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# CERN-TH/2003-294 OUTP 0333P Neutrino Phenomenology – the case of two right handed neutrinos.

## 1 Introduction

The see-saw mechanism  for generating neutrino masses remains the most plausible one to describe the observed neutrino masses. It relates the smallness of the observed masses to the inverse of the mass scale at which the strong weak and electromagnetic couplings unify. Such a structure is natural if one extends the Standard Model to include Standard Model singlet right handed neutrino states, something that recovers the quark lepton symmetry.

However the analysis of the neutrino phenomenology coming from the see-saw mechanism is made more difficult because it involves many more parameters than can be measured from the neutrino masses and mixings. One may hope that the observed structure will reveal a simplification and that the full range of parameters is not necessary. For example it may be that an underlying symmetry relates the fundamental Yukawa couplings or elements of the Majorana mass matrix or forbids the appearance of one or more of them – “texture zeros”. Another possibility that has been explored recently in  is that only two of the right-handed neutrinos (2RHN) play a role in the determination of neutrino properties . This also reduces the number of free parameters.

In order to look for the phenomenological implications of such structure it is necessary to systemetize the parameterisation of the see saw mechanism. In  it was shown how this could be done using a parameterisation suggested by . The method was applied to the case that there were additional texture zeros limiting the number of free parameters. In this paper we extend this analysis by exploring the phenomenological implications of the 2RHN case. We start in Section 2 with a discussion of the number of free parameters in this case and in Section 3 we determine how the general parameterisation of  is modified. Section 4 shows that, despite the fact that there are still two undetermined parameters, there are general constraints on leptogenesis and lepton flavour violation in the 2RHN case. To go further requires some model dependent reduction in the number of free parameters. In Section 5 we discuss how this comes about if the Yukawa couplings have one or more texture zero, presumably originating from an underlying symmetry. Section 6 determines the predictions that result if there is one texture zero and Section 7 does the same for the two texture zero case. Finally Section 8 gives our conclusions.

## 2 Parameter counting for the two right handed neutrino case.

If only two right handed neutrinos play a role in the see-saw mechanism there is a reduction in the number of parameters needed. To see this we consider first the case of three generations of left-handed $`SU(2)`$ doublet neutrinos, $`\nu _{L,i,}`$ and three generations of right-handed Standard Model singlet neutrinos, $`\nu _{R,i}`$ (3RHN). The Lagrangian responsible for lepton masses has the form

$$_{lep}=\nu _{R}^{c}{}_{}{}^{T}𝐘_\nu \nu _LH^0+l_{R}^{c}{}_{}{}^{T}𝐘_ll_L\overline{H}^0\frac{1}{2}\nu _{R}^{c}{}_{}{}^{T}𝐌_\nu \nu _R^c,$$
(1)
where $`𝐘_\nu `$ and $`𝐘_l`$ are the matrices of Yukawa couplings which give rise to the neutrino and charged lepton Dirac mass matrices respectively and $`𝐌_\nu `$ is the neutrino Majorana mass matrix. The light neutrino mass matrix, $`,`$ is given by the see-saw form

$$=𝐘_\nu ^T𝐌_\nu ^\mathrm{𝟏}𝐘_\nu ,$$
(2)
Consider the basis in which the Majorana masses and the charged leptons are diagonal and real. In this case there are 3 Majorana masses together with 18 real parameters (9 angles and 9 phases) needed to specify $`𝐘_\nu `$. Of these, 3 phases are unphysical and can be eliminated by a redefinition of the left handed lepton doublet. However not all of the remaining parameters are independent in the way they determine $`.`$ In particular, in the basis in which $`𝐌_\nu `$ is diagonal, $`D_{M_\nu }=diag(M_1,M_2,M_3)`$, a simultaneous rescaling of $`\left(𝐘_\nu \right)_{Ij},`$ $`j=1,2,3`$ with $`I`$ fixed by $`\lambda `$ can be absorbed by a rescaling of $`M_I`$ by $`\lambda ^2`$ so that the Majorana masses do not introduce additional parameters. As a result there are only 15 effective parameters determining the light neutrino mass matrix via the see-saw mechanism. The measureable parameters associated with the light neutrino mass matrix consist of 3 masses plus three mixing angles and 3 phases, a total of 9 measureables. That means 6 parameters associated with the see-saw mechanism are not determined by the neutrino masses, mixing angles and phases. In  a general parameterisation of these parameters was given. In it the most general neutrino Yukawa coupling which is compatible with low energy data, written in the basis where the charged lepton Yukawa coupling and the right-handed mass matrix are diagonal, is given by

$$𝐘_\nu =D_{\sqrt{𝐌_\nu }}RD_\sqrt{m}U^{}/H^0,$$
(3)
where $`D_{\sqrt{𝐌_\nu }}`$ is the diagonal matrix of the square roots of the eigenvalues of $`𝐌_\nu `$, $`D_\sqrt{m}`$ is the diagonal matrix of the roots of the physical masses, $`m_i,`$ of the light neutrinos, $`U`$ is the Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (MNS) matrix  and $`R`$ is a $`3\times 3`$ orthogonal matrix which parameterises the information that is lost in the decoupling of all three right-handed neutrinos. Notice that we have included all the low energy phases in the definition of the matrix $`U`$, i.e. we have written the MNS matrix in the form $`U=V\mathrm{diag}(e^{i\varphi /2},e^{i\varphi ^{}/2},1)`$, where $`\varphi `$ and $`\varphi ^{}`$ are the CP violating phases and $`V`$ has the form of the CKM matrix. It is important to note that $`R`$ can be complex as long as $`R^TR=RR^T=1`$. Thus $`R`$ has 6 real parameters corresponding to the 6 undetermined parameters discussed above. The mass matrix, $``$, is determined by $`𝐘_\nu D_{\sqrt{𝐌_\nu }}^1`$ and, as expected, it is not separately dependent on $`𝐌_\nu `$.

If only 2RHN contribute to the see-saw mechanism the number of parameters is reduced. In this case only 12 real parameters (6 moduli and 6 phases) are needed to specify $`\left(𝐘_\nu \right)_{ij},`$ $`i=1,2,`$ $`j=1,2,3.`$ Allowing for 3 redundant phases and the rescaling of the 2 Majorana masses the effective number is reduced to 7 plus, of course, the 2 Majorana masses. The number of measureable parameters is only reduced by the 2 corresponding to one mass and one phase. The conclusion is that in the 2RHN case there are only (9-7)=2 real parameters determining the light neutrino mass matrix via the see-saw mechanism.

## 3 The 2RHN model as the decoupling limit of the 3RHN model

The 2RHN model can be regarded as the limiting case of the three right-handed neutrino model in which one of the right-handed neutrinos has an infinite mass, while all the Yukawa couplings remain perturbative. As we have discussed, the 2RHN model depends on 4 fewer parameters than the 3RHN model, and this should be reflected in the number of parameters of the matrix $`R`$. This may be seen by taking the limit in which one of the right handed neutrinos has an infinite mass, say $`M_3.`$ In this case two angles in the matrix $`R`$ are determined. The reason is the following. From eq.(3) one finds that the elements of the third row of $`R`$ are given by

$$R_{3i}=\frac{(𝐘_\nu U)_{3i}}{\sqrt{M_3m_i}}H^0.$$
(4)
Since the numerator is finite and $`m_2`$ and $`m_3`$ are different from zero, $`R_{32}`$ and $`R_{33}`$ have to vanish as $`M_3`$ goes to infinity. On the other hand, $`m_10`$ as $`M_3\mathrm{}`$, so the limit of $`R_{31}`$ is not well defined and might be non-zero. However, the orthogonality of $`R`$ requires $`R_{31}`$ to be unity and $`R_{i1}=0`$, $`i=1,2`$. Therefore, in the limit $`M_3\mathrm{}`$, the matrix $`R`$ takes the form:

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& \mathrm{cos}z& \pm \mathrm{sin}z\\ 0& \mathrm{sin}z& \pm \mathrm{cos}z\\ 1& 0& 0\end{array}\right),$$
(5)
where $`z`$ is a complex angle and the $`\pm `$ in the third column has been included to account for the possible reflections in the orthogonal matrix $`R`$. It is clear that in the 2RHN model, the corresponding matrix $`R`$ is simply given by the first two rows of eq.(5).

Using this form for $`R`$ the different elements of the neutrino Yukawa matrix read:

$`𝐘_{\nu }^{}{}_{1i}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{M_1}(\sqrt{m_2}\mathrm{cos}zU_{i2}^{}\pm \sqrt{m_3}\mathrm{sin}zU_{i3}^{})/H^0,`$ (6)
$`𝐘_{\nu }^{}{}_{2i}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{M_2}(\sqrt{m_2}\mathrm{sin}zU_{i2}^{}\pm \sqrt{m_3}\mathrm{cos}zU_{i3}^{})/H^0,`$
where $`i=1,2,3`$. The unknown complex parameter $`z`$ encodes the real parameter and the phase necessary to match the total number of parameters at high energies and at low energies in the 2RHN model.

A word of caution is in order concerning the relation between the decoupling limit of the 3RHN case and the 2RHN case. In the 3RHN case the Yukawa couplings $`𝐘_{\nu }^{}{}_{3i}{}^{}`$ are not necessarily negligible due to the factor $`\sqrt{M_3}`$ appearing in eq.(3), and could produce some effect at low energies through the radiative corrections. Whether or not they are, depends on the magnitude of the elements $`R_{3j},`$ $`j=2,3`$ which vanish like $`1/\sqrt{M_3}.`$ Moreover, the decoupling limit corresponds to the case that the third Majorana mass is at, or above, the cutoff scale so that the third neutrino does not contribute, even via radiative corrections.

## 4 Leptogenesis and lepton flavour violation in the 2RHN case.

Without making assumptions about the parameters relevant at high energy scales there are no definite predictions for the low energy neutrino parameters. However, the reduction in the number of unknown parameters with respect to the 3RHN model makes it possible to extract some general features of this case, in particular, for thermal leptogenesis  and for rare lepton decays induced by radiative corrections .

### 4.1 Thermal leptogenesis

First, we derive some general constraints on the thermal leptogenesis scenario, assuming that the decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino is the only source of lepton asymmetry . If this is the case, the CP asymmetry produced by heavy lepton decay can be written as (we will drop small correction terms of $`O(m_2/m_3)`$)

$$\frac{ϵ}{|ϵ_{\mathrm{max}}|}\frac{Im(\mathrm{sin}^2z)}{\left|\mathrm{sin}^2z\right|+\frac{m_2}{m_3}\left|\mathrm{cos}^2z\right|},$$
(7)
where $`|ϵ_{\mathrm{max}}|\frac{3}{8\pi }\frac{M_1m_3}{H^0^2}`$ . It is clear that for a suitable choice of $`z`$ it is possible to maximise $`ϵ.`$ However thermal leptogenesis can only lead to an acceptable level of baryogenesis if the subsequent washout effects are not too large. They can be conveniently characterized by  the parameter $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$, the parameter being bounded above if washout processes are to be limited. In the 2RHN case.

$$\stackrel{~}{m}_1=m_2\left|\mathrm{cos}^2z\right|+m_3\left|\mathrm{sin}^2z\right|.$$
(8)
Notice that $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_2`$ and so there is a potential conflict with the upper bound following from the condition that washout is acceptable , . To quantify this we note that from eqs.(7) and (8) one finds

$$\left|\frac{ϵ}{ϵ_{max}}\right|<(1\frac{m_2}{\stackrel{~}{m}_1}).$$
(9)
The problem is now obvious because, if the washout effects are minimal (minimum $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ implying from eq.(8) that $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1=m_2`$), the CP asymmetry vanishes. Physically, taking $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_2`$ corresponds to the case in which the heaviest light neutrino state is dominated by the lightest right-handed neutrino state ($`\mathrm{cos}z1`$). On the other hand, when the CP asymmetry is close to maximal, $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ must be very large. In this case, to avoid washout , we must have a large right handed neutrino mass, $`M_110^{11}`$ GeV. In particular, this is the case for the limit in which the heaviest light neutrino state is dominated by the heaviest right-handed neutrino state ($`\mathrm{cos}z0`$). In a supersymmetric model with gravity mediated supersymmetry breaking, the reheat temperature which is related to $`M_1`$ is high and could be in conflict with the gravitino overproduction constraints. However, this problem can be circumvented in other supersymmetry breaking mediation scenarios, such as gauge mediation, where the gravitino can be much lighter or through a weakening of the constraints on the reheat temperature .

### 4.2 Rare processes

The general 2RHN structure also has implications for rare processes in supersymmetric scenarios. We concentrate in the most conservative case from the point of flavour violation111Therefore, our results should be understood as lower bounds on the rates for these rare processes, barring cancellations among different contributions., namely the class of scenarios where supersymmetry is broken in a hidden sector, and the breaking is transmitted to the observable sector by a flavour blind mechanism, like gravity. If this is the case, all the soft breaking terms are diagonal at the high energy scale, and the only source of flavour violation in the leptonic sector are the radiative corrections to the soft terms, through the neutrino Yukawa couplings. In this class of scenarios, the rate for the process $`l_il_j\gamma `$ is given by

$$BR(l_il_j\gamma )\frac{\alpha ^3}{G_F^2m_S^8}[\frac{1}{8\pi ^2}(3m_0^2+A_0^2)]^2|C_{ij}|^2\mathrm{tan}^2\beta ,$$
(10)
where $`C_{ij}=(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )_{ij}`$ is the crucial quantity to determine the size of these rates. In this formula, $`m_S`$ represents supersymmetric leptonic masses, and $`m_0`$ and $`A_0`$ are, respectively, the universal scalar soft mass and the trilinear term at the GUT scale. If all the parameters are real, we estimate these quantities to be $`|C_{12}|𝒪(0.1)\frac{\sqrt{m_2m_3}}{H^2}M_2\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M_2}`$ and $`|C_{13,23}|\sqrt{\frac{m_3}{m_2}}C_{12}`$. The predicted rates for the rare processes are therefore rather small, unless $`M_2`$ is large. For instance, from the present bound on the process $`\mu e\gamma `$ one can set the bound $`M_210^{14}`$ GeV. This bound could be improved by one order of magnitude if the next generation of experiments reach the projected sensitivity, BR$`(\mu e\gamma )10^{13}`$.

However, if leptogenesis is the correct mechanism to generate the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, the parameter $`z`$ has to be complex and this could enhance the rates for the rare processes. We concentrate on the combination $`C_{12}`$ that is related to the process $`\mu e\gamma `$. In Figure 1 we show the maximum value of $`|C_{12}|`$ as a function of the lightest right-handed neutrino mass, $`M_1`$, assuming $`U_{13}=0`$ and $`M_2=10M_1`$. For other hierarchies of right-handed masses, the results scale roughly as $`(M_2/M_1)^2`$. In this plot, we take random values for $`\varphi ^{}`$ and $`z`$, and we fix the lightest right-handed neutrino mass by requiring a correct baryon asymmetry $`\eta _B6\times 10^{10}`$, as reported by the WMAP collaboration. To compute the baryon asymmetry, we used the approximate treatment of the dilution effects described in . In the plot we have also used the best fit points for the solar angle and the neutrino masses reported in , and we have assumed a hierarchical spectrum of neutrino masses. The enhancement in the rates after including the constrains from leptogenesis illustrates the interesting interplay between low energy lepton flavour violation and leptogenesis in supersymmetric scenarios.

## 5 Parametrization of the see-saw mechanism in the texture zero basis

As was discussed in , further assumptions about the physics relevant at a high energy scale can reduce the number of parameters and even lead to relations among the low energy observables. In the remainder of this paper we consider the possibility that one or more elements of the Yukawa coupling matrix are anomalously small and can be ignored, the so-called “texture zeros”. For example, one texture zero in the neutrino Yukawa matrix would fix the matrix $`R`$ up to “reflections”, and two texture zeros would lead to relations among the mixing angles and the neutrino masses. One reason for the interest in texture zeros is that they may indicate the presence of a new family symmetry which require certain matrix elements be anomalously small. Thus identification of texture zeros may be an important step in unravelling the origin of the fermion masses and mixings. It is already known that the measured quark masses and mixing angles are consistent with such texture zeros ,. In this and the following sections we will explore the different consequences at low energies of the 2RHN model assuming that there are texture zeros.

In general, texture zeros do not appear in the basis where the charged lepton Yukawa couplings and the right-handed mass matrix are simultaneously diagonal. To allow for this we write the Lagrangian responsible for lepton masses in the texture zero basis as:

$$_{lep}^{TZ}=\nu _{R}^{c}{}_{}{}^{T}𝐘_\nu ^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}\nu _LH^0+l_{R}^{c}{}_{}{}^{T}𝐘_l^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}l_L\overline{H}^0\frac{1}{2}\nu _{R}^{c}{}_{}{}^{T}𝐌_\nu ^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}\nu _R^c.$$
(11)
We can diagonalize the charged lepton Yukawa matrix by $`𝐘_l^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=V_lD_{𝐘_l}U_l^{}`$ and the right-handed mass matrix by $`𝐌_\nu ^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=V_\nu ^{}D_{𝐌_\nu }V_\nu ^{}`$. Then, the most general neutrino Yukawa coupling that is compatible with the low-energy data, written in the texture zero basis, is given by:

$$𝐘_\nu ^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=V_\nu ^{}D_{\sqrt{𝐌_\nu }}RD_\sqrt{m}W^{}/H^0,$$
(12)
where $`W=U_lU`$. Here, $`R`$ is

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& \mathrm{cos}z& \pm \mathrm{sin}z\\ 0& \mathrm{sin}z& \pm \mathrm{cos}z\end{array}\right).$$
(13)
In the texture zero basis the right-handed mass matrix can be diagonalized by a unitary matrix that in general depends on three phases and one rotation angle. One of these phases cannot be removed by redefinitions of the right-handed neutrino fields, due to the Majorana nature of these particles. On the other hand, the other two can be removed without altering the texture zero structure of the Yukawa matrices. Hence, in our texture zero basis, the unitary matrix $`V_\nu `$ can be parametrized by

$$V_\nu =\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\omega & \mathrm{sin}\omega \\ \mathrm{sin}\omega & \mathrm{cos}\omega \end{array}\right).\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& \\ & e^{i\alpha }\end{array}\right),$$
(14)
where $`\omega `$ is the mixing angle, and $`\alpha `$ is the Majorana phase.

There remains the question of the form of the lepton mixing matrix in the texture basis, needed to determine $`W.`$ The form of this has been discussed in . For the case the lepton mass matrix has off diagonal elements whose magnitude is approximately symmetric and that, like the quarks, the hierarchy of lepton masses is due to an hierarchical structure in the matrix elements and not due to a cancellation between different contributions one has the bounds

$`\left|\left(U_l\right)_{23}\right|`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_\mu }{m_\tau }}},`$
$`\left|\left(U_l\right)_{12}\right|`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_e}{m_\mu }}},`$
$`\left|\left(U_l\right)_{13}\right|`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_e}{m_\tau }}}.`$ (15)
In addition, it is necessary to determine the phases in $`U_l`$. There is a residual phase ambiguity because the basis in which the MNS matrix has the standard form can be different from the ”symmetry” basis in which the texture zero appears. This corresponds to the simultaneous redefinition of the phase of the left- and right- handed states such that the Dirac structure is invariant. With this we have $`W`$ $`=|U_l|PU`$ where $`P=diag(e^{i\alpha _1},e^{i\alpha _2},e^{i\alpha _3})`$. In practice the magnitudes of $`\left(U_l\right)_{23}`$ and $`\left(U_l\right)_{13}`$ are so small that they do not affect the mixing coming from the neutrino sector. However $`\left(U_l\right)_{12}`$ close to the upper bound given in eq.(15) does give a significant contribution to the CHOOZ angle. Its effect is considered below. If the magnitude of the charged lepton mass matrix elements departs significantly from the symmetric form there is no constraint on the magnitude of the matrix elements of $`U_l.`$ In this case the contributions to the MNS matrix coming from the neutrino sector should be considered as an indication of the lower bound on the MNS matrix elements, assuming there is no delicate cancellation between the contributions of $`U_l`$ and $`U_\nu .`$

With this parametrization of the see-saw mechanism, it is straightforward to compute predictions at low energies from texture zeros. One texture zero in the texture zero basis would fix the angle, $`z`$, in $`R`$; two texture zeros would yield relations among physical parameters (light neutrino masses, mixing angles in $`W`$ and right handed sector parameters). Although some of these physical parameters are not measurable, for instance the right handed sector parameters, this approach will allow us to predict ranges for the measurable quantities, in particular the CHOOZ angle.

## 6 Predictions from models with one texture zero

One texture zero in the neutrino Yukawa coupling fixes the unknown parameter $`z`$. From eq.(6), we obtain

$$\mathrm{tan}z=\sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}.\frac{W_{i2}^{}\pm \sqrt{\frac{M_2}{M_1}}\sqrt{\frac{m_3}{m_2}}W_{i3}^{}e^{i\alpha }\mathrm{tan}\omega }{W_{i3}^{}\sqrt{\frac{M_2}{M_1}}\sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}W_{i2}^{}e^{i\alpha }\mathrm{tan}\omega },$$
(16)
when $`𝐘_{1i}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$, and

$$\mathrm{tan}z=\pm \sqrt{\frac{m_3}{m_2}}\frac{W_{i3}^{}\sqrt{\frac{M_1}{M_2}}\sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}W_{i2}^{}e^{i\alpha }\mathrm{tan}\omega }{W_{i2}^{}\pm \sqrt{\frac{M_1}{M_2}}\sqrt{\frac{m_3}{m_2}}W_{i3}^{}e^{i\alpha }\mathrm{tan}\omega },$$
(17)
when $`𝐘_{2i}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$. With only these hypotheses, there are no predictions for the low energy parameters. However, fixing $`z`$ imposes further restrictions on the leptogenesis parameters $`ϵ`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$. These are summarized in Figure 2, where we show the allowed regions in the plane $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1|\frac{ϵ_1}{ϵ_{max}}|`$. For the (1,1) and (2,1) texture zeros, $`\mathrm{tan}z`$ depends on the CHOOZ angle, which has not been measured. So, in the plot we have taken the CHOOZ angle between zero and 0.23, which is the $`3\sigma `$ bound from the global analysis .

From the figure, we see that Yukawa couplings with zeros in the (2,2) and (2,3) positions are very disfavoured from the point of view of leptogenesis. They yield small CP asymmetries, $`|\frac{ϵ_1}{ϵ_{max}}|<\frac{m_2}{m_3}`$, and large washout effects, $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_3`$. Similarly for the Yukawa coupling with a texture zero in the (1,1) position. On the other hand, for Yukawa couplings with a texture zero in the (2,1) position the bound is almost identical to the model independent bound $`|\frac{ϵ}{ϵ_{max}}|<1\frac{m_2}{\stackrel{~}{m}_1}`$. However, a stronger bound on the CHOOZ angle will make the allowed region smaller at high values of $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$. Yukawa matrices with a (1,2) or (1,3) texture zero are also favoured from the point of view of leptogenesis. They yield almost minimal washout effects, $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_2(1+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _{12})`$ and relatively large CP asymmetries, $`|\frac{ϵ_1}{ϵ_{max}}|<\frac{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _{12}}{1+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _{12}}`$.

In Figure 2 we have neglected the contributions to the mixing from the charged lepton sector and the right-handed Majorana sector. These mixings do not qualitatively change the results. For example, for the case for the texture zero in the (2,2) position we still find most of the points concentrated in the region around the dashed line in Figure 2. There are only a few points saturating the model independent bound, eq.(9), that correspond to special choices of the right-handed parameters.

An interesting issue that has been discussed extensively in the literature concerns the connection of leptogenesis and low energy observables . In particular the correlation between the sign of the baryon asymmetry and the CP violation at low energies has been discussed . This connection is clear only when $`U_l1`$ and $`V_\nu 1`$, otherwise some unmeasurable parameters in the charged-lepton sector or the right-handed sector enter into play. We find that one texture zero is enough to establish such connection, since the sign of the CP asymmetry is determined by minus the argument of $`\mathrm{tan}^2z`$, which in turn is fixed with one single texture zero. For instance, when the texture zero appears in the (1,2) or (1,3) position,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_1}{|ϵ_{max}|}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\varphi ^{}}{1+|\frac{W_{i3}}{W_{i2}}|^2}},`$
$`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ $``$ $`m_2(1+|{\displaystyle \frac{W_{i2}}{W_{i3}}}|^2),`$ (18)
where $`i=2,3.`$ On the other hand, when it appears in the (2,2) or (2,3) position,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_1}{|ϵ_{max}|}}`$ $``$ $`+\mathrm{sin}\varphi ^{}.{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}|{\displaystyle \frac{W_{i2}}{W_{i3}}}|^2,`$
$`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ $``$ $`m_2.`$
Finally, the case when the texture zero appears in the first column deserves some more careful analysis, since it involves the CHOOZ angle which has not been measured. The expressions are rather complicated, but can be readily computed from eqs.(7, 8) and eqs.(16, 17). We just show the numerical results in Figure 3, where we plot the CP asymmetry divided by $`\mathrm{sin}(\varphi ^{}2\delta )`$, to show better the connection between the sign of the CP asymmetry and the low energy CP violation. The lepton asymmetry and $`\mathrm{sin}(\varphi ^{}2\delta )`$ have the same sign for the (2,1) texture zero and opposite for the (1,1) texture zero (the sign of the baryon asymmetry is opposite to the sign of the lepton asymmetry).

## 7 Predictions from models with two texture zeros

We can write now the predictions from two texture zeros in the neutrino Yukawa matrix. When the two texture zeros appear in the same row, $`𝐘_{1i}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$, $`𝐘_{1j}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$ then

$$ϵ_{ijk}W_{k1}(e^{i\alpha }M_1\mathrm{cos}^2\omega +e^{i\alpha }M_2\mathrm{sin}^2\omega )=0.$$
(19)
or if $`𝐘_{2i}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$, $`𝐘_{2j}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$ then

$$ϵ_{ijk}W_{k1}(e^{i\alpha }M_1\mathrm{sin}^2\omega +e^{i\alpha }M_2\mathrm{cos}^2\omega )=0.$$
(20)
On the other hand, when the texture zeros appear in different rows, $`𝐘_{1i}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$, $`𝐘_{2j}^{\mathrm{𝐓𝐙}}=0`$, the following relation holds:

$$W_{i3}W_{j3}+\frac{m_2}{m_3}W_{i2}W_{j2}\pm \sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega (e^{i\alpha }\sqrt{\frac{M_1}{M_2}}e^{i\alpha }\sqrt{\frac{M_2}{M_1}})ϵ_{ijk}W_{k1}^{}detW=0,$$
(21)
where the $`\pm `$ comes from the two possible reflections in $`R`$, see eq.(5).

Let us first discuss the results for the case where $`U_l1`$ and $`V_\nu 1`$, i.e. when all the mixing in the neutrino sector comes from the neutrino Yukawa matrix, and later on the general case, when there are also contributions coming from the right-handed Majorana sector and the charged-lepton sector.

### 7.1 The case with $`U_l1`$ and $`V_\nu 1`$

Under these assumptions it is straightforward to compute the predictions at low energies for all the fifteen possible Yukawa matrix with two texture zeros222Some related analyses for this case can also be found in .. These are summarized in Table 1, where we have set the atmospheric angle to the experimentally favoured maximal value. Only five of them are allowed by present experiments, namely textures IV, VII, and VIII. The matrix with texture zeros in the same column leads to the prediction for the CHOOZ angle $`s_{13}\sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}\mathrm{sin}\theta _{sol}0.22`$, which is marginally allowed, and a CP violating phase $`\delta \varphi ^{}/2`$. On the other hand, the other four possibilities yield $`s_{13}\frac{m_2}{2m_3}\mathrm{sin}2\theta _{sol}0.08`$ and a phase $`\delta \varphi ^{}`$, for the textures with zeros in the first and third columns, or $`\delta \varphi ^{}+\pi `$, for the textures with zeros in the first and second columns.

These four textures cannot be discriminated only with neutrino oscillation experiments. However, if the prediction for the CHOOZ angle is confirmed it would be interesting to determine which is the actual Yukawa matrix at high energies. As we discussed in the introduction, under some well motivated hypothesis on the theory at high energies, rare processes and leptogenesis provide additional information about the neutrino Yukawa matrices. To quantify this we will assume, as is usually done, that all the soft SUSY breaking terms are flavour diagonal at high energies, and that the only particles present in the spectrum are the MSSM particles and the two right-handed neutrino superfields. Under these assumptions, those four allowed textures could be discriminated through their predictions for rare processes. The texture VII yields, at leading order, a vanishing rate for $`\mu e\gamma `$. On the other hand, the matrix with texture VII1 gives different predictions for $`\tau e\gamma `$ and $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ than the one with texture VII2. Analogously, neutrino Yukawa matrices with texture VIII yield vanishing rates for $`\tau e\gamma `$, but different predictions for $`\mu e\gamma `$ and $`\tau \mu \gamma `$. All these results are summarized in Table 2.

The analysis for the remaining allowed texture, texture IV, is more complicated, since the matrix with strict texture zeros would require non perturbative Yukawa couplings to reproduce the low energy masses and mixing angles. If one keeps track of these texture zeros in the analysis, one can see that the combination $`|(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )_{23}|`$ diverges as $`M_1/𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{11}{}^{}`$ or $`M_2/𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{21}{}^{}`$, depending on which of them is larger. However, this texture would still predict $`U_{13}\pm i\sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}U_{12}`$ as long as $`\frac{𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{11}{}^{}}{M_1}+\frac{𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{21}{}^{}}{M_2}\frac{m_2}{H^0^2}`$, and all the Yukawa couplings would remain perturbative provided the right-handed masses are not too large ($`M_2<\frac{H^0^2}{m_3}`$). It is interesting to note that the possibility $`|(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )_{23}|1`$, is not excluded, and would yield rates for $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ at the reach of future experiments, while preserving the prediction for the CHOOZ angle. Finally, one can check that when $`\frac{𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{11}{}^{}}{M_1}`$ and $`\frac{𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{21}{}^{}}{M_2}`$ are sufficiently small to keep the prediction $`U_{13}\pm i\sqrt{\frac{m_2}{m_3}}U_{12}`$ approximately valid, one obtains

$$|(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )_{12}||(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )_{13}|\frac{M_k\sqrt{m_2m_3}}{H^0^2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}\theta _{sol}}{\sqrt{2}}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M_k},$$
(22)
where $`k=2`$ if $`𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{21}{}^{}𝐘_{\nu }^{2}{}_{11}{}^{}`$, and $`k=1`$ otherwise.

The only unknown parameters in $`|(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )_{ij}|`$, the combination relevant for radiative corrections, are the right-handed neutrino masses. Therefore, for each texture, one could set constraints on these masses from the bounds on the rates of rare decays. Unfortunately, the constraints are very weak: for typical values of the soft SUSY masses and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =3`$ one obtains, from the present bounds on $`\mu e\gamma `$, that $`M_1<9\times 10^{13}`$ GeV for the texture VIII2, and $`M_2<9\times 10^{13}`$ GeV for VIII1. These bounds could be improved by one order of magnitude with the next generation of experiments, that expect to reach a sensitivity on the branching ratio of $`10^{13}`$. From $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ or $`\tau e\gamma `$ the upper bounds on the right-handed masses are even weaker, of the order of $`10^{15}`$ GeV. Moreover, theoretical guesses of the right-handed neutrino masses, coming from scenarios of thermal leptogenesis or particular models, would yield rates for the rare processes which are too small to be observed in the next generations of experiments, if radiative corrections induced by right-handed neutrinos are the only source of flavour violation in the slepton sector.

The high predictivity of these textures also allows us to obtain information about the CP asymmetry generated in the decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino and the parameter $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$, which are important for thermal leptogenesis and some models of non-thermal leptogenesis. For the texture IV, leptogenesis is not likely to occur since washout effects are very large (in this case, $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ diverges as $`𝐘_{\nu 11}^2`$ or $`𝐘_{\nu 21}^2`$). The results for the remaining four allowed textures are shown in Table 3. These expressions for the CP asymmetry are all written in terms of parameters that are in principle measurable at low energies (the solar angle, neutrino masses and the Majorana phase), plus the lightest right-handed neutrino mass. As we have just discussed, this mass is related to some matrix elements of $`(𝐘_\nu ^{}\mathrm{log}\frac{M_X}{M}𝐘_\nu )`$ and consequently to the rates for rare decays in certain scenarios of supersymmetry breaking. Therefore, leptogenesis parameters can be written only in terms of quantities that are, in principle, measurable at low energies. The explicit expressions are shown in Table 3. As before, given the expected range of values for the CP asymmetry in thermal leptogenesis, one could obtain bounds on the rates of the rare decays. Again the constraints are very weak: for example, for the value of the CP asymmetry hinted at by thermal leptogenesis, $`|ϵ_1|10^6`$, one obtains branching ratios of the order of $`10^{18}`$. If the only source of lepton flavour violation are the neutrino Yukawa couplings, the observation of any of these rare processes at rates larger than this would imply an overproduction of baryon asymmetry in the Universe in the two right-handed neutrino scenario.

### 7.2 The general case

We consider now the effect of $`U_l`$ and $`V_\nu `$. Under the hypotheses on the charged lepton sector explained in section 5, it is clear from eqs.(19) and (20) that in the general case the textures I, II and III with texture zeros in the same row are still excluded. Similarly the textures V, VI and IX are also excluded. On the other hand texture IV leads to the relation

$`U_{13}e^{i\alpha _1}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_e}{m_\mu }}}U_{23}\pm i\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}}U_{12}`$ (23)
yielding $`0.028<|U_{13}|<0.13`$.

Textures VII yield the prediction for the CHOOZ angle

$`U_{13}e^{i\alpha _1}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_e}{m_\mu }}}U_{23}{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}{\displaystyle \frac{U_{12}U_{22}}{U_{23}}}e^{i\beta }\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{M_2}{M_1}}}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega {\displaystyle \frac{U_{31}^{}}{U_{23}}},`$ (24)
where $`\beta `$ is an unknown phase, in which definition we have also absorbed the indeterminacy coming from the two possible “reflections” in the matrix $`R`$. On the other hand, the textures VIII give

$`U_{13}e^{i\alpha _1}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_e}{m_\mu }}}U_{23}{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}{\displaystyle \frac{U_{32}U_{12}}{U_{33}}}+e^{i\beta }\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{M_2}{M_1}}}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega {\displaystyle \frac{U_{21}^{}}{U_{33}}}.`$ (25)
The predictions for the CHOOZ angle are very similar for textures VII and VIII, because of the large angles in the atmospheric and the solar sector. In Figure 4 we show the predictions for the Yukawa matrix with texture VII1 as a function of $`\sqrt{M_2/M_1}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega `$. In this plot, we assign random numbers to the unmeasured phase $`\varphi ^{}`$ and to the unknown phase $`\beta `$, and show the regions at 1$`\sigma `$ (darkest) and 2$`\sigma `$ (lightest) from the main value. We prefer to leave $`\omega `$ as a completely free parameter, since we do not have any hint about the Majorana sector and we do not know whether the mixing angle $`\omega `$ is large or small. If the right-handed mass matrix is hierarchical, one expects this mixing angle to be small, unless some fine-tuning is taking place. To be precise, one expects $`\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega \sqrt{M_1/M_2}`$, being the bound saturated when there is a zero in the (1,1) position of the right-handed mass matrix. So, in this case the allowed parameter space is $`0\sqrt{M_2/M_1}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega 1`$. On the other hand, it could happen that the eigenvalues in the Majorana mass matrix are quasi-degenerate and the mixing angles could be large without any fine-tuning. If this is the case, it also happens that $`0\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega <\sqrt{M_1/M_2}1`$. The plot shown in Figure 4 covers all the possible natural structures in the right-handed mass matrix.

Finally, for the texture IX the prediction is

$`U_{23}{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}{\displaystyle \frac{U_{22}U_{32}}{U_{33}}}+e^{i\beta }\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m_2}{m_3}}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{M_2}{M_1}}}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega {\displaystyle \frac{U_{11}}{U_{33}}}.`$ (26)
The numerical results for this case are shown in Figure 5. The inclusion of the right-handed mixing effects is not enough to reproduce the experimental value $`|U_{23}|1/\sqrt{2}`$. Therefore, this texture is disfavoured at the 2$`\sigma `$ level.

The conclusions about the rates of rare decays and leptogenesis are qualitatively similar to the case in which $`U_l1`$ and $`V_\nu 1`$, namely that the rare processes are observable and the CP asymmetry is large enough only when the right-handed masses are large.

## 8 Conclusions

In the case that there are only two right-handed neutrinos or, in the three neutrino case, that the heaviest one decouples, leads to relations amongst observable properties of neutrinos . Here we have presented a general analysis of this possibility. In this case the number of parameters involved in the see-saw mechanism is significantly reduced from 6 to 2 leading to some general phenomenological implications. In particular, adequate baryogenesis through thermal leptogenesis is problematic due to large washout processes and we give an upper bound on the magnitude of the asymmetry. Inhibiting these, requires a large right handed neutrino mass which causes problems in supersymmetric theories due to excessive gravitino production. In the 2RHN case there are also strong constraints between the level of leptogenesis and lepton flavour violating processes. Requiring that these latter processes be acceptable puts an upper bound on the heaviest of the right-handed neutrino masses.

Further phenomenological implications apply if the two remaining parameters are constrained due to some underlying symmetry of the theory. Such symmetries can give rise to anomalously small elements, “texture zeros”, in the matrix of Yukawa couplings. We have made a complete study of the cases that there are one or two such texture zeros in neutrino sector of Yukawa couplings. For the case of one texture zero we find constraints on the thermal leptogenesis parameters. The case of texture zeros in the (1,1), (2,2) and (2,3) positions give small asymmetries, below the model independent bound found for the general case. The case of texture zeros in the (2,1), (1,2) or (1,3) is more promising, nearly saturating the upper bound. An interesting issue in these cases is the connection between leptogenesis and the low energy phases and we have determined this in the cases that the contribution to mixing from the charged lepton and Majorana sectors are small.

For the case of two texture zeros we find a prediction for the CHOOZ angle and we have classified all possible cases and identified the viable ones. The various viable possibilities cannot be distinguished on the basis of the CHOOZ angle alone but we point out that it may be possible to do so from lepton flavour violating processes. For the viable cases we have also determined the connection between leptogenesis and the low energy phases, again under the assumption that the contribution to mixing from the charged lepton and Majorana sectors are small. Finally we considered the more general case in which the contribution to mixing from the charged lepton and Majorana sectors is non-negligible. Although less predictive we are still able to eliminate several possibilities. For the remainder we determined the expected range of the CHOOZ angle consistent with the texture zero structure.

## Acknowledgements

This work was partly funded by the PPARC rolling grant PPA/G/O/2002/00479 and the EU network “Physics Across the Present Energy Frontier”, HPRV-CT-2000-00148.


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# Starbursts in barred spiral galaxies

## 1 Introduction

The neutral hydrogen (HI) content of galaxies is a key parameter for the study of their evolution, because the HI gas is both the reservoir for future star formation and an excellent tracer of the large-scale galaxy dynamics.

It has often been suggested that the nuclear activity in galaxies is fuelled by accretion of gas toward the central regions, and that the mechanism for this radial infall is either a gravitational interaction or the presence of a bar (e.g., Noguchi 1988; Shlosman et al. 1989; Mihos & Hernquist 1994; Friedli & Benz 1993, 1995). The effect of a bar on nuclear activity has been the main motivation behind the present series of papers, and the first objective of this paper is to determine whether there is a difference in HI content between barred and unbarred galaxies.

The presence of nuclear activity should also be related to the overall gaseous content of the host galaxies, since the availability of interstellar matter is expected to affect the fueling rate of the nuclear regions. So far, only loose correlations have been found between the HI gas content and the level of star formation in various samples of galaxies (e.g., Jackson et al. 1987; Mirabel & Sanders 1988; Martin et al. 1991; Eskridge & Pogge 1991; Andreani, Casoli & Gérin 1995; Contini 1996). A much tighter correlation has been found between the star formation rate (SFR) per unit area and the HI surface density in galaxies, extending over several orders of magnitudes in SFR and gas density (Kennicutt 1998). Our second objective is to investigate whether starburst and Seyfert galaxies have an abnormal neutral hydrogen content with respect to normal ones.

Another important use of HI data is for exploring the Tully-Fisher relation (Tully & Fisher 1977; hereafter TF) for active galaxies. The TF relation is an empirical correlation which predicts that the absolute magnitude of a disk galaxy is proportional to its maximum rotational velocity $`V_\mathrm{m}`$. In spite of the frequent use of the TF relation as a distance indicator, the physical origin of this relationship is still relatively poorly understood, and it remains unclear whether all rotationally supported disk galaxies obey a single TF relation. As the fundamental scaling relation for spiral galaxies, the TF relation provides constraints on galaxy formation, because it is deeply connected to the processes by which disk galaxies form (e.g., Burstein & Sarazin 1983; Cole et al. 1994; Eisenstein & Loeb 1996; Steinmetz & Navarro 1999; Koda, Sofue & Wada 2000; Navarro & Steinmetz 2000; van den Bosch 2000; Mo & Mao 2000).

Until now, the primary goal of detailed TF studies has been to establish the tightest relation possible for use as a distance indicator. Thus, most local TF studies are limited to normal isolated galaxies, excluding galaxies with nuclear activity (starburst or AGN) and with signs of interactions and/or tidal distorsion (e.g., Rubin et al. 1985; Pierce & Tully 1992; Courteau 1997; Tully & Pierce 2000). The TF relation has not yet been extensively used to probe galaxy evolution. Coziol et al. (2000) have recently shown that a significant fraction of the Markarian (Mrk) starburst galaxies strongly deviate from the $`B`$-band TF relation defined for normal galaxies, suggesting that the disks of these galaxies are not in a state of dynamical equilibrium.

The third goal of this paper is to investigate whether starburst and Seyfert galaxies deviate systematically from the TF relation using $`K`$-band photometry, which is a better probe of galaxy masses than the $`B`$ band. Our study complements searches for TF deviations in low-mass galaxies (Courteau & Rix 1999; O’Neil, Bothun & Schombert 2000; Hunter, Hunsberger & Roye 2000; McGaugh et al. 2000), extreme late-type galaxies (Matthews, van Driel & Gallagher 1998), asymmetric galaxies (Zaritsky & Rix 1997) and galaxies in close pairs (Barton et al. 2001).

To address the goals outlined above, we have culled a sample of galaxies from the catalogue of Markarian galaxies, retaining only those galaxies which had been detected by IRAS (in other words, those with a measured far-infrared flux).

The outline of the paper is as follows. The samples of barred and unbarred Mrk FIR-bright galaxies are described in Sect. 2. The HI observations and data reduction are presented in Sect. 3 and the results in Sect. 4. A comparative analysis of the HI content in Mrk IRAS vs. normal, and of barred vs. unbarred galaxies is given in Sect. 5.1. The behavior of Mrk IRAS galaxies in the TF plane is investigated in Sect. 5.2. Our principal conclusions are summarized and interpreted in terms of evolutionary stage of starburst galaxies in Sect. 6. Throughout this paper, all calculations assume an $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ and $`H_0=75`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 cosmology.

## 2 The two subsamples

The sample of Mrk IRAS galaxies was broken into two subsamples, barred and unbarred galaxies, according to the morphological type listed in LEDA111LEDA (http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr).

The subsample of 144 barred galaxies contains $``$ 80% of starbursts and 20% of Seyfert galaxies. It has been the subject of detailed multi-wavelength studies (Contini 1996; Contini et al. 1995, 1997a,b, 1998; Chapelon et al. 1999; Coziol et al. 1997, 1999) and is described in more details by Contini et al. (1998).

The subsample of unbarred galaxies contains 110 Mrk IRAS galaxies with nearly the same relative proportion of starburst and Seyfert galaxies as in the barred sample. It is smaller than the barred subsample, but inspection of high-resolution images of the latter subsample (Contini 1996) revealed that 15 galaxies were in fact of unbarred type, so that the two groups are in fact of comparable sizes.

## 3 Observations and data reduction

When a literature search for HI observations of our sample turned out a rather small number of galaxies, we decided to obtain HI observations of the Mrk IRAS galaxies that had not yet been observed.

The observations were obtained at the large decimetric radiotelescope of Nançay Observatory222http://www.obs-nancay.fr/html\_an/a\_tecrt.htm. The half power beam width of the telescope at 21cm is 3.6’(EW)x22’(NS) at zero declination. The spectrometer is a 1024-channel autocorrelator of 6.4 MHz bandwidth, with 512 channels in each polarization. The channel resolution is 2.64 km s-1 at 21cm. Three runs (a total of 281 hours) were allocated for the barred subsample in 1993-94, and six runs (214 hours) for the unbarred subsample in 1996-99. We observed a total of 111 galaxies, and detected 80 (+ one companion), of which 64 are new detections.

The data were reduced at Nançay Observatory with the DAC and SIR softwares, operating on a microVax. The horizontally and vertically polarized signals were reduced separately and added after baseline subtraction. The latter operation was generally done using a polynomial of order 3. All spectra were then boxcar smoothed to a final resolution of 7.92 km s-1.

There was no independent check of the absolute flux calibration; we relied on the results of Theureau et al. (1998, their Fig.4) and applied a correction of 1.12 to the fluxes obtained in the first series of runs, and of 1.32 for the second, to make up for successive changes in overall gain at zero declination and redshift. A chromatic correction was likewise applied using a series of calibrations provided by Gilles Theureau, where the temperature of the noise diode is seen to increase with decreasing frequency (increasing redshift); this correction is similar to that adopted by Thuan et al. (1999), but extends further in frequency. The gain of the antenna is 1.1 K/Jy at zero declination. A correction for loss of sensitivity with declination was done using graphs provided by the telescope staff.

The observations at a recession velocity of about 12500 km s-1 were considerably perturbed by radar signals, and some of the galaxy profiles around that velocity might not be reliable. In particular, we had to discard the spectra of Mrk 126, 413, 726, 1231. We also discarded the spectra of Mrk 572 and 904, because of obvious artefacts in the profiles or baselines. This leaves 106 galaxies, out of which 24 were not detected, and three (Mrk 333, 445, and UGCA 304) are not part of the sample. Mrk 445 was observed by mistake (instead of Mrk 446), Mrk 333 turned out to be undetected by IRAS, and UGCA 304 is a companion to Mrk 1337. UGCA 304 was probably not completely in the beam of the telescope, and the corresponding Nançay HI flux is thus underestimated. In summary, the total number of Mrk IRAS galaxies detected by us is 80.

In order to determine the total HI fluxes and linewidths we converted the line profiles into MIDAS tables and images and applied custom-made procedures to derive these astrophysical quantities. The total HI fluxes were corrected for beam-filling using the precepts of Theureau et al. (1998) and taking galaxy position angles and diameters in LEDA; they amount to a factor of 1.02 or less in most cases. The systemic velocity is given in the radio convention (namely c($`\nu \nu _o`$)/$`\nu _o`$). At this stage, the linewidths are corrected for cosmological stretching, but not for instrumental resolution or internal velocity dispersion. These corrections (e.g. Fouqué et al. 1990) will be applied before computing the maximum velocity of rotation.

For undetected galaxies, we determined an upper limit to the flux by measuring the rms noise and estimating the linewidth from the absolute magnitude and inclination of the galaxy via the TF relation. The HI profiles are displayed in Figs. 1 to 3.

The uncertainties in the velocities and fluxes were estimated following the method outlined in Fouqué et al. (1990).

$$\mathrm{\Delta }V_{}=4\sqrt{RP}/SNR$$
(1)
and

$$\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{HI}}=5\sqrt{RAh}/SNR$$
(2)
where $`R`$ is the channel resolution (identical to the channel spacing), $`P`$ is the steepness of the profile (i.e. ($`W20`$$`W50`$)/2), $`h`$ is the peak intensity in the profile (in Jy), $`A`$ is the measured area under the profile (in Jy km s-1) and $`SNR`$ the signal-to-noise ratio (defined as the ratio of $`h`$ to the rms noise). The uncertainties on the linewidths $`W50`$ and $`W20`$ are simply 2 and 3 times $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{}`$ respectively.

## 4 Results

The results are presented in Table 5. The Mrk number is in col. 1, the morphological type $`t`$ in col. 2, the inclination in col. 3, the radial heliocentric HI velocity (in brackets when from LEDA) and its error (in km s-1) in cols. 4 and 5, the rms noise in the profile (in mJy) in col. 6, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in col. 7, the measured linewidths at 20 and 50% of maximum intensity (in km s-1) in cols. 8 and 9. When no line was detected, the listed W50 was estimated from the TF relation and is given in brackets. The HI flux $`F_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ (or an upper limit) and its uncertainty (in Jy km s-1) are given in cols. 10 and 11. The last galaxy of that Table is UGCA 304, the companion of Mrk 1337.

The mean value of $`SNR`$ (col.7) is 5.5 $`\pm `$ 0.3, while the mean signal-to-noise ratio for the fluxes (col. 10) is 4.4 $`\pm `$ 0.3. The uncertainty estimate for the HI fluxes is thus rather conservative.

HI data for 21 of the galaxies selected for observation appeared in the LEDA database after our observing runs were initiated. A comparison with our own data is given in Table 1. The Mrk number is in col. 1, the radial heliocentric HI velocity (in brackets when from LEDA) and its uncertainty (in km s-1) in cols. 2 and 3, the measured linewidths at 20 and 50% of maximum intensity and their uncertainty (in km s-1) in cols. 4 to 7. An asterisk (\*) following $`W20`$ means that this is in fact $`W25`$. The maximum velocity of rotation and its uncertainty in log(km s-1) are given in col. 8 and 9, the HI flux $`F_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ (or an upper limit) and its uncertainty (in Jy km s-1) are given in cols. 10 and 11. The signal-to-noise in col. 12 and the reference to the measurement in col 13. The references are coded as follows. 1 : this paper; 2 : Theureau et al., 1998; 3 : Giovanelli & Haynes, 1993; 4 : Haynes & Giovanelli, 1991; 5 : Henning, 1992; 6 : Davis & Seaquist, 1983; 7 : Bushouse, 1987; 8 : Giovanelli & Haynes, 1985; 9: Andreani et al., 1995 10: Thuan et al., 1999; 11: Smoker et al., 2000; 12: Garcia et al., 1994; 13: Heckman et al., 1978; 14: Haynes et al., 1997.

The maximum velocity of rotation is defined as (Theureau et al. 1998) :

$$\mathrm{log}(V_M)=(2\mathrm{log}(W20_c)+\mathrm{log}(W50_c))/3\mathrm{log}(2\mathrm{s}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}(incl))$$
(3)
where $`W20_c`$ and $`W50_c`$ are the linewidths corrected for instrumental resolution and internal velocity dispersion. The upper limits to the two HI fluxes taken from the literature were rederived using the linewidths determined by us.

The overall agreement between our data and the literature is satisfactory. The only discrepancy in the linewidths and $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$concerns Mrk 1199. (Note that the discrepancy in the $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$of Mrk 1200 is obviously due to the choice of inclination, which is not specified in ref. 2). The agreement among total HI fluxes is not as good, but when 3 sets of independent observations are available it appears that the fluxes of ref. 2 (Theureau et al. 1998) tend to be significantly lower than the other two. In the case of Mrk 860, the accuracy of the flux and error-bar quoted in the literature are questionable, in view of the rather short integration time. We are thus confident in the quality of our data and adopt them in all conflicting cases.

We next examine the individual profiles, taking into account the morphological type and inclinations given in Table 5. Only a few of the galaxies of our sample have the standard saddle-shaped profile: Mrk 1092, 1337, 1363, 1425 and, to a lesser extent, Mrk 90, 382, 592, 827, 898, 905, 966, 968, 997, 1200, 1270. Only one narrow profile corresponds to a nearly face-on galaxy (Mrk 626); the others (Mrk 373, 922, 928, 937, 1064, 1104) suggest that the HI may in some instances be confined to the central parts of the galaxy. Such a behavior has also been noted for the molecular gas of these starburst galaxies (Contini et al. 1997a). Conversely, some nearly face-on galaxies, like Mrk 922 and 1200, have large line widths, suggesting non-planar motions. Most profiles appear perturbed, but, because of the generally low signal-to-noise ratio, it is difficult to draw more information about the dynamics of the neutral gas from these profiles.

Finally, we note that our data on Mrk 237 might be affected by confusion, since the galaxy has a very close companion at about the same recession velocity.

## 5 Analysis

We complemented the HI data from our 80 galaxies by data from the literature for 138 other galaxies, to form a large sample of 218 Mrk IRAS galaxies, 105 unbarred and 113 barred ones, which is given in Table 7. The Mrk number is in col. 1, the morphological type (SA = unbarred, SB = barred) in col. 2, the spectral type (stb = nuclear starburst; sy = Seyfert; st? and sy? are classifications from an IRAS color index as explained below) in col. 3, the numerical morphological type $`t`$ (defined in RC3; de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991) in col. 4, the inclination (in degrees) in col. 5, the isophotal diameter $`d_\mathrm{c}`$ and its uncertainty (in log of 0.1′) in cols. 6 and 7, the maximum rotation velocity $`V_\mathrm{m}`$ (in km s-1) and its uncertainty in cols. 8 and 9, the distance $`D`$ (in Mpc) in col. 10, the $`K`$-band magnitude in col. 11, the oxygen abundance (O/H) with respect to solar in col. 12, the total HI mass and its uncertainty in M in cols. 13 and 14, the total far-infrared (FIR) luminosity (in L ) in col. 15 and the absolute blue magnitude $`M_\mathrm{B}`$ in col. 16.

The spectral type (starburst or Seyfert) was taken from Contini et al. (1998), Mazzarella & Balzano (1986) or Mazzarella & Boroson (1993). When no classification was available, we estimated it from the IRAS color index $`\alpha `$(60,25) = $`\mathrm{log}(S_{60}/S_{25})`$ / $`\mathrm{log}(25/60)`$, where $`S_{60}`$ and $`S_{25}`$ are the IRAS fluxes at 60 and 25 $`\mu `$m respectively. According to Coziol et al. (1998), $`\alpha `$(60,25) is larger than $`1.70`$ for Seyferts and between $`2.5`$ and $`1.70`$ for starburst galaxies; this last spectral classification is of course to be taken with caution. The maximum rotation velocity $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$was computed from the linewidths (given in Table 5) corrected for resolution and internal velocity dispersion (eq. 3), or taken from LEDA when not in Table 5.

The distance was estimated from the recession velocity corrected for Virgocentric flow (given in LEDA) and a Hubble constant of 75 km s-1 Mpc-1. The $`K`$-band magnitude was taken from NED333NED (http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu) or from Bergougnan et al. (paper VII, in preparation). The oxygen abundance was taken from Contini (1996) for the barred (SB) galaxies and from the literature, mainly Balzano (1983) and Dahari & De Robertis (1988), for the unbarred (SA) ones. The O/H for the SA are generally based on photographic work and thus more uncertain than that for the SB. The total HI mass was derived from the corrected total fluxes (given in Table 1) according to the following equation (Haynes & Giovanelli 1984):

$$\mathrm{log}(M_{\mathrm{HI}})=5.373+2\mathrm{log}(D)+\mathrm{log}(F_{\mathrm{HI}})$$
(4)
For galaxies not observed at Nançay, it was estimated from the $`m21_\mathrm{c}`$ parameter in LEDA using the equation :

$$\mathrm{log}(M_{\mathrm{HI}})=12.335+2\mathrm{log}(D)0.4m21_\mathrm{c}$$
(5)
The morphological type, inclination, isophotal diameter, FIR luminosity and absolute magnitude were taken from LEDA.

### 5.1 Neutral hydrogen content

The first questions to address are i) whether Mrk IRAS galaxies have an abnormal neutral hydrogen content with respect to normal galaxies, and ii) whether the HI content of barred and unbarred galaxies differ. As comparison sample of “normal” galaxies, we used the the sample of Mathewson & Ford (1996). In order to compare homogeneous sets of data, we only selected the 1197 normal galaxies for which the maximum velocity and HI flux were available in LEDA.

The Mrk IRAS galaxies have on average the same quantity of HI mass as the normal galaxies (see Table 2). However, this result is probably affected by selection effects. Indeed, our sample of Mrk IRAS galaxies and that of normal galaxies do not have the same distributions in distance, nor in morphological type (see Fig. 4); the Mrk IRAS galaxies are further away and of earlier type than the normal galaxies. Galaxies observed further away tend to have higher masses because of the Malmquist bias, and later-type galaxies tend to be richer in HI.

In order to circumvent the distance bias, we normalize the HI mass by $`d_\mathrm{c}`$ (the corrected linear diameter at the isophote 25 blue mag arcsec-2) squared, which is free of Malmquist bias. This has the dimension of an HI surface density; but one has to keep in mind that the blue isophotal diameter does not necessarily measure the radial extent of the HI distribution. The distribution of isophotal diameters $`d_\mathrm{c}`$ is shown in Fig. 5, for the sample of Mrk IRAS galaxies and for the comparison sample of normal galaxies. Mean values of isophotal diameters and HI surface densities, $`M_{\mathrm{HI}}/d_\mathrm{c}^2`$, with uncertainties are listed in Table 2, where a distinction is made between barred and unbarred galaxies.

We find that, on average, the Mrk IRAS have a higher surface density than the normal galaxies. But, as noted above, the two samples do not have the same distributions in morphological types, which introduces another bias. To take these differences into account, we calculate the excess HI mass over that predicted for a given morphological type and diameter ($`d_c`$, in kpc), using the following equation :

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M_{\mathrm{HI}}=\mathrm{log}(M_{\mathrm{HI}})c_1c_2\mathrm{log}(d_c^2)$$
(6)
where the constants $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ are given in Table V of Haynes & Giovanelli (1984) for the different morphological types, except those earlier than S0 ($`t=1.5`$). The values of excess HI mass for the different subsamples are listed in Table 2, together with the number of objects (since types earlier than S0 were not included). As a check, we corrected the HI surface densities in another way, using as reference the mean HI surface densities given by Giovanelli & Haynes (1988; their Table 12.1); this method leads to results that are in qualitative agreement with those obtained by the method of Haynes & Giovanelli (1984).

We find that Mrk IRAS galaxies have a larger excess ($`\mathrm{\Delta }M_{HI}`$) of HI mass than normal galaxies. The fact that most galaxies have a positive excess of HI mass is due to the definition of the diameter: Haynes & Giovanelli (1984) use the uncorrected diameter from UGC, whereas we use the corrected diameter from LEDA, and the LEDA uncorrected angular diameters are on average 9% smaller than the UGC diameters (Paturel et al. 1991).

We also computed the HI mass to blue light ratio for the two samples, and find that the Mrk IRAS galaxies have a lower ratio than the normal galaxies. This is contrary to expectations, and probably due to the fact that the two samples have different distributions in type (see Fig. 4) : the Mrk IRAS are of earlier type, thus of brighter absolute magnitude (see Roberts & Haynes 1994) than the other sample. There is in fact a small magnitude dependence in the HI mass to blue luminosity ratio expressed as $`L_\mathrm{B}^\beta `$ (see Smoker et al. 2000 and references therein). We find that $`\beta `$ = – 0.33 for both our samples. Computing $`M_{\mathrm{HI}}L_\mathrm{B}^{0.66}`$ reduces, but does not reverse the trend. But this is perhaps not a very good HI mass indicator, since the exponent $`\beta `$ depends on the sample, and ranges from – 0.1 to – 0.33.

We finally computed the excess HI mass over that predicted for a given morphological type and luminosity, using the constants given in Table V of Haynes & Giovanelli (1984). For this type of bias correction we find the expected trend, that the Mrk IRAS galaxies have on average a larger HI mass excess than the normal galaxies, and that the normal barred galaxies have less excess than the normal unbarred galaxies (there is no significant difference between the barred and unbarred Mrk IRAS galaxies in that respect).

These last results weaken our claim that the Mrk IRAS galaxies have more HI than normal galaxies. However, as stated by Haynes & Giovanelli (1984), normalizing the HI mass by the luminosity leads to HI mass indicators of inferior quality compared to $`M_{\mathrm{HI}}/d_\mathrm{c}^2`$.

The answer to the second question, whether barred and unbarred galaxies have different HI content, is perhaps easier to give, since the detection of a bar is less likely to be biased. One could argue that bars are less conspicuous in more distant galaxies (and, indeed, the unbarred galaxies tend to be further away than the barred ones in Table 2), but our classification (in the Mrk IRAS sample) is based on high resolution images (Contini, 1996), thus less affected by the Malmquist effect.

We find that barred galaxies have on average a lower HI mass, lower HI mass to blue luminosity, lower HI surface density and lower HI mass excess than unbarred ones (see Table 2), and this is true for both Mrk IRAS and normal galaxies.

We performed Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests to quantify the statistical significance of the differences found between samples. The results are summarized in Table 3, which gives the confidence level (in percent) at which the two samples are drawn for different populations. The difference in the parameters $`\mathrm{log}(M_{\mathrm{HI}}/d_\mathrm{c}^2)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ is significant at a confidence level of at least 95%, and mostly of 98-99%. As stated above, the significance of the differences in $`\mathrm{log}(M_{\mathrm{HI}})`$ is probably illusory in view of possible Malmquist bias.

In summary, the two main results of this subsection are that i) Mrk IRAS galaxies have a larger excess of HI mass than normal galaxies, and ii), within each category (Mrk IRAS or normal), unbarred galaxies have a larger HI mass, mass density and mass excess than barred ones. This is a clear indication that activity (starbursts or Seyfert) and the presence of a bar are both related to the HI content of galaxies.

Finally, we must point out that we did not find any dependence of the HI mass excess on the global star formation rate of galaxies, measured by the FIR luminosity. This also holds for barred and unbarred galaxies considered separately, and by excluding Seyferts and uncertain types of nuclear activity (st?, sy?; see Table 7). On the other hand, we do find the correlation between star formation rate and HI surface density which has been established for different samples of nearby galaxies (e.g. Kennicutt 1989; Donas et al. 1990; Deharveng et al. 1994; Boselli 1994; Kennicutt 1998).

### 5.2 Tully-Fisher relation

The Tully-Fisher relation is one of the most basic relations among spiral galaxies and provides a critical constraint on galaxy formation theories. The third objective of this analysis is to examine whether the Mrk IRAS galaxies follow the TF relation.

We determined a TF relation for normal galaxies in the $`B`$ and $`K`$ bands using the sample of Mathewson & Ford (1996), extracting the relevant parameters from LEDA and NED, and restricting our analysis to galaxies with an uncertainty smaller than 0.1 on $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ and an inclination larger than 30. There were 1162 such galaxies for calibrating the $`B`$-band TF relation, and 682 for the $`K`$ band. The advantage of determining our own relations, rather than relying on relations from the literature, is that we are comparing homogeneous sets of data, affected in the same way by systematic effects and errors.

In the $`B`$ band, the relation is :

$$\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})=0.126M_\mathrm{B}0.388$$
(7)
In the $`K`$ band, it is :

$$\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})=0.090M_\mathrm{K}+0.137$$
(8)
The $`B`$-band TF relation for our sample of Mrk IRAS galaxies is shown in Fig. 6, together with the linear relation for normal galaxies. This Figure is limited to data with an uncertainty in $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ smaller than 0.1 and inclinations larger than 30. This plot shows that there is no difference between the barred and unbarred galaxies. More remarquably, it also shows that the Mrk IRAS galaxies do not follow the local $`B`$-band TF relation, as already stated in Coziol et al. (2000), showing a large scatter.

One could argue that the luminosity in the $`B`$-band is dominated by young OB stars in starbursts or by the non-thermal nucleus in Seyferts and thus is not a good tracer of the total virial mass. A starburst generally brightens the galaxy by up to 2 mag in $`B`$, and only 0.5 mag in $`K`$ (Mouhcine & Lançon 2003). However, there is admittedly no significant excess of galaxies with low $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$compared to high-$`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ones, which is surprizing. One could perhaps argue that the B-band TF relation estimated from normal galaxies is affected by unidentified starburst galaxies in the sample, or that OB stars and dust play in opposite senses in starburst galaxies, contributing to the observed scatter. At any rate, to avoid potential problems of the $`B`$ band, we use the $`K`$-band absolute magnitude as mass indicator.

The $`K`$-band TF relation for our sample of starburst and Seyfert galaxies is shown in Fig. 6, together with the linear relation for normal galaxies. This Figure is limited to data with an uncertainty in $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ smaller than 0.1 and an inclination larger than 30. Like the TF relation in the $`B`$ band, we find no difference between the barred and unbarred galaxies, and a significant proportion of galaxies with very low $`V_\mathrm{m}`$.

The fact that the barred and unbarred galaxies show no difference in the TF plane is not specific to Mrk IRAS galaxies. We have verified that this is also true for the normal galaxies of Mathewson & Ford (1996). Courteau et al. (2003) reach a similar conclusion, but based on optical kinematics. This simply means that the presence of a bar does not affect the proportion of luminous to dark matter at a given radius.

We believe that the excess of galaxies with low $`V_\mathrm{m}`$ in Fig. 6 is real, and tells us something about the physical properties of Mrk IRAS galaxies. We next try to identify the origin of this effect, by investigating the 17 most deviant galaxies in the $`K`$-band TF diagram. They are indicated by a triangular symbol in both panels of Fig. 6; one can see that most of them are also deviant in the $`B`$-band TF relation. Their properties are listed in Table 4.

The HI distribution has been mapped in only two galaxies (Mrk 52 and 313) among those listed in Table 4. The HI distribution of Mrk 52 is well resolved, revealing a centrally peaked column density structure (Taylor et al. 1995). The velocity map of this galaxy indicates differential rotation, though it lacks spatial and velocity resolution to detect any asymmetries that might exist. High-resolution HI observations in the Mrk 313 group of galaxies reveal that the HI morphology of almost all the member galaxies are affected by the environment and four galaxies show tidally distorted HI morphology and kinematics (Li & Seaquist 1994). The HI emission of the pair NGC 7464/Mrk 313 is dominated by a ring around Mrk 313. The orientation of Mrk 313 and the ring suggest that it represents a polar ring around Mrk 313 and could be material pulled out of NGC 7464 during a close encounter with Mrk 313.

For the other galaxies, we have to rely on the HI profiles. Four of them are in Fig. 1, the others can be found in the literature. Only a few galaxies have a classical double-horned profile : Mrk 52, 307, 489, 592, and possibly Mrk 300 and 319. The others have a sloping profile, either gaussian or centrally peaked (Mrk 201, 331, 353, 691, 905, 1064, 1302) or a lopsided profile (Mrk 313, 471, 685, 1003, 1157). The gaussian/centrally peaked profiles suggest that the HI is centrally concentrated and does not extend to the flat part of the rotation curve, the lopsided profiles indicate uneven distribution of HI in the disk of the galaxy. In summary, such profiles indicate that the HI gas has not reached equilibrium in these galaxies.

Peculiar HI kinematics does not seem to be limited to active galaxies. We have examined the properties of the 7 galaxies which have an abnormally low $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ in the $`K`$-band TF relation for the 682 normal galaxies (Mathewson & Ford 1996). Five of these galaxies (ESO 34-3, 446-2, 512-12, 563-13, 576-1) become “normal” again if one uses the maximum rotation velocity of the ionized gas instead of that of the HI gas. For the two other ones (ESO 384-32 and UGC 645) optical kinematics are not available. Thus peculiar HI kinematics in an otherwise normally rotating galaxy can also be found among normal galaxies, unless these objects are misclassified in terms of nuclear activity.

In order to better understand the cause of the slow rotation of the neutral HI gas in part of our sample, we have looked for correlations with other properties of the galaxies. Their environment, as determined from CCD and sky survey images, gives no indication to explain the perturbed kinematics : only one galaxy (Mrk 201) appears strongly disturbed, and another one (Mrk 313) is in a group, while the others are isolated or in rather distant pairs and fairly symmetric in shape (Table 4). The 17 deviant galaxies have on average a much higher HI mass excess ($`<\mathrm{\Delta }M_{\mathrm{HI}}>=0.30`$ and $`0.33`$ for the barred and unbarred galaxies respectively, see Table 4) than the whole sample of Mrk IRAS galaxies (Table 2). As pointed out by the referee, applying the baryonic correction advocated by McGaugh et al. (2000) to these gas-rich galaxies makes them even more deviant, and thus even more peculiar.

The deviant galaxies also have a stronger FIR luminosity and a lower oxygen abundance. This is shown in Fig. 7, which give the difference between the observed $`V_\mathrm{m}`$ and that given by Eq. 8 as a function of FIR luminosity ($`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ in L) and oxygen abundance (O/H) respectively. Only the data with an accuracy in $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ better than 0.1 and an inclination larger than 30 are plotted. The same holds true for the departure from the TF relation in the $`B`$ band. These trends are reinforced if one plots data with an accuracy in $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$ better than 0.2 (instead of 0.1). It thus appears that the most deviant galaxies are the youngest ones and those with the highest star formation rates, which is proportional to $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$.

## 6 Conclusions

The first objective of this paper was to search for differences in HI content between Mrk IRAS and “normal” galaxies, and between barred and unbarred galaxies. We compared the HI properties of two homogeneous samples of Mrk IRAS (mainly starburst) and normal galaxies, with a further distinction between barred and unbarred objects. The main results of this comparative study can be summarized as follows.

Taking into account selection effects due to different distributions in distances and morphological type between normal and Mrk IRAS galaxies, we find that unbarred galaxies have more HI gas than barred ones. This is probably the most important result of this paper. Our interpretation is that the bar contributes efficiently to transforming the neutral hydrogen into molecular form, by funneling it into denser and dust-rich regions where most CO is detected : the leading edge of the bar (Sheth et al. 2002) and subsequently the central regions of the galaxy, where most star formation takes place. Note, however, that the bars of the Mrk IRAS galaxies are too young to have contributed to the actual central starburst (Coziol et al. 2000; Considère et al. 2000).

We also find that the Mrk IRAS galaxies have more neutral gas than normal galaxies. Although less robust, this result suggests that these galaxies have transformed less HI into stars because they are young, as testified by their metallicity (e.g. Coziol et al. 1997).

The other objective of this study was to investigate how the Mrk IRAS galaxies behave with respect to the TF relation, which is a fundamental scaling relation between the galaxy mass and its large-scale dynamics. We found that a significant fraction of Mrk IRAS galaxies strongly deviate from the TF relation defined for normal galaxies, both in the $`B`$ and the $`K`$ bands. This is the other striking result of this study and, as already pointed out by Coziol et al. (2000), an important property of starburst galaxies. However, the interpretation of these deviations is not straightforward, because we have no detailed kinematic information on these galaxies.

Peculiar HI distribution and kinematics seem to be quite common among star-forming galaxies (e.g., Taramopoulos, Payne & Briggs 2001; Meurer, Staveley-Smith & Killeen 1998; Swaters, Sancisi & van der Hulst 1997; Hurt, Turner & Ho 1996; Kobulnicky & Skillman 1995). The motion of HI gas in the vertical direction has been studied in several nearby spiral galaxies. The general interpretation of these vertical motions is that they are the result of the formation and expansion of supershells around starburst nuclei due to stellar winds from massive OB stars and/or supernova explosions (e.g. Sancisi et al. 2001). Finally, Barton et al. (2001) have recently shown that a significant fraction of star-forming galaxies in close pairs deviate from the TF relation, with lower values of $`\mathrm{log}(V_\mathrm{m})`$. Although most of these outliers show signs of recent star formation, Barton et al. (2001) suggest that gas dynamical effects are probably the dominant cause of their anomalous TF properties, some of them showing signs of recent gas infall after a close galaxy-galaxy pass.

Most of the deviant galaxies in Table 4 are isolated, suggesting that strong gravitational interactions are not at the origin of the peculiar HI kinematics, except perhaps for Mrk 201 and 313. We assume that the HI gas has been recently accreted by these galaxies in minor merger events, and has not settled to dynamical equilibrium (lopsided profiles), or is partly in non-planar motion induced by superwinds (gaussian/centrally peaked profiles). A single minor merger is not sufficient to raise the HI mass excess by 0.15, since it would require that the typical merging dwarf contribute 40% of the HI mass of the galaxy. We thus have to assume either that our galaxies frequently suffered minor mergers (say 4 to 7 in their lifetime), which seems unprobable in view of their generally low metallicity (and thus age), or that they were initially gas-rich; a combination of the two possibilities is probably the correct scenario, since, as pointed out by the referee, gas-rich disks are likely to respond to mergers by more vigorous starburst.

How can we interpret these results in terms of the evolutionary stage of starburst galaxies?

In the framework of the hierarchical formation of galaxies, gravitational interactions play a fundamental role in galaxy evolution, primarily through minor galaxy-galaxy encounters. In the local universe, starburst nucleus galaxies are certainly the best examples of such processes. They frequently show signatures of recent interactions (e.g., Contini 1996) and have systematically lower metallicities than normal galaxies of similar masses and morphological types (Coziol et al. 1997), suggesting a particularly early evolutionary stage. Moreover, recent studies have shown that their bar structures were formed recently (age $`<1`$ Gyr; Considère et al. 2000) mainly because these galaxies are still forming their disks (Coziol et al. 2000). A detailed and exhaustive study of their chemical abundances further revealed that the star formation history of starburst nucleus galaxies is probably dominated by a succession of starbursts extending over a few Gyr (Coziol 1996; Coziol et al. 1999; Mouhcine & Contini 2002). The most natural explanation for such a star formation scenario involves the trigger of starbursts by gravitational interactions, mainly through minor mergers.

The results of this paper, which concerns both the global gas content and the large-scale HI dynamics in starburst galaxies, further support this evolutionary scenario. Starburst galaxies contain more neutral gas than normal ones because they recently underwent several minor mergers which increased their reservoir of HI gas and triggered nuclear starbursts. A significant fraction of these galaxies show strong deviations from the TF relations because the recently accreted HI gas has not had time to become stable in a regularly rotating disk and reach dynamical equilibrium. The fact that the most deviant galaxies are those with the highest star formation rates and the lowest metallicities is not surprizing. The level of dynamical perturbations in the HI kinematics (measured by the departure from the TF relation), as well as the level of induced star formation (measured by $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$) should scale in principle with the intensity of the latest gravitational interaction undergone by the galaxy. Following the well-known scaling relation between metallicity and mass, metal-poor galaxies have small masses and are thus more affected by interactions than massive ones, explaining the observed trend in Fig. 7.

As predicted by numerical simulations, low-level gravitational interactions are the best way to initiate instabilities in the stellar galactic disk and thus to form a bar. This could explain why bars are so “young” in starburst galaxies: their disks are still forming and they suffered recent minor interactions. The difference in HI content between barred and unbarred galaxies – the latter being richer – could be explained by the efficiency of bars in driving gas toward denser and dust-richer regions of galaxies, where it is transformed into molecular clouds on its way to forming stars. Following this scenario, barred galaxies should contain more molecular gas than unbarred ones. We are investigating this prediction thanks to new CO observations of Mrk starburst galaxies (Contini et al., in preparation).

Over the past few years, considerable progress have been achieved in our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. In particular, deep photometric and spectroscopic surveys performed on the largest telescopes revelead populations of luminous star-forming galaxies up to redshifts 3 – 4. Even if it remains unclear whether these objects are representative of the whole galaxy population that exists in the distant universe, the starburst phenomenon appears now as a key process in galaxy evolution.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the technical staff of Observatoire de Nançay for their help in acquiring the data, and Gilles Theureau for help with the absolute calibration. We acknowledge with thanks detailed constructive comments from an anonymous referee, which considerably improved the paper. This research has made use of LEDA (the Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database; http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr), and of NED (the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database; http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu) 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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# Untitled Document

On Linearity of Nonclassical Differentiation

Serguei SAMBORSKI

Université de Caen, Mathématiques, 14032 CAEN Cedex, France

Abstract We introduce a real vector space composed of set-valued maps on an open set X and note it by S. It is a complete metric space and a conditionally complete lattice. The set of continuous functions on X is dense in S as in a metric space and as in a lattice. Thus the constructed space plays the same role for the space of continuous functions with uniform convergence as the field of reals plays for the field of rationals. The classical gradient may be extended in the space S as a closed operator. If a function f belongs to the domain of this extension, then f is locally lipschitzian and the values of our gradient coincide with the values of Clarke’s gradient. However, unlike Clarke’s gradient, our generalized gradient is a linear operator.

Key wordsfunctional metric spaces, functional lattices, extensions of differentiation, Clarke’s gradient, quasi continuous functions.

AMS Subject Classification26A24, 28A15, 46E05, 54C35

Author Dr. Prof. Samborski Serguei

Mathematiques, Universite de CAEN, 14032 CAEN Cedex, France

e-mail: samborsk@math.unicaen.fr

fax : +33 2 31 56 73 20

Sorry, this article is being rewritten. Please email the author to be informed about its availability.


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# Comment on ”Experimental determination of superconducting parameters for the intermetallic perovskite superconductor MgCNi3”

## Abstract

In a recent paper (Phys. Rev. B 67, 094502 (2003)) Mao et al. investigated the bias-dependent conductance of mechanical junctions between superconducting MgCNi3 and a sharp W tip. They interpreted their results in terms of ’single-particle tunneling’. We show it is more likely that current transport through those junctions is determined by thermal effects due to the huge normal-state resistivity of MgCNi3. Therefore no conclusion can be drawn about the possible unconventional pairing or strong-coupling superconductivity in MgCNi3.

In a recent paper Mao et al. Mao  reported bulk transport and specific heat measurements on superconducting MgCNi3. Additionally, they investigated the conductance of mechanical junctions between superconducting MgCNi3 and a sharp W tip with $`15\mu `$m curvature radius. By postulating that tunneling dominates the conductance they interpreted the observed zero-bias conductance peak (ZBCP) as caused by Andreev-bound states which result from a possible unconventional pairing state in MgCNi3. Besides that, Mao et al. Mao  attributed the simultaneously appearing two conductance dips to the characteristic superconducting energy scale in MgCNi3. On this basis Mao et al. suggested that ’this result can be taken as further support of strong-coupling superconductor of MgCNi3’.

We believe that before dealing with more exotic phenomena, like Andreev-bound states, more trivial effects should be considered to explain the observed conductance anomalies of those junctions.

Firstly, Mao et al. Mao  assumed that a tunneling barrier forms at their junctions with rather low resistance $`<0.1\mathrm{\Omega }`$. This assumption was based only on the fact that the shape of the superconducting transition in the resistance $`R(T)`$ of the junctions deviates from that of the bulk resistivity $`\rho (T)`$. According to our experience, such deviations are typical for mechanical junctions (or point contacts) with highly resistive metals. The sharp tip damages the sample surface in the contact area, that means the material there is more degraded than in the bulk. This can locally change $`\rho `$ as well as $`T_c`$. Fig. 1 shows as example the behavior of $`R(T)`$ for several contacts between an amorphous superconducting Zr2Ni ribbon (its residual normal-state resistivity $`\rho _0170\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$cm is comparable to that of MgCNi3) and a Cu tip Naidyuk1 . While $`R(T)`$ of low-ohmic contacts has a rather sharp transition similar to that of $`\rho (T)`$, the transition broadens for larger $`R_\mathrm{N}`$ The same kind of broadening was observed for URu2Si2 break junctions Naidyuk2  (also a metal with large $`\rho `$). In the latter experiments breaking the samples at helium temperatures prevented the formation of any oxide or other contaminating layer on the surface which could otherwise produce a tunneling barrier.

Secondly, ZBCPs are characteristic features of junctions formed with superconductors that have a high normal-state resistivity, as shown in the inset of Fig. 1 for a ZrNi2 \- Cu contact. As another example, Gloos et al. Gloos  observed pronounced zero-bias minima in $`dV/dI`$ (corresponding to ZBCPs in $`dI/dV`$) for contacts between the heavy-fermion superconductor UBe13 and a W tip (UBe13 also has a very high resistivity, comparable to that of MgCNi3). They concluded that the $`dV/dI`$ anomalies were due to diffusive and thermal transport through the junctions, while significant Andreev reflection currents were missing.

Thirdly, MgCNi3 has a huge residual resistivity $`\rho _0400\mu \mathrm{\Omega }`$cm (see the inset of Fig. 3 in Ref. 1) like that of amorphous metals. With the carrier density $`n10^{28}`$m3 from Ref. 6 and the Drude formula $`l=\mathrm{}k_F/(e^2n\rho )`$, where $`k_F`$ is the Fermi wave number, we calculate an elastic electron mean free path (mfp) $`l_{el}0.7`$nm. This is comparable to the lattice constant. The inelastic mfp $`l_{in}\mathrm{}v_F/k_BT1.5\mu `$m at 1 K according to Ref. 5. Here $`v_F`$ is the Fermi velocity. This results in a very small diffusive inelastic mfp $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\sqrt{l_{el}l_{in}}`$30 nm. Applying the Maxwell formula that describes the spreading resistance of large metallic contacts

$$R_\mathrm{N}\rho /2d$$
(1)
and taking into account that W has a negligibly small resistivity compared to that in MgCNi3 we estimate a contact radius $`r=d/2`$ between 12-20$`\mu `$m for the junctions presented in Ref. 1. This fits very well the curvature of the W tip (15 $`\mu `$m), supporting our model of a direct metallic contact!. Since $`d`$ is much larger than the diffusive inelastic electronic mfp $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, these contacts are in the thermal regimeVerkin  in which the temperature inside the contact rises with applied bias voltage, and the differential conductance depends only on $`\rho (T)`$ Verkin . In the thermal regime the bias voltage does no longer determine the excess energy of the electrons. And this makes it impossible to obtain any spectral information about the transport processes through the junctions and seriously questions the conclusions in Ref. 1 with respect to the characteristic superconducting energy scale in MgCNi3.

Fourthly, the current density can be quite large for the contacts investigated in Ref. 1. For example at $`V=1`$mV the current density is larger than $`j=V/(R_\mathrm{N}d^2)10^7`$A/m2. The ZBCPs, the abrupt decrease of $`dI/dV`$ with increasing bias voltage, are very likely caused by the continuous growth of the normal phase due to the temperature rise inside the constriction discussed above as well as due to the increasing current density. Iwan  The pulsed-current method used by Mao et al. Mao  to measure the $`IV`$ curves with a pulse duration of $`t=510^2`$s certainly reduces heating of the bulk sample itself, but it does not prevent local heating of the junctions. Junctions with diameters of several $`10`$nm typically have a thermal relaxation time $`\tau 10^9`$s. Verkin ; Balkashin  Since $`\tau d^2`$, the MgCNi3 \- W contacts with $`d2040\mu `$m, as estimated above, should have $`\tau 10^3`$s. This is still much smaller than the pulse duration $`t`$, meaning that the local temperature will respond to the applied bias voltage almost without delay.

In conclusion, to obtain reliable information from point-contact experiments, the regime of current flow through the constrictions has to be properly established and/or analyzed. For junctions with highly resistive metals like MgCNi3 thermal effects have to be expected. Apparently, they play here the role of preventing us from energy-resolved spectroscopy.

Discussions with K. Gloos and I. K.Yanson are gratefully acknowledged.