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# Quark degrees of freedom in hadronic systems

## 1 Introducing Quantum Chromodynamics

There is little doubt nowadays in the physics community that Quantum Chromodynamics ($`QCD`$)  is the theory that describes the hadronic interactions within the Standard Model. $`QCD`$ is a renormalizable quantum field theory whose elementary fields are quarks, spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$ fermions with color ($`A=1,2,3`$) and flavor ($`i=1,\mathrm{},6`$), and gluons, spin $`1`$ bosons with color ($`a=1,\mathrm{},8`$), coupled to achieve $`SU_{color}(3)`$ gauge invariance of the theory,

$$=i\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i^A(x)\gamma ^\mu (D_\mu )_{AB}\mathrm{\Psi }(x)_i^BM_{ij}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i(x)\mathrm{\Psi }_j(x)\frac{1}{4}F^{\mu \nu a}F_{\mu \nu }^a+\text{gauge fixing}+\text{ghosts}.$$
(1)
The quark fields have been denoted by $`\mathrm{\Psi }_j^A`$, the covariant derivative is given by

$$(D_\mu )_{AB}=\delta _{AB}_\mu igA_\mu ^a(t^a)_{AB}$$
(2)
where $`t^a`$ are the group generators in the quark representation satisfying the algebra of the group, $`[t_a,t_b]=f_{abc}t_c`$, $`A_\mu ^a`$ denote the gluon fields and $`g`$ the coupling constant. The dynamics provides self-couplings for the gluons as can be seen from the definition of the gluonic tensor,

$$F_{\mu \nu }^a=_\mu A_\nu ^a_\nu A_\mu ^a+gf_{abc}A_\mu ^bA_\nu ^c.$$
(3)
Finally the only dynamics associated with flavor comes from the mass matrix,

$$M_{ij}=m_i\delta _{ij},$$
(4)
a parameter set whose origin is external to the theory.

Despite its apparent simplicity, almost thirty years have passed since its original formulation, and we have not yet been able to solve it exactly. However much has been learned about its structure and its properties.

### 1.1 Exact Results

There has been progress in understanding the properties of strongly interacting gauge theories through the development of rigorous inequalities. In particular a surprising amount of information about symmetry realization in $`QCD`$ follows from relatively simple facts about fermion determinants and propagators in Euclidean space-time  and anomaly constraints :

* the pion mass is the smallest among the mesons;
* the pion mass is smaller than any baryon mass;
* if axial currents are conserved the axial symmetry is spontaneously broken;
* if vector currents are conserved the vector symmetry is unbroken;
* parity is not spontaneously broken .

These exact results confirm that $`QCD`$ verifies the experimental observation that chiral symmetry is realized in the hadronic interactions à la Goldstone, i.e. in spontaneously broken fashion, and that the pion is the lightest hadron in nature. Thus, even in the massless quark limit, the $`QCD`$ vacuum breaks chiral symmetry despite the fact that the currents derived from the $`QCD`$ lagrangian are conserved.

### 1.2 Asymptotic freedom

A very important property of $`QCD`$, known as asymptotic freedom, is that the effective coupling constant vanishes at short distances . This can be mathematically expressed, in perturbation theory to leading order, by the so called running coupling constant

$$\alpha _S(Q^2)=\frac{12\pi }{(332n_f)\mathrm{log}(\frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2})}.$$
(5)
A mathematical statement that implies that at large spacelike momenta ($`Q^2\mathrm{}`$) the theory behaves as a free field theory modulo logarithmic corrections. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ introduces the scale for perturbative phenomena in the theory. Moreover for sufficiently large momenta the corrections to the free field theory can be calculated in a power series in $`\alpha _S(Q^2)`$. The contributions to the physical processes are determined by the elementary vertices determined from the lagrangian and the renormalization group.

These features can be seen directly by looking at high energy Jets  and have been proven extremely successful in the interpretation of the Deep Inelastic lepton-hadron Scattering (DIS) data, what is known as Bjorken scaling and the logarithmic deviations from it .

### 1.3 Confinement

How does the theory behave away from the asymptotic regime? We have not been able to isolate quarks and gluons in the laboratory. This could have been taken as a failure of $`QCD`$, however it has turned into the dynamical principle which governs the low energy behavior of the theory known as confinement. The fact that $`\alpha (Q^2)`$ grows for low momenta (see Eq. (5)) is taken as an indication that quark and gluons are confined. However the theory becomes in that regime highly non-perturbative and one cannot use perturbative technology to describe this dynamics. Does confinement arise from the quantum theory obtained from Eq(1)? We have not been able to answer this question exactly except in particular situations: lower dimensionality , Supersymmetric Yang Mills theories  and in the most promising approximation to the theory, i.e. Lattice QCD, for pure glue .

The problem with real QCD is that the structure of the vacuum is highly non trivial. It is precisely the vacuum properties which dominate the low energy behavior. All types of non perturbative field configurations inhabit the groundstate, instantons, merons, monopoles,…, and moreover seem to play a role in the way the theory is realized at the hadronic level.

Let us present a plausible confinement scenario .The effective color interaction becomes stronger as the separation between the probe color charges increases. In this regime a new phenomenon takes place. When the distance becomes larger than some number times $`\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$, and exceeds a critical one, the branching of the gluons becomes so intensive that one cannot speak about individual gluons, but rather should describe the interaction in terms of chromoelectric and chromomagnetic fields. In $`QCD`$, the chromoelectric field between the probe charges squeezes into a sausage-like configuration, the flux tube. This situation is reminiscent of the Meissner effect in superconductivity. We deal here with chromoelectric flux-tubes, i.e. with a Dual Meissner effect. Confinement is insured by a condensation of magnetic monopoles (not charges), which force the fields to form the flux tubes in the $`QCD`$ vacuum.

Nobody has ever proved this scenario. There are however indications arising from lattice-$`QCD`$ calculations  and from N=2 SUSY Yang Mills  where in the strong coupling regime monopoles have been shown to condense.

### 1.4 Chiral symmetry

In the massless quark limit $`QCD`$ is invariant under $`SU(n_f)SU(n_f)`$ chiral symmetry. This symmetry is however spontaneously broken and for two flavors the pion is the associated Goldstone boson. Microscopically the properties of the vacuum are crucial in describing the realization of chiral symmetry. The Casher-Banks formula,

$$<\overline{q}q>=\pi \rho (\lambda =0)$$
(6)
tells us that the condensate, namely the order parameter for the transition from the unbroken to the spontaneously broken phase, is connected with the density ($`\rho `$) of quark states of small virtuality ($`\lambda `$). It has been shown  that the instantons play an instrumental role in explaining microscopically the realization of chiral symmetry.

### 1.5 Imitating $`QCD`$

The main effort in understanding $`QCD`$ at present, since an exact solution seems non atainable, is into developing its lattice approximation. However this approach is still very primitive in order to produce, without guidance, realistic results. It may serve to support or reject some of the scenarios that may be proposed in view of the data, but as of yet is still far away from being able to predict or explain many of the hadronic properties .

Physicists have turned to other means of understanding the data by approximating the theory. The effective theory approach has been widely used for describing low energy data. In this method one starts from the original action and measure of the theory, integrates out the irrelevant degrees of freedom and using the appropriate matching conditions obtains a different, much more tractable, field theory with the same S-matrix . This procedure has been used with notable precision at high energies. At low energies we are not able to follow strictly the procedure and therefore apply a celebrated, though unproven, theorem by Weinberg , which states that one should write the most general lagrangian, constructed from the accesible degrees of freedom in the domain under consideration, which satisfies the relevant symmetries of the theory. This is the scheme used for Chiral Perturbation Theory , which has been extremely successful in low energy meson physics.

A second procedure has been the use of approximation methods to truncate $`QCD`$. The most relevant examples are $`\frac{1}{N}`$ and $`HQET`$. In this case we proceed in terms of an expansion parameter $`\frac{1}{N}`$, $`N`$ being the number of colors for the former, and $`\frac{1}{M}`$, $`M`$ being the mass of the heavy quark, for the latter. Unluckily we have been only able to develop arguments in the $`\frac{1}{N}`$ case since, despite many efforts, we have not been able to sum the planar graphs for $`QCD`$. $`HQET`$ has been extremely successful in discovering new spin symmetries for the heavy quark sector and describing decays in terms of only a few parameters.

Lastly, people have resorted to use their imagination to produce models, whose relation with the theory is at most qualitative, but which are extremely predictive once they are fully developed. The basic assumption is that one knows the way the theory is realized at low energies, i.e., the vacuum, the Fock states and the dynamics among the constituents. There are many models, which are becoming more detailed following the advances in our microscopic understanding of the properties of the theory.

The subject of my discussion will be the physics associated with models of hadron structure, but before I proceed along these lines let me mention an example of how specific features of the microscopic structure of the theory can motivate explanations for particular phenomena. The instantons building the $`QCD`$ vacuum induce interactions among the quarks which have been shown to be responsible for many observable effects of hadron physics, both in the vacuum and in the nuclear medium .

It has become clear by now that it is hard to make definitive statements about hadrons made up of light quarks (u,d and s), were the nonperturbative structure of the theory is difficult to avoid. Nevertheless the hadron spectrum and the interactions among the hadrons display regularities which, when properly formulated, correlate with simple properties of the fundamental theory. They are best expressed by inventing mechanisms that describe the undisclosed features of the theory.

## 2 Modelling hadron structure

The role of models in $`QCD`$ is to produce simple physical pictures that connect the phenomenological regularities with the underlying structure. Models should be used to guide fundamental calculations and experiments. They are not substitute for the theory and therefore should be closely tied to it and abandoned when they become a divertimento by themselves.

Historically the first models of hadron structure appeared in the sixties right after Gell-Mann and Zweig  introduced the Quarks. Dalitz in his beautiful Les Houches Lectures of 1965 , performed a phenomenological analysis leading to flavor forces of the type

$`U(\overline{q}q)`$ $`=`$ $`U_{p1}(1\stackrel{}{\sigma _1}\stackrel{}{\sigma _2})(1\stackrel{~}{F}_1\stackrel{~}{F}_2)+U_{p8}(1\stackrel{}{\sigma _1}\stackrel{}{\sigma _2})(8+\stackrel{~}{F}_1\stackrel{~}{F}_2)+`$ (7)
$`U_{v1}(3+\stackrel{}{\sigma _1}\stackrel{}{\sigma _2})(1\stackrel{~}{F}_1\stackrel{~}{F}_2)+U_{v8}(3+\stackrel{}{\sigma _1}\stackrel{}{\sigma _2})(8+\stackrel{~}{F}_1\stackrel{~}{F}_2)`$
where $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ arises from the quark spin generators and $`\stackrel{~}{F}`$ from the SU(3) flavor generators. This most general Ansatz produced a beautiful fit, which had to be dropped because no explanation was found to justify the abandonment of the Spin-Statistics theorem. The introduction of color  solved all these problems and led to the formulation of $`QCD`$.

The Quark Model was revisited soon after the introduction of $`QCD`$ by De Rújula, Georgi and Glashow , who developed a scheme to incorporate color to the spectroscopic analysis. Their philosophy has motivated many of the developments thereafter. In particular the Bag Model  relies on a quantum field theoretic description to implement the same philosophy. The aim of these approaches is to define a scheme which incorporates the properties of $`QCD`$ as we next describe.

### 2.1 Confinement

The models contain a mechanism which provides the dynamics to bind quarks (antiquarks) to form color singlet hadrons. These mechanisms are varied: color independent attractive potentials , field boundary conditions providing the confinement of color to a space-time tube , etc.

### 2.2 Asymptotic freedom

Guided by the apparent absence of strong renormalization (higher twist effects) in DIS it was thought that once confinement is implemented a picture of a hadron arises where perturbative $`QCD`$ is qualitatively reliable. Therefore an additional residual interaction between the quarks based on the One Gluon Exchange contribution was introduced. This so called color-magnetic interaction has an operator structure in color space of the form

$$\underset{ij}{}F(r_{ij})\lambda _i\lambda _j\stackrel{}{\sigma _i}\stackrel{}{\sigma _j}$$
(8)
which has been implemented in all approaches and is responsible among other things for the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-Nucleon mass splitting. With the proper simplifications, taking into account the Fock Space of the lowest quark states, it can be reduced to an interaction of flavor type  which reflects the strong flavor dependence explicit in the original parametrization of Dalitz.

Models satisfying these two properties have been extremely successful in explaining a large amount of data . They have been used as low energy descriptions of $`QCD`$, and by means of the Operator Product Expansion, we have been able to study and predict high energy data . The so called proton spin problem can be understood as a transition from constituent quarks to currents quarks, antiquarks and gluons. Moreover it has been shown that the data serve to unveil the Regge structure of the constituent quarks . Moreover they have also been used to speculate about the behavior of hadrons in the nuclear medium .

Despite the many successes of the schemes just described, they all lack an ingredient, namely the realization of a fundamental symmetry of $`QCD`$, i.e. spontaneously broken chiral symmetry. The role of the pseudoscalar mesons as Goldstone boson was not incorporated in these models and the pion is considered a conventional $`\overline{q}q`$ boundstate. This absence implied that all traditional low energy hadron physics, dominated by chiral flavor symmetry, had to appear from confined perturbative $`QCD`$. Although the static properties were well reproduced, except in the pseudoscalar meson sector, whose mass should vanish in the massless quark limit, the attempts to reproduce the long distance properties of the hadronic interaction failed.

### 2.3 Chiral symmetry

Chiral symmetry was implemented initially in the bag model formalism since the field theoretic language was more suitable for the task. Confined perturbative $`QCD`$ was kept in the interior of the bag, while in the outside region an elementary meson field was introduced by means of a non linear sigma model. The dynamics between the quarks and the pions arises naturally from implementing chiral current conservation at the boundary . Soon thereafter attempts were made to implement this scheme into the potential models .

These models are able to reproduce the static properties also with great precision. Moreover the appearence of the Goldstone modes allows them to describe without further ingredients low energy properties associated with chiral symmetry in a straightforward fashion. Let us describe two lines of thought much developed in these days.

#### 2.3.1 The Cheshire Cat Principle

In two dimensions fermion theories are exactly bosonizable. Let us separate space arbitrarily in two regions. The left hand side we describe in terms of a fermion theory, e.g. $`QCD`$ and the right hand side in terms of the equivalent bosonic theory. If the appropriate boundary conditions are defined, by matching both classical current conservation and quantum mechanical anomalies, the Cheshire Cat Principle (CCP) states: the physical properties have to be independent of the position of the boundary . In four dimensions the situation can be best appreciated in a bag picture. Inside the bag we have confined perturbative $`QCD`$ and outside the equivalent bosonic theory, where solitons, i.e., skyrmions, carry the baryon number. The CCP states that the physical observables have to be radius independent . $`QCD`$ in four dimensions is not exactly bosonizable nor it is solvable to any degree of approximation in the quark gluon language, thus the CCP principle can be only approximate. We have used the opposite logic. We have taken the CCP as a quality control check over the approximations involved : only for those values of the radius where there appears an almost radius independence can the approximations be trusted. Monotonic functions of the radius for the observables imply that important contributions are missing. Many observables have been analyzed successfully under this philosophy. It is important to stress that not all the observables require the same approximations. Those observables, where anomalies contribute, like in the spin problem, are very delicate to calculate, because no contribution is dominant and large cancellations among all of them occur .

#### 2.3.2 Chiral quarks

Manohar and Georgi tried to understand the successes of the non-relativistic quark model in terms of effective theories . Their main argument is that the scale associated with confinement $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ ($`100300`$ MeV) is smaller than that associated with chiral symmetry breaking $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\chi SB}`$ ($`1000`$ MeV). Therefore there is a region of momentum where quarks, gluons and pions coexist. Using the effective theory approach they obtain a theory where quarks and gluons interact by means of the conventional color couplings while quarks and pions through a non-linear sigma model. The quark and gluon fields are effective fields, i.e., the latter with a constituent mass obtained from chiral symmetry breaking. By naive dimensional arguments and by properly matching the unknown coupling constants of the theory they get from the hyperfine splitting $`\alpha _s0.3`$ and from $`\pi \pi `$ scattering the chiral scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\chi SB}=4\pi f_\pi `$, where $`f_\pi 93`$ MeV is the pion decay constant. They also show that gluon loops are suppresed as compared to quark and pion loops, a statement which is much dependent on their dimensional arguments and matching scheme.

Let me conclude this section by stating that the implementation of chiral symmetry both in bag model schemes and in effective theories leads to a theory which contains quarks, gluons and Goldstone mesons as the natural degrees of freedom to describe the low energy properties. I will not support therefore any of the sides of the recent Isgur-Glozman debate but conclude that both extremes are unnatural. As shown very clearly in the investigations on the CCP a full quark gluonic theory would imply the consideration of higher order contributions making the calculation impractical, while a full mesonic theory would need ultimately the inclusion of many mesons, not only making the calculation impractical, but filled with parameters to be fitted. In my opinion certain features of the structure of hadrons appear in an extremely simple manner in terms of the chromomagnetic interaction , while others, in particular the long range tale of the nucleon-nucleon interaction are easily described by the pion . A scheme which incorporates both features, like the Chiral Bag Model or the Chiral Quark Model, is most appropriate to develop a model due to its simplicity.

## 3 Applications

I proceed to motivate and review some of the developments surrounding my own research. The investigation aims at testing models of $`QCD`$ in different regimes and circumstances to show what they teach us about the true theory and analyze if they are helpful in predicting new data.

### 3.1 Approximate bosonization

The $`CCP`$ has been tested in many instances with notable success . It has been observed at the level of topological quantities, i.e., baryon charge fractionation  and approximately at the level of non topological observables, i.e., masses, magnetic moments, etc …. The explicit manifestation of the $`CCP`$ in the latter is through some type of minimum sensitivity principle in terms of the bag radius. Moreover the mean value about which observables are not sensitive to the radius corresponds to the confinement scale $`R\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}}`$.

There is one case, the flavor axial singlet charge ($`FSAC`$), were its implementation had not been successful beyond doubt and therefore it has merit our attention . From the phenomenological point of view the $`FSAC`$ is associated with the $`\eta ^{}`$ and therefore with the anomaly . This observable is relevant for what has been referred to as the proton spin problem. In the chiral bag model the formulation is very elaborate. Confinement induces through quantum effects a color anomaly, which leads to a surface coupling of the $`\eta ^{}`$ with the gluon field. The latter induces a gauge non invariant Chern-Simons current, whose expectation value we need to calculate. We have shown that the presence of the surface term generated by the proper matching of the color anomaly with the surface gluon-$`\eta ^{}`$ coupling allows us to obtain for this observable a value close to the data over a wide range of bag radii. The CCP was instrumental in obtaining this agreement .

### 3.2 Chiral quarks

We have seen that in an effective theory approach the light chiral quarks appear if $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\chi SB}>>\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$. In the region between the two scales we have quarks and gluons interacting through the $`SU(3)`$ color interaction. Since $`SU(3)SU(3)`$ global chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken, there must be also an octet of Goldstone bosons which are introduced in the effective theory also as fundamental fields. All other hadrons are obtained as $`qqq`$ or $`\overline{q}q`$ bound sates.

We shall use for effective lagrangian below the chiral scale a linear realization, although non-linear realizations can be immediatly developed, i.e.

$``$ $`=`$ $`i\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i^A(x)\gamma ^\mu (D_\mu )_{AB}\mathrm{\Psi }(x)_i^BM_{ij}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i(x)\mathrm{\Psi }_j(x){\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F^{\mu \nu a}F_{\mu \nu }^a+`$ (9)
$`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i(x)(\sigma \delta _{ij}+i\gamma _5\stackrel{}{\pi }\stackrel{}{\tau }_{ij})\mathrm{\Psi }_j(x)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_\mu \sigma ^\mu \sigma +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_\mu \stackrel{}{\pi }^\mu \stackrel{}{\pi }.`$
This is the fundamental support for many of the chiral quark models. The quarks here are effective quarks and therefore the masses appearing in the lagrangian are constituent masses.

Our aim has been to approach phenomenology from this scheme and we have developed a non-relativistic picture which incorporates besides the confinement potential, the OGEP, the OPEP and the OSEP and with these scheme we have described both the spectra and the $`NN`$ and $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ scattering channels. This most naive approach is very successful.

### 3.3 Constituent quarks and partons

The models we have been discussing in the previous sections have been motivated by mostly static properties and therefore pretend to reflect the non-perturbative aspects of the theory. In what follows we would like to analyze high energy data by using them. The much spoken about success of perturbation theory is a non predictive statement. The renormalization group relates scales and therefore the success is based on experimental circumstances where either the non-perturbative aspects are cancelled between several observations, or data are fed into the theory and the evolution from one scale to another is analyzed. We would like to be predictive with the caveat that we are substituting the true theory by models.

#### 3.3.1 Parton distributions from quark models

The basic idea in this approach arises from rephrasing the OPE which states that,

$$F_i^n(Q^2)=M_{ij}^nF_j^n(Q_0^2),$$
(10)
i.e., the moments of structure functions at one scale are related by means of perturbatively calculable transformation matrices to the same moments at another scale . If $`Q_0^2`$ is taken to be a low scale, what we have labelled hadronic scale, the F functions become highly non perturbative matrix elements in general. We substitute these matrix elements at the hadronic scale by the same matrix elements calculated with a model. In particular we are able to relate the valence quark distribution functions with the momentum distributions in the corresponding baryonic state $`n_q^a`$, i.e. with the hadronic wave functions of the model,

$$xq_V^a(x)=\frac{1}{(1x)^2}d^3pn_q^a(\stackrel{}{p})\delta (\frac{x}{1x}\frac{k_+}{M})$$
(11)
where $`a`$ represents the diverse degrees of freedom (unpolarized, $``$, $``$, $`\mathrm{}`$), $`p_+=p_0p_z`$, $`x`$ is the Bjorken variable and $`M`$ the mass of the baryonic state.

In this way we have studied polarized and unpolarized structure function, transversity distributions and angular momentum distributions with various models . The results of our calculations show that these models, with the parameters fixed by low energy properties are able to provide a qualitative description of the data and therefore become predictive. They are however too naive and new ingredients not seen by the low energy probes have to be incorporated.

#### 3.3.2 Constituent and current quarks

Our basic assumption above has been that gluon and sea bremsstrahlung are the source of difference between the constituents and the current quarks. We have gone beyond that scheme by incorporating some structure to the quarks following the procedure we have called ACMP . Within this approach constituent quarks are effective particles made up of point-like partons (current quarks, antiquarks and gluons), interacting by a residual interaction described by a quark model .The structure of the hadron is obtained by a convolution of the constituent quark model wave function with the constituent quark structure function. For a proton made up of $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks,

$$f(x,\mu _0^2)=_x^1\frac{dz}{z}[u_0(z,\mu _0^2)\mathrm{\Phi }_{uf}(\frac{x}{z},\mu ^0)+d_0(z,\mu _0^2)\mathrm{\Phi }_{df}(\frac{x}{z},\mu ^0)],$$
(12)
where $`\mu _0^2`$ is the hadronic scale, $`f=q_v,q_s,g`$ (valence quarks, sea quarks and gluons respectively) and $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ represents the constituents probability in each quark and has been parametrized following general arguments of $`QCD`$ as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{qf}(x,\mu _0^2)=C_fx^{a_f}(1x)^{A_f1}.$$
(13)
The constants have been fixed by Regge phenomenology and the choice of the hadronic scale ($`\mu _0=0.34`$ GeV<sup>2</sup>). The discussion can be generalized to the polarized structure functions. The procedure is able to reproduce the data extremely well and in this framework the so called spin problem does not arise.

## 4 Concluding remarks

$`QCD`$ has a complex non-perturbative realization which has escaped solution for the past 27 years. The recent progress in calculating directly from the theory has come from the lattice approximation, however these calculations are still primitive, and certainly expensive, if one wants to compare with data. In the meantime effective theories and models should provide lattice $`QCD`$ with well defined scenarios where the theory can be tested.

We have emphasized the relation between models and the properties of the theory. The concept of effective theory has been most instrumental for our developments. Effective theories provide the parameters that one has to calculate from first principles. Models provide the scenarios where new physics may be envisaged.

We have approached the recent controversy, about the most adequate degrees of freedom to describe hadron properties, from the point of view of the $`CCP`$. Our conclusion is that there is a price to pay, namely complexity and lack of predictivity, if one doest not consider gluon degrees of freedom to address scenarios where asymptotic freedom is fundamental in determining the physics. Moreover, there is no way, besides solving $`QCD`$, to describe without pions scenarios where spontaneous broken chiral symmetry dominates the dynamics. Our $`CCP`$ analysis has taught us that models, called generically hybrid, are the most economical way to describe the physics of medium energy.

We have shown that many models, developed to describe low energy physics, if taken as approximate solutions of $`QCD`$ in the hadronic regime, are able to describe, via evolution, properties of the asymptotic regime surprisingly well and moreover be predictive.

## Acknowledgements

I have recalled some of the recent developments from the perspective of my own personal research. Many friends, luckily too many to cite them here, have accompanied me in the voyage. You may find some of them in the reference list. Others were simply too generous to sign my papers. Of all of them I would like to single out a few, because they have strongly motivated my work. Pedro Gónzalez has developed chiral quarks to its present beauty. Mannque Rho has mantained my interest in the $`CCP`$ and has forseen much of its power. Marco Traini has kept my faith in our early discovery: the relation between low energy models and high energy data. Sergio Scopetta has been the driving force behind our recent work in the asymptotic regime, which has confirmed our expectations. Nimai brought me back to naive models and showed me their beauty. I miss him!


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# Connection between the Dielectric and the Ballistic Treatment of Collisional Absorption

## 1 Basic Results

### 1.1 The Ballistic Model

111The model is based on the usage of the Coulomb cross section which is the subject of standard text books. For a detailed discussion of the ensemble averaging and the Coulomb logarithm see ref. .

The momentum loss per unit time along the initial direction of a electron scattered by an ion reads

$$\dot{𝒑}=m_e\nu _{ei}(𝒗)𝒗=\frac{K}{v^3}𝒗,K=\frac{Z^2e^4n_i}{4\pi \epsilon _0^2m_e}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{b_{\mathrm{max}}^2+b_{}^2}{b_{\mathrm{min}}^2+b_{}^2}.$$

This equation defines the collision frequency $`\nu _{ei}(𝒗)`$. The Coulomb logarithm $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ depends on two cut-off lengths $`b_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and $`b_{\mathrm{min}}`$ which describe the dynamical screening of the Coulomb potential and the quantummechanical closing of the singularity at the origin on the scale of a De Broglie wavelength. So we assume

$$b_{\mathrm{max}}=\frac{\sqrt{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}^2/2+v_{\mathrm{th}}^2}}{\mathrm{max}(\omega ,\omega _p)},b_{\mathrm{min}}=\frac{\mathrm{}}{m_e\sqrt{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}^2/2+v_{\mathrm{th}}^2}}.$$

Notice that the collision parameter $`b_{}`$ for perpendicular deflection is an inherent quantity for the Coulomb collision and not a cut-off.
Calculating the ensemble average over an isotropic distribution function, where the Coulomb logarithm is treated as a constant, we could determine the time-dependent collision frequency

$$\nu _{ei}(t)=\frac{K}{m_ev_{\mathrm{os}}^3(t)}_0^{v_{\mathrm{os}}(t)}4\pi v_e^2f(v_e)𝑑v_e.$$

In order to compare this result with the dielectric model, we have to determine the time averaged energy absorption of the plasma in the laser field for a harmonic electron movement. The energy absorption is connected to the time-averaged collision frequency $`\overline{\nu }_{ei}`$ by

$$m_e\overline{\nu _{ei}𝒗_{\mathrm{os}}^2}=m_e\overline{\nu _{ei}}\overline{𝒗_{\mathrm{os}}^2}=2\overline{\nu }_{ei}\overline{E}_{\mathrm{kin}}.$$

Hence, we find for the cycle averaged absorped energy density $`\overline{\dot{}}`$

$$\overline{\dot{}}=2n_e\overline{\nu }_{ei}\overline{E}_{\mathrm{kin}}=Z\omega _p^4m_e\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }\overline{\frac{1}{v_{\mathrm{os}}(t)}_0^{v_{\mathrm{os}}(t)}v_e^2f(v_e)𝑑v_e}.$$
(1)
### 1.2 The Dielectric Model

In many papers about collisional absorption in plasmas the dielectric theory was the starting point, refs. . As this theory is well known we only present the result for the cycle averaged absorped energy density

$$\overline{\dot{}}=\frac{Z\omega _p^4m_e}{\pi ^2\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}_0^{k_{\mathrm{max}}}\frac{dk}{k}F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})$$
(2)
$$F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})=\omega ^2\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}n\mathrm{}\{ϵ_n^1\}_0^{\frac{k\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{\omega v_{\mathrm{th}}}}𝑑xJ_n^2(x)$$
(3)
$$ϵ_n(k,\omega )=1+\frac{1}{k^2}\sqrt{2}\frac{n\omega }{k^3}D\left(\frac{n\omega }{\sqrt{2}k}\right)i\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{2}}\frac{n\omega }{k^3}e^{\frac{n^2\omega ^2}{2k^2}}$$

with

$$D(x)=e^{x^2}_0^xe^{t^2}𝑑t,kk/k_D,k_D=\frac{\omega _p}{v_{\mathrm{th}}},\omega \omega /\omega _p.$$

The upper integral limit $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ in eq. (2) is necessary in the classical case due to the divergence of the integral for large $`k`$. In the quantum case an additional term $`\mathrm{exp}(k^2/8k_\mathrm{B}^2)`$ ($`k_\mathrm{B}`$ De Broglie wavenumber) appears inside the integral of eq. (2), which confirms the assumption that the De Broglie wavelength has to be considered in $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$, refs. .

## 2 The Connection between the Models

When analizing the function $`F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})`$ we get the remarkable equality

$$\underset{k\mathrm{}}{lim}F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})=G(\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})=\pi ^2\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}\overline{\frac{1}{v_{\mathrm{os}}(t)}_0^{v_{\mathrm{os}}(t)}v_e^2f_\mathrm{M}(v_e)𝑑v_e},$$
(4)
which connects eq. (1) and eq. (2) if $`f(v_e)`$ is set Maxwellian, see Fig. 2.

The approximation that the $`k`$-dependence of $`F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})`$ is a theta function leads us to the Coulomb logarithm

$$\underset{0}{\overset{k_{\mathrm{max}}}{}}\frac{dk}{k}F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})G(\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})\mathrm{ln}\frac{k_{\mathrm{max}}}{k_{\mathrm{min}}}=G(\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})\mathrm{ln}\frac{b_{\mathrm{max}}}{b_{\mathrm{min}}}.$$
(5)
The lower cut-off $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$, which is nothing else the inverse screening length, will be determined by comparing the integrals

$$_0^{k_0}𝑑kF(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})=_0^{k_0}𝑑kG(\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})\mathrm{\Theta }(kk_{\mathrm{min}}),$$

where $`k_0`$ is chosen large enough that $`F(k_0,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})`$ and $`G(\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})`$ are equal.
Comparing the dielectric inverse screening length $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and the one introduced in the ballistic model, Fig. 2, we come to a good qualitative agreement. Nervertheless, a quantitative difference appears. It must be kept in mind that we handled the Coulomb logarithm as a constant during the ensemble average and also during the time average, which is not done in the dielectric model. The discrepancy should decrease if we overcome this approximation, which will be the subject of further investigations.

## 3 Conclusions

It was shown in the previous section that there exists a strong connection between the dielectric and the ballistic model. This results from the fact that the integral kernel $`F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})`$, eq. (3), only becomes a function of $`v_{\mathrm{os}}/v_{\mathrm{th}}`$ and agrees with the integral term of eq. (1). When calculating it is essential to include enough orders of Bessel functions for large $`k`$. So, as the integral in eq. (3) runs up to large $`k`$, it is never a good approximation to take only a few orders of Bessel functions, which was done by many authors to get analytical expressions for the absorption. Furthermore, it is much easier to find approximations of the term in eq. (1), ref. , than of the complicated expression eq. (3).
When making the approximation eq. (5) in the dielectric treatment we could see the difference between both models. In case of the dielectric model the collision parameter $`b_{}`$ for perpendicular deflection is missing. This is exactly the term which leads beside the De Broglie wavelength to the convergence of the collision integral for small collision parameters which means large $`k`$ in eq. (2). The disappearance of that length is a consequence of the weak coupling approximation in the dielectric theory, equivalent to the first order Born approximation or straight orbit assumption. We could expect that the integral kernel $`F(k,\omega ,\frac{\widehat{v}_{\mathrm{os}}}{v_{\mathrm{th}}})`$ should show a decay to zero for $`k>b_{}^1`$ when we go beyond the weak coupling approximation, which leads to a reduced absorption. This is in agreement to stopping power calculations, ref. , where the authors found an overestimation of the stopping power in the case of the first order Born approximation in the electron-ion coupling. Including the static shielded T matrix they found good agreement with numerical results.


text:
# Precision Measurements of the ⁷𝐵𝑒(𝑝,𝛾)⁸𝐵 Reaction With Radioactive Beams and the ⁸𝐵 Solar Neutrino Flux 11footnote 1Work Supported by USDOE Grant No. DE-FG02-94ER40870.

## 1 Introduction: The $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ Reaction at Low Energies

The solar neutrino problem  may allow for new break through in our understanding of the standard model . The precise knowledge of the astrophysical $`S_{17}`$-factor of the 7Be(p,$`\gamma `$)8B reaction at the Gamow peak, about 20 keV, is of crucial importance for interpreting terrestrial measurements of the solar neutrino flux . This is particularly true for the interpretation of results from the Homestake, Kamiokande, SuperKamiokande and SNO experiments  which measured high energy solar neutrinos mainly or solely from 8B decay.

Eight direct measurements were reported for the 7Be(p,$`\gamma `$)8B reaction . Since the cross section at $`E_{\mathrm{cm}}`$ 20 keV is too small to be measured, the $`S_{17}`$-factors at low energies have to be extrapolated from the experimental data with the help of theoretical models (see e.g. Johnson et al. , Jennings et al. ). But also in the energy range above $`E_{\mathrm{cm}}`$ 100 keV, where measurements can be performed, experimental difficulties, mainly connected with the determination of the effective target thickness of the radioactive 7Be target, hamper the derivation of accurate results. These difficulties are reflected in the fact that the six precise measurements  can be grouped into two distinct data sets which agree in their energy dependence but disagree in their absolute normalization by about 30%. Since this discrepancy is larger than the error of adopted $`S_{17}`$ in the standard solar model, experimental studies with different methods are highly desirable for improving the reliability of the input to the standard solar model .

In Fig. 1 we show the world data including our new GSI measurement of $`S_{17}`$ . It is clear from this figure that if we are to quote $`S_{17}(0)`$ with an accuracy of $`\pm 5\%`$, many more experiments using different methods are required.

Fig. 1: World data on $`S_{17}`$ as reported by our GSI collabortion .

### 1.1 Extrapolation Procedures

The discrepancy in the measured absolute value of the cross section of the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction is quite possibly best addressed with a $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ radioactive beam and a hydrogen target, allowing for a direct measurement of the beam-target luminosity as we propose to do at LLN. However, additional uncertainty exists in the theoretical extrapolation of the measured cross section to solar energies (approximately 20 keV). A few theoretical studies suggest an extrapolation procedure that is accurate to approximately $`\pm 1\%`$ . Without discussing these rather strong statements we consider a similar situation that haunted Nuclear Astrophysics a few years back– the S-factor of the $`d(d,\gamma )^4He`$ reaction. It was assumed that in this case d-waves dominate and no nuclear structure effects should play a role at very low energy, as low as 100 keV. Much in the same way, it is stated today that s-waves dominate the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction and we do not expect nuclear structure effects to play a role at low energies in the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction. In Fig. 2 we show Fowler’s extrapolated d-wave S-factor that is a mere factor of 32 smaller than measured, due to a small non d-wave component in the d + d interaction . A small nuclear structure effect, namely the d-wave component of the ground state of $`{}_{}{}^{4}He`$, gives rise to a change by a factor of 32 in the predicted astrophysical S-factor. Similarly we may ask whether a small non s-wave component in the low energy interaction of p + $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ could alter the extrapolated $`S_{17}(0)`$ value by considerably more than one percent. A measurement of $`S_{17}(0)`$ with an accuracy of $`\pm 5\%`$ mandates that the cross section be measured at low energies, as low as possible, so as to also test the extrapolation procedures.

Fig. 2: Extrapolation of d-wave S-factor of the $`d(d,\gamma )^4He`$ reaction. Note the presence of small non d-wave components that yield a discrepancy from Fowler’s extracted S-factor by a factor of 32.

## 2 The Coulomb Dissociation of $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ and the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ Reaction at Low Energies

The Coulomb Dissociation (CD)  is a Primakoff  process that could be viewed in first order as the time reverse of the radiative capture reaction. In this case instead of studying for example the fusion of a proton plus a nucleus (A-1), one studies the disintegration of the final nucleus (A) in the Coulomb field, to a proton plus the (A-1) nucleus. The reaction is made possible by the absorption of a virtual photon from the field of a high Z nucleus such as $`{}_{}{}^{208}Pb`$. In this case since $`\pi /k^2`$ for a photon is approximately 1000 times larger than that of a particle beam, the small cross section is enhanced. The large virtual photon flux (typically 100-1000 photons per collision) also gives rise to enhancement of the cross section. Our understanding of the Coulomb dissociation process  allows us to extract the inverse nuclear process even when it is very small. However in Coulomb dissociation since $`\alpha Z`$ approaches unity (unlike the case in electron scattering), higher order Coulomb effects (Coulomb post acceleration) may be non-negligible and they need to be understood . The success of CD experiments  is in fact contingent on understanding such effects and designing the kinematical conditions so as to minimize such effects.

Hence the Coulomb dissociation process has to be measured with great care with kinematical conditions carefully adjusted so as to minimize nuclear interactions (i.e. distance of closest approach considerably larger then 20 fm, or very small forward angles scattering), and measurements must be carried out at high enough energies (many tens of MeV/u) so as to maximize the virtual photon flux.

### 2.1 The RIKENII Results at 50 AMeV

The RIKENII measurement  of detailed angular distributions for the Coulomb dissociation of $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ allowed us to extract the E2 amplitude in the CD of $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$. The same data also allowed us to extract values for $`S_{17}`$ as recently published . The 208Pb target and 8B beam properties in this experiment were as in Ref. , but the detector system covered a large angular range up to around 9 to be sensitive to the E2 amplitude. The E1 and E2 virtual photon fluxes were calculated  using quantum mechanical approach. The nuclear amplitude is evaluated based on the collective form factor where the deformation length is taken to be the same as the Coulomb one. This nuclear contribution results in possible uncertainties in the fitted E2 amplitude. Nevertheless, the present results lead to a very small E2 component at low energies, below 1.5 MeV, of the order of a few percent, even smaller than the low value predicted by Typel and Baur  and considerably below the upper limit on the E2 component extracted by Gai and Bertulani  from the RIKENI data. These low values of the E2 amplitude were however recently challenged by the MSU group  that used interference between E1 and E2 components to observe an asymmetry of the longitudinal-momentum distribution of 7Be . They  claim: $`S_{\mathrm{E2}}`$/$`S_{\mathrm{E1}}=6.7_{1.9}^{+2.8}\times 10^4`$ at 0.63 MeV. These results are considerably larger than reported by Kikuchi et al. , and just below the upper limit reported by Gai and Bertulani . A recent analysis of the RIKENII data  by Bertulni and Gai  confirmed the small E2 extracted by Kikuchi et al.  as well as the negligible nuclear contribution. Note that in this analysis  the acceptance of the RIKENII detector is taken into account using the matrix generated by Kikuchi et al. . Recently a possible mechanism to reduce the E2 dissociation amplitude was proposed by Esbensen and Bertsch .

### 2.2 The GSI Results at 254 A MeV

An experiment to measure the Coulomb dissociation of 8B at a higher energy of 254 $`A`$ MeV was performed at GSI . The present experimental conditions have several advantages: (i) forward focusing allows us to use the magnetic spectrometer KaoS  at GSI for a kinematically complete measurement with high detection efficiency over a wider range of the p-7Be relative energy; (ii) because of the smaller influence of straggling on the experimental resolution at the higher energy, a thicker target can be used for compensating the weaker beam intensity, (iii) effects that obscure the contribution of E1 multipolarity to the Coulomb dissociation like E2 admixtures and higher-order contributions are reduced . The contribution of M1 multipolarity is expected to be enhanced at the higher energy, but this allows to observe the M1 resonance peak and determine its $`\gamma `$ width.

A 8B beam was produced by fragmentation of a 350 $`A`$ MeV 12C beam from the SIS synchrotron at GSI that impinged on a beryllium target with a thickness of 8.01 g/cm2. The beam was isotopically separated by the fragment separator (FRS)  by using an aluminum degrader with a thickness of 1.46 g/cm2 with a wedge angle of 3 mrad. The beam was transported to the standard target-position of the spectrometer KaoS . The average beam energy of 8B in front of the breakup target was 254.5 $`A`$ MeV, a typical 8B intensity was 104 /spill (7s/spill). Beam-particle identification was achieved event by event with the TOF-$`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ method by using a beam-line plastic scintillator with a thickness of 5 mm placed 68 m upstream from the target and a large-area scintillator wall discussed later placed close to the focal plane of KaoS. About 20 % of the beam particles were 7Be, which could however unambiguously be discriminated from breakup 7Be particles by their time of flight.

An enriched 208Pb target with a thickness of 199.7 ($`\pm `$ 0.2) mg/cm2 was placed at the entrance of KaoS. The average energy at the center of the target amounted to 254.0 $`A`$ MeV. The reaction products, 7Be and proton, were analyzed by the spectrometer which has a large momentum acceptance of $`\mathrm{\Delta }p/p50`$ % and an angular acceptance of 140 and 280 mrad in horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. For scattering-angle measurement or track reconstruction of the two reaction products, two pairs of silicon micro-strip detectors were installed at about 14 and 31 cm downstream from the target, respectively, measuring either x- or y-position of the products before entering the KaoS magnets. Each strip detector had a thickness of 300 $`\mu `$m, an active area of 56 $`\times `$ 56 mm2, and a strip pitch of 0.1 mm.

The measured complete kinematics of the breakup products allowed us to reconstruct the p-7Be relative energy and the scattering angle $`\theta _8`$ of the center-of-mass of proton and 7Be (excited 8B) with respect to the incoming beam from the individual momenta and angles of the breakup products.

To evaluate the response of the detector system, Monte-Carlo simulations were performed using the code GEANT. The simulations took into account the measured 8B beam spread in energy, angle, and position at the target, as well as the influence of angular and energy straggling and energy loss in the layers of matter. Losses of the products due to limited detector sizes were also accounted for. Further corrections in the simulation are due to the feeding of the excited state at 429 keV in 7Be. We used the result by Kikuchi et al.  who measured the $`\gamma `$-decay in coincidence with Coulomb dissociation of 8B at 51.9 $`A`$ MeV.

The Monte Carlo simulations yielded relative-energy resolutions from the energy and angular resolutions of the detection system to be 0.11 and 0.22 MeV (1$`\sigma `$) at $`E_{\mathrm{rel}}=0.6`$ and 1.8 MeV, respectively. The total efficiency calculated by the simulation was found to be larger than 50% at $`E_{\mathrm{rel}}=02.5`$ MeV. due to the large acceptance of KaoS.

Fig. 3: (a,b,c) Yields of breakup events plotted against $`\theta _8`$, the scattering angle of the excited 8B, for three relative energy bins. The full histograms show the results of a simulation taking into account the measured angular spread of the incident 8B beam (shown in d) and assuming E1+M1 multipolarity. The dashed histograms show the simulated results for E2 contribution according to the calculations of Bertulani and Gai.

In Fig. 3, the experimental yield is plotted against the scattering angle of the excited 8B for three relative-energy bins, 0.3$``$0.5 (a), 0.5$``$0.7 (b), and 1.0$``$1.2 (c) MeV, together with results of the Monte-Carlo simulations assuming E1 excitation. The M1 transition also contributes to the 0.5$``$0.7 MeV bin with the same angular dependence. Since we did not measure the incident angle of 8B at the target, the experimental angular-distributions represent the $`\theta _8`$ distributions folded with the angular spread of the incident beam shown in Fig. 3d. The angular resolution was estimated to be 0.35 (1$`\sigma `$), smaller than the observed widths. As seen in Fig. 3 the experimental distributions are well reproduced by the simulation using only E1 multipolarity, in line with the results of Kikuchi et al. .

To study our sensitivity to a possible E2 contribution, we have added the simulated E2 angular distribution from the E2 Coulomb dissociation cross section calculated by Bertulani and Gai . Note that nuclear breakup effects are also included in the calculation. By fitting the experimental angular distributions to the simulated ones, we obtained 3$`\sigma `$ upper limits of the ratio of the E2- to E1-transition amplitude of the 7Be(p,$`\gamma `$)8B reaction, $`S_{\mathrm{E2}}`$/$`S_{\mathrm{E1}}`$ of $`0.06\times 10^4`$, $`0.3\times 10^4`$ and $`0.6\times 10^4`$ for $`E_{\mathrm{rel}}=`$ 0.3$``$0.5, 0.5$``$0.7 and 1.0$``$1.2 MeV, respectively. These numbers agree well with the results of Kikuchi et al. , and suggest that the results of the model dependent analysis of Davids et al.  needs to be checked.

### 2.3 Conclusion: The Coulomb Dissociation Method

In conclusion we demonstrated that the Coulomb dissociation (when used with ”sechel”) provides a viable alternative method for measuring small cross section of interest for nuclear-astrophysics. First results on the CD of $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ are consistent with the lower measured values of the cross section and weighted average of all thus far data is: $`S_{17}(0)=19.4\pm 1.3eVb`$, see Table 1. The accuracy of the extracted S-factors are now limited by our very understanding of the Coulomb dissociation process, believed to be approx. $`\pm `$10%. The value of the E2 S-factor as extracted from both the RIKEN and GSI experiments are consistent and shown to be very small, $`S_{E2}/S_{E1}`$ of the order of $`10^5`$ or smaller, see Table 1.

Table 1: Measured S-factors in Coulomb dissociation experiments.

|  | Experiment | $`S_{17}(0)`$ eV-b | $`S_{E2}/S_{E1}`$(0.6 MeV) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |
|  | RIKEN1 | $`16.9\pm 3.2`$ | $`<7\times 10^4`$ |
|  |
|  | RIKEN2 | $`18.9\pm 1.8`$ | $`<4\times 10^5`$ |
|  |
|  | GSI1 | $`20.6\pm 1.2\pm 1.0`$ | $`<3\times 10^5`$ |
|  |
|  | MSU |  | $`6.7+2.81.9\times 10^4`$ |
|  |
|  | ADOPTED | $`19.4\pm 1.3`$ | $`<3\times 10^5`$ |

## 3 The UConn-LLN Experiment With $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ Radioactive Beam

We propose to measure the cross section of the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction with the use of $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ beams produced at Louvain-La-Neuve (LLN) . We intend to perform two experiments, both with $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ beams at Louvain-La-Neuve. The first one is already approved (PH120) with the use of the old cyclotron for three data points measured at 1.0-0.5 MeV. In a second experiment we propose to use the new cyclotron at LLN for additional measurements below 0.5 MeV. It is however clear that a test of the extrapolation procedures, as discussed above, will require yet a third experiment with an implanted $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ and low energy proton beams.

Fig. 4: The Experimental setup of the UConn-LLN Experiment (PH120) to measure the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction with $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ beams .

The experimental detector setup for the LLN experiment is shown in Fig. 4. By measuring the energy of the emerging $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ beam, we ensure that the $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ produced in the middle of the target is stopped at the end of the first aluminum catcher foil. Due to the finite target thickness, the recoil $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ emerge with a (step) distribution of energies with widths approximately 0.7 MeV, and a stopping spread in aluminum of approximately 0.5 $`\mu m`$. Thus the stopped $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ are designed to be equally spread over the two aluminum catcher foils (0.5 $`\mu m`$ each). The beta-delayed alpha-particle emission of $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ will be measured by measuring coincidence between the two back to back equal energy alpha-particles detected in a pair of detectors, see Fig. 4. The large diameter of the central detector (more than twice that of front and back detectors) yield a large coincidence efficiency (better than 98%), as shown by our extensive Monte Carlo simulations. By requiring that the count rates in the front and back pair of detectors are similar we will ensure that the $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ are spread equally on both aluminum foils and thus no $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ escapes the catcher foils and none get stopped in the degrader, yielding nearly 100% collection efficiency.

In the target region, two monitors measure beam intensity by measuring the elastic scattering off a thin Au foil (evaporated onto a very thin carbon backing) and the recoil protons off the target. We plan to measure $`\sigma /\sigma _{Rutherford}`$ for p + $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be`$ with high precision. Thus the cross section of the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction will be measured relative to the elastic scattering, thereby removing several systematic uncertainties related to beam-target composition. The hydrogen component of the target will be continuously monitored by measuring the recoil protons from the target. These measurements will allow us to continuously measure and monitor the beam-target luminosity.

Since two alpha-particles are associated with that decay we expect a very large detection efficiency, approximately 50% of $`2\pi `$. Our extensive Monte carlo simulations yield a large (98%) coincidence efficiency and thus approximately 50% total coincidence efficiency for two equal energy correlated back to back alpha-particles. For a $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ transfer time of 0.07 sec, every 0.5 sec, we obtain a total alpha-particle detection efficiency of approximately 25%. The closed detection geometry (50% of 4$`\pi `$) with a front and back detectors (a-la calorimetry style) also ensures that the total alpha detection efficiency is nearly independent of the exact location of the collection foils, as long as the two foils remain parallel and at constant distance and the recoil $`{}_{}{}^{8}B`$ nuclei are spread equally on both catcher foils.

A beam intensity of $`5\times 10^8/sec`$ and a 250 $`\mu g/cm^2CH_2`$ target ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{cm}=100keV`$) containing $`2\times 10^{19}hydrogens/cm^2`$ yield a luminosity of $`10^{28}/sec/cm^2`$. With expected cross sections of $`\sigma =0.5,0.4`$ and $`0.2\mu b`$, at $`E_{cm}=1.0,0.8`$ and $`0.5`$ MeV, respectively, and alpha-particle detection efficiency of 25%, we obtain count rates of approximately 5, 4, and 2 counts per hour. Thus experiments lasting two to three days at $`E_{cm}=1.0,0.8`$ and $`0.5`$ MeV, respectively, will yield a total count of 240, 192 and 144 counts and statistical uncertainties of 6.4%, 7.2% and 8.3%, respectively. With approved 9 days of experiment we plan to adjust the length of runs to achieve 5% precision at each data point.

## 4 Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the work of N. Iwasa, T. Kikuchi, K. Suemmerer, F. Boue and P. Senger on the data analyses of the CD data and Ralph H. France III and James E. McDonald on the data analysis of the $`{}_{}{}^{7}Be(p,\gamma )^8B`$ reaction. I also acknowledge discussions and encouragements from Professors J.N. Bahcall, C.A. Bertulani, G. Baur, and Th. Delbar.


text:
# A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449

## 1 Introduction

Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at both optical (Phillips et al., 1996; Matthews et al., 1999) and near-infrared (NIR, Carollo, Stiavelli, & Mack, 1998; Böker et al., 1999a) wavelengths have revealed that a compact, photometrically distinct star cluster is often present in the center of spiral galaxies of all Hubble types. The formation mechanism of such clusters is puzzling, especially in late-type spirals which by definition do not possess a prominent bulge. In these cases, the gravitational potential is very shallow, and it is far from obvious how the gas could fall all the way to the center to form a dense star cluster.

In this paper, we describe the results of a pilot program to investigate the processes of nuclear cluster formation. More specifically, we have performed 1-2 Å resolution optical Echellette spectroscopy of the nucleus of NGC 4449, which is part of a small sample of galaxies with prominent nuclear star clusters that were identified from a recent NIR survey with HST (Böker et al., 1999a). The morphological classification of NGC 4449 has been the subject of some confusion. It was originally classified as Irr by Hubble (1936) and Sandage (1961), but it is listed as Sm in Sandage & Tamman (1981). As van den Bergh (1995) points out, the presence of a stellar nucleus might be a useful criterion to distinguish between the two classes, since Irregulars usually do not have a well-defined nucleus - in contrast to late-type spirals, as discussed above. The extent, morphology, and dynamics of its H I gas suggest that NGC 4449 has undergone some interaction in the past, a fact that might well account for its unusually high star formation activity (Hunter, van Woerden & Gallagher, 1999). It also has a prominent stellar bar which covers a large fraction of the optically visible galaxy. Both the nuclear cluster and the stellar bar are evident in Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449, which shows a ground-based R-band image by Frei et al. (1996).

The fact that the nucleus of NGC 4449 is also prominently seen in the far ultraviolet (FUV) (Hill et al., 1998) and in various emission lines (Sabbadin et al., 1984; Mayya, 1994; Hill et al., 1998; Böker et al., 1999a) indicates that it is the site of ongoing star formation. NGC 4449 is somewhat unusual in this regard, since emission-line surveys have shown that the nuclei of late-type galaxies often are devoid of ionized gas (e.g. Böker et al., 1999a). It appears that NGC 4449 is one of the few late-type spirals that is “caught in the act” of ongoing star formation in its nucleus.

NGC 4449 was chosen for a case study because of its high cluster-to-disk contrast which allows us to isolate the light of the nuclear cluster from the underlying galaxy. From the disk-subtracted cluster spectrum, we derive the equivalent width (EW) of a number of stellar absorption features. We then use stellar population synthesis methods to constrain the star formation history of the nuclear cluster and to determine the age of its dominant stellar population. In § 2, we describe our observations and the data reduction methods. Section 3 describes the quantitative analysis of a number of emission lines and stellar absorption features, as well as our spectral synthesis efforts. From the results of these various diagnostic tools, we deduce an age of about $`610\mathrm{Myr}`$ for the nuclear cluster. In § 4, we discuss our results and compare them to a recent study by Gelatt, Hunter, & Gallagher (2001) which confirms our age estimate from a complementary dataset. We also briefly discuss suggested mechanisms of nuclear cluster formation and their possible impact on the evolution of the host galaxy.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

The data described here were taken in April 1999 at the Steward Observatory $`90^{\prime \prime }`$ Bok reflector. We used the Boller & Chivens spectrograph in Echellette mode with a $`2^{\prime \prime }`$-wide slit to obtain spectra with 1-2 Å resolution covering the range $`36009000`$Å. The average seeing over the observation was $`2.5^{\prime \prime }`$.

Following Willmarth & Barnes (1994), we used standard IRAF111IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomical Observatories, which are operated by AURA, Inc. under contract to the NSF. routines in the LONGSLIT and ECHELLE packages to perform the following data reduction steps. After the data frames were bias-subtracted and trimmed using the CCDPROC routine, we corrected for bad pixels. We obtained a bad pixel mask by ratioing two domeflat exposures with different integration times, and replaced the bad pixels with a median filter. A second pass through CCDPROC then flatfielded the data using a median-combined set of domeflat exposures.

We obtained three 30 minute exposures of NGC 4449 which were median-combined after verifying that the brightness profile was properly centered on the slit for all three exposures. Using the APALL task, we then extracted the multi-order spectrum of the galaxy over 12 subapertures of $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ each, thus retaining the spatial information. Spectra of the standard star Hiltner 600 were extracted with the DOECSLIT task and used to measure the Echelette sensitivity function, based on spectrophotometry published by Massey et al. (1988). Also within DOECSLIT, we determined the dispersion correction from spectra of a Helium-Argon lamp. Both flux and wavelength calibration were then applied to the galaxy spectrum, before we used SCOMBINE to combine all orders into one two-dimensional spectrum covering the full wavelength range.

Finally, we averaged the central $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ into a one-dimensional spectrum of the nucleus, as well as two stripes of $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ width each, located $`3.5^{\prime \prime }`$ on either side of the nucleus. Subtracting the two resulting 1-d spectra from each other eliminates the sky emission lines and isolates the light of the nuclear star cluster from the underlying galaxy disk. The simple linear interpolation of the underlying disk is likely to leave a small residual contribution to the spectrum of the nuclear cluster. Higher order interpolation clearly is desirable, but proved unfeasible over the full wavelength range of the spectrum. However, for limited wavelength ranges, we verified that the results of our analysis are robust against such variations in the methodology of the background subtraction. We conclude that the errors introduced by the imperfect interpolation of the galaxy surface brightness profile are small.

As the result of the described data reduction process, the flux- and wavelength-calibrated spectrum between 3600 and 9000 Å of the central $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ of NGC 4449 is shown in Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449. The red end of the spectrum is subject to some residual fringing with peak-to-peak amplitudes smaller than 10% of the continuum. This slightly affects the uncertainty of the the continuum level for measurement of the Ca triplet absorption lines (see § 3.1.2). The large residuals near 7580 Å are due to imperfect correction of telluric oxygen absorption (“A-band”), as are smaller residuals at 6280 Å and 6860 Å.

## 3 Results

### 3.1  Stellar Absorption Features

In order to measure the equivalent width (EW) of various stellar absorption features, we rectified and normalized the spectrum. The line and continuum windows that we used for continuum fitting and EW measurement are defined in González Delgado, Leitherer & Heckman (1999) for the Balmer and HeI series, and in Díaz, Terlevich & Terlevich (1989) for the CaII triplet (CaT) around 8500 Å. They are listed in Table 3.1, together with all measured EWs. Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449 shows the rectified spectrum over two exemplary regions which contain some higher order Balmer lines and the CaT, respectively. The analysis of the Balmer absorption is complicated by the presence of emission lines. We took the following approach to subtract the line emission before measuring the EW of the absorption features. We iteratively subtracted Gaussian components (typically one or two) until the resulting “pure” absorption spectrum of each Balmer line could be well fitted by a Voigt-profile. Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449 demonstrates the process. The sum of the fitted Gauss components then yields the emission line fluxes for the Balmer series. Fitting synthesized spectra of stellar populations as described in § 3.2 yields an alternative approach. After subtraction of the best fitting model spectrum, the residuals contain only the line emission. The line fluxes derived with both methods are consistent. We conservatively estimate the uncertainty in the derived EWs of the Balmer absorption to be 10%. In what follows, we compare the measured EWs to evolutionary synthesis models.

#### 3.1.1 Balmer absorption

In Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449, we compare our measurements to evolutionary synthesis models of González Delgado et al. (1999). Each panel contains the time evolution of the EW of a specific absorption feature. The grey horizontal bar denotes the respective measured EW, the width of the bar indicates the uncertainty of 10%. The crossing point of the bar with the model yields a solution for the cluster age. All features yield an age of $`610\mathrm{Myr}`$ for the dominant stellar population in the nuclear cluster of NGC 4449. This result is rather independent of the detailed IMF or the star formation mode (continuous or instantaneous). For all reasonable models, the rise in the Balmer EW occurs at about the same time, so that the crossing point of the measurements with the model curve is robust to within a few million years. A theoretical second solution, namely an extremely old cluster with an age around 10 Gyr is ruled out from the evidence that follows.

#### 3.1.2 Calcium triplet

Because the CaT absorption is produced in cooler and more evolved stars than the Balmer series, it provides an independent age estimator. In Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449b, we show the spectral region comprising the CaII triplet around 8500 Å which also contains the line and continuum windows used for our analysis. These are also listed in Table 3.1 and are identical to those used by García-Vargas, Mollá & Bressan (1998) to derive theoretical EWs of the CaT from evolutionary synthesis models.

We compare the EW sum of the two strongest features ($`\lambda `$8542 and $`\lambda `$8662) as measured from our data to the García-Vargas et al. (1998) models (their grid I) in Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449. The horizontal line again denotes the measured EW of the CaT and the shaded region its estimated uncertainty which is dominated by the uncertainty in the continuum level due to residual fringing on the red end of the spectrum. Despite the conservative error estimate, the very deep CaT absorption in the nuclear cluster of NGC 4449 unambiguously confirms a young cluster age between 5 and $`20\mathrm{Myr}`$.

Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449 also seems to indicate a high metallicity of at least solar value. However, we caution that the low-metallicity stellar evolutionary tracks used in the population synthesis models have been shown to systematically underpredict the red supergiant (RSG) features (Origlia et al., 1999). This is a longstanding problem that also manifests itself in the inability of current models to reproduce the observed blue-to-red supergiant ratio in galaxies (e.g. Langer & Maeder, 1995). As a consequence, the predicted CaT EW for low-metallicity RSG populations falls significantly below the observed values in, e.g., young clusters in the LMC (Bica, Santos, & Alloin, 1990). For individual stars, the CaT EW exceeds 9 Åonly in red supergiants (Díaz et al., 1989). Certainly, any single-age population of stars that has a CaT EW as high as the nuclear cluster of NGC 4449 has to contain red supergiants with ages between 5 and $`20\mathrm{Myr}`$, irrespective of its metallicity. In summary, Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449 confirms a young cluster age, but does not provide a reliable way to constrain its metallicity. In § 3.3.2, we will explore alternative methods to derive the metallicity based on nebular emission lines.

### 3.2 Spectral modeling

As an additional test of the above results we have compared the spectrum of the nuclear cluster in NGC 4449 to spectral models, using the entire available wavelength range. For this we first created model spectra of simple stellar populations (SSPs), i.e. populations that form in instantaneous, short-lived starbursts. Models were calculated for ages on a logarithmically spaced grid with a spacing of $`0.5`$ dex. We used the 1996 version of the Bruzual & Charlot (1993) models, which assume a Salpeter (1955) IMF between 0.1 and $`125\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and solar metallicity. The observed spectrum is then modeled as a linear superposition of these SSPs, which essentially allows an arbitrary star formation history (approximated as a weighted sum of delta functions). We find the weights that optimize the fit to the data, allowing also for a redshift due to the systemic velocity of the galaxy. The $`\chi ^2`$ fit was performed with the software of Rix & White (1992), developed originally for the analysis of galaxy kinematics.

The best fit to the observed spectrum was obtained with a model that has the large majority of its light ($`>90`$%) in the SSP of age $`10^7`$ years. The data-model comparison is shown in Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449. The overall shape of the spectrum as well as the depth of the Balmer absorption features are well reproduced. However, the Ca II feature at 3934 Å, as well as some other metal lines, are significantly underestimated in the fit. This discrepancy is possibly due to a metallicity mismatch. We used template spectra with solar abundances for the modeling because we did not have lower metallicity tracks with sufficient spectral resolution available. However, as we will show in § 3.3.2, the nuclear cluster in NGC 4449 does actually have subsolar metallicity. Nonetheless, the shape of the $`4000`$Å break and the depth of the Balmer series absorption features depends only slightly on metallicity, so that the quality of the fit should yield a good age estimate despite the non-perfect choice of metallicity. We conclude that the spectral modeling confirms the results of our previous analysis that the nuclear cluster in NGC 4449 is young.

### 3.3 Emission lines

As can be seen from Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449, the spectrum of the nuclear star cluster of NGC 4449 – after subtraction of the circum-nuclear light – contains a number of strong emission lines. After subtracting the continuum fit described in § 3.2, we measured the fluxes of all significant emission lines (except H9 and H10) using SPECFIT as implemented in IRAF (Kriss, 1994). The residual spectrum was subdivided into three segments and a fit with $`\chi ^2`$ optimization was performed, assuming a linear fit to any residual continuum and Gaussian profiles in a common velocity frame for the emission lines. The fluxes of H9 and H10 were measured as described in § 3.1 to more accurately correct for the underlying absorption. The resulting fluxes on an absolute scale and relative to H$`\beta `$ are listed in Table 3.3, along with their 1-$`\sigma `$ uncertainties.

#### 3.3.1 Extinction

Extinction of the nebular emission can be quantified from reddening of the spectrum as indicated by the Balmer emission line ratios. For the intrinsic relative line strengths, we employed predictions from Hummer & Storey (1987) assuming Case B recombination in a $`10^4`$ K gas with $`n_e=100`$ cm-3 (e.g., $`\mathrm{H}\alpha /\mathrm{H}\beta `$ = 2.86). The electron density can be constrained from the ratios of \[O II\] $`\lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3729}/\lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3726}=1.38\pm 0.02`$ and \[S II\] $`\lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6716}/\lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6731}=1.29\pm 0.05`$, both of which suggest $`n_e100`$ cm-3 (e.g. Osterbrock, 1989). For the extinction analysis, we employed the reddening law from Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis (1989) with $`R_V=3.1`$. The measured Balmer emission fluxes ratioed to $`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ then imply extinction values of $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}=`$(1.1, 0.85, 1.4, 1.8, 0.47, 2.6) mag for ($`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$, $`\mathrm{H}\gamma `$, $`\mathrm{H}\delta `$, $`\mathrm{H}ϵ`$, H8, H9). The measured flux for H8 is almost certainly contaminated by emission in He I $`\lambda `$3890, which would account for the low value of $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ suggested by this line. The other features show a general trend of increasing $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ with higher-order Balmer lines, which is probably an indication that the line fluxes are still slightly underestimated due to stellar absorption. We ultimately adopted an extinction value of $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}=1.1`$ mag based on the $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$/$`\mathrm{H}\beta `$ ratio, since among the Balmer lines these features have the highest signal-to-noise ratio and are expected to suffer the least from underlying absorption. The majority of this extinction is evidently intrinsic to NGC 4449, since the foreground Galactic extinction is only 0.06 mag (Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis, 1998). The $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ adopted here is about one magnitude higher than the value derived by Ho, Filippenko & Sargent (1997) using the same intrinsic line ratio. On the other hand, Ho et al. (1997) removed the stellar continuum by subtracting generic template spectra in order to measure the emission-line strengths. The difference of about 30% in the measured line ratio needed to reconcile the two measurements can probably be explained by any one or a combination of the following reasons: a slight mismatch of the continuum template in the Ho et al. (1997) analysis, the fact that they used a somewhat larger aperture, or differences in spectral resolution (which affect the ability to separate the emission core from the absorption trough).

#### 3.3.2 Metallicity

The relative line fluxes can be used to obtain an independant estimate for the metallicity in the nucleus of NGC 4449. The “bright-line” method originally proposed by Pagel et al. (1979) makes use of the quantity

$$\mathrm{R}_{23}(\mathrm{I}_{3727}+\mathrm{I}_{4959}+\mathrm{I}_{5007})/\mathrm{H}_\beta $$
(1)
as a measure of metallicity. For the NGC 4449 nucleus, the reddening-corrected line fluxes imply $`\mathrm{R}_{23}=8.2\pm 0.2`$. A recent analysis illustrating the available calibrations of $`\mathrm{R}_{23}`$ is provided by Kobulnicky, Kennicutt, & Pizagno (1999). Their Figure 8 indicates that our measured value of $`\mathrm{R}_{23}`$ falls at or near the turnaround point between the low- and high-metallicity branches for this diagnostic; this result implies 12 + log(O/H) $`8.38.4`$, or about one fourth of the solar value (12 + log(O/H) = 8.9). This abundance for the nucleus is in good agreement with the average value for the disk of NGC 4449 of 8.32 reported by Lisenfeld & Ferrara (1998). Abundances can be inferred directly if diagnostics of the nebular electron temperature are available. Table 3.3 lists a detection of the auroral \[O III\] $`\lambda `$4363 line, which in combination with \[O III\]$`\lambda \lambda `$4959, 5007 can be used for this purpose. We used the dereddened measurements to calculate the O/H abundance using the methods described in Oey & Shields (2000). The large error bar on the \[O III\] $`\lambda `$4363 flux translates into substantial uncertainties in the derived quantities, with a resulting temperature of $`16700\pm 3500`$ K and 12 + log(O/H) = $`7.8\pm 0.3`$. The latter abundance is consistent at the 2$`\sigma `$ level with the result based on the $`\mathrm{R}_{23}`$ diagnostic.

### 3.4 Mass and color of the nuclear cluster

Assuming a cluster age of $`10\mathrm{Myr}`$, a simple estimate of the cluster mass can be obtained from its V-band luminosity. Our flux-calibrated spectrum after subtraction of the underlying galaxy light (Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449) yields $`\mathrm{F}_{550\mathrm{nm}}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3.5}\times 10^{15}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{\AA }^1`$, or $`m_V=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}15.0}`$. This value can be compared to evolutionary synthesis models for single-age populations such as those in the Starburst99 package (Leitherer et al., 1999). For a Salpeter IMF with $`m_{low}=1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`m_{up}=100\mathrm{M}_{}`$, the observed cluster luminosity requires a mass of about $`4\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (after correction for $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}=1.1`$, for a distance222derived by assuming that NGC 4449 follows the Hubble flow with $`\mathrm{H}_0=65\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ to NGC 4449 of $`3.9\mathrm{Mpc}`$ and an age of $`10\mathrm{Myr}`$). This cluster mass should represent a lower limit for two reasons. First, the distance to NGC 4449 is rather uncertain and has been estimated as high as $`5.4\mathrm{Mpc}`$ (Kraan-Korteweg & Tamman, 1979). In addition, the IMF likely has a lower mass cutoff below the assumed $`1\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Adding low-mass stars does not change the cluster luminosity much, but significantly increases the total mass.

As an additional check of our results, we have measured the color of the nuclear cluster. The $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})`$ color of the spectrum in Figure A Young Stellar Cluster in the Nucleus of NGC 4449 is $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})=1.1`$. Correcting for an extinction of $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}=1.1`$ as derived from the nebular emission lines (§ 3.3.1), the intrinsic color of the stellar population is $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})=0.6`$. This value is most likely a lower limit, since at UV- and optical wavelengths, the stellar continuum is usually less reddened than the nebular emission lines (Calzetti, 1997). Comparison with the Leitherer et al. (1999) models shows that a color of $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})0.6`$ is entirely consistent with a $`610\mathrm{Myr}`$ old population.

The mass in the nuclear cluster implied by the stellar continuum can be compared with that inferred from the nebular flux. The extinction-corrected H$`\beta `$ flux of $`8.9\times 10^{14}`$ ergs s-1 cm-2 corresponds to a total H$`\beta `$ luminosity of $`1.6\times 10^{38}`$ ergs s-1. For Case B recombination (§ 3.3.1), this luminosity requires that hydrogen-ionizing photons be produced and absorbed at a rate of $`Q(\mathrm{H})=3.4\times 10^{50}`$ s-1 within the H II region. Comparison to the Starburst99 models shows that this is entirely consistent with a $`10\mathrm{Myr}`$ old cluster with a mass of $`4\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and a metallicity of about one fourth of the solar value.

The dereddened He I $`\lambda `$5876/H$`\beta `$ ratio of $`0.10\pm 0.01`$ can be compared with the Case B prediction (Benjamin et al., 1999) of 0.14($`\frac{\mathrm{He}^+/\mathrm{H}^+}{0.1}`$), where $`\mathrm{He}^+/\mathrm{H}^+`$ is the ionic abundance ratio. The fact that the observed line ratio is close to the prediction implies that most of the helium within the nuclear H II region is singly ionized. This condition sets a strong limit on the age of the cluster, since relatively hot stars are required to maintain the helium ionization. The production rate of helium-ionizing photons implied by the extinction-corrected He I $`\lambda `$5876 flux is $`2.6\times 10^{49}`$ s-1. For the above cluster parameters, this luminosity is consistent with the Starburst99 prediction at an age of $`7\mathrm{Myr}`$.

## 4 Discussion and outlook

The results of this study imply that NGC 4449 can be added to a growing list of late-type spiral galaxies that host a compact, young star cluster in their nucleus. While accurate spectroscopy - and hence a reliable age estimate - of nuclear clusters is available for only a few objects such as the Milky Way (Krabbe et al., 1995), NGC 7793 (Shields & Filippenko, 1992), and IC 342 (Böker, van der Marel & Vacca, 1999b), photometric measurements show that many clusters are fairly blue, e.g. those in M 31, M 33, NGC 4242, or ESO 359-029 (Lauer et al., 1998; Matthews et al., 1999). This indicates the existence of a young ($`100\mathrm{Myr}`$) stellar population in many of these nuclei.

From an HST survey of intermediate-type spirals, Carollo et al. (1998) find that virtually all galaxies with exponential bulges (i.e. bulges with an exponential surface brightness profile, as opposed to “power-law” or “$`R^{1/4}`$” bulges) host compact nuclear clusters and that their luminosity correlates with that of the host galaxy. If one assumes that the mass-to-light ratio of the host galaxies as a whole is roughly the same for all objects, the most straightforward interpretation of this result is that more massive galaxies have more massive nuclear clusters. On the other hand, stellar populations fade with time (e.g. Bruzual & Charlot, 1993). Another possible interpretation therefore is that more massive galaxies host younger clusters. This intrinsic degeneracy makes age dating of nuclear clusters from photometric data alone impossible. Spectroscopic analysis is needed to investigate the age distribution of nuclear clusters and to decide whether their formation is a one time event or not. If nuclear clusters indeed form recurrently, the formation processes likely impact the morphological evolution of the host galaxy.

Of particular interest in this context is a model suggested by Friedli & Benz (1993) and developed further by Norman, Sellwood & Hasan (1996). These authors point out that build-up of a central mass concentration - e.g. a nuclear star cluster - can dissolve stellar bars, and lead to the formation of a bulge via collective bending instabilities (Raha et al., 1991; Merritt & Sellwood, 1994). The Norman et al. (1996) simulations show that only 5% of the combined disk and bar mass in a central concentration is sufficient to destroy a stellar bar on short timescales, leading to a bulge-like distribution of stars. In this scenario, repeated cycles of bar formation — gas infall — cluster formation — bar disruption will build the galaxy bulge over time. If true, the Hubble classification scheme could be naturally explained as an evolutionary sequence from late to early Hubble types.

In the case of NGC 4449, the cluster mass of (at least) $`4\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ derived in § 3.4 would be sufficient to destroy a bar with a mass up to $`10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$. The unusually prominent stellar bar in NGC 4449, which covers a large part of the optically visible galaxy, is probably much more massive than this value. This can be seen from the total luminosity of NGC 4449, which is listed in the RC3 (de Vaucouleurs et al., 1991) as $`\mathrm{V}_\mathrm{T}^0=9.53`$, which corresponds to $`\mathrm{L}_\mathrm{V}2\times 10^9\mathrm{L}_{,\mathrm{V}}`$. Since the optical image is dominated by the stellar bar, and typical mass-to-light ratios are of order unity, the bar mass should be $`10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$. The fact that it co-exists with the nuclear cluster is therefore not inconsistent with the Norman et al. (1996) scenario.

However, as pointed out before, NGC 4449 is a special case because of its unusually high overall star formation rate and its complex history with evidence for past interactions. The complex gas flows produced by a past merger might well explain why – different from most other late-type spirals (e.g. Böker et al., 1999a) – the nucleus of NGC 4449 contains large amount of ionized gas. Furthermore, there is no indication of an underlying older population of stars in the nuclear cluster of NGC 4449, as is the case, e.g., in the Milky Way. We point out, however, that for external galaxies where individual stars cannot be resolved, it is difficult to detect an old stellar population underlying a young starburst because the latter is dominating the luminosity (assuming similar masses for both bursts). It is somewhat unclear at this point whether the processes that govern the star formation in the nucleus of NGC 4449 are similar to those in “typical” late-type spirals, or whether NGC 4449 is an entirely different “special” case.

After the present paper had been finished, another study of the nuclear cluster in NGC 4449 appeared in the literature (Gelatt et al., 2001). Using ground-based spectroscopy of the $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(2,0)`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(3,1)`$ absorption features around $`2.3\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and UVI colors from HST imaging, these authors derived a cluster age between 8 and $`15\mathrm{Myr}`$, in good agreement with our estimate of $`610\mathrm{Myr}`$. Assuming a somewhat lower extinction to the NGC 4449 nucleus than derived by us from the Balmer decrement (§ 3.3.1), Gelatt et al. conclude that the color of the nuclear cluster is better matched by evolutionary tracks with a metallicity of Z=0.008, somewhat higher than the average over the NGC 4449 disk. However, increasing the extinction by one magnitude (roughly the difference between our extinction and theirs) would easily move the location of the nuclear cluster in their Figure 3 within the range of the lower metallicity tracks. After accounting for the different extinction estimates, the derived V-I color of the nuclear cluster differs by about 0.2 magnitudes in the two studies. This could be the result of the somewhat different aperture sizes used to extract the cluster light ($`1.4^{\prime \prime }`$ for Gelatt et al. compared to $`2.0^{\prime \prime }`$ for our study). Either way, both papers come to very similar conclusions on the age of the nuclear cluster in NGC 4449, with complementary methods.

This study is part of a larger observational program that contains three independent, but related approaches. First, we will use the WFPC2 onboard the Hubble Space Telescope during Cycle 10 to measure the structural properties of all nuclear clusters found in a large sample of nearby, face-on spiral galaxies of late Hubble type. We will then measure the stellar velocity dispersion in the brightest nuclei found in order to derive the cluster mass, as recently demonstrated for the example of IC 342 (Böker et al., 1999b). Finally, we hope to obtain optical spectra with HST/STIS to derive the stellar population and to constrain the formation history of individual nuclear clusters in much the same way as described in this paper. We aim to study a large number of nuclear clusters to allow a statistical analysis of their properties and dependence on the Hubble type of the host galaxy. Since ground-based observations are possible only for the brightest nuclear clusters, they are likely biased towards the young end of their age distribution. The goal of our study is to eliminate this bias. Measuring the true age distribution of nuclear star clusters will allow us to answer the question whether repeated nuclear starbursts are indeed common in late-type spirals, and, if so, what their duty cycle is.

## 5 Summary

We have presented a new, high-quality spectrum of the nuclear star cluster of NGC 4449 which covers the region between 3700 and 9000 Å. Analysis of a variety of stellar absorption features leads to the conclusion that the nucleus of NGC 4449 has undergone a short-lived starburst about $`610\mathrm{Myr}`$ ago. We do not find evidence for significant metal enrichment due to multiple previous periods of star formation in the nucleus of NGC 4449.

We thank the anonymous referee for useful comments that helped to improve the presentation of this paper.