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# ZeV Air Showers: The View from Auger

## I Introduction

The detection of high energy showers with the radio technique has been shown to have a high potential for astroparticle physics thoroughout this conference. One of the advantages of radio detection is that provided an appropriate wavelength can be chosen, exceeding the shower dimensions, the emission from all the shower particles becomes coherent. When the emission from all particles is coherent the emitted power should scale with the square of the primary energy. The technique thus becomes most advantageous for the detection of the highest energy particles. The detection of air showers with the radio technique was started in the 1950’s weekes  but it experienced many difficulties and other methods took the leading role in cosmic ray detection, at first arrays of particle detectors and Čerenkov telescopes and more recently air fluorescence detectors.

One of the most intriguing questions in Astroparticle Physics concerns precisely the origin and nature of the highest energy cosmic rays. The existence of events with energy above $`10^{20}`$eV has been known since the 1960’s EeVents  soon after Volcano Ranch, the first large air shower array experiment, started operation. Since then they have been slowly but steadily detected by different experiments as illustrated in Fig. 1. The observation of high energy cosmic rays has been recently reviewed by Nagano and Watson WatsonNagano  who have shown that there is very good agreement between different experiments including the low and high energy regions of the spectrum. By now over 17 published events above $`10^{20}`$ eV zaspuebla  and preliminary new events from HiRes sokolsky  are enough to convince the last skeptics about the non observation of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz’min (GZK) cutoff, expected because of proton interactions with cosmic microwave photons GZK . The data suggest that the spectrum continues but little is known about the nature of the arriving particles. A large effort is being made in the 2000’s to understand these particles. A new generation of large aperture experiments has started with HiRes already in operation sokolsky , the Auger observatory in construction and with plans for using new techniques such as detection from satellites EUSO , with radar gorham  and with radiotelescopes pointing to the moon alvarez  (See Fig. 1).

The Auger project is the last approved large aperture experiment to explore the high energy tail of the cosmic ray spectrum, those particles with energies exceeding $`10^{19}`$ eV AUGER . The observatory has been shown to provide quite large acceptance for the detection of inclined showers induced by high energy neutrinos Capelle . Recent analysis of inclined shower data from the Haverah Park array rate ; zasbound  has shown that it is possible to enhance the acceptance of air shower arays and to study with them the nature of the cosmic ray particles themselves zasbound . In this article, after briefly addressing shower development, I will discuss the main characteristics of the Auger Observatories. The role of inclined showers for neutrino detection and composition measurements will be stressed, making reference to a model to describe the muon densties at ground level induced by inclined cosmic rays. Recent conclusions about composition at high energies using vertical and inclined showers will be reviewed.

## II The Auger Observatories

As a high energy cosmic ray enters and interacts in the atmosphere it gives rise to different generations of secondary particles that through succesive interactions constitute the extensive atmospheric shower. By the time the shower reaches ground level the number of particles in the shower front, mostly photons, electrons and positrons can exceed $`10^{12}`$ for the highest energy cosmic rays. As the shower penetrates to further depths the number of photons and that of electrons and positrons follow a characteristic behavior not too far from a gaussian which reaches a maximum between 1000 and 2000 meters above sea level for vertical showers above the EeV energy scale. Muons arise mainly in the decays of charged pions produced in hadronic interactions. Unlike electrons, muons do not shower and are practically only subject to minimum ionization losses. Their depth development increases following the pions but hardly decreases after reaching its maximum. Typically only muons with energies above the GeV scale reach ground level because of decay and energy loss. At ground level the photons which are most abundant have an average energy of order 1 MeV. Electrons and muons are typically ultrarelativistic with respective average energies of order 5 MeV and 1 GeV.

In the plane transverse to shower axis the shower front has a particle density which decreases as the separation from shower axis ($`r`$) increases due to multiple elastic scattering. Photons are more numerous than electrons but the lateral distributions are similar, decreasing as $`r^\alpha `$. Although most particles are contained within the Molière radius (of order 100 m), for showers above 1 EeV the particle density remains significant even when $`r`$ exceeds one km. The muons have a significantly flatter lateral distribution. Although they are outnumbered by electrons, the muon density can dominate at large $`r`$ (in the km scale). The shower front develops a characteristic curvature depending on the position of shower maximum. The thickness of the shower front is mostly governed by the different delays that the particles accumulate as they deviate from the shower axis. Higher energy particles tend to deviate less and thus arrive earlier.

Extensive air showers have similar distributions whatever the nature of the initial particle. The establishment of composition is one of the toughest challenges in the detection of high energy cosmic rays. Simulations reveal some differences that can be used for this purpose. One of them is the total number of muons in a shower relative to electrons. Showers induced by photons mainly cascade into electrons and photons and only ocasionally a photon photoproduces mostly pions, channelling part of its energy into a hadronic shubshower. As a result showers induced by photons typically have of order ten times fewer muons than showers induced by protons of the same energy. If the cosmic rays are hadrons, the number of muons serves as a discriminator between heavy and light nuclei, the former having a somewhat higher muon content.

The Auger project is conceived as two 3,000 km2 twin observatories in the northern and southern hemispheres, situated at mid latitudes. Each observatory is a hybrid experiment combining the two only succesful techniques for the study of EeV cosmic rays up to now, namely an array of particle detectors and a fluorescent detector (see Fig. 2). The Engineering Array is now being constructed in Pampa Amarilla in Mendoza, Argentina. It is a fraction of the Southern Auger array covering only 55 km2 and which should be finished during the year 2001. The first physics results could be coming very soon. The Northern observatory is planned to be sited in Utah, U.S.A.

The ground array uses cylindrical water Čerenkov detectors of 10 m2 surface area and 1.2 m of height, each instrumented with three photodetectors. They are going to be arranged in a hexagonal grid separated 1.5 km from each other and extending over a surface area of 3,000 km2. Two such tanks have been running in coincidence with the AGASA array. When electrons and photons reach the tank they are typically absorbed and they give a Čerenkov light signal which is proportional to the total energy carried by them. On the other hand most muons travel through the whole tank and give a light signal that is proportional to their track length within the tank. The arrival directions of the incident cosmic rays is determined from the arrival times of the shower front, typically with one degree accuracy. Each of the tanks is powered with a solar cell and the data are transmitted from the detectors to a central station by conventional wireless communication technology. Final triggering will be made at the central station.

The relative contributions of each particle species to the tank signals are comparable for a proton initiated shower because the average energies carried by photons, electrons and muons partly compensate the diferences in particle density. As we approach shower core both the relative number of muons and the time spread of the signal become smaller. At distances of order 1.5 km however the signals in the tanks can spread over times of order 2 $`\mu `$s. At large distances to shower axis the relative signal induced by muons becomes larger than that of electrons and photons. As the signal will be digitized with few nanosecond timing, the identification of large Čerenkov spikes from the individual muons will allow their separation, particularly well away from the shower core.

The particle density and the arrival times serve for the determination of the shower energy and its direction. The ground array has a large aperture, a $`100\%`$ duty cycle and a uniform right ascension exposure for the study of anisotropy. The shower energy determination is usually determined by the particle density at a given distance to shower axis. Although this distance is chosen to minimize the effects of fluctuations and different primaries, the results are unavoidably dependent to some extent on both the nature of the arriving particle and the interaction model used for shower simulation.

As the shower develops in the atmosphere, nitrogen is excited and emits fluorescence photons in proportion to the number of ionizing particles, a few photons per meter of ionizing track length. By measuring the light signal and its arrival time from different positions along the shower depth development it is possible to detect and study very high energy cosmic rays. The fluorescence technique requires mirrors with imaging capabilities and covering a sufficient field of view to capture the depth development of the shower. The arrival direction of the cosmic ray particle is determined by the geometry and timing of the arriving light. This method has been very succesful at detecting EeV cosmic rays in dark nights.

The fluorescence detector in the Southern observatory will consist on four “eyes”, three near the perimeter of the surface array and one roughly in the central part, at locations which are slightly elevated with respect to the rest of the detector. These eyes are located to monitor the atmosphere on top of the ground array. In the current design each eye is based on Schmidt optics and consists of mirror modules each with a 1.7 m diaphragm preceeding a 7 m diameter mirror and limiting the field of view of each mirror to approximately a $`30^{}\times 30^{}`$ fraction of the sky bluemer . Each eye views $`30^{}`$ upwards from the horizon and combines several of these mirror modules in the azimuthal directions. The central eye requires 12 modules to cover $`360^{}`$ in azimuth and the other three eyes to be sited on the perimeter of the ground array only require 6 or 7 to cover $`180^{}`$ or $`210^{}`$ in azimuth dawson . The focal plane of each mirror is instrumented with a camera, an array of $`20\times 22`$ optical modules, each of viewing aproximately $`1.5^{}\times 1.5^{}`$.

The detection of $`10^{20}`$ eV showers with the fluorescence technique necessarily requires the collection of light which is produced over 20 km away and thus subject to significant dispersion and attenuation in the atmosphere. Moreover the conversion of light to shower signal is affected by uncertainties in the geometrical reconstruction of the shower direction. Much of the geometrical uncertainty in the reconstruction is eliminated if the showers are detected from two or more eyes, that is from at least two different locations. This is the stereo viewing which constitutes one of the important advantages of HiRes sokolsky . In the Auger observatory many of the showers will be viewed in stereo and even by three eyes.

The fluorescence detector measures the particle production as a function of depth into the atmosphere and it is therefore a calorimetric energy determination. The uncertainty in the energy determination is therefore reduced with respect to a particle array which is measuring the particle content at a particular point in shower development and thus is subject to fluctuations between different showers. The ability to follow the depth development of the shower is also an important advantage because shower maximum can be determined directly. Such measurements of depth of maximum are most important for the establishment of primary composition.

The Auger observatory will be the first hybrid detector combining the fluorescence technique with a ground array for the detection of EeV cosmic rays. The combination of the two techniques is an improtant step because besides adding all the features of the two techniques, it will serve for cross calibration. The angular resolution of the fluorescence technique improves when used in combination with the ground array, because much of the geometrical uncertainty in the reconstruction of the shower profile is eliminated when the impact point of the shower axis is determined by the ground array. The power for composition of using both the method of establishing the depth of maximum and that of measuring muon content will help to eliminate part of the ambiguity associated to the interdependence between composition and interaction models.

## III Inclined Showers and Composition

The fact that high energy particles exceeding the GZK cutoff have been observed allows one to make a strong case for the existence of high energy neutrinos. Although the origin and nature of these particles is unknown it is difficult to conceive the observed flux of any particle species without the existence of a flux of high energy neutrinos. The detection of inclined showers has been for long known to be a possible way to detect very high energy neutrinos interacting in the atmosphere berezinskii . When a neutrino interaction happens deep into the atmosphere, the showe can reach its maximum very close to ground level in spite of being close to horizontal. Such a shower would look much like an ordinary vertical shower with high electron and photon content and a front curvature corresponding to shower maximum near ground level. The Auger observatory will be sensitive to high energy neutrinos. Its acceptance for the electromagnetic component of deep and inclined showers induced by neutrinos exceeds 10 km3sr of water equivalent Capelle  (See Fig. 2).

The original motivation for the study of inclined showers induced by cosmic rays was to understand the background of cosmic ray signals to neutrino detection, but these showers have proved to be of great interest on their own. The study of cosmic ray showers by particle arrays has been mostly restricted to relatively vertical showers, typically resticting zenith angles to less than $`45^{}`$. The particle densities in such such showers keep the characteristic circular symmetry allowing an easy reconstruction of the event energy by measuring it at a given distance to the shower axis. The acceptance $`𝒜`$ of a ground array of area $`A`$ for cosmic rays depends on $`\theta _{max}`$, the maximum zenith angle that the array can detect:

$$𝒜=A\mathrm{cos}\theta d(\mathrm{sin}\theta )𝑑\varphi =\pi A[1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _{max}]$$
(1)
If only zenith angles below $`\theta _{max}=45^{}`$ are analysed with the Auger observatory, its acceptance would be 4,500 km2sr. The acceptance of the observatory will double if the analysis of showers can extend to zenith angles less than $`90^{}`$. It has recently become quite clear that inclined showers produced by cosmic rays can be analysed at least with arrays of water Čerenkov tanks HSmodel ; rate ; zasbound . Moreover the analysis of these showers has also shown to have a remarkable potential for the study of primary composition zasbound .

Much development has been possible by separately modelling the distortion of the muon density patterns in inclined showers under the influence of the Earth’s magnetic field HSmodel . The showers can first be studied in the absence of a magnetic field where two important facts emerge for inclined showers: a) Most of the muons are produced in a well defined region of shower development which is quite distant from the ground and b) the lateral deviation of a muon is inversely correlated with its energy. Most of the characteristics of the muon densities in inclined showers are governed by the distance and depth travelled by the muons which is of order 4 km for vertical showers, becomes 16 km at 60 and continues to rise as the zenith angle rises to exceed 300 km for a completely horizontal shower. This distance determines the minimum energy needed for a muon to reach ground level and thus fixes the average energy of these muons that can be of a few hudred GeV.

In the absence of a magnetic field we can assume that all muons are produced at a given altitude $`d`$ with a fixed transverse momentum $`p_{}`$ that is uniquely reponsible for the muon deviation from shower axis. In the plane transverse to shower axis at ground level (transverse plane) the muon deviation, $`\overline{r}`$, is inversely related to muon momentum $`p`$. The density pattern has full circular symmetry. When the magnetic field effects are considered the muons deviate a further distance $`\delta x`$ in the perpendicular direction to the magnetic field projected onto the transverse plane $`\stackrel{}{B}_{}`$, given by:

$$\delta x=\frac{e|B_{}|d^2}{2p}=\frac{0.15|B_{}|d}{p_{}}\overline{r}=\alpha \overline{r},$$
(2)
where in the last equation $`B_{}`$ is to be expressed in Tesla, $`d`$ in m and $`p_{}`$ in GeV.

Eq. 2 is telling us that all positive (negative) muons that in the absence of a magnetic field would fall in a circle of radius $`\overline{r}`$ around shower axis, are translated a distance $`\delta x`$ to the right (left) of the $`\stackrel{}{B}_{}`$ direction. As the muon deviations are small compared to $`d`$ they can be added as vectors in the transverse plane and the muon density pattern is a relatively simple transform of the circularly symmetry pattern. The dimensionless parameter $`\alpha `$ measures the relative effect of the translation. For small zenith angles $`d`$ is relatively small and $`\alpha <<1`$ so that the magnetic effects are also small, and results into slight elliptical shape of the isodensity curves. For high zeniths however $`\alpha >1`$ the magnetic translation exceeds the deviation the muons have due to their $`p_{}`$ and shadow regions with no muons appear as confirmed by simulation. For an approximate $`p_{}200`$ MeV and $`B_{}=40\mu `$T this happens when $`d`$ exceeds a distance of order 30 km, that is for zeniths above $`70^{}`$. The muon patterns in the transverse plane can be projected onto the ground plane to compare with data as well as standard simulation programs. Realistic density patterns are obtained if these ideas are modified accounting for the energy distributions of the muons at a given $`\overline{r}`$. In the simulations it is the average muon energy which is inversely related to $`\overline{r}`$.

For each zenith angle the shape of the lateral distribution of the muons does not change for showers of energy spaning over four orders of magnitude. Different primary particles and interaction models also have similar distribution functions in shape. As a result one only needs the total number of muons to describe a shower of given zenith. This normalization scales with the proton energy $`E`$ as:

$$N=N_{ref}E^\beta $$
(3)
where $`\beta `$ and $`N_{ref}`$ are slightly model dependent constants rate .

The inclined shower data obtained in the Haverah Park array was analysed with the help of the model described above. The Haverah Park detector was a 12 km2 air shower array using 1.2 m deep water Čerenkov tanks that was running from 1974 until 1987 in Northern England which has been described elsewhere haverah . It is the array that has been made closest to the ground array of the Auger observatory because it also consisted on water Čerenkov tanks Particular care was taken to account for new corrections to the tank signals that arise when horizontal events are detected. These include light that falls directly into the photoubes, enhanced delta ray signal because muons are more energetic, catastrophic energy losses for the muons and a signal due to electromagnetic particles from muon decay.

The event rate as a function of zenith angle has been simulated using the modelled muon distributions. The qualitative behaviour of the registered rate is well described in the simulation and the normalization is also shown to agree with data to better than $`30\%`$ using the measured cosmic ray spectrum for vertical incidence, assuming proton primaries and using the QGSM model rate . More impressive are the results of fits of the models for muon densities to the observed particle densities sampled by the different detectors on an event by event basis. This result demonstrates that the acceptance of these detectors can be extended to practically all zenith angles. The analysis of the nearly 10,000 events recorded with zenith angles above $`60^{}`$ is a complex process that involves a sequence of time fits to get the arrival directions and density fits to obtain the energy under the assumption that the primaries are protons. The curvature of the shower front is considered and care is taken to account for the correlations between the shower energy and the impact point of the shower.

The analysed data are subject to a set of quality cuts: the shower is contained in the detector (distance to core less than 2 km), the $`\chi ^2`$ probability of the event is greater than $`1\%`$ and the downward error in the reconstructed energy is less than $`50\%`$. These cuts ensure that the events are correctly reconstructed and exclude all events detected above $`80^{}`$. Examples of reconstructed events compared to predictions are illustrated in Fig. 3. Two new events with energy exceeding $`10^{20}`$ eV have been revealed. The results have been compared to a simulation that reproduces the same fitting procedure and cuts using the cosmic ray spectrum deduced from vertical air shower measurements in reference WatsonNagano . The agreement between the integral rate above $`10^{19}`$ eV measured and that obtained with simulation is striking when the QGSJET model is used for the interactions. Sibyll leads to a slight underestimate zasbound .

The universality of the muon lateral distribution function is very powerful and once the equivalent proton energy is determined for all events, corresponding energies can be easily obtained for different assumptions about primary composition. In the case the incoming particles are iron nuclei (photons), the primary energy can be calculated multiplying the equivalent proton energy by a factor which is $`0.7`$ (6) for $`10^{19}`$ eV and varies slowly as the primary energy raises. As a result when a photon primary spectrum is assumed, the simulated rate seriously underestimates the observed data by a factor between 10 and 20. A fairly robust bound on the photon composition at ultra high energies can be established assuming a two component proton photon scenario. The photon component of the integral spectrum above $`10^{19}`$eV (4 $`\times 10^{19}`$ eV) must be less than $`41\%`$ ($`65\%`$) at the $`95\%`$ confidence level. Details of the analysis are presented in zasbound  and will be expanded elsewhere.

## IV Summary

The Auger detector will soon give an important contribution to the observation of the high energy tail of the cosmic ray spectrum. Its acceptance is close to 9,000 km2sr when considering the inclined air showers. Its hybrid character will be of great value to cross calibrate the two classes of detectors and for establishing the composition. The combined analysis of vertical and horizontal showers will also set important limits to composition at high energies. The combination of two different techniques for composition studies will be of great importance in reducing the uncertainties associated to the hadronic interaction models.

## Acknowledgements

The author thanks the organizers of such a pleasant conference bringing together people from so many different fields, an also thanks D. Saltzberg for helpful comments after carefully reading the manuscript. This work was supported in part by the European Science Foundation (Neutrino Astrophysics Network N. 86), by the CICYT (AEN99-0589-C02-02) and by Xunta de Galicia (PGIDT00PXI20615PR).


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# High-precision evaluation of the Vibrational spectra of long-range molecules

## I Introduction

A new kind of high precision molecular spectroscopy is probing long-range forces between constituent atoms of molecules. This spectroscopy is based on using light to combine two colliding cold-trapped atoms into a tenuous molecule.

The burgeoning field of ”Photoassociation Spectroscopy” is allowing very precise measurement of lifetimes of the first excited states of Alkaline atoms and observation of retardation effects and long-range forces. It provides a means of probing accurately the weak interaction between these atoms Jones 96 .

The agreement between theory and experiment requires simultaneously a highly accurate representation of the interaction potential as well as a highly reliable method for the calculation of the corresponding energy levels.

Since our aim is directed towards the latter problem, we make use of an alternative method to evaluate the energy levels for the potential at hand instead of comparing to the experimental values in order to assess the validity of our results.

The determination of the vibrational spectra of these very tenuous molecules is extremely subtle specially for the highest levels which play an important role in photoassociation spectroscopy. Thus a careful control of accuracy is needed in order to diagonalise the Hamiltonian without losing accuracy for all energies including those close to the dissociation limit.

The magnitudes of potential energy, distance and mass values in these kinds of molecules stand several orders of magnitude above or below what is encountered in ordinary short-range molecules.

For instance, the typical intramolecular potential well depth at the equilibrium distance of about 100 $`a_0`$ (Bohrs), is a fraction of a cm-1 while the reduced mass is several 10,000 electron masses. All these extreme values require special numerical techniques in order to avoid roundoffs, divergences, numerical instability and ill-conditioning during processing.

The method we use in this work adapts well to this extreme situation with the proviso of employing a series of isospectral scaling transformations we explain below.

Since accuracy and its control are of paramount importance in this work, the canonical function method (CFM) Kobeissi 82  is an excellent candidate because it bypasses the calculation of the eigenfunctions. This avoids losing accuracy associated with the numerical calculation specially with rapidly oscillating wave functions of highly excited states.

This method evaluates the full spectrum of the Hamiltonian, for any potential, to any desired accuracy up to the continuum limit. It has been tested succesfully in long-range and short-range potentials for atomic and molecular states. It describes faithfully bound and free states and is staightforward to code.

This work is organised as follows: Section 2 is a description of the CFM and highlights the details of the method. Section 3 presents the results we obtain for the vibrational levels of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule $`0_g^{}`$ and $`1_u`$ electronic states. Section 4 is an additional validation of the method with the Lennard-Jones molecular potential used in a similar situation. We conclude in section 5.

## II The Canonical Function Method

In this work we consider rotationless long-range diatomic molecules only. The associated Radial Schrödinger equation (RSE) is given by:

$$(\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2\mu }\frac{d^2}{dr^2}V(r)+E)\psi (r)=0$$
(1)
where $`\mu `$ is the reduced mass and $`V(r)`$ is the potential energy of the interacting constituent atoms.

The diagonalisation of the RSE is described mathematically as a singular boundary value problem. The prime advantage of the CFM is in turning it into a regular initial value problem.

Primarily developed by Kobeissi and his coworkers Kobeissi 82  the CFM, consists, essentially, in writing the general solution as a function of the radial distance $`r`$ in terms of two basis functions $`\alpha (E;r)`$ and $`\beta (E;r)`$ for some energy $`E`$.

Picking an arbitrary point $`r_0`$ at which a well defined set of initial conditions are chosen Kobeissi 90  i.e.: $`\alpha (E;r_0)=1`$ with $`\alpha ^{}(E;r_0)=0`$ and $`\beta (E;r_0)=0`$ with $`\beta ^{}(E;r_0)=1`$, the RSE is solved by progressing simultaneously towards the origin and $`\mathrm{}`$. The effect of using different algorithms for the numerical integration will be examined in the next section.

During the integration, the ratio of the functions is monitored until saturation signaling the stability of the eigenvalue spectrum Kobeissi 91 .

One may define two associated energy functions:

$$l_+(E)=\underset{r+\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\alpha (E;r)}{\beta (E;r)};$$
(2)
and:

$$l_{}(E)=\underset{r0}{lim}\frac{\alpha (E;r)}{\beta (E;r)}$$
(3)
The eigenvalue function is defined in terms of:

$$F(E)=l_+(E)l_{}(E)$$
(4)
The saturation of the $`\alpha (E;r)/\beta (E;r)`$ ratio as r progresses towards 0 or $`\mathrm{}`$ yields a position independant eigenvalue function $`F(E)`$. Its zeroes yield the spectrum of the RSE.

Generally, one avoids using the wavefunction but if one needs it, the functions $`\alpha (E;r)`$ and $`\beta (E;r)`$ are used to determine the wavefunction at any energy with the expression:

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(E;r)=\mathrm{\Psi }(E;r_0)\alpha (E;r)+\mathrm{\Psi }^{}(E;r_0)\beta (E;r)$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }(E;r_0)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}(E;r_0)`$ are the wavefunction and its derivative at the start point $`r_0`$. The eigenfunctions are obtained for $`E=E_k`$ where $`E_k`$ is any zero of $`F(E)`$.

The graph of the eigenvalue function has a typical $`\mathrm{tan}(|E|)`$ shape versus the logarithm of the absolute value of the energy $`E`$ as displayed in Fig. 1.

## III Vibrational states of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule

We apply the CFM to the calculation of the vibrational energy levels of a diatomic molecule where the interaction between the atoms is given by the Movre and Pichler potential Movre 77 .

We start with the $`0_g^{}`$ electronic state of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule. The corresponding potential is given by:

$$V(r)=\frac{1}{2}[(13X)+\sqrt{16X+81X^2}]$$
(6)
where $`X=C(0_g^{})/9r^3\mathrm{\Delta }`$. $`r`$ is the internuclear distance and the parameter $`C(0_g^{})`$ is such that:

$$\underset{r+\mathrm{}}{lim}V(r)\frac{C_3(0_g^{})}{r^3}$$
(7)
Identification of the large $`r`$ limit yields the result: $`C_3(0_g^{})=C(0_g^{})/3`$. We have used in the calculations below $`C_3(0_g^{})=6.390`$ Hartrees.$`a_0^3`$ like Stwalley 78 . The parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{1.56512.10}^4`$ Rydbergs is the atomic spin-orbit splitting. Given $`C_3(0_g^{})`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the equilibrium internuclear distance is $`r_e=71.6a_0`$.

We scale all energies with a factor $`E_0`$ (usually cm-1) with the use of equation (1). Then we scale all distances with a typical length $`L_0`$ transforming the RSE appropriately. This double transformation is reflected generally in the potential coefficients preserving thus the functional form of the potential.

In order to gauge the accuracy of the spectra, we perform the integration of the RSE with two different methods: A fixed step Fourth-order Runge-Kutta method (RK4) and a Variable Step Controlled Accuracy (VSCA) method Kobeissi 91 .

The VSCA method is based on a series expansion of the potential and the corresponding solution to an order such that a required tolerance criterion is met. Ideally, the series coefficients are determined analytically to any order, otherwise loss of accuracy occurs leading quickly to numerical uncertainties as discussed later.

Table 1 shows the results we obtain with the RK4 method. The limitation of the RK4 method to fourth order hampers the finding of levels beyond the 33rd (see Table 1). In order to find the higher levels we have to select an algorithm that enables us to tune the accuracy well beyond the fourth order.

Pushing the accuracy within the framework of a fixed step method has the effect of reducing substantially the integration step. In order to avoid this problem, we use a variable step that adjusts itself to the desired accuracy, the VSCA method.

This method is powerful and flexible enough to find all the desired energy levels and allows us to find one additional level that was not detected before. It should be noted that the last three levels given by Stwalley at al. Stwalley 78  were extrapolated and not calculated. The agreement between our calculated levels and those of Stwalley et al. Stwalley 78  is quite good. We believe that the small discrepancy, increasing as we progress towards the dissociation limit, is due to a loss of accuracy associated with traditional methods in sharp contrast with the CFM.

The estimation of accuracy of the results hinges basically on two operations, integration and determination of the zeroes of the eigenvalue function $`F(E)`$. The superiority of the VSCA method is observed in the determination of the upper levels that are not detected by the RK4 method (see Tables 1 and 2). In addition, it is observed in the behavior of the eigenvalue ratio versus the index. While in both cases (RK4 and VSCA) the ratio increases steadily as the index increases because we are probing higher excited states, in the RK4 case it rather blows up as dissociation is approached. We use typically series expansion to order 12 in VSCA with a tolerance of $`10^8`$. In the root search of $`F(E)`$, the tolerance required for a zero to be considered as an eigenvalue is $`10^{15}`$. This does not imply that we disagree as strongly as $`0.13\%`$, for instance, with the Ground state value (see Tables 1 and 2) found by Stwalley et al. Stwalley 78  for the simple reason, we use a splitting energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{1.56512.10}^4`$ Rydbergs corresponding to an equilibrium internuclear distance $`r_e=71.6a_0`$. Stwalley et al. do not provide explicitly the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ they use, and more recently Jones et al. Jones 96  provide a value that is slightly different.

We treat next the $`1_u`$ electronic state of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule. This state is higher that the $`0_g^{}`$ and the number of vibrational levels is smaller because the potential is shallower as displayed in Fig. 2.

The potential associated with the $`1_u`$ electronic state of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule is a lot more involved. Its VSCA implementation is particularly difficult because of the complex functional of the potential as we explain below. Analytically, the VSCA algorithm requires performing a Taylor series expansion to any order around an arbitrary point Kobeissi 90 .

This is still, numerically, an open problem for arbitrary functions and the use of LISP based symbolic manipulation techniques produces quickly cumbersome expressions. Special methods based on analytical fitting expressions are needed in order to turn the series coefficients into a more manageable form.

The first step is to determine the $`1_u`$ electronic state of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule by solving the Movre et al. Movre 77  secular equation such that:

$$V(r)=\mathrm{\Delta }[2\sqrt{Q}cos(\frac{\theta 2\pi }{3})\frac{a}{3}1]$$
(8)
where a=-2-6X and $`X=C(1_u)/9r^3\mathrm{\Delta }`$. In addition, $`\theta =cos^1(\frac{1+270X^3}{\sqrt{(1+63X^2)^3}})`$, and $`Q=\frac{1+63X^2}{9}`$.

The parameter $`C(1_u)`$ is such that:

$$\underset{r+\mathrm{}}{lim}V(r)\frac{C_3(1_u)}{r^3}$$
(9)
Identification of the large $`r`$ limit yields to the result: $`C_3(1_u)=C(1_u)(\sqrt{7}2)/9`$. We have used in the calculations below $`C_3(1_u)`$=1.383 Hartrees.$`a_0^3`$ like Stwalley et al. The parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{1.56512.10}^4`$ Rydbergs is the same as for the $`0_g^{}`$ state.

Table 3 displays the results we obtain with the RK4 method that cannot find more than 11 levels due to accuracy limitations.

The next results for the $`1_u`$ electronic state of the $`{}_{}{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}_{2}^{}`$ molecule are obtained with the VSCA method as shown in table 4. We find an additional 15-th level in contrast to Stwalley et al. who found fourteen and extrapolated the last two levels.

The corresponding graph of the eigenvalue function is displayed in Fig. 3 below.

## IV Lennard-Jones molecules

We apply our methodology to the Lennard-Jones case. Our results are compared to the results obtained by Trost et al. Trost 98 . We start with the levels obtained with the RK4 method. The energy unit is $`ϵ`$ the depth of the potential well of the Asymmetric Lennard-Jones potential (ALJ):

$$V(r)=C_1(\frac{1}{r})^\beta C_2(\frac{1}{r})^\alpha $$
(10)
The Asymmetric-Lennard-Jones (ALJ) depends on $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ yielding an equilibrium distance at $`r=r_{min}`$ and a potential depth of $`ϵ`$. Trost et al. Trost 98  use the general parameterisation:

$$C_1=\frac{ϵ}{(\beta \alpha )}\alpha r_{min}^\beta ,C_2=\frac{ϵ}{(\beta \alpha )}\beta r_{min}^\alpha $$
(11)
It is scaled in such a way that the energy is expressed in units of the potential well depth $`ϵ`$. When $`\alpha =6`$, $`\beta =12`$ we obtain $`r_{min}=\sqrt[6]{\frac{2C_1}{C_2}}`$ and $`ϵ=\frac{C_2^2}{4C_1}`$. and the radial distance is in $`\frac{a_0}{\sqrt{B}}`$ where $`B`$ is a reduced scaled mass given by $`B=2\mu ϵr_{min}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$. Numerically Trost et al. use $`B=10^4`$ which is the order of magnitude encountered in long-range molecules within the framework of their system of units. The potential energy in these units is displayed in Fig. 4. The RK4 methods yields the results displayed in Table 5.

The accuracy limitation of the RK4 results in losing the uppermost level 24. Thus we move on to the results obtained with the superior VSCA method. All levels are obtained with the VSCA and the agreement with Trost et al. results is perfect as witnessed by the ratio values of Table 6. The eigenvalue function obtained with the VSCA method as a function of energy is displayed in Fig. 5.

## V Conclusion

The CFM is a very powerful method that enables one to find the Vibrational spectra of tenuous molecules where energies and distances are so remote from the ordinary short-range molecules case that special techniques should be developed in order to avoid numerical instabilities and uncertainties.

The VSCA integration method used gives the right number of all the levels and the variation of the eigenvalue function $`F(E)`$ definitely determines the total number of levels. Generally it requires performing analytically Taylor series expansion to any order of an arbitrary potential function that might require the combination of numerical, symbolic manipulation and functional fitting techniques. Despite these difficulties, the results of the VSCA are rewarding.

The use of the RK4 and the VSCA methods jointly paves the way to a precise comparative evaluation of the accuracy of the spectra obtained. In practice, the RK4 method can be used in optimisation problems whereas the VSCA is more adapted to the direct evaluation of the spectra.

In this work, we did not consider molecular rotation, nevertheless the CFM is adapted to solve accrately Ro-Vibrational problems as well as any RSE diagonalisation problem.

The methodology we describe in this work enables one to tackle precisely weakly bound states that are of great importance in low-energy scattering of atoms and molecules and generally in Bose-Einstein condensation problems Trost 98 .

Acknowledgements: Part of this work was performed on the IDRIS machines at the CNRS (Orsay).


text:
# Acknowledgement

## Acknowledgement

We should like to thank Z. Xing for useful discussions.


text:
# Comment on “Experimental Separation of Geometric and Dynamical Phases Using Neutron Interferometry”

##

Figure Captions

Figure 1:

The expected phase shift as a function of distance along three paths in the space of parameters $`B_{1y}`$, $`B_{2y}`$, beginning at the point I, i.e. $`q(180,180)`$ and ending at F, i.e. $`q(180,180)`$ and passing through the point $`q(179,179)`$ (solid line), the point $`q(181,181)`$ (dotted line) or the point $`q(1,1)`$ (dashed line). q stands for $`1/\sqrt{2}`$. Note the nonlinear variation and change in sign of the phase.


text:
# Topcolor assisted technicolor models and muon anomalous magnetic moment

## Abstract

We discuss and estimate the contributions of the new particles predicted by topcolor assisted technicolor(TC2) models to the muon anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$. Our results show that the contributions of Pseudo Goldstone bosons are very small which can be safely ignored. The main contributions come from the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$ and topcolor gauge boson $`Z^{}`$. If we demand that the mass of $`Z^{}`$ is consistent with other experimental constrains, its contributions are smaller than that of $`x_\mu `$. With reasonable values of the parameters in TC2 models, the observed BNL results for $`a_\mu `$ could be explained.

PACS number(s): 12.26NZ, 14.60.Ef, 13.40.Em

A new experimental value of the muon anomalous magnetic moment, $`a_\mu =\frac{1}{2}(g2)_\mu `$, was recently reported by BNL. The data seems to include a 2.6 standard deviation from theoretical predictions based on the standard model(SM). This may be an indication of new physics if it is more than a statistical fluctuation. If the deviation comes from the new physics effects, then at $`95\%`$ CL, $`\delta a_\mu ^{NP}`$ must lie in the range:

$$215\times 10^{11}\delta a_\mu ^{NP}637\times 10^{11}.$$
(1)
Many authors have considered various possibilities of interpreting the deviation in models beyond the SM, such as supersymmetry theories, technicolor theories, muon with substructure in composite models and models with extra neutral gauge bosons or fermions. In this letter, we estimate the contributions of the new particles (technipions, top-pions, ETC gauge bosons and extra $`U(1)_Y`$ gauge boson $`Z^{}`$) predicted by topcolor assisted technicolor(TC2) models to the muon anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$. Our results show that, with reasonable values of the parameters in TC2 models, the deviation could be explained.

To solve the phenomenological difficulties of traditional technicolor(TC) theory, TC2 models were proposed by combing TC interactions with the topcolor interactions for the third generation at the scale of about 1 TeV. In TC2 models, there are two kinds of new gauge bosons: (a) ETC gauge bosons, (b) the topcolor gauge bosons $`B_\mu ^A`$ and $`Z^{}`$. Furthermore, this kind of models predict a number of Pseudo Goldstone bosons (PGBs) including the technipions in the TC sector and the top-pions in the topcolor sector. It has been shown that all of these new particles can give corrections to the Z-pole observablities at LEP and SLD, and thus the LEP-SLD precision data could give constrains on the parameters of TC2 models. In this letter, we consider the contributions of these new particles to the muon anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$ and see whether the recent measured value of $`a_\mu `$ can give constrains on the parameters of TC2 models.

Before numerical estimations, we give the couplings of these new particles to muons. The couplings of PGBs to muons can be written as:

$$\frac{im_\mu }{\sqrt{2}F_T}[\pi _p^0\overline{\mu }\gamma ^5\mu +\overline{\nu }_{\mu L}\pi _p^+\mu _R+\overline{\mu }_L\pi _p^{}\nu _{\mu R}]+\frac{im_\mu }{\sqrt{2}F_t}(\frac{F_t}{\upsilon _w})[\pi _t^0\overline{\mu }\gamma ^5\mu +\overline{\nu }_{\mu L}\pi _t^+\mu _R+\overline{\mu }_L\pi _t^{}\nu _{\mu R}],$$
(2)
where $`F_T`$ is the decay constant of the technipion $`\pi _p`$, $`F_t50GeV`$ is the decay constant of the top-pion $`\pi _t`$ and $`\upsilon _w=\upsilon /\sqrt{2}=174GeV`$.

For TC2 models, the underlying interactions, topcolor interactions, are non-universal and therefore do not possess a GIM mechanism. When the non-universal interactions are written in the mass eigen basis, it lead to the flavor changing (FC) vertices of the new gauge bosons, such as $`Z^{}tc`$, $`Z^{}\mu e`$ and $`Z^{}\mu \tau `$. The couplings of $`Z^{}`$ to muons , including the $`\mu \tau `$ transition, can be written as:

$$\frac{1}{2}g_1\mathrm{tan}\theta ^{}(\overline{\mu }_L\gamma ^\mu \mu _L+2\overline{\mu }_R\gamma ^\mu \mu _R)g_1[K_L(\overline{\mu }_L\gamma ^\mu \tau _L)+2K_R(\overline{\mu }_R\gamma ^\mu \tau _R)],$$
(3)
where $`g_1`$ is the $`U(1)_Y`$ coupling constant at the scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{TC}`$, $`\theta ^{}`$ is the mixing angle with $`\mathrm{tan}\theta ^{}=g_1/(2\sqrt{\pi K_1})`$. $`K_L`$ and $`K_R`$ are the flavor mixing factors. In the following estimation, we will assume $`|K_L|=|K_R|=V_{23}`$, which is the matrix element of the lepton mixing matrix V. In order to explain the atmospheric neutrino results, one needs an almost maximal mixing between $`\nu _\mu `$ and $`\nu _\tau `$. Thus, we take a large mixing between the second and third generation leptons, i.e. $`V_{23}=1/\sqrt{2}`$.

For TC2 models, the TC interactions play a main role in breaking the electroweak symmetry. The topcolor interactions also make small contributions to the electroweak symmetry breaking, and give rise to the main part of the top quark mass, $`(1ϵ)m_t`$ with a model dependent parameter $`ϵ1`$. In TC2 models, ETC interactions are still needed to generate the masses of the light quarks and leptons, give masses to PGBs, and contribute a few $`GeV`$ to $`m_t`$, i.e. $`ϵm_t`$. Ordinary fermions receive the ETC induced masses via the ETC couplings of technifermions to ordinary fermions. The couplings of the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$ to muons can be written as:

$$g_E(\zeta _\mu \overline{L_L}\gamma ^\mu l_L+\zeta _{R\mu }\overline{E_R}\gamma ^\mu \mu _R),$$
(4)
where $`L_L=(N,E)`$ and $`E_R`$ represent technifermions, and $`l_L=(\nu _\mu ,\mu )_L`$, $`\mu _R`$ represent the second generation leptons. Ordinary fermions couple to the techinfermions via ETC interactions with the coupling constant $`g_E`$, $`\zeta _\mu `$ and $`\zeta _{R\mu }`$ are the coefficients of the left- and the right-handed couplings.

From eq.2 we can see that the PGBs ($`\pi _p`$ and $`\pi _t`$) can give the one-loop corrections to the muon anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$ via the Feynman diagrams shown in Fig.1. Calculating Fig.1, we can give the corrections of PGBs to $`a_\mu `$, which can be approximately written as:

$`\delta a_\mu ^{PGB}`$ $`=`$ $`\delta a_\mu ^{\pi _p^0}+\delta a_\mu ^{\pi _p^\pm }+\delta a_\mu ^{\pi _t^0}+\delta a_\mu ^{\pi _t^\pm }`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_Fm_\mu ^2}{4\pi ^2\sqrt{2}}}\{({\displaystyle \frac{m_\mu ^2}{m_{\pi _p}^2}})({\displaystyle \frac{\upsilon }{F_T}})^2[\mathrm{ln}({\displaystyle \frac{m_{\pi _p}^2}{m_\mu ^2}}){\displaystyle \frac{7}{6}}]+({\displaystyle \frac{m_\mu ^2}{m_{\pi _t}^2}})[\mathrm{ln}({\displaystyle \frac{m_{\pi _t}^2}{m_\mu ^2}}){\displaystyle \frac{7}{6}}]\}.`$
The contributions of the charged PGB’s to $`a_\mu `$ are much smaller than those of the neutral PGB’s, which have been neglected in above equation. It has been pointed out that the mass of the lightest technipion $`\pi _p^0`$ is about $`100GeV`$ and the mass of the top-pion $`\pi _t^0`$ is in the range of $`200400GeV`$. If we take $`F_T=40GeV`$, which corresponds to the topcolor assisted multiscale technicolor models, then we find $`\delta a_\mu ^{PGB}1.2\times 10^{12}`$. Thus, the corrections of the PGBs to $`a_\mu `$ can be safely neglected.

The one-loop corrections of the extra $`U(1)_Y`$ gauge boson $`Z^{}`$ to the muon anomalous magnetic moment can be divided into two parts: one part comes from the coupling $`Z^{}\mu \overline{\mu }`$ and the other comes from the FC couplings . The heavier generations are naturally expected to have larger FC couplings. Then the most main contributions generated by the FC couplings to $`a_\mu `$ arise from the FC coupling $`Z^{}\mu \overline{\tau }`$. The relevant Feynman diagrams are shown in Fig.2. Using eq.(3), we can estimate the corrections of $`Z^{}`$ to $`a_\mu `$, which are given by:

$$\delta a_\mu ^{\mu \mu }=\frac{\alpha _e^2}{12\pi c_W^4}\frac{m_\mu ^2}{K_1M_Z^{}^2}+0(\frac{m_\mu ^2}{M_Z^{}^2}),\delta a_\mu ^{\mu \tau }=\frac{2\alpha _eV_{23}^2}{\pi c_W^2}\frac{m_\mu m_\tau }{M_Z^{}^2}+0(\frac{m_\mu ^2}{M_Z^{}^2},\frac{m_\tau ^2}{M_Z^{}^2}).$$
(6)
Using the relation $`K_1M_Z^{}^2\frac{\sqrt{5}\alpha _es_W^2M_W^2A}{8c_W^4\sqrt{B_r^{exp}(\mu 3e)}}`$, we can estimate the value of $`\delta a_\mu ^{\mu \mu }`$, we find $`\delta a_\mu ^{\mu \mu }<1\times 10^{14}`$, which is at least smaller than the deviation $`\delta a_\mu `$ reported from BNL by five orders of magnitude. Thus, we can safely neglect the contributions from the $`Z^{}\mu \overline{\mu }`$ coupling. However, the numerical value of $`\delta a_\mu ^{\mu \tau }`$ is dependent on the value of $`M_Z^{}`$, so we can write $`\delta a_\mu ^Z^{}\delta a_\mu ^{\mu \tau }`$ and we have:

$$\delta a_\mu ^Z^{}\frac{2\alpha _eV_{23}^2}{\pi c_W^2}\frac{m_\mu m_\tau }{M_Z^{}^2}.$$
(7)
According the idea of TC2 models, the lepton masses are dynamically generated by ETC interactions. Then the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$ which is responsible for the mass $`m_\mu `$ should have contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$ via the couplings given in eq.(4). The Feynman diagram is similarly to Fig.2$`a`$, only with $`x_\mu `$ replacing $`Z^{}`$, and the technifermion line replacing the internal muon line. Then the contributions of $`x_\mu `$ to the anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$ can be written as:

$$\delta a_\mu ^{ETC}\frac{2(2\gamma )}{2+\gamma }\frac{m_\mu ^2}{M_{x_\mu }^2}.$$
(8)
The anomalous dimension $`\gamma `$ is in the range of $`02`$. In our calculation, we take $`\gamma `$ as a free parameter. Thus, for TC2 models, the total correction to $`a_\mu `$ can be written as:

$$\delta a_\mu \delta a_\mu ^Z^{}+\delta a_\mu ^{ETC}\frac{2\alpha _eV_{23}^2}{\pi c_W^2}\frac{m_\mu m_\tau }{M_Z^{}^2}+\frac{2(2\gamma )}{2+\gamma }\frac{m_\mu ^2}{M_{x_\mu }^2}.$$
(9)
In Fig.3, we plot the correction $`\delta a_\mu `$ as a function of the mass $`M_{x_\mu }`$ for $`\gamma =1`$ and three values of $`M_Z^{}`$. One can find $`\delta a_\mu `$ is not sensitive to the value of $`M_Z^{}`$. As long as $`1.1TeVM_{x_\mu }2.2TeV`$, TC2 models could explain the 2.6 standard deviation of the muon anomalous magnetic moment over its SM prediction.

To see the effects of the anomalous dimension $`\gamma `$ on the muon anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$, we plot $`\delta a_\mu `$ as a function of the parameter $`\gamma `$ in Fig.4 for $`M_Z^{}=2TeV`$ and three values of $`M_{x_\mu }`$. From Fig.4 we can see that the recent experimental value of $`a_\mu `$ give severe bounds on the parameters of TC2 models. For $`\gamma =2`$, the contributions of the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$ to the muon anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$ are zero and the value of $`\delta a_\mu `$ generated by the topcolor gauge boson $`Z^{}`$ is only $`1.5\times 10^{10}`$ for $`M_Z^{}=2TeV`$. In this case, if we want that TC2 models could explain the deviation $`\delta a_\mu =a_\mu ^{exp}a_\mu ^{SM}`$, there must be $`M_Z^{}550GeV`$ which is not consistent with other experimental bounds on the $`Z^{}`$ mass. For $`\gamma =0`$, the contributions of the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$ are largely enhanced compared that of $`\gamma =2`$. The $`Z^{}`$ mass $`M_Z^{}`$ can be larger than $`1.5TeV`$, which is consistent with the limits on $`M_Z^{}`$ from other experiments. However, the mass of the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$ must be in the range $`1.9TeVM_{x_\mu }3.3TeV`$.

TC2 models predict a number of new particles, including PGBs (technipions, top-pions), ETC gauge bosons and extra $`U(1)`$ gauge boson $`Z^{}`$. All of these new particles have contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment $`a_\mu `$. We find the contributions of PGBs are very small which can be safely ignored. If we demand that the mass of topcolor gauge boson $`Z^{}`$ is consistent with other experimental constrains, its contributions are smaller than that of the ETC gauge boson $`x_\mu `$. As long as the muon mass is generated by the ETC interactions or other strong interactions , TC2 models could explain the deviation $`\delta a_\mu =a_\mu ^{exp}a_\mu ^{SM}`$ for reasonable values of the parameters.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(I9905004), the Excellent Youth Foundation of Henan Scientific Committee(9911) and Foundation of Henan Educational Committee.

Figure captions

Feynman diagrams for the contributions of PGB’s in TC2 models.

Feynman diagrams for the contributions of extra gauge boson $`Z^{}`$ (a) $`Z\mu \overline{\mu }`$ coupling; (b) $`Z\mu \overline{\tau }`$ coupling.

The total correction $`\delta a_\mu `$ as a function of the mass $`M_{x_\mu }`$ for $`\gamma =1`$, and $`M_Z^{}=0.5TeV`$ (solid line), $`M_Z^{}=1TeV`$(dotted line) and $`M_Z^{}=2.5TeV`$(dashed line).

The total correction $`\delta a_\mu `$ in TC2 models as a function of the parameter $`\gamma `$ for $`M_Z^{}=2TeV`$, and $`M_{x_\mu }=1TeV`$(solid line), $`M_{x_\mu }=3TeV`$(dotted line) and $`M_{x_\mu }=5TeV`$(dashed line).


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# Three-nucleon portrait with pion

## 1 Introduction

A crucial aspect in modern three-nucleon dynamics concerns the inclusion in the system of additional mesonic aspects which cannot be conveniently described by a conventional (e.g., meson-exchange) two-nucleon potential. The standard approach to this problem introduces three-nucleon forces (3$`NF`$), which effectively describe the addition of such irreducible mesonic contributions. Such “3$`NF`$” approaches turned out to be successful in curing the problem of the underbinding of the three-nucleon bound state, but failed to explain the puzzle of the vector analyzing powers (“the $`A_y`$ puzzle”) in nucleon-deuteron scattering at low energy.

Recently, with the aim to explain the $`A_y`$ puzzle, there have been various approaches which introduced 3$`NF`$ of new structure, in the attempt to characterize, more or less effectively, some refined aspects of the meson dynamics which were not yet contemplated in the traditional 3$`NF`$ expressions. The starting point of these descriptions is characterized by a Hamiltonian which is restricted in the three-nucleon space, wherein the mesonic aspects have been integrated out from the very beginning via the introduction of 3$`NF`$-like contributions.

In contrast, we have considered an approach which starts from the employment of the full four-body dynamics of the one-pion three-nucleon system. The method is based on a generalization to the one-pion three-nucleon problem of the rigorous four-body theory of Grassberger-Sandhas-Yakubovsky, this generalization being developed by one of the authors. Such generalization turned out to be a highly nontrivial task, and a physically sound approximation scheme has been recently derived for the resulting dynamical equations.

To the lowest order, such approximation scheme reproduces the diagrams leading to the 3$`NF`$ á la Tucson-Melbourne. However, at the same level of approximation, other irreducible diagrams of different structure appeared. In particular, a recent detailed analysis for one class of such diagrams showed the appearence of a new three-nucleon force of tensor structure. This 3$`NF`$ component is generated by the underlying one-pion exchange diagram where one of the two nucleons interacts with the third one while the pion is being exchanged. In a conventional 3$`NF`$ approach, where the meson degrees of freedom are integrated out from the very beginning, such diagram is usually neglected because of the presence of a cancellation effect involving meson-retardation effects of the combined exchange of two pions. However, by treating explicitly the pion dynamics, it was found that this cancellation is incomplete, and a 30% effect survives once these mesonic retardations are taken into account. In a recent work, the effect of this new 3$`NF`$ of tensor structure has been studied in neutron-deuteron scattering at low energy.

## 2 Pion production from few-nucleon collisions

Here we summarize the results obtained on pion production from collisions involving few-nucleon systems. For full details, we refer to the original papers7-11. The starting point is the low-energy Lagrangian coupling the pion ($`\mathrm{\Phi }`$) and nucleon ($`\mathrm{\Psi }`$) fields,

$`_{\mathrm{int}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{f_{\pi NN}}{m_\pi }}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\gamma ^\mu \gamma ^5\stackrel{}{\tau }\mathrm{\Psi }_\mu \stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$
$`4\pi {\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _I}{m_\pi ^2}}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\gamma ^\mu \stackrel{}{\tau }\mathrm{\Psi }\left[\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\times _\mu \stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\right]4\pi {\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _O}{m_\pi }}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }\left[\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\right].`$
The choice of the two constants $`\lambda _I`$ and $`\lambda _O`$ is consistent with the pion-nucleon scattering lengths; however the kinematics for the pion-production mechanism requires an off-shell extrapolation of the two constants, which can be conveniently obtained by representing the corresponding four-leg vertices in terms of a combination of exchanges of heavier mesons, $`\rho `$, $`\sigma `$ and some additional effective short-range effects.

The description of the pion production process in terms of this Lagrangian is however not sufficient, because of the strong coupling of the $`\pi `$N system to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ channel. Therefore, one must consider, in addition, the mechanisms triggered by the $`\pi `$N$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ coupling and by the $`V(\mathrm{\Delta }NNN)`$ transition potential. As shown in Fig. 1, this occurs even around threshold, since the structure of $`A_y`$ is governed by the interference effects between the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and non-$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ mechanisms. The results obtained for pion production from $`pd`$ collision show that this interplay is even more important here, and the relevance of the various production mechanisms shows up already at the level of the integral cross section (see the contribution to these Proceedings by M. Viviani, Fig. 2). In particular, the off-shell effects in the isoscalar channel turned out to be very important, for the normalization of the production cross-section, as well as for describing the spin observables at threshold.

## 3 Pion dynamics and new three-nucleon-force diagrams

The explicit pion dynamics can be included in the 3$`N`$ system by generalizing the rigorous 3$`N`$ approach in terms of AGS equations. One advantage is consistency between the treatment of such mesonic aspects, and the method of solution of the three-nucleon problem with a given 2$`N`$ potential. Starting from this result a practical approximation scheme has been derived, which treats perturbatively the four-body dynamics of the pion-three-nucleon system. To the lowest order, the approach leads to 3$`NF`$ diagrams, which can be incorporated into an effective two-cluster 3$`N`$ equation:

$$X_{ss^{}}^{(2)}=Z_{ss^{}}^{(2)}+\underset{s^{\prime \prime }}{}Z_{ss^{\prime \prime }}^{(2)}\tau _{s^{\prime \prime }}^{(2)}X_{s^{\prime \prime }s^{}}^{(2)}$$
(2)
where the driving term is given by two contributions

$$Z_{ss^{}}^{(2)}=Z_{ss^{}}^{AGS}+Z_{ss^{}}^{3NF}.$$
(3)
The first term represents the standard nucleon-exchange diagram between different correlated pairs of nucleons, while the second contains irreducible exchange diagrams involving the pion (see Fig. 2). Beside the standard 3$`NF`$ diagram –the first diagram in the figure– where the pion rescatters with the nucleon while being “in flight” (it represents the basic diagram for the construction of the “standard” three-nucleon force), we obtain at the same order two additional diagrams which lead to 3$`NF`$ of different structure. At the present stage we have considered the consequences implied by the second diagram of Fig. 2, representing a 2$`N`$ rescattering process while the pion is “in flight”. The combined effect of the two 3$`NF`$ terms implied by the first two diagrams in Fig. 2 have been studied also in a schematic one-dimensional model. Further work is needed in order to consider the last type of diagrams shown in figure.

## 4 Tensor three-nucleon force

The tensor structure of the 3$`NF`$ implied by the second diagram shown in Fig.2 has been discussed recently. The explicit expression is

$`V_3^{3N}(𝐩,𝐪,𝐩^{},𝐪^{};E)={\displaystyle \frac{f_{\pi NN}^2(Q)}{m_\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}}`$
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle \frac{(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟏}𝐐)(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟑}𝐐)(𝝉_\mathrm{𝟏}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟑})+(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟐}𝐐)(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟑}𝐐)(𝝉_\mathrm{𝟐}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟑})}{\omega _\pi ^2}}\right]`$
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{t}_{12}(𝐩,𝐩^{};E\frac{q^2}{2\nu }m_\pi )}{2m_\pi }}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{f_{\pi NN}^2(Q)}{m_\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{t}_{12}(𝐩,𝐩^{};E\frac{q_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}{2\nu }m_\pi )}{2m_\pi }}`$
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle \frac{(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟏}𝐐)(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟑}𝐐)(𝝉_\mathrm{𝟏}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟑})+(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟐}𝐐)(𝝈_\mathrm{𝟑}𝐐)(𝝉_\mathrm{𝟐}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟑})}{\omega _\pi ^2}}\right].`$
The momenta $`𝐩,𝐪`$ represent the Jacobi coordinates of the pair “$`1`$$`2`$”, and spectator “$`3`$” in the incoming state, and similarly $`𝐩^{},𝐪^{}`$ are for the outgoing channel. $`E`$ is the 3$`N`$ energy and $`𝐐`$ is the momentum carried by the pion, $`𝐐=𝐪𝐪^{}`$. The tensor structure arises because of the presence of the One-Pion-Exchange term between the spectator nucleon and the pair, while the pair correlation is described by means of the 2$`N`$ $`t`$-matrix, evaluated at the off-shell energy, as required from the kinematics for the subsystems.

The above expression has been obtained by taking into account the dynamical effects of one single pion. It is clear, however, that one should expect that the combined exchanges of more than one pion will have some additional effects. However, the irreducible diagrams generated by the combined exchange of two pions –at leading order– cancel out against the mesonic retardation effects of the reducible contributions –at second order– of the Born diagram. This cancellation has been observed by various authors111See, e.g., the references contained here, but it has been also argued recently that this cancellation is incomplete, and leads in Eq. (4) to a subtracted $`t`$-matrix: $`\stackrel{~}{t}_{12}(𝐩,𝐩^{};E\mathrm{})=t_{12}(𝐩,𝐩^{};E\mathrm{})v_{12}(𝐩,𝐩^{})`$.

In Fig. 3 it is shown that this subtracted $`\stackrel{~}{t}`$-matrix is not negligible in the relevant kinematical region, if compared to the unsubtracted $`t`$-matrix. The figure refers to the Bonn CD potential, however we obtained similar results for other modern potentials, and also in other 2$`N`$ states.

Fig. 4 is taken from a recent preprint (which we refer to for all details), and shows the results obtained when the $`3NF`$ herein discussed is included, with respect to a calculation with the Paris $`2NF`$, only. As $`2N`$ interaction we have considered the high-rank parameterization of this interaction known as $`PEST`$, developed by the Graz group.

## 5 Summary

Pion production reactions have been studied by us theoretically with a combination of mechanisms involving meson exchanges and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ excitations. The results obtained showed that such combination is appropriate for describing unpolarized and polarized observables at low energies.

Also, an approach for the treatment of pion dynamics has been developed, by taking into account the complete four-body dynamics of the pion and three nucleon system. The resulting equations have been treated with an approximation scheme which leads, to the lowest order, to effective three-nucleon interactions. It has been shown that one class of diagrams leads to a tensor-like three-nucleon potential. It has been argued how this new term could explain the puzzle of the nucleon-deuteron vector analyzing powers.

## Acknowledgments

We thank for support the Italian MURST-PRIN Project “Fisica Teorica del Nucleo e dei Sistemi a Piú Corpi”. We also acknowledge support from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The authors thank also the Institutions of INFN (Padova), TRIUMF (Vancouver), University of Manitoba, and Universitá di Padova for hospitality during reciprocal visits.


text:
# Anomalous X-ray Pulsars and Soft 𝛾-ray Repeaters: Spectral Fits and the Magnetar Model

## 1 Introduction

The roughly half dozen so-called anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs; Mereghetti & Stella 1995; van Paradijs, Taam, & van den Heuvel 1995) have recently emerged as a distinct class of objects. They are slow ($`P5`$–10 s) rotators with no evidence of Doppler shifts from binary motion, and several are associated with supernova remnants, suggesting that they are young objects. Owing to their long periods, their rotational energy loss is far too low to power their observed X-ray luminosities. Models to account for the properties of these sources fall into two broad categories. In the first class of models, the X-ray emission is powered by accretion, which could result from a binary companion of very low mass (Mereghetti & Stella 1995), the debris of a disrupted massive companion (van Paradijs, Taam & van den Heuvel 1995; Ghosh, Angelini & White 1997), or material falling back after a supernova explosion (Corbet et al. 1995; Chatterjee, Hernquist & Narayan 2000; Alpar 1999, 2000; Marsden et al. 2001). In the second class of models, accretion is not involved; instead, the AXPs are hypothesized to be either ultramagnetized neutron stars (NSs; Thompson & Duncan 1996) or remnants of Thorne-$`\dot{\mathrm{Z}}`$ytkow objects (van Paradijs et al. 1995). In the former case, the X-ray luminosity could be powered either by magnetic field decay (Thompson & Duncan 1996; Heyl & Kulkarni 1998) or by residual thermal energy (Heyl & Hernquist 1997a,b).

If the AXPs are indeed ultramagnetized NSs (or “magnetars”; Duncan & Thompson 1992, 1995), then they may be related to another class of objects, the soft $`\gamma `$-ray repeaters (SGRs; e.g. Kouveliotou et al. 1999). In their quiescent X-ray emission, the SGRs have slow pulsations similar to those seen in the AXPs. In addition, the SGRs sometimes show strong hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray bursts, which can be distinguished from the classical $`\gamma `$-ray bursts (GRBs) by their recurrence and their spectra, which are generally much softer than those of the GRBs. According to Thompson & Duncan (1996), these bursts could be the result of sudden releases of energy resulting from rearrangement of the magnetic fields in the crusts of highly magnetized NSs.

In the magnetar model for the AXPs and SGRs, whether the X-ray luminosity is powered by cooling or magnetic field decay or by a combination of both, the thermally emitting area must be consistent with a neutron star surface. However, blackbody fits to the spectra of these objects require emitting areas that are only a small fraction of the total surface. This discrepancy may arise at least partially because the thermal emission of NSs most likely does not have a true blackbody spectrum. Atmospheric effects are known to distort NS spectra. Fallback after the supernova explosion, and/or accretion from the interstellar medium, will likely cover the surface of the star with light elements. (Note that to cover the surface to an X-ray optical depth of unity requires only $`10^{14}\mathrm{g}10^{19}M_{}`$ of material.) Moreover, this material is likely to suffer significant fractionization on short timescales (Alcock & Illarionov 1980; Romani 1987). Owing to the enormous surface gravity of the star, the heavier elements will settle out in of order 1$``$100 sec, leaving an atmosphere made of light elements. Besides atmospheric effects, the emergent NS spectrum is also dependent on the underlying temperature distribution on the stellar surface (in blackbody fits this is assumed incorrectly to be uniform), and on the general relativistic effect of light deflection owing to the large surface gravity. A spectral analysis that takes into account all these effects is the purpose of this work.

More specifically, in this Letter, we analyze archival ASCA data for some of the known AXPs and SGRs, and fit them with a model in which the X-ray flux is produced by thermal emission from a highly magnetized NS with an atmosphere made of light elements. We take into account the anisotropy in the flow of heat through the envelope of the NS owing to the intense magnetic field, as well as general relativistic corrections to the observed spectrum. Our fits are consistent with emission from the entire surface of a neutron star, supporting the interpretation of AXPs and SGRs as magnetars.

## 2 The X-Ray Spectrum of a Cooling Magnetar

We consider a highly magnetized neutron star cooling through an accreted envelope. Heyl & Hernquist (1998b, 2000) showed that, if $`B_p10^{12}`$ G, the flux transmitted through the envelope can be well approximated by $`F\mathrm{cos}^2\psi `$, where $`\psi `$ is the angle between the local radial direction and the magnetic field. For a dipolar field,

$$\mathrm{cos}^2\psi =4\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _p/(3\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _p+1)$$
(1)
(Greenstein & Hartke 1983), where $`\theta _p`$ is the angle between the radial direction at position ($`\theta ,\varphi `$) on the surface of the star, and the magnetic pole. In spherical coordinates, it is given by

$$\mathrm{cos}\theta _p=\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cos}\alpha +\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\alpha \mathrm{cos}\varphi ,$$
(2)
where $`\alpha `$ is the angle that the magnetic pole makes with the line of sight. For this study, we consider an orthogonal rotator.111We find that spectral fits are insensitive to this choice when considering the average flux over the rotational period of the star. The angle $`\alpha `$ is then coincident with the phase angle $`\mathrm{\Omega }t`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the angular velocity of the star. For the local emission from the NS surface, $`n(E,T)`$, we assume a blackbody spectrum modified by the presence of an atmosphere made of light elements, for which we adopt the semianalytical model of Heyl & Hernquist222This model yields spectral intensities very close to those of Pavlov et al. (1994), who computed detailed atmospheres for magnetic field strengths on the order of $`10^{12}10^{13}`$ G. Preliminary results (D. Lloyd et al. in preparation) suggest furthermore that realistic spectra are similar to ours even for much stronger fields, $`B10^{14}10^{15}`$ G.  (1998a), but with the inclusion of limb darkening. This is parameterized by an angle dependence of the intensity $`\mathrm{cos}^\beta \delta `$. The dependence on $`\beta `$ is explored in the fits.

Let $`R`$ be the radius of the NS star, $`M`$ its mass (for which we adopt $`M=1.4M_{}`$), $`R_s=2GM/c^2`$ its Schwarzschild radius, and define $`e^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_s}\sqrt{1R/R_s}`$. If $`D`$ is the distance from the star to the observer, the phase-averaged flux measured by an observer at infinity (without including the reduction due to photoelectric absorption by intervening material) is given by

$$f(E)=\frac{\pi R_{\mathrm{}}^2\sigma T_{p,\mathrm{}}^4}{4\pi D^2}\frac{1}{kT_{p,\mathrm{}}}_0^{2\pi }\frac{d\alpha }{2\pi }_0^12x𝑑x_0^{2\pi }\frac{d\varphi }{2\pi }I_0(\theta ,\varphi )n[Ee^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_s};T_s(\theta ,\varphi )],$$
(3)
in units of photons cm-2 s-1 keV-1. Here $`x=\mathrm{sin}\delta `$ ($`\delta `$ being the angle between the normal to the NS surface and the direction of the photon trajectory), $`R_{\mathrm{}}Re^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_s}`$, and $`T_{p,\mathrm{}}T_pe^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_s}`$, where $`T_p`$ is the temperature at the pole. The general relativistic effects of light deflection are taken into account through the ray-tracing function (Page 1995)

$$\theta (\delta )=_0^{R_s/2R}x𝑑u/\sqrt{\left(1\frac{R_s}{R}\right)\left(\frac{R_s}{2R}\right)^2(12u)u^2x^2},$$
(4)
where $`u=R_s/2r`$, with $`r`$ being the radial coordinate. A photon emitted at an angle $`\delta `$ with respect to the normal to the surface comes from a colatitude $`\theta (\delta )`$ on the star. The total flux at each point $`(\theta ,\varphi )`$ of the NS surface is given by

$$I_0(\theta ,\varphi )=\frac{4\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _p}{3\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _p+1}(0.75\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _p+0.25)^{0.2}.$$
(5)
The first term in the right hand side is appropriate for a dipole, and we have then assumed a further dependence of the flux on $`B^{0.4}`$, as in Heyl & Hernquist (1998b). Finally, the local temperature on the stellar surface is determined by

$$T_s(\theta ,\varphi )=T_p[I_0(\theta ,\varphi )]^{1/4}.$$
(6)
## 3 Observations and Analysis

We analyzed archival observations of several AXPs and SGRs made by the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA; Tanaka, Inoue, & Holt 1994), obtained from the High Energy Astrophysics Archival Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. ASCA was launched in 1993 and continued to make observations through 2000. It carried four identical grazing incidence X-ray telescopes capable of imaging X-rays in the 0.5–10 keV range with a 24 arcmin (FWHM) field of view, a $``$1 arcmin point spread function, and a total effective area of 1300 cm2 at 1 keV. Each telescope had one dedicated focal plane instrument, and all four instruments simultaneously recorded data for each observation. The two CCD cameras (SIS0 and SIS1) had superior energy resolution ($`E/\mathrm{\Delta }E`$20–50) and were sensitive down to about 0.5 keV. The two gas scintillation imaging proportional counters (GIS2 and GIS3) had more modest energy resolution ($`E/\mathrm{\Delta }E`$10) and little sensitivity below 1 keV, but their effective area was comparable to the CCDs around 2 keV and higher above $``$4 keV. Thus, the GIS data were somewhat better suited for studying the X-ray continuum spectrum of absorbed sources like the AXPs and SGRs. However, we initially examined data from all four instruments in our analysis.

A summary of the ASCA observations that we analyzed is given in Table 1. For simplicity, we confined ourselves to those sources where there is no contaminating emission from a surrounding supernova remnant to consider; this excludes the AXPs 1E 2259+586 and 1E 1841-045. We used the standard screened events files provided through HEASARC by the ASCA Guest Observer Facility (GOF). From these files, spectra were extracted for the point sources. The extraction radii were 6 arcmin and 4arcmin for GIS and SIS respectively. Background spectra were also extracted from the event files from the area outside a 8 arcmin radius from the point source and any other bright sources present in the observation. We fitted the X-ray spectra for all the observations in Table 1 using the XSPEC spectral analysis package (Arnaud 1996). In each case, we fit the analytic magnetar model described in Equation (3). For comparison, we also fit an ideal blackbody model (BB), assuming a uniform temperature distribution over the emitting area. The free parameters of the magnetar model are the pole temperature $`T_p`$ and the radius of the star $`R`$. (For a non-relativistic star, the radius affects only the overall normalization of the spectrum; however, when general relativistic effects are taken into account, the radius also modifies the shape of the spectrum through the dependence of the function $`\theta (x)`$ in Equation (3) on $`R`$.)

For both the magnetar and the BB models, we included the multiplicative effect of interstellar photoelectric absorption (Morrison & McCammon 1983). We also allowed for the possibility of an absorbed power law (PL) component, using the same absorption column as for the thermal component. However, for each object, a fit using only the absorbed thermal component alone was also attempted. A spectrum produced by an atmosphere indeed has a harder tail compared to simple blackbody emission at the same effective temperature. Therefore, even if the blackbody fit always required an extra power law component, this did not necessarily have to be the case when processing by an atmosphere was included in the computation of the spectrum.

For each observation, we began by fitting the data for each instrument individually, in order to evaluate the data quality separately. If the data from one or more of the instruments had poor statistics (usually in the case of the SIS data) or was otherwise problematic, it was discarded. The remaining data were then fit jointly to maximize our continuum sensitivity, with the overall normalization tied to that of the GIS2 detector (which generally gave the best independent fits). In the case of the SGR 1627$``$41 and SGR 1806$`20`$, we found that there were too few soft counts to allow a meaningful constraint on the fit parameters for the thermal components. We do not consider these sources further in this paper.

The results of our fits are summarized in Table 2. For each source, we show both the absorbed BB+PL fits and the absorbed magnetar+PL fits. In the case of AX J1845-0258, however, the statistics were too poor to constrain both components separately. For this object, the thermal and non-thermal components in Table 2 represent alternate fits to the same data. In a few cases (i.e. when the fit was acceptable), we also show an absorbed magnetar-PL fit with the column density held fixed at $`N_\mathrm{H}=1\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2. For all our fits, we also give the fraction of the flux that is in the power law component, computed in terms of the unabsorbed photon flux in the 0.7–10 keV band. A comparison between the temperatures and radii obtained in the BB fits and in the fits with the atmospheres is shown in Figure 1 (except for the object RXS J1708$``$40, whose distance is still largely uncertain, and for which a separate discussion will be made in §4). The two dashed lines mark the region of NS radii which are allowed by currently available models for the NS equation of state.

## 4 Discussion

We have analyzed archival ASCA data for several known AXPs and SGRs and fitted their spectra with a model in which the X-ray emission consists of thermal radiation from a highly magnetized neutron star, as well as a power-law component at high energies. For the thermal contribution, we have included distortions in the spectra due to the presence of an atmosphere of light elements, accounted for the anisotropic flow of heat through the envelope due to the intense magnetic field, and included general relativistic corrections to the observed flux. We find that the thermal emitting areas implied by our model are always larger than those derived by spectral fits that use a blackbody spectrum, and are generally consistent with those expected for neutron stars. All the fits were made using a model with a moderate beaming, i.e. $`\beta 01`$. We have considered other radiation patterns and find that a more intense beaming results in slightly larger inferred areas and smaller temperatures, but the fits are equally acceptable. Therefore, spectral fits alone made with the phase averaged spectrum are not able to constrain the degree and type of beaming, especially given the uncertainties in the other parameters.

In most of the cases we found that, despite the fact that processing by an atmosphere leads to lower temperatures than those implied by the BB fits, our inferred temperatures are still too high to be accounted for by thermal cooling alone. However, if the magnetic field is sufficiently strong and decaying, the energy from its decay may augment the thermal emission from the surface (Heyl & Kulkarni 1998). The inferred surface temperatures of all of the objects with well constrained fits are higher than would be expected for a neutron star cooling through an iron envelope (Heyl & Hernquist 2000); the results for the AXP 4U 0142$`+61`$, RXS J1708$``$40 and SGR 1900$`+`$14 are marginally consistent with a neutron star cooling through a highly magnetized iron envelope with a substantial contribution to the flux from the decay of the magnetic field (Heyl & Kulkarni 1998). If the energy released by the magnetic field is deposited at high densities, magnetic field decay alone cannot explain the high effective temperatures of the AXPs 1E 1048.1$`5937`$ and 1E 1845$``$0245. Thermal emission through a light element envelope (Heyl & Hernquist 1997b, Potekhin, Chabrier & Yakovlev 1997), however, can account for these sources.

Atmospheric effects play a crucial role in determining the emitted spectrum (Romani 1987; Pavlov et al. 1994; Zampieri et al. 1995; Rajagopal & Romani 1996; Zavlin, Pavlov & Shibanov 1996). For the effective temperatures of these stars (i.e. $``$ a few $`\times 10^6`$ K), the spectra from hydrogen atmospheres depend only weakly on the strength of the magnetic field (see e.g. Fig. 5 in Rajagopal, Romani & Miller 1997). However, the composition of the atmosphere may dramatically affect the emitted spectrum (see, e.g. references above). If the atmosphere were made of heavy elements such as iron, the emitted spectrum would be much closer to a blackbody333Note that the accretion model predicts that the opacity should be dominated by heavy metals in SGRs and AXPs, because the settling time is dominated by the rate of metal deposition for the accretion rates implyed by the X-ray emission (Brown, Bildsten & Rutledge 1998). (Rajagopal et al. 1997).

Note that, given the mild dependence of the spectrum on the strength of the magnetic field for $`B10^{12}`$ G, the model we have developed could similarly be used to model the thermal emission of neutron stars with magnetic fields $`10^{12}10^{13}`$ G and light element atmospheres. However, in the case of the AXPs, the additional heat (with respect to the predictions of standard cooling scenarios) would be difficult to explain without the contribution from magnetic field decay. A hypothetical contribution from accretion would most likely result from matter channeled onto the magnetic poles of the star by the presence of the magnetic field lines. This would yield hot polar caps and the total spectrum would show two thermal components, one at lower energy being consistent with the total area of the star (due to thermal cooling) and another at higher temperature but coming from a small fraction of the star (due to the heated polar caps). Here we find that spectral fitting requires only one thermal component, and therefore this scenario does not seem to be favored. However, it is also true that the high column density to these sources would make a low-temperature thermal component difficult to detect.

The distances to the sources are still rather uncertain. As Figure 1 shows, relatively small variations with respect to the assumed values would not affect any of the conclusions of this work. The value of the inferred radius, $`R`$, roughly scales with the distance $`D`$. If any of the distances turned out to be much smaller than the assumed value, so that the radii were consequently much smaller than the minimum allowed value by the NS equation of state, then an accretion model where the X-ray emission is produced by a hot spot would be favored with respect to the magnetar model, where it is produced by the whole surface of the star. On the other hand, if any of the distances turned out to be much larger than the assumed value, so that the corresponding BB radius were already consistent with the emission from the entire surface, then a light element atmosphere would not be appropriate, as it would yield too large radii, while an atmosphere made of heavy elements such as iron would be a viable option, because it yields spectra very close to blackbody, as discussed above. In such a case, it would be difficult to interpret the X-ray emission as being powered by accretion unless the magnetic field of the objects were very small, so that accretion could proceed in a quasi-spherical fashion rather than being channeled through the poles444Note that in models where accretion derives from fallback disks (e.g. Chatterjee et al. 2000), a magnetic field of the order of $`10^{12}10^{13}`$ G is needed..

Among all the objects that we considered, RXS J1708$`40`$ is the one which has the largest uncertainty in its distance. It lies in the Galactic plane, and, along this direction, spiral arms are located at a distance of $`1`$, $`3`$, and $`4.5`$ kpc (Taylor & Cordes 1993). The large column density to the source inferred from the X-ray spectra suggests a likely distance in the 5-10 kpc range (Israel et al. 1999). However, a smaller distance cannot be ruled out. Our results suggest that this object, if it were a magnetar with a light element atmosphere, would most likely reside in the middle spiral arm. However, a magnetar with an atmosphere of heavy elements would be consistent with the largest estimates of the distance.

Besides the distance to the sources, the main uncertainty in the inferred emitting areas from the spectral fits arises from the uncertainty in the column density $`N_\mathrm{H}`$. This conclusion is similar to the findings of Rutledge et al. (1999) for their spectral fits of the quiescent X-ray emission from accreting NS transients. This uncertainty may be reduced if high signal-to-noise spectral data becomes available in a passband that covers both the energy range where absorption is most effective and where it is not. Such observations may be possible with Chandra X-Ray Observatory and XMM-Newton.

Despite the harder tail in the spectrum produced by reprocessing of the outgoing flux through an atmosphere, spectral fits still require in most cases a hard power law component (even though its normalization is often not well constrained). In the context of the magnetar model, the origin of this power-law emission is not fully understood. Thompson & Duncan (1996) have proposed that the non-thermal components of AXP and SGR spectra can be produced by magnetospheric currents resulting from fracturing of the neutron star crust. An important constraint on this type of model is provided by the fact that the hard emission from AXPs appears to be pulsed, often with a large amplitude. Although the angular distribution of the radiation from these effects is not yet known, a magnetospheric origin for the power-law component is appealing from the point of view of helping to account for the observed pulsations, because gravitational bending would be relatively less significant far from the stellar surface. A preliminary analysis (C. Thompson, private communication) suggests that photons produced by magnetospheric currents will preferentially escape from regions near the magnetic poles, possibly resulting in a large amplitude of pulsation. However, in order to be able to draw firmer conclusions from a timing analysis, tighter limits on the power law fraction $`f_{\mathrm{pl}}`$ are needed, possibly as a function of energy. To such purpose, independent constraints on the column densities would be highly desirable. In the fits in which $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ is held fixed the normalization of the power law component is much better constrained. Moreover, the column density itself influences the inferred values of the pulsed fractions (Perna, Heyl & Hernquist 2000).

In summary, our finding that plausible atmosphere models yield thermal emitting areas consistent with a neutron star surface supports the interpretation of AXPs and SGRs as magnetars. However, based on currently available data, we cannot definitively discriminate between the magnetar and accretion models for these objects. In particular, the apparent requirement that a large fraction of the flux arises from a hard power-law component significantly complicates efforts to infer the true nature of these sources.

A variety of objections have been raised against both the magnetar and accretion models for AXPs and SGRs (e.g. Li 1999; Marsden, Rothschild & Lingenfelter 1999; DeDeo, Psaltis & Narayan 2000; Hulleman et al. 2000a; Marsden et al. 2001). In the case of the magnetar interpretation, our results show that the thermal emission is consistent with the surface area of a neutron star, provided that the spectrum from this component is sufficiently distinct from a blackbody. Moreover, the existence of a substantial non-thermal, power-law component mitigates concerns that the large pulsed fractions measured for some AXPs and SGRs might be inconsistent with the magnetar hypothesis. For an object like 1E 1048.1-5937, for example, the unusually large pulsed fraction of $`70\%`$ (e.g. Corbet & Mihara 1997; Oosterbroeck et al. 1998) may simply reflect the inferred presence of a particularly important non-thermal process whose contribution in this case approaches $`80\%`$ of the total flux. It remains problematic, however, whether or not models for the origin of the power-law emission in the context of the magnetar model can account for such high relative fluxes.

Perhaps the most challenging argument against the accretion model for AXPs and SGRs comes from recent studies of optical and infrared emission from these objects. In the work of Chatterjee et al. (2000), for example, the presence of an extended disk is expected to yield significant optical and infrared fluxes (e.g. Perna et al. 2000; Perna & Hernquist 2000), in disagreement with existing observational measurements (e.g. Hulleman et al. 2000a,b). However, Menou et al. (2001) have recently proposed an alternate accretion scenario based on fallback in which the disk always remains geometrically thin and radially compact and accretion is halted on timescales comparable to the ages of AXPs and SGRs through a thermal ionization instability. In this model, the optical and infrared emission from the disk is greatly suppressed relative to that predicted by e.g. Chatterjee et al. since the disk is limited in radial extent.

Another argument against the accretion model for AXPs concerns the unusually steady spindown of objects like RXS J1708$`40`$ and 1E 2259$`+586`$ (Kaspi, Chakrabarty & Steinberger 1999). Such behavior is not characteristic of accreting, binary X-ray pulsars, but the implication of this finding for isolated fallback disks is less clear, particularly for models in which the disks are low in mass (Menou et al. 2001) and considering the noisier behavior of AXP 1E 1048.1$``$5937 (Kaspi et al. 2000).

Thus, it appears that with existing observational constraints it is not possible to conclusively rule out either the magnetar or accretion scenario for AXPs and SGRs. In detail, however, the spectral energy distributions expected in these two classes of models should exhibit significant differences in many wavelength intervals. Hence, we are optimistic that highly sensitive ongoing multi-wavelength observations combining X-ray spectroscopy with deep optical and infrared searches will eventually discriminate between the magnetar and accretion pictures, definitively revealing the true nature of these sources.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Chris Thompson for enlightening discussion, Jonathan McDowell for support with the XSPEC software, and an anonymous referee for insightful comments. Support for JSH was provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Number PF0-10015 issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-39073.