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# References

Verlinde  made an interesting proposal that the Cardy formula  for the two-dimensional CFT can be generalized to arbitrary spacetime dimensions. Verlinde further proposed that a closed universe has subextensive (Casimir) contribution to its energy and entropy with the Casimir energy conjectured to be bounded from above by the Bekenstein-Hawking energy. Within the context of the radiation dominated universe, such bound on the Casimir energy is shown to lead to the Hubble and the Bekenstein entropy bounds respectively for the strongly and the weakly self-gravitating universes. The generalized entropy formula, called the Cardy-Verlinde formula, is further shown to coincide with the Friedmann equation at the moment when the conjectured bound on the Casimir energy is saturated. These results were later generalized  to brane universes in the bulks of various (A)dS black holes.

It is the purpose of this note to examine whether the above mentioned results of Ref.  are generic properties of the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional closed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe satisfying a general equation of state of the form $`p=w\rho `$. We find that the entropy of the FRW universe can no longer be expressed in a form similar to the Cardy formula with square root, when $`w1/n`$. As a result, the entropy expression does not coincide with the Friedmann equation at the moment when the conjectured bound on the Casimir energy is saturated and the conjectured bound on the Casimir energy does not lead to the Hubble and the Bekenstein entropy bounds.

The general metric ansatz for an $`(n+1)`$-dimensional universe satisfying the principles of homogeneity and isotropy in the $`n`$-dimensional space has the following Robertson-Walker form:

$$g_{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu =d\tau ^2+a^2(\tau )\gamma _{ij}dx^idx^j,$$
(1)
where $`a`$ is the cosmic scale factor and $`\gamma _{ij}`$ is given by

$$\gamma _{ij}dx^idx^j=\left(1+\frac{k}{4}\delta _{mn}x^mx^n\right)^2\delta _{ij}dx^idx^j=\frac{dr^2}{1kr^2}+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_{n1}^2.$$
(2)
Here, $`k=1,0,1`$, respectively for the $`n`$-dimensional space with the negative, zero and positive spatial curvature. In this paper, we mostly concentrate on the closed universe case ($`k=1`$). Generalization to the other cases is straightforward.

The Friedmann equations, describing the expansion of the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional universe described by the Robertson-Walker metric (1), are given by

$$H^2=\frac{16\pi G}{n(n1)}\rho \frac{k}{a^2},$$
(3)
$$\dot{H}=\frac{8\pi G}{n1}(\rho +p)+\frac{k}{a^2},$$
(4)
where $`H\dot{a}/a`$ is the Hubble parameter, and $`\rho `$ and $`p`$ are the energy density and the pressure of the universe. From the Friedmann equations, we obtain the following energy conservation equation:

$$\dot{\rho }+n(\rho +p)\frac{\dot{a}}{a}=0,$$
(5)
where the overdot denotes derivative w.r.t. $`\tau `$.

For the perfect fluid matter of the universe satisfying an equation of state

$$p=w\rho ,$$
(6)
by solving the energy conservation equation (5) we obtain

$$\rho a^{n(1+w)}.$$
(7)
We denote the constant of proportionality in this equation as $`\rho _0`$, namely, $`\rho =\rho _0a^{n(1+w)}`$.

We assume that the FRW universe satisfies the first law of thermodynamics. When applied to a comoving volume element of unit coordinate volume and physical volume $`v=a^n`$, the first law of thermodynamics takes the form:

$$Tds=d(\rho a^n)+pda^n,$$
(8)
where $`T`$ is the temperature of the universe and $`s`$ is the entropy density of the universe per comoving volume. Making use of Eqs. (5) and (8), we see that entropy of the FRW universe per comoving volume stays constant in time, i.e., $`ds/d\tau =0`$. Therefore, the FRW universe satisfying the first law of thermodynamics expands adiabatically: $`dS=0`$, where $`S=sd^nx\sqrt{\gamma }`$ is the total entropy inside the total volume $`V=a^nd^nx\sqrt{\gamma }`$ of the universe. By substituting the following relation, obtained from the integrability condition $`^2s/(Tv)=^2s/(vT)`$:

$$\frac{dp}{dT}=\frac{p+\rho }{T},$$
(9)
into Eq. (8), we obtain the following expression for entropy of the FRW universe per comoving volume:

$$s=\frac{a^n}{T}(p+\rho )+s_0,$$
(10)
where $`s_0`$ is an integration constant. For a universe satisfying an equation of state of the form $`p=w\rho `$, the temperature of the universe is therefore given by

$$T=\frac{(1+w)\rho _0}{ss_0}a^{nw}.$$
(11)
The total energy $`E=\rho V`$ can be written as a sum of the purely extensive part $`E_E`$ and the subextensive part $`E_C`$, called the Casimir energy, in the following way:

$$E(S,V)=E_E(S,V)+\frac{1}{2}E_C(S,V).$$
(12)
Under the transformations $`S\lambda S`$ and $`V\lambda V`$ with a constant $`\lambda `$, the extensive and the subextensive parts of the total energy respectively scale as

$`E_E(\lambda S,\lambda V)`$ $`=`$ $`\lambda E_E(S,V),`$ (13)
$`E_C(\lambda S,\lambda V)`$ $`=`$ $`\lambda ^{12/n}E_C(S,V).`$ (14)
Therefore, we have $`E(\lambda S,\lambda V)=\lambda E_E(S,V)+\frac{1}{2}\lambda ^{12/n}E_C(S,V)`$. Taking derivative of this relation w.r.t. $`\lambda `$ and letting $`\lambda =1`$, we obtain

$$S\left(\frac{E}{S}\right)_V+V\left(\frac{E}{V}\right)_S=E_E+\left(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{n}\right)E_C.$$
(15)
Since we assume that the universe satisfies the first law of thermodynamics $`dE=TdSpdV`$, we have the thermodynamics relations $`\left(\frac{E}{V}\right)_S=p`$ and $`\left(\frac{E}{S}\right)_V=T`$. Making use of these thermodynamic relations and Eq. (12), we can put Eq. (15) into the following definition for the Casimir energy as the violation of the Euler identity:

$$E_C=n(E+pVTS).$$
(16)
By comparing Eq. (10) with Eq. (16), we see that the Casimir energy of the closed FRW universe has the form

$$E_C=nTs_0d^nx\sqrt{\gamma }.$$
(17)
For the universe satisfying the equation of state $`p=w\rho `$, the Casimir energy therefore behaves with the cosmic scale factor like $`E_Ca^{nw}`$. Since $`E\rho a^na^{nw}`$, the extensive part $`E_E=E\frac{1}{2}E_C`$ of energy also goes like $`E_Ea^{nw}`$. Unlike the case of the radiation dominated FRW universe, the Casimir entropy $`S_C=\frac{2\pi }{n}E_Caa^{1nw}`$ does not remain constant during the cosmological evolution, when $`w1/n`$. Making use of the above properties of $`E_C`$ and $`E_E`$, in the following we obtain the expression for the total entropy $`S`$ of the universe.

We begin by reviewing the case considered in Ref. , namely the radiation dominated universe, for which the universe has conformal invariance. If we assume the conformal invariance, the products $`E_Ea`$ and $`E_Ca`$ are independent of the volume $`Va^n`$ and are functions of the entropy $`S`$, only, since $`E_Ea^1`$ and $`E_Ca^1`$ for $`w=1/n`$. Making use of this fact and the rescaling behaviors (14) of $`E_E`$ and $`E_C`$, we infer the following expressions :

$$E_E=\frac{\alpha }{4\pi a}S^{1+1/n},E_C=\frac{\beta }{2\pi a}S^{11/n},$$
(18)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are arbitrary constants. Making use of Eqs. (12) and (18), we obtain the following expression  for entropy resembling the Cardy formula 222In general for a universe with the curvature parameter $`k`$, Eq. (12) should be replaced by $`E=E_E+\frac{k}{2}E_C`$. With this general expression for $`E`$, we obtain $`S=\frac{2\pi a}{\sqrt{\alpha \beta }}\sqrt{E_C(2EkE_C)}`$ and Eq. (16) is replaced by $`kE_C=n(E+pVTS)`$, which are exactly the results obtained in Ref. . :

$$S=\frac{2\pi a}{\sqrt{\alpha \beta }}\sqrt{E_C(2EE_C)}.$$
(19)
The undetermined normalization factor $`\sqrt{\alpha \beta }`$ is fixed  to be $`n`$ for CFT with an AdS dual, making use of the fact that thermodynamic quantities of the CFT at high temperature can be identified with those of the bulk AdS black hole .

We now consider more general case. For the universe satisfying an equation of state (6) with a general $`w`$, the Cardy-Verlinde formula (19) no longer holds. This can be easily seen by the fact that with $`Ea^{nw}`$ and $`E_Ca^{nw}`$ the entropy expression in Eq. (19) goes like $`Sa^{1nw}`$, which is contradictory with the fact that $`S=sd^nx\sqrt{\gamma }`$ is constant in time for the FRW universe satisfying the first law of thermodynamics. For an arbitrary value of $`w`$, it is rather the products $`E_Ca^{nw}`$ and $`E_Ea^{nw}`$ that are independent of $`V`$ and should be functions of $`S`$, only. Making use of the general scaling behaviors (14), we therefore obtain the following expressions for the extensive and the subextensive parts of the total energy of the FRW universe satisfying $`p=w\rho `$:

$$E_E=\frac{\alpha }{4\pi a^{nw}}S^{w+1},E_C=\frac{\beta }{2\pi a^{nw}}S^{w+12/n},$$
(20)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are again arbitrary constants. From these expressions for $`E_E`$ and $`E_C`$, we obtain the following expression for the entropy of the universe:

$$S=\left[\frac{2\pi a^{nw}}{\sqrt{\alpha \beta }}\sqrt{E_C(2EE_C)}\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}.$$
(21)
We therefore see that the expression for entropy of the universe resembling the Cardy formula (with square root) is special only for the radiation dominated universe ($`w=1/n`$). This new entropy formula can be expressed as the following entropy relation:

$$S^{2(w1/n+1)}=\frac{n^2}{\alpha \beta }a^{2(nw1)}(2S_BS_CS_C^2),$$
(22)
where $`S_B\frac{2\pi a}{n}E`$ is the Bekenstein entropy. So, clean relation among various entropies is possible only for the $`w=1/n`$ case. Note, the above entropy expression holds only for the case in which the universe expands adiabatically. While the entropy increases ($`dS>0`$) as the universe expands, the entropy will not be expressed solely in terms of $`E`$ and $`E_C`$ as above.

The Friedmann equations (3) and (4) can be expressed in the following forms resembling thermodynamic formulas of CFT, regardless of the form of equation of state satisfied by the universe:

$$S_H=\frac{2\pi }{n}a\sqrt{E_{BH}(2EkE_{BH})},$$
(23)
$$kE_{BH}=n(E+pVT_HS_H),$$
(24)
in terms of the Hubble entropy $`S_H`$ and the Bekenstein-Hawking energy $`E_{BH}`$, where

$$S_H(n1)\frac{HV}{4G},E_{BH}n(n1)\frac{V}{8\pi Ga^2},T_H\frac{\dot{H}}{2\pi H}.$$
(25)
Eq. (23) is referred to as the cosmological Cardy formula, due to its resemblance to the Cardy formula for the two-dimensional CFT. Note, Eq. (24) resembles the Smarr’s formula for a thermodynamics system having the Casimir contribution. The first Friedmann equation (3) can be expressed also as the following relation among the Bekenstein entropy $`S_B\frac{2\pi a}{n}E`$, the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy $`S_{BH}(n1)\frac{V}{4Ga}`$ and the Hubble entropy $`S_H`$:

$$S_H^2=2S_BS_{BH}kS_{BH}^2.$$
(26)
This can be expressed as the following quadratic relation, when $`k=1`$:

$$S_H^2+(S_BS_{BH})^2=S_B^2.$$
(27)
The Bekenstein entropy goes like $`S_BEaa^{1nw}`$ and therefore remains constant during the cosmological evolution only for the $`w=1/n`$ case.

We assume that the cosmological bound on the Casimir energy $`E_C`$, proposed by Verlinde , continues to hold even when the universe is not radiation dominated:

$$E_CE_{BH}.$$
(28)
For a universe satisfying the equation of state $`p=w\rho `$, we have seen that $`E_C`$ behaves like $`a^{nw}`$, whereas $`E_{BH}`$ always goes like $`a^{n2}`$. This implies that the cosmological bound (28) is satisfied, provided the universe is larger \[smaller\] than a certain critical size (for which the bound is saturated) when $`w>(n2)/n`$ \[$`w<(n2)/n`$\]. In particular, the radiation dominated universe ($`w=1/n`$) and the matter dominated universe ($`w=0`$) correspond to the former case, and the vacuum dominated universe ($`w=1`$) corresponds to the latter case. For the $`w=(n2)/n`$ case, the bound can never be satisfied depending on the values of the constant coefficients of $`E_C`$ and $`E_{BH}`$.

It is shown  that the Friedmann equations for the radiation dominated universe ($`w=1/n`$) coincide with thermodynamic formulae of the dual CFT at the moment when the cosmological bound (28) on $`E_C`$ is saturated. However, for $`w1/n`$, the modified Cardy-Verlinde formula (21) and the cosmological Cardy formula (23) with $`k=1`$ do not coincide when $`E_C=E_{BH}`$. Therefore, the matching of the first Friedmann equation and the Cardy-Verlinde formula is accidental for the radiation dominated universe, for which entropy of the universe is expressed in terms of square root just like the Cardy formula. Next, we consider the second Friedmann equation. Although $`S`$ and $`T`$ do not respectively reduce to $`S_H`$ and $`T_H`$ when $`E_C=E_{BH}`$, it can be shown by using Eqs. (4) and (16) that the product $`T_HS_H`$ reduces to $`TS`$ when $`E_C=E_{BH}`$, for the $`k=1`$ case 333This fact can be shown to hold even for the $`k1`$ case by using the generalized expression given in the previous footnote.. Therefore, regardless of the form of the equation of state, the cosmological Smarr’s formula (24) reduces to the Smarr’s formula (16) for a thermodynamic system with the Casimir energy $`E_C`$ when the bound (28) on $`E_C`$ is saturated.

We now examine whether the cosmological bound (28) on $`E_C`$ continues to imply the Hubble entropy bound and the Bekenstein bound even for the $`w1/n`$ case. The criteria for a weakly and a strongly self-gravitating closed universes are respectively

$`EE_{BH}`$ $`\mathrm{for}`$ $`Ha1`$ (29)
$`EE_{BH}`$ $`\mathrm{for}`$ $`Ha1.`$ (30)
First, we consider the strongly self-gravitating case. From Eqs. (28) and (30) we see that $`E_CE_{BH}E`$. Furthermore, we see from Eq. (21) that $`S`$ is a monotonically increasing \[decreasing\] function of $`E_C`$ in the interval $`E_CE`$ when $`w>(n1)/n`$ \[$`w<(n1)/n`$\] 444When $`w=(n1)/n`$, $`S`$ is insensitive to variation of $`E_C`$ and, therefore, the conjectured bound (28) on $`E_C`$ does not lead to cosmological entropy bounds.. Therefore, $`S`$ takes the maximum \[minimum\] value when $`E_C=E`$ and therefore $`E_C=E_{BH}`$, for the $`w>(n1)/n`$ \[$`w<(n1)/n`$\] case. The extremum value of $`S`$ (when $`E_C=E_{BH}`$) is given by $`S=\left[\frac{n}{\sqrt{\alpha \beta }}a^{nw1}S_H\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}`$, as can be seen from Eq. (23) with $`k=1`$ and Eq. (21). So, the cosmological entropy bound for the strongly self-gravitating closed FRW universe, resulting from Eq. (28), is

$`SS_0\left[a^{nw1}S_H\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}`$ $`\mathrm{for}`$ $`w>(n1)/n`$ (31)
$`SS_0\left[a^{nw1}S_H\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}`$ $`\mathrm{for}`$ $`w<(n1)/n,`$ (32)
where we have absorbed all the constant factors into an undetermined constant $`S_0`$. Second, we consider the weakly self-gravitating case. Since $`EE_{BH}`$ for such case, the maximum \[minimum\] for $`S`$ is reached earlier, namely when $`E_C=E`$, for the $`w>(n1)/n`$ \[$`w<(n1)/n`$\] case. The extremum (the value of $`S`$ when $`E_C=E`$) is $`S=\left[\frac{2\pi a^{nw}}{\sqrt{\alpha \beta }}E\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}=\left[\frac{n}{\sqrt{\alpha \beta }}a^{nw1}S_B\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}`$. The cosmological entropy bound for the weakly self-gravitating closed FRW universe, resulting from the bound on $`E_C`$, is therefore

$`SS_0\left[a^{nw1}S_B\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}`$ $`\mathrm{for}`$ $`w>(n1)/n`$ (33)
$`SS_0\left[a^{nw1}S_B\right]^{\frac{n}{(w+1)n1}}`$ $`\mathrm{for}`$ $`w<(n1)/n.`$ (34)
We have therefore seen that the conjectured bound (28) on $`E_C`$ implies the Hubble and the Bekenstein bounds only for the radiation dominated universe case. It appears from the entropy expression (21) that the Hubble and the Bekenstein entropy bounds are not likely to be reproduced when $`w1/n`$, even with modified bound on $`E_C`$.


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# Stream-fed Accretion in Intermediate Polars

## 1. Introduction

Early work on intermediate polars (IPs), taking a lead from studies of DQ Her, tended to assume the presence of an accretion disc. The accretion stream would feed the outer disc, as in non-magnetic systems, and the magnetic field would disrupt the inner disc and so channel the accretion along field lines onto magnetic polecaps. Hameury, King, & Lasota (1986) and Lasota & King (1991) presented theoretical arguments against this idea. They suggested that most IPs were discless, with the accretion stream falling until it encountered the magnetosphere directly. They argued that, observationally, discless systems would be distinguished by X-ray modulations over the orbital cycle, since in a stream-fed system the accretion sites would lie ‘beneath’ the stream, and so be localised in orbital phase.

Hellier (1991) and Hellier, Garlick, & Mason (1993) pointed out that X-ray orbital modulations can also result from obscuration of the white dwarf by structure in an accretion disc, as seen in ‘dipping’ LMXBs, and so are not exclusive to discless systems. We suggested that a better diagnostic was the presence of an X-ray pulsation at the beat frequency ($`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$) between the spin ($`\omega `$) and orbital ($`\mathrm{\Omega }`$) frequencies. This arises because the geometry changes on the beat frequency when a magnetosphere (spinning at $`\omega `$) rotates beneath a stream (orbiting at $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$). Indeed we would expect the stream to follow the field line involving least deviation from the orbital plane, and so flow to the upper magnetic pole for half the beat cycle and then flip to the lower pole for the remainder of the cycle.

Wynn & King (1992) modelled the situation and confirmed that X-ray modulations at $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are characteristic of stream-fed accretion, but also found that power could be moved from $`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to 2$`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for certain combinations of the system inclination and the angle between the magnetic and spin axes.

Hellier (1991; 1992) analysed X-ray lightcurves to show that all currently known IPs were dominated by X-ray pulsations at the spin period, rather than the beat period, and so argued that they were all disc-fed accretors. However, Buckley et al. (1995; 1997) then discovered the Rosat source V2400 Oph, which showed a strong X-ray pulsation at the 1003-sec beat period but none at the 927-sec spin period, and thus was the first secure case of discless accretion amongst the known IPs.

The 927-sec period was detected only in polarised light, and this raised the following problem for deductions based on X-ray periodicities: since many IPs show no polarised light, might we fail to detect the spin period in a non-polarised discless system, and if so might we be misinterpreting the beat cycles as spin cycles? Exactly this issue was debated in the case of BG CMi (Norton et al. 1992b; de Martino et al. 1995; Hellier 1997). New spectroscopy of V2400 Oph, reported in Hellier & Beardmore (2002), is reassurring on this point. Both the spin and the beat cycles are seen easily in the emission lines (Fig. 1), and this would leave little doubt as to their respective identities, even if we had no polarimetry. Thus V2400 Oph greatly strengthens the overall argument, since the discovery of a system showing so clearly the predicted hallmark of discless accretion confirms the validity of distinguishing between disc-fed and stream-fed accretors using the spin and beat pulses in the X-ray lightcurve.

Since nearly all well-studied IPs show both spin and beat cycles in the emission lines, we can have confidence in assigning cycles correctly and thus in applying the argument to the whole class.

## 2. Stream/disc overflow

Even in systems where a spin-cycle pulsation dominates the X-ray lightcurves, a weaker beat-cycle pulsation is often seen (e.g. Buckley & Tuohy 1989; Hellier 1991; Norton et al. 1992a; Hellier 1998). These have been interpreted as showing that most of the accretion flows through an accretion disc, but that part of the stream overflows the disc and so encounters the magnetosphere directly, giving rise to the beat-cycle modulation (e.g. Hellier 1991; 1993). The idea that overflow occurs in cataclysmic variables is supported by theoretical modelling (e.g. Lubow 1989; Armitage & Livio 1998).

Murray et al. (1999) have argued against this idea as follows. The overflowing stream cannot penetrate further in than the radius of minimum approach of a ballistic stream, $`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$, so cannot connect to the magnetosphere unless $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$$`>`$$`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$; yet it is unclear whether a disc can form if $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$$`>`$$`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$, since the stream could not orbit freely around the magnetosphere. Murray et al. argue instead that spiral shocks in the inner disc might give rise to orbital sidebands of the spin frequency.

One counterargument is that a two-armed spiral would result in modulations at 2($`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$), whereas a stream leads to $`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, and we typically observe $`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ rather than 2($`\omega `$ – $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$). A second response is that in most IPs the magnetospheric radius is indeed larger than $`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$. As an example, take the case of AO Psc, with orbital and spin periods of 3.59 hr and 805 sec, respectively. Deducing $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$ by assuming that the magnetosphere corotates with a Keplerian disc at $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$, and choosing plausible stellar masses, we find that $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$$``$ 1.2 $`\times `$ 1010 cm, whereas $`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$ is smaller at $``$ 0.6 $`\times `$ 1010 cm. Since systems like AO Psc do appear to accrete through discs, judging by the dominance of the X-ray spin pulse, the task becomes explaining disc formation in the regime where $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$$`>`$$`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$. Recent work on V2400 Oph (Section 4) may shed light on this.

## 3. FO Aqr

In turning now to individual systems, I first highlight FO Aqr as the best-studied example of a system showing disc-overflow accretion. The X-ray pulsation at the spin period is always largest, but there is often (though not always) an additional pulsation at the beat period (Hellier 1991; Norton et al. 1992a; Hellier 1993; Beardmore et al. 1998). The implication is that the overflow is variable, occurring often but not always. FO Aqr can be taken as an exemplar of the stars AO Psc, V1223 Sgr & BG CMi, which have all shown a weak beat-cycle pulsation in at least one X-ray observation (e.g. Hellier 1998).

## 4. V2400 Oph

V2400 Oph is at a low inclination of only $``$ 10, so we only ever see the ‘upper’ magnetic pole (Buckley et al. 1995; Hellier & Beardmore 2002). As the stream flips to the hidden, lower pole, the X-ray flux drops, resulting in a beat-cycle pulsation which dominates the X-ray lightcurves (Fig. 2). The idea is supported by optical spectroscopy, where observed velocity changes over the beat cycle match well to a simulation of pole-flipping accretion, calculated for material 5–10 $`R_{\mathrm{wd}}`$ from the white dwarf (Fig. 3).

However, a pole-flipping stream cannot be the whole story in V2400 Oph. In Hellier & Beardmore (2002) we concluded that much of the accretion flow is circling the white dwarf, not falling inward in a stream. The evidence is, firstly, that the X-ray beat pulse is only 25% deep. This implies that accretion is always occuring at both poles continually, so that we still see accretion when the stream flips to the lower pole, suggesting that $``$ 75% of the flow does not participate in the pole flipping. Secondly, the velocity variation of the emission lines over the orbital cycle is only 6 km s-1. Even at 10, the infall motion of a stream would mean that it would generate an orbital modulation of hundreds of km s-1. Only by diluting this with material circling the white dwarf is it possible to account for the observations. A third line of argument is that while the changes in the line profile over spin and beat phases are explained by stream-fed accretion (Figs. 3 & 4), the varying components comprise only $``$ 10% of the total line line, implying that most line emission comes from something other than the stream.

One possibility is that a disc is present, but this is unlikely given the non-detection of any X-ray spin pulse. Instead, we suggested (Hellier & Beardmore 2002) that the flow is in the form of diamagnetic blobs circling the white dwarf, following the theoretical analysis of King (1993) and Wynn & King (1995). The simulations by King & Wynn (1999) show that, given a range of blobs densities, the less-dense material is easily threaded and controlled by field lines, while denser blobs can cross field lines and orbit the white dwarf.

The above picture may provide the answer to disc formation in the regime $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$$`>`$$`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$, since it implies that dense blobs are crossing field lines, losing memory of orbital phase, and spiralling inward to accrete onto the white dwarf. If the field were somewhat lower, the drag on the blobs would be reduced, slowing their inward spiral and allowing them to accumulate. They would tend to screen the field from one another, reducing the effective field further, and so producing a runaway that would lead to disc formation.

In this regard it is notable that V2400 Oph has the highest field estimate among IPs at 9–27 MG (Buckley et al. 1995; Väth 1997), and this might explain why it is discless. Even so, the presence of circling material suggests that it is on the edge of disc formation. A comparably high-field IP is PQ Gem, with an estimate of 9–21 MG (Väth et al. 1996; Potter et al. 1997), but this system appears to be disc-fed, judging by the dominance of the X-ray spin pulse and the lack on any X-ray beat pulse (Mason et al. 1992). Thus, the two stars V2400 Oph and PQ Gem could be delineating the conditions for disc formation in an IP, with a slightly lower field and wider orbit in PQ Gem allowing a disc to form.

## 5. TX Col

Most IPs have X-ray lightcurves dominated either by the spin pulse or by the beat pulse, allowing them to be interpreted as predominantly disc-fed or predominantly stream-fed systems. In TX Col, however, the two pulsations are of comparable amplitude and are variable, so that the spin-pulse is larger at some times and the beat pulse larger at others (Buckley & Tuohy 1989; Norton et al. 1997; Wheatley 1999). One possible explanation, as for FO Aqr, is variable disc-overflow, but this time with the flow through the stream being sufficient, on occasion, to produce a beat pulse which is larger than the spin pulse.

However, it might also be possible to explain TX Col along the lines of V2400 Oph, with a combination of a stream and orbiting blobs. If a disc were on the verge of forming, the accretion flow could be hovering between the two modes, explaining the variability of the X-ray lightcurves. Arguing against this is the fact that polarisation is not seen in TX Col, suggesting that it is not among the higher-field IPs. There has been relatively little optical work published on TX Col, and further spectroscopy may be the way to resolve the issue.

## 6. V1025 Cen

The two stars EX Hya and V1025 Cen have exceptionally long spin periods with $`P_{\mathrm{spin}}/P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$$`>`$ 0.4, whereas in all other IPs the ratio is $`<`$ 0.1 (e.g. fig. 4 of Hellier, Beardmore, & Buckley 1998). The condition $`P_{\mathrm{spin}}/P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$$`<`$ 0.1 is required for equilibrium rotation with a disc (where the field’s corotation velocity equals the Keplerian velocity at $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$) since $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$ cannot exceed the stream’s circularisation radius, and this puts an upper limit on $`P_{\mathrm{spin}}`$ (see, e.g., King & Lasota 1991). One possible explanation is that EX Hya and V1025 Cen do possess discs but are far from equilibrium, perhaps because of a drop in mass-transfer rate from which they are now recovering.

A second possibility, though, has been suggested by King & Wynn (1999). They expound a discless model for these stars in which $`R_{\mathrm{mag}}`$ equals the distance to the Lagrangian point. Most of the mass-transfer stream accretes, but $``$ 10% is expelled outward by the field to be swept up by the secondary. The expulsion of high-angular-momentum material balances the accretion torques and locks the system into an equilibrium at much longer spin periods than in most IPs.

In Hellier, Wynn, & Buckley (2002) we present optical spectroscopy of V1025 Cen aimed at deciding between the two models. We find that King & Wynn’s model has several successes in addition to accounting for the anomalous spin period of this system. In particular, there are correspondences between the observed line profiles over the orbital cycle and the profiles predicted by the model (Fig. 5). Further, both observed and model tomograms show the same ‘hook’-like features (Wynn 2001; Hellier et al. 2002).

However, the stream-fed model of King & Wynn (1999) is again a geometry varying with beat phase, and predicts a strong modulation of accretion rate with beat phase (see their fig. 3). The X-ray lightcurves, though, show only a spin-cycle pulsation (Hellier et al. 1998). Although a spin-cycle pulse is readily explained even in a stream-fed accretor, since views of the accretion sites vary with spin phase, the absence of any beat-cycle pulsation is a problem for any such model. A comparison of the Fourier transforms of X-ray lightcurves of V2400 Oph and V1025 Cen would suggest that the former is stream-fed and the latter disc-fed (Fig. 6).

Thus, with points both for and against the two models, further work is required to reach a conclusion about V1025 Cen. In particular, it is worthwhile exploring whether a variant of the King & Wynn model could retain the same flow near the Lagrangian point, where expulsion of material leads to the long spin period, but then give way to a disc-like flow near the white dwarf, where dependence on orbital phase is washed out.

## 7. EX Hya

Like V1025 Cen, the X-ray lightcurve of EX Hya is always dominated by a spin-cycle pulsation, pointing to disc-fed accretion. A beat-cycle pulsation has been seen only once, during an outburst (Hellier et al. 2000). The eclipse profiles during outburst showed conclusively that the accretion stream was greatly enhanced. These findings fullfilled predictions made from an earlier outburst (Hellier et al. 1989) where emission-line profiles suggested that the stream was overflowing the disc and impacting on the magnetosphere. Thus, observations show that disc-overflow accretion occurs in EX Hya during outburst (probably owing to enhanced mass-transfer) but not in quiescence. It is currently unclear whether the enhanced mass transfer is the sole cause of EX Hya’s outbursts, or whether the enhancement is triggered by a disc instability (see Hellier et al. 2000). If the latter, it would be proof of the presence of a disc. The quiescent studies show the double-peaked lines characteristic of an accretion disc, and an S-wave compatible with arising from the bright spot where the stream hits the disc (e.g. Hellier et al. 1987). Thus, overall the observations point to the presence of a disc in EX Hya, despite the anomalous spin period. However, it should be noted that a detailed comparison of observations to the King & Wynn (1999) model has not yet been published, and could develop this debate further.

## 8. AE Aqr

To complete a round-up of stream-fed accretion, I mention AE Aqr. The white dwarf in AE Aqr is the fastest rotator among the secure IPs, with a period of 33 sec. The current picture is that it has no disc, and the stream is expelled from the system by the propeller effect of the rapidly spinning field (Wynn, King, & Horne). The evidence is primarily the finding that the spin-down energy of the white dwarf exceeds the accretion energy (de Jager et al. 1994), suggesting that only a small fraction of the mass-transfer stream is accreted. The small fraction that accretes is slowed by the propeller effect, presumably circling the white dwarf many times before accreting; it loses dependence on orbital phase and thus produces pulses at the spin period, although given the slow infall they are seen in soft X-rays only. Again, a detailed comparison of the observations to this model has yet to be published, so it is too early for final conclusions, but see Welsh (1999) for a review of the state of play.

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text:
# Strong acoustic turbulence and the speed of Bose-Einstein condensation

## 1 Introduction

The discovery of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in alkali vapors  had stimulated interest in a theoretical description of non-ideal Bose gases, a research topic that dates back to Bogoliubov’s work  on the equilibrium properties. In current experiments, the gas is confined in a small magnetic trap and is strongly affected by the confining potential. However, theorists have also investigated the kinetics of BEC in a uniform (on average) gas, contained in a macroscopic volume . In addition to the intrinsic interest that this problem has for basic science, it is also of potential importance for astrophysics and cosmology in connection with the problem of galactic dark matter .

The earliest theoretical work we are aware of on this subject is the paper by Kraichnan . Although we will confirm below several qualitative results of that work (such as concentration of particles in a progressively smaller momentum range and a turbulent cascade at larger momenta), the quantitative details differ. We attribute the difference to the imprecise treatment of phonons in ref.  (noted by Kraichnan himself). Although the amount of theoretical work on BEC in a macroscopic volume has grown rapidly in recent years , an adequate understanding of the phonon dynamics has remained elusive. In the present paper, we attempt to improve the situation, through a combination of analytical estimates and numerical results.

We consider an isolated nonrelativistic Bose gas, sufficiently dilute for the interaction between the particles (atoms in the laboratory, or dark matter particles in the outer space) to be characterized by a single parameter—the scattering length. Such a gas can be described by an effective Hamiltonian:

$$H=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\psi ^{}\psi +\frac{1}{2}g_4(\psi ^{}\psi )^2,$$
(1)
where $`\psi `$ and $`\psi ^{}`$ are canonically conjugate (field) variables, $`m`$ is the particle mass, and $`g_4`$ is the coupling that encodes the value of the scattering length.*** In the context of dark matter, using (1) implies neglect of gravitational interactions, which in general is only possible up to some spatial scale. We discuss this question further in the conclusion. In a macroscopic volume, a negative $`g_4`$ (i.e. an attractive interaction) leads to clumping, the process that had been investigated numerically in ref. . In the present paper we consider the case of a positive $`g_4`$ (a repulsive interaction). In the concluding section, we will also discuss briefly the case when the coupling is switched from positive to negative, as in a recent experiment . We assume that the volume is macroscopic, and the gas is on average uniform.

A fundamental role in the kinetics of a Bose gas is played by the length scale corresponding to the wavenumber $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$,

$$\mathrm{}^2k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2=4g_4mn_{\mathrm{ave}},$$
(2)
which we will call the Bogoliubov wavenumber. Here $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}=\psi ^{}\psi `$ is the average density of the gas. Particles with momenta $`p\mathrm{}k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$ can be considered as weakly interacting, while those with smaller momenta in general cannot. For $`p\mathrm{}k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$, elementary excitations of a fully condensed gas have a linear dispersion law; these are Bogoliubov’s phonons .

In addition to the Bogoliubov length $`\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}}=2\pi /k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$, which is time-independent, let us consider the time-dependent correlation length of the gas $`\lambda _0(t)`$. The correlation length is defined as the characteristic scale at which the two-point function $`\psi ^{}(𝐱)\psi (0)`$ changes its behavior (e.g. from a power law to an exponential). The corresponding wavenumber is $`k_0(t)=2\pi /\lambda _0(t)`$. BEC corresponds to the growth of the correlation length with time, and we now summarize some previous results concerning this growth .

If the initial value of the correlation length is small (we say that the initial sate is disordered),

$$\lambda _0(0)\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}},$$
(3)
BEC proceeds in two stages. At the first stage, $`\lambda _0(t)\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}}`$. If one assumes that the main role is played by interactions of particles with wavenumbers larger than or of order $`k_0(t)`$, one can use a quantum Boltzmann equation, because at this stage all such particles are weakly interacting. The solution to the Boltzmann equation  shows that the main feature of the spectrum is a turbulent front that propagates to smaller wavenumbers. The position of the front can be identified with $`k_0(t)`$.

When the correlation length exceeds $`\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}}`$, the particles begin to interact strongly with their local environment, and the standard Boltzmann equation cannot be used. At this second stage the growth of the correlation length continues through coarsening, i.e. a process of alignment of the field on progressively larger spatial scales , characterized by a power-law dependence of $`\lambda _0`$ on time (at large times):

$$\lambda _0(t)=\mathrm{const}\times t^\alpha .$$
(4)
We will return to discussion of the scaling exponent $`\alpha `$ shortly. Also, as we will see below, the particle number contained in modes with $`k<k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$ is in fact concentrated in the ever-shrinking region $`kk_0(t)`$. So, at this stage the correlation length $`\lambda _0`$ gives the typical size of correlated patches (i.e. regions over which the phase of the field is approximately constant).

If the initial value of the correlation length is already large (the initial state is partially ordered),

$$\lambda _0(0)\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}},$$
(5)
there is no room for a “preparatory” stage that can be described by a Boltzmann equation for the particles: one has to use a different description from the beginning. Here we consider only the late-time coarsening stage, which is present in either of the two cases.

How does one go about determining the scaling exponent $`\alpha `$? The fastest the correlation length can possibly grow is at the speed of sound (cf. ref. ), which in our case is the speed of Bogoliubov’s phonons

$$v_s=(g_4n_{\mathrm{ave}}/m)^{1/2}.$$
(6)
If one replaces (1) with a theory of non-interacting phonons, as it is done in the “phase-only” model of ref. , the only scaling law one can possibly discover is $`\lambda _0(t)v_st`$, corresponding to $`\alpha =1`$. Although this value of $`\alpha `$ is consistent with the results of numerical simulations  of the full theory (1), the questions remain if the approximation of non-interacting phonons is a good one, and why their free propagation should have anything to do with the growth of the correlation length.

In the present paper, we attempt to answer these questions by taking a look at what happens in the momentum space, i.e. at the evolution of the power spectrum of the field. We find that a consistent description of the power spectrum is obtained by assuming that the longest-wave phonons, far from being non-interacting, are in the opposite, maximally nonlinear, regime. This assumption leads to a prediction of an inverse (i.e. directed towards the infrared) turbulent cascade of the particle number, with a definite value of the scaling exponent. This prediction is confirmed by numerical simulations in two and three spatial dimensions.

We stress that this strong turbulence, characterized by strong quasiparticle interactions, is completely different from weak turbulence found in a variety of physical systems on the basis of a Boltzmann equations for weakly interacting quasiparticles . Likewise, it is different from the turbulent solution obtained numerically in ref.  for the Boltzmann stage of the evolution of a Bose gas.

Because phonons at wavenumbers $`k1/\lambda _0`$ are maximally nonlinear, the rate at which the particle number is transferred to still larger scales is of order of the phonon frequency $`\omega =v_sk`$. The time at which the order is established at a scale $`k`$ is therefore $`t1/\omega `$, which leads to

$$\lambda _0(t)v_st.$$
(7)
Thus, the linear scaling law for the correlation length obtains, and the speed of BEC is of order $`v_s`$, even though phonons are by no means free-propagating.

The paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2 we present analytical considerations, and in Sect. 3 the numerical results. Concluding Sect. 4 contains estimates of condensation times for trapped atomic gases and galactic dark matter.

## 2 Acoustic turbulence

For a fully ordered Bose gas (i.e. a Bose-Einstein condensate plus small fluctuations), the spectrum of quasiparticles had been found by Bogoliubov  for an arbitrary pairwise potential. For the local interaction contained in (1) the dispersion law, $`\omega (k)`$, is given by

$$\omega ^2(k)=\frac{g_4n_{\mathrm{ave}}}{m}k^2+\frac{\mathrm{}^2k^4}{4m^2}.$$
(8)
Hence, the wavenumber $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$, eq. (2), separates those $`k`$ for which the spectrum is significantly modified by the interaction with the condensate from those for which quasiparticles approximately coincide with the ordinary particles of the gas.

For a partially ordered gas, with the typical size of correlated domains (the correlation length) equal to some $`\lambda _0`$, eq. (8) can be applied to excitations with $`kk_0=2\pi /\lambda _0`$, because these can be viewed as propagating on an ordered background (we will make the latter statement more precise shortly). In this section, we will present analytical arguments in favor of a certain form of the power spectrum of $`\psi `$ in the low-momentum range

$$k_0kk_{\mathrm{Bo}}.$$
(9)
Recall that we consider the stage when $`k_0k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$. For wavenumbers in the range (9), the quasiparticle dispersion law $`\omega (k)`$ is nearly linear in $`k`$, so we refer to the excitations as phonons.

In perturbation theory, one writes $`\psi =\sqrt{n}\mathrm{exp}(i\theta /\mathrm{})`$ and defines the zeroth-order approximation by replacing $`n`$ with $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}`$ in the first term in (1). This gives

$$HH_0=\frac{n_{\mathrm{ave}}}{2m}(\theta )^2+\frac{1}{2}g_4n^2.$$
(10)
From the kinetic term in the Lagrangian, $`i\mathrm{}\psi ^{}_t\psi `$, we find that $`n`$ is the momentum conjugate to $`\theta `$. We now see that (10) is a theory of noninteracting waves with the linear dispersion law

$$\omega ^2(k)=\frac{g_4n_{\mathrm{ave}}}{m}k^2.$$
(11)
This theory coincides with the “phase-only” model considered in ref. , except that we do not introduce any coupling to a heat bath. Eq. (11) is, of course, the low-momentum limit of (8).

Next, allow $`n`$ to deviate from $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}`$ in the gradient term and consider small $`\delta n=nn_{\mathrm{ave}}`$. To the second order in $`\delta n`$, the Hamiltonian becomes $`HH_0+H_1`$, where

$$H_1=\frac{\delta n}{2m}(\theta )^2+\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{8m}\frac{(n)^2}{n_{\mathrm{ave}}}.$$
(12)
The second term results in a correction to the dispersion law, restoring the full eq. (8). (A similar way of deriving Bogoliubov’s spectrum was used in ref. .) The first term is an interaction among quasiparticles. Using the decomposition of $`\theta `$ and $`\delta n`$ in terms of quasiparticle creation and annihilation operators,

$`\theta `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{V}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}g_4}{2\omega _k}}}\left(a_𝐤+a_𝐤^{}\right)\text{e}^{i\mathrm{𝐤𝐱}},`$ (13)
$`\delta n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\sqrt{V}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}\omega _k}{2g_4}}}\left(a_𝐤a_𝐤^{}\right)\text{e}^{i\mathrm{𝐤𝐱}},`$ (14)
where $`V`$ is the total volume, we find that the matrix element of the interaction, $`U(𝐤_1,𝐤_2,𝐤_3)`$, has the conventional phonon form at low momenta:

$$U(𝐤_1,𝐤_2,𝐤_3)\left(k_1k_2k_3\right)^{1/2}.$$
(15)
We can now understand better the sense in which we can talk about quasiparticles in a partially ordered state. First, note that in addition to perturbative excitations there are nonperturbative ones—vortices in two dimensions and vortex lines in three. These cannot be described in terms of quasiparticles because $`n`$ vanishes at the core of a defect, making it impossible to even define $`\theta `$ there. We expect that the typical distance between the defects is of order of the correlation length $`\lambda _0`$ (cf. ref. ). Because perturbative excitations scatter strongly on the defects, the quasiparticle concept breaks down for $`kk_0`$: such excitations do not have any room to propagate. Of course, excitations with $`kk_0`$ also scatter on the defects, but only on scales of order $`\lambda _0`$. On shorter scales, they can be treated as if the defects were absent. In particular, if the interaction among quasiparticles themselves leads to a mean-free path shorter than $`\lambda _0`$, it is that interaction (rather than scattering off the defects) that determines the quasiparticle lifetime. We will now argue that such is indeed the case.

Indeed, it is precisely for acoustic (close to linear) dispersion laws that the conditions under which quasiparticle interactions can be treated perturbatively become quite subtle. The reason has been explained in ref.  and is the following. For an exactly linear dispersion law, wave packets do not disperse, so if two excitations are produced with nearly parallel momenta, they will stay together for a long time, breaking the usual condition of applicability of perturbation theory. In our case, the dispersion law $`\omega (k)`$, given by eq. (8), is not exactly linear but curves upward from a straight line. As a result, the process in which two quasiparticles merge into one is kinematically allowed but, because the deviation of the dispersion from linear is small at small $`k`$, the initial momenta have to be almost parallel. Thus, quasiparticles are forced into the kinematic arrangement in which the interaction between them can be large. In particular, a weak turbulence spectrum, obtained as a solution to a quantum Boltzmann equation for phonons (with an interaction of the form (15)), is applicable only at sufficiently large $`k`$ . Therefore, in the small $`k`$ region (9), we will be searching for strong turbulence, for which the lifetime of a quasiparticle is of order of its inverse frequency, and the Boltzmann equation cannot be applied.

To see further the importance of the scattering process in which two quasiparticles merge into one, let us visualize BEC as going from the situation shown in Fig. 1a to that shown in Fig. 1b. The field $`\psi `$ is represented by arrows on a grid, with the length of an arrow corresponding to $`|\psi |`$, and the angle of rotation to $`\mathrm{arg}\psi \theta `$. The grid is made one-dimensional for illustrative purposes only; in fact, we do not consider $`d=1`$ in this paper. We have chosen these particular configurations in such a way that the lengths of all arrows are about the same, and the magnitudes of angular differences between neighboring arrows are also the same, for all sites in Figs. 1a and 1b. Thus, both the gradient and potential energies are about the same for the two figures, i.e. the energy is conserved. Nevertheless, the state of Fig. 1a has no long-range order, while the state of Fig. 1b clearly has some. We can also say that the first state has many low-momentum quasiparticles, while the second state has relatively few high-momentum ones. The transition from the first state to the second should therefore occur through merging of quasiparticles, leading to a decrease in their number and an increase in the average quasiparticle energy.

We now see that the process of BEC is largely analogous to turbulence in an incompressible fluid. Instead of turbulent eddies we now have quasiparticles, and instead of a larger eddy splitting into smaller ones we now have two quasiparticles merging into one (of course the inverse process exists as well but, as we have seen, for BEC to occur the merging of quasiparticles should statistically prevail over the splitting). Moreover, we have seen that the interaction among quasiparticles in this process has every chance to be strong, so that the corresponding mean-free path can be short—shorter than the correlation length $`\lambda _0`$. If that is indeed so, this process is the main interaction effect for the entire momentum range (9), so this range becomes analogous to the inertial range in an incompressible fluid (cf. ref. ). We can therefore try to deduce the power spectrum of $`\psi `$ by an argument a la Kolmogorov and Obukhov (as reviewed for instance in the Landau-Lifshitz textbook ).

Unlike the case of an incompressible fluid, where only the energy is conserved, in our case there are two conserved quantities: the energy and the number of particles (by particles we mean here the ordinary particles of the gas, as opposed to quasiparticles, whose number is not conserved). The process of BEC can be viewed either as particle number accumulating in low-momentum modes or, as we have seen above, as energy accumulating in high-momentum modes. So, we have to decide with respect to which quantity the turbulent cascade will be established. A posteriori checks show that the only consistent choice is an inverse (i.e. directed towards the infrared) cascade of the particle number.

We therefore proceed to define the particle number contained in all scales shorter than a certain scale $`\lambda =2\pi /k`$, with $`k`$ in the inertial range (9):

$$N(k,t)=\underset{|𝐤^{}|>k}{}\psi _𝐤^{}^{}\psi _𝐤^{}(t),$$
(16)
where the angular brackets denote averaging over the quantum state of the system. A turbulent cascade corresponds to a constant ($`k`$-independent) flux of the particle number in momentum space. The flux can be estimated by multiplying $`N(k)`$ by the rate at which quasiparticle interactions transport the particle number to larger scales. This rate is simply the inverse quasiparticle lifetime; for strong turbulence it is of order of the quasiparticle frequency $`\omega (k)v_sk`$. Thus, we obtain

$$kN(k,t)=\stackrel{~}{A}(t),$$
(17)
where $`\stackrel{~}{A}`$ is a $`k`$-independent function of time. Eq. (17) corresponds to the following power spectrum of $`\psi `$

$$P(k)=|\psi _𝐤|^2=\frac{A(t)}{k^{d+1}},$$
(18)
where $`A`$ is proportional to $`\stackrel{~}{A}`$, and $`d=2`$ or 3 is the number of spatial dimensions.

We can now consider some consistency checks. According to the previous discussion, we expect that the particle number, given by the integral over $`𝐤`$ of $`P(k)`$ saturates in the infrared, while the gradient energy, given by the integral of $`k^2P(k)`$ saturates in the ultraviolet. Both conditions indeed hold for the power spectrum (18).

The integrals in question are cut-off at the boundaries of the range (9). In particular, the integral corresponding to the total particle number is cut-off at $`kk_0`$:

$$N_{\mathrm{tot}}\frac{A(t)}{k_0(t)}V,$$
(19)
where $`V`$ is the total volume. The time dependence of $`k_0`$ can be found by pushing our estimate for the quasiparticle lifetime $`\tau (k)1/v_sk`$ to the limit of its applicability, i.e. to $`kk_0`$. Then, $`\tau (k)`$ can be interpreted as the timescale at which the turbulent spectrum reaches the wavenumber $`k`$, or equivalently the size of correlated domains extends to spatial scale $`\lambda =2\pi /k`$. The estimate $`\tau (k_0)1/v_sk_0`$ corresponds to

$$\lambda _0(t)v_st,$$
(20)
i.e. a linear growth of the correlation length with time. We stress that this growth is due to a strong interaction among quasiparticles and cannot be described by the phase-only model (10), which contains no such interaction at all.

For comparison, in the ring-model approximation for $`d=3`$ Kraichnan  finds $`P(k)k^{13/3}`$ (which is curiously close to our scaling (18)), and $`\lambda _0(t)\sqrt{t}`$. (Note that notations differ: our $`k_0`$ corresponds to Kraichnan’s $`k_{}`$, and our $`\mathrm{}k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2/2m`$ is twice his $`\omega _0`$.)

Because the total number of particles is time-independent, the scaling $`k_01/t`$ implies, through (19), that

$$A(t)=\frac{\mathrm{const}}{t}.$$
(21)
Thus, the spectrum propagates to smaller $`k`$ according to (20), while the magnitude of the spectrum at a given $`k`$ decreases according to (21).

We wish to stress again that the power spectrum (18) describes the distribution of ordinary particles of the gas, as opposed to quasiparticles. This distinction should be kept in mind when making comparisons with the literature. For instance, weak turbulence is often described by a distribution of quasiparticles , the same ones for which the Boltzmann equation is written. In our case, a transition to quasiparticle spectra may be difficult: due to the strong interactions, the statistics of quasiparticles is likely to be non-Gaussian and therefore not amenable to a simple description in terms of occupation numbers.

## 3 Numerical results

The results of the previous section are all based on one central assumption, namely, that a turbulent cascade, described by a constant flux of particles in the $`k`$-space, is indeed established. As well known in other contexts, a turbulent cascade can only occur if the interaction (in our case, among quasiparticles) is in a certain sense local in the $`k`$-space. In our case, that means that the main role should be played by interactions among quasiparticles whose momenta are of the same order of magnitude, rather than, say, by processes in which a quasiparticle will jump directly to a momentum of order $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$.

Another ingredient of our theory is the use of the maximally nonlinear estimate for the quasiparticle lifetime. Although we tried to motivate this estimate in the previous section, it should still be properly considered as an assumption.

For cases of weak turbulence, the assumption of locality can be verified, and the quasiparticle lifetime can be found by using the solution to the corresponding Boltzmann equation . We are not aware of any such analytical method for strong turbulence. So, we have resorted to numerical simulations. The test of the assumptions will be indirect—through the form of the power spectrum.

Operationally, the numerical approach is quite straightforward. One assumes that the pile-up of particles at low momenta leads to large occupation numbers in low-momentum modes, so that the field $`\psi `$ can be regarded as classical and described by a classical equation of motion (which for the Hamiltonian (1) is known as the Gross-Pitaevsky equation). The classical equation can be applied to the coarsening stage of the evolution  (as well as to the Boltzmann one ), as long as the assumption of classicality is good. This approach was used in the previous numerical study of BEC , but the form of the power spectrum was not addressed there. (For attractive interactions, the classical approximation was used in refs. .) Here we concentrate on the power spectrum of $`\psi `$.

The condition for the occupation numbers to be large, though, is not entirely trivial. For wavenumbers in the range (9), it can be derived if we use the already obtained power spectrum (18) (anticipating that this form of the spectrum will be confirmed numerically). Defining the particle occupation numbers as $`n_𝐤=\psi _𝐤^{}\psi _𝐤`$ and using (19), we find

$$n_𝐤\frac{n_{\mathrm{ave}}k_0(t)}{k^{d+1}}.$$
(22)
Thus, at any given $`k`$ the occupation number actually decreases with time. Still, for all $`k`$ from the range (9)

$$n_𝐤\frac{n_{\mathrm{ave}}k_0(t)}{k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^{d+1}}=\frac{k_0(t)}{ϵk_{\mathrm{Bo}}},$$
(23)
where $`ϵ=k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^d/n_{\mathrm{ave}}`$. So, if the interaction parameter $`ϵ`$ is small, the condition $`n_𝐤1`$ can hold even for an already small ratio $`k_0/k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$.

Furthermore, the use of the classical approximation implies that $`n_𝐤1`$ for all “important” momenta. That is certainly not so for a thermal state, in which both the particle number and the energy are concentrated in modes with $`n_𝐤1`$. For this reason, we will consider nonthermal initial conditions. In addition, we will have to make sure that the high-momentum modes do not get overly populated in the course of the evolution. This latter requirement is rather nontrivial, since the gradient energy contained in the range (9) is, for the power spectrum (18), of order

$$_{k_0}^{k_{\mathrm{Bo}}}𝑑𝐤k^2P(k)A(t)k_{\mathrm{Bo}},$$
(24)
and thus decreases with time. So, unlike the particle number, the gradient energy is not contained in the low momentum modes but is being transferred to modes with $`k>k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$. In this way, the low-momentum part of the gas gets “cooled down”, while the high-momentum part is “heated up”. In a quantum system, the flow of energy to high momenta leads to thermalization, but in a classical system on a lattice, the energy eventually becomes dominated by the cutoff modes. When that happens, the simulation breaks down. Fortunately, when we plot the power spectra, we will be able to monitor their high-momentum content as well.

After these remarks on the applicability of the classical approximation, we proceed to solve the classical equation of motion for a dilute Bose gas (the Gross-Pitaevsky equation), which after some rescalings takes the form

$$i\frac{\psi }{t}=^2\psi +|\psi |^2\psi .$$
(25)
The rescalings that lead from (1) to (25) are as follows. A factor of $`\sqrt{g_4}`$ is absorbed into $`\psi `$, a factor of $`\mathrm{}`$ into the time derivative, and a factor of $`\mathrm{}/\sqrt{2m}`$ into the spatial derivatives. We hope that using the same letters for the rescaled quantities as for the original ones will cause no confusion, as only the rescaled quantities are used throughout this section. The rescalings correspond formally to setting $`\mathrm{}=1`$, $`g_4=1`$, and $`m=1/2`$. In particular, the expression for the Bogoliubov wavenumber becomes

$$k_{\mathrm{Bo}}=\sqrt{2n_{\mathrm{ave}}}.$$
(26)
The power spectrum of a classical field is defined by averaging over direction of the wavevector:

$$P(k)=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{tot}}}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_𝐤|\psi _𝐤|^2,$$
(27)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{tot}}=2\pi `$ in $`d=2`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{tot}}=4\pi `$ in $`d=3`$. It satisfies the equality

$$n_{\mathrm{ave}}=(2\pi )^dd^dkP(k).$$
(28)
Eq. (25) was solved in two- and three-dimensional boxes will equal sides of length $`L`$ and periodic boundary conditions. We used an operator-splitting algorithm, based on alternation of two different types of updates corresponding to the individual terms on the right-hand side of (25). The updates were alternated so as to maintain the second-order accuracy in time. The action of $`^2`$ was computed in the momentum space, using the fast Fourier transform. The algorithm conserves the number of particles exactly. Energy nonconservation, for the times shown in the figures, was about 0.2% in $`d=3`$ and about 2% in $`d=2`$, relative to the value of energy at $`t=0`$.

The initial condition was taken in the form

$$\psi _𝐤(t=0)=\sqrt{P(k,0)}\mathrm{exp}(i\gamma _𝐤),$$
(29)
with random uniformly distributed phases $`\gamma _𝐤`$ and a nonthermal power spectrum

$$P(k,0)=B\mathrm{exp}(k^2/\mu ^2).$$
(30)
For both runs shown in the figures, we used $`\mu =\pi `$, while the values of $`B`$ were such that the average densities equaled $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}=31.4`$ for $`d=2`$, and $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}=27.8`$ for $`d=3`$, corresponding to $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}=7.93`$ and $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}=7.46`$. The parameter $`\mu `$ can be viewed as the wavenumber corresponding to the initial correlation length $`\lambda _0(0)`$: $`\mu =\pi `$ means $`\lambda _0(0)=2`$. Because $`\mu <k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$ for both runs, the gas was in the coarsening regime from the beginning.

In $`d=2`$, a Bose gas cannot support long-range order at any finite temperature . However, a classical simulation of an isolated system described by eq. (25), with a finite total energy and a large (ideally, infinite) ultraviolet cutoff, corresponds to an effectively zero temperature. In particular, at a finite temperature there would be a finite equilibrium density of vortices (or vortex-antivortex pairs). In a classical simulation, the number of vortices and antivortices decreases with time.

We show the evolution of the power spectrum for $`d=3`$ in Fig. 2, and for $`d=2`$ in Fig. 3. We see that in either case a region of power law forms, well approximated by eq. (18). According to our previous discussion, the power law should extend in the ultraviolet to wavenumbers of order $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$. Numerically, we find a “knee” in the power spectrum at $`k2k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$.

It is interesting to compare our results to those obtained in ref.  for an externally driven $`d=2`$ Gross-Pitaevsky equation. In that case, the total number of particles is not conserved, so the parameters $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$ and $`v_s`$ are time-dependent. Nevertheless, if the change of these parameters is sufficiently slow, we can still expect formation of an inverse cascade via quasiparticle scattering. It is not immediately clear what the rate of change of $`N_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ should be compared to. However, for the case called moderate pumping in ref. , this rate is much smaller than even the smallest energy scale present in the Hamiltonian (1), $`\mathrm{}^2k_{\mathrm{min}}^2/2m`$, where $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ is the minimal nonzero lattice wavenumber. It seems plausible that in this case the quasiparticle spectrum and the scattering rates are not affected too much by the time-dependence of $`N_{\mathrm{tot}}`$.  The authors of  obtain a power-law spectrum $`n_𝐤k^2`$, i.e. an index different from ours, but they also observe that the spectrum (including the index) is anisotropic. We believe the anisotropy can be explained by the presence of some remaining vortex-antivortex pairs, perhaps just one such pair in the entire integration volume. Such well-separated vortices are easily pinned on a lattice, so a single pair can survive for a long time, causing an effective anisotropy. Then, it makes sense to average the power spectrum over the direction of the wavenumber, as we do in our definition (27). In the presence of anisotropy, the main contribution to the average will come from directions in which fluctuations are the largest. It is precisely in such directions that the spectrum obtained in ref.  is very similar to ours, with a relatively flat region at the smallest $`k`$, and a power law $`n_𝐤k^3`$ at larger $`k`$.

The spatial sizes of our lattices were not sufficient to perform quantitative checks of the temporal scaling laws (20) and (21). While for the first of these one may be content with the results of ref. , it would certainly be interesting to directly test (21) on larger lattices. Qualitatively, the predicted by (21) decrease in the magnitude of the power spectrum in the inertial range is clearly seen in both Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.

## 4 Discussion

We now apply our results to two cases: (i) BEC in atomic vapors and (ii) formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate from galactic dark matter. In both cases, we estimate the speed of BEC as being of order of the sound velocity (6). We can then estimate the time scale required for BEC to complete on physically interesting spatial scales.

Using the estimate $`4\times 10^{14}`$ cm-3, obtained in ref.  for the number density of sodium atoms, as $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}`$ in eq. (6) and noting that our parameter $`g_4`$ is identical to $`\stackrel{~}{U}`$ used in that paper, we find $`g_4n_{\mathrm{ave}}=520\mathrm{nK}`$, and

$$v_s=1.4\mathrm{cm}/\mathrm{s}.$$
(31)
Thus, for a gas cloud a few micron across, we estimate that the coarsening time is shorter than 1 ms. The duration of evaporative cooling in ref.  was 7 s, so the coarsening time was not a limiting factor in that experiment. In the experiment with rubidium , density was about two orders of magnitude smaller, which reduces $`v_s`$ by about an order of magnitude compared to (31) ($`g_4`$ and $`m`$ are also different, of course, but by smaller factors). Still, the coarsening time remains much smaller than the time scale of evaporative cooling.

On the other hand, the relaxation time corresponding to the first, Boltzmann, stage of BEC in these gases is quite large. For a gas of lithium-7 atoms (which have an attractive interaction at low densities), with the parameters of the experiment of ref. , this time was estimated in ref.  to be of order 1 s. Similar estimates can be obtained for gases with repulsive interactions. First, form the dimensionless parameter of nonlinearity

$$\xi _T=\frac{4\pi \mathrm{}^2an}{mT},$$
(32)
where $`a`$ is the scattering length, and $`T`$ is the temperature in energy units. For rubidium-87, the authors of ref.  quote $`a10^6`$ cm, $`n=2.5\times 10^{12}`$ cm-3, and $`T=170`$ nK. With these values of the parameters, $`\xi _T10^2`$. In the Boltzmann approximation, the relaxation rate is proportional to $`a^2`$. Hence, we can roughly estimate the relaxation time as

$$t_r\frac{\mathrm{}}{T\xi _T^2}0.4\mathrm{s}.$$
(33)
The authors of  noted that after reaching the condensation temperature the condensate fraction grew for 2 seconds. Given how crude the estimate (33) is, it seems plausible that this delay can be attributed to the Boltzmann relaxation.

The distinction between disordered and partially ordered initial states is important also for a Bose gas with an attractive two-particle interaction (a negative $`a`$). The wavenumber $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$ is now defined (in units with $`\mathrm{}=1`$) by

$$k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2=4|g_4|mn_{\mathrm{ave}}=16\pi |a|n_{\mathrm{ave}}$$
(34)
(the last equality is specific for three spatial dimensions). The quadratic dependence of the rate of collapse (fragmentation into individual drops) on the scattering length  applies only when the initial state is disordered, i.e. the correlation length $`\lambda _0`$ is smaller than $`\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}}`$. In the opposite limit of a large correlation length, collapse in a sufficiently dense system will occur by linear instability. Indeed, the dispersion law for excitations with $`kk_0`$ is now

$$\omega ^2(k)=\frac{1}{4m^2}\left(k^4k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2k^2\right),$$
(35)
which corresponds to an instability for all $`k<k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$. The instability is the strongest for $`k=k_{\mathrm{Bo}}/\sqrt{2}`$, where its rate is

$$|\omega |_{\mathrm{max}}=k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2/4m.$$
(36)
A large initial correlation length can be achieved, for example, if the scattering length was originally positive, but after some time was switched to a negative value, as in a recent experiment . If we imagine that the gas is confined in a sphere of radius $`R`$ with Dirichlet boundary conditions for $`\psi `$, and we gradually increase $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$, by increasing $`|a|`$ or $`n_{\mathrm{ave}}`$, the instability will first appear when $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}=\pi /R`$. Then, after $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}`$ passes a transitional region with $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}\pi /R`$, the time scale of collapse will, as seen from (36), become inversely proportional to the scattering length and to the density of atoms. In our estimation, these scaling laws—especially the former—are well born out in the experimental results of ref. .

For Bose gases considered in cosmological and astrophysical applications, one should take into account gravitational effects. If the particles are quanta of a real scalar field with a potential

$$V(\varphi )=\frac{1}{2}m^2\varphi ^2+\frac{\lambda _\varphi }{4}\varphi ^4,$$
(37)
then, in the absence of gravity, (1) is the correct nonrelativistic limit, provided

$$g_4=\frac{3\lambda _\varphi }{4m^2}.$$
(38)
This limit is obtained by writing

$$\varphi =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2m}}\left(\psi \text{e}^{imt}+\psi ^{}\text{e}^{imt}\right)$$
(39)
and assuming that $`\psi `$ changes with a frequency scale much smaller than $`m`$. Eq. (6) for the sound velocity becomes

$$v_s=\left(\frac{3\lambda _\varphi \rho }{4m^4}\right)^{1/2},$$
(40)
where $`\rho =mn_{\mathrm{ave}}`$ is the mass density.

Gravitational interaction (in Newtonian gravity) modifies the quasiparticle dispersion law, so that now

$$\omega ^2(k)=\frac{1}{4m^2}\left(k^4+k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2k^2k_J^4\right),$$
(41)
where $`k_J^4=16\pi Gm^2n_{\mathrm{ave}}`$ is the Jeans scale of the gas. (For a discussion of various length scales in a self-gravitating Bose gas, and various types of gravitational instabilities, see ref. .) In a partially ordered Bose gas, eq. (41), similarly to eq. (8), applies only at scales smaller than the correlation length $`\lambda _0(t)`$. It follows that once $`\lambda _0`$ exceeds a critical value $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$,

$$\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}^2=\frac{4\pi ^2k_{\mathrm{Bo}}^2}{k_J^4}=\frac{3\pi \lambda _\varphi }{4Gm^4},$$
(42)
the gas becomes gravitationally unstable via a linear (Jeans) instability and fragments into smaller clumps. Similar expressions were obtained in ,  for the radius of a stable gravitationally bound object.

According to the general theory presented above, BEC at scale $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$ will occur through coarsening only if $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is larger than the Bogoliubov wavelength $`\lambda _{\mathrm{Bo}}`$, or equivalently $`k_{\mathrm{Bo}}>k_J`$. This corresponds to

$$\lambda _\varphi >\frac{4m^3}{3}\left(\frac{\pi G}{\rho }\right)^{1/2}=10^{25}\left(\frac{m}{1\mathrm{eV}}\right)^3.$$
(43)
In the last estimate, we have used $`\rho =0.02M_{}/\mathrm{pc}^3`$  for the mass density at a galaxy core. The time scale $`\tau `$ required for coarsening to extend to scale $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$ can be estimated as

$$\tau =\frac{\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}}{v_s}=\left(\frac{\pi }{G\rho }\right)^{1/2}=2\times 10^8\mathrm{yrs}.$$
(44)
Thus, regardless of the coupling, $`\tau `$ is much smaller than the current age of the universe (although much larger that the age at the time of galaxy formation).

On the other hand, the condition for the first, Boltzmann, stage of BEC to complete, obtained in  is, for the same value of $`\rho `$,

$$\lambda _\varphi >10^{15}\left(\frac{m}{1\mathrm{eV}}\right)^{7/2}.$$
(45)
If this condition is satisfied, completion of BEC on scale $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is guaranteed by (44). So, for the gas to be at least linearly stable on the scale of the galaxy core, $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$ should exceed the core diameter $`2r_c`$. In view of (42), this requires

$$\lambda _\varphi >3\times 10^4\left(\frac{r_c}{1\mathrm{kpc}}\right)^2\left(\frac{m}{1\mathrm{eV}}\right)^4.$$
(46)
Except for very small masses, (46) is a stronger condition than (45) for all scales of relevance to galactic dark matter, $`r_c>1\mathrm{kpc}`$. If $`\lambda _\varphi `$ satisfies (45) but not (46), then the coarsening eventually sets off a Jeans instability, and the core fragments into smaller objects (Bose stars).

In conclusion, we have presented analytical arguments in favor of strong turbulence of the particle number occurring at the final, coarsening stage of Bose-Einstein condensation. We have found the form of the spectrum in the region of wavenumbers corresponding to an inverse cascade of the particle number. We have confirmed both the existence and the scaling exponent of the power-law spectrum by numerical simulations of classical fields in two and three dimensions. According to our theory, quasiparticles (Bogoliubov’s phonons) are in the maximally nonlinear regime, implying that the correlation length grows linearly in time, with the speed of order of the speed of phonons. Finally, we have applied these findings to estimate the time scale of BEC in atomic vapors and in galactic dark matter.

I would like to thank I. Tkachev for getting me interested in theory of BEC and many useful discussions. Part of this work was done during the 1999 miniprogram “Nonequilibrium Quantum Fields” at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara. I thank ITP for hospitality. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy through Grant DE-FG02-91ER40681 (Task B).


text:
# Radial structure of galactic stellar disks

## 1. Introduction

Van der Kruit (1979) initially found that the outer parts of disks of spiral galaxies do not retain their exponential light distribution to the observed faint levels, but rather show sharp edges. For three nearby edge-on galaxies (NGC 4244, NGC 4565, NGC 5907) he derived that the typical radial scalelength $`h`$ steepens from 5 kpc to about 1.6 kpc at the edge of the disk. The existence of these truncations, which are already visible in contour maps of edge-on and even of some face-on galaxies, is now well accepted (Pohlen 2001), but no unique physical interpretation is given to describe this observational phenomenon. The proposed explanations span a rather wide range of possibilities. Van der Kruit (1987) deduced a connection to the galaxy formation process describing the truncations as remnants from the early collapse. Ferguson & Clark (2001), for example, proposed an evolutionary scenario represented by the viscous disk evolution models. And Kennicutt (1989) suggested a —probably less striking— star-formation threshold. Up to now the applied characteristic parameter for comparing the observational results of different studies is the distance independent ratio of a truncation radius $`R_\mathrm{t}`$ to a measured radial scalelength $`h`$. Van der Kruit & Searle (1982) found for their sample of seven galaxies a value of $`R_\mathrm{t}/h=4.2\pm 0.6`$, whereas Pohlen, Dettmar, & Lütticke (2000a) derived a significantly smaller one of $`R_\mathrm{t}/h=2.9\pm 0.7`$ for their CCD survey of 30 galaxies.

## 2. Our new edge-on sample

To explain these different $`R_\mathrm{t}/h`$ values, we have improved the rather inhomogeneous sample of Pohlen et al. (2000b). The resulting morphologically selected sample contains 72 galaxies of high data quality. They are selected to be edge-on, undisturbed, and similar to ’well-behaved’ disk-prototypical cases such as NGC 4565 and IC 2531. Thereby we want to assure that we are able to consistently fit our simple one-component disk model. We have chosen S0-Sd galaxies (mainly Sb-Sc) and have obtained deep optical imaging in at least one filter, reaching a limiting surface brightness of $`\mu _{\mathrm{lim}}^{1\sigma }2627`$ V-mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$or $`\mu _{\mathrm{lim}}^{1\sigma }2526`$ R-mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$.

We have fitted three different kind of models to the data (cf. Pohlen 2001): A sharply-truncated exponential model characterised by the cut-off radius $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ and the corresponding scalelength $`h_{\mathrm{co}}`$ . The cut-off radius is derived at the position where the profiles bend vertically into the noise. An infinite-exponential model, which is only characterised by a scalelength $`h_{\mathrm{}}`$ and realised by fixing the cut-off radius to ten times the sharply-truncated scalelength, to address the problem of the a priori assumed sharp truncations. And finally a two-slope or smoothly-truncated model, characterised by a break radius $`R_{\mathrm{br}}`$ and an inner $`h_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and an outer $`h_{\mathrm{out}}`$ scalelength, which is obtained by fitting two 1D exponentials to the profiles.

## 3. Results

A surprising result is that sample galaxies, although morphologically selected to look as similar as our simple model disk, frequently show significant deviations from the input model. Some objects exhibit a huge low surface brightness envelope (e.g. ESO 572-044,) or a rather perturbed outer component (e.g. UGCA 250). In another case (e.g. ESO 443-042) a strong bar hampers a reasonable model fitting. We find that three galaxies (NGC 3390, NGC 3717, NGC 4696C), classified as Sb, do not show a truncation feature in their radial surface brightness profiles, but rather an S$`0`$-like outer component. For the remaining galaxies we derive a mean value of $`R_{\mathrm{co}}/h_{\mathrm{co}}=3.5\pm 0.8`$ and confirm the suspected coupling of the two parameters, cut-off radius and associated scalelength, for the sharply-truncated model. This is, in combination to a slightly different way in identifying the cut-off radius, the reason for the significantly deviant results of van der Kruit & Searle (1982) and Pohlen et al. (2000a).

The main result, however, is that most galaxies ($`>60`$%) are best fitted with a two-slope or smoothly-truncated model. Fig. 1 clearly shows that the best fitting sharply-truncated model does not fit well for the inner profiles, which exhibit more likely a two-slope behaviour. The second slope is well described by another exponential decline. We derive for the distance independent ratio of the break radius to the inner scalelength a value of $`R_{\mathrm{br}}\text{ }/h_{\mathrm{in}}\text{ }=2.5\pm 0.8`$ (cf. Fig. 2) with mean values of 7.6 kpc for the inner and 1.9 kpc for the outer scalelength. The mean extrapolated surface brightness of this break on the major axis is $`\mu _{\mathrm{br}}=23.4\pm 0.6`$ V-mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$and $`\mu _{\mathrm{br}}=22.6\pm 0.6`$ R-mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$. Additionally, 35% of the galaxies are also well fitted at higher $`z`$-profiles with the two-slope structure. We want to emphasise that the profiles show a rather sharp break, but are not sharply truncated, implying that beyond the break we still find a remaining disk. These two-slope profiles could not be produced by any conventional dust distribution as simulations have shown. The various characteristic parameters (e.g. $`R_{\mathrm{co}}/h_{\mathrm{co}}`$ , $`R_{\mathrm{co}}/h_{\mathrm{}}`$ , $`R_{\mathrm{br}}`$$`/`$$`h_{\mathrm{in}}`$) do not correlate with the Hubble type, whereas plotting $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{br}}`$ in linear units versus the maximum rotation velocity reveals an unusual distribution (cf. Fig. 2). A general trend is expected since the faster the galaxy rotates the more mass it has and therefore its size will also be larger. However, there is a surprisingly sharp limit in the size-velocity relation apparent. Above a well defined diagonal line no galaxies are found, whereas there is no similar lower boundary for the expected diagonal. This would imply the existence of a maximal possible size for a given rotational velocity.

The crucial experiment to confirm this two-slope structure is to observe the same behaviour for face-on galaxies. We have used the 2.2 m telescope at Calar Alto with CAFOS and obtained images ($`t_{\mathrm{exp}}180`$ min) of three face-on galaxies, chosen to be as circular as possible and therefore intrinsically face-on and not of early type. Observations are made using an efficient rectangular R-band filter (Röser R, RR) achieving a reliable photometry down to $`\mu _{\mathrm{RR}}=28.0`$ mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$, equivalent to $`\mu _{\mathrm{JR}}=28.4`$ mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$in Johnson R. We find that the azimuthally averaged profiles as well as profiles from individual sectors exhibit a similar two-slope structure (cf. Fig. 3).

The break radius occurs at the same surface brightness level ($`\mu _{\mathrm{br}}=24.9\pm 0.6`$ JR-mag$`/`$$`\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }`$) as compared to the edge-on case, if the line of sight integration is taken into account. However, we derive a mean value for the ratio of the break radius to the inner scalelength $`R_{\mathrm{br}}\text{ }/h_{\mathrm{in}}\text{ }=3.9\pm 0.7`$ (individually: 4.3, 4.2, and 3.1) for the three galaxies. This does not fit well to the edge-on result and we probably still have a problem to find a good scalelength comparison for the edge-on and face-on case. However, the neglected dust and the applied 1D fitting of the individual scalelengths in the edge-on case both tend to increase the measured scalelength and therefore decrease $`R_{\mathrm{br}}`$$`/`$$`h_{\mathrm{in}}`$.

## 4. Outlook

After this extensive optical imaging campaign the physical nature of disk truncations is still unknown and will be approached in the next step. We are still lacking of a detailed analysis to prove that these truncations in the optical light profiles are also present in the mass distribution. In addition, one has to check for possible environmental effects to address a tidal truncation scenario. We will observe the radial molecular gas distribution —as the reservoir for star-formation— of galaxies with known optical truncations to find a correlation between the truncations and star-formation. A similar approach will be performed by a comparison study of the truncated optical profiles with $`\mathrm{H}`$$`\alpha `$ -profiles tracing the actual star-formation.

## References

Ferguson, A.M.N., & Clark, C.J. 2001, MNRAS, 325, 781

Kennicutt, R.C., Jr. 1989, ApJ, 344, 685

Pohlen, M., Dettmar, R.-J., & Lütticke, R. 2000a, A&A, 357, L1

Pohlen, M., Dettmar, R.-J., Lütticke, R. et al. 2000b, A&AS, 144, 405

Pohlen, M., 2001, PhD Thesis, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

van der Kruit, P.C. 1979, A&AS, 38, 15

van der Kruit, P.C. 1987, A&A, 173, 59

van der Kruit, P.C., & Searle, L. 1982, A&A, 110, 61