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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Milliarcsecond-resolution interferometric radio observations of the central parsec-scale regions of active galactic nuclei often reveal sub-structure emitting low-frequency radiation with inferred rest-frame brightness temperatures $`T_b10^{11}`$$`10^{12}`$ K. If there were thermal plasma present in these regions, it could be heated efficiently as a result of induced Compton scattering of the radio radiation on the electrons (Levich, Sunyaev, 1971).

Such a plasma has not been observed so far in extragalactic sources. On the other hand, there is evidence that relatively cold matter constitutes a significant fraction of the total mass contained in the jets, including their inner ($`10^{12}`$ cm) regions, of the famous galactic source SS433 (see Vermeulen, 1992 for a review). Of course, these jets are only mildly relativistic ($`v0.26c`$) and therefore quite different from the relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei (which have bulk Lorentz factors $`\gamma 5`$), but it is reasonable to expect that some amount of quasi-thermal plasma may be present in extragalactic jets as well (see, e.g., Celotti et al., 1998).

One can derive directly from the Kompaneets kinetic equation the induced Compton heating rate of thermal electrons located in an isotropic radiation field (Levich, Sunyaev, 1971). The resulting expression is, however, only applicable when the electron temperature is relatively low, $`kT<`$ a few keV. As the electrons become more relativistic, their heating rate monotonically decreases. Theoretical efforts in the 70-s (Vinogradov, Pustovalov, 1972; Blandford, 1973; Blandford, Scharlemann, 1975) resulted in a number of useful formulae that allow one to determine the heating rate of relativistic electrons and their distribution function in various limits, e.g., for ultrarelativistic electrons, for narrow radiation beams, or for some specific radiation spectra. Illarionov and Kompaneets (1976) have derived a general expression that gives the heating rate for an electron moving with an arbitrary velocity in a given isotropic radiation field. This formula is, however, rather complex: one needs to compute a 3-dimensional integral in order to find the heating rate of an ensemble of electrons with a given velocity distribution (e.g, Maxwellian).

In the present paper we demonstrate that electrons can be heated by Compton scattering up to mildly relativistic temperatures $`kT`$ a few tens of keV, but not more, in an isotropic radiation field with $`T_b<10^{12}`$ K. For these plasma temperatures, the nonrelativistic estimates for the heating rate and some relevant quantities become inaccurate. However, these expressions can be modified by adding to them a few correction terms, thereby retaining the original simple structure, as shown below.

It should be noted that although we mentioned above only active galactic nuclei, the induced Compton effect may play a major role also in other astrophysical situations. We also note that the problem of plasma heating near, but outside, a source of low-frequency radiation requires a special study.

## 2 Heating and cooling of thermal electrons during Compton scattering

Let us derive the rates of heating and cooling of mildly relativistic thermal electrons ($`kT<0.1mc^2`$, where $`T`$ is the electron temperature) in an isotropic radiation field, as a result of both the spontaneous and induced Compton scattering processes.

The radiation field may be defined by its spectral energy density, $`ϵ_\nu `$ (measured in units of erg cm-3 Hz-1), or, equivalently, by the occupation number in photon phase space, $`n=ϵ_\nu c^3/(8\pi h\nu ^3)`$. We require that the spectrum be sufficiently broad, which means that its characteristic width $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu /\nu `$ should be much larger than the typical fractional frequency shift acquired by a photon during a scattering event either due to the Doppler effect, $`\pm (kT/mc^2)^{1/2}`$, or due to Compton recoil, $`h\nu /mc^2`$. In this case the integral kinetic equation describing the time evolution of $`ϵ_\nu `$ (caused by the Compton interaction of the radiation with the electrons) can be transformed into a Fokker-Planck-type differential equation. In the limit of $`kT,h\nu mc^2`$, the resulting equation is the Kompaneets (1957) equation.

From the Kompaneets equation one can derive the expressions for the electron heating and cooling rates (Levich, Sunyaev, 1971), which are fairly accurate for electron and photon energies $`<0.01mc^2`$. The Kompaneets equation can be extended into the mildly-relativistic domain ($`kT,h\nu <0.1mc^2`$) by adding to it relativistic correction terms $`(kT/mc^2)^m(h\nu /mc^2)^n`$ (Itoh et al., 1998; Challinor, Lasenby, 1998; Sazonov, Sunyaev, 2000). For example, the first-order generalization of the Kompaneets equation (which obtains by Fokker-Planck-type expansion of the integral kinetic equation to the fourth order in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$) is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{n}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _\mathrm{T}N_\mathrm{e}h}{mc}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{\nu }}\nu ^4\{n(1+n)+{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{h}}{\displaystyle \frac{n}{\nu }}+{\displaystyle \frac{7}{10}}{\displaystyle \frac{h\nu ^2}{mc^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{n}{\nu }}`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}[{\displaystyle \frac{5}{2}}(n(1+n)+{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{h}}{\displaystyle \frac{n}{\nu }})+{\displaystyle \frac{21}{5}}\nu {\displaystyle \frac{}{\nu }}(n(1+n)+{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{h}}{\displaystyle \frac{n}{\nu }})`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{7}{10}}\nu ^2(2\left({\displaystyle \frac{n}{\nu }}\right)^2+2(1+2n){\displaystyle \frac{^2n}{\nu ^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{h}}{\displaystyle \frac{^3n}{\nu ^3}})]\},`$
where $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}`$ is the Thomson cross section and $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ is the number density of electrons.

Multiplying Eq. (1) by $`h\nu `$ and integrating over the photon phase space leads to an expression for the variation of the radiation total energy density, $`ϵ=_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu 𝑑\nu `$, and, at the same time, for the change of the mean electron energy, $`E_\mathrm{e}1.5kT(1+1.25kT/mc^2)`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N_\mathrm{e}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dϵ}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{dE_\mathrm{e}}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{8\pi \sigma _\mathrm{T}h}{c^2}}[4{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\nu ^3nd\nu +{\displaystyle \frac{h}{mc^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\nu ^4(n+n^2)d\nu `$
$`10\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^2{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\nu ^3n𝑑\nu {\displaystyle \frac{21}{5}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{h}{mc^2}}\right)^2{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\nu ^5n𝑑\nu `$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{h}{mc^2}}({\displaystyle \frac{47}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\nu ^4(n+n^2)d\nu {\displaystyle \frac{21}{5}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\nu ^6\left({\displaystyle \frac{n}{\nu }}\right)^2d\nu )].`$ (2)
The first two terms in the square brackets in Eq. (2) describe the electron heating and cooling rates in the nonrelativistic limit (Peyraud, 1968; Zel’dovich, Levich, 1970; Levich, Sunyaev, 1971). The additional terms represent relativistic corrections of the order of $`kT/mc^2`$ or $`h\nu /mc^2`$. Note that the correction to the heating rate associated with the induced Compton effect (the corresponding terms are nonlinear in $`n`$) includes a term which is expressed through the square of the derivative, $`(n/\nu )^2`$. Higher-order \[$`(kT/mc^2)^2`$, etc.\] corrections to the induced-Compton energy transfer rate, which are not given in Eq. (2), depend on higher-order derivatives of $`n`$, as is explicitly shown below (in §3).

Using Eq. (2), we can, for example, find the energy transfer rate between electrons and black-body radiation of temperature $`T_r`$,

$$\frac{dϵ}{dt}=4ϵ\sigma _\mathrm{T}N_\mathrm{e}c\left(\frac{kT}{mc^2}\frac{kT_r}{mc^2}\right)\left(1+\frac{5}{2}\frac{kT}{mc^2}2\pi ^2\frac{kT_r}{mc^2}\right).$$
(3)
This expression was originally derived (in a different way) by Woodward (1970).

We note that the problem of the energy transfer between radiation and a thermal plasma via spontaneous Compton scattering is well studied, and the corresponding part of Eq. (2) follows directly from the first moment of the Compton scattering kernel (Shestakov et al., 1988; Sazonov, Sunyaev, 2000; also see the Appendix). We are concerned here with the terms describing the contribution of induced scattering.

## 3 Induced Compton heating of thermal electrons

Powerful extragalactic radio sources emit low-frequency continuum radiation that in some cases has a very high brightness temperature, $`T_b=nh\nu /k10^{11}`$$`10^{12}`$ K, so that $`kT_b>mc^2`$. Induced Compton scattering can be a major mechanism of heating of free electrons situated in such a radiation field. Moreover, nonrelativistic estimates lead to the conclusion that electrons can be heated up to relativistic temperatures $`kT`$ a fraction of $`kT_b`$ (Levich, Sunyaev, 1971). Clearly, nonrelativistic treatment is inappropriate here. Below we show that in reality, electron temperatures achievable in this situation are only mildly relativistic (i.e., $`kT`$ is significantly less than $`mc^2`$). As a result, all relevant physical quantities can be described by simple analytic expressions.

We consider throughout an isotropic radiation field. In this paragraph we also assume a relativistic Maxwellian distribution of electrons (which can be maintained, e.g., by Coulomb collisions). This last assumption is dropped in §4.

The rate at which energy is transfered by induced Compton scattering from an isotropic radiation field to a single electron moving at a speed $`v=\beta c`$ is given by (Illarionov, Kompaneets, 1976)

$`W^+(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{12\pi \sigma _\mathrm{T}h^2}{mc^4}}{\displaystyle _0^\beta }\mathrm{\Phi }(y^{})G(\beta ,\beta ^{})𝑑\beta ^{},`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }(y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}n(\nu )n(y\nu )\nu ^4𝑑\nu ,`$
$`G(\beta ,\beta ^{})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^2}{\gamma ^5\beta ^8(1+\beta ^{})^5}}[(3024\beta ^2+2\beta ^4)\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{y^{}}{y}}`$
$`+28\beta ^360\beta +5(3\beta ^2)^2\beta ^{}+(5\beta ^2)(3+\beta ^2)\beta ^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^{}}{\gamma }}\right)^2],`$
$`y`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1\beta }{1+\beta }},y^{}={\displaystyle \frac{1\beta ^{}}{1+\beta ^{}}},`$
$`\gamma `$ $`=`$ $`(1\beta ^2)^{1/2},\gamma ^{}=(1\beta ^2)^{1/2}.`$ (4)
Eq. (4) is valid for arbitrary electron velocities, provided that $`h\nu mc^2`$. This formula can be simplified in some limits, in particular, for spectrally narrow radiation lines ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu \nu `$), such as those produced in cosmic masers and laboratory lasers (Vinogradov, Pustovalov, 1972; Blandford, Scharlemann, 1975). We are instead interested in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu >\nu `$ case.

In order to calculate the instantaneous heating rate of an actual plasma, it is necessary to weight the result of Eq. (4) with a given distribution of electron velocities, $`f_\beta `$. The computation procedure to determine the heating rate will therefore be three-dimentional integration: 1) over the radiation spectrum \[when calculating $`\mathrm{\Phi }(y^{})`$\], 2) over $`d\beta ^{}`$ and 3) over $`f_\beta `$. However, if the electrons obey a relativistic Maxwellian distribution and are only mildly relativistic ($`kT<0.1mc^2`$), it is possible to considerably simplify the computation procedure, by reducing it to integration over the radiation spectrum, as demonstrated below.

When $`kT<0.1mc^2`$, the majority of electrons have $`\beta <0.5`$, and therefore the typical random Doppler frequency shift caused by a scattering is relatively small: $`\delta \nu <\nu `$. The following Taylor expansion of the $`\mathrm{\Phi }(y^{})`$ function entering Eq. (4) is then justified:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(y^{})=_0^{\mathrm{}}n^2\nu ^4𝑑\nu +(y^{}1)_0^{\mathrm{}}n\frac{n}{\nu }\nu ^5𝑑\nu +\frac{1}{2}(y^{}1)^2_0^{\mathrm{}}n\frac{^2n}{\nu ^2}\nu ^6𝑑\nu +\mathrm{},$$
(5)
where, in turn,

$$y^{}1=2\beta ^{}+2\beta ^2+\mathrm{},\frac{1}{2}(y^{}1)^2=2\beta ^2+\mathrm{},\mathrm{etc}.$$
(6)
A similar expansion is possible for the kernel $`G(\beta ,\beta ^{})`$ of Eq. (4):

$$G=\frac{4}{\beta }\left[\left(\frac{\beta ^{}}{\beta }\right)^32\left(\frac{\beta ^{}}{\beta }\right)^5+2\left(\frac{\beta ^{}}{\beta }\right)^7\right]+20\left[\left(\frac{\beta ^{}}{\beta }\right)^4+2\left(\frac{\beta ^{}}{\beta }\right)^62\left(\frac{\beta ^{}}{\beta }\right)^8\right]+\mathrm{}.$$
(7)
The subsequent straightforward calculation leads to

$`W^+(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _\mathrm{T}c^2}{8\pi m}}[J_0+({\displaystyle \frac{17}{30}}J_0{\displaystyle \frac{7}{5}}J_1)\beta ^2+({\displaystyle \frac{47}{600}}J_0+{\displaystyle \frac{17}{150}}J_1+{\displaystyle \frac{11}{30}}J_2)\beta ^4`$
$`+({\displaystyle \frac{899}{19600}}J_0+{\displaystyle \frac{2833}{29400}}J_1+{\displaystyle \frac{4261}{14700}}J_2{\displaystyle \frac{64}{1575}}J_3)\beta ^6+\mathrm{}],`$
$`J_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}ϵ_\nu ^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu ,J_1={\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_\nu }{\nu }}\right)^2𝑑\nu ,`$
$`J_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2ϵ_\nu }{\nu ^2}}\right)^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu ,J_3={\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^3ϵ_\nu }{\nu ^3}}\right)^2\nu ^4𝑑\nu .`$ (8)
Note that the Planck constant, $`h`$, is absent from Eq. (8), which reflects the well-known fact that the process of induced Compton scattering is classical (see, e.g., Zel’dovich, 1975).

Our next step is to replace $`\beta ^2`$, $`\beta ^4`$, $`\beta ^6`$ in Eq. (8) by their average values $`\beta ^2`$, $`\beta ^4`$, $`\beta ^6`$, calculated for a mildly-relativistic Maxwellian distribution at temperature $`T`$, which is given by (e.g., Sazonov, Sunyaev, 2000)

$`f_\beta =\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\pi kT}{mc^2}}\right)^{3/2}\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{15}{8}}{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{105}{128}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{315}{1024}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^3+\mathrm{}\right]^1`$
$`(1+{\displaystyle \frac{5}{2}}\beta ^2{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^4mc^2}{kT}}+{\displaystyle \frac{35}{8}}\beta ^4{\displaystyle \frac{5}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^6mc^2}{kT}}+{\displaystyle \frac{9}{128}}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^8m^2c^4}{k^2T^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{105}{16}}\beta ^6`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{345}{128}}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^8mc^2}{kT}}+{\displaystyle \frac{75}{256}}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^{10}m^2c^4}{k^2T^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{9}{1024}}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^{12}m^3c^6}{k^3T^3}}+\mathrm{}\left)\mathrm{exp}\right({\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^2mc^2}{2kT}}).`$ (9)
The resulting heating rate as a function of the plasma temperature is

$`W^+(T)={\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _\mathrm{T}c^2}{8\pi m}}[J_0({\displaystyle \frac{17}{10}}J_0+{\displaystyle \frac{21}{5}}J_1){\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}+({\displaystyle \frac{123}{40}}J_0+{\displaystyle \frac{61}{5}}J_1+{\displaystyle \frac{11}{2}}J_2)\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^2`$
$`({\displaystyle \frac{1989}{280}}J_0+{\displaystyle \frac{453}{14}}J_1+{\displaystyle \frac{1899}{140}}J_2+{\displaystyle \frac{64}{15}}J_3)\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^3+\mathrm{}],`$ (10)
where $`J_0`$, $`J_1`$, $`J_2`$ and $`J_3`$ were introduced in Eq. (8).

In the case of cold electrons ($`kTmc^2`$), only the leading term of the series in powers of $`kT/mc^2`$ in Eq. (10) is important, and the heating rate due to induced Compton scattering is described by the well-known (Zel’dovich, Levich, 1970; Levich, Sunyaev, 1971) formula

$$W_0^+=\frac{\sigma _\mathrm{T}c^2}{8\pi m}_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu ^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu .$$
(11)
Both the nonrelativistic expression (11) and the first-order relativistic correction to it (see Eq. ) were already obtained in §2 following a different approach; see Eq. (2). Thus, two independent methods give the same result.

### 3.1 Heating in a field of self-absorbed synchrotron radiation

Let us now consider one particular spectral distribution, namely the spectrum of synchrotron radio emission with self-absorption at low frequencies. The radiation spectrum generated by a spherically-symmetric homogeneous source is (Gould, 1979)

$`ϵ_\nu ^0(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`A\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\nu _0}}\right)^{5/2}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}(t)}{t}}{\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{exp}(t)}{t^2}}\right],`$
$`t`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu _0}{\nu }}\right)^{0.5p+2}.`$ (12)
The shape of the distribution (12) is defined by a single parameter, $`p`$, which is the index of the power-law energy distribution of the electrons producing the synchrotron radiation, $`dN_e\gamma ^pd\gamma `$. The other two parameters that appear in Eq. (12), $`\nu _0`$ and $`A`$, determine the position of the spectrum along the frequency axis and its amplitude, respectively. Far enough from the peak of intensity ($`\nu _{\mathrm{peak}}1.15\nu _0`$), the spectrum (12) assumes a power-law shape: $`ϵ_\nu ^0\nu ^{5/2}`$ in the region of self-absorption ($`\nu \nu _0`$) and $`ϵ_\nu ^0\nu ^{(1p)/2}`$ in the optically thin part ($`\nu \nu _0`$).

Since the integral $`ϵ=_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu ^0𝑑\nu `$ diverges at $`\mathrm{}`$ for $`p3`$, and it is this quantity that determines the Compton cooling rate, which will be taken into account below, we modify Eq. (12) as follows:

$$ϵ_\nu (\nu )=\{\begin{array}{cc}ϵ_\nu ^0(\nu ),\hfill & \nu \nu _b\hfill \\ (\nu /\nu _b)^{0.5}ϵ_\nu ^0(\nu ),\hfill & \nu >\nu _b.\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
Here we have assumed that a steepening of the spectrum (increase in the slope by $`0.5`$) takes place above some “break” frequency, $`\nu _b\nu _0`$, due to the fast synchrotron cooling of more energetic electrons.

To be concrete, we take the slope of the optically thin part of the spectrum (prior to the slope break) to be $`\alpha =0.7`$, which corresponds to $`p=2.4`$. We additionally adopt $`\nu _b=10^3\nu _0`$ as a fiducial value for our treatment of electron cooling, although this parameter just enters as a multiplicative factor in the relevant formulae as long as $`\nu _b\nu _0`$. The resulting spectrum is plotted in Fig. 1. Note that the low-frequency breaks observed in the spectra of some radio sources are sometimes interpreted as being caused by mechanisms other then synchrotron self-absorption, which include free-free absorption in the ambient medium (e.g., Bicknell et al., 1997) and induced Compton scattering either outside or inside the radio source (e.g., Sunyaev, 1971; Sincell, Krolik, 1994; Kuncic et al., 1998). However, the radiation field inside the source, which we are concerned with, may well be the superposition of self-absorbed synchrotron spectra generated by individual plasma components.

Fig. 2a shows the heating rate of thermal electrons exposed to self-absorbed synchrotron radiation as a function of the electron temperature. The exact result was obtained by weighting the heating rate for monoenergetic electrons, given by Eq. (4), with the relativistic Maxwellian distribution, $`dN_\mathrm{e}=const\gamma (\gamma ^21)^{1/2}\mathrm{exp}(\gamma mc^2/kT)d\gamma `$. We have additionally verified this dependence with Monte-Carlo simulations (using the Comptonization code described in Pozdnyakov et al., 1983 with a slight modification to allow for induced Compton scattering). The computation proves to be faster with the semi-analytic formula (4) of Illarionov and Kompaneets. Also presented in Fig. 2a are various approximations for the heating rate that result from retaining a different number of temperature terms in Eq. (10).

One can see that the heating rate begins to decrease appreciably ($`>5`$%) at $`kT5`$ keV. The temperature domain where this decrement is described very well by the approximate relation (10) extends to $`kT30`$ keV, when the heating rate is already smaller by $`30`$% than in the case of cold electrons. The further decrease in the heating rate that takes place at yet higher temperatures cannot be described properly in the framework of the Fokker-Planck approach, which led to Eq. (10). We found it convenient to describe the exact dependence presented in Fig. 2a by an approximate formula, which is accurate to within 3% for $`kT<5mc^2`$:

$$W^+(T)=\left\{0.8\mathrm{exp}\left[3.7\left(\frac{kT}{mc^2}\right)^{0.8}\right]+0.2\mathrm{exp}\left[1.8\left(\frac{kT}{mc^2}\right)^{0.6}\right]\right\}W_0^+,$$
(14)
where, as follows from Eq. (11), (12:

$$W_0^+=1.110^{24}A^2\nu _0^1\mathrm{eV}\mathrm{s}^1$$
(15)
($`A`$ is measured in erg Hz-1 cm-3 and $`\nu _0`$ in GHz).

It is worth mentioning that the heating rate approaches an asymptote $`W^+(T)(mc^2/kT)^3`$ when $`kTmc^2`$. This results from the fact that only the lower-energy part of the relativistic Maxwellian distribution, i.e., electrons with $`\gamma <1`$, significantly contributes to the net heating rate (because $`W^+\gamma ^5`$ for $`\gamma 1`$ — see Illarionov, Kompaneets, 1976), and the relative number of such electrons is proportional to $`(mc^2/kT)^3`$.

Although we have assumed a particular slope ($`0.7`$) for the optically-thin part of the radiation spectrum, it turns out that the dependence of the heating rate on the electron temperature changes very slowly as the slope varies. Quantitatively, $`W^+(T)`$ remains the same to within 10% for $`\alpha `$ in the range $`[0.9;0.5]`$. Thus, formula (14) is quite useful in that it allows obtaining reasonably good estimates for the heating rate of substantially relativistic Maxwellian electrons in an isotropic field of self-absorbed synchrotron radiation.

Of course, the mildly-relativistic Eq. (10), which is applicable when $`kT<30`$ keV, explicitly depends on the spectral distribution, and so can be used to calculate the heating rate for an arbitrary (broad) radiation spectrum.

### 3.2 Stationary temperature of electrons

Zel’dovich and Levich (1970) studied, in the nonrelativistic approximation, the problem about the establishment of a stationary distribution of electrons during their interaction with an isotropic field of low-frequency radiation of high brightness temperature. These authors showed that if the induced Compton heating is counteracted by cooling due to inverse (spontaneous) Compton scattering, then the stationary distribution will be Maxwellian with a temperature

$$kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0=\frac{c^3}{32\pi ϵ}_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu ^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu ,$$
(16)
where $`ϵ=_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu 𝑑\nu `$.

It is reasonable to suggest that in the mildly-relativistic regime there will be only small deviations from a Maxwellian distribution. Furthermore, if other mechanisms, e.g., Coulomb collisions should play a significant role in the redistribution of electrons in momentum space, then a Maxwellian distribution can be maintained easily. We postpone a detailed discussion of questions related to the electron distribution until §4. Here we will continue to assume as before that the electrons obey a relativistic Maxwellian distribution, and will find the stationary electron temperature, considering inverse Compton scattering (of the same low-frequency synchrotron radiation that is heating the electrons) the only cooling agent. Other possible cooling mechanisms, which may prove more important under certain conditions, will be mentioned in §3.3.

The inverse Compton cooling rate is given by (e.g., Pozdnyakov et al., 1983)

$$W^{}(T)=\left(\gamma +\frac{kT}{mc^2}\right)W_0^{}(T),$$
(17)
where the mean electron energy (in units of $`mc^2`$) is

$$\gamma =\frac{3kTK_2(mc^2/kT)+mc^2K_1(mc^2/kT)}{2kTK_1(mc^2/kT)+mc^2K_0(mc^2/kT)},$$
(18)
$`K_p(x)`$ are modified Bessel functions, and the cooling rate in the nonrelativistic limit ($`kTmc^2`$) is

$$W_0^{}(T)=\frac{4\sigma _\mathrm{T}ϵkT}{mc}.$$
(19)
We can expand Eq. (17) in powers of $`kT/mc^2`$ to obtain a formula applicable in the mildly-relativistic limit, which is similar in structure to the corresponding relation for the heating rate (Eq. ):

$$W^{}(T)=\frac{4\sigma _\mathrm{T}ϵkT}{mc^2}\left[1+\frac{5kT}{2mc^2}+\frac{15}{8}\left(\frac{kT}{mc^2}\right)^2\frac{15}{8}\left(\frac{kT}{mc^2}\right)^3+\mathrm{}\right].$$
(20)
An excellent fit to the exact formula (17) in the range $`kT<5mc^2`$ is provided by

$$W^{}(T)=\left[1+3.4\left(\frac{kT}{mc^2}\right)^{1.1}\right]W_0^{}(T),$$
(21)
with $`W_0^{}`$ given by Eq. (19).

The dependences $`W^{}(T)`$ described by Eqs. (17) and (20) are plotted in Fig. 2b and can be compared to the corresponding dependences for the heating rate (Fig. 2a). We note that the relationship $`W^{}(T)`$, of course, does not depend on the shape of the radiation spectral distribution (depending only on the total energy density), as opposed to $`W^+(T)`$.

We can now find the equilibrium electron temperature by solving the equation $`W^+(T_{\mathrm{eq}})=W^{}(T_{\mathrm{eq}})`$. In order to proceed, we need to specify the constant $`A`$ appearing in Eq. (12), which defines the amplitude of the spectral distribution. It is natural to express this coefficient through the maximal brightness temperature, $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}=max[ϵ_\nu (\nu )c^3/(8\pi \nu ^2)]`$. $`T_b`$ peaks at $`\nu ^{\mathrm{max}}=0.61\nu _0`$ for $`\alpha =0.7`$ (although the position of the peak is only marginally dependent on $`\alpha `$ for typically observed radiation spectra of extragalactic radiosources). We find:

$$A22\pi kT_b^{\mathrm{max}}\nu _0^2/c^3.$$
(22)
Fig. 3 shows the equilibrium electron temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}`$, as a function of $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$. The exact result is compared with the nonrelativistic result (Eq. ) and different-order mildly-relativistic estimates that were obtained by equating Eq. (10) and Eq. (20). One can see that the nonrelativistic Eq. (16) is still valid for $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}<5`$ keV, which corresponds in our case to brightess temperatures $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}<310^{10}`$ K. In this regime

$$kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0=1.9\frac{T_b^{\mathrm{max}}}{10^{10}\mathrm{K}}\left(\frac{\nu _b}{1000\nu _0}\right)^{0.33}\mathrm{keV}.$$
(23)
The next decade of values of the equilibrium temperature, up to $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}40`$ keV, is well described by the approximate formulae (10) and (20). Note that $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}=40`$ keV corresponds to $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}410^{11}(\nu _b/1000\nu _0)^{0.33}`$ K. An important conclusion can be made: electrons can be heated up to mildly relativistic temperatures, $`kT`$ a few tens of keV, as a result of induced Compton scattering of synchrotron radiation with $`T_b10^{11}`$$`10^{12}`$ K, but not above these temperatures.

### 3.3 Evolution of the electron temperature during Compton interaction

Let us now address a related timing problem, namely, examine how rapidly electrons can be heated to mildly relativistic temperatures through induced Compton scattering.

We will first estimate the basic characteristic quantities in the nonrelativistic limit. Substituting $`A`$ given by Eq. (22) into Eq. (15), we find

$$W_0^+=1.410^9\left(\frac{T_b^{\mathrm{max}}}{10^{11}\mathrm{K}}\right)^2\left(\frac{\nu _0}{1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}\right)^3\mathrm{eV}\mathrm{s}^1.$$
(24)
If there were no cooling, then initially cold electrons would acquire a kinetic energy of $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0`$, given by Eq. (23), during

$$t_{\mathrm{heat}}=\frac{kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0}{W_0^+}=1.410^{13}\left(\frac{T_b^{\mathrm{max}}}{10^{11}\mathrm{K}}\right)^1\left(\frac{\nu _0}{1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}\right)^3\left(\frac{\nu _b}{1000\nu _0}\right)^{0.33}\mathrm{s}.$$
(25)
We notice that the heating time depends strongly on the characteristic frequency of the synchrotron self-absorption: $`t_{\mathrm{heat}}\nu _0^3`$.

Using Eq. (19), we can find the corresponding cooling rate:

$$W_0^{}(T)=3.810^8\frac{kT}{mc^2}\frac{T_b^{\mathrm{max}}}{10^{11}\mathrm{K}}\left(\frac{\nu _0}{1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}\right)^3\left(\frac{\nu _b}{1000\nu _0}\right)^{0.33}\mathrm{eV}\mathrm{s}^1.$$
(26)
In the mildly-relativistic regime, the heating and cooling rates will be respectively smaller and larger than those given by Eqs. (24) and (26). We have computed the evolution of the electron temperature for a set of $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$ values by integrating the following differential equation:

$$\frac{dT}{dt}=\left(\frac{d\gamma (T)}{dT}\right)^1\frac{W^+(T)W^{}(T)}{mc^2},$$
(27)
using Eq. (18) to represent the dependence $`\gamma (T)`$ and the fitting formulae (14) and (21) for $`W^+(T)`$ and $`W^{}(T)`$, respectively. The resulting time histories are presented in Fig. 4, for which the value $`\nu _0=1`$ GHz was used. For a given value of $`\nu _0`$, one should simply rescale the time axis in Fig. 4 as $`(\nu _0/1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z})^3`$.

Each of the time histories presented in Fig. 4 can be divided into two intervals. During the earlier period, the temperature grows linearly because $`W^+W^{}`$. As $`T`$ becomes $`>0.5T_{\mathrm{eq}}`$, the second (longer) period starts, during which the cooling plays a major role and the temperature slowly approaches the equilibrium value. This transition period is additionally lengthened by relativistic effects (compare the different solutions in Fig. 4). We can define a characteristic time of induced heating as the time needed to heat the plasma to $`0.5T_{\mathrm{eq}}`$. To give an example, for $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}=10^{12}`$ K, a time of $`310^4(\nu _0/1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z})^3`$ years is required to heat the electrons to $`kT=0.5kT_{\mathrm{eq}}34`$ keV. If further, $`\nu _010\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$, the heating time becomes $`30`$ years. Interestingly enough, the simple nonrelativistic Eq. (25) provides a good estimate (within a factor of 2) for the heating time even for values of $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$ as high as $`10^{13}(\nu _b/1000\nu _0)^{0.33}`$ K (of course, the equilibrium temperature in this case is much less than the nonrelativistic estimate).

In real situations, there may be mechanisms operating by which the plasma cools more efficiently than by inverse Compton scattering of the synchrotron radiation. One should then modify accordingly the cooling rate $`W^{}(T)`$ in our treatment above. If the energy density of a possible high-frequency radiation component is larger than that of the low-frequency synchrotron emission, then the contribution of this component to the inverse Compton cooling rate will be accordingly larger. Also, cooling due to free-free transitions will become more important than inverse Compton cooling if the plasma is dense enough, namely when $`N_\mathrm{e}T^{1/2}ϵ^1>10^4`$ K-1/2 erg-1. For the synchrotron spectrum described by Eqs. (12) and (13), this condition translates into $`N_\mathrm{e}>6(T_b^{\mathrm{max}}/10^{11}\mathrm{K})^{3/2}(\nu _0/1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z})^3(\nu _b/1000\nu _0)^{0.166}`$ cm-3. Another possible cooling mechanism is adiabatic expansion of a plasma cloud. The characteristic time scale for this process is $`t_{\mathrm{ad}}=310^{10}(R/1\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c})(U/10^3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)^1s`$, where $`R`$ is the size of the cloud and $`U`$ is the expansion velocity (assuming spherical expansion).

## 4 Effect of induced Compton scattering on the electron distribution

So far we have assumed that the distribution of the electrons in momentum space remains relativistic Maxwellian during their interaction with the low-frequency radiation. This should be the case if the plasma is dense enough that electron-electron collisions can quickly smooth out any arising deviations from a Maxwellian distribution. In order to find out whether this thermalization really takes place, one should compare the induced Compton heating time, $`t_{\mathrm{heat}}`$, given by Eq. (25), with the time scale on which electrons can relax to a Maxwellian distribution (Spitzer, 1978), $`t_{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}}=2.510^{12}(\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }/40)^1(kT/mc^2)^{3/2}N_\mathrm{e}^1`$ s, where $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the Coulomb logarithm. Taking $`T=T_{\mathrm{eq}}^0`$ (Eq. ), we find that relaxation is efficient when

$$\frac{t_{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}}}{t_{\mathrm{heat}}}=10^3\left(\frac{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }}{40}\right)^1\left(\frac{T_b^{\mathrm{max}}}{10^{11}\mathrm{K}}\right)^{5/2}\left(\frac{\nu _0}{1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}\right)^3\left(\frac{\nu _b}{1000\nu _0}\right)^{0.166}N_\mathrm{e}^1<1.$$
(28)
Let us consider a few examples. At $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}=10^{11}`$ K and $`\nu _0=1`$ GHz, Maxwellization of the electron spectrum occurs when $`N_\mathrm{e}>10^3`$ cm-3. For $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}=510^{11}`$ K and $`\nu _0=10`$ GHz, the corresponding range is $`N_\mathrm{e}>10^2`$ cm-3. It should be noted here that the establishment of the high-velocity tail of the Maxwellian distribution occurs on a larger time scale than $`t_{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}}`$ given above. In the nonrelativistic limit, the appropriate characteristic time is proportional to $`(v/v)^3`$ when $`vv`$, where $`v`$ is the velocity of an electron and $`v`$ is the typical thermal velocity of electrons (e.g., Krall, Trivelpiece, 1973).

We now consider an extreme situation when $`t_{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}}t_{\mathrm{heat}}`$, i.e., no Maxwellization of electrons takes place due to collisions. To find out what momentum distribution, $`f(p)`$, results in this case, we need to consider the diffusion of electrons in momentum space caused by induced and spontaneous (inverse) Compton scattering. The corresponding Fokker-Planck equation for the electron momentum distribution is (Illarionov, Kompaneets, 1976)

$$\frac{f}{t}=\frac{1}{p^2}\frac{}{p}p^2\left[D\frac{f}{p}F_{\mathrm{sp}}f\right],$$
(29)
where the diffusion coefficient

$`D(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{12\pi \sigma _\mathrm{T}h^2}{c^4}}{\displaystyle _0^\beta }\mathrm{\Phi }(y^{})G_D(\beta ,\beta ^{})𝑑\beta ^{}`$
$`G_D(\beta ,\beta ^{})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\beta ^2}{\gamma ^4\beta ^8(1+\beta ^{})^5}}\left[(3\beta ^2)\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{y}{y^{}}}+2\beta 2\beta ^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^{}}{\gamma }}\right)^2+2(\gamma ^2+\gamma ^2)(\beta \beta ^{})\right],`$
and the breaking force due to spontaneous scattering (Landau & Lifshits 1975)

$$F_{\mathrm{sp}}(\beta )=\frac{4}{3}\sigma _\mathrm{T}ϵ\beta \gamma ^2.$$
(31)
The electron velocity is related to the electron momentum via

$$\beta =\frac{p}{\gamma mc}=\frac{p}{mc}\left[1+\left(\frac{p}{mc}\right)^2\right]^{1/2}.$$
(32)
The remaining quantities appearing in Eqs. (LABEL:d\_illar) and (31) are the same as in Eq. (4).

The cumbersome expression (LABEL:d\_illar) can be simplified if we assume that $`\beta 1`$. Series expansion can then be carried out, which is completely analogous to those written down in §3 for the induced Compton heating rate:

$$D(\beta )=\frac{\sigma _\mathrm{T}c^2}{24\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu ^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu \left[1+\beta ^2\left(\frac{4}{25}\frac{21_0^{\mathrm{}}(ϵ_\nu /\nu )^2𝑑\nu }{25_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu ^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu }\right)+\mathrm{}\right].$$
(33)
The equilibrium momentum distribution is given by

$$f_{\mathrm{eq}}(p)=const\mathrm{exp}\left[_0^p\frac{F_{\mathrm{sp}}(p^{})}{D(p^{})}𝑑p^{}\right],$$
(34)
In the nonrelativistic limit, $`D(p)=const`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{sp}}(p)p`$; hence $`F_{\mathrm{eq}}\mathrm{exp}(p^2/2mkT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0)`$ with $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}^0`$ given by Eq. (16). Therefore, the equilibrium distribution is Maxwellian in this limit, which was first shown by Zel’dovich and Levich (1970).

We can find the first-order relativistic correction to the nonrelativistic equilibrium distribution from Eq. (34), by making use of the approximate expression (33) for the diffusion coefficient and transforming Eq. (31) to $`F_{\mathrm{sp}}=4/3\sigma _\mathrm{T}ϵ(p/mc)[1+0.5(p/mc)^2+\mathrm{}]`$. The result is

$$f_{\mathrm{eq}}(p)=const\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{p^2}{2mkT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0}\left[1+\left(\frac{p}{mc}\right)^2\left(\frac{17}{100}+\frac{21_0^{\mathrm{}}(ϵ_\nu /\nu )^2𝑑\nu }{50_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ_\nu ^2\nu ^2𝑑\nu }\right)\right]\right\},$$
(35)
where $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}^0`$ is given by Eq. (16).

In the case of synchrotron radiation with self-absorption at low frequencies (Eqs. , ), the equilibrium distribution is

$$f_{\mathrm{eq}}(p)=const\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{p^2}{2mkT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0}\left[1+0.69\left(\frac{p}{mc}\right)^2\right]\right\}.$$
(36)
In Fig. 5, we have plotted the equilibrium distributions for two values of $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$: $`510^{11}`$ K and $`510^{12}`$ K. The corresponding stationary temperatures, as estimated using nonrelativistic Eq. (16), are $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}=95`$ keV and 950 keV. The exact result was obtained by numerical evaluation of Eq. (34) using Eqs. (LABEL:d\_illar) and (31). Also plotted are the nonrelativistic Maxwellian distribution at temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}^0`$ and the mildly-relativistic approximation given by Eq. (36). One can see that the right wing of the distribution is substantially suppressed compared to the nonrelativistic Maxwellian distribution. This takes place because of the decreasing diffusion coefficient and increasing breaking force with increasing $`p`$. Surprisingly enough, the approximate formula (36) provides an excellent fit even when $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0>mc^2`$.

Since the distribution (34) becomes a Maxwellian one in the limit $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0mc^2`$ and assumes a quasi-Maxwellian shape in the mildly-relativistic regime, it is natural to characterize this type of distribution by some effective temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. We define $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ to be the temperature of the relativistic Maxwellian distribution for which the mean electron energy, $`\gamma mc^2`$=$`(p^2+1)^{1/2}`$, is equal to that for a given quasi-Maxwellian distribution, i.e.,

$$\frac{(p^2+1)^{1/2}p^2f_{\mathrm{eq}}(p)𝑑p}{p^2f_{\mathrm{eq}}(p)𝑑p}=\gamma (T_{\mathrm{eff}})mc^2,$$
(37)
where the dependence of $`\gamma `$ on temperature is given by Eq. (18).

For the two example distributions presented in Fig. 5, $`kT_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ takes values of 45 and 140 keV — these should be compared with $`kT_{\mathrm{eq}}^0=95`$ and 950 keV, respectively. The relativistic Maxwellian distributions that correspond to these $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values are shown in Fig. 5.

In Fig. 6, we have plotted $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, calculated using both the exact formula (34) and its mildly-relativistic approximation (35), as a function of $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$. For comparison, the dependence $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}(T_b^{\mathrm{max}})`$ for Maxwellian electrons is reproduced from Fig. 3. One can see that the two exact dependencies are nearly coincident (the difference is less than 10%) in an extremely broad range of parameter values: $`kT_{\mathrm{eff}},kT_{\mathrm{eq}}<mc^2`$. Even more surprising is the nearly perfect agreement between the exact solution for $`T_{\mathrm{eq}}(T_b^{\mathrm{max}})`$ and the midly-relativistic approximation (Eq. ) for $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}(T_b^{\mathrm{max}})`$. We should emphasize here that the differences between the different dependences shown in Fig. 6 are real (as is confirmed by the fact that they diverge significantly when $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}mc^2`$), although very small. An important conclusion follows: the energy that can be accumulated by an ensemble of electrons as a result of induced Compton heating (with inverse Compton scattering serving to cool the electrons) is almost independent in the sub-relativistic regime on whether the electrons are maintained Maxwellian while being heated or not.

We have also checked that the contribution of the heated electrons to the gas pressure, which is proportional to $`p\beta (p^2+1)^{1/2}[1(1+p^2)^1]p^2f(p)𝑑p`$ (compare with Eq.  for the mean energy), proves to be nearly the same (to within 2% for arbitrary values of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$) for a quasi-Maxwellian plasma with the distribution function (34) and for the thermal plasma with $`T=T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ (note that in the limit $`kT_{\mathrm{eff}}mc^2`$ both pressures must be equal, because $`\beta 1`$). Therefore, the effective temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ perfectly characterizes the thermodynamic properties of a mildly relativistic quasi-Maxwellian plasma that has been heated by means of the induced Compton process.

The above discussion also suggests that one can make use of the simple expression (35) to estimate the mean stationary electron energy with high accuracy in a very broad parameter range, at least up to $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}mc^2`$, which for our model spectrum corresponds to as high as $`T_b^{\mathrm{max}}10^{15}`$ K, independent of whether thermalization takes place or not.

Suppose that plasmas whose electrons are in the distribution given by Eq. (35) do exist. Would they be different from thermal plasmas observationally? In particular, will the energy spectrum of hard X-ray bremsstrahlung emission from such plasmas be peculiar? We have computed such a spectrum for the momentum distribution shown in Fig. 5a ($`kT_{\mathrm{eff}}=45`$ keV). The result is presented in Fig. 7. The computation consisted of weighting the Bethe-Heitler formula (Jauch, Rohrlich, 1976) for the cross-section of electron-ion bremsstrahlung with the given momentum distribution (Eq. ). One can see that the deviation from the spectrum produced by an ensemble of relativistic Maxwellian electrons with temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is negligible. Only when $`kT_{\mathrm{eff}}>100`$ keV, does the bremsstrahlung spectrum formed in the quasi-Maxwellian plasma become noticeably different from that corresponding to a thermal plasma.

This research was partially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (projects 00-02-16681 and 00-15-96649).

## Appendix

In a recent paper (Sazonov, Sunyaev, 2000) we have given an analytic expression for the kernel of the integral kinetic equation describing the redistribution of photons in frequency as a result of induced Compton scattering in a mildly relativistic thermal plasma. This kernel allows one, in principle, to derive the terms associated with the induced Compton process in Eq. (1) — the generalized Kompaneets equation. Unfortunately, the published expression contains a minor error (in the leading coefficient), and as a consequence, the formula does not correspond to the stated accuracy (it is valid when $`kT<0.01mc^2`$, instead of $`kT<0.1mc^2`$). We use the opportunity to give here the correct expression:

$`K^{\mathrm{ind}}(\nu ,𝛀;\nu ^{},𝛀^{\mathbf{}})`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu }}\right)^2K(\nu ^{},𝛀^{\mathbf{}}\nu ,𝛀)K(\nu ,𝛀\nu ^{},𝛀^{\mathbf{}})`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{32\pi }}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^{3/2}{\displaystyle \frac{h\nu ^{}(\nu ^{}\nu )}{mc^2g\nu }}[1+\mu ^2+({\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\mu {\displaystyle \frac{63}{8}}\mu ^2+5\mu ^3){\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}`$
$`\mu (1\mu ^2)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}\nu }{g}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{3(1+\mu ^2)mc^2}{8kT}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}\nu }{g}}\right)^4\left]\mathrm{exp}\right[{\displaystyle \frac{(\nu ^{}\nu )^2mc^2}{2g^2kT}}],`$
$`g`$ $`=`$ $`|\nu 𝛀\nu ^{}𝛀^{\mathbf{}}|=(\nu ^22\nu \nu ^{}\mu +\nu ^2)^{1/2}.`$ (38)
Here, $`\nu `$ and $`𝛀`$ are the frequency and direction of propagation of a photon before scatter, $`\nu ^{}`$ and $`𝛀^{}`$ are the corresponding values after scatter, and $`\mu =𝛀𝛀^{\mathbf{}}`$ is the scattering angle.

An analogous correction is due for the kernel averaged over the scattering angle (see Sazonov, Sunyaev, 2000):

$`P^{\mathrm{ind}}(\nu ;\nu ^{})`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu }}\right)^2P(\nu ^{}\nu )P(\nu \nu ^{})=2\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^{3/2}{\displaystyle \frac{h\nu ^{}(\nu ^{}\nu )}{mc^2\nu (\nu +\nu ^{})}}(p_0+p_t),`$
$`p_0`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{11}{20}}+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{5}}\delta ^2+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{5}}\delta ^4\right)F+|\delta |\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}2\delta ^2{\displaystyle \frac{4}{5}}\delta ^4\right)G,`$
$`p_t`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{1091}{1120}}{\displaystyle \frac{507}{560}}\delta ^2+{\displaystyle \frac{57}{35}}\delta ^4+{\displaystyle \frac{68}{35}}\delta ^6\right)F+|\delta |\left({\displaystyle \frac{9}{4}}+\delta ^2{\displaystyle \frac{26}{5}}\delta ^4{\displaystyle \frac{136}{35}}\delta ^6\right)G\right]{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}},`$
$`F`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}(\delta ^2),G={\displaystyle _{|\delta |}^{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{exp}(t^2)𝑑t=0.5\pi ^{1/2}Erfc(|\delta |),`$
$`\delta `$ $`=`$ $`\left(2{\displaystyle \frac{kT}{mc^2}}\right)^{1/2}{\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}\nu }{\nu ^{}+\nu }}.`$ (39)
The formulae (38) and (39) are applicable in the range $`h\nu kT<0.1mc^2`$, $`nh\nu =kT_bkT`$ (the latter condition means that the inverse Compton effect is small with respect to the induced one).

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# Corrections to the Boltzmann mean free path in disordered systems with finite size scatterers

## 1 Introduction

The mean free path $`l`$ is an important parameter which allows to characterize the different regimes in disordered systems . When the disorder is strong, there appears a localized phase for $`Kl1`$, where $`K`$ is the wave number, whereas the diffusive phase is characterized by $`Kl1`$. The strength of disorder is thus measured by the parameter $`1/Kl`$.

In most theoretical approaches, the randomly distributed impurities are often approximated by point-like potentials . Although this type of potential greatly simplifies the analytical calculations, it has been found that this approximation can lead to incorrect results, in particular as far as causality violation is concerned . Scattering theory with finite size potentials does not encounter any problem with causality . Therefore, it is important to use finite size potentials in order to describe multiple scattering effects. Effects due to the finiteness of the potential size are generally neglected even when the description is in terms of scattering $`𝐭`$-matrices which describe finite size potentials . As we shall show, contributions coming from the momentum dependence of the $`𝐭`$-matrix elements and from spatial correlations can be neglected. Nevertheless, one has to take care of the way corrections due to multiple scattering are calculated. It is indeed shown in this paper that the range of the potential plays an important role in the calculation of corrections to the Boltzmann mean free path in the diffusive regime, where the scatterer density is low. Finally, the mean free path is expanded in powers of the scatterer density up to the first subleading order in 2 and 3 space dimensions.

## 2 Formalism

We consider the propagation of an electron in a disordered system which is described by the following Hamiltonian.

$`H=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}\mathrm{\Delta }+𝐕,`$ (1)
where the potential $`𝐕=_{i=1}^N𝐯_i`$ is the sum of the $`N`$ randomly distributed individual potentials. The simplest finite range interaction, which one can imagine, is the hard sphere potential defined by

$`v_i(𝐫)=v(|𝐫𝐑_i|)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{}\hfill & \text{for }|𝐫𝐑_i|a,\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{for }|𝐫𝐑_i|>a.\hfill \end{array}`$ (2)
Like the point-like scatterer given by a delta function, this type of scatterer has no internal structure (the wave function vanishes inside the potential), but it has a finite size given by the range of the potential $`a`$. The electron propagator can be cast in the form

$`G=`$ $`G_0+G_0\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}𝐯_i\right)G=G_0+G_0𝒯G_0,`$ (3)
where $`G_0`$ is the free propagator and $`𝒯`$ is the global scattering matrix of the system. This $`𝒯`$-matrix is given in terms of the individual scattering $`𝐭`$-matrices by the Watson series

$`𝒯=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}𝐭_i+{\displaystyle \underset{i,ji}{}}𝐭_iG_0𝐭_j+{\displaystyle \underset{\begin{array}{c}i,ji,\\ kj\end{array}}{}}𝐭_iG_0𝐭_jG_0𝐭_k+\mathrm{}`$ (6)
Each term of this operator series represents a sequence of multiple scattering. The insertion of the closure relation $`\frac{d𝐤}{(2\pi )^3}|𝐤𝐤|=1`$ between the operators introduces off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix elements. The hard sphere off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix elements, $`𝐤^{}|𝐭_K|𝐤`$ with $`kk^{}\sqrt{2mE}`$, can be derived from the off-shell barrier potential of finite height  by extrapolation of its height to infinity. Their expression is given in appendix A. The analytic expression, of each term of the electron propagator in Fourier space, $`G(E,𝐤)`$, given by (3), is obtained by inserting the momentum closure relation in the scattering series (6). The momentum integrations are then performed with the use of expressions (A.1) and (A.2) for the $`𝐭`$-matrix elements in 2 and 3 dimensions and the integrals (Appendix B : Useful integrals) and (Appendix B : Useful integrals) of appendix B. Throughout the calculation, one has to take care of the fact that the scatterers do not overlap. This gives rise to correlations between scatterers which have to be accounted for when taking the ensemble average of the propagator.

In contrast to the point-like scatterers case where there is no spatial correlation, the ensemble average, noted with a bar, of a quantity $`Q`$ reads

$`\overline{Q}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒵}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}d𝐑_i\underset{j>i}{}\mathrm{\Theta }(R_{ij}2a)Q(\{𝐑_i\}_{i=1,\mathrm{},n})},`$ (7)
where $`R_{ij}|𝐑_{ij}||𝐑_i𝐑_j|`$ and

$$𝒵=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}d𝐑_i\underset{j>i}{}\mathrm{\Theta }(R_{ij}2a)$$

is a normalization constant, the same as the spatial term of the partition function of a 3D hard sphere or 2D hard disk gas. The Heaviside step function $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ accounts for the spatial correlations.

Using results from the virial expansion, especially the Kirkwood superposition approximation , the spatial correlation function can be written as a product of two-body correlation functions $`g`$.

$$\frac{1}{𝒵}\underset{j>i}{}\mathrm{\Theta }(R_{ij}2a)=\frac{1}{V^n}\underset{j>i}{}g(R_{ij}).$$
(8)
Then, the average of $`Q`$ can be approximated by

$$\overline{Q}=\frac{1}{V^n}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}d𝐑_i\underset{j>i}{}g(R_{ij})Q(\{𝐑_i\}_{i=1..n}),$$
(9)
where the two-body correlation function $`g`$ is expanded in powers of the scatterer density $`\rho `$

$`g(R_{ij})=g_0(R_{ij})+\rho g_1(R_{ij})+\rho ^2g_2(R_{ij})+\mathrm{},`$ (10)
$`g_0`$, $`g_1`$, $`g_2`$…being derived from the virial expansion . In the case of hard spheres, $`g_0(R_{ij})=\mathrm{\Theta }(R_{ij}2a)`$ describes the fact that two hard spheres at position $`𝐑_i`$ and $`𝐑_j`$ cannot overlap, and the other terms $`g_1`$, $`g_2`$…take into account the average effect coming from the presence of other scatterers in the system.

In the case of point-like scatterers $`g_0(R_{ij})=1`$ and $`g_{i1}(R_{ij})=0`$. Notice that using this approximation, *i.e.* neglecting the spatial correlations, for the calculation of $`\overline{𝐤^{}|𝐭_i𝐆_0^{(+)}(E)𝐭_j𝐆_0^{(+)}(E)𝐭_i|𝐤}`$ with the expressions (A.2) and (A.1) leads to a divergence instead of the correct result . This divergence is due to the convergence conditions of integrals (Appendix B : Useful integrals) and (Appendix B : Useful integrals). It shows that the use of off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix elements is restricted to non-overlapping scatterers. This can be understood by observing that the existence of off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix elements is related to the finiteness of the size of the scatterer. Therefore it makes no sense to use these off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix elements in a point-like scatterer approximation.

In order to calculate the average of the propagator analytically, one needs an additional approximation, which neglects the correlations between non successive scatterers which appear in the scattering series (6). Then

$$\overline{Q}=\frac{1}{V^n}𝑑𝐑_n\underset{i=1}{\overset{n1}{}}d𝐑_{i,i+1}g(R_{i,i+1})Q(\{𝐑_i\}_{i=1..n}).$$
(11)
With the help of this approximation, each sequence of the Watson series (6) containing only distinct scatterers can be calculated. The summation of this class of terms is usually referred to as *independent scatterer approximation* . It gives the first order contribution in density of the self-energy. The approximation (11) is justified as long as the self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ of the average propagator

$$\overline{G}(E,𝐤)=G_0(E,𝐤)+G_0(E,𝐤)\mathrm{\Sigma }(E,𝐤)\overline{G}(E,𝐤)$$

is expanded up to order $`\rho ^2`$,

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(E,𝐤)=\underset{𝒪(\rho )}{\underset{}{\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}(E,𝐤)}}+\underset{𝒪(\rho ^2)}{\underset{}{\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}(E,𝐤)}}+\mathrm{}$$

Indeed, corrections coming from the overlapping of two non-successive scatterers are at least of the order $`\rho ^3`$, because they correspond to scattering sequences containing at least three scatterers.

In the $`s`$-wave approximation, where $`Ka1`$, the first order term of the self-energy is simply given by the off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix element

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}(E,𝐤)\rho 𝐤|𝐭(E)|𝐤.$$
(12)
Notice that this expression is the one obtained in the usual independent scatterer approximation. Its imaginary part is related to the individual scattering cross section via the optical theorem and leads to the Boltzmann mean free path $`l_0`$ ,

$$l_0=\frac{K}{𝔪\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}}\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{K\mathrm{ln}^2Ka}{\rho \pi ^2}\hfill & \text{ in 2D,}\hfill \\ \frac{1}{4\pi \rho a^2}\hfill & \text{ in 3D,}\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
where the self-energy is taken on the energy shell, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}(E,𝐤)`$ with $`|𝐤|=K=\frac{\sqrt{2mE}}{\mathrm{}}`$.

The second term of the self-energy contains the contribution coming from the resummation of the infinite series of all multiple scattering terms involving two distinct scatterers and a further term coming from the excluded volume. It appears that this latter term is negligible in comparison with the other terms of order $`\rho ^2`$, because of order $`a^d`$ where $`d`$ is the spatial dimension. The two-body scattering term is calculated in appendix C and reads

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\left(\frac{\pi \rho }{K}\right)^2\left\{\frac{2}{\mathrm{ln}^3K^{}a}+\frac{3\pi i}{\mathrm{ln}^4K^{}a}\right\}$$
(14)
where $`K^{}=Ke^\gamma /2`$ and $`\gamma 0.5772`$ is the Euler constant in 2D, and

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\frac{(4\pi )^2a^3}{K}\rho ^2\left\{\frac{i}{2}+Ka\left(\mathrm{ln}Ka+3\mathrm{ln}2+\mathrm{ln}3+\gamma 3\frac{i\pi }{2}\right)\right\}$$
(15)
in 3D.

## 3 Corrections to the Boltzmann mean free path

The mean free path $`l`$ is defined as the decreasing rate of the average propagator

$$\overline{G}(E,𝐫𝐫^{})e^{\frac{|𝐫𝐫^{}|}{2l}}.$$

In order to compare with the case of point-like scatterers , we consider the deviation of the mean free path with respect to the Boltzmann mean free path $`l_0`$.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{l}{l_0}}=`$ $`1\left({\displaystyle \frac{𝔢\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}}{2K^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝔢\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}}{K}}+{\displaystyle \frac{𝔪\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}}{𝔪\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}}}\right)+𝒪(\rho ^2),`$ (16)
where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}\frac{d}{dk}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}(E,𝐤)|_{k=K}`$. This formula is easily derived from the definition of the mean free path,

$$l=\frac{1}{2𝔪\stackrel{~}{K}},\text{ where }\stackrel{~}{K}^2=K^2(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}+\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}).$$
(17)
For point-like scatterers, the term $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}`$ vanishes, there is no off-shell contribution.

In 2 dimensions, for low density $`\rho `$ and low energy $`Ka1`$, one obtains

$$\frac{l}{l_0}1+\frac{\pi \rho }{K^2}\left(\frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}Ka}+\frac{3}{\mathrm{ln}^2Ka}\right).$$
(18)
The excluded volume term appears to be of the same order in $`Ka`$ as the off-shell term $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}`$, *i.e.* $`𝒪\left((Ka)^2\right)`$. These two terms are also of the same order in $`Ka`$ as the first partial wave term which is the term for $`m=\pm 1`$ in expression (A.1). They are therefore neglected here.

The leading correction term in (18) is given by the on-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}`$ and the subleading correction term comes from the first term of the two-body series. These corrections lead to a decrease of the mean free path with respect to the Boltzmann value. Neglecting the subleading corrections in $`1/\mathrm{ln}^2Ka`$, expression (18) can be written in terms of $`1/Kl_0`$ and reads

$$\frac{l}{l_0}1+\frac{\mathrm{ln}Ka}{\pi }\frac{1}{Kl_0}.$$
(19)
This expression shows that the corrections are not only written in terms of $`1/Kl_0`$ but that there appears a logarithmic correction involving the size of the scatterer.

In 3 dimensions, the excluded volume and the off-shell corrections are also negligible for the same reasons. Contrary to the two dimensional case, the leading term is not given by the on-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(1)}`$. This latter is compensated by the first term of the two-body series $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}`$, given by (C.1). It comes out that the leading term of the corrections to the Boltzmann mean free path is given by the second term (Appendix C : Two-body scattering) of the two-body series. As in 2 dimensions, the mean free path is smaller than the Boltzmann expression.

$$\frac{l}{l_0}1\rho \left(\frac{\pi ^2a^2}{K}+𝒪(a^3)\right).$$
(20)
The expression (16) for the deviation of the mean free path already exists for point-like scatterers in 3 dimensions . Instead of being of the form $`\rho a^2/K`$ as obtained in (20), the corrections to the Boltzmann mean free path for scalar scatterers are proportional to $`\rho /K^3`$. This shows that the behavior of the scalar point-like scatterers is very different from that of finite size scatterers. It is much more sensitive to small wave numbers. For finite size potentials, the effect of two-body scattering is much less important than it is in the case of point-like potentials. Written in terms of the disorder strength $`1/Kl_0`$, expression (20) reads

$$\frac{l}{l_0}1\frac{\pi }{4}\frac{1}{Kl_0}.$$
(21)
For the scalar point scatterers at resonance, a similar expression is found except that the numerical factor is not $`\pi /4`$ but 0.375 (see eq. (3.14a) from ). The effect of the disorder is more important for finite size scatterers than for point-like scatterers.

## 4 Conclusion

In this paper we worked out the corrections to the Boltzmann mean free path of infinite disordered systems composed of hard disk scatterers in two dimensions and hard sphere scatterers in three dimensions. Calculations with finite size scatterers present several differences compared with calculations with point-like scatterers. One is led to use off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix elements. The excluded volume has to be taken into account, yielding spatial correlations when averaging over disorder. These two effects appear to be of the same order in $`Ka`$ and are negligible with respect to a more important effect due to multiple scattering. They become important when one is interested in non-isotropic scattering, *i.e.* when more than one partial wave has to be taken into account.

To the knowledge of the author, the result obtained in two dimensions is new and has not been evaluated even for point-like potentials. The corrections to the mean free path cannot be given only in terms of $`1/Kl_0`$, indeed they contain a logarithmic prefactor depending on the size of the scatterer. In three dimensions, the comparison of our result with the result obtained for point-like potentials shows a discrepancy in the numerical factor in front of the disorder strength $`1/Kl_0`$. The decrease of the mean free path is more important for finite size scatterers than for point-like potentials.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank D. Boosé, J.-M. Luck and J. Richert for useful discussions.

## Appendix A : Off-shell $`𝐭`$-matrix

Following , the off-shell scattering $`𝐭`$-matrix of a quantum particle with energy $`E=\frac{\mathrm{}^2K^2}{2m}`$ takes the form

$`𝐤^{}|𝐭(E)|𝐤=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2mV}}2\pi a{\displaystyle \underset{m=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}e^{im(\theta _k^{}\theta _k)}`$ (A.1)
$`\{{\displaystyle \frac{k^2K^2}{k^2k^2}}(kJ_m(k^{}a)J_{m1}(ka)k^{}J_{m1}(k^{}a)J_m(ka))`$
$`+kJ_m(k^{}a)J_{m1}(ka)KJ_m(ka)J_m(k^{}a){\displaystyle \frac{H_{m1}^{(1)}(Ka)}{H_m^{(1)}(Ka)}}\}`$
in 2 dimensions and

$`𝐤^{}|𝐭(E)|𝐤=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi \mathrm{}^2}{mV}}a^2{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}(2l+1)P_l(\mathrm{cos}(\widehat{𝐤^{},𝐤}))`$ (A.2)
$`\times \{{\displaystyle \frac{k^2K^2}{k^2k^2}}[kj_l(k^{}a)j_{l1}(ka)k^{}j_{l1}(k^{}a)j_l(ka)]`$
$`+kj_l(k^{}a)j_{l1}(ka)Kj_l(k^{}a)j_l(ka){\displaystyle \frac{h_{l1}^{(+)}(Ka)}{h_l^{(+)}(Ka)}}\}`$
in 3 dimensions. The $`j_l`$ and $`h_l^{(+)}`$ are the spherical Bessel and Hankel functions and the $`J_m`$ and $`H_m^{(1)}`$ are the ordinary Bessel and Hankel functions . In 3 dimensions, the angular part is taken into account by the Legendre polynomial $`P_l`$.

These expressions enter the calculation of each term of the scattering series (6) in the expression of the electron propagator (3).

## Appendix B : Useful integrals

In order to derive the expressions of each term of the scattering series (6) in Fourier space, one has to compute products of propagators $`G_0`$ with $`𝐭`$-matrices. The following integrals are the basic integrals appearing in these products.

The integral used in the calculation of each scattering sequence of the Watson series (6) in 2 dimensions reads

$`{\displaystyle _0^+\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^{d1}dk}{K^2k^2+iϵ}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}J_{\mu _i}(ka_i)J_m(kR)`$
$`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{2}}K^{d2}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}J_{\mu _i}(Ka_i)H_m^{(1)}(KR).`$ (B.1)
It is valid under the following conditions

$$\{\begin{array}{c}d+m+_{i=1}^n\mu _i=2pp\hfill \\ R>_{i=1}^na_i\hfill \\ d+_{i=1}^n|\mu _i|>|m|.\hfill \end{array}$$

In 3 dimensions, one gets

$`{\displaystyle _0^+\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^{d1}dk}{K^2k^2+iϵ}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}j_{\mu _i}(ka_i)j_l(kR)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{2}}K^{d2}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}j_{\mu _i}(Ka_i)h_l^{(+)}(KR),`$ (B.2)
if the conditions

$$\{\begin{array}{c}d+1+l+_{i=1}^n\mu _i=2pp^+\hfill \\ R_{i=1}^na_i\hfill \\ d1+_{i=1}^n\mu _i>l\hfill \end{array}$$

are verified.

## Appendix C : Two-body scattering

The two-body scattering term consists of the summation of all the multiple scattering terms with two distinct scatterers

$$(iji)+(ijij)+(ijiji)+(ijijij)+\mathrm{}$$
(22)
where $`(ij)`$ is a symbolic notation for $`_{i,ji}𝐭_iG_0𝐭_j`$.

In 2 dimensions, the average of the first term of this series is the leading term and can be calculated exactly .

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}`$ $`8i\pi \rho ^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{J_0(z)}{H_0^{(1)}(z)}}\right)^3{\displaystyle _{2a}^{\mathrm{}}}r𝑑rH_0^{(1)}(Kr)H_0^{(1)}(Kr)`$
$`=`$ $`16i\pi \rho ^2a^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{J_0(z)}{H_0^{(1)}(z)}}\right)^3\left[(H_0^{(1)}(2z))^2+(H_1^{(1)}(2z))^2\right],`$
where $`z=Ka`$. When $`Ka0`$, expression (14) is recovered. The average of the other terms appearing in the series (22) can be evaluated by a saddle-point approximation of $`r𝑑r\left(H_0^{(1)}(Kr)\right)^n`$. They lead to an infinite series of powers of $`t=\frac{J_0(z)}{H_0^{(1)}(z)}\frac{1}{1+\frac{2i}{\pi }\mathrm{ln}\frac{z}{2}e^\gamma }`$ for the self-energy.

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}\frac{8i\pi }{K^2}\rho ^2\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}t\underset{n2}{}()^na_nt^n$$
(23)
with $`a_n\frac{2}{e^{2\gamma }}\left(\frac{i}{\pi }\right)^nn!`$.

In 3 dimensions, the geometrical series is first resummed before averaging. Then the order $`\rho ^2`$ term of the self-energy is given by the average of this resummation and reads

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{(2)}=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\frac{(4\pi )^2}{K}\rho ^2\left(\frac{j_0(z)}{h_0^{(+)}(z)}\right)^3\hfill \\ \hfill \times _{2a}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{r^2drh_0^{(+)}(Kr)^2\left(1\frac{j_0(z)}{h_0^{(+)}(z)}j_0(Kr)h_0^{(+)}(Kr)\right)}{1\left[\frac{j_0(z)}{h_0^{(+)}(z)}h_0^{(+)}(Kr)\right]^2},\end{array}$$
(24)
The integral is decomposed into three parts, noted $`I^{(1)}`$, $`I^{(2)}`$, and $`I^{(3)}`$. The first contribution represents the scattering sequence $`(iji)`$.

$$I^{(1)}\frac{1}{z^2}_2^{\mathrm{}}𝑑xe^{2izx}=\frac{ie^{4izx}}{2z^3}\frac{i}{2z^3}\frac{2}{z^2}.$$
(C.1)
The second contribution is the scattering sequence $`(ijij)`$.

$`I^{(2)}`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}ze^{iz}}{z^4}}{\displaystyle _2^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{x^2}}e^{3izx}\mathrm{sin}zx`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z^2}}\left(\mathrm{ln}z+4\mathrm{ln}2+\gamma 1{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{2}}\right).`$ (C.2)
In the limit $`z0`$, the remainder of the series can be evaluated by taking $`z=0`$. This gives

$$I^{(3)}=\frac{1}{z^2}_2^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dx}{x(x+1)}=\frac{1}{z^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{3}{2}.$$

Combining these three expressions, one obtains expression (15) for the self-energy.