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# Improvement of the Spatial Resolution of the ACIS Using Split Pixel Events

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Chandra is the first X-ray imaging satellite to have an image quality that is comparable to that of optical images. The point spread function (PSF) of the high resolution mirror assembly (HRMA) has half-power diameter (HPD) of about one-half arcsecond (Chandra Observatory Guide), which corresponds to $`24\mu `$m on the focal plane. The detector system should oversample the PSF in order to achieve the highest imaging capability. Chandra has two types of non-dispersive detector systems: the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS), a CCD array, and the High Resolution Camera (HRC), a micro-channel plate. The CCD chip employed in the ACIS is a frame-transfer device with $`24\mu `$m square pixels (Burke et al. 1997) and moderate energy resolution. The overall PSF of the Chandra/ACIS image is a convolution of the PSF of the HRMA and the pixel shape of the CCD. Because the pixel size of the CCD is comparable to the HPD of the HRMA, the image quality is somewhat degraded. The HRC has higher spatial resolution ($`20\mu `$m FWHM, with $`6.4\mu `$m pixels), but with poor energy resolution. The observer therefore needs to choose the detector system depending on the required combination of angular resolution and energy resolution.

Because the CCD pixel boundaries are sharply delineated by physical structures on the detector, we can utilize the morphology of X-ray events that split charge between pixels to provide detector position information on a size scale much smaller than the actual pixel size. In §2, we explain the process of charge generation and division within the CCD pixel. In §3, we describe our method for subpixel resolution. In §4, we apply this method to Chandra/ACIS data for six point sources, and show that the method does indeed recover the inherent angular resolution of the HRMA, although at the price of reduced observing efficiency.

## 2 X-RAY DETECTION IN A CCD

The process of detection of X-rays in a CCD has been discussed in detail by Lumb & Nousek (1993) and by Townsley et al. (2001). Here we provide an abbreviated discussion of these processes sufficient to explain our method for subpixel resolution. A CCD is ordinarily used in photon-counting mode to detect X-rays. To make this possible, the count rate must be low enough (and the exposure short enough) so that at most one photon is detected per frame in any given 3 x 3 “neighborhood” of pixels. When an X-ray photon enters the CCD, it is captured by photoelectric absorption, and generates a primary charge cloud in which the number of electrons is proportional to the incident X-ray energy. An X-ray photon of 1 keV, for example, generates about 275 electrons, while an optical photon generates only one or two electrons. Figure 5 schematically shows the evolution of a primary charge cloud generated by X-ray photons inside the CCD. The primary charge cloud expands through diffusion as it travels through the depletion region of the CCD to the buried channel, where the charge is collected into pixel structures defined by electric fields near the surface of the CCD. Before being captured into the photon entrance pixel, the primary charge cloud generated by an X-ray photon absorbed near the back of the depletion region can spread into neighboring pixels, creating a ‘split-pixel event’. By contrast, an X-ray photon absorbed in or near the buried channel will typically deposit its charge in a single pixel, and the resulting charge packet is referred to as a ‘single pixel event’. The incident X-ray energy is estimated by summing up the signal contained inside the event. Because the output from each pixel contains noise, single-pixel events usually have a better energy resolution than do split pixel events.

The size of the primary charge cloud depends on the travel distance in the depletion layer and the electric field inside the CCD. If the CCD is front-illuminated (FI), the travel distance in the depletion region depends on where the photoabsorption occurs, and therefore depends strongly on the photon energy. The shorter the attenuation length for an X-ray photon, the smaller the primary charge cloud will be. The X-ray photons used in our analysis are mainly around 1 keV (near the peak effective area of the instrument), and have a relatively short attenuation length in silicon compared with the depletion depth or the pixel size of the CCD. Therefore, they are photoabsorbed in a relatively shallow region of the depletion layer. On the contrary, if the CCD is back-illuminated (BI), a 1 keV photon is absorbed near the back surface; the travel distance will be the depth of the depletion layer, and is almost independent of the X-ray energy. Applying a simple diffusion model, the primary charge cloud size will be a few $`\mu `$m for the BI CCD and smaller for the FI CCD. This explains qualitatively why objects observed with the FI CCD show a higher fraction of single-pixel events in the branching ratio than those observed with the BI CCD.

The spreading of the charge cloud is less than typical CCD pixel sizes, and X-ray events may contain charge in more than one adjacent pixel in excess of the local bias level and/or dark current, with most true X-ray events (as opposed to particle-induced background events) containing no more than four adjacent pixels. X-ray events are classified by their morphology, with two common systems being the 8 grades used by the ASCA satellite (grades 0$``$7) and the 256 grades used by the ACIS instrument (fltgrades 0$``$255). Further details regarding ASCA grades are given in Yamashita et al. (1997) while §6.4 of the Chandra Proposers’ Observatory Guide (2000) describes ACIS fltgrade.

## 3 SUBPIXEL RESOLUTION METHOD FOR CHANDRA/ACIS

Because the primary charge cloud generated inside the CCD expands through diffusion, the position on the CCD where the X-ray entered can be precisely determined if the center of gravity of this charge cloud can be measured. If the primary charge cloud remains within a single pixel (a single pixel event), its centroid cannot be determined, and one generally assumes that the X-ray photon landed in the center of that pixel, with an uncertainty of about 1/2 pixel. However, if an X-ray photon is absorbed near a pixel boundary, the primary charge cloud splits into the adjacent pixel(s), forming a split-pixel event, and the centroid of the charge distribution can be used to precisely locate, in at least one dimension, the position at which the photon was absorbed. The charge cloud size determines the size of the boundary region within which the X-ray photon becomes a split event. The pixel is therefore divided into three classes of regions that characterize single-pixel events (from the center of the pixel), two-pixel split events (from the pixel edges) and three- or four-pixel split events (from the pixel corners). The ratios among the areas for these three regions can be roughly estimated from the branching ratio of these X-ray event grades.

This technique has been verified by our mesh experiments (Tsunemi, Yoshita, & Kitamoto 1997; Tsunemi et al. 1998). In these experiments, we placed a metal mesh with many small periodically-spaced holes just above the CCD. Such a setup enables us to directly measure the primary charge cloud shape (Hiraga et al. 1998). We thus found that the charge cloud shape is well expressed by a Gaussian function with a standard deviation ($`\sigma `$) for $`14`$ keV photons of about $`12\mu `$m (Tsunemi et al. 1999). Although the charge cloud shape depends on the CCD chip, the charge cloud size for an X-ray photon with energy of a few keV is at most a few $`\mu `$m. Knowledge of the grade of an event, combined with the relatively narrow size of the charge cloud, allows the position at which the X-ray enters the CCD to be determined with subpixel resolution (Hiraga, Tsunemi, & Miyata 2001).

Based on these results, we can safely estimate the primary charge cloud size generated by an X-ray photons with energy of a few keV inside the ACIS CCD chip to be a few $`\mu `$m. The mesh experiment applied to the ACIS CCD shows that split events are generated very near to the pixel boundary (Pivovaroff et al. 1998). The grade information of the X-ray event will thus specify the entering position within the pixel to high accuracy for X-rays absorbed near the pixel boundaries. For single-pixel events, the photon can only be localized to a region slightly smaller than the pixel size. The two-pixel split events can be identified only with a pixel edge, which provides high resolution in one dimension. The greatest improvement for the X-ray position resolution is achieved for three- or four-pixel split events (corner events), which are generated when the X-ray enters the CCD very close to a pixel corner. The X-ray entering position must be within one charge cloud size from the pixel corner. This allows us to improve on the spatial resolution of the pixel size by roughly a factor of ten, based solely on the event grade.

This is of practical use for data obtained by Chandra because, unlike the HST, which points very accurately at a fixed position during observations, Chandra is intentionally moved slowly across the sky during each observation. This ‘dithering’ motion of the observatory moves the target image across the CCD surface, forming a Lissajous figure with an amplitude of about 20 pixels and a period of about 1000 sec. Therefore, X-rays from a point source do not always enter the same subpixel position of the same pixel, but have randomly distributed subpixel positions. Some photons enter the central part of the pixel, forming single-pixel events, while others enter the pixel boundary, forming split pixel events. The latter can be used to achieve higher spatial resolution than that determined by the pixel size. Strictly speaking, the image shape can vary according to the dithering motion. With taking into account the amplitude of the dithering motion, the degradation of the image quality concerned is negligibly small compared to the actual PSF of the HRMA.

The method we employ is quite simple. First, we discard all X-ray events except for corner events (ACIS fltgrades 10, 11, 18, 22, 72, 80, 104, and 208). We know that these remaining events entered the detector near a pixel corner, but were projected onto the sky as if they had entered at the pixel center. We therefore need to shift the sky coordinates for these events by 1/2 pixel along each axis in detector coordinates. To do this, we need to know the orientation of the CCD chip projected onto the sky coordinates. This is given by the roll angle of the spacecraft, which is specified in the header keyword of the event file. We then can shift the position for corner events by half the pixel size (which is $`0.^{\prime \prime }246`$) along both pixel sides. The actual shift direction depends on the CCD chip employed and the roll angle as well as the fltgrade of the event. The resulting sky positions accurately reflect the actual incident positions on the CCD detector to within about $`0.^{\prime \prime }05`$ for perfect attitude knowledge.

## 4 RESULTS

To test this method, we searched our GTO data and publicly available calibration data for point-like sources with appropriate characteristics. We selected sources with good statistics (at least 1500 total counts) and that are close to the optical axis (within 75′′) in order to avoid possible distortion. We selected six point-like sources; two stars and four AGNs. The two stars, which we refer to as ‘source 1’ ($`5^\mathrm{h}35^\mathrm{m}15.^\mathrm{s}67`$, $`5^{}23^{}11.^{\prime \prime }2`$) and ‘source 2’ ($`5^\mathrm{h}35^\mathrm{m}15.^\mathrm{s}73`$, $`5^{}23^{}15.^{\prime \prime }5`$), are in the Orion Nebula. Two AGNs, PKS0312$``$770 and PG1634+706, come from the public data. The other source contains the two gravitationally lensed images of the quasar Q0957+561, named ‘image A’ and ‘image B’ (Walsh, Carswell, & Weymann 1979). Three sources are observed with the front-illuminated (FI) CCD while the others are observed with the back-illuminated (BI) CCD.

We removed the subpixel randomization usually applied in the standard data processing at the Chandra X-ray Center so that we can assess the precise X-ray entering position on the detector. Townsley et al. (2000) developed a CTI correction method that could correct the ‘grade migration’ (the corruption of event grades caused by poor charge transfer efficiency in the FI CCDs) for the data obtained after 1999 September 16. We applied their method to five data sets out of six, since it could not cover the data for PKS0312$``$770. The observational configurations are summarized in Table 1.

We then sorted all the X-ray events (all events) according to the event geometry on the CCD. Specifically, they were sorted as single-pixel events, two-pixel split events and corner events. Furthermore, they were sorted according to the event geometry within the $`3\times 3`$ pixels using the ‘fltgrade’ (see the Chandra Proposers’ Observatory Guide). In this way, we sorted the event list into nine groups: one single-pixel event group, four two-pixel split event groups and four corner event groups. The statistics for each grade are summarized in Table 1. We then extracted the images in absolute sky coordinates, which places each event on the sky at the projection of the central pixel of the $`3\times 3`$ pixel event neighborhood.

Figure 5 shows an example of the distributions of four groups of corner events for Q0957+561 image A in absolute sky coordinates that is obtained by employing uncorrected events. One can clearly see the systematic shift of their centers of gravity, depending on the fltgrade of the event. Figure 5 shows the centers of gravity for all nine event types discussed here in absolute sky coordinates for six sources, where the square shows the pixel shape projected on the sky with the proper orientation. These figures are also obtained by using uncorrected events. We confirm that the distribution of the single-pixel events coincides with the nominal position, which is the center of the central pixel of the event. As expected, the centers of gravity of the two-pixel events lie near the centers of the pixel edges, while the centers of gravity of the three- and four-pixel events fall near the pixel corners. Because the software places these uncorrected events at the centers of the pixels instead of at their true corner locations, they end up at incorrect celestial locations with the centroids of the four corner event groups making an inverted image of the pixel. Applying the correction discussed in this paper would make the four pixel clouds lie on top of one another.

Figure 5 shows images obtained using corrected corner events, as well as those obtained from all events for comparison. Since we find that all images are almost point symmetric, we fit them with a point-symmetric Gaussian function with constant background. The background is less than 1% of the count rate of the source. We then calculated the HPD from the best fit Gaussian function for each image. The results are summarized in Table 2 where all errors are 90% confidence levels. HPDall and HPDc represent the HPDs for the images for all events and for the corner events, respectively.

The actual HPD can be easily measured by counting the number of events. In this measurement, we assume the center of the Gaussian function determines the image center. We then count the number of events contained in a circle as a function of diameter. We define the actual HPD as the diameter of the circle that contains half of the events appeared in a circle of $`4^{\prime \prime }`$ in diameter. We confirmed that the actual HPD measured are consistent with those obtained by fitting the Gaussian function within statistical uncertainties.

## 5 DISCUSSION

The PSF of the HRMA has a size of about $`0.^{\prime \prime }5`$ HPD on the optical axis, which corresponds to about $`24\mu `$m on the detector. The HPD of the final image is the root mean square of that for the HRMA and that for the CCD pixel. The $`\sigma `$ for a square distribution is $`\sqrt{a^2/12}`$ where ‘a’ is the square size. If we use $`2\sqrt{2\mathrm{ln}2}`$ as the conversion factor from $`\sigma `$ to HPD just as the case of the Gaussian function, the HPD for the ACIS CCD pixel is about $`16\mu `$m which is the HPD for all events if the subpixel position of the photon is unknown.

Therefore, the HPD of the final image obtained for all events will be $`29\mu `$m on the detector or $`0.^{\prime \prime }59`$ when projected onto the sky. However, the position accuracy of the corner events is about a few $`\mu `$m since their distribution is within the charge cloud shape. This value is negligibly small compared with the PSF of the HRMA, and does not degrade it.

We can estimate the improvement of the position resolution between all events and the corner events by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{HPD}=\sqrt{\mathrm{HPD}_{all}^2\mathrm{HPD}_c^2}`$, as listed in Table 2. Figure 5 shows a plot of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{HPD}`$ along the angular distance from the optical axis as well as $`\mathrm{HPD}_{all}`$ and $`\mathrm{HPD}_c`$. We found $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{HPD}=0.^{\prime \prime }35\pm 0.^{\prime \prime }07`$ by using all the data. This corresponds to $`17\pm 3\mu `$m on the detector. This shows that by using only corner events we can significantly reduce the PSF degradation caused by the under-sampling of the PSF by the ACIS pixels. Practically, we can say that the image degradation by all events is noticeable while that by the corner events is negligibly small.

In principle, the effective resolution could be improved further by using both the knowledge of the charge cloud shape and that of the grade of the multi-pixel events to determine the exact position of the X-ray within the boundary region. Actually the primary charge cloud shape is known an the position on the CCD where the X-ray entered can be determined for split pixel events with sub-$`\mu `$m resolution (Hiraga et al. 2001). The simplifying assumption that we have made here is that, even if the charge cloud shape is not known, we can assume that the X-ray entering position for corner events is precisely at the pixel corner. For Chandra, the angular uncertainty associated with this assumption is much smaller than the PSF of the HRMA. These data demonstrate that the boundary region itself is sufficiently small that this additional information would not significantly improve the PSF.

The fraction of the corner events, which depends on the incident X-ray spectrum as well as on the CCD type, is about $`416\%`$ of the total events. Thus, this technique, while able to improve the effective angular resolution of Chandra, does so at the cost of low efficiency. However, we have shown that this technique is effective, even for as few as 300 corner events.

## 6 CONCLUSION

We have demonstrated that X-ray split events on the CCD can yield position information more precise than the pixel size. The Chandra Observatory has a dither motion that moves the target on the detector so that the X-rays are absorbed uniformly over the pixels. Therefore, some fraction of the X-ray photons always generate corner events that can be used to achieve the finer image without degradation by the CCD pixel size.

We have studied six point-like sources that were observed near the optical axis. Since the split events are generated near the CCD pixel boundary, we can determine the X-ray entering position with much better resolution than the pixel size. The average image size using the corner events is $`0.^{\prime \prime }56`$ (HPD) while that using all events is $`0.^{\prime \prime }66`$ (HPD). The image degradation between the image obtained by the corner events and the image obtained by all events corresponds to that expected from the CCD pixel shape. Therefore, we can say that the image obtained using the corner events is almost free from the degradation of the image due to the CCD pixel shape. The corner events are generated only when X-rays enter near the pixel corner, which reduces the effective count rate. We therefore need relatively longer exposure times to obtain good statistics. Finally we should add that our method is useful only for the Chandra HRMA that is undersampled by the detector. Thus, for example, this technique cannot be applied to XMM-Newton observations.

The authors would like to express their special thanks to Dr. Eric Feigelson who kindly supplied us his Chandra data set and Dr. M. W. Bautz of MIT for useful discussions. Dr. Jonathan McDowell explained to H.T. the attitude determination system of Chandra in detail. This research is partially supported by ACT-JST Program, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, the Sumitomo foundation, and by NASA contract NAS8-38252.


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# Complete null data for a black hole collision

## Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by NSF grants PHY 9510895 and PHY 9800731 to the University of Pittsburgh. R.G. thanks the Albert-Einstein-Institut for hospitality. Computer time was provided by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and by NPACI.


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# Testing Higgs Self-Couplings at High-Energy Linear Colliders

PM/01–03 hep-ph/0101262

## Abstract

In order to verify the Higgs mechanism experimentally, the Higgs self-couplings have to be probed. These couplings allow the reconstruction of the characteristic Higgs potential responsible for the electroweak symmetry breaking. The couplings are accessible in a variety of multiple Higgs production processes. The theoretical analysis including the most relevant channels for the production of neutral Higgs boson pairs at high-energy and high-luminosity $`e^+e^{}`$ linear colliders will be presented in this note.

1. Within the Higgs mechanism higgs  the electroweak gauge bosons and fundamental matter particles acquire their masses through the interaction with a scalar field. The self-interaction of the scalar field induces, via a non-vanishing field strength $`v=(\sqrt{2}G_F)^{1/2}246`$ GeV, the spontaneous breaking of the electroweak $`SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y`$ symmetry down to the electromagnetic $`U(1)_{EM}`$ symmetry.

To establish the Higgs mechanism experimentally, the self-energy potential of the Standard Model gunion , $`V=\lambda \left(\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\mathrm{\Phi }v^2/2\right)^2`$, with a minimum at $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=v/\sqrt{2}`$ must be reconstructed. This task requires the measurement of the Higgs self-couplings of the physical Higgs boson $`H`$, which can be read off directly from the potential

$`V={\displaystyle \frac{M_H^2}{2}}H^2+{\displaystyle \frac{M_H^2}{2v}}H^3+{\displaystyle \frac{M_H^2}{8v^2}}H^4`$ (1)
As evident from Eq. (1), in the SM the trilinear and quadrilinear vertices are uniquely determined by the mass of the Higgs boson, $`M_H=\sqrt{2\lambda }v`$.

The trilinear self-coupling $`\lambda =6\sqrt{2}\lambda `$ in units of $`v/\sqrt{2}`$ is accessible directly in Higgs pair production at high-energy $`e^+e^{}`$ linear colliders. For c.m. energies up to about 1 TeV, double Higgs-strahlung hrad1 ; hrad2

$`e^+e^{}ZHH`$ (2)
is the most promising process muehlmm . The process includes the amplitude involving the trilinear Higgs self-coupling and two additional amplitudes due to the standard

electroweak gauge interactions, cf. Fig. 1, so that it is a binomial in $`\lambda _{HHH}`$. As evident from Fig. 2a the cross section is very sensitive to the trilinear Higgs self-coupling and amounts up to 0.35 fb for $`M_H=120`$ GeV and a c.m. energy of 500 GeV. Scaling with the energy, it decreases to $`0.3`$ fb at $`\sqrt{s}=800`$ GeV. Experimental detector simulations of signal and background processes in the SM have demonstrated that the Higgs self-coupling can be extracted with an accuracy of $`20\%`$ for $`M_H=120`$ GeV at high luminosity $`=2`$ ab-1 gay .

The $`WW`$ double Higgs fusion process hrad2 ; wwfus

$`e^+e^{}\nu _e\overline{\nu }_eHH`$ (3)
which increases with rising $`\sqrt{s}`$, can be exploited for larger energies, cf. Fig. 2b. \[$`\sigma =0.37`$ fb for $`M_H=120`$ GeV and $`\sqrt{s}=1`$ TeV, polarized $`e^+e^{}`$ beams.\]

Triple Higgs production is sensitive to the quadrilinear Higgs self-coupling. Due to the suppressed coupling and an additional particle in the final state, the cross section $`\sigma (e^+e^{}ZHHH)`$ is only of $`𝒪(`$ab$`)`$ and therefore not measurable at typical linear collider energies and luminosities muehlmm .

2. In the Minimal Supersymmetric Extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) with five physical Higgs particles $`h,H,A`$ and $`H^\pm `$ habergun , a plethora of trilinear and quadrilinear Higgs self-couplings can be realized. The CP-invariant couplings

TABLE 1: The trilinear couplings between neutral CP-even and CP-odd MSSM Higgs bosons, which can generically be probed in double Higgs-strahlung and associated triple Higgs-production, are marked by a cross. \[The matrix for WW fusion is isomorphic to the matrix for Higgs-strahlung.\]
among the neutral Higgs bosons, $`\lambda _{hhh}`$, $`\lambda _{Hhh},\lambda _{HHh},\lambda _{HHH},\lambda _{hAA},\lambda _{HAA}`$, are involved in a large number of processes muehlmm ; mssmproc . The double and triple Higgs production processes and the trilinear couplings, that can be probed in the respective process, are listed in Table 1. The system is solvable for all $`\lambda `$’s up to discrete ambiguities. However, in practice, not all processes are accessible experimentally so that one has to follow the reverse direction in this case: Comparing the theoretical predictions with the experimental results of the accessible channels, the trilinear Higgs self-couplings can be tested stringently.

The process $`e^+e^{}Zhh`$ is sensitive to the trilinear coupling of the light CP-even Higgs boson $`h`$,

$`\lambda _{hhh}=3\mathrm{cos}2\alpha \mathrm{sin}(\beta +\alpha )+𝒪(G_FM_t^4/M_Z^2)`$ (4)
expressed in the mixing angles $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, in a large range of the MSSM parameter space, as can be inferred from Fig. 3. It shows the $`2\sigma `$ sensitivity area in the $`[M_A,\mathrm{tan}\beta ]`$ plane for a non-zero coupling at an integrated luminosity of 2 ab-1. The cross section is required to exceed 0.01 fb. The sensitivity areas are significantly smaller for processes involving heavy Higgs bosons $`H`$ and $`A`$ in the final state. Details can be found in Ref.muehlmm .

3. In summary. The measurement of the Higgs self-couplings is essential for the reconstruction of the characteristic self-energy potential. The large luminosities, which are available at future high-energy $`e^+e^{}`$ linear colliders, allow the measurement of the trilinear Higgs self-couplings via double Higgs-strahlung and $`WW`$ double Higgs fusion.

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to my collaborators A. Djouadi, W. Kilian and P.M. Zerwas for helpful discussions. Further more I would like to thank the organizers of the Linear Collider Workshop at Fermilab Oct 2000 for the nice atmosphere. This work is supported by the European Union under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00149.


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# The ultraviolet visibility and quantitative morphology of galactic disks at low and high redshift

## 1 Introduction

At large distances, very concentrated galaxies with large surface brightnesses are more easily observed. It is generally accepted that these galaxies are probably spheroids (Steidel et al. Steidel96 (1996), Giavalisco et al. 1996b ). The detection of spirals and, more generally, galactic disks which exhibit a lower surface brightness is far more difficult. Moreover, at high z we observe the rest frame ultraviolet (UV) emission of galaxies redshifted in the visible. If we wish to compare high redshift objects with local ones, we must account for this effect by choosing templates observed in the appropriate wavelength range. The morphology of moderate and high z galaxies has been intensively studied lately (Abraham et al. 1996a ; Abraham et al. 1996b ; Schade et al. Schade96 (1996); Lilly et al. Lilly98 (1998)) and structural parameters have been proposed which can be measured in a rather automatic way (Abraham et al. 1996a ). These parameters are quantities like the half-light radius ($`r_{hl}`$) or the mean surface brightness but also more sophisticated quantities such as the concentration (CA) or the asymmetry ($`A`$). Before being applied to distant galaxies these parameters must be calibrated on well-known templates which must be, as much as possible, representative of all the galaxies expected at high z. The calibration is generally made with catalogs of nearby galaxies observed in the visible. The sample of Frei et al. (Frei96 (1996)) is used largely for this aim (e.g. in Abraham et al. 1996a ; Conselice et al. Conselice00 (2000); Bershady et al. Bershady00 (2000)).

In trying to find an adequate tool to classify high-redshift galaxies, Abraham et al. (1996b ) present a distribution of HDF galaxies in the log A versus log $`C_A`$ plane. Abraham et al. (1996b ) divide their diagram in three sectors calibrated at z $``$ 0 and assimilated to E/SO, spirals and irreguliar/peculiar/merger galaxies in agreement with van den Bergh et al. (vandenBergh96 (1996)). The most important result is that the relative proportion of galaxies in the three sectors seems to evolve : more galaxies lie in the irr/pec/mrg area when moving to I$``$24 mag and the contribution from large spiral galaxies is very close to zero at faint magnitudes. Although the redshift of these galaxies is poorly constrained, Abraham et al. (1996b ) suggest that the faint galaxies are mostly in the redshift range 0.5 $`<`$ z $`<`$ 2.5. Combining morphological information with distance estimates, Driver et al. (Driver98 (1998)) confirm the higher fraction of irregulars at low redshift compared to the 1 $``$ z $``$ 3 range. With the assumption that normal galaxies are absent at high redshift, Driver et al. (Driver98 (1998)) conclude that the latter are the progenitors of the former. However, Brinchmann et al. (Brinchmann98 (1998)) performed simulations and observed an apparent migration of galaxies towards later Hubble types which can be interpreted as a misclassification of galaxies by about 24 % at z $``$ 1. Simulations were also carried out by Abraham et al. (1996a ) by artificially redshifting the Frei et al. (Frei96 (1996)) sample of normal galaxies. Only a small number of these galaxies fall in the irr/pec/mrg area while most of them lie in the spiral-E/SO (their dotted polygon). Finally, Bunker et al. (Bunker00 (2000)) analyze the redshift evolution of high-redshift galaxies directly from multi-wavelength data. They compare the appearance of galaxies at the same rest-frame wavelengths and find that morphological K-corrections are generally not very important. However, in the specific case of spiral galaxies, the effect is more important and when the rest-frame wavelength moves to the UV, the morphology does become more irregular.

As noted before (e.g. Bohlin et al. Bohlin91 (1991); Kuchinski et al. Kuchinski00 (2000)), it is necessary to take into account the apparent migration of spiral galaxies towards more irregular types in morphology-sensitive works. For instance, works have been using the morphology classification of HDF galaxies to compute morphology-dependent number-counts (Abraham et al. 1996b ; Driver et al. Driver98 (1998)). The misclassification of spiral galaxies due to band-shifting is a strong bias that needs to be quantified before continuing in the comparison of observations with models as underlined by Abraham et al. (1996a ). The effect might be negligible at redshifts below z $``$ 1 but as we will see, it becomes crucial when moving at redshifts of the order of z $``$ 2. It will play a key role in the interpretation of future observations and in the understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

When redshifting nearby templates, Abraham et al. (1996a ) have applied a K-correction for each pixel according to its color. Here we adopt a more straightforward method by directly redshifting UV images. Pionneering work was carried out by Bohlin et al. (Bohlin91 (1991)). Kuchinsky et al. (Kuchinski00 (2000)) has a similar approach by using UIT Astro-2 images but no quantitative measurements have been performed on these templates so far.

In this paper, we first study the morphology of some well-known local spiral galaxies (M33, M51, M81, M100 and M101) to test their representativity. Then, we redshift these galaxies in the bands of the HST-WFPC2 (UBVRI) matching the redshifts to remove any wavelength K-correction.

## 2 The galactic disk templates

We have chosen to focus on five very well known galaxies. They exhibit different luminosities with -21 $``$ $`M_B`$ $``$ -18 and different star formation activities. All of them have been observed in UV by the FOCA telescope. The main characteristics of the galaxies are gathered in Tab. 1.

The FOCA telescope is a wide-field camera (Milliard et al. Milliard92 (1992)) with a 150 nm-wide bandpass centered near 200 nm. The camera is a 40cm Cassegrain telescope with an image intensifier coupled to a IIaO emulsion film. It was operated in two modes, the FOCA 1000 (f/2.6) and FOCA 1500 (f/3.8), which provide a 2.3 $`\mathrm{deg}`$-diameter field of view, 20 $`\mathrm{}`$-resolution, and 1.5 $`\mathrm{deg}`$-diameter field of view, 12 $`\mathrm{}`$-resolution, respectively.

The photometry was performed using the ELLIPSE software in IRAF. The ellipticities of the galaxies (Tab. 1) were estimated on the images at z=0 and set fixed for the redshifted images for which only the center was allowed to be adjusted. Given the low number of pixels in the redshifted images and the poor resolution on the disk we have not adjusted each isophote but prefered to adopt uniform values of P.A. and ellipticity. We have checked on the best detected cases that the results are not affected by this choice.

## 3 Redshifting the galaxies

### 3.1 The method

The way we processed our restframe-UV images to produce distant-like galaxies is similar to the method described in Giavalisco et al. (1996a ). In brief, we rebinned the initial image by a factor b defined as follows :

$$b=\frac{D(1+z)^2}{L_z}\frac{s_0}{s_z}$$

where $`L_z`$ is the luminosity distance, D the real distance of the galaxy before placing it to a redshift $`z`$ and $`s_0`$ and $`s_z`$ are the pixel sizes at $`z0`$ from the FOCA telescope (see Tab. 1) and at $`z>0`$ from the HST WFPC2 camera (0.1 arcsec.pixel-1) respectively. To compute the distance luminosity $`L_z`$, we used the redshift computed in Tab. 2 ($`z=\lambda _c/\lambda _z1`$), where $`\lambda _c`$ is the central wavelength of the HST filter and $`\lambda _z`$ the wavelength of the emitted radiation. Here, $`\lambda _z`$=203 nm, which is the FOCA observation wavelength. In the following, U will stand for the HST filter f336W, B for f439W, V for f555W, R for f675W and I for f814W.

Note that we did not try to convolve our images with the HST Point Spread Function (PSF). Indeed, even if the shape of the PSF is well known (from short observations of stars close to the center of the chips or from modelled PSFs), several effects are acting to prevent us from obtaining a good accuracy. Observed PSFs vary with wavelength, time and field positions. If we can deal with the first one, we have no specific reasons to select any values for the remaining ones (Holtzman et al. Holtzman95 (1995)). There is also evidence for sub-pixel Quantum Efficiency variation at the 10 % level. More realistic simulations to compare with specific observations might be obtained by using the appropriate PSF, but our goal is more generic. By not convolving our images, the effect is to produce images which are too “peaky”. To give an order of magnitude, the light detected in the central pixel of a non-resolved object would only be $``$ 70 % of our value, the remaining would spread over a 3x3-pixel area. Consequently, objects would be more difficult to detect in reality than in our simulations.

The average sky background estimated on the FOCA telescope is subtracted and, depending on the adopted redshifting scenario for evolution (next Sect.), the galaxy is boosted or not. Next, the average pixel value $`p_z`$ at $`z>0`$ is evaluated from the average pixel value $`p_0`$ at $`z0`$ with the following formula :

$$p_z=p_0\frac{a_0}{a_z}\frac{s_z^2}{s_0^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _z}{\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _0}\frac{1}{(1+z)^5}\mathrm{t}_{\mathrm{HST}}$$

where $`a_0`$ is the FOCA calibration constant and $`a_z`$ the HST calibration constants given in Tab. 2. The dark current, estimated from the value given in the WFPC2 Instrument Hankbook v3.0 (0.005 e-.s-1.pixel-1) and the sky background (23.3 V-mag.arcsec-2 in agreement with sky values from the WFPC2 Instrument Handbook) are added to the image. The gain used throughout these simulations is 7 e-/ADU. A poissonian noise and a readout noise of 5 e-.pixel-1 are assumed. Note that the noise from the original UV images is negligeable compared to the simulated noise (Figs. 1-5). 36 images of each target were combined. The exposure time of individual images is 1000 s with a total exposure time of $`t_{HST}`$ = 10 hours. Figs. 1-5 present the results of the projection for our five galaxies. The luminosity evolution scenarios used are described in Sect. 3.2.

We can compare our HST limiting surface brightness with the data available in the literature and in the WFPC2 handbook. This is performed with the simulations using the f555W and f814W filters, since the variable uniform brightening allows us to scan the S/N scale (everything else kept constant : exposure times, etc.) . The 1-$`\sigma `$ limiting magnitude is $`\mu _{AB}`$ = 26.5 mag.arcsec-2 for our galaxies, for the adopted 10h-exposure time and with the chosen instrumental configuration. For such a surface brightness, and with the above filters and 45o declination (as assumed in our simulations), the WFPC-2 Exposure Time Calculator (ETC) returns a S/N $``$ 1.5 per pixel, in reasonable agreement with our computation. We can also compare these values with the 1$`\sigma `$ limiting isophote of the HDF data of 26.5 mag.arcsec-2 quoted by Abraham et al. (1996b ). Given a f606W HDF exposure time of $``$ 35h and assuming the S/N scales as the square root of the exposure time, we should have a limiting surface brightness of $``$ 25.8 mag.arcsec-2, which is slightly brighter but still consistent with our values. On the other hand, Giavalisco et al. (1996b ) presents a limiting surface brightness of 29.31 mag.arcsec-2 in the f606W for an exposure time of 15600 sec., which is much dimmer. We have no clear explanation for this discrepancy.

### 3.2 The adopted evolutionary scenarios

Three scenarios have been adopted to move the galaxies away and simulate younger galaxies. First, we simply redshifted them without any modification : no evolution (scenario 1). As we will see below this scenario leads to almost no detections, even at moderate redshifts. Therefore, we assumed some evolution (scenario 2): we adopted an exponential decrease of the star formation rate with an e-folding rate of 8 Gyrs except for M81 which has a e-folding rate of 3 Gyrs. These values are consistent with those expected from the morphological types of the galaxies (e.g. Kennicutt et al. Kennicutt94 (1994)). The adopted evolutionary scenarios translate into a higher UV magnitude when we simulate younger galaxies. The increases in magnitude due to evolution vary with the redshift by 2.5, 3.2, 3.6, 3.9 and 4 mag in U, B, V, R and I respectively for M81 and by 0.9, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 1.5 mag in U, B, V, R and I respectively for the other galaxies. However, this evolutionary scenario is not very efficient for the detection of galaxies. For the purpose of actually seeing galaxies and estimating the magnitude needed to observe them, we also applied arbitrary luminosity increases to each pixel of the galaxies from 1 to 4 mag to all the galaxies (see Sect. 5). This last scenario (scenario 3) was only applied to the V-band and I-band or equivalently to the galaxies redshifted to z=1.68 and z=2.94.

## 4  Detailed properties of the galactic disks

### 4.1 The surface brightness

We measured the surface brightness distribution of each galaxy in UV (at z $``$ 0) and at different redshifts. The UV rest-frame surface brightnesses are presented in Fig. 6. For comparison, we normalized them to the semi-major axis of the total aperture used for the photometry and defined in section 4.2.1. Whereas M33 and M101 exhibit a rather linear profile, as expected for exponential disks, M51 and M81 have a non-monotonic distribution and M100 may be viewed as an intermediate case. Such a difference in radial profiles will lead to variations in the morphological classification as discussed below. No clear bulge is present in the profiles. Since no recent star formation appears in the bulge, it disappears in UV. These typical morphological changes have been already described in Kuchinski et al. (Kuchinski00 (2000)). M51 is classified as a Seyfert 2 galaxy and M81 as an AGN galaxy but the contribution from the nucleus to the overall UV emission is not important. On the other hand, there is some UV light in the core of M100 which seems to be produced within a nuclear star-formation region (e.g Ryder & Knappen Ryder99 (1999)).

We also calculated the UV surface brightness within the ellipse which encloses half the total light. The measured values are in very good agreement with the predicted values (e.g. Lilly et al.’s Lilly98 (1998)) :

$$\mu _{\mathrm{AB}}(\mathrm{z})=\mu _{\mathrm{AB}}(\mathrm{RF})+2.5\mathrm{log}(1+\mathrm{z})^3\mathrm{BST}$$

$`\mu _{\mathrm{AB}}(\mathrm{z})`$ is the surface brightness observed in the HST filters, $`\mu _{\mathrm{AB}}(\mathrm{RF})`$ the rest frame surface brightness measured in the UV image and BST the boost in magnitude which varies according to the adopted scenario. In this formula we only account for the cosmological dimming term without $`K`$-corrections since the redshifts were chosen to match the HST filters and to avoid these $`K`$-corrections.

### 4.2 Morphological parameters

#### 4.2.1 The half-light radius

The half-light radius ($`r_{hl}`$) is a basic parameter which measures the size of a galaxy. The critical point is to define the total aperture of the galaxies. We adopt the method detailed in Bershady et al. (Bershady00 (2000)) which defines the total aperture to perform photometry as twice the semi-major axis (called hereafter the major radius) where $`\eta (\mathrm{r})=\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{r})/<\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{r})>=0.2`$. Note that $`I(r)`$ is the local surface brightness and $`<\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{r})>`$ the average surface brightness within the major radius $`r`$. With such a definition we avoid the need to define isophotal radii which are redshift dependent. In practice, the total flux thus estimated is similar to that deduced from the analysis of the curve of growth. The total UV magnitude of the galaxies at z $``$ 0 are reported in Tab. 1.

The half-light major radius was measured in each detected galaxy and the results are reported in Tabs. 3-7. Predicted values were calculated with the measurement at z$``$0 and are also reported in these Tables. A remarquable agreement is found between the measured and predicted quantities. In physical units this corresponds to 6 kpc for M81 and M51, 6.8 kpc for M100, 13 kpc for M101 and 3.8 kpc for M33. M101 appears to be very extended: its half-light radius is approximately twice that of M51. As a comparison the ratio of their diameter at B=25 mag ($`D_{25}`$) is only 1.45. In UV M101 is 0.8 mag brighter than M51 while the difference is of 0.5 mag in B (Tab. 1). M101 is a diffuse object whereas M51 has a very high surface brightness. As expected the detection of M51 at high z is far easier than that of M101 in spite of their absolute luminosity. M81 and M33 are intrinsically fainter with $`M_{UV}`$ $`>`$ -18.5 but here again their half-light radii are very different due to their very different UV distribution.

Our conclusion is that the half-light radius appears as a very robust parameter when the galaxy is moved away at high z but only gives a rough estimate of the galaxy size without any morphological information.

#### 4.2.2 The concentration

Kent’s parameter

The concentration parameter is a classical quantity first introduced by Kent (Kent85 (1985)). It is generally defined as the logarithm of the ratio of two radii :

$$\mathrm{C}_\mathrm{K}=5\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{r}_{0.8}/\mathrm{r}_{0.2})$$

where $`r_{0.8}`$ is the outer radius enclosing 80$`\%`$ of the total flux and $`r_{0.2}`$ is the inner radius enclosing 20$`\%`$ of the total flux. Such a definition is not based on isophotes and is therefore not dependent on surface brightness dimming as soon as the total aperture to perform photometry is defined independently of isophotal levels. Bershady et al. (Bershady00 (2000)) have found that this parameter is remarkably stable against resolution degradation and conclude that it is very suitable for high redshift measurements.

We calculated the concentration parameter for all the galaxies detected. The aperture to determine the total flux was defined as in the previous section. As expected it appears very stable when the galaxies are redshifted, varying by less than 0.1 as soon as the signal-to-noise ratio (defined within the half-light radius) is larger than 20. However, the absolute values of $`C_K`$ are out of the range usually found for disk galaxies. All the objects exhibit a very low value of $`C_K`$ from 1.5 to 2.6 with $`C_K(M51)=2`$, $`C_K(M81)=1.5`$, $`C_K(M101)=2.6`$, $`C_K(M100)=2.3`$ and $`C_K(M33)=2.5`$ whereas typical values for galactic disks are larger than 3, even for late-type disk galaxies (Kent Kent85 (1985), Bershady et al. Bershady00 (2000)).

This result must be related to the surface brightness profiles presented in Fig. 6. The value of $`C_K`$ for an exponential disk is 2.7, in agreement with the values found for M33 and M101 whose distributions look like exponentials. The very low values found for M51 and M81 are due to their irregular UV distribution with a low central emission and a bright annulus . As already underlined, no bulge is visible. For the five galaxies $`C_K`$ is found too low, due to the absence of a bulge in UV. This result lowers the importance of this parameter for high redshift galaxies observed in a UV rest frame unless a reliable calibration on a large database of templates of all types of galaxies is performed. The calibration made with the Frei sample in B and R are not representative of the UV morphology.

Abraham et al.’s parameter

More recently, Abraham et al. (1996a  and references therein) have introduced another definition of the concentration as the ratio of fluxes within two isophotal radii. The outer galaxy isophote is fixed at a given level above the sky (1.5 or 2 $`\sigma `$) and the inner isophote is defined as having a radius equal to 0.3 times the radius of the outer isophote. The concentration parameter is the ratio of the fluxes between these inner and outer isophotes. Here we adopt the definition:

$$C_A=\frac{\underset{E_\alpha }{}I_{ij}}{_{E_{iso}}I_{ij}}$$

where $`\mathrm{E}_{\mathrm{iso}}`$ refers to the elliptical aperture with a semi major axis ($`sma_{iso}`$) corresponding to the outer isophote at 1.5 or 2 $`\sigma `$ and $`E_\alpha `$ to the elliptical aperture with the semi major axis equal to $`0.3sma_{iso}`$ (see Fig. 6).

This parameter depends on isophotes and is therefore subject to potential problems since the surface brightness is a steep function of the redshift. This difficulty has lead Bershady et al. to prefer the concentration defined by Kent. Brinchmann et al. (Brinchmann98 (1998)) chose to use Abraham et al.’s concentration (hereafter $`C_A`$) but with a correction of this effect. They assume a de Vaucouleurs law to perform their correction. Such a distribution is certainly not valid for the UV distribution of star forming galaxies. Here we adopt a more empirical approach by directly measuring the concentration on redshifted images of real nearby galaxies.

$`C_A`$ was measured in UV at z $``$ 0 for an isophotal level of 1.5 and reported in Tabs. 3-7. The concentration is calculated only when the isophote at the adopted level is closed. All the values found are lower than 0.4 ($`\mathrm{log}(C_A)0.4`$) which is characteristic of spirals and irregulars (e.g. Abraham et al. 1996a ). M81 appears very extreme: this quiescent early-type spiral has a very low concentration. Moreover, the concentration parameter $`C_A`$ of each galaxy is stable when the galaxy is redshifted. The difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_A=|C_A(z=0)C_A(z0)|`$ $``$ 0.16 for all the spiral galaxies studied here except for one value for M33 (scenario 3 and boost by 4 mag) which has a large uncertainty.

Therefore Abraham et al.’s concentration parameter appears as a robust one. It is more adequate than Kent’s one to describe the UV morphologies at low and high redshifts.

#### 4.2.3 The asymmetry

Asymmetry is one of the most natural way of analyzing morphology and classifying galaxies. Conselice et al. (Conselice00 (2000)) present a detailed study of rotational asymmetry in galaxies. Here, we define the asymmetry in the same way as Abraham et al. (1996a ) :

$$A=1/2(min[\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }|I_0I_\mathrm{\Phi }|}{\mathrm{\Sigma }|I_0|}]min[\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }|B_0B_\mathrm{\Phi }|}{\mathrm{\Sigma }|I_0|}])$$

where $`I`$ represents the image pixel values and $`B`$ the background pixel values. The rotation angle $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is set to 180 $`\mathrm{deg}`$ in this paper, which means that the IΦ images are rotated by 180 $`\mathrm{deg}`$ before subtraction with the original image. The first term on the right side of the equation corresponds to the asymmetry of the source. Note, however, that the rotational asymmetry is a measurement based on individual pixels and noise poses an important problem. Consequently, Conselice et al. (Conselice00 (2000)) introduce a noise correction (only valid for uncorrelated noise and therefore not for HDF dithered images) which is computed in the latter term. This correction consists of estimating the asymmetry of blank areas in the neighborhood of the galaxy. In order to optimize this calculus we must check that the computed asymmetry is really at a minimum and an additional step is to compute $`A`$ at different positions on a grid and keep the minimum value. Another key-point lies in the signal-to-noise ratio. In this paper, we computed $`A`$ for all detected galaxies. In agreement with Conselice et al. (Conselice00 (2000)), we computed the asymmetry up to the radius where $`\eta `$ = 0.2 ($`\eta (r)`$ = $`\frac{I(r)}{<I(r)>}`$), which permits us to define a maximum radius independent of the distance/redshift and of the photometric calibration. The half-light integrated S/N must exceed $``$ 20 in order to have reliable estimates for A. This is less than the limiting S/N values reached by Conselice et al. (Conselice00 (2000)). As expected, the galaxies appear very asymmetric with $`A>0.2`$. This point will be discussed in Sect. 6.

## 5 Detection of disks at high redshifts

The first question that we will address is the detectability of disks at high redshifts. The evolution of the B mean surface brightness of large disk-dominated galaxies was thought to increase by a value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$ ranging from 0.8 to 1.6 mag between now and a redshift of z $``$ 1 compared to Freeman’s (Freeman70 (1970)) value at z = 0 (Schade et al. Schade96 (1996); Lilly et al. Lilly98 (1998); Roche et al. Roche98 (1998), Bouwens & Silk Bouwens00 (2000)). However, Simard et al. (Simard99 (1999)) performed a similar analysis but took into account a selection function in the magnitude-size plane as a function of redshift. The main effect produced by the above bias is that galaxies with low surface brightnesses are lost at high redshit. Before correction, the mean disk surface brightness would increase by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$ = 1.3 mag from z=0.1 to z=0.9 consistently with the values estimated by Schade et al. (Schade96 (1996)), Lilly et al. (Lilly98 (1998)), Roche et al. (Roche98 (1998)). After accounting for the selection effect, no discernible evolution is observed in the disk surface brightness of disk-dominated galaxies brighter than $`M_B`$ = -19. However, using the same dataset Bouwens & Silk (Bouwens00 (2000)) reach a different conclusion ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$ $``$1.5 mag of evolution). This difference stems from the fact that Bouwens & Silk (Bouwens00 (2000)) find, in the observation, a number of high surface brightness galaxies exceeding model predictions. These authors therefore argue that there is a strong evolution in the total number of high surface brightness galaxies from z = 0 to z $``$ 1 not accounted for by Simard et al. (Simard99 (1999)).

We can analyze the detectability of our simulated high-redshift observations in HST bands. The first point to note is that M33, M81 and M100 become undetectable if they are redshifted in the HST V-band (z=1.68) without any other modifications. The situation is only more favourable for M51 and M101 which are detected in the V-band with an integrated S/N $``$ 10. Note that the S/N are measured within ellipses which enclose half the total light of the galaxy. Even when detected, these low S/N prevent any safe estimations of morphological parameters as discussed below. None of the galaxies are detected in the HST I-band (z=2.94). The results for the V-band and I-band without evolution are reported in Tabs. 3-7 (referred to as a brightening of 0 mag). The V-band appears as the best configuration to maximize S/N as it combines a rather moderate redshift (z=1.68) with an efficient filter (f555W).

In the following we will use scenario 2 of luminosity evolution presented in Sect. 3.2 for the galaxies and analyze their effect on the detectability of the spiral galaxies. For all the galaxies other than M81, this scenario implies an evolution of the surface brightness consistent with the values found in the literature and presented at the beginning of the section. The S/N barely reaches 30, i.e. below the value of 50 which is considered by Conselice et al. (Conselice00 (2000)) as necessary to begin to estimate reliable morphological parameters. It seems, however that some reasonably safe work can be carried out down to S/N $``$ 20-30, depending on the galaxies (see Sect. 5.2). The adopted evolutionary scenario is not enough for M33 and S/N $`<`$ 10. For the other spiral galaxies, 10 $``$ S/N $``$ 30. Nevertheless, in only a limited number of cases, $`A`$ and $`C_A`$ can be safely estimated. If such galaxies are observed at high redshift, it would be often impossible to perform a reliable morphological analysis.

In order to constraint the evolution needed to detect our local spiral galaxies and estimate their morphological parameters, we applied scenario 3, i.e. a uniform magnification (same one to each pixel of the image) ranging from 1 to 4 magnitudes to our galaxies observed at z=1.68 and z=2.94 i.e. observations through the WFPC2 V-f555W and I-f814W filters. In the V-band, S/N $``$ 20 is the minimum needed to perform any morphological analysis. M51 reaches such a value with a boost of 1 mag. This boost is slightly less that the V-boost adopted in scenario 2 and explains the positive results for this filter. Assuming H0=50 km.s-1.Mpc-1 and q0=0.5, this translates into an e-folding rate slightly larger than in scenario 2 : $`\tau _V=10.9`$ Gyrs.

The high surface brightness of M51 is the major characteristic that helps detection of this spiral galaxy. A boost by 2 mag (i.e. $`\tau _V=5.5`$ Gyrs) is needed for M100 and M101 to get reliable morphological parameters. Up to 3 mag (i.e. $`\tau _V=3.6`$ Gyrs) and more than 4 mag (i.e. $`\tau _V=2.7`$ Gyrs) are necessary to measure $`A`$ and $`C_A`$ in V. The situation is slightly worse in the I-band where a reliable estimate of the morphology corresponds to a boost by 3 mag ($`\tau _I=4.1`$ Gyrs) for M51, by 4 mag ($`\tau _I=3.1`$ Gyrs) for M100 and M101 with the same assumptions on the cosmology. M33 and M81 are never detected in I, which implies boost $`>`$ 4 mag (i.e. $`\tau _I>3`$ Gyrs) for a detection. Such evolutions are very high and imply e-folding rates more typical of very early type galaxies dominated or largely influenced by the bulge component. Roche et al. (Roche98 (1998)) found $``$ 2.8 mag of surface brightness evolution for galaxies at 2 $`<`$ z $`<`$ 3.5 relative to galaxies at z $`<`$ 0.35.

In conclusion, except perhaps for spiral galaxies with the high surface brightnesses (evolution $`>`$ 3 mag) which may be detected at high redshift with a good S/N, it would not be possible to get reliable estimates of their morphological parameters $`A`$ and $`C_A`$ and therefore to classify them at z$`>`$2. In Fig. 7 we compare the detection limit (with an exposure time of 2.5 ksec) reached by Roche et al. (Roche96 (1996)) in the ($`Log(r_{hl})`$ vs. $`I_{AB}`$) diagram for I-band exposures to our measured values (in the I-band as well). It was necessary to change Roche et al.’s (Roche96 (1996)) Johnson I magnitudes to the AB systems by applying the relation $`I_{AB}=I+0.52`$. Our spiral galaxies could have been detected by Roche et al. (Roche96 (1996)) assuming boosts $``$ 1-2 mag for M51, M100 and M101 but boosts $``$ 3-4 mag for M33 and M81. The size of M101 is in the upper bin in the $`r_{hl}`$ distribution presented by Roche et al. (Roche98 (1998)). The other galaxies have $`r_{hl}`$ in the observed range.

Note that our simulations are more optimistic that actual HST observations (see Sect. 3), and it would be even more difficult to detect them. However, the detection is not the whole story and an additional caveat appears. We have only been able to quantitatively estimate the asymmetries and concentration for M51, M100 and M101 with large boosts. This means that we would not be able to classify those galaxies unless very large boosts were applied to the brightest galaxies. Moreover, as we will see in the next section, these galaxies would not appear as spirals anyway.

Models of galaxy formation in hierarchical cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogonies predict that Milky Way-like disks cannot form at $`z>1`$ in a universe with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_01`$ while lower constraints come from a low-$`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ universe (Mo et al. Mo98 (1998)). Note, however, that these scenarios predict that early disks may be present at high redshifts but with a size significantly smaller than the disks observed today. From an analysis of the NTT Deep Field, Poli et al. (Poli99 (1999)) found that the size distribution of a sample of disk-dominated galaxies peaks at very small sizes, $`r_{hl}2.5`$ kpc, corresponding in their sample to $`r_{hl}`$ 0.3 $`arcsec`$. This is also consistent with the HST Medium Deep Survey (MDS) results (Roche et al. Roche98 (1998)). Comparing their results to the CDM predictions, Poli et al. (Poli99 (1999)) show a general agreement but noticed a possible excess of faint, small-sized galaxies. Our simulations show that we could not draw any definite conclusions on the existence of large spiral disks at redshifts $`z>1`$ as stated by Mao, Mo and White (Mao98 (1998)). Actually, the observational constraints from the fact that we could not detect them with the HST and NTT are too small.

What are the disk-dominated galaxies seen by Roche et al. (Roche98 (1998)) at z $``$ 3-4 and Poli et al. (Poli99 (1999)) at I $``$ 25 ? Our simulations show that we do not expect any variations of the size with the redshift due to dimming of surface brightness. Roche et al. (Roche98 (1998)) conclude that the $`r_{hl}`$ distributions are in agreement with a size-luminosity evolution model where spiral galaxies undergo a small size evolution below z $``$ 1.5 but are smaller by a factor of the order of 2 at z $``$ 3. In addition, Mo et al. (Mo98 (1998)) models for the formation of galactic disks would tend in the same direction. It is therefore a subject that deserves further work and we will analyze, in a follow-up paper, scenarios where we vary the size of the disk assuming, for instance, a radial variation of the star formation history as in Roche et al. (Roche96 (1996)).

## 6 Morphology of disks at high redshifts

Using our own sample of local spiral galaxies observed in UV with FOCA, we simulate high-redshift observations and we also estimate asymetries and concentration for our simulated galaxies. Tabs. 3-7 and Fig. 8 present our results. Fig. 8 is the (Log $`A`$ vs. log $`C_A`$) diagram where the dotted lines represent the separations of Hubble types reported by Abraham et al. (1996b ). As noted above, we have assumed several scenarios for the luminosity evolution. The first point to note is that all the galaxies fall in the top-left area corresponding to the irr/pec/mrg galaxies. We do confirm the previous qualitative results that spiral galaxies observed in a UV rest-frame appear more irregular. Indeed, this effect is clearly present even at z $``$ 0 but it must be pointed out the the morphology is very stable and does not change with the redshift. From z=0 to the highest explored redshifts, we observed similar concentrations and asymmetries for a given galaxy. The migration of spiral galaxies towards more asymetrical areas is mainly caused by the clumpiness of the star formation regions observed in UV. The symbols corresponding to the redshifted galaxies in the HST filters fall very close to their z $``$ 0 parent galaxy. Galaxies where the evolution is assumed to be proportional to e-t/τ fall in the diagram at -1.4 $``$log $`C_A`$ $``$ -0.5. This quite large range is in fact due to M81 (log $`C_A`$ -1.0) whereas the other galaxies show similar concentrations (-0.9 $``$log $`C_A`$ $``$ -0.5). Moreover, note that the concentration is not consistent with the usual values measured in the visible. Indeed, M81 is the most early-type galaxy but appears as the least concentrated galaxy in Fig. 8. Clearly, more UV templates must be studied to test concentration as a morphological discriminator between early and late type galaxies. All spiral galaxies lie in a very narrow log A range (-0.7 $``$ log A $``$ -0.2). They are very asymmetric compared to their optical morphology and are located in the irregular domain. Furthermore, the degeneracy of the log $`A`$ parameter in UV is very limiting for morphology studies. Other ways of measuring the asymmetry have been studied. For instance, Rudnick & Rix (Rudnick98 (1998)) use the Fourier amplitudes of the image. Kornreich et al. (Kornreich98 (1998)) compare the relative fluxes of trapezoidal areas distributed around the center of the galaxy. Even for scenarios where the galaxy is uniformely boosted by a magnitude ranging from 0 $``$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$ $``$ 4, the increase of S/N does not change our conclusion and the galaxies remain in the same area whatever the scenario. This large asymmetry - low concentration morphology is intrinsic to the UV.

## 7 Conclusion

The main results of this paper are summarized as follows :

* As expected, galaxies observed in UV are very different from their visible counterpart as the young populations are predominent. These galaxies appear more clumpy.
* Local galaxies with large disk projected at high redshift (0.65 $``$ z $``$ 2.94) would be hardly detected with the HST in 10-hr exposure times. Consequently, no strong observational constraints can be set on the presence or absence of large galaxy disks at high z.
* A quantitative analysis of the UV morphology of disk galaxies shows that there is a clear trend for spirals to move towards more irregular morphology types (morphological K-correction). If the concentration parameter appears to be a good discriminator between early and late type galaxies, the asymmetry is degenerate and all the galaxies have very similar asymmetry values. New ways of measuring the asymmetry need to be explored.
* The location of a given galaxy in the (log $`A`$ vs. log $`C_A`$) diagram is very stable and does not depend on the redshift or the S/N as soon as the rest-frame wavelength is in UV. Therefore, rest-frame visible imaging is not helpful and it would be useful to define a multi-wavelength morphology system.

This paper stresses the need to keep on working on the UV morphology of galaxies if we wish to be able to understand the objects observed at high redshift. It is therefore necessary to define new tools for classifying galaxies. A number of objects have been observed by FOCA, UIT-Astro-2 and other UV imagers. However, the database is still too small for a significative study. Hopefully, GALEX, the GALaxy Evolution eXplorer will complete a UV survey of the sky within the next years and the accumulated data will be crucial to progress in the understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank J.-M. Deltorn and A. Boselli for helpful and stimulating discussions about this work. The FOCA balloon program has been conducted jointly by the Laboratoire d’Astronomie Spatiale (now Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille) and the Observatoire de Genève. Financial support was provided by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Fonds National de la Recherche Suisse (FNRS).


text:
# Stationary phase in Coherent State Path Integrals

## I introduction

The propagator from the coherent state $`A`$ to the coherent state $`B`$ over a time interval $`\tau `$ can be written K2  as a path integral over coherent state paths from $`A`$ to $`B`$.

$$B|U(\tau )|A=_A^B𝒟Le^{iS[L]/\mathrm{}}$$
(1)
The integral is over all complex paths $`L(t)`$ such that $`L(0)=A`$ and $`L(\tau )=B`$, and the action for the path $`L(t)`$ is defined as

$$S[L]_0^\tau 𝑑t\left[i\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}\left(\dot{L}L^{}L\dot{L}^{}\right)L|H|L\right]$$

If the expectation value of the hamiltonian ($`H`$) is truncated to second order in $`L`$ it is expected, from experience with path integrals FeynmanAndHibbs , that by expanding about the “classical path” from $`A`$ to $`B`$, the path integral will be reduce to a gaussian path integral with trivial boundary conditions. This procedure is the adaptation of the stationary phase approximation to path integrals. Unfortunately this cannot be done directly. The difficulty is that the action integral is linear in $`\dot{L}`$, and thus the equation of motion for the classical path is first order. Consequently a solution to the equation of motion will not have sufficient freedom to choose both end points. Thus, in general, there is no classical path that matches the boundary conditions.

Klauder suggests circumventing this problem by including a $`\dot{L}^2`$ term in the action that vanishes in the path integral limit K1 . This leads to a second order equation of motion for the classical path and thus classical paths that can match the boundary conditions at both ends.

More recently Shibata and Takagi have suggested IJMP  that the failure of the stationary phase approximation for the coherent state path integral indicates that the action, quoted above, for the coherent state path integral is incorrect, and that it is necessary to start over with a discrete-time formalism in each case in order to get the correct result.

This work demonstrates that there is no need to reevaluate the coherent state action. A coherent state path integral can be approximated by the stationary phase approximation without altering the action or starting over with a discrete-time formalism.

This paper will first find the propagator using the coherent state path integral, and show that this the propagator is correct. Then the apparent conflict between this result and the work of Klauder and Shibata will be addressed.

## II The Extreme-Path Solution

Consider then the general, truncated to second order, expectation value of the Hamiltonian, written as

$$L|H|L\mathrm{}\left(\omega LL^{}+fL+f^{}L^{}\right)$$
(2)
with $`\omega `$ real and $`f`$ a complex function of time. With this truncation, the action can be written in the following form.

$$S[L]=_0^\tau 𝑑t[L(t),L^{}(t)]S[L,L^{}]$$

with

$$[L(t),M^{}(t)]\mathrm{}\left[\frac{i}{2}\left(\dot{L}M^{}L\dot{M}^{}\right)\omega LM^{}fLf^{}M^{}\right]$$

Considering $`L`$ and $`M`$ as independent functions, the associated Lagrange’s equations of motion are

$`i\dot{L}`$ $`=`$ $`\omega L+f^{}`$
$`i\dot{M}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\omega M^{}+f`$ (3)
We know that deviations from paths satisfying Eq. (II) induce no first order deviation in the action since these paths are stationary points of the action. For this reason, paths that satisfy Eq. (II) will be called extreme paths in this paper. Indeed we find after an integration by parts that there are no linear terms in the integral over the deviations.

$`S[L_0+\delta L,M_0^{}+\delta M^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`S[L_0,M_0^{}]`$ (4)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\mathrm{}\left[M_0^{}\delta LL_0\delta M^{}\right]_0^t`$
$`+`$ $`\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t\left[{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left(\dot{\delta L}\delta M^{}\delta L\dot{\delta M}^{}\right)\omega \delta L\delta M^{}\right]`$ (5)
Where $`M_0`$ and $`L_0`$ satisfying the equations of motion Eq. (II).

Oddly, $`L`$ and $`L^{}`$ can be expanded about different extreme paths and the resulting integral in the action will still have no linear terms. Note also that this lack of linear terms has nothing to do with the boundary conditions, and depends only on the fact that the paths satisfy the equations of motion.

While it is true that $`L`$ and $`L^{}`$ can be expanded about different paths and still get the simplification of Eq. (4), in the path integral we need the action, $`S[L,L^{}]`$, for a single path $`L`$. Thus for present purposes it must be demanded that $`(M_0^{}+\delta M^{})^{}=L_0+\delta L`$ and thus that

$$M_0+\delta M=L_0+\delta L.$$
(6)
It is apparent then that $`\delta L`$ and $`\delta M`$ are not really independent. Which is as it should be since this action is in a path integral over a single path. For a given choice of $`M_0`$ and $`L_0`$ we can write $`\delta M`$ in terms of $`\delta L`$.

$$\delta M=L_0M_0+\delta L$$

This can be used to write the action in terms of a single function, $`\delta L`$. The following is found, after an integration by parts and using the fact that $`L_0`$ and $`M_0`$ are solutions to Eq. (II).

$`S[L,L^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`S[L_0+\delta L,M_0^{}+\delta M^{}]`$
$`=`$ $`S[L_0,M_0^{}]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\mathrm{}[M_0^{}\delta LL_0\delta M^{}]_0^t+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\mathrm{}[L_0^{}\delta LM_0^{}\delta L]_0^t`$
$`+\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t\left[{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left(\dot{\delta L}\delta L^{}\delta L\dot{\delta L}^{}\right)\omega \delta L\delta L^{}\right]`$
$`=`$ $`S[L_0,M_0^{}]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\mathrm{}[L_0^{}\delta LL_0\delta M^{}]_0^t`$
$`+\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t\left[{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left(\dot{\delta L}\delta L^{}\delta L\dot{\delta L}^{}\right)\omega \delta L\delta L^{}\right]`$
Now comes the nice part. The first two terms do not depend on $`\delta L`$, just the boundary conditions and the extreme paths. Thus these terms may be brought outside the path integral over $`\delta L`$ in the path integral representation of the propagator, Eq. (1). The last term, on the other hand, is the action associated with a harmonic oscillator hamiltonian $`\mathrm{}\omega a^{}a`$, where $`a`$ is the annihilation operator ($`a|L=L|L`$). Thus

$`B|U(\tau )|A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathrm{}}}S[L_0,M_0^{}]\right\}`$ (7)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[L_0^{}\delta LL_0\delta M^{}]_0^\tau \right\}`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle _{AL_0(0)}^{BL_0(\tau )}}𝒟[\delta L]e^{iS_{\mathrm{HO}}[\delta L]/\mathrm{}}`$
The third term is the propagator for a harmonic oscillator hamiltonian, $`H_{\mathrm{HO}}=\mathrm{}\omega a^{}a`$. Because the coherent states are eigenstates of the annihilation operator this propagator is simply expressed in this basis K2 .

$`{\displaystyle _{AL_0(0)}^{BL_0(\tau )}}𝒟[\delta L]e^{iS_{\mathrm{HO}}[\delta L]/\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`BL_0(\tau )|e^{i\omega a^{}at}|AL_0(0)`$
$`=`$ $`BL_0(\tau )|e^{i\omega t}(AL_0(0))`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\{{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}|BL_o(\tau )|^2{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}|AL_o(0)|^2`$
$`+e^{i\omega \tau }(BL_o(\tau ))^{}(AL_o(0))\}`$
Because the expansion about the extreme path left a simple path integral, it is possible to evaluate the integral even though the boundary conditions on the path integral are not the trivial boundary conditions that one expects in a stationary phase approximation. These non-trivial boundary conditions occur because our extreme path did not satisfy the boundary conditions of the original path integral.

Putting this result into the expression Eq. (7) for the propagator the following is found.

$`B|U(\tau )|A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\{{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathrm{}}}S[L_0,M_0^{}]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[L_0^{}\delta LL_0\delta M^{}]_0^\tau `$ (8)
$`{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}|BL_o(\tau )|^2{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}|AL_o(0)|^2`$
$`+e^{i\omega \tau }(BL_o(\tau ))^{}(AL_o(0))\}`$
It is important to note that each of the terms in this expression depends on the choice of extreme paths $`M_0`$ and $`L_0`$. This is the price to be payed for not having the extreme paths satisfy the boundary conditions of the path integral. This indicates that there is a problem, since the propagator should not depend on the freely chosen extreme paths. It will be shown that this problem is only apparent.

The first step in disentangling the extreme paths from the propagator is to evaluate the extreme action (the first term in Eq. (8)).

$`S[L_0,M_0^{}]`$ $`=\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left(\dot{L}_0M_0^{}L_0\dot{M}_0^{}\right)\omega L_0M_0^{}fL_0f^{}M_0^{}\right\}`$ (9)
$`=\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[(\omega L_0+f^{})M_0^{}+L_0(\omega M_0^{}+f)\right]\omega L_0M_0^{}fL_0f^{}M_0^{}\right\}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t\left(fL_0+f^{}M_0^{}\right)`$
In order to evaluate this further it is useful to write out the solution to the equations of motion. The Green’s function solution is as follows.

$`L_0(t)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\omega t}\left[L_0(t^{})e^{i\omega t^{}}i{\displaystyle _t^{}^t}𝑑se^{i\omega s}f^{}(s)\right]`$
$`M_0^{}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\omega t}\left[M_0^{}(t^{\prime \prime })e^{i\omega t^{\prime \prime }}+i{\displaystyle _{t^{\prime \prime }}^t}𝑑se^{i\omega s}f(s)\right]`$
Both sets of constants $`t^{}`$,$`t^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`L_0(t^{})`$,$`M_0^{}(t^{\prime \prime })`$ are arbitrary. Thus, without loss of generality one can choose $`t^{}=0`$ and $`t^{\prime \prime }=\tau `$, since the free choice of $`L_0(t^{})`$ and $`M_0^{}(t^{\prime \prime })`$ will allow any solution to be described. With this choice the solutions becomes the following.

$`L_0(t)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\omega t}\left[L_0(0)i{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑se^{i\omega s}f^{}(s)\right]`$
$`M_0^{}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\omega t}\left[M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }+i{\displaystyle _\tau ^t}𝑑se^{i\omega s}f(s)\right]`$ (10)
With this in hand the extreme action can be evaluate more fully. Putting the extreme path Eq. (II) into the expression for the extreme action Eq. (9) the extreme action can be written as follows.

$`S[L_0,M_0^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^\tau }dt\{f(t)e^{i\omega t}[L_0(0)i{\displaystyle _0^t}dse^{i\omega s}f^{}(s)]`$
$`+f^{}(t)e^{i\omega t}[M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }+i{\displaystyle _\tau ^t}dse^{i\omega s}f(s)]\}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\{L_0(0)\underset{g}{\underset{}{{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑tf(t)e^{i\omega t}}}i{\displaystyle _0^\tau }dt{\displaystyle _0^t}dse^{i\omega (st)}f(t)f^{}(s)`$
$`+M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }\underset{g^{}}{\underset{}{{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑tf^{}(t)e^{i\omega t}}}+i{\displaystyle _0^\tau }dt{\displaystyle _\tau ^t}dse^{i\omega (ts)}f(s)f^{}(t)\}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\{L_0(0)gi{\displaystyle _0^\tau }dt{\displaystyle _0^t}dse^{i\omega (st)}f(t)f^{}(s)`$
$`+M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}i{\displaystyle _0^\tau }dt{\displaystyle _t^\tau }dse^{i\omega (ts)}f(s)f^{}(t)\}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\{L_0(0)gi{\displaystyle _0^\tau }dt{\displaystyle _0^t}dse^{i\omega (st)}f(t)f^{}(s)`$
$`+M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}i{\displaystyle _0^\tau }ds{\displaystyle _s^\tau }dte^{i\omega (st)}f(t)f^{}(s)\}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\left\{L_0(0)g+M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}2i\underset{h}{\underset{}{{\displaystyle _0^\tau }𝑑t{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑se^{i\omega (st)}f(t)f^{}(s)}}\right\}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\left[L_0(0)g+M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}2ih\right]`$
Note that $`g`$ and $`h`$ depend only on the function $`f(t)`$ and the time interval $`\tau `$. Also notice that by using Eq. (II) and the definition of $`g`$, that $`L_0(\tau )`$ can be written in terms of $`L_0(0)`$ and $`g`$. Similarly $`M_0^{}(0)`$ can be written in terms of $`M_0^{}(\tau )`$ and $`g`$.

$`L_0(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\omega \tau }\left(L_0(0)ig^{}\right)`$
$`M_0^{}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }ig`$ (12)
This is useful since the propagator Eq. (8) can now be expressed in terms of these boundary values and the boundary condition that $`L`$ goes from $`A`$ to $`B`$. By putting Eq. (II) and Eq. (II) into Eq. (8) and doing a bit of algebra the final result for the propagator is found.

$`B|U(\tau )|A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\{{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}[L_0(0)g+M_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}2ih]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[L_0^{}\delta LL_0\delta M^{}]_0^\tau `$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|BL_0(\tau )|^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|AL_0(0)|^2+e^{i\omega \tau }(BL_0(\tau ))^{}(AL_0(0))\}`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{iL_0(0)giM_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}2h`$
$`L_0^{}(\tau )\delta L(\tau )+L_0^{}(0)\delta L(0)+L_0(\tau )\delta M^{}(\tau )L_0(0)\delta M^{}(0)`$
$`|BL_0(\tau )|^2|AL_0(0)|^2+2e^{i\omega \tau }(BL_0(\tau ))^{}(AL_0(0))\}`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\{iL_0(0)giM_0^{}(\tau )e^{i\omega \tau }g^{}2h`$
$`L_0^{}(\tau )(BL_0(\tau ))+L_0^{}(0)(AL_0(0))`$
$`+L_0(\tau )(BM_0(\tau ))^{}L_0(0)(AM_0(0))^{}`$
$`(BL_0(\tau ))(BL_0(\tau ))^{}(AL_0(0))(AL_0(0))^{}`$
$`+2e^{i\omega \tau }(BL_0(\tau ))^{}(AL_0(0))\}`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}AA^{}{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}BB^{}+e^{i\omega \tau }B^{}Aig^{}e^{i\omega \tau }B^{}igAh\right\}`$
Notice that the final result does not depend in any way on the particular extreme paths chosen. Indeed if this were not the case, and the freely chosen parameters of a computational crutch remained in the final answer, the result would certainly be erroneous.

## III Verifying the Result

It will be easier to verify that this result is correct if the coherent state representations of the creation and annihilation operators are found first. Since the coherent states are the eigenbasis of the annihilation operator, $`a|A=A|A`$ and $`A|a^{}=A^{}A|`$. With this, the creation operator can be written in the coherent state representation.

$$B|a^{}|\psi =B^{}B|\psi $$

The representation of the annihilation operator can be found similarly.

$`B|a|\psi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑AB|a|AA|\psi }`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑AAB|AA|\psi }`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑AAe^{\frac{1}{2}B^{}B\frac{1}{2}A^{}A+B^{}A}A|\psi }`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑A\left(\frac{}{B^{}}+\frac{1}{2}B\right)e^{\frac{1}{2}B^{}B\frac{1}{2}A^{}A+B^{}A}A|\psi }`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑A\left(\frac{}{B^{}}+\frac{1}{2}B\right)B|AA|\psi }`$
$`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{B^{}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B\right){\displaystyle 𝑑AB|AA|\psi }`$
$`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{B^{}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B\right)B|\psi `$
Just as the momentum operator can be written as a derivative in the position basis, $`pi\mathrm{}\frac{}{x}`$, the annihilation operator can be written as a derivative in the coherent state basis. $`a\frac{}{B^{}}+\frac{1}{2}B`$.

Now the Schrödinger equation can be written out in the coherent state basis.

$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}|\psi `$ $`=`$ $`H|\psi `$
$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}B|\psi `$ $`=`$ $`B|H|\psi `$
$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}B|U(t)|\psi _0`$ $`=`$ $`B|HU(t)|\psi _0`$
Since any initial state can be written as a sum of coherent states it can be assume, without loss of generality, that the initial state is a coherent state, $`|\psi _0=|A`$. Thus it is only necessary to show that the following is true

$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}B|U(t)|A`$ $`=`$ $`B|HU(t)|A`$
$`=`$ $`B|\mathrm{}[\omega a^{}a+f(t)a+f^{}(t)a^{}]U(t)|A`$
In the above, the hamiltonian that corresponds to the truncated Lagrangian has been used.

Now using the above representation of the creation and annihilation operators we find the following form of the Schrödinger equation.

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`B|\left[\omega a^{}a+f(t)a+f^{}(t)a^{}i{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}\right]U(t)|A`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`B|\left[(\omega a^{}+f(t))a+f^{}(t)a^{}i{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}\right]U(t)|A`$
$`=`$ $`\left[\left(\omega B^{}+f(t)\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{B^{}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B\right)+f^{}(t)B^{}i{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}\right]B|U(t)|A`$
The Schrödinger equation is now written out in terms of the matrix elements of the propagator in the coherent state basis.

Using the propagator Eq. (II), the following results are found.

$$\left(\frac{}{B^{}}+\frac{1}{2}B\right)B|U(t)|A=e^{i\omega \tau }(Aig^{})B|U(t)|A$$
(15)
$$i\frac{}{t}B|U(t)|A=e^{i\omega \tau }\left[ifg^{}\omega B^{}A+i\omega g^{}B^{}f^{}e^{i\omega \tau }B^{}fA\right]B|U(t)|A$$
(16)
Substituting Eq. (16) and Eq. (15) into Eq. (14), it is found that the propagator Eq. (II) satisfies the Schrödinger equation.

## IV Discussion

In summary, the following has been shown. $``$ The stationary phase approximation can be applied to coherent state path integrals without altering the action. $``$ The paths about which one expands need only to satisfy the equations of motion, they do not need to satisfy the boundary conditions. $``$ The path and it’s complex conjugate can be expanded about different extreme paths. $``$ There is not a unique extreme path.

The stationary phase approximation failed for Shibata and Takagi IJMP  because they did not account for the nonzero boundary term that results from the integration by parts in Eq. (4). They altered the boundary conditions, following Klauder K3 , so that it was possible to find a classical path satisfying these altered boundary conditions. But these altered boundary conditions were different from the boundary conditions of the path integral. Thus there should have been a nonzero boundary term from the integration by parts in equation 3.18a and the boundary conditions on their remaining path integral (equation 3.18b) should have had non-trivial boundary conditions. When they found the continuous-time coherent state path integral to give an erroneous propagator, they concluded that this was due to a failure of the continuous-time coherent state path integral. This was an unfounded conclusion since the failure was due an error with the boundary conditions rather than the formalism.

Klauder’s prescription chooses the particular boundary conditions for the extreme paths of $`L_0(0)=A`$ and $`M_0(t)=B`$. It is unclear what is special about this particular extreme path. This paper has demonstrated that any path satisfying the equations of motion will suffice for the stationary phase approximation. This casts into doubt the validity of his argument leading to this special case since it picks one of many possible extreme paths as the “true classical path”.

This also puts into question the usual interpretation of the classical path being the “most probable” or the one “that contributes the most to the path integral”, for coherent state path integrals. Since there are many equivalent extreme paths, they cannot all have this interpretation. The extreme path in coherent state path integrals does not appear to have the same significance as the classical path in position space path integrals.

A final note: In checking our result we also compared our propagator (for the special case of initial and final states having zero momentum) with an equivalent propagator from Feynman and Hibbs FeynmanAndHibbs , equation (8-141). We find that there is an error in their result in one of the coefficients: $`\frac{1}{m\sqrt{2\omega }}`$ should be $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}m\omega }}`$.