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# The X-ray spectrum of the atoll source 4U 1608-52

## 1 Introduction

Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs) with a neutron star primary can be observationally divided into two main categories, namely atolls and Z sources (Hasinger & van der Klis 1989). This classification is based on changes in both spectral and timing properties as the source varies, and probably reflects differences in both mass accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$, and magnetic field, $`B`$. The Z sources have high luminosity (typically more than 50 per cent of the Eddington limit) and magnetic field ($`B>10^9`$ G) while the atolls have lower luminosity (generally less than 10 per cent of Eddington) and low magnetic field ($`B10^8`$ G) (Hasinger & van der Klis 1989).

Both atolls and Z-sources show spectral changes which form a well defined track in a colour-colour diagram. The atolls show hard, power-law spectra at low luminosities (island state), which are startlingly like the low/hard spectra of Galactic black hole binaries (e.g. Barret & Vedrenne 1993; van Paradijs & van der Klis 1994; Barret et al. 2000). At higher luminosities the spectra are typically much softer (banana state; e.g. di Salvo et al. 2000; Piraino, Santangelo & Kaaret 2000). The Z sources always show soft spectra, but there are subtle spectral changes which show up as a Z-shaped track on a colour-colour diagram. Both types of sources move along their tracks on the colour-colour diagram on time-scale of hours to days, except the island state of atolls, where motion can take days or weeks. They do not jump between the track branches. Most of the X-ray spectral and timing parameters depend only on the position of a source in this diagram. This is usually parameterized by the curve length, $`S`$, along the track.

Until recently the atolls were thought to show a characteristic C- (or atoll) shaped track on the colour-colour diagram. However, mapping the full range of colour-colour changes for these LMXBs is difficult because the data available from most of the sources show little variability. There are only a few transient LMXBs with enough observations covering wide range of luminosities, to follow the whole track traced out in the colour-colour diagram. In these transient systems the C-shaped path is only a subset of a larger track. At low luminosities, evolution within the island state forms an upper branch, turning the C into a Z (Gierliński & Done 2002; Muno, Remillard & Chakrabarty 2002).

While the colour-colour diagram is clearly useful as a way of parameterizing the spectral changes, true spectral fitting gives much more information on the underlying physical changes in the source emission. Here we look at the detailed spectral shape of the transient atoll 4U 1608–52 as a function of its position on the colour-colour diagram, and show for the first time that all the spectra can be fit with a model in which a Comptonized boundary layer around the neutron star illuminates the accretion disc, giving rise to a relativistically smeared (and often highly ionized) reflected component and iron line. We show that the spectral changes mapped by the colour-colour diagram are consistent with a picture in which increasing average mass accretion rate increases the optical depth of the boundary layer and decreases the inner radius of the accretion disc.

## 2 The source

4U 1608–52 is one of the transient neutron star LMXBs, with outbursts triggered by the disc instability which reoccur on time scales of $`80`$ days to 2 years (Lochner & Roussel-Dupré 1994). However, little is known about the system as the optical counterpart is very faint (Grindlay & Liller 1978; Wachter 1997). The distance is likewise poorly known. The current best estimate of 3.6 kpc is from observations of flux saturated (radius expansion, Eddington limited) type I X-ray bursts (e.g. Nakamura et al. 1989). The inclination is constrained only by the fact that there are no eclipses in the X-ray light curve. The neutron star spin may be indicated by the recently detected burst oscillation in RXTE at 620 Hz (Muno at al. 2001)

Hasinger and van der Klis (1989) classified 4U 1608–52 as an atoll source from its spectral and timing properties. Mitsuda et al. (1989) observed with Tenma a continuous spectral transition from the banana high-luminosity, soft thermal spectrum to the island state with its low-intensity, hard power-law spectrum. They successfully fit these spectra by a two-component model consisting of the multicolour blackbody from the accretion disc and the Comptonized blackbody from the boundary layer. Higher energy observations with BATSE show that the island state power law is cut-off above $``$ 100 keV (Zhang et al. 1996). An iron fluorescence line is detected in the Tenma X-ray spectra (Suzuki at al. 1984) with intensity weakly correlated with the source flux (Hirano et al. 1987). Ginga observations showed spectra in varying stages between the island and banana states, where the iron line (modelled including the Compton reflected component) increased as the spectrum softened and the source moved towards the banana branch (Yoshida et al. 1993).

The power density spectrum of 4U 1608–52 in the island state resembles that of the black holes in the hard state (Yoshida et al. 1993). It is characterized by a flat top noise ($`P_\nu \nu ^s`$, with the slope $`s0`$) below and a turn-over above a certain frequency, $`\nu _b`$ 0.2–1 Hz. There is also a low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) around 2–9 Hz. RXTE has seen a similar spectrum, where the high-frequency noise can be represented by the exponentially cut-off power law (Yu et al. 1997). In the banana state the power spectrum consists of very low-frequency noise below $``$ 1 Hz (power law with $`s1`$), and an exponentially cut-off power law at higher frequencies (Méndez et al. 1999).

Twin kilohertz QPO’s were detected by RXTE (van Paradijs et al. 1996; Berger at al. 1996; Méndez et al. 1998a) with varying peak separation (Méndez et al. 1998b). A third kilohertz QPO has also been detected (Jonker, Méndez & van der Klis 2000). The kHz QPOs are only found in a limited range of the colour-colour diagram, near the transition between the island and banana states (Méndez et al. 1999).

## 3 Data analysis

We have analyzed RXTE observations from the 1998 February–April outburst (archival numbers P30062, P30188, and P30502) and from low-luminosity observations in 1996 December (P10094) and 1998 June, August and September (P30419). All these data belong to the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) gain Epoch 3. A conservative prescription to characterise uncertainties in the instrument response is to add 2 per cent systematics to the data for bright sources (e.g. Cui et al. 1997), irrespective of which detector/layer combination and gain epoch are used. However, inspection of data from the Crab shows that in Epoch 3, when using only top layer data from detectors 0 and 1, smaller systematics of 0.5 per cent are more appropriate (Wilson & Done 2001). We have repeated this Crab analysis, and found that even using a single absorbed (fixed at $`N_H=3.2\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2; Massaro et al. 2000) power law gives a reduced $`\chi ^2=1.1`$ with 0.5 per cent systematic errors. This clearly shows that there are no residuals in the response (e.g. features from the Xenon edge at 4.7 keV, or from the rapid decrease in effective area at low energies) of the top layer of detectors 0 and 1 at this level at this time. This is not the case for all layers and all detectors, where the reduced $`\chi ^2=2.2`$ with 0.5 per cent systematic errors and there is a clear feature in the residuals at low energies. Thus we use only data from Epoch 3, and from the top layer of detectors 0 and 1, and apply 0.5 per cent systematic errors. However, we have checked that our conclusions are robust even to using 1 per cent systematics, although this gives unrealistically low $`\chi ^2`$ values.

First, we created PCA light-curves for each energy channel in 128 s time bins. We excluded all the data affected by the type I bursts. This gave us 240 ks of PCA data. The light-curves were used to build a colour-colour diagram, defining a soft colour as a ratio of 4–6.4 to 3–4 keV count rates, and a hard colour as a 9.7–16 over 6.4–9.7 keV ratio. These count rates are corrected for the slow variations in the PCA response (van Straaten et al. 2000; see Gierliński & Done 2002 for technical details applied here). The diagram is shown in Fig. 1.

Next, we extracted the PCA and High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE) spectra corresponding to different positions in the colour-colour diagram. We have assumed that 4U 1608–52 shows a Z-shaped track on the diagram, with inferred accretion rate increasing along the Z: from left to right on the upper branch, through the diagonal to the lower branch (Gierliński & Done 2002; Muno et al. 2002). The diagonal branch is sparsely covered in this data selection. We divided the diagram into eight regions (boxes), as shown in Fig. 1, and averaged the spectra over each box. Neutron star LMXBs are known to vary in luminosity at given colours, creating the so-called parallel lines in colour-intensity diagrams (e.g. van der Klis 2001). Therefore, within one box we average spectra of different intensities. Though not necessary identical, these spectra should be very similar, considering nearness of colours. In the classic terminology of the atoll sources boxes 1–3 belong to the island state, boxes 5–8 to the banana, while the status of the box 4 cannot be established without joint spectral and timing analysis. To avoid accumulating spectral data from periods distant in time, we have created spectra 1 and 2 from 1996 data only (slanted crosses in Fig. 1), and spectra 3–8 from 1998 data only (filled squares in Fig. 1). The PCA spectra are accompanied by the simultaneous HEXTE spectra extracted from cluster 0. We will refer to these joint spectra as S1–S8.

For spectral fitting we use the X-ray spectral fitting package xspec version 11 (Arnaud 1996). The error of each model parameter is given for a 90 per cent confidence interval. We use the 3–20 keV PCA data and 20–150 keV HEXTE data. The relative normalization of the PCA and HEXTE instruments is still uncertain, so we allow this to be an additional free parameter in all spectral fits.

## 4 Spectral model

Unlike black holes, the accreting neutron stars have both a surface and a magnetic field. Therefore, their X-ray spectra are expected to be more complex than these of the black holes. As well as emission from the accretion flow (direct emission from an optically thick, X-ray illuminated disc and/or an optically thin inner flow, corona or active regions; e.g. Czerny, Czerny & Grindlay 1986; Esin, McClintock & Narayan 1997; Beloborodov 1999) there can be emission from the neutron star surface and the boundary layer (e.g. Popham & Sunyaev 2001).

Observationally, the X-ray spectra of LMXBs in the soft state are well known to require at least two different spectral components, but the interpretation of these is not unique. The so-called Eastern model (Mitsuda et al. 1984, 1989) assumes that the soft component is from the disc, while the hard component is due to Comptonization in the boundary layer or the inner disc. In the Western model (White, Stella & Parmar 1988) the soft component is a single-temperature blackbody from the surface, while the hard component is a Comptonized emission from the disc. While it is likely that both disc and boundary layer are Comptonized at some level, it seems more probable that the boundary layer should have a higher temperature than the accretion disc (Popham & Sunyaev 2001).

The hard state X-ray spectra of LMXBs are similar to those of the black hole candidates in their low/hard spectral state. They are dominated by a power law, with some contribution from an additional soft thermal component. The power law is usually interpreted as Comptonization of seed photons in hot, optically thin plasma (see e.g. Barret et al. 2000).

Thus, a physically motivated model which can potentially fit the hard component in all spectral states is thermal Comptonization. An optically thin, hot plasma would produce a power-law spectrum (island state), while a plasma with intermediate or high optical depth and lower temperature can create a softer spectrum in which the high energy rollover due to the electron temperature can be seen (banana state). We model the Comptonized spectrum using an approximate solution of Kompaneets (1956) equation (Zdziarski, Johnson & Magdziarz 1996). The model (hereafter thcomp, not included in the standard distribution of xspec) is parameterized by the plasma electron temperature, $`T_e`$ and optical depth $`\tau _e`$ (or equivalently the asymptotic spectral index), and blackbody seed photon temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{seed}}`$.

The seed photon energy is very important in the Comptonization model, since it gives a low-energy cut-off in the spectrum. For typical mass accretion rates onto a neutron star the seed photons from either the inner accretion disc or neutron star surface should have $`kT_{\mathrm{seed}}1`$ keV. This is plainly not far from the observed X-ray bandpass, so simple analytic approximations (e.g. the compst model or a cut-off power law) for the Compton scattered spectrum are not valid, since they extend towards lower energies as a uncut power law (see e.g. Done, Życki & Smith 2002). The model thcomp we use in this paper treats the seed photons low-energy cut-off properly.

The boundary layer should illuminate the inner disc, producing a relativistically broadened iron line and associated reflected continuum. While a broad iron line is often identified in atoll spectra, the reflected continuum which must accompany any line emission has only been fit to island state spectra. We calculate the Compton reflection of the thcomp continuum spectrum using a model where both the continuum reflection and the line are calculated self-consistently for a given ionization state (Życki, Done & Smith 1998). The reflected spectrum (continuum and line) is also relativistically smeared for a given inner disc radius, $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$. We approximate relativistic smearing by convolving the reflected spectrum with a relativistic line profile (Fabian et al. 1989).

First we demonstrate explicitly the need for a two component continuum in all the data sets. The thcomp continuum model and its reflection alone cannot give satisfactory fits for the spectra S1–S5, where $`\chi ^2>120`$ at 80 or 79 degrees of freedom. There is a strong soft excess in the residuals below $``$ 5 keV, which is particularly marked in S1 and S5 where $`\chi ^2>200`$. We use a multicolour disc blackbody (diskbb in xspec; Mitsuda et al. 1984), to describe the soft component. This model is parameterized by the disc temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{soft}}`$, at the inner disc radius ($`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$) and normalization $`N_{\mathrm{soft}}R_{\mathrm{in}}^2`$. However, its shape is poorly constrained by the RXTE data so it can equally well be a single-temperature blackbody. The spectra S6–S8 give good fits without the soft component ($`\chi ^2`$ = 80, 88 and 75 at 78 d.o.f., for S6, S7 and S8, respectively), though even here inclusion of diskbb improves the fits significantly. The soft component in the case of the weakest improvement (for S6 where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=11.6`$) is statistically significant at 99.7 per cent level.

The Compton reflection (including the self-consistent iron line emission) is always significantly detected also. Using the two component continuum model (diskbb+thcomp) without a reflected component gives an increase in $`\chi ^2`$ by more than 50 in all spectra (corresponding to an extremely high significance level).

These results motivate us to choose a model consisting of thermal Comptonization, its Compton reflection and the disc blackbody as the model with which to fit all the spectra.

## 5 Results

For spectral fitting we use the model described in the previous section. We apply absorption corresponding to a fixed galactic hydrogen column of $`N_H=1.5\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 (Penninx et al. 1989). In the island state spectra, S1-S3, the HEXTE statistics at higher energies are not good enough to constrain the electron temperature of the Comptonized component, $`T_e`$. The high energy cutoff begins to be seen in S4 and S5, although again the uncertainties on $`T_e`$ are large. All of these spectra provide only lower temperature limits. Therefore, we fit the spectra S1–S5 with $`kT_e`$ fixed at 50 keV, a value consistent with all these data sets, and then calculate the lower limits on the electron temperature. On the other hand, the spectra S6–S8 are able to constrain the electron temperature well.

The data cannot constrain the inner disc radius from relativistic smearing of the reflected component. Spectral fitting gives only lower limits on $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$, which are typically 10–20$`R_g`$ (where $`R_gGM/c^2`$) except for spectra S4 and S5 which are consistent with $`R_{\mathrm{in}}=6R_g`$. We fix $`R_{\mathrm{in}}=20R_g`$ in all the fits.

We fit all the spectra with the above constraints, and show the spectra unfolded with the best-fitting models in Fig. 2. The best-fitting model parameters are shown in Tab. 1 and Fig. 3.

We calculate the unabsorbed bolometric flux, $`F_{\mathrm{bol}}`$, from the model. We cannot precisely estimate its uncertainties as this depends on the model used as well as on the statistics. However, fits with different soft component model (disc or blackbody) show consistently similar results, with the same trend: an increase from S1 to S3, a drop at S4 and a further increase from S5 to S8. This supports the inferred direction of the increasing accretion rate on the colour-colour diagram, tracing out a Z-shaped track (see also Gierliński & Done 2002).

With increasing inferred accretion rate the spectra become brighter, softer, and have a decreasing electron temperature as seen from the high energy cutoff. The change in the spectral shape between the island and banana states is clearly visible. Spectrum S4 bears more similarities to the banana state spectra than to island state, so it likely belongs to the banana state. The curvature expected from the low energy cut-off in the Comptonized spectrum close to the seed photon energy is clearly seen in spectra S4–S8, where $`kT_{seed}>1`$ keV. The lower seed photon temperature derived for the island state means the low energy cutoff is less pronounced (not significantly detected) in spectra S1-S3.

The electron temperature of the hard Comptonized component is consistent with a monotonic decline along the colour-colour track, while the optical depth is consistent with a corresponding monotonic increase. These two parameters are difficult to disentangle in data in which the high-energy rollover (at a few $`kT_e`$) is not observed, as in the island state spectra. However, while the optical depth derived for a given temperature also depends on the assumed geometry, it is clear that the island state spectra have $`\tau _e`$ of order unity, while the banana branch has $`\tau _e1`$. We derive similar optical depths and temperatures when we replace the approximate thcomp thermal Comptonization model with compps Comptonization code (Poutanen & Svensson 1996), which finds a numerical solution of the Comptonization problem explicitly considering successive scattering orders.

Reflection (mostly driven by the detection of the self consistently produced iron line) is always significantly detected, although the inferred solid angle subtended by the reflecting material is generally rather low, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi 0.1`$. The spectrum S4 has somewhat more reflection but this is not strongly statistically significant. Reflection is always strongly ionized, with ionization increasing in the higher luminosity banana spectra. The presence of reflection in all spectra (both in island and banana states) demonstrates that the broad, ionized iron line seen from these sources can indeed be produced by illumination of the accretion disc.

The rather small reflected fraction in the island state is in conflict with $`\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi `$ 0.5–1 found in 2–20 keV Ginga X-ray spectra of 4U 1608–52 by Yoshida et al. (1993) and Zdziarski, Lubiński & Smith (1999). This is mostly due to the continuum model used. A power law and its reflected component does indeed give a larger $`\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi `$, but these fits are statistically unacceptable, as well as physically inconsistent. Comptonization does not give rise to a power law at energies close to the seed photon energies, and the data also require a soft component as well as the Comptonized emission. Our results are consistent (although with large uncertainties) with a reflection-spectral shape correlation for spectra S1-S4, as claimed by Zdziarski et al. (1999) although there is plainly no overall correlation that extends from the island state all the way through the banana branch.

The observed soft component shows rather complex behaviour. Fig. 4 shows the soft component flux derived from the model given in Table 1, versus its temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{soft}}`$. There is a striking difference between the behaviour of the soft component in the island and banana states. The figure also shows the curve $`F_{\mathrm{soft}}T_{\mathrm{soft}}^4`$, as expected if the disc geometry remained constant. The uncertainties are large, but while the banana state spectra could be consistent with this relation, the island state is clearly not. This can be also seen from the fitting results (Fig. 3), where the normalization $`N_{\mathrm{soft}}R_{\mathrm{in}}^2`$ is fairly constant along the banana track

The difference in the soft component between the island and banana can be further seen in Fig. 5. The seed photons temperature is systematically higher then the soft component temperature in the banana state. Though 90 per cent confidence errors for $`T_{\mathrm{seed}}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{soft}}`$ overlap (see Tab. 1), these two parameters are correlated and a fit with forced $`T_{\mathrm{seed}}=T_{\mathrm{soft}}`$ is significantly worse. In the island state the uncertainties on these temperatures are substantial but $`T_{\mathrm{seed}}`$ is consistent with being equal to $`T_{\mathrm{soft}}`$, and the soft component can be the source of seed photons. This result does not change when we use a single-temperature blackbody instead of the multicolour disc. Conversely, in the banana state, the observed soft component is not the source of seed photons for the Comptonized component.

In the island state, the observed seed photons (which are consistent with being the seed photons) have rather low normalization. If these were emitted from a disc then the inner disc radius can be estimated from the diskbb model as

$$R_{\mathrm{in}}0.61N_{\mathrm{soft}}^{1/2}\frac{2.7}{\eta }\frac{D}{3.6\mathrm{kpc}}\left(\frac{f_{\mathrm{col}}}{1.8}\right)^2\left(\frac{0.5}{\mathrm{cos}i}\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{km},$$
(1)
where $`D`$ is the distance to the source, $`i`$ is the inclination angle of the disc, $`f_{\mathrm{col}}`$ is the ratio of the colour to effective temperature (Shimura & Takahara 1995) and $`\eta `$ is the correction factor for the inner torque-free boundary condition (Gierliński et al. 1999: $`\eta =2.7`$ for $`R_{\mathrm{in}}=6R_g`$ and less for higher $`R_{\mathrm{in}}`$). With $`\eta =2.7`$, $`D`$ = 3.6 kpc, $`f_{\mathrm{col}}=1.8`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.5`$ we find $`R_{\mathrm{in}}<5`$ km for S1–S3. This is less than the expected neutron star radius of $``$ 10 km, and suggests that though we fit the soft component by a disc model, it might not be a disc at all. Even if the colour temperature correction is as high as $`f_{\mathrm{col}}=2.7`$ (Merloni, Fabian & Ross 2000), then S3 still yields $`R_{\mathrm{in}}<5.5`$ km. There are of course more unknowns in Eq. (1), in particular the inclination angle, but $`R_{\mathrm{in}}>10`$ km requires $`i>81^{}`$, which is excluded by the lack of X-ray eclipses.

It is therefore unlikely that the soft component is the accretion disc in the island state. Instead, we suggest it comes from the neutron star surface. A fit of a model including a single-temperature blackbody instead of a disc to the island state data yields an apparent radius of the blackbody of $`4\pm 2`$ km.

Conversely, in the banana states, the soft component is consistent with emission from the accretion disc, although these photons do not provide the seed photons for Compton scattering. The inner disc radius is consistent with remaining constant throughout the banana state. From the fit to the typical banana spectrum S6 we estimate $`R_{\mathrm{in}}30`$ km, a value consistent with the disc truncated not very far from the neutron star.

If the soft component is the neutron star surface in the spectra S1–S3 and the accretion disc in the spectra S4–S8, then the change of trend in $`T_{\mathrm{soft}}`$ and $`N_{\mathrm{soft}}`$ between S3 and S4 (see Fig. 3) is naturally explained, and does not contradict our assumption about the direction of increase in the accretion rate in the upper branch in the colour-colour diagram. We discuss a physical picture for the evolution of the soft and seed photons in Section 7.

## 6 Comparison to other sources

The X-ray spectra of 4U 1608–52 analyzed here are entirely typical of atoll sources. Having a good coverage of a large luminosity variation, we can compare our results to previous observations of other atolls in various luminosity states.

The island state is characterized by a hard, power-law spectrum, similar to the hard state of black hole binaries, though a bit softer. The presence of a soft component has been reported before in SAX J1808.4–3658 (Gierliński, Done & Barret 2002), 4U 1724–308 (Guainazzi et al. 1998), 1E 1724–3045 and SLX 1735–269 (Barret et al. 2000). In these sources, the radius of the soft component is not consistent with the accretion disc (except perhaps SLX 1735–269, though there is Galactic bulge emission component in the spectrum, which makes spectral modelling difficult; see Barret et al. 2000). This is consistent with what we find in 4U 1608–52 and suggestive that the soft component arises from the neutron star surface rather than from the accretion disc.

The banana state X-ray spectra are soft, and here again the 4U 1608–52 is entirely similar to other atolls. A two-component model has been successfully applied to e.g. KS 1731–260 (Narita, Grindlay & Barret 2001), GX 3+1, Ser X-1 (Oosterbroek et al. 2001) and MXB 1728–34 (di Salvo et al. 2000), the soft component being consistent with the disc. On the other hand, one must be very cautious here, since the soft component properties strongly depend on the Comptonization model applied, and inappropriate approximations have often been used (see Done et al. 2001 for details).

The ambiguity in the spectral shape of the soft component has been reported before (e.g. Guainazzi et al. 1998; Barret et al. 2000). Interestingly, in MXB 1728–34, even BeppoSAX spectra which extend down to much lower energies than the PCA cannot distinguish between a disc and blackbody spectrum for the soft component (see di Salvo et al. 2000).

Compton reflection has been reported before in the island state, in e.g. SAX 1808.4–3658 (Gierliński et al. 2002), 4U 1728–34 (Narita et al. 2001), 4U 0614+091 (Piraino et al. 1999), GS 1826–238 and SLX 1735–269 (Barret et al. 2000). However, this paper shows the first detection of reflection in the banana state. Previous work has generally fit an ad hoc broad Fe K$`\alpha `$ line, rather than including the self consistently produced reflected continuum e.g. in GX 3+1, Ser X-1 (Oosterbroek et al. 2001) and 4U 1728–34 (Piraino, Santangelo & Kaaret 2000; Di Salvo et al. 2000).

## 7 Discussion and conclusions

We fit the spectra of the atoll 4U 1608-52 at all points along its track on the colour-colour diagram by a physically motivated model, consisting of thermal Comptonization and its Compton reflection, together with a soft component. Both reflection (with the self consistently calculated iron line emission) and the soft component are always statistically significantly detected in the spectra.

There is a dramatic change in spectral shape between the island and banana states, probably caused by an equally dramatic change in the accretion flow geometry. In the island state the observed soft component luminosity and temperature implies an emission region which is smaller than an accretion disc around a neutron star. We suggest it arises from optically thick, thermal emission from surface of the neutron star. The hard component is consistent with Comptonization of these observed soft photons from the neutron star surface by hot electrons in an inner optically thin accretion flow (or outer boundary layer). The optically thin Comptonizing medium has temperature of $``$ 20 keV. We do not see direct emission from the accretion disc in the PCA energy range, but we do see weak reflected emission implying that the disc subtends a solid angle $`0.1\times 2\pi `$ from the point of view of the hard X-ray source.

In the banana branch spectra the Comptonized component is much softer, with temperature of $``$ 5 keV and optical depth of $`1`$. Here the observed soft component is consistent with being from the disc, but the seed photons are not consistent with being the observed soft component, and again it is more likely that the seed photons are produced predominantly by the neutron star surface. This interpretation favours the Eastern model of LMXBs on the banana branch.

A scenario consistent with all of the above results is one in which the main parameter driving the spectral evolution is the average mass accretion rate, which determines the truncation radius of the inner accretion disc. At low mass accretion rates the optically thick disc does not extend down to the neutron star surface, and the inner accretion flow/boundary layer is mostly optically thin. The large radius of the optically thick disc means that its temperature and luminosity is low so it cannot be seen directly in the PCA spectra, and it subtends a rather small solid angle for reflection. Since the accretion flow is not very optically thick then some fraction $`e^\tau 0.3`$ of the emission from the neutron star surface can be seen directly, while the rest is Comptonized into the hard component. As the mass accretion rate increases, so the disc extends further in and the optical depth of the inner flow/boundary layer increases. Eventually the neutron star surface is shrouded by the increasingly optically thick flow, so that these seed photons cannot be seen. The high optical depth also means that the boundary layer emission is then close to thermalizing, so its temperature drops, while the decreasing inner radius of the disc means that its emission starts to become more important in the PCA bandpass.

In this scenario the island state/banana branch transition is marked by the point at which the inner accretion flow collapses into a disc. The disc extends further in so that it is observed more easily as a soft component, softening the soft colour. But it also means that the boundary layer becomes much more optically thick, so its temperature drops, softening the hard colour.

It is plain that this can explain qualitatively the atoll source evolution. We will investigate the quantitative implications of this in a later paper.

## Acknowledgements

This research has been supported in part by the Polish KBN grant 2P03D00514.


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# Has the anomalous single production of the fourth SM family quarks decaying into light Higgs boson been observed by CDF?

## Abstract

Superjet events observed by the CDF Collaboration are interpreted as anomalous single production of the fourth SM family $`u_4`$ quark, decaying into a new light scalar particle. The specific predictions of the proposed mechanism are discussed.

Recently, CDF Collaboration has reported 1  the observation of an excess of events in $`W+2,3`$ jet topologies, the so called “superjet” events, in which a single jet has both a soft lepton and a secondary vertex. These events are interpreted in 2  as scalar quark $`\stackrel{~}{b}`$ with a mass of $`3.6`$ GeV and a lifetime of $`1`$ ps, decaying into $`cl\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ where scalar neutrino is assumed to be massless. In our opinion, this interpretation favors the MSSM scenario with superpartner of the right-handed neutrino as the LSP 3 , because LEP experiments put the limit $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}>44`$ GeV on the mass of superpartners of the left-handed neutrinos 4 . As mentioned in 5 , at least some of these events could be explained as anomalous single production of the fourth SM family (see saleh  and the references therein) quarks via the process $`u_4tgWbg`$. The superjet is associated with the normal $`b`$ quark decay. However, this interpretation leads to an essential excess in single tag events, which is several times larger than CDF observations 1 .

In this letter, we give another interpretation to superjet events. Following our previous study 5 , we still assume that the production is due to anomalous $`q_4qg`$ interaction but the decay chain is changed to $`u_4tx^0Wb\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$. The new proposed particle $`x^0`$ must have a mass around $`45`$ GeV. In this mechanism, superjet is formed by the decay of one $`\tau `$ leptonically and the other one hadronically. There are two possible identifications of $`x^0`$. One possibility is the lightest neutral Higgs boson in SM with extended Higgs sector. The other one is a light neutral dilepton which is expected in preonic models.

The effective Lagrangian for the anomalous interactions between the fourth family quarks, ordinary quarks and the gauge bosons $`V`$ ($`V=\gamma ,Z,g`$) can be written as follows:

$`L={\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _\gamma ^{q_i}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}e_qg_e\overline{q}_4\sigma _{\mu \nu }(A_\gamma ^{q_i}+B_\gamma ^{q_i}\gamma _5)q_iF^{\mu \nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _Z^{q_i}}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }}}g_Z\overline{q}_4\sigma _{\mu \nu }(A_Z^{q_i}+B_Z^{q_i}\gamma _5)q_iZ^{\mu \nu }`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _g^{q_i}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}g_s\overline{q}_4\sigma _{\mu \nu }(A_g^{q_i}+B_g^{q_i}\gamma _5)T^aq_iG_a^{\mu \nu }+h.c.`$ (1)
where $`F^{\mu \nu },Z^{\mu \nu }`$, and $`G^{\mu \nu }`$ are the field strength tensors of the photon, $`Z`$ boson and gluons, respectively; $`T^a`$ are Gell-Mann matrices; $`e_q`$ is the charge of the quark; $`g_e,g_Z`$, and $`g_s`$ are the electroweak, and the strong coupling constants respectively. $`g_Z=g_e/\mathrm{cos}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\theta _W`$ where $`\theta _W`$ is the Weinberg angle. $`A_{\gamma ,Z,g}^q`$ and $`B_{\gamma ,Z,g}^q`$ are the magnitudes of the neutral currents; $`\kappa _{\gamma ,Z,g}`$ define the strength of the anomalous couplings for the neutral currents with a photon, a $`Z`$ boson and a gluon, respectively; $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the cutoff scale for the new physics. We assume all the neutral current magnitudes in Eq. (1) to be equal, satisfying the constraint $`|A|^2+|B|^2=1`$ and take all anomalous couplings as $`\kappa _\gamma ^{q_i}=\kappa _Z^{q_i}=\kappa _g^{q_i}=1`$. We have implemented the new interaction vertices into the CALCHEP calchep  package to calculate the cross sections and branching ratios.

$`x^0`$ as a light Higgs. We require $`u_4tx^0`$ coupling to be sufficiently large in order to provide significant BR($`u_4tx^0`$). On the other hand, the interaction of $`x^0`$ with the intermediate vector bosons should be suppressed in order to avoid contradiction with the LEP data. So, we will denote this particle as a light Higgs boson $`h^0`$. Naturally, the main decay mode of $`h^0`$ should be into kinematically allowed heaviest fermions, namely $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ and $`c\overline{c}`$. In the case of $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$, the branching ratios into possible final states are 0.44 for superjet, 0.12 for all lepton mode, 0.43 for all hadron mode. Similar numbers are valid for $`h^0c\overline{c}`$. In order to have the lifetime of $`h^0`$ to be less than $`1`$ ps, the coupling constant $`a_\tau `$ in the interaction term $`a_\tau h^0\overline{\tau }\tau `$ should be larger than $`5\times 10^7`$.

The number of superjet events can be estimated as

$`N_s`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma (gqu_4)BR(u_4th^0)BR(tbW)`$ (2)
$`BR(h^0superjet)BR(We\nu +\mu \nu )ϵL_{int}`$
where $`ϵ`$ stands for detection efficiency. In Table 1, we present production cross section, branching ratios and total decay width for $`u_4`$ at different mass values, assuming BR($`u_4th^0`$) $`=10\%`$. This assumption corresponds to $`b_{tu_4}0.1`$ where $`b_{tu_4}`$ is the coupling in the interaction term $`b_{tu_4}h^0\overline{t}u_4`$. By taking $`ϵ=0.25`$, BR($`tbW`$) $`=1`$ and BR($`We\nu +\mu \nu `$) $`=0.21`$, we obtain from Eq. (2) number of superjet events $`N_s=6`$ for $`m_{u_4}=300`$ GeV and the integrated luminosity $`L_{int}=106`$ pb-1.

$`x^0`$ as a light dilepton. Second candidate for the identification of $`x^0`$ is a neutral dilepton with zero lepton number 7 . So, we denote this particle as $`D_\tau ^0`$. The difference between $`D_\tau ^0`$ and $`h^0`$ decay modes is that $`D_\tau ^0`$ decays into $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ only. $`D_\tau ^0`$ can be produced in $`u_4`$ decays via the mixing with a diquark $`D_q^0`$, interacting with $`u_4`$ and $`t`$ (for classification of diquarks see 8 ):

$`D_1^0=D_\tau ^0\mathrm{cos}\theta +D_q^0\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ (3)
$`D_2^0=D_\tau ^0\mathrm{sin}\theta +D_q^0\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ (4)
where $`\theta `$ is the mixing angle. Therefore, $`u_4`$ decay chain becomes $`u_4tD_1^0Wb\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$, where we identify $`x^0`$ as $`D_1^0`$, and $`D_2^0`$ is assumed to be heavy. In order to obtain BR($`u_4tD_1^0`$)$`=10\%`$, one needs $`b\mathrm{sin}\theta =0.1`$ where $`b`$ is the coupling constant of the $`D_q^0u_4t`$ interaction.

To test the proposed mechanism, we have reconstructed the invariant mass of the $`W+j`$ system where $`j`$ denotes the ordinary jet accompanying the superjet, using the W + 2 jet events in Table XVI of 1 . The resulting mass values are $`159,175,600,159,178,228,172,`$ $`149`$ GeV. The third and the sixth events do not reproduce the expected top quark mass value and probably they are due to SM background.

Another prediction of our mechanism is the occurrence of spectacular events with collinear $`e\mu `$ tracks originating from $`x^0`$ when both $`\tau `$ leptons decay leptonically. Ratio of the number of events of this type to the number of superjet events should be $`1:15`$ for $`h^0`$ and $`1:8`$ for $`D_\tau ^0`$. Therefore, we expect the observation of a number of collinear $`e\mu `$ tracks at the upgraded Tevatron with integral luminosity $`1`$ fb-1.

In conclusion, CDF superjet events seem to indicate very exciting physics at TeV scale. Namely, existence of the fourth SM family, anomalous interactions, extended SM Higgs sector etc. The scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=2`$ TeV can be a hint of relatively low scale compositeness which will lead to a rich zoo of new particles at the LHC.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to P. Giromini for his illuminating remarks on CDF data. This work is partially supported by Turkish State Planning Organization under the Grant No 2002K120250.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Cosmic strings remain somewhere in our universe as relics of cosmological phase transition at early times. These linear topological defects have been extensively studied in connection with cosmological problems . Global strings were proposed as a candidate of producing primordial density perturbations leading to galaxy formation . However, the original purpose seems unlikely to be achieved due to radiation of Goldstone bosons around oscillating closed loops of strings  and other stringent astrophysical bounds . Recently other physical applications are also investigated, e.g., time evolution of global string network  and possible generation of several types of global strings in high density QCD .

When infinite straight U(1) global strings are coupled to Einstein gravity, static solutions with cylindrical symmetry encounter unavoidable singularity . With a negative cosmological constant, global vortices become seeds for charged BTZ black holes in (2+1) dimensions without physical singularity . Such spacetime structure with horizons is extended to a viable model of 6-dimensional Randall-Sundrum type brane worlds, which is composed of our world on the 3-brane and 2 extra-dimensions identified with spatial plane of global vortices .

The questions we are interested in in this paper are the vacuum structure and the global strings in the effective theory with conical singularities. Suppose that an infinite straight local cosmic string was generated throughout a cosmological phase transition in the very early universe, e.g., a Nielsen-Olesen vortex string at grand unification (GUT) scale. If there has been no other phase transition up to the late-time transition of a very low energy, e.g., electroweak (EW) scale or lower scale, the supermassive local cosmic string may be observed through some gravitational effects, i.e., background spacetime has a deficit angle. Even though a phase transition occurs at the low energy, released latent heat or other fluctuations may be not enough to melt this high-energy cosmic string. So the survived string may affect the new vacuum structure of spontaneous symmetry breaking. In section 2, we assume an O(2) scalar theory with conical singularity in the background spacetime for tractability, and compute one-loop effective action including a $`\delta `$-function singularity. In section 3, we analyze vacuum of the effective theory and show that an inhomogeneous vacuum, jumping from symmetric local maximum at the points of conical singularities to broken global minimum at the other space, is minimum energy configuration instead of homogeneous broken vacuum. In section 4, we address our main issue that the production of a global string along the supermassive local cosmic string seems favorable and natural.

The obtained low-energy global string containing the supermassive local cosmic string core looks like an infinite straight candle with a heavy wick. This kind of possibilities was firstly proposed in the case of superconducting strings, e.g., the O(10) string with an inner core of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{U}}(1)`$ magnetic flux . It may also be understood as a simplified field-theoretic calculation of daily life experience that the structure of extend objects can easily formed at the site of a defect or dust when a vapor (or a liquid) is cooled down to the liquid (or the solid).

## 2 Effective action in the presence of a cosmic string

Suppose that a straight cosmic string was produced throughout a cosmological phase transition in the very early universe. When its species is a local cosmic string, e.g., a string-like object of a Nielsen-Olesen vortex of Abelian Higgs model, the energy density is localized around the stringy core of the cosmic string, of which size is the inverse of the Higgs mass. At an energy scale much lower than that of the Higgs mass, the cosmic string looks like an extremely-thin straight wire so that its energy-momentum tensor can be approximated as a $`\delta `$-function on a plane orthogonal to the string direction :

$$T_\nu ^\mu M_0^2\mathrm{diag}(1,0,0,1)\delta (x)\delta (y),$$
(2.1)
where string direction is chosen by $`z`$-axis and mass of the string per unit length, $`M_0^2`$, is roughly of order the square of the scale of the phase transition.

The existence of such massive object in the early universe is likely to be detected by gravitational effect. Spacetime structure of the cosmic string (2.1) is determined by Einstein equations and then, in cylindrical coordinates, metric is expressed as follows

$$ds^2=dt^2+dr^2+r^2(14GM_0^2)^2d\theta ^2+dz^2.$$
(2.2)
This spacetime is flat everywhere except for the site of the string core at $`r=0`$, and the effect of the local cosmic string is detected only by a deficit angle $`2\pi \gamma =8\pi GM_0^2`$ on the $`(x,y)`$-plane (or $`(r,\theta )`$-plane) $`C_\gamma `$. Except for supermassive scale ($`4GM_0^21`$), $`C_\gamma `$ describes nothing but a cone .

From now on let us consider a model at low energy in the presence of a very massive straight cosmic string. To be specific, we take into account massless O(2) linear sigma model in the gravitational background of a straight local cosmic string (2.2), described by the action

$$S=_{}d^4x\left(\frac{1}{2}_\mu \varphi _a^\mu \varphi _a\frac{\lambda }{24}(\varphi ^2)^2\right),$$
(2.3)
where $`\varphi ^2=\varphi _a\varphi _a(a=1,2)`$ and the base manifold is $`=M^2\times C_\gamma `$. The situation with which we are dealing should involve two ingredients : One is a phase transition and the other some effect of high-energy cosmic string skeleton. In this paper, we will compute effective action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{tot}}(\varphi )`$ so that the vacuum shifts from symmetric vacuum $`\varphi =0`$ to new broken vacuum $`\varphi 0`$ and a few singular terms are induced in effective potential, due to $`\delta `$-function singularity at the string site. It is actually enough to calculate the one-loop effective potential in order to fulfill the above demands up to leading order.

Here we compute the one-loop effective action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$ by using background field methods near classical field $`\varphi _a^c`$. In the context of Euclidean path integral formalism, the one-loop contribution $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$ to the effective action is

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}(\varphi _c)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle 𝒟\varphi ^qe^{\frac{1}{2}__\mathrm{E}d^4x\varphi _a^qA_{ab}\varphi _b^q}}`$ (2.4)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{ln}det\left({\displaystyle \frac{A}{\mu ^2}}\right).`$ (2.5)
In the second line of Eq. (2.5) an arbitrary mass parameter $`\mu `$ was introduced to keep the effective action dimensionless. Physicswisely, it will play a role of an ultraviolet cutoff and will be identified as the scale of the phase transition. The specific form of the operator $`A`$ after Euclideanization is

$$A_{ab}=\left(_t^2+_z^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_c\frac{1}{6}\lambda (\varphi ^c)^2\right)\delta _{ab}+\frac{\lambda }{3}\varphi _a^c\varphi _b^c,$$
(2.6)
where under the metric (2.2) the Laplace-Beltrami operator $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ in Eq. (2.6) is expressed by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_c=_r^2+\frac{1}{r}_r+\frac{1}{r^2}_\theta ^2.$$
(2.7)
It is well-known that $`\zeta `$-function regularization is an effective scheme for the calculation of the one-loop effective action (2.5. In this method the $`\zeta `$-function with eigenvalues $`\lambda _j`$’s of the differential operator $`A`$ takes the form

$`\zeta (s|A)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\lambda _j^s={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)}}{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau \tau ^{s1}e^{\lambda _j\tau }`$ (2.8)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau \tau ^{s1}{\displaystyle __\mathrm{E}}d^4xK(x,x,\tau ),`$
where the kernel $`K(x,y,\tau )x|e^{\tau A}|y`$ satisfies the equation

$$_\tau K(x,y,\tau )=AK(x,y,\tau ),$$
(2.9)
and its boundary condition is given by a $`\delta `$-function $`\delta __\mathrm{E}^4(xy)`$ on the manifold $`_\mathrm{E}=R^2\times C_\gamma `$

$$\underset{\tau 0}{lim}K(x,y,\tau )=\delta __\mathrm{E}^4(xy).$$
(2.10)
Therefore the one-loop effective action (2.5) is expressed in terms of the $`\zeta `$-function (2.8)

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}(\varphi _c)=\frac{1}{2}\zeta ^{}(0|A)\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\mu ^2\zeta (0|A),$$
(2.11)
where $`\zeta ^{}(0|A)=\frac{d\zeta (s|A)}{ds}|_{s=0}`$.

Though the background spacetime is spatially inhomogeneous and static vortex configurations will be taken into account at the subsequent sections, we compute the one-loop effective potential in this section. This calculation is enough for the above requirement such as the phase transition and the effective terms due to conical singularities. Now let us turn off spacetime dependence of the fields $`\varphi _a`$, and denote the classical field $`\varphi _c`$ as $`\varphi `$ in what follows for simplicity. Then the $`\zeta `$-function in the one-loop effective action (2.11) is simplified as follows

$`\zeta (s|A)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau \tau ^{s1}{\displaystyle __\mathrm{E}}d^4x\mathrm{tr}x|e^{\tau \left[(_t^2+_z^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_c\frac{\lambda }{6}\varphi ^2)\delta _{ab}+\frac{\lambda }{3}\varphi _a\varphi _b\right]}|x`$ (2.12)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{V_2}{4\pi \mathrm{\Gamma }(s)}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau \tau ^{s2}{\displaystyle _{C_\gamma }}d^2xx|e^{\tau \mathrm{\Delta }_c}|x\left(e^{\frac{\tau \lambda }{6}\varphi ^2}+e^{\frac{\tau \lambda }{2}\varphi ^2}\right),`$
where ‘tr’ denotes the trace over internal index $`a,b`$, and $`V_2`$ is 2-dimensional volume of the $`(t,z)`$-coordinates. Using a well-known result for the case with conical singularities

$$_{C_\gamma }d^2xx|e^{\tau (\mathrm{\Delta }_c)}|x=\frac{V(C_\gamma )}{4\pi \tau }+\frac{1}{12}\left(\frac{2\pi }{\gamma }\frac{\gamma }{2\pi }\right),$$
(2.13)
we have

$`\zeta (s|A)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{V_2V(C_\gamma )}{16\pi ^2(s1)(s2)}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{6}}\right)^{2s}+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{2}}\right)^{2s}\right]`$ (2.14)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{V_2\gamma _0}{16\pi ^2(s1)}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{6}}\right)^{1s}+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{2}}\right)^{1s}\right],`$
where $`V(C_\gamma )`$ is volume of the cone $`C_\gamma `$ and $`\gamma _0=\frac{\pi }{3}\left(\frac{2\pi }{\gamma }\frac{\gamma }{2\pi }\right)`$. Therefore, substitution of Eq. (2.14) into Eq. (2.11) leads to the one-loop effective potential

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}(\varphi )=\frac{5V_2V(C_\gamma )}{1152\pi ^2}\lambda ^2\varphi ^4\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{2\mu ^2}\right)\frac{1}{10}\mathrm{ln}3\frac{3}{2}\right]+\frac{V_2\gamma _0}{48\pi ^2}\lambda \varphi ^2\left[1+\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}3\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{2\mu ^2}\right)\right].$$
(2.15)
We obtain an effective action by adding the classical action (2.3) and the one-loop effective potential (2.15), which coincides with that containing the leading one-loop quantum correction in the derivative expansion

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{tot}}(\varphi )={\displaystyle _{}}d^4x\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_\mu \varphi _a^\mu \varphi _aV_{\mathrm{eff}}(\varphi ){\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _0\delta _c(x)}{48\pi ^2}}\lambda \varphi ^2\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{ln}3\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{2\mu ^2}}\right)\right]\right\},`$ (2.16)
where $`\delta _c(x)`$ is $`\delta `$-function on the cone $`C_\gamma `$ and $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(\varphi )`$ is regular part of the effective potential :

$$V_{\mathrm{eff}}(\varphi )=\frac{\lambda }{24}\varphi ^4+\frac{5\lambda ^2}{1152\pi ^2}\varphi ^4\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\lambda \varphi ^2}{2\mu ^2}\right)\frac{1}{10}\mathrm{ln}3\frac{3}{2}\right]+\frac{5\mu ^4}{1923^{\frac{4}{5}}\pi ^2}\mathrm{exp}\left(2\frac{96\pi ^2}{5\lambda }\right).$$
(2.17)
In Eq. (2.17) we adjusted a cosmological constant to zero at its true minimum and subtracted the energy of the cosmic string since it does not change physics of our interest.

## 3 Inhomogeneous vacuum due to conical singularities

As well-known, the effective potential $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(\varphi )`$ in Eq. (2.17) comprises a local maximum at $`\varphi =0`$ with a positive cosmological constant and the true vacuum is attained at

$$\varphi (v)=\sqrt{\frac{2\mu ^2}{\lambda }}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\lambda (10+\mathrm{ln}3)96\pi ^2}{20\lambda }\right].$$
(3.18)
An intriguing observation should be noted. At such broken vacuum with vanishing cosmological constant, the energy is not zero even for the homogeneous vacuum configuration of $`\varphi =v`$ but includes additional positive contribution from the site of the cosmic string $`(r=0)`$, which is proportional to the length of the string. The energy per unit length along $`z`$-axis for the broken vacuum is

$$E_z|_{\varphi =v}=\frac{\gamma _0(192\pi ^2+3\lambda \mathrm{ln}3)}{1603^{\frac{9}{10}}\pi ^2}\mathrm{exp}\left(1\frac{48\pi ^2}{5\lambda }\right)\frac{\mu ^2}{\lambda }>0.$$
(3.19)
To minimize its energy, the vacuum configuration should be static and cylindrically-symmetric along the $`z`$-axis. Let us look into another possibility of inhomogeneous vacuum that the scalar field $`\varphi `$ has $`r`$-dependence. Introducing dimensionless quantities

$`\varphi (x)={\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{\sqrt{\lambda }}}f(r)\left(\stackrel{~}{v}=\sqrt{2}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda (10+\mathrm{ln}3)96\pi ^2}{20\lambda }}\right]\right),`$ (3.20)
$`r\stackrel{~}{r}=\mu r,\delta _c(x)\stackrel{~}{\delta }(\stackrel{~}{x})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mu ^2}}\delta _c(x),`$ (3.21)
we express the energy per unit length along the $`z`$-axis such as

$`E_z={\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{\lambda }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\stackrel{~}{r}\stackrel{~}{r}{\displaystyle _0^\gamma }𝑑\theta \left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{df}{d\stackrel{~}{r}}}\right)^2+\stackrel{~}{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)+\stackrel{~}{\delta }(\stackrel{~}{x})U(f)\right],`$ (3.22)
where dimensionless part of the effective action (2.17) becomes

$`\stackrel{~}{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{f^4}{24}}+{\displaystyle \frac{5\lambda }{1152\pi ^2}}f^4\left(\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{f^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{10}}\mathrm{ln}3{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{5\lambda }{1923^{\frac{4}{5}}\pi ^2}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{48\pi ^2}{5\lambda }}\right)\right],`$
$`U(f)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _0\lambda }{48\pi ^2}}f^2\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{ln}3\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{f^2}{2}}\right).`$ (3.24)
From here on, we denote the dimensionless quantities without tilde notation for convenience.

Outside the core of the cosmic string $`(r>0)`$, the singular part of the effective potential, $`\delta (r)U(f)/\gamma r`$, does not contribute to the energy functional (3.22). Consider the one-parameter family of configurations,

$$f_\kappa (r)f(\kappa r).$$
(3.25)
If $`f(r)`$ be the vacuum at $`r>0`$, then $`f(r)`$ is an extremum of the energy functional. Since the derivative term in Eq. (3.22) is invariant under the scaling, the extremum condition provides $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)=0`$ so that $`f=v`$ should be the vacuum at $`r>0`$. As mentioned previously, extension of the vacuum $`f=v`$ to the origin has positive energy contribution from the singular potential like as (3.19). The inhomogeneous vacuum would be given by a stationary solution of equation of motion

$$\frac{1}{r}\frac{d}{dr}r\frac{df}{dr}\frac{dV_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)}{df}=\frac{\delta (r)}{r}\frac{dU(f)}{df}.$$
(3.26)
Since second term at left-hand side of Eq. (3.26) is finite at the origin, integration of it from zero to an infinitesimal $`\epsilon `$ gives

$$\epsilon \frac{df(r)}{dr}|_{r=\epsilon }=\frac{dU(f(r))}{df}|_{r=0}.$$
(3.27)
Right-hand side of Eq. (3.27) is a finite constant so that its solutions are classified into two :

$$\underset{\epsilon 0}{lim}f(\epsilon )\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{ln}\epsilon \hfill & \text{when }\frac{dU}{df}|_{r=0}0\hfill \\ =0\mathrm{or}\sqrt[8]{48}\hfill & \text{when }\frac{dU}{df}|_{r=0}=0\hfill \end{array}.$$
(3.28)
For the singular solution proportional to $`\mathrm{ln}\epsilon `$, the energy per unit length along the $`z`$-axis (3.22) is logarithmically divergent due to the derivative term in Eq. (3.22), i.e., $`E_zlim_{\epsilon 0}^\epsilon 𝑑rr(d\mathrm{ln}r/dr)^2+\mathrm{}\mathrm{ln}\epsilon `$ . So this cannot be a vacuum solution. Note that $`f(0)=\sqrt[8]{48}`$ is also ruled out because the valid range of $`f`$ should not be much larger than $`v`$. Therefore, the remaining possibility in Eq. (3.28) is $`f(0)=0`$.444Though $`f\mathrm{}`$ looks like global minimum with negative infinite energy in Eq. (3.22), $`f\mu /\sqrt{\lambda }`$ is unphysical because the valid range of $`f`$ in the computation of effective potential (2.15) does not allow such limit. Since the $`\delta `$-function term is also invariant under the scale transformation (3.25), the scaling behavior of the energy functional (3.22) tells us that the energetically favored configuration is

$$f(r)=\{\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & \text{at }r=0\hfill \\ v\hfill & \text{at }r0\hfill \end{array}.$$
(3.29)
For this configuration, both the regular and singular terms of the effective potential in Eq. (3.22) have vanishing energy contribution. One may easily notice that the derivative term also does not contribute to the energy according to the following estimation

$$_0^\epsilon 𝑑rr\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{df}{dr}\right)^2\left(\epsilon \frac{df}{dr}|_{r=\epsilon }\right)^2=0.$$
(3.30)
Now we find the true vacuum of minimum energy. When the phase transition was accomplished so that the broken vacuum is realized almost everywhere, the site of the supermassive cosmic string still remains in the symmetric phase. Amazingly enough, such nonanalytic inhomogeneous vacuum has zero energy. Suppose that the core region of the symmetric phase swells and becomes connected smoothly to the broken vacuum at asymptotic region. Then, the radiation of massless Goldstone bosons is naturally initiated  and its final destination is expected to be the obtained nonanalytic vacuum (3.29).

## 4 Global string with massive cosmic string wick

In the previous section we have shown that the effective action obtained in section 2 favors the symmetry-broken vacuum $`\varphi =v`$ almost everywhere but does the symmetric vacuum $`\varphi =0`$ at the site of the massive cosmic string wick. Since a representative topological defect of this O(2) scalar theory is global vortex string, let us study infinite global vortex-line along $`z`$-axis, which connects smoothly the symmetric vacuum at the vortex center and the broken vacuum at exterior region of its core.

Field configuration of the global string is static and cylindrically-symmetric along the $`z`$-axis in order to minimize its energy. For an appropriate ansatz to make the field single-valued

$$\varphi _1+i\varphi _2=\frac{\mu }{\sqrt{\lambda }}e^{i\overline{n}\theta }f(r),$$
(4.31)
the energy per unit length along the $`z`$-axis involves a topological term proportional to $`\overline{n}^2`$ ;

$`E_z={\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{\lambda }}\gamma {\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\stackrel{~}{r}\stackrel{~}{r}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{df}{d\stackrel{~}{r}}}\right)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{n}^2}{2\stackrel{~}{r}^2}}f^2+\stackrel{~}{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)+{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _0}{48\pi ^2\gamma }}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta (\stackrel{~}{x})}{\stackrel{~}{r}}}\lambda f^2\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{ln}3\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{f^2}{2}}\right)\right],`$
(4.32)
where $`\overline{n}=2\pi n/\gamma `$ and $`n`$ is an integer. Though effect of the deficit angle appears in the ansatz of the global vortex (4.31), topological charge $`\nu `$ of it is an integer $`n`$, i.e., $`\nu _{C_\gamma }𝑑\stackrel{}{l}(\varphi _1\stackrel{}{}\varphi _2\varphi _2\stackrel{}{}\varphi _1)/2\pi \varphi ^2=n`$.

To let the configuration nonsingular, we have a boundary conditions at the origin, $`f(r=0)=0`$, and, to make energy density vanish at spatial infinity, the scalar amplitude should approach to the broken vacuum at asymptotic region, $`f(r=\mathrm{})=v`$. Now our task is to find a vortex string configuration interpolating these two boundary conditions and satisfying the equation of motion

$$\frac{d^2f}{dr^2}=\frac{1}{r}\frac{df}{dr}+\frac{\overline{n}^2}{r^2}f\frac{d}{df}(V_{\mathrm{eff}}),$$
(4.33)
where $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)`$ is given in Eq. (3). Series expansion of $`f(r)`$ near the origin is

$`f(r)f_0r^{\overline{n}}+{\displaystyle \frac{5\lambda f_0^3\overline{n}}{576\pi ^2(\overline{n}+1)(2\overline{n}+1)}}r^{3\overline{n}+2}\mathrm{ln}r+\mathrm{},`$ (4.34)
where $`f_0`$ is a constant determined by the proper behavior of the fields at the asymptotic region. Though the configuration seems not to be regular at the origin due to the singularity at the vertex of the cone, Eq. (4.34) tells us that there is no $`\delta `$-function-like energy addition at the origin at all. The behavior at large $`r`$ is obtained precisely by analyzing the equation of motion (4.33)

$`f(r)v{\displaystyle \frac{144\pi ^2\overline{n}^2}{5\lambda vr^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{10368\pi ^4\overline{n}^2(3\overline{n}^2+8)}{25\lambda ^2v^3r^4}}+\mathrm{}.`$ (4.35)
Since we cannot have an exact solution, a numerical solution is shown in Fig. 1.555Existence and uniqueness of the static global vortex solution can easily be proved. Once the following identifications, $`fx,rt`$ and $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(f)V(x)`$, are made, Eq. (4.33) is analogous to a Newtonian equation of a unit-mass particle in 1-dimensional motion, of which applied forces are time-dependent friction, time-dependent repulsion, and conservative force in order in Eq. (4.33). The motion corresponding to the vortex solution is that starting from the valley of the potential $`(x=0)`$ at $`t=0`$ and arriving at the hilltop $`(x=v)`$ after infinite time $`t`$ elapsed. Profile of the energy density shows a long range tail in addition to a ring shape at the vortex core as expected. Existence of such long range term can easily be read from the energy expression (4.32) : The second term proportional to $`\overline{n}^2`$ is $`𝒪(1/r^2)`$ at large distance from the global cosmic string core so that the energy per unit length along the $`z`$-axis is logarithmically divergent as ordinary global strings did.

Now discussion on the stability of the above global string is in order under some simplified situations. Suppose that a phase transition occurred in the very early universe, e.g., at the GUT scale ($`10^{16}`$ GeV), and topologically-stable local cosmic strings have been produced via spontaneous symmetry breaking. If there does not happen subsequent phase transition up to the EW scale (1 TeV) like desert in the standard model and we neglect complicated dynamics of cosmic strings , the high-energy cosmic string wick may survive even throughout the EW phase transition because released latent heat may not be enough to melt the extremely-massive topological defects. Specifically, 1 TeV seems too small compared to $`10^{16}`$ GeV. So form of the remnant near each high-energy cosmic string is likely to be observed as a line of the deficit angle of the background spacetime or Aharonov-Bohm effect of a magnetic flux tube. This may justify the usage of our calculation of the effective potential in the section 2. Since the background planar space $`C_\gamma `$ orthogonal to the string direction has a circle as its spatial boundary $`C_\gamma =S^1`$, the low-energy global strings we obtained are also topologically stable despite its logarithmically-divergent energy.

An intriguing issue in this stage may be to answer the question whether or not a straight global string favors its generation site along the cosmic string wick. Here we deal with energy difference between two possible configurations without considering the huge mass of the background string wire, which is always same irrespective of existence of the low-energy strings so that it does not contribute to the energy difference. Suppose that a global string of unit topological charge ($`n=1`$) is produced along the cosmic string wick. Its core size is roughly estimated from the first and second terms of Eq. (4.35), i.e., $`\sqrt{\lambda }vr_{\mathrm{core}}(1+4GM_0^2)12\pi /\sqrt{5}`$. The core energy per unit length along the $`z`$-axis is computed by an integration of Eq. (4.32) from $`r=0`$ to $`r=r_{\mathrm{core}}`$ after inserting $`f(r)=0`$ into the integrands : $`E_z^{\mathrm{core}}\frac{\mu ^2}{\lambda }\gamma _0^{r_{\mathrm{core}}}𝑑rrV_{\mathrm{eff}}(f=0)=(1+4GM_0^2)\pi v^2/16`$. The logarithmically divergent energy is obtained by another integration of Eq. (4.32) from $`r=r_{\mathrm{core}}`$ to an infra-red cutoff $`R`$ after substituting the vacuum value $`f(r)=v`$ : $`E_z^R\frac{\mu ^2}{\lambda }\gamma _{r_{\mathrm{core}}}^R𝑑rr(\overline{n}^2/2r^2)|_{n=1}=(1+4GM_0^2)\pi v^2\mathrm{ln}(R/r_{\mathrm{core}})`$. Therefore, both the core radius and the energy per unit length along the wick are $`(1+4GM_0^2)`$ times those generated outside the singularity. Since $`4GM_0^210^6`$ at the GUT scale, energy difference can be negligible except for the cosmic strings of Planck scale, $`4GM_0^21`$. When a global string is generated, the boundary conditions of the strings coincide with those of the vacuum (3.29) at both the origin and spatial infinity. So generation of a global string is nothing but a process that the extremely-thin wire starts to swell naturally to the extended core of radius $`r_{\mathrm{core}}`$ carrying a topological charge $`n`$. The energy supplied for such process may be almost the same as the energy of a global string given above. However, in order to produce a global string at the homogeneous broken vacuum, the process is rather complicated , some more energy cost may be needed to excite a defect in addition to that of a global string. In the context of symmetry, the former preserves the cylindrical symmetry but the latter does not. These suggest that an infinite straight global string along the supermassive thin cosmic string wick is a favorable configuration, which can naturally be generated throughout a low-energy phase transition.

## 5 Concluding remarks

We have analyzed vacuum structure and global string solutions in the one-loop effective action of self-interacting O(2) scalar fields of which background space has conical singularities. In the one-loop effective potential, a singular part proportional to 2-dimensional $`\delta `$-function emerges in addition to well-known regular part of it. The configuration of minimum energy is an inhomogeneous vacuum in which the homogeneous broken vacuum dominates almost everywhere but the vertex points of conical singularities have symmetric vacuum. If the region of symmetric vacuum swells and then is connected smoothly to broken vacuum due to a topological winding, it becomes a hybrid of global string of low energy and local cosmic string wick of high energy.

Since our computation seems not sufficient for supporting all the steps of the procedure of consideration, refined calculation is needed in future. What we obtained in this paper can be extended to other similar cases, e.g., local strings of gauge theories with a local cosmic string wick, global strings from dynamical symmetry breaking, monopoles with a supermassive global monopole seed. The obtained topological defects of candle shape with a wick should be applied for understanding various cosmological questions as the others have been examined.

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Chanju Kim for valuable comments and discussions. Y.K. wishes to acknowledge informative discussions with T. Vachaspati, H.-C. Kim, and B. K. Lee at the early stage of this work. This work was the result of research activities (Astrophysical Research Center for the Structure and Evolution of the Cosmos (ARCSEC)) supported by Korea Science $`\&`$ Engineering Foundation. O-K. Kwon is supported by the KOSEF fellowship.


text:
# Deuteron 𝑁𝑁^∗(1440) components from a chiral quark model

## Abstract

We present a nonrelativistic coupled-channel calculation of the deuteron structure including $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`NN^{}`$(1440) channels, besides the standard $`NN`$ $`S`$ and $`D`$-wave components. All the necessary building blocks to perform the calculation have been obtained from the same underlying quark model. The calculated $`NN^{}(1440)`$ probabilities find support in the explanation given to different deuteron reactions.

Since the discovery of nucleon structure, nucleon resonances have attracted considerable attention from theorists and experimentalists. An important effort was made to choose and design experiments that could probe the presence of resonance configurations in different nuclear systems. The basic idea lies in the observation that a small fraction of the nucleons will be internally excited and therefore present as virtual resonances in every nucleus. This may happen even at low energies due to the possibility of exciting internal nucleon degrees of freedom according to the process $`NNNN^{}(\mathrm{or}N^{}N^{})NN`$ involving intermediate $`N^{}`$’s. As a consequence, the many nucleon wave function should be supplemented by configurations involving one or several nucleons in an excited baryon resonance state.

If the virtual $`N^{}`$’s exist in bound nuclear states, one expects them to play an important role already in the bound two-nucleon system, the deuteron WEAR . The most prominent low-lying even-parity nucleon resonances are the $`P_{33}`$, the $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)`$, and the $`P_{11}`$, the $`N^{}(1440)`$ or Roper resonance. The $`N^{}`$’s contribute predominantly to the nucleon short-range correlations and enhance the high momentum components of the nuclear two-particle density. Being the deuteron isoscalar, the energetically lowest state $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is forbidden, and therefore the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`NN^{}(1440)`$ components would be the relevant nonnucleonic configurations. The admixture probabilities of these exotic states are small due to the low nuclear density and the rather high resonance-nucleon mass difference. Nonetheless, they have been advocated long ago to understand elastic proton-deuteron backward scattering at energies above pion threshold KEKI  or the angular distribution of deuteron photodisintegration at energies above $`E_\gamma =`$ 100 MeV HADJ . Recent calculations have renewed the interest on these nonnucleonic components as they could be indirectly observed in several reactions as for example antiproton-deuteron annihilation DEKL , subthreshold antiproton production DOLR  or $`pddp`$ processes UZIK . Although the evidence for resonance configurations in the deuteron from such processes is indirect, is suggestive and encouraging.

The treatment of nucleon resonances in the nuclear wave function can be done in different ways. One possibility has consisted on keeping only nucleons (and no resonances) in the nuclear wave function and using effective operators. However, it would be surprising if such an ad hoc procedure would phenomenologically account for any detailed internal dynamics, because in the hard-core region two nucleons are likely to excite each other and thus mutually probe their internal degrees of freedom. If one wants to turn the attention to the virtual contribution from these nucleon excited states, one has to include explicitly $`N^{}`$ transition potentials in a coupled channel calculation.

When performing a coupled channel calculation for the deuteron based on effective baryon-baryon potentials, a problem immediately arises. If one uses for the nucleon-nucleon ($`NN`$) channel an effective potential which is fitted to the $`NN`$ scattering data, it will already include contributions from intermediate $`N^{}`$’s, and thus one would obtain too much attraction at medium range. Therefore one has to modify the normal nucleon-nucleon potential and weaken the intermediate range attraction in order to account for the additional attraction from the explicit dispersion contribution to the potential with intermediate $`N^{}`$’s. Such a procedure usually introduces an unwanted model dependence on the results obtained.

There are multiple examples in the literature of these type of calculations. Haapakoski and Saarela HASA  studied $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ components on the deuteron changing in an ad hoc manner the intermediate range attraction of the central Reid soft-core potential until the deuteron binding energy was fit to the experimental value. The tensor force was not changed. Arenhövel, Danos and Williams ARDW  studied $`NN^{}(1440)`$ configurations using perturbation theory with the one-pion-exchange (OPE) potential and Hulthén $`NN`$ deuteron wave functions. The singular nature of the potentials required a cutoff factor and the results were found to be rather sensitive to the cutoff chosen. Weber WEBE  and Nath and Weber NAWE  calculated $`NN^{}`$ components by means of an OPE potential in momentum space. The resulting probabilities were again found to be rather dependent on the high momentum suppression factor. Finally, Rost ROST  performed a calculation where the existence of resonance components is taken into account by a modification of the intermediate attraction of the Reid hard-core potential. As a consequence, the study of nonnucleonic configurations in the deuteron based on standard meson-exchange $`NN`$ potentials depends on two basic assumptions: on one hand, the hypothesis done to modify the intermediate range attraction of the $`NN`$ interaction, on the other hand, the specific transition potential to the resonance configurations used.

During the last decade an important effort has been devoted to the qualitative and quantitative understanding of the nucleon-nucleon interaction based on quark degrees of freedom. The first attempts of the early 80’s based on the one-gluon-exchange (OGE) force OKYA ; FAFL  evolved to the so-called hybrid quark models KUNO ; FEVS ; GOLD . The original OGE was supplemented by Goldstone-boson exchanges at the level of quarks and, thus, fully quark-model based $`NN`$ potentials were obtained. The OGE provided the first explanation of the repulsive core of the $`NN`$ interaction. Although it is known that quark-antisymmetry on the Goldstone-boson exchanges induces the same effect VAFG , the OGE still results crucial to regularize the short-range part of the Goldstone-boson exchange tensor force. The pseudoscalar-boson exchange tensor coupling is fundamental to reproduce the $`NN`$ phase shifts, and, finally, the scalar-boson exchange provides the necessary medium-range attraction. The two-baryon problem based on quark-quark interactions is solved by means of the resonating group method (RGM) in a coupled-channel scheme considering usually $`NN`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and hidden color-hidden color components. The importance of particular configurations, like $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$, to describe the low orbital angular momentum partial waves has been recently demonstrated VAFF . Such calculations present the great advantage that any baryon-baryon interaction can be determined, once the $`NN`$ potential has been fixed, in a completely parameter-free way. Therefore, the quark-model framework provides an adequate scheme to study nonnucleonic configurations on the deuteron without the aforementioned uncertainties appearing in meson-exchange models.

In the present work we want to focus on the influence of the most important nonnucleonic channels on the deuteron properties. In order to have a consistent calculation we will make use of baryonic potentials constructed from the same underlying quark-quark interaction potential so that no parameters are fitted independently for the different channels. The quark-model parameters have been previously determined to describe the deuteron binding energy and $`S`$-wave $`NN`$ phase shifts with enough accuracy so that conclusions on the role played by the different channels, and thus, by the $`N^{}(1440)`$ resonance or $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ can be inferred.

Within the quark model framework, this problem has already been partially undertaken using different approximations. The possible effects of a bigger Hilbert space were considered in Ref. ZHBF  through the formation of six-quark bags at short-distances. Ref. KUNO  proposed an alternative formulation in terms of quark-shell configurations, later on projected onto physical channels. Ref. GLKU  proposed an indirect calculation where the nonnucleonic configurations were not explicitly considered for the calculation of the two-body system. As a consequence, these methods rely again on several hypothesis that could hide physical conclusions. In Ref. MAAM  the influence of $`N`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ resonances on the $`NN`$ interaction has been studied. The most significant contribution was obtained from channels involving $`N`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ ground states, although a quantitative calculation of the nonnucleonic configurations was not performed.

Among the various constituent quark models already available in the literature, to have a reliable prediction for the nonnucleonic components of the deuteron one should require an accurate description of the bound state and, at the same time, the $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{3}D_{1}^{}`$ $`NN`$ scattering partial waves. For consistency one should also require coherent results for the other $`NN`$ $`S`$ wave, the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$. The model of Refs. FEVS ; ENFV  fulfills the above requirements. The present study has been done by means of a Lippmann-Schwinger formulation of the RGM equations in momentum space ENFV .

In our calculation Eq. (20) of Ref. ENFV  has been generalized to a coupled channel scheme. It implies a modification of Eq. (24) of Ref. ENFV  with additional terms which contain the different $`NNNN^{}`$ couplings. The calculation of the transition potential has been simplified using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. We have carefully checked the quality of our approximation in order to guarantee that our results will not be influenced. It can be seen that the on-shell properties for the low angular momentum partial waves obtained by means of the Born-Oppenheimer method are of the same quality (within 5$`\%`$ for energies below 250 MeV) as those obtained, using the same quark model Hamiltonian, but making use of the RGM BORG .

The potential yields a fairly good reproduction of the experimental data up to laboratory energies of 250 MeV. In Table 1 we quote the quark model parameters, that have been taken from Ref. ENFV .

As can be seen, a fine tuning has been done in order to consider the other nonnucleonic configurations. Let us finally mention that the quark-quark interaction used reproduces the even-parity baryon spectrum ($`N`$, $`N^{}(1440)`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1600)`$,..) in an exact Faddeev calculation BRIE .

Within the above described framework we have calculated the deuteron binding energy and wave function making emphasis in a simultaneous description of the $`NN`$ scattering phase shifts. For the bound state problem, Eq. (20) of Ref. ENFV  can be discretized in momentum space and written as

$$\underset{j}{}(H_{ij}E\delta _{ij})\mathrm{\Psi }_j=0,$$
(1)
where we have used a simplified notation and the indices $`i`$ and $`j`$ run not only for all the discretization points but also for the different channels included in the calculation. The nontrivial solutions are given by the zeroes of the Fredholm determinant

$$|H_{ij}E\delta _{ij}|=0,$$
(2)
being the values of $`E`$ that satisfy the previous equation the energy of the bound states. Once the energies have been found the wave function can be easily calculated solving the linear problem of Eq. (1).

We show in Table 2 the different configurations and partial waves included in our calculation.

In Table 3 we present the results obtained for the nonnucleonic probabilities and the static properties of the deuteron. In all cases the deuteron binding energy is correctly reproduced, being $`E_d=`$2.2246 MeV. We have shown the results of a calculation including only $`NN`$ components, including $`NN`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ configurations and finally the full calculation including also $`NN^{}(1440)`$ configurations. Among the allowed configurations, the $`NN^{}(1440)`$ has not been usually included in the deuteron calculations due to the great uncertainty associated to the coupling constant and cutoff parameters ARDW ; ROST . The first result we would like to emphasize is the fact that the probability of $`NN^{}(1440)`$ channels are smaller than the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ ones. They do not show much influence on the static properties of the deuteron as it seems to be case for the deuteron form factors GROS . However, these small components find support in the explanation given in the literature to some deuteron reactions DEKL ; DOLR ; UZIK . Subthreshold antiproton production in $`dp`$ and $`dd`$ reactions DOLR , $`pddp`$ reactions UZIK , or antiproton-deuteron annihilation at rest DEKL  are compatible with small percentage of $`NN^{}(1440)`$ in the deuteron wave function.

The prediction we obtain for the $`NN^{}(1440)`$ probabilities, a larger component of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}D_{1}^{}(NN^{}(1440))`$ partial wave than the $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}(NN^{}(1440))`$ partial wave, agrees with the ordering obtained by other calculations present in the literature ROST ; MAAM . This can be understood if one takes into account that the tensor coupling, which is the main responsible for the presence of nonnucleonic components on the deuteron wave function, is much stronger for the $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}(NN)^3D_1(NN^{}(1440))`$ transition than for the $`{}_{}{}^{3}D_{1}^{}(NN)^3S_1(NN^{}(1440))`$ one, enhancing in this way the $`D`$-wave influence with respect to the $`S`$-wave component. Regarding the absolute value of the probabilities, our results are a factor ten smaller than those reported on Ref. ROST , where an estimation of 0.17$`\%`$ for the $`NN^{}(1440)`$ configuration was obtained (0.06$`\%`$ for the $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}`$ and 0.11 $`\%`$ for the $`{}_{}{}^{3}D_{1}^{}`$ partial wave). The dependence of this result on the hypothesis made and the deviation from the results we obtain could be understood in the following way. The deuteron is calculated using the Reid hard-core potential. When including $`NN^{}(1440)`$ components, the channel coupling induces an attractive interaction on the $`NN`$ system, that needs to be subtracted out. Such a subtraction was done by reducing the intermediate range attraction of the central part of the Reid hard-core potential without modifying the tensor part, as was done in Ref. HASA  to calculate the probability of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ components. As a consequence, in these type of calculations the strength of the tensor coupling to the $`NN^{}(1440)`$ state can be enhanced by decreasing the intermediate range attraction in the $`NN`$ channel. The balance between these two sources of attraction cannot be disentangled in a clearcut way. This is a similar problem to the one arising in the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}(NN)`$ partial wave when the coupling to the $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ system was included GREE . The same attractive effect could be obtained by a central potential or a tensor coupling to a state with higher mass, being necessary other observables to discriminate between the two processes GREE . This seems to be the reason of the much bigger probability for the $`NN^{}(1440)`$ components in Ref. ROST , that on the other hand showed a great dependence on the choice of the $`NN`$ phenomenological potential. In Ref. MAAM , although the contribution of resonance configurations has been included to study the nucleon-nucleon system, there are no numerical predictions to compare with.

There are other estimations on the literature. The results of Ref. ARDW  are only of qualitative interest. The pathological behavior of the transition potential to resonance states was regularized by a cutoff factor that made the potential too weak at small distances. In Ref. GLKU  they study the effective numbers for different resonance configurations on the deuteron making use of baryon wave functions obtained from the diagonalization of a quark-quark interaction containing gluon and pion exchange in a harmonic oscillator basis including up to 2$`\mathrm{}\omega `$ excitations, and deuteron wave functions obtained from the Paris potential or a different quark model approach. They obtain an upper limit of $`1\%`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ components and $`0.1\%`$ for $`NN^{}(1440)`$ in agreement with the order of magnitude and ordering of our results.

To summarize, we have studied the resonance structure of the deuteron using quark-model based interactions. The $`NN^{}(1440)`$ baryon resonance probabilities in the deuteron, being smaller than the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ ones, are in agreement with indirect estimations obtained from the analysis of processes like subthreshold antiproton production on $`dp`$ collisions or $`pddp`$ reactions.

B.J. thanks Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain) for finantial support. This work has been partially funded by Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain) under Contract No. BFM2001-3563, by Junta de Castilla y León under Contract No. SA-109/01, and by the Ramón Areces Foundation.