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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Neural networks are widely used in scientific and commercial applications due to their generally better performance compared to traditional statistical approaches and their relatively simple operation principle. In high energy physics domain they are commonly used in various pattern recognition problems e.g. for quark and gluon jet identification  or in top quark  and Higgs boson searches , track finding , triggering -, data mining, and general classification tasks. (Introduction to neural networks and review of their applications can be found in -.)

In this paper we present a signal-from-background separation study based on neural networks technique applied to a W/quartz fiber calorimeter. The performance in terms of signal efficiency and improvement of the signal-to-background ratio, and for various calorimeter depths, read-out frequencies and total number of channels is presented.

The paper is organized as follows: in section 2 we give a general introduction on neural networks and related topics. The detector and its physics objectives are described in section 3. Section 4 contains the analysis steps and the results. We summarize and conclude in section 5.

## 2 Neural networks

### 2.1 General

A neural network (NN) is a simplified mathematical structure inspired from the real biological neural networks and their way of learning from experience, acquiring knowledge and solving problems. Their basic units are the neurons, which are interconnected through synapses and exchange signals. In general, a neuron produces an output signal which is depending on the signals it receives from the other neurons. Of great importance is the fact that the output signal is non-linearly dependent to the input, whereas the input signal is approximately the linear sum (the “coefficients” are determined by the synaptic strengths) of all the signals that are received by the neuron simultaneously. The human brain consists of $`O(10^{12})`$ neurons, where each neuron is connected to a number, from $`O(1)`$ to $`O(10^5)`$, of other neurons. The whole structure is of immense complexity and plasticity and thus ability.

An NN has the basic concepts of a real biological neural network (neuron, connection strength, input linearity, output non-linearity) but in a much more conservative level of complexity. The neuron is a mathematical entity which has a real value depending on the connection strengths (weights) and the values of the other neurons with which it is connected. The non-linear function that relates the output from the neuron with the weights and the inputs to the neuron is usually called activation function and has a simple sigmoid shape bound to values in the interval  or \[-1,1\].

A neural network can be structured or self-organized. In a common structured topology the neurons are organized in layers. The input layer, from where the NN is fed with the input variables of the problem to be solved, followed by a number of layers, the so-called hidden layers, and finally the output layer. In the case where the information flow is in one direction only, from the input layer towards the output layer, we speak about feed-forward neural networks. For bidirectional connections we have feed-back NNs. When the output layer is fed back into the input layer then we have recurrent networks.

An NN is trained by a set of examples which are representative of the problem. During training the weights, which are the state variables of the network and determine its behavior, are adapted to the presented examples. In such a way the NN acquires knowledge of the rule which produced the examples and then it can generalize. Generalization means that the network can be used on real events and perform the task that was trained for. Its generalization ability is tested usually with a set of test events that we know their properties, with this procedure we validate the network’s performance and afterwards it is ready to be used on real events.

The training procedure can be supervised or unsupervised. Supervised training is accomplished by presenting input-output pairs to the NN. The NN calculates its output, according to its weights, which is compared to the given desirable output. The weights are updated in such a way that the NN produces output as close as possible to the desirable one. In unsupervised training the network receives only a set of input examples without any output labeling. In this case the task is to detect some, yet unknown, structure that the real events may have.

In the following we concentrate on one of the most commonly used feed-forward neural networks, the multilayer perceptron. It is usually being trained with the back-propagation algorithm to perform event classification tasks. We describe its architecture and present the mathematical background of the training algorithm. First we discuss in brief the problem of pattern recognition.

### 2.2 Pattern recognition

Pattern recognition for event classification is a common problem encountered in high energy physics (e.g. particle identification by its shower dimension and shape, electron/hadron discrimination, trigger signal generation, quark and gluon jet classification etc.). In all cases, the problem consists in defining a procedure that should be followed in online or offline analysis, and will be able to recognize events and categorize them based on their features. A feature or pattern, is the set of properties that a class of events is characterized of, and with which this class can be possibly discriminated by the other ones. The difficulty is to reveal characteristic patterns from the measured quantities. Therefore the whole procedure is to find and properly use quantities or combination of them, that will allow correct event classification. In an approach without NNs, one usually tries to perform classification by imposing a set of one-dimensional cuts on various selected measured variables, that may characterize the events of interest. Such cuts are usually determined by examining single variable probability distributions for the events of interest and for the others (see e.g. ). When the complexity of the problem is increasing, better results can be obtained by employing methods that could simultaneously exploit correlations among variables. In this case a procedure with high degree of parallelism is required. The neural networks are built by concept with this kind of parallelism (neurons), and therefore they are usually used on pattern recognition tasks with outstanding performance.

### 2.3 Multilayer perceptron

One of the most widely used NNs for pattern recognition tasks is the multilayer perceptron. It is a feed-forward network with its neurons arranged in input, hidden and output layers (fig. 1). Every neuron is connected to all neurons of the preceding layer and of the next one, whereas there is no connection between neurons belonging to the same layer. Every neuron receives inputs from all neurons of the preceding layer, and sends its output to all ones in the next layer. All neurons obey to this connectivity scheme. Every connection is associated to a weight parameter that will be optimized during the training phase. The neuron’s output is given by the activation function $`f(x)`$, a sigmoid function like eq. 3, that has values bound to the interval $`[1,1]`$, or like eq. 4, with values bound to the interval $`[0,1]`$. The parameter $`T`$, usually called temperature of the network, determines how steep the sigmoid function is, the lower $`T`$ the steeper sigmoid. In general the final performance does not depend on $`T`$, a value equals to 1 is the usual choice. The input layer consists of a number of neurons which is equal to the $`N_{input}`$ input variables that will be used for the event classification.

Presenting these in mathematical form, we define $`I_i^k`$ to be the input to the $`i`$th neuron in the $`k`$th layer, which consists of $`N^k`$ (111in this notation $`k`$ serves as an index and not as an exponent value) neurons, $`O_i^k`$ to be the output of the $`i`$th neuron in the $`k`$th layer and $`w_{ji}^{k1}`$ to be the weight of the connection between the $`j`$th neuron in the $`(k1)`$th layer and the $`i`$th neuron in the $`k`$th layer. Then :

$`I_i^k={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N^{k1}}{}}}w_{ji}^{k1}O_j^{k1}`$ , $`k>1`$ (1)
$`O_i^k=f(I_i^k+w_{i0}^k)`$ , $`k>1`$ (2)
where $`f(x)\mathrm{sigmoid}\mathrm{function}`$, e.g.

$`f(x)=\mathrm{tanh}(x/T)`$ (3)
or

$`f(x)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+e^{x/T}}}`$ , (4)
and $`w_{i0}^k`$ is a so-called bias or threshold of the neuron. During the training phase it is simply considered as a weight and it is optimized in a same way.

For $`k=1`$ (input layer) it is :

$`O_i^1I_i^1=\mathrm{input}\mathrm{variables}`$ , $`i=1,\mathrm{},N_{input}`$ (5)
The output layer may consist of one neuron and in this case the network is suitable for two classes separation problem. In general there may be $`N_{output}`$ neurons when the events should be categorized in $`2^{N_{output}}`$ classes. In this case the $`k`$th bit in a binary representation of the class number is determined by the value of the $`k`$th output neuron. Alternatively, the individual $`N_{output}`$ neurons could be associated with particular classes among of $`N_{output}`$ possible choices.

Concerning the number of hidden layers, a general rule is that no more than two hidden layers should be needed . Experience shows that whether a multilayer perceptron with two hidden layers performs satisfactorily or not, then by adding to it more hidden layers its performance is not improved. In most cases only one hidden layer is sufficient. In fact for problems of function approximation, it has been shown  that a linear combination of sigmoids can approximate any continuous function of one variable or more. Obviously (eq. 12) this can be achieved with a network with one hidden layer.

Concerning the number of hidden neurons that a NN should have, there is no general rule that could suggest which number is optimal. In general the number of hidden neurons should be large enough to ensure a high degree of classification, and small enough to ensure a high degree of generalization. If there are too many hidden neurons, the network tends to learn to recognize only the set of examples that were used for its training. Therefore its generalization ability is poor and it does not perform well on a test sample or/and on real events. If the number of neurons is too small, the network performs bad since during the training phase it is unable to learn to classify.

In the following we describe the back-propagation algorithm which is usually used for training a multilayer perceptron.

### 2.4 Back-propagation algorithm

The back-propagation algorithm is a supervised training method often used with various modifications for training feed-forward networks. A set of examples is presented to the network which determines its output according to its state variables, the weights. The output is compared to the desired target output that each example is labeled with. By the difference between the network’s output and the target one, a so-called error or cost function is determined. It is actually a function of the weights, and the algorithm should update and modify these free parameters in such way that the error function is minimized, or in other words the network’s output is as close as possible to the target output. The minimization is done with a gradient descent method with respect to the weights.

We describe the algorithm following the notation given in the previous subsection. We consider a multilayer perceptron that is composed of $`H+2`$ layers (an input layer, $`H`$ hidden ones and an output layer). There are $`N_{weights}`$ parameters (connection weights and thresholds are simply called weights) that should be optimized, where

$`N_{weights}={\displaystyle \underset{k=2}{\overset{H+2}{}}}(N^k+N^kN^{k1})`$ (6)
The error function is defined as

$`E(t)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N_{examples}}{}}}(O(n;t)T(n))^2`$ (7)
where $`O(n;t)`$ is the output of the network corresponding to the $`n`$th example after the minimization process has been iterated $`t`$ times, and $`T(n)`$ is the target output associated with the example. For simplicity we consider the case of event classification between two classes (signal associated with target output $`T=1`$ and background with $`T=0`$), and so the output layer has only one neuron (denoted as $`O^{H+2}`$ or simply $`O`$).

The weights are modified after each iteration according to

$`w_{ji}^k(t+1)=w_{ji}^k(t)+\mathrm{\Delta }w_{ji}^k(t+1)`$ , $`k=1,\mathrm{},H+1`$ (8)
with

$`\mathrm{\Delta }w_{ji}^k(t+1)=\eta {\displaystyle \frac{E(t)}{w_{ji}^k(t)}}+\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }w_{ji}^k(t)`$ , $`k=1,\mathrm{},H+1`$ (9)
where the parameter $`\eta `$ (learning factor) determines the step of change, and thus the training rate, and $`\alpha `$ (momentum coefficient) is a smoothing parameter that helps the method to avoid getting stuck around the local minima of the error function.

The partial derivative of the error function is given by the recurrent relations (event and iteration indices are not shown for convenience)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{E}{w_{ji}^k}}=D_i^{k+1}{\displaystyle \frac{f(x)}{x}}|_{x=I_i^{k+1}+w_{i0}^{k+1}}O_j^k`$ , $`k=1,\mathrm{},H+1`$ (10)
with

$`D_i^{k+1}={\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{N^{k+2}}{}}}D_l^{k+2}{\displaystyle \frac{f(x)}{x}}|_{x=I_l^{k+2}+w_{l0}^{k+2}}w_{il}^{k+1}`$ , $`k=1,\mathrm{},H`$ (11)
and

$`D^{H+2}=O^{H+2}T`$ (12)
As can be seen in equations 10 and 11, the update information flows back from the last layer to the previous one (back-propagated). The weights of the neural network can be updated either after each example presentation (online training), or after the whole set of examples has been processed (batch training).

In general, we anticipate to reach a state in which the update differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }w_{ji}^k`$ are zero or close enough to it. After the training phase, we validate the quality of classification task that the network achieved with a test sample of events (generalization ability). The neural network is now ready to classify real events, that has never seen before, with known classification efficiency.

The main disadvantage of the algorithm presented above, often called as the standard back-propagation method, is that it converges very slowly to the minimum of the error function. Besides this convergence time grows very fast with the complexity of the problem and the size of the network. There are a couple of decades of different methods, that are based on the core features of the standard one, which achieve to speed up the overall performance significantly, at least in most cases, by e.g. defining a different error function, changing the learning factor or the network’s temperature with iteration, using second order derivatives or adding extra terms, or even by allowing the network to generate or destroy neurons (self-generation) in order to reach better performance. For a rigorous description and references on several methods consult .

For any training method, concerning the number of example events ($`N_{examples}`$) that one should use on training, a general rule is that it should be one or two orders of magnitude larger than the number of weights ($`N_{weights}`$) which are composing the neural network. This is imposed by the fact that the generalization ability depends mainly on the ratio $`N_{weights}/N_{examples}`$. Actually, for a multilayer perceptron with one hidden layer it has been shown that the generalization error is of $`O(N_{weights}/N_{examples})`$ .

Of special care is the question on when the training phase should be stopped. The answer to this is, whenever there is indication of network over-training. This is the case where the network starts learning to recognize only the set of training examples, and as a consequence, losing its generalization ability. This can be avoided by performing training and testing in parallel and inspect the evolution of the error function for both samples with respect to the iteration of the training algorithm. When the value of the error function on the testing examples starts to increase, while on the training ones it continues decreasing, there is danger of over-training if we continue the training procedure. There is no rule that associates maximum number of iterations with over-training or with best training. Generally, this depends on the complexity of the classification problem, the complexity of the neural network, the training method and its learning factor. If a network does not show satisfactory performance before over-training occurs, then it means that the approach to that classification problem with neural network technique unfortunately fails.

We close this introduction to neural networks by adding another, somehow abstract but at the same time hopefully more clear, description of the neural networks approach to pattern recognition problems. The whole procedure can be considered as a fitting problem of $`N_{examples}`$ “points” on an $`N_{input}\times N_{output}`$ -dimensional “plane” with a “curve” (neural network) of $`N_{weights}`$ free parameters. The best fitting “curve” (trained neural network), is simply represented by a function parameterized by the weights (free parameters that were optimized) that receives $`N_{input}`$ arguments (the network’s input variables) and returns a value (results in the output layer) which approximates the corresponding “point’s position” (classification).

## 3 The CASTOR calorimeter

### 3.1 Motivation

Cosmic rays experiments have detected events with unusual properties, the so-called Centauro events -, which exhibit small particle multiplicity compared to normal hadronic events, complete absence or strong suppression of the electromagnetic component ($`N_{hadrons}/N_\gamma 1`$, $`E_{hadrons}/E_\gamma 1`$) and very high $`<p_t>`$. Furthermore, a number of hadron-rich events are accompanied by a strongly penetrating component observed in the form of halo , strongly penetrating clusters  or long-living cascades, whose transition curves exhibit a characteristic form with many maxima and slow attenuation (e.g. fig. 3. These events can not be explained in terms of statistical deviation from conventional hadronic physics .

According to a phenomenological model , the Centauros are considered to be the products of hadronization of a deconfined quark-matter fireball formed in nucleus-nucleus collisions in the upper atmosphere. The “long penetrating objects” usually accompanying them are assumed to be long-lived strangelets, that may have been formed because of a mechanism of strangeness separation  of the fireball’s strange quark content and are emitted during fireball’s hadronization. In a similar way, this kind of events and particles may be produced in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC ($`\sqrt{S}=5.5`$ TeV/nucleon) from the hadronization of a Quark Gluon Plasma state formed in the beam fragmentation region.

### 3.2 Detector description

The CASTOR detector  is a Cherenkov effect based sampling calorimeter with a tungsten absorber and quartz fibers as active material. The signal is the Cherenkov light produced by the shower charged particles traversing the fibers. The calorimeter is azimuthally divided in 8 octants and longitudinally segmented in layers. Each absorber layer is followed by a number of quartz-fiber planes, altogether consisting a W-fiber layer. The W-fiber layers have 45 inclination with respect to the beam axis to achieve maximum light production. The calorimeter consists of several channels per octant. One channel consists of a number of consecutive W-fiber layers, the signal of which is collected and transmitted to its corresponding photomultiplier through an air-core lightguide (fig. 2). The calorimeter is proposed as a very forward detector of the ALICE  or CMS  experiments at the LHC covering the pseudorapidity range $`5.46\eta 7.14`$. Its main objective is to search in the baryon rich, very forward rapidity region of central Pb+Pb collisions for unusual events and “long penetrating objects”, assumed to be strangelets, by measuring the hadronic and electromagnetic energies and the hadronic shower’s longitudinal profile on an event-by-event mode.

Detailed simulation studies of the performance of the CASTOR calorimeter have been done . The calorimeter shows linear response to electrons and hadrons, satisfactory energy resolution and very narrow visible transverse size of electromagnetic and hadronic showers, a property that derives from the detector’s operation principle, based on the Cherenkov effect, which makes such calorimeters sensitive essentially only to the shower core . Concerning the lightguides, their shape, dimensions and inner walls have been studied  and are optimized for better light transmission efficiency.

In this point we wish to refer the ALICE-PMD (Photon Multiplicity Detector) , which covers the pseudorapidity region $`1.8\eta 2.6`$ and is dedicated to the measurement of photon and charged particle multiplicities. It is designed for Centauro events related research but from a different viewpoint. Its objective is to detect possible large non-statistical fluctuations on an event-by-event basis which is the primary signature of the formation of Disoriented Chiral Condensate (e.g. ). Also, concerning strangelets research in the central rapidity region covered by the ALICE barrel detector, a similar search as has been performed on recent fixed target heavy-ion experiments (NA52  at CERN-SPS and E864  at BNL-AGS), aiming on detection of particles with low charge-to-mass ratio, is forseen  using the central tracking system. (For a rigorous review on strange quark matter searches consult ).

### 3.3 “Long penetrating objects”

The hypothesis that the long penetrating objects may be strangelets is supported by simulations  which show that the passage of a strangelet through matter produces shower which is slowly attenuated, long penetrating and has a longitudinal profile with many maxima structure, as observed in cosmic rays experiments . The passage of strangelets through the CASTOR calorimeter has been also simulated  and the analysis of the results has shown that the signal can be easily distinguished from the hadronic background for strangelets with energy greater than 20 TeV. Nevertheless, strangelets with a such high energy are expected to be boosted in high rapidity (and thus pseudorapidity) and as a consequence it is very likely that they pass outside the detector’s coverage. In addition, for the identification of lower energy strangelets, a calorimeter with very high read-out frequency is required, which is not feasible. In this study we present a sophisticated method based on neural networks technique for the separation of the low energy strangelets signal from the hadronic background.

## 4 Signal-from-background separation analysis

The forward region ($`5.46\eta 7.14`$) covered by the CASTOR calorimeter receives $`200\pm 11`$ TeV per central Pb+Pb collision at $`\sqrt{S}=5.5`$ TeV/nucleon, carried by about 2000 particles (event generated by HIJING ). This amount of energy is associated with the conventional hadronic events, treated as background for CASTOR’s research interests. We make the basic assumption that in case that a strangelet is produced in a Pb+Pb collision, the energy not carried by it is going into conventional particle production as described by the event generator. In other words, although the detector may receive the same amount of energy, in the first case the event should be considered as not interesting (background), whereas in the second one, as signal. The only discriminating feature between them is the fact that the strangelet’s passage through the detector gives a shower with many maxima and negligible attenuation.

We study the case of a 5 TeV strangelet, an amount of energy which corresponds to 2.5% of the total energy per event that is received by the calorimeter, a fact that makes the separation task not trivial because of mainly two reasons. First, the characteristic pattern of the longitudinal development of the shower is weak and can be easily masked and suppressed by fluctuations of the showers of the other hadrons. Second, due to the fact that the calorimeter is divided in a reasonable (low) number of channels, and thus the characteristic many-maxima signal is likely to be distributed to consecutive channels and undersampled. The situation would be even worse with a detector which was not azimuthally divided. The 8 octants of the CASTOR detector are operating as stand-alone calorimeters since the visible shower transverse size is very narrow .

We should also mention the fact that we must be able to cope with an expected signal-to-background ratio (in the raw data recorded) of the order of 1/10000. As it is shown in the followings, by using neural networks we can surpass these difficulties and achieve very efficient separation of signal from background.

### 4.1 Analysis steps description

Since the calorimeter is composed of 8 octants which are operating and read-out as individual detectors, the task of event classification consists in disentangling an octant which contains the signals of a strangelet and the accompanying particles (signal event) from an octant which contains only conventional signal (background event). The neural network is fed with input variables that are the responses of the channels of the octant and should provide a discriminating value (NNoutput) which is close to 1 for signal events and 0 for background ones. A typical distribution of signal and background events as a function of NNoutput is shown in fig. 4. By applying a suitable cut (NNoutputcut) we can select a subset which contains sufficiently high number of signal events and low number of contaminating background.

We define the followings:

signal efficiency, $`ϵ_s`$, which represents the probability of classification of a real signal event as signal,

$`\text{signal efficiency: }ϵ_s={\displaystyle \frac{N_{signalNN}}{N_{signal}}}`$ (13)
where $`N_{signalNN}`$ is the number of events that have been selected out of $`N_{signal}`$ signal events due to the fact that they produce a NNoutput which satisfies the condition to be greater than the imposed cut value NNoutputcut,

contamination, $`ϵ_b`$, which represents the probability of misclassification of a background event as signal,

$`\text{contamination: }ϵ_b={\displaystyle \frac{N_{signallikeNN}}{N_{background}}}`$ (14)
where $`N_{signallikeNN}`$ is the number of events that, although they belong to the set of the $`N_{background}`$ background events, they produce a NNoutput value which is greater than NNoutputcut and thus they are misclassified as signal events,

signal enhancement, $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$, which represents the factor of improvement of the signal-to-background ratio,

$`\text{signal enhancement}={\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}}`$ (15)
The parameters $`ϵ_s`$, $`ϵ_b`$, $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$ are determined at the training and testing phase of the network and quantify its performance. Then by applying the trained network on e.g. a set of raw data that was taken during experiment run and is assumed to have a signal-to-background ratio $`S/B=\frac{N_{signal}}{N_{background}}`$, we can result in a subset of data to be further analyzed with a signal-to-background ratio $`(S/B)_{NN}`$ enhanced by a factor of $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$,

$`(S/B)_{NN}={\displaystyle \frac{N_{signalNN}}{N_{signallikeNN}}}={\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}}{\displaystyle \frac{N_{signal}}{N_{background}}}={\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}}S/B`$ (16)
For the construction of the neural networks, their training and testing we used the environment provided by the MLPfit package , a tool with great functionality in development of multilayer perceptrons. Other packages usually used are Jetnet , SNNS , NNO . A set of 10000 signal events and 10000 background ones, which represents the calorimeter’s octant simulated response to the interesting and non-interesting events as described above, is used for training the networks. A second independent set composed by 10000+10000 events is used in the testing phase. Several network architectures have been used with one hidden layer since by adding a second layer the performance is not improved. Several training algorithms have been initially used, and as expected without causing any significant change in the final network performance. We chose to work with the BFGS algorithm (Broyden-Fletcher-Godfarb-Shanno) since it is fast, very efficient and reliable .

The general specifications of the calorimeter we used in this study are tabulated in table 1. In order to investigate how the total calorimeter depth and the total number of channels influence the signal detection efficiency, we studied 9 different configurations tabulated in table 2. They can be categorized in three cases, according to total calorimeter depth or according to depth per channel. In the following subsections we use the second categorization scheme. The results are presented in terms of signal enhancement ($`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$) and signal classification efficiency ($`ϵ_s`$).

### 4.2 Calorimeter of 1.05 $`\lambda _I`$ per channel

We first consider the case where each channel consists of 15 consecutive W-fiber layers, which correspond to 1.05 $`\lambda _I`$ per channel ($`=28.8X_0`$/channel). We studied calorimeters that are composed of 9, 10 and 11 channels per octant (total depth is 9.45, 10.50, 11.55 $`\lambda _I`$’s, respectively). Neural networks with various numbers of hidden neurons have been used. Their performances in terms of signal enhancement ($`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$) as a function of signal classification efficiency ($`ϵ_s`$) are depicted in figures 56 and 7. Although the performance varies among different configurations, for all cases a signal enhancement higher than 1000 can be achieved at satisfactorily high efficiency. The results from each neural network configuration are presented analytically in table 3 at page 3 and discussed in subsection 4.5.

### 4.3 Calorimeter of 0.70 $`\lambda _I`$ per channel

In this case each channel consists of 10 consecutive W-fiber layers, which correspond to depth of 0.70 $`\lambda _I`$ per channel ($`=19.2X_0`$/channel). The calorimeters that have been studied are composed of 13, 15 and 17 channels per octant (total depth is 9.10, 10.50, 11.90 $`\lambda _I`$’s, respectively). The same procedure as in the previous case has been followed, neural networks with various numbers of hidden neurons have been studied. Their performance is shown in figures 89 and 10. We can still achieve high signal enhancement and efficiency. Although the channel depth of this case is reduced by 28.6% compared to the previous one, we observe that the performance is not significantly improved. The results from each neural network configuration are presented analytically in table 3 at page 3 and discussed in subsection 4.5.

### 4.4 Calorimeter of 0.49 $`\lambda _I`$ per channel

We studied also the case where each channel consists of 7 consecutive W-fiber layers, corresponding to depth of 0.49 $`\lambda _I`$ per channel ($`=13.4X_0`$/channel). Calorimeters of total depth 9.31, 10.29 and 11.76 $`\lambda _I`$’s have been studied (composed of 19, 21 and 24 channels per octant, respectively). A significantly improved performance should be reached to justify the high cost, due to large number of channels. We followed the same procedure as in the previous cases. The performance of the neural networks that have been used is depicted in figures 1112 and 13. The signal enhancement $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$ at fixed efficiency $`ϵ_s=0.96`$ and the efficiency $`ϵ_s`$ at fixed $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}=1000`$ are presented for each NN architecture in table 3 at page 3. In general, although the performance in terms of achievable signal enhancement and efficiency is very satisfactory, it is not considerably better compared to that of 1.05 or 0.70 $`\lambda _I`$/channel cases.

In the following we discuss the results of the various calorimeter configurations and neural network architectures that have been studied.

### 4.5 Results recapitulation

The signal enhancement $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$ at $`ϵ_s=0.96`$ and the signal classification efficiency $`ϵ_s`$ at $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}=1000`$ are presented for each neural network architecture and calorimeter configuration in table 3. As proposed in  we average the performance of the different neural networks which correspond to the same calorimeter configuration. The results are tabulated in table 4 and plotted in figures 15 and 15 (points are grouped according to depth per channel and total calorimeter depth, respectively). We observe that the signal enhancement is increasing by increasing calorimeter depth and/or decreasing depth per channel. The signal efficiency stays basically unchanged, thus the use of a deep calorimeter with frequent read-out results in more efficient background discrimination (so lower contamination).

Generally, in all calorimeter configurations that have been studied, the signal-background classification task as performed by neural networks can provide a signal-over-background enhancement factor, $`\frac{ϵ_s}{ϵ_b}`$, larger than 2000(1000) at high signal classification efficiency, $`ϵ_s`$, of a value of 0.96(0.97). This performance is considered very satisfactory and can be achieved even with a moderately short calorimeter (9.45 $`\lambda _I`$’s deep) with a conservative number of channels (9 channels per octant, 1.05 $`\lambda _I`$/channel). In the case of very frequent read-out (0.49 $`\lambda _I`$/channel), the performance in terms of achievable signal enhancement and efficiency is improved. But still is not considerably better, compared to the cases of 1.05 or 0.70 $`\lambda _I`$/channel read-out, to justify the higher cost of the large total number of calorimeter channels. If we had to choose a configuration out of the 9 ones that have been studied, we would suggest either the case of a calorimeter of 11.55 $`\lambda _I`$’s deep with 11 channels per octant (1.05 $`\lambda _I`$/channel) or one with depth of 10.50 $`\lambda _I`$’s with 15 channels per octant (0.70 $`\lambda _I`$/channel), since they both combine adequate number of channels and total depth with high performance and cost efficiency.

## 5 Summary and conclusions

We presented a signal-from-background separation study based on neural networks technique. We used a multilayer perceptron with one hidden layer that was fed with input variables that were the channel responses of each octant of the CASTOR calorimeter. The network was trained to distinguish between an octant, which contained the characteristic pattern of the longitudinal development of the shower of a “long-penetrating object” (strangelet), and an octant, which contained only signals from conventional particle showers.

We concentrated on the case of a strangelet with energy of 5 TeV, an amount which corresponds to 2.5% of the total energy per event that is expected to be received by the calorimeter. We studied calorimeter configurations with various total depths and depths per channel. The results show that we can very efficiently separate the signal from the background and compensate the initial signal-to-background ratio which is expected to be of the order of 1/10000. The neural networks based classification task can provide a signal-over-background enhancement factor larger than 2000(1000), at signal classification efficiency as high as 0.96(0.97), and thus resulting to a selected subset of events to be further analyzed with a significantly improved signal-to-background ratio of the order of 0.1 or higher. We stress the fact that this performance is achieved without any preprocessing or preselection procedure, thus an even higher signal-to-background ratio might be accomplished.

Concerning the optimum calorimeter configuration in terms of total depth and read-out frequency, we conclude that a total depth between 11.55 and 10.50 $`\lambda _I`$’s and with 1.05-0.70 $`\lambda _I`$/channel (10 to 15 channels per octant) is sufficient to ensure high classification performance. The fact that such good performance corresponds to a 5 TeV strangelet leads in concluding that similar or even better performance can be achieved for strangelets of higher energy since their signal will be stronger and more pronounced.

References


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# Equilibrium Models of Galaxy Clusters with Cooling, Heating and Conduction

## 1 Introduction

The X-ray surface brightness of many clusters of galaxies shows a strong central peak which has been interpreted as the signature of a cooling flow (Cowie & Binney 1977, Fabian & Nulsen 1977, Sarazin 1988, Fabian 1994). However, the simple cooling flow model conflicts with a growing number of observations that show that while the temperature is declining in the central region, gas with a temperature below $``$1 keV is significantly less abundant than predicted. The absence of a cool phase in cooling flows has proven a persistent puzzle. Recently, two main candidates for the heating of the gas in the central regions of clusters have emerged: (i) heating by outflows from active galactic nuclei (AGN) (Tabor & Binney 1993, Churazov et al. 2001a, Binney 2001, Brüggen et al. 2002, Brüggen 2003), and (ii) transport of heat from the outer regions of the cluster by thermal conduction (Zakamska & Narayan 2003, Ruszkowski & Begelman 2002, Fabian et al. 2001, Voigt et al. 2002, Gruzinov 2002, Friaca 1986, Bertschinger & Meiksin 1986, Meiksin 1988, Bregman & David 1988).

The role of thermal conduction in the ICM has been the subject of a long debate and, owing to the complex physics of MHD turbulence, the value of the effective conductivity remains uncertain. The thermal conductivity of an unmagnetised, fully ionised plasma was calculated by Spitzer (1962). Originally it has been thought that the magnetic field in clusters strongly supresses the thermal conductivity because the magnetic fields prevent an efficient transport perpendicular to the field lines. Even if the transport can be efficient along the magnetic field lines, the overall isotropic conductivity was thought to be many orders of magnitude less than the Spitzer value. This paradigm has been supported by a number of observations, such as sharp edges at so-called cold fronts, small-scale temperature variations in mergers and sharp boundaries around radio bubbles. It is thought that the existence of these sharp features precludes thermal conduction near the Spitzer value (Markevitch et al. 2000, Vikhlinin, Markevitch & Murray 2001).

Recent theoretical work by Narayan & Medvedev (2001), Malyshkin & Kulsrud (2001), Chandran et al. (1999), Chandran & Cowley (1998) and earlier work by Rechester & Rosenbluth (1978) has shown that a turbulent magnetic field is not as efficient in suppressing thermal conduction as previously thought. It is argued that chaotic transverse motions of the tangled magnetic field lines can enhance the cross-field diffusion to an extent that the effective conductivity is of the order of the Spitzer value. Following this work, Zakamska & Narayan (2003) have looked for hydrostatically stable models in which the radiative cooling is exactly balanced by thermal conduction and where the temperatures on the inner and outer boundaries were fixed. For half of the clusters they investigated they found that a thermal conductivity of around 30 % of the Spitzer value yielded good fits to the observed profiles. However, for the other half of the clusters conduction alone appeared unlikely to halt a cooling catastrophe. Consequently, some form of heating is necessary such as mechanical heating by AGN. The work by Zakamska & Narayan (2003) has motivated us to reexamine cluster models that takes into account thermal conduction as well as heating by central radio sources. We include a more generally valid treatment of radiative cooling by utilising a fit to the cooling function that takes into account line cooling. This becomes particularly important in the central regions of cooler clusters.

Radio-loud AGN drive strong outflows in the form of jets that inflate bubbles or lobes. The lobes are filled with hot plasma, and can heat the cluster gas in various ways. The effect of hot bubbles on the ICM consists primarily of heating via $`pdV`$ work and redistribution of mass via buoyancy-driven mixing. Hydrodynamic simulations (Brüggen 2003) have shown that a significant fraction ($`10`$ %) of the energy residing in radio lobes can be dissipated in the cluster gas.

Clearly, the lifetime of the activity of the central AGN (as brief as $`10^410^5`$ yrs) is short compared to the evolutionary time scale of the cluster gas. Therefore, once the AGN stops supplying energy to the buoyant bubbles, the cluster gas will settle down once again and a full cooling flow may be re-established. The cooling gas flows to the centre of the cluster and may then trigger a further active phase of the AGN. Thus a self-regulating process with cooling periods alternating with brief bursts of AGN activity may be established (Quilis, Bower, & Balogh 2001, Voit & Bryan 2001). The rising bubbles uplift colder material from the vicinity of the AGN and thus disrupt the supply of fresh fuel for the radio jets. This feedback mechanism might automatically regulate the power of the radio jets. It has been found that 71 % of all cD galaxies at the centres of cooling-flow clusters show evidence of radio activity (Burns 1990). This fraction is higher than in non-cooling flow galaxies which again points towards the existence of some form of feedback mechanism where the cooling gas flows to the centre of the cluster and triggers a further active phase of the AGN. The bubbles rise at a speed that is comparable to the sound speed, which in turn is comparable to the dynamical speed. Therefore, the cooling timescale is much longer than the bubble rise timescale, and it is justifiable to treat feedback heating in a time-averaged sense.

In this paper, we will present a simple model that incorporates, both, thermal conduction and heating by bubbles. We compute a class of models that are subject to radiative cooling, thermal conduction, heating by AGN and that are in hydrostatic equilibrium. We will investigate those parameters that yield plausible solutions and will compare our solutions to observations. Finally, we briefly discuss the origin of the energy that is conducted into the cluster.

## 2 Model

In our model of the cluster, we assume that the dark matter distribution is given by a modified NFW profile (Navarro et al. 1997)

$$\rho _{\mathrm{DM}}(r)=\frac{M_0/2\pi }{(r+r_c)(r+r_s)^2},$$
(1)
where $`r`$ is the distance from the centre, $`r_s`$ the scale radius of the NFW profile and $`r_c`$ a softening radius, within which the density becomes constant and which prevents the temperature from going to zero at $`r=0`$. The core radius $`r_c`$ determines the shape of the potential near the centre and here we adopt $`r_c=r_s/20`$ as recommended by Zakamska & Narayan (2003). We can express the characteristic mass $`M_0`$ in terms of the commonly used concentration parameter $`c=(3M_{\mathrm{vir}}/4\pi 200\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}(z)r_c^3)^{1/3}`$, where $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}`$ is the critical density of the universe at the redshift of the cluster and $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ is the virial mass:

$$M_0=2\pi r_s^2r_c\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}(z)\left(\frac{200}{3}\right)\frac{c^3}{\mathrm{ln}(1+c)c/(1+c)}.$$
(2)
The conductive heat flux is given by

$$F_\mathrm{c}=(\kappa T),$$
(3)
where $`\kappa `$ is the thermal conductivity and $`T`$ temperature. If thermal conduction is due to electrons, the conductivity according to Spitzer (1962) is given by

$$\kappa _{\mathrm{sp}}\mathrm{9.2\; 10}^7T^{5/2}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{K}^1\mathrm{cm}^1.$$
(4)
Here we seek an equilibrium model that is spherically symmetric, static, and time-independent. Moreover, we neglect magnetic fields and the self-gravity of the ICM. In spherical coordinates, the gravitational potential $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is governed by the dark matter distribution

$$\frac{1}{r^2}\frac{d}{dr}\left(r^2\mathrm{\Phi }\right)=4\pi G\rho _{\mathrm{DM}}(r)=\frac{2GM_0}{(r+r_c)(r+r_s)^2},$$
(5)
where $`G`$ is the gravitational constant. Following Zakamska & Narayan (2003) the mass-temperature relation of Afshordi & Cen (2002) and the mass-scale relation of Maoz et al. (1997), can be used to determine $`M_0`$ and $`r_s`$ for a given cluster. The equation of hydrostatic equilibrium can now be written as

$$\frac{dp}{dr}=\rho \frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dr},$$
(6)
where $`p`$ is pressure and $`\rho `$ gas density. Demanding that radiative cooling and heating are balanced by thermal conduction, we can write

$$\frac{1}{r^2}\frac{d}{dr}\left(r^2F_\mathrm{c}\right)=\rho +,$$
(7)
where $`\rho `$ and $``$ are the volume cooling and heating functions, respectively, and $`F_\mathrm{c}`$ is the conductive flux, which depends on the temperature gradient as stated above

$$\kappa \frac{dT}{dr}=F_\mathrm{c},$$
(8)
where we write $`\kappa `$ as $`f\kappa _{\mathrm{sp}}`$, $`f`$ being a suppression factor. We should point out that we omitted a term for the convective flux in equation (7). However, for the levels of heating considered here the ICM is convectively stable and the neglect of convection is a justifiable assumption.

Pressure is related to $`n_e`$ and $`T`$ via the ideal gas law

$$p=\frac{\rho kT}{\mu m_u}=\frac{\mu _e}{\mu }n_ekT,$$
(9)
where $`m_u`$ is the atomic mass unit.

For the volume cooling rate $`\rho `$ we use an approximation to the cooling function based on calculations by (Sutherland and Dopita, 1993)

$$\rho =[C_1(kT)^\alpha +C_2(kT)^\beta +C_3]\frac{\mu _e}{\mu }n_e^210^{22}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{s}^1.$$
(10)
The units for $`kT`$ are keV, $`n_e`$ is the electron number density, and $`\mu `$ and $`\mu _e`$ denote the mean molecular weight per hydrogen atom and per electron, respectively. As in Zakamska & Narayan (2003) we use $`\mu =0.62`$ and $`\mu _e=1.18`$, corresponding to a fully ionized gas with hydrogen fraction $`X=0.7`$ and helium fraction $`Y=0.28`$. For an average metallicity $`Z=0.3Z_{}`$ the constants are $`\alpha =1.7`$, $`\beta =0.5`$, $`C_1=8.6\times 10^3`$, $`C_2=5.8\times 10^2`$ and $`C_3=6.4\times 10^2`$.

The term $``$ in equation (7) represents the energy input by a central AGN. The energy is deposited in the ICM by the rising bubbles and thus, averaged over time, the heating will be distributed in radius. To quantify this heating, we use a prescription proposed by Begelman (2001) which quantifies the heating of the ICM by the rising bubbles. Assuming that this heating mechanism reaches a quasi-steady state, the details of the bubble motions and geometry should cancel and the energy flux may be written as

$$\dot{e}p_\mathrm{b}(r)^{(\gamma _\mathrm{b}1)/\gamma _\mathrm{b}},$$
(11)
where $`p_\mathrm{b}(r)`$ is the partial pressure of buoyant gas inside bubbles at radius $`r`$ and $`\gamma _\mathrm{b}`$ is the adiabatic index of buoyant gas which we will take to be 4/3. Assuming that the partial pressure scales with the thermal pressure of the ICM, the volume heating function $``$ can be expressed as

$$h(r)\frac{\dot{e}}{4\pi r^2}=h(r)\left(\frac{p}{p_0}\right)^{(\gamma _b1)/\gamma _b}\frac{1}{r}\frac{d\mathrm{ln}p}{d\mathrm{ln}r},$$
(12)
where $`p_0`$ is the central pressure and $`h(r)`$ is the normalization function

$$h(r)=\frac{L}{4\pi r^2}(1e^{r/r_0})q^1,$$
(13)
where $`L`$ is the luminosity of the AGN. The normalisation factor $`q`$ is defined by

$$q=_{r_{\mathrm{min}}}^{r_{\mathrm{max}}}\left(\frac{p}{p_0}\right)^{(\gamma _b1)/\gamma _b}\frac{1}{r}\frac{d\mathrm{ln}p}{d\mathrm{ln}r}(1e^{r/r_0})dr,$$
(14)
where $`r_0`$ is the inner heating cutoff radius which is determined by the finite size of the central radio source. Here $`r_0`$ was taken to be 10 kpc. This heating function mimics a possible feedback mechanism between the AGN and the ICM in the sense that the volume heating function does not depend on the physical conditions at the source alone but on the pressure gradient (Ruszkowski & Begelman 2002). Thus, it resembles thermal conduction, with the difference that the heating rate depends on the gradient of pressure rather than temperature.

Equations (5) - (9) can be combined to yield a set of four first-order differential equations for $`n_e`$, $`r^2d\mathrm{\Phi }/dr`$, $`T`$ and $`r^2F_\mathrm{c}`$. We solve these equations as an initial-value problem subject to the initial conditions: $`n_e(0)=n_{\mathrm{in}}`$, $`r^2d\mathrm{\Phi }/dr|_{r=0}=0`$, $`T(0)=T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`r^2F_\mathrm{c}|_{r=0}=0`$, where $`n_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ are parameters. Other parameters in this simplified model are $`M_0`$, $`r_s`$, $`f`$ and $`L`$. We have investigated the dependence of the resulting density and temperature profiles on some of these parameters, which is discussed in the next session.

## 3 Results and Discussion

We integrate the system of four ordinary differential equations using a Runge-Kutta method and adopt a characteristic mass of $`M_0=6.6\times 10^{14}M_{}`$ and a scale radius of $`r_s=460`$ kpc (parameters inferred for the cluster Abell 1795, Zakamska & Narayan 2003). For a cluster with a central temperature of 2 keV and a central density of $`n_e=0.05`$ cm-3 the resulting density and temperature profiles are shown in Figures 1 and 2. Curves plotted in different styles correspond to different values of the suppression factor $`f`$ and the luminosity of the central source $`L`$. The values assumed for $`L`$ here correspond to typical energies supplied by the jet to the ICM of $`10^{44}`$ erg s-1 (e.g. Owen, Eilek and Kassim 2000). In Figure 1 one can note that the temperature profile rises less steeply with radius if thermal conduction is more efficient. In order to maintain a given central temperature, the temperatures gradient in the cluster has to be higher if conduction is more suppressed. The higher temperature gradient makes up for the smaller suppression factor so that enough energy is conducted inwards to balance the radiative losses. The highest value for the suppression factor that we have adopted here (0.5) is at the upper end of what is physically plausible. Even higher thermal conductivities seem very unlikely. Moreover, one can see, that the heating term has an effect similar to that of thermal conduction, in that a higher luminosity of the central source flattens out the temperature profile. Because the distributed heating depends on the pressure gradient, a higher luminosity of the central source can afford a smaller pressure gradient, leading to a shallower temperature distribution. Physically speaking, the smaller pressure gradient makes the energy transfer from the bubbles to the ICM less efficient.

For higher values of $`f`$ and $`L`$ the electron number density is higher in the centre ($`<`$ 100 kpc) and drops off faster in the outer regions (see Fig. 2).

Figures 3 and 4 are the corresponding figures for a cluster with a higher central temperature of 4 keV, all other parameters being the same. For this hotter cluster the luminosity of the central source has to be higher in order to produce the same relative effect as in the cooler cluster. In these plots we also included a model with a high luminosity of $`L=3\times 10^{45}`$ erg s-1. In this case the temperature distribution is nearly isothermal.

Clearly, by including a physically motivated heating term, there are more degrees of freedom to fit the density and temperature profiles inferred from observations. This can be demonstrated at the example of Hydra A which is a well-studied cooling flow cluster with a FR I radio source (3C218) at its centre. Zakamska & Narayan (2003) have shown that Hydra A cannot be fitted with a conduction model alone unless one allows for unplausibly high values for $`\kappa `$. The NFW parameters for Hydra A are $`r_s=370`$ kpc and $`M_0=2.9\times 10^{14}M_{}`$. The central electron density is $`n_e(0)=0.08`$ cm-3, the temperature at the centre is $`T_{\mathrm{in}}=3.11`$ keV and at 190 kpc is $`T(190\mathrm{kpc})=4.04`$ keV. In Figure 5 we show the temperature profile as inferred from CHANDRA observations (David et al. 2001) together with our best fit for $`f=0.5`$ ($`L=4.0\times 10^{45}`$ erg s-1). As is readily seen, the inclusion of the heating term produces a good fit to the data without having to invoke an abnormally high conductivity.

A question that we have not addressed so far is the question of the origin of the energy that is conducted inwards in order to keep the cluster from collapsing. If we take a cluster model with no heating, i.e. $`L=0`$, and a suppression factor of $`f=0.1`$ (all other parameters being those of Fig. 1), the asymptotic value of $`r^2F_\mathrm{c}`$ at large radii is $`6.2\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1. This means that over a period of 5 Gyrs a total energy of $`10^{62}`$ erg has to be conducted into the cluster which amounts to $`5`$ % of the total thermal energy of the cluster ($`3M_0k\overline{T}/2\mu m_p`$). For higher values of $`f`$ this percentage increases. Ultimately, this energy must be provided by infalling gas at the accretion shock.

It was pointed out by Loeb (2002) that a significant thermal conductivity will also lead to energy transport out of the cluster because beyond the temperature maximum of the cluster the temperature begins to drop again and the temperature gradient is reversed. Therefore, conduction is also reversed and heat is transported from the cluster to its surrounding envelope in these regions. As estimated by Loeb (2002), heat conduction must be suppressed significantly over the Spitzer value in the outer cluster regions or else the cores of X-ray clusters would have cooled significantly over their life times.

### 3.1 Stability of the solutions

We have not performed a stability analysis of the model presented here. Instead we refer the reader to relevant works that have been published by others. The thermal stability of stratified atmospheres in the presence of radiative cooling and heat conduction was first analysed by Field (1965) and later generalised by Balbus (1988) and Balbus and Soker (1989) who performed a Lagrangian stability analysis. Recently, the issue of thermal instability in clusters was revisited by Kim & Narayan (2003) who examined the global stability of the models found by Zakamska & Narayan (2003). On the basis of a Lagrangian perturbation analysis they concluded that the growth time of the most unstable global radial mode was $``$ 6 - 9 times longer than the growth time of the local isobaric modes at the centre if the conductivity was 20 % to 40 % of the Spitzer value. Typical growth times are thus comparable with the time since the last cluster merger. Hence it is argued that the cluster is thermally stable if there is a sufficient amount of thermal conduction. The presence of a heating term as implemented in our model will act to increase the stability of the cluster.

### 3.2 Summary

We have devised a one-dimensional hydrostatic model for the ICM where radiative losses are balanced by, both, thermal conduction and heating by a central source. By including a physically motivated heating term we have shown that it is possible to fit cluster profiles without having to invoke unplausibly high values for the thermal conductivity.

We should concede, however, that our model is very simplified: It assumes that the cluster is in hydrostatic equilibrium and spherically symmetric, it does not allow the gas to condense and drop out of the flow, it ignores magnetic fields and includes a heuristic treatment of heating by AGN. But despite its simplicity, only a few free parameters suffice to reproduce the observed profiles of X-ray clusters.

I thank Simon White, Eugene Churazov, Bill Forman and Christian Kaiser for helpful discussions.


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# The Cepheid Instability Strip in the GAIA Era

## 1. Introduction

The bulk of stars with spectral types ranging from late A to late G are pulsating variables located inside the so-called Cepheid instability strip. When moving from brighter to fainter objects inside this strip we find Classical Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars. These objects are the prototypes of young, intermediate-mass and old, low-mass standard candles. Owing to these intrinsic features and to the fact that they can be easily identified due to their large luminosity variation they are robust stellar tracers. Between these two groups of variables are located Type II Cepheids. Their periods are similar to classical Cepheids but they are old, low-mass stars in the Asymptotic-Giant-Branch phase (double-shell burning). This evolutionary phase is substantially shorter when compared to RR Lyrae and Cepheids.

Toward fainter magnitudes we find the $`\delta `$ Scuti stars (Breger 2002) and the Oscillating Blue Stragglers (Bono et al. 2002). These objects are intermediate-mass stars burning Hydrogen in the core or in a thick-shell, i.e. evolved off the main sequence. Obviously these variables outnumber the previous ones, but the luminosity amplitudes are smaller and the mode identification is still debated in the literature. Stars with spectral types ranging from late K to M and low surface gravities are once again pulsating variables located in the Mira instability strip. The physical mechanism driving the pulsation instability is the same, but the pulsation properties are substantially different. The most common variables located inside this strip are the semiregular variables and the Long-Period-Variables (see the paper by Feast in these proceedings).

Instruments on board of GAIA have been optimized to supply accurate trigonometric parallaxes and physical parameters (chemical composition, radial velocity, effective temperature, surface gravity, reddening, binarity) for stars with spectral types ranging from F to K. This means that photometric and spectroscopic data collected by GAIA will have a fundamental role to improve current knowledge on pulsating variables located inside the Cepheid and the Mira instability strips.

The microlensing experiments (EROS, OGLE, MACHO, PLANET), aimed at the detection of baryonic dark matter have already provided a large amount of photometric data in the direction of the Galactic bulge. These data substantially increased the number of variables for which are available accurate estimates of periods, mean magnitudes and colors. However, the observables that GAIA plan to measure are mandatory (see the paper by Perryman in these proceedings) to constrain the accuracy of theoretical predictions concerning evolutionary and pulsation properties of Galactic stars, the formation and evolution of the Galaxy and its interaction with nearby dwarf galaxies as well as chemical evolution models.

In the following we discuss the role that GAIA spectroscopy will have on Cepheid and RR Lyrae distance scales as well as on the use of these objects as stellar tracers. Finally, we briefly outline the impact that GAIA will have on outer disc and halo stellar populations.

## 2. Classical Cepheids

The Cepheid distance scale is the crossroad for the calibration of secondary distance indicators, and in turn for estimating the Hubble constant $`H_0`$. The strengths and the weaknesses in using the PLC relation, that supplies individual Cepheid distances, or the PL relation, that supplies ensemble distances, have been widely discussed in the recent literature (Sandage et al. 1999; Tanvir 1999). Pros and cons in using optical, near-infrared (NIR), or Wesenheit magnitudes (W=V-2.45(V-I)) reddening free magnitudes) have also been lively debated during the last few years (Feast 1999; Freedman et al. 2001; Bono 2003). However, the critical issue concerning Cepheid distances is to assess on a firm basis whether the zero-point and the slope of PL and PLC relations do depend on the metal content. During the last few years the number of theoretical and empirical investigations focused on this problem are countless. Empirical findings seem to suggest that the PL relation in the optical bands presents a mild dependence on the metallicity. In particular, metal-rich Cepheids at fixed period appear brighter than metal-poor ones (Sasselov et al. 1997; Kennicutt et al. 1998; Sandage et al. 1999; Macri et al. 2001; Fouqué et al. 2003).

On the other hand, hydrodynamical envelope models that account for the coupling between pulsation and convection predict that metal-rich Cepheids, at fixed period, are fainter than metal-poor ones (Bono et al. 1999a,b; Alibert et al. 1999). This means that we are facing with a substantial discrepancy between theoretical predictions and empirical data. Current scenario is further jazzed up by multi-band analyses of Magellanic Cloud (MC) Cepheids that support the theoretical sign (Groenewegen & Oudmaijer 2000; Groenewegen 2000). At the same time, recent empirical investigations based on accurate individual distance and reddening determinations of Galactic Cepheids appear to suggest that both the zero-point and the slope of the PL relation in the optical bands do depend on the metal content (Saha et al. 2003; Tammann & Sandage 2003). Paucis verbis the Cepheid PL and PLC relations in the optical bands are not universal. This means that to estimate the distance of external galaxies are necessary PL and PLC relations based on Cepheids that present the same mean metallicity. As a consequence, Galactic Cepheids might be crucial to improve the intrinsic accuracy of distance determinations, since the metallicity distribution of these objects, in contrast with Magellanic ones, is quite similar to the mean metal abundance of external spiral galaxies where the two HST key projects identified Cepheids (Freedman et al. 2001; Saha et al. 2001).

However, it is worth mentioning that theoretical and empirical results do suggest that the PL and the PLC relation of First Overtone (FO) Cepheids marginally depends on metal content. In a recent investigation Bono et al. (2002) found that predicted and empirical Wesenheit function as well as $`PL_K`$ relations provide quite similar mean distances to the MCs. This finding seems quite promising, since these distance evaluations are marginally affected by systematic uncertainties. In fact, K-band and Wesenheit magnitudes are marginally affected by uncertainties on reddening corrections and presents a mild dependence on metallicity (Bono et al. 1999b). The width in temperature of FO Cepheids is roughly a factor of two narrower than for fundamental (F) Cepheids. Therefore distances based on former variables are marginally affected by the intrinsic spread of the PL relation typical of the latter ones. Moreover, the period range covered by FOs is $``$ 1 dex shorter than for F Cepheids, thus FO PL and PLC relations are hardly affected by changes in the slope when moving from long to short-period variables (Bauer et al. 1999; Bono, Caputo, & Marconi 2001).

Why GAIA might play a crucial role to improve the Cepheid distance scale?

To nail down the systematic uncertainties affecting the Cepheid distance scale are required accurate trigonometric parallax measurements for a sizable sample of Galactic Cepheids. However, according to the above discussion accurate and homogeneous measurements of Cepheid metal abundances are mandatory to properly address the problem. The most recent spectroscopic investigation concerning the chemical composition of Galactic Cepheids do rely on a sample of roughly 100 objects (Andrievsky et al. 2002b, and references therein). According to these authors the metallicity distribution across the Galactic disk might be split intro three different zones:

i) the inner region, ranging from $`4`$ to $`7`$ kpc for which they found a metallicity gradient of $`d[Fe/H]/dR_G0.13\pm 0.03dexkpc^1`$;

ii) the central region, ranging from $`7`$ to $`10`$ kpc, for which the gradient is flatter and equal to $`0.02\pm 0.01dexkpc^1`$;

iii) while in a small portion of the outer disk (toward the Galactic anticenter), ranging from $`10`$ to $`12`$ kpc, they found a gradient of $`0.06\pm 0.01dexkpc^1`$. Moreover and even more importantly, Andrievsky et al. found a discontinuity in the metallicity distribution located at roughly 10 kpc from the Galactic center. These findings somehow supports the results obtained by Twarog et al. (1997) on the basis on photometric (Stroemgren) indicators and by Caputo et al. (2001) on the basis of multiband (Johnson) Cepheid pulsation relations. However, no firm conclusion can be drawn concerning the metallicity gradient, since current photometric and spectroscopic data for Cepheids located in the outer disc ($`d12`$ kpc) are scanty.

It goes without saying that homogeneous high resolution spectra for a complete sample of Galactic Cepheids together with accurate distances might be the Panacea not only for the Cepheid distance scale but also to constrain dynamical models of the galactic disc as well as its chemical evolution. Note that the occurrence of shallow metallicity gradients of iron and of iron-group elements might be caused, according to current predictions by gas infall from the halo, by gas viscosity in the disc, or by a central bar structure (Portinari & Chiosi 2000; Andrievsky et al. 2000a). This scientific goal can be easily reached by GAIA, since a spectrograph with $`R15000`$ should supply accurate spectra ($`S/N50`$) Data plotted in Fig. 1 show that short-period, Galactic FO Cepheids present and absolute I magnitude ranging from -1.5 to -2.0. Therefore if we assume that the outskirt of the Galactic disc is roughly located between 20 and 25 kpc ($`DM17.0`$ mag) and a mean reddening that ranges from E(B-V)=0.5 to 1.0, then the apparent magnitude of fainter Cepheids should range from $`I16`$ to $`I17`$ mag. This means that a substantial fraction of Galactic Cepheids are brighter than the limiting magnitude ($`V17.5`$ mag) for which GAIA will supply accurate chemical compositions and radial velocities (see the papers by Munari and Zwitter in these proceedings).

Note that GAIA spectra will be collected at least over three consecutive years, therefore they can also be adopted to identify a substantial fraction of binary Cepheids (see the paper by Szabados in these proceedings). Finally, we mention that this project can be hardly accomplished with current generation of multi-fiber, wide field of view spectrographs such as FLAMES/GIRAFFE@VLT, since the spatial density of Cepheids is too low.

## 3. RR Lyrae variables

RR Lyrae stars are very useful objects, since they are robust, low-mass standard candles and robust tracers of old stellar populations. They are ubiquitous across the Galactic spheroid and thanks to their pulsation properties (peculiar shape of the light curves, narrow period range), they can also be easily identified in Local Group (LG) galaxies. Although, RR Lyrae stars present several advantages, distance estimates based on different calibrations (Baade-Wesselink method, HB models) of the $`M_V`$ vs \[Fe/H\] relation taken at face value present a difference that is systematically larger than the empirical uncertainties (Walker 2000,2003; Cacciari 2003). This might indicates that current RR Lyrae distance determinations are still affected by systematics. Fortunately enough, empirical evidence dating back to Longmore et al. (1990) suggest that RR Lyrae stars do obey to a well-defined PL relation in the K-band ($`PL_K`$). The use of this relation might overcome some of the problems affecting the RR Lyrae distance scale, since the $`PL_K`$ relation is marginally affected by evolutionary effects as well as by the spread in stellar mass inside the instability strip. This finding was further strengthened by a recent theoretical investigation (Bono et al. 2001) suggesting that RR Lyrae obey to a very tight $`PLZ_K`$ relation connecting the period, the luminosity, the K-band absolute magnitude, and the metallicity. This approach seems very promising and should allow us to supply during the next few years an accurate calibration of the $`M_V`$ vs \[Fe/H\] relation over the metallicity range covered by RR Lyrae ($`2.2[Fe/H]0`$).

During the last few years RR Lyrae are becoming very popular, since the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) detected an overdensity of candidate RR Lyrae and of A-type stars located approximately 50 kpc from the Galactic center. According to this empirical evidence Ivezic et al. (2000) and Yanny et al. (2000) suggested that such a clump is the northern tidal stream left over by the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal (dSph). Independent observational (Ibata et al. 2001; Martinez-Delgado et al. 2001; Vivas et al. 2001) and theoretical (Helmi & White 1999; Helmi 2002) investigations support this hypothesis. The observations of such extra-tidal stellar remnants in dSph resembles the tidal debris recently detected in a large number of Galactic Globular Clusters (GGCs, Leon et al. 2000; Odenkirchen et al. 2002). On the other hand, dSph galaxies apparently host large amounts of Dark Matter (DM), and indeed the mass-to-light ratio in these systems range from $`(M/L)_V5`$ (Fornax) to $`100`$ (Ursa Minor), whereas in GGCs the M/L ratio is $`12`$. As a consequence, the study of the radial distribution of RR Lyrae can supply tight constraints on the tidal interaction that these interesting systems undergo with the Milky Way.

On the basis of V-band time series data that cover a large sky area (100 deg2) Vivas et al. (2000) identified and measured the mean magnitude of 148 RR Lyrae stars and more than 50% of this sample belong to the clump identified by Ivezic et al. (2000). These data provided the first firm evidence that the Galactic halo does not show smooth contours in density. In fact, they also detected two smaller overdensities in the halo one of which located at R$``$ 17 kpc seems related to the GGC Palomar 5, while the other is located at R$``$ 16 kpc.

to pin point peculiar radial distributions It is worth stressing, that a substantial improvement in the intrinsic accuracy of the $`M_Vvs[Fe/H]`$ and of the $`PLZ_K`$ relation does not allow us to use RR Lyrae in the Galactic halo to constrain the dynamical interaction of dwarf galaxies and GGCs with the Milk Way. The detections of peculiar radial distributions is hampered by the limited number of RR Lyrae stars for which are available accurate spectroscopic measurements of radial velocities and chemical compositions (Suntzeff et al. 1994; Layden et al. 1996; Dambis & Rastorguev 2001). Moreover, current sample of RR Lyrae in the Galactic halo might also be affected by a selection bias. Data plotted in Fig. 2 show that RR Lyrae in the halo might be peculiar. The period distribution and the mean period of fundamental pulsators ($`<P_{ab}>0.539`$ d) mimic the behavior of Oosterhoff type I clusters (see figure 3 in Clement et al. 2001)111GGCs that host a good sample of RR Lyrae stars are classified Oosterhoff type I clusters if the mean fundamental period is roughly equal to $`<P_{ab}>0.55`$ and the ratio between first overtones and the total number of RR Lyrae, $`N_{FOs}/N_{RR}`$ is roughly equal to 0.2. A GGC is classified as an Oosterhoff type II if $`<P_{ab}>0.64`$ and $`N_{FOs}/N_{RR}0.5`$.. However, the number of FO RR Lyrae in the halo is quite small ($`N_{FOs}/N_{RR}<0.1`$) and the period distribution of fundamental pulsators does show a gap at $`P0.5`$ that is not present among RR Lyrae in the Galactic bulge and in GGCs (Bono et al. 2003). At present, it is not clear whether these peculiarities are intrinsic or due to a selection bias.

Once again GAIA might play a crucial role to improve current empirical scenario. The unprecedented opportunity to supply accurate high resolution spectra down to a limit magnitude of $`V17.5`$ mag will allow us to trace the pulsation properties of RR Lyrae over a substantial portion of the halo. The use of metallicity indicators based on the GAIA multi-band photometric system should also allow us to extend the spectroscopic analysis from the bulge to the outermost regions of the halo ($`DM1920`$).

Finally, it is worth mentioning that we still lack an empirical estimate of the dynamical mass of a Horizontal-Branch (HB) star, since no binary system has been detected that include one of these objects. The detection of a few of these systems would be of paramount relevance to constrain the input physics (equation of state, opacities, nuclear burning rates) of evolutionary and pulsation models, and in turn to properly address long-standing stellar astrophysical problems such as the second parameter problem and the HB morphology (Castellani 1999).

## 4. Final Remarks

The compelling results obtained by the two HST key projects concerning the estimate of the Hubble constant contributed to the diffuse believe that problems affecting the calibration of both primary and secondary distance indicators have been settled. Recent findings concerning the dependence of the Cepheid PL relation on the metal abundance, as well as the nonlinearity of the RR Lyrae $`M_V`$ vs \[Fe/H\] relation (Caputo et al. 2000) cast some doubts on this view. The mismatch between distance determinations based on different standard candles further strengthens this working hypothesis. Data listed in Table 1 clearly show that distance determinations to the Coma cluster based on different zero-points and secondary indicators range from 34.64 to 35.29 mag, while $`H_0`$ evaluations range from 60 to 84 $`kms^1Mpc^1`$. Note that the Coma cluster will play a fundamental role to improve the accuracy of the Hubble constant, since it is the nearest galaxy cluster not affected by local motions.

The above discussion brings forward the evidence that distance indicators might require new detailed empirical and theoretical investigations to nail down the deceptive errors affecting current distance determinations. In the near future different roots might shed new lights on this long-standing problem.

i) The use of the white-light interferometer, FGS3, on board of HST recently provided a new accurate estimate of the trigonometric parallax of $`\delta `$ Cephei (Benedict et al. 2002), and in turn a new calibration of the PL relation. This instrument during the next few years might supply accurate geometric distances for a handful of nearby Cepheids. This means that the zero-point and the slope of both the PL and the PLC relations can be improved.

ii) The new CCD camera (ACS) on board of HST should allow the detection of FO Cepheids in external galaxies where F Cepheids have already been measured. This instrument could supply the unique opportunity to cross-check independent distance determinations based on the same group of variable stars.

iii) During the next few years ground-based survey telescopes aimed at detecting near Earth asteroids, such as Pan-STARRS (Kaiser 2002)222For further information visit http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/k̃aiser/pan-starrs/pressrelease/ and LSST333For further information visit http://www.lsst.org/lsst\_home.html will be equipped with detectors that cover a sky area ranging from one to several square degrees. Therefore a detailed sampling of stellar populations down to $`V2427`$ mag might be accomplished in the near future. The same outcome applies for the wide field imagers that are already available on telescope of the 8m class such as SUPRIME@SUBARU or will become available in a few years such as LBC@LBT. The new multi-band time series data will allow a complete census of RR Lyrae and Cepheids belonging to the Galaxy as well as to LG galaxies.

In this possible scenario, GAIA gives the unprecedent opportunity to supply accurate trigonometric parallaxes, as well as accurate measurements of radial velocities, and chemical compositions for a large amount of Galactic stars. During the next ten years ground-based telescopes of the 8m class equipped with multi-object spectrographs will supply accurate estimates of stellar parameters for stellar populations in stellar systems such as globular clusters and nearby dwarf galaxies. However, the stellar density in the outer disc as well as in the halo is too low to be interesting targets for these instruments.

Finally, we mention that the selection of the GAIA photometric bands is crucial to improve the accuracy of stellar parameters we plan to supply. The estimates of stellar abundances strongly depend on the accuracy of effective temperature and surface gravity. Moreover and even more importantly, the calibration of new metallicity and reddening indicators are two outstanding legacies we are looking for from the GAIA mission.

I am indebted to my collaborators for helpful discussions and suggestions. This work was supported by MIUR/Cofin 2001 under the project: ”Origin and Evolution of Stellar Populations in the Galactic Spheroid”.

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