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# Spectroscopic study of blue compact galaxies III. Empirical population synthesis

## 1 Introduction

The stellar populations of galaxies carry a record of their star forming and chemical histories, from the epoch of formation to the present. The global properties of galaxies are determined by the nature and evolution of their stellar components. Their studies thus provide a powerful tool to explore the physics of galaxy formation and evolution (Kong (2000); Cid Fernandes et al.  (2001)). For local group galaxies and some very nearby galaxies that can be resolved into individual stars with HST and 10-m class telescopes, the stellar population properties may be studied by means of direct observations. However, for objects at larger distances, individual stars (except for some giants) are unresolved, even with 10-m class telescopes. The integrated light of such galaxies is expected to contain valuable information about their physical properties.

The most common approach used to interpret the integrated spectrophotometric properties of galaxies is stellar population synthesis. There are two main types of population synthesis studies: evolutionary population synthesis and empirical population synthesis (EPS hereafter). Both types of studies require a complete library of input (observed or model atmosphere) spectra of stars or star clusters (e.g., Fritze-v. Alvensleben (2000)).

In the evolutionary population synthesis approach, pioneered by Tinsley (1967), the main adjustable parameters are the stellar initial mass function (IMF), the star formation history and, in some cases, the rate of chemical enrichment. Assumptions about the time evolution of these parameters allow one to compute the age-dependent distribution of stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, from which the integrated spectral evolution of the stellar population can be obtained. In recent years, a number of groups have developed evolutionary population synthesis models, which allow one to investigate the physical properties of observed galaxies (Bruzual (1983); Arimoto & Yoshii 1987; Buzzoni 1989; Bressan, Chiosi & Fagotto 1994; Worthey 1994; Weiss, Peletier & Matteucci 1995; Fioc & Rocca-Volmerange 1997; Mas-Hesse & Kunth 1999; Moeller, Fritze-v. Alvensleben & Fricke 1999; Leitherer et al. 1999; and Bruzual & Charlot 1993, 2003). Such models are convenient tools for studying the spectral evolution of galaxies, as they allow one to predict the past and future spectral appearance of galaxies observed at any given time. However, modern evolutionary population synthesis models still suffer from serious limitations (e.g., Charlot et al.  1996).

The empirical population synthesis approach, also known as ‘stellar population synthesis with a data base’, was introduced by Faber (1972). In this technique, one reproduces the integrated spectrum of a galaxy with a linear combination of spectra of individual stars or star clusters of various types taken from a comprehensive library. The empirical population synthesis approach has been employed successfully by several authors to interpret observed galaxy spectra (Faber 1972; O’Connell 1976; Pickles 1985; Bica 1988; Pelat 1998; Boisson et al. 2000; Cid Fernandes et al. 2001). An appealing property of this approach is that the results do not hinge on a priori assumptions about stellar evolution, the histories of star formation and chemical enrichment, nor—in the case of a library of individual stellar spectra—the IMF. In return, it does not allow one to predict the past and future spectral appearance of galaxies. In 1996, a workshop devoted to the comparison of various evolutionary population synthesis and empirical population synthesis codes showed broad agreement in general and a number of discrepancies in detail (Leitherer et al. 1996).

In this paper, we use the empirical population synthesis approach to constrain the stellar content and star formation histories of a sample of 73 blue compact galaxies (BCGs). Our approach builds on earlier studies by Bica (1988) and Cid Fernandes et al. (2001), and we adopt the library of observed star-cluster spectra assembled by Bica & Alloin (1986; see also Bica 1988). Our primary goal is to illustrate the constraints that can obtained on the ages and metallicities of the stellar populations of BCGs that cannot be resolved into individual stars, on the basis of their integrated spectra. In a forthcoming study, we will use the results of this analysis to model the spectral evolution of BCGs using evolutionary population synthesis models. Another goal of the present work is to refine previous measurements of the Balmer emission-line fluxes of the BCGs in our sample, through an accurate modeling of the underlying stellar absorption spectrum. This issue is critical to spectroscopic analyses of BCGs (e.g., Thuan & Izotov (2000); Olive & Skillman (2001)).

The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we briefly review the principle of the empirical population synthesis approach. We describe the properties of the BCG spectral sample in Section 3. In Section 4, we estimate the stellar components in BCGs by fitting the observed equivalent widths and continuum colors with the empirical population synthesis approach. In Section 5 we discuss the age-metallicity degeneracy and the possible application of our results. Section 6 summarizes our main results.

## 2 Empirical population synthesis model

In a recent paper, Cid Fernandes et al. (2001) revisit the classical problem of synthesizing the spectral properties of a galaxy by using a ‘base’ of star-cluster spectra, approaching it from a probabilistic perspective. Their work improves over previous EPS studies at both the formal and computational levels, and it represents an efficient tool for probing the stellar population mixture of galaxies. To provide a quantitative description of the stellar components in the nuclear regions of BCGs, we will apply this EPS method to our BCG sample. It is based on spectral-group templates built from star clusters of different ages and metallicities, and on Bayes probabilistic theorem and the EPS Metropolis algorithm. In this section, we first describe the star cluster base. We then briefly review Bayes probabilistic formulation and the EPS Metropolis algorithm.

### 2.1 Description of the star cluster base

Empirical population synthesis by with a data base (a base of $`n_{}`$ spectra of stars or star clusters) is a classical tool designed to study the stellar population of galaxies. The recent EPS algorithm of Cid Fernandes et al. (2001; see also Bica 1988) relies on a data base of star-cluster spectra rather than on one of individual stellar spectra. The star cluster base used by Cid Fernandes et al. (2001) was introduced by Schmidt et al. (1991). It consists of 12 population groups, spanning five age bins — 10 Gyr (representing globular cluster-like populations), 1 Gyr, 100 Myr, 10 Myr and ‘HII’-type (corresponding to current star formation) — and four metallicities — 0.01, 0.1, 1 and 4 times Z (see Table 1 of Cid Fernandes et al. 2001). All metallicities are not available for clusters of all ages. In particular, spectra of star clusters younger than 1 Gyr are only available for the metallicities Z and 4Z. Since blue compact galaxies are expected to have predominantly low abundances, the base of star-cluster spectra used by Cid Fernandes et al. (2001) is not optimal for our analysis.

The base of 35 star-cluster spectra used by Bica (1988; see also Bica & Alloin 1986) is better appropriate for our purpose, as it contains spectra of young star clusters with metallicities down to $`\mathrm{log}(Z/Z_{})=0.5`$ (see Table 1). Each component, corresponding to a specific age and metallicity, is characterized by a set of six metallic features (Ca ii K $`\lambda `$3933, CN $`\lambda `$4200, G band $`\lambda `$4301, Mg i+Mg h $`\lambda `$5175, Ca ii $`\lambda `$8543, Ca ii $`\lambda `$8662) and three Balmer lines (H$`\delta `$, H$`\gamma `$, and H$`\beta `$), as well as $`n_C=7`$ continuum fluxes at selected pivot wavelengths (3290, 3660, 4020, 4510, 6630, 7520 and 8700 Å), which are normalized at $`\lambda `$5870 Å. The library contains an HII region component corresponding to current star formation. This is represented by a pure continuum based on the spectrum of 30 Dor, which is used at all metallicities (see the recent description by Schmitt et al. 1996).

Table 1 lists the ages and metallicities of each of the 35 components of the Bica (1988) base of star-cluster spectra. The top line lists the ages of the components, while the rightmost column lists the metallicities, with \[Z/Z\] = log(Z/Z).

### 2.2 The synthesis algorithm

The principle of EPS is to find the linear combination of a base of spectra ($`n_{}`$ star clusters) that best reproduces a given set of measured observables, such as the equivalent widths $`W_j`$ of $`n_W`$ conspicuous absorption features and the $`n_C`$ continuum fluxes $`C_k`$ in an observed galaxy spectrum. Different synthesis algorithms have been developed to select the optimal combination of base spectra in the most efficient way. We use here the algorithm described by Cid Fernandes et al. (2001). Since this is relatively new, we briefly recall below its probabilistic formulation and the main features of the algorithm.

The data $`𝒟`$ we wish to model is composed of a set of $`n_{obs}=n_W+n_C`$ observables, as described above. The measurement errors in these observables, collectively denoted by $`\sigma `$, are known from the observations. Given these, the problem of EPS is to estimate the population vector $`𝐗`$ (Xi, i=1,…,$`n_{}`$) and the extinction $`A_V`$ that ‘best’ represents the data according to a well defined probabilistic model, where Xi denotes the fractional contribution of the $`i`$th base element to the total flux at the reference wavelength. The probability of a solution $`(𝐗,A_V)`$ given the data $`𝒟`$ and the errors $`\sigma `$, is given by Bayes theorem (Smith & Grandy (1985)):

$$P(𝐗,A_V|𝒟,\sigma ,)=\frac{P(𝒟|𝐗,A_V,)P(𝐗,A_V|\sigma ,)}{P(𝒟|)}.$$
(1)
$``$ summarizes the set of assumptions on which the inference is to be made, $`P(𝒟|𝐗,A_V,\sigma ,)`$ is the likelihood, $`P(𝒟|)`$ is the normalizing constant, $`P(𝐗,A_V|)`$ is the joint a priori probability distribution of $`𝐗`$ and $`A_V`$.

For a non-informative prior, the posterior probability $`P(𝐗,A_V|𝒟,\sigma ,)`$ is simply proportional to the likelihood:

$$P(𝐗,A_V|𝒟,\sigma ,)P(𝒟|𝐗,A_V,\sigma ,)e^{(𝐗,A_V)}$$
(2)
with $``$ defined as half the value of $`\chi ^2`$:

$`(𝐗,A_V)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\chi ^2(𝐗,A_V)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{n_W}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{W_j^{obs}W_j(𝐗)}{\sigma (W_j)}}\right)^2`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n_C}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{C_k^{obs}C_k(𝐗,A_V)}{\sigma (C_k)}}\right)^2.`$
Here $`W_j^{obs}`$ and $`C_k^{obs}`$ are the observed features and $`W_j(𝐗)`$ and $`C_k(𝐗,A_V)`$ are the synthetic features.

This expression contains the full solution of the EPS problem, as embedded in it is not only the most probable model parameters but also their full probability distributions. In order to compute the individual posterior probabilities for each parameter, we use an efficient parameter-space exploration method, known as the Metropolis algorithm (Metropolis et al.  (1953)). The code preferentially visits regions of large probability, starting from an arbitrary point of the parameter space. At each iteration $`s`$, we pick one of the $`n_{}+1`$ variables at random and change it by a uniform deviate ranging from $`ϵ`$ to $`+ϵ`$, producing a new state $`s+1`$. Moves to states of smaller $`\chi ^2`$ are always accepted, whilst changes to less likely states are accepted with probability exp\[$`(\chi _{s+1}^2\chi _s^2)`$\], thus avoiding trapping onto local minima. Moves towards non-physical regions ($`X_i<0`$ or $`>1`$, $`A_V<0`$) were truncated. In this way, the probability distributions for the $`X_i`$ is given, and then the whole set ($`X_i`$, i=1,…,$`n_{}`$) is renormalized to unit sum.

The main output of the EPS approach is the population vector $`𝐗`$, whose $`n_{}`$ components carry the fractional contributions of each base element to the observed flux at the normalization wavelength 5870 Å. This vector corresponds to the mean solution found from a $`10^8`$ steps likelihood-guided Metropolis walk through the parameter space. Owing to intrinsic errors in the observable parameters and some other uncertainties, more than one acceptable solution can represent the observation data. The final mean solution is given by the weighted ($`e^{\chi ^2/2}`$) average of all solutions within the observational errors. This mean solution is more reliable than the single optimal solution, and it provides a more representative result to the population synthesis problem.

## 3 Description of the BCG sample

Our sample is drawn from the atlas of optical spectra of 97 blue compact galaxies by Kong & Cheng (2002a). The spectra were acquired with the 2.16 m telescope at the XingLong Station of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) in China. A 300 line mm-1 grating was used to achieve coverage in the wavelength region from 3580 to 7600 Å with the dispersion is 4.8 Å pixel-1. The slit width was adjusted in between 2′′ and 3′′ each night, depending on seeing conditions. A detailed decription of the observations, the sample selection, the data reduction and calibration and the error analysis can be found in the first paper of this series (Kong & Cheng 2002a ). The average signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra is $``$ 51 per pixel. The spectrophotometry is accurate to better than 10% over small wavelength regions and to about 15% or better on large scales.

Kong et al. (2002b) measured several quantities in the spectra of the 97 BCGs in this sample, including the fluxes and equivalent widths of emission lines, continuum fluxes, the 4000 Å break and the equivalent widths of several absorption features. The galaxies were ordered into three classes based on their emssion-line properties: 13 were classified as ‘non-emission-line galaxies’ (non-ELG), 10 as ‘low-luminosity active galactic nuclei’ (AGN) and 74 as ‘star-forming galaxies’ (SFG). We are primarily interested here in the star formation rates, metallicities and star formation histories of BCGs. Therefore, we focus on the subsample of 74 star-forming galaxies (SFGs). We exclude I Zw 207 from this subsample because the absence of a blue spectrum prevents the measurements of most absorption features in this galaxy. Our final sample therefore consists of 73 star-forming, blue compact galaxies.

## 4 Empirical population synthesis results

We use the EPS approach of Cid Fernandes et al. (2001; Section 2.2 above) and the library of star-cluster spectra of Bica (1988; Section 2.1 above) to interpret the spectra of the 73 star-forming BCGs in our sample.

### 4.1 Input data

We use the following observable quantities to constrain the stellar components in the nucleus regions of BCGs: the observed absorption equivalent widths ($`W_j^{obs}`$; $`W_j^{obs}1.0`$ Å) of Ca ii K $`\lambda `$3933, H$`\delta `$ $`\lambda `$4102, CN $`\lambda `$4200, G band $`\lambda `$4301, H$`\gamma `$ $`\lambda `$4340, and Mg i+Mg h $`\lambda `$5176 and the continuum fluxes (normalized at 5870 Å) at 3660, 4020, 4510, 6630, and 7520 Å (in practice, we use the H$`\delta `$ and H$`\gamma `$ absorption equivalent widths only for galaxies with negligible emission at these wavelengths, representing roughly half of the sample). The absorption equivalent widths and continuum fluxes were measured by Kong et al. (2002b) according to the procedure outlined in Bica (1988) and Cid Fernandes et al. (2001; see Kong et al. 2002b for detail). In some spectra, the continuum flux at 5870 Å may be buried underneath the He i$`\lambda `$5876 Å emission line. In such cases, adjacent wavelength regions were used to estimate the continuum level. The resulting absorption equivalent widths are listed in Table 6 of Kong et al. (2002b), and the continuum fluxes in Table 4 of Kong et al. (2002b). The errors in the absorption equivalent widths and continuum fluxes must also be included as input parameters. These are set to 10% for those absorption bands with $`W_j^{obs}>5`$Å, 20% for those absorption bands with $`1.0<W_j^{obs}<5`$ Å, and 10% for continuum colors. These errors are consistent with the quality of the spectra (Kong & Cheng 2002a).

### 4.2 Computation

To select the linear combination of the base cluster spectra that best represents an observed galaxy spectrum, we set the EPS algorithm to sample $`N_s=10^8`$ states of the whole age versus \[Z/Z\] parameter space, with the ‘visitation parameter’ $`ϵ`$ set to 0.05 for the $`X_i`$’s ($`\mathrm{\Delta }X_i`$ = 0.05) and 0.01 for $`A_V`$. As described in Section 2.2, we obtain as output a 35-dimension, mean population vector $`𝐗`$ containing the expected values of the fractional contribution of each component to the total light at the normalization wavelength $`\lambda `$5870 and $`A_V`$. Table 2 lists, as examples, the results for two galaxies in our sample.

The results for the 73 BCGs in our sample indicate that, in all cases, a single metallicity is favored for all four youngest stellar components (corresponding to ages less than $`5\times 10^8\mathrm{yr}`$). The metallicity of young stars is \[Z/Z\]=–0.5 for 55 galaxies in the sample and \[Z/Z\]=0.0 for the remaining 18 galaxies. For stars older than $`5\times 10^8\mathrm{yr}`$, the dominant metallicity anticorrelates with age, in the sense that the metallicity of the stellar component contributing most to the integrated light increases with decreasing age from $`1\times 10^{10}\mathrm{yr}`$ to $`1\times 10^9\mathrm{yr}`$ (see the examples in Table 2). We note that the dominant metallicity of stars older than $`5\times 10^8\mathrm{yr}`$ is always found to be less than or equal to that of younger stars. It is not surprising that a dominant metallicity be favored for stars of any given age in a galaxy. The nuclei of BCGs correspond to small volumes, where star-forming gas is expected to be chemically homogeneous at any time. It is worth noting that our results differ from those of previous EPS analyses, such as those performed by Bica (1988) and Schmitt et al. (1996), in that we determine the evolutionary paths of galaxies in the age-metallicity plane from a full maximum-likelihood analysis. In most previous studies, the star-formation and chemical-enrichment histories of galaxies were selected from a limited number of a priori evolutionary paths.

It is of interest to exploit these results and compute simple ‘evolutionary paths’ for the galaxies in our sample. As mentioned above, for each galaxy, the EPS analysis favors a dominant metallicity for stars of any given age, such that young stars have typically a higher metallicity than older stars. At any age, however, stars of any metallicity are assigned non-zero weights by the EPS algorithm. To represent the star-formation and metal-enrichment histories of BCGs in a schematic way, we adopt for each galaxy the path favored by the EPS analysis in the age-metallicity plane. For consistency, we readjust the various proportions of stars of different ages along this path by rerunning the EPS algorithm after setting the weights of all stars outside the path to zero. Since, for a given galaxy, the age-metallicity space to be explored then reduces to a single dimension, we refine the analysis by lowering the ‘visitation parameter’ $`ϵ`$ to 0.005 ($`\mathrm{\Delta }X_i`$ = 0.005) while still sampling $`N_s=10^8`$ states (we keep $`ϵ=0.01`$ for $`A_V`$).

### 4.3 Stellar populations

The results of our analysis are summarized in Tables 3 and 4 for the galaxies with asymptotic (young-star) metallicities \[Z/Z\]=–0.5 and 0.0, respectively. For each galaxy, we report the percentage contributions from each age-metallicity component to the integrated flux at $`\lambda =5870`$ Å. The first and second lines of each table indicate the metallicities and the ages of the different stellar components. For reference, the third line indicates the indices of the stellar components in the cluster data base of Table 1. For each galaxy, we also list the inferred $`V`$-band attenuation $`A_V`$ and the absorption equivalent widths of H$`\gamma `$, H$`\delta `$, H$`\beta `$ and H$`\alpha `$, as measured from the synthetic stellar population spectra. Figure 1 shows the equivalent widths ($`W_j^{syn}`$) of all the stellar absorption features used to constrain the fits in the model spectra against those in the observed spectra ($`W_j^{obs}`$, for $`W_j^{obs}1.0`$ Å), for all 73 BCGs in our sample. Clearly, the feature strengths in the model spectra are in very good agreement with those in the observed spectra.

A first noticeable result in Tables 3 and 4 is that all BCGs show an underlying component of stars older than $`1\times 10^9\mathrm{yr}`$. The fractional contribution of this component to the total light at $`\lambda `$5870 Å exceeds 15% for most galaxies, except for some low-luminosity BCGs, such as I Zw 18, II Zw 40, which have very strong emission line spectra, and have a marginally detected old component. We note that the spectra used here sample the inner regions of the galaxies. The contribution from old and intermediate-age stars to the integrated light could be even larger in the extended (off-nuclear) regions of galaxies. The presence of significant populations of old and intermediate-age stars indicates that blue compact galaxies have experienced substantial episodes of star formation in the past. This supports the results from deep imaging observations of the color-magnitude diagrams of a few nearby BCGs that these are old galaxies (see section 5.2 below). As expected, stars younger than $`5\times 10^8\mathrm{yr}`$ tend to dominate the emission at 5870 Å, consistent with the observational character of BCGs, i.e. blue colors and strong emission lines.

Another interesting result of Tables 3 and 4 is that blue compact galaxies present a variety of star formation histories. In II Zw 67 and I Zw 56, for example, stars with age 10 Gyr contribute as much as 20 per cent of the flux at $`\lambda `$5870 Å. In contrast, in III Zw 43 and Mrk 57, old stars do not contribute significantly to the flux at $`\lambda `$5870 Å, that is produced in half by intermediate-age stars. The galaxies I Zw 18 and II Zw 40 differ from these cases in that their emission at $`\lambda `$5870 Å is accounted almost entirely by young stars. The star formation history of BCGs, therefore, appears to vary significantly on a case by case basis.

For simplicity, in what follows we arrange stars into four age bins: OLD stars with age $`1\times 10^{10}\mathrm{yr}`$ (proportion $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$); INTermediate-age stars with ages between $`1\times 10^9\mathrm{yr}`$ and $`5\times 10^9\mathrm{yr}`$ (proportion $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$); Young Stars with ages between $`10^7\mathrm{yr}`$ and $`5\times 10^8\mathrm{yr}`$ (proportion $`𝐗_{\mathrm{YS}}`$); and newly-born stars in H ii regions (proportion $`𝐗_{\mathrm{HII}}`$). Hence $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$\+ $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$\+ $`𝐗_{\mathrm{YS}}`$\+ $`𝐗_{\mathrm{HII}}`$= 1. Figure 2 illustrates graphically the variety of star formation histories reported in Tables 3 and 4 for the 73 galaxies in our sample. In each panel, the horizontal axis represents $`𝐗_{\mathrm{HII}}`$, $`𝐗_{\mathrm{YS}}`$, $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$, and $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$ (from left to right), while the vertical axis shows the percentage contributions at 5870Å of stars in these four age bins. Stars younger than $`5\times 10^8\mathrm{yr}`$ dominate the emission in most BCGs, but the galaxies also contain substantial fractions of older stars.

### 4.4 Spectral fits

Figure 3 illustrates the results of the spectral fits obtained for four galaxies in our sample. Also shown are the contributions to the integrated spectrum by stars in the four age groups defined in section 4.3 above (the relative contributions by the different stellar components to the total flux at $`\lambda `$5870 Å are those listed in Tables 3 and 4 for these galaxies). Figure 3 shows that the synthetic spectra (SYN) inferred from our population synthesis analysis provide good fits to the observed spectra of BCGs (OBS). The absorption wings of H$`\beta `$, H$`\gamma `$ and H$`\delta `$ in the observed spectra are also well reproduced by the models (the synthetic spectra do not include nebular emission lines). We find that, for some strong star-forming galaxies, the synthetic spectra do not provide very good fits to the observed continuum spectra at wavelengths between 4300 and 4800 Å. This may arise from the presence of Wolf-Rayet (WR) features, such as N iii features at $`\lambda `$4511 – 4535, \[N ii\]$`\lambda `$4565, \[N v\]$`\lambda `$4605, 4620, and He ii$`\lambda `$4686, in the observed spectra. We plan to investigate this small discrepancy using evolutionary population synthesis models in a future paper.

### 4.5 Evolutionary diagram

The range of star formation histories inferred for the BGCs in our sample may be interpreted in terms of an evolutionary sequence. Following Cid Fernandes et al. (2001b), we represent graphically the histories of star formation of the galaxies in Figure 4, in a plane with abscissa $`𝐗_{\mathrm{H}+\mathrm{Y}}`$=$`𝐗_{\mathrm{HII}}`$+$`𝐗_{\mathrm{YS}}`$ and ordinate $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$. Also shown as dashed lines in the figure are lines of constant $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$ ($`𝐗_{\mathrm{H}+\mathrm{Y}}`$+$`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$+$`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$=1).

The main result from Figure 4 is that the 73 BCGs in our sample define a sequence in $`𝐗_{\mathrm{H}+\mathrm{Y}}`$ and $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$ over a relatively small range of $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$. The range in $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$ is slightly smaller for galaxies with asymptotic (young-star) metallicity \[Z/Z\]=–0.5 (stars) than for those with asymptotic metallicity \[Z/Z\]= 0.0 (squares). Some galaxies with ‘extreme’ stellar populations are labelled in Fig. 4. In I Zw 56 and II Zw 67, for example, old stars contribute up to $`20`$% of the integrated flux at $`\lambda `$5870 (see section 4.3 above). The galaxy III Zw 43 is that where intermediate-age stars contribute the most to the optical continuum emission. In contrast, some galaxies, such as I Zw 18, II Zw 40, appear to be almost ‘pure starbursts’. The small percentage of old and intermediate-age stars found here for these galaxies is consistent with the results from other recent studies, e.g., Smoker et al.  (1999), Aloisi et al.  (1999) (see section 5.2 below).

Since the location of an individual galaxy in Figure 4 reflects the evolutionary state of its stellar population, we can interpret the distribution of galaxies in this diagram as an evolutionary sequence. In particular, starbursting galaxies whose spectra are entirely dominated by young massive stars (bottom right part of the diagram) will presumably evolve toward larger $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$/$`𝐗_{\mathrm{H}+\mathrm{Y}}`$values (top left part of the diagram) over a timescale of a few $`10^9\mathrm{yr}`$, once their bursts have ceased. This interpretation is supported by several observational facts. First, metal absorption-line features become stronger and galaxy colors become progressively redder as one moves from large $`𝐗_{\mathrm{H}+\mathrm{Y}}`$ to large $`𝐗_{\mathrm{INT}}`$ along the sequence. Second, galaxies with large $`𝐗_{\mathrm{OLD}}`$ (such as I Zw 56, II Zw 67) have spectra typical of a “post-starburst” galaxies, with pronounced Balmer absorption lines characteristic of A-type stars and with no strong emission lines. Finally, most BCGs in which WR features have been detected are located in the large-$`𝐗_{\mathrm{H}+\mathrm{Y}}`$ region of the diagram, consistent with the young burst ages implied by the presence of WR stars (Schaerer et al.  (1999)).

### 4.6 Stellar Balmer absorption

Accurate measurements of the H-Balmer emission lines are crucial to constrain the attenuation by dust, the star formation rate, the gas-phase abundances of chemical elements and the excitation parameter in galaxies (e.g., Rosa-González et al.  (2002)). To measure with accuracy the Balmer emission-line fluxes of BCGs, we must account for the contamination by underlying stellar absorption.

Different approaches have been used to correct Balmer emission-line fluxes for underlying stellar absorption in BCGs. The simplest approach consists in adopting a constant equivalent width (1.5–2 Å) for all the Balmer absorption lines (e.g., Skillman & Kennicutt (1993); Popescu & Hopp (2000)). Another standard correction consists in determining the absorption equivalent width through an iterative procedure, by assuming that the equivalent width is the same for all Balmer lines and by requiring that the color excesses derived from H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$, H$`\beta `$/H$`\gamma `$, and H$`\beta `$/H$`\delta `$ be consistent (e.g., Olive & Skillman (2001); Cairós et al. (2002)). In reality, however, the absorption equivalent width may not be the same for all H-Balmer lines.

The advantage of the empirical population synthesis method used above to fit the observed spectra of BCGs is that it provides simultaneous fits to the continuum and stellar absorption features of the galaxies. We have measured the absorption equivalent widths of H$`\alpha `$, H$`\beta `$, H$`\gamma `$, and H$`\delta `$ in the synthetic spectra fitted to all 73 galaxies in our sample (last four columns of Table 3 and 4). Figure 5 shows the distributions of the equivalent widths of the four lines. The equivalent widths of H$`\gamma `$, H$`\delta `$, and H$`\beta `$ range typically between 2 Å and 5 Å (the distributions have different shapes for different lines), while that of H$`\alpha `$ is typically less than 2 Å. Hence, Figure 5 indicates that adopting a constant absorption equivalent width for all H-Balmer lines is only a crude approximation. Our results are consistent with those of Mas-Hesse & Kunth (1999) and Olofsson (1995).

We can correct with accuracy, therefore, the fluxes of Balmer emission lines for underlying stellar absorption in the spectra of BCGs. In a forthcoming study, we will exploit the nebular emission-line spectra (OBS–SYN in Figure 3) of BCGs to constrain the rates of star formation and gas-phase chemical element abundances in these galaxies.

## 5 Discussion

### 5.1 Age-metallicity degeneracy

It is worth noting that the reason why we are able to constrain simultaneously the ages and metallicities of the different stellar components in BCGs is that our approach is based on fitting stellar absorption lines, in addition to continuum fluxes. Age and metallicity have similar effects on the continuum spectra of galaxies. However, some stellar absorption features such as H$`\beta `$, H$`\delta `$, H$`\gamma `$ and the G-band have been shown to depend mostly on age, while others, such as Mg i+Mg h and Fe$`\lambda `$5709, have been shown to depend mostly on metallicity (e.g., Worthey & Ottaviani (1997); Vazdekis & Arimoto (1999); Kong & Cheng (2001)).

In this paper, we use the Ca ii K $`\lambda `$3933, H$`\delta `$ $`\lambda `$4102, CN $`\lambda `$4200, G band $`\lambda `$4301, H$`\gamma `$ $`\lambda `$4340 and Mg i+Mg h $`\lambda `$5176 absorption features to determine the stellar population of BCGs. These include both age-sensitive and metal-sensitive features. Some of these absorption features may not be available in some spectra, which may lack, for example, H$`\delta `$ and H$`\gamma `$. Also, some absorption features may be very shallow, and hence difficult to measure with high accuracy. For most galaxies, however, we find that the results of the empirical population synthesis analysis provide coarse but useful constraints on the histories of star formation and metal enrichment.

### 5.2 Population synthesis versus CMD analysis

The most straightforward way to observe the star formation history of galaxies is through deep single-star photometry. This allows one to directly identify stars in various evolutionary phases through their positions in a color-magnitude diagram (CMD) containing the fossil record of the star formation history. During the past few years, intense activity has focused on the reconstruction of the star formation histories of nearby galaxies using this approach. Several of these studies were performed on BCGs and led to new constraints on the ages of the oldest stars present in these galaxies (Aloisi et al.  (1999); Crone et al.  (2002); Papaderos et al.  (2002); Oestlin et al.  (1998)). The general conclusions from these studies are that BCGs contain evolved stellar populations, and that their star formation histories have been discontinuous. The basic shortcoming of this approach is that it cannot be used in galaxies at large distances. In addition, the CMD-analysis method is also subject to several uncertainties such as distance determination, extinction, and contamination of stellar colors by gaseous emission.

Our results of the EPS analysis of 73 BCGs are consistent with those of the CMD analysis of a few nearby galaxies, supporting the finding that BCGs are old galaxies with intermittent star formation. The evolutionary diagram constructed in Figure 4 above shows that the EPS method is not only able to recognize composite systems from a handful of observable absorption-line features and continuum fluxes, but also to provide a rough description of the evolutionary state of the stellar components. Therefore, the EPS method provides a convenient tool for the study of stellar components and star formation histories of galaxies. It can be easily applied to the spectra gathered by large spectroscopic galaxy surveys.

## 6 Summary

We have presented the results of an empirical population synthesis study of a sample of 73 blue compact galaxies. Our main goal was to study the stellar components of BCGs. We have constrained the star formation histories of BCGs by comparing observed stellar absorption features and continuum fluxes with a library of star cluster spectra. Our conclusions can be summarized as follows:

BCGs present a variety of star formation histories, as inferred from the wide spread in stellar absorption equivalent widths and continuum colors from galaxy to galaxy. BCGs are typically age-composite stellar systems, in which different stellar components are clearly distinguished: the current starburst, an underlying older population, and some intermediate-age population.

A quantitative analysis indicates that the nuclei of some BCGs are dominated by young components and the star-forming process is still ongoing. In most of BCGs, stars older than 1 Gyr contribute significantly to the integrated optical emission. The contribution by these stars can exceed 40% in some cases. Overall, the stellar populations of BCGs suggest that they are old galaxies undergoing intermittent star formation episodes; a typical BCGs is not presently forming its first generation of stars. We also find that the attenuation by dust is typically very small in the BCGs in our sample.

Our results are consistent with the results from deep imaging observations using HST and large ground-based telescopes. The virtue of the EPS approach is that it is applied to integrated galaxy spectra. This method should be useful, therefore, for interpreting the spectra garthered by large spectroscopic galaxy surveys.

The EPS approach also provides accurate spectral fits of observed galaxy spectra. From these spectral fits, it is possible to measure with accuracy, in particular, the absorption strengths of stellar Balmer lines and to correct the observed Balmer emission-line fluxes for underlying stellar absorption. The pure emission-line spectra of the BCGs in our sample, resulting from the subtraction of the synthetic spectral fits from the observed spectra, will be presented in a forthcoming paper.

We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments and constructive suggestions, which helped us improve the paper. We are very grateful to Dr. R. Cid Fernandes for giving us the EPS computer program, and kindly assisting us in its use. This work is based on observations made with the 2.16m telescope of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory(BAO) and supported by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (CNNSF 10073009). S.C. thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the Programme for Investment in the Future (ZIP) of the German Government for support. X.K. has been financed by the Special Funds for Major State Basic Research Projects of China and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany.


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# Topological quantum numbers in the Hall effect

## 1 The Hall effect

The story of the Hall effect begins with a mistake made by James Clerk Maxwell, (1831-1879). In the first edition of his book *“Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism”*, which appeared in 1873, Maxwell discussed the deflection of a current carrying wire by a magnetic field. Maxwell then says: *It must be carefully remembered that the mechanical force which urges a conductor …acts, not on the electric current, but on the conductor which carries it*. If the reader is puzzled that is OK, he should be.

In 1878 Edwin H. Hall, a student at Johns Hopkins University, was reading Maxwell for a class by Henry A. Rowland. Hall was puzzled by this passage and approached Rowland. Rowland told him that  *…he doubted the truth of Maxwell statement and had sometimes before made a hasty experiment …though without success.* Hall made a fresh start, and tried to measure the magnetoresistence—a hard experiment. This experiment failed too and Maxwell appeared to be safe. Hall then decided to repeat the experiments made by Rowland, and following a suggestion of his advisor, replaced the original metal bar with a thin gold leaf and found that the magnetic field deflected the galvanometer needle. This earned Hall a position at Harvard.

Maxwell died in the year that Hall’s paper came out. In the second edition of Maxwell’s book, which appeared posthumously in 1881, there is a polite footnote by the editor saying: *Mr. Hall has discovered that a steady magnetic field does slightly alter the distribution of currents in most conductors so that the statement in brackets must be regarded as only approximately true.* It turned out that the magnitude, and even the sign of the Hall voltage depends on the conductor. This made the Hall effect an important diagnostic tool. Maxwell, even in error, inspired a remarkable research direction.

A hundred years later, the Hall effect was revived as a source of wonderful physics. In 1980 Klaus von Klitzing discovered that two dimensional electron gas, at very low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, displays a remarkable quantization of the Hall conductance. Namely, the graph of the Hall conductance as function of the magnetic field, is a staircase function, where the value of the Hall conductance at the plateaus is, to great accuracy, an integer multiple of $`e^2/h=1/(25812.807572\mathrm{\Omega })`$. This discovery led to superior standards of resistance and von-Klitzing was awarded the Nobel prize in 1985 for his discovery.

The precision of the quantization in the Hall effect is remarkable in that it takes place in systems that are imprecisely characterized on the microscopic scale: Different samples have different distributions of impurities, different geometry and different concentrations of electrons. Nevertheless, whenever their Hall conductances are quantized, the quantized values mutually agree with great precision.

The quantum Hall effect may also be interpreted as a measurement of the fine structure constant. The precision is slightly inferior to the determination that follows from the measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron: The Hall effect gives $`\mathrm{137.0360\hspace{0.17em}0300}(270)`$ for the inverse of the fine structure constant while the anomalous magnetic moment gives $`\mathrm{137.0359\hspace{0.17em}9976}(50)`$. Interestingly, the latter will need to be revised by 6 ppb due to an error in the computation of 18 Feynmann diagrams .

Among the deep theoretical developments spawned by this discovery was the recognition that the Hall conductance has topological significance . In particular, its precise quantization can be understood in terms of topological invariants known as Chern numbers and their non-commutative analog: Fredholm Indices. These topological invariants are our theme.

## 2 Laughlin argument

In a 1981 Robert Laughlin  put forward an argument for the quantization of the Hall conductance. This argument played a seminal role in the development of the theory of the Integer Hall effect and it deserves to be re-examined a quarter of a century later. As we shall see, Laughlin argument goes most of the way in explaining the quantization, short of one step: The step of topological quantum numbers.

Laughlin considers a 2D electron gas confined to the ribbon shown in Fig. 1. In this geometry, the Hall effect may be interpreted as a pump that transfers charges from the reservoir $`A`$ to the reservoir $`B`$. The pump is driven by magnetic flux tube in the figure carrying a time dependent flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$. A cycle of the pump corresponds to an increase of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ by a unit of quantum flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=hc/e`$. The Hall conductance, measured in the quantum unit of conductance, $`e^2/h`$, is then the number of electrons transported between the reservoirs in a cycle of the pump. Laughlin concludes the argument saying:…by gauge invariance, adding $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ maps the system back to itself, …\[resulting in\] the transfer of n electrons. The quantization of the Hall conductance is then implied.

That the number of particles transferred to the $`A`$ reservoir is an integer follows from the a basic tenet of quantum mechanics which guarantees that each measurement of the number of particles in $`A`$ always gives an integer. However, there is no general a-priori reason why each and every cycle of the pump should transfer the same number of particles. In a quantum theory this number may be a fluctuating integer.

More precisely, the Hall conductance is the average number of particles transferred in a cycle of the pump. To complete the Laughlin argument one therefore needs to understand when and why quantum averages are quantized. This is where topological quantum numbers come into play. As we shall explain, topological quantum numbers quantize averages.

An alternate way of formulating the issue at stake is as follows: The Hall conductance is determined by Kubo’s formula. Being a formula for a quantum average it takes the form of a quantum expectation value. Why is it quantized? As we shall explain, Kubo’s formula can be identified with known topological invariants: Chern numbers and their non-commutative analogs, Fredholm indices.

## 3 The geometry of linear response

At about the same time that these developments took place in the quantum Hall effect, another theoretical development unfolded. In 1981 Michael V. Berry  discovered that the phase accumulated by the wave function undergoing adiabatic evolution can be decomposed into two pieces—a dynamical part that carries information on the energy of the system, and a part, Berry’s phase, that carries geometric information on the wave function. To explain the geometric significance of the Berry’s phase it is instructive to take a step back and reconsider the geometry of surfaces.

In 1917 Tulio Levi-Civita developed a fresh perspective on the geometry of surfaces by focusing on parallel transport as the primary object. The face of the earth is an example of a curved surface—a sphere—and the Foucault pendulum realizes the notion of parallel transport on it.

Consider a Foucault pendulum at latitude $`\theta `$. The plane of the pendulum defines a direction on earth. As the earth rotates, the angle between the direction of the pendulum and the latitude changes as if the pendulum was parallel transported along a circle of constant latitude. Once earth completed a cycle the pendulum does not point in the same direction as it did initially. Rather, there is an angular mismatch of $`2\pi \mathrm{sin}\theta `$. This mismatch is geometric: It is independent of the angular velocity of earth around its axis (so long as it is small compared with the natural frequency of the pendulum). More importantly, it is a hallmark of curvature. So, while the conventional point of view is to regard the Foucault pendulum as a demonstration that earth is rotating, from the geometric point of view it may also be interpreted as a demonstration that earth is a sphere.

Viewing curvature as the mismatch of parallel transport allows the extension of the notion of curvature beyond geometry to quantum mechanics. The wave function, a vector in the Hilbert space, plays a role analogous to the direction determined by the plane of the Foucault pendulum. A full rotation of the earth is an analog of taking the Hall pump through a complete cycle. The Berry’s phase which is accumulated in a cycle of the pump is the analog of the angular mismatch accumulated by the pendulum in a day.

To complete the analogy and introduce the notion of adiabatic curvature one needs an analog of longitude. This is $`\theta `$, the phase associated with a gauge transformation twisting the two reservoirs. The corresponding eigenfunctions, $`|\psi `$, then depend on two parameters $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\theta `$ and Berry’s phase accumulated by traversing a small loop is proportional to the area of the loop. The adiabatic curvature,

$$K=2Im_\mathrm{\Phi }\psi |_\theta \psi .$$
(1)
is the proportionality factor.

The significance of the adiabatic curvature to transport comes from the fact that it can be identified with conductance as determined by Kubo’s formula. To see this note that the quantum mechanical current operator is $`I=c_\theta H`$. In the adiabatic regime where $`\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ is small one finds as a consequence of the Schrödinger equation that the expectation value for the current is:

$$\psi \left|I\right|\psi =c_\theta E+\mathrm{}cK\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}$$
(2)
In the time-independent case, $`\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}=0`$, this reduces to the more familiar Feynman-Hellmann theorem. Eq. (2) gives a linear relation between the current and the driving emf, $`\frac{1}{c}\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$, generated by the flux tube. The conductance is therefore $`\mathrm{}c^2K`$. This expression is equivalent to Kubo’s formula for the conductance in linear response theory.

## 4 Chern numbers

Ludwig Boltzmann is reputed to have said that elegance is for tailors. The geometric interpretation of linear response is clearly elegant. Is there more to it than just elegance? There is: Geometry links linear response with topological invariants.

Geometry and topology are, of course, intimately related. Let us start by recalling this relation in its most intuitive setting: The theory of surfaces.

A remarkable relation between geometry and topology is the formula by Gauss and Bonnet:

$$\frac{1}{2\pi }_S𝑑AK=2(1g)$$
(3)
$`S`$ is a surface, without a boundary, like the two handled torus in Fig. 2. $`K`$ is the (Gaussian) curvature of the surface (i.e. $`K^1`$ is the product of the two radii of curvatures) and $`dA`$ the area element. The data on the left are purely geometric. $`g`$ on the right, the number of handles ($`g=2`$ in the figure), is purely topological. In particular, a deformation of the surface does not change the number of handles. This then implies that the curvature of a surface can not be deformed at will: Its integral is constrained by topology.

The Gauss-Bonnet formula has a generalization, known as Gauss-Bonnet-Chern formula, which goes beyond the theory of surfaces. The Chern number is the analog of $`2(1g)`$ in Eq. (3). The integral of the adiabatic curvature over parameter space $`S`$ is quantized provided $`S`$ is compact and has no boundary.

The simplest quantum mechanical example of a Chern number is a heavy spin $`1/2`$ particle on a spherical shell with a magnetic monopole at the center , see Fig.3. The Hamiltonian is $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{B}`$ where $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ is the triplet of Pauli matrices and $`\stackrel{}{B}`$, the magnetic field, is pointing in the radial direction.

The ground state singles out a spinor in the two (complex) dimensional Hilbert space. Now, even though the Hamiltonian is a continuous function of the position of the particle one can not demand that the ground state spinor, $`|\chi (\stackrel{}{B})`$, be both normalized and continuous everywhere on the sphere. This is an analog of the geometric fact that a vector field tangent to the sphere can not be both continuous and normalized. At best, one may choose the ground state spinor to be normalized and continuous away from a single point, say the south pole. We denote this choice by $`|\chi _s(\stackrel{}{B})`$. Similarly, $`|\chi _n(\stackrel{}{B})`$, is the spinor that is normalized and continuous away from the north pole. Away from the poles the two choices of the ground state must agree up to a phase, namely,

$$|\chi _n(\stackrel{}{B})=e^{i\gamma (\stackrel{}{B})}|\chi _s(\stackrel{}{B})$$
(4)
As $`\stackrel{}{B}`$ goes around a latitude, the phase winds. For the ground state of spin $`1/2`$ it winds once. This obstructs extending $`|\chi _s(\stackrel{}{B})`$ to the south pole since $`|\chi _n(\stackrel{}{B})`$ is continuous there. The obstruction is a phase aspect of the wave function. There is no obstruction to choosing the projection on the ground state to be continuous everywhere on the sphere.

The relation between Chern numbers and the winding of phase $`\gamma `$ explains why Chern numbers are topological.

## 5 Chern numbers in the Hall effect

A simple yet often rather accurate model for 2D electron gas is the Landau Hamiltonian. In this model the Chern numbers count the filled Landau levels; so its success made the art of calculating Chern numbers dispensable. To display the glory of Chern numbers one needs to consider situations which can not be approximated in terms of the Landau model. This is the case for periodic  and multiply connected systems .

The tight-binding analog of the Landau model is known as the Hofstadter model. It has a plethora of Chern numbers with intricate dependence on the electron density and the magnetic field. The model is formally defined by the one particle Hamiltonian

$$H=U+U^{}+V+V^{},UVU^{}V^{}=e^{2i\pi \varphi }$$
(5)
where $`U`$ and $`V`$ are the operators of translation. $`\varphi =\mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is now the magnetic flux through unit cell. Remarkably, precisely the same model also describes the splitting of the lowest Landau level by a super-lattice potential except that in this case $`\varphi =\mathrm{\Phi }_0/\mathrm{\Phi }`$.

When the Fermi energy lies in a gap and $`\varphi `$ is rational the Brillouin zone plays the role of $`S`$ in Eq. (3) and the Hall conductance at zero temperature can be identified with a Chern number. The Chern numbers of the Hofstadter model can be determined as the solution of certain Diophantine equations .

The $`T=0`$ quantum phase diagram of the tight-binding Hofstadter model is shown in Fig. 4. It is a fractal phase diagram where the colors represent distinct quantum phases, labelled by Chern numbers. Warm colors represent positive Chern numbers, cold colors represent negative ones and white is zero. Experiments, such as those shown in Fig. 5, explore a thin horizontal sliver of the diagram near $`\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$, because available magnetic fields have tiny flux through the unit cell of natural crystals.

The phase diagram of a split Landau level is shown in Fig. 6. The vertical axis is now inversely proportional to the magnetic field. That the two phase diagrams come from the same formal Hamiltonian is seen in the skeleton of the butterfly. However, once one pays attention to the colors, the two phase diagrams are qualitatively different. The split Landau phase diagram has less symmetry: It is is not periodic in $`\varphi `$ and is not anti-symmetric under reflection.

Albrecht et. al.  carried out experiments that test the predictions of the Hofstadter model of a split Landau level. The experiment successfully reconstructs the main features of the phase diagram of Fig. 6.

According to conventional wisdom the integer Hall effect is a feature of non-interacting electrons, while for strongly interacting electrons fractions arise . One might therefore expect that the theory of Chern numbers is restricted to non-interacting electrons. This is not so. Even with electron-electron interaction present quantum transport is related to Chern numbers: Consider an interacting 2D electron gas associated with a multiply connected system such as the one shown in Fig. 2. Thread the two holes with a pair of flux tubes. The charge transport around one flux tube induced by the emf generated by the other flux tube is, again, related to adiabatic curvature. The adiabatic curvature is not quantized. However, its average over the two fluxes is a Chern number and is therefore quantized.

## 6 Fredholm indices

An important theoretical model of the quantum Hall effect is that of a 2D electron gas of independent electrons under the influence of a random potential and strong magnetic field. Because of the randomness there is no Brillouin zone. (This is also the case for the Hofstadter model with irrational magnetic field). Without a Brillouin zone to play the role of $`S`$ in Eq. (3), the Chern number approach to the Hall effect has no leg to stand on.

Jean Bellissard realized that Hall conductance can be related to another topological invariant, one that does not require a Brilloun zone: The Fredholm index. It is a non-commutative analog of the Chern number . Like the Chern number, the Fredholm index is an integer which is stable under small deformations. In those cases where the conductance may be interpreted either way the Fredholm index coincides with the Chern number.

The Fredholm index is closely related to the creation and annihilation operators of many-body quantum mechanics. The states annihilated by an operator $`F`$ belong to a subspace of the Hilbert space denoted by $`kerF`$. The dimension of this space, $`dimkerF`$, clearly an integer, counts the number of states annihilated by $`F`$. It is tempting to relate the Hall conductance with the states that were lost to reservoir $`A`$ upon the increase of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ by a quantum flux.

However, not every integer is a topological invariant, and $`dimkerF`$ is an example: It has no stability. If $`dimkerF0`$ then an arbitrarily small deformation of $`F`$ will generically make $`dimkerF=0`$. It turns out that one can make a topological invariant from $`dimkerF`$. This is the Fredholm index which is defined by

$$IndF=dimkerFdim\mathrm{ker}F^{}$$
(6)
$`IndF`$, being the difference of dimensions, is an integer. It is stable under deformations of $`F`$ because whenever $`dimkerF`$ jumps, so does $`dimkerF^{}`$.

It can be shown  that the Hall conductance of a two dimensional electron gas in the plane, in the presence of random potential, is a Fredholm index, provided the Fermi energy lies in the region of localized states. In fact, Kubo’s formula for the Hall conductance can be written as

$$\frac{e^2}{h}Ind(P_FUP_F)=\frac{e^2}{h}Tr\left(U[P_F,U^{}]\right)^3$$
(7)
Where $`P_F`$ projects on the states below the Fermi energy. $`U`$ is a gauge transformation associated with one unit of quantum flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$.

How does this formula relate to the quantized staircase seen in the Hall effect? The Fredholm index is not always defined: It may be of the form $`\mathrm{}\mathrm{}`$. However, when it is defined, it is an integer. Once it is defined, it is stable under small deformations. This implies that the Hall conductance as a function of the chemical potential has quantized plateaus.

## 7 Outlook

The geometric and topological ideas developed in the context of the quantum Hall effect  had substantial impact on an emerging new direction in mesoscopic physics: Quantum pumps. These are quantum dots that transport charge (or spin) between reservoirs that are otherwise in equilibrium. The pumps are modulated periodically by varying two independent parameters. For example, by manipulating the shape of the dot . For small pump cycle the charge transport is proportional to the area and the constant of proportionality is an analog of the adiabatic curvature, as pointed out by Piet Brouwer .

So far we have avoided saying anything about the Fractional quantum Hall effect. It is time to redress this. The theory of the Fractional Hall effect  is based on the wave function approach of Robert Laughlin. It developed into a large body of knowledge , some of it, with strong geometric flavor. It is noteworthy that Chern numbers and Fredholm indices did not yet find their proper place in the theory of the fractional Hall effect. This is an open challenge.

Some of the ideas we touched upon here make contact also with other areas of physics. Let us briefly note a relation to super-string theory and quantum computing. In the former, there is much interest in non-commutative geometry as a key to the structure of space time at the Planck scale. The lowest Landau level is the simplest example of the non-commutative plane and the Hofstadter model is a realization of the non-commutative torus. In the latter, a major obstacle on the road to realizing quantum computers is to devise qbits that are protected against decoherence and yet accessible for writing and reading. It has been proposed in  that the topological aspects of quantum Hall systems hold promise for realizing such qbits.

Paul Dirac said that “God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world”. The story of topological quantum numbers in the Hall effect is an example.

## 8 Acknowledgment

We thank F. Jegerlehner, U. Sivan and D. Thouless for useful comments. This work is supported by the Technion fund for promotion of research, by the EU grant HPRN-CT-2002-00277 and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft SFB288.


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# Gluino Pair Production in 𝒆⁺𝒆⁻ and 𝜸𝜸 Collisions at CERN CLIC

## Abstract

We confront the generally small cross sections for gluino pair production in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation with the much larger ones in photon-photon scattering at a multi-TeV linear collider like CERN CLIC. The larger rates and the steeper rise of the cross section at threshold may allow for a precise gluino mass determination in high-energy photon-photon collisions for a wide range of squark masses and post-LEP SUSY benchmark points.

To appear in the CERN Yellow Report from the CLIC Physics Study Group.

preprint: hep-ph/0303058

Weak-scale supersymmetry (SUSY) is one of the most attractive extensions of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. If it is realized in nature, SUSY particles will be discovered either at Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron or within the first years of running at the CERN LHC. Reconstruction of the SUSY Lagrangian and a precise determination of its free parameters will, however, require the clean environment of a linear $`e^+e^{}`$ collider, where in particular the masses, phases, and (electroweak) couplings of sfermions and gauginos will be determined with high accuracy. However, the mass and coupling of the gluino will pose some difficulties, since the gluino couples only to strongly interacting particles and is thus produced only at the one-loop level or in multi-parton final states. In a recent publication, we have investigated gluino pair production through triangular quark/squark loops in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation with energies up to 1 TeV, which may become available in the nearer future at linear colliders like DESY TESLA Berge:2002ev . Due to large cancellation effects, we found that promisingly large cross sections can only be expected for scenarios with large left-/right-handed up-type squark mass splittings or with large top-squark mixing and for gluino masses up to 500 GeV. Small gluino masses of 200 GeV might be measured with a precision of about 5 GeV in center-of-mass energy scans with luminosities of 100 fb-1/point.

In this Report, we focus on a multi-TeV linear collider like CERN CLIC with electron (positron) beam polarization of 80% (60%) and integrated luminosity of 1000 fb-1/year and compare the generally small production rates in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation to the larger ones in photon-photon scattering. Further details on gluino pair production in high-energy photon collisions can be found in Ref. Berge:2003cj . In the photon collider version of CERN CLIC, 100% polarized laser photons are backscattered from two electron beams, whose helicities must be opposite to those of the laser photons in order to maximize the number of high-energy photons. In the strong fields of the laser waves, the electrons (or high-energy photons) can interact simultaneously with several laser photons. This non-linear effect increases the threshold parameter for $`e^+e^{}`$ pair production to $`X=(2+\sqrt{8})(1+\xi ^2)6.5`$, which corresponds to laser wavelengths of 4.4 $`\mu `$m at an $`e^+e^{}`$ center-of-mass energy of 3 TeV Burkhardt:2002vh . The maximal fractional energy of the high-energy photons is then $`x_{\mathrm{max}}=X/(X+1)=0.8\overline{6}`$. Since the low-energy tail of the photon spectrum is neither useful nor well understood, we use only the high-energy peak with $`x>0.8x_{\mathrm{max}}=0.69\overline{3}`$ and normalize our cross sections such that the expected number of events can be obtained through simple multiplication with the envisaged photon-photon luminosity of 100-200 fb-1/year. This requires reconstruction of the total final-state energy, which may be difficult due to the missing energy carried away by the escaping lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). However, high-energy photon collisions allow for cuts on the relative longitudinal energy in addition to the missing-$`E_T`$ plus multi-jet, top or bottom (s)quark, and/or like-sign lepton analyses performed at hadron colliders, and sufficiently long-lived gluinos can be identified by their typical $`R`$-hadron signatures.

We adopt the current mass limit $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}200`$ GeV from the CDF Affolder:2001tc  and D0 Abachi:1995ng  searches in the jets with missing energy channel, relevant for non-mixing squark masses of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}325`$ GeV and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =3`$. Since values for the ratio of the Higgs vacuum expectation values, $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, below 2.4 are already excluded by the CERN LEP experiments, and since values between 2.4 and 8.5 are only allowed in a very narrow window of light Higgs boson masses between 113 and 127 GeV lhwg:2001xx , we employ a safely high value of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =10`$. For a conservative comparison of the $`\gamma \gamma `$ and $`e^+e^{}`$ options at CERN CLIC, we maximize the $`e^+e^{}`$ cross section by adopting the smallest allowed universal squark mass of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}m_{\mathrm{SUSY}}=325`$ GeV and large top-squark mixing with $`\theta _{\stackrel{~}{t}}=45.195^{}`$, $`m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_1}=110.519`$ GeV, and $`m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_2}=505.689`$ GeV, which can be generated by choosing appropriate values for the Higgs mass parameter, $`\mu =500`$ GeV, and the trilinear top-squark coupling, $`A_t=648.512`$ GeV Hahn:2001rv . The SUSY one-loop contributions to the $`\rho `$-parameter and the light top-squark mass $`m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_1}`$ are then still significantly below and above the CERN LEP limits, $`\rho _{\mathrm{SUSY}}<0.0012_{0.0014}^{+0.0023}`$ and $`m_{\stackrel{~}{t}_1}100`$ GeV Hagiwara:pw ; lswg:2002xx . For small values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, mixing in the bottom squark sector remains small, and we take $`\theta _{\stackrel{~}{b}}=0^{}`$. A full set of Feynman diagrams can be generated and evaluated with the computer algebra packages FeynArts Hahn:2000kx  and FormCalc Hahn:1998yk .

Fig. 1 shows a comparison of the total cross sections expected in

$`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation and $`\gamma \gamma `$ collisions for gluino masses between 200 and 500 GeV. A light squark mass $`m_{\mathrm{SUSY}}`$ and large top-squark mixing has been chosen in order to maximize the $`e^+e^{}`$ cross section. Neveretheless, it stays below 0.1 fb and falls steeply with $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$, so that gluino pair production will be unobservable for $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}>500`$ GeV irrespective of the collider energy. In contrast, the $`\gamma \gamma `$ cross section reaches around ten fb for a wide range of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$. In $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation the gluinos are produced as a $`P`$-wave and the cross section rises rather slowly, whereas in $`\gamma \gamma `$ collisions they can be produced as an $`S`$-wave and the cross section rises much faster.

The different threshold behavior can be observed even more clearly in Fig. 2, where the sensitivities of $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$ colliders

to the gluino mass are compared. For the CERN LHC experiments, a precision of $`\pm 30\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}60}`$ ($`12\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}25}`$) GeV is expected for gluino masses of 540 (1004) GeV :1999fr ; Abdullin:1998pm . If the masses and mixing angle(s) of the top (and bottom) squarks are known, a statistical precision of $`\pm 5\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}`$ GeV can be achieved in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation for $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}=200`$ GeV for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1 per center-of-mass energy point. A precision of $`\pm 2\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}`$ GeV may be obtained at a CERN CLIC photon collider for $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}=540`$ GeV and an integrated photon-photon luminosity of 50 fb-1 per point, provided that the total final-state energy can be sufficiently well reconstructed. Of course, uncertainties from a realistic photon spectrum and the detector simulation add to the statistical error.

Finally, we demonstrate in Fig. 3 that gluino pair production

in $`\gamma \gamma `$ collisions depends only weakly on the universal squark mass $`m_{\mathrm{SUSY}}`$ and even less on the top-squark mixing. This is in sharp contrast to the results obtained in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation Berge:2002ev . In this plot, the $`e^{}e^{}`$ center-of-mass energy is chosen close to the threshold for gluino pair production and is varied simultaneously with $`m_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$. Also shown in Fig. 3 are several post-LEP SUSY benchmark points, which have recently been proposed within the framework of the constrained MSSM Battaglia:2001zp . Studies similar to those performed in Fig. 2 show that with the exception of point E, where only about ten events per year are to be expected, the gluino mass can be dermined with a precision of $`\pm 20`$ GeV (point J) or better.

In conclusion, the reconstruction of the SUSY Lagrangian and the precise determination of its free parameters are among the paramount objectives of any future linear $`e^+e^{}`$ collider. Determination of the gluino mass and coupling will, however, be difficult, since the gluino couples only strongly and its pair production cross section suffers from large cancellations in the triangular quark/squark loop diagrams. A photon collider may therefore be the only way to obtain precise gluino mass determinations and visible gluino pair production cross sections for general squark masses and would thus strongly complement the physics program feasible in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation.