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# A wall of dust around a proto-Mira

## 1 AGB Supershells

Mass loss dominates stellar evolution on the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB). The mass loss probably begins on the early AGB, or even the first Red Giant Branch (Jura, 1999), but culminates during the last 10% of the AGB, the thermal-pulsing AGB (TP-AGB). Observed mass-loss rates range from $`10^7\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for semiregulars and Miras, up to a few times $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for OH/IR stars and obscured carbon stars. Typically, the Mira phase lasts between $`7\times 10^4\mathrm{yr}`$ and a few times $`10^5`$ yr (e.g. Wood 1990). The OH/IR star or the obscured carbon star phase may last $`10^4`$yr. Because the mass-loss rates increase during the AGB evolution, circumstellar shells may be expected to have a centrally-condensed, compact appearance. But mass-loss fluctuations during the thermal-pulse cycle can lead to detached circumstellar shells (Vassiliadis & Wood, 1993), and observations of detached shells have been interpreted as such (Zijlstra et al., 1992).

Evidence for detached shells came from the IRAS point source data, when Willems & de Jong (1986) found carbon stars with excess flux at 60$`\mu `$m. Zijlstra et al. (1992), in the same way, found oxygen-rich stars (M stars) with detached shells; they interpreted these in terms of mass-loss variations during the thermal-pulse cycle. From IRAS spectroscopy Hashimoto et al. (1998) found evidence for a detached shell with a small inner radius around the O-rich star R Hya (see also Zijlstra & Bedding 2002).

Photometric evidence may be affected by cirrus (Iveciz & Elitzur, 1995), and direct imaging can give more stringent evidence for detached shells. Izumiura et al. (1996, 1997) imaged detached shells around the carbon stars Y CVn and U Ant, with U Ant even showing a double detached shell. A spectacular thin CO ring was found around the carbon star TT Cyg (Olofsson et al., 1998, 2000). Lindqvist et al. (1999) found a detached shell around the carbon star U Cam. Speck et al. (2000) reported parsec-sized thin dust shells around two carbon-rich post-AGB stars, AFGL 2688 and AFGL 618, indicating episodic mass-loss variations with timescales of a few times 104 years. A thermal-pulse explanation is likely for all these cases.

Circumstellar shells could grow to very large dimensions during the AGB evolution. In principle, a gradual and gentle slow-down of the earliest ejected shell(s) by the ISM could allow subsequently expelled matter to catch up, and yield very large, detached-appearing shells independent of the thermal-pulse cycle. Young et al. (1993), using IRAS survey data for 512 AGB stars and young PNe (mostly within 1 kpc), found a total of 76 stars with circumstellar shells greater than 2$`\mathrm{}`$ in the 60$`\mu `$m data. Of these, four shells are larger than 4 pc in diameter; all four appear detached, having inner diameters of between 0.5 and 1.4 pc. (The detection of these shells is complicated by the often very bright central sources, requiring deconvolution techniques to separate the shell from the PSF of the stellar source).

Such fossil shells carry the imprint of the mass-loss history and the structure and density of the ISM. They could help to explain the presence of halos around planetary nebulae (but see Corradi et al. 2000) and the interaction of the most evolved of them with interstellar matter. Clearly, a search for extended shells - the larger, the better \- is of interest.

Here we report on an extreme dust shell around the source IRAS 02091+6333, with a diameter of 4 pc. We interpret the shell not in terms of mass-loss variations, but as a wall of swept-up ISM. We suggest that rings and walls around evolved stars may not have a single explanation.

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 The Dust Shell

The dust ring was discovered by one of us (RW) during a search for extremely extended structures, such as holes and emission regions around planetary nebulae, on the IRAS SkyView maps provided by NASA. It is visible at 60$`\mu `$m and - slightly better - at 100$`\mu `$m, and attracted our attention because of its well-defined shape and the presence of a stellar, almost centrally located object, prominent at 12$`\mu `$m but fainter at 25$`\mu `$m and absent at longer wavelengths. The shape of the dust emission suggests that the central source is responsible for the ring, which has the appearance of a detached shell. The shell is brightest at 100$`\mu `$m indicative of cold dust. Interestingly, the shell, particularly its brightest part towards the south, is also optically identifiable as an absorbing cloud on the POSS I blue-sensitive (O) plates. The stellar field is very dense (consistent with low foreground extinction for a line of sight near the Galactic plane) and the lack of blue stars in the small patch is highly noticeable. We estimate from the appearance of the patch that $`A_\mathrm{V}0.5`$mag.

The processed IRAS images, retrieved from the IPAC SkyView images, and also remade from the original (recalibrated) scans using the IRAS Software Telescope (Assendorp et al., 1995), are shown in Fig. 1. The emission at 100$`\mu `$m has a slightly elliptical shape, with the long axis in the N-S direction. It consists of a ring of emission which is thicker (and brightest) in the south and least thick in the west. There is a distinct, approximately round, central cavity. The outer dimensions are 19$`\mathrm{}`$ $`\times `$ 16$`\mathrm{}`$, corresponding to 3.9 $`\times `$ 3.2 pc at $`D=700`$pc (see below). The ring has a mean apparent thickness of $``$1.0 pc, and the cavity is $``$1.6 pc in diameter. The resolution of IRAS at 100-$`\mu `$m is sufficient to resolve the cavity, but the thickness of the ring is likely affected by the IRAS beam. The emission spur towards the south-west is probably unrelated (it has a different colour temperature). The total flux of the ring is about 20 Jy at 60$`\mu `$m and 70 Jy at 100$`\mu `$m: both values are uncertain due to the need to subtract a sloping background.

The concave thickening of the ring in the south is suggestive of an interaction with the ISM of the Galactic plane which runs approximately E-W, 2.3 below the object. But this interaction has had no marked effect on the outer shape of the ring.

A subtraction of the 60-$`\mu `$m from the 100-$`\mu `$m map, carried out using the unprocessed images, showed that there is no obvious radial dependence within the ring. The black-body dust temperature is about 35 K. The large distance from the central star indicates the shell is heated externally (e.g., Young et al. 1993; Speck et al. 2000). The temperature should be compared to typical values for Galactic cirrus emission of 15–20 K (Boulanger et al., 2001).

### 2.2 The Central Star

The flux densities of the central source (Table 1) are consistent with photospheric emission. Optical images from the Palomar Sky Surveys show a star coincident with the central source. Although rather bright, very red, and located not far from the Galactic plane ($`\mathrm{}=131.79,b=+2.32`$) in one of the most studied regions of the Milky Way, SIMBAD does not list individual observers. It is present in the Guide Star Catalog (GSC-id 0404101743), in the AC2000, and was covered by the TYCHO experiment onboard of HIPPARCOS. Data for the star are listed in Table 1.

One long-slit spectrum (300 sec) of the star was taken with the instrument AFOSC attached to the 1.82 m telescope of the Asiago Observatory. It was obtained on Dec 1st 1999, at an air mass of $``$1.4. The spectral range covered was 3940 – 7860 Å and the dispersion was 4.9 Å/pixel. Another spectrum was kindly provided by Maurice Gavin, taken on Dec 21st, 1999 at the Worcester Park Observatory (UK) at a dispersion of 40 Å/pixel. Both spectra were reduced in the usual way. The spectra show only the star itself, i.e. we found no traces of any nebulosity in its immediate neighborhood. The TiO bands are very well visible and establish the spectral type as M3 or M4. We could however not determine the luminosity class. The discussion below shows that a giant is most probable and we will assume the object to be an M3 III star. Several photometric runs in BVRI were kindly done for us by Roger Pickard, who used his 40 cm Newtonian Reflector. He reported $`BV`$ = 2.06.

The central star appears to have a slight offset of $`1.5^{}`$ from the center of the shell. However, this apparent offset is in part caused by the difference in brightness between the N and S part of the shell. Compared to the peak brightness positions, the star is very well centred, 7 from the two components.

### 2.3 Association or Confusion?

Although the star is close to the centre of the ring, in such a dense stellar field the chance of an accidental superposition of the shell and the central source has to be addressed. The IRAS catalogue lists 49 sources located within $`1^\mathrm{o}`$ radius of the present position. Of these, 36 are detected at 12$`\mu `$m and 20 are detected at both 12 and 25$`\mu `$m. One of these has the colours of an HII region and can be removed. Of the 36 candidates, 14 appear to be associated with a GSC star of $`m_\mathrm{V}<12`$, within 5 arcsec. The V– colours indicate that 6 of these are early-type stars. The remaining 8 stars (including IRAS 02091+6333) have the colours of RGB or AGB stars: the density of such stars in this field is 1 per 1400 square arcminutes (we note that the association of IRAS 02091+6333 is, at 1.6 arcsec, the closest of the 14 sources.)

Using the apparent offset of 1.5, the chance that the central star and ring are unrelated is 0.5%: the association is significant at the 3$`\sigma `$ level. Even without the presence of an optical star, the significance of an association between the ring and the central IRAS source would be close to 3$`\sigma `$. A relation between the ring and its bright central AGB or RGB star is therefore plausible.

One should however also take into account how common such rings are in the IRAS images. This close to the Galactic plane, the background emission is extensive and structured. But within a field of $`2^\mathrm{o}\times 2^\mathrm{o}`$, there is no other ring-like structure: the background emission shows elongated ridge-like structures instead. The difference between these structures and the ring is shown by the fact that most of the IRAS PSC sources in this region correspond to parts of the ridges, tracing brightness fluctuations which are common features of these structures. In contrast, the ring is quite smooth and was not picked up as one or more point sources.

Although confusion can not be fully ruled out, a physical association between star and ring appears plausible.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 The Star

For an M4III or M3III star, $`(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V})_0=1.75`$ or $`1.71`$ respectively (Wainscoat et al., 1992). The observed $`\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}=2.134`$, gives an extinction $`E(BV)=0.42`$ or $`A_\mathrm{V}=1.30`$, for an M3III star. The dereddened V$`[12]`$ colour of 4.9 indicates an M3 rather than M4 star, with $`M_\mathrm{V}=0.6`$ (e.g Wainscoat et al. 1992) for which we find a distance of $`D700`$pc. This extinction and distance are not unreasonable if compared to nearby stars of known spectral type, luminosity class and with reliable photometry: within a radius of 40$`\mathrm{}`$ four such stars were found in SIMBAD: two are about $`500`$pc distant and have an $`E(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V})`$ of 0.15 and 0.30, respectively, and the other two are about 1 kpc away and have values of 0.59 and 0.43, respectively. Some of the extinction towards the central star may be circumstellar. We note that the W3–5 complex, located only 2 degrees away in the Perseus arm, is at a distance of 2.35 kpc (e.g. Heyer & Tereby 1998). If an extinction sheet is associated with this spiral arm, IRAS 02091+6333 is likely located in front of it. The OB association Cam OB1 is found a few degrees away at 900 pc (de Zeeuw et al., 1999).

The likely distance suggests that the M3 star is of luminosity class III rather than I. Furthermore, its circumstellar obscuration cannot be very large. The IRAS PSC flux densities and the V– colour are consistent with photospheric emission from an M3 star: there is no evidence for hot circumstellar dust, and the present mass-loss rate must be small. The MSX flux densities (Table 1) agree with IRAS but the 14 micron point seems a little higher, a difference that may be caused by the larger beam width of MSX, which was a smaller telescope.

Evidence for mass loss (the detached shell), generally indicates a thermal-pulsing, variable AGB star. Jura (1999) shows that some RGB stars also show dust emission, but only close to the star. But there is no strong evidence for variability of the M3III star. The 228 TYCHO measurements include some fainter ones, but the magnitude is close to the limiting magnitude of the instrument and the catalog does not flag the star as variable. A comparison of its brightness in a POSS I overlapping region (plates E/O 597, taken on 1952-09-15/16, and E/O 878, taken on 1953-10-30/31) also does not show any obvious variability. Monitoring by Roger Pickard between January 2000 and January 2001 indicates a possible brightening at V from 10.5 to 10.1, and from 12.5 to 11.7 at B, but this requires further confirmation.

The bolometric magnitude is estimated as $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}=3.2`$, based on the BC(V) of Flower (1996). This is very uncertain as the bolometric correction is a steep function of colour. The corresponding luminosity $`L1500\mathrm{L}_{}`$ is, given the uncertainty, consistent with a TP-AGB star (e.g. Weidemann & Schönberner 1990). Low-level variability would be consistent with a pre-Mira evolutionary stage. But the data does not rule out a location near the tip of the RGB; neither can a TP-AGB star during the helium-burning phase of the TP cycle be ruled out, when luminosity and the mass-loss rate are reduced.

### 3.2  The Shell

The fact that part of the shell is seen in absorption gives an indication of its mass. We use the conversion ratio $`A_\mathrm{V}/N(\mathrm{H})=5.3\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{mag}`$. The absorption region is roughly $`3^{}\times 3^{}0.4\mathrm{pc}^2`$. This gives a total mass of $`3M_{}`$ for $`A_\mathrm{V}=0.5`$mag. This estimate is by necessity rough, since the extinction is estimated and the size of the region has significant uncertainties.

The IRAS flux (70 Jy at 100 $`\mu `$m) gives a second determination of the mass of the shell. Using a black-body dust temperature of 35 K, we derive a total dust mass of $`0.025d^2\mathrm{M}_{}`$, where $`d`$ is the distance in kpc (Tokunaga, 2000). For a distance of $`700`$pc and a gas-to-dust mass ratio of 200, the total mass in the ring is $`2.5`$ M. Most of this mass will be in the brighter southern region. The agreement between the two estimates is deceptive, since the uncertainties in these calculates are easily a factor of 2. However, it indicates a relation between the absorption region and the ring.

### 3.3 Shell Origin

In general, distant shells around AGB stars have been interpreted in terms of episodically enhanced mass loss, related to the thermal-pulse cycle (Zijlstra et al., 1992; Izumiura et al., 1997). Assuming an expansion velocity of 10 km/s, the outermost gas in the shell would have been ejected $`2\times 10^5`$yr ago, and the gas closest to the star $`1\times 10^5`$yr ago. The duration of the mass-loss event would not be inconsistent with the duration of the thermal-pulse cycle (Vassiliadis & Wood, 1993). However, this would require an equally long time of quiescence to explain the cavity, whilst the duration of the low-luminosity part of the cycle, during helium burning, is only 10–15 per cent of the cycle.

The relatively large mass of the shell suggests that much of the the gas does not originate from the star. Given the uncertainties in distance, integrated IRAS flux density, and temperature, the mass could be as low as 1 M in which case a significant contribution from stellar mass loss could not be excluded.

## 4 The Wall

### 4.1 AGB–ISM Interaction

In view of these two points, we suggest that the shell reflects ISM sweep-up. In this model, the AGB wind, moving out at $`10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ into the ISM, is creating a a denser shell consisting of both components. Models for the early phases of such sweep-up have been calculated by Young et al. (1993). The typical cooling time for the post-shock region is $`10^4\mathrm{yr}`$, with density increasing to $`10^2`$, reducing as the front slows down (Spitzer, 1978). The interaction region can thus be considered momentum-driven, in agreement with Young et al. (1993). The velocity of the interface declines as $`vr^1`$ or $`vt^{0.5}`$, until its velocity drops below the sound speed in the ISM outside the shell. Young et al. (1993) do not consider cases where the amount of matter swept up from the ISM exceeds the mass contributed by the stellar wind. The large mass of the present shell suggests the present shell has evolved past this phase.

Using the measured diameter of the shell, and assuming its mass reflects the ISM, suggests a local ISM density (outside of the shell) of a few particles cm-3. Fig. 2 shows the early development of the wall. In this case, the velocity of the interface (the ’wall’) drops to 1 km s-1 after about $`5\times 10^5\mathrm{yr}`$. The early phase ends once the thermal pressure $`P`$ of the ambient ISM becomes non-negligible, causing the interface to stall. This happens once

$$P\frac{\dot{M}v_\mathrm{w}}{4\pi r^2}$$
(1)
For the ambient pressure, we use a typical value of $`nT=100`$. Assuming that the interface has stalled at a distance of 2 pc from the star (the present radius of the shell), the equation above yields a mass-loss rate $`\dot{M}5\times 10^8\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$. This value is typical for semi-regular variables, which have not yet evolved into Mira variables, and is sufficiently low that the 12-$`\mu `$m emission would still be dominated by the photosphere. Much of the stellar envelope mass on the AGB may be lost in such a moderate wind before the onset of the Mira phase (the narrow $`PL`$ relation for short-period Miras (Glass & Lloyd-Evans, 1981; Feast et al., 1989) suggests that their masses are already reduced to close to the final white dwarf mass before the Mira phase begins). IRAS 02091+6333 could have built a hydrogen wall during its pre-Mira evolutionary phase, before reaching the mass-loss rates associated with the tip of the AGB.

However, the resulting shell will not be stable: once the interface becomes trapped, the swept-up shell begins to expand into the ambient ISM at its sound speed. Using a typical value of the sound speed of $`c_\mathrm{s}=1\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, the ring reaches a thickness of 1 pc in $`10^6\mathrm{yr}`$. As a rough estimate, we may assume that the shell ceases to be observable once its density has dropped to twice that of te surrounding (presumably uniform) medium. For a thin shell:

$$4\pi r^2c_\mathrm{s}2\rho _0=\frac{4\pi }{3}r^3\rho _0$$
(2)
which gives

$$t=\frac{1}{6}\frac{r}{c_\mathrm{s}}3\times 10^5\mathrm{yr}$$
(3)
The observed thickness of the ring is roughly 1 pc, but this is affected by the IRAS 10-$`\mu `$m resolution and the actual thickness is probably rather less. Within the limited accuracy, we find agreement between the possible parameters of such a wall and the observed ring of IRAS 02091+6333.

This suggests that it is possible to create such a wall even before the Mira phase on the AGB, and that the wall could survive for an appreciable fraction of the thermal-pulsing AGB ($`10^6\mathrm{yr}`$). At a constant mass-loss rate, the interface will stall in less than $`10^6\mathrm{yr}`$ after the onset of the mass loss. However, the mass loss likely slowly increases over time, effectively resetting the clock and re-creating the shell. The resulting shell may be seen for up to $`10^6\mathrm{yr}`$ following an increase in mass-loss rate. The precise value depends on ambient density and mass-loss rate.

The limited life time of the ring indicates it cannot pre-date the present evolutionary phase of the star. We therefore suggest that IRAS 02091+6333 presents a case where an AGB star, having undergone mass loss, perhaps intermittently over some fraction of its AGB life time, has surrounded itself with a swept-up wall of dust and hydrogen more than 1 pc away.

### 4.2 Morphology

Two aspects of the wall need further consideration: first, it is roughly (but not perfectly) spherical; second, its intensity is strongest towards and away from the Galactic plane.

The morphology, in the model of the previous subsection, will be determined by the intrinsic distribution of the stellar wind and by the structure of the ISM. The ISM shows structure on many size scales, however the shell is small compared to its large-scale structure. If the shell is running into a region of higher density, this is most likely to have occured near its outer edge as this is the region contributing most to the volume. This would affect the intensity distribution, but would be less likely to cause large deviations from spherical symmetry.

Stellar winds on the AGB tend to be symmetric, until the star approaches the tip of the AGB (e.g. Zijlstra et al. 2001). However, the effects of the peculiar motion of the star with respect to the ISM should be considered. The proper motion indicates a velocity of 45 km s-1. About half of this is due to the effect of the solar motion and galactic rotation; the remaining velocity vector has a large uncertainty. The proper motion of the ISM is also not easily measured, but considerable deviations from circular rotation may occur in both the young stellar population and the ISM (e.g. Anantharamaiah et al. 1984; Merchán Benítez & Jurado Vargas 2000). A recent study of proper-motion vectors of stars in the CAM OB1 association (de Zeeuw et al., 1999), at a distance of 900 pc and at $`\mathrm{}135^\mathrm{o}`$, shows a number of distant OB-type stars with similar proper motion vectors to IRAS02091+6333. The relative velocity between star and ISM is therefore not well determined. To first order, the effect of stellar motion is to change the wind velocity with respect to the ISM. The stalling radius depends on the square root of this velocity, and thus the shape of the shell is relative insensitive to small peculiar velocities. But at velocities much larger than 10 km s-1, the effects become large and the star may position itself off-centre over the life time of the shell.

Supernova remnants often show a bilateral structure very similar to that of IRAS 02091+633 and these structures are generally oriented in the same way with respect to the Galactic plane (Gaensler, 1998). The explanation is believed to be shaping by the Galactic magnetic field, which tends to run along the plane. The shaping can either occur directly by the magnetic field, or indirectly if the ISM is stratified by the field. However, for nebulae as small as our ring these effects are expected to be negligible. The similarity is likely accidental. Planetary nebulae do not show a preferential alignement with respect to the Galactic plane (Corradi et al., 1998).

### 4.3 The Future

Assuming that the wall around IRAS 02091+6333 is due to AGB–ISM interaction, the question arises how this structure will evolve. The interface between the wind and the ISM will have stalled and the inner edge of the wall can be considered stationary. The outer edge is expanding at the velocity of sound, $`1`$ km s-1. The thermal-pulsing AGB lasts several $`10^6`$ yr, allowing this edge to travel several parsec, beyond the phase of observability. Once the star enters the post-AGB phase, stellar evolution speeds up dramatically and the wall will evolve much slower than the inner nebula and its star.

After the AGB, the circumstellar wind quickly becomes ionized as the star heats up. At the same time a hot, much faster stellar wind sweeps up the inner AGB wind, with the swept-up region forming (part of) a planetary nebula, with a typical radius of 0.1–0.5 pc (Frank & Mellema, 1994). The planetary nebula phase may last $`5\times 10^4`$ yr (Zijlstra & Pottasch, 1991). In our model, this swept-up shell is itself embedded in the much larger wall. Outer rims and haloes are seen in some planetary nebulae but they do not have a unique explanation (Corradi et al., 2000) and their presence cannot be taken as a vindication of this scenario.

In IRAS 02091+6333 the wall is visible as an IRAS shell. Once the expansion dilutes the wall, this shell becomes less and less distinct. However, inside the wall is still a region where the density is much lower, in which the AGB wind keeps the surrounding medium at bay. Thus, instead of a shell, one can expect the appearance of an infrared cavity in which the planetary nebula may be located.

Such a cavity has been found around the old nova CK Vul (Evans et al., 2002). These authors classify CK Vul as a late-thermal-pulse nova, similar to nova Sakurai. In this case, the nova is expected to be located inside an old planetary nebula. (A hydrogen nebulosity has been found around CK Vul but has (sofar) not been indentified as an old planetary nebula). The cavity has a radius of approximately 1 pc. We suggest that this object may be an example of an old wall. The presence of other, very large cavities around planetary nebulae will be the topic of a future paper.

## 5 Summary

We present the discovery of a large dust shell with a detached appearance, surrounding a previously unknown but bright AGB star. An association between the star and the dust shell is likely, given the statistics of confusion in this region. The spectral type of the star, magnitude and colour, is used to derive the extinction, and a distance of $`700\mathrm{pc}`$. The gas mass of the shell is estimated as $`2.5M_{}`$.

The large mass and size of the shell make an origin in a thermal pulse, as normally assumed for detached shells around AGB stars, unlikely. Instead we propose a model in which an AGB wind of low mass-loss rate has swept out a cavity in the ISM; the swept-up material forms the present shell. We show a typical calculation in which the snowplough phase lasts for $`5\times 10^5`$rm. At the end of this phase, the shell is subsonic, stalls and begins to expand into ISM at its sound speed. In our model, the shell remains visible for a further $`3\times 10^5`$yr. After this, the shell would be visible as an apparent hole in the ISM surrounding the central AGB star, or the later planetary nebula wich follows the AGB evolutionary phase.

A star with a similar size dust shell is R CrB (Gillet et al., 1986), where a huge nearly symmetrical dust shell has been discovered. This shell may have a similar origin. Hydrogen walls are also known around the Sun and nearby stars, from the interaction between the solar wind and the ISM (e.g. Ben-Jaffel et al. 2000): they are a common feature of star–ISM interactions.

The interaction between an AGB wind and its surrounding ISM has largely been ignored in the analysis of circumstellar environments, with the exception of Young et al. (1993). The shell of IRAS 02091+6333 suggests that the effects of such an interaction should be further explored.

## Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Roger Pickard who provided us with the results of his photometric runs of the central star of the dust shell and to Maurice Gravin for spectroscopy. Special thanks also go to Sonia Temporin, Gernot Grömer, Ernst Dorfi and Stefan Kimeswenger. Fernando Comeron took time to explain to us the various aspects of low-velocity hydrodynamics. This research has made use of the VizieR and SIMBAD databases, maintained by the CDS, of the IPAC on-line IRAS and MSX databases, and of the IRAS Software Telescope system maintained by SRON, Groningen.


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# A late-time transition in the cosmic dark energy?

## 1 Introduction

The idea that the universe is currently accelerating comes from a number of high-quality, but indirect, experiments. The luminosity distance estimated from type Ia supernovae (Riess et al. 1998) favours recent acceleration while the recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data (Netterfield et al. 2002, Lee et al. 2001, Halverson et al. 2002, Padin et al. 2001) suggest the universe has almost zero spatial curvature. This, combined with clustering estimates giving $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.3`$ (Hamilton and Tegmark 2002), provides compelling evidence for a dominant, unclustered, universal element; a conclusion supported by the height of the first, and position of the second, acoustic peak in the CMB (Kamionkowski & Buchalter 2000).

Nevertheless, our understanding of the true nature of such an unclustered “ether” is arguably even worse than it is for the dark matter responsible for galaxy clustering. The oldest idea is that it is a cosmological constant, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }0`$. This requires generating a tiny scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(10^3\mathrm{eV})^4`$ and there have been many recent ideas to achieve this (see e.g. Dienes 2001, Deffayet et al. 2001, Verlinde & Verlinde 2000, Verlinde 2000), mostly motivated by the revolution associated with higher dimension brane world models.

Undoubtedly the best-studied explanation, however, is quintessence (Ferreira & Joyce 1998, Caldwell et al 1998); a very light scalar field $`Q`$, whose effective potential $`V(Q)`$ leads to acceleration in the late universe. However, quintessence suffers from extreme fine-tuning since not only must one set the cosmological constant to zero but one must arrange for the quintessence field to dominate at late times only. This coincidence problem typically requires severe fine-tuning in the potential, although this can be alleviated in models where the quintessence field couples to dark matter (Holden & Wands 2000, Amendola 2001, Tocchini-Valentini & Amendola, 2001).

Such couplings to standard model fields imply extra fine-tunings however since the quintessence field is extraordinarily light and typically has Planck-scale vacuum expectation value today $`QM_{pl}`$. If one believes that the quintessence field comes from supergravity, then non-renormalisable couplings to standard matter fields should appear automatically, even if all the renormalisable couplings to standard matter are fine-tuned to vanish.

These non-renormalisable couplings, such as $`QF_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }/M_{pl}`$, where $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ is the Maxwell tensor, cause variations of the fundamental constants of nature, such as the fine-structure constant (Carroll 1998), and the corresponding coefficients must be made small to avoid conflicting with evidence at low redshift. Similar constraints come from neutrino data (Horvat 2000) and make the quintessence scenario appear extremely fine-tuned without some more fundamental theoretical basis.

Quite another possibility is that quantum effects have become important at low redshifts and have stimulated the universe to begin accelerating. Examples are vacuum metamorphosis, put forward recently by Parker & Raval (1999,2000: hereafter PR) and the work of Sahni and Habib (1998).

In particular, PR consider a scalar field of mass $`m`$ in a flat, FLRW background, and non-perturbatively compute the effective action in terms of the Ricci scalar, $`R`$. They show that the trace of the Einstein equations receives quantum corrections some of which are proportional to

$$\frac{\mathrm{}Gm^4R}{m^2+(\xi 1/6)R}[1+𝒪(R)].$$
(1)
which diverges when $`Rm^2/(\xi 1/6)`$, signalling significant quantum contributions to the equation of state of the scalar field. Here $`\xi 1/6`$ is the non-minimal coupling constant. At early times the equation of state is dust on average 111A massive scalar field acts like dust on averaging over many oscillations of the field. Since the scalar field here is so light this may be a bad approximation since the period of oscillation is so long. and then makes a transition from dust to cosmological constant plus radiation (PR 1999).

To explain the supernova Type Ia (SN1a) data the scalar field is forced to be extremely light, $`m^2/(\xi 1/6)10^{33}`$ eV. Vacuum metamorphosis therefore suffers from the same fine-tuning problems as quintessence - why are there no dimension 5 operators leading to unacceptable variation of fundamental constants?

The idea of a sudden phase transition is very attractive however and is more general than just the example of vacuum metamorphosis. In fact the idea of late-time phase transitions is rather old, dating back at least as far as 1989 (Hill et al 1989, Press et al 1990).

We therefore choose a phenomenological model which captures the basic features of a phase transition in the equation of state, but which is not strictly linked to any specific model. We then ask whether current CMB and large scale structure (LSS) data rule out such a transition, or indeed, favour it over the now standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model.

## 2 The Phenomenological Model

In addition to baryons, neutrinos and cold dark matter our model is characterized by a scalar field $`Q`$ with a redshift dependent equation of state $`p_Q=w(z)\rho _Q`$. We choose $`w(z)`$ to have the following form

$$w(z)=w_0+\frac{(w_fw_0)}{1+\mathrm{exp}(\frac{zz_t}{\mathrm{\Delta }})}$$
(2)
In this paper, we shall restrict ourselves to the case where the initial equation of state is pressure-free matter, $`w_0=0`$. In terms of the scalar field dynamics, we will consider a class of models characterized by three free parameters: (1) the final value of the equation of state, $`w_f`$, (2) the redshift $`z_t`$ of the transition, and (3) the energy density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ of the scalar field in units of the critical energy density $`\rho _{crit}`$; $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q=\rho _Q/\rho _{crit}`$ 222Notice that the width of the transition is controlled by $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Double precision limits require that $`z_T/\mathrm{\Delta }<100`$ while the constraint that $`w=w_f`$ at $`z=0`$ implies that $`z_T/\mathrm{\Delta }>10`$. To satisfy both of these constraints simultaneously for $`0<z_T<2000`$, we have chosen a $`z_t`$-dependent $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ defined by $`z_T/\mathrm{\Delta }30`$.

We also assume that any coupling of the scalar field with other fields are negligible. In this case the energy density $`\rho _Q`$ is determined from energy conservation

$$\dot{\rho }_Q=3H\rho _Q(1+w(z))$$
(3)
which can be explicitly integrated since $`w(z)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ today are given. Using Eq. (2) for $`w(z)`$ and specifying initial conditions for the scalar field one obtains the scalar field potential $`V(Q)`$ and its derivatives along the “background” trajectory $`Q(t)`$. In particular, $`V^{}(Q)`$, is

$$V^{}(Q)=\frac{3H}{2}\sqrt{(1+w)\rho _Q}\left[1\frac{1}{3}(1+z)\frac{d\mathrm{log}(w(z))}{dz}\right]$$
(4)
and $`V^{\prime \prime }(Q)`$ can be easily obtained from Eq. (4). $`V^{\prime \prime }(Q)`$ is required to solve the evolution equation for the scalar field fluctuations, $`\delta Q(𝐱,t)`$. In the synchronous gauge, the Fourier modes $`\delta Q_k(t)`$ obey the equation

$$\delta \ddot{Q}_k+3H\delta \dot{Q}_k+\left(\frac{k^2}{a^2}+V^{\prime \prime }\right)\delta Q_k=\dot{h}_k\dot{Q}$$
(5)
where $`h`$ is the trace of the spatial metric perturbation (Ma and Bertschinger 1995). We choose adiabatic initial conditions $`\delta Q_k=\delta \dot{Q}_k=0`$ for the scalar field.

## 3 The data and analysis pipeline

### 3.1 The cosmic parameters

Due to computational restrictions we fixed cosmic parameters not directly linked with the scalar field $`Q`$. We therefore performed a likelihood analysis in the neighbourhood of the best fit standard model. Hence we have no assurance that a better global minimum for $`\chi ^2`$ does not exist. However, our main goal is to test whether the current data favour a phase transition over the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model, and for this our analysis is sufficient. We chose the following “standard” cosmic parameters (Wang et al. 2001):

* $`H_0=65`$ km/s/Mpc
* $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.05`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{tot}}=1`$ (flat universe)
* $`n_s=1`$, $`n_t=0`$, $`\tau =0`$ .

Here $`\tau `$ is the reionisation optical depth and $`n_{s,t}`$ are the spectral indices for scalar and tensor perturbations respectively. We set $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ and included only the effective $`3.04`$ massless standard model neutrinos. We did not include tensor perturbations and as we varied $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ today we specified the cold dark matter density to ensure overall flatness of the universe, viz. $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{CDM}}1\mathrm{\Omega }_b\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$. We emphasize here that fixing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ and $`H_0`$ can produce artificially narrow likelihood curves especially for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ and that our results should not be interpreted as determining the true energy density of the scalar field to such a precision.

### 3.2 Observational Data and Analysis

We constrain the parameters of our phenomenological model by comparing its predictions with a number of observations.

CMB: we use the decorrelated COBE DMR data (Tegmark & Hamilton 1997) to constrain the fluctuations on large scales and combine it with the recent data from the BOOMERanG (Netterfield et al. 2002), MAXIMA (Lee et al. , 2001) and DASI (Halverson et al. 2002) experiments. In total we used $`49`$ data points ranging in $`\mathrm{}[2,1235]`$. We take into account the published calibration uncertainties for BOOMERanG, MAXIMA and DASI but not the pointing and beam uncertainties, since they are not public for all experiments.

LSS: we use the matter power spectrum inferred from the 2dF 100k redshift survey (Tegmark, Hamilton & Xu 2001), the IRAS PSCz 0.6 Jy survey (Hamilton & Tegmark, 2000) and the Abell/ACO cluster survey (Miller et al. 2001). We limit the comparison to $`k<0.2h/\mathrm{Mpc}`$ to minimise potential non-linear contaminations. All together, we use $`48`$ points. We do not currently include the Ly-$`\alpha `$ analysis of Croft et al (2000). Even though our best fitting models agree quite well with the shape of the recovered linear matter power spectrum, the concerns raised by (Zaldarriaga et al. 2001) make it seem preferable to postpone the use of this data set.

SN1a: we use the redshift-binned supernova data from Riess et al. (2001), which includes the HZT (Riess et al. 1998) and SCP (Perlmutter et al. 1999) data.

We follow the standard approach of computing the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$’s and $`P(k)`$ for each set of parameters over the 3 dimensional grid $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_Q,z_T,w_f)`$, using a modified version of CMBFAST (Seljak & Zaldarriaga 1996). We then evaluate the corresponding $`\chi ^2`$ at each grid point.

We find that the likelihood values for the CMB depend slightly on the likelihood functional used, eg. a simple $`\chi ^2`$ computed using the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$’s or an offset log-normal distribution (Bond et al. 2000), but we are not certain if this is an intrinsic difference, or due to the slightly different data in the RADPACK package. However the overall changes are within $`1\sigma `$ and hence not significant.

The link between CMB and LSS is given by the respective normalisations. The CMB data fixes the overall amplitude of the model quite precisely. As the connection between the matter power spectrum inferred from galaxy and cluster surveys and the actual distribution of dark matter is much less clear, we allowed a bias, $`b(1/5,5)`$ for 2dF and PSCz and $`b(1/9,9)`$ for Abell/ACO since clusters are expected to be more biased than galaxies. Here $`b`$ is the factor between the perturbation amplitudes, and hence enters quadratically in the power spectra.

In general we marginalise over parameters by integrating the likelihood. We find that the results are consistent with those found from maximising the likelihood. This is expected for a nearly Gaussian likelihood, and it provides some reassurance that the $`\chi ^2`$ method is justified.

## 4 The physics of metamorphosis

### 4.1 The CMB

To understand the imprint of metamorphosis on the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$’s of the CMB requires two insights. First the contribution of the scalar field to the expansion rate of the universe is negligible for $`z>3`$ if $`w_f<0.4`$ since $`\rho _Qa^{3(1+w_f)}`$. This implies that the dynamics of $`Q`$ has little effect on the evolution of the metric perturbations (which respond to the total matter perturbation) and hence the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$’s are almost insensitive to transitions with $`z_t>3`$.

This is evident in Fig. (2). The figure also shows an effect which at first sight is perhaps surprising: the CMB is extremely sensitive to $`z_t`$ for $`z_t<3`$. This is clarified once we remember that the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM CMB has a large Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) contribution due to the decay of the gravitational potential $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ during the epoch of acceleration, typically occurring at $`z<2`$.

Therefore, if we choose two models with $`w_f<0.5`$ but with $`z_t=0.5`$ and $`z_t=1.5`$ respectively, the initiation of the accelerated phase will vary by around $`300\%`$, and the decay of the gravitational potential starts at very different epochs. Hence the fluctuations in the CMB for these two models differ mainly on large angular scales which alters the acoustic-peak/SW-plateau ratio.

In addition, $`z_t<2`$ implies that the rapid change in $`w`$ can cause its own effect on the gravitational potential since the energy density of $`Q`$ is starting to dominate. This gives rise to an ISW effect purely due to the scalar field dynamics. We will see later that these two effects almost completely explain the behaviour of the likelihood curves in Fig.(4) which are very sensitive to small $`z_t`$ but exhibit a long tail for large $`z_t`$.

The other parameter of interest is $`w_f`$. This has a simple effect on the CMB. As $`w_f`$ decreases towards to $`1`$ the universe starts to accelerate earlier and is accelerating more violently today. This alters the ISW effect which is important on large scales and which contributes to the COBE normalisation. The effect of $`w_f`$ is mainly then to amplify or supress the $`\mathrm{}>50`$ $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$’s by a more-or-less $`\mathrm{}`$-independent amount. This is evident in Fig. (2).

### 4.2 The matter power spectra

We now discuss the effect of $`z_t`$ and $`w_f`$ on the CDM and $`Q`$ power spectra. A key point is that the scalar field is very light both before and after the transition at $`z_t`$. This means that the associated Compton wavelength, $`(V^{\prime \prime })^{1/2}`$, of the $`Q`$ field is very large (as in standard quintessence models) for all times. This implies that no clustering occurs in the $`Q`$ field on small scales ($`k>0.01h`$ Mpc-1).

After the transition the potential $`V(Q)`$ becomes even flatter (in order to obtain acceleration) and hence the Compton wavelength increases. This means that clustering now only occurs on the largest scales for $`z<z_t`$. This allows us an intuitive idea of the effect of $`z_t`$. As $`z_t`$ is increased, we see that the Compton wavelength effect forces clustering to occur only on larger and larger scales. However, this is actually only a fairly weak effect and the dominant variable is $`w_f`$.

The effect of $`w_f`$ on the $`Q`$ power spectrum is straight-forward: for fixed $`z_t`$, the closer $`w_f`$ is to $`1`$, the less clustering occurs. Conversely, the closer $`w_f`$ is to $`0`$, the more clustering occurs. This is clear in the quintessence case from the work of Ma et al. (1999) which can be understood by rewriting the RHS of equation (5) in terms of the CDM density perturbation $`\delta _c\delta \rho _{CDM}/\rho _{CDM}`$ which becomes $`\delta _c[(1+w_f)\rho _Q]^{1/2}`$. Clearly this driving term drops to zero as $`w_f1`$.

For fixed $`w_f`$, increasing $`z_t`$ implies that the universe spends less time in the dust phase where $`w=0`$ and hence the long wavelengths of $`\delta Q`$ have less time to grow relative to the short wavelengths (that will not grow irrespective of the values of $`z_t`$ and $`w_f`$ ). This effect is clearly visible in Fig. 1 where we show the global best-fit CDM power spectrum with $`z_t=1.5`$ together with the best-fit to just the LSS data which has $`z_t=6.5`$ and hence less power on large scales. Similarly for fixed $`z_t`$, increasing $`w_f`$ towards zero allows more clustering on large scales relative to small scales.

An important point is that simply specifying $`w_f=1`$ and $`z_t>1000`$ does not imply that the resulting model is the same as a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. While the transfer function $`T(k)=1`$ on all scales for $`z<z_t`$ if $`w_f=1`$, this does not mean the initial power spectrum $`P_Q(k)`$ was zero, whereas $`P_\mathrm{\Lambda }(k)0`$ since $`\delta \mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ by definition. This is visible in the $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{}s`$ of the left panel of figure (1). Both curves have $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q=0.73`$ and $`w_f=1`$. They differ due to the fluctuations $`\delta Q`$ and the transition at $`z_t=1.5`$.

This means that despite the background dynamics being essentially equivalent for the two models for $`z_t\mathrm{}`$, the perturbations are not the same, and indeed one could consider adiabatic or isocurvature initial conditions for the $`\delta Q`$. Hence, simply showing that the recent dynamics of the universe favours $`w=1`$ does not of itself, prove that the acceleration comes from the cosmological constant.

Tests sensitive to perturbations are also required. This may be particularly important in the case when the scalar field is non-minimally coupled to the spacetime curvature (see e.g. Perrotta & Bacciagalupi, 2001).

### 4.3 The SN1a data

To compare with the supernovae type Ia measurements we compute the luminosity distance:

$$d_L(z)=c(1+z)_0^z𝑑u/H(u)$$
(6)
from which $`\mathrm{\Delta }(mM)=5[log_{10}(d_L(z))log_{10}(d_{L_0}(z))]`$ where $`d_{L_0}=cz(z+2)/(2H_0)`$ is the empty-beam distance. We find that a step-function approximation to $`w(z)`$ is extremely accurate, due to the integral nature of the luminosity distance (see the dash-dotted line versus the short dashed line in figure (3)).

Figure (3) shows $`\mathrm{\Delta }(mM)`$ for a variety of models while figures (4) and (5) show the results of the likelihood analysis. Models with a very recent transition from deceleration to acceleration are favoured since they fit the highest $`z`$ supernova best, while still being consistent with the intermediate-$`z`$ supernovae at $`z0.5`$. Due to the large error bars, the constraints are weak, however. Furthermore, since the metamorphosis models are almost indistinguishable from standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models for $`z<z_t`$, we have only constraints on $`z_t`$ less than the redshift of the farthest supernova observed ($`z1.75`$).

The dependence on the other parameters is very much the same as for conventional dark energy models. Not surprisingly, we recover for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ vs $`w_f`$ the results of Turner and Riess (2001).

### 4.4 BBN constraints

Big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) primordial abundances depend sensitively on the expansion rate of the universe at the temperature $`T=1`$MeV which controls the neutron-proton ratio. Assuming that the quintessence field scales as radiation at nucleosynthesis Bean et al. (2001) set the limit of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q<0.045`$ at $`2\sigma `$ at $`T=1MeV`$.

Since we assume the initial $`w_0=0`$, the scalar field scales as dust for $`z>z_t`$ and hence $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ is dynamically negligible at nucleosynthesis which therefore provides no constraints on our parameters.

If we broadened our parameter set to include $`w_0`$ we would expect BBN to set joint limits on the parameters. In particular, for $`w_0=1/3`$ (radiation), the BBN data would favour large $`z_t`$, $`w_f`$ close to $`1`$ and smaller $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$.

## 5 Results

Figures (4) and (5) show our main results through the marginalised 1-d and 2-d likelihoods for $`(z_t,w_f,\mathrm{\Omega }_Q)`$.

We do not show the likelihoods for CMB and LSS alone since the LSS provides only very weak constraints on $`z_t`$ (slightly preferring higher values) and $`w_f`$ (no constraints at all). It prefers an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ around $`0.7`$, consistent with the CMB likelihood. Due to these very weak results (and the consistent result for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$), the likelihood for the CMB data looks just like the one for the combined CMB+LSS data.

The supernovae prefer (as explained in section 4.3) a low $`z_t`$, but its significance (stemming from only one supernova at $`z>1`$) is too weak to change the overall likelihood by much. The constraints on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ are weaker than for the other data sets, but consistent. Furthermore, the SN1a data prefers $`w1`$, which tightens the overall constraints on the equation of state somewhat, leading to $`w<0.8`$ at the 1$`\sigma `$ level.

In Figs. (1) and (3) we show our best fits versus the current CMB, LSS and SN1a data and theoretical predictions of the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model.

The $`\chi ^2`$ values of the overall best fit model (with $`w_f=1.0`$, $`z_t=1.5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q=0.73`$) are $`33`$ (CMB) + $`36`$ (LSS) \+ $`4`$ (SN1a), in total $`73`$. On the same parameter grid, the best fit $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model has $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q=0.73`$ as well. Its $`\chi ^2`$ values are $`40`$ (CMB), $`34`$ (LSS) and $`4`$ (SN1a), in total $`78`$.

We used $`49`$ data points for the CMB, $`48`$ for the LSS and $`7`$ for the supernova data. We allowed a free overall model normalisation plus a bias/calibration uncertainty for each of the three LSS and the four CMB data sets. Our phenomenological model has three free parameters, while the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models have only one. So in total we have approximately (neglecting correlations within the experiments as well as between them) $`49+48+71433=93`$ degrees of freedom for our model, and $`95`$ dof for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models.

We can see that both groups of models are perfectly consistent with current data. Given the error bars of the data sets, the family of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models is included in our phenomenological models for $`w=1`$ and large $`z_t`$. The figures show that current data slightly prefers a low-$`z`$ phase transition, which is still true when taking into account that we have to add two degrees of freedom for pure $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models. On the other hand, the difference is too small to speak of a detection; assuming Gaussian errors and 3 “parameters of interest” ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$, $`w_f`$, $`z_t`$), models with a $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$ of $`5`$ above the best-fit would formally be excluded at about 83%, hence somewhere between 1 and 2 $`\sigma `$.

## 6 Conclusions and tests for late transitions

We have studied a phenomenological model in which the dark energy of the universe is described by a scalar field $`Q`$ whose equation of state $`w`$ undergoes a sudden transition (metamorphosis) from $`w_0=0`$ (dust) to $`w_f<0.3`$ at a specific redshift $`z_t`$.

While similar to the quintessence paradigm in practical respects, the underlying philosophy is very different since we are interested in the possibility of detecting radical physics in the dark energy, such as the vacuum metamorphosis model (PR). We used the current CMB, large-scale structure (LSS) and supernovae (SN1a) data to constrain our phenomenological parameter space variables $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_Q,z_t,w_f)`$.

The CMB and SN1a data are sensitive to a transition if it occurs at low redshifts ($`z_t<3`$) due to the delay in the epoch at which cosmic acceleration can begin, relative to the standard $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models. We found that

* The global best-fit to the current data occurs for $`z_t=1.5,w_f=1.0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q=0.73`$ while the marginalised 1d likelihood for $`z_t`$ peaks at $`z_t=2.0`$. The best-fit model is consistent with the data and is a marginally better fit than the best $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model.
* The CMB provides the best constraints on the parameters, especially on $`z_t`$ due to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect (Fig. 4).

Is it possible to distinguish this metamorphosis from standard quintessence models?

This may be difficult since studies of quintessence favour similar values for $`w_f`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$ (Wang et al 1999, Bacciagalupi et al. 2002, Corasaniti & Copeland 2002) and $`c_s^2=1`$ in both cases (Erickson et al. 2001). Traditional methods to discover variation in $`w`$ based on the luminosity/area distance may be sufficient to discover transitions at $`z_t<2`$ but may be statistically inefficient in separating metamorphosis from standard quintessence since the distances effectively depend on the integral $`w(z)𝑑z`$ (Maor et al. 2001).

An interesting alternative (Jimenez & Loeb 2001) is measurements of age differences in passively-evolving galaxies at different redshifts which in principle allow direct determination of $`w(z)`$ and a direct test of metamorphosis if $`z_t`$ lies in the epoch of galaxy formation ($`z_t<5`$).

Furthermore, future very high-precision measurements of the CMB at 1% or better might be able to detect the perturbations in the microwave background from the fluctuations in the scalar field itself, which would not be present in a smooth background component like a cosmological constant though separating this out from lensing and foreground contamination will be very difficult.

Finally, an intriguing possibility is that the rapid transitions studied here may provide a solution to the current impasse for quintessence models in explaining the varying-$`\alpha `$ data,viz: quintessence models can explain the apparent variation of $`\alpha `$ around $`z13`$ but cannot then simultaneously match the results of the Okun natural reactor (Chiba & Khori 2001) at $`z0`$. Detailed analysis of these issues is left to future work.

## Acknowledgements

We thank Luca Amendola, Carlo Baccigalupi, Rachel Bean, Rob Caldwell, Takeshi Chiba, Pier Stefano Corasaniti, Marian Douspis, Andrew Hamilton, Steen Hansen, Rob Lopez, Roy Maartens, Max Tegmark and David Wands for useful discussions on a variety of issues. We thank Chris Miller for providing us with the Abell/ACO data, and Adam Riess for the combined SNIa data.

BB acknowledges Royal Society support and useful discussions with the groups at RESCEU, Kyoto, Osaka and Waseda. MK acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. CU is supported by the PPARC grant PPA/G/S/2000/00115.