text:
# References

## Abstract

It is argued by Duff that only the time variation of dimensionless constants of nature is a legitimate subject of enquiry, and that dimensional constants such as $`c,\mathrm{},G\mathrm{}`$ are merely human constructs whose value has no operational meaning. We refute this claim and point out that such varying dimensional “constants” can have significant physical consequences for the universe that can be directly measured in experiments. Postulating that dimensional constants vary in time can significantly change the laws of physics.

Comment on the Variation of Fundamental Constants
J. W. Moffat111e-mail: john.moffat@utoronto.ca
Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada
and
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9, Canada

In a recent article, Duff  has asserted that dimensional constants such as $`c,\mathrm{},G\mathrm{}`$ are human constructs that have no intrinsic meaning in physics. He states that the dimensional constants “are merely human constructs whose number and values differ from one choice of units to the next and which have no intrinsic physical significance.” Of course, as long as these dimensional constants remain constants, then we can set them equal to unity, and treat them as a means to change units. However, once we postulate that these constants are no longer really “constant” but vary in space and time, we can no longer assert that they are just “human constructs” that allow us to change from one set of units to another. It is this source of confusion that I wish to address in the following.

If we consider the fine structure constant, $`\alpha =e^2/\mathrm{}c`$, then clearly varying the electric charge $`e`$ with time will have quite significant consequences compared to varying $`\mathrm{}`$ or $`c`$. Dirac was one of the first physicists to suggest that, in connection with his theory of large numbers, fundamental dimensional constants may vary in time during the expansion of the universe . Indeed, he considered that Newton’s gravitational constant $`G`$ varied with time. If one so wishes, one can consider the measurable quantity, $`\dot{G}/G`$, in which the only dimensional quantity that enters the formula is the time $`t`$ and $`t`$ is measured by standard clocks.

The idea that a variation in the speed of light $`c`$ would have significant consequences for cosmology was first suggested in the context of the big bang model a decade ago . It was followed by other suggested cosmological models  and has been the subject of attention by physicists in investigations of extra dimensions, strings and branes . The media has recently been drawn to the importance of these ideas by the possible variation of $`\alpha `$ to one part in 100,000, deduced from observations of QSO absorption lines . The significance of these observations and the consequences of a variation of $`\alpha `$ has been the subject of intensive research . To these investigations can be added the recent paper by Davies et al., . It seems clear that whether you vary $`e`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ or $`c`$ will have very different consequences for physics. Such consequences can be detected and measured and from these results, we can decide which “dimensional” constant of the three involved is varying, even though the effects of a varying $`\alpha `$ appear to be falsely “hidden” in the variation of either $`e`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ or $`c`$. Considering the variation of $`\alpha `$ in isolation from the rest of physics and not taking into account the variation of either $`e`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ or $`c`$ individually seems an unacceptable approach to the problem.

In a paper by the author , it was shown that varying $`e`$ would significantly violate Einstein’s weak equivalence principle, unless some very exotic features of dark matter were invoked222see also, e.g. . It was concluded by the author that it only seemed reasonable to vary $`c`$ and that $`c`$ should increase as you went into the past in the expanding universe, i.e. varying $`c`$ by the amount suggested by the observations of Webb et al. would not obviously violate any current experiment, although it would require a major revision of relativity theory. It was pointed out that such a variation in $`c`$ would become critical at big bang nucleosynthesis at a red shift $`z10^910^{10}`$. Future analysis of satellite observations could significantly restrict a variation in $`\alpha `$ . Bekenstein,  in his early paper on a model of the variation of the electric charge $`e`$, came to the same conclusion that varying $`e`$ would produce a strong violation of the weak equivalence principle.

It is clear (also to the media) that the consequences of a varying $`c`$ could significantly alter our description of the physical world, for the second postulate of Einstein’s special relativity: “The speed of light is the same constant for all observers irrespective of their motion and the motion of the source” would no longer hold true. Consider $`c(t)=c_0\varphi (t)`$, where $`c_0`$ is the standard measured speed of light $`c_0=299792458ms^1`$, then writing $`c(t)/c_0=\varphi (t)`$ shows that the dynamical effects of the dimensionless $`\varphi (t)`$ in a postulated action for a theory describing the universe will obviously change our predictions from those in which $`c(t)=c_0`$ and $`\varphi (t)=1`$. We have to fundamentally alter our understanding of spacetime and gravitation. This could be done by breaking the symmetry of Lorentz invariance in the action,  or e.g. postulating the existence of two spacetime metrics connected by the gradient of a scalar field, which would introduce two varying light cones . Once we postulate that the speed of light varies in time, then we must somehow change Einstein’s special theory of relativity in a fundamental way.

Varying other dimensional constants will be expected to have similar significant consequences for the laws of physics and produce theoretical models in which the different assumed actions predict differing physical results. If we assume that $`\mathrm{}`$ varies in time with $`c`$ kept constant, this would produce detectable effects in atomic spectra but it would not obviously alter quantum mechanics at a fundamental level, nor would it require a revision of special relativity.

In conclusion, we realize that postulating that constants such as $`\mathrm{}`$, $`c`$ or $`G`$ vary in time elevates them to a status of fundamental importance in theoretical physics, and makes them more than merely human constructs whose number and values differ from one choice of units to the next with no operational meaning.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.


format: text

text:
# Formation of Kuiper Belt Binaries

## 1 Introduction

The Kuiper belt\[Luu & Jewitt¡1¿\] is the best solar system laboratory for studies of the early stages of runaway accretion. Runaway accretion in the Kuiper belt terminated when the velocity dispersion of its members was increased by an as yet undetermined process\[Morbidelli, Jacob & Petit¡2¿\]. Unlike the asteroid belt, its largest members have suffered little collisional evolution since.

The discovery that a substantial fraction of its largest members are in binaries with wide separations and order unity mass ratios\[Elliot et al.¡3¿, Kavelaars et al.¡4¿, Brown & Trujillo¡5¿, Trujillo & Brown¡6¿, Noll et al.¡7¿, Noll et al.¡8¿, Veillet et al.¡9¿\] is the latest of many surprises provided by the Kuiper belt. Collisions coupled with tidal evolution, mechanisms that may explain other solar system binaries, fail to account for the formation of the Kuiper belt binaries.

The low frequency of collisions among the large Kuiper belt objects\[Stern¡10¿\] implies that binaries formed by collisionless interactions mediated by gravity. These were most effective earlier when dynamical friction due to small bodies limited the velocity dispersion of the large ones. This situation pertains during runaway accretion.

In the following section §2, we outline a simple model for runaway accretion to set the stage for binary formation. We are guided by more detailed formalisms implemented in numerical simulations. Values of relevant parameters are estimated based on the numbers and sizes of objects deduced from Kuiper belt surveys, and by the extrapolation of the surface density in the minimum mass solar nebula. We estimate the binary formation rate and derive the semi-major axis distribution in section §3. In the final section §4, we discuss the observational implications of our results and mention several open issues.

## 2 Preliminaries

In this section, we introduce a simple set of equations to describe the major processes that occur during the growth of planetesimals. These equations are abstracted from more complete treatments in the literature \[Wetherill & Stewart¡11¿, Wetherill & Stewart¡12¿\]. The main simplification in our approach is the identification of two groups of bodies, small ones, containing most of the total mass, and large ones, contributing a small fraction of it. The latter group, which dominates the stirring of all bodies, is identified with the currently observed population of Kuiper belt objects.

Gravitational interactions determine the accretion rates and velocity dispersions of both large and small bodies. The governing equations for these processes read:

$$\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{}}\frac{1}{R}\frac{dR}{dt}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}F_{MM}+\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}F_{Mm},$$
(1)
$$\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{}}\frac{1}{s}\frac{ds}{dt}\frac{\sigma }{\rho s},$$
(2)
$$\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{}}\frac{1}{v}\frac{dv}{dt}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}F_{MM}^2\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}F_{Mm}^2,$$
(3)
$$\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{}}\frac{1}{u}\frac{du}{dt}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}F_{Mm}^2\frac{\sigma }{\rho s},$$
(4)
where $`R`$ and $`s`$ are the radii of the large and small bodies, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\sigma `$ are their surface mass densities, $`v`$ and $`u`$ are their velocity dispersions,***We are making an additional simplification by using a single velocity dispersion in place of three that are needed to characterize a triaxial velocity ellipsoid. $`\rho `$ is the material densityWe use the same density for the Kuiper belt objects as for the Sun. and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}`$ is the orbital frequency around the Sun.In writing equations (1)-(4) we implicitly assume that $`u>v`$.

The expressions $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }_{}/\rho R`$ and $`\sigma \mathrm{\Omega }_{}/\rho s`$ give the kinematic (ignoring gravitational focusing) collision rates of large bodies onto large bodies and small bodies onto small bodies; $`\sigma \mathrm{\Omega }_{}/\rho R`$ is the kinematic collision rate of small bodies onto a large one multiplied by the mass ratio $`(s/R)^3`$. The factors $`F_{MM}`$ and $`F_{Mm}`$ in equation (1) account for the enhancements of the physical collision rates due to gravitational focusing by large bodies of the trajectories of incoming large and small bodies respectively. Cross sections for large deflections exceed those for physical collisions when gravitational focusing is significant. The factors $`F_{MM}^2`$ and $`F_{Mm}^2`$ that appear in equations (3) and (4) are the ratios of those cross sections to the geometrical ones. Appropriate expressions for $`F_{Mm}`$ read:

$$F_{Mm}\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & v_{esc}<u\hfill \\ (v_{esc}/u)^2\hfill & v_H<u<v_{esc}\hfill \\ (v_{esc}^2/v_Hu)\hfill & \theta _{}^{1/2}v_H<u<v_H\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
where $`\theta _{}10^4`$ is the angle subtended by the solar radius as seen from the Kuiper belt, $`v_{esc}`$ is the escape velocity from the large bodies and $`v_H`$ is their Hill velocity defined in terms of the Hill radius,

$$R_H\left(\frac{M}{M_{}}\right)^{1/3}a_{}\frac{R}{\theta _{}},$$
(6)
as

$$v_H\mathrm{\Omega }_{}R_H.$$
(7)
The escape velocity is related to the Hill velocity by

$$v_{esc}(G\rho )^{1/2}Rv_H/\theta _{}^{1/2}.$$
(8)
$`F_{MM}`$ is obtained by replacing $`u`$ with $`v`$ in the above expressions and in their ranges of validity.

Each of equations (1)-(4) has a simple interpretation. In equation (1), the two terms on the rhs account for the radius growth of the large bodies by the accretion of large and small bodies. The single term on the rhs of equation (2) describes how the radii of small bodies increase as the result of coalescence under conditions of negligible gravitational focusing. In equation (3), the first term describes the viscous stirring of large bodies due to mutual gravitational deflections, whereas the second term accounts for the damping of the large bodies’ velocity dispersion by dynamical friction resulting from their gravitational interactions with the small bodies. Equation (4) shows how the velocity dispersion of the small bodies evolves under viscous stirring by large bodies and damping due to collisions between small bodies.

Values of the dimensionless parameters $`\mathrm{\Sigma }/\sigma 1`$ and $`\theta _{}`$ determine the appropriate regime of runaway accretion. At the Kuiper belt $`a_{}40\mathrm{AU}`$ so $`\theta _{}10^4`$. Based on Kuiper belt surveys\[Trujillo, Jewitt & Luu¡13¿, Gladman et al.¡14¿, Chiang & Brown¡15¿\] which detect only the large bodies, we estimate $`\mathrm{\Sigma }/\rho 3\times 10^4`$cm and $`R100\mathrm{km}`$. Extrapolating the minimum mass solar nebula surface density to $`40`$ AU, yields $`\sigma /\rho 0.3\mathrm{cm}`$. The resulting ratio of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }/\sigma 10^3`$ is compatible with Kuiper belt simulations\[Kenyon & Luu¡16¿, Kenyon & Luu¡17¿, Kenyon¡18¿\]. In the rest of this paper we assume that

$$\theta _{}<\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }<1.$$
(9)
In this regime of runaway accretion, the rates of gravitational stirring and dynamical friction acting on the large bodies are much greater than the large bodies’ growth rates. Moreover, provided the radii of the small bodies satisfy

$$s>\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }R0.1\mathrm{km},$$
(10)
their growth rates are negligible compared to those of the large bodies and collisional damping of their velocities is unimportant on the timescale of viscous stirring.§§§We assume that the inequality in equation (10) always applies. Under these approximations, dynamical friction on the large bodies balances their viscous stirring, and the stirring of the small bodies proceeds with negligible collisional losses. Equations (1)-(4) yield

$$\frac{v}{v_H}\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }\right)^{3/2}0.3$$
(11)
and

$$\frac{u}{v_H}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }\right)^{1/2}3.$$
(12)
Thus, the velocity ratio

$$\frac{u}{v}\theta _{}^{1/2}\frac{\sigma }{\mathrm{\Sigma }}10.$$
(13)
These results are in accord with the most recent simulations\[Kenyon¡18¿\].

Given this solution, the balanced rates of viscous stirring and dynamical friction for large bodies satisfy

$$\frac{1}{v}\frac{dv}{dt}|_{df}=\frac{1}{v}\frac{dv}{dt}|_{vs}\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}\left(\frac{\sigma }{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\right)^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{}.$$
(14)
Large bodies grow predominantly by accreting small bodies; The small bodies’ velocity dispersion evolves mainly by viscous stirring provided by the large bodies. These two processes proceed at equal rates:

$$\frac{1}{R}\frac{dR}{dt}\frac{1}{u}\frac{du}{dt}\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}\left(\frac{\sigma }{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\right)\mathrm{\Omega }_{}.$$
(15)
## 3 Binaries

Because $`v<\mathrm{\Omega }_{}R_H`$, the gravity of a large body significantly deflects other large bodies at separations smaller than $`R_H`$, whereas small bodies are only affected at separationsWe assume that the small bodies are on hyperbolic orbits with respect to the large body. smaller than

$$r_u\frac{GM}{u^2}\frac{\sigma }{\mathrm{\Sigma }}R.$$
(16)
Since $`v_H<u<v_{esc}`$, we have $`R<r_u<R_H`$.

For separations $`r<r_u`$, the velocity dispersion of the small bodies is

$$\left(\frac{GM}{r}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{r_u}{r}\right)^{1/2}u.$$
(17)
In addition, since the impact parameter for a small body to arrive at radius $`r`$ is $`b\left(r_ur\right)^{1/2}`$, the continuity equation implies that the small bodies’ number density is enhanced by a factor

$$\frac{b^2u}{s^2u(r_u/s)^{1/2}}\left(\frac{r_u}{s}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(18)
### 3.1 binary formation

We identify two distinct channels for binary formation. Both begin when two large bodies penetrate each other’s Hill spheres. This occurs at a rate

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{M}R_H^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{}10^4\mathrm{y}^1,$$
(19)
per large body. Stabilization of such a transient binary requires energy loss on timescale $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}^1`$. This can be achieved either by dynamical friction from small bodies or by interaction with a third large body.

Dynamical friction from small bodies during time $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}^1`$ results in a fractional energy loss

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }E}{Mv_H^2}\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}\left(\frac{\sigma }{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\right)^20.03.$$
(20)
This is also the fraction of transient binaries that become bound. Numerical simulations that verify this assertion are described in the figure. Thus, this mechanism leads to a binary formation rate per large body

$$_1\left(\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}\right)^2\left(\frac{\sigma }{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\right)\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{}3\times 10^6\mathrm{y}^1.$$
(21)
The probability that a third large body joins the Hill sphere of a transient binary during its lifetime is

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^23\times 10^3.$$
(22)
A significant fraction of these triplets will result in a bound binary. Therefore, the binary formation rate per large body via this channel is

$$_2\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}\right)^2\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^4\mathrm{\Omega }_{}3\times 10^7\mathrm{y}^1.$$
(23)
With our parameters the ratio

$$\frac{_2}{_1}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }\right)^3\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^20.1$$
(24)
is smaller than unity. Thus from here on we take $`=_1`$.

The ratio of $``$ to $`R^1dR/dt`$ is

$$\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^23,$$
(25)
so binaries form at a rate comparable to the large bodies’ growth rate.

### 3.2 binary fraction and semi-major axis distribution

Let $`p(a)`$ be the differential probability distribution of finding a large body in a binary with semi-major axis $`a`$. In steady state By steady state we mean during a time over which $`R`$ is sensibly constant.

$$ap(a)\frac{}{a^1|da/dt|}$$
(26)
For $`r_u<a<R_H`$, $`a^1da/dt`$ equals the energy decay rate due to dynamical friction given by equation (14). Thus

$$ap(a)\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^23\times 10^3,$$
(27)
which is independent of $`a`$.

For $`R<a<r_u`$, two competing effects come into play. The number density of small bodies is enhanced by a factor $`(r_u/a)^{1/2}`$ and their velocity dispersion is increased by the same factor. Therefore $`a^1|da/dt|`$ is reduced by a factor $`a/r_u`$ in comparison to its constant value for $`r_u<a<R_H`$. Thus in this interval of semi-major axis

$$ap(a)\frac{\sigma }{\rho R}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^2\frac{R}{a}3\left(\frac{R}{a}\right),$$
(28)
which increases inwards as $`a^1`$.

The timescale for a binary to spiral in until contact is achieved is equal to $`R(dR/dt)^1`$. Contact occurs on the same time scale as that during which large bodies grow by accretion of small ones. Thus, if we define a critical separation

$$a_{crit}\frac{\sigma }{\rho }\frac{1}{\theta _{}^2}300\mathrm{km},$$
(29)
inside of which $`ap(a)>1`$, then accretion by binary inspiral might make a substantial contribution before $`R`$ reaches $`a_{crit}`$. As long as $`R<a_{crit}`$, we may also expect to find more than one companion to a given large body. However, both these assertions are uncertain since they require the stability of clusters of high multiplicity. For our parameters, $`Ra_{crit}`$.

Exchange reactions, in which the lighter member of a binary is replaced by a heavier body which passes through the system, are rare occurrences. The rate at which large bodies pass through an existing binary of semimajor axis $`r_H`$ is given by equation (19). This is smaller than the rate of orbital decay. For smaller semimajor axes, even fewer large bodies pass through during an orbital decay time.

## 4 Discussion

We propose that the wide binaries observed in the Kuiper belt formed during runaway accretion. A fraction of the large bodies that entered each other’s Hill spheres became bound as the result of energy lost to small bodies by dynamical friction.\**\**\**Interaction with a third large body was a less important channel for binary formation. The time scale for a large body to become bound to a similar companion was

$$\left(\frac{\rho R}{\sigma }\right)^2\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }\right)\frac{\theta _{}^2}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{}}3\times 10^5\mathrm{y},$$
(30)
Further dynamical friction hardened the binaries. The timescale to achieve contact was that during which isolated large bodies grew;

$$\frac{\rho R}{\sigma }\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sigma }\right)\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{}}10^6\mathrm{y}.$$
(31)
Initially the inspiral was at a constant rate, but it slowed down inside $`r_u`$ where the small bodies’ number density and velocity dispersion were enhanced above their background values. We deduce that the probability that a large body is part of a binary with angular separation greater than $`r_u/a_{}3^{\prime \prime }`$ is

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\rho R}\left(\frac{1}{\theta _{}}\right)^23\times 10^3.$$
(32)
Inward of $`r_u`$, the binary probability per logarithmic interval of semimajor axis increases inversely with semimajor axis. Close to contact, the probability exceeds unity for $`R<a_{crit}100\mathrm{km}`$, which implies that systems with higher multiplicities would exist if such are stable. For the resolution of the HST survey $`0.2^{\prime \prime }`$, we predict a binary fraction of about $`5\%`$, roughly compatible with observations (Brown, private communication). Our prediction that close binaries are common could be tested by monitoring the brightness of Kuiper belt objects for evidence of eclipses and/or fast rotation. The latter is a consequence, but not a unique signature, of binary mergers.

In our analysis we estimate the surface density ratio of large to small bodies from the observational census of Kuiper belt objects together with an extrapolation of the surface density of the minimum mass solar nebula. It would be an improvement to have a theoretical understanding of how this ratio evolves during runaway accretion. Also, we elaborated the binary evolution scenario with a given set of parameters, specifically $`\theta _{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }/\sigma `$. Different scalings that apply for other parameter regimes remain to be worked out.

Additional predictions suitable for testing by future observations of Kuiper belt binaries could be made by extending our model in a variety of ways. Relaxing the restriction to two mass groups would allow us to investigate the mass ratio distribution of binary components and its dependence on semi-major axis. We predict the formation of multiple systems for bodies with $`R<a_{crit}`$. Numerical experiments can establish what types of systems survive disruption due to mutual interactions of their members. We could also predict eccentricity and inclination distributions. This would require a more detailed look at the anisotropy of the velocity distribution of small bodies, especially for $`a<r_u`$. Anisotropy leads to tensorial dynamical friction in which the force is not antiparallel to the velocity. Binney\[Binney¡19¿\] has investigated a related problem, the evolution of the orbits of galaxies in anisotropic clusters. We can already say that the eccentricities are likely to be large. They begin large following binary capture. Moreover, since the magnitude of the dynamical friction force increases outward for $`a<r_u`$, they should remain large in this region.

Simple numerical simulations of the Hill problem that incorporate dynamical friction would help pin down the dependence of the capture probability on the velocity dispersion and on the strength of dynamical friction. Computations involving three massive bodies are needed for evaluation of capture probabilities via that channel. Three body capture cross sections have been computed for stars in globular clusters \[Hut & Bahcall¡20¿\], but in our regime the Hill sphere must be taken into account.

The two largest known Kuiper belt objects, Pluto and Charon, form a binary. Collision coupled with tidal evolution is the generally accepted mode of formation for this system. Our scenario for binary formation provides another candidate. It may also apply to the formation of some binaries in the asteroid belt.

In closing, we caution that our numerical results are crude. Dynamical processes have been estimated to order of magnitude. We have ruthlessly discarded numerical coefficients and logarithmic factors. More credence should be accorded to the functional dependences of our results than to the precise numerical predictions.


text:
# A short lecture on Divergences

## Abstract

We present some clues to the study of the renormalization group, at graduate level, as well as some bibliographical pointers to classical resources. Just the kind of things one had liked to hear when starting to study the subject.

This was going to be a notice on “recent advances on renormalization group theory”, from which advanced students can get bibliography to please their teachers. But I happened to visit Jacques Gabay’s printing house, and I decided to take a wider view. At least, wider than usual treatises on Quantum Field Theory. Gabay’s mission is to keep in print old mathematics texts from the late XIXth and early XXth, and his work helps to keep the perspective.

Fact is, all generations of physicists since Euler times have been used to live with divergences. Students are supposed to become exposed to the subject gradually, but this gradation varies strongly across schools and faculties, and the balance keeps more in the room of Cauchy than in Borel quarters. There is even a darker side, about if everything which is legal in Mathematics should be legal in Physics, but this question keeps usually in the philosophical level. Still, one should point that classical mechanics, the science of newtonian limits, is mathematically legal but physically ruled out!

The usual scenario for divergences is: we have a differential equation. We look for a solution from power series expansion. Most times, the solution is known to exist, say from Picard’s fixed point method, say from other convergence theorem. But we are forced to pick up a power series expansion on the “wrong” parameter, so that the convergence radius is zero. Or (change $`x>1/z`$ if necesary) we could to know only a asymptotic series around infinity. Poincare treatises are the first ones showing all of this.

Note, still, that we are here in a purely classical matter. We can do perturbation theory with a small coupling constant in a perturbation potential, and then expand the solution as a power series of the coupling constant. The series diverges, and then we have only an asymptotic series. Borel transform, or other resummation techniques, can be invoked to get a better expansion. Sometimes even a convergent series is known, for instance for the three-body problem (which, remember, is chaotical respect to small perturbations), but even then it can happen that the divergent series is faster than the convergent one for a given level of precision!

This kind of problems when solving perturbation series is thus expected to appear also in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. In fact, an argument from Dyson  shows that the perturbative expansion of quantum electrodynamics will give place to a divergent series of this kind. This is not to be confused with renormalizability questions, which will refer to each term in this expansion.

A interesting detail of the quantum approach is that it does not start from the differential equation, but from the action principle. This is a puzzling thing, because the action principle is an integral between two conditions, and it must be connected to a local differential equation. It seems that quantum theory has an alternate way to go from the lagrangian, in the action law, to the hamiltonian, in Schroedinger equation; it is very suggestive to read this derivation in the original article of Feynman. Later, Schwinger and Dyson produced a way to deduce, from variation of a quantum action, the canonical equations of quantum theory. In any case, calculation efficiency suggest to start always from perturbations of the action, and this is the engine who drives to diagrammatics.

Also, we have a richer set of expansions when going to quantum theory. Besides the perturbative method around a coupling constant, we have the possibility to expand on Plank constant. In QM, the Schroedinger equation is written in Ricatti form,

$$i\mathrm{}\frac{d\xi }{dx}+2m(EV)\xi ^2=0$$

and then we expand

$$\xi =\xi _n(x)(\mathrm{}/i)^n$$

AFC  refer to this as the eikonal expansion (This change of variables is characteristic also of the Hoft algebra of diffeomorfisms used by Connes and Kreimer). And the diagrams give still other expansion; if we are in QFT with only a coupling constant, then a series on Plank constant coincides with the expansion on number of loops. But for the general case, we have still this third possibility, on the number of loops of each Feynman diagram.

Besides perturbations, one could expect also divergences for bad shaped, singular, potentials, but their study has been bypassed by history. Still, it is worth to mention that the gravitating n-body problem can be formulated -and solved- including collisions throught the singularities.

Well, this was the world of our grand-grandfathers in the first decades of XXth century. Then it came a more painful source of divergences. Not only happened that the perturbation expansion was around bad places, but also that every term in the expansion happened to contain a divergence of his own. As the effect relates to the indeterminate creation of virtual particles, this is the thing we are expected to learn in any QFT course. Still, it is worth to mention the three steps in taking control of this source of problems:

–First, Feynman, Dyson and Schwinger got to recognize how the divergence can be absorbed in the coupling constant in a consistent form. This comes from a lot of previous experience on considering the cloud of virtual particles around a singular charge, and the real surprise is that just a finite number of coupling constants can adjust for all the divergences.

–Second, Gellman and Low, in a paper of compulsory reading, identify a general method to predict the renormalized values without entering in detailed calculation: the renormalization group. Asymptotical analysis get here a completely new meaning.

–Third, Kadanoff, Wilson and Kogut recognize the renormalization group as a question of scaling between different orders of magnitude. The study of fixed points, and perturbations around them, conects this approach with the previous results.

In the first step, the problem is traced to an limit when $`xy`$ goes to zero. In the Second step, the bug is transformed in a feature, and general properties of this $`xy`$ divergence are systematised. In the third step, the question of existence of scales is related with the problem of continuum limit of a lattice. A renormalization “semigroup”, decimating degrees of freedom, is sketched, and Wilson shows how it can be related to the previous G-L group. A fourth step could be the finding of asymptotically free theories; this is standard lore in your textbooks.

Wilson’s approach has the merit of making very explicit the role of the cut-off that regularises the theory. In a renormalisable theory, this cut-off is removed after the manipulations and then the Gellman-Low equation (and Callan-Simanzik) become apparent. It is possible to keep the cut-off and to do calculations with an “effective” theory, even if it is not renormalisable. Feelings about this can be mixed. One paralell which can be invoked is the origin of quantum mechanics: The Plank constand did appear in physics as a mean to regularise the energy distribution, then getting finite results where the Rayleigh-Jeans theory was divergent. Also other cut-off techniques are natural in thermodinamics; in any case it is very delicate to extend these similtudes, as one must distinguish between ultraviolet and infrared divergences; in this presentation we are almost forgetting the IR ones.

After recognising the role of $`xy`$ in the divergences, it is more natural to ask “what about QM?” in the straighforward formulation as $`0+1`$ dimensional field theory. Of course, power counting in a $`0+1`$ theory shows that any polynomial interaction will be free of divergences (in the sense of renormalization). But it is very interesting to study the role of $`t_1t_0`$ from the point of view of scaling and renormalization theory. This exercise was published by Polonyi in 1993111Tarrach in Barcelona, as well as Boya and myself in Zaragoza, did took some interest on different views of the renormalization process of QM.

It is not only QM, by the way. The ideas coming from renormalization group, and perhaps the renormalization group itself, descent back to the theory of classical evolution of differential equations. There, dimensional analysis and scaling got a fresh airh from both Wilson and GellMann-Low techniques. We could mention the works of Goldenfeld-Chen- Oono, as well as the ones of Kunihiro, while AFC describes some previous attemps middle way between classical and quantum. Also the original question of resummation techniques (by changing the coefficients in the perturbative expansion) get some help from this, even if it sounds strange, it seems it is possible to mimic QFT and to use the techniques of control of coefficients (the RG) to control the whole expansion.

In the mean time, since Wilson’s age, the renormalization group had been rigorized from the point of view of mathematical physics. This task was accomplished by Bogoliugov, who worked out both the distributional character of the theory and the mechanics of the substraction process. The approach summarized into the BPHZ method, and additionaly some more analytical part of this research drove to the formulation of Epstein and Glaser. This was all the rigour a physicist could even desire.The surprise come recently when Connes and Kreimer found a rigorization from pure mathematics. Kreimer got a method to map Feynman diagrams to rooted trees, and it happened that this method formulated a Hoft algebra, nice enough to hold the group structure of renormalization.

And this surprise came with a message from calculus, when it was noticed, by Brouder, that the Hoft algebra of trees was the same technique that had been used by Butcher in the seventies, to classify the numerical Runge Kutta methods! We can understand why if we look from a very general point of view, stratification of compactified configuration spaces, as Kreimer explains lately. Or we can go back in the time, when the series expansion of the solutions of a differential equation was classified by labelling each term with a Cayley tree.

Start from a differential equation $`x^{}=F(x)`$. One want to get the series $`x(t)=x_0+x_1t+x_2t^2+\mathrm{}`$, and it is straighforward that we can proceed by derivating the original equation to get first

$$x^{\prime \prime }=F^{}(x)x^{}=F^{}(x)F(x)$$

then

$$x^{\prime \prime \prime }=F^{\prime \prime }(x)(x^{})^2+F^{}(x)x^{\prime \prime }=F^{\prime \prime }F^2+F^{}F^{}F$$

and so on. The increasing complexity of the expansion can be tamed by using rooted trees to describe each term.

The same technique is used to tame the terms in a QFT expansion and to recursively apply the renormalization, so it seems we are again approaching in the domain of the theory of differential calculus. If the circle finally closes, we will have learn some very deep lessons on the structure of calculus and its interaction with physics.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Since a long time the question on why sex evolved has been studied through different models. Some of them justify the sexual reproduction from intrinsic genetic reasons, and others from extrinsic or social reasons like child protection, changing environment or parasites .

The Redfield model  is an example of an elegant model that requires little computer time. It is not a population dynamics model following the lifetime of each individual, but only simulates their probabilities to survive up to reproduction. The mortality increases exponentially with the number of mutations in the individual. For the sexual variant the number of mutations in the child is determined by a binomial distribution such that on average the child has as its own number of mutations half the number of the father, plus half the number from the mother. At birth, new mutations are added following a Poisson distribution, for both asexual and sexual reproduction. Because of the lack of an explicit genome, intermediate forms of reproduction as meiotic parthenogenesis and hermaphroditism were not simulated.

A more realistic model, involving an explicit genome in the form of bit-strings, was more recently used by Örçal et al.  to investigate intermediate reproductive regimes. It makes use of a parameter $`\mu `$, introduced before by Jan et al. , defined such that only individuals with $`\mu `$ and more mutations exchange genome. Healthy individuals without many mutations reproduce asexually, that is, by cloning plus deleterious random mutations.

The models we present here are of this second type, that is, the genomes of the individuals are represented by bit-strings, and our purpose is to investigate an intermediate strategy (between asexual-haploid and sexual-diploid reproduction) which is called parasex (S. Cebrat, private communication).

## 2 Penna-type models

### 2.1 General

For biological ageing, the Penna model  presently is the most widespread computer simulation method. The genome of each individual is given by a string of 32 bits, representing dangerous inherited diseases (detrimental mutations) for the at most 32 intervals of life of this individual. A 0-bit means health, a 1-bit on position $`a`$ of the bit-string means a mutation affecting the health from that age $`a`$ on. Three such diseases kill the individual at that age $`a`$ at which the third disease becomes active. At each time step, i.e. one iteration of the whole population, each living individual above a minimum reproduction age of 8 gives birth to three children with the same genome as the mother except for one mutation: One bit position is randomly selected and its bit is set to one independently of its previous value. Besides these deaths from genetic reasons, individuals also die at each time step with the Verhulst probability $`N/N_{max}`$ where $`N`$ is the total population and $`N_{max}`$ a constant parameter, often called the carrying capacity. For more results from the Penna model we refer to . In particular, this model was used to compare various forms of sexual and asexual reproduction for diploids . We start with the asexual Fortran program published in .

### 2.2 With ageing

To simulate parasex, at each time step each individual gets with probability $`p`$ from another randomly selected individual half of its genome: For each of the 32 bits we determine randomly if the old bit is kept or the bit of the other individual is inserted instead. The number of deleterious mutations (1-bits) is then found from the newly formed bit-string. This model might correspond to mutations of haploid individuals hundreds of million years ago to evolve from asexual to sexual reproduction. Bacteria to our present knowledge show no ageing effects and are thus not described by this model but by the one in the next subsection.

Fig.1 compares the population from the standard asexual Penna model with that from this parasex model. This is a simple way to compare the fitness of species under the same environment: the larger the stationary population $`N`$ is for the same $`N_{max}`$, the fitter is this species . We see a fitness maximum at a probability $`p0.1`$. These organisms also live longer with parasex than without (not shown). With also positive mutations, however, the advantages of parasex are lost. A positive mutation means that when the randomly selected bit to be mutated is equal to one, it is set to zero in the offspring genome.

### 2.3 Without ageing

Now we get rid of the ageing effects (increase of mortality with increasing age) trying to model present-day bacteria. For this purpose the program  no longer counts at each iteration the current number of active mutations; instead the number of mutations is determined at birth (inherited mutations plus new mutation happening at birth), and stays with this individual until its death. Otherwise the program remains essentially as published , i.e. again three mutations kill. By definition, the survival probabilities of all living individuals is independent of their number of mutations (0, 1 or 2), while the survival of their offspring depends on this number.

“Death” for bacteria is a matter of definition: If one bacterium splits into two, we may regard this event as the death of the previously living and the birth of two new bacteria. Computationally less changes are required if we define this duplication process as a mother giving birth to one child. The mother then keeps the old genome, while the child has at most one more mutation. In this way, the individuals are genetically immortal and die only from environmental causes simulated by the above mentioned Verhulst factor. The mortality (probability to die within the time up to the next birth) is thus positive but independent of age.

Fig.2 shows the stationary populations in this model without ageing, but still with the above birthrate of three. (One iteration may thus approximate two consecutive duplications.) We see a fitness plateau at a low parasex probability up to $`10^3`$.

Simulations with birth rate = 1 instead of 3 are shown in Fig.3, giving similar results. For both Fig.2 and 3 our model gives much lower populations (166032 and 45466, respectively), if we omit completely the exchange of genomes. We feel that this comparison, which makes parasex very advantageous, is the appropriate one.

## 3 Bit-string model with longer genomes

### 3.1 General

This bit-string model has no age structure, and was previously introduced by de Oliveira  for diploid populations (see also ,,). Here we simplify it for haploids. The genome of each individual is represented by a bit-string now of 1024 bits each. At every time step each individual $`i`$ produces a copy of its own genome (child), and mutations are randomly introduced to this copy according to a predefined mutation rate $`m`$. Now mutations can be only deleterious (the randomly selected bits are always set to one) or mixed. In the last case if a randomly selected bit of the original genome is equal to one, it is set to zero in the child genome (positive mutation) and vice-versa (bad mutation).

The population size $`P`$ (the number of alive individuals) is kept nearly constant, always fluctuating around some number $`P_0`$, say $`P_0=10000`$, by applying the following death rule after the whole population breeding is over. Each individual $`i`$ survives with probability $`x^{N_i+1}`$, where $`N_i`$ is the number of 1-bits in its genome. Before killing any individual, the value of $`x`$ is determined in order to give an overall death rate that compensates the number of newborns, that is, by solving the equation

$$x\underset{i=1}{\overset{P}{}}x^{N_i}=P_0,$$
(1)
where the sum runs over all individuals, including the newborns. Once the value of $`x`$ is already known, then the death roulette is applied sequentially to each individual $`i`$, according to its $`N_i`$. In this way, the larger is the number of 1-bits in a given individual’s genome, the smaller is its survival probability. In contrast to the previous model (section 2.3), now individuals differ from each other only according to their own survival probabilities, the number of offspring per time step being the same for all.

After the killing process described above, again for each individual $`i`$, a random number between zero and one is selected and compared to a predefined probability $`p`$ of exchanging genomes. If this random number is smaller or equal to $`p`$ a new individual $`j`$ is randomly selected from the same population and the genomes of $`i`$ and $`j`$ are crossed. The same crossing position is randomly selected along the 1024 bit-string for both, and one piece of individual’s $`i`$ genome is recombined with the complementary piece of individual’s $`j`$ genome. The same recombination occurs with the remaining parts, producing in this way two new genomes, without changing the total number of individuals. After completing the process of breeding, killing and recombination on the whole population, one more time step is added to the evolutionary clock of the whole system.

### 3.2 Results for mixed mutations

All results presented in this subsection were obtained for a population size $`P_0=10000`$ individuals, a total number of 65 thousands time-steps with averages performed during the last 32 thousands. At this stage, the probability distribution of 1-bits in the genomes of all individuals has already reached a steady state.

First, we studied this distribution when there is no parasex. We observed that for a very high mutation rate ($`m512`$), that is, if during the reproduction step half or more of the offspring genome is mutated, there is no selection effect: Genomes end up, on average, with half of the bits equal to one (maximum entropy). In this case the introduction of parasex has no visible effect and the probability distribution of 1-bits per individual seems to be a Gaussian centered at 512, in both cases (rightmost curve of Fig.4.).

For small mutation rates, selection effects are already present even without parasex: The probability distribution is now centered at a value smaller than 512. The introduction of parasex moves the distribution towards an even smaller average number of 1-bits, as shown in Fig.4.

In order to confirm that these distributions are Gaussians, that is:

$$y=A\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(NN)^2}{2\alpha ^2}\right]$$

where $`N`$ is the average number of 1-bits and $`\alpha `$ is the distribution width, we plot $`Y=\mathrm{ln}y`$ as a function of $`X=(NN)^2`$, to check if we obtain straight lines for both sides of the distribution. The slope of these lines is proportional to $`1/\alpha ^2`$. The results are shown in Fig.5, for a mutation rate of $`m=513`$.

In this case where, as mentioned before, selection does not work, it can be seen that the distributions are indeed Gaussians.

However, from Fig.6 we can see that for small mutation rates ($`m=3`$) the tails of the distributions deviate from the Gaussian form, mainly when there is no parasex (circles). It occurs because selection is working and there are more individuals populating the left side of the distributions, than the right one. The reason why this deviation is stronger when there is no crossing is that parasex tends to mix the very clean genomes already selected by the dynamic process. However, this effect should not be confounded with a possible loss of diversity. On the contrary, besides improving the average genetic fitness of the whole population by pushing the distribution to the left, as shown in Fig.4, parasex in fact increases the diversity, i.e. the width of the distribution. Note the lower slope of the lines in Fig.6 when there is parasex. The role of the crossing mechanism is simply to offer a larger number of options to the Darwinian selection process.

Similar results were obtained for smaller values of the parasex probability $`p`$. Also, in all cases the final steady state distribution of 1-bits is reached much faster when parasex is allowed. This is another advantage in what concerns the ability of the population to adapt to sudden environment changes.

### 3.3 Results for pure bad mutations

When only deleterious mutations are considered, without parasex all genomes end up with only 1-bits, independently of the value of the mutation rate. For real genomes this would result in a genetic population meltdown with the death of all individuals. The introduction of parasex is able to avoid this extinction, even for small probabilities of exchanging genomes. Fig.7. shows the probability distribution for genome lengths of 512 bits. Without parasex the distribution evolves to a delta-function at 512.

## 4 Conclusions

We have used three different models to simulate genome exchange between individuals, a possible intermediate behaviour between asexual and sexual reproduction. In all of them the genome of each individual is represented by one bit-string (haploid) and its fitness is related to the number of 1-bits accumulated in its genome. Every individual has a probability to exchange part of its genome with another individual randomly chosen among the same population, a process called parasex. We have observed that this exchanging of genomes always increase the survival chances, measured through the population size or through the probability distribution of 1-bits per genome, depending on the model. Even in extreme cases where the population evolves to genetic meltdown, the introduction of parasex is enough to avoid it.

Acknowledgements: To PMMH at ESPCI for the warm hospitality, to Sorin Tănase-Nicola for helping us with the computer facilities and to S. Cebrat for discussions; SMO and PMCO thank the Brazilian agency FAPERJ for financial support.


text:
# How to Evolve Safe Control Strategies

## 1 . Introduction

Control strategies are critical ingredients of a space mission because they indicate what actions are to be taken by the spacecraft in response to environmental conditions. Unfortunately, control strategies defined at the beginning of a mission may have to be modified later on. The need for this modification may be due to system failures that reduce functionality or because the spacecraft has encountered unanticipated environmental conditions.

An appealing method for dealing with these undesirable situations is to use a *reconfigurable system*, which can adopt a different functionality. For example, a reconfigurable system eliminates the need for redundant hardware—which consumes precious space and weight—by simply modifying the existing hardware to compensate for the failure. However, despite the enormous advantages of reconfiguration, reconfiguration information originating from Earth will probably not arrive in time to do any good.

The real solution lies with *adaptive systems*—i.e., systems capable of self-reconfiguration in response to faults or a changing operational environment . This adaption is performed in-situ (in place), thereby removing any reliance on Earth-bound resources for reconfiguration information.

In this paper we propose a method for evolving new control strategies in a way guaranteed to be safe during the reconfiguration process. Our method fully supports in-situ adaption of the strategies.

## 2 . Discussion

Control strategies can be evolved *extrinsically*, where each strategy is simulated, but only the best one is actually implemented, or *intrinsically*, where each candidate strategy is downloaded into the system and exercised in the real physical environment. In-situ extrinsic evolution may be problematic because some closed-form objective function is necessary to assess efficacy, but it may not always be possible to define a suitable one. Thus, in most cases intrinsic evolution may be the only thing that makes sense. It is therefore absolutely essential that the control strategy be safe—i.e., it does no harm to the controller itself nor to any other system. This safety check must be made prior to testing the new strategy online.

Our approach is to evolve a series of deterministic *finite state machines* (FSMs), each encoding a potential new control strategy. Evolutionary programming (EP)  is used to evolve these FSMs. The suitability of each strategy will be assessed by actually trying it in the real physical environment. However, only control strategies that pass a safety check will be downloaded for evaluation. We will borrow automatic formal verification methods to assess this safety. These methods use mathematically provable techniques to characterize a system without conducting exhaustive simulation or testing. Specifically, we will rely on *model checking* (MC) techniques  to verify the safety of candidate FSMs generated by EP. Although model checking has been extensively used in hardware design and software verification, to the best of our knowledge no prior research effort in formal methods has attempted the problem we consider here.

MC is a formal method that verifies if a system, modelled as a FSM, adheres to a specified property. The properties of interest are encoded as temporal logic expressions, which expresses properties that change over time . There are many different kinds of temporal logic but *computation tree logic* (CTL) is the most widely used with model checkers. The basic idea is a safety property is expressed in ordinary Boolean logic, and then special temporal operators are added for describing future events.

MC has been used to verify properties in systems with hundreds of thousands of states. In practice, control strategies tend to have orders of magnitude fewer states. The MC algorithm complexity is linear in the size of the FSM and in the length of the CTL expression , so the safety of a control strategy can be quickly verified. A graphical representation of the MC algorithm is shown in Figure 1.

Several important issues concerning using MC to check safeness of control strategies are worth highlighting:

* The large number of states in physical systems often forces one to use a reduced FSM model where some details are abstracted out. Model checking cannot guarantee safety under these circumstances.

In our approach the EP algorithm renders FSMs which are complete in the sense that every aspect of the control strategy is explicitly described in the FSM structure. No details are abstracted out or reduced so the safety check results are guaranteed.
* Model checkers typically provide trace information to help pinpoint where the safety property failed.

We will not use this feature. In fact, we treat the entire safety issue as a decision problem—i.e., either the strategy is safe or it is not. Unsafe control strategies are immediately discarded, so there is no need to know why it is unsafe.
* Model checkers are used to verify functional specifications and other properties, e.g., liveness.

In our approach model checking only verifies safety. All other performance criteria are assessed by trying out the control strategy in the physical environment.

## 3 . Implementation Details

Our method can be summarized as follows:

* Control strategies are encoded with FSMs.
* An EP algorithm generates candidate control strategies by evolving FSMs. EP is ideally suited for this task .
* Safety properties are encoded as CTL expressions.
* A symbolic model checker accepts the FSM and CTL expressions as input, and quickly checks to see if the control strategy is safe. The correctness of the safety check is guaranteed.
* Safe control strategies are evaluated in the physical environment whereas unsafe strategies are discarded.
* The EP algorithm runs a fixed number of generations or terminates sooner if a suitable control strategy is found. The best performing FSM is implemented as the new control strategy.


text:
# Comment on “No-Signaling Condition and Quantum Dynamics”

While I would concur with the main thesis of Messrs. Simon, Bužek, and Gisin SBG , having previously reached and published most of the same conclusions SV , I feel some remarks are in order. The main contention of SBG  and a part of SV , is that the no-signal condition (NSC) along with a set $``$ of quantum mechanical hypotheses (presumed true in standard quantum theory) imply linearity of quantum processes. For this to have any bite, the hypotheses in $``$ should somehow be more compelling and less enigmatic than linearity itself, nor should they presuppose any of the linearity one is trying to prove.

The authors’ division of phenomena into static and dynamic in is rather arbitrary. Measurement is relegated to the static, yet what can be more dynamic than the interaction of a system with an apparatus? Any realistic measurement process involves evolution of states, and the usual trace formula, linear in the density matrix, would be arguably irreconcilable with non-linear evolutions, if they were present in the full realistic measurement process. The assumption that the “static” aspects of quantum mechanics have the usual description is to assume part of what one is trying to prove. Furthermore, in the coincidence experiments contemplated by the authors, when viewed from a different frame the space-like separated measuring events are not simultaneous and there is an interpolating evolution. Thus the “static” result in one frame must be equivalent to two “static” results and a dynamic evolution in another frame. This shows that the “static” and dynamic aspects are intimately tied together and in the end one wonders just how much of the conclusion is already present in the hypotheses and does not need the support of NSC. In Ref. SV  some of the relevant “static” aspects are actually derived from NSC and that paper’s $``$.

The most critical point however is the following: for the argument in Ref. SBG  to procede, one must admit an objective difference between probabilistic mixtures of pure states that result in the same density matrix. Without such objectification (which cannot be local SCL ) no linearity results can be deduced. Without a clear notion of the objective nature of such differences, which should be part of $``$, it is hard to see just precisely what one is achieving. Furthermore, joining a non-local objectivity with a locality assumption such as NSC, heightens the enigmatic nature of the assumptions.

Recently Bóna bo  criticized Ref. SBG  in relation to the same point of objectivity, concluding that “…the declared goals of SBG  were not attained there.” I would state that they were attained with a proper reading, but alternate readings, such as Bóna’s are also consistent.

I would be the first to admit that some of my remarks could apply to my own Ref. SV . In the twelve years since I have proved my results (and the six since they were publicly available), I’ve had some time to ponder the lessons. What has to be included in $``$ to be able to securely conclude linearity from it and NSC is itself just as enigmatic as linearity itself. No true understanding is forthcoming from this attempt, just some hints and a greater appreciation of how remarkably are the local and the non-local joined in quantum mechanics. Because of this I’ve come to view NSC as ineffective in clarifying quantum mechanics and concluded that linearity and lack of signals should both follow from something more basic. Ref. SCL  is an attempt: NSC is replaced by Lorentz invariance and a form of locality, and a general quantum logic is used, but there is still a form of the projection postulate (formally present in all causal theories corc ) and an objectification (non-local) of probabilistic mixtures. It is this coexistence of local and non-local that is at the heart of the problem, and is much more perplexing than linearity. In the end, what seems possible to me is that both linearity and causality could appear as universal emergent features of quantum gravity based on a quite general non-linear version of quantum mechanics. Ironically, the role of non-linear quantum theory would then be to finally explain the linearity of quantum mechanics as we know it.


text:
# A LOW NOISE THERMOMETER READOUT FOR RUTHENIUM OXIDE RESISTORS

## 1 Introduction

The Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE) experiment1 is designed to detect or limit spectral distortions in the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The key to this experiment is the external calibrator. The absolute temperature of the calibrator is required to compare to other experiments such as Far InfraRed Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS)2,3. It is more critical, however, that the calibrator be isothermal and remain at a constant temperature while it is shifted between the various radiometers of ARCADE. The other parts of the ARCADE instrument (loads, horns, switches etc) must remain at a stable temperature, but the absolute accuracy requirement is not severe because the external calibrator will calibrate all of these terms to first order. The measurement and thermal control must be performed at high altitudes ($`30`$ km) while the instrument is suspended from a balloon.

In order to eliminate the reflections and emission of a window the ARCADE radiometers run without a window. The target, similar in many respects to that of FIRAS, is moved from one horn to the other to provide an external blackbody reference to compare to the sky. A blackbody internal reference reduces the dynamic range of the amplifier signal. With this arrangement, it is important to maintain the temperature of critical components in the radiometer such as the target, the internal reference, the amplifier and the horn antenna while the target is moved from one radiometer to another.

Cryogenic thermometers are often used in applications where low noise is desired and low power is required. Low level signals from the thermometers are susceptible to noise pick-up and degradation by the capacitance of long lines. Long term measurement stability is required, so it is desirable to have a thermometer system with built in calibration.

Most of the ARCADE thermometers are used to maintain thermal control of the instrument; low noise and stability are more important than knowledge of the absolute temperature. However, key thermometers are imbedded within the microwave absorber of the external calibration target. The ARCADE science goals require an isothermal target, which in turn requires precise cross-calibration for the target thermometers.

## 2 THERMOMETER DESIGN

The system requirements include about 25 thermometers, with a $``$1 Hz read rate, and low power dissipation, with four wire measurements. Drifts in the readout system are a concern for balloon operations so fixed resistors are included for self calibration.

RuO2 resistive thermometers were chosen because of their low cost, long term stability and large resistance changes in the neighborhood of 2.7 K4. The thermometers are commercially-available thick-film chip resistors5 (Fig 1), with resistance 10 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at room temperature. At 2 K, the resistance rises to $``$40 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with a $`dT/dR`$ of -0.098, -0.158, -1.042, and -10 mK/$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at 2.2, 2.7, 6.3 and 20 K respectively. The readout noise is ultimately related to this ratio. Manganin leads (76 $`\mu `$m dia.) allow 4-wire resistance measurements. Mechanical stress is relieved by thermally cycling each chip 100 times between 300 K and 77 K prior to soldering the leads, then another 50 times after the leads are attached. Most of the thermometers monitor the cryogenic performance of the instrument (e.g., amplifier or dewar temperatures). The thermometers are mounted to a thin copper tab using Stycast 2850-FT epoxy, and calibrated against National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-traceable Ge thermometers on the cold stage of a pumped LHe dewar.

The entire target, including five embedded thermometers, was cycled an additional ten times to relieve thermal stress, then the thermometers were calibrated in situ by immersing the entire target in a liquid helium bath and varying the vapor pressure above the bath. Temperature gradients within the target during calibration are small, limited ultimately by convection cells within the liquid. The absolute temperature scale is referenced to a NIST-traceable Ge thermometer and cross-checked by measurement of the superfluid helium transition temperature. At temperatures near 2.7 K, the target thermometer calibration absolute accuracy is $``$0.9 mK verified by repeated cycling and remeasurement.

The readout utilizes a four-wire resistance measurement, with an alternating excitation current and a lock-in integrator for low-power and low-noise6. To minimize the power dissipated in the thermometer, the current is limited to 1.3 $`\mu `$A. The readout multiplexes among 28 thermometers; the lines to each thermometer vary in length, so the line capacitance seen by the readout varies. To make each measurement in 1/30 second and still use an alternating current to minimize the effects of offset drifts, 75 Hz was used for the excitation frequency. The circuit is shown in Figure 2. Note all of the components except for the thermometers are maintained in a RF shielded box with a controlled temperature.

The readout of each thermometer is accomplished in 5 phases. Each phase is 6.7 ms long. During phases 1 & 3 the excitation current and integration signal are positive, while for phases 2 & 4 both are negative (Fig 3). During the fifth phase the current is zero. During the first half of the fifth phase the integrator is decoupled from its input and the result is digitized. During the second half of the fifth phase the integrating capacitor is shorted to reset it for the next thermometer. At the transition from the phase 5 to phase 1 the current and signal multiplexers are switched to the next thermometer (or to a reference resistor). The readout multiplexes among four calibration resistors as well as the 28 thermometers. The 32 inputs are read sequentially, and the results are sequentially relayed to a computer with RS232 protocol at 2400 Baud. The multiplexing and the off phase together reduce the duty cycle to 2.5%, so the average power dissipation is only $`1`$ nW. The same clock is used for the instrumentation phases as for the digital readout, so the time for a single sample is 1/30 second. Thus it takes 1.067 seconds for a complete cycle.

The integrating capacitor is polypropylene for stability (Sprague 730P). The charging time constant is 20 ms. Low resistance discharge resistors make the discharge time constant 0.2 ms. While the signal is digitized the capacitor is essentially disconnected from any input. Figure 4 shows the signal on the integrating capacitor for five samples during a laboratory test. The digitize command (also shown) initiates the digitization at the beginning of phase 5 of the cycle just as the integrating capacitor is decoupled from the input and the current to the thermometer is zeroed.

The metal film calibration resistors were characterized: The observed change in their resistance is less than 0.5% between 295 K and 77 K. The values of these resistors are distributed over the dynamic range of the RuO2 thermometers.

## 3 PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD DESIGN

To minimize the noise pickup between components, the printed circuit board was designed with internal ground and power planes. The circuit traces were distributed on the top and bottom of the board to allow for field modification of the circuit. The analog components were clustered around the opamps to keep the leads short, and the digital components were pushed to the outer edges of the circuit board to minimize their coupling into the measurement circuitry. The multiplexer chips were kept close to the input connector and the opamp to minimize line length.

## 4 TESTING DESCRIPTION

During testing, the circuitry and wiring were optimized for low noise. The offset resistor, nominally 400 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, was tuned to 329 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to null the integrator reading at 25 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (midscale or 2.7 K). Capacitance (50 pF) was added in parallel with each calibration resistor to approximately match the measured line capacitance to the sensors, and 30 $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ was added in series on each end to match the line resistance. The feedback capacitance in the excitation stage was set at 1 nF to roll off of the square wave to reduce the high frequency noise while maintaining sufficient fidelity in the square wave to avoid spikes in the demodulation. The output time constant is 0.2 ms. The cables connecting the instrument box to the dewar are 41 conductor braid-shielded cable. The shielding was grounded at both ends to minimize ground pickup noise, and the thermometer cables were separated from the cables that carry the driver lines to the ferrite switches in the instrument.

Nominally the readout voltage-to-ohm conversion is linear. For flight instrumentation and the temperature control (see §5), a simple linear fit between the 20 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and 25 k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ reference resistors was used. For detailed post-flight analysis calculations a second order fit was used for all four of the reference resistors. The data for the reference resistors were smoothed over 32 second intervals to minimize the noise contribution from the reference resistors. The second order fit only changes the value by a few ohms (about 1 mK).

Once the resistance was determined, the table of calibration temperatures, and resistances for each resistor, obtained in ground calibration testing, was interpolated to arrive at a temperature estimate. The final uncertainty is dominated by the calibration process rather than the readout uncertainty.

## 5 THERMAL CONTROL

Stable temperatures of the radiometer components are required for the ARCADE science mission. To determine the coupling parameters of the radiometer to individual components, it is important to be able to change the temperature of those individual components selectively. To accomplish this, the components were placed under closed-loop thermal control.

Closed-loop thermal control was performed using; 1. the temperature sensing described above, 2. a simple resistive heater driven by a D$``$A, and 3. a software proportional-integral-differential (PID) control loop. A PID control loop imposes a restoring action proportional to the error signal (the P). In many situations this leads to oscillation so a damping term is added (the D). But an external bias leads to a long term error so an integral correction is included (the I).The signal for the control loop, in this case, was the difference between the measured temperature and the desired temperature (in K). The control output is calculated in watts and then converted to the appropriate value for the D$``$A and heater driving circuits. Ten control loops were implemented for the various instrument components.

The PID loop has an update rate of $``$1 Hz, limited by the update rate on the temperature sensors. The PID parameters for each item to be controlled were determined empirically by using measured time constants and oscillation frequencies. The differential parameter was intentionally set to a value closer to zero than would be optimal for transient response. This allowed us to have robust control loops that do not oscillate over a wide temperature range, at a small cost in settling time after a commanded temperature change.

For each loop, only a single set of parameters was used to cover the temperature range from 2 - 20 K. Typical time constants for internal instrument components were of order 10 seconds. Typical control parameters were of order $`k_p=0.1`$ (W/K) (proportional term), $`k_i=0.015`$ (W/K-s) (integral term), and $`k_d=0.02`$ (W-s/K) (differential term).

If the temperature error was more than a maximum value (typically 5 K), the PID loop was temporarily suspended and the heater turned full on or off. Once the temperature error was reduced to below the maximum value, PID control was restored. This loop override was useful for making quick large temperature changes. Figure 5 shows the in-flight thermal control performance of the 10 GHz internal load.

## 6 PERFORMANCE IN FLIGHT

Performing temperature measurement at $``$30 km altitude puts reliability and simplicity at a premium. Care must be taken to avoid arcing (far easier at low pressure), and to make the circuit robust in the face of uncertain temperatures and launch shocks. However, the battery powered gondola has advantages as well. The circuit is far away from the 60 Hz that plagues laboratory measurements. And the balloon ride is very smooth (after launch) eliminating the ground vibration. Even the air currents are light (as the balloon follows the wind), stable and at low pressure. These together allow the inflight noise to be lower than the best measured noise in the laboratory before launch.

The 4 reference resistor measurements drifted only by about five counts (4 $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$) over the entire flight. Most of the changes occurred in the form of discrete steps or jumps. Data near the jumps was excised. The cause of these steps was not determined although they appeared in the measurements of all of the thermometers as well. After calibration the RMS noise of the measurements was approximately 1 $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for each sample (Fig 6). This corresponds to 0.15 mK on the RuO2 thermometers at the critical temperature of 2.7 K, comparable to bridge measurements done in the laboratory7.

The final performance is shown in Figure 7. It is not clear if the low frequency noise (below 0.02 Hz) is low frequency drift in the thermometry system or actual drifts in the temperature of the instrumented component. However by shifting the target between the different frequency antennas every minute or so, the low frequency noise will not be an issue in measuring the Cosmic Background Radiation at the sub mK level.

## 7 Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the IR laboratory staff of the NASA/GSFC Code 685. We are also grateful to Leah Johnson, Elizabeth Cantando, and Paul Alexandre Rischard for assisting with the testing and installation during their summer program, and Anatoly Brekhman and Gary Palmer II for wiring the thermometers during their school-year internships.


text:
# 1 Introduction and Observations

## 1 Introduction and Observations

The Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating (HETGS) and RXTE Proportional Counter Array (PCA) observed GRS 1915+105 in the low hard state on 2000 April 24 (MJD: 51658.06654, orbital phase zero \[Greiner, Cuby, & McCaughrean(2001)\]) for $``$ 31.4 ks. The absolute absorption corrected luminosity $`L_{\mathrm{bol}}L_X>6.4\times 10^{38}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> . The Greenbank Interferometer radio observations on 2000 April 24.54 indicate a flux of $`20\pm 4`$ mJy at 2.25 GHz, which is consistent with the presence of a steady jet.

## 2 Surrounding cold material, XAFS and dust

We detect prominent K-shell absorption edges of Fe, S, Si, and Mg (Fig. 1). The equivalent Hydrogen column densities $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ from Mg and S (assuming solar abundances) are consistent with the $`3\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ value expected from neutral line-of-sight absorption. This is contrasted with the $`N_\mathrm{H}9\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ value derived from Fe and Si, indicating anomalous abundances, that is likely associated with the environment of GRS 1915+105. However, the possibility for unusual line-of-sight abundances cannot currently be ruled out.

We additionally report the exciting possibility for the first astrophysical detection of XAFS (X-ray Absorption Fine Structure), which is most notable in the Si edge. If confirmed, such a positive detection of the details of absorption by material in solids (e.g. interstellar grains) will have important consequences for (the beginning of) solid state astrophysics, by which grain properties can be extracted via the solid’s inner compound structure.

## 3 The ionized features from the accretion disk atmosphere

In addition to the neutral edges, the presence of highly ionized material can be surmised from the detection of H– and He–like Fe xxvi and Fe xxv resonant absorption and possibly emission. Assuming photoionization and a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$ power law ionizing spectrum, we calculate lower limits for the plasma conditions (i.e. ionization parameter $`\xi `$, temperature, and equivalent hydrogen column $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ in that region) using the ratio of the ionic column densities of Fe xxvi ($`N_{\mathrm{Fe26}}4\times 10^{17}`$) to Fe xxv ($`N_{\mathrm{Fe25}}<1.1\times 10^{17}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) :

$$(𝐈)\frac{N_{\mathrm{Fe26}}}{N_{\mathrm{Fe25}}}\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{log}\xi >\hfill & 4.15[\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1]\hfill \\ \mathrm{T}>\hfill & 2.4\times 10^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6}}\mathrm{K}(\mathrm{temperature})\hfill \\ N_\mathrm{H}>\hfill & 2.8\times 10^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}22}}\mathrm{cm}^2(\mathrm{in}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{absorber}\mathrm{region})\hfill \end{array}$$

Using these results and the relationship between the luminosity L and $`\xi `$, we can estimate an upper limit for the distance to the absorber $`R`$ and a lower limit to the hydrogen equivalent number density $`n`$ (see Fig. 2 for illustration).

$$(\mathrm{𝐈𝐈})[L=\frac{\xi }{nR^2};N_\mathrm{H}=n\mathrm{\Delta }R]\{\begin{array}{ccc}R<\hfill & 2\times 10^{11}\mathrm{cm}\mathrm{assumes}\hfill & \\ n>\hfill & 2\times 10^{12}\mathrm{cm}^3\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{R}}{\mathrm{R}}<0.1\hfill & \end{array}$$

## 4 Outflowing material and variability

It is plausible that the ionized absorber (at $`R<10^{11}\mathrm{cm}`$) responsible for the H- and He-like Fe lines is associated with material flowing out from the X-ray source (e.g. wind), which we can compare with the accretion rate. We posit a velocity $`v100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for the calculation of the (spherical) mass outflow rate $`\dot{M}_{flow}`$ :

$`\dot{M}_{flow}=4\pi r^2nm_pv({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{4\pi }})`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi m_pv({\displaystyle \frac{L_x}{\xi }})({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{4\pi }})9.5\times 10^{18}({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{4\pi }})\mathrm{gm}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (1)
where $`r`$ is the characteristic radius, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ solid angle subtended by the outflow, and the density of the absorbing material $`\rho =nm_p`$ is the product of the proton mass $`m_\mathrm{p}`$ and the number density of the electrons $`n`$ in the absorber. This can be contrasted with

$$\dot{M}_{accretion}=\frac{L_{bol}}{\eta c^2}7.1\times 10^{18}\mathrm{gm}\mathrm{s}^1$$
(2)
where the efficiency $`\eta 0.1`$ and the lower limit on the bolometric luminosity $`L_{bol}L_x`$ is used. Such a comparison for $`v100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ shows that as the covering fraction (i.e. $`\mathrm{\Omega }/4\pi `$) approaches unity, the dynamics can be such that the material being accreted is re-released in some kind of flow.

This possibility for a (slow) outflow is supported by variability results. (1) The RXTE data show that the most significant variations occur in the disk blackbody component which supports an accretion disk origin for the ionized lines (Fig. 3a). (2) These variations appear to be correlated with the spectral behavior seen in the temporal subsets of the Chandra data, which show that the ionized lines evolve on $`10`$ ks timescales (Fig. 3b). In particular, the Fe xxv absorption (Fig. 3b, second panel) is more pronounced during the dip in the light curve (Fig. 3a, panels 1 & 2), which is also correlated with the notable diminution of the disk flux (Fig. 3b, panel 3). In contrast, Fe xxvi dominates during the brightest periods of our observation. Additionally, we note that an $``$ 20% change in the flux at these ionizations implies an $``$ 30% change in the ionization fraction of Fe xxv (assuming that $`\xi `$ scales with the ionizing flux, while $`n`$ and $`R`$ remain constant). This is not sufficient to explain the lack of Fe xxv absorption, and dominance of Fe xxvi absorption during the periods when the count rate is high, indicating that the ionizing flux is only part of the solution, and changing density the other factor. For the values of $`R10^{11}`$ cm and flow velocity $`v10^7\mathrm{cm}\mathrm{s}^1`$ discussed earlier, it is plausible that the observed spectral variability can be attributed to a flow which can change on timescales of 10 ks. This is not inconceivable since 10 ks is a very long time, corresponding to many dynamical timescales of the relevant parts of the disk, in the life of a source like GRS 1915+105. Furthermore, since this source accretes near its Eddington limit, one would expect the mass flow rate and wind density to be strong functions of the luminosity, such that the actual structure of the wind (i.e. density and size) can change as a function of the luminosity.

## 5 Summary

The Chandra  HETGS and simultaneous RXTE  PCA observations of GRS 1915+105 during the low hard state reveal :

$``$ Cold material with anomalous Fe and Si abundances : There is a possibility that these abundance excesses may be related to material that is associated with the immediate environment of GRS 1915+105. See also similar suggestions from IR studies (\[Mirabel et al.(1996)\],\[Martí, Mirabel, Chaty, & Rodríguez(2000)\]). Abundance anomalies (of the lighter $`\alpha `$-process elements such as sulfur and oxygen) have also been reported from optical spectra of the companion stars of the other microquasars GRO J1655–40 and V4641 Sgr (\[Israelian et al.(1999)\],\[Brown et al.(2000)\],\[Orosz et al.(2001)\]).

$``$ Hot material from the accretion disk atmosphere/wind/corona is detected in the form of highly ionized H- and He-like Fe lines.
$``$ Flow : The possibility for the presence of a slow flow is suggested by variability studies.
$``$ Dust : If confirmed, the detection of XAFS will have important implications for directly probing the structure and chemical composition of interstellar grains.

## Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Chandra grant GO 0-1103X. JCL also acknowledge support from the NASA contract NAS 8-01129.