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# The power-law behaviours of angular spectra of polarized Galactic synchrotron

## 1 Introduction

Angular power spectra (henceforth, APS) of the Galactic synchrotron polarized radiation are raising up an increasing attention in these years. The first study, based on the Parkes 2.4 GHz survey (Duncan et al. 1997, hereafter D97), was due to Tucci et al. (2000), and other papers appeared shortly after (Baccigalupi et al., 2001a; Giardino et al. 2001). The main motivation for these works was the need for an angular-scale–dependent separation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) signal from the polarized radio foreground; in fact the first work on the APS of a polarized Galactic foreground (Prunet et al. 1998) modelled thermal dust emission in view of the scenario to be met by Planck HFI at 143-217 GHz. CMB polarization is essential in order to remove degeneracies between important cosmological parameters (Zaldarriaga et al. 1997), but the cosmological window (the region in the frequency–angular-scale plane where the cosmological signal is stronger than foregrounds) is narrower for polarization than for anisotropy. A careful study of Galactic contamination versus angular scale is thereby necessary. The study of synchrotron APS may also be important because of its bearing on the knowledge of Galactic structure, and in particular of the transverse magnetic field in emission regions and the longitudinal field in compact foreground screens (Tucci et al. 2001). This point is open to future studies.

The purpose of this work is to check the generality of the APS behaviour found by Tucci et al. (2000): Electric and magnetic parity APS are governed (with reasonable approximation for $`100l800`$) by power laws $`C_{E,Bl}l^{\alpha _{E,B}}`$ with $`\alpha _{E,B}1.41.5,`$ in the portion of the Southern Galactic Plane probed by the D97 Parkes survey. Although such slopes are close to the values $`\alpha _{E,B}^{(\mathrm{dust})}1.31.4`$ found for thermal dust emission (Prunet et al. 1998), later work cast serious doubts on the generality of this behaviour, as far as synchrotron is concerned. For the APS of the scalar $`PI\sqrt{Q^2+U^2}`$ somewhat steeper spectra, with $`\alpha _{PI}`$ ranging from $`1.7\pm 0.2`$ to $`1.9\pm 0.3`$, are given for the Galactic Plane by Baccigalupi et al. (2001a) and Giardino et al. (2001). The former authors also find a much higher slope, $`\alpha _{PI}=2.9\pm 0.2`$ for $`l\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}10^2,`$ out of the Galactic Plane from the 1.4 GHz, low-resolution survey of Brouw and Spoelstra (1976: BS76). This discrepancy would be important when evaluating the synchrotron contamination at large scales; it would thereby be rather unconfortable in view of the role of CMB polarization harmonics with $`l220`$ in the separation of effects of the primordial gravitational background from those of the secondary ionization of the cosmic medium. \[This is one of the objectives of the SPOrt project, see e.g. Cortiglioni et al. (2001).\] Note that the situation is not quite clear for the total intensity $`I`$ either: Large values $`\alpha _I3`$ are supported by Bouchet and Gispert (1999) and Giardino et al. (2001), but $`\alpha _I2`$ follows from analysis of the Jodrell Bank 5-GHz interferometric survey by Giardino et al. (2000).

Here we extend our analysis of APS in the Galactic Plane considering the 2.7 GHz Effelsberg survey (Duncan et al. 1999: D99); further, we analyse several patches at intermediate Galactic latitudes, $`\left|b\right|20^{}`$, from the 1.4 GHz Effelsberg survey (Uyaniker et al. 1999: U99), and finally three regions from BS76, at 5 frequencies between 408 and 1411 MHz, covering latitudes up to near the North Galactic Pole. Following Tucci et al. (2001) and thereby extending the analysis of Baccigalupi et al. (2001a), we carefully distinguish between the APS providing a fuller statistical description of the spin-2 polarization field (i.e., $`C_{El}`$ and $`C_{Bl}`$, from which $`C_{Pl}=C_{El}+C_{Bl}`$ is usually computed), and the $`C_{PIl}`$ spectrum which takes into account only the magnitude of the polarization pseudovector. This is necessary because Tucci et al. (2001) find quite significant differences between $`C_{Pl}`$ and $`C_{PIl}`$ both for a Gaussian polarization field, as predicted in the standard scenario for CMB, and for synchrotron radiation.

Our results confirm that slopes around $`1.41.5`$ in the range $`100l800`$ are preferred on the average, in both the Northern and the Southern Galactic Plane for $`C_{El}`$, $`C_{Bl}`$ and $`C_{Pl}`$, although significant fluctuations around theses values are found in $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ patches. The fluctuations however become stronger in small patches out of the Galactic Plane, so that a preferred slope should not regarded as meaningful for the U99 survey. In fact, the partial regularities that we find for polarization APS do not support the usefulness of global (i.e., full sky) $`C_{E,Bl}`$ for a satisfactory description of the spatial distribution of synchrotron: Local $`C_{E,Bl}`$ based on Fourier analysis are much more suitable to this purpose. A consistent picture, however, emerges at all of the scales we investigated. As a matter of facts, from the low-resolution BS76 survey we find moderate slopes for $`l70`$, at all frequencies and even near the Galactic Pole. Due to the limited range of $`l`$ available for the fits, we find strong correlations between fitted parameters and, as a consequence, large error bars; however there is no evidence for steep spectra, since the best values lie in the range $`\alpha _{E,B}0.52.0`$ almost everywhere and are particularly small at frequencies where Faraday rotation is more important. For the $`C_{PIl}`$ spectrum, the slope fluctuations are smaller than for $`C_{E,Bl}`$. Our best value for $`\alpha _{PI}`$ is $`1.61.8`$ at all resolutions and Galactic latitudes, and all frequencies $`1.4`$ GHz. The difference between $`C_{E,Bl}`$ and $`C_{PIl}`$ is significant, although not large in the average. The latter quantity should thereby be confronted with $`C_{PIl}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$, not with the $`C_{E,Bl}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$ spectra which are popular among cosmologists, and this is properly done in the last Section of this paper.

All of the results that we provide for polarization APS should not be affected by contamination from point sources; regions with flat $`C_{Il},`$ on the other hand, are possibly dominated by point sources in total intensity, and are used in this paper to derive upper limits on their contribution to polarization APS, as discussed in Section 3.

## 2 Data analysis

### 2.1 Polarized synchrotron surveys

Our first high-resolution analysis of Galactic-Plane synchrotron polarization was performed on the 2.4 GHz Parkes survey (D97); this study, using twelve $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ square patches (Tucci et al. 2000), is extended here to the 2.7 GHz Effelsberg survey (1999: D99) covering the additional Galactic longitude range $`5^{}\mathrm{}74^{}`$ (see Table 1) and providing six more $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ patches. A belt extended about 54% of the Galactic Plane is thereby covered, although with two slightly different frequencies. The FWHM resolutions are $`10.4^{}`$ and $`5.1^{}`$ respectively, sufficient to achieve angular scales up to $`l10^3`$. The nominal rms noise in D97 is 8 mK for total power and 5.3 mK for polarization (5.3 and 2.9 mK in some more sensitive areas), while in D99 the rms noise is 9 mK.

Our study is further extended to moderate Galactic latitudes analysing the maps of the Effelsberg 1.4 GHz survey (U99), consisting of five regions fairly close to the Galactic Plane, $`15^{}b20^{}`$. The angular resolution is there $`9.35^{}`$, and the rms noise is about 15 mK for total intensity and about 8 mK for linear polarization. The above regions having different sizes, we extracted different numbers of patches from them, namely, 1, 2, 2, 3 and 3 patches respectively, for regions corresponding to increasing row numbers in the U99 sector of Table 1. The patch size is $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ almost everywhere (so that a portion of the first region is not used), but only $`6^{}\times 6^{}`$ in the second region.

Finally we analysed the maps of Brouw and Spoelstra (1976: BS76) at five frequencies between 408 and 1411 MHz. The corresponding beamwidths and noise levels are summarized in Table 2. These maps cover a substantial (more than 40%) part of the sky, allowing us to compare results at quite different latitudes up to near the Galactic Pole, although with moderate resolutions. In order to get good sampling and large signal-to-noise ratios we selected three rectangular regions, whose locations are reported in the last three rows of Table 1 and in Fig. 1. As an example, we show the 820-MHz total polarization signal in Fig. 2. The BS76 maps are affected by undersampling, and the grid spacing (typically larger than the $`\mathrm{FWHM}`$) depends on the sky region and frequency. In the selected patches the average grid spacing is about $`2^{}`$. To make Fourier analysis feasible we thereby constructed three new, evenly spaced grids adopting a Gaussian smoothing function with dispersion $`\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}=\mathrm{FWHM}/\sqrt{8\mathrm{ln}2}`$ and $`\mathrm{FWHM}=3^{}`$. This procedure is straightforward near the Galactic Plane, where geodesics orthogonal to meridians can be identified with parallels with no appreciable errors. At high latitudes we constructed the grids projecting orthogonal geodesics, evenly spaced with $`\mathrm{\Delta }b=1.5^{}`$ at starting points, out of the central meridian of each patch, having longitude $`\mathrm{}=\mathrm{}_\mathrm{c}`$ as reported in the last two rows of Table 1. On such geodesics, extended respectively up to proper lengths $`\mathrm{\Delta }\psi =\pm 27^{}`$ and $`\pm 15^{}`$, we picked out the centres of the Gaussian beams, with spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }\psi ^{}=1.5^{}`$. (Since these centres do not lie on parallels, the latitude ranges in the Table refer to central longitudes $`\mathrm{}_\mathrm{c}`$.) We checked that for the chosen $`\mathrm{\Delta }\psi `$ the proper distance between corresponding points on neighbour geodesics remains sufficiently close to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\psi ^{}`$ even at the extremal longitudes $`\mathrm{}=\mathrm{}_\mathrm{c}\pm \mathrm{\Delta }\psi `$. This in fact provides an intrinsic check for the applicability of flat-space concepts to celestial-sphere patches.

### 2.2 Computation of angular spectra

Because of the limited sky coverages, power spectra can be suitably obtained from Fourier analysis instead of the standard spherical-harmonic approach (Seljak 1997). The estimators for the power spectra of fields can be derived by means of

$$C_{Xl}=\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{N_l}\underset{\stackrel{}{l}}{}X(\stackrel{}{l})X^{}(\stackrel{}{l})w_X^1\right]b_l^2,$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the solid angle of the patch under analysis, $`N_l`$ the number of Fourier modes in the interval around $`l`$ chosen for averaging, $`w_X^1`$ the noise contribution and $`b_l`$ the beam function. Note that $`X(\stackrel{}{l})`$ is the discrete Fourier transform of the smoothed field $`X(\theta _i,\varphi _i)`$, a function of the bin coordinates which can be any of the Stokes parameters $`I`$, $`Q`$ and $`U`$, but also (considering the electric and magnetic parity polarization) $`E`$ and $`B`$. In the small scale limit, electric and magnetic modes can in fact be given in terms of $`Q`$, $`U`$ modes by means of a simple rotation in $`l`$–space:

$`E(\stackrel{}{l})`$ $`=`$ $`Q(\stackrel{}{l})\mathrm{cos}(2\varphi _\stackrel{}{l})+U(\stackrel{}{l})\mathrm{sin}(2\varphi _\stackrel{}{l}),`$
$`B(\stackrel{}{l})`$ $`=`$ $`Q(\stackrel{}{l})\mathrm{sin}(2\varphi _\stackrel{}{l})+U(\stackrel{}{l})\mathrm{cos}(2\varphi _\stackrel{}{l}).`$ (2)
Thus dealing with maps of the fields $`Q`$ and $`U,`$ we end up with $`C_{El}`$ and $`C_{Bl}`$, which are most suitable for comparison with CMB spectra. Of course one could directly use $`C_{Ql}`$ and $`C_{Ul}`$, but these spectra are not rotationally invariant. The APS describing the total power of the polarization field (taking into account spatial variations of both magnitude and direction) is

$$C_{Pl}=C_{Ql}+C_{Ul}=C_{El}+C_{Bl},l2.$$
(3)
Note the lower limit on $`l`$, arising from the spin-2 nature of linear polarization (namely, of the $`Q`$, $`U`$ complex). Other authors have considered the APS of the polarized intensity $`PI=\sqrt{Q^2+U^2}`$, which is defined for any $`l0`$. Equation (1) still applies with $`X=PI`$. The $`PI`$ field however does not provide a complete description of polarization, being only related to the magnitude of the polarization pseudovector. The equality $`C_{PIl}=C_{Pl}`$ is warranted only if the polarization angle is uniform inside all the survey area, and different spectral behaviours arise even for Gaussian random fields (Tucci et al. 2001).

In conclusion *as many as 7 APS can be defined, without counting cross-correlation and circular polarization spectra*. Out of these, 4 are mutually independent, and out of the latter, 3 are polarization APS.

The technique based on Eqs. (1) and (2), which has been already applied by Tucci et al. (2000) on D97 data, is fairly straightfoward for the small-size patches of high-resolution surveys. As done in that work, it is implemented here with a cosine apodization to suppress border effects, and with subtraction of mean values to suppress aliasing. However, a careful analysis is required for BS76 maps. We have already remarked in the previous Subsection that for high-latitude patches we need geodesics to identify equally spaced grids to be used in Fourier analysis; now we observe that we must also take reference frame effects into account for $`Q`$ and $`U`$ fields. Such effects are especially important for our last patch under analysis, whose border is very close to the Galactic Pole.

In particular, in order to smooth the $`Q`$ and $`U`$ fields we use the following procedure: (i) at each point within a proper distance $`\chi 5\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}`$ from a Gaussian beam centre, we construct the polarization vector $`\stackrel{}{p}`$, (ii) we perform a parallel transport of $`\stackrel{}{p}`$ to the beam centre, obtaining

$$p_\theta ^{(\mathrm{PT})}=p_\theta \mathrm{cos}t+p_\varphi \mathrm{sin}t,p_\varphi ^{(\mathrm{PT})}=p_\theta \mathrm{sin}t+p_\varphi \mathrm{cos}t,$$
(4)
with $`t=\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{d}\varphi ,`$ and (iii) from $`p_{\theta ,\varphi }^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$we recover the parallel-transported Stokes parameters $`Q^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$ and $`U^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$ and apply the weight function $`\mathrm{exp}[\chi ^2/(2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2)]`$ to them, obtaining the smoothed quantities

$`Q_{\mathrm{sm}}^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_kQ_k^{(\mathrm{PT})}\mathrm{exp}[\chi _k^2/(2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2)]}{_k\mathrm{exp}[\chi _k^2/(2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2)]}},`$
$`U_{\mathrm{sm}}^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_kU_k^{(\mathrm{PT})}\mathrm{exp}[\chi _k^2/(2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2)]}{_k\mathrm{exp}[\chi _k^2/(2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2)]}}.`$ (5)
We checked that in practice the parallel transport could be made with negligible variations on any reasonable path close to geodesics, and a very convenient approximation is $`t=\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{ave}}\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi `$, with $`\theta _{\mathrm{ave}}`$ the average of polar angles at the starting and end points. The smoothed fields $`Q_{\mathrm{sm}}^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$ and $`U_{\mathrm{sm}}^{(\mathrm{PT})}`$ are then used in Eq. (1) for the angular spectra of BS76 maps.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 High-resolution surveys

Angular spectra for total intensity and E-parity polarization found in the Galactic Plane are shown in Fig. 3. For most of the square patches the curves are reasonably approximated by power laws,

$$C_{Xl}=A_Xl^{\alpha _X}.$$
(6)
This holds not only for $`X=I`$ and $`E`$, but also for the $`B`$, $`Q`$, $`U`$, and $`P`$ spectra which, having similar behaviours, are not shown in the Figure. In Table 3 we report the results of spectral fits for $`X=I`$, $`E`$ and $`B`$, in the range $`100l800`$ for all of the 18 Galactic Plane patches.

Total intensity spectra exhibit large variations in amplitude, by more than three orders of magnitude. (The variations appear magnified in the normalization parameter $`A_I`$, up to five orders of magnitude, because of a positive correlation with $`\alpha _I`$.) The same feature is not found in polarization spectra. This can be explained by observing that, while the total power emission decreases fast when moving away from the Galactic centre, the polarized component remains much more uniform changing the Galactic longitude and latitude \[see Figs. 4 and 6 in Duncan et al. (1995), and Fig. 9 in D97\]; D97 noticed a “background component” in the polarized emission of about 20 mK, nearly constant over the entire survey. The distributions of the indices $`\alpha _X`$, too, highlight some differences between total intensity and polarization spectra: The values of $`\alpha _I`$ range between 0.4 and 2.2, while the slopes of the polarization spectra in all patches remain relatively close to the mean value $`1.41.5`$. Moreover, low–emission regions show very flat spectra in total intensity, while no meaningful differences are found between high– and low–polarized emission regions.

In Table 4 we report the values of the average slopes (rows labelled with $`\alpha _X`$), as well as the fit parameters from the average spectra (rows labelled by $`C_l`$) for both D97 and D99 surveys. The D97+D99 averages are computed rescaling the D99 data to 2.4 GHz using a spectral index $`\beta _{\mathrm{syn}}=2.8`$ (Platania et al. 1998). The agreement is very satisfactory. On the other hand, the $`C_{PIl}`$ spectra turn out to be somewhat steeper; the average slopes turn out to be $`\alpha _{PI}1.61.8`$ (see Table 7 in the next Subsection), and fluctuations around these values are quite moderate. Although the difference with the above results is not large, it has a statistical significance, and is not surprising in the light of still large differences found in the arcmin angular range by Tucci et al. (2001).

Fig. 4 and Table 5 report the results obtained from 5 intermediate–latitude regions of U99. (The E-mode spectra in the Figure again are illustrative of the behaviour of the other polarization modes.) The intensity spectra are found to be extremely flat ($`\alpha _I<1`$) and low, indicating that the diffuse emission drops just out the Galactic plane. On the contrary, the polarization spectra do not show a decrease in amplitude with respect to the other two surveys; this means that the polarized background observed in D97 and D99 should extend at least up to $`\mathrm{}15^{}`$. However, in U99 we observe large differences in the slope of polarization spectra from region to region: there are three patches with $`\alpha _{E,B}>2`$ and two with $`\alpha _{E,B}1`$. Some of these regions cannot be considered as typical; for example, the area $`140^{}\mathrm{}153^{},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}^{}b10.4^{}`$ lies within the so called “fan region”, and the two regions centered at $`\mathrm{}=80^{}`$ show rather complex structures. Such particularly large differences may be due to Faraday rotation effects, which are relevant at 1.4 GHz. However a significant dispersion in the results remains at higher frequencies, and undoubtedly shows how local (rather than global) spectra will be important for foreground subtraction in CMB polarization measurements.

It is interesting to observe that several U99 patches exhibit nearly flat intensity spectra, i.e. $`\alpha _I0`$, with a remarkably uniform normalization. It can be argued that these patches are dominated (in total intensity) by extragalactic point sources, which are expected indeed to have flat APS as far as clustering can be neglected (Tegmark and Efstathiou 1996; Toffolatti et al. 1998). We can thereby estimate $`C_{Il}^{(\mathrm{PS})}5\times 10^7`$ K$`^2.`$ To be quite conservative, we can take this number as an upper limit. From this limit, adopting a radio-source polarization degree of 5% \[in agreement with De Zotti et al. (2000)\] we get $`C_{Xl}^{(\mathrm{PS})}<1.3\times 10^9`$ K<sup>2</sup> for $`X=P`$, $`PI`$ at 1.4 GHz. Assuming further a (frequency) spectral index $`\beta _{\mathrm{RG}}=2`$ for radiogalaxies, we also get $`C_{Xl}^{(\mathrm{PS})}<1.5\times 10^{10}`$ K<sup>2</sup> at 2.4 GHz. We conclude that the contribution of point sources should be negligible in the whole range $`l800`$ for all of our polarization APS. This is consistent with our results: The reported $`C_{E,Bl}`$, being $`\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}5\times 10^9`$ K<sup>2</sup> for $`l<1000`$ at 1.4 GHz, do not show any flattening. Note also that more stringent limits on $`C_{Il}^{(\mathrm{PS})}`$ (and therefore, on $`C_{P,PIl}^{(\mathrm{PS})}`$) might be derived from estimates of Tegmark et al. (1996) and Toffolatti et al. (1998). These however would be less safe.

### 3.2 Low-resolution survey

For the BS76 survey we analysed the maps at all of the frequencies, but due to the moderate resolution and the patch size, we could investigate only a limited range of $`l`$. In particular, uncertainties in the beam angular function for $`l>\pi /\mathrm{FWHM}`$ must exist in the original experiment; further, adopting a Gaussian shape for our smearing function $`\mathrm{exp}[\chi ^2/(2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2)]`$ neglects the finite bin of the original measurements. Therefore, it is advisable to limit ourselves to the range such that $`b_l^2\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}e`$. In fact, the spectra computed by means of Eq. (1) turned out to increase for $`b_l^2\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}e`$, as can be expected for the difficulty of an accurate calculation of noise for the smoothed beams. Limiting ourselves to the range $`l70`$, this effect does not appear to visual inspection (see Figs. 5-7); however, for the fits we adopt the modified function

$$C_{Xl}=A_Xl^{\alpha _X}+O_Xb_l^2.$$
(7)
Here $`O_X`$, a parameter to be determined by the fit, is not intended to describe the field $`X`$, but rather to account for the inaccurate a priori estimate of $`w_X^1`$. The upper limits on point source APS given in the previous Subsection, rescaled to the BS76 frequencies, exclude that the $`O_Xb^2`$ term may mask important contributions from the above sources. As a matter of facts, for $`\beta _{\mathrm{RG}}=2.3`$ we find for instance $`C_X\mathrm{}^{(\mathrm{PS})}<4\times 10^7`$ K<sup>2</sup> for $`X=P`$, $`PI`$ at 408 MHz, some orders of magnitude below the measured APS.

The results of the fits are given in Table 6. The declared uncertainties, which are 1-$`\sigma `$ errors on individual parameters computed from $`\chi ^2`$ fields, are large because of correlations in 3-parameter fits. In particular, we find strong, positive correlations between $`A_X`$ and $`\alpha _X`$, as illustrated by an example in Fig. 8, which refers to the 408-MHz low-latitude patch. This Figure shows $`\chi ^2`$ iso-contours that we found in the ($`A_X`$, $`\alpha _X`$) plane after minimization with respect to $`O_X`$. In spite of the above uncertainties, we find moderate slopes for $`\alpha _E`$ and $`\alpha _B`$, generally in the range $`12`$. At low frequencies, $`\nu 610`$ MHz where Faraday rotation is larger, we occasionally find some slopes $`<1`$, and in one case (near the Galactic Pole in the 610 MHz map) a best value $`\alpha _E<0.`$ We should remark that due to the finite resolution of our sampling in ($`A_X`$, $`\alpha _X`$, $`O_X`$) space, and the existence of narrow, elongated valleys with $`\chi ^2`$ near minimum, the best values reported in Table 6 are less significant than the full extension of the confidence regions, described by the error bars in the Tables. However, none of the above considerations would change if the centres of such confidence regions were considered instead of the quoted minimum points. Thus there is sufficient evidence that polarization APS are somewhat flatter at low frequencies.

The angular spectral behaviour does not exhibit any clear dependence on Galactic latitude at these moderate resolutions. It makes sense therefore to average over our three patches from the BS76 survey. Rows 1 to 5 of Table 7 gives the average slopes $`\alpha _P`$ and $`\alpha _{PI}`$ for each BS76 frequency. At low frequencies, where Faraday rotation becomes more and more important, we observe a gradual flattening of both spectra; the deficit of steepness is more apparent for $`\alpha _P`$, in agreement with the considerations of Tucci et al. (2001). On the other hand, at 1411 GHz where Faraday rotation is less important (but not negligible at all), there is no evidence for any difference between $`\alpha _P`$ and $`\alpha _{PI}`$ due to the large error bars. Also, the result quoted for $`\alpha _{PI}`$ at 1411 MHz is quite consistent to those found with higher resolution in the Galactic Plane at 2.4 and 2.7 GHz (cfr. the last two rows in the Table).

## 4 Conclusion

The regularities found for polarization APS in this work are not sufficient to establish the usefulness of global (i.e., full sky) $`C_{Xl}`$ for a satisfactory description of the spatial distribution of synchrotron itself, and a fortiori for the separation of Galactic synchrotron from CMB at higher frequencies. On the contrary, the local $`C_{Xl}`$ based on Fourier analysis are much more suitable for a fuller description of angular structure. This makes all-sky surveys of polarized synchrotron quite necessary.

Quite significant fluctuations are found for parameters fitted in $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ patches. When we average over larger regions, the most stable behaviour is found for the polarized intensity spectrum $`C_{PIl}`$ which, for all of the surveys analysed by us at $`\nu 1.4`$ GHz, everywhere exhibits a slope $`\alpha _{PI}=1.61.8.`$ This holds in the full range $`10\begin{array}{c}<\\ \end{array}l800`$, although we have large error bars for the range $`l70`$ investigated on BS76 maps. In spite of the more intricate situation for the other APS $`C_{Xl}`$ ($`X=E`$, $`B`$ and $`P`$), we can state the following:

* In the Galactic Plane, the slopes of electric and magnetic parity APS are quite moderate at 2.4 and 2.7 GHz, with averages $`\alpha _E\alpha _B1.41.5`$ in the range $`100l800`$.
* Local fluctuations do not allow us to establish equally significant average slopes out of the Galactic Plane in the same angular range.
* At lower resolution, $`l70`$, large correlation between fit parameters cause large error bars; however, the best-fit slopes $`\alpha _E`$ and $`\alpha _B`$ stay in the range $`0.52`$ for almost all frequencies (in the range $`0.41.4`$ GHz) and Galactic latitudes, and are quite inconsistent with values around 3.

The above behaviours of polarization APS should be attributed to Galactic synchrotron, with no appreciable contamination from point sources. On the other hand, the total intensity APS may be locally dominated by sources, when they exhibit small amplitude and slope $`\alpha _I`$ close to zero.

Our results resolve the seeming discrepancy with other authors for the angular range $`100l800`$, showing that investigators simply have to carefully consider which polarization APS is actually being computed. Our Galactic Plane result, $`\alpha _E\alpha _B1.41.5,`$ is very close to results found for the polarization APS of thermal dust (Prunet et al. 1998); this number is maybe deeply connected to Galactic structure. On the other hand, we do not confirm the high spectral slope found by Baccigalupi et al. (2001a) for $`C_{PIl}`$ at smaller $`l`$ on three BS76 patches at 1.4 GHz. Our BS76 patches however are different from theirs, being expressely chosen to have a larger signal-to-noise ratio. Our best value $`\alpha _{PI}=1.76\pm 0.51`$, which arises from averaging over 1.4-GHz BS76 patches, is consistent with our results at all resolutions and frequencies $`1.4`$ GHz. The latter also agree with results obtained by Tucci et al. (2001) in the arcminute range. The slope of starligth APS, $`\alpha _{PI}^{(\mathrm{star})}1.5`$ (Fosalba et al. 2001), is closer to our $`\alpha _{E,B}`$.

Generally speaking, the $`PI`$ and $`E`$$`B`$ fields contain different physical information. Since $`PI`$ does not carry any information on the polarization angle, its spectrum cannot properly describe some related effects like, for example, beam depolarization; it should be used carefully, keeping in mind that it does not provide a complete description of the polarization field.

In particular, if $`C_{PIl}`$ is extrapolated to the cosmological window, it is important to make a proper comparison with the corresponding APS of CMB. Figure 9 compares both $`C_{El}`$ and $`C_{PIl}`$ spectra of synchrotron and CMB. The reported CMB E-mode spectrum is the output of CMBFAST for a sCDM model with a reionization optical depth $`\tau _{\mathrm{ri}}=0.1`$. The corresponding $`C_{PIl}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$ spectrum is obtained through simulations in a $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ box, with the mean value being subtracted off. \[Simulations of $`C_{El}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$ in the same box reproduced the CMBFAST output to a satisfactory extent, see Tucci et al. (2000) for details.\] The synchrotron APS in the Figure are extrapolated to 60 and 90 GHz from the Galactic Plane average spectra (6th row in Table 4) for $`l100`$, and from BS76 patch centered at $`b=44.5^{}`$ for $`l70`$. In both cases, the computed normalization applies to high-emission regions and is not expected to be representative of the whole sky. For the extrapolations to high frequencies we assume a spectral index $`\beta _{\mathrm{syn}}=3`$ (Platania et al., 1998). The results taken altogether offer a quite consistent picture. They imply that in high emission regions, whathever polarization APS is chosen, the synchroton polarized foreground should be comparable to CMB at 60 GHz even at large $`l`$. At 90 GHz the expected scenario looks more favourable for CMB experiments, both at small and large angular scales. Reionization effects on CMB should be investigated at $`l10`$ by means of $`C_{El}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$ rather than $`C_{PIl}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$. From the inspection of Fig. 9, and recalling that the height of the low-$`l`$ peak of $`C_{El}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$ is approximately proportional $`\tau _{\mathrm{ri}}^2`$, we infer that the 90-GHz CMB signal from reionization should prevail on synchrotron at least for $`\tau _{\mathrm{ri}}\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}0.05`$. We finally remark that in the $`PI`$ spectrum the “DC” signal $`C_{PI0}^{(\mathrm{CMB})}`$ might be interesting, but Fourier analysis is not appropriate to this purpose.

## Acknowledgments

We thank T.A. Spoelstra for kindly providing the BS76 data. This work was performed within the SPOrt collaboration, and was financially supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI).


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# Density perturbations in warm inflation and COBE normalization

## I Introduction

Inflationkolbtur  is the better description of the early stages of the Universe, where besides providing a satisfactory solution for the main problems of the standard Cosmology, also predicts a mechanism to generate the inhomogeneities for the structure formation. The advent of more precise observational data given by COBEcobe , MAXIMAmaxima , etc has so far confirming the basic predictions of the inflation. Nonetheless, since the first model of inflation was proposed, we have witnessed a myriad of alternative models, as for instance, new inflation, chaotic inflation, extended inflation, hybrid inflation, warm inflation, etc. A direct way of deciding which model must be discarded is confronting their theoretical predictions with the appropriate observational dataturner ; kolbdodel . In this context, I shall discuss the warm inflationberefang ; olivrud ; gleiser ; bellini ; leefang1 ; taylor ; linde ; olivjor  (WI) whose important feature is that thermal fluctuations during inflation play a dominant role in producing the initial spectrum of perturbations. In WI radiation is continuously generated through a dissipation mechanism resulting from the interaction of the inflaton with other fields. Therefore, it is expected that at the end of inflation enough radiation for a smooth transition to the next phase, and the reheating phase is no longer necessary.

Warm inflation can be understood as a two-field inflation model. In this case, entropy perturbations arise from the variation of the effective equation of state relating the total pressure with the total energy density. As a consequence, contrary to the single-field inflation models, the curvature perturbationbardeen ; mukhanov  $`\zeta `$ has a non-trivial evolution after the perturbation crosses outside the horizon, and the way in which it evolves in super-horizon scales depends on the details of the model itself. We expect that COBE normalization provides observational limits on the dissipation term $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ once, as we have already shownolivjor , the dissipation term plays a crucial role in producing the entropy perturbations. Recently, de Oliveira and Jorasolivjor  investigated cosmological perturbations in WI together with the first determination of the observational limits on the dissipation term111Berera and Fangberefang  have established an expression for the range of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in the weak dissipative regime just by considering $`T_r>H`$, $`T_r`$ being the temperature of the thermal bath, without any treatment on the evolution of cosmological perturbations.. Moreover, in this determination it was assumed a very small dissipation in the sense of allowing, as a good approximation, the conservation of $`\zeta `$. Under such circumstances, we found $`\mathrm{\Gamma }10^{16}m_{Pl}`$ for two distinct models, being compatible with other estimationsolivrud ; leefang1  which the only criterion was the requirement that at the end of inflation there is enough radiation for the next phase. On the other hand, it will very important to determine the observational limits on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ with no assumption whether the dissipation is small or not when compared with the Hubble parameter. Then, this observational test will constitute a definitive solution of the theoretical disputegleiser ; linde  concerning the feasibility of WI.

This paper is divided as follows. In Section II the basic equations that describe WI, and the equation for the perturbations are presented. Taking into account the slow-roll conditions, an approximate solution of these equations is derived where the contribution of adiabatic and entropy modes are shown explicitly. In Section III, we present a procedure to normalize the amplitude of density perturbations in WI using the COBE data. A specific application of COBE normalization is performed in Section IV. Finally, in Section V is devoted to discuss the main results and conclusions.

## II Adiabatic and entropy modes in warm inflation

The basic equations that describe the homogeneous background dynamics of interacting radiation and scalar fields in flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetimes areberefang

$`H^2={\displaystyle \frac{8\pi }{3m_{Pl}^2}}\left(\rho _r+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\dot{\varphi }^2+V(\varphi )\right)`$ (1)
$`\ddot{\varphi }+(3H+\mathrm{\Gamma })\dot{\varphi }+V^{}(\varphi )=0,`$ (2)
$`\dot{\rho }_r+4H\rho _r=\mathrm{\Gamma }\dot{\varphi }^2.`$ (3)
Here $`H=\frac{\dot{a}}{a}`$ is the Hubble parameter, $`m_{Pl}`$ is the Planck mass, dot and prime denote derivative with respect to the cosmological time $`t`$ and the scalar field, respectively; $`\rho _r`$ is the energy density of the radiation field. The dissipative term $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is responsible for the decay of the scalar field into radiation during the slow-roll phase. In general, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ can be assumed as a function of $`\varphi `$ of the type $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_m\varphi ^m`$, reflecting the types of interactions between the scalar field $`\varphi `$ and other fieldsberefang ; olivrud . In addition, $`m`$ must be even and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_m>0`$ to guarantee the positiveness of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ as demanded by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We remark that there is a theoretical controversy about the introduction of the dissipative term in Eq. (2) during the slow-rollgleiser ; linde , and therefore on the feasibility of WI. Our approach here will be to assume it as part of the WI scenario and, from a consistent treatment of cosmological perturbations, allow that observation dictates the result of this issue.

Warm inflation is characterized by the accelerated growth of the scale factor driven by the potential term $`V(\varphi )`$ that dominates over other energy terms in Eq. (1), or

$$H^2\frac{8\pi }{3m_{Pl}^2}V(\varphi ).$$
(4)
Also, the $`\ddot{\varphi }`$ term can be neglected in Eq. (2), yielding

$$\dot{\varphi }\frac{V^{}(\varphi )}{3H+\mathrm{\Gamma }},$$
(5)
and the radiation density is kept approximately constant given by

$$\rho _r\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\dot{\varphi }^2}{4H}.$$
(6)
Several authors have studied the dynamics of WI in which the basic issue was to present WI as a viable description of the early universe. In this context, it was shown that even for a tiny dissipation, in the sense of the ratio $`\alpha \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{3H}1`$, enough radiation is found at the end of inflation for a smooth transition to the radiation era. In particular, for $`\alpha `$ of order $`10^9`$ is in agreement with observational dataolivjor .

We consider inhomogeneous perturbations of the FRW background described by the metric in the longitudinal gaugebardeen ; mukhanov

$$ds^2=(1+2\mathrm{\Phi })dt^2a^2(t)(12\mathrm{\Psi })\delta _{ij}dx^idx^j,$$
(7)
where $`a(t)`$ is the scale factor, $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }(t,𝐱)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Psi }(t,𝐱)`$ are the metric perturbations. The spatial dependence of all perturbed quantities are of the form of plane waves $`e^{i𝐤.𝐱}`$, $`k`$ being the wave number, so that the perturbed field equations regarding now only their temporal parts (we omit the subscript $`k`$) are

$`\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}+H\mathrm{\Phi }={\displaystyle \frac{4\pi }{m_{pl}^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{4}{3k}}\rho _rav+\dot{\varphi }\delta \varphi \right)`$ (8)
$`(\delta \varphi \ddot{)}+(3H+\mathrm{\Gamma })(\delta \varphi \dot{)}+({\displaystyle \frac{k^2}{a^2}}+V^{\prime \prime }+\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Gamma }^{})\delta \varphi =4\dot{\varphi }\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}+(\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Gamma }2V^{})\mathrm{\Phi }`$ (9)
$`(\delta \rho _r\dot{)}+4H\delta \rho _r+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}ka\rho _rv=4\rho _r\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}+\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\delta \varphi +\mathrm{\Gamma }\dot{\varphi }(2(\delta \varphi \dot{)}3\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Phi })`$ (10)
$`\dot{v}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\dot{\varphi }^2}{\rho _r}}v+{\displaystyle \frac{k}{a}}\left(\mathrm{\Phi }+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \rho _r}{4\rho _r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3\mathrm{\Gamma }\dot{\varphi }}{4\rho _r}}\delta \varphi \right)=0`$ (11)
where $`\delta \rho =\delta \rho _r+\dot{\varphi }(\delta \varphi \dot{)}\dot{\varphi }^2\mathrm{\Phi }+V^{}\delta \varphi `$ and $`\delta p=\frac{1}{3}\delta \rho _r+\dot{\varphi }(\delta \varphi \dot{)}\dot{\varphi }^2\mathrm{\Phi }V^{}\delta \varphi `$ are the perturbations of the total energy density and pressure, respectively; $`v`$ originates from the decomposition of the velocity field as $`\delta U_i=\frac{iak_i}{k}ve^{i𝐤.𝐱}`$ (see Bardeenbardeen ). Also, due the fact that the perturbation of the total energy-momentum tensor does not give rise to anisotropic stress ($`\delta T_j^i\delta _j^i`$), $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Phi }`$. Warm inflation can be considered as a hybrid-like inflationary model since two basics fields, the inflaton and the radiation fields, are interacting during the slow-roll phase. Therefore, isocurvature or entropy perturbations are generated, besides the adiabatic ones. We have shownolivjor  that the entropy perturbations are directly related to the dissipation term. In what follows, we will obtain an approximate solution for the long wavelength perturbations valid during the slow-roll phase, in which the adiabatic and the entropy modes are exhibited explicitly.

During the slow-roll phase, it can be assumed that the perturbed quantities do not vary strongly (see the appendix). This means, that in Eq. (8) $`H\mathrm{\Phi }\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$; in Eq. (9), $`(\delta \varphi \ddot{)}(\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H)(\delta \varphi \dot{)}`$, and so on. Following these approximations, together with the slow-roll conditions provided by Eqs. (4), (5) and (6), $`\delta \rho _r`$ and $`v`$ are expressed as

$$\frac{\delta \rho _r}{\rho _r}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}\delta \varphi 3\mathrm{\Phi },$$
(12)
$$v\frac{k}{4aH}\left(\mathrm{\Phi }+\frac{\delta \rho _r}{4\rho _r}+\frac{3\mathrm{\Gamma }\dot{\varphi }}{4\rho _r}\delta \varphi \right).$$
(13)
Using these equations, the metric perturbation (Eq. (8)) can be written as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{4\pi \dot{\varphi }}{m_{pl}^2H}\left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{4H}+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\dot{\varphi }}{48H^2}\right)\delta \varphi .$$
(14)
Note that in the case of null dissipation, we recover the standard relation between the metric and scalar field perturbations, $`\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{4\pi \dot{\varphi }}{m_{pl}^2H}\delta \varphi `$, that describes the adiabatic modelinde1 ; plastaro .

The equation of motion for $`\delta \varphi `$ reads now as

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H)(\delta \varphi \dot{)}+(V^{\prime \prime }+\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Gamma }^{})\delta \varphi (\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Gamma }2V^{})\mathrm{\Phi },$$
(15)
where it will be useful to introduce an auxiliary function $`\chi `$ by

$$\chi =\frac{\delta \varphi }{V^{}}exp\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H}𝑑\varphi \right),$$
(16)
that generalizes the procedure due to Starobinski and Polarskiplastaro  in the realm of double inflationary models. Substituting Eq. (16) into (15), we obtain the following equation for $`\chi `$

$$\frac{\chi ^{}}{\chi }+\frac{9}{8}\frac{(\mathrm{\Gamma }+2H)}{(\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H)^2}\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }+4H\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}V^{}}{12H(\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H)}\right)\frac{V^{}}{V}0$$
(17)
We separate two situations: $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=const`$, and the variable dissipation term $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_m\varphi ^m`$, $`m=2,4,..`$. Considering the first case, Eq. (17) can be integrated exactly, yielding

$$\delta \varphi \frac{C_1\dot{\varphi }}{H}\left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{3H}\right)^{5/4}exp\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{4(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0+3H)}\right].$$
(18)
where $`C_1`$ is a constant of integration. It will be instructive to expand this expression in power series of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$,

$$\delta \varphi \frac{C_1\dot{\varphi }}{H}\left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{2H}+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^2}{36H^2}+\mathrm{}\right).$$
(19)
Notice that the zeroth order term is the same found in single field inflationary modelslinde1 ; plastaro , which is related the adiabatic mode. The remaining terms describe the effect of dissipation to the fluctuation of the scalar field, or in another words, the entropy mode. The metric perturbation is obtained straightforwardly from Eqs. (14) and (18),

$$\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{C_1\dot{H}}{H^2}\left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{4H}\right)\left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{3H}\right)^{1/4}exp\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{4(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0+3H)}\right].$$
(20)
Again, expanding it power series of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$, the role of the dissipation in producing entropy mode becomes evident

$$\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{C_1\dot{H}}{H^2}\left(1+\frac{5\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{12H}+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^2}{72H^2}+\mathrm{}\right).$$
(21)
For the second case, the integration of (17) can be performed only after specifying the potential $`V(\varphi )`$.

An important relation between the density of matter fluctuations, $`\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }`$, and the metric perturbation can be derived in WI after taking into account that, during the slow-roll phase, $`\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }\frac{V^{}}{V}\delta \varphi `$, and Eq. (14),

$$\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }\frac{8}{3}\frac{(\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H)}{\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }+4H+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\dot{\varphi }}{12H}\right)}\mathrm{\Phi }.$$
(22)
In the absence of the dissipation, we recover the usual relation $`\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }2\mathrm{\Phi }`$ valid for single field inflationary models. On the other limit, for instance, high constant dissipation, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0H`$, it follows that $`\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }\frac{8}{3}\mathrm{\Phi }`$. The above relation together with the integration of Eq. (17) will be of fundamental importance for the COBE normalization as we are going to show next.

## III COBE normalization

In super cooled inflation the overall dynamics of perturbations can be reduced to a single conservation law for the gauge invariant curvature perturbation on comoving hypersurfaces, $`\zeta `$, defined bybardeen ; mukhanov

$$\zeta \frac{2\rho }{3H(\rho +p)}(H\mathrm{\Phi }+\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }})+\mathrm{\Phi }.$$
(23)
During inflation, we have $`H\mathrm{\Phi }\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ such that, together with Eqs. (18), (20) and (22) and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0`$, it follows that the curvature perturbation can be approximated as $`\zeta \frac{\delta \rho }{\rho +p}`$linde1 ; turner1 . In order to illustrate the importance of this quantity, consider a perturbation corresponding the size of a galaxy, $`\lambda _{gal}`$. Accordingly, it can be shown that this perturbation leaves the horizon about 50 e-folds before the end of inflation. Then, $`\zeta _{50}\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho +p}\right)_{50}`$, with the subscript 50 indicating that the curvature perturbation is evaluated at 50 e-folds before the end of inflation, is frozen until the perturbation re-enters the Hubble horizon in the radiation or matter dominated eras. When this happens, it can be established that $`\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho +p}\right)_{50}\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }\right)_{horizon,\lambda }`$ is the amplitude of density perturbations on the scale $`\lambda _{gal}`$ when the perturbations crosses back inside the horizon during the post-inflation epoch, where the constant of proportionality depends whether $`\rho +p=n\rho `$, $`n=1,4/3`$ for matter, radiation era, respectively. For instance, for single-field inflation models, it can be show thatturner ; kolbdodel  $`\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }\right)_{horizon,\lambda }\left(\frac{V^{3/2}}{m_{Pl}^3V^{}}\right)_{50}`$, where quantum fluctuations are the source of the perturbations of the scalar field. The Sachs-Wolfe effectsachswolfe  establishes, roughly speaking, that the metric perturbation, which in turn is related to the density perturbations, determines the temperature anisotropy of the CBR (cosmic microwave background), or

$$\frac{\delta T}{T}\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho }\right)_{horizon,\lambda }.$$
(24)
The COBE satellite performed reliable measurements of the anisotropies of temperature, and therefore, became a powerful tool of testing inflation models by normalizing the amplitude of perturbations, as well as determining the spectral index of the spectrum of perturbations.

Under the influence of entropy perturbations, the conservation of $`\zeta `$ in super-horizon scales is no longer valid, and in the specific case of WI, the rate of variation of $`\zeta `$ is depends directly on the dissipation termolivjor . An important observational test for WI is the determination of the magnitude of the dissipation term compatible with COBE data, implying that it can be decided if strong dissipative regime characterized by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }H`$, weak dissipative regime $`\mathrm{\Gamma }H`$, or even dissipation of the order of the Hubble parameter is the most viable model for WI. Indeed, this task was partially accomplished by de Oliveira and Jorasolivjor  by assuming ab initio weak dissipation such that the effect of the entropy perturbation could be neglected. Under this assumption it was possible to determine a lower bound of the dissipation term taking into account that thermal fluctuations are mainly responsible for the production of the inhomogeneities of the inflaton, and the COBE data, where it was found that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }10^{16}m_{Pl}`$.

Here, we derive a convenient expression for $`\zeta _{end}`$ necessary for COBE normalization, in which it is assumed that the dissipation is constant and vanishes after inflation. This last condition is physically reasonable, since dissipation results from the interaction between the inflaton and other fields, and at the end of inflation the inflaton field has transferred the enough energy to radiation to start a new phase without the necessity of reheating. The next step is to obtain a suitable expression for the curvature perturbation $`\zeta `$ in WI. For this, we may consider that during the slow-roll phase, Eq. (23) is reduced to

$$\zeta \frac{2\rho }{3(\rho +p)}\mathrm{\Phi }$$
(25)
due to the quasi-static evolution of the perturbations in this phase. This equation together with Eq. (22) yield,

$$\zeta \frac{(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0+4H)}{4(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0+3H)}\frac{\delta \rho }{\rho +p}.$$
(26)
In the limit $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=0`$, as well as for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0H`$, $`\zeta \frac{\delta \rho }{\rho +p}`$, suggesting that the effect of the dissipation is to change this proportionality. Now, we are in conditions trace out a procedure to apply the COBE normalization.

Consider again a perturbation in WI corresponding to a scale of astrophysical interest that corresponds to the size of a galaxy. This perturbation will cross outside the Hubble radius at approximately 50 e-folds before the end of inflationolivjor . As previously discussed, the presence of entropy perturbations are responsible for the variation of $`\zeta `$ in super-horizon scales, and such a variation takes place until the end of inflation, since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=0`$ after inflation. The curvature perturbation $`\zeta _{end}`$ associated to this perturbation is kept constant until the moment when the perturbation re-enters the Hubble horizon during the post-inflation epoch to become the necessary fluctuations for structure formation. The amplitude of the resulting spectrum is normalized by COBE data. As one can see, we need to know $`\zeta _{end}`$ instead of $`\zeta _{50}`$ due to the variation of curvature perturbation. To determine the former, we calculate the ratio

$$K\frac{\zeta _{end}}{\zeta _{50}}\left(\frac{\rho }{\rho +p}\right)_{end}\left(\frac{\rho }{\rho +p}\right)_{50}^1\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_{end}}{\mathrm{\Phi }_{50}},$$
(27)
where we have taken into account Eq. (25). The ratio between the metric perturbation follows from the approximate solution (20), for which it can be shown that for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=0`$, $`K=1`$, as expected. Then, the expression for $`\zeta _{end}`$ as given by

$$\zeta _{end}=K\zeta _{50}K\left[\frac{(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0+4H)}{4(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0+3H)}\frac{\delta \rho }{(\rho +p)}\right]_{50},$$
(28)
that must be normalized by COBE data. Notice that $`\delta \rho V^{}(\varphi )\delta \varphi `$, with the fluctuations of the scalar field being due to thermal interactions with the radiation fieldberefang . In the next Section we apply the COBE normalization to determine the dissipation term.

## IV Worked examples: high dissipation and COBE data

Let us consider the case of quadratic potential $`V(\varphi )=\frac{1}{2}m^2\varphi ^2`$. It will be useful to introduce adimensional quantities such as

$$\gamma _0=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{m},x=\frac{\sqrt{4\pi }}{m_{Pl}}\varphi ,\alpha =\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{3H}\frac{\gamma _0}{\sqrt{3}x},$$
(29)
where in the last expression it is assumed that $`H^2\frac{8\pi }{3m_{Pl}^2}V(\varphi )`$. The regime of high dissipation is characterized by $`\alpha 1`$. The end of WI is achieved when $`ϵ_{wi}\frac{m_{Pl}^2}{4\pi \alpha }\left(\frac{H^{}}{H}\right)^2=1`$ for $`x=x_e`$, where $`ϵ_{wi}`$ is the generalized slow-roll parameter for WIolivjor . The beginning of WI at $`x=x_{}`$ can be determined from the condition of 60 e-folds necessary for a successful inflation. Then, both conditions render

$$x_e\frac{\sqrt{3}}{\gamma _0},x_{}\frac{61\sqrt{3}}{\gamma _0}.$$
(30)
To guarantee that the regime of high dissipation holds since the beginning of WI, it is necessary that $`\gamma _0^2183`$. Also, if $`x_{50}`$ corresponds the scalar field evaluated at 50 e-folds before the end of inflation, it can be shown that

$$x_{50}\frac{51\sqrt{3}}{\gamma _0}.$$
(31)
According to the discussion of the last Section, we need to know $`K`$, which can be determined from the approximate solution for $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ given by Eq. (20) together with the slow-roll conditions (4), (5), (6). The derived expression is found to be

$$K\left(\frac{\alpha _e}{\alpha _{50}}\right)^{5/4}1.36\times 10^2,$$
(32)
where the values of $`\alpha `$ at the end of inflation and at 50 e-folds before the end of inflation are given by Eqs. (30) and (31). This value of $`K`$ is the maximum reached by considering very high dissipation. The next step is to consider Eq. (28) assuming $`\delta \rho V^{}(\varphi )\delta \varphi `$, with the fluctuations of the scalar field being generated by thermal interactions with radiation, instead of quantum fluctuations. Then, following Berera and Taylortaylor , it is established that

$$(\delta \varphi )^2\frac{(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0H)^{1/2}T_r}{2\pi ^2},$$
(33)
where $`T_r`$ is the temperature of the thermal bath. These fluctuations are evaluated at 50 e-folds before the end of inflation. After performing this calculation, together with Eqs. (29), (30), (31) and the condition $`\alpha 1`$, we arrived to a simple expression for $`\zeta _{end}`$

$$|\zeta _{end}|93.45\left(\frac{m}{m_{PL}}\right)^{3/4}\gamma _0^{3/4}.$$
(34)
COBE normalization tells us that $`|\zeta _{end}|7.33\times 10^6`$, implying

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_03.36\times 10^{10}m_{PL},$$
(35)
which, in view of our approximation, this result can be interpreted as the upper bound of the dissipation term. In order to assure the regime of high dissipation during the whole WI, it is necessary that $`\gamma _014`$. This restriction together with the obtained upper bound of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ implies that

$$m2.40\times 10^{11}m_{PL}.$$
(36)
This constraint is a very small bound for the mass of the inflaton, even if compared with the value obtained by COBE normalization in super-cooled inflationturner , which is $`m10^6m_{PL}`$.

We have considered another potential $`V(\varphi )=\lambda ^4\varphi ^4`$ and variable dissipation term $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2\varphi ^2`$, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ being a constant of dimension $`m_{PL}^1`$. In this case, high dissipation is characterized by

$$\alpha \frac{m_{PL}\mathrm{\Gamma }_2}{\sqrt{24\pi }\lambda ^2}1.$$
(37)
The scalar field evaluated at the end, the beginning and at 50 e-folds before the end of WI, correspond, respectively, to

$$x_e\frac{2}{\sqrt{\alpha }},x_{}\sqrt{61}x_e,x_{50}\sqrt{51}x_e.$$
(38)
For the sake of completeness, the end of WI occurs for $`ϵ\frac{m_{PL}^2}{\pi \alpha }\frac{1}{\varphi ^2}`$, and the remaining values are determined from $`N\frac{\pi \alpha }{m_{PL}^2}(\varphi _{}^2\varphi _N)`$, by setting $`N=50,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}60}`$. We need to know $`\delta x`$ in order to determine the metric perturbation from Eq. (14), and consequently $`K`$ (see Eq. (25) which is valid for any $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$). After integrating Eq. (17) imposing $`\alpha 1`$, the perturbation of the scalar field is given by

$$\delta x4\lambda ^4\chi _0x^{7/2}exp\left(\frac{3}{4\alpha ^2x^2}\right),$$
(39)
where $`\chi _0`$ is the constant of integration. Taking into account this result and the corresponding expression for $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, we obtain

$$K\left(\frac{3\alpha x_e^21}{3\alpha x_{50}^21}\right)\frac{x_{50}}{x_e}\frac{(\delta x)_e}{(\delta x)_{50}}1.24\times 10^2.$$
(40)
Notice that the maximum value of growth of the curvature perturbation is approximately the same as found in the previous case. The final step for the COBE normalization is to consider Eq. (33) inserted into

$`\zeta _{end}=K\zeta _{50}K\left[\frac{\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }+4H+\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\dot{\varphi }}{12H}\right)}{4(\mathrm{\Gamma }+3H)}\frac{V^{}\delta \varphi }{(\rho +p)}\right]_{50}`$ together with the value of $`K`$ given by Eq. (39). Hence, after a direct calculation

$$|\zeta _{end}|3.21\times 10^3\lambda ^{3/2}.$$
(41)
Contrary to the previous case, the dissipation term does not appear explicitly. COBE normalization imposes that

$$\lambda ^410^{24}.$$
(42)
## V Discussion

In this paper, we have integrated the equations for the metric and scalar field perturbation in WI. The contributions of the adiabatic and entropy modes were exhibited explicitly showing the central role played by the dissipation in producing the entropy mode. Another very important result was the generalization of the relation between the total density of matter perturbations and metric perturbations given by Eq. (22). Using the analytical expressions, a general procedure to apply COBE normalization was proposed, since in WI a conservation equation for the curvature perturbation, $`\zeta `$, is no longer valid.

As an application of the COBE normalization, we have considered two distinct examples, namely, quadratic potential $`V(\varphi )=\frac{1}{2}m^2\varphi ^2`$ with constant dissipation, and quartic potential $`V(\varphi )=\lambda ^4\varphi ^4`$ with variable dissipation term. The common aspect shared by these two examples is the assumption of high dissipative regime guaranteed by $`\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{3H}1`$. In the first case, COBE normalization determines directly the upper bound of the dissipation term as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_03.36\times 10^{10}m_{PL}`$, with the mass of the inflaton given by $`m2.40\times 10^{11}m_{PL}`$. Thus, considering the previous result concerning lower bound of the dissipative termolivjor , the following constraint is obtained

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{min}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\mathrm{\Gamma }_{max}$$
(43)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{min}/m_{PL}10^{16}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{max}/m_{PL}10^{10}`$. On the other hand, for the case of quartic potential, COBE normalization imposes that $`\lambda ^410^{24}`$, which represents a stronger fine tuning if compared with $`10^{14}`$ found in supercooled inflation. In spite of representing a drawback for very high dissipative regime in WI in this specific example, it is necessary further analysis considering other situations in order to give a final word about the feasibility of the very high dissipative regime of WI as far as COBE normalization is concerned. In this way, a possible direction of investigation is to treat other cases characterized by distinct potentials and by not imposing a priori any kind of high/low dissipative regime to verify the consequences of COBE normalization.

## VI Acknowledgments

I acknowledge CNPq for financial support. I am grateful to Rocky Kolb and J. Frieman for useful discussions. Finally, I am also grateful to the anonymous referee whose observations improved the final version of the manuscript.

## Appendix A Appendix

It is well established that the slow-roll phase $`\dot{H}H^2`$. This condition has a direct consequence on the evolution of the perturbed quantities as we are going to illustrate integrating Eq. (8). The general solution of Eq. (8) can be written as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{a}+\frac{1}{a}\mathrm{\Delta }a𝑑t$$
(44)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ is the initial value of the metric perturbation and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{4\pi }{m_{pl}^2}\left(\frac{4}{3k}\rho _rav+\dot{\varphi }\delta \varphi \right)`$ for convenience. The non-decreasing mode is given by the integral, that can be expanded in power seriesmukhanov ; linde1  like

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{H}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{H}\right)^.H^1+\left[\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{H}\right)^.H^1\right]^.H^1+\mathrm{}$$
(45)
Then, it is acceptable to approximate the above expression considering only the first term of the series, since during the slow-roll, $`\frac{\dot{H}}{H^2}1`$ and $`\frac{\dot{\mathrm{\Delta }}}{H^2}1`$. As we can see, this approximation is equivalent to assume $`H\mathrm{\Phi }\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$. Applying this procedure to the other perturbed equations, we arrive to the Eqs. (12), (13), (14) and (15).


text:
# The logical meaning of Expansion

## 1 Introduction

In previous work , I have shown that a set of three properties of choice functions, previously studied by researchers in the theory of social preferences: Contraction, Coherence and Local Monotonicity corresponds exactly to an important family of nonmonotonic consequence operations, characterized by five properties: Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity and Threshold Monotonicity. The choice functions that, in addition, satisfy a condition proposed by Arrow correspond exactly to the operations that, in addition, satisfy Rational Monotonicity.

Another property has been widely considered in Social Choice:

$$\mathrm{𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧}f(X)f(Y)f(XY).$$

It does not follow from Contraction, Coherence and Local Monotonicity. Under the simplifying assumption that all sets are definable, Expansion follows from Contraction and Arrow.

It is therefore a reasonable assumption that Expansion (in the presence of Contraction, Coherence and Local Monotonicity), corresponds exactly to some property of the consequence operation that is weaker than Rational Monotonicity. Many such properties have been studied in .

It shall be shown that, indeed, Expansion is, essentially, the exact equivalent of one of those properties: the property found by Satoh  and Freund  to characterize the existence of injective preferential models, typically written, in the finitary framework: if $`ab\text{ }c`$, then there exists $`a^{}`$ and $`b^{}`$ such that $`a\text{ }a^{}`$, $`b\text{ }b^{}`$ and $`a^{}b^{}c`$, where $``$ is logical implication. In the infinitary framework, the same property is:

(1)
$$𝒞(𝒞n(A)𝒞n(B))𝒞n(𝒞(A),𝒞(B)).$$

Two important remarks must be made immediately. The property above assumes the existence of an underlying monotonic consequence operation ( $``$, $`𝒞n`$), of which $`𝒞`$ is an extension. We do not assume the existence of such an operation and therefore, shall use, in place of $`𝒞n(A)`$, the closest operation that can be defined in terms of $`𝒞`$, i.e., $`_{FA}𝒞(F)`$. The finitary form also assumes the existence of a disjunction in the language. We shall need to make a similar assumption: we shall assume that the union of two definable sets is definable. The fact that such an assumption is needed indicates that Expansion is not a property that is as natural as the other properties considered. The question of whether the result holds without this assumption is open.

The property we propose to consider is:

$$(𝐄)𝒞(\underset{FA\mathrm{or}FB}{}𝒞(F))𝒞(𝒞(A),𝒞(B)).$$

Notice that, due to the Threshold Monotonicity property, the right hand side is equal to $`_{F𝒞(A)𝒞(B)}𝒞(F)`$, the exact translation of the right hand side of Equation 1.

Leaving the exact formulation of the result for later, let us examine the situation.

The completeness direction seems easier than the soundness one. Assume $`𝒞:2^{}2^{}`$ satisfies Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity, Threshold Monotonicity and property (E). As in the proof of the main representation result of previous work, we take $``$ to be the set of all theories (sets of formulas closed under $`𝒞`$) and define the satisfaction relation by: $`Ta`$ iff $`aT`$. We define $`f`$ by: $`f(X)=X\widehat{𝒞(\overline{X})}`$. We have shown in the previous proof that $`f`$ preserves definability and satisfies Contraction, Coherence and Local Monotonicity and that $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A})}`$. We easily notice that, for any set $`X`$,

(2)
$$f(X)f(\widehat{\overline{X}}).$$

We already noticed in  that:

(3)
$$\overline{\widehat{A}}=\underset{BA}{}𝒞(B)$$

and that

(4)
$$f(\widehat{A})=\widehat{𝒞(A)}$$

Notice, first, that, by (3), for any $`A`$, $`B`$:

$$𝒞(\underset{FA\mathrm{or}FB}{}𝒞(F))=𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}})$$

and that, by Threshold Monotonicity and by (3), for any $`A`$, $`B`$,

$$𝒞(𝒞(A),𝒞(B))=\underset{F𝒞(A)𝒞(B)}{}𝒞(F)=\overline{\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))}.$$

Property (E) then becomes:

$$(𝐄^{})𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}})\overline{\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))}.$$

Therefore we have:

$$(𝐄^{\prime \prime })\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))=\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))})\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}})).$$

We want to show that Expansion holds true. Let $`X`$ and $`Y`$ be arbitrary sets of models and let us define $`A=\overline{X}`$ and $`B=\overline{Y}`$ By definition of $`f`$:

$$f(X)f(Y)=X\widehat{𝒞(A)}Y\widehat{𝒞(B)}$$

and

$$f(XY)=(XY)\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(\overline{XY})).$$

Since $`XYXY`$, to prove Expansion, i.e., $`f(X)f(Y)f(XY)`$, it is enough to prove that

$$\widehat{𝒞(A)}\widehat{𝒞(B)}\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(\overline{XY})).$$

But

$$\widehat{𝒞(A)}\widehat{𝒞(B)}=\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))$$

and $`\overline{XY}=AB`$. It is therefore enough to show that

$$\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(AB)).$$

By (E”) it is enough to show that:

$$\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}))\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(AB)).$$

But $`A=\overline{X}=\overline{\widehat{A}}`$ and $`B=\overline{Y}=\overline{\widehat{B}}`$.

We have proved the following.

###### Theorem 1

If $`𝒞:2^{}2^{}`$ satisfies Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity, Threshold Monotonicity and property (E), then, there is a set $``$, a satisfaction relation $``$ and a definability-preserving choice function $`f`$ that satisfies Contraction, Coherence, Local Monotonicity and Expansion such that $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A})}`$. The function $`f`$ may be chosen to satisfy $`f(X)f(\widehat{\overline{X}})`$.

Let us now turn to the soundness direction. We assume that the union of two definable set is definable, i.e.,

(5)
$$\widehat{A}\widehat{B}=\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}})=\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}).$$

This assumption is satisfied, for example, if the language $``$ is closed under a binary connective $``$ that behaves semantically as a disjunction:

(6)
$$xab\mathrm{iff}\mathrm{either}xa\mathrm{or}xb.$$

In this case, if $`X=\widehat{A}`$ and $`Y=\widehat{B}`$, then $`XY=\widehat{AB}`$, where $`AB`$ is the set of all formulas $`ab`$ for $`aA`$ and $`bB`$.

We assume that $`f`$ preserves definability and satisfies Contraction, Coherence, Local Monotonicity and Expansion. We also assume

(7)
$$f(X)f(\widehat{\overline{X}}).$$

$`𝒞`$ is defined by: $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A})}`$. We know from previous work that $`𝒞`$ satisfies Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity and Threshold Monotonicity. Therefore $`𝒞`$ also satisfies Cumulativity. We also know that

(8)
$$\widehat{𝒞(A)}=f(\widehat{A})$$

and that

(9)
$$\overline{\widehat{A}}\underset{FA}{}𝒞(F).$$

We want to show that property (E) holds:

$$(𝐄)𝒞(\underset{FA\mathrm{or}FB}{}𝒞(F))𝒞(𝒞(A),𝒞(B)).$$

We shall proceed in two stages. In the first stage we shall show that

$$𝒞(\underset{FA\mathrm{or}FB}{}𝒞(F))𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}).$$

In the second stage we shall show that

$$𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}})𝒞(𝒞(A),𝒞(B)).$$

Expansion is needed only in the second stage.

Let us deal with the first stage. In fact, we can show equality. The result relies on the following lemma, asserting what Makinson  called Distributivity.

###### Lemma 1

$`𝒞(A)𝒞(B)𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}})`$.

Proof: By Equation 5,

$$f(\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}}))=f(\widehat{A}\widehat{B}),$$

but, by Coherence

$$f(\widehat{A}\widehat{B})f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B}).$$

We conclude that we have:

$$f(\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}}))f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B}).$$

Therefore, by considering the sets of models of both sides:

$$\overline{f(\widehat{A})}\overline{f(\widehat{B})}\overline{f(\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}}))}.$$

By the definition of $`𝒞`$ we have

$$𝒞(A)𝒞(B)𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}})=𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}).$$

Now, we claim:

$$\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}\underset{FA\mathrm{or}FB}{}𝒞(F))𝒞(A)𝒞(B)𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}).$$

The first inclusion follows from Equation 9, the second inclusion is obvious and the third one follows from Lemma 1. But we know that $`𝒞`$ is cumulative and therefore

$$𝒞(\underset{FA\mathrm{or}FB}{}𝒞(F))=𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}}\overline{\widehat{B}}).$$

For the second stage, notice that, by Expansion

$$f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B})f(\widehat{A}\widehat{B}).$$

By Contraction

$$f(f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B}))f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B})$$

and by Equation 7,

$$f(\widehat{A}\widehat{B})f(\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}})),$$

therefore we have

$$f(f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B}))f(\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}})).$$

By considering the sets of formulas defined by both sides we have:

$$\overline{f(\mathrm{Mod}(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}}))}\overline{f(f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B}))}.$$

But, by Equation 8,

$$f(f(\widehat{A})f(\widehat{B}))=f(\widehat{𝒞(A)}\widehat{𝒞(B)})=f(\mathrm{Mod}(𝒞(A)𝒞(B))).$$

By the definition of $`𝒞`$ we have:

$$𝒞(\overline{\widehat{A}\widehat{B}}))𝒞(𝒞(A),𝒞(B)),$$

which concludes the second stage of our derivation of (E).

We summarize this soundness result.

###### Theorem 2

If $``$is a set of models and $`\times `$ is such that the union of any two definable sets of models is definable, and if $`f:`$ is definability-preserving and satisfies Contraction, Coherence, Local Monotonicity, Expansion and $`f(X)f(\widehat{\overline{X}})`$, then the operation defined by: $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A}})`$ satisfies Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity, Threshold Monotonicity and property (E).

One would like to prove a stronger and more elegant result. Assume that the language $``$ is closed under a binary connective $``$. One may show, as in Theorem 2 that: if $``$is a set of models and $`\times `$ is such that $`mab`$ iff $`ma`$ or $`mb`$, and if $`f:`$ is definability-preserving and satisfies Contraction, Coherence, Local Monotonicity, Expansion and $`f(X)f(\widehat{\overline{X}})`$, then the operation defined by: $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A}})`$ satisfies Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity, Threshold Monotonicity, property (E),

(10)
$$𝒞(A,a)𝒞(A,b)𝒞(A,ab),$$

and

(11)
$$a𝒞(A)ab𝒞(A),b𝒞(A)ab𝒞(A).$$

One would like to strengthen Theorem 1 by claiming: if $`𝒞:2^{}2^{}`$ satisfies Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity, Threshold Monotonicity, property (E), (10) and (11), then, there exists a set $``$, a satisfaction relation $``$ such that $`mab`$ iff $`ma`$ or $`mb`$, and a definability-preserving choice function $`f`$ that satisfies Contraction, Coherence, Local Monotonicity, Expansion and $`f(X)f(\widehat{\overline{X}})`$ such that $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A})}`$.

Unfortunately this result does not seem to be within reach, because some compactness assumption seems to be needed to show that if $`T`$ is a theory that does not contain $`a`$, there is a $``$-complete theory $`T^{}T`$ that does not contain $`a`$, where $`complete`$ means: $`abT`$ implies either $`aT`$ or $`bT`$.

A more elegant equivalence result, on the model of Theorem 5 of  may be obtained if one assumes the existence of proper negation and disjunction. We need to consider the following syntactic and semantic properties.

$$\mathrm{𝐖𝐞𝐚𝐤}\mathrm{𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬}𝒞(A)=\mathrm{a}\mathrm{finite}B_fA\mathrm{such}\mathrm{that}𝒞(B)=.$$

(12)
$$𝒞(A,a,\neg a)=$$

(13)
$$𝒞(A,\neg a)=a𝒞(A)$$

(14)
$$x\neg a\mathrm{iff}x\vDash ̸a.$$

###### Theorem 3

Assume $``$ is closed under a unary connective ($`\neg `$) and a binary connective ($``$) and that $`𝒞:2^{}2^{}`$ satisfies Weak Compactness, (12), (13),(10), (11), Inclusion, Idempotence, Cautious Monotonicity, Conditional Monotonicity and Threshold Monotonicity. The two following conditions are equivalent:

1. $`𝒞`$ satisfies property (E), and
2. there is a set $``$, a satisfaction relation $``$ that satisfies (14), (6) and a definability-preserving choice function $`f`$ that satisfies Contraction, Coherence, Local Monotonicity, Expansion and (7) such that $`𝒞(A)=\overline{f(\widehat{A})}`$, for any $`A`$.

Proof: Assume 1. By Theorem 5 of  and Theorem 1, 2 follows. Assume 2. The union of two definable sets of models is definable, as explained following (6). Theorem 2 implies that property (E) holds.


text:
# Limits on Radio Continuum Emission from a Sample of Candidate Contracting Starless Cores

## 1 Introduction

Star formation occurs within molecular clouds, behind large column densities of obscuring dust that hinders observations of its earliest evolutionary stages. The “Class 0” objects, which are not detected at wavelengths shorter than the submillimeter, represent the youngest protostars observed, with inferred ages of $`10^4`$ years (see André, Ward-Thompson & Barsony 1993, André & Montmerle 1994). Even younger protostars need to be identified to improve our understanding of the first stages of protostellar collapse.

The “starless” dense cores, density enhancements within molecular clouds that show no evidence for embedded protostars, may represent an evolutionary stage of the star formation process prior to that of the Class 0 objects. Lee et al. (1999) recently surveyed more than 200 nearby starless cores in spectral lines of dense gas tracers. Seventeen cores were identified with evidence for infalling motions, as suggested by the presence of redshifted self-absorption in line profiles. These rare infall candidates provide an excellent chance to locate the very youngest protostars, whose low luminosity and reddened spectral energy distributions might have escaped detection at far-infrared wavelengths by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).

A possible method to identify extremely young protostellar objects makes use of the well-documented occurrence of simultaneous mass accretion (infall) with mass expulsion (outflow) during star formation. From a sample of 29 Class 0 and Class I protostellar sources, Anglada (1995) noted a strong correlation between 3.6 cm radio continuum luminosity and bolometric luminosity. The radio continuum emission arises from the shock-ionized inner regions of a collimated outflow, while the bolometric luminosity arises predominately from accretion (e.g. Rodriguez et al. 1982, Lada 1985). If outflow is inextricably linked to accretion, the presence of a very young protostar within a so-called “starless core” with evidence for infalling motions can be deduced from the detection of compact radio continuum emission. Using a variant of this concept, Visser (2000) found evidence for three candidate protostars in a sample of 40 Lynds starless cores by detecting high velocity 12CO(2–1) emission from previously unknown outflows.

We present here observations of eight starless cores made with the Very Large Array (VLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory111 The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is operated by Associated Universities Inc., under contract with the National Science Foundation. to search for indications of embedded protostars through the detection of compact radio continuum emission from their nascent outflows. The eight cores observed are the nearest objects ($`<250`$ pc) from the survey of Lee et al. (1999) that show redshifted self-absorption in at least two molecular spectral lines.

## 2 Observations and Data Reduction

The VLA observations of starless cores were made on 1999 March 6 and 1999 April 27 in the D configuration at 3.6 cm (8.46 GHz). The use of the VLA in its most compact configuration and at its most sensitive wavelength maximizes the instrument’s utility for detecting faint sources of radio continuum emission. Table 1 lists the target cores, calibrators, synthesized beam sizes, and the rms noise levels achieved in the images. The central pointing positions for the cores were taken from Lee et al. (1999). The uncertainties in these positions with respect to the column density peaks are at the $`15^{\prime \prime }`$ level. For the March observations of 4 cores at 4–5 hours Right Ascension (in the Taurus region), 3C 48 was used as the flux calibrator (3.15 Jy at 3.6 cm). For the April observations of 4 cores at 15–20 hours R.A. 3C 286 was used as the flux calibrator (5.20 Jy at 3.6 cm). The flux calibration is expected to be accurate to better than 10%. Standard procedures in the AIPS software package were used for all data calibration and imaging.

For each field, sources were located within the 5$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$3 primary beam half power diameter using the AIPS routine Search and Destroy, with a flux threshold of $`5\times `$ the rms noise in the cleaned image. Table 2 lists the positions and fluxes of the 13 detected sources from the 8 fields. These sources generally fall within the regions of extended molecular line emission, but none are located within $`1^{}`$ of the adopted positions for the column density peaks. This choice of criterion for positional coincidence is arbitrary, but it is likely that all the detected sources are background objects. Nevertheless, more millimeter/sub-millimeter observations must be done to locate the column density peaks with better accuracy, to substantiate the significance of the observed displacements. It remains conceivable that one or more of the 3.6 cm sources may be tracing smaller clumps of material embedded within the cores; this possibility could be tested by future higher resolution observations. The observed source counts are consistent with expectations for a background population. Based on a detection threshold of $`0.09`$ mJy, the source properties from Condon (1984), and the calculation in the appendix of Anglada et al. (1998), on average 1.0 background sources are expected per field, for a total of $`8\pm 3`$ sources, which is consistent within 2 $`\sigma `$ of the detected number. For the strongest source, L1521F (1), a reliable match is found in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) point source catalog. The NVSS flux measurement at 21 cm (1.4 GHz) implies a radio spectral index for this source of $`0.70\pm 0.02`$, which suggests synchrotron emission from a background radio galaxy. This source is also the only resolved member of the sample (the resolution of the cleaned images is $`10^{\prime \prime }`$). The remaining unresolved sources show no matches in the SIMBAD astronomical database.

## 3 Discussion

### 3.1 Bolometric Luminosity Limits

The lack of positional coincidence between any of the detected radio continuum sources and the centers of the starless cores suggests that none of these sources are associated with the cores. Hence, the observations allow us to place upper limits on the 3.6 cm radio continuum luminosity of any compact sources present in the cores, and thus, upper limits on their bolometric luminosities following Anglada (1995). Figure 1 shows the radio continuum and bolometric luminosity data for the 29 sources compiled by Anglada, together with a least-squares fit. The fitted correlation

$$\mathrm{log}[S_{3.6\mathrm{cm}}d^2(\mathrm{mJy}\mathrm{kpc}^2)]=(2.1\pm 0.1)+(0.7\pm 0.1)\mathrm{log}[L_{\mathrm{bol}}(\mathrm{L}_{})]$$

allows the observed trend to be extrapolated to lower luminosities, the regime of our sensitive VLA observations. While there is no observational support for the validity of this extrapolation, there are no changes expected in the relevant mechanisms at lower luminosity levels that would suggest a breakdown of the correlation.

For the 4 Taurus cores (L1521F, TMC2, TMC1, CB23) at a distance of 140 pc (Elias 1978), the correlation and 5 $`\sigma `$ upper limits on the radio continuum luminosity imply bolometric luminosity limits of $`L0.1`$ L. For the three Ophiuchus cores (L183, L158, L234E–S) at a distance of 165 pc (Chini 1981), the implied limits are $`L0.2`$ L. For L694–2, at an assumed distance of 250 pc that derives from an association with the cloud complex harboring the B335 core (Tomita, Saito & Ohtani 1978), the implied bolometric luminosity limit is $`L0.7`$ L. Figure 1 shows the upper limits for the 3.6 cm luminosities as arrows. The uncertainty in these limits due to the uncertainty in the fitted correlation is $`50\%`$.

### 3.2 Comparison with IRAS Limits

In some circumstances, the limits on protostar luminosity implied by the VLA null-detections represent a substantial improvement on limits implied by the lack of an IRAS point source. For objects like starless cores that may be characterized by low temperatures, the limit from the longest wavelength IRAS band (100 $`\mu `$m) most strongly constrains luminosity. For isolated objects at high Galactic latitudes ($`|b|>50^{}`$), the IRAS Point Source Catalog has a 50%-completeness limit of 1.0 Jy at 100 $`\mu `$m (Beichman et al. 1988). Nearer to the plane of the Galaxy, in more complicated regions such as Ophiuchus or Orion, the limits are often much higher due to extended “Cirrus” emission, and confusion with other sources. For example, VLA 1623, the prototypical Class 0 object, escaped detection by IRAS despite a fairly warm dust temperature ($`T20`$ K) and substantial bolometric luminosity $`L0.5`$$`2.5`$ L (Andrè, Ward-Thompson & Barsony 1993). For this core, crowding with nearby sources causes the IRAS limiting flux to be raised to 45 Jy (Ward-Thompson 1993).

To calculate appropriate IRAS limits on bolometric luminosity, we assume that the spectral energy distributions of Class 0 objects and dense cores may be modeled reasonably well by modified graybodies of the form:

$$F_\nu =B_\nu (T_{dust})(1\mathrm{exp}[\tau _\nu ])\mathrm{\Omega }_S,$$

where $`B_\nu (T_{dust})`$ denotes the Planck function at frequency $`\nu `$ for a dust temperature $`T_{dust}`$, $`\tau _\nu `$ is the dust optical depth, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_S`$ the solid angle subtended by the source (Gordon 1988, Ward-Thompson, André & Kirk 2001). The optical depth is proportional to the mass opacity of the dust, which is generally assumed to follow a power law with frequency. The power law index is uncertain for the dust in dense cores, but bounded to a small range (Ossenkopf & Henning 1994). Here, we adopt $`\tau _\nu \nu ^{1.5}`$, as found for VLA 1623 by Andrè et al. 1993. The solid angle subtended by the source is constrained to be $`2^{}`$ in diameter, the resolution of IRAS at 100 $`\mu `$m. The maximum bolometric luminosity of such a graybody that may be hidden below a 1.0 Jy IRAS completeness limit is temperature dependent, roughly 1 L for $`T_{dust}=10`$ K, and falling to 0.1 L for $`T_{dust}=14`$ K, for a source at Taurus distance that is optically thin for $`\lambda 100`$ $`\mu `$m. This result is similar to the 0.05–0.1 L limit for Taurus obtained by Myers et al. (1987), although the analysis presented here is more applicable to Class 0 objects.

Since the cores in this study are often viewed superposed against a parent molecular cloud, the 100 $`\mu `$m point source completeness limit may be worse than the nominal value of 1 Jy for isolated objects. For a $`3`$ Jy limit, a source as bright as 0.3 L at 140 pc would have been undetected by IRAS even with a dust temperature of 14 K. The presence of even a small amount of (visible) warm dust would strongly increase the emission at the shorter wavelengths, and substantially lower the bolometric luminosity that could be hidden from IRAS. But such warm dust would be located close to the protostar, in the central regions of the core, in which case the solid angle subtended by the warm component would be small, and it would be shielded from view by absorption in the intervening layers of cold dust. To illustrate this scenario, consider an example of a cold core (14 K) that surrounds a warm dust component (40 K) that represents $`1`$% of the total dust mass. If this core has an optical thickness that is only one-tenth that of VLA 1623, making it optically thick for $`\lambda 20`$ $`\mu `$m, then it could produce a bolometric luminosity of 0.1 L$`{}_{}{}^{}(d/140\mathrm{pc})_{}^{2}`$ but remain undetected by IRAS with a 100 $`\mu `$m detection limit of $`3`$ Jy. In these circumstances, the limits on protostar luminosity implied by the VLA null-detections are at least comparable to, and in many cases significantly lower than the corresponding IRAS limits.

### 3.3 Implications for the Infall Process

The null-detection of an embedded point source in a contracting core has implications for the nature of the infall process. Tafalla et al. (1998) presented a detailed discussion of these implications pertaining to L1544, a starless core in Taurus with evidence for infalling motions and comparable 3.6 cm radio continuum limits (Williams et al. 1999). In short, the low luminosities and extended sizes of the observed regions of inward motions are inconsistent with the widely applied model of inside-out collapse of a singular isothermal sphere (Shu 1977). In this model, collapse leads to the formation of a central point source with luminosity $`La^6t/GR_{}`$, where $`a`$ is the effective sound speed, $`t`$ is the time since the onset of collapse, and $`R_{}`$ is the protostellar radius (Shu, Adams, & Lizano 1987). Taking $`R_{}3R_{}`$ (Stahler 1988) and $`a0.19`$ km s-1 ($`T10`$ K), the model predicts $`L3(t/10^5\mathrm{yr})`$ L. Infall onto a disk would reduce this luminosity (Kenyon et al. 1993), but these very young objects undetected by IRAS show no evidence for disks, nor are large disks predicted at such early times (Terebey, Shu & Cassen 1984). In the context of the Shu model, and using the Anglada correlation between radio continuum luminosity and bolometric luminosity, for an embedded source at Taurus distance to remain undetected by our VLA observations would require $`t4\times 10^3`$ years, corresponding to an infall radius of only $`R_{\mathrm{inf}}8\times 10^4`$ pc. For a source at Ophiuchus distance, the corresponding values are $`t7\times 10^3`$ years, and $`R_{\mathrm{inf}}1\times 10^3`$ pc, while at the greater distance of L694–2, the values are $`t2\times 10^5`$ years, and $`R_{\mathrm{inf}}0.04`$ pc. Lee et al. (2001) have computed sizes for the infalling regions in six of the eight cores that were observed in this study (TMC2, TMC1, L183, L158, L234E–S, and L694–2) by analyzing the extent of redshifted self-absorption in lines of CS and N2H+. The infall radii so derived range from 0.07 pc for L158 up to 0.17 pc for TMC1, and are typically 0.1 pc. The method used to calculate these radii is fairly simple, and more detailed modelling may refine the exact values. Nevertheless, the observed infall radii are very much larger than the limits on radii derived from the strict luminosity constraints found here assuming the inside-out collapse scenario. Moreover, the ambipolar diffusion process in a strongly sub-critical core apparently cannot explain the high velocities of infalling material observed in these cores (Lee et al. 2001; Ciolek & Mouschovias 1995). The cores studied here represent a sample whose inward motions are inconsistent with the standard theories of low mass star formation.

## 4 Summary

We used the VLA to search for 3.6 cm radio continuum emission from embedded outflows in eight “starless cores” that show evidence for infalling motions in the profiles of molecular spectral lines (Lee et al. 1999). We detected a total of 13 compact sources of radio continuum emission. None of the sources are within an arcminute of the column density peaks, and the source counts are consistent with expectations for a background population. Based on these apparent null-detections and an observed correlation between outflow luminosity and bolometric luminosity from protostellar objects, we place approximate upper limits on the luminosities of any embedded protostars (with uncertainty $`50`$%) of $`0.1`$ L$`{}_{}{}^{}(d/140\mathrm{pc})_{}^{2}`$. These limits, together with the extended nature of the inward motions inferred from molecular line mapping (Lee et al. 2001), are inconsistent with the inside-out collapse model of singular isothermal spheres and suggest a less centrally condensed phase of core evolution during the earliest stages of star formation.

This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.