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# The new sample of Giant radio sources: I. Radio imaging, optical identification and spectroscopy of selected candidates

## 1 Introduction

Giant double radio sources with a projected linear extent $`D1`$ Mpc (if $`\mathrm{\Omega }_o=1`$ and $`H_o=50`$ km s-1Mpc-1 which we use hereafter) are the largest objects in the Universe. Since the existing models of the radio source evolution (e.g. Kaiser et al. 1997; Kaiser & Alexander 1999; Blundell et al. 1999) predict that classical double sources grow in size with increasing age, these giants must represent a very late phase of the evolution of radio sources. In the analytical model of Kaiser et al. (1997), the range of luminosities and the largest linear sizes are limited mostly by the jet powers and the different processes of energy loss. The importance of adiabatic, synchrotron, and inverse Compton losses in reducing the source luminosity at large life time is so significant that the largest sources should have very low luminosity, especially at high observing frequencies. Blundell et al. argue that the samples of FRII sources are strongly affected by the effect of ”youth–redshift degeneracy” causing the old sources are barely observed at high redshifts.

A natural consequence of these predictions is that the majority of giants have to be very old. On the other hand, it is not clear under what circumstances radio sources can live long enough to reach Mpc-sizes, and what fraction of their population can do that. One possibility is that the extreme sizes of some sources are related to their surrounding intergalactic medium. Mack et al. (1998), after the spectral ageing analysis of 5 giant radio galaxies, found evidence that those giants are so large because of their low-density environments and not because of higher ages. Kaiser & Alexander suggested that a few giant sources in the LRL sample (Laing et al. 1983) may ”constitute a class of objects intrinsically different from the rest of the sample”.

It has to be emphasized that all these studies were based on an inhomogenous collection of currently known giant sources. An ambitious project to select a uniform and large sample of giant radio sources appropriate for an extensive study of their population, has been undertaken at Leiden Observatory (e.g. Schoenmakers et al. 1998). The sample of 33 candidate sources, selected from the WENSS 325-MHz survey in the sky area of about 2.5 sr (Rengelink et al. 1997), has been studied by Schoenmakers (1999). These sources supplement a sample of 19 Giants already known in the same sky area. However, in our contribution during IAU Symposium No. 199 on the population modelling of giant FRII-type sources, we have presented evidence that only a very small fraction of expected faint giants (with 1.4 GHz flux density less than 0.5 Jy) has already been detected. In order to find the missing giant sources we have selected another sample of faint candidates for which further radio and optical observations have been done.

In this paper, the first results of (i) the radio imaging with the main effort to detect a compact radio core in those giant candidates whose cores were not detected yet, (ii) the follow-up optical identifications, and (iii) the optical spectroscopy of identified optical counterparts (with the one exception - only galaxies) are presented. In Sect. 2, the selection criteria and the list of candidates are given. The new radio observations are described in Sect. 3. The optical identification, and the deep optical imaging for those candidates whose optical counterpart is not visible on the POSS plates, are gived in Sect. 4. Finally, the optical spectroscopy of the identified galaxies bright enough that their spectrum could be taken with a medium-size telescope are presented in Sect. 5.

Basic physical parameters have been derived for the sample sources with spectroscopic redshift including their radio and optical luminosity, projected linear size, equipartition magnetic field and energy density. A photometric redshift and size estimates are provided for a few host galaxies identified in the deep optical images and for which a crude apparent $`R`$-band magnitude has been determined. These results are summarized in Sect. 6.

## 2 Selection criteria

We decided to select our candidates from the 1.4-GHz sky surveys: NVSS (Condon et al. 1998) and the first part of FIRST (Becker et al. 1995). These surveys, which provide radio maps made with two different angular resolutions ($`45\mathrm{}`$ and $`5\mathrm{}`$, respectively) at the same observing frequency, allowed (i) an effective removal of confusing sources, (ii) a reliable determination of its morphological type, and (iii) a determination of the compact core component necessary for the proper identification of the source with its host optical object. From the population modelling (cf. Introduction) we expected that most missing giants should be below a redshift of about 0.4. At $`z0.4`$, a source with a linear size of 1 Mpc will have an angular size of 2.6 arc min. Therefore, we have chosen the following selection criteria:

The radio source

(1) lies within the sky area of 0.47 sr limited by $`07^\mathrm{h}20^\mathrm{m}<\mathrm{R}.\mathrm{A}.(\mathrm{J2000})<17^\mathrm{h}30^\mathrm{m}`$ and $`+28\stackrel{}{.}5<\mathrm{Decl}.(\mathrm{J2000})<+41\stackrel{}{.}0`$,

(2) has a morphological type (suggested from the NVSS and FIRST radio maps, Fanaroff-Riley (1974)) type II (FRII) or FRI/II,

(3) has an angular separation between the brightest regions on the maps $`\mathrm{\Theta }\stackrel{>}{}3`$ arc min, and

(4) has a 1.4 GHz flux density on the NVSS map of $`S_{1.4}<500`$ mJy.

The above criteria were fulfilled by 36 sources listed in Table 1. The entries of Table 1 are:

Column 1: IAU name at epoch J2000

Column 2: Fanaroff-Riley morphological type

Column 3: 1.4 GHz flux density from the NVSS survey

Column 4: radio spectral index around the frequency of 1.4 GHz specified as the mean of spectral indices $`\alpha (325,1400)`$ and $`\alpha (1400,4850)`$. If a flux density at about 5 GHz is not known, the respective spectral index is given as $`>\alpha (325,1400)`$

Column 5: angular size in arc sec

Column 6: information about radio core; ‘c’ indicates that the core has already been detected in the FIRST survey, ‘c’ – that it has been detected in this work. ‘c?’ indicates the lack of high-resolution map, but a compact core is very probable

Column 7: optical identification; G–galaxy, Q–quasar

Column 8: R–band apparent magnitude of the identified host object taken from the reference given in column 10. The magnitudes of faint galaxies detected in this paper (cf. Sect. 4.2 and Table 4) are marked by bold-face

Column 9: redshift of the host object (galaxy). The redshifts of 5 objects were available prior to our spectroscopical observations; the relevant references are given in column 10. Redshifts determined in this paper are marked by bold-face.

Column 10: references to optical type of the identified object and its magnitude, and to the redshift.

At the bottom of Table 1 we list 4 additional giant candidates which have been observed spectroscopically though they do not belong to the complete sample. J1218+5026, taken from the GB/GB2 sample (Machalski 1998), was supposed to be a very large source; the remaining three (J1018–1240, J1328–0307, and J1457–0613) are the largest sources among the Las Campanas radio galaxies (cf. Machalski & Condon 1999).

Notes on individual sources in Table 1:

J0816+3347: Very blue object on the DSS (E=18.76 mag; O–E$`=0.04`$ mag). R=($`20.7\pm 0.2`$) mag was found in March 4, 2000 (cf. Fig. 3a). A very certain variability suggests that this object may be a quasar.

J0912+3510: The source was noticed as a giant by Jamrozy & Machalski (1999) on the basis of a photometric redshift estimate derived for the brightest galaxy near the midpoint between its radio lobes (marked as galaxy A in Table 4 and in Fig. 2a). Fig. 4b shows the spectrum of galaxy A. On the other hand, the statistical effect that the radio core is predominantly closer to the brighter radio lobe (cf. Sect. 6.4) suggests another possible identification with galaxy B. Unfortunately, no radio core brighter than about 0.1 mJy beam-1 was detected in spite of two observational attempts (cf. Table 2).

J0927+3510: The second case where we did not detect the radio core (cf. Fig. 1a). Therefore, a probable identification is a galaxy marked as galaxy A in Table 4 and Fig. 3b. This 20.6 mag galaxy is closer to the brighter eastern lobe of the source, thus is favoured by the correlation mentioned above. The second possible identification is the 21.7 mag galaxy B lying close to the midpoint between the radio lobes (cf. Fig. 3b).

J1330+3850: Because a radio core is unknown yet, the optical identification remains uncertain. Two possible identifications of a host galaxy are given in Table 4.

J1343+3758: The radio map with the core indicated is shown in Fig. 1d. A detailed analysis of this the third largest giant source known up to now is given by Machalski & Jamrozy (2000). The final corrected redshift of the identified galaxy is given in this paper.

J1344+4028: A 20 mJy background source at $`13^\mathrm{h}44^\mathrm{m}46\stackrel{s}{.}51`$, $`+40\mathrm{°}26\mathrm{}50\stackrel{}{.}6`$ (J2000), contaminating the sample source, is subtracted.

J1555+3653: The sample source is slightly confused on the NVSS map by the strong steep-spectrum background source 6C155304.9+370235 (B1950).

J1725+3923: Strongly confused by two compact sources at the (J2000) positions: $`17^\mathrm{h}25^\mathrm{m}18\stackrel{s}{.}15`$; $`+39\mathrm{°}21\mathrm{}19\stackrel{}{.}0`$ and $`17^\mathrm{h}25^\mathrm{m}24\stackrel{s}{.}44`$; $`+39\mathrm{°}24\mathrm{}04\stackrel{}{.}7`$, hence its radio spectrum is uncertain.

## 3 Radio observations

Eight out of twelve sources with no radio core detected in the FIRST survey have been observed with the VLA in the B–array at 4.86 GHz and/or BnC–array at 8.46 GHz. The observing log is given in Table 2. In order to reach a $`rms`$ noise of about 30 $`\mu `$Jy beam-1 the field of view centred at a midpoint between the lobes was observed for an integration time of at least 40 min. The interferometric phases were calibrated approximately every 20 min with the phase calibrator nearest to the observed source. The source 3C286 served as the primary flux density calibrator.

The sky coordinates and the integrated flux density of the detected cores are given in Table 3. The last column of Table 3 gives the ratio of 5-GHz flux density of the core to 1.4-GHz flux density of the entire source. Unfortunately, no core brighter than about 0.1 mJy beam-1 was detected in the sources J0912+3510 and J0927+3510. Dividing the above limit of core flux by the total flux of these sources, one can expect their fraction $`f_\mathrm{c}`$ to be below 0.001. This is about 2 times less than that of the faintest core detected in already known giants. Also no core was detected in the source J1513+3841. In this case, the upper limit of 5 GHz flux density of the core is about 0.25 mJy beam-1.

The high-frequency VLA contour maps for those sources whose extended lobes were not attenuated too much by the VLA primary beam and/or where some compact structures reside in the lobes, are presented in Figs. 1a–f. In order to show how these structures are located inside the extended emission, each contour map is overlaid onto the relevant NVSS map shown in the gray scale. The compact cores, for the sake of proper contrast, are shown by the black contours. The crosses indicate the position of the host galaxy (cf. Sect. 4).

## 4 Optical imaging and identification

### 4.1 DSS identification

To identify our source candidates whose radio core is known with a host optical object, first of all we used the ‘Digitized Sky Survey’ (DSS), i.e. digitized POSS survey. For 29 sample sources with cores, we have identified their cores with 13 galaxies and one very blue object, possibly a quasar. This means that the optical counterpart of one half of our giant candidates is fainter than $`R20`$ mag. Taking into account the $`R`$-band Hubble diagram for 3C radio galaxies (Eales 1985) and allowing the giant radio galaxies to be one magnitude less luminous than the 3C ones, $`R\stackrel{>}{}20`$ mag implied a redshift $`z>0.4`$. For four giant candidates without known radio core (J0912+3510, J1253+4041, J1345+3952, and J1615+3826) a very probable host galaxy has been determined. The optical fields, reproduced from the DSS and showing the presumed identification with the radio contour NVSS map overlayed, are shown in Fig. 2a–d. The $`R`$ magnitudes of the identified galaxies from the DSS are listed in Table 1 with 0.01 precision.

### 4.2 Deep imaging

For 9 sky fields containing the sample sources, 6 of which having no radio core identification in the DSS, deep optical imaging was done with the 2.1m telescope of the McDonald Observatory (Texas). The observations were made using the ‘Imaging Grism Instrument’ (IGI) equipped with aTK4 $`1024\times 1024`$ CCD detector cooled with liquid nitrogen. IGI allows direct imaging and spectroscopy with a spatial scale of $`0\stackrel{}{.}48`$ per pixel within the field of view of about $`8\times 8`$ arc min. The sky fields centred on the radio source were observed through the Cousins $`R`$-band filter at zenith angles providing air masses less than 1.2, most of them being below 1.05. The exposure times applied ranged from 3 min to 10 min. Although seeing conditions during the observing night of March 4/5,2000 were not photometric ones, also the standard fields NGC 2419, NGC 4147, and M92 (Christian et al., 1985) were observed for a crude photometric calibration.

The astrometric calibration has been done by transforming the instrumental pixel coordinates of stars in the investigated frame into their sky coordinates in the DSS data base. As a result, all six sources with a core have been identified with faint galaxies. In the two remaining fields, possible galaxy identifications are found. Instrumental magnitudes of the identified host galaxies (and several other objects) on the CCD frames, reduced for bias, dark current and flat field with the ESO MIDAS package, were determined using both the aperture (MIDAS magnitude/circle procedure) and PSF (DAOPHOT II procedure; Stetson 1987) methods. These instrumental magnitudes were then transformed into $`R`$ magnitudes in the twofold manner: a transformation formula was determined for (i) those objects in the particular frame whose magnitudes are calibrated in the DSS ($`R_{\mathrm{DSS}}`$), and (ii) standards in the calibration fields ($`R_{\mathrm{cal}}`$). Dispersions of the differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_1=RR_{\mathrm{DSS}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_2=RR_{\mathrm{cal}}`$ (the latter calculated from the calibration fields taken just before and after the target frame) have been used to determine the combined $`rms`$ error $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=(\mathrm{\Delta }R_1^2+\mathrm{\Delta }R_2^2)^{1/2}`$ of particular $`R`$ magnitude.

The sky coordinates, radio-minus-optical offsets with respect to the radio core, and $`R`$-magnitude estimate with its $`rms`$ error of the identified faint galaxies are listed in Table 4. The CCD R-band frames with the deep identification marked are shown in Figs. 3a–h.

## 5 Optical spectroscopy

### 5.1 Observations

In order to determine redshifts of the identified galaxies brighter than about 18.5 mag in the $`R`$ band, optical spectroscopic observations were conducted between Feb 27 and March 4, 2000. Also these observations were made with the McDonald Observatory 2.1m telescope equipped with the IGI instrument. A grism sensitive to the wavelength range of 3750 Å to 7600 Å, and a $`2\mathrm{}`$ wide slit providing a dispersion of 3.7 Å per pixel and spectral resolution of about 12 Å, were used. A number of exposures ranging from 15 min to 30 min was taken for 15 galaxies, of which only 11 belonging to the complete sample were bright enough to be observed with the 2.1m telescope. The resulting redshifts have been put in bold face in Table 1. The epoch of observations did not allow us to try to observe the identified galaxies at R.A.$`>16^\mathrm{h}30^\mathrm{m}`$ (i.e. J1712+3558 and J1725+3923).

Usually two or three useable exposures were obtained for each galaxy, which made it possible to improve S/N ratio without an increase of smearing of the spectrum during a too long single exposure due to imperfect tracking of the telescope. The total integration time for each spectrum ranged from 30 min for the brightest galaxy (J1344+4028) to 90 min for the faintest ones. The wavelength calibration was carried out using exposures to helium and mercury lamps. The flux calibration was provided by exposures of a spectrophotometric standard star close to the observed galaxy, chosen from among HZ43, HZ44, EG50, EG79, GZ140, and Feige98 (Stone 1977).

### 5.2 Data reduction and the results

All spectra obtained were reduced in the standard way, i.e. corrected for bias, dark current and flat field, rejected cosmic rays , combined and calibrated using the longslit package of the IRAF software. One-dimensional spectra for the galaxies were extracted interactively, using the observed intensity profile along the slit to define the apertures and sky-background regions. The final 1–D spectra of the observed galaxies are shown in Figs. 4a–o. The emission lines and/or absorption bands detected, as well as the resultant redshift of these features with its $`rms`$ error are listed in Table 5.

Most of the spectra are typical of elliptical and lenticular (E, S0) galaxies whose continuum emission with the prominent 4000 Å discontinuity is dominated by evolved giant stars (cf. Kennicutt 1992). The emission lines mostly detected are \[OII\]$`\lambda 3727`$ and \[OIII\]$`\lambda 4959`$ and $`\lambda 5007`$. Also weak Balmer lines are present in some spectra, however usually only H$`\beta `$ is detected because the majority of the spectra is redshifted by more than 1.1, so that in those cases the H$`\alpha `$ line was beyond the wavelength range observed. In a few spectra the blue continuum is strong and suggests the presence of a young population of stars characteristic for early-type spirals. However these blue galaxies are too faint to be morphologically classified on the digitized POSS plates. For four galaxies (J1344+4028, J1345+3952, J1512+3050, and J1635+3608) their redshift can be determined from the absorption lines CaII$`\lambda 3934`$ $`\lambda 3968`$ and bands G, Mg, and Na D only.

## 6 Physical parameters

### 6.1 Determination of the parameters

The global physical parameters estimated for the sources with spectroscopic redshift are given in Table 6. The twelve columns of Table 6 give:

Column 1: IAU name of source

Column 2: Logarithm of radio luminosity at the emitted frequency of 1.4 GHz ($`\mathrm{log}L_{1.4}`$) calculated with the luminosity-distance modulus for $`q_o`$=0.5, i.e.

$$A(z)=2(1+z)\sqrt{1+z}$$

Column 3: Absolute $`R`$-band magnitude of the host galaxy calculated assuming it is an elliptical with an optical spectral index ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{opt}}`$) corresponding to the $`BR`$ colour and evolving with redshift accordingly the ‘c’-model of Bruzual (1983). Thus

$$M_R=R5\mathrm{log}A(z)2.5\{\alpha _{opt}(z)1\}\mathrm{log}(1+z)43.891$$

No correction for the foreground extinction has been applied because most of the galaxies have a galactic latitude $`b>50\mathrm{°}`$.

Column 4: Logarithm of the radio–optical luminosity ratio parameter defined by

$$\mathrm{log}r=\mathrm{log}L(1.4\mathrm{GHz})\mathrm{log}L_{\mathrm{opt}}(\mathrm{Rband}),\mathrm{where}$$

$$\mathrm{log}L_{\mathrm{opt}}[\mathrm{W}\mathrm{Hz}^1]=0.4M_R+13.522$$

Column 5: Linear size of source ($`D`$), i.e. projected separation between the hotspots or the brightest regions in opposite radio lobes

Column 6: Average magnetic field ($`B_{\mathrm{me}}`$) calculated under assumption of energy equipartition, a cylindrical geometry of the extended emission with the base diameter set equal to the average width of the lobes, usually measured half-way between the core and their brightest regions, using the prescription of Leahy & Williams (1984), a filling factor of unity, and equal distribution of kinetic energy between relativistic electrons and protons. The total radio luminosity is integrated from 10 MHz to 10 GHz.

Column 7: Minimum energy density ($`u_{\mathrm{me}}`$) under the same assumptions

Column 8: Ratio of the equivalent magnetic field of the microwave background radiation $`B_{\mathrm{iC}}=0.324(1+z)^2`$\[nT\] to the equipartition magnetic field in the source $`B_{\mathrm{me}}`$

Column 9: Ratio of the energy losses by synchrotron radiation to the total energy losses due to the synchrotron and inverse Compton processes, $`B_{\mathrm{me}}^2/(B_{\mathrm{iC}}^2+B_{\mathrm{me}}^2)`$

Column 10: Ratio of the 1.4 GHz flux densities in two opposite radio lobes, $`S_1/S_2`$

Column 11: Ratio of the radio core separation from the hotspot (or the brightest region) in the brighter lobe to that from the darker one, $`d_2/d_1`$

Column 12: Misalignment angle ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$) between straight lines connecting the core with the brightest regions in opposite lobes

The above parameters are not estimated for a few faint sample sources for which the total luminosity could not be determined because of a practically unknown radio spectrum. It is worth emphasizing that the parameters in columns 6, 7, 8, and 9 are calculated under assumptions identical to those adopted by Ishwara-Chandra & Saikia (1999) in their list of previously known giant sources. Thus, the above parameters are homogeneously determined for our giants and theirs, and can be used for statistical analyses.

### 6.2 Error estimates

As in Machalski & Jamrozy (2000), we have estimated the errors in the determination of $`B_{\mathrm{me}}`$, $`u_{\mathrm{me}}`$, $`B_{\mathrm{iC}}/B_{\mathrm{me}}`$, and $`B_{\mathrm{me}}^2/(B_{\mathrm{iC}}^2+B_{\mathrm{me}}^2)`$ adopting errors of 20 per cent in the integral radio luminosity, and 50 per cent in the source volume. These give identical fractional errors for the above values as follows: $`B_{\mathrm{me}}(1_{0.21}^{+0.27})`$, $`u_{\mathrm{me}}(1_{0.38}^{+0.60})`$, $`B_{\mathrm{iC}}/B_{\mathrm{me}}(1_{0.27}^{+0.21})`$, and $`B_{\mathrm{me}}^2/(B_{\mathrm{iC}}^2+B_{\mathrm{me}}^2)(1_{0.40}^{+0.50})`$.

### 6.3 Redshift and size estimates for identified faint galaxies

The absolute $`M_\mathrm{R}`$ magnitude of the galaxies with spectroscopic redshift varies from $`22.0`$ mag to $`25.0`$ mag (with the exception of J1428+2918 whose apparent $`R`$ magnitude may be overestimated). A distribution of the $`M_\mathrm{R}`$ values in Table 6 has a mean of $`23.65`$ mag and a standard deviation of 0.95 mag. Assuming this mean for the remaining identified galaxies but not observed spectroscopically (cf. Table 1), one can estimate their redshift, and hence distance, size, etc. Such estimates of redshift, logarithm of 1.4-GHz luminosity, logarithm of radio–optical luminosity ratio (log $`r`$), and linear size $`D`$ for the identified faint galaxies are given in columns 2, 3, 4, and 5 of Table 7. An uncertainty of the above estimates is computed taking into account the minimal and maximal $`M_\mathrm{R}`$ values as $`22.0`$ mag and $`25.0`$ mag. Columns 6, 7, and 8 of Table 7 give the measure of asymmetries of the sources as do columns 10, 11, and 12 of Table 6.

The size estimates of the sources in Table 7 are well above 1 Mpc, strongly suggesting that all these sources would be giants even if their host galaxy had the lowest absolute magnitude.

### 6.4 Remarks on some correlations between physical parameters

1) The investigated sample is inevitably biased against radio luminosity. The sources at higher redshifts (or redshift estimates) are evidently more luminous. This is not the case for the optical absolute magnitude; 11 galaxies with $`0.07<z<0.2`$ in our sample have $`M_\mathrm{R}=(23.5\pm 0.3)`$ mag, while 7 galaxies with $`0.2<z<0.4`$ have $`M_\mathrm{R}=(23.7\pm 0.3)`$ mag. The above parameters produce a spurious correlation between the radio–optical luminosity ratio (log $`r`$) and redshift.

2) The ratio $`B_{\mathrm{iC}}/B_{\mathrm{me}}`$ for all the giant sources in our sample reaches the value of about 2 to 6 supporting the thesis that inverse-Compton losses are a few times larger than synchrotron radiative losses in the time evolution of the lobes of giant radio sources. Indeed, our limited data confirm the correlations between the ratio $`B_{\mathrm{iC}}/B_{\mathrm{me}}`$ and linear size $`D`$, as well as between $`B_{\mathrm{me}}^2/(B_{\mathrm{iC}}^2+B_{\mathrm{me}}^2)`$ and $`D`$ pointed out by Ishwara-Chandra & Saikia.

3) In most of the giant sources in Tables 6 and 7, the brighter lobe is closer to the host galaxy. This is expected if a source is intrinsically highly symmetric, its inclination angle from the observer’s line of sight differs (but slightly) from $`90\mathrm{°}`$, and it is at an age where the luminosity of its lobes is already decreasing. In such cases, the asymmetries of the lobes in brightness and separation from the nucleus are generated by the different ages the lobes have in the observer’s frame. The lobe (hotspots) seen as closer to the nucleus has to be younger and brighter than the farther one.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors acknowledge (i) the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Socorro, NM) for the target-of-opportunity observing time, (ii) the McDonald Observatory (Mt. Locke, TX) for the observing time, (iii) the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (Kitt Peak, AZ) for the usage of the IRAF software, (iv) the Space Telescope Science Institute for the usage of the DSS data base, and (v) Dr Luigina Feretti for her constructive remarks improving this paper. This work was supported in part by the State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) under contract PB 0266/PO3/99/17.


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# Tempo and mode in quasispecies evolution

## 1 Introduction and motivation

Eigen’s quasispecies theory of molecular evolution is the simplest mathematical model that incorporates the central Darwinian paradigm of natural selection acting on variability created by random mutations. The model was originally developed to understand the conditions for the maintenance of information in systems of self-instructive replicating macromolecules . Such systems can be realized in the laboratory in the form of populations of RNA strands which replicate in vitro in the presence of RNA replicase, displaying a wide range of evolutionary phenomena . The notion of a quasispecies  refers to the structure of self-replicating populations, which typically consist of a distribution of related mutants centered around a most abundant master genotype (see below). The quasispecies structure plays an important role in the evolution of RNA viruses, where the presence of a wide range of mutants allows the virus to adapt rapidly to environmental changes . On the other hand, the existence of an error threshold beyond which no localized quasispecies can be maintained (see Eq.(4)) places an upper bound on the genome length of RNA viruses .

The mathematical structure of the quasispecies model has made it a favored entrance way for statistical physicists into the field of biological evolution222Recent articles which review this connection are .. It was first observed by Leuthäusser  that the discrete time dynamics (3) can be interpreted as a transfer matrix of a two-dimensional Ising model, where the genotype sequences become one-dimensional spin configurations that are coupled in the time direction through the mutation matrix (1) . A similar relation can be established between (3) and the transfer matrix of a polymer directed along the time axis . In addition, Baake and coworkers have recently exploited the equivalence between quantum spin chains and a class of kinetic evolution equations closely related to the quasispecies model, in which mutation and selection occur in parallel .

In its most basic version, the quasispecies model is formulated in terms of standard chemical reaction equations333Similar equations arise in classical population genetics . written for the concentrations $`n_\sigma (t)`$ of sequences $`\sigma =(\sigma _1,\mathrm{},\sigma _N)`$, each of which is composed of $`N`$ symbols drawn from an alphabet of $`K`$ letters; the usual choice is a binary alphabet ($`K=2`$), so that $`\sigma _i`$ takes the values 0 and 1. The resulting sequence space consists then of $`S=2^N`$ points arranged on the vertices of an $`N`$-dimensional hypercube. Each sequence $`\sigma `$ reproduces at a rate $`W(\sigma )`$, which may be taken as a measure of its fitness . In the reproduction process errors occur with a mutation probability $`\mu `$ per site. The probability of creating a sequence $`\sigma ^{}`$ when attempting to copy sequence $`\sigma `$ is therefore equal to

$$Q_\mu (\sigma \sigma ^{})=\mu ^{d_H(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})}(1\mu )^{Nd_H(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})}$$
(1)
where

$$d_H(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}(\sigma _i\sigma _i^{})^2$$
(2)
is the Hamming distance between the two sequences, i.e. the number of digits in which the two differ. The dynamical evolution in discrete time is then given by

$$n_\sigma (t+1)=\underset{\sigma ^{}}{}W(\sigma ^{})Q_\mu (\sigma ^{}\sigma )n_\sigma ^{}(t).$$
(3)
Introducing the constraint of a fixed number of molecules leads to nonlinear loss terms on the right hand side of (3) . However since these can generally be transformed away, we ignore this complication here, at the expense of dealing with exponentially growing population numbers.

The linear form of the evolution equation (3) makes it plain that, for long times, the concentrations will approach that eigenvector of the evolution matrix $`W(\sigma )Q_\mu (\sigma \sigma ^{})`$ which corresponds to the largest eigenvalue. Provided this eigenvector is localized in sequence space, it defines the quasispecies: A distribution of related mutants centered around the master sequence, which usually is the sequence with the maximum replication rate $`W(\sigma )`$. The most celebrated property of the model is its prediction of a sharp error threshold, where the quasispecies delocalizes, and the population spreads uniformly over sequence space. In terms of the sequence length $`N`$ and the mutation probability $`\mu `$, the condition for a localized quasispecies takes the form

$$N<N_{\mathrm{max}}=\frac{\mathrm{ln}A}{\mu },$$
(4)
where $`A`$ denotes the selective advantage, a measure for the superiority of the master sequence compared to the other sequences. For the simplest case of a single peak fitness landscape, where the master sequence replicates at rate $`W_0`$ and all other sequences replicate at rate $`W_1<W_0`$, the selective advantage is $`A=W_0/W_1`$, while for randomly distributed replication rates it is a functional of the rate distribution . In terms of the physical analogies described above, the error threshold phenomenon is equivalent to the thermal phase transition in the Ising model  and to the thermal unbinding of a directed polymer bound to an attractive columnar defect along the time direction .

Much less appears to be known about the evolutionary dynamics of the model, that is, the approach to the final quasispecies distribution from an initial localized or delocalized state. It was first pointed out by McCaskill  that this dynamics should take the form of a “slowing optimization walk” through a succession of metastable states which correspond, in some sense, to local maxima in the fitness landscape. The separation of time scales between the (long) residence time in a metastable state and the (brief) transition time to the next maximum implies a punctuated pattern of evolution , which can be analyzed in analogy to variable range hopping in condensed matter physics .

We should concede from the outset that the deterministic rate equations (3) are not an entirely appropriate description for this evolutionary regime, since the transition between two local maxima proceeds through the tails of the localized, metastable quasispecies, where the population numbers are small and fluctuations due to the finite number of molecules cannot be ignored . It seemed nevertheless worthwhile to explore these questions within the most basic, deterministic model, before turning to more sophisticated approaches.

The present paper reports on some preliminary results from such an investigation. To avoid the complications due to a finite error threshold, we consider a strong selection limit (to be described in the next section), in which the population is localized at a single site in sequence space at all times. This allows a direct comparison with simple schematic models of evolutionary dynamics, such as adaptive walks  and record dynamics . Adaptive walks describe the evolution of a genetically homogeneous population under the assumption that deleterious mutations (which decrease the fitness) are eliminated, while advantageous mutations spread instantaneously. The population then performs an uphill walk in the fitness landscape, which terminates at a local maximum where no fitter one-step neighbors are available. In contrast, in the quasispecies model the population evolves through a chain of local fitness maxima which progresses all the way to the global optimum. Some qualitative properties of these evolutionary trajectories are described in Section 3, while Section 4 focuses on a specific statistical feature, the total evolution time. A comparison with record dynamics is provided in Section 5, and some open questions are formulated in Section 6.

Throughout the paper we will consider maximally rugged fitness landscapes, in which the reproduction rate $`W(\sigma )`$ is chosen independently and randomly for each sequence. In contrast to simpler permutation invariant landscapes , this makes it necessary to store all $`2^N`$ sequences during the iteration of the evolution equations444An approximate scheme which reduces the storage requirement from $`2^N`$ to $`N`$ is described in ., restricting our numerical treatment to rather short sequences; the results shown here are for $`N=10`$. A systematic analysis of the dependence on sequence length will be presented elsewhere .

## 2 The strong selection limit

The form of the strong selection limit is motivated by the analogy with the zero temperature limit in the associated problems of statistical physics. Following Peliti  we introduce an inverse “selective temperature” $`k>0`$ by writing the reproduction rates in the form

$$W(\sigma )=e^{kF(\sigma )}.$$
(5)
We want to take the strong selection limit $`k\mathrm{}`$ in such a way that only a few mutations occur in each time step. This requires to scale the mutation rate as

$$\mu =e^{k\gamma }$$
(6)
where $`\gamma >0`$ is a constant. Inserting (5) and (6) into (3) it is clear that the sequence concentrations will grow for large $`k`$ as

$$n_\sigma (t)=e^{kE(\sigma ,t)}.$$
(7)
In the limit $`k\mathrm{}`$ the evolution equation (3) then reduces to the recursion

$$E(\sigma ,t+1)=\underset{\sigma ^{}}{\mathrm{max}}[E(\sigma ^{},t)+F(\sigma ^{})\gamma d_H(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})].$$
(8)
Since the term $`\gamma d_H`$ suppresses mutations to far away sequences, we expect similar behavior for a model in which only nearest neighbor mutations are allowed,

$$E(\sigma ,t+1)=\underset{d_H(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})1}{\mathrm{max}}[E(\sigma ^{},t)+F(\sigma ^{})\gamma d_H(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})].$$
(9)
All results shown in this paper were obtained using the nearest neighbor rule (9), with the parameter $`\gamma `$ set to unity555For a discussion of the differences between the rules (8) and (9), see ..

We still need to specify the probability distribution $`p(F)`$ of the fitnesses $`F(\sigma )`$. Two choices will be considered: The exponential distribution $`p(F)=e^F`$, $`F0`$, and a uniform distribution on the interval $`[0,S]`$, where $`S=2^N`$. The reason for this particular scaling of the width of the uniform distribution will become clear below in Section 4.

## 3 Evolutionary trajectories

It is evident from (7) that, in the strong selection limit $`k\mathrm{}`$, the entire population resides at the global maximum of the function $`E(\sigma ,t)`$. The position of this maximum in sequence space will be referred to as the master sequence at time $`t`$, and denoted by $`\sigma ^{}(t)`$. At time $`t=0`$ the master sequence is placed at a randomly chosen point $`\sigma ^{(i)}`$ by setting $`E(\sigma ^{(i)},t)=0`$ and $`E(\sigma ,t)=\mathrm{}`$ for $`\sigma \sigma ^{(i)}`$. The subsequent time evolution $`\sigma ^{}(t)`$ defines an evolutionary trajectory.

Inspection shows that, after one or two time steps, such a trajectory passes exclusively through local fitness maxima, and eventually, after a total evolution time $`T`$, it invariably reaches the global fitness maximum. During the evolution, the master sequence spends increasingly long time intervals at local maxima of increasing fitness, with a few abrupt transitions in between (Figure 1). The number of transitions is small (see Figure 5), much smaller than the number of local fitness maxima, which is on average equal to $`2^N/(N+1)93`$ . This implies that most local maxima are bypassed by a typical trajectory.

A quantification of this statement is shown in Figure 2, in which the fitness $`F`$ of local maxima is plotted against the number of times it is visited by an evolutionary trajectory. These data were generated by going through all possible starting points $`\sigma ^{(i)}`$ in a fixed fitness landscape. The figure shows a roughly linear correlation between the fitness of a maximum and the logarithm of the number of visits.

In relation to adaptive walks , which respond only to the relative ordering of fitnesses and not to their actual values, it is of interest to ask to what extent the set of maxima visited by a given trajectory is determined by the ordering of fitnesses. For this reason Figure 1 shows two trajectories evolving in landscapes which were generated using the same random numbers – thus having identical ordering of fitnesses – but with different fitness distributions. It can be seen that the set of local maxima visited by the two trajectories is almost identical, apart from a small detour taken by the “uniform” trajectory, but the timing of the evolutionary transitions is markedly different in the two cases. With reference to G.G. Simpson’s classic treatise , we may say that the fitness distribution affects only the tempo, but not the mode of quasispecies evolution. For a quantitative analysis of the temporal aspects we next turn to the distribution of evolution times.

## 4 Distribution of evolution times

Figure 3 shows the distribution $`P(T)`$ of the number of time steps $`T`$ required to reach the global fitness maximum, obtained by averaging over 500000 landscapes with exponential and uniform fitness distributions. The time distribution for the exponential case displays a distinct maximum around $`T=7`$, followed by a slowly decaying tail which is well described by the power law

$$P(T)T^2$$
(10)
over roughly two decades. The distribution for the uniform case is much broader, but a similar power law tail can be seen for times $`T500`$.

The power law (10) appears to be a simple consequence of the order statistics of uncorrelated fitness landscapes. Let $`F^{(1)}>F^{(2)}>\mathrm{}>F^{(S)}`$ be a realization of fitnesses arranged in decreasing order. As a measure of the spread in fitnesses among the most fit sequences we introduce the fitness gap

$$ϵ=F^{(1)}F^{(2)}>0,$$
(11)
which is a random variable characteristic of each fitness landscape. In the late stage of evolution the population will typically make a a transition from the second best sequence $`\sigma ^{(2)}`$ (or some local fitness maximum with comparable fitness666In fact $`\sigma ^{(2)}`$ is a local fitness maximum with high probability $`1N/(2^N1)0.990`$.) to the globally optimal sequence $`\sigma ^{(1)}`$. From the evolution rule (9) it is easy to see that, for small $`ϵ`$, this transition will require a time of the order of

$$Ta(N)/ϵ,$$
(12)
where the coefficient $`a`$ is determined by the early stages of the evolution process . Thus given the gap distribution $`P_\mathrm{g}(ϵ)`$ the tail of the distribution of evolution times can be estimated to be

$$P(T)aT^2P_\mathrm{g}(a/T),$$
(13)
and a $`T^2`$ power law follows for $`Ta`$, provided that $`0<P_\mathrm{g}(0)<\mathrm{}`$. The gap distribution is given by $`P_\mathrm{g}(ϵ)=e^ϵ`$ both for exponentially distributed fitnesses, and for fitnesses distributed uniformly between 0 and $`S`$, when $`S`$ is large . The striking difference between the two evolution time distributions seen in Figure 3 is related to the different scaling of the coefficient $`a(N)`$ in (12) with sequence length: In the exponential case $`a(N)N^{3/2}`$, while in the uniform case $`a(N)\sqrt{N}S`$ .

To compute $`P_\mathrm{g}(0)`$ for general fitness distributions, note first that the joint distribution of $`F^{(1)}`$ and $`F^{(2)}`$ is given by

$$P_2(F^{(1)},F^{(2)})=S(S1)p_c(F^{(2)})^{S2}p(F^{(1)})p(F^{(2)})$$
(14)
where $`p_c(F)=_0^F𝑑F^{}p(F^{})`$ denotes the cumulative fitness distribution. The cumulative gap distribution is obtained by integration,

$$\mathrm{Prob}[F^{(1)}F^{(2)}<ϵ]=$$

$$S(S1)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑F^{(2)}p(F^{(2)})p_c(F^{(2)})^{S2}_{F^{(2)}}^{F^{(2)}+ϵ}𝑑F^{(1)}p(F^{(1)}),$$
(15)
which tends to $`P_\mathrm{g}(0)ϵ`$ for $`ϵ0`$. Thus we conclude that

$$P_g(0)=S(S1)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑Fp(F)^2p_c(F)^{S2}$$
(16)
which is clearly finite and nonzero.

The relationship (13) implies that the near-degenerate fitness landscapes, which have very small gaps, are the ones that give rise to anomalously long evolution times. Figure 4 illustrates this connection. The data shown as crosses were obtained from an average over exponential fitness landscapes, for which the fitness gap $`ϵ`$ was increased artificially by increasing the global fitness maximum according to $`F^{(1)}F^{(1)}+1`$. This is seen to immediately remove the power law tail (10).

## 5 Comparison to record dynamics

A simple schematic analogue of the nonstationary (ever slowing) evolution process found in the quasispecies model is provided by the dynamics of records , which is equivalent to evolution by long-ranged random mutations known in the classical literature as the theory of “hopeful monsters” . In the present context it reduces to the following rule for the motion of the master sequence $`\sigma ^{}(t)`$ in sequence space: At each time step, the population attempts a jump to another, randomly chosen sequence $`\sigma ^{}\sigma ^{}(t)`$. The move is accepted, and $`\sigma ^{}(t+1)=\sigma ^{}`$, if $`F(\sigma ^{})>F(\sigma ^{}(t))`$; otherwise it is discarded and $`\sigma ^{}(t+1)=\sigma ^{}(t)`$. Thus the current sequence $`\sigma ^{}(t)`$ represents the fitness record among the sequences which the population has encountered so far.

Clearly this process gives rise to a step-like, punctuated pattern which is qualitatively similar to that shown above in Figure 1. Here we are concerned with a quantitative comparison of statistical properties. Let us first compute the probability distribution of the total evolution time $`T`$ for the record dynamics. Since the probability of finding the global fitness maximum in any jump is $`1/S`$, the probability that it has not been found up to time $`t`$ is $`(11/S)^te^{t/S}`$ for large $`S`$ and $`t`$. Taking the derivative one obtains

$$P(T)=S^1e^{T/S}.$$
(17)
The typical evolution times are of the order of the number of sequences, much larger than in the quasipecies model. This demonstrates impressively the “guided” nature of quasispecies evolution , which is much more efficient than a random search. Figure 3 shows how broad the distribution (17) is compared to that of the quasispecies model. Note, however, that for very long times (longer than $`S`$) Eq.(17) decays exponentially, faster than the degeneracy-induced power law (10). Taken literally, Eq.(10) implies that the mean evolution time is infinite.

Next we consider the distribution $`P_n`$ of the total number $`n`$ of evolutionary jumps which occur on the way to the global fitness maximum. Adapting the results of Sibani and collaborators , for the case of record dynamics we find that $`P_n`$ is a Poisson distribution with parameter $`\mathrm{ln}S`$,

$$P_nS^1\frac{(\mathrm{ln}S)^{n1}}{(n1)!}.$$
(18)
In Figure 5 this is compared to numerical data obtained for the quasispecies model. Again the distributions for the quasispecies dynamics are much narrower, showing that less transitions are required to reach the global maximum. Simulations for longer sequences show that the mean number of transitions increases sublinearly in $`N`$, more slowly than the linear behavior predicted by (18) .

## 6 Outlook

The simplicity of the strong selection dynamics (8,9) suggests to use it for a dynamical characterization of different kinds of fitness landscapes. In contrast to the random landscapes considered here, realistic fitness landscapes obtained e.g. from RNA folding contain extended neutral networks in sequence space, in which the fitness (defined in terms of the RNA secondary structure) does not change . Central concepts of quasispecies theory have been extended to such landscapes . Extended neutrality provides a distinct mechanism for the appearance of punctuation patterns in evolution, since changes in the genotype do not show up in the phenotype, as long as the former moves within a neutral network .

Another interesting direction for further research inspired by the analogy with directed polymers is to include effects of environmental fluctuations, which amounts to making the fitness landscape time-dependent . In the directed polymer analogy, the issue is the interplay between columnar disorder, which is provided by the time-independent part of the landscape, and point disorder modeling the time-dependent variations . It is well known that point disorder can depin a polymer from an attractive columnar defect in much the same way as thermal fluctuations . This suggests the intriguing possibility of an error threshold delocalization phenomenon induced by environmental fluctuations.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank T. Halpin-Healy and C. Karl for their contributions to this project, and K. Sneppen, H. Flyvbjerg and L. Peliti for useful discussions. This work has been supported in part by NATO within CRG.960662, and by NSF under Grant No. PHY99-07949.


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# Untitled Document

##

D.W. Hooper

Phenomenology Institute
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Abstract

##

If weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs) make up the galactic dark matter halo, high densities of such particles would exist near massive bodies, such as the sun. The resulting annihilations are believed to produce neutrinos, gamma rays and other decay products. If any significant fraction of such annihiliations occur outside of the sun itself, gamma rays may be observable by detectors on Earth.

##

This paper describes a calculation to determine the fraction of solar-captured WIMP annihiliations which occur outside of the sun. The implications of this result on experimental searches is also discussed. We find that the prospect of detecting gamma rays from near-solar WIMP annihilations is very poor.

##

I. Introduction

##

There has been a great deal of evidence mounting recently which supports the existence of cold, weakly-interacting, particle dark matter. It is believed that such matter is the primary constituent of the galactic dark matter halo density. Although the mass of such a particle is model dependent, it is generally in the range of 10’s of GeV to several TeV. Such particles interact with massive bodies such as the Sun and Earth and become gravitationally trapped due to the loss of kinetic energy during the interaction. A high density of such particles then builds up in the center of these bodies until the annihilation rate of WIMPs equals the capture rate.

##

Following the initial interaction between a WIMP and the Sun (or other massive body), a WIMP, if captured, will assume an elliptical orbit which passes through but does not generally remain within the Sun during the entire orbit. It often takes many interactions between the WIMP and sun before total internal capture occurs. If the WIMP becomes totally captured within the Sun, it will eventually annihilate and will be observable only if it’s annihilation modes include neutrinos (other annihilation products will not penetrate the Sun). If the WIMP happens to annihilate with another WIMP outside of the Sun (prior to total capture), other annihilation products can be observed, including gamma rays.

##

Extensive calculations have been made to predict the number of neutrinos produced in the Sun from WIMP annihilations.1,2 The only additional information needed to predict a similar result for gamma rays is the fraction of WIMP annihilations that occur outside of the Sun and the comparison of the branching ratios of WIMPs into neutrinos versus photons.

##

II. Calculations

##

Using a Boltzman velocity distribution with rms velocity 270 km/sec for the WIMP halo density, the temperature of the population is given by:

$$T=\frac{2mv_{rms}^2}{\pi k}$$
(1)
where m is the WIMP mass. Then a random velocity can be assigned to a WIMP using Boltzman statistics:

$$v=\sqrt{\frac{2E}{m}}=\sqrt{\frac{2kT\mathrm{ln}x}{m}}$$
(2)
where x is a random number between one and zero selected by the monte carlo. Assuming the WIMP travels through, and interacts with, the Sun, it first gains 1385 km/sec from solar gravitational potential and then loses an average velocity of 3:

$$\delta v=2vm_p/m_{WIMP}$$
(3)
If the resulting velocity, as calculated at infinity, is less than zero, the WIMP is captured. If it is greater than -619 km/sec, the solar surface escape velocity, some of the WIMPs orbit will be outside of the Sun.

##

To simplify the problem, this calculation will assume that the WIMP takes a direct trajectory into the center of the Sun (zero angular momentum). This is a reasonable approximation since the majority of WIMPs captured will travel generally through the center of the Sun rather than through an edge. This is a result of the greater amount of solar material passed through in a direct trajectory.

##

From the new velocity, simple conservation of energy can determine the semi-major axis of the one-dimensional WIMP orbit:

$$\frac{1}{2}v_{surface}^2\frac{GM_{Sun}}{R_{Sun}}=0\frac{GM_{Sun}}{a}$$
(4)
$$a=[\frac{1}{R_{Sun}}\frac{v_{surface}^2}{2GM_{Sun}}]^1$$
(5)
where a is the semi-major axis of the new WIMP orbit. From this and Kepler’s laws, the orbital period is easily calculated:

$$Period=\frac{2\pi a^{3/2}}{G^{1/2}M_{Sun}^{1/2}}$$
(6)
After a number of orbits determined by the probability for a passing WIMP to interact with the Sun, the WIMP will further lose energy and a new semi-major axis and period will be calculated. This is continued until the new semi-major axis is less than the solar radius and total solar capture occurs. The total distance and total time spent outside of the Sun by the WIMP are calculated by suming the semi-major axes and periods including a factor reflecting the fraction of the orbit spent outside the Sun which is generally close to one.

##

The probability of a WIMP annihilating with another near-solar WIMP is calculated by integrating the product of the total distance traveled outside of the Sun prior to total solar capture, the WIMP-WIMP cross section and the number of density of WIMPs in the region. The WIMP-WIMP cross section can be approximated reasonably well and is generally on the order of $`10^{35}cm^2`$ for a WIMP with velocity of a few hundred kilometers per second.4 The number density of near solar WIMPs is calculated by iteration in the monte carlo. It is approximated by a flat distribution extending to the mean semi-major axis of a near-solar WIMP orbit (usually around 2 solar radii). To determine if this approximation was valid, a distribution was calculated. It revealed a strong suppression at large distance from the Sun. The majority of WIMP interactions should occur within a few solar radii. The density distribution was normalized by the solar WIMP capture rate which is generally around $`10^{21}`$ WIMPs per second and varies inversely with WIMP mass.5

##

III. Results and Discussion

##

To begin calculating prospective event rates from near-solar WIMP annihilations, some assumptions are needed. The WIMP-WIMP and WIMP-proton cross sections are approximated by the standard weak coupling with appropriate suppressions. A value of $`6\times 10^{42}cm^2`$ was used for WIMP-proton interactions and a range of values from $`2\times 10^{36}`$ to $`2\times 10^{34}cm^2`$ were used for WIMP-WIMP interactions. Three values of the WIMP mass were considered: 100, 300 and 1000 GeV. Although branching ratios of WIMPs to photons are needed to predict event rates, we chose to be agnostic of this value and simply acknowledge that the branching ratio is generally quite small.

##

Figure 1 shows the fraction of solar captured WIMP annihilations which occur outside of the Sun as a function of WIMP-WIMP cross section for a few WIMP masses. The results indicate that to observe gamma rays from near-solar WIMP annihilations, an experimental method about 16 orders of magnitude more effective than those experiments designed to detect internal solar decay products would be needed. Neutrino telescopes have approximately the following probability of detecting a neutrino passing though it’s effective area5:

$$Probability=2\times 10^{13}m_{WIMP}^2(GeV)$$
(7)
Therefore, a gamma ray detector with similar effective area and perfect efficiency would still observe many orders of magnitude fewer events than neutrino telescopes. The most optimistic neutrino event rates from WIMP annihilation are generally of the order of tens or a hundred events per year for a square kilometer effective area2.

##

To consider the most optimistic case, we can describe a truly enormous gamma ray detector of, for example, 100 square kilometers effective area, which is perfectly able to differentiate between background and actual signal from near-solar WIMPs (the Veritas detector, which isthe largest such detector planned, is about 3 orders of magnitude smaller and perfect efficiency is not actually realistic). Suppose that the number of gamma rays produced in such annihilations is of the same order of magnitude of the number of neutrinos produced. This number may reach up to the order of $`10^{12}`$ events per square kilometer of detector area per year in the most favorable supersymmetric models (generally the number is far fewer)2. Then, together, such a scenario would yield less than one event per hundred years. This result neglects the difference of branching ratios of WIMPs to photons and neutrinos. This effect would make the gamma ray event rates even lower.

##

The existing and planned gamma ray detectors include large area Earth-based detectors such as MILAGRO and small area space-based detectors such as GLAST. GLAST has the advantage of energy sensitivity. WIMP annihilation to a photon pair would create a spectral line at the mass of the WIMP. The energy sensitivity of such as detector could be used to remove background events, but still suffers from the lack of signal described above.

##

Another class of solar-captured WIMPs has been proposed. WIMPs in this class have had their orbits modified by planetary gravitational perturbations such that their orbits no longer intersect the sun, and thus are stable6. Although this population may be able to enhance the near-solar WIMP density and thus the near-solar annihilation rates, the enhancement is generally less than a factor of two and not particularly relevant for this discussion.

##

IV. Conclusions

##

The very small number of solar captured WIMP annihilations which occur outside of the sun makes the prospect of WIMP-produced gamma ray detection very poor indeed. Detectors such as MILAGRO would need very unrealistic effective areas to compete with existing and future neutrino telescopes in this type of observation.

##

Acknowledgements

##

Thanks to Brenda Dingus and Francis Halzen for valuable discussions. This research was supported in part by DOE grant No. DE-FG02-95ER40896 and in part by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

##

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