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# Expected Performance of a Neutrino Telescope for Seeing AGN/GC Behind a Mountain

## 1 Neutrino Astronomy

Neutrino astronomy is still in its infancy. Although neutrinos are abundantly produced in stars, as they live and when they die, one suffers from an extremely low cross section for detection on Earth. Still, it is rather impressive that we already have “neutrino images” of the Sun, as well as neutrino blips of the cataclysmic SN1987A event. At the start of a new century/millennium, we yearn to reach beyond the stars and observe cosmological neutrino sources. Large “km3” ice/water or air shower neutrino “telescopes” are being built, and “the sky is the limit”.

Neutrinos could play an important role in connecting several branches of particle astrophysics. The origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) is still a great puzzle . Bottom-up theories propose that they originate from energetic processes such as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) or Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB). The energetic hadron component could interact with accreting materials near the central black hole and produce neutrinos through the decay of charged pions. On the other hand, top-down theories suggest that UHECR are decay products of topological defects or heavy relic particles. According to these theories, there are more neutrinos than gamma rays and protons . Measurement of the neutrino flux at and above the “knee” region (i.e. $`>10^{15}`$ eV) provides a good discriminator to distinguish between the two scenarios.

Cosmic gamma rays are attenuated by the infrared, microwave and radio background photons . The recent observation of TeV gamma rays from extragalactic sources such as Mkn421  and Mkn501 , however, has aroused some concern. In order to reach the Earth from extragalactic distances, these $`\gamma `$ sources must have either a much harder spectrum or more powerful mechanisms, e.g. electromagnetic (EM) processes such as inverse Compton scattering, or hadronic processes such as $`p+X\pi ^o+\mathrm{}\gamma +\mathrm{}`$ The former produces few neutrinos, while the latter produces comparable amounts of both neutrinos and photons. Neutrinos therefore provide direct probes of the production mechanism of TeV $`\gamma `$ rays from extragalactic sources such as AGN/GRB.

Recent results on atmospheric neutrinos add an interesting twist to cosmological neutrino detection. Super-Kamiokande (SK) and Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) data strongly suggest that muon neutrinos oscillate into tau neutrinos. Below $`10^{12}`$ eV, the tau decay length is less than 5 mm, and SK and SNO have difficulty distinguishing between showers initiated by electrons and those by taus. Above $`10^{15}`$ eV, the tau decay length becomes 50 m or more, distinctive enough for identifying the taus. Since cosmic neutrinos are produced via $`\pi ^+`$ decay predominately, one does not expect much directly produced cosmic $`\nu _\tau `$ flux . Detecting a tau decendent on Earth would not only probe AGN/GRB mechanisms, but would also constitute a tau-appearance experiment.

## 2 A Genuine Neutrino Telescope

Because of the low interaction cross-section, all neutrino experiments resort to a huge target volume. The target volume is usually surrounded by the detection devices in order to maximize detection efficiency. Thus, the target volume is approximately equal to the detection volume. In other words, the cost of building a detector cost varies in propotional to the target/detection volume. Furthermore, to shield against cosmic rays or even high energy atmospheric neutrinos, these detectors often have to be deep underground. For instance, the km3 size ICECUBE project  at the South Pole has a price tag of $100M, aims to look for upward going events, and takes years to build. Variants such as sea/ocean or air watch experiments are similarly large and costly. These “telescopes” tend to bear litte resemblance to their EM counterparts.

Some alternative approaches have been proposed, such as using the Earth  or a mountain  as the target into convert neutrinos to leptons, which will then initiate air showers in the atmosphere. Observing the air showers from a region obscured by a mountain or the Earth can eliminate the contamination of cosmic ray showers. The main difference between this approach and the conventional experiments is that the target volume and the detection volume are different. Moreover, materials in the target volume (mountain, Earth) and the detection volume (atmosphere) are readily available at almost no cost, thus the overall cost (and perhaps schedule) of the experiment could be reduced dramatically. This makes the approach worthy of further exploration.

Using an approach similar to that of Vannucci , a Cerenkov telescope sits on one side of a valley opposite a mountain. Energetic cosmic neutrinos, while passing through the atmosphere with ease, interact inside the mountain and produce leptons. Electrons will shower quickly and have little chance of escaping from the mountain. For muons, the decay/interaction lengths are too large to initiate showers inside the valley. The taus have suitable decay length to escape from the mountain and initiate showers inside the valley upon decay. This process is illustrated in Fig. 1. With this design, the telescope is not only a detector for astrophysical and cosmological neutrinos, but also serves as a tau-appearance experiment.

It is interesting to note that this telescope resembles closely usual EM telescopes and a typical particle experiment. The field piece is the mountain, which functions as both a target and a shield, and the subsequent valley is the shower volume. The actual Cerenkov telescope functions as an “eye piece” that focuses the Cerenkov light from a shower emerging from the mountain onto a sensor plane. The sensor could be a MAPMT array, where fast electronics matches the 10 ns Cerenkov pulse and helps discriminate against other background sources. Using two telescopes in coincidence would be produce better results. The only drawback, in comparison to a regular EM telescope, is that we cannot move the mountain and would have to rely on the Earth’s rotation to move the telescope.

Besides cost, expected to be far less than ICECUBE or Auger, the most critical issue is the expected count rate. In the following, we choose a potential site (Hawaii Big Island), examine the neutrino conversion efficiency, and then derive the flux limit and sky coverage of the proposed detector.

## 3 Potential Site

The criteria for choosing a potential site are as follows:

* Reduced artificial lights, dry air and cloudless sky, much like usual optical telescopes.
* Target mountain broad enough for the sake of acceptance.
* Valley wide enough for taus to decay and air showers to develop.

In the energy range of $`10^{14}`$$`10^{18}`$ eV, the depth of shower maximum $``$ 500 – 800 gm/cm2. At altitude around 2 km, this depth corresponds to a horizontal distance of 4.5 to 7.8 km. Therefore, the width of the valley must be larger than 5 km, but less than the attenuation length of light $``$ 50 km.
* Good exposure to the Galaxy Center (GC).

The nearest massive black hole — what may be behind astrophysical neutrinos — is our Galaxy Center.

Hawaii Big Island, with its perfect weather conditions, has been a favorable site for astronomical (EM) telescopes. The Big Island also has a rather unique configuration. Besides the more sought after Mauna Kea, the other 4 km high mountain, Mauna Loa, has a breadth of approximately 90 km. Across from Mauna Loa to the northwest, Mount Hualalai is $``$ 20 km away and 2.3 km in altitude. This makes Mauna Loa a good candidate for the target mountain with the detector installed on top of Hualalai. In the following study we assume this configuration.

## 4 Neutrino conversion efficiency

In this study, the mountain is simplified as a block of thickness L. Neutrinos enter the mountain, pass through distance $`x`$, interact in $`x`$ to $`x+dx`$, produce taus, which then survive through the rest of the mountain without decay.

The probability for neutrinos to survive the atmosphere ($`P_1`$) is taken as 1, which is very close to the actual case. The probability for neutrinos to survive distance x inside the mountain is $`P_2(X)=\mathrm{exp}(x/\lambda _\nu )`$, where $`\lambda _\nu =1/(N_A\sigma \rho )`$, $`\sigma `$ is the charged current interaction cross-section , $`N_A`$ is the Avogadro number, and $`\rho `$ is the mean density of the mountain. The chance of neutrino interaction in $`x`$ to $`x+dx`$ is $`dx/\lambda _\nu `$. The energy of tau is approximated as $`E_\tau =(1y)E_\nu `$, where $`y`$ is the fraction of energy carried by the recoiling (shattered) nuclei or electron, which is in the range of 0.2 to 0.5 with mean $``$ 0.25, we therefore use $`E_\tau =0.75E_\nu `$.

The probability for taus to survive through the rest of the mountain of distance $`Lx`$ is $`P_3(X)=\mathrm{exp}((Lx)/\lambda _\tau )`$, where $`\lambda _\tau `$ is the decay length of tau and equals $`(E_\tau /\mathrm{PeV})\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}48.91}`$ m.

The neutrino conversion efficiency is

$$\epsilon =_0^L\text{e}^{x/\lambda _\nu }\text{e}^{\left(Lx\right)/\lambda _\tau }\frac{dx}{\lambda _\nu }=\frac{\lambda _\tau }{\lambda _\nu \lambda _\tau }\left(\text{e}^{L/\lambda _\nu }\text{e}^{L/\lambda _\tau }\right),$$
(1)
where the integration was done by neglecting the energy loss of tau. The maximum efficiency occurs at $`\frac{d\epsilon }{dL}|_{L=L_{max}}=0,`$ i.e.

$$L_{max}=\frac{\mathrm{ln}(\lambda _\nu /\lambda _\tau )}{\frac{1}{\lambda _\tau }\frac{1}{\lambda _\nu }}$$
(2)
The conversion efficiencies at five energies are shown in Fig. 2. The efficiency plateaus above $`L>L_{max}/2`$. This maximal efficiency scales roughly as a power law in energy.

$$\epsilon _{max}\frac{\lambda _\tau }{\lambda _\nu }3.6\times 10^6(\frac{E_\nu }{\text{PeV}})^{1.4}$$

The mean distance traveled by taus inside the mountain is

$$\overline{L_\tau }=\frac{_0^L(Lx)\text{e}^{x/\lambda _\nu }\text{e}^{\left(Lx\right)/\lambda _\tau }\frac{dx}{\lambda _\nu }}{_0^L\text{e}^{x/\lambda _\nu }\text{e}^{\left(Lx\right)/\lambda _\tau }\frac{dx}{\lambda _\nu }}=\frac{\lambda _\nu }{\lambda _\nu \lambda _\tau }\lambda _\tau .$$

Because $`\lambda _\nu \lambda _\tau `$, $`\overline{L_\tau }<\lambda _\tau `$, the mean production point of tau is approximately one decay length inside the mountain. As long as the thickness of mountain is larger than $`\lambda _\tau `$, $`\overline{L_\tau }`$ remains unchanged.

## 5 Acceptance of flux limit

Fig. 3 shows the panoramic view from the top of Mt. Hualalai towards Mauna Loa. The field of view of the detector is the shaded mountain region inside the box. The azimuth angle extends from south to east. The minimum zenith angle of $`86.9^\text{o}`$ is set by the line from the summit of Hualalai to that of Mauna Loa. The maximum zenith angle of $`91.5^\text{o}`$ is set by the line from the summit of Hualalai to the horizon at the base of Mauna Loa. A cross-section of the Big Island along the line from Hualalai to Mauna Loa is shown in Fig. 4.

The acceptance is defined by the effective area multiplied by the effective solid angle. Owing to lateral distribution of air shower, the Cerenkov light cone of shower is approximately $`5^\text{o}`$ to $`6^\text{o}`$ . The effective solid angle can be determined by the sensitivity of PMT, the distance from the detector to the shower maximum, and the Cerenkov light yield of air shower. The number of Cerenkov photons is proportional to the number of secondary particles in the air showers, which is proportional to the tau energy. Also, the lower energy taus decay closer to the mountain, thus farther away from the detector and the Cerenkov light suffers more atmospheric scattering. These two effects reduce the effective solid angle at lower energy. The extend of the effect can be obtained by detailed simulation. To simplify the calculation, we use a constant value of $`5^\text{o}`$, which yields the effective solid angle

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=_0^{\theta _c}\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\varphi =2\pi (1\mathrm{cos}\theta _c)=0.024\text{sr}$$

The effective area is the cross-section area where tau decays. The mean distance of decay after taus escape from the mountain is still $`\lambda _\tau `$. So the effective area is

$$a_{\mathrm{eff}}(E)=_{\mathrm{FOV}}(r(\omega )\lambda _\tau (E))^2𝑑\omega $$

where $`\omega `$ is the solid angle of each pixel, FOV is the field of view, and $`r`$ is the distance from the detector to the mountain surface viewed by that pixel. The total acceptance $`A(E)`$ is $`a_{\mathrm{eff}}(E)\times \mathrm{\Omega }`$ as shown in Fig. 5. Below $`10^{17}`$ eV, the acceptance is approximately 1 km2 sr, similar to ICECUBE. The sharp decrease in acceptance at $`E>2\times 10^{17}`$ eV is due to the increase in decay length of tau beyond 10 km. The valley $``$ 20 km is not wide enough to contain these high energy taus.

The target volume is defined as the volume inside the mountain where taus are produced,

$$V=_{\mathrm{FOV}}_{R_i}^{R_f}r(\omega )^2𝑑r𝑑\omega ,$$

where $`R_i`$ is the distance from the detector to the mountain surface, and

$$R_f=\{\begin{array}{cc}R_i+W\hfill & \text{if}W<\overline{L_\tau }\hfill \\ R_i+\overline{L_\tau }\hfill & \text{if}W\overline{L_\tau }\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`W`$ is the width of mountain in the field of view $`\omega `$. The target volume is then transferred to the water-equivalent target volume by multiplying the density of rock, $`2.65g/cm^3`$. $`\overline{L_\tau }\lambda _\tau `$ increases almost linearly with energy, so does the target volume. For conventional neutrino telescopes, such as SK or ICECUBE, the target volume is identical to the detection volume, therefore the acceptance is propotional to the detection volume. For the Earth-skimming or mountain-valley type neutrino telescopes, the target volume and the detection volume are different. Thus, the acceptance and the target volume do not have any direct relation.

This study does not consider the effect of energy loss of taus inside the mountain. The effect becomes more serious for energies $`>10^{17}`$ eV, where tau energy loss leads to a decrease in decay length of taus, thus increasing acceptance at high energy. When the energy loss of tau is taken into consideration, Eq. (1) cannot be integrated in closed form. At the present stage, we have ignored the energy loss effect for simplicity and treat the results as lower limit of acceptance and upper limit of sensitivity.

Because of the lower light yield and more scattering at lower energy, the acceptance should be lower at lower energy. In view of the two factors above, the best energy range for this type of detector is approximately in $`10^{15}<E<10^{18}`$ eV.

The flux limit is estimated by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(E)=\frac{d^2N(E)}{dTdE}=\frac{dN(E)/dT}{A(E)\epsilon (E)}$$

where $`N`$ is the number of events, $`T`$ is the exposure time, $`dN(E)/dT`$ is the event rate, $`dE`$ is the bin width of energy which is approximately equal to the energy resolution of detector. The conversion efficiency $`\epsilon (E)`$ is calculated by similar process as Eq. (1). The exact zenith angle, the atmospheric pressure, the mountain width, and the curvature of the Earth are all taken into consideration.

In the conversion from $`\nu _\tau `$ to $`\tau `$, some fraction of energy ($`y`$E) are brough out by interacting nuclei. Because this interaction take place inside the mountain, this energy can not be measured. $`\sigma _y0.18`$ is the largest source of systematic error in energy. With some uncertainties from detection and reconstruction, a simplified value of half a decade $`10^{0.5}=0.31`$ is assumed as the energy resolution $`dE`$.

The detector sensitivity is defined as the flux when the event rate is 0.3 event in one year. Based on the acceptance of Hualalai site, the sensitivity of the proposed detector and the recent AMANDA B-10 neutrino limit are shown in Fig. 6. Note that the AMANDA B-10 limit is the integral flux limit from null observation of neutrino in the energy range of $`10^{12}`$ to $`10^{15}`$ eV. The null observation in one year of operation of the proposed detector could set an upper limit similar to that of AMANDA B-10 , but at $`10^{15}<E<10^{18}`$ eV.

## 6 Sky coverage

The detector is operated at moonless and cloudless nights. We simulate the operation from December 2003 to December 2006. The detector operates when the total time of moonless night is longer than one hour. The total exposure time in three years is 5200 hours, corresponding to a duty cycle of $``$ 20%. In reality, some cloudy nights have to be excluded.

According to the field of view specified above, the sky covered by the detector can be calculated. The total exposure hours in $`1{}_{}{}^{\text{o}}\times 1^\text{o}`$ of galactic coordinates are shown in Fig. 7. The galactic center is visible for approximately 70 hours.

## 7 Discussion

Although the acceptance reaches 1 km2 sr, the optical detection suffers 10% operation time in each calandar year. There are several ways to improve the acceptance.

* Extending the zenith angle coverage to below the horizon can include the Earth-skimming events, which are not studied in this report. This extension could double the acceptance at $`E<10^{16}`$ eV. At higher energy, acceptance does not increase much because of lack of space for taus to decay.
* If the detector could also detect the fluorescent light from air showers, the current field of view could be triggered by showers initiated by the taus escaping from Mauna Kea and by Earth-skimming from south-west of Mauna Loa. The large increase in solid angle could increase acceptance by a factor of 3 to 10. This is most effective at energy higher than $`10^{17}`$ eV.

The above improvements can increase the acceptance to 20 km2 sr. The azimuth angle can also be extended to the west side of Hualalai so that the sea-skimming events can be used as well. However, the reflection from waves may create more noise.

The detector should have some coverage of the sky and record cosmic ray events. This can help monitor detector performance, and the cosmic ray flux can be used to cross-calibrate the energy scale with other cosmic ray experiments.

## 8 Summary

Taking Hawaii Big Island as a potential neutrino telescope site, we calculate the neutrino conversion efficiency. The detector acceptance is approximately 1.4 km2 sr. The sensitivity of the proposed detector is close to the AMANDA B-10 limit. The exposure time of the galactic center, where the nearest black hole is located, is approximately 70 hours in three years of operation.

This study shows that a compact neutrino telescope utilizing the mountain for neutrino conversion is capable of achieving a sensitivity similar to that of a big detector. In addition, the cost and construction time is greatly reduced. This type of detector at $`10^{15}<E<10^{18}`$ eV could complement conventional neutrino telescopes such as AMANDA aiming at energies $`E<10^{16}`$ eV, and cosmic ray experiments such as Auger aiming at $`E>10^{18}`$ eV.

## Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the HiRes group for providing the source code for moonless nights in Julian time.


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# Jet Energy Loss in Hot and Dense Matter

## 1 Introduction

Coherent scattering effects on induced photon/gluon emission have been studied in both abelian and non-abelian gauge theories. Destructive interference of photon radiation from initially on-shell fast electrons propagating and multiply interacting in matter was first discussed by Landau and Pomeranchuk  and independently by Migdal . Photon bremsstrahlung off asymptotically prepared jet states was found to be suppressed in the infrared ($`\omega 0`$) region relative to the naive Bethe-Heitler limit  of radiation resulting from independent collisions. Those results have been experimentally confirmed at SLAC .

The non-abelian generalization of Bethe-Heitler radiation was discussed by Bertsch and Gunion  in the presence of a single scattering center. In a QED-like scenario the case of multiple interactions was first investigated by Gyulassy and Wang . The non-abelian nature of QCD coherence was later employed by BDMPS  to show that in the high energy regime the mean energy loss of asymptotic jets is proportional to the square of the length of the medium, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }EL^2`$. Those results were obtained for “thick” plasmas with a very large number of soft scatterings. Discussion of gluon bremsstrahlung in the path integral formalism can be found in Refs. .

The GLV reaction operator approach  to non-abelian parton energy loss relies on a systematic expansion of induced gluon radiation associated with jet production in a dense QCD plasma in terms of correlations between multiple scattering centers. Analytic expressions for the induced inclusive gluon transverse momentum and light-cone momentum distributions are derived to all orders in powers of the opacity of the medium, $`\chi =N\sigma _g/A=L/\lambda _g`$. The analytic solution to all orders in opacity generalizes previous continuum results by allowing for arbitrary correlated nuclear geometry and evolving screening scales as well as the inclusion of finite kinematic constraints. In comparison to data we use numerical results corrected up to third order in $`\chi `$ that allow us to extend jet quenching computations down to parton energies $`E5`$ GeV. For gaining theoretical insight, however, it is useful to resort to analytic formulas that neglect some of the kinematic constraints but capture the essential features of parton energy loss. The dominant first order energy loss can be written as

$`\mathrm{\Delta }E^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{C_R\alpha _s}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\tau _0}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau {\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2(\tau )}{\lambda (\tau )}}(\tau \tau _0)\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{2E}{\mu ^2L}},`$ (1)
where $`C_R`$ is the second casimir in the representation of the jet and the $`\mu ^2(\tau )/\lambda (\tau )`$ is the local “transport coefficient”. In a hot and dense medium in local thermal equilibrium $`\mu ^2(\tau )=4\pi \alpha _sT^2(\tau )`$ and perturbatively one can express $`\mu ^2(\tau )/\lambda (\tau )=(C_TC_A/d_A)4\pi \alpha _s^2\rho (\tau )`$, where $`C_T`$ is the color charge of the target and $`d_A`$ is the dimension of the adjoint representation. This formulation allows to account for the realistic dynamical time evolution of the systems created in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions.

Jet tomography is the QCD analog of conventional X-ray tomography that exploits the attenuation of high energy jets produced in nuclear matter . We use the term “jet tomography”, inspired by a seminar by Istvan Lovas  entitled “Vector meson tomography of the QGP”, to contrast the particular advantages of high $`p_T`$ PQCD probes of the density evolution of partonic matter formed in A+A reactions. The dependence of the non-abelian energy loss on the density and geometry of the medium as seen in Eq. (1) provides a rigorous theoretical framework for the jet tomographic analysis discussed in Refs. . The experimental discovery of a factor of $`3`$ suppression of moderate $`p_\mathrm{T}\stackrel{<}{}4`$ GeV $`\pi ^0`$’s in central $`Au+Au`$ reactions by PHENIX  and the discovery of large transverse asymmetries in non-central collisions for $`p_\mathrm{T}\stackrel{<}{}5`$ GeV by STAR  have confirmed that the high $`p_T`$ frontier at RHIC does in fact provide a wide range of new physics opportunities.

We here present the results of our calculation of the suppression of high $`p_T`$ particle spectra relative to the binary collision scaled $`pp`$ reference baseline and the $`p_T`$ and centrality dependence of the $`p/\pi `$ ratios . We find good agreement between data and theory for jet energy loss driven by initial gluon rapidity density $`dN^g/dy800`$. One of the descriptions of soft parton production, based on the saturation models , suggests slow variation of the number densities of quanta per unit rapidity achieved in the early stages of A+A reactions with $`\sqrt{s}`$ and therefore a slow variation of the quenching factor. In contrast, at SPS energies moderate $`p_T`$ neutral pions were found to be enhanceda by a factor $`2`$ . We propose that one possible solution to this puzzle may be related to differences in the composition of the non-abelian plasma (quarks vs. gluons), an important detail that has so far been ignored in jet tomographic studies.

## 2  Induced Gluon Radiation

The GLV formalism  for multiple elastic and inelastic interactions inside nuclear matter expands the differential probability of observing a final state jet or jet+gluon system (described by a set of quantum numbers $`\{\alpha \}`$) in orders of the correlations between multiple scattering centers, i.e. $`P(\{\alpha \})=_nP^{(n)}(\{\alpha \})`$. In the high energy eikonal approximationb a major simplification occurs as a result of the well defined path ordering of sequential interactions inside the medium. It is therefore possible to build all relevant classes of amplitudes by subsequent insertion of single Born or “direct” ($`\widehat{D}`$) and double Born or “virtual” ($`\widehat{V}`$) interactions. At the probability level the recursion relation is generated by the reaction operator  $`\widehat{R}=\widehat{D}^{}\widehat{D}+\widehat{V}^{}+\widehat{V}`$. The virtual corrections $`\widehat{V}^{}+\widehat{V}`$ to the naive elastic scattering component $`\widehat{D}^{}\widehat{D}`$ ensure unitarity in the GLV formalism. The approach described here is quite general, i.e. within the framework of the approximations stated for an arbitrary initial condition described by an amplitude $`A_0`$, $`P^{(n)}(\{\alpha \})A_0^{}(\widehat{R})^nA_0`$. The technical part of the calculation includes solving for the color and kinematic structure of the the “direct” and “virtual” operators. Recently this was illustrated via a computation of the elastic broadening of jets propagating in nuclear matter .

For the case of jets produced at finite time $`t_0`$ in heavy ion reactions the solution for the double differential gluon radiation intensity was given in Ref.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dI^{ind.}}{dxd^2𝐤}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{C_R\alpha _s}{\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{L\mathrm{\Delta }z_1\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Delta }z_{i1}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Delta }z_i}{\lambda _g(i)}}{\displaystyle }\left(d^2𝐪_i[\overline{v}_i^2(𝐪_i)\delta ^2(𝐪_i)]\right)\times `$ (2)
$`\times (2𝐂_{(1,\mathrm{},n)}{\displaystyle \underset{m=1}{\overset{n}{}}}𝐁_{(m+1,\mathrm{},n)(m,\mathrm{},n)}\times `$
$`\times [\mathrm{cos}\left({\displaystyle \underset{k=2}{\overset{m}{}}}\omega _{(k,\mathrm{},n)}\mathrm{\Delta }z_k\right)\mathrm{cos}\left({\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{m}{}}}\omega _{(k,\mathrm{},n)}\mathrm{\Delta }z_k\right)]),`$
where $`𝐂_{(1,\mathrm{},n)}=\frac{1}{2}_𝐤\mathrm{log}(𝐤𝐪_1\mathrm{}𝐪_n)^2`$, $`𝐁_{(m+1,\mathrm{},n)(m,\mathrm{},n)}𝐂_{(m+1,\mathrm{},n)}𝐂_{(m,\mathrm{},n)}`$ are the Bertsch-Gunion terms , and $`\omega _{(k,\mathrm{},n)}=1/(2xE|𝐂_{(k,\mathrm{},n)}|^2)`$ are the interference phases that produce the non-abelian analog of the LPM effect . The destructive interference pattern can be seen at a differential level in Eq. (2). In the calculation of the gluon bremsstrahlung we use a normalized color-screened Yukawa potential leading to $`\overline{v}_i^2(𝐪_i)=\mu ^2/(\pi (𝐪_i^2+\mu ^2)^2)`$. One unexpected result was that the series in Eq. (2) converges very fast . Even more surprisingly, the first term was found to give the dominant contribution and by integrating over the transverse momentum $`𝐤`$ and light-cone momentum fraction $`x`$ of the gluon one recovers the result of Eq. (1). In computing the spectrum of gluons and the energy loss of jets we take into account numerically corrections up to third order in the opacity $`\chi `$ and the evolution of the density of the system due to the longitudinal Bjorken expansion.

## 3  Hadronic Spectra at Moderate to High $`p_T`$

The computed energy loss spectrum is employed in the calculation of the quenched spectrum of hadrons. A jet of flavor $`c`$ and transverse momentum $`p_c`$ produced in a hard PQCD scattering $`a+bc+d`$ is attenuated prior to hadronization by the radiative energy loss to $`p_c^{}=p_c(1ϵ)`$. This shifts the hadronic fragmentation fraction $`z_c=p_h/p_c`$ to $`z_c^{}=z_c/(1ϵ)`$.

The invariant distribution of hadrons reduced by the energy loss in $`A+A`$ collision at impact parameter $`𝐛`$ is then given by

$`E_h{\displaystyle \frac{dN_h^{AA}}{d^3p}}=T_{AA}(𝐛){\displaystyle \underset{abcd}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑x_1𝑑x_2d^2k_{T,a}d^2k_{T,b}g(\stackrel{}{k}_{T,a})g(\stackrel{}{k}_{T,b})}`$
$`f_{a/A}(x_1,Q^2)f_{b/A}(x_2,Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma ^{abcd}}{d\widehat{t}}}{\displaystyle 𝑑ϵP(ϵ,p_c)\frac{z_c^{}}{z_c}\frac{D_{\pi ^0/c}(z_c^{},Q^2)}{\pi z_c}},`$ (3)
where $`T_{AA}(𝐛)`$ is the Glauber profile density. The fragmentation functions $`D_{h/c}(z,Q^2)`$ is taken from BKK  and the structure functions for $`f_{a/A}(x,Q^2)`$ (we take the GRV94 LO ) include the isospin dependence. Nuclear shadowing, $`k_\mathrm{T}`$ broadening and Cronin effect are taken into account as in . The modification of the fragmentation functions due to gluon radiation can be seen in Eq. (3) and is also discussed in . The FFs carry the information of the medium induced jet energy loss but the observed suppression of high $`p_T`$ is a result of the full calculation that folds in a variety of nuclear effects as well as the shape of the initial jet spectrum.

In order to extend our calculations to lower transverse momenta of hadrons we discuss a phenomenological soft component motivated by the string and baryon junction picture. We patrametrize here this component as follows:

$$\frac{dN_s(𝐛)}{dyd^2𝐩_\mathrm{T}}=\underset{\alpha =\pi ,K,p,\mathrm{}}{}\frac{dn^\alpha }{dy}(𝐛)\frac{e^{p_\mathrm{T}/T^\alpha (𝐛)}}{2\pi (T^\alpha (𝐛))^2}.$$
(4)
Such seemingly “thermal” distribution of hadrons is observed already in $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions and may be related to Gaussian fluctuations in the string tension . As in string models the soft component is assumed to scale with the number of participants ($`N_{part}`$). In Eq. (4) we also account for the possibly different mean inverse slopes $`T^\alpha `$ for baryons and mesons. In the junction picture , the large $`T^B`$ may arise from the predicted  smaller junction trajectory slope $`\alpha _J^{}\alpha _R^{}/3`$. This implies that the effective string tension is three times higher than $`1/(2\pi \alpha _R^{})1`$ GeV/fm leading in the massless limit to $`p_\mathrm{T}^2_J3p_\mathrm{T}^2_R`$. In terms of the string model the factor three enhancement of the mean square $`p_\mathrm{T}`$ is due to the random walk in $`p_\mathrm{T}`$ arising from the decay of the three strings attached to the junction. Naively, we would thus expect $`T^B\sqrt{3}T^\pi `$ predicting an approximately constant $`\sqrt{p_T^2^B}`$ for all baryon species.

Fig. 1. The ratio of charged hadron and $`\pi ^0`$ multiplicities to the binary collision scaled $`\overline{p}p`$ result is shown from . The curves utilize the GLV quenched hard spectrum and the string and baryon junction soft component Eq. (4).

Fig. 1 shows the ratio $`R_{AA}`$ of the differential particle yields relative to the binary collision scaled $`\overline{p}p`$ for inclusive charged hadrons and neutral pions. We obtain reasonable agreement with data if the jet energy loss is driven by initial gluon rapidity density $`dN^g/dy800`$. This number is lower by $`30\%`$ from existing estimates. The difference in the suppression factor of $`\pi ^0`$ and $`0.5(h^++h^{})`$ is understood through the possibly different baryon and meson production mechanisms in the moderate high $`2p_T5`$ GeV window. In our calculation pion production becomes PQCD dominated for $`p_T>2`$ GeV and correspondingly suppressed by the jet energy loss. In contrast, baryon production in the region of interest is dominated through the junction mechanism by baryon transport in rapidity and moderate $`p_T`$. This accounts for the different suppression of neutral pions and inclusive charged hadrons as seen in Fig. 1. At large $`p_T`$ baryon production also becomes perturbative, leading to a common suppression factor. This is manifest in the $`p_T>5`$ GeV region of Fig. 1.

Fig. 2. The centrality dependence of $`p/\pi `$ is predicted for three different centralities. Solid (dashed) lines correspond to $`A^1`$ ($`A^{4/3}`$) scaling of the baryon junction component. The ratio of $`\overline{p}`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$ fits to PHENIX data on central reactions is shown for comparison. A boosted thermal source (dashed line) is also shown. The left/right panel reflects negative/positive hadrons.

The interplay between soft and hard physics at RHIC is possibly most clearly seen in the $`p_T`$ differential baryon/meson ($`R_B`$) ratios. Our predictions for the centrality and the $`p_T`$ dependence of $`\overline{p}/\pi ^{}`$ and $`p/\pi ^+`$ are given in Fig. 2. An extended discussion can be found in Refs. . In central collisions the interplay between the anomalous baryon component and the quenched PQCD component of pions leads to maximum of $`R_B`$ near $`p_\mathrm{T}34`$ GeV/c. At large $`p_\mathrm{T}56`$ GeV/c we predict a gradual decrease of $`R_B`$ below unity consistent with the the PQCD baseline calculations . In Fig. 1 we have included through error bands the factor of $`3`$ uncertainty in the fragmentation functions into $`\overline{p},p`$ at high $`p_\mathrm{T}`$. The solid and dashed curves reflect the difference between the $`N_{part}`$ and $`N_{part}^{4/3}`$ scaling of the junction component.

In peripheral reactions the size of the interaction region as well as the initial density of the medium decrease, leading to a reduction of energy loss. The absence of quenching reduces the observability of the anomalous component and the $`p/\pi `$ ratio may stay below unity for all $`p_\mathrm{T}`$. The case of peripheral reactions is hence similar to $`\overline{p}p`$ collisions. The experimentally testable prediction of the model is therefore that the maximum of the $`R_B=p/\pi `$ ratio decreases with increasing impact parameter, decreasing participant number, or equivalently decreasing $`dN^{ch}/dy`$. The reduction of $`R_B`$ at large $`p_T`$ is also an important prediction of our computation and is not seen by other models attempting fits only in regions of $`p_T`$ where experimental data already exists.

## 4  Jet Tomography of the QGP Partonic Composition

Two extreme scenarios for the composition of the quark-gluon plasma have been extensively discussed in the literature. In one scenario, based on saturation models , the hot and dense matter created in A+A collisions is interpreted as purely gluonic degrees of freedom. Alternatively, quark coalescence models  advocate the creation of dense quark-antiquark matter as a result of the vary fast decay of massive gluons into quark degrees of freedom . We here propose that jet tomography is a powerful tool that can distinguish between different scenarios.

Fig. 3. The effective  fractional energy loss for $`E=6`$ GeV jet is plotted versus $`\sqrt{s}`$ for two extreme scenarios.

Fig. 3 illustrates the idea behind the QGP composition tomography. We contrast the case of gluon jets propagating through gluon plasma to the case of quarks propagating through quark-antiquark plasma at center of mass energies ranging from $`\sqrt{s}=20`$ AGeV at SPS to $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ AGeV (the top RHIC energy). The variation in the effective fractional energy loss (using an approximately constant density renormalization factor $`Z0.40.5`$ ) is small $`50\%`$ due to the small change of the initial density of quanta per unit rapidity (this can be most easily seen from the naive picture of parton-hadron duality). In contrast, the changing plasma composition and the jet representation lead to a factor of $`(C_A/C_F)^25`$ difference. While neither of the extreme scenarios may hold for the broad range of collision energies in question, it is possible that the partonic composition of the system created in heavy ion reactions evolves as a function of $`\sqrt{s}`$, leading to pronounced differences in $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{eff}(\sqrt{s})/E`$ as indicated in Fig. 3. Faster than expected increase of energy loss with $`T/T_c`$ was also discussed in a Polyakov Loop model .

The quenching of neutral pions is shown in Fig. 4. In this particular example we study only the effect of energy loss and we have not included nuclear shadowing and Cronin effect. We have also not included a phenomenological soft component to mock the part of phase space that is not perturbatively accessible and is possibly sensitive to higher twist effects. In Fig. 4 the medium that drives the quenching of high $`p_T`$ jets at RHIC $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ AGeV is reinterpreted as composed of 60% gluons and 40% quarks and antiquarks. At $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ AGeV Au+Au the number of quanta per unit rapidity increases only by $`15\%`$ . The dashed line illustrates the suppression factor $`R_{AA}`$ for this slightly increased rapidity density of soft partons when unchanged QGP composition is assumed. We note that the effect is even smaller than naively expected ($`15\%`$) due to finite kinematics effects in computing $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/E`$ and hadronization. Detectable increase $`30\%`$ in the $`\pi ^0`$ suppression factor is only possible if one assumes a transition to almost completely gluon dominated soft background as shown in Fig. 4.

At smaller center of mass energies ($`\sqrt{s}=20`$ AGeV) we have studied the case of jets propagating through quark-antiquark plasma. We have used phenomenologically a smaller mean energy loss renormalization coefficient $`Z=0.2`$ to account for the possibly bigger energy loss fluctuations (more detailed studies of $`Z`$ are needed). Those effects tend to strongly reduce the effective energy loss. The observed suppression factor $`R_{AA}`$, however, convolutes the apparent decrease of $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{eff}/E`$ with the much steeper $`p_T`$ differential hadron distributions (3). As a result a still significant suppression of neutral pions ($`R_{AA}0.5`$) remains, which is inconsistent with the current SPS results . It is important to improve the jet tomographic calculation presented in Fig. 4 to take into account Cronin effect and nuclear (anti)shadowing in a more quantitative comparison to the WA98 data as well as to investigate the cause for the unusually small energy loss at SPS.

Fig. 4. The $`\pi ^0`$ suppression factor resulting from the non-abelian energy loss of jets is shown.

## 5 Conclusions

We have shown that in a two component soft+hard model that incorporates jet energy loss computed in the GLV formalism  one can account for the suppression of the inclusive charged hadrons and neutral pions seen in the $`\sqrt{s}=130`$ AGeV RHIC run. Jet tomography is shown to be an important probe of the partonic composition of the hot and dense medium created in the initial stages of heavy ion reactions. In particular, at CERN SPS energy of $`\sqrt{s}20`$ AGeV large energy loss induced by gluon medium on gluon jets seems excluded by data.

## Acknowledgements

We are grateful to MTA academician I. Lovas for inspiring discussions on the importance of tomographic analysis of A+A reactions, and we celebrate his 70th birthday. Discussions with MTA septarian academicians J. Zimanyi and J. Nemeth throughout many years are also gratefully acknowledged on the occasion of their mutual birthdays. This trio of nuclear theorists have advanced nuclear physics worldwide and we wish them an equally productive future. This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of Nuclear Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FG02-93ER40764 and by the U.S. NSF under INT-0000211 and OTKA No. T029158.

## Notes

* Recent reanalysis of the WA98 data (M.M. Aggarwal et al., Eur. Phys. J. C23, 225 (2002).) suggests that the enhancement estimates should be reduced by $`30\%`$.
* All recent approaches  that discuss the LPM effect in QED and QCD employ the eikonal approximation together with a model of well separated scattering centers $`\mu \lambda 1`$. For the case of A+A reaction this condition sets a natural upper limit on the opacity $`\chi `$ of a medium of finite small size $`L5`$ fm and is suggestive of the dominant role of low order correlations between multiple scatterings as demonstrated by GLV .


text:
# On the Pseudo-Hermiticity of a Class of PT-Symmetric Hamiltonians in One Dimension

## Abstract

For a given standard Hamiltonian $`H=[pA(x)]^2/(2m)+V(x)`$ with arbitrary complex scalar potential $`V`$ and vector potential $`A`$, with $`x`$, we construct an invertible antilinear operator $`\tau `$ such that $`H`$ is $`\tau `$-anti-pseudo-Hermitian, i.e., $`H^{}=\tau H\tau ^1`$. We use this result to give the explicit form of a linear Hermitian invertible operator with respect to which any standard $`PT`$-symmetric Hamiltonian with a real degree of freedom is pseudo-Hermitian. Our results do not make use of the assumption that $`H`$ is diagonalizable or that its spectrum is discrete.

In a recent series of papers  we have revealed the basic mathematical structure responsible for the intriguing spectral properties of certain $`PT`$-symmetric systems . The main ingredient leading to the results of  and their ramifications  is the concept of a pseudo-Hermitian operator. By definition, a linear operator $`H`$ acting in a Hilbert space is pseudo-Hermitian if there is a linear Hermitian invertible operator $`\eta `$ satisfying

$$H^{}=\eta H\eta ^1,$$
(1)
where a dagger stands for the adjoint of the corresponding operator. As we have shown in , every diagonalizable Hamiltonian admitting an antilinear symmetry is necessarily pseudo-Hermitian. This applies, in particular, to diagonalizable $`PT`$-symmetric Hamiltonians. We also explained in  that most of the $`PT`$-symmetric Hamiltonians considered in the literature are $`P`$-pseudo-Hermitian and that there are also $`PT`$-symmetric Hamiltonians that are not $`P`$-pseudo-Hermitian. The proof of the equivalence of pseudo-Hermiticity and the presence of antilinear symmetries presented in  uses the assumption that the Hamiltonian is diagonalizable and has a discrete spectrum. It is based on the fact that every such Hamiltonian $`H`$ is anti-pseudo-Hermitian, i.e., there is an (essentially unique ) antilinear, Hermitian, invertible operator $`\tau `$ fulfilling

$$H^{}=\tau H\tau ^1.$$
(2)
The purpose of this article is to generalize the results of  to the class of standard Hamiltonians:

$$H^{}=\frac{1}{2m}[pA(x)]^2+V(x),$$
(3)
with arbitrary complex scalar ($`V:`$) and vector ($`A:`$) potentials in one-dimension, where in the position representation $`x`$ and $`p=i_x`$. In particular, we wish to address the following two questions without assuming the diagonalizability of the Hamiltonian (equivalently the existence of a complete biorthonormal system of ‘energy’ eigenvectors) or discreteness of its spectrum.

* Is there an antilinear, Hermitian, invertible operator $`\tau `$ satisfying (2) for such a Hamiltonian?
* Is there a linear, Hermitian, invertible operator $`\eta `$ satisfying (1) for such a $`PT`$-symmetric Hamiltonian?

In the following $`T`$ and $`P`$ denote the time-reversal and parity operators, respectively.

* Lemma: Let $`\alpha :`$ be a complex-valued function. Then $`\tau :=Te^{i\alpha (x)}`$ is an antilinear, Hermitian, invertible operator.
* Proof: $`\tau `$ is the product of a linear and an antilinear operator, and both of these operators are invertible. Hence $`\tau `$ is antilinear and invertible. We can easily establish the Hermiticity of $`\tau `$ using the following simple calculation.

$$\tau ^{}=e^{i\alpha ^{}(x)}T^{}=e^{i\alpha ^{}(x)}T=Te^{i\alpha (x)}=\tau ,$$

where we have used $`T^{}=T`$ and that for every function $`f:`$,

$$Tf(x)T=f^{}(x).$$
(4)
$`\mathrm{}`$
* Theorem: Every Hamiltonian of the form (3) is anti-pseudo-Hermitian with respect to

$$\tau :=Te^{2i_0^xA(x^{})𝑑x^{}}.$$
(5)
* Proof: First recall the identities

$$e^{i\alpha (x)}pe^{i\alpha (x)}=p+_x\alpha (x),e^{i\alpha (x)}xe^{i\alpha (x)}=x,$$

which are valid for every differentiable function $`\alpha :`$. Now let $`\alpha (x):=2_0^xA(x^{})𝑑x^{}`$ and note that for every function $`f:`$,

$$Tf(p)T=f(p)^{}.$$
(6)
Then,

$`\tau H^{}\tau ^1`$ $`=`$ $`Te^{i\alpha (x)}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}[pA(x)]^2+V(x)\right]e^{i\alpha (x)}T`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}T[p_x\alpha (x)A(x)]^2T+V^{}(x)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}T[p+A(x)]^2T+V^{}(x)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}[p+A^{}(x)]^2+V^{}(x)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}[pA^{}(x)]^2+V^{}(x)`$
$`=`$ $`H^{{}_{}{}^{}}.`$
$`\mathrm{}`$
* Corollary 1: For every $`PT`$-symmetric Hamiltonian $`H^{}`$ of the form (3),

$$\eta :=e^{2i_0^xA^{}(x^{})𝑑x^{}}P$$
(8)
is a linear, Hermitian, invertible operator with respect to which $`H^{}`$ is pseudo-Hermitian.
* Proof: $`\eta `$ is the product of two linear invertible operators, so it is linear and invertible. In order to establish the Hermiticity of $`\eta `$, we first note that the $`PT`$-symmetry of $`H^{}`$,

$$(PT)H^{}(PT)=H^{},$$
(9)
demands

$$A_r(x)=A_r(x),A_i(x)=A_i(x),V_r(x)=V_r(x),V_i(x)=V_i(x),$$
(10)
where the subscripts ‘r’ and ‘i’ respectively denote the real and imaginary parts of the corresponding quantity. Now, in view of (10),

$`\eta ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`Pe^{2i_0^xA(x^{})𝑑x^{}}`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2i_0^xA(x^{})𝑑x^{}}P`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2i_0^xA(x^{})𝑑x^{}}P`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2_0^x[iA_r(x^{})A_i(x^{})]𝑑x^{}}P`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2_0^x[iA_r(x^{})+A_i(x^{})]𝑑x^{}}P`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2i_0^xA^{}(x^{})𝑑x^{}}P`$
$`=`$ $`\eta ,`$
where we used $`P^{}=P`$ and that for every $`f:`$,

$$Pf(x)P=f(x).$$
(11)
Next, we recall from  that the $`PT`$-symmetry (9) and anti-pseudo-Hermiticity (7) with respect to $`\tau `$ imply pseudo-Hermiticity with respect to $`\tau PT`$. But it is an easy exercise to check that indeed $`\tau PT`$ with $`\tau `$ given in (5) coincides with $`\eta `$ given in (8). $`\mathrm{}`$
* Corollary 2: Every Hermitian Hamiltonian $`H^{}`$ of the form (3) admits an antilinear symmetry generated by (5).
* Proof: For a Hermitian Hamiltonian $`H^{}`$, Equation (7) implies $`[\tau ,H]=0`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

Note that for a Hermitian Hamiltonian $`H^{}`$ with a vanishing vector potential $`A(x)`$, $`\tau =T`$. This is consistent with the well-known fact that in this case $`H^{}`$ is time-reversal invariant. The importance of Corollary 2 is that even when $`A(x)0`$, $`H^{}`$ admits an antilinear symmetry. In view of the results of  this is a general property of arbitrary Hermitian Hamiltonians. It may be viewed as a nonrelativistic analog of the $`CPT`$ theorem.

In summary, we have given an explicit demonstration of the fact that the standard (not-necessarily Hermitian) Hamiltonians (3) are anti-pseudo-Hermitian. We used this result to establish the claim that for a standard quantum system with a real degree of freedom $`PT`$-symmetry is a special case of pseudo-Hermiticity. We wish to emphasize that the results of this paper do not rely on the assumption of the diagonalizability (equivalently the existence of a complete biorthonormal system of ‘energy’ eigenvectors) of the Hamiltonian or discreteness of its spectrum, and in this sense improve those of . However, we wish to also note that our findings were obtained under the assumption that the configuration space of the system is the real line. This assumption is not valid for all the $`PT`$-symmetric systems considered in the literature. The next natural step in our study of the relation between pseudo-Hermiticity and $`PT`$-symmetry is to try to generalize the results of this paper to systems with a complex configuration space.

This project was supported by the Young Researcher Award Program (GEBIP) of the Turkish Academy of Sciences. I would like to thank M. Znojil for many illuminating discussions.


text:
# The controversial piston in the thermodynamic limit

## Abstract

We consider the evolution of a system composed of $`N`$ non-interacting point particles of mass $`m`$ in a container divided in two regions by a movable adiabatic wall (adiabatic piston). In this talk we discuss the thermodynamic limit where the area $`A`$ of the container , the number $`N`$ of particles, and the mass $`M`$ of the piston go to infinity keeping $`\frac{A}{M}`$ and $`\frac{N}{M}`$ fixed. We show that in this limit the motion of the piston is deterministic. Introducing simplifying assumptions we discuss the approach to equilibrium and we illustrate the results with numerical simulations. The comparison with the case of a system with finite $`(A,N,M)`$ will be presented.
PACS: 05.20 Dd; 05.40.+j; 05.70.Ln; 02.50.+s

Keywords: Liouville equation, adiabatic, piston, mechanical equilibrium, thermal equilibrium, damping.

## 1 Introduction

The ”adiabatic piston” is a well known problem in thermodynamics. Two gases enclosed in a cylinder are separated by an adiabatic movable piston. Initially the piston is at rest at the position $`X_0`$ and the two gases on the left $`()`$ and on the right $`(+)`$ of the piston are in thermal equilibrium with pressure $`p^\pm `$ and temperature $`T^\pm `$. At time $`t=0`$ the piston is let free to move and the problem is to find the final equilibrium state, $`i.e.`$ the position $`X_f`$ of the piston and the state $`(p_f^\pm ,T_f^\pm )`$ of the two gases $`(fig.1.a)`$.

figure 1: (a) The adiabatic piston, (b) The simple piston

Experimentally the ”adiabatic piston” has been used before $`1940`$ , to measure the ratio $`\gamma =\frac{c_p}{c_v}`$ of gases. From $`1929`$ until today this ratio has been mesured  by observing the damped ”harmonic” motion of a simple piston under a constant external force $`(fig.1.b)`$. The main result of the recent experiments is that one should distinguish between two regimes, corresponding to weak and strong damping with very different properties, $`e.g.`$

* for weak damping the frequency of oscillations is close to the values computed assuming adiabatic oscillations.
* for strong damping, and small enough amplitudes, the frequency correspond to isothermal oscillations.

Since $`1963`$ the adiabatic piston became a controversial conceptual problem because it led to the conclusion that the two laws of thermostatics are not sufficient to yield the final state $`[3]`$. In fact one is forced to solve the equations obtained from thermodynamics to find the final state $`[4]`$.

In $`1998`$ we started to investigate this problem using a very simple microscopical model \[$`58`$\]. The system consists of $`N`$ point particles of mass $`m`$ in a cylinder of length $`L`$ and cross section $`A`$. The cylinder is divided into two compartments, containing respectively $`N_{}`$ and $`N_+`$ particles $`(N=N_{}+N_+)`$, by an ”adiabatic piston” of mass $`Mm`$ orthogonal to the $`x`$-axis, $`i.e.`$ a wall with no internal degrees of freedom $`(fig.1.a)`$. Initially the piston is fixed and the two gases are in thermal equilibrium. At time $`t=0`$ the piston is released and moves without friction, along the $`x`$-axis under the colisions with the gas particles. It is assumed that the gas particles move with constant velocity, except for purely elastic collisions on the boundaries of the cylinder and on the piston. The system is isolated and thus the energy $`E`$ is conserved.

Since the components of the particles velocities perpendicular to the piston play no role in the dynamic of the piston we assume that all the particles have velocities parallel to the $`x`$-axis and all distribution functions are independent of the transverse coordinates. Therefore if $`v`$ and $`V`$ denote the velocities of a particle and the piston before a collision, then under the collision

$`vv^{}=`$ $`2Vv+\alpha (vV)VV^{}=V+\alpha (vV)`$ (1)
$`\text{where}\alpha =`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{M+m}}`$ (2)
## 2 Numerical Results

A systematic study of the time evolution of this model using numerical simulations have led to the conclusion that the evolution of the piston proceed essentially in two stages with totally different properties and time scales $`[58]`$.

1. In a first stage caracterised by a time scale of order $`\tau _1=L\sqrt{\frac{M}{E_0}}`$ the evolution $`X(t)`$ of the piston has the following properties $`(fig.2)`$

1. It is deterministic
    2. Let $`R_\pm =m{\displaystyle \frac{N_\pm }{M}}`$. For fixed $`R_\pm `$, the evolution is independant of $`M`$ for $`M`$ large enough ($`e.g.M>10^4m`$). Moreover

    * if $`R_\pm <4`$, the damping is weak. The frequency of oscillations and the damping coefficient increase with $`R_\pm `$.
        * if $`R_\pm >10`$, the damping is strong. The evolution is independant of $`N_\pm `$ and $`M`$.
    3. The system evolves adiabatically ($`i.e.`$ without heat transfer through the piston) toward a state of ”mechanical equilibrium”, where the pressure are equal $`p^+=p^{}=p_f`$, but the temperature different. In particular the temperature of the gas increases under compression.
2. In a second stage, caracterised by a time scale of order $`\tau _2=\frac{M}{m}\tau _1`$, which is very large if one considers realistic numbers, the evolution $`X(t)`$ is caracterised by $`(fig.3)`$

1. It is stochastic, with pressures $`p^\pm `$ fluctuating around $`p_f`$.
    2. It depends strongly on $`M`$, but not on $`N_\pm `$. More precisely the following scaling relation is observed $`X_M(t)=X(t/M)`$ where $`X(t)`$ is independant of $`M`$ and $`N_\pm `$.
    3. The system evolves with transfer of heat through the piston toward a state of ”thermal equilibrium” where $`p^+=p^{}`$ and $`T^+=T^{}`$.

    In particular in this stage the temperature of the gas decreases under compression.

Let us remark that some time after ”mechanical” or ”thermal” equilibrium is reached, the piston starts oscillations which then disappear in time $`(fig.2)`$. These oscillations reflect the fact that the velocity distributions of the gases are not maxwellian and they will be responsible for the approach to thermalisation with maxwellian distribution of velocities (see also $`[10]`$ were similar results have been obtained).

## 3 Thermodynamic limit

Although the second stage is qualitatively understood and rather well described by Boltzmann Equation $`[8]`$ (see $`fig3.b`$), the same is not true for the first stage. To gain insight into truly adiabatic evolution, one can either study the simple piston $`(fig.1.b)`$ where no heat is involved $`[9]`$, or consider the adiabatic piston in the thermodynamic limit $`[7]`$ where $`A\mathrm{},N_\pm \mathrm{},M\mathrm{}`$ with fixed values for

$`L,R_\pm =m{\displaystyle \frac{N_\pm }{M}},\text{and}\gamma =2m{\displaystyle \frac{A}{M+m}}`$ (3)
In this section we shall presents this second approach to the study of adiabatic evolution. Let us first consider a finite system, $`i.e.A,N_\pm ,M`$ are all finite. We start from the Liouville Equation on the complete phase space for $`N`$ particles and the piston,with the dynamics defined by the elastic collisions (on the boundaries of the cylinder and the piston). Integrating Liouville equations over all variables except one we obtain the equations for the one-particle distributions of the left and right particles $`\rho ^\pm (x,v;t)`$ and of the piston $`\mathrm{\Psi }(X,V;t)`$. It involves the two-particle distribution function $`\rho _{\pm ,p}(x,v;X,V;t)`$ for one particle and the piston:

$`(_t+v_x)\rho ^{}(x,v;t)=`$ $`\delta (x+L/2)v\rho ^{}(x,v;t)+I^{}`$ (4)
$`(_t+v_x)\rho ^+(x,v;t)=`$ $`\delta (xL/2)v\rho ^+(x,v;t)+I^+`$ (5)
$`_t\varphi (V;t)=`$ $`I`$ (6)
$`\text{where }\varphi (V;t)={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}}𝑑X\mathrm{\Psi }(X,V;t)`$ (7)
$`I^{}(x,v;t)`$ $`={\displaystyle _v^+\mathrm{}}𝑑V(Vv)\rho _{,p}(x,v^{};x,V^{};t){\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^v}𝑑V(vV)\rho _{,p}(x,v;x,V;t)`$
$`I^+(x,v;t)`$ $`={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^v}𝑑V(vV)\rho _{+,p}(x,v^{};x,V^{};t){\displaystyle _v^+\mathrm{}}𝑑V(Vv)\rho _{+,p}(x,v;x,V;t)`$
$`I(V;t)`$ $`=A\{{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^V}dv(Vv)[\rho _{surf}^{}(v^{},V^{};t)\rho _{surf}^+(v,V;t)]`$
$`+{\displaystyle _V^+\mathrm{}}dv(vV)[\rho _{surf}^+(v^{},V^{};t)\rho _{surf}^+(v,V;t)]\}`$
$`\text{and }\rho _{surf}^\pm (v;V;t)={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}}𝑑x\rho _{\pm ,p}(x,v;x,V;t).`$ (8)
In the thermodynamic limit $`\alpha =\frac{2m}{M+m}`$ is zero, and $`Eq.6`$ can be written as

$`_t\varphi (V;t)=\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{}{_V}}\left\{{\displaystyle _V^+\mathrm{}}𝑑v(vV)^2\rho _{surf}^{}(v,V;t){\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^V}𝑑v(vV)^2\rho _{surf}^+(v,V;t)\right\}.`$ (9)
With the initial conditions we have considered one can show that the solution is

$`\mathrm{\Psi }(X,V;t)`$ $`=\delta (XX(t))\delta (VV(t))`$ (10)
$`\text{where}\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{d}{dt}X=V\hfill \\ \frac{d}{dt}V=2m\frac{A}{M}\left[F_2^{}(V;t)F_2^+(V;t)\right]\hfill \end{array}`$ (13)
$`F_2^{}(V;t)={\displaystyle _V^+\mathrm{}}𝑑v(vV)^2\rho _{surf}^{}(v;t)F_2^+(V;t)={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^V}𝑑v(vV)^2\rho _{surf}^+(v;t)`$
$`\rho _{\pm ,p}(x,v;X,V;t)=`$ $`\rho ^\pm (x,v;t)\mathrm{\Psi }(X,V;t)`$ (14)
$`\rho _{surf}^\pm (v;V;t)=`$ $`\rho ^\pm (X(t),v;t)\delta (VV(t))=\rho _{surf}^\pm (v;t)\delta (VV(t))`$ (15)
In conclusion in the thermodynamic limit $`M\mathrm{}`$, the evolution of the piston is deterministic given by the coupled equations $`45`$, $`1016`$. $`Eq.13`$ can be written in the form

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}V={\displaystyle \frac{A}{M}}(p^{}p^+)(\lambda ^+(V)+\lambda ^{}(V))V`$ (16)
where $`p^\pm `$ represent the pressure exerted by the particles which are going to hit the piston and $`\lambda ^\pm (V)`$ are strictly positive functions which represent the friction coefficients:

$`p^+p^{}=2m{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑v\rho _{surf}^+(v;t)v^22m{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^0}𝑑v\rho _{surf}^{}(v;t)v^2`$ (17)
and

$`\lambda ^\pm (V)=\pm {\displaystyle \frac{2}{V}}m{\displaystyle \frac{A}{M}}\left[F_2^\pm (V)F_2^\pm (0)\right]`$ (18)
Similary introducing the energy per unit area of the left/right compartment,

$`e^\pm (t)={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}}𝑑v\rho ^\pm (v;t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}mv^2,\rho ^\pm (v;t)={\displaystyle 𝑑x\rho ^\pm (x,v;t)}`$
we obtain

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}e^\pm =\pm 2mF_2^\pm (V)V`$
which shows that the change in the energy of the gases is entirely due to the work done by the piston: the evolution is therefore adiabatic in the thermodynamic limit.

## 4 Infinite cylinder $`(L=\mathrm{})`$ and thermodynamic limit $`(M=\mathrm{})`$

If the cylinder is infinite and if the initial conditions are such that $`|p^{}p^+|`$ is sufficiently small, we can expect that the recollisions of particles on the piston will be negligible. In that case the functions $`F_2^\pm (V)`$ will be independant of $`t`$. Therefore the piston will evolve monotonically to the stationary state with constant velocity $`\overline{V}`$ solution of

$`{\displaystyle _{\overline{V}}^+\mathrm{}}𝑑v\rho ^{}(v)(v\overline{V})^2={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\overline{V}}}𝑑v\rho ^+(v)(v\overline{V})^2`$ (19)
and the approach to the stationnary state is exponentially fast with time constant $`\tau _0=\frac{1}{\lambda }`$, where $`\lambda \lambda ^+(V=0)+\lambda ^{}(V=0)`$. Moreover the stationnary velocity does depend on the value $`\frac{M}{A}`$, and the time necessary to reach this stationnary state is proportionnal to $`\left(m\frac{N}{M}\right)^1`$.

## 5 Thermodynamic limit for the piston $`(M=\mathrm{})`$, but cylinder with finite length $`(L<\mathrm{})`$

In this section, to simplify the notation, we take $`N_+=N_{}=\overline{N}`$ and $`R=m\frac{\overline{N}}{M}`$. In the case of a finite cylinder, recollisions of particles on the piston imply that $`\rho _{surf}^\pm (v;t)`$ depend explicitly on time and we have thus to study the complete set of coupled equations.

We remark first that if the friction coefficient $`\lambda `$ is sufficiently large the piston will reach almost immediately the constant velocity $`\overline{V}`$ given by $`(20)`$ and this uniform motion should proceeed until the induced ”shock wave” reaches the boundary. This expected result is well confirmed by the numerical simulations for $`R=m\frac{\overline{N}}{M}`$ larger than $`4`$ ($`fig.2a`$) .

Since we can not solve the complete set of coupled equations we restrict ourselves to a qualitative discussion. If $`p^+=p^{}`$ then $`X(t)=X_0`$ (recall that $`(M=\mathrm{})`$). Therefore if the initial conditions are such that $`|p^+p^{}|`$ is small, we expect that $`|X(t)X_0|1`$ and we introduce the following assumption

$`\rho _{surf}^{}(t)`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{N_{}}{A}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{X(t)}}=\rho ^{}(t);`$ $`\rho _{surf}^+(t)\left({\displaystyle \frac{N_+}{A}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{LX(t)}}=\rho ^+(t)`$
$`p^{}(t)`$ $`2e^{}(t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{X(t)}}=\rho ^{}(t)k_BT^{}(t);`$ $`p^+(t)2e^+(t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{LX(t)}}=\rho ^+(t)k_BT^+(t)`$
Moreover since $`|V|`$ is small we replace the friction coefficients $`\lambda ^\pm (V)`$ by $`\lambda ^\pm (0)`$ computed from maxwellian distributions, $`i.e.`$

$`\lambda ^\pm ={\displaystyle \frac{A}{M}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{8}{\pi }}k_Bm}\rho ^\pm \sqrt{T^\pm }`$ (20)
With these approximations we have two constants of the motion

$`T^{}+T^++{\displaystyle \frac{2}{k_BR}}V^2=2T_0`$ (21)
$`\sqrt{T^{}}X\sqrt{T^+}(LX)=C.`$ (22)
We can thus find the equilibrium point, which is independant of $`\overline{N}`$ and $`M`$:

$`\{\begin{array}{c}\sqrt{X_f^3}\sqrt{(LX_f)^3}=\sqrt{\frac{L}{2T_0}}C\hfill \\ T_f^{}=2T_0{\displaystyle \frac{X_f}{L}}\hfill \\ T_f^+=2T_0(1{\displaystyle \frac{X_f}{L}})\hfill \end{array}`$ (26)
Finally linearising the equations around the equilibrium point yield

$`\ddot{x}=`$ $`w_0^2x\lambda \dot{x}`$ (27)
$`w_0^2=`$ $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6}R{\displaystyle \frac{k_BT_0}{X_f(LX_f)}}`$ (28)
$`\lambda =`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{R}{\pi }}}\left[\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{X_f}{L}}}+\sqrt{1{\displaystyle \frac{X_f}{L}}}\right]w_0`$ (29)
The evolution is thus weakly damped if

$`R<R_{max}={\displaystyle \frac{3\pi }{2}}\left[\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{X_f}{L}}}+\sqrt{1{\displaystyle \frac{X_f}{L}}}\right]`$
$`\text{with period}\tau ={\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{w_0}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1\frac{R}{R_{max}}}}}`$ (30)
It is interesting to remark that $`w_0`$ coincide with the frequency for adiabatic oscillations $`[2]`$

## 6 Conclusions

Numerical simulations have shown that strictly adiabatic evolution can be obtained only in the thermodynamic limit for the piston. The study of a simple microscopical model has shown that in this limit the evolution of the piston is deterministic, caracterised by two regimes,weak and strong damping depending on whether $`R=\frac{M_{gas}}{M}`$ is small or large. For weak damping the frequency of oscillations coincide with the values obtained in numerical simulations. However the predicted value for damping is larger than the simulations by several orders of magnitude. For strong damping the initial uniform motion coincide with the simulation with the correct value for the friction coefficient.
Using simplifying assumptions we obtained equations for the final equilibrium state in agreement with the numerical simulations; moreover one can show that the entropy of both gases increase in time, in agreement with the second law for adiabatic evolution.
Finally it should be stressed that the adiabatic evolution that we have discussed is strictly hamiltonian, however in all cases we obtain a damping mechanism. This damping mechanism is still not well understood and the question of whether one can predict the final equilibrium state from fundamental principles remain an open problem.

## Acknowledgment

This paper is dedicated to H. Eugene Stanley in honor of his $`60^{th}`$ birthday. We are grateful to the ”Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique” for his financial support of this project.