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# On the Association of Gamma–ray Bursts with Massive Stars: Implications for Number Counts and Lensing Statistics

## 1. Introduction

The Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) has detected thousands of gamma–ray bursts (GRBs) since 1991 (Paciesas et al. 1999). The distribution of BATSE bursts on the sky is isotropic, while the intensity distribution shows a clear deficiency of faint events relative to a uniform population of sources in Euclidean space (Meegan et al. 1992). Both these results provided the first clear indication for a cosmological origin of GRBs. The discovery of X–ray (Costa et al. 1997) and optical (van Paradijis et al. 1997) afterglows has permitted to firmly establish the cosmological nature of these events.

From a theoretical perspective, the physical origin of GRBs is still uncertain. Few known phenomena can release a suitable amount of energy to trigger such a powerful event, and most models associate GRBs either with merging neutron stars or with the death of massive stars. Recent observations have provided some evidence that GRBs are related to star forming regions (Paczyński 1998; Fruchter et al. 1999), and perhaps to some type of supernova explosion (Galama et al. 1998). If the violent death of massive stars (whose lifetimes are much shorter than the expansion timescale at the redshifts of interest) is somehow at the origin of the GRB phenomenon, then the rate of events per unit cosmological volume should be an unbiased tracer – unaffected by dust obscuration and surface brightness limits – of the global star formation history of the universe. It has been pointed out by many authors (Lamb & Reichart 2000; Blain & Natarajan 2000; Totani 1997, 1999; Krumholz, Thorsett, & Harrison 1999; Lloyd & Petrosian 1999; Wijers et al. 1998; Sahu et al. 1997) that standard statistical analyses of GRBs and their afterglows could then be used to derive additional constraints on the evolution of the stellar birthrate (SFR), and to gain further insight on the nature of these events.

In this paper we study the expected cosmological distribution of GRBs in the massive star progenitor scenario, identify some uncertanties in the data and in their interpretation, and discuss future observations for addressing them. We show that the brightness distribution of the BATSE bursts can be well reproduced by assuming a proportionality between the GRB rate density and observationally–based SFR estimates, once the standard candle hypothesis is relaxed (cf. Totani 1999). By itself, the bursts number–flux relation cannot discriminate between different plausible star formation histories (see Krumholz et al. 1998) since, given a SFR and assuming a functional form for the intrinsic luminosity function of GRBs, the values of free parameters can always be optimized to reproduce the observed number counts. On the other hand, quantities which reflect the redshift distribution of the bursts (like, e.g., the ratio between the average durations of bright and faint events) do depend on the underlying SFR and could be used as discriminants. With this problem in mind we also reassess the detectability of multiply–imaged GRBs due to the strong lensing effect of foreground mass concentrations (Paczyński 1986; Mao 1992). Events associated with galaxy (cluster) lenses will produce images with typical angular separations of a few ($`20`$) arcseconds and time delays of the order of weeks or months (years). Multiply–imaged bursts cannot be spatially resolved by present–day gamma–ray detectors and will appear as ‘mirror’ or recurrent events – same location on the sky, identical spectra and light curves – at different times and with different intensities. While a number of strongly lensed individual bursts could be detected by Swift, the restricted sky coverage makes the probability of observing a lensed pair rather small.

## 2. log $`N`$–log $`P`$ distribution

The photon flux (in units of $`\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) observed at Earth in the energy band $`E_{\mathrm{min}}<E<E_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and emitted by an isotropically radiating source at redshift $`z`$ is

$$P=\frac{(1+z){\displaystyle _{(1+z)E_{\mathrm{min}}}^{(1+z)E_{\mathrm{max}}}}S(E)𝑑E}{4\pi d_\mathrm{L}^2(z)},$$
(1)
where $`S(E)`$ is the differential rest–frame photon luminosity of the source (in units of s$`^1`$ keV-1), and $`d_L(z)`$ is the standard luminosity distance for a Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) metric. It is customary to define an ‘isotropic equivalent’ burst luminosity in the energy band 30–2000 keV as $`L=_{30\mathrm{keV}}^{2000\mathrm{keV}}ES(E)𝑑E`$. If we denote with $`\psi (L)`$ the GRB luminosity function (normalized to unity), then the observed rate of bursts with observed peak fluxes in the interval $`(P_1,P_2)`$ is

$$\frac{dN}{dt}(P_1P<P_2)=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑z\frac{dV(z)}{dz}\frac{R_{\mathrm{GRB}}(z)}{1+z}_{L(P_1,z)}^{L(P_2,z)}𝑑L^{}\psi (L^{})ϵ(P),$$
(2)
where $`dV/dz`$ is the comoving volume element, $`R_{\mathrm{GRB}}(z)`$ is the comoving GRB rate density, $`ϵ(P)`$ is the detector efficiency as a function of photon flux, and the factor $`(1+z)^1`$ accounts for cosmological time dilation. If the geometry of the universe is FRW on large scales, then

$$\frac{dV}{dz}=\frac{c}{H_0}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_sd_L^2(z)}{(1+z)^2[\mathrm{\Omega }_M(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_K(1+z)^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }]^{1/2}},$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_s`$ is the solid angle covered on the sky by the survey, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_K=1\mathrm{\Omega }_M\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the curvature contribution to the present density parameter. Unless otherwise stated, we shall assume in the following a vacuum–dominated cosmology with density parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, and a Hubble constant $`H_0=65h_{65}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$.

## 3. Star formation history

Our starting hypothesis is that the rate of GRBs traces the global star formation history of the universe, $`R_{\mathrm{GRB}}(z)R_{\mathrm{SF}}(z)R_{\mathrm{SN}}(z)`$, with $`R_{\mathrm{SF}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{SN}}`$ the comoving rate densities of star formation and core–collapse (Type II) supernovae, respectively. The constant of proportionality, $`kR_{\mathrm{SN}}/R_{\mathrm{GRB}}`$, is a free–parameter of the model. Popular scenarios for GRBs include merging neutron stars (Paczyński 1986) or the formation of black holes in supernova–like events (‘collapsars’, MacFadyen & Woosley 1999). The key idea here is to assume that GRBs are produced by stellar systems which evolve rapidly – by cosmological standards – from their formation to the explosion epoch. This would not be true at high redshift in the case of coalescing neutron stars, which have a median merger time of 100 Myr according to the recent population synthesis study of Bloom, Sigurdsson, & Pols (1999).

A number of workers have modelled the expected evolution of the cosmic SFR with redshift. Most have followed a similar route to that employed by Madau et al. (1996), who based their estimates on the observed (rest–frame) UV luminosity density of the galaxy population as a whole. Using various diagnostics, the cosmic SFR can now be traced to $`z4`$, although some details remain controversial. We use here three different parameterizations (shown in Figure 1) of the global star formation rate per unit comoving volume in an Einstein–de Sitter universe (EdS). The first (hereafter SF1) is taken from Madau & Pozzetti (2000):

$$R_{\mathrm{SF1}}(z)=0.3h_{65}\frac{\mathrm{exp}(3.4z)}{\mathrm{exp}(3.8z)+45}\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3.$$
(4)
This star formation history matches most measured UV–continuum and H$`\alpha `$ luminosity densities, and includes an upward correction for dust reddening of $`A_{1500}=1.2`$ mag. The SFR increases rapidly between $`z=0`$ and $`z=1`$, peaks between $`z=1`$ and 2, and gently declines at higher redshifts. Because of the uncertainties associated with the incompleteness of the data sets and the amount of dust extinction at early epochs, we consider a second scenario in which the SFR remains instead roughly constant at $`z\mathrm{}>2`$ (Steidel et al. 1999),

$$R_{\mathrm{SF2}}(z)=0.15h_{65}\frac{\mathrm{exp}(3.4z)}{\mathrm{exp}(3.4z)+22}\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3$$
(5)
(SF2). Some recent studies have suggested that the evolution of the SFR up to $`z1`$ may have been overestimated (e.g. Cowie, Songaila, & Barger 1999), while the rates at high–$`z`$ may have been severely underestimated due to large amounts of dust extinction (e.g. Blain et al. 1999). We then consider a third SFR,

$$R_{\mathrm{SF3}}(z)=0.2h_{65}\frac{\mathrm{exp}(3.05z0.4)}{\mathrm{exp}(2.93z)+15}\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3$$
(6)
(SF3), with more star formation at early epochs. In every case we adopt a Salpeter initial mass function (IMF) – assumed to remain constant with time – with a lower cutoff around $`0.5M_{}`$ (Madau & Pozzetti 2000), consistent with observations of M subdwarf disk stars (Gould, Bahcall, & Flynn 1996). A constant multiplicative factor of 1.67 will convert the SFR to a Salpeter IMF with a cutoff of $`0.1M_{}`$. To include the effect of a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$–dominated cosmology we have computed the difference in luminosity density between an EdS and a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ universe, and applied this correction to the SFR above (see Appendix A for details). Assuming that all stars with masses $`M>8\mathrm{M}_{}`$ explode as core–collapse supernovae (SNe), the SN II rate density $`R_{\mathrm{SN}}(z)`$ can then be estimated by multiplying the selected SFR by the coefficient

$$\frac{_8^{125}𝑑m\varphi (m)}{_0^{125}𝑑mm\varphi (m)}=0.0122\mathrm{M}_{}^1,$$
(7)
where $`\varphi (m)`$ is the IMF and $`m`$ the stellar mass in solar units. The resulting rates agree within the errors with the locally observed value of $`R_{\mathrm{SN}}=(1.1\pm 0.4)\times 10^4h_{65}^3\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ (e.g. Madau, della Valle, & Panagia 1998 and references therein).

## 4. Luminosity function

The observed fluxes from GRBs with secure redshifts rule out the classical standard candle hypothesis (see Table 1 of Lamb & Reichart 2000 and references therein): the inferred ‘isotropic–equivalent’ photon luminosities at peak vary by about a factor of 50, with a mean value of $`3.8h_{65}^2\times 10^{58}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The data are too sparse, however, for an empirical determination of the burst luminosity function, $`\psi (L)`$. To model the number counts we then simply assume that the burst luminosity distribution does not evolve with redshift and adopt a simple functional form for $`\psi (L)`$,

$$\psi (L)=C\left(\frac{L}{L_0}\right)^\gamma \mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{L_0}{L}\right),$$
(8)
where $`L`$ denotes the peak luminosity in the 30–2000 keV energy range (rest–frame), $`\gamma `$ is the asymptotic slope at the bright end, $`L_0`$ marks a characteristic cutoff scale, and the constant $`C=[L_0\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma 1)]^1`$ (for $`\gamma <1`$) ensures a proper normalization $`_0^{\mathrm{}}\psi (L)𝑑L=1`$.

## 5. Photon spectrum

To describe the typical burst spectrum we adopt the functional form empirically proposed by Band et al. (1993):

$$S(E)=A\times \{\begin{array}{cc}\left(\frac{E}{100\mathrm{keV}}\right)^\alpha \mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{E(\beta \alpha )}{E_b}\right]\hfill & \text{if }E<E_b;\hfill \\ \left(\frac{E_b}{100\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{\alpha \beta }\mathrm{exp}(\beta \alpha )\left(\frac{E}{100\mathrm{keV}}\right)^\beta \hfill & \text{if }EE_b.\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)
For simplicity, the low and high energy spectral indices, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, have been assigned the values of $`1`$ and $`2.25`$, respectively, for all bursts. These are the mean values recently measured by Preece et al. (2000) for a large collection of bright BATSE events. The assumed characteristic energy of the spectral break is $`E_b=511`$ keV. Note that the method introduced by Fenimore & Bloom (1995) to account for the spectral diversity of bursts by averaging the number counts over the spectral catalog by Band et al. (1993) cannot be rigorously applied when the standard candle hypothesis is relaxed. We have checked, a posteriori, the stability of our results with respect to small variations of the spectral parameters. This issue is briefly discussed in the next session.

## 6. Comparison with the data

To calibrate and test our models against the observed number counts we have used the off–line BATSE sample of Kommers et al. (2000), which includes 1998 archival BATSE (“triggered” plus “non–triggered”) bursts in the energy band 50–300 keV. The efficiency of this off–line search is well–described by the function $`ϵ(P)=0.5[(1+\mathrm{erf}(4.801+29.868P)]`$ (Kommers et al. 2000).

We have optimized the value of our three free parameters, $`k,\gamma `$ and $`L_0`$, by $`\chi ^2`$ minimization over 25 peak flux intervals (see Table 2 in Kommers et al. 2000). In Figure 2 we show the best–fitting results for the three different star formation histories considered. The observed number counts have been converted into rates per unit time per unit solid angle by estimating the effective live time of the searches and their field of view following Kommers et al. (2000). Assuming a normal distribution for the errors, we can relate confidence levels to value intervals for the free parameters. Table 1 gives the chi–square of the best–fitting models, $`\chi _\mathrm{B}^2`$, the ranges corresponding to the $`68\%`$ confidence level for the parameters that determine the luminosity function ($`\gamma `$ and $`L_0`$), and the expected number of core–collapse supernovae per BATSE burst, $`k_\mathrm{B}`$.

The overall quality of the best–fit decreases when the star formation rate at high redshift is increased, i.e. as the models start predicting too many bursts to be consistent with the faintest off–line BATSE counts: the minimum $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom is $`18.5/22=0.84`$ for $`R_{\mathrm{SF1}}`$, $`20.9/22=0.95`$ for $`R_{\mathrm{SR2}}`$, and $`23.2/22=1.05`$ for $`R_{\mathrm{SF3}}`$.

Strong covariance of $`\gamma `$ and $`L_0`$ is observed in the region of parameter space surrounding the best–fitting values. When the slope of the high–luminosity tail of the $`\psi (L)`$ is increased, one has to correspondingly raise the value of the cutoff luminosity to prevent a strong $`\chi ^2`$ increment: this means that our models need the presence of relatively high–luminosity events to reproduce the data. Luminosity intervals corresponding to $`90\%`$ of the bursts (obtained excluding the $`5\%`$ tails on both sides) are given in Table 2. The average ($`L`$), median ($`L_{50}`$), and mode ($`L_+`$) of the distributions are also given 111Note that $`L^n=L_0^n\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma n1)/\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma 1)`$ if $`\gamma <(n+1)`$, and diverges otherwise.. The derived rate of GRBs at the present epoch ranges from $`(0.181\pm 0.008)h_{65}^1\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Gpc}^3`$ (SF1) down to $`(0.133_{0.009}^{+0.006})h_{65}^1\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Gpc}^3`$ (SF2) and $`(0.125_{0.006}^{+0.008})h_{65}^1\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Gpc}^3`$ (SF3). The best–fit values for $`\gamma `$ and $`L_0`$ are found to be rather insensitive to $`20\%`$ variations in the spectral parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`E_0`$. The cutoff scale of the luminosity function, however, depends more sensitively on the assumed value of the high–energy spectral index $`\beta `$ (this is especially true for $`\beta >2.25`$). For example, for SF1 and $`\beta =2.0`$, the best–fitting parameters become $`L_0=3.7_{0.8}^{+1.0}`$ and $`\gamma =2.5\pm 0.2`$.

It is of interest to compare the properties of the luminosity functions that provide the best–fit for each star formation rate. As expected, to balance the effect of cosmic expansion, the typical burst luminosity increases in models with larger amounts of star formation at early epochs (see Table 2). Moreover, changing from SF1 to SF3, the luminosity function broadens, becoming less and less peaked around $`L_+`$, while the slope of the luminosity function in the range $`L_+\mathrm{}<L\mathrm{}<L_{95}`$, $`\gamma _{\mathrm{eff}}`$, remains the same in all the models, $`\gamma _{\mathrm{eff}}2.3`$. An increase in the amount of star–formation at high redshifts requires a steeper high–luminosity tail of $`\psi (L)`$. Regrettably, since the number of GRBs with known redshift is very small, it is not yet possible to use observational data to discriminate among different luminosity functions (see below, however, for a comparison between the redshift distributions of bursts predicted by our models as a function of measured peak flux, and the available data).

To test our models against observations of very bright and rare bursts we have also used the number counts accumulated by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) at $`20<P<1000\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ in the 100–500 keV band (see Table 2 in Fenimore & Bloom 1995). Since no threshold effects are expected in the PVO detection of such bright events, we set $`ϵ(P)=1`$ in equation (2) for the counts. By combining PVO and BATSE data we should be able to test our models over about 3.5 orders of magnitudes in peak flux. We find that, while our best–fitting models for the BATSE counts have the right shape to accurately describe the PVO rates (roughly a $`3/2`$ power–law), the predicted counts need to be multiplied by a factor of $`2.53`$ to have the right normalization (see Figure 2). To better quantify this discrepancy, we have minimized the chi–square function using only PVO data (divided in 6 bins as in Fenimore & Bloom 1995), and allowing just the parameter $`k`$ to vary, while assigning to $`\gamma `$ and $`L_0`$ the values given in Table 1. The resulting minimum chi–square, $`\chi _\mathrm{P}^2`$, and the corresponding normalization constant of the GRB rate, $`k_\mathrm{P}`$, are shown in Table 1. It is possible that the PVO and off–line BATSE catalogues, using different selection criteria, may not form a homogeneous burst sample. 222Note that our models, when normalized to fit the PVO data, automatically account for the on–line BATSE counts given in Table 2 of Fenimore & Bloom (1995); these have been carefully selected to be consistent with the PVO data set. The PVO catalogue does not report the trigger time–scale for burst detection, and each light curve has been analyzed a posteriori to select only events above the detection threshold on timescales of either 0.25 s or 1 s. Kommers et al. (2000) have included only events detected on a timescale of 1.024 s: short–duration bursts may then be under–represented in the off–line BATSE sample. Alternatively, the discrepancy could be explained with the existence of a local (bright) population of GRBs. In the following we will only include long–duration bursts in our analysis and use models calibrated against archival BATSE data.

In Figure 3, the expected redshift distribution of bursts, $`d/dz(dN/dt)`$ (with $`dN/dt`$ defined in eq. 2), is plotted as a function of redshift for a number of selected luminosity intervals (the efficiency of BATSE off–line search is assumed), and two different star formation histories: SF1 (upper panels) and SF3 (lower panels). Bright events ($`P1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) are depicted in the left panels, faint bursts on the right. The peak flux intervals used by Kommers et al. (2000) (approximately evenly spaced in $`\mathrm{log}P`$) which contain at least one GRB with known redshift are considered. A similar analysis for the faint bursts ($`P<1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) is performed in the right panels. In this case, we also plot the redshift distribution of the sources corresponding to two luminosity intervals in which no afterglow redshifts have been determined. The redshifts of bursts with known optical counterparts (see Table 1 of Lamb & Reichart 2000), including GRB000301C (Smith, Hurley, & Kline 2000; Castro et al. 2000) are also shown as filled points on the curve corresponding to their observed brightness. We do not include GRB980425 in this analysis, since its association with SN 1998 bw (a Type Ic at $`z=0.0085`$) is uncertain (Pian et al. 2000). It might well be the case that GRB980425 is representative of a special class of GRBs (e.g. Bloom et al. 1998).

Note that, barring selection effects, model SF1 can reasonably account for all but the highest observed redshift ($`z=3.418`$ for GRB971214), which has a low a priori probability in all three models (cf. Schmidt 1999). The detection of relatively faint bursts at $`z1`$ (like GRB970508 and GRB980613) appears improbable in model SF3. Table 3 lists the expected average redshift of GRBs observed in three selected flux ranges: a bright sample ($`7.94<P<20\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, subscript $`b`$), an intermediate sample ($`1.0<P<2.26\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, subscript $`i`$), and a faint sample ($`0.18<P<0.20\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, subscript $`f`$). The entire interval $`0.18<P<20\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ is also considered (subscript $`t`$). The redshift distribution of GRBs has another direct observational consequence: because of cosmic expansion, faint bursts will have longer durations than bright ones, on the average. This time dilation effect is proportional to $`1+z`$. Even though observational results are still controversial, a cosmological time dilation factor of about 2 between dim and bright bursts is widely accepted for the long duration events (Norris et al. 1994, 1995; Norris 1996). The average redshifts of the bursts lying in the peak flux intervals considered by Norris et al. (1995) are also shown in Table 3. The quantities $`z_{\mathrm{Nb}}`$ and $`z_{\mathrm{Nd}}`$ refer, respectively, to their bright ($`4.21P58.28\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) and combined dim + dimmest ($`0.33P2.82\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) samples (see Table 1 in Horack, Mallozzi & Koshut 1996). Since, for both classes of GRBs, the peak flux distribution of the dataset used in the analysis of Norris et al. (1995) is strongly peaked around the mean value, we repeated our calculations considering smaller $`P`$ intervals. The quantities $`z_{\mathrm{Nb}^{}}`$ and $`z_{\mathrm{Nd}^{}}`$ are, in fact, performed over the ranges of peak flux corresponding to $`P\pm 2\sigma _P`$ (i.e. $`12.34P20.06\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ for the bright sample, and $`0.72P0.84\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ for the faint one), with $`\sigma _P`$ the standard deviation of the mean. The time dilation estimates of $`2.25`$ (Norris et al. 1995) and $`1.75`$ (Norris 1995) appear to favor scenarios in which the SFR does not decrease at high–redshift. On the other hand, SF1 is slightly preferred to the other cosmic star formation histories by the $`\mathrm{log}N\mathrm{log}P`$ analysis of the BATSE data (see the $`\chi _\mathrm{B}^2`$ values in Table 1). A recent search for non–triggered GRBs in the BATSE records (Stern et al. 2000), however, has detected many more faint bursts than the analysis by Kommers et al. (2000). The ratio between the estimated number counts can be as high as a factor of $`2`$ at $`P=0.2\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. If confirmed, a large number of faint counts would probably favor scenarios in which the star–formation rate does not substantially decrease at $`z\mathrm{}>34`$.

## 7. Gravitational lensing of GRBs

In the observable (clumpy) universe, gravitational lensing will magnify and demagnify high redshift GRBs relative to the predictions of ideal (homogeneous) reference cosmological models. A burst that goes off within the Einstein ring of a foreground mass concentration may generate multiple images at different positions on the sky. The magnitude and frequency of the effect depend on the redshift distribution of the sources, the abundance and the clustering properties of virialized clumps, the mass distribution within individual lenses, and the underlying world model. Events associated with galaxy (cluster) lenses will produce images with typical angular separations of a few ($`20`$) arcseconds, smaller than the presently achievable $`\gamma `$–ray instrumental resolution. On the other hand, GRBs are transient phenomena with durations ranging from a fraction of a second to several hundreds seconds, while the typical time delay between multiple images is of the order of weeks in the case of galaxy lensing, and years for lensing by a foreground cluster. Mirror images of the same burst will then appear as separate events with overlapping positional error boxes, identical time histories, and intensities that differ only by a scale factor. In principle, the detection of two or more images satisfying these three conditions should pinpoint a good candidate for a lensed GRB. However, temporal variation of the background signal and the presence of noise in observed light curves can make this task estremely difficult (Wambsganss 1993), and special statistical methods devised to minimize the effect of the noise must be adopted for light curve comparison (e.g. Nowak & Grossman 1994).

In this section we estimate the number of multiply–imaged GRBs expected as a function of the limiting sensitivity of the survey, and for the different star formation histories discussed in § 3. We improve upon previous calculations of GRB lensing by using more realistic models of the burst redshift and brightness distributions, and of the foreground mass concentrations. Following our previous study on high–$`z`$ supernovae (Porciani & Madau 2000), we assume that lensing events are caused by intervening dark matter halos which approximate singular isothermal spheres on galaxy scales and Navarro–Frenk–White (Navarro, Frenk, & White 1997; hereafter NFW) profiles on group/cluster scales, and are distributed in mass according to the Press–Schechter (Press & Schechter 1974; hereafter PS) theory. This model for the lens population provides a good fit to the data on QSO image separations lensing, and may originate in a scheme which includes the dissipation and cooling of the baryonic protogalactic component and the radial re–distribution of the collisionless dark matter as a consequence of baryonic infall (e.g. Keeton 1998). The strong lensing optical depth for a light–beam emitted by a point source at redshift $`z_s`$ is (Turner, Ostriker, & Gott 1984)

$$\tau (z_s)=_0^{z_s}𝑑z(1+z)^3\frac{dl}{dz}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑M\mathrm{\Sigma }(M,z,z_s)n(M,z),$$
(10)
where $`dl/dz=cH_0^1(1+z)^1[\mathrm{\Omega }_M(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_K(1+z)^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }]^{1/2}`$ is the cosmological line element, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(M,z,z_s)`$ is the lensing cross section as measured on the lens–plane, and $`n(M,z)`$ the comoving differential distribution of halos with mass $`M`$ at redshift $`z`$. Equation (10) assumes that each bundle of light rays encounters only one lens, the lens population is randomly distributed, and the resulting $`\tau 1`$. The mass distribution in a single lens and the geometry of the source–lens–observer system completely determine $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(M,z,z_s)`$. For a singular isothermal sphere (SIS) with one–dimensional velocity dispersion $`\sigma _v`$, the strong lensing cross section is

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SIS}}(\sigma _v,z_s,z_l)=16\pi ^3\left(\frac{\sigma _v}{c}\right)^4\left(\frac{D_lD_{ls}}{D_s}\right)^2,$$
(11)
where $`D_l,D_s,`$ and $`D_{ls}`$ are the angular diameter distances between the observer–lens, the observer–source, and the lens–source systems. According to the PS theory, the differential comoving number density of dark halos with mass $`M`$ at redshift $`z`$ is given by

$$n(M,z)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }}\frac{\rho _0}{M}\frac{\delta _c(z)}{\sigma _M^3}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\delta _c^2(z)}{2\sigma _M^2}\right]\left|\frac{d\sigma _M^2}{dM}\right|,$$
(12)
where $`\rho _0`$ is the present mean density of the universe. The halo abundance is then fully determined by the redshift–dependent critical overdensity $`\delta _c`$ (e.g. Eke, Cole, & Frenk 1996) and by the linearly extrapolated (to $`z=0`$) variance of the mass–density field smoothed on the scale $`M`$, $`\sigma _M^2`$. The latter is computed assuming a scale–invariant power–spectrum of primordial density fluctuations with spectral index $`n_\mathrm{p}=0.96`$ and the transfer function for CDM given in Bardeen et al. (1986). The amplitude of density perturbations is fixed by requiring the (present–day, linearly extrapolated) rms mass fluctuation in a $`8h^1`$ Mpc sphere to be $`\sigma _8=0.87`$.

Assuming that every halo virializes to form a (truncated) singular isothermal sphere of velocity dispersion $`\sigma _v`$, mass conservation implies

$$\sigma _v(M,z)=\frac{1}{2}H_0\left(\frac{3M}{4\pi \rho _0}\right)^{1/3}\mathrm{\Omega }_M^{1/3}\mathrm{\Delta }^{1/6}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_M}{\mathrm{\Omega }(z)}\right]^{1/6}(1+z)^{1/2},$$
(13)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }(z)=\mathrm{\Omega }_M(1+z)^3/[\mathrm{\Omega }_M(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_K(1+z)^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }]`$. Here $`z`$ denotes the virialization epoch of the halo, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(z)`$ is the ratio between its actual mean density at virialization and the corresponding critical density, $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}(z)=3H^2(z)/8\pi G`$ (here $`H(z)`$ the Hubble parameter at redshift $`z`$, and $`G`$ the gravitational constant). Equation (13) relates the PS mass function to the SIS lens profile, therefore allowing the computation of the optical depth given in equation (10). For the NFW density profile – shallower than isothermal near the halo center and steeper than isothermal in its outer regions – the lens equation must be solved numerically. With respect to a halo SIS profile containing the same total mass, a NFW lens has a smaller cross section for multiple imaging, but generates a higher magnification.

The resulting optical depths for strong lensing are plotted in Figure 4 for our reference cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM) and two other popular cold dark matter models: OCDM ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, $`n_\mathrm{p}=1`$, $`\sigma _8=0.85`$, and $`H_0=70\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$), and SCDM ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, $`n_\mathrm{p}=1`$, $`\sigma _8=0.5`$, and $`H_0=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$). In all cases the amplitude of the power spectrum has been fixed in order to reproduce the observed abundance of rich galaxy clusters in the local universe (e.g. Eke, Cole & Frenk 1996). In $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM a convenient fit to the lensing optical depth is

$$\tau (z)=\frac{8.4\times 10^4}{3.1z^{2.85}0.39z^{1.42}+z^1+9.5\times 10^4z^{1.5}},$$
(14)
to within 1% in the range $`0.6<z<7`$. Our analytical method is expected to be very accurate for sources at $`z_s3`$, and to slightly underestimate the optical depth for multiple lensing at higher redshift (Holz, Miller, & Quashnock 1999).

The cumulative rate of lensed GRBs can then be computed as

$$\frac{dN}{dt}=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑z\frac{dV(z)}{dz}\frac{R_{\mathrm{GRB}}(z)}{1+z}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑L\psi (L)_{\mu _{\mathrm{min}}(L,z)}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\mu 𝒫(\mu ,z)ϵ[\mu P(L,z)],$$
(15)
where $`\mu _{\mathrm{min}}(L,z)`$ is the minimum magnification needed to detect a source in a flux–limited survey. The above equation relates the number counts to the probability distribution of magnification, $`𝒫(\mu ,z)`$, which is related to $`\tau (z)`$ as discussed in Porciani & Madau (2000). The detection rates for the two brightest detectable images of strongly lensed GRBs are compared with the total number counts in Figure 5. These results have been obtained by considering the different star formation histories discussed above (solid, short–dashed, and long–dashed lines refer to SF1, SF2, and SF3, respectively), and taking $`ϵ(P)=1`$. The upper set of curves (which lie approximately on top of each other since we impose our models to provide the same number counts in the BATSE energy band) represents the GRB counts in absence of any lensing effects. The $`\mathrm{log}N\mathrm{log}P`$ relation has a $`3/2`$ slope at the bright end ($`P\mathrm{}>10\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) and progressively flattens out with decreasing limiting flux. The remaining two sets of curves show, respectively, the count–rates for the brightest and the second brigthest images of strongly lensed GRBs. Qualitatively, the shapes of these curves are similar to those of the unlensed counts. The limiting peak flux at which they flatten out, however, depends on the assumed star formation history, and decreases from SF1 to SF3 as the lensing cross–section increases with the source redshift. Note that the rates in Figure 5 are all–sky averages, and the detection of the fainter image (the last to reach the observer) does not imply that its brighter counterpart will also be observed. This is because satellite experiments generally guarantee only partial sky (and temporal) coverage and have a rapidly varying field–of–view. In this case the detection of multiple images of the same event has a much smaller probability. For a perfect detector – full sky and time coverage plus $`ϵ=1`$ – our models predict the presence of a doubly–imaged event every 2557, 1886, and 1615 bursts with $`P>1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ for SF1, SF2 and SF3, respectively. At fainter fluxes, $`P>0.01\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, recurrent events will be detected every 888, 533, and 420 bursts instead.

Marani (1998) has compared the light curves of the brightest $`75\%`$ events of a sample containing 1235 BATSE bursts. Her analysis revealed the absence of good lens candidates with $`P>1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, a result largely expected because of the low efficiency of BATSE at detecting multiply–imaged bursts. As a consequence of Earth blockage, BATSE could only monitor $`2/3`$ of the sky at the same time. Moreover, the trigger was disabled during readout time and when the spacecraft was in specific locations. Depending on declination, the angular exposure (i.e. the fraction of time during which burst detection is possible in a given direction of the sky) of the 4B catalogue ranges between 0.44 and 0.6, with a mean value of 0.48 (Hakkila et al. 1998). Since the orbital period of CGRO was only $`5000`$ s, the BATSE efficiency for detecting a burst in a particular direction of the sky varied with a characteristic time–scale which was much shorter than the typical time–delay between lensed multiple images. In other words, the phases of the CGRO orbit at which two mirror images of a burst could be observed were practically uncorrelated: the efficiency of multiply–imaged detection is then proportional to $`ϵ(\mu _1P)\times ϵ(\mu _2P)`$, and roughly 3/4 of lensed events remained undetected. We will see in the next section that, because of the inefficient duty cycle, the probability of detecting a double burst is quite small even in a more sensitive future experiment like Swift.

## 8. Discussion

In a flux–limited sample, sources that are observed to be gravitationally lensed include not only the lensed objects that are intrinsically brighter than the flux limit, but also sources that are intrinsically fainter but are brought into the sample by the magnification effect Relative to the optical depth shown in Figure 4, lensed systems will then be overrepresented among GRBs of a given peak flux. We have quantified this effect from the GRBs number counts, by defining the magnification bias $`B`$ as the ratio between the actual flux–limited counts of lensed GRBs and the counts of lensed events that are intrinsically brighter than the flux limit,

$$B(<P)=\frac{{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑z{\displaystyle \frac{dV(z)}{dz}}{\displaystyle \frac{R_{\mathrm{GRB}}(z)}{1+z}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑L\psi (L)ϵ{\displaystyle _{\mu _{\mathrm{min}}(L,z)}^{\mathrm{}}}𝒫(\mu ,z)𝑑\mu }{{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑z{\displaystyle \frac{dV(z)}{dz}}{\displaystyle \frac{R_{\mathrm{GRB}}(z)}{1+z}}{\displaystyle _{L(P,z)}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑L\psi (L)ϵ{\displaystyle _{\mu _{\mathrm{min}}(L,z)}^{\mathrm{}}}𝒫(\mu ,z)𝑑\mu }.$$
(16)
This definition (Porciani & Madau 2000) generalizes that given in Turner, Ostriker & Gott (1984) by taking into account the redshift dependence of the lensing optical depth. The magnification bias for the two brightest images of a GRB is plotted in Figure 6 (for $`ϵ=1`$). At faint fluxes, where lensing becomes a significant effect, the bias is small as a consequence of the flatness of the burst $`\mathrm{log}N\mathrm{log}P`$ relation. Contrary to quasars, where the number of sources at a given flux rises steeply at the faint end, there are relatively few GRBs to be brought into the flux–limited sample by the magnification effect. The situation is different for bright bursts. In this case, the steepening of the $`\mathrm{log}N\mathrm{log}P`$ relation causes a rapid increase of the magnification bias. However, as shown in Figure 5, the absolute rate of lensed events is extremely low for such luminous events.

It is interesting to use our modelling of the GRBs number counts, redshift distribution, and lensing probability to make predictions for a future space mission like the Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, a multiwavelength orbiting observatory selected by NASA for launch in the 2003 333see http://swift.sonoma.edu/.. Its main instrument will be the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) in the 10–150 keV energy range. A X–ray telescope (XRT) and an ultraviolet and optical telescope (UVUOT) complete the onboard instrumentation and will be used to study afterglows and get accurate determinations of burst locations. In Figure 7 we plot our estimates for the GRB number counts accumulated by the BAT in a 3–year survey, as a function of limiting flux $`P`$. These have been computed in the energy band $`10150`$ keV, assuming a field of view of 2 sr and $`ϵ=1`$. The expected sensitivity of the BAT should be close to $`0.14\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ in the fully–coded field of view ($`0.2\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ half–coded), assuming a flat–topped GRB of duration 2 s and an 8–sigma detection (D. Palmer, personal communication). Note that, even though the luminosity functions and the overall spatial density of bursts have been fixed to reproduce the BATSE rates, the Swift counts corresponding to SF1 and SF3 disagree by about a factor of two at both the faint and bright ends. This shows how data from BATSE and Swift could be combined to set additional constraints on the statistical properties of GRBs.

The number of lensed images that could be detected with the BAT is small. As shown in Figure 7, in a 3–year survey with $`P>0.1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, Swift should detect 0.45 secondary lensed images (i.e. the second brightest images of strongly lensed events) over a total number of 525 bursts for SF1, 0.90 over 611 for SF2, and 1.34 over 760 for SF3. Even at $`P>0.01\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, the number of lensed images would not sensibly increase: 0.78 over 573 for SF1, 1.73 over 715 for SF2, and 2.74 over 908 for SF3. In a SCDM cosmology the numbers are typically 40% higher. In any case, since the field of view of BAT covers a small fraction of the sky, the probability of detecting a lensed pair is extremely low.

For particular configurations, lensed pairs could also be detected by combining BAT and XRT observations. The XRT will make high resolution spectroscopic observations of afterglows from the initial acquisition ($`50`$ s after the burst) for up to 10 hours, while spectrophotometric observations will go on for up to 4 days after the burst. Thus, if the time delay between the different components of a strongly lensed system is as small as a few days, the secondary image may be easily detected by the XRT during follow–up observations (even when too weak to trigger the BAT). For a given lensing halo, and at fixed source and lens redshifts, the time delay is anti–correlated with the magnification: smaller delays correspond to more perfect source–lens alignments and thus to larger magnifications. On the other hand, less massive deflectors will always produce relatively short delays. For example, in our $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology, isolated SIS lenses at $`z=0.5`$, deflecting the light emitted by a point source at $`z_s=2`$ and having masses of $`10^{12}`$, $`10^{11}`$ and $`10^{10}`$ $`M_{}`$, will produce maximum delays of 6.6, 1.4 and 0.3 days, respectively. Thus, the search for short–delayed images of lensed bursts could be optimized following up those bursts which are located in the vicinity of field galaxies having redshifts between 0.5 and 1. Assuming SIS+NFW lenses distributed in mass according to the PS theory, and considering a point source at $`z_s=2`$, we find that $`15\%`$ of the bursts which generate multiple images will have time delays smaller than 4 days. This implies that, on average, only about one lensed pair should be detected during a 3–year survey.

So far we have confined our attention to axially symmmetric lenses producing two observable images. Non axisymmetric (e.g. elliptical) potentials, however, generally produce 5 images (one of them always strongly demagnified and in practice unobservable), and this may increase the odds of a successful lensing detection. As shown by Grossman & Nowak (1994), the probability of observing two or more images out of $`n`$ above the detection limit follows a binomial distribution

$$𝒫(2|n)=\underset{i=2}{\overset{n}{}}({}_{i}{}^{n})p^i(1p)^{ni},$$
(17)
where $`p`$ is the probability of detecting a single image. Taking the sky coverage of Swift ($`1/2\pi `$) as a representative value for $`p`$, one gets: $`𝒫(2|2)=0.025`$, $`𝒫(2|3)=0.068`$ and $`𝒫(2|4)=0.122`$. If systems producing 4 sufficiently bright images are common, then the probability of detecting a recurrent burst is a factor of 5 higher than estimated by considering axisymmetric lenses only. For QSOs, doubly–imaged objects account roughly for one–half of all lensed systems, groups of 4 images contribute for another $`30\%`$ (see http://cfa–www.harvard.edu/castles/index.htm). In the case of GRBs, the magnitude of this enhancement will depend on their redshift distribution.

Support for this work was provided by NASA through ATP grant NAG5–4236 and grant AR–06337.10–94A from the Space Telescope Science Institute (P.M.). C.P. is supported by a Golda Meir fellowship.
## Appendix A. Star formation rate density in different cosmologies

The estimate for the luminosity density at redshift $`z`$, obtained by combining photometric and spectroscopic data of a galaxy sample, depends on the assumed underlying cosmology. In particular, it comes out proportional to the quantity $`F(z|\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h_{65})=d_L^2(z)/(dV/dz)`$. Thus,

$$R_{\mathrm{SF}}(z|\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h_{65})=\frac{F(z|\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h_{65})}{F(z|1,0,1)}R_{\mathrm{SF}}(z|1,0,1)=\frac{H(z|\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h_{65})}{H(z|1,0,1)}R_{\mathrm{SF}}(z|1,0,1),$$
$`(\mathrm{A1})`$
and, expliciting the dependence of the Hubble expansion rate $`H`$ on the cosmological parameters, we eventually get

$$R_{\mathrm{SF}}(z|\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h_{65})=h_{65}\frac{[\mathrm{\Omega }_M(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_K(1+z)^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }]^{1/2}}{(1+z)^{3/2}}R_{\mathrm{SF}}(z|1,0,1).$$
$`(\mathrm{A2})`$


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# Finite Temperature Magnetism in Fractional Quantum Hall Systems: Composite Fermion Hartree-Fock and Beyond

## I Introduction

The fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect has introduced us to new, highly correlated, incompressible states of electrons in high magnetic fields. A unified understanding of all fractions $`\nu =p/(2sp+1)`$ was achieved by the Composite Fermion picture of Jain, in which the electrons are dressed by $`2s`$ units of statistical flux to form Composite Fermions (CFs). At a mean field level, the CFs see a reduced field $`B^{}=B/(2sp+1)`$, in which they fill $`p`$ CF-Landau levels (CF-LLs), and exhibit the integer quantum Hall effect.

Due to the small $`g`$ factor of electrons in GaAs, spins may not be fully polarized in FQH states. Transitions between singlet, partially polarized, and fully polarized states (based on gap measurements) have been observed for a number of fillings, which can be understood in terms of CF’s with a spin. The transitions happen when an unoccupied CF-LL of one spin crosses the occupied CF-LL of the opposite spin.

While these low temperature measurements are in satisfactory agreement with the ground states predicted in the CF picture, in order to understand the temperature dependence of the polarization $`P(T)`$ one has to consider all excited states as well. Detailed measurements of $`P(T)`$ for the $`\nu =1/3`$ state have recently appeared in the literature. It is well-known that the $`\nu =1/3`$ state is spontaneously polarized at $`T=0`$, even when the Zeeman coupling $`E_Z=g\mu B_{tot}`$ is zero. In this it is analogous to the $`\nu =1`$ state, which has been extensively studied theoretically and experimentally. There are, however, significant differences between the two cases at finite $`T`$.

In a recent paper, MacDonald and Palacios identified a key qualitative feature that makes $`\nu =1/3`$ very different from $`\nu =1`$. In the $`\nu =1`$ case the particle-hole excitations are very high in energy compared to $`E_Z`$, and are frozen out at all low temperatures of interest. Consequently, the $`T`$ dependence of $`P`$ comes mainly from spin wave excitations and their interactions. This is the reason why long-wavelength effective theories such as the continuum quantum ferromagnet approach are successful. However, for $`\nu =1/3`$, particle-hole excitations are on the same scale of energy as $`E_Z`$, and cannot be ignored at any $`T`$. MacDonald and Palacios use a simplified model to illustrate this feature, but the model is not sufficiently detailed to enable a calculation of $`P(T)`$ for a realistic sample, and is difficult to extend to non-Laughlin fractions.

The goal of this paper is to describe a general analytical method for approximately computing $`P(T)`$ for an arbitrary principal fraction for realistic samples. To this end, an approximate hamiltonian formalism in which Composite Fermion variables explicitly appear will be used. This hamiltonian approach is based on the field theoretic idea of attaching flux to electrons by using a Chern-Simons field. The CF-Hamiltonian approach has many features suited to the computation of the physical properties of fractional Hall systems. The CFs see the effective field, and fill CF-Landau levels (CF-LLs). In the principal fractions $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$ with which we will be concerned, the effective field is $`B^{}=B/(2p+1)`$, and the CFs fill $`p`$ CF-LLs. The energies of the CF-LLs are controlled entirely by interactions, which is a correct feature of the physics of electrons in the lowest Landau level. Note that this is not a theory in which Composite Fermions are free. On the contrary, the theory is fully interacting, with both the kinetic energies and the residual interactions of the CFs being controlled by the electron-electron interaction. Finally, the nonperturbative charge and dipole moment of the excitations appear explicitly in the theory. The fact that all these nontrivial features are built into the theory raises the expectation that very simple approximate treatments of this Hamiltonian theory (such as Hartree-Fock) will suffice to produce reasonable numbers for physical quantities. This expectation is indeed borne out by explicit calculations. The hamiltonian formalism will be presented briefly in Section II.

The Hamiltonian approach is particularly suited to the computation of finite-temperature properties in fractional Hall systems. In the Composite Fermion Hartree-Fock (CFHF) approximation, one self-consistently finds the single-particle energies and occupations of the various CF-LLs at any finite temperature. Since the energies of the states are controlled entirely by interactions and occupations, these energies will be temperature-dependent. This is a familiar feature in other interacting many-body systems, such as the BCS superconductor, where the single-particle gap is a collective effect, and depends on temperature. Thus the Hamiltonian theory gives us valuable information on the evolution of the collective state as a function of temperature, which is then used in the mapping to the effective theory. Once the occupations of the single particle CF-LLs have been determined, the polarization is computed simply as the difference of the total $``$-spin and $``$-spin occupations. This yields the CFHF prediction for the temperature dependence of the spin magnetization. This procedure and the results for $`\nu =1/3`$ and $`\nu =2/5`$ are described in Section III. A brief description of this work has appeared previously.

It turns out that for the spontaneously polarized $`\nu =1/3`$ state the CFHF prediction is higher than the experimental values for all temperatures, with the discrepancy being considerable for intermediate temperatures, as shown in Figure 1. To put it in the proper context, the agreement between CFHF and experiment is considerably better than for $`\nu =1`$, where HF does a very poor job of predicting the spin polarization.

However, the discrepancy is nonetheless there, and is presumably the result of spin fluctuations which are not treated correctly in the CFHF approximation. One can imagine integrating out the fermions to obtain an effective theory that has low energy spin degrees of freedom. One is then led to map the low energy physics on to the continuum quantum ferromagnet (CQFM). The CQFM has two free parameters, the magnetization per unit volume $`M_0`$, and the spin stiffness $`\rho _s`$. In the traditional CQFM theory these are temperature-independent parameters. However, since the theory is fermionic at the microscopic level, with the fermionic energy levels and occupations being temperature dependent, one should expect $`M_0`$ and $`\rho _s`$ to acquire a $`T`$ dependence in the effective theory. It turns out that these parameters can be easily extracted from the CFHF treatment of Section III. Armed with this information, we proceed to include spin fluctuations in a large-N approach as described by Read and Sachdev. The results are in quite good agreement with the experimental data over the whole range of temperature, as shown in Figure 1 for the 10W sample of Khandelwal et al. The same comparison is shown for the data of Melinte et al in Figure 2.

The details of the figures will be explained in Sections III and IV. The mapping to the effective theory and the subsequent calculations are described in Section IV. We end with some conclusions, caveats, and open questions.

## II Hamiltonian Formalism

Since detailed descriptions of the Hamiltonian theory of CFs have appeared elsewhere, we will restrict ourselves to a summary of the essential features of this formalism.

The Composite Fermion picture was originally used by Jain to generate electronic wave functions with good correlations. These wave functions have excellent overlap with the exact wave functions for finite systems, and encode all the right physics. In order to compute dynamical response functions, it is desirable to have an operator or field theoretic formulation of CFs. The fundamental property that CFs carry statistical flux can be implemented by a Chern-Simons(CS) transformation, which performs flux attachment via the CS gauge field to obtain a field theoretic description with either bosons or fermions. These theories have provided us with a link between the microscopic formulation of the problem and experiment, both for incompressible and compressible states.

Recently R. Shankar and the present author developed a hamiltonian CS theory for the fractional quantum Hall states. Inspired by the work of Bohm and Pines on the 3D electron gas, the Hilbert space was enlarged to introduce $`n`$ high-energy magnetoplasmons degrees of freedom, ($`n`$ also being the number of electrons) at the same time imposing an equal number of constraints on physical states. However, the fermions still had the bare mass (recall that in the lowest Landau level, the electrons should lose all memory of the bare mass, and acquire an effective mass controlled by interactions), and the frequency of the magnetoplasmons was incorrect. Hence a final canonical transformation was employed to decouple the fermions from the oscillators in the infrared limit.

The final fermions are called the Composite Fermions for the following reasons. Firstly, the final fermions have no dispersion in the absence of interactions and acquire an effective mass dependent on interactions alone. Next, the final canonical transformation assigns to each fermion the magnetic moment $`e/2m`$ as mandated by very general arguments. The central result of the formalism is the formula for the electronic charge density, which takes the following form, separable into high- and low-energy pieces, at small $`q`$:

$`\rho _e(q)={\displaystyle \frac{q}{\sqrt{8\pi }}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2p}{2p+1}}}(A(q)+A^{}(q))`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\underset{j}{}e^{iqx_j}}{2p+1}}il^2({\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}(q\times \mathrm{\Pi }_j)e^{iqx_j}`$ $`)`$ (2)
where $`A,A^{}`$ refer to the annihilation and creation operators of the magnetoplasmon oscillators, $`l=1/\sqrt{eB}`$ is the magnetic length, and $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}_j=\stackrel{}{P}_j+e\stackrel{}{A}^{}(r_j)`$ is the velocity operator of the CFs. The oscillator piece saturates Kohn’s theorem. The rest, to be called $`\overline{\rho }`$, is obtained by adding to the canonically transformed electronic charge density a particular multiple of the constraint (in the physical subspace, one can add any multiple of the constraint without physical consequences, but we wish to work in the full space). It has some very useful properties in the full space:

* $`\overline{\rho }`$ satisfies the magnetic translation algebra (MTA) to lowest leading order. Since this is the algebra of the electron density in the lowest Landau level (LLL), the LLL projection has been correctly carried out in the infrared.
* Note that $`\overline{\rho }`$ is a sum of a monopole with charge $`e^{}=e/(2p+1)`$, which is the charge associated with the CF, and a dipole piece which alone survives at $`\nu =1/2`$ and has the value proposed by Read. (A number of recent constructions have emphasized this dipolar aspect).
* We also find that that as $`\stackrel{}{q}0`$ all transition matrix elements of $`\overline{\rho }`$ from the HF ground state vanish at least as $`q^2`$.

The final property is an essential property of physical  charge density matrix elements from incompressible liquid ground states in the LLL. It is easy to see that if one intends to use the Hartree-Fock approximation ignoring constraints, these properties of $`\overline{\rho }`$ are essential. They make it plausible that $`\overline{\rho }`$ does not suffer vertex corrections.

The Hamiltonian of the low-energy sector (dropping the magnetic moment term) is

$$H=\frac{1}{2}\frac{d^2q}{(2\pi )^2}v(q)\overline{\rho }(q)\overline{\rho }(q).$$
(3)
where $`v(q)`$ is the electron-electron interaction. Real samples have a finite thickness $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ of the same order as $`l`$, so that the Coulomb interaction is cutoff at large wavevectors. We will model this interaction by

$$v(q)=\frac{2\pi e^2}{q}\mathrm{exp}\lambda q$$
(4)
Finally, the constraint will be approximately implemented by cutting off the number of CF-LLs to maintain the correct number of electronic states. For $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$ this means keeping $`2p+1`$ CF-LLs. More details of the formalism can be found in refs..

## III The Composite Fermion Hartree-Fock Approximation

The CFHF approximation has been applied to the above Hamiltonian, and reasonable success has been obtained in computing various physical quantities in the gapped fractions, including a very recent calculation of the temperature-dependent polarization $`P(T)`$ for the compressible half-filled LL.

Before one employs the CFHF approximation, one needs to express the Hamiltonian as an operator acting on a set of states. Since the CFs see the effective field $`B^{}`$, it is natural to represent the Hilbert space as Slater determinants of single-particle CF-Landau level states in the effective field. The wave functions of these states in the Landau gauge are

$$\varphi _{n,X}(\stackrel{}{r})=\frac{1}{\sqrt{L}}e^{iXy/(l^{})^2}\varphi _n((xX)/l^{})$$
(5)
Here $`l^{}=l\sqrt{2p+1}`$ is the effective magnetic length, $`L`$ is the linear dimension of the system, $`X=2\pi (l^{})^2j/L`$ is the degneracy index, and $`j=0,1,\mathrm{},L^2/(2\pi (l^{})^2)`$, and $`\varphi _n`$ is the $`n^{th}`$ normalized harmonic oscillator eigenfunction. The index $`n`$ is the CF-LL index.

The density is a one-body operator, and can be expressed in this basis (after the spin labels have been included) as

$$\widehat{\overline{\rho }}(\stackrel{}{q})=\underset{\sigma ,X\{n_i\}}{}e^{iq_xX}\rho _{n_1n_2}(\stackrel{}{q})d_{\sigma ,n_1,X\frac{q_y(l^{})^2}{2}}^{}d_{\sigma ,n_2,X+\frac{q_y(l^{})^2}{2}}$$
(6)
where $`\sigma =,`$ is the spin index, and $`d_{\sigma ,n,X}`$ destroys a CF in the single-particle state labelled by $`\sigma ,n,X`$, and $`\rho _{n_1n_2}(\stackrel{}{q})`$ is a matrix element given by

$`\rho _{n_1n_2}(\stackrel{}{q})={\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{n_<+n_2}}{2p+1}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{n_<!}{n_>!}}}e^{i(\theta _q\frac{\pi }{2})(n_1n_2)}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ql^{}}{\sqrt{2}}}\right)^{n_>n_<}`$ (7)
$`\times e^{y/2}(n_>L_{n_<1}^{n_>n_<}+2L_{n_<}^{n_>n_<}(n_<+1)L_{n_<+1}^{n_>n_<})`$ (8)
where $`n_<`$ ($`n_>`$) is the lesser (greater) of $`n_1,n_2`$, $`\theta _q`$ is the angle of the vector $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ measured from the $`x`$-axis, $`y=(ql^{})^2/2`$ is the argument of the Laguerre polynomials $`L_n^k`$.

The Hamiltonian is now a four-fermi operator. It can easily be shown that the single-particle states defined above form a good HF basis. In the CFHF approximation, one reduces the four-fermi Hamiltonian to a two-fermi operator by taking averages according to the rules

$`<GS|d_\nu ^{}d_\nu ^{}|GS>=\delta _{\nu \nu ^{}}N_F(\nu )`$ (9)
$`<GS|d_\nu d_\nu ^{}^{}|GS>=\delta _{\nu \nu ^{}}(1N_F(\nu ))`$ (10)
where $`\nu `$ is a shorthand for all the state labels. This results in the HF Hamiltonian

$$H_{HF}=\underset{\sigma ,n,X}{}ϵ(\sigma ,n)d_{\sigma ,n,X}^{}d_{\sigma ,n,X}$$
(11)
where the HF single-particle energy is

$`ϵ(\sigma ,n)=`$ (12)
$`\pm {\displaystyle \frac{E_Z}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2q}{(2\pi )^2}v(q)\underset{m}{}(12N_F(\sigma ,m))|\rho _{nm}(q)|^2}`$ (13)
in which the Zeeman energy has been added ($`E_Z=g^{}\mu _BB`$).

Finding the energies at $`T=0`$ is quite simple, since the occupations of the CF-LLs can only be 0 or 1. For example, for the $`\nu =1/3`$ state, $`N_F(,0)=1`$ and all other occupations are zero, and for the $`\nu =2/5`$ singlet state $`N_F(,0)=N_F(,0)=1`$, and all other occupations are zero. For nonzero $`T`$ one has to carry out a self-consistent procedure. First one chooses trial values for the energies (say the $`T=0`$ values) and a trial value for chemical potential $`\mu `$ (say halfway between the lowest unoccupied and highest occupied CF-LL). Then one assigns the occupations of the single-particle levels according to Fermi occupation function

$$N_F(\sigma ,n)=\frac{1}{1+\mathrm{exp}(ϵ(\sigma ,n)\mu )/T}$$
(14)
with the trial value of $`\mu `$. Then one recomputes the HF energies using equation (13). Note that the structure of degenerate CF-LLs remains intact, and only the energies and occupations change. Since the filling has to remain fixed, the chemical potential will change when the energies change. One then recomputes the chemical potential as the root of the equation

$$\underset{n}{}(N_F(,n)+N_F(,n))=p$$
(15)
for the principal fraction $`p/(2p+1)`$ and iterates the whole process until self-consistency is acheived. Finally, the spin polarization is given by

$$P=\underset{n}{}(N_F(,n)N_F(,n))/p$$
(16)
From the above procedure it is clear that only single-particle excitations have been taken into account in obtaining $`P(T)`$ so far, and spin fluctuations have been explicitly ignored. If it so happens that for the system under consideration the effects of spin fluctuations are small, then this approximation should be accurate, otherwise not.

Let us proceed to compare the CFHF results to experiments. We first consider the 10W sample of Khandelwal et al. The sample parameters are $`B_{}=9.61T`$, and $`B_{tot}=12T`$. This implies that the Coulomb energy scale is $`E_C=e^2/\epsilon l160K`$ and the Zeeman energy is $`E_Z=0.0175E_C`$. We will use a value of $`\lambda =1.5l`$ for the thickness parameter for illustrative purposes throughout this paper. This value ought to be in the physical regime for most samples, and also approximately agrees with that extracted from an analysis of the compressible states. It should be emphasized that the CFHF analysis, and the mapping to the effective spin theory that follows, can be performed for any potential $`v(q)`$.

Figure 1 (in the Introduction) shows the HF prediction from our theory for $`\lambda =1.5l`$ compared to the experimental data. The agreement is good at very low ($`T1K`$) and very high ($`T8K`$) temperatures. However, at intermediate $`T`$, there is a big discrepancy between the CFHF prediction and the data. This indicates that effects not treated correctly in HF, notably long wavelength thermal spin fluctuations, are important in this intermediate regime of $`T`$. Nonetheless, to put the result in context, one should note that the CFHF prediction agrees much better with the data than the corresponding HF prediction for $`\nu =1`$ (see, for example, ref for a comparison of the different predictions for $`\nu =1`$). This is because at $`\nu =1`$ particle-hole excitations are completely unimportant at all temperatures of interest, while thermal spin fluctuations dominate. Since long wavelength spin fluctuations are treated very poorly in HF the agreement is bad. However, at $`\nu =1/3`$, particle-hole excitations play a major role in reducing $`P(T)`$ for $`T>5K`$. In the next section we will see how to incorporate spin fluctuations into our calculation, resulting in much better agreement with the data.

Figure 3 shows the same type of comparison for the Knight shift data of Melinte et alfor their M242 sample. Here the sample parameters are $`B_{tot}=B_{}=17T`$. This implies that $`E_C210K`$, $`E_Z=0.0186E_C4K`$. Once again a value of $`\lambda =1.5l`$ has been used in the CFHF calculation. In order to translate the Knight shifts into polarization numbers or vice versa, one needs to determine the saturation value of the Knight shift, which presumably corresponds to a polarization of $`P=1`$. There is a lot of scatter in the data at low $`T`$, due to the very long times needed to measure the Knight shift, and the error bars are also large at low $`T`$. There is thus some uncertainty in determining the Knight shift corresponding to $`P=1`$. In any reasonable theory one expects to find that $`P=1`$ for $`TE_Z`$, and expects to see this saturated value of $`P`$ up to about $`T=0.5E_Z`$ or so.

Based on these considerations two values of the saturation Knight shift $`K_{s,P=1}`$, $`21kHz`$ and $`19kHz`$ have been used to fit the data here, both of which lie within the error bars of the low $`T`$ data. One possibility that can explain this spread is that spin-reversed quasiparticles are present in the ground state due to disorder, which can bring down the “saturated” value of the Knight shift. The $`21kHz`$ value was used by Melinte et al in a phenomenological $`\mathrm{tanh}(\mathrm{\Delta }/4k_BT)`$ fit to obtain $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1.7E_Z`$. However, one must note that the fit for $`K_{s,P=1}=19kHz`$ seems slightly better, since then the experimental saturation region is about $`0.5E_Z`$. The agreement between theory and experiment for this value of $`K_{s,P=1}`$ are also better than for $`K_{s,P=1}=21kHz`$. The $`19kHz`$ value will be used in the mapping to the effective theory in the next section. Overall the agreement is slightly worse than for the Khandelwal et al data, but leads to the same conclusion: It is quite important to treat thermal spin fluctuations correctly at intermediate temperatures for $`\nu =1/3`$.

Before we proceed to approximately incorporate spin fluctuations into the theoretical prediction, let us address the following interesting question: Why is HF so good in this case relative to the case of $`\nu =1`$? To answer this question let us turn to the spin wave dispersions. The spin wave is a collective spin-flip excitation, and at wave vector $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ corresponds a plane wave state in which a majority spin quasihole and a minority spin quasiparticle are at a separation of $`q(l^{})^2`$.

The $`q0`$ limit is required to be $`E_Z`$ by Larmor’s theorem, while in the $`q\mathrm{}`$ limit the particle and hole become infinitely separated, so that the energy of the excitation is the spin-reversed particle-hole gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$. The dispersion of these excitations can be computed for $`\nu =1/3`$ in the manner described in ref., and is shown in Figure 4 for $`\lambda =1.5l`$ for $`E_Z=0.0175E_C`$ and $`T=0`$. Figure 4 explicitly illustrates the feature that the spin-flip particle-hole excitations are at the same energy scale as $`E_Z`$.

How does this evolve as temperature increases? Recall that all the energy splittings in the CF-Hamiltonian formalism come from interactions, and as the occupations of the states change with $`T`$ so do their HF energies. As $`T`$ increases the occupations of the minority spin levels increase while that of the lowest majority spin level decreases. This means that the exchange splitting between the minority and majority spin levels decreases, as can be seen from equation (13). It is clear that as $`T`$ becomes very large the occupations of all the levels should tend to become the same, and therefore $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$ should tend towards $`E_Z`$. Since the spin wave dispersion has to be $`E_Z`$ for very small $`q`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$ for very large $`q`$, this implies that the spin wave dispersion becomes increasingly flat at $`T`$ increases. We will estimate the spin stiffness in the next section and corroborate this conclusion. Figure 5 shows this behavior of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$ explicitly for the same parameters as in Figure 4.

Now consider a noninteracting theory of CFs. This would have a completely flat dispersion for the collective mode, that is, $`\omega (q)=E_Z`$. Therefore, as the temperature increases, the theory appears to be more weakly interacting, and the CFHF approximation becomes more accurate. This trend can be expected to continue until a temperature scale when CFs cease to exist. There are no obvious signs of such a scale in the data.

The CF-Hamiltonian theory and the CFHF approximation are very general, and can be applied to any fractional Hall state (for an application to compressible states see ref). To ilustrate this Figure 6 shows the $`P(T)`$ curves for $`\nu =2/5`$ for $`\lambda =1.5l`$ for a range of Zeeman couplings. Note the nonmonotonicity of the curves that start from the singlet ground state at $`T=0`$. There is a transition to the fully polarized state around $`E_Z=0.01E_C`$.

Note also that only results for translationally invariant HF states are presented, which ignores possible partially polarized inhomogeneous states that have recently been proposed to explain intriguing observations by Kukushkin et al of a state with half the maximal polarization for $`\nu =2/5`$, which is not allowed as a translationally invariant CF state at $`T=0`$.

Let us compare our results to the only other method that can compute $`P(T)`$ for arbitrary fractions, which is exact diagonalization (keeping all the excited states) and subsequent calculation of thermodynamic quantities. Due to computational limitations, this method is restricted to fairly small systems. For example, the largest system studied by Chakraborty and Pietilainen for $`\nu =1/3`$ has 5 electrons, and for $`\nu =2/5`$ has 4 electrons. For $`\nu =1/3`$ the exact diagonalization result lies above our predictions (and the experiment) for $`T>4K`$. This discrepancy might be the result of finite thickness and/or finite size corrections. However, at low $`T`$ the exact diagonalization result follows the data more closely than our HF approximation (in all the above comparisons the $`g=0.5`$ line in Figure 2 of ref has been used and compared to the 10W sample of Khandelwal et al. This sample has the closest parameters to those used in ref). For $`\nu =2/5`$, the CFHF results reproduce the nonmonotonicity of $`P(T)`$ for those values of $`E_Z`$ where the singlet state is the ground state, and the peaks in $`P(T)`$ occur at roughly the same $`T`$ in the CFHF and the exact diagonalization results. However, the same overall pattern holds for $`\nu =2/5`$, namely, the results of Chakraborty and Pietilainen are below the CFHF prediction for low $`T`$, but are higher for $`T>0.02E_C`$, where they once again see a $`1/T`$ tail with a large coefficient. It would be interesting to explore the finite size systematics to see if the large $`T`$ tail is suppressed for larger sizes.

## IV Spin Fluctuations: Mapping to the Continuum Quantum Ferromagnet

As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, spin fluctuations are quite important for $`\nu =1/3`$ at intermediate temperatures. for $`\nu =1`$, the coarse-grained effective theory of the continuum quantum ferromagnet (CQFM) coupled with the large-$`N`$ approximation, first applied to this problem by Read and Sachdev, has been quite successful in explaining the temperature dependence of the polarization. In this section a method is presented to map the $`\nu =1/3`$ problem to the CQFM.

In the CQFM description one starts with the action

$`S=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d^dx{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{1/T}{}}}d\tau (iM_0\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{n})_\tau \stackrel{}{n}+{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _s}{2}}(_x\stackrel{}{n})^2`$ (17)
$`M_0\stackrel{}{H}\stackrel{}{n}+\mathrm{})`$ (18)
where $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ is a local vector of unit length pointing in the direction of the magnetization, $`\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{n})`$ is the field that implements the Berry’s phase needed to obtain the correct quantum commutation relations between the spin components, and $`\stackrel{}{H}=g^{}\mu _B\stackrel{}{B}`$ is the Zeeman field ($`|\stackrel{}{H}|=E_Z`$). The two crucial parameters which enter the action are $`M_0`$, the magnetization density, and $`\rho _s`$, the spin stiffness. There are other omitted terms in the action, which produce at most a logarithmic correction to the magnetization in two dimensions. There are various ways one can proceed at this point, but the most convenient one for our purposes involves mapping the spin problem to a problem with Schwinger bosons, and making the large-$`N`$ approximation. There are two common ways of mapping the spin problem to Schwinger bosons: The $`SU(N)`$ approach and the $`O(N)`$ approach, which give slightly different answers.

In the following, we will restrict the theoretical results to the leading large-$`N`$ approximation, where the magnetization is given as $`M(T)=M_0\mathrm{\Phi }_M(r,h)`$, where $`r=\rho _s/T`$ and $`h=E_Z/T`$ are scaling variables, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_M`$ is a scaling function. In this approximation, the results of Read and Sachdev for the magnetization in the $`SU(N)`$ approach are

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_M(r,h)=\frac{\mathrm{log}(q_1e^{h/2})\mathrm{log}(q_1e^{h/2})}{8\pi r}$$
(19)
and $`q_1>1`$ is a root of the equation

$$(q_1e^{h/2})(q_1e^{h/2})=q_1^2e^{8\pi r}$$
(20)
The corresponding results in the leading $`O(N)`$ approximation are

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_M(r,h)=\frac{\mathrm{log}(q_2e^h)\mathrm{log}(q_2e^h)}{4\pi r}$$
(21)
where $`q_2>1`$ is the solution of

$$(q_2e^h)(q_21)(q_2e^h)=q_2^3e^{4\pi r}$$
(22)
The principal assumption underlying the CQFM description is that long-wavelength ferromagnetic spin fluctuations are the only low energy modes that affect the spin polarization in the temperature range of interest. In the regime where this assumption holds for the $`\nu =1/3`$ state, it should be possible to map the CF-Hamiltonian theory to the CQFM. Conceptually, one can think of “integrating out” the fermions and leaving behind an effective theory of the spin fluctuations. Operationally, one needs to find the values of $`M_0`$ and $`\rho _s`$ corresponding to the $`\nu =1/3`$ state. An additional complication arises here: Since the underlying fermionic theory responds to temperature by self-consistently modifying occupations and energies, one should expect to obtain temperature dependent values $`M_0(T)`$ and $`\rho _s(T)`$. We will extract these values from the CFHF Hamiltonian results.

First consider $`M_0(T)`$. We already have a value for the CFHF magnetization $`M_{HF}(T)`$. Let us first write down the correct relation between $`M_0`$ and $`M_{HF}`$ and then justify it.

$$M_{HF}(T)=M_0(T)\mathrm{\Phi }_M(r=0,h=\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}/T)$$
(23)
In the CFHF theory the particles and holes are treated as independent, or noninteracting, with a gap equal to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$ (to be more precise, this is the lowest energy spin-flip excitation). To put it differently, the energy gap to create this spin-flip excitation is always $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$, no matter what the distance between the particle and the corresponding hole. This is as though the collective mode dispersion were completely flat, $`\omega (q)=\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$. The CQFM description that corresponds most closely to the CFHF is the one that has the same spin-flip excitation spectrum, namely one with no spin stiffness, that is, $`r=0`$, and and an effective Zeeman field $`E_Z^{eff}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$. The CQFM prediction for the magnetization of such a theory is the right hand side of equation (23), which has to be equated to the CFHF prediction, hence the above formula, equation (23).

Knowing that, for $`SU(N)`$,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_M(0,h)=\mathrm{tanh}(h/2)$$
(24)
while, for $`O(N)`$,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_M(0,h)=\frac{\mathrm{sinh}(h)}{1/2+\mathrm{cosh}(h)}$$
(25)
one extracts $`M_0(T)`$ from equation (23), using the value of $`M_{HF}(T)`$ computed in Section III.

Next consider the spin stiffness $`\rho _s(T)`$. At a given temperature $`T`$ the self-consistent occupations $`N_{F,GS}(\sigma ,n)`$ and energies $`ϵ(\sigma ,n)`$ in the ground state are computed using the procedure described in Section II. Now one creates a twisted spin state by defining

$`d_{,n,X}=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}(qX/2)d_{\alpha ,n,X}+\mathrm{sin}(qX/2)d_{\beta ,n,X}`$ (26)
$`d_{,n,X}=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}(qX/2)d_{\alpha ,n,X}+\mathrm{sin}(qX/2)d_{\beta ,n,X}`$ (27)
where $`\alpha ,\beta `$ define local directions of up and down. In the twisted spin state the occupations of the local up and down spins remain the same as in the ground state, that is

$`<d_{\alpha ,n,X}^{}d_{\alpha ,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{XX^{}}N_{F,GS}(,n)`$ (28)
$`<d_{\beta ,n,X}^{}d_{\beta ,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{XX^{}}N_{F,GS}(,n)`$ (29)
$`<d_{\alpha ,n,X}^{}d_{\beta ,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`0`$ (30)
This leads to the following expectation values for the actual (global) $``$ and $``$ spin directions.

$`<d_{,n,X}^{}d_{,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{XX^{}}\times `$ (31)
$`(\mathrm{cos}^2(qX/2)N_{F,GS}(,n)`$ $`+\mathrm{sin}^2(qX/2)N_{F,GS}(,n))`$ (32)
$`<d_{,n,X}^{}d_{,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{XX^{}}\times `$ (33)
$`(\mathrm{sin}^2(qX/2)N_{F,GS}(,n)`$ $`+\mathrm{cos}^2(qX/2)N_{F,GS}(,n))`$ (34)
$`<d_{,n,X}^{}d_{,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{XX^{}}\times `$ (35)
$`\mathrm{sin}(qX/2)\mathrm{cos}(qX/2)`$ $`(N_{F,GS}(,n)N_{F,GS}(,n))`$ (36)
$`<d_{,n,X}^{}d_{,n^{},X^{}}>=`$ $`<d_{,n,X}^{}d_{,n^{},X^{}}>`$ (37)
and corresponds to a state where the unit vector $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ pointing in the direction of the local magnetization has components $`\stackrel{}{n}=(\mathrm{sin}(qX),0,\mathrm{cos}(qX))`$. Using the expectation values from equation (37), one can compute the HF energy of the twisted ground state, and thence the excess energy to order $`q^2`$. Comparing to the energy cost of a twist in the CQFM, which is $`(\rho _s/2)L^2q^2`$, one finds the spin stiffness

$`\rho _s=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16\pi }}{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^2s}{(2\pi )^2}}v(s){\displaystyle \underset{n_1,n_2}{}}|\rho _{n_1n_2}(s)|^2\times `$ (38)
$`(N_F(,n_1)N_F(,n_1))(N_F(,n_2)N_F(,n_2))`$ (39)
where $`L^2`$ is the area of the system, and $`\rho _{n_1n_2}`$ is the density matrix element of equation (8). One caveat should be mentioned here: The above should be regarded as an estimate for the twist rather than a rigorous calculation (even in HF), since ideally one should compute the free energy cost of a twist, rather than just the internal energy cost, as we have done. The free energy cost would be computed by carrying out a self-consistent HF at finite $`T`$ in the presence of a twist. However, a fully relaxed HF calculation of an inhomogeneous state at $`T0`$ is computationally prohibitive. In the following we use the value given by equation (39).

Figure 7 shows the results for $`M_0(T)`$ and $`\rho _s(T)`$ for the parameters corresponding to the Melinte et al M242 sample. As can be seen, $`\rho _s`$ in particular has a dramatic $`T`$ dependence, and essentially vanishes for $`T>6K`$. This corroborates the earlier observation that the spin-reversed gap collapses to $`E_Z`$ at around the same temperature, as seen in Figure 4.

Having extracted the parameters $`M_0(T)`$ and $`\rho _s(T)`$, it is now easy to calculate the effects of spin fluctuations in the leading large-$`N`$ approximation from equations (19,21). Figure 1 (in the Introduction) presents the results for the Khandelwal et al data. As can be seen, the agreement between the theory and experiment is now quite good, indicating that the proper treatment of long-wavelength thermal spin fluctuations has remedied most of the defects of the CFHF prediction. Turning to the M242 sample of Melinte et al, a similar dramatic improvement in the agreement between theory and experiment is seen in Figure 2 (in the Introduction). There are still some discrepancies in both the figures, but they never amount to more than $`1015\%`$.

One might wonder how important it is to keep the temperature dependence of the parameters $`M_0`$ and $`\rho _s`$. Figure 8 shows the prediction of the large-$`N`$ approach using the values of $`M_0`$ and $`\rho _s`$ computed at $`T=0`$ for the parameters corresponding to the Khandelwal et al data. This fit ignores finite-temperature single particle excitations. It is clear that while this prediction is somewhat better the the CFHF result for lower temperatures, it is worse beyond $`6K`$. Also, this prediction is uniformly worse than the one including both CFHF and spin fluctuation effects.

Clearly, the reason is that this fit does not incorporate the finite-temperature fermionic single-particle effects that renormalize the spin stiffness substantially downwards beyond about $`3K`$, as seen in Figure 7. It must be concluded that the temperature dependence of the parameters $`M_0`$ and $`\rho _s`$ is crucial, and that both single-particle and thermal spin wave effects must be treated correctly if one is to accurately predict the spin polarization.

## V Conclusions, Caveats, and Open Questions

In summary, an approximate analytical method for computing the temperature dependence of the polarization for an arbitrary fractional quantum Hall state has been presented, and illustrated for $`\nu =1/3`$ and $`2/5`$. It consists of two steps. The first step is a finite-temperature Composite Fermion Hartree-Fock approximation on the CF Hamiltonian. This already incorporates important effects on the polarization resulting from particle-hole excitations, and is sufficient to produce all the correct qualitative features, such as the nonmonotonicity of the polarization for $`2/5`$. For the spontaneously polarized $`1/3`$ state, however, there is a substantial discrepancy between this prediction and experiment at intermediate temperatures due to the incorrect treatment of spin fluctuations. The second step, for the $`\nu =1/3`$ state, is to map the long-wavelength low-energy physics on to the continuum quantum ferromagnet. The parameters that enter the effective theory are extracted from the CFHF approximation. Finally, the approximate solution to continuum quantum ferromagnet in the large-$`N`$ approach is used to produce a prediction for the spin polarization which incorporates the effects of both single particle and spin wave excitations. Note that the reduction of the spin polarization due to single-particle and spin wave effects is not additive in the two effects: the parameters $`M_0`$ and $`\rho _s`$ extracted from the CFHF approximation encode information about single-particle excitations in a very nonlinear way. The resulting prediction is in quite good agreement with experimental data, as seen in Figures 1 and 2. The comparison between theory and experiment was made using the model potential of equation (4) for illustrative purposes, with a thickness parameter $`\lambda =1.5l`$, which ought to be in the physical regime for most samples. However, the above two-step procedure of first carrying out the CFHF, and then mapping the problem on to the CQFM, can be executed for any potential $`v(q)`$.

A number of caveats must be noted at this point. In order for the mapping to the CQFM to make sense, spin wave excitations must be the only low energy spin-flip excitations. However, as $`T`$ increases, other spin-flip excitations also become relevant (such as a transition from the $``$-spin $`n=0`$ CF-LL to the $``$-spin $`n=1`$ CF-LL). Another complicating issue is that while the CQFM assumes the spin wave dispersion to be quadratic at all $`q`$, in reality it turns over and asymptotes at the spin-reversed gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}`$. Both these considerations suggest that the mapping is to be trusted only in the regime where $`T\mathrm{\Delta }_{SR}(T)`$. One can verify from Figure 5 that this corresponds to $`T6K`$ or so, which fortunately includes the most interesting region of the data. It is somewhat puzzling that the prediction from the mapping works well to twice this temperature. Finally, $`1/N`$ corrections can be expected to the leading large-$`N`$ prediction, which reduce the magnetization slightly beyond the leading large-$`N`$ result (see, for example, Timm et al). These corrections would improve the agreement between the theory and the data at low $`T`$.

An important open problem is the development of a formalism in which one can systematically integrate out fermions, leaving behind a theory of the low-energy excitations, perhaps along the lines of Ref. . Such excitations need not be restricted to spin wave excitations, but may perhaps include other spin-flip modes or even density modes, depending on the temperature and the system. Such a theory is necessary to address the effects of thermal spin fluctuations on the temperature dependent spin polarization of fractional Hall states which are not fully polarized in the absence of a Zeeman coupling. The spin-flip modes of such systems do not have the simple quadratic CQFM form even at small $`q`$ (for example, the spin-flip collective mode of the fully polarized $`2/5`$ state starts with a negative quadratic term). A further interesting application would be to the interplay of spin and density fluctuations in the compressible fractional Hall states.

## VI Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to thank R. Shankar, J. K. Jain, H. A. Fertig, S. M. Girvin, C. Timm, S. E. Barrett, and N. Freytag for helpful conversations, and the latter two for sharing their raw data. The author also wishes to thank the National Science Foundation for partial support (under grant DMR 0071611), and the Aspen Center for Physics for a stimulating workshop during which some of this work came to fruition.


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# EXTERNAL COULOMB AND ANGULAR MOMENTUM INFLUENCE ON ISOTOPE COMPOSITION OF NUCLEAR FRAGMENTS.

## References