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# Supporting Out-of-turn Interactions in a Multimodal Web Interface

## 1 Introduction

Computing power today is increasingly moving away from the desktop computer to mobile computing devices such as PDAs, tablet PCs, and 3G phones. While posing capacity limitations (e.g., screen real estate, memory), such devices also present possibilities for multimodal interaction via gestures, speech, and handwriting recognition.

An area that is witnessing tremendous growth in multimodal interaction is web browsing on mobile devices. Technologies such as SALT (Speech Application Language Tags) and X+V (XHTML plus Voice) are ushering in the speech-enabled web – documents that can talk and listen rather than passively display content. The maturing of commercial speech recognition engines  has been a key factor in the emergence of this niche segment of multimodal browsing.

Speech as a mode of web interaction has become important for primarily two reasons. First, speech permits natural ways to perform certain types of tasks and helps compensate for deficiencies in traditional hyperlink access (which can get cumbersome on small form-factor devices). More importantly, speech-enabled websites help improve accessibility for the more than 40 million visually impaired people in the world today. As a result, using speech leads to the possibility of a conversational user interface  that combines the expressive freedom of voice backed by the information bandwidth of a traditional browser.

What exactly would we use a speech-enabled web interface for? The common use of speech on a website is to support navigation of existing site structure via voice , in other words as an alternative interaction medium. We posit that this is a rather limited viewpoint and that speech can actually be used to support new functionality at a website. In particular, we show how a multimodal web interface can support a flexibility of information access not possible with hyperlinks alone.

### Motivating Example

Consider the following dialogs between an information seeker (Sallie) and an automated political information system.

> Dialog 1
>
> | 1 | System: | Welcome. Are you looking for a Senator or a Representative? |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | 2 | Sallie: | Senator. |
> | 3 | System: | Democrat or Republican or an Independent? |
> | 4 | Sallie: | Republican. |
> | 5 | System: | What State? |
> | 6 | Sallie: | Minnesota. |
> | 7 | System: | That would be Norm Coleman. First elected in 2002, Coleman … |
> | (conversation continues) |

> Dialog 2
>
> | 1 | System: | Welcome. Are you looking for a Senator or a Representative? |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | 2 | Sallie: | Senator. |
> | 3 | System: | Democrat or Republican or an Independent? |
> | 4 | Sallie: | Not sure, but represents the state of Indiana. |
> | 5 | System: | Well, then it is either a Democrat or a Republican, there are no Independents from Indiana. |
> | 6 | Sallie: | I see. Who is the Republican Senator? |
> | 7 | System: | That would be Richard G. Lugar. First elected in 1976, Lugar … |
> | (conversation continues) |

It is helpful to contrast these dialogs from a conversational initiative standpoint. In the first dialog, Sallie responds to the questions in the order they are posed by the system. Such a dialog is called a fixed-initiative dialog as the initiative resides with the system at all times. The second dialog is system-initiated till Line 4, where Sallie’s input becomes unresponsive and provides some information that was not solicited. We say that Sallie has taken the initiative of conversation from the system. Nevertheless, the conversation is not stalled, the system registers that Sallie answered a different question than was asked, and refocuses the dialog in Line 5 to the issue of party (this time, narrowing down the available options from three to two). Sallie now responds to the initiative and the dialog progresses to complete the specification of a political official. Such a conversation where the two parties exchange initiative is called a mixed-initiative interaction .

What would be required to support such a flexibility of interaction at a website? It is clear that system-initiated modes of interaction are easiest to support and are the most prevalent in web browsing today. For instance, a webpage displaying a choice of hyperlinks presents such a view, so that clicking on a hyperlink corresponds to Sallie responding to the initiative. The reader can verify that the first dialog above can be supported by a three-level tree-structured HTML site presenting options for branch of congress, party, and state. But how can we support the second dialog, allowing Sallie to take the initiative at a website? This is where speech comes in. If Sallie can talk into the browser, she can provide unsolicited information using voice when she is unable to make a choice among the presented hyperlinks. In addition, if the system can process such an out-of-turn input, it can continue the progression of dialog and tailor future webpages so that they accurately reflect the information gathered over the course of the interaction. We have designed many such multimodal web interfaces, one example is shown in Fig. 1.

It is important to re-iterate that speech input is used here to provide a certain out-of-turn interaction capability at a website. In other words, Sallie is not merely using voice to answer the posed question (although she can do that too), but using it to specify unsolicited information. In the absence of such an out-of-turn facility, the website designer would have to anticipate various user needs and support all possible interaction sequences directly in the HTML site structure (e.g., browse by branch-party-state order, browse by branch-state-party order etc.), or provide a search facility as a method for pruning web pages. The first solution is inelegant due to the mushrooming of choices, and the second is not desirable either since search facilities usually terminate the dialog and return a flat list of results. Out-of-turn interaction via speech does not clutter the interface and provides a smooth continuation of the dialog.

We must point out that we are not supporting free-form input of all kinds, only input pertaining to specification aspects that are not yet solicited by the system. This can be viewed as akin to “looking under the hood, and saying a hyperlink label that is deeper below.”

## 2 System Design

Supporting such a natural mode of interaction in a web interface is not an easy undertaking. While technologies such as SALT and X+V enable the augmentation of speech into browsers, they either operate at a lower level of specification than the applications considered here, hence significantly increasing programming effort, or are otherwise limited in their expressive power for creating and managing dialogs . A multimodal web application must build on these technologies to provide flexible dialog capabilities.

Several considerations emerge in thinking about a software system design for multimodal web interaction. First, it is important to have uniform processing of hyperlink and voice interaction and, when voice is used, to introduce minimal overhead in handling responsive versus unsolicited input. Observe that hyperlink access can only be used to respond to the initiative whereas voice input can be used both for responding and for taking the initiative. Furthermore, a user may combine these modes of initiative in a given utterance – e.g., if the user speaks “Republican Senator from Minnesota” at the outset, he is responding to the current solicitation as well as providing two unsolicited pieces of information. Uniform processing of input modalities irrespective of medium (hyperlink or voice) or initiative (responsive or unsolicited) is thus important to support a seamless multimodal interface. Second, it is beneficial to have a representation of the dialog at all times, in order to determine how the user’s input affects remaining dialog options. For instance, in Line 5 of Dialog 2 above, Independents are removed as a possible party choice; in addition to pruning the hyperlink structure (shown in Fig. 1(c)), we must dynamically reconfigure the speech recognizer to only await the remaining legal utterances. Third, it must be possible for the site designer to exert fine-grained control over what types of out-of-turn interactions are to be supported. And finally, it is desirable to be able to automatically re-engineer existing websites for multimodal out-of-turn interaction, without manual configuration.

### 2.1 Dialog Representation

We have designed a framework taking into account all these considerations . It is based on staging transformations  – an approach that represents dialogs by programs and uses program transformations to simplify them based on user input. As an example, Fig. 2 (left) depicts a representation of the dialog from Section 1 in a programmatic notation. You can see that the tree-structured nature of the website is represented as a nested program of conditionals, where each variable corresponds to a hyperlink that is present in the site. We can think of this program as being derived from a depth-first traversal of the site. For Dialog 1 of Section 1, the sequence of transformations in Fig. 2 depicts what we want to happen. For Dialog 2 of Section 1, the sequence of transformations in Fig. 3 depicts what we want to happen.

The first sequence of transformations corresponds to simply interpreting the program in the order in which it is written. Thus, when Sallie clicks on ‘Senator’ she is specifying the values for the top-level of nested conditionals (‘Senator’ is set to one, and ‘Representative’ is set to zero). This leads to a simplified program that now solicits for choice of party. The sequence of Fig. 3, on the other hand, corresponds to ‘jumping ahead’ to nested segments and simplifying out inner portions of the program before outer portions are even specified. This transformation is well known to be partial evaluation, a technique popular to compiler writers and implementors of programming systems . In Fig. 3 when the user says ‘Indiana’ at the second step, the program is partially evaluated with respect to this variable (and variables for other states set to zero); the simplified program continues to solicit for party, but one of the choices is pruned out since it leads to a dead-end. Notice that a given program when used with an interpreter corresponds to a system-initiated dialog but morphs into a mixed-initiative dialog when used with a partial evaluator!

This is the essence of the staging transformation framework: using a program to model the structure of the dialog and specifying a program transformer to stage it. We write the first dialog as:

$$\frac{I}{\text{branch}\text{party}\text{state}}$$

where the $`I`$ denotes an interpreter. Similarly, the second dialog is represented as:

$$\frac{PE}{\text{branch}\text{party}\text{state}}$$

where the $`PE`$ denotes a partial evaluator. An interpreter permits only inputs that are responsive to the current solicitation and proceeds in a strict sequential order; it results in the most restrictive dialog. A PE, on the other hand, allows utterances of any combination of available input slots in the dialog. It is the most flexible of stagers.

We will introduce a third stager, called a curryer ($`C`$) that permits utterance of only valid prefixes of the input arguments. The dialog represented by

$$\frac{C}{\text{branch}\text{party}\text{state}}$$

allows utterance of either ‘branch,’ or (‘branch,’ ‘party’), or (‘branch,’ ‘party,’ ‘state’). In other words, if we are going to take the initiative at a certain point, we must also answer the currently posed question.

These stagers can be composed in a hierarchical fashion to yield dialogs comprised of smaller dialogs, or subdialogs. This allows us to make fine-grained distinctions about the structure of dialogs and the range of valid inputs. In this sense,

$$\frac{PE}{abcd}$$

is not the same as

$$\frac{PE}{\frac{PE}{ab}\frac{PE}{cd}}$$

The former allows all $`4!`$ permutations of $`\{a,b,c,d\}`$ whereas the latter precludes utterances such as $`cabd`$.

As a practical example of our dialog representation, consider a breakfast dialog involving specification of a {eggs, coffee, bakery item} tuple. The user can specify these items in any order, but each item involves a second clarification aspect. After the user has specified his choice of eggs, a clarification of ‘how do you like your eggs?’ might be needed. Similarly, when the user is talking about coffee, a clarification of ‘do you take cream and sugar?’ might be required, and so on. This form of mixing initiative is known as subdialog invocation . The set of interaction sequences that address this requirement can be represented as:

$$\frac{PE}{\frac{C}{e_1e_2}\frac{C}{c_1c_2}\frac{C}{b_1b_2}}$$

where $`e_1,e_2`$ are egg specification aspects, $`c_1,c_2`$ support coffee specification, and $`b_1,b_2`$ specify a bakery item.

The staging transformations framework also specifies a set of rules that dictate how a (dialog, stager) pair is to be simplified based on user input. Notice that this is not as straightforward as it looks as it might require a global restructuring of the representation. Assume that we stage the breakfast dialog using the interaction sequence $`c_1e_1c_2\mathrm{}`$; the occurrence of $`e_1`$ is invalid according to the dialog specification above, but we will not know that such an input is arriving at the time we are processing $`c_1`$. So in response to the input $`c_1`$, the dialog must be restructured as follows:

$$\frac{PE}{\frac{C}{e_1e_2}\frac{C}{c_1c_2}\frac{C}{b_1b_2}}\frac{C}{\frac{C}{c_2}\frac{PE}{\frac{C}{e_1e_2}\frac{C}{b_1b_2}}}$$

By replacing the top-level PE stager with a C, it becomes clear that the only legal input now possible must have $`c_2`$. Once the coffee subdialog is completed, the top-level stager will revert back to a PE. Such dialog restructurings are necessary if we are to remain faithful to the original specification. See  for formal algorithms to perform such dialog restructurings.

At this point, it must be clear that the staging transformation framework is a powerful representational basis to design dialogs: it has a uniform vocabulary for denoting specification aspects (e.g., each of the slots above could be filled via hyperlink clicks or by voice) and the use of stagers helps us control the mixing of initiative in a very precise manner.

In order to make the staging notation machine-readable, we have defined an XML representation of dialogs called DialogXML. Fig. 4 depicts a minimal DialogXML specification for the politicians example. DialogXML provides elements for defining the slots associated with a dialog, the textual prompts associated with each slot (not shown in Fig. 4), the accompanying vocal prompts and any tapering of them over the course of interaction (also not shown), confirmatory characteristics (whether the user’s response needs confirmation), and constructs for combining basic dialog elements to create complex dialogs. More details about DialogXML and the possible legal specifications are available in . While DialogXML borrows ideas from some tags in the VoiceXML standard , the structure of the DialogXML document is more closely modeled after the idea of stagers111It has been recently brought to our attention that there is a similar technology with the same name . This work, however, is an extension of the VoiceXML standard for voice interfaces and does not address multimodal interaction..

### 2.2 Site Creation and Content Generation

Having such a representation of the dialog is only the first step. We must create a site to reflect the underlying structure of the dialog and initiate speech processing to recognize the legal utterances as specified in the stager markup. Based on user input, we must simplify the dialog and present personalized content, including facilities for continuing the dialog.

An integrated software framework for this purpose is shown in Fig. 5. Operationally it can be divided into four modules: (i) seeding dialog representations, (ii) staging dialogs, (iii) input and output processing, and (iv) database connectivity. The idea of seeding dialog representations is to take a dialog specified in our DialogXML notation and create an internal representation, suitable for staging. The staging transformation framework is then used to handle dialog management. The embodiment of these dialogs must contend with voice realizations, hence a significant portion of the framework is devoted to generating grammars for speech output and validating voice input. The framework currently uses the SALT and Speech Recognition Grammars standards to handle voice interaction. Finally, the database operations module manages and streamlines the delivery of web content. Every website is organized as a database that the user initially selects for exploration via out-of-turn interaction. Each record in the database identifies a unique interaction sequence leading to a leaf web page (e.g., Senator Norm Coleman is identified by a record that describes his political affiliations and other addressable attributes).

When the interaction begins, the dialog manager uses the parsed DialogXML and metadata from the database to initialize the representation. The dialog manager must then decide what content to display on the page, the items to offer the user for selection, and the speech prompts to play for the current slot. In addition, the dialog manager must determine what aspects the user may specify out-of-turn. Through an analysis of the dialog representation and a set of SQL queries, it determines this information and generates a HTML page that contains relevant SALT XML objects and references to a suitably generated SRGS grammar. The grammar identifies all the legally speakable utterances for the particular page.

User input from both voice and hyperlinks is uniformly handled by the Utterance Validator module of the system. Upon receiving an utterance from the user, the module first determines whether the utterance contains fillings for multiple slots, and whether the utterance is valid. If part or whole of the utterance was invalid, then the system accepts the valid utterances and rejects the invalid utterances. An appropriate prompt is displayed and played to the user. Having tokenized the user’s utterance into its constituent fillings, the dialog manager then calls the staging transformer with the values for the fillings in the order they were received. After the representation is simplified, the dialog manager applies a suite of dialog motivators  (discussed below) to the dialog. If the dialog is not completed, content creation and speech grammar generation resumes.

The system is implemented as a Java web application using JSPs and Servlets. The application runs inside the Tomcat servlet engine. The system uses the Apache HTTPd web-server with a WARP connector to connect to the Tomcat servlet engine, and functions like a proxy-server. A PostgreSQL database server serves the example databases we use in this article. The web-application connects to the database server using the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API. It uses a meta-data API to learn about the structure of the data present in the database. An SQL query initially helps compute a VIEW that serves as the starting point for the dialog. This VIEW is used for all future interactions and helps reinforce that a user is always working with a personalized ‘view’ of the information space. The use of VIEWs can be used to increase system efficiency as they can be shared across many users. We tested the system using the Microsoft SALT plug-in for the Internet Explorer 6.0 browser on a system running Windows XP.

### 2.3 Dialog Motivators

The only aspect of the architecture to be covered are the dialog motivators and the grammar generators. Dialog motivators are useful nuggets of processing that help streamline the dialog at every user utterance. We use four main motivators:

1. complete-dialog: This motivator decides if a dialog is complete. A dialog is complete if a unique record in the database VIEW being used has been identified, or if there are no more items left to solicit input for in the dialog. In such cases, the unnecessary slots are removed from the representation.
2. prune-dialog: This motivator decides if the internal dialog representation can be pruned as a result of the previous utterance by the user. For example, in the case of a pizza dialog, if the user specifies a size of ‘small,’ and only pepperoni pizzas available in small size, there is no longer a need to ask the user for a topping. Thus the topping slot can be automatically filled with ‘pepperoni’ and removed from the dialog representation. While the current implementation does not provide the user with notification when a dialog is pruned in this fashion, such user-feedback is being considered for future work.

Notice that complete-dialog is a specialization of prune-dialog.
3. confirm-dialog: This motivator applies if the item has been designated in the DialogXML as one for which confirmation must be sought. In a real application, confirmation would be sought for utterances that have been recognized with a low value of confidence; however SALT does not provide us with the hooks to learn about confidence values of recognized utterances, hence we specify the need for confirmation in the DialogXML markup.
4. collect-results: This motivator applies if the user explicitly requested (via a ‘Show me results’ utterance) that the dialog be terminated in order to view a flat listing (of the relevant remaining records).

### 2.4 Grammar Generation

Grammar generation proceeds in a straightforward manner except for a careful division of labor between the browser, utterance validator, and the embedded speech grammars themselves. For instance, the system generates JavaScript to handle some types of interaction on the client side within the browser itself. Confirmation of the user’s utterance, ‘What may I say?,’ and ‘Show me something else’ type of questions are examples of interactions handled by JavaScript. The embedded SRGS grammars are used for encapsulating site-specific logic and are faithful to the $`C`$ and $`I`$ stager specifications. Generating grammar fragments corresponding to the $`PE`$ stager will result in an exponential enumeration of utterance possibilities, so we use a less restrictive grammar and allow the invalid utterances to be caught by the Utterance Validator instead.

## 3 Example Applications

Two applications have been created using the out-of-turn interaction framework presented above. The first is an interface to the Project VoteSmart website (http://www.vote-smart.org) and an example interaction has been already described in Fig. 1. This interface provides details on about 540 politicians comprising the U.S. Congress.

The second application is an interface to the fuel economy guide at the environmental protection agency (EPA – http://www.fueleconomy.gov). Th EPA provides raw data on fuel economy statistics about cars available in the United States in a comma separated format (CSV). For this article, we downloaded and reformatted data from the past three years (2000, 2001, and 2002) and loaded it into a PostgreSQL database. The dataset has a total of 2641 records, which translates to approximately 880 records. Upto 26 different attributes can be specified in any interaction with this database. We organized a dialog around three subdialogs. The first is an engine subdialog which solicits (fuel type, information about whether the engine is a gas guzzler, and if it is equipped with a turbo charger and/or a super charger). Another subdialog solicits information about the transmission (whether it is automatic or manual) and the drive (4 wheel or all wheel). The main specification aspects for the car (year, manufacturer, model, number) are included in another subdialog. While there are other ways to organize this information, we initialized the dialog representation as:

$$\frac{PE}{\frac{PE}{\text{year}\text{class}\text{maker}\text{model}}\frac{C}{\text{fuel}\text{gas}\text{super charged?}\text{turbo charged?}}\frac{C}{\text{transmission}\text{drive}}}$$

An example interaction is shown in Fig. 6. It depicts an expert user who knows exactly what he wants, and as a result does not need to engage in a dialog with the system. In a single utterance, he specifies three pieces of information that uniquely identify a car in the database. The dialog manager has applied the prune-dialog motivator to the items in the remaining dialog as these specification aspects are no longer necessary. The system redirects the user to a leaf page, where the user is able to see information about Ford Escort cars manufactured in 2000. This example also shows how the user is able to specify multiple utterances while interacting with the system.

We hasten to add that, for ease of presentation, the screenshots in this article were taken on a Microsoft PocketPC simulator. As of this writing, PocketPC does not support SALT and these case studies were actually tested using Microsoft Internet Explorer with the SALT plugin.

## 4 Discussion

The above applications have highlighted the key features of our software framework. The staging transformers have been primarily responsible for dialog control, specifying what the user may say at any given time. The dialog manager has streamlined the dialog, pruning it when necessary, and triggering the appropriate actions. Our modularized implementation approach makes it easy to construct speech-enabled interfaces to database-driven sites. For want of space, we have not demonstrated several other features of our system such as user response confirmation, tapered prompting, and results collection.

This work helps demonstrate the viability of our view of the speech-enabled web – namely, that of a flexible dialog between the user and the system which allows the user to take the initiative in controlling the flow of the dialog. Rosenfeld et al.  have argued that speech interfaces will become increasingly ubiquitous and will be able to support smaller form-factors without comprising usability. The applications presented here validate this viewpoint and help illustrate the importance of using voice to supplement interaction in mobile devices.

It is helpful to contrast our representation-based approach with other ways of specifying dialogs, notably VoiceXML. While they share some similarities, our DialogXML notation is purely declarative and captures only the structure of the dialog. Control is implicitly specified using program transformations, which makes the process of dialog specification less cumbersome for the designer. Furthermore, while VoiceXML permits mixed-initiative dialog sequences too, it does so more as a result of how its form interpretation algorithm (FIA) is organized. Using a combination of program transformation constructs and hierarchically composed dialogs, we are able to specify the nature of out-of-turn interaction in a manner not precisely expressable in VoiceXML (see  for more details).

The successful implementation of a dialog-based system  requires many more facets such as language understanding, task modeling, intention recognition, and plan management, which are beyond the scope of this work. We are now exploring several directions such as natural language speech input and extending the specification capability of DialogXML. We are also conducting usability studies for our multimodal interfaces and carefully assessing the role of speech as an out-of-turn interaction medium. Especially important is addressing the veritable ‘how do users know what to say?’ problem  for multimodal web browsing.

This work is an initial exploration into the use of multimodal interfaces to websites. As the use of browsers that support technologies such as SALT, X+V grows, the importance of software frameworks to support multimodal interaction will only increase.

## Acknowledgements

This work is supported in part by US National Science Foundation grants IIS-0049075, IIS-0136182, and by a grant from IBM to explore the use of VoiceXML within their WebSphere product. We acknowledge the helpful contributions of Michael Narayan (who designed the formal rules underlying staging transformations), Robert Capra (for input on speech-enabled interfaces), and Saverio Perugini (who implemented a toolbar version of out-of-turn interfaces ).


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# Deci hertz Laser Interferometer can determine the position of the Coalescing Binary Neutron Stars within an arc minute a week before the final merging event to Black Hole

## 1. Introduction

There are at least four frequency bands where active or planned gravitational wave antennae exist. The resonant bars as well as ground laser interferometers such as TAMA300 , LIGO I , VIRGO , and GEO600 are covering the frequency band of 10Hz–kHz while the timing analysis of pulsars is covering $`10^8`$Hz band. Laser Interferometer Space Antenna 111LISA web page http://lisa.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html (LISA) will cover $`10^410^2`$Hz from $``$ 2010. Very recently the space antenna in the deci Hertz band ($`10^210`$ Hz) comes into the group. According to Seto, Kawamura and Nakamura (2001) it might be possible to construct a laser interferometer gravitational wave antenna in space with $`h_{rms}10^{27}`$ at $`f0.1\mathrm{Hz}`$ in this century. Using this antenna they show that 1) $`10^5`$ chirp signals of coalescing binary neutron stars per year may be detected with S/N $`10^4`$. 2) The time variation of the Hubble parameter of our universe may be determined for ten years observation of binary neutron stars at $`z1`$ so that we can directly measure the acceleration of the universe. 3) the stochastic gravitational wave which is predicted by the inflationary universe paradigm, may be detected.

Seto et al. (2001) call the deci Hertz antenna DECIGO(DECi hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) while recently in the NASA SEU 2003 Roadmap “Beyond Einstein” the deci Hertz antenna is called as BBO (Big Bang Observer) 222See http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/be/roadmap.html to stress the detection of the stochastic gravitational waves from inflation. Since DECIGO and BBO are similar antennae, in this Letter we call the deci hertz antenna as DECIGO/BBO. In DECIGO, $`h_{rms}10^{27}`$ around 0.1 Hz is the ultimate goal in the far future, assuming the quantum limit sensitivity for a 100 kg mass.

Let us consider more realistic parameters which might be achieved in $`2020`$ such as 300W laser power, 3.5m mirrors, $`5\times 10^4`$km arm length and 0.01 LISA acceleration noise, which will give $`h_{rms}10^{23}`$ around 0.1 Hz (e.g. Larson, Hiscock & Hellings 2000). In this sensitivity, S/N of the chirp signal from the coalescing binary neutron stars at $`z1`$ will be $`1`$ while that of 10$`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ black hole binary will be $`10`$ so that we may directly measure the acceleration of the universe similar to the ultimate DECIGO. After subtracting the signals from neutron star binaries and black hole binaries 333There may be other sources that we do not know about at this point. we may detect the stochastic gravitational waves from inflation if $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{GW}10^{15}`$ which is the upper bound from CMB quadrupole anisotropies measured by COBE (Gorski et al. 1996).

One of the main targets of the ground laser interferometer gravitational wave antennae is the chirp signal from the coalescing binary neutron stars or black holes at the distance of $`200400`$Mpc with the expected event rate of $``$1 per year (e.g. Phinney 1991). Since the event rate is $``$1 per year, the same binary is in the band of DECIGO/BBO, $`110`$ years before the ground laser interferometers and bar detectors detect the gravitational waves from the final merging event. This means that in practice we may observe the evolution of the coalescing binary from $`10^2`$ Hz band to $``$kHz band. The duration in the band of the ground laser interferometer is three minutes or so while the duration in DECIGO/BBO band is 1-10 years so that we may extract the information of the binary from the DECIGO/BBO band observation first. The point here is that we may know the accurate position and the distance to the binary beforehand so that we can prepare various detectors for the observation of the final merging phase, that is, we can point electro-magnetic antennae from radio to ultra high energy gamma rays and cosmic rays to the direction of the coalescing binary at the expected final merging time. We may also tune the gravitational wave antennae to various sensitivity bands to detect the characteristics of the merging event such as the frequency at the inner most stable circular orbit and the quasi-normal mode of the final black hole.

In this Letter using the practical DECIGO/BBO in $`2020`$ we show how accurately we can determine the spatial position and the distance to the coalescing binary neutron stars or black holes. Since the angular resolution of LISA was calculated in (Cutler 1998; Hughes 2002; Seto 2002; Vecchio 2003), we apply these methods to the case of DECIGO/BBO. We adopt the Hubble parameter $`hH_0`$/100km/s/ Mpc=0.7 and the units of $`c=G=1`$.

## 2. Gravitational Waveform and Parameter Estimation

### 2.1. Sensitivity of DECIGO/BBO

DECIGO/BBO would consist of three spacecrafts separated by $`5\times 10^4`$ km which is 1/100 times smaller than the size of LISA (see Bender et al. 2000). They would be spaced in an equilateral triangle and be orbiting around the Sun. The change of the detector’s orientation and the position enables us to obtain the source position in the following two ways; (i) DECIGO/BBO’s orientation rotates with a period of one-year, which imposes the modulation on the measured signal. (ii) DECIGO/BBO’s orbital motion around the Sun imposes the periodic Doppler shift on the signal frequency (see also Cutler 1998 in the case of LISA). For the monochromatic signal of the frequency $`f`$, (i) the rotational modulation changes the frequency $`f`$ to $`f\pm 2/T`$, where $`T=1`$ yr ($`2/T10^7`$ Hz), (ii) the Doppler modulation changes $`f`$ to $`f(1\pm v)`$, where $`v10^4`$. Then for the frequency higher than $`10^3`$ Hz like in DECIGO/BBO, the effect of the Doppler modulation is more important for the determination of the source position than the rotational modulation so that we only consider the former effect in the measured signal. The observed waveform $`h`$ in the frequency domain $`\stackrel{~}{h}_D(f)`$ is given by,

$$\stackrel{~}{h}_D(f)=\stackrel{~}{h}(f)e^{i\varphi _D(f)}$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{~}{h}(f)`$ is the waveform at the solar system barycenter. $`\varphi _D(f)`$ is the Doppler phase, which is the difference of the phase between the detector and the Sun; $`\varphi _D=2\pi fR\mathrm{sin}\theta _S\mathrm{cos}(2\pi t/T\varphi _S)`$, where $`R=1`$ AU, $`T=1`$ yr and $`(\theta _S,\varphi _S)`$ is the direction to the source. These angular coordinates are defined in a fixed barycenter frame of the solar system (see Cutler 1998).

The strain sensitivity of DECIGO/BBO is about 1000 times better than that of LISA (i.e. $`10^{23}\text{Hz}^{1/2}`$ at $`f=0.11`$ Hz), and the acceleration noise is 100 times lower than that of LISA (i.e. $`3\times 10^{17}\text{m}/\text{s}^2/\text{Hz}^{1/2}`$). Adopting these parameters, we show the sensitivity of DECIGO/BBO as compared with LISA and LIGO II in Fig.1 (Larson et al. 2000). Note that we are using a smooth curve and neglecting the wavy behavior of the transfer function for simplicity.

### 2.2. Gravitational Waveform

We consider the equal mass neutron star and black hole binaries as sources of DECIGO/BBO. We only consider a circular orbit since the expected eccentricity is $`10^3`$ for the neutron star binary. We use the restricted 1.5 post-Newtonian approximation as the in-spiral waveform (Cutler & Flanagan 1994) for simplicity. The waveform in the frequency domain is given by,

$$\stackrel{~}{h}(f)=𝒜f^{7/6}e^{i\mathrm{\Psi }(f)},$$
(2)
where $`𝒜`$ is the amplitude and $`\mathrm{\Psi }(f)`$ is the phase. They depend on six parameters; the red-shifted chirp mass $`_z=(M_1M_2)^{3/5}(M_1+M_2)^{1/5}(1+z_S)`$, the reduced mass $`\mu _z=M_1M_2(1+z_S)/(M_1+M_2)`$, the spin-orbit coupling constant $`\beta `$, the coalescence time $`t_c`$ and the phase $`\varphi _c`$ and the luminosity distance to the source $`D_S`$. The amplitude is given by $`𝒜=K\sqrt{5/96}_z^{5/6}/(\pi ^{2/3}D_S)`$, where $`K`$ is the constant determined by the inclination of the source, the relative orientation of the source and the detector. Since the average value of $`K`$ is about unity (Finn & Chernoff 1993), we assume $`K=1`$ for the following calculation. The phase $`\mathrm{\Psi }(f)`$ in Eq.(2) is a rather complicated function of $`_z`$, $`\mu _z`$, $`\beta `$, $`\varphi _c`$ and $`t_c`$ which is given in Eq.(3.24) of Cutler & Flanagan (1994).

### 2.3. Parameter Estimation

The signal observed by DECIGO/BBO, $`\stackrel{~}{h}_D(f)`$, can be obtained inserting Eq.(2) to Eq.(1). The signal $`\stackrel{~}{h}_D(f)`$ is characterized by eight parameters ($`_z`$, $`\mu _z`$, $`\beta `$, $`\varphi _c`$, $`t_c`$, $`D_S`$, $`\theta _S`$, $`\varphi _S`$). In the matched filter analysis with the template, these parameters can be determined. We compute the errors in the estimation of these parameters using the Fisher matrix formalism (Finn 1992; Cutler & Flanagan 1994). The variance-covariance matrix of the parameter estimation error $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma _i`$ is given by the inverse of the Fisher information matrix $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ij}`$ as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma _i\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma _j=\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }^1\right)_{ij}`$. The Fisher matrix becomes

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ij}=4\text{Re}\frac{df}{Sn(f)}\frac{\stackrel{~}{h}_D^{}(f)}{\gamma _i}\frac{\stackrel{~}{h}_D(f)}{\gamma _j},$$
(3)
where $`Sn(f)`$ is the noise spectrum. We regard $`Sn(f)`$ as the instrumental noise in Fig.1, neglecting the binary confusion noise since there are no or little confusion noise for $`f0.1`$ Hz (Seto et al. 2001). The signal to noise ratio ($`S/N`$) is given by

$$(S/N)^2=4\frac{df}{Sn(f)}\left|\stackrel{~}{h}_D(f)\right|^2.$$
(4)
We integrate the gravitational waveform in Eq.(3) and Eq.(4) from 1 or 10 yr before the final merging to the cut-off frequency $`f_{cut}`$ when the binary separation becomes $`r=6(M_1+M_2)`$.

The initial frequency is given by $`f_{init}=0.23(_z/M_{})^{5/8}(T_{obs}/1\text{yr})^{3/8}\text{Hz}`$ where $`T_{obs}=1`$ or $`10`$ yr, and the cut-off frequency is $`f_{cut}=4.4\times 10^3[(M_{1z}+M_{2z})/M_{}]^1\text{Hz}`$. The result does not depend on the value of $`f_{\text{cut}}`$ so much, since $`Sn(f)`$ is large at $`f_{\text{cut}}`$.

## 3. Results

We consider the neutron star binaries ($`1.4M_{}+1.4M_{}`$) and the stellar mass BH binaries ($`10M_{}+10M_{}`$) at $`D_S=200\text{h}^1`$ Mpc and the intermediate mass BH binaries of mass ($`10^2M_{}+10^2M_{}`$) as well as ($`10^3M_{}+10^3M_{}`$) at $`D_S=3000\text{h}^1`$ Mpc (Hubble distance) as the sources. Note here that we adopt $`h=0.7`$. For each mass case we randomly distribute $`10^4`$ binaries on the celestial sphere at $`D_S`$, and we show the probability distribution of the angular resolution for these sources.

In Fig.2, we show the relative probability distribution of the angular resolution for the various binary masses $`M_{1,2z}=1.4M_{},10^{13}M_{}`$ in the case of $`1`$ yr observation. The solid lines and the dashed lines show $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta _S`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _S`$, respectively. We also show the signal to noise ratio $`S/N`$ and the estimation error in the coalescence time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_c`$ assuming the template is accurate enough. $`S/N`$ is independent of $`\theta _S`$ and $`\varphi _S`$ since the phase factor $`e^{i\varphi _D(f)}`$ becomes unity in Eq.(4) while $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_c`$ is found to depend on $`\theta _S`$ and $`\varphi _S`$ very weakly. In general, the errors ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta _S,\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _S,\mathrm{\Delta }t_c`$) simply scale as $`(S/N)^1`$. As shown in Fig.2, the angular resolutions are typically $`0.110`$ arc minutes for the neutron star binaries and the black hole binaries. This is about $`101000`$ times better than that of LISA ($`1`$ deg). The Doppler modulation ($`\varphi _Df`$ in Eq.(1)) effect is larger than the rotational modulation for the high frequency band like DECIGO/BBO. It is shown (Cutler & Vecchio 1998; Moore & Hellings 2002; Takahashi & Seto 2002), that the angular resolution scales as $`f^1(S/N)^1`$ for the monochromatic sources. Thus the angular resolution of DECIGO/BBO should be about 100 times better than that of LISA if the S/N is equal. This explains the accuracy of $`0.110`$ arc minute.

We comment the results for $`10`$ yr observation. In this case, the angular resolution is $`24`$ times better than the case for $`1`$ yr observation in Fig.2.

In Table.1, we show the $`S/N`$ and the estimation errors of the chirp mass $`_z`$, the reduced mass $`\mu _z`$, the coalescence time $`t_c`$ and the distance to the source $`D_S`$. The results are presented for the various binary masses ($`1.4,10^{13}M_{}`$) for 1yr (the upper line) and 10 yr (the lower line) observation. The errors simply scale as $`(S/N)^1`$ for the change of the distance to the source. For the accuracy of the chirp mass $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z10^7`$ and the reduced mass $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _z10^4`$, each mass of the binary is determined within $`10^4`$. The distance to the binary is determined by $`(S/N)^1`$.

## 4. Discussions

The distance to gamma ray bursts (GRBs) was not determined before 1997. The minimum possible distance was $``$ 100 AU and the maximum one was the Hubble distance (Fishman and Meegan 1995) so that many theoretical models were equally possible. The main reason why the distance to GRBs was not determined is that the accuracy of the spatial position of GRBs using the gamma ray observation was at most $``$ deg so that many possible host galaxies exist in an error box of GRBs. To find the host galaxy of GRB was akin to searching a needle in a haystack. In 1997 Italian-Dutch satellite Beppo-Sax succeeded in obtaining the high resolution ($``$ 2 arc minutes) X-ray images of GRBs which led to the determination of redshifts and host galaxies of GRBs (Costa et al 1997). This clearly demonstrates that the accuracy of an arc minute or so is indispensable to study the objects in full details.

In this Letter we showed that spatial position of coalescing binary neutron stars or black holes of mass $`10M_{}`$ at the distance of $`300`$ Mpc can be determined within an arc minute from one year observation. This accuracy is comparable or better than that of Beppo-SAX so that we may expect the rapid progress of research like in GRBs after 1997. 444 The situation for GRBs is a little different from that for coalescing compact binaries. For compact binaries, we can determine the distance without identification of a host galaxy. But there are $`10^4`$ galaxies in one square degree, and it would be difficult to identify the host galaxy even if the distance is determined.  In Beppo-SAX case the accurate position of GRBs was obtained a few hours after the GRB event. In our case the observation period is $`110`$ year before the final merging to black hole so that we would distribute the alert of the event beforehand.

Let us consider the observation from $`1`$ yr before the merging up to a day before the merging. In Fig.4, we show the angular resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi _S`$ for the neutron star binary ($`1.4+1.4M_{}`$) at $`200h^1`$ Mpc at each time. We integrate the waveform in Eq.(3) from $`1`$ yr before the final merging to three months (the dotted line), a month (the short dashed line), a week (the long dashed line) and a day (the dot-dashed line) before the merging. The solid line shows for the case of full one year observation up to the cut-off frequency. We see that the accuracy is $``$ 10 arc minutes at three months before the final merging while $``$ 0.4 arc minute at a day before so that the accuracy of the position depends on the time before the final merging.

In conclusion DECIGO/BBO in $``$ 2020 can determine the angular position of the neutron star binary and the black hole binary at $`300`$ Mpc within an arc minute before the final merging to the black hole. In a sense DECIGO/BBO will truly open gravitational wave astronomy since the positional accuracy is comparable to X-ray telescope on Beppo-SAX.

We would like to thank T. Tanaka and N. Seto for useful comments and discussions. This work was supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, No.14047212 and No.14204024.


text:
# Propagator of the interacting Rarita-Schwinger field

## Introduction

The covariant description of the spin 3/2 particles is usually based on the Rarita-Schwinger formalism Rar-Sch  where the main object is the spin-vector field $`\mathrm{\Psi }^\mu `$. However in addition to spin 3/2 this field contains extra spin 1/2 components and this circumstance generates the main difficulties in its description JohnSud61 ; VeZw69 . The problem has a long history, we mention here only relatively recent works Kor ; Pas98 ; Pas01 ; Cas ; Kir ; AKS  (see for older references therein) which contain some discussion of the problem.

The most general lagrangian for free Rarita-Schwinger field has the following form(see e.g. AU ; NEK ; BDM ):

$`=`$ $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}^\mu \mathrm{\Lambda }^{\mu \nu }\mathrm{\Psi }^\nu ,`$
$`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`(\widehat{p}M)g^{\mu \nu }+A(\gamma ^\mu p^\nu +\gamma ^\nu p^\mu )+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(3A^2+2A+1)\gamma ^\mu \widehat{p}\gamma ^\nu +M(3A^2+3A+1)\gamma ^\mu \gamma ^\nu .`$ (1)
Here $`M`$ is the mass of Rarita-Schwinger field, $`A`$ is an arbitrary parameter, $`p_\mu =i_\mu `$.

This lagrangian is invariant under the point transformation:

$`\mathrm{\Psi }^\mu \mathrm{\Psi }^\mu =(g^{\mu \nu }+\alpha \gamma ^\mu \gamma ^\nu )\mathrm{\Psi }^\nu ,AA^{}={\displaystyle \frac{A2\alpha }{1+4\alpha }},`$
with parameter $`\alpha 1/4`$.

The lagrangian (1) leads to the following equations of motion:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }^{\mu \nu }\mathrm{\Psi }^\nu =0.$$
(2)
The free propagator of the Rarita-Schwinger field in a momentum space obeys the equation:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }^{\mu \nu }G_0^{\nu \rho }=g^{\mu \rho }.$$
(3)
The expression for the free propagator $`G_0^{\mu \nu }`$ is well known (see references in above), thus we do not present it here.

As concerned for the dressed propagator, its construction is a more complicated issue and its total expression is unknown up to now. Thus a practical use of $`G^{\mu \nu }`$ (in particular for the case of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)`$ production) needs some approximation in its description. The standard approximation Pas95 ; KS  consist in a dressing of the spin 3/2 components only while the rest components of $`G^{\mu \nu }`$ can be neglected or considered as bare. Another way to take into account the spin 1/2 components is a numerical solution of the appearing system of equationsKor ; AKS . In Ref. Pas95  it was noticed that the spin 1/2 components are necessary to reproduce the experimental data on the $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)`$ production in Compton scattering. So the correct account of the extra spin 1/2 component in the $`\mathrm{\Psi }^\mu `$ field has also a practical meaning.

In this paper we derive an analytical expression for the interacting Rarita-Schwinger field’s propagator with accounting all spin components and shortly discuss its properties. It turned out that the spin 1/2 part of the dressed propagator has rather compact form, and a crucial point for its deriving is the choosing of a suitable basis.

## Dyson-Schwinger equation and its solution

The Dyson-Schwinger equation for the propagator of the Rarita-Schwinger field has the following form

$$G^{\mu \nu }=G_0^{\mu \nu }+G^{\mu \alpha }J^{\alpha \beta }G_0^{\beta \nu }.$$
(4)
Here $`G_0^{\mu \nu }`$ and $`G^{\mu \nu }`$ are the free and full propagators respectively, $`J^{\mu \nu }`$ is a self-energy contribution. The equation may be rewritten for inverse propagators as

$$(G^1)^{\mu \nu }=(G_0^1)^{\mu \nu }J^{\mu \nu }.$$
(5)
If we consider the self-energy $`J^{\mu \nu }`$ as a known value 111That is the widely used in the resonance physics ”rainbow approximation”, see e.g. recent reviewMaRo , than the problem is reduced to reversing of relation (5). This procedure is not technically evident and it needs some preparations. First of all it is useful to have a basis for both propagators and self-energy.

1. The most natural basis for the spin-tensor $`S^{\mu \nu }(p)`$ decomposition is the $`\gamma `$-matrix one:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill S^{\mu \nu }(p)=& g^{\mu \nu }s_1+p^\mu p^\nu s_2+\hfill \\ & +\widehat{p}p^\mu p^\nu s_3+\widehat{p}g^{\mu \nu }s_4+p^\mu \gamma ^\nu s_5+\gamma ^\mu p^\nu s_6+\hfill \\ & +\sigma ^{\mu \nu }s_7+\sigma ^{\mu \lambda }p^\lambda p^\nu s_8+\sigma ^{\nu \lambda }p^\lambda p^\mu s_9+\gamma ^\lambda \gamma ^5ı\epsilon ^{\lambda \mu \nu \rho }p^\rho s_{10}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
Here $`S^{\mu \nu }`$ is an arbitrary spin-tensor depending on the momentum $`p`$, $`s_i(p^2)`$ are the Lorentz invariant coefficients, and $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{2}[\gamma ^\mu ,\gamma ^\nu ]`$. Altogether there are ten independent components in the decomposition of $`S^{\mu \nu }(p)`$.

It is known that the $`\gamma `$-matrix decomposition is complete, the coefficients $`s_i`$ are free of kinematical singularities and constraints, and their calculation is rather simple. However this basis is inconvenient at multiplication and reversing of the spin-tensor $`S^{\mu \nu }(p)`$ because the basis elements are not orthogonal to each other. As a result the reversing of the spin-tensor $`S^{\mu \nu }(p)`$ leads to a system of 10 equations for the coefficients.
2. There is another basis used in consideration of the dressed propagator Kor ; AKS ; Pas95  $`G^{\mu \nu }`$. It is constructed from the following set of operators222We changed here the normalization of $`𝒫_{21}^{1/2}`$, $`𝒫_{12}^{1/2}`$ for convenience. BDM ; Pas95 ; PvanNie

$`(𝒫^{3/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`g^{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{p^\mu p^\nu }{p^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\gamma ^\mu \gamma ^\nu +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3p^2}}(\gamma ^\mu p^\nu \gamma ^\nu p^\mu )\widehat{p},`$
$`(𝒫_{11}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\gamma ^\mu \gamma ^\nu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{p^\mu p^\nu }{p^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3p^2}}(\gamma ^\mu p^\nu \gamma ^\nu p^\mu )\widehat{p},`$
$`(𝒫_{22}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{p^\mu p^\nu }{p^2}},`$
$`(𝒫_{21}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{p^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3p^2}}(p^\mu +\gamma ^\mu \widehat{p})\widehat{p}p^\nu ,`$
$`(𝒫_{12}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{p^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3p^2}}p^\mu (p^\nu +\gamma ^\nu \widehat{p})\widehat{p}.`$ (7)
Here $`𝒫^{3/2}`$,$`𝒫_{11}^{1/2}`$,$`𝒫_{22}^{1/2}`$ are the projection operators while $`𝒫_{21}^{1/2}`$,$`𝒫_{12}^{1/2}`$ are nilpotent. As for their physical meaning, it is clear that $`𝒫^{3/2}`$ corresponds to spin 3/2. The remaining operators should describe two spin 1/2 representations and transitions between them.

Let us rewrite the operators (7) to make their properties more obvious:

$`(𝒫^{3/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`g^{\mu \nu }(𝒫_{11}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }(𝒫_{22}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu },`$
$`(𝒫_{11}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`3\pi ^\mu \pi ^\nu ,`$
$`(𝒫_{22}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{p^\mu p^\nu }{p^2}},`$
$`(𝒫_{21}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{p^2}}}\pi ^\mu p^\nu ,`$
$`(𝒫_{12}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{p^2}}}p^\mu \pi ^\nu .`$ (8)
Here we introduced the vector

$$\pi ^\mu =\frac{1}{3p^2}(p^\mu +\gamma ^\mu \widehat{p})\widehat{p}$$
(9)
with the following properties:

$$(\pi p)=0,(\gamma \pi )=(\pi \gamma )=1,(\pi \pi )=\frac{1}{3},\widehat{p}\pi ^\mu =\pi ^\mu \widehat{p}.$$
(10)
The set of operators (7) can be used to decompose the considered spin-tensor as following Kor ; AKS :

$`S^{\mu \nu }(p)`$ $`=`$ $`(S_1+S_2\widehat{p})(𝒫^{3/2})^{\mu \nu }+(S_3+S_4\widehat{p})(𝒫_{11}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }+(S_5+S_6\widehat{p})(𝒫_{22}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }+`$ (11)
$`(S_7+S_8\widehat{p})(𝒫_{21}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }+(S_9+S_{10}\widehat{p})(𝒫_{12}^{1/2})^{\mu \nu }.`$
Let us call this basis as $`\widehat{p}`$-basis. It is more convenient at multiplication since the spin $`3/2`$ components $`𝒫^{3/2}`$ have been separated from spin $`1/2`$ ones. However, the spin $`1/2`$ components as before are not orthogonal between themselves and we come to a system of 8 equations when inverting the (5). Another feature of decomposition (11) is existence of the poles $`1/p^2`$ in different terms. So to avoid this unphysical singularity, we should impose some constraints on the coefficients at zero point.
3. Let us construct the basis which is the most convenient at multiplication of spin-tensors. This basis is built from the operators (7) and the projection operators $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^\pm `$

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }^\pm =\frac{\sqrt{p^2}\pm \widehat{p}}{2\sqrt{p^2}},$$

where we assume $`p^2>0`$. Ten elements of this basis look as

$`𝒫_1=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^+𝒫^{3/2},`$ $`𝒫_3=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^+𝒫_{11}^{1/2},`$ $`𝒫_5=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^+𝒫_{22}^{1/2},`$ $`𝒫_7=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^+𝒫_{21}^{1/2},`$ $`𝒫_9=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^+𝒫_{12}^{1/2},`$
$`𝒫_2=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}𝒫^{3/2},`$ $`𝒫_4=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}𝒫_{11}^{1/2},`$ $`𝒫_6=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}𝒫_{22}^{1/2},`$ $`𝒫_8=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}𝒫_{21}^{1/2},`$ $`𝒫_{10}=`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}𝒫_{12}^{1/2},`$ (12)
where tensor indices are omitted. We will call (12) as the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-basis.

Decomposition of a spin-tensor in this basis has the following form:

$$S^{\mu \nu }(p)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{10}{}}𝒫_i^{\mu \nu }\overline{S}_i(p^2).$$
(13)
The coefficients $`\overline{S}_i`$ are calculated in analogy with $`\gamma `$-matrix decomposition. Besides, we found (with computer analytical computation) the matrix relating the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-basis with the $`\gamma `$-matrix basis and convinced ourselves that this matrix is not singular. So the elements of this basis (12) are independent. It is easy to connect the expansion coefficients (11) and (13) between themselves.

$`\overline{S}_1=`$ $`S_1+\sqrt{p^2}S_2,`$
$`\overline{S}_2=`$ $`S_1\sqrt{p^2}S_2,\text{etc.}`$ (14)
The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-basis has very simple multiplicative properties which are represented in the Table 1.

The first six basis elements are projection operators, while the remaining four elements are nilpotent. We are convinced by direct calculations that there are no other projection operators besides indicated.

Now we can return to the Dyson-Schwinger equation (5). Let us denote the inverse dressed propagator $`(G^1)^{\mu \nu }`$ and free one $`(G_0^1)^{\mu \nu }`$ by $`S^{\mu \nu }`$ and $`S_0^{\mu \nu }`$ respectively. Decomposing the $`S^{\mu \nu }`$, $`S_0^{\mu \nu }`$ and $`J^{\mu \nu }`$ in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-basis according to (13) we reduce the equation (5) to set of equations for the scalar coefficients

$$\overline{S}_i(p^2)=\overline{S}_{0i}(p^2)+\overline{J}_i(p^2)$$

So the values $`\overline{S}_i`$ are defined by the bare propagator and the self-energy and may be considered as known.

The dressed propagator also can be found in this form

$$G^{\mu \nu }=\underset{i=1}{\overset{10}{}}𝒫_i^{\mu \nu }\overline{G}_i(p^2)$$
(15)
The existing $`6`$ projection operators take part in the decomposition of $`g^{\mu \nu }`$:

$$g^{\mu \nu }=\underset{i=1}{\overset{6}{}}𝒫_i^{\mu \nu }.$$
(16)
Now solving the equation

$$G^{\mu \nu }S^{\nu \lambda }=g^{\mu \lambda }$$

in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-basis, we obtain a set of equations for the scalar coefficients $`\overline{G}_i`$. The equations are easy to solve due to simple properties of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-basis — see Table 1.

The solution is:

$`\overline{G}_1`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\overline{S}_1}},\overline{G}_2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\overline{S}_2}},`$
$`\overline{G}_3`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_6}{\mathrm{\Delta }_1}},\overline{G}_4={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_5}{\mathrm{\Delta }_2}},\overline{G}_5={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_4}{\mathrm{\Delta }_2}},\overline{G}_6={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_3}{\mathrm{\Delta }_1}},`$
$`\overline{G}_7`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_7}{\mathrm{\Delta }_1}},\overline{G}_8={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_8}{\mathrm{\Delta }_2}},\overline{G}_9={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_9}{\mathrm{\Delta }_2}},\overline{G}_{10}={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{S}_{10}}{\mathrm{\Delta }_1}},`$ (17)
where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_1=\overline{S}_3\overline{S}_6\overline{S}_7\overline{S}_{10},\mathrm{\Delta }_2=\overline{S}_4\overline{S}_5\overline{S}_8\overline{S}_9.$$
(18)
The $`\overline{G}_1`$, $`\overline{G}_2`$ terms which describe the spin 3/2 have the usual resonance form and could be obtained from (11) as well. As for $`\overline{G}_3\overline{G}_{10}`$ coefficients which describe the spin 1/2 contributions, they have a more complicated structure. Let us consider the denominators of (17) in more details.

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_1=`$ $`\overline{S}_3\overline{S}_6\overline{S}_7\overline{S}_{10}=(S_3+\sqrt{p^2}S_4)(S_5\sqrt{p^2}S_6)(S_7+\sqrt{p^2}S_8)(S_9\sqrt{p^2}S_{10}),`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_2=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1(\sqrt{p^2}\sqrt{p^2}).`$ (19)
The appearance of $`\sqrt{p^2}`$ factor is typical for fermions. To see it one can find the dressed propagator of the spin 1/2 Dirac particle with a help of the projection operators $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^\pm `$.

$$\frac{1}{\widehat{p}m}\frac{1}{\widehat{p}m\mathrm{\Sigma }(p)}=\mathrm{\Lambda }^+G^++\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}G^{}$$
(20)
The dressed unrenormalizated propagator is:

$`(G^+)^1=`$ $`mA(p^2)+\sqrt{p^2}(1B(p^2)),`$
$`(G^{})^1=`$ $`mA(p^2)\sqrt{p^2}(1B(p^2)),`$ (21)
where $`A,`$ $`B`$ are the self-energy components:

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(p)=A(p^2)+\widehat{p}B(p^2).$$

Note that use of the projection operators $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^\pm `$ in the case of Dirac particle is useful but not necessary technical step. After renormalization thus obtained propagator will coincide with expression given in any textbook. As for the apparent branch point $`\sqrt{p^2}`$, it is canceled in total expression (20). The same is true for the dressed Rarita-Schwinger propagator (17).

Note that the propagator’s denominators (19) are not similar by their structure to the Dirac case (21). The nearest analogy for the Rarita-Schwinger field propagator is the joint dressing of two Dirac fermions with account for their mutual transition. Probably this analogy will be useful in the renormalization.

## Conclusion

Thus we obtained the simple analytical expression (17) for the interacting Rarita-Schwinger field propagator which accounts for all spin components. To derive it we introduced the spin-tensor basis (12) with very simple multiplicative properties. This basis is singular and it seems unavoidable (recall the vector field case). Nevertheless the singularity of a basis is not so big obstacle in its use. We did not suppose here any symmetry properties of the self-energy $`J^{\mu \nu }`$ restricting ourselves by general case. Of course the concrete form of interaction will lead to some symmetry of $`J^{\mu \nu }`$ and it will be important at renormalization.

Note some features of the obtained answer (17). First, if there is only one spin 1/2 pole it can not appear in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ simultaneously. Second, it is well known that $`\mathrm{\Psi }^\mu `$ field contains two spin 1/2 components (two irreducible representations) associated with $`𝒫_{11}^{1/2}`$ and $`𝒫_{22}^{1/2}`$ operators. However it turns out that these two representations are not completely independent since they have common denominators $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$.

The obtained dressed propagator (17) solves an algebraic part of the problem, the following step is renormalization. Note that the investigation of dressed propagator is the alternative for more conventional method based on equations of motion (see, i.e Ref. Pas99  and references therein). The natural requirement for the renormalization is that the spin $`1/2`$ components should remain unphysical after dressing. In other words the denominators $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ should not acquire of zero in the complex energy plane. However a problem of the renormalization needs a more careful consideration.

## Acknowledgements

We are indebted D. V. Naumov for reading the manuscript and useful remarks. We thank G. Lopez Castro and D. V. Ahluwalia-Khalilova for comments and references.


text:
# A survey of Probable Open Cluster Remnants in the Galactic Disk

## 1. NGC 1901

NGC 1901 is a loose aggregate of stars (see Fig. 1, left panel) in Doradus, and it is the subject of a recent paper by Pavani et al. (2001). They present new CCD photometry, which they combine with proper motions and conclude that NGC 1901 is a physical aggregate, whose features are not typical of a classical open cluster, but better describe an open cluster remnant. This is quite clear from the vector point diagram in Fig 1 (right panel) which shows a clear concentration of stars having the same tangential motion.
In this study we present a radial velocity survey of the 16 brightest stars in NGC 1901, which allow us to better constrain the cluster membership, an derive updated estimates of its fundamental parameters.

In Fig. 2 (left panel) we present a few example of high resolution spectra, whereas in Fig. 2 (right panel) we show the radial velocity distribution which allows \- together with the vector point diagram - to discriminate between members and non members. We find that $`v_r`$ = -3.5$`\pm `$1.0 km/sec, and a radial velocity dispersion of 2.4 km/sec.

Once members have been selected, we build up their Color Magnitude Diagram (CMD), which is presented in Fig. 3 (left panel). The cluster exhibits a clear Main Sequence (MS), which are nicely fit by a solar abundance 500 Myr isochrone from the Padova group (Girardi et al. 2000). From this fit we derive an absolute distance modulus $`(mM)_0`$ = 8.25$`\pm `$0.16 and a reddening E$`(BV)`$ = 0.06$`\pm `$0.03, in agreement with previous study. Our spectra are single epoch spectra, and therefore we are not able to derive a binary fraction estimate, which would be quite an important constrain for $`N`$-body models. Second epoch observations are however planned. Nonetheless, by inspecting the CMD, we can argue that two stars off the Main Sequence at V $``$ 11 might be actually binaries.
The Present Day Mass Function (PDMF) is not the Salpeter anymore, but (see Fig. 3, right panel) it is a power law with a slope amounting at -1.6 (solid line). Noticeably, there is a significant lack of low mass stars with respect to the Salpeter MF (dashed line).
The comparison with available $`N`$-body models of clusters evolution and dissolution (de la Fuente Marcos 1997) leads us to conclude that the initial population of the clusters was around 500 stars. In fact such an initial models after half a billion years should have 15 members, exactly like NGC 1901.

Work is in progress to secure membership definition for a number of POCRs on a radial velocity basis (Villanova 2003, Villanova et al. 2003).

## References

Bica E., et al., 2001, A&A 366, 827
de la Fuente Marcos R., 1997, A&A 332, 764
Girardi L., et al. , 2000, A&AS 141, 371
Pavani D.B., et al., 2001, A&A 374, 554
Villanova S., 2003, Master Thesis, Padova University
Villanova S., Carraro G., Skiff B., de la Fuente Marcos R., 2003, in preparation


text:
# References

Comment on “Solitonlike Solutions of the Grad-Shafranov Equation”

G. N. Throumoulopoulos111 gthroum@artemis1.physics.uoi.gr, K. Hizanidis#222 kyriakos@central.ntua.gr, H. Tasso$``$333 het@ipp.mpg.de
University of Ioannina,
Association Euratom-Hellenic Republic,
Department of Physics, GR 451 10 Ioannina, Greece.
$`\mathrm{\#}`$National Technical University of Athens,
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
9 Iroon Polytehniou Str., Zografou Campus,
157 73 Athens, Greece
$``$ Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik,
Euratom association,
D-85748 Garching bei München, Germany

Abstract

In the above entitled recent publication by Giovanni Lapenta \[Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 135005 (2003) \] it is claimed construction of a new class of solitonlike solutions for the Grad-Shafranov equation in plane geometry. It is proved here that, because of the mathematically erroneous choice $`p=|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }`$ for an analytic continuation of the poloidal magnetic flux-function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ in the complex plane ($`p`$ is the pressure), the cubic Schrödinger equation considered by the author is irrelevant to the equilibrium problem and the Grad-Shafranov equation.

In a recent publication , the author claims derivation of a new class of solitonlike solutions for the Grad-Shafranov equation in plane geometry. The equilibrium equations considered are (Eqs. (5) )

$`\left(\mathrm{\Psi }\times B_z\right)\widehat{𝐳}`$ $`=`$ $`0`$
$`p+^2\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }+B_zB_z`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (1)
where $`p(\mathrm{\Psi })`$ and $`B_z(\mathrm{\Psi })`$ are the pressure and the $`z`$\- component of the magnetic field, respectively. The following forms of the free functions $`p`$ and $`B_z`$ are then chosen (Eq. (13) )

$$B_zB_z=\alpha _0^2\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }$$
(2)
$$p=\alpha _0^2|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(3)
and (1) is extended in the complex plane, thus leading to the cubic Schrödinger equation (Eq. (14) )

$$\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }}{x^2}+\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }}{y^2}=\alpha _0^2(1+|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2)\mathrm{\Psi }.$$
(4)
A solitonlike solution of (4) is (Eq. (15) )

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(x,y)=\mathrm{\Psi }_psech(x/L)e^{j(\alpha _0+1/2\alpha _0y_0^2)y}.$$
(5)
For a complex function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, however, the rhs of (3) becomes a non holomorphic function, i.e. owing to the fact that $`|\mathrm{\Psi }|`$ does not have derivative, the term $`\alpha _0^2|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }`$ can not be a function gradient as the lhs of (3) requires. An explicit proof follows. Taking the curl of (3) yields $`|\mathrm{\Psi }|\times \mathrm{\Psi }=0`$, implying that $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ depends only on $`|\mathrm{\Psi }|`$:

$$\mathrm{\Psi }=f(|\mathrm{\Psi }|).$$
(6)
In order that the complex function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ be analytic, on account of (6) and the Cauchy-Riemann conditions leads to $`|\mathrm{\Psi }|=`$ constant and therefore $`\mathrm{\Psi }=`$ constant. Also, even without requiring analyticity of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, by only considering its polar form, $`\mathrm{\Psi }=|\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathrm{exp}(j\mathrm{\Theta }(x,y))`$, Eq. (6) implies that

$$\mathrm{\Theta }=\mathrm{\Theta }(|\mathrm{\Psi }|).$$
(7)
Solution (5), however, is inconsistent with (7) (otherwise it should hold that $`x=x(y)`$). Therefore, (4) is irrelevant to the Grad-Shafranov equation; as a matter of fact the real part of (5),

$$u(x,y)=\mathrm{\Psi }_psech(x/L)\mathrm{cos}\left[(\alpha _0+1/2\alpha _0y_0^2)y\right],$$

does not satisfy the respective Grad-Shafranov equation

$$\frac{^2u}{x^2}+\frac{^2u}{y^2}=\alpha _0^2(1+u^2)u.$$
(8)
A mathematically legitimate choice for $`p`$, instead of (3), could be

$$p=\alpha _0^2\mathrm{\Psi }^3\mathrm{\Psi }.$$
(9)
This leads to an equation of the form (8) for $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Solving this equation in the complex plane, however, is a task not easier than that for real $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$.

In conclusion, because of the mathematically erroneous choice (3) for an analytic continuation of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, the cubic Schroedinger equation (4) considered by the author is irrelevant to the equilibrium problem (1) and to the Grad-Shafranov equation. Despite this unlucky situation we consider the idea of the author as appealing, and hope that it will be successful in the future if used in an appropriate setting.

Acknowledgements

Part of this work was conducted during a visit of one of the authors (G.N.T.) to the Max-Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching. The hospitality of that Institute is greatly appreciated.

The present work was performed under the Contract of Association ERB 5005 CT 99 0100 between the European Atomic Energy Community and the Hellenic Republic.


text:
# Mass Dependence of Disappearance of Transverse Flow

## I Introduction

The heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies provide a rich physical insight into the reaction dynamics. One has measured (and/or predicted) several new phenomena that may shed light on the nature of hot and dense nuclear matter formed during a collision. In addition, one also hopes to understand the nature of nuclear interactions in medium. The prediction of collective transverse flow by the hydrodynamical model was a very important step towards the understanding of excited nuclear matter scheid74 . The collective transverse flow was found to be very sensitive towards different signals of excited nuclear matter. Apart from the transverse flow, one has also proposed e.g. differential flow li99 , and elliptic flow zheng99 . All these quantities are assumed to be sensitive towards the (nuclear matter) equation of state and/or nucleon-nucleon (nn) cross-section$``$ the ultimate goal of the intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions. One should however, keep in the mind that the reaction dynamics depends also on the incident energy as well as on the impact parameter of the reaction. At low incident energies, the dynamics is governed by the attractive mean field whereas the repulsive interactions decide the fate of a reaction at higher incident energies. Naturally, the effect of nn collisions decreases with decrease in the incident energy. The dominance of the attractive mean field (at low incident energies) may prompt the emission of particles into backward hemisphere whereas if nn scatterings dominate, the particle emission is likely to be in the forward hemisphere. Therefore, while going from the low incident energy to higher energy, the attractive interactions may be balanced by the repulsive interactions, resulting in the net zero flow (i.e. the disappearance of flow). The energy at which the flow disappears is termed as the balance energy mol85 .

During the last few years, extensive efforts have been made to measure and understand the disappearance of flow west93 ; pak96 ; ang97 ; sull90 ; krof91 ; he96 ; cus02 ; mag0062 ; westnpa ; krof92 ; zhang90 ; mag0061 ; buta95 . One has measured the balance energy ($`E_{bal}`$) in 12C+12C west93 , 20Ne+27Al west93 , 36Ar+27Al ang97 ; buta95 , 40Ar+27Al sull90 , 40Ar+45Sc west93 ; pak96 ; mag0062 , 40Ar+51V krof91 , 64Zn+27Al he96 , 40Ar+58Ni cus02 , 64Zn+48Ti buta95 , 58Ni+58Ni cus02 ; mag0062 ; westnpa , 58Fe+58Fe westnpa , 64Zn+58Ni buta95 , 86Kr+93Nb west93 ; mag0062 , 93Nb+93Nb krof92 , 129Xe+118Sn cus02 , 139La+139La krof92 , and 197Au+197Au mag0062 ; zhang90 ; mag0061  systems. The very recent and accurate measurement of the balance energy $`E_{bal}`$ in 197Au+197Au mag0062 ; mag0061  has generated a renewed interest in the field cus02 . Interestingly, most of the reported reactions are symmetric in nature. It should be kept in the mind that the reaction dynamics depends also upon the asymmetry of the reaction singh00 . All the above mentioned measurements were for the central collisions only. Some measurements pak96 ; sull90 ; he96 ; cus02 ; mag0062 ; westnpa  however, also took the impact parameter dependence into account. As noted in ref. mag0062 , the $`E_{bal}`$ for heavier nuclei shows a little dependence on the impact parameter whereas a large variation in the $`E_{bal}`$ can be seen for lighter colliding nuclei pak96 ; mag0062 . The possible cause could be the fact that the disappearance of flow for heavier nuclei occurs at a much lower incident energy compared to lighter nuclei (e.g. the measured $`E_{bal}`$ for 197Au+197Au is 42$`\pm `$3$`\pm `$1 MeV/nucleon mag0061  whereas it is 111$`\pm `$10 MeV/nucleon for 20Ne+27Al west93 ). In the (nearly) absence of nn collisions at low incident energies, a little dependence should occur on impact parameter puri98 . Some attempts also exist in the literature where enhancement in the $`E_{bal}`$ with neutron content was found experimentally/theoretically westnpa ; lie98 ; li96 .

The above findings reveal the measurements of balance energy in more than 15 systems ranging from very light to heavy nuclei. As a result, a power law behaviour ($``$$`A^\tau `$) has also been reported for $`E_{bal}`$ west93 ; mag0062 ; mag0061 ; buta95 . Earlier the power law parameter “$`\tau `$” was supposed to be close to –1/3 (resulting from the interplay between the attractive mean field and repulsive nn collisions) west93  whereas the recent measurements suggest a deviation from the above mentioned power law mag0062 ; mag0061 .

Various theoretical attempts have been made to understand the vanishing of nuclear flow. Most of these are, however, using the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck model li99 ; zheng99 ; mol85 ; west93 ; sull90 ; he96 ; mag0062 ; westnpa ; krof92 ; mag0061 ; li96 ; zhounpa ; kla93 ; xu92 ; li93 ; zhou94 . Some attempts are also reported in the literature where Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model was used pak96 ; lie98 ; soff95 ; leh96 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 . Different theoretical attempts considered either a stiff or soft equation of state along with variety of nn cross-sections. Interestingly, out of all these studies, only a couple of attempts exist where mass dependence of the disappearance of flow was discussed west93 ; mag0062 ; mag0061 ; buta95 ; zhou94 ; soodsym ; sood03 . A careful analysis shows that in refs. west93 ; zhou94  a total mass $``$200 was considered for the power law studies whereas in refs. soodsym ; sood03  only heavier masses $``$175 were analyzed. There the $`E_{bal}`$ for heavier nuclei was found to scale as approximately $`1/\sqrt{A}`$ soodsym ; sood03  whereas lighter and medium mass nuclei follow A-1/3 dependence west93 ; zhou94 . Refs. mag0062 ; mag0061  included for the first time, a larger mass range 63/47$``$A$``$394. However, even in these studies, only six systems were taken into account (note that the power law fit was made for those systems which were recorded in the 4$`\pi `$ NSCL experiment. The data from the GANIL experiments, however, was not taken into account for fitting). The earlier mass dependence by the same group west93  also considered five systems only. We here present, for the first time, a complete study of the mass dependence in the disappearance of flow by analyzing as many as fifteen central collisions ranging from 20Ne+27Al to 197Au+197Au/238U+238U. The corresponding experimental measurements were reported by several different groups west93 ; pak96 ; ang97 ; sull90 ; krof91 ; he96 ; cus02 ; mag0062 ; westnpa ; krof92 ; zhang90 ; mag0061 ; buta95 . This study, therefore, will present a unified analysis of the balance energy irrespective of the experimental setup/group. The present study is carried out within the framework of the Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model singh00 ; puri98 ; lie98 ; soff95 ; leh96 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 ; suneel981 ; aich ; hart . The details of the model are given in section 2. The results and discussion is presented in section 3 and we summarize our results in section 4.

## II The Model

We describe the time evolution of a heavy-ion reaction within the framework of Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model singh00 ; puri98 ; lie98 ; soff95 ; leh96 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 ; suneel981 ; aich ; hart  which is based on a molecular dynamics picture. Here each nucleon is represented by a coherent state of the form

$$\varphi _\alpha (x_1,t)=\left(\frac{2}{L\pi }\right)^{\frac{3}{4}}e^{(x_1x_\alpha (t))^2}e^{ip_\alpha (x_1x_\alpha )}e^{\frac{ip_\alpha ^2t}{2m}}.$$
(1)
Thus, the wave function has two time dependent parameters $`x_\alpha `$ and $`p_\alpha `$. The total n-body wave function is assumed to be a direct product of coherent states:

$$\varphi =\varphi _\alpha (x_1,x_\alpha ,p_\alpha ,t)\varphi _\beta (x_2,x_\beta ,p_\beta ,t)\mathrm{}.,$$
(2)
where, antisymmetrization is neglected. The initial values of the parameters are chosen in a way that the ensemble ($`A_T`$+$`A_P`$) nucleons give a proper density distribution as well as a proper momentum distribution of the projectile and target nuclei. The time evolution of the system is calculated using the generalized variational principle. We start out from the action

$$S=_{t_1}^{t_2}[\varphi ,\varphi ^{}]𝑑\tau ,$$
(3)
with the Lagrange functional

$$=\left(\varphi \left|i\mathrm{}\frac{d}{dt}H\right|\varphi \right),$$
(4)
where the total time derivative includes the derivatives with respect to the parameters. The time evolution is obtained by the requirement that the action is stationary under the allowed variation of the wave function

$$\delta S=\delta _{t_1}^{t_2}[\varphi ,\varphi ^{}]𝑑t=0.$$
(5)
If the true solution of the Schrödinger equation is contained in the restricted set of wave function $`\varphi _\alpha (x_1,x_\alpha ,p_\alpha ),`$ this variation of the action gives the exact solution of the Schrödinger equation. If the parameter space is too restricted, we obtain that wave function in the restricted parameter space which comes close to the solution of the Schrödinger equation. Performing the variation with the test wave function (2), we obtain for each parameter $`\lambda `$ an Euler-Lagrange equation;

$$\frac{d}{dt}\frac{}{\dot{\lambda }}\frac{}{\lambda }=0.$$
(6)
For each coherent state and a Hamiltonian of the form, $`H=_\alpha \left[T_\alpha +\frac{1}{2}_{\alpha \beta }V_{\alpha \beta }\right]`$, the Lagrangian and the Euler-Lagrange function can be easily calculated aich

$$=\underset{\alpha }{}\dot{𝐱}_\alpha 𝐩_\alpha \underset{\beta }{}V_{\alpha \beta }\frac{3}{2Lm},$$
(7)
$$\dot{𝐱}_\alpha =\frac{𝐩_\alpha }{m}+_{p_\alpha }\underset{\beta }{}V_{\alpha \beta },$$
(8)
$$\dot{𝐩}_\alpha =_{𝐱_\alpha }\underset{\beta }{}V_{\alpha \beta }.$$
(9)
Thus, the variational approach has reduced the n-body Schröndinger equation to a set of 6n-different equations for the parameters which can be solved numerically. If one inspects the formalism carefully, one finds that the interaction potential which is actually the Bruckner G-matrix can be divided into two parts: (i) a real part and (ii) an imaginary part. The real part of the potential acts like a potential whereas the imaginary part is proportional to the cross-section.

In the present model, interaction potential comprises of the following terms:

$$V_{\alpha \beta }=V_{loc}^2+V_{loc}^3+V_{Coul}+V_{Yuk},$$
(10)
$`V_{loc}`$ is the Skyrme force whereas $`V_{Coul}`$ and $`V_{Yuk}`$ define, respectively, the Coulomb and Yukawa terms. The expectation value of these potentials is calculated as

$`V_{loc}^3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle f_\alpha (𝐩_\alpha ,𝐫_\alpha ,t)f_\beta (𝐩_\beta ,𝐫_\beta ,t)V_I^{(2)}(𝐫_\alpha ,𝐫_\beta )}`$ (11)
$`\times d^3𝐫_\alpha d^3𝐫_\beta d^3𝐩_\alpha d^3𝐩_\beta ,`$
$`V_{loc}^3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle f_\alpha (𝐩_\alpha ,𝐫_\alpha ,t)f_\beta (𝐩_\beta ,𝐫_\beta ,t)f_\gamma (𝐩_\gamma ,𝐫_\gamma ,t)}`$ (12)
$`\times V_I^{(3)}(𝐫_\alpha ,𝐫_\beta ,𝐫_\gamma )d^3𝐫_\alpha d^3𝐫_\beta d^3𝐫_\gamma `$
$`\times d^3𝐩_\alpha d^3𝐩_\beta d^3𝐩_\gamma .`$
Where $`f_\alpha (𝐩_\alpha ,𝐫_\alpha ,t)`$ is the Wigner density which corresponds to the wave functions (eq. 2). If we deal with the local Skyrme force only, we get

$$V^{Skyrme}=\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{A_T+A_P}{}}\left[\frac{A}{2}\underset{\beta =1}{}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\rho }_{\alpha \beta }}{\rho _0}\right)+\frac{B}{C+1}\underset{\beta \alpha }{}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\rho }_{\alpha \beta }}{\rho _0}\right)^C\right].$$
(13)
Here A, B and C are the Skyrme parameters which are defined according to the ground state properties of a nucleus. Different values of C lead to different equations of state. A larger value of C (=380 MeV) is often dubbed as stiff equation of state.

A number of attempts exist in the literature which study the nature of equation of state. Following refs. li99 ; zheng99 ; mol85 ; pak96 ; sull90 ; he96 ; zhounpa ; xu92 ; zhou94 ; soff95 ; leh96 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 , we shall also employ a stiff equation of state through out the present analysis. It should also be noted that the success rate is nearly the same for stiff and soft equations of state. Further, it has been shown in refs. sull90 ; he96 ; zhounpa ; xu92 ; zhou94  that the difference between $`E_{bal}`$ using a stiff and soft equation of state is insignificant for central heavy-ion collisions.

The imaginary part of the potential i.e. the nn cross-section has been a point of controversy. A large number of calculations exist where a constant and isotropic cross-section is used. Following refs. sull90 ; he96 ; zhounpa ; xu92 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 ; barz96 ; roy97 , we also use constant energy independent cross-section. As shown by Li li93 , most of the collisions below 100 MeV/nucleon happen with nn cross-section of 55 mb strength. Keeping the present energy domain into mind, the choice of a constant cross-section is justified. It has also been also shown by Zheng et al. zheng99  that a stiff equation of state with free nn cross-section and a soft equation of state with reduced cross-section yield nearly the same results. For comparison, we shall also use an energy dependent cross-section as fitted by Cugnon aich  (labeled as Cug) as well as a medium dependent cross-section derived from G-matrix aich  (denoted by GMC).

## III Results and Discussion

Using a stiff equation of state along with different nn cross-sections, we simulated the above mentioned reactions for 1000-3000 events in each case. The reactions were followed till transverse flow saturates. The saturation time varies between 150 fm/c (for lighter colliding nuclei such as 20Ne+27Al) and 300 fm/c (for heavier colliding nuclei such as 197Au+197Au). In particular, we simulated 20Ne+27Al at b=2.6103 fm, 36Ar+27Al at b=2 fm, 40Ar+27Al at b=1.6 fm, 40Ar+45Sc at b=3.187 fm, 40Ar+51V at b=2.442 fm, 64Zn+27Al at b=2.5 fm, 40Ar+58Ni at b=0-3 fm, 64Zn+48Ti at b=2 fm, 58Ni+58Ni at b=2.48 fm, 64Zn+58Ni at b=2 fm, 86Kr+93Nb at b=4.07 fm, 93Nb+93Nb at b=3.104 fm, 129Xe+NatSn at b=0-3 fm, 139La+139La at b=3.549 fm and 197Au+197Au at b=2.5 fm. The choice of impact parameter is based on the experimentally extracted information \[5-17\]. The above reactions were simulated at incident energies between 30 MeV/nucleon and 150 MeV/nucleon depending upon the mass of the system. Naturally, a lower energy range was used for heavy nuclei whereas a higher beam energy was needed for lighter cases. The reactions were simulated at different fixed incident energies and a straight line interpolation was used to find the balance energy $`E_{bal}`$.

There are several methods used in the literature to define the nuclear transverse flow. In most of the studies, balance energy is extracted from ($`p_x/A`$) plots where one plots ($`p_x/A`$) as a function of $`Y_{cm}/Y_{beam}`$. Using a linear fit to the slope, one can define the so-called reduced flow (F). Naturally, the energy at which the reduced flow passes through zero, is called the balance energy. Alternatively, one can also use a more integrated quantity “directed transverse momentum $`p_x^{dir}`$” which is defined as leh96 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 ; suneel981 ; aich ; hart :

$$p_x^{dir}=\frac{1}{A}\underset{i}{}sign\{Y(i)\}p_x(i),$$
(14)
where $`Y(i)`$ and $`p_x(i)`$ are the rapidity distribution and transverse momentum of the $`ith`$ particle. In this definition, all rapidity bins are taken into account. It, therefore, presents an easier way of measuring the in-plane flow rather than complicated functions such as the ($`p_x/A`$) plots. It is worth mentioning that the balance energy is independent of the nature of emitted particle west93 . Further, the apparatus correction and acceptance does not play any role in calculating the energy of vanishing flow west93 ; krof91 .

In fig. 1, we display the final state transverse momentum $`p_x/A`$ as a function of the rapidity which is defined as:

$$Y(i)=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{𝐄(i)+𝐩_z(i)}{𝐄(i)𝐩_z(i)},$$
(15)
where $`𝐄(i)`$ and $`𝐩_z(i)`$ are, respectively, the total energy and longitudinal momentum of $`ith`$ particle. The upper parts are for 20Ne+27Al (at 150 fm/c) and 40Ar+45Sc (at 150 fm/c), whereas the bottom parts are for 139La+139La (at 300 fm/c) and 197Au+197Au (at 300 fm/c). The middle part is for 64Zn+58 Ni (at 300 fm/c) and 93Nb+93Nb (at 300 fm/c). In all cases, the slope is negative at lower incident energies which changes to positive value at higher incident energies. Between these limits, the slope becomes almost zero at a particular energy. This zero slope energy is termed as balance energy. One also notices that a higher value of incident energy is needed in lighter cases to balance the attractive and repulsive forces. This energy decreases with increase in the mass of the system.

A look at fig. 2, where $`p_x^{dir}`$ (instead of $`p_x/A`$) is plotted, depicts quite similar trends. Here $`p_x^{dir}`$ is displayed as a function of the reaction time. The $`p_x^{dir}`$ during initial stage is always negative irrespective of the incident energy. This shows that the interactions among nuclei are attractive during the initial phase of the reaction. These interactions remain either attractive throughout the time evolution, or may turn repulsive depending on the incident energy. The transverse flow in lighter colliding nuclei saturates earlier compared to heavy colliding nuclei. One also sees a sharp transition from negative to positive flow in lighter nuclei. This transition is gradual when one analyzes the heavier nuclei. If one compares figs. 1 and 2, one finds that the disappearance of flow (where flow is zero) occurs at same incident energies in both cases showing the equivalence between ($`p_x/A`$) and $`p_x^{dir}`$ as far as balance energy is concerned. The latter quantity is more useful since it is stable than former one. These findings are in agreement with refs. leh96 ; suneel98 .

It has been advocated by several authors that the study of disappearance of flow can shed light on the magnitude of nn cross-section zheng99 ; west93 ; sull90 ; he96 ; mag0062 ; westnpa ; mag0061 ; zhounpa ; xu92 ; li93 ; zhou94 ; leh96 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 . To check this point with reference to mass dependence, we show in fig. 3, the final stage $`p_x^{dir}`$ as a function of the incident energy. The left panel is for 20Ne+27Al, 64Zn+58Ni and 139La+139La, respectively, for top, middle and bottom whereas top, middle and bottom of right hand side displays the results, respectively, of 40Ar+45Sc, 93Nb+93Nb and 197Au+197Au. The experimental data are displayed by stars whereas the present results with $`\sigma `$=55, 40 and 20 mb are shown, respectively, by solid circles, open squares and solid triangles. The $`p_x^{dir}`$ obtained with energy dependent cross-section due to Cugnon (labeled as Cug) and the one that takes the medium into account (i.e. the G-matrix) are marked by solid diamonds and inverted triangles, respectively. First of all, we see that the medium effects in nn cross-section do not play any role at these low incident energies. The results obtained with Cugnon energy dependent cross-section and G-matrix medium dependent cross-section are roughly the same for heavier colliding nuclei where reactions are simulated at low incident energies. Some visible differences, however, can be seen in the case of light colliding nuclei where incident energy is relatively high. One also sees a linear enhancement in the nuclear flow with increase in the incident energy. Further, the role of different cross-sections is consistent through out the present mass range. The largest cross-section gives more positive flow which is followed by the second larger cross-section. Interestingly, these effects depend on the mass of the system. If one looks at the reaction of 20Ne+27Al, one sees that the $`E_{bal}`$ increases from 89 MeV/nucleon to 244 MeV/nucleon when nn cross-sections is reduced from 55 mb to 20 mb. Whereas the range of $`E_{bal}`$ for the same cross-sections was 47-83 MeV/nucleon for 93Nb+93Nb reaction. If one goes to still heavier nuclei, 197Au+197Au, the range of $`E_{bal}`$ narrows down to 38-59 MeV/nucleon. In other words, a reduction in the cross-section by 64% percent yields a change of 155 MeV/nucleon in the case of 20Ne+27Al reaction, whereas it is only 21 MeV/nucleon for the case of 197Au+197Au. Similarly looking at the curves of $`\sigma `$=55 and 40 mb, a reduction in the cross-section by 27% yields a difference of 30 MeV/nucleon in the $`E_{bal}`$ for 20Ne+27Al reaction whereas nearly 4 MeV difference exists for the case of 197Au+197Au reaction. This result, which is in agreement with the findings of refs. mag0062 ; westnpa , depicts that for heavier colliding nuclei, the $`E_{bal}`$ is independent of the cross-section one is choosing. Further, the standard energy dependent nn cross-section (Cug) fails to reproduce the observed balance energy in almost all the cases. However, a constant cross-section of 40 mb strength seems to be closer to the experimental observed balance energy. This conclusion is supported by several other groups where a cross-section of 30-40 mb was used to reproduce the experimental data sull90 ; he96 ; zhounpa ; xu92 ; li93 ; zhou94 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 ; barz96 ; roy97 . This will be discussed in detail in the following paragraphs.

It has been argued in refs. leh96 ; blat91  that the flow at any point during the reaction can be divided into the parts emerging from the (attractive) mean field potential and (repulsive) nn collisions. Following leh96 , we decomposed the transverse momentum into the contributions created by the mean field and two- body nn collisions. This extraction, which is made from the simulations of the QMD model, is done as following leh96 : Here at each time step during the collision, momentum transformed by the mean field and two- body collision is analyzed separately. Naturally, we get two values at each step which can be followed throughout the reaction. The total transverse momentum can be obtained by adding both these contributions.

In fig. 4, we display the final state $`p_x^{dir}`$ decomposed into two parts i.e. into the mean field and two- body collision parts as a function of the incident energies for different colliding systems as reported in fig. 3. Again a linear enhancement in the flow with energy can be seen. Further, the contribution of the mean field remains attractive throughout the energy range whereas collision contribution is always repulsive. The balancing of both these contributions results in net zero flow. One should, however, keep in the mind that the contribution of the mean field potential may even turn repulsive at higher incident energies blat91 .

In fig. 5, we display the energy of vanishing flow ($`E_{bal}`$) as a function of the combined mass of the system for fifteen different colliding pairs that range from 20Ne+27Al to 197Au+197Au. In our earlier communication sood03 , a prediction of $`E_{bal}`$ for 238U+238U was also reported. It is worth mentioning that this is the first ever attempt that deals with as many as fifteen systems. Earlier attempts of mass dependence west93 ; mag0062 ; mag0061 ; buta95 ; zhou94  had taken about six cases into account. Apart from the experimental data, we also show our results for $`\sigma `$=35 and 40 mb. All curves are a fit of the form $`c.A^\tau `$ using $`\chi ^2`$ minimization procedure. The experimental data can be fitted by $`\tau _{expt}=0.42079\pm 0.04594`$ whereas our present results with $`\sigma `$=40 mb has $`\tau _{40}=0.41540\pm 0.08166`$. The results with $`\sigma `$=35 mb yields $`\tau _{35}=0.43037\pm 0.08558`$. Exclusively, one can extract the following:

* The present value of $`\tau _{expt}`$ differs from the earlier reported results ($`\tau _{expt}=1/3`$ for A$``$200 west93  and $`\tau _{expt}=0.46\pm 0.06`$ mag0061  for A$``$400 mass). Note that in earlier attempts mag0062 ; mag0061 , the data of NSCL alone was used to fit the power law. In the present case, we have taken data from different sources amounting to 15 reactions. Therefore, the present analysis is universal in nature.
* The present theoretical value $`\tau _{40}=0.41540\pm 0.08166`$ is the closest one obtained so far. In earlier reports west93 , the $`\tau _{expt}`$ was $`1/3`$ whereas BUU model yielded $`0.28`$$``$$`\tau _{th}`$$``$$`0.32`$. In another study mag0061 , the $`\tau _{expt}`$ was $`0.46\pm 0.06`$ whereas BUU model has $`\tau _{th}=0.41\pm 0.03`$. In other words, the present QMD model with a stiff EOS along with $`\sigma `$=35-40 mb can explain the data much better than any other theoretical calculations. Our present analysis has much wider mass spectrum than any early attempt. Some deviations in the middle order are also reported by other authors li93 . The $`\sigma `$=40 explains $`E_{bal}`$ in heavier nuclei whereas $`\sigma `$=35 reproduces a middle order nicely.
* From the figure, it is also evident that a true cross-section for this energy domain should be between 35 and 40 mb. This conclusion is very important since a wide range of masses was used for the present analysis. Our conclusion about the strength of the nn cross-section is in agreement with large number of earlier calculations on disappearance of flow and other phenomena in heavy-ion collisions sull90 ; he96 ; zhounpa ; xu92 ; li93 ; zhou94 ; suneel98 ; soodsym ; sood03 ; barz96 ; roy97 . As noted in ref. zhou94 , this value of nn cross-section is still much less than the actual averaged free nn cross-section which is about 60 mb chen68 . In the case of fragmentation, a larger cross-section of $`\sigma `$=55 mb is also suggested barz96 .

We have also tried to fit the balance energy in terms of other parameters such as the charge of the colliding nuclei. This attempt is shown in fig. 6 where $`E_{bal}`$ is plotted as a function of the total atomic number of the system. In the upper part, we display the full range of the systems whereas in the lower part, only heavier nuclei are taken into picture. A power law $``$$`Z^\tau `$ fits the data nicely. Now $`\tau `$ is $`0.46703\pm 0.04745`$ ($`0.45808\pm 0.08688`$) for experimental data (theoretical results) which is larger compared to mass power law ($`\tau =0.42079\pm 0.04594(0.41540\pm 0.08166)`$) for experiment data (theoretical results). This difference in the slopes stems from the different charge/mass ratio in lighter and heavy nuclei. Interestingly, the value of $`\tau `$ for heavier nuclei (see fig. 6(b)) is $`0.59316\pm 0.0622`$ ($`0.58483\pm 0.11409`$). This result, which is in agreement with ref. mag0061 , shows the dominance of the Coulomb interactions in heavier colliding nuclei. It would be of further interest to investigate whether the flow due to the collision and mean field parts (at the balance energy) exhibit any mass dependence or not. We display, in fig. 7, the flow $`p_x^{dir}`$ at balance energy due to the collision (upper) and mean field parts (lower). Interestingly, we do not see any clear mass dependence. Rather very weak dependence (with $`\tau =0.09427\pm 0.08379`$) exists on the system size. This is in agreement with ref. blat91 , where a similar conclusion was drawn.

## IV Summary

We have studied the mass dependence of the disappearance of flow in large number of colliding nuclei using QMD model. As many as fifteen reactions with masses between 47 and 476 were studied for the first time, where experimental balance energy was available. Our findings suggest a weak dependence of different cross-sections for heavier colliding nuclei in agreement with mag0062 . For the first time, fifteen different reactions were studied and our calculations with a stiff equation of state are in excellent agreement with experimental data. We could reproduce the slope of the power law ($``$$`A^\tau `$) very well. Our calculations suggest a cross-section of 35-40 mb in this incident energy domain. We also showed that the collective flow due to mean field is attractive whereas it is repulsive for collision part. The balancing of these two parts results in the disappearance of flow.

This work is supported by the grant (No. SP/S2/K-21/96) from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Figure Captions

FIG. 1. The averaged $`p_x/A`$ as a function of $`Y_{c.m.}/Y_{beam}`$. Here we display the results at different incident energies using a stiff equation of state along with $`\sigma `$=40 mb. The reactions of 20Ne+20Al and 40Ar+45Sc are at 150 fm/c whereas those of 64Zn+58Ni, 93Nb+93Nb, 139La+139La and 197Au+197Au are at 300 fm/c.

FIG. 2. The time evolution of $`p_x^{dir}`$ as a function of time. Here again results are for stiff equation of state along with $`\sigma `$=40 mb.

FIG. 3. The $`p_x^{dir}`$ as a function of the incident energy. The results for different cross-sections of 55, 40 and GMC are represented, respectively, by the solid circles, open squares and solid inverted triangles whereas for Cug and 20 mb are represented by solid diamonds and solid triangles. A stiff equation of state has been used. All lines are to guide the eyes.

FIG. 4. The decomposition of $`p_x^{dir}`$ into collision and mean field parts as a function of incident beam energy. Here results are displayed for $`\sigma `$=40 mb. Stars are the experimental balance energy.

FIG. 5. The balance energy as a function of combined mass of the system. The experimental points along with error bars are displayed by solid stars whereas our theoretical calculations for $`\sigma `$=35 and 40 mb are shown by open triangles and squares. The lines are the power law $``$$`c.A^\tau `$. The solid, dashed and dash-dotted lines represent the power law fit for experimental points, with $`\sigma `$=40 and 35 mb, respectively.

FIG. 6. (a) Balance energy as a function of atomic number Z. Here we display the experimental results along with our calculations for $`\sigma `$=40 mb. The fits are obtained with $`\chi ^2`$ minimization for power law function $`c.Z^\tau `$. (b) Same as (a), but for heavier nuclei.

FIG. 7. The decomposition of the $`p_x^{dir}`$ at balance energy into collision and mean field parts. The results are obtained using a stiff equation of state along with $`\sigma `$=40 mb.