text:
# An efficient filter for detecting gravitational wave bursts in interferometric detectors

## I  Introduction

Long baseline interferometric detectors of gravitational waves (GW)  will be operational in the next years. The preparation for data analysis with these new instruments has begun since a long time for the compact binary inspirals, the most promising source of GW to date, and for periodic sources as well (see eg  for a review). On the other hand, it is important to develop analysis methods to search for GW bursts for which no accurate models exist. Typical sources of GW bursts are supernovae (historically the first cosmic sources of gravitational radiation ever considered). Simulations of collapses of isolated massive stars to neutron stars (type II supernovae)  suggest small departures from spherical symmetry. As a consequence, the power radiated away by GW during the few milliseconds of the collapse remains very low : the typical GW amplitude expected for such a source located at 10 Mpc does not exceed $`10^{22}`$-$`10^{23}`$. This seems to give only hope for detecting supernovae events from inside our Galaxy, given the expected initial sensitivity of the current projects. Collapses of more massive stars to black holes don’t seem to provide much larger amplitudes of GW . One important aspect is that these simulations are unable to predict accurate waveforms for the signals, as a small change in parameters can completely change the shape of the waveform (see  for example). This situation calls for search methods with high efficiency and robustness against waveform variations.

Mergers of compact binaries  can also be considered as burst sources with perhaps good chances of detection. Some recent estimates for the amplitude of GW during the merging of two neutron stars give numbers as high as a few $`10^{21}`$ for sources located at 10 Mpc . The merging of a neutron star and and black hole seems even more efficient with amplitudes near $`10^{20}`$ for sources at 10 Mpc . The predicted amplitudes are just above the noise level of initial interferometric detectors, hence a likely detection. Note also that these two kinds of merging compact binaries are likely to be also strong emitters of gamma-ray bursts and, so studies of coincidences between GW detectors and gamma-ray burst detectors on satellites can be crucial to validate the GW detection . Here again, the details of the waveforms in the merging phase are poorly predicted. Finally, concerning the merging of two black holes, the Binary Black Hole Grand Challenge Alliance  intends to compute numerically the waveforms emitted during black hole collision and coalescence. Recent results suggest that GW amplitudes could also be of the order of a few $`10^{21}`$ for a total binary mass around 10 $`M_{}`$ located at 10 Mpc .

Sources of GW bursts are then characterised by poor predictions of the emitted waveforms. At best, we only have ideas about bandwidths or typical frequencies of the signals. Matched filtering, as used for the detection of inspiralling binaries is clearly ruled out in this case and robust methods for detecting this kind of sources are then required.

Some methods have been recently proposed and studied. The “power filter” technique has been introduced by Flanagan and Hugues  in the context of binary black hole mergers, and developed further by Anderson et al. . The idea here is to monitor the noise power along the time; it can be shown that this filter is optimal when only signal duration and bandwidth are known . A similar idea (“Norm Filter”) has been tested independently by Arnaud et al.  to detect supernova GW signals. Time-frequency methods  should be also pertinent for detecting unmodelled bursts; because of their computing costs, these methods are more suited to the off-line (re-)analysis of candidates selected by faster online algorithms. Of course, one can hardly distinguish between a real burst GW signal and a transient burst caused by noise; thus, methods devoted to detect non stationarity in the noise are then able to detect “true” signals as well. Conversely, general filters are sensitive to transient noises as well as to bursts signals. If selected by on-line triggers, these spurious events can be eliminated if they are coincident with signals detected in auxiliary sensors sensitive to different kinds of environmental noise (seismic activity, RF pickup, …). Otherwise they can be validated when searching for coincidences between candidates from different GW detectors . Furthermore, if an event is seen in coincidence by, say the three interferometers of the LIGO-Virgo network, then it will be possible to reconstruct the characteristics of the emitted GW signal . In particular, the reconstruction of the location of the source in the sky will permit to search for further coincidences with other types of detectors (optical telescopes or gamma-ray satellites for example), and thus enhance the confidence level of the detection.

Our purpose is to develop and test filters for GW burst detection which are efficient, yet simple and fast enough to be used as on-line triggers. In this paper, we propose to study a family of filters based on slope detection algorithms, similar to existing contour detection algorithms used for image processing, applied here to the simpler one-dimensional case. The basic idea is to detect a non zero slope in the data stream delivered by interferometric detectors. In a first step the data are whitened by some suitable procedure , so that we assume that the noise is Gaussian and white. If we fit a finite-length time series containing only noise to a straight line, a null slope and a null offset are obtained. A non vanishing slope could then indicate the presence of some signal added to the noise. In the following, we will first study as filters for detecting GW bursts, the two parameters of a linear fit, namely the slope (slope detector) and the offset (offset detector). These two filters are strongly correlated; it is however possible to decorrelate them, and finally combine them in an unique filter using the complete information. Next, we compute the performance of these filters, following a procedure already described in , and compare them to filters previously tested  and to the optimal filter taken as reference. We finally study the efficiency of the filters (fraction of events detected for a given signal over many different noise realisations).

## II Slope detection and related filters

### A The noise model

Throughout the paper, we assume that the noise is Gaussian and white with zero mean. The standard deviation of the noise is then :

$$\sigma =\sqrt{\frac{S_hf_0}{2}},$$
(1)
where $`f_0`$ is the sampling frequency and $`S_h`$ is the one sided spectral density of the noise . For numerical examples, we take $`f_0=20`$ kHz (Virgo sampling rate) and $`\sqrt{S_h}4\times 10^{23}`$ $`/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}`$, which is about the minimum value of the foreseen noise spectral density of the Virgo interferometer ; this choice is correct since the minimum is lying right in the frequency range for expected burst sources of GW. The fact that we choose a Gaussian noise is not essential, but simply convenient for the design of the filters. Deviation from gaussianity will produce for example an excess in the rate of false alarms and it will then be possible to retune the algorithms according to the real noise statistics. In the frequency range of interest, above a few 100 Hz, the Virgo noise sensitivity curve is rather flat, although not exactly white. The filtering methods presented here and in  require a whitening of the noise , which is foreseen for the output of the Virgo data. In the following, we normalise the noise by its standard deviation, so that we are dealing with a Gaussian noise with zero mean and unit standard deviation.

### B Detecting a non zero slope in the data

Let us divide the data set in sliding time windows with N samplings. Fitting the data $`h(t)`$ to a straight line $`at+b`$, we obtain the slope $`a`$ and the offset $`b`$,

$`a`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{<th><t><h>}{<t^2><t>^2}},`$ (2)
$`b`$ $`=<h>a<t>,`$ (3)
where $`<x>=\frac{1}{N}_{i=1}^Nx_i`$ is defined as the arithmetic mean of the $`x_i`$ in the interval of length $`N`$. Here, $`t_i=i/f_0`$ is the $`i^{th}`$ sampled time and $`h_i`$ is the $`i^{th}`$ sampled value of the detector output. The fit transforms the input normalised Gaussian noise into Gaussian random variables, considered as linear filters, with zero mean and standard deviations $`\sigma _a`$ and $`\sigma _b`$ given by :

$`\sigma _a^2`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{12f_0^2}{N(N^21)}},`$ (4)
$`\sigma _b^2`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{4N+2}{N(N1)}}.`$ (5)
We can finally compute the signal to noise ratio (SNR) for each of the two filters, $`X_a=a/\sigma _a`$ and $`X_b=b/\sigma _b`$, noting that the only free parameter for both filters is the length of the analysis window $`N`$. In practice, their implementation is very simple and fast thanks to trivial recursive relations between filter outputs for two successive windows.

It is interesting to notice that the maximum SNR $`X_a`$ or $`X_b`$ with respect to the window size $`N`$ is in general not obtained when the slope $`a`$ or the offset $`b`$ is maximum. This point is illustrated in Fig. 1 and 2, where we plot the slopes and SNR for a Gaussian burst signal $`\mathrm{exp}((tt_0)^2/2\mathrm{\Delta }^2)`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.5`$ ms and $`t_0=25`$ ms (signal maximum at the centre of the time scale). In Fig. 1, the analysis window size is $`N=10`$, while in Fig. 2, it is $`N=100`$. The slope computed by the fit procedure is much larger in the first case ($`N=10`$) than in the second ($`N=100`$)(factor about 5). Nevertheless, the SNR is higher (by a factor about 5 in this example) for the $`N=100`$ window than for the $`N=10`$ window. This is due to the fact that a larger window size allows to average the effect of the noise; indeed, from Eq. (4), we see that $`\sigma _a`$ scales as $`1/N^3`$. Thus, for a Gaussian signal of width $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the optimal window size is found to be about $`7\mathrm{\Delta }`$, as seen in Fig. 3. The same is observed for the offset detector (to a lesser extent) and for the derived filters described below.

### C Decorrelation of the slope and offset detectors

In case of noise alone, the normalised offset and slope detectors $`X_a`$ and $`X_b`$ are two highly correlated random variables. They can be decorrelated by diagonalising the covariance matrix of $`X_a`$ and $`X_b`$ :

$$C=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& \alpha \\ \alpha & 1\end{array}\right)$$
(6)
where $`\alpha `$ = cov$`(X_a,X_b)`$. The eigenvalues of $`C`$ are then $`1\pm \alpha `$, corresponding to the eigenvectors $`X_a\pm X_b`$. Two new uncorrelated random variables are introduced :

$$X_\pm =\frac{X_a\pm X_b}{\sqrt{2(1\pm \alpha )}}$$
(7)
$`X_\pm `$ are normalised in such a way that they are standard normal variables, if $`X_a`$ and $`X_b`$ are standard normal variables.

The computation of the covariance $`\alpha `$ is easy, yielding :

$$\alpha =\sqrt{\frac{3}{2}\left(\frac{N+1}{2N+1}\right)}.$$
(8)
The two new statistics $`X_\pm `$ can be used as uncorrelated filters for detecting GW bursts, but can also be easily combined into an unique filter.

### D The combined filter : ALF

The optimal variable retaining the full information contained in the slope and offset filters is :

$$A=X_+^2+X_{}^2=\frac{X_a^2+X_b^22\alpha X_aX_b}{1\alpha ^2}.$$
(9)
In the absence of signal in the noise, $`A`$ is well approximated by a $`\chi ^2`$ with 2 degrees of freedom, as a sum of the square of two uncorrelated (albeit not independent) normal variables. The filter based on $`A`$ is called ALF (Alternative Linear fit Filter). Again, the only free parameter is the window size $`N`$. Note that ALF is not a linear filter, contrary to the slope, offset and $`X_\pm `$ filters.

### E Threshold for detection and false alarms

#### 1 Redefinition of an Event

A major problem arises when such filters are implemented, and tested with real (or simulated) data. To be optimally efficient and because of the short durations of the signals we are interested in, each filter is applied every time step ($`\delta t=5\times 10^5s`$ for Virgo). As a consequence, a same false alarm is likely to appear for different window sizes, if different analysis windows are used in parallel, and for consecutive windows : this is the multi-triggering problem.

The redefinition of an event solves this problem. For each window size $`N`$ used in the implementation of the filters, we note $`t_{start}`$ and $`t_{end}`$ the time characteristics of each triggered event (time serie of data points for which SNR $`\tau `$, where $`\tau `$ is the detection threshold). One has to take into account all the possibilities of overlapping between the different intervals. For instance, $`[t_{start1},t_{end1}]`$ (for analysis window $`N_1`$) and $`[t_{start2},t_{end2}]`$ (for analysis window $`N_2`$) will describe the same event if, e.g, $`t_{start1}t_{start2}t_{end1}`$ and $`t_{end1}t_{end2}`$. Each selected event will be a cluster of points, characterised by a starting time and an ending time.

#### 2 General discussion

We set a detection threshold by choosing a false alarm rate $`\kappa _0`$. In all the following numerical examples, we consider $`\kappa _0=10^6`$, corresponding to 72 false alarms per hour for a 20 kHz sampling frequency. This choice results from a compromise between the necessary data reduction after online processing (which should not exceed a few percent) and the weakness of the GW signals we are looking for. For instance, it will be shown in the following that, with such a false alarm rate, optimal filtering of a sample of supernovae signals gives, on average, an upper limit for the distances of detection of the order of the radius of our galaxy, using realistic simulations for the emitted waves. A large part of these false alarms will be in principle then discarded, when working afterwards in coincidence with other detectors, supposing that the different detectors noises are well uncorrelated. Obviously, this rate should be adjusted in future coincidence experiments by the maximum allowed rate for accidental coincidences. One could have chosen a false alarm rate so that the mean detection distance obtained by Matched Filtering of realistic supernovae waveforms corresponds to, e.g, the diameter of the Milky Way ($`R30\text{ kpc}`$) or the distance of the Magellanic Clouds ($`d55\text{ kpc}`$). In both cases, however, the number of false alarms is too high to be manageable (hundreds or thousands of false alarms per hour).

Anyway, the exact choice of the false alarm rate, and the corresponding threshold, is not important in this study, since we concentrate in the following on the relative performances of the filters (relative with respect to the optimal filter with the same false alarm rate), provided that these performances do not crucially depend on the false alarm rate. Fig. 4 shows the evolution of the relative performance of the ALF filter averaged over a sample of realistic supernovae signals (described below) as a function of the false alarm rate. This performance shows to be relatively constant for weak false alarm rates, and begins to increase for (non relevant) extremely high false alarm rates ($`\kappa 10^3`$ corresponds to several thousands of false alarms per hour) ; this last feature is due to the redefinition of a event, which gives a larger threshold reduction for large false alarm rates.

The false alarm rate chosen in this paper corresponds to a threshold of about $`\tau 4.89`$ for a normalised Gaussian variable (slope and offset detectors, $`X_+`$ and $`X_{}`$) and to a threshold of about $`27.63`$ for a two-dimensional $`\chi ^2`$ (ALF). This supposes of course an implementation with an unique window size ; if several window sizes are to be used in parallel, then the threshold has to increased accordingly to keep the same overall false alarm rate. The actual false alarm rate is then altered by the redefinition of events that is adopted here. As an example, for a single-windowed Slope Detector, the same detection threshold would correspond to false alarm rate $`\kappa _0=10^6`$ if the definition of an event is taken into account, and to a false alarm rate roughly equal to $`2\times \kappa _0`$ if not.

#### 3 Can we use the clustering information ?

The real false alarm rate will correspond to the number of streams of data points $`N_i`$ in which $`SNR\tau `$ ($`\tau `$ is the detection threshold). The information provided by clustering can be used in two different ways.

First, for a given false alarm rate $`\kappa `$ (corresponding to a detection threshold $`\tau `$ for ALF), and for a given window size, one can determine the probability P(cluster size $``$ $`n`$) for a cluster of size larger than $`n`$ to occur. A cluster of size larger than $`n`$ will then be found with a rate $`\kappa \times P(n)`$. An integer $`n_0`$ can be found such that $`\kappa \times P(n_0)=\kappa _0`$. As a consequence, the detection threshold $`\tau `$ for ALF corresponding to $`\kappa `$ will be lowered. The definition of an event in this case will thus be a cluster of size $``$ $`n_0`$ for which SNR $`\tau `$. The results obtained with such a definition are similar to the ones described in the next section.

The distribution of the number of consecutive triggers for a given threshold can be used in another way. This distribution gives a probability of occurrence $`P(n)`$ of a given number $`n`$ of consecutive triggers for the fixed threshold $`\tau `$. Then, each cluster can be labelled with the corresponding probability, and one can put priority in the treatment of those events. Furthermore, putting a threshold on the quantity $`n`$ can help to remove some of the false alarms. In this case, one can hope to discard a substantial part of the events, which with great probability are actually false alarms. Of course, the loss of signal this process causes has to be quantified. For high SNRs physical signals, using ALF, an average loss as high as $`20\%`$ is observed for a $`50\%`$ false alarms removal. The price to pay for such a removal is clearly too high.

## III Detection of supernovae

In order to benchmark the filters, we use a catalogue of simulated supernova GW signals. Indeed, as we need “robust” filters with respect to the details of the waveforms, it seems convenient to average the filters performances over a variety of (physically sound) waveforms.

### A The catalogue of signals

As in  and , we use as a catalogue the 78 GW signals simulated by Zwerger and Müller  which are available in . These waveforms result from the collapse of massive stars into neutron stars within the assumption of axial symmetry. Each signal corresponds to a particular set of parameters, mainly the initial distribution of angular momentum inside the progenitor star and the rotational energy in the core. All the signals are computed for a source located at 10 Mpc; we can then re-scale the amplitudes of waveforms in order to locate the source at any distance. In the following, we assume that the incoming waveforms are optimally polarised, along the interferometer arms; this assumption has no consequence on the relative performances of the filters. The detection distances displayed below have then to be considered as upper limits. Zwerger and Müller distinguish three different types of waveforms. Type I signals typically present a first peak (associated to the bounce) followed by a ring-down. Type II signals show a few (2-3) decreasing peaks, with a time lag between the first two of at least 10 ms. Type III signals exhibit no strong peak but fast ($``$ 1 kHz) oscillations after the bounce.

As the waveforms in the catalogue are explicitly known, optimal filtering can be used as a benchmark. The optimal SNR $`\rho _0`$ for a GW signal $`h(t)`$ (e.g. any of the 78 signals in the catalogue, located at a distance $`d`$) is given by :

$$\rho _0^2=2\frac{|\stackrel{~}{h}(f)|^2}{S_h(f)}𝑑f=\frac{f_0}{\sigma ^2}|h(t)|^2𝑑t$$
(10)
where we use the relation between the one-sided spectral density of the noise $`S_h`$, the sampling frequency $`f_0`$ and the r.m.s of the noise $`\sigma `$ given by Eq. (1). Since the noise is whitened in the detection bandwidth, $`S_h`$ is constant and the Parseval’s theorem can be used. The optimal SNR $`\rho _0`$ is proportional to $`<1/d>`$. We can rather define a (mean) distance of detection as the distance for which the signal is just detected, that occurring when $`\rho `$ reaches the threshold $`\tau `$. Such mean detection distances have to be found by simulations (because $`<d>`$ is always larger than $`<1/d>^1`$). With $`\tau 4.89`$, we obtain a distance of detection, averaged over the $`N_c`$ signals of the catalogue (here $`N_c=78`$), $`d_0=\frac{1}{N_c}_{i=1}^{N_c}d_0^{(i)}26.5`$ kpc, where $`d_0^{(i)}`$ is the optimal distance of detection for the i-th signal of the catalogue. We note that, with the threshold we have chosen, $`d_0`$ is of the order of the diameter of our Galaxy; a few signals (those with large initial rotational energy) have optimal distances of detection larger than 50 kpc, the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud. The largest distance of detection obtained in the sample is about 130 kpc.

### B Definition of the performance

Let us consider the i-th signal in the Zwerger and Müller catalogue. Its mean optimal distance of detection, defined above, is $`d_0^{(i)}`$. The mean distance of detection obtained with another filter is $`d^{(i)}`$ (averaged over noise realisations). We then define the performance of the filter for this signal as $`d^{(i)}/d_0^{(i)}`$. This relative definition is convenient, because of the different “strengths” of the signals in the catalogue. The global performance $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ of the filter is then defined as the average of the performances for the $`N_c`$ signals of the catalogue :

$$\mathrm{\Pi }=\frac{1}{N_c}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_c}{}}\frac{d^{(i)}}{d_0^{(i)}}.$$
(11)
Fig. 5 shows the performances of the slope and offset detectors and of ALF, as a function of the window size. The maximal performances are obtained for small window sizes (between 20 and 40 bins, that is 1 ms and 2 ms). The Slope Detector (SD) has a performance greater than $`0.6`$ for window sizes ($`N_w`$) up to 100 bins (5 ms). The Offset Detector (OD) keeps a performance greater than $`0.6`$ up to $`N=7.5`$ ms while the performance of ALF is always greater than $`0.6`$ up to $`N17`$ ms. For all the window sizes studied here, all the filters have performances greater than $`0.5`$. For $`X_+`$ and $`X_{}`$ (not shown on Fig. 5), the maximal performances are $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{m}ax}0.71`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{m}ax}0.67`$. The ALF, which combines the informations of the slope and offset detectors, is the most performant for any window size.

| Filter | SD | OD | ALF |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Optimal Window Size (ms) | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Performance | 0.65 | 0.70 | 0.78 |

Table 1 : Optimal analysis window sizes and performances. The performance is averaged over the 78 signals for all filters, with one single window size for all signals.

### C Window size and detection strategy

In fact, each of the signals will be optimally detected with a given analysis window size $`N_i`$ (for signal $`i`$). The distribution of those window sizes for all ZM signals (see Fig 6) shows different “preferred” regions. If each signal was detected with its own optimal window size (unrealistic case), the overall performance could rise to $`0.91`$ for ALF. In fact, to stay as unbiased as possible, it is possible to discretise the window size parameter space, allowing for example 5, 10 or 20 different window sizes used for the same filter. The size of windows and their spacing is not crucial for a given number of window, as the performances of the filters do not depend crucially on these parameters (within typically 1%).

Of course, the individual threshold for each of the window sizes would have to be higher in order to obtain an overall false alarm rate (taking into account the redefinition of a false alarm) equal to $`10^6`$.

### D Performances of the filters

Table 2 shows the performances obtained with multi-windowing slope, offset and ALF filters, using $`\{`$Window Sizes$`\}`$ = $`\{`$1.5 ms, 2.5 ms, 5 ms, 10 ms, 15 ms$`\}`$ (with a clear preference for short duration windows)

We recall also the performances of the Norm Filter (NF) and the Peak Correlator (PC) . The Peak correlator is implemented with 26 (truncated) Gaussian templates of widths optimally located in the interval \[0.1 ms, 10 ms\]. All filters related to the Slope Detector excepted ALF have performances from $`0.5`$ up to about $`0.7`$, while ALF reaches a performance greater than $`0.8`$.

| Filter | Optimal | NF | PC | SD | OD | $`X_+`$ | $`X_{}`$ | ALF |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Average distance (kpc) | 26.5 | 11.5 | 18.5 | 11.3 | 15.2 | 18.4 | 13.1 | 22.5 |
| Performance ($`\%`$) | 1 | 0.46 | 0.73 | 0.49 | 0.59 | 0.66 | 0.54 | 0.81 |

Table 2 :Performances of the ALF and related filters, each implemented with 5 windows in parallel .

It has been noticed that with 20 window sizes (rather than 5) in parallel, all filters related to ALF have performances around $`0.8`$. Indeed, to keep an overall false alarm rate of $`\kappa _0`$ for $`n_{window}`$ window sizes in parallel, the individual false alarm rate to apply for each window size is roughly given by $`\kappa _0/n_{window}`$. This quantity is then tuned by simulations, because each of the filters studied here react in a different way with respect to the event redefinition. The fact that $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{ALF}^{5windows}\mathrm{\Pi }_{ALF}^{20windows}`$ whereas $`\mathrm{\Pi }_L^{5windows}<\mathrm{\Pi }_L^{20windows}`$ (where $`L`$ denotes all the linear filters, i.e all the filters except ALF) shows the robustness of ALF with respect to a variation of the detection threshold.

### E Robustness of performances with respect to signal type

Table 3 shows the mean performances of the filters described above for each of the three types of signal in the ZM Catalogue. Each of the filters are nearly equally performant with type III signals, except $`X_+`$ and ALF which are much more performant. They all seem to have the same behaviour for type I signals, whereas great differences can be seen in their performances with type II signals (from $`0.46`$ for SD to $`0.72`$ for $`X_+`$).

ALF shows its best performances for type III signals (short durations and high frequencies), whereas types I are preferred by SD and $`X_{}`$, and Type II by OD and $`X_+`$. Those results give a dispersion (with respect to signal type) of about $`5\%`$, for all filters.

| Filter | SD | OD | $`X_+`$ | $`X_{}`$ | ALF |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Type I signal performance | 0.53 | 0.60 | 0.59 | 0.57 | 0.79 |
| Type II signal performance | 0.47 | 0.62 | 0.72 | 0.54 | 0.81 |
| Type III signal performance | 0.41 | 0.48 | 0.62 | 0.45 | 0.89 |

Table 3 : Performances (in percent) of the ALF and related filters. Each filter is implemented with 5 windows applied in parallel on the different kinds of signals of the ZM Catalogue.

Concerning the robustness of the filters, one could argue that we have studied the performance of the filters with only one set of GW signals. It is worth noting that the linear fit filters have been also tested on other “signals” than those given by the Zwerger and Müller catalogue : generic peaks or damped sine. This kind of signals could be the signature of typical instrumental artifacts but also of real GW signals such as black hole oscillations  for example. The performances in this case are similar (or better) to the benchmark above, except in the case of high frequency (kHz) and slightly damped signals (long signals), where the performance of ALF, for example, falls down to about 0.3, while it is close to 1. for very short bursts (Gaussian peaks and strongly damped sine as well).

### F Efficiency of the filters

Another way to compare the different filters is to compute their efficiency as a function of the distance of the source. The efficiency for a given signal located at a given distance is defined as the number of detections over the total number of simulated noise realisations. Again the efficiency is there calculated by averaging over the signals of the ZM catalogue. Fig. 7 presents the detection efficiency for the different filters, SD, OD, and ALF as a function of the distance to the source, expressed in units of the optimal distance of detection for this particular source, and averaged over all the signals. That means that each source has been located to a distance $`x\times d_{optimal}^i`$, where $`d_{optimal}^i`$ is the mean detection distance obtained with the Matched Filtering for the $`i^{th}`$ signal in the Catalogue, and $`x[0,1]`$. The detection efficiency presented here is the mean of the detection efficiencies obtained for each signals in the Catalogue. $`X_{}`$ (not shown on Fig 7) behaves like OD at small distances and like SD at larger distances (this is the contrary for $`X_+`$).

We can also derive the distances $`d_e`$ for which each signal reaches a efficiency of $`e`$%(see Table 4). We note that in spite of performances rather different for all the filters presented here, their detection efficiencies behave quite similarly. Eventually, all filters have the same effective performance $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\text{eff}}`$ defined by $`d_{50}/d_{\mathrm{o}ptimal}`$, which is around $`0.75`$. We note also that the efficiency of the Wiener filter is around 50% for the optimal distance of detection $`d/d_{\mathrm{o}ptimal}=1`$.

| Filter | Optimal | SD | OD | $`X_+`$ | $`X_{}`$ | ALF |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`d_{95}/d_{\mathrm{o}ptimal}`$ | 0.65 | 0.47 | 0.5 | 0.47 | 0.49 | 0.52 |
| $`d_{50}/d_{\mathrm{o}ptimal}`$ | 0.96 | 0.72 | 0.73 | 0.72 | 0.73 | 0.75 |

Table 4 : Average source distances for which the ALF and related filters reach a 95% (50%) efficiency

Figure 7 shows the false dismissal rate (ratio of missed events or inefficiency) as a function of the false alarm rate, for signals located at 10 and 25 kpc, for a single windowed ALF filter. At $`10\text{kpc}`$, with realistic false alarm rates (of the order of $`10^610^7`$), the dismissal rate is about $`4050\%`$. Small dismissal rates can be reached with extremely high false alarm rates (greater than $`10^3`$). Even if the performances of such a filter seems to be very high, the detection of sources (from such a catalogue) out of our Galaxy will be clearly difficult. The last curve (labelled $`d_{95}`$) shows the evolution of the false dismissal rate where each signal of the Catalogue has been located to a distance at which, for final ALF (5 windows), the detection efficiency is $`95\%`$. This means that in this case, each source is located at the same fraction of its own optimal detection distance (hence a different distance for each source).

## IV Sensitivity of the Filters to Non-White Noise

It is likely that the data provided by the interferometric detectors will be non-Gaussian and non-white. On-line filters will process pre-whitened data, and this whitening will be certainly non perfect. This is a crucial point to know how online triggers will behave in such a case. In order to study this effect, we thus have added to the white Gaussian noise low frequency components of the type $`A_{bf}sin(2\pi ft)`$. We then compute, as a function of the frequency $`f`$, the amplitude $`A_{10\%}`$ which corresponds to an increase of $`10\%`$ of the number of false alarm, for the final multi-windowing ALF filter.

For $`f=0.6Hz`$ (pendulum mode in Virgo), we find that the maximum authorised amplitude is of the order of $`2\times 10^2\times \sigma _{noise}`$. For other frequencies, $`A_{10\%}`$ is in the range $`2\times 10^2`$ \- $`5\times 10^2`$ ($`\times \sigma _{\text{noise}}`$) up to 1 kHz. Fig. 9 shows the evolution of the false alarms excess as a function of the amplitude of the $`0.6Hz`$ component in imperfectly whitened samples of data. A low frequency amplitude about 5 times larger than $`A_{10\%}`$ for $`f=0.6Hz`$ gives 10 times more false alarms. This proves (if needed) that the whitening process will be a crucial part of the analysis procedure.

## V Conclusions

We have designed and tested some filters based on linear fits and aimed at the detection of short bursts of gravitational waves, such as the ones emitted by massive star collapses. In particular, we have built a non linear filter, ALF, from the slope and offset detectors resulting from the fit procedure. These filters match the simplicity and speed requirements needed for on line triggers to be easily implemented in interferometric detectors of gravitational waves. The performances of the filters are better than those of the filters studied in  with the same procedure. In particular, the ALF filter, if implemented with 5 windows, reaches a performance of about $`80\%`$, relative to the matched filter, and the detection efficiency for such signals is about $`50\%`$ at a distance $`d0.75\times d_{\text{optimal}}`$. This is, however, just enough to detect supernova signals from anywhere in the Galaxy. Indeed, the mean distance of detection averaged over the supernova signals contained in the Zwerger and Müller catalogue is about 22.5 kpc, of the order of the diameter of the Galaxy. This figure has been obtained by assuming an optimal incidence of the (“+” polarised) signals along the arms of the interferometric detector, and should be in fact corrected for the incidence effect. Averaging over all the possible source locations in the sky reduces the signals by at least $`1/\sqrt{5}`$ (in the isotropic case). This finally results in a mean distance of detection of about 10 kpc. Clearly, with the low expected rate of supernovae in our galaxy (about 3 per century) massive star collapses are not likely to be detected with the first generation of interferometric detectors, unless the asymmetry of the collapse is much larger than presently expected in current models. It is not impossible, however, that the first generation detectors could be sensitive to binary mergers as far as the Virgo cluster (especially black hole mergers). Indeed, rough estimates of the amplitudes of the GW signals are two or three orders of magnitude larger than the ones predicted for the supernova signals; this gives crudely distances of detection that might be as large as 10 Mpc with the present detectors, LIGO I and Virgo. Regarding the detection of GW emitted by a binary system, combining the traditional method of matched filtering for the inspiral phase and a “pulse” detection technique, such as those developed in this paper and in , could help to increase the final signal to noise ratio and then the confidence in the detection of an interesting event. This can be valuable especially for binary black holes, for which only a few cycles can span the detector bandwidth, so that the contribution of the merging phase to the total signal to noise ratio can be important (see  for an idea of the respective strengths of the inspiral and merger waveforms).

Finally, a filter such as ALF seems to fulfil all requirements to be implemented as part as on line trigger dedicated to detect bursts of unknown waveform in interferometric detectors of gravitational waves.


format: text

text:
# Theory of Tunneling Spectroscopy in Ferromagnetic Nanoparticles

\[

## Abstract

We present a theory of the low-energy excitations of a ferromagnetic metal nanoparticle. In addition to the particle-hole excitations, which occur in a paramagnetic metal nanoparticle, we predict a branch of excitations involving the magnetization-orientation collective coordinate. Tunneling matrix elements are in general sizable for several different collective states associated with the same band configuration. We point out that the average change in ground state spin per added electron differs from non-interacting quasiparticle expectations, and that the change in the spin-polarization, due to Zeeman coupling, is strongly influenced by Coulomb blockade physics.

\]

The energies of many-particle states in metallic nanoparticles and semiconductor quantum dots can be measured directly by tracking the dependence of resonant tunneling conductance peaks on gate and bias voltages. This technique has been used to study the interaction physics of quantum dots at weak fields and in the quantum Hall regime, and metallic nanoparticles in both superconducting and normal states. In zero-field semiconductor quantum dots at high densities and in normal metallic nanoparticles, experiments are generally consistent with a model which acknowledges electron-electron interactions only in a mean-field electrostatic term that, because of its long range, gives rise to the Coulomb blockade effect. The success of this simple interpretation is a consequence of the Fermi-liquid character of these interacting electron systems.

The present work is motivated by recent experimental studies of tunneling via discrete energy levels in ferromagnetic Cobalt nanoparticles that find resonance spacings smaller than predicted in an independent particle picture, and a dependence on external field qualitatively different from those in paramagnetic metal nanoparticles. Since bulk ferromagnetic metals have low-energy spin-wave excitations in addition to their Fermi liquid particle-hole excitations, it is natural, as suggested by Guéron et al., to seek an explanation in terms of the collective quantum physics of the magnetic order parameter field. In this Letter we address the inter-play of quasiparticle and collective order parameter excitations in tunneling spectroscopy studies of ferromagnetic nanoparticles. Our conclusions are based in part on the properties of a simple exactly solvable toy model, described in the following paragraphs. We conclude that only states in which all singly occupied nanoparticle orbitals have aligned spins are relevant at low-energies in ferromagnetic nanoparticles, and use this observation to derive expressions for the tunneling amplitudes of ground and excited many-particle collective spin states. Near fields where magnetization reversal occurs, many of these low-energy spin states have large tunneling amplitudes, and contribute significantly to the tunneling spectrum, partly explaining the enhanced density of resonances seen in experiment.

In ferromagnetic metals, short-range exchange interactions favor spin-alignment, giving rise to an approximately rigid spin-splitting of quasiparticle energies in the ferromagnetic ground state. Our toy model reflects this rigidity by assuming identical exchange constants between all pairs of orbitals:

$$=\underset{j,\sigma }{}c_{j,\sigma }^{}c_{j,\sigma }ϵ_j\frac{U}{8}\underset{j,k}{}\underset{s,s^{},t,t^{}}{}c_{j,s^{}}^{}\stackrel{}{\tau }_{s^{},s}c_{j,s}c_{k,t^{}}^{}\stackrel{}{\tau }_{t^{},t}c_{k,t}.$$
(1)
In Eq. 1 $`ϵ_j`$ is a nanoparticle orbital energy that incorporates the charge correlation physics neglected in our model Hamiltonian and $`\stackrel{}{\tau }`$ is the Pauli spin matrix vector. The single particle orbitals have an average spacing inversely proportional to the volume of the nanoparticle and are expected to exhibit spectral rigidity. The many-particle spectrum of this Hamiltonian follows readily from the following observations: i) the total occupation of each orbital is a good quantum number ii) the interaction term is proportional to the square of the total electron spin operator $`\stackrel{}{S}_{tot}`$. The $`2^{N_s}`$ states with a given set of $`N_s`$ singly occupied orbitals have their band energy degeneracy lifted by the interaction energy $`(U/2)S_{tot}(S_{tot}+1)`$, where the total spin $`S_{tot}`$ has a maximum value $`N_s/2`$. We show below that only this $`N_s+1`$-fold degenerate spin-multiplet is relevant to the low energy physics of a ferromagnetic nanoparticle.

We start by considering the ground state of a ferromagnetic metal nanoparticle in which majority and minority spin quasiparticles are occupied up to their Fermi energies. We take these to have the values $`ϵ_{Fa}`$ and $`ϵ_{Fi}`$ in the absence of an external magnetic field at a reference total particle number. We are interested in how the nanoparticle evolves as a function of external field and gate voltage. We assume, for simplicity, that the quasiparticle energy levels of majority and minority spins are equally spaced near their respective Fermi energies. It follows from the considerations of the previous paragraph that the total energy, relative to that of the reference state, is

$`\delta E`$ $`=`$ $`[ϵ_{Fa}\mathrm{\Delta }/2+\delta _a/2]\delta N_a+[ϵ_{Fi}+\mathrm{\Delta }/2+\delta _i/2]\delta N_i`$ (2)
$`+`$ $`E_{cb}(\delta N_a+\delta N_i)^2/2`$ (3)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta N_a^2}{2}}(\delta _a\mathrm{\Delta }/2(2S_0+1))+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta N_i^2}{2}}(\delta _i\mathrm{\Delta }/2(2S_0+1))`$ (4)
$`+`$ $`\delta N_a\delta N_i{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{2(2S_0+1)}}`$ (5)
$``$ $`(V_g+g\mu _BB/2)\delta N_a(V_gg\mu _BB/2)\delta N_i.`$ (6)
In this energy expression, $`\delta _{a,i}`$ are level spacings, and we have added by hand the electrostatic Coulomb blockade term, which depends only on the total number of particles in the grain. The terms proportional to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in Eq. 6 originate from the interaction energy $`US_{tot}(S_{tot}+1)/2`$; the notational change $`U\mathrm{\Delta }/(2S_0+1)`$ is motivated by the identification, explained below, of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ as the spin-splitting energy of the quasiparticle bands. Here $`S_0=(N_{a0}N_{i0})/2`$ is the ground state total spin of the reference state and $`S_{tot}=S_0+(\delta N_a\delta N_i)/2`$. Note that for a ferromagnetic particle $`S_0`$ will be proportional to volume. We have not explicitly indicated the capacitance ratio relating the gate voltage and the chemical potential of the nanoparticle, and have assumed that only Zeeman coupling to an external field is important.

Stability of the reference system ground state requires that its energy increases at fixed total particle number $`N`$ both for $`S_{tot}S_0+1`$ ($`\delta N_a=1,\delta N_i=1`$) and $`S_{tot}S_01`$ ($`\delta N_a=1,\delta N_i=+1`$). From this it follows that

$$|ϵ_{Fa}ϵ_{Fi}\mathrm{\Delta }+(\delta _a\delta _i)/2|<\left[\delta _a+\delta _i2\mathrm{\Delta }/(2S_0+1)\right].$$
(7)
Since the right hand side of Eq. 7 $`N_A^1`$, where $`N_A`$ is the number of atoms in the grain, it follows that $`\mathrm{\Delta }=ϵ_{Fa}ϵ_{Fi}`$ to within a fluctuating mesoscopic correction, i.e. that $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the quasiparticle spin-splitting. The energy difference between the $`S_{tot}=(N_aN_i)/2`$ states retained in our considerations and the $`S_{tot}(N_aN_i)/21`$ states we have discarded is $`\mathrm{\Delta }2S_0/(2S_0+1)\mathrm{\Delta }`$, well outside the energy range of interest.

It is instructive to minimize the energy by considering $`N_a`$ and $`N_i`$ as continuous variables, thereby obtaining the trend lines around which the mesoscopic ground-state spin and charge quantum numbers fluctuate as gate voltage and external field vary. We find that

$`C_{aa}^1\delta N_a+C_{ai}^1\delta N_i`$ $`=`$ $`V_g+g\mu _BB`$ (8)
$`C_{ia}^1\delta N_a+C_{ii}^1\delta N_i`$ $`=`$ $`V_gg\mu _BB`$ (9)
where

$`C_{aa}^1`$ $`=`$ $`E_{cb}+\delta _a\mathrm{\Delta }/4S_0`$ (10)
$`C_{ai}^1`$ $`=`$ $`C_{ia}^1=E_{cb}+\mathrm{\Delta }/4S_0`$ (11)
$`C_{ii}^1`$ $`=`$ $`E_{cb}+\delta _i\mathrm{\Delta }/4S_0.`$ (12)
The inverse capacitance matrix $`C^1`$ describes the coupled spin and charge response of the nanoparticle. This coupling is responsible for the variation of total particle number with external field observed by Ono et al..

Eq. 9 can be solved to obtain the variation of both $`N_a`$ and $`N_i`$ with either $`V_g`$ or $`B`$. For example, we find that

$$\frac{dS_{tot}}{d(g\mu _BB)}=\frac{2E_{cb}+(\delta _a+\delta _i)/2}{E_{cb}(\delta _a+\delta _i\mathrm{\Delta }/S_0)+\delta _a\delta _i\mathrm{\Delta }(\delta _a+\delta _i)/4S_0},$$
(13)
and that

$$\frac{dN_a/dV_g}{dN_i/dV_g}=\frac{M_{ii}M_{ai}}{M_{aa}M_{ai}}=\frac{\delta _i\mathrm{\Delta }/2S_0}{\delta _a\mathrm{\Delta }/2S_0}.$$
(14)
Level spacings and exchange splittings in metallic ferromagnet nanoparticles can be estimated from spin-density functional band structure calculations. For the case of Cobalt particles $`\delta _a=5.55\mathrm{eV}/N_A`$, $`\delta _i=1.43\mathrm{eV}/N_A`$, $`2S_0=1.65N_A`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }/2S_0=1.07\mathrm{eV}/N_A`$. The Coulomb blockade energy is sensitive to the screening environment of the nanoparticle; for a grain with $`N_A1500`$, Ralph et al. find that $`E_{cb}30\mathrm{m}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$. As expected, the largest elements in the inverse capacitance matrix are the purely electrostatic Coulomb blockade contributions. Evaluating the right hand side of Eq. 14 we find that $`S_{tot}`$ almost always decreases when particles are added. The response of $`S_{tot}`$ to external fields, given by Eq. 13, is smaller than would be expected naively, because $`E_{cb}`$, the dominant mesoscopic energy scale, suppresses charge fluctuations causing the larger (majority spin) level spacing to limit this response. Typically the relatively large value of $`E_{cb}`$ suppresses the total charge response to both gate voltage and external field. For example, for $`N_A=1500`$ and $`E_{cb}=30\mathrm{m}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$, typical for the particle size studied by Guéron et al., we find that $`\delta N_a=0.0025dV_g+0.306d(g\mu _BB)`$ and $`\delta N_i=0.0302dV_g0.321d(g\mu _BB)`$ with energies in meV.

In the model discussed so far, structure would appear in the bias dependence of the tunneling current only on the scale of the single-particle level spacing. Following Guéron et al., we seek an explanation of experiment by invoking spin-orbit coupling and long-range dipole interactions between the electronic spins. In Cobalt, the typical band energy shift due to spin-orbit coupling is $`\delta E1\mathrm{m}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$; the dependence of the total band energy on spin-moment orientation results from a partially cancelling sum of spin-orbit energy shifts over all singly occupied orbitals. The typical spin-orbit matrix element between an individual pair of orbitals in a grain is $`\delta E/N_A`$, $`1\mu \mathrm{eV}`$ for the grain sizes of interest to us. These considerations justify starting from a model which neglects spin-orbit coupling of states with different band configurations and uses the bulk magnetocrystalline anisotropy coefficient to describe its effect within a single multiplet:

$$=K(S_z/S_0)^2.$$
(15)
where, for Cobalt, $`K0.073N_A\mathrm{meV}`$. Note for $`N_A1500`$, $`K.1\mathrm{eV}`$, much larger than either level spacing or Coulomb blockade energy scales.

A theory of tunneling spectroscopy in ferromagnetic nanoparticles requires results for tunneling matrix elements between many-body eigenstates, found by diagonalizing the collective spin Hamiltonian

$`=`$ $`E_{\mathrm{band}}K(S_z/S_0)^2g\mu _B\stackrel{}{B}\stackrel{}{S}`$ (16)
$`=`$ $`E_{\mathrm{band}}K/S_0\left(S_z^2/S_0+\alpha \widehat{B}\stackrel{}{S}\right)`$ (17)
where $`K/S_00.05\mathrm{meV}`$ is the natural energy scale and $`\alpha g\mu _BB/(K/S_0)2B[\mathrm{T}]`$ is the (dimensionless) strength of the magnetic field. In Fig. 1 we plot the energy eigenvalues $`E_n`$ as a function of the expectation value of $`S_z`$ for the corresponding eigenstates $`|S_0,n`$ for $`S_0=25`$ and $`\widehat{B}`$ oriented at $`\theta _{\mathrm{ext}}=\pi /4`$ from the easy axis, $`\widehat{z}`$.

The curves are offset for clarity, starting at the bottom with $`\alpha =2`$. For large negative $`\alpha `$ the ground state spin is polarized along the field direction, and gradually reorients toward $`\widehat{z}`$ as the field is ramped to zero. At $`\alpha =0`$ a level crossing occurs and the ground state state is now polarized along $`\widehat{z}`$. The former ground state, now classically metastable and separated from the true ground state by a potential barrier, is apparent in the spectrum until the classical switching field is reached at $`\alpha _{SW}+1.2`$. The classical down-sweep metastable states appear at negative values of $`\alpha `$ and positive values of $`S_0,n|S_z|S_0,n`$.

In order to evaluate the many-particle tunneling matrix elements, we express these eigenstates in terms of microscopic electronic degrees of freedom. For a given set of quasiparticle occupations, the microscopic state for collective spins oriented in direction $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}(\theta ,\varphi )`$ is

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})=\underset{jS}{}[𝒱_{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})c_{j,}^{}+𝒱_{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})c_{j,}^{}]\underset{kD}{}c_{k,}^{}c_{k,}^{}|0,$$
(18)
where $`D`$ and $`S`$ are the sets of doubly and singly occupied orbitals respectively; $`𝒱_{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})=\mathrm{cos}(\theta /2)\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )`$ and $`𝒱_{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})=\mathrm{sin}(\theta /2)\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )`$.

The matrix element between states with collective spin orientations $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{}`$ and $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ for adding an electron with spin-orientation $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ to an empty orbital, thereby increasing $`N_s`$ and $`S_{tot}`$, is

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{})|c^{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}})|\mathrm{\Psi }(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})_+=\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{}|\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{1/2}^{N_s}\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{}|\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}}_{1/2},$$
(19)
where $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{}|\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{1/2}`$ is the inner product of spin-1/2 coherent states.

Similarly the matrix element for adding an electron with spin-orientation $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ to a singly occupied orbital, thereby decreasing $`N_s`$ and $`S_{tot}`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{^{}})|c^{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}})|\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }})_{}=\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{}|\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{1/2}^{N_s1}\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}|\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}}_{1/2}.$$
(20)
The tunneling spectral function is defined as

$`A_\pm (\omega )=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}\left|(N_s\pm 1)/2,n|c^{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}})|N_s/2,0\right|^2`$ (22)
$`\times \delta \left[\omega (E_{(N_s\pm 1)/2,n}E_{N_s/2,0})\right],`$
where $`|(N_s\pm 1)/2,n`$, $`E_{(N_s\pm 1)/2,n}`$ are collective spin eigenstates and eigenvalues of $``$ in the $`S_{\mathrm{tot}}=S_0\pm 1/2=(N_s\pm 1)/2`$ manifold respectively. To evaluate the matrix elements in Eq. 22, we expand these eigenstates first in terms of eigenstates of $`S_z`$ and then in terms of spin-coherent states with a definite $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$. Using Eqs. 1920, we finally arrive at the simplified expressions

$`(N_s\pm 1)/2,n|c^{}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}})|N_s/2,0={\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m^{}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}𝒱_\sigma (\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{ext}})`$ (23)
$`\times c_n^m^{}(N_s+1)c_0^m(N_s){\displaystyle \frac{N_s\pm 1}{2}}m^{}|{\displaystyle \frac{N_s}{2}}m;{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\sigma ,`$ (24)
where $`c_n^m(N_s)`$ are the expansion coefficients of $`|N_s/2,n`$; $`\frac{N_s\pm 1}{2}m^{}|\frac{N_s}{2}m;\frac{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}}{2}\sigma `$ are Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for adding the angular momenta $`S_0=N_s/2`$ and $`s=1/2`$.

Many-particle tunneling spectra for $`S_0=N_s/2=25`$ and $`\theta _{\mathrm{ext}}=\pi /4`$ are illustrated in Fig. 2: In these ‘up-sweep’ calculations, we chose $`|N_s/2,0`$ to be the true ground state for $`\alpha <0`$ and $`\alpha >\alpha _{\mathrm{sw}}`$. In the field interval $`0<\alpha <\alpha _{\mathrm{sw}}`$, however, we allowed the system to be initially in the metastable stable, discussed in Fig. 1. These figures clearly show that the tunneling spectra have a regime near the classical switching field, where many excited states contribute giving rise to a dense tunneling spectrum, like that seen in experiment.

For a particular ferromagnetic metal particle at a given gate voltage, the onset tunneling spectra can be dominated by an intermediate state with either increased or decreased particle number. In either case, the lowest energy multiplet could have $`S_{\mathrm{tot}}=S_0\pm 1/2`$, although decreases will be more common for particle addition and increases for particle removal, as we have discussed. The calculations presented here can explain a dense tunneling spectra with level spacing $`K/S_0`$ rather than $`\delta `$ near the classical switching field, but not at general fields. The magnetic anisotropy energy landscape of a realistic nanoparticle is certain to be more complex than in our model calculation. There is clearly a shape anisotropy, since the particles used in the experiment are approximately hemispherical. A self-consistent calculation on small, irregularly shaped clusters predicts a magnetic anisotropy energy that can be much larger than the one we have used here. If this were the case, this energy scale would no longer be a candidate for explaining the experiment. Note however that for ellipsoidal particles, the shape anisotropy constant is comparable to the bulk constant. On the other hand, magnetostatic interactions with nearby particles and more subtle surface effects are probably important but much harder to estimate. Finally, nonequilibrium effects and spin-orbit coupling between different band multiplets could also contribute significantly to the ubiquity of dense tunneling spectra observed in experiment.

We are grateful to M. Deshmukh, S. Guéron, D. Ralph and J. von Delft for helpful interactions. CMC thanks the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo, Norway, for hospitality. AHM was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DMR-9714055.


text:
# The Role of Z=0 AGB Stars on the Early Chemical Enrichment

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The standard homogeneous Big Bang nucleosynthesis predicts that the material emerged from this epoch was mainly made by 1H and 4He. The total mass fraction of heavier elements was lower than $`10^{10}`$, so that the first generation of stars, the so called Population III, was built from matter essentially deprived of metals. Such a peculiarity significantly affected the star formation phase. Yoshii and Saio  found that the peak of the resulting IMF for Pop III stars ranges between 4 and 8 $`M_{}`$. Recently, Nakamura and Umemura  have obtained that the typical mass of Pop III stars should be $`3`$ M. Nevertheless, recent simulations of collapse and fragmentation of primordial clouds (see e.g. ) obtain a Jean mass $`10^210^3`$ M, although it is still not clear whether these clumps will further fragment down to stellar mass values. The key role in this process is played by molecular hydrogen rather than dust or heavy molecules cooling. Therefore, early star formation with a normal present-day IMF seems very unlikely. In this framework, intermediate and/or very massive stars were the dominant constituents of the first stellar population.

The simplest explanation for the absence of ”zero metal” stars is that they have not survived up to the present epoch, which is compatible with the idea that primordial stars were not of low mass. Thus, the very metal poor stars presently observed were formed from matter already enriched by the ashes of massive Z=0 stars. Consequently, an indirect way to search for Pop III stars is to look for their nucleosynthetic imprint in the extremely metal poor objects now observed. As it is well known, the most important contribution of intermediate mass stars to the chemical enrichment of galaxies comes from the nucleosynthesis occurring during the AGB phase.

## 2 MODELS AND EVOLUTIONARY PROPERTIES

The evolutionary models of 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 M (Z=0, Y=0.23) stars have been computed by the latest version of the FRANEC code . No mass loss has been assumed. Owing to the lack of metals the main differences in the evolution with respect to that of metallic AGB stars are: 1) H burning starts at high temperature through the pp chains. The convective cores are smaller but H-burning extends to the 80$`\%`$ of the stellar mass. The core contracts until the $`3\alpha `$ reaction starts; then the burning switches to the CNO, 2) during He-burning the star is at the blue side of the H-R diagram, therefore the 1st dredge-up does not occur, and 3) during the AGB phase the inward penetration of the envelope dredges-up He, C, N and O. For M$`6`$ M the amount of CNO elements is enough to develop a normal TP phase. For M$`<6`$ M the normal TP phase starts after an episode of C ingestion during the first pulses. See  for more details.

## 3 NUCLEOSYNTHESIS

As a consequence of the occurrence of normal TP, $`3^{th}`$ dredge-up and hot bottom burning, the Pop III nucleosynthesis scenario is revised. The duration of the whole AGB phase has been determined by using the classical Reimers formula for the mass-loss rate for different values of the scaling factor $`\eta `$. The major products of these stars are 4He, 7Li, 12C and 14N. In Table 1 we report the most important (IMF weighted) yields provided by our Z=0 IMS models, namely: the abundance in mass fraction of a given element in the material ejected into the interstellar medium at the end of the AGB phase. We have used the Population III IMF proposed by Yoshii and Saio  (cases a & b) and for comparison we also compute the yields from the Salpeter IMF. The \[C,N/Fe\] ratios are obtained from Z=0 AGB and SN II yields assuming an ejection of 0.05 M of Fe per SNII (Table 2). The main results are:

* Li is produced by the Cameron-Fowler mechanism particularly efficient during the first part of the AGB phase. The maximum Li yield obtained is of the order of the standard Big-Bang nucleosynthesis predictions.
* C and N (primary) are built up during the AGB phase. However, the C and N yields significantly change along the AGB, thus the cumulative amount of these elements finally ejected depend on the mass loss history.
* Free neutrons are released from the operation of the 22Ne$`(\alpha ,n)^{25}`$Mg reaction. The envelope is built up with extreme non-solar ratios 24Mg/25Mg/26Mg$`=1/10/13`$.


text:
# Probing Planet Formation Among Nearby Young Stars

## 1. Introduction

The recent identification of several groups of young stars within 100 parsecs of the Sun has generated widespread interest. Given their proximity and possible age differences, these systems are ideally suited for detailed studies of disk evolution and planet formation. Here I discuss recent results and prospects for the near-future.

## 2. TW Hydrae Association

At a distance of $``$ 55 pc, the TW Hydrae Association (Kastner et al. 1997) is almost three times closer than the Taurus molecular clouds, and its estimated age of $``$10 Myr fills a significant gap in the age sequence between previously known 1-Myr-old T Tauri stars and 50-Myr-old nearby open clusters. The group consists mostly of low-mass stars, typically a few tenths as massive as our sun, and includes several binary systems as well as one remarkable quadruple system (HD 98800). There is only one early-type star (HR 4796A). The origin of the TW Hydrae Association remains a bit of a mystery. There is no obvious parent cloud and the stars are dispersed across some 20 degrees on the sky and 20 pc in radial distance making it difficult to determine their birthplace. Nevertheless, they do offer the prospect of better constraining timescales for disk evolution and planetary birth.

Over the past two years, we have obtained mid-infrared observations of TW Hya stars using the OSCIR instrument on the Keck II and CTIO 4-meter telescopes. During this program, we imaged a spatially-resolved dust disk around the young A star HR 4796A (Jayawardhana et al. 1998). The surface brightness distribution of the disk is consistent with the presence of an inner disk hole of $``$50 AU radius, as was first suggested by Jura et al. (1993) based on the infrared spectrum. Our results for HR 4796A and other stars in the group indicate rapid evolution of inner disks (Jayawardhana et al. 1999b). However, it is unlikely that there is a universal evolutionary timescale for protoplanetary disks, especially when the influence of companion stars is taken into account. For example, we have detected thermal emission from a dusty disk around the primary, but not the secondary, in the Hen 3-600 binary system (Jayawardhana et al. 1999a). Comparison with the median spectral energy distribution of classical T Tauri stars suggests that the disk around Hen 3-600A may be truncated by the secondary.

## 3. Other Nearby Groups

The all-sky survey done by the ROSAT satellite has been particularly useful in identifying isolated young stars through their X-ray emission. Of the other recently discovered stellar groups, MBM12 and Eta Chamaeleontis appear particularly interesting. At about 65 pc, MBM12 is the nearest known star-forming cloud, containing only 30-100 solar masses of gas. It does not appear to be gravitationally bound, and may be breaking up on a timescale comparable to the sound-crossing time. Thus, in a few million years, the young stars in MBM12 may appear to be isolated objects, not associated with any cloud material –very similar to how the TW Hydrae stars appear at present. Hearty et al. (2000) have identified eight low-mass young stars associated with MBM12. Most of them are classical T Tauri stars, and are likely to be a younger population than the TW Hydrae members. Eta Cha is a cluster of a dozen young stars, first identified in X-rays (Mamajek et al. 1999). As with the TW Hydrae group, Eta Cha is far from any substantial cloud. However, its members are much less dispersed than the TW Hydrae stars, and may represent an epoch intermediate between MBM12 and TW Hydrae Association. The comparison of disk statistics and properties among MBM12, $`\eta `$ Cha, and the TW Hya Association may provide additional insight on disk evolution.

## 4. Prospects for Imaging Young Planets

If planets have indeed formed around these stars, it may be possible to detect them using large ground-based telescopes. Adaptive optics allows one to search within several AU of these nearby stars for planets a few times as massive as Jupiter (Jayawardhana 2000). Since newborn planets are quite warm, such objects would be sufficiently luminous to be detected at distances of 50-100 pc. In other words, we should be able to look for newborn giant planets located at distances from their parent stars similar to those of giant planets in our own solar system. Already, at least one brown dwarf has been found in the TW Hydrae Association (Lowrance et al. 1999) and searches for still lower-mass objects are underway (e.g., Neuhauser et al. 2000).

## References

Hearty, T., et al. 2000, A&A, 353, 1044

Jayawardhana, R. 2000, Science, 288, 64

Jayawardhana, R., et al. 1998, ApJ, 503, L79

Jayawardhana, R., et al. 1999a, ApJ, 520, L41

Jayawardhana, R., et al. 1999b, ApJ, 521, L129

Jura, M., et al. 1993, ApJ, 418, L37

Kastner, J.H., et al. 1997, Science, 277, 67

Lowrance, P.J., et al. 1999, ApJ, 512, L69

Mamajek, E.E., et al. 1999, ApJ, 516, L77

Neuhauser, R., et al. 2000, A&A, 354, L9


text:
# Observation of the Ω_𝑐⁰ Charmed Baryon at CLEO

## Abstract

The CLEO experiment at the CESR collider has used 13.7 fb-1 of data to search for the production of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ (css-ground state) in $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions at $`\sqrt{s}10.6`$ GeV. The modes used to study the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ are $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^{}`$. We observe a signal of 40.4$`\pm `$9.0(stat) events at a mass of 2694.6$`\pm `$2.6(stat)$`\pm `$1.9(syst) MeV/$`c^2`$, for all modes combined.

preprint:   CLNS 00-1695 CLEO 00-19

D. Cronin-Hennessy,1 A.L. Lyon,1 E. H. Thorndike,1 V. Savinov,2 T. E. Coan,3 V. Fadeyev,3 Y. S. Gao,3 Y. Maravin,3 I. Narsky,3 R. Stroynowski,3 J. Ye,3 T. Wlodek,3 M. Artuso,4 R. Ayad,4 C. Boulahouache,4 K. Bukin,4 E. Dambasuren,4 S. Karamov,4 G. Majumder,4 G. C. Moneti,4 R. Mountain,4 S. Schuh,4 T. Skwarnicki,4 S. Stone,4 J.C. Wang,4 A. Wolf,4 J. Wu,4 S. Kopp,5 M. Kostin,5 A. H. Mahmood,6 S. E. Csorna,7 I. Danko,7 K. W. McLean,7 Z. Xu,7 R. Godang,8 G. Bonvicini,9 D. Cinabro,9 M. Dubrovin,9 S. McGee,9 G. J. Zhou,9 E. Lipeles,10 S. P. Pappas,10 M. Schmidtler,10 A. Shapiro,10 W. M. Sun,10 A. J. Weinstein,10 F. Würthwein,10,***Permanent address: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. D. E. Jaffe,11 G. Masek,11 H. P. Paar,11 E. M. Potter,11 S. Prell,11 D. M. Asner,12 A. Eppich,12 T. S. Hill,12 R. J. Morrison,12 R. A. Briere,13 G. P. Chen,13 A. Gritsan,14 J. P. Alexander,15 R. Baker,15 C. Bebek,15 B. E. Berger,15 K. Berkelman,15 F. Blanc,15 V. Boisvert,15 D. G. Cassel,15 P. S. Drell,15 J. E. Duboscq,15 K. M. Ecklund,15 R. Ehrlich,15 A. D. Foland,15 P. Gaidarev,15 R. S. Galik,15 L. Gibbons,15 B. Gittelman,15 S. W. Gray,15 D. L. Hartill,15 B. K. Heltsley,15 P. I. Hopman,15 L. Hsu,15 C. D. Jones,15 J. Kandaswamy,15 D. L. Kreinick,15 M. Lohner,15 A. Magerkurth,15 T. O. Meyer,15 N. B. Mistry,15 E. Nordberg,15 M. Palmer,15 J. R. Patterson,15 D. Peterson,15 D. Riley,15 A. Romano,15 J. G. Thayer,15 D. Urner,15 B. Valant-Spaight,15 G. Viehhauser,15 A. Warburton,15 P. Avery,16 C. Prescott,16 A. I. Rubiera,16 H. Stoeck,16 J. Yelton,16 G. Brandenburg,17 A. Ershov,17 D. Y.-J. Kim,17 R. Wilson,17 T. Bergfeld,18 B. I. Eisenstein,18 J. Ernst,18 G. E. Gladding,18 G. D. Gollin,18 R. M. Hans,18 E. Johnson,18 I. Karliner,18 M. A. Marsh,18 C. Plager,18 C. Sedlack,18 M. Selen,18 J. J. Thaler,18 J. Williams,18 K. W. Edwards,19 R. Janicek,20 P. M. Patel,20 A. J. Sadoff,21 R. Ammar,22 A. Bean,22 D. Besson,22 X. Zhao,22 S. Anderson,23 V. V. Frolov,23 Y. Kubota,23 S. J. Lee,23 R. Mahapatra,23 J. J. O’Neill,23 R. Poling,23 T. Riehle,23 A. Smith,23 C. J. Stepaniak,23 J. Urheim,23 S. Ahmed,24 M. S. Alam,24 S. B. Athar,24 L. Jian,24 L. Ling,24 M. Saleem,24 S. Timm,24 F. Wappler,24 A. Anastassov,25 E. Eckhart,25 K. K. Gan,25 C. Gwon,25 T. Hart,25 K. Honscheid,25 D. Hufnagel,25 H. Kagan,25 R. Kass,25 T. K. Pedlar,25 H. Schwarthoff,25 J. B. Thayer,25 E. von Toerne,25 M. M. Zoeller,25 S. J. Richichi,26 H. Severini,26 P. Skubic,26 A. Undrus,26 S. Chen,27 J. Fast,27 J. W. Hinson,27 J. Lee,27 D. H. Miller,27 E. I. Shibata,27 I. P. J. Shipsey,27 and V. Pavlunin27

1University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627

2Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94309

3Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275

4Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244

5University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712

6University of Texas - Pan American, Edinburg, TX 78539

7Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235

8Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061

9Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202

10California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125

11University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093

12University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106

13Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

14University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0390

15Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853

16University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611

17Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

18University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801

19Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6

and the Institute of Particle Physics, Canada

20McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 2T8

and the Institute of Particle Physics, Canada

21Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York 14850

22University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045

23University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455

24State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York 12222

25Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

26University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019

27Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907

Many experimental groups have searched for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ in numerous decay modes: however, their reported $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ masses are only marginally consistent with each other. The WA62 experiment  claimed the first evidence of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ in the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$ decay mode with a mass of $`2740.0\pm 20.0`$ MeV/$`c^2`$. The ARGUS Collaboration published an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ signal in the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode with a mass of $`2719.0\pm 7.0\pm 2.5\text{MeV/}c^2`$, based on 0.380 fb-1 of data. This result was contradicted by CLEO, in an unpublished conference paper  using 1.8 fb-1 of data. Later, E687 published an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass of $`2705.9\pm 3.3\pm 2.3`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ using the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode and a mass of $`2699.9\pm 1.5\pm 2.5`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ using the higher-statistics $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode. In 1995, the WA89 Collaboration reported 200 $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ events in seven decay modes with an average mass of 2707.0$`\pm `$1.0(stat) MeV/$`c^2`$; this result remains unpublished.

The $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ ($`c`${$`s`$$`s`$}) is a $`J^P`$ = $`\frac{1}{2}^+`$ ground state baryon, where {$`s`$$`s`$} denotes the symmetric nature of its wave function with respect to the interchange of light-quark spins. Various theoretical models predict an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass in the range 2664 - 2786 MeV/$`c^2`$.

The data used in this analysis were collected with CLEO II and the upgraded CLEO II.V detector operating at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR). The data corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 13.7 fb-1 from the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ resonance and at energies in the continuum region just below. We searched for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ in the five decay modes $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$, and $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$. The choice of these five modes is based mainly on the pattern of other charmed baryon decays. Reconstruction efficiencies and the size of the combinatorial background were other considerations. A sixth channel, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, was also investigated because E687 showed a significant signal in this decay mode, although CLEO has rather low efficiency for this mode.

Charmed baryons at CESR are either produced from the secondary decays of $`B`$ mesons or directly from $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilations to $`c`$$`\overline{c}`$ jets. We introduce $`x_p`$ as the scaled momentum of a $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ candidate, where $`x_p=p/p_{\mathrm{max}}`$, and $`p_{\mathrm{max}}`$ = $`\sqrt{E_\mathrm{b}^2M^2}`$ with $`E_\mathrm{b}`$ equal to the beam energy and $`M`$ the mass of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ candidate. Our search is limited to $`x_p`$ $`>`$ $`0.5`$ or $`x_p`$ $`>`$ $`0.6`$, depending on the decay mode, so as to avoid the combinatorial background that dominates at low $`x_p`$. Charmed baryons from $`B`$ meson decays are kinematically limited to $`x_p`$ $`<`$ 0.4, so our search is limited to the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ baryons produced in the $`e^+e^{}`$ continuum. We implemented $`p/K/\pi `$ identification by defining a joint probability for each hypothesis, using both the specific ionization ($`dE/dx`$) in the drift chamber and the time-of-flight to the scintillation counters. A charged track is defined to be consistent with a particular particle hypothesis if the corresponding probability is greater than $`0.1\%`$. We required all the charge tracks in all the decay modes to be consistent with their respective particle hypotheses. To further reduce the combinatorial background we also required the momentum of daughter pions and kaons from $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ to be greater than 0.2 GeV/$`c`$ to 0.5 GeV/$`c`$ depending on the decay mode.

We begin the analysis by reconstructing $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$$``$$`p`$$`\pi ^{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$$``$$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$$`\pi ^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$``$$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$$`\pi ^{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$``$$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$$`K^{}`$, and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$``$$`p`$$`\pi ^0`$. Charge conjugation is implied throughout the analysis. The analysis procedure for reconstructing these particles closely follows that presented elsewhere . The hyperons are required to have vertices well separated from the beamspot, with the flight distance of the secondary $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ greater than that of the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$, or $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$. We then combine these hyperons with tracks from the primary event vertex to reconstruct $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ candidates.

In each mode the signal area above the background is obtained by fitting with the sum of a Gaussian signal function (with width fixed at the signal Monte Carlo predicted value for that mode) and a second order polynomial background. The Monte Carlo sample used in this analysis was generated for the two CLEO detector configurations using a GEANT-based  simulation and was processed similarly to the data. We simultaneously fit the five modes to a single mean value for the mass. In the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode, we required $`x_p`$ to be greater than 0.5 and the $`\pi ^+`$ momentum to be greater than 0.5 GeV/$`c`$. Figure 1(a) shows the invariant mass distribution; a fit to this distribution yields a signal of $`13.3\pm 4.1`$ events. In the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$ mode, only $`\gamma `$$`\gamma `$ combinations having invariant mass within 12.5 MeV/$`c^2`$(2.5 standard deviation) of the nominal $`\pi ^0`$ mass are used as $`\pi ^0`$ candidates; we assume the photons used for reconstructing $`\pi ^0`$$``$$`\gamma `$$`\gamma `$ come from the event vertex. We also required $`x_p`$ to be greater than 0.5 and the $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^0`$ momenta to be greater than 0.3 and 0.5 GeV/$`c`$, respectively. Figure 1(b) shows the invariant mass distribution. A fit to the distribution gives a signal yield of $`11.8\pm 4.9`$ events. Figure 1(c) shows the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ invariant mass distribution for $`x_p`$ greater than 0.5. All the charged pions are required to have momenta greater than 0.2 GeV/$`c`$. The corresponding fit yields a signal of $`0.9\pm 1.4`$ events. In the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode, we considered combinations with $`x_p`$ greater than 0.6, since the combinatorial background is higher in this mode. Figure 1(d) shows the invariant mass distribution, with a fit yielding a signal of $`9.2\pm 4.9`$ events. In the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode, we required $`x_p`$ to be greater than 0.6 and pion and kaon momenta to be greater than 0.2 and 0.3 GeV/$`c`$, respectively. A fit to this distribution yields a signal of $`7.0\pm 3.7`$ events. Finally, in the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode, we required $`x_p`$ to be greater than 0.5 and required charged track momenta to be greater than 0.3 GeV/$`c`$. The upper limit on the yield is 9.5 events (90 $`\%`$ C.L.). Figure 1(f) shows the invariant mass distribution for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode. The efficiency for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ reconstruction is $`15\%`$ of that for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode, which has the highest signal yield. We have not included the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode in the mass measurement. The total yield in the five decays modes, excluding $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, is $`40.4\pm 9.0`$ events as shown in Table I. The corresponding combined mass distribution is shown in Figure 2.

To better determine the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass, we have performed an unbinned maximum-likelihood fit using the sum of a single Gaussian and a second order polynomial background. There are two inputs to the fit, the invariant mass $`M_i`$ and the corresponding mass resolution $`\sigma _i`$ of each of the 458 mass candidates from 2.55 to 2.85 GeV/$`c^2`$. The invariant mass $`M_i`$ of each candidate is calculated using a vertex constrained fit; the uncertainty $`\sigma _i`$ is obtained from the covariance matrix of the fit. The likelihood function to maximize is the product of probability density functions (PDFs) for all the candidate events, and has the following form:

$$(M(\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0),f_s,a_1,a_2)=\underset{i}{}\left[f_sG(M_iM(\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0)|S\sigma _i)+(1f_s)\frac{P(M_i)}{_{2.55}^{2.85}P(M_i)𝑑M_i}\right],$$
(1)
where G($`y|\sigma `$) = (1/$`\sqrt{2\pi \sigma }`$)exp($`y^2/2\sigma ^2`$) and P($`y`$) = $`1.0+a_1(y2.7)+a_2(y2.7)^2`$. $`M(\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0)`$ is the fitted $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass, $`S`$ is a global scale factor multiplying $`\sigma _i`$, and $`f_s`$ is the fraction of signal events. We tested the fitting procedure by first applying it to Monte Carlo generated events with the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass set to 2695 MeV/$`c^2`$. The fitted mass using the above PDF is 2694.9$`\pm `$0.1(stat) MeV/$`c^2`$ for the Monte Carlo and 2694.6$`\pm `$2.6(stat) MeV/$`c^2`$ for the data. The fitted scale factor $`S`$ is 1.72$`\pm `$0.42 for the data and 1.16$`\pm `$0.02 for the simulated events. The fitted value of $`f_s`$ $`=`$ 0.099$`\pm `$0.027(stat) implies a signal size of 45.2$`\pm `$13.7(stat) in good agreement with the result from Table I. We tested our fitter on the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_c^0`$ charmed baryon in the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$ final state. Our fit gives a $`\mathrm{\Xi }_c^0`$ mass that is consistent with the world average value, and the fitted global scale factor $`S`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Xi }_c^0`$ Monte Carlo and the data are in good agreement with each other.

We have also checked for goodness-of-fit by performing a binned-likelihood version of the above fit (but without event-by-event mass uncertainties). This gives an almost identical mass value and similar yields, and forms the basis for the curve shown in Figure 2. The $`\chi ^2`$ for the fit to the combined data is 46.2 for 46 degrees of freedom.

The dominant systematic uncertainty in the mass measurement comes from its sensitivity to the fitting method employed - the difference in the weighted average of the individually fitted $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ modes and the unbinned maximum likelihood method. The various fitting methods contribute 1.5 MeV/$`c^2`$ to the systematic uncertainty. A systematic uncertainty (0.5 MeV/$`c^2`$) comes from imperfect treatment of modes with $`\pi ^0`$ mesons due to mismeasured photons at low energies that give rise to an asymmetric $`\pi ^0`$ peak. Additional contributions to the systematic uncertainty come from uncertainties in the energy loss correction for charged tracks (0.25 MeV/$`c^2`$) and the overall momentum scale (1.0 MeV/$`c^2`$). Taking these errors in quadrature, we estimate a total systematic uncertainty of 1.9 MeV/$`c^2`$.

In Table I we also give the measured inclusive cross-section times the branching faction, $`\sigma `$, for $`x_p`$ $`>`$ 0.5 into $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^{}`$and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$$`K^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$. We estimated the systematic errors for the branching fractions by changing the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass by $`\pm 1.0\sigma `$ (combined error) from its best fit value. In Table I the first error is due to statistics and the second, when given, to systematics. In charm decays, $`cWs`$, the $`W`$ tends to couple more strongly to two pions (via the $`\rho `$-meson) than to a single pion. The relative branching fraction $`(cs\pi ^+\pi ^0)/(cs\pi ^+)`$ is greater than unity. The relative branching fractions for $`(D^+\overline{K^0}\pi ^+\pi ^0)/(D^+\overline{K^0}\pi ^+)`$, $`(D^0K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^0)/(D^0K^{}\pi ^+)`$, and $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+\mathrm{\Lambda }\pi ^+\pi ^0)/(\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+\mathrm{\Lambda }\pi ^+)`$ are 3.4$`\pm `$1.1(stat), 3.6$`\pm `$0.2(stat), and 4.0$`\pm `$1.9(stat) , respectively. We also observe a similar trend in the branching fraction for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$$``$$`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$ relative to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$$``$$`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, as given in Table I. We have also studied the momentum spectrum of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$, finding it consistent with other charmed baryons .

In conclusion, we observe the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ with a mass of 2694.6$`\pm `$2.6(stat)$`\pm `$1.9(syst) MeV/$`c^2`$ in the five decay modes $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$, and $`\mathrm{\Xi }^0`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$. Although the signal is not statistically significant in any individual mode, the combined signal stands out over the background with a yield of 40.4$`\pm `$9.0(stat) events. Our measured $`\sigma `$ value for the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$$`K^{}`$$`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^+`$ mode ($`18.2\pm 10.6\pm 3.3`$ fb) is in clear disagreement with the ARGUS value ($`2410\pm 900\pm 300`$ fb) for the same $`x_p`$ range.

We gratefully acknowledge the effort of the CESR staff in providing us with excellent luminosity and running conditions. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Research Corporation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the A.P. Sloan Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Texas Advanced Research Program, and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.