text:
# Estimating purity in terms of correlation functions

## Abstract

We prove a rigorous inequality estimating the purity of a reduced density matrix of a composite quantum system in terms of cross-correlation of the same state and an arbitrary product state. Various immediate applications of our result are proposed, in particular concerning Gaussian wave-packet propagation under classically regular dynamics.

The autocorrelation function of time evolution, also known as survival probability or as fidelity in the context of echo dynamics fidelity , is an important tool in the discussion of quantum systems. Indeed the autocorrelation function contains a vast amount of information, but analysis in terms of the more general concept of cross correlation functions can bring additional insight. This has been recently demonstrated for spectral statistics Gorin . In this note we shall seek a better understanding of the evolution of entanglement in terms of cross correlation functions. This is particularly attractive, because entanglement is at the very root of quantum mechanics, and we shall therefore test the usefulness of cross correlation functions in this context. Note that the first experimental test on the value of cross correlations for the analysis of spectral statistics was carried out in a microwave experiment with classical fields Schaefer  rather than in the context of quantum mechanics.

Entanglement indicates to what extent the state under consideration can be written as a product of states in two subsystems selected due to their interest in the physical context. For pure states, entanglement is reflected in the properties of the reduced density matrix for any of the two subsystems. While it is tempting to use some form of entropy to describe this property, this makes analytic work very difficult. We shall therefore use the purity of a subsystem Zurek  as a measure of entanglement. Purity is defined as the trace of the square of the reduced density matrix. The fact, that we use an analytic function, allows to obtain the basic inequalities with cross correlations, which are the main result of this note. To explore to what extent these inequalities can be exhausted, we shall turn to two examples, which first called our attention to this problem.

First, considering the time evolution under an integrable Jaynes Cummings Hamiltonian of a wave packet forming a product state, the group of M.C. Nemes Nemes  observed a strong maximum in the purity after half the period of the classical orbit around which the packet was constructed Nemes . It is intuitively clear that the autocorrelation function will show a revival only after a full period, and thus cannot contribute an explanation for this phenomenon. Note that the Jaynes Cummings Hamiltonian

$$H=\mathrm{}\omega a^{}a+\mathrm{}ϵJ_\mathrm{z}+\frac{\mathrm{}G}{\sqrt{2J}}(aJ_++a^{}J_{})$$
(1)
describing an oscillator with standard annihilation operator $`a`$ and SU(2) spin $`\stackrel{}{J}`$, has a mirror symmetry given by

$$aa,J_\pm J_\pm ,J_zJ_z,$$
(2)
which is also evident in the figures 1 and 2 of Ref. Nemes . We may then conjecture that the oscillations seen in the linear entropy, defined as one minus purity, are due to maxima in the autocorrelation functions for full periods and maxima in the cross correlation functions with the mirror image of the initial state for the half-period.

Second, following the time evolution of a similar packet under echo dynamics with the same Hamiltonian and a slight detuning as perturbation, we found that coherent states conserved purity to higher order in $`\mathrm{}`$ than other, e.g. random states Marco . Here the conjecture is that the cross correlation function with the classically transported image of the original packet will yield an explanation.

These examples serve to illustrate our analytic results in the framework of a model, whose use is widespread in atomic physics and quantum optics, in particular for Rydberg atoms in cavities and for atoms in Paul traps with externally driven fields. The first case will become rather obvious once the inequalities are derived, and for the second case we shall derive the result within the linear response approximation.

Consider a composite system with a Hilbert space

$$=_1_2,$$
(3)
consisting of two factor spaces $`_{1,2}`$ which may have either finite or infinite dimensions.

Let $`|\psi `$ be an arbitrary pure state of a composite system which, after tracing over the subsystem $`2`$, defines a reduced density operator over the subsystem $`1`$

$$\rho _1=\mathrm{tr}_2|\psi \psi |.$$
(4)
We can prove the following general inequality estimating the purity

$$I[\rho _1]=\mathrm{tr}_1\rho _1^2$$
(5)
of a reduced state $`\rho _1`$.
Theorem: The following inequality holds

$$|\varphi |\psi |^4I[\rho _1].$$
(6)
for any product state $`|\varphi =|\varphi _1|\varphi _2`$.
Proof: Uhlmann’s theorem Uhlmann76  states for pure states $`\rho =|\psi \psi |`$ and $`\sigma =|\varphi \varphi |`$ that

$$|\varphi |\psi |^2=\mathrm{tr}\rho \sigma \mathrm{tr}_1[\mathrm{tr}_2\rho \mathrm{tr}_2\sigma ]=\varphi _1|\rho _1|\varphi _1.$$
(7)
Then, applying Cauchy-Schwartz inequality for operators $`|\mathrm{tr}(A^{}B)|^2\mathrm{tr}(AA^{})\mathrm{tr}(BB^{})`$ we get

$$|\mathrm{tr}_1[\mathrm{tr}_2\rho \mathrm{tr}_2\sigma ]|^2\mathrm{tr}_1[\mathrm{tr}_2\rho ]^2\mathrm{tr}_1[\mathrm{tr}_2\sigma ]^2=I[\rho _1].$$
(8)
Combining inequalities (7) and (8) we get the result (6).
Corollary 1: An interesting special case of the above result is obtained if $`|\varphi =|\psi (0)`$ is an initial disentangled state of a unitary quantum time evolution $`|\psi =|\psi (t)`$. Then our results says that the entanglement growth as measured by purity is bounded from below by the autocorrelation function $`|\psi (0)|\psi (t)|^4`$.
Corollary 2: A more general situation arises if $`|\varphi `$ is any factorizable state as required by the theorem. Then we obtain that the growth of entanglement as measured by the purity is bounded from below by all cross correlation functions of the type $`|\varphi |\psi (t)|^4`$.
The second corollary includes the first as a special case and is the general result we need in order to apply cross correlation functions to understand oscillations or slow growth of the entanglement.

To explore the possibility to approach equality in the second corollary (and the main theorem) we have to look at the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix (which are identical for both subspaces x1 ). As the purity is the trace of an analytic function of the reduced density matrix the optimal function $`\varphi `$ to establish cross correlation with, is a product of the eigenfunctions corresponding to the largest eigenvalue. Note that the eigenvalues are the same for the reduced density matrix in both subspaces. If we denote this eigenvalue by $`1\delta `$ the cross correlation function will take the value $`|\varphi |\psi (t)|^4=(1\delta )^2`$. Actually, purity $`I`$ will obey the slightly sharper inequality

$$(1\delta )^2+\delta ^2I(1\delta )^2+\frac{\delta ^2}{\mathrm{min}(\mathrm{dim}(_1),\mathrm{dim}(_2))1},$$
(9)
where $`\mathrm{dim}`$ indicates the dimension of the corresponding Hilbert space. We obtain this inequality by assuming the two extreme cases: either the missing intensity $`\delta ^2`$ is concentrated in a single product state or it is evenly distributed among all such states. The former provides the upper bound and the latter the lower bound. As the lower limit is larger than the value $`(1\delta )^2`$ we obtain from corollary 2 that equality in (6) can only be reached for $`I=1`$. Note that the inequality (6) provides a fairly sharp lower bound if purity is close to 1 because then $`1I\delta `$ while $`I|\varphi |\psi (t)|^4\delta ^2`$, i.e. the error of the lower bound is quadratic in the deviation of purity from unity.

We can now hope to find sets of functions $`\varphi _i`$ such that the cross-correlation with these will explain the behavior of purity as long as the latter is near to $`1`$. Yet, to be illuminating we must be able to construct such a set without diagonalizing the density matrix. If we have a symmetry group which acts separately on the two subspaces, this set is trivially generated by applying the symmetry operations to the initial function $`\psi (0)`$. For the example discussed in the introduction a cross-correlation with the function obtained by applying the reflection (2) to $`\psi (0)`$, will have maxima at $`1/2`$, $`3/2`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ of the full period. We shall now turn to the other example we mentioned, namely the slow decay of purity for coherent states in an integrable system. This question was discussed in Marco  for arbitrary Gaussian packets in the context of echo dynamics, and illustrated again in the Jaynes Cummings model.

We can follow the line of considering cross correlations a little further in this context if we consider the quantity $`\mathrm{tr}_1[\mathrm{tr}_2\rho \mathrm{tr}_2\sigma ]=R(\rho _1,\sigma _1)`$ considered in Eq. (7). For $`\rho =\rho (t)`$ and $`\sigma =\rho (0)`$ this quantity was introduced as reduced fidelity in Marco2  implying a reduced autocorrelation function if we do not treat an echo situation. With this notation we have $`I(\rho _1)R^2(\rho _1,\sigma _1)|\varphi |\psi |^4`$, but in addition the second identity is fulfilled if $`\varphi `$ is chosen as the eigenfunction of the largest eigenvalue of $`\rho _1`$. By choosing $`\rho _1=\rho (t)`$ and $`\sigma `$ arbitrary, we have an additional cross correlation that we may use. The basic advantage of this quantity is, that it is, just like purity, defined on the subspace alone, and may therefore be handier in some situations. As far as approaching the identity with purity is concerned this quantity has no advantages.

We shall next follow the same line of reasoning to find an optimized factorizable function $`\varphi `$ to understand the behavior of the purity when it is near identity for a general Gaussian wave-packet

$$\stackrel{}{x}|\psi =C\mathrm{exp}(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}[(\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X})A(\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X})+\stackrel{}{P}\stackrel{}{x}]),$$
(10)
centered at $`(\stackrel{}{X},\stackrel{}{P})`$ and having the shape described by the (generally complex) matrix

$$A=\left(\begin{array}{cc}A_{11}& A_{12}\\ A_{21}& A_{22}\end{array}\right)$$
(11)
corresponding to a division of a $`d=d_1+d_2`$ dimensional configuration space into $`d_1`$ and $`d_2`$ dimensional parts $`\stackrel{}{x}=(x_1,x_2)`$. The purity of a reduced wave-packet $`\rho (x_1,x_1^{})=𝑑x_2x_1,x_2|\psi \psi |x_1^{},x_2`$ is $`I=𝑑x_1𝑑x_1^{}|\rho (x_1,x_1^{})|^2`$ which can be evaluated in terms of a $`2d`$ dimensional Gaussian integral Marco

$$I=(det\mathrm{Im}A)\left|\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{Im}A_{11}& \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{12}^{}& 0& \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{12}\\ \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{21}^{}& \mathrm{Im}A_{22}& \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{21}& 0\\ 0& \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{12}& \mathrm{Im}A_{11}& \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{12}^{}\\ \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{21}& 0& \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}A_{21}^{}& \mathrm{Im}A_{22}\end{array}\right|^{1/2},$$
(12)
where the vertical lines indicate the determinant of a matrix. According to our result, this expression should be bounded from below by cross correlation with any disentangled state which we again choose to be a Gaussian packet centered at the same point in phase space

$$\stackrel{}{x}|\varphi =D\mathrm{exp}(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}[(\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X})B(\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{X})+\stackrel{}{P}\stackrel{}{x}]),$$
(13)
with

$$B=\left(\begin{array}{cc}B_{11}& 0\\ 0& B_{22}\end{array}\right).$$
(14)
Straightforward evaluation of Gaussian integral yields for the cross correlation

$$|\varphi |\psi |^4=\frac{(det\mathrm{Im}A)(det\mathrm{Im}B)}{|det(AB^{})|^2}$$
(15)
which, as we have shown, is strictly smaller than (12) for any $`B`$ of the form (14).

One may now ask the following question: Which packet (13) optimizes the inequality (6)? In general this is a complicated optimization problem, however we may solve it asymptotically when purity is close to $`1`$. In that case, off diagonal elements of the shape matrix are small, so we may write $`A_{12}=ϵZ_{12},A_{21}=ϵZ_{21}`$ where $`ϵ`$ is small. It turns out that the inequality is optimized to leading order in $`ϵ`$ if we take $`B_{11}=A_{11},B_{22}=A_{22}`$, namely in that case $`|\varphi |\psi |^4=1c_1ϵ^2+𝒪(ϵ^4)`$, $`I=1c_2ϵ^2+𝒪(ϵ^4)`$ where $`c_1=c_2`$.

We note that the cross-correlation (15) is manifestly $`\mathrm{}`$independent. It may be used to compute dynamical, time dependent cross-correlation function of a propagating Gaussian packet $`|\psi (t)`$ (as long as linearized dynamics is a good approximation), as we know that the time dependence of the shape matrix $`A=A(t)`$ is given by the ratio of two pieces of the classical monodromy matrix heller . We have thus shown that to lowest order we can easily optimize the reference wave function $`|\varphi `$ though it will clearly have to vary with time. We could first simply use the transported original (and factorizable) state $`|\psi (0)`$ centered around the new position, i.e. $`B=A(0)`$, where $`\varphi |\psi (t)`$ may be called transported autocorrelation function. This would not optimize the lower bound, but for short times it might be quite good, and it would certainly make the bound $`\mathrm{}`$ independent. Furthermore, one could apply the bound (15) to the case of echo dynamics where liner response approximation is valid even for long times if the perturbation is sufficiently small (see Marco ).

We may summarize our results by stating that we found a general inequality between the fourth power of cross (and auto) correlation functions and purity. Furthermore, we were able to assert, that the lower limit is almost identical to the value, if the purity is near to one. Thus any such value of purity can be explained by the fact that the evolving state acquires a large overlap with a factorizable state, and the difference between purity and our lower bound is of second order in the deviation of purity from identity. The knowledge of this factorizable state may contribute to the understanding of the slow decay or renewed maxima (also known as recoherence) for the purity. Particular examples of such situations are given in the case of symmetry group whose representation factorizes in the variables in which we wish to split the spaces, and in the case of coherent states.

Financial support by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of Slovenia and from projects IN-112200, DGAPA UNAM, Mexico, 41000 CONACYT Mexico and DAAD19-02-1-0086, ARO United States is gratefully acknowledged.


format: text

text:
# Diffusion limited friendship network: A model for six degrees of separation

## Abstract

A dynamic model of a society is studied where each person is an uncorrelated and non-interacting random walker. A dynamical random graph represents the acquaintance network of the society whose nodes are the individuals and links are the pairs of mutual friendships. This network exhibits a novel percolation like phase transition in all dimensions. On introducing simultaneous death and birth rates in the population we show that the friendship network shows the six degrees of separation for ever after where the precise value of the network diameter depends on the death/birth rate. A SIS type model of disease spreading shows that this society remains always healthy if the population density is less than certain threshold value.

Though at present the human population of the world has attained a very large size, more than $`6\times 10^9`$ precisely, it is believed that any two randomly selected persons in the world are connected by a short chain of intermediate acquaintances, typically of length 6. This phenomenon is referred as the “six degrees of separation”. The idea originated from the famous letter distribution experiment of Milgram in 1960s Milgram . Since then any network of $`N`$ nodes is said to display six degrees of separation if its diameter is small and grows at most as $`\mathrm{log}N`$ WS ; Barabasibook .

Most human communications, especially the information exchanges, take place directly between individuals when they are at close proximity to one another. The spread of news, rumors, jokes and fashions all take place by communications among individuals. More importantly the infectious diseases also spread by person-to-person contact and the structure of network of such contacts has important effects on the nature of the epidemics. Naturally the speed of spreading in general is faster for a network with small diameter.

There are important models of the social networks like Small-world network (SWN) that displays the six degrees of separation WS . Also the process of spreading of epidemics is modeled by a susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model Anderson  in which a non-equilibrium phase transition takes place from a healthy society to an infected society at a critical value of the infection probability Anderson ; Marro ; Bailey ; Vesp .

All these models of the social networks as well as for the spreading of the infectious diseases consider a static picture of the society. More precisely static individuals are positioned at the nodes of certain graphs and a person interacts with only a fixed set of neighbours determined by the degree of the node. Where as in actual society the number of acquaintances of a person increases with time. Everyday a person goes to office, market, theaters, clubs etc. and therefore gets acquainted with other people who were unknown to him. By the same movements a person becomes exposed to infections by others or transfers his own infection to others. Again not all the friends of an infected person has the chance of getting infection, only those friends who come close to this person has the risk of infection. In this paper we study this basic property of a dynamical society where individuals are not static objects but move continuously and therefore comes in contact with other people. To make a simple model we have considered the diffusive motion of the individuals and modeled the society by a set of random walkers. Specifically in our model (i) unlike static models the number of acquaintances of a person evolves with time (ii) irrespective of how many friends an infected person has, he may infect only those friends who come to his close proximity, this is unlike to the ordinary SIS type models. What we achieve are: (i) with the introduction of a death/birth rate the society indeed shows the six degrees of separation effect (ii) there is a threshold density of population, below which the society is always healthy (iii) a very interesting theoretical observation that the associated dynamical random graph has a non-trivial dimension dependent critical behaviour.

Over last few years it is becoming increasingly evident that highly complex structures of many social Newman , biological Jeong ; Sole , electronic communication systems web ; Faloutsos  etc. can be modeled by simple graphs. Erdös and Rényi studied the well known random graphs (RG) of $`N`$ nodes where each pair of nodes is connected with a probability $`p`$ and the graph shows a continuous phase transition at $`p_c=1/N`$ Erdos . Scale-free networks (SFN) are characterized by the power law decay of the nodal degree distribution function: $`P(k)k^\gamma `$. Two very important networks in electronic communication system like World Wide Web web  and the Internet Faloutsos  are observed to possess the scale-free property. Barabási and Albert (BA) proposed a model for a growing SFN where nodes are linked with the preferential attachment probability barabasi ; albert . Other routes, e.g., static Caldarelli  and quasistatic Mukherjee  models to obtain SFNs are also studied. Assigning a Hamiltonian correlations are studied in the optimized networks keeping biological networks in mind Lassig . SWNs with random walkers capable of making long distance jumps are studied in Manrubia .

In our model each member of the society executes a simple uncorrelated and non-interacting random walk on a regular lattice. Initially the population of $`N`$ persons are released on the square lattice of size $`L\times L`$ at randomly selected positions. The system then starts evolving with time. At each time step each person makes a jump to one of its neighbouring lattice positions with equal probabilities. Each person represents a node of the growing acquaintance network and a link is established between two nodes the moment the corresponding pair of persons come in contact to each other at the same position and at the same time sublattice . Gradually the number of links among the individuals grow. Thus the set of $`N`$ nodes and the set of links among these nodes define our network called as the Diffusion limited friendship network (DLFN) where as the associated graph is referred as the Dynamical random graph (DRG).

All persons which are at the same lattice site immediately become friends and the associated subgraph with these people become a clique. At each time many such cliques are formed at different sites. All these cliques remain for ever, they never get destroyed, moreover they grow in sizes as time proceeds. At the early times, the number of links is small and the DRG has many different isolated components of different sizes. The size of a component is determined by its number of nodes and the giant component has the largest size. The giant component not only grows by including new nodes into it but also by the process of merging equally large components. After some slow initial growth the giant component grows very fast and its size become proportional to $`N`$. This behaviour is just like the threshold phenomenon in a continuous phase transition e.g., what happens in a random graph Erdos . The whole DRG ultimately reaches the limiting stage of a giant $`N`$-clique when each node is linked to all other nodes.

We first characterize DRG to compare with RG. DRG has two characteristic time scales. $`𝒯_c`$ measures the time required for the phase transition and is observed to vary like $`L^z/N^\alpha `$. In a mean-field limit when the density $`\rho =N/L^d`$ is small this variation is estimated in the following way: If a person randomly walks a linear distance $`R`$ in $`d`$-dimension in time $`𝒯_c`$ then $`R𝒯_c^\mu `$ and therefore around $`L^d/R^d`$ such $`d`$-dimensional spheres are needed to cover the volume of size $`L`$ which is $`N`$ itself. This gives $`𝒯_cL^{1/\mu }/N^{1/\mu d}`$ i.e., $`z=1/\mu `$ and $`\alpha =1/\mu d`$ in general and therefore $`z=2`$ and $`\alpha =1`$ for ordinary random walks ($`\mu =1/2`$) in two dimension. Fig. 1 shows the scaled plot of $`𝒯_c`$ for different $`L`$ and $`N`$ values and a good collapse of the data is observed but for $`\alpha 0.89`$ and $`z2.25`$. We believe the difference in the exponents from the mean-field values are due to finite size of the system. At a second characteristic time $`𝒯_{}^{}{}_{c}{}^{}L^z^{}/N^\alpha ^{}`$ the DRG becomes an $`N`$-clique where $`z^{}`$ and $`\alpha ^{}`$ are estimated as 2.22 and -0.33 respectively for $`\mu =1/2`$ and $`d`$=2. The positive value of $`\alpha `$ and the negative value of $`\alpha ^{}`$ are consistent with intuition: for a fixed $`L`$ but with increasing $`N`$, less number of steps per person are necessary for the giant component to include all nodes, but a larger number of steps are required to form the $`N`$-clique. The values of $`z`$ and $`z^{}`$ are likely to be the same.

The link density $`p(t,N)`$ at a time $`t`$ for an $`N`$ node network is defined as the ratio of the number of links to its maximum possible number $`N(N1)/2`$. Numerically we find the following scaling form:

$$p(t,L)(t/L^z)$$
(1)
where the scaling function $`(x)x^\alpha `$ and $`\alpha `$ and $`z`$ are approximately found to be 0.89 and 2.25 again.

The order parameter $`\psi (p,N)`$ of this transition is the average fraction of nodes in the giant component for a link density $`p`$. The critical link density at the transition point $`p_c`$ is defined by $`\psi (p_c,N)=1/2`$ and is observed to vary with $`N`$ as: $`p_c=b/N^\alpha `$ with $`b1.28`$ and $`\alpha 0.89`$ as before. As the mean-field calculation gave $`\alpha =1/\mu d`$, we see that only the ordinary random walks in two dimensions with $`p_c=1/N`$ correspond to the random graphs Erdos  but for other walks with different $`\mu `$ and in different dimensions $`p_c(N)`$ have non-trivial dimension dependence. A scaling plot for the order parameter is shown in Fig. 2 where we plot $`\psi (p,N)N^{\beta /\nu }`$ vs. $`[pp_c]N^{1/\nu }`$. An excellent collapse of the data shows that the order parameter has the following scaling form:

$$\psi (p,N)N^{\beta /\nu }𝒢[(pp_c)N^{1/\nu }]$$
(2)
with $`\nu 0.8`$ and $`\beta 0.02`$.

The topological distance between a pair of nodes is the number of links on the shortest path connecting them and the diameter is the maximum of such paths. The average diameter $`𝒟(N)`$ is measured over many independent configurations. The configuration average of the mean distance between an arbitrary pair of nodes is denoted by $`𝒟^{}(N)`$. As the system evolves, both measures first increase with time, reach their maxima and then decrease very slowly, finally saturates to a fixed value for a long time. The maximum of the diameters occur at the characteristic times $`𝒯_c`$. As expected the nodal degree distribution of the giant component at the transition point is a Poisson distribution similar to RG, since there is no preferential link attachment probability in this model as in the scale-free networks.

The network described so far has a major drawback that it assumes each individual as immortal. As a consequence the DRG becomes an $`N`$-clique at time $`𝒯_{}^{}{}_{c}{}^{}`$. To make our model more realistic, we therefore introduce a probability of death and birth in the population but with equal rates to keep the population conserved. More precisely at each time step only one randomly selected individual is killed with a probability $`q`$. As a consequence all links associated with the node representing this individual are immediately deleted. This may result the fragmentation of the particular component of the dynamical graph which belonged this node. A fresh determination of the different components of the DLFN especially the giant component is done immediately before the system proceeds to the next time step. At the same time we assume that a fresh individual has taken birth at the same position of the dead individual so that the population conservation is maintained.

When an individual dies, the deletion of all his links may severely affect the distribution of distances between all pairs of nodes in the system. In fact it is expected that in general the distance between an arbitrary pair of nodes should increase due to the death of an individual, which thus enhances the values of $`𝒟(N,t)`$ and $`𝒟^{}(N,t)`$. On the other hand the newly born individual also start diffusing in the system and start building up links of acquaintances with other individuals of the network. Therefore the magnitudes of the diameters decrease again. As a result the net effect of the two competitive processes of simultaneous death and birth of individuals is to make the diameters fluctuate around their steady averages whose magnitudes must depend on the rate $`q`$ of death/birth processes. In Fig. 3 we show the time variation of these diameters and for $`L=64,N=64`$ the diameter $`𝒟(q,N,L)`$ has a value very near to 6 for $`q`$ = 0.43 where as the $`𝒟^{}(q,N,L)`$ is around 2.85. As expected the diameters increase with decreasing $`q`$.

Finally we study a susceptible-infected-susceptible model on the DLFN. At any time a lattice site may be occupied by a number of persons. If at least one of them is infected, each of the other healthy persons at that site has a probability $`r`$ to become infected and with a probability $`1r`$ it remains healthy. An infected person at time $`t`$ becomes healthy at the next time step. For a certain average density $`\rho `$, the average fraction of infected persons in the system fluctuates but maintains a steady time independent average $`A(r,\rho )`$. In Fig. 4 we show that the average activity $`A(r,\rho )`$ vanishes for $`r<r_c`$ and it continuously increases beyond $`r_c`$. The threshold $`r_c`$ is the critical point of a phase transition from a completely healthy society to an infected society. The $`A(r,\rho )`$ plays the role of the order parameter in this transition. We also notice that $`r_c`$ is in general a function of the population density $`\rho `$. In the inset of Fig. 4 we plot the variation of $`r_c(\rho )`$ with $`\rho `$. The value of the critical infection probability decreases with increasing the population density i.e., more the density it is more likely that the infection really spreads. On the other hand, below a certain density $`\rho <\rho _c`$ infection does not spread at all even with the maximum possible infection probability $`r_c=1`$. For the square lattice we estimate $`\rho _c0.75`$.

A number of different aspects of this model may be of interest. On average a human being remains more or less localized up to his/her home, home city or home country. Therefore perhaps it would be better to consider their motion as sub-diffusive ($`R^2(t)t^{2\mu }`$ with $`\mu <1/2`$) rather than normal diffusion. Secondly DLFN may be important to study the reaction kinetic networks of two species reversible or irreversible chemical reactions $`A+BC`$.

To summarize, we have considered the evaluation of the mutual friendship network in a dynamic model of a society. Each member of the society executes a diffusive motion. Members of the society represent nodes of the network and their mutual friendships are the links. The dynamical random graph associated with the network shows a novel dimension dependent phase transition. With a certain death/birth probability the network displays the six degrees of separation effect. We also observe that such a society remains always healthy if the average population density is below certain threshold value, which should have very important practical consequences.

I thank P. Sen for some initial discussions, D. Dhar for some useful comments and Brian Hayes for pointing out the paper by J. S. Kleinfeld Milgram .


text:
# A search for planets in the metal-enriched binary HD 219542 Based on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Centro Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Chile, using FEROS spectrograph at 1.5 m telescope (proposal ID: 69.D-0338)

## 1 Introduction

The increasing number of extrasolar planets discovered by radial velocity surveys (over 100, see e.g. Butler et al. butler02 (2002), Butler et al. butler03 (2003), Udry et al. udry02 (2002)) reveals a surprising variety of planetary systems: giant planets very close to their parent stars, planets in very eccentric orbits, multiple planets systems, in some cases showing orbital resonances. Further dedicated efforts are required for a detailed understanding of frequency and properties of giant planets as a function of some fundamental parameters (mass, chemical composition of parent star, dynamical environment).

More than half of the stars in the solar neighborhood are in binary systems. Recent discoveries of planets in binary systems with different mass ratios and separations indicate that planets might form in binaries. The case of 16 Cyg B is remarkable, showing radial velocity variations due to a massive planet orbiting the star at 1.7 AU (Cochran et al. 16cyg (1997)). The very high eccentricity (e=0.68) might be induced by dynamical perturbations of 16 Cyg A (Holman et al. holman97 (1997); Mazeh et al. mazeh97 (1997)). Even more compelling is the case of $`\gamma `$ Cep, that harbours a planet in spite of the presence of a low-mass stellar companion in a 70-year orbit (Hatzes et al. gammacep (2003)). Zucker & Mazeh (zucker02 (2002)) noted that planets found in binaries have a different mass-period correlation than planets orbiting single stars, with an overabundance of short-period high-mass planets.

Besides the study of dynamical effects (minimum binary separation for planets formation, perturbations of planetary orbits), binary systems could be used to explore the origin of the connection between high metallicity and occurrence of planetary companions (Gonzalez et al. gonzalez01 (2001), Santos et al. santos (2001)). Two possible explanations were suggested: either a high metal content makes it easier to form planets (and in this case no metallicity difference is expected between members of a binary system with and without planetary companions) or the high metallicity is the result of planets or planetesimal ingestion (Gonzalez gonzalez97 (1997)). It is also possible that both explanations are valid.

Infall of some planetary material on the star surface is expected during the formation and subsequent evolution of a planetary system. This may happen during the early phases of the planet formation, or in a more mature stage of the planetary system evolution, with the infall of remnant of the protoplanetary disk or with the ingestion of already formed planets, scattered toward the star by dynamical interactions with other planets in the system, distant stellar companions or passing stars.

If the material engulfed by the star is depleted in hydrogen and helium, the chemical composition of the star can be modified, leading to metal rich convective envelopes. This alteration is small or negligible for stars in the pre main sequence phase, that have thick convective zones. Stellar pollution is likely efficient mostly for main sequence stars with masses 1.0-1.3 $`M_{}`$, that have a convective envelope thin enough to allow a significant metallicity enhancement for reasonable quantities of accreted material.

The search for stellar pollution signatures was prompted by the evidence that the host stars of the extrasolar planets found by radial velocity surveys are typically metal–rich. The stars with planets were searched for trends in metallicity as a function of stellar mass or size of convective envelope (Santos et al. santos (2001) , Pinsonneault et al. pinsonneault (2001)), for anomalous abundance ratios, signatures of accretion of chemically fractionated material (Smith et al. smith (2001)), and for lithium content anomalies (Ryan ryan (2000), Israelian et al. israelian (2001), Reddy et al. reddy (2002)). Lithium, and particularly the 6Li isotope is in fact a good diagnostic for accretion since it is destroyed during the stellar lifetime. Murray et al. (murray (2001)) studied instead field main sequence stars with spectroscopically determined iron abundance. They found evidences for typical accretion of $`0.5M_{}`$ of iron during the main sequence lifetime.

However, these results are hardly conclusive because of the lack of a suitable reference representing the original, unpolluted abundances.

Wide binaries represent instead easier targets to search for chemical anomalies, because of the comparison immediately provided by the two companions. Furthermore, their physical association (i.e. same distance) allows the use of differential analysis between the components. In fact, some of the most compelling results on the chemical anomalies of the stars with planets were achieved by studying the stars with planets member of binary systems e.g. 16 Cyg (King et al. king (1997), Laws & Gonzalez laws (2001)) and HD 178911 (Zucker et al. zucker01 (2002)).

Differential techniques for the determination of stellar abundances are very sensitive for pair of stars with similar temperatures and gravities, i.e. main sequence stars with similar masses. This argument was at the basis of our project for the study of a sample of wide binaries, aimed to search for planets (using radial velocities) and the chemical composition signatures due to the engulfment of planetary material. This survey is on-going at TNG (the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, INAF, on La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain), using the high resolution spectrograph SARG (Gratton et al. 2001a ).

The first result of our survey was the discovery of a pair (HD 219542) whose components differ in iron content by about 0.1 dex (Gratton et al. 2001b , hereinafter Paper I), with hints that the overabundance of the primary is confined to rocky elements, while volatiles have comparable abundances. The primary is also lithium rich. The most likely explanation of this abundance pattern is the infall of planetary material on the primary, either portions or remnants of a circumstellar disk or already formed planets. Reddy et al. (reddy (2002)) searched for 6Li in HD 219542 A. This isotope represents a very powerful trace of recent accretion. They find 6Li/7Li=$`0.03\pm 0.03`$, clearly not conclusive. It must be noted that such an amount of 6Li is nearly the one expected on the basis of the observed iron difference.

In this paper, we present the results of the 2 years radial velocity monitoring of the components of HD 219542 aimed at finding planets around them. In this case, we are searching for planets around stars showing evidence of accretion of planetary material. This effort is complementary to the searches for abundance anomalies of stars around which planets have already been detected, and may represent an important piece in the understanding of the origin of the observed chemical composition differences.

The paper is organized as follows: in Sect. 2 and 3 the available information concerning the stellar and orbital characteristics of the HD 219542 binary system are described; in Sect. 4. our high precision radial velocity measurements are presented; in Sect. 5 the significance of the variability of HD 219542 B is discussed; in Sect. 6 we discuss the possibility that the observed variations are due to activity–related phenomena; in Sect. 7 upper limits to the planets still allowed to exist around HD 219542 A are derived; in Sect. 8 the implications of our result are discussed.

## 2 Stellar properties

HD 219542 (HIP 114914, BD -02 5917, ADS 16642) is a wide pair of main sequence solar type stars. The physical associations of the components was confirmed by the Hipparcos astrometry. The main properties of the components of HD 219542 are summarized in Table 1.

### 2.1 Stellar masses and ages

Isochrone fitting can only poorly constrain the age of unevolved main sequence stars. The position in the color-magnitude diagram is best fitted by an age in the range 1-2 Gyr. The other indirect age indicators like chromosperic activity, X-ray emission, lithium, and rotational velocity are discussed in Sect. 2.2-2.3-2.4.

The stellar masses derived using the Z=0.03 1 and 2 Gyr isochrones of Girardi et al. (girardi2000 (2000)) are 1.15-1.12 and 1.07-1.05 for A and B component respectively, with an uncertainty of 0.05 $`M_{}`$ due to the errors in the parallax. In any case, the derivation of ages and masses using standard stellar models can be misleading for polluted stars (as likely HD 219542 A), that should have different composition in the radiative and convective zone (Sasselov sasselov (2002), Sandquist et al. sandquist02 (2002)).

### 2.2 Rotational profiles

Our template spectra have resolution ($`R`$ 150000) and S/N ($``$ 200) high enough that the shape of the Fourier Transform of portions of spectra including suitable lines can be used to derive rotational and macroturbulent velocities.

Stellar rotational velocities have then been derived for both components of the system (A and B) using the first zeros of the Fourier Transform, as described by Gray (gray (1992)). To this purpose, we used the lines at 6252.565, 6421.360 and 6439.083 Å measured on the radial velocity template spectra. Assuming a limb-darkening coefficient of 0.6 (appropriate for the stars under consideration), we obtain estimates of $`1.9\pm 0.1`$ and $`2.4\pm 0.1`$ km/s for the values of $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ for components A and B respectively. The value for component A agrees quite well with the value of 1.55-2.24 km/s obtained by Reddy et al. (reddy (2002)).

The macroturbolence velocities result of $`4.4\pm 0.3`$ and $`4.8\pm 0.3`$ km/s for HD 219542 A and B respectively, normal for this type of stars.

It should be noted that there is some degree of degeneracy between the values for rotational and macroturbulent velocities, that is fully removed only by using very high S/N spectra. However, the macroturbolence we obtain is consistent with the spectral types of the stars, supporting the adopted values for rotational velocities.

### 2.3 Activity indicators

The level of chromospheric activity can give some clues about the age of the system and it is relevant also for the interpretation of the radial velocity behaviour of the stars (see Sect. 6). We acquired spectra of both components of HD 219542 (as well as of other $``$ 40 stars) using the FEROS spectrograph at the 1.5 m telescope in La Silla in August 2002. Details of observations will be reported elsewhere. The spectra cover the range 3900-9200 Å, including the region of chromospheric diagnostics H and K CaII lines. Fig. 1 shows the region of the K line for HD 219542 A and B, compared to the solar spectrum and to the active star 36 Oph A. It appears that both stars have low chromospheric activity, with some emission possibly present in component B and no evidence for emission in component A. In order to quantify the activity level, we measured on our spectra the fluxes within a 1 Å band centered on the Ca II K line, and normalized them to the values of the fluxes in two narrow pseudocontinuum bands at 3909 and 3954 Å. This procedure was repeated for all stars observed with FEROS, as well as for solar type stars observed during the FEROS commissioning (Kaufer et al. kaufer (1999)), whose spectra are available on the FEROS Consortium archives111http://feros.lsw.uni-heidelberg.de/docu/ferosDB/search.html. The resulting flux ratios I(K) were converted into $`R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ values by using 41 observations of 11 stars with values of $`R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ determined in the literature (from Baliunas et al. baliunas95 (1995), Henry et al. henry96 (1996) and Henry et al. henry00 (2000)). The transformation included a term dependent on (B-V); this term accounts for the systematic dependences of the fluxes in the narrow reference bands on temperature and metal abundance. The finally-adopted correlation is able to predict $`R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ values for the calibrators with an accuracy of 0.10 dex (see Fig. 2); the residual scatter is very similar to the r.m.s. scatter of $`R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ values for the Sun taken at different epochs (Baliunas et al. baliunas95 (1995)), and may be attributed to the variability of the Ca II emission222Actually, we expect that our values of $`R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ contain systematic errors due to stellar rotation. Lines of some of our calibrators are indeed significantly broadened by rotation; however the values of $`R^{}(HK)`$ we derived for these stars do not differ systematically by more than 0.05 dex from the average calibration of Figure 2.. The values of $`R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ for HD 219542 obtained by this procedure are $`5.36\pm 0.13`$ and $`5.11\pm 0.13`$ for components A and B respectively. This low level of chromospheric activity is consistent with the results quoted by Glebocki et al. (glebocki (1980)). The small rotational velocities we measured are also in agreement with a low activity level for both the stars.

The ROSAT satellite detected a source (1RXS J231636.1-013459) that has an offset of 13 and 18 arcsec with respect HD 219542 A and HD 219542 B respectively (Voges et al. rosat (2000)). Since the position error of the X-ray source is 19 arcsec, 1RXS J231636.1-013459 is very likely the counterpart of one or both the components of HD 219542 (at the high galactic latitude of this star the chance of a background object of similar flux is very small, according to Hasinger et al. hasinger (1993)). The X-ray luminosity derived using the calibration of Hünsch et al. (hunsch (1999)) is $`L_X=2.1_{1.2}^{+1.8}10^{28}`$ erg/s (A+B components). Assuming similar contribution by both components, the X-ray luminosity results about one order of magnitude lower than Hyades stars and typical for stars with an age of about 1-2 Gyr (Randich randich (2000)). Such X-ray luminosity is also in reasonable agreement with the observed rotational velocities according to the relation by Bouvier (bouvier (1990)).

### 2.4 The galactic orbit and the possible association with the Hyades

Eggen (eggen60 (1960)) in his search for moving groups in the solar neighboorood picked up HD 219542 as a member of the Hyades moving group. While the existence itself of moving groups is debated in the literature (see Taylor taylor00 (2000) and references therein), we tried to confirm or reject this possible association using updated velocities and distance for HD 219542 (see Table 1). The space velocities of the binary are $`(U,V,W)=(40.5,16.5,4.0)`$. This is compatible with the space velocities of the Hyades given by Perryman et al. (perryman98 (1998)). The galactic orbit of HD 219542, computed as in Barbieri & Gratton (barbieri (2002)), is represented in Fig 3. The orbit ($`R_{min}=7.70`$ kpc; $`R_{max}=9.41`$ kpc; $`Z_{max}=0.06`$ kpc; $`e=0.10`$) is normal for a moderately young star.

The distance from the Sun of HD 219542 (54.6 pc) is comparable to that of the Hyades. The physical distance of HD 219542 from the center of the Hyades is about 40 pc.

Other physical indicators can be used to shed light on the possible link between the HD 219542 system and the Hyades:

* The metallicity of HD 219542 B (assumed to be unpolluted) is \[Fe/H\]=$`+0.20\pm 0.10`$, compatible within errors with the cluster metallicity (\[Fe/H\]=+0.14, Perryman et al. perryman98 (1998))333Note that the \[Fe/H\] values given in Paper I may be slightly overestimated, due to the choice of a very low value for the microturbulent velocity.
* There are no peculiar abundance patterns either in the Hyades stars or in HD 219542 B
* The lithium content of HD 219542 A444The measurement of lithium of HD 219542 A of Paper I was confirmed by the independent analysis by Reddy et al. (reddy (2002)). and especially of HD 219542 B is lower than that of Hyades stars of similar temperature (Fig. 4) and rather similar to that of stars in older open clusters like NGC 752 and M67 (Paper I). This seems not compatible with the Hyades association, since Hyades show a very low scatter in lithium abundance at a given temperature.
* Isochrone fitting does not have the accuracy for distentangling ages differences of $``$ 0.5 Gyr for unevolved objects like the two components of HD 219542
* The rotational velocities of the components of HD 219542 are at the low end of those of Hyades stars of similar spectral type. Note that a pole-on orientation for both components is unlikely, since for binaries with separation larger than 40 AU the rotation axes do not appear to be aligned (Hale hale (1994)).
* The chromospheric activity as measured on our FEROS spectra is much lower than that of Hyades stars of similar colour
* The X-ray luminosity derived in Sect. 2.3 is about one order of magnitude lower than that of Hyades stars of similar temperature
* None of the 24 Hyades G dwarfs studied by Paulson et al. (paulson02 (2002)) has a radial velocity jitter as low as HD 219542 A (see Sect. 6.4).

In summary, we conclude that while the kinematic data suggests the HD 219542 may be part of the Hyades moving group, the other stellar properties (lithium, rotation, chromospheric activity, X-ray emission, radial velocity jitter) seems to indicate a much older age (at least 1-2 Gyr) for the system. In particular, isochrone fitting and X-ray emission point to an age of $`12`$ Gyr, while the very low chromospheric activity suggests an even older age.

## 3 Orbital properties of the binary system

### 3.1 Astrometric Data

The projected separation of 5.279 arcsec at the distance measured by Hipparcos (54.6 pc) corresponds to 288 AU. Available data can be used to costrain the orbit of the binary. The first astrometric measurement of this pair dates back to 1830 (Aitken aitken (1932)). The literature astrometric measurements are listed in Table 2. Position angles were precessed to 2000.0 using Eq. 5 of Heintz (heintz (1978)).

Clear trends both in separation and in position angle can be noticed (Fig. 5). No changes in separation and position angle were instead detected by Hipparcos because of its limited time baseline. A linear fitting to the available data555The measurements were weighted according to their errors, when available, and assigning errors of 0.2 arcsec and 2 deg for $`\rho `$ and $`\theta `$ measurements respectively for those stars without errors bars. gives $`d\rho /dt=0.0048\pm 0.0003`$ arcsec/yr and $`d\theta /dt=0.018\pm 0.003`$ deg/yr.

### 3.2 Radial Velocity Difference

A further clue to the orbital properties of the system comes from the radial velocity differences between the components, that results $`1.15\pm 0.02`$ km/s (see Sect. 4). Therefore HD 219542 B is moving toward us with respect to HD 219542 A.

### 3.3 Clues on the orbital parameters

The availability of $`\rho `$, $`\theta `$, their time derivatives, the velocity difference and the parallax means that we know the relative position of the stars in the plane of the sky ($`x`$, $`y`$) and all the velocity components $`v_x`$, $`v_y`$, $`v_z`$ (Table 3). The position $`z`$ along the line of sight is instead unknow, so that it is not possible to derive the orbital parameters of the visual binary.

However, it is possible to constrain the value of $`z`$ assuming that the two components are bound and derive the orbital parameters as a function of $`z`$. To this aim, we follow the procedure by Hauser & Marcy (hauser (1999)). The allowed separation along the line of sight results $`1260<z<1260`$ AU. The orbital parameters as a function of $`z`$ are shown in Fig. 6.

It appears that low eccentricity orbits with periastron of a few hundreds AU, as well as very eccentric orbits with periastron as small as 10 AU, are compatible with the available data. Radial velocity variations due to the binary orbit are below 1 m/s/yr over the whole range of $`z`$, undetectable from our data.

The critical semiaxis for dynamical stability of planets for the family of orbits described above can be calculated following Holman & Weigert (holmanweigert (1999)). As expected, for the very eccentric orbits occurring for $`500<z<0`$ AU the zone allowed for stable planetary orbits is very small, while for the low eccentricy orbits occurring if $`z500`$ AU dynamical stability up to $``$ 100 AU is ensured (Fig. 7).

## 4 Radial Velocities

### 4.1 Observations and data analysis

The components of HD 219542 were observed as part of our ongoing planet search program using SARG at TNG. The goals of the project are the study of the frequency of planets around stars in wide binaries with atypical separation 200-300 AU, looking for the dynamical effects due to the stellar companion, and the search for chemical differences between the components (see Paper I). A recent report is presented by Gratton et al. (washington (2002)). The survey as well as the observational and data analysis procedure will be described in detail in a forthcoming paper (Desidera et al., in preparation). Here we briefly summarize the most relevant points.

The observations used for the radial velocity determinations were acquired with the SARG spectrograph using the Yellow Grism, that covers the spectral range 4600-7900 Å without gaps, and the 0.25 arcsec slit. The resulting resolution is R=150000 (2 pixels sampling). The iodine cell was inserted into the optical path, superimposing a dense forest of absorption lines used as reference spectrum for the radial velocity determination. The spectral ranges 4600-5000 Å and 6200-7900 Å are free from the contamination of iodine lines and can be used to monitor the changes of the line profile and equivalent width (see Sect 6.16.3). Only the blue part of the spectra is used in this paper. The insertion of a suitable filter avoids any grism second order contamination in the red extreme of the spectra. Exposure times were fixed at 15 minutes, to reduce the errors in barycentric correction caused by the lack of knowledge of the exact flux mid time of the exposure. During the observations, the slit was usually oriented perpendicularly to the separation of the components to minimize the contamination of the spectra by the companion. The rather large separation of the components of HD 219542 (5.3 arcsec) makes the contamination issue not important for the case presented here.

The data reduction was performed using IRAF666IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under contract with the National Science Fundation.

The radial velocity analysis was performed using the AUSTRAL code developed by Endl et al. (austral (2000)). Each star+iodine spectrum was modeled using a pure iodine template of the SARG cell obtained with the Kitt Peak FTS (Desidera thesis (2000)) and a high quality pure stellar template (i.e. without the iodine cell in the path) obtained with SARG, properly deconvolved for the instrument profile. In the modeling of the star+iodine spectrum, the best Doppler shift of the stellar spectrum relative to its template is found and the instrument profile was reconstructed. Since the instrument profile changes along a spectral order, the spectrum was divided in chunks approximately 100 pixels long ($``$2 Å), each one modeled independently. About 400 chunks were used in the final analysis. Internal errors of velocities are calculated as the errors of the mean of the chunks. We find that averaging the velocities obtained with several different chunk lenghts (in the range 90-120 pixels for solar type stars) improves the quality of the results. Changing the chunk length means to slightly reduce the impact of noise due to the division of the spectrum in discrete pieces.

The parameters for the instrument profile modeling were instead kept fixed on values fine-tuned using fast rotating featureless stars, the constant radial velocity star $`\tau `$ Ceti and the planet-bearing stars 51 Peg and $`\rho `$ CrB. A long term precision of about 3 m/s was achieved for these stars. For the much fainter (V=8-9) stars of the binary sample the errors are typically about 5 m/s, due to the lower S/N of the spectra. For the components of HD 219542, the typical S/N we achieved is 80-100. The stellar templates (used also in Paper I for the abundance analysis) have instead S/N above 200.

### 4.2 Differential Radial Velocities

More than 20 radial velocities measurements of the components of HD 219542 were obtained, spanning the period October 2000 - November 2002 (Tables 4-5). On a few nights, we obtained two consecutive spectra for the targets. In these cases, we computed a weighted average of the velocities.

The time series of velocities of HD 219542 A is shown in Fig. 8. The dispersion of velocities is 5.8 m/s, only slightly larger than the mean internal errors (5.6 m/s) determined by the chunk-to-chunk internal scatter in the velocities777Comparison between pairs of observations obtained consecutively in both components suggest that the errors given by this procedure may be overestimated by about 25%, possibly because individual chunks consistently deviates by similar amounts in spectra acquired on the same night.. Statistical analysis (see Sect. 5) does not reveal significant periodicities. Long term trends are also not apparent from the data. Therefore we can rule out both short-period Jupiter-mass planets as well as massive companions in external orbits. The upper limits on the giant planets around HD 219542 A still compatible with the data are discussed in Sect. 7.

The velocities of HD 219542 B show instead a dispersion (9.2 m/s) larger than the measurement errors (5.1 m/s). Since the two components were usually observed consecutively, we can exclude the occurrence of systematic errors due to uncorrected instrumental shifts or barycentric correction as possible causes of the observed variations.

We performed a period search within the RV-results in the range of $`2`$ to $`1000`$ days, using the well-known Lomb-Scargle periodogram (Lomb lomb (1976); Scargle scargle (1982)). We found a strong peak at a period of $`112`$ days. Its significance is discussed in Sect. 5. The best-fit Keplerian orbital solution888The fitting was performed using the program Orbitsolver (R.E.M. Griffin, priv. comm.) that adjusts all the elements of the orbit simultaneously in a least-squares solution (Griffin & Cornell griffin (1998)). to the RV-data of HD 219542 B yields a period P=112.1 days, semiamplitude K=13.0 m/s and a moderate eccentricity $`e0.32`$ (Table 6). The r.m.s. of residuals from the keplerian fit is 5.1 m/s (5.9 m/s taking into account the loss of degrees of freedom introduced by the keplerian fitting). Fig. 9 shows the radial velocities of HD 219542 B with overplotted the orbital solution; Fig. 10 shows the residuals from the keplerian fit, and Fig. 11 the velocities of HD 219542 B phased to best fitting period. Fischer et al. (fischer01 (2001)) noted that for noisy data (and in the case of undetected further planets in the system) the orbital fitting produces spuriuos eccentricity enhancements. For this reason, the derived eccentricity should be considered with some caution.

Among the planets found so far, 3 have comparable velocity amplitude (namely HD 16141b, Marcy et al. hd16141 (2000); 47 UMa c, Fischer et al. 47uma (2002); 55 Cnc c, Marcy et al. 55cnc (2002)). Therefore a careful evaluation of the data is required to discuss the significance of the result (Sect. 5) and the possible activity origin of the observed variations (Sect. 6). As we will see, the results of these tests are rather inconclusive, so that the existence of a planet around HD 219542 B still needs confirmation999We cannot then at present confirm at a high level of confidence the announcement of a planet that some of us (the italian part of the group) gave as a press release in November 2002..

### 4.3 Absolute Radial Velocities

The iodine cell technique provides velocities relative to an arbitrary zero point, different for each star. Cross-correlation with a template of a star with known absolute radial velocity allows to determine the absolute velocity values for both stars.

We used as template 51 Peg, that has an absolute velocity of $`33.23`$ km/s (Nidever et al. nidever (2002)). The velocities result of $`V_A=11.1`$ km/s and $`V_B=10.0`$ km/s. Corrections for gravitational redshift and convective blueshift were not included, because 51 Peg has a colour intermediate between those of HD 219542 A and B. It was also not necessary to include a correction for the orbital motion due the planet around 51 Peg, because the template of 51 Peg was acquired by chance with the star close to its center of mass velocity. The errors of our velocities are likely within 0.2 km/s. The only literature determination of radial velocity is -16.5 km/s for HD 219542 A (Wilson gcrv (1953)). The discrepancy is likely explained by the low accuracy of the old data.

For the analysis of the possible binary orbit (Sect. 3) it is important to have a precise measurement of the difference of radial velocities between the components. Such a difference was measured using the same stellar template for both stars. Considering the templates of HD 219542 A and HD 219542 B, the radial velocity difference results $`V_AV_B=1200\pm 10`$ m/s. Such quantity must be corrected for the difference of the gravitational redshift and convective blueshift between the stars to give the real radial velocity difference. We estimate this effect to be about 50 m/s, using the relation by Nidever et al. (nidever (2002)). Therefore our best estimate for the radial velocity difference between the components is $`V_AV_B=1150\pm 25`$ m/s (including further $`20`$ m/s of uncertainty in the gravitational and convective corrections).

## 5 Test of significance of the proposed planet orbit

We considered two different tests to evaluate the significance of the solution. The first one answers to the question: “What is the probability that we would extract a solution corresponding to a Keplerian motion induced by a planet better than the solution found from the real data from a similar analysis of a random sequence of radial velocities sampled at the same epochs and with the same noise as the data ?”

The following procedure was used to answer this question. We employed an orbit finder program that scans through the parameter range for period, amplitude, phase angle, eccentricity and periastron angles and determines the quality of the fit for each test-orbit. We considered two different best fit estimators, minimizing either the r.m.s. scatter of data or the $`\chi ^2`$ of the distribution, using the internal errors as estimate of the real errors. While $`\chi ^2`$ might be expected to be a better fit estimator, we note that on one side the distribution of individual internal errors is quite uniform, and on the other internal errors may neglect some source of scatter present in the data (e.g. activity-induced jitter, barycentric correction, etc.). Furthermore, we have some indications that internal errors are overestimated by $``$ 25% (Sect. 4.2). We define as acceptable those solutions whose eccentricity is not larger than 0.8, and there is no phase interval longer than 0.25 without any data.

We verified that our orbit finder program delivers similar solutions to the OrbitSolver program using both estimators. The solutions found by our program have in both cases period of 111.3 d, amplitude of 12.7 m/s, and eccentricity 0.4. The r.m.s. of residuals is of 5.8 m/s and the $`\chi ^2`$ is 104.7 m/s. In both cases they are very close to the optimized value.

We employ a bootstrap randomization scheme in order to estimate the significance of the 112 days period. In this bootstrap method the radial velocities and errors of individual nights are randomly re-distributed along the times of observations.

We ran the program on the generated data sets and we found that only in 2 cases out of 1000, random extractions yield solutions with an r.m.s. smaller than or equal to that given by the real observations. When using $`\chi ^2`$, the solutions better than the observed case are 1.2%.

Second, we tested the probability to have by chance a power in the periodogram similar to that of the observed data, following the bootstrap approach decribed above and computing the power spectrum for each new dataset is generated (Kürster et al. mak97 (1997); Murdoch et al. mur (1993)). For each of the two components we performed 10000 bootstrap runs. The results are displayed in Fig. 12. We found a false-alarm-probability (FAP) of $`3.7\%`$. We note that this second approach is more general, since it assumes that the signal is given by sine-functions, independently of its physical origin. From this more prudent estimate, we conclude that there is a 3% probability that our solution may be due to chance.

The same tests performed for component A give a rather high probability (more than 50%) that a better result can be obtained from a random set of radial velocities.

Finally, it should also be remembered that a basic assumption throughout this procedure is that there is no correlation between noise on consecutive (or close) nights. However, some correlation is expected if noise is dominated by activity. Hence this test cannot exclude that the observed velocity variations are due to activity rather than to keplerian motion.

## 6 Activity or Planet?

The low amplitude of the velocity variations of HD 219542 B may be in principle due to orbital motion (i.e. a planet) or to activity related phenomena. We note that a period of 112 days is too long for a rotational modulation (the upper limit to the rotational period from the observed $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ value is $``$ 21 days) and too short for the long term activity cycle typical for solar type stars. However, it is still possible that the observed variations are due to some transient short period modulations, not apparent as significant in the statistical analysis because of the lack of coherence over our $``$ 800 days of observations101010The second peak in Fig. 12 is at 18.5 days (a reasonable rotational period for the star). While the season 2002 data can be fitted fairly well by a sinusoidal variation with this period, the 2001 data cannot.. In this case, however, we would have picked up a phase of low activity during our observations in July 2001, when we obtained 5 observations over 8 nights, showing a dispersion of 4.5 m/s (nightly averages).

We performed a few tests to check this possibility: we studied the characteristics of the components of HD 219542 to infer the expected activity-induced radial velocity jitter, we checked the Hipparcos photometry for variability, and we measured line bisector and equivalent width variability on SARG spectra.

### 6.1 Bisector analysis

Given the small amplitude of the observed variations in the radial velocity of HD 219542 B, it is well possible that such variations are not real, but rather are due to the effects of line asymmetries. Such variations could be in principle related to activity: e.g. in the case of HD 166435, Queloz et al. (queloz01 (2001)) found that radial velocity variations with semiamplitude as large as $`K=83`$ m/s can be attributed to correlated variations of the line bisectors of $`200`$ m/s (peak-to-peak) with the rotational period and attributable to the effects of star spots. Unfortunately, such an analysis is much more difficult in the present case, because the variations in the bisectors required to explain the radial velocity variations are very small ($`10`$ m/s). While we did not expect that such an accuracy can be achieved using our data for both components of HD 219542, we however performed an analysis of the variations of line bisectors, using those orders shortward of 5000 Å, where there are not lines due to iodine.

The technique we used is similar to that devised by Queloz et al. (queloz01 (2001)), that is an analysis of asymmetries in the Cross Correlation Function (CCF). The CCF is obtained by cross correlating the observed spectra with a suitable mask, that is a function that is 1 within very narrow regions (ideally $`\delta `$ of Dirac) centered at the wavelengths of selected spectral lines, and 0 elsewhere. This CCF represents an average profile for the lines in the lists. To this purpose we selected about 80 clean spectral lines in this spectral region, with equivalent widths in the range 10-70 mÅ. The left panel of Fig. 13 displays a typical CCF obtained by this technique. Typical Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) of our CCF’s are 0.10 Å: this broadening is essentially due to macroturbulence, since the instrumental profile has a typical FWHM of 0.032 Å. In analogy with Queloz et al. (queloz01 (2001)), we quantified line asymmetry span as the difference $`b`$ between the average bisector values in two regions of the CCF’s (from 0.96 to 0.89, and from 0.86 to 0.72 of the line profile, see Fig. 13).

Our analysis is certainly not optimal: in fact, asymmetries in our CCFs may arise for reasons different from real asymmetries in the spectral lines (and other than photon noise). Possible causes include blends with nearby lines, errors in the wavelength calibration and inhomogeneities in the slit illumination. The first effect has not a large impact here, because it would show up as a constant pattern, and we are rather interested in bisector variations. Also, we selected lines very carefully, and the average line profiles is very close to the continuum at the base of the line. We also note that at least in the case of 51 Peg (for which we performed a similar analysis using our own spectra, see below), the run of the bisector with depth is similar to those published in the literature (Gray gray97 (1997)) in the regions of overlap. The runs of the bisectors with depth are very similar for 51 Peg and the two components of HD 219542, with a trend for the span to slightly larger in the warmer star (HD 219524 A) and slightly smaller in the cooler one (HD 219542 B), with 51 Peg (which has intermediate temperature) showing an intermediate behaviour. This agrees with expectations (Gray gray (1992)). The other effects are of major concern, and likely are more important in our analysis than in that by Queloz et al. (queloz01 (2001)) because slit illumination is not scrambled by fibers, and because our wavelength calibration is not as accurate. On the other side, it should be also noted that our spectra have a resolution that is about three times larger. and this would result in a gain af about one order of magnitude of the sensitivity of the CCF to real changes in the bisectors. We also note that all these effects do not affect our radial velocities, because they are virtually eliminated in our calibration procedure based on the iodine cell lines; however they may dominate asymmetries in the cross correlation peaks, hiding the effects of activity-related variations of the bisectors.

In order to quantify the internal errors, we analyzed with the same procedure a series of 23 spectra of 51 Peg (these spectra have S/N ratios about 2.5 times larger than those of HD 219542) taken over two years with SARG at TNG. Spectrum-to-spectrum variations of the bisector span $`b`$ are $`10.7`$ m/s (r.m.s.). The scatter is smaller (about 5.6 m/s r.m.s.) for spectra taken during the same night (generally over a few minutes). This last value seems then a lower limit for the internal errors in our bisector values for this star. In fact, one one hand we expect that real variations of the bisectors should show up over longer timescales, and on the other hand we can not exclude that other errors arise when comparing data from different nights, when e.g. a different wavelength calibration is used. Hence, in the case of 51 Peg we may set an upper limit to real bisector span variations of about 9 m/s from our data. More stringent upper limit on the bisector span variations for 51 Peg was obtained by Hatzes et al. hatzes98 (1999) ($`7`$ m/s). However, the definition of the bisector span is different in that case, so that it is not easy to compare the two results. Transformation of our upper limit on bisector to a limit on the jitter in radial velocity is not obvious (it depends on the definition of the bisector span): however, in the case of HD 166435 (for which Queloz et al. queloz01 (2001) used a definition similar to the present one) radial velocity variations are roughly 1.1 times the variations of the bisector spans. If the same rule then applies to our case, the upper limit to radial velocity jitter for 51 Peg is $`10`$ m/s: this is about 2.5 times larger than the limit obtained from photometric (Henry et al. henry00 (2000)) and equivalent width variations (see below). However, we consider it as still an interesting upper limit.

In the case of HD 219542, the scatter of bisector spans is 31.2 m/s and 21.8 m/s for A and B component respectively. Bisector span is not significantly correlated with radial velocities for both stars (Fig 14). Lower limits to measurement errors, determined as above from the results of consecutive spectra, is about 17.3 m/s. Therefore the observed pattern can be explained mostly by measurement errors. Anyway, there is still room for bisector span variations corresponding to a radial velocity variations of $`15`$ m/s. This is larger than the observed scatter for HD 219542 B, so that we can not exclude that the observed radial velocity variations are due to line asymmetries.

We note that while the bisector analysis is not conclusive in the present case, however it would be sufficient to disentangle the origin of radial velocity variations with amplitudes of a few tens of m/s. Finally, we note that a more detailed approach (that takes into account the instrumental line profile determined using the iodine lines) could be devised; however it requires a lengthy procedure and we postpone it to a forthcoming paper.

### 6.2 Limits on photometric variations

The only photometric data set available suitable for a variability search is the Hipparcos photometry. However, it refers to the combined light of A and B components. When averaging data on a daily basis, the r.m.s. is 0.004 magnitudes, without hints of variability above the measurement errors. No significant periodicities appeared applying the same procedures used in Sect. 5. The study of the Hyades by Paulson et al. (quoted by Henry et al. henry02 (2002)) gives a relation between the radial velocity and photometric scatters of $`3.3`$ m/s/mmag. Therefore, to justify the observed radial velocity dispersion, a photometric scatter 0.003 mag would be required. This is much lower than the limit placed by Hipparcos photometry, taking into account that HD 219542 B contributes only $``$ 40% of the composite light.

### 6.3 Equivalent Width Variations

We expect that activity may cause (small) variations in the average temperature in the line forming region. For this reason, we expect (small) variations in the average equivalent widths ($`EW`$s) of spectral lines. This method is similar to the line depth ratio method considered by Gray (gray94 (1994)). We then selected among the line list used in Sect. 6.1 in the spectrum section clean of iodine lines the lines with large sensitivity to effective temperature changes, determined using appropriate spectral synthesis. The final selection includes about 40 lines for which variations of 1.0 mÅ in the $`EW`$ are due to temperature changes of less than 20 K. A variations of 20 K in the stellar effective temperature causes a variation of about 0.017 mag in stellar magnitude. We then measured the $`EW`$s of the lines on all spectra of both components of HD 219542, as well as for the comparison star 51 Peg, using an our own purposely written code. On 51 Peg we found that for a single line, the typical r.m.s. scatter of the residuals of the $`EW`$s with respect of the average value is 0.86 mÅ. The spectra have a typical S/N of about 170 at this wavelength. Application of the formula by Cayrel (cayrel (1988)) would produce an expected error of 0.22 mÅ for these lines; however this formula neglects the contribution due to the continuum and background subtraction, that likely significantly increases the errors. Furthermore, internal errors obtained by considering the error for individual lines divided by the square root of the number of lines, likely underestimates the real error bar because they do not take into account correlation existing between nearby lines (due to positioning of the continuum level and errors in the background subtraction). We then measured the temperature variations properly weighting the lines according to their temperature sensitivity. The observed r.m.s. scatter of results for individual spectra is 2.5 K, with internal errors 2.1 K. This yields an upper limit to real spectrum-to-spectrum of 1.3 K. This on turn yields an upper limit to real variations in the luminosity of 51 Peg of 0.0011 mag (comparable to the results by Henry et al. henry00 (2000)). This very strict upper limits constraints the jitter in radial velocity to be less than 3.6 m/s (using the quoted relation 3.3 m/s/mmag).

When the same procedure is applied to the spectra of HD 219542 B, we get much less stringent upper limits, due to the lower S/N of the spectra. The observed r.m.s. of temperature is 8.34 K; the internal error is 5.95 K. This implies an upper limit to real variations in the effective temperature of 5.8 K, and an upper limit to photometric variations of 0.0050 mag, about twice lower than the limit determined from the Hipparcos photometry. However, this limit is still large enough to accomodate a jitter in the radial velocity of about 15 m/s, similar to the limit obtained from bisectors and well enough to justify observations.

We conclude that also this estimate of the expected jitter is not accurate enough for the present purpose.

### 6.4 Expected radial velocity jitter

The low chromospheric activity and the low rotational velocities ($`R_{HK}=5.36\pm 0.13`$, $`v\mathrm{sin}i=1.9`$ km/s for HD 219542 A; $`R_{HK}=5.11\pm 0.13`$, $`v\mathrm{sin}i=2.4`$ km/s for HD 219542 B) indicate a low activity level. The jitter expected on the basis of the relation $`\sigma _v`$ vs $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ by Saar et al. (saar (1998)) is about 6 m/s and 8 m/s for HD 219542 A and B respectively. The $`\mathrm{log}R_{HK}^{^{}}`$ calibration gives instead $`2`$ and $`3`$ m/s respectively. The calibration by Marcy (Marcy 2002, private communication), that is based on a larger and higher precision data set than Saar et al. (saar (1998)) ones and takes into account the color dependence, predict instead a jitter of about 2 and 4 m/s for components A and B respectively.

To get a jitter of 8 m/s (required to explain the observed scatter), the chromospheric activity of HD 219542 B should be as high as $`\mathrm{log}R_{HK}^{^{}}4.75`$. Such a value seems to be excluded from the analysis presented in Sect. 2.3111111Note that our $`R_{HK}`$ measurement was obtained in the season for which a larger radial velocity scatter is present..

The observed radial velocity jitter of HD 219542 A is very low, at most 4 m/s, assuming that the 25% overestimate of errors of consecutive spectra holds also on longer time baseline. On the basis of the results by Paulson et al. (paulson02 (2002)) for the Hyades, we do not expect that the colder component of a (coeval) pair shows larger jitter than the warmer one. However, the two stars may be on different phases of their activity cicle, so that the low jitter of HD 219542 A does not automatically guarantee the absence of moderate activity in its companion121212If the planet around HD 219542 B does exist, the upper limit to the jitter estimated from residuals from the best fitting orbit, is 4.2 m/s, similar to HD 219542 A..

Therefore, we can not exclude an activity origin for the velocity variations, taking into account that the line bisector, photometry and equivalent width analysis do not have the precision required to evidence the variations causing a $`10`$ m/s radial velocity scatter.

## 7 Limits on planetary companions

As shown in Sect. 4.2, HD 219542 A does not show variations above errors and the statistical analysis did not reveal any significant periodicity in the velocities. The small velocity errors and the dense sampling of the observations allow us to derive firm upper limits for possible substellar companions. To this aim, we have developed a procedure that allow us to derive constraints for the masses of planets in circular as well as in eccentric orbit.

The method is a Monte–Carlo extraction and is as follows: we set a dense grid of mass and semimajor axis values covering the ranges 0.05-4$`M_J`$ and 0.01-3 AU. For each pair of mass and semimajor axis we randomly generated (with uniform distribution) 10000 combinations of orbital phase $`T_0`$ eccentricity $`e`$ and longitude of the periastron $`\omega `$ (the last two only for the eccentric case). We adopt the following ranges: $`e<0.5625\times \mathrm{log}(P)0.12`$ for $`P<80`$ days (a conservative upper limit to the eccentricity of known exoplanets as a function of period) and $`0e`$ 0.95 for longer periods131313This upper limit is justified on the basis on the detection of a planet with $`e`$=0.93 (HD80606b, Naef et al. naef (2001)).; $`0\omega 360`$ deg; $`0T_0P_{max}`$.

For each set of orbital parameters, we create a synthetic radial velocity curve obtained by adding a Gaussian noise term (with the same rms as our RV-results) to a Keplerian orbit sampled at the epochs of our observations.

We then applied the F test, and computed the probability that the synthetic and the observed data sets have the same variance. If the probability is larger than 5% for more than 95% of the 10000 data sets for each mass–semimajor axis pair, than we took the planet with the corresponding mass and orbital semiaxis as compatible with the observed data. Otherwise, we considered the planet as excluded by our data, since its presence would have created a detectable excess of variability.

In this manner we obtain two regions in the mass–semimajor axis plane the first where planets can be excluded, and an area below our limits (see Fig. 15-16), where planets can still exist. It must be noted that the derived upper limits concern $`m\mathrm{sin}i`$.

Our method, based on the evaluation of the excess of radial velocity variability caused by the presence of hypothetical planets, allows a complete exploration of the possible orbital parameters for eccentric orbits (the real case, since most of the known planets are in eccentric orbits). This is not feasible when the synthetic data are examined using methods like the periodogram analysis (see Endl et al. endl02 (2002)).

Note that this procedure attempts to answers the question: would the presence of a planet more massive than this limit at the given separation have caused scatter incompatible with observed data? This is a somewhat different question from that answered by the usual procedure, that consider the detection of a planet with a high level of confidence (typically 99%) using procedures based on the periodogram analysis (see e.g. Endl et al. endl02 (2002); Cumming et al. cumming (1999)). These authors formulate the problem slightly differently: they determine the minimum amplitudes for planetary signal at various separations, which can be detected by their data at a statistical significance of $`>99`$%. The two approaches are rather different, because in principle, a planet could be present even if its detection is not significant at a high level of confidence. However, we repeated our procedure for the case of $`\alpha `$ Cen A, for which upper limits to planet masses have been obtained by Endl et al. (endl01 (2001)) using the alternative approach, and we find that our procedure (when assuming circular orbits) closely reproduces the same upper limits to planetary masses obtained in that paper.

Fig. 15 shows the results for HD 219542 A. The limits for planets in eccentric orbit are less stringent than for planets in circular orbits, becuase of the flexibility of shape of the keplerian curve for high eccentricties. Planets with $`m\mathrm{sin}i>2M_J`$ are excluded for separation smaller than 2.4 AU also 51 Peg-like planets with masses $`m\mathrm{sin}i>0.15M_J`$ are excluded. For orbital periods exceeding the baseline of our measurement the constraint becomes shallower. A peak corresponding to the 1 year observing window can be noticed, especially in the eccentric case. Fig. 16 shows the results for HD 219542 B. The limits are less stringent because of the larger scatter of the velocities.

## 8 Discussion

The main results of this paper are the following:

1. We detected a low-amplitude RV variation for HD 219542 B which could be due to a Saturn mass planet in close orbit;
2. For component A, the star which shows signs of planetary accretion, we can place stringent upper limits on the existence of orbiting giant planets.

Taking into account the possibility that that the observed radial velocity variation of component B is caused by modest stellar activity, we think that a lengthy discussion on the implications of the presence of a planet around HD 219542 B is premature.

However, we note that HD 219542 Bb, if it exists, should represent the third case of a planet in a binary system around the lithium poor component of the pair, after 16 Cyg B and HD 178911. In the case of HD 219542 and 16 Cyg141414To our knowledge, a high precision differential chemical composition analysis was not performed for HD 178911, but this would be complicated by the double line spectroscopic binarity of the primary., the star without detected planet shows also the signatures of accretion of planetary material. In these cases, the signatures of accretion might be anti-correlated with the presence of planets.

HD 219542 B is by itself a metal-rich star, with metallicity typical for the stars with planets (\[Fe/H\]=+0.20). If we take the abundances of HD 219542 B as the original values one for the system (i.e. assuming that no enrichment occurred for HD 219542 B) it implies that the system was originally very metal rich. This might suggest that accretion events are more likely on very metal rich stars, possibly because they form more planets and/or they have more massive disks. The full analysis of the SARG sample would tell us if such enrichment events are limited to very metal rich stars or they can happen also for metal poor stars.

The lack of giant planets in close orbit around HD 219542 A leaves several possibilities for the origin of the observed signatures of accretion open.

* Planet formation did not occur around HD 219542 A and a significant portion of the circumstellar disk fell into the stars possibly because of the dynamical perturbation of HD 219542 B. This possibility is neither excluded nor supported by the possible stellar orbital parameters given in Sect. 3. If the planet around component B is confirmed, it would indicate that gravitational influence did not disrupt the planet formation process.
* One or more giant planets orbiting around HD 219542 A were scattered toward the star by other planets in the system (Marzari & Weidenschilling marzari02 (2002)) or by the perturbation of HD 219542 B. In the first case, we would expect to find a planet in an external eccentric orbit. The continuation of our radial velocity monitoring could reveal that.
* No giant planets formed in the system while terrestrial ones formed in the inner regions. Some of them may have been scattered into the star by mutual interactions.

Our results exclude instead a scenario with a giant planet that formed near the ice boundary (4-5 AU) and migrated inward, causing the infall on the star of the inner part of the disk and/or terrestrial planets already formed (we would have detected such planet, unless the planet itself was engulfed by the star).

The study of a few pairs clearly does not allow us to reach a firm conclusion about the frequency of pairs with chemical composition differences; a general picture is missing. How frequent are these pairs? Is there any link between the pollution phenomena and some properties like the physical separation of the components and the initial composition? How frequent are planets around the components of nearly equal mass binaries with separation 200-300 AU and what are their orbital characteristics? Are planets really missing around polluted stars?

Our on-going survey including a sample of about 50 binaries might allow some deeper insight into these very exciting topics.

###### Acknowledgements.

We warmly thank A. Bragaglia, F. Leone, S. Randich, F. Sabbadin, and P. Sestito for taking some spectra during their observing time. We thank the TNG staff for its help in the observations. We are grateful to R.E.M. Griffin for supplying the Orbitsolver code. We are grateful to M. Kürster and S. Els for useful insights on the radial velocity measurements and to G. Marcy for providing us its jitter calibration. We thank the referee A. Hatzes for a very encouraging report. This publication makes use of public data obtained during FEROS Commissioning and of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. ME acknowledges support from NSF Grant AST-9808980 and NASA Grant NAG5-9227.