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# On the cooling-schedule dependence of the dynamics of mean-field glasses

## I Introduction and results

Upon cooling, glass-forming liquids show a dramatic slowing-down of their relaxational dynamics. In mean-field models, this phenomenon is caricatured by a weak ergodicity breaking phase transition (the so called “dynamic phase transition”) which occurs at some critical temperature $`T_\mathrm{d}`$ DynamicsReview ; KirkpatrickThirumalai1 . Surprisingly enough, this phenomenon could be relevant in understanding the behavior of local search algorithm for hard computational problems CSReview ; PTAC . The time-complexity of these algorithms suddenly explodes when some macroscopic parameter describing the instances crosses a critical value.

Despite their apparent simplicity, the dynamics of mean-field models is still poorly understood in many aspects. Consider, for instance, the following couple of Gedanken experiments. In the first one, the system is at infinite temperature at time $`t=0`$: $`T(0)=\mathrm{}`$, and is suddenly quenched below the dynamic transition: $`T(t)=T<T_\mathrm{d}`$ for $`t>0`$. At some time $`t_\mathrm{f}`$ we measure the observable $`𝒪`$ and the experiment is finished. We are interested in the asymptotic behavior:

$`𝒪_{\mathrm{quench}}\underset{t_\mathrm{f}\mathrm{}}{lim}𝒪(t_\mathrm{f})_T.`$ (1)
In the second experiment we choose a cooling schedule, i.e. a smooth function $`T_{\mathrm{sch}}(\tau )`$, $`0\tau 1`$, with $`T_{\mathrm{sch}}(0)=\mathrm{}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{sch}}(1)=T`$. We start from $`T(0)=\mathrm{}`$ and slowly cool down the system, keeping it at temperature $`T(t)=T_{\mathrm{sch}}(t/t_\mathrm{f})`$ for $`0tt_\mathrm{f}`$. Then we measure the same observable $`𝒪`$ and consider the limit

$`𝒪_{\mathrm{cool}}\underset{t_\mathrm{f}\mathrm{}}{lim}𝒪(t_\mathrm{f})_{T_{\mathrm{sch}}(t/t_\mathrm{f})}.`$ (2)
In this paper we address the question:

$`𝒪_{\mathrm{quench}}\stackrel{\mathrm{?}}{=}𝒪_{\mathrm{cool}}.`$ (3)
Notice that both in Eqs. (1) and (2), the thermodynamic limit is assumed to be taken before the long-time limit. In the opposite case the answer would be trivially positive.

It turns out that the two quantities are in general different: $`𝒪_{\mathrm{quench}}𝒪_{\mathrm{cool}}`$. In the following we shall focus on the internal energy, $`𝒪=(\sigma )`$ and we will show that in this case $`(\sigma )_{\mathrm{quench}}>(\sigma )_{\mathrm{cool}}`$ strictly. This result is quite surprising. The bulk of analytical results in this field comes, in fact, from the solution of the fully connected $`p`$-spin spherical model CrisantiSommers\_Statics ; CrisantiSommers\_Dynamics ; CugliandoloKurchanPspin . In this case $`𝒪_{\mathrm{quench}}=𝒪_{\mathrm{cool}}`$.

Like other properties of the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of mean-field models, the result $`𝒪_{\mathrm{quench}}𝒪_{\mathrm{cool}}`$ can be interpreted in connection with the structure of metastable states. It is worth recalling this connection here. Below $`T_\mathrm{d}`$ the Boltzmann measure splits into an exponential number of metastable states. Formally 222For the specialist: Throughout this paper we identify ‘states’ by the condition that two typical configuration in the same state have overlap greater or equal than $`q_{\mathrm{min}}`$. Two configurations in different states have instead zero overlap. Here $`q_{\mathrm{min}}`$ is the smallest non-zero overlap in the support of the Parisi order parameter $`P(q)`$ (notice that such a definition is meaningful only for discontinuous models). Sometimes other names (‘families’, ‘clusters’, etc) are used for the same objects to emphasize that they can be decomposed further.

$`𝒪_{\mathrm{eq}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}w_\alpha 𝒪_\alpha .`$ (4)
Such a splitting has been proven rigorously for some completely connected $`p`$-spin models Talagrand . Two different states have different values of the extensive observables (energy, magnetization, etc). One can therefore construct constrained Boltzmann measures using only those states which have a definite value of one of these observables. For instance one can constrain on the energy

$`𝒪_e{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha :_\alpha Ne}{}}w_\alpha 𝒪_\alpha .`$ (5)
It is a simple property of mean field models that purely relaxation dynamics does not necessarily converge to (Boltzmann) equilibrium. Consider for instance a Curie Weiss model at low temperature in a small positive magnetic field. If the dynamics is initiated from a (sufficiently) negative magnetization configuration, it will converge to a negative magnetization state unless one waits a time exponential in the size of the system Langer .

Unlike in the Curie Weiss model, in glassy systems it is difficult to select a particular metastable state by switching on a field in the appropriate direction. In general, the appropriate out-of-equilibrium measure will rather resemble a mixture of metastable states. A fascinating hypothesis on mean-field spin glasses is that relaxation dynamics converges indeed (as long as one-time observables are concerned) to a constrained measure of the form (5). If one accepts this hypothesis, the open question is: which of the many possible constrained measures does the dynamics converge to? Our results imply that the answer depends upon the path along which the system is driven into its low-temperature phase. Viceversa, this path can be tailored in such a way to select different constrained measures.

Figure 1 sketches the mechanism for selecting metastable states at different energy densities by changing the cooling schedule. The evolution of the energy density and its asymptotic value are traced. In the inset we show the complexity (i.e. the logarithm of the number of metastable states) at the final temperature. It turns out that cooling slowly the system through the dynamic transition one is able to avoid the higher energy (and most numerous) metastable states. This is not the case after a rapid quench. We also show the marginal energy density which correspond to the appearance of a full hierarchy of ‘nested’ decompositions of the form (4). In spin glass jargon, this corresponds to full replica symmetry breaking (FRSB). Let us notice that these sketches, as well as the examples in the following, refer to cases in which a thermodynamic FRSB transition does not exist (in other words the marginal energy line does not cross the thermodynamical energy line). This is not, however, a fundamental restriction of the theory.

Already Crisanti, Horner and Sommers CrisantiSommers\_Dynamics  noticed that the asymptotic value of one-time observables depends upon the cooling schedule for the spherical $`p`$-spin model in non-zero magnetic field. This phenomenon was further investigated in a non-homogeneous spherical model by Barrat, Franz and Parisi FranzParisi ; BarratFranzParisi . The crucial point is that the $`p`$-spin spherical model is an exceptional case as far as the structure of high-lying metastable states is considered.

Although several conclusions of BarratFranzParisi  agree with our findings, they relied on some uncontrolled assumptions and interpretations. The generality of their results wasn’t fully appreciated. In this paper we revisit the same problem in a context NostroInst , where numerical simulations can be carefully compared with analytical results, and assumptions can be checked. Moreover, the model considered is a close (although simpler) relative of a large family of hard optimization problems.

Our conclusions are based on an extensive numerical study of a diluted Ising spin glass with $`p`$-spin interactions. The dynamics of these models can be simulated with a smaller computational effort with respect to their fully-connected counterparts. Moreover, the analysis of their static properties has being rapidly developing in the last few years. This paper contains one further step in this direction. Developing the ideas of Ref. NostroInst , we show how to compute the marginality condition of one-step replica-symmetry breaking (1RSB) solutions for diluted models at non-zero temperature.

The paper is organized as follows. In Section II we define the family of models to be investigated and give some analytical results concerning the metastable states of these models. Moreover we explain how the marginality condition is computed. In Sec. III we present our numerical simulations and compare them with the static calculations mentioned above. A few comments on these results are presented in Sec. IV. In Appendix A we collect some explicit formulae for the model of Sec. II. Finally in the App. B, we show that, in the large connectivity limit, our computation of the marginality condition coincides with the usual replicon result Gardner .

## II The model and its marginality condition

We shall consider the family of diluted spin glasses defined by the Hamiltonian

$`(\sigma )={\displaystyle \underset{(i_1\mathrm{}i_p)𝒢}{}}J_{i_1\mathrm{}i_p}\sigma _{i_1}\mathrm{}\sigma _{i_p}.`$ (6)
where $`𝒢`$ is the hypergraph of interactions, i.e. a set of $`M`$ among the $`\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{p}\right)`$ possible $`p`$-uples (with $`p3`$) of the $`N`$ spins. We shall consider hypergraphs $`𝒢`$ with fixed connectivity: each spin is supposed to participate to $`c=l+1`$ interaction terms (hereafter $`c3`$). The graph $`𝒢`$ is drawn randomly, with uniform probability, among all such hypergraphs (i.e. among all the hypergraphs on $`N`$ vertices with connectivity $`c`$, and $`p`$-vertices edges). Finally we shall assume the couplings $`J_{i_1\mathrm{}i_p}`$ to take the values $`\pm 1`$ with equal probability.

This model was already studied in Refs. FranzEtAlFerromagn ; FranzEtAlExact  within a 1RSB approximation. As the temperature is lowered it undergoes a dynamic phase transition at $`T_\mathrm{d}>0`$ and, if $`c>p`$, a static phase transition at $`T_\mathrm{s}`$, with $`0<T_\mathrm{s}<T_\mathrm{d}`$. For $`ll_\mathrm{G}(p)`$ a second static phase transition takes place at some temperature $`T_\mathrm{G}`$: the $`T<T_\mathrm{G}`$ phase is characterized by full replica-symmetry breaking. In Ref. NostroInst  we studied the $`T=0`$ limit and found $`l_\mathrm{G}(3)=10`$. In Tab. 1 we report the values of $`T_\mathrm{s}`$ and $`T_\mathrm{d}`$ for $`p=3`$ and a few values of $`l<10`$.

At a fixed temperature $`T=1/\beta <T_\mathrm{d}`$, the Gibbs measure decomposes over an exponential number of pure (metastable) states. The number of states at a given free energy density $`f`$ is given, at the leading exponential order, by $`𝒩_\beta (f)\mathrm{exp}\{N\mathrm{\Sigma }_\beta (f)\}`$. In 1RSB approximation, the complexity $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\beta (f)`$ is obtained MonassonMarginal  as the Legendre transform of the $`m`$ replicas free energy $`m\varphi (m,\beta )`$ with respect to the parameter $`m`$:

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\beta (f)=m\beta fm\varphi (m,\beta )|_{\beta f=_m[m\varphi ]}`$ (7)
The parameter $`m`$ can be varied in the range $`m_\mathrm{d}(T)<m<m_\mathrm{s}(T)`$. This corresponds to selecting states of free-energy densities $`f_\mathrm{d}(T)>f>f_\mathrm{s}(T)`$. Any other observable can be computed over metastable states of a given free energy, by properly tuning $`m`$. The internal energy, for instance, decreases from $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$ to $`e_\mathrm{s}(T)`$, as $`f`$ varies from $`f_\mathrm{d}(T)`$ to $`f_\mathrm{s}(T)`$. In Tab. 2 we report the curves $`e_\mathrm{s}(T)`$ and $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$ for $`p=3`$ and a few values of $`l`$, see also Figs. 2, 3. The 1RSB saddle point equations were solved using the population dynamics algorithm of Ref. MezardParisiBethe .

As shown in Ref. NostroInst , high-energy metastable states are, quite generically, unstable towards FRSB. Here we want to compute the stability threshold $`m_\mathrm{G}(T)`$ and the corresponding internal energy $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$ at finite temperature $`T`$. We proceed by determining the instability toward two-steps replica symmetry breaking (2RSB), which in turn is expected to imply the instability towards FRSB. We shall present the method in a general setting and give some numerical results, cf. Tab. 2. We refer to App. A for explicit formulae in the case of the Hamiltonian (6).

Let $`𝒮`$ be the space of normalized measures $`\rho (x)`$ over the real numbers. The 2RSB order parameter for the model (6) is a probability distribution $`Q[\rho ]`$ over $`𝒮`$. This is slightly simpler than the most general 2RSB order parameter for a diluted model because we assumed all the sites to be equivalent FranzEtAlExact . Notice in fact the finite neighborhood of any two sites $`i`$ and $`j`$ are identical (up to a gauge transformation $`\sigma _i\tau _i\sigma _i`$) in the thermodynamic limit.

We consider now a generic model such that, once an interaction term has been taken away, each adjacent spin interacts with $`k`$ other ones \[to make contact with the Hamiltonian (6) one should take $`k=l(p1)`$\]. The 2RSB saddle point equations for such a model have the form

$`Q[\rho ]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒵}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}dQ[\rho _i]z[\rho _1,\mathrm{},\rho _k]^{m_1/m_2}\delta \left[\rho \rho _0[\rho _1,\mathrm{},\rho _k]\right]},`$ (8)
where $`m_1<m_2`$ are the two breaking parameters required for 2RSB SpinGlass . The functional $`\rho _0[\mathrm{}]`$ reads

$`\rho _0(x)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{z[\rho _1,\mathrm{},\rho _k]}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}d\rho _i(x_i)w(x_1,\mathrm{},x_k)^{m_2}\delta (xf(x_1,\mathrm{},x_k))},`$ (9)
and $`z[\rho _1,\mathrm{},\rho _k]`$ is fixed by the normalization condition $`𝑑x\rho _{}(x)=1`$. The functions $`w(x_1,\mathrm{},x_k)`$ and $`f(x_1,\mathrm{},x_k)`$ are model-dependent. Their explicit form for the model (6) are reported in App. A.

An 1RSB solution is recovered if $`Q[\rho ]`$ is supported on $`\delta `$-functions. We want to compute the stability of this subspace under the recursion (8). We consider therefore an order parameter $`Q[\rho ]`$ which is concentrated on narrow distributions $`\rho (x)`$. Such distributions can be characterized by their first two moments:

$`\overline{x}{\displaystyle 𝑑\rho (x)x},ϵ{\displaystyle 𝑑\rho (x)x^2}\left({\displaystyle 𝑑\rho (x)x}\right)^2.`$ (10)
In the $`ϵ0`$ limit we can derive from Eq. (8) a recursion for the probability distribution $`Q(\overline{x},ϵ)`$ of these two parameters:

$`Q(\overline{x},ϵ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\widehat{𝒵}}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}dQ(\overline{x}_i,ϵ_i)w(\overline{x}_1,\mathrm{},\overline{x}_k)^{m_1}\delta \left(\overline{x}f(\overline{x}_1,\mathrm{},\overline{x}_k)\right)\delta \left(ϵ\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}\left(_{\overline{x}_i}f\right)^2ϵ_i\right)}.`$ (11)
Notice that the largest breaking parameter $`m_2`$ plays no role in the relation (11). Hereafter we shall drop the subscript in the remaining parameter and set $`m=m_1`$. Let us call $`\rho _{}(\overline{x})`$ the marginal distribution of $`\overline{x}`$: $`\rho _{}(\overline{x})𝑑ϵQ(\overline{x},ϵ)`$. It is straightforward to see that this distribution satisfies the 1RSB equation:

$`\rho _{}(\overline{x})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{z_{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}d\rho _{}(\overline{x}_i)w(\overline{x}_1,\mathrm{},\overline{x}_k)^m\delta \left(\overline{x}f(\overline{x}_1,\mathrm{},\overline{x}_k)\right)}.`$ (12)
Therefore $`\rho _{}(\overline{x})`$ is nothing but the 1RSB solution with parameter $`m`$. If $`Q(\overline{x},ϵ)\rho _{}(\overline{x})\delta (ϵ)`$ under the iteration (11), the 1RSB space is stable. In the opposite case, it is unstable towards 2RSB and (presumably) FRSB.

The distribution $`Q(\overline{x},ϵ)`$ can be represented by a population of couples $`\{(\overline{x}_i,ϵ_i):i=1,\mathrm{},𝒩\}`$, and the recursion (11) can be approximated by a population dynamics algorithm following the ideas of Ref. MezardParisiBethe . The stability of the 1RSB subspace can be verified by monitoring a suitable norm of the $`ϵ_i`$’s, e.g.

$`ϵ{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒩}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}}|ϵ_i|`$ (13)
and checking whether $`ϵ0`$ or not. An alternative (and numerically preferable) procedure is the following. After each sweep in the population dynamics algorithm the $`ϵ_i`$’s are renormalized: $`ϵ_iϵ_i/\lambda `$. The parameter $`\lambda `$ is chosen such that $`ϵ=1`$ is kept fixed (this can be done because Eq. (11) is linear in the $`ϵ_i`$’s). We keep track of $`\lambda `$ and (eventually) average it over many iterations. The 1RSB subspace is stable if $`|\lambda |<1`$.

In Tab. 2 we report the value $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$ of the internal energy on the marginally stable states ($`|\lambda |=1`$) for the model (6) with $`p=3`$ and several values of $`l`$. As for the the dynamic and static energies, $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$ and $`e_\mathrm{s}(T)`$, we used populations of size $`𝒩=10^5÷10^6`$ and averaged over $`200÷400`$ iterations.

One further entry in Tab. 2 is the iso-complexity energy $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$. The corresponding parameter $`m_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$ is defined by the condition

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_T(m_{\mathrm{ic}}(T))=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{T_\mathrm{d}}(m_d(T_d)),`$ (14)
where, with an abuse of notation, we used the symbol $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_T()`$ to denote the complexity as a function of the breaking parameter. The relevance of this curve to the issues introduced in Sec. I was suggested in Ref. Lopatin  and will be discussed in the next Section.

## III Numerical results

We simulated the model (6) for $`p=3`$ and $`c=4,5,8`$. In order to investigate the question in Eq. (3), we measured the internal energy of the system, $`𝒪=(\sigma )`$, both during the relaxation after a quench and during a slow cooling.

The system is always prepared in a random configuration ($`T=\mathrm{}`$). In the quenching experiments the system is let evolve directly at the final temperature $`T_\mathrm{f}`$. In the cooling experiments we used the following schedule for the temperature: $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}`$ Monte Carlo sweeps (MCS) are performed at each temperature $`T\{T_{\mathrm{max}},T_{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{\Delta }T,T_{\mathrm{max}}2\mathrm{\Delta }T,\mathrm{},2\mathrm{\Delta }T,\mathrm{\Delta }T,0\}`$. Values for $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}`$ are $`10^2`$, $`10^3`$, $`10^4`$ and $`10^5`$, while those for $`T_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ are reported in the two central columns of Tab. 1.

In order to minimize finite size effects, we considered samples of size $`N=(4\times 10^51)`$ for quenching experiments, and $`N=(10^51)`$ for cooling experiments. We checked our results simulating few samples of size $`N=(10^61)`$. The number of samples varies from $`N_\mathrm{s}=5`$ for quenching experiments to $`N_\mathrm{s}10`$ for cooling experiments.

In Fig. 2 we show the internal energy of the system as a function of the temperature during the cooling experiments with 4 different values of $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}`$ for each connectivity (upper dotted lines). It should be clear from this picture that the system is undergoing a dynamic arrest preventing it to reach the thermodynamic energy (lower dashed line). We also show in this picture the iso-complexity energy (bold solid line). Numerical evidences, to be shown below, strongly suggests that the system follows the iso-complexity line when cooled infinitely slowly.

In order to better study the $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}\mathrm{}`$ limit we choose one connectivity, e.g. $`c=5`$, and we zoom on the interesting region. Figure 3 shows cooling energies for $`c=5`$ on a different scale ($`n_{\mathrm{cool}}=10^2`$ has been omitted for clarity). Statistical errors are smaller than symbol size. For comparison we also plot (from top to bottom) the analytic curves corresponding to the threshold or dynamic energy, $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$, the marginal energy, $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$, and the iso-complexity energy, $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$, reported in Tab. 2.

It is expected that energy relaxation converges to a threshold energy, lying between $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$ and $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$. This belief is based on the fact that for energies below $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$ 1RSB states are stable. On the contrary we clearly see from Fig. 3 that a cooling experiments may bring the system to an energy below $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$. In Sec. IV we will argue that this numerical observation is not in contrast with the existence of well defined 1RSB states.

Next we ask whether for very slow cooling rates, i.e. for $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}\mathrm{}`$, the energy of the system follows the iso-complexity energy. In order to investigate this point we extrapolate the cooling energy for $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}\mathrm{}`$ as follows. For any temperature $`T`$ we fit the data to the law

$$e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T,n_{\mathrm{cool}})=e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)+an_{\mathrm{cool}}^b.$$

For all the connectivities considered ($`c=4,5,8`$) and for temperatures $`TT_\mathrm{d}`$ typical values for the best fitting $`b`$ parameter are in the range $`0.3÷0.36`$.

The extrapolated energies $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)`$ for $`c=5`$ are plotted in the main panel of Fig. 4 (points with errors). We have included in the error bars also the contribution due to the uncertainty on the analytic estimation of $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$. Thin lines are cooling energies with $`n_{\mathrm{cool}}=10^2,10^3,10^4,10^5`$, while the thick line is the iso-complexity energy.

Within the statistical error $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)`$ and $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$ perfectly coincide, as can been better seen in the inset of Fig. 4, where the difference $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$ has been plotted for all the connectivities.

Let us now consider the energy relaxation after a sudden quench to temperature $`T`$. The temperatures studied for each connectivity are written in the last column of Tab. 1. Each simulations has been run for $`10^6`$ MCS. We assume that on late times the energy relaxation may be approximated by a single power law behavior

$$e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T,t)=e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)+a^{}t^b^{}.$$
(15)
Best fitting values for $`b^{}`$ are typically around $`1/3`$, for all the connectivities and the temperatures studied.

The extrapolation of $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)`$ depends of course on the range of times used in the fitting procedure, because of sub-leading corrections. In order to have an appreciation of this effect, we fitted the $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T,t)`$ data to expression (15) within the interval $`t[t_{\mathrm{min}},t_{\mathrm{max}}]`$, with $`t_{\mathrm{max}}10^5`$ and $`t_{\mathrm{max}}/t_{\mathrm{min}}200`$.

In Fig. 5 the extrapolated energy $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)`$ (in the main panel) and the best fitting $`b^{}`$ (in the inset) are shown as a function of $`t_{\mathrm{max}}`$ for $`c=5`$ and $`T=0.6`$ (very similar results has been obtained for the remaining connectivities and temperatures). For each value of $`t_{\mathrm{max}}`$, different points correspond to different values of $`t_{\mathrm{min}}`$. Statistical errors (not shown for clarity) are of the same order of the spread of points. Results seems to be almost $`t_{\mathrm{min}}`$-independent, and also the dependence on $`t_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is rather mild.

From Fig. 5 we conclude that the extrapolated energy value is reasonably robust. Moreover the comparison with analytic energies supports the conclusion that $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)`$ stays above the energy $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$ reached by cooling experiments.

On the other hand we expect $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)`$ to coincide with the FRSB dynamic energy $`e_{\mathrm{d},\mathrm{FRSB}}(T)`$, i.e. with the maximal energy such that the complexity is strictly positive, once FRSB effects have been taken into account NostroInst . While we know that $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)e_{\mathrm{d},\mathrm{FRSB}}(T)e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$, we do not yet have any estimate of this threshold. Verifying this theoretical expectation is therefore very difficult. Based on the data of Fig. 5 we guess that, if our expectation proves correct, then $`e_{\mathrm{d},\mathrm{FRSB}}(T)`$ is ‘close’ to $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$ in the models at hand. The vicinity of the energy extrapolated from the quenches $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)`$ to the dynamic energy $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$ is well verified for all the connectivities and the temperatures studied in this work (see last column of Tab. 1). This is presumably a general property of the model (6) for the range of connectivities considered in this paper.

## IV Discussion

We think that previous pages provide solid support for three statements concerning the general question (3): $`(i)`$ $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)<e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)`$; $`(ii)`$ $`e_{\mathrm{quench}}(T)>e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$; $`(iii)`$ $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)=e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$. For certain values of the temperature also a fourth statement holds: $`(iv)`$ $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)<e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$. The first of these statements, in particular, implies a negative answer to the question (3). While the second statement was largely expected NostroInst , the fourth one comes as a surprise, being in contradiction with some widespread expectation in the field. Notice moreover that these statements gets sharper as the temperature is lowered. In fact the separation between $`e_\mathrm{d}(T)`$, $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$ and $`e_\mathrm{G}(T)`$ increases at low temperature, cf. Fig. 3.

As for the third one, namely $`e_{\mathrm{cool}}(T)=e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$, there exists a simple argument which helps to understand this relation. Consider a system with 1RSB, and assume that no temperature chaos is present. In other words, pure states can be traced in temperature without crossings or bifurcations. It is then easy to show Lopatin  that the energy of a pure state, regarded as a function of the temperature, follows an iso-complexity line (the value of the complexity on this line depending upon the state). In particular, $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T)`$ is the energy of the first metastable states to appear when the temperature is lowered across $`T_\mathrm{d}`$. Therefore, as far as single-time quantities are concerned, the system behave as if  it equilibrated within the first metastable states encountered in its cooling history. Of course this picture is too simplified, and in fact the system ages also if it is slowly cooled across $`T_\mathrm{d}`$ AgingSimul . A pictorial view of the evolution of the system during a slow cooling given in Fig. 1.

Coming back to the discussion of metastable states in Sec. I, the present analysis suggest a general (and testable) strategy for tailoring out-of-equilibrium ensembles of the form (5). The general idea is to add external sources $`\lambda _1`$, $`\lambda _2`$, etc conjugated to extensive observables $`𝒪_1`$, $`𝒪_2`$, etc. Such observables could be, for instance, the energy or the magnetization. The important rule is that any slow change in the control parameters induces an iso-complexity change in the state of the system. This is analogous to entropy conservation for adiabatic transformations in classical thermodynamics. Although here the system is in contact with a thermal bath, slow degrees of freedom are effectively thermally isolated.

Let us finally comment on the relevance of our results for the analysis of local search algorithms for random combinatorial optimization problems (here we make the usual identification between cost function and Hamiltonian). It has become customary PTAC ; XorSat ; DynamicCodes  to compare the asymptotic cost $`e_{\mathrm{search}}(t\mathrm{})`$ achieved by such algorithms with the 1RSB threshold energy $`e_\mathrm{d}(T=0)`$ . Here (see also PTAC  for a discussion concerning this point) we notice that:

1. In general, the local search algorithm does not satisfy detailed balance with respect to the Boltzmann distribution at any temperature $`T`$. If this is the case, the very existence of a relation between $`e_{\mathrm{search}}(t\mathrm{})`$ and any thermodynamic quantity \[and a fortiori $`e_\mathrm{d}(T=0)`$\] is an open problem.
2. In the simplest case, the local search algorithm satisfies detailed balance at any time $`t`$ with respect to the Boltzmann distribution at temperature $`T(t)`$, with $`T(t)`$ a deterministic schedule such that $`T(t)0`$ as $`t\mathrm{}`$. Surprisingly, even in this case $`e_\mathrm{d}(T=0)`$ is not relevant. However, our results seem to imply that $`e_{\mathrm{search}}(t\mathrm{})e_{\mathrm{ic}}(T=0)`$. This is an encouraging remark for the application of such algorithms. First of all $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(0)<e_\mathrm{d}(0)`$. Moreover one could imagine constructing more complex annealing paths using clever deformations of the cost function to define the Hamiltonian. A smart deformation would probably allow to reduce $`e_{\mathrm{ic}}(0)`$.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are grateful to Andrei Lopatin for bringing to our attention the relevance of the iso-complexity curve, and to Giorgio Parisi for stressing the importance of assuming the absence of temperature chaos. This work was partially supported by the ESF programme SPHINX and by the European Community’s Human Potential Programme under contracts HPRN-CT-2002-00307, Dyglagemem, and HPRN-CT-2002-00319, Stipco.

## Appendix A Some formulae for the diluted $`p`$-spin model

For the sake of self-containedness we report here some explicit formulae for the diluted $`p`$-spin model (6). These formulae can be used in computing the 1RSB stability threshold along the lines of Sec. II.

It is convenient to express the cavity equations in terms of two functional order parameter $`Q[\rho ]`$ and $`\widehat{Q}[\widehat{\rho }]`$. The first one is related to the distribution of cavity fields when one interaction term is removed from the system. The second one corresponds to the distribution of cavity fields when one spin is removed from the system.

The 2RSB cavity equations read

$`Q[\rho ]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒵}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}d\widehat{Q}[\widehat{\rho }_i]z[\widehat{\rho }_1,\mathrm{},\widehat{\rho }_l]^{m_1/m_2}\delta \left[\rho \rho _0[\widehat{\rho }_1,\mathrm{},\widehat{\rho }_l]\right]},`$ (16)
$`\widehat{Q}[\widehat{\rho }]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p1}{}}dQ[\rho _j]𝔼_J\delta \left[\widehat{\rho }\widehat{\rho }_0[J;\rho _1,\mathrm{},\rho _{p1}]\right]},`$ (17)
where $`𝔼_J`$ denotes the expectation with respect to the random variable $`J`$ which takes values $`+1`$ or $`1`$ with equal probability). The mappings $`\rho _0[\mathrm{}]`$ and $`\widehat{\rho }_0[\mathrm{}]`$ are defined below:

$`\rho _0(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z[\{\widehat{\rho }_i\}]}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}d\widehat{\rho }_i(y_i)w(\{y_i\})^{m_2}\delta (xy_1\mathrm{}y_l)},`$ (18)
$`\widehat{\rho }_0(y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p1}{}}d\rho _j(x_j)\delta \left(y\frac{1}{\beta }\mathrm{atanh}[\mathrm{tanh}\beta J\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_1\mathrm{}\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_{p1}]\right)}.`$ (19)
The reweighting factor is

$`w(y_1,\mathrm{},y_l)={\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{cosh}(\beta _{i=1}^ly_i)}{_{i=1}^l2\mathrm{cosh}\beta y_i}}.`$ (20)
## Appendix B The large connectivity limit

The recipe we proposed for computing the stability condition of a diluted spin glass model does not necessarily capture the most relevant instability. In this Appendix we show that, in the large connectivity limit $`l\mathrm{}`$, our approach yields the replicon instability already computed in Gardner . This provides an important check of our calculation.

When adapting the basic recursion (11) to the cavity equations reported in the previous Appendix, it is necessary to use two distributions $`Q(\overline{x},ϵ)`$ and $`\widehat{Q}(\overline{y},\widehat{ϵ})`$. These distributions can be used to define the functions $`ϵ(x)`$ and $`\widehat{ϵ}(y)`$ as follows

$`ϵ(x)={\displaystyle 𝑑ϵ^{}Q(x,ϵ^{})ϵ^{}},\widehat{ϵ}(y)={\displaystyle 𝑑\widehat{ϵ}^{}\widehat{Q}(y,\widehat{ϵ}^{})\widehat{ϵ}^{}}.`$ (21)
It is easy to show that Eq. (11) implies a recursion of the type $`[ϵ(x),\widehat{ϵ}(y)][ϵ^{}(x),\widehat{ϵ}^{}(y)]`$, where:

$`ϵ^{}(x)={\displaystyle 𝑑yM(x,y)\widehat{ϵ}(y)},\widehat{ϵ}^{}(y)={\displaystyle 𝑑x\widehat{M}(y,x)ϵ(y)}.`$ (22)
The kernels of this mapping are given in terms of the 1RSB solution $`\rho _{}(x)`$, $`\widehat{\rho }_{}(y)`$:

$`M(x,y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{l}{z_{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{l1}{}}d\widehat{\rho }_{}(y_i)w(y,y_1\mathrm{}y_{l1})^m\delta (xyy_1\mathrm{}y_{l2})},`$ (23)
$`\widehat{M}(y,x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p2}{}}d\rho _{}(x_j)\mathrm{\Delta }(x,\{x_j\})\delta \left(y\frac{1}{\beta }\mathrm{atanh}[\mathrm{tanh}\beta J\mathrm{tanh}\beta x\mathrm{}\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_{p2}]\right)},`$ (24)
where $`z_{}=z[\widehat{\rho }_{}\mathrm{}\widehat{\rho }_{}]`$ and

$`\mathrm{\Delta }(x,\{x_j\})(p1)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}\beta J(1\mathrm{tanh}^2\beta x)_{j=1}^{p2}\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_j}{1\mathrm{tanh}^2\beta J\mathrm{tanh}^2\beta x_{j=1}^{p2}\mathrm{tanh}^2\beta x_j}}\right]^2.`$ (25)
Notice that we do not need to average on the sign of $`J`$ in Eqs. (24) and (25) because the distribution $`\rho _{}(x)`$ is symmetric.

The stability of the fixed point $`ϵ(x)=0`$, $`\widehat{ϵ}(y)=0`$ under the recursion (22), can be determined by diagonalizing the composition of the kernels (23), (24). As we will see shortly, this diagonalization becomes considerably easier in the limit $`l\mathrm{}`$.

First of all, we rescale the coupling strength by setting $`J=\sqrt{p/2l}`$ in such a way that the energy remains finite in the large connectivity limit. We also rescale the cavity fields defining $`y=\sqrt{p/2l}\stackrel{~}{y}`$ (hereafter we shall drop the tilde). It is easy to see that, in the large connectivity limit, the 1RSB fields distributions become

$`\rho _{}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒵}}(\mathrm{cosh}\beta x)^me^{x^2/2\lambda },`$ (26)
$`\widehat{\rho }_{}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p1}{}}d\rho _{}(x_j)\delta (y\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_1\mathrm{}\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_{p1})}.`$ (27)
The parameter $`\lambda `$ must be found by solving the equation

$`\lambda ={\displaystyle \frac{p}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle 𝑑\rho _{}(x)\mathrm{tanh}^2\beta x}\right]^{p1}.`$ (28)
This equation was already found in Ref. Gardner  while solving the fully connected $`p`$-spin model.

Taking the $`l\mathrm{}`$ limit also in the kernels (23) and (24) we obtain

$`M(x,y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{p}{2}}\rho _{}(x),`$ (29)
$`\widehat{M}(y,x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p2}{}}d\rho _{}(x_j)D(x,\{x_j\})\delta (y\mathrm{tanh}\beta x\mathrm{}\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_{p2})},`$ (30)
with

$`D(x,\{x_j\})=\left[\beta (1\mathrm{tanh}^2\beta x){\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{p2}{}}}\mathrm{tanh}\beta x_i\right]^2.`$ (31)
It is evident from Eq. (29) that there is a unique non-vanishing eigenvalue, and that the corresponding eigenvector has $`ϵ(x)\rho _{}(x)`$. A little thought shows that the eigenvalue is

$`\mathrm{\Lambda }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}p(p1)\beta ^2q^{p2}{\displaystyle 𝑑\rho _{}(x)(\mathrm{cosh}\beta x)^4},`$ (32)
with $`\rho _{}(x)`$ given by Eq. (26). As anticipated, this result coincides with the replicon eigenvalue of Gardner .


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# IR and Optical Observations of GRB 030115

## 1 Introduction

The High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE) detected Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) 030115 (=H2533) (Kawai et al., 2003) on January 15, 2003, at 03:22:34.28 UT. The Wide Field Monitor (WXM) position was reported to the community over the GRB Coordinate Network (GCN) at 04:33:07 UT, and a 2 arcminute error radius, Soft X-ray Camera (SXC) position was reported at 04:46:34 UT on January 15, 2003. Followup optical observations were begun early, with observations as deep as the Digital Sky Survey beginning between 1-2 hours after the burst, (Atteia, et al., 2003; Castro-Tirado, et al., 2003; Masetti et al., 2003a), but no conclusive evidence for a fading counterpart was found. Infrared (IR) observations were begun at $``$5 hours after the burst by Levan et al. (2003) and a fading IR source was reported to the GCN about 15 hours after the burst.

We made further IR observations of this source with the Magellan 6.5 meter Baade telescope using the Classic Cam instrument on January 23, 2003, but we were not able to analyze the data because of difficulties with the astrometry of the images. The recent release of archived111http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/ Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) observations of GRB 030115 allowed for more accurate astrometric calibration of our images. Our analysis of the Classic Cam images and the public HST archived data is presented below.

## 2 Infrared Data and Analysis

Our IR observations were taken with the Classic Cam IR instrument at the Magellan telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Classic Cam is a Rockwell NICMOS-3 HgCdTe array with a 256x256 array of 40 $`\mu `$m pixels. It was positioned at one of the f/11 foci of the 6.5m Baade telescope, but is no longer in use. The Classic Cam imager has a maximum field of view of $``$30x30 arcseconds, which we used with the K-short filter. The USNO catalog star $``$14” to the West of the GRB was used to align the telescope with the field. At the time of our observations, however, engineering issues with the telescope meant that the camera orientation was not well known. Therefore, with only one bright star in the field of view, it was almost impossible to determine the orientation of the field. Stacking of all 45 good images from the data set revealed three other weak sources in the field, but the finder charts available at the time did not clearly resolve other sources in the extremely small $``$30x30” field around the USNO star.

The release of three HST NICMOS F160W filtered images from February 10, 2003, covering the field of GRB 030115 gave an opportunity to orient these images, as the HST images were much deeper, and so clearly resolved the faint sources not seen in the finding charts. Stacking the three images allowed for a clean removal of cosmic rays in the field in IRAF. A comparison between the three stacked NICMOS and our Classic Cam image (below) shows the corrected orientation. Unfortunately, from the image below, you can see that the GRB was below our sensitivity limit for the observation. A limiting magnitude has been calculated at Ks$``$22 for our Stacked Classic Cam image. IRAF aperture photometry of the stacked NICMOS image gives a magnitude of 24.8 for the host galaxy in the F160W filter ($``$H band), when calibrated using the zero point photometry keywords in the HST header files of the images222see http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/handbooks/DataHandbookv5/.

## 3 Optical Data and Analysis

The IR transient was reported to the GCN at $``$16 hours after the burst (Levan et al., 2003). At that time earlier observers were able to re-examined their images, and the transient was found in the optical bands at R$``$21.5 on January 15, 2003, at 05:25 UT (Masetti et al., 2003b) with respect to a nearby USNO-A2 catalog star, or R$``$21.9 when recalibrated against the USNO-B1 catalog. Late time optical observations were made by Garnavich (2003) on Jan. 29.4 UT, 2003, and placed the magnitude of the GRB and host at R=25.2, when recalibrated to the USNO-B1 catalog magnitudes.

The public archived ACS images we obtained were taken on February 10, 2003. There were images available in two filters, F606W and F814W, which are approximately equal to the broad band V and I filters, respectively. Only one image of good quality was available in each filter, so science quality cosmic ray rejection was not available, but an attempt was made to remove the worst of the cosmic rays by combining the two filters to make the image above. It clearly shows the small irregular host galaxy of the GRB with no obvious point source remaining, as well as the bright comparison USNO catalog star used for photometric calibration. The small companion to the host galaxy at 1.3” to the Northeast, reported by Garnavich (2003), is also resolved in these images. It is comparatively more blue than the host, only $``$0.3 magnitudes dimmer than the host in the F606W filter, and then progressively fainter in the longer wavebands.

IRAF aperture photometry was performed on each of the two ACS images. A small 5 pixel (0.25”) radius aperture was used to avoid contamination by cosmic rays, which unfortunately led to not all of the galaxy being contained in the aperture. Our photometry was calibrated against the USNO-B1 catalog star 14 arcseconds to the west of the host galaxy (B=20.640, R=19.450, I=19.690). The errors in moving between the different filters have not been accurately calibrated, and so the magnitudes reported below should be taken as preliminary. We find a magnitude of $``$26 for the central region of the host galaxy in both filters, F606W and F814W. This gives a surface brightness of $``$24 magnitudes per square arcsecond.

## 4 Conclusions

We can place a new upper limit in the afterglow of GRB 030115 of Ks ¿ 22 on January 23, 2003. This upper limit is too faint to be consistent with the afterglow decay of $``$0.7 between the two earlier Ks measurements reported by Kato et al. (2003b), which implies a steepening of the light curve at some time between $``$2 and 6 days after the burst. We also place the magnitude of the afterglow plus host galaxy in F160W ($``$H band) at 24.8 at 25 days after the burst. Optically, the host galaxy of GRB 030115 is seen to be a small, irregular galaxy, perhaps interacting with its companion to the Northeast. A slight count excess at the position of the GRB in the Digital Sky Survey (DSS) image of the region was reported by Masetti et al. (2003b), but this is most likely noise, given the faintness of the host galaxy in the ACS images.


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# Measurements of electron-proton elastic cross sections for 0.4 < 𝑄² < 5.5 (GeV/𝑐)²

## I Introduction

Recently, there has been much renewed interest in the proton electromagnetic form factors in the region of four-momentum transfer, $`Q^2`$ $`>`$ 1 $`(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^2`$. This is due primarily to recent measurements from Hall A at Jefferson Lab jones ; gayou1  on the ratio of the Sachs electric to magnetic form factors via the polarization transfer technique pol1 ; pol2 . These data are in stark disagreement with previous extractions of these form factors litt ; price ; walker ; andiv  from cross section measurements utilizing the Rosenbluth separation technique rosen .

There have been recent efforts brash ; arrington ; arrington2  to extract the individual form factors by combining the cross section and polarization transfer results. However, it is clear that the data sets from these two techniques are systematically inconsistent arrington  and, as such, the method that one chooses for combining the data sets is not well defined. It is critical, then, that the source of the discrepancy be identified, if there is to be any chance of pinning down the $`Q^2`$ dependence of the individual form factors arrington2 .

In this paper we will present results from 28 new precision measurements of the ep elastic cross section in the range 0.4 $`<`$ $`Q^2`$ $`<`$ 5.5 $`(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^2`$ performed in Hall C at Jefferson Lab. Although the kinematics are such that only limited Rosenbluth separations of the form factors can be performed, this data represents a significant contribution to the world’s cross section data set, and as such, can help provide new constraints on global fits from which the form factors can be extracted.

The high precision and large kinematic coverage of the new Jefferson Lab data can help provide crucial information as to whether there exists an experimental systematic error in the world’s cross section data set, which is dominated by the data from SLAC in the $`Q^2`$ range where the discrepancy with the polarization transfer data exists.

## II ep Elastic Scattering

The elastic scattering of an electron from a proton target can be represented in the first order Born approximation by the exchange of a single virtual photon between the leptonic and hadronic electromagnetic currents. This exchange is represented by the diagram in Fig. 1 and is often referred to as the one photon exchange approximation (OPEA), with 4-momentum transfer

$$q_\mu =k_\mu ^{}k_\mu ,$$
(1)
where $`k_\mu `$ ($`k_\mu ^{}`$) is the four-momentum of the electron before (after) scattering. For space-like photons ($`q^2=q_\mu q^\mu `$ $`<`$ 0) it is customary to define the absolute value of the square of the four-momentum transfer

$$Q^2q^24EE^{}\mathrm{sin}^2(\theta /2).$$
(2)
If the proton were point-like, then the cross section could be calculated within the framework of quantum electrodynamics (QED) to give

$$\sigma _{pl}\frac{d\sigma _{pl}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{E^{}}{E}\frac{\alpha ^2\mathrm{cos}^2(\theta /2)}{4E^2\mathrm{sin}^4(\theta /2)}.$$
(3)
However, the spatial extent of the electromagnetic charge and current densities of the proton lead to the introduction of form factors, which modify the proton vertex and parameterize the protons internal structure. It is common to see the cross section expressed in terms of the Sachs electric and magnetic form factors, $`G_{E}^{}{}_{p}{}^{}`$ and $`G_{M}^{}{}_{p}{}^{}`$. These form factors are defined in such a way that only terms quadratic in them appear in the Rosenbluth expression for the cross section,

$$\frac{d\sigma }{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\sigma _{pl}\left[\frac{G_{E}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2)+\tau G_{M}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2)}{1+\tau }+2\tau G_{M}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2)\mathrm{tan}^2(\theta /2)\right],$$
(4)
where $`\tau Q^2/4M_p^2`$ and $`M_p`$ is the proton mass. In the non-relativistic limit, $`G_{E}^{}{}_{p}{}^{}`$ is given by the Fourier transform of the spatial charge distribution, while $`G_{M}^{}{}_{p}{}^{}`$ is given by the Fourier transform of the spatial magnetization distribution. At zero momentum transfer, the proton is resolved as a point particle of total charge equal to one and total magnetic moment given by $`\mu _p=1+\kappa _p`$, where $`\kappa _p=1.7928`$ is the proton anomalous magnetic moment. This leads to the normalizations

$$G_{E}^{}{}_{p}{}^{}(0)=1\text{ and }G_{M}^{}{}_{p}{}^{}(0)=\mu _p.$$
(5)
## III Extraction of Form Factors From Cross Section Measurements

The Rosenbluth expression, Equation 4, can be recast in terms of the relative longitudinal polarization of the virtual photon, $`\epsilon =\left[1+2(1+\tau )\mathrm{tan}^2(\theta /2)\right]^1`$, as

$$\frac{d\sigma }{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{\sigma _{pl}}{\epsilon (1+\tau )}\left[\epsilon G_{E}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2)+\tau G_{M}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2)\right],$$
(6)
with the reduced cross section defined by

$$\sigma _r\frac{d\sigma }{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\frac{\epsilon (1+\tau )}{\sigma _{pl}}=\epsilon G_{E}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2)+\tau G_{M}^{2}{}_{p}{}^{}(Q^2).$$
(7)
At fixed $`Q^2`$, the individual form factors, $`G_E`$ and $`G_M`$, can be extracted from a linear fit in $`\epsilon `$ to the measured reduced cross section. Such a fit is generally referred to as a Rosenbluth fit and yields $`\tau G_M^2`$ as the intercept and $`G_E^2`$ as the slope. Due to the $`\tau `$ weighting of $`G_M^2`$, the cross section becomes less sensitive to $`G_E`$ at large $`Q^2`$. Hence, the accuracy with which $`G_E`$ can be extracted decreases (inversely) with $`Q^2`$ and Rosenbluth separations eventually fail to provide information on the value of $`G_E`$. This failure was part of the impetus for the development of the polarization transfer technique. The fractional contribution of $`G_E`$ to the cross section assuming $`G_M/\mu _p=G_E`$ (form factor scaling) is shown as a function of $`\epsilon `$ in Fig. 2 for $`Q^2`$ values of 1, 3, and 5 $`(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^2`$. At $`Q^2`$ = 3 $`(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^2`$, $`G_E`$ contributes only 12$`\%`$ to the cross section at $`\epsilon `$ = 1, with this contribution decreasing approximately linearly as $`\epsilon `$ 0 in this $`Q^2`$ range.

## IV Experiment

The ep elastic scattering data presented here were obtained as part of experiment E94-110 e94110 , which was intended to separate the longitudinal and transverse unpolarized proton structure functions in the nucleon resonance region via Rosenbluth separations. The experiment utilized the high luminosity electron beam provided by the CEBAF accelerator and was performed in Jefferson Lab Hall C during summer and fall of 1999. Scattered electrons were detected in the High Momentum Spectrometer (HMS). Additionally, the Short Orbit Spectrometer (SOS) was used to detect positrons, which were used to determine possible electron backgrounds originating from charge-symmetric processes such as $`\pi ^0`$ production and subsequent decay in the target. For the kinematic of the elastic scattering measurements, these backgrounds were found to be less than $`0.1\%`$.

### IV.1 Hall C Beamline

The Hall C beamline from the beam switch yard to the beam dump in the experimental area is shown in Fig. 3. The beam from the accelerator south linac enters the Hall C Arc and passes through a series of dipole and quadrupole magnets which steer it into the Hall. The beam position and profile can be measured at several stages in the Arc with the use of superharps. The superharps consist of a set of fine wires (two horizontal and one vertical) which are moved back and forth through the beam to determine the centroid position to about 10 $`\mu m`$. However, these measurements are invasive and can not be performed during data taking. Continuous monitoring of the beam position in the Arc is done with the aid of three beam position monitors (BPMs), which are nondestructive to the beam and are calibrated with superharp scans.

The absolute beam position provided by scans of each of the three superharps allows the trajectory of the beam through the magnets to be determined. This, combined with knowledge of the field integrals of the Arc magnets, then allows the absolute beam energy to be determined to better than $`0.1\%`$. Absolute beam energy measurements which require superharp scans were performed about twice per beam energy setting.

Accelerator cavity RF instabilities have been observed to cause variations in the beam energy of about 0.05$`\%`$. These variations of the beam energy can be measured using the relative positions provided by the Arc BPMs. These BPMs were read into the data stream every second and used to monitor the beam energy drift. In principle, the effect of a drift can be corrected for if a large enough sample of events is considered. However, the effect of beam energy drift on runs used in the current analysis was studied and found to be less than a $`0.02\%`$ effect on the beam energy.

The beam position monitoring system in the Hall consists of three BPMs and two superharps for calibrations. Deviations in the angles of the beam on target translate into corresponding offsets in the reconstructed angles, whereas deviations in the vertical (spectrometer dispersive direction) position of the beam will manifest themselves a s apparent momentum and out-of-plane angle offsets in the spectrometers. The effect of a beam position offset can be calculated from the optical matrix elements for the spectrometer. For a 1 mm vertical offset of the beam on target, the shifts in the reconstructed momentum and out-of-plane angle in the HMS are about $`0.08\%`$ and 1 mrad, respectively.

The centroid of the beam spot, determined by the beam steering into the Hall, is constantly monitored by both fast-feedback electronics and visual displays of the BPM readouts and is adjusted to prevent large drifts of the on-target position during data taking. A study of the run-to-run beam steering stability was made during the running of this experiment. In this study, the run-to-run variations in the vertical position on target were measured to be less than 0.2 mm, resulting in a corresponding point-to-point uncertainty in the reconstructed momentum of $`0.016\%`$. The run-to-run variations in the angles on target were found to be less than 0.04 mrad.

In order to minimize localized target boiling effects in the liquid hydrogen, the small intrinsic beam spot size of about 300 $`\mu \mathrm{m}^1`$11footnotetext: This is about 3$`\times `$ the normal intrinsic spot size. was increased by a set of fast rastering magnets before entering the Hall. The fast raster produced a rectangular pattern with a full width of about 4 mm in the horizontal and 2 mm in the vertical. Corrections due to the vertical rastering were calculated and corrected event-by-event.

The beam current monitoring system in the Hall consists of two (three for E94-110) resonant microwave cavity beam current monitors (BCMs). The BCMs provide continuous measurement of the current and are calibrated to about 0.2 $`\mu `$A by use of an Unser monitor in the Hall. Dedicated calibration runs were performed about once every three days during this experiment to minimize the effects of drifts in the BCM gains. The current was carefully monitored during data taking and was required to be $`60\pm 2\mu `$A. The normalization uncertainty due mostly to the Unser was estimated to be 0.4%. The run-to-run uncertainty in the beam current of 0.2% was estimated by combining in quadrature the fit residuals from the calibration runs and the typical observed drift between calibrations. Detailed information on the current monitoring systems in Hall C can be found in Reference armstrong .

### IV.2 Target

A representation of the cryogenic target assembly is displayed in Fig. 4, and shows the three “tuna can” shaped cryogen cells, as well as the dummy target. Each can was machined out of aluminum to provide a very uniform cylindrical shape which ’bulges’ a negligible amount when the cell is pressurized to about 25 psia dunne . The hydrogen cell was measured to have an inside diameter of 40.113 mm when warm and 39.932 mm when cold, and a cylindrical wall thickness of 0.125 mm. Due to the circular shape, the average target length seen by the beam depended upon both the central position of the beam spot and the size and form of the raster pattern. The normalization uncertainty in the hydrogen target length was estimated to be 0.3% and the run-to-run uncertainty was estimated to be 0.1%. The dummy target was made from two 0.975 mm thick, rectangular sheets of aluminum separated by 40 mm. Additional details on the target assembly can be found in Reference dunne .

Localized target density fluctuations, induced by an intense incident beam, can modify significantly the average density of a cryogenic target. Uncertainties in target density enter directly as uncertainties in the total cross section, and can be current-dependent on a point-to-point basis. The current-dependence can be measured by comparing the yields at fixed kinematics with varying beam currents. The deadtime-corrected yields should be proportional to the luminosity (and, therefore, to the target density).

The result of such a ‘luminosity scan’ for E94-110 is shown in Fig. 5, where the luminosity relative to the lowest current has been plotted on the vertical axis. The error bars on the data are statistical only and do not reflect fluctuations in the beam current. The correction factor applied to the measured target density (at zero current) to account for the reduction resulting from localized target boiling is given by the product of the fitted slope and the current at which the data was taken. For the present data the current was typically kept at 60 $`\pm `$ 2 $`\mu `$A, resulting in a density correction of

$$(2.4\pm 0.2)\%60\mu \mathrm{A}/100\mu \mathrm{A}=1.44\pm 0.12\%.$$
(8)
The uncertainty in the current did not contribute appreciably to the uncertainty on this correction. The total estimated run-to-run uncertainty in the target density is 0.1%.

### IV.3 HMS Spectrometer

The HMS is a magnetic spectrometer consisting of a $`25^{}`$ vertical bend dipole magnet (D) for momentum dispersion and three quadrupole magnets (Q1, Q2, Q3) for focusing. All magnets are superconducting and were operated in a mode to provide a point-to-point optical tune. A schematic side view of the HMS is shown in Fig. 6, and includes representations of the pivot (with target chamber), magnets, and the shielded hut containing the detector stack.

The detector stack is shown in Fig. 7 and consists of two vertical drift chambers baker  (DC1 and DC2) for track reconstruction, scintillator arrays (S1X(Y) and S2X(Y)) for triggering, and a threshold gas Čerenkov and electromagnetic calorimeter, which were both used in the present experiment for particle identification (PID) and pion rejection.

The acceptance limits of the HMS in-plane ($`Y^{}`$) and out-of-plane ($`X^{}`$) scattering angles are defined by an octagonal collimator positioned between the target and the first quadrupole magnet. The edges of this collimator define a maximum angular acceptance of $`28<Y^{}<28`$ mrad and $`75<X^{}<75`$ mrad, and a total solid angle of about 6.8 msr. Additional details on the HMS can be found elsewhere dutta .

### IV.4 Data Acquisition

Data acquisition was performed using the CEBAF On-line Data Acquisition (CODA) software abbot1  running on a SUN Ultra-2 workstation. The detector information for each event was collected from the front-end electronics by VME/CAMAC computers (collectively referred to as Read-Out Controllers or ROCs). Event fragments from the ROCs were then transfered via TCP/IP to CODA, which formed events and wrote them to disk.

## V Data Analysis

CODA events from individual run files where decoded by the Hall C Replay software, which reconstructed the trajectories of individual particles from hit information in the drift chambers. Tracks were then transported back to the target via an optical transport model of the HMS, which allowed the determination of the particle kinematics. For each run an HBOOK hbook  ntuple was then created which contained the reconstructed event kinematics and calibrated PID detector information. The final analysis of the ntuples into experimental yields is described in the sections which follow.

### V.1 Kinematic Calibrations

One of the larger $`\epsilon `$-dependent uncertainties that directly affects Rosenbluth separations is that due to the uncertainties in the kinematics at which the cross sections are measured. It is convenient to absorb this uncertainty directly into the cross sections by calculating the expected difference in the measured cross section when the kinematics are changed from the nominal values within their uncertainties. In order to minimize this uncertainty, it was critical that the kinematic quantities, $`E`$, $`E^{}`$, and $`\theta `$ be determined to the best possible precision. This was aided by the kinematic constraint of elastic scattering, that the reconstructed mass of the unmeasured hadronic state be equal to the proton mass.

For each kinematic setting, the difference of the reconstructed invariant mass, W, from the proton mass ($`\mathrm{\Delta }W`$ = $`W`$ \- $`M_p`$) was calculated after correcting for the effects of energy loss due to both ionization and bremsstrahlung emission. This provided a large set of kinematics for which the dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }W`$ on possible energy and angle offsets could be studied. Finally a minimization of $`\mathrm{\Delta }W`$ was performed to determine the best set of kinematic offsets under the following assumptions: 1) the offset of the nominal HMS central momentum from the true value was a constant fractional amount, and 2) the offset of the nominal HMS central angle from the true value was a constant. The nominal HMS momentum used in this study was that determined in dutta , while the nominal HMS central angle was determined from a comparison of marks scribed on the floor of the Hall to a marker on the back of the spectrometer, which indicated the optical axis.

The reconstructed $`W`$ values for these data are plotted versus scattering energy in Fig. 8, for eight different beam energies and thirty one unique kinematic settings. It was found that the entire data set could be well described by assuming that the true HMS central angle was smaller than the nominal value by 0.6 mrad, and that the true HMS central energy was smaller than the nominal value by 0.39$`\%`$.

The true beam energy was also found to be smaller than the Arc measurements by an amount that varied with the energy. This latter result was subsequently confirmed mack  by a remapping and analysis of the field for one of the Arc magnets. The reconstructed values for $`W`$ are shown, both before (open symbols) and after (solid symbols) correcting for the kinematic offsets found from these studies. The corrected values are all seen to be within 1-2 MeV of the proton mass. This procedure was used for the E94-110 data and yielded a estimated uncertainty in the corrected beam energy of 0.056$`\%`$, about half that typically quoted from Hall C Arc measurements. We estimate that this uncertainty is the quadrature sum of equal normalization and run-to-run uncertainties. We note that the beam energies determined from the Arc measurements utilizing the updated field maps agree with the current results to about 0.05%.

### V.2 Binning the Data

The data were binned on a 2-dimensional grid in the reconstructed variables $`E^{}`$ and $`\theta `$. This was because, at fixed beam energy, the inclusive cross section only depends on the scattered electron energy and angle. In practice, the binning in $`E^{}`$ was converted to a binning in $`\delta P/P`$, which is the more natural variable for the application of the acceptance corrections. The ranges were chosen such that the entire angular acceptance was included and the $`\delta P/P`$ acceptance was well determined from the model of the HMS. For $`\delta P/P`$, the binning chosen was 16 bins over a range of $`\pm 8\%`$, while for $`\theta `$ the binning chosen was 20 bins over a range of $`\pm 35`$ mrad ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta `$ = 3.5 mrad). We note that the physical solid angle coverage ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$) can be different for each $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta `$.

### V.3 Analysis Procedure

For a beam of electrons of energy $`E`$ incident on a fixed proton target, the number of electrons scattered at an angle $`\theta `$ in a solid angle $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is related to the differential cross section, $`d\sigma (\theta )/d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ by

$$N(\theta )=\frac{d\sigma (\theta )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega },$$
(9)
where $``$ is the integrated luminosity. This is not the OPEA cross section of Equation 6, but contains contributions from higher order QED effects. These include virtual particle loops, multi-photon exchange, as well as the emission of bremsstrahlung photons, both before and after the scattering.

The emission of unmeasured bremsstrahlung photons by either the electron beam or the outgoing detected electron results in energies at the scattering vertex which are either smaller (the incoming case) or larger (the outgoing case) from those used in the reconstruction of the kinematics. This results in a large radiative “tail” in both the reconstructed $`E^{}`$ and the invariant hadron energy distributions for elastic events. To compare to the OPEA cross section, requires that this radiative tail be integrated to some cut-off in $`E^{}`$, with a correction factor, which included the remaining higher order effects, depending on this cut-off. This “radiative” correction is applied as a multiplicative factor (denoted RC) and is discussed in more detail in section V.8. Because the radiative tail extends beyond the threshold for single pion production at $`W^21.16`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, the integration was cutoff at $`W_{max}^2<1.16`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ to avoid including events from inelastic processes. The corresponding correction factor, RC($`W_{max}^2`$), is therefore cutoff dependent.

In addition, the measured number of counts must also be corrected for detector efficiencies, $`eff`$, and the effective solid angle acceptance, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{eff}(\theta ,E^{})`$, after subtraction of counts from background processes, BG$`(\theta ,E^{})`$. In this experiment the measured cross section was determined for each bin on a 2-dimensional grid of the electron scattering energy and angle, $`E^{}`$ and $`\theta `$, across the entire phase space for which the spectrometer has a non-zero acceptance. The extracted cross section was then determined from the relation,

$$\frac{d\sigma _{1\gamma }(\theta )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{RC(W_{max}^2)}{}^{W_{max}^2}\mathrm{𝑑𝐸}^{}\frac{[N(E^{},\theta )BG(E^{},\theta )]}{eff\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{eff}(E^{},\theta )}.$$
(10)
The individual ingredients will be discussed in detail in the following sections.

### V.4 Backgrounds

There are three physical processes that are possible sources of background counts to the elastically scattered electron yields. These are: electrons scattered from the target aluminum walls, negatively charged pions that are not separated from electrons by the PID cuts, and electrons originating from other processes, which are dominated by charge symmetric processes which produce equal numbers of positrons. Each of these potential backgrounds will be examined in the discussion that follows.

#### V.4.1 Target Cell Backgrounds

The quasielastic scattering from nucleons in aluminum nuclei can produce electrons at the same kinematics as those from elastic ep scattering. The scattering of the beam from front and back of the target cell wall produces backgrounds of this type which are difficult to isolate. Therefore, the corresponding background is determined by measuring the yield of events from a “dummy” target, which is a mockup of the target ends. In order to minimize the data acquisition time, the total thickness of this dummy target was about 8 times the total cell wall thickness seen by the beam. After measuring the dummy yield, the total background from scattering from the target walls, $`\mathrm{BG}_w(E^{},\theta )`$, was then determined from

$$\mathrm{BG}_w(E^{},\theta )=\frac{t_wQ_w}{t_dQ_d}N_d(E^{},\theta )C_{\mathrm{br}}(E^{},\theta ),$$
(11)
where $`Q_{w(d)}`$ is the total charge incident on the walls (dummy), $`t_{w(d)}`$ is the total thickness of the walls (dummy), and $`N_d(E^{},\theta )`$ is the number of events collected for the dummy run after applying efficiency and deadtime corrections.

The factor, $`C_{\mathrm{br}}(E^{},\theta )`$, corrects for the difference in external bremsstrahlung emission due to the greater thickness of the dummy target. More precisely, this accounts for the fact that the distribution of events for thicker targets are more strongly shifted toward lower scattering energies (higher $`W`$) than those for thinner targets. The size of this correction was studied and was found to be less than a few tenths of a percent at all kinematics measured, and typically less than $`0.1\%`$. Since this was the typical size of the uncertainty in this correction, we have taken $`C_{\mathrm{br}}=1`$, and absorbed an additional $`0.1\%(0.1\%)`$ into the point-to-point (normalized) uncertainty in the background subtraction.

The largest contribution to the uncertainties in the aluminum background subtraction comes from the uncertainties in the thickness of the cell wall of about $`1.5\%`$ dunne . However, the typical size of this background was on the order of $`8\%`$ of the total yield, which leads to an uncertainty on the subtracted yield of only $`0.12\%`$. This uncertainty is approximately independent of the kinematics and run conditions.

#### V.4.2 Pion Backgrounds

The rejection of negatively charged pions was accomplished by placing requirements on both the number of Čerenkov photoelectrons collected and the energy deposition of the particle in the calorimeter. The count distribution of photoelectrons collected in the HMS Čerenkov at an HMS momentum of 1 GeV is shown in Fig. 9. For electrons, this is a Poisson distribution, with a mean of approximately 10 photoelectrons. For pions, the number of photoelectrons produced should be zero. However, pions can produce $`\delta `$-rays (electron knockout) in the materials immediately preceding the Čerenkov detector and some of these “knock-on” electrons can produce Čerenkov radiation, with the probability of $`\delta `$-ray production increasing with energy. With a requirement of more than 2 photoelectrons, this decreases the pion rejection factor from the maximum value of about $`1000:1`$ found at low energies. However, this doesn’t cause any significant pion contamination above this cut since the worst $`\pi ^{}/e^{}`$ ratios are at low scattering energy where the rejection factor is the largest.

The fractional energy deposition in the calorimeter, both before (unshaded region) and after (shaded region) applying the Čerenkov requirement of $`>2`$ photoelectrons to select electrons, is shown in Fig. 10 for the four kinematics that exhibited the worst $`\pi ^{}/e^{}`$ ratio. The fractional energy deposition of the particles is calculated by dividing the energy collected in a fiducial region about the track in the calorimeter by the momentum determined from the track reconstruction. Even for these worst cases, it is evident that the Čerenkov requirement alone does a good job of removing pions. To further insure a clean electron sample, a requirement that the fractional energy deposited in the calorimeter be greater than $`0.7`$ was also applied. The pion background after applying both the Čerenkov and calorimeter requirements is estimated to be less than $`0.1\%`$.

The Čerenkov efficiency, using a 2 photoelectron cut, was found to be $`99.6\%`$, independent of the energy. This is because the shape of the electron distribution does not depend on the particle’s energy, resulting in the same fraction of electrons in the tail being removed. This is not true for the calorimeter, since a fixed energy resolution results in an increase in the width of the electron fractional energy distribution at lower energies. The calorimeter cut efficiency decreases from a maximum of about $`99.5\%`$ at energies above 3 GeV to about $`98.5\%`$ at an energy of 0.6 GeV. The run-to-run uncertainties on the efficiencies were estimated from Gaussian fits of the distribution of efficiencies determined for each run from the entire E94-110 elastic data set, and were found to be $`0.1\%`$ for the Čerenkov detector and $`0.1\%`$ for the calorimeter.

### V.5 Acceptance Corrections

Whether a scattered electron reaches the detector stack or is stopped by hitting the edge of the collimator or one of the various apertures in the HMS magnet system and beam pipe is dependent upon several factors, including: 1) the electron momentum, 2) the in-plane and out-of-plane scattering angles, and 3) the vertex position. However, the physics depends only upon the momentum and full scattering angle, $`\theta =\mathrm{cos}^1\left[\mathrm{cos}(X^{})\mathrm{cos}(\theta _cY^{})\right]`$, so that for a fixed central spectrometer angle, $`\theta _c`$, it is convenient in what follows to consider only the $`E^{}`$ and $`\theta `$ dependence of the acceptance averaged over the vertex coordinates.

Using a model of the spectrometer, the fractional acceptance, $`A(E^{},\theta )`$, is calculated by generating Monte Carlo events and taking the ratio of the number of detected events to the number of generated events for each bin in phase space. That is

$$A(E^{},\theta )N_{acc}(E_{gen}^{},\theta _{gen})/N_{gen}(E_{gen}^{},\theta _{gen}),$$
(12)
where $`N_{gen}(E_{gen}^{},\theta _{gen})`$ is the number of events generated and $`N_{acc}(E_{gen}^{},\theta _{gen})`$ is the number of events accepted in a given $`(E_{gen}^{},\theta _{gen})`$ bin. The $`gen`$ subscripts denote that the kinematics used for the binning are as generated. The fractional acceptance as defined here is simply a probability. However, it is evident that $`A(E^{},\theta )`$ depends upon the solid angle, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{gen}(\theta )`$, into which events are generated. The “effective” solid angle coverage for each 2-dimensional bin is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{eff}(E^{},\theta )A(E^{},\theta )\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{gen}(\mathrm{\Delta }\theta ),$$
(13)
and is independent of the size of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{gen}(\mathrm{\Delta }\theta )`$. For example, increasing the generation limits of the out-of-plane angle, $`X^{}`$, from $`\pm 100`$ mrad to $`\pm 150`$ mrad will decrease $`A(E^{},\theta )`$ since $`\left|X^{}\right|>100`$ mrad is already outside of the collimator aperture. However, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{gen}(\mathrm{\Delta }\theta )`$ will increase accordingly and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{eff}`$ will remain unchanged.

We note that the determination of $`A(E^{},\theta )`$ does not require generating the events uniformly provided that the number generated in each part of phase space is known. The assumption here is that events generated in a given $`(E^{},\theta )`$ bin are not detected in another $`(E^{},\theta )`$ bin. The fractional acceptance as defined is then simply the probability that an event generated in a given bin will be detected in that bin, and, therefore, the correction to the yield due to the fractional acceptance in each bin is $`1/A(E^{},\theta )`$. If the bin-to-bin migration is small then it is already approximately accounted for by redefining the acceptance in Equation 12 to

$$A(E^{},\theta )=N_{acc}(E_{rec}^{},\theta _{rec})/N_{gen}(E_{gen}^{},\theta _{gen}),$$
(14)
where the $`rec`$ subscripts denote the kinematics as reconstructed. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{eff}`$ distribution extracted from the HMS model for $`E^{}`$ = 2.8 GeV and $`\theta _c=12.5^{}`$ is shown in figure 11. The shape in $`\theta \theta _c`$ is dominated by the octagonal collimator, which largely determines the HMS solid angle acceptance. We note that the acceptance is not symmetric in the full scattering angle when the out-of-plane angle contributes significantly (i.e. at forward in-plane spectrometer angles), even though the HMS has a high degree of symmetry about the in-plane scattering angle. This is because any out-of-plane angle will always result in a larger full scattering angle.

The solid angle defined by the HMS collimator is about 6.75 msr for a point target. This is slightly reduced for a 4 cm extended target and the reduction becomes larger as the spectrometer is moved to larger angles. At the smallest angle measured of $`\theta _c=12.5^{}`$, the average solid angle acceptance due to the collimator for a momentum bite of $`\left|\delta p/p\right|<8\%`$ was determined from the HMS model to be 6.714 msr. The reduction due to all other apertures resulted in a further reduction of only 2.5% to 6.612 msr. At the largest angle measured of $`\theta _c=80^{}`$, the average solid angle acceptance due to the collimator was determined to be 6.685 msr, with a further reduction due to other apertures of 5.2% to 6.335 msr. For this momentum bite the largest reduction of events after the collimator is in the second quadrupole.

The normalization uncertainty on the acceptance corrections was estimated by combining in quadrature an uncertainty of 0.7% stemming from the reduction in solid angle due to apertures other than the collimator (more than one fourth the total at $`\theta _c=12.5^{}`$) and an uncertainty of 0.4% due to the modeling of the HMS optics.

The optical properties of the HMS have been well studied dutta  utilizing several techniques and a large amount of dedicated optics data taken during many experiments over nearly a decade. For the HMS, the optical transport of charged particles through the spectrometer is independent of the momentum setting to a very high degree. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ distribution at a given $`\theta _c`$ is then only dependent on the energy setting through the dependence of the resolution (including energy straggling) and multiple scattering effects in the spectrometer.

### V.6 Elastic Peak Integration

As already noted, the scattering energy distribution of the elastic peak at an individual $`\theta `$ value is broadened from the $`\delta `$ function expected in the OPEA due to several effects. These include energy resolution effects, and energy loss due to both ionization and bremsstrahlung emission. A typical peak distribution for a single $`\theta `$ bin is shown in Fig. 12. The lower limit of integration is chosen to both minimize the loss of events due to resolution smearing and to minimize the sensitivity to potential backgrounds, while the upper limit is chosen to include as much of the peak as possible yet to be below the threshold for inelastic $`\pi `$ production at $`W^21.16`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$.

The sensitivities to both the lower and upper limits were studied and were found to be small. For the lower limit, the insensitivity indicates that the aluminum background subtractions are correctly handled. For the upper limit, it indicates that both the resolution effects and the shape of the bremsstrahlung distribution are accounted for reasonably well. Once the upper limit has been chosen, the fraction of the distribution that is outside this limit is accounted for by the correction factor RC($`W_{max}^2`$). If the effects of bremsstrahlung, energy straggling, and resolution are well understood, then a corresponding peak integration should be independent of the energy cutoff chosen, once the corresponding radiative correction has been applied.

The sensitivity of the extracted cross section to the energy cutoff is shown in Fig. 13. For each kinematic setting, the ratio of the integrated distribution for an energy cutoff of $`W_{max}^2`$ to that for a cutoff of $`1.15`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ is plotted versus $`\epsilon `$. In the upper plot $`W_{max}^2=1.10`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, in the middle plot $`W_{max}^2=1.05`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, and for the bottom plot $`W_{max}^2=1.0`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. The typical point-to-point difference in tail-corrected integration is less than $`0.3\%`$ for the largest change in the cutoff value and shows little $`\epsilon `$ dependence. We take this as the estimated random point-to-point uncertainty on this procedure and include it in the uncertainty of the radiative corrections. Additionally, we note that the normalization difference of about 1% between between the smallest and largest values for $`W_{max}^2`$ is likely due to a combination of unoptimized resolution matching and the approximate handling of the energy straggling in the simulation used for generating the acceptance corrections. However, this optimization becomes much less important as more of the peak is integrated. We take 0.35% as the estimated normalization uncertainty on this procedure and include it in the uncertainty of the radiative corrections.

Finally, we note that, except for the three measurements at beam energies below 2 GeV, the same $`W_{max}^2`$ value was used for all kinematic settings. This was possible because of the large acceptance of the HMS spectrometer. This is in contrast to previous precision measurements walker ; andiv , in which the spectrometer acceptance determined the maximum $`W_{max}^2`$ at each kinematic setting.

### V.7 $`\theta `$ Bin-Centering and Averaging

After performing the peak integration, the cross section is then extracted for each $`\theta `$ bin. Often, the statistics taken in each bin are small ($`<`$ 2000 counts). In order to improve the statistical accuracy, one would like to combine the data from all $`\theta `$ bins. If the cross section did not depend (or depended only linearly) on the scattering angle, the cross sections extracted in each bin could simply be averaged. This is not the case, however. The HMS spectrometer has a relatively large acceptance of about $`\pm `$1.8 degrees in the scattering angle. Therefore, the cross section can vary greatly across the angular acceptance. At some kinematics, this variation can be a factor of 3 or more (and strongly non-linear) across the acceptance. In order to average the cross sections in each $`\theta `$ bin, the $`\theta `$ dependence of the cross section must be corrected for.

This correction is called “$`\theta `$ bin-centering” (BC), and our prescription for it is straightforward. Since we would like to quote the cross section at the central angle of the spectrometer, the following correction is applied to each $`\theta `$ bin:

$$\left[\frac{d\sigma (\theta )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{BC,i}=\frac{d\sigma (\theta _i)}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\frac{\sigma ^{Mod}(\theta )}{\sigma ^{Mod}(\theta _i)},$$
(15)
where $`\theta `$ is the central angle, $`\theta _i`$ is the angle for the $`i^{th}`$ bin, and $`\sigma ^{Mod}`$ is the value of a cross section model. For this procedure to be valid, care must be taken to subtract all backgrounds and to apply all corrections that have a $`\theta `$ dependence, bin-by-bin. This includes radiative corrections. The bin-centered cross sections can then be averaged over the $`\theta _i`$ to give the measured cross section at the central spectrometer angle. This was done as a weighted average, where the inverse of the square of the full statistical errors was used as a weighting factor. The statistical errors take into account the statistics of both the hydrogen and subtracted target endcap events, as well as the acceptance correction uncertainties due to statistical errors on the Monte Carlo generation.

An example of this procedure is presented in Fig. 14. Shown is the cross section extracted at a beam energy of 3.12 GeV and a central HMS angle of $`12.5^{}`$, before both acceptance and BC corrections (triangles). Also plotted is the cross section after applying acceptance corrections (squares) and after applying both acceptance and bin-centering corrections (circles). Only statistical uncertainties in the data are included in the error bars shown. However, the calculated acceptance corrections for bins at the edge of the acceptance can have large fractional errors, as they are very sensitive to both accurate modeling of the multiple scattering processes and small variations in the positions of apertures like the collimator. To minimize the effects of such sensitivities, bins at the edge of the $`\theta `$ acceptance where the calculated acceptance was below some minimum value were neglected in the averaging procedure. The angular acceptance limits used in the present experiment are represented by the vertical dashed lines in Fig. 14. The cross sections obtained after averaging over these limits were found to be quite insensitive to the effects described above. Uncertainties associated with these effects were studied by adjusting aperture/target positions, magnet fields, and multiple scattering distributions within reasonable limits and determining the corresponding acceptance function. The cross section extracted with this acceptance function was typically found to agree with that using the nominal acceptance function to within 0.5%.

The shape of the uncorrected distribution is the convolution of the $`\theta `$ dependence of the cross section with the acceptance of the spectrometer, with the latter being primarily defined by the collimator. Correcting for the acceptance leaves only the $`\theta `$ dependence, which is then removed by the bin-centering corrections. The resulting, fully corrected, cross section should then be a constant across the $`\theta `$ acceptance and equal to the cross section at the central $`\theta `$ to within statistical fluctuations. This is indeed the case, allowing for small variations which are mostly due to an imperfect optics model for the spectrometer, as well as the approximate treatment of the multiple scattering effects in the simulations.

### V.8 Radiative Corrections

While the form factors can be easily extracted from the Born cross section for single photon exchange, the cross section that is measured in a scattering experiment includes higher order electromagnetic processes which are depicted in Fig. 15. These processes can be categorized into two types: 1) the internal processes, which originate due to the fields of the particles at the scattering vertex, and 2) the external processes, which originate due to the fields of particles in the bulk target materials. The internal processes include: vacuum polarization, vertex corrections, two-photon exchange, and (internal) bremsstrahlung emission in the field of the proton from which the scattering took place, while the external process is due to (external) bremsstrahlung in the field of a proton in the material either before or after the scattering vertex.

The radiative correction factors, which account for these higher order processes, were calculated using the same procedure as the high precision SLAC data walker ; andiv  and discussed in detail in Reference walker . This procedure is based on the prescription of Mo and Tsai tsai ; motsai . The radiative correction (RC) is applied to the measured cross section (after integration of the bremsstrahlung tail) as a multiplicative factor, i.e.,

$$\left[\frac{d\sigma (\theta )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{Born}=RC\left[\frac{d\sigma (\theta )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{Meas}.$$
(16)
The corrections calculated include only the infrared divergent contributions from the two-photon exchange and proton vertex diagrams, with the non-divergent contributions having been previously estimated motsai  to be less than 1$`\%`$. However, the topic of two-photon exchange has recently been of renewed theoretical interest 2pho1 ; 2pho2 ; 2pho3  in light of the discrepancy between the elastic form factor ratios extracted from Rosenbluth separations of cross section measurements and those measured in polarization transfer experiments. In addition, a recent study positrons  of the world’s data on the ratio of elastic cross sections for $`e^+p`$ to $`e^{}p`$ has recently been made to look for evidence of two-photon effects.

The radiative corrections applied at each kinematic setting are listed in Table 3. We note that these correction factors are significantly smaller than those applied in References walker ; andiv . This is mostly due to integrating more of the radiative tail, but also to the reduction of external bremsstrahlung afforded by our much shorter target.

The uncertainties in the radiative correction procedure were studied in References walker ; andiv  and were estimated to be 0.5% point-to-point and 1.0% nomalized. To these we have added, in quadrature, the additional contributions resulting from the radiative tail integration, which are discussed in Section V.6. .

### V.9 Additional Corrections Applied to Large $`E^{}`$ Data

The four cross section measurements at scattering energies greater than 3.5 GeV (indicated with a $``$ in Table 3) required two additional corrections that were not needed for the rest of the data set. These corrections, which will be discussed in what follows, account for the following two effects: 1) an additional change in the effective target density, and 2) a small misfocusing in the spectrometer optics, relative to nominal.

During the data taking it was discovered that the fan controlling the flow of hydrogen through the cryogenic target had been inadvertently lowered from the 60 Hz nominal speed to 45 Hz. This resulted in larger localized boiling due to the beam and effectively lowered the density of hydrogen. To account for this, high statistics runs ($`0.1\%`$) were performed at both fan speeds and the size of the effect was determined from the ratio of cross sections. Since the effect of target boiling was already measured for a fan speed of 60 Hz, an additional correction to the yields of $`+0.6\%\pm 0.2\%`$ was included for the data taken at the lower speed.

In addition to the correction for the difference in target density, the cross section measurements at large $`E^{}`$ were also corrected for a slight misfocusing of the spectrometer. A TOSCA tosca  model of the HMS dipole indicated that it would start to suffer from saturation effects starting at currents corresponding to a momentum of 3.5 GeV for the central ray and that this effect would increase quadratically with momentum. This correction was included when setting the current in the dipole for this experiment, but was later found from both kinematic and optics studies to not be needed. These studies indicated that the actual HMS field continues to increase linearly with current to a high accuracy up to the highest momentum tested of 5.1 GeV.

The missetting of the dipole field due to this unneeded saturation correction resulted in reconstructing the wrong scattering angle by an amount that varied across the angular acceptance, and led to a depletion of events that reconstructed in the region of the angular acceptance used in the analysis. The correction to the reconstructed scattering angle was determined by requiring $`W=M_p`$ for each $`\theta `$ bin, and this correction was then fit as a function of $`\theta `$ across the angular acceptance. The result of this fit was applied as a correction to the scattering angle event-by-event, and effectively reshuffled events back into the depleted bins. The effect of this correction on the cross section was largest at the highest scattering momentum in this experiment of 4.7 GeV and resulted in a $`1.6\%`$ increase. The uncertainty on this correction was estimated to be $`0.4\%`$ and was assumed to be the same at all four kinematics where a correction was applied.

## VI Systematic Uncertainties

The estimated systematic uncertainties for the experiment are listed in Table 1 for those that are assumed random point-to-point in $`\epsilon `$ and in Table 2 for those that effect the overall normalization uncertainty only. The quadrature sum of the point-to-point and normalization uncertainties gives the absolute uncertainties on the cross section measurements. The point-to-point uncertainties are those that depend upon variable run conditions or kinematics. Discussions of the uncertainties presented here can be found in earlier sections of the text.

## VII Results

The complete set of Born cross sections extracted from these precision elastic scattering measurements are listed in Appendix A. In total, measurements at 28 different kinematics were included in the final data set, covering a range in $`Q^2`$ from approximately 0.4 GeV to 5.5 GeV. In addition, a significant range in $`\epsilon `$ was covered, even though the elastic kinematics were not specifically optimized for Rosenbluth separations.

### VII.1 Comparisons to Fits of the Existing World’s Data

Comparisons of these cross sections were made to recent fits of the previous world’s data set. These included the fit of Brash $`et`$ al. from brash  and the fits of Arrington from arrington . Both analyzes performed a fit to the combined cross section and polarization transfer data, while that of Arrington also included a fit to the cross section data alone. It should be stressed that, although nearly the same data sets were included in the fits, the method of combining the polarization transfer data differed.

In the work of Brash $`et`$ al., the polarization transfer results for the $`Q^2`$ dependence of $`G_E/G_M`$ were used as a constraint to do a one-parameter refit of the Rosenbluth data, from which $`G_M`$ was extracted. A $`\chi ^2`$ minimization was then performed to fit $`G_M`$ as a function of $`Q^2`$. In the work of Arrington, two fits were performed: one that included the polarization transfer data, and one that did not. However, here the polarization transfer results for $`G_E/G_M`$ were included with the cross section measurements as equally weighted points in a $`\chi ^2`$ minimization to fit both form factors simultaneously. This follows closely the older work of Walker walker  on global fits to cross section data.

The ratio of the data to the Arrington fit of cross section data is shown in Fig. 16 versus $`\theta `$, $`\epsilon `$, and $`E^{}`$. The inner error bars represent the purely statistical uncertainties, while the full error bars include the point-to-point uncertainties as well. This fit is observed to describe the data set very well over the entire kinematic range. The $`\chi ^2`$ (calculated using only the point-to-point uncertainties and after removing the average $`0.6\%`$ normalization difference between the current data set and the previous world data set of cross section measurements) distribution was found to be well described by a Gaussian distribution with a width corresponding to an average uncertainty of about 1.0$`\%`$, consistent with the estimated errors combining the systematic point-to-point and statistical uncertainties in quadrature. For each of the three fits previously described, the total $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom ($`\chi _\nu ^2`$) to the data was calculated. The results for the region above $`Q^2`$ = 1 $`(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^2`$, where the discrepancy between the cross section and polarization results differ significantly, were found to be $`\chi _\nu ^2=`$ 0.76 (Arrington fit to cross sections), 1.06 (Arrington fit including polarization transfer results), and 2.95 (Brash $`et`$ al fit), allowing the overall normalization to vary.

These results are interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the full data set above $`Q^2`$ = 1 $`(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^2`$ favor the fit to cross section data only over the fits that includes the polarization transfer data. Secondly, the data favor the Arrington prescription for combining the cross section and polarization transfer data over the prescription of Brash $`et`$ al. This does not resolve the inconsistency between the Rosenbluth and polarization transfer results, but rather underscores a consistency in the global cross section data set including these new measurements. The discrepancy with these and the polarization transfer measurements is highlighted further.

### VII.2 Rosenbluth Extractions of Form Factors

The individual Sachs form factors were extracted from the cross section data at seven different $`Q^2`$ values via the Rosenbluth separation method. This required that the cross section measurements at similar $`Q^2`$ values be grouped. Since none of the measurements were taken at precisely the same $`Q^2`$, a correction factor was applied to some of the cross sections in each group to evolve to a common $`Q^2`$. The correction factor for this $`Q^2`$ evolution was calculated from fits to previous data via

$$\frac{d\sigma (Q_c^2,\epsilon )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{d\sigma (Q^2,\epsilon )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\frac{\sigma ^{Mod}(Q_c^2,\epsilon )}{\sigma ^{Mod}(Q^2,\epsilon )},$$
(17)
where $`\sigma ^{Mod}`$ is the value given by the fit of Arrington to the cross sections data, and $`Q^2`$, $`Q_c^2`$, represent the values before and after the evolution, respectively.

In order to perform Rosenbluth separations at a particular $`Q^2`$, the following two conditions on the data were required: 1) each separation must contain three distinct $`\epsilon `$ points, and 2) the $`Q^2`$ evolution for each $`\epsilon `$ point must constitute less than a 15$`\%`$ correction. The sensitivity of the extracted form factors on the model used for the $`Q^2`$ evolution was found to be much less than the uncertainties. Plots of the reduced cross sections versus $`\epsilon `$ are presented in Fig. 17 for each $`Q^2`$. Also presented are the results of the linear fit. The error bars on each point represent the total point-to-point uncertainties, including both statistical and systematic uncertainties added in quadrature.

The results for the ratio $`\mu G_E/G_M`$ extracted from the current data set are presented in Fig. 18, along with previous extractions from both cross section walker  and polarization transfer jones ; gayou1  data. The current data are seen to agree well with the previous cross section data, while being in significant disagreement with the polarization transfer results. The error bars on each point represent the uncertainties obtained for the fit parameters, while the hatched band at the top of the figure represents that due to the estimated 0.4 mrad uncertainty in the absolute scattering angle. To a large degree, an error in the scattering angle would shift the entire set of ratios up or down but would not significantly alter the trend versus $`Q^2`$, which is significantly different from that of the polarization transfer data.

## VIII Conclusion

We have performed high precision measurements of the ep elastic cross section covering a considerable amount of the $`Q^2\epsilon `$ space for which there exists a large discrepancy between Rosenbluth and polarization transfer extractions of the ratio $`\mu G_E/G_M`$. This data set shows good agreement with previous cross section measurements, indicating that if a here-to-fore unknown systematic error does exist in the cross section measurements then it is intrinsic to all such measurements.

A likely candidate, which has received much theoretical interest recently 2pho1 ; 2pho2 ; 2pho3 , is possible contributions from two-photon exchange, which are not fully accounted for in the standard radiative corrections procedure of Mo-Tsai. Although it is currently unclear whether such an effect can fully explain the discrepancy, considerable progress is being made.

Complementary to this theoretical effort is the recently completed experiment super  in JLab Hall A which utilizes the so-called ‘Super-Rosenbluth’ technique to extract the form factor ratio. This experiment measured the proton cross sections and is therefore sensitive to a different set of systematic uncertainties than the previous electron cross section data. However, these measurements are still as sensitive to two-photon exchange effects as electron cross section measurements and will, therefore, provide a vital clue whether such effects are present. In any event, it is critical that the source of the discrepancy be found if there is to be any hope of extracting the $`Q^2`$ dependence of the individual form factors.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported in part by research grants 0099540 and 9633750 from the National Science Foundation and under contract W-31-109-ENG-38 from the U.S. Department of Energy, Nuclear Physics Division. We are grateful for the outstanding support provided by the Jefferson Lab Hall C scientific and engineering staff. The Southeastern Universities Research Association operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility under the U.S. Department of Energy contract DEAC05-84ER40150.