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# Mass-Losing Semiregular Variable Stars in Baade’s Windows

## 1 Introduction

One of the most complex and least understood phases of stellar evolution is the asymptotic giant branch (AGB; Iben & Renzini 1983). AGB evolution is regulated by very high rates of mass loss (Bowen & Willson 1991; Vassiliadis & Wood 1993).

The current theory of mass loss from red giants invokes a combination of two physical processes: stellar pulsation and radiation pressure on dust grains (see reviews by Morris 1987; Gail, Kuntz & Ulmschneider 1990; Lafon & Berruyer 1991; Habing 1996). The association of mass loss with pulsation is due to the fact that mass-losing red giants are often variable stars, such as Miras, and the mass-loss rates of Miras are observed to be correlated with their pulsation periods (de Gioia-Eastwood et al. 1981; Whitelock et al. 1994, 1995). Stellar pulsation is theoretically linked to mass loss through the propagation of periodic shocks (Wood 1979; Willson & Hill 1979). The shocks are nearly isothermal, and thus responsible by themselves for very low mass-loss rates (Bowen 1988). However, they also extend the outer-atmospheres of red giants, increasing the gas density at the dust condensation radius. Dust therefore forms efficiently, and radiation pressure accelerates the dust grains (Hoyle & Wickramasinghe 1962). The accelerated dust grains are momentum-coupled to the gas, which drives mass loss at high rates (Gilman 1972; Kwok 1975). The standard theory of mass loss has evolved to include sophisticated treatments of time-dependent hydrodynamics, grain condensation, and radiative transfer (e.g. Fleischer, Gauger & Sedlmayr 1992; Arndt, Fleischer & Sedlmayr 1997).

The standard theory of mass loss in red giants may not be appropriate for all AGB stars. While the majority are variable (e.g. Alcock et al. 2000), most do not show the large-amplitude, long-period pulsations characteristic of Miras. Instead, most AGB variable stars are classified as semiregulars (SRs). The classical requirement for a Mira is that it shows an optical pulsation amplitude $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$`>`$ 2.5 mag, while the semiregulars are defined as having pulsation amplitudes smaller than this. Stars with visual amplitudes around the dividing level occur relatively infrequently (Payne-Gaposchkin, 1951). The optical pulsation amplitudes of current model AGB stars with periodic shocks as prescribed by the theory of mass loss are typical of the pulsation amplitudes of Miras, but not of semiregulars. Another characteristic feature of Miras is periodic Balmer-line emission, believed to arise from shocks (Willson 1976). The theoretical velocity changes across the periodic shocks are in agreement with those inferred from the Balmer-line emission of Miras (Fleischer, Gauger & Sedlmayr 1992). Although data are scarce, many SRs do not exhibit periodic Balmer-line emission. In addition, near-infrared spectra of SRs do not show line-doubling as Miras often do, a characteristic of shocks (Hinkle, Lebzelter, & Scharlach 1997). Thus the pulsations induced in the standard theory of mass loss are probably too strong to be appropriate for semiregulars.

Up till now, detailed knowledge of the properties of the SR variables has been limited to relatively small numbers of bright objects, mainly situated in the solar neighborhood at unknown distances (e.g. Jura & Kleinmann 1992; Kahane & Jura 1994; Kerschbaum, Olofsson & Hron 1996; Mennessier et al. 2000). However, the picture is undergoing rapid change thanks to the gravitational lensing experiments like MACHO and OGLE, and the astrometric satellite Hipparcos, which have obtained frequent photometric measurements of large samples of SRs at known distances, and over long periods of time. These relatively new databases cover well-defined samples and can reveal variations with amplitudes as small as a few hundredths of a magnitude, well beyond the capabilities of earlier photographic work. We mention Alves et al. (1998), Minniti et al. (1998), Wood et al. (1999), and Glass et al. (2000) who have discussed MACHO observations of SRs in the LMC and Galactic Bulge. Koen & Laney (2000), Bedding & Zijlstra (1998), and others have discussed SRs observed by Hipparcos in the solar neighborhood.

At the same time, the ISOCAM camera of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO)111ISO is a European Space Agency (ESA) project with instruments funded by member states (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) and with the participation of ISAS and NASA. pointed, observatory-style satellite has enabled mid-infrared photometric surveys to be carried out with much greater sensitivity and spatial resolution than, for example, was possible with IRAS, which suffered severely from crowding of sources near the Galactic plane. In particular, in the Baade’s Windows of low extinction in the inner part of the Galactic bulge, the ISOGAL Collaboration has detected 1193 stars in the ISOCAM 7$`\mu `$m or $`15\mu `$m bands in two fields of 15 $`\times `$ 15 arcmin2 (Glass et al. 1999). As a result, it is now evident that there is a continuous sequence of increasing mass-loss from mid- to late-type M-giant stars on the AGB, ending with the Miras and other long-period, large-amplitude variables.

In order to advance our theories of AGB stellar evolution, and in particular, advance our understanding of mass loss, we have undertaken a new study of AGB stars in the Galactic bulge. We have combined two types of observations ideally suited to investigate issues of AGB star mass loss: optical-band lightcurves from the MACHO Project and mid-infrared photometry from the ISOGAL Collaboration. Our dataset is the first large sample of mass-losing AGB variable stars whose pulsation and mass-loss rates are well-characterized, and whose distances, and thus energetics, are also known.

## 2 Data

### 2.1 ISOGAL

The ISOGAL Survey222This is paper no. 10 in a refereed journal based on data from the ISOGAL Survey. is a multi-wavelength infrared survey of the inner Galaxy at high resolution (Omont et al. 2000). It made use of the ISOCAM camera (Cesarsky et al. 1996) on the ISO satellite to survey numerous sample fields in visually-obscured regions along the Galactic plane and towards the center of the Galaxy in order to study topics such as Galactic structure, the red giant population, interstellar extinction and other matters.

#### 2.1.1 ISOGAL observations

The survey comprises mainly exposures in the LW2 (5.5–8$`\mu `$m) and LW3 (12–18$`\mu `$m) broad-band filters of ISOCAM. Each pixel subtended 6 $`\times `$ 6 arcsec2 on the sky. The detector arrays had 32 $`\times `$ 32 pixels. Large areas could be imaged by combining individual images obtained during raster scans. The data that we describe were obtained from two areas located in the Baade’s Windows, each covering 15 $`\times `$ 15 arcmin2 in $`\mathrm{},b`$. Exposures were made on two occasions, about a year apart (see Glass et al. 1999). On the first occasion, observations were obtained only with the LW2 filter; on the second, both filters were used. The centres of the fields were at $`\mathrm{}=+1.03^{}`$, $`b=3.83^{}`$, which includes the globular cluster NGC 6522, and at $`\mathrm{}=+1.37^{}`$, $`b=2.63^{}`$, known as the SgrI field. The Baade’s Window fields were included because, although they are near the galactic centre, they are sufficiently unobscured (with visual extinction $`A_V`$ $``$ 1.5 – 1.8 mag) to be observable at visual wavelengths and have been the subject of numerous previous investigations. Thus they can be regarded as fiducial fields for the analysis of more heavily obscured areas.

#### 2.1.2 Photometric properties

ISOGAL has identified 1193 sources from these fields at either or both of the 7- and 15-micron passbands. In the fields Sgr I and NGC 6522, there are 696 and 497 sources, respectively. Of these, 182 and 287 were detected at both wavelengths. The methods used for reducing the photometry, taking account of various difficulties produced by the responses of the detectors and the crowded nature of the fields, have been described by Glass et al. (1999). The flux calibrations of the 7 $`\mu `$m and 15 $`\mu `$m bands were set for a spectrum with $`F_\lambda \lambda ^1`$ and should be correct at wavelengths 6.7 and 14.3 $`\mu `$m respectively. Conversion from magnitudes follows the relations

$$[7]=12.382.5\mathrm{log}F_{LW2}(\mathrm{mJy})$$
(1)
and

$$[15]=10.792.5\mathrm{log}F_{LW3}(\mathrm{mJy}),$$
(2)
where the zero points have been set to obtain zero mag for a Vega model flux at the isophotal wavelengths given above.

Only sources with fluxes greater than 5 mJy in either or both filters were accepted for the final catalogue. These limits correspond to  = 10.64 and  = 8.99. The rms dispersion of the ISOGAL photometry is 0.14–0.2 mag, except at the faint end, where it rises to $``$ 0.4 mag (see Glass et al. 1999; Ganesh et al. in preparation). With 35–45 pixels per source, observations in these fields are seen to be close to the confusion limit.

As in Glass et al. (1999), we have not applied extinction corrections to the ISOGAL data. The absorption in the ISOGAL bands is believed to be less than 0.05 mag, though the precise character of the interstellar extinction curve in this wavelength region is not well-determined.

#### 2.1.3 Astrometric calibration

The extracted source positions were set systematically by reference to the Deep Near-Infrared Survey (DENIS) positions for the same area. The DENIS survey has an internal astrometric accuracy of order 0.5′′ (see Omont et al. 1999) and is ultimately referred to the USNO-A2.0 astrometric catalogue, which has a rms absolute accuracy of 1 arcsec. The rms dispersions of the differences between the ISOGAL and the DENIS positions are (0.6, 0.7) and (0.9, 0.8) arcsec in (R.A., Dec) for NGC 6522 and Sgr I, respectively.

#### 2.1.4 ISOGAL color-magnitude diagram

Figure 1 shows the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) for 182 and 287 stars detected at both wavelengths in NGC 6522 and Sgr I fields, respectively. The objects in the Baade’s Windows are almost exclusively from the Bulge, and are therefore at a nearly constant distance from the Sun, with a distribution governed by the thickness of the Bulge. The minimum photometric scatter due to line-of-sight effects can be expected to be similar to that derived from the period–$`K`$ luminosity plot for Miras in the Sgr I field (Glass et al. 1995), viz 0.35 mag, since the intrinsic scatter in the relationship is known to be $``$ 0.13 mag from Magellanic Cloud studies (Glass et al. 1987). There is a continuous progression of  mag, and therefore dust output, with – color and late spectral type (Glass et al. 1999). The sequence stretches from the top of the Red Giant Branch (RGB), located in the bottom left corner of the diagram, to the Mira variables, which are generally, but not exclusively, the most luminous dust emitters. Mira-type large-amplitude variability is thus seen not to be a necessary condition for mass-loss in M-stars, as was previously believed.

The objects which approach the Miras in dust emission are close to them in $`K`$-mag also (Frogel & Whitford 1987; Glass et al. 1999), indicating that they have similar bolometric mags. Spectral types are available for all the M-giants in part of the ISOGAL NGC 6522 field (Blanco 1986), as well as for late-type M-giants in the whole field (Blanco, McCarthy & Blanco 1984). It is evident from figure 12 of Glass et al. (1999) that only M5 giants or later types are detectable at 15$`\mu `$m, i.e., it is only these objects that have observable dust shells. Mira and SR variables of C-type are entirely absent from these fields.

A group of stars with luminosities similar to Miras, marked by crosses in Figure 1, were examined by T. Lloyd Evans on the photographic plate material that was used for finding most of the known Miras in the Baade’s Window fields (Lloyd Evans 1976). Little additional evidence was found for photometric variability, ruling out the notion that they may have been overlooked as Miras, but not excluding the possibility that they could be SR variables of much lower amplitude. It therefore became of interest to see if a modern photoelectric survey would reveal anything more.

### 2.2 MACHO

The MACHO Project had dedicated use of the 50-inch Great Melbourne Telescope located at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia from January, 1992 to January, 2000. A system of corrective optics installed at the prime focus gave a focal reduction to $`f/3.9`$ and a $`1^{}`$ field of view. A dichroic beam-splitter enabled simultaneous blue and red imaging. The MACHO filters were non-standard, with the blue filter running from $``$4500$``$6300 $`\AA `$ and the red filter from $``$6300$``$7600 $`\AA `$ (see Alcock et al. 1999). At both the red and blue foci, a mosaic of four 2048$`\times `$2048 Loral charge coupled devices (CCDs) were mounted, yielding an 0.52 square degree imaged area.

Approximately 45 square degrees of the Galactic bulge were observed every few nights, with exceptions for weather and the southern summers. Photometry was handled by a special purpose crowded-field, PSF-fitting code called SoDOPHOT, which is described by Alcock et al. (1999). At the time of this work, the MACHO photometry database contained a time-series of $``$1000 two-color photometric measurements spanning $``$6 years for most Galactic bulge fields. Most of the stars of interest here are quite bright, and thus the typical error on each photometric measurement is about $`\pm `$0.02 mag.

Following Alcock et al. (1999), the MACHO instrumental photometry have been calibrated to the standard Kron-Cousins system using:

$$V=v+23.6990.1804(vr)$$
(3)
$$R=r+23.412+0.1825(vr)$$
(4)
where $`v`$ and $`r`$ are instrumental magnitudes, and $`V`$ and $`R`$ are on the Kron-Cousins standard system. The color coefficients are averages of the values determined for different CCDs in the MACHO focal plane, corrected for airmass. These calibration formulae are estimated to have an overall absolute accuracy of $`\pm `$0.10 mag in $`V`$ or $`R`$, and $`\pm `$0.04 mag in $`(VR)`$. For the purposes of calibration, we assumed $`(vr)`$ = 0.5 mag for all stars without instrumental colors in the database; the systematic error may be larger for these stars. The systematic calibration error may also be larger for stars with colors of $`(VR)`$ $`>`$ 1.2 mag (see Alcock et al. 1999).

Astrometry for the MACHO database was derived independently for each field using the Guide Star Catalog. Astrometric offsets of order $``$1′′ between MACHO fields (as determined from common stars in field overlap regions) are typically found, which gives an indication of the overall astrometric accuracy to be expected.

## 3 Matching MACHO & ISOGAL Sources

In our initial reconnaisance of the MACHO photometry database, we overplotted MACHO “tiles” on the spatial distribution of ISOGAL sources (tiles are a defined region of the sky in the MACHO database, each approximately a few arcminutes square). In this manner, we identified 54 tiles that overlapped (or nearly overlapped) ISOGAL sources. Unique starlists were extracted from the MACHO photometry database for these tiles, which totaled just over $`3\times 10^5`$ stars. We estimate that 91% and 88% of the areas of the ISOGAL SGR I and NGC 6522 fields, respectively, are included in the MACHO photometry database. This estimate accounts for gaps in MACHO sky coverage between fields and CCDs, but not for area lost to CCD defects or saturated pixels. The latter probably accounts for no more than $``$5% of the field area.

A blind spatial matching of the ISOGAL sources with such a large number of MACHO stars would have certainly resulted in numerous chance coincidences. Therefore, we decided to apply a “reasonable” cut in the optical color-magnitude diagram before attempting to cross-correlate sources. We considered only MACHO stars with $`V>13.5+4.67(VR)`$ as possible counterparts to the ISOGAL sources. This cut was chosen to include the red clump, very red faint stars, and very bright blue stars. It excluded most faint main sequence stars, but may have also excluded some relatively blue AGB stars located behind the Galactic bulge. After applying this cut, approximately $`4\times 10^4`$ MACHO stars remained.

For each of the 1193 ISOGAL sources, the angular distance to each MACHO star was calculated, and the closest positional match was recorded if lying within 3 arcseconds. In an initial matching trial, median offsets in $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ were calculated using a subset of matches that included only MACHO stars with colors $`(VR)>1.5`$ mag, which were considered very likely matches. The offsets for each field, in the sense of ISO $``$ MACHO, and in units of arcseconds, are: ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$) = (1.4, 0.7), and (0.8, 0.6) for ISOGAL fields SGR I and NGC 6522, respectively. A second and final matching trial proceeded as the first, except that the offsets were applied.

Figure 2 shows the final distribution of angular separations for matches in ISOGAL fields SGR I and NGC 6522. In order to provide some estimate of the number of spurious matches, we repeated the matching procedure described above, except that we applied an arbitrary ($`15`$ arcsec) shift to each MACHO starlist. The result of this control matching trial is also shown in Figure 2 (shaded histograms). The total number of matches are 518 and 386 in ISOGAL fields SGR I and NGC 6522, while the probabilities for a spurious match are 7% and 3%, respectively. The details of the matching criteria described above do not affect the main results of this work.

The total number of matches (904) represents 76% of the 1193 ISOGAL sources, which compares to the estimated $``$90% overlapping area between the MACHO and ISOGAL fields. This discrepancy ($``$165 stars) is probably too large to attribute to CCD defects in the MACHO images, which would tend to lower the percentage of overlapping area ($``$5%). It would also seem too large to attribute to saturation in the MACHO data ($`V_{SAT}`$ 11; although this is certainly case for some known Miras, as discussed below). It is unlikely that this represents a significant population of self-obscured AGB stars, since there aren’t that many very bright ISOGAL sources. It is possible that the ISOGAL sources without optical counterparts are not real, but are instead low signal-to-noise, false detections. However, a combination of all of the above effects is perhaps the most likely explanation. A detailed accounting of each ISOGAL source is beyond the scope of this work. We are confident that we have correctly matched a large number of ISOGAL sources with MACHO stars, and will proceed with an analysis of this dataset.

332 stars of the 904 MACHO and ISOGAL matches have complete sets of $`V`$, $`R`$, $`[7]`$, and $`[15]`$ mags. They are listed in Table 1. In Figure 3, we plot all 904 sources, distinguishing those with four-color photometry. The four-color sources are seen to deviate in the direction of higher $`VR`$ and/or fainter $`V`$ from the others, apart from the small group of stars near $`V`$ $``$ 17, $`VR`$ $``$ 0.9, which coincide with the red giant clump. This can be an effect of either or both of photospheric temperature and reddening due to circumstellar material. Those located near the clump are consistent with chance matches.

For the remainder of this work, we restrict our analyses to the subset of 332 matches with four-color photometry.

## 4 Pulsation characteristics

### 4.1 Periodicity

Most of our sample (305 out of 332, or 92%) show quite well-defined periodic or quasi-periodic variations of moderate amplitude superimposed on irregular longer-term fluctuations, which do not, with a few exceptions, appear periodic on the overall time scale of our observations. Of the remaining 27 stars, 26 were frequently saturated in the MACHO image data and thus have unusable light curves. The remaining object is an eclipsing binary. There are 14 known Miras in these fields and they are discussed separately below. The SRs outnumber the Miras by about 20:1.

### 4.2 Semiregular Variables

All 332 $`R`$-band light curves were plotted and examined. Approximate periods were first estimated by eye and later made more precise by Fourier analysis. The seasonality of the observations led to the presence of confusing noise at low frequencies as well as aliases. Stars with estimated values of log $`P`$ $`<`$ 2.2 were analysed separately from those with longer periods.

The log $`P`$ $`<`$ 2.2 stars (280) were Fourier analysed season by season and their amplitude periodograms were then summed. The component with highest amplitude with log $`P`$ $`<`$ 2.2 was taken to be the most characteristic or relevant one, even if other periods sometimes had almost equal amplitudes.

The remaining 25 of the 305 periodic or quasi-periodic variables, i.e., those with estimated log $`P`$ $``$ 2.2, were also Fourier analysed, but using the information derived by eye from the light curves to assist in the interpretation.

It is traditional to divide the SR variable giants, whether having M-, C-, or S-type spectra, into subtypes SRa and SRb, according to their variability characteristics. The SRa types show persistent periodicity in the range 35–1200 days, though with amplitudes less than Miras (defined to have minimum amplitude $`>`$2.5 mag at $`V`$) and variability in amplitude and light-curve shapes. The SRb stars have much more poorly expressed periodicity in the range (20–2300) days, with slow, irregular changes, or even periods of constancy. Usually, however, a mean period can be assigned to them.

About 3/4 of our variables can be classified as SRa and most of the remainder as SRb. However, this classification scheme can only be regarded as subjective. The SRb types occur predominantly among the longer-period objects.

Figure 4 (a) – (d) shows examples of the different types of variables.

### 4.3 Mira Variables

Of the fourteen Miras known from previous work (Lloyd Evans, 1976; Glass et al. 1995), six have good to recognizable Mira light curves (Table 2). Five were completely missing from the overall list of 332 identifications because they were saturated in the MACHO template images for these fields and thus do not appear at all in the MACHO photometry database (Alcock et al. 1999). The remaining three were misidentified and do appear amongst the 332, but as matches to nearby faint stars. The Miras themselves were saturated in the MACHO images. Two of the resulting three ‘wrong’ light curves exhibit irregular flare-like spikes which presumably arise from occasional seeing-related contamination from the true Mira counterparts.

The periods determined by MACHO are based on much more comprehensive light curves than either those of Lloyd Evans (1976) or Glass et al. (1995). It is therefore interesting to compare these values in order to have some check on the error arising from uncertain $`P`$ values when determining $`PL`$ relations. The differences may be due to observational error or to intrinsic irregularities in the Mira light curves (Fig 4a). For the 6 stars in common with Lloyd Evans (1975) we find $`\mathrm{\Delta }P/P_{\mathrm{MACHO}}=7\pm 5\%`$ and for the 4 stars in common with Glass et al. (1995) we get $`\mathrm{\Delta }P/P_{\mathrm{MACHO}}=9\pm 9\%`$. Since the scatter of the LMC Miras around their $`K`$, log$`P`$ relation is around 13%, it is clear that errors arising from uncertain or poorly determined periods contribute significantly to the overall scatter in the relationship, besides those associated with finding the mean values of $`K`$.

### 4.4 Period-Luminosity Relations for Semiregulars and Miras

Fig 5a shows the log $`P`$,  diagram for our sample. As we will see, the 7 $`\mu `$m mag is, like the $`K`$, closely related to $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ for these stars. We have superimposed a line equivalent to that which fits local SR variables having photometric and astrometric data from Hipparcos, as suggested by Bedding and Zijlstra (1998). To transform from their empirical $`M_K`$ relation to one involving , we made use of 51 late-type non-Mira stars in the NGC 6522 Baade’s Window having $`K_0`$ (de-reddened) values by Frogel & Whitford (1987) and also 7$`\mu `$m mags from ISOGAL, finding that  = 1.04 $`K_0`$ – 0.20 (s.d. 0.26). (For reference, using Frogel & Whitford’s (1987) bolometric magnitudes corrected for the difference in assumed distance moduli, we also found $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ = 0.75 obs – 9.25 (s.d. = 0.21) for the same sample. The distance modulus of the Baade’s Windows was taken to be 14.7 in our work and 14.2 by Frogel & Whitford). The Bedding and Zijlstra (1998) line then has the form

$$[7]=1.85\mathrm{log}P+11.27.$$
(5)
The Bedding & Zijlstra (1998) line runs fairly centrally through, or perhaps 0.1 to 0.2 mag above, the distribution of Baade’s Window points. It is about 0.8 mag above that originally found for globular cluster variables with periods in the range $`0\mathrm{log}P2.8`$ by Whitelock (1986).

Fig 5a also includes an empirical log $`P`$,  fit for the Miras, excluding TLE 57 (a possible SR):

$$[7]=(6.9\pm 1.4)\mathrm{log}P+(23.5\pm 3.4),$$
(6)
with s.d. 0.4. Unlike the case for the SR variables, the 7 $`\mu `$m flux from a Mira is likely to include a substantial component arising from dust as well as normal photospheric emission. It is therefore no longer a simple measure of bolometric output, particularly at longer periods.

The $`K`$ emission of Miras is little contaminated by dust and is thus more representative of bolometric output. Accordingly, in order to facilitate a more direct comparison with other work, in Fig 5b we have transformed the  mags of the SRs to $`K_0`$ and plotted a log $`P`$, $`M_K`$ diagram, with the Bedding and Zijlstra (1998) line and the same authors’ transformation of the Whitelock (1986) fit (its exact position is dependent on the distance scale used).

Fig 5c shows the log$`P`$, $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ diagram, where we have transformed the  mags of the SRs to $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ using the relationship given above. The Miras and their $`PL`$ relation from Glass et al. (1995) are shown, as is the (linear) $`P`$, $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ relation given by Whitelock (1986) for Galactic globular clusters.

The shallow sequence of SRs relative to the Miras in these diagrams (Figs 5a,b,c) may reflect an evolutionary sequence. Evolutionary tracks of this kind, though covering a much reduced period range (1.8 $`<`$ log $`P`$ $`<`$ 2.8), were predicted by Vassiliadis & Wood (1993). Alves et al. (1998) have also projected theoretical evolutionary tracks onto the PL diagram, extending the sequences to the lower luminosities and shorter periods appropriate for SRs. The Alves et al. (1998) PL sequences are based on accurate analytic approximations to the grid of Vassiliadis & Wood (1993) AGB models and are thus properly comparable to the latter authors’ PL sequences. The absolute luminosities of the evolutionary PL sequences depend on initial mass and metallicity. Alves et al. (1998) showed that SRs in the clusters 47 Tuc and NGC 1783, which have similar metallicities but different initial masses, support the relative luminosities predicted by the theoretical PL sequences. Therefore, the overall luminosity of the SRs in Fig. 5a,b,c may indicate the characteristic age and metallicity of the AGB population.

When a star moves up along one of the nearly parallel evolutionary sequences in the PL diagram, it eventually reaches the Mira line at a unique position. For Galactic globular clusters, this occurs at the relatively short period of about 200 days, in accordance with the known period distribution of the Miras that they contain. The solar neighbourhood line intersects the Miras at about 460 days. The period distribution of local Miras is unknown at present, but long periods are common and this figure may be reasonable. The census of Miras in the SgrI Baade’s Window is complete (Glass et al. 1995) and their average period is 346 days, in accord with the distributions in Fig. 5a,b,c. This period is much longer than the typical 200 days found for Miras in Galactic globulars and is consistent with the SRs in Baade’s Window lying above the Whitelock (1986) PL sequence.

It is known that the scatter of the Miras in the Sgr I Baade’s Window around the log $`P`$, $`K_0`$ relation is $``$0.35 mag (Glass et al. 1995). Most of this is attributed to the distribution of the Miras along the line of sight, i.e., the finite thickness of the Bulge, though some of it may be caused by the patchy nature of the interstellar extinction. The scatter of the SR variables in Fig. 5a is not much greater, implying that the spread of evolutionary tracks cannot be very wide.

As can be seen from Fig. 6 (upper panel), there is no conspicuous clumping in numbers at any given period of the semiregular variables in our sample. There is however a gap visible in Fig. 5a,b,c between the Mira region and the semi-regular variables similar to that noted by Wood & Sebo (1996) and Wood (2000) in the case of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This gap corresponds, however, to the period range where aliasing is severe due to the seasonality of the MACHO data, and may in part be an artefact. Wood & Sebo (1996) and Wood (2000) interpret the Mira sequence as being one of fundamental mode pulsators and suggest that the semi-regulars pulsate in higher modes. First overtone pulsators are expected to lie on a parallel sequence about $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$log$`P`$ $``$ 0.35 to the left of the fundamental, and higher modes should lie at progressively smaller intervals to the left of these. The sequences arising from the higher modes, although clearly seen in the LMC, are not expected to be separated from each other as clearly in our Baade’s windows data because of greater observational error and a range of distances. The necessity that the short-period end of the semi-regular M-giants must pulsate in very high modes has also been discussed by Koen & Laney (2000). This interpretation is not incompatible with the evolutionary picture previously discussed.

### 4.5 Amplitudes

Because the short-period variability of the SRs is often modulated by apparently irregular long-period trends, eye-estimates of the envelope of the $`R`$-band variations were made for each star, accurate to about 20% or 0.05 mag, whichever is greater. None exceeded $`\mathrm{\Delta }R`$ $``$ 1 mag, whereas the five Miras with adequate data (Fig. 4a) each showed $`\mathrm{\Delta }R`$ $``$ 4 mag.

Three stars with short periods around 50 – 60 days also showed long periods around 400 days (one or two other short-period stars are also suspected to have long periods close to a year, but their interpretation is confused by the annual nature of the observations). They have amplitudes of 0.1 – 0.2 mag in the short periods and 0.5 mag in the long (see Fig. 4d), but have luminosities appropriate to SRs rather than Miras. Similar stars are found in the LMC MACHO data (see Alves et al. 1998; Wood et al. 1999), covering short periods of 50 – 100 days and long periods of 250 – 1000 days. Wood et al. find long to short period ratios in the range 5 – 13.

Figure 6 shows a histogram of the average amplitude of variability as well as the period distribution. There is a very clear trend towards smaller amplitudes at shorter periods (see also Minniti et al. 1998). The shorter period groups may have been influenced by selection effects, in the sense that very small amplitude variables may not have been detected.

## 5 Discussion of mass-loss rates

In non-Mira M-giant stars, the flux entering the 7$`\mu `$m ISOCAM LW2 filter arises primarily from photospheric emission and does not include a large dust contribution. The 15$`\mu `$m LW3 filter, on the other hand, overlaps with the silicate dust emission features at 10 and 18$`\mu `$ and is strongly affected by dust, when present. Only when the dust is optically thick, such as in long-period Miras and OH/IR sources, is the 7$`\mu `$m band likely to be strongly affected. The $`K_0`$ and  mags of the SRs and Miras previously discussed in §4.4 are consistent with this scenario.

### 5.1 Spectral Energy Distributions

Here we model the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for the small subset of our sample also identified by Frogel & Whitford (1987). These stars allow us to calibrate mass-loss rates based upon the observed 15 µm flux excess using model SEDs. We also attempt an initial characterization of how mass-loss rates depend on fundamental stellar parameters such as luminosity and effective temperature in order to compare with recent theoretical predictions. This is the first time that dust sensitive mid-infrared photometry has been assembled for a sample of SRs (and Miras) whose distances and thus energetics are known. We compare pulsational properties of the sample with mass-loss rates calibrated here in §5.4.

First, we assembled $`J_0`$ and $`K_0`$ photometry (see also Table 2) and SED-integrated bolometric magnitudes for 26 stars (1 Mira from Table 1 and 25 SRs from Table 2) from Frogel & Whitford (1987). The bolometric magnitudes were adjusted by $``$0.5 mag to account for a distance modulus of 14.7 mag as discussed previously. The ISOGAL running number (BW), the MACHO identifier, the star name by Frogel & Whitford (1987) and the adjusted values of $`M_{\mathrm{BOL}}`$ are listed in the first four columns of Table 3, respectively. The $`V`$ and $`R`$ magnitudes were dereddened by adopting a visual extinction of $`A_V`$ = 1.5 mag and taking $`A_R/A_V`$ = 0.75. Optical and near-infrared fluxes were calculated using the zero points from Bessell, Castelli, & Plez (1998). The mid-infrared fluxes were calculated from Eqns. (1) & (2) of this paper. Errors associated with absolute flux calibration and dereddening are negligible for the purposes of this work.

Stellar effective temperatures in column (5) of Table 3 were calculated from the dereddened $`(VK)_0`$ color, where we employed the calibration of Bessell, Castelli, & Plez (1998). These temperatures are assumed to represent an accurate, relative effective temperature scale. It is noted that systematic uncertainty in the temperature scale at the $`\pm 100^{}`$K level or less will not affect our conclusions (e.g., see §5.2).

For our SED modeling, we assembled the “corrected” model spectra of Lejeune, Cuisinier, & Buser (1997) with solar \[Fe/H\], $`\mathrm{log}g`$ of either 0.28 or 0.00, and effective temperatures of 2500, 2800, 3000, 3200, 3350, 3500, 3750, and 4000 K. This was the finest temperature grid available. This corrected spectral library, by definition, yields synthetic optical and near-infrared broadband colors consistent with the $`(VK)_0`$ color-temperature calibration adopted above. We caution that these model spectra are for static stars and do not take account of photospheric extension arising from variability (e.g., Bessell et al. 1989).

The Lejeune et al. (1997) model spectra were input as $`\lambda `$, Fν files into the radiative transfer code, DUSTY (Ivezić, Nenkova, & Elitzur 1999). DUSTY solves the radiative transfer problem of an AGB star enshrouded in dust, including a self-consistent solution for the density structure in the wind-driven dust shell. We adopted the faster-running analytic approximation for the wind-driven dust density structure, which is an option in DUSTY. We chose 100% warm silicate for the grain composition (Ivezić et al. 1999). The grain size distribution was a truncated power-law (q = $``$3.5, a1 = 0.005 µm and a2 = 0.25 µm; Ivezić et al. 1999; see also Mathis, Rumpl, & Nordsieck 1977). The temperature at the dust shell’s inner-boundary was fixed to be 1000 K, which is supported by observations (Reid & Menten 1997). We ran a total of $``$200 model SEDs with DUSTY using the 8 different Lejeune et al. (1997) model spectra as inputs and allowing for a wide range of mass-loss rates. DUSTY reports the mass-loss rate (ṀL4) and the expansion velocity ($`V_{exp}`$) normalized to a luminosity $`L=10^4L_{}`$. The true mass-loss rate (Ṁ) scales in proportion to $`L^{3/4}`$ and $`(r_{gd}\rho _s)^{1/2}`$, where $`r_{gd}`$ is the gas-to-dust ratio and $`\rho _s`$ is the dust grain bulk density. The expansion velocity scales as $`L^{1/4}`$ and $`(r_{gd}\rho _s)^{1/2}`$. For these latter parameters, the default values from DUSTY are employed: $`r_{gd}`$ = 200 and $`\rho _s`$ = 3 g cm-3. This corresponds to an absorption coefficient at 60 µm of $`\chi _{60}`$ = 70 cm2 g-1. For all stars, we assume that $`r_{gd}`$, $`\rho _s`$, the grain size distribution, the dust composition, and the temperature at the inner-boundary are the same. These simplifying assumptions are sufficient to establish a plausible, relative calibration of the mass-loss rates in our sample.

Each model SED from DUSTY is fit to the observed, dereddeded flux data in the $`\mathrm{log}(\lambda F_\lambda )`$ versus $`\mathrm{log}(\lambda )`$ plane, allowing for one zeropoint constraint. The SED fits yield both the luminosity and temperature. The best-fit input model spectrum temperature (TMOD) and the mass-loss rate normalized to $`L=10^4L_{}`$ (ṀL4) are listed in columns (6) & (7) of Table 3, respectively. The true mass-loss rate (Ṁ), which is rescaled for each known stellar luminosity by a factor of $`(L/10^4L_{})^{3/4}`$, is listed in column (8) of Table 3. Finally, the expansion velocity corrected for a factor of $`(L/10^4L_{})^{1/4}`$ is listed in column (9) of Table 3.

We find reasonable agreement between the $`(VK)_0`$ color temperatures and those indicated by the best-fit model SEDs. However, the former are preferred because of the poor temperature resolution of the grid of model spectra. We also checked that the stellar luminosities derived from our SED fits agree with those taken from Frogel & Whitford (1987). The agreement is fair in most cases. However, in a few instances of fitting the SEDs of stars with high mass-loss rates, we obtain luminosities lower than those given by Frogel & Whitford (1987). In these cases, our statistical best-fit model SED (which gives equal weight to all flux data) underestimates the near-infrared flux (near the peak of $`\lambda F_\lambda `$) and overestimates the mid-infrared data. Fortunately, while this affects the luminosities so obtained, the mass-loss rates themselves are not underestimated at a level which is important in this work. In summary, we adopt the distance modulus-adjusted, SED-integrated Frogel & Whitford (1987) luminosities, the Bessell, Castelli, & Plez (1998) $`(VK)_0`$ color temperatures, and the SED-fit mass-loss rates in our subsequent analyses.

Figure 7 shows four example SEDs (filled circles) and their best-fit DUSTY SEDs (solid lines). Each input spectrum is shown as a dotted line. We plot $`\mathrm{log}(\lambda F_\lambda )`$ versus $`\mathrm{log}(\lambda )`$.

### 5.2 Mass-loss rate, effective temperature, and luminosity

Our data, as presented in Table 3, can be used to obtain observational constraints on the dependence of mass-loss rate on effective temperature and luminosity for the first time. We assumed that the relationship should be of the form: Ṁ $``$ Tα Lβ. Adopting a factor of two uncertainty for each true mass-loss rate, a chi-squared minimization yields the power-law exponents:

$$\alpha =8.80_{0.24}^{+0.96}\beta =+1.74_{0.24}^{+0.16}$$
(7)
Theoretical studies of mass-loss for C-rich long-period variables (not yet extended to O-rich or M-type variables) suggests that their mass-loss rates are mainly governed by stellar photospheric temperature, followed by mass and luminosity, and are relatively independent of amplitude of variation, C over-abundance, and pulsational period (Arndt, Fleischer & Sedlmayr 1997). They obtain

$$\dot{M}T_{\mathrm{eff}}^{8.26}L^{1.53}.$$
(8)
which is in good agreement with our observations.

### 5.3 Dust-based mass-loss rates from 15 $`\mu `$m photometry

Table 3 includes the excess of 15 µm flux based on a Rayleigh-Jeans extrapolation of the 7 µm flux ($`x`$ in mJy) for each star. We can calibrate this quantity in terms of the true mass-loss rate, as given by the DUSTY models, yielding

$$\mathrm{log}\dot{M}=0.78(\pm 0.08)\mathrm{log}(x[15])7.88(\pm 0.11),$$
(9)
with a s.d. = 0.30 dex. This formula should be valid for SRs having observed 15$`\mu `$m excesses from 3 to 130 mJy, giving mass-loss rates from 1 $`\times `$ 10-8 to 5 $`\times `$ 10-7 $`M_{}`$ yr-1.

As previously explained, determination of the 15$`\mu `$m continuum by Rayleigh-Jeans extrapolation of the 7$`\mu `$m flux will not be correct for objects whose dust shells become optically thick at shorter wavelengths than is usually the case for SRs. Thus, in particular, we do not expect long-period Miras to follow the empirical relationship given.

It is instructive to compare our values with those given by the Jura (1987) formula for the mass-loss from an AGB star:

$$\dot{M}=1.7\times 10^7\left(\frac{150}{\chi _{60}}\right)v_{15}R_{kpc}^2L_4^{1/2}F_{\nu ,60}\lambda _{10}^{1/2}M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1,$$
(10)
where $`v_{15}`$ is the gas outflow velocity in units of 15 km s-1, determined from CO observations, $`R`$ is the distance to the star in kpc, $`L_4`$ is the stellar luminosity in units of 104 $`L_{}`$, $`F_{\nu ,60}`$ is the flux from the object at 60 $`\mu `$m in Jy, $`\lambda _{10}`$ is the mean wavelength of light emerging from the star in units of 10 $`\mu `$m, and $`\chi _{60}`$ is the dust absorption coefficient in units of cm2 g-1. We adopt $`R`$ $``$ 8.7 kpc, $`L_4`$ = 0.3, ($`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ = –4.04) and $`\lambda _{10}`$ = 0.1 from the bolometric magnitude of a 200-day Mira (Glass et al. 1995). To relate the given 15 $`\mu `$m flux to the 60 $`\mu `$m flux required, we take the relation by Jura (1986), intended for carbon stars (but see also the values of $`Q_{abs}`$ for astronomical silicate grains; Draine & Lee 1984), namely $`F_\nu `$ $``$ $`\nu ^{1.54}`$. As noted above, our DUSTY models employ $`\chi _{60}`$ = 70 cm2 g-1. Finally, we adopt the mean expansion velocity of those listed in Table 3, or 16 km s-1; this compares to 8 km sec-1, the average value determined for semi-regular variables by Kerschbaum, Olofsson & Hron (1996). If the excess 15 $`\mu `$m flux is 100 mJy, we obtain Ṁ = 2 $`\times `$ 10-7 $`M_{}`$ yr-1. This is within a factor of two of the mass-loss rate expected from our calibration, 4 $`\times `$ 10-7 $`M_{}`$ yr-1 for a similar 15$`\mu `$m flux excess. Thus our mass-loss rate calibration and Jura’s well-known calibration yield similar results.

### 5.4 Mass-loss rate and Pulsation Periods

The part of the 15 $`\mu `$m flux emitted by dust ($`x`$) for the whole sample of SRs has been estimated by subtracting the photospheric flux which was taken to be a Rayleigh-Jeans tail fitted to the 7 $`\mu `$m measurements. The latter were assumed to be completely free of dust emission. Figure 8 shows this quantity $`x`$ as a function of log period. Although the same procedure has been applied to the Miras, which are also included in Fig. 8, it becomes unreliable with increasing period because the assumption that the 7 $`\mu `$m flux is free of a dust component progressively ceases to be valid.

It is evident from Fig. 8 that the mass-loss rates of the longer-period SRs overlap those of the short-period Miras and clearly do not depend on the presence of large-amplitude pulsation. The lack of measurable mass-loss for stars with periods $`P`$ $`<`$ 60 days accords with the finding of Kerschbaum, Olofsson & Hron (1996, see below) that CO radio emission is not detected for 0 $`<`$ $`P`$ $`<`$ 75 days. Similarly, though stars with periods in the range 75 $`<`$ $`P`$ $`<`$ 175 days may show dust emission, as they may also show CO emission, this does not constitute a sufficient condition.

### 5.5 CO-based information

As noted above, the period-dependent behavior of the quantity $`x`$ for SRs in the Galactic bulge is consistent with that of CO detections for SRs found in the solar neighborhood. It is therefore of interest to briefly recall the CO-based information.

Kahane & Jura (1994) found CO emission from 11 SRs with measured periods (typically 100-160 days) and brighter than $`K`$ = 0. They determined mass-loss rates of 1–1.5 $`\times `$ 10-7 $`M_{}`$ yr-1, which they compared to calculations based on the dust mass-loss rates derived from IRAS 60$`\mu `$ fluxes. Similar dust-to-gas ratios, CO line ratios, outflow velocities and mass-loss rates were found as for Miras with 300 $``$ P $``$ 400 days period, leading to the speculation that this group of SRs were overtone pulsators corresponding to the Miras which pulsate in the fundamental mode. Kerschbaum, Olofsson and Hron (1996) extended their sample to another group of SRas and SRbs, selected on the basis of their 60$`\mu `$m fluxes. The Kerschbaum & Hron (1992) blue SRVs were not detected, whereas the red ones and the Miras had a 50% detection rate. Those with periods below 75 days were not seen, nor were those with 175 $``$ P $``$ 325 days. Those with 75 $``$ P $``$ 175 had a high detection rate. A CO study by Young (1995) of nearby Miras with optically thin dust shells showed that only stars of type later than M5.5 could be detected, the rate becoming 100% only for M7 and later types. The mass-loss rate was found to be correlated with far-IR luminosity but not color, and also with CO outflow velocity. Similar mass-loss rates were found for M6.5–M8 types (comparable to the rates for semiregular variables found by other workers).

### 5.6 Mass-loss rates as a function of luminosity only

We have seen that mass-loss in SRs can be expressed as a function of $`T`$ and $`L`$. High luminosities and long periods in LPVs are associated with low temperatures, which are not independent variables but are connected by evolutionary tracks.

Figure 9 shows $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ plotted against the mass-loss rates from Table 3 of our work together with those derived for dust-enshrouded O- and C-rich AGB stars in the LMC by van Loon et al. (1999). There is a striking continuity between the rates exhibited by the low-luminosity semi-regular variables and those found amongst the extreme AGB-tip variables, both C-type and M-type, in the LMC, in spite of the differences in metallicities between the samples. We have derived a linear fit between log $`\dot{M}`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$. Because the distribution of errors between these quantities is uncertain, we have solved first assuming that all the errors are in $`M_{\mathrm{bol}}`$ and second assuming that they are in $`\dot{M}`$. Both fits are shown and the average slope is given by the solid line, whose form is

$$\dot{M}1.09M_{\mathrm{bol}},$$
(11)
i.e., we find that

$$\dot{M}L^{2.7},$$
(12)
in the range 10-8 $`<`$ $`\dot{M}`$ $`<`$ 10-4 $`M_{}`$ yr-1.

## 6 Conclusions

1. Almost all non-Miras in our sample detected in the four MACHO and ISO colors show semi-regular variability.

2. The SRs outnumber Miras by 20:1 in our sample.

3. We see no preferred periods in 10-200 day range, but a gap exists between the distributions of SRs and Miras which may be explicable in terms of pulsation modes.

4. The Galactic bulge SRs possess a $`PL`$ distribution similar to that of the solar neighbourhood SRs observed by Hipparcos. They can probably be regarded as lying on a series of $`PL`$ relations with slopes equal to that observed in globular clusters, but with luminosity levels appropriate to higher metallicities and initial masses.

5. The amplitudes of the SRs increase with period, reaching about 0.3 mag at 100 days.

6. Mass loss depends on luminosity and period, but does not require large Mira-like amplitudes, even though the mass-loss levels reach those of the shorter-period Miras.

7. A minimum period of about 70d is required for, but does not guarantee, detectable mass loss, in agreement with conclusions based on CO observations.

8. The mass-loss rate for semi-regular variables depends on temperature and luminosity approximately according to $`\dot{M}T^{8.8}L^{1.7}`$.

9. The observed mass-loss rates in SRs range from 1 $`\times `$ 10-8 $`M_{}`$ yr-1 to 5 $`\times `$ $`10^7`$ $`M_{}`$ yr-1.

10. Taking into account the work of van Loon et al. (1999) concerning extreme mass-losing AGB stars in the LMC, we find the general result that $`\dot{M}L^{2.7}`$ in the range 10-8 $`<`$ $`\dot{M}`$ $`<`$ 10-4 $`M_{}`$ yr-1.

Note that in this work we have discussed only those stars which were detected in both MACHO and both ISOGAL bands. A preliminary examination of the light curves of the stars seen by ISOGAL only at 7 $`\mu `$m indicates that most of them are also SRs, but presumably with mass-loss rates too low for 15 $`\mu `$m detection.

D.R.A. acknowledges support of this work from a NASA grant administered by the American Astronomical Society. D.R.A. also thanks the South Africa Astronomical Observatory for his appointment to the Visiting Astronomer Program, and acknowledges their financial support of his visit. I.S.G. thanks the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, and the Institut d’Astrophysique, Paris, for their hospitality and support during part of this work, under PPARC and CNRS grants, respectively. We thank M. Groenwegen for useful comments on an early version of this paper. The MACHO Collaboration thanks the skilled support by the technical staff at MSSSO. Work at LLNL was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy bu the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W7405-ENG-48. Work at CfPA was supported by NSF AST-8809616 and AST-9120005. Work at MSSSO was supported by the Australian Dept. of Industry, Technology and Regional Development. W.J.S. thanks PPARC Advanced Fellowship, K.G. thanks DOE OJI, Sloan, and Cottrell awards, C.W.S. thanks Sloan and Seaver Foundations. D.M. is supported by Fondecyt 1990440.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Noncommutative gauge theories have attracted attention due to recent achievements in string theory. Seiberg and Witten in their celebrated work have shown that the open string theory in large external constant $`B`$-field yields the effective noncommutative theory on the world volume of D-brane. That is why coupling of a noncommutative theory to a commutative one can be useful for understanding the interaction of open and closed strings.

It is the fundamental idea that the noncommutativity is a deformation of the algebra of functions, thus the fields of a noncommutative gauge theory are valued in the deformed algebra of functions where the usual product is replaced by the associative noncommutative Moyal $``$-product

$$\begin{array}{c}f_1f_2(x)=f_1(x)\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\stackrel{}{}_\mu \theta ^{\mu \nu }\stackrel{}{}_\nu }f_2(x).\end{array}$$
(1)
The following integral representation of the $``$-product will be used in the future,

$$\begin{array}{c}f_1f_2(x)=d^dx^{}d^dx^{\prime \prime }K(x,x^{},x^{\prime \prime })f_1(x^{})f_2(x^{\prime \prime }),\\ K(x,x^{},x^{\prime \prime })=\frac{1}{\pi ^ddet(\theta ^{\mu \nu })}\mathrm{exp}\{2\mathrm{i}(x^{}x)^\mu (\theta ^1)_{\mu \nu }(x^{\prime \prime }x)^\nu \}.\end{array}$$
(2)
We shall restrict ourselves to the case of two noncommuting spatial coordinates,

$$[x^1,x^2]=\mathrm{i}\theta ^{12}\mathrm{i}\theta .$$

In this case

$$\begin{array}{c}K(x,y,z)=\frac{1}{\pi ^2\theta ^2}\mathrm{e}^{\frac{2\mathrm{i}}{\theta }\left(x^2(y^1z^1)+y^2(z^1x^1)+z^2(x^1y^1)\right)}.\end{array}$$
(3)
This formula will be exploited in the subsequent calculations to evaluate different $``$-products. If some extra commuting temporal or spatial coordinates are present they serve as additional parameters from the $``$-product view-point.

The Weyl-Moyal (WM) correspondence is a very useful tool for performing calculations in noncommutative theories. This is the one-to-one correspondence (isomorphism) between the deformed algebra of functions (i.e. the former algebra to which noncommutative fields belong) on a noncommutative manifold with a constant noncommutativity matrix $`\theta ^{ij}`$ and the algebra of operators acting in the auxiliary Hilbert space. The literature on this topic is very extended so we do not spend too much time for discussing it (for example, see).

The paper is organized as follows. In the next section we present the model, i.e. its action functional and gauge transformations. This is the massive charged scalar field $`\varphi `$ coupled to a background noncommutative gauge field $`A`$. Further we consider a particular background of constant strength. The third section deals with the correlation functions of the theory. Such a free (quadratic in $`\varphi `$) theory appears to be in some sense equivalent to an effective commutative one. This equivalence becomes especially transparent physically when we use the linear ansatz for the gauge field. Namely, a gauge-dependent rescaling of coordinates is required to perform this reduction. That is why the definition of the gauge invariant correlators proves to involve the $``$-product and differs from that in the commutative case. It is the $``$-product that is expected to rescue the situation. The gauge invariance of these correlators is verified by the explicit calculation using the formal spectral definition of the Green’s function. These objects are shown to really possess the required feature. The gauge invariant two-point function is calculated explicitly as an infinite series where each term is obviously gauge invariant.

## 2 Classical theory

The model we consider is the complex scalar field theory coupled to background noncommutative U(1) Yang-Mills. The action functional is given by

$$\begin{array}{c}S=\overline{\varphi }(D_iD^i+m^2)\varphi .\end{array}$$
(4)
The metric tensor is considered to be of euclidean $`(++)`$ signature. The covariant derivatives act according to

$$\begin{array}{c}D_i\varphi =_i\varphi \mathrm{i}A_i\varphi ,\\ F_{ij}=\mathrm{i}[D_i,D_j]=_iA_j_jA_i\mathrm{i}[A_i,A_j].\end{array}$$
(5)
The gauge transformations

$$\begin{array}{c}\varphi U\varphi ,\overline{\varphi }\overline{\varphi }\overline{U},\\ A_iUA_i\overline{U}\mathrm{i}_iU\overline{U},\\ F_{ij}UF_{ij}\overline{U}\end{array}$$
(6)
are generated by a star-unitary $`U`$ such that

$$\begin{array}{c}\overline{U}U=1=U\overline{U}.\end{array}$$
(7)
In what follows we shall work with the background of constant strength $`F_{12}=F`$ and choose the potential

$$\begin{array}{c}A_1=\alpha _1x^2,A_2=\alpha _2x^1,\\ F=\alpha _1+\alpha _2+\theta \alpha _1\alpha _2.\end{array}$$
(8)
Though $`F`$ itself is not gauge invariant, in the present situation it is so. $`F>0`$ will be assumed hereinafter without loss of generality. Without analyzing in detail all the gauges we simply exhibit the one-parametric family of the functions $`U`$ that generate some gauge transformations leaving the potential like (8) within this class:

$$\begin{array}{c}U_t=\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}t}\mathrm{e}^{\frac{2\mathrm{i}}{\theta }x^1x^2\mathrm{tanh}t},\\ U_0=1,\overline{U}_t=U_t,\\ U_{t_1}U_{t_2}=U_{t_1+t_2}.\end{array}$$
(9)
The gauge transformation generated by $`U_t`$ changes $`\alpha _i`$ as

$$\begin{array}{c}\alpha _1\mathrm{e}^{2t}\alpha _1\frac{2}{\theta }\mathrm{e}^t\mathrm{sinh}t,\\ \alpha _2\mathrm{e}^{2t}\alpha _2+\frac{2}{\theta }\mathrm{e}^t\mathrm{sinh}t.\end{array}$$
(10)
Another interesting thing is that the invariance of the action (4) is provided even if 111Author thanks A.Morozov for pointing at this fact.

$$\begin{array}{c}\overline{U}U=1,U\overline{U}=1P.\end{array}$$
(11)
Obviously $`PP=P`$, i.e. $`P`$ is a projector. This generating function is ‘topologically nontrivial’, i.e. $`U\mathrm{e}_{}^{\mathrm{i}f}`$ for any real $`f`$. Field strength transforms according to

$$\begin{array}{c}F_{ij}UF_{ij}\overline{U}+U(A_j_i\overline{U}A_i_j\overline{U})P+\mathrm{i}(_iU_j\overline{U}_jU_i\overline{U})P\end{array}$$
(12)
but this makes no trouble as the $`F_{ij}F^{ij}`$ term is not present in the action for background $`A_i`$. In the case of such a transformation the gauge field $`A_i`$ no longer remains real.

## 3 Quantum theory

It has been emphasized that free noncommutative theories are identical to the commutative ones, so the definition of the free propagator in the background gauge field is the same, i.e. as the inverse to the quadratic in $`\varphi `$ part of the action. If $`f_n`$ are orthonormalized eigenfunctions of the operator $`(D_iD^i+m^2)`$ with the corresponding eigenvalues $`\lambda _n`$ then the Green’s function is given by its formal spectral definition 222Upper indices of $`x`$’s are coordinate indices and those in brackets will onwards mark the number of point in correlator.

$$\begin{array}{c}G(x_{(1)},x_{(2)})=\underset{n}{}\frac{1}{\lambda _n}f_n(x_{(1)})\overline{f_n}(x_{(2)}),\end{array}$$
(13)
$`n`$ being discrete or continuous. As in the usual case,

$$\begin{array}{c}\varphi (x_{(1)})\overline{\varphi }(x_{(2)})=𝒟\varphi 𝒟\overline{\varphi }\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}S[\varphi ,\overline{\varphi }]}\varphi (x_{(1)})\overline{\varphi }(x_{(2)})=\mathrm{i}G(x_{(1)},x_{(2)}).\end{array}$$
(14)
This free propagator is not gauge invariant and transforms as

$$\begin{array}{c}G(x_{(1)},x_{(2)})U(x_{(1)})G(x_{(1)},x_{(2)})\overline{U}(x_{(2)}).\end{array}$$
(15)
To verify this we have to check the invariance of the measure w.r.t. the gauge transformations. Now it becomes clear why both conditions of (7) are necessary. An example of $`U`$ satisfying (11) and not satisfying (7) is

$$\begin{array}{c}\widehat{U}:|n|n+1.\end{array}$$
(16)
(we have used the WM correspondence). If one now approximates the path integral measure as

$$\begin{array}{c}𝒟\varphi 𝒟\overline{\varphi }=N\underset{m,n0}{}d\varphi _{mn}d\overline{\varphi }_{mn},\\ \varphi _{mn}=m|\widehat{\varphi }|n,\overline{\varphi }_{mn}=m|\widehat{\varphi }^{}|n\end{array}$$
(17)
where $`\widehat{\varphi }`$ denotes the operator to which $`\varphi `$ is mapped under the Weyl-Moyal correspondence then

$$\begin{array}{c}m|\widehat{U}\widehat{\varphi }|n=\{\begin{array}{cc}\varphi _{m1,n},\hfill & \hfill m1\\ 0,\hfill & \hfill m=0\end{array}\end{array}$$
(18)
The similar formula holds for $`\overline{\varphi }\widehat{\varphi }^{}`$ and even the domain of integration is not invariant. Another way to obtain the transformation law (15) is expansion (13). If the transformation generated by $`U`$ is invertible, i.e. $`U`$ has a left inverse that can generate a gauge transformation (in the case of (11) $`\overline{U}`$ cannot do it) then all the eigenfunctions before and after the transformation are in one-to-one correspondence and (15) becomes obvious.

If one chooses $`A_1=Fx^2,`$ $`A_2=0,`$ then $`D_1=(1+\frac{F\theta }{2})_1+\mathrm{i}Fx^2,`$ $`D_2=_2`$. Thereby is the effect of noncommutativity merely rescaling the $`x^1`$ coordinate? On the other side, the gauge $`A_1=0,`$ $`A_2=Fx^1`$ implies rescaling of the other coordinate. Should one use the symmetric gauge, both coordinates would be rescaled by an identical factor (this situation seems to respect the rotational symmetry more than the two former ones). It becomes clear from this simple example that the subject of interest (in our case gauge invariant correlators) is also changed w.r.t. the commutative case. So the naive correlator $`:\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(1)})::\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(2)}):`$ no more remains gauge invariant and should be replaced by 333This correlator will be referred to as a two-point one.

$$\begin{array}{c}:\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(1)})::\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(2)}):.\end{array}$$
(19)
Let us denote $`\beta _i=1+\frac{\alpha _i\theta }{2},`$ then the covariant derivatives take the form

$$\begin{array}{c}D_1=\beta _1_1+\mathrm{i}\alpha _1x^2,\\ D_2=\beta _2_2\mathrm{i}\alpha _2x^1.\end{array}$$
(20)
The problem of finding the above eigenfunctions $`f_n`$ can be solved using the ansatz $`f_n(x)=\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\frac{\alpha _2}{\beta _2}x^1x^2)g_n(x)`$; it reduces to

$$\begin{array}{c}\{\beta _1^2_1^2\beta _2^2_2^22\mathrm{i}(\frac{\beta _1^2\alpha _2}{\beta _2}+\alpha _1\beta _1)x^2_1+(\frac{\beta _1^2\alpha _2}{\beta _2}+\alpha _1\beta _1)^2(x^2)^2+m^2\}g_n=\lambda _ng_n.\end{array}$$
(21)
From this one easily finds requisite eigenfunctions/eigenvalues

$$\begin{array}{c}f_{n,k}=\frac{\sqrt[4]{F}}{\sqrt{2\pi |\beta _2|}}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\mathrm{i}\left(\frac{\alpha _2}{\beta _2}x^1x^2+kx^1\right)\right\}\psi _n\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{\beta _2}+\frac{\beta _1k}{\sqrt{F}}\right),\\ \lambda _n=(2n+1)F+m^2.\end{array}$$
(22)
Here $`\psi _n`$ stands for the $`n`$-th normalized wavefunction of one-dimensional harmonic oscillator with frequency equal to unity, i.e. $`\mathrm{e}^{\frac{x^2}{2}}`$ multiplied by some Hermite polynomial. To obtain the correlator $`(\text{19})`$ one can use the ordinary Wick’s theorem coming from the commutative case arriving to

$$\begin{array}{c}:\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(1)})::\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(2)}):=G(x_{(1)},x_{(2)})e^{\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\theta ^{ij}(\stackrel{}{}_{(1)i}\stackrel{}{}_{(1)j}+\stackrel{}{}_{(2)i}\stackrel{}{}_{(2)j})}G(x_{(2)},x_{(1)}).\end{array}$$
(23)
The answer is

$$\begin{array}{c}:\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(1)})::\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(2)}):=\\ \underset{n_1,n_2=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{\lambda _{n_1}\lambda _{n_2}}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}dk_1dk_2\{\overline{f}_{n_1,k_1}f_{n_2,k_2}(x_{(1)})\}\{\overline{f}_{n_2,k_2}f_{n_1,k_1}(x_{(2)})\}.\end{array}$$
(24)
The integral kernel (3) is of extreme use for the evaluation of the rhs of (24). The result is

$$\begin{array}{c}\overline{f}_{n_1,k_1}f_{n_2,k_2}(x)=\frac{|2+\alpha _2\theta |\sqrt{F}}{4\pi |1+\alpha _2\theta |}\psi _{n_1}\left(\frac{(2+\alpha _2\theta )(2+F\theta )}{4(1+\alpha _2\theta )\sqrt{F}}k_1+\frac{(2+\alpha _2\theta )F\theta }{4(1+\alpha _2\theta )\sqrt{F})}k_2+x^2\sqrt{F}\right)\\ \psi _{n_2}\left(\frac{(2+\alpha _2\theta )F\theta }{4(1+\alpha _2\theta )\sqrt{F})}k_1+\frac{(2+\alpha _2\theta )(2+F\theta )}{4(1+\alpha _2\theta )\sqrt{F}}k_2+x^2\sqrt{F}\right)\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}x^1\frac{(k_2k_1)(2+\alpha _2\theta )}{2(1+\alpha _2\theta )}}.\end{array}$$
(25)
In the future the following substitution will be useful:

$$\begin{array}{c}k_1=\frac{\sqrt{F}}{2+F\theta +\alpha _1\theta }\left((2+F\theta )\xi _1F\theta \xi _2\right),\\ k_2=\frac{\sqrt{F}}{2+F\theta +\alpha _1\theta }\left(F\theta \xi _1+(2+F\theta )\xi _2\right),\\ \left|det\left(\frac{(k_1,k_2)}{(\xi _1,\xi _2)}\right)\right|=\frac{4F(1+\alpha _2\theta )}{(1+\alpha _1\theta )(2+\alpha _2\theta )^2}sign(1+F\theta )\end{array}$$
(26)
as then

$$\begin{array}{c}\overline{f}_{n_1,k_1}f_{n_2,k_2}(x)=\frac{|2+\alpha _2\theta |\sqrt{F}}{4\pi |1+\alpha _2\theta |}\psi _{n_1}\left(x^2\sqrt{F}+\xi _1\right)\psi _{n_2}\left(x^2\sqrt{F}+\xi _2\right)\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}x^1\sqrt{F}(\xi _2\xi _1)}.\end{array}$$
(27)
As $`\lambda _n`$’s do not depend on $`k`$, the integration over $`k_1,k_2`$ (or, equivalently, $`\xi _1,\xi _2`$) in (24) can be done explicitly and the result is proportional to (we have performed the constant shift in the integration variables $`\xi _i\xi _i\frac{(x_{(1)}^2+x_{(2)}^2)\sqrt{F}}{2}`$)

$$\begin{array}{c}𝑑\xi _1𝑑\xi _2\psi _{n_1}\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi _1\right)\psi _{n_1}\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi _1\right)\\ \times \psi _{n_2}\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi _2\right)\psi _{n_2}\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi _2\right)\mathrm{exp}\left\{2\mathrm{i}\frac{x^1\sqrt{F}}{2}(\xi _1\xi _2)\right\},\\ xx_1x_2.\end{array}$$
(28)
The crucial feature is the definite parity of $`\varphi _n`$’s as now

$$\begin{array}{c}𝑑\xi \psi _n\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi \right)\psi _n\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi \right)\mathrm{exp}\left\{2\mathrm{i}\frac{x^1\sqrt{F}}{2}\xi \right\}=\\ (1)^n𝑑\xi \psi _n\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}\xi \right)\psi _n\left(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2}+\xi \right)\mathrm{exp}\left\{2\mathrm{i}\frac{x^1\sqrt{F}}{2}\xi \right\}=\frac{(1)^n}{2}\varphi _n(\frac{x^2\sqrt{F}}{2},\frac{x^1\sqrt{F}}{2}).\end{array}$$
(29)
$`\varphi _n`$ denotes the phase space Wigner function corresponding to the quantum mechanical state described by $`|\psi _n`$, i.e. the function to which the $`|\psi _n\psi _n|`$ operator is mapped under the Weyl-Moyal correspondence ($`\mathrm{}=1`$). In our case

$$\begin{array}{c}\varphi _n(x)=2(1)^n\mathrm{e}^{|x|^2}L_n(2|x|^2),\end{array}$$
(30)
$`L_n`$ being the $`n`$-th Laguerre polynomial. These functions form the complete set of one-dimensional radially symmetric projectors solving the equation $`\varphi \varphi =\varphi `$. The final answer reads

$$\begin{array}{c}:\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(1)})::\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(2)}):=\frac{1}{|1+F\theta |\pi ^2}\left(\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{(1)^nF\varphi _n(\frac{x\sqrt{F}}{2})}{4((2n+1)F+m^2)}\right)^2,\\ xx_{(1)}x_{(2)}.\end{array}$$
(31)
In these calculations the two-point correlation function factors in a natural way just as in the commutative theory $`:\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(1)})::\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x_{(2)}):=|\overline{\varphi }(x_{(1)})\varphi (x_{(2)})|^2`$. So in the noncommutative case (31) is also a full square (not just a $``$-square) of a gauge invariant quantity.
As for $`F0\underset{n}{}\frac{(1)^nF\varphi _n(\frac{x\sqrt{F}}{2})}{4((2n+1)F+m^2)}\underset{n}{}\frac{(1)^nF\varphi _n(\frac{x\sqrt{F}}{2})}{4m^2}=\frac{\delta ^{(2)}(x)}{m^2}`$ the correlator displays singular behaviour in this limit.

The higher correlators are calculated in the way similar to that of the commutative theory with the novel feature of multiplying Green’s functions with the $``$-product like (23) and it is the $``$-product that does provide the noncommutative gauge invariance. For the evaluation of the $`n`$-point function one can rescale the integration variables so that

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{2+\alpha _2\theta }{1+\alpha _2\theta }k_ik_i,\end{array}$$
(32)
then the Jacobian cancels the non-invariant factor coming from the rhs of (25) and every term of the series is explicitly gauge invariant (i.e. expressed in terms of $`F`$). Correlators with $`n>2`$ points do not reduce to projector solitons of anymore, e.g. for $`n=3`$ there appear terms like

$$\begin{array}{c}𝑑k_1𝑑k_2𝑑k_3\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\left(x_{(1)}^1(k_3k_1)+x_{(2)}^1(k_1k_2)+x_{(3)}^1(k_2k_3)\right)}\\ \times \psi _{n_1}\left(x_{(1)}^2\sqrt{F}+\frac{(2+F\theta )k_1+F\theta k_3}{4\sqrt{F}}\right)\psi _{n_3}\left(x_{(1)}^2\sqrt{F}+\frac{(2+F\theta )k_3+F\theta k_1}{4\sqrt{F}}\right)\\ \times \psi _{n_2}\left(x_{(2)}^2\sqrt{F}+\frac{(2+F\theta )k_2+F\theta k_1}{4\sqrt{F}}\right)\psi _{n_1}\left(x_{(2)}^2\sqrt{F}+\frac{(2+F\theta )k_1+F\theta k_2}{4\sqrt{F}}\right)\\ \times \psi _{n_3}\left(x_{(3)}^2\sqrt{F}+\frac{(2+F\theta )k_3+F\theta k_2}{4\sqrt{F}}\right)\psi _{n_2}\left(x_{(3)}^2\sqrt{F}+\frac{(2+F\theta )k_2+F\theta k_3}{4\sqrt{F}}\right)\end{array}$$
(33)
and there is no use trying to do a substitution like (26) unless $`\theta =0`$. It is easy to see that the latter expression does not vary when the identical shift in $`x_{(i)}`$’s is done so it depends only on the relative position of the points.

It is also useful to construct the generating functional. To do this we add to the action the current corresponding to the composite operator $`\overline{\varphi }\varphi `$:

$$\begin{array}{c}SS+J(x)\overline{\varphi }\varphi (x)=S+A(x^{},x^{\prime \prime })\overline{\varphi }(x^{})\varphi (x^{\prime \prime }),\\ A(x^{},x^{\prime \prime })=𝑑xJ(x)K(x,x^{},x^{\prime \prime }).\end{array}$$
(34)
Then

$$\begin{array}{c}Z[J]=Ndet(\mathrm{i}G^1+\mathrm{i}A)=det(1+GA).\end{array}$$
(35)
The generating functional for connected diagrams

$$\begin{array}{c}W[J]=\mathrm{log}Z[J]=tr\mathrm{log}(1+GA)=\\ tr(GA)\frac{1}{2}tr(GA)^2+\mathrm{}\end{array}$$
(36)
Normal ordering $`:\overline{\varphi }\varphi :`$ is nothing but removing the first term from the rhs manually. Obviously the former results are recovered because the variation $`\frac{\delta A(x^{},x^{\prime \prime })}{\delta J(x)}`$ produces $`K(x,x^{},x^{\prime \prime })`$ so after the integration over $`x^{}`$ and $`x^{\prime \prime }`$ the $``$-product is reproduced.

## 4 Concluding remarks

All the previous results can be easily generalized to the more realistic case of 2+1-dimensional field theory in the constant magnetic field. The Green’s functions are

$$\begin{array}{c}G(x_{(1)},x_{(2)})=\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\underset{n}{}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\sqrt{\lambda _n}|x_{(1)}^0x_{(2)}^0|}}{\sqrt{\lambda }_n}f_n(\stackrel{}{x}_{(1)})\overline{f}_n(\stackrel{}{x}_{(2)})\end{array}$$
(37)
with the same $`f_n`$’s. So the most interesting features survive. The 2-point gauge invariant functions can still be expressed in terms of the Wigner functions (noncommutative projector solitons). This statement seems to be valid for a large class of potentials.

The gauge invariance is recovered with the help of the $``$-product between the Green’s functions that replaces the usual one and our result does depend on coordinates with *no* gauge-dependent rescaling resolving the seeming paradox (what naively does not look completely obvious).

The main goal of the paper is to verify the above physically nontrivial statements concerning noncommutative gauge invariance etc. explicitly.

## 5 Acknowledgements

Author is grateful to ITEP group for hospitality and numerous discussions, in particular to K.Saraikin, A.Gorsky, K.Selivanov and A.Morozov for useful discussions and carefully reading the manuscript and especially to A.Morozov for initiating this work. Author thanks Yu.Sitenko and V.Shadura for support and discussions. The work was supported by grant INTAS-99-590.


text:
# Exact static solutions in Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling parameterA short version of the talk given at the 4^{𝑡ℎ} General Conference of the Balkan Physical Union, Veliko Turnovo , Bulgaria, 22-25 August, 2000.

## Abstract

We present solution generating methods which allow us to construct exact static solutions to the equations of four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity starting with arbitrary static solutions to the pure vacuum Einstein equations, Einstein-dilaton or Einstein-Maxwell equations.

In four dimensions the field equations of the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling parameter $`\alpha `$, can be obtained from the following Einstein frame action

$`𝒜={\displaystyle \frac{1}{16\pi }}{\displaystyle d^4x\sqrt{g}\left(R2_\mu \phi ^\mu \phi e^{2\alpha \phi }F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\right)}.`$ (1)
Here $`R`$ is the Ricci scalar with respect to the space-time metric $`g_{\mu \nu }`$ (with a signature $`(,+,+,+)`$), $`\phi `$ is the dilaton field and $`F_{\mu \nu }=(dA)_{\mu \nu }`$ is the Maxwell two-form.

The aim of the present work is to present methods for generating exact static solutions to the EMd-gravity equations generalizing the previous work of the author .

For a static space-time the metric can be written in the form

$`ds^2=e^{2u}dt^2+e^{2u}h_{ij}dx^idx^j`$ (2)
where $`e^{2u}=g(\xi ,\xi )`$.

In order to simplify calculations we will consider the pure electric case. In this case the Maxwell two-form is:

$`F=e^{2u}\xi d\mathrm{\Phi }`$ (3)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the electric potential.

In terms of the three-dimensional metric $`h_{ij}`$ the field equations following from the action (1) are:

$`{}_{}{}^{3}R_{ij}^{}=2D_iuD_ju+2D_i\phi D_j\phi 2e^{2u2\alpha \phi }D_i\mathrm{\Phi }D_j\mathrm{\Phi }`$ (4)
$`D_iD^iu=e^{2u2\alpha \phi }D_i\mathrm{\Phi }D^i\mathrm{\Phi }`$
$`D_iD^i\phi =\alpha e^{2u2\alpha \phi }D_i\mathrm{\Phi }D^i\mathrm{\Phi }`$
$`D_i\left(e^{2u2\alpha \phi }D^i\mathrm{\Phi }\right)=0.`$
Here $`D_i`$ is Levi-Civita connection and $`{}_{}{}^{3}R_{ij}^{}`$ is the Ricci tensor with respect to the three-metric $`h_{ij}.`$

Let us introduce the following symmetric matrix

$`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}e^{(1+\alpha )u+(\alpha 1)\phi }(1+\alpha ^2)\mathrm{\Phi }^2e^{(\alpha 1)u(1+\alpha )\phi }& \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{\Phi }e^{(\alpha 1)u(1+\alpha )\phi }\\ \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{\Phi }e^{(\alpha 1)u(1+\alpha )\phi }& e^{(\alpha 1)u(1+\alpha )\phi }\end{array}\right).`$ (5)
In the terms of the matrix $`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}`$ the equations (4) can be written in the following compact form:

$`{}_{}{}^{3}R_{ij}^{}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+\alpha ^2}}Sp\left(_i\stackrel{\alpha }{S}_j\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1\right)`$
$`D^i\left(\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1D_i\stackrel{\alpha }{S}\right)=0.`$ (6)
The above equations can be derived from the following action

$`\stackrel{~}{𝒜}={\displaystyle }\sqrt{h}({}_{}{}^{3}R{\displaystyle \frac{h^{ij}}{1+\alpha ^2}}Sp\left(D_i\stackrel{\alpha }{S}D_j\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1\right))d^3x.`$ (7)
The action (7) is invariant under the group $`GL(2,R)`$ for fixed projection metric $`h_{ij}`$. The group $`GL(2,R)`$ acts explicitly as follows

$$\stackrel{\alpha }{S}G\stackrel{\alpha }{S}G^T$$

where $`GGL(2,R)`$.

The $`GL(2,R)`$ symmetry can be employed for generating new exact EMD solutions from known ones. In particular, it will be useful to employ the $`GL(2,R)`$ symmetry to generate exact solutions with nontrivial electric field from any given solution of the pure vacuum Einstein equations or Einstein-dilaton equations (for details see ). The action of the symmetry group does not, in general, preserve the asymptotic flatness. The subgroup preserving the asymptotic flatness is $`SO(1,1)`$ (see ).

Another method which allows us to generate large classes of exact EMD solutions from solutions of pure vacuum Einstein equations will be discussed below.

We assume now that the matrix $`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}`$ depends on the space coordinates only through one potential $`\chi `$ satisfying the equation

$`D_iD^i\chi =0.`$ (8)
Then requiring also that

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\left(1+\alpha ^2\right)}}Sp\left({\displaystyle \frac{d\stackrel{\alpha }{S}}{d\chi }}{\displaystyle \frac{d\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1}{d\chi }}\right)=1`$ (9)
the equations (Exact static solutions in Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling parameterthanks: A short version of the talk given at the $`4^{th}`$ General Conference of the Balkan Physical Union, Veliko Turnovo , Bulgaria, $`22`$-$`25`$ August, $`2000`$. ) are reduced to the following

$`{}_{}{}^{3}R_{ij}^{}=2D_i\chi D_j\chi `$
$`D_iD^i\chi =0`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\chi }}\left(\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\chi }}\stackrel{\alpha }{S}\right)=0.`$ (10)
The important observation is that the first two equations of (Exact static solutions in Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling parameterthanks: A short version of the talk given at the $`4^{th}`$ General Conference of the Balkan Physical Union, Veliko Turnovo , Bulgaria, $`22`$-$`25`$ August, $`2000`$. ) are actually the static vacuum Einstein equations. The third equation is separated from the first two and can be formally integrated. Its general asymptotically flat solution is

$`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}=\sigma _3e^{Q\chi }`$ (11)
where $`Q=\left(\begin{array}{cc}a& b\\ b& c\end{array}\right)`$ and $`\sigma _3`$ is the third Pauli matrix. In dependence of the determinant of the matrix $`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}`$ we obtain three classes of solutions.

The first class solutions is obtained when $`detQ<1+\alpha ^2`$:

$`e^{2u}=(1\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)^{\frac{2}{1+\alpha ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{2\chi \mathrm{cos}(\omega \omega _\alpha )}}{\left(1\mathrm{\Gamma }^2e^{2\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{cos}(\omega )}\right)^{\frac{2}{1+\alpha ^2}}}},`$
$`e^{2\phi }=(1\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)^{\frac{2\alpha }{1+\alpha ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{2\chi \mathrm{sin}(\omega \omega _\alpha )}}{\left(1\mathrm{\Gamma }^2e^{2\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{cos}(\omega )}\right)^{\frac{2\alpha }{1+\alpha ^2}}}},`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1e^{2\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{cos}(\omega )}}{1\mathrm{\Gamma }^2e^{2\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{cos}(\omega )}}},`$
$`\omega _\alpha =\mathrm{arcsin}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}}\right).`$
The second class solutions is obtained for $`detQ=1+\alpha ^2`$:

$`e^{2u}={\displaystyle \frac{e^{\frac{2\alpha }{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}\chi }}{(1b\chi )^{\frac{2}{1+\alpha ^2}}}},`$
$`e^{2\phi }={\displaystyle \frac{e^{\frac{2}{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}\chi }}{(1b\chi )^{\frac{2\alpha }{1+\alpha ^2}}}},`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{b\chi }{1b\chi }}.`$
The third class solutions is obtained when $`detQ>1+\alpha ^2`$:

$`e^{2u}=e^{\frac{2\alpha \chi }{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}\mathrm{cosh}(\psi )}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}^{\frac{2}{1+\alpha ^2}}(\vartheta )}{\mathrm{cos}^{\frac{2}{1+\alpha ^2}}(\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{sinh}(\psi )+\vartheta )}}`$
$`e^{2\phi }=e^{\frac{2\chi }{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}\mathrm{cosh}(\psi )}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}^{\frac{2\alpha }{1+\alpha ^2}}(\vartheta )}{\mathrm{cos}^{\frac{2\alpha }{1+\alpha ^2}}(\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{sinh}(\psi )+\vartheta )}}`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{sinh}(\psi ))}{\mathrm{cos}(\chi \sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{sinh}(\psi )+\vartheta )}}.`$
Here the free parameters $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^2<1`$, $`\omega `$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`\vartheta `$ are functions of the original parameters $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$.

The obtained results can be summarized in the following

###### Theorem 1

Let $`g^E`$ is a static, asymptotically flat solution to the Einstein equations and $`e^{2\chi }=g^E(\xi ,\xi )`$. Then the metric

$$g=e^{2\chi 2u}g^E\left(e^{2u}e^{2u4\chi }\right)\xi \xi $$

together with the two form $`F=e^{2u}\xi d\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and scalar field $`\phi `$ is a static and asymptotically flat solution to the EMD-gravity equations when $`𝐮`$, $`\phi `$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are given by one the classes (1), (2) and (3).

For spherically symmetric space-times most of the obtained solutions describe globally naked strong curvature singularities . Only within the first class solutions, for the particular case $`\omega =\omega _\alpha `$, we obtain the charged dilaton black hole solution.

It is also interesting to consider static, axi-symmetric space-times. In this case the metric can be written in the form

$`ds^2=e^{2u}dt^2+e^{2h2u}(d\rho ^2+dz^2)+e^{2u}\rho ^2d\varphi ^2.`$ (12)
For static, axi-symmetric space-times the EMD equations take the form

$`_\rho \left(\rho \stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1_\rho \stackrel{\alpha }{S}\right)+_z\left(\rho \stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1_z\stackrel{\alpha }{S}\right)=0`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_\rho h={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2(1+\alpha ^2)}}(Sp\left(_z\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1_z\stackrel{\alpha }{S}\right)Sp\left(_\rho \stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1_\rho \stackrel{\alpha }{S}\right))`$ (13)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_zh={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+\alpha ^2}}Sp\left(_\rho \stackrel{\alpha }{S}_z\stackrel{\alpha }{S}^1\right).`$
The first equation of the above system is well-known. This equation can be solved by use of the inverse scattering problem method. This method allows us to construct $`n`$-soliton solutions. The inverse scattering problem method, however, requires tedious calculations. It seems that the method described above is more powerful than the inverse scattering problem method and it gives larger classes of solutions in more direct and simpler manner. Assuming again that the matrix $`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}`$ depends on the space-coordinates only through the one harmonic potential $`\chi `$ we obtain

$`\stackrel{\alpha }{S}=\sigma _3e^{Q\chi }`$
where

$`_z^2\chi +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_\rho \chi +_\rho ^2\chi =0.`$
Note that here the elements of the matrix $`Q`$ are not constrained by (9) and can be arbitrary.

We would also like to discuss briefly once more method for constructing exact EMD solutions. One may wonder whether exact EMD solutions can be constructing from solutions of Einstein-Maxwell equations. We shall demonstrate that this is possible , .

Let us go back to the static, axisymmetric EMD equations (Exact static solutions in Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling parameterthanks: A short version of the talk given at the $`4^{th}`$ General Conference of the Balkan Physical Union, Veliko Turnovo , Bulgaria, $`22`$-$`25`$ August, $`2000`$. ) and to introduce the new potentials $`U=u+\alpha \phi `$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\alpha u\phi `$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\sqrt{1+\alpha ^2}\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and the new metric function $`H=(1+\alpha ^2)h`$. The static, axisymmetric EMD equations can be rewritten in the form

$`_\rho ^2\mathrm{\Psi }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_\rho \mathrm{\Psi }+_z^2\mathrm{\Psi }=0`$
$`_\rho ^2U+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_\rho U+_z^2U=e^{2U}\left((_\rho \mathrm{\Lambda })^2+(_z\mathrm{\Lambda })^2\right)`$
$`_\rho \left(\rho e^{2U}_\rho \mathrm{\Lambda }\right)+_z\left(\rho e^{2U}_z\mathrm{\Lambda }\right)=0`$ (14)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_\rho H=(_\rho U)^2(_zU)^2+(_\rho \mathrm{\Psi })^2(_z\mathrm{\Psi })^2e^{2U}\left((_\rho \mathrm{\Lambda })^2(_z\mathrm{\Lambda })^2\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }}_zH=2_\rho U_zU+2_\rho \mathrm{\Psi }_z\mathrm{\Psi }2e^{2U}_\rho \mathrm{\Lambda }_z\mathrm{\Lambda }.`$
It is not difficult to recognize that the above system is just the static, axisymmetric Einstein-Maxwell equations along together with minimally coupled scalar field $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Therefore we obtain

###### Theorem 2

Let $`U`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, $`H`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ form a solution of the static, axisymmetric Einstein-Maxwell equations with minimally coupled scalar field. Then $`u=(1+\alpha ^2)^1(U+\alpha \mathrm{\Psi })`$, $`\phi =(1+\alpha ^2)^1(\alpha U\mathrm{\Psi })`$, $`h=(1+\alpha ^2)^1H`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }=(1+\alpha ^2)^{1/2}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ form a solution of static, axisymmetric EMD equations.

The line of the present investigation has been continued for the EMD cosmological space-times in .

Another approach to finding exact EMD solutions can be found in , , .

Acknowledgments: The author is grateful to the organizers of the $`4^{th}`$ General Conference of the Balkan Physical Union and especially to Prof. M. Mateev for the opportunity to give this talk and for financial support.