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# Chandra Observations of the Pleiades Open Cluster: X-ray Emission from Late-B to Early-F Type Binaries

## 1 Introduction

Magnetic dynamo theories predict that an interaction between differential rotation and sub-photospheric convection creates large photospheric magnetic fields (Parker, 1955). These magnetic fields interact in stellar coronae to produce X-ray emission and flares (Pallavicini et al., 1981). Because an outer convective envelope is essential for producing dynamo driven magnetic activity, stars with radiative outer envelopes (hotter than $``$A2) (Bohn, 1984) and stars with thin outer convective envelopes (late-A to early-F) do not show a strong correlation between X-ray emission and rotation as would be expected for coronal magnetic activity (Walter, 1983). Various theories, such as heating through the dissipation of acoustic and MHD waves (Stein, 1981; Narain & Ulmschneider, 1990), have been suggested to explain X-ray activity from late-A to early-F type stars (see discussion in §4.2).

One of the early surprises from the Einstein mission was the detection of strong X-ray emission from O stars, with X-ray luminosity highly correlated with bolometric luminosity (Harnden et al., 1979). Lucy & White (1980) suggested that shock heated clumps could form in the radiatively driven winds of OB stars, possibly leading to X-ray emission. More recent instability-driven wind shock models (Owocki, Castor & Rybicki, 1988; MacFarlane & Cassinelli, 1989; Hillier et al., 1993; Feldmeier et al., 1995; Cohen et al., 1996; Owocki & Cohen, 1999) have been able to explain the X-ray properties of many O and early-B stars with sufficiently high mass-loss rates.

The two leading explanations for X-ray emission, instability-driven wind shocks and dynamo driven magnetic activity, probably cannot produce strong X-rays for stars in the approximate spectral range B3–early-F (Stauffer et al., 1994). Nonetheless, moderate X-ray emission from late-B to early-F stars has been reported for nearly twenty years (e.g., Caillault, Gagné & Stauffer, 1994; Huélamo et al., 2001, and references therein). For example, in Einstein (Caillault & Helfand, 1985; Micela et al., 1990), ROSAT (Stauffer et al., 1994; Gagné, Caillault & Stauffer, 1995; Micela et al., 1996, 1999), and Chandra (Krishnamurthi et al., 2001, , hereafter Paper I) studies of the Pleiades, some fraction (10–50%) of late-B to early-F stars were detected. Two explanations have been suggested: the X-rays are produced in the coronae of unseen late-type companions (as first suggested by Golub et al., 1983) or these stars are intrinsic X-ray emitters. The late-type companion hypothesis is difficult to disprove because close binaries are not resolved in X-ray images and spectroscopic binaries are not resolved with high-resolution X-ray grating spectra.

Several studies of the X-ray emission from B- and F-type stars have examined the late-type companion hypothesis in detail. In a ROSAT study of A-type stars, Panzera et al. (1999) could not conclusively identify the source of the X-ray emission. Micela et al. (1999) concluded that all the B-type stars detected in the Pleiades are known or possible binaries, thereby supporting the late-type companion hypothesis. Similarly, in an Einstein survey of the Pleiades, Caillault & Helfand (1985) concluded that the X-ray emission from the $``$A6 star, HII 1384, could be attributed to a late-type companion. Simon, Drake & Kim (1995) used archival ROSAT data to study ten A-type stars, of which five are associated with known late-type companions. In this study, Simon et al. (1995) concluded that the remaining five must have late-type companions. Stauffer et al. (1994) performed a ROSAT survey of the Pleiades showing inconclusive results on this subject. Finally, in Einstein and ROSAT studies of B6-A3 stars in the Orion Nebula, Caillault & Zoonematkermani (1989) and Stauffer et al. (1994) proposed that the X-ray emission from these stars could be attributed to T-Tauri stars. As Caillault & Zoonematkermani (1989) also suggested, the current models for X-ray emission may need to be revised, as none of these studies could prove or disprove the late-type companion hypothesis.

Several studies have suggested that late-B to early-F stars are intrinsic X-ray emitters. In studies by Micela et al. (1996), Stauffer et al. (1994), and Caillault & Helfand (1985), the A star, HII 1384 (see above), exhibits steady, intense X-ray emission. There is no known companion to this star, as noted by Micela et al. (1990, 1996). An analysis by Berghöfer & Schmitt (1994), using data from the ROSAT all-sky survey of B stars with known late- or early-type companions, showed that most of the X-ray flux from these systems was emitted by the early-type stars and not late-type companions. A similar examination of visual binaries was performed by Schmitt et al. (1993) using ROSAT HRI pointing data. Here again, they concluded that the dominant X-ray emission was from late B-type stars. Schmitt (1997) analyzed observations of A- through G-type stars from the ROSAT all-sky survey. He consistently found X-ray emission from stars later than $``$A7 and concluded that shallow convection zones are sufficient to produce X-ray emission.

The Pleiades is the prototypical young open cluster. It contains a co-eval ($`100`$ Myr old) population of early- and late-type stars at approximately the same distance ($`127`$ pc, Stello & Nissen, 2001; Stauffer et al., 1994) with constant reddening ($`E(BV)0.03`$) in all but the northwest corner of the cluster (Stauffer et al., 1994). Pleiades membership probabilities have been determined in a number of studies using lithium abundances and proper motion data. Recent radial velocity studies of the Pleiades (Liu, Janes, & Bania, 1991; Raboud & Mermilliod, 1998) combined with Hipparcos and Tycho studies of visual binaries (Dommanget & Nys, 2000; Høg et al., 2000) have determined the duplicity of all Pleaides stars hotter than K0. In this paper, we use a pair of deep Chandra ACIS-I observations centered on the core of the Pleiades cluster to further examine the X-ray characteristics of early- and late-type cluster members.

## 2 Data Acquisition and Reduction

Chandra observed the core of the Pleiades open cluster for a total of 56.4 ks. The data consist of a 34.8 ks exposure using the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) detector acquired on 1999 September 18 (Krishnamurthi et al., 2001) and a 21.2 ks exposure obtained on 2000 March 20. Chandra’s high-resolution mirror assembly and ACIS are described in “The Chandra Proposers’ Observatory Guide.” The ACIS-I CCDs (I0-I3) and two CCDs on the ACIS-S array (S2-S3) continuously collected 3.24 s exposures with $``$40 ms read-out intervals. The I3 aim-points were at (J2000) $`\alpha =3^\mathrm{h}46^\mathrm{m}45\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{.}6`$, $`\delta =+24^{}04\mathrm{}31\mathrm{}`$ and $`\alpha =3^\mathrm{h}46^\mathrm{m}48\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{.}7`$, $`\delta =+24^{}04\mathrm{}57\mathrm{}`$ for the 1999 and 2000 observations, respectively.

### 2.1 Data Reduction

We reduced the data using methods available through version 1.1.3 of Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations (CIAO) software, beginning with the second level event list.111An “event list” is a file cataloging each photon’s position at impact with Chandra’s CCD camera, time of arrival and the energy. The Chandra X-ray Center performs preliminary reduction processes on the data resulting in a “second level” event list. Events with standard ASCA grades (0, 2, 3, 4, and 6) were retained. Several hot columns were visible in each observation that had not been removed during the original reduction process. We extracted 14 “hot columns” per observation and six additional columns per CCD near node boundaries. Subtracting these columns from the original 6144 columns resulted in a $`0.8\%`$ data loss. We used the aspect histograms and the incident spectrum of a typical Pleiades X-ray source to generate energy-corrected exposure maps. From these we produced a map of the effective exposure time over both observations. We used this final exposure map to calculate the count rate for each source.

ACIS event lists often contain “flaring pixels”: 2-7 localized high-energy events in consecutive read-out frames. Using Takamitsu Miyaji’s C-program, FLAGFLARE,222FLAGFLARE is available at http://www.astro.psu.edu/xray/acis/recipes/clean.html. all events with flare values $`<1`$ were removed. Tsuboi & Gaffney (2000) show that $`5\%`$ of the counts from real events may be removed by using FLAGFLARE.

Finally, the front-side illuminated CCDs were damaged by radiation early in the mission. The consequent charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) affects the gain and energy resolution (Townsley et al., 2000) of ACIS. We corrected the event lists for each observation using software provided by the Chandra X-ray Center.

### 2.2 Source Extraction

For each dataset we generated three $`1400\times 1400`$ pixel images: with $`0.5\mathrm{}`$, $`1\mathrm{}`$ and $`2\mathrm{}`$ pixels. The ACIS-S CCDs were far off-axis for these observations. As a result of vignetting and the large point-spread function (PSF), no new sources were detected; the ACIS-S data are not presented in this paper. The first and second epoch images were registered with respect to the 1999 September images. The resulting co-added images were sharp and showed no signs of systematic astrometric errors. Figure 1 shows a $`1400\mathrm{}\times 1400\mathrm{}`$ image with $`1\mathrm{}`$ pixels of the Pleiades with a logarithmic stretch.

Using these co-added images and exposure maps, we detected 99 Chandra sources by applying CIAO’s wavelet-based algorithm tool, wavdetect. Wavdetect was applied to each image at scales 2, 4, and 8, where the scaling factors are defined as wavelet radii in pixels. Using a false alarm probability of $`10^6`$, we should detect $`<2`$ spurious sources per image. We acquired the greatest coordinate accuracy for each source detection by using scaling factors in accordance with the PSF, and therefore off-axis angle.

The individual source lists from 1999 September and 2000 March were visually compared to the co-added source list. We found that twenty-three new sources appeared as a result of the co-added image’s increased S/N. An additional twenty-two wavdetect detections were clearly artifacts of the detection algorithm: these detections were lined up along the edge of the FOV, having been detected because the counts inside the source region were significantly higher than the background outside the FOV. None of these twenty-two positions corresponded to known optical stars. In three cases, a 3–4 count source with no optical candidate was detected in one of the two individual exposures, but not in the co-added image. These three were eliminated because no other other 3–4 count sources were detected. We removed a five count detection because it was over $`5\mathrm{}`$ off-axis (where the PSF is larger) and no sources with fewer than seven counts had optical counterparts. Table 1 lists the IAU-approved name, position, X-ray counts, associated $`1\sigma `$ statistical uncertainty in the measured counts, and corrected count rate (counts s-1) for the 99 Chandra sources in the $`17\mathrm{}\times 17\mathrm{}`$ FOV.

The resulting 90%-power ellipses were used to extract 99 individual event lists from which we extracted the hardness ratio, Kolmogorov-Smirnov time-variability statistic, light curves and spectrum for each source. We could only use second-epoch data for HHJ 257 (CXOP J034655.6+235622) and first-epoch data for SCG94 171 (CXOP J034716.9+241233), because of slight differences in pointing position. Additionally, it should be noted that HII 956 (CXOP J034615.8+241122) dithered on and off the CCD during the second-epoch observation.

## 3 Data Analysis

### 3.1 Source Matching

We constructed a database of all known optical (Martín et al., 2000; Stauffer et al., 1998; Hambly, Hawkins & Jameson, 1993; Haro, Chavira & Gonzalez, 1982; Hertzsprung, 1947, USNO-A333United States Naval Observatory Catalog A 2001 (USNO-A), available at http://www.fofs.navy.mil.), infrared (Krishnamurthi et al., 2001; Martín et al., 2000; Pinfield et al., 2000; Stauffer et al., 1998; Hambly et al., 1993, 2MASS4442MASS 2001, 2d Incremental Release, Point Source Catalog, available at http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/releases/second/index.html. ), and X-ray sources (Micela et al., 1999, 1996; Stauffer et al., 1994; Caillault & Helfand, 1985) in the ACIS-I FOV. The position uncertainties used to cross-reference previously cataloged sources are listed in Table 2. Chandra position uncertainties are defined by the PSFs described above.

The FOV contains 376 objects, 57 of which are unidentified Chandra sources. Of the 99 Chandra sources, seven are only associated with known infrared sources, thirteen with only optical sources, and 28 with sources detected both in the optical and infrared. There are no brown dwarf candidates in the Chandra FOV. Alternate identifications and spectral data (from Micela et al., 1996, 1999; Haro et al., 1982) are listed in Tables 3 and 4. Chandra detected all 34 ROSAT sources in the ACIS-I FOV, 26 of which exhibit flare-like activity. In Table 3 we cross-reference each Chandra source with all corresponding entries from previous catalogs. In six cases, single sources from other X-ray catalogs were resolved into two or three sources with Chandra.

#### 3.1.1 Pleiades Members

Chandra detected eighteen of the 23 bona fide Pleiades members and all five of the possible Pleiades members in the ACIS-I FOV (Pinfield et al., 2000; Belikov et al., 1998; Stauffer et al., 1998; Micela et al., 1996; Schilbach et al., 1995; Hambly et al., 1993). In this paper, Pleiades membership is defined by stars with a proper motion probability (ppm) $`>50\%`$ consistent with the known proper motion of the Pleiades cluster. Possible members are stars with similar photometric properties as Pleiades members but where ppm$`<50\%`$. In Figure 1, the Pleiades members are outlined on the ACIS-I image. X-ray emission can be associated with five (of seven) early-type Pleiades members (B6 IV, A7 V, A9 V, F3 V, F4 V), and thirteen (of sixteen) late-type stars (K-M) during these observations (Micela et al., 1999, 1996; Haro et al., 1982).

A spectral analysis of seven X-ray luminous Pleiades members revealed that there is a systematic, linear dependence of flux on the HR (see §3.2) of a given source. The flux conversion factor (FCF) can then be expressed as,

$$\mathrm{FCF}=1.5\times 10^{11}\times \mathrm{HR}+\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1.03}\times 10^{11}.$$
(1)
Using this FCF, the X-ray luminosities ($`L_\mathrm{X}`$) were determined for all detected Pleiades members (for 0.5–8.0 keV).

We calculated $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ upper limits for Pleiades members not detected by Chandra. Assuming a constant background, we used detection limits corresponding to the faintest source in a given off-axis radial band ($`d`$); the faintest sources where $`0\mathrm{}d<5\mathrm{}`$ have 7 cts, $`5\mathrm{}d<10\mathrm{}`$ have 10 cts, and $`d>10\mathrm{}`$ have 24 cts. We then used the respective 95% confidence level (where $`2\sigma `$ corresponds to a 97.72% confidence level) upper limits for sources of $`6_3^{+6}`$, $`9_4^{+7}`$, and $`23_7^{+10}`$ counts given by Gehrels (1986) to compute the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ upper limits. For these calculations we used a constant HR corresponding to the mean HR of detected Pleiades members ($`\mathrm{HR}=0.04`$) and the effective exposure time at that source’s location (see §2.1).

All of the undetected Pleiades members (HCG 254, HII 1362, HII 1375, MHO 10, and MHO 11) were located near the edge of the ACIS-I FOV. The locations of undetected Pleiades members is illustrated by boxes in Figure 1. As mentioned above ($`\mathrm{\S }2.2`$), the point-source sensitivity of ACIS-I decreases as the PSF increases and effective area decreases with distance from the Chandra I3 aim-point. These effects may explain the non-detection of these Pleiades members. It should be noted, however, that despite repeated observations (Micela et al., 1999, 1996; Stauffer et al., 1994; Caillault & Helfand, 1985), these sources have not been detected with other X-ray observatories. Thus these undetected sources, which must have low X-ray luminosities, might have been detected by Chandra if they were near the aim-point. Table 5 shows spectral data and spectral types for all Pleiades members and possible members not detected during these Chandra observations.

### 3.2 Variability, Hardness Ratios and Spectra

The cleaned event files (§2.1) list the arrival time, energy, and position of each X-ray photon. A cumulative count distribution, $`f_n(t)`$, for each source was used to calculate the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic (KS) assuming a constant count rate, $`f_o(t)`$, (Babu & Feigelson, 1996),

$$\mathrm{KS}=\sqrt{n}\mathrm{max}|f_n(t)f_o(t)|,$$
(2)
where $`n`$ is the number of photon events and $`t`$ is the time of arrival. We computed the KS statistic for each source during the first and second observations to look for short term variability. We used the CIAO tool lightcurve to extract light-curves for each source and found that short-term and flare-like variability was correlated with $`\mathrm{KS}1.00`$. In Table 1, KSs is the larger of the KS values from 1999 September and 2000 March.

The $`6`$ month interval between 1999 September and 2000 March allowed us to search for long-term variability. We concatenated the two event lists by subtracting the $`6`$ month gap from the second set of photon arrival times. The resulting long-baseline statistic, KSl, is listed in Table 1. We assume significant long-term variability and no significant short-term variability if KS$`{}_{l}{}^{}>1.00`$ and KS$`{}_{s}{}^{}<1.00`$. There are 17 such sources in our sample. As noted in $`\mathrm{\S }2.2`$, KSl is not calculable for HII 956, HHJ 257, and SCG94 171 because the sources were only visible during one Chandra observation.

We have compared the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ values inferred for the six K stars and two F stars in our sample that were also observed with the ROSAT PSPC and analyzed by Gagné et al. (1995). Five of the stars have nearly identical X-ray luminosities, but three of the K stars are factors of 2.1–2.5 times fainter than observed by ROSAT. This magnitude and frequency of variations is consistent with the result found by Schmitt et al. (1993) that $`40`$% of the Pleiades sources are variable by a factor of 2 in an 11 year time span.

The hardness ratio is defined by,

$$\mathrm{HR}=(\mathrm{hard}\mathrm{soft})/(\mathrm{hard}+\mathrm{soft}),$$
(3)
where soft and hard counts are defined as ACIS events with energies between 0.5-1.0 keV and 1.0-8 keV, respectively. Soft sources show HR$`<0.0`$ and hard sources show HR$`0.0`$. We compute the error ($`\sigma _{\mathrm{HR}}`$) assuming $`1\sigma `$ Poisson statistics from the combined event lists. Table 1 tabulates KSs, KSl, HR, and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{HR}}`$ for each source.

Using the variable-abundance APEC model in XSPEC version 11.0 we modeled ACIS spectra of the six most X-ray luminous Pleiades members in our FOV: HII 956 (A7 + F6), HII 980 (B6 + G), HII 1355 (K6 V), HII 1122 (F4 + K), HII 1124 (K3 V) and HII 1094 (K V). The spectral differences between the 1999 and 2000 observations were significant enough that models of the combined data were not quantitatively accurate. Therefore, the best-fit VAPEC parameters for each of the above stars, with $`1\sigma `$ uncertainties, listed in Table 6 correspond to the individual observations. However, for a qualitative analysis, the ACIS spectra and model fits from the combined dataset are plotted in Figures 2a-f.

These spectra were best fit with a column density of $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{H}=3.6\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, in agreement with the reddening to the cluster and previous column density estimates (Caillault & Helfand, 1985; Stauffer et al., 1994; Krishnamurthi et al., 2001). For three stars (HII 1094, HII 1124, and HII 1355) single-temperature models yielded $`\chi ^2>2.0`$. Since the S/N of these spectra were not sufficient to constrain a two-temperature model with 9 free parameters, the Mg abundance was fixed at 1.00, the column density was fixed at $`N_\mathrm{H}=3.6\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, and the upper temperature was fixed at $`kT=3.5`$ keV. We note that the excess emission near 0.7 keV in the spectrum of HII 956 (Fig. 2d) gave rise to $`\chi ^21.6`$ for both one- and two-temperature models.

## 4 Results and Discussion

### 4.1 Background AGN

Background active galactic nuclei (AGN) are generally detected in ACIS images, and the deep imaging capability of Chandra above 2–3 keV makes it possible to observe substantial populations of background AGN even through high column densities.

Unfortunately, because the distant sources show few counts ($`7171`$ photons), we cannot reliably discriminate between AGN and faint background stellar populations from the shape of their spectra. However, measurements of the HR and count rate are powerful tools for identifying background AGN, as they appear as hard sources with low count rates. In Paper I (Krishnamurthi et al., 2001, and references therein), we estimate that ultra-soft AGN would have $`\mathrm{HR}>0.32`$, while most X-ray–bright AGN have $`\mathrm{HR}>0`$. Stellar sources have $`\mathrm{HR}0.35`$. While HR alone cannot distinguish between stars and AGN, AGN typically have higher HR values. Figure 3 illustrates this population of unidentified, hard sources with low count rates.

In the Einstein Medium-Sensitivity Survey (EMSS) (Stocke et al., 1991), AGN show $`1.0\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)1.2`$, whereas nearly all stars in the EMSS are much less active at X-ray wavelengths: $`\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)1.0`$. To calculate the maximum expected X-ray flux from a star below the optical completeness threshold, we used the current upper limits (Stauffer et al., 1998, V$`=22.5`$) and Equation A3 from Maccacaro et al. (1988),

$$\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)=\mathrm{log}(f_x)+\frac{\mathrm{V}}{2.5}+5.37.$$
(4)
A very X-ray active star at the completeness threshold of Stauffer et al. (1998) would produce approximately three ACIS counts in our 56.4 ks Chandra observation. We conclude that most of the unidentified X-ray sources are not coronal stars. Table 4 also shows a population of ten optically faint ($`\mathrm{V}>22.5`$, $`\mathrm{R}>20.2`$ or $`\mathrm{J}>14.5`$) X-ray sources whose $`\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)`$ values also exceed -1. Figure 3 illustrates that both the unidentified X-ray sources and most of the optically faint X-ray sources have similar X-ray properties (low count rates, low KS values, and high HR values). At this flux level and at this galactic latitude, the most likely candidates for both populations are the optically faint, X-ray–bright AGN.

We also note that the candidate AGN do not show medium- to large-amplitude short-term variability, as seen on the late-type stars, and have low KS values. This is consistent with known AGN activity since AGN generally show only low-amplitude variability on time-scales $`1`$ day (Zamorani et al., 1984). For faint AGN, this type of low-level variability would not be evident in a light curve and would yield low KS statistics.

A Chandra observation of the Hubble Deep Field-North (Hornschemeier et al., 2001) analyzed the X-ray properties of 82 sources associated with the $`8.6\mathrm{}\times 8.7\mathrm{}`$ area covered by the Caltech Faint Field Galaxy Redshift Survey. We compared our data to those of Hornschemeier et al. (2001) by assuming $`\mathrm{FCF}_{\mathrm{AGN}}=1.33\times 10^{11}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{per}\mathrm{ct}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for a typical AGN candidate. We found that the AGN candidates in our observation have full band ($`0.58.0`$ keV) fluxes of $`4\times 10^{14}<\mathrm{f}_{\mathrm{AGN}}<2\times 10^{15}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1. These flux levels encompass 26 sources in $`\frac{1}{4}`$ of the ACIS-I FOV (Hornschemeier et al., 2001). Therefore, in the direction of the Pleiades, we expect to find $`<100`$ AGN in our FOV. The column density through the Galaxy, in the direction of the Pleiades is N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}1.1\times 10^{21}`$cm-2 (Dickey & Lockman, 1990).

Our source detections give a population of fifty-seven AGN candidates that have not been detected at any other wavelength, and ten optically faint AGN candidates; all of these show HR$`0.32`$ and KS$`{}_{s}{}^{}1.5`$. Five of these have previously been detected with ROSAT (Stauffer et al., 1994). Two of the AGN candidates show HR$`0.35`$. In Figure 3 it is obvious that stellar sources (namely Pleiades members) populate the same region of the diagram as candidate AGN. The reader should note the relatively large $`\sigma _{\mathrm{HR}}`$ values associated with these sources. Every source in Table 1 without an optical or infrared indentification is an AGN candidate. Additionally, X-ray detected sources with measured optical and/or infrared magnitudes and with $`1.0\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)1.2`$ are marked as AGN in Table 4.

### 4.2 Are B- and A-type stars intrinsic X-ray sources?

Of the 23 bona fide Pleiades members present in the ACIS-I FOV, Chandra detected eighteen including: B6 IV + G, A7 V + F6, A9 V + K, F3 V + F6, F4 V + K, seven additional K-type, and five M-type stars. One detected but optically faint Pleiades member (HHJ 92) had no listed spectral type, but its color indicates that it is a late-type star. Based on this sample of stars, we examine the question of whether B4-F5 type stars are intrinsic X-ray emitters, or if the X-ray emission observed from some of these stars comes from late-type companions.

Theoretical stellar structure models (Bohn, 1984, e.g.,) show that sub-photospheric convective zones decrease in thickness with increasing $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and disappear entirely for main sequence stars at $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}9000`$ K, corresponding to spectral type A2 V. Although the precise temperature at which convection disappears depends on gravity, metal abundance, the mixing length, or other convection parameters, all theories show a rapid decrease in convective zone thickness from the F stars to the early-A stars. This is important because the presence of a turbulent convective layer is usually thought necessary to drive a magnetic dynamo. The turbulent motions in a convective zone also continually shuffle the foot-points of magnetic flux tubes, leading to field reconnection events (flares and micro-flares) in the corona and thus heating. In an atmosphere, these convective motions propagate outward, leading to heating by the dissipation of acoustic and MHD waves. Field reconnection events and wave dissipation are the mechanisms typically assumed to heat the chromosphere and coronae of low mass stars.

However, in 1991, Simon & Landsman (1991) used the IUE to find chromospheric C II 1335Å emission in late-A to early-F stars. Soon after, Walter, Matthews & Linsky (1995) found C II 1335Å from $`\alpha `$ Aql (A7 IV-V) and $`\alpha `$ Cep (A7 IV-V). The discovery of N V 1239Å emission from $`\alpha `$ Aql and $`\alpha `$ Cep, and Si III 1206Å emission from $`\alpha `$ Aql, $`\alpha `$ Cep, and $`\tau ^3`$ Eri (A4 V) (Simon & Landsman, 1997) confirmed that some stars as early as A4 V have an active upper atmosphere with plasma heated to between 30,000 K and 150,000 K. Additional observations by Rachford (1997, 1998, 2000) confirmed chromospheric He I 5876Å (D3) emission in A5–F5 (III–V) stars in the Hyades, Praesepe, Coma, the Pleiades and Alpha Persei. In sum, there exist some late-A to early-F type stars with confirmed chromospheres. This, coupled with the findings of Walter (1983, §1), implies that either (1) the shallow convective zones of these stars are able to heat the upper atmospheres through the dissipation of acoustic and/or MHD waves, or (2) there exists some heating mechanism that is not completely understood or fully incorporated into current theoretical models.

Massive stars are not expected to show dynamo-driven magnetic activity, but the spectral type at which the magnetic or wave mechanisms for coronal heating disappear is not yet identified with any precision. Strong wind shocks on O- and early B-type stars lead to relatively soft, non-variable X-ray emission in high-mass stars (Owocki & Cohen, 1999; Owocki, Castor & Rybicki, 1988; Lucy & White, 1980). Therefore, current models do not predict X-ray emission from late-B to A-type stars. However, Paper I, Huélamo et al. (2001), Stauffer et al. (1994), Caillault et al. (1994), Berghöfer & Schmitt (1994), Schmitt et al. (1993), Micela et al. (1990), Pallavicini, Tagliaferri & Stella (1990), Caillault & Zoonematkermani (1989), and Schmitt et al. (1985) have all recorded X-ray emission from a small percentage of the observed B and A stars using the Einstein, ROSAT, and Chandra satellites. Micela et al. (1996), Stauffer et al. (1994), Schmitt et al. (1993), Grillo et al. (1992), Caillault & Helfand (1985), and Golub et al. (1983) have proposed that this X-ray emission from some early-type stars could be explained as emission from previously unknown late-type companions.

The hypothesis that late-B and A-type X-ray sources have late-type coronal companions is difficult to refute on the basis of X-ray luminosity or detection fraction alone. Stauffer et al. (1994) noted that the B- and A-type star X-ray luminosities are comparable to active G- and K-type stars, and the fraction of X-ray emitting B- and A-type stars does not exceed the fraction of B- and A-type stars expected to have close late-type companions. However, with the increased S/N and wider bandpass of Chandra, we can revisit the question of B- and A-type star X-ray emission by comparing the X-ray characteristics of B- and A-type X-ray sources with flaring and non-flaring Pleiades members. Since the Pleiades stars are likely co-eval, late-type companions to early-type stars should have the same X-ray properties as single late-type stars. A comparison of the hardness ratios, KS statistics, light curves, X-ray luminosities, and X-ray spectra of early- and late-type Pleiades stars thus should test the hypothesis. In order to do this, we split the Pleiades sources into three categories with similar X-ray properties: low X-ray luminosity stars, high X-ray luminosity K stars, and high X-ray luminosity late-B to early-F stars. X-ray characteristics for these groups are summarized in Table 7.

#### 4.2.1 Low X-ray Luminosity Stars

The X-ray faint (inactive) Pleiades members in Table 7 are characterized by $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}<28.2`$ and $`\mathrm{HR}0.0\pm 0.2`$. HII 1284’s (CXOP J034704.0+235942) (A9 V + K) X-ray properties ($`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=27.58`$ and $`\mathrm{HR}=0.20\pm 0.16`$) are consistent with X-ray emission from an inactive late-type companion. HII 1284 has been repeatedly observed (Micela et al., 1999, 1996; Stauffer et al., 1994; Caillault & Helfand, 1985) and not detected in X-rays.

#### 4.2.2 Active K-type Stars

All X-ray luminous K-type stars in our sample, except for HII 1124, were observed to flare, as shown by Table 7. These stars also have hardness ratios with values between $`0.28\mathrm{HR}0.15`$. Two-temperature VAPEC models (Smith et al., 2001) are needed to adequately fit the X-ray spectra of most of the active K-type stars (see Figures 2a-c, Table 6, and §3.2), HII 1094 (K V), HII 1124 (K3 V), and HII 1355 (K6), the exceptions being observations during which there were no large-scale flares. Presumably, these plasma components correspond to cooler coronal emission at $`\mathrm{kT}0.30.6\mathrm{keV}`$ and hotter $`\mathrm{kT}3.5\mathrm{keV}`$ plasma associated with high- or low-level flaring. Model fits to the HII 1094, HII 1124, and HII 1355 X-ray data also revealed sub-solar iron abundances relative to solar ($`0.17`$$`0.66`$, $`0.13`$$`0.30`$, and $`0.04`$$`0.70`$ respectively) (Anders & Grevesse, 1989). Both HII 1094 and HII 1355 show super-solar neon ($`2.05`$$`2.95`$ and $`1.22`$$`2.91`$) and silicon ($`1.5`$$`2.5`$ and $`2`$$`4`$) abundances (see Table 6). The reader should note that the spectral resolution of ACIS-I is relatively low and, therefore, the derived abundances should be interpreted with caution. However, similar abundance patterns are seen in high-resolution grating spectra of the Pleiades moving-group member AB Doradus (K1 V) and in other active late-type stars (Güdel et al., 2001; Drake et al., 2001).

#### 4.2.3 HII 956 (A7 SB? + F6)

HII 956 is a non-flaring source, has a high X-ray luminosity ($`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=29.31`$), consistent with previous measurements (Micela et al., 1996, 1990; Stauffer et al., 1994; Caillault & Helfand, 1985), and a soft spectrum (HR$`=0.48\pm 0.03`$). As noted earlier, we find a marginally acceptable one-temperature fit with $`kT=0.57\mathrm{keV}`$ (see Figure 2d and Table 6). This spectrum also requires somewhat enhanced abundances (where $`\mathrm{Ne}=1.5\pm 0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{Mg}=1.5\pm 0.3`$ relative to solar).

The A7 V primary of HII 956 is a suspected spectroscopic binary (Liu, Janes, & Bania, 1991). It has a visual companion in the Tycho catalogue with separtion $`0.85\mathrm{}`$, V=9.45 and B$``$V=0.54. The visual companion (at 110 A.U.) is very similar to the F6 Pleiad HII 1309 (K. Briggs & J. Pye, private communication). We conclude that the X-rays are likely emitted by the late-F-type visual companion.

#### 4.2.4 HII 980=Merope (B6 + G?)

HII 980 is the most bolometrically luminous star in the Chandra FOV, with $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=29.60`$. The X-ray spectrum of HII 980 (Figure 2e and Table 6) requires one plasma with temperatures ranging from $`kT=0.51`$$`0.61\mathrm{keV}`$. HII 980 suggests sub-solar iron ($`0.58`$$`0.86`$), super-solar neon ($`1.0`$$`1.5`$), magnesium ($`1.30`$$`1.89`$), and silicon ($`1.30`$$`2.41`$) abundances. We note, however, that VAPEC fits with solar Ne, Mg, and Si abundances yield only slightly poorer $`\chi ^2`$ values.

Dommanget & Nys (2000) report a Hipparcos visual companion to Merope, with no further information. Merope’s X-ray properties are consistent with a moderately active early-G-type companion (Stauffer et al., 1994; Güdel, Guinan, & Skinner, 1997). The Chandra light curve shows some short-term and long-term variability, but no obvious flares. Historically (Micela et al., 1996, 1990; Stauffer et al., 1994; Caillault & Helfand, 1985), HII 980 has displayed steady, bright X-ray emission ($`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}29.8`$).

#### 4.2.5 HII 1122 (F4 + K) and HII 1338 (F3 + F6)

HII 1122 (F4 V + K) and HII 1338 (F3 V + F6) have X-ray luminosities consistent with those reported by Stauffer et al. (1994); Micela et al. (1999, 1996, 1990). We measure $`L_\mathrm{X}=29.06`$ for HII 1122 and $`L_\mathrm{X}=28.67`$ for HII 1338. These stars have hardness ratios ($`\mathrm{HR}0.45`$) comparable to those of HII 956 ($`\mathrm{HR}=0.48\pm 0.03`$) and HII 980 ($`\mathrm{HR}=0.34\pm 0.02`$). The light curves of both HII 1338 and HII 1122 are similar to those of HII 956 and HII 980 as shown in Figure 4. The spectrum of HII 1122 (Figure 2f and Table 6) indicates a temperature of $`kT=0.45\mathrm{keV}`$, like HII 956 and HII 980. Note also the super-solar magnesium ($`2.79\pm 0.74`$) abundance.

HII 1122 is a double-lined spectroscopic binary with a secondary mass $`M0.5M_{}`$ (Liu, Janes, & Bania, 1991; Raboud & Mermilliod, 1998), suggesting a K-type secondary. K stars with $`L_\mathrm{X}29`$ generally show hard X-ray spectra, higher hardness ratios, and occasional flaring. HII 1122 is the softest X-ray source in our survey. We suggest that the F4 primary is the source of the X-ray emission.

HII 1338 is a double-lined spectroscopic binary (Liu, Janes, & Bania, 1991) with well determined orbital elements (Raboud & Mermilliod, 1998). The spectral type and luminosity of the primary imply a highly inclined orbit and a secondary mass of $`M1.3M_{}`$ (K. Briggs & J. Pye, private communication). Based on its hardness ratio and $`L_\mathrm{X}`$, the F6 secondary is the most likely X-ray source; although the F3 star may contribute to the X-ray emission. Hence, mid-F stars appear to be strong, soft X-ray sources as evidenced by HII 956B (F6), HII 1122A (F4), and HII 1338B (F6).

Among the moderately active F, G, and K stars listed in Table 7, we see a clear increase in hardness ratio with decreasing mass of the X-ray emitter. Active M-type stars on the other hand appear to have somewhat cooler coronae than their active K-type counterparts. Low-resolution PSPC spectra of the Pleiades suggest a similar result: the hardest X-ray sources are the rapidly rotating, flaring G stars, followed by K stars, slowly rotating G stars, and F stars (Gagné et al., 1995).

#### 4.2.6 Undetected A stars: HII 1375 (A0 + A) and HII 1362 (A7)

Chandra did not detect HII 1375 (A0 V + A SB) or HII 1362 (A7) with a very low upper limit of $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}<27.98`$ and $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}<27.87`$ respectively. As these stars have been repeatedly observed and not detected in the X-rays (Micela et al., 1999, 1996, 1990; Stauffer et al., 1994; Caillault & Helfand, 1985, $`\mathrm{\S }\mathrm{3.1.1}`$), we conclude that they are not strong X-ray sources and that they do not have active late-type companions. It is interesting to note that while HII 1362 is one of the earliest known stars to have a detectable chromosphere (Rachford, 2000), it was not detected by Chandra.

#### 4.2.7 Detection fraction of flares

As reported by Gagné et al. (1995), flares detected by ROSAT exhibited peak X-ray luminosities in excess of $`L_\mathrm{X}=3\times 10^{30}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Only ten flares were detected from 171 Pleiades members (Gagné et al., 1995; Stauffer et al., 1994) with ROSAT (all associated with late-type stars). As a result of its small PSF, increased effective area, and low ACIS-I background, Chandra detected flare-like activity on nine of twenty-three Pleiades members on similar time-scales.

Chandra reveals flare-like activity on five of the seven K-type Pleiades members in the FOV. Also, of the seven early-type Pleiades members in the FOV, Chandra detected five; none of which show flare-like variability. In the cases of HII 1284 (A9 + K) and HII 980 (B6 + G), the late-type secondaries are relatively inactive and less likely to flare. In the cases of HII 956B (F6), HII 1122A (F4), and HII 1338B (F6), the lack of short-term variability is consistent with previous observations of F stars with the PSPC (Gagné et al., 1995).

### 4.3 Possible New Pleiades Members

Chandra detected all five of the possible Pleiades members in the ACIS-I FOV. Membership probability was determined by proper motion and photometric properties in agreement with the Pleiades cluster (Belikov et al., 1998; Stauffer et al., 1998; Micela et al., 1996; Schilbach et al., 1995; Hambly et al., 1993; Soderblom et al., 1993, $`\mathrm{\S }3.1`$). Tentative X-ray luminosities have been determined for the possible Pleiades members using the same parameters (including distance) as for the bona fide Pleiades members. These X-ray characteristics are listed in Table 7.

#### 4.3.1 HHJ 140 (M V)

The light-curve of HHJ 140 (CXOP J034635.4+240134) (M V) displays a high amplitude flare during the second observation, exceeding the count rate of the first observation by a factor of 75. This hard source shows HR$`=0.17\pm 0.03`$ and $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=29.48`$. This is much harder than typical HR values of the active Pleiades late-type stars. However, the hardness of HHJ 140’s spectrum is due to the flare: during the first observation HR$`=0.59`$, and during the second HR$`=0.22`$. As the second observation contains the majority of the counts, the overall HR value is heavily weighted by the second observation. Since no other sources in these observations show flares of this magnitude, we cannot directly compare the X-ray properties of this source with Pleiades stars. However, the large flare and X-ray luminosity indicate that HHJ 140 is very active, and thus is consistent with being a Pleiades member.

#### 4.3.2 HHJ 195 and HHJ 257

HHJ 195 (CXOP J034623.3+240151) and HHJ 257 (CXOP J034655.6+235622) are both faint X-ray sources showing $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=28.13`$ and $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=28.32`$, respectively, if they are located at the distance of the Pleiades. The HR values (HR$`=0.23\pm 0.11`$ and HR$`=0.23\pm 0.16`$ respectively) are also within the range for X-ray faint late-type Pleiades members. These stars have been speculatively included in two membership catalogs (Stauffer et al., 1994; Hambly et al., 1993), but do not have associated membership probabilities. The X-ray properties indicate that these stars lie within the range observed in the Pleiades cluster and are thus likely Pleiades members.

#### 4.3.3 SRS 62618 and SRS 60765

SRS 62618 (CXOP J034643.5+235941) and SRS 60765 (CXOP J034709.1+240307) are candidate Pleiades members in the Schilbach et al. (1995) and Belikov et al. (1998) catalogs. These sources have low proper motion probability, although their photometric properties are consistent with Pleiades membership (see Table 4 and $`\mathrm{\S }`$3.1.1). SRS 62618 and SRS 60765 are relatively soft sources (HR$`=0.23\pm 0.07`$ and HR$`=0.19\pm 0.16`$), with high X-ray luminosities ($`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=28.67`$ and $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}=29.03`$), and high KSs values (KS$`{}_{s}{}^{}=1.33`$ and KS$`{}_{s}{}^{}=3.50`$). These stars have X-ray properties of active late-type Pleiades members, suggesting that SRS 62618 and SRS 60765 are Pleiades members and not field stars.

## 5 Summary

Based on our analysis of the 1999 September and 2000 March Chandra ACIS-I observations of the core of the Pleiades cluster,

1. We identify 99 X-ray sources, of which 57 have not been detected at any other wavelength. Hardness ratios, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics, and count rates have been derived for all 99 Chandra sources.
2. The 57 sources are faint, hard, and have low KS values and are not listed in optical/IR catalogs. They also show $`1.0\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)1.2`$. There are an additional ten faint optical/IR sources with similar $`\mathrm{log}(f_x/f_v)`$. These 67 sources are probably background AGN.
3. Four Chandra sources are mid-B to early-F type stars with cooler companions: HII 980 (B6+G), HII 956 (A7+F6), HII 1338 (F3+F6), and HII 1122 (F4+K). These sources exhibit consistently high X-ray luminosity, soft X-ray spectra, and little or no detectable short-term variability. All of these sources are spectroscopic or visual binaries. The B6 and A7 primaries in HII 980 and HII 956 are probably not intrinsic X-ray sources. The X-ray emitters are probably all F and G-type stars — HII 980B, HII 956B, HII 1338B, and HII 1122A. This conclusion is strengthened by the nondetection of A stars without cooler companions, HII 1375 (A0V + A SB) and HII 1362 (A7), which have X-ray luminosity upper limits 27–54 times smaller than the B6–A7 stars with cooler companions, HII 980 (B6 + G) and HII 956 (A7 SB? + F6).
4. Among the sample of active F, G and K-type Pleiades members listed in Table 7, we see a clear anti-correlation between the mass of the X-ray emitter and its hardness ratio, although active M-type stars appear to have somewhat cooler coronae than their active K-type counterparts.
5. HII 1284 (A9 + K) has X-ray properties comparable to those of K-type Pleiades members. Its X-ray emission probably comes from HII 1284B.
6. Five Pleiades members are not detected in the combined Chandra image, putting stringent upper limits on the X-ray luminosity of some early- and late-type cluster members. Two of these are Pleiades A stars.
7. HHJ 140, SRS 62618, SRS 60765, HHJ 195, and HHJ 257 are likely Pleiades members.

We would like to thank John Pye and Kevin Briggs for alerting us to the binary nature of the B-, A-, and F-type stars in the Chandra field of view. This study was made possible by NASA grant H-04630D to NIST and the University of Colorado. We are grateful to Anita Krishnamurthi for providing compiled catalogs of sources in this region, and for her helpful comments on imaging. We thank Chris Reynolds for his helpful comments on AGN. We would also like to thank Takamitsu Miyaji for providing the code to eliminate flaring pixels. This research made use of the SIMBAD astronomical database operated by CDS at Strasbourg, France.


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# References

In Ref.  (see also ), the renormalization group (RG) improvement of the Heavy Quarkonium spectrum for the equal mass case was obtained within the potential NRQCD (pNRQCD) formalism . This result was compared with the one of Ref.  (see also ) obtained within the vNRQCD formalism . Disagreement was found. This disagreement is potentially important as it propagates to different observables like, for example, $`t`$-$`\overline{t}`$ production near threshold, where it is claimed  that the resummation of logs plays an important role. For instance, the matching coefficient of the electromagnetic current, which is a necessary ingredient in these calculations, is different . Nevertheless, for the known logs at next-to-next-to-leading  and next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order , both calculations happen to agree with each other.

In order to try to clarify this issue, we will consider the simplified problem of a Hydrogen-like system coupled to $`n_f`$ light (massless) fermions in QED. We will then obtain the next-to-next-to-leading-log (NNLL) RG scaling of the spectrum of this system. In principle, these results can be applied to muonic Hydrogen. In this case, the electron is replaced by the muon, $`n_f1`$ and the remaining light fermion is the electron (which we will take to be massless for simplicity or, at most, of $`O(m\alpha ^2)`$, where $`m`$ is the mass of the muon). In this situation, we will be able to compare, in certain limits, with finite $`O(m\alpha ^6\mathrm{ln}^2)`$ results already available in the literature . Our results will agree with these calculations.

The computation will closely follow the procedure of Ref.  to which we refer for details. Here we will just write the main formulas necessary to set up the notation and the results.

The first step is to obtain the RG improved matching coefficients of the NRQED  Lagrangian at one loop and up to $`O(1/m^2)`$ ($`m`$ is the mass of the massive lepton (the muon for the muonic hydrogen) and the mass of the nucleus is sent to infinity in this paper).

The NRQED Lagrangian including light fermions reads at $`O(1/m^2)`$ (up to field redefinitions)

$$=_{ph}+_l+_\mu +_p+_{\mu p},$$
(1)
where $`\mu `$ is the Pauli spinor that annihilates the fermion, $`N_p`$ is the Pauli spinor that annihilates the nucleus, $`iD_0=i_0gA_0`$, $`i𝐃=i\mathbf{}+g𝐀`$,

$$_{ph}=\frac{1}{4}F^{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu },$$
(2)
$`_l`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\overline{l}_ii\text{/}Dl_i+c_1^{ll}{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{8m^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}\overline{l_i}\gamma ^\mu l_i\overline{l}_j\gamma _\mu l_j+c_2^{ll}{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{8m^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}\overline{l_i}\gamma ^\mu \gamma _5l_i\overline{l}_j\gamma _\mu \gamma _5l_j,`$ (3)
$`_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`\mu ^{}\{iD_0+c_k{\displaystyle \frac{𝐃^2}{2m}}+c_4{\displaystyle \frac{𝐃^4}{8m^3}}+c_Fg{\displaystyle \frac{𝝈𝐁}{2m}}`$
$`+c_Dg{\displaystyle \frac{\left(𝐃𝐄𝐄𝐃\right)}{8m^2}}+ic_Sg{\displaystyle \frac{𝝈\left(𝐃\times 𝐄𝐄\times 𝐃\right)}{8m^2}}\}\mu `$
$`+c_1^{\mu l}{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{8m^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mu ^{}\mu \overline{l}_i\gamma _0l_i+c_2^{\mu l}{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{8m^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mu ^{}\gamma ^\mu \gamma _5\mu \overline{l}_i\gamma _\mu \gamma _5l_i,`$
$$_p=N_p^{}iD_p^0N_p,$$
(5)
where $`iD_p^0=i_0+gZA_0`$ and

$$_{\mu p}=\frac{d_s}{m^2}\mu ^{}\mu N_p^{}N_p+\frac{d_v}{m^2}\mu ^{}𝝈\mu N_p^{}𝝈N_p.$$
(6)
We have also included the $`𝐃^4/m^3`$ term above since it will be necessary in the evaluation of the spectrum once the power counting is established. Moreover, we will consider that the kinetic term matching coefficients are protected by reparameterization invariance ($`c_k=c_4=1`$) , however, we will often keep them explicit for tracking purposes.

By definition, NRQED has an ultraviolet cutoff $`\nu _{\mathrm{NR}}=\{\nu _p,\nu _s\}`$ satisfying $`mv\nu _{\mathrm{NR}}m`$. $`\nu _p`$ is the ultraviolet (UV) cut-off of the relative three-momentum of the heavy fermion and antifermion. $`\nu _s`$ is the UV cut-off of the three-momentum of the photons and light fermions. The derivation of the scale dependence of the matching coefficients with respect the UV cutoffs of the theory goes identical to the one in Ref. . In particular the fact that no dependence of $`\nu _p`$ appears at this order. In principle, the running of $`c^{ll}`$ and $`c^{\mu l}`$ could be deduced from the results of  by taking care of the changes of the color structure. Since we are only interested in the computation of the spectrum at NNLL accuracy, their contribution will vanish at this order as far as the spectrum is concerned ($`c_1^{\mu l}`$ appears in the equation of $`c_D`$ but the running of $`c_1^{\mu l}`$ is zero at LL accuracy). Therefore, the relevant RG equations in our case read

$$\nu _s\frac{d}{d\nu _s}c_D=\frac{\alpha }{\pi }\left(\frac{8}{3}c_k^2+\frac{\beta _0}{2}c_1^{\mu l}\right)$$
(7)
and zero otherwise.

By taking the matching conditions at the scale $`m`$: $`c_k=c_F=c_s=c_D=1`$ and $`\{d\}=0`$, we can obtain the solution of the RG equations. We only explicitely display those which will be necessary later on (we define $`z=\left[\frac{\alpha (\nu _s)}{\alpha (m)}\right]^{\frac{1}{\beta _0}}11/(2\pi )\alpha (\nu _s)\mathrm{ln}(\frac{\nu _s}{m})`$, $`\beta _0=\frac{4}{3}T_Fn_f`$ with $`T_F=1`$)

$`c_F(\nu _s)`$ $`=`$ $`1,`$
$`c_S(\nu _s)`$ $`=`$ $`1,`$
$`c_D(\nu _s)`$ $`=`$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{16}{3}}\mathrm{ln}z,`$
$`d_s(\nu _s)`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$
$`d_v(\nu _s)`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (8)
The above results are a necessary step towards the RG improvement of pNRQED with the matter content described above, which we consider in what follows. pNRQCD is defined by the cut-off $`\nu _{\mathrm{pNR}}=\{\nu _p,\nu _{us}\}`$, where $`\nu _p`$ is the cut-off of the relative three-momentum of the heavy fermions and is such that $`mv\nu _pm`$ and $`\nu _{us}`$ is the cut-off of the three-momentum of the photons and light fermions with $`mv^2\nu _{us}mv`$.

The pNRQED Lagrangian reads as follows ($`iD_S^0=i_0+g(Z1)A_0`$):

$`L_{\mathrm{pNRQED}}={\displaystyle }d^3𝐱d^3𝐗S^{}(𝐱,𝐗,t)\{iD_S^0c_k{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩^2}{2m}}+c_4{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩^4}{8m^3}}+`$ (9)
$`V^{(0)}{\displaystyle \frac{V^{(1)}}{m}}{\displaystyle \frac{V^{(2)}}{m^2}}+gV_A𝐱𝐄(𝐗,t)\}S(𝐱,𝐗,t){\displaystyle }d^3𝐗{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu },`$
where $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐗`$, and $`𝐩`$ and $`𝐏`$ are the relative and center of mass coordinate and momentum respectively. All the gauge fields in Eq. (9) are functions of the center-of-mass coordinate and the time $`t`$ only. We have explicitly written only the terms relevant to the analysis at the NNLL.

We now display the structure of the matching potentials $`V^{(0)}`$, $`V^{(1)}`$ and $`V^{(2)}`$, which are the relevant ones to our analysis. At order $`1/m^0`$, we have the static potential:

$$V^{(0)}Z\frac{\alpha _V}{r}.$$
(10)
In principle, at order $`1/m`$, we may have a potential scaling as $`\frac{V^{(1)}}{m}\frac{1}{mr^2}`$. Nevertheless, it vanishes at the order we are working. It would give, at most, $`O(m\alpha ^6)`$ corrections to the spectrum in a finite order calculation and the running equations would not mix with it. Therefore, for the purposes of this paper, we approximate

$$\frac{V^{(1)}}{m}0.$$
(11)
At order $`1/m^2`$, to the accuracy we aim at, $`V^{(2)}`$ has the structure

$$\frac{V^{(2)}}{m^2}=\frac{\pi ZD_d^{(2)}}{m^2}\delta ^{(3)}(𝐫)+\frac{3ZD_{LS}^{(2)}}{2m^2}\frac{1}{r^3}𝐋_1𝐒_1,$$
(12)
where $`𝐒_1=𝝈_1/2`$. In principle, one may consider more structures for the $`1/m^2`$ potential but, since they will not contribute at the accuracy we aim and in order to focus the problem as much as possible, we will set them to zero in what follows, as we have done for the $`1/m`$ potential.

The coefficients, $`\stackrel{~}{V}=\{\alpha _{V_s}`$, $`D_s`$, …$`\}`$ contain some $`\mathrm{ln}r`$ dependence once higher order corrections to their leading (non-vanishing) values are taken into account. In particular, we will have expressions like $`\delta ^{(3)}(𝐫)\mathrm{ln}^nr`$. This is not a well-defined distribution and should be understood as the Fourier transform of $`\mathrm{ln}^n1/k`$. Nevertheless, in order to use the same notation for all the matching coefficients, and since it will be sufficient for the purposes of this paper, namely to resum the leading logs, we will use the expression $`\delta ^{(3)}(𝐫)\mathrm{ln}^nr`$, although it should always be understood in the sense given above.

By studying the UV behavior of pNRQED it is possible to obtain the scale dependence of the coefficients of the potentials $`\stackrel{~}{V}`$. The discussion closely follows the one of Ref.  to which we refer for details. Here we just mention the main points. The potentials have the following structure:

$$\stackrel{~}{V}(d(\nu _p,\nu _s,m),c(\nu _s,m),\nu _s,\nu _{us},r)=\stackrel{~}{V}(\nu _p,m,\nu _{us},r)\stackrel{~}{V}(\nu _p,\nu _{us}).$$
(13)
In particular,

$$\nu _s\frac{d}{d\nu _s}\stackrel{~}{V}=0.$$
(14)
Moreover, at the accuracy we aim, we also get

$$\nu _p\frac{d}{d\nu _p}\stackrel{~}{V}=0.$$
(15)
Therefore, we obtain

$$\stackrel{~}{V}(\nu _p,\nu _{us})\stackrel{~}{V}(\nu _{us})$$
(16)
and we only have to compute the $`\nu _{us}`$ scale dependence.

The $`\nu _{us}`$-scale dependence could be obtained along the same lines as in Ref. . We obtain in this specific case:

$`\nu _{us}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\nu _{us}}}\alpha _s`$ $`=`$ $`\beta _0{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^2}{2\pi }},`$ (17)
$`\nu _{us}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\nu _{us}}}D_d^{(2)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (\nu _{us})}{\pi }}V_A^2c_k^2\alpha (r^1),`$
and zero for the other potentials.

Eqs. (14), (15) and (17) provide the complete set of RG equations at the desired order. By using Eqs. (14) and (15), we obtain

$$\stackrel{~}{V}=\stackrel{~}{V}(d(1/r,m),c(1/r,m),\nu _s=1/r,\nu _{us},r).$$
(18)
We now need the initial condition in order to solve the US RG equations, i.e. the matching conditions. We fix the initial point at $`\nu _{us}=1/r`$. In summary, we need to know the static potential with $`O(\alpha ^3)`$ accuracy, the $`1/m`$ potential with $`O(\alpha ^2)`$ accuracy, the $`1/m^2`$ potentials with $`O(\alpha )`$ accuracy and $`V_A`$ with $`O(1)`$ accuracy at $`\nu _{us}=1/r`$. For the non-vanishing potentials, they read

$`\alpha _V(r^1)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha (r^1)\{1+(a_1+2\gamma _E\beta _0){\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (r^1)}{4\pi }}`$
$`+[\gamma _E(4a_1\beta _0+2\beta _1)+({\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{3}}+4\gamma _E^2)\beta _0^2+a_2]{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^2(r^1)}{16\pi ^2}}\},`$
$`D_d^{(2)}(r^1)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha (r^1){\displaystyle \frac{c_D(r^1)}{2}},`$
$`D_{LS,s}^{(2)}(r^1)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (r^1)}{3}}c_S(r^1),`$
$`V_A(r^1)`$ $`=`$ $`1,`$ (19)
where $`\beta _1=4T_Fn_f`$ and the values of $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ can be easily obtained from the QCD results  by taking $`C_f1`$, $`C_A0`$ and $`T_F1`$.

We now have all the necessary ingredients to solve the RG equations. The RG improved potentials read:

$`\alpha _V(\nu _{us})`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha _V(r^1),`$
$`D_d^{(2)}(\nu _{us})`$ $`=`$ $`D_d^{(2)}(r^1){\displaystyle \frac{8}{3\beta _0}}\alpha (r^1)\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (r^1)}{\alpha (\nu _{us})}}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (r^1)}{2}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{16}{3\beta _0}}\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (m)}{\alpha (\nu _{us})}}\right)\right),`$
$`D_{LS}^{(2)}(\nu _{us})`$ $`=`$ $`D_{LS}^{(2)}(r^1).`$ (20)
This completes the RG evaluation of the pNRQED Lagrangian at NNLL.

With the above results we can obtain the energy with NNLL accuracy. The discussion goes similar to the one in Ref. . All the large logs can be obtained from the potential terms. Once the potentials are introduced in the Schrödinger equation, the $`\mathrm{ln}^n(1/r)`$ terms produce $`\mathrm{ln}^n(m\alpha )`$ terms plus subleading contributions ($`\mathrm{ln}^{n1}(m\alpha )`$, $`\mathrm{}`$) within the LL resummation counting. The expectation value of the potential terms is $`\nu _{us}`$-scale dependent. This scale dependence is cancelled by the ultraviolet scale dependence of ultrasoft loops. The typical scales in these integrals is of the order $`m\alpha ^2`$. Therefore, the logs of the ultrasoft loops get minimized by setting $`\nu _{us}m\alpha ^2`$ and all the large logs get encoded in the potential contributions. Finally, one obtains the following correction to the NNLO energy expression:

$$\delta E_{n,l,j}^{\mathrm{pot}}(\nu _{us})=E_n\alpha ^2\frac{Z^2\delta _{l0}}{3n}\left(\frac{16}{\beta _0}\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{\alpha (\nu _{us})}{\alpha }\right)3(c_D1)\right),$$
(21)
where $`E_n=mZ^2\alpha ^2/(2n^2)`$ and the scale $`\nu _s`$ in $`z`$ and in the NRQED matching coefficients has been fixed to the soft scale $`\nu _s=2a_n^1`$, where $`a_n^1=\frac{mZ\alpha (2a_n^1)}{n}`$. $`\alpha `$ is also understood at the soft scale $`\nu _s=2a_n^1`$ unless the scale is specified. The $`\nu _{us}`$-scale dependence of Eq. (21) cancels against contributions from US energies. Since $`m\alpha ^2`$ is the next relevant scale, their effective role will be to replace $`\nu _{us}`$ by $`m\alpha ^2`$ (up to finite pieces that we are systematically neglecting) in Eq. (21). In particular, we take $`\nu _{us}=E_n`$. As expected, Eq. (21) with $`\nu _{us}=E_n`$ reproduces the well known Hydrogen-like $`O(m\alpha ^5\mathrm{ln}\alpha )`$ correction but, indeed, Eq. (21) gives all the $`O(m\alpha ^4(\alpha \mathrm{ln}\alpha )^n)`$ terms for $`n1`$ of the spectrum of the Hydrogen-like systems with $`n_f`$ massless fermions. After adding to Eq. (21) the NNLO result with the normalization point at the same soft scale, $`\nu _s=2a_n^1`$, that we have used here, the complete NNLL mass is obtained. Note that the above resummation of logs also correctly accounts for $`\mathrm{ln}Z`$ terms with the same accuracy.

We have seen that the large logs of the spectrum can be obtained from the potential terms by setting $`1/rm\alpha `$ and $`\nu _{us}m\alpha ^2`$. The velocity of the non-relativistic particle is typically $`vZ\alpha `$. Therefore, it is interesting to consider the scaling of the potentials with respect $`v`$ as it will help us to later compare with vNRQED results. In practice, we will consider its scaling with respect $`\nu mv`$ (therefore $`\nu _{us}=\nu ^2/m`$) where

$$\stackrel{~}{V}(\nu _p,m,\nu _{us},r)\stackrel{~}{V}(m,\nu _{us},r)\stackrel{~}{V}(m,\nu ^2/m,1/\nu )\stackrel{~}{V}(\nu ).$$
(22)
We can now consider its derivative with respect $`\nu `$. We will just focus on $`D_d^{(2)}`$ since it is the only one which has a non-trivial running. We obtain

$$\nu \frac{d}{d\nu }D_d^{(2)}=\frac{\beta _0}{4\pi }c_D(\nu )\alpha ^2(\nu )+\frac{4}{3}\frac{\alpha ^2(\nu )}{\pi }\mathrm{ln}\frac{\alpha (\nu )}{\alpha (\frac{\nu ^2}{m})}\frac{8}{3}\frac{\alpha (\nu )}{\pi }\alpha (\frac{\nu ^2}{m}).$$
(23)
It is remarkable that the above expression can be rearranged as

$$\nu \frac{d}{d\nu }D_d^{(2)}=\frac{\beta _0}{4\pi }c_D(\frac{\nu ^2}{m})\alpha ^2(\nu )\frac{8}{3}\frac{\alpha (\nu )}{\pi }\alpha (\frac{\nu ^2}{m}).$$
(24)
There is an evaluation  within the vNRQCD framework  of the RG improved Heavy Quarkonium mass when $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}m\alpha _s^2`$. The evaluation performed within the pNRQCD framework  disagreed with that evaluation. It was noticed there that the disagreement still persisted if one considered a QED-like limit with light fermions by taking $`C_f1`$, $`C_A0`$ and $`T_F1`$. Agreement was found for a QED-like limit without light fermions by taking $`C_f1`$, $`C_A0`$, $`n_f0`$, $`T_F1`$. Some errors seem to have been detected in the first versions of these calculations in vNRQCD  that may partially explain the difference, in particular for the $`1/m^2`$ potential. In this case, agreement may exist in the limit $`C_f1`$, $`C_A0`$ and $`T_F1`$.

For the evaluation performed in this paper, the computation of the spectrum for the case of Hydrogen-like atoms with massless fermions, there exists no analogous within the vNRQED framework. Nevertheless, it is possible to guess what would be the result in that formulation by using the rules of Ref. , which relate the anomalous dimensions computed here with the ones that should appear in vNRQED. For the specific case of $`D_d^{(2)}`$, we obtain

$$\nu \frac{d}{d\nu }D_d^{(2)}(\mathrm{vNRQED})=\gamma _s+2\gamma _u,$$
(25)
where

$$\gamma _s=\frac{\beta _0}{4\pi }c_D(\nu )\alpha ^2(\nu ),\gamma _{us}=\frac{4}{3}\frac{\alpha (\nu )}{\pi }\alpha (\frac{\nu ^2}{m}).$$
(26)
This should be compared with the running in pNRQED obtained above. If we do so, we find that Eqs. (25) and (24) are different. If expanded in $`\alpha `$ they first differ at $`O(\alpha ^2\mathrm{log}^2\alpha )`$. This produces a difference in the computation of the mass at $`O(m\alpha ^6\mathrm{log}^2\alpha )`$. In order to perform an independent check, it would be extremally important that corrections of this order had been computed before. The closest system to the one discussed here corresponds to the muonic hydrogen for which, indeed, corrections to the energy at this order have been computed by Pachucki . In order to compare our results with his evaluation, we have to take the limit $`n_f1`$. Moreover, for the real muonic hydrogen, the mass of the light fermion (the electron in this case) is not negligible. However, we can formally consider the situation $`m_em\alpha ^2`$ (even if for the physical situation $`m_em\alpha `$ is closer to reality) in his and our calculation. For the matter of comparison, in our case, this means that, for scales of the order of $`m_e`$ and $`m\alpha ^2`$, we can use the low energy electromagnetic coupling $`\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}1/137\mathrm{}`$. This is indeed the parameter expansion used in Pachucki’s calculation. A closer inspection shows that the diagrams that give rise to the large logs computed here correspond to the ones drawn in Fig. 4 in Ref. . If we reexpand our result in terms of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}=\alpha (\nu _{us})`$, we obtain (up to the order of interest and with $`v\alpha `$)

$`D_d^{(2)}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (\nu )}{2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (\nu _{us})}{2}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _0}{2\pi }}\alpha (\nu _{us})\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{mv}}+\mathrm{}\right)`$
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (\nu _{us})}{\pi }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{m}}{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\beta _0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (\nu _{us})}{\pi }}\right)^2\mathrm{ln}^2{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{m}}+\mathrm{}\right)`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^2(\nu _{us})}{\pi }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{m}}{\displaystyle \frac{2\beta _0}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^3(\nu _{us})}{\pi ^2}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{mv}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{m}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\beta _0{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^3(\nu _{us})}{\pi ^2}}\mathrm{ln}^2{\displaystyle \frac{mv^2}{m}}.`$
It is easy to identify the above terms (last equality) within a diagrammatic picture. The first term is the standard Lamb-shift correction one would find for the Hydrogen atom and corresponds to the diagrams of Fig. 4 of Ref.  without any bubble insertion. The second term corresponds to the first diagram in Fig. 4 of Ref. . The last term corresponds to the second diagram in Fig. 4 of Ref. . Therefore, our result seems to have the correct structure for the $`O(m\alpha ^6\mathrm{ln}^2)`$ corrections. Let us now go deeper in the comparison with Pachucki’s results. First, we can see that the last term of Eq. (S0.Ex16) can reproduce the analogous Pachucki’s contribution by setting $`\alpha (\nu _{us})=\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}`$ and $`\nu _{us}=m_e`$ (this result depends on the two-loop muon form factor first computed in Ref. ). For the second term of Eq. (S0.Ex16), the explicit comparison is a little bit more involved. Nevertheless, it is possible to see that the first term in Eq. (39) of Ref.  gives the logs of the second term in Eq. (S0.Ex16) since one can make the replacement (as far as the LL contribution is concerned)

$$V_{VP}\frac{Z\alpha (\nu _{us})}{r}\left[\frac{\beta _0}{2\pi }\alpha (\nu _{us})\mathrm{ln}\frac{mv^2}{mv}\right]$$
(28)
for $`V_{VP}`$, as defined in Ref. <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1We note that for this diagram both loops factorize. Therefore, no sign of correlation of scales appears at this level of the computation.. The second term in Eq. (39) of Ref.  gives the logs due to expanding the wave-function at the origen $`(m\alpha )^3`$ (which are naturally written in terms of $`\alpha (\nu )`$) in terms of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}`$. Therefore, we can trace back all the logs of the computation in Ref. . This provides a check of our calculation to a level where it starts to first differ with what would be the vNRQED result. Nevertheless, it may happen that, if the corrections of the vNRQCD results for the equal mass calculation are finally confirmed, they may also explain the different result obtained here.

In conclusion, we have computed the energy spectrum at NNLL for an Hydrogen-like system with $`n_f`$ massless fermions. We have checked our results at $`O(m\alpha ^6\mathrm{ln}^2)`$ by comparing with results already available in the literature  for muonic Hydrogen and agreement has been found. We have also compared with what we would expect to be the result in the vNRQED framework based on the rules of  and disagreement has been found. Finally, we would like to mention that the above results can be useful in checking higher order logs in computations of the spectrum for muonic atoms or alike where the electron can be considered to be a light particle.

Acknowledgments
We thank A. Hoang and specially J. Soto for discussions. We would also like to thank J. Soto for the reading of the manuscript.

Note added. After this paper was sent to the hep-ph archives a new paper hep-ph/0204299 appeared in the net where it was pointed out that there was a systematic error in the vNRQCD computations to date and that the diagram Fig. 20b in this reference should be included in such computations. After its inclusion, the corrected $`1/m^2`$ potential obtained in vNRQCD agrees with the $`1/m^2`$ potential obtained in pNRQCD , the replacement $`c_D(\nu )c_D(\nu ^2/m)`$ should be done in Eq. (26) and the new result of vNRQED for the muonic hydrogen spectrum agrees with our result.


text:
# Leptogenesis with Majorana neutrinos

## 1 What is known about Neutrinos?

Extensive studies with neutrinos have established many of their properties. Neutrino–induced processes are either leptonic or semileptonic. In the semileptonic processes there are also hadronic matrix elements whose properties are known to various degrees of accuracy. This was one of the main topics of this conference: to report and compare various calculations at the few percent level. I must also say that there are many calculations waiting to be compared with the data (low energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$–resonance, nuclear target effects, etc.). I will cover several reactions in my second talk to this conference.

Beyond their couplings, neutrinos have special properties.

1. Neutrinos of various generations mix with each other, implying that there are physical states of different masses.
2. It is possible to construct coherent states of particles and antiparticles, known as Majorana neutrinos.

The above properties allow us to write two kinds of mass terms: Dirac $`M_D\overline{\nu }_L\nu _R`$ and Majorana masses $`M_L\overline{\nu }_L^c\nu _L`$ and $`M_R\overline{\nu }_R^c\nu _R`$.

The latter allow the states: $`N\nu _R+\nu _R^c`$ and $`\nu _M\nu _L+\nu _L^c`$ with which we can write the mass matrix

$$\left(\overline{\nu }_M\overline{N}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}m_L& m_D\\ m_D& M_R\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _M\\ N\end{array}\right).$$

The mixing phenomena observed so far are sensitive only to mixings among generations and say nothing about the presence of Majorana mass terms. We may now ask if the Majorana nature of particles influences other phenomena, like Leptogenesis, Baryogenesis, Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay, etc.

I will describe next how the mixing and the decays of Majorana-type neutrinos produces an asymmetry between leptons and antileptons in the universe. This phenomenon provides an attractive scenario for the generation of a lepton asymmetry in the early universe, which was converted, at a later epoch, into a baryon-asymmetry.

## 2 Lepton Asymmetry for Heavy Majorana Neutrinos

We extend the standard model to include a right–handed neutrino in each generation . A typical generation is

$$\psi _L=\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _e\\ e^{}\end{array}\right)_L,e_R,(N_e)_R$$
(1)
We are led to an $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ invariant Lagrangian

$`_F`$ $`=`$ $`i\overline{\psi }_R\gamma _\mu (^\mu +ig^{}{\displaystyle \frac{y}{2}}B_\mu )\psi _R`$ (5)
$`+`$ $`i\overline{\psi }_L\gamma _\mu (^\mu +ig^{}{\displaystyle \frac{y}{2}}B^\mu +ig\tau ^kA^{k,\mu })\psi _L`$
$`+`$ $`h_{\alpha \beta }\overline{\psi }_L^\alpha \left(\begin{array}{c}\varphi ^+\\ \varphi ^0+v\end{array}\right)\psi _R^\beta `$
$`[\mathrm{providing}\mathrm{mixing}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{families}`$
$`\mathrm{sufficient}\mathrm{for}\mathrm{oscillations}]`$
$`+`$ $`k_{ij}\overline{\psi }_R^{c,i}\psi _R^j(H^0+w)`$
$`\left[\mathrm{requires}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{new}\mathrm{Higgs}\mathrm{singlet}\right]`$
This theory has new couplings like: $`h_{\alpha _i}\overline{\mathrm{}}_{L\alpha }\varphi N_{Ri}`$ and a mass term of Majorana type: $`k_{ij}\overline{\psi }_R^{c,i}\psi _R^jw.`$

We select the Majorana mass matrix to be real and diagonal. The new couplings introduce new diagrams in decays and in the mass terms. Decays like

and the mixing of states in the mass matrix

produce an asymmetry

$`\epsilon `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(N_{R_i}\mathrm{})\mathrm{\Gamma }(N_{R_i}\mathrm{}^c)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(N_{R_i}\mathrm{})+\mathrm{\Gamma }(N_{R_i}\mathrm{}^c)}}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi v^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(m_D^+m_D)_{11}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=2,3}{}}Im\left((m_D^+m_D)_{1j}^2\right)f(x)`$
with $`f(x)=\sqrt{x}\left\{\frac{1}{1x}+1(1+x)\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{1+x}{x}\right)\right\}`$, $`x=\left(\frac{M_j}{M_1}\right)^2`$ and $`M_1`$ the mass of the lightest Majorana neutrino. The term $`\left(\frac{1}{1x}\right)`$ comes from the mixing of the states  and the rest from the interference of vertex corrections with Born diagrams . The above formula is an approximation for the case when the two masses are far apart. In case they are close together there is an exact formula, showing clearly a resonance phenomenon  from the overlap of the two wave functions. The origin of the asymmetry has also been studied in field theory  and supersymmetric theories .

Consider a theory with two generations. The current states for the neutrinos and antineutrinos are represented by the column matrix

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}N_1^c\\ N_1\\ N_2^c\\ N_2\end{array}\right).$$

On this basis higher order corrections produce the mass matrix

$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& M_1+H_{11}& 0& H_{12}\\ M_1+H_{11}& 0& \stackrel{~}{H}_{12}& 0\\ 0& \stackrel{~}{H}_{12}& 0& M_2+H_{22}\\ H_{12}& 0& M_2+H_{22}& 0\end{array}\right)$$

whose details are given in article . The physical states are now superpositions of particles and antiparticles

$`|\psi _1`$ $`=`$ $`C_1\left[a_1N_1^c+b_1N_2^c+c_1N_1+d_1N_2\right]`$
$`|\psi _2`$ $`=`$ $`C_2\left[a_2N_1^c+b_2N_2^c+c_2N_1+d_2N_2\right].`$
$`a_i,\mathrm{}d_i`$’s are constants from the solution of the eigenvalue problem and $`C_1,C_2`$ are normalization constants. These are mixed states, analogous to $`K_L`$ and $`K_S`$, or $`B_H`$ and $`B_L`$ of the mesons. We shall call the CP–violation from the mixing of states $`\delta `$, in analogy to the indirect CP–violation of the $`K`$–mesons. Similarly, we call the CP–parameter from the vertex corrections $`\epsilon ^{}`$. We know that for the $`K`$–Mesons $`\epsilon _K𝒪(10^3)`$ and $`\epsilon _K^{}𝒪(10^7)`$. It will be interesting to know if there is also a hierarchy among the various terms contributing to leptogenesis.

## 3 Properties of Heavy Majoranas

We can estimate the probability for collisions of these states. A typical interaction is shown in the diagram of Fig. 3.

Taking the density of states in the early universe to be $`n=\frac{2}{\pi ^2}T^3`$ and calculating the cross section at an energy $`E`$ equal to the temperature $`T`$, we obtain

$$n\sigma v=\frac{|h_t|^2|h_{\mathrm{}}|^2}{8\pi ^3}T$$
(7)
with $`\sigma `$ the cross section, $`v`$ their relative velocity and $`h_t`$, $`h_{\mathrm{}}`$ the couplings of the Higgses to quarks and leptons, respectively. At that early time the decay width of the moving leptons with mass $`M_N`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_N=\frac{|h_{\mathrm{}}|^2}{16\pi }\frac{M_N^2}{T}$$
(8)
leading to

$$\frac{n\sigma v}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_N}\left(\frac{T}{M_N}\right)^2|h_t|^2.$$
(9)
Thus, at early stages of the universe with $`TM_N`$, when the mixed states are created, they live long enough so that in one life–time they have many interactions with their surroundings. They develop into incoherent states .

When they decay, they produce more leptons than antileptons. The excess appears in each one of the decays, but does not survive on the large scale of the universe, because the inverse reaction (recombinations) washes it out. The excess survives when the recombinations cease to take place, as it happens when they decouple.

As the universe expands its temperature and the energy of the particles decrease. At some time the energy of each particle becomes smaller than half the mass of the heaviest neutrino. At that stage the heaviest neutrino decouples. These neutrinos decay, but cannot be reproduced because the decay products do not have enough energy. Over the course of time the energy of each particle becomes smaller than half the mass of the lightest Majorana neutrino. As a result the neutrinos decay but cannot be reproduced. The universe deviates from thermal equilibrium. Every heavy neutrino decays and leaves a signature of its presence in the excess of the produced leptons.

It is interesting to ask if there is a signal of this primordial CP–violation which can be observed at low energies.

The dynamical creation of the asymmetry appears in the presence of many other particles of the early universe. They are out of thermal equilibrium and develop according to the Boltzmann equations. The surviving asymmetry in the final state depends on the ratio

$$K=\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\psi _1}}{H(z)}\right)_{T=M_1}$$
(10)
with $`H`$ the Hubble constant at temperature $`T=M_1`$. Solutions of the Boltzmann equations  give the development of the asymmetry as function of the inverse temperature: $`z=M_1/T`$. The development is shown in figure 4  for three values of the parameter $`K`$. At a temperature smaller than $`M_1`$, i.e. at an epoch which is later than the time of the $`N_1`$ decays, the asymmetry reaches constant asymptotic values $`F`$, which should not be much smaller than $`F10^3`$.

Numerical studies have shown that a consistent picture emerges provided that

1. the dilution factor in the out–of–equilibrium decays is $`F10^3`$, and
2. the asymmetry $`\epsilon `$ from individual decays is of order $`10^4`$ to $`10^5`$ for $`g_{}=100`$ degrees of freedom.

The generated lepton asymmetry survives down to the electroweak phase transition, where a fraction is converted to a baryon asymmetry. This happens in terms of topological solutions of field theories (sphalerons) and decreases the asymmetry by a factor $`\frac{28}{79}`$.

To sum up, in order to obtain a large lepton and subsequently baryon asymmetry, three conditions must be satisfied.

1. The Leptogenesis must occur after Inflation, so that it is not diluted. This gives the condition $`M_{N_1}<10^{15}`$ GeV.
2. For the states to be incoherent

$$\frac{n\sigma v}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_N}>P$$

with $`P`$ a large number. For $`P=10^3`$ this condition gives

$$T>\sqrt{P}M_{N_1}30M_{N_1}$$
(11)
(Incoherence Condition)
3. The dilution factor from thermal development should not be too large or too small. Acceptable values are $`F10^3`$ to $`10^4`$ for

$$K<10^3\mathrm{to}10^4.$$

This is known as the out–of–equilibrium condition and leads to $`M_{N_1}>10^7`$ GeV.

All three conditions can be satisfied in the early universe with a large range for the masses still being possible.

The lepton asymmetry created by the above method can be converted into a Baryon asymmetry at the electroweak scale. This phenomenon takes place through topological solutions of non–abelian gauge theories. The new solutions are called sphalerons and create a baryon excess

$$\frac{n_B}{S}=\frac{8N_G+4N_H}{22N_G+13N_H}\left(\frac{n_L}{S}\right)_{\mathrm{initial}}$$
(12)
with $`n_L`$ and $`n_B`$ the excess of leptons and baryons, respectively. They are normalized to the entropy $`S`$ with $`N_H`$ is the number of Higgs doublets, and $`N_G`$ the number of generations in the theory.

For typical theories $`N_H=1`$ and $`N_G=3`$, leading to

$$\frac{m_B}{S}\frac{1}{3}\frac{n_L}{S}=\frac{1}{3}\frac{\delta +\epsilon ^{}}{g}F.$$
(13)
With the numerical values, mentioned in the previous section, we obtain a Baryon asymmetry consistent with the one observed in the universe.

## 4 Possible Observables

Leptogenesis will become more interesting and important when it will be related to other physical phenomena. Two interesting questions arise in this respect:

1. Are the CP asymmetries observed in low energy laboratory experiments related to the CP–violation in the early universe?
2. Are there other macroscopic remnants of the cosmological CP–violation, besides the matter asymmetry, which we can observe?

These are important questions whose consequences are beginning to emerge. In the past year, it was recognized that for specific models there are relations between the high and low energy phenomena. There are already models where a connection has been established.

The Majorana mass matrix is symmetric and can be diagonalized by a unitary matrix $`U_R`$

$$U_RM_RU_R^+=\mathrm{diag}.(M_1,M_2,M_3).$$
(14)
On this basis the current states $`N_R^{}`$ are related to the physical states $`N_R`$ by $`N_R=U_RN_R^{}`$. The transformation also changes the Dirac mass matrix

$$m_D=\stackrel{~}{m}_DU_R^+$$

where $`\stackrel{~}{m}_D`$ is the original Dirac mass matrix appearing in the Lagrangian. This demonstrates how the right–handed mixing matrix enters the Dirac mass matrix and consequently the lepton asymmetry.

The low energy phenomena, on the other hand, are determined by the matrix

$$m_\nu =m_D\mathrm{diag}.(M_1^1,M_2^1,M_3^1)m_D^T.$$
(15)
In fact, $`m_\nu `$ is determined by the masses, mixing angles and phases occurring in low energy phenomena. In specific models for $`\stackrel{~}{m}_D`$ and $`M_R`$, it is possible to invert Eq. (12), to obtain $`m_R`$ and consequently the lepton asymmetry $`\epsilon `$ in Eq. (3). This has been done in several articles  and has been discussed in a more general framework of $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ . Many of these models consider $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ theories with the see–saw mechanism.

An alternative approach considers the left–right symmetric models based on $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R`$. The left– and the right–handed mass matrices are now related

$$m_L=fv_L\mathrm{and}m_R=fv_R$$
(16)
with $`f`$ the entries of the mass matrices and $`v_L,v_R`$ the vacuum expectation values.

In case that the low energy phenomena are determined by $`m_L`$, the lepton asymmetry is predicted . Fig. 5 shows the results of an analysis  where $`m_L`$ is determined by the observed neutrino mass differences and mixing angles. In particular, the analysis adopted the hierarchical mass scheme and calculated the asymmetry for the three solar solutions. We note that the large–mixing–angle and the vacuum–oscillation solutions produce acceptable values for the baryon asymmetry over an extended region of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _3`$.

In the same model, it is possible to calculate the lepton mass parameter

$$m_{ee}=\underset{i}{}U_{ei}^2m_i$$

entering the neutrinoless double beta decay. In special cases large values of

$$m_{ee}10^3\mathrm{to}10^2\mathrm{eV}$$

are allowed which are close to the bound established in the Heidelberg–Moscow experiment  $`m_{ee}<0.35`$ eV.

## 5 Summary

Neutrino physics remains an active field of research with the development of new topics for investigation. An open issue is the origin of the unique properties of neutrinos. We would like to know the nature of the neutrinos: are they Dirac or Majorana particles? In case they are Majorana particles, there is the attractive possibility that they generated a lepton–asymmetry in the early universe, which was later converted to a baryon asymmetry.

Several articles have been published during the past year, relating the masses and mixings observed in the oscillation experiments to the high energy phenomena that took place in the early universe. This is a welcome development, because several apparently remote phenomena seem to be related to each other.