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# Relative Flux Calibration of Keck HIRES Echelle SpectraBased on data obtained with the Kast spectrograph on the Lick Observatory 3-m Shane telescope and with the HIRES and ESI spectrographs at the W.M. Keck Observatory that is a joint facility of the University of California, the California Institute of Technology and NASA.

## 1 Introduction

In recent decades, the combination of large aperture telescopes and high resolution spectrographs have allowed for precision analysis of a variety of astrophysical objects. Echelle spectrographs are the instrument of choice for high resolution, and most large telescopes now have one (Vogt, 1987; Diego et al., 1990; Dekker et al., 2000; Noguchi et al., 1998; Tull, 1998; McLean et al., 1998).

Echelle gratings can give spectra with high spectral resolution, with a large slit width, and a large wavelength range in a single setting (Schroeder, 1987). An echelle grating disperses the spectrum into many tens of spectral orders, which are then cross dispersed by a second dispersive element so that the orders can be placed, one above the other, on a rectangular CCD detector. It is difficult to combine the spectra from the many spectral orders of an echelle to produce a single continuous spectrum. This difficulty arises because the response varies rapidly across each order, and at a given wavelength is usually different in different orders.

High quality relative flux calibration of echelle spectra is highly desirable in many scientific applications. For example, accurate flux levels over a large range of wavelengths makes it much easier to place continuum levels on spectra with pervasive blended absorption, such as the Lyman alpha forest absorption seen in high redshift QSO spectra.

In this paper, we discuss the relative flux calibration of spectra from the HIRES echelle spectrograph on the Keck-I telescope (Vogt et al., 1994). We do not discuss absolute flux calibration, as it requires additional calibration data and is not necessary for our absorption line work. We intend that a spectrum with relative flux calibration has the correct shape over some range of wavelengths, and differs from an absolute calibration in only the normalization.

We developed the methods described in this paper to improve our measurements of the primordial Deuterium to Hydrogen abundance ratio in QSO absorption systems, for which the bulk of our spectra come from HIRES. We have found that we obtain more accurate and reliable estimates of the absorption column densities when we use spectra with accurate relative flux. High quality flux calibration was not a major design goal for HIRES, and we have found that special steps must be taken to obtain the quality of calibration that we need for our work on D/H. The usual (Willmarth & Barnes, 1994; Massey et al., 1992; Clayton, 1996) methods of echelle flux calibration appear inadequate for reasons that we do not fully understand. This inadequacy motivated the development of the methods we describe.

We would like to both minimize the flux errors in our spectra, and to estimate the size of errors which remain after our calibrations. We shall find that the flux calibration errors depend on wavelength and they are correlated on various wavelength scales. We would like to estimate the size of the errors on these different scales. We would also like to make the error in the relative flux calibration less than the photon noise on some relevant scale. For example, when we fit a flat continuum level to a 50 pixel segment of a HIRES spectrum with signal to noise ratio of 100 per pixel, the photon noise on the continuum level is 0.14%.

We found that is harder to approach a given accuracy in relative flux calibration in many places. These places include the regions where echelle orders join, regions where spectra have lower signal to noise ratio, wavelengths in the near UV, and in general as the wavelength range increases. It is very hard to get flux calibration errors of $`<1`$% over even a wavelength range of $`<40`$ Å within one HIRES order. Fortunately for our absorption line work, errors that vary smoothly over wavelength scales $`>40`$ Å are not as serious as smaller scale errors.

In this paper, we describe a way of calibrating the relative flux in a HIRES spectrum using well calibrated reference spectra of the same target to transfer flux information from other spectrographs to the HIRES spectra. We force each HIRES spectrum to have the shape of these reference spectra. This method should correct a variety of flux calibration errors, both from variable vignetting and differences in spectrum extraction and reduction. The method could also be applied to spectra from various spectrographs, and not just echelles. This method is based on that introduced by Burles & Tytler (1997, 1998) and applied with improvements to HS 0105+1619 in O’Meara et al. (2001).

The paper is organized as follows: we first describe the nature of inconsistencies between repeated HIRES observations of a target, and how this impacts flux calibration. Second, we describe the spectra we used to illustrate our flux calibration method. Third, we describe at first in overview, and then in detail, our methods for flux calibration. Fourth, we describe how we combine the HIRES orders that we have flux calibrated individually. Finally, we discuss the accuracy and errors of our method.

## 2 Description of the HIRES flux calibration problem

The usual methods of flux calibration appear inadequate when applied to HIRES spectra. When we determine the instrument response by observing a spectrophotometric standard star, different exposures of the same star give different instrument response functions, even when we believe that the exposures were taken with the same instrument configuration. For example, in Figure 1, we show the signal extracted from two HIRES integrations of G191-B2B. The exposures were taken on consecutive nights, with similar instrument configurations. On the second night the star was 0.07 degrees higher in the sky and the image rotator (Appendix B) physical angle differed by 0.071 degrees to compensate for the change in parallactic angle. The spectra were both extracted with Tom Barlow’s MAKEE software (April 2001 version). We show the “raw” ADU from the CCD before division by the flat field integration or any other calibration.

The differences between the two exposures shown in Figure 1 are large and unexpected. In particular, even though the exposures were taken on different nights, we did not expect to see large ($`10`$%) differences within a single order, even after the two exposures were normalized to have the same mean flux in that order. The differences are largest ($``$ 10%) at the ends of the order. Similar differences (both in shape and magnitude) are present in each observed spectral order. However, the form of the difference is not precisely the same for each order, as demonstrated in Figure 2. Barlow & Sargent (1997) also noted the possibility of systematic flux errors of 10% near order overlaps.

Flux differences have also been reported for the Subaru telescope HDS echelle spectrograph that sometimes shows 10% changes during observations (Aoki, 2002).

We have examined approximately 20 other pairs of standard star integrations from HIRES that have similar instrumental setups. Most show differences of order 10%, though the exact shape of the differences is not always the same. In addition to the “U” shaped ratios (seen in Figure 1), we see three other shapes for ratios: near flat ratios, tilted and ogive (or “fallen S”) shapes. In each case, the shapes of the ratios vary gradually order-to-order in a systematic way, such that adjacent orders have similar shapes. The shapes of the ratios vary much more between pairs of integrations than they do from order-to-order for a given pair of integrations.

Approximately 30% of integration pairs give flat ratios that indicate that the instrumental response was very similar for the two integrations, which should make flux calibration simple. A cursory examination did not show any predictors (e.g. telescope elevation, rotator angle, position of target on the slit, seeing) as to which pairs would be similar and which different.

In Figure 3, we show HIRES integrations on two stars that we flux calibrated in the usual manner, each using a response function determined from a HIRES exposure of a standard star. The spectra that we calibrated differ from the known flux levels by large amounts over a wide range of wavelengths. The main deviations are systematic across each HIRES order. We also see large differences at the order overlap wavelengths. Different ways of combining spectral orders leave different flux calibration errors. If we take the mean of the signals then the flux will jump in a single pixel, by up to 10%, where each order begins and ends. There will be approximately 70 such jumps in a complete HIRES spectrum with 36 orders.

In the past, we have attempted to reduce the flux errors by fitting continua to each order, and dividing by these continua, before we take the mean flux in a wavelength overlap. This method is unsatisfactory because it is very hard to ensure that the continua that we fit to adjacent orders have both the same flux levels and the same shapes, and we loose flux information.

For some unknown reason, long integrations on a QSO show smaller differences than short integrations on a bright star. A dependence on integration time might relate to some averaging, perhaps related to the target position on the slit. A dependence on brightness might relate to the 100 times lower signal in the QSO integrations, and perhaps subsequent differences in the spectrum extraction. We still have difficulty flux calibrating QSO exposures, even though they appear to be more stable than exposures on standard stars, because usual procedures still require that we determine the instrument response from a standard star exposure.

The variations we see in standard star exposures indicate that there is some instability in either Keck+HIRES, in our data reduction processes, or in both. We have investigated two possible origins for the instability: variable vignetting inside of HIRES, and inadequate the extraction of the spectra. We do not see a clear signature of either in our spectra, but we do know that the vignetting is expected to change.

We have explored the possibility of extraction errors by varying the type of profile used during extraction, and the profile width, but found no differences from the standard extraction results from MAKEE. We also measured flux ratios from the raw counts in the CCD images that were similar to those in the spectra extracted by MAKEE.

We know that the vignetting inside HIRES changes with the position angle of the sky image on the HIRES slit and with the telescope elevation (Appendix B). When the image rotator is used there are two main options. We can use the image rotator in “Vertical angle mode” to keep the vertical angle along the slit, so that the position angle varies with the position of the target in the sky. The rotator can also be used to keep a desired position angle along the slit. If the rotator is not used, the relevant angle is the telescope elevation. The variation in vignetting arises from a known mechanical and optical misalignment between the Keck-I telescope and HIRES, and the expected amount of change in the vignetting, from ray tracing kindly provided by Steve Vogt, is approximately 10%, consistent with our observations.

We can account for why the ratios of HIRES spectra have similar shapes across all orders if the variable vignetting happens after the echelle, and before leaving the cross-disperser. In this part of HIRES the light from the red end of each order is separated from that in the blue end, but all orders are coincident. We might explain the shape of the ratios, and the similarity from order-to-order, if a varying amount of light misses the top and bottom of the cross-disperser (the grooves are vertical), where the red and blue ends of the orders land. This variation could arise when the cone of light from the telescope tips up and down in the vertical plane that connects the center of the tertiary mirror and the HIRES slit.

However, we suspect that vignetting is not the sole cause of the variations in the flux, because we have seen variations in spectra taken under apparently identical instrumental conditions (same elevation, image rotator setting, and target location on the slit) on consecutive nights, as we saw in Figure 1.

The changes might also come from differences in the extraction of the spectra from the CCD image, e.g. if we do not extract a fixed proportion of the flux recorded at each wavelength. Differences in the extraction of spectra, including multiple integrations on a given target, are likely whenever there are changes in conditions, such as the location of the target along the slit, the seeing, the sky brightness and the amount of signal recorded. However, extraction problems seem an unlikely explanation for standard stars that have high signal to noise ratio.

## 3 Spectra we will use to Illustrate our Method

Here, we introduce the spectra that we will use to illustrate our method of relative flux calibration. This is the set of spectra that we used to measure D/H towards QSO 1243+3047 ($`z_{em}=2.64`$, V=16.9; Kirkman et al. 2003). For our D/H work, we were mostly interested the flux calibration in a 40 Å region centered on the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ line near 4285 Å, and on the Lyman limit near 3210 Å. We began the development of the methods using a similar set of spectra of HS 0105+1619 that we had used to make an earlier D/H measurement (O’Meara et al., 2001).

We used 5 spectra from the Kast spectrograph on the Lick 3-m telescope, and one from the ESI echelle spectrograph on the Keck-II telescope. We used both the Kast and ESI spectra separately to make independent flux calibrations of 8 integrations from HIRES. Further details of the observations, including the dates, the resolution, the mean S/N, and plots of the spectra are in Kirkman et al. (2003). All of the spectra that we used were shifted into the heliocentric frame, and placed on a logarithmic wavelength scale with a constant velocity increment per pixel, although with different increments for different spectra.

### 3.1 Spectra from Kast

The Kast double spectrograph uses a beam splitter to record blue and red spectra simultaneously in two cameras. For QSO 1243+3047 we have five KAST integrations, one from 1997, and two each from 1999 and 2001. All integrations were obtained using the d46 dichroic that splits the spectrum near 4600 Å, the 830 line/mm grism blazed at 3460 Å for the blue side, and the 1200 line/mm grating blazed at 5000 Å for the red side. We reduced all exposures with the IRAF package longslit.

### 3.2 Spectra from ESI

ESI covers from 3900 – 11,000 Å in ten overlapping orders (Epps & Miller, 1998; Bigelow & Nelson, 1998; Sheinis et al., 2000). We have one exposure of QSO 1243+3047 using a 1” slit, taken in the echellette mode on January 11, 2000. From the same night, we also have an exposure of the flux standard star Feige 110.

### 3.3 Spectra from HIRES

Our HIRES spectra of QSO 1243+3047 all used similar instrumental setups. The angle of the HIRES echelle was the same for all exposures, and placed the center of each order near the center of the CCD. The cross-disperser angle was also similar for all exposures, except for one exposure that extended to much larger wavelengths. The image rotator (Appendix B) was used in vertical mode, to minimize slit losses from atmospheric dispersion. We used the C5 decker, which provides an entrance aperture to the spectrograph with dimensions $`1.15^{^{\prime \prime }}\times 7.5^{^{\prime \prime }}`$. In each case we placed the target near the middle of the slit. The spectra were all recorded on the engineering grade Tektronix CCD with 2048 $`\times `$ 2048 pixels that has been used in HIRES since 1994. The HIRES pixel size is 2.1 km s-1.

The CCD is large enough to record beyond the free spectral range for all orders at wavelengths $`<5200`$ Å, and we placed the spectra on the CCD such that we did record this flux for all such orders. All but one integration covered from near 3200Å out to 4700Å in approximately 36 orders. These integrations were 7200 – 9000 seconds long. The S/N in each integration is near 3 per 2.1 km s-1 pixel near the Lyman limit at $``$ 3200 Å, and rises to near 35 at the peak of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line at $``$ 4400 Å.

The HIRES spectra we use are the normal output from the MAKEE software, which are the raw counts spectrum divided by spectra extracted from flat field integrations. In addition, the CCD defects were marked with negative error values. These spectra differ from the raw counts that we discussed in the previous section in that the flat field division has removed most of the variation across the orders due to the blaze and vignetting. Although this flat field division may introduce additional undesirable changes in the relative flux, we proceed with these spectra because it is imperative that the CCD defects have been removed.

#### 3.3.1 HIRES Spectral Resolution

We measured the instrument resolution of HIRES by fitting Gaussian functions to narrow, apparently un-blended lines in a single Thorium-Argon arc integration taken before one of the QSO integrations. We fit hundreds of arc lines in all parts of the spectrum, and found a dispersion of $`\sigma =3.4\pm 0.1`$ km s-1, which corresponds to a FWHM spectral resolution of $`8.0\pm 0.2`$ km s-1($`b_{ins}=\sqrt{2}\sigma =4.81\pm 0.14`$ km s-1). We did not detect any variation in the resolution with wavelength. However, we did detect that the arc lines are not Gaussian in shape, with more extended wings, such that the best fitting $`\sigma `$ increases when we extend the fitting range around an individual line. We also expect that the spectra will have slightly different FWHM from the arc spectra, because the illumination of the slit is different. The wavelength shifts that we describe in the next section suggest that the resolution will depend in part on the guiding and seeing.

#### 3.3.2 HIRES Wavelength Shifts

We measured wavelength shifts between the HIRES integrations and we shifted the spectra onto the same scale to correct these shifts. We measured the cross-correlations between each of the 7 integrations with the eighth that we used as the reference. An example of the shifts is shown in Figure 4. Comparisons of other pairs of integrations often show a much larger dispersion in the measured shifts. In all cases, the shifts measured in each order are consistent with a single shift for each integration. The shifts had a standard deviation of 0.7 km s-1, which is 30% of one HIRES CCD pixel. Each shift was measured to an accuracy of 0.13 km s-1, which we determined from the scatter in the shifts that we measured separately for each order.

These shifts may arise from differences in the placement of the QSO light in the HIRES slit, which projects to approximately 4 HIRES pixels. The 0.7 km s-1 rms shift is approximately 9% of the FWHM resolution, which itself is similar to the slit width. The shifts do not correlate with hour angle or the correction that was applied for the Earth’s orbital motion ($`<30`$ km s-1) and spin ($`<0.4`$ km s-1). The shifts are also larger than we expect from wavelength scale errors. However, we did find much larger wavelength scale errors when we did not ensure that MAKEE used enough arc lines to determine the dispersion solution for each order.

## 4 Overview of the Method

There are three main steps in our procedure to apply relative flux calibration to HIRES spectra.

* Step 1: Flux calibrate a high quality reference spectrum of the target.
* Step 2: Flux calibrate the HIRES echelle orders with the reference spectrum. This imposes the long scale ($`>10`$ Å) spectral shape of the reference spectrum upon each HIRES echelle order. The flux information on smaller scales (e.g. absorption line profiles) still comes from HIRES.
* Step 3: Combine the HIRES orders. We first sum the integrations and then join the orders to give one continuous spectrum.

These procedures do not replace standard CCD spectrum extraction procedures. Rather, they should be thought of as a “software patch”, applied to correct errors that remain after the spectra have been extracted, and perhaps calibrated, in the usual way. Reasonably well calibrated HIRES spectra are required as inputs to our method, because the flux information on scales $`<10`$ Å will still come directly from the HIRES spectra. The procedure is not unique, and we expect that other sequences might be appropriate for different spectra.

We now discuss in further detail each of the steps outlined above.

## 5 Step 1: Flux Calibrating the Reference Spectra of the Target

Since we can not transfer information about the instrument response between exposures, we must “self-calibrate” each exposure we take with HIRES. The first step of our method is thus to obtain a well calibrated spectrum of the target. The reference spectrum must come from a well calibrated and stable spectrograph. In our work on Q1243+3047, we obtained reference spectra from both Lick+KAST and Keck+ESI, and compared them to gauge the accuracy of the final flux calibration.

### 5.1 Flux Calibration of Kast Spectra

To calibrate the flux in our Kast spectra of QSO 1243+3047, we took flux information from a model spectrum of G191 B2B for the 1997 spectrum, and a STIS spectrum of BD 28 4211 for the 1999 and 2001 exposures. We discuss the reasons behind our choice of these standard stars in Appendix A. We measured and matched the resolution of the observed and reference spectra of the standard stars before we used them to calculate the Kast response function. The dip in the response at the end of blue CCD and the beginning of red the CCD is due to the changing efficiency of the beam splitter. In Figure 5, we illustrate the flux calibration process.

The spectrum shows atmospheric ozone absorption lines (Schachter, 1991) as the wiggles of the raw CCD counts (panel b) below 3400 Å. Their strength depends on the temperature of the ozone layer and the effective airmass of the integration, and we have not made appropriate adjustments. We left the wiggles un-smoothed in the response (Figure 5, panel d) to help partially remove their effect from the quasar spectrum.

In Figure 6, we show the accuracy of the flux calibration of a Kast spectrum of another star. The flux residuals between our calibrated KAST spectrum and a STIS spectrum of the same star are less than 3%.

### 5.2 Flux Calibration of ESI Spectrum

We flux calibrate ESI spectra in the same way we do those from Kast. In Figure 7, we show the steps in the flux calibration of an ESI spectrum. The ESI orders overlap in wavelength, and in Figure 8, we see that the orders do not always have the same flux. These differences increase in size as we approach the end of an order. We have not investigated the origin of these flux differences. We cut off most of the regions where the differences exceeds 2% (which is the noise level in our spectrum) without leaving any gaps in the wavelength coverage. We do not know the size of the remaining error, especially in regions where there was no wavelength overlap, because we do not have redundant observations of bright stars. Nonetheless, the ESI spectra could have better relative flux calibration than HIRES spectra, for several reasons. ESI has fewer orders, each of which covers more wavelength range and a much larger portion of each order is sampled by adjacent orders. ESI has a fixed instrumental configuration and our ESI spectra have much higher S/N than our individual HIRES integrations, which may change the proportion of the flux that is extracted.

### 5.3 Errors in the Reference Spectra

The errors in the relative flux calibration of the reference spectrum are a fundamental limitation on how well we can apply relative flux calibration to the HIRES spectrum. One way to explore these errors is to compare different reference spectra. We will see that the differences increase with wavelength range and they are the main source of error in our calibration of our HIRES spectra of QSO 1243+3047.

We found that the 5 Kast spectra show two types of shape. The two from 1999 are similar, as are the two from 2001. We call the sum of the two flux calibrated spectra from 1999 K99, and the two from 2001 K01. KSUM is our name for the sum of all five spectra. The 1997 spectrum is similar to K01, but has much lower S/N.

These two groups, K99 and K01, differ in shape on the largest scales across the whole Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest, but they do have very similar shapes across a few hundred Angstroms after we normalize them to each other at those wavelengths. These differences are best seen when we smooth them slightly by differing amounts to reduce differences in the spectral resolution. The K01 spectra have up to 10% systematically higher flux at wavelengths $`<3400`$ Å than do the K99 spectra. The K01 spectra had a few percent lower flux from 4000 – 4300 Å and higher flux across the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line. We do not know the origin of these differences. Possible origins include variation in atmospheric extinction (Burki et al., 1995) or a variation in the QSO.

We find that the ESI spectra differed from the various Kast spectra by typically 2% or less per Kast pixel, from 4100 – 4400 Å. The differences correlate over a few Kast pixels in the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest, with no large scale trends, except that to the red side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line the ratio of the Kast to ESI flux increases by approximately 5% from 4300 – 4400 Å for all five Kast spectra.

## 6 Step 2: Flux Calibrating HIRES Echelle Orders with a Reference Spectrum

We calibrated the relative flux in a HIRES spectrum using a calibrated reference spectrum from either Kast or ESI. We divided a smoothed version of the HIRES spectrum by the reference spectrum to find the “Conversion Ratio” spectrum. We found that the smoothed HIRES spectrum and the reference had to have the same wavelength scale and resolution, because the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest absorption lines cause the flux to vary rapidly in wavelength. We calibrated the individual orders of each HIRES integration using a smooth function fitted to the conversion ratio spectra, one for each order of each integration.

In Figure 9, we illustrate the calibration of the relative flux in the HIRES orders that we describe in the following five sub-sections.

### 6.1 Wavelength Matching

Because the wavelengths from HIRES are more accurate, we shifted the Kast spectra onto the HIRES wavelength scale. We measured the shifts by cross-correlation of complete HIRES orders, and we confirmed the values by cross-correlating individual strong lines in the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest.

Some of the wavelength shifts may arise because the QSO was not exactly centered in the slit. This is a reasonable explanation for the typical shift which was 42 km s-1, or 0.4 Kast pixels, only 17% of the projected width of a 2 arcsecond wide slit. These shifts should vary monotonically along a spectrum, and some Kast spectra show this. However, Figure 10 shows that other spectra have more complex wavelength shifts. In such cases we measured the mean shift for each HIRES order, and we fit a low order polynomial to these mean values, similar to that used to fit the arc line wavelengths, to give a smoothly changing wavelength scale without gaps or discontinuities.

We also placed the ESI spectra on the HIRES wavelength scale. This wavelength scale assignment was obtained by first smoothing the HIRES spectra to the approximate spectral resolution of ESI, and then finding the velocity shift by cross-correlation of the ESI with the HIRES integration. We shifted the complete ESI spectrum by +5.61 km s-1, which is 7.5% of the projected 1 arcsec slit width. As with the Kast spectra, this shift is larger than we would expect from the wavelength fits to the arc calibration lines and may arise because the QSO was not exactly centered in the slit.

### 6.2 Resolution Matching

We smooth the HIRES spectrum to match the resolution of the Kast spectrum. This procedure is sensitive to wavelength shifts between the two spectra, and hence it was done after the wavelength scales were matched. In contrast, the wavelength scale matching is insensitive to the spectral resolution. We smoothed the HIRES spectrum, and sampled it in the wavelength bins of the Kast spectrum. We smoothed with a Gaussian function of known FWHM, truncated at $`2\sigma `$, and normalized to unit area. We smoothed by different FWHM to find the amount of smoothing that left the smallest residuals between the smoothed HIRES and Kast spectra. These residuals appeared flat across strong absorption lines, which suggests that a Gaussian is an adequate approximation to the line spread function of the Kast spectrum. As with the wavelength matching, the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest provides additional signal for resolution matching.

The Kast spectral resolution varies from spectrum to spectrum, and it can vary with wavelength in a spectrum, depending on where we chose to focus. We took the Kast resolution to be the FWHM of the smoothing applied to the HIRES, after subtracting the initial HIRES 8 km s-1 FWHM in quadrature. For example, in the 1999 spectra of QSO 1243+3047, the FWHM of the Kast spectrum is near 300 km s-1 near 3300 Å and from 3800 – 4300 Å but it improves to 220 km s-1 near 3500 Å, where the measurement error is approximately 10 – 30 km s-1, depending on the region of the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest. We smoothed the HIRES spectrum by a single mean FWHM even when the resolution varied along the Kast spectrum. Using similar methods we found that the ESI spectrum had a FWHM of 63.2 $`\pm `$ 3.0 km s-1.

### 6.3 Calculating the Conversion Ratio

We divide the smoothed HIRES spectrum by the Kast spectrum, to obtain the “conversion ratio” (CR) spectrum. The Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest hinders our calculation of the CR, because we are very sensitive to slight remaining errors in the wavelengths and the resolution. When we calculate the CR, we weight the flux in the individual spectra by their errors, and we assign an error to each pixel in the CR. It is common to see increased error in the CR near strong absorption lines (e.g. near 4285 Å in panel (e) of Figure 9), but this error does not have a systematic shape when the wavelengths and resolution are well matched.

### 6.4 Smoothing the Conversion Ratio

We fit the CR spectra to obtain a smoothly changing function. The original CR spectra vary from pixel to pixel because of photon noise in the reference and HIRES spectra, especially in strong absorption lines. These variations can be much larger than the expected change in the flux calibration and hence we can improve the flux calibration by interpolating. We explored various ways of smoothing and fitting, some in one dimension, along each order separately, and others in two dimensions, both along and between adjacent orders. The best choice will increase the S/N in the CR as much as possible without changing the structure.

We found that a 4th order Chebyshev polynomial fit to the CR spectrum for each HIRES order was a good choice. We choose this order by trial and error. It leaves enough freedom to fit the shapes of the CR and give a reduced $`\chi ^21`$. Other fits would be appropriate in spectra with different amount of structure and S/N. In Figure 11, we show the CR spectra for many HIRES orders. We see that the CR spectra for adjacent orders are very similar in shape, but change systematically as we move across many orders. We also found that the changes in shape from order-to-order are larger than those between integrations for a given order, except for the effects of photon noise in the CR.

We calculate the CR twice, in an iterative fashion, to improve the accuracy near the ends of the HIRES orders. The first time, we stop the calculation before the order ends, where the filter, which we use to smooth the HIRES spectrum to the resolution of the reference spectrum, just touches the last pixel in the order. We can not, at that time, calculate the CR for the remaining pixels because we do not know the flux from beyond the end of the order. This flux is needed when we smooth the HIRES spectrum to match the reference spectrum. We do, however, allow the fit to the CR to extrapolate to the end of the order, and we use that extrapolation to make the first estimate of the flux calibration. When we calculate the CR the second time, we know the HIRES flux from beyond the end of the order, because we have already calibrated the whole HIRES spectrum.

An example of the type of error that can occur in the CR at order ends is shown in Figure 12. In middle panel on the left, the CR is erroneously low in the first two pixels at the start of order 98. Here we calculated the CR once only, and we ignored the flux from beyond the end of the order, where there happens to be a Ly$`\beta `$ absorption line. This absorption line lowers the flux in the reference spectrum, but not in the HIRES spectrum for that order.

The error in the relative flux calibration of a HIRES integration depends in part on the S/N in that HIRES integration. The conversion ratios in Figure 12 are for a second integration of QSO 1243+3047 that can be compared to the integration shown in Figure 11. The two integrations were calibrated using the same Kast spectrum, and hence the differences are caused by noise in the HIRES integration, especially at the shortest wavelengths.

We experimented with other ways of smoothing the CR to reduce the effects of photon noise. The 4th order polynomials smooth in wavelength along an order, but they do not use any information from adjacent orders. We made a 2-dimensional map of the CR in the coordinate frame of the HIRES CCD detector, and we smoothed this map in both dimensions, both using a Gaussian filter and independently by fitting a 2D surface using Chebyshev polynomials. The Gaussian filter did not work well because the largest width that did not change the shape of the CR surface had a $`4\sigma `$ width of only 3 orders, not enough to reduce the noise significantly. In Figure 13, we show a surface fit that was an improvement over the 1D polynomial fits, but we did not use this in Kirkman et al. (2003).

The error in the CR depends on the S/N in each CR pixel, and on the fitting or smoothing that we use. The error will correlate on the smoothing scale. When we apply a 4th order polynomial to each order of 40 Å, (the correlation length is approximately 10 Å) and this can be seen when we compare Figures 11 & 12. There are also strong correlations in the CR near the ends of orders, and near strong absorption where the errors are largest.

The contribution to the error in the CR from the S/N in the reference or HIRES spectra can be estimated from the number of pixels in the correlation length. There are approximately 34 pixels in a Kast spectrum per HIRES order, and hence 8.5 per correlation length. An individual Kast spectrum of QSO 1243+3047 has S/N 60 per pixel near 4250 Å and 20 near 3250 Å. The CR will then have errors of at least 0.6% near 4250 Å and 1.7% near 3250 Å.

### 6.5 Applying the Conversion Ratio

We divide the original HIRES integration, with full spectral resolution and pixels, by the 1D fits to the CR to obtain the desired flux calibrated HIRES spectrum. Since we have not merged the orders, the wavelength overlaps remain. The resulting HIRES integration now has relative flux calibration on each order.

## 7 Step 3: Combine the HIRES Orders

The final step is to combine the fluxed HIRES orders into a single spectrum. We add the HIRES integrations that have very similar wavelength coverage, order by order, and then merge the orders. We choose this sequence because it facilitates checks of the relative flux calibration. We compare the flux in each order in multiple integrations before we sum the integrations. After they are summed, the enhanced S/N makes it easier to see errors in the flux calibration in the wavelength overlap between orders.

First, we place all orders from all HIRES integrations on a single wavelength scale, so that pixels from orders that overlap in wavelength sample exactly the same wavelengths. We choose a scale with a constant velocity increment of 2.1 km s-1 per pixel, equivalent to constant log wavelength increment. This choice has two advantages over constant wavelength: in velocity units, the spectral resolution of the echelle does not vary significantly with wavelength, and we use velocity units to describe the widths of absorption line systems.

We simultaneously correct errors in the wavelength scales, using information from the cross-correlation of different integrations as discussed in (§3.3.2). We do this correction at the same time because we want to re-bin the HIRES spectra only once.

We calculate the mean flux in each pixel, from all integrations, after rejecting large deviations that we identify by evaluating the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic for each pixel. We ignore the flux in a pixel from an individual integration if it is $`>m\sigma _i`$ away from the weighted mean for all integrations, where $`\sigma _i`$ are the errors on the fluxes in the individual integrations. The value of $`m`$ was determined iteratively to remove most pixels with conspicuously deviant flux values. For QSO 1243+3047, we use $`m=2`$. The algorithm iterates, and re-derives the $`\chi ^2`$ after rejecting the flux value from one integration. If all integrations are $`>m\sigma `$ away from the weighted mean, we examine the errors. If the errors in some of the integrations have data, shown by non-zero errors returned by MAKEE, we use the flux from the integration with the smallest error as the mean. If, however, there is no data in a particular pixel, for example because of a known CCD defect, then we use the weighted mean of the two pixels on either side, again using only those integrations that are within $`m\sigma `$ of the weighted mean for that wavelength. If none of the above criterion are met, we use the average of the fluxes in all integrations.

Finally, we verify that adjacent orders show similar flux levels where they overlap, and we used a weighted mean to combine the orders in these regions, producing a single flux calibrated spectrum. In Figure 14, we show order overlap for spectra of star Feige 34. This spectrum can be compared to the spectra in Figures 3 that show the flux calibration using usual methods. The ratio of the flux in adjacent orders shows most variation near 3250 Å : 0.92 – 1.08%, and decreases to 0.98 – 1.02 near 4300 Å, where the signal to noise ratio is highest in the Kast spectrum that we used as a reference. The calibration of Feige 34 used the method and algorithm that we developed and applied to our spectra of QSO 1243+3047, with a few exceptions. The star does not have Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest lines, and hence we matched the wavelength scale of the Kast and HIRES spectra using a single shift for the whole Kast spectrum. We fitted the CR with one 4th order polynomial per order. A 6th order fit would work better near 4300 Å where the signal to noise ratio is high.

We consistently found, from many spectra, that the remaining difference between between the orders was largest at the end of an order, where the CR is less well known. Hence, we tapered the flux from each order using a weighting function that declined linearly from one, where the overlap begins, to zero, where the order ends.

## 8 Comparison of Spectra of QSO 1243+3047 Calibrated with Different Reference Spectra

We made several different calibrations of the HIRES spectra of QSO 1243+3047 using different low resolution spectra to convey the flux information. We label these HIRES spectra by the spectra that we used for the flux calibration: hence, HK99 is the HIRES spectrum of QSO 1243+3047 calibrated using the Kast K99 spectrum of QSO 1243+3047, HKSUM was calibrated using the mean of all five Kast spectra and HESI was calibrated using the ESI spectrum of QSO 1243+3047.

We also made a spectrum, HH, which we calibrated using a HIRES spectrum of a standard star. This HH calibration is not typical of the accuracy that we usually obtain, but rather it is the best that we could obtain with our spectra. We made many calibrations using different HIRES integrations of standard stars, and we show the calibration that had the smoothest order joins. This HH calibration contrasts with the calibrations of the stars that we showed in Fig. 3 that did not work as well.

In Figure 15, we show the ratios of HIRES spectra calibrated in these different ways. The top panel shows HK99 spectra divided by HESI. There is a 7% difference across the wavelength region shown. The HK01 differs from HESI by 5% at most, while the HKSUM calibration differs from HESI by 4%. The calibrations HH and HESI differ the least – only 3% – but show the largest jumps at order joins, e.g. near 4325 Å. The four gray bands of Figure 15 show the wavelength overlaps between the HIRES orders. We show three complete orders and two partial ones.

We show the wavelength region centered on the strong Ly$`\alpha `$ lines that we have use to measure the H I column density that contributes to a D/H measurement. This Ly$`\alpha `$ line has damping wings that absorb approximately 1% of the flux near 4233 and 4340 Å and hence accurate flux calibration of this region helps us measure the column density, although most information comes from 20 Å on either side of the line center.

The differences between the calibrations have three origins. The largest differences, which are on the largest scales, come from the differences between the K99, K01 and ESI spectra. Other differences, especially near the order joins, are related to the fitting of the CR, and are sensitive to the signal to noise ratio in the Kast and ESI spectra. A third type of difference occurs from pixel to pixel, and comes from the rejection of deviant pixels from among the 8 HIRES integrations. The CR fits are smooth curves, and the ratios would also be smooth were it not for differences in the pixels which are rejected when we took the sum of the 8 integrations. The numerous small 1 – 2% deviations arise when a pixel is not used from one integration or another. The size of these deviations is given by the signal to noise ratio of the individual integrations. The noise increases in the strong absorption lines where we are dividing two HIRES spectra, each of which has low signal to noise noise. Trends that are seen in more than one panel may come from differences of the ESI spectrum from the others.

We do not know which of the spectra is the more accurate. All of the spectra used in Figure 15 were calibrated with CR spectra that were fit order by order. We found that the 2-dimensional fits to the CR, like that shown in Figure 13, slightly reduced the deviations near the order joins.

## 9 Discussion of the Accuracy of the Flux Calibration

Many factors contribute to the errors in the relative flux calibration, including:

* Errors in the flux reported for the standard star.
* Errors in our spectra of the standard star and reference. Common error sources include extinction and absorption in the Earth’s atmosphere, slit losses that depend on wavelength, a dichroic in the spectrograph, variation of the target, variation with wavelength of the proportion of the flux extracted, and the S/N of the spectra.
* Errors calculating the response function that we use to calibrate the reference spectrum. Errors occur matching the resolution and wavelength scales of our spectrum of the standard to the published flux information. Such errors are especially conspicuous near absorption lines in the standard.
* Errors in the preparation of the HIRES spectrum, including the bias subtraction, flat field division and extraction.
* Errors applying the flux calibration to HIRES spectrum, including wavelength shifts, resolution differences, the signal to noise ratio of the HIRES spectrum and fitting the CR.

We have found that many of these factors can produce 1 – 10% errors in flux calibration, but it is difficult to assign typical values for these errors.

The size of the error in the relative flux calibration depends on the wavelength and the wavelength range. We do not include errors from the CR in the usual error array because the CR errors are correlated over many pixels. In this paper we have concentrated on scales of a few orders, or approximately 120 Å that are most relevant to our work on D/H. We have paid much less attention to the relative flux calibration on larger scales that are dominated by a different set of factors, such as the extinction at the time of observation. We expect errors due to extinction to monotonically increase with scale in our reference spectrum.

An indication of the accuracy we have attained in relative flux calibration is given in Figure 14. We compare three spectra of the flux standard star Feige 34: a HIRES spectrum that we flux calibrated using a Kast spectrum as the reference, the Kast reference spectrum, and STIS a spectrum. The Kast and STIS spectra are those shown in Figure 6. The STIS spectrum was not used in the calibration, except to provide the normalization of the Kast spectrum across the range 3200 – 4450 Å. We used a one-dimensional 4th order polynomial to fit the CR. In the wavelength region shown, the HIRES spectrum differs from its reference by at most 2.5%, except near the absorption line, and typically $`<1`$%. At wavelengths 3400 – 3800 Å, where the signal to noise ratio is lower, the differences are twice as large. The differences correlate on scales $`>5`$ Å. The flux in different HIRES orders joins smoothly, with no unusual structure. The remaining differences of the HIRES and STIS spectra come from the deviation of the Kast spectrum from the STIS, shown in Figure 14. This comparison demonstrates that the method can give errors of $`<1`$% in the relative flux over approximately 200 Å. For Feige 34 the accuracy of the flux calibration was limited by the accuracy of the reference, and not by the method itself.

## 10 SUMMARY

We found that the distribution of the signal recorded in HIRES integrations differs from integration to integration. We do not have a complete explanation for this behavior, although varying vignetting and inadequate extraction may be involved. We found that these differences persist even when the instrument is apparently unchanged. These changes mean that the usual methods of flux calibration are inadequate.

The methods we have described for applying relative flux calibration to a HIRES spectrum use three spectra: the HIRES spectrum of the target that we wish to calibrate, and Kast spectra of both the target and a flux standard star. We use the latter to get the Kast response and calibrate the Kast spectrum of the target that we name the reference spectrum. We use reference spectrum to impose flux calibration on the HIRES target spectrum.

This has method has three advantages. First, we can calibrate HIRES when normal calibrations using standard stars observed with HIRES alone are inadequate. Second, we can correct many types of error in the HIRES spectrum, including those from varying vignetting and inadequate extraction. Finally, we can obtain all the calibration spectra at a different time and on a different telescope.

The error in relative flux calibration, and the solution that we describe, could apply to any spectrum with inadequate relative flux calibration, whether from an unstable spectrograph or from inadequate extraction. Vignetting could vary in any spectrograph that was unstable. Instability could involve an optical misalignment, as with HIRES. Variable vignetting would be harder to recognize in a first order spectrum because we expect the largest changes near the largest field angles, but there is only one spectrum to show this change, and flux calibration is often harder near the ends of a single spectrum, for other reasons.

## 11 Acknowledgments

This work was funded in part by grant NAG5-9224 and by NSF grant AST-9900842 and AST-0098731. The spectra were obtained from the Lick and the W.M. Keck observatories. The W.M. Keck observatory is managed by a partnership among the University of California, Caltech and NASA. We are grateful to Steve Vogt, the PI for the Keck HIRES instrument that enabled our work on D/H, for many invaluable discussions, along with Tom Barlow, who developed the MAKEE extraction software package. We also thank Wako Aoki and Kunio Noguchi for discussions of the HDS echelle spectrograph, and the W.M. Keck Observatory staff and the Lick Observatory staff.

## Appendix A Appendix A: Choice of Standard Star

We used the calibrations of the flux in stars based on STIS spectra (Bohlin, Dickinson, & Calzetti, 2001). In Figure 16 we see that the STIS spectra do not show the wiggles at 3200-3850 Å that are present in the Oke (1990) spectrum of G191 B2B. This and other Oke spectra are widely used by default in the reduction packages IRAF and MIDAS. The differences between the Oke (1990) and STIS spectra can reach several percent, larger than our random photon noise. Based on the lack of features in the spectrum and the STIS data quality, we preferred the following stars for UV flux calibration near 3200 Å: G191 B2B, BD+28 4211, Feige 110, and Feige 34. For G191 B2B we have the additional choice of using a model spectrum given by Bohlin et al. (2001). This model spectrum fits their STIS spectra to within 0.7 % in the continuum (Bohlin, 2000), and it simplifies flux calibration because it has full resolution.

We used the entire STIS spectrum for flux calibration, including the broad Balmer absorption lines. The Oke (1990) paper provides AB magnitudes at discrete continuum points in 5-50 Å intervals. These points skip the Balmer absorption lines, but we can not do this, because we then have insufficient information to calibrate several echelle orders, each of which is only 30-60 Å long.

Our use of the flux calibration information near the Balmer lines can help us avoid significant errors. In Figure 17 we show a spectrum from ESI echellette order 15 that has its sensitivity peak around 4350 Å that coincides with Balmer $`\gamma `$ line, 4341.68 Å. QSO 1243+3047 (Kirkman et al., 2003) happens to have its Ly$`\alpha `$ emission at 4330 Å. In an early flux calibration of this order, poor interpolation across this Balmer line had led us to make an 8% calibration error that was three times the random error.

## Appendix B Appendix B: HIRES Image Rotator

The vignetting in HIRES depends on whether or not the image rotator is used, and on the mode in which the rotator is used.

HIRES is fixed to the Nasmyth platform of the Keck-I telescope with its slit approximately parallel to the horizon. When we look at the image of the sky on the HIRES slit, we see that the vertical direction in this image rotates at a rate given by the elevation (EL) of the telescope. This is because telescope is rotating in EL while HIRES is fixed. If the telescope is pointing at the horizon, and looking at an arrow in the sky that is pointing towards the zenith, the image of this arrow on the slit plane is also pointing towards the vertical, which is perpendicular to the length of the slit. As the telescope moves to higher EL, the arrow rotates until it is aligned along the slit when the telescope is pointing to the zenith.

The HIRES image rotator allows us to rotate the image of the sky on the slit plane in any way we like. We installed an image rotator in HIRES in late 1996. This is a large quartz prism that sits in front of the HIRES slit. The light from the Keck-I telescope tertiary mirror undergoes three total internal reflections in the prism before coming to a focus on the slit plane. The prism can rotate continuously in either direction about the axis of the beam that converges on the center of the slit. The prism is aligned so that the image of a star on the center of the slit moves by under 0.5 arc seconds when the prism is moved in or out of the beam, and when the prism is rotated. The prism can be spun rapidly to demonstrate this alignment. The prism does not vignette any of the beam that lands within 60 arc seconds of the center of the slit.

The image rotator has two main modes of operation: Position Angle and Vertical Angle. The position angle mode is used when we wish to keep two stars in the slit, where as the vertical angle mode is used to keep the vertical direction in the sky parallel with the slit, as a surrogate for an atmospheric dispersion compensator. When the image rotator was used in Vertical mode, the position angle along the slit is the parallactic angle, and this varies as we track a target. The parallactic angle is measured at the target, from the North Celestial Pole to the Zenith, in the direction from North via East. The parallactic angle is fixed for a given elevation and azimuth in the sky, but it changes when we track a target across the sky.

HIRES spectra are hard to flux calibrate in part because the vignetting can change by 10% from spectrum to spectrum. The vignetting changes because there is a known misalignment between the beam coming from tertiary mirror and the HIRES optical axis. When HIRES was installed, the center of the Keck telescope pupil was measured to be approximately 9 mm away from the collimator center, which corresponds to a beam misalignment of 7.4 arcminute. If a star is held at one position on the HIRES slit, the axis of the beam entering HIRES will rotate around the HIRES optical axis at a rate given by any change in the position angle of the sky image on the slit. If the position angle moves through 360 degrees, the axis of the beam entering HIRES follows the surface of a cone with an apex angle of approximately 14.8 arcminutes. Steve Vogt used ray tracing to find that this rotation causes the vignetting to vary by approximately 10%, depending on the angle. The vignetting occurs due to a dewar which forms a central obstruction in the beam near the camera’s prime focus.


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# A classical model for the negative dc conductivity of ac-driven 2D electrons near the cyclotron resonance

## Abstract

A classical model for dc transport of two dimensional electrons in a perpendicular magnetic field and under strong irradiation is considered. We demonstrate that, near the cyclotron resonance condition, and for linear polarization of the ac field, a strong change of the diagonal component, $`\sigma _d`$, of the dc conductivity occurs in the presence of a weak nonparabolicity of the electron spectrum. Small change in the electron effective mass due to irradiation can lead to negative $`\sigma _d`$, while the Hall component of the dc conductivity remains practically unchanged. Within the model considered, the sign of $`\sigma _d`$ depends on the relative orientation of the dc and ac fields, the sign of the detuning of the ac frequency from the cyclotron resonance, and the sign of nonparabolic term in the energy spectrum.

1. Introduction. Recently reported observation of a zero-resistance state, that emerges upon microwave irradiation of a high-mobility 2D electron gas in a weak magnetic field, was immediately followed by a number of theoretical papers, in which the origin of this state was discussed. The only microscopic calculation to date indicates that, for strong enough radiation intensity, the diagonal component, $`\sigma _d`$, of the dc conductivity tensor changes sign from the dark value $`\sigma _d>0`$ to $`\sigma _d<0`$ within certain frequency intervals of the ac field, away from the cyclotron frequency and its harmonics. Negative local value of $`\sigma _d`$ results in the instability of the homogeneous current distribution. In Ref.  the scenario of how the instability might develop into the zero-resistance state was proposed.

In this situation it seems important to trace the emergence of negative $`\sigma _d`$ in an ac-driven system from the simplest possible model. Such a model is considered in the present paper. Obviously, $`\sigma _d`$ is sensitive to the illumination only if the Kohn theorem is violated. It is commonly assumed that the reason for this violation is a random impurity potential. Here we consider a model, in which the Kohn theorem is violated due to an intrinsic reason, namely, due to a weak nonparabolicity of the electron spectrum. More specifically, we adopt the following form of the dispersion relation for the conduction band electrons

$$\epsilon (p)=\frac{p^2}{2m}\left[1\frac{p^2}{2mE_0}\right],$$
(1)
where $`m`$ is the effective mass, and $`E_0`$ is the energy of the order of the bandgap. The corresponding expression for the velocity reads

$$𝒗=\frac{𝒑}{m}\left[1\frac{p^2}{mE_0}\right].$$
(2)
2. dc conductivity. As we will see below, negative $`\sigma _d`$ emerges when the ac field, $`𝓔\mathrm{cos}\omega t`$, is linearly polarized. We choose the direction of polarization along the $`x`$-axis. We will also see that the magnitude and the sign of $`\sigma _d`$ depend on the direction of the driving dc field, $`𝐄`$ (Fig. 1). Denote with $`\theta `$ the direction of $`𝐄`$ with respect to the $`x`$–axis. Then the classical equation of motion of an electron in a perpendicular magnetic field $`𝑩`$ and driven by ac and dc fields is

$$\frac{d𝒑}{dt}+\frac{𝒑}{\tau }\frac{e}{c}\left[𝒗\times 𝑩\right]=e𝑬+e𝓔\mathrm{cos}\omega t,$$
(3)
where $`\tau `$ is the relaxation time. It is convenient to rewrite this equation introducing a complex variable $`𝒫=p_x+ip_y`$. Then it takes the form

$$\frac{d𝒫}{dt}+\frac{𝒫}{\tau }i\omega _c𝒫+\frac{i\omega _c}{mE_0}𝒫|𝒫|^2=eEe^{i\theta }+\frac{e}{2}\left(e^{i\omega t}+e^{i\omega t}\right).$$
(4)
Here $`\omega _c=eB/mc`$ is the cyclotron frequency. We search for a solution of Eq. (4) in the form

$$𝒫(t)=𝒫_0+𝒫_+\mathrm{exp}(i\omega t)+𝒫_{}\mathrm{exp}(i\omega t),$$
(5)
where $`𝒫_0𝒫_+,𝒫_{}`$ is a small dc component proportional to $`E`$. Near the cyclotron resonance condition, $`\omega \omega _c`$, we have $`|𝒫_{}||𝒫_+|`$. Still we keep the nonresonant term, $`𝒫_{}`$, to the lowest order, since the ac field affects $`\sigma _d`$ through this term. In other words, the effect of irradiation on $`\sigma _d`$ emerges beyond the rotating-wave approximation, adopted in Ref. . Substituting Eq. (5) into Eq. (4), we obtain the following system of equations for $`𝒫_+`$, $`𝒫_{}`$, and $`𝒫_0`$.

$$\left[i(\omega \omega _c)+\frac{1}{\tau }\right]𝒫_++\frac{i\omega _c}{mE_0}𝒫_+|𝒫_+|^2=\frac{e}{2},$$
(6)
$$i\left(\omega +\omega _c\right)𝒫_{}=\frac{e}{2},$$
(7)
$$\left[\frac{1}{\tau }i\omega _c\left(1\frac{2|𝒫_+|^2}{mE_0}\right)\right]𝒫_0+\left[\frac{2i\omega _c}{mE_0}𝒫_+𝒫_{}\right]𝒫_0^{}=eEe^{i\theta }.$$
(8)
The ac-induced term $`|𝒫_+|^2`$ in the equation for $`𝒫_0`$ describes the change of the effective mass caused by irradiation, and has no effect on the dc transport. The effect comes from the term $`𝒫_+𝒫_{}`$, which describes the “rectification” of the Larmour motion due to nonparabolicity.

From Eq. (7) we obtain $`𝒫_{}=ie/4\omega _c`$. The solution of Eq. (6) can be formally presented in the form

$$𝒫_+=\frac{e\tau }{2(1+i\mathrm{\Omega }\tau )},$$
(9)
where

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\omega \omega _c+\frac{\omega _c|𝒫_+|^2}{mE_0}$$
(10)
is the deviation of the microwave frequency from the ac–shifted cyclotron frequency. Substituting $`𝒫_+`$, $`𝒫_{}`$ into Eq. (8), we find the longitudinal, $`p_{}`$, and transverse, $`p_{}`$, with respect to the applied dc field, components of the drift momentum

$$p_{}=Re\left\{𝒫_0e^{i\theta }\right\}=\frac{eE}{\omega _c^2\tau }\left\{1\left[\frac{(e\tau )^2}{8mE_0}\right]\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }\tau \mathrm{sin}2\theta \mathrm{cos}2\theta }{1+(\mathrm{\Omega }\tau )^2}\right\},$$
(11)
$$p_{}=Im\left\{𝒫_0e^{i\theta }\right\}=\frac{eE}{\omega _c}\left\{1\left[\frac{(e)^2\tau }{8mE_0\omega _c}\right]\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }\tau \mathrm{cos}2\theta +\mathrm{sin}2\theta }{1+(\mathrm{\Omega }\tau )^2}\right\}.$$
(12)
The expressions for the diagonal, $`\sigma _d`$, and transverse, $`\sigma _t`$, conductivities immediately follow from Eqs. (11), (12). It is convenient to rewrite these expressions using the dimensionless parameter $`\delta m/m`$, which is the relative correction to the effective mass due to irradiation

$$\frac{\delta m}{m}=\frac{|𝒫_+|^2}{mE_0}=\frac{(e\tau )^2}{4mE_0\left[1+(\mathrm{\Omega }\tau )^2\right]}.$$
(13)
The above consideration is valid when $`\delta m/m1`$. Then we obtain

$$\sigma _d=\frac{ne^2}{m\omega _c}\left[\frac{1}{\omega _c\tau }\left(\frac{\delta m}{2m}\right)\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }\tau \mathrm{sin}2\theta \mathrm{cos}2\theta }{\omega _c\tau }\right],$$
(14)
$$\sigma _t=\frac{ne^2}{m\omega _c}\left[1\left(\frac{\delta m}{2m}\right)\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }\tau \mathrm{cos}2\theta +\mathrm{sin}2\theta }{\omega _c\tau }\right],$$
(15)
where $`n`$ is the electron concentration. We see that the ac-induced correction to the transverse conductivity is small, since we assumed that $`|\mathrm{\Omega }|\omega _c`$ and $`\delta m/m1`$. The latter condition allows us to use the expansion of $`\epsilon (p)`$ given by Eq. (1), i.e., to neglect the higher–order, in $`\epsilon /E_0`$, terms in the kinetic energy. Our prime observation, however, is that with $`\delta m/m1`$, the diagonal conductivity, given by Eq. (14), becomes negative for large enough detuning from the cyclotron resonance. The corresponding condition for negative $`\sigma _d`$ can be presented as

$$\frac{\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|}{\omega _c}>\frac{2}{\omega _c\tau }\left(\frac{m}{\delta m}\right).$$
(16)
In the clean limit, $`\omega _c\tau 1`$, this condition is compatible with $`|\mathrm{\Omega }|\omega _c`$ and $`\delta m/m1`$. The ratio $`\delta m/m`$ increases with the intensity of the ac field. Therefore, in order to meet the condition (16), microwave irradiation should exceed a critical value. For the intensities above this critical value the diagonal conductivity assumes negative values within certain intervals of relative orientation, $`\theta `$, as illustrated in Fig. 1.

It is instructive to analyze the above expressions for diagonal and transverse conductivities in the limit $`\tau \mathrm{}`$, where they can be simplified to

$$\sigma _d=\left(\frac{ne^2}{m\omega _c}\right)\left[\frac{(e)^2}{8mE_0\mathrm{\Omega }\omega _c}\right]\mathrm{sin}2\theta ,$$
(17)
$$\sigma _t=\frac{ne^2}{m\omega _c}\left[1\frac{(e)^2}{8mE_0\mathrm{\Omega }\omega _c}\mathrm{cos}2\theta \right].$$
(18)
Remarkably, the relaxation time, $`\tau `$, drops out not only from $`\sigma _t`$, but also from the diagonal conductivity. This means that the the momentum relaxation, necessary for dissipative transport, is provided by scattering from the microwave field, coupled to the translational motion via the nonparabolic term in the dispersion relation.

3. Bistability. In general, $`\sigma _d`$ in Eq. (17) is not simply proportional to the intensity of the ac field. This is because the effective detuning, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, also depends on $``$, as follows from Eq. (10). Below we analyze the $`\mathrm{\Omega }\left(\right)`$ dependence. For this purpose, we rewrite Eq. (9) in the form

$$z\frac{|𝒫_+|^2}{mE_0}=\frac{|e|^2}{4mE_0\omega _c^2\left(\delta +z\right)^2},\delta \frac{\omega \omega _c}{\omega _c}.$$
(19)
Upon introducing new dimensionless variables

$$\eta =\frac{|e|^2}{4mE_0\omega _c^2},s=z/\delta ,$$
(20)
this equation takes the form

$$s\left(1s\right)^2=\frac{\eta }{\delta ^3},$$
(21)
Diagonal conductivity can be expressed through a solution of this equation as follows

$$\sigma _d=\frac{1}{2}\sigma _t\delta ^2s\left(s1\right)\mathrm{sin}2\theta ,$$
(22)
where $`\sigma _t=ne^2/m\omega _c`$ is the transverse conductivity. Remarkably, Eq. (21) yields three solutions for $`\delta <0`$ and $`\eta /|\delta |^3<4/27`$. Two of these solutions are stable. This fact was first pointed out by Kaplan , who predicted a hysteresis in the cyclotron resonance of a free electron, caused by the relativistic correction to its velocity. The role of $`\tau `$ in Ref.  is played by the radiative friction. This prediction was confirmed experimentally in Ref..

The aspect of nonlinear cyclotron resonance, which is interesting to us, is how the bistability manifests itself in the diagonal conductivity, when polarization of the ac field is linear. Two stable solutions of Eq. (21) can be obtained analytically in the limit $`\eta |\delta |^3`$

$$s_1=\frac{\eta }{|\delta |^3},s_2=1+\left(\frac{\eta }{|\delta |^3}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(23)
It is seen from Eq. (22) that they result in two values of diagonal conductivity

$$\sigma _{d1}=\sigma _t\frac{\eta }{2|\delta |}\mathrm{sin}2\theta ,\sigma _{d2}=\frac{1}{2}\sigma _t\sqrt{\eta |\delta |}\mathrm{sin}2\theta .$$
(24)
This result is obtained in the limit of infinite $`\tau `$. Analysis with finite $`\tau `$ indicates that the phenomenon of negative diagonal conductivity vanishes for the second solution, while $`\sigma _{d1}`$ remains unaffected. On the other hand, kinetic energies of these states are

$$\epsilon _1=\frac{\eta }{2\delta ^2}E_0,\epsilon _2=\frac{1}{2}|\delta |E_0.$$
(25)
Note, that the condition $`\eta |\delta |^3`$ insures that $`\epsilon _1\epsilon _2`$. Our findings can be thus summarized as follows: negative $`\sigma _d`$ corresponds to the lower–energy state, while in the higher–energy state the diagonal conductivity remains positive. Hence, within the model considered in the present paper, the phenomena resulting from negative diagonal conductivity should vanish at high enough temperature due to activation to the state with positive $`\sigma _d`$.

4. Concluding remarks. We would like to emphasize that the effect of irradiation on dc transport emerges within our model only for linear polarization of the ac field. As a result, the ac–induced contribution depends on the relative orientation of the dc field and ac–polarization. Simplicity of our model rules out comparison to the experiments . However, we hope that with disorder and interactions present, the real part of electron self-energy might mimic nonparabolicity of dispersion relation and contribute to the ”rectification” of the ac–driven Larmour motion, thus affecting the respose to the dc field.

The other outcome of our consideration is that in the regime of bistability  two stable states of the Larmour rotation exhibit drastically different response to the dc drive. When these states have diagonal conductivities of opposite sign, their energies being comparable may impede the global redistribution of current.


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# Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday

## Abstract

Cosmologists have long wondered whether the Universe will eventually re-collapse and end with a Big Crunch, or expand forever, becoming increasingly cold and empty. Recent evidence for a flat Universe, possibly with a cosmological constant or some other sort of negative-pressure dark energy, has suggested that our fate is the latter. However, the data may actually be pointing toward an astonishingly different cosmic end game. Here, we explore the consequences that follow if the dark energy is phantom energy, in which the sum of the pressure and energy density is negative. The positive phantom-energy density becomes infinite in finite time, overcoming all other forms of matter, such that the gravitational repulsion rapidly brings our brief epoch of cosmic structure to a close. The phantom energy rips apart the Milky Way, solar system, Earth, and ultimately the molecules, atoms, nuclei, and nucleons of which we are composed, before the death of the Universe in a “Big Rip”.

Hubble’s discovery of the cosmological expansion, crossed with the mathematical predictions of Friedmann and others within Einstein’s general theory of relativity, has long sparked speculation on the ultimate fate of the Universe. In particular, it has been shown that if the matter that fills the Universe can be treated as a pressureless fluid, which would be the case for galaxies, then the Universe expands forever (if it has a Euclidean or hyperbolic spatial geometry) or eventually re-collapses (if its spatial geometry is that of a 3-sphere). Evidence from supernova searches supernovaone ; supernovatwo  and the stunning cosmic microwave background (CMB) results from balloon and ground experiments toco ; boom ; max ; dasi ; cbi ; archeops  and now from WMAP wmapparams ; wmappeaks  that indicate an accelerating cosmological expansion show that this simple picture is not enough; the Universe additionally consists of some sort of negative-pressure dark energy.

The dark energy is usually described by an “equation-of-state” parameter $`wp/\rho `$, the ratio of the spatially-homogeneous dark-energy pressure $`p`$ to its energy density $`\rho `$. A value $`w<1/3`$ is required for cosmic acceleration. The simplest explanation for dark energy is a cosmological constant, for which $`w=1`$. However, this cosmological constant is 120 orders of magnitude smaller than expected from quantum gravity. Thus, although we can add this term to Einstein’s equation, it is really only a placeholder until a better understanding of this negative pressure arises. Another widely explored possibility is quintessence quint ; ratra ; wetterich ; coble ; turnerwhite ; spint , a cosmic scalar field that is displaced from, but slowly rolling to, the minimum of its potential. In such models, the equation-of-state parameter is $`1<w<1/3`$, and the dark-energy density decreases with scale factor $`a(t)`$ as $`\rho _Qa^{3(1+w)}`$.

Fig. 1 shows constraints to the $`w`$-$`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ parameter space (where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ is the pressureless-matter density in units of the critical density) from the cluster abundance, supernovae, quasar-lensing statistics (see Refs. WangEtAl ; perlmutter  and references therein), and the first acoustic peak in the CMB power spectrum (values taken from Ref. wmappeaks ). As the Figure shows, $`w`$ seems to be converging to $`w=1`$.

But what about $`w<1`$? Might the convergence to $`w=1`$ actually be indicating that $`w<1`$? Why restrict our attention exclusively to $`w1`$? Matter with $`w<1`$, dubbed “phantom energy” rrc , has received increased attention among theorists recently. It certainly has some strange properties. For example, the energy density of phantom energy increases with time. It also violates the dominant-energy condition dominant ; carroll , a cherished notion that helps prohibit time machines and wormholes. However, it is hard to see how time machines and wormholes would arise with phantom energy. Although sound waves in quintessence travel at the speed of light, it does not automatically follow that disturbances in phantom energy must propagate faster than the speed of light; in fact, there are already several scalar-field models for phantom energy in which the sound speed is subluminal rrc ; parker ; scalarfieldsone ; scalarfieldstwo ; scalarfieldsthree ; scalarfieldsfour . It is true that these models feature unusual kinetic terms in their Lagrangians, but such terms may arise in supergravity supergravity  or higher-derivative-gravity theories higher . Theorists have also discussed stringy phantom energy frampton  and brane-world phantom energy braneworlds . Connections with the dS/CFT correspondence have also been made mcinnes . To be sure, phantom energy is not something that any theorist would have expected; on the other hand, not too many more theorists anticipated a cosmological constant! Given the limitations of our theoretical understanding, it is certainly reasonable to ask what empirical results have to say.

In Fig. 2 we generalize the analysis of cosmological constraints to a parameter space that extends to $`w<1`$. As indicated here, there is much acceptable parameter space in regions with $`w<1`$; see also Refs. hannestad ; schuecker . With certain prior assumptions, the best fit is actually at $`w<1`$.

As we now show, if $`w<1`$ persists, then the fate of the Universe is quite fantastic and completely different than the possibilities previously discussed. To begin, let us review these other fates. In a flat or open Universe without dark energy, the expansion continues forever, and the horizon grows more rapidly than the scale factor; the Universe becomes colder and darker, but with time the co-moving volume of the observable Universe evolves so that the number of visible galaxies grows. If the expansion is accelerating, as a consequence of dark energy with $`1w<1/3`$, then the expansion again continues forever. However, in this case, the scale factor grows more rapidly than the horizon. As time progresses, galaxies disappear beyond the horizon, and the Universe becomes increasingly dark. Still, structures that are currently gravitationally bound, such as the Milky Way and perhaps the Local Group, remain unaffected. Thus, although extragalactic astronomy becomes less interesting, Galactic astronomy can continue to thrive.111There is another possibility: if the quintessence potential at some point becomes negative, then the Universe can reach a point of maximum expansion and then re-collapse Steinhardt ; kallosh .

With phantom energy, the Friedmann equation governing the time $`t`$ evolution of the scale factor $`a(t)`$ becomes $`H^2(\dot{a}/a)^2=H_0^2[\mathrm{\Omega }_m/a^3+(1\mathrm{\Omega }_m)a^{3(1+w)}]`$, where $`H_0`$ is the Hubble parameter, and the dot denotes a time derivative. If $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.3`$, then the Universe is already dark-energy–dominated, and for $`w<1`$ it will become increasingly dark-energy–dominated in the future. We thus approximate the subsequent evolution of the scale factor by neglecting the first term on the right-hand side. Doing so, we find that the scale factor blows up in a time $`t_{rip}t_0(2/3)|1+w|^1H_0^1(1\mathrm{\Omega }_m)^{1/2}`$ from the current time $`t_0`$. For example, for $`w=3/2`$ and $`H_0=70`$ km sec-1 Mpc-1, the time remaining before the Universe ends in this “Big Rip” mcinnes  is 22 Gyr.

As in a cosmological-constant Universe, the scale factor grows more rapidly than the Hubble distance $`H^1`$ and galaxies will begin to disappear beyond the horizon. With phantom energy, the expansion rate $`H`$ grows with time, the Hubble distance decreases, and so the disappearance of galaxies is accelerated as the horizon closes in on us. More intriguing is that the increase in the dark-energy density will ultimately begin to strip apart gravitationally bound objects. According to general relativity, the source for the gravitational potential is the volume integral of $`\rho +3p`$. So, for example, a planet in an orbit of radius $`R`$ around a star of mass $`M`$ will become unbound roughly when $`(4\pi /3)(\rho +3p)R^3M`$. With $`w1`$, $`(\rho +3p)`$ is decreasing with time so if $`(4\pi /3)(\rho +3p)R^3`$ is smaller than $`M`$ today, then it will remain so ever after. Thus, any system that is currently gravitationally bound (e.g., the solar system, the Milky Way, the Local Group, galaxy clusters) will herafter remain so.

With phantom energy, $`(\rho +3p)`$ increases, and so at some point in time every gravitationally bound system will be dissociated. With the time evolution of the scale factor and the scaling of the phantom-energy density with time, we find that a gravitationally-bound system of mass $`M`$ and radius $`R`$ will be stripped at a time $`tP\sqrt{2|1+3w|}/[6\pi |1+w|]`$, where $`P`$ is the period of a circular orbit around the system at radius $`R`$, before the Big Rip (see Table 1). Interestingly, this time is independent of $`H_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$.

Thus, for example, for $`w=3/2`$, the interval is $`t0.3P`$ before the end of time. In this case, clusters will be stripped roughly a billion years before the end of time. In principle, if $`w`$ were sufficiently negative, the Andromeda galaxy would be torn from the Local Group before it could fall into the Milky Way; however, given current upper limits to $`w`$, this is unlikely. For $`w=3/2`$, the Milky Way will get stripped roughly 60 million years before the Big Rip. Curiously, when this occurs the horizon will still be $`70`$ Mpc, so there may still be other observable galaxies that we will also see stripped apart (although given the time delay from distant objects, we will see the Milky Way destroyed first). A few months before the end of time, the Earth will be ripped from the Sun, and $`30`$ minutes before the end the Earth will fall apart. Similar arguments also apply to objects bound by electromagnetic or strong forces. Thus, molecules and then atoms will be torn apart roughly $`10^{19}`$ seconds before the end, and then nuclei and nucleons will get dissociated in the remaining interval. In all likelihood, some new physics (e.g., spontaneous particle production or extra-dimensional, string, and/or quantum-gravity effects) may kick in before the ultimate singularity, but probably after the sequence of events outlined above.

The end of structure, from cosmic, macroscopic scales down to the microscopic, leads us to remark that our present epoch is unique from the viewpoint that at no other time are non-linear structures possible. When the phantom energy becomes strong enough, gravitational instability no longer works and the Universe becomes homogeneous. Eventually, individual particles become isolated: points separated by a distance greater than $`3\delta t(1+w)/(1+3w)`$ at a time $`t_{rip}\delta t`$ cannot communicate before the Big Rip. Therefore, the dominance of the phantom energy signals the end of our brief era of cosmic structure which began when the non-relativistic matter emerged from the radiation. In such a Universe, certain cosmic questions have new significance. It is natural to find ourselves — or more generally, non-linear structure — living close to the onset of acceleration if the structure is soon destroyed and the Universe does not survive much longer afterwards mcinnes . A Big Rip renders the “why now?”, or question of cosmic coincidence, irrelevant.

The current data indicate that our Universe is poised somewhere near the razor-thin separation between phantom energy, cosmological constant, and quintessence. Future work, and the longer observations by WMAP, will help to determine the nature of the dark energy. In the meantime we are intrigued to learn of this possible new cosmic fate that differs so remarkably from the re-collapse or endless cooling considered before. It will be necessary to modify the adopted slogan among cosmic futurologists — “Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in iceFrost  — for a new fate may await our world.

Acknowledgments RRC thanks the UCSB KITP for hospitality. This work was supported at Caltech by NASA NAG5-9821 and DoE DE-FG03-92-ER40701, at the KITP by NSF PHY99-07949, and at Dartmouth by NSF grant PHY-0099543. NNW was supported by a NSF graduate fellowship.