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# The Coupling of 𝜂 Mesons to Quarks and Baryons from 𝐷_𝑠^∗→𝐷_𝑠𝜋⁰ Decay

## 1 Introduction

The flavor symmetry breaking $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ decay mode is mainly due to a small isoscalar $`\eta `$ meson component in the physical $`\pi ^0`$ meson as only the $`\eta `$ meson can couple to the strange quark in the strange-charm mesons . As the magnitude of the $`\pi ^0\eta `$ mixing angle has been at the focus of a considerable amount of theoretical and phenomenological analysis, its value is now rather well known . The expression given by chiral perturbation theory to lowest order  is, for small $`\theta _m`$,

$$\theta _m=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{4}\frac{m_dm_u}{m_sm_0}\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0.010}$$
(1)
where $`m_0`$ is the average of the $`u`$ and $`d`$ current quark masses. To this should be added the contribution from $`\pi ^0\eta ^{}`$ mixing, which is smaller because of the larger mass of the $`\eta ^{}`$, and which may increase the value of $`\theta _m`$ by at most about 30% . The resulting effective $`\pi ^0\eta `$ mixing angle is therefore about $`0.012`$.

Combination of the notion of the spontaneously broken approximate chiral symmetry of QCD with $`SU(3)`$ flavor symmetry implies that the coupling of the baryons to the octet of light pseudoscalar mesons ($`\pi ,K,\eta `$) takes the form

$$_{NNM}=i\frac{g_A}{2f_m}\overline{\psi }_N\gamma _5\gamma _\mu _\mu m_a\lambda _a\psi _N,$$
(2)
where $`\psi _N`$ denotes the baryon octet field, $`m_a`$ the meson octet field, $`\lambda _a`$ the $`SU(3)`$ Gell-Mann matrices, $`f_m`$ the decay constants of the mesons, and $`g_A`$ the axial coupling constant of the baryons. The current experimental value of $`g_A`$ as determined from low energy nuclear beta decays is $`g_A=1.2573`$ , while the phenomenological value is $`g_A=1.267\pm 0.004`$ . If these values are employed together with the Goldberger-Treiman relations for nucleons, then ”effective” pseudovector coupling constants may be defined as

$$f_{\pi NN}=\frac{m_\pi }{2f_\pi }g_A0.95,f_{\eta NN}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}\frac{m_\eta }{2f_\eta }g_A1.79.$$
(3)
The above value for the $`\pi NN`$ coupling constant agrees completely with that used in the most recent realistic phenomenological nucleon-nucleon interaction models, the parameters of which have been determined by fits to nucleon-nucleon scattering data . Such fits do not, however, constrain the value of $`f_{\eta NN}`$ very well, and therefore its value remains uncertain. Different realistic phenomenological potential models give values between $`0.5`$ and $`3.6`$ for this coupling , while analysis of data on photoproduction of the $`\eta `$ on the nucleon indicate that the value for $`f_{\eta NN}`$ should not exceed 0.64 , a value which also seems to be consistent with data on $`\eta `$ production near threshold in proton-proton collisions .

The point of the present paper is to show that it is possible, given the value of the $`\pi ^0\eta `$ mixing angle, to estimate the strength of the coupling of the $`\eta `$ meson to strange quarks from the empirically known ratio of the branching fractions for $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ and $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$. This requires that realistic models for the respective hadronic matrix elements and $`Q\overline{q}`$ wavefunctions are at hand. From the $`\eta ss`$ coupling obtained, the corresponding $`\eta qq`$ coupling may be estimated using flavor $`SU(3)`$ symmetry. One may then, by standard quark model relations, obtain useful and constraining information on the $`\eta `$baryon, and in particular, the $`\eta `$nucleon coupling $`f_{\eta NN}`$. The main source of error in this analysis is the rather large uncertainty in the empirical determination of the $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ branching fractions for the $`D_s^{}`$ meson. This error is likely to be much larger than that introduced by $`SU(3)`$ breaking effects into the current analysis.

If one considers the coupling of the octet of light pseudoscalar mesons to the light ($`u,d,s`$) quarks, one obtains analogously to eq. (2) the couplings

$$_{qqM}=i\frac{g_A^q}{2f_m}\overline{\psi }_q\gamma _5\gamma _\mu _\mu m_a\lambda _a\psi _q,$$
(4)
where $`g_A^q`$ denotes the axial coupling constant for constituent quarks. For the pions and the $`\eta `$ meson, the empirical values of the decay constants are $`f_\pi `$ = 93 MeV and $`f_\eta `$ = 112 MeV, respectively, so at least in this case the $`SU(3)`$ flavor symmetry is broken only at the 10% level. Combination of the chiral coupling (4) with the representation

$$m_a\lambda _a=\sqrt{2}\left[\begin{array}{ccc}\frac{\pi ^0}{\sqrt{2}}+\frac{\eta ^0}{\sqrt{6}}& \pi ^+& K^+\\ \pi ^{}& \frac{\pi ^0}{\sqrt{2}}+\frac{\eta ^0}{\sqrt{6}}& K^0\\ \overline{K}^{}& \overline{K}^0& \sqrt{\frac{2}{3}}\eta ^0\end{array}\right],\psi _q=\left(\begin{array}{c}u\\ d\\ s\end{array}\right)$$
(5)
leads to the following definitions for the quark-level pseudovector coupling constants $`f_{mqq}`$, which are analogous to those given by eq. (3):

$$f_{\pi qq}=\frac{m_\pi }{2f_\pi }g_A^q,f_{\eta qq}=\frac{m_\eta }{2\sqrt{3}f_\eta }g_A^q,f_{\eta ss}=\frac{m_\eta }{\sqrt{3}f_\eta }g_A^q.$$
(6)
The above relations then suggest that the magnitude of the coupling of $`\eta `$ mesons to $`u,d`$ quarks should be one-half that of the $`\eta `$ coupling to strange quarks, independently of the $`\eta `$ meson mass. The numerical value of $`g_A^q`$ is not very well known, although typical values fall in the range 0.87 - 1 . Calculations of the pionic decay widths of the $`D^{}`$ mesons show that value range to be realistic . In the static quark model the meson-quark coupling constants eq. (6) are related to the meson-nucleon coupling constants given by eq. (3) as (see e.g. ref. )

$$f_{\pi NN}=\frac{5}{3}f_{\pi qq},f_{\eta NN}=f_{\eta qq}.$$
(7)
Thus for $`g_A1.26`$ one would predict a value of $`g_A^q0.75`$, which may be considered as a lower bound for the constituent quark axial coupling . If the relation (6) is employed with values of $`g_A^q`$ in the range 0.87 - 1.0 , then the corresponding values of $`f_{\eta ss}`$ would fall between -2.5 and -2.8. Note that the value of $`g_A^q`$ is conventionally extracted from the axial (spatial) current coupling, as the value of the effective axial charge coupling of confined constituent quarks depends on the form of the confining interaction .

The empirical observation of the charmonium decay modes $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \pi ^0`$ and $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ indicates that charm quarks also couple to the $`\pi ^0`$, and may potentially influence the $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ decay. The fairly large empirical width for $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ of $``$ 7.5 keV which corresponds to a branching fraction of $`3\%`$ suggests that besides $`q\overline{q}`$ and $`s\overline{s}`$ the $`\eta `$ meson may have a $`c\overline{c}`$ admixture. While this would allow direct coupling of the $`\eta `$ meson to charm quarks, the charm components of the $`\eta `$ and $`\eta ^{}`$ mesons are phenomenologically, as well as theoretically, constrained to be rather small . The known decay width for $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$  and the Hamiltonian model for the $`c\overline{c}`$ spectrum of ref.  may nevertheless be used to explore the consequences of a nonzero $`\eta cc`$ coupling for the decay $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ and thereby the resulting value for $`f_{\eta NN}`$. For this purpose the effective $`\eta cc`$ coupling is here taken to have the form (4).

This paper is divided into 5 sections. In section 2, the method for extracting the $`\eta ss`$ coupling from the ratio of the empirically known branching fractions for the decays $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ and $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ is described, along with the models for the $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ decays of the $`D_s^{}`$. It is shown that a relativistic treatment of both the $`\gamma `$ and $`\pi ^0`$ decays of the $`D_s^{}`$ is called for. In section 3 it is shown that the two-quark exchange current contributions to the $`\gamma `$ decay amplitude, which are associated with the scalar confining and vector one-gluon exchange (OGE) components of the $`Q\overline{q}`$ interaction, provide a way of obtaining a realistic value for the matrix element for $`\gamma `$ decay, which is not possible in the impulse approximation. These two-quark contributions appear here because of the explicit elimination of negative energy components in the Blankenbecler-Sugar (BSLT) reduction of the Bethe-Salpeter equation. Section 4 contains the numerical results for the $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ matrix elements, and an estimated upper bound for the $`\eta cc`$ coupling. Section 5 contains a concluding discussion of the results obtained for the coupling of $`\eta `$ mesons to quarks and nucleons.

## 2 The $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ and $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ Decays

### 2.1 Extraction of the $`\eta ss`$ coupling

Application of the relations (6) together with eq. (4) yields a coupling of $`\eta `$ mesons to strange quarks in terms of $`f_{\eta ss}`$. The coupling of the $`\pi ^0`$ meson to the strange quark may then be expressed in terms of the ”effective” mixing angle $`\theta _m`$ as

$$_{ss\pi ^0}=i\frac{f_{\eta ss}}{m_\eta }\theta _m\overline{\psi }_s\gamma _5\gamma _\mu _\mu \varphi _{\pi ^0}\psi _s,$$
(8)
where $`\mathrm{sin}(\theta _m)`$ has been replaced by $`\theta _m`$, which is a very good approximation for values of $`\theta _m0.015`$ rad. In eq. (8), $`\theta _m`$ now corresponds to the sum of the $`\pi ^0\eta `$ and $`\pi ^0\eta ^{}`$ contributions as discussed in the previous section.

The differential decay width of an excited heavy-light ($`Q\overline{q}`$) meson may be expressed in the form

$$\frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{q}{8\pi ^2}\frac{M_f}{M_i}|T_{fi}|^2,$$
(9)
where $`q`$ denotes the momentum of the emitted particle, $`T_{fi}`$ is the hadronic decay amplitude for the process in question, and $`M_f/M_i`$ is a normalization factor for the quarkonium states analogous to that employed in ref. . The width for the process $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ may then be obtained directly from the expression for $`D^\pm D^\pm \pi ^0`$ given in ref.  by the replacement $`g_A^q/2f_\pi f_{\eta ss}\theta _m/m_\eta `$, giving

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0)=\frac{1}{6\pi }\frac{M_{D_s}}{M_{D_s^{}}}\frac{f_{\eta ss}^2}{m_\eta ^2}\theta _m^2q_\pi ^3|_\pi |^2,$$
(10)
if the $`\pi ^0`$ emission takes place at the strange quark. Here $`_\pi `$ is a radial matrix element for pion emission. Similarly, using eq. (9) the decay width for the radiative M1 transition $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ may be written in the form

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(D_s^{}D_s\gamma )=\frac{16}{3}\frac{M_{D_s}}{M_{D_s^{}}}\alpha q_\gamma ^3|_\gamma |^2,$$
(11)
where $`\alpha `$ is the fine structure constant. In analogy with eq. (10), $`_\gamma `$ is a radial matrix element for M1 decay, which includes the inverse quark mass factor (see below). By means of eqs. (10) and (11), the ratio of the $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ decay widths of the $`D_s^{}`$ meson is then obtained as

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi }{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\gamma }=\frac{8}{9\pi }\frac{f_{\eta ss}^2\theta _m^2}{m_\eta ^2\alpha }\left(\frac{q_\pi }{q_\gamma }\right)^3\left(\frac{|_\pi |}{|_\gamma |}\right)^2.$$
(12)
Note that in the above equation, the dimension of $`|_\gamma |`$ is \[MeV\]<sup>-1</sup>. Through use of the empirical ratio of pion and photon momenta  known to be approximately 139/48 and the $`\eta `$ meson mass of 547 MeV one may solve for the coupling constant $`f_{\eta ss}`$ to get

$$f_{\eta ss}^2=\theta _m^2\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi }{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\gamma }\left(\frac{|_\gamma |}{|_\pi |}\right)^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4.814}\mathrm{fm}^2.$$
(13)
As the ratio of the $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ decay rates is experimentally known, albeit with quite large errors, to be $`0.062\pm 0.028`$ , it is, given the rather well known value of $`\theta _m`$, possible to obtain an estimate for the coupling constant $`f_{\eta ss}`$. This requires a model for the matrix elements in eq. (13), as discussed below.

Eq. (13) was obtained by assuming that the $`\pi ^0`$ decay takes place only at the strange quark. However, the observed $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ decay shows that the $`\eta `$ meson also couples to charm quarks, which implies that $`\pi ^0`$ emission by the charm quark may also take place in the $`D_s^{}`$ meson in addition to $`\pi ^0`$ emission by the strange quark through $`\pi ^0\eta `$ mixing. If the pion emission at the charm quark is taken to proceed through a coupling of the type (8), then the effect of $`\pi ^0`$ emission by the charm quark may be taken into account by replacement of eq. (13) with the expression

$$R=\theta _m^2\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi }{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\gamma }|_\gamma |^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4.814}\mathrm{fm}^2,$$
(14)
where $`R`$ is defined as

$$R=\left|f_{\eta ss}_\pi ^s+f_{\eta cc}_\pi ^c\right|^2.$$
(15)
Here $`_\pi ^c`$ denotes the radial matrix element for pion emission by the charm quark. Because of the small momentum of the emitted $`\pi ^0`$ and the heaviness of the charm quark, this matrix element will be very close to 1. The phenomenological implications of a nonzero contribution to $`\pi ^0`$ decay by the charm quark will be explored in section 5.

The coupling constant $`f_{\eta cc}`$ can only be estimated from the empirically observed decay $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ which, although somewhat suppressed by the orthogonality of the $`\psi ^{}`$ and $`J/\psi `$ wavefunctions, is known  to have a rather large width of $`7.5`$ keV corresponding to a branching fraction of about 3%. However, reliable estimation of the coupling constant $`f_{\eta cc}`$ from the decay $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ is difficult for several reasons. The first is that the matrix element for $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ is very small in the nonrelativistic approximation because of the orthogonality of the wavefunctions. In a relativistic calculation this matrix element is typically increased by an order of magnitude. Furthermore, the axial charge component from a coupling of the type (8), along with the associated two-quark effects, may also contribute significantly to such a decay . Thus if the axial current component of eq. (8) is used with the replacement $`f_{\eta ss}\theta _mf_{\eta cc}`$, then the value for $`f_{\eta cc}`$ obtained by fitting the empirical width for $`\eta `$ decay of the $`\psi ^{}`$ should be expected to represent an upper bound only. The expression for the width so obtained is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta )=\frac{4}{3\pi }\frac{M_{J/\psi }}{M_\psi ^{}}\frac{f_{\eta cc}^2}{m_\eta ^2}q_\eta ^3|_\eta |^2.$$
(16)
Here $`_\eta `$ is the matrix element for $`\eta `$ decay, which is given in the next section together with the matrix element $`_\pi `$. Note that in eq. (16), the difference of a factor 8 as compared with eq. (10) arises from the product of a factor 2 from the spin sum for a triplet-triplet transition and a factor 4 from the sum of the quark and antiquark contributions to $`\eta `$ decay. In section 4 it is shown that evaluation of eq. (16) leads to an upper bound for $`f_{\eta cc}`$ of about $`0.8`$.

### 2.2 Matrix elements for pseudoscalar emission

When the strange and charm constituent quarks are treated non-relativistically, the radial matrix element for $`\pi ^0`$ decay, $`_\pi `$, is

$$_\pi ^{\mathrm{NR}}=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑ru^2(r)j_0\left(\frac{q_\pi r}{2}\right)1\frac{r^2q_\pi ^2}{24}+𝒪(q_\pi ^4),$$
(17)
where $`u(r)`$ is the reduced radial wavefunction of $`c\overline{s}`$ system. Because of the smallness of $`q_\pi `$ (48 MeV) and $`r^2`$ ($`0.2\mathrm{fm}^2`$), the numerical value of the matrix element $`_\pi ^{\mathrm{NR}}`$ is very close to unity. If the constituent strange and charm quarks are treated as Dirac particles, then the matrix element (17) for $`\pi ^0`$ emission by the strange constituent quark is modified to

$`_\pi ^{\mathrm{Rel}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑r^{}r^{}u(r^{}){\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑rru(r){\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑PP^2{\displaystyle _1^1}𝑑zF_s^\pi (P,q_\pi ,z)`$ (18)
$`j_0\left(r^{}\sqrt{P^2+{\displaystyle \frac{q_\pi ^2}{16}}+{\displaystyle \frac{Pq_\pi z}{2}}}\right)j_0\left(r\sqrt{P^2+{\displaystyle \frac{q_\pi ^2}{16}}{\displaystyle \frac{Pq_\pi z}{2}}}\right),`$
where the function $`F_s^\pi `$, which describes the strange quark contribution to pion emission by the $`D_s^{}`$, which is a $`1^3S_1`$ state, to the $`D_s`$ ground state from the Lagrangian (8) may be expressed as

$$F_s^\pi (P,q_\pi ,z)=\sqrt{\frac{(E^{}+m_s)(E+m_s)}{4EE^{}}}\left(1\frac{P^2q_\pi ^2/4}{3(E^{}+m_s)(E+m_s)}\right).$$
(19)
Here the energy factors of the strange quark are defined as $`E=\sqrt{m_s^2+P^2+q_\pi ^2/4Pq_\pi z}`$ and $`E^{}=\sqrt{m_s^2+P^2+q_\pi ^2/4+Pq_\pi z}`$ respectively. In the above expressions, $`\stackrel{}{P}`$ is defined as $`\stackrel{}{P}=(\stackrel{}{p}^{}+\stackrel{}{p})/2`$ in terms of the relative momenta in the center-of-momentum system. In realistic models for the heavy-light mesons  and the baryons  typical values of the constituent masses for the strange and charm quarks fall in the range $`m_s`$ = 400 MeV - 600 MeV and $`m_c`$ = 1.3 - 1.6 GeV, respectively. Because of the small constituent mass of the strange quark the value of the expression (19) is expected to deviate significantly from the nonrelativistic limit (17).

Because of the small value of the momentum of the $`\pi ^0`$, one may to a very good approximation, as in eq. (17), set $`q_\pi `$ to zero in the expression (19), which then reduces to

$$F_s^\pi (P)=\underset{q0}{lim}F_s^\pi (P,q_\pi ,z)=\frac{1}{3}+\frac{2}{3}\frac{m_s}{E}.$$
(20)
In this approximation the relativistic matrix element for $`\pi ^0`$ decay may then be expressed as

$$_\pi ^{\mathrm{Rel}}=\frac{2}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑r^{}r^{}u(r^{})_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑rru(r)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑PP^2F_s^\pi (P)j_0\left(r^{}P\right)j_0\left(rP\right).$$
(21)
Eq. (20) thus indicates that in the ultrarelativistic limit, the matrix element for $`\pi ^0`$ decay assumes the value $`1/3`$. For $`m_s=560`$ MeV, the value of the matrix element (21) is $`0.8`$, which shows that the strange constituent quark has to be treated relativistically. In addition, two-quark mechanisms associated with intermediate negative energy quarks were shown in ref.  to give a small contribution to the matrix element for pion decay. These effects will be discussed in more detail in section 3.

In order to obtain the matrix element for pion emission by the charm quark in the $`D_s^{}`$ meson, it is sufficient to make the substitution $`m_sm_c`$ in all equations of this subsection. On the other hand, the matrix element for the decay $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ takes the form

$`_\eta ^{\mathrm{Rel}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑r^{}r^{}u_{J/\psi }(r^{}){\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑rru_\psi ^{}(r){\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑PP^2{\displaystyle _1^1}𝑑zF_c^\eta (P,q_\eta ,z)`$ (22)
$`j_0\left(r^{}\sqrt{P^2+{\displaystyle \frac{q_\eta ^2}{16}}+{\displaystyle \frac{Pq_\eta z}{2}}}\right)j_0\left(r\sqrt{P^2+{\displaystyle \frac{q_\eta ^2}{16}}{\displaystyle \frac{Pq_\eta z}{2}}}\right),`$
where $`u_{J/\psi }`$ and $`u_\psi ^{}`$ denote the reduced radial wavefunctions for the $`J/\psi `$ and $`\psi ^{}`$ states, respectively. The factor $`F_c^\eta `$ may be obtained by substitution of $`m_sm_c`$ and $`q_\pi q_\eta `$ in eq. (19).

### 2.3 Matrix element for $`\gamma `$ decay

In the nonrelativistic approximation the matrix element for radiative M1 decay of a $`c\overline{s}`$ meson in eq. (13) is

$$_\gamma ^{\mathrm{NR}}=\frac{1}{12}\left[\frac{2}{m_c}\frac{1}{m_s}\right].$$
(23)
Although the photon momentum $`q_\gamma `$ is somewhat larger (139 MeV) than $`q_\pi `$, it is still small enough so that the M1 approximation may be considered valid. If the strange and charm constituent quarks are treated as Dirac particles, then the canonical boosts lead to relativistic modifications of the spin-flip magnetic moment operators . The relativistic matrix element for M1 decay may thus, in analogy with eqs. (18) and (21), be written as

$$_\gamma ^{\mathrm{Rel}}=\frac{2}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑r^{}r^{}u(r^{})_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑rru(r)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑PP^2F_s^\gamma (P)j_0\left(r^{}P\right)j_0\left(rP\right),$$
(24)
where the factor $`F_s^\gamma `$ is defined as

$$F_s^\gamma (P)=\frac{1}{12}\left[\frac{2}{m_c}f_c^\gamma (P)\frac{1}{m_s}f_s^\gamma (P)\right].$$
(25)
The functions $`f_i^\gamma (P)`$ represent correction factors to the static spin-flip magnetic moment operators, and may be expressed as

$$f_i^\gamma (P)=\frac{m_i}{3E_i}\left[2+\frac{m_i}{E_i}\right]$$
(26)
for the charm and strange constituent quarks. Here the energy factors are defined as $`E_i=\sqrt{P^2+m_i^2}`$. From eq. (23) it is evident that there is destructive interference between the contributions from the heavy and light quark currents to the M1 decay rate of a heavy-light meson. Insertion of standard values of $`m_c1500`$ MeV and $`m_s500`$ MeV for the constituent quark masses reveals that the light constituent quark contribution is somewhat larger than that of the heavy quark, which leads to an overall negative value for the $`\gamma `$ decay matrix element, cf. Table 4. However, if the relativistic form, eq. (24), is employed then the charm and strange quark contributions very nearly cancel each other. This occurs because of the larger relativistic suppression of the strange quark contribution. The end result is, that in the relativistic impulse approximation the width for M1 decay of a charged heavy-light meson is very small .

This result is, however, unrealistic, since two-quark mechanisms associated with intermediate negative energy quarks will contribute significantly to the matrix elements for M1 decay. These mechanisms, which are illustrated by the Feynman diagrams in Fig. 1 appear because of the explicit elimination of negative energy components in the Blankenbecler-Sugar reduction of the Bethe-Salpeter equation. The resulting two-quark magnetic moment operators have been calculated for equal constituent masses in ref. . It has been shown in ref.  that the two-quark contribution associated with the scalar confining interaction is required for obtaining agreement with experiment for the M1 decays in the charmonium ($`c\overline{c}`$) system. Without that contribution, the width for $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \gamma `$ would be overpredicted by a factor $`3`$.

However, the situation is much more complicated for the heavy-light mesons because of the uncertain structure of $`Q\overline{q}`$ interaction. Relativistic effects are also likely to be substantial for the two-quark operators because of the low masses of the light constituent quarks. It will be shown in the next two sections that once the two-quark effects associated with a $`Q\overline{q}`$ interaction formed of scalar confining and OGE components are taken into account, then the matrix elements for M1 decay of the $`D^\pm `$ and $`D_s^\pm `$ may be restored to the same order of magnitude as the non-relativistic estimate in eq. (23). The form of these two-quark operators will be outlined in section 3, and the numerical results are given in section 4.

## 3 Two-quark contributions to $`D_s^{}`$ decay

### 3.1 Two-quark contributions to $`\gamma `$ decay

In the reduction of the Bethe-Salpeter equation for the $`s\overline{c}`$ system to a Blankenbecler-Sugar equation, the negative energy components are eliminated in the impulse approximation. These do however contribute to the current matrix elements of the $`s\overline{c}`$ system as transition matrix elements, as illustrated in Fig. 1. In the Blankenbecler-Sugar equation framework these transition matrix elements have to be included as explicit two-quark current operators . These two-quark matrix elements have been shown to give a large correction to the spin-flip matrix element of the single quark current .

The qualitative effect of this two-quark current may be understood in terms of a shift of the constituent quark mass by the scalar confining interaction $`mm+V_c(r)`$. Since the constituent mass appears in the denominator of the magnetic moment operator, this mass shift will lead to a reduction of the corresponding single quark contribution to the M1 decay width. However, because of the cancellation of the relativistic single quark current matrix element (24) for the $`c\overline{s}`$ system outlined in section 2.3, the two quark currents give the main contribution to the transition rate for $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ . For the scalar confining interaction, that current may be expressed in the form

$`\stackrel{}{ȷ}_c(\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{k}_1,\stackrel{}{k}_2)=e({\displaystyle \frac{Q_1^{}\stackrel{}{P}_1}{m_1^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{Q_2^{}\stackrel{}{P}_2}{m_2^2}}`$ $`+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1+\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2)\times \stackrel{}{q}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{Q_1^{}}{2m_1^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{Q_2^{}}{2m_2^2}}\right]`$ (27)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2)\times \stackrel{}{q}[{\displaystyle \frac{Q_1^{}}{2m_1^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{Q_2^{}}{2m_2^2}}]),`$
where $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ is the momentum of the emitted photon, which corresponds to $`\stackrel{}{p}^{}\stackrel{}{p}`$ in case of the single quark amplitude. In eq. (27), the variables $`Q_1^{}`$ and $`Q_2^{}`$ are defined as $`Q_1^{}=V_c(\stackrel{}{k}_2)Q_1`$ and $`Q_2^{}=V_c(\stackrel{}{k}_1)Q_2`$, where $`V_c(\stackrel{}{k}_n)`$ is the (formal) Fourier transform of the scalar confining interaction. The momentum variables $`\stackrel{}{P}_1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{P}_2`$ correspond to the expressions $`(\stackrel{}{p}_1+\stackrel{}{p}_1^{})/2`$ and $`(\stackrel{}{p}_2+\stackrel{}{p}_2^{})/2`$ respectively, while $`\stackrel{}{k}_n`$ denotes the momentum transfered to quark $`n`$ according to Fig. 1. The analogous expression for the two-quark current induced by the vector coupled OGE interaction is of the form

$`\stackrel{}{ȷ}_g(\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{k}_1,\stackrel{}{k}_2)`$ $`=`$ $`e\left(Q_1^{}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1\times \stackrel{}{k}_2}{2m_1^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{2\stackrel{}{P}_2+i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2\times \stackrel{}{k}_2}{2m_1m_2}}\right]+Q_2^{}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2\times \stackrel{}{k}_1}{2m_2^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{2\stackrel{}{P}_1+i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1\times \stackrel{}{k}_1}{2m_1m_2}}\right]\right),`$ (28)
with $`Q_1^{}=V_g(\stackrel{}{k}_2)Q_1`$ and $`Q_2^{}=V_g(\stackrel{}{k}_1)Q_2`$. Here $`V_g(\stackrel{}{k})`$ denotes the momentum-space form of the OGE interaction. The corresponding magnetic moment operators may then be computed from eqs. (27) and (28) according to

$$\stackrel{}{\mu }\frac{i}{2}\underset{q0}{lim}\left[\stackrel{}{}_q\times \stackrel{}{ȷ}(\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{k}_1,\stackrel{}{k}_2)\right],$$
(29)
where the momentum transfer variables are given by $`\stackrel{}{k}_1=\stackrel{}{q}/2\stackrel{}{k}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{k}_2=\stackrel{}{q}/2+\stackrel{}{k}`$. Upon Fourier transformation, the resulting magnetic moment operators may, for transitions between $`S`$-wave states, be written in the form

$$\stackrel{}{\mu }_c=\frac{eV_c(r)}{4}\left\{\left[\frac{Q_1}{m_1^2}\frac{Q_2}{m_2^2}\right](\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2)+\left[\frac{Q_1}{m_1^2}+\frac{Q_2}{m_2^2}\right](\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1+\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2)\right\}$$
(30)
for the scalar confining interaction, and

$$\stackrel{}{\mu }_g=\frac{eV_g(r)}{8}\left\{\left[\frac{Q_1}{m_1^2}\frac{Q_2}{m_2^2}\frac{Q_1Q_2}{m_1m_2}\right](\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2)+\left[\frac{Q_1}{m_1^2}+\frac{Q_2}{m_2^2}+\frac{Q_1+Q_2}{m_1m_2}\right](\stackrel{}{\sigma }_1+\stackrel{}{\sigma }_2)\right\}$$
(31)
for the one-gluon exchange interaction. In the limit $`m_1=m_2`$, the above magnetic moments reduce to those given in ref. . Note that for the case of equal constituent quark masses, the one-gluon exchange magnetic moment operator has no spin-flip term and consequently does not contribute to M1 decay if $`m_1=m_2`$. The terms in eqs. (30) and (31) that are symmetric in the quark spins affect only the magnetic moments of the heavy-light mesons and give no contribution to the M1 decay widths.

The spin-flip matrix elements for radiative M1 decay of a $`c\overline{s}`$ meson that should be added to the relativistic single quark matrix element (24) are thus

$$_\gamma ^{\mathrm{Conf}}=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑ru^2(r)\frac{V_c(r)}{12}\left[\frac{2}{m_c^2}\frac{1}{m_s^2}\right],$$
(32)
in case of the scalar confining interaction, and

$$_\gamma ^{\mathrm{Oge}}=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑ru^2(r)\frac{V_g(r)}{24}\left[\frac{2}{m_c^2}\frac{1}{m_s^2}\frac{1}{m_cm_s}\right]$$
(33)
for the one-gluon exchange interaction. In the above expressions, the appropriate values of the quark charge operators have been entered. For the scalar confining interaction, the form $`V_c(r)=crb`$ will be used, where the parameters $`c`$ and $`b`$ are taken to be those obtained in the potential model of ref. . The one-gluon exchange potential $`V_g(r)`$ is taken to be of the form

$$V_g(r)=\frac{4}{3}\frac{2}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k\alpha _s(\stackrel{}{k}^2)j_0(kr),$$
(34)
which is known as the Richardson potential  and features the running QCD coupling $`\alpha _s`$ which is parameterized in terms of the QCD scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ and a dynamical gluon mass $`m_g`$, which in ref.  were obtained as 280 MeV and 240 MeV, respectively:

$$\alpha _s(k^2)=\frac{12\pi }{27}\frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}[(k^2+4m_g^2)/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2]}.$$
(35)
Note that if $`\alpha _s`$ is taken to be constant, then the above form reduces to the standard Coulombic one-gluon exchange potential of perturbative QCD.

### 3.2 Two-quark contributions to $`\pi ^0`$ decay

In ref.  it was shown that a two-quark mechanism analogous to that for M1 decay shown in Fig. 1, which is due to coupling of the emitted pion to an intermediate negative energy quark, which interacts with the heavy spectator quark by the $`Q\overline{q}`$ interaction may contribute to the amplitude for pion decay. If the decay amplitude for emitted pions is written in the form

$$T_\pi =i\stackrel{}{q}_\pi \stackrel{}{A},$$
(36)
then the axial current $`\stackrel{}{A}`$ may be decomposed into single- and two-quark contributions according to $`\stackrel{}{A}=\stackrel{}{A}_s+\stackrel{}{A}_{\mathrm{ex}}`$. The two-quark contributions, which have been calculated for equal constituent masses in ref. , are in this case however proportional to $`m_q^3`$ in the nonrelativistic limit, which means that they are of much less importance than the two-quark contributions to the magnetic moment operator. Furthermore, it has been shown in ref.  that the axial exchange current contribution associated with the scalar confining interaction is much reduced if relativistic effects are considered, because of the low mass of the strange constituent quark.

The end result is, that two-quark effects due to the scalar confining and one-gluon exchange interactions will only modify the relativistic matrix element (21) at the $`510`$% level. As the uncertainties in the value of the mixing angle $`\theta _m`$ and the empirically determined ratio of $`\gamma `$ and $`\pi ^0`$ decay are much greater, there is no need to include the two-quark contributions to the amplitude for $`\pi ^0`$ decay at this time.

## 4 Numerical Results for $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ and $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$

In order to obtain a description of the decay $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ that is as realistic as possible, the model for M1 decay presented here should be checked against the empirical results on the corresponding decays of the non-strange $`D`$ mesons. As the decay width for $`D^\pm D^\pm \gamma `$ is known directly and that for $`D^0D^0\gamma `$ can be estimated from the empirical branching ratios and model calculations of the pionic decays of the $`D`$ mesons, it is possible to calibrate the mass of the light constituent quark so that an optimal description of the M1 decay of the $`D^\pm `$ is obtained. Together with the potential model calculation in ref. , this information can then be used to obtain a realistic estimate of the strange quark constituent mass. In order to calculate the M1 decay rate $`D^\pm D^\pm \gamma `$, it is sufficient to make the substitution $`m_sm_q`$ in all matrix elements, but for $`D^0D^0\gamma `$, one should substitute $`m_s^12m_q^1`$ in eq. (25), and $`m_s^22m_q^2`$, $`1/m_cm_s4/m_cm_q`$ in eqs. (32) and (33). The obtained results for the M1 widths of the non-strange $`D`$ mesons are given for different light constituent quark masses in Tables 1 and 2.

It is instructive to compare the results presented in Table 1 with the current experimental data for the $`D^\pm `$. Until recently, only the relative branching ratios for $`\pi `$ and $`\gamma `$ decay were known . However, a first empirical measurement of the total width of the $`D^\pm `$ has recently been published by the CLEO collaboration . The reported result is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(D^\pm )=96\pm 4\pm 22`$ keV, where the latter error represents the systematic uncertainties. Taking into account the reported  branching ratio of $`1.6\pm 0.4`$% for radiative decay, one obtains $`1.5\pm 0.6`$ keV for the transition $`D^\pm D^\pm \gamma `$. Here most of the uncertainty stems from the systematic errors of the experimental result. However, it is evident that the results of Table 1 reproduce this result well for a range of values of the light constituent quark mass $`m_q`$. The value $`m_q=450`$ MeV corresponds to the potential model of ref. , while the value $`m_q=420`$ MeV has been suggested by refs. . From Table 1 it is thus seen that a light constituent quark mass of 420 MeV produces a width for radiative decay which is close to 1.5 keV. That value of the width is also favored by the analysis of ref. .

Even though the total width of the neutral $`D^0`$ meson has not yet been determined , considerable information about the expected width for $`D^0D^0\gamma `$ may be extracted from the reported branching fraction of $`38.1\pm 2.9`$, since the corresponding width for pion decay can be constrained by means of the empirically determined width of the $`D^\pm `$ and model calculations of the pionic decays of $`D`$ mesons . This is seen directly if one first notes that the branching fraction of $`D^\pm D^0\pi ^\pm `$ is reported as $`67.7\pm 0.5`$, which implies a width for this decay mode of $`65\pm 14`$ keV. From the model calculation of ref.  one finds that this corresponds to a width of $`40\pm 10`$ keV for $`D^0D^0\pi ^0`$. As the relative branching fractions for $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ decay of the $`D^0`$ are well known , the best estimate for the width of $`D^0D^0\gamma `$ is $`25`$ keV. There remains, however, still a considerable uncertainty of $`\pm 10`$ keV from the systematic errors in the empirical measurement of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(D^\pm )`$.

A width for $`D^0D^0\gamma `$ of around 20-30 keV is also preferred by ref. . The result of the model calculation in Table 2 is smaller by about a factor $`2`$ as the OGE contribution is weaker in this case as compared to the contribution from the scalar confining interaction. Moreover, as a relativistic treatment of the two-quark currents will effectively lead to replacement of the quark masses by energy-dependent factors, it may be argued that relativistic effects will generally lead to a weakening of the two-quark contributions to the matrix element for M1 decay. It is thus entirely possible that a fully relativistic treatment will render the two-quark contributions too weak to account for the experimental data on M1 decay of the $`D^\pm `$ meson as well.

This conclusion is in line with that reached in ref. , where it was found that the introduction of a large anomalous magnetic moment is required in order to fit the observed M1 decay widths of the heavy-light mesons. Another interesting possibility is that the instanton induced interaction for $`Q\overline{q}`$ systems given in refs.  may also contribute a significant two-quark current. The interaction of refs. , which was found to be short-ranged, negative and attractive, has scalar coupling to the light constituent quark. One may thus conclude that this interaction will add up constructively with the OGE contribution from eq. (33). Thus the instanton induced interaction will have an overall favorable effect on the widths for M1 decay, particularly for the $`D^0`$, which may be inferred from the matrix elements given in Table 4.

As it appears to be possible to obtain a realistic description of the radiative M1 decay of the $`D^\pm `$ meson using the model presented in this paper, then a prediction based on the potential model  for the M1 decay $`D_s^\pm D_s^\pm \gamma `$ and the associated matrix element $`_\gamma `$ can be made. That information is needed as input for eq. (13) in order to obtain an estimate for $`f_{\eta ss}`$. These results are given in Tables 3 and 4.

In order to estimate the coupling constant $`f_{\eta ss}`$, the matrix element (21) for $`\pi ^0`$ decay of the $`D_s^{}`$ meson also needs to be evaluated. The value of that matrix element for a strange constituent quark mass of 560 MeV is 0.794, which together with the total matrix element for $`\gamma `$ decay of the $`D_s^{}`$ may then be used with eq. (13) to obtain a value for $`f_{\eta ss}`$. If the charm quark also couples significantly to the $`\eta `$ meson, then the matrix element for pion emission by the charm quark in eq. (15) needs to be evaluated as well. This can be done by the substitution $`m_sm_c`$ in eq. (21). For a charm quark mass of 1580 MeV, the result $`_\pi ^c`$ = 0.949 is obtained. Thus, in the evaluation of eqs. (14) and (15), the following values for the matrix elements for $`\gamma `$ and $`\pi ^0`$ decay will be used:

$`_\gamma =1.2210^2\mathrm{fm}`$

for the $`\gamma `$ decay matrix element, and

$`_\pi ^s=0.794_\pi ^c=0.949`$

for the $`\pi ^0`$ decay matrix elements. Note that in all the calculations of this section, the masses of the initial and final quarkonium states as well as the momenta of the emitted photons and $`\pi ^0`$ mesons have been taken to equal those given in ref. .

### 4.1 Numerical Results for $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$

The evaluation of eq. (16) involves the computation of the matrix element $`_\eta `$ given by eq. (22). The $`\psi ^{}`$ and $`J/\psi `$ wavefunctions are here taken to be those computed in the potential model of ref. . Because of the somewhat larger value of $`q_\eta `$ (200 MeV) , and the orthogonality of the $`\psi ^{}`$ and $`J/\psi `$ radial wavefunctions, it is undesirable to make the approximation $`q_\eta =0`$ in this case. The resulting relativistic matrix element for the decay $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ is obtained as $`_\eta =3.5310^2`$, and gives the desired width of $`7.5`$ keV if the coupling constant $`f_{\eta cc}`$ is taken to be $`0.8`$. The sign of $`f_{\eta cc}`$ is of course not determined by this computation.

As there exists both theoretical and phenomenological arguments  against a significant $`c\overline{c}`$ admixture in the $`\eta `$ meson, then this value for $`f_{\eta cc}`$ may appear uncomfortably large. Indeed, it will be shown in the next section that a value of $`f_{\eta cc}`$ around $`0.8`$ is, in view of the $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ decay, about one half of the so obtained value for $`f_{\eta ss}`$. However, as neither the axial charge component nor the associated two-quark contributions to the amplitude for $`\eta `$ decay of the $`\psi ^{}`$ have been considered, the value of 0.8 for $`f_{\eta cc}`$ should be considered as an upper limit only. Nevertheless, it will be shown in the next section that the inclusion of a pion-charm quark coupling will serve to increase the obtained value for $`f_{\eta ss}`$, thus bringing it closer to the phenomenologically preferred values .

## 5 Discussion

Assuming that in the $`\pi ^0`$ decay of the $`D_s^{}`$, the pion couples mostly to the strange constituent quark, eq. (13) may be used directly together with the matrix elements for $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ decay given in the previous section to estimate the magnitude of $`f_{\eta ss}`$. Insertion of the matrix elements and taking $`\theta _m=0.012`$ yields $`R=0.3085`$, giving $`|f_{\eta ss}|=0.70`$. Taking into account the uncertainties in the mixing angle and the empirical decay widths for $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma `$ decay, the best estimate is

$`f_{\eta ss}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.7}_{0.3}^{+0.5}`$

In the above result, the negative sign is suggested by the relations in eq. (6). The static quark model then implies, through eq. (7), that the magnitude of the corresponding pseudovector $`\eta `$-nucleon coupling constant $`f_{\eta NN}`$ should be one half of this value. Thus one obtains the following value for the $`\eta `$-nucleon coupling:

$`f_{\eta NN}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}\hspace{0.25em}0.35}_{0.25}^{+0.15}`$

This result should be compared with the value for $`f_{\eta NN}`$ (or the equivalent pseudoscalar coupling constant $`g_{\eta NN}=(2m_N/m_\eta )f_{\eta NN}`$, which has been determined by phenomenological model fits to photoproduction of $`\eta `$ mesons on the nucleon . The latter value for $`f_{\eta NN}`$ is 0.64. This value has also been found to be realistic in calculations of the cross section for $`pppp\eta `$ near threshold . Although the result obtained above for $`f_{\eta NN}`$ has quite large uncertainties which are mostly of empirical origin, it still appears to be significantly smaller. A larger value for $`f_{\eta NN}`$ could of course be obtained by decreasing the mixing angle $`\theta _m`$.

Additional modifications to the current estimation of $`f_{\eta NN}`$ may of course also arise from $`SU(3)`$ breaking effects in eq. (6), which relates $`f_{\eta qq}`$ to $`f_{\eta ss}`$. Likewise, relativistic effects may also modify the static quark model result (7) which relates $`f_{\eta qq}`$ to $`f_{\eta NN}`$. However, in view of the large experimental uncertainty in the determination of the branching fractions for $`\gamma `$ and $`\pi ^0`$ decay of the $`D_s^{}`$, there appears to be little motivation to include such effects at this time. Another possibility is that the matrix element for $`\gamma `$ decay as given by Table 4 is too small. However, as the computed width for $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ is already somewhat larger than that given in ref. , this possibility may be considered unlikely.

Another option worth considering, in view of the fact that the empirical detection of a considerable branching fraction for $`\psi ^{}J/\psi \eta `$ indicates that the $`\eta `$ meson also couples to the charm quark, is that the coupling of the $`\eta `$ meson to the charm quark would be strong enough to significantly influence the $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$ decay. For nonzero values of the coupling $`f_{\eta cc}`$, the coupling constant $`f_{\eta ss}`$ may thus be determined from eq. (15) according to

$$f_{\eta ss}=\frac{\sqrt{R}f_{\eta cc}_\pi ^c}{_\pi ^s},$$
(37)
where the different possibilities are $`\sqrt{R}=\pm 0.5554`$ and $`f_{\eta cc}=\pm 0.8`$. The most realistic of these appears to be $`\sqrt{R}=0.5554,f_{\eta cc}=+0.8`$, giving $`f_{\eta ss}=1.66`$. In this case a nonzero and positive $`f_{\eta cc}`$ leads to a larger and negative value for $`f_{\eta ss}`$, allowing for better agreement with the values of $`f_{\eta NN}`$ suggested above. The value for $`f_{\eta NN}`$ that corresponds to $`f_{\eta cc}=+0.8`$ turns out to be

$$f_{\eta NN}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}\hspace{0.25em}0.83}_{0.35}^{+0.25},$$
(38)
which is closer to the phenomenological estimates given by refs.  and . Although the value +0.8 for $`f_{\eta cc}`$ is, in view of the discussion in the previous section, probably much too large, there still remains a distinct possibility that the charm quark contributes significantly to the width for $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$. In this case it is found that values around $`f_{\eta ss}1.7`$ are favored by an eta-charm coupling of $`+0.8`$.

It is useful to compare the results obtained from the present phenomenological analysis with the predictions of eq. (6). With the value $`g_A^q=0.87`$ for the axial coupling constant of the constituent quarks, eq. (6) yields the value $`f_{\pi qq}=`$ 0.65 for the pion-quark coupling, which is close to the value $`f_{\pi qq}=3/5f_{\pi NN}0.57`$ suggested by the static quark model (cf. (3)). The values for $`f_{\eta qq}`$ and $`f_{\eta ss}`$ so obtained are 1.25 and -2.5 respectively. The values for $`f_{\eta ss}`$ obtained here from the ratio of the empirical branching fractions for $`D_s^{}D_s\pi ^0`$ and $`D_s^{}D_s\gamma `$, are much smaller than this quark model value. In the completely $`SU(3)`$ flavor symmetric limit, in which the pion and $`\eta `$ are degenerate in mass, the value for $`f_{\eta ss}`$ would however be equal to $`2/\sqrt{3}f_{\pi qq}`$, which is only -0.75. The results from various modern phenomenological analyses are typically about twice this value.

Naive application of $`SU(3)`$ flavor symmetry at the level of a chiral symmetry violating pseudoscalar coupling model for pions and $`\eta `$ mesons to baryons gives the result $`g_{\eta NN}=1/\sqrt{3}g_{\pi NN}`$. With the (now) standard value of 12.8 for $`g_{\pi NN}`$ this relation would give the value 7.4 for $`g_{\eta NN}`$. Such a large value would correspond to $`f_{\eta NN}`$ = 2.2. While values of that magnitude are ruled out by $`\eta `$ meson photoproduction, as well as, as shown here, by the $`\pi ^0`$ decay of the $`D_s^{}`$ meson, they were employed in early realistic boson exchange models for the nucleon-nucleon interaction.

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Dr.S. Wycech for instructive discussions. DOR thanks the W.K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology for its hospitality during the completion of this work. Research supported in part by the Academy of Finland by grants 43982 and 54038.


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# Two-temperature coronal flow above a thin disk

## 1 Introduction

It is commonly thought that AGN are composed of a central supermassive black hole and a thin equatorial accretion disk. Spectral features of AGN, the big blue bump, the soft X-ray excess and hard X-ray tails, and the 6.4 keV fluorescent iron lines show strong observational evidence for hot gas in the neighborhood of the inner accretion disk (e.g., Mushotzky, Done, & Pounds 1993; Zdziarski 1999). Soft disk photons are Compton up-scattered by the optically thin hot plasma and cause the power-law hard X-ray component in the spectrum. The relative strength of the hard X-ray component with respect to the UV–soft X-ray component, leading to the classification as soft or hard spectrum, is ascribed to the dominance of either the thermal emission from the accretion disk or of the thermal Comptonization in a hot plasma. The iron lines are explained by reflection of the hard X-rays from the underlying disk (e.g., Fabian et al. 2000; Reeves et al. 2001; Gondoin et al. 2001).

Theoretical simulations successfully reproduce the observed spectra by assuming a certain fraction of gravitational energy released in the hot gas (e.g. Haardt & Maraschi 1991; Kawaguchi, Shimura, & Mineshige 2001) and/or a certain spatial distribution of the hot gas (e.g. Merloni & Fabian 2001a). However, without understanding the coexistence of disk and corona, the previous models require additional free parameters besides the mass of the black hole and the accretion rate for modeling the observed spectra.

On the other hand, mass evaporation from the underlying cool disk to the hot corona provides a mechanism for the change of the accretion disk in the outer region to the coronal flow/ADAF in the inner region. Such a model (Meyer & Meyer-Hofmeister 1994, Meyer et al. 2000a) describes the physics of the process how mass and energy exchange and how the hot corona exists above the cool disk. Further the model allows to explain self-consistently whether and where the accretion changes from the thin disk to the hot coronal flow/ADAF in dependence on the given accretion rate. The model explains the soft/hard spectral transitions in black hole X-ray binaries (Meyer, Liu, & Meyer-Hofmeister 2000b) and the truncation of the thin disk in soft X-ray transients and some galactic nuclei ( Liu et al. 1999; Liu & Meyer-Hofmeister 2001). It provides a scenario for disk evolution and outburst cycles of soft X-ray transients (Meyer-Hofmeister & Meyer 1999). In these applications of the evaporation model the inner disk is truncated due to a relatively low accretion rate.

If we apply the disk corona model to AGN, the inferred high mass accretion rate in these luminous systems makes it possible for the disk to extend inward to the last stable orbit since the high accretion rate tends to prohibit the disk from being depleted. Then the hard X-ray radiation originates from re-processing in the hot corona. Such an inner corona has very high temperature and low density, and hence electrons and ions are no longer well coupled if all the heating goes to ions and only Coulomb collisions transfer energy from ions to electrons. Photons from the thin disk are Compton up-scattered in the coronal region close to the central black hole. This process influences the coronal structure. Our former applications of the evaporation model adequate for equal ion and electron temperature (one-temperature coronae) would not be a good approximation anymore for the innermost regions of the black hole accretion system. A two-temperature treatment has to be developed.

Recently a semi-analytical approach based on the same physics is carried out in detail by Różańska & Czerny (2000). In their investigation the corona is regarded as a layer with constant pressure, which means that the frictional heating is higher than that in the real corona where the pressure scale height is much smaller as shown by our numerical computations (Meyer et al. 2000a). This approximation and further assumptions in their work lead to quite a difference in the detailed results. A recent investigation by Spruit & Deufel (2001) concerns the heating of the innermost disk region by hot ions and the resultant evaporation of matter from the disk.

In the present study we took into account the decoupling of electrons and ions and the Compton cooling, extending the previous disk evaporation model (Meyer et al. 2000a) to small distances from the black hole. We calculated the vertical structure of the corona numerically, attempting to describe the hot corona self-consistently in equilibrium with the cool disk below. We also investigated the dependence on the viscosity value chosen for the hot gas. We found that the evaporation efficiency is higher for larger viscosity, that means the mass flow in the corona is higher and consequently the mass accretion rate in the underlying disk is lower. Our new results are of interest with regard to the observed spectra and the spectral variations of AGN and galactic black hole candidates. In Sect.2 we briefly describe the model. The detailed computational results are presented in Sect.3 . In Sect.4 we discuss the dominant accretion form at different accretion rates and the possible coexistence of disk and corona in the innermost region of AGN. Our conclusions are given in Sect.5.

## 2 The model

We consider a hot corona above a geometrically thin standard disk around a central black hole. Heat released by friction in the corona flows down into lower cooler and denser corona. There it is radiated away if the density is sufficiently high. If the density is too low, cool matter is heated up and joins the coronal gas. We call this process evaporation. This goes on until an equilibrium density is established. The gas evaporating into the corona still retains angular momentum, it will differentially rotate around the central object similar to a standard accretion disk. By friction the gas looses angular momentum and drifts inward thus continuously drains mass from the corona towards the central object. This is compensated by a steady mass evaporation flow from the underlying disk. The process is driven by the gravitational potential energy released by friction in the form of heat in the corona. Therefore, mass is accreted to the central object partially through corona (evaporated part) and partially through disk (the left part of the supplying mass).

### 2.1 The equations

In our earlier study (Meyer et al. 2000a) the equations for the corona above the disk are derived. The approximations used to describe the complex physics are discussed there in detail. For the application to coronae near the black hole we now take additionally into account different ion and electron temperature and hence separate energy equations for ions and electrons. Also Compton cooling is considered.

We list the equations as follows,

Equation of state

$$P=n_i\kappa T_i+n_e\kappa T_e=\frac{\mathrm{}\rho }{2\mu }(T_i+T_e),$$
(1)
where we assumed a standard chemical composition ($`X=0.75,Y=0.25`$) for the corona. The average molecular weight is then $`\mu =0.62`$. For simplicity we take the number density of ions $`n_i`$ equal to that of electrons $`n_e`$, which is strictly true only for a pure hydrogen plasma.

Equation of continuity

$$\frac{d}{dz}(\rho v_z)=\frac{2}{r}\rho v_r\frac{2z}{r^2+z^2}\rho v_z.$$
(2)
$`z`$-component of momentum equation

$$\rho v_z\frac{dv_z}{dz}=\frac{dP}{dz}\rho \frac{GMz}{(r^2+z^2)^{3/2}}.$$
(3)
For the derivation of the above two equations see Eqs. (39) and (34) in Meyer et al. (2000a). The term $`\frac{2z}{r^2+z^2}\rho v_z`$ is due to the gradual change of the channel ($`1+z^2/r^2`$ the channel cross section) of the ascending gas from a cylindrical to a spherical expanding shape at large height $`z`$.

There are now two energy equations (compare Eq. (46) Meyer et al. (2000a) for the one-temperature case), one for ions and one for electrons, and the cooling and heating processes in such a hot corona have to be included.

1) For ions the energy balance is between viscous heating, cooling by collision with electrons and radial and vertical advection.

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{d}{dz}\left[\rho _iv_z\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P_i}{\rho _i}\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)\right]\hfill \\ =\frac{3}{2}\alpha P\mathrm{\Omega }q_{ie}\hfill \\ +\frac{2}{r}\rho _iv_r\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P_i}{\rho _i}\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)\hfill \\ \frac{2z}{r^2+z^2}\left[\rho _iv_z\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P_i}{\rho _i}\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)\right],\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
where the radial velocity is approximated as $`v_r\alpha V_s^2/\mathrm{\Omega }r`$ ($`V_s`$ sound speed). The friction is assumed to be proportional to the total pressure, and thus the viscous heating rate per unit volume is $`q_{\mathrm{vis}}=\frac{3}{2}\alpha P\mathrm{\Omega }`$ as appears in the equation. Here we assume that all viscous heating goes to ions as usual (though there is a controversy on possible viscous heating on electrons (e.g. Bisnovatyi-Kogan & Lovelace 1997; Quataert & Gruzinov 1999)) and the ion energy is transferred to electrons by Coulomb coupling alone. Thus, the exchange rate of energy between electrons and ions for non-relativistic approximation is (Stepney 1983),

$$\begin{array}{cc}q_{ie}\hfill & =\left(\frac{2}{\pi }\right)^{1/2}\frac{3}{2}\frac{m_e}{m_p}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }\sigma _Tcn_en_i(\kappa T_i\kappa T_e)\frac{1+T_{}^{1/2}}{T_{}^{3/2}}\hfill \\ & =3.59\times 10^{32}n_en_i(T_iT_e)\frac{1+T_{}^{1/2}}{T_{}^{3/2}},\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
with

$$T_{}=\frac{\kappa T_e}{m_ec^2}\left(1+\frac{m_e}{m_p}\frac{T_i}{T_e}\right),$$

and $`G`$ gravitational constant, $`m_p`$ and $`m_e`$ proton and electron mass, $`\sigma _T`$ Thomson scattering cross section, $`c`$ speed of light, $`\kappa `$ Boltzmann constant, and Coulomb logarithm $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ taken as 20.

2) For electrons the energy balance is determined by the processes of heating by collision with ions, cooling by Bremsstrahlung, Compton cooling and vertical thermal conduction (the radial one is neglected since $`T_e/rT_e/z`$), as well as advection.

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{d}{dz}\left[\rho _ev_z\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P_e}{\rho _e}\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)+F_c\right]\hfill \\ =q_{ie}n_en_iL(T_e)q_{\mathrm{comp}}\hfill \\ +\frac{2}{r}\rho _ev_r\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P_e}{\rho _e}\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)\hfill \\ \frac{2z}{r^2+z^2}\left[\rho _ev_z\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P_e}{\rho _e}\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)+F_c\right],\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
where $`n_en_iL(T_e)`$ is the bremsstrahlung cooling rate and $`q_{\mathrm{comp}}`$ the Compton cooling rate,

$$q_{\mathrm{comp}}=\frac{4\kappa T_e}{m_ec^2}n_e\sigma _Tc\frac{aT_{\mathrm{eff}}^4}{2},$$
(7)
with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ the effective temperature of the main body of the disk,

$$T_{\mathrm{eff}}^4=\frac{3GM\dot{M}_d}{8\pi r^3\sigma },$$

here we have added a factor 1/2 to the the energy density of a black-body photon field in Eq.(7) since photons from the underlying disks only cover half of the sky of electrons in the optically thin corona (compare with Rybicki & Lightman 1979), and $`F_c`$ the thermal conduction (Eq. (49) in Meyer et al. (2000a)),

$$F_c=\kappa _0T_e^{5/2}\frac{dT_e}{dz},$$
(8)
with $`a`$ radiative constant, $`\sigma `$ Stefan-Boltzmann constant, $`\kappa _0=10^6`$g cm $`\mathrm{s}^3\mathrm{K}^{7/2}`$ for fully ionized plasma (Spitzer 1962), and $`\dot{M}_d`$ mass flow rate in the disk.

From Eq.(4) and Eq.(6) we obtain an energy equation in the same form as for our one-temperature model, but with a new term concerning the Compton cooling,

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{d}{dz}\left[\rho v_z\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P}{\rho }\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)+F_c\right]\hfill \\ =\frac{3}{2}\alpha P\mathrm{\Omega }n_en_iL(T_e)q_{\mathrm{comp}}\hfill \\ +\frac{2}{r}\rho v_r\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P}{\rho }\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)\hfill \\ \frac{2z}{r^2+z^2}\left[\rho v_z\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{\gamma }{\gamma 1}\frac{P}{\rho }\frac{GM}{\left(r^2+z^2\right)^{1/2}}\right)+F_c\right]\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)
For convenience the two energy equation Eq.(4) and Eq.(9) are used in the numerical calculations instead of Eq.(4) and Eq.(6).

We want to point out that the one-zone approximation is taken for deriving the above equations. For a given distance $`r`$ we choose a region between $`r_1`$ and $`r_2`$ so that

$$\pi (r_2^2r_1^2)=\pi r^2$$
(10)
and

$$r=\frac{_{r_1}^{r_2}r^{}2\pi r^{}𝑑r^{}}{\pi (r_2^2r_1^2)},$$
(11)
i.e. $`r_1=0.72r`$ and $`r_2=1.23r`$. In the one-zone region the radial advection is taken related to the difference between mass inflow from the outer neighboring regions and outflow towards the inner neighboring regions,

$$\frac{(2\pi r\mathrm{\Delta }z\rho v_r)_{r_2}(2\pi r\mathrm{\Delta }z\rho v_r)_{r_1}}{2\pi r\mathrm{\Delta }z(r_2r_1)}\frac{\rho v_r}{(r_2r_1)}\frac{2}{r}\rho v_r$$
(12)
This approximation for the net radial flow requires the mass outflow larger than the inflow. In the following sections we will see that the evaporation rate reaches a maximum and doesn’t increase any more (see Fig. 3) inside the maximal evaporation region. This implies our results are inconsistent in the inner region and we need to reconsider the radial flow. For this we study the radial flow more accurately in Sect.4.1. It turns out that the effect of the radial advective loss is very small to the inner structures, the corresponding terms in the continuity and energy equations are not very important. Therefore, our results based on one-zone approximation are still consistent.

### 2.2 Boundary conditions

The 5 differential equations, Eqs.(2), (3),(4), (8) and (9), contain 5 variables $`P(z)`$, $`T_i(z)`$, $`T_e(z)`$, $`\dot{m}(z)(\rho v_z)`$ and can be solved with 5 boundary conditions.

At the lower boundary $`z_0`$ (the interface of disk and corona), there is no heat flux and the temperature of the gas should be the effective temperature of the accretion disk. Former investigations (Liu, Meyer, & Meyer-Hofmeister 1995) show that the coronal temperature increases from effective temperature to $`10^{6.5}`$K in a very thin layer and thus the lower boundary conditions can be reasonably approximated (Meyer et al. 2000a) as,

$$T_e=10^{6.5}K,T_i=T_e,\mathrm{and}F_c=2.73\times 10^6P\mathrm{at}z=z_0$$
(13)
At infinity, there is no artificial confinement and hence no pressure. This requires sound transition at some height $`z=z_1`$, which is taken as our upper boundary. There is no heat flux from/to infinity either. We then constrain the upper boundary as,

$$F_c=0\mathrm{and}v_z^2=V_s^2P/\rho =\frac{\mathrm{}}{2\mu }(T_i+T_e)\mathrm{at}z=z_1$$
(14)
With such boundary conditions, we have to assume lower boundary values for $`P`$ and $`\dot{m}`$ to begin the integration along $`z`$, if the trial $`P`$ and $`\dot{m}`$ fulfill the upper boundary conditions, we find the solutions.

## 3 Computational results

We solved the differential Eqs.(2), (3),(4), (8) and (9) using the Runge-Kutta method. The technical details of the integration procedure are similar to those in our previous study (Meyer et al. 2000a). In the present investigation standard parameters were taken for the black hole mass $`M=10^8M_{}`$ and the viscosity coefficient $`\alpha `$=0.3. The Compton cooling by photons depends on the radiation from the underlying disk and hence on the mass flow rate in the disk. This is an additional parameter on which the evaporation efficiency depends and this parameter is different in different astrophysical objects. In order to study the coronal properties without involving the mass accretion rate in the disk, we first investigate the influence of viscosity without Comptonization, that means we assumed a very low mass accretion rate in the disk. The results are presented in Sects. 3.13.5. The computational results for the effect of Compton scattering are discussed in Sect. 3.6, the relevance for corona around stellar-mass black holes in Sect. 3.7.

### 3.1 Vertical structure of the corona

Fig. 1 shows the vertical structure of the corona at distances $`r=3400r_g`$ and $`r=340r_g(10^{16}`$cm for $`M=10^8M_{}`$), where $`r_g=2.95\times 10^{13}(M/10^8M_{}`$)cm is the Schwarzschild radius, and $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}=GMm_p\mu /\kappa r=3.37\times 10^{12}(r/r_g)^1`$K the virial temperature. The variation with height $`z`$ of the variables, $`P(z)`$, $`\dot{m}(z)`$, $`F_c(z)`$, $`T_e(z)`$, $`T_i(z)`$, and $`V_z/V_s`$, is similar to that in our previous computations. The temperature, pressure, density keep almost invariable in the corona form $`zr`$ to the upper boundary ($`z3r`$). Steep changes occur in the lower corona ($`zr`$), where the temperature increases from a chromospheric value ($`T_e=T_i10^{6.5}`$K) to a coronal value ($`T_i(0.20.3)T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$) and the pressure decreases rapidly. The density, $`\rho P/T`$, drops even more steeply than temperature in the lower corona.

At large distance $`r3400r_g`$ electrons in the corona are well coupled with ions, and thus electron and ion temperatures are nearly the same, $`T_e10^8`$K. At a distance close to the black hole, Coulomb coupling between ions and electrons becomes weak due to low density and high temperature, and the temperature in ions (e.g. $`T_i10^{11}`$K at $`r=10r_g`$) is about 100 time higher than that in electrons.

### 3.2 Distribution of the temperature versus distance

Fig. 2 shows the change of the coronal temperatures with distance. The ion temperature increases towards the central black hole, from values of about $`\frac{1}{5}T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ in the outer region (e.g. $`T_i1.8\times 10^8`$K at $`r=3400r_g`$) to $`\frac{1}{3}T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ close to the black hole (e.g. $`T_i10^{11}`$K at $`r=10r_g`$), while the electron temperature hardly increases beyond the value of $`T_e10^9`$K from the distance $`r100r_g`$ inward to the black hole. The temperature distribution of ions differs from that of electrons since the viscous heat of ions can hardly be transferred by collisions to electrons and is only transferred to the entropy of ions. The fraction of heat turned into entropy becomes larger at small distance. The electrons, however, can efficiently cool by thermal conduction and radiation and hence keep their temperatures almost constant at decreasing distance in the inner region. Such distributions of ion and electron temperature versus distance in the corona are almost the same as those in a typical ADAF (Narayan & Yi 1995; Nakamura et al. 1997; Manmoto, Mineshige, & Kusunose 1997). The evaporation of mass is inefficient in the inner accretion region and the viscous heat is transferred to entropy. The corona is essentially identical with an ADAF.

For comparison the temperature distribution resulting from our previous one-temperature (1-T) model is also plotted in Fig. 2 (dotted line). From the outer regions to the distance of most efficient evaporation ($`r340r_g`$) the 1-T temperature lies between the temperatures of ions and electrons of two-temperature (2-T) model, actually the three temperatures are not much different. In the innermost region the one-temperature solutions are not adequate anymore unless there exists much more efficient coupling than Coulomb coupling.

### 3.3 Distribution of evaporation rate versus distance

We define the mass evaporation rate from our one-zone region as $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)2\pi r^2\dot{m}_0(r),`$ where $`\dot{m}_0(r)`$ is the evaporation rate from unit surface area at the interface of the corona and the chromosphere (i.e. the lower boundary). Fig. 3 shows the rate of mass evaporating from the disk to the corona versus distance. The evaporation rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)`$ increases with decreasing distance $`r`$, reaches a maximum (hump) of $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{hp}}=0.012\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ ($`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}=10L_{\mathrm{Edd}}/c^2`$ Eddington rate) at $`r_{\mathrm{hp}}340r_g`$, and decreases towards the black hole. The occurrence of evaporation hump is an important characteristic of our disk corona model. The maximum of the coronal flow rate is caused by the change in the physical processes that remove the frictional heat. At large distances the coronal heat is balanced by the inward advection and wind loss. Downward heat conduction and subsequent radiation in the denser lower region play a minor role. Thus, the evaporation is weak. At small distances thermal conduction removes an increasing part of the viscous heat and becomes dominant with rising temperature. This downward conducted viscous heat then evaporates the cool gas at the chromosphere and leads to efficient radiation. Therefore, the mass evaporation rate in the corona increases continuously with decreasing radius until the radius $`r_{\mathrm{hp}}`$ is reached. At distances $`r<r_{\mathrm{hp}}`$, the electrons are no longer well coupled with ions in the corona and downward thermal conduction is less important; on the other hand, since the density increases towards the black hole, the heat at the lower coronal layer can easily be released by radiation in the innermost region, and thus evaporation is not active.

Also shown in Fig. 3 (dotted line) is the distribution of the evaporation rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)`$ from our previous 1-T model ($`\alpha =0.3`$). The maximum lies at the same distance from the black hole, but its value is one time larger than that of the 2-T model. The difference of evaporation efficiency between the 2-T and the 1-T model originates from the temperature difference, the slightly lower electron temperature in the 2-T model leads to less thermal conduction and resultant evaporation. A small part of heat remains in ions to keep the ion temperature slightly higher than the temperature in the 1-T model instead of going to electrons and evaporating disk gas.

The gas evaporated from the disk into the corona flows inward through the corona towards the black hole, except for a small fraction leaving by wind. Therefore the coronal mass flow rate at each distance $`r`$ is the amount of gas evaporated from the disk at distances further outward up to $`r`$. Since the mass evaporation rate has a steep hump, the coronal flow at radius $`r`$ outside the hump is approximately $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)`$, while at radius inside the hump it is a little bit higher than the maximal evaporation rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{hp}}`$.

### 3.4 Energy flows in the corona

For the local energy balance we consider the processes of viscous heating, radiative cooling, radial advection and vertical advection (energy brought into the corona by gas evaporated from the disk and removed in the wind). Considering the coronal structure at a given distance $`r`$ from the black hole we integrate the energy loss by radiative cooling and the loss by vertical and sidewise advective outflow over $`z`$, the height of the corona. It is an interesting feature how these losses, normalized by the release of frictional energy, vary with distance $`r`$. We plotted the values in Fig. 4. It shows that the fraction of viscous heat which is lost by radiation is larger at small distances than at large distances, while advection is dominant in outer the region ($`r3400r_g`$). It takes away the major fraction of viscous heat there. At the distance $`r340r_g`$, where evaporation rate reaches its maximum, advection and radiation both remove half of the viscous heat respectively. In the inner region the density in the layers at the bottom of the corona is large, thus the radiation becomes efficient and takes away a larger fraction of viscous heat than advection. This feature seems to be in contrast to the typical ADAFs, in which the flows are radiation dominated further out and become more and more advection dominated with decreasing distance until finally the advective cooling balances the viscous heating in the innermost region (Nakamura et al. 1997; Manmoto et al. 1997). But with a corona above the thin disk evaporation leads to mass exchange and therefore the flow is not a constant radial mass flow in the corona as in an ADAF.

The detailed calculations of the vertical structure allow to study the difference in the energy flow in the upper corona as compared to that in the lower layers (compare also Fig. 4 in Meyer et al. 2000a). Radiation and thermal conduction dominate the energy processes in the very low layer, the heat conducted downwards by electrons and subsequently radiated away in the lower layers is provided by the viscous heat produced in the whole region from the chromosphere to a height of $`zr`$. In the upper layers the pressure is very low and the small amount of viscous heat produced there is almost completely advected. Thus, the total radiation (vertically integrated over the whole corona) predominantly originates from the lower coronal layers. Considering the layers from height $`z=r`$ to the upper boundary, the viscous heat is advected, as shown in Fig. 4 (dotted lines). The very small fraction of radiative loss (e.g. a few thousandths at $`r3400r_g`$), decreases towards the black hole. In this sense, the corona is advection-dominated, consistent with the ADAF except that our corona model also includes vertical advection flow.

Comparing the energy flow in our computed corona with an ADAF, we find that the difference between the disk corona and the ADAF is in the supply of accretion gas. In the ADAF, accreting matter streams inward from the further outward adjacent ADAF region, where the temperature is also high. While for the coronal flow above the disk, at $`r>r_{\mathrm{hp}}`$, the accreting mass is mainly supplied from the underlying disk with a temperature far lower than that in the corona and the evaporating gas is heated to a high temperature before it accretes inwards. This needs to increase the entropy and the potential of the gas by “absorbing” viscous heat, and meanwhile the heat is partially radiated in the dense lower corona. If we consider the whole vertical region, the lower and upper coronal layers, the average temperature should be lower than that of an ADAF with the same mass supply rate, and the average radiative cooling is more efficient due to the structure of the lower coronal layers. After the essential increase of temperature and corresponding changes of the other quantities in the lower corona the quantities are nearly constant in the upper layers, where the gas density is very low and the temperature is rather high. Such a corona is radiation-inefficient, almost all of the viscous heat is advected with the accretion flows (dotted lines in Fig. 4). These typical coronal layers are actually like an ADAF, which can also be seen from the temperature distribution shown in Fig. 2.

### 3.5 Effect of viscosity

The dependence of the evaporation rate on the viscosity is shown in Fig. 3. We have chosen a relatively large viscous coefficient, $`\alpha =0.9`$, for comparing with the results for our standard value $`\alpha =0.3`$. As already predicted by an earlier analytical study of this dependence, the influence on the evaporation efficiency is strong. For a larger viscosity in the corona the evaporation rate is higher. The radial location of the maximal rate is shifted inwards for higher viscosity values. The maximal rate for $`\alpha =0.9`$ is 0.14$`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$, about 10 times larger than that for $`\alpha =0.3`$, and the maximum occurs at a distance about 30 Schwarzschild radius, about 10 times smaller than that for $`\alpha =0.3`$. The reason is that the larger viscosity leads to more efficient heating and an enhanced mass flow in the corona. The increased viscous heat is then conducted downward by electrons and has to be radiated away by more efficient evaporation of the gas in the disk atmosphere. On the other hand, faster accretion in the corona tends to decrease faster the number density of the corona and requires more mass supply by evaporation to keep the energy balance at the interface of corona and disk. Therefore, the increase in viscosity largely increases mass evaporation. Similar results were obtained in an investigation using the 1-T model (Meyer-Hofmeister & Meyer 2001), where small viscosity is assumed.

As an important consequence of this dependence on viscosity, the distance where the mode of accretion via the thin disk changes to an ADAF is also affected. For a given mass inflow from the outer part the disk can extend farther inward for smaller values of viscosity. Therefore, the emerging spectra should be different if two systems have a similar mass accretion rate but different viscosity in the hot coronal gas (for details see Meyer-Hofmeister & Meyer 2001). But it is difficult to draw detailed conclusions from the observations.

### 3.6 Effect of Compton cooling

At small distance from the black hole Compton cooling affects the structure of the corona. The Compton cooling term is included in the energy equation (9). Considering the processes which enter in the energy balance, Compton cooling is the only process which causes a dependence of the coronal structure on the accretion luminosity and therefore the mass flow in the underlying disk. Otherwise the equilibrium between corona and disk relies only on the existence of cooler gas below. The dependence on the mass flow in the disk adds one more parameter to the evaluation of coronal structure and the evaporation rate. To eliminate this problem we derived the results assuming a negligible Compton cooling (corresponding to very low mass flow rate in the disk) in the foregoing sections .

To investigate the effect of Compton cooling in a disk around a supermassive black hole with a mass of $`10^8M_{}`$ we assumed a rate of $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}=0.05M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ ($`0.02\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$), corresponding to a bolometric luminosity $`L=2.8\times 10^{44}`$ergs$`\mathrm{s}^1`$ (assuming an energy-conversion coefficient of $`0.1`$). A part of the mass flow goes to the corona through evaporation. So at a given distance the net mass flow rate in the disk should be

$$\dot{M}_\mathrm{d}(r)=\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}\dot{M}_\mathrm{c}(r),$$
(15)
where $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{c}(r)`$ is the integrated evaporation rate from outer edge to the distance $`r`$. This relation allows to evaluate the energy density of soft photons from the underlying disk to be scattered in the corona by assuming blackbody radiation. We calculated the coronal structure and the evaporation rate for different distances from large distance towards the central black hole. In Fig. 5 these results for the assumed total mass flow rate $`0.02\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ and $`0.01\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ are shown together with the results without taking the Compton cooling into account (corresponding to a very low mass flow rate). As expected the Comptonization has a strong influence on the structure of the corona if the mass flow rate in the disk is high. Since the mass flow rate at distance $`r`$ in the disk depends on the evaporation in the further outward regions, whether the Compton cooling affects the evaporation rate at $`r`$ depends on the accretion in the outward disk plus corona. At large distances, e.g. $`r10^3r_g`$, the corona is hardly affected by Compton scattering, while in the inner region, Compton cooling is so strong that it overwhelms Bremsstrahlung and removes viscous heat efficiently, there is no much need for vertically advective cooling and hence little gas evaporates from disk to corona. For the example with mass accretion rate $`0.02\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ shown in this figure, the evaporation rate at $`r=340r_g`$ is half of the value without Comptonization, and drops very steeply inwards, reaching a value of $`15`$ times less than the non-Compton one. In other words, strong Comptonization in the inner region restrains the evaporation. The corona then becomes rather weak.

An interesting feature caused by Compton cooling is the possible shift of the location of the maximal evaporation rate to a larger distance from the black hole. Computations for a series of mass flow rates show that from a larger total mass flow rate $`0.02\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ to those for negligible mass flow in the disk, the evaporation rate at given $`r`$ continuously increases and location of the maximal evaporation moves inwards, as shown in Fig. 5. For a total mass flow rate from the outer regions of $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}=5.0\times 10^4\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$, the Compton cooling does not affect the evaporation. For a rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}=0.01\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$, there is only very little influence by Compton cooling (see the dotted line in Fig. 5), at the distance $`r=340r_g`$ where the evaporation rate is maximal, there is already no enough mass flow to supply the efficient evaporation. For a rate $`0.02\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ the changes are correspondingly larger, and the evaporation rate at $`r=340r_g`$ is small and already inside the location of the maximal evaporation rate which moved outward to a larger distance. In our previous papers (Liu et al. 1999, Meyer-Hofmeister & Meyer 1999) we suggested that the transition from the thin disk accretion to a coronal flow/ADAF is caused by the mass evaporation. The new results including Compton cooling by the disk radiation which show a decrease of the evaporation efficiency in the inner disk regions imply the transition in the accretion mode for a given mass flow rate in the disk (a rate below the maximal evaporation efficiency) at a smaller distance from the black hole. For higher rates the change between the hard and soft spectral states is expected, which occurs at a lower mass inflow rate than that without Compton cooling.

The effect of Comptonization obviously depends on the total mass accretion rate. Since large accretion flow in disk provides strong seed photons to be Compton scattered in the corona, the conductive heat at the lower layers of the corona can be appropriately released by Compton radiation, the evaporation will decrease or stop from some distance inwards. At very large accretion rates, our computations show that the Compton cooling is so efficient that either sound transition at the upper boundary is inaccessible, or the corona needs artificial heat from the upper boundary, in other words, no evaporation solutions are found. This indicates that probably part of the coronal gas falls back to the disk by efficient Compton cooling in the innermost region.

### 3.7 Corona around stellar-mass black hole

Since the physics of a disk corona around a stellar-mass black hole is same as that around a galactic black hole, we performed with the same code numerical calculations for accretion onto a stellar-mass black hole of $`M=6M_{}`$ to study the influence of evaporation for adequate mass flow rates. We obtained similar results for both vertical and radial structure. If the distance is measured in Schwarzschild radius $`r_g`$ and the mass accretion rate in Eddington rate, the radial distribution of the evaporation rate and the location of the maximum rate are the same as those for a supermassive black hole. The values of temperature at any distance (in Schwarzschild radius) for both systems are also the same. As for the vertical structure, the quantities are mass independent as long as we scale the size (distance $`r`$ and height $`z`$) in Schwarzschild radius and multiply the quantities $`F_c`$, $`P`$, $`\rho `$, $`\dot{m}`$ by the mass of the black hole. This is essential since our equations and boundary conditions are invariant against scale transformations that leave temperature and velocities constant. Therefore, the coronal structures are scale free with respect to the mass of central black holes.

Dimensional analysis of the Compton cooling term and its related equations show that the coronal structures are still independent on the mass of the black hole even if the Compton cooling is included. This is easily understood by comparing the Compton cooling term and viscous heating term in the energy equation. If we scale the distance in Schwarzschild radius and the disk accretion rate in Eddington rate we obtain the dependences of $`q_{\mathrm{vis}}`$ and $`q_{\mathrm{comp}}`$ on the black hole mass as, $`q_{\mathrm{vis}}P\mathrm{\Omega }PM^1`$, $`q_{\mathrm{comp}}\frac{T_e}{T_e+T_i}PM^1`$. Obviously the Compton cooling term has the same dependence on $`M`$ as the viscous term, implying that the results are also mass independent when Compton cooling is included. If we take the rate $`0.01\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ ($`0.025M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for a $`10^8M_{}`$ black hole) as upper limit for which the corona is not affected by Compton cooling (the true value should be slightly smaller as shown in Fig. 5), we derive an accretion rate of $`2.5\times 10^{10}M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ (or $`9.5\times 10^{16}`$g$`\mathrm{s}^1`$) for a $`6M_{}`$ black hole for the limit. This rate is a little less than that expected for X-ray transients at spectral transition. This means the hard/soft spectral transition of X-ray transients is hardly affected by Compton cooling. The luminosity for which spectral transitions occur would be only slightly lower with Compton cooling included.

Despite the similarity between the corona above a stellar mass and that above a supermassive black hole (quantities scaled as described) the spectra would be different even if the mass accretion rates in unit of Eddington rate are the same. The reason are the different temperatures in the cool disk around the black holes. The situation is similar to that of the inner ADAFs with outer thin disks.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Validity of the approximation of radial advective loss

In Sect.2.1 we already pointed out the radial advection problem. For our computation of the coronal structure in a given zone of radial extent $`r_2r_10.5r`$, we assumed that the mass entering from outer adjacent region is less than the mass evaporating into this zone, and thus we approximated the radial mass loss $`\frac{1}{r}\frac{r\rho v_r}{r}\frac{2}{r}\rho v_r`$. Similar approximation was taken for the energy advection. Computations based on this one-zone model show that evaporation does not increase any more in the inner region. This means that our approximation is justified only for distances from the black hole larger than $`r_{\mathrm{hp}}`$. At smaller distances the mass flow in the corona should also include the mass entering from outer adjacent region besides the evaporation flow, and the radial advective loss has to be taken consistently with the mass flow change in the corona.

At a coronal region inside the hump, an inflow of $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r_{\mathrm{hp}})`$ superimposes on the evaporation flow, increases the coronal density and pressure. As a result, the gradient of radial mass flux $`\frac{2}{r}\rho v_r`$, which is contributed by the evaporation mass in the one-zone region, should be formally decreased by a factor of $`\eta (r)`$ to compensate the increase of the density, i.e.,

$$\frac{1}{r}\frac{r\rho v_r}{r}\frac{2}{r}\eta (r)\rho v_r$$
(16)
with

$$\eta (r)\frac{\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)}{\dot{M}_\mathrm{c}(r_2)+\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)},$$
(17)
where $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{c}(r_2)`$ is the mass flow coming from the outer edge of one-zone region and $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)`$ the mass flow evaporating into the one-zone region. The net energy flow is also multiplied by $`\eta (r)`$.

Computations have shown that the coronal flow comes mainly from the dominant evaporation region, i.e. the hump zone. As a rough estimate, we simplify $`\eta (r)`$ to

$$\eta (r)\frac{\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)}{\dot{M}_\mathrm{c}(r_{\mathrm{hp}})}.$$
(18)
Replacing $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}(r)`$ in Eq.(18) by $`2\pi r^2\dot{m}_0(r)`$, we recalculate the coronal structure with the new radial mass flux and energy flux, the evaporation rate along distance is plotted in Fig.6. From the figure we see that the evaporation by including the inflow from outer neighboring region is still inefficient in the inner region. The characteristic feature of hump-evaporation efficiency along distances doesn’t change. Since $`\eta `$ is very small at small distances far from the hump region, the dependence of the evaporation rate on the radial advective loss is quite weak. The coronal flow inside the hump is the same order of magnitude as the hump flow. The evaporation rate and the coronal flow seem to depend more strongly on the detailed cooling and heating processes, such as Comptonization, additional heating (large $`\alpha `$). On this more consistent global investigations are needed but they are beyond the scope of this paper.

### 4.2 Accretion via corona, disk, or both?

We investigated the hot corona lying above a cool accretion disk and the mass and energy exchange between the corona and the disk. Continuously mass evaporates from the disk into the corona and flows in the corona towards the central black hole. At large distance from the black hole only accretion via a thin disk occurs. Further inward (at distances of $`10^3`$ to $`10^4`$ Schwarzschild radii for X-ray transients in quiescence or low luminosity galactic nuclei) the accretion can change to the mode of an ADAF (e.g. Narayan, McClintock, & Yi 1996). This transition occurs where the evaporation rate exceeds the mass inflow rate in the cool disk. From that distance inward the thin disk is depleted and the coronal flow fills the inward region up to the last stable orbit. Consequently, the accretion changes from thin disk outside to coronal flows/ADAFs inside. The transition radius is determined by the values of mass evaporation rate and mass flow rate in the disk. Actually outside the transition radius both exist together, the cool disk and the corona above. Such a truncation of the thin disk only occurs if the mass supply rate in the disk is less than the maximal evaporation rate. If the mass inflow rate is higher, the disk cannot be fully depleted and we expect an interior disk below the corona inside the distance of maximal evaporation. Summarizing these interactions, we claim that the mass supply rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}`$, compared to $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}`$, determines whether accretion via the corona or the disk, or both dominate: 1) At low accretion rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}`$, a large part of the disk is depleted by mass evaporation and filled by coronal accretion flows/ADAFs, so accretion is dominated by hot coronal flows/ADAFs. 2) At a rate around the maximal evaporation rate the disk truncation reaches its innermost possible distance, i.e. the hump distance, and an inner corona/ADAF coexists with an outer disk. 3) At a higher rate, the disk extends to the last stable orbit, and the corona, which is negligible in the far outward parts, could be also weak at innermost region due to the efficient Compton cooling. In such a way, the thin disk exists at all distances with a corona lying above.

Up to now the evaporation model was applied to the situation of a thin disk truncated at a certain distance, that is for mass flow rates $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}`$ less than the maximal $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{evap}}`$. (Meyer et al. 2000b, Liu & Meyer-Hofmeister 2001). Now the new computation of coronal structure for inner regions and the evaporation efficiency there connect to the interesting questions how the radiation from these coronae with disks underneath affects the spectrum.

We have shown that the evaporation rate strongly depends on the viscosity value, especially that the maximum rate is changed and this maximum rate occurs for the higher viscosity at smaller distance than for lower $`\alpha `$. The larger the viscosity value is, the smaller is the inner region with an ADAF. Furthermore, the Compton cooling can affect the evaporation. If the mass flow rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{in}}`$ is high, the Compton cooling reduces the evaporation, and due to the reduced maximal evaporation rate the disk extends further inwards and may even extend to the last stable orbit. Therefore, the dominant accretion mode and the transition radius from outer disk accretion to an inner ADAF sensitively depend on both, viscosity and mass supply rate to the disk. The dependence of the transition radius on the mass accretion rate is different from that in our previous investigation if Compton cooling becomes important.

### 4.3 Corona + thin disk in AGN?

In AGN hard X-ray tails and iron $`K_\alpha `$ lines are observed (e.g. Pounds et al. 1990; Matsuoka et al. 1990; Tanaka et al. 1995), implying that cold and hot gas exist in the vicinity of the central black hole. Commonly it is believed that these components are corona and disk respectively. Soft photons from the disk are Compton up-scattered by energetic electrons in the optically thin corona and form the hard X-ray power-law spectral component. The iron lines are from the illumination of disk matter by X-ray radiations from the corona (e.g. Guilbert & Rees 1988; Lightman & White 1988; George & Fabian 1991).

The disk corona evaporation model shows that such kind of structure can exist self-consistently, if the mass accretion rate and the viscosity have appropriate values. Considering the high luminosity in AGN, Comptonization is quite strong and the evaporation is restrained. Near the black hole part of the coronal gas is expected to cool down and fall back to the disk. To keep the corona above the thin disk at this innermost region, very large viscosity is required as is indicated in Fig. 3. This implies that a large fraction of accretion energy needs to be released in the corona. Here we raise the same question as Merloni & Fabian (2001b) did, that how the corona stores and releases so much energy.

In luminous AGN (i.e. large $`\dot{M}/\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$), corona can not exist in the innermost region anyhow as Compton cooling is so strong that coronal plasma completely cools down and falls back to the disk. No strong hard X-ray spectral component is expected from corona. This is consistent with the observational feature that high-$`\dot{m}`$ objects (e.g., Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxies with relatively small black hole mass) show steep hard X-ray spectra (e.g. Boller, Brandt, & Fink 1996; Brandt, Mathur, & Elvis 1997), while the relatively low luminosity AGN (e.g., classical Broad- Line Seyfert 1s) show hard X-ray tails.

## 5 Conclusions

We studied the properties of disk and corona around black holes including the exchange of mass and energy between the disk and the corona. The decoupling of electron and ion temperatures and Compton cooling were taken into account. We found that the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$ for the coronal gas has a strong influence on the evaporation efficiency, for larger $`\alpha `$ the mass flow in the corona increases and the maximum of the evaporation rate is reached at a smaller radius. We also found that mass evaporation to the corona is largely restrained by Compton cooling at regions close to the black hole. Both effects, larger viscosity and smaller incoming mass accretion rate to the disk, lead to the coronal flow/ADAFs extending outwards to a larger distance. Coronal radiation is weak for high accretion rates, consistent with the steep hard X-ray spectra observed in NLS1s and galactic black hole candidates. To maintain a corona lying above a thin disk down to the last stable orbit in AGN, a large energy store/release is required. The results based on galactic nuclei are mass independent and therefore also applicable to black hole X-ray binaries.

BFL and TK would like to thank the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for support. This work is partially supported by the Grants-in Aid of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture of Japan (P.01020, BFL; 13640238, SM; P.4616, TK).