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# Damped Ly𝛼 Gas Metallicities at Redshifts 𝑧=0.9-2.0 from SDSS SpectraBased on data obtained in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and by the Hubble Space Telescope, operated by STScI-AURA, for NASA.

## 1. Introduction

Over a decade ago Pettini and collaborators presented the first in a series of studies aimed at deriving metal abundances for the neutral-gas-phase component of the Universe at high redshift (see Pettini et al. 1999 and references therein). In their initial studies they relied on medium-resolution spectroscopy of the Zn II $`\lambda \lambda `$2026,2062, and Cr II $`\lambda \lambda `$2056,2062,2066 absorption lines in QSO damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems (DLAs). Measurements of metals in DLAs with $`N_{HI}2\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2 are appropriate for studies of the cosmic neutral-gas-phase metallicity because these systems trace the bulk of the neutral hydrogen gas mass of the Universe out to at least redshift $`z3.5`$ (see Storrie-Lombardi & Wolfe 2000, Rao & Turnshek 2000, hereafter RT2000, and references therein). It was realized that measurements of the Zn II and Cr II lines using medium-resolution spectra would likely be sufficient to consider the problem because the lines would be unsaturated even in DLAs.

However, selection effects and small number statistics continue to be important concerns in these studies. For example, the presence of dust in a subset of absorbers would dim the corresponding background QSOs, causing a bias against finding absorbers with high dust content. Moreover, while a column density-weighted determination of the cosmic metallicity is the most relevant measurement for tracking the overall chemical evolution of the neutral gas, this leads to a result mostly dominated by a few of the highest $`N_{HI}`$ systems. Since individual absorbers have a range of metallicities, the uncertainty introduced by the small number of very high $`N_{HI}`$ absorbers studied to date is a problem.

Instead of measuring individual QSO absorption-line systems, we take the approach of using composite spectra here, which leads to preliminary measurements of the DLA gas metallicity of the Universe at moderate redshift. We derive the composites from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000) early data release (EDR; Stoughton et al. 2002) QSO spectra (Schneider et al. 2002), which individually show evidence for high-$`N_{HI}`$ absorption based on their Mg II absorption-line properties. By using these composite spectra, the worries related to small number statistics can be mitigated. We have used 223 absorption-line systems in the redshift interval $`0.9z2.0`$ to make composites in this initial study, representing a total integrated neutral hydrogen column density of $`N_{HI}^{tot}8\times 10^{22}`$ atoms cm-2. This exceeds corresponding numbers for previously studied individual systems: 42 systems over the redshift interval $`0.4<z<3.5`$ with $`N_{HI}^{tot}4\times 10^{22}`$ atoms cm-2 (Pettini et al. 1999; Prochaska & Wolfe 1999; Molaro et al. 2000; Ge, Bechtold, & Kulkarni 2001).

## 2. Analysis

### 2.1. Sample Definition

Using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) UV spectroscopy, RT2000 showed that strong intervening Mg II$``$Fe II absorption-line systems identified in QSO spectra characteristically have very high neutral hydrogen column density gas (generally $`10^{19}<`$ $`N_{HI}`$ $`<10^{22}`$ atoms cm-2). Many are DLAs with $`N_{HI}2\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2. RT2000 showed that $`95`$% of these DLAs can be identified by selecting systems which have a Mg II $`\lambda `$2796 rest equivalent width (REW) $`W_0^{\lambda 2796}>0.5`$ Å and Fe II $`\lambda `$2600 REW $`W_0^{\lambda 2600}>0.5`$ Å. We have used these results to establish criteria for selecting high-$`N_{HI}`$ systems in the past. Here we use a slightly revised criterion ($`W_0^{\lambda 2796}1.0`$ Å) to obtain a sample of 370 high-$`N_{HI}`$ systems. It is straightforward to select absorption-line systems above this threshhold using SDSS spectra.111We note that our composite spectra indicate that $`W_0^{\lambda 2796}`$ is $`1.9`$ times larger than $`W_0^{\lambda 2600}`$. Thus, we are generally consistent with the criterion that $`W_0^{\lambda 2600}>0.5`$ Å. Recognizing weaker systems is also possible, but with greater incompleteness due to signal-to-noise considerations. In Nestor et al. (2003, in preparation) we will present the findings of a survey for Mg II $`\lambda \lambda `$2796,2802 absorption-line systems in SDSS QSO spectra. The results will establish the incidence of Mg II systems as a function of REW and also include measurements of Fe II $`\lambda `$2600 and Mg I $`\lambda `$2852, when available. The details of selecting systems (e.g., continuum fitting, equivalent width measurements, completeness) will be discussed there. It should be emphasized that our selection method basically amounts to a kinematic, as opposed to a metallicity-based, criterion. This is because the Mg II $`\lambda `$2796 absorption lines are on the saturated part of the curve of growth, so their REWs are essentially measures of velocity spread rather than column density.

### 2.2. Forming and Measuring the Composite Spectra

The 370 absorbers in our sample were found in 3683 SDSS EDR spectra. To form composites we continuum-normalized each spectrum (and error array) and wavelength-shifted them into the absorber rest frame. To accomplish this, a spectrum was first rebinned on a finer subpixel grid, with subpixels having one-fifth the size of an original pixel; this minimized data smoothing due to rebinning. We then used visual inspection to eliminate 70 spectra that suffered from abnormalities or poor signal-to-noise in the Zn II$``$Cr II region of interest. In principle, the remaining 300 spectra would all be valuable for forming composites. However, one of the goals of our analysis is to make an accurate measurement of the Zn II $`\lambda 2026`$ absorption line, and in SDSS medium-resolution spectra this line is potentially blended with the low-oscillator-strength Mg I $`\lambda 2026`$ absorption line. Therefore, in this initial study, we decided to estimate the contribution of Mg I $`\lambda 2026`$ to the blend by only using spectra that also had data on the higher-oscillator-strength (but generally unsaturated) Mg I $`\lambda 2852`$ absorption line. This resulted in the elimination of 77 more systems for which Mg II $`\lambda `$2852 was unavailable. We then experimented with different methods for forming composites and found that inverse variance-weighting produced the highest signal-to-noise ratio composites, so we adopted results produced by this method since there is no known correlation between $`N_{HI}`$ and spectrum signal-to-noise ratio. Other methods (e.g., straight averaging) would have produced somewhat lower signal-to-noise ratio composites. We note that, if QSO dimming due to the presence of dust and, therefore, high metal content, is significant, we would be underestimating the mean metallicity, as our weighting method favors brighter QSOs.

The composite spectrum in the Zn II$``$Cr II region derived from the entire sample of 223 absorbers is shown in the left panel of Figure 1. The right panel of Figure 1 shows other composites formed by roughly dividing the sample into quarters while keeping the variance approximately the same. These subsamples correspond to Mg II absorbers with low REW ($`1.0W_0^{\lambda 2796}<1.3`$ Å) and high REW ($`W_0^{\lambda 2796}1.3`$ Å), and at lower redshift ($`0.9z<1.35`$) and higher redshift ($`1.35z2.0`$) within the total sample. This subdivision leads to some important results (§3 and §4). Measurements of the absorption lines in the Zn II$``$Cr II region in the five composites shown in Figure 1 are reported in Table 1, along with the characteristic properties that define the total sample and four subsamples.

### 2.3. The Mean $`N_{HI}`$ of the Sample

To estimate the mean neutral hydrogen column density of the absorber sample, we have measured $`N_{HI}`$ (when available) for every known Mg II system with $`W_0^{\lambda 2796}1`$ Å, i.e., 24 systems studied by RT2000 and 51 new systems from ongoing HST UV spectroscopy of the Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption line in strong Mg II systems (Rao et al. 2003, in preparation). These 75 systems have neutral hydrogen column densities in the range $`5\times 10^{18}<`$ $`N_{HI}<7\times 10^{21}`$ atoms cm-2, and their mean neutral hydrogen column density is $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ $`=3.6\pm 1.3\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2, which we take to be the mean neutral hydrogen column density of our sample. There is no indication that the $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ values for the four subsamples are different from that determined for the entire sample.

However, the REW regime considered (§2.1) does not represent a census of all H I in the Universe over the studied redshift interval, nor does it represent all DLAs with $`N_{HI}2\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2. RT2000 estimated that 5% of DLAs are missed using their selection criterion and the results of Nestor et al. (2002) indicate that about half of the DLAs are missed by excluding $`0.5<W_0^{\lambda 2796}<1.0`$ Å systems from a composite spectrum. Our HST spectroscopy suggests that Mg II systems in this REW range have mean neutral hydrogen column density $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ $`=2.7\pm 1.2\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2. This is 25% smaller than the mean neutral hydrogen column density for higher REW Mg II systems, but statistically equivalent given the measurement errors. These effects need to be accounted for when deriving the cosmic neutral-gas-phase metallicity of DLAs (§3).

## 3. Measurements and Abundance Results

The basis for using the Zn II and Cr II absorption lines for element abundance determinations stems from the fact that these lines are unsaturated. This can be verified through high-resolution studies (e.g., Prochaska & Wolfe 1999). Although there has been some discussion of the importance of ionization corrections for metal abundance determinations in DLAs (e.g., Howk & Sembach 1999), we will not consider this since it is an issue that needs further study and ionization corrections have not been made when reporting DLA metal abundances in the literature. However, it is generally agreed that the bulk of the Zn and Cr is singly ionized in the DLA neutral regions. Thus, we assume that a determination of \[Zn+/H0\] is equivalent to \[Zn/H\] and a determination of \[Cr+/Zn+\] is equivalent to \[Cr/Zn\].

The notes to Table 1 provide information on the method we use to deduce metal abundances, but two clarifications should be made. First, the $`W_0^{\lambda 2796}1.0`$ Å composite over the studied redshift interval does not sample all of the DLA gas. By excluding $`W_0^{\lambda 2796}<1.0`$ Å systems, $`45`$% of the DLA gas is likely to be excluded from the composite (§2.3). Second, the subsample composites with $`1.0W_0^{\lambda 2796}<1.3`$ Å show no detectable metallicity (Table 1), suggesting that the missed DLA gas has negligible metallicity. Thus, to derive the cosmic DLA gas metallicity, we must reduce the derived metallicity in the full composite sample by a factor of $`1.8`$. Overall we then find that \[Zn/H\] = $`1.13\pm 0.19`$ in DLAs, or $`7.4\pm 1.1\%`$ solar. The result for Cr, which does not correct for the missed DLAs, is \[Cr/Zn\] = $`0.45\pm 0.13`$, indicating that $``$ 65% of the Cr is depleted on to grains.

We also find that trends are present. The derived metallicities are highest in the subsamples with the largest REWs, which correspond to those with the largest velocity spreads (Table 1). Within the high-REW regime, the Zn metallicity is larger and \[Cr/Zn\] is smaller in the lower redshift composite. These results are equivalent to column-density-weighted determinations of cosmic neutral-gas-phase metallicities in DLAs. Our findings are consistent with and directly comparable to the results of Pettini et al. (1999) and, more recently, the results summarized by Turnshek et al. (2003).

The statistical error on $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ is 36% (0.16 dex). Thus, since the measured errors on REWs in the total sample and in the two high-REW subsamples are smaller, this error dominates the uncertainties in \[Zn/H\] determinations. With the aide of future HST UV spectroscopy of high-$`N_{HI}`$ systems, this error may be reduced. The statistical errors in \[Cr/Zn\] determinations are smaller since $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ does not enter into the determinations. Recall that, within the redshift and REW intervals under study, there is at present no evidence that $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ is correlated with redshift or REW. However, if such a correlation were present, it would give rise to a systematic error requiring additional analysis to remove. In all cases the errors quoted are statistical errors propagated from REW and/or $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ measurement errors.

## 4. Conclusions and Discussion

We have derived cosmic DLA gas Zn and Cr abundances in two Mg II REW intervals which correspond to high and low velocity spread regimes. Within each of these kinematic regimes we have considered low-redshift ($`0.9z<1.35`$) and high-redshift ($`1.35z2.0`$) intervals. We find that:

(1) At redshifts $`0.9z2.0`$, after correcting for missed DLAs, we find that the overall \[Zn/H\] = $`1.13\pm 0.19`$ ($`7.4\%`$ solar). We find \[Cr/Zn\] = $`0.45\pm 0.13`$ ($`65\%`$ of the Cr is depleted), but this does not correct for the missed DLAs.

(2) According to Savage & Sembach (1996), \[Cr/Zn\] values in the Milky Way Galaxy are typically $`0.5`$ (halo), $`0.8`$ (disk+halo), $`1.1`$ (warm disk), and $`2.1`$ (cool disk). Thus, while our measured value of \[Cr/Zn\] provides evidence for significant depletion of Cr on to dust grains, the effect is not nearly as large as in the Galactic ISM. It is of interest to assess the affect of this dust in the high-REW subsamples at low and high redshift since they exhibit the highest metallicities. For the adopted $`<`$$`N_{HI}`$$`>`$ of our sample ($`3.6\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2), this amount of dust in the absorber rest frame would give rise to mean values of $`<`$A$`{}_{V}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{absorber}`$$`>=0.07`$ mag for the low-redshift subsample ($`<`$$`z`$$`>`$=1.15, \[Zn/H\]$`=0.56`$, \[Cr/Zn\]$`=0.64`$) and $`<`$A$`{}_{V}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{absorber}`$$`>=0.02`$ mag for the high-redshift subsample ($`<`$$`z`$$`>`$=1.53, \[Zn/H\]$`=0.94`$, \[Cr/Zn\]$`=0.38`$). This is largely independent of the nature of the dust, i.e., Galactic-like, LMC-like, or SMC-like. Individual high-Mg II-REW absorbers would undoubtedly exhibit a reasonable spread of A$`{}_{V}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{absorber}`$ values around these mean values, and typically the low-Mg II-REW absorbers would give rise to little extinction. For a high REW absorber at the mean redshifts of the low and high redshift subsamples, the mean V-band extinctions in the observer frame would be $`<`$A$`{}_{V}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{observed}`$$`>=0.16`$ mag and $`<`$A$`{}_{V}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{observed}`$$`>=0.06`$ mag, respectively. These results provide some indication of the importance of selection effects caused by dust, but the possible exclusion of extremely dusty absorbers due to dimming of background QSOs is still an open issue.

(3) There are clear trends in the composite spectra which indicate that metallicities are higher in absorption systems with larger velocity spreads (i.e., in the high-Mg II-REW absorbers). Moreover, among the high-Mg II-REW absorbers, both the metallicity and dust content increase with decreasing redshift, with \[Zn/H\]$`=0.56`$ (28% solar) and \[Cr/Zn\]$`=0.64`$ at $`<`$$`z`$$`>=1.15`$ and \[Zn/H\]$`=0.94`$ (11% solar) and \[Cr/Zn\]$`=0.38`$ at $`<`$$`z`$$`>=1.53`$. Two explanations, or a combination of the two, seem viable. One is that larger velocity spreads correspond to deeper gravitational potential wells. These more massive regions would lead to more chemically evolved structures. The other is that larger velocity spreads correspond to regions with more intense bursts of star formation. This would also lead to kinematically broad structures of chemically enriched gas.

(4) Finally, the findings presented here suggest that future analyses of the full set of SDSS spectra will result in a significantly better understanding of the neutral-gas-phase metallicity of the Universe in the redshift interval $`0.9z2.0`$, due to the $``$ 30-fold increase in the number of available SDSS spectra and the inclusion of results on weaker Mg II absorbers.

We thank members of the SDSS collaboration who made the SDSS project a success and who made the QSO EDR spectra available.222Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, NASA, NSF, DOE, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/. The SDSS is managed by ARC for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are University of Chicago, Fermilab, Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the US Naval Observatory, and University of Washington. We also acknowledge support from NASA-STScI, NASA-LTSA, and NSF. We thank Eric Furst for initial work on detecting Mg II systems in the SDSS EDR sample of QSOs. DBN thanks Sara Ellison for discussions on searches for dust-reddening in SDSS absorber spectra. This study is an extension of that ongoing work.


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# Another type of log-periodic oscillations on Polish stock market?

## 1 Introduction

Starting from 1996, Sornette et al.  in the series of papers , give arguments that crashes are analogous to critical points, which are preceded by log-periodic oscillations. Such oscillations were studied in statistical physics. The interactions between investors lead to a speculative ”bubble” which ends in a crash. Over 50 such crashes have been described on stock, FX and Gold market. Moreover, using the symmetric in time bubble formula they have found so called ”anti-bubble” price development which describes how a market behaves after a crash. Starting at rapidly oscillating state after the crash a market goes down with its price decorated by log-periodic oscillations. Both types of oscillations: bubble and anti-bubble are assigned to herding behavior of investors. However difficulties have been encountered when crashes on Eastern Europe stock markets were studied . We propose another type of oscillations, where an exogenous crash initializes a log-periodic price development, but the prices are rising. We will call it ”inverted bubble”.

In order to accurately define a crash we use so called ”drawdowns”. A drawdown is a persistent decrease in the price over consecutive days . We ignore corrections between local maximum and local minimum less than $`ϵ=30\%`$ of the preceding price fall.

Fig.1 presents a scheme of a $`ϵ`$-drawdown. In the first step we construct drawdowns (drawups) by merging together quotations with price changes in the same direction. For example, the first three prices of Fig.1. are merged into a drawdown AB, the next two create a drawup BC, followed by a drawdown CD. In the second step $`ϵ`$-drawdowns are constructed as follows.If the drawup BC: $`P_CP_B`$, is less than $`ϵ`$ (here we assume that $`ϵ=30\%`$) of the absolute value of the drawdown AB: $`|P_BP_A|`$, and price in the point D is less than in the price in the point B, than the drawup BC is treated as the correction to the trend. So that the $`ϵ`$-drawdown AD is made in place of the two drawdowns AB, and CD and the drawup BC. Finally, the price change is transferred into logarithms:

$$drawdown=ln(P_{max}/P_{min})$$
(1)
where $`P_{max}`$ and $`P_{min}`$ are prices at beginning and at the end of a drawdown (here points A and D). According to  the distribution of drawdowns is a stretched exponential

$$f(x)=aexp(b|x|^z)$$
(2)
Fig.2 shows the distribution of drawdowns of WIG (Warsaw Stock Index) from 1991 to August 2002. The fit of stretched exponential to this distribution gives us: $`a=63.6,b=0.019,z=1.08`$. Hence , events with drawdowns less than -14.5 % are outliers. We will adopt a definition of a crash as a drawdown with price loss over 14.5 %. An extreme rise will be a drawup of more than 17.5 %.

## 2 Log-periodic oscillations

The prices or index values prior to crash are described by the first term ”Landau” expansion. The expansion describes a power law behavior of price $`p(\tau )`$:

$$\frac{dp(\tau )}{d\mathrm{ln}\tau }=(\beta +i\omega )p(\tau )$$
(3)
This equation is sometimes written in the form:

$$\frac{d\mathrm{ln}p(\tau )}{d\mathrm{ln}\tau }=(\beta +i\omega )$$
(4)
which illustrates that the price $`p(\tau )`$ becomes self-similar with respect to the dilation of the distance $`\tau `$. The relative variations $`d\mathrm{ln}p=dp/p`$ of price with respect to the relative variations of the time to crash $`d\mathrm{ln}\tau =d\tau /\tau `$ are independent of time. From equation 3 one can obtain a log-periodic development of price:

$$p(t)=A+\tau ^\beta \left[B+C\mathrm{cos}\left(\omega \mathrm{ln}\tau +\varphi \right)\right]$$
(5)
where $`\tau =\left|t_ct\right|`$ , and $`t_c`$ is critical time (the time of crash).

The numerical way to identify log-periodicity in a time series is to fit the 7 parameters-function from eq. 5 to the data. The amoeba fitting procedure  was used to minimize the variance:

$$Var=\frac{1}{N}\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}(p_kp(t_k;A,B,C,\beta ,\omega ,t_c,\varphi ))^2$$
(6)
Where N is the number of points in the data set, $`t_k`$ and $`p_k`$ are the time and price of the k-th point.

To convince that the oscillations are really present in the data we transform the analyzed data to a pure cosine function :

$`t_kln|t_kt_c|`$ (7)
$`p_k{\displaystyle \frac{p_k(A+B\tau ^\beta )}{C\tau ^\beta }}`$ (8)
From the transformed data we made a Lomb periodogram  The Lomb periodogram is used to find periodicity in unevenly sampled data. The Lomb periodogram should give us the same frequency as the fitting procedure.

At least four distinct log-oscillation events can be identified on the Polish stock market index WIG in the years 1991 to 2002 (Fig. 3): the speculative bubble which ended with the crash in March 1994, then an anti-bubble recovery from that crash and the inverted bubble crash of April 2000 followed by the anti-bubble price development.

## 3 Why inverted log-periodic oscillation?

The Nasdaq ”New Economy” fall in April 2000 was a bubble ending in a crash . This event is an instance of log-periodic price development on rising market ending with a crash. A fit with eq. (5) describes the behavior of Nasdaq from Spring 1997 to April 2000. The examined period consists of four evident oscillations.

The ”New Economy” crash was also observed on the Polish stock market. However no satisfying long-term fit with the eq. (5) could be made. Here are our attempts. On Fig.4 the bubble fit to Warsaw Stock Index WIG is shown. The best fit extends over one year, with one oscillation period only, and gives the critical time 4 months after the ”New Economy” crash happened. On Fig. 5 the fit to the period August 1998 (so called ”Russian crisis”, which caused WIG $`drawdown=31.5\%`$) to August 2000 is shown. The critical time is April 2000, but the fit is based on a small correction in January 2000, which itself could not be well approximated. It is impossible to predict this crash with log-periodic function. It was possible to made the presented fit only because we know when the crash occurred. Summing up, we claim that both fits are doubtful, and are extended only about 1.5 periods of the cosine function.

Therefore we propose another possibility of describing the development of WIG index in the time period from August 1998 to April 2000. On August 1998 the ”Russian crisis” occurred. The ”Russian crisis” was a exogenous event for the Polish stock market. The critical time $`t_c`$ (August 1998) means the starting point of inverted bubble: a log-periodicity price behavior with a rising market. Now, the fit extends over 4 periods of the cosine function (Fig. 6). We have found two satisfactory fits to the WIG index: the first fit is with $`\omega =9.8`$ and second one is with $`\omega =11.3`$.

Unfortunately, the inverted bubble was not found in Nasdaq data. From an inverted bubble one can not predict the time of the next crash (April 2000 in this case). However it can be expected, that crash should coincide with the maximum of the cosine function.

Note

After finishing this paper we have recognized that inverted bubbles were independently described by Zhou and Sornette . They have found six market indices with such behavior (they call them ”bullish anti-bubbles”). All critical times were set between August and November 2000. However, these log-periodic oscillations have not ended with a crash yet.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Gdańsk University grant BW 5400-5-0014-3.


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# Characterizing entanglement with global and marginal entropic measures

## I Introduction and Basic Notations

The modern developments in quantum information theory NilsChu  have highlighted the key role played by entanglement in the fields of quantum communication Commun , quantum computation Comput , quantum cryptography Crypto  and teleportation Telep . While a comprehensive theory for the qualification and the quantification of the entanglement of pure states is well established, even for two qubits, the smallest nontrivial bipartite quantum system, the relation between entanglement and mixedness remains a fascinating open question Zyczkowski ; MaxMix ; Munro ; Nemoto . The degree of mixedness is a fundamental property because any pure state is induced by environmental decoherence to evolve in a generally mixed state. There are two measures suited to quantify the mixedness or the disorder of a state: the *Von Neumann entropy* $`S_V`$ which has close connections with statistical physics and quantum probability theory, and the *linear entropy* $`S_L`$ which is directly related to the *purity* $`\mu `$ of a state. For a quantum state $`\rho `$ in a $`D`$dimensional Hilbert space $``$ they are defined as follows

$`S_V(\rho )`$ $``$ $`\text{Tr}\left[\rho \mathrm{log}_D\rho \right],`$ (1)
$`S_L(\rho )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{D}{D1}}\left[1\text{Tr}\rho ^2\right]{\displaystyle \frac{D}{D1}}\left[1\mu (\rho )\right],`$ (2)
where $`\mu \text{Tr}\rho ^2`$ is the purity of the state $`\rho `$. For pure states $`\rho _p=|\psi \psi |`$, $`\mu =1`$; for mixed states $`\mu <1`$, and it acquires its minimum $`1/D`$ on the maximally mixed state $`\rho =𝕀_D/D`$. The entropies Eqs. (1)-(2) range from 0 (pure states) to 1 (maximally mixed states), but they are in general inequivalent in the sense that the ordering of states induced by each measure is different Nemoto . For a state $`\rho `$ of a bipartite system with Hilbert space $`_1_2`$ the marginal density matrices of each subsystem are obtained by partial tracing $`\rho _{1,2}=\text{Tr}_{2,1}\rho `$.

Any state $`\rho `$ is said to be *separable* Werner89  if it can be written as a convex combination of product states $`\rho _S=_ip_i\rho _1^i\rho _2^i,\rho _{1,2}^i_{1,2}`$, with $`p_i`$ positive weights such that $`_ip_i=1`$. Otherwise the state is *entangled*. For *pure* states of a bipartite system, the entanglement $`E(\rho _p)`$ is properly quantified by any of the marginal mixednesses as measured by the Von Neumann entropy (entropy of entanglement) Noteentpure :

$$E(\rho _p)S(\rho _{p_1})S(\rho _{p_2}).$$
(3)
Concerning *mixed* states, there is a weak qualitative correspondence between mixedness and separability, in the sense that all states sufficiently close to the maximally mixed state are necessarily separable Zyczkowski . On the other hand, due to the existence of the so-called isospectral states Nielsen , i.e. states with the same global and marginal spectra but with different entanglement properties, only *sufficient* conditions for entanglement, based on the global and marginal mixednesses, can be given. In particular, entangled states share the unique feature that their individual components may be more disordered than the system as a whole. Because this does not happen for correlated states in classical probability theory and for separable quantum states, this property can be quantified to provide sufficient conditions for entanglement, such as the entropic criterion Entropic , and the majorization criterion Nielsen .

In this work we present numerical studies and analytical bounds that discriminate separable and entangled states in the three-dimensional manifold spanned by global and marginal entropic measures. We study the behavior of entanglement with varying global and marginal mixednesses and identify the maximally entangled states for fixed marginal mixednesses (MEMMS). Knowledge of these states provides an analytical upper bound relating the entanglement of formation and the marginal linear entropies. We then compare the Von Neumann and linear entropies, finding that, with respect to the latter, there exist separable and entangled states that for given marginal purities $`\mu _{1,2}`$ are less pure than product states (LPTPS). We provide an analytical characterization of the entangled LPTPS, showing that they can never satisfy the majorization criterion.

To be specific, let us consider a two-qubit system defined in the $`4`$-dimensional Hilbert space $`=^2^2`$. The entanglement of any state $`\rho `$ of such a system is completely qualified by the Peres-Horodecki criterion of positive partial transposition (PPT) Peres , stating that $`\rho `$ is separable if and only if $`\rho ^{T_1}0`$, where $`\rho ^{T_1}`$ is the partial transpose of the density matrix $`\rho `$ with respect to the first qubit, $`(\rho ^{T_1})_{m\mu ,n\nu }=(\rho )_{n\mu ,m\nu }`$. As a measure of entanglement for mixed states, we consider the *entanglement of formation* Bennett , which quantifies the amount of entanglement necessary to create an entangled state,

$$E_F(\rho )\underset{\{p_i,\psi _i\}}{\mathrm{min}}\underset{i}{}p_iE(|\psi _i\psi _i|),$$
(4)
where the minimization is taken over those probabilities $`\{p_i\}`$ and pure states $`\{\psi _i\}`$ that realize the density matrix $`\rho =_ip_i|\psi _i\psi _i|.`$ For two qubits, the entanglement of formation can be easily computed Wootters , and reads

$`E_F(\rho )`$ $`=`$ $`(𝒞(\rho )),`$ (5)
$`(x)`$ $``$ $`H\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(1+\sqrt{1x^2}\right)\right),`$ (6)
$`H(x)`$ $`=`$ $`x\mathrm{log}_2x(1x)\mathrm{log}_2(1x).`$ (7)
The quantity $`𝒞(\rho )`$ is called the *concurrence* of the state $`\rho `$ and is defined as $`𝒞(\rho )\mathrm{max}\{0,\sqrt{\lambda _1}\sqrt{\lambda _2}\sqrt{\lambda _3}\sqrt{\lambda _4}\},`$ where the $`\{\lambda _i\}`$’s are the eigenvalues of the matrix $`\rho (\sigma _y\sigma _y)\rho ^{}(\sigma _y\sigma _y)`$ in decreasing order, $`\sigma _y`$ is the Pauli spin matrix and the star denotes complex conjugation in the computational basis $`\{|ij|i|j,i,j=0,1\}`$. Because $`(x)`$ is a monotonic convex function of $`x[0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}]`$, the concurrence $`𝒞(\rho )`$ and its square, the *tangle* $`\tau (\rho )𝒞^2(\rho )`$, can be used to define a proper measure of entanglement. All the three quantities $`E_F(\rho )`$, $`𝒞(\rho )`$, and $`\tau (\rho )`$ take values ranging from zero (separable states) to one (maximally entangled states).

## II Characterizing Entanglement in the Space of Von Neumann Entropies

To unveil the connection between entanglement, global, and marginal mixednesses, let us first consider the three-dimensional space $`_V\left\{S_{V1}S_V(\rho _1),S_{V2}S_V(\rho _2),S_VS_V(\rho )\right\}`$ spanned by the global and marginal Von Neumann entropies. We randomly generate several thousands density matrices Noterandom , and plot them as points in the space $`_V`$ as shown in Fig. 1(a). We assign to each state a different color according to the value of its entanglement of formation $`E_F`$. Red points denote separable states ($`E_F=0`$). Entangled states fall in four bundles with increasing $`E_F`$: green points denote states with $`0<E_F1/4`$; cyan points are states with $`1/4<E_F1/2`$; blue points are states with $`1/2<E_F3/4`$; and magenta points denote states with $`3/4<E_F1`$. We find a qualitative behavior, according to which the entanglement tends to increase with decreasing global mixedness and with increasing marginal mixednesses. Qualitatively, more global mixedness means more randomness and then less correlations between the subsystems. One then expects that by keeping the marginal mixednesses fixed, the maximally mixed states must be those with the least correlation between subsystems, i.e. they must be product states. This is in fact the case: product states are “maximal” states in the space $`_V`$. In Fig. 1(a) they lie on the yellow plane $`S_V=(S_{V1}+S_{V2})/2`$. Proceeding downward through Fig. 1(a), we first find a small region containing only separable states lying above the horizontal red-orange plane $`S_V=(\mathrm{log}_412)/2`$ Nemoto . Below this plane there is a “region of coexistence” in which both separable and entangled states can be found. Going further down one identifies an area of lowest global and largest marginal mixednesses that contains only entangled states. Pure states are obviously located at $`S_V=0`$ on the line $`S_{V1}=S_{V2}`$, while for $`S_V=0`$ there cannot be states for $`S_{V1}S_{V2}`$. This qualitative behavior is reflected in some analytical properties. Firstly, the Von Neumann entropy satisfies the triangle inequality Wehrl

$$\left|S_{V1}S_{V2}\right|2S_VS_{V1}+S_{V2}.$$
(8)
The leftmost inequality is saturated for pure states, while the rightmost one for product states $`\rho ^{}=\rho _1\rho _2`$. This means that, for any state $`\rho `$ with reduced density matrices $`\rho _{1,2}`$, $`S_V(\rho )S_V(\rho ^{})`$, so that product states are indeed maximally mixed states with fixed given marginals. The lower boundary to the region of coexistence is determined by the entropic criterion, stating that for separable states $`2S_V\mathrm{max}\{S_{V1},S_{V2}\}`$. As soon as this inequality is violated, only entangled states can be found. The structure of the bundles identified in the space $`_V`$ and depicted in Fig. 1(a) shows that the most entangled states fall in the region of largest marginals, and yields the following numerical upper bound:

$$E_F(\rho )\mathrm{min}\{S_{V1},S_{V2}\}.$$
(9)
This bound is obviously very loose since it can be saturated only for $`S_{V1}=S_{V2}`$, and then only by pure states. Pure states can thus be viewed as maximally entangled states with equally distributed marginals. This naturally leads to the question of identifying the maximally entangled mixed states with fixed, arbitrarily distributed *marginal* mixednesses. We will name these states “maximally entangled marginally mixed states” (MEMMS). MEMMS should not be confused with the “maximally entangled mixed states” (MEMS) introduced in Ref. Munro , which are maximally entangled states with fixed *global* mixedness.

## III MEMMS: Maximally Entangled States with Fixed Marginal Mixednesses

In order to determine the MEMMS, we begin by reminding that both the entanglement and the mixednesses are invariant under local unitary transformations. Without loss of generality, we can then consider in the computational basis density matrices of the following form:

$$\rho =\left(\begin{array}{cccc}x& 0& 0& e\\ 0& y& f& 0\\ 0& f& w& 0\\ e& 0& 0& z\end{array}\right),$$

with $`\left|e\right|\sqrt{xz},\left|f\right|\sqrt{yw}`$ for the positivity of $`\rho `$. The PPT criterion entails $`\rho `$ entangled if and only if $`\left|e\right|>\sqrt{yw}`$ or $`\left|f\right|>\sqrt{xz}`$. We can always choose $`e`$ and $`f`$ to be real and positive from local invariance. The concurrence of such a state reads $`𝒞(\rho )=2\mathrm{max}\{f\sqrt{xz},e\sqrt{wy},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}\}`$. The role of the first two terms can be interchanged by local unitary operations, so, in order to obtain maximal concurrence, we can equivalently annihilate one of the four parameters $`\{x,y,w,z\}`$. We choose to set $`y=0`$, so that entanglement arises as soon as $`e>0`$. This implies $`f=0`$; exploiting then the constraint of normalization $`\text{Tr}\rho =1`$, we arrive at the following form of the state

$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}x_1& 0& 0& c/2\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1x_1x_2& 0\\ c/2& 0& 0& x_2\end{array}\right),$$
(10)
with $`x_1+x_21,c2\sqrt{x_1x_2}`$. This form is particularly useful because every parameter has a definite meaning: $`c𝒞(\rho )`$ is the concurrence and it regulates the entanglement of formation Eq. (5), while the reduced density matrices are simply $`\rho _1=diag\{x_1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}x_1\},\rho _2=diag\{1x_2,x_2\}`$. The problem of maximizing $`c`$ (or $`E_F`$) keeping $`\{x_1,x_2\}`$ *fixed* is then trivial and leads to $`c=2\sqrt{x_1x_2}`$. Let us mention that, to gain maximal concurrence while assuring $`\rho 0`$, in our parametrization $`x_1`$ must be identified with the greatest eigenvalue of the less pure marginal density matrix, and $`x_2`$ with the lowest of the more pure one (or vice versa).

The MEMMS, up to local unitary operations, have thus the simple form

$$\rho _m=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}x_1& 0& 0& \sqrt{x_1x_2}\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1x_1x_2& 0\\ \sqrt{x_1x_2}& 0& 0& x_2\end{array}\right).$$
(11)
Let us remark that these states are maximally entangled with respect to any entropic measure of marginal mixedness (either Von Neumann, or linear, or generalized entropies) because the eigenvalues of $`\rho _{1,2}`$ are kept fixed. Their global Von Neumann entropy is limited by $`1/2`$, and they reduce to pure states for $`x_1=1x_2`$. Notice that density matrices of the form Eq. (11) have at most rank two. The entanglement of formation of MEMMS is $`E_F(\rho _m)=(2\sqrt{x_1x_2})`$. Unfortunately, it cannot be expressed analytically as a function of the marginal entropies $`S_V(\rho _{m_i})=H(x_i)`$ due to transcendence of the binary entropy function $`H(x)`$ Eq. (7).

## IV Characterizing Entanglement in the Space of Linear Entropies

We now consider the linear entropy as a measure of mixedness. The advantage of using the linear entropy is that it is directly related to the purity of the state by Eq. (2), and its definition does not involve any transcendental function. In this case the entanglement is properly quantified by the tangle $`\tau (\rho )𝒞^2(\rho )`$ because the linear entropy of entanglement for pure states is related to the Von Neumann entropy of entanglement Eq. (3) by the same relationship that connects the tangle to the entanglement of formation. We again randomly generate some thousands density matrices $`\rho `$ of two qubits and plot them as points in the three-dimensional space $`_L\left\{S_{L1}S_L(\rho _1),S_{L2}S_L(\rho _2),S_LS_L(\rho )\right\}`$, as shown in Fig. 1(b). The distribution of colored bundles is analogous to that of the previous case Fig. 1(a), but with the linear entropies and the tangle replacing, respectively, the Von Neumann entropies and the entanglement of formation.

A comparison with the previous case shows some *prima facie* analogies and some remarkable differences. We find again a general trend of increasing entanglement with decreasing global and increasing marginal mixednesses. Product states lie on the yellow surface of equation $`S_L=2(S_{L1}+S_{L2})/3(S_{L1}S_{L2})/3`$. With respect to the linear entropy, taken as a measure of mixedness, they are *not* maximally mixed states with fixed marginals. This fact has deep consequences that we will explore in Sec. VI. Going downward through Fig. 1(b) we find a small region of only separable states above the horizontal red-orange plane $`S_L=8/9`$ Nemoto . Below this plane there is again the region of coexistence of separable and entangled states, while in the region of lowest global and largest marginal mixednesses we find only entangled states. Pure states are always located at $`S_L=0`$ on the line $`S_{L1}=S_{L2}`$, and again, there are no states for $`S_L=0`$ and $`S_{L1}S_{L2}`$. Qualitatively, the structure is very similar to that obtained in the space $`_V`$ of Von Neumann entropies. Some numerics changes due to different definitions, in particular the lower boundary of the region of coexistence is now determined by the entropic criterion for the linear entropies: if a state is separable, then $`S_L2(\mathrm{max}\{S_{L1},S_{L2}\})/3`$, or, equivalently, $`\mu \mathrm{min}\{\mu _1,\mu _2\}`$. A state violating these inequalities must necessarily be entangled. The tangle satisfies a numerical upper bound analogous to Eq. (9) for the entanglement of formation,

$$𝒞^2(\rho )\mathrm{min}\{S_{L1},S_{L2}\}.$$
(12)
## V MEMMS in the Space of Linear Entropies: Analytical Bounds

Obviously, states of the form Eq. (11) are MEMMS in the space $`_L`$ as well. The relation between the eigenvalues $`x_i`$ of the reduced density matrices $`\rho _{m_i}`$ and the tangle is $`𝒞^2(\rho _m)=4x_1x_2`$, while for the marginal linear entropies we have $`S_{Li}=2[x_i^2+(1x_i)^2]`$. This time we can straightforwardly invert these relations to obtain the following analytical upper bound on the tangle of any mixed state of two qubits (see Fig. 2)

$$𝒞^2(\rho )\left(1\sqrt{1S_{L1}}\right)\left(1\pm \sqrt{1S_{L2}}\right),$$
(13)
where the minus sign must be associated with the lowest marginal linear entropy. For equal marginals this bound reduces simply to $`𝒞^2(\rho )S_{L1}=S_{L2}`$ and the equality is reached for pure states. The bound Eq. (13) bears some remarkable consequences. In particular, it entails that maximal entanglement decreases at a very fast rate with increasing difference of marginal linear entropies, as can be seen in Fig. 2. In fact, it introduces the following general rule: in order to obtain maximally entangled states one needs to have the lowest possible global mixedness, the largest possible marginal mixednesses, and the smallest possible difference between the latter. That the marginals should be as close as possible is intuitively clear, because if the two subsystems have strong quantum correlations between them, they must carry about the same amount of information. For instance, the MEMS defined in Ref. Munro  have always the same marginal spectra. The marginals should be large as well: in particular, if the mixedness of one of the subsystems is zero, then the state of the total system is *not* entangled. Finally, from Eqs. (5) and (13) it immediately follows that the entanglement of formation satisfies the following bound:

$$E_F(\rho )\left(\sqrt{\left(1\sqrt{1S_{L1}}\right)\left(1\pm \sqrt{1S_{L2}}\right)}\right).$$
(14)
This bound establishes a relation between the entanglement of a mixed state and its marginal mixednesses. Although the entanglement of formation for systems of two qubits is known Wootters , our *inequality* Eq. (14) provides a generalization to mixed states of the *equality* $`E_F(\rho _p)=\left(\sqrt{S_L(\rho _{p_{1,2}})}\right)`$ holding for pure states.

## VI LPTPS: Entangled States that are Less Pure than Product States

Unlike the Von Neumann entropy, the linear entropy is not additive on product states, and does not satisfy the triangle inequality. As mentioned above, with respect to the linear entropy, product states are *not* maximally mixed states with fixed marginal mixednesses (see Fig. 1(b)), and this entails the existence of states (separable or entangled) that are less pure than product states (LPTPS). We wish to characterize the entangled LPTPS and to study their tangle as a function of their “distance in purity” from product states. Because for the latter $`\mu =\mu _1\mu _2`$, then for any state $`\rho `$ to be a LPTP state (separable or entangled) the following condition must hold:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\mu \mu _1\mu _2\mu 0,$$
(15)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$ defines the natural distance from the purity of product states. The LPTPS that saturate inequality Eq. (15) are isospectral to product states. We are looking for entangled LPTPS, and we can then exploit again the form Eq. (10) of the density matrix, and impose the condition Eq. (15) to obtain the following constraints:

$$\{\begin{array}{cc}12x_12x_2+2x_1x_20\hfill & \\ c^24x_1x_2(12x_12x_2+2x_1x_2).\hfill & \end{array}$$
(16)
For all entangled LPTPS this implies that

$$S_{L1,2}\frac{4\sqrt{1S_{L2,1}}}{\left(1+\sqrt{1S_{L2,1}}\right)^2},$$
(17)
which simply means that no entangled states can exist too close to the maximally mixed state, as shown in Fig. 3(a). In the range of parameters $`\{c,x_1,x_2\}`$ constrained by Eq. (16), it is immediately verified that the largest eigenvalue of the density matrix Eq. (10) is always smaller than the largest eigenvalues of the marginals $`\rho _{1,2}`$ so that entangled LPTPS are *never* detected by the majorization criterion. We now wish to determine the maximally entangled LPTPS with fixed $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$. This problem can be easily recast as a constrained maximization of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu =x_1x_2(12x_12x_2+2x_1x_2)/2c^2`$ with fixed $`c`$. Its solution yields a class of states with $`x_1=x_2=(3\sqrt{5})/4`$, and a linear relation between the distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$ and the tangle $`c^2`$:

$$c^2=2(\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{\Delta }\mu ),$$
(18)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _{\mathrm{max}}=(5\sqrt{5}11)/80.0225`$. The tangle of maximally entangled LPTPS decreases linearly with increasing $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$ from the maximum value $`c_{\mathrm{max}}^2=2\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _{\mathrm{max}}`$ at $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu =0`$, and vanishes beyond the critical value $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _{\mathrm{max}}`$ (See Fig. 3(b)). When the mixednesses are measured using the Von Neumann entropy, one finds that all LPTPS lie below the plane of product states in the space $`_V`$ (See Fig. 1(a)). Therefore, in this case, the lack of precision with which the linear entropy characterizes the Von Neumann entropy turns out to be an useful resource to detect a class of entangled states that could not be otherwise discriminated by the entropic and majorization criteria.

## VII Concluding Remarks and Outlook

In conclusion, we explored and characterized qualitatively and quantitatively the entanglement of physical states of two qubits by comparing their global and marginal mixednesses, as measured either by the Von Neumann or the linear entropy. We found that entanglement generally increases with decreasing global mixedness and with increasing local mixednesses, and we provided several numerical bounds. We determined the class of maximally entangled states with fixed marginal mixednesses (MEMMS). They allow to obtain an analytical upper bound for the entanglement of formation of generic mixed states in terms of the marginals. This provides a partial generalization to mixed states of the exact equalities holding for pure states. We may reasonably expect that similar bounds and inequalities can be determined for more complex systems that do not allow for a direct computation of entanglement measures.

The difference between linear and Von Neumann entropies allows to detect a class of states that are less pure than product states with fixed marginal mixednesses (LPTPS). We characterized the entangled LPTPS and showed that their maximal entanglement decreases with decreasing purity. Finally, we singled out in both spaces $`_V`$ and $`_L`$ a large region of coexistence of separable and entangled states with the same global and marginal mixednesses. In this region a complete characterization of entanglement can be achieved only once the amount of classical correlations in a quantum state has been properly quantified. This problem awaits further study, as well as the question of characterizing entanglement with global and marginal mixednesses for higher–dimensional and continuous variable systems.

###### Acknowledgements.

Financial support from INFM, INFN, and MURST under projects PRIN–COFIN (2002) is acknowledged.


text:
# Formation of the Galactic Halo

## 1. Introduction

In our quest to understand the formation of galaxies, the Milky Way takes a special place. Nowhere else can the properties of stellar populations be observed in comparable detail, can ages, metallicities, and kinematics be determined for as many individual stars. The Galactic stellar halo, the topic of this article, gives a vivid illustration: with its mass of only some $`10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and estimated surface brightness near the Sun of 27.7 V mag/arcsec2 (Morrison 1993) it would be hard to observe at all in external galaxies. Yet it is believed to be the oldest component of the Galaxy, and to hold important information about the Milky Way’s formation process.

The early debate and even much of the recent discussion about the formation of the Galactic stellar halo focussed on two contrasting scenarios. One view, based on an apparent correlation between the metallicities and the orbital velocities and eccentricities of halo stars, held that the halo formed in a rapid dissipative collapse phase during which metal enrichment took place (Eggen, Lynden-Bell & Sandage 1962, ELS). The other, based on the lack of abundance gradient in the halo globular clusters and a $`10^9\mathrm{yr}`$ age spread inferred from their horizontal branch colours, proposed that that the Galactic halo formed by the prolonged, chaotic accretion of dwarf galaxy-like fragments (Searle & Zinn 1978). Because in modern samples of low-metallicity halo stars no correlation is in fact found between metallicity and kinematics (Norris 1986, Carney, Latham & Laird 1990, Chiba & Beers 2000), and because of direct evidence for accretion such as in the form of the Sgr dwarf galaxy (Ibata, Gilmore & Irwin 1994), the accretion scenario has become the standard view in the field (Freeman & Bland-Hawthorne 2002).

However, recent observational and theoretical developments suggest that some revision of this picture may be necessary. The fraction of the halo for which an accretion origin can be substantiated with present data is only of order 10 percent (Section 2). Modern analysis shows no evidence of an age spread for the metal-poor globular clusters within an error of $`10^9\mathrm{yr}`$; these are consistent with being old and coeval (Rosenberg et al. 1999, Salaris & Weiss 2002). Only intermediate metallicity clusters around \[Fe/H\]$`1.2`$ show evidence for an age spread of $`23\mathrm{Gyr}`$. From the new large samples of halos stars there is evidence for both dissipative and dissipationless processes during halo formation (Section 3). Recent models of dissipative collapse, in a cosmological context and including feedback from star formation, show that the predictions of the ELS model on which much of this discussion is based are oversimplified and partly incorrect (Section 4). And finally, in the current hierarchical models for structure formation in the Universe, accretion may occur both in a smooth, dissipative form and through the merging of subunits. In the hierarchical framework, the interesting question regarding the origin of the halo is not “dissipative collapse or merging?”, but

* how important was smooth accretion compared to lumpy accretion or merging?
* did small units form stars before they fell together?
* were infalling subunits tidally disrupted in the halo or did they survive into the disk or center?

Understanding the formation of the Galactic halo from the observed properties of its constituents will help in answering these questions within the more general problem of galaxy formation in hierarchical models of structure formation in the Universe.

## 2. Evidence for accretion

The most dramatic case for accretion in the Galactic halo is provided by the disrupting Sagittarius dwarf galaxy discovered by Ibata, Gilmore & Irwin (1994). The Sgr dwarf is visible over some $`20^{}\times 8^{}`$ on the sky, centered at (l,b)$`(6^{},14^{})`$, at a galactocentric distance of $`16\mathrm{kpc}`$ on the other side of the Galactic center. It is orientated roughly perpendicular to the Galactic plane along its orbit. Sgr contains $`L_V12\times 10^7\mathrm{L}_{}`$ of stars, 4 globular clusters, and probably $`10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$ of dark matter, which are in the process of being added to the Galactic halo (Ibata et al. 1997). The extended stream of previously dissolved stars has been found in several surveys.

With time, such streamers will phase-mix and become invisible in photometric surveys unless confined to particular orbital planes. However, substructure in phase-space is preserved much longer, once the Galactic potential has settled and evolves only slowly. Helmi et al. (1999) identified one sub-group of halo stars in a Hipparcos sample which they identified as the remains of an ancient accretion event. This subgroup was confirmed by Chiba & Beers (2000) in their larger sample of halo stars. According to these authors, the total mass of the precursor object is a few percent of the present Galactic halo, i.e, similar to that of the Sgr dwarf. New surveys based on halo Carbon stars (Ibata et al. 2001), RR Lyrae stars (Vivas et al. 2001), SDSS (Newberg et al. 2002), and GDSS (Kundu et al. 2002) have found at most a very small number of streams other than the Sgr stream. At least half the halo Carbon stars appear to belong to the Sgr stream according to Ibata et al. (2001), severely limiting the amount of stars that can have been accreted in the last 5 Gyr.

Thus from present data, the fraction of the Galactic halo for which there is evidence for accretion is of order 10%. This is in some contrast to the prediction of Bullock, Kravtsov & Weinberg (2001), who find that in hierarchical CDM models a large number of tidal streams from disrupted dwarf galaxies should make up a large fraction of the Galactic stellar halo. One way out would be that many of the small dark matter lumps predicted in CDM never made stars (see, e.g., Bullock, Kravtsov & Weinberg 2001, Stoehr et al. 2002). Alternatively, it is possible that the planned GAIA satellite will in fact detect halo substructure for a much larger fraction of halo stars, but on much finer scales. This would be the signature expected from accretion events during the early formation of the Galaxy, now in a more advanced state of phase-mixing, or from accretion of much smaller subunits. However, in this case the interpretation must involve questions about star formation issues as well. What are the smallest and what are the typical star-forming units in a Galactic collapse? In the Galactic disk, there is clearly structure on the scale of giant molecular clouds up to $`10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$. And how can we distinguish between an inevitably lumpy and prolonged collapse, and the accretion of separate fragments?

## 3. Evidence from halo star properties

There is general agreement that the Galactic halo is the oldest component of the Milky Way. The most metal-poor globular clusters with \[Fe/H\]$`<1.5`$ are old and coeval, with age $`12\pm 1\mathrm{Gyr}`$ (Rosenberg et al. 1999, Salaris & Weiss 2002). Intermediate metallicity clusters around \[Fe/H\]$`1.2`$ show evidence for an age spread of $`23\mathrm{Gyr}`$ and a slightly younger age. Halo field stars with \[Fe/H\]$`<1.8`$ have red turnoff colours B-V$`0.4`$, and comparison with isochrones likewise indicates old ages. Only a small fraction of stars at higher metallicities have bluer turnoff colours, limiting the number of dwarf galaxies with intermediate age populations that could have been accreted (Unavane, Wyse & Gilmore 1996).

A detailed analysis of 1200 stars with \[Fe/H\]$`0.6`$, distance estimates, radial velocities, and proper motions was published by Chiba & Beers (2000). From this large, kinematically unbiassed sample they deduced some noteworthy properties of Galactic halo stars: There is no correlation between \[Fe/H\] and orbital eccentricity $`e`$ for the metal-poor stars, demonstrating that the evidence given by Eggen et al. (1962) is a result of kinematic bias. However, there is a concentration of halo stars on radial orbits at \[Fe/H\]$`1.7`$, which may be a signature of early collapse, and a concentration of disk stars on near-circular orbits at \[Fe/H\]$`>1`$. Other than this, the \[Fe/H\]-eccentricity diagram is populated remarkably uniformly; even at the lowest abundances, $`20\%`$ of the stars have $`e<0.4`$. Furthermore, while confirming the absence of a correlation of rotation velocity with \[Fe/H\] for \[Fe/H\]$`1.5`$, Chiba & Beers (2000) find a decrease of rotation velocity with vertical height even for the lowest metallicity halo stars. This they interpret as a signature of dissipative formation of the inner halo. The inferred density distribution of the halo is nearly spherical in the outer region beyond $`R=1520\mathrm{kpc}`$, and highly flattened in the inner region. Studying the halo star orbits while slowly removing the Galactic disk potential, Chiba & Beers (2001) concluded that the inner halo prior to disk formation must have been substantially rounder than now, with axis ratio $`c/a0.8`$, but still more flattened than the outer halo.

Based on their results, Chiba & Beers (2000) argue for a hybrid picture, in which the inner halo formed by dissipative contraction, while the outer halo was made mainly by the accretion of subgalactic fragments. (They discuss previous related ideas.) This would also be consistent with the tangentially anisotropic velocity distribution of BHB field stars at large distances inferred by Sommer-Larsen et al. (1997). However, because no division of the inner and outer halo components is visible in either the density profile or the rotation properties, this suggests that both dissipative and dissipationless processes may have occurred simultaneously at each radius, with the dissipationless processes relatively more important at larger radii. As discussed below, this would fit in quite naturally with the evolution expected in clumpy collapses in CDM models.

## 4. Modern dissipative collapse models

In modern computer models, it is possible to simulate the collapse, dissipation, star formation, and enrichment in an assembling galaxy in considerable detail, including the effects of a two-phase medium and of the feedback from supernovae. To compare with the abundances and kinematics of halo stars, one must follow the enrichment and kinematics of successive stellar generations. In such a simulation, it is not yet possible to follow the entire evolution from the initial gravitational clustering in the large-scale CDM universe to the late high-resolution baryonic processes. A number of simplifying assumptions must therefore be made, as is also the case in, e.g., the well-known semi-analytic models. In particular, in the absence of a quantitative theory of star formation, simple recipes for star formation rates must be used which, however, can be calibrated against observed star formation rates such as those of Kennicutt (1998).

In a recent model, Samland & Gerhard (2003) followed the dynamical collapse and star formation of a massive disk galaxy within a growing $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM dark matter halo, whose mass evolves according to the cosmological simulations of the VIRGO-GIF project (Kauffmann et al. 1999). Small-scale structure and merging in the halo were ignored; this also by-passes the so-called angular momentum problem. The baryonic matter falls in with the dark matter. Both have the same angular momentum distribution, which corresponds to $`\lambda =0.05`$ and is similar to the universal distribution found by Bullock et al. (2001). The model includes two interstellar medium phases, one a hot gas fluid, the other a cold/warm cloud medium. These phases and the stars interact through a number of processes, including the energy release and enrichment from young stars and supernovae. Stars form from the cold phase with a rate approximately $`\rho ^{3/2}`$, and are subsequently followed by an N-body code. Due to the macroscopic description of these processes, the model contains several parameters which are not well-determined theoretically. However, most of these can be calibrated against observations and, because of the self-regulating nature of the interactions, the dependence of the physical variables on these parameters is only modest.

The disk galaxy that forms in this model has about three times the mass of the Galaxy and is not a special model of the Milky Way. However, several results emerged which are of relevance for the formation of the Galactic halo. (1) The feedback from supernovae is important especially at early times when the potential of the dark matter halo is still shallow. Thus, the collapse and formation of the most metal-poor component (\[Fe/H\]$`<1.9`$) takes about $`1\mathrm{Gyr}`$, significantly longer than their dynamical time. (2) As a result, there is no dependence of rotation velocity on metallicity for these extreme halo stars; see Fig. 1. This relation only emerges at higher metallicities, at \[Fe/H\]$`1.8`$, similar as for the observed halo stars. (3) Using the distribution in Fig. 1, it is possible to identify a number of stellar subcomponents, which can tentatively be identified with observed components in the Milky Way (see Samland & Gerhard 2003 for details). This is surprising, since no corresponding information was put into the simulation. (4) Because of the interplay between enrichment, feedback and dynamical collapse, the distribution of stars in the \[Fe/H\] - orbital eccentricity plane is surprisingly broad (Fig. 2). There does not exist a well-defined relation between these quantities for the model stars. The only significant difference to the observed distribution of Chiba & Beers (2000) is a lack of stars with metallicities \[Fe/H\]$`2`$ on near-circular orbits.

Thus collapse models including cosmological infall and feedback from supernovae are considerably more complicated and can in some aspects be qualitatively different from traditional collapse models. Result (1) is clearly of relevance as regards the distribution of halo globular cluster ages. Results (2) and (4) are contrary to the predictions that are usually associated with the Eggen, Lynden-Bell & Sandage model.

Bekki & Chiba (2001) have published a one-phase model which in terms of the gas dynamics, star formation, and chemical enrichment description is much simpler than the model just described, and has no feedback, but which includes small-scale structure by imprinting a CDM power spectrum on the initial spherical matter distribution. In their model, substructure clumps form, and dissipationless processes such as dynamical friction and merging resp. disruption of these clumps are important. This has the effect of filling in the gap in the metallicity - eccentricity diagram of metal-poor halo stars on circular orbits (see their Fig. 13).

Based on these dynamical models, the idea of a hybrid formation for the Galactic halo looks promising. Within the broad class of hierarchical models, the dissipative collapse of a distributed gas component and the accretion of substructure is expected to occur simultaneously. From the results discussed above, it appears possible that the right mixture of the two will in the end be able to explain the observed properties of the Galactic stellar halo. There is clearly still much work to do in finding out whether this assertion is true, and if so, what the right mixture is. By doing this work we will gain valuable insight into the galaxy formation process at large.

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text:
# Towards the Understanding of Stability Puzzles in Phage 𝜆

In their elegant work Aurell and Sneppen developed a framework to quantify the robustness of a biological state. They have successfully applied their formulation to the robustness of the epigenetic state of the wild type phage $`\lambda `$, but concluded, and supported by their further numerical study, that their model is not robust against various mutations in the gene regulatory network of phage $`\lambda `$. They called this disagreement between their mathematical modeling and biological experiments the stability puzzle. We agree with their assessment that the robustness can be viewed as a first exit problem and do not dispute the possibility that certain unknown biology may be responsible for their discrepancy. In this comment we would like, however, to call the attention to two important aspects, one on biology and one on modeling, overlooked by Aurell and Sneppen, and to argue that the including of those two aspects may be sufficient to understand the stability puzzle.

Biological aspect: in vivo vs. in vitro. It is well known that so far most molecular parameters in biology are measured in vitro, that is, not in the native chemical and biological environments of the living organism (in vivo). This is same for phage $`\lambda `$, one of most well studied organisms. Tremendous efforts have been made to ensure the in vitro conditions as close as those of in vivo. Subsequently, it has been generally concluded that though there is indeed an in vivo and in vitro difference, this difference is small and normally not exceeds 30$`\%`$ of the measured in vitro value. Such a small difference, for the case of affinities in DNA-protein binding dominated the dynamics of gene regulatory networks, is about a few kcal/mol. Regarding to the usual qualitative nature of biological data where measurements for the same quantity are common to be differed by a factor of order unity, one would be satisfied to have such in vitro values. Unfortunately, for the stability as a first exit problem, the escape rate can be exponentially sensitive to some parameters. Hence 10$`\%`$ change in a critical parameter can result in orders of magnitudes change in the escape rate. In physics and chemistry such examples are too abundant to enumerate here. This comes our first observation to understand the stability of the biological states: One must carefully take the in vivo and in vitro difference into account for dominant molecular parameters in the modeling. This has been attempted but not taken seriously in Ref. and .

Modeling aspect: the nature of noise. As it is clear from the mathematical modeling, the noise strength equivalent to temperature plays the most important role, as well exemplified by the classical Arrhenius law. We found two important features on noise which have not be taken cared of properly in Ref., the diffusion approximation for the intrinsic noise and the presence of extrinsic noise. First, Aurell and Sneppen modeled the noise as it directly comes from the chemical reaction rates. Indeed, the chemical reactions are noisy processes. What used by Aurell and Sneppen is the standard diffusion approximation to obtain the noise strength, called the intrinsic noise. This approximation is good near a stable fixed point, but can be very problematic when applied to relative stability problem. Orders of magnitudes in error may be embedded in this diffusion approximation when calculating the escape rate. More precise approximation is needed to get a better description of the intrinsic noise, which we believe can be done with an improved diffusion approximation. The second feature is more seriously, regarding to the extrinsic noise: There are other noisy processes beyond those dictated by reaction rates of the deterministic part of the modeling. In fact, biological experimental data already indicated the existence of the extrinsic noise. The extrinsic noise is not in the modeling of Aurell and Sneppen, which may well account for their inability to solve the stability puzzle.

With the consideration of above two biological and modeling aspects, the in vivo and in vitro difference and the proper modeling of the noise, can one understand the stability puzzle in phage $`\lambda `$? It is evident that those two aspects will give enough difference in the numerical outcome of the modeling. One should not be surprised to find the positive answer.


text:
# The anticharmed exotic baryon Θ_𝑐 and its relatives

## I Introduction

The recent experimental discovery of an exotic exotic 5-quark $`KN`$ resonance , $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ with $`S=+1`$, a mass of 1540 MeV and a very small width $``$20 MeV opens up the possibility that other similar exotic baryon resonances might exist.

The simplest quark configuration with the quantum numbers of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ is $`uudd\overline{s}`$, with the light $`u`$ and $`d`$ quark likely coupled to an isosinglet. In a recent paper  we proposed an interpretation of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ as $`uudd\overline{s}`$ pentaquark consisting of an $`I=0`$ color antitriplet $`ud`$ diquark coupled to an $`I=0`$ color triplet $`uds`$ triquark, with one unit of relative orbital angular momentum between the two clusters. This unusual color structure turns out to minimize the hyperfine interaction of the color magnetic moments of the constituents. The resulting tri-diquark has $`I=0`$ and $`J^P=1/2^+`$, in accordance with expectations based on the Skyrme model . A rough estimate of the mass in  yields 1592 MeV, about 3% off the experimental value.

There is nothing in QCD that prevents the existence of states with more than 3 quarks, or mesons with additional quarks, on top of a quark and an antiquark. Yet, the spectacular phenomenological success of the quark model based on 3-quark baryons and quark-antiquark mesons made it almost a dogma that other, “exotic” states do not exist. Now, that the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ has been discovered experimentally, it is clear that this dogma needs a deep revision.

Any five-quark explanation of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ should have the four quarks $`uudd`$ coupled to isospin zero and an additional heavier antiquark. This immediately raises the question of the flavor of the antiquark. If any $`(uudd\overline{s})`$ model is good for a strange antiquark, why not also a similar $`(uudd\overline{Q})`$ model with any heavy antiquark Q like charmed or bottom? QCD tells us that the only difference QCD sees between these different flavors is their mass. So it is reasonable to look for a narrow resonance also in $`D^{}p`$, $`\overline{D}^0n`$ or $`B^0p`$, $`B^+n`$. These should appear as unexpectedly narrow peaks in mass distributions.

In this work we focus on the possibility that such exotic baryons do exist, and compute their properties, using the model constructed in Ref. .

## II The diquark-triquark model

Most quark model treatments of multiquark spectroscopy use the color-magnetic short-range hyperfine interaction as the dominant mechanism for possible binding. The application of this interaction by Jaffe to treat the exotic color configurations not found in normal hadrons used a color-spin $`SU(6)`$ algebra in which the hyperfine interaction between two quarks denoted by $`i`$ and $`j`$ is written as

$$V_{hyp}=V(\stackrel{}{\lambda }_i\stackrel{}{\lambda }_j)(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j)$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{}{\lambda }`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ denote the generators of $`SU(3)_c`$ and the Pauli spin operators, respectively. Jaffe has used the sign and magnitude of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-nucleon mass splitting as input for the sign and strength of the hyperfine interaction. The quark-quark interaction (1) is seen to be attractive in states symmetric in color and spin where $`(\stackrel{}{\lambda }_i\stackrel{}{\lambda }_j)`$ and $`(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j)`$ have the same sign and repulsive in antisymmetric states whee they have opposite signs. This then leads to the ”flavor-antisymmetry” principle: the Pauli principle forces two identical fermions at short distances to be in a state that is antisymmetric in spin and color where the hyperfine interaction is repulsive. Thus the hyperfine interaction is always repulsive between two quarks of the same flavor, such as the like-flavor $`uu`$ and $`dd`$ pairs in the nucleon or pentaquark.

This flavor antisymmetry suggests that the bag or single-cluster models commonly used to treat normal hadrons may not be adequate for multiquark systems. In such a state with identical pair correlations for all pairs in the system all same-flavor quark pairs are necessarily in a higher-energy configuration due to the repulsive nature of their hyperfine interaction, The $`uudd\overline{s}`$ pentaquark is really a complicated five-body system where the optimum wave function to give minimum color-magnetic energy can require flavor-dependent spatial pair correlations for different pairs in the system; e.g. that keep the like-flavor $`uu`$ and $`dd`$ pairs apart, while minimizing the distance and optimizing the color couplings within the other pairs. This is the physical basis for the success of the diquark-triquark model . An even more complicated spatial configuration might well do better.

To see a simple picture of the model constructed in Ref.  take a $`K^+`$ and a neutron and put them just far enough apart so that they are out of the range of the very short range Fermi color hyperfine interaction. Now take one of the $`d`$-quarks in the neutron and move it over to the kaon and recouple the color and spin to optimize the hyperfine interaction.

Moving the quark a distance from a point $`r_1`$ to a point $`r_2`$ while doing nothing to the kaon requires an energy in the potential model of the neutron of $`V(r_2)V(r_1)`$, where $`V`$ is the confining potential; e.g. Coulomb + linear. The energy is in the color electric field that has been created between $`r_1`$ and $`r_2`$. This distance costs color electric energy. Recoupling the color and spins of the triquark gains hyperfine energy. But because the triquark is a color-electric triplet like the quark, the recoupling does not change the color electric field in the approximation where the spatial extension of the triquark is neglected.

The change in color-electric energy can also be described in the approximation of a point triquark and point diquark by solving the Schroedinger equation for a quark-antiquark pair in the confinement potential. One has to balance the gain in hyperfine energy with the excitation energy of the relative diquark-triquark system in the confinement potential. The rough calculation in Ref.  suggests that this tradeoff between the hyperfine and the confining interaction reproduces the measured mass of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$.

In this picture we can replace the strange antiquark by a charmed antiquark and get a narrow resonance in $`D^{}`$-proton scattering. This might be seen by FOCUS by checking the invariant mass distribution of $`D^{}`$-proton, to see whether there may be a narrow peak like the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$. This possibility is discussed in detail in the next section.

## III Exotic baryons with $`\overline{c}`$ or $`\overline{b}`$ instead of $`\overline{s}`$

The detailed Skyrme model prediction for the anti-strange pentaquark  has now been beautifully confirmed by the data . However, the exotic baryons in which the $`\overline{s}`$ is replaced by a heavier antiquark cannot be treated within the Skyrme model approach of Ref. , in which the strange antiquark is in the same $`SU(3)_f`$ multiplet as $`u`$ and $`d`$, and symmetry breaking by quark mass differences is treated as a first-order perturbation. This approach may be fine for the $`s`$ quarks, but it not valid for heavier quarks such as $`c`$ and $`b`$.

In contrast, the explicit model in Ref.  is easily generalized to include any mass for the antiquark. This mass appears only in the hyperfine interaction between the antiquark and the $`ud`$ pair in the triquark, with a coefficient inversely proportional to the antiquark mass. All that is necessary to consider an antiquark of any flavor is to adjust this coefficient to the appropriate inverse quark mass.

Ref.  treats the hyperfine interactions in the diquark-triquark model in the $`SU(3)`$ limit; i.e. with the mass of the strange antiquark equal to the masses of the $`u`$ and $`d`$ quark. The necessary generalization to include any antiquark flavor and mass is easily incorporated by separating the quark-quark and quark-antiquark interaction and changing the coefficient of the quark-antiquark interaction to correspond to the correct antiquark mass.

To show explicitly how the results of Ref.  can be generalized, we first review in detail the calculation leading to their result.

We use the general form of the color-spin hyperfine interaction  for systems containing both quarks and antiquarks:

$$V=(v/2)[\overline{C}(tot)2\overline{C}(Q)2\overline{C}(\overline{Q})+16N]$$
(2)
where $`V`$ is the total hyperfine contribution to the mass of the system, and $`v`$ is a parameter defining the strength of the interaction, normalized by computing the value of $`V`$ for the nucleon and the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, and equating it with the experimental value of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-nucleon mass splitting,

$$M(\mathrm{\Delta })M(N)=V(\mathrm{\Delta })V(N)=16v,$$
(3)
$`\overline{C}(tot)`$, $`\overline{C}(Q)`$ and $`\overline{C}(\overline{Q})`$ denote respectively the values for the whole system and for the subsystems of all the quarks and all the antiquarks in the system of the following linear combination of Casimir operators

$$\overline{C}=C_6C_3(8/3)S(S+1)$$
(4)
$`C_6`$ and $`C_3`$ denote the eigenvalues of the Casimir operators of the $`SU(6)`$ color-spin and $`SU(3)`$ color groups respectively, and $`S`$ and $`N`$ denote the total spin and the number of quarks in the system.

The diquark, triquark and meson states are labeled in the conventional notation $`|D_6,D_3,S,N`$  where $`D_6`$ and $`D_3`$ denote the dimensions of the color-spin $`SU(6)`$ and color SU(3) representations in which the multiquark states are classified, .

$$|\mathrm{diquark}(S=1)=|(2q)_{21}^1=|\overline{21},6,1,2$$
(5)
$$|\mathrm{diquark}(S=0)=|(2q)_{21}^0=|\overline{21},\overline{3},0,2$$
(6)
$$|\mathrm{triquark}(S=1/2)=|(2q\overline{s})_{21}^{(1/2)}=|6,3,1/2,3$$
(7)
$$|\mathrm{meson}=|(q\overline{s})_1^0=|1,1,0,2$$
(8)
Then

$$\overline{C}(2q)_{21}^1=[(160/3)(40/3)(16/3)]=(104/3)$$
(9)
$$\overline{C}(q)=\overline{C}(\overline{s})=[(70/3)(16/3)2]=16$$
(10)
$$\overline{C}(q\overline{s})_1=[(0)]=0$$
(11)
The interaction is easily evaluated for the diquark states (5-6) by substituting the eigenvalues of the Casimir operators :

$`C_6(6)`$ $`=(70/3)`$ (12)
$`C_6(21)`$ $`=(160/3)`$ (13)
$`C_3(3)`$ $`=(16/3)`$ (14)
$`C_3(6)`$ $`=(40/3)`$ (15)
We then obtain

$$V(2q)_{21}^1=(v/2)[(160/3)(40/3)(16/3)32]=(8/3)(v/2)$$
(16)
$$V(2q)_{21}^0=(v/2)[(160/3)(16/3)32]=(16)(v/2)$$
(17)
For the triquark and meson states we obtain

$$V(2q\overline{s})_{21}^1=(v/2)[162(104/3)32+48]=(112/3)(v/2)$$
(18)
$$V(q\overline{s})_0=(v/2)[64+32]=(32)(v/2)$$
(19)
We now separate the contributions to the triquark hyperfine interaction(18) into the quark-quark and quark-antiquark contributions by noting that the hyperfine interaction in the diquark that is in the triquark is $`(8/3)(v/2)`$ , We can then write the generalized triquark hyperfine interaction for the case where the antiquark mass is $`m_Q`$.,

$$V(2q\overline{s})_{21}^1=(8/3)(v/2)\zeta (104/3)(v/2)$$
(20)
where $`\zeta =m_u/m_Q`$. For the generalized meson,

$$V(q\overline{s})_0=\zeta (32)(v/2)$$
(21)
The hyperfine interaction in the diquark of our diquark-triquark model is equal to the hyperfine interaction in the nucleon.

$$V(N)=V(\mathrm{\Lambda })=V(2q)_{21}^0=8v$$

Thus the difference between the hyperfine interactions in the diquark-triquark system will differ from that in the kaon-nucleon system only by the difference between the triquark and the kaon.

$$V(2q\overline{s})_{21}^1V(q\overline{s})_0=(1+\zeta )(4/3)v$$
(22)
$$[V(2q\overline{s})_{21}^1+V(d_{21}^0)][V(q\overline{s})_0+V(N)]=\frac{1+\zeta }{12}[M(\mathrm{\Delta })M(N)]$$
(23)
The hyperfine interaction is greater by $`(1+\zeta )(1/12)[M(\mathrm{\Delta })M(N)]`$ for the diquark-triquark system than for the kaon nucleon system. This gives previous result of $`(8/3)v=(1/6)(M_\mathrm{\Delta }M_N)`$ for $`\zeta =1`$ . This result is obtained without any flavor symmetry assumption and holds for any mass antiquark.

### A The anticharmed exotic baryon $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c=uudd\overline{c}`$

We now apply this formalism to the specific case of the anticharmed exotic baryon $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$, i.e. the $`uudd\overline{c}`$ pentaquark. We use effective quark masses that fit the low-lying mass spectrum :

$$m_u=m_d=360\text{ MeV};m_s=540\text{ MeV};m_c=1710\text{ MeV};m_b=5050\text{ MeV}.$$
(24)
from this we find a very rough estimate of the $`ud`$ diquark and $`ud\overline{c}`$ triquark effective masses

$$m_{ud}=720\text{ MeV};m_{ud\overline{c}}=2430\text{ MeV},$$
(25)
so that the reduced mass for the relative motion of the $`ud`$ diquark and $`ud\overline{c}`$ triquark system is $`m_r(\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{c}\})=555`$ MeV. This reduced mass is fairly close to the reduced mass of the $`c\overline{s}`$ system used to describe the internal structure of the $`D_s`$ spectrum, $`m_r(c\overline{s})=410`$ MeV. The dependence of the excitation energy on the reduced mass is expected to be rather small, e.g. the $`\psi ^{}J/\psi `$ splitting is 589 MeV vs. 563 MeV for $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$. Using the proximity of reduced masses, we can obtain a rough estimate of the $`P`$-wave excitation energy in the $`\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{c}\}`$ diquark-triquark system , using the relevant experimental information about the $`D_s`$ system,

$$\delta E^{Pwave}207\text{MeV}.$$
(26)
From eq. (23) we infer that without the $`P`$-wave excitation energy the $`\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{c}\}`$ diquark-triquark mass is

$$m_{\{ud\text{-}ud\overline{c}\}}^0=m_N+m_D\frac{1}{12}(1+\zeta _c)\left[M(\mathrm{\Delta })M(N)\right]2778\text{MeV}.$$
(27)
where $`\zeta _c=m_u/m_c=0.21`$. so that the total mass of the $`\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{c}\}`$ diquark-triquark is

$$M_{\mathrm{\Theta }_c}2778+207=2985\text{MeV}.$$
(28)
Clearly, this is a rather rough estimate so is should be expected to hold to no more than to within 50 MeV, so we expect $`M_{\mathrm{\Theta }_c}=2985\pm 50`$ MeV. In Ref.  the same approach gave an estimate $`m_{\mathrm{\Theta }^+}=1592`$ MeV, overshooting the experimental value by about 50 MeV, so it is quite possible that the estimate (28) might be overshooting a bit as well, but at this point we don’t think the mass estimate is accurate enough to use the $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ input to fine-tune the prediction.

Assuming flavor $`SU(3)`$ symmetry, the general formula for the decay rate of a baryon $`B_1`$ of mass $`M_1`$ into a baryon $`B_2`$ with mass $`M_2`$, plus an octet pseudoscalar meson $`𝒫`$ of mass $`M_𝒫`$ is given by

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(B_1B_2+𝒫)=\frac{3G_0^2}{2\pi (M_2+M_1)^2}|p|^3\frac{M_2}{M_1}\times 𝒞$$
(29)
where $`|\stackrel{}{p}|=\sqrt{(M_1^2(M_2+M_𝒫)^2)(M_1^2(M_2M_𝒫)^2)}/2M_1`$ is the momentum of the meson, $`G_0`$ is the appropriate coupling constant (an analogue of $`g_{\pi NN}`$) and $`𝒞`$ is an $`SU(3)_f`$ group-theoretical factor, depending on the flavor and spin quantum numbers of the initial and final state hadrons. Schematically,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(B_1B_2+𝒫)=G_0^2\times 𝒞\times \text{(phase space)}$$
(30)
In  eq. (29) was shown to compare well with experiment for several well-measured decays of decuplet baryons, such as $`\mathrm{\Delta }N\pi `$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }\pi `$, etc., assuming $`G_019`$, with values of $`𝒞`$ which turned out to be between 1/15 and 1/5.

Next, for the decay $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+KN`$, it was assumed that $`G_09.5`$ and $`𝒞1/5`$, yielding the prediction $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Theta }^+KN)=15`$ MeV, which seems to be in good agreement with experiment . On a qualitative level, the crucial observation is that the phase space for $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+KN`$ is very small, so $`\mathrm{\Theta }^+`$ is narrow, even though $`G_0^2\times 𝒞20`$.

In order to obtain a very rough estimate of the width of the decay $`\mathrm{\Theta }_cDN`$, we use eq. (29) with $`M_1=M_{\mathrm{\Theta }_c}=2985`$ MeV, as given by (28), $`M_2=M_N`$, $`M_𝒫=M_D`$, $`G_010`$ and $`𝒞1/5`$. This yields

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Theta }_cDN)21\text{MeV}.$$
(31)
Clearly, eq. (31) should be viewed only as indication of the expected width, probably no better than a factor of 2. On the face of it, this is for three reasons at least: (a) we do not know the value of the $`g_{\pi NN}`$ analogue, $`g_{D\mathrm{\Theta }_cN}=G_0`$ ; (b) the group-theoretical factor $`C`$ was originally derived for $`SU(3)_f`$ ; (c) the phase space is very sensitive to mass differences, so a relatively small shift in $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$ mass can cause a significant shift in its width. Still, the estimate (31) is probably in the right ball park, since $`g_{D\mathrm{\Theta }_cN}`$ is a meson-baryon-baryon coupling, so assuming $`g_{D\mathrm{\Theta }_cN}10`$ is not unreasonable. As for the group-theoretical factor $`𝒞`$, formally we can think of introducing (a very badly broken) flavor group $`SU(3)`$ encompassing the $`u`$, $`d`$ and $`c`$ quarks. The group-theoretical factor reflects the group structure with no mass dependence, so changing $`s`$ to $`c`$ should not affect it.

On a qualitative level, it is important to realize that the phase space for $`\mathrm{\Theta }_cDN`$ is small, so for a typical hadronic coupling and a typical group-theoretical factor we expect $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$ to be narrow.

### B The exotic baryon $`\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+=uudd\overline{b}`$

The above discussion can now be repeated, this time replacing $`\overline{s}`$ by $`\overline{b}`$. We expect the $`\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+`$ to have the same isospin and spin-parity as $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$, i.e. an isosinglet with $`J^P=\frac{1}{2}^{}`$ .

The $`\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+`$ mass is estimated exactly as for $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$, i.e. from eq. (24) we obtain a very rough estimate of the $`ud\overline{b}`$ triquark effective mass, $`m_{ud\overline{b}}=5770`$ MeV, so that the reduced mass for the relative motion of the $`ud`$ diquark and $`ud\overline{b}`$ triquark system is $`m_r(\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{b}\})=640`$ MeV. As in the $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$ case, without the $`P`$-wave excitation energy the $`\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{b}\}`$ diquark-triquark mass is

$$m_{\{ud\text{-}ud\overline{b}\}}^0=m_N+m_B\frac{1}{12}(1+\zeta _b)\left[M(\mathrm{\Delta })M(N)\right]6191\text{MeV}.$$
(32)
where $`\zeta _b=m_u/m_b=0.07`$, so that the total mass of the $`\{ud\}\text{-}\{ud\overline{b}\}`$ diquark-triquark is

$$M_{\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+}m_{\{ud\text{-}ud\overline{b}\}}^0+\delta E^{Pwave}=6191+207=6398\pm 50\text{MeV}.$$
(33)
In order to obtain a very rough estimate of the width of the decay $`\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+BN`$, we again use eq. (29) with $`M_1=M_{\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+}=6398`$ MeV, as given by (33), $`M_2=M_N`$, $`M_𝒫=M_B`$, $`G_010`$ and $`𝒞1/5`$. This yields

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Theta }_b^+BN)4\text{MeV}.$$
(34)
Again, we repeat here all the caveats regarding the very rough nature of this estimate, as explained following the estimate of the $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$ width. On a qualitative level however, it seems quite likely that the $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$ width will indeed be substantially more narrow that the width of $`\mathrm{\Theta }_c`$.

## Acknowledgments

The research of one of us (M.K.) was supported in part by a grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem and by the Einstein Center for Theoretical Physics at the Weizmann Institute. The research of one of us (H.J.L.) was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of High Energy Physics, Contract W-31-109-ENG-38. We benefited from e-mail discussions with Ken Hicks and John Cumulat about experimental data.