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# Investigations of the 𝜋𝑁 total cross sections at high energies using new FESR: log 𝜈 or (log 𝜈)²

## Abstract

We propose to use rich informations on $`\pi p`$ total cross sections below $`N(10`$ GeV) in addition to high-energy data in order to discriminate whether these cross sections increase like log $`\nu `$ or (log $`\nu )^2`$ at high energies, since it is difficult to discriminate between asymptotic log $`\nu `$ and (log $`\nu )^2`$ fits from high-energy data alone. A finite-energy sum rule (FESR) which is derived in the spirit of the $`P^{}`$ sum rule as well as the $`n=1`$ moment FESR have been required to constrain the high-energy parameters. We then searched for the best fit of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}`$ above 70 GeV in terms of high-energy parameters constrained by these two FESR. We can show from this analysis that the (log $`\nu )^2`$ behaviours is preferred to the log $`\nu `$ behaviours.

preprint: APS/123-QED

The high energy behavior of $`\pi N`$ total cross sections has been one of the longstanding problems in particle physics. The sum of $`\pi ^+p`$ and $`\pi ^{}p`$ total cross sections has a tendency to increase above 70 GeV experimentallyrf1 . It is well-known as the Froissart unitarity boundrf2  that the increase of total cross sections is at most log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$. It has not been possibleCudell , however, to discriminate between asymptotic log $`\nu `$ and log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ fits if one uses high-energy data alone above $``$70GeV.

The purpose of this paper is to propose to use rich informations of $`\pi p`$ total cross sections at low and intermediate energy regions through new finite-energy sum rules (FESR) as constraints in addition to high-energy data, in order to discriminate the high energy behaviours of $`\pi p`$ total cross sections above 70 GeV.

Such a kind of attempt has been initiated in Ref. rf3 . The $`s`$-wave $`\pi N`$ scattering length $`a^{(+)}`$ of the crossing-even amplitude had been expressed as

$`\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{M}}\right)a^{(+)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_r^2}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2M}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1(\frac{\mu }{2M})^2}}`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑k[\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(\mathrm{})]`$
with pion mass $`\mu `$ under the assumption that there are no singularities with the vacuum quantum numbers in the $`J`$ plane except for the Pomeron $`(P)`$. The evidence that this sum rule had not been satisfied led us to the prediction of the $`P^{}`$ trajectory with $`\alpha _P^{}(0)0.5`$, and soon the $`f`$ meson ($`f_2(1275)`$) has been uncovered on this $`P^{}`$ trajectory.

(FESR(1)): Taking into account the present situation of increasing total cross section data, we derive FESR in the spirit of the $`P^{}`$ sum rulerf3 . We consider the crossing-even (spin-averaged) forward scattering amplitude for $`\pi p`$ scatteringrf4

$`f^{(+)}(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}[A^{(+)}(\nu )+\nu B^{(+)}(\nu )].`$ (2)
We assume

$`\mathrm{Im}f^{(+)}(\nu )`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{Im}R(\nu )+\mathrm{Im}f_P^{}(\nu )`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu ^2}}(c_0`$ $`+`$ $`c_1\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }}+c_2\mathrm{log}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }})+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _P^{}}{\mu }}({\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }})^{\alpha _P^{}(0)}`$ (3)
at high energies $`(\nu N)`$. Since this amplitude is crossing-even, we have

$`R(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i\nu }{2\mu ^2}}\{2c_0+c_2\pi ^2+c_1(\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\pi }\nu }{\mu }}+\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }})`$ (4)
$`+c_2(\mathrm{log}^2{\displaystyle \frac{e^{i\pi }\nu }{\mu }}+\mathrm{log}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }})\},`$
$`f_P^{}(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _P^{}}{\mu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(e^{i\pi }\nu /\mu )^{\alpha _P^{}(0)}+(\nu /\mu )^{\alpha _P^{}(0)}}{\mathrm{sin}\pi \alpha _P^{}(0)}}\right),`$ (5)
and subsequently we obtain

$`\mathrm{Re}R(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \nu }{2\mu ^2}}\left(c_1+2c_2\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }}\right),`$ (6)
$`\mathrm{Re}f_P^{}(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _P^{}}{\mu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }}\right)^{\alpha _P^{}(0)}\mathrm{cot}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \alpha _P^{}(0)}{2}}`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _P^{}}{\mu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }}\right)^{0.5},`$
substituting $`\alpha _P^{}(0)=\frac{1}{2}`$ in Eq. (5). Let us define

$`\stackrel{~}{f}^{(+)}(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`f^{(+)}(\nu )R(\nu )f_P^{}(\nu )`$ (8)
$``$ $`\nu ^{\alpha (0)}(\alpha (0)<0),`$
and write dispersion relation for $`\frac{\stackrel{~}{f}^{(+)}(\nu )}{\nu \mu }`$. Since this amplitude is superconvergent, we obtain

$`\mathrm{Re}\stackrel{~}{f}^{(+)}(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{P}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\nu ^{}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Im}\stackrel{~}{f}^{(+)}(\nu ^{})}{\nu ^{}\mu }}`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2P}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}\mathrm{Im}\stackrel{~}{f}^{(+)}(\nu ^{})}{k^2}}𝑑\nu ^{}.`$
Using Eqs. (8) and (9), we have

$`\mathrm{Re}f^{(+)}(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Re}R(\mu )+\mathrm{Re}f_P^{}(\mu ){\displaystyle \frac{g_r^2}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2M}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1(\frac{\mu }{2M})^2}}`$ (10)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{N}}}\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)𝑑k{\displaystyle \frac{2P}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^N}{\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{k^2}}\left\{\mathrm{Im}R(\nu )+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _P^{}}{\mu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\nu }{\mu }}\right)^{0.5}\right\}𝑑\nu ,`$
where $`\overline{N}\sqrt{N^2\mu ^2}N`$. Let us call Eq. (10) as the FESR(1) which we use as the first constraint. It is important to notice that Eq. (10) reduces to the $`P^{}`$ sum rule in ref.rf3  if $`c_1,c_20`$.

The FESR (rf5 , rf6 , rf7 )

$`{\displaystyle _0^N}𝑑\nu \nu ^n\mathrm{Im}f(\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\beta _i{\displaystyle \frac{N^{\alpha _i(0)+n+1}}{\alpha _i(0)+n+1}}`$ (11)
holds for even positive integer $`n`$ when $`f(\nu )`$ is crossing odd, and holds for odd positive integer $`n`$ when $`f(\nu )`$ is crossing even. We can also derive negative-integer moment FESR. The only significant FESR is a one for $`f^{(+)}(\nu )/\nu `$ corresponding to $`n=1`$. FESR(1) belongs to this case.

It is important to emphasize that the FESR should not depend so much on the value of $`N`$.

(FESR(2)): The second FESR corresponding to $`n=1`$ is:

$`\pi \mu \left({\displaystyle \frac{g_r^2}{4\pi }}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2M}}\right)^3`$ $`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{N}}}𝑑kk^2\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)={\displaystyle _0^N}\nu \mathrm{Im}R(\nu )𝑑\nu +{\displaystyle _0^N}\nu \mathrm{Im}f_P^{}(\nu )𝑑\nu .`$ (12)
We call Eq. (12) as the FESR(2). It is to be noticed that the contribution from higher energy regions is enhanced.

(Data) The numerical values,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{g_r^2}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2M}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1(\frac{\mu }{2M})^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`0.0854\mathrm{GeV}^1,`$
$`\pi \mu {\displaystyle \frac{g_r^2}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2M}}\right)^3`$ $`=`$ $`0.0026\mathrm{GeV},`$ (13)
have been evaluated using $`\frac{g_r^2}{4\pi }=14.4`$.

$`\mathrm{Re}f^{(+)}(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{M}}\right)a^{(+)}=\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{M}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(a_{\frac{1}{2}}+2a_{\frac{3}{2}})`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`(0.014\pm 0.026)\mathrm{GeV}^1`$
was obtained fromrf8  $`a_{\frac{1}{2}}=(0.171\pm 0.005)\mu ^1`$ and $`a_{\frac{3}{2}}=(0.088\pm 0.004)\mu ^1`$.

We have used rich datarf1  of $`\sigma ^{\pi ^+p}`$ and $`\sigma ^{\pi ^{}p}`$ to evaluate the relevant integrals of cross sections appearing in FESR(1) and (2). We connect each data point111 We take the error $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ for each data point $`y`$ as $`\mathrm{\Delta }y=\sqrt{(\mathrm{\Delta }y)_{\mathrm{stat}.}^2+(\mathrm{\Delta }y)_{\mathrm{syst}.}^2}`$. When several data points, denoted as $`y_i`$ with error $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_i`$ $`(i=1,\mathrm{},n)`$, are listed at the same value of $`k`$, these points are replaced by $`\overline{y}`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{y}`$, given by $`\overline{y}=(_iy_i/(\mathrm{\Delta }y_i)^2)/(_i1/(\mathrm{\Delta }y_i)^2)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{y}=\sqrt{1/(_i1/(\mathrm{\Delta }y_i)^2)}`$.  of $`\sigma ^{\pi ^\pm p}(k)`$ or $`k^2\sigma ^{\pi ^\pm p}(k)`$ with the next point by straight line in order, from $`k=0`$ to $`k=\overline{N}`$, and regard the area of this polygonal line graph as the relevant integral in the region $`0k\overline{N}`$. The integrals of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ ($`k^2\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$) are given by averaging these of $`\sigma ^{\pi ^+p}(k)`$ and $`\sigma ^{\pi ^{}p}(k)`$ ($`k^2\sigma ^{\pi ^+p}(k)`$ and $`k^2\sigma ^{\pi ^{}p}(k)`$). We have obtained

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{N}}}𝑑k\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ $`=`$ $`38.75\pm 0.25\mathrm{GeV}^1,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{N}}}𝑑kk^2\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ $`=`$ $`1817\pm 31\mathrm{GeV}`$ (15)
for $`\overline{N}=10`$ GeV. The errors of relevant integrals, which are from the error of each data point, are very small ($`1`$ percent), and thus, we regard the central values are exact ones in the following analysis.

When $`\sigma ^{\pi ^+p}`$ and $`\sigma ^{\pi ^{}p}`$ data points are listed at the same value of $`k`$, we make $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ data point by averaging these values. Totally 183 points are obtained in the region $`0.16k340`$ GeV as $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ data. There are 12 points in $`k70`$GeV region, which will be used in the following analysis.

(Analysis) The FESR(1) and (2) are our starting points. Armed with these two, we expressed high-energy parameters $`c_0`$, $`c_1`$, $`c_2`$, $`\beta _P^{}`$ in terms of the Born term and the $`\pi N`$ scattering length $`a^{(+)}`$ as well as the total cross sections up to $`N`$. We then attempt to fit the $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}`$ above 70GeV. We set $`N=10GeV`$ (corresponding to $`\sqrt{s_{p\pi }}=4.43`$GeV) since there are no resonances above this energy. The FESR(2) has also contributions from the lower trajectory $`P\mathrm{"}`$ which may pass through $`f_2(1810)`$. Since $`\alpha _{P\mathrm{"}}(0)`$ is expected to be around -1, we can assume $`P\mathrm{"}`$ contribution to be suppressed compared with that from $`P^{}`$.

Let us first define the log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ model and the log $`\nu `$ model. The log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ model is a model for which the imaginary part of $`f^{(+)}(\nu )`$ behaves as $`a+b\mathrm{log}\nu +c(\mathrm{log}\nu )^2`$ as $`\nu `$ becomes largeKN75 . The log $`\nu `$ model is a model for which the imaginary part of $`f^{(+)}(\nu )`$ behaves as $`a^{}+b^{}\mathrm{log}\nu `$ for large $`\nu `$. So we generally assume that the Im $`f^{(+)}(\nu )`$ behaves as Eq. (3) at high energies $`(\nu N)`$.
(1) log $`\nu `$ model: This model has three parameters $`c_0`$, $`c_1`$ and $`\beta _P^{}`$ with two constraints FESR (1), (2). (Note that the number of independent parameters is one.) We set $`N=10`$GeV and expressed both $`c_0`$, $`\beta _P^{}`$ as a function of $`c_1`$ using the FESR(1) and (2). We obtained

$`c_0(c_1)`$ $`=`$ $`0.08794.94c_1,`$
$`\beta _P^{}(c_1)`$ $`=`$ $`0.1290+7.06c_1.`$ (16)
We then tried to fit 12 data points of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ between 70GeV and 340GeV. The result is shown by thick solid line in FIG. 1. The best fit we obtained is $`c_1=0.00185`$ which gives $`c_0=0.0787`$ and $`\beta _P^{}=0.142`$ with the bad “reduced $`\chi ^2`$,” $`\chi ^2/(N_{\mathrm{data}}N_{\mathrm{param}})=29.04/(121)2.6`$. Therefore it turned out that this model has difficulties to reproduce the experimental increase of $`\pi p`$ total cross sections above 70GeV (see, thick solid line in FIG. 1 (b)). In this log $`\nu `$ fit, the results also depend on the value of $`N`$, which is not so good.

(2) log2 $`\nu `$ model: This model has four parameters $`c_0`$, $`c_1`$, $`c_2`$ and $`\beta _P^{}`$ with two constraints FESR(1),(2). (So the number of independent parameters is two.) We again set $`N=10`$GeV and required both FESR(1) and (2) as constraints. Then $`c_0`$, $`\beta _P^{}`$ are expressed as functions of $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ as

$`c_0(c_1,c_2)`$ $`=`$ $`0.08794.94c_121.50c_2,`$
$`\beta _P^{}(c_1,c_2)`$ $`=`$ $`0.1290+7.06c_1+41.46c_2.`$ (17)
We then searched for the fit to 12 data points of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ above 70GeV. The result is shown by thick solid line in Fig.2 . The best fit in terms of two parameters $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ led us to greatly improved value of “reduced $`\chi ^2`$,” $`\chi ^2/(N_{\mathrm{data}}N_{\mathrm{param}})=0.746/(122)0.075`$ for $`c_1=0.0215<0`$ and $`c_2=0.00182>0`$ which give $`c_0=0.155`$ and $`\beta _P^{}=0.0524`$. This is an excellent fit to the data (see, thick solid line in FIG. 2 (b)).

($`\alpha _P^{}`$ dependence) So far, we have assumed the intercept of the $`P^{}`$ trajectory $`\alpha _P^{}(0)`$ to be 0.5. The value $`\alpha _P^{}(0)`$ is estimated to be 0.586 according to the Chew-Frautschi plot, using the universal slope $`\alpha ^{}=1/1.15`$GeV-2 and the mass of $`f_2`$ to be 1275MeV. Let us check if the results change for this value of $`\alpha _P^{}(0)`$.

Suppose we take $`\alpha _P^{}(0)=0.586`$ and discuss the two cases, log $`\nu `$ and log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$.
(1) log $`\nu `$ model: We again set $`N=10`$GeV and expressed both $`c_0,\beta _P^{}`$ as functions of $`c_1`$ using FESR (1),(2). We then obtained

$`c_0(c_1)`$ $`=`$ $`0.08175.28c_1,`$
$`\beta _P^{}(c_1)`$ $`=`$ $`0.1238+6.77c_1.`$ (18)
We then searched for the fit to 12 data points of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ above 70 GeV. The result is shown by thin solid line in FIG. 1. The best fit we obtained is $`c_1=0.00353`$ which gives $`c_0=0.0630`$ and $`\beta _P^{}=0.148`$ with “reduced $`\chi ^2`$$`\chi ^2/(N_{\mathrm{data}}N_{\mathrm{param}})=22.30/(121)=2.03`$. So, this model has difficulties again to reproduce the experimental increase of $`\pi p`$ total cross sections above 70 GeV (see, thin solid line in Fig. 1 (b) ).
(2) log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ model: We also set $`N=10`$GeV and required both FESR (1) and (2) as constraints. Then we obtained

$`c_0(c_1,c_2)`$ $`=`$ $`0.08175.28c_123.50c_2,`$
$`\beta _P^{}(c_1,c_2)`$ $`=`$ $`0.1238+6.77c_1+39.80c_2.`$ (19)
We again searched for the fit to 12 points of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}(k)`$ above 70 GeV. The best fit in terms of two parameters $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ again led us to greatly improved value of “reduced $`\chi ^2`$”, $`\chi ^2/(N_{\mathrm{data}}N_{\mathrm{param}})=0.750/(122)=0.075`$ for $`c_1=0.0197<0`$ and $`c_2=0.00173>0`$ which give $`c_0=0.145`$ and $`\beta _P^{}=0.0593`$. This is again an excellent fit to the data (see, the caption of Fig. 2).

We have also searched for $`\alpha _P^{}(0)=0.543`$ (average of 0.5 and 0.586) and for $`\alpha _P^{}(0)=0.642`$ due to the Particle Data Grouprf1 . We found that the results do not change so much.

It is remarkable to notice that the wide range of data ($`k5`$GeV) have been reproduced within the error even in the region where the fit has not been made (see Fig. 2 (a) and (b)). The results do not change so much for the value of $`N`$. The increase of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}`$ above 50 GeV is explained via log2 $`\nu /\mu `$ $`(c_2>0)`$ and the decrease between $`550`$GeV is explained by log $`\nu /\mu `$ ($`c_1<0`$). It should also be emphasized that the comparison of Fig. 1 (log $`\nu `$ model) and Fig. 2 (log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ model) clearly indicates the latter model to be preferred. Similar conclusion is also obtained by completely different approachrf11 .

Recently a datumrf12  for $`\pi ^{}N`$ total cross section at very high energy ($`k`$=610GeV)222 At this energy the difference between $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{\pi ^{}p}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{\pi ^{}n}(=\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{\pi ^+p})`$ being estimated as $``$0.2mb is negligible, and the $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{\pi ^{}N}`$ can be regarded as $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}`$).  was reported by the SELEX collaboration. Our log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ model(log $`\nu `$ model) with $`\alpha _P^{}(0)=0.5`$ predicts 25.9mb(24.2mb) for $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^{(+)}`$ at 610GeV which is consistent(inconsistent) with their value on $`\pi ^{}N`$, $`(26.6\pm 0.9)`$mb . This fact also suggests the validity of the log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ model.

Therefore, we can conclude that our analysis in terms of high-energy parameters constrained by the FESR (1),(2) prefers the log2 $`\nu /\mu `$ behaviours satisfying the Froissart unitarity bound. Finally we should add a note that the origin of the log$`{}_{}{}^{2}\nu `$ behaviour of the amplitude at high energy is argued to be explained from the effect of gluon saturationrf13 .

###### Acknowledgements.

One of us (K. I. ) wishes to thank Prof. H. Miyazawa for useful conversations. The authors would like to express gratitude to Prof. J. Engelfried of SELEX collaboration for informing us of their $`\pi ^{}N`$ datum at 610GeV. We also thank Prof. B. Nicolescu for inforimg us of their related works.


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# A difference boosting neural network for automated star-galaxy classification

## 1 Introduction

Automated classification using neural networks has recently found several applications in astronomy. These range from classification of stellar (e. g. Singh et al. 1998) and galactic (Folkes et al. 1996) spectra, differentiating between stars and galaxies from imaging data (e. g. Odewahn et al. 1992), to detecting defects on CCDs (Rogers & Riess 1994).

Two powerful neural network paradigms (and their variants) have been popular in the astronomical community for addressing classification problems. These are, the Back-propagation algorithm (see McClelland & Rumelhart 1982) and the Self-Organizing Map (SOM; Kohonen 1982). The basic difference between the two is that SOM can organize itself into clusters unsupervised, meaning that no prior definition of the correct output for an input vector is needed. On the other hand, back-propagation requires a carefully selected training set for successful convergence. Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages depending upon the application. When an input is presented, SOM tries to associate it with a model vector that has features that best match with those of the input vector. If no such model vector is found, SOM assigns a new label to the object and considers it as the model vector of a new class of objects. SOM is therefore good in situations where the user does not know the possible classes of objects a priori. However, SOM has the disadvantage that it often classifies objects into different groups when in fact they belong to a single group. In the astronomical context, this often happens due to time-dependent variations in features associated with the data, e. g. variations in seeing conditions. Nevertheless, a number of variants of SOM have appeared with different adaptation rules, distance measures and structures of the map interconnections (Kohonen 1995).

Back-propagation, on the other hand, is most suitable in situations where one knows a priori the possible classes that an object can belong to, and wants to classify objects with a minimum error in the classification. From a computational perspective, back-propagation is a kind of function fitting process in which the parameters, generally known as the connection weights, are modified so that the network is able to map the system in terms of a nested sum of products of its node functions, which are generally sigmoid functions. The back-propagation network requires a training set, a test set and often a validation data set. In the training process the connection weights are updated in proportion to the negative gradient of the error surface. The network passes through the same set of data several times, lowering the overall error in each pass. Since in many astronomical classification problems the human observer is able to classify sources into their possible classes directly, and only requires the machine to behave as a faster classifier, back-propagation and its variants have been widely used for classification of astronomical images and spectra. Another advantage of the back-propagation network over SOM is that the user has full control over the relevant parameters to be used for the classification, and can therefore prevent the system from being misled by irrelevant features in the training data. Raw data is preprocessed to extract the significant parameters which then become the input for the neural network.

Automated and accurate classification of objects into stars and galaxies from optical (and near infrared) imaging data is an issue of considerable interest. Artificial neural network based approaches to the star galaxy classification problem include SOM (Miller & Coe 1996), decision tree induction (Weir, Fayyad & Djorgovski 1995) and back propagation, which is the basis for SExtractor, a widely used tool for star-galaxy separation (Bertin & Arnouts 1996). One of the drawbacks of classification tools such as SExtractor that employ back propagation is that it is difficult to modify them for specific needs. With the advent of a number of visible and near-infrared sky surveys, with varying sensitivities and observing conditions, it is often desirable for the user to be able to specify the optimum parameters for classification after experimenting with several possibilities. Trying new parameters on a general purpose tool like SExtractor is computationally very time consuming. The objective of this paper is to present a tool that can do the training at a faster rate, so that the network can be rapidly tested with different sets of classification parameters to discover the optimum parameter set. The short training time makes the network very flexible and its potential astronomical applications are much wider than the star-galaxy classification problem discussed here.

## 2 The Difference Boosting Neural Network (DBNN)

DBNN is based on a powerful and intuitive procedure originally developed and used by mathematicians (Laplace 1812) for sensible classification of objects. Named after its inventor Bayes (1763), Bayes’ theorem, according to Laplace, is the mathematical expression of common sense. Bayes’ theorem computes the conditional probability for the occurrence of an event, given that another event which could lead to this event has occurred (for an introduction to Bayes’ theorem see Loredo 1990). In complex problems, computation of the Bayesian probability becomes a laborious process. However, a variant of the Bayesian classifier known as the naive Bayesian classifier (Elkan 1997) is able to compute the Bayesian probability with reasonable accuracy under the assumption that, given the class, the attribute vectors (arrays of parameter values) are independent. However, in practice this independence assumption is frequently invalid and the performance of the network degrades when there are correlated attribute vectors.

The Difference Boosting Algorithm (DBNN) (Philip & Joseph 2001) is a computationally less intensive Bayesian classifier algorithm than its peers, and is closely related to the naive Bayesian classifier. DBNN, however, does not strictly follow the independence of attributes as a basic criterion and allows some correlation between the attributes. It does this by associating a threshold window with each of the attribute values of the sample. The threshold window demands that all the attribute values be in the range specified by the training set for each class of the sample. When any of the attribute values is outside the range specified by the threshold function, the confidence in the classification is penalized by a certain factor.

A popular example manifesting the correlation between input parameters is the XOR gate. A typical XOR gate has two digital inputs and one digital output. A digital state has only two possible values represented as high or low state. The XOR gate behaves such that its output is a high only when the two inputs are dissimilar, as shown in Table 1. Although the conditions appear to be simple, this is a case where the conditional independence is violated. For example, from the knowledge of the value of only one of the inputs, it is not possible to have any preferred knowledge about the class of the object. The actual class can be assigned only when both the inputs are known together. Since only the value of one of the inputs is used by the naive Bayesian classifier at a time, it is not able to produce a confidence level better than 50% (both alternatives equally likely) on such data. However, since DBNN takes into account the values of the other parameters by the use of the window function, it is able to give an accurate representation of the output states. We then say that the network has learned the XOR problem.

Some other advantages of the DBNN algorithm are its explicit dependence on probability estimates, its ability to give an estimate of the confidence value of a prediction and greater training speed. For the particular application to star galaxy classification, the DBNN gives good results with fewer input parameters than SExtractor. Philip & Joseph (2001), compared results from DBNN with the results obtained by Schiffmann, Joost & Werner (1994) on sixteen other network models. While Schiffmann et al. (1994) report an average training time of $`12`$ hours on the dataset they used, DBNN on the same dataset took only about 10 minutes for training. While their best result from the eighteen models produced an accuracy of 98.48% on independent test data, DBNN gave an accuracy of 98.60%.

One of the motivations for the DBNN classifier is that the human brain looks for differences rather than details when it is faced with situations that require distinction between almost identical objects. While the standard Bayesian method is very elaborate and takes every possibility into consideration, and the naive Bayesian ignores all possible correlations between attribute values, DBNN is an attempt to have the best of both worlds by highlighting only the differences.

## 3 Working of the DBNN

The working of the DBNN may be divided into three units. The first unit computes Bayes’ probability and the threshold function for each of the training examples. The second unit consists of a gradient descent boosting algorithm that enhances the differences in each of the examples in an attempt to minimize the number of incorrectly classified cases. At this stage, boosting is applied to the connection weights for each of the probability components $`P(U_mC_k)`$ of the attribute $`U_m`$ belonging to an example from the class $`C_k`$. Initially all the connection weights are set to unity. For the correctly classified object, the total probability $`P(UC_k)`$, computed as the product of component probabilities will be a maximum for $`C_k`$, the class of the object given in the training set. For the wrongly classified examples, for each of the component probability values, the associated weights are incremented by a factor $`\delta W_m`$ which is proportional to the difference in the total probability of membership of the example in the stated class and that in the wrongly classified class. The exact value is computed as

$$\delta W_m=\alpha \left(1\frac{P_k}{P_k^{}}\right)$$

in a sequence of iterations through the training set. Here $`P_k`$ is the computed total probability for the actual class of the object and $`P_k^{}`$ that of the wrongly classified class. The parameter $`\alpha `$ is a learning constant functionally similar to the learning constant in the back-propagation algorithm. It thus defines the rate at which the algorithm updates its weight parameter. The third unit computes the discriminant function (Bishop 1999) $`P(C_kU)`$ as:

$$P(C_kU)=\frac{_m\widehat{P}(U_mC_k)W_m}{_j_m\widehat{P}(U_mC_j)W_m}.$$

Here $`\widehat{P}(U_mC_k)`$ stands for $`P(U_mC_k)/P(C_k)`$ which from the axioms of set theory is equivalent to $`P(U_mC_k)`$.

In the implementation of the network, the actual classification is done by selecting the class corresponding to a maximum value for the discriminant function. Since this value is directly related to the probability function, its value is also an estimate of the confidence with which the network is able to do the classification. A low value indicates that the classification is not reliable. Although a network based on back-propagation also gives some probability estimates on the confidence it has on a classification scheme, these are not explicitly dependent on the probabilities of the distribution. Thus while such networks are vulnerable to divergent training vectors that are invariably present in training samples, DBNN is able to assign low probability estimates to such vectors. This is especially significant in astronomical data analysis where one has to deal with variations in the data due to atmospheric conditions and instrumental limitations. Another significance of the approach is the simplicity in the computation. DBNN can be retrained with ease to adapt to the variations in the observations enabling one to generate more accurate catalogs.

In the following section, we describe the use of the DBNN technique to differentiate between stars and galaxies in broadband imaging data. We chose to illustrate the capabilities of the DBNN by addressing the star-galaxy classification problem for the following reasons:

1. A widely used benchmark implementation of the back propagation algorithm is already available for tackling this problem in SExtractor.
2. High quality imaging data has recently become available from ongoing optical surveys. The number of sources detected by such surveys is large enough for us to construct moderately large training and test sets from uniformly high quality data. The data we use here is publicly accessible and our results can therefore be verified and extended by other researchers.
3. Construction of a reasonably accurate training set is possible from visual examination, given our experience with optical imaging data.

## 4 Separating stars and galaxies

The star–galaxy classification problem addresses the task of labeling objects in an image either as stars or as galaxies based on some parameters extracted from them. Classification of astronomical objects at the limits of a survey is a rather difficult task, and traditionally has been carried out by human experts with intuitive skills and great experience. This approach is no longer feasible, because of the staggering quantities of data being produced by large surveys, and the need to bring objectivity into the classification, so that results from different groups can be compared. It is thus necessary to have machines that can perform the task with the efficiency of a human expert (but at much greater speed) and with robustness in the classification, over variations in observing conditions.

Processing the vast quantities of data produced by new and ongoing surveys and generating accurate catalogs of the objects detected in these surveys is a formidable task, and reliable and fast classifiers are much in demand. Following the work by Odewahn et al. (1992), there has been a growing interest in this area in the past decade. SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996) is a popular, publicly available general purpose tool for this application. SExtractor accepts a FITS image of a region of the sky as input and provides a catalog of the detected objects as output. It has a built–in back propagation neural network which was trained once for all by the authors of SExtractor using about $`10^6`$ simulated images of stars and galaxies, generated under different conditions of pixel-scale, seeing and detection limits. In SExtractor an object is classified quantitatively by a stellarity index ranging from zero to unity, with index zero representing a galaxy and unity representing a star. The stellarity index is also a crude measure of the confidence that SExtractor has in the classification. A stellarity index of 0.0 or 1.0 indicates that SExtractor confidently classifies these objects as galaxy and star respectively while a stellarity index of 0.5 indicates that SExtractor is unable to classify the object. The input to the neural network used by SExtractor consists of nine parameters for each object, extracted from the image after processing it through a series of thresholding, deblending and photometric routines. Of the nine input parameters, the first eight are isophotal areas and the ninth one is the peak intensity for each object. In addition to these nine parameters, a control parameter, the seeing full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the image, is used to standardize the image parameters against the intrinsic fuzziness of the image due to the seeing conditions. In practice, some fine tuning of this control parameter is required for obtaining realistic output from the network, due to the wide range of observing conditions encountered in the data. A scheme for carrying out such tuning is described in the SExtractor manual.

Among other packages proposed recently for star-galaxy classification in wide field images is NExtractor (NExt) by Andreon et al. (2000). NExt claims to be the first of its kind that uses a neural network both for extracting the principal components in the feature space, as well as for classification. The performance of the network was evaluated over twenty five parameters that were expected to be characteristic to the class label of the objects, and it was found that six of these parameters, namely, the harmonic and Kron radius, two gradients of the PSF, the second total moment and a ratio that involves the measures of intensity and area of the observed object were sufficient to produce optimum classification. A comparison of NExt performance with that of SExtractor by Andreon et al. (2000) showed that NExt has a classification accuracy that is as good as or better than SExtractor. The NExt code is not publicly available at the present time (Andreon, personal communication) and a comparison with DBNN is not possible.

### 4.1 Constructing the training set

The first requirement for the construction of any good classifier is a complete training set. Completeness here means that the training set consists of examples with all possible variations in the target space and that the feature vectors derived from them are distinct in the feature space of their class labels. In the context of star–galaxy classification, this means that the training set should contain examples of the various morphologies and flux levels, of both stars and galaxies, spanning the entire range of parameters of the objects that are to be later classified.

We decided to construct our training set from an R band image from the publicly available NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey (NDWFS). This survey will eventually cover 18 square degrees of sky. The first data from the survey obtained using the MOSAIC-I CCD camera on the KPNO 4m Mayall telescope were released in January 2001. We chose to use data from this survey because of its high dynamic range, large area coverage and high sensitivity that allowed us to maintain uniformity between the moderately large training set and numerous test sets. The training set was carefully constructed from a subimage of the R band image NDWFSJ1426p3456 which has the best seeing conditions among the data currently released. Details of the image are listed in Table 2.

We used SExtractor as a preprocessor for selection of objects for the training set and for obtaining photometric parameters for classification. The values of some critical configuration parameters supplied to SExtractor for construction of the object catalog are listed in Table 3. Saturated stars were excluded from the training set by setting the SATUR\_LEVEL parameter. SEEING\_FWHM was measured from the point spread function (PSF) of the brightest unsaturated stars in the image. The DETECT\_MINAREA parameter was set so that every selected object had a diameter of at least 1.8 times the FWHM of the PSF. DETECT\_THRESH was set conservatively to 3 times the standard deviation of the background which was estimated locally for each source. ANALYSIS\_THRESH was set to a lower value to allow for more reliable estimation of the classification parameters we used. No cleaning or filtering of extracted sources was done. DEBLEND\_NTHRESH and DEBLEND\_MINCONT were set by trial and error using the guidelines in the SExtractor documentation. The following parameters were obtained from descriptions of the NDWFS data products in the NOAO archives - PIXEL\_SCALE, MAG\_ZEROPOINT and GAIN. SExtractor computes several internal error flags for each object and reports these as the catalog parameter FLAGS. Objects with a FLAGS parameter $`4`$ were deleted from the training set. This ensured that saturated objects, objects close to the image boundary, objects with incomplete aperture or isophotal data and objects where a memory overflow occurred during deblending or extraction were not used.

The training set was constructed from objects satisfying the above criteria from a $`2001\times 2001`$ pixel region of the image described in Table 2. The image region we used was selected at random. The objects were largely in the Kron-Cousins magnitude range 20–26. Objects brighter than this limit are mostly saturated stars which were not used. Each object in the training set was visually classified as a star or galaxy by two of the authors working separately, after examining the radial intensity profile, surface map and intensity contours. Less than 2% of the sources were differently classified by the two authors. These discrepancies were resolved by a combined examination by both authors. It was not possible to visually classify 35 of the objects, and these were deleted from the training set. All the deleted objects are fainter than magnitude 26. Some details about the training set, named NDWF10, are given in Table 4. Visual classification of many of the brighter stars was aided by the perceptibly non-circular PSF of the image. After visual classification was complete, SExtractor classification for all sources in the training set was obtained. An object-by-object comparision of the visual and SExtractor classification showed that the latter was successful in 97.76% of the cases in reproducing the results of the visual classification (see Table 4). The number of stars in the training set is considerably smaller than the number of galaxies because of the high galactic latitude of the field and the faint magnitudes of objects in the training set.

### 4.2 Obtaining optimum parameters for classification

Once a training set is available, the next task is to select the parameters that the network will use for classification. We tested all available parameters extracted by SExtractor for their suitability as classification parameters. We also derived some new parameters from the basic parameters obtained from SExtractor. For the classification we sought parameters which were (a) not strongly dependent on the properties of the instrument/telescope and on observing conditions; (b) would not depend on photometric calibration of the data, which is not always available; and (c) resulted in the clearest separation between stars and galaxies. To meet the last requirement, we plotted each parameter against the FWHM of the intensity profile and identified the parameters which provided the best separation. After extensive experimentation with our training set data, we found that three parameters were most suitable. These are:

1. Elongation measure: This is the logarithm of the ratio of second order moments along the major and minor axis of the lowest isophote of the object. For a star, the ratio should be near unity. For our training set, this ratio is different from unity because of the slightly elliptical PSF.
2. The standardized FWHM measure: This is the logarithm of the ratio of the FWHM of the object (obtained from a Gaussian fit to the intensity profile) to the FWHM of the point spread function for the image.
3. The gradient parameter (slope): This is the logarithm of the ratio of the central peak count to the FWHM of the object, normalized to the FWHM of the point spread function for the image.

We trained the DBNN using the values for these parameters for the visually classified set of stars and galaxies as the training set. In Figure 1 we show plots of the three final DBNN parameters against each other, with stars and galaxies marked differently. It is clear that excellent separation between stars and galaxies is obtained.

### 4.3 Testing the network performance

We tested the network on 2 sub-regions (2001 $`\times `$ 2001 pixels each) of the NDWFSJ1426p3456 field. The central coordinates of the two test set images are listed in Table 4. Using a different region of the same field for testing ensures that erroneous classification due to variations in data quality is not an issue. As in the case of the training set, these sub-regions were also selected at random. The object catalogs for the test sets were constructed using the same SExtractor configuration as for the training set. DBNN marked some objects as boundary examples, meaning that their confidence level was not more than 10% above the plain guess estimate (50%) regarding the class of the object.

In test set 1 (NDWF5), 32 out of 336 objects were deleted as they could not be classified visually. Of the remaining 314 objects, DBNN found 15 as marginal but classified 10 of these correctly. Two objects were misclassified. In test set 2 (NDWF14), 14 out of 422 objects were deleted for which visual classification was not possible. Of the remaining, DBNN marked 17 objects as marginal but classified 12 of these correctly. One object was misclassified. The results for the two test sets are summarized in Table 5. The classification accuracy is marginally better than that of SExtractor. The marginal superiority of DBNN, in the test set data, is not significant if some allowance is made for subjectivity in the construction of the test set. However, the fact that DBNN can obtain high classification accuracy with only 3 parameters as compared to 10 (9+ 1 control) parameters used by SExtractor is of some importance.

### 4.4 Effects of image degradation

An important consideration is to check the performance of DBNN (and SExtractor) on low signal to noise images. In such images even visual classification becomes difficult. In order to examine the effects of noise on the classification, we have therefore chosen to degrade the training image NDWF10 by adding progressively higher levels of noise, rather than use additional low S/N data. We have used the IRAF task mknoise to increase the noise level of our training set. The level of noise was controlled by using progressively higher values for background counts. The original image has a background of 879 counts. Four additional images were created having a background count of 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% of the original background. mknoise was used to add Poisson noise to each of these 4 images, and they represent progressively higher levels of background noise and lower S/N ratio as compared to the original image. Note that the noise being added by us here is in addition to the noise introduced during the acquisition of the NDWFS data (which is already present in the original undegraded image). Sources are extracted from the degraded images with the same SExtractor parameters used for the original training set. The number of sources found in the degraded images are listed in 6. As expected, the noisier the image, the lower was the number of objects selected. The DBNN was not retrained; sources in the degraded images were classified using the DBNN trained with the original training set.

We have listed in Table 7 the performance of SExtractor and DBNN on the degraded images. We find that DBNN performance is slighter poorer than that of SExtractor on the fainter sources. This may be due to the fact that SExtractor uses the magnitudes at 8 different isophotes as input parameters while DBNN looks for gradients. For fainter objects, gradients are smaller, making DBNN fail for a few faint objects. A factor in favour of DBNN is that it was trained with possibly contaminated training data (due to limitations of the humans who constructed the training and test sets) and can be retrained, while for SEx, the training data was pristine (simulated) and frequent retraining is not practical.

The second observation from the table is that, at brighter magnitudes, DBNN produces more accurate classification on marginal objects compared to SEx. Also on objects that produce high confidence levels, results from DBNN are marginally better than those of SEx. It is important to keep in mind that the the confidence levels reported by a neural network do not indicate the difficulty in visual classification by humans. The confidence levels are parameter dependent and merely quantify the appropriateness of a set of parameters. The actual measures of efficiency of a classifier are (1) the total number of objects it can classify with good confidence; a good classifier should have a minimum number of marginal objects at all magnitudes and (2) it should produce minimum errors at high confidence levels. The table shows that DBNN does at least as well as SExtractor in overall efficiency of classification on both these counts.

## 5 Discussion and summary

The results from the test data sets above indicate that the DBNN classifier works as well as the widely used SExtractor software. All instances of DBNN failure correspond to objects that do not have a counterpart in the training set or objects that are difficult (but not impossible) to classify visually. In both test sets, there is no instance where an obvious misclassification has occurred.

As mentioned before, in addition to the consistency, the increase in speed of the training process is very significant here. Our training procedure for DBNN on the 402 objects in the training dataset took 0.23 seconds on an Intel Pentium III processor running at a clock speed of 700 MHz. Such short training times are invaluable when one has to optimally deal with large datasets that are collected and processed over a significantly wide span of time, demanding repeated retraining of the classifier to account for variations in observing conditions and use of newer and better parameters for classification. Data from large surveys fall into this category. Also, unlike BPNN, since DBNN is based on Bayesian probability estimates, it is immune to diverse training vectors that often appear in the training set due to noise in the observation. This means that the performance of the network is likely to be significantly better than the BPNN beyond the completeness limit.

In this paper we have illustrated the power of the technique by applying it to the star galaxy classification problem. The technique can easily be applied to all classification problems that currently employ BPNN. For example, by using the large number of photometric and spectroscopic parameters measured (for millions of objects) by surveys such as the the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it will be possible to apply the DBNN technique to identify interesting samples for study in the vast, largely unexplored parameter space. We are in the process of enhancing DBNN to solve problems that involve regression.

The source code, documentation and the training and test set images described in this paper may be downloaded from the URL: http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/$``$nspp/dbnn.html

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors would like to thank Ashish Mahabal for discussions and a careful reading of the manuscript. The first author would like to express his sincere thanks to Inter University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the computer staff there for providing him all the required facilities for the successful completion of this project. We also thank the anonymous referee whose detailed comments considerably improved this paper. This work made use of images and data products provided by the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (Jannuzi and Dey 1999), which is supported by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). NOAO is operated by AURA, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.


text:
# Heavy Quarkonium and QCD Nonrelativistic Effective Field Theories 1footnote 11footnote 1Invited Talk given at the “Workshop on Charmonium Spectroscopy: Past and Future”, Genova (Italy), June 7-8, 2001.

## I INTRODUCTION

Heavy quarkonium systems play a key role in a large range of ongoing or planned experiments, from the search of hybrids to the quarkonium production, from the quark-gluon plasma formation to the next linear collider physics. Being nonrelativistic systems, they enjoy a degree of simplification with respect to the other quark bound systems and thus appear to be the most appropriate laboratory to study the confinement mechanism and the QCD vacuum properties. Being bound systems with a characteristic radius $`r`$ extending from the short range ($`r<1/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$) to the long range ($`r>1/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$) they probe the transition region from the perturbative to the nonperturbative regime. For all these reasons, it is relevant to be able to treat these systems inside QCD and in a model independent approach. In particular, to relate the properties of heavy quarkonium directly to the fundamental QCD parameters, like $`\alpha _s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$.

The study of heavy quark-antiquark systems is an old topic, see lectures  for some reviews. The spectra show that the gap between the energy levels of such systems is much smaller then the mass of the constituent quarks. Thus, they are nonrelativistic systems and can be described in first approximation by a Schrödinger equation with a potential. The form of the potential may be phenomenologically constrained by the structure of the energy levels which points to something intermediate between a Coulomb and a harmonic oscillator potential. A whole zoo of phenomenologically inspired potentials has been used in the past to reproduce/predict the properties of the spectra. The main ingredients of such potentials remain a Coulomb term superimposed with a linear (confining) term lectures . But in spite of their success eichten ; rich , the limitations of such phenomenological potential models are clear: the theoretical understanding is poor, there is no room for systematic improvement, there is no clear relation between the parameters of the potential models and the fundamental parameters of QCD. In such approaches the confining interaction is imposed by hand. Thus, relativistic corrections to the static potential are added typically in a complete model dependent way and there is no systematic procedure to take into account retardation effects which are typically related to low energy gluons. This last thing becomes particularly relevant in QCD where nonperturbative contributions may appear also as nonpotential effects (carried e.g. by the gluon condensate leut ). This lead in the past to many inconsistencies and contradictory statements about the existence or not of the $`q\overline{q}`$ potential.

A more rigorous method to obtain the potentials from QCD was developed inside the Wilson loop approach where the potentials are calculated as vacuum expectation values of Wilson loops and (chromo)electric and (chromo)magnetic field insertions inside Wilson loops lectures ; wilson . Such objects are suitable for a direct lattice evaluation or a calculation inside QCD vacuum models. However, also this approach is missing part of the dynamics that may characterize a particular heavy quarkonium state, like some of the short distance higher order contributions and nonpotential effects.

It appears that in the several approaches to quarkonium physics there is always something out of control. This is related, on one hand to the many physical scales that enter the problem and control several dynamic effects: perturbative (hard scale) and nonperturbative (low scale) effects; potential and nonpotential contributions, local and nonlocal condensates contributions. On the other hand, it is due to the lack of a fully systematic approach endowed with a unambiguous power counting (in some small parameter) that allows to estimate clearly the order of magnitude, and thus the relevance, of the neglected contributions. The effective field theory (EFT) approach satisfactory eliminates such difficulties reveff ; nrqcd ; eff ; pnrqcd . Indeed, the existence of a hierarchy of energy scales in quarkonium systems allows the construction of EFT with less and less degrees of freedom. This leads ultimately to a field theory derived quantum mechanical description of these systems. We call pNRQCD (potential Non Relativistic QCD) the corresponding EFT pnrqcd ; eff ; reveff . It is important to stress that all the EFT that we will introduce here are, by construction, completely equivalent to QCD. The procedure through which such an equivalence is imposed and the integration of the degrees of freedom is done in practice, is called “matching” reveff .

To be able to disentangle the scales of the bound state, as the EFT allows us to do, is of key importance in QCD, where we have a confinement region and we would like to be able to ’factorize’ as much as possible the high energy physics from the low energy physics, dominated by nonperturbative effects. Even inside a pure lattice approach, we have to resort to the EFT approach in order to be able to eliminate the non relevant scales and thus make the heavy quarkonium system fits inside the present capabilities of lattice QCD latticenrqcd .

Due to space limitations, the present paper is only a guided (and partial) collection of recent results and references in QCD NREFT for heavy quarkonium. The reader is warmly suggested to refer to the quoted papers for all the details and the explanations.

## II Effective Field Theories for Heavy Quarkonium

Being nonrelativistic, heavy quarkonium systems are characterized by, at least, three widely separated scales: the mass $`m`$ of the quark, the (soft) scale associated with the relative momentum $`pmv`$, $`v1`$, and the (ultrasoft) scale associated with the typical kinetic energy $`Emv^2`$. Also the inverse of the typical size of the system $`r^1`$ is of order $`mv`$. Here $`v`$ is the velocity of the quark in the bound system and what matters for the following is only that $`v`$ is a small number. The power counting of the EFT will be established in powers of $`v`$. This point requires special care in the case of charmonium where it is not clear if $`v`$ remains a sufficiently small number. Moreover, in dependence of the specific system, the scale of the nonperturbative physics $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, may turn out to be close to some of the above dynamical scales. The physical picture, which then arises, may be quite different from the perturbative situation. What remains true for all heavy quarkonia is that $`m\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ and thus at least the mass scale can be treated perturbatively, i.e. integrated out from QCD order by order in the coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$. The resulting EFT is called NRQCD (Non Relativistic QCD) nrqcd . The Lagrangian of NRQCD can be organized in powers of $`1/m`$, thus making explicit the non-relativistic nature of the physical systems. In order for an effective field theory to be useful, a power counting is needed. The power counting of NRQCD (organized in powers of $`v`$ and $`\alpha _s`$) follows from arguments valid in the perturbative regime (which should correspond strictly speaking to ΛQCD<

mv2subscriptΛQCD<

𝑚superscript𝑣2\Lambda_{\rm QCD}{\ \lower-1.2pt\vbox{\hbox{\hbox to0.0pt{$<$\hss}\lower 6.0pt\vbox{\hbox{$\sim$}}}}\ }mv^{2})reveff . Moreover, being still two scales (the momentum and energy scales) dynamical, the matrix elements do not have a unique power counting beyond leading order eff . NRQCD allows us to calculate on the lattice systems like bottomonium latticenrqcd . The new and very successful predictions of NRQCD on inclusive quarkonium decays and on quarkonium production are well known nrqcd .

## III Small radius systems and pNRQCD (for $`mv\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$)

In NRQCD still the dominant role of the potential as well as the quantum mechanical nature of the problem are not yet maximally exploited. A higher degree of simplification may still be achieved. In other words, we want to build another effective theory for the low energy region of the non-relativistic bound-state, i.e. we want an EFT where only the ultrasoft degrees of freedom remain dynamical, while the unwanted degrees of freedom are integrated out. To this aim we integrate out the scale of the momentum transfer $`mv`$ which is supposed to be the next relevant scale. Then, two different situations may exist. In the first one, $`mv>\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ and thus the matching from NRQCD to pNRQCD may be performed in perturbation theory, expanding in $`\alpha _s`$. This is the situation that I will discuss in this paragraph. In the second situation, mv<

ΛQCD𝑚𝑣<

subscriptΛQCDmv{\ \lower-1.2pt\vbox{\hbox{\hbox to0.0pt{$<$\hss}\lower 6.0pt\vbox{\hbox{$\sim$}}}}\ }\Lambda_{\rm QCD}, the matching has to be nonperturbative, i.e. no expansion in $`\alpha _s`$ is allowed. Recalling that $`r^1mv`$, these two situations correspond to systems with inverse typical radius smaller or bigger than $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, or systems respectively dominated by the short range or long range (with respect to the confinement radius) physics. Although no direct measurements of the typical radius is possible, from all the information we have at hand we can say that charmonium belongs to the second case and we will discuss it together with the nonperturbative matching to pNRQCD in Sec.4.

Now, we briefly describe the case in which $`mv>\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$. At the scale of the matching $`\mu ^{}`$ ($`mv\mu ^{}mv^2,\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$) we have still quarks and gluons. The effective degrees of freedom are: $`Q\overline{Q}`$ states (that can be decomposed into a singlet and an octet wave function under color transformations) with energy of order of the next relevant scale, $`O(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}},mv^2)`$ and momentum $`𝐩`$ of order $`O(mv)`$, plus ultrasoft gluons $`A_\mu (𝐑,t)`$ with energy and momentum of order $`O(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}},mv^2)`$. All the gluon fields are multipole expanded (i.e. in $`r`$). The Lagrangian is then an expansion in the small quantities $`p/m`$, $`1/rm`$ and in $`O(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}},mv^2)\times r`$.

The EFT we obtain pnrqcd ; eff ; reveff  produces a zero order equation and correction interactions terms of the type pnrqcd ; reveff

$`\begin{array}{cc}& \left(i_0{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩^2}{2m}}V_0(r)\right)\mathrm{\Phi }(𝐫)=0+\mathrm{corrections}\mathrm{to}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{potential}\hfill \\ & +\mathrm{interaction}\mathrm{with}\mathrm{other}\mathrm{low}\mathrm{energy}\mathrm{degrees}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{freedom}\hfill \end{array}\}\mathrm{pNRQCD}`$
where $`V_0(r)=C_f\alpha _s/r`$ in the perturbative tree level case for the singlet and $`\mathrm{\Phi }(𝐫)`$ is the $`\overline{Q}`$$`Q`$ (singlet or octet) wave-function.

The equivalence of pNRQCD to NRQCD, and hence to QCD, is enforced by requiring the Green functions of both effective theories to be equal (matching). In practice, appropriate off shell amplitudes are compared in NRQCD and in pNRQCD, order by order in the expansion in $`1/m`$, $`\alpha _s`$ and in the multipole expansion. The difference is encoded in potential-like matching coefficients that depend non-analytically on the scale that has been integrated out (in this case $`𝐫)`$.

At the leading order (LO) in the multipole expansion, the equations of motion of the singlet field is the Schrödinger equation. Therefore pNRQCD has made explicit the dominant role of the potential and the quantum mechanical nature of the bound state. In particular both the kinetic energy and the potential count as $`mv^2`$ in the $`v`$ power counting. The actual bound state calculation turns out to be very similar to a standard quantum mechanical calculation, the only difference being that the wave function field couples to US gluons in a field theoretical fashion. From the solution of the Schrödinger equation we obtain the leading order propagators for the singlet and the octet state, while the vertexes come from the interaction terms at the NLO (next-to-leading order) in the multipole expansion. In fact the pNRQCD Lagrangian contains retardation (or nonpotential) effects that start at the NLO in the multipole expansion. Thus, pNRQCD has explicit potential terms and thus it embraces a description of heavy quarkonium in terms of potentials. However, it has also explicit dynamical ultrasoft gluons and thus it describes nonpotential (retardation) effects. As we see, such an effective theory is able to provide a solution to the problems mentioned in the introduction.

The power counting is unambiguous. Calculations can be performed systematically in the $`v`$ expansion and can be improved at the desired order. Perturbative (high energy) and nonperturbative (low energy) contributions are disentangled. Renormalization group improvement may be performed in the effective theoryrg .

This allows us to systematically parameterize the nonperturbative contributions that we are not able to evaluate directly. There are two main situations. If $`mv^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ the system is described up to order $`\alpha _s^4`$ by a potential entirely accessible to perturbative QCD. Nonpotential effects start at order $`\alpha _s^5\mathrm{ln}\mu ^{}`$ and have been calculated in nnll . We call Coulombic this kind of systems. Nonperturbative effects are of non potential type and can encoded into local (a la Voloshin-Leutwyler) or nonlocal condensates. In the second case, when $`mv\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}mv^2`$, nonperturbative contributions to the potential arise when integrating out the scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ pnrqcd . We call quasi-Coulombic the systems where the nonperturbative piece of the potential can be considered small with respect to the Coulombic one. Some levels of toponium, the lowest level of $`b\overline{b}`$ may be considered Coulombic systems, while the $`J/\psi `$, the $`\eta _c`$, the lowest level of $`B_c`$ and part of the bottomonium excited levels maybe considered as quasi-Coulombic. Detailed calculation of the properties of such systems in this frame may be found in bott ; bc ; tt . In particular in bott  an accurate determination of the mass of the $`b`$ is also obtained.

As it is typical in an effective theory, only the actual calculation may confirm if the initial assumption about the physical system was appropriate.

## IV Charmonium and the nonperturbative matching to pNRQCD

With the exception of the lowest state, which maybe a quasi-Coulombic system, the main part of the excited levels of charmonium probe the confinement region mv<

ΛQCD𝑚𝑣<

subscriptΛQCDmv{\ \lower-1.2pt\vbox{\hbox{\hbox to0.0pt{$<$\hss}\lower 6.0pt\vbox{\hbox{$\sim$}}}}\ }\Lambda_{\rm QCD}. Then, pNRQCD should be obtained via a nonperturbative matching, i.e. without expansions in $`\alpha _s`$. This have been proved to be equivalent to compute the heavy quarkonium potential at order $`1/m^2`$ nonp . More precisely, a pure potential picture emerges at the leading order in the ultrasoft expansion under the condition that all the gluonic excitations (hybrids) have a gap of order $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ nonp . Higher order effects in the $`1/m`$ expansion as well as extra ultrasoft degrees of freedom such as hybrids or pions can be systematically included and may eventually affect the leading potential picture. Thus we recover the quark model from pNRQCDnonp . The final result for the potentials (static and relativistic corrections) appear factorized in a part containing the high energy dynamics (and calculable in perturbation theory) which is inherited from NRQCD, and a part containing the low energy dynamics given in terms of Wilson loops and chromo-electric and chromo-magnetic insertions in the Wilson loop nonp ; reveff ; lectures . Such low energy contributions can be simply calculated on the lattice or evaluated in QCD vacuum models. Also in this case the power counting supply us with a valuable and systematic way of estimating the size of the neglected terms. Moreover, since the power counting of pNRQCD may be different from the power counting of NRQCD, we expect that we may eventually explain in this way the difficulties that NRQCD is facing in explaining the polarization of the prompt $`J/\psi `$ data prod . New and quite interesting predictions have been obtained in this frame also for charmonium $`P`$ wave inclusive decays decay  (see alsomussa ) and on the behaviour of the heavy (and thus also charmed) hybrids potential for small $`r`$ pnrqcd .

## V Conclusions

An effective theory of QCD which describes heavy quarkonium has been constructed systematically and within a controlled expansion. Such a theory disentangles the scales of the bound state and has a definite power counting. All known perturbative and nonperturbative, potential and nonpotential regimes are present and separately factorized in the theory. In this way the properties of heavy quarkonium and in particular of charmonium, which is the subject of the present conference, are related to the fundamental parameters of QCD. Such an effective theory is thus the appropriate frame to perform calculation of heavy quarkonium properties. In this paper we presented just a guided recollection of recent references where new results on heavy quarkonium spectra, decays, production and heavy quarkonium hybrids potentials can be found inside the frame of pNRQCD.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Claudia Patrignani and the other organizers for the invitation and for the perfect organization of this very interesting workshop. I thank the Alexander Von Humboldt foundation for support.