Section 2.3). In a few cases small differences can be discerned, but there is no indication for any systematic difference between the AMDs of the two components. Therefore, the standard assumption that the gas and dark matter have the same distributions of specific angular momentum is to first order correct, and the shocks that occur during the virialization process do not significantly modify the angular momentum distribution of the gas.

In Figure 6 we compare the gas AMD $`p(l^v)`$ (dashed lines) to the distribution $`p(l)`$ as computed from the streaming motions of the gas (solid lines). Here a clear systematic difference is apparent; typically $`p(l)`$ has a less extended wing to negative specific angular momentum than $`p(l^v)`$ (cf. lower right panel of Figure 2), and a more pronounced peak at low angular momentum. Note that with equation (7) both distributions integrate to the same value of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$.

In Figures 7 and 8 we plot $`\lambda (R)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R)`$ as functions of $`R/R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, respectively. Results for both the dark matter (solid lines) and the gas (dashed lines) are shown. Here $`\lambda (R)`$ is the spin parameter inside a sphere of radius $`R`$, i.e.,

$$\lambda (R)=\frac{j^v(R)}{\sqrt{2GRM(R)}}$$
(8)
with $`j^v(R)`$ and $`M(R)`$ the specific angular momentum and mass inside a sphere of radius $`R`$, respectively. $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R)`$ is defined as the angle between the angular momentum vector inside radius $`R`$ and that inside $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ (i.e., by definition $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R_{\mathrm{vir}})=0`$). In some cases the gas and dark matter have fairly similar $`\lambda (R)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R)`$ profiles (e.g., halos 14, 19, and 58), while in other cases the gas and dark matter seem to have quite distinct profiles (e.g., halos 36, 156, 582). Remarkably, halos for which the $`\lambda (R)`$ and/or $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R)`$ profiles are quite different for the gas and dark matter are not necessarily also the ones that have the least similar AMDs, nor do they correspond to halos for which any of the global parameters listed in Table 1 are in any way special. Note that $`\lambda `$ typically either decreases or stays roughly constant with radius, while the angular momentum directions of both the gas and the dark matter typically change quite dramatically from the center to the virial radius. We discuss the implications of this intrinsic misalignment for the formation of disk galaxies in Section 4.

### 3.3 Robustness of results

The results presented above are based on a numerical simulation with relatively low resolution ($`128^3`$ particles), with a small box size ($`L_{\mathrm{box}}=10h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ comoving), and which has only been run to redshift $`z=3`$. Too small resolution causes shocks to be poorly resolved, which could result in an underestimate of the possible angular momentum redistribution of the gas during its relaxation process. A small box size may cause an inaccurate representation of the cosmological tidal field responsible for the angular momentum of halos. Finally, it is not a priori clear that angular momentum distributions at $`z=3`$ are representative for those at $`z=0`$.

In order to address the robustness of our results against these effects we analyze a high resolution numerical simulation of a cluster kindly provided by Naoki Yoshida. In this simulation exactly the same cosmological parameters are adopted as in the simulation discussed above (see Section 2.1). It is based on the technique of ‘zooming in’ on a region of interest (Tormen, Bouchet & White 1997). The parent simulation from which this region is chosen is the GIF-$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM simulation of Kauffmann et al. (1999) which followed $`256^3`$ particles within a comoving box with $`L_{\mathrm{box}}=141.3h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$. The Lagrangian region that collapses to form the second most massive halo in this GIF simulation (with virial mass $`8\times 10^{14}h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$) has been resimulated with greatly increased mass and force resolution and including a non-radiative gas. This high resolution region is represented by $`2.2\times 10^5`$ dark matter and gas particles each, with masses of $`1.2\times 10^{10}h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`2.1\times 10^9h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$, respectively. Outside this high-resolution region $`3.1\times 10^6`$ particles with larger masses are used to represent the cosmological tidal field. More details regarding this simulation can be found in Springel et al. (2001) and Yoshida et al. (2000a,b)

We analyze the angular momentum distributions of the dark matter and gas of this high resolution halo at $`z=0`$. Using the standard friends-of-friends algorithm (Davis et al. 1985) we identify the most massive group and its most bound particle. Next the virial radius $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ of the spherical volume, centered on this particle, is determined adopting $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{vir}}=101`$ (appropriate for this cosmology and redshift; Bryan & Norman 1998). The halo thus defined (hereafter referred to as halo ‘S0’) contains $`1.2\times 10^5`$ particles (more than twice that of the biggest halo analyzed in the previous section), and has a virial mass and radius of $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}=8.7\times 10^{14}h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`1.86h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$, respectively. Analyzing the angular momentum distributions of the dark matter and gas particles as in Section 2.4 we obtain the spin parameters and mass fractions with negative specific angular momentum listed in Table 1. The resulting angular momentum distributions $`p(l^v)`$ and $`p(l)`$, as well as $`\lambda (R)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R)`$, are shown in Figure 9.

Note that the angular momentum distributions of halo ‘S0’ are in no way systematically different from those of the sample of halos analyzed above. In particular, once again we find that the gas and dark matter have virtually identical angular momentum distributions $`p(l^v)`$, and that a large mass fraction ($`45`$ percent) of the gas has negative specific angular momentum. The $`\lambda (R)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta (R)`$ profiles are similar to that of halo 11 (cf. Figures 7 and 8). Although one has to be careful to draw conclusions based on a single high resolution halo, these results suggest that the characteristics of the angular momentum distributions presented in Section 3.2 are not influenced by the relatively low resolution, by the small box size, or by the fact that we analyzed the halos at $`z=3`$.

### 3.4 Do Dark Matter Halos follow a Universal Angular Momentum Profile?

Bullock et al. (2001; hereafter B01) computed the angular momentum distributions of dark matter halos and argued that these follow a universal profile given by:

$$P(j)\frac{M(<j)}{M_{\mathrm{vir}}}=\frac{\mu (j/j_{\mathrm{max}})}{(j/j_{\mathrm{max}})+\mu 1},$$
(9)
Here $`M(<j)`$ is the halo mass with specific angular momentum less than $`j`$, $`j_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is the maximum specific angular momentum of the entire AMD, and $`\mu `$ is a free fitting parameter. Note that $`P(j)`$ corresponds to the cumulative distribution of the specific angular momentum. In order to compute these AMDs, B01 split up their halos in a number of spatial cells. The angular momentum profiles $`P(j)`$ are then constructed by ranking the cells according to their total specific angular momentum $`j`$ from which the best-fitting value of $`\mu `$ is determined. Note that this cell averaging should in principle average out the random motions $`𝐰`$ of the dark matter particles, and equation (9) should thus be interpreted as the cumulative distribution of $`p(j)`$ rather than $`p(j^v)`$.

However, there are two problems. First of all, it is unlikely that the particular cell geometry adopted by B01 yields the true streaming motions of the dark matter (see the discussion in Section 2.3). This means that, depending on the actual cell geometry adopted, the AMD of equation (9) does not necessarily reflect the true $`p(j)`$. Secondly, because $`j`$ corresponds to a projected component the total $`j`$ of any cell can be negative. B01 ignored this and removed all cells with negative $`j`$ from their ranked list. We find that the $`p(l)`$ of our halos are well fit by equation (9) for $`l0`$, in agreement with B01. However, whereas B01 have implicitely assumed that there is no mass with negative specific angular momentum, we find large mass fractions with $`l<0`$, at least for the gas. Since measuring the true streaming motions of the dark matter is non-trivial we have not attempted to obtain the $`p(l)`$ for the dark matter. However, since the $`p(l^v)`$ of the gas and dark matter are virtually identical, it seems reasonable to assume that the same applies for the $`p(l)`$-distributions<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1The accuracy of this assumption needs to be checked using simulations of higher resolution than the one analyzed here.. If confirmed, between $`5`$ and 50 percent of the dark matter mass has negative specific angular momentum, in clear disagreement with the ‘Universal’ profile of B01. Furthermore, since the mass fraction with negative specific angular momentum is strongly anti–correlated with the total specific angular momentum, the ‘Universal’ angular momentum profile of equation (9) lacks an essential characteristic of the true AMDs.

## 4 Implications of the Formation of Disk Galaxies

In the standard picture of disk formation, (i) the specific angular momentum of disk galaxies arises from cosmological torques, (ii) is identical to that of their dark matter halos, and (iii) is conserved during the process of disk formation. Recently several authors have pointed out that this picture is inconsistent with observations, as it would result in disks that are too centrally concentrated (B01; van den Bosch 2001; van den Bosch et al. 2001). This is a reflection of the fact that the specific angular momentum distributions of dark matter halos, as described by the ‘Universal’ profile of B01, contain relatively too much low angular momentum material.

As we argued in Section 1 this seems to suggest that one or more of the standard assumptions is incorrect. Our results clearly show that in the non-radiative case the angular momentum distributions of the gas and dark matter are virtually identical, thereby lending strong support to (ii). However, our results also indicate that assumption (iii) cannot be correct. As shown, the angular momentum distributions $`p(l)`$ of the gas contain relatively large mass fractions with negative specific angular momentum. Disk galaxies, on the other hand, generally do not contain material with negative specific angular momentum. This suggests that detailed conservation of specific angular momentum has to be violated if one wants to build a disk out of the typical AMDs of the gas in proto-galaxies.

Once the gas starts to cool, its density increases, enhancing the frequency of shocks through which the gas parcels exchange angular momentum. Gas parcels with negative $`j_z`$ can share their angular momentum with parcels with positive $`j_z`$, thus increasing the mass fraction with low angular momentum. This, however, can only aggravate the low angular momentum problem. Apparently real disks do not contain a large fraction of low angular momentum material (van den Bosch et al. 2001). It is tempting, however, to speculate that this low angular momentum material might actually build a (near-zero angular momentum) bulge component (cf. van den Bosch 1998; Kepner 1999). The mass of such a bulge depends on the details of the angular momentum exchange during cooling. The mass with negative specific angular momentum may combine with very little mass but with high positive specific angular momentum (yielding a minimum bulge mass), or with a relatively large amount of mass with small, but positive, specific angular momentum (yielding a maximum bulge mass). As a simple intermediate case, consider the scenario in which the zero angular momentum bulge forms out of the material with AMD

$$p_{\mathrm{bulge}}(l)=\{\begin{array}{cc}p(l)\hfill & l<0\hfill \\ p(l)\hfill & l0\hfill \end{array}$$
(10)
If the remaining material builds a disk, the resulting bulge-to-disk mass ratio is

$$B/D=\frac{2f_{\mathrm{gas}}}{12f_{\mathrm{gas}}},$$
(11)
while the angular momentum distribution of the disk material is given by $`p_{\mathrm{disk}}(l)p(l)p(l)`$ where $`l0`$. Under the standard assumption that this material conserves its specific angular momentum, and that the dark matter follows an NFW density profile (Navarro, Frenk & White 1997), the surface density $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)`$ of the resulting disk component can be computed using the relation

$$\frac{M_{\mathrm{disk}}}{12f_{\mathrm{gas}}}_{l_1}^{l_2}p_{\mathrm{disk}}(l)dl=2\pi _{R_1}^{R_2}\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)RdR$$
(12)
where $`l`$ and $`R`$ are related according to

$$l=\frac{RV_c(R)}{R_{\mathrm{vir}}V_{\mathrm{vir}}}=\sqrt{x\frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+cx)cx/(1+cx)}{\mathrm{ln}(1+c)c/(1+c)}}$$
(13)
with $`x=R/R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, $`V_c(R)`$ the circular velocity at radius $`R`$, and $`c`$ the NFW concentration parameter for which we adopt $`c=10`$ throughout. For simplicity we ignore the self-gravity of the disk, so that $`V_c(R)`$ reflects the circular velocity of the NFW halo.

In Figure 10 we plot the resulting disk surface density distributions $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)`$ for four representative halos from our sample of 23 (thick solid lines). In each panel we indicate the bulge-to-disk ratio computed with equation (11). The thin lines correspond to disks that would form out of an angular momentum distribution given by

$$p(l)=\frac{\zeta \mu (\mu 1)}{(\zeta l+\mu 1)^2},$$
(14)
which corresponds to the ‘Universal’ profile of equation 9. Here

$$\zeta =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}}\left(1\mu \left[1(\mu 1)\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mu }{\mu 1}\right)\right]\right).$$
(15)
where $`\lambda _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ is the spin parameter of the gas in the halo under consideration (listed in Table 1). We adopt $`\mu =1.25`$, which corresponds to the median value of all halos analyzed by B01.

Whereas the disks forming out of the AMDs of the gas analyzed here have surface brightness profiles that are very close to exponential (corresponding to a straight line in the panels on the left), this is not the case for disks forming out of the ‘Universal’ AMD. The largest difference between the two surface brightness profiles is apparent at small radii. This is due to the bulge-formation scenario included in one case but not the other. In fact, as shown by van den Bosch (2001), if a simple bulge formation scenario is included, the ‘Universal’ AMD also yields near-exponential disks. One problem that is not solved by turning low angular momentum material into a bulge, however, is the fact that the ‘Universal’ AMD yields disks with a clear truncation radius which occurs at too high surface density (van den Bosch 2001). However, the disks forming out of the AMDs of the gas analyzed here continue as exponentials to much lower surface brightness, suggesting that the cell averaging adopted by B01 underestimated the true $`j_{\mathrm{max}}`$.

Thus, the angular momentum distributions of the gas in proto-galaxies seem consistent with the observed surface density distributions of disk galaxies if the material with negative specific angular momentum is assumed to make a bulge component. Nevertheless, several problems remain.

First of all, since $`0.05\stackrel{<}{}f_{\mathrm{gas}}\stackrel{<}{}0.5`$ in the scenario considered above, a large fraction of the halos will form bulge dominated ‘early-type’ systems. If we use a bulge-to-disk ratio of $`B/D=1`$ to discriminate between late and early-type galaxies, disk dominated late type galaxies only form in $`60`$ percent of all halos in our sample. Furthermore, with a minimum $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ of about 5 percent (see Figure 2), no systems will form with $`B/D<0.1`$, so the question of how bulge-less dwarf and LSB galaxies form (van den Bosch 2001; van den Bosch et al. 2001) is unanswered.

Another problem concerns the various misalignments of angular momentum. As we have shown in the lower panels of Figure 7, not all gas has the same direction of angular momentum. When the self-gravity of the gas becomes important, gas parcels with different angular momentum directions (moving on non-coplanar circular orbits) will exert torques on each other, resulting in a redistribution of angular momentum. In addition, when the gas is misaligned with the potential of the dark matter halo<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2We emphasize here that any possible misalignment between the gas and the moment of inertia of the dark matter halo is not related to the misalignment angle $`\theta `$ between the angular momentum vectors of the gas and dark matter: halos are not rotationally supported systems, and as shown by Porciani, Dekel & Hoffman (2002), the spin and inertia of dark matter halos are poorly aligned., transfer of angular momentum between the gas and dark matter will occur. If the gas predominantly transfers angular momentum to the dark matter, which one might naively expect since the latter is the dominant mass component, this results in an additional problem as many authors in the past have pointed out: In order to explain the observed distribution of disk scale lengths the gas cannot lose much of its angular momentum.

## 5 Conclusions

It is generally assumed that the gas and the dark matter in a proto-galaxy have the same distribution of specific angular momentum. This is motivated by the fact that both mass components experience the same tidal torques. However, the two components undergo rather different relaxation mechanisms: whereas the dark matter undergoes collisionless, violent relaxation, the gas gets shocked which could in principle cause a redistribution of its angular momentum distribution. In this paper we have used numerical simulations to test, for the first time, whether the ansatz that gas and dark matter have similar initial angular momentum distributions is correct. We presented a numerical simulation of structure formation in a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology including both dark matter and a non-radiative gas. For $`380`$ halos with virial masses in the range $`4.8\times 10^9h^1\mathrm{M}_{}M_{\mathrm{vir}}1.1\times 10^{12}h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (at $`z=3`$) we computed the angular momenta of both the gas and the dark matter.

We have shown that on average the gas and dark matter have the same distribution of spin parameters and that their detailed angular momentum distributions in individual halos are remarkably similar. Evidently, shocking during the virialization process does not decouple the angular momentum of the gas from that of the dark matter, supporting the standard assumption that gas and dark matter have identical angular momentum distributions. We have shown that these results are robust by also analyzing a high resolution numerical simulation of a single cluster-sized halo at $`z=0`$ in a much larger cosmological volume.

A careful analysis of the detailed angular momentum distributions reveals that they are inconsistent with the ‘Universal’ profile suggested by B01. In the angular momentum distributions presented here between 5 and 50 percent of the mass has negative specific angular momentum, whereas B01 have (implicitly) assumed that all mass has positive specific angular momentum. Furthermore, our angular momentum distributions have wings out to very high specific angular momentum, whereas the profile suggested by B01 has a cut-off at a certain $`j_{\mathrm{max}}`$ that results in disk truncation at too high surface density (van den Bosch 2001).

The fact that relatively large mass fractions have negative specific angular momentum suggests that the standard assumption of detailed specific angular momentum conservation, which is often made in theories of disk formation, cannot be correct. After all, disk galaxies do not typically contain material with negative specific angular momentum. We have suggested that during the cooling process the gas with negative specific angular momentum may collide/shock with material with positive specific angular momentum to build a bulge component with zero angular momentum. In such a picture at least the total amount of angular momentum of the gas is conserved, and we have shown that it can produce disks with near-exponential surface density distributions without the small truncation radii implied by the ‘Universal’ profile of B01. Numerical simulations of disk formation that include cooling do indeed seem to reveal the formation of a dense central knot of gas in addition to the disk (e.g., Katz & Gunn 1991; Navarro & White 1994). Although this ‘bulge’ is typically interpreted as forming out of sub-clumps that lose their specific angular momentum to the dark matter through dynamical friction, our results suggest that even without substructure a bulge may form naturally. In fact, taking the results at face value suggests that $`40`$ percent of all halos are unable to form disk dominated galaxies, simply because they have too large mass fractions with negative specific angular momentum. In addition, systems with bulge-to-disk mass ratios below 10 percent will be extremely rare.

In reality the formation of disk galaxies will be more complicated as depicted above. We have shown that the angular momentum vectors of the gas and dark matter are misaligned by on average $`35^\mathrm{o}`$. Surprisingly the amount of misalignment is not a measure for the degree to which the respective angular momentum distributions agree or disagree with each other. There is a weak tendency for the misalignment to be weaker in halos that are more massive or have larger spin parameters. Higher resolution simulations are required to investigate the amount and origin of this misalignment in more detail. In addition to this misalignment between the two components, the angular momentum vector of each individual component can change direction quite dramatically with radius. This is typically interpreted as originating from decoherence in the angular momentum orientation of material accreted at different times (Ryden 1988; Quinn & Binney 1992) and is often invoked as a mechanism to create warps in disk galaxies (e.g., Ostriker & Binney 1989). Although the exact implications of these various misalignments are currently unclear, and require a more detailed investigation, it is clear that any misalignment of the gas with either itself or with the inertia moment of the dark matter halo has to vanish if one wants to build a stable disk. If this results in a significant transfer of angular momentum from the gas to the dark matter these misalignments might be an additional cause for the angular momentum catastrophe hampering the formation of sufficiently extended disk galaxies in numerical simulations.

Finally, we emphasize that the implications for disk/bulge formation discussed above are highly speculative. In our simulations the gas was not allowed to cool, and we used the angular momentum distributions of the gas found at $`z=3`$ to speculate about the fate of the gas once cooling were turned on. In reality the gas will already have (partially) cooled inside sub-clumps that merge to form the systems analyzed here, and this will also impact on the angular momentum distribution of the gas and its subsequent evolution (e.g., dynamical friction). On the other hand, it has been argued by several authors that in order to prevent the angular momentum catastrophe the gas has to be prevented from cooling inside sub-clumps for instance by feedback processes or preheating (e.g., Navarro & White 1994; Weil, Eke & Efstathiou 1998; Sommer-Larsen, Gelato & Vedel 1999). Under those circumstances the angular momentum distribution of the gas may in fact resemble those analyzed here, although it is unclear to what extent these heating processes influence the angular momentum distributions of the gas prior to being incorporated in the halos. For instance, processes related to feedback and re-ionization create pressure gradients in the gas which may decouple the angular momentum distribution of the gas from that of the dark matter. In a follow-up paper (Abel et al. 2002) we address in more detail the impact such pressure forces may have on the angular momentum distributions in proto-galaxies.

We are grateful to Naoki Yoshida for providing his high resolution numerical simulation, to James Bullock, Andreas Burkert, Avishai Dekel, Ariyeh Maller, Joel Primack and Risa Wechsler for stimulating discussions, and to Volker Springel for his help with the simulations. This work has partially been supported through NSF grants ACI96-19019 and AST-9803137. We also acknowledge support from the Grand Challenge Cosmology Consortium, and from the EC RTN network “The Physics of the Intergalactic Medium”.


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# Spin separation in digital ferromagnetic heterostructures

\[

## Abstract

In a study of the ferromagnetic phase of a multilayer digital ferromagnetic semiconductor in the mean-field and effective-mass approximations, we find the exchange interaction to have the dominant energy scale of the problem, effectively controlling the spatial distribution of the carrier spins in the digital ferromagnetic heterostructures. In the ferromagnetic phase, the majority and minority carriers tend to be in different regions of the space (spin separation). Hence, the charge distribution of carriers also changes noticeably from the ferromagnetic to the paramagnetic phase. An example of a design to exploit these phenomena is given.

PACS number(s): 75.70.Cn, 75.50.Pp, 75.10.-b

\]

The research in proactive use of the spins of the carriers to add a new dimension to electronics starts a new area known as spintronics. The recent discoveries  of ferromagnetism with high Curie temperatures in a number of conventional semiconductors doped with magnetic impurities hold promise for the implementation of spintronics in semiconductors.

Inhomogeneously doped semiconductors, such as the p-n junction, play a crucial role in conventional electronic devices. Their properties depend on the distribution of the itinerant carriers, which is governed by the Coulomb interaction of the carriers with the impurities and with other carriers. In this paper we study the charge and spin distributions of the itinerant carriers in semiconductors delta-doped with magnetic impurities, such as GaMnAs. Our theory is within the mean-field, effective-mass and virtual-crystal approximations. In addition to the electrostatic forces, the itinerant carriers have an exchange interaction with the magnetic impurities. Our calculation shows that the magnetization of the high Mn concentration in the delta layers in the ferromagnetic phase gives rise to a spin-dependent potential experienced by the carriers comparable in order of magnitude to the charge potential of the delta layer. The effect of the spin-dependent potential on the inhomogeneous spin distribution of the carriers was noted by Loureriro da Silva et al.  in multilayered GaMnAs with 5% magnetic impurities. By contrast, the delta doping with a nominal concentration per atomic plane of 25% to 50% Mn atoms gives rise to a qualitative different phenomenon of spin separation. This creates the possibility of the magnetic control of the itinerant carriers by manipulating the magnetization of the Mn ions. In particular, the spin-dependent potential may be used to influence the spin dependence of the distribution of itinerant carriers. The majority spin carriers accumulate in the region of the Mn layers whereas minority carriers are repelled from the Mn region. In the paramagnetic phase, the spin potential averages to zero and the magnetic influence disappears. This prediction of large changes in the distribution of carriers between the paramagnetic and the ferromagnetic phases may be a cause of the anomalous Hall effect in the ferromagnetic phase observed in the delta-doped systems. To show the potential of the spin separation for device applications, we give an example of how heterostructures may be designed to engender spin separation.

This paper is organized as follows. A brief review of the relevant theoretical formalism precedes the application to establish the general principle of magnetic control and to show how it works in two specific systems. The first is the experimental system of multiple digital layers of references . We find the phenomenon of spin separation in the ferromagnetic phase. Specifically, for appropriate carrier densities and interlayer distances, the minority carriers are located mainly in the interlayer spacer, with a very small overlap with the magnetic atoms whereas the majority carriers are mainly located in the layers of magnetic atoms. Second, we design a double GaAs quantum well with AlGaAs barriers and a delta layer of Mn in the middle of one well and a delta layer of an acceptor (Be) in the middle of the other. When the GaMnAs well is changed from the paramagnetic phase to the ferromagnetic phase, a net transfer of charge and spin from the Be well to the Mn well is produced, because of the appearance of the dominant magnetic interaction. As a result, there is a potential drop across the structure as well as a spin polarization in the Be well.

Our calculations are based on the mean-field model,  with two types of spins: localized d electrons with magnetic moments of $`5/2`$ Bohr magnetons and itinerant carriers (holes because of the Mn and Be doping). There is a Heisenberg spin exchange between the itinerant carrier and the Mn d electron, which is responsible for the ferromagnetism. The hole energy bands are based on the effective mass approximation with the kinetic energy given by the bands of the host GaAs. The effective potential induced by the dopants is the only change for the carrier subbands, as in the virtual crystal approximation. The Coulomb interaction between the holes is taken into account in the Hartree approximation. The in-plane energy dispersion of the holes subbands is described by a parabolic model which neglects the spin-orbit interaction. The omission of the spin-orbit effect, which has also been used in references , greatly simplifies the numerical computation. On the other hand, it leads to an overestimate of the polarization of the Mn spins induced by the interaction with the carriers. We correct for this by using a smaller value of the coupling constant $`J`$ of the Heisenberg exchange which reproduces the Curie temperature obtained in our previous calculation including the spin-orbit interaction. Because the charge and spin distributions are averaged properties of the system, we argue that the qualitative aspects of the effects discussed in this paper would remain if the spin-orbit interaction is included.

Both model systems studied here are taken to be translationally invariant in the $`xy`$-plane normal to the growth axis. Thus, the Mn concentration $`c_M(z)`$ varies only along the $`z`$ axis. We assume that, in addition to the magnetic impurities which act as acceptors in GaMnAs, there is a distribution of donors, $`c_c(z)`$, which partially compensate the Mn acceptors, so that the total density of holes is smaller than the density of Mn, as is observed.  For simplicity, we assume that the spatial distributions of the donor and acceptor impurities are the same except for a multiplicative constant. From the charge neutrality condition, $`P+C_c=C_M`$, where $`P`$, $`C_c`$ and $`C_M`$ are the average densities of holes, of the compensating impurities, and of the Mn impurities, respectively.

In the mean-field approximation, the effect of the magnetic impurities on the itinerant carriers is given by a spin-dependent potential:

$$V_\sigma =\frac{J\sigma }{2}c_M(z)M(z)$$
(1)
where $`\sigma =\pm 1`$ denotes the spin directions, $`J`$ is the exchange coupling constant between the itinerant carrier and the Mn spin, and $`M(z)`$ stands for the local average magnetization of Mn. The Mn polarization is produced by the molecular field created by the spin polarization of the itinerant carriers as well as the external magnetic field. At temperature $`T`$ and zero external magnetic field, the Mn magnetization is given by the usual Brillouin function:

$$M(z)=SB_S\left(\frac{J}{k_BT}\frac{p_+(z)p_{}(z)}{2}\right)$$
(2)
where $`p_\sigma (z)`$ is the spin-dependent density of the itinerant carriers.

The effective Schrödinger equation for the holes has a self-consistent potential $`V_e(z)+V_\sigma (z)`$, where $`V_e(z)`$ is the electrostatic potential seen by the hole given by,

$$\frac{d^2}{dz^2}V_e(z)=\frac{4\pi e^2}{ϵ}[c_c(z)c_M(z)+p_+(z)+p_{}(z)]$$
(3)
The hole eigenenergy is the sum of the quantized energy $`E_{n,\sigma }`$ from the motion in the $`z`$ direction and the plane wave energy $`ϵ_\stackrel{}{k}_{}=\frac{\mathrm{}^2k_{}^2}{2m_{}}`$ from the inplane motion. The hole wave function is the product of the bound state envelope function in $`z`$ times the plane wave normal to the $`z`$ axis. The spin-dependent hole density is given by:

$$p_\sigma (z)=\underset{n}{}\frac{d^2\stackrel{}{k}_{}}{(2\pi )^2}\frac{|\varphi _{n,\sigma }(z)|^2}{e^{(E_{n,\sigma }+ϵ_\stackrel{}{k}_{}\mu )/k_BT}+1},$$
(4)
where $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential.

It is illuminating to estimate the strength of the spin dependent potential (1) for a single magnetic digital layer. Throughout the paper we take the hole effective mass tensor to be $`m_{}=0.11`$ and $`m_z=0.37`$ times the free electron mass and model the distribution of the Mn in a digital layer as Gaussian:

$$c_M(z)=\frac{C_M}{\sqrt{\pi }\mathrm{\Delta }}Exp[(z/\mathrm{\Delta })^2]$$
(5)
In a digital layer of Ga0.5Mn0.5As the total concentration of Mn is $`C_M=3.13\times 10^{14}\text{ cm}^2=3.13\text{ nm}^2`$. Transmission electron microscopy experiments  reveal that the Mn is spread over 2 or 3 atomic planes. This corresponds roughly to the Gaussian half-width of $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.5`$ nm. The exchange integral of $`J=150`$ mev-nm3 used in our previous work to calculate the Curie temperature is reduced to $`J=100`$ mev-nm3 here in order to compensate the absence of spin-orbit in the present calculation. The maximum of the spin-dependent potential in Eq. (1) for saturated magnetization is 441.5 meV in comparison with the charge well depth of about 177 meV. The peak to valley splitting is twice the maximum value. In a diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum well, the magnetic potential is one order of magnitude smaller than in a digital layer. Hence, the magnetic control is more practical in digital layers than in quantum wells.

The magnetic potential is attractive for the majority carriers and repulsive for the minority carriers. As the temperature is increased, the magnetization decreases and so does the magnetic potential, vanishing above the Curie temperature. Accordingly, the itinerant carrier density profiles change significantly as the temperature varies. Both the potentials and the density profiles are shown in Fig. 1 for a system of $`N=4`$ digital layers, with an interlayer separation $`D=40`$ ML (GaAs monolayers), or 11.3 nm, and a density of holes per layer $`p=1.310^{13}`$ cm-2. Similar results are obtained for systems between 1 and 10 layers. In the left panel of Fig. 1 we present the potential profiles at $`T=`$40 K (thick dashed line), when the system is paramagnetic. In the same panel we show the total potential for majority (attractive) and minority (repulsive) carriers for spin dependent potentials at $`T=`$5 K when the system is ferromagnetic. The large magnitude of the spin-dependent part of the potential is apparent in the figure. The effect on the density profile of the itinerant carriers is shown in the right panel. In the ferromagnetic case (thin solid line) the carriers tend to pile up in the magnetic layers. In the paramagnetic case (long dashed line) the carrier distribution is more spread out, with more carriers in the spacer layers relative to the ferromagnetic case.

Figure 2 shows the resultant spin-dependent density profiles for two temperatures. In the ferromagnetic case, the distributions of majority and minority carriers are distinct. The majority carriers are localized in the magnetic layers whereas the minority carriers are almost totally expelled from it. This “spin separation” phenomenon is, of course, absent in the paramagnetic case. We have checked that as the interlayer distance decreases or the hole density increases the spin separation diminishes. Spin fluctuations of Mn beyond the mean-field approximation are a major source of spin-flip scattering. Hence, we expect the spin-flip scattering to be reduced when the spin separation is larger. We have also found a correlation between the absence (or presence) of the observed anomalous Hall effect in transport experiments  and the presence (or absence) of the spin separation in our calculations of the same sample configurations. The anticorrelation may provide a clue to construct in future a theory of the anomalous Hall effect based on the absence of spin separation.

Results of figure (1) show how the exchange interaction can overcome the electrostatic interactions in the case of a digital layer. We propose here a heterostructure in which this effect is made more apparent and can be measured. It is a double quantum well of GaAs with GaAsAl barriers, delta-doped with one layer of Mn in the middle of the left well and one layer of the acceptor Be in the middle of the right well. For illustration but not necessity, we choose the density profile of the Be to be identical to that of the Mn ions plus its compensating charges. We take the density of holes per digital layer in either well of $`1.3\times 10^{13}cm^2`$. The digital layer of Mn has a total density of $`3.13\times 10^{13}cm^2`$ and a Gaussian distribution as in Eq. (5) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.5`$ nm.

Above the Curie temperature the system is totally symmetric (by the construction of the model) and so is the charge distribution (shown in the middle column of Fig. 3). At low temperatures the majority carriers with spin antiparallel to the Mn are attracted by the magnetic layer. As a result, there is a spin-dependent charge transfer from the non-magnetic to the magnetic well (the left column of Fig. 3), which generates an internal electric field and a potential drop. In the rightmost panel we plot both the potential drop and the Mn average magnetization as a function of the temperature. The potential drops follows the average magnetization and its maximum is close to 20 meV at zero temperature. Larger values can be obtained for smaller carrier densities, but this decreases the Curie temperature . The charge imbalance is $`1.2\times 10^{12}cm^2`$ or 4.6$`\%`$ of the total hole density. The charge transfer effect takes also place for other values of the carrier density, as well as for structures with a different density of Be and Mn. As a result of the rearrangment of the carriers in the heterostructure, as the system goes from the paramagnetic to the ferromagnetic phase, large changes in the in plane and vertical transport properties can be expected as well.

Recent Monte Carlo simulations for bulk ferromagnetic semiconductors , in which the the Mn magnetic moment is treated as a classical vector of fixed norm, confirm that the carriers are more localized around the magnetic atoms in the ordered phase than in the paramagnetic phase. This indicates that the attraction of the carriers to the magnetic atoms is a cooperative effect which is accounted for in our mean field calculation. Tight binding calculations for a superlattice of digital GaAs/GaAsMn  give very similar results to those obtained using an envelope function approach , validating the use of the effective mass approximation in delta-doped systems. A density functional calculation for a superlattice of digital GaAs/MnAs predicts a half-metallic behavior . Our results should be compared with a similar calculation including compensating impurities, 50% of Mn and larger interlayer distances.

In conclusion, we have studied the spatial distribution of the carrier spins in digital ferromagnetic heterostructures. Our main results are: (i) the distribution of carriers in digital ferromagnetic heterostructures of GaAsMn is largely controlled by the exchange interaction, which overcomes the electrostatic interaction. (ii) Large changes in the spatial distribution of carriers take place when ferromagnetism is switched off (for instance, by increasing the temperature above the Curie temperature). (iii) In some situations the minority carriers are totally separated from the Mn layers and the majority carriers. This might have consequences in transport properties and the anomalous Hall effect.

We wish to thank D.D. Awschalom, R. Kawakami, A. Gossard, E. Gwinn, L. Brey and B. H. Lee for stimulating discussions. We acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Education for a post-doctoral fellowship and support by DARPA/ONR N0014-99-1-109 and NSF DMR 0099572.

(\*) Present Address: University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712.


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# Echelle spectroscopy of Ca II HK activity in Southern Hemisphere planet search targets Based on observations obtained at the Anglo–Australian Telescope, Siding Spring, Australia.

## 1 Introduction

Extensive planet search programmes are now operating on a variety of telescopes around the world, including the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope (Tinney et al. 2001,Butler et al. 2001), the 10m Keck I (Vogt et al. 2000), the Lick 3m (Fischer et al. 2001), the Leonard Euler 1.2m (Naef 2001) and ESO Coudé Auxiliary Telescopes (Kürster 2000) at La Silla, and the Observatoire de Haute-Provence 1.9m (Queloz et al. 1998). These programmes reach velocity precisions ranging from 15 to 3 m s-1. At these levels apparent velocity variability (known as jitter), which is intrinsic to the target star itself (rather than the presence of an unseen companion), can be produced by the effects of stellar activity and rapid rotation combined with surface inhomogeneity (Saar et al. 1998, Saar & Fischer 2000, Santos et al. 2000).

The level of stellar activity in solar-type stars is commonly examined by measuring the strength of chromospheric emission features in the cores of the Ca II H and K absorption lines. This emission is usually parametrised by the Mount Wilson HK Project’s R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ index (see Baliunas et al. (1998) and references therein). This index has been shown to be a useful indicator of the levels of jitter in F-M type stars (Saar, Butler & Marcy 1998). Estimates of R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ are therefore essential to planet search programmes, since they indicate the level of velocity variability in a given star which could be erroneously ascribed to the presence of an unseen planet, rather than jitter.

Unfortunately, while extensive R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ data are available in the Northern Hemisphere from the Mount Wilson HK Project programme (Baliunas et al. 1998) and the Vienna-KPNO Ca II H&K Survey (Strassmeier et al. 2000), the only large R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ data set available in the South is that of Henry et al. (1996). Henry et al. measured chromospheric Ca II emission in more than 800 southern stars (mostly G dwarfs). However, a large fraction of the stars targeted by the Anglo-Australian Planet Search (Tinney et al. 2001, Butler et al. 2001) were not observed by Henry et al. We have therefore begun a programme of ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy of these stars on the AAT to fill this gap.

## 2 Observations

The Anglo-Australian Planet Search (AAPS) is being carried out on the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), using the University College London Echelle Spectrograph (UCLES). The observations reported here were obtained on 2001 August 4. For these observations UCLES was operated in its 31 lines mm-1 mode, with its UV-optimised collimator, to provide an echellogram centered at 390 nm. The detector used was the AAO’s EEV 2048$`\times `$4096 13.5$`\mu `$m pixel detector (rather than the MITLL2 2048$`\times `$4096 15$`\mu `$m pixel CCD used for all previous AAPS observations). This CCD provides excellent UV response, with a quantum efficiency at the Ca II HK lines of $``$ 65 per cent. Compared to the MITLL2 the EEV has smaller pixels and reduced charge diffusion, resulting in greatly improved resolution – it will become the default detector for all future AAPS observing. CCD gain was 2.7 $`e^{}`$ adu-1, and read noise was 4.4 $`e^{}`$ per pixel. The CCD was binned by two spatially, to provide an effective slit length of 11 pixels. In the configuration adopted the dispersion at the Ca II R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ lines is 0.002 nm pixel-1, while the resolution is 3.5 pixels or 0.007 nm.

Sixty seven F, G, K and M-type stars were observed in 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$7 seeing though a 1$`\stackrel{}{.}`$0$`\times `$3$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 slit, with exposure times ranging from 30s to 180s, providing a signal-to-noise ratio per 0.002 nm wavelength pixel of between 10 and 50. The stars observed included AAPS target stars which were also observed by Henry et al. (1996), and stars from the Mount Wilson HK Project, which Henry et al. used as standards for calibrating their observations onto the Mount Wilson R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ system. The stars observed are listed in Table 1 along with magnitude, colour and spectral type data for each star from the HIPPARCOS catalogue (ESA 1997).

## 3 Analysis

### 3.1 Image Processing

Reduction of the CCD echellogram images proceeded in a standard manner in the Figaro environment. Images were overscan subtracted, trimmed and then flat-fielded using flat-field exposures from which the spectrograph blaze function for each order had been fitted and divided out. Scattered light in the spectrograph produces a faint overall level of illumination of the detector – this was fitted in the gaps between orders and subtracted over the whole detector. These images were then straightened to make the echelle orders align with columns on the detector. The entire 3$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 slit length was then extracted from each order – no sky subtraction was performed. In the wavelength range of interest the sky is featureless. An observation of blank sky obtained well after astronomical twilight reveals sky counts contribute less than 0.016 $`e^{}`$ s-1 per 0.002 nm wavelength pixel, which is negligible compared to our targets ($``$8 $`e^{}`$ s-1 per 0.002 nm wavelength pixel at V=7.5).

The orders containing the Ca II H and K lines, as well as the adjoining orders (orders 146-142), were then extracted for individual processing. All were wavelength calibrated using a ThAr spectrum obtained at the end of the night. All these data were also flux calibrated using an observation of the HST flux standard $`\mu `$ Col (Turnshek et al. 1990) – note that we use this observation only to correct the blaze and inter-order sensitivity of our data. The night was not spectro-photometric.

The spectra in order 142 ($`\lambda =398.0402.6`$ nm) were cross-correlated against the observation of HD142, and the barycentric correction for HD142 was applied. The result is a set of zero-velocity spectra. (Though HD142 is a radial velocity variable at the 30m s-1 level (Tinney et al. 2002), this variability is negligible for our purposes). Lastly, all the spectra were re-sampled to the same 0.002 nm binning.

### 3.2 S Indices

The resulting spectra were then used to produce a chromospheric Ca II HK emission index, SMW. The Mount Wilson HK Project defines its SMW (Duncan et al. 1991) as the ratio of the flux in two triangular bands with full-width at half-maximum of 0.109 nm centered at 393.3664 (K) and 396.8470 nm (H), to that in two 2.0 nm wide continuum bands centered at 390.1 (V) and 400.1 nm (R). This ratio is measured using a specifically-designed multi-channel photometer. SMW defined as

$$\mathrm{S}_{\mathrm{M}W}=\alpha \frac{N_H+N_K}{N_R+N_V},$$

where the $`N_i`$ are the counts in each of the H, K, V and R bands, and $`\alpha `$ is a constant determined for each night by the observation of standards.

Using the high-resolution spectra obtained at the AAT, we were able to define our Ca II H and K and continuum bands as having the same effective profiles (i.e. 0.1 nm triangular and 2.0 nm square bandpasses) as used at Mount Wilson. At the AAT, therefore, we measure the flux in each band, and normalise for the band width to obtain

$$N=\frac{_\lambda F(\lambda )\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda }{_\lambda \mathrm{\Delta }\lambda }$$

in each band. Because both the Ca H and Ca K lines appear in two orders in our echellogram, we actually obtain two flux estimates for each, which we combine to form an observed SAAT index as follows

$$\mathrm{S}_{\mathrm{A}AT}=\frac{N_{H,1}+N_{H,2}+N_{K,1}+N_{K,2}}{2(N_R+N_V)}.$$

In Figure 2 we plot this observed SAAT against the SMW and SHenry values reported by Henry et al. A tight linear correlation is seen between SMW and SAAT, with rms scatter about a linear fit of 0.02, zero-point offset of 0.061 and slope of 1.043. Examination of Fig. 2 would suggest that a calibration against the MW data alone would have even smaller scatter, and could be preferred. Certainly our high-resolution spectra should transfer onto the MW system in a linear fashion with no systematic effects. Unfortunately, the number of MW stars accessible in the south is small, so such a calibration would (at present) be based on a small number of stars, and only a few active ones. Because such active stars are by their very nature highly variable in their activity, we have therefore chosen to use all the MW and Henry et al. calibrators to derive the relation shown in Fig. 2. No major correlation is seen between degree of deviation from the fit and spectral type.

The values of SAAT so calibrated (including propagated photon-counting uncertainties), and the calibrating S indices are shown in Table 1. In general the scatter about the calibration curve is significantly larger than the photon-counting uncertainties, which likely reflects the intrinsically variable nature of stellar activity.

It should be noted that an advantage of performing these observations at high spectral resolution is that we can define our bandpasses in exactly the same way as those used at Mount Wilson – the resulting indices require only a linear calibration with slope of 1.0 to place them on a standard system. Henry et al., in contrast, were forced to use a non-linear calibration, which changes from run to run, introducing possible systematic effects. Experiments on our data show that when the Ca II bandpass is broadened, non-linear calibrations of increasing complexity become necessary, with the consequent risk of introducing systematic uncertainties.

### 3.3 R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ Indices

The S index provides an estimator of photospheric plus chromospheric Ca II strength. For activity purposes, however, it is the chromospheric emission which is of interest. This is usually normalised to the star’s bolometric luminosity, and parametrised by the R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ index. The derivation of R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ from S is described in detail in the Appendix of Noyes et al. (1984). We follow these procedures to derive the log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,AAT}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ values shown in Table 1, where we also show: the log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,CTIO}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ values measured by Henry et al. (1996); the log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,MW}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ values used to calibrate those data; and the HIPPARCOS B–V photometry used to estimate the photometric contribution to SAAT.

In Figure 3 we plot log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,AAT}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ against log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,MW}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ and log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,CTIO}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$. Note that there are no arbitrary calibration factors included in the transformation from SAAT to R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,AAT}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$. The resulting plot is consistent with a unitary transformation – the solid line fit shown in Fig. 3 is for a zero-offset of 0.09$`\pm `$2.3 and a slope 1.02$`\pm `$0.09, and has rms scatter of 0.09 (for all data), or 0.05 for the MW data alone . We therefore apply no further calibration to our log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K,AAT}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ estimates, presented in Table 1, but note a root-mean-square scatter about the MW standards of $`\pm `$0.05 (in the logarithm), which is a better uncertainty estimate for the final results than the photon-counting uncertainties. The rms scatter about the fit for observations in common with Henry et al. is larger at $`\pm `$0.09. Expressed as the “mean absolute deviation” (used by Henry et al.) this corresponds to $`\pm `$0.07, while the mean absolute deviation for the calibration of the Henry et al. sample onto the MW data is $`\pm `$0.052, leading us to conclude a large part of this scatter may be intrinsic to the Henry et al. comparison sample rather than the AAT data.

## 4 Discussion

Table 1 provides at least two new R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ measurements for stars with known planetary companions, HD27442 (Butler et al. 2001) and HD142 (Tinney et al. 2002) – though there may be several more, as yet undiscovered, planets in this set of stars (for which AAPS observing is on-going). In the case of HD27442, we find the star, at this epoch, to be very inactive. Saar et al. (1998) and Santos et al. (2000) have examined the levels of velocity variability intrinsic to stars themselves ($`\sigma _v^{}`$), as a function of activity (R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$), in stars monitored by the Lick 3m planet search. A trend emerges in which more active stars show more intrinsic velocity instability, or “jitter”, with a form of $`\sigma _v^{}`$(R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$)1.1 for G and K dwarfs, and with $`\sigma _v^{}`$ in the range 3-10 m s-1 for log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$=-5.0.

Based on this we would predict the jitter in HD27442 to be $``$1.5-5 m s-1. Butler et al. (2001) derive a scatter about their Keplerian fit to the velocity data for HD27442 of 2.9 m s-1, which is an upper limit to the level of jitter which could be present in this star – in line with its extremely low level of Ca II activity.

HD142 is only slightly more active at log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$=-4.95, implying an expected level of jitter in the range $``$4-12 m s-1. Tinney et al. (2002) report a scatter about a single Keplerian fit of 5.9 m s-1, consistent with this prediction.

Several of the stars in Table 1 reveal themselves to be quite active, with log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$$`>`$ -4.5. This would correspond to likely levels of jitter greater than 10-30 m/s in HD19632, HD30876 and HD205390. Planet candidates detected around stars like this must be scrutinised with great care to avoid erroneous detection claims. The recent results of Queloz et al. (2001) for HD166435, in particular, provide a valuable cautionary tale. HD166435 was selected for observation as part of the Observatoire de Haute-Provence ELODIE planet search. The available data (which did not include R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ measurements) did not indicate particular youth or activity. Over the period May 1997 to September 1999 seventy spectra of this star were acquired, as it appeared to have an unseen planetary companion. Further analysis, however, revealed this variability to be entirely due to activity. A result which is not unexpected when the value of the S index of this star (as measured at Mount Wilson) is considered. At S=0.42-0.51 (Queloz et al. 2002) this G0 dwarf is phenomenally active – more active than the most active stars shown in Figs. 2 and 3, implying log R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$$`4`$. At this level of activity the Saar et al. (1998) results would imply an expected level of jitter in the range 36-120 m s-1, which would go much of the way toward explaining the 200 m s-1 amplitude velocity variations seen in HD164435. Having R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ measurements in hand when considering the validity of a planet candidate is clearly essential.

Finally we would note the intrinsically variable nature of active stars, and the importance of obtaining Ca II observations at multiple epochs in order to be sure a star really is inactive. The reliability of such data is important when trying to decide what level of velocity variability could be due to activity/rotation induced jitter, and what level can be trusted to be due to an unseen companion.

## 5 Conclusion

Ca II HK activity measurements are provided for 59 stars from the Anglo-Australian Planet Search target list – thirty five of which are for stars not previously published. Four-metre telescope UV echelle spectroscopy is an efficient way in which to obtain high quality data for this purpose, and because of the high resolution of such data, calibration onto the standard Mount Wilson R$`{}_{\mathrm{H}K}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ system can be carried out with greatly reduced systematic uncertainties.

### Acknowledgments

The Anglo-Australian Planet Search team would like to gratefully acknowledge the grant of Director’s time in which these observations were carried out, the superb technical support which has been received throughout the programme from AAT staff - in particular E.Penny, R.Patterson, D.Stafford, F.Freeman, S.Lee, J.Pogson and G.Schafer. We further acknowledge support by; the partners of the Anglo-Australian Telescope Agreement (CGT,HRAJ,APJ); NASA grant NAG5-8299 & NSF grant AST95-20443 (GWM); NSF grant AST-9988087 (RPB); and Sun Microsystems.


text:
# 1 Solutions (A) and (B) where 𝑛_𝑖=𝑎𝑛₁+𝑏𝑛₄.

UCRHEP-T328

January 2002

New U(1) Gauge Extension of the
Supersymmetric Standard Model
Ernest Ma
Physics Department, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA

## Abstract

In extending the minimal standard model of quarks and leptons to include supersymmetry, the conservation of baryon and lepton numbers is no longer automatic. I show how the latter may be achieved with a new U(1) gauge symmetry and new supermultiplets at the TeV scale. Neutrino masses and a solution of the $`\mu `$ problem are essential features of this proposed extension.

It is well-known that the minimal standard model of quarks and leptons conserves both baryon number $`B`$ and lepton number $`L`$ automatically (as the consequence of the assumed $`SU(3)_C\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y`$ gauge symmetry and its representation content). It is also well-known that this is not true any more once it is extended to include supersymmetry. Thus any such extension must be supplemented by a new symmetry which forbids the violation of $`B`$ or $`L`$ or both. There are many ways to do this; the most direct is to impose the conservation of an odd-even discrete symmetry, i.e. $`R(1)^{2j+3B+L}`$, which is of course the defining hypothesis of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM).

There are two additional features of the MSSM which are often called into question. One is the absence of neutrino masses. This is, however, easily remedied by the addition of three neutral singlet lepton superfields (analogs of the three right-handed singlet neutrinos of the nonsupersymmetric standard model). The other is the presence of the so-called $`\mu `$ term in the MSSM superpotential, i.e. $`\mu \widehat{\varphi }_1\widehat{\varphi }_2`$, where $`\widehat{\varphi }_{1,2}`$ are the two Higgs superfields which spontaneously break the electroweak gauge symmetry. Since this term is allowed by the gauge symmetry and the supersymmetry, there is no understanding of why $`\mu `$ should be the order of the electroweak breaking scale, rather than some very large unification scale.

Whereas there are piecemeal solutions of all the above three problems of the MSSM, it is clearly desirable to have a single principle which works for all three at the same time. In this paper I show how a new simple U(1) gauge extension of the MSSM may be used exactly for this purpose .

Consider the gauge group $`SU(3)_C\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y\times U(1)_X`$. The usual quark and lepton (left-handed) chiral superfields transform as follows:

$`(\widehat{u},\widehat{d})(3,2,1/6;n_1),\widehat{u}^c(3^{},1,2/3;n_2),\widehat{d}^c(3^{},1,1/3;n_3),`$ (1)
$`(\widehat{\nu },\widehat{e})(1,2,1/2;n_4),\widehat{e}^c(1,1,1;n_5),\widehat{N}^c(1,1,0;n_6).`$ (2)
They are supplemented by the two Higgs doublet superfields

$$\widehat{\varphi }_1(1,2,1/2;n_1n_3),\widehat{\varphi }_2(1,2,1/2;n_1n_2),$$
(3)
with

$$n_1+n_3=n_4+n_5,n_1+n_2=n_4+n_6,$$
(4)
as in the MSSM. However, the $`\mu `$ term is replaced by the trilinear interaction $`\widehat{\chi }\widehat{\varphi }_1\widehat{\varphi }_2`$, where $`\widehat{\chi }`$ is a Higgs singlet superfield transforming as

$$\widehat{\chi }(1,1,0;2n_1+n_2+n_3).$$
(5)
Thus

$$2n_1+n_2+n_30$$
(6)
is required so that the effective $`\mu `$ parameter of this model is determined by the $`U(1)_X`$ breaking scale, i.e. $`\widehat{\chi }`$.

To complete this model, I add two copies of the singlet quark superfields

$$\widehat{U}(3,1,2/3;n_7),\widehat{U}^c(3^{},1,2/3;n_8),$$
(7)
and one copy of

$$\widehat{D}(3,1,1/3;n_7),\widehat{D}^c(3^{},1,1/3;n_8),$$
(8)
with

$$n_7+n_8=2n_1n_2n_3,$$
(9)
so that their masses are also determined by the $`U(1)_X`$ breaking scale.

To ensure the absence of the axial-vector anomaly , the following conditions are considered .

$$[SU(3)]^2U(1)_X:2n_1+n_2+n_3+n_7+n_8=0,$$
(10)
$`[SU(2)]^2U(1)_X:3(3n_1+n_4)+(n_1n_3)+(n_1n_2)=0,`$ (11)
$`[U(1)_Y]^2U(1)_X`$ $`:`$ $`3\left[6\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\right)^2n_1+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)^2n_2+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)^2n_3+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)^2n_4+n_5\right]`$ (12)
$`+2\left[3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)^2n_7+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)^2n_8\right]+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)^2n_7+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)^2n_8`$
$`+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)^2(n_1n_3)+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)^2(n_1n_2)=0,`$
$`U(1)_Y[U(1)_X]^2`$ $`:`$ $`3\left[6\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\right)n_1^2+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)n_2^2+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)n_3^2+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)n_4^2+n_5^2\right]`$ (13)
$`+2\left[3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)n_7^2+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)n_8^2\right]+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)n_7^2+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)n_8^2`$
$`+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)(n_1n_3)^2+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)(n_1n_2)^2=0,`$
$`[U(1)_X]^3`$ $`:`$ $`3\left[6n_1^3+3n_2^3+3n_3^3+2n_4^3+n_5^3+n_6^3\right]+3(3n_7^3+3n_8^3)`$ (14)
$`+2(n_1n_3)^3+2(n_1n_2)^3+(2n_1+n_2+n_3)^3=0.`$
Using Eq. (9), it is clear that Eq. (10) is automatically satisfied. Using Eqs. (4) and (9), it is easily shown that both Eqs. (11) and (12) are satisfied by the single condition

$$n_2+n_3=7n_1+3n_4.$$
(15)
Using Eqs. (4), (9), and (15), it is then simple to show that Eq. (13) becomes

$$6(3n_1+n_4)(2n_14n_23n_7)=0.$$
(16)
Using Eq. (15), it is clear that $`3n_1+n_4=0`$ contradicts Eq. (6). Hence only the condition

$$2n_14n_23n_7=0$$
(17)
will be considered from here on.

At this point, the eight parameters ($`n_1`$ to $`n_8`$) are constrained by the five conditions given by Eqs. (4), (9), (15), and (17). Consider $`n_1`$, $`n_4`$, and $`n_6`$ as the independent parameters. The others are then given by

$`n_2`$ $`=`$ $`n_1+n_4+n_6,`$ (18)
$`n_3`$ $`=`$ $`8n_1+2n_4n_6,`$ (19)
$`n_5`$ $`=`$ $`9n_1+n_4n_6,`$ (20)
$`n_7`$ $`=`$ $`2n_1{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}n_4{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}n_6,`$ (21)
$`n_8`$ $`=`$ $`11n_1{\displaystyle \frac{5}{3}}n_4+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}n_6.`$ (22)
It is now straightforward to simplify Eq. (14) to read

$$36(3n_1+n_4)(9n_1+n_42n_6)(6n_1n_4n_6)=0.$$
(23)
Whereas one factor, i.e. $`3n_1+n_4`$, must be nonzero, there remain two possible solutions, i.e.

$`(\mathrm{A})`$ $`n_6={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(9n_1+n_4),`$ (24)
$`(\mathrm{B})`$ $`n_6=6n_1n_4,`$ (25)
which render $`U(1)_X`$ free of the axial-vector anomaly. This exact factoring of the sum of eleven cubic terms is certainly not a trivial result .

Solution (A) is thus given by

$`n_2=n_3={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(7n_1+3n_4),n_5=n_6={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(9n_1+n_4),`$ (26)
$`n_7=4n_12n_4,n_8=5n_1n_4.`$ (27)
In the MSSM, $`\widehat{L}`$ and $`\widehat{\varphi }_1`$ transform identically under $`SU(3)_C\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y`$. Here $`\widehat{L}`$ and $`\widehat{\varphi }_1`$ are distinguished by $`U(1)_X`$ if

$$9n_1+5n_40.$$
(28)
Hence the lepton number $`L`$ may be automatically conserved as in the nonsupersymmetric standard model.

In the MSSM, the term $`\widehat{u}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{d}^c`$ is allowed in the superpotential. Here it is forbidden if

$$7n_1+3n_40.$$
(29)
Hence the baryon number $`B`$ may be automatically conserved as well.

Solution (B) has

$`n_2=5n_1,n_3=2n_1+3n_4,n_5=3n_1+2n_4,`$ (30)
$`n_6=6n_1n_4,n_7=6n_1,n_8=3n_13n_4.`$ (31)
Hence $`L`$ is automatically conserved if

$$3n_1+4n_40,$$
(32)
and $`B`$ is automatically conserved if

$$3n_1+2n_40.$$
(33)
Note that solutions (A) and (B) are identical if $`n_4=n_1`$. This turns out to be also the condition  for $`U(1)_X`$ to be orthogonal to $`U(1)_Y`$, i.e.

$`3\left[6\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\right)n_1+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)n_2+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)n_3+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)n_4+n_5\right]`$
$`+2\left[3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)n_7+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\right)n_8\right]+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)n_7+3\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)n_8`$
$`+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)(n_1n_3)+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)(n_1n_2)=0.`$ (34)
There are two more anomalies to consider. The global SU(2) chiral gauge anomaly  is absent because the number of $`SU(2)_L`$ doublets is even. The mixed gravitational-gauge anomaly  is proportional to the sum of $`U(1)_X`$ charges, i.e.

$`3(6n_1+3n_2+3n_3+2n_4+n_5+n_6)+3(3n_7+3n_8)`$
$`+2(n_1n_3)+2(n_1n_2)+(2n_1+n_2+n_3)=6(3n_1+n_4),`$ (35)
which is not zero. This anomaly may be tolerated if gravity is neglected. On the other hand, it may be rendered zero by adding $`U(1)_X`$ supermultiplets as follows: one with charge $`3(3n_1+n_4)`$, three with charge $`2(3n_1+n_4)`$, and three with charge $`(3n_1+n_4)`$. Hence they contribute $`3+3(21)=6`$ (in units of $`3n_1+n_4`$) to Eq. (35), but $`27+3(81)=0`$ to Eq. (14).

The allowed terms in the superpotential of either solution (A) or (B) consist of the usual allowed terms of the MSSM with $`\mu \widehat{\varphi }_1\widehat{\varphi }_2`$ replaced by $`\widehat{\chi }\widehat{\varphi }_1\widehat{\varphi }_2`$. In (A), the usual $`R`$-parity violating terms are forbidden by Eqs. (28) and (29). As for the interactions of the exotic quark singlets of Eqs. (7) and (8), $`n_1+n_40`$ forbids $`\widehat{U}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{d}^c`$, $`\widehat{u}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{D}^c`$, and $`(\widehat{u}_i\widehat{d}_j\widehat{d}_i\widehat{u}_j)\widehat{D}`$; $`13n_1+n_40`$ forbids $`\widehat{U}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{D}^c`$; and $`n_10`$ forbids $`\widehat{e}^c\widehat{u}^c\widehat{D}`$, $`(\widehat{\nu }\widehat{d}\widehat{e}\widehat{u})\widehat{D}^c`$, $`\widehat{N}^c\widehat{u}^c\widehat{U}`$, and $`\widehat{N}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{D}`$. This means that if $`n_4=n_1`$, then $`\widehat{U}^c`$ and $`\widehat{D}^c`$ are diquark superfields, and if $`n_1=0`$, then $`\widehat{U}`$ and $`\widehat{D}`$ are leptoquark superfields.

In solution (B), the usual $`R`$-parity violating terms are forbidden by Eqs. (32) and (33). Furthermore, $`n_1+3n_40`$ forbids $`\widehat{U}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{d}^c`$; $`n_10`$ forbids $`\widehat{u}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{D}^c`$ and $`(\widehat{u}_i\widehat{d}_j\widehat{d}_i\widehat{u}_j)\widehat{D}`$; $`4n_1+3n_40`$ forbids $`\widehat{U}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{D}^c`$; $`n_1+n_40`$ forbids $`\widehat{e}^c\widehat{u}^c\widehat{D}`$, $`(\widehat{\nu }\widehat{d}\widehat{e}\widehat{u})\widehat{D}^c`$, and $`\widehat{N}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{D}`$; and $`5n_1n_40`$ forbids $`\widehat{N}^c\widehat{u}^c\widehat{U}`$. This means that $`\widehat{U}^c`$ is a diquark if $`n_4=n_1/3`$, and $`\widehat{U}`$ is a leptoquark if $`n_4=5n_1`$; whereas $`\widehat{D}^c`$ is a diquark if $`n_1=0`$, and $`\widehat{D}`$ is a leptoquark if $`n_4=n_1`$.

Even with the imposition of $`R`$-parity, there are higher-dimensional operators in the MSSM which may induce proton decay, i.e. $`\widehat{q}\widehat{q}\widehat{q}\widehat{l}`$ and $`\widehat{u}^c\widehat{u}^c\widehat{d}^c\widehat{e}^c`$. In the nonsupersymmetric standard model, since quarks and leptons are fermions, these operators have dimension six, but in the MSSM they have dimension-five pieces. Hence proton decay may not be sufficiently suppressed, which is a well-known problem of the MSSM. In this model, these terms are forbidden \[in both solutions (A) and (B)\] by $`3n_1+n_40`$, i.e. the same condition that forbids the $`\mu `$ term.

As it stands, this model pairs $`\nu `$ with $`N^c`$ to form a Dirac neutrino with mass proportional to $`\varphi _2`$. This would require extremely small Yukawa couplings and is generally considered to be very unnatural. On the other hand, if $`n_6=3n_1+n_4`$ is assumed \[i.e. $`n_4=3n_1`$ in solution (A) or $`n_4=3n_1/2`$ in solution (B)\], then the extra singlets used to cancel the mixed gravitational-gauge anomaly of Eq. (35) are exactly of the right number and structure to allow neutrinos to acquire naturally small seesaw Dirac masses, as shown below.

In addition to the 3 singlets $`N^c`$ of $`U(1)_X`$ charge $`n_6`$, there are now also 3 singlets $`N`$ of charge $`n_6`$ and 3 singlets $`S^c`$ of charge $`2n_6`$. The $`12\times 12`$ mass matrix spanning $`(\nu ,S^c,N,N^c)`$ is then of the form

$$=\left[\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& m_1\\ 0& 0& m_2& 0\\ 0& m_2& 0& M\\ m_1& 0& M& 0\end{array}\right],$$
(36)
where $`m_1`$ comes from $`\nu N^c\varphi _2^0`$ with $`\varphi _2^00`$, $`m_2`$ comes from $`NS^c\chi `$ with $`\chi 0`$, and $`M`$ is an allowed invaraint mass. Thus $`m_110^2`$ GeV, $`m_210^3`$ GeV, and $`M10^{16}`$ GeV are expected. In the reduced $`(\nu ,S^c)`$ sector, the effective $`6\times 6`$ mass matrix is still exactly of the Dirac form, i.e.

$$_\nu =\left[\begin{array}{cc}0& m_1m_2/M\\ m_1m_2/M& 0\end{array}\right],$$
(37)
and $`m_1m_2/M10^2`$ eV is the right order of magnitude for realistic neutrino masses.

In conclusion, a remarkable new U(1) gauge symmetry has been identified in a simple extension of the supersymmetric standard model which is capable of enforcing $`B`$ or $`L`$ conservation or both, as well as the absence of the $`\mu `$ term and the presence of neutrino masses. Two solutions have been obtained \[from the exact factoring of Eq. (14) to become Eq. (23)\] with many possible variations regarding new interactions beyond the MSSM, as summarized in Tables 1 and 2. The origin of this new U(1) gauge symmetry is unknown at present; it has no obvious fit into any simple model of grand unification or string theory.

This work was supported in part by the U. S. Department of Energy under Grant No. DE-FG03-94ER40837.