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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

It is commonly believed that quarks and gluons are relevant degrees of freedom in strongly interacting matter at very high temperatures and baryon densities. This state of matter is usually described by various QCD motivated models. On the other hand, at low temperatures and moderate densities, at least up to the nuclear saturation density $`\rho _0=0.17`$ fm-3, strongly interacting matter exists in the hadronic phase. In particular, atomic nuclei are finite droplets of this phase with baryon density $`\rho _B\rho _0`$. They are self–bound and therefore can exist in vacuum, without external pressure. This fact itself provides an important constraint on the equation of state (EOS) of cold nuclear matter, namely, its pressure must vanish at $`\rho _B=\rho _0`$. There are many effective models which successfully describe nuclear matter in terms of interacting nucleons.

Unfortunately, at present there exists no rigorous approach which can describe the EOS of strongly interacting matter at finite baryon densities. As known, QCD lattice simulations have principal limitations at nonzero chemical potential. Therefore the only practical way to study the possibility of the deconfinement phase transition in this case is to compare various models of hadronic and quark phases. In the last two decades there were numerous attempts to construct a unified EOS which would interpolate between the two asymptotic regimes. In this paper we critically revise this problem in the light of new calculations for the hadronic and quark phases.

In our analysis we include four hadronic models. Two of them are Relativistic Mean–Field (RMF) models of the Walecka type , namely, the NLZ  and the TM1  models. Next is the so called Chiral Hadronic Model (CHM) which was recently developed in Refs. . Fourth model is the Variational Chain Model (VCM)  based on the Argonne NN potentials with addition of 3–body forces and relativistic corrections. Unlike the above three models, the VCM takes into account correlation effects neglected in the mean–field approximation. As argued in Ref. , the mean–field approximation is not well justified at baryon densities $`\rho _B\rho _0`$ .

For the quark matter we take three different models: the MIT Bag Model (BM) , the Massive Quasiparticle Model (MQM)  and the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model (NJL) . Presumably, the hadronic degrees of freedom are more relevant at baryon densities $`\rho _B\rho _0`$ and quark degrees of freedom take over at much larger densities. But the transition between these two regimes is very poorly understood at present. By considering various hadronic and quark models we pursue several goals. First, we compare different models for a single phase to get an idea on the uncertainty in their predictions. Second, by applying the Gibbs criterion, we investigate the possibility of a deconfinement phase transition in cold baryon-rich matter. Finally, we examine reliability of different quark models (in particular, allowed values of model parameters) by extrapolating their predictions into the domain of nuclear matter, $`\rho _B\rho _0`$.

The paper is organized as follows. In Sect. II we give short descriptions of several popular models of the hadronic phase. Their predictions regarding the equation of state of cold baryonic matter are summarized and compared between each other.In Sect. III different models of the quark phase are introduced. Their pairwise comparison with hadronic models, aimed at finding a hadron–quark phase transition, is carried out in a systematic way. In Sect. IV we present our conclusions and outlook.

## 2 Models of hadronic phase

### 2.1 Relativistic mean–field models

At present the field–theoretical description of dense hadronic matter is one of the most popular approaches. Within this approach the matter is described in terms of baryons interacting with self–consistent meson fields. Most calculations are done within the mean–field approximation. There are many versions of the RMF model which differ by the choice of meson fields as well as by the baryon–meson coupling schemes. Here we consider two realizations of the RMF approach which give very good description of finite nuclei, namely, the NLZ  and the TM1  models.

The general form of the effective RMF Lagrangian used in these models is 111 Below we consider static and homogeneous isospin–symmetric matter. In this case the derivatives of mean meson fields over space and time as well as the contribution of $`\rho `$–mesons may be omitted.

$$=\overline{\psi }(i/m_N^{}g_\omega \omega \gamma _0)\psi U_s(\sigma )+U_v(\omega ).$$
(1)
Here $`\psi ,\sigma `$ and $`\omega `$ are, respectively, the nucleon, scalar and vector meson fields,

$$m_N^{}=m_Ng_\sigma \sigma $$
(2)
is the effective nucleon mass, $`U_s`$ and $`U_v`$ are the scalar and vector potentials:

$`U_s(\sigma )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(m_\sigma \sigma )^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{g_2\sigma ^3}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{g_3\sigma ^4}{4}},`$ (3)
$`U_v(\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(m_\omega \omega )^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{g_{3\omega }\omega ^4}{4}}.`$ (4)
In the above equations $`m_i`$ denote vacuum masses of nucleons ($`i=N`$) and mesons ($`i=\sigma ,\omega `$), $`g_j`$ are coupling constants. The parameter sets for the NLZ and TM1 models are listed in Table 1. Note that contrary to the NLZ, within the TM1 model the vector field is a nonlinear function of the baryon density. This leads to a significant reduction of the repulsive interaction at high $`\rho _B`$.

Within the mean–field approximation $`\sigma `$ and $`\omega `$ fields are regarded as purely classical and replaced by c–numbers. Using the Lagrangian (1) one can easily calculate pressure $`P`$ of cold nonstrange matter as a function of the baryon chemical potential $`\mu _B`$ (see for details Refs. ). At given $`\mu _B`$ , applying thermodynamic relations one obtains the following equations for the baryon density and the energy density of matter

$`\rho _B`$ $`=`$ $`dP/d\mu _B,`$ (5)
$`ϵ`$ $`=`$ $`\mu _B\rho _BP.`$ (6)
The energy per baryon is equal to $`E/B=ϵ/\rho _B`$ .

### 2.2 The chiral hadron model

Although the Lagrangian (1) leads to very good description of nuclear phenomenology it has one principal defect. Namely, it does not respect chiral symmetry of strong interaction. It is commonly accepted that this symmetry is spontaneously broken in vacuum and can be restored at high density and temperature. In recent years there were several attempts to incorporate this symmetry into the RMF framework. It turned out that most easily this can be achieved  by introducing an additional scalar (dilaton) field $`\chi `$ responsible for the trace anomaly of QCD. For our analysis we have chosen the Chiral Hadron Model (CHM) developed in Ref. . Below we use the version of the CHM, given by the parameter set C1 in Ref. . As compared to the NLZ and TM1 models, the CHM includes also a strange scalar field $`\zeta `$. The following parametrization of $`m_N^{}`$ is used instead of (2):

$$m_N^{}=g_\sigma \sigma +g_\zeta .$$
(7)
The scalar potential $`U_s`$ is parametrized as a fourth-order polynomial in $`\sigma ,\zeta `$ and $`\chi `$. Its parameters are tuned to reproduce the pattern of spontaneous symmetry breaking at low densities. In addition there appear logarithmic terms, $`\chi ^4\mathrm{log}\chi ^4`$ and $`\chi ^4\mathrm{log}(\sigma ^2\zeta )`$, motivated by the trace anomaly. As shown in Ref.  the CHM gives satisfactory description of nuclear matter and finite nuclei.

### 2.3 The variational chain model

The VCM  is a microscopic approach where the interaction between nucleons is describes in terms of two and three body forces. The Hamiltonian is written in the form

$$=\underset{i}{}\frac{1}{4}\left(\frac{1}{m_p}+\frac{1}{m_n}\right)\mathrm{\Delta }_i+\underset{i<j}{}(v_{ij}+\delta v_{ij})+\underset{i<j<k}{}v_{ijk}.$$
(8)
Here the first term gives non–relativistic kinetic energy of nucleons. The NN interaction terms $`v_{ij}`$ are chosen in the form of the Argonne potential with parameters fitted to reproduce the NN scattering phases up to the c.m. energy 300 MeV. The terms $`\delta v_{ij}`$ denote relativistic (Lorentz–boost) corrections up to the second order in the NN pair momentum. The 3N interaction terms $`v_{ijk}`$ are taken in the Urbana UIX form with parameters which correctly reproduce binding energies of lightest ($`A4`$) nuclei. The calculations are carried out by applying the variational Monte Carlo method and the chain summation technique . Besides properties of finite nuclei, pressure and energy density of nuclear matter are calculated at various nucleon densities and neutron to proton ratios.

### 2.4 Comparison of model predictions

In Figs. 15 we compare pressure and binding energy of cold isospin–symmetric baryonic matter calculated within the above four models. Figure 1 shows predictions for energy per baryon as a function of $`\rho _B`$ . All models give nearly the same results at densities $`\rho _B\rho _0`$ . At higher densities the CHM, VCM, and the TM1 model are not far from each other, unlike the NLZ model which seems to overestimate significantly the energy per baryon at $`\rho _B3\rho _0`$222 One should regard the results of effective hadronic models at $`\rho _B>>\rho _0`$ with caution due to the lack of available information concerning EOS at such densities. .

Figure 2 shows pressure as a function of baryon chemical potential. The discrepancy between different hadronic models becomes especially evident at $`\mu _Bm_N200`$ MeV. One can see that the results of the NLZ model strongly deviate from the predictions of other models. Apparently, this is due to overestimation of vector repulsion within the NLZ model. On the other hand, the CHM, VCM, and the TM1 model give similar results at $`\mu _B1.5`$ GeV. All hadronic models predict the first order phase transition of the liquid–gas type at $`\mu _Bm_N`$ which corresponds to baryon densities $`\rho _B\rho _0`$. This is clear from Fig. 3 where pressure is shown at a finer scale. For example, in the case of the VCM the parts AB, BC, and AC of the pressure curve are unstable with respect to decomposition of matter into the dilute ($`i=1`$) and dense ($`i=2`$) phases. According to the Gibbs rules for coexisting phases

$`P^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`P^{(2)},`$ (9)
$`\mu _B^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`\mu _B^{(2)}.`$ (10)
The phase transition points at $`T=0`$ are given by intersection of different branches of pressure as a function of chemical potential 333 When analyzing EOS in the $`\mu _BP`$ plane one should bear in mind that lower branches of pressure correspond to metastable or unstable states. . For example, point A in Fig. 3 is the phase transition point in the case of the VCM.

According to Eq. (5), the density jump in the first order phase transition, $`\rho _B^{(2)}\rho _B^{(1)}`$ is equal to the difference of slopes $`dP/d\mu _B`$ at $`\mu _B\mu _c\pm 0`$ where $`\mu _c`$ (the phase transition point) is the solution of Eq. (9). The equivalent criterion of the first order phase transition is the so–called ”double tangent construction” for energy density as a function of baryon density. Indeed, by using thermodynamic identities (5)–(6) one can rewrite Eqs. (9)–(10) in the form

$$\frac{ϵ^{(2)}ϵ^{(1)}}{\rho _B^{(2)}\rho _B^{(1)}}=\frac{dϵ^{(1)}}{d\rho _B}=\frac{dϵ^{(2)}}{d\rho _B}.$$
(11)
Below the conditions (9)–(10) and (11) will be used for investigating the possibility and estimating parameters of the deconfinement transition by comparing pressures of hadronic ($`i=1`$) and quark ($`i=2`$) phases.

Four hadronic models considered in this paper predict essentially different behavior of the baryon density with raising $`\mu _B`$ . This is shown in Fig. 4. Again, one can see strong deviation of the NLZ results from the predictions of other hadronic models. Figure 5 shows pressure isotherms as functions of $`\rho _B`$. It is clearly seen that the NLZ model predicts the ”hardest” EOS. Indeed, at intermediate densities $`\rho _B(1.54)\rho _0`$ this model predicts the highest compressibility i.e. the largest derivative $`dP/d\rho _B`$. The NLZ model gives also the largest pressure at given $`\rho _B`$ . On the other hand, the $`P(\mu _B)`$ curve predicted by this model is lower as compared to other models (see Fig. 2). Apparently, this difference is caused by the vector repulsion which is especially large in the NLZ model.

An important characteristic of nuclear matter is the in–medium nucleon mass $`m_N^{}`$ . Experiments on inelastic electron–nucleus scattering show that at $`\rho _B\rho _0`$ , this mass is lowered to about $`0.7m_N`$ . By solving the gap equations (2), (7) one can calculate the $`\rho _B`$ dependence of $`m_N^{}`$ within the CHM as well as in the TM1 and NLZ models. The results are shown in Fig. 6. All the models predict a rapid drop of $`m_N^{}`$ at $`\rho _B2\rho _0`$ and much slower decrease at higher densities. This behavior shows the tendency towards restoration of chiral symmetry at high $`\rho _B`$ .

Having in mind that predictions of the NLZ model at high densities strongly deviate from the results of other models, below we use only the CHM, VCM, and the TM1 model for the comparison with quark models.

## 3 Deconfined phase

### 3.1 The bag model

The simplest description of deconfined phase is given by the MIT bag model (BM). Within this model pressure of homogeneous nonstrange quark matter at zero temperature is expressed as

$$P=P_0(\mu )B,$$
(12)
where $`\mu =\mu _B/3`$ is the chemical potential of light quarks, $`B`$ is the bag constant and

$$P_0(\mu )=\frac{N_f\mu ^4}{4\pi ^2}$$
(13)
is pressure of ideal gas of massless quarks with $`N_f`$ flavors. Below we assume that only light $`u,d`$ quarks are present, i.e. $`N_f=2`$. We consider the simplest version of the BM neglecting perturbative corrections due to the color–magnetic interaction. Thus, the only nonperturbative aspect of the model is associated with the bag constant $`B`$. The BM has been widely used for modelling a phase transition from the baryon–free hadron matter into the quark–gluon plasma at nonzero temperature. The critical temperature $`T_c`$ for this transition is determined not only by the bag constant but also by the numbers of active degrees of freedom in respective phases. Reasonable values, $`T_c160`$ MeV, are obtained  with $`B^{1/4}200`$ MeV. The calculations below are made for $`B^{1/4}`$=145, 165 and 200 MeV.

In Figs. 79 we compare the EOS predicted by the hadronic models (VCM, CHM and TM1) and the BM for different values of $`B`$ . Figure 7 shows energy per baryon as a function of baryon density. It is clear that small values of bag constant, $`B^{1/4}150`$ MeV, are unrealistic because in this case quark matter would be more stable at $`\rho _B\rho _0`$ than cold nuclear matter. Due to this reason, below we consider only two values of bag constant corresponding to $`B^{1/4}=165`$ and $`200`$ MeV.

Figure 8 shows pressure as a function of chemical potential calculated for the same models. From this figure one can see that at $`B^{1/4}=165`$ and 200 MeV the transition from the hadronic to the quark phase is possible only for the VCM and the TM1 model. Filled symbols in Fig. 8 mark points of intersection between respective pressure curves. By using the Gibbs rules (9)–(10) it is possible to calculate parameters of the

quark–hadron mixed phase predicted by these models. The results of such calculation are summarized in Table 2. A more detailed information on the resulting EOS with the hadron–quark phase transition is given by Fig. 9. However, the calculations show that the phase transition occurs at rather large values of $`\mu _B`$ and $`\rho _B`$, in the region where applicability of hadronic models is questionable.

### 3.2 The massive quasiparticle model

A more realistic model of the quark phase, the MQM, has been proposed in Refs. . The case of hot baryon–free matter has been studied in Ref. . In Ref.  a similar model was formulated to study the EOS of quark matter at $`T=0,\mu 0`$444 It should be noted that the dependence of strong coupling constant on $`\mu `$ was disregarded in Ref. . . Within the MQM it is assumed that cold quark matter may be regarded as an ideal gas of quarks with nonzero effective mass $`m=m(\mu )`$. Arguments in favor of this picture follow from calculations based on the hard thermal loop resummation technique developed in Refs. . In the case of hot baryon–free matter it was possible to reproduce lattice results by using only leading order diagrams for quark and gluon self–energies. On the other hand, at small strong coupling constant, $`\alpha _s=g^2/4\pi `$ , one obtains results consistent with the perturbation theory up to the $`\alpha _s^2`$ order. The case of cold quark matter has been recently studied  within the hard density loop resummation technique. It was shown that dependence of pressure on quark chemical potential can be well approximated by treating quarks as ideal gas of massive quasiparticles. However, the analytic formula $`P=P_{\mathrm{id}}(m,\mu )`$ suggested in Ref.  is thermodynamically inconsistent in the case when $`m(\mu )\text{const}`$ (see below).

As shown in Refs. , at large enough 3–momenta the dispersion relation for quarks can be interpreted in terms of quasiparticles with nonzero effective mass $`m`$ . In the leading order in $`\alpha _s`$ this mass can be expressed as

$$m=\sqrt{\frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}\mu .$$
(14)
One should have in mind that at small values of $`\mu `$ corresponding to $`\alpha _s1`$ (see below) the applicability of Eq. (14) becomes questionable.

In our calculations we use the three–loop expression  for the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s=g^2/4\pi `$ as function of the renormalization scale $`Q`$

$$\alpha _s(Q)=\frac{4\pi }{\beta _0L}\left\{1\frac{2\beta _1}{\beta _0^2}\frac{\mathrm{log}L}{L}+\frac{4\beta _1^2}{\beta _0^4L^2}\left[(L1/2)^2+\frac{\beta _0\beta _2}{8\beta _1^2}\frac{5}{4}\right]\right\}.$$
(15)
Here $`L=\mathrm{log}(Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$ and

$`\beta _0=112N_f/3,\beta _1=5119N_f/3,`$
$`\beta _2=28575033N_f/9+325N_f^2/27.`$ (16)
The cutoff momentum $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is fixed by the condition $`\alpha _s(2\mathrm{GeV})=0.3089`$ , which gives $`\mathrm{\Lambda }0.4178`$ GeV for $`N_f=2`$. From dimensionality arguments it is clear that $`Q\mu `$ . As in Refs. , it is assumed that $`Q=\gamma \mu `$ where the coefficient $`\gamma `$ is of the order of unity and does not depend on $`\mu `$ . At fixed $`\gamma `$ physical values of $`\mu `$ correspond to $`Q>\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ .

Further it is postulated that the density of quark matter equals to the density of ideal gas of massive fermions

$$\rho =3\rho _B=\rho _{\mathrm{id}}(\mu )\frac{N_f}{\pi ^2}\left(\mu ^2m^2\right)^{3/2}\mathrm{\Theta }(\mu m),$$
(17)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)(1+\mathrm{sgn}x)/2`$ . Thus, the quark density vanishes at $`\mu m`$. This condition is satisfied at $`\mu \mu _c`$ where $`\mu _c`$ is the critical chemical potential determined from Eq. (14) with $`m=\mu `$ . The latter condition is equivalent to $`\alpha _s=3\pi /2`$ . The calculation shows that $`\mu _c0.5974/\gamma `$ GeV for $`N_f=2`$ .

Figs. 1011 show $`\alpha _s`$ and $`m`$ as functions of baryon chemical potential $`\mu _B=3\mu `$ for several values of the parameter $`\gamma `$. The shaded region in Fig. 11 corresponds to the domain where $`m>\mu `$ . It is seen that quark masses are very sensitive to the choice of $`\gamma `$. At large $`\mu _B`$ quark masses increase, although slower than $`\mu _B`$ . As discussed in Ref. , the existence of nonzero quark mass does not contradict to the restoration of chiral symmetry at large $`\mu _B`$ .

Using Eq. (17) and thermodynamic identity (5) one can calculate pressure as a function of $`\mu `$ :

$$P=\underset{\mu _c}{\overset{\mu }{}}\text{d}\mu _1\rho _{\mathrm{id}}(\mu _1).$$
(18)
Here we assume that $`P(\mu _c)=0`$ , i.e. pressure is zero at vanishing quark density. If one would replace $`m(\mu _1)`$ in the integrand $`\rho _{\mathrm{id}}`$ by the ”constant” mass $`m(\mu )`$ , one would obtain the well–known expression  for pressure of ideal gas $`P_{\mathrm{id}}`$. However, as shown in Ref. , the approximation $`P=P_{\mathrm{id}}`$ is thermodynamically inconsistent when masses depend on $`T`$ or $`\mu _B`$ . In particular, Eq. (5) does not hold in this case. The thermodynamic consistency can be recovered by introducing the effective bag constant $`B(\mu )=P_{\mathrm{id}}P`$ .

Figure 12 shows thermodynamic quantities calculated within the MQM by using Eqs. (17)–(18), (6). Density, pressure and energy density are shown as functions of the dimensionless variable $`\mu /\mu _c`$ . All quantities are given as ratios to their respective limits for massless quarks ($`P_{SB}=ϵ_{SB}/3=P_0(\mu )`$). In this representation the results do not depend on $`\gamma `$ . In Fig. 12 we also demonstrate inaccuracy of the approximation $`P=P_{\mathrm{id}}`$ used in Ref. . It is seen that $`B(\mu )`$ is typically of order $`0.1P_{\mathrm{id}}`$ and changes sign at $`\mu 2\mu _c`$ .

Energy per baryon and pressure calculated within the MQM are compared with predictions of hadronic models in Figs. 1314. Unlike the BM, in this model the energy per baryon increases monotonically with $`\rho _B`$, even at low densities. According to Fig. 13, the MQM with $`\gamma >2`$ is unrealistic since in this case the quark matter would be energetically more favorable at $`\rho _B\rho _0`$ than normal nuclear matter.

According to Fig. 14 at $`1.5\gamma 2`$ the MQM pressure curve intersects only with curves predicted by the VCM and the TM1 model. Parameters of possible phase transitions are given in Table 3. One can see that quark phase appears only at rather high baryonic densities, namely, at $`\rho _B>\rho _B^{(1)}6\rho _0`$ . At $`\gamma 1`$ there are no intersections of hadronic and quark branches, at least at not too large $`\mu _B`$.

We have also checked sensitivity of the results to the choice of $`N_f`$ in the QCD coupling constant. The calculation has been made using $`N_f=3`$ in Eqs. (15)–(16), but retaining $`N_f=2`$ (only $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks) in thermodynamic quantities. This leads to a slight increase of $`P(\mu _B)`$ that lowers the phase transition density by not more than 10%.

### 3.3 The Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model

The NJL model  is one of the most popular models dealing with constituent quarks. There are several advantages of the NJL model compared to other models considered above. First, it respects chiral symmetry of strong interactions, second, it explicitly takes into account negative energy (Dirac sea) states, and third, it describes well meson phenomenology. Different versions of this model have been extensively used to describe the EOS of equilibrium and nonequilibrium quark matter at finite $`T`$ and $`\mu _B`$ .

Here we use results of our calculations  within the SU(3)–flavor version of the model suggested in Ref. , but with an additional term due to vector–axial-vector interaction. The color-singlet part of the Lagrangian in the mean field approximation can be written as

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{f}{}}\overline{\psi }_f(i/m_f\gamma _0G_V\rho _{Vf})\psi _f{\displaystyle \frac{G_S}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{f}{}}\rho _{Sf}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}`$ (19)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_V}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{f}{}}\rho _{Vf}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+4K{\displaystyle \underset{f}{}}\rho _{Sf}.`$
Here $`\psi _f`$ is the field operator of quarks with flavor $`f=u,d,s`$ and

$`\rho _{Sf}`$ $`=`$ $`<\overline{\psi }_f\psi _f>,`$ (20)
$`\rho _{Vf}`$ $`=`$ $`<\overline{\psi }_f\gamma _0\psi _f>`$ (21)
are their scalar and vector densities. Angular brackets in Eqs. (20)–(21) denote quantum–statistical averaging. $`G_S`$, $`G_V`$ and $`K`$ in Eq. (19) are, respectively, the coupling constants of scalar, vector and flavor–mixing interactions.

The constituent quark masses, $`m_f`$, are determined from the coupled set of gap equations

$$m_f=m_{0f}G_S\rho _{Sf}+2K\underset{f^{}f}{}\rho _{Sf^{}},$$
(22)
where $`m_{0f}`$ is the bare (current) mass of quarks with flavor $`f`$ .

The NJL model is an effective, non–renormalizable model. To regularize the divergent contribution of negative energy states of the Dirac sea, one must introduce an ultraviolet cut–off. Below the 3–momentum cut–off $`\mathrm{\Theta }(\mathrm{\Lambda }p)`$ is used in divergent integrals. The model parameters $`m_{0f},G_S,K,\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ can be fixed by reproducing the observed masses of $`\pi ,K`$ , and $`\eta ^{}`$ mesons as well as the pion decay constant. As shown in Ref. , a reasonable fit is achieved with the following input parameters:

$`m_{0u}=m_{0d}`$ $`=`$ $`5.5\mathrm{MeV},m_{0s}=140.7\mathrm{MeV},`$ (23)
$`G_S=20.23\mathrm{GeV}^2,`$ $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.6023\mathrm{GeV},K=155.9\mathrm{GeV}^5.`$ (24)
In principle, the vector coupling constant may be extracted by fitting the nucleon axial charge or masses of vector mesons. It was shown  that the ratio $`\xi =G_V/G_S`$ should be of the order of unity. However, as discussed in Ref. , the accuracy of such fitting procedure is rather low. Due to uncertainty in the parameter $`G_V`$ , below we present results for various values of $`\xi `$ from the interval $`0\xi 1`$ .

Let us consider cold isospin–symmetric nonstrange matter with baryon density $`\rho _B`$ . In this case $`\rho _{Vs}=0,\rho _{Vu}=\rho _{Vd}=3\rho _B/2`$ . The energy density $`ϵ`$ can be calculated directly from the Lagrangian (19) with the result

$$ϵ=\underset{f}{}\left[ϵ_{Kf}+\frac{G_S}{2}\rho _{Sf}^2+\frac{G_V}{2}\rho _{Vf}^2\right]4K\underset{f}{}\rho _{Sf}+ϵ_0.$$
(25)
Here $`ϵ_{Kf}`$ is the kinetic term which includes also ”active” negative energy states with momenta $`p<\mathrm{\Lambda }`$:

$$ϵ_{Kf}=\frac{3}{\pi ^2}\underset{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\overset{p_{Ff}}{}}\text{d}pp^2\sqrt{m_f^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+p^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}},$$
(26)
where $`p_{Ff}=(\pi ^2\rho _{Vf}/3)^{1/3}`$ is the $`f`$–quark Fermi–momentum. Scalar densities can be calculated by using the relation

$$\rho _{Sf}=\left(\frac{ϵ_{Kf}}{m_f}\right)_{p_{Ff}}.$$
(27)
The constant $`ϵ_0`$ in the l.h.s. of Eq. (25) is introduced in order to set the energy density of the physical vacuum equal to zero. This constant can be calculated by solving the gap equations (22) for the vacuum case, $`\rho _B=0`$ . Finally, pressure can be found by using thermodynamic identities $`\mu _B=dϵ/d\rho _B`$ and $`P=\mu _B\rho _Bϵ`$ .

The results of calculations are shown in Figs. 1518 for three values (0, 0.5, 1.0) of the parameter $`\xi `$ . Figs. 1516 show the comparison of the MQM and NJL model. It is seen that the discrepancy between their results is especially large in the case $`\gamma =1`$ . Unlike the MQM, the NJL model predicts metastable states of quark matter corresponding to local minima in $`E/B`$ as function of $`\rho _B`$ . However, such states exist only at $`\xi 0.1`$555 As shown in Refs. , they appear in strange matter even at larger $`\xi `$. .

In Figs. 1718 we compare EOS predicted by the NJL and hadronic models. As seen in Fig. 18 the hadron–quark phase transition may take place only at small $`\xi `$ which, most likely, are not realistic. For larger $`\xi `$ the repulsive vector interaction makes the NJL phase too stiff to cross any of the hadronic curves. The phase transition parameters for $`\xi =0`$ are given in Table 4. Again the transition to quark matter is possible only from the TM1 and VCM hadronic phases and predicted critical densities are above $`5\rho _0`$.

At $`\xi <0.71`$ the pressure isotherms calculated within the NJL model contain unstable parts in the region $`\mu _B11.2`$ GeV  . This means that this model itself predicts the first-order chiral phase transition in the quark matter. However, corresponding parts of pressure isotherms lie below the hadronic curves. Therefore, such a phase transition is not observable due to the hadronization of quark phase. This situation is quite general: many phase transitions found within different quark models are predicted in regions of the $`\mu _BP`$ plane where quark phase is unstable with respect to hadronization.

## 4 Conclusions and outlook

Our goal in this paper was to find possible phase transition between hadronic and quark phases of strongly interacting matter at high baryon density. For each of the phases we have selected several models which are widely discussed in the literature. Namely, we have considered the CHM, VCM, and RFM models for the hadronic phase, and the BM, MQM, and NJL model for the quark phase. When necessary, we have varied model parameters in reasonable limits to determine possible range of uncertainty. For each model we have calculated main thermodynamic quantities, in particular, pressure as a function of baryon chemical potential, $`P(\mu _B)`$ . Possibility of a deconfinement phase transition is signalled by an intersection of $`P(\mu _B)`$ curves corresponding to the hadronic and quark phases.

A pairwise comparison of different hadronic and quark models has shown that such an intersection is not at all a general feature but rather an exception. For instance, the CHM, which is probably the most advanced hadronic model at present, does not predict a phase transition with any of quark models. Also, no phase transition is predicted when most realistic parameters are used in quark models ($`B^{1/4}200`$ MeV in the BM, $`\gamma 1`$ in the MQM, or $`\xi 0.5`$ in the NJL model). Even in the cases when a phase transition is possible, e.g. between the TM1 model and the BM, or between the VCM and BM, characteristics of mixed phase are very sensitive to model parameters. Moreover, this phase transition is predicted at such a high density, above $`5\rho _0`$ where predictions of hadronic models are very unreliable. The situation with quark models is even worse. First, it is unclear at all how far down in density one can use these models. Second, the predictions of various quark models differ significantly in the region of moderately high baryon densities of interest here. Of course, due to the asymptotic freedom of QCD the quark phase must approach asymptotically the ideal gas limit. However, it is unclear at present when such asymptotic behavior sets in.

In this paper we have considered only isospin–symmetric matter, but we think that similar conclusions can be made also for $`\beta `$–equilibrium neutron star matter. For example, the comparison of EOS predicted by the CHM and NJL model (for details see Ref. ) does not show any phase transition between hadronic and quark phases.

As has been demonstrated in this paper, some phase transitions found in the QCD motivated models, e.g. the chiral transition within the NJL model, occupy regions of the $`\mu _BP`$ plane where quark phases are unstable with respect to hadronization. We expect that similar situation takes place also for color-superconducting phases of quark matter , although this question deserves a special study.

We should conclude that after more than 30 years of model building in both the hadronic and quark sectors the situation regarding a hadron–quark phase transition and EOS at high baryon densities remains rather uncertain. We believe that progress in this field can be achieved by developing new class of models where both the hadronic and quark degrees of freedom are treated within a unified theoretical framework. Attempts to construct such a model were made in Refs. . Such unified approach should include constraints from nuclear physics (existence of the nuclear bound state) and QCD (chiral symmetry, asymptotic freedom). It is quite possible that the transition from hadronic to quark degrees of freedom will be continuous , like ionization in atomic systems . Indications of such behavior are found in recent lattice calculations . All this means that the problem of hadron–quark transition at high baryon densities remains a challenge for theorists.

## Acknowledgments

The authors thank P.J. Ellis and D.H. Rischke for fruitful discussions. I.N.M. and L.M.S. acknowledge financial support from DAAD and GSI, Germany. This work has been partially supported by the RFBR Grant No. 00–15–96590.


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# Experimental Investigation of the Robustness of Partially Entangled Photons over 11km

## Abstract

We experimentally investigate the robustness of maximal and non-maximal Time-Bin entangled photons over distances up to 11 km. The entanglement is determined by controllable parameters and in all cases is shown to be robust, in that the photons maintain their degree of entanglement after transmission.

Quantum communication and quantum networks are only part of a much larger field now of Quantum Information Science Nielsen00a . At the heart of many of these associated endeavours is entanglement Tittel01a . Entangled states also play an essential role with respect to the fundamental nature of the microscopic world as investigated in tests of Bell inequalities Einstein35 ; Bell64 ; Aspect82 ; Tittel98 ; Weihs98 . Beyond the mere existence of entanglement, quantum communication schemes like quantum cryptography Eckert91 ; Gisin02a  and teleportation Bennett93a ; Bouwmeester97a ; Rome98a ; Shih01a  have been developed to utilise what has become known as this quantum resource, entanglement. Schemes using photonic quantum channels that connect distant nodes of a quantum network Cirac97a  or for quantum repeaters Breigel98a  rely on the possibility to broadcast entanglement over significant distances.

An important aspect which has received little attention from an experimental perspective is that information may need to be encoded in possibly unknown states of arbitrary degrees of entanglement. At a fundamental level, we expect that the entanglement should be robust whether the state is maximally entangled or not. Depending on the decohering environment this may not be the case. At some intuitive level however, we may be inclined to believe that due to their inherent symmetry, maximally entangled states are more robust against decoherence than non-maximal ones. We will consider a state to be robust if, when it is detected, the initial entanglement is unchanged over the length of the transmission.

We have previously shown that maximally entangled Energy-Time photons are robust enough to violate a Bell inequality between analysers 10 km apart Tittel98 . In this letter, we now investigate the robustness of partially, and maximally, entangled Time-Bin Qubits, when transmitted over long optical fibers, along the way providing the necessary basis for distribution of arbitrary states.

Entangled time-bin photons (entangled qubits) Brendel99a  can be created using the experimental setup pictured in Fig.(1). A coherent superposition of two classical pump pulses is generated, from a single diode laser pulse, after passing through a Bulk optics Michelson interferometer with a large path-length difference. The laser produces pulses of less than 100 ps width at a frequency of 80 MHz with a wavelength of 657 nm. In this scheme the pulse duration must be short compared to the travel time difference of the pump interferometer, 1.2 ns in our case. The two pulses then undergo spontaneous parametric downconversion in a Periodically Poled Lithium-Niobate (PPLN) waveguide Tanzilli01a ; Tanzilli01b  producing pairs of entangled photon at 1314 nm wavelength, convenient for fibre telecommunication. At these wavelengths the detection is obtained via passively quenched germanium avalanche photodiodes, operated in Geiger mode and cooled to 77 K. Depending on the amplitudes of the two classical pulses and the relative phase, one can create maximally and non-maximally entangled states of the form

$$|\psi =\alpha |1,0;1,0_{AB}+\beta e^{i\varphi _P}|0,1;0,1_{AB}$$
(1)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are real and $`\alpha ^2+\beta ^2=1`$, due to normalisation. Our notation represents, in the case of a state like $`|n,0;0,m`$, that $`n`$ photons are in the first time-bin for $`A`$ and that $`m`$ photons are in the second time-bin for $`B`$. The time difference is obtained as a result of the photons having taken either the short or long arms of the Bulk, or ”Pump”, interferometer, and $`\varphi _P`$ is the resulting relative phase. For equal amplitudes, $`\alpha =\beta `$, the state is maximally entangled, and when $`\varphi _P`$=0, Eq.(1) corresponds to the maximally entangled Bell state $`|\varphi ^+`$.

After passing through the second (fibre) interferometer the state can be described by:

$`|\psi ^{}=\alpha |1,0,0;1,0,0_{AB}+\alpha e^{2i\varphi _I}|0,1,0;0,1,0_{AB}`$
$`+\beta e^{i\varphi _P}|0,1,0;0,1,0_{AB}+\beta e^{i(2\varphi _I\varphi _P)}|0,0,1;0,0,1_{AB}.`$ (2)
The resulting double coincidences for the pump and A (and the pump and B) from this state correspond to the three peaks of the coincidence histogram, as depicted at the bottom of Fig.(1). The two middle terms of this state interfere with respect to the amplitudes and phases of our initial entangled state in the central time bin. We can distinguish the first and last terms in Eq.(2) via the pump timing information. Thus, conditioning the detection on events in both middle peaks by making a triple coincidence corresponds to a projective measurement onto the state of Eq.(1).

In this experiment we are not concerned with questions of non-locality but simply with the robustness of the Time-Bin entangled states. As such we primarily utilise a ”Franson Replié” arrangement which utilises only one analyser interferometer as depicted in Fig.(1). This arrangement can be thought of as having used the symmetry of the standard Franson interferometer setup Franson89a  and folded it in half so both interferometers were on top of each other in a sense. After the 11 km of fibre (on a spool) a circulator is placed at one port of the interferometer allowing us to both input and detect. The other detector operates normally on the other port. Coincidences correspond to both photons taking the short or the long paths together as opposed to doing it in independent interferometers. Whilst we believe that the correlations will be the same, whether we use one or two interferometers, we will give some results with respect to an experimental arrangement with two interferometers so that each photon travels over an independent 2.4 km length of fibre. This is done by placing a 2x2 fibre coupler (beamsplitter) after the PPLN waveguide in Fig.(1), connected to the two fibres, each with an interferometer, where detection is made on one output of each.

During transmission these pure states can in general suffer from environment induced phase as well as from bit flips. Bit flips can happen if the broadening of the photon (in time space), due to chromatic dispersion effects in fibers, is such that the amplitude initially located in one time bin starts overlapping with the one in the other time bin. ie the three peaks at the bottom of Fig.(1) merge together. This reduces our ability to discriminate between them, and hence we loose information. This can be prevented in several ways: we already produce our entangled photons centered at telecommunication wavelength of 1.3 $`\mu `$m where chromatic dispersion is zero, thus reducing the susceptibility to dispersion. We can improve this non-locally by using the right choice of wavelength determined by the dispersion curve of the fibers, in the same way that it is done for energy-time entangled states Franson92a ; Tittel99a . However, note that the compensation will be less perfect as the energy correlation between the entangled qubits is less stringent. Further on, we can utilise interference filters, in our case of 40 nm width, to reduce the spectral width of the photons, leading to a less pronounced spread of the pulse during a given transmission distance. And finally, we can increase the separation between the time bins, but this would make the interferometers larger and less stable and render the qubits more vulnerable to phase errors during transmission.

Phase errors generally arise as a result of some random variation between the two time bins but this is negligible in our case, at least as far as transmission is concerned. With 1.2 ns separation between time bins there would need to be very high (GHz) frequency noise in order to produce a phase flip. Our main phase error arises during creation and detection of ensembles of photons over extended periods of time. This requires that the interferometers have the same path-length difference for the entire time that we prepare and measure a particular state. This will be discussed further as we discuss our states.

If we are going to generate non-maximally entangled states, then an important question is: how can we characterise them? Firstly we can restrict our attention to pure states of the form of Eq.(1), as we post-select the final state. Now, given the state in Eq.(2), the probability of coincidence in the central time-bin is given by,

$`P_c=0.5[\alpha ^2+\beta ^2+2\alpha \beta cos(\varphi )].`$ (3)
We see that the probability of a coincidence detection varies with the phase, $`\varphi =2\varphi _I\varphi _P`$. Therefore, by varying the phase, we can scan through maximum and minimum probabilities corresponding to regimes of maximum constructive and destructive interference and thus determine the Visibility which is given by,

$`V=2\alpha \beta .`$ (4)
Our fibre interferometers are thermally stabilised and the phase is varied by changing the temperature of the interferometer.

In Fig.(2) we see the results of this approach using the experimental setup in Fig.(1) with 11 km of fibre. Depicted are the nett count rates after subtraction of accidental coincidences. We will comment on this later. Due to the long distances the signal is reduced and hence we have to count for a longer time, 60 seconds in this instance. The squares denote the number of triple coincidences in each 60 second interval. It is for this 60 second integration time that we have to maintain the stability of the laser to within a fraction of a wavelength to minimise the phase errors discussed previously. The solid line that traces these points is a sinusoidal fit to the data derived from Eq.(3) and allows us to determine the Visibility.

The key here is that the nett Visibility parameterises the entanglement in the final state, as we would expect. Both the bit-flips and phase flips will manifest themselves as a reduction in Visibility and as such we will use this as the experimental measure of our entanglement. With respect to Fig.(2), this analysis returns a value of $`V=94.2\pm 4.8\%`$ after transmitting the maximally entangled state over 11km. The error in this result, $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$, is determined by the numerical uncertainty in the sinusoidal fit to the data.

Table(1) shows the raw Visibility as well as the nett Visibility, which is derived after subtracting the accidental coincidences, for maximally entangled states with both one and two interferometers. We see that although the raw Visibility is less over the longer distances, the nett Visibilities are almost equivalent.

Let us briefly comment on the nature of accidental coincidences. They occur if both events in the coincidence window are triggered by noise. Also, there will be contributions if one photon triggers one detector and noise triggers the other while the photon’s correlated partner is absorbed in the fiber. Thus, the resulting decrease of raw visibility is due to a combination of fiber losses and detector noise. However, since we are interested in the impact of bit and phase flips on the entanglement, we must subtract this source of noise which is well understood and is easily measured.

The other aspect of characterisation is related to generating the non-maximally entangled states. We can quantify the expected entanglement in the state in terms of the Entropy of Entanglement:

$`E=\alpha ^2log_2\alpha ^2(1\alpha ^2)log_2(1\alpha ^2),`$ (5)
where we use the amplitudes of the two pump pulses, appropriately normalised. With this experimental setup non-maximally entangled states can be realised in a controlled manner by varying the attenuation in one of the arms of the pump interferometer so that the classical pulses have unequal magnitudes. In practice we vary the attenuation in both arms so that we have the same mean power before the waveguide.

The results of the measurements of the non-maximally entangled states are given in Fig.(3). The solid line shows the theoretically expected Visibility from Eq.(4) as a function of the Entanglement Eq.(5) as $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are varied. In the experiment we have complete control over the classical amplitudes and these are measured directly at the output of the pump interferometer. After transmission the nett Visibility are obtained from sinusoidal fits described previously. On average, subtraction of the noise improved the raw Visibilities for the 0 distance runs by less than 5% and the 11 km runs by less than 9%. A dashed line corresponding to the theory but scaled to have a maximum Visibility of 95% is also shown. We see that for both the experimental setup as depicted in Fig.(1), with or without 11 km of fibre, and also with one or with two interferometers the results are in good agreement with the theory. Specifically we see that regardless of the initial entanglement or the distance travelled that there is no loss of entanglement over transmission for any of the states.

With our experimental configuration we don’t have access to an absolute phase reference within the system and hence standard tomographic techniques White99a ; James01a ; Thew02a  won’t work. Given that the entanglement could be parameterised by the Visibility and there were no adverse effects due to decoherence, there appears little to be gained by reconstructing the full density matrix for the state.

In this experiment we use a PPLN waveguide which provides a highly efficient generator of entangled photons. A consequence of this high efficiency, conversion rates 4 orders of magnitude higher than obtained with bulk sources Tanzilli01a ; Tanzilli01b , is that when using a pulsed laser the probability of producing multiple photon pairs per pulse can become significant. This has the effect of reducing the Interference Visibility and hence at a more fundamental level the entanglement. This is a critical point especially in experiments of this nature. We ensured that we had the same mean power at the PPLN waveguide throughout these experiments. This was done so that any reduction in the Visibilility was due to decoherence and not due to variation in the rate of production of photon pairs.

A theory describing this behaviour has recently been developed, the details of which will be presented elsewhere Marcikic02a . From this we expect the Visibility to be related inversely to the number of photon pairs produced, $`V=1/n`$. If we also make the assumption that the pairs satisfy a Poissonian distribution, where $`P(n)=\mu ^ne^\mu /n!`$ is the probability of having $`n`$ pairs and $`\mu `$ is the mean number of photon pairs created per pulse, then we can find the following relationship

$`V(\mu )=V_{max}{\displaystyle \frac{e^\mu }{1e^\mu }}{\displaystyle \underset{n1}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^n}{n!n}}.`$ (6)
Here $`V_{max}`$ is a scaling factor to compensate for known factors that reduce the Visibility in a given experiment. From our knowledge of the experimental setup we can relate the measured quantities, the 2 single photon count rates, $`S_1,S_2`$, and the average coincidence count rate, $`R_c`$, to give us an estimate of the mean number of photon pairs, $`\mu _e=S_1S_2/4R_cf`$, where $`f`$ is the frequency of the pulsed laser source. This gives us a measure that not only takes account of collection and detection efficiencies but also losses, which is convenient when working over long distances. We see in Fig.(4) that theory and experiment are in good agreement which allowed us to optimise the power so as to efficiently generate arbitrarily entangled states for transmission.

We have shown that we can generate, in a controlled way, states with arbitrary degrees of entanglement using a pulsed diode laser and a PPLN waveguide. This is very much a new technology under development which holds great promise for integrated quantum optics and hence quantum communication. The main results proved resoundingly that Time-Bin entanglement is robust with transmission distances up to 11 km.

This work was supported by the Swiss NCCR ”Quantum Photonics” and the European QuComm IST projects. W.T. acknowledges funding by the ESF Programme Quantum Information Theory and Quantum Computation (QIT)


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# The physical conditions within dense cold clouds in cooling flows II

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Ferland, Fabian, and Johnstone (1994; hereafter FFJ) computed the thermal and ionization structure of a constant pressure cloud embedded within a cooling flow and exposed to radiation from the cooling flow and the cosmic background. By hypothesis the cloud was taken to be free of dust grains. FFJ also computed a conventional dusty Orion PDR model as an appendix. FFJ tried to identify the most important physical processes affecting the state of the gas. Any cloud will cool down to the temperature of the cosmic background once it is sufficiently shielded from other sources of radiation. In their calculation they found this occurred after a hydrogen column density of $`4\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$.

Several papers have questioned this result, mainly working by analogy with galactic molecular clouds (Voit & Donahue 1995, hereafter VD; O’Dea et al 1994; Braine et al 1995; Henkel & Wiklind 1997). Here we reconsider the FFJ calculation and go over some details that may have caused confusion. Any numerical simulation of a non-equilibrium plasma is the result of a balance between a host of microphysical processes. Many of these processes are research areas by themselves, and can have substantial uncertainties. In some circumstances the final results may be sensitive to an especially effective creation or destruction mechanism, and in others to dozens or more channels. On top of this there may be fundamental questions such as whether the gas is in steady state.

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate in detail what happens to a cloud which is maintained at a reasonably high pressure ($`10^5\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{K}`$) for billions of yr and at the same time is continuously exposed to X-radiation from the surrounding, pressure-confining medium. In particular we investigate the physical processes for the coldest parts of the cloud, which enable the temperature to be significantly less than 17 K. Small amounts of microturbulence, or grains, cause it to be much colder still. Calculations by Puy, Grenacher & Jetzer (1999) have also found a low final temperature for a fully molecular cloud in a cooling flow.

## 2 What happened in the FFJ model

Several questions have arisen concerning the calculation presented by FFJ: a) why does the cooling function not agree with existing molecular cloud cooling functions, b) does the cooling due to the \[CI\] 370 and 610 $`\mu `$m lines violate fundamental thermodynamic limits, and c) VD point out that the heating efficiencies, taken from Shull and van Steenberg (1985) have been superceded by more recent calculations (Xu & McCray 1991), which do not agree for very low electron fractions.

In this section we use an early version of CLOUDY (C84.09) to recompute the model shown in FFJ to illustrate some of the dominant physics. We believe that this is the version used for that work.

### 2.1 Cooling flow cloud vs molecular cloud cooling functions

The cooling functions computed for molecular clouds by Goldsmith & Langer (1978), used by O’Dea et al (1994) and Braine et al (1995), do not agree with FFJ. In particular, O’Dea et al (1994) predict a temperature of between 30 and 50 K. Examination of the original papers reveals the problem. The FFJ model has no dust which greatly reduces the H2 formation rate. Also carbon remained mostly atomic across the cloud (Fig 2, FFJ). This was due to rapid charge transfer, CO + He$`{}_{}{}^{+}`$ O + C+ \+ He, well known to be the dominant CO destruction process in most environments (Tielens and Hollenbach 1985a). He remains partially ionized due to the low electron density, its large photoelectric cross section at X-ray energies, and significant abundance of suprathermal electrons from X-ray photoionization.

This situation is totally unlike that assumed in calculations of the molecular cloud cooling function. There, cooling due to atomic carbon is assumed to be a minor component. For an environment where C/O $`<`$ 1 little atomic carbon will exist when the gas becomes totally molecular and all C is locked up in CO. The difference between FFJ and molecular cloud cooling functions is the contribution of \[CI\] cooling, which can be intense.

VD present separate curves for the cooling due to CO and \[CI\]; our result agrees with that of VD for neutral atomic gas, i.e. where the major low temperature coolant is \[CI\].

### 2.2 The black body limit to \[CI\] emission

The \[CI\] 370, 610$`\mu `$m lines were especially important coolants in FFJ’s calculation. Their Fig. 3 shows that these lines dominated the cooling beginning from a depth of roughly $`1.5\times 10^{16}\mathrm{cm}`$ ($`3\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) and extend to the point where CO was the dominant coolant. The temperatures over this region were below roughly 15 K. The issue here is whether the emergent intensity of the \[CI\] lines violates fundamental thermodynamic limits.

For a cloud with constant source function $`S_\nu `$, the emergent specific intensity is trivially given by $`I_\nu =S_\nu [1\mathrm{exp}(\tau )].`$ For a thermalized line, for frequencies near the line center $`S_\nu `$ is the Planck function at the excitation temperature, and we obtain the familiar result that the intensity saturates at the black body intensity. The astrophysical flux $`_\nu `$ (Allen 1973; p90) is then $`\pi B_\nu `$ and the one-sided emittance, or energy emitted by a cloud into $`2\pi \mathrm{sr}`$, will be $`\pi B_\nu \delta \nu `$.

FFJ gave the total emittance or total energy emitted by both sides of a cloud into $`4\pi \mathrm{sr}`$. The black body limit, for the plane parallel approximation, is $`2\pi B_\nu \delta \nu `$. For $`\delta \nu `$ we take the full width at half max for the \[CI\] 610 $`\mu `$m line. It has an optical depth of roughly 80, so the line is optically thick to 2.09 times the Doppler core (Elitzur & Ferland 1986).

The cloud computed by FFJ was not isothermal, and it is not possible to determine at what temperatures the emergent \[CI\] 610 $`\mu `$m line was produced, given the figures shown. FFJ did show the fraction of the total cooling carried by the lines, and the lines dominated the cooling at depths between 1.5 and $`5\times 10^{16}\mathrm{cm}`$. It is important to remember that heating and cooling balance one another, and that the heating rate falls drastically across the cloud as the incident continuum is attenuated. The statement that the line is a uniformly major contributor to the cooling between these depths is not equivalent to the statement that these depths are the dominant contributors to the total emittance.

Figs. 1a and 1b show the temperature structure (upper panel) and local emissivity over the regions where the \[CI\] fine structure lines form. The \[CI\] 610 $`\mu `$m line forms predominantly within a narrow region near $`1.4\times 10^{16}\mathrm{cm}`$. The emissivity-weighted mean temperature where the 610$`\mu `$m line is formed is 27.5 K, and the total emittance for a black body at this temperature and line width is $`1.3\times 10^5\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{s}^1`$. The total emittance predicted by FFJ was substantially less at $`2.1\times 10^6\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{s}^1`$.

Although Fig. 1b shows that the emissivity of the 610 $`\mu `$m line has a tail that extends to substantially cooler temperatures we confirm that the emissivity in this line does not exceed the black body limit at any point within the cloud.

We note that the geometry assumed by the CLOUDY code is appropriate for a cloud in the outer parts of a cooling flow (say at 100 kpc radius, which is that assumed by FFJ). The radiation from the cooling flow is incident on one face; the other, cold face, is exposed to deep space and the microwave background. This will be inappropriate for clouds near the centre of the flow. Since they are heated from all sides it is plausible that the inner cores of such clouds are warmer than calculated here and we consider this geometry below. We note that both cold and warm clouds are commonly seen in the central regions of cooling flows.

### 2.3 Revised low-ionization fraction heating efficiencies

In an ionized gas all photoelectrons have their energy converted to thermal energy by rapid elastic collisions with free electrons. In a predominantly neutral gas, X-ray photoelectrons heat, excite, and ionize the gas before they are thermalized. FFJ used Shull & van Steenberg’s (1985)fits to Monte Carlo calculations to take account of these effects. VD point out that the more recent calculations of Xu & McCray (1991) show that these fitting formulae do not have the proper asymptotic limit. This affects regions with electron to hydrogen atom ratios less than $`10^4.`$ Regions of the cloud modelled by FFJ deeper than $`1.5\times 10^{16}\mathrm{cm}`$ (or with a hydrogen column density greater than $`3\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) do have electron fractions smaller than this.

Fig. 2 shows that the effects of changing from the Shull and van Steenberg results to those of Xu and McCray do indeed affect the results by a modest amount, and make the core of the cloud warmer.

## 3 Advances in the microphysics

Any simulation of a non-equilibrium plasma rests on a foundation of a host of microphysical processes. Estimates of rates and cross sections have improved enormously over the past decade, some of which are relevant to the problem addressed here. CLOUDY has been revised to take account of these advances. Version numbers are used to track the changes and the CLOUDY home page http://www.pa.uky.edu/$``$gary/cloudy records them in detail. FFJ used version C84.09 of the code. That version had rates and cross sections that were up-to-date circa 1992. The current version is C96 and every effort has been made to update the entire atomic/molecular database to the best current values (Ferland et al 1998).

As we show below, the physical conditions predicted by the two versions of the code do not agree deep within the cooling flow irradiated cloud. Here we identify the physical processes that have caused the computed conditions to change. We will compare an existing copy of version 84.09 (after correcting for the proper asymptote for the secondary ionizations) to the version of the code now available on the web.

### 3.1 Constant density model

The original FFJ calculation was a constant pressure cloud. This was motivated by the physical situation, visualized as one in which the hot X-ray emitting plasma and the cool clouds are in pressure equilibrium. For this comparison between the two versions we consider constant density clouds to clarify the real differences in the codes. The constant pressure assumption exaggerates differences between similar photoionization models, since minor differences in the thermal structure are magnified by resulting changes in the density and ensuing opacity. Otherwise the initial conditions are identical to FFJ. In particular we will stop both calculations at the same column density, $`\mathrm{log}(N_H)=22.8\mathrm{cm}^2`$. This is the depth at which the temperature predicted by C84.09 fell below 4K.

#### 3.1.1 Conditions at the illuminated face of a cloud

Fig. 3 shows some details of the FFJ standard cloud computed by both C84.09 and the current version. The electron temperatures at the illuminated face differ by significant amounts, with the current version being cooler. Temperature is the result of the balance between heating and cooling. Fig. 3 also shows that the photoelectric heating is nearly the same at the illuminated face.

The differences at the illuminated face are caused by changes in the cooling efficiency of the gas. The biggest change is due to IR lines within the ground term of Fe+. The current version of the code uses collision strengths from Zhang & Pradhan (1995). The \[Si II\] 34 $`\mu `$m line is stronger now; the current version uses the recent collision strengths from Dufton & Kingston (1994). None of these rates were available for C84.09. Changes in the charge transfer data base, especially reactions involving He and He+ (Wang J., Stancil, P., Schultz, D., Rakovic’, M., Kingdon, J.,& Dalgarno, A., 2001, in preparation; http://www-cfadc.phy.ornl.gov/astro/ps/data/), also increased the cooling by changing the ionization of the gas. Fe was predicted to be $`50`$ per cent in the form of Fe+ in the old calculation, while close to 100 per cent of Fe is now predicted to be in the form of Fe+. This further increases \[FeII\] cooling and results in lower temperatures. The result of this increased cooling efficiency is that the gas now equilibrates at a somewhat lower temperature (2700K) than it did in version 84 (6380K). The gas pressure is smaller by the corresponding factor.

The figure also shows that the depth at which the thermal front, where the gas abruptly changes from the warm ($``$4000K) to cool ($`<`$1000K) phases, is also different. This is again due to changes in the details of the cooling function.

#### 3.1.2 Conditions deep within a cloud

Fig. 3 shows that the largest differences occur deep within the cloud. The photoelectric heating is now roughly a factor of two larger, as is the electron density and resulting temperature. These differences are caused by two major improvements in the atomic database.

Fig. 4 shows the local continuum at the shielded face of the cloud. The dashed line is the incident continuum produced by the surrounding cooling flow. The solid line is the continuum predicted by the later code, and the dotted line is that predicted by C84.09. (These continua are in excellent agreement, and the two are often not distinguishable.)

The continuum is strongly absorbed between the atomic carbon edge (11.2 eV) and several keV. Rayleigh scattering provides significant additional shielding for energies longward of Ly$`\alpha `$. The net effect is that the conditions deep within the cloud are determined by gas interactions with both very soft (5-10eV) and very hard ($`>`$ 2keV) radiation.

The entire photoionization cross section database was revised in C90 (Ferland et al 1998). C84.09 used photoionization cross sections computed by Reilman & Manson (1979). The physical assumptions they used were very accurate for highly charged species, but became increasingly approximate for lower charges. The database used in C96 is described by Verner et al. (1996). It uses experimental or Opacity Project (Seaton 1987) cross sections and explicitly gives partial cross sections for each subshell. The Reilman & Manson and the Verner et al. data sets are in good agreement for second and more highly charged ions, and for inner shells of most ions, but are quite different for valence shells of atoms and first ions. A comparison of the opacity between 0.1 and 3 Ryd computed by C84.09 and the later code is shown in Fig. 5.

Deep in the cloud there is actually more power available in reprocessed Balmer continuum radiation than in the attenuated X-ray continuum (Fig. 4). This cloud has a very low level of ionization, and there have been dramatic increases in the photoionization cross sections for neutral atoms and first ions. The valence shell photoionization cross sections for atoms and first ions are now often 0.5 dex to 1.0 dex larger. Fig. 5 shows that the total gas opacity, as determined by these cross sections and the resulting ionization balance, also differs by up to 1 dex. This results in substantially different photoionization rates, photoelectric heating, and electron densities, mainly due to third row elements with small ionization potentials (Na, Si, S, Ca). These species were atomic in the C84.09 solution, but are predicted to be first ions by C96. This accounts for roughly half of the differences between the two calculations.

The remaining differences are largely due to changes in the fluorescent yields and distribution of Auger electrons. Version 84 used the approximate methods outlined by Weisheit & Dalgarno (1972), Weisheit (1974), and Weisheit & Collins (1976). The current version employs the extensive data set of Kaastra & Mewe (1993), combined with detailed subshell photoionization cross sections (Verner et al. 1996). The distribution of Auger electrons ejected for third and fourth row elements is significantly different. The resulting equilibrium is especially sensitive to details of inner shell processes since an exceptionally hard continuum is present at depth (Fig. 4).

The net result is that the gas is more highly ionized with larger photoelectric heating rates. It is unusual for a calculation to change by as much as this one has, because changes in the atomic database tend to be random and so have a small net effect. In this case the changes in the valence shell photoionization cross sections and numbers of Auger electrons have all been in the sense to result in increased ionization and heating, and they have had a major net effect.

### 3.2 Changes to molecules and grains

A major effort has gone into making the grain physics state-of-the-art. The current implementation is described by van Hoof et al. (2001). A built-in Mie code can be used to generate optical properties for any grain constituent, and the grain population can be resolved into any number of size bins. Grain charging, heating, temperature and drift velocity is then computed for each size. Resolving the grain size distribution is crucial since smaller grains tend to be hotter, produce the greatest photoelectric heating of the gas, and so have a profound effect on the spectrum. PAHs and single-photon heating (Guhathakurta & Draine 1989) are also fully treated. The current implementation of the grain physics fully reproduces the results presented by Weingartner & Draine (2001) but with the added advantage of including a self-consistent solution of the physical state of the gas surrounding the grains (radiation field, electron kinetic energy distribution, etc).

The molecule network presently includes H-, H2, H$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$, H$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{3}{}^{}`$, HeH+, OH, OH+, CH, CH+, O2, O$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$, CO, CO+, H2O, H2O+, H3O+, and CH$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$. Reaction rate coefficients are from Hollenbach and McKee (1979; 1989); Tielens and Hollenbach (1985a), Lenzuni, Chernoff, and Salpeter (1991), Wolfire, Tielens, and Hollenbach (1990); Crosas and Weisheit (1993); Puy et al (1993), Maloney, Hollenbach, & Tielens (1996), Hollenbach & Tielens (1999), and the UMIST database (http://www.rate99.co.uk/). The resulting chemistry is in good agreement with standard PDR calculations. The effects of suprathermal electrons are important and treated as in Dalgarno et al (1999).

CO includes both 12C16O and 13C16O using shielding rates from van Dishoeck & Black (1988) and all radiative transfer processes. These molecules are treated as rigid rotators with a complete calculation of the level populations and emission from the ground rotational ladder. Any number of levels can be included; the current calculation includes the lowest 50 levels and uses collision rates from de Jong, Chu, & Dalgarno (1975). The older calculation treated CO rotation cooling using expressions from Hollenbach & McKee (1979). This is crucial for the cloud cores, where CO is the dominant coolant. The current calculations obtain the CO cooling by solving for level populations along the full rotational ladder, including collisional excitation, deexcitation, continuum pumping excitation, and line trapping. This treatment is expected to be more rigorous because it is evaluated at each point for the detailed local conditions and line optical depths for lines along the CO rotational ladder. Tests show that the cooling predicted by the detailed molecule is generally within a factor of three of that predicted by the Hollenbach & McKee approximation. Besides its greater accuracy, another benefit of the complete model molecule is that the full rotation spectrum is predicted. The work of Puy et al 1999 considered the cooling function due to molecules of H2 CO and HD. We have checked and found that the inclusion of the HD molecule has no significant effect on our results.

### 3.3 Constant pressure model

Johnstone, Fabian & Taylor (1998) recalculated the FFJ cold cloud model using C90.04, and found that there existed an extended region in the core of the cloud with a temperature of between $`1317`$K at column densities up to $`4\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (their Fig. 8). In Fig. 6 we show the temperature profiles within the clouds for C84.09 (dashed line) and C96 (solid line). The reasons for the difference in the models between versions are as explained in section 3.1.

## 4 What happens in nature?

### 4.1 Equilibrium timescales

FFJ’s calculations were basically of a conventional photodissociation region (PDR). They presented both a grain-free model of a constant pressure cooling flow cloud and, as an appendix, the dusty Orion blister. The methods and assumptions they used were based on the chemistry that occurs in conventional PDR (Tielens & Hollenbach 1985a,b) and warm shocks (Hollenbach & McKee 1979, 1989). Where comparisons were possible the calculations obtained by FFJ using the then current version of the code CLOUDY were in reasonable agreement with these papers. The assumption that the structure has had time to come into time-steady equilibrium underlies all of this work. FFJ did check that the recombination and thermal timescales were short.

Since that time Draine & Bertoldi (1996) have shown that, even for conventional galactic objects like the Orion PDR, the H2 part of the chemistry is so slow that it may not reach equilibrium (Bertoldi & Draine 1996; Draine & Bertoldi 1996). The basic reason is that for a homonuclear species like H2 direct formation is not possible (there is no dipole moment) and only indirect mechanisms are available. In the case of H2 these include radiative association through H- and catalysis on grain surfaces. For a grain-free environment only the first process is possible.

CLOUDY (C96) now checks timescales for most important parts of the ionization and thermal solutions. Fig. 7 shows some of these timescales for the FFJ cloud. This calculation is of a constant pressure cloud with the density at the illuminated face given in FFJ. Timescales for recombination, thermal equilibrium, and the formation of the important species CO and H2, are shown. All timescales are fast enough for them to reach steady state. At the shielded face of the cloud the longest timescale is that for H2 formation, but even here the timescale of $``$1Gyr is likely fast enough to have reached equilibrium. The major effect of the H2 network being out of equilibrium would be to introduce an uncertainty in the total hydrogen density since the H and H2 fractions are uncertain. H2 has little influence on the thermal balance of the cloud, however.

### 4.2 Dependence on the velocity field

One parameter that strongly affects the results is the local velocity field. The original calculation was of a cloud in pressure equilibrium with its surroundings. Only thermal line broadening was assumed. We have now computed the temperature structure of the constant pressure cloud using C96 and including a microturbulent velocity field of $`1\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. (This is the Alfvén speed of a matter dominated magnetic field which has an energy density of only 0.02 per cent of the thermal energy density at the illuminated face of the cloud. This would be unusually low in the interstellar medium of our galaxy.) The only physical effect of the microturbulence is to desaturate the lines and allow them to cool more efficiently. The dot-dashed line in Fig. 6 shows the temperature profile resulting from this model; temperatures are approximately a factor of two cooler at depth. Since the thermal width for the \[CI\] fine structure lines is only a fraction of a kilometer per second, even modest levels of turbulence make a substantial effect. Most of the core of a realistic, dust-free cloud is therefore below 10 K.

### 4.3 Dependence on the presence of dust

Grains have a dramatic effect on the structure of these clouds. Fabian, Johnstone & Daines (1994) and more recently Johnstone, Fabian, & Taylor (1998) showed the effects of a variety of dust to gas ratios on the temperature profiles of the clouds. We reproduce the model from Johnstone, Fabian & Taylor which included dust at the galactic gas-to-dust ratio as the dotted line in Fig. 6.

In the calculations with dust absent the gas had essentially no opacity in the Balmer continuum. H2 formation proceeded only through the H- route. At depth the radiation field was dominated by reprocessed Balmer continuum radiation. This radiation field dominated the physical conditions there.

In the dusty model the H2 and CO molecular fractions are far larger than in the grain-free case; both approach 100 percent of the H or C abundance. H2 forms more efficiently on grain surfaces, and the added grain opacity shields H2 and CO from photodissociating radiation. The grain opacity peaks at energies near 1 Ryd, so the grains get a significant part of the ionizing radiation field. The biggest effect of this is that the reprocessed Balmer continuum is about a factor of 20 weaker in the dusty case. There is therefore far less heating of the gas at depth and the cloud reaches the background temperature at a column density of just over $`10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The \[SiII\] and \[FeII\] emission lines are predicted to be much weaker than in the non-dusty case due to depletion of these elements on to dust grains.

We have considered the effect that the ambient galaxy starlight has on the structure of our cloud by modelling it as a stellar atmosphere (Kurucz 1991) with $`T_{eff}`$=4500K. We set the stellar flux incident on the cloud by assuming the starlight from the whole galaxy was a point source with an absolute bolometric magnitude of -23, located at a distance of 100kpc from the cloud. There is no discernable difference in the temperature structure of the cloud when this radiation field is included. We note that on smaller scales, in the central regions of cooling flow galaxies, there is evidence for excess blue light which may power the optical emission line regions (Johnstone etal 1987, Allen 1995, Crawford etal 1995).

### 4.4 Cloud irradiated from all sides

As mentioned above, the models we consider are appropriate for condensations in the outer regions of the flow, where diffuse emission from the hot gas strikes only one face of the cloud we model. The shielded face is exposed only to the extragalactic background radiation. The cloud is able to freely radiate in this outer direction, which is also the coldest part of the cloud.

For regions closer to the center of the flow, a cloud will be illuminated from all sides. In this case the most shielded region will be the cloud’s core, which will not be able to radiate very efficiently due to the shielding effects of the surrounding gas. How does this warmer layer of gas affect the core temperature? As VD point out, in the simple case of a cloud cooled only by one optically thick line, the temperature of the core could not fall below that of surrounding warmer layer. Although this is not the situation in the clouds we consider (there are many different coolants, and different coolants operate at different depths; FFJ assumed one-sided illumination), the geometry does occur in parts of the flow.

We did tests to simulate the two-sided illuminated case. In this case the cloud core ”sees” both the part of the layer we model, and also a mirror image that is symmetric about the core. The main effect is that the total line optical depths are twice as large as those to the midplane - at the core the line optical depth is the same in all directions and equal to the optical depth from the illuminated face to the shielded face in the previous calculations.

The predicted structure is shown as the dot-dot-dot-dashed line in Fig. 6. As expected, the clouds are indeed slightly warmer. The main coolant in the core is CO, and Table 1 shows that, although the intensity of the lowest 1-0 transition hardly changes, the higher rotation lines become somewhat brighter. As the lower J lines become more optically thick their upper level population increases, and higher transitions in the rotation ladder carry the cooling. These lines, which are the most efficient coolants, have small optical depths.

### 4.5 A heated cloud with dust

Galactic molecular clouds are not heated by starlight photoionization. Rather a variety of agents, many involing mechanical or magnetic processes, act to sustain the temperature at higher-than-expected levels. Were this to occur in the clouds we computed, the CO would be stronger than we predict.

As a test we recomputed our dusty (zero turbulence) model, but not allowing the temperature to fall below 30 K. The full thermal solution was performed when the equilibrium temperature was found to be above this limit, but a constant 30 K temperature was used for gas that otherwise would have been cooler. The results are given in the last column of Table 1.

The hydrogen lines are fainter due to absorption of the incident continuum by grains, and the Si and Fe lines are fainter due to depletion of these elements on to grains. The CI lines, and especially the CO rotation transitions, are however, stronger. This is due to the warmer temperature in regions where they are formed. Actually the CO lines could increase in intensity, almost without limit, were the cloud column density to be increased (the calculation was stopped at a somewhat arbitrary depth). The important results are the line ratios.

### 4.6 Observational evidence for molecular gas and dust in cooling flows

Until recently, there was little evidence for cold molecular gas in cooling flows. NGC1275 in the centre of the Perseus cluster had been detected (Bridges & Irwin 1998) and many non-detections reported (Grabelsky & Ulmer 1990; McNamara & Jaffe 1992; O’Dea et al 1994; Braine & Dupraz 1994; Henkel & Wiklind 1997). Now CO line emission has been found in the central galaxies of 16 central cluster galaxies (Edge 2001). The molecular gas implied by these detections has a temperature consistent with 20–40 K and masses which range from $`10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$ in the weakest objects to $`10^{11.5}\mathrm{M}_{}`$ in the strongest. More cooler gas could be present; the CO flux predicted by our standard model from a square kpc of our irradiated clouds is less than one per cent of that detected by Edge (2001). Smaller masses of much hotter molecular gas has also been found in cooling flows through vibrational H2 emission (Jaffe & Bremer 1997; Falcke et al 1998; Donahue et al 2000; Jaffe, Bremer & van der Werf 2001; Edge et al 2002; Wilman et al 2002).

Dust too appears to be common in this environment, and is detected either by its effect on emission-line ratios (Hu 1992; Donahue & Voit 1993; Allen et al 1995; Allen 1995; Hansen, Jorgensen & Norgaard-Nielsen 1995; Crawford et al 1999), dust lanes (Sparks, Macchetto & Golombek 1989; McNamara et al 1996; Pinkney et al 1996) or FIR/sub-mm emission (Lester et al 1995; Cox, Bregman & Schombert 1995; Allen et al 2001; Edge 2001; Irwin, Stil & Bridges 2001).

The origin and heating of the molecular gas and grains is currently unknown. They may form from gas cooled from the cooling intracluster medium and be enriched and photoionized by the emissions of massive young stars formed within the cooled clouds, or they may have another source. This uncertainty remains also for the optical nebulosity common in cooling flows. The cold clouds modelled in this paper would only be detectable in emission if they are both dust free and have a covering fraction exceeding 10 per cent over the telescope beam (scaling from the results of Edge 2001). Such a high covering fraction would imply a molecular mass greater than $`10^{11}\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for objects at $`z0.1`$ and the instruments used by Edge (2001). However, part of the emission seen may be due to the clouds modelled here. Detection by absorption would, of course, depend on the covering factor and velocity spread of the cloud population.

### 4.7 The HI 21 cm line

There is atomic hydrogen in our models, suggesting that the clouds might be observed, in absorption or emission, through the HI 21cm line. Indeed a number of detections have been made (see eg Allen 2000 for references).

Lines at radio wavelengths are characterized by their brightness temperatures, which will be nearly equal to the spin temperature of the line at the position where it reaches an optical depth of roughly unity. The clouds we model are quite optically thick in the 21cm line ($`\tau 10^3`$ for the standard cold cloud computed here) so the observed brightness temperature will depend on which side of the cloud is viewed. An observer viewing the cloud from its illuminated face would see a brightness temperature of $`15`$ K, while an observer viewing the shielded side would see a slightly lower temperature, nearer 10 K. Note that these would be the observed brightness temperatures if the clouds fully fill the telescope’s beam. If the clouds do not fill the beam the observed brightness temperature will be lower as the remainder of the beam sees the cosmic microwave background. Our model makes no prediction for the cloud filling factor.

## 5 Summary

We have shown that a pressure-confined cloud at a radius of about 100 kpc in a cooling flow irradiated by a cooling flow has a large cold core at a temperature of less than 17 K where cooling by atomic carbon is dominant. This coolant explains the major difference between our result and that obtained using molecular cloud cooling rates by O’Dea et al (1994) and others. Clouds with a small amount of microturbulence, or dust, are colder still. The temperature profile of the dusty cloud drops very rapidly towards that of the microwave background.

Due to the continuing revisions of the atomic and molecular cross sections, rates and processes that have taken place since FFJ, there have been changes in our computed model which we have explored in detail. Further small changes will probably occur over the next few years.

We do not argue here that such clouds necessarily are the sink of the cooled matter in cooling flows, or are the source of the excess X-ray absorption inferred in their spectra. That will be explored elsewhere. Our purpose has been to confirm, from a detailed calculation of the thermal and radiation balance of X-ray irradiated and pressure-confined gas, that very cold clouds can be expected in the cooling flow environement.

## 6 Acknowledgements

We thank Mark Voit for comments on this and an earlier version of this work. Research in Nebular Astrophysics at the University of Kentucky is supported by the NSF (AST 00-71180) and NASA (NAG 5-4235). ACF thanks for Royal Society for support.