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# Spike timing and the coding of naturalistic sounds in a central auditory area of songbirds

## 1 Introduction

Nearly fifty years ago, Barlow  and Attneave  suggested that the brain may construct a neural code that provides an efficient representation for the sensory stimuli that occur in the natural world. Slightly earlier, MacKay and McCulloch  emphasized that neurons that could make use of spike timing—rather than a coarser “rate code”—would have available a vastly larger capacity to convey information, although they left open the question of whether this capacity is used efficiently. Theories for timing codes and efficient representation have been discussed extensively, but the evidence for these attractive ideas remains tenuous. A real attack on these issues requires (at least) that we actually measure the information content and efficiency of the neural code under stimulus conditions that approximate the natural ones. In practice, constructing an ensemble of “natural” stimuli inevitably involves compromises, and the responses to such complex dynamic signals can be very difficult to analyze.

At present the clearest evidence on efficiency and timing in the coding of naturalistic stimuli comes from central invertebrate neurons  and from the sensory periphery  and thalamus  of vertebrates. The situation for central vertebrate brain areas is much less clear. Here we use the songbird auditory system as an accessible test case for these ideas. The set of songbird telencephalic auditory areas known as the field L complex is analogous to mammalian auditory cortex and contains neurons that are strongly driven by natural sounds, including the songs of birds of the same species (conspecifics) . We record from the zebra finch field L, using naturalistic stimuli that consist of recordings from groups of 10-40 conspecific birds. We find that single neurons in field L show robust and well modulated responses to playback of long segments from this song ensemble, and that we are able to maintain recordings of sufficient stability to collect the large data sets that are required for a model independent information theoretic analysis. Here we give a preliminary account of our experiments.

## 2 A naturalistic ensemble

Auditory processing of complex sounds is critical for perception and communication in many species, including humans, but surprisingly little is known about how high level brain areas accomplish this task. Songbirds provide a useful model for tackling this issue, because each bird within a species produces a complex individualized acoustic signal known as a song, which reflects some innate information about the species’ song as well as information learned from a “tutor” in early life. In addition to learning their own song, birds use the acoustic information in songs of others to identify mates and group members, to discriminate neighbors from intruders, and to control their living space . Consistent with how ethologically critical these functions are, songbirds have a large number of forebrain auditory areas with strong and increasingly specialized responses to songs . The combination of a rich set of behaviorally relevant stimuli and a series of high-level auditory areas responsive to those sounds provides an opportunity to reveal general principles of central neural encoding of complex sensory stimuli. Many prior studies have chosen to study neural responses to individual songs or altered versions thereof. In order to make the sounds studied increasingly complex and natural, we have made recordings of the sounds encountered by birds in our colony of zebra finches. To generate the sound ensemble that was used in this study we first created long records of the vocalizations of groups of 10-40 zebra finches in a soundproof acoustic chamber with a directional microphone above the bird cages. The group of birds generated a wide variety of vocalizations including songs and a variety of different types of calls. Segments of these sounds were then joined to create the sounds presented in the experiment. One of the segments that was presented ($`30`$ sec) was repeated in alternation with different segments.

We recorded the neural responses in field L of one of the birds from the group to the ensemble of natural sounds played back through a speaker, at an intensity approximately equal to that in the colony recording. This bird was lightly anesthetized with urethane. We used a single electrode to record the neural response waveforms and sorted single units offline. Further details concerning experimental techniques can be found in Ref. .

## 3 Information in spike sequences

The auditory telencephalon of birds consists of a set of areas known as the field L complex, which receive input from the auditory thalamus and project to increasingly selective auditory areas such as NCM, cHV and NIf  and ultimately to the brain areas specialized for the bird’s own song. Field L neurons respond to simple stimuli such as tone bursts, and are organized in a roughly tonotopic fashion , but also respond robustly to many complex sounds, including songs. Figure 1 shows 4 seconds of the responses of a cell in field L to repeated presentations of a 30 sec segment from the natural ensemble described above. Averaging over presentations, we see that spike rates are well modulated. Looking at the responses on a finer time resolution we see that aspects of the spike train are reproducible on at least a $`10`$ ms time scale. This encourages us to measure the information content of these responses over a range of time scales, down to millisecond resolution.

Our approach to estimating the information content of spike trains follows Ref. . At some time $`t`$ (defined relative to the repeating stimulus) we open a window of size $`T`$ to look at the response. Within this window we discretize the spike arrival times with resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ so that the response becomes a “word” with $`T/\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ letters. If the time resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ is very small, the allowed letters are only 1 and 0, but as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ becomes larger one must keep track of multiple spikes within each bin. Examining the whole experiment, we sample the probability distribution of words, $`P_T(W)`$, and the entropy of this distribution sets the capacity of the code to convey information about the stimulus:

$$S_{\mathrm{total}}(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )=\underset{W}{}P_T(W)\mathrm{log}_2P_T(W)\mathrm{bits},$$
(1)
where the notation reminds us that the entropy depends both on the size of the words that we consider and on the time resolution with which we classify the responses. We can think of this entropy as measuring the size of the neuron’s vocabulary.

Because the whole experiment contributes to defining the vocabulary size, estimating the distribution $`P_T(W)`$ and hence the total entropy is not significantly limited by the problems of finite sample size. This can be seen in Fig. 2 in the stability of the total entropy with changing the number of repeats used in the analysis. Here we show the total entropy as a rate in bits per second by dividing the entropy by the time window $`T`$.

While the capacity of the code is limited by the total entropy, to convey information particular words in the vocabulary must be associated, more or less reliably, with particular stimulus features. If we look at one time $`t`$ relative to the (long) stimulus, and examine the words generated on repeated presentations, we sample the conditional distribution $`P_T(W|t)`$. This distribution has an entropy that quantifies the noise in the response at time $`t`$, and averaging over all times we obtain the average noise entropy,

$$S_{\mathrm{noise}}(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )=\underset{W}{}P_T(W|t)\mathrm{log}_2P_T(W|t)_t\mathrm{bits},$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{}_t`$ indicates a time average (in general, $`\mathrm{}_x`$ denotes an average over the variable $`x`$). Technically, the above average should be an average over stimuli $`s`$, however, for a sufficiently long and rich stimulus, the ensemble average over $`s`$ can be replaced by a time average. For the noise entropy, the problem of sampling is much more severe, since each distribution $`P_T(W|t)`$ is estimated from a number of examples given by the number of repeats. Still, as shown in Fig. 2, we find that the dependence of our estimate on sample size is simple and regular; specifically, we find

$$S(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau ;N_{\mathrm{repeats}})=S(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau ;\mathrm{})+\frac{A}{N_{\mathrm{repeats}}}+\mathrm{}.$$
(3)
This is what we expect for any entropy estimate if the distribution is well sampled, and if we make stronger assumptions about the sampling process (independence of trials etc.) we can even estimate the correction coefficient $`A`$ . In systems where much larger data sets are available this extrapolation procedure has been checked, and the observation of a good fit to Eq. (3) is a strong indication that larger sample sizes will be consistent with $`S(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )=S(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau ;\mathrm{})`$; further, this extrapolation can be tested against bounds on the entropy that are derived from more robust quantities . Most importantly, failure to observe Eq. (3) means that we are in a regime where sampling is not sufficient to draw reliable conclusions without more sophisticated arguments, and we exclude these regions of $`T`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ from our discussion.

Ideally, to measure the spike train total and noise entropy rates, we want to go to the limit of infinite word duration. A true entropy is extensive, which here means that it grows linearly with spike train word duration $`T`$, so that the entropy rate $`𝒮=S/T`$ is constant. For finite word duration however, words sampled at neighboring times will have correlations between them due, in part, to correlations in the stimulus (for birdsong these stimulus autocorrelation time scales can extend up to $`100`$ ms). Since the word samples are not completely independent, the raw entropy rate is an overestimate of the true entropy rate. The effect is larger for smaller word duration and the leading dependence of the raw estimate is

$$𝒮(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau ;\mathrm{})=𝒮(\mathrm{};\mathrm{\Delta }\tau ;\mathrm{})+\frac{B}{T}+\mathrm{},$$
(4)
where $`B>0`$ and we have already taken the infinite data size limit. We cannot directly take the large $`T`$ limit, since for large word lengths we eventually reach a data sampling limit beyond which we are unable to reliably compute the word distributions. On the other hand, if there is a range of $`T`$ for which the distributions are sufficiently well sampled, the behavior in Eq. (4) should be observed and can be used to extrapolate to infinite word size . We have checked that our data shows this behavior and that it sets in for word sizes below the limit where the data sampling problem occurs. For example, in the case of the noise entropy, for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =2`$ ms, it applies for $`T`$ below the limit of $`50`$ ms (above this we run into sampling problems). The total entropy estimate is nearly perfectly extensive.

Finally, we combine estimates of total and noise entropies to obtain the information that words carry about the sensory stimulus,

$$I(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )=S_{\mathrm{total}}(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )S_{\mathrm{noise}}(T;\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )\mathrm{bits}.$$
(5)
Figure 2 shows the total and noise entropy rates as well as the mutual information rate for a time window $`T=32`$ ms and time resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =2`$ ms. The error bars on the raw entropy and information rates were estimated to be approximately $`\pm 0.2`$ bits/sec using a simple bootstrap procedure over the repeated trials. The extrapolation to infinite data size is shown for the mutual information rate estimate (error bars in the extrapolated values will be $`<\pm 0.2`$ bits/sec) and is consistent with the prediction of Eq. (3). Since the total entropy is nearly extensive and the noise entropy rate decreases with word duration due to subextensive corrections as described above, the mutual information rate shown in Fig. 2 grows with word duration. We find that there is an upward change in the mutual information rate (computed at $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =2`$ ms and $`T=32`$ ms) of $`7`$%, in the large $`T`$ limit. For simplicity in the following, we shall look at a fixed word duration $`T=32`$ ms that is in the well-sampled region for all time resolutions $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ considered.

The mutual information rate measures the rate at which the spike train removes uncertainty about the stimulus. However, the mutual information estimate does not depend on identifying either the relevant features of the stimulus or the relevant features of the response, which is crucial in analyzing the response to such complex stimuli. In this sense, our estimates of information transmission and efficiency are independent of any model for the code, and provide a benchmark against which such models could be tested.

One way to look at the information results is to fix our time window $`T`$ and ask what happens as we change our time resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$. When $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =T`$, the “word” describing the response is nothing but the number of spikes in the window, so we have a rate or counting code. As we decrease $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$, we gradually distinguish more and more detail in the arrangement of spikes in the window. We chose a range of $`T`$ values from $`30100`$ ms in our analyses to cover previously observed response windows for field L neurons and to probe the behaviorally relevant time scale ($`100`$ ms) of individual song syllables or notes. For $`T=32`$ ms, we show the results (extrapolated to infinite data size) in the upper curve of Fig. 3. The spike train mutual information shows a clear increase as the timing resolution is improved. In addition, Fig. 3 shows that roughly half of the information is accessible at time resolutions better than $`10`$ ms and additional information is still being revealed as time resolution is improved to 2 ms.

## 4 Information in rate modulation

Knowing the mutual information between the stimulus and the spike train (defined in the window $`T`$), we would like to ask whether this can be accounted for by the information in single spike events or whether there is some additional information conveyed by the patterns of spikes. In the latter case, we have precisely what we mean by a temporal or timing code: there is information beyond that attributable to the probability of single spike events occurring at time $`t`$ relative to the onset of the stimulus. By event at time $`t`$, we mean that the event occurs between time $`t`$ and time $`t+\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ is the resolution at which we are looking at the spike train. This probability is simply proportional to the firing rate (or peri-stimulus time histogram (PSTH)) $`r(t)`$ at time $`t`$ normalized by the mean firing rate $`\overline{r}`$. Specifically if the duration of each repeated trial is $`T_{\mathrm{repeat}}`$ we have

$$P(1\text{spk @}t|s(t^{}))=\frac{r(t)\mathrm{\Delta }\tau }{\overline{r}T_{\mathrm{repeat}}},$$
(6)
where $`s(t^{})`$ denotes the stimulus history ($`t^{}<t`$). The probability of a spike event at $`t`$, a priori of knowing the stimulus history, is flat: $`P(1\text{spk @}t)=\mathrm{\Delta }\tau /T_{\mathrm{repeat}}`$. Thus, the mutual information between the stimulus and the single spike events is :

$`I(1\mathrm{spike};\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`S[P(1\text{spk @}t)]S[P(1\text{spk @}t|s)]_s`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r(t)}{\overline{r}}}\mathrm{log}_2\left({\displaystyle \frac{r(t)}{\overline{r}}}\right)_t\mathrm{bits},`$
where $`r(t)`$ is the PSTH binned to resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ and the stimulus average in the first expression is replaced by a time average in the second (as discussed in the calculation of the noise entropy in spike train words in the previous section). We find that this information is approximately $`1`$ bit for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =2`$ ms. Supposing that the individual spike events are independent (i.e. no intrinsic spike train correlations), the information rate in single spike events is obtained by multiplying the mutual information per spike (Eq. 7) by the mean firing rate of the neuron ($`3.5`$ Hz). This gives an upper bound to the single spike event contribution to the information rate and is shown in the lower curve of Fig. 3 (error bars are again $`<\pm 0.2`$ bits/sec). Comparing with the spike train information (upper curve), we see that at a resolution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =2`$ ms, there is at least $`20`$% of the total information in the spike train that cannot be attributable to single spike events. Thus there is some pattern of spikes that is contributing synergistically to the mutual information. The fact discussed, in the previous section, that the spike train information rate grows subextensively with the the word duration out to the point where data sampling becomes problematic is further confirmation of the synergy from spike patterns. Thus we have shown model-independent evidence for a temporal code in the neural responses.

## 5 Conclusion

Until now, few experiments on neural responses in high level, central vertebrate brain areas have measured the information that these responses provide about dynamic, naturalistic sensory signals. As emphasized in earlier work on invertebrate systems, information theoretic approaches have the advantage that they require no assumptions about the features of the stimulus to which neurons respond. Using this method in the songbird auditory forebrain, we found that patterns of spikes seem to be special events in the neural code of these neurons, since they carry more information than expected by adding up the contributions of individual spikes. It remains to be determined what these spike patterns are, what stimulus features they may encode, and what mechanisms may be responsible for reading such codes at even higher levels of processing.

## Acknowledgments

Work at UCSF was supported by grants from the NIH (NS34835) and the Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology. BDW and KS supported by NRSA grants from the NIDCD. We thank Katrin Schenk and Robert Liu for useful discussions.


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# Magnon Modes for Thin Circular Vortex State Magnetic Dot

## Abstract

The magnetization in a magnetic microdot made from soft magnetic materials can have a vortex-like ground state structure resulting from competition between the exchange and dipolar interactions. Normal mode magnon frequencies for such dots are calculated taking into account both exchange and magnetostatic effects. The presence of a low-lying mode as well as doublet structure with small splitting is demonstrated. Estimates of the mode frequencies for permalloy dots are obtained, and the possibility of experimental detection of such modes is discussed.

Nanostructures fabricated from soft magnetic materials are of interest both in basic and applied magnetics with potential applications including high-density magnetic storage using an array of dot structures.Smyth1 ; Maeda2  In the following we will consider the dynamics of thin magnetic dots, with the important parameter in relation to the dot radius, $`R`$ and the dot thickness,$`L`$ being the exchange length, $`l_0=\sqrt{A/4\pi M_s^2}`$ , where $`A`$ is the inhomogeneous exchange constant and $`M_s`$ is the saturation magnetization. It has been shown Miramond3  that under certain conditions a vortex structure will be stable because of competition between the exchange and dipole interactions, and it is expected that these non-uniform states will drastically change the dynamic and static properties of a dot. For this reason dynamic properties for thin ($`LR`$) magnetic dots in the vortex state are studied by determination of the spin wave normal mode frequencies. The method used is based on the determination of the of vortex-magnon scattering amplitude,Ivanov4  where the non-local dipolar interaction is included by calculation of the magnetostatic energy arising from spin waves on the vortex background. A calculation of the discrete spin-wave spectrum leads to modes labeled by an azimuthal number, $`m`$, and a principal number, $`n`$. The magnon modes for the dot are compared with modes in the uniformly magnetized dot.Guslienko5  For vortex state dots a quasi-Goldstone mode ($`m=1,n=0`$) with an anormalously small frequency appears and the doublets with $`m=\pm |m|`$ are split.

For consideration of the vortex state it is natural to write the magnetization, $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ by use of angular variables in the polar coordinate system $`M_x=M_s\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\phi `$, $`M_y=M_s\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\phi `$, $`M_z=M_s\mathrm{cos}\theta `$. For thin enough dots with $`L`$ smaller that the vortex core size the magnetization is uniform along the dot axis $`z`$, and the vortex state is given by the ansatz

$$\theta =\theta (r),\phi =\chi \pm \phi _0.$$
(1)
where $`r`$ and $`\chi `$ are polar coordinates in the dot plane.

This distribution is typical for magnetic vortices in two-dimensional easy plane (EP) ferromagnet (FM), and the function $`\theta (r)`$ is determined by numerical solution of an ordinary differential equation.Kosevich6  This gives the results that in the center of the dot $`(r=0)\mathrm{sin}\theta (r)=0`$ and for $`rl_0`$, the value $`\theta (r)`$ tends to $`\pi /2`$ exponentially. For the magnetic dot made of soft magnetic materials the crystallographic EP anisotropy is negligible, and the demagnetization field, $`\stackrel{}{H}_m`$ is dominant. Assuming that the magnetization along the dot axis $`z`$ is uniform, the energy is as an integral over the dot plane,

$$W=\frac{1}{2}Ld^2x\left[\left(A/M_s^2\right)\left(\stackrel{}{M}\right)^2\stackrel{}{M}\stackrel{}{H}_m\right]$$
(2)
The sources of magnetostatic field $`\stackrel{}{H}_m=\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are both volume and surface ”magnetic charges” arising from $`\text{ div}\stackrel{}{M}`$, and from the discontinuity of the normal component of $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ on the surface. For determination of the demagnetizing field the vortex distribution (1) is very simple because $`\text{ div}\stackrel{}{M}=0`$ and $`\stackrel{}{M}\stackrel{}{\widehat{r}}|_{r=R}`$ for $`\phi _0=\pi /2`$, thereby giving neither dot edge nor volume contributions and the sole source of field, for the ground state is $`M_z`$. For a thin enough dot this gives the contribution to the energy $`\stackrel{}{M}\stackrel{}{H}_m/2=2\pi M_z^2`$ which is an effective EP anisotropy forming the out-of-plane vortex structure. The magnetostatic potential from the edge and volume are determined by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_v=\frac{\text{div}\stackrel{}{M}}{\left|\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r}^{}\right|}d^3x,\mathrm{\Phi }_{edge}=\underset{r=R}{}\frac{(\stackrel{}{M}\stackrel{}{\widehat{r}})}{\left|\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r}^{}\right|}R𝑑\chi 𝑑z$$
(3)
where $`(\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r}^{})^2=r^2+r^22rr^{}\mathrm{cos}(\chi \chi ^{})+(zz^{})^2`$. The magnon modes are investigated using the usual procedure of expansion in small deviations from the vortex state using $`\theta =\theta _0(r)+\vartheta `$ and $`\phi =\chi +\pi /2+\psi `$. It is convenient to define the new small variable, $`\mu =\psi \mathrm{sin}\theta _0`$ so that the corrections to magnetization can be expressed in the simple form, $`\delta \stackrel{}{M}/M_s=\vartheta \left(\stackrel{}{\widehat{\chi }}\mathrm{cos}\theta _0\stackrel{}{\widehat{z}}\mathrm{sin}\theta _0\right)+\mu \stackrel{}{\widehat{r}}`$. The linear equations of motion for $`\mu ,\vartheta `$ can be written as

$$4\pi M_s\widehat{G}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\vartheta }{\mu }\right)\frac{1}{r}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{cos}\theta _0\left(\mathrm{\Phi }/\chi \right)}{r\left(\mathrm{\Phi }/r\right)}\right)=\frac{1}{\gamma }\frac{}{t}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mu }{\vartheta }\right)$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_v+\mathrm{\Phi }_{edge}`$ , from (3), and $`\widehat{G}`$ is the same dimensionless operator as for the vortex in EP magnets.Ivanov4  Thus, in contrast to the case of EP magnets with local interactions, Ivanov4  the equations for and $`\vartheta `$ and $`\mu `$ become integro-differential.

To proceed with the solution of (4) the ansatz $`\vartheta =f_m(r)\mathrm{cos}(\chi m+\omega t)`$, $`\mu =g_m(r)\mathrm{sin}(\chi m+\omega t)`$ is used. It is easy to see that for this ansatz the values of $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{M}\stackrel{}{\widehat{r}}|_{r=R}`$ , as well as the magnetostatic potentials $`\mathrm{\Phi }_v`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{edge}`$ , are proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}(\chi m+\omega t)`$. Then, one obtains the set of ordinary integro - differential equation for functions$`f_m(r),g_m(r)`$ instead of (4) with partial derivatives.

The edge contribution to $`\stackrel{}{H}_m`$ can be estimated from the integral (3), which diverges as $`L0`$ giving a non-analytic contribution to the system energy for small $`L`$. Using asymptotic techniques, the edge contribution to the magnetostatic field can be written in the form $`H_r=\mu (R,\chi )M_sF_m(r)`$, where $`F_m(r)=(L/R)(r/R)^{|m|1}`$ as $`r0`$, and reaches its maximal value independent of the small parameter $`L/R`$, with $`F_m(r)`$ $`2\pi `$ , as $`rR`$ near the edge. The maximal value of the volume contribution to $`H_r`$ is small (the order of $`L/R`$) over all of the dot. Thus, the main contribution to the magnetostatic energy is determined by the field $`H_r`$ in the region near the edge $`RrL`$. The leading (logarithmic) contribution to the energy in the parameter $`L/R`$ for any $`m`$ is determined from the value of $`g`$ on the edge only,

$$W_{edge}=2\pi L^2RI_mM_s^2g^2(R)\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{4R}{L}\right)$$
(5)
where $`I_m=2`$ for $`m=0`$ and $`I_m=1`$ for the other modes. Therefore, to lowest order in $`L/R`$ , the contribution from non-local magnetostatic potentials can be accounted by use of the effective boundary condition for $`g(r)`$,

$$R\frac{dg(r)}{dr}_{r=R}+g(R)\mathrm{\Lambda }=0,\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{RL}{2\pi l_0^2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{4R}{L}\right)$$
(6)
To find the frequencies of magnon modes in the lowest (logarithmic) order in $`L/R`$ , one can solve (4) with $`\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$, find $`\mu (r)`$ and apply the boundary condition (6). The solution far from the vortex core, $`rl_0`$ is $`g_m(r)=J_m(kr)+\sigma _m(kl_0)Y_m(kr)`$ , where $`J_m(z),Y_m(z)`$ are Bessel and Neumann functions, respectively, $`k`$ is a wave number, and $`\sigma _m(kl_0)`$ is the so-called scattering amplitude.Ivanov4  For the case of interest $`kR1`$ the value of $`kl_0l_0/R1`$ , and long-wave approximation is valid. In this case, the spin wave frequency $`\omega =\omega _0l_0k`$, where $`\omega _0=4\pi \gamma M_s`$, and the asymptotics for $`\sigma _m(kl_0)`$ found in Ivanov4  can be used. For estimates, we will use the values for permalloy, $`A^{1/2}/M_s=17`$ nm, that gives $`l_0=4.8`$ nm and the characteristic demagnetizing field $`4\pi M_s=1.012`$ T, leading to the following results.

In the first approximation on $`kl_01`$ the scattering amplitude is small and $`g_m(r)J_m(kr)`$. The frequencies of modes with $`m=|m|`$ and $`m=|m|`$ are equal and are determined by $`\omega _{n,m}=\varpi _{n,\left|m\right|}=4\pi \gamma M_s\left(\kappa _{n,m}l_0/R\right)`$, where $`\kappa _{n,m}`$ is the $`n`$-th solution of $`\kappa J_m^{}(\kappa )+\mathrm{\Lambda }J_m(\kappa )=0`$. The value of $`\kappa _{n,m}`$ falls between the $`n`$ -th root of the Bessel function $`j_{m,n}`$ and the $`n`$-th root of its derivative $`j_{m,n}^{},\kappa `$ $`j_{m,n\text{ }}`$ at $`\mathrm{\Lambda }m`$ and $`\kappa j_{m,n\text{ }}^{}`$in the opposite case. Taking into account $`\sigma _m`$, the value of which depends on the sign of $`m`$,Ivanov4  produces the splitting of these doublets for the modes with $`m0`$. The scattering amplitude is maximal (linear in $`k`$) for the modes with $`m\pm 1`$, with $`\sigma _m=\pi kl_0m/4\left|m\right|`$, Ivanov4  and the splitting of this doublet is the order of the next power on the small parameter $`l_0/R`$, $`\omega _{m=1}\omega _{m=1}6.16\omega _0(l_0/R)^2`$. Thus, for a typical $`R`$ like $`100`$ nm, this splitting is of order $`(0.5÷2)`$GHz and is much smaller than the mean frequency, see Fig.1.

Large values of the scattering amplitude leads to the most interesting feature of the vortex state dot frequencies, namely, the appearance of a low lying mode with $`m=1`$ and $`n=0`$ corresponding to vortex displacement from the center of the dot, the so-called translational Goldstone mode (TGM), for which $`J_1(kR)(kl_0)Y_m(kR)`$ and $`kR1`$. Ivanov4  For vortex state magnetic dots the frequency of the TGM mode, shown in Fig.2 , depends non-monotonically on $`R`$, $`\omega _{TGM}=\omega _0(l_0/R)^2(\mathrm{\Lambda }1)/(\mathrm{\Lambda }+1)`$. Comparison of Figs. 1 and 2 shows that it has the same order of magnitude as the doublet splitting for higher modes with $`|m|=1`$, and it much smaller than $`\varpi _1`$ or smaller than frequencies for homogeneously magnetized dots. The frequency of TGM found from the effective equation of motion for the coordinate of the vortex $`\stackrel{}{X}`$ with some model assumptions about static vortex energy shows different dependence on the dot radius,Usov7 ; Guslienko8  namely, $`\omega 1/R^3`$ in Ref. Usov7,  and $`\omega 1/R`$ in Ref. Guslienko8, . In contrast with,Usov7 ; Guslienko8  we do not need in any model assumption and our approach is based on the analysis of Eq.(4).

The modes with $`m`$ = 0 are singlets having cylindrical symmetry, and their frequencies for $`n`$ = 0 and $`n`$ = 1 are shown in Fig. 1. The lower mode with $`m=0,n=0`$ can be considered as coupled oscillations of the vortex core size and $`\phi _0`$ defined in (1). It can be observed in resonance experiments with an ac field perpendicular to the dot plane.

Modes with $`|m|>1`$ have small values of $`\sigma _m(kl_0)^\eta `$, $`\eta 4`$ for different $`m`$ with small doublet splitting, $`\left(\omega _{n,m}\omega _{n,m}\right)/\varpi _{n,\left|m\right|}\left(l_0/R\right)^\eta `$, that cannot be seen on the scale used for Fig. 1. The mean frequencies $`\varpi _{n,\left|m\right|}`$ of these modes for the vortex state dots have the same order of magnitude as for the homogeneous states modes calculated in.Guslienko5

In summary, it is shown that the dynamics of the magnetic dot in the vortex state differs significantly from the case of uniformly magnetized dots. The magnon mode corresponding to oscillations of the vortex position (TGM, $`m=1,n=0`$) have the lowest frequency. The next mode $`(m=0,n=0)`$ describes the oscillations of the vortex core size. These two modes can potentially be detected in resonance experiments, with ac - field parallel and perpendicular to the dots plane, respectively. Higher modes with $`m0`$ forms doublets with maximal splitting less that 1 GHz.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank A.N. Slavin, D.D. Sheka and N.A. Usov for useful discussions. This work is supported by NSF grants DMR-9974273, DMR-9972507, and INTAS Foundation grant No 97-31 311.


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# Radio observations of the circumnuclear ring in NGC6951

## 1 Introduction

The dynamics and relationships between gas inflow processes, circumnuclear star formation and the presence of an active nucleus are important, since they might provide valuable leads towards understanding the transport of gaseous material towards the nuclear regions of active galaxies. An interesting class of objects for studying these aspects are the Sérsic-Pastoriza or S-P galaxies (Sérsic & Pastoriza 1965; Sérsic 1973) which include galaxies with diffuse and amorphous nuclei in addition to the well-known hot-spot systems. Sérsic & Pastoriza (1967) found that galaxies with these unusual nuclear morphologies occurred in barred or mixed-type galaxies. The S-P galaxies reflect a broad spectrum of properties with some of them also harbouring an active nucleus. The existence of both starburst and an active nucleus makes them particularly interesting for studying their kinematics, evolution and possible relationships between the two forms of activity. Circumnuclear star formation has been seen in many hot-spot galaxies, and there have been suggestions of a correlation between circumnuclear rings and nuclear activity (cf. Arsenault 1989).

Theoretical studies suggest that circumnuclear rings arise due to a bar-driven inflow of gas and dust to an inner Lindblad resonance (ILR) or between two ILRs (e.g. Combes & Gerin 1985; Athanassoula 1992; Byrd et al. 1994; Piner et al. 1995). The dense gas which accumulates in an ILR ring leads to a high star-formation rate either due to collisions of the molecular clouds (Combes & Gerin 1985), or gravitational collapse in the ring when the density reaches a critical value (Elmegreen 1994). To understand the formation and fuelling of the AGN, the gas must flow inwards from the ILR to sub-parsec scales, and this is at present not well understood (cf. Axon & Robinson 1996). Some simulations suggest small, steady inflow (Piner et al. 1995), while others suggest rapid inflow for brief periods (Wada & Habe 1992; Heller & Shlosman 1994).

In this paper we report high-resolution radio observations of the nuclear region in the barred, late-type grand-design galaxy NGC6951, which we had earlier observed as part of a survey of 47 S-P galaxies with the Very Large Array (VLA) at $`\lambda `$20 and 6 cm (Saikia et al. 1994). The observations reported here are of higher resolution and better sensitivity, and clarify the radio structure of the circumnuclear region of this well-studied galaxy. New supernovae have been reported in this galaxy during 1999 and 2000 (Cao et al. 1999; Valentini et al. 2000).

## 2 NGC6951

NGC6951, which has been classified as a spiral galaxy of type SAB(rs)bc (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991), has an active nucleus (Boer & Schulz 1993; Ho et al. 1995) and a circumnuclar ring of star formation (Buta & Crocker 1993; Barth et al. 1995). The active nucleus has been classified either as a Seyfert 2 (e.g. Boer & Schulz 1993; Ho et al. 1995, 1997a) or a LINER (Filippenko & Sargent 1985; Muñoz-Tuñón et al. 1989; Márquez & Moles 1993). Pérez et al. (2000) have considered the available data and have classified it as a transition object between a ‘very high excitation LINER and a possible nitrogen over-abundant Seyfert 2.’

It is at a distance, d, of 24.1 Mpc (Tully 1988), so that 1′′ corresponds to 117 pc. Márquez & Moles (1993) have noted its high degree of isolation with no other galaxy within a projected distance of 1 Mpc and 500 km s-1 in redshift, suggesting that it has been free of any gravitational influence for about 109 yr.

There have been a large number of studies of this galaxy which include broad- and narrow-band observations at optical and infrared wavelengths (Buta & Crocker 1993; Márquez & Moles 1993; Barth et al. 1995; Wozniak et al. 1995; Elmegreen et al. 1996; Friedli et al. 1996; Knapen 1996; Rozas et al. 1996a,b; González Delgado et al. 1997; González Delgado & Pérez 1997; Mulchaey et al. 1997; Elmegreen et al. 1999; Pérez et al. 2000), spectroscopy of the nuclear region (Filippenko & Sargent 1985; Muñoz-Tuñón et al. 1989; Boer & Schulz 1993; Márquez & Moles 1993; Ho et al. 1995, 1997a,b; Pérez et al. 2000), radio images of the nuclear region (Vila et al. 1990; Saikia et al. 1994; Ho & Ulvestad 2001, hereinafter referred to as HU) and high-resolution images of the molecular gas (Kenney et al. 1992; Kohno et al. 1999).

The most prominent features are the bar, the bulge and the spiral arms, with the bar being better defined at infrared wavelengths. The circumnuclear region has a pseudo outer, pseudo inner and circumnuclear ring, with evidence of isophotal twisting between the bar and the circumnuclear ring. The dust lanes appear as straight features from the bar edges. The ring morphology has many bright knots, with the largest concentration being towards the north-western and south-eastern sides of the ring. The hotspots or knots of emission are also seen in the infrared K-band and there is a general correspondence between the positions of the hotspots in H$`\alpha `$ and in K band, although in some cases there is some offset in the positions (Knapen 1996). The CO (1$``$0) emission shows a twin-peak morphology which could be due to orbit crowding near the outer ILR (Kenney et al. 1992; Kohno et al. 1999). The HCN observations by Kohno et al. show this dense gas to also have twin-peaks, but these are offset from the CO peaks and appear to be closely related to the radio peaks in the lower-resolution images.

## 3 The nuclear radio ring in NGC6951

In Fig. 1 we present the convolved and full-resolution radio images of NGC6951 at 8.4 GHz. These observations were made with the VLA B-array on 1995 October 30 and have an angular resolution of 2.57 $`\times `$ 1.44 arcsec2 along position angle (PA) 0, and 0.86 $`\times `$ 0.71 arcsec2 along PA 113 respectively. The rms noise level in each of the images is $``$0.02 mJy/beam.

The low-resolution image shows two prominent outer peaks at RA 20h 36m 36.s10, Declination 65 55 49.′′00, and RA 20h 36m 37.s20, Declination 65 55 44.′′25, with peak flux densities of 0.94 and 0.86 mJy/beam respectively. The peak flux density of the central component is 0.81 mJy/beam. The high-resolution image shows the beautiful ring oriented at a position angle of $``$135, with individual peaks of radio emission. The extent of the radio ring is $``$9.1$`\times `$6.2 arcsec2, which corresponds to a linear size of 1060$`\times `$720 pc2. The positions and flux densities of the different components were estimated by fitting Gaussians and an underlying tipped plane at the peaks of radio emission which are at least $``$5 times higher than the rms noise level. These values are subject to significant uncertainties because of difficulties in defining the background flux density levels in the vicinity of each of the knots. Due to the irregular background and limited angular resolution of the observations we could not get satisfactory fits for four of the knots. All the components are listed in Table 1, along with their flux density estimates in units of mJy/beam. The components have been named such that the first four digits represent the seconds of right ascension and the digits after the $`+`$ sign the arsec of declination. We have listed the peak flux densities of the components from the image (column 2), as well as those obtained from the Gaussian fits (column 3). This gives an idea of the contribution of the background at the different locations. The radio luminosities of the individual components are listed in units of 1019 W Hz-1 using the flux densities from the Gaussian fits, if available. The luminosities of those without satisfactory Gaussian fits have been estimated from the peak values in the image and are enclosed in parentheses. The nuclear component has been marked with the superscript $`n`$.

The size and orientation of the ring seen at radio frequencies is roughly similar to that seen at optical, H$`\alpha `$, infrared and mm wavelengths. The correspondence between the positions of the radio peaks and those seen at other wavelengths is not precise although they occur in the same general region. For example, by aligning the nuclear components, it can be seen that in the north-western region, the radio knot 36.44+50.6 appears spatially coincident with a bright peak in the $`B^{}K^{}`$ image (Pérez et al. 2000) as well as a prominent peak in the H$`\alpha `$ contours (González Delgado et al. 1997). On the other hand, there are no such corresponding bright features for the nearby brighter radio components 36.19+50.0 and 36.02+49.1.

The separation between the successive peaks of radio emission listed in Table 1 ranges from $``$0.′′8 to 3.′′5. These separations are reasonably uniformly distributed between 0.′′8 and 2.′′6, with only the largest separation being beyond this range. There does not appear to be a regular period in the separation of the peaks of emission. If the radio peaks trace the star forming regions, one would expect these to be regularly spaced in the gravitational instability models (Elmegreen 1994).

The two most prominent regions of radio emission are towards the north-west and the south-east. From CO (1-0) and HCN (1-0) observations, Kohno et al. (1999) find that although both CO and HCN emission are dominated by ‘twin-peaks’ morphology, the HCN emission is better correlated spatially with the peaks of radio emission, which are identified with the regions of massive star formation. In this case, the peaks of CO emission are identified with the region of crowding of the $`x_1`$ and $`x_2`$ orbits.

### 3.1 Nature of radio emission

The radio emission from the circumnuclear region is possibly a mixture of thermal and non-thermal emission with the discrete components being either supernova remnants (SNRs) or H ii regions. The diagnostics which are usually employed to distinguish them are the brightness temperatures, as in the starburst galaxy Arp 220 (Smith et al. 1998), and radio spectral indices. The radio components are usually too weak for polarization measurements.

The brightness temperature of the components in NGC6951 is small, $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ 15 K, and does not provide an unambiguous resolution of the nature of the compact components. Spectral index information on the individual knots is not available; however the spectral index, $`\alpha `$ defined as S$`\nu ^\alpha `$, of the entire circumnuclear emission estimated from scaled-array VLA observations between $`\lambda `$20 and 6 cm is 0.84 (HU). Convolving the $`\lambda `$3.6 cm image to lower resolutions and comparing with the images of Saikia et al. (1994) and HU also suggests a non-thermal spectrum.

However, a few caveats need to be borne in mind while examining the nature of the emission of the components based on their spectra. With inadequate resolution H ii regions and SNRs may not be resolved from each other (cf. Gordon et al. 1999). Also, although the overall spectrum from coarser resolution might appear non-thermal, individual compact components identified from higher-resolution observations may be due to H ii regions. An example of this is the blue compact galaxy Henize 2-10 which is an archetypal starburst galaxy containing a large population of Wolf-Rayet stars (Conti 1991). The integrated radio spectrum estimated from observations largely with an angular resolution of about a kpc has a non-thermal spectrum, with $`\alpha 0.54`$, while the compact radio knots observed with a resolution of $``$30 pc have a flat or inverted spectrum (Kobulnicky & Johnson 1999). These are identified with dense, compact H ii regions which are strong sources of free-free emission. For example, the features in Henize 2-10 (d$``$9 Mpc) have a luminosity of $``$9$`\times 10^{18}`$ W Hz-1 at $`\lambda `$3.6 cm, electron densities of up to 5000 cm-3 and harbour the youngest ‘super-star clusters’ (Kobulnicky & Johnson 1999). A similar feature has been reported in the nuclear region of NGC5253 (Turner et al. 1998, 2000) which has a luminosity of $``$2$`\times 10^{19}`$ W Hz-1 at $`\lambda `$2 cm. Infrared observations confirm it to be an H ii region excited by a dense cluster of young stars (Gorjian et al. 2001).

The nature of the compact radio components in other galaxies with either a circumnuclear ring or a nuclear starburst might provide some clues towards understanding the nature of the components in NGC6951. A number of these galaxies have been observed at more than one frequency. Amongst the galaxies with radio rings, the radio spectrum of the ring in NGC613 was found to be $`0.65\pm 0.10`$ (Hummel & Jörsäter 1992), the components in NGC1097 (Hummel et al. 1987) and NGC1365 (Saikia et al. 1994; Sandqvist et al. 1995; Stevens et al. 1999) tend to have non-thermal spectra, as well as the ring of emission in the Seyfert galaxy NGC7469 (Wilson et al. 1991). In NGC4736, which has a continuum ring, Duric & Dittmar (1988) found 9 of their compact components to have a thermal spectrum between $`\lambda `$20 and 6 cm, and the remaining 10 to have a non-thermal spectrum. Turner & Ho (1994) observed this galaxy at $`\lambda `$6 and 2 cm, and found 9 of their 14 sources to have $`\alpha <0.2`$.

The compact components in these systems are a mixture of both SNRs and H ii regions occuring in an area of high star formation. The proportion of these two types of objects has been investigated in some detail in the archetypal starburst galaxies M82 (Unger et al. 1984; Kronberg et al. 1985) and NGC253 (Antonucci & Ulvestad 1988). Spectral studies of selected components in M82 (Wills et al. 1997; Allen & Kronberg 1998) showed that of the 26 components, only one was identified with a thermal emission spectrum. However, more recent observations of a further 20 largely weaker components suggest that only 5 of these are SNRs while the remaining 15 are likely to be H ii regions (McDonald 2001). Thus about two-thirds of the compact objects are identified with SNRs. In NGC 253 about a half of the sources with spectral information have flat spectra and are dominated by emission from H ii regions, while the remaining half have steep spectra and are identified with SNRs (Ulvestad & Antonucci 1991, 1997). A similar situation is also seen in the nearby merger NGC4038/4039 (the Antennae), where about a third of the objects have been suggested to be thermal and the remaining two-thirds non-thermal (Neff & Ulvestad 2000). The spectral indices of the components in NGC1808 tend to be nonthermal (Saikia et al. 1990; Collison et al. 1994). In the starburst galaxy NGC2146 which has an S-shaped structure with several knots of emission (Kronberg & Biermann 1981; Saikia et al. 1994), spectral index measurements suggest three sources to be good candidates for SNRs or radio supernovae, and 6 to be associated with compact, dense H ii regions (Tarchi et al. 2000). Based on these studies of a wide variety of starburst galaxies, it is reasonable to assume that the ring in NGC6951 consists of a mixture of both these types of objects, although our linear resolution of about 100$`\times `$83 pc2 is inadequate to identify individual SNRs and H ii regions.

### 3.2 Radio luminosity and supernova rate

The compact components seen in NGC6951 have a median luminosity of 1019 W Hz-1 at $`\lambda `$3.6 cm. The value is similar when one considers those with Gaussian fits as well as for the entire list. The luminosity distribution is skewed towards lower values, with a tail extending towards higher luminosities, suggesting that we have not been able to identify the weaker components from the existing observations.

It is interesting to compare the values obtained for NGC6951 with those obtained for other galaxies exhibiting high star formation rates. For ease of comparison we have considered those for which observations have been made at $`\lambda `$3.6 cm. The median luminosity of the components in NGC253 (d$``$2.5 Mpc) observed with a linear resolution of $``$3 pc is $``$4.5$`\times 10^{17}`$ W Hz-1 (Ulvestad & Antonucci 1991), while those in M82 (d$``$3.4 Mpc) observed with a similar linear resolution has a median value of $``$2$`\times `$1018 W Hz-1 (Huang et al. 1994; Allen & Kronberg 1998). Considering more distant galaxies, the median luminosity for the archetypal starburst galaxy in the southern hemisphere, NGC1808 (d$``$10.9 Mpc), is about 8$`\times 10^{18}`$ W Hz-1 with a linear resolution of 30 pc (Collison et al. 1994), while the knots in NGC1365 (d$``$20 Mpc) has a median luminosity of $``$3.5$`\times 10^{19}`$ W Hz-1 with a linear resolution of about a 100 pc (Stevens et al. 1999). The increase in luminosity for the more distant systems is largely due to the coarser linear resolution of the observations. To examine this we have convolved a multi-configuration VLA image of M82 with a linear resolution of $``$6 pc to a resolution comparable with our observations of NGC6951. In the convolved image, the individual components are indistinguishable and the peak brightness has increased by a factor of $``$16, corresponding to a luminosity of 6.1$`\times 10^{20}`$ W Hz-1 at 5 GHz. This is more luminous than the individual radio components in NGC6951. A more detailed comparison would require observations of NGC6951 with higher linear resolution.

We estimate the SN rate in NGC6951 using the model of Condon & Yin (1990) which was based on data for our Galaxy. Assuming that the entire emission at 1465 MHz (Hummel et al. 1985) is non-thermal, we estimate the SN rate to be $``$0.07 yr-1. Bearing in mind that the emission at 1465 MHz could also contain a thermal contribution, the SN rate in NGC6951 appears to be reasonably consistent with estimates of $``$0.1 yr-1 for M82 (e.g. Huang et al. 1994), $`\stackrel{<}{}`$0.1 to 0.3 for NGC253 (Ulvestad & Antonucci 1997), $``$0.1 yr-1 for the clumpy irregular starburst galaxy Mrk 325 (Condon & Yin 1990) and also for the starburst galaxy NGC3448 of the Arp 205 system (Noreau & Kronberg 1987).

### 3.3 The central component

By fitting a two-dimensional gaussian and an underlying tipped plane to the central component, we find it to be resolved with a deconvolved angular size of 0.7$`\times `$0.2 arcsec2 along a PA of 156. This corresponds to a linear dimension of $``$80$`\times `$20 pc2. HU also find evidence of a similar extension but are unable to confirm it because of the coarser resolution of their observations with the restoring beam being elongated along a similar PA. The H$`\alpha `$ image of Knapen (1996) also seems to show a similar extension. The spectral index of the nuclear component obtained by smoothing the $`\lambda `$3.6 cm image to that of the lower-resolution $`\lambda `$6 cm image of Saikia et al. (1994) is $``$0.6. The scaled-array observations of HU yield slightly higher values of 0.69 and 0.90 between $`\lambda `$20 and 6 cm for the peak and integrated flux densities respectively. The supernova rate estimated from the nuclear radio flux density (cf. Colina & Pérez-Olea 1992) is about 0.003 yr-1, which is much smaller than the SN rate in bright nuclear starbursts. As pointed out by Pérez et al. (2000), the low SN rate is consistent with the faintness of the nucleus in H$`\alpha `$. The resolved central component, which is elongated and has a steep spectral index, could be due to a small-scale, weak nuclear jet from the Seyfert/LINER nucleus.

## 4 Conclusions

High-resolution radio observations of the circumnuclear region of NGC6951 reveal a ring of radio emission with many discrete components and a slightly resolved nuclear component. The discrete components have a median luminosity of 1019 W Hz-1 when observed with a linear resolution of $``$90 pc, and are likely to consist of a mixture of both SNRs and H ii regions. The SN rate has been estimated to be $``$0.07 yr-1, which is reasonably consistent with those found in some of the archetypal starburst galaxies. The central component, which is resolved and has a steep radio spectrum, could be due to a small-scale jet from the active nucleus.

###### Acknowledgements.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under co-operative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. We have made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We thank Jim Ulvestad for several comments and suggestions which have improved the paper significantly. We also thank Graham Smith and Peter Thomasson for their detailed comments on the manuscript. One of us (DJS) would like to thank the Cave Lecture Fund and the Principal’s Development Fund of Queen’s University, Kingston, and Director, Jodrell Bank Observatory for financial support, and Judith Irwin, Dieter Brueckner and Peter Thomasson for hospitality during different phases of this piece of work.


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# New Results on ATLAS Pixel Opto-Link

## 1 Results on Opto-Packs

The main technical challenge in the fabrication of the opto-pack is the alignment tolerance of the VCSEL with respect to the fibre:

$``$ 50 $`\mu `$m in $`z`$ (along the fibre)

$``$ 25 $`\mu `$m in $`r`$ (transverse to the fibre)

The requirements can be satisfied either by passive or active alignment. For the former, parts must be fabricated or placed with high precision ($`10\mu `$m) so that the overall precision is still within the tolerance. The alignment tolerance of the PIN to the fiber is much looser. There were two designs for the opto-pack, OSU and Academia Sinica (Taiwan), using passive and active alignment, respectively.

In the Taiwan design, the fiber is cleaved at 45o to act as a mirror. Light traveling down the fiber is reflected onto the PIN placed directly below the cleaved surface. Conversely, light emitted by a VCSEL is reflected off the cleaved surface into the fiber. Each fiber is actively aligned and glued permanently to the package. The package is of low cost but the permanent attachment of the fibers to the package presents a technical challenge to the assembly of the pixel detector.

The OSU design uses a connector concept: a cap with a hole for the fibre and a base with deposited wire bonding trace and pad for PIN or VCSEL placement. The design is shown in Fig. 1. The package is of low cost and the cap with the fiber attached can be mounted on the base near the end of the pixel detector assembly. Precise alignment of the VCSEL to the fiber is achieved by fabricating the bases and caps with high precision and by the accurate placement of the VCSEL and fibre relative to the base and cap, respectively.

The base is made of aluminia. To fabricate the base, aluminia sheet is ground to the precise thickness of the base and then cut into strips for deposition of three-dimensional traces . Most of the deposited traces have good connectivity across the corner of the base. Strips with a large number of traces of good connectivity were then precisely diced into individual bases .

The cap is made of Ultem (polyetherimide), a mold-injectable plastic with a radiation tolerance  of 10 GRad. Due to the high cost and long lead time in developing the injection molding technique for fabricating small parts with high precision, we decided to use “manual mold injection”. Here a small spring-loaded mold of 5 cm $`\times `$ 5 cm $`\times `$ 10 cm is used in a small oven as opposed to a standard mold of 30 cm $`\times `$ 30 cm $`\times `$ 30 cm placed inside an automatic mold injection machine of 1 m $`\times `$ 1 m $`\times `$ 2 m. The critical part in the mold fabrication is the precisely machined mold for the interior of the cap that fits the base and the precisely located hole for the placement of a pin which produces the hole for the fiber. We have proven the principle of this precise micro-mold injection technique and can fabricate several quality caps per hour.

The VCSEL is precisely placed on the base under an optical comparator. To further improve the alignment between the fiber and the VCSEL, the location of the pin on the mold is also measured so that the VCSEL is placed on the base at the location as expected from the fabricated cap. In addition, the dimension of each base is measured individually so that the location of the VCSEL is adjusted slightly to account for the small variation in size.

We have fabricated 31 VCSEL opto-packs. Figure 2 shows the measured coupled power. The coupled power of all packages are above the specification of 300 $`\mu `$W minimum power for an average current of 10 mA in the VCSEL. The average coupled power is 760 $`\mu `$W. The caps can also be used multiple times. Figure 3 shows the coupled power of two typical caps for each of the 10 mountings on a base. Each mounting gives about the same coupled power. The caps are also interchangeable. Figure 4 shows the coupled power of a cap on the 31 bases. The cap gives about the same coupled power on all bases. This proves the feasibility of the connector-type design. The waveforms of the mounted VCSELs also have fast rise time, $`<`$ 1ns. We have fabricated two PIN opto-packs with three PINs in each package. The PIN diodes have good responsivity, $`>`$ 0.5 A/W. The opto-packs therefore meets the pixel detector specification.

There was a review of the OSU and Taiwan opto-packs in June. The Taiwan opto-pack potentially has 10-15% higher coupled power and has been chosen as the baseline in order to take advantage of the additional resources from Taiwan.

## 2 Results on Optical Chips

The pixel detector design of the VDC and DORIC takes advantage of the development work for similar chips used by the outer detector, the SemiConductor Tracker (SCT). Both SCT chips attain radiation-tolerance by using bipolar integrated circuits (AMS 0.8 $`\mu `$m BICMOS) and running with high currents in the transistors. The chip is therefore not applicable for the higher radiation dosage and lower power budget requirements of the pixel detector. We design the radiation-hard CMOS version of the circuits in collaboration  with University of Siegen, Germany.

The first pixel version of the chips with 0.8 $`\mu `$m feature size was submitted to DMILL in July 1999. VDC functioned well but DORIC could not decode the clock properly. The problem was due to underestimate of the parasitic capacitance.

The second version of the chips was submitted to DMILL in July 2000. Both chips worked but for some of the DORICs the pre-amp output was observed to be saturated with no input signal, indicating that there was an offset between the differential pre-amp inputs due to process variations. We submitted to DMILL in May 2001 a new design with a DC feedback circuit between the output and input of the pre-amp to cancel the offset. We expect the delivery of the chips in November 2001.

In April 2001, we irradiated 14 chips from the second DMILL run with 24 GeV protons at CERN. Some of the chips can operate up to $``$ 50 Mrad by increasing the supply voltage from 3.2 to 5.0 V but others died within a few Mrad. Annealing at 100oC for a week failed to improve or revive the chips. This indicates that the chips may not be adequate for the pixel detector as we expect the optical link to receive a dosage of 20 Mrad.

We have converted the DMILL design into a design with smaller feature size, 0.25 $`\mu `$m, using a different vendor. This process is expected to be more radiation hard than the DMILL process. The new designs were submitted in February 2001. The VDC works well with fast rise and fall time ($`<`$ 1 ns) but consumes more current than we would like. We plan to reduce the current consumption by several mA in the next submission expected in the Fall 2001. For the DORIC, the delay control circuit oscillates. We are not able to reproduce the oscillation in the simulation. The oscillation can be cured with an external bypass capacitor and then the chips decode the bi-phase marked clock properly. Some chips require a large input PIN signal due to the large pre-amp offset from process variations. The DC feedback circuit can cancel part of the offset; this has been verified by adjusting the amount of DC feedback. We will increase the amount of feedback in the next submission. We plan to irradiate the chips with 24 GeV protons at CERN in September 2001.

## 3 Summary

We have developed an opto-pack based on the novel connector-type concept for the pixel detector of the ATLAS experiment. The opto-pack meets the specification but the Taiwan design was chosen as the baseline to take advantage of their resources. We have designed versions of the VDC and DORIC in the 0.8 and 0.25 $`\mu `$m technology. The chips are functional but further improvements are planned. The design in the 0.8 $`\mu `$m technology appears inadequate in radiation hardness for the ATLAS pixel detector.

###### Acknowledgments.

This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy. The author wishes to thank K.E. Arms, K. Arndt, J. Burns, H.P. Kagan, R.D. Kass, S. Smith, T. Weidberg, and R. Wells for their contributions to the development of the opto-packs.


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# Spin Fluctuation Induced Dephasing in a Mesoscopic Ring

## Abstract

We investigate the persistent current in a hybrid Aharonov-Bohm ring - quantum dot system coupled to a reservoir which provides spin fluctuations. It is shown that the spin exchange interaction between the quantum dot and the reservoir induces dephasing in the absence of direct charge transfer. We demonstrate an anomalous nature of this spin-fluctuation induced dephasing which tends to enhance the persistent current. We explain our result in terms of the separation of the spin from the charge degree of freedom. The nature of the spin fluctuation induced dephasing is analyzed in detail.

Persistent current (PC) in a mesoscopic Aharonov-Bohm (AB) ring is an ideal probe of quantum coherence of electron motion in the equilibrium state. Usually the PC is likely to be suppressed by various dephasing processes. The role of the intrinsic dephasing at low temperature has not been well understood till now . An alternative viewpoint to this is to introduce an artificial dephasor, in order to study the effect of decoherence in a controlled manner . A conceptually simple but instructive example for that purpose is an AB ring attached to an electron reservoir which exchanges charges with the ring . In the reservoir electrons are scattered inelastically and there is no phase coherence between electrons absorbed and those emitted by the reservoir. Therefore charge transfer between the ring and the reservoir diminishes the coherence and thus the AB oscillation. On the other hand, the effect of the spin exchange interactions on the PC has been attracting growing interest in recent years . It has been proposed that the spin fluctuation affects the PC in a drastically different manner compared to the case of charge fluctuation . Experimentally, the role of coherent spin fluctuation has been investigated by transport measurements using AB interferometer setup

In this Letter, we address the effect of dephasing induced by the spin fluctuations. For this purpose we consider the geometry schematically drawn in Figure 1, where the spin fluctuation between the ring and the reservoir is mediated via antiferromagnetic exchange interactions with the quantum dot (QD), while direct charge transfer is prohibited by the Coulomb blockade. We find a counterintuitive result that the dephasing tends to enhance the PC rather than to reduce it in this geometry. We argue that this enhancement can be regarded as a signature of the separation of the spin degree of freedom from the charge one.

Our model is described by the Hamiltonian:

$$H=H_0+H_R+T,$$
(1)
where $`H_0`$, $`H_R`$ and $`T`$ stand for the hybrid dot-ring system, reservoir, and tunneling between the QD and the reservoir, respectively. $`H_0`$ is decomposed into the three parts as

$$H_0=H_{QD}+H_{ring}+H_t^{},$$
(2)
where $`H_{QD}`$, $`H_{ring}`$, and $`H_t^{}`$ correspond to the Hamiltonians describing the quantum dot, the AB ring, and the dot-ring hybridization, respectively:

$`H_{QD}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\epsilon _dd_\sigma ^{}d_\sigma +Un_{}n_{},`$ (4)
$`H_{ring}`$ $`=`$ $`t{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\left(e^{i\phi /N}c_{j\sigma }^{}c_{j+1\sigma }+\text{h.c.}\right),`$ (5)
$`H_t^{}`$ $`=`$ $`t^{}{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\left(d_\sigma ^{}c_{0\sigma }+c_{0\sigma }^{}d_\sigma \right).`$ (6)
Here, we describe the ring by using a tight-binding Hamiltonian with $`N`$ lattice sites, and the QD by a single Anderson impurity. The single particle energy and the on-site Coulomb repulsion in the QD are represented by $`\epsilon _d`$ and $`U`$, respectively. The phase $`\phi `$ in Eq. (5) comes from the AB flux, and is defined by $`\phi =2\pi \mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$, where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ are the external flux and the flux quantum ($`=hc/e`$), respectively. Note that Eq. (5) can be diagonalized and the corresponding eigenvalues are given by $`\epsilon _m=2t\mathrm{cos}\frac{1}{N}(2\pi m\phi )`$ ($`m`$ being an integer number). The reservoir is modeled by a Fermi sea of electrons with single particle energies {$`E_k`$} :

$$H_R=\underset{k\sigma }{}E_ka_{k\sigma }^{}a_{k\sigma },$$
(7)
Finally, coupling between the QD and the reservoir is given by a tunneling Hamiltonian

$$T=\underset{k\sigma }{}\tau _k\left(a_{k\sigma }^{}d_\sigma +\text{ h.c.}\right).$$
(8)
The hopping strength of reservoir-dot and that of ring-dot are represented by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_R`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}`$, respectively. $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_R`$, assumed to be constant at the energy interval of $`D<\epsilon <D`$, is defined as

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_R=\pi \rho _R(\epsilon )|\tau (\epsilon )|^2,$$
(9)
where $`\rho _R`$ and $`\tau `$ represent the density of states in the reservoir and the tunneling amplitude between the reservoir and the QD. For half-filled case (where the Fermi energy is set to be zero) in the continuum limit, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}`$ can be simply written as

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}=\frac{t^2}{2t},$$
(10)
and the level discreteness at the Fermi energy is given by

$$\delta =\frac{2\pi t}{N}.$$
(11)
Our study is restricted to the simplest half-filled case, which does not affect the result and conclusion we will draw.

To rule out the effect of charge fluctuation, we consider the parameter limit of $`\epsilon _d,\epsilon _d+U\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_R`$. In the absence of the reservoir, the Bethe ansatz result  shows that the PC is not affected by the QD in the Kondo limit with $`\delta /T_K0`$, where $`T_K`$ stands for the Kondo energy scale. For finite value of $`\delta /T_K`$, the coupling of the ring to the QD linearly reduces the PC as a function of $`\delta /T_K`$ for small $`\delta /T_K`$, and induces a crossover from the continuum Kondo limit ($`\delta /T_K1`$) to an effectively decoupled ring-dot system ($`\delta /T_K1`$.

To calculate the PC in the presence of the reservoir, we adopt the leading order $`1/N_s`$-expansion with $`N_s`$ being the magnetic degeneracy. This approach was shown to describe well the essence of the Kondo correlation preserving the Fermi liquid properties . In addition, for the ring-dot system without reservoir, this approximation reproduces the exact Bethe ansatz result for $`\delta /T_K0`$ . Here we consider the infinite-$`U`$ limit since the consideration of finite $`U`$ and double occupancy in the QD does not provide any modification to the renormalized physical quantities . Then the problem is reduced to solving the self-consistent equation:

$$E_G^{}=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}}{\pi }\delta \underset{m\sigma }{}\frac{f(\epsilon _m)}{E_G^{}+\epsilon _m\epsilon _d}+\underset{k\sigma }{}\frac{f(E_k)|\tau _k|^2}{E_G^{}+E_k\epsilon _d},$$
(12)
where $`f(\epsilon )`$ is the Fermi distribution function. $`E_G^{}E_GE_\mathrm{\Omega }`$, where $`E_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the energy of the ground state without tunneling. $`E_G`$ corresponds to the ground state energy of the coupled system at zero temperature.

At zero temperature the 2nd term of Eq. (12) can be calculated analytically and the latter is rewritten as

$$E_G^{}=2\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}}{\pi }\delta \underset{\epsilon _m<0}{}\frac{1}{E_G^{}+\epsilon _m\epsilon _d}+\frac{2\mathrm{\Gamma }_R}{\pi }\mathrm{log}\frac{\epsilon _dE_G^{}}{D}.$$
(13)
The PC is defined in terms of the phase sensitivity of the ground state energy as

$$I(\phi )=\frac{e}{\mathrm{}}\frac{E_G}{\phi }.$$
(14)
Combining Eq.(14) with Eq.(13), the PC can be expressed as the sum of two terms, $`I_{ring}`$ and $`I_{int}`$, originating from the ideal ring and from the interactions, respectively:

$`I(\phi )`$ $`=`$ $`I_{ring}(\phi )+I_{int}(\phi ),`$ (16)
$`I_{ring}(\phi )`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \underset{\epsilon _m<0}{}}I_m(\phi ),`$ (17)
$`I_{int}(\phi )`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}}{\pi }}\delta 𝒵{\displaystyle \underset{\epsilon _m<0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{E_G^{}+\epsilon _m\epsilon _d}}I_m(\phi ),`$ (18)
where

$$I_m(\phi )=\frac{e}{\mathrm{}}\frac{\epsilon _m}{\phi }$$
(19)
is the contribution to the PC from the bare ring energy level $`\epsilon _m`$, and

$$𝒵=\left(1+2\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}}{\pi }\delta \underset{\epsilon _m<0}{}\frac{1}{(E_G^{}+\epsilon _m\epsilon _d)^2}+\frac{2\mathrm{\Gamma }_R}{\pi }\frac{1}{\epsilon _dE_G^{}}\right)^1$$
(20)
corresponds to the renormalization constant for the ground state. Note the negative sign at the R.H.S. of Eq.(18) which leads to the reduction of the PC for finite value of $`\delta /T_K`$.

Figure 2 displays the effect of the coupling to the reservoir on the PC. The PC is plotted as a function of the dimensionless coupling strength $`\gamma `$ defined by

$$\gamma \mathrm{\Gamma }_R/\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}.$$
(21)
Note that the PC is a universal function of $`\gamma `$, $`\phi `$, and $`\delta /T_K^0`$, which does not depend on the parameter detail chosen here. $`T_K^0`$ in the figure denotes the Kondo energy scale in the absence of the coupling to the reservoir ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }_R=0`$) for $`\delta 0`$, (while $`T_K`$ stands for the counterpart including the reservoir). First, one should recall that for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_R=0`$ the PC is reduced to $`I_{ring}`$ in the continuum limit ($`\delta T_K^0`$), and is suppressed for finite value of $`\delta /T_K^0`$ . It will be natural to believe that the reservoir would reduce the AB oscillation since it is expected to play the same role as a charge reservoir which induces decoherence. However, the result is opposite to this simple expectation. Coupling to the reservoir enhances the PC as shown for several values of $`\delta /T_K^0`$. As $`\gamma `$ increases, the PC is enhanced and eventually it saturates to $`I_{ring}`$ for sufficiently large $`\gamma `$.

This anomalous result is interpreted as follows. Instead of reducing the PC, coupling to reservoir suppresses $`I_{int}`$ only, the contribution originating from the spin exchange interactions. This makes net increase of the PC because the direction $`I_{int}`$ is opposite to $`I_{ring}`$. This is a unique signature that the spin and the charge degrees of freedom are decoupled. That is, the reservoir degrades the coherence of spin degree of freedom ($`I_{int}`$) only, while it does not affect the charge one ($`I_{ring}`$).

To be more precise, the influence of reservoir on the system can be classified into two factors. (i) Increase of the Kondo binding energy: As the coupling turns on, the effective spin exchange interactions between the electrons in the QD and the conduction electrons increase. This results in the enhancement of the binding energy (or reducing the size of the Kondo screening cloud). (ii) Decoherence of electrons: The Kondo scattering provides effective charge flow between the ring and the reservoir. Since the electrons in the reservoir are scattered inelastically, no phase coherence exists between the electrons absorbed and those emitted by the reservoir. This feature has never been addressed before in the Kondo limit.

Both effects ((i),(ii)) are present in the result of Figure 2. The effect of enhanced Kondo binding energy is not a unique feature of our geometry. That is, the energy scale is modified by changing other parameters as well, and it can be well understood in terms of the renormalized energy scale, $`T_K`$. In order to extract the dephasing effect, we show the PC as a function of $`\delta /T_K`$ for three different values of $`\gamma `$ in Figure 3(a). The effect (i) is already included in the renormalized parameter $`\delta /T_K`$ with $`\gamma `$-dependent $`T_K`$. The PC displays a crossover at $`\delta /T_K1`$ from the Kondo limit ($`\delta /T_K1`$) to the effectively decoupled limit ($`\delta /T_K1`$), regardless of the coupling to the reservoir. For large $`\delta /T_K`$ the PC saturates to the value which corresponds to that of the ideal ring with one electron subtracted from the present system (denoted by the dotted line). This demonstrates effective decoupling of the ring from the rest part of the system.

Here we point out that the PC increases as $`\gamma `$ increases even after subtracting the effect of rescaled Kondo energy, as shown in Figure 3(a). This demonstrates the anomalous nature of the Kondo-assisted dephasing that enhances AB oscillation. That is, the dephasing influences only the interaction part of the current, $`I_{int}`$, through the spin-fluctuation channel, which results in a net increase of the PC. This property is analyzed in more detail in Figure 3(b). For small $`\delta /T_K`$, $`I_{int}/I_{ring}`$ shows $`\gamma `$-dependent linear behavior as $`I_{int}/I_{ring}=c(\gamma )\delta /T_K`$, where $`c(\gamma )>0`$. One can see that the slope $`c(\gamma )`$ decreases as $`\gamma `$ increases. The reduction of the slope as a function of $`\gamma `$ is the result of dephasing through spin exchange interactions.

To complete our discussion it is instructive define the coherence factor, $`\eta `$, associated with the spin-fluctuation-induced dephasing by the ratio

$$\eta \frac{c(\gamma )}{c(0)}.$$
(22)
The coherence factor (Figure 4) decreases monotonically as $`\gamma `$ increases. This is a manifestation of decoherence mediated by the spin fluctuations. This behavior is quite universal independent of any parameter detail.

In conclusion, we have investigated the effect of reservoir coupled to a composite AB ring - QD system on the PC. In the Coulomb blockade limit, spin fluctuations induce decoherence of the system in an anomalous way. The persistent current circulating the ring is enhanced due to the dephasing in the Kondo limit. We have argued that this enhancement is closely related to the separation of the spin from the charge degree of freedom.

This work has been supported by the National Research Laboratory program of the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology, and also by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication.


text:
# The oxygen isotope effect in the ab-plane reflectance of underdoped YBa2Cu3O7-δ.

Present address: \]Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O.Box 2711, Beijing 100080, P. R. China

Present address: \]II. Phys. Inst., Univ. zu Köln, Zuelpicher Str. 77 D-50937 Köln, Germany Present address: \]Walther Meissner Institut, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, D-85748 Garching, Germany

## Abstract

We have measured the effect of oxygen isotope substitution on the ab-plane reflectance of underdoped YBa2Cu3O7-δ. The frequency shift of the transverse optic phonons due to the substitution of 16O by 18O yields an isotope effect of the expected magnitude for copper-oxygen stretching modes with $`\alpha =0.5\pm 0.1`$. The reflectance shoulder at 400 - 500 cm-1 shows a much smaller exponent of $`\alpha =0.1\pm 0.1`$ in the normal state and $`\alpha =0.23\pm 0.1`$ in the superconducting state. These observations suggest that the shoulder is of electronic origin and not due to a phonon mode as has been suggested recently.

The absence of a substantial isotope effect on the transition temperature of high temperature superconductors has been used to rule out phonons as the bosons responsible for coupling between the charge carriersfranck94 . But this lack of $`T_c`$ shift with isotope substitution has failed to convince everyone. Many mechanisms in addition to the frequencies of the underlying phonon can affect $`T_c`$. For example, among BCS superconductors, there are examples where the isotope effect of $`T_c`$ is small and even positive due to the Coulomb interaction parameter $`\mu ^{}`$franck94 . whereas we know that the underlying boson frequencies, phonons in this case, would show a square root dependence on isotopic mass. Thus the isotope effect of $`T_c`$ is of marginal value in settling the question of phonon origin of superconductivity. A direct measurement of the isotope effect of the boson frequency is a much more convincing test.

Recently, attention has been directed to the kink in the dispersion of the angle-resolved photoemission spectra (ARPES)kaminski00 ; valla00 ; bogdanov00 ; johnson00 . The simplest picture of the kink is that it is the result of the interaction of the charge carriers with a bosonic excitation. This opens a new scattering channel at the energy required to generate the excitation, and according to Kramers-Kronig relations applied to the complex self energy, a kink is formed in the energy dispersionkaminski00 . In infrared spectroscopy the kink can be seen as an onset of absorption or a ”knee” in low temperature reflectance spectra around 500 cm-1, a result of enhanced scattering above this energybasov96c ; puchkov96d . The energy of the knee does not vary among the various high temperature superconductors with the notable exception of the three-layer mercury compound where it is at a substantially higher energy, at 750 cm-1mcguire00 .

The knee has been associated with the superconducting transition (in optimally doped YBa2Cu3O7-δ it can only be seen below $`T_c`$), although in most underdoped materials it is present in the normal state and has therefore been related to the pseudogapbasov96c . This has lead to the suggestion that the bosonic excitation responsible for the knee is a possible candidate for the pairing excitation of high temperature superconductivitycarbotte99 ; lanzara01 , similar to the role played by phonons in conventional superconductivity. Recently Lanzara et al. have proposed that certain zone boundary oxygen vibrations are responsible for the kink in ARPES dispersion curveslanzara01 . A more conventional view is that the excitation is of magnetic originbourges98 ; carbotte99 . Suggestions that it is related to the sharp 41 meV neutron resonance have been challenged recentlykee01 .

An obvious experiment that will distinguish between these two models of the kink excitation is the oxygen isotope effect of the frequency of the kink. If the kink is due to phonons, its frequency should vary as the -0.5 power-law of the reduced mass of the mode. On the other hand, the frequency of a purely magnetic mode should be independent of isotopic mass. Any such experiment will be difficult because the mode giving rise to the kink is broad. This is illustrated in Fig. 1a where we use standard transport theoryshulga91  to calculate the conductivity and the reflectance in a Fermi liquid system coupled to a bosonic mode. We model the kink excitation as a copper-oxygen stretching mode phonon of 12 cm-1 width centered at 516 cm-1, interacting with the charge carriers with a plasma frequency $`\omega _p=1.9`$ eV and a coupling constant $`\lambda =2.2`$. Fig. 1a shows that within this model, the complete replacement of 16O by 18O in the copper oxygen planes, results in the displacement of the knee in reflectance to lower frequency curve by 24 cm-1, or alternately, a reduction of reflectance in the spectral region above the knee by 0.7 %. We express a partial isotope effect of the frequency of the mode $`\nu `$ in terms of the isotope coefficient $`\alpha `$ defined in $`d\nu /\nu =\alpha dm/m`$ where m is the reduced mass of the copper-oxygen stretching vibration.

To our knowledge, there are no published experiments on the isotope dependence of the frequency scale associated with the pseudogap state or the kink in dispersion of the charge carriers. There are however several reports, based on NMR and NQR measurements, on the isotope dependence of the temperature $`T^{}`$ associated with the onset of the pseudogap in YBa2Cu4O8, a material that is naturally underdoped with a $`T_c=80`$ K. A zero isotope coefficient was reported by Williams et al. williams98 , whereas Raffa et al.raffa98  found a value of $`\alpha =0.061`$ for $`T^{}`$. The same value, within experimental error, of $`\alpha =0.056`$ was found for the superconducting transition temperature $`T_c`$, defined as $`\alpha `$ in $`dT_c/T_c=\alpha dm/m`$ where m is the mass of the oxygen isotope. Giant isotope effects have been reported on the relaxation rate of crystal field excitationstemprano00 .

For the experiment we used a large single crystal of YBa2Cu3O7-δ which was broken in two pieces which were parallel annealed, one in 16O and the other in 18O to yield two underdoped samples. The weight changes of the crystals were consistent with a near complete isotope exchange. Neutron diffraction experiments showed that the occupancy of the chain sites was identical for the two samples. More importantly, the measurements also show that the z-parameter of apical oxygen only shifts by -0.00003(4) c-axis units which is the opposite sign from what one would expect if the shift in $`T_c`$ was solely due to a difference in oxygen occupation (+0.00006)neutron-diff . The uncertainty in the apical oxygen position gives an uncertainty in $`T_c`$ of 0.45 K. The change in shoulder frequency with Tc is approximately 2.5 cm-1/K giving an uncertainty in the shoulder frequency due to occupancy of the chain site of only 1.1 cm-1. This is too small to compensate for a possible isotope shift expected due to phonons (see Fig. 1) of 24 cm-1.

The superconducting transition temperatures were $`T_c`$ = 67.6 K for 16O and $`T_c`$ = 66.7 K for 18O which yields a (partial) isotope coefficient $`\alpha =0.1`$. For a pure electron-phonon interaction in a monatomic system, $`\alpha =0.5`$. A small value of $`\alpha `$ is typical of high temperature superconductorsfranck94 . The advantage of an underdoped sample is that it allows us to measure the kink frequency in both the normal and the superconducting state. The samples were twinned.

The reflectance measurements were performed on freshly cleaved faces normal to the c-axis. To correct for irregularities of the surface, resulting from the cleavage process, the sample was coated with a gold layer, evaporated in situhomes93a .

All the measurements were carried out in a cold-finger flow cryostat with a minimum sample temperature of 25 K. A Bruker IFS 66 v/S spectrometer was used in the far-infrared with He-cooled bolometer detectors below 700 cm-1 and an MCT detector up to 8000 cm-1. The absolute reflectance measurements have an error of $`\pm `$ 0.5 %.

Figure 2 shows the reflectance of the two crystals at 25 K. Since the spectra are nearly identical on the scale of the figure, the 18O curve has been displaced downward by 0.02 for clarity. We have normalized the two spectra in the 250 to 420 cm-1 region, below the reflectance shoulder frequency, by subtracting 0.3 % from the reflectance of the 16O curve at 25 K and 0.75 % at 80 K.

In Fig. 2 the reflectance minima marked P1 (bond bending) and P2 (bond stretching) are due to transverse optic phononshomes00 . The effect of the isotopic substitution on their resonant frequencies can be seen clearly. From the isotopic masses one expects a frequency ratio (FR) $`\nu _{18}/\nu _{16}=0.9428`$ for pure copper-oxygen stretching vibrations. The observed values of FR at 25 K are 0.956 and 0.953 for P1 and P2 respectively. The expected values from the shell model of Chaplot et al.chaplot95  are 0.954 and 0.9456 respectively. The zone boundary half breathing mode is predicted to have an isotope ratio of 0.9437, close to the pure oxygen vibration. Note, however, that the anomalously low frequency of the half-breathing mode is not correctly described by the model. The good agreement of FR with the theoretical values is consistent with complete in-plane isotopic substitution since the isotope effect on phonon frequencies is reduced for isotopic mixtures in a linear fashionmontgomery65 .

The modes marked B1 and B2 do not shift significantly with isotopic substitution. Their frequencies and spectral weights suggest that they may be related to the modes discussed recently by Bernhard et al.bernhard01 . These authors found two modes in this spectral region with spectral weights over an order of magnitude larger than what is expected for phonons, and suggested that they may be of electronic origin. The absence of an oxygen isotope shift supports this picture although, it should be pointed out, low frequency modes generally involve heavier atoms in the unit cell and would not be expected to exhibit a complete oxygen isotope shift. While the modes B1 and B2 have been seen by previous workersbernhard01 , they were not seen in ultra-pure crystalshomes99  and are likely activated by impurities.

We obtained the frequency shift of the shoulder with isotope substitution in several ways. The most straightforward method would be to evaluate the second derivative of the reflectance which is closely related to $`\alpha ^2F(\mathrm{\Omega })`$allen71 ; farnworth74 ; marsiglio98 ; carbotte99 ; abanov01  which has a peak at the frequency of the mode responsible for the shoulder in the conventional Fermi liquid picture. We find this peak at 520 cm-1 in the superconducting state and at 420 cm-1 at 80 K, in the normal state. However, as a recent study shows, even with large crystals of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 which have very flat surfaces, the error of this method is too large to resolve the isotope effecttu01 . The source of this error is the well known growth of error with successive differentiation. To find a peak position in the $`\alpha ^2F(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ spectrum, we must in effect evaluate the zero-crossing of the third derivative of the reflectance.

To achieve the required resolution, we adopted the simpler method of evaluating the shift along the frequency axis of the slope portion of the reflectance in the 480 to 620 cm-1 region. As Fig. 1 shows, within the Fermi liquid model, the isotope effect gives rise to a uniform shift of the curves along the frequency axis. We evaluated this shift in three different ways. The simplest was to fit a straight line to the reflectance in the slope region and to evaluate the frequency shift of this line for the two isotopes. This method gave $`\alpha =0.23\pm 0.1`$ in the superconducting state at 25 K and $`\alpha =0.1\pm 0.1`$ in the normal, pseudogap state, at 80 K. To minimize uncertainties in the values of the absolute reflectance, all the curves were normalized in the 250 to 420 cm-1 region. In the second method, we again normalized the curves in the flat region and and evaluated the average shift in reflectance in the slope region and divided this by the slope of reflectance, $`dR/d\omega `$ to get the frequency shift. Within an experimental error of $`\alpha `$ of 0.1, the results were the same as those obtained by the first method.

We were concerned with the influence of the optic phonons P1 and P2 to our analysis. The third, more elaborate method, was designed to subtract the optic phonons from the spectra. We started by fitting the normalized reflectance to a series of six Lorentzian oscillators that described the optical conductivity in the 250 to 1000 cm-1 region. These included a Drude oscillator and the two phonons. We then recalculated the reflectance, without the phonons, and fitted a straight line in the slope region to the calculated model reflectance. The resulting isotope shift was identical to the one found by a direct fit to the experimental reflectance that included the phonons.

The increased isotope dependence of the shoulder in the superconducting state may be related to the isotope effect of the superconducting transition temperaturefranck94 . In our samples $`\alpha (T_c)=0.1\pm 0.1`$. In several models of the shoulder at $`520`$ cm-1, its frequency in the superconducting state is a sum of the normal state mode frequency and the superconducting gap frequencycarbotte99 ; abanov01 . If there is a proportionality between the superconducting transition temperature and the gap frequency, we would expect an additional isotope effect of 0.1 in the superconducting state within the scope of these models. This is roughly what we observed.

Another experiment that is difficult to reconcile with the phonon model for the shoulder is the infrared reflectance of the three-layer mercury-based superconductor which has a $`T_c`$ of 130 K. In this material the shoulder frequency is at 750 cm-1, some 45 % higher than in materials with a maximum $`T_c`$ in the 94 K regionmcguire00 . There are no direct measurements of the oxygen stretch frequency in this material. However, one can estimates this frequency from the general rule $`\omega ^2a^3`$ where $`a`$ is the lattice parametertajima91 ; pintschovius89 . The lattice parameter of the three-layer mercury compound is 3.854 at optimal doping, as compared to 3.827 in YBa2Cu3O7-δ. The calculated phonon frequency shift, based on the lattice parameter change, is -0.5 %. This is to be compared to the observed shift of the shoulder of +45 %.

In summary, we have measured the effect of substituting the oxygen isotope 18O for 16O on the infrared reflectance spectrum of underdoped YBa2Cu3O7-δ. We find that two peaks, previously assigned to phonons, show the expected isotope shift with a coefficient close to the theoretical value of $`0.5`$, whereas the reflectance shoulder has a much smaller coefficient of $`0.1\pm 0.1`$ in the normal state which increases to $`0.23\pm 0.1`$ in the superconducting state. Thus, within experimental error, we can rule out any simple phonon model involving copper-oxygen stretching modes as an explanation for the reflectance shoulder in the normal state. The small isotope shift of the shoulder suggests that it is largely of electronic origin.

The work at McMaster University and the University of Alberta was supported by the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council. We thank J.P. Carbotte, D.N. Basov, A. Lanzara. M.R. Norman and Z.-X. Shen for useful discussions.