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# Deviations from the Local Hubble Flow. I. The Tip of the Red Giant Branch as a Distance Indicator

## 1 Introduction

### 1.1 Local Deviations from Hubble Flow

Although tremendous progress has been made in recent years in mapping the large-scale gravitational field (out to scales of $`cz10,000`$ km s-1), relatively little data are available to study the velocity field of galaxies in the local neighborhood ($`500`$ km s-1). The major impediment to constraining the local flow is the lack of a consistent set of distances to nearby galaxies. Locally, the deviations from a pure Hubble law have been predicted to be large and measurable, as much as 1 magnitude in distance modulus.

If gravitational instability has generated all the large scale structure in the Universe, then it must also be responsible for the extremely anisotropic local galaxy distribution (see Fig. 1) (Peebles, 1993). Under this assumption, it is possible to predict the velocity field from this distribution. The catalogs from such full–sky galaxy redshift surveys as the 1.2 Jy IRAS survey (Fisher et al., 1994) allow us to estimate the large scale gravity field out to a redshift $`cz8,000`$ km s-1. In the limit of linear perturbations at late times, one expects the peculiar velocity at a point in space to be proportional to the gravity field at that point. Fig. 1 demonstrates that according to linear theory, the local velocity field is expected to show substantial deviations from uniformity, with quadrupole distortions dominating. Outflow is directed toward Virgo and Fornax on opposite sides of the sky, while substantial infall occurs from the poles of the local distribution. Such a flow is expected within any gravitational model and would act to depopulate galaxies from the local poles. The bulk of the local galaxy distribution does reside on the positive and zero contours of Figure 1 (the local supercluster plane), while the regions of negative peculiar velocity are deficient but not entirely devoid of galaxies. It is possible that linear theory does not apply on this scale, but in that case one would expect a more chaotic flow of similar amplitude.

Observations of local deviations from Hubble flow do not really support the expectations of Fig. 1, especially in the southern direction (see the review by Burstein (1990)). However, the data are sparse because large spiral galaxies suitable for Tully-Fisher or Cepheid Period–Luminosity analysis are very rare locally, and the sky coverage, particularly in the expected infalling regions, is poor. We have thus set out to provide new distances to a complementary sample of nearby galaxies that were chosen to lie near the maximum predicted infall.

### 1.2 A Consistent Distance Scale for Nearby Galaxies: The Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB)

According to stellar evolution theory, the tip of the first–ascent red–giant branch (TRGB) marks the onset of the core–helium flash in low–mass stars. Observationally, this phenomenon causes a distinct and abrupt termination of the bright end of the red–giant branch luminosity function. This discontinuity translates directly into an excellent distance indicator: the bolometric luminosity of the TRGB for low–mass stars is predicted to vary by only $`0.1`$ mag for ages ranging from 2 up to 15 Gyr (Iben & Renzini, 1983) and for metallicities encompassing the entire range represented by Galactic globular clusters ($`2.1<[Fe/H]<0.7`$) (Salaris & Cassisi, 1997). The discontinuity is also found empirically to be stable at the $`0.1`$ mag level in the $`I`$ band for the same set of stellar properties.

The TRGB method has a strong empirical, as well as physical, basis. Distances obtained using the TRGB agree with the Cepheid Period–Luminosity relation (where direct comparisons have been made) at a $`\pm `$5% level, e.g. Lee et al. (1993); Sakai et al. (1996); Udalski et al. (2001) – an exception is for M33: Kim et al. (2002). Furthermore, since all visible galaxies must have had a first generation of stars, the TRGB method is applicable to populations in all morphological types, including spiral, elliptical, and even irregular galaxies, provided their metallicity is sufficiently low. The TRGB method also requires far less telescope time for observations than Cepheids since repeat visits are unnecessary, a considerable advantage. A good review of the TRGB, its applications and theoretical underpinnings, is given in Madore & Freedman (1998).

We have used the Tip of the Red Giant Branch to obtain distances to a sample of local galaxies (mostly dwarfs) in order to derive their peculiar velocities. In § 2 we discuss the observations we have made of several galaxies using both the W.M. Keck observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In § 3 we present the methods for measuring the TRGB that we have employed and include detailed information on the analysis and error propogation. Finally, in § 4 we present the Color–Magnitude Diagrams, Luminosity Functions, and derived distances for several of the galaxies studied. We discuss the derived peculiar velocities and their implications in paper II (Méndez et al., 2002).

## 2 Data

To select targets for observation, we assembled an all-sky sample of 502 galaxies likely to be in the local volume (cz $`{}_{}{}^{<}550`$ km s-1) . This sample consists of all objects identified as galaxies (Type G) with heliocentric radial velocities less than +900 km s-1 within the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)111The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.. We then transformed all velocities to the Local Group frame (Karachentsev & Makarov, 1996) and selected those having radial velocities less than +550 km s-1. Their distribution on the sky (in Galactic coordinates) is shown in Fig. 1. Undoubtedly, many ($`100`$) of these galaxies are not actually within the local neighborhood but are cluster members whose large peculiar velocities arising from virial motions bring them into our sample. This is clearly the case toward the Virgo cluster ($`l=283.78^{}`$, $`b=74.49^{}`$). We are most interested in galaxies located in the regions of strong infall predicted by the flow models of Nusser & Davis (1994) and Baker et al. (1998). We have observed a subset of these galaxies with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii and/or the Hubble Space Telescope.

### 2.1 Keck Observations and Reduction

We observed target galaxies on the nights of 1997 December 22 and 23 under photometric conditions using the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) (Oke et al., 1995). At that time LRIS operated at the Cassegrain focus of the 10-m Keck II telescope at the W.M. Keck Obseratory located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii (it now resides on Keck I). The instrument includes a backside-illuminated Tek $`2048\times 2048`$ CCD detetector with an imaging scale of 0.215 arcseconds/pixel and a field of view of $`6\times 8`$ arcminutes. We read out the CCD in the two-amplifier mode.

Each galaxy was observed through both Johnson $`V`$ and Cousins $`I`$ broadband filters. For the brightest, best resolved galaxies we took one exposure in each filter, of typically 300 sec duration . For the fainter, less well–resolved galaxies we took between three and eight 250–500 second exposures in $`I`$ and one to two 300–800 second exposures in $`V`$. See Table 1 for details. Over both nights four Landolt standard star fields were observed (Landolt, 1992) in order to calibrate the photometry.

The images were reduced according to standard procedures using software written in IDL. The CCD frames were subtracted for bias level (determined from the overscan region appropriate to that amplifier) and dark current. The right side of each frame was scaled to match the left using the gain (1.97 $`e^{}`$/count for the left amplifier, 2.1 $`e^{}`$/count for the right) and the respective bias levels. In $`I`$ sky flats were constructed using all of a single night’s image frames themselves, while in $`V`$ dome flats were used to remove pixel-to-pixel variations. The resulting image frames were found to be uniform in sensitivity across their widths to better than 1% . Frames for individual galaxies were registered and combined through a median filter to remove cosmic rays and increase the signal-to-noise ratio. These combined frames were used for finding stars.

Due to geometric and optical distortions, the point spread function (PSF) varies as a function of position on the LRIS CCD chip. It was therefore necessary to compute an empirical PSF for each image from a hand-selected list of $`1030`$ bright, unsaturated stars that had no stellar neighbors within $`3\times `$FWHM. The PSF for each data image was modeled using the DAOPHOT package within IRAF222IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under contract to the National Science Foundation.. Stars were identified and instrumental magnitudes were computed using the FORTRAN versions of DAOPHOT II/ALLFRAME (Stetson, 1987, 1994). These programs, modified for FITS I/O, were obtained from K. Gebhardt at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Several of the fainter targets were not well resolved into stars, and thus were not usable for determining TRGB distances. Thus, we did not perform full photometry on these objects.

The instrumental magnitudes $`m_{\mathrm{inst}}`$ and magnitude errors for each image in a filter were combined using a robust mean (a weighted mean iteratively refined by a factor of $`1/(1+\chi _i^2)`$ for each weight, $`w_i`$) and converted to standard magnitudes $`m_{\mathrm{stand}}`$ with the equation

$$m_{\mathrm{stand}}=m_{\mathrm{inst}}+2.5\mathrm{log}(t)+\mathrm{ac}\mathrm{c}_1\mathrm{c}_2\mathrm{X}\mathrm{c}_3(VI)\mathrm{c}_4\mathrm{X}(VI)$$
(1)
where $`t`$ is the exposure time, ac is the aperture correction, X is the airmass for each observation, and c1, c2, c3, and c4 are constants. The aperture correction, ac, was computed by comparing the magnitudes of bright isolated stars in each object found through an aperture of 40 pixels (8.6 arcsec) in diameter to the magnitude found via PSF fitting. Values of the aperture corrections range from $`0.00`$ to $`0.10`$ mag, with standard errors of $`0.01`$ to $`0.03`$ mag. The broadband filters on LRIS are very close to the standard system, so the color terms, c3 and c4, were found to be negligable. The extinction coefficients (in magnitudes/airmass) given by c2 are 0.12 at 550 nm and 0.07 at 800 nm (Beland et al., 1988). The magnitude zero point, c1, was computed by using the above information and aperture photometry of both Landolt standard stars and the additional stars in Landolt fields recently calibrated to the standard system (Stetson, 2000). The interactive IRAF task fitparams in the noao.digiphot.photcal package was used to compute a non-linear least squares fit of the observed magnitudes to the calibrated magnitudes of these standards. The resulting zero points have an rms error of 0.02 mag in both $`I`$ and $`V`$.

### 2.2 HST Observations and Reduction

We also obtained images of thirteen galaxies with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope333Observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with proposal # 8199. between August 13, 1999 and May 9, 2000 (program 8199, PI M. Davis). Galaxies were observed in two exposures from 1200 - 1300s each in the F814W filter; three objects were also observed with two 1200 - 1300s exposures in the F555W filter. Table 1 details the WFPC2 observations. These thirteen galaxies were chosen specifically because they are located in regions of the sky where strong inflow is predicted by the IRAS data, especially around $`l=170^{}240^{}`$ and $`b=10^{}30^{}`$.

The calibrated and data–quality images were retrieved from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) where preliminary CCD processing, including bias- and dark-subtraction, flat–fielding, and a shutter–shading correction, are automatically applied using calibration data closest to the time of the observation. Details of these initial reductions are given in Burrows (1994) and Holtzman et al. (1995).

For photometric measurements we used the PSF-fitting package HSTphot444The source code and documentation for HSTphot can be obtained at http://www.noao.edu/staff/dolphin/hstphot. developed by A. Dolphin specifically for analyzing HST/WFPC2 data. HSTphot has been used recently in a number of stellar population studies (Wyder, 2001; Saha et al., 2001; Dolphin et al., 2001; Seitzer et al., 2001). It has been optimized for the undersampled conditions present in WFPC2 data and works very well in crowded fields. HSTphot is written in C and runs non-interactively from the command line. In our reductions, HSTphot was an order of magnitude faster than ALLFRAME, and identified $`1030\%`$ more stars. The algorithms used by HSTphot most resemble those of DoPHOT (Schechter et al., 1993); tests of HSTphot photometry including a comparison with an independent DoPHOT analysis are discussed in Dolphin (2000b). Our own limited tests of HSTphot reliability as measured against ALLFRAME photometry showed no gross systematics, even at faint magnitudes.

HSTphot determines stellar magnitudes using a library of Tiny Tim PSFs (Krist & Hook, 1996) that have been built for all the commonly used WFPC2 filters. The PSFs are modified internally for geometric distortions using the equations of Holtzman et al. (1995), and corrected for the 34th row error (Shaklan et al., 1995). The final stellar magnitudes are calibrated using the charge-transfer efficiency and zero-point corrections derived in Dolphin (2000a).

The data were analyzed using HSTphot according to the following recipe: (1) mask bad pixels and columns using the data-quality image; (2) reject cosmic rays; (3) flag and mask hot pixels; (4) generate a sky image; (5) find stars and make photometric measurements; and (6) determine and apply aperture corrections. The output from the *multiphot* procedure in HSTphot was trimmed according to the following criteria to generate the final, calibrated star list: $`\chi ^2<5`$, $`0.5<\mathrm{sharpness}<0.5`$, $`\mathrm{S}/\mathrm{N}>3.5`$, and $`\mathrm{class}<3`$.

We augmented our sample of HST data by searching the WFPC2 archive555Data are based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with proposal # 6276. for suitable nearby galaxies with observations in the F814W and F555W filters. The blue compact dwarf galaxy UGC 06456 was found to have a well defined TRGB as discussed in more detail in § 4.3.6. These data were reduced in the same way as described above.

## 3 Measuring the TRGB

### 3.1 Detection of the TRGB

Early estimates of the apparent magnitude of the TRGB used a simple “eyeball” estimate of its location in a Color-Magnitude Diagram (CMD), e.g. Mould & Kristian (1986). In the 1990s more quantitative methodologies were introduced (Lee et al., 1993). In our analysis we have used two distinct methods to quantitatively estimate the TRGB magnitude from the shape of the luminosity function of a population of stars.

After the exhaustion of hydrogen fuel in the core of a star there is a rapid increase in the rate at which its luminosity will change with time. Because this evolution is so quick, stars that appear above the main sequence turnoff point in the CMD must have had the same Main Sequence lifetime, and hence the same initial mass, to within a few percent. Therefore, the luminosity function of a star cluster (or single population of stars) past the Main Sequence is primarily a reflection of the rate of luminosity evolution for those stars. See the review by Renzini & Fusi Pecci (1988) for details in interpreting the luminosity functions of populations of evolved stars.

Low-mass, post-main-sequence stars develop an inert isothermal core supported by electron degeneracy pressure. The luminosity of these stars is almost entirely dependent on the mass of that core, because all of their energy generation occurs in a thin hydrogen burning shell surrounding the core. The temperature of the shell is set by the amount of potential energy converted to heat by the gravitational contraction of the core. Once on the red giant branch (the vertical track in the CMD) the stars’ rate of luminosity evolution is primarily dependent on the rate of increase of the mass of the core.

Due to the simple dependence of luminosity on core mass, red giant branch luminosity functions are expected to be very simple and depend only very weakly on parameters such as age, metallicity, or mass of the envelope of the star. Indeed theoretical and empirical studies find the bright end of red giant branch luminosity functions to have a simple power-law behavior; i.e., they are straight lines in the magnitude-log(counts) plane (Zoccali & Piotto, 2000). Models all predict essentially the same power-law slope and are in excellent agreement with observations.

The luminosity function of the red giant branch terminates at the TRGB, the core mass at which the helium flash occurs, and the stars then adjust their structures rapidly and move to a new location in the CMD (the Horizontal Branch of helium core–burning stars). The magnitude of the TRGB is the location in the luminosity function where the red giant branch power–law truncates. Brightward of that break are other populations of stars (asymptotic giant branch and red supergiant stars mostly) but they are rare and have a distinctly different luminosity function behavior.

From our data we have determined that if the red giant branch luminosity function power-law is given as

$$N(m)dm10^{am},$$
(2)
where $`m`$ is the apparent magnitude, then $`a=0.30\pm 0.04`$. This fixed slope can also be found in numerous other studies of red giant branch luminosity functions (Zoccali & Piotto, 2000, for example) though that fact is rarely explicitly stated.

#### 3.1.1 Discontinuity Detection

The first TRGB estimation method we have applied simply uses the fact that there will be a discontinuity in the luminosity function at the location of the TRGB. The first derivative of the luminosity function should therefore show a large peak at the discontinuity. Early applications often used histograms to approximate the luminosity function and a Sobel edge–detection filter to estimate the first derivative (Lee et al., 1993), but this had the major drawback that the estimates could be strongly dependent on the histogram binning size. Later Sakai et al. (1996, hereafter referred to as SMF96) updated this method by employing a Gaussian-smoothed luminosity function, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(m)`$, and a continuous edge–detection function

$$E(m)=\mathrm{\Phi }(m+\overline{\sigma }_m)\mathrm{\Phi }(m\overline{\sigma }_m),$$
(3)
where $`\overline{\sigma }_m`$ (as defined by SMF96) is the mean photometric error within a bin of $`\pm 0.05`$ mag about magnitude $`m`$.

We have used the method of SMF96, with some minor modifications, to estimate the TRGB magnitude of our objects. Due to the natural power–law form of the luminosity function we are most concerned with fractional changes. Thus, we use a logarithmic edge–detection function,

$$E(m)=\mathrm{log}_{10}(\mathrm{\Phi }(m+\overline{\sigma }_m))\mathrm{log}_{10}(\mathrm{\Phi }(m\overline{\sigma }_m)).$$
(4)
Another modification to the SMF96 method is the definition of $`\overline{\sigma }_m`$ used. For each galaxy observed we determine a polynomial fit to our data for the photometric flux errors as a function of flux. The function is then transformed to magnitude error as a function of magnitude. Thus, we define $`\overline{\sigma }_m`$ as simply the photometric error given by the fit at magnitude $`m`$. The region of the luminosity function brighter than the TRGB is sparsely populated (mostly by AGB stars) and thus very noisy; the large first derivative noise spikes can make it difficult to robustly identify the TRGB automatically. We thus weight the edge–detection response by the Poisson noise in the smoothed luminosity function. Even that fails to quiet some noise spikes and we are thus forced to limit this analysis to the region of the luminosity function that we know by inspection contains the TRGB. See the figures in § 4.3 for results of the edge–detection (e.g. Fig. 4)

#### 3.1.2 Maximum Likelihood Analysis

Binning the data is not necessary, and we have employed a maximum likelihood analysis similar in spirit to the luminosity function analysis of Sandage et al. (1979, see also references therein). Define the luminosity distribution function of stars in the galaxy under investigation to be $`\varphi (m|𝐚)`$ where $`m`$ is the apparent magnitude and a is the list of parameters defining the function. The probability $`P`$ that star $`i`$ has an observed magnitude $`m_i`$ within a range $`dm`$ is then

$$P_i=\frac{\varphi (m_i|𝐚)dm}{_{m1}^{m2}\varphi (m|𝐚)𝑑m}$$
(5)
where $`m1`$ and $`m2`$ are lower and upper bounds for the validity of the parameterized distribution function.

The likelihood $``$ that the observed distribution of stellar magnitudes is described by this function is simply the product of the individual probablities, since each star is drawn randomly from this distribution. It is most convenient to consider $`\mathrm{ln}`$

$$\mathrm{ln}=\underset{i}{}\mathrm{ln}P_i=\underset{i}{}\mathrm{ln}\varphi (m_i|𝐚)N\mathrm{ln}(\varphi (m)𝑑m),$$
(6)
where the sum extends over all stars $`i`$ with $`N`$ stars in total.

For this analysis we use a simple, broken power-law model to describe the luminosity distribution function, but we also take into account the smoothing induced by measurement errors for the apparent luminosities. We use the form

$$\varphi (m)=g(m^{})e(mm^{})𝑑m^{}$$
(7)
and define $`g(m)`$ as

$$g(m)=\{\begin{array}{cc}10^{a(mm_{\mathrm{TRGB}})}& mm_{\mathrm{TRGB}}>0\hfill \\ 10^{b(mm_{\mathrm{TRGB}})c}& mm_{\mathrm{TRGB}}<0\hfill \end{array}$$
(8)
We fix $`a=0.3`$ but allow as free parameters the TRGB magnitude $`m_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$, the slope of the luminosity function brighter than the TRGB $`b`$, and the strength of the discontinuity at the TRGB, $`c`$. The smoothing function $`e(x)`$ is the same error function mentioned in § 3.1.1 used to estimate $`\overline{\sigma }_m`$. It is a function of the apparent magnitude but not of the parameters of the fit.

Our procedure is then to compute the likelihood function on a grid in the parameters $`m_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$ and to determine the point of maximum likelihood. The method used is self–normalizing; the likelihood contours are quite peaked, with $`3\sigma `$ error widths in $`m_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ usually less than $`0.1`$ mag (e.g. Fig 9). To test for covariance we marginalize the likelihood by computing

$$(m)=_{0.0}^{1.2}_{0.5}^{1.0}(m,b,c)𝑑b𝑑c.$$
(9)
Covariance with the variables, $`b`$, and $`c`$ is found to be negligible, and the peaks in most of the marginalized likelihoods occur at the same magnitude as the peaks in the full likelihoods. In the cases reported in § 4.3 there are no differences, and the largest difference in all cases is only $`0.06`$ mag. We fit gaussians to the marginalized likelihoods and find that the $`1\sigma `$ errors in $`m_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ are typically only a few hundredths of a magnitude.

The best fitting $`\varphi (m)`$ curves for each galaxy are displayed in the figures of § 4.3. Note that these fits are quite acceptable in each case. Smoothing by the photometric errors converts the discontinuity in $`g(m)`$ at $`m=m_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ into a continuous distribution $`\varphi (m)`$. Since the smoothing becomes larger for fainter magnitudes, the model automatically degrades the apparent slope of the TRGB edge as a function of distance.

The likelihood analysis works best if the red giant branch power–law is observed over a range of one magnitude or more. In cases in which we failed to detect the TRGB, we seldom observed a power law slope for the red giant branch, with crowding and incompleteness effects leading to a rolloff of detected stars that did not fit the TRGB form. In these cases our model for $`g(m)`$ is inadequate and the likelihood analysis is meaningless. In any event, it is necessary to set the limits of the magnitude range for which the likelihood analysis is performed; it is critical to ensure that the faint limit avoids regions where incompleteness is non-negligible. The bright limit is less critical, but it obviously must be set brighter than the TRGB. We find that setting it at $`0.5`$ or more magnitudes brighter than the TRGB gives good results.

### 3.2 Uncertainty in measuring the TRGB

We have used a different approach for estimating random error in the TRGB magnitude from most previous authors. Errors from the method of SMF96 are generally obtained from the Sobel edge–detection response. The uncertainty of $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ is taken as either the $`\sigma `$ in a Gaussian fit to the peak response or the FWHM of the peak, e.g. Sakai et al. (2000). Instead we use bootstrap resampling of the data (Babu & Feigelson, 1996, and references therein) to simulate the act of making the same observation multiple times. This allows for the most realistic estimate of the standard deviation in the mean.

The magnitudes of all the stars brighter than a given limiting magnitide $`M_l`$ in an entire population have some luminosity function, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(M>M_l)`$. We observe only a random fraction of the whole stellar population and so determine an observed luminosity function, $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(M>M_l)`$. From this luminosity function we determine $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ via either edge detection or maximum likelihood analysis; let us simply refer to the result of either process as $`\mathrm{TRGB}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }})`$. We then randomly resample, with replacement, all of the observed magnitudes (i.e., any given star may appear more than once or not at all). Each stellar magnitude, $`M_i`$, carries with it some magnitude error, $`ϵ_i`$. Thus, during the resampling $`M_i`$ is perturbed by its errors such that the resampled magnitude, $`M_i^{}`$, will be randomly drawn from a Gaussian distribution about the original magnitude with $`ϵ_i`$ as its standard deviation. For each resampling a bootstrap luminosity function , $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{}`$, is then determined, and $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}^{}`$ is measured via $`\mathrm{TRGB}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{})`$. We perform the bootstrap resampling 500 times for each galaxy and take the standard deviation of the distribution of $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}^{}`$ as the uncertainty in the measurement of $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$. We find that in most cases the estimated uncertainty is a few hundredths to one tenth of one magnitude. Details for each galaxy are given in § 4.3.

## 4 Distances to Local Galaxies

### 4.1 TRGB Calibration

With a robust measurement of the $`I`$ magnitude of the TRGB, $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$, we may now calculate the distance modulus. We start with the following equation:

$$(mM)_I=I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}+BC_IM_{\mathrm{bol},\mathrm{TRGB}},$$
(10)
where $`M_{\mathrm{bol},\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ is the bolometric magnitude of the TRGB and $`BC_I`$ is the bolometric correction to the $`I`$ magnitude of the TRGB.

The quantity $`M_{\mathrm{bol},\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ was found by Da Costa & Armandroff (1990, hereafter referred to as DA90) empirically to be a function of the metallicity \[Fe/H\]:

$$M_{\mathrm{bol},\mathrm{TRGB}}=0.19[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]3.81.$$
(11)
They also found that $`BC_I`$ is a function of $`(VI)`$ color,

$$BC_I=0.8810.243(VI)_{\mathrm{TRGB}}.$$
(12)
DA90 determined an empirical relation between $`(VI)`$ color and metallicity, but Lee et al. (1993) found it necessary to alter the relation slightly for more distant (and hence fainter) systems, obtaining

$$[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=12.64+12.6(VI)_{3.5}3.3(VI)_{3.5}^2,$$
(13)
where $`(VI)_{3.5}`$ is the dereddened red giant branch $`(VI)`$ color measured at an absolute $`I`$ magnitude of $`3.5`$. The absolute magnitude of the TRGB is given by

$$M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}=M_{\mathrm{bol},\mathrm{TRGB}}BC_I.$$
(14)
To determine $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ we iteratively calculate the distance modulus and the metallicity until they converge. The amount of Galactic extinction (and hence reddening) is calculated for each galaxy using the $`I`$ and $`V`$ extinctions given in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which are based upon the dust maps of Schlegel et al. (1998).

To measure the $`(VI)`$ color of the TRGB, we calculate a histogram of the colors of stars within $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}\pm 0.1`$ mag. We then fit a Gaussian to that histogram (binned at 0.01 mag) and take its peak as a first guess for $`(VI)_{,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$. To determine the uncertainty in this value we carry out a bootstrap resampling procedure similar to that used in determination of the uncertainty in $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$. Stellar magnitudes and colors are randomly resampled (with replacement) and perturbed by their internal random errors. The histogram calculation and Gaussian fitting are then carried out for each bootstrap resampling (we used 800 bootstrap samples). We fit a Gaussian to the final distribution of $`(VI)_{,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ values and use its peak and standard deviation as the best estimate of $`(VI)_{,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ and its uncertainty. The same procedure is used to determine $`(VI)_{3.5}`$. These values are given for each galaxy in Table 2.

The calibration relations were derived over the metallicity range of the Galactic globular clusters ($`2.1[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.7`$) and are expected to work well over ages spanning 2 - 15 Gyr. The zero point was calibrated to the same level as that of the RR Lyrae distance scale (used to estimate the distances of the Galactic globular clusters). Lee et al. (1993) states generally that for this range $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}4.0\pm 0.1`$ mag. More specifically, using the above calibration relations and metallicity range one finds $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}=4.01`$ mag with an rms uncertainty of $`\pm 0.03`$ mag and a systematic error of $`\pm 0.18`$ mag. Ferrarese et al. (2000b) treated the TRGB as a secondary distance indicator and calibrated a zero point from galaxies with Cepheid distances that yielded $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}=4.06\pm 0.07(\mathrm{random})\pm 0.13(\mathrm{systematic})`$ mag. Also, Bellazzini et al. (2001) determined a new TRGB calibration based on photometry and a distance estimate from a detached eclipsing binary in the Galactic globular cluster $`\omega `$ Centauri. They found $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}=4.04\pm 0.12`$ mag. For this paper we use the calibration of Lee et al. (1993), but in paper II we will use the calibration of Ferrarese et al. (2000b) for consistency with other recent TRGB measurements.

### 4.2 Total Error Budget

The true distance modulus for each galaxy is computed as

$$\mu _{}=(mM)_IA_I=I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}A_I.$$
(15)
We consider total errors in distance to be of two forms for these data. There are internal errors that are specific to each galaxy and external systematic errors that are the same for all galaxies. The internal uncertainties in our distances are determined as the sum in quadrature of random and internal systematic errors. The random errors in the distance moduli are taken as the quadrature sum of the random error in measuring $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ (estimated via bootstrap resampling) and $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ as such

$$(\sigma _{\mu _{},\mathrm{random}})^2=(\sigma _{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{bootstrap}})^2+(\sigma _{BC_I,\mathrm{random}})^2+(\sigma _{M_{bol},\mathrm{random}})^2.$$
(16)
Uncertainties in $`M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ arise from the errors in measuring the $`(VI)_{}`$ color at $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ and at $`M_I=3.5`$ as described in the previous section. These errors are propagated through the calibration equations (11-14) :

$$\sigma _{BC_I,\mathrm{random}}=0.243\sigma _{(VI)_{0,\mathrm{TRGB}},\mathrm{bootstrap}},$$
(17)
$$\sigma _{M_{bol},\mathrm{random}}=0.19\sigma _{[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]},$$
(18)
and

$$\sigma _{[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]}=|12.66.6(VI)_{3.5}|\sigma _{(VI)_{3.5},\mathrm{bootstrap}}.$$
(19)
Internal systematic errors include the uncertainties in the aperture corrections, the normalization to the standard photometric system (i.e. the photometric zero points), and the foreground extinction and reddening . Thus, we have

$$(\sigma _{\mu _{},\mathrm{int},\mathrm{sys}})^2=(\sigma _{I,\mathrm{sys}})^2+(\sigma _{M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}},\mathrm{int},\mathrm{sys}})^2+(\sigma _{A_I})^2,$$
(20)
$$\sigma _{M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}},\mathrm{int},\mathrm{sys}}=(0.2430.19(12.66.6(VI)_{3.5}))\sigma _{(VI),\mathrm{sys}},$$
(21)
and

$$(\sigma _{(VI),\mathrm{sys}})^2=(\sigma _{I,\mathrm{sys}})^2+(\sigma _{V,\mathrm{sys}})^2+(\sigma _{E(VI)})^2.$$
(22)
The systematic magnitude errors ($`\sigma _{I,\mathrm{sys}}`$ and $`\sigma _{V,\mathrm{sys}}`$) are the quadrature sums of the aperture and zero point corrections in each bandpass. The uncertainties in extinction ($`A_I`$) and reddening ($`E(VI)=(A_VA_I)`$) are taken to be 10% of their values (as per Schlegel et al. (1998)).

The values of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{bootstrap}}`$ range from $`\pm 0.02`$ mag (Sextans B and UGC 06456 using the Maximum Likelihood Method) to $`\pm 0.12`$ mag (Leo I and UGC 03755 using the Edge Detection Method). The values of $`\sigma _{M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}}}`$ range from $`\pm 0.02`$ mag to $`\pm 0.04`$ mag. For galaxies without observations in $`V`$ we use the full range of color/metallicity under which the calibrations were determined. This yields an rms uncertainty of $`\pm 0.03`$ mag. The total internal uncertainties in the true distance moduli are thus

$$(\sigma _{\mu _{},\mathrm{internal}})^2=(\sigma _{\mu _{},\mathrm{random}})^2+(\sigma _{\mu _{},\mathrm{int},\mathrm{sys}})^2,$$
(23)
ranging from $`\pm 0.04`$ mag (Sextans B and UGC 06456 using the Maximum Likelihood Method) to $`\pm 0.13`$ mag (Leo I and UGC 03755 using the Edge Detection Method).

The principle identified external systematic errors in the determination of the distance moduli arise from the uncertainty in the RR Lyrae distance scale for globular clusters ($`\pm 0.15`$ mag; see Sakai & Madore (1999)), and the uncertainty in the TRGB calibration relations ($`\pm 0.11`$ mag):

$$(\sigma _{\mu _{},\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{sys}})^2=(\sigma _{M_{I,\mathrm{TRGB}},\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{sys}})^2=(\sigma _{\mathrm{RRLyrae}})^2+(\sigma _{BC_I,\mathrm{sys}})^2+(\sigma _{M_{bol},\mathrm{sys}})^2.$$
(24)
Da Costa & Armandroff (1990) give the dispersion in equation (12) as $`\pm 0.057`$ mag and the dispersion in equation (11) as $`\pm 0.09`$ mag. Thus, the total systematic error common to all our TRGB distance measurements is $`\pm 0.18`$ mag.

### 4.3 TRGB Distances

In order to gain confidence in our photometry and TRGB detection methodology we observed a few local galaxies with Keck that have been studied quite extensively by previous authors, including Leo I, NGC 3109, and Sextans B. We find that our derived distance moduli for these galaxies are in excellent agreement with those of previous authors. In our HST dataset we were able to successfully detect the TRGB for three galaxies and possibly a fourth. The definite detections were UGC 07577, UGC 06456, and NGC 1313, and the possible detection was UGC 03755. There were several galaxies in our combined Keck/HST dataset, such as NGC 2366 and NGC 2683, for which we were unable to successfully determine distances . Based upon distance estimates by previous authors using various methods we believe that these galaxies are sufficiently far away that their red giant branch stars were not resolved in our data. A summary of TRGB distances and uncertainties is presented in Table 2. Color-Magnitude diagrams (CMDs), luminosity functions, and other details for these galaxies are now presented. 666Photometry data for the galaxies presented here are archived in the NED/LEVEL5 database at the following URL: http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Mendez/.

#### 4.3.1 Leo I

The dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I is thought to be one of the most distant satellites of the Milky Way. Our observations with Keck were able to fully resolve Leo I into stars down to $`I24`$ mag (See Fig. 2). The Color-Magnitude diagram for the entire field reveals a very simple stellar population of red giants (Fig. 3). There appear to be almost no blue stars that may contaminate the luminosity function. The Red Giant Branch is extremely well defined with an unambiguous tip at $`I=18.14`$ mag. Plotted in Fig. 3 is an red giant branch locus for Leo I. We determine this locus by using the value of $`(VI)_{0,\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ to interpolate between the two nearest of the four galactic globular cluster loci determined by DA90: M15, M2, NGC 1851, and 47 Tuc. The few stars above the tip are likely Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars. Also visible is the red clump of helium burning stars at $`(VI)_{}0.50.9`$ mag and $`21.0I22.0`$ mag.

Fig. 4 shows the logarithmic luminosity function for all stars with $`0.3(VI)1.5`$ mag. The upper red giant branch power law is quite obvious and has a clear break. Both the maximum likelihood model and the modified Sobel edge detector agree on the location of the break. For the maximum likelihood analysis we determine $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=18.14`$ mag as shown in Fig 5. Bootstrap resampling gives an uncertainty of $`\pm 0.07`$ mag, with a distribution shown in Fig. 4. The edge–detector also finds $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=18.14`$ mag with a bootstrap uncertainty of $`\pm 0.11`$ mag. These uncertainties are among the largest of the galaxies reported in this paper, despite Leo I being the closest by far. The large uncertainty is due to the small number of stars at the TRGB. With so few stars at the TRGB it is easier for it to move by a few hundredths of a magnitude with each bootstrap. Madore & Freedman (1995) studied the effect of small population sizes and estimated that if more than $`100`$ stars can be imaged in the first full magnitude interval then any systematic effect in the distance modulus would be well less than $`0.1`$ mag. There are just over 100 stars in the first magnitude of the luminosity function of Leo I. Thus, using the method described in § 4.1 we find $`(VI)_{0,\mathrm{TRGB}}=1.39\pm 0.02`$ mag and \[Fe/H\] = $`1.94\pm 0.08`$ dex. With a line of sight extinction of $`A_I=0.07`$ mag we find $`(mM)_IA_I=\mu _{}=22.05\pm 0.10`$(internal)$`\pm 0.18`$(systematic) mag for the maximum likelihood case. This is in excellent agreement with a previously published distance modulus for Leo I of $`(mM)_V=22.00\pm 0.15`$ mag (Caputo et al., 1999). Another estimate of the TRGB for Leo I was made by Lee et al. (1993), who found $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=18.25\pm 0.1`$ mag (yielding $`\mu _{}=22.18\pm 0.11`$ mag for the assumed $`A_I=0.04`$ mag). The difference between their measurement of $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ and that presented here is $`0.11\pm 0.13`$ mag, again in good agreement.

#### 4.3.2 Sextans B

Sextans B is a dwarf irregular galaxy located at the edge of the Local Group. It was well resolved in our Keck observations. Fig. 6 shows the CMD for the $`20,000`$ resolved stars with good photometry in the LRIS field. The stellar population appears fairly simple; the red giant branch is quite prominent and red giants clearly dominate the light of the galaxy. There is little contamination from blue stars. The stars above the red giant branch are likely AGB stars that do not obscure the conspicuous TRGB. In order to minimize these contaminants and those arising from crowding and photometric errors we examined the CMD of only the stars in an arbitrary halo region. Fig. 7 shows the positions of the 9500 stars in this halo region and their CMD. The TRGB was already obvious in Fig. 6 but it can now be seen more clearly.

Additionally, we make a color cut in the halo star list. Fig. 8 shows the resulting luminosity function of halo stars with $`0.6(VI)1.6`$ mag. Again, the power-law distribution with index $`a=0.3`$ is evident and has an unambiguous break at $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=21.68`$ mag in the maximum likelihood analysis as shown in Fig. 9 (also $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=21.68`$ mag in the edge-detector). Bootstrap resampling of stars in the color-cut halo region gives an uncertainty of $`\pm 0.02`$ mag, shown in panels 3 and 4 of Fig. 8. The TRGB color is estimated to be $`(VI)_{0,\mathrm{TRGB}}=1.44\pm 0.01`$ mag and the metallicity is \[Fe/H\] = $`1.73\pm 0.04`$ dex. The Schlegel et al. (1998) dust maps give the foreground extinction as $`A_I=0.062`$ mag. We assume that internal extinction is negligible as we are focusing on the halo region that is presumably mostly dust-free. Thus for the maximum likelihood method we determine a Population II distance modulus of $`(mM)_{}=25.63\pm 0.04`$(internal)$`\pm 0.18`$(systematic) mag corresponding to a heliocentric metric distance of $`1.34\pm 0.02`$ Mpc. This result is in superb agreement with a previously published study of Sextans B by Sakai et al. (1997) using both the TRGB ($`(mM)_{}=25.56\pm 0.10`$) and Cepheids ($`(mM)_{}=25.69\pm 0.27`$ mag).

#### 4.3.3 NGC 3109

NGC 3109 is another dwarf irregular galaxy, classified Sm IV, at the edge of the Local Group. It has a flattened disk region apparently viewed nearly edge-on. Our Keck observations have brilliantly resolved the galaxy into stars. In Fig. 10 we present the CMD for the entire LRIS field. This CMD is considerably more complex than those of Sextans B or Leo I. A red giant branch is evident but there is large contamination from blue main sequence and asymptotic giant branch stars. There are also likely some red supergiants in the mix to further complicate matters.

As we did with Sextans B, we selected stars from a halo region to reduce contamination around the TRGB. The pixel map and CMD for these stars is shown in Fig. 11. The red giant branch is now much more apparent as is its tip. The luminosity function of halo stars with $`0.7(VI)1.6`$ mag is shown in Fig. 12. The two TRGB detection methods agree quite well and we find $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=21.63\pm 0.05`$ mag for the maximum likelihood analysis, as shown in Fig. 13, and $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=21.60\pm 0.08`$ mag for the logarithmic edge–detector. The best estimate of the TRGB color is $`(VI)_{0,\mathrm{TRGB}}=1.46\pm 0.02`$ mag, with \[Fe/H\] = $`1.69\pm 0.06`$ dex. For the maximum likelihood method and using an extinction value of $`A_I=0.129`$ mag we find the distance modulus $`(mM)_{}=25.52\pm 0.06`$(internal)$`\pm 0.18`$(systematic) mag, which corresponds to a distance from the Sun of $`1.27\pm 0.04`$ Mpc. This is within the errors of a previously published work on NGC 3109 (Minniti et al., 1999) which found $`(mM)_{}=25.62\pm 0.1`$ mag using the tip of the red giant branch.

#### 4.3.4 UGC 07577

The dwarf irregular galaxy UGC 07577 was one of our HST target galaxies. Based on our experience with the Keck data we decided to minimize HST observation time by only obtaining images in the FW814 filter. This was done for galaxies not expected to have considerable contamination from blue main sequence or asymptotic giant branch populations. Even a large AGB population is not likely to affect the TRGB detection severely as it would surely have a different power-law slope in $`I`$ band from the red giant branch, so the break in the red giant branch power-law at the TRGB would remain.

The galaxy was well resolved into stars (see Fig. 14). The galaxy (transformed into standard Cousins $`I`$) was broken up into core and halo regions as was done for the Keck objects. The luminosity functions of the entire field and of the halo are shown in Fig. 15, and Fig. 16 respectively. All show the same familiar red giant branch power-law slope, $`a=0.3`$. The likelihood function for the entire field is maximized at $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=23.05\pm 0.03`$ mag and the edge detector gives $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=23.01\pm 0.09`$ mag. For the halo region the likelihood function is maximized at $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=23.01\pm 0.06`$ mag as shown in Fig. 17 and this is the value we adopt. We assume that the mean metallicity of the UGC 07577 red giants is within the calibrated range of the Galactic globular clusters. Thus we adopt an absolute magnitude of $`M_{\mathrm{I},\mathrm{TRGB}}=4.01\pm 0.03`$ mag. Using the maximum likelihood value and an extinction of $`A_I=0.039`$ mag we derive a distance modulus for UGC 07577 of $`(mM)_{}=26.98\pm 0.05`$(internal)$`\pm 0.07`$(systematic) mag, which is a heliocentric distance of $`2.49\pm 0.08`$ Mpc. UGC 07577 has been little studied previously, but one recent estimate by Tikhonov & Karachentsev (1998) gives the distance as 4.8 Mpc. This is extremely discrepant, However they were estimating the distance using the magnitudes of the brightest blue super giant stars. Several authors have commented on the errors associated with this method, e.g. Rozanski & Rowan-Robinson (1994); Karachentsev & Tikhonov (1994); Lyo & Lee (1997). While there have been differences between their estimates the errors are generally uncomfortably large ($`0.79`$ mag for the brightest blue stars).

#### 4.3.5 NGC 1313

NGC 1313 is classified as a SB(s)d barred spiral and was described by de Vaucouleurs (1963) as a transition object from the normal barred spirals to the irregular Magellanic type barred spirals. It has considerable ongoing star formation and an active nucleus. Certainly the mixed stellar populations and the internal extinction of the disk are cause for concern in making a clear distance measurement based on the TRGB. For these reasons we obtained HST observations in the halo region of this galaxy 3.67 arcmin from its center (see Fig. 18). In this region we expect the dominant stars to be Population II red giants.

We obtained images only in the F814W bandpass for NGC 1313 as we expected little contamination from other stellar types in this region of the galaxy. In Fig. 19 we present the $`I`$ band luminosity function for the entire WFPC2 field of view. The tell-tale power-law signature ($`a=0.3`$) of the red giant branch is visible from $`I24.3`$ mag down to the photometric limits at $`I=25.5`$ mag. While there are many stars brighter than $`I24.3`$ mag they would appear to cause little doubt that the red giant branch terminates there. The maximum likelihood analysis gives the magnitude of the TRGB for NGC 1313 as $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=24.28\pm 0.04`$ mag, as shown in Fig. 20, and the modified Sobel edge–detector gives $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=24.35\pm 0.05`$ mag. Since we do not have color information for the NGC 1313 halo we assume that its metallicity is within the calibrated range and thus use $`M_{\mathrm{I},\mathrm{TRGB}}=4.01\pm 0.03`$ mag. Using the maximum likelihood value and the Schlegel et al. (1998) extinction of $`A_I=0.212`$ mag we obtain a Population II distance modulus for NGC 1313 of $`(mM)_{}=28.08\pm 0.06`$(internal)$`\pm 0.18`$(systematic) mag corresponding to a heliocentric distance of $`4.13\pm 0.11`$ Mpc. Using the magnitudes of brightest resolved stars, de Vaucouleurs (1963) estimated the distance of NGC 1313 at 4.5 Mpc. Tully (1988) additionally gives the distance to NGC 1313 as 3.7 Mpc.

#### 4.3.6 UGC 06456

In addition to our own HST data we searched through the HST archive at STScI for WFPC2 observations of galaxies in our all sky sample in at least F814W. While we found several good candidates, most of the observations we found were for disk regions within spiral galaxies. We have found at least one excellent dataset to add to our study. The observations (program 6276, PI J. Westphal) were taken as part of a project to study peculiar and interacting galaxies. From the archive data we used three 1400s exposures in F555W and three 1400s exposures in F814W of the blue compact dwarf galaxy (BCD) UGC 06456. We reduced these data as described in § 2.2 for our own HST observations.

The observations resolved the galaxy brilliantly into stars revealing a bright and knotted population of blue stars at its core and a smooth background of red stars. Fig. 21 shows our color-magnitude diagram for the entire WFPC2 field. Evident in the CMD is a strong population of blue main sequence stars as well as a prominent red giant branch. There are also a small number of AGB stars visible above the red giant branch. We were able to remove the contamination from the blue stars by excluding the stars from the central region as shown in Fig. 22. Furthermore we exclude stars with colors outside the range $`0.45(VI)1.8`$ mag. Fig. 23 shows the resulting luminosity function.

The TRGB is extremely obvious and the maximum likelihood analysis finds the TRGB at $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=24.23\pm 0.02`$ mag, as shown in Fig. 24, and the color of the TRGB is $`(VI)_{0,\mathrm{TRGB}}=1.46\pm 0.02`$ mag. We thus take the metallicity of the red giant branch to be \[Fe/H\] = $`1.62\pm 0.05`$. Using an extinction of $`A_I=0.070`$ mag we find the distance modulus for UGC 06456 to be $`(mM)_{}=28.19\pm 0.04`$(internal)$`\pm 0.18`$(systematic) mag and hence the heliocentric distance to be $`4.34\pm 0.07`$ Mpc. This is in good agreement with the TRGB analysis carried out by previous authors using these same data (Lynds et al., 1998; Schulte-Ladbeck et al., 1998) who found $`(mM)_I=28.25\pm 0.10`$ and $`(mM)_{}=28.4\pm 0.09\pm 0.18`$ mag respectively.

#### 4.3.7 UGC 03755

UGC 03755 is a typical dwarf irregular galaxy that has been little studied by previous authors. It was of particular interest to us because it lies in the region of the sky with the strongest predicted infall (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 25 shows one of our F814W exposures of UGC 03755. The galaxy appears well resolved into stars. However, inspection of the CMD (Fig. 26) shows that we did not resolve the galaxy very deeply, especially in the F555W bandpass. There is only the slightest hint of a red giant branch, and the F555W photometry limits cut into it almost immediately. Making region or color cuts does not actually help a detection in this case. However, upon inspection of the luminosity function for UGC 03755 (Fig. 27) we can see the red giant branch power-law signature for $`0.8`$ mag brighter than the magnitude limits in $`I`$ band. There is no strong discontinuity in the luminosity function as seen with the previous galaxies but there is a definite break in the power-law. We interpret this break as the tip of the red giant branch at $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}=24.65\pm 0.06`$ mag, as measured weakly by the maximum likelihood algorithm and shown in Fig. 28. Because the red giant branch is not well defined we chose to treat UGC 03755 as a case in which we did not have color data and hence we assume that its metallicity is within the calibrated range and adopt $`M_{\mathrm{I},\mathrm{TRGB}}=4.01\pm 0.03`$ mag. We use the Schlegel et al. (1998) line of sight extinction of $`A_I=0.172`$ mag, which yields a distance modulus of $`(mM)_{}=28.49\pm 0.07`$(internal)$`\pm 0.18`$(systematic) mag. This corresponds to a heliocentric distance of $`4.98\pm 0.17`$ Mpc. We take this as a lower limit on the distance to this galaxy, for if it were closer we should have seen a definitive red giant branch. Likewise we take this distance as the upper limit for our ability to measure distances in our HST dataset. Since all of our exposure times were the same we would not resolve the red giant branch population of any galaxy that is farther than this.

Georgiev et al. (1997) estimated $`(mM)=28.08`$ mag for this galaxy, based upon the magnitudes of the brightest resolved stars. In another paper (Georgiev et al., 1997) they estimated the calibration errors in their method to be $`\pm 0.39`$ mag. There is no strong agreement, but again we believe that UGC 03755 cannot be any closer than $`5.0`$ Mpc.

#### 4.3.8 NGC 2366 & NGC 2683

With success comes failure; we were not able to determine TRGB distances to many of our target galaxies. Based on our successful measurements and on work done by previous authors, we do not think that our failures were caused by contaminating stellar populations. Rather we think that in most cases the data were simply not deep enough to resolve out red giant branch stars. Hence, the galaxies are too far away for our data to reveal the TRGB.

We estimate that in our Keck data we would not have been able to detect any red giant branch (or tip thereof) fainter than $`I23.0`$ mag. We take the limiting magnitude as at least $`0.5`$ magnitudes brighter than the turn over in the luminosity function. This means that we could not have successfully measured a TRGB distance for any galaxy with a distance greater than $`2.5`$ Mpc. This was unfortunate as many of our Keck targets are expected members of the M81 group. One example is NGC 2366. This dwarf irregular galaxy has been estimated to lie at a distance $`d3.44`$ Mpc, which is consistent with other M81 group members (Ferrarese et al., 2000a, and references therein). Our CMD for this galaxy (Fig. 29) shows no recognizable structure, and the luminosity function turns over at about $`I23.5`$ mag never having any red giant branch power-law slope. Clearly our data for this object did not go deep enough to resolve a red giant branch population.

The situation is much the same for our HST data. The typical detection limit in the HST data is $`I25.0`$ mag, corresponding to a linear distance limit of $`6.2`$ Mpc. An example of a galaxy we failed to measure a TRGB distance for is NGC 2683. This is a spiral galaxy seen nearly edge-on. We avoided the disk region and observed only in the halo region of the galaxy to minimize any Population I contamination. A recent survey of galaxies by Tonry et al. (2001) that used surface brightness fluctuations as a distance indicator gave a distance for this galaxy of $`7.7`$ Mpc. This galaxy is then clearly outside the reach of our data. There is little wonder that we see no hint of a red giant branch power-law in the luminosity function (Fig. 30).

## 5 Summary

We have successfully used the TRGB as a distance indicator for seven local galaxies observed with HST and Keck. Using knowledge of the luminosity function behavior of the red giant branch, we conducted a maximum likelihood procedure to estimate the $`I`$ band magnitude of the TRGB. The uncertainty in the estimates of $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ and $`(VI)_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ were calculated via bootstrap resampling which makes no assumption about the underlying distributions and allows one to model the act of making repeated measurements of the same quantity. Bootstrap resampling also allows us to better estimate the error in $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ when the number of red giant branch stars at that magnitude is small. We find that compared to Sobel edge detection the maximum likelihood analysis is equally accurate but more precise, and we find no systematic difference in the derived values of $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ between the two methods. Indeed we find the weighted mean absolute difference in $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ to be $`<|I_{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{ML}}I_{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{ED}}|>=0.03\pm 0.02`$ mag (the simple average absolute difference in $`I_{\mathrm{TRGB}}`$ is $`<|I_{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{ML}}I_{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{ED}}|>=0.03\pm 0.01`$ mag). The average ratio of uncertainties is $`<\sigma _{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{ML}}/\sigma _{\mathrm{TRGB},\mathrm{ED}}>=0.62`$. Therefore, on average, the maximum likelihood method is 38% more precise than the Sobel edge detection. It should also be noted that other authors (e.g. Cioni et al. (2000)) have found Sobel edge detection to be a biased estimator of the TRGB. The bias depends on the amount of smoothing in the luminosity function at the location of the TRGB. For our data this bias was less than 0.04 mag which is less than random errors and therefore we would not be sensitive to it in a comparison to the maximum likelihood. It is a positive feature of the TRGB method that it does not depend very sensitively on the statistical technique used to define the tip. The TRGB method will be most useful in further broadening our knowledge of distances to local galaxies and allow us to study the local flow in greater detail.

Bryan Méndez acknowledges support from a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship for Minorities. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. Support for proposal # 8199 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


text:
# Oscillation damping of chiral string loops

## I Introduction

Cosmic strings are one-dimensional topological defects which may have formed during phase transition in the early universe Kibble1 ; Zel'dovich1 ; Vilenkin1 . Witten Witten1  has shown that strings could be superconducting in certain particle physics models. The presence of current in a string leads to the principal specific feature: the superconducting string loop may form a stable stationary configuration Davis1 ; Haws1 ; Haws2 . Cosmic strings lose their energy on gravitational and electromagnetic radiation (if string is superconducting). As a result, the “ordinary” not extremely long cosmic strings without the current evaporate completely during the cosmological time. On the contrary the superconducting string loops could survive due to the presence of conserved “charge” and tend to the stable configuration which is named the chiral vorton Davis1 .

Numerous works were devoted to calculations of the gravitational and electromagnetic radiation by cosmic strings (see reviews and references in Vilenkin2 ; Kibble2 ). Unfortunately the general problem of the motion of a superconducting cosmic string coupled to the electromagnetic field is not solved analytically. The using of Nambu-Goto equations of string motion in general case results in the singular cusp formation and the divergence of the electromagnetic power radiated by the string. Nevertheless equations of motion can be solved precisely Carter1 ; Davis2 ; Vilenkin3  if (i) the gauge field influence on the string motion is negligible, e.g. when the superconducting current is neutral, and (ii) the string current $`J^a`$ is chiral, i. e. $`J^aJ_a=0`$, where $`J^a`$ is a two-dimensional current on the string world surface. It turns out that electromagnetic power radiated by the cusp of chiral cosmic strings is finite Blanco .

Self-consistent calculations of string evolution with time is complicated by the influence of the radiation back reaction on the string motion (see some approaches to numerical calculations of back reaction in Quashnock ). In this work we consider the electromagnetic and gravitational radiation by chiral strings loops which are close to the stationary vorton state (when amplitude of loop oscillations is very small). In this case it is physically justified the supposition that all string oscillations are faded out. We determine the upper bounds on gravitational and electromagnetic radiation of near stationary chiral loops when oscillations are small in amplitude. For some simple configurations of the string loops we calculate both types of radiation. We also find the analytical law for behavior in time of the string loop energy and current basing on the symmetries of the problem in the case when the final vorton configuration is the chiral ring and oscillations are radial. For some other less symmetric examples of loops we estimate the damping time of small amplitude oscillations. It turns out that in all considered examples the oscillation damping time of chiral strings due to gravitational radiation is order of magnitude longer than the known lifetime estimations for the “ordinary” cosmic strings without the current.

The paper is organized in the following order. Section II describes the general properties of the motion of chiral string loop in flat space-time. In Section III we consider the gravitational and electromagnetic radiation of the chiral string loops. The radiation power of the near stationary chiral loop with small amplitude oscillations is determined and the corresponding upper bounds for gravitational and electromagnetic radiation are found. Some solvable examples of near stationary chiral strings including radially oscillating ring are presented in Section IV. In Section V the damping time of weakly oscillating chiral loops is estimated and the exact time evolution law for radially oscillating chiral ring is found. Section VI briefly summarizes some features of the oscillation damping of chiral loops.

## II Chiral string motion

We remind here the known basic properties of chiral string motion in flat space-time required for the following calculations. The moving string sweeps a two-dimensional world-sheet in the Minkowski space-time. The corresponding space-time points on this world-sheet $`x^\mu =x^\mu (\sigma ^a)`$, where indices $`a=0,1`$, and $`\sigma ^0`$ and $`\sigma ^1`$ are coordinates on a two-dimensional world-sheet. If the back reaction of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation is negligible, then equations of motion of the string with a current is given by Witten1 ; Vilenkin4

$`_a\left[\sqrt{\gamma }\left(\mu \gamma ^{ab}+\theta ^{ab}\right)x_{,b}^\nu \right]=0,`$
$`_a\left(\sqrt{\gamma }\gamma ^{ab}\varphi _{,b}\right)=0,`$ (1)
where $`\gamma _{ab}=\eta _{ab}x_{,a}^\mu x_{,b}^\nu `$ is the induced metric on a two-dimensional world-sheet, $`\mu `$ is the energy of a string per unit length, $`\varphi `$ is the auxiliary scalar field and $`\theta ^{ab}`$ is the energy-momentum tensor of the charge carriers

$$\theta ^{ab}=\gamma ^{ac}\gamma ^{bd}\varphi _{,c}\varphi _{,d}\frac{1}{2}\gamma ^{ab}\gamma ^{cd}\varphi _{,c}\varphi _{,d}.$$
(2)
The conserved current on a two-dimensional world-sheet is written in terms of the scalar field

$$J^a=\frac{q}{\sqrt{\gamma }}ϵ^{ab}\varphi _{,b},$$
(3)
where $`q`$ is the coupling constant of the fields in the string. The four-dimensional current is expressed through (3) as Vilenkin4

$$j^\mu (x)=d^2\sigma \sqrt{\gamma }J^ax_{,a}^\mu \delta ^{(4)}(xx(\sigma )).$$
(4)
If this current is chiral, i. e.

$$J^aJ_a=0,$$
(5)
then equations of motion (II) can be solved analytically Carter1 ; Davis1 ; Vilenkin3 . This solution for the chiral string with an invariant length $`L`$ is

$$x^0=t,𝐱(t,\sigma )=\frac{L}{4\pi }\left[𝐚(\xi )+𝐛(\eta )\right],$$
(6)
where $`𝐚(\xi )`$ and $`𝐛(\eta )`$ are the vector functions of $`\xi =(2\pi /L)(\sigma t)`$ and $`\eta =(2\pi /L)(\sigma +t)`$ obeying the constraints:

$$𝐚_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=1,𝐛_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}1$$
(7)
For closed strings (with identified ends) the vector functions $`𝐚(\xi )`$ and $`𝐛(\eta )`$ define loops which are called $`a`$\- and $`b`$\- loops. The corresponding solution for scalar field is

$$\varphi (\sigma ,t)=\frac{L}{2\pi }F(\eta ),$$
(8)
where $`F(\eta )`$ is an arbitrary function. It is useful to define $`𝐛_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}k^2(\eta )`$. Then new function $`k(\eta )`$ is expressed through $`F(\eta )`$ in the following way:

$$k^2(\eta )=1\frac{4F^2(\eta )}{\mu }.$$
(9)
At $`k=0`$ the chiral string becomes vorton.

The energy-momentum tensor of the string in this gauge

$$T^{\mu \nu }=\mu 𝑑\sigma \left(\dot{x}^\mu \dot{x}^\nu x^\mu x^\nu \right)\delta ^{(3)}\left(𝐱𝐱(\sigma ,t)\right),$$
(10)
and correspondingly the string total energy

$$E=\mu 𝑑\sigma ,$$
(11)
with $`\sigma `$ to be the measure of the string total energy. The four-dimensional current (4) can be written as

$$j^\mu (𝐱,t)=q𝑑\sigma \varphi ^{}(x^\mu \dot{x}^\mu )\delta ^{(3)}\left(𝐱𝐱(\sigma ,t)\right),$$
(12)
with the total charge for the closed string loop

$$q_{\mathrm{tot}}=\frac{q\sqrt{\mu }}{2}𝑑\sigma \sqrt{1k^2}.$$
(13)
## III Chiral string radiation

### III.1 Gravitational radiation

In the case of the periodic physical systems with period $`T`$ for the energy-momentum tensor $`T_{\mu \nu }`$ we will have $`T^{\mu \nu }(𝐱,t)=T^{\mu \nu }(𝐱,t+T)`$. Fourier series for $`T_{\mu \nu }`$ is

$`T^{\mu \nu }(𝐱,t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}e^{i\omega _lt}T^{\mu \nu }(\omega _l,𝐱)+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c},`$ (14)
where $`\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}`$ denotes the complex conjugation of the preceding expression, $`\omega _l=2\pi l/T`$ is the frequency and

$`T^{\mu \nu }(\omega _l,𝐱)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{T}}{\displaystyle _0^T}𝑑te^{i\omega _lt}T^{\mu \nu }(𝐱,t).`$ (15)
For $`T^{\mu \nu }(\omega _l,𝐱)`$ we have Fourier transform

$`\widehat{T}^{\mu \nu }(\omega _l,𝐧)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3xT^{\mu \nu }(\omega _l,𝐱)e^{i\omega _l\mathrm{𝐧𝐱}}}`$ (16)
where $`𝐧=𝐱/|𝐱|`$.

The corresponding gravitational power, radiated per unit solid angle $`d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ by periodic system is given by Weinberg

$$\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}(\omega _l)}{d\mathrm{\Omega }},$$
(17)
where

$$\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}(\omega _l)}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{G\omega _l^2}{\pi }P_{ij}P_{lm}[\widehat{T}_{il}^{}\widehat{T}_{jm}\frac{1}{2}\widehat{T}_{ij}^{}\widehat{T}_{lm}].$$
(18)
Here $`P_{ij}=\delta _{ij}n_in_j`$ is the projection operator to the plane perpendicular to vector $`𝐧`$. It is possible to simplify the equation (18) further if rewrite it in the ‘corotating’ basis $`(𝐞_1^{},𝐞_2^{},𝐞_3^{})=(𝐧,𝐯,𝐰)`$, where $`𝐯`$ and $`𝐰`$ are the arbitrary unit vectors, perpendicular each other and to vector $`𝐧`$. In this corotating basis (18) transforms to Durrer

$$\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}(\omega _l)}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{G\omega _l^2}{\pi }[\tau _{pq}^{}\tau _{pq}\frac{1}{2}\tau _{qq}^{}\tau _{pp}].$$
(19)
where $`\tau _{pq}`$ are correspondingly the Fourier-transforms of an energy-momentum tensor in the corotating basis. Only indexes $`p,q`$ with values $`2`$ and $`3`$ appear in the equation (19). The Fourier-transforms $`\tau _{pq}`$ can be expressed in the following way Durrer

$$\tau _{pq}(\omega _l,𝐧)=\frac{L\mu }{2}[I_p(l)Y_q(l)+Y_p(l)I_q(l)],$$
(20)
where functions $`I_p(l)`$ and $`Y_q(l)`$ are determined through ”fundamental integrals”

$`I_2(l)`$ $``$ $`I_l(𝐧,𝐯),I_3(l)I_l(𝐧,𝐰),`$
$`Y_2(l)`$ $``$ $`Y_l(𝐧,𝐯),Y_3(l)Y_l(𝐧,𝐰).`$ (21)
with

$`I_l(𝐧,𝐳)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\xi e^{il(\xi +\mathrm{𝐧𝐚}(\xi ))}𝐚^{}(\xi )𝐳,`$ (22)
$`Y_l(𝐧,𝐳)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta e^{il(\eta \mathrm{𝐧𝐛}(\eta ))}𝐛^{}(\eta )𝐳.`$ (23)
Using functions (22) and (23) we rewrite the gravitational power (19) radiated per unit solid angle at frequency $`\omega _l=4\pi l/L`$ in the final form

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{gr}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ $`=`$ $`16\pi l^2G\mu ^2\left\{\right|I_2(l)Y_2(l)|^2+|I_3(l)Y_3(l)|^2`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left|I_2(l)Y_3(l)+I_3(l)Y_2(l)\right|^2`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|I_2(l)Y_2(l)+I_3(l)Y_3(l)|^2\}.`$
### III.2 Electromagnetic radiation

We will consider the electromagnetic radiation of chiral strings close to the stationary configuration, i. e. when the current is near to its maximum value. For the opposite limiting case of electromagnetic radiating by the strings with a weak electromagnetic current see Blanco ; Berezinsky .

Similar to the case of the gravitational radiation, the electromagnetic power emitted per solid angle $`d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is expanded in Fourier series:

$$\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}(\omega _l)}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}.$$
(25)
Expanding the electromagnetic current $`j^\mu `$ in Fourier series we find

$$j^\mu (𝐱,t)=\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}e^{i\omega _lt}j^\mu (\omega _l,𝐱)+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c},$$
(26)
where

$$j^\mu (\omega _l,𝐱)=\frac{1}{T}_0^T𝑑te^{i\omega _lt}T^\mu (𝐱,t).$$
(27)
Fourier transforms of $`j^\mu `$ are

$$\widehat{j}^\mu (\omega _l,𝐧)=d^3xj^\mu (\omega _l,𝐱)e^{i\omega _l\mathrm{𝐧𝐱}}.$$
(28)
Then expanding in standard way the retarded solution of Maxwell equations for electromagnetic potential in Lorenz gauge $`\mathrm{}A_\mu =4\pi j_\mu `$ in series of $`1/r`$, taking the leading term and substituting in formula for electromagnetic radiation Landau  $`d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}/d\mathrm{\Omega }=𝐄\times 𝐇/4\pi `$ one can find finally

$$\frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}(\omega )}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{\omega ^2}{2\pi }\iota _p^{}\iota _p.$$
(29)
Here $`\iota _p`$ is the Fourier transform of electromagnetic current in the corotating basis. In the case of chiral loop $`\iota _p`$ can be expressed in the following way:

$$\iota _p(\omega _l,𝐧)=\frac{Lq\sqrt{\mu }}{2}I_p(l)M(l),$$
(30)
where $`I_p`$ is from (III.1) and

$`M(l)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta e^{il(\eta \mathrm{𝐧𝐛}(\eta ))}\sqrt{1|𝐛^{}(\eta )|^2}.`$ (31)
Using functions (22) and (31) we rewrite the electromagnetic power, radiated per unit solid angle at frequency $`\omega _l`$ in the final form

$$\frac{d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{em}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=2\pi l^2q^2\mu \left(\left|I_2(l)\right|^2+\left|I_3(l)\right|^2\right)\left|M(l)\right|^2$$
(32)
### III.3 Radiation of near stationary loops

Now we may consider in more details the small amplitude oscillations of the chiral string loop, i. e. when string is near to its stationary state. This means that arbitrary function $`b(\eta )`$ in the solution for string motion (6) is such $`b^{}(\eta )=k(\eta )1`$. If three-dimensional coordinates are chosen so that a $`b`$-loop is near to the origin of coordinate system (e. g., $`b`$-loop intersects exactly the origin of coordinate system) then $`b(\eta )1`$. In this case we can neglect the term $`\mathrm{𝐧𝐛}`$ in the first order of expansion on parameter $`k`$ in the exponent of (23). As a result we obtain

$`Y_l(𝐧,𝐳){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta e^{il\eta }𝐛^{}(\eta )𝐳`$ (33)
and therefore $`Y_l(𝐧,𝐳)`$ in this case is $`l`$-th Fourier component $`𝐛^{}(\eta )𝐳`$. To find the first order expansion on $`k`$ in (31) we should take into account not only zero, but also the first term in expansion of the exponent $`\mathrm{exp}(il\mathrm{𝐧𝐛})`$. This gives

$`M(l)i{\displaystyle \frac{l}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta e^{il\eta }\mathrm{𝐧𝐛}.`$ (34)
This provides the opportunity to determine an upper limit of the gravitational radiation power in the case of near stationary chiral loops. From (III.1) it follows

$`\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}(\omega _l)}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right|`$ $``$ $`8\pi G\mu ^2l^2\{[|I_2(l)Y_2(l)|+|I_3(l)Y_3(l)|]^2`$ (35)
$`+`$ $`[|I_2(l)Y_3(l)|+|I_3(l)Y_2(l)|]^2\}.`$
Let us assume now, that $`b(\eta )`$ is twice continuously differentiable, and $`b^{\prime \prime \prime }(\eta )`$ is piece-wise continuous. Successive double integration by parts in (33) gives

$$Y_l(𝐧,𝐳)=\frac{1}{2\pi l^2}_0^{2\pi }𝑑\eta e^{il\eta }𝐛^{\prime \prime \prime }(\eta )𝐳.$$
(36)
From (36) it follows the inequality

$$\left|Y_l(𝐧,𝐳)\right|\frac{b_3}{l^2},$$
(37)
where $`b_3`$ is a maximum value $`|b^{\prime \prime \prime }(\eta )|`$ on the segment $`\eta (0,2\pi )`$. Using (35), (37) and obvious relation $`|I_2|1`$ we find

$`\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{gr}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right|8\pi G\mu ^2{\displaystyle \frac{b_3^2}{l^2}}.`$ (38)
Integration of (38) over the unit sphere and successive summation over $`l`$ using relation $`_{l=1}^{\mathrm{}}l^2=\pi ^2/6`$ gives the requested upper limit for the gravitational radiation power

$`\left|\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}\right|32\pi ^4b_3^2G\mu ^2.`$ (39)
Similarly in the case of electromagnetic radiation integrating (34) three times by parts and using (32) we find

$`\left|\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}\right|{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}\pi ^4b_3^2q^2\mu .`$ (40)
The presence the third derivative $`𝐛^{\prime \prime \prime }(\eta )`$ in (39) and (36) is not surprise and resemble the quadruple gravitational radiation formula (see e. g. Landau )

$$\dot{E}=\frac{G}{45}\stackrel{\dot{}\dot{}\dot{}}{D}_{ij}^2$$
(41)
with the third time derivative of the quadruple momentum $`D_{ij}`$. Electromagnetic radiation contains $`\ddot{𝐝}`$ in dipole approach, where $`𝐝`$ is the dipole moment. Arguing similarly it may seem, in this case, that we need restriction on a second derivative $`𝐛(\eta )`$, not the third. But in the first order of expansion on $`k`$ dipole radiation is equal to zero, the first non-zero term is quadruple, therefore we again obtain dependence from $`𝐛^{\prime \prime \prime }`$.

Note that requirement of restriction of the third derivative $`𝐛^{\prime \prime \prime }`$ is not necessary in general. For example, if the string has kinks (see below) then the first derivative $`𝐛^{}`$ is discontinuous (and, consequently $`Y_p(l)1/l`$, $`M(l)1/l`$). Convergence of series (17) and (25) in this case is ensured by the behavior of fundamental integrals $`I_p(l)1/l`$ at $`l1`$.

## IV Near stationary loops

It is possible to derive rather simple expressions for the total power radiated by the chiral loops in the limit when loops are very close to their stationary states, i. e. $`k1`$ in (7). Additionally it is supposed that $`k`$ does not depend on $`\eta `$ and therefore the current $`j^\mu `$ is constant along the string. Using expansion of (III.1) and (32) in powers of $`k`$, the corresponding gravitational and electromagnetic power can be written in the form:

$$\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}=K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu ^2k^2,\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}=K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2\mu k^2,$$
(42)
where $`K^{\mathrm{em}}`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ are numerical factors, depending only on the loop geometry. We see that radiation power of the near stationary chiral loops is proportional to $`k^2`$.s The geometrical numerical factor $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ in turn is connected with the corresponding parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in equation $`\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}=\mathrm{\Gamma }G\mu ^2`$ by relation

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=K^{\mathrm{gr}}k^2.$$
(43)
### IV.1 Multiply wound chiral loop

The first simple solvable example of a near stationary loop radiation is the multiply wound chiral string Davis2 :

$`𝐚`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}(\mathrm{cos}m\xi ,\mathrm{sin}m\xi ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}),`$
$`𝐛`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{n}}(\mathrm{cos}n\eta ,\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}n\eta ,\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}n\eta ),`$ (44)
where $`m,n`$ are integer (harmonic numbers). For nonzero Fourier component indexes in (17) and (25) the following condition is held: $`l=\kappa m=\lambda n`$, where $`\kappa `$ and $`\lambda `$ are integers (see Appendix A for details). In all other cases $`d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{gr}}/d\mathrm{\Omega }=d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{em}}/d\mathrm{\Omega }=0`$. Let $`\lambda `$ be the minimum integer such as $`\kappa m=\lambda n`$. In this case first non-zero term in expanding of the energy on $`k`$ is proportional to $`k^{2\lambda }`$:

$`\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ $``$ $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}(\kappa ,\lambda ,\mathrm{\Phi })l^2k^{2\lambda }G\mu ^2,`$
$`\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $``$ $`K^{\mathrm{em}}(\kappa ,\lambda ,\mathrm{\Phi })l^2k^{2\lambda }q^2\mu ,`$ (45)
where $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}(\kappa ,\lambda ,\mathrm{\Phi })`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}(\kappa ,\lambda ,\mathrm{\Phi })`$ are numerical factors depending on geometrical string configuration. For example, the particular case with $`m=n=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$ in (IV.1) corresponds to pure radial oscillations of the chiral loop:

$`𝐚`$ $`=`$ $`(\mathrm{cos}\xi ,\mathrm{sin}\xi ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}),`$
$`𝐛`$ $`=`$ $`k(\mathrm{cos}\eta ,\mathrm{sin}\eta ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}).`$ (46)
In this case the first non-zero term in expanding of radiated power on $`k`$ is proportional to $`k^2`$. Therefore taking into account only first term in expanding (17) we have (A)

$`I_2(1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}e^{i\varphi }[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )+J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]\mathrm{cos}\theta ,`$
$`I_3(1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}e^{i\varphi }[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )].`$ (47)
By keeping the leading nonzero term at $`k1`$ we obtain (A)

$`Y_2(1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}e^{i\varphi }\mathrm{cos}\theta ,`$
$`Y_3(1)`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}e^{i\varphi },`$
$`M(1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}e^{i\varphi }\mathrm{sin}\theta .`$ (48)
Substituting (IV.1) and (IV.1) in (III.1) and (32) we find

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{G\mu ^2\pi k^2}{2}}\{[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2+`$
$`2\left[3J_2^2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0^2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )\right]\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +`$
$`[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )+J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2\mathrm{cos}^4\theta \},`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi k^2q^2\mu }{8}}\{[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2+`$
$`[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )+J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta \}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta .`$ (49)
Integration over the unit sphere in (IV.1) gives

$`K^{\mathrm{gr}}=\pi ^2{\displaystyle _0^\pi }d\theta \mathrm{sin}\theta \{[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2+`$
$`2\left[3J_2^2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0^2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )\right]\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +`$
$`[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )+J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2\mathrm{cos}^4\theta \},`$
$`K^{\mathrm{em}}={\displaystyle _0^\pi }d\theta \mathrm{sin}^3\theta \{[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2+`$
$`[J_2(\mathrm{sin}\theta )+J_0(\mathrm{sin}\theta )]^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta \}.`$ (50)
with numerical values for $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}=4.73`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}=2.28`$.

### IV.2 Piece-wise string evolution

Let us consider now the second example of chiral string loop

$`𝐚`$ $`=`$ $`𝐀\{\begin{array}{ccc}\left(\xi \pi /2\right),\hfill & & 0\xi \pi ,\hfill \\ \left(\xi +3\pi /2\right),\hfill & & \pi \xi 2\pi ,\hfill \end{array}`$ (53)
$`𝐛`$ $`=`$ $`k𝐁\{\begin{array}{ccc}\left(\eta \pi /2\right),\hfill & & 0\eta \pi ,\hfill \\ \left(\eta +3\pi /2\right),\hfill & & \pi \eta 2\pi ,\hfill \end{array}`$ (56)
where $`𝐀`$ and $`𝐁`$ are constant unit vectors. This is the generalization of ordinary piece-wise string loop without the current Garfinkle  to the chiral current case. See Fig. 1 for visualisation of this chiral loop oscillations. For fundamental integrals (III.1) and function $`M(l)`$ from (31) we obtain in this case respectively

$`I_2(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i\mathrm{𝐯𝐀}\left[e^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}(1)^le^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}\right]}{\pi l\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2\right]}},`$ (57)
$`I_3(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i\mathrm{𝐰𝐀}\left[e^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}(1)^le^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}\right]}{\pi l\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2\right]}},`$
$`Y_2(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{ik\mathrm{𝐯𝐁}\left[e^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}(1)^le^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}\right]}{\pi l\left[1(k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]}},`$
$`Y_3(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{ik\mathrm{𝐰𝐁}\left[e^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}(1)^le^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}\right]}{\pi l\left[1(k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]}},`$
$`M(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{ik\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}(1k^2)^{1/2}\left[e^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}(1)^le^{il\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}/2}\right]}{\pi l\left[1(k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]}}.`$
Functions $`Y_p(l)`$ decrease here as $`1/l`$ with growing of $`l`$. Combining with similar behavior of $`I_p(l)1/l`$, this provides the convergence of energy series in (17) and (25). As a result for the gravitational and electromagnetic radiation of the nearly stationary chiral loop (53) we obtain respectively

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{gr}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{32G\mu ^2}{\pi ^3l^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left[1(1)^l\mathrm{cos}(l\pi \mathrm{𝐧𝐀})\right]\left[1(1)^l\mathrm{cos}(l\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})\right]}{\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2\right]\left[1k^2(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]^2}}\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]k^2,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{em}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8q^2\mu }{\pi ^3l^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left[1(1)^l\mathrm{cos}(l\pi \mathrm{𝐧𝐀})\right]\left[1(1)^l\mathrm{cos}(l\pi k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})\right]}{\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2\right]\left[1k^2(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]^2}}(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2k^2(1k^2),`$ (58)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{16G\mu ^2}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{1\frac{1}{2}\left(|\mathrm{𝐧𝐀}+k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}|+|\mathrm{𝐧𝐀}k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}|\right)}{\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2\right]\left[1k^2(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]^2}}\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]k^2,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4q^2\mu }{\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{1\frac{1}{2}\left(|\mathrm{𝐧𝐀}+k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}|+|\mathrm{𝐧𝐀}k\mathrm{𝐧𝐁}|\right)}{\left[1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2\right]\left[1k^2(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2\right]^2}}(\mathrm{𝐧𝐁})^2k^2(1k^2).`$ (59)
The last two equations for the radiated energy flux into the solid angle $`d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are obtained after summation over $`l`$ with the using of identity Gradshteyn

$$\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{\mathrm{cos}(lx)}{l^2}=\frac{1}{4}(x\pi )^2\frac{\pi ^2}{12},0x2\pi .$$
(60)
Note, that (IV.2) and (IV.2) are valid for all $`k`$, not only for $`k1`$. Choosing $`A=(1,0,0)`$ and $`B=(\mathrm{cos}\alpha ,\mathrm{sin}\alpha ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0})`$ we find in this case from (43) the corresponding numerical factors $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}`$:

$`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{16}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\theta 𝑑\varphi \mathrm{sin}\theta {\displaystyle \frac{1[\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}(\alpha \varphi )]^2}{1+|\mathrm{cos}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\theta |}},`$
$`K^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\theta 𝑑\varphi \mathrm{sin}\theta {\displaystyle \frac{[\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}(\alpha \varphi )]^2}{1+|\mathrm{cos}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\theta |}}.`$ (61)
For example, in the particular case of $`\alpha =\pi /2`$ the double integrals (IV.2) equal $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}=28.3`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}=4`$ respectively.

### IV.3 Stretched loop oscillation

Let us consider now the loop of the following kind (combination of the first and second cases)

$`𝐚`$ $`=`$ $`𝐀\{\begin{array}{ccc}\left(\xi \pi /2\right),\hfill & & 0\xi \pi ,\hfill \\ \left(\xi +3\pi /2\right),\hfill & & \pi \xi 2\pi ,\hfill \end{array}`$ (64)
$`𝐛`$ $`=`$ $`k(\mathrm{sin}\eta ,\mathrm{cos}\eta ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}),`$ (65)
where $`𝐀`$ is the unit vector and $`k1`$. We will call this example as the stretched loop See Fig. 2. Substituting (IV.1) and (57) in (III.1), and integrating over the unit sphere, we find

$`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{12}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\theta 𝑑\varphi \mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}^2\theta {\displaystyle \frac{[1+\mathrm{cos}\left(\pi \mathrm{𝐧𝐀}\right)]^2}{1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2}},`$
$`K^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\theta 𝑑\varphi \mathrm{sin}^3\theta {\displaystyle \frac{[1+\mathrm{cos}\left(\pi \mathrm{𝐧𝐀}\right)]^2}{1(\mathrm{𝐧𝐀})^2}}.`$ (66)
For example in the case $`𝐀=(0,0,1)`$ we find $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}=7.63`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}=3`$.

## V Damping of loop oscillations

Let us evaluate now the damping time of small amplitude oscillations of near stationary chiral strings corresponding to the limit $`k1`$ in (7). For simplicity we assume that $`k`$ does not depend on $`\eta `$ in the considered limit (this assumption is held true in the considered above solvable examples). Then a total loop charge conservation in (13) gives

$$\frac{q\sqrt{\mu }}{2}L\sqrt{1k^2}=const.$$

From this equation we find the relation between energy $`E`$ and parameter $`k`$ of the chiral string with small amplitude oscillations:

$$EE_v\left(1+\frac{k^2}{2}\right),$$
(67)
where $`E_v=L\mu `$ is the energy of the stationary (vorton) chiral loop configuration at $`k=0`$. Comparing (67) with (42) we estimate the damping time of string oscillations

$$\tau \frac{E_v}{2(K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu ^2+K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2\mu )}.$$
(68)
Let us express (68) through vorton length. We have $`E_v=L\mu `$, where $`L`$ is the invariant length, and physical length of a stationary string is equal to half of invariant length $`L_{\mathrm{ph}}=L/2`$ Steer . We find

$$\tau \frac{L_{\mathrm{ph}}}{K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu +K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2}.$$
(69)
In the case of the chiral ring with one harmonic (IV.1), it is naturally to assume, that evolving ring saves its form (due to symmetry) during the damping of small amplitude oscillations. In this case therefore we can find precisely the evolution of the radiating string with time. Only $`k`$ varies in time if the shape of the string is invariable. Solving together (42) and (67), we find the law of oscillation damping in the near stationary chiral ring

$$k^2k_0^2e^{t(1/\tau _c^{\mathrm{gr}}+1/\tau _c^{\mathrm{em}})},$$
(70)
where $`k_0=k(t=0)`$, and correspondingly the damping time due to gravitational radiation

$`\tau _c^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{E_v}{2K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu ^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{L_{\mathrm{ph}}}{K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu }}`$ (71)
and due to electromagnetic radiation

$`\tau _c^{\mathrm{em}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{E_v}{2K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2\mu }}={\displaystyle \frac{L_{\mathrm{ph}}}{K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2}}.`$ (72)
Substituting (70) in (67) we obtain

$$EE_v\left[1+\frac{k_0^2}{2}e^{t(1/\tau _c^{\mathrm{gr}}+1/\tau _c^{\mathrm{em}})}\right].$$
(73)
An effective number of oscillations during the damping time (oscillator quality) is

$`Q={\displaystyle \frac{\tau }{T}}={\displaystyle \frac{2}{L}}{\displaystyle \frac{\tau ^{\mathrm{gr}}\tau ^{\mathrm{em}}}{\tau ^{\mathrm{gr}}+\tau ^{\mathrm{em}}}}.`$ (74)
To restore the usual CGS units we replace $`G\mu ^2G\mu ^2c`$, $`q^2\mu q^2\mu c^2/\mathrm{}`$ and choose standard normalization for the string mass per unit length $`G\mu /c^2=10^6\mu _6`$ and $`q_e=q/e`$ for dimensionless charge carrier on the string, where elementary electric charge is $`e=4.8\times 10^{10}`$. As a result we obtain for damping time

$`\tau ^{\mathrm{gr}}={\displaystyle \frac{L_{\mathrm{ph}}c}{K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu }},\tau ^{\mathrm{em}}={\displaystyle \frac{L_{\mathrm{ph}}\mathrm{}}{K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2}}.`$ (75)
The oscillator quality (74) in the cases of the gravitational and electromagnetic radiation are respectively

$`Q^{\mathrm{gr}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{K^{\mathrm{gr}}}}{\displaystyle \frac{c^2}{G\mu }},Q^{\mathrm{em}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{K^{\mathrm{em}}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}q_e^2}},`$ (76)
with $`\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}=e^2/c\mathrm{}`$ The ratio of damping times is

$$\tau ^{\mathrm{gr}}/\tau ^{\mathrm{em}}\frac{q^2}{G\mu \mathrm{}}\left(\frac{K^{\mathrm{em}}}{K^{\mathrm{gr}}}\right)1.4\times 10^4\frac{q_e^2}{\mu _6}\frac{K^{\mathrm{em}}}{K^{\mathrm{gr}}}.$$
(77)
If $`q_e^2/\mu _61.4\times 10^3`$, then electromagnetic radiation prevails in the chiral loop evolution (it is valid for the standard values of $`\mu _61`$ and $`q_e1`$). If on the contrary $`q_e^2/\mu _61.4\times 10^3`$ (for example, if a current is neutral and there is no electromagnetic radiation at all), then pure gravitational radiation determines the evolution.

Let us estimate a characteristic size of the string $`L_\mathrm{v}`$ with oscillation damping time (75) equals to the universe lifetime $`t_010^{18}`$ s. In the case of the gravitational radiation predominance we find

$`L_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{gr}}{\displaystyle \frac{G\mu K^{\mathrm{gr}}t_0}{c}}10^2\mu _6\text{ kpc}`$ (78)
for $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}1`$. So the chiral strings with length $`L<L_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ (i. e. with a size of typical galactic halo or less) have had enough time to fade into vortons. On the other hand if the electromagnetic radiation prevails, we have

$$L_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{em}}\frac{q^2K^{\mathrm{em}}t_0}{\mathrm{}}70q_e^2\text{ Mpc}$$
(79)
for $`K^{\mathrm{em}}1`$ and so the electromagnetically radiated chiral loops with the length shorter than the size of galactic clusters have had transformed now to vortons.

## VI Discussion

We have explored the asymptotic fading of chiral cosmic string loops into vortons. It turns out that the upper bound of the gravitational radiation of a near stationary loop (40) is proportional to the squared third derivative of the oscillation amplitude. This result is in qualitative agreement with the known formula for gravitational radiation in quadruple approximation.

The derived equations (III.1) and (32) for respectively the gravitational and electromagnetic power radiation of oscillating chiral loops are suitable for practical calculations. We demonstrate that, if oscillations are small in amplitude ($`k1`$) and the current $`j^\mu `$ is constant along the string, then the power of the gravitational and electromagnetic radiation (42) is proportional to $`k^2`$ and the coefficient of proportionality depends only on the form of the loop. For some examples of chiral loops we calculated the total radiated power in the limit of small amplitude oscillations. For chiral ring with small amplitude radial oscillations the radiated power per solid angle $`d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for the electromagnetic (IV.2) and gravitational (IV.2) radiation is found analytically.

We estimated the damping time of chiral loops (68) with small amplitude oscillations. In the case of the gravitational radiation prevalence this time is $`\tau ^{\mathrm{gr}}L_{\mathrm{ph}}/K^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu `$, where $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ is a numerical coefficient depending on the string geometry. The damping time due to the gravitational radiation of the considered chiral loops is of the order of magnitude longer than the lifetime of ordinary cosmic strings. If the electromagnetic radiation is prevail then decay time is $`\tau ^{\mathrm{em}}L_{\mathrm{ph}}/K^{\mathrm{em}}q^2`$. The oscillation energy and amplitude parameter $`k`$ of the radially oscillating chiral ring are found to be exponentially decaying with time according to respectively (70) and (73).

From the damping time estimation it follows that only sufficiently long superconducting cosmic strings oscillate up to the present time. On the contrary the small scale chiral loops transformed into the stationary vortons due to the oscillation damping. Namely, the minimal length of presently oscillating chiral loop varies from $`L_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{gr}}10^2\mu _6`$ kpc for gravitational radiation domination to $`L_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{em}}70q_e^2`$ Mpc for electromagnetic radiation domination depending on the relations between $`\mu `$ and $`q`$. It appears that the oscillator quality of chiral loops (76) is independent on the loop length and is determined only by the loop shape through geometric parameters $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}`$. For characteristic values of $`K^{\mathrm{gr}}10`$ and $`K^{\mathrm{em}}1`$ the corresponding oscillator qualities for the gravitational and electromagnetic radiation are $`Q^{\mathrm{gr}}10^5/\mu _6`$ and $`Q^{\mathrm{em}}137/q_e^2`$.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported in part by Russian Foundation for basic Research grants 00-15-96632 and 00-15-96697 and by the INTAS through grant 99-1065.

## Appendix A Multiply wound ring

Here we calculate the fundamental integrals (22), (23) and (31) which define the radiated power of the string for the particular case of multiply wound loop in the Section IV.1. We begin from the consideration of the following integrals

$`Is_{lm}(x,y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta e^{il(\eta +x\mathrm{sin}m\eta +y\mathrm{cos}m\eta )}\mathrm{sin}\eta ,`$
$`Ic_{lm}(x,y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta e^{il(\eta +x\mathrm{sin}m\eta +y\mathrm{cos}m\eta )}\mathrm{cos}\eta .`$ (80)
The combinations $`Is_{lm}\pm Ic_{lm}`$ are integrals of the form

$$S_{nm}(x,y)=\frac{1}{2\pi }_0^{2\pi }𝑑\eta e^{il(\eta +x\mathrm{sin}m\eta +y\mathrm{cos}m\eta )},$$
(81)
and integral (81) is expressed as follows

$$S_{nm}(x,y)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(\frac{xiy}{r}\right)^{n/m}T_{nm}(nr),\hfill & r0,\hfill \\ 0,\hfill & r=0,n0,\hfill \\ 1,\hfill & r=0,n=0,\hfill \end{array}$$
(82)
where $`r=(x^2+y^2)^{1/2}`$ and

$$T_{nm}(r)=\frac{1}{2\pi }_0^{2\pi }𝑑\eta e^{i(n\eta +r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )}.$$
(83)
Let $`n,m`$ are integer. If $`n=cm`$, where $`c`$ is integer, then replacing $`\eta m\eta `$ and taking into account, that the function in integral (83) is periodic we find

$$T_{nm}(r)=J_c(r),n=cm,n,m,cZ,$$
(84)
where $`J_c`$ is $`c`$-th Bessel function. Then integrals (A) can be expressed through Bessel functions in the following way

$`Is_{nm}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{z^{}}{r}}\right)^c[{\displaystyle \frac{z^{}}{r}}J_{c+1}(cr){\displaystyle \frac{z}{r}}J_{c1}(cr)],`$
$`Ic_{nm}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{z^{}}{r}}\right)^c[{\displaystyle \frac{z^{}}{r}}J_{c+1}(cr)+{\displaystyle \frac{z}{r}}J_{c1}(cr)],`$ (85)
where $`z=x+iy`$ and $`z^{}=xiy`$. Let us demonstrate now that if $`ncm`$, where $`c`$ is integer, then integrals (A) equal zero. In other words we need to prove, that $`T_{nm}(r)0`$ if $`ncm`$. First of all we note that

$`f(\eta )=\mathrm{Im}e^{i(n\eta +r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )}=f(2\pi \eta )`$ (86)
and therefore $`\mathrm{Im}T_{nm}(r)0`$. The real part of function in the integral (83) is

$$\mathrm{cos}n\eta \mathrm{cos}(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )\mathrm{sin}n\eta \mathrm{sin}(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta ).$$
(87)
Expansion of $`\mathrm{cos}(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )`$ in Taylor series gives:

$`\mathrm{cos}(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^k{\displaystyle \frac{(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )^{2k}}{2k!}},`$
$`\mathrm{sin}(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^k{\displaystyle \frac{(r\mathrm{sin}m\eta )^{2k+1}}{(2k+1)!}},`$ (88)
where for odd and even values of $`k`$ we have the standard binomial-like representation

$`\mathrm{sin}^km\eta =\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2i}}\right)^{k1}\left[\mathrm{sin}km\eta C_1^k\mathrm{sin}(k2)m\eta +\mathrm{}+(1)^{\frac{k1}{2}}C_{(k1)/2}^k\mathrm{sin}m\eta \right],`$
$`\mathrm{sin}^km\eta ={\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{\frac{k}{2}}}{2^{k1}}}\left[\mathrm{cos}km\eta +\mathrm{}+(1)^{\frac{k1}{2}}C_{(k1)/2}^k\mathrm{cos}2m\eta \right]+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^k}}C_{k/2}^k.`$ (89)
It can be seen that only terms of the kind

$`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta \mathrm{sin}(n\eta )\mathrm{sin}[(2k+1)m\eta ],`$
$`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\eta \mathrm{cos}(n\eta )\mathrm{cos}(2km\eta ),`$ (90)
enter in the considered series (A). Using this fact and (86) we find, that if $`ncm`$, where $`c`$ is integer, then integrals (A) equal zero, what we wanted to prove.

Let us consider the following chiral circular loop:

$`𝐚`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}(\mathrm{cos}m\xi \mathrm{sin}m\xi ),`$
$`𝐛`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{n}}(\mathrm{cos}n\eta \mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}n\eta \mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}n\eta ),`$ (91)
where $`m,n`$ are integer. For $`l=\kappa m`$, where $`\kappa `$ is integer, we obtain (see (A,A))

$`I_2(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{cos}\theta [J_{\kappa +1}(\kappa \mathrm{sin}\theta )+J_{\kappa 1}(\kappa \mathrm{sin}\theta )]e^{i\kappa \varphi },`$
$`I_3(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}[J_{\kappa +1}(\kappa \mathrm{sin}\theta )J_{\kappa 1}(\kappa \mathrm{sin}\theta )]e^{i\kappa \varphi }.`$ (92)
For all others $`l`$ we have $`I_p(l)=0`$. Denoting further $`x=k\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\varphi `$, $`y=k(\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\varphi +\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{cos}\theta )`$, $`r=(x^2+y^2)^{1/2}`$, we can write

$`Y_2(l)`$ $`=`$ $`k\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cos}\varphi Ic_{l,n}(x,y)`$
$`+k(\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{sin}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}\theta )Is_{l,n}(x,y),`$
$`Y_3(l)`$ $`=`$ $`k\mathrm{sin}\varphi Ic_{l,n}(x,y)+k\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{cos}\varphi Is_{l,n}(x,y),`$
$`M(l)`$ $`=`$ $`S_{l,n}(x,y)\sqrt{1k^2}.`$ (93)
If $`l=\lambda n`$, where $`\lambda `$ is integer, then $`Y_p0`$, $`M(l)0`$, In all other cases $`Y_p=M(l)=0`$. As a result: if $`l=\kappa m=\lambda n`$ (where $`\kappa `$, $`\lambda `$ are integer), then $`l`$-th term in expanding of the energy is nonzero. In all other cases $`d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{gr}}/d\mathrm{\Omega }=d\dot{E}_l^{\mathrm{em}}/d\mathrm{\Omega }=0`$. Let $`\lambda `$ is minimal integer, such as $`\kappa m=\lambda n`$. From the properties of Bessel functions

$$J_l(x)=\frac{x^l}{2^ll!}+O(x^2),$$
(94)
it follows for (82) and (A) in the first nonzero term of expansion on $`k`$:

$`Is_{ln}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}(xiy)^{\lambda 1}{\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda )^{\lambda 1}}{2^{\lambda 1}(\lambda 1)!}},`$
$`Ic_{ln}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(xiy)^{\lambda 1}{\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda )^{\lambda 1}}{2^{\lambda 1}(\lambda 1)!}},`$
$`S_{ln}`$ $`=`$ $`(xiy)^\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda )^\lambda }{2^\lambda (\lambda )!}}.`$ (95)
Using (A), we obtain (A)

$`Y_2(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}(xiy)^{\lambda 1}{\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda )^{\lambda 1}}{2^{\lambda 1}(\lambda 1)!}}\times `$
$`\left(\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cos}\varphi +i\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{sin}\varphi i\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{sin}\theta \right),`$
$`Y_3(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}(xiy)^{\lambda 1}{\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda )^{\lambda 1}}{2^{\lambda 1}(\lambda 1)!}}\times `$
$`\left(\mathrm{sin}\varphi +i\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{cos}\varphi \right),`$
$`M(l)`$ $`=`$ $`(xiy)^\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda )^\lambda }{2^\lambda (\lambda )!}}\sqrt{1k^2}.`$ (96)
By substituting (A) in (III.1) and (32) we can calculate the corresponding parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ from expressions for $`\dot{E}^{\mathrm{gr}}=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mathrm{gr}}G\mu ^2`$ and $`\dot{E}^{\mathrm{em}}=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mathrm{em}}G\mu ^2`$.


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# Anomalous thermal conductivity and local temperature distribution on harmonic Fibonacci chains

## References

## Figure captions