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# Dense quark matter in nature

## 1 Introduction

One of the most striking features of QCD is asymptotic freedom: the force between quarks becomes arbitrarily weak as the characteristic momentum scale of their interaction grows larger. This immediately suggests that at sufficiently high densities and low temperatures, matter will consist of a Fermi sea of essentially free quarks, whose behavior is dominated by the high-momentum quarks that live at the Fermi surface.

However, over the last few years it has become clear that the phase diagram of QCD is much richer than this. In addition to the hadronic phase with which we are familiar and the quark gluon plasma (QGP) that is predicted to lie at temperatures above $`170\mathrm{MeV}`$, there is a whole family of “color superconducting” phases, that are expected to occur at high density and low temperature . The essence of color superconductivity is quark pairing, driven by the BCS mechanism, which operates when there exists an attractive interaction between fermions at a Fermi surface. The QCD quark-quark interaction is strong, and is attractive in many channels, so we expect cold dense quark matter to generically exhibit color superconductivity. Moreover, quarks, unlike electrons, have color and flavor as well as spin degrees of freedom, so many different patterns of pairing are possible. This leads us to expect a rich phase structure in matter beyond nuclear density.

Color superconducting quark matter may occur naturally in the universe, in the cold dense cores of compact (“neutron”) stars, where densities are above nuclear density, and temperatures are of the order of tens of keV. (It might conceivably be possible to create it in future low-energy heavy ion colliders, such as the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) or the Compressed Baryonic Matter facility at GSI Darmstadt.) Up to now, most work on signatures has focussed on properties of color superconducting quark matter that would affect observable features of compact stars, and I will discuss some of these below.

## 2 Phase diagram of quark matter

In the real world there are two light quark flavors, the up ($`u`$) and down ($`d`$), with masses $`10\mathrm{MeV}`$, and a medium-weight flavor, the strange ($`s`$) quark, with mass $`150\mathrm{MeV}`$. The strange quark therefore plays a crucial role in the phases of QCD, and we expect it to remain fully paired with the light flavors as long as $`\mu M_s^2/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is a gap parameter for the pairing of the strange quark. Fig. 1 shows two conjectured phase diagrams for QCD. One panel is for small $`M_s^2/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, in which case the strange quark’s mass never breaks its pairing with the light flavors, so there is a direct transition from nuclear matter to color-flavor-locked (CFL) quark matter . In the CFL phase the strange quark participates symmetrically with the up and down quarks in Cooper pairing—this is described in more detail in section 3.1. The other panel in Fig. 1 is for large $`M_s^2/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, in which case the strange quark is too heavy to pair symmetrically with the light quarks at medium densities, then there will be an interval of some other phase or phases. These may well include the recently proposed gapless CFL phase , which will be described in section 3.2, although other possibilities such as crystalline color superconductivity  or some form of single-flavor pairing  have been suggested.

## 3 Review of color superconductivity

The essential physics of color superconductivity is the same as that underlying conventional superconductivity in metals . As mentioned above, asymptotic freedom of QCD means that at sufficiently high density and low temperature, there is a Fermi surface of almost free quarks. The interactions between quarks near the Fermi surface are certainly attractive in some channels (quarks bind together to form baryons) and it was shown by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS)  that if there is any channel in which the interaction is attractive, then there is a state of lower free energy than a simple Fermi surface. That state arises from a complicated coherent superposition of pairs of particles (and holes)—“Cooper pairs”.

Attractive interactions play a crucial role in the BCS mechanism for the formation of Cooper pairs. This can easily be understood in an intuitive way. The Helmholtz free energy is $`F=E\mu N`$, where $`E`$ is the total energy of the system, $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential, and $`N`$ is the number of fermions. The Fermi surface is defined by a Fermi energy $`E_F=\mu `$, at which the free energy is minimized, so adding or subtracting a single particle costs zero free energy. Now switch on a weak attractive interaction. It costs no free energy to add a pair of particles (or holes), and if they have the right quantum numbers then the attractive interaction between them will lower the free energy of the system. Many such pairs will therefore be created in the modes near the Fermi surface, and these pairs, being bosonic, will form a condensate. The ground state will be a superposition of states with all numbers of pairs, breaking the fermion number symmetry.

Since pairs of quarks cannot be color singlets, the resulting condensate will break the local color symmetry $`SU(3)_{\mathrm{color}}`$. We call this “color superconductivity”. Note that the quark pairs play the same role here as the Higgs particle does in the standard model: the color-superconducting phase can be thought of as the Higgs phase of QCD.

### 3.1 Three flavors: Color-flavor locking (CFL)

The favored pairing pattern at high densities, where the strange quark Fermi momentum is close to the up and down quark Fermi momenta, is “color-flavor locking” (CFL) . This has been confirmed by both NJL  and gluon-mediated interaction calculations . The CFL pairing pattern is

$$\begin{array}{c}q_i^\alpha q_j^\beta _{1PI}^{}C\gamma _5\left((\kappa +1)\delta _i^\alpha \delta _j^\beta +(\kappa 1)\delta _j^\alpha \delta _i^\beta \right)\\ [SU(3)_{\mathrm{color}}]\times \underset{\left[U\left(1\right)_Q\right]}{\underset{}{SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R}}\times U(1)_B\underset{\left[U\left(1\right)_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}\right]}{\underset{}{SU(3)_{C+L+R}}}\times _2\end{array}$$
(1)
Color indices $`\alpha ,\beta `$ and flavor indices $`i,j`$ run from 1 to 3, Dirac indices are suppressed, and $`C`$ is the Dirac charge-conjugation matrix. The term multiplied by $`\kappa `$ corresponds to pairing in the $`(\mathrm{𝟔}_S,\mathrm{𝟔}_S)`$, which although not energetically favored breaks no additional symmetries and so $`\kappa `$ is in general small but not zero . The Kronecker deltas connect color indices with flavor indices, so that the condensate is not invariant under color rotations, nor under flavor rotations, but only under simultaneous, equal and opposite, color and flavor rotations. Since color is only a vector symmetry, this condensate is only invariant under vector flavor+color rotations, and breaks chiral symmetry. The features of the CFL pattern of condensation are

* The color gauge group is completely broken. All eight gluons become massive. This ensures that there are no infrared divergences associated with gluon propagators.
* All the quark modes are gapped. The nine quasiquarks (three colors times three flavors) fall into an $`\mathrm{𝟖}\mathrm{𝟏}`$ of the unbroken global $`SU(3)`$, so there are two gap parameters. The singlet has a larger gap than the octet.
* A rotated electromagnetism (“$`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$”) survives unbroken. It is a combination of the original photon and one of the gluons.
* Two global symmetries are broken, the chiral symmetry and baryon number, so there are two gauge-invariant order parameters that distinguish the CFL phase from the QGP, and corresponding Goldstone bosons which are long-wavelength disturbances of the order parameter. When the light quark mass is non-zero it explicitly breaks the chiral symmetry and gives a mass to the chiral Goldstone octet, but the CFL phase is still a superfluid, distinguished by its baryon number breaking.
* The symmetries of the 3-flavor CFL phase are the same as those one might expect for 3-flavor hypernuclear matter , so it is possible that there is no phase transition between them.

In a real compact star we must require electromagnetic and color neutrality  (possibly via mixing of oppositely-charged phases), allow for equilibration under the weak interaction, and include a realistic mass for the strange quark. These factors tend to pull apart the Fermi momenta of the different quark species, imposing an energy cost on cross-species pairing.

The requirement of neutrality penalizes the 2SC phase relative to the CFL phase. This can be shown by analyzing a generic expansion of the free energy in powers of $`m_s/\mu `$  or by an NJL calculation  that handles $`m_s\mu `$ and includes the coupling between the chiral condensate and quark condensate gap equations. The net result, assuming that mixed phases are excluded by the surface energy cost  (see Section. 4), is that there is no (or very little) density range in which 2SC is the phase with the lowest free energy: unpaired or CFL-paired quark matter are generally favored over 2SC.

### 3.2 Gapless CFL (gCFL)

Introducing a strange quark mass leads to new color-superconducting phases. The dimensionless parameter that expresses the effect of the strange quark mass is $`M_s^2/(\mu \mathrm{\Delta })`$, which tells us how the pairing gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of the strange quark compares with the amount by which the strange quark mass is trying to separate the strange quark Fermi surface from those of the light quarks. In reality, both $`M_s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ will depend on $`\mu `$, but in the rest of this section we will treat $`M_s`$ as a parameter, and discuss the effects of varying $`M_s^2/\mu `$, invoking model-independent arguments as well as results from a NJL model in which the pairing gap at $`\mu =500`$ MeV and $`M_s=0`$ is $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0=25`$ MeV.

At very high densities the strange quark mass is small relative to the chemical potential ($`M_s^2/\mu \mathrm{\Delta }_{CFL}`$) and it may, depending on the size of instanton effects , induce a flavor rotation of the CFL condensate known as “kaon condensation” , which breaks isospin. As one reduces the density (increasing $`M_s^2/\mu `$) the strange quark mass becomes more important, and it now seems  that there is a smooth transition into a gapless CFL phase “gCFL” at $`M_s^2/\mu =2\mathrm{\Delta }_{CFL}`$. This will be discussed in more detail below. At lower densities things become complicated. The strange quark mass and the requirements of color and electric neutrality impose a free energy cost for keeping the Fermi momenta of different flavors locked together so that they can pair with each other, and when $`M_s^2/\mu `$ is large this cost is too great to be compensated by the resultant pairing energy. One might expect the strange quark to decouple first, leading to “2SC” pairing between up and down only , but neutrality constraints disfavor this . However, we do not expect the favored phase in this region to be rigorously unpaired. There may be a range of $`M_s^2/\mu `$ in which the different flavors are able to maintain some pairing by switching from BCS pairing to “LOFF” crystalline pairing, involving only part of the Fermi surface  (see Section 4). Another possibility is that each flavor simply pairs with itself . At some point that cannot be predicted with current techniques, there will be a transition from quark matter to baryonic matter.

The gapless CFL phase, then, is the “medium-high density” phase of QCD. It involves a more complicated pairing pattern than (1),

$$\psi _a^\alpha C\gamma _5\psi _b^\beta \mathrm{\Delta }_1ϵ^{\alpha \beta 1}ϵ_{ab1}+\mathrm{\Delta }_2ϵ^{\alpha \beta 2}ϵ_{ab2}+\mathrm{\Delta }_3ϵ^{\alpha \beta 3}ϵ_{ab3}.$$
(2)
Here $`\psi _a^\alpha `$ is a quark of color $`\alpha =(r,g,b)`$ and flavor $`a=(u,d,s)`$; the condensate is a Lorentz scalar, antisymmetric in Dirac indices, antisymmetric in color (the channel with the strongest attraction between quarks), and consequently antisymmetric in flavor. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ parameterize the pairing as follows:

* The $`rd`$ and $`gu`$ quarks pair with gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$.
* The $`bu`$ and $`rs`$ quarks pair with gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$.
* The $`gs`$ and $`bd`$ quarks pair with gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$.
* The $`ru`$, $`gd`$ and $`bs`$ quarks pair among each other in a fashion involving all three gap parameters $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$.

As with CFL pairing, there is a “rotated electromagnetism” generated by a mixture $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$ of the photon and a gluon. However, unlike CFL, which is a $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$ insulator, gCFL has some $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-charged gapless modes (assuming we include electrons as well as quark matter), and is therefore a $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$ conductor. At the continuous phase transition between CFL and gCFL, there is a simultaneous partial unpairing of the $`gs`$ and $`bd`$ quarks, and the $`bu`$ and $`rs`$ quarks (see Fig. 2). The corresponding gaps $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ drop ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ much more rapidly) as $`M_s^2/\mu `$ increases, while the gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ for the $`rd`$ and $`gu`$ quarks, which remain robustly paired, rises.

The difference in behavior of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3`$ reflects the ways in which different quarks experience the stress of an increasing $`M_s`$, and the requirement of neutrality. To understand this better, let us study their dispersion relations.

For a pair of massless quarks that pair with gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the dispersion relation is

$$E(p)=\left|\delta \mu \pm \sqrt{(p\overline{\mu })^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}\right|$$
(3)
where the individual chemical potentials of the quarks are $`\overline{\mu }\pm \delta \mu `$. As long as the chemical potentials pulling the two species apart are not too strong, Cooper pairing occurs in all modes

$$\text{pairing criterion:}|\delta \mu |<\mathrm{\Delta }$$
(4)
However when this condition is violated there are gapless ($`E=0`$) modes at momenta

$$p_{\mathrm{gapless}}=\overline{\mu }\pm \sqrt{\delta \mu ^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2}$$
(5)
and there is no pairing in the “blocking” or “breached pairing” region between these momenta  The pairing criterion (4) can be interpreted as saying that the free energy cost $`2\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of breaking a Cooper pair of two quarks $`a`$ and $`b`$ is greater than the free energy $`2\delta \mu `$ gained by emptying the $`a`$ state and filling the $`b`$ state (assuming that $`\delta \mu `$ pushes the energy of the $`a`$ quark up and the $`b`$ quark down) .

We now apply these ideas to quark matter. To impose neutrality, we introduce an electrostatic potential $`\mu _e`$ coupled to $`Q_e`$ which is the negative of the electric charge, and chemical (color-electrostatic) potentials $`\mu _3`$ and $`\mu _8`$ coupled to the diagonal color generators. To take into account the leading effect of the strange quark mass, we introduce an effective chemical potential $`M_s^2/(2\mu )`$ for the strange quarks. The splittings of the various pairs are then as given in the middle column of table 1. We do not discuss the $`ru`$, $`gd`$, and $`bs`$ quarks that pair in a $`3\times 3`$ block, because they do not play a role in defining the boundaries of the CFL and gCFL phases.

First consider just the quark matter, with no electrons (i.e. send the electron mass to infinity). In this case there is a range of allowed $`\mu _e`$ at each $`M_s^2/\mu `$, because the CFL-paired quark matter is a $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-insulator, with a free energy that is independent of $`\mu _{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$ as long as all $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-charged modes are gapless. This means that one can vary $`\mu _e`$, keeping $`\mu _3=\mu _e`$ and $`\mu _8=\frac{1}{2}(\mu _eM_s^2/\mu )`$, and the free energy of the quark matter will not change, as long the pairing criterion (4) is obeyed by all quark pairs. The resultant chemical potential splittings as a function of $`\mu _e`$ are given in the last column of table 1. In Fig. 3 we show the lines that bound the areas where the pairing criterion (4) is obeyed, for each pair in table 1. We see that CFL matter exists in a wedge, between the $`rd`$-$`gu`$ unpairing line and the $`rs`$-$`bu`$ unpairing line, up to a critical value of $`M_s^2/\mu `$, where the the $`gs`$-$`bd`$ pairs break. From table 1 we can see that the $`bd`$-$`gs`$ is vertical because the $`bd`$ and $`gs`$ are $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-neutral, so their splitting does not depend on $`\mu _e`$. Above the critical $`M_s^2/\mu `$, the $`bd`$ and $`gs`$ are unpaired, and there is a region in which $`rd`$-$`gu`$ and $`rs`$-$`bu`$ pairing is maintained.

Now include the electrons. In the CFL region, the system is forced to $`\mu _e=0`$ (dashed line in Fig. 3) . However, at the transition point to gCFL, where the $`gs`$-$`bd`$ pairs break, we find that the neutrality requirement forces us over the line where $`rs`$-$`bu`$ pairs also begin to break. The result is that as $`M_s^2/\mu `$ increases further, the system maintains neutrality by staying close to the $`rs`$-$`bu`$-unpairing line, where there is a narrow blocking region in which there are unpaired $`bu`$ quarks. Their charge is cancelled by a small density of electrons.

We see that gCFL quark matter is a conductor of $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$ charge, since it has gapless $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-charged quark modes, as well as electrons. The $`rd`$ and $`gu`$ quarks, which are insensitive to the strange quark mass, remain robustly paired, and the $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-neutral $`bd`$ and $`gs`$ quarks develop a large blocking region, as the system moves far beyond their unpairing line. The neutrality requirement naturally keeps the system close to the $`rs`$-$`bu`$-unpairing line, so these quarks have a very narrow blocking region. We can see the effect of this by taking $`p\overline{\mu }\mathrm{\Delta }`$ with $`\delta \mu \mathrm{\Delta }`$, and expanding Eq. (3): the dispersion relation for these quarks is almost quadratic, with a very high density of states at the lowest energies.

We conclude that gCFL quark matter is likely to have very different transport properties from CFL quark matter. The occurrence of many gapless fermionic modes will certainly affect cooling, and the fact that some of them are $`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$-charged will affect the conductivity and hence the behavior of magnetic fields. It remains to be seen what astrophysical signatures flow from these properties, and this question is being actively studied. In the rest of these proceedings we will discuss observable properties of compact stars, however we will not try to treat the complications of the gCFL phase: we will assume that the pairing is strong enough or the strange quark is light enough so that quark matter always occurs in the CFL phase.

## 4 Compact star transport phenomenology

The high density and relatively low temperature required to produce color superconducting quark matter may be attained in compact stars. Typical compact stars have masses close to $`1.4M_{}`$, and are believed to have radii of order 10 km.

Color superconductivity affects the equation of state at order $`(\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu )^2`$. It also gives mass to excitations around the ground state: it opens up a gap at the quark Fermi surface, and makes the gluons massive. One would therefore expect it to have a profound effect on transport properties, such as mean free paths, conductivities and viscosities. Various observable consequences are under investigation.

* $`r`$-mode spindown. The $`r`$-mode is a bulk flow in a rotating star that, if the viscosity is low enough, radiates away energy and angular momentum in the form of gravitational waves. One can rule out certain models for compact stars on the grounds that they have such low damping that they could not support the high rotation rates observed in pulsars: $`r`$-mode spindown would have slowed them down. Madsen  has shown that for a compact star made entirely of quark matter in the CFL phase, even a gap as small as $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1`$ MeV is ruled out by observations of millisecond pulsars. It remains to extend this calculation to the more generic picture of a quark matter core surrounded by a nuclear mantle.
* Interfaces and mixed phases. These were studied in Ref. , and it was found that a mixed phase only occurs if the surface tension of the interface is less than about $`40\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{fm}^2=0.2\times (200\mathrm{MeV})^3`$, a fairly small value compared to the relevant scales $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}200\mathrm{MeV}`$, $`\mu 400\mathrm{MeV}`$. A sharp nuclear-quark interface will have an energy-density discontinuity across it, which will affect gravitational waves emitted in mergers, and also the $`r`$-mode spectrum and the damping forces to which $`r`$-modes are subject.
* Crystalline pairing (the “LOFF” phase). This is expected to occur when two different types of quark have sufficiently different Fermi momenta that BCS pairing cannot occur . This is a candidate for the intermediate “non-CFL” phase of Fig. 1, where the strange quark mass, combined with requirements of weak equilibrium and charge neutrality, gives each quark flavor a different Fermi momentum. The phenomenology of the crystalline phase has not yet been worked out, but recent calculations using Landau-Ginzburg effective theory indicate that the favored phase may be a face-centered cubic crystal , with a reasonably large binding energy. This raises the interesting possibility of glitches in quark matter stars.
* Cooling by neutrino emission. The cooling rate is determined by the heat capacity and emissivity, both of which are sensitive to the spectrum of low-energy excitations, and hence to color superconductivity. CFL quark matter, where all modes are gapped, has a much smaller neutrino emissivity and heat capacity than nuclear matter, and hence the cooling of a compact star is likely to be dominated by the nuclear mantle rather than the CFL core . Other phases such as 2SC or LOFF give large gaps to only some of the quarks. Their cooling would proceed quickly, then slow down suddenly when the temperature fell below the smallest of the small weak-channel gaps. This behavior should be observable .

## 5 Mass-radius relationship for compact stars

Although the effects of color superconductivity on the quark matter equation of state are subdominant, they may have a large effect on the mass-radius relationship. The reason for this is that the pressure of quark matter relative to the hadronic vacuum contains a constant (the “bag constant” $`B`$) that represents the cost of dismantling the chirally broken and confining hadronic vacuum,

$$p=(1c)\frac{3}{4\pi ^2}\mu ^4\frac{3}{4\pi ^2}m_s^2\mu ^2+\frac{3}{\pi ^2}\mathrm{\Delta }^2\mu ^2B.$$
(6)
If the bag constant is large enough so that nuclear matter is favored (or almost favored) over quark matter at $`\mu 320\mathrm{MeV}`$, then the bag constant and $`\mu ^4`$ terms almost cancel, so if we can fix the bag constant by other means then the strange quark mass $`m_s`$ and color superconducting gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ may have a large effect on the equation of state and hence on the mass-radius relationship of a compact star .

### 5.1 $`M(R)`$ at fixed bag constant

In Ref.  Sanjay Reddy and I explored the effect of quark pairing on the $`M`$-$`R`$ relationship at fixed values of the bag constant that are consistent with nuclear phenomenology. Fig. 4 shows the mass-radius curve for the bag model of dense matter, in which there is competition between a nuclear matter phase and a quark matter phase. The nuclear matter was described either by the APR98 equation of state . The quark matter equation of state was essentially that of equation (6), but we included the full (free-quark) correction due to the strange quark mass. The coefficient of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2\mu ^2`$ term is the one appropriate to CFL color superconductivity involving all nine colors/flavors of the quarks. We used physically reasonable values of the bag constant $`B^{1/4}=180`$ MeV ($`B=137\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{fm}^3`$) and strange quark mass $`m_s=200`$ MeV. We set the parameter $`c`$ to zero: its effects will be discussed below.

Curves for unpaired ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$) and color-superconducting ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=100\mathrm{MeV}`$) quark matter are shown. At these values the stars are typically “hybrid”, containing both quark matter and nuclear matter. The solid lines in Fig. 4 correspond to stars that either have no QM at all, or a sharp transition between NM and QM: the core is made of quark matter, which is the favored phase at high pressure, and at some radius there is a transition to nuclear matter, which is favored at low pressure. The transition pressure is sensitive to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, for reasons discussed earlier. The dashed lines are for stars that contain a mixed NM-QM phase. In all cases we see that light, large stars consist entirely of nuclear matter. When the star becomes heavy enough, the central pressure rises to a level where QM occurs in the core. As can be seen from the figure the transition density is very sensitive to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. The line labeled “Cottam et al.” indicates the constraint obtained by recent measurements of the redshift on three spectral lines from EXO0748-676 .

### 5.2 $`M(R)`$ with non-free quarks: quark matter mimicking nuclear matter

In Ref.  we kept the bag constant fixed, assuming that it could be fixed by other observations, and we treated the quark matter as free quarks with a pairing energy. It is interesting to see what happens when we relax these assumptions, since the bag constant is not easily measured, and even after taking pairing into account we expect remaining QCD interactions between the quarks in the Fermi sea.

To allow for effects of quark interactions beyond Cooper pairing, we follow the parameterization of Fraga et. al. , who find that the $`𝒪(\alpha _s^2)`$ pressure for three unpaired flavors over the relevant range of $`\mu `$ is well-described by a bag-model-inspired form given by

$$P_{\alpha _s^2}(\mu )=\frac{3}{4\pi ^2}a_{\mathrm{eff}}\mu ^4B_{\mathrm{eff}},a_{\mathrm{eff}}1c.$$
(7)
They find $`a_{\mathrm{eff}}0.63`$ ($`c0.37`$), but admit that at the density of interest for compact star physics the QCD coupling is strong, and there there is no reason to expect the leading order calculation to be accurate. We therefore take their result as indicating that it is reasonable to treat $`c`$ as an additional parameter in the quark matter equation of state, as shown in Eq. (6), and we proceed to study its effects on the mass-radius relationship of compact stars.

To see how closely quark matter can mimic nuclear matter, we will not treat the bag constant as fixed, but tune it to keep the physics as constant as possible. Thus when we compare, say, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ (non-color-superconducting) quark matter with CFL ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=50`$) quark matter, we set the bag constant in each case so that the transition from nuclear to quark matter occurs at a given density of nuclear matter. This effectively “subtracts out” the part of any variation in $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ that simply corresponds to a renormalization of the bag constant, which is in any case very poorly known.

We explore the effect of a color superconducting gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and perturbative correction $`c`$ on the mass-radius relationship. We fix the bag constant by requiring that that the nuclear to quark matter phase transition occur at nuclear matter baryon density $`\rho =1.5n_{\mathrm{sat}}`$. The resultant $`M(R)`$ curves are shown in Fig. 5. The noticeable features of the plots are

1. Increasing $`c`$ makes the stars smaller and lighter.
In our parameterization the stars resulting from quark matter equations of state without perturbative correction ($`c=0`$, blue lines) are smaller and lighter.
2. Color superconductivity acts like a change in the bag constant.
In Ref.  we showed that at fixed bag constant, color superconductivity has a strong effect on the mass-radius relationship of compact stars. Here, by comparing the dashed lines with the dotted lines in Fig. 5, we see that it is difficult to distinguish the effect of color superconductivity from a change in the bag constant. In Fig. 5, as we vary parameters $`c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of the quark matter equation of state, the bag constant is tuned to maintain a constant value of the nuclear density at the transition to quark matter, and in this situation color superconductivity only makes a small difference to the mass-radius relationship.
3. Quark matter with $`c0.3`$ looks just like APR98 nuclear matter.
The stars with $`c=0.3`$ have mass-radius relationships that are very similar to the pure nuclear APR98 matter. In fact, for the case where there are perturbative corrections but no color superconductivity the equations of state ($`p(\mu )`$) are so similar that our program found a series of phase transitions back and forth between CFL and APR98 up to $`\mu =546\mathrm{MeV}`$ (baryon density $`\rho =5.4n_{\mathrm{sat}}`$). This is why the $`c=0.3`$ red dotted curve lies almost exactly on top of the solid black (APR98) curve, even though there was a phase transition from APR98 to CFL at $`\rho =1.5n_{\mathrm{sat}}`$ (which is first attained when the APR98 star reaches a mass of $`0.315M_{}`$, $`R=13.3\mathrm{km}`$).

### 5.3 $`M(R)`$ measurements and quark matter

We can now ask what significance mass and radius measurements will have for the presence of quark matter, and particularly color-superconducting quark matter, in compact stars.

* What would rule out quark matter?
From Fig. 5 we see that an observed mass $`M2M_{}`$ would be inconsistent with the star containing quark matter obeying the equation of state that we have studied here. However, we emphasize that by introducing the parameter $`c`$ and setting it to a reasonable value $`c0.3`$ we have increased the mass range for hybrid stars, moving the upper limit from its old value around $`1.6M_{}`$ up to about $`1.9M_{}`$.
* What would indicate the presence of quark matter?
This is difficult. Regions of $`M`$-$`R`$ space that cannot be reached by any nuclear matter equation of state also cannot be reached by hybrid NM-QM equations of state. It is clear from Figs. 5 and 4 that hybrid stars are smaller than Walecka or APR98 nuclear matter stars, with radii of around $`10\mathrm{km}`$ at $`M1.4M_{}`$. But there are many other suggested nuclear equations of state, and the flattening of the $`M(R)`$ curve that appears in our plots to be characteristic of quark matter may easily be mimicked by kaon condensation in nuclear matter .

Obviously the region of pure quark matter objects which lie at very low mass and radius (“strangelets”) is not attainable by nuclear matter, but the existence of such objects, unlike that of compact stars, remains a matter of speculation.
* What would indicate the presence of color superconducting quark matter?
This is more difficult. Even if we found an $`M(R)`$ characteristic of quark matter, we would need an independent determination of the bag constant to claim that it was color-superconducting.

Acknowledgments

I thank the organizers of “Finite density QCD at Nara” and Confinement 2003. The work reported in Section 5 was performed in collaboration with Sanjay Reddy, and was supported by the UK PPARC and by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant number DE-FG02-91ER40628. The work reported in Section 3.2 was performed in collaboration with C. Kouvaris and K. Rajagopal, and was supported in part by DOE grants DE-FG02-91ER40628 and DF-FC02-94ER40818.


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# Halo asphericity and the shear 3-pt function

## 1. Introduction

Gravitational lensing (for reviews, see Mellier LensReview (1999); Bartelmann & Schneider Schneider (2001); Wittman Wittman (2002)) provides us with a unique opportunity to probe the matter distribution of the universe and, in combination with galaxy surveys, the galaxy-halo connection. In particular the small angular scale structure of the lensing shear field is sensitive to the density distribution of dark matter halos over a range of mass scales, as has been emphasized by Takada & Jain TakJai (2003).

In this brief report we show, using a simple toy model, that the 3-point function of the shear is sensitive to the halo ellipticity/asphericity. This gives us another way, in principle, to measure the shapes of dark matter halos. We expect that the higher order shear correlation functions will be ever more sensitive to the asphericity of halos, thus the distribution of halo shapes, in addition to the distribution of sizes, masses and radial profiles, should be included in semi-analytic models aiming at a high fidelity prediction of the higher order shear correlations.

## 2. The halo model

Our calculations will all be performed within the halo model paradigm (see Corray & Sheth HaloModel (2002)). Specifically we assume that all the mass in the universe is contained within virialized halos with a range of sizes and shapes. Under this assumption the correlation function and higher order moments of the shear can be related to integrals over the (projected) density profiles of the halos, times geometrical factors, and terms involving the clustering of the halos (Takada & Jain TakJaib (2002); Zaldarriaga & Scoccimarro ZalSco (2003)). If we work on small (arcminute) angular scales then the dominant contribution to the shear 3-point function will arise when all 3 points sample the mass from within the same halo (Takada & Jain TakJaib (2002)). This term is independent of the clustering of the halos.

To describe the 3-point function we will use conventions similar to those by Zaldarriaga & Scoccimarro ZalSco (2003) and Schneider & Lombardi Geomsource (2003), with $`\theta _i`$ the vector to vertex $`i`$ of the triangle with the origin of the coordinate system set to the center of the triangle and $`𝐮`$ is the center of the halo we are considering. The geometry is shown in Fig. 1.

We construct scalar $`3`$-point correlation functions by contracting the three observed shears with spin-2 quantities (Mellier LensReview (1999); Bartelmann & Schneider Schneider (2001); Wittman Wittman (2002); Zaldarriaga & Scoccimarro ZalSco (2003))

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}𝐏_+\hfill & =& (\theta _x^2\theta _y^2,2\theta _x\theta _y)\theta ^2& =& (\mathrm{cos}2\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}2\varphi )\hfill \\ 𝐏_\times \hfill & =& (2\theta _x\theta _y,\theta _x^2\theta _y^2)\theta ^2& =& (\mathrm{sin}2\varphi ,\mathrm{cos}2\varphi )\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
which have opposite parity. When we contract the above quantities with the shear components $`\gamma _1`$ and $`\gamma _2`$, we will get $`\gamma _+`$ and $`\gamma _\times `$. Thus, we can define our three point function as

$$\zeta _{\alpha \beta \chi }=\gamma _\alpha \gamma _\beta \gamma _\chi =𝐏_\alpha ^{\mu _\mathrm{𝟏}}𝐏_\beta ^{\mu _\mathrm{𝟐}}𝐏_\chi ^{\mu _\mathrm{𝟑}}\gamma _{\mu _1}\gamma _{\mu _2}\gamma _{\mu _3}$$
(2)
where $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$ and $`\chi `$ are either + or $`\times `$

The contribution to the small-angle $`\zeta `$ from a single halo of projected density $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is then

$$\zeta _{\alpha \beta \gamma }=d^2uϵ^\alpha \mathrm{\Sigma }(\theta _1𝐮)ϵ^\beta \mathrm{\Sigma }(\theta _2𝐮)ϵ^\gamma \mathrm{\Sigma }(\theta _3𝐮)$$
(3)
where the halo is centered at $`𝐮`$ and the $`ϵ^i`$ are phase factors that depends on the geometry of the halo.

It has been standard in the literature to use a “spherically averaged” halo profile in the computation of the higher-order moments of the shear field. In this limit the shear is tangential to the halo center and the phase factors are simply

$$ϵ^+=\mathrm{cos}2\alpha ϵ^\times =\mathrm{sin}2\alpha ,$$
(4)
where $`\alpha `$ is the angle between $`𝐮`$ and $`\theta `$. However we know from numerical simulations (Frenk & White Frenk (1988); Dubinski & Carlberg Dubin (1991)) that dark matter halos are triaxial, so we wish to relax the spherical assumption.

In order to highlight the effects of halo asphericity on the 3-point function with minimal complications we shall employ a simple toy model. First, we work entirely in terms of a single halo, we do not integrate over the entire mass distribution. Second, we work throughout with projected quantities. Specifically we modify the spherical (projected) density profile, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(r)`$, to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(s)`$ where $`s=\sqrt{x^2+(qy^{})^2}`$ and $`x^{}`$ and $`y^{}`$ are sky coordinates, possibly rotated with respect to the axes defining the shear triangle. For $`q<1`$ the profile is elliptical, elongated along the $`x^{}`$ axis. Meneghetti, Bartelmann & Moscardini Meneghetti (2003) found $`q0.7`$ characterized the ellipticity of dark matter halos found in N-body simulations, and we shall use this value later as an indicator of the potential size of ellipticity effects. Since our profile is now elliptical, the phase factors, $`ϵ`$, become

$$ϵ^+=\mathrm{cos}2(\alpha \beta )ϵ^\times =\mathrm{sin}2(\alpha \beta )$$
(5)
where $`\beta `$ is the angle between $`\theta 𝐮`$ and the normal to the tangent at $`\theta `$. The definitions of the variables can be easily understood from Figure 1. Thus, for an NFW halo (Navarro, Frenk & White NFW (1996)), our expression for $`\zeta _{+++}`$ becomes

$$\zeta _{+++}=𝑑\varphi d^2u\underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\mathrm{cos}2(\alpha _i\beta _i)\mathrm{\Sigma }(s_i)$$
(6)
where

$`s_i`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{x_i^2+(qy_i^2)}`$ (7)
$`x_i`$ $`=`$ $`(\theta _x^iu_x)\mathrm{cos}\varphi +(\theta _y^iu_y)\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$ (8)
$`y_i`$ $`=`$ $`(\theta _x^iu_x)\mathrm{sin}\varphi +(\theta _y^iu_y)\mathrm{cos}\varphi ,`$ (9)
$`\alpha _i`$ and $`\beta _i`$ are functions of $`\theta _i`$ and $`q`$, $`𝑑\varphi `$ is an integral over the orientation of the halo and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the projected profile which we take to be (Bartelmann Bart (1996))

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^2(s)=\left(\frac{1}{s^21}\right)\left(1\frac{2}{|s^21|^{1/2}}\mathrm{tann}^1\left|\frac{s1}{s+1}\right|^{1/2}\right)$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{tann}^1(x)=\mathrm{tan}^1(x)`$ when $`x>1`$ and $`\mathrm{tanh}^1(x)`$ when $`x<1`$. Similar expressions hold for the other components of $`\zeta `$.

## 3. Results and Discussions

It has been argued that halo ellipticity would not affect the higher order correlations of the shear, since different orientations would “wash out” the effect. Our results show that this argument is too simplistic – the physical observables do depend on $`q`$. One reason for this is the change in the projection of the shear at $`\theta _i`$ onto the $`+`$ and $`\times `$ components. The other is simply that the orientation average of $`\rho ^3`$ isn’t equal to the cube of the orientation averaged $`\rho `$, an inequality which becomes stronger as we go to higher orders.

Since $`\zeta _{+++}`$ has the strongest signal among all of the 3-point functions, we have used it to illustrate the effect of halo asphericity. The most noticeable property of Fig. 2 is the peak shift and amplitude change when $`q<1`$. The peak first moves to the right from around $`2\pi /3`$ and then moves to the left. It may be possible to see such a shift in Fig. 10 of Takada & Jain TakJai (2003) which compares the analytic theory (assming spherical halos) to numerical results. We can try to understand the shape of $`\zeta _{+++}`$ and the peak shift by starting from a simple case when the halo is spherical and the triangle is equilateral. Let us consider the halo center to be inside the triangle, which minimizes the distances to the vertices and thus maximizes the signal, and assume that the triangle fits entirely within the halo. For $`q=1`$ the configuration which best matches the shear orientations to $`\gamma _+`$ at each vertix can easily be seen to be an equilateral triangle. For a wide range of halo center positions one obtains a positive contribution to $`\zeta _{+++}`$. If the halo has $`q<0.7`$ then triangles with $`\varphi <2\pi /3`$ have some orientations which allow more of the high density region of the halo to fall within the triangle and to better match the orientations of the $`+`$ shear components, enhancing the signal at slightly smaller angles than the $`q=1`$ case. For completeness we also show two of the seven other 3-point functions in Figs. 3 and 4. To avoid clutter we only show results for $`q=1`$, $`0.8`$ and $`0.7`$. These figures show clearly that halo asphericity has an effect on all of the (non-zero) shear 3-point functions.

We have shown in this brief report that aspherical dark matter halos give rise to a different configuration dependence of the weak lensing shear 3-point function than spherical halos. The positions and amplitudes of the peaks in the 3-point function shift as the typical halo is made more aspherical. This effect, in principle, provides us a probe of dark matter halo shapes, which have long been predicted by numerical simulations to be aspherical. It should also be included in semi-analytic models aiming at a high fidelity prediction of higher order correlations in the shear field.

SH wants to thank Joanne Cohn, Chuck Keeton, Chris Vale, Amol Upadhye and the Berkeley Cosmology Group for their valuable discussions and support. This research was supported by the NSF and NASA.


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# Intrinsic absorbers in BL Lac objects: the XMM-Newton view

## 1 Introduction

BL Lacs are well-known for their featureless spectra, all the way from radio to gamma rays. These smooth continua are thought to be generated by synchrotron self-compton emission from jets of material streaming out of the active nucleus towards us. Canizares & Kruper (canizares (1984)), however, discovered a soft X-ray absorption feature in the Einstein Objective Grating Spectrometer (OGS) spectrum of the BL Lac PKS 2155-304, and since that time, similar features have been detected in several other objects: 1H1219+301, Markarian 501, PKS 0548-322, Markarian 421 (Madejski et al. madejski1991 (1991)) and H1426+428 (Madejski et al. madejski1992 (1992)). This absorption, interpreted in each case as being due to ionised gas intrinsic to the BL Lac, is perhaps the only insight we have into the immediate environment of these enigmatic sources. The dispersive spectrometers on-board XMM-Newton and Chandra, with their combination of high resolution and large effective area, provide the best opportunity yet to investigate and understand these features. To this end, XMM-Newton observed the BL Lacs 1H1219+301, H1426+428, Markarian 501 and PKS 0548-322 with the aim of obtaining high resolution soft X-ray spectra with the Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS; den Herder et al denherder (2001)), and high signal-to-noise CCD resolution spectra from EPIC (Strüder et al. struder (2001)). This paper presents the X-ray spectra of these objects, and discusses the evidence for spectral traces of the BL Lac environment. Table 1 gives their coordinates, cosmological redshifts and Galactic neutral absorbing columns.

Various authors have searched for soft X-ray ionised absorption in the four BL Lacs discussed in this paper. Madejski et al. (madejski1991 (1991)) found evidence for an absorption notch (trough) in the Einstein SSS spectrum of 1H1219+301; this feature appeared at 0.56 $`{}_{0.02}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.01}`$ keV (all energies in this Section are quoted in the observed frame unless otherwise stated) and had a width of about 100 eV. It has apparently not been seen since with other missions.

A soft X-ray absorption feature in the BBXRT spectrum of H1426+428 was reported by Madejski et al. (madejski1992 (1992)), and analysed in greater detail by Sambruna et al. (sambruna1997\_h1 (1997)). These latter authors also find indications of soft X-ray ionised absorption in spectra from ROSAT and ASCA. The BBXRT feature was best described by a broad gaussian absorption line at $``$0.66 keV with a width less than or equal to 43000 km s-1. The ROSAT and ASCA data were fitted together as they had similar flux levels. The fitting produced indications of two absorption edges at 0.15 keV and 0.52 keV.

The first evidence for an absorption feature in Markarian 501 came from the Einstein SSS spectrum; Urry et al. (urry (1986)) found an absorption trough at $``$0.57 keV with a width of 80 eV (these were the same as the parameters obtained for PKS 2155-304). The data were reanalysed by Madejski et al. (madejski1991 (1991)), who modelled the absoption with a notch at 0.56 $`\pm `$ 0.01 keV, of width 240 eV and covering factor 0.52. A later study by Fink et al. (fink (1991)) of ROSAT data revealed the possibility of an absorption line at 0.37 $`{}_{0.09}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.25}`$ keV (the width was fixed at 100 eV), although the statistical significance was too low to prove the existence of the line.

Madejski et al. (madejski1991 (1991)) detected an absorption trough at 0.57 $`\pm `$ 0.02 keV in the Einstein SSS spectrum of PKS 0548-322. More recently, Sambruna et al. (sambruna1998\_pks0548 (1998)) found an absorption edge at $``$0.66 keV in ASCA data; this feature could alternatively be explained by a notch at 0.82 keV with width 100 eV (fixed) and covering factor 0.12. They re-analysed the Einstein SSS data, obtaining an edge at 0.487 keV, and found evidence of two edges in ROSAT data. One of the ROSAT edges (at around 1 keV) was probably instrumental, and the other, at 0.553 keV, may either have been intrinsic or due to residual calibration problems.

The usual interpretation advanced for these features is that they originate in highly ionised oxygen in the environment of the BL Lac. The earliest detected feature amongst the objects described here, the absorption trough in Markarian 501, was simply described as being due to highly ionised oxygen (Urry et al. urry (1986)). Madejski et al. (madejski1991 (1991)), following the lead of Canizares & Kruper (canizares (1984)), interpreted their notches as being due to O viii Ly$`\alpha `$ resonance absorption. Sambruna et al. (sambruna1997\_h1 (1997)) found their $``$0.66 keV feature to be consistent with absorption edges of O v–O vii, and marginally consistent with O viii Ly$`\alpha `$. In their ROSAT and ASCA fits, no physical meaning could be determined for the 0.15 keV edge, whereas that at 0.52 keV was identified with the K-edge of O iii. Fink et al. (fink (1991)) give no physical interpretation for their 0.37 keV line. The absorption feature seen by Sambruna et al. (sambruna1998\_pks0548 (1998)) in PKS 0548-322 has two possible explanations: if it is an edge, it corresponds to O vi, and if it is a notch it would correspond to Fe xix–Fe xx or Ne vii. Sambruna et al. (sambruna1997\_h1 (1997) and sambruna1998\_pks0548 (1998)) also fit the absorption with photoionised warm absorber models. The appearance of features at different energies, when the sources are at different flux levels, has also been used as a diagnostic. In H1426+428, the features were found to be at lower energies when the source flux was lower, consistent with the predictions of warm absorber models (Sambruna et al. sambruna1997\_h1 (1997)). The opposite has been found to be true (lower energy features at *higher* flux levels), however, in PKS 0548-322 (Sambruna et al. sambruna1998\_pks0548 (1998)).

Seyfert galaxies have the best understood warm absorbers of all the classes of AGN. Since the advent of high resolution X-ray spectrometers, it has been known that narrow absorption and emission lines, rather than deep absorption edges, are the most common characteristic of ionised gas in the environment of this variety of AGN (e.g. Kaastra et al. kaastra2000 (2000)). It would be interesting to see if this is also true of BL Lacs, and particularly whether the low resolution of previous spectrometers has been hiding a wealth of information in these narrow lines. Since the launch of Chandra, weak intrinsic narrow absorption lines of O vii He$`\alpha `$ have been found in Chandra LETGS spectra of Markarian 421 (Nicastro et al. nicastro2000 (2000), nicastro2003 (2003)), and narrow absorption lines due to the local Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium have also been found in PKS 2155-304 (Nicastro et al. nicastro2002 (2002)) and Markarian 421 (Nicastro et al. nicastro2003 (2003)) as observed by Chandra, and also in XMM-Newton RGS spectra (Paerels et al. paerels (2003)). There have been no reports so far of the broad absorption features found in the past, even though PKS 2155-304 and Markarian 421 have been observed many times as calibration sources by both XMM-Newton and Chandra.

## 2 Observations and data analysis

The dates, observing modes and exposure times of the observations are given in Table 2. The EPIC-pn data were processed using the XMM-Newton SAS (Science Analysis System) Version 5.4, using the `epproc` task, and spectra and lightcurves were extracted from a source region of 40”, using both single and double events, with background subtraction being performed using regions of the same size. Time intervals affected by proton flaring were filtered out of the event lists used for spectral extraction; the medium filter exposures of Markarian 501 were disregarded due to a high proton background throughout in both of them. Response matrices and ancillary response files were generated using the SAS tasks `rmfgen` and `arfgen` respectively. It was found, using `epatplot`, that the minimum useful energy for spectral fitting is $``$0.4 keV. There are no pn data for PKS 0548-322.

The EPIC-MOS data were extracted with `emproc` under SAS V5.4. The imaging mode MOS data for all objects were found to be piled-up, and so were not used further in the analysis. Timing Uncompressed (TU) mode data were available for H1426+428 and Markarian 501; these did not suffer from pile-up, although the response matrices were found to have an incorrect energy scale in the region of the oxygen K-edge at $``$ 0.5 keV which biased the spectral fitting. Because of this, and the existence of better-quality pn data, the TU MOS data were not used in the final spectral fits.

RGS1 and RGS2 data were extracted using `rgsproc` under SAS V5.4, which carries out background subtraction using regions spatially adjacent to the source. Time intervals affected by proton flaring were filtered out. For each source, RGS1 and RGS2 data (both first and second order spectra) were combined channel by channel to achieve the best possible signal to noise. The RGS spectra were binned into groups of three channels, approximately equivalent to the spectral resolution. Both the RGS and pn X-ray spectra were analysed using xspec, with the search for detailed spectral features being carried out in SPEX 2.00 (Kaastra et al. 2002a ). Since PKS 0548-322 has no usable EPIC data, the RGS was used to obtain an X-ray lightcurve with `evselect`, performing background subtraction using the average background lightcurve obtained from regions above and below the source in the cross-dispersion direction.

## 3 Lightcurves

The 0.4$``$10 keV pn lightcurves of 1H1219+301, H1426+428 and Markarian 501 are constant to within $``$ 5%, and the RGS lightcurve of PKS 0548-322 is on average constant to within $``$ 10% (the signal-to-noise is poorer for the RGS lightcurve); these lightcurves are plotted in Fig 1. Our spectral fitting is thus unlikely to be much affected by any spectral variability in the sources.

## 4 EPIC-pn spectra

The 0.4$``$10 keV pn spectra were fitted with power-law models with fixed neutral absorption due to our Galaxy. The ratios of the data to these models are shown in Fig. 2. Some spectral curvature is present in each case, but there is no evidence for deep warm absorption - or excess neutral absorption - in any of the sources; any fit residuals in the soft band are all within the 10% calibration uncertainties which exist below 2 keV. Motivated by the observed spectral curvature, we fitted broken power-law models (again with fixed Galactic neutral absorption) to the spectra. The parameters of both broken power-law and simple power-law fits are listed in Table 3, and the broken power-law fits are shown superimposed on the data in Fig. 2.

## 5 RGS spectra

None of the RGS spectra show evidence of broad absorption features. The parameters of power-law and broken power-law continuum fits, with neutral absorption due to the ISM of our Galaxy, are given in Table 3. The statistical significance of apparent narrow emission and absorption features in the spectra was assessed by fitting a gaussian against a local continuum (as done for NGC 7469 in Blustin et al. blustin (2003)). The results of this, alongside the respective RGS spectra, are plotted in Figs. 36. If the features were purely due to statistical noise, then in an RGS spectrum of about 1000 data points, one would expect to see about three features significant at 3$`\sigma `$. Any 4$`\sigma `$ features would be likely to be real.

Figs. 3 and 5 show that the apparent features in 1H1219+301 and Markarian 501 are consistent with statistical noise. H1426+428 (Fig. 4) and PKS 0548-322 (Fig. 6) each have one narrow absorption feature significant at 4$`\sigma `$ or greater. The H1426+428 feature has an equivalent width of 40 $`\pm `$ 10 m$`\mathrm{\AA }`$ at 11.55 $`\mathrm{\AA }`$ (observed frame), which is 10.23 $`\mathrm{\AA }`$ in the source rest frame, and could be identified as Ne x Ly$`\beta `$. The corresponding Ly$`\alpha `$ is not present though, making the identification unlikely. The observed line could conceivably be Ne x Ly$`\alpha `$ blueshifted by $``$ 47000 km s-1, if it was associated with the BL Lac jet, but no further lines are found which could give support to this pattern. The 4$`\sigma `$ absorption line in PKS 0548-322 appears at 21.82 $`\mathrm{\AA }`$ in the observed frame (20.41 $`\mathrm{\AA }`$ in the rest frame), and has an equivalent width of 70 $`\pm `$ 20 m$`\mathrm{\AA }`$ at 21.82 $`\mathrm{\AA }`$. It has no obvious interpretation in the rest frame - the nearest likely transition is O vii He$`\alpha `$, at a blueshift of $``$ 17000 km s-1. Again, there are no further features to reinforce this interpretation.

H1426+428 and PKS 0548-322, respectively, have five and ten features significant at three sigma. In each case, only one of the features is in emission. This is not what is expected from a random distribution, and suggests that the features may be real. They are not due to bad channels in the spectrum, and the vast majority do not seem to be related to known systematic errors (e.g. anomalies in the response matrix at CCD gaps). We have, however, been unable to find any consistent or plausible identification or interpretation for any of the features.

## 6 Discussion and conclusions

Our high resolution and CCD resolution spectra showed no sign of deep broad ionised absorption features, as had been claimed to be present in spectra from previous missions. Two RGS spectra, those of PKS 0548-322 and H1426+428, have weak indications of narrow line absorption, although we are not able to find convincing identifications for any of these apparent features, and so cannot confirm that they are real.

So where have the deep intrinsic absorption features gone? Fig. 7 contains plots of the observed 2$``$10 keV X-ray flux versus time, over the past 25 years, of the four sources discussed in this paper. Those observations where features have been reported are marked. Only published observations by missions that had sufficient soft X-ray effective area and spectral resolution to detect the features are included (Einstein, ROSAT, BBXRT, ASCA, BeppoSAX and XMM-Newton; there have been no Chandra publications on these objects). It has been claimed (e.g. Madejski et al. madejski1991 (1991)) that intrinsic absorption could be detected in EXOSAT spectra, by means of a soft X-ray spectral flattening, even though this mission had no energy resolution in the band where the features occur; we find no reports in the literature that EXOSAT has ever actually detected such absorption for any of our four objects, so EXOSAT observations are not included. ROSAT’s energy resolution in the relevant energy band is extremely low, but since ROSAT spectra of H1426+428 and Markarian 501 have shown possible evidence of ionised absorption (Sambruna et al. sambruna1997\_h1 (1997), Sambruna et al. sambruna1998\_pks0548 (1998), Fink et al. fink (1991)), we include flux measurements from this mission. The fluxes, when not quoted directly in the 2$``$10 keV band in the original papers, were calculated from the original fit parameters using either PIMMS or XSPEC, and the derived values are given in Table 4 alongside the observation dates and references. The 2$``$10 keV band was chosen as it is the one quoted most frequently in the literature (thus minimising the chance of introducing errors in the extrapolation to a new band), and also the range least affected by the possible confusion between power-law slope and excess neutral absorption in the soft band.

The data in Fig. 7 suggest that the features - if they exist - are only visible some of the time. However, absorption could have been present but not reported (or not detectable) during some of these observations, especially the earlier ones. Because the XMM-Newton spectra are of much higher quality than any of the previous data, and no broad features are observed in any of the XMM-Newton spectra, we can state categorically that if the features observed with past missions were real, they must be a transient phenomenon.

In Fig. 7 no clear patterns emerge in terms of feature visibility at different flux levels. In H1426+428, a feature of some sort was observed for at least three years, but is no longer seen eight years after it was first detected. In Markarian 501, the absorption appears in a space of a few months and has disappeared by the time of the next observation four years hence. We can use the detection rate of the broad absorption features in previous observations to determine the probability of observing no features with XMM-Newton. The fraction of previous observations which did not yield a detection of a broad absorption feature is 75%, 25%, 66% and 57% for 1H1219+301, H1426+428, Markarian 501 and PKS 0548-322 respectively. With these detection rates, the probability of observing no broad absorption features in any of these objects with XMM-Newton is only 7%.

If we take these results at face value, then we can rule out the existence of transient deep, broad intrinsic absorption features in these sources at 93% confidence. If a further comparable set of observations fail to detect any features, then their existence will be ruled out at 99.5% confidence. Time - and future observations with the high quality instruments on board XMM-Newton and Chandra - will lay the question of broad absorption features in BL Lacs to rest.

Low spectral resolution, low signal-to-noise and calibration uncertainties must have contributed to previous conclusions about these features. The major source of the apparent detection of intrinsic soft X-ray absorption features was, though, probably the use of a single power-law to fit the X-ray spectral continuum of BL Lac objects. These continua were fitted at higher energies and extrapolated over the soft band, and the resulting deficit of photons in the soft band was interpreted as evidence for absorption. As our observations show, there is significant spectral curvature in our four sources. This is also seen in other recent observations; for example, Fossati et al. (fossati (2000)) have shown that the X-ray continuum of Markarian 421 is best described by a gradually steepening power-law with the photon index increasing towards higher energies. Such spectral curvature, when fitted with a simple power-law, would give rise to soft X-ray residuals which could plausibly be interpreted as absorption.

So, BL Lac objects do not seem likely to yield much knowledge of the immediate environment of their central engines through X-ray absorption features. A more fruitful search for such evidence will probably involve other classes of radio galaxy in which we are not looking directly down the axis of the jet; Broad Line Radio Galaxies with Seyfert-like nuclei are an ideal candidate for such studies.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA). We acknowledge the support of PPARC. We wish to thank the referee, Grzegorz Madejski, for helpful comments on the contribution of continuum fitting to the detection of absorption features in data from previous missions. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


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# The band spectrum of periodic potentials with 𝒫𝒯-symmetry

## 1 Introduction

In a previous series of papers -, we have presented the exact diagonalization of the hermitian Schrödinger operator corresponding to a periodic potential composed of $`N`$ atoms modelled by delta functions with different couplings for arbitrary $`N`$. This basic structure can repeat itself an infinite number of times giving rise to a periodic structure representing a $`N`$-species one dimensional infinite chain of atoms. To our surprise this model is exactly solvable and a far from straightforward calculation leads to an exact band condition. Due to the factorizable form of the solution one has not only the advantage of closed form expressions but one can also perform computer calculations with an exceedingly degree of accuracy due to the exact nature of the solution itself. The main physical motivation was indeed to modelate the band structure of a one dimensional quantum wire. The model can be extended with a minimum amount of effort to the non-hermitian but $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric  quantum hamiltonian and the band condition becomes real although the potential is obviously a complex one. The imaginary parts of the couplings play a central role in defining the band structure which can be modeled at will by varying this parameter. The purpose of this paper is to present this new solution in a detailed fashion. In a previous paper a preliminary analysis of the existence and properties of this exact band model solution were given . Here we want to present a careful study of the solution in a more rigurous manner paying due attention to the exciting properties that this rich structure seems to exhibit.

The idea of performing band structure calculations by using a non-hermitian Hamiltonian is extremely promissing as the examples of $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric quantum hamiltonians so far existing in the literature rely more in aspects concerning the discrete spectrum and bound states (, ,  and ) and are also far from an actual physical application. It is not the aim of the present paper to provide a full discussion of the manifold aspects of the $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetry in quantum mechanics. We address the interest reader to the original reference , some recent interesting theoretical criticism  and also to some work done recently in one dimensional models  which may help to understand better the role of $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetry in the framework of one dimensional systems. In all these papers the imaginary part of the coupling plays a substantial role in defining the spectrum of bound states. We shall show that in the case of the band structure hereby presented this imaginary parts are of primary importance in defining the transport properties of the one dimensional quantum chain.

The plan of the paper is the following. In Section 2 we shall be discussing the main features of the model just as a simple model for a quantum wire with only real couplings. Furthermore the presence of $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetry and the role of the complex couplings will be introduced. The band spectrum remains analytical and real in spite of the complex non-hermitian nature of the potential. In Section 3 a throughout analysis of the band condition is made in order to clarify the effect of the imaginary parts of the couplings on the band spectrum. This analysis can be expressed analytically for some cases where $`N`$ is not too large. Otherwise the equations appear to be intractable. Even in this case numerical calculations can always be performed with a large degree of accuracy. In section 4 we make some comments on the band spectrum and observe the form of the $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric electronic states. Several pathologies plaguing the band spectrum for the complex coupling case are observed. It can be avoided working on a small range of energies for certain values of the imaginary couplings. The localization of the wave function over the primitive cell is also found to be altered manipulating only the imaginary parameters. We close with a section of Conclusions.

## 2 The model and its band spectrum

Let us begin with a brief remainder of the solution presented in  corresponding to a infinite periodic potential composed of a basic structure made out of a finite number $`N`$ of equally spaced deltas with different real $`N`$ couplings, repeating itself an infinite number of times. If the spacing is $`a`$ and

$$a_j=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{me_j^2}$$
(2.1)
is the length associated to each coupling ($`e_j^2`$), the band structure can be written as

$$\mathrm{cos}(NQa)=(\epsilon ;a_1,a_2,\mathrm{},a_N)$$
(2.2)
where Q is an arbitrary real number which varies between $`\frac{\pi }{Na}`$ and $`\frac{\pi }{Na}`$ and

$`(\epsilon ;a_1,\mathrm{},a_N)=`$ $`2^{N1}{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(N)\mathrm{}h_k2^{N3}{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(N2)\mathrm{}h_k`$ (2.3)
$`+2^{N5}{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(N4)\mathrm{}h_k\mathrm{}(1)^{\frac{N}{2}1}2{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(2)\mathrm{}h_k`$
$`+(1)^{\frac{N}{2}}`$
$`(\epsilon ;a_1,\mathrm{},a_N)=`$ $`2^{N1}{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(N)\mathrm{}h_k2^{N3}{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(N2)\mathrm{}h_k`$ (2.4)
$`+2^{N5}{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(N4)\mathrm{}h_k\mathrm{}(1)^{\frac{N3}{2}}2^2{\displaystyle \underset{P}{}}h_i\mathrm{}(3)\mathrm{}h_k`$
$`+(1)^{\frac{N1}{2}}(h_1+h_2+\mathrm{}+h_N)`$
for even and odd $`N`$ repectively.

The symbol $`_Ph_i\mathrm{}(M)\mathrm{}h_k`$ means a sum over all products of M different $`h_i`$’s with the following rule for each product: the indices must follow an increasing order and to an odd index must always follow an even index and reciprocally.

The functions $`h_j`$ have the universal form:

$$h_j(\epsilon )=\mathrm{cos}(\epsilon )+\left(\frac{a}{a_j}\right)\frac{\mathrm{sin}(\epsilon )}{\epsilon }$$
(2.5)
and the independent variable is a function of the energy (i.e. $`\epsilon =ka`$). In order to see that this condition looks much simpler than one might think at the beginning of the calculation let us list below, for the benefit of the reader, the first three conditions for the cases $`N=2,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}`$ and $`4`$.

$`\mathrm{cos}(2Qa)=2h_1h_21`$ (2.6)
$`\mathrm{cos}(3Qa)=4h_1h_2h_3(h_1+h_2+h_3)`$ (2.7)
$`\mathrm{cos}(4Qa)=8h_1h_2h_3h_42(h_1h_2+h_1h_4+h_2h_3+h_3h_4)+1`$ (2.8)
It does not require too much time to write down the band conditions for fairly large $`N`$, but more important is the fact that the exact formulae (2.3) and (2.4) are in itself quite easy to program for sequential calculations. Using the band condition we have been able to generate not only a full band spectrum but also to calculate the density of states for periodic one dimensional lattices with a high degree of accuracy (See references  and ).

The next step is to include $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetry in this model. It is not hard to see that (2.2) is still real if we include the following changes:

* Promote the couplings from real to complex. i.e. $`\left(\frac{a}{a_j}\right)r_j+\mathrm{}s_j`$
* Order the potential in a $`𝒫𝒯`$-invariant form, that allow us to choose a $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric primitive cell. This leads to the following identifications:

$`h_N`$ $`=h_1^{}`$
$`h_{N1}`$ $`=h_2^{}`$
$`\mathrm{}`$
$`h_{\frac{N}{2}+1}`$ $`=h_{\frac{N}{2}}^{}\text{even }N`$
$`h_{\frac{N+1}{2}}`$ $`=h_{\frac{N+1}{2}}^{}\text{odd }N`$

It is easy to check that equations (2.3) and (2.4) remain real  under these identifications which make obviously the periodic potential complex but $`𝒫𝒯`$-invariant. There has been an earlier attempt to generate real band condition from a complex but $`𝒫𝒯`$-invariant potential . However the results concerning the appearance and disappearance of forbidden and allowed bands was inconclusive. In our case this effect is clear and will be discussed at length below.

As is well known for years a hermitian periodic potential cannot alter its band spectrum just by fine tunning the couplings. The bands can indeed be made wider or narrower but its number and quality (forbidden or allowed) remains unchanged. The theorems supporting these statements are all based upon the intuitive idea that a hermitian operator cannot change its spectrum that is basically given by the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the states at the edges of the bands. The mathematics can be hard but the physical idea was indeed whether this behaviour would be mantained if a $`𝒫𝒯`$-invariant potential is used. For this purpose they use various analytical potentials carefully shifted to be $`𝒫𝒯`$-invariant. They can prove that the band condition is real but in order to analyze the band structure they have to assert with a very high degree of precision whether a given curve is above (below) $`+1`$ ($`1`$) in a similar manner as we have to ascertain ourselves that the expressions (2.6)-(2.8) (and in general (2.3) and (2.4)) exceeds $`+1`$ or goes below $`1`$. In the case of  this appears a very hard task indeed as the authors do not have to their disposal an analytical band condition, so they must carry out various kinds of approximations. The authors conclude that ”despite this impressive precision, \[…its equations\] (16) and (17) cannot be used directly to answer the crucial question of whether there are band gaps because these approximations to the discriminant \[… band condition\] never cross the values \[…normalized to\] $`\pm 1`$

But we do have such an exact band condition and in spite of the apparent formidable aspect of the expressions (2.3)-(2.4) we can perform various kinds of exact and numerical analysis in order to check the dependence of the band width and the band number on the exceptional parameter that arises in our model: the imaginary part of the complex couplings. This will be the subject of next Section.

## 3 The band condition for couplings with non-vanishing imaginary part

In order to understand the effect of the imaginary part of the couplings on the band spectrum one must analize in detail the behaviour of the band condition. Let us begin with the simplest $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric chain including $`2`$ deltas in the primitive cell characterized by the parameters $`(a/a_1)=r_1+\mathrm{}s_1`$ and $`(a/a_1)^{}=r_1\mathrm{}s_1`$. This case has been also carefully studied considering different distances between the deltas in reference . The band structure is entirely determined by the function $`=2h_1h_1^{}1`$, which can written as

$$=(s_1=0)+\frac{2s_1^2\mathrm{sin}^2(\epsilon )}{\epsilon ^2}.$$
(3.1)
The term due to the imaginary part is always positive and it has the effect of lifting up the band condition for all values of $`r_1`$. The position and width of the allowed (forbidden) bands come from the intersections at $`=1,1`$ which depend strongly on the position of the maxima and minima of the band condition. The changes on these limiting points can be analytically described in this case.

From the equation $`/\epsilon =0`$ one can find the value of the oscillatory part of the band condition (i.e. the trigonometric functions) as a function of $`\epsilon `$ and substituting into $``$ with a properly choice of signs will result in an analytical form for the curves crossing the extremal points of the band condition which reads:

$$C_\pm =2f_\pm f_\pm ^{}1$$
(3.2)
where $`C_+(C_{})`$ lays on the maxima(minima) and the functions $`f_\pm `$ are defined as follows:

$`f_\pm =`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{F_\pm }}}\left[\sqrt{2}r_1(r_1\mathrm{}s_1)\pm \left(F_\pm 2r_1^2\epsilon ^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\right]`$ (3.3)
$`F_\pm =`$ $`r_1^2+(r_1^2+s_1^2)^2+2(r_1+r_1^2s_1^2)\epsilon ^2+\epsilon ^4\pm `$ (3.4)
$`(r_1r_1^2s_1^2+\epsilon ^2)\left[(r_1+r_1^2+s_1^2)^2+2(r_1+r_1^2s_1^2)\epsilon ^2+\epsilon ^4\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}.`$
Hence, the behaviour of the band condition can be studied through the evolution of $`C_\pm `$. Taking the limit $`s_10`$ we obtain,

$$\underset{s_10}{lim}C_\pm =\{\begin{array}{cc}1+\frac{2r_1^2}{\epsilon ^2}\frac{r_1(2+r_1)+\epsilon ^2}{r_1(2+r_1)+\epsilon ^2+\frac{r_1^2}{\epsilon ^2}}\hfill & \\ 1.\hfill & \end{array}$$
(3.5)
The real part of the couplings controls the amplitude of the oscillations (and therefore the distance between $`C_+`$ and $`C_{}`$) but the minima will always lean on $`=1`$ unless the imaginary part is non zero. Thus as we increase $`s_1`$ the minima will rise, as can be seen in figure 1(a), and they never touch $`1`$ because $`lim_\epsilon \mathrm{}C_{}=1`$. On the other hand considering $`r_10`$, after some algebra one obtains

$`\underset{r_10}{lim}C_+`$ $`=\{\begin{array}{cc}1+\frac{2s_1^2}{\epsilon ^2}\frac{s_1^4+\epsilon ^4+s_1^2(12\epsilon ^2)}{s_1^4+\epsilon ^4+s_1^2(\frac{s_1^2}{\epsilon ^2}2\epsilon ^2)}\hfill & \text{for }\epsilon s_1\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \text{for }\epsilon >s_1\hfill \end{array}`$ (3.6)
and for $`C_{}`$ the limit is the same as for $`C_+`$ but interchanging with respect to the intervals in $`\epsilon `$. Thus for an imaginary part of the coupling large enough compared to the real one the band condition goes above $`+1`$ for energies below the value $`s_1`$. Figure 1(b) shows this last configuration. In fact the situation $`s_1r_1`$ can be easily understood from the form of the band condition that can easily be written in this limit as:

$$1+\frac{2s_1^2}{\epsilon ^2}+2\mathrm{cos}^2(x)\left(1\frac{s_1^2}{\epsilon ^2}\right)$$
(3.7)
which shows clearly the boundaries when $`\epsilon s_1:\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}1+2s_1^2/\epsilon ^2`$ saturated at $`\epsilon =n\pi `$ and $`\epsilon =(2n+1)\frac{\pi }{2}n`$ respectively. For $`\epsilon >s_1`$ the boundaries simply interchange among them. Due to the nature of the functions $`h_j(\epsilon )`$ the band condition is always tied up to the value $`+1`$ at every multiple of $`\pi `$ for all $`r_1,s_1`$, as figure 1(b) clearly shows. Several configurations of the spectrum as the ones in figure 1 can be built for different values of the complex coupling.

Let us now consider a $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric chain whose primitive cell includes $`3`$ atoms charaterized by the parameters $`(a/a_1)=r_1+\mathrm{}s_1`$, $`(a/a_2)=r_2`$ and $`(a/a_1)^{}`$. The band condition function reads $`=4h_1h_1^{}h_2(h_1+h_1^{}+h_2)`$. This can be arranged as:

$$=(s_1=0)+\frac{4s_1^2\mathrm{sin}^2(\epsilon )\left[\epsilon \mathrm{cos}(\epsilon )+r_2\mathrm{sin}(\epsilon )\right]}{\epsilon ^3}.$$
(3.8)
The extra term arising from the imaginary part of the coupling can be either positive or negative depending on the value of $`r_2`$ and the energy. The effect of $`s_1`$ is different compared to the previous case although there is only one imaginary parameter. The structure of the band condition seems to be composed by pieces each one including $`3`$ different types of extremal points, as figure 2(a) shows, and each type apparently following a given pattern. The curves crossing the extremal points of the band condition can also be analytically calculated in this $`N=3`$ case but the expressions are quite hard to simplify and therefore we do not provide the explicit form of the equations. Three curves are obtained, one for each type of extremal point. Initially when $`s_1=0`$ all the extremal points are outside or on the borders of the range $`[1,1]`$. As we increase the imaginary part, the amplitudes of two of the three types of extremal points begin to decrease (green and red in figure 2(b)). At the same time as $`s_1`$ becomes larger the green and red curves get narrower with decreasing energy until $`\epsilon s_1`$. Below this value the curves broaden trying to expel the extremal points of the band condition outside the target range (figure 2(c)). From the form of $``$ it is clear that the even(odd) multiples of $`\pi `$ will remain fixed to $`1`$($`1`$). The efficiency of this expelling process depends upon the values of the real couplings as they control the amplitudes of the oscillations. One can stretch the maxima and minima (up and down respectively) increasing $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$, as shown in figure 2(d).

Several configurations can be obtained among the ones shown in figure 2 and one important feature must be emphasized: the band condition always changes “symetrically” with respect to the abscisa axis. That is: there is the same amount of positive and negative function whatever the values of the couplings are. In fact the curves laying on the extremal points show an exact reflection symmetry around the energy axis. This is in great contrast to the $`N=2`$ case where the band condition can be pushed up above $`+1`$ for certain couplings. Thus when $`s_1r_1,r_2`$ there will always remain a trace of the original permitted energy ranges in the form of “flat” bands.

The first chain for which two different imaginary couplings can be manipulated is the one with $`N=4`$ atoms inside the primitive cell: $`(a/a_1)=r_1+\mathrm{}s_1`$, $`(a/a_2)=r_2+\mathrm{}s_2`$, $`(a/a_2)^{}`$ and $`(a/a_1)^{}`$. In this case we have not calculated analytically the curves crossing the extremal points. Nevertheless a pictorial approach for some of the curves has been included in the graphics for a better understanding of the tendencies of change. The initial situation ($`s_1=s_2=0`$) is a common one for a periodic chain (figure 3(a)) and two different group of extremal points can be distinguished. As we increase the imaginary part of the couplings one group of extremal points starts to decrease and the band condition lifts up globally (figure 3(b)). The effect of the two imaginary parts is quite similar. When both of them have comparable values the two groups of minima follow the same tendency moving upwards the band condition. However if one imaginary part grows much more than the other one, several minima strech down in a region of energy roughly included in $`s_{small}<\epsilon <s_{large}`$ (figure 3(c)). Finally when $`s_1,s_2r_1,r_2`$ one can force the band condition to go above $`+1`$ (keeping our well known knots at $`\epsilon =n\pi `$) in a certain energy range which depends on the values of the imaginary parts of the couplings (figure 3(d)) approximately the same way as for the $`N=2`$ case. Unlike the $`N=3`$ example the band condition can be unbalanced to positive values with a properly choice of the parameters.

The band condition has been also studied in detail for $`N=5`$ and $`N=6`$. Its behaviour gets really complex as the number of atoms grows. In figure 4 and figure 5 some characteristic examples are shown. For $`N=5`$ the band condition shows five types of extremal points that evolve “symmetrically” around the abcisa axis as we change the imaginary couplings. For $`N=6`$ three types of maxima and minima appear and for large enough values of the imaginary couplings the band condition is greater than $`+1`$.

To summarize this mathematical analysis of the band condition let us now list some of the most salient features:

* the band condition is composed of pieces integrated by $`N`$($`N/2`$) extremal points for odd(even) $`N`$. Each extremal point belongs to a group that evolves differently according to the values of the imaginary parts of the couplings
* for odd $`N`$ the band condition is “symmetric” around the abcisa axis for all values of the couplings. Therefore, some permitted levels always remain as a part of the spectrum
* for even $`N`$ the band condition can be expelled out of the target range for certain values of the couplings and so removing the allowed bands
* for $`\epsilon =n\pi `$ the band condition is fixed to $`+1`$ or $`1`$ depending on the parity of $`N`$ and $`n`$ for all values of the couplings
* the real parts of the couplings are always proportional to the amplitude of the oscillations.

Even with all the included figures it is hard to make a complete explanation of the behaviour of the band condition that otherwise can only be fully understood watching some proper animations of the function. This is the procedure we have followed to support the results. We encourage the interested reader to reproduce those animations that can easily be done with Mathematica. Some example code lines are listed in the appendix.

## 4 The band structure and the electronic states

Let us now make some comments about the band structure. One important feature that stands out from the above examples is the presence of maxima(minima) inside the target range $`(1,1)`$. This fact involves the presence of points in the recripocal space where the gradient of the energy diverges that makes the physical interpretation of the hamiltonian not so straightforward. Probably some additional restrictions have to be imposed on the $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric hamiltonian. These special points also cause some changes on the form of the bands which are always understood as the ensembles of states and energies labelled with a certain index ($`n`$ for the $`n`$-th band). Every point of the Brillouin zone must represent a physical state on every band. Therefore for a certain value $`Qa`$ let us label the eigenenergies of the hamiltonian following an increasing order ($`\epsilon _1(Qa)<\epsilon _2(Qa)<\mathrm{}`$). These procedure leads unavoidably to the definition of bands whose dipersion relations are not continuos over the reciprocal space as seen in figure 6(a). Of course the choice of the bands indices is not unique but none of them will be free of these discontinuities.

On the other hand those pathologies can be avoided if one restrics his working scenario to an small range of energies. In that case the imaginary parts of the couplings can be tuned to modify essentially the spectrum of the system removing or decreasing gaps to change virtually its response to transport phenomena (figures 6(b) and 6(c)).

One can also wonder about the form of an electronic states belonging to such a characteristic spectrum. It is not hard to calculate analytically the wave function inside the primitive cell as a function of the position and the energy with the help of the computer for low $`N`$. To our surprise we have found that the imaginary parts of the couplings behave as control parameters of the localization of the electrons inside the primitive cell. Thus one could tune these parameters to decrease the probability of presence in several sectors almost to zero or distribute it more homogeneously over the primitive cell, as shown in figure 7. Also for non-vanishing imaginary parts of the couplings the depence of the state on the energy seems quite strong as a small variation of this energy can involve an important change in the shape of the state (figure 8).

## 5 Conclusions

In this paper the band structure of a one dimensional $`N`$-different coupling delta periodic potential is also assumed to be $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetric and hence the delta couplings can be made complex. In spite of the non-hermitian nature of such a Hamiltonian, the band spectrum condition remains real. The imaginary parts of the couplings play an essential role in the variety of shapes and forms that the band spectrum and the wavefunctions may acquire in this new framework. Although the band condition is analytical for arbitrary $`N`$, we have studied carefully just some cases with a low number of couplings. A throughout study of the $`N=2`$ case is given with analytic expressions for the limiting points of the bands. The cases $`N=3`$, $`4`$, $`5`$ and $`6`$ are solved graphically and conclusive results for the band spectrum are also offered. In all these cases, the control of the imaginary parts plays an essential role in the way that the band spectrum gets distorted and reshaped. As we have been able to discuss the evolution of this band spectrum, we are now planning to apply these results to more physical situations in which localization and de-localization may be tuned on and off by means of a judicious control of the imaginary parts. We have been able to show how wavefunction de-localization takes place actually for particular cases as the ones discussed in Section 4. However a manifold of interest questions remains to be answered such as: Could a random (non-periodical) calculation with this sort of potentials be carried out in the case of $`𝒫𝒯`$-symmetry ?, Does the de-localization property holds for more general cases?. These and related research subjects are now being investigated and will be reported elsewhere.

We acknowledge with thanks the support provided by the Research in Science and Technology Agency of the Spanish Government (DGICYT) under contract BFM2002-02609.

## Appendix

Here are some example lines for animating the band condition. First load the package “Animation” and define the band conditions for $`N=2`$ and $`N=3`$.

```
    << Graphics ‘Animation‘
    h[r_,s_]=Cos[x]+(r+I*s)*Sin[x]/x;
    B2[r1_,s1_]=2*h[r1,s1]*h[r1,-s1]-1;
    B3[r1_,r2_,s1_]=4*h[r1,s1]*h[r2,0]*h[r1,-s1]
                         -(h[r1,s1]+h[r2,0]+h[r1,-s1]);

```

To see the evolution of the band condition for $`N=3`$ versus the imaginary part $`s_1`$ for $`r_1=2`$ and $`r_2=3`$ one would write:

```
    Animate[Plot[Evaluate[{B3[2,3,t],1,-1}],{x,0,30},
                                         PlotRange->{-3,3}],{t,0,30}]

```

and finally one must group and compress the cells with all the generated plots and by double clicking on the image the animation will start.

## References