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# Shape statistics of Sloan Digital Sky Survey superclusters

## 1 Introduction

The launch of the recent observational data has brought great progress in understanding the cosmic structure formation pattern. From the large scale structure point of view it has been shown that cluster of galaxies are not randomly distributed but tend to aggregate in larger groups, the so called superclusters (cf. Bahcall 1988). Since they have been seeded by density perturbations of the largest scale ($`100h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$), they therefore constitute objects with which one can study the details of the fluctuations that gave rise to cosmic structures (cf. West 1989; Einasto et al. 1997). In this framework, we can extract useful information regarding the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe and test cosmological models within the framework of hierarchical structure formation scenario (Bahcall & Soneira 1984; Bahcall 1988; Frisch et al. 1995).

Indeed many authors have confirmed that the large scale clustering pattern of galaxies is described well by a filamentary distribution (Zel’dovich, Einasto & Shandarin 1982; de Lapparent, Geller & Huchra 1991; Einasto et al. 2001). However, only recently (Sathyaprakash et al. 1998a; Basilakos, Plionis & Rowan-Robinson 2001; Kolokotronis, Basilakos & Plionis 2002) was any significance given to cosmological inferences from supercluster shape statistics claiming that a low matter density ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.3`$) flat cosmological model ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM) fits the observational results at high significance level. Sathyaprakash et al. (1998a) and Basilakos et al. (2001) have used infrared galaxy samples (1.2 Jy and PSCz, respectively), whereas Kolokotronis, et al. (2002) considered Abell/ACO clusters.

A variety of geometrical and topological methods have been developed and applied to observational data in order to give qualitative and quantitative description of large scale structure (cf. Weinberg, Gott & Melott 1987; Coles & Plionis 1991; Mecke et al. 1994; Sahni & Coles 1995; Yess & Shandarin 1996; Kerscher et al. 1997; Kerscher et al. 2001a, b; Hoyle, Vogeley & Gott 2002; Hoyle et al. 2003; Jatush et al. 2003 and references therein). Recently, a new technique was obtained by Sahni, Sathyaprakash & Shandarin (1998) based on the differential geometry (Minkowski functionals), in order to describe in detail the geometrically and topologically complex features of large scale structure. In its general form the Minkowski functionals have been shown to provide a better approximation to complex structures than the simple semi-axes procedures (Sathyaprakash, Sahni & Shandarin 1998b). For example, in cases where the matter distribution is one-dimensional but not along straight line, one is bound to get somewhat smaller signal for filamentarity from the Babul & Starkman (1992) and Luo & Vishniac (1995) statistics (semi-axes method). This problem is even more true for two dimensional structures.

The first time this new shapefinder technique was applied to astronomical data was in Basilakos et al. (2001), where it ascertained that the prominent feature of the large scale structures we see today is filamentarity, as it has also been observed in N-body simulations of gravitational clustering (Sathyaprakash et al. 1998b and references therein). In this paper we utilize the recently completed SDSS CE cluster catalog (Goto et al. 2002) in order: (i) to study whether we can reliable identify SDSS superclusters and measure their shape and size distribution and (ii) whether or not superclusters verify the dominance of filamentarity as the basic trait of large scale structure. A different analysis applied by Einasto et al. (2002), who identified clusters and 43 superclusters (high density regions) from the smoothed galaxy density field of the SDSS Early Data Release (Stoughton et al. 2002) catalog. The plan of the paper is as follows. The observed dataset is presented in section 2. In section 3, we give a brief report on the method used to investigate supercluster shape properties and comment on the systematic effects introduced in our analysis. In section 4, we present the morphological parameters of the SDSS superclusters data and finally in section 5 we draw our conclusions.

## 2 The SDSS cluster catalogue

In the present analysis we use the recent SDSS CE cluster catalog (Goto et al. 2002), which contains 2770 and 1868 galaxy clusters in the North ($`145.1^{}<RA<236.0^{}`$, $`1.25^{}<DEC<1.25^{}`$) and South ($`350.5^{}<RA<56.61^{}`$, $`1.25^{}<DEC<1.25^{}`$) slices respectively, covering an area of $`400`$deg2 in the sky. Redshifts are converted to proper distances using a spatially flat cosmology with $`H_{}=100h`$km s$`^1`$Mpc-1 and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.3`$.

In figure 1, we present the estimated (histogram) and the expected (line) number of the SDSS clusters as a function of redshift. It is obvious that up to redshift $`z_{\mathrm{max}}0.23`$ we have a volume limited sample due to the fact that the number of the SDSS clusters is proportional to $`r^3`$. We have compare the two distributions (up to $`z_{\mathrm{max}}0.23`$) via a standard Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statistical test and the corresponding probability of consistency between model and observations is $`𝒫_{\mathrm{KS}}0.43`$. Therefore, the redshift cutoff corresponds to a limiting distance $`r_{\mathrm{max}}653h^1`$Mpc. This subsample contains 1690 entries in the North and South slices respectively.

In order to investigate further the latter result we need to compute the number density of the cluster sample as a function of redshift. We do so by using five equal volume shells ($`\delta V2.4\times 10^6h^3`$ Mpc3) up to $`z_{\mathrm{max}}0.23`$ and calculate, as a function of redshift, the cluster space density (continuous line in figure 2). While, the corresponding average-over-shells density for the SDSS subsample is $`n_{\mathrm{SDSS}}(z_{\mathrm{max}})1.26(\pm 0.32)\times 10^4h^3`$Mpc-3 (see dashed line in figure 2) giving rise to intercluster separation of order $`20\pm 1.47`$ $`h^1`$Mpc. .

## 3 Shape Statistic

### 3.1 SDSS Superclusters

Identifying real superclusters is a difficult problem in general, due to observational selection function, that can significantly affect the visual structure of superclusters and distort the true pattern. Our supercluster finding algorithm consists of the main steps: The supercluster catalogs constructed by utilizing, in supergalactic coordinates, a constant size neighborhood radius, i.e. the percolation radius (Zel’dovich et al. 1982). In particular, we place a sphere of a certain size around each cluster and then find all neighboring spheres having an overlap region. Then, all mutually linked clusters are joined together to form groups (with $`k`$ members), and the groups with more than $`k8`$ clusters are identified as candidate rich superclusters. Of course, we choose the optimal percolation radius, by repeating the procedure by successively increasing the size of the sphere. At the end, we identify the radius that yields the maximum number of superclusters, which obviously occurs before the percolation of the superclusters themselves. Performing many tests we select a percolation radius $`R_{\mathrm{pr}}26h^1`$Mpc following the same criteria to those of Einasto et al. (2001; Kolokotronis et al. 2002 and references therein). To this end this procedure produced a list of 57 rich superclusters.

### 3.2 Test for systematic errors

In this section we investigate the number of the random clumps revealed from the percolation procedure. In particular, we run a large number of Monte-Carlo simulations in which we destroy the intrinsic SDSS clustering by randomizing the supergalactic coordinates of the clusters while keeping their distances and therefore their selection function unchanged. On this intrinsically random cluster distribution, we apply the procedure described before and identify the expected random superclusters, $`N_{\mathrm{ran}}`$, which are due to our supercluster-identification method itself.

In figure 3 (top panel) we plot for the different percolation radii, the probability of detecting real clusters in the SDSS data, defined as $`𝒫=1N_{\mathrm{ran}}/N_{\mathrm{SDSS}}`$ as well as the number of real, $`N_{\mathrm{SDSS}}`$ (continuous line), and random, $`N_{\mathrm{ran}}`$ (dashed line), superclusters. In the presence of negligible systematic biases in our method and data, the above selection process should result in $`𝒫1`$. In other words, the closer $`𝒫`$ is to 1 the less likely to reveal random superclusters.

To this end from figure 3 it is evident that with a threshold of $`26h^1`$Mpc for the percolation radius, we find an average of 0.4 random superclusters in the mock SDSS realizations. Thus the superclusters we detect in the SDSS with $`R_{\mathrm{pr}}=26h^1`$Mpc are significant at the $`99\%`$ confidence level. This is why we set this percolation threshold.

### 3.3 The Supercluster Global Geometry

Shapes are estimated for those superclusters that consist of 8 or more clusters 111In Kolokotronis et al. (2002), we have tested the performance of the shape method using a large set of Monte Carlo simulations (see their section 3.3) and they found that structures with more that 8 members (points) are well described by the our shape method., utilizing the moments of inertia ($`I_{ij}`$) method to fit the best triaxial ellipsoid to the data (cf. Plionis, Barrow & Frenk 1991). We diagonalize the inertia tensor

$$\mathrm{det}(I_{ij}\lambda ^2M_3)=0(\mathrm{M}_3\mathrm{is}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3}\times 3\mathrm{unit}\mathrm{matrix}),$$
(1)
obtaining the eigenvalues $`\alpha _1`$, $`\alpha _2`$, $`\alpha _3`$ (where $`\alpha _1`$ is the semi-major axis) from which we define the shape of the configuration since, the eigenvalues are directly related to the three principal axes of the fitted ellipsoid

$$𝒓(\theta ,\varphi )=a_1\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\varphi \widehat{𝒊}+a_2\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\varphi \widehat{𝒋}+a_3\mathrm{cos}\theta \widehat{𝒌},$$
(2)
having volume $`V=\frac{4\pi }{3}\alpha _1\alpha _2\alpha _3`$ and $`0\varphi 2\pi `$, $`0\theta \pi `$. The shape statistic procedure, that we use, is based on a differential geometry approach, introduced by Sahni et al.(1998). In this paper we review only some basic concepts.

Furthermore, having identified superclusters with $`k8`$ members a set of three shapefinders are defined having dimensions of length; $`_1=VS^1`$, $`_2=SC^1`$ and $`_3=C`$, with $`S`$ the surface area and $`C`$ the integrated mean curvature. In this framework, based on these, the dimensionless shapefinders $`K_1`$ and $`K_2`$ can be defined as follows:

$$K_1=\frac{_2_1}{_2+_1}$$
(3)
and

$$K_2=\frac{_3_2}{_3+_2},$$
(4)
where $`K_{1,2}1`$ by definition and normalized to give $`_i=R`$ ($`K_{1,2}=0`$) for a sphere of radius $`R`$. The above shape vector $`𝐊=(K_1,K_2)`$ characterizes the shapes of topologically non-trivial cosmic objects according to the following classification: (i) pancake-like ellipsoids for $`K_1>K_2`$ or $`=K_1/K_2>1`$; (ii) filament-like ellipsoids for $`K_1<K_2`$ or $`=K_1/K_2<1`$; (iii) triaxial for $`K_1=K_2`$ or $`=K_1/K_2=1`$ and (iv) spheres for $`\alpha _1=\alpha _2=\alpha _3`$ and thus $`(K_1,K_2)=(0,0)`$. Note that for ideal filaments $`𝐊=(0,1)`$, pancakes $`𝐊=(1,0)`$, triaxial structures $`𝐊=(1,1)`$ and spheres $`𝐊=(0,0)`$.

For the quasi-spherical objects, $`K_1`$ and $`K_2`$ are both very small (order of $`10^310^4`$), and thus the ratio $`=K_1/K_2`$ measures the deviation from pure sphericity (for further details see Basilakos et al. 2001). It is interesting to mention that in the present work we didn’t find such small values for the $`(K_1,K_2)`$ \[for further details see next section\].

## 4 Morphological Properties

We investigate supercluster characteristics according to the observational requirements and the definitions of shape statistic set in section 3. Taking the optimum value of $`R_{\mathrm{pr}}=26h^1`$Mpc for the combined SDSS sample, we find 57 superclusters with $`k8`$. Table 1, lists all the relevant information. In figure 4, we show a 2D ($`Z_{\mathrm{sup}}=0`$) schematic representation of superclusters (squares) and the related cluster distribution (dots) for the SDSS sample. Note, that only superclusters with $`k8`$ and their member clusters are plotted.

As is evident from Table 1, there are 19 entries which are near the boundaries of the SDSS cluster catalog. Therefore, in order to avoid ill shape definitions, for the shape statistics, we feel more secure to use superclusters which are away from the boundaries. This selection procedure decreases the total number of analysed entries to 38.

Again from Table 1, it is obvious that there are no spherical superclusters in concordance with numerical N-body simulations of gravitational clustering and similar studies on observed data (Plionis, Valdarnini & Jing 1992; Sathyaprakash et al. 1998a, b; Sahni et al. 1998; Basilakos et al. 2001; Kolokotronis et al. 2002). We plot in figure 5 the shape-spectrum as well as the multiplicity function (volume spectrum). The shape spectrum shows a measure of the global SDSS superclusters geometry. It is obvious that filamentary structures dominate our supercluster sample, in agreement with previous studies (Sathyaprakash et al. 1998a,b; Basilakos et al. 2001; Kolokotronis et al. 2002). It is interesting to mention that the vast majority of the systems (71$`\%`$ or 27/38) reveal filamentary configuration with 2 of them being close to pure triaxial $`K_1K_2`$ or $`1`$ (see Table 1: supercluster 31 and 44). The rest of the objects (11 or 29$`\%`$) are estimated to be pancakes, with 3 of them being close to pure triaxial (see Table 1: supercluster 17, 18 and 54). The mean value of the semi-major supercluster axes is $`\overline{\alpha }_1=54.96\pm 22.34h^1`$Mpc. However, for the total supercluster sample we find 79$`\%`$ (45/57) filaments and 21$`\%`$ (12/57) pancakes respectively. Finally, the histogram in figure 6 presents the total number of the rich SDSS superclusters as a function of redshift corresponds to a mean density of order $`5.58(\pm 0.74)\times 10^6h^3`$Mpc-3.

A recent paper by Einasto et al. (2002) examines clusters and superclusters in the SDSS survey. Superclusters are found by these authors utilizing a smoothed apparent magnitude limited sample rather than the point distribution of clusters and the paper concentrates on measuring the high density regions. These authors found 43 superclusters, 35 of which are dubbed as rich ($`k8`$) up to redshift 0.2; we find 42 such superclusters. The smoothing technique owing to the coupling between the selection function and the constant radius smoothing could produce a distorted smoothed density distribution, especially at large distances (see Gaztanaga & Yokoyama 1993; Basilakos et al. 2001).

## 5 Conclusions

We have studied the morphological parameters of superclusters identified in the optical SDSS cluster catalog, up to redshift $`0.23`$, using the selection features of the SDSS cluster catalog. We have applied a constant size percolation radius $`R_{\mathrm{pr}}`$ in order to detect superclusters within a distance where the cluster sample is volume limited. The measure of the global supercluster geometry has been based on a differential geometry method derived by Sahni et al. (1998) and we find that filaments (71$`\%`$) dominate over pancakes (29$`\%`$), in agreement with other recent large-scale structure studies.

## Acknowledgements

This work is jointly funded by the European Union and the Greek Goverment in the framework of the programme ’Promotion of Excellence in Technological Development and Research’, project ’X-ray Astrophysics with ESA’s mission XMM’. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous referee, for his/her useful suggestions.


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# Heavy Carriers and Non-Drude Optical Conductivity in MnSi

(november 11, 2002)

## Abstract

Optical properties of the weakly helimagnetic metal MnSi have been determined in the photon energy range from 2 meV to 4.5 eV using the combination of grazing incidence reflectance at $`80^{}`$ (2 meV to 0.8 eV ) and ellipsometry (0.8 to 4.5 eV). As the sample is cooled below 100 K the effective mass becomes strongly frequency dependent at low frequencies, while the scattering rate developes a linear frequency dependence. The complex optical conductivity can be described by the phenomenological relation $`\sigma (\omega ,T)(\mathrm{\Gamma }(T)+i\omega )^{0.54}`$ used for cuprates and ruthenates.

The weakly helimagnetic metal MnSi ($`T_C=29.5`$ K) has been the subject of intensive studies during the last 40 years. In the helimagnetic phase the resistivity has a $`T^2`$ dependence, which has been explained as resulting from a coupling of the charge carriers to spin fluctuationsmoriya . Recently interest has shifted to the quantum phase transition pfleiderer ; pfleiderer-nature  at a critical pressure of $`14.6`$ kbar where the Curie temperature becomes zero. The temperature dependence of the resistivity outside the magnetically ordered region, at high pressures, has been found to be proportional to $`T^{3/2}`$ in temperature range far larger than that predicted by the so-called nearly ferromagnetic Fermi-liquid theory (an extension of the Fermi-liquid picture)pfleiderer-nature . This fact has suggested the non-Fermi liquid nature of MnSi in the normal state pfleiderer-nature . Despite these efforts in understanding the physics behind MnSi, few attempts have been made to determine and understand its optical properties. Measurements below $`T_C`$ of the far infrared normal incidence reflectivity indicated a remarkable departure from the Hagen-Rubens law, usually observed in metalsdamascelli . However, the high value of the reflection coefficient close to the 100 $`\%`$ line prevented a detailed analysis of the frequency dependent optical conductivity in this range. In this Letter we overcome this hurdle by using $`p`$-polarized light at a grazing angle of incidence of $`80^{}`$, for which the reflection coefficient drops well below the 100 $`\%`$ line. We show that the frequency dependent scattering rate, and the effective mass deviate from the behavior expected for Fermi liquids which can be described with an expression for $`\sigma (\omega )`$ that departs from the usual Drude model.

Single crystals were grown using the travelling floating zone techniquedamascelli ; fath . The temperature dependence of the resistivity is shown in Fig. 1. Fitting the resistivity to the equation $`\rho (T)=\rho (0)+AT^\mu `$ in the temperature interval 4K to 23K, we obtain $`\rho (0)=1.85\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$.cm, $`A=0.021\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$.cm.K, and $`\mu =2.1`$. The resistivity increases more rapidly in the region between 23 K and the phase transition. For $`T>30`$K the resistivity fits to the formula $`\rho _p(T)=(1/\rho _{\mathrm{}}+1/(AT))^1`$ with $`\rho _{\mathrm{}}=286\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$cm and $`A=1.62\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$cmK-1. The remarkable accuracy of this description is further confirmed by the logarithmic derivative shown in the inset of Fig. 1. The tendency of the resistivity toward saturation at a value $`\rho _{\mathrm{}}`$ for $`T\mathrm{}`$ is in agreement with Calandra and Gunnarsson’s resultgunnarsson  that the resistivity saturates when the mean free path $`l=0.5n^{1/3}d`$ (roughly the Ioffe-Regel limit), where $`n`$ is the density of the electrons and $`d`$ is lattice parameter. Also this indicates that, if the temperature saturation would be absent, the resistivity would be proportional to $`T^\mu `$, where the exponent $`\mu =1.0`$ with a very high accuracy. These observations stand in stark contrast to the $`T^{5/3}`$ temperature dependence predicted from the model of spin-fluctuations in itinerant electron magnetismmoriya . Yet the overall temperature dependence, and the strong reduction of $`\rho (T)`$ below $`T_C`$ indicate a dominant electronic (or spin) contribution to the scattering mechanism.

Grazing incidence reflectivity was measured in the range 20 to 6000 cm-1 using a Bruker 113v FT-IR spectrometer (see Fig. 2a and 2b). The temperature dependence was measured using a home-built cryostat, the special construction of which guarantees the stable and temperature independent optical alignment of the sample. The intensities were calibrated against a gold reference film which was evaporated in situ without repositioning or rotating the sample-holder. In the range 20 to 100 cm-1 we measured the temperature dependence of the grazing reflectivity with 0.5 K intervals below 50 K and 2 K intervals above 50 K. The complex dielectric function in the range 6000 to 36000 cm-1 was measured with a commercial (Woollam VASE32) ellipsometric spectrometer for the same set of temperatures as the grazing reflectivities using an ultra high vacuum cryostat (shown for 10 K and 300 K in Fig. 2c). The complex dielectric function $`ϵ(\omega )=ϵ^{}(\omega )+i(4\pi /\omega )\sigma _1(\omega )`$ was calculated from the complete data set (grazing infrared reflectance and visible ellipsometry) using Kramers-Kronig relations, following the procedure described in Ref. eb, . Below 20 cm-1 the reflectivity data were extrapolated to fit the experimentally measured DC conductivities. The optical conductivity is shown for some temperatures in Fig. 3.

The first remarkable feature in the spectra is the similarity of the optical conductivity to the response of heavy fermion systemsdegiorgi . In those materials, $`\sigma (\omega )`$ has almost no temperature dependence down to a frequency of $``$10 cm-1 and, below this frequency, a narrow mode centered at zero frequency is formed degiorgi . Similar behavior has also been noticed for $`\alpha `$-ceriumeb  in the mid-infrared frequency range. Following a common procedure in the study of the electrodynamic response of heavy fermion systems, we have calculated $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ and $`m^{}(\omega )/m`$ from the optical conductivity using the extended Drude-model hopfield :

$$\sigma (\omega )=\frac{\omega _p^2}{4\pi }\frac{1}{1/\tau (\omega )i\omega m^{}(\omega )/m}$$
(1)
adopting the value $`\omega _p/2\pi c=18700`$cm-1 for the plasma frequency, motivated by the least square fits which we will discuss below. Fig. 4a indicates a significant mass renormalization at low frequencies which, at the lowest measured temperatures, shows no indication of reaching a frequency independent value. Previous de Haas-van Alphen experiments (at $`T=`$0.35 K) taillefer  provided an average enhancement of 4.5 times the cyclotron mass, although values as high as 14 were observed for some of the orbits. This average value was found to be compatible with the enhancement of the linear coefficient of the heat capacity $`\gamma /\gamma _o=`$5.2 calculated from specific heat data of Ref. fawcett, . In comparison, our data show at 10 K and at the lowest measured frequency an enhancement of 4, and an enhancement of 17 when we extrapolate the data to $`\omega =0`$.

The second remarkable feature is the behavior of $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ (Fig. 4b). At high temperatures this quantity becomes frequency independent, as expected for a Drude peak. Already at 100 K $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ is no longer a constant. Approaching the phase transition $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ becomes strongly frequency dependent between 30 and 300 cm-1 and it follows approximately a linear frequency dependence in this frequency range. In contrast, other correlated systems, such as heavy fermions degiorgi ; eb  and perovskite titanates katsufuji , show a frequency-dependent scattering rate with an $`\omega ^2`$ dependence at low frequencies. Indeed the theory of Fermi liquids pines  predicts

$$1/\tau (\omega ,T)=1/\tau _o+a(\mathrm{}\omega )^2+b(k_BT)^2$$
(2)
with $`b/a=\pi ^2`$. The same expression was obtained by Millis and Lee considering the Anderson lattice model millis , and qualitatively similar behavior has been calculated by Riseborough in the context of spin-fluctuationsriseborough . MnSi has also a $`T^2`$ dependence of the DC resistivity below $`T_C`$ and the corresponding expected frequency dependence of $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ is plotted in the inset of the lower panel of Fig. 4 (dotted lines) for 10 and 20 K. There is a mismatch with the experimental $`1/\tau (\omega )`$, both in absolute value and the observed trend, which is outside the experimental error bars. However it can not be excluded, that at an even lower frequency the experimental $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ would cross over to a $`\omega ^2`$-dependence.

Above, we have pointed out various striking results in the optical response of MnSi. In order to understand their nature, let us take a closer look at the low frequency data. From 300 to 75 K, $`1R_p(\omega )`$ follows a $`\omega ^{1/2}`$ behavior (see Fig. 2b). This can be easily understood from the fact that at low frequencies, from the Fresnel formulae, $`R_p`$ can be written approximately as:

$$R_p=1\frac{2\omega ^{1/2}}{\mathrm{cos}\theta }\text{R}e\left[\frac{1}{\sqrt{i\pi \sigma (\omega )}}\right]$$
(3)
where $`\theta `$ is the angle of incidence. In the case that $`\sigma _1`$ is constant and $`\sigma _2`$ goes to zero, this expression reduces to the well known Hagen-Rubens law. In the Drude picture this corresponds to the frequency range where the scattering rate is larger than $`\omega `$. In contrast, below 75 K our measured $`R_p`$ does not follow a $`\omega ^{1/2}`$ behavior. Combining the Drude model with the Fresnel equations for reflectivity, a plateau in the reflectivity is expected for intermediate frequencies (frequencies larger than the scattering rate but much lower than the plasma frequency). To check this more closely we measured $`R_p`$ below 100 cm-1 in a finer temperature mesh. Our results show no sign of a plateau, instead $`1R_p(\omega )`$ evolves gradually to a linear frequency dependence when T is lowered. We can then conclude that either the peak centered at zero frequency departs from the Drude picture or other modes appear at low temperatures and at low frequencies.

To distinguish between these alternatives we have fitted, simultaneously, the measured reflectivity, ellipsometry and resistivity with two models. First we modelled the data with a Drude peak and a set of oscillators. In this case, the fit fails to reproduce the measured DC resistivities at low temperatures (stars in Fig. 3b). On the other hand, if we give more fitting weight to $`\rho _{DC}`$, the result is a poor fit of $`R_p`$ at low frequencies. Although this can in principle by remedied by introducing an arbitrary number of oscillators at frequencies below 100 cm-1, the infrared properties together with the DC resistivity can be summarized in an economical way (i.e. requiring a minimal set of adjustable parameters) when we replace the Drude formula withmarel-nfl

$$\sigma (\omega )=\frac{\omega _p^2}{4\pi }\frac{i}{(\omega +i\mathrm{\Gamma })^{12\eta }(\omega +i\mathrm{\Omega })^{2\eta }}$$
(4)
which for $`\eta =0.25`$ corresponds to the model by Ioffe and Millisioffe-millis , and for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\omega \mathrm{\Omega }`$ to Anderson’spwa  power-law formula $`\sigma (\omega )(i\omega )^{2\eta 1}`$, both in the context of the optical conductivity of the cuprate high Tc superconductors. Eq. 4, in the case $`\mathrm{\Omega }\omega `$, has been shown to describe the optical conductivity of SrRuO3, below 40 K, in the range \[6-2400\]cm-1 with $`\eta =0.3`$ dodge . For SrRuO3 this behavior has been justified as arising from the coupling of electrons to orbital degrees of freedomlaad , and in the context of the discrete filamentary model of charge transportphillips .

Our new fit, non-Drude plus Lorentz oscillators (whose individual components at 300 K are displayed in Fig. 3a), gives the same overall result at high temperatures ($`T>`$75 K) as the Drude fit. However, at low temperatures, the non-Drude equation gives a better fit at low frequencies and, what is more important, reproduces $`\rho _{DC}`$ at all temperatures (open symbols in Fig. 3b). Therefore, we conclude that the low frequency optical response of MnSi is best described by Eq. 4. From the fit we can extrapolate the optical properties to lower frequencies (insets of Fig. 4). The extrapolation shows that at 10 K, for $`\omega 0`$, $`m^{}(\omega )/m=17`$, with a gradual decay as a function of increasing frequency. Similarly, $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ is approximately proportional to $`\omega `$ in the frequency range below 300 cm-1. Above $`T_C`$, it has a weak $`\omega ^2`$ frequency dependence.

Now let us analyze the parameters of the non-Drude conductivity as provided by the fit to Eq. 4. These values are summarized in Fig. 5a-d where the error bars represent the interval of confidence calculated for a variation of 1% of $`\chi ^2`$. Within those error bars, the parameters $`\omega _p`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\eta `$ are temperature independent, which contrasts with the strong temperature dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. This has another interesting consequence in connection with the DC resistivity. From Eq. 4 we can easily see that $`\rho _{DC}=4\pi \omega _p^2\mathrm{\Omega }^{2\eta }\mathrm{\Gamma }^{12\eta }`$, but since $`\omega _p`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\eta `$ are temperature independent, $`\rho _{DC}(T)\mathrm{\Gamma }(T)^{12\eta }`$. For our sample, using the values of $`\omega _p=18867`$ cm-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2049`$ cm-1 and $`\eta =0.23`$ (from Fig. 5), we obtain $`\rho _{DC}=6.02\mathrm{\Gamma }^{0.54}`$ \[$`\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$.cm\]. Recently, Dodge et al.dodge  have emphasized a similar non-linear relationship between the DC resistivity and the parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in the case of the weak itinerant ferromagnet SrRuO3. The conclusions for SrRuO3 have been questioned recently by Capogna et al.capogna , who argued that the true temperature dependence of the optical properties may have been masked by the large residual resistivity of the sample used in Ref. dodge, . In the present work this problem is absent due to the low residual resistivity of single crystalline MnSi. In fact, we can go a step further and try to give a detailed picture of the temperature dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. For that purpose we fit the low frequency $`R_p`$ (at all the measured temperatures) to Eq. 4 using the known values of $`\omega _p`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\eta `$. The values obtained for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ are displayed in Fig. 5e. The inset shows $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{0.54}`$ and $`\rho _{DC}/6.02`$. We can see that the model represented by Eq. 4 describes the measured data (reflectivity and resistivity) down to approximately 20 K. Below this temperature a fit only to reflectivity produces unphysical negative values for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. However, introducing the measured $`\rho _{DC}`$ produces a $`\chi ^2`$ which is not more than twice that obtained when fitting only reflectivity. Apparently at low temperatures there are still details which Eq. 4 is not able to describe.

At low frequencies, deviations from the Drude formula of the optical conductivity have been seen accompanied by deviations from $`T^2`$ in $`\rho _{DC}`$. Well known examples are YBCO schlesinger  and more recently CaRuO3 lee . Therefore, a departure from Drude behavior has been usually considered as evidence against Fermi-liquid behavior. Here, for MnSi, we are confronted with an atypical case. The resistivity has a quadratic temperature dependence, but the optical conductivity is better described by Eq. 4 with $`\eta 0.23`$, a clear departure from the Drude formulation. Moreover, instead of an $`\omega ^2`$-type frequency dependent scattering rate, which is usually observed in strongly interacting Fermi-liquids eb ; degiorgi , here $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ has a linear frequency dependence. Although Eq. 4 summarizes in a compact way the low frequency optical response, differing in a fundamental way from conventional Drude behavior, its microscopic origin is as yet not fully understood.

For frequencies below 300 cm-1 and for $`T<100`$ K the situation can be summarized as follows: (i) $`m^{}/m`$ decreases from 17 to 1 as temperature and frequency are increased. (ii) Phenomenologically the DC conductivity and the optical conductivity follow $`\sigma (\mathrm{\Gamma }(T)+i\omega )^{0.5}`$. In this formulation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(T)T^4`$ below $`T_C`$, whereas above Tc the temperature temperature dependence is approximately linear. (iii) For $`T>T_C`$ the scattering rate $`1/\tau (\omega ,T)`$ is proportional to $`T`$ and $`\omega ^2`$ in contradiction with the theory of weak itinerant ferromagnetism.(iv) For $`T<T_C`$ the scattering rate is proportional to $`T^2`$ and $`\omega `$. Given the frequency range for this type of measurements, we can not exclude the possibility, that for frequencies below 30cm-1 the scattering rate crosses over to the Fermi-liquid result $`1/\tau \pi ^2T^2+\omega ^2`$.

This project is supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter with financial aid from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek.


text:
# Specific heat at the transition in a superconductor with fluctuating magnetic moments

## Abstract

In the heavy-fermion materials CeCoIn5 and UBe13, the superconducting order parameter is coupled to flucutating magnetization of the uncompensated part of the localized $`f`$-moments. We find that this coupling decreases the superconducting transition temperature and increases the jump of the specific-heat coefficient, which indicates entropy transfer from the magnetic to the superconducting degree of freedom at the transition temperature. Below the transition, we find that the magnetic fluctuations are suppressed. We discuss the relation of our results to experiments on CeCoIn5 under pressure.

In this paper, we examine the effects of fluctuating paramagnetic moments on the specific-heat jump at the transition $`\mathrm{\Delta }C`$. We are motivated to examine this question due to recent experiments in CeCoIn5, a heavy-fermion superconductor with an unusually large ratio of $`\mathrm{\Delta }C/\gamma T_c5`$ at ambient pressure, bigjump , whereas the BCS value for singlet $`s`$-wave superconductor is 1.43. Anisotropy of the gap further decreases this value; for instance, for a $`d`$-wave or an anisotropic $`p`$-wave superconductor, it is suppressed by factors 2/3 or 5/6, respectively. We also recall that UBe13 UBe13 , one of the first heavy Fermion superconductors to be discovered, has $`\mathrm{\Delta }C/\gamma T_c2`$. In UBe13, the normal-state specific-heat coefficient $`\gamma `$ above $`T_c`$ increases as temperature is lowered indicating that the asymptototic Fermi-liquid state is not reached down to $`T_c`$. In CeCoIn5, the integrated measured entropy

$$\underset{0}{\overset{T_c}{}}C/T𝑑T$$
(1)
is about 3 times larger than $`\gamma (T_c)T_c`$ bigjump  assuring that were it not for the superconducting instability, a further enhancement of the normal state specific heat at lower temperatures would occur. Indeed, in a magnetic field just above $`H_{c2}=5`$T, the specific-heat coefficient has a sharp upturn around 1K as $`T`$ decreases below $`T_c`$ and continues to rise down to the lowest measured temperature 0.2K. The entropy is quite adequately balanced between this measurement and the zero-field entropy of the superconducting state demonstrating the consistency of the experimental measurements. We may associate the high temperature constant $`\gamma `$ state to an unstable Fermi-liquid state characterized by a Fermi temperature $`T_{Fh}3550`$K (see (10) below), and the low temperature constant $`\gamma `$ state to an asymptotically stable Fermi-liquid state characterized by a temperature $`T_{Fl}`$. The measurement of $`\gamma `$ above 5T suggests that $`T_{Fl}1`$K. Thus, $`T_{Fh}T_c`$. We see that $`T_c`$ is bigger than $`T_{Fl}`$ by a factor 2 or 3. To simplify the analysis, we shall assume $`T_cT_{Fl}`$. We shall see that the results still give a good agreement with the experimental data.

The two energy scales can originate in heavy fermions from a variety of causes. For example, multistage Kondo effects can arise in magnetic impurities when crystal field splittings are taken into account Nozieres ; the values of the crystal-field splittings have been measured in various experiments ourpaper ; Nakatsuji . In fact, a low Kondo temperature scale of about 1.5K has been deduced Nakatsuji  from the crystal-field scheme and the high Kondo temperature of 35K. A suppressed putative antiferromagnetic transition below $`T_c`$ could also provide a lower energy scale. Such a transition would of course also be suppressed in a field as large as 5 Tesla required to suppress superconductivity and the $`\gamma (T)`$ would then show a rise as observed below about 1 K (followed by a decline). In a recent detailed analysis Satoru f , the specific-heat and magnetic-susceptibility data of CeCoIn5 have been decomposed into a contribution from a heavy Fermi liquid characterized by $`T_{Fh}`$ and a contribution from local impurities with Kondo temperature $`T_{Fl}`$. The microscopic origin of the scale $`T_{Fl}`$ is not important in our model and the ensuing calculations.

We shall study the renormalizations of the specific heat (and magnetic fluctuations) using the following Ginzburg-Landau free energy function.

$`[\psi ,𝐌(𝐫)]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{V}{}}d^dr\left[{\displaystyle \frac{a(TT_c)}{2}}|\psi |^2+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{4}}|\psi |^4+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (T+T_{sf})}{2}}𝐌^2(𝐫)+{\displaystyle \frac{\eta }{2}}|\psi |^2𝐌^2(𝐫)\right]`$ (2)
$`=`$ $`V\left[{\displaystyle \frac{a(TT_c)}{2}}|\psi |^2+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{4}}|\psi |^4\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2V}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{\overset{k_c}{}}}(\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta |\psi |^2)𝐌_𝐤^2.`$
In (2), $`\psi `$ is the superconductivity order parameter, $`𝐌(𝐫)`$ is the magnetization at $`𝐫`$ and the coupling $`\eta `$ between the superconducting order parameter $`\psi `$ and the magnetization $`𝐌(𝐫)`$ is of the lowest allowed order and is independent of momentum and frequency.The magnetic fluctuations are assumed to be local and classical:

$$\chi _0(T)=\frac{1}{\alpha (T+T_{sf})},$$
(3)
The assumptions underlying the free energy (2) are the following: The fluctuations characteristic of the high temperature renormalized Fermi energy $`T_{Fh}`$ are assumed to lead to pairing and to determine $`T_c`$ and the bare parameters $`a`$ and $`b`$ in Eq. (2). The fluctuations characterestic of the low temperature Fermi energy $`T_{Fl}`$ have a characterestic energy $`T_{sf}=𝒪(T_{Fl})`$. As stated above, we further assume $`T_{Fh}T_cT_{Fl}`$ for CeCoIn5. Two simplifications follow from this which are used in (2): (i) The magnetic fluctuations characterised by $`T_{sf}`$ can be treated classically near $`T_c`$, (ii) there is clear separation in the microscopic processes leading to $`T_c,a,b`$ on the one hand and those parametrized in $`\eta `$. Note that the term involving $`\eta `$ correctly describes the Abrikosov-Gorkov AG  effects of magnetic impurities on superconductivity to leading order.

We can obtain the renormalized superconducting transition temperature, the jump of the specific-heat coefficient, and the susceptibility from the Helmholtz free energy. To calculate the Helmholtz free energy, we must integrate over all possible configurations of $`𝐌`$ and $`\psi `$. We shall do this in a two-step process. First we integrate over $`𝐌`$, because the integral is Gaussian, and can therefore be done exactly. That gives us a contribution $`_{fluct}(|\psi |^2)`$ to the superconducting Ginzburg-Landau free energy. We then approximate the integral over $`\psi `$ by the value of the integrand at its maximum.

$`\mathrm{exp}{\displaystyle \frac{_{fluct}(|\psi |^2)}{T}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟𝐌_𝐤\mathrm{exp}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{TV}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{\overset{k_c}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta (k)|\psi |^2)|𝐌_𝐤|^2`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{\overset{k_c}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{\frac{\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta (k)|\psi |^2}{2TV}}}\right)^{3/2}`$
so

$$\frac{_{fluct}(|\psi |^2)}{T}=\frac{_0}{T}+\frac{3}{2}\frac{VT}{l^d}\left[\frac{\eta }{\alpha (T+T_{sf})}|\psi |^2\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\eta }{\alpha (T+T_{sf})}\right)^2|\psi |^4\right]+𝒪(|\psi |^6).$$
(5)
Here

$$_0=\frac{3}{2}VT\stackrel{k_c}{}\frac{d^dk}{(2\pi )^d}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\alpha (T+T_{sf})}{2\pi TV}$$
(6)
is the free energy of the uncoupled magnetic fluctuations, and $`l`$ is the lattice constant. This formula is correct in the classical regime of the magnetic fluctuations, $`T_{Fl}<<T`$ that we are studying here. In the quantum regime, that is, when the temperature is lower than the energy of the magnetic mode at momentum $`k_c`$, we have to cut off the momentum integration at the value corresponding to $`T`$.

The Ginzburg-Landau energy density for the superconducting order parameter after including the effect of the fluctuating magnetization is

$$F_{sc}(|\psi |^2)=\frac{a}{2}\left(TT_c+T_{\psi M}\frac{T}{T+T_{sf}}\right)|\psi |^2+\frac{b}{4}\left(1T_{\psi M}^2l^d\frac{a^2}{3b}\frac{T}{(T+T_{sf})^2}\right)|\psi |^4.$$
(7)
Here we have combined $`\eta `$ and $`\alpha `$ into one parameter with the dimension of temperature

$$T_{\psi M}\frac{3\eta }{l^da\alpha },$$
(8)
which characterizes the strength of the magnetic fluctuations. From the functional (2), we see that

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma l^d\frac{a^2}{2b}$$
(9)
is the jump of the specific heat coefficient at $`T_c`$ of the bare superconductor per unit cell, so it has dimension of inverse temperature. Its value $`T_\gamma `$ is of the order $`T_{Fh}`$. From the experimental values of $`\gamma (T>T_c)0.20.3J/molK^2`$ using $`R8J/molK`$, we obtain

$$T_\gamma T_{Fh}=3550K.$$
(10)
Once $`T_\gamma `$ is more than an order of magnitude bigger than the transition temperature, the measurable quantities are not very sensitive to its precise value. Behavior of $`F_{sc}`$ close to zero defines the renormalized Ginsburg-Landau parameters

$$F_{sc}(|\psi |^2)\frac{a^{}}{2}(TT_c^{})|\psi |^2+\frac{b^{}}{4}|\psi |^4.$$
(11)
The new transition temperature $`T_c^{}`$ satisfies the equation

$$\delta T_cT_c^{}T_c=T_{\psi M}\frac{T_c^{}}{(T_c^{}+T_{sf})},$$
(12)
and the new specific heat jump is given by

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma ^{}}{\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma }=\frac{\left(1+\frac{T_{\psi M}T_{sf}}{(T_c^{}+T_{sf})^2}\right)^2}{1\frac{T_{\psi M}^2}{T_\gamma }\frac{T_c^{}}{(T_c^{}+T_{sf})^2}}.$$
(13)
We note that the coupling to the magnetic fluctuations decreases the transition temperature and increases the specific-heat jump. We would like to compare our results to the experiments on CeCoIn5 under pressure pressurejump , which show, that applying pressure increases $`T_c`$ and decreases the jump of the specific-heat coefficient. In the first approximation, we will assume that the bare superconducting parameters $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`T_c`$, as well as the bare magnetic parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`T_{sf}`$ are set at high energies, and thus do not change with pressure. The pressure is expected to change only the low-energy coupling $`\eta `$ and hence the temperature $`T_{\psi M}`$. In Fig.1, we plot the dimensionless quantities $`T_c^{}/T_c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma ^{}/\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma `$ as functions of the dimensionless variable $`T_{\psi M}/T_c`$, to show that $`T_c^{}`$ decreases and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma ^{}`$ increases as $`T_{\psi M}`$ increases. Hence, our interpretation of the experimental results is that the hydrostatic pressure suppresses $`T_{\psi M}`$. In Fig.1, we used the values $`T_c=6`$K, $`T_{sf}=1.5`$K (in agreement with the measurements of $`\gamma `$ in the magnetic field bigjump  discussed in the introduction), and $`T_\gamma =50`$K. Note that $`T_{sf}<T_c`$, which justifies our assumptions that the fluctuating moments are classical. These values are reasonable on physical grounds, and give a reasonable agreement between the experimental data and the calculated results (12) and (13). Experimentally, as the applied hydrostatic pressure changes from 0 to 1.48 GPa, $`T_c^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma ^{}/\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma `$ change from 2.3 to 2.7K and from 3 down to 2, respectively. The experimental data correspond to $`T_{\psi M}T_c`$: From the formulas (12) and (13), we find that as $`T_{\psi M}/T_c`$ changes from 1.05 down to 0.85, $`T_c^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma ^{}/\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma `$ change from 2.2 to 2.7K and from 3.0 down to 2.1, respectively. The fit to the experimental data is, of course, not exact because at each value of the pressure, we are solving two equations (11) and (12) for one unknown $`T_{\psi M}`$. For a detailed comparison with the experiment, we also need to assume a pressure dependence of another bare parameter, for example $`T_{sf}`$, but that pressure dependence comes out much weaker than the pressure dependence of $`T_{\psi M}`$, in agreement with our considerations at the beginning of this paragraph.

Finally, we calculate the change of the magnetic susceptibility relative to its bare value (3) due to the interaction $`\eta `$ to see the effect of superconductivity on magnetic fluctuations. The magnetic susceptibility is given by

$$\chi (T,q)=\frac{𝒟𝐌_𝐤𝒟\psi 𝒟\psi ^{}|𝐌_𝐪|^2e^{\frac{[\psi ,𝐌]}{T}}}{𝒟𝐌_𝐤𝒟\psi 𝒟\psi ^{}e^{\frac{[\psi ,𝐌]}{T}}};$$
(14)
we do both integrals by the two-step process described earlier. Above $`T_c^{}`$, $`\psi =0`$, so the susceptibility stays equal to (3). Below $`T_c^{}`$, the $`𝐌`$ integral gives

$$𝒟𝐌_𝐤|𝐌_𝐪|^2e^{\frac{1}{TV}\underset{𝐤}{\overset{k_c}{}}\frac{1}{2}(\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta |\psi |^2)|𝐌_𝐤|^2}=\frac{1}{2(\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta |\psi |^2)}\underset{𝐤}{\overset{k_c}{}}\left(\frac{\pi }{\frac{\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta |\psi |^2}{2TV}}\right)^{3/2}.$$
(15)
The extra factor $`1/(\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta (k)|\psi |^2)`$ on the right-hand side will change the extremum in the numerator of (14) by a number of the order of $`1/V`$ relative to the denominator, so we will neglect that difference. Then everything but this factor cancels between the numerator and the denominator, and we get

$$\chi (T,q)=\frac{1}{\alpha (T+T_{sf})+\eta |\psi (T)|^2}$$
(16)
with $`|\psi (T)|^2`$ obtained by minimization of (11). We see that the magnetic fluctuations are suppressed by coupling to superconductivity, but susceptibility of the localized moments remains finite down to zero temperature. Both effects are consistent with measurements of Knight shift Curro .

In conclusion, we propose that the anomalously big specific-heat jump at the superconducting transition in UBe13 and CeCoIn5 is caused by interaction between superconducting ordering and fluctuating unordered classical magnetic moments of localized f-electrons. We describe such a coupling between the two degrees of freedom by the simplest possible Ginsburg-Landau functional. We find that the transition temperature decreases and the jump of the specific-heat coefficient increases as the strength of the paramagnetic fluctuations and/or of their coupling to the superconducting order parameter increase. Below the transition, magnetic susceptibility is suppressed but remains finite down to zero temperature.

We thank Ar. Abanov, E. Abrahams, N. Curro, M.F. Hundley, E. Lengeyel, D.K. Morr, R. Movshovich, N. Oeschler, and D. Pines for useful discussions. We especially wish to acknowledge the sharing of the data analysis Satoru f  by S. Nakatsuji.


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# Analytical formulations of Peer-to-Peer Connection Efficiency

## 1 Introduction

A number of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) projects have been developed over the last few years and the use of the P2P communication paradigm is becoming widely known . A peer is a process which can connect to and accept connections from other peers. Hence peers may provide services and may request services from other peers. Classification of P2P technology is proposed in .

A large number of P2P specific example applications have arisen: *Napster*111www.napster.com and Gnutella are well known and widely used file sharing systems222See opennap.sourceforge.net for a long list of other P2P file sharing protocols., *Freenet*333freenet.sourceforge.com is an adaptive P2P network application that permits the publication, replication, and retrieval of data while protecting the anonymity of both authors and readers , SETI@home is a well developed system for peers to distribute and process data units and *PCSCW*  provides a P2P based computer supported cooperative work environment. Other examples can be found in .

Using TCP/UDP and sockets provides a standard interface for connecting peers but is insecure. Secure connections, including peer authentication, between peers can be provided using SSL or some other form of secure communication such as Kerberos. Secure connections take a longer time to establish but are required for certain kinds of activity such as resource sharing services where peers should provide only authorised access to local resources, e.g. when providing direct access to the underlying operating system as a generic computer resource.

With classic client/server systems, if the server cannot satisfy a client request then the client may redirect its request to another server by disconnecting and reconnecting. For example, the WWW defines connections between servers in the form of hyper-links which clients use to search for and access information. Furthermore, until recent developments such as XML the WWW servers were not responsible for the connections, which lead to a significant fraction of their connections becoming invalid.

The communication patterns that arise via the use of P2P are fundamentally different to classic client/server. Peers may hop from peer to peer, disconnecting and reconnecting, in order to access a service. Also service requests may be passed from peer to peer, following paths determined by the peers. Unlike a static service network such as DNS, connections between peers dynamically change, e.g. to avoid unnecessary intermediate peers.

A number of empirical studies of P2P networks have been undertaken. The study by Saroiu, Gummadi at. al.  gives detailed measurements of peer characteristics in the Napster and Gnutella networks. They built crawlers to automatically sample peer characteristics in the live peer networks. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, the results show that the behaviour of users in a peer system may be categorised as client-like and server-like. Approximately 26% of Gnutella users share no data, 7% of Gnutella users offer more files than all of the other users combined and on average 60-80% of Napster users share 80-100% of the files. In general, about 22% of the participating peers have upstream (from peer) bottleneck bandwidths of 100Kbps or less, which makes them unsuitable to provide content and data services. The median session (connected) time is approximately 60 minutes, corresponding to be the time taken to connect and download a small number of files. Further studies of P2P networks were reported in .

### 1.1 Contribution of this paper

This paper provides an analytical formulation and optimisation of the fundamental principles governing a peer connection and service provision. In the first case a single connection is optimised so as to minimise the total time spent connecting or connected but unused, given an average arrival rate of requests. In the second case multiple connections are optimised so as to simultaneously minimise the on time of each connection while minimising the queue lengths at each connection, given an average aggregate arrival rate.

The optimisations are useful for reducing bandwidth and power consumption, e.g. in the case of peers being mobile devices with a limited power supply. Also these results could be used to determine when a (virtual) circuit should be switched to support a connection.

## 2 Peer connection efficiency

In the following sections the formulation considers a peer which receives requests, either from a user or from some number of incoming connections, and services these requests by establishing one or more outgoing connections to other peers, i.e. the peer connects to another peer in order to service each request as in Figure 1.

### 2.1 Single connection

Let $`t_c`$ be the time to establish a connection and $`t_s`$ be the time taken to complete the service once the connection has been established. Let requests arrive randomly with an average arrival rate $`\lambda `$. For a given request, if the peer is connected (state 1) then the service time is $`s_1=t_s`$ otherwise the peer is not connected (state 0) and so the service time is $`s_0=t_c+t_s`$.

On the arrival of a request let the peer be *not* connected with probability $`p`$ and connected with probability $`q=1p`$. Then the average service time is

$$E[s]=ps_0+qs_1=pt_c+t_s.$$
(1)
The $`M/G/1`$ queueing system model is applicable with a mean service rate $`\mu =1/E[s]`$ and utilisation $`\rho =\frac{\lambda }{\mu }`$.

It follows that, for a fraction $`\rho `$ of a given time interval, the peer is either connecting or the connection is being used to provide the service. For a fraction $`1\rho `$ of the same time interval, the peer is either disconnected or connected but not making use of the connection, the later called idling. One minus the fraction of time that the peer uses to connect minus the fraction of time that the peer idles defines the *peer connection efficiency*:

$$\eta (p;\lambda ,t_c,t_s)=1\rho \frac{pt_c}{pt_c+t_s}(1\rho )(1p).$$
(2)
Conversely, not using the connection when it is not needed is considered efficient, as is not having to establish a connection every time the service is requested.

As an intuitive example, consider a hard drive system that has two states: spinning and sleeping. If the hard drive is sleeping when a request arrives, then it must first spin up, taking time $`t_c`$, before servicing the request, taking an additional time $`t_s`$. If the hard drive is already spinning, then the request is serviced in time $`t_s`$ only. Clearly the system aims to minimise the fraction of time spent spinning up and idling.

This goal is trivial for $`\lambda 0`$ by setting $`p=1`$ and when $`\lambda \frac{1}{t_s}`$ by setting $`p=0`$. In the first case the peer is not required and in the second case such a situation is not good because the service becomes unstable as the request queue grows to infinity. Maximising $`\eta `$ with respect to $`p`$ yields an optimal value:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \frac{d(1\eta )}{dp}& =2\lambda pt_c+\lambda t_s1\hfill \\ \hfill p^{}& =\frac{1\lambda t_s}{2\lambda t_c};0<\lambda \frac{1}{t_s}.\hfill \end{array}$$

However for small $`\lambda `$, $`p^{}`$ becomes $`>1`$ so

$$p^{}=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \lambda a,\hfill \\ \frac{1\lambda t_s}{2\lambda t_c}\hfill & \frac{1}{t_s}\lambda >a,\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \lambda >\frac{1}{t_s}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(3)
where $`a=\frac{1}{2t_c+t_s}`$.

Figure 2(a) shows $`p`$ (series that tend to 0) and $`\eta `$ (series that tend to 1) as a function of normalised average arrival rate444$`\lambda `$ takes the values $`(0,\frac{1}{ts})`$. for various values of $`t_c`$ and $`t_s`$. The series for $`t_c=1,2,3,4`$ are with $`t_s=1`$ and the series for $`t_s=2,3,4`$ are with $`t_c=1`$. Arrows point to the intersection of associated series. Figure 2(b) shows the results of a simulation (given in Section A) that uses $`p^{}`$ from Equation 3.

### 2.2 Multiple connections

Each peer may open a number of simultaneous connections in order to satisfy service requests. Since a peer may satisfy a request transparently by simply passing the request to another peer, any peer may satisfy any type of request. With this assumption, a peer may take an incoming request and pass it to any other peer for service. A network of file mirroring peers gives an example where this assumption holds, every file is available on every peer.

In this case, let requests arrive at the peer with an average arrival rate of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and let the peer maintain $`d`$ (outgoing) connections, with each connection receiving an average $`\lambda _i`$, $`i=0,1,2,\mathrm{},d1`$, requests per second where

$$\lambda _i=\mathrm{\Lambda }.$$

In other words, the peer forwards a request to connection $`i`$ with probability $`\lambda _i/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Let $`\lambda =(\lambda _0,\lambda _1,\mathrm{},\lambda _{d1})`$. Note that the peer must observe the bounds $`0\lambda _i<\frac{1}{t_s}`$ to ensure that the queue lengths associated with each connection are finite.

In the previous analysis the probability $`p`$ that a connection is disconnected after servicing a request was computed such that the wasted time, being the sum of connecting time and idle time, was minimised. Continuing, let $`p_i`$ be this probability for connection $`i`$. From Equation 2 let

$$\xi _i=p_i(1\rho _i)$$

be called the *off-time* of connection $`i`$ where $`\rho _i`$ is the utilisation of connection $`i`$. Let $`t_{c,i}=t_c`$ and $`t_{s,i}=t_s`$ be invariant over all connections. When $`p_i`$ is set to minimise the fraction of wasted time for a given $`\lambda _i`$ then it maximises the fraction of time available for both servicing the requests and for residing in the off state.

When $`\xi _i=0`$ the connection $`i`$ is on for all time and conversely when $`\xi _i=1`$ the connection $`i`$ is off for all time. For a given $`\lambda _i`$, the length of the request queue that connection $`i`$ is servicing555Using Pollaczek’s formula. is

$$L_i=\frac{\rho _i^2}{1\rho _i}\frac{1+C_{s,i}^2}{2}$$

where from Equation 1

$$C_{s,i}^2=\frac{Var[s,i]}{E[s,i]^2}=\frac{t_c^2p_i(1p_i)}{(p_it_c+t_s)^2}$$

is the squared coefficient of variation for the $`M/G/1`$ queueing system. The quantity $`\xi _i/L_i`$ is the fraction of time the connection is off per request. It follows that

$$OPR(\lambda ;p_i^{},t_c,t_s)=\frac{_{i=0}^{d1}\xi _i}{_{i=0}^{d1}L_i}$$
(4)
is the average off time per request for the peer. Clearly the objective of the peer is to maximise $`OPR`$ for a constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

Numerical solutions, using simulated annealing, that maximise Equation 4 for the cases when $`d=2,3,5,10`$ are shown in Figure 3 with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=(0,\frac{d}{t_s})`$. In Figure 3(a), $`\lambda _0=\lambda _1`$ for small $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and similarly in Figures 3(b), 3(c) and 3(d) (however $`\lambda `$’s are difficult to distinguish and are not shown for this last case). In Figure 3(f) $`\lambda _0`$ and $`\lambda _1`$ are equal.

From Figure 3 it is seen that the peer should partition the set of connections into a set with a high utilisation and a set with low utilisation in order to achieve the objective. The vertical lines show when a $`\lambda _i`$ switches from a low value up to a high value. For certain regions where the solution involves a $`\lambda _i=0`$ it is evident that less connections is better.

Clearly if $`t_c>t_s`$ then optimal conditions are reached by loading a small number of connections and when $`t_c<t_s`$ the connections may be equally loaded most of the time. Mirrored hard drives, which have spin up time much greater than the time to service a request would operate optimally according to Figure 3(e). Peer connections tend to be established faster than the time to service the request so they would operate optimally according to Figure 3(f).

### 2.3 Servicing a fraction of requests

The peer is expected to service some fraction of the total $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ requests. Let $`\lambda _0`$ be the chosen rate of requests that the peer services as depicted in Figure 4. In this case Equation 4 is modified to obtain a service off time per request:

$$\begin{array}{c}SOPR(\lambda ;p_i^{},t_c,t_s)=\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{_{i=1}^{d1}\xi _i}{L_0+_{i=1}^{d1}L_i},\end{array}$$
(5)
where $`L_0=\rho _0^2/(1\rho _0)`$ and $`\rho _0=\lambda _0t_s`$. There is no $`t_c`$ for requests serviced by the peer and no wasted time since the peer is on all the time.

Figures 5(a) and 5(b) show how $`SOPR`$ compares to $`OPR`$ for the case when $`d=3`$ and $`d=5`$ respectively.

### 2.4 Expected number of peers traversed

So far the time $`t_s`$ has been considered the time taken to service a request over an established connection. Consider $`t_s`$ to be the time taken to transmit the request. In this case, the request is transmitted from peer to peer until it is finally serviced. The probability of being serviced at a peer is

$$p_s=\frac{\lambda _0}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}$$

and the average number of peers that a request passes through (including the last one) is then $`k=1/p_s`$.

The average queue length experienced by a request as it passes through a peer is

$$\widehat{L_q}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{d1}{}}L_{q,i}\frac{\lambda _i}{\mathrm{\Lambda }\lambda _0}$$

and so the total length of queues experienced by a request in the P2P network is

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p_s(1p_s)^{i1}\left(\widehat{L_q}(i1)+L_0\right)$$

where $`L_0`$ is defined for $`SOPR`$. Average queue length increases in direct proportion to the number of connections that each peer maintains. This suggests that having a small number of connections is better. However, because the connections are not bandwidth constrained, having more connections allows a larger load. Computing optimal connection efficiency given bandwidth constraints required dynamic programming techniques and is left for further research.

## 3 Conclusion

Deciding if and when to disconnect from a server in order to minimise the total wasted connecting plus idle connection time with respect to the arrival of requests is an interesting problem. This maximises the *connection efficiency*. This paper derived a probability $`p`$ such that, for a given request arrival rate $`\lambda `$, if the client (blindly) disconnects with probability $`p`$ after servicing a request then the connection efficiency is maximised. In this case the client has no knowledge of the queue size. It is seen that, for a connection establishment time $`t_c`$ and a request service time $`t_s`$, the worst efficiency occurs when the request rate is about $`\frac{1}{2t_c+t_s}`$. Better efficiency could be obtained by considering the queue size (whether $`>0`$ or not) and other statistical information that describes the arrival of requests. This aspect is left for further study.

In a P2P network, peers can connect (like clients) to other peers (like servers) in order to service incoming requests. Using a broad assumption, peers can relay requests to other peers so that any peer can transparently service any kind of request. As each connection from a peer has an associated connection efficiency, which is a function of request rate, it follows that the average connection efficiency over the peer’s connections is dependent on the proportion of requests forwarded over each connection. To avoid solutions that give unbounded queue sizes the paper proposed a quantity called *off time per request* and uses simulated annealing techniques to find an assignment of request rates over a given number of connections that maximises this quantity, thus minimising wasted time.

Furthermore, the paper considered each peer to be servicing some fraction of requests that it receives, rather than forwarding these requests to other peers. In this case a similar quantity called *service off time per request* is introduced and maximised subject to similar conditions.

It was seen that the forwarding of requests to peers should be divided into two general classes: a highly loaded class and a lightly loaded class. This intuitively follows from observing that the least efficient operating load for a connection, as a function of load, is between 0 and maximum load and that a lightly loaded connection is less efficient that a heavily loaded connection. For more than a few connections it is seen that some connections are better left inactive until required to handle the load.

Future research will study the delay (wait time) rather than queue length. Although delay and queue length are related as

$$W_q=\frac{L_q}{\lambda }$$

the solutions for minimum service off time per request are significantly different. Thus, the system must choose to minimise $`W_q`$ or $`L_q`$ or a combination of both. Also, analytical solutions to the multidimensional minimisation problem have not be derived. The problem is a piecewise non-linear minimisation problem with constraints. The method of simulated annealing required a significantly large number of restarts in order to achieve the global minimum.

The study of peer connection efficiency is an interesting area of P2P research that describes fundamental P2P modes of operation using rigorous analytical theory. There is substantial grounds for further analysis and potential for new discoveries.

## Appendix A Simulation algorithm

The following simulation was executed with $`T=5000`$ arrivals to obtain the results of Figure 2(b).

1. given $`t_c`$ and $`t_s`$ and a uniform random variable $`X`$ between $`0`$ and $`1`$,
2. for each $`\lambda `$

1. compute $`p`$ according to Equation 3
    2. $`Connected=false`$
    3. $`Waste=0.0`$
    4. $`CurrentTime=0.0`$
    5. $`ArrivalsTime=0.0`$
    6. for $`T`$ number of arrivals do

    1. $`Arrival=(1/\lambda )\mathrm{log}(1X)`$
        2. $`ArrivalsTime=ArrivalsTime+Arrival`$
        3. $`TimeDifference=ArrivalsTimeCurrentTime`$
        4. if $`TimeDifference<0`$ then set $`TimeDifference=0`$
        5. if $`Connected=true`$ then

        1. set $`Waste=Waste+TimeDifference`$
            2. set $`CurrentTime=CurrentTime+TimeDifference+t_s`$
        6. ELSE

        1. set $`Waste=Waste+t_c`$
            2. set $`CurrentTime=CurrentTime+t_s+t_c`$
        7. set $`Connected=false`$ with probability $`p`$ and $`=true`$ with probability $`1p`$
    7. output $`\eta (\lambda )=1Waste/CurrentTime`$