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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Understanding from “first principles” the ground state of multi-baryon matter, namely, nuclear matter, is currently one of the most important issues in nuclear physics in connection with the mapping of the QCD phase structure. It is indispensable to the physics of hadronic matter under extreme conditions such as what is believed to be encountered in the interior of compact stars and in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Of various approaches developed so far for the problem, one can cite, broadly, two classes of approaches to the problem: One deals directly with QCD variables and the other indirectly although both are anchored on the modern theory of strong interactions, QCD.

In the first class is the approach that deals directly with the quark and gluon fields but in a nonperturbative setting . This is emerging in the most recent development and being in a seminal stage, does not yet lend itself to a direct confrontation with nature. We will have little to say on this in this paper. Let it suffice to briefly state that it exploits the possible “quark-hadron continuity” observed at high density  and extrapolated downward to low density in the “top-down” way.

In the second class are two approaches that resort to effective field theories of QCD that deal with $`effective`$ degrees of freedom, namely, hadronic fields. Of the two, the one closest in spirit to the standard nuclear physics approach (SNPA) is based on chiral dynamics given in terms of local baryonic (nucleon, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, etc) and mesonic (pion, vector meson $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$, etc.) fields. Here nuclear matter emerges from an effective chiral $`action`$ as a sort of Q-matter or “chiral-liquid” nontopological soliton . This description can then be related to Landau Fermi liquid structure  via Walecka’s model  when the notion of “sliding vacuum” in dense medium is implemented as discussed in . This approach allows a contact with nature and suggests how to extrapolate to densities higher than that of nuclear matter. Some of the recent developments along this line are reviewed by Song . While this approach relies on an effective field theory strategy, thereby maintaining a link to “first principles” and enabling certain phase transitions like kaon condensation to be described within the same framework , numerous assumptions that are not directly accountable by the fundamental theory are invoked to arrive at the forms used for describing nature. As it stands, it is difficult to say to what extent this approach represents QCD and how reliable it is in confronting nature.

The other method in this second class which is in principle closest to QCD is the topological soliton approach based on an effective Lagrangian. In principle, given an effective chiral Lagrangian that is as “accurate” as can be, one should be able to quantitatively describe $`n`$-baryon systems for arbitrary $`n`$ including nuclear matter as $`solitons`$ of the Lagrangian. Presently we are far from being able to do this for the obvious reasons: First of all, such a Lagrangian is not available and secondly, even if it were available, we would not know how to obtain reliable soliton solutions. In the absence of an indication that this feat can be realized in the immediate future, our present aim is to use a “reasonable” but simple Lagrangian and arrive at a QCD-based description of nuclear matter that can be probed for any given density. The objective of this paper is to make a first such step toward that goal which is to pick a simple Lagrangian and develop a scheme which can be exploited to reach the ultimate goal, i.e., nuclear matter via skyrmion.

What we accomplish in this paper is admittedly quite modest but we feel that it presents a promising way to make the next step and hence deserves to be discussed. For this purpose, we shall take the simplest such effective Lagrangian known that is shown to be semi-realistic, namely, the Skyrme model .

The Skyrme model describes the baryons with an arbitrary baryon number as static soliton solutions of an effective Lagrangian for pions. This model has been used to describe not only single baryon properties, but also has served to derive the nucleon-nucleon interaction, the pion-nucleon interaction, properties of light nuclei and of nuclear matter. In the case of nuclear matter, most of the developments  involve the skyrmion crystal, except for a few exceptions where the skyrmion fluid is considered. The first trial to understand dense skyrmion matter was made by Kutchera et al.. In their work, a single hedgehog skyrmion is put into a spherical Wigner-Seitz cell without incorporating explicit information on the interaction.

The conventional approach so far studied to skyrmion matter is to assume a crystal symmetry and then to perform numerical simulations using the symmetry as a constraint. The first guess at this symmetry was made by Klebanov . He considered a system where the skyrmions are located in the lattice site of a cubic crystal (CC) and have relative orientations in such a way that the pair of nearest neighbors attract maximally. Goldhaber and Manton  suggested that contrary to Klebanov’s findings, the high density phase of skyrmion matter is to be described by a body-centered lattice (BCC) of half skyrmions. This suggestion was shown to be confirmed  and its energy per baryon of the ground state calculated, $`(E/B)_{min}=1.076(6\pi ^2f_\pi /e)`$111We use throughout the paper the units in parenthesis to express the energy and the length. In these expressions $`f_\pi `$, the pion decay constant, and $`e`$ are parameters appearing in Skyrme’s model , as we shall show in the next section. We recall also that the energy of a single skyrmion is – in these units – 1.23 in the conventional parameterization .when the lattice size($`L`$) is $`L_{\mathrm{min}}=5.56(\mathrm{}c/ef_\pi )`$.

Kugler and Shtrikman , using a variational method, investigated the ground state of the skyrmion crystal including not only the single skyrmion CC and half-skyrmion BCC but also the single skyrmion face-centered-cubic (FCC) and half-skyrmion CC. The ground state was found to be a half-skyrmion CC with the energy per baryon of $`(E/B)_{min}=1.038`$ at $`L_{\mathrm{min}}=4.72`$. This simple cubic arrangement of half skyrmions undergoes a further phase transition at very high densities to a BCC crystal of half skyrmions.

These classical crystalline structures are quite far from normal nuclear matter which is known to be in a Fermi liquid phase at low temperature. In order for the skyrmion matter to be identified with nuclear matter, we have to quantize and thermalize the classical system. Since it is a system of solitons in a pion field theory, it is not sufficient to quantize the pion fields only. We have to introduce and quantize proper collective variables not only to complement the broken symmetries of the whole skyrmion system but also to describe the dynamics of the single skyrmions in order to obtain a realistic picture of nuclear matter. The limitation of the works that include only the former has been discussed in Ref.. In order to describe a system of extended objects, e.g. skyrmions, we need a large number of dynamical variables, such as, the position of their center of mass, their relative orientations, their size, their deformation, etc. Among them, those degrees of freedom that describe translations and rotations of the single skyrmion play the dominant role at low energy. Thus we need at least 6 variables for each skyrmion. For a single skyrmion, the collective variables that define the orientation in isospin space are quantized to give rise to nucleons and isobars. For the multi-skyrmion system, the simplest way of introducing collective variables for the position and orientation of each single skyrmion is through the use of the product ansatz, the old idea of Skyrme to investigate the nucleon-nucleon force. In this case, a multi-skyrmion solution can be obtained by products of single skyrmion solutions centered at the corresponding positions and rotated to have the corresponding orientation. However, the product ansatz works well only when the skyrmions are sufficiently separated. Furthermore, due to the non-commutativity of the matrix products, it is very difficult to apply the product ansatz to many-skyrmion systems.222The symmetrization principle haunts us: we have to construct a system of identical particles, at the classical level, such that the physical quantities are invariant under the exchange of any two of them.

Another scheme which has been used to study multi-skyrmion systems is the procedure based on the Atiyah-Manton ansatz . In this scheme, skyrmions of baryon number $`N`$ are obtained by calculating the holonomy of Yang-Mills instantons of charge $`N`$. This ansatz has been used successfully in few-nucleon systems . This procedure has been also applied to nuclear matter with the instanton solution on a four torus . The energy per baryon was found to be $`(E/B)_{min}=1.058`$ at $`L_{\mathrm{min}}=4.95`$, which is comparable to the variational result of Kugler and Shtrikman et al. One advantage of the Atiyah-Manton ansatz over others is that it provides a natural framework to introduce the proper dynamical variables for the skyrmions through the parameters determining the multi-instanton configuration. Several useful ansätze for multi-instanton solutions are available in the literature. Contrary to the product rule of the multi-skyrmion solution as a product ansatz, the multi-instanton solutions are given in terms of an additive rule.

In our first effort to go from a skyrmion matter to nuclear matter, we analyze here whether the Atiyah-Manton scheme can be used for introducing the proper variables to describe the skyrmion system. As a multi-instanton solution, we adopt a modified ’t Hooft ansatz to ensure that each instanton has a finite size and relative orientations to others. This ansatz provides us with the smallest set of dynamical variables for the skyrmion system. We study the structure of the ground state as a function of density by minimizing with respect to the parameters describing the dynamical degrees of freedom. The method we used can be considered as a variational method. Once we are able to describe the ground state, we shall relax the parameters to go beyond skyrmion matter.

This summary has served not only to present a brief report on the status of skyrmion matter, but also to introduce our calculational techniques. For completeness, we should mention the rational map technique , which has been very successful for baryons up to $`B=27`$. This technique has also been applied to skyrmion matter, but only in two dimensions for which a Skyrme lattice with hexagonal symmetry  has been obtained. However, applying this technique to skyrmion matter in three dimensions is difficult in its present form, since, although the parameters of this scheme may cover most of the configurations of the ground state of finite baryon-number systems, their physical meaning is obscure.

This paper is organized as follows; in the following section, we describe how to apply the Atiyah-Manton ansatz to the skyrmion crystals. The numerical results are presented in Section 3 and Section 4 contains our conclusions.

## 2 Ansatz for Skyrmion Matter

### 2.1 The Skyrme model Lagrangian

Our starting point is the model of Skyrme  whose Lagrangian density reads 333As a side remark, we should clarify our point of view regarding the Skyrme Lagrangian (1). For mathematicians, the Lagrangian (1) $`defines`$ the problem and the goal for them is to $`solve`$ the problem. This endeavor led to some beautiful results for the structure of “mathematical baryons” with the baryon number $`B`$. For physicists who are interested in understanding the physics of $`B`$-body systems, (1) is only an approximation to nature and possibly a poor one for certain processes. While the first term of (1) is the current algebra term and hence is a legitimate ingredient of QCD, what comes after that term is not generally known, and depends in practice upon what one wants to study. It is understood that in the limit of large number of colors, $`N_C\mathrm{}`$, QCD can be represented in terms of the pion fields but in an infinite series. For studying low-energy interactions with pions, one can write the series systematically in terms of derivatives of the $`U`$ field; this leads to chiral perturbation theory. However if one wants to study high energy processes or hadronic excitations under extreme conditions (high temperature and/or high density), such a large $`N_c`$ Lagrangian in the simplest form does not work . The same difficulty arises when one wants to obtain the baryons as solitons from the effective Lagrangian. There is no workable systematic way known to write down the appropriate Lagrangian that can quantitatively describe baryons. It is therefore more the reason for surprise that although there is no theoretical justification from “first principles”, the Skyrme Lagrangian (1) with the given quartic term turns out to give qualitatively correct description of the baryons . What we are doing here is that we simply assume that (1) applies to nuclear matter as well and take it (with the above caveat in mind) to study how to go from the skyrmion matter structure to the nuclear matter structure that we wish to describe. We are not concerned here with the accuracy of the effective Lagrangian itself. Our point of view is that once we know how to do this with the Skyrme Lagrangian, we will be able to do a realistic calculation once a Lagrangian that represents QCD realistically is found.

$$=\frac{f_\pi ^2}{4}\text{Tr}(_\mu U^{}^\mu U)+\frac{1}{32e^2}\text{Tr}([U^{}_\mu U,U^{}_\nu U]^2),$$
(1)
where $`U(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is the nonlinear realization of the pion fields $`\pi _i(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$($`i`$=1,2,3); viz.

$$U(\stackrel{}{r},t)=\mathrm{exp}(i\stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{\pi }/f_\pi ),$$
(2)
with the Pauli matrices $`\tau _i`$($`i`$=1,2,3) generating the $`SU(2)`$ isospin space. Here, $`f_\pi `$ is the pion decay constant and $`e`$ is the so called skyrme parameter. The pions are assumed massless in this Lagrangian density.

It is more convenient and elegant to use dimensionless units for the length and energy 444The following scaling is implied by our choice of units: the lengths change as $`[ef_\pi ]xx`$ and the energies as $`E[e/(f_\pi 6\pi ^2)]E`$ in terms of which the Lagrangian is expressed as

$$=\frac{1}{24\pi ^2}\text{Tr}(L_\mu L^\mu )+\frac{1}{192\pi ^2}\text{Tr}([L_\mu ,L_\nu ]^2),$$
(3)
where $`L_\mu `$ is the “left current” defined as

$$L_\mu _\mu U^{}Ui\stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_i.$$
(4)
The Faddeev-Bogomoln’y bound of a soliton solution carrying the baryon number $`B`$ is 555Unlike in the case of the magnetic monopole, the equality in (5) is never satisfied for a nontrivial configuration for $`U`$.

$$E|B|,$$
(5)
where $`E`$ is the energy of the static soliton solution

$$E=\frac{1}{12\pi ^2}d^3x\left[\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_i\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_j+\frac{1}{2}(\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_j\times \stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_k)^2\right].$$
(6)
and the baryon number is given by

$$B=\frac{1}{24\pi ^2}\epsilon ^{ijk}d^3x\text{Tr}(L_iL_jL_k)=\frac{1}{12\pi ^2}\epsilon ^{ijk}d^3x\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_i(\stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_j\times \stackrel{}{\mathrm{}}_k).$$
(7)
For the pion decay constant and the Skyrme parameter, the following two sets of values have been widely used in the literature. One is

$$\{\begin{array}{cc}f_\pi =93\text{ MeV},\hfill & \text{ the empirical pion decay constant,}\hfill \\ e=4.75,\hfill & \text{ from a fitting to }g_A=1.25\text{.}\hfill \end{array}$$

This choice leads to a value for the skyrmion mass $`M_{B=1}=1.23\times 6\pi ^2f_\pi /e1425`$ MeV 666This looks much too big for a nucleon. However as explained in , there is a term which is not included in  of $`𝒪(N_c^0)`$ Casimir energy that comes out to be of order $`500`$ MeV. and the length unit becomes $`197/(93\times 4.75)0.45`$ fm. The other is obtained by a fit to the $`N`$-$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ mass difference  that arises after quantizing the classical soliton to order $`N_c`$, to include $`1/N_c`$ effects, which requires the following values

$$\{\begin{array}{c}f_\pi =64.5,\hfill \\ e=5.45,\hfill \end{array}$$

In this case, the length unit is $`197/(64.5\times 5.45)0.56`$ fm.

### 2.2 From instantons to skyrmions

Atiyah and Manton proposed a remarkable ansatz, with which a multi-skyrmion solution of the Skyrme Lagrangian carrying the baryon number $`N`$ is expressed in terms of a multi-instanton solution of charge $`N`$.777One should not confuse this instanton solution with that of the color gauge field in QCD. We are just borrowing the mathematical structure. Thus, differently from the massive Yang-Mills theory, the presence of the pion mass term in the Skyrme Lagrangian does not cause any problem in using the ’t Hooft instanton solution.  Explicitly, the soliton solution is taken to be given by

$$U(\stackrel{}{x})=C𝒮\left\{𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left[_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)dt\right]\right\}C^{},$$
(8)
where the time component of the gauge potential of an instanton field of charge $`N`$ is integrated along the time direction. Here, $`𝒫`$ denotes the time-ordering, $`𝒮`$ is a constant matrix to make $`U`$ approach 1 at infinity and $`C`$ describes an overall $`SU(2)`$ rotation. The homotopy ensures that the static soliton configuration carries the same baryon number as the total charge of the instanton.

An exact solution for the multi-instanton of charge $`N`$ is known and takes the form

$$A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)=\frac{i}{2}\frac{\stackrel{}{}\mathrm{\Phi }}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\stackrel{}{\tau },$$
(9)
Here $`\tau `$’s are the Pauli matrices generating the same $`SU(2)`$ space as those appearing in $`U(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$. The ansatz reduces the equations of motion, $`_\mu F^{\mu \nu }=0`$, together with the self-duality relation, $`\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }=F_{\mu \nu }`$, to $`^2\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$. Two scalar functions $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, yielding instanton charge $`N`$, are well-known in the literature.

A first choice, known as ’t Hooft instanton solution , is given by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=1+\underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\lambda _n^2}{(xX_n)^2},$$
(10)
which contains $`5N`$ parameters for the positions $`X_n^\mu (\mu =1,2,3,4)`$ of the $`n`$-th instanton in 4-dimensional Euclidean space and their sizes $`\lambda _n`$. In the $`N=1`$ case, the substitution of this ’t Hooft instanton solution into the Atiyah-Manton ansatz leads to the hedgehog skyrmion solution

$$U(\stackrel{}{r})=\mathrm{exp}(i\stackrel{}{\tau }\widehat{r}F(r)),$$
(11)
with the profile function given by

$$F(r)=\pi \left(11/\sqrt{1+\frac{\lambda ^2}{r^2}}\right).$$
(12)
The minimum energy of the approximate solution comes out to be $`E=1.24`$ when $`\lambda =2.11`$, which is very close to that of the exact solution $`E_{B=1}^{\text{exact}}=1.23`$. When substituted into the Atiyah-Manton ansatz, the ’t Hooft instanton solution provides $`5N1`$888Note that in the time integration procedure to obtain a skyrmion out of the ansatz one can choose, for example, $`X_{4,n=1}=0`$ without loss of generality, and therefore the skyrmion has one parameter less. parameters to the skyrmion system, these parameters becoming dynamical variables in the procedure. This number is much smaller than the minimum number of variables required, i.e., $`6N`$.

A second choice is the Jackiw-Nohl-Rebbi (JNR) instanton solution

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\underset{n=1}{\overset{N+1}{}}\frac{\lambda _n^2}{(xX_n)^2},$$
(13)
which nontrivally generalizes the ’t Hooft solution to contain 4 more parameters. This increase in the number of parameters produces the toroidal minimum energy solution for the $`B=2`$ skyrmion. (Note that $`5N+3>6N`$ only when $`N<3`$.) On the other hand, here, $`X_n^\mu `$ loses its meaning as the position of the instanton so that it is quite difficult to guess the geometry of the resulting skyrmion system. The number of parameters is still less than $`6N`$.

### 2.3 Instanton crystal and skyrmion crystal

We proceed to modify the ’t Hooft ansatz so as to be applicable to many-skyrmion systems. In its present form, the $`1/x^2`$ tail of the instanton, when summed over the infinite number of instantons in a crystal, makes the $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ diverge and hence the ’t Hooft ansatz cannot be applied. To proceed, we shall slightly modify the ’t Hooft multi-instanton structure, the time component of which, $`A_4(x)`$, can be written explicitly as

$$A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}i\stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{}\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)}{1+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)},$$
(14)
with

$$\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)=\frac{\lambda _n^2}{(xX_n)^2}.$$
(15)
The modification consists of introducing the relative orientation of each instanton without changing the instanton charge:

$$A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}C_ni\stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{}\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)C_n^{}}{1+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)},$$
(16)
with $`C_nSU(2)`$($`n=1,2,\mathrm{},N`$). The $`C_n`$’s may be parameterized by the Euler angles $`(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )`$,

$$C=e^{i\alpha \tau _z/2}e^{i\beta \tau _x/2}e^{i\gamma \tau _z/2}.$$
(17)
We can further change the instanton profile function $`\varphi `$ to be finite ranged by multiplying it with a suitable “truncation function” $`h(x,X_n)`$; viz.

$$\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)=\frac{\lambda _n^2}{(xX_n)^2}h(x,X_n).$$
(18)
We have checked numerically that, as long as $`h(x,X_n)`$ satisfies the constraint, $`h=1`$, when $`x=X_n`$, and is finite at infinity, the baryon number of the corresponding skyrmion field does not change. For simplicity we choose a spatially truncated function such as

$$h(x,X_n)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(1\frac{|\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X}_n|^2}{R^2}\right)^p,\hfill & |\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X}_n|<R,\hfill \\ 0\hfill & |\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X}_n|>R,\hfill \end{array}$$
(19)
which is continuous and differentiable up to $`p`$-th order. In our numerical analysis, we fix $`p`$ to 3.

Due to this modification, Eq.(16) is no longer an exact solution of the instanton self-duality equation. However since the Atiyah-Manton strategy amounts to borrowing the topological structure of the instanton configuration via the holonomy, we believe that the use of this approximate solution would not lead to serious problems at the skyrmion level. We note that this modified formula resembles that figuring in the instanton liquid model used to study QCD vacuum structure, for which the corresponding $`A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)`$ is of the form

$$A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)=\frac{1}{2}\underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{C_ni\stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{}\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)C_n^{}}{1+\varphi (x,X_n,\lambda _n)}.$$
(20)
The difference is in the way the sums are performed.

Now, each instanton is described by 9 parameters: $`X_n^\mu `$($`\mu `$=0,1,2,3) defines its position in 4-dimensional Euclidean space, $`C_nSU(2)`$ the relative orientation, $`\lambda ^2`$ the its strength and $`R`$ the range. Except for the temporal position of the instantons, the other instanton parameters will preserve their physical meaning when transformed to the skyrmion configuration with the particles well-separated. Thus, it is rather easy to guess and construct an instanton crystal corresponding to the skyrmion crystal of an expected symmetry. Explicitly, the ansatz for a given instanton crystal reads as

$$A_4(\stackrel{}{x},t)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{{\displaystyle \underset{\text{box}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}C_ni\stackrel{}{\tau }\stackrel{}{}\varphi (x,X_{n,\text{box}},\lambda _n)C_n^{}}{1+{\displaystyle \underset{\text{box}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\varphi (x,X_{n,\text{box}},\lambda _n)},$$
(21)
where the summation runs now over instantons in a periodic box and for all the boxes as far as the instanton in that box is within the range. The spatial periodicity of the crystal requires that

* all the image particles in each box share the same values of the parameters for $`\lambda _n^2`$, $`C_n`$ and $`X_{0,n}`$;
* only the spatial position parameters depend on the position of the box.

$$\stackrel{}{X}_{n,\text{box}}=\stackrel{}{X}_n+\text{ box position}.$$
(22)

We show in Fig.1 two of the crystals that can be constructed in the way described. Figure 1a illustrates the simple cubic crystal (CC) with the lattice constant $`L_C`$. This configuration carries one unit of baryon number in a volume of $`L_C^3`$. The instanton parameters that we have used in searching the ground state(s) are listed in Table 1 and 2. The symmetry allows us to fix the size and the range of each instanton to be equal. Although the ground state is found for $`T=0`$ later, we impose the most general condition for the temporal parameter consistent with the CC structure. Strictly speaking, it is not the conventional CC. As far as the field $`U(\stackrel{}{r})`$ is concerned, exactly the same field configuration is repeated with a period of $`2L_C`$. Thus, it is more convenient to work with a box of length $`2L_C`$ containing eight unit cells. However, with $`T=0`$ and for large $`L_C`$, each unit cell shows the same baryon number distribution that forms a CC. If $`T0`$, it is somewhat like an NaCl crystal.

Fig.1b shows a Face-Centered Crystal (FCC) with lattice constant $`L_F`$. A box of volume $`L_F^3`$ contains 4 baryons. Here again, the nearest skyrmions are rotated by $`\pi `$ with respect to the axis perpendicular to the line joining the pair. The choice of the other parameter is based on similar arguments to those of the CC crystal. In the remaining part of this paper, we will only work only with this FCC configuration. It fulfills the main purpose of this paper, which is to show that our technique, described in the previous section, is relevant to describe skyrmion matter.

It is important to realize that we are putting the starting crystal symmetry in our initial conditions in order to generate the required crystal structure for the ground-state configuration. In principle, all the parameters of our ansatz can be treated as free parameters or variables without imposing any restriction. This is the main advantage of our procedure over the more conventional ones . In the next section, we will illustrate the power of the present approach by evaluating the energy associated with the shift of a single skyrmion from its stable position (i.e., ground state) keeping all others fixed.

We are now ready to work out the Atiyah-Manton construction Eq.(8) with the modified instanton configuration (16). Time-ordering makes the construction somewhat complicated. In order to simplify the calculation, we introduce a skyrmion field generator $`\stackrel{~}{U}(\stackrel{}{r})`$ given by

$$\stackrel{~}{U}(\stackrel{}{r},t)𝒮𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left(_{\mathrm{}}^tA_4(\stackrel{}{r},t^{})𝑑t^{}\right),$$
(23)
The generator satisfies the differential equation

$$_t\stackrel{~}{U}(\stackrel{}{r},t)=A_4(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{~}{U}(\stackrel{}{r},t).$$
(24)
The skyrmion ansatz $`U(\stackrel{}{r})`$ can be obtained from the generator in the limit

$$\underset{t\mathrm{}}{lim}\stackrel{~}{U}$$
(25)
We proceed therefore by solving the differential equation, which is a conventional time evolution problem, from $`t_0=\mathrm{}`$ where it takes the initial value

$$\stackrel{~}{U}(\stackrel{}{r},\mathrm{})=𝒮,$$
(26)
to the final time $`t`$. The constant matrix $`𝒮`$ is chosen so that

$$U(|\stackrel{}{r}|\mathrm{})=1.$$
(27)
In the numerical procedure of evaluating physical quantities, we only need the Sugawara variables $`L_\mu `$. They can be directly obtained as a $`t\mathrm{}`$ limit of $`\stackrel{~}{L}_\mu `$ defined as

$$\stackrel{~}{L}_\mu =_\mu \stackrel{~}{U}^{}\stackrel{~}{U}$$
(28)
which satisfies the differential equation

$$_t\stackrel{~}{L}_\mu =[A_4(\stackrel{}{r},t),\stackrel{~}{L}_\mu ]_\mu A_4(\stackrel{}{r},t).$$
(29)
The differential equation can be solved numerically by changing the integration variable as $`t=\mathrm{tan}\theta `$, which makes the integration range finite from $`\pi /2`$ to $`\pi /2`$.

## 3 Results

Our calculation starts from an ansatz, at low density, constructed from an FCC lattice with 4 skyrmions per site. At first, for a given $`L_F`$, we search for the lowest energy configuration(s) by adjusting the other parameters such as $`\lambda `$, $`R`$ and $`T`$. Shown in Fig.2 is $`E/B`$ obtained in that way as a function of $`L_F`$. As the density increases from the dilute skyrmion system, the energy per baryon decreases to a minimum.

A best fit to this curve in the region around the minimum gives

$$E/B=0.1056L_F+0.0255+2.4581/L_F.$$
(30)
Therefore

$$(E/B)_{min}=1.044,$$
(31)
and

$$L_{\mathrm{min}}=4.82.$$
(32)
This result is comparable to the lowest value $`E/B=1.038`$ obtained by Kugler and Shtrikman.999For a rough estimation, if we take $`f_\pi =93`$ MeV and $`e=4.65`$, our values correspond to $`2.18`$fm and to $`B/V=0.38`$ nucleons/fm3. On the other hand, if we take $`f_\pi =64.5`$MeV and $`e=5.45`$, our values correspond to $`L_F2.72`$fm and $`B/V=0.20`$ nucleons/fm3. Thus, it is compatible to the normal nuclear matter density. This indicates that our calculation has reached the true minimum of the skyrmion crystal at high density and that the instanton parameters so determined can be taken as the appropriate variables needed for describing the dynamics of the multi-skyrmion system.

To see the configuration of the final skyrmion crystal, we present in Fig. 3 the baryon density on the $`xy`$ plane ($`z=0`$) at two different values of $`L_F`$; (a) $`L_F=8.0`$ and (b) $`L_F=5.0`$. When it is dilute (Fig.3a), the system is composed of well separated single skyrmions lodged on each FCC lattice site. We may call this the phase of “single skyrmion FCC”. At high density (including the minimum energy configuration), the individual skyrmion loses its identity because of the overlap among the skyrmions. The dense centers of the single skyrmion split into two and the final configuration forms a CC crystal whose unit cells carry one-half unit of baryon number. This can be interpreted as the “half-skyrmion CC” obtained in Ref.. However, the shape of the instanton tail described by Eq.(18) and the cut-off function Eq.(19) are not accurate enough to reproduce the exact half-skyrmion picture. Note that this half-skyrmion phase has arisen without any additional changes in our procedure: while our initial instanton configuration is still FCC, the final skyrmion configuration turns out to be a CC lattice with a fractional skyrmion per site.

A rough analysis on the configuration shows that the phase transition from the single-skyrmion FCC to the half-skyrmion CC takes place at around $`L_F7.5`$. Such a phase transition can be explicitly seen in the parameter values that lead to the minimum energy configurations at the given $`L_F`$ as shown in Fig.4. For the high density phase ($`L_F7.5`$), the parameters vary around

$$\lambda /L_F1.1,R/L_F1.4,$$

to become a half-skyrmion CC, while for the low density phase ($`L_F>7.5`$) the parameters change sharply to

$$\lambda 2,R/L_F1.7$$

returning to the single skyrmion FCC crystal. The abrupt change which one might interpret as a phase transition is also observed in the $`E/B`$ curve of Fig.2, where the slope of the curve suddenly changes to lower values around $`L_F=7.5`$ making the approach to the asymptotic free value of $`1.23`$ slower.

Though intriguing, it should however be pointed out that this “phase transition” may not be physical. If we look at the pressure defined as $`P=E/V`$, such a phase transition happens where the pressure is negative. In the density where the pressure is negative, the system is unstable and would prefer a disordered phase to the symmetric FCC or CC phases 101010The phase transition that we have here should not be confused with that of skyrmions in the $`S_3`$ sphere . It happens in the range of density where the pressure appears negative and this is caused because the skyrmion system is constrained to be in FCC shape. By forming disordered clusters of a few skyrmions, the system could develop lower energy..

It is interesting to see that all the configurations in the half-skyrmion phase show a certain scale invariance. In Fig.5 we plot the baryon number density normalized to its maximum value $`\rho _B/\rho _{B,\text{max}}`$ as a function of the position normalized to the lattice constant $`x/L`$ along the $`y=z=0`$ line. The figure shows that $`\rho _B/\rho _{B,\text{max}}`$ for $`L_F=7.5`$ and $`L=4.8`$ depends only on $`x/L`$. This type of scaling behavior repeats itself for all values of $`L_F7.5`$, i.e., for high densities all the configurations become almost half-skyrmion configurations. However if $`L_F7.5`$ they lose this scaling property and become like the initial FCC ansatz, i.e, a single skyrmion located at each FCC site and with the overlapping region more or less void. This scaling behavior may be related to the one found in the variational approach of Kugler and Shtrikman: when the configuration of the skyrmion crystal is expanded in harmonics, the primary harmonics are found to play the dominant role. This implies that at high density, the symmetry of the system dominates over all dynamical details such as the interaction between two nearest neighbors.

As stressed, the main advantage of our approach is not in the calculation of the ground state configuration but in the ability to describe with the same ansatz the skyrmion system $`far`$ from the crystal structure without relying on symmetry arguments. For example, we can calculate how the energy of the whole skyrmion system changes when a single skyrmion is shifted from its stable lattice position. This can be done just by shifting the position of one instanton in Eq.(16) while leaving unchanged that of all other instantons in the same box and in the neighboring boxes (including its image particles). Since the instantons are chosen to have a finite range, the calculation is easy. Only the physical quantities inside this finite range are affected. Shown in Fig.6 is the energy change of the system when a skyrmion is shifted from its FCC lattice site by an amount $`d`$ in the direction of the $`z`$-axis. The error bars are estimated by the numerical fluctuations in the baryon number, assuming that the energy is calculated with an error of the same magnitude. Two extreme cases are shown. In the case of a dense system ($`L_F=5.0`$), the energy changes abruptly. For small $`d`$, it is almost quadratic in $`d`$. It implies that the dense system is in the crystal phase. On the other hand, in the case of a dilute system ($`L_F=10.0`$), the system energy remains almost constant up to some large $`d`$, which implies that the system is in a gas (or liquid) phase. If we let all the variables vary freely, the system will prefer to change to a disordered phase – in which a few skyrmions will form clusters – to be more attractive.

## 4 Conclusion

In this paper, we propose a systematic way of introducing dynamical variables in skyrmion matter that would allow us to study nuclear matter with a link to large-$`N_c`$ QCD. The method exploits the Atiyah-Manton ansatz to construct the pion field configuration for the multi-skyrmion system from the muti-instanton configuration. By modifying the ’t Hooft instanton solution, we can introduce a set of basic dynamical variables, such as, the positions of the single skyrmions, the relative orientations in the isospin space, sizes, etc. to cover the necessary configuration space. To check whether these variables can indeed cover sufficiently the important configuration space of skyrmion matter, we look for the ground state of the system. Although not perfect in its details – e.g., the shape of the tails of the instanton, the numerical results show that our procedure is working satisfactorily.

The power of our approach is that we can go without much effort beyond the ground state of the skyrmion crystal which is not readily accessible to other approaches. As an example, we demonstrate how easily one can evaluate the energy change of the system when a single skyrmion is shifted from its stable position while the others are kept fixed. A careful analysis of the data enables us to investigate the vibrational energy spectrum of the Skyrme crystal and hence its thermodynamic properties, e.g., the specific heat, compressibility, etc. of skyrmion matter.

What is obtained in this paper sets the stage for the next step.

* First of all, the theory can be quantized. Substituting in the Atiyah-Manton skyrmion-instanton connection our modified ’t Hooft instanton ansatz, making the dynamical variables “time-dependent,” and plugging the result into the Skyrme Lagrangian density, after integrating over the space variables, we obtain the Lagrangian describing the skyrmion dynamics,

$$d^3r(U(\stackrel{}{x},q_\xi (t)))=L(q_\xi ,\dot{q}_\xi )=\frac{1}{2}_{\xi \eta }\dot{q}_\xi \dot{q}_\eta V(q_\xi ),$$
(33)
where $`q_\xi (t)(\xi =1,2,\mathrm{},9N)`$ denote the variables introduced as $`X_n`$, $`\lambda _n`$ and $`_{\xi \eta }=_{\xi \eta }(q_\zeta )`$ are the inertia tensors conjugate to these dynamical variables. This Lagrangian yields the equations of motion for these variables. If these equations of motion are solved by applying molecular dynamics simulation techniques, we expect to see that the skyrmion crystal melts to a liquid at a certain density.
* By incorporating fluctuations in the pionic field, we should be able to study how pions (and also kaons) behave in dense medium. This will provide a self-consistent scheme to study the role of pions as Goldstone bosons in dense medium, in particular in connection with Goldstone boson condensation and chiral restoration. The presently available information on this matter is incomplete in that although chiral symmetry is maintained, the role of pions in the structure of baryons as described by e.g. chiral Lagrangian is obscure particularly when the quark condensate representing the QCD vacuum structure is modified by density.

These two issues will be addressed in the forthcoming publication.

## Acknowledgments

Two of the authors (MR and VV) are grateful for the hospitality of Korea Institute for Advanced Study where this work was performed. V.V. thanks the University of Valencia for a travel grant. This work was supported in part by SEUI-BFM2001-0262, KOSEF-1999-2-111-005-5 and KRF-2001-015-DP0085.


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# GRB 010921: Discovery of the First HETE Afterglow

## 1 Introduction

The High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE-2) was successfully launched and deployed on 2000 October 9 (Ricker et al., 2000). As the first satellite entirely dedicated to the detection and study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), HETE’s primary mission is the localization of GRBs through their prompt emission and the rapid relaying of the coordinates to ground-based observers. Here, we present the discovery of the afterglow of GRB 010921 (Ricker et al., 2001b), the first afterglow to be identified through localization by HETE-2.

## 2 Discovery of an Optical and Radio Transient

GRB 010921 triggered the FREGATE instrument on board HETE-2 on 2001 September 21.21934 UT as HETE trigger number 1761 (Ricker et al., 2001a). The GRB was detected by only one of HETE’s two Wide-field X-ray Monitors, and so localization was only possible in a single dimension. Fortunately, the Interplanetary Network was able to provide complementary localization and the resultant 310-square-arcmin error box was speedily reported to the community via the GRB Coordinate Network (GCN) Circulars (Hurley el al., 2001). We observed this error box with the Large Format Camera (LFC) on the Hale 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, commencing 22 hours after the GRB, in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000) $`r^{}`$ filter. Despite the 26-arcmin field-of-view (FOV) of the LFC, three pointings were required to cover the entire error box.

A quick comparison of the images with the Digital Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (Djorgovski et al. 1999; also in prep.) failed to identify an afterglow candidate within the large error box (Fox et al., 2001). Hoping to identify the afterglow by its variability (i.e., decay), we re-observed the error box with LFC five days later.

Reduction of data from LFC is complicated by the instrument’s large FOV which leads to substantial optical distortions in the focal plane, some of which can be removed in software, but this does not correct for the inevitable coma at the edges of the field. Furthermore, this problem is made worse by our choice of on-chip binning (which however reduced the file size of the images). We used the MSCRED package in the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF)111IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories. to bias-subtract, flat-field and combine the individual images.

Comparison of the first- and second-epoch images was done through PSF-matched image subtraction (Alard, 2000). Subtraction of images was rendered difficult due to the binning of pixels. Nonetheless, we identified source A ($`\alpha _{2000}`$ = 22h55m59s90, $`\delta _{2000}`$ = +4055$`^{^{}}`$52$`^{^{\prime \prime }}`$9) and source B ($`\alpha _{2000}`$ = 22h56m15s09, $`\delta _{2000}`$ = +4104$`^{^{}}`$48$`^{^{\prime \prime }}`$1), both of which were within the error box and were clearly variable. These positions are derived relative to USNO-A2.0 and are uncertain by approximately 0.6 arcsec.

In order to further investigate these two sources, we re-observed the field on 2001 October 12th and 17th, 21 and 26 days after the GRB respectively. Photometry from these epochs revealed that source B had increased in brightness, while source A had faded further and appeared to be settling to a constant flux level; see Figures 1 and 2. Source B, which is faintly visible at the plate limit of the second Digitised Sky Survey222The Digitized Sky Surveys were produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under U.S. Government grant NAG W-2166., is likely a variable star or some other object unrelated to the GRB, while the light curve of source A bears a similarity to the afterglows of other GRBs which are observed to undergo a power-law decay followed by leveling off at the flux level of the host galaxy.

Optical photometry was performed relative to stars in the field calibrated through observations of numerous Landolt standards observed at the USNO Flagstaff Station 1.0-meter telescope on 2001 September 22. We estimate that these calibrations have a zero-point error of less than 0.03 mag. Reference star magnitudes in the SDSS photometric system were derived through application of the transformations of Fukugita et al. (1996). The resulting photometry of source A can be found in Table 1.

A program of observations at the Very Large Array (VLA)333The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. NRAO operates the VLA. were begun commencing on 2001 October 17; see Table 2. All radio observations were obtained in the standard continuum mode with $`2\times 50`$ MHz contiguous bands. We observed the extra-galactic source J2255+420 for phase calibration, and 3C48 (J0137+331) and 3C286 (J1331+305) for flux calibration. All data were reduced using the Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS).

Coincident with source A, we identified a radio source at $`\alpha _{2000}=22^\mathrm{h}55^\mathrm{m}59^\mathrm{s}931\pm 0.018`$ and $`\delta _{2000}=+40^{}55^{^{}}52^{^{\prime \prime }}23\pm 0.20`$ and with a spectral slope of $`\beta =0.35\pm 0.19`$ (where $`f_\nu \nu ^\beta `$) between 4.86 and 22.5 GHz. This value of $`\beta `$ is consistent with that expected from the synchrotron emission of an afterglow ($`\beta =1/3`$; Sari, Piran & Narayan 1998), but does not exclude the possibility that the source is a low-luminosity AGN. Further observations indicate variability in the source (Table 2), which may be interpreted as due to interstellar scintillation, a phenomenon commonly seen in radio afterglows (Frail et al., 1997).

## 3 The Afterglow

As noted above, the optical light curve, a decline followed by leveling off, the variable radio emission and the flat radio spectrum, support the identification of source A as the afterglow of GRB 010921. However, the data are sparse and the possibility remains that source A could be an AGN since AGNs also possess power-law spectra and can be strongly variable. However, in section 4 we note that the optical spectrum of the host does not show any evidence for a central engine. Furthermore, by comparing Palomar LFC images taken on 2001 September 22 (dominated by the optical transient) with those taken on 2001 October 17 (dominated by the galaxy), we find that the transient is offset from the light centroid of the host galaxy by 0.351 $`\pm `$ 0.049 arcsec, or 2.18 $`\pm `$ 0.30 kpc at the distance of the galaxy (see §4). Such angular and physical offsets with respect to their host galaxy are typical of GRBs (Bloom, Kulkarni & Djorgovski, 2002). Thus from the totality of the radio and optical data we concluded that source A is not an AGN but rather the afterglow of GRB 010921 and announced it as such (Price et al., 2001b).

After accounting for Galactic extinction towards this direction ($`E_{(BV)}=0.148`$; Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis 1998) we fit the optical photometric measurements to a power-law (afterglow) model, $`F_\nu t^\alpha \nu ^\beta `$. We obtain marginally-acceptable fits ($`\chi ^2`$/DOF = 14.5/10), with $`\alpha =1.59\pm 0.18`$ and $`\beta =2.22\pm 0.23`$. Park et al. (2002) report similar decay values based on observations carried out with a number of telescopes.

The temporal decay slope is consistent with those seen in previous optical afterglows, but the spectral slope is quite steep, suggestive of extinction in the source frame. Adopting standard afterglow theory (Sari, Piran & Narayan, 1998), we can deduce the intrinsic spectral slope from the temporal data. However, this inference depends on the details of the afterglow model (ambient gas, homogeneous versus inhomogeneous; the electron distribution power law index, $`p`$; the shape of the explosion, spherical versus collimated outflow). The extinction along the line-of-sight to the GRB, parametrized by $`A_V`$ in the rest frame of the source, can then be obtained from the deviation of the observed broad-band spectrum from that expected from the afterglow model.

The actual value of the derived $`A_V`$ is somewhat dependent on the choice of both the extinction curve (Milky Way, LMC or SMC), and the afterglow model (collimated or isotropic ejecta; cooling break, redward or blueward of the optical band over the course of the observations) but, as can be seen from Table 4 it is clear that $`A_V`$ is in excess of 0.5 mag. The best fit model has a spherical outflow with the cooling frequency below the optical band by day 1 and an LMC-like extinction curve ($`\chi ^2`$/DOF = 15.5/11).

## 4 The Host Galaxy

Using the Double Spectrograph (Oke & Gunn, 1982) at the Cassegrain focus of the Hale 200-inch telescope we obtained a spectrum of the host galaxy (Figure 3). We used a 1-arcsec wide long-slit, at a position angle $`132^{}`$, close to the parallactic angle, and a 158 lines mm-1 grating, giving an effective instrumental resolution FWHM $`12`$Å, and an approximate wavelength coverage 5,000–10,000 Å on the red side. We obtained 2 exposures of 1800-s each, with a small dither along the slit. Exposures of arc lamps were obtained for calibrations and small wavelength shifts due to the instrument flexure were removed by fitting the wavelengths of night sky lines. The net resulting wavelength scatter is $`0.4`$ Å. Flux calibration was made through observations of the spectrophotometric standard BD$`+17^{}4708`$ from Oke & Gunn (1983).

Several emission lines are detected (see Table 3), corresponding to \[O II\]$`\lambda `$3727, H$`\beta `$, \[O III\]$`\lambda \lambda `$4959,5007 and H$`\alpha `$, at a mean redshift of $`z=0.4509\pm 0.0004`$. We note that the widths of the lines, ranging from 10 Å to 13 Å, are consistent with the instrumental resolution and thus there is no reason to invoke an AGN component to this host galaxy. Furthermore, the line flux ratios $`F_{5007}/F_{4861}`$ and $`F_{3727}/F_{5007}`$ place the host galaxy squarely in the range corresponding to normal HII galaxies on the identification plot of Baldwin, Phillips & Terlevich (1981).

In estimating the properties of the host galaxy, we adopt a standard flat cosmology with $`H_0=65`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$. From the observed Balmer decrement and an LMC extinction curve, we calculate an optical depth at H$`\beta `$ due to dust of 1.51 (assuming an intrinsic H$`\alpha `$ to H$`\beta `$ flux ratio of 2.87; Mathis 1983); note, we have not accounted for Balmer absorption lines in the host galaxy. The corresponding $`A_V`$ which applies to the galaxy as a whole is 1.3 mag. This value of $`A_V`$ is comparable to the extinction along the line-of-sight to the GRB afterglow and thus most likely the extinction observed in the afterglow is due to interstellar (as opposed to circumburst) dust.

There are two other GRB host galaxies for which Balmer line fluxes have been published, the hosts of GRBs 980703 (Djorgovski et al., 1998) and 990712 (Vreeswijk et al., 2001), for which we calculate optical depths at H$`\beta `$ of approximately 0.1 and 2.41, respectively, using the above method. We note that the Balmer decrement observed for the host of GRB 010921 falls squarely within the range observed for these other two GRB hosts.

We now infer the metallicity (oxygen abundance) using the empirical relation between oxygen abundance and $`\mathrm{log}R_{23}\mathrm{log}\left(([OII]+[OIII])/H\beta \right)`$ (Kobulnicky, Kennicutt & Pizagno, 1999). We find $`\mathrm{log}R_{23}=1.05\pm 0.18`$ which is close to the knee of this relation and thus yields an unambiguous measure of the oxygen abundance, 12 + log (O/H) of $`8.35\pm 0.25`$. The rest-frame equivalent width of the \[O II\] line, $`34.5\pm 3.5`$ Å, is typical for field galaxies (Hogg et al., 1998), which have equivalent widths spanning 0 – 50 Å. Furthermore, using the \[O II\] and H$`\alpha `$ line fluxes and the empirical star-formation rate (SFR) estimators of Kennicutt (1998) we derive extinction-corrected SFR of 8 M yr-1 and 6 M yr-1 respectively. All in all, we conclude that GRB 010921 occured in a normal, star-forming galaxy with an oxygen abundance approximately one-quarter solar.

We also observed the host galaxy with the Near InfraRed Camera (NIRC; Matthews & Soifer 1994) on the Keck I telescope on 2001 November 1 UT in the $`JHK_s`$ bands under photometric conditions. The individual frames were flat-fielded and then sky-subtracted and combined using the DIMSUM package in IRAF (Eisenhardt et al., 1999). Flux calibration was performed through observation of Persson et al. (1998) standards SJ9126 and SJ9134. We estimate that the calibration is accurate to within 0.05 mag. The resulting magnitudes of the host galaxy, measured within a 1.5-arcsec aperture, are also displayed in table 1. From the flat spectrum in the NIR, we estimate that the stellar population of the host is less than 1 Gyr in age.

From the FREGATE 8–400 keV fluence of $`1.5\times 10^5`$ erg/cm2 (Ricker et al., 2001b), we derive the isotropic-equivalent prompt energy release (without any k correction) of $`9.0\times 10^{51}`$ erg. However, it is now generally appreciated that GRBs are beamed or collimated (Frail et al., 2001) and thus the isotropic-equivalent value is an upper limit. Unfortunately, the paucity of the afterglow data do not place significant constraint on the opening angle of the explosion (see Table 4).

## 5 Conclusion

Here we report the first afterglow resulting from an HETE localization of a GRB. The afterglow in itself is similar to afterglows studied to date. However, the GRB occured in a low-redshift, $`z=0.451`$, dusty star-forming galaxy. Such low redshift GRBs are valuable for two reasons. First and foremost, such low-redshift events offer the best opportunity to study the explosion physics including the opportunity to constrain the presence of (or detect) any underlying supernova. Second, the low redshift allowed us to determine the metallicity of the host galaxy with relative ease.

It is perhaps significant to note that the afterglow was discovered through the use of image differencing. We suggest that the use of this technique may be a more robust method of identifying GRB afterglows than the traditional manual comparison with sky survey images, since it enables the detection of an afterglow superimposed on a bright host galaxy. This is particularly important for low redshift GRBs. We wonder whether the traditional approach — looking for an isolated transient — could be the cause of failure to identify optical afterglows in some GRBs.

We thank Martha Haynes for the generous donation of her Hale 200-inch time without which the discovery of this afterglow would not have been possible. We thank Rick Burrus for his help with 200-inch observations. PAP gratefully acknowledges an Alex Rodgers Travelling Scholarship. DAF thanks Caltech for the hospitality shown by Caltech during his sabbatical leave. SRK and SGD thank NSF for support of our ground-based GRB observing program. JSB acknowledges support from the Hertz Foundation in the form of a fellowship. KH is grateful for Ulysses support under Contract JPL 958059, and for HETE support under Contract MIT-SC-R-293291.


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# Real-analytic, volume-preserving actions of lattices on 4-manifolds

## 1 Results

Zimmer conjectured in \[Zi1\] that the standard action of $`\mathrm{SL}(n,Z)`$ on the $`n`$-torus is minimal in the following sense:

###### Conjecture 1 (Zimmer).

Any smooth, volume-preserving action of any finite-index subgroup $`\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{SL}(n,\text{Z})`$ on a closed $`r`$-manifold factors through a finite group action if $`n>r`$.

While Conjecture 1 has been proved for actions which also preserve an extra geometric structure such as a pseudo-Riemannian metric (see, e.g. \[Zi1\]), almost nothing is known in the general case. For $`r=2`$ and $`n>4`$, the conjecture was proved for real-analytic actions in \[FS1\]. Quite recently, Polterovich \[Po\] has brought ideas from symplectic topology to the problem, using these to give a proof of Conjecture 1 for orientable surfaces of genus $`>1`$. In \[FS2\] we will point out how his methods actually prove Conjecture 1 for the torus as well. For $`r=3`$, Conjecture 1 is known only in some special cases where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains some torsion and the action is real-analytic (see \[FS1\]).

In this note we prove the following result.

###### Theorem 2 (Actions on $`4`$-manifolds with $`𝝌\mathbf{(}𝑴\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟎}`$).

Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a lattice in a simple Lie group $`G`$ such that $`\text{Q}\text{-rank}(\mathrm{\Gamma })7`$. Then any real-analytic, volume-preserving action of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ on a closed $`4`$-manifold of nonzero Euler characteristic factors through a finite group action.

In particular, Theorem 2 applies to any finite-index subgroup of $`\mathrm{SL}(n,\text{Z})`$, $`n>7`$.

The main ingredient in the proof of Theorem 2 is Theorem 7.1 of \[FS1\] on real-analytic actions which preserve a volume form. This theorem, which is the most difficult result in \[FS1\], gives a codimension-two invariant submanifold for centralizers of elements with fixed-points. One can then apply results of \[FS1\] and \[Re\], which show that real-analytic (not necessarily area-preserving) actions of certain lattices on $`2`$-dimensional manifolds must factor through finite groups.

For the case of symplectic actions, some further progress on Conjecture 1 can be found in \[Po\] and \[FS2\].

## 2 Proof of Theorem 2

Before giving the proof of Theorem 2, we will need two algebraic properties of lattices with large Q-rank.

###### Proposition 3 (Some algebraic properties of lattices).

Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a lattice in a simple algebraic group over Q. Then the following hold:

1. If $`d=\text{Q}\text{-rank}(\mathrm{\Gamma })7`$ then $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains commuting subgroups $`A`$ and $`B`$ which are isomorphic to irreducible lattices with Q-ranks $`2`$ and $`d3`$ respectively.
2. If $`\text{Q}\text{-rank}(\mathrm{\Gamma })4`$ then $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains a torsion-free nilpotent subgroup which is not metabelian.

Proof. The proof of the first statement is similar to that of Proposition 2.1 of \[FS1\]. By Margulis’s Arithmeticity Theorem (see, e.g., \[Zi2\], Theorem 6.1.2), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is commensurate with the group of Z-points of a simple algebraic group $`G`$ defined over Q. Hence without loss of generality we can assume that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ itself is the group of Z-points in such a group $`G`$.

Since $`G`$ is simple, the root system $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ of $`G`$ is irreducible, and the Dynkin diagram determined $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ therefore appears in the list given in Section 11.4 of \[Hu\]. By going through this list, one sees that in every case where $`d7`$, one may “erase a vertex $`v`$” of the diagram to obtain a a graph with 2 components: one with two vertices and another which is a Dynkin diagram with at least $`d3`$ vertices. Let $`G_1`$ and $`G_2`$ be the root subgroups corresponding to these two components of the Dynkin diagram. Then the group of $`𝐐`$-points of $`G_1`$ has Q-rank at least $`2`$, the group of Q-points of $`G_2`$ has Q-rank at least $`d3`$, and $`G_1`$ commutes with $`G_2`$.

Now $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_i=\mathrm{\Gamma }G_i`$ is an arithmetic lattice in $`G_i`$ for $`i=1,2`$, since by a theorem of Borel-Harish-Chandra (see, e.g. \[Zi2\]) the Z-points of an algebraic group defined over Q form a lattice in the group of R-points. Then $`A=\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ and $`B=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ have the required properties.

To prove the second statement, note that since $`\text{Q}\text{-rank}(\mathrm{\Gamma })4`$, we can find a connected, nilpotent Lie subgroup $`N`$ which is defined over Q and has derived length $`3`$, i.e. is not metabelian. As $`\mathrm{\Gamma }N`$ is the group of Z-points of the Q-group $`N`$, it is a lattice in $`N`$, and in particular is Zariski-dense in $`N`$. Hence $`\mathrm{\Gamma }N`$ is nilpotent and has no metabelian subgroup of finite index. As $`\mathrm{\Gamma }N`$ must have a tosrion-free subgroup of finite index, the assertion follows. $``$

We now turn to the proof of Theorem 2. Let $`M`$ be a closed $`4`$-manifold with nonzero Euler characteristic. Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be an irreducible lattice in a simple Lie group $`G`$, and assume $`d=\text{Q}\text{-rank}(\mathrm{\Gamma })7`$. By part (1) of Proposition 3, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains commuting subgroups $`A`$ and $`B`$ which are isomorphic to irreducible lattices with Q-ranks $`2`$ and $`d34`$ respectively.

Let $`\gamma _0`$ be any infinite order element of $`A`$. By an old theorem of Fuller \[Fu\], any homeomorphism of a closed manifold of nonzero Euler characteristic has a periodic point; the proof is an application of the Lefschetz fixed-point theorem and basic number theory. Hence some positive power $`\gamma `$ of $`\gamma _0`$ has a fixed point.

We will also need the following two facts. First, since $`\text{Q}\text{-rank}(B)d34`$, it follows from Margulis’s Superrigidity Theorem that any representation of $`B`$ into $`\mathrm{GL}(4,\text{R})`$ has finite image. Second, since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a lattice in a simple Lie group $`G`$ with $`\text{R}\text{-rank}(G)2`$, the Margulis Finiteness Theorem (see, e.g., Theorem 8.1 of \[Zi2\]) gives that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is almost simple in the sense that any normal subgroup of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ must be finite or of finite index.

We are now in a position to apply Theorem 7.1 of \[FS1\]. For the reader’s convenience we recall the statement here. We say that a group action $`\rho :\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{Diff}(\mathrm{M})`$ is infinite if $`\rho `$ has infinite image.

Theorem 7.1 of \[FS1\]:  Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be an almost simple group. Suppose we are given an infinite, volume-preserving, real-analytic action of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ on a closed, connected $`n`$-manifold $`M`$. Suppose further that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ contains commuting subgroups $`A`$ and $`B`$ with the following properties:

* There exists an element $`\gamma A`$, noncentral in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, having a fixed point in $`M`$.
* $`A`$ is isomorphic to an irreducible lattice of Q-rank $`2`$.
* $`B`$ is noncentral in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.
* Any representation of any finite-index subgroup of $`B`$ in $`\mathrm{GL}(n,\text{R})`$ has finite image.

Then there is a nonempty, connected, real-analytic submanifold $`WM`$ of codimension at least 2 which is invariant under a finite-index subgroup $`B^{}`$ of $`B`$. Furthermore, the action of this subgroup on $`W`$ is infinite.

Remark. The action of $`B^{}`$ on the surface $`W`$ produced by this theorem is NOT necessarily area preserving.

We now conclude the proof of Theorem 2. Since $`B^{}`$ is a lattice in a simple Lie group and $`\text{Q}\text{-rank}(B^{})4`$, it follows from part (2) of Proposition 3 that $`B^{}`$ contains a torsion-free nilpotent subgroup $`H`$ which is not metabelian. But Rebelo \[Re\] showed that any nilpotent group of real-analytic diffeomorphisms of a compact, oriented surface must be metabelian. It follows that the action of $`H`$ on $`W`$ is not effective.

Since $`H`$ is torsion-free, there is an infinite-order element of $`HB^{}`$ which acts trivially on $`W`$. Since $`B^{}`$ has finite index in the almost simple group $`B`$, and hence is almost simple, some finite index subgroup $`C`$ of $`B^{}`$ acts trivially on $`W`$; in particular $`C`$ has a global fixed point in $`M`$. Since $`C`$ is isomorphic to a lattice of Q-rank at least $`4`$, by Lemma 3.2 of \[FS1\] we have that a finite index subgroup $`D`$ of $`C`$ acts trivially on $`M`$. Since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is almost simple, it follows that some finite index normal subgroup of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ acts trivially on $`M`$, and we are done. $``$

Benson Farb:
Dept. of Mathematics, University of Chicago
5734 University Ave.
Chicago, Il 60637
E-mail: farb@math.uchicago.edu

Peter Shalen:
Dept. of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, IL 60680
E-mail: shalen@math.uic.edu


text:
# Optical detection of magnetic data using magnetooptic indicators with in-plane magnetization

## I Introduction

Magnetic data storage and readout has long been an active field of research due to the ever increasing demands for faster and better access to stored data. The areal density for information storage on magnetic media has increased at an astonishing rate over the last three decades. From 1970 - 1990 the density increased at a rate of $`30\%`$ per year. In 1992 IBM introduced the magnetoresistive read-head, and the growth rate increased to $`60\%`$ per year. A very successful development followed in 1998 when IBM announced giant magnetoresistive spin-valves, and thus boosted the growth rate to $`100\%`$ per year. As the bit density gets higher, it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to design and construct media, read-head, write head, tracking system and error correction electronics.

Many attempts have been directed towards reading out magnetic data by optical systems, since optical readout systems have many interesting features not possessed by magnetic readout heads. However, in most optical systems the resolution is limited by the classical diffraction limit $`\lambda /2NA`$, where $`\lambda `$ is the wavelength of light, and NA is the numerical aperture. A possible way to circumvent this problem was introduced by japanese researchers in the 1980’s . In 1986, Hatakeyama et al.  reported that when a thin magnetic film is positioned normally to the recording medium surface, i.e., similar to a single-pole magnetoresistive head, a higher linear resolution may be expected. To demonstrate the principle, they sputtered a Co-Zr thin film on glass, and added a nonmagnetic mirror. By utilizing the longitudinal Kerr effect, they were able to demonstrate a resolution of $`1`$ $`\mu m`$, but claimed that the resolution prospects are much better than this. Soon after, Tokumaru and Nomura demonstrated a different system with approximately the same resolution prospects. Their system consisted of a high permeability thin film placed in perpendicular contact with the recording medium, thus guiding the magnetic signal to a stripe-domain Bi-substituted iron garnet film, which responded to the field variations by changing the width of its stripes. In spite of these two very interesting proposals, no further development has taken place on such hybrid optical and magnetical storage systems.

In this paper we analyze a different approach, based on ref., for optical detection of magnetically stored data and other weak magnetic flux sources. The basic system, shown in Fig. 1, is in principle a polarization microscope which detects the magnetization distribution of a magnetooptic indicator. Like most other optical systems, our system is also limited by the classical diffraction limit, but it will be shown that by utilizing a suitable solid immersion lens it is possible to obtain a spot size of $`200`$ nm. If the indicator has virtually no domains and is sufficiently sensitive to external fields, it will redistribute its magnetization within less than a nanosecond, and follow the field. Here we present a simple model, which describes the magnetization in the indicator and the magnetooptical detection system. We evaluate the signal to noise ratio as well as the resolution and the focal depth. Finally, we discuss detection of several magnetic tracks simultaneously.

## II Readout principle

Today there exists different methods for magnetooptical readout; the single ended detection system of Fig. 1 and the differential detection system of Fig. 2. The differential detection system is a key feature to the success of modern magnetooptical storage devices, mainly due to its low noise and superior signal. The light source is here a polarized semiconductor laser diode operating at constant output power (in practice the laser’s drive current is modulated at several hundred MHz to reduce noise from e.g. mode hopping and mode competition). The light beam from the laser is then collimated and passed through a polarizer to ensure that all the light is x-polarized. This light is then focused by the combined action of an objective and a spherical solid immersion lens (SIL). The SIL is placed in very close contact with a magnetooptic indicator. To obtain the best possible contact, the indicator should be deposited directly onto the surface of the SIL. To reflect the light (both x and y-polarized), a mirror is deposited onto the indicator. This mirror should also function as a protection against wear from the magnetic carrier medium. If this is not sufficient, an additional protective layer (e.g. $`Ti_3N_4`$ or equivalent) can be applied. The magnetic carrier is moved while staying in close contact with the mirror/protective layer. Usually an airgap is formed between the two, and the sum of the airgap and the total thickness of the mirror/protective layer will be called the flying height of the carrier, since this corresponds to the actual distance to the magnetic sensor.

The indicator will redistribute its magnetization according to the magnetic source. Furthermore, since the indicator is supposed to have large magnetooptic effect, it will turn some of the incident x - polarized light into y - polarized light. In the return path, the partially polarizing beamsplitter (PPB) provides the detection module with a fraction $`\gamma `$ of the x-component and the entire y-component. The x-component, although without significant information, is needed for proper extraction of data. A polarizing beam splitter (PB), with its axes at $`45^{}`$ to the x and y-polarization, splits the beam in two components. Together with detectors 1 and 2, the PB comprise a balanced differential detection module. The detectors are low noise photodiodes, and their signals form the input of a differential amplifier.

## III Magnetooptic response

In order to serve as an indicator, the film must in addition to having a small anisotropy field, also have a large magnetooptic effect, as shown in Fig. 3, and we will here only consider the Faraday rotation. Due to this effect, secondary light beams are generated on the way down and also after reflection from the mirror. The combined action of the mirror and the indicator is represented by the effective reflection matrix

$$𝐑=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}r_x& r_{xy}& \\ r_{yx}& r_y& \end{array}\right].$$

If we assume that multiple reflections and absorption can be neglected, and that the light is normally incident on the indicator, one has $`r_x=r_y=1`$ and

$$r_{yx}=r_{xy}=\frac{2V}{M_s}_0^tM_z𝑑z.$$
(1)
Here $`V`$ is a constant characteristic of the indicator, $`t`$ the thickness and $`M_s`$ is the saturation magnetization. The z-component of the magnetization is expressed as

$$M_z=M_s\frac{H_z}{H_a},H_a=M_s\frac{2K_u}{\mu _0M_s},$$
(2)
where $`H_a`$ is the anisotropy field and $`K_u`$ is the uniaxial anisotropy constant. For a Kerr film similar expressions for the reflection coefficients exists.

For data stored on tapes and hard discs the magnetic field can be found rather accurately by applying the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equations. Such detailed calculations require extensive computational efforts, and will not be considered here. Instead we will follow Hatakeyama et al., who assumed that the field from a source of size b has a z-component given by

$$H_z=M\mathrm{exp}\left(\pi \frac{z+d}{b}\right).$$
(3)
The remanent magnetization of the recording medium, $`M`$, will in general depend on the bit size and the configuration of the neighbour bits. However, we will take it to be constant with $`M=100`$ kA/m. We also neglect the presence of an in-plane magnetic field, since the main effect of such a component is to increase the effective anisotropy field, and thereby reducing the sensitivity. The eq. (1) and eq. (3) give then the following magnetooptic coefficient

$$r_{yx}=\frac{2VMb}{\pi H_a}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\pi d}{b}\right)\left[1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\pi }{b}t\right)\right].$$
(4)
We define the polar Faraday rotation as

$$\mathrm{\Theta }=\frac{r_{yx}}{r_x}.$$
(5)
There are many materials which may function as indicators. In particular, bismuth-substituted ferrite garnet films with in-plane magnetization have been shown to have very little domain activity as well as excellent sensitivity to external fields. Fig. 4 shows experimental values for the Faraday rotation (at $`\lambda =633`$ nm) as a function of a uniform magnetic field ($`H_z`$) for two different garnet films. From the figure we find that $`V1`$ $`\mu m^1`$ and $`H_a60`$ $`kA/m`$. By shifting the wavelength towards $`\lambda =510`$ nm and increasing the bismuth content it is possible to increase V by a factor 10, although at the cost of increased absorption.

Shown in Fig. 5 is the Faraday rotation obtained from eq. (4) and eq. (5) as a function of bit size $`b`$ for two film thicknesses and d=100 nm. One sees that for detection of bits smaller than $`0.5`$ $`\mu m`$ one gains very little by using garnets thicker than $`0.5`$ $`\mu m`$. Fig. 6 shows the calculated Faraday rotation as function of bit size for different flying heights $`d`$ when $`t=0.5`$ $`\mu m`$. Note that the signal is strongly dependent on the flying height. We find that flying heights of less than 100 nm are required to obtain 0.1 degree rotation when b = 200 nm.

## IV Signal to noise ratio

To calculate the signal to noise ratio, we will use the model considered in the previous section. Let us assume that the incident beam consists of x - polarized light only, and has intensity $`I_0=|E_0|^2`$. The light is first transmitted through the isotropic GGG substrate, and then reach the magnetooptic layer, where some fraction is transformed into y-polarized light. After reflection the rays are transmitted once more through the substrate before they reach the analyzer. Then the normalized electric field components just before the analyzer can be written as $`E_x=r_x=1`$ and $`E_y=r_{yx}`$ . Here we have neglected all differences in transmission coefficients for x and y-polarized light.

For various reasons, there are fluctuations in the effective reflectivity of the s and p-component of the polarization. First, the creation of domains and the redistribution of magnetization will vary rapidly with the magnetic signal, and this may give rise to a y-polarized noise component. Second, the noise from the magnetic carrier may have its own noise which is transferred to the optical signal in the form of y-polarized noise. Third, there are residual amounts of vibration and defocus errors that vary with time and, therefore, cause the x-polarized reflectivity to fluctuate. However, this class of noise is rather common to most readout devices (depend on mechanical design), and will not be considered here. We will follow the procedure given by Mansuripur in dealing with the noisy signal. In this approach, we write the x and y-component of the reflectivity as

$$r_x(t)=1+\delta _x(t),|\delta _x|1,$$
(6)
and

$$r_y(t)=1+\delta _y(t),|\delta _y|1.$$
(7)
There is also a conversion from x to y-polarized light not caused by the magnetooptic effect, but rather by random scattering events. This can be expressed as

$$r_{xy}(t)=\delta _{xy}(t),|\delta _{xy}|1,$$
(8)
We do not expect this component to be large, since the optical system is at rest, thus reducing all random scattering events to a minimum. We will ignore all correlations between $`\delta _x`$, $`\delta _y`$ and $`\delta _{xy}`$, and treat these parameters as independent random variables. Finally, we must take into account the laser noise $`\delta _l`$, which is rooted in instabilities in the laser cavity (e.g. mode hopping and mode competition). The laser noise is common to both x and y-polarized light. The root mean square values of the fluctuation parameters are defined as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_\alpha =\sqrt{<\delta _\alpha ^2>},\alpha =x,xy,y,l.$$
(9)
For the rest of the paper we will assume that all the signals and fluctuations are real-valued. The intensity reaching the individual detectors in Fig. 2 can be given as

$$I_{1,2}=|\frac{E_0}{\sqrt{2}}(1+\delta _l)\left[\gamma E_x(1+\delta _x)\pm E_y(1+\delta _y)\pm E_x\delta _{xy}\right]|^2,$$
(10)
where $`+`$ and $``$ corresponds to detector 1 and 2, respectively. To first order this expression becomes

$$I_1=\frac{1}{2}I_0\left[(\gamma E_x+E_y)^2+(\gamma E_x+E_y)[E_x\gamma (\delta _l+\delta _x)+E_x\delta _{xy}+E_y(\delta _l+\delta _y)]\right],$$
(11)
$$I_2=\frac{1}{2}I_0\left[(\gamma E_xE_y)^2+(\gamma E_xE_y)[E_x\gamma (\delta _l+\delta _x)E_x\delta _{xy}E_y(\delta _l+\delta _y)]\right].$$
(12)
The difference signal between the two detectors is therefore given by

$$I_1I_2=i_{sig}\left[1+\left(2\delta _l+\delta _x+\delta _y+\frac{E_x}{E_y}\delta _{xy}\right)\right],$$
(13)
where the useful signal is

$$i_{sig}=2\gamma I_0E_xE_y.$$
(14)
The noise due to variations in the reflectivities becomes

$$i_{rms}^2=(i_{sig})^2\left(4\mathrm{\Delta }_l^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_x^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_y^2+(\frac{E_x}{E_y})^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{xy}^2\right).$$
(15)
Two other inavoidable noise sources are the shot noise and the thermal noise. The shot noise is expressed by

$$i_{shot}^2=2e\left|\frac{E_0}{\sqrt{2}}\right|^2(\gamma ^2E_x^2+E_y^2)B=eI_0(\gamma ^2E_x^2+E_y^2)B,$$
(16)
where $`B`$ is the bandwidth of electronic system. The thermal noise is

$$i_{th}^2=\frac{4kTB}{R},$$
(17)
where $`k`$ is the Boltzmann constant, $`T`$ is the temperature and $`R`$ is the load resistance of the differential amplifier.

In total the noise from the differential system is given by

$$i_n^2=i_{rms}^2+2i_{shot}^2+2i_{th}^2.$$
(18)
Since there are two detectors in the system, the thermal and the shot noise from each of them add together.

The signal to noise ratio (SNR), is defined as

$$SNR=\frac{i_{sig}}{i_n}$$
(19)
It should be pointed out that the SNR considered here does not take into account diffraction or interbit crosstalk, and should therefore be regarded as an upper estimate.

To illustrate the behaviour of the SNR in the current model, Fig. 7 shows the SNR as a function of bit size for 3 different flying heights. The parameters used here are $`I_0=1`$ mW, $`B=10`$ MHz, $`R=100`$ $`k\mathrm{\Omega }`$, $`t=1`$ $`\mu m`$, $`\gamma =0.5`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_x=\mathrm{\Delta }_y=0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_l=\mathrm{\Delta }_{xy}=10^5`$ in addition to indicator parameters adopted earlier. The figure suggests that it is necessary to keep the flying height less than 100 nm in order to obtain a SNR of 30 for bit sizes around 200 nm. For bit sizes of 1 $`\mu m`$, the SNR can be as large as 500.

Fig. 8 shows the SNR as a function of bit size for different y-polarized noise components $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ when $`t=1`$ $`\mu m`$ and d=100 nm. The main effect of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ seems to be a reduction of the SNR for larger bit sizes, which is due to the fact that the noise increases with increasing magnetooptic signal.

Fig. 9 shows the SNR as a function of flying height for changing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ when $`t=1`$ $`\mu m`$, $`b=0.5`$ $`\mu m`$. The curves indicate that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ is very important for small flying heights, and should be kept less than $`10^2`$ to avoid significant reduction of the SNR.

## V Resolution

A critical parameter is the optical resolution of the system. In order to estimate the resolution, we adopt the method of Ichimura et al.. Since the off-axis reflection coefficients are very small, we neglect their influence on the focusing properties of the system. We also set the refractive index of the SIL to n=2, since this is close to the refractive index of GGG, and the semiconverging (focusing) angle to $`\alpha =60`$ degrees. This gives NA=1.73, which is within reach of the current technology. We see from Fig. 10 that it is possible to obtain full-width-half-maximum resolution of $`200`$ nm, although the width is slightly different in the x and y-directions. It is important to note that our system is, unlike most other SIL-systems, not based on evanescent waves, and does not suffer from the stabillity problems possessed by such systems. Finally it is also useful to note that the resolution (and focal depth) may be improved by introducing an appropriate phase-apodizer.

## VI Extension to several channels

The system discussed above was primarily designed for detection of only one channel/track. To extend this to $`N`$ channels, i.e. to detect of $`N`$ magnetic data tracks simultaneously, it is necessary to have an optical readout system with larger field of view. One method is here to include the indicator films in a commerically available magnetooptical disk drive. A typical lens used in current optical disk drives is a molded glass aspheric singlet, designed for operation at single wavelength. It is typically 5 mm in diameter, weighs less than 0.1 g, and has a focal length of approximately 4 mm. Its NA is 0.5-0.6, and the field of view covers a circle with diameter around 100 $`\mu m`$. To obtain a thin elliptical illumination beam on the indicator, a cylindrical lens must be inserted in front of the laser. Maeda and Koyonagi found that for an ordinary optical disk drive this has negligible influence on the resolution if the NA is around 0.5. Then, if the magnetic tracks each has a width of 5 $`\mu m`$, it should be possible to read out 20 tracks simultaneously, each with a bit size down to 0.5 $`\mu m`$.

Another method for increasing the field of view is to use a cylindrical SIL in combination with an imaging lens. A cylindrical SIL will give approximately the same resolution as the spherical SIL. Then, by using a suitable cylindrical or biconic lens to image the tracks onto the pixels, a large field of view and a high optical resolution can exist simultaneosuly.

## VII Conclusion

The detection of bits in magnetic media using magnetooptical indicators with in-plane magnetization has been investigated. A simple model for the magnetooptical detection system was presented. Using this model we have calculated the Faraday rotation and signal to noise ratio, assuming that the signal comes from one bit only, and that the system has negligible absorption. The signal to noise ratio was found to vary strongly with the bit size, the polarization noise as well as the distance between the magnetic carrier and the indicator. In particular, our model predicts that a signal to noise ratio of more than 30 is possible for bit sizes of 200 nm at flying heights of less than 100 nm. We also estimate the resolution and the focal depth of the system. It is shown that an optical resolution of $`200`$ nm is possible using a solid immersion lens.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors acknowledge helpful discussions with A. Kozlov. This work was financially supported by the Norwegian Research Council and Tandberg Data ASA.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

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text:
# Status report of the ANTARES project

## 1 The ANTARES project

Neutrino telescopes of huge dimensions can investigate the far Universe and the Very High Energy (VHE) cosmic ray sources. Neutrinos are unique ‘probes’ to investigate regions at larger distances than 50 Mpc, because they are weakly interacting and point backwards to their source. Large neutrino telescopes are designed to detect the Cherenkov light emitted by charged particles in deep water/ice using an array of phototubes (PMTs) enclosed in high pressure resistant glass spheres called optical modules (OM). Upward going muons produced by neutrinos having crossed through the Earth, are recognized as products of $`\nu `$ interactions in the instrumented region or close to it. Neutrino telescopes are expected to measure the muon direction and energy, while distinguishing the neutrino signal from the atmospheric muon background, which is orders of magnitude larger. PMT pulse times and amplitudes allow us to calculate these quantities.

The ANTARES (Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch) project , is complementary to already existing experiments, such as AMANDA  and Lake Baikal , in covering the whole sky looking for neutrinos of astrophysical origin. The ANTARES collaboration involves physicists and astrophysicists, sea science experts and engineers from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. The project started in 1996. During a 4 year R&D phase, extensive campaigns of measurements of environmental parameters have lead to the selection of the detector site located 40 km off the Toulon coast (South France) at a depth of 2400 m. Thanks to the rotation of the Earth, this location (42 50’N, 6 10’E) has an efficient sky coverage of about 3.5$`\pi `$ sr, with approximately a 0.5$`\pi `$ sr overlap with AMANDA, and allows to survey the Galactic Center, not accessible to AMANDA.

## 2 The R&D phase

Since 1996, several measurement systems have been designed and operated in order to locate the site where the deployment of the detector is possible and to study the sea-water properties which largely determine the design of the detector.

Surveys have qualified the sea bed for detector deployment; observed currents, on average $`6`$ cm/s with maximum peaks of 19 cm/s, are taken into account to allow long term continuous operation. When exposed to sea water, optical module surfaces are fouled by living organisms and by sediments. These processes reduce light collection efficiency. Results from about 8 months of measurements with a system of PIN diodes illuminated by a blue LED at angles between 50 to 90 from upward vertical, have shown that at $`90^{}`$ fouling induces a light loss of about 2 % per year. Consequently, ANTARES PMTs will be oriented downwards. Water transparency determines light detection efficiency, while the amount of scattered photons affects reconstruction and hence pointing capabilities. The photon arrival time distributions for a pulsed isotropic LED source at wavelengths of 370 nm (UV) and 470 nm (blue) have been measured at 2 different distances of a 1” PMT from the source (24 m and 44 m). These distributions are used in simulations including the PMT angular response to develop and test reconstruction techniques, described in detail in . For a distance of 24 m, 95% of the emitted photons are collected by the detector within 10 ns (30 ns) for blue (UV) light. It is found that for blue light the absorption length is $`55`$ m and the effective scattering length (the scattering length divided by $`1\mathrm{cos}\theta `$, where $`\theta `$ is the scattering angle) is in the 300 m range. The scattering contribution is negligible in sea water compared to ice.

Trigger logic and electronics, track reconstruction and background rejection must take into account the presence of background light due to the $`\beta `$-decay of 40K present in sea water. This light produces an almost constant counting rate of about 60 kHz on a 10 inch PMT (much higher than the background rate for AMANDA at the South Pole). Moreover, short bioluminescence bursts of MHz counting rate with few ms rise-time over a few seconds have been measured. These induce on average less than 5% dead time on PMTs with negligible correlation between storeys.

From Nov. 1999 to June 2000, a demonstrator string was deployed at a depth of 1100 m and connected to shore with a 37-km electro-optical cable. The string had a structure different from the current design, containing couples of glass spheres separated by 15 m. Near the bottom 7 OMs were equipped with PMTs oriented horizontally. More than 50000 of 7-fold coincidences were recorded and zenith angles were reconstructed using recorded times and amplitudes. We reproduced the shape of the zenith angular distribution of atmospheric muons reasonably well, in spite of the single string and the small number of PMTs. After reconstruction, the simulation which is compared to the data includes a $`50\%`$ contribution of multiple muons (due to the shallow depth of the string).

The demonstrator string allowed us to test the ANTARES relative and absolute positioning with a system of acoustic rangemeters, compasses and tiltmeters. Relative distances between 2 elements were measured with 5 cm accuracy while absolute positioning was obtained with $`1`$ m accuracy.

## 3 Detector design and physics studies

The final detector design (Fig. 1) was defined after the R&D environmental and electronics studies and after simulations of the detector response, given cost constraints. Ten strings, holding 90 PMTs each, made by mechanically strong electro-optical cables and anchored at the sea bed will be deployed. Strings, kept taut by buoys at the top, will be separated by roughly 60 m. Each string contains 30 storeys separated by 12 m. Each storey is equipped with 3 OMs oriented outwards at $`45^{}`$ downwards. The 10” Hamamatsu R7081-20 PMTs in the OMs are sensitive to single photons with transit time spread $`<3`$ ns (FWHM). The electronics chain has a timing precision of $`1`$ ns. Signals are digitized, then read out via optical fibers in cables. A submarine will connect the cables from individual strings to a junction box at the end of an electro-optical cable sending signals to a shore base where data are recorded. The $`40`$ km long cable has been recently successfully deployed. An extra-string will be devoted to environmental parameter measurements. The possibility to extend the detector up to 14 strings is considered.

The ANTARES scientific program is mainly devoted to the detection of neutrinos of astrophysical origin with energies above 10 GeV. Extra-galactic and galactic objects could be emitting neutrinos as a consequence of hadronic production mechanisms alternative to the electromagnetic processes.

Parameters to qualify a neutrino telescope are its effective area, which includes reconstruction and selection efficiency 111At high energies the number of ‘volume’ events with the vertex inside the instrumented region is relatively small., the angular resolution and the energy resolution. Simulation results show that the effective area exceeds the geometrical surface in the high energy region of interest even after strict selections (see Fig. 2). The neutrino pointing resolution and the intrinsic angular resolution of the telescope, defined as the median angular separation between the ’true’ and the reconstructed muon track, has been studied by simulations. For reconstructed events the angular resolution improves with energy. Above 10 TeV, the pointing resolution is found to be within $`0.2^{}`$, in spite of light scattering effects.

Below 100 GeV, neutrino energy is inferred from muon range in the detector, while at energies $`>1`$ TeV an energy estimator based on the PMT charge amplitudes currently allows a confidence interval ($`68\%`$ C.L.) on the measured energy $`E`$ between $`E/3`$ and $`3E`$. We are still working on rejection algorithms to suppress atmospheric neutrinos based on the deduced energy. Simulations show that by imposing a $`10`$ TeV cut, 20/150 events/yr are selected using single AGN / diffuse AGN  fluxes with a background of $`10`$ atmospheric neutrino events/year.

Preliminary results on neutralino searches from the core of the Sun and from the Galactic Center, where these particles could be trapped if they are the dark matter in the Galaxy, have been shown in . The ANTARES sensitivity may be better than current experiments, taking into account the different energy thresholds. The algorithms developed for the oscillation studies, also used for dark matter searches, show that ANTARES is expected to reach down to an energy threshold of 10 GeV (thanks to the inclusion of single-string reconstructed events) with a median angular error of $`2.6^{}`$ below 100 GeV.

Studies on the ANTARES performance for neutrino oscillations show that $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ can be measured throughout the region allowed by Super-Kamiokande with a precision of about $`30\%`$ in 3 years. (For maximum mixing, the region $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2310^4610^1`$ eV2 could be excluded with $`90\%`$ C.L.). The observables used are the zenith angle $`\theta `$ and $`E/L`$ ($`L`$ is the baseline which is almost proportional to $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$) for 4000 upgoing muons/year. Backgrounds and systematic errors are under study.