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# Odd-even mass differences in self-consistent Mean-Field calculations.

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## Abstract

The odd-even mass staggering (OES) of nuclei is analyzed in the context of self-consistent mean-field calculations. The procedure developed allows to understand the OES for spherical as well as for deformed nuclei. Comparison with results at the Hartree-Fock level shows the non-perturbative effect on this observable of the inclusion of pairing correlations.

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Odd-even staggering of binding energies is a common phenomenon of several finite many-fermion systems. In nuclei, it has been attributed to an evidence of pairing correlations. Assuming that masses are smooth functions of the number of neutrons and protons except for pairing effects, simple expressions have been derived for the gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ based on the differences between binding energies of even and odd nuclei. Detailed analyses and pairing adjustments have been based on these expressions. The simplest example is the well-known three-point mass formula:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}(N)=\frac{(1)^N}{2}[E(N+1)2E(N)+E(N1)]$$
(1)
where N (Z) is the number of neutrons (protons). However, a study of the OES in light alkali-metal clusters and light N=Z nuclei  has lead to the conclusion that this phenomenon was not due to pairing correlations but rather to deformation effects. That work motivated a study by Satula et al.  about the “mean-field” contribution to the OES in nuclei, especially from deformation. To isolate mean-field effects, they set the pairing force to zero and performed Hartree-Fock (HF) calculations for light deformed nuclei. At this level, they already discovered an odd-even staggering, itself oscillating:

$`\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{\Delta }_{HF}^{(3)}(N)\hfill & & 0& \mathrm{if}N\mathrm{is}\mathrm{odd},\\ & & \frac{e_ke_{k1}}{2}& \mathrm{if}N\mathrm{is}\mathrm{even},\end{array}`$ (4)
where $`(e_ke_{k1})`$ stands for the possible gap around the Fermi level and is zero in spherical nuclei (apart for magic numbers) but different from zero for deformed nuclei because of the spread doubly-degenerated spectrum. Thus, they found the deformation (Jahn-Teller effect) to be responsible for a direct contribution to the three point odd-even mass formula. Consequently, in presence of pairing correlations $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{odd}^{(3)}`$ could be a measure of pairing effect only, whereas $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{even}^{(3)}`$ will contain an additional contribution responsible for the staggering of this quantity. Note that, such a scheme cannot account for the same oscillation in spherical nuclei.

The aim of the present study is to analyze for all nuclei the contributions to odd-even mass differences in a fully self-consistent mean-field picture and to extract a quantity more directly related to pairing correlations. After the presentation of the results, our approach will be compared to that of the Ref. .

Finite-difference mass formulas are intended to extract the quickly varying part of the energy as a function of the neutron or proton number. The underlying assumption is the possible division of the energy into a smooth and a rapidly varying part. OES can be viewed as a probe of the difference of structure between odd and even nuclei, due to the polarization effect by the odd nucleon and to the reduction of pairing by its blocking.

The energy would be smooth if those differences of structure would not exist. Thus the smooth part can be defined as EHFBE (HFBE meaning Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov Even) which is the energy obtained when all nuclei are calculated as if they were even ones (no blocking and no breaking of the time reversal symmetry in odd nuclei). This definition of EHFBE has already been used in  in a similar context. The theoretical energy of an odd nucleus can be decomposed as:

$`E^{HFB}(N)`$ $`=`$ $`E^{HFBE}(N)+[E^{HFB}(N)E^{HFBE}(N)]`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`E^{HFBE}(N)+\stackrel{}{E^{pol}(N)+\mathrm{\Delta }(N)},`$ (6)
where $`E^{pol}(N)`$ is the difference of binding energy due to the polarization of the core by the odd nucleon, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(N)`$ is the positive contribution specifically related to the blocking effect.

From the explicit calculation of both $`E^{HFB}`$ and $`E^{HFBE}`$, one obtains $`E^{pol}(N)+\mathrm{\Delta }(N)`$ through the odd-even mass formulas which are quantities comparable to experiment. The separation between $`E^{pol}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(N)`$ is not discussed in this paper.

Following eq. 6, the three point mass formula becomes:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N)=\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}(N)+\mathrm{\Delta }_{pairing+pol}^{(3)}(N).$$
(7)
As EHFBE varies smoothly with N, one can write:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}(N)\frac{(1)^N}{2}\frac{^2E^{HFBE}}{N^2}|_N.$$
(8)
We also obtain

$`\begin{array}{ccccc}\hfill \mathrm{\Delta }_{pairing}^{(3)}(N)& =& \mathrm{\Delta }(N)\hfill & & \mathrm{if}N\mathrm{is}\mathrm{odd}\hfill \\ & =& \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(N1)+\mathrm{\Delta }(N+1)}{2}\hfill & & \mathrm{if}N\mathrm{is}\mathrm{even},\hfill \end{array}`$ (11)
and similarly for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pol}^{(3)}(N)`$. Similar expressions can be written for higher order formulas. We will use below the five-point formula (fourth-order):

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(5)}(N)=\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(5)}(N)+\mathrm{\Delta }_{pairing+pol}^{(5)}(N).$$
(12)
We have calculated energies using the formalism and forces detailed in Ref. . It is based on the self-consistent HFB method with an approximate particle number projection using the Lipkin-Nogami prescription. It should be mentioned that the time-odd components of the force are included since the time-reversal symmetry is explicitly broken in the calculation of odd nuclei.

To avoid the contributions from deformation we first study the odd-even mass staggering along an isotopic chain of spherical nuclei. Seventy ground-states are calculated along the tin isotopic chain, from 100Sn to 169Sn. Each odd-N nucleus is calculated twice: first, with the fully self-consistent HFB scheme (several 1 quasi-particle (qp) configurations are investigated to get the lowest in energy); and second, as a HFB vacuum requiring only an odd average number of neutrons (HFBE case).

Calculated $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(5)}(N)`$ along this chain are given on the left panel of Fig. 1. A staggering is observed for $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}(N)`$ whereas no staggering occurs for $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}(N)`$.

To understand these observations, let us focus first on the right panel of Fig. 1 which displays the contributions of the smooth part of the energy EHFBE to $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ (eq. 8 and 12). Apart for the magic number $`N=82`$, this figure shows that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(5)}0`$. This legitimates the identification of EHFBE as the smooth part of the energy. Indeed, the larger the order of the formula, the smaller the expected contribution coming from an existing smooth part of the energy.

Assuming that $`E^{pol}(N)+\mathrm{\Delta }(N)`$ does not vary significantly over a few consecutive odd nuclei and gives similar contributions to $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$, one can write:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N)\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(5)}(N)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}(N)`$ (13)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(5)}(N)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pairing+pol}^{(5)}(N).`$ (14)
To justify this equation, we compare on the left panel of Fig. 2 both sides of eq. 13. The agreement is impressive along the whole isotopic line (except for the magic number $`N=82`$). Some one-qp configurations for odd nuclei are hard to converge leading to slight irregularities in the curve $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ HFB. One can notice that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}(N)`$ is equal, in absolute value, for odd and even neighbors. The right panel of Fig. 2 provides a comparison between $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{Exp}^{(3)}(N)\mathrm{\Delta }_{Exp}^{(5)}(N)`$ deduced from experimentally known masses . The agreement between the staggering of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{Exp}^{(3)}`$ around $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{Exp}^{(5)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}`$ is very good as well.

Eq. 13 and the above numerical results shed a new light on the OES problem. Indeed, the $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ staggering must be understood as an oscillation around $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ due to the contribution to $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ of the smooth part of the energy. Moreover, $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ is found to be a good measure of the rapidly varying part of the energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pairing+pol}^{(5)}(N)`$ which we want to extract while $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{odd}^{(3)}`$ still contains smooth contributions. Finally, these results fully justify the separation of the energy performed in eq. 6. We want to make clear that although our calculated $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N)`$ overestimates experiment (not shown here), the oscillation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N)`$ is in agreement with experiment. This underlines the decoupling between these two aspects.

To extend the above analysis to deformed nuclei, we have calculated all cerium isotopes from 118Ce to 166Ce. The ground-state quadrupole deformation along this isotopic line undergoes large variations. It goes from a region of strong prolate deformation around 118Ce ($`\beta _20.37`$), through the spherical 140Ce nucleus, to another prolate deformation region ($`\beta _20.31`$ around 160Ce).

On the left panel of Fig. 3 are shown $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(5)}`$. The comparison between $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(5)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}`$ is presented on the right panel. The same kind of results and agreements as for the tin isotopes is obtained: $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(5)}0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N)\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(5)}(N)\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(3)}(N)`$. The oscillations of $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ around $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ are once again well reproduced by the contribution coming from $`E^{HFBE}`$. Comparison with experiment has not been included because the error bars on the cerium masses are too large to make it relevant. These calculations show that deformation does not modify the conclusions drawn above for spherical nuclei.

In our separation procedure, the deformation manifests itself in several ways. First, the main effect of deformation is present in EHFBE, apart from regions of shape transition and shape coexistence where the deformation varies suddenly with N. The smooth contribution of the deformation to the OES is thus extracted through $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFBE}^{(n)}`$. There is an additional contribution related to odd-even effect. This term is usually small  and manifests itself in Epol. As seen from our numerical results and the above explanation, the separation given by eq. 6 is well defined whether the nuclei are deformed or not. Deformation will also influence the pairing part of the energy through correlations between particle-hole and particle-particle channels. The evolution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pairing}^{(n)}`$ with deformation might give some informations about the behavior of the pairing force with respect to this degree of freedom.

As it has been suggested to use HF energies as a reference to study the $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ staggering , we compare in Fig. 4 the staggering $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}(2n)\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}(2n+1)`$ obtained with full HFB calculations and Hartree-Fock ones (without time-reversal symmetry breaking, see ) for the cerium isotopic chain. The single-particle splitting around the Fermi level (eigen-states of the HF field) $`(e_ke_{k1})/2`$ in even-N nuclei, due to the deformation, is also shown as it is presumably related to this staggering (eq. 4). The HF calculations do not reproduce the staggering of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}`$: the global trend is different between the two cases and for most nuclei the difference between the two calculations exceeds 200 keV. One can also see that the difference between $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N=2n)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{HFB}^{(3)}(N=2n+1)`$ is not a measure of the splitting of the single-particle levels $`(e_ke_{k1})/2`$ around the Fermi energy. The latter conclusion for deformed nuclei holds of course also for spherical ones.

In summary, we have proposed a new analysis for the odd-even mass staggering based on self-consistent mean-field calculations. It assumes the definition of a “virtual” odd nucleus, having the structure of an even one, as the underlying structure of the “real” nucleus. The notion of underlying structure is justified by the validation of this energy separation obtained for a large number of odd nuclei, whatever the type of qp (shell, spin, parity) blocked self-consistently on this vacuum to describe the odd nuclei. Instead of being a single-particle excitation on an even core, an odd nucleus is seen as a qp excitation constructed on an odd fully paired core. It has permitted to identify the staggering of $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ for spherical, as well as for deformed nuclei, as an oscillation around $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ due to the contribution of this fully paired core. Moreover, $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(5)}`$ has been found to be the right quantity to extract the pairing part of the odd-even staggering. This conclusion has already been drawn from numerical comparison of HFBCS calculations with experiment for several possible theoretical quantities measuring the gap parameter .

Finally, our results do not confirm the ones obtained at the HF level that the staggering of $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(3)}`$ is a measure of the single-particle splitting around the Fermi energy in deformed nuclei. A forthcoming article will present a full analysis of the above and complementary results.

Methods  have been recently introduced in which the correlations beyond mean field due to symmetry restorations are included. Such developments require a reanalysis of the different contributions to the EOS. It is one of the future steps of our study within the above framework.


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# Size-Luminosity scaling and Inverse Compton Seed Photons in Blazars

## 1. Introduction

Blazars have been shown to exhibit a sequence of properties as a function of source power (Fossati et al. 1998). As the source power increases, the emission line luminosity and the ratio of Compton to synchrotron luminosity increase, while the synchrotron peak frequency $`\nu _s`$ and the IC peak frequency decrease. Recent multiwavelength studies support this scheme (e.g. Kubo et al. 1998), although the result that the ratio of the Compton to synchrotron luminosity increases with source luminosity suffers from limited statistics, and should be only considered tentative.

The initial division of blazars into flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and BL Lacertae objects (BLs) was based on the equivalent width (EW) of the broad emission lines. Sources with EW $`>`$ 5 Å were classified as FSRQs and sources with EW $`<`$ 5 Å as BLs. This difference in the EW of the emission lines has been interpreted as absence of a substantial BLR in BLs, and has been used to advance the idea that in BLs the GeV-TeV emission is due to SSC, while in FSRQs the GeV emission is due to EC. However, the EW criterion does not correspond to a dichotomy (Scarpa & Falomo 1997), because a weak BLR is present in BLs as well. Additionally, it is not the BLR luminosity $`L_B`$ that is relevant for the EC luminosity, but the BLR photon energy density $`U_E`$ that is measured in the comoving frame of the non-thermal source. One needs to know not only $`L_B`$, but also the BLR radius $`R_B`$ and the location of the non-thermal emitter relative to the BLR in order to quantify the relative importance of SSC versus EC emission.

The size of the BLR has been measured only for radio quiet AGNs through reverberation mapping (Kaspi et al. 2000), and it has been found to scale with the ionizing luminosity $`L_{acc}`$ of the acrretion disk as $`R_BL_{acc}^{0.7}`$. It was additionally found that, assuming Keplerian motions for the BLR clouds, the mass of the central object scales with the ionizing luminosity as $`ML_{acc}^{0.5}`$.

Here we assume the scalings apply also to radio loud AGN and examine the implications for blazars. Following the formalism of internal shocks propagating in a conical jet (Rees 1978), we scale the location $`D_{blob}`$ and the radius $`R_{blob}`$ of the non-thermal spherical emitter with the mass $`M`$ of the central object. We assume that $`L_B`$ is a fraction of $`L_{acc}`$ and scale the kinetic luminosity and the Poynting flux of the blob with $`L_{acc}`$.

## 2. The scaling and its application

Under this scheme, the radius of the BLR scales as $`R_BL_{acc}^{0.7}`$, and the distance of the blob from the center of the system scales as $`D_{blob}ML_{acc}^{0.5}`$. Therefore, we assume that for powerful sources the blob radiates from inside the BLR, $`D_{blob}<R_B`$. However, if we consider increasingly weaker sources, $`R_B`$ falls faster than $`D_{blob}`$ and, below some critical luminosity, the blob radiates from outside the BLR. For a blob inside the BLR, $`U_E(L_B/R_B^2)\mathrm{\Gamma }^2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the bulk motion Lorents factor of the blob. For a blob outside the BLR, the solid angle subtended by the BLR, as seen by the blob, is reduced. This affects $`U_E`$ in two ways. The first is the usual geometric $`1/r^2`$ factor, and the second is a relativistic de-boosting that, for $`D_{blob}R_B`$, gives $`U_E(L_B/D_{blob}^2)/\mathrm{\Gamma }^2`$ (Dermer & Schlickeiser 1994). The second effect dominates if the blob is located less than a few $`R_B`$ away from the BLR. For example, for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=10`$, $`U_E`$ at a distance of $`10R_B`$ is smaller than $`U_E`$ inside the BLR by a factor of $`10^2`$ due to the usual $`1/r^2`$ and by a factor of $`10^4`$ due to relativistic de-boosting.

We apply this scaling using a model (Georganopoulos & Kirk 2000) for the blob which includes both particle acceleration and radiative losses with IC scattering losses treated in the Thomson regime. Particles are accelerated in an acceleration zone and escape into a radiation zone, before they eventually escape out of the system.

This simplified picture is intended to represent particles which are accelerated by a shock front, escape it, and radiate downstream before the compressed plasma re-expands. Whilst undergoing acceleration, particles simultaneously suffer synchrotron losses and losses by Compton scattering of both photons of external origin (EC) and synchrotron photons (SSC) from the radiation zone. In the radiation zone, EC, SSC and synchrotron losses occur until the particle finally escapes after a time $`t_{esc}=3R_{blob}/c`$. The electron energy distribution (EED) is computed self-consistently, taking account of these processes.

Our assumption about the scaling of the Poynting flux implies a constant magnetic field, which we take to be $`B=0.2`$ G. The blob is assumed to move with a Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=15`$ at an angle $`\theta =1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ with respect to the line of sight. Low energy particles ($`\gamma _0=10`$) are injected into the blob at a rate of $`Q=0.1`$ cm-3 s-1. Also $`L_B=0.01L_{acc}`$. For $`L_{acc}=10^{44}`$ erg s-1, reverberation mapping gives $`R_B\mathrm{8.6\hspace{0.33em}10}^{16}`$ cm. We assume that at this luminosity $`R_B=D_{blob}`$ and $`R_{blob}=\mathrm{2\hspace{0.33em}10}^{15}`$ cm.

In Fig.1, we let $`L_{acc}`$ vary from $`10^{42}`$ erg s -1 to $`10^{46}`$ erg s-1, and follow the behavior of the system. In the lower panel $`R_B`$, $`D_{blob}`$, and $`R_{blob}`$ are plotted as a function of $`L_{acc}`$. For weak sources, the blob is located outside the BLR ($`D_{blob}>R_B`$). As the source power increases, the blob gradually approaches and eventually enters the BLR. In the middle panel of Fig.1 we see how this affects $`U_E`$ (the magnetic field energy density $`U_B`$ is constant under the adopted scaling). For weak sources, $`U_E`$ is much smaller than both $`U_B`$ and the self-consistently derived synchrotron photon density $`U_S`$. Gradually $`U_E`$ increases, and eventually, for bright sources, dominates over both $`U_B`$ and $`U_S`$. In the upper panel of Fig.1 we plot the self-consistently derived break $`\gamma _{break}`$ in the EED. Note that $`\gamma _{break}`$ decreases as the power of the source decreases.

In Fig.2 we plot basic observable quantities as a function of $`L_{acc}`$. In the lower panel we plot the synchrotron luminosity $`L_S`$, the SSC luminosity $`L_{SSC}`$, and the EC luminosity $`E_{EC}`$. At low powers, $`L_{EC}`$ is much weaker than $`L_{SSC}`$ and $`L_S`$ that are roughly equal. As the source power increases, $`L_{EC}`$ gradually dominates over $`L_{SSC}`$ and $`L_S`$, and we end up with an EC dominated source. In the middle panel we plot the peak frequencies of the three emission components. Note how the synchrotron peak frequency $`\nu _S`$ decreases as the source power increases.

Similar behavior is also seen for the SSC peak frequency $`\nu _{SSC}`$ and the EC peak frequency $`\nu _{EC}`$. Finally in the upper panel of Fig.1 we plot the ratio $`L_S/L_{acc}`$ (solid line) of the synchrotron to accretion disk luminosity and the ratio $`L_C/L_S`$ of the IC luminosity to synchrotron luminosity. $`L_S`$ dominates over $`L_{acc}`$ in weak sources in agreement with the lack of a thermal component and weak emission lines in weak sources like BLs. $`L_{acc}`$ becomes more significant for powerful sources, again in agreement with the strong emission lines of FSRQs and the accretion disk signature observed in some FSRQs (e.g. in 3C 279, Pian et al 1999). The dominance of the Compton over the synchrotron emission increases as the source power increases, in agreement with observations (e.g. Kubo et al. 1998). Note, however, that the observational case for an increasing Compton dominance with source power is based on poor statistics due to the limited sensitivity of the CGRO.

In Fig.3 we plot the synchrotron luminosity $`L_s`$ versus the synchrotron peak frequency $`\nu _s`$ for the blazars studied by Sambruna, Maraschi & Urry (1996) and Kubo et al. (1998). On top of the data points we plot the model tracks as a function of $`L_{acc}`$ for a range of observing angles. Note that these tracks represent two model derived quantities, $`L_S`$ and $`\nu _S`$ as $`L_{acc}`$ varies. The model covers rather well the observed parameter space. Given the track of the model under an angle $`\theta =0^{}`$, we do not expect that any powerful ($`L_S10^{47}`$ erg s-1) sources with high peak frequencies $`\nu _S10^{17}`$ Hz exist. The discovery of such sources would pose a serious problem for this model.

## 3. The luminosity scaling

In Fig.4 we plot the peak luminosities of the three emission mechanisms for 5 model sources with $`L_{acc}`$ ranging from $`10^{42}`$ up to $`10^{46}`$ erg s-1. The behavior of the model is in good agreement with the general characteristics of the observed luminosity sequence (compare with Fig.12 of Fossati et al. 1998). The synchrotron peak frequency decreases from $`10^{18}`$ Hz down to $`10^{12}`$ Hz, as the synchrotron power increases. The Compton peak frequency in weak sources is in the TeV regime ($`10^{2526}`$ Hz) and it is due to SSC, while in powerful sources it is in the GeV regime ($`10^{23}`$ Hz) and it is due to EC. According to the model, although in these bright sources the energy losses are dominated by EC, the hard X-ray emission is due to SSC, in agreement with resent observations (Kubo et al. 1998).

We note here that Fig.4 corresponds to sources that are oriented at an angle $`\theta =1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. In reality one should expect a range of angles, which will give rise to significant scattering around the presented trend. This scattering is visible in the work of Fossati et al. (1998) and indicates that a proper unification scheme for blazars should include the effects of orientation.

## References

Dermer, C. D., & Schlickeiser, R. 1994, ApJS, 90, 945

Fossati, G., et al. 1998, MNRAS, 299, 433

Georganopoulos, M. & Kirk, J.G. 2000, in preparation

Kaspi, S., et al. 2000, ApJ533, 631

Kubo, H., et al. 1998, ApJ, 504, 693

Pian, E. et al. 1999, ApJ, 521, 112

Rees, M.J. 1978, MNRAS, 184, 61

Sambruna, R. M., Maraschi, L., & Urry, C. M. 1996, ApJ, 463, 444

Scarpa, R., Falomo, R. 1997, A&A, 325, 109


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# 1 Motivation

## 1 Motivation

Among the most fascinating and longstanding puzzles that physicists face in this new century is: “What is the nature of spacetime geometry?” The classical, (pseudo-)Riemannian geometry that served us during the last century does not adequately describe the universe as seen by strings and D-branes. Classical geometry fails to capture the smooth behavior of conformal field theories at orbifold singularities and flop transitions , as well as the smooth physics of conifold singularities that are resolved  or subject to discrete torsion  in the presence of D-branes. Every shortcoming of classical geometry is a clue to this puzzle, and as these pieces are assembled, a picture of a new stringy geometry  is only beginning to emerge.

Consider a spacetime consisting of a noncompact $`D`$-dimensional manifold, $`M`$, with a compact Calabi-Yau manifold over each point. Classically, each simply-connected, compact Calabi-Yau manifold is described by some topological characteristics (Hodge numbers, an intersection form, etc.) and also a point in moduli space, which corresponds to a choice of Kähler and complex structure moduli. In stringy geometry there are smooth transitions which connect the moduli spaces of topologically distinct Calabi-Yau, forming an extended moduli space. Thus our spacetime is described by associating a point in the extended moduli space with each point in $`M`$. Even in the simplest case, where the moduli are chosen identically everywhere, many new features of stringy geometry have been discovered.

However some phenomena only appear when the moduli are allowed to vary. For example, near large numbers of BPS D-branes wrapped around non-trivial cycles in a Calabi-Yau, we know that the moduli experience an attractor flow  as one moves toward the branes. To better understand the nature of stringy geometry, we will consider such variations in moduli as seen by D-brane probes. In particular, we will pose the question, “How well can D-branes measure local variations in moduli?”

We will present arguments to motivate the following conjecture.

###### Conjecture 1.

A measurement of a variation in a period111The periods $`p_i`$ are a set of coordinates on moduli space that roughly correspond to the volume of cycles $`C_i`$ in the Calabi-Yau. $`p`$ which is localized to a region of diameter $`d`$ in the noncompact directions will generically affect the values of the other periods. Furthermore this effect increases as the precision of the measurement of $`p`$ increases and as $`d`$ decreases.

In particular we expect that for $`d`$ very large, corresponding to measuring a nearly constant modulus, the conjectured effect disappears. Assuming that this phenomenon is not an artifact of our measurement scheme, we can interpret it as an uncertainty principle.

This conjecture is plausible for the following reason. Imagine that we measure a local variation of period $`p_1`$ by wrapping branes around the corresponding cycle $`C_1`$ and using these branes to probe the region with the variation (see Fig. 1). To obtain an accurate measurement of the deformation of $`p_1`$, we slowly send many branes very close to the region to be measured. However this is likely to cause a backreaction on the geometry, which (using attractor flows as a guide) we suspect will alter the other periods in much the same way as an accurate position measurement alters momentum in the case of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Being mere mortals, in this paper we will only begin an analysis of the validity of this conjecture. We will consider an illustration of our proposed experiment in the case of toroidal compactification. In the case of the two-torus, we find a variant of the space-space uncertainty expected in any theory of quantum gravity, which upon dimensional reduction becomes a Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We conclude with preliminary evidence for our conjecture on the four-torus.

The next step in this analysis would be to apply the lessons learned below to the measurement of moduli on $`T^4`$, $`T^6`$, $`T^2\times K3`$, as well as some simple orbifolds and multi-parameter Calabi-Yau three-folds if possible.

## 2 The Experiment

We consider Type II string theory at small $`g_s`$ and in a spacetime of the form $`^{1,D1}\times T^2`$. A critical string theory may be obtained by adding a superconformal field theory with central charge $`c=12(3D/2)`$. We perturb spacetime so that the two radii of the torus vary in the noncompact directions, which yields a torus fibration rather than a direct product. Specifically, the tori have constant radii

$$R_1=R_2=R\sqrt{\alpha ^{}}$$
(2.1)
everywhere in $`^{1,D1}`$ except for a small, spherical region in space of diameter $`d`$. In the interior of this sphere the radii of the torus are slightly different from $`R`$, each by a small amount (not necessarily the same amount for both radii) of order $`\delta RR`$. We describe this variation perturbatively as a wavepacket consisting of a superposition of closed strings.

The moduli describing these variations are massless fields in the low energy effective theory on $`^{1,D1}`$ so this wavepacket travels at the speed of light and is composed of strings with momenta on the order of $`1/d`$. As these strings interact with each other, the wavepacket will tend to disperse. This dispersion is expected, as the wavepacket that we are considering is a finite energy perturbation of the interacting theory which does not, a priori, correspond to a stable deformation of the string background222However, in Ref.  it was shown that smooth variations of the moduli of the torus which admit a timelike killing isometry can be lifted to exact classical string vacua by adding an appropriate compensating variation of the dilaton and light-cone gauge metric, at least if $`D=2`$..

There are perturbative arguments that lead us to believe that these variations in moduli are sufficiently stable for the experiment to be sensible. To see this, note that the leading contribution to this dispersion comes from the four point function on the sphere, which is of order $`g_s^2`$ and not from the on-shell three point amplitude, which is kinematically forbidden. One advantage of using D-brane probes is that they interact with the moduli with an amplitude of order $`g_s`$, and therefore to leading order in $`g_s`$, we may neglect the dispersion. In addition, for small $`\delta R`$, the density of closed strings in the packet is small. This suppresses the dispersion further because the dispersion scales as the density squared, while our measurement process scales only as the density.

To measure the variation $`\delta R`$, let us place an advanced experimental physicist in the path of the wavepacket. He knows both the packet’s trajectory and the order of magnitude of its size, but wants to determine $`\delta R`$ more precisely. The experimenter wants to understand spacetime geometry as the branes see it, and so he is only interested in the scattering of the wavepacket by branes and not by any other probes at his disposal. Fortunately he has a reservoir of branes of various dimensions and wrappings in his lab which he can arrange in any configuration before the wavepacket arrives. After reading Refs. , he figures out how many branes of each type he will need so that on the order of one brane will be scattered by the incoming wavepacket.

The branes are placed in a line, along the path of the variation (see Fig. 2). The tree-level scattering calculations  are only valid when spacetime is reasonably flat, which is achieved by separating the brane probes sufficiently. Eventually the packet passes through the assortment of branes, knocking some of them into a detector. After counting hits and reconstructing the time of the scattering from the brane velocities, our experimenter extrapolates $`\delta R`$. However in order to obtain a very accurate measurement, the experimenter would need a large number of branes, and this would deform the modulus variation that he is trying to measure so much that his results would be useless. For example, the first few branes would see a very different wavepacket from the last few.

That is to say, there is an uncertainty bound characteristic of theories of quantum gravity (not the uncertainty we have conjectured) on how accurately he can perform this measurement. For the duration of this paper we will describe just what the branes do to these moduli and what kind of uncertainty relation this implies.

## 3 The Calculation

To analyze the preceding gedanken experiment we have calculated the relevant scattering amplitudes using the results of Refs. . Specifically, for the case of flat space and thus toroidal compactifications, the authors calculated tree-level amplitudes for closed strings scattering off D-branes. We will outline those calculations here with a view towards the analogous calculations in non-trivial Calabi-Yau string compactifications.

### 3.1 The Scattering

We are interested in the interaction of a closed string comprising the modulus and a D-brane completely wrapped around some toroidally compactified dimensions. The relevant tree-level calculation is the absorption and re-emission of a closed string from an open string attached to the brane seen schematically in Fig. 3.

Thus we are interested in a disk with two punctures, corresponding to the vertex operators of the incoming and outgoing closed strings. The incoming modulus is a massless NS-NS closed string with polarizations in the compact directions and momentum only in the noncompact direction. The outgoing state, at lowest order in $`g_s`$, may, a priori, be any massless (in the $`D+2`$-dimensional sense) closed string with arbitrary polarization and momenta in either the compact or noncompact directions (although we will see that, as expected, some final states are forbidden) or a pair of open strings attached to the brane.

As an example, consider the case in which both the initial and final states are NS-NS closed strings. Their vertex operators are of the form

$$V=ϵ_{\mu \nu }(X^\mu +ip\psi \psi ^\mu )(\overline{}X^\nu +ip\overline{\psi }\overline{\psi }^\nu )e^{ipX}$$
(3.1)
where $`p`$ is the momentum and $`ϵ`$ a polarization tensor.

We always assume that the incoming string has no compact momentum. The compact momentum of the outgoing string is quantized, $`p_m=N_m/R`$, where the index $`m`$ runs over the compact coordinates. To specify the vertex operators for the incoming moduli, we only need to identify their polarization tensors. The Kähler modulus is a complex combination of the volume of the torus and the integral of the NS-NS two form over the torus, while the complex structure modulus can be identified by writing the metric on the torus in standard form as

$$ds^2=\left|dx_D+\tau dx_{D+1}\right|^2.$$
(3.2)
Thus, we can arrive at the appropriate form for the polarization tensors by writing small deformations of these moduli in terms of variations of the metric, dilaton and antisymmetric tensor fields. We then find that polarization tensors corresponding to incoming excitations of Kähler and complex moduli can be written as

$$ϵ^K=\left(\begin{array}{cc}i\hfill & 1\hfill \\ 1\hfill & i\hfill \end{array}\right),ϵ^C=\left(\begin{array}{cc}i\hfill & 1\hfill \\ 1\hfill & i\hfill \end{array}\right)$$
(3.3)
in the compact directions and zero in the noncompact directions.

Since toroidal compactifications are described by free field theories on the world-sheet, the vertex operators were easy to construct. However, in a general Calabi-Yau compactification the vertex operators we are interested in correspond to truly marginal deformations of the SCFT and are more difficult to construct. Fortunately many Calabi-Yau moduli spaces have distinguished points where the nonlinear sigma model is a rational $`(2,2)`$ superconformal field theory, such as the Gepner point on the quintic hypersurface. Near such points we can construct these deformations from the (chiral, chiral) and (chiral, antichiral) primaries as described in Ref. . Boosting the resulting vertex operator in a noncompact direction yields our wavepacket. One can explicitly check that in the case of toroidal compactification this procedure yields the polarizations given in Eq. (3.3).

Once the appropriate vertex operators have been constructed, the amplitude for the disk with two closed string insertions (and one superconformal ghost, as required on the disk) is calculated in Refs.  using the covariant formulation of Ref. . By imposing Neumann boundary conditions in $`p+1`$ directions and Dirichlet conditions on the rest, the authors obtain an amplitude for the scattering of an NS-NS string by the p-brane in flat space. We will not reproduce their formulas here, but instead refer the interested reader to Refs.  for details. Although the final state may be in the R-R sector (or even a pair of open string excitations of the brane when $`d<R`$), for our present purpose it will suffice to restrict our attention to NS-NS outgoing states.

### 3.2 Results

We first consider the case $`d>R`$, so that the moduli in the wavepacket have insufficient energy to excite any internal modes of the brane or Kaluza-Klein modes on the torus. In this case, we found that 0 and 2 branes interact with Kähler moduli, while 1 branes interact with complex structure moduli. This is expected since the Kähler modulus on a torus is described by the period of a closed (1,1) form while the complex structure modulus can be described by the periods of closed (0,1) and (1,0) forms. Generally, the branes scatter these moduli either to R-R states or to gravitons and dilatons with both polarizations along the noncompact directions, but never mix the Kähler and complex structure moduli. When the final polarizations of the NS-NS states are both along the noncompact directions, one of the outgoing polarizations must (using the standard $`ϵp=pϵ=0`$ gauge) lie along the plane of the scattering and be orthogonal to the outgoing momentum. We will use this fact in Sec. 5 when we consider measurements on $`T^4`$. This and other possible scattering processes are summarized in the table below.

| Brane Dim. | d vs. R | Incoming Modulus | Possible Outgoing (NS-NS) States |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0 or 2 | $`d>R`$ | Kähler | Dilaton, Graviton, Kähler Modulus |
| 0 or 2 | $`d>R`$ | Complex Str. | No Interaction |
| 1 | $`d>R`$ | Kähler | No Interaction |
| 1 | $`d>R`$ | Complex Str. | Dilaton, Graviton, Complex Str. Modulus |
| 0,1 or 2 | $`d<R`$ | Kähler | Any |
| 0,1 or 2 | $`d<R`$ | Complex Str. | Any |
| Table 1: Possible Scattering Processes | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |

When the size of the wavepacket, $`d`$, is less than the largest radius of the torus we can excite Kaluza-Klein modes. In this case we find that the scattering proceeds as one would expect in the flat space case, with the branes interacting generically with all massless closed string states. Outgoing closed strings with non-vanishing compact momenta can have any transverse polarization, and at the same order in $`g_s`$ the final state can consist of two open strings bound to the brane probe with opposite compact momenta.

## 4 Space-Space Uncertainty Principle

In the previous section we saw that trying to measure $`\delta R`$ generically transformed the polarizations of the closed strings in our wavepacket, thus changing the value of the modulus. Below we argue that this indicates the existence of a version of the space-space uncertainty relation present in theories of quantum gravity. We will derive our version of this relation in three different ways. For simplicity we will restrict our attention to dilations of the area of the torus, the quanta of which we will refer to as dilatons.

Our experimenter has chosen the number of branes so that of order one brane will scatter. This means that, because the wavepacket is assumed to be dilute, of order one dilaton will scatter. Even for the case when the Kaluza-Klein modes are suppressed ($`d>R`$), the outgoing string will generically have polarizations along the noncompact directions. Thus $`\delta R`$ is changed by the loss of one incoming dilaton. As a result the smallest $`\delta R`$ that our experimentalist can measure at fixed $`d`$, corresponds to a wavepacket containing of order one dilaton. To learn what this $`\delta R`$ is, we will count the number of dilatons in a packet.

We know that the dilatons have energies of order $`1/d`$, thus it will suffice to calculate the energy of a given packet. The energy of a packet $`E_{\text{packet}}`$ should depend on its size $`d`$ and its amplitude $`\delta R`$ and so we can solve for the smallest measurable $`\delta R`$ as follows:

$$1\text{\# of dilatons}=\frac{E_{\text{packet}}}{\text{energy per dilaton}}d\times E_{\text{packet}}.$$
(4.1)
We will now calculate the total energy as a function of $`d`$ and $`\delta R`$ in three ways.

### 4.1 Counting Dilatons

We will calculate the energy of the variation using the effective field theory, Einstein’s equation, as well as a model of space as a stretchable sheet with constant tension equal to the inverse Newton’s constant, $`T=1/G_N`$.

Consider the low energy effective theory for the NS-NS sector of Type II string theory compactified on a two-torus. We assume that the non-compact space is flat $`^{1,D1}`$ (with $`D=8`$ in the critical case). In this theory, the moduli are realized as combinations of the various scalar fields arising from the components of the metric and NS-NS antisymmetric tensor field along the torus. The Kähler modulus is a complex scalar field which is a combination of the determinant of the metric on the torus $`\sqrt{det(g_{mn})}`$ and the antisymmetric tensor field component $`B_{mn}=B_{nm}`$ along the torus , while the complex structure modulus is a combination of the metric components $`g_{mn}`$. Explicitly, the Kähler and complex structure moduli can be identified as the complex scalars $`\rho =\rho _1+i\rho _2`$ and $`\tau =\tau _1+i\tau _2`$ which are defined by (take D=8 for ease of notation):

$$\rho =\frac{R^2}{\alpha ^{}}\left(B_{89}+i\sqrt{det(g_{mn})}\right),\tau =\frac{1}{g_{88}}\left(g_{89}+i\sqrt{det(g_{mn})}\right).$$
(4.2)
Note that the imaginary part of $`\rho `$ is related to area of the torus by

$$\rho _2=\frac{A}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}.$$
(4.3)
Thus, to consider the energy associated to a localized perturbation of the area of the torus moving along the noncompact $`x_1`$ direction, with some magnitude associated with a radius perturbation $`\delta R`$, we can take

$$\rho _2=\frac{A_0}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}\left(1+\frac{\delta R}{\sqrt{A_0}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(x_1t)^2+|𝐱|^2}{d^2}\right]\right)$$
(4.4)
(where $`A_0`$ is the area of the unperturbed torus) and calculate the energy of the configuration in the effective theory.

To do this, we first note that the effective action for the massless fields in the NS-NS sector in a toroidally compactified type II string theory, expressed in Einstein frame, takes the form

$$S=\frac{1}{16\pi G_N^D}d^Dx(G_D)^{1/2}\left(R_D\frac{1}{2}\frac{_\mu \tau ^\mu \overline{\tau }}{\tau _2^2}\frac{1}{2}\frac{_\mu \rho ^\mu \overline{\rho }}{\rho _2^2}+\mathrm{}\right).$$
(4.5)
Here $`G_N^D`$ is the $`D`$-dimensional Newton’s constant, while $`G_D`$ and $`R_D`$ are the effective $`D`$-dimensional spacetime metric and Ricci scalar respectively. To compute the energy of the wavepacket, we make the field redefinition $`\rho _2=e^K`$. The action for $`K`$ has the standard free field form. As we are in flat $`D`$ dimensional space with no other background field fluctuations, the Hamiltonian is the standard one and the energy of the field configuration (4.4) is

$$E=\frac{1}{32\pi G_N^D}d^{D1}x\left((_tK)^2+(_{x_i}K)^2\right)\frac{1}{G_N^DA_0}(\delta R)^2d^{D3}.$$
(4.6)
The Newton constant in $`D+2`$ dimensions is $`G_N=G_N^DA_0`$, and thus we have

$$E_{\text{packet}}\frac{(\delta R)^2d^{D3}}{G_N}.$$
(4.7)
Taking the energy of each dilaton to be on the order of $`1/d`$, the number of dilatons comprising the wavepacket is

$$\text{\# dilatons}d\times E_{\text{packet}}\frac{(\delta R)^2d^{D2}}{G_N}.$$
(4.8)
When $`D=2`$ we note that the number of dilatons in the packet is independent of the size of the variation $`d`$. This follows from the fact that for a one dimensional packet we can always boost the size of the variation $`d`$ to any arbitrary value by, for example, giving the brane probes an initial momentum.

Using Einstein’s equation, we can model the wavepacket (see Fig. 2) as a gravitational wave corresponding to a Gaussian profile in the spacetime metric. For example when $`D=2`$ with noncompact coordinates $`x`$ and $`t`$, the metric along the compact directions (the metric is $`\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ along all $`D`$ noncompact directions) is

$$g_{mn}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}A+he^{\frac{(xt)^2}{d^2}}& 0\\ 0& A+he^{\frac{(xt)^2}{d^2}}\end{array}\right].$$
(4.9)
The background metric on the torus is $`A\delta _{m,n}`$ and the amplitude of the wavepacket variation is parametrized by $`h`$. Treating, as usual, the Einstein tensor of this gravitational wave as an effective stress-energy tensor and then integrating over all space we learn that

$$E_{\text{packet}}=\frac{\sqrt{\pi }h^2}{2^{5/2}G_NAd}$$
(4.10)
when D=2. For general D, we find that the energy of the wavepacket is

$$E_{\text{packet}}\frac{h^2}{G_NA}d^{D3}\frac{(\delta R)^2d^{D3}}{G_N},$$
(4.11)
which agrees with Eq. (4.7).

A simpler and more intuitive derivation of the results in Eqs. (4.7) and (4.8) can be obtained by considering spacetime to be a $`D`$-dimensional sheet with constant tension $`1/G_N`$ embedded in $`^{1,D}`$. When spacetime is Minkowskian, the flat sheet describes the unperturbed vacuum. We can deform this sheet by fixing a $`D2`$ sphere in space of diameter $`d`$ and pulling the center of this sphere away a distance $`\delta R`$ in the transverse direction. This locally stretches the sheet into a cone over $`S^{D2}`$ (see Fig. 4).

In the case $`D=2`$ this sheet is just a string and the energy of this deformation is just $`1/G_N`$ times how far we have stretched the string. When $`\delta R<<d`$ this is

$$E_{\text{packet}}=\frac{1}{G_N}(\sqrt{(d/2)^2(\delta R)^2}d/2)\frac{(\delta R)^2}{G_Nd}$$
(4.12)
in agreement with Eq. (4.7). A similar calculation can be carried out for arbitrary dimension $`D`$ and clearly each extra noncompact dimension contributes one more power of $`d`$ because we integrate tension over a cone of one higher dimension.

### 4.2 Uncertainty Principle

Having discussed the wavepacket we are now ready to return to the scattering process. Recall that we have placed just enough branes in the path of this wavepacket so that on the order of one dilaton is scattered. Thus, setting the number of dilatons in the packet to be of order one in Eq. (4.8) gives a lower bound on how small of a $`\delta R`$ we can measure, or equivalently how small $`\delta R`$ can be for a packet of width $`d`$:

$$(\delta R)^2d^{D2}G_N.$$
(4.13)
We interpret this result as a space-space uncertainty. For example, for a single dilaton, $`d`$ is just the uncertainty in its position and so Eq. (4.13) assumes a familiar form. In the dimensionally reduced theory, the variation in moduli appears to be a packet of energy moving at the speed of light in the non-compact directions with some momentum $`p\delta R/d`$ and so Eq. (4.13) resembles the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. As such space-space uncertainty principles are expected in all theories of quantum gravity, we will need to learn to distinguish this effect from our conjecture in the case of more general Calabi-Yau compactifications.

Notice that this uncertainty principle tells us that any local measurement of a period in some region $`U^{1,D1}`$ will affect its value in that region. However, it does not imply that this measurement affects the values of other periods in $`U`$ and thus cannot imply our conjecture.

## 5 Possible Evidence on the Four-Torus

The allowed scattering channels described in Sec. 3 provide preliminary evidence for our conjecture on the four-torus. Consider now a ten dimensional Minkowskian spacetime with global coordinates $`x_\mu `$, compactified on $`T^4`$, which extends along dimensions numbered $`6`$ through $`9`$. Among the moduli of the four-torus are the complex structure moduli of the two subtori that span the 6-7 and 8-9 directions. Imagine that a wavepacket consisting of a variation of the 8-9 torus complex structure (that is, gravitons polarized along the 8 and 9 directions) is propagating through space, and consider measurements of the two complex structures using 1-branes wrapped around a cycle of the subtorus to be measured. Notice that when a 1-brane wraps a cycle of one of the tori, the other torus sees this 1-brane as a 0-brane and thus its complex structure is not effected by this measurement.

More precisely, choose coordinates such that the graviton scattered by the first measurement has momentum

$$\widehat{p}_2=\widehat{x}_1.$$
(5.1)
and so the incoming wavepacket has initial momentum and polarization

$$\widehat{p}_1=\mathrm{cos}(\theta )\widehat{x}_1+\mathrm{sin}(\theta )\widehat{x}_2,ϵ_1=\left(\begin{array}{cc}i\hfill & 1\hfill \\ 1\hfill & i\hfill \end{array}\right)$$
(5.2)
where the polarization lies along the 8 and 9 directions. To exhibit our conjecture we will measure the complex structure variation of the subtori in both orders and compare the results. These measurements will be performed in a finite region $`U`$ and so the space-space uncertainty principle (4.13) will apply in both cases.

Let us first measure the complex structure modulus on the 6-7 torus using 1-brane probes wrapped around the 6 direction. Using our results from the two-torus, we know that a complex structure variation with these momenta can only scatter to its original polarization, or to a dilaton or graviton with at least one polarization along the $`\widehat{x}_2`$ direction. These amplitudes are invariant under time reversal, and so only a 6-7 graviton or a dilaton or graviton with a polarization component along the $`\widehat{x}_2`$ direction can scatter with our brane to produce 6-7 gravitons, thereby creating a variation in the complex structure of this torus. However, no such strings are present and so this measurement does not affect the complex structure at string tree level (although the space-space uncertainty limits the accuracy to which this measurement is possible).

Alternately, let us measure the complex structure of the 8-9 torus first (see Fig. 5), using 1-brane probes wrapped around the 9 direction. While most of our 8-9 gravitons will pass by the brane without interacting, those that scatter may change polarization to become, for example, 2-3 gravitons. Later, when we use 1-brane probes wrapped around the 6 direction to measure the complex structure of the other torus, this brane will scatter some of the 2-3 gravitons created in the first measurement into 6-7 gravitons. Thus, as the complex structure of the 6-7 torus is measured, it will change. This implies that the result of this measurement and all subsequent measurements of the 6-7 complex structure will be altered333In fact, if we alternate wrappings on the brane probes we believe that the complex structure variations of the two subtori will approach each other. In the case of the six-torus, this may be seen, perhaps coincidentally, as a flow towards the attractor point identified in Ref. . if we first measure the 8-9 complex structure, which is exactly our conjecture. Like the space-space uncertainty principle, this effect requires the region $`U`$ to be finite. However, unlike the space-space uncertainty, this effect grows with the number of 8-9 gravitons.

This measurement process can be reinterpreted as follows. Two necessarily non-parallel branes exchange closed strings, altering the moduli of the branes. The necessity of making them non-parallel, or in the general Calabi-Yau case of wrapping the branes around different cycles, is likely to destroy the supersymmetry. Thus one may expect both nontrivial interactions between the branes and that the moduli flow as the constraints of supersymmetry are removed.

Several issues still need to be addressed before this evidence should be taken seriously. For example, the branes are necessarily close to each other, and so one must check that the perturbative treatment is valid. Also, there may be a better way to perform this experiment, perhaps a way to filter out the 2-3 gravitons between measurements. If all goes well, these and other issues will be resolved in a sequel.

Acknowledgements

We express eternal gratitude to the people who were willing to speak with us, such as N. Arkani-Hamed, K. Bardakçi, T. Bartles, C. Callan, B. Greene, S. Kachru, R. Kallosh, M. Kleban, J. McGreevy, S. Shenker, B. Zumino and Y. Zunger.

John and Jarah would like to thank the good people of the Venetian Resort and Casino for their generosity and hospitality throughout the year.


text:
# Microscopic calculations for solar nuclear reactionsThis work was partly supported by Grants D32513/FKFP-0242-2000/BO-00520-98 (Hungary) and by the John Templeton Foundation (938-COS153).

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The very-low-energy cross sections of the solar nuclear reactions are used as input parameters in solar models . In order to get reliable results from these models for the energy generation, neutrino fluxes, etc., of our sun, all input parameters, including those coming from nuclear physics, should be known as precisely as possible. Despite the tremendous improvements in our understanding of these processes in the past decades, some uncertainties still exist, which could considerably influence the predictions of solar models .

In order to try to reduce some of these uncertainties, we have performed a systematic study of some of the key reactions of the solar p-p chain by using a microscopic cluster model. The wave function of our model looks like

$$\mathrm{\Psi }=\underset{L,S}{}𝒜\left\{\left[\left[\mathrm{\Phi }^A\mathrm{\Phi }^B\right]_S\chi _L(𝝆)\right]_{JM}\right\},$$
(1)
where $`𝒜`$ is the intercluster antisymmetrizer, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are the cluster internal states, $`𝝆`$ is the intercluster relative coordinate, while $`L`$, $`S`$, and $`J`$ are the orbital angular momentum, intrinsic spin, and total spin, respectively. The internal states of the $`A4`$ clusters are simple $`0s`$ harmonic oscillator shell-model functions, while the heavier subsystems are described by two-cluster wave functions, similar to Eq. (1) (for example, 7Be inside 8B is described as a $`{}_{}{}^{4}\mathrm{He}+{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}`$ two-cluster system). The intercluster relative motions $`\chi `$, which are the most important degrees of freedom, are treated with high precision, using variational methods .

## 2 SOLAR NUCLEAR REACTIONS

We briefly summarize the physics motivation and the main results of Refs. , where the model, discussed above, was applied to selected reactions of the solar p-p chain. Further details can be found in the original papers.

$`{}_{}{}^{\mathit{4}}\mathrm{𝐻𝑒}({}_{}{}^{\mathit{3}}\mathrm{𝐻𝑒},\gamma ){}_{}{}^{\mathit{7}}\mathrm{𝐵𝑒}`$: We studied the effects of the $`{}_{}{}^{6}\mathrm{Li}+p`$ channel on the reaction cross section and on the properties of 7Be . It is known that the zero-energy astrophysical S-factor ($`S(E)=\sigma (E)\mathrm{exp}[2\pi \eta (E)]`$, where $`\sigma (E)`$ is the cross section and $`\eta `$ is the Coulomb parameter) is correlated with the quadrupole moment of $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Li}/{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}`$. This relation was used to estimate the value of $`S_{34}(0)`$ . As the $`{}_{}{}^{6}\mathrm{Li}+p`$ configuration brings in large charge polarization in 7Be, it might have some interesting effects on these relations and on the determination of $`S_{34}(0)`$. We have shown that the inclusion of the $`{}_{}{}^{6}\mathrm{Li}+p/n`$ channel in the description of the $`{}_{}{}^{4}\mathrm{He}({}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He},\gamma ){}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{4}\mathrm{He}({}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{H},\gamma ){}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Li}`$ reactions really has an appreciable effect . However, detailed analyses indicate that in order to have a clear picture, one should use a more sophisticated 6Li state than the one used by us ($`\alpha +d`$ with pure $`L=0`$ relative motion between the $`\alpha `$ and the $`d`$). The careful study of the correlations between the quadrupole moments of $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}/{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Li}`$ and the reaction cross sections revealed that the currently accepted $`S_{34}(0)`$ value seems to be in conflict with the recommended quadrupole moment of 7Li.

$`{}_{}{}^{\mathit{3}}\mathrm{𝐻𝑒}({}_{}{}^{\mathit{3}}\mathrm{𝐻𝑒},\mathit{2}p){}_{}{}^{\mathit{4}}\mathrm{𝐻𝑒}`$: We searched for narrow resonances in 6Be, close to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}+{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}`$ threshold . Such a state, if it exists, could strongly enhance the reaction cross section and, as a consequence, suppress the fluxes of the 7Be- and 8B-type solar neutrinos. We used methods which allowed us to rigorously treat 2-body ($`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}+{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}`$) or 3-body ($`{}_{}{}^{4}\mathrm{He}+p+p`$) resonances, if they exist. We found no indication for narrow resonances. It seems to us that the only remaining possibility for the existence of such a state is that it might come from the interplay between the $`s`$\- and $`d`$-states (not present in our model) of the two 3He clusters.

$`{}_{}{}^{\mathit{7}}\mathrm{𝐵𝑒}(p,\gamma ){}_{}{}^{\mathit{8}}B`$: This reaction is responsible for the production of the highest-energy solar neutrinos (except for the $`hep`$-neutrinos ). Recently it has been the target of many experimental and theoretical analyses. We would like to point out that a possible way of finding the most probable values of the zero-energy astrophysical S-factor, $`S_{17}(0)`$, of the reaction is to find correlations between it and some measurable quantities of 7Be and 8B . Fig. 1 shows the results of our model for $`S(0)`$ in correlation with some measurable properties of $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}/{}_{}{}^{8}\mathrm{B}`$. We note that in Ref.  an incorrect value was used for the phenomenological Coulomb-displacement energy. We correct this error in Fig. 1.

As one can see, our model cannot produce a low value for $`S_{17}(0)`$. It remains a question whether one could get a small $`S_{17}(0)`$ by going beyond the $`{}_{}{}^{4}\mathrm{He}+{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}+p`$ model-space.

## 3 CONCLUSION

We have studied some of the important nuclear reactions of the solar p-p chain, using microscopic models. We believe that in order to make significant further advances in the description of these processes, one should probably use a full $`A`$-body dynamical model. However, the fully consistent description of the bound and scattering states in such an approach will be a difficult task.


text:
# On the Kinematics of GRB980425 and its association with SN1998bw

## 1 Introduction

GRB980425 and its apparent association with SN 1998bw (Galama et al., 1998) has drawn much attention among gamma-ray burst researchers. While the connection of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) to the supernova (SN) remains uncertain, it is striking that GRB980425 and SN 1998bw were each, taken individually, unusual events.

To start, SN 1998bw was a relatively rare and unusually luminous Type I b/c supernova (Galama et al., 1998). It was the brightest radio supernova ever observed (Waxman & Loeb, 1999) which may have been due to relativistic outflow with Lorentz factor $`\gamma 2`$ (Kulkarni et al., 1998).

Furthermore, GRB980425 was an unusual GRB. It was comprised of a single, unusually rounded peak (Bloom et al., 1998). A cool burst, it was not seen in BATSE’s highest energy channel ($`>300`$ keV) (Norris et al., 2000). If this burst is indeed associated with SN1998bw ($`z=0.008`$), then the burst is apparently vastly weaker than all other known bursts, with an inferred isotropic gamma-ray energy of $`8\times 10^{47}`$ ergs (Galama et al., 1998). Finally, of particular interest to this paper, Norris et al. (2000) found that the lag of the peak of this burst between BATSE channels 1 and 3 was exceptionally large: $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{980425}4.5`$ seconds.

In light of the respective idiosyncrasies of these two events, we may either conclude that we have seen a chance coincidence of two unusual events, with a probability of $`10^4`$ or less (Galama et al., 1998), or perhaps the discovery of an entirely new type of GRB (Galama et al., 1998; Bloom et al., 1998).

In this paper I propose a third alternative; that GRB980425/SN1998bw is a canonical gamma-ray burst, deriving from a relativistic jet driven by a collapsar (MacFadyen & Woosley, 1999), observed at high angle of inclination. The idea that this burst was a jet viewed off-axis has been proposed by several other authors (Wang & Wheeler, 1998; Woosley et al., 1999; Nakamura, 1999; Höflich et al., 1999). However in this paper I show how GRB980425 may be a canonical gamma-ray burst by its relation to other bursts on the lag-luminosity relationship discovered by Norris et al. (2000). Thus this burst need not be a distinct class of GRB or a special case of a failed collapsar, polluted with excessive baryon entrainment within the jet (Woosley & MacFadyen, 1999). Physical GRB parameters can be gleaned from this identification.

In brief, if we assume that the core of the jet has the highest velocity material and that the velocity monotonically decreases with increasing angle from the core axis, then there will be an angle at which the $`1/\gamma `$ aperture imposed by relativistic beaming becomes comparable to the angular size $`\theta _0`$ of the emitting region. At this angle there will be a change in the observed properties of the GRB. In particular, one would expect a break in the lag-luminosity relationship discovered by Norris et al. (2000) and futher interpreted by Salmonson (2000). Herein I show that the peak number luminosity’s inverse dependence on spectral lag, $`N_{pk}\mathrm{\Delta }t^1`$, will steepen to $`N_{pk}\mathrm{\Delta }t^3`$. By fitting the $`\mathrm{\Delta }t^3`$ curve to intersect with GRB980425 one obtains a complete lag-luminosity curve for GRBs which is consistent with observed data (Figure 1). Knowledge of the shape of this curve allows determinations of some key quantities of interest for GRBs; particularly jet opening angle, maximum lorentz factor, and total energy.

## 2  A Break in the Lag-Luminosity Relation

In Norris et al. (2000) was presented a relationship between the peak luminosity of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and the pulse time lag between BATSE energy channels. In Salmonson (2000) this correlation was found to be substantially improved when we neglected our poor knowledge of received photon energy, thus taking the correlation between photon number luminosity and pulse time lag. It was found that the inferred isotropic peak number luminosity $`N_{pk}`$ (photons sec<sup>-1</sup>) is related to the observed spectral lag between energy channels $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ by

$$N_{pk}=8.6\times 10^{56}\mathrm{\Delta }t^{0.98}.$$
(1)
In Salmonson (2000) was presented a kinematic interpretation of the origin of this relation. Specifically, bursts with emitting material moving with a higher velocity toward the observer appear more luminous and have shorter observed lag (derived from an intrinsic pulse cooling timescale) between observed energy channels due to relativistic blue shift. Relativistic beaming allows one to only consider emitters moving directly toward the observer. I proposed that the wide range of observed (cosmological redshift compensated) spectral lags and inferred luminosities (see Figure 1) could be explained if GRBs derive from a relativistic jet in which the fastest material moves along the core of the jet and the velocity of the material monotonically decreases with increasing angle from the jet axis. The variety of observed bursts then derives from our perspective of the jet. All of the material is assumed to move relativistically ($`\gamma 1`$) and so all of our received flux is derived from a very small $`1/\gamma ^2`$ solid angle of the jet; much smaller than the jet opening angle ($`1/\gamma \theta _0`$). It is from this small region that all of our information about a burst is derived.

The question then arises: what happens when the jet is observed at such large angles from its central axis that the observed emitting material is moving at ‘slow’ enough velocity that the $`1/\gamma `$ beaming angle becomes comparable to the diametric angular size of the emitter ($`\theta _02/\gamma `$)? At this point the size and extent of the emitting region becomes directly observable. In the relativistic case ($`\gamma 1`$), the received flux emits from an apparent region of size $`R_s/\gamma `$ where $`R_s`$ is the emitter distance from the center of the source. If $`\gamma `$ is small such that $`1/\gamma >\theta _0R_e/R_s`$, where $`R_e`$ is the size of the emitting region, then the received flux emits from the entire physical size of this region $`R_e`$, i.e. the physical extent of the jet becomes observable.

Using this distinction one can derive the dependence of the inferred isotropic number luminosity $`Nf_NR^2`$ on Lorentz factor for the two cases, where number intensity $`f_N=\gamma ^3f_N^{}`$. The relativistic $`N_{rel}`$ scales as

$$N_{rel}(\gamma ^3f_N^{})(R_s/\gamma )^2\gamma \text{for }1/\gamma <\theta _0/2$$
(2)
and the sub-relativistic $`N_{subrel}`$ scales as

$$N_{subrel}(\gamma ^3f_N^{})R_e^2\gamma ^3\text{for }1/\gamma >\theta _0/2.$$
(3)
Thus, taking the observed spectral lag dependence $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{obs}1/\gamma `$ (Salmonson, 2000) one gets

$$N_{rel}\mathrm{\Delta }t^1\text{for }1/\gamma <\theta _0/2$$
(4)
$$N_{subrel}\mathrm{\Delta }t^3\text{for }1/\gamma >\theta _0/2.$$
(5)
Thus if GRBs are jets, one can expect a break in the lag-luminosity relationship. This is analogous to the expected break in the lightcurve of a GRB afterglow as it transitions from relativistic to sub-relativistic expansion (Rhoads, 1997).

The inclusion of GRB980425 into the set of all long GRBs is the simplest explanation; one need not invoke a separate phenomenon to explain a burst so vastly weaker than its cosmological counterparts. The model presented here unifies these seemingly disparate events by way of a single mechanism; observer perspective on a relativistic jet. For GRB980425 to be a member of the set of known bursts, it must be in the sub-relativistic regime. Thus I fit the $`N_{subrel}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ curve to contain GRB980425. The result is a complete lag-luminosity relationship for long GRBs and is shown in Figure 1. Although the data is as yet very sparse, it is consistent with the curve.

The intersection of the $`N_{rel}(\mathrm{\Delta }t_{obs})`$ and $`N_{subrel}(\mathrm{\Delta }t_{obs})`$ curves is at

$$N_{int}=5.5\times 10^{57}\text{photons sec}\text{-1}$$
(6)
$$\mathrm{\Delta }t_{int}=0.15\text{sec}.$$
(7)
At this point the jet and beaming angles are the same, $`\theta _0=2/\gamma `$. As in Salmonson (2000)

$$\frac{\gamma _{int}}{\gamma _{980425}}=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }t_{980425}}{\mathrm{\Delta }t_{int}}=\frac{4.5\text{sec}}{0.15\text{sec}}=30$$
(8)
so $`\gamma _{int}=30\gamma _{980425}`$. Similarly for the brightest burst in this dataset, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{990123}0.01`$, so $`\gamma _{990123}450\gamma _{980425}`$. The value of $`\gamma _{980425}`$ is uncertain. Bounds will be discussed in the next section, but for now we take $`\gamma _3\gamma _{980425}/3`$. Thus the brightest, fastest bursts such as GRB990123 have Lorentz factors $`\gamma _{max}1000\gamma _3`$ or higher, while more middling bursts such as GRB980703 have $`\gamma 100\gamma _3`$.

The diametric opening angle of the jet is

$$\theta _0\frac{2}{\gamma _{int}}=\frac{2}{90\gamma _3}\frac{1.3^o}{\gamma _3}.$$
(9)
In Salmonson (2000) it was estimated that $`\theta _0(5^o\text{to}10^o)/\gamma _{100}`$ where $`\gamma _{100}\gamma _{max}/100`$, which is in agreement with the value presently calculated.

Having knowledge of the opening angle of the jet, $`\theta _01/45/\gamma _3`$, we may calculate the beaming factor

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill f_\mathrm{\Omega }& =1\mathrm{cos}\left(\text{Arcsin}\left(\frac{1}{\gamma }\right)+\frac{\theta _0}{2}\right)\hfill \\ & \frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\theta _0}{2}\right)^2=6.4\gamma _3^2\times 10^5\hfill \end{array}$$
(10)
where $`1/\gamma \theta _0/21`$ for cosmological GRBs. The total energy in $`\gamma `$-rays is related to the inferred isotropic energy by $`E_{tot}=f_\mathrm{\Omega }E_{iso}`$. This is a large reduction in the energy required to make a GRB. For instance, GRB990123 had $`E_{iso}=2\times 10^{54}`$ ergs (Galama et al., 1999) and thus $`E_{tot}=1.2\gamma _3^2\times 10^{50}`$ ergs. So $`\gamma `$-ray energies of bursts are a fraction of the total collapsar energy.

## 3  Event Rate Estimation

Having derived the above quantities, one can now make some crude estimations of rates of GRBs and SNe Ib/c. First, what fraction of SNe Ib/c make GRBs? Woosley & MacFadyen (1999) estimate that 1% of SNe Ib/c have large enough helium cores to make a collapsar SN-GRB. Bloom et al. (1998) estimate the SN Ib/c rate to be 0.3/day out to distance of $`100h_{65}^1`$ Mpc, which is roughly the limiting distance for a GRB980425 to be seen by BATSE. Thus one expects 0.003/day $`1`$/year GRB rate within this distance. Norris et al. (1999, see their Fig. 2) find that the number of bursts similar to GRB980425 and with comparable lags comes to roughly $`1`$/year, consistent with this estimate.

A lower bound for our rate can give information on the Lorentz factor of $`\gamma _{980425}`$. The beaming factor $`f_\mathrm{\Omega }=1\mathrm{cos}(\text{Arcsin}(1/\gamma )+\theta _0/2)`$ gives the probability of observing an event’s jet. Since $`1/\gamma \theta _0`$ for GRB980425, $`f_\mathrm{\Omega }1\sqrt{11/\gamma ^2}=1v/c1/2/\gamma ^2`$ where $`v`$ is the speed. Since we estimate a SN-GRB rate of 1/yr within 100 Mpc, the inverse average number of years between detected SN-GRBs estimates $`f_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ which, in turn, gives a weak (due to incompleteness of SN-GRB detections) lower bound on $`\gamma `$. For instance, if $`\gamma =5`$, then $`f_\mathrm{\Omega }=0.02`$, and we can expect a burst like GRB980425 every $``$ 50 years. For $`\gamma =2`$ and 3 one gets 7 and 17 years respectively. Bloom et al. (1998) and Norris et al. (1999) find little evidence for another convincing SN-GRB event in the BATSE catalog. Firstly, this is not a problem; GRB980425-like events are likely rare enough to have been missed or not exist during BATSE mission duration. Secondly, assuming completeness (a poor assumption) the data begins to push the lower bound on $`\gamma `$ up to around 2 or 3. Kulkarni et al. (1998) argue for a radio emission source moving with $`\gamma 2`$, while Woosley & MacFadyen (1999) suggest that $`\gamma 5`$ could have created GRB980425. These values likely bracket the real value. Thus in this paper I assume $`\gamma _{980425}3`$.

At cosmological distances, taking the above rate of GRB generating SNe, one gets a rate out to radius $`r`$

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \text{Rate}(r)& f_\mathrm{\Omega }3\times 10^3/\text{day}\left(\frac{r}{100\text{Mpc}}\right)^3\hfill \\ & =0.2/\text{day}\left(\frac{r}{10\text{Gpc}}\right)^3.\hfill \end{array}$$
(11)
using Eqn (10). This is consistent with the $``$ 1 GRB/day observed by BATSE. Much better modeling including cosmology and star formation rates can be done. However, the point to make here is that it is consistent that GRB980425 and the cosmological bursts derive from the same progenitor.

## 4  Discussion

The obvious prediction of the model present herein is that all (long) GRBs will fall along the curve in Figure 1. In addition, since this model supports the collapsar model for GRB progenitors, all (long) GRBs should have a SN buried within as predicted by Woosley & MacFadyen (1999).

Many questions remain. For instance GRB980425 had a quickly decaying X-ray afterglow (Bloom et al., 1998). Perhaps numerical simulations of afterglows from relativistic jets (e.g. Granot et al., 2000) could yield insights into this behavior. If this is a common characteristic of off-axis jets, this might have an effect on the predicted rates of observable so called “orphan afterglows” (Rhoads, 1997).

This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract W-7405-ENG-48.


text:
# Evidence for the Heating of Atomic Interstellar Gas by PAHs

## 1 Introduction

The heating and cooling processes in the interstellar medium are crucial to determining its physical state in equilibrium. Photoelectrons from dust grains or Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are thought to dominate the heating of neutral gas (Watson 1972; Hollenbach & Tielens 1999). In an indirect and inefficient mechanism, incident far-ultraviolet photons with energies high enough to eject electrons from dust grains ($`h\nu >6`$ eV) heat the gas via these photoelectrons, with a typical efficiency of $`0.11\%`$. This efficiency is determined by microphysics of the grains, in particular the work function and the resultant photoelectric yield, and therefore the charge of the grains. It is defined as the ratio of the gas heating rate by photoelectrons to grain heating rate by far-ultraviolet photons. The grain heating is radiated away in the infrared. The gas heating is also radiated away in the infrared, primarily via fine-structure lines such as \[CII\] (158 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$) and \[OI\] (63 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$), with \[CII\] dominant at lower densities and temperatures. The photoelectric effect on dust thus provides the main coupling of the far-ultraviolet radiation field to interstellar gas outside of H II regions, and is a major process in photodissociation regions (Hollenbach & Tielens 1999). The heating efficiency of the photoelectric effect is traditionally measured by the flux ratio (\[CII\]+\[OI\])/FIR, where FIR is the dust continuum in the far-infrared.

The physical description of the photoelectric effect and its dependence on various parameters is fairly well developed. In particular, it has been established for some time that smaller grains are more effective at generating photoelectrons, because of their lower potential barrier to escaping electrons, and because the emerging electron is less likely to lose energy as it works its way from the ejection site within the grain to the outside. Given the typical grain size distributions, the net result is that the smallest grains dominate the photoelectric heating (Watson 1972, Jura 1976, de Jong 1977, Draine 1978, Bakes & Tielens 1994). d’Hendecourt & Léger (1987) argued that PAHs may be the key to H I interstellar gas heating in clouds and intercloud regions, assuming they carry a plausible 10% of interstellar carbon. On the other hand, in a standard Bakes & Tielens model of the Orion Bar about half of the total photoelectric heating is due to small grains with radii less than 15 Å, typical of PAHs and smaller molecules. The importance of PAHs to the ionization balance and chemistry of the interstellar medium is discussed by Lepp & Dalgarno (1988).

Quite independently, the hypothesis of very small grains heated stochastically to emit at wavelengths shorter than expected for their radiative environment was proposed by Andriesse (1978), and by Sellgren (1984) to explain her data on reflection nebulae which showed an excess in the near infrared with abnormally elevated apparent temperatures. IRAS revealed ubiquitous dust emission at 12 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$, and very small grains were accepted as widespread (Beichman 1987). Combined with rudimentary spectral data, the IRAS 12 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ emission was associated with Aromatic Features (Puget & Leger 1989). Detailed spectra with ISO left no doubt that the mid-infrared emission from dust in all but the most extreme environments is dominated by the Aromatic Features, and is therefore a good tracer of PAHs (Tielens et al. 1999). Helou et al. (2000) recently established that the mid-infrared spectra of normal galaxies are almost constant in shape, and dominated by the Aromatic Features in Emission (AFE), which carry from a few percent up to 20% of the total infrared luminosity.

## 2 The \[CII\] “Deficiency”

Malhotra et al. (1997 and 2000a) reported ISO observations of 60 normal galaxies spanning a broad range in R(60/100), FIR/B-band flux and morphology, and demonstrated that \[CII\]/FIR decreases as R(60/100) increases in galaxies. Since most galaxies have ratios \[CII\]/FIR $`10^310^2`$, those with ratios $`<10^3`$ were said to be “deficient.” Since R(60/100) measures average temperatures of the large dust grain population, it increases with increasing far-ultraviolet flux $`G_0`$. The lowest \[CII\]/FIR ratios are observed in warmer and more actively star-forming galaxies. There have been many explanations proposed, such as optical depth effects, heating radiation too soft to ionize carbon, or the influence of an active galactic nucleus (Malhotra et al. 1997 and 2000a, Luhman et al. 1998, Genzel & Césarsky 2000). The currently prevailing opinion, however, points to decreased efficiency of photoelectric heating due to positively charged grains. In the more actively star-forming and warmer galaxies, the far-ultraviolet flux is higher. A higher ratio of far-ultraviolet flux to gas density, $`G_0/n`$, leads to more positively charged grains and therefore to lower photoelectric efficiency.

It is possible that the decrease in \[CII\]/FIR, instead of indicating a decrease in the heating efficiency, might result from the gas cooling via the other principal channel, \[OI\] 63 $`\mu `$m. However, the combined flux in the cooling lines normalized to the far-infrared emission (\[CII\]+\[OI\])/FIR still shows a clear trend towards smaller values for the more actively star-forming galaxies. \[OI\] 63 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ does become the dominant coolant for galaxies showing warmer dust temperatures, but this relative rise does not compensate for the decrease in \[CII\] relative to FIR.

## 3 A New Normalization?

The “deficiency” seen in \[CII\] is defined by comparison to the far-infrared emission from dust grains. Far-infrared emission measures the radiation emitted by large or “classical” grains that are in thermal equilibrium, maintaining a nearly constant temperature. If photoelectric heating is dominated by small grains, a more appropriate normalization factor for \[CII\] line should be the emission from these grains (Helou 1999). The smallest grains briefly reach very high effective temperatures with the absorption of a single photon and therefore emit in the mid-infrared. In the PAH picture, this can be viewed as a fluorescence phenomenon from a molecule at high excitation temperature. In any case, because of the invariant AFE spectrum, the mid-infrared flux tracks well the total heating of this grain population. Figure 1 (top panel) shows the \[CII\] line strength normalized to the AFE flux plotted against R(60/100). The AFE flux is derived from ISO-CAM observations with broadband filter at 6.75 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ (Dale et al. 2000), which is very well matched to measuring the AFE. The observed flux is scaled up by a factor of 1.17 to recover the integrated 5–10 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ flux. The scaling factor derives from the properties of the ISO-CAM 6.75 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ filter and the average mid-infrared spectrum of Helou et al. (2000). We see not only a lack of any trend of decreasing \[CII\]/AFE with R(60/100), but the scatter in the \[CII\]/AFE values is about half the dispersion in \[CII\]/FIR (comparing top and bottom panels of Figure 1). This suggests that there is indeed a special connection between mid-infrared emission and \[CII\] emission.

### 3.1 Scatter and Outliers

The measured line fluxes have 30% uncertainty which contributes substantially to the observed scatter of $`\sigma =0.18`$ dex ($``$ 50%). The 5–10 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ flux attributed to AFE also includes some contribution from stellar light which is not significant except in early type galaxies (Malhotra et al. 2000b). The mid-infrared emission is from grains heated by far-ultraviolet as well as optical photons (Uchida, Sellgren & Werner 1998), whereas only far-ultraviolet photons at energies typically greater than 6 eV are effective in heating the gas. Thus the variation of the hardness of the radiation field also introduces some scatter in the observed \[CII\]/AFE value. Some fraction of \[CII\] flux also arises in ionized regions where the photoelectric effect is not the dominant heating mechanism (Petuchowski & Bennett 1993, Heiles 1994, Malhotra et al. 2000a); extreme cases of this offset are discussed further below. With all these terms, it is remarkable that the dispersion in \[CII\]/AFE is not greater than measured.

The lowest value of \[CII\]/AFE in Figure 1 represents NGC 4418 and is more than 5$`\sigma `$ away from the mean. As discussed by Lu et al. (2000), the mid-infrared spectrum of NGC 4418 is not typical of star-forming galaxies. It shows none of the familiar aromatic features but instead has a very broad plateau between 6 and 8.5 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$. This may be a partial view of the continuum along with the 9.7 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate absorption feature. In any case the imaging with the ISO-CAM filter at 6.75 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ does not measure aromatic feature emission for NGC 4418. The upper limit in \[CII\]/AFE in Figure 1 represents IC 860, from which \[CII\] was not detected. The mid-infrared spectrum of IC 860 appears similar to that of NGC 4418, but has a very low signal-to-noise ratio (Lu et al. 2000). Both galaxies are OH mega-masers.

Two of the three highest values of \[CII\]/AFE in Figure 1 belong to galaxies that have \[NII\]/FIR a factor of ten and 4$`\sigma `$ greater than the mean value. As discussed by Malhotra et al. (2000a), this indicates a larger than average contribution from H II regions to the \[CII\] line emission from these galaxies, which appears to cause somewhat elevated \[CII\]/AFE.

### 3.2 \[OI\] $`\lambda `$ 63 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$

Since \[OI\](63 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$) is also an important coolant, a more appropriate quantity to plot might be the total gas cooling with respect to the AFE flux, i.e. (\[CII\]+\[OI\])/AFE. In Figure 2 this quantity is plotted against R(60/100), showing a larger scatter in the (\[CII\]+\[OI\])/AFE, but essentially the same behavior as the ratio \[CII\]/AFE up to R(60/100)$`0.65`$. For greater values, the scatter increases quickly as does the mean ratio. This is consistent with \[CII\] being the dominant cooling line for all but the warmest galaxies (Malhotra et al. 2000a). The energy level and critical density for \[OI\] (63 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$) is higher than for \[CII\], so this line is expected to become more important relative to \[CII\] in warmer and dense gas, which is associated with greater values of $`G_0/n`$ and R(60/100) in photodissociation region models.

## 4 Discussion

The empirical results above strongly suggest that the smallest particles which produce the mid-infrared emission are a key contributor to the photoelectric effect in photodissociation regions. Theoretical studies of the Orion photodissociaton region where the values of $`G_0`$ and $`n`$ are elevated and the ratio $`G_0/n`$ is also moderately high, show that about half the photoelectric heating is due to particles smaller than 15 Å (Bakes & Tielens 1994). The observed constancy of the \[CII\]/AFE ratio, in a sample where the \[CII\]/FIR ratio shows larger systematic variations, indicates that the role of small grains in heating the gas may be even more prominent. The interpretation of this empirical picture however is hindered by serious uncertainties in the properties of the systems involved, as detailed below. We present below (§4.2) two possible scenarios to account for the empirical facts, without favoring either. The empirical evidence can be summarized in four items:

\[CII\]/AFE has a small dispersion for R(60/100)$`<0.6`$, $`\sigma 0.16`$ dex.

\[CII\]/FIR has a moderate dispersion for R(60/100)$`<0.6`$, $`\sigma 0.18`$ dex, and falls off by an order of magnitude at larger R(60/100) values (Malhotra et al. 2000a).

\[OI\]/FIR has a larger dispersion for R(60/100)$`<0.6`$, $`\sigma 0.20`$ dex, and shows no convincing evidence of falling with R(60/100); there are few data points at larger R(60/100) values, but the dispersion appears to increase quickly.

\[OI\]/\[CII\] rises with R(60/100) (Malhotra et al. 2000a).

### 4.1 Uncertainties

The exact composition of grains responsible for the spectral features in the mid-infrared is uncertain, but these features correspond to bending and stretching modes of C-C and C-H bonds in Aromatic hydrocarbons (Duley & Williams 1981). The AFE have often been attributed to PAHs (Léger & Puget 1984; Allamandola, Tielens & Barker 1985); we will adopt here the notation PAH to refer to the carriers of the AFE. It is also uncertain in what proportion ionized and neutral PAH might contribute to the emission, especially in light of recent ISO observations that show little change in mid-infrared spectral shapes as the far-ultraviolet flux ranges over $`G_0=110^5`$ (Uchida et al. 2000). These data appear to contradict laboratory studies which show significant changes in relative strengths of different features from ionized to neutral PAHs, with the ionized PAHs much stronger in the 5 to 9 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ range.

In view of these uncertainties, we cannot unambiguously associate AFE with a specific stage of the photoelectric process, even though the evidence in Figure 1 suggests that the AFE closely track the rate of photoelectron generation into the interstellar medium. For instance, Figure 1 might be easily understood if AFE derive predominantly from PAHs that have just been ionized and are decaying from an excited state, or predominantly from recombining PAHs, or from both in a roughly constant proportion. However, no such association can be established, and moreover excitation by non-ionizing photons cannot be ruled out (Uchida et al. 2000). Furthermore, there is currently no way to ascertain or constrain the ionization balance of the carrier population.

Additional uncertainty arises from the significant variations known to occur in the concentration of AFE carriers relative to large grains. Boulanger et al. (1990) studied the relative distribution of 12 and 100 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ IRAS emission in molecular clouds and concluded that the variations of R(12/100) required the abundance of transiently heated grains, which are mostly PAHs, to vary relative to the large grain population. In particular, they observed a systematic decrease of R(12/100) as the 100 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ brightness increased, which appears as limb brightening of clouds in AFE with a greater contrast than explained by optical depth effects. They proposed that this abundance variation is related to the cycling of interstellar matter between gas phase and grain surfaces. On the other hand, the AFE contribution to the total dust luminosity from galaxies decreases as the heating increases (Helou, Ryter & Soifer 1992; Lu et al. 2000). This trend has been related to the destruction of AFE carriers in the most intense heating environments near and in H II regions, a claim that is supported by observations of the Milky Way and the Small Magellanic Cloud (Tran 1999, Contursi et al. 2000), but may be linked to the effect observed by Boulanger et al. (1990). These depletion trends must then be superposed on the trends of photoelectric yield with interstellar medium parameters, resulting in the empirical evidence summarized above and in Figure 1.

### 4.2 Possible Scenarios

The close association of \[CII\] with AFE is easy to interpret at low values of R(60/100), by assuming that \[CII\] represents the cooling of the gas, and AFE measures the heating by photoelectrons. However, at larger values of R(60/100), reflecting an enhanced $`G_0/n`$ (Malhotra et al. 2000a), this association becomes puzzling since \[OI\] overtakes \[CII\] in cooling luminosity, casting doubt on the argument that \[CII\]/AFE is constant because it is intimately tied to the photoelectric effect. As the heating becomes more intense, the ratio of (\[CII\]+\[OI\])/AFE rises, suggesting an apparent increase in the photoelectric efficiency of the PAHs; this however is in direct conflict with the physics, leading us to the conclusion that PAHs become less significant contributors to the total photoelectric heating compared with other grain populations. This decreased significance is consistent with the decreased energetic importance of PAHs, manifested as the drop in AFE/FIR with increasing R(60/100) (Helou, Ryter & Soifer 1991).

In this picture of decreasing significance of \[CII\] as a cooling line and of AFE as a dust radiator, one would have to invoke a coincidental agreement between these two rates of decrease in order to explain the unchanged ratio of \[CII\]/AFE. This coincidence may reflect a certain scaling of $`G_0`$ with $`n`$, similar to the $`G_0n^{1.4}`$ derived by Malhotra et al. (2000a). Such a scaling might result from a feedback mechanism linking the density of the medium and the intensity of the star formation, turning the coincidence into a causal connection. In any case, it is not clear what drives the systematic decrease in AFE/FIR, though it has been suggested that a more intense radiation field may be inducing greater ionization or de-hydrogenation of the PAHs (Tielens et al. 1999).

An alternate scenario to explain the observations would be a two-component model broadly similar to the Helou (1986) decomposition of the far-infrared emission into an “active” star formation component and a “quiescent” or cirrus component. The cirrus-like component would dominate at low values of R(60/100), and therefore be characterized by high values of \[CII\]/\[OI\], AFE/FIR and \[CII\]/FIR, just as one would expect from a photodissociation region with low density and $`G_0/n`$. On the other hand, the high-density photodissociation regions at the surface of molecular clouds directly illuminated by young massive stars would provide the active component, with elevated values of $`G_0,n`$ and $`G_0/n`$, resulting in more cooling via \[OI\] than \[CII\], and less efficient gas heating due to grain charging. In this scenario, one would have to assume that the AFE emission from the active component is depressed compared to the diffuse component, a property marginally suggested by the observations of lower AFE/FIR ratios in denser molecular clouds (Boulanger et al. 1996). A significant contribution to the active component by H II regions would also help explain the depressed values of AFE/FIR. The observed trends as a function of R(60/100) are then interpreted as a result of a varying proportion between the two components, with the interstellar medium falling almost bimodally into these two components, and the properties of each component varying little among galaxies.

While either one of these scenarios is plausible, each requires a number of assumptions which are difficult to verify with currently available data. This however illustrates the richness of the data at hand, and the need for a more sophisticated treatment of the interstellar medium on the scale of galaxies.

We would like to thank F. Boulanger & J.-L. Puget for stimulating discussions and J. Brauher for help with data processing. This work was supported by ISO data analysis funding from NASA, and carried out at IPAC/JPL of the California Institute of Technology. ISO is an ESA project with instruments funded by ESA Member States (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), and with the participation of ISAS and NASA. SM’s research funding is provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant #HF-01111.01-98A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA under NASA contract NAS5-26555. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.