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# Cyclotron damping and Faraday rotation of gravitational waves

## I Introduction

The propagation of weak gravitational waves in the presence of matter and electromagnetic fields has been considered by several authors, e.g. -. The back-reaction on the gravitational waves, resulting in damping and/or dispersion, has been studied by Refs. -, but the gravitational effects of matter (most frequently assumed to be a fluid or neutral gas) and the effects of electromagnetic fields have mainly been treated separately. The interaction of gravitational waves with a plasma – which is the most common state of matter relevant for gravitational wave propagation – has been considered in an astrophysical as well as an cosmological context, see e.g. Refs. - and Ref.  respectively, and references therein. In general it turns out that matter which is in a plasma state – and thus exhibits electromagnetic properties – has possibilities of more efficient interaction with gravitational radiation, as compared to neutral matter.

In this paper we study the propagation of weak gravitational waves in a collisionless plasma with an external static and homogenous magnetic field, parallel to the direction of propagation. Naturally, the matter and fields produces a background curvature, but nevertheless it is meaningful to treat the background as Minkowski, provided the wavelength is much shorter than the background curvature (see the Appendix for a detailed discussion). It turns out that there is a new effect on the gravitational waves that appears due to presence of the external magnetic field - a gravitational analog of cyclotron damping of electromagnetic waves (cf. Ref. ). In the electromagnetic case, the waves may interact resonantly with the gyrating motion of the particles, and the resonance occurs for particles that experience a wave whose Doppler shifted frequency equals the gyrofrequency. In the gravitational analog, the resonance occurs when the (Doppler shifted) wave frequency is twice the gyrofrequency. A mechanism for gravitational wave damping similar to cyclotron damping has been considered previously - namely Landau damping . However, cyclotron damping is a potentially more important mechanism, since for this case, efficient wave-particle interaction may take place without the presence of ultra relativistic particles. The possibility for cyclotron damping of gravitational waves has been considered by Ref.  and recently by Ref. . However, the calculation of the damping coefficient in Ref.  do not rest on a selfconsistent kinetic theory, and it turns out that our value of the damping based on the Vlasov equation is smaller than theirs by several orders of magnitude. On the other hand, if we take the limit of a non-relativistic Maxwellian distribution function, our results essentially (see note ) reduces to those of Ref. .

In the case where the unperturbed distribution function of the particles is not in thermodynamical equilibrium, gravitational wave instabilities rather than damping may occur. We give a condition on the distribution function for instabilities to develope and demonstrate that it may be fulfilled, for instance, by plasmas with a temperature anisotropy. Naturally, the gravitational wave dispersion is also modified by the presence of the magnetic field. The dependence of the damping and dispersion on the temperature and on the cyclotron- and gravitational wave frequencies is investigated. Furthermore, we confirm that the natural wave modes are circularly polarized waves also in the relativistic regime and that – as a consequence of the different dispersion relations for these modes (in an electron-ion type of plasma) – gravitational waves experiences a phenomena analogous to Faraday rotation of electromagnetic waves in such a medium.

The paper is organized as follows: In section II we present the equations governing our system, using a tetrad description in order to make the interpretation of our results more straightforward. Section III reviews the problem of single particle motion in the presence of a gravitational wave propagating parallel to an external magnetic field. In particular it is shown that resonant particles experiences continuous acceleration with velocities approaching the speed of light in vacuum. In section IV the interaction between the gravitational waves and the plasma is studied selfconsistently in the linearized approximation using the Einstein-Maxwell-Vlasov system of equations. The damping and dispersion of the gravitational wave is studied in some detail for an electron-ion plasma as well as for an electron-positron plasma in thermodynamical equilibrium. The case of a plasma which is not in thermodynamical equilibrium is studied in section V. Finally, in section VI, we summarize our results and discuss their implications. There is also an appendix where , the problem of separating effects into background curvature effects (“indirect” matter effect) and “direct” matter effects is discussed. The results in this paper, obtained using a tetrad frame formalism, are compared with those of a coordinate frame formalism.

## II Basic equations

We consider the interaction between weak gravitational waves and a collisionless plasma in an external magnetic field. Since we consider nonempty space the background space-time is necessarily curved. However, if the wavelength of the gravitational waves and the interaction region is small relative to the background curvature we may take the background to be flat and static, and the energy-momentum tensor to be the one corresponding to the perturbations of the electromagnetic and material fields (see the Appendix).

For simplicity, the direction of propagation is assumed parallel to the magnetic field which we take to be static and homogeneous. Linearized, the Einstein field equations (EFE) take the form

$$\mathrm{}h_{ab}=2\kappa \left[\delta T_{ab}\frac{1}{2}\delta T\eta _{ab}\right]$$
(1)
provided the gauge condition $`h_{,b}^{ab}=0`$ is fulfilled, which is equivalent to state that only tensorial perturbations are present. That the gauge condition is indeed satisfied will be verified in Section III below. Here $`\mathrm{}\left[c^2_t^2_z^2\right]`$, $`h_{ab}`$ is the small deviation from the Minkowski background metric, i.e. $`g_{ab}=\eta _{ab}+h_{ab}`$, $`\kappa 8\pi G/c^4`$, $`\delta T_{ab}`$ is the part of the energy-momentum tensor containing small electromagnetic and material field perturbations associated with the gravitational waves and $`\delta T`$ $`=\delta T_a^a`$. In the following it is understood that we neglect contributions of second order and higher in $`h_{ab}`$. In our notations $`a,b,c,\mathrm{}=0,1,2,3`$ and $`i,j,k,\mathrm{}=1,2,3`$ and the metric has the signature $`(+++)`$.

In vacuum, a linearized gravitational wave can be transformed into the transverse and traceless (TT) gauge. Then we have the following line-element and corresponding orthonormal frame basis

$`\mathrm{d}s^2`$ $`=`$ $`c^2\mathrm{d}t^2+(1+h_+(\xi ))\mathrm{d}x^2+(1h_+(\xi ))\mathrm{d}y^2`$ (3)
$`+2h_\times (\xi )\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y+\mathrm{d}z^2,`$
$`𝐞_0`$ $``$ $`c^1_t,𝐞_1(1\frac{1}{2}h_+)_x\frac{1}{2}h_\times _y,`$
$`𝐞_2`$ $``$ $`(1+\frac{1}{2}h_+)_y\frac{1}{2}h_\times _x,𝐞_3_z.`$
where $`\xi zct`$ and $`h_+,h_\times 1`$. As it turns out, the gravitational waves takes this form also in the particular case (propagation parallel to the magnetic field) we are considering. The difference to the vacuum case will be that $`\xi =zv_{\mathrm{ph}}t`$, where $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is the phase velocity of the gravitational wave. From now on we will refer to tetrad components rather than coordinate components.

We follow the approach presented in  for handling gravitational effects on the electromagnetic and material fields. Suppose an observer moves with 4-velocity $`u^a`$. This observer will measure the electric and magnetic fields $`E_aF_{ab}u^b`$ and $`B_a\frac{1}{2}ϵ_{abc}F^{bc}`$ , respectively, where $`F_{ab}`$ is the electromagnetic field tensor and $`ϵ_{abc}`$ is the volume element on hyper-surfaces orthogonal to $`u^a`$. It is convenient to introduce a 3-vector notation $`𝐄(E^i)=(E^1,E^2,E^3)`$ etc. and $`𝐞_i`$. From now on we will assume that $`u^0=c`$ is the only nonzero component of $`u^a`$. Generally, the Maxwell equations contain terms coupling the electromagnetic field to the gravitational radiation field. If the gravitational waves propagate parallel to a magnetic field there are no gravitationally induced effects on $`𝐄`$ and $`𝐁`$. This can be deduced as follows: Given the Ricci rotation coefficients for gravitational waves in the TT-gauge, the “gravitational source terms” in the Maxwell equations in Ref. vanishes for the given orientation of the magnetic field.

The equation of motion for a particle of mass $`m`$ and charge $`q`$ in an electromagnetic and gravitational wave field is

$$\frac{d}{dt}𝐩=q\left[𝐄+(\gamma m)^1𝐩\times 𝐁\right]𝐆$$
(4)
where $`\gamma =\sqrt{1+p_ip^i/(mc)^2}`$ and the four-momenta is $`p^a=\gamma mdx^a/dt`$. The gravitational force like term $`G^i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ab}^ip^ap^b/\gamma m`$, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ab}^i`$ are the Ricci rotation coefficients, becomes

$`G_1`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{1}{2}(v_{\mathrm{ph}}p_z/\gamma m)\left[\dot{h}_+p_1+\dot{h}_\times p_2\right]`$ (5)
$`G_2`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{1}{2}(v_{\mathrm{ph}}p_z/\gamma m)\left[\dot{h}_+p_2+\dot{h}_\times p_1\right]`$ (6)
$`G_3`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{1}{2}(\gamma m)^1\left[\dot{h}_+(p_1^2p_2^2)+2\dot{h}_\times p_1p_2\right]`$ (7)
for weak gravitational waves propagating in the z-direction in Minkowski space, where the dot symbol represents derivative with respect to $`\xi `$.

In order to account for resonant wave-particle interactions we apply kinetic plasma theory, representing each particle species by a distribution function $`f`$ governed by the Vlasov equation. In tetrad form the Vlasov equation reads

$`f=0`$

where the Liouville operator is

$`_t+(c/p^0)p^ie_i+\left[F_{\mathrm{EM}}^i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ab}^ip^ap^bc/p^0\right]_{p^i}`$

and the electromagnetic force responsible for geodesic deviation is $`F_{\mathrm{EM}}^iq(E^i+ϵ^{ijk}p_jB_k/\gamma m)`$. In vector notation the Vlasov equation reads

$$_tf+\frac{𝐩f}{\gamma m}+\left[q\left(𝐄+\frac{𝐩\times 𝐁}{\gamma m}\right)𝐆\right]_𝐩f=0$$
(8)
where $`_𝐩(_{p_1},_{p_2},_{p_3})`$. In the absence of gravitational waves, the Vlasov equation has the following spatially homogeneous (thermodynamical) equilibrium solution, the Synge-Jüttner distribution,

$$f_{SJ}=\frac{n_0\mu }{4\pi (mc)^3K_2(\mu )}e^{\mu \gamma }$$
(9)
where $`n_0`$ is the spatial particle number density, $`\mu mc^2/k_BT`$, $`k_B`$ is the Boltzmann constant, $`T`$ the temperature and $`K_2(\mu )`$ is a modified Bessel function of second kind. Generally, the unperturbed static solutions to Eq. (8) consistent with a homogeneous and static magnetic field, say in the $`z`$-direction, but not necessarily in thermodynamical equilibrium are distribution functions $`f=f(p_{},p_3)`$, where $`p_{}=\sqrt{p_1^2+p_2^2}`$.

Since there are no induced electromagnetic fields, the perturbed energy-momentum tensor can be written

$$\delta T_{ab}=\underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}\frac{p_ap_b}{m\gamma }f_Gd^3p$$
(10)
where $`f_G`$ is the gravitational perturbation of the distribution function and the summation is over particle species ($`\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.`$). The selfconsistent set of equations governing the interaction between the gravitational waves and the plasma are thus the two coupled equations (1) and (8). Obviously, as we have adapted a tetrad formalism, we mean the tetrad equivalence of Eq.(1) .

## III Cyclotron resonance acceleration

As we will consider effects that are due to wave-particle interaction, it might be in place to first review some results of single particle (test-particle) motion in the presence of gravitational waves and an external magnetic field.

Single particle motion in gravitational wave fields has been examined by many authors, see e.g.  and references therein. Particles moving in a monochromatic gravitational wave field experiences periodic change in its energy and periodic deviation from its mean direction of propagation. If the particle motion is constrained, for instance by a magnetic field, the change in energy and momentum may be cumulative. We refer to this as resonant acceleration.

We focus here on charged particles in a homogenous and static magnetic field parallel to the direction of propagation of gravitational waves. The single particle motion in this situation have been investigated in some detail by , treating it as a Hamiltonian dynamical problem, and also by . Most noticeable is that not only can resonant acceleration occur, particles can even be “trapped” in such a resonant state and experience essentially unlimited linear growth in kinetic energy (linear in coordinate time) and the parallel velocity will approach the velocity of light. The solution we present here does not – in contrast to that of Ref.  – result in an exact description of the particle motion but does reveal the main effect (resonant acceleration of particles) and has the advantage of being straight forward. It also provides an intuitively clear explanation of the mechanism and the resemblance to electromagnetic cyclotron resonance acceleration . In the electromagnetic (vacuum) case this phase-lock situation also exists, i.e., unlimited resonant acceleration of “trapped” particles.

Since there are no gravitationally induced electromagnetic fields (linear in $`h_{ab}`$), Eq. (4) becomes

$$\frac{d}{dt}𝐩=(\omega _\mathrm{c}/\gamma )𝐩\times \widehat{𝐳}𝐆𝐅$$
(11)
where $`\omega _\mathrm{c}qB/m`$. The gravitational wave is assumed monochromatic and arbitrarily polarized: $`h_+=\widehat{h}_+\mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t)]+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$ and $`h_\times =\widehat{h}_\times \mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t)]+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$, where $`\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$ stands for complex conjugate. In this section $`\omega `$ and $`k`$ are assumed real.

We assume $`\omega _\mathrm{c}/\gamma \omega h_{ab}`$ so that the gravitational force in Eq. (11) is small compared to the electromagnetic one. Thus, the particle orbits are close to the gyrating motion in the absence of a gravitational field, and we therefore make the ansatz $`p_1=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\widehat{p}(t)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\omega _\mathrm{c}t/\gamma )+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$ and $`p_2=\pm \frac{\mathrm{i}}{\sqrt{2}}\widehat{p}(t)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\omega _\mathrm{c}t/\gamma )+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$ where the amplitude $`\widehat{p}(t)`$ depend slowly on time \[i.e. $`|d\widehat{p}/dt||(\omega _\mathrm{c}/\gamma )\widehat{p}|`$\] due to the gravitational influence and $`\pm =\mathrm{sgn}(q).`$ Note that the cyclotron period is not itself a constant, but is depending on the gamma factor that also is varying slowly. Consider now the explicit form of the parallel driving force

$`F_3`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}{\displaystyle \frac{k}{\gamma m}}\left[\widehat{h}_+\widehat{p}^2\pm \mathrm{i}\widehat{h}_\times \widehat{p}^2\right]e^{\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t2\omega _\mathrm{c}t/\gamma )}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$ (13)
$`\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}{\displaystyle \frac{k}{\gamma m}}\left[\widehat{h}_+\widehat{p}^2\mathrm{i}\widehat{h}_\times \widehat{p}^2\right]e^{\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t+2\omega _\mathrm{c}t/\gamma )}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.`$
where the star symbol denotes complex conjugate. A particle with trajectory $`z(t)`$ will typically experience an irregular oscillatory force. Unless the particle is resonant (or almost resonant) with the wave, the parallel motion will be random and there will be no net effect – except for the possibility of (small) diffusive acceleration. Particles may, however, be resonant, i.e., have a trajectory such that there will be a non-oscillatory force resulting in a lasting acceleration/deceleration over several time periods of gyration. Almost resonant particles will be acted on by a force varying in time on a time scale (depending on the magnitude of the mismatch) slower than the gravitational wave period. From Eq. (13) we see that there are two possibilities for a particle to be resonant and thus acted on by a constant force:

$`k{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\overline{z}}{\mathrm{d}t}}\omega {\displaystyle \frac{2\omega _\mathrm{c}}{\gamma }}`$ $`=`$ $`0`$
$`k{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\overline{z}}{\mathrm{d}t}}\omega +{\displaystyle \frac{2\omega _\mathrm{c}}{\gamma }}`$ $`=`$ $`0`$
implying

$`\omega `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\omega _\mathrm{c}}{\gamma p_3/mv_{\mathrm{ph}}}}`$ (14)
$`\omega `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\omega _\mathrm{c}}{\gamma p_3/mv_{\mathrm{ph}}}}`$ (15)
respectively, where $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}=\omega /k`$. By $`\overline{z}`$ we mean the time averaged trajectory and since we will only consider time-averaged effects, we have put $`p_3=m\gamma \mathrm{d}\overline{z}/\mathrm{d}t`$ here and throughout the remainder of this section. Physically, the particles are resonant when they see a wave whose Doppler shifted frequency is twice the gyrofrequency $`\omega _\mathrm{c}/\gamma `$. The factor two – not present in the electromagnetic case – is due to the fact that the driving force is quadratic in $`\widehat{p}`$. Note that the two resonance conditions can be fulfilled simultaneously only by particles that are oppositely charged.

The question is now whether or not the resonant particles remain resonant even though they are accelerated – a change in $`p_3`$ and $`\gamma `$ may potentially lead to a violation of the resonance condition (14) or (15). Clearly the resonance is preserved only if $`\gamma p_3/mv_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is a constant of motion. The gravitational force, Eq. (5)-(7), has the property $`𝐆𝐩=\gamma mv_{\mathrm{ph}}G_3`$. Thus it holds that

$$\frac{d}{dt}\left(\gamma \frac{p_3}{mv_{\mathrm{ph}}}\right)=\frac{𝐅𝐩}{\gamma m^2c^2}\frac{F_3}{mv_{\mathrm{ph}}}=0$$
(16)
if and only if $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}=\pm c`$, i.e. the resonance is preserved in vacuum but generally not in a medium. In many situations for gravitational waves, however, the vacuum relation $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}=\pm c`$ holds to a very good approximation.

In the remainder of this section we will confine ourself to the case $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}=c`$, $`\mathrm{sgn}(q)=1`$ and to the resonance condition (15). We define the constant of motion $`\alpha `$ $`\gamma p_3/mc`$ and observe that $`p_3=mc(\gamma \alpha )`$ and $`\left|\widehat{p}\right|=mc\sqrt{2\gamma \alpha 1\alpha ^2}`$. By considering the (time averaged) time evolution of $`\gamma `$ we find

$$\frac{d\gamma }{dt}=\omega \left[2\alpha \gamma ^1(1+\alpha ^2)\right]\left[|\widehat{h}_+|\mathrm{sin}\phi +|\widehat{h}_\times |\mathrm{cos}\psi \right]$$
(17)
where $`\phi \mathrm{arg}(\widehat{h}_+\widehat{p}^2/\gamma m)`$ and $`\psi \mathrm{arg}(\widehat{h}_\times \widehat{p}^2/\gamma m)`$. Apparently the kinetic energy is a monotonously increasing function for particles with suitable initial phase of the gyrating motion, i.e., for

$`h|\widehat{h}_+|\mathrm{cos}\phi +|\widehat{h}_\times |\mathrm{sin}\psi >0`$

independently of the initial magnitude of $`\widehat{p}`$ and $`p_3`$. From now on we limit ourselves to such particles. For large times when $`\gamma 1`$, Eq. (17) implies $`\gamma 2\alpha h\omega t`$. Using the expressions for $`\widehat{p}`$ and $`p_3`$ in terms of $`\gamma `$ and $`\alpha `$ we note that coordinate momenta $`\widehat{p}/\gamma 0`$ as $`t\mathrm{}`$ whereas $`p_3/\gamma `$ scales as

$$p_3/\gamma mc\frac{mc}{2h\omega t}$$
(18)
This implies the possibility of unlimited acceleration in which $`p_3/\gamma m`$ approaches $`c`$ on a time scale $`t(h\omega )^1`$. Note, however, that the assumption $`\omega _\mathrm{c}/\gamma \omega h_{ab}`$ formally restricts the predicting power of these results. However, as demonstrated by Ref.  the linear growth of $`\gamma `$ (due to parallel acceleration) remain even beyond $`\omega _\mathrm{c}/\gamma \omega h_{ab}`$.

The sections to follow will concentrate on linearized gravitational wave propagation, in which case the particles will be assumed to deviate only slightly from the unperturbed orbits. It should be noted, however, that cyclotron acceleration may have interesting applications in the vicinity of a binary pulsars close to merging. Practically speaking the effective distance of acceleration close to the source will be limited by effects due to a 3-D geometry. On the other hand, particles close to pulsars are likely to have a relativistic background temperature, in which case the resonant ones may be accelerated to ultrahigh energies.

## IV Cyclotron damping

As seen in the preceding section, charged particles in a homogenous static magnetic field can be accelerated and decelerated by gravitational waves. Thus it should not be surprising that the gravitational wave will be damped – or be unstable and experience growth – as it propagates through a collisionless plasma. The damping (or growth) rate will depend on how the particles are distributed in momentum space. In order to incorporate the damping effect due to this resonant wave-particle interaction mechanism, we use a kinetic description of the plasma, i.e. each plasma component is represented by a distribution function $`f(x^a,p^i)`$. The gravitational waves, $`h_+=\widehat{h}_+\mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t)]`$ and $`h_\times =\widehat{h}_\times \mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t)]`$ are superimposed on the Minkowski background metric (see the Appendix), and are assumed to be associated with a small perturbation, $`f_G=\widehat{f}_G\mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{i}(kz\omega t)]`$ , of the distribution function, i.e. $`f=f_0+f_G`$, where $`f_0`$ is a stationary solution to the Vlasov equation (8) in the absence of gravitational waves. This means that the background distribution function $`f_0`$ is a function of $`p_{}`$ and $`p_3`$, where $`p_{}=\sqrt{p_1^2+p_2^2}`$.

### A Linearized Vlasov equation

We begin by calculating the perturbed distribution function that results from a gravitational wave propagating parallel to an external magnetic field. Linearizing the Vlasov Eq. (8) in $`h_+`$, $`h_\times `$ and $`f_G`$ gives

$$\mathrm{i}\left[k\frac{p_3}{\gamma m}\omega \right]f_G+\frac{q}{\gamma m}𝐩\times 𝐁_𝐩f_G=𝐆_𝐩f_0$$
(19)
It is convenient to change to cylindrical coordinates in momentum space, i.e. we define $`p_1p_{}\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ , $`p_2p_{}\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$ and $`p_3p_{}`$ , so that $`(q/\gamma m)𝐩\times 𝐁_𝐩=\gamma ^1\omega _c_\varphi `$ and Eq. (19) thus becomes

$$\left[\mathrm{i}\left(\frac{kp_{}}{\gamma m}\omega \right)\frac{\omega _c}{\gamma }_\varphi \right]f_G=\mathrm{i}\omega \left[h_+\mathrm{cos}2\varphi +h_\times \mathrm{sin}2\varphi \right]_0$$
(20)
where

$$_0\frac{p_{}}{2v_{ph}}\left[\left(v_{ph}\frac{p_{}}{\gamma m}\right)_p_{}f_0+\frac{p_{}}{\gamma m}_p_{}f_0\right]$$
(21)
Eq. (20) has the solution

$`f_G`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma \omega _0e^{\mathrm{i2}\varphi }}{kp_{}/m\gamma \omega 2\omega _c}}(h_+\mathrm{i}h_\times )`$ (23)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma \omega _0e^{\mathrm{i2}\varphi }}{kp_{}/m\gamma \omega +2\omega _c}}(h_++\mathrm{i}h_\times )`$
The occurrence of singularities in Eq. (23) indicate that there is a resonant interaction. In the case $`\omega _c=0`$ there are no singularities, because without magnetic field $`\omega ck`$ in our approximation, and therefore Landau damping of gravitational waves do not occur. For any finite value of $`\omega _c`$, however, the expression for $`f_G`$ has singularities and we therefore expect cyclotron damping to occur.

### B Dispersion relation

We now solve the tetrad equivalence  of EFE (1). Using (10) and (23) it is straight forward to confirm that the TT-gauge is a consistent choice in our case. The two diagonal elements both reads

$`\left[\omega ^2c^2k^2\right]h_+`$ $`=`$ $`2c^2\kappa {\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{2\pi }{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_{}^3}{\gamma m}}\mathrm{cos}^2\varphi f_Gdp_{}d\varphi dp_{}`$ (24)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(h_+\mathrm{i}h_\times )I_{}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(h_++\mathrm{i}h_\times )I_+`$ (25)
and the two off diagonal elements gives

$`\left[\omega ^2c^2k^2\right]h_\times `$ $`=`$ $`2c^2\kappa {\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{2\pi }{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_{}^3}{\gamma m}}\mathrm{cos}\varphi \mathrm{sin}\varphi f_Gdp_{}d\varphi dp_{}`$ (26)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}}(h_+\mathrm{i}h_\times )I_{}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}}(h_++\mathrm{i}h_\times )I_+`$ (27)
where we have made use of Eq. (23) and

$$I_\pm =\underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}C\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p_{}^3\frac{_0}{kp_{}/m\gamma \omega 2\omega _c}𝑑p_{}𝑑p_{}$$
(28)
together with $`C\pi \omega \kappa c^2/m`$. The two equations (25) and (27) combines to

$`\left[\omega ^2c^2k^2A_+\mathrm{i}B_+\right](h_++\mathrm{i}h_\times )`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (29)
$`\left[\omega ^2c^2k^2A_{}\mathrm{i}B_{}\right](h_+\mathrm{i}h_\times )`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (30)
where

$`A_\pm ReI_\pm \text{and}B_\pm ImI_\pm `$

The natural gravitational wave modes for EFE with the given source are thus the circularly polarized modes $`h_++\mathrm{i}h_\times `$ and $`h_+\mathrm{i}h_\times `$. Eqs. (29) and (30) contain the information about the dispersion and the damping or growth (due to $`B_\pm 0`$). Due to the smallness of the gravitational coupling constant, $`A_\pm `$ and $`B_\pm `$ can typically be considered small in the sense that the dispersion relations Eq. (29) and (30) reads

$$\omega ck+A_\pm /2\omega +\mathrm{i}B_\pm /2\omega $$
(31)
Throughout the remainder of this paper we will have this approximation in mind and we will occasionally make use of $`\omega ck`$ to simplify the expressions for $`I_\pm `$.

The fact that $`A_+A_{}`$ , unless the plasma components are of equal particle masses and as long $`\omega _\mathrm{c}0`$, implies that the two gravitational wave modes have slightly different phase velocities. Thus, an incident linearly polarized wave – being a superposition of the two circularly polarized states – will experience a polarization shift, i.e. the direction of linear polarization will be rotated as it propagates through the medium. In the case of electromagnetic waves this is known as Faraday rotation. In principle this could be an important result as the polarization of a gravitational wave carries valuable information about the emitting source , e.g. the inclination of the spin axis of a quadrupole moment source.

The pole contribution in the integral in (28) is dealt with in the standard fashion, i.e. by letting the contour of integration pass below the pole. It should be noted that this approach disregards what happens with the distribution function close to the singularity, and it also misses some other aspects of the damping process, see e.g., but it is the simplest way to find the main effect due to the pole, and for our purposes it suffices.

### C Equilibrium plasma

For a plasma in a state of thermodynamical equilibrium the unperturbed relativistic expression for the distribution function is the Synge-Jüttner distribution $`f_0=f_{SJ}`$, defined in Eq. (9), and for this choice $`_0`$ reduces to

$$_0=\frac{\mu p_{}^2}{2\gamma (mc)^2}f_{SJ}$$
(32)
As no instabilities can develope the gravitational waves will exhibit damping. In this section we examine how the damping and dispersion depends on the ratio $`\omega _\mathrm{c}/\omega `$ and on the temperature of the plasma. First we examine the nonrelativistic regime for which analytic results can be obtained. In the relativistic regime we then present results for an electron-positron plasma and an electron-ion plasma obtained by numerical integration of Eq. (28). For this purpose it is practical to introduce normalized momenta $`𝔭_{}p_{}/mc`$, $`𝔭_{}p_{}/mc`$ and a dimensionless frequency ratio $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\omega _\mathrm{c}/\omega `$.

#### 1 Nonrelativistic temperature

In the regime of nonrelativistic particle velocities Eq. (28) together with (32) becomes

$$I_\pm =\underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}\frac{32\pi }{\tau ^2}\left(\frac{\mu }{2\pi }\right)^{3/2}\mu ^2\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{e^{\mu 𝔭_{}^2/2}}{𝔭_{}12\mathrm{\Omega }}𝑑𝔭_{}$$
(33)
after performing the $`p_{}`$ integration, where we have introduced $`\tau 1/\sqrt{\pi mn_0G}`$, which is the characteristic time for gravitational contraction of a gas with density $`n_0`$ and particle mass $`m`$. In the case of a cosmological plasma $`\tau `$ coincides, apart from a factor $`\sqrt{3/8}`$, with the Hubble time. From Eq. (33) we obtain to lowest order in the temperature

$`A_\pm `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{16}{\tau ^2\mu }}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1\pm 2\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ (34)
$`B_\pm `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{8\sqrt{2\pi }}{\tau ^2\sqrt{\mu }}}e^{\mu (12\mathrm{\Omega })^2/2}`$ (35)
Note that for Eq. (34) to apply we must assume $`\mu ^1(1\pm 2\mathrm{\Omega })^11`$, i.e. for the wave frequency close enough to twice the gyrofrequency, higher order thermal effects is always important for the wave dispersion, whereas Eq.(35) – which follows from the residue theorem – holds for all values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Still, it is clear that the dispersion can be enhanced by the magnetic field due to the existence of the resonance. The exponential decrease of the damping with $`12\mathrm{\Omega }`$ implies that significant damping only occurs in a limited region in frequency space close to $`12\mathrm{\Omega }=0`$ for a low temperature plasma. In the limit of zero temperature the size of this region tends to zero. The magnitude of both $`A_\pm `$ and $`B_\pm `$ are monotonically increasing with temperature and vanishes at zero temperature. The results in this subsection essentially agrees with Ref. , see note . In the case of no magnetic field, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=0`$, the dispersion relations (29) and (30) both reduces to $`\omega ^2c^2k^2A=0`$, where $`A_{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}16/\tau ^2\mu `$. This expression is in agreement  with Refs. \- .

#### 2 Electron-positron plasma

Denote $`\tau _{\mathrm{ep}}1/\sqrt{\pi m_\mathrm{e}n_0G}`$ (e and p stands for electron and positron, respectively). In this case only the sign of the charge differ for the two particle species and we may write Eq. (28), applying (32), as

$$I_\pm (\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }})=\tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2\underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}\frac{\mu ^2}{K_2(\mu )}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{𝔭_{}^5}{\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}\frac{e^{\mu \sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}}{𝔭_{}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}2\mathrm{s}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{n}(q)\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}𝑑𝔭_{}𝑑𝔭_{}$$
(36)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c/\omega `$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c=|q|B/m`$. Note that $`I_\pm (\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }})=I_{}(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }})=I_\pm (\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }})`$. The normalized function $`_\pm (\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }})I_\pm \mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2`$ is numerically calculated for four different temperatures, namely $`\mu =100`$ (“nonrelativistic”) $`10`$, $`1`$ and $`0.1`$ (“ultrarelativistic”). The results are displayed in Figure 1 (note that $`_\pm `$ is normalized against the temperature). In the nonrelativistic case (see Figure 1. (a)) we have a finite region, $`1/2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}1/2`$ , where $`ReI_\pm `$ is positive. $`ReI_\pm `$ changes sign at $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\pm 1/2`$ and approaches zero like $`1/(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }})`$ in the limit $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\pm \mathrm{}`$. $`ImI_\pm `$ is negative definite (and thus there is indeed damping of the gravitational wave for any finite $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$) and has a gaussian shape around the resonances $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\pm 1/2`$.

This is also the characteristic behavior for $`ReI_\pm `$ and $`ImI_\pm `$ at higher temperatures. The relativistic effects on the dispersion and the damping are the following: i) The resonance peaks of $`ImI_\pm `$ (which occur at $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\pm 1/2`$ at zero temperature) are shifted to higher values of $`|\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}|`$ for higher temperatures. Also $`ReI_\pm `$ experiences a similar shift. In the ultrarelativistic case (see Figure 1. (d)), $`ReI_\pm `$ changes sign at $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\pm 25`$ and $`ImI_\pm `$ is centered about $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\pm 20`$. ii) The magnitude of both $`ReI_\pm `$ and $`ImI_\pm `$ increases roughly linearly with temperature (note that the curves are normalized against $`(\mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2)^1`$ in Figure 1.), which can be compared with the temperature dependence in the nonrelativistic regime that is given by Eq. (34) and Eq. (35). iii) The region of damping broadens. In the cold limit $`ImI_\pm `$ takes the form of two separated gaussian functions, the width tending to zero with diminishing temperature. These regions are widened and the gaussian shape is deformed with increasing temperature. In the ultrarelativistic case $`ImI_\pm `$ decays exponentially as $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\pm \mathrm{}`$ but approaches zero more abruptly as $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}0`$.

#### 3 Electron-ion plasma

Denote $`\tau =\tau _{\mathrm{ei}}1/\sqrt{\pi m_\mathrm{i}n_0G}`$ (e and i stands for electron and ion, respectively). For an electron-ion plasma there is an asymmetry between the particle species due to the small mass ratio $`\epsilon m_\mathrm{e}/m_\mathrm{i}`$, giving different order of magnitudes for the two cyclotron frequencies $`\omega _{c\mathrm{e}}`$ and $`\omega _{c\mathrm{i}}`$. Thus the resonances will occur for very different gravitational wave frequencies. Given Eq. (32), we have the following form of Eq. (28)

$`I_\pm `$ $`=`$ $`\tau _{\mathrm{ei}}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\epsilon \mu _\mathrm{e}^2}{K_2(\mu _\mathrm{e})}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝔭_{}^5}{\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{\mu _\mathrm{e}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}}{𝔭_{}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}\pm 2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}}}𝑑𝔭_{}𝑑𝔭_{}`$ (38)
$`\tau _{\mathrm{ei}}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _\mathrm{i}^2}{K_2(\mu _\mathrm{i})}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝔭_{}^5}{\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{\mu _\mathrm{i}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}}{𝔭_{}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}}}𝑑𝔭_{}𝑑𝔭_{}`$
where

$`\mu _{\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{i}}={\displaystyle \frac{m_{\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{i}}c^2}{k_BT_{\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{i}}}}\text{and}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{i}}{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{\omega }_{c\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{i}}}{\omega }}={\displaystyle \frac{|q|B}{m_{\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{i}}\omega }}`$

Provided that $`T_\mathrm{e}=T_\mathrm{i}`$, $`\mu _\mathrm{i}`$ and $`\mu _\mathrm{e}`$ differs typically by three orders in magnitude. This implies that the ions can be considered nonrelativistic even in the regime of ultrarelativistic electrons ($`\mu _\mathrm{e}0.1`$). It is convenient to consider the two frequency domains $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}1`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}1`$ separately. Noting that $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}=\epsilon \stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}`$ and $`\mu _\mathrm{i}=\epsilon ^1\mu _\mathrm{e}`$, in the region $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}1`$ we have

$$I_\pm (\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})\tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2\frac{\mu _\mathrm{e}^2}{K_2(\mu _\mathrm{e})}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{𝔭_{}^5}{\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}\frac{e^{\mu _\mathrm{e}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}}}{𝔭_{}\sqrt{1+𝔭_{}^2+𝔭_{}^2}\pm 2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}}𝑑𝔭_{}𝑑𝔭_{}+\frac{16}{\tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2\mu _\mathrm{e}}\frac{1}{1\pm 2\epsilon \stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}}$$
(39)
The normalized function $`_+(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})I_+\mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2`$ is displayed in Figure 2 for $`\mu _\mathrm{e}=100`$ (“nonrelativistic”) $`10`$, $`1`$ and $`0.1`$ (“ultrarelativistic”). By symmetry, $`I_{}(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})`$ is the mirror image of $`I_+(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})`$, i.e. $`I_{}(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})=I_+(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})`$ and therefore this curve is not presented. Except for the lack of symmetry about $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e}=0`$ the result is similar to that of the electron-positron plasma. In the given temperature and frequency domains the ion contribution to the normalized function $`I_\pm (\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{e})`$ is just the approximately constant value $`16`$.

The effect of resonant ions becomes important in the frequency domain $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}1`$. In Fig. 3 we show $`_+(\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i})I_+\mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2`$ for $`\mu _\mathrm{e}=0.1`$. The corresponding figures are qualitatively similar in the entire temperature domain $`0.1100`$, however, and therefore only one of them is shown. The small region near $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}=0`$ ($`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}\epsilon `$ to be specific) that contains the electron contribution has been left out.

#### 4 The group velocity

The fact that $`A_\pm `$ is at some points negative implies, together with (31), that for some wavelengths and frequencies the group velocity of the waves exceeds the speed of light. Superluminal group velocities for gravitational waves have been found before, see Ref.  and references therein. In most cases, but not in all, it has been an effect of the background curvature. It should be noted that several results from the literature are in contradiction with each other. Naturally, in our case the superluminal group velocity is a direct effect of the medium. For the case of an electron-positron plasma the group velocity corresponding to Eq. (31) is

$$v_g\frac{d\omega }{dk}=c\left[1\frac{1}{2\omega ^2}\left(A_\pm +\frac{\stackrel{~}{\omega }_\mathrm{c}}{\omega }A_\pm ^{}\right)\right]$$
(40)
where the prime denotes derivative with respect to $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_\mathrm{c}/\omega `$. For $`\omega _\mathrm{c}=0`$, i.e. in the case of no magnetic field, the medium is just a collisionless gas of charged particles and the group velocity is smaller than the velocity of light, in agreement with the results of previous authors, e.g. . From Figure 1 it is clear that there are regions where $`v_g>c`$ is realized, for instance about the point $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_\mathrm{c}/\omega 0.6`$ (where $`A_\pm `$ has a local minima) in Figure 1(a). Similarly, also an electron-ion plasma allows superluminal group velocities. Group velocities that exceeds the speed of light is not necessarily at odds with causality – an issue explored for instance in Ref. . The group velocity can simply not be interpreted as the (gravitational wave) signal velocity in this situation.

## V Nonequilibrium plasma

In the case of thermodynamical nonequilibrium, the system has free energy that may feed a gravitational wave instability. This occurs whenever the imaginary part of $`I_\pm `$, defined by Eq. (28), is somewhere positive. Applying the residue theorem, Eq. (28) gives

$$B_\pm =\pi \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}C\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p_{}^3\left[\frac{_0}{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{r}k/m}\right]_{p_{}=p_\mathrm{r}}𝑑p_{}$$
(41)
where $`p_\mathrm{r}mc\left(\gamma _\mathrm{r}\pm 2\omega _c/\omega \right)`$ is the resonant parallel momenta,

$`\gamma _\mathrm{r}{\displaystyle \frac{2\omega _c}{\omega ^2c^2k^2}}\left\{\omega ck\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{(\omega ^2c^2k^2)}{4\omega _c^2}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{p_{}^2}{m^2c^2}}\right)\right]^{1/2}\right\}`$

is the gamma factor evaluated at the resonant momenta and

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{r}1{\displaystyle \frac{\omega }{ck}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_\mathrm{r}}{\gamma _\mathrm{r}mc}}`$

Instabilities occurs for distribution functions and frequencies such that the condition $`B_\pm >0`$ is satisfied. For simplicity we focus on nonrelativistic temperatures from now on, in which case Eq. (41) reduces to

$$B_\pm =\underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}\frac{4\pi ^2}{n_0(mc)^2\tau ^2}\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p_{}^3\left[4p_\mathrm{c}f_0+p_{}^2_p_{}f_0\right]_{p_{}=p_\mathrm{r}}𝑑p_{}$$
(42)
where $`p_\mathrm{c}\pm 2mc\omega _c/\omega `$. In order to show that there indeed exist instabilities we consider the following example of a temperature-anisotropic “drifting Maxwellian” distribution function

$$f_{\mathrm{drift}}=\frac{n_0}{\pi ^{3/2}p_{\mathrm{th}}p_{\mathrm{th}}^2}e^{[(p_{}p_\mathrm{d})^2/p_{\mathrm{th}}^2+p_{}^2/p_{\mathrm{th}}^2]}$$
(43)
where $`p_{\mathrm{th}}\sqrt{2mk_BT_{}}`$, $`p_{\mathrm{th}}\sqrt{2mk_BT_{}}`$ and $`p_\mathrm{d}`$ is the drift momenta, for which $`B_\pm `$ becomes

$$B_\pm =\underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}\frac{8\sqrt{\pi }}{\tau ^2}\frac{p_{\mathrm{th}}^2}{mcp_{\mathrm{th}}}\left[\frac{p_\mathrm{d}}{mc}1\alpha \mathrm{\Theta }\right]e^{m^2c^2\mathrm{\Theta }^2/p_{\mathrm{th}}^2}$$
(44)
where $`\alpha T_{}/T_{}1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Theta }1\pm 2\omega _c/\omega p_\mathrm{d}/mc`$. It is easily seen that $`B_\pm >0`$ for certain values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\omega _c/\omega `$. Note that if $`\alpha =0`$ then $`B_\pm <0`$ for all values of $`\omega _c/\omega `$ and hence there can be no temperature-isotropic beam instability . On the other hand, putting $`p_\mathrm{d}=0`$, it is clear that a temperature-anisotropic distribution function without a drift can be the source of an instability.

The gravitational waves produced by a homogeneous plasma, due to the above cyclotron resonance instability will have a frequency of the order of the cyclotron frequency, at least in the nonrelativistic temperature limit considered here. In principle this opens up the possibility of emission of high frequency gravitational waves through large magnetic fields (of the order of $`10^6`$ $`\mathrm{T}`$ or larger), i.e. frequencies well above the frequency range expected from “conventional” gravitational wave sources, such as compact binaries, neutron-star normal modes and gravitationally collapsing objects, reaching up to $`10`$ $`\mathrm{kHz}`$. Still the radiation considered here is generated by a collective process where the amount of matter interacting coherently can be as large as in other astrophysical examples.

It is not so easy to find astrophysical applications of the cyclotron resonance instability, however: Firstly there must be a magnetized plasma cloud, with a nonequilibrium distribution function that fulfills the condition $`B_\pm >0`$. Such a cloud could in principle be generated, for example if there is a magnetic field geometry that allows for a loss-cone distribution to evolve. However, there is an obvious risk that there will be purely electromagnetic instabilities, which typically have much higher growth rates than the gravitational one, that will dominate the picture. Secondly, for significant gravitational generation, the plasma cloud must be very much denser than the average density of the universe, otherwise the growth of the amplitude will take place slowly even compared to a cosmological time-scale. In a dense plasma cloud, on the other hand, gravitation must be balanced by pressure gradients in order not to selfcontract before significant radiation generation due to the cyclotron resonance instability occurs. This suggests that maybe plasma inhomogeneities should be included in our treatment, although it seems likely that the effects of inhomogeneity may be neglected as long as the gradient scale lengths is much longer than the wavelength of the gravitational radiation.

## VI Summary and discussion

We have considered linearized gravitational waves in the short wavelength approximation, propagating in a plasma parallel to an external magnetic field. In vacuum, there is the possibility of cyclotron acceleration of charged particles up to velocities arbitrarily close to the speed of light. Taking the collective effects of particle distributions on the gravitational waves into account, it follows that the (gravitational) normal modes for the system are circularly polarized gravitational waves, and we derive the corresponding dispersion relations, which coincide with that of Ref.  in the limit of a low-temperature Maxwellian plasma. In the case of an equilibrium plasma the waves are shown to be damped due to resonant interaction with the plasma particles and the dispersion is modified and enhanced as compared to the case of no magnetic field. In the case of thermodynamical nonequilibrium, there is the possibility of gravitational wave instabilities. To show in a concrete way that this can be realized, we demonstrate that there are temperature anisotropic distribution functions that are unstable. Furthermore, we have examined how the damping and dispersion in an electron-positron type of plasma and an electron-ion plasma, respectively, depends on the ratio $`\omega _c/\omega `$ and on $`T`$ in the regime of relativistic temperature. The strongest effects occurs when $`\omega `$ and $`\omega _\mathrm{c}`$ are comparable and the effect increases with temperature and density.

The question is whether cyclotron damping can be observed, if we assume that gravitational wave astronomy  develops successfully. The calculations made in Ref.  end up with an estimate of 10% damping during a propagation distance of the order of 30 kpc, which suggests that there is at least some chance of gravitational cyclotron damping to be observed. Combining Eq. (31) with the definition $`_\pm I_\pm \mu \tau ^2`$ (recall that $`_\pm `$ is the normalized value of $`I_\pm `$ displayed in Figure1, 2 and 3) we note that our damping rate is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pm =\frac{Im_\pm }{2\omega \mu \tau ^2}.$$
(45)
Similarly, the time-scale for gravitational wave dispersion is $`\mu \omega \tau ^2/Re_\pm `$. For typical values for (equilibrium) plasma in interstellar space, it is clear that the damping rate predicted by Eq. (45) is several orders of magnitude smaller than the estimation made in Ref.. Presumably the discrepancy is due to the fact that in Ref., only the effect of acceleration of particles (corresponding to energy being transported from the gravitational wave) is considered. Generally when the damping due to wave-particle interaction is small, it should be noted that as $`\omega t_{\mathrm{prop}}`$(where $`t_{\mathrm{prop}}`$ is the time of wave- particle interaction) grows, the energy loss of the decelerated particles becomes very close to the energy gained by the accelerated particles, and thus the omission of the contribution from decelerated particles leads to large errors in the damping coefficient. If the singularities is treated properly, the effect of decelerating as well as accelerating particles on the wave is included automatically in a kinetic description. In general for parallel propagation we find that cyclotron damping as well as dispersion of gravitational waves through interstellar space is negligible, in the sense that there is essentially no hope of detecting it with gravitational wave detectors with realistic sensitivity.

In general gravitational waves propagate in an angle to the magnetic field. It is well-known (see e.g. ) that this leads to generation of electromagnetic fields by the gravitational wave, and a dispersion relation governing propagation perpendicular to a magnetic field in a plasma has been derived by Ref. . The results shows that the gravitational wave is most affected by the matter when the frequency matches one of the natural frequencies of the system, like the cyclotron frequency or the plasma frequency. It should be noted that in an inhomogeneous medium with slowly varying background parameters we will typically reach a point where the generated electromagnetic fields fulfills the dispersion relation of some natural plasma mode. In that case linear mode conversion, which is a resonant process involving all particles, may take place. However, such a problem remains an issue for future research.

## VII Appendix

At a first sight our results seem to disagree with those of Ref. . However, we will show below that our results essentially are in agreement, although the comparison is non-trivial. In general the effect of a curved background space-time cannot be neglected. However, for linearized gravitational waves with short wavelength compared to the background curvature, the back-reaction on the gravitational wave can be separated into two effects, those respective contribution can be added to the flat vacuum dispersion relation $`\omega ^2k^2c^2=0,`$ see Ref. 1 p. 427. The first effect (that is considered by us) is a direct consequence of matter and fields (where the background curvature can be neglected), and the second effect is an indirect consequence due to the background curvature produced by the matter and fields . How to find the curved background contribution to the gravitational wave dispersion relation for a Robertson-Walker or a Schwarzschild background metric, see Ref. and Ref.  respectively. Here a warning is strongly motivated, however. In general the separation of contributions to the dispersion relation into the “direct” and “indirect” effect is not completely unique, but to some extent depends on the formalism used. Thus great care must be taken when adding a “direct” and an “indirect” contribution to the dispersion relation derived by different authors, to see that the formalisms that have produced the different expressions are compatible.

To illustrate the above matters we compare our calculations using a tetrad frame formalism with those of a coordinate frame formalism. In the absence of gravitational wave perturbations the Einstein field equation reads

$$R_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}=\kappa [T_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}\frac{1}{2}g_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}T^{(0)}]$$
(46)
In this section we use Greek indices $`\mu ,\nu ,\mathrm{}=0,1,2,3`$ (or $`t,x,y,z`$) for coordinate components and reserve $`a,b,\mathrm{}=0,1,2,3`$ for tetrad components. Adding a small perturbation, so that $`R_{\mu \nu }=R_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}+\delta R_{\mu \nu }`$, $`T_{\mu \nu }=T_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}+\delta T_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`g_{\mu \nu }=g_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}+h_{\mu \nu }`$, gives the linearized equation

$$\delta R_{\mu \nu }=\kappa \delta [T_{\mu \nu }\frac{1}{2}g_{\mu \nu }T]$$
(47)
Focusing on the direct effect of matter and assuming the short wavelength regime we use $`g_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}=\eta _{\mu \nu }`$, and after suitable gauge transformations we obtain:

$$\mathrm{}h_{\mu \nu }=2\kappa \left[\delta T_{\mu \nu }\frac{1}{2}\delta T\eta _{\mu \nu }\right]$$
(48)
It should be noted that in principle the left hand side of Eq. (48) should contain “cross terms” proportional to the product of $`h_{\mu \nu }`$ and components of the background part of the Riemann tensor (see Ref. ), corresponding to the “indirect effects of matter” but these terms are omitted, not because they are small, but because in the short wavelength limit their contribution can be calculated separately and added afterwards. For the same reason also a term proportional to $`T^{(0)}h_{\mu \nu }=R^{(0)}h_{\mu \nu }`$ have been omitted from the right hand side. Eq. (48) also applies to the tetrad description if it is understood that $`h_{ab}`$ denotes what $`\delta R_{ab}`$ reduces to in this approximation, i.e. $`h_{11}=h_{22}=h_+`$ and $`h_{12}=h_{21}=h_\times `$ in the TT-gauge. The short wavelength approximation and TT-gauge is now assumed throughout the remainder of this section if nothing else is said.

The total energy-momentum tensor due to electromagnetic fields and matter is

$`T_{\mu \nu }=\mu _0^1\left(F_\mu ^\sigma F_{\nu \sigma }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}g_{\mu \nu }F^{\sigma \tau }F_{\sigma \tau }\right)+{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle p_\mu p_\nu f\frac{\sqrt{|g|}}{m\gamma }d^3p}`$

where $`\mu _0`$ is the magnetic permeability, $`\gamma p_t/mc=\left[1+𝐩^2/(mc)^2h^{\mu \nu }p_\mu p_\nu /(mc)^2\right]^{1/2}`$ and $`p_t`$ is the zero component of the four-momenta satisfying $`p^\mu p_\mu =m^2c^2`$. Note that the definition $`\gamma p_t/mc`$ differs from the tetrad formalism. The background magnetic field is taken to be $`F_{12}=F^{12}=B`$ (being identical to that in the tetrad description). Hence the linearized energy-momentum tensor reads

$`\delta T_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`\mu _0^1\left(h^{\sigma \tau }F_{\sigma \mu }F_{\tau \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}h_{\mu \nu }B^2\right)`$ (50)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle p_\mu p_\nu \frac{f_0\delta \gamma }{m\gamma _0}d^3p}+{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle p_\mu p_\nu \frac{\delta f}{m\gamma _0}d^3p}`$
where $`\delta \gamma =\frac{1}{2}h^{\mu \nu }p_\mu p_\nu /\left(\gamma _0mc\right)^2`$ and $`\gamma _0=\left[1+𝐩^2/(mc)^2\right]^{1/2}`$. Note that only the last term on the right hand side appears in the tetrad equation corresponding to Eq. (50), since we have $`g_{ab}=\eta _{ab}`$ in that case. In some sense the perturbation of the electromagnetic part of the energy momentum tensor is somewhat artificial, since the electromagnetic field itself is not perturbed, although it is clear from a technical point of view that all terms in Eq. (50) must be included.

In the coordinate description the Vlasov equation reads

$`_tf+{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩}{m\gamma }}f+\left[𝐅𝐆\right]_𝐩f=0`$

where $`F^i=qp^\mu F_\mu ^i/\gamma m`$, $`G^i=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^ip^\mu p^\nu /\gamma m`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^i`$ are the Christoffel symbols corresponding to $`g_{\mu \nu }=\eta _{\mu \nu }+h_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`=(_x,_y,_z)`$. The linearized Vlasov equation for the gravitationally perturbed part of the distribution function, $`f_G`$, thus becomes

$$\left[_t+\frac{𝐩}{m\gamma _0}+𝐅_0_𝐩\right]f_G+\left[\delta 𝐅𝐆\right]_𝐩f_0=0$$
(51)
where

$`\delta 𝐅_𝐩f_0`$ $`=`$ $`2\omega _c\gamma _0^1\left[h_+\mathrm{sin}2\varphi h_\times \mathrm{cos}2\varphi \right]_0`$ (52)
$`𝐆_𝐩f_0`$ $`=`$ $`i(2\omega kp{}_{}{}^{}(\gamma _0m)_{}^{1})[h_+\mathrm{cos}2\varphi h_\times \mathrm{sin}2\varphi ]_0`$ (53)
and $`_0`$ was defined in Eq. (21). The term $`\delta 𝐅`$ in Eq. (51) has its origin from the lowering of an index on $`F_\mu ^i`$ and therefore does not occur in the tetrad description . Also the term $`𝐆_𝐩f_0`$ differs from the tetrad description because $`G_1=\frac{1}{2}G_x`$, $`G_2=\frac{1}{2}G_y`$, and $`G_3=G_z`$.

Solving Eq. (51) and applying the solution to Eq. (48) gives the dispersion relations

$`\left[\omega ^2c^2k^2A_+\mathrm{i}B_+\right](h_++\mathrm{i}h_\times )`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (54)
$`\left[\omega ^2c^2k^2A_{}\mathrm{i}B_{}\right](h_+\mathrm{i}h_\times )`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (55)
where $`A_\pm =ReI_\pm +A_0`$, $`B_\pm =ImI_\pm `$ and

$`I_\pm `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \kappa c^2}{m}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}p_{}^3{\displaystyle \frac{2\omega kp{}_{}{}^{}/(\gamma _0m)\pm 2\omega _c/\gamma _0}{kp_{}/m\gamma _0\omega 2\omega _c}}_0𝑑p_{}𝑑p_{}`$ (56)
$`A_0`$ $`=`$ $`\kappa c^2\mu _0^1B^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \kappa }{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_{}^5}{(\gamma _0m)^3}}f_0𝑑p_{}𝑑p_{}`$ (57)
A couple of things should be noted. Firstly, the coordinate frame description gives a term contained in $`A_0`$ proportional to $`B^2`$ that remains even in the absence of particles. This term has no correspondence in the tetrad formalism, and the reason is that there are no perturbations of the electromagnetic part of the energy momentum tensor when we study the projections on the tetrad basis vectors, in contrast to what happens when we look at the coordinate basis components (cf. Eqs. (10) and (50)). However, the division into the perturbed and unperturbed tensors are the same independent of formalism, and thus the “direct term” proportional to $`B^2`$ in the coordinate frame formalism is compensated by a term associated with the background curvature produced by the unperturbed magnetic field in the tetrad formalism. On the other hand the division into a direct effect of matter and an indirect (background curvature) effect is not completely artificial: The direct effect is determined entirely by the local matter content, whereas the background curvature effect is determined by the matter content both locally and globally. Furthermore, the background curvature effect will necessarily give contributions to (54) and (55) that are real and independent of the gravitational wave frequency (cf. the discussion after Eq. (48)). Noting that

$$\frac{2\omega kp{}_{}{}^{}/(\gamma _0m)\pm 2\omega _c/\gamma _0}{kp_{}/m\gamma _0\omega 2\omega _c}=\frac{\omega }{kp_{}/m\gamma _0\omega 2\omega _c}\gamma _0$$
(58)
it is clear that the correction to the vacuum dispersion relations in the coordinate and tetrad frame formalism deviates only by a frequency independent real constant, and in particular the cyclotron damping agrees perfectly within the short wavelength approximation scheme. Adding the contribution to $`I_\pm `$ from the second term in Eq. (58) to $`A_0`$ then all differences between the tetrad and coordinate frame formalisms are collected in this term:

$$\kappa c^2\mu _0^1B^2+\pi \kappa \underset{\mathrm{p}.\mathrm{s}.}{}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left[\frac{p_{}^5}{2(\gamma _0m)^3}f_0\gamma _0p_{}^3_0c^2/m\right]𝑑p_{}𝑑p_{}$$
(59)
Relaxing the assumption of Minkowskian background, i.e. adding “cross terms” (cf. Ref. ) to Eq. (48) (which of course requires a different tetrad basis in that formalism), we could in principle confirm the agreement of the total dispersions relations including both direct and indirect effects. This would be a tedious task, however, since we must then solve for the background configuration including the anisotropic magnetic field contribution. Since we have shown that the separation into background curvature and “direct” matter effects is not unique, one can question the relevance of the figures showing the real (dispersive) part of $`I_\pm `$ since only the direct matter effect is contained (recall that the damping contribution is unique, however, and due to the direct effect only). But it turns out that there are three reasons that make also the real plots of $`I_\pm `$ relevant: Firstly, the main contribution to the real value of $`I_\pm `$ occurs in the frequency regime when cyclotron resonance effects plays a role, which always is a direct effect of matter independent of formalism. Secondly, for many cases the dominant contribution to the background curvature comes from the rest mass ($`T_{00}`$) part of the energy momentum tensor, and if that is the case, the difference displayed in (59) is negligible as compared to other background curvature contributions . For example we could add the background curvature contributions for a Robertson-Walker or a Schwarzschild background metric, using the results of Ref. and Ref.  respectively, since the difference in formalisms used in most cases would give only a negligible contribution in comparison with that included. Thirdly, since the background curvature gives only a real constant contribution to the dispersion relations, our plots always reveal the frequency dependence of the dispersion.

FIG. 1. The real (solid line) and imaginary (dotted line) part of $`_\pm I_\pm \mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2`$ for an electron-positron plasma at four different temperatures: (a) $`\mu =100`$, (b) $`\mu =10`$ ,(c) $`\mu =1`$ and (d) $`\mu =0.1`$.

FIG. 2. The real (solid line) and imaginary (dotted line) part of $`_+I_+\mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2`$ for an electron-ion plasma at four different temperatures: (a) $`\mu =100`$, (b) $`\mu =10`$ ,(c) $`\mu =1`$ and (d) $`\mu =0.1`$.

FIG. 3. The real (solid line) and imaginary (dotted line) part of $`_+I_+\mu \tau _{\mathrm{ep}}^2`$ for an electron-ion plasma for $`\mu _\mathrm{e}=0.1`$. The small region near $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\mathrm{i}=0`$ containing the electron contribution has been left out.


text:
# An attempt to incorporate separate chemical and thermal freeze-outs in hydrodynamics

## I Introduction

The behavior of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature is the subject of the research programs at CERN (SPS) and Brookhaven (AGS and RHIC). Hydrodynamical and thermal models have been used extensively to describe data from these collisions and the following picture has emerged (see e.g. ) from a study of collisions at SIS, AGS, SPS energies, with a variety of targets and projectiles (for a compilation see e.g. ). It is also expected to hold at RHIC and LHC energies. The dense and hot fluid expands and cools until chemical freeze-out occurs for some species of particles. Namely these particles stop having inelastic collisions so that their abundances are frozen. Therefore by studying the abundances of these chemically frozen particle species, one learn the conditions at chemical freeze-out. For example, at CERN, $`T_{ch.f.}160200`$ MeV . The fluid goes on cooling until thermal freeze-out happens. Precisely, particles stop having elastic interactions and so the shape of their momentum distribution is fixed. Therefore by studying these spectra, one gets information about the conditions at thermal freeze-out. For example at CERN, using various types of particles  or combining information about the spectrum of a single particle species and its Bose-Einstein correlations , one extracts $`T_{th.f.}100140`$ MeV. There are some deviations to this picture. For example, some particles like the $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ may undergo both freeze-outs almost together and early (due to their small cross section).

Though this picture is simple and consistent with data, its theoretical justification needs further scrutiny. First, in a way, this picture works too well as a statistical description seems to apply even to very elementary systems . This has been debated a lot yet remains an open question. Second, in this description, it is assumed that particles make sudden freeze-outs. For example, when they cross the 180 MeV temperature three-dimensional surface in the fluid they immediately stop interacting inelastically. In reality one expects that this should happen over a certain length. A formalism to account for finite freeze-out volumes and the subsequent new data interpretation have been presented in . Third, in the freeze-out scenario, when computing particle distribution with the usual Cooper-Frye formula , there may be particles contributing negatively, corresponding to particles that are in the frozen out region and re-entering the interacting region. Physically this should not happen but in the calculation, it may. Ways to deal with this problem and how it affects particle data interpretation can be found in .

Leaving aside these problems for further studies, the objective of this paper is the following. In the past, cascade event generators (Fritiof, Venus, RQMD, ARC, etc) were employed in particular by experimental groups, to study their data. Recently, simple thermal and hydrodynamics-inspired models have been used increasingly. It seems useful therefore to start developing more sophisticated hydrodynamical codes  to extract physical information from data. Though data call for separate chemical and thermal freeze outs, no hydrodynamical code so far includes chemical and thermal freeze outs self-consistently. Namely, the effect of the early chemical freeze out on the fluid expansion is never taken into account. In this paper, we discuss how to incorporate separate chemical and thermal freeze-outs in a hydrodynamical code and show that in certain cases, this will have sizable impact on the predicted values of observables.

Finally let us mention that early universe and relativistic heavy ion collisions call for different treatments for the following reason. In the early universe, the expansion rate ($`H10^4s^1`$) at the QCD phase transition is many orders of magnitude smaller than for relativistic heavy ion collisions ($`H10^{21}10^{23}s^1`$). In both cases, a typical reaction rate for hadrons is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\sigma nv_{rel}1fm^1=10^{23}s^1`$. Therefore while in the early universe, chemical and thermal equilibrium betweeen hadrons must have prevailed ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }>>H`$), this is not the case for relativistic heavy ion collisions ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ may be $`H`$). Moreover in relativistic heavy ion collisions, we expect separate chemical and thermal freeze-outs (i.e. at distinct temperatures) because inelastic collisions (responsible for chemical equilibrium) need higher center of mass energy to be operative in general, compared to elastic collisions (responsible for thermal equilibrium). This distinction needs not be made in the early universe (both rates $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{inel}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{el}`$ being much larger than the expansion rate).

## II Inclusion of separate chemical and thermal freeze-outs in the hydrodynamical equations

To simplify the discussion, we use a known and simple hydrodynamical model, Bjorken one-dimensional boost invariant model . Before chemical freeze-out, the fluid evolution is governed by the hydrodynamical equations

$`{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ+p}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{n_B}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{n_B}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (2)
The last equation can be solved easily

$$n_B(t)=\frac{n_B(t_0)t_0}{t}.$$
(3)
The first equation must be completed by the choice of an equation of state $`p(n_B,ϵ)`$, for the pressure as function of the net baryon density and energy density.

Also to simplify the discussion, we suppose that chemical or thermal freeze-out occurs at some fixed temperature (as often assumed in the analysis of experimental data). Attempts to incorporate more physical freeze-out conditions have been carried out  and in principle might be incorporated in the scheme described below.

When the fluid temperature has decreased to some temperature $`T_{ch.f.}`$, (which corresponds to a certain time $`t_{ch.f.}`$), some particle species get their abundances frozen. To fix ideas, we suppose that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ are in this situation. Then in addition to the above hydrodynamical equations, we introduce separate conservation laws for these two types of particles for time $`t>t_{ch.f.}`$, namely

$`{\displaystyle \frac{n_\mathrm{\Lambda }}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{n_\mathrm{\Lambda }}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (4)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (5)
These equations have solutions of the same form as (3) but with $`t_0`$ substituted by $`t_{ch}`$. Therefore what remains to be done is to solve the energy-momentum equation (1) with a modified equation of state, to account for the particles who make an early chemical freeze-out.

We suppose that the fluid is a gas of non-interacting resonances. Then for particle species $`i`$, using an expansion in term of modified Bessel functions  to allow the study of their limit more easily in (9-11),

$`n_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_im_i^2T}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}()^{n+1}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{n\mu _i/T}}{n}}K_2(nm_i/T)`$ (6)
$`ϵ_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_im_i^2T^2}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}()^{n+1}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{n\mu _i/T}}{n^2}}[3K_2(nm_i/T)`$ (7)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{nm_i}{T}}K_1(nm_i/T)]`$ (8)
$`p_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_im_i^2T^2}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}()^{n+1}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{n\mu _i/T}}{n^2}}K_2(nm_i/T)`$ (9)
where $`m_i`$ is the particle mass, $`g_i`$, its degeneracy and $`\mu _i`$, its chemical potential, the minus sign holds for fermions and plus for bosons. In principle each particle species $`i`$ making early chemical freeze-out has a chemical potential associated to it; this potential controls the conservation of the number of particles of type $`i`$. For particle species not making early chemical freeze-out, the chemical potential is of the usual type, $`\mu _i=B_i\mu _B+S_i\mu _S`$, where $`\mu _B`$ ($`\mu _S`$) ensures the conservation of baryon number (strangeness) and $`B_i`$ ($`S_i`$) is the baryon (strangeness) number of particle of type $`i`$. So the modified equation of state depends not only on $`T`$ and $`\mu _B`$ but also $`\mu _\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\mu _{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}},etc`$. (the notation “$`etc`$” stands for all the other particles making early chemical freeze-out) . This complicates the hydrodynamical problem, however we can note the following.

If $`m_i\mu _i>>T`$ (the density of type $`i`$ particle is low) and $`m_i>>T`$, (these relations should hold for all particles except pions and we checked them for various times and particle types) the following approximations can be used

$`n_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_i}{2\pi ^2}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{2}}}(m_iT)^{3/2}e^{(\mu _im_i)/T}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{15T}{8m_i}}+{\displaystyle \frac{105T^2}{128m_i^2}}+\mathrm{}\right)`$ (10)
$`ϵ_i`$ $`=`$ $`n_im_i\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{3T}{2m_i}}+{\displaystyle \frac{15T^2}{8m_i^2}}+\mathrm{}\right)`$ (11)
$`p_i`$ $`=`$ $`n_iT`$ (12)
We note that $`ϵ_i`$ and $`p_i`$ are written in term of $`n_i`$ and T. Therefore we can work with the variables $`T,\mu _B,n_\mathrm{\Lambda },n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}},etc`$, rather than $`T,\mu _B,\mu _\mathrm{\Lambda },\mu _{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}},etc`$. The time dependence of $`n_\mathrm{\Lambda },n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}},etc`$ is known as discussed already. So the modified equation of state can be computed from $`t`$, $`T`$ and $`\mu _B`$.

The scheme presented above can easily be generalized to particles making chemical freeze-out at different times (using different $`t_{ch.f.}`$) and particles doing chemical and thermal freeze-outs together (whose contribution drop out of the equation of state). One can show that entropy is conserved even in the presence of an early chemical freeze-out when the hydrodynamical equations are satisfied by a perfect fluid .

For illustration, we present results using in the equation of state, the basic multiplets of resonances (pseudoscalar meson octet plus singlet, vector meson octet plus singlet, baryon octet and baryon decuplet) and supposing that the early chemical freeze-out occurs at 180 MeV, a value typical for SPS energy more or less independently of the projectile . We use for initial conditions $`T_0=\mu _{B\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}}=200`$ MeV, $`\tau _0=1`$ fm, so that $`\mu _{Bch.f.}=210`$ MeV, which is in agreement with results for S or Pb at SPS . In figure 1, we compare the behavior of $`T`$ and $`\mu _B`$ as function of $`t`$, obtained from the hydrodynamical equations using the modified equation of state and the unmodified one. For the modified equation of state, we considered two scenarios: (I) all strange particle in the basic multiplets, (II) all strange particles except $`K`$ and $`K^{}`$’s, make an early chemical freeze-out. This is a conservative estimate, it is possible for example that the pions make an early freeze-out . Comparing scenarios I and II, we note that if more particles undergo early chemical freeze-out, stronger effects for $`T(t)`$ and $`\mu _B(t)`$ are seen. We concentrate on I thereon. We see that the deviations between I and the unmodified equation of state case increase with time. In particular from this figure, if the thermal freeze-out occurs at 110 MeV, the thermal freeze-out time is 13 fm for the modified equation of state and 20 fm for the unmodified one; the corresponding baryonic potentials are not very different, 405 and 375 MeV respectively. If the thermal freeze-out occurs earlier, say at 140 MeV, the difference in the thermal freeze-out times would be much less. An immediate consequence of this, is that the thermal freeze-out volume (in our case simply proportional to time) may be much smaller for the modified equation of state. We expect this conclusion to hold qualitatively even in the presence of transverse expansion: in this case, expansion is faster and the thermal freeze-out temperature is reached faster, so the thermal freeze-out times for the modified and unmodified equation of state are less different, however there is a competing effect for the thermal freeze-out volumes, they now scale with higher powers of time. We also expect this conclusion to hold at RHIC energies, with $`T_{ch}`$ still of order 180 MeV (it cannot be much higher since a transition to quark-gluon plasma is expected at about this temperature from lattice gauge simulations) but a lower value of $`\mu _{B,ch}`$ (less baryon stopping is expected at RHIC than SPS), the value of $`T_{th}`$ may be a little smaller than at SPS  and $`\mu _{B,th}`$ will be higher than $`\mu _{B,ch}`$ (cf. figure 1). We conclude that if the chemical and thermal freeze-out temperatures are very different (in our simplified case, 180 and 110 MeV) or if many particle species make an early chemical freeze out (e.g. also pions), it is important to take into account the effect of the early chemical freeze-out on the equation of state to make predictions for observables which depend on thermal freeze-out volumes, for example particle abundances and eventually particle correlations. This is our main result.

## III Particular case where $`T_{ch}T_{th}`$ or few particle species undergo early chemical freeze out

If the chemical and thermal freeze-out temperatures are not very different (say 180 and 140 MeV), or if few particle species make the early freeze out, one can proceed as follows. One can use an unmodified equation of state in a hydrodynamical code and to account for early chemical freeze-out of species $`i`$, when the number of type $`i`$ particles was fixed, use a modified Cooper-Frye formula

$$\frac{Ed^3N_i}{dp^3}=\frac{N_i(T_{ch.f.})}{N_i(T_{th.f.})}\times _{S_{th.f.}}𝑑\sigma _\mu p^\mu f(x,p).$$
(13)
The second factor on the right hand side is the usual one and it gives the shape of the spectrum at thermal freeze-out, the first factor is a normalizing term introduced such that upon integration on momentum $`p`$, the number of particles of type $`i`$ is $`N_i(T_{ch.f})`$. For illustration, we show results obtained with the hydrodynamical model, HYLANDER-PLUS . It provides a numerical solution of the relativistic hydrodynamical equations in (3+1) dimensions with axial symmetry (for details, see ). It gives a good description of single-particle-rapidity data, transverse-momentum spectra of $`h^{}`$, $`\pi ^{}`$, $`p`$, $`\overline{p}`$, $`K^0`$, $`\pi ^{}/\pi ^+`$ and pion correlation data at CERN energies, for an appropriate choice of the initial conditions, an equation of state incorporating a first order phase transition and a freeze-out temperature of 139 MeV. In figures 2 and 3, we show results obtained for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}`$ respectively (neglecting resonance decays) and data.

We see that both their shapes and abundances can be reproduced for $`T_{ch.f.}=176`$ MeV and $`T_{th.f.}=139`$ MeV, while simultaneous freeze-outs at $`T_{ch.f.}=T_{th.f.}=139`$ MeV would yield the correct shapes but too few particles. Therefore,results with HYLANDER-PLUS and a modified Cooper-Frye formula (12) support the separate freeze-outs picture. However in this code, $`T_{th.f.}`$ is fixed to 139 MeV while as already mentioned, some data seem to imply lower thermal freeze-out temperatures. In the next generation of hydrodynamical codes, it is desirable to consider a wider range of $`T_{th.f.}`$.

## IV Conclusion

In summary, we showed how to incorporate separate chemical and thermal freeze-outs in a hydrodynamical code via a modified equation of state in section II (general case) or via a modified Cooper-Frye formula in section III (particular case of $`T_{ch.f.}`$ close to $`T_{th.f.}`$ or few particle species undergoing early chemical freeze-out). The modified equation of state causes faster cooling and may have sizable impact on the predicted values of observables.

This work was partially supported by FAPESP (2000/04422-7,2000/05769-0) and CNPq (proc. 300054/92-0).


text:
# Entrance channel dependence and isospin dependence of preequilibrium nucleon emission in intermediate energy heavy ion collisions

## 1 Introduction

During the heavy ion collisions induced by stable or radioactive nuclei with different neutron to proton ratios, thermal and compressed nuclear states with different isospin asymmetries can be created. The properties of these nuclear states and their subsequent fragmentation products depend sensitively on the neutron to proton ratio of the colliding system, the symmetry potential, and the isospin dependence of in-medium nucleon-nucleon (N-N) cross section. Thus, the information on the equation of state (EOS) of isospin asymmetric nuclear matter can be extracted by making a comparison between theoretical calculations and experiment data \[1-5\] in a wide domain of isospin degree of freedom ranging from symmetric nuclear matter to pure neutron matter. R. Pak and Bao-An Li et al. suggested to extract the information of in-medium N-N cross section by studying the isospin dependences of collective flow and balance energy \[6-9\]. We also proposed that the information of in-medium N-N cross section can be extracted by studying isospin effects of multifragmentation in heavy ion collisions at some chosen beam energies . Bao-An Li et al.  have found that the information of symmetry potential can be extracted by studying the ratio of preeqilibrium neutrons to protons in heavy ion collisions at relatively low beam energy ($`E100MeV/u`$). However, most of investigations on the ratio of preequilibrium neutrons to protons in heavy ion collisions concentrated at the energies nearby the Fermi energy and made use of the isospin-dependent BUU model.

As is well known that the outcome of heavy ion collisions depends sensitively on entrance channel conditions. In this paper, we shall investigate systematically the entrance channel dependence of the isospin effect on preequilibrium nucleon emission in heavy ion collisions by using the isospin dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) with momentum dependence interaction (MDI) and Pauli potential. The calculated results show that the ratio of the preequilibrium neutrons to protons depends strongly on the symmetry potential, the initial ratio of neutrons to protons of the colliding system, and the beam energy, but weakly on the isospin dependence of in-medium N-N cross section, the impact parameter, the Pauli potential, and the momentum dependent interaction in the energy region from 45 Mev/u to 150 MeV/u where the dynamics is dominated by N-N collisions. The ratio of preequilibrium neutron number to proton number for the neutron-rich colliding systems is larger than the initial value of the neutron-proton ratio of the colliding systems, but the ratio for neutron-deficient systems is less than the initial value.

## 2 Theoretical model and its parameters

In order to describe the isospin effects on the dynamical process of heavy ion collisions, quantum molecular dynamics (QMD)  should be modified properly: the density dependent mean field should contain the correct isospin-dependent terms, such as symmetry energy and Coulomb potential, the in-medium N-N cross section should be different for neutron-neutron ( proton-proton ) and neutron-proton collisions, and finally Pauli blocking should be counted by distinguishing neutrons and protons. In addition, in our calculations, Pauli potential and momentum dependent interaction (MDI) are also included in the interaction potential which contains Skyrme, Coulomb, Yukawa, symmetry, Pauli potential and MDI, their formula are as follows
$`U^{Sky}`$ is the Skyrme potential

$$U^{Sky}=\alpha (\frac{\rho }{\rho _0})+\beta (\frac{\rho }{\rho _0})^\gamma $$
(1)
$`U^{coul}`$ is the Coulomb potential. The Yukawa potential acting on particle j is given by the expectation value of $`U^{Yuk}`$ interaction

$$\begin{array}{cc}U_j^{Yuk}=\hfill & t_3_{ij}\frac{e^{L/m^2}}{r_{ij}/2m}\{e^{r_{ij}/m}[1\mathrm{\Phi }(\sqrt{L}/mr_{ij}/2\sqrt{L})]\hfill \\ & \\ & e^{r_{ij}/m}[1\mathrm{\Phi }(\sqrt{L}/m+r_{ij}/2\sqrt{L})]\}\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the error function. $`U^{MDI}`$ is the momentum dependent interaction

$$U^{MDI}=t_4ln^2[t_5(\stackrel{}{p_1}\stackrel{}{p_2})^2+1]\frac{\rho }{\rho _0}$$
(3)
$`U^{Pauli}`$ is the Pauli potential

$$U^{Pauli}=V_p(\frac{\mathrm{}}{p_0q_0})^3exp(\frac{(\stackrel{}{r_i}\stackrel{}{r_j})^2}{2q_0^2}\frac{(\stackrel{}{p_i}\stackrel{}{p_j})^2}{2p_0^2})\delta _{p_ip_j}$$
(4)
$$\delta _{p_ip_j}=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{for neutron-neutron or proton-proton}\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{for neutron-proton}\hfill \end{array}$$

which is used to describe Pauli blocking at the mean field level . According to our experience, the mean field containing Pauli potential can describe the structure effect of fragmentation in the process of heavy ion collisions . $`U^{sym}`$ is the symmetry potential

$$U^{sym}=C\frac{\rho _n\rho _p}{\rho _0}\tau _z$$
(5)
$$\tau _z=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{for neutron}\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \text{for proton},\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`C`$ taking the values of 0 or 32MeV, is the strength of the symmetry potential.

First of all, Skyrme-Hatree-Fock code with parameter set SKM  is employed to get the density distributions and root mean square (RMS) radii for the neutrons and protons of each colliding nucleus studied. For example, in Fig.1 is given the density distributions for the neutron-rich nucleus $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn`$ and the neutron-deficient nucleus $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr`$. It is clear seen that there is a tail for the neutron distribution of the neutron-rich nucleus $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn`$, but the difference between the neutron distribution and the proton distribution of the neutron-deficient nucleus $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr`$ is very small. The ground state of each colliding nucleus is then prepared according to the obtained above density distributions in coordinate space and Fermi distribution in momentum space by using Monte-Carlo sample. The parameters of the interaction potentials are given in table 1, where the parameters of Skyrme and MDI are taken from Ref.  and those of Pauli potential refer to Ref..

| $`\alpha `$ | $`\beta `$ | $`\gamma `$ | $`t_3`$ | m | $`t_4`$ | $`t_5`$ | $`V_p`$ | $`p_0`$ | $`q_0`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| (MeV) | (MeV) |  | (MeV) | (fm) | (MeV) | ($`MeV^2`$) | (MeV) | (MeV/c) | (fm) |
| -390.1 | 320.3 | 1.14 | 7.5 | 0.8 | 1.57 | $`5\times 10^4`$ | 30 | 400 | 5.64 |

Table 1. The parameters of the interaction potentials

The following empirical expression is used for the in-medium N-N cross section

$$\sigma _{NN}^{med}=(1+\alpha \frac{\rho }{\rho _0})\sigma _{NN}^{free},$$
(6)
with $`\alpha =0.2`$. $`\sigma _{NN}^{free}`$ is the experimental free N-N cross section from .

The neutron-proton cross section is about 3 times larger than the proton-proton or neutron-neutron cross section below about 500MeV.

In order to check the IQMD code with the above parameters, the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ for the reactions $`{}_{}{}^{58}Fe+^{58}Fe`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{58}Ni+^{58}Ni`$ at the beam energy $`E=75`$MeV/u has been calculated by using the IQMD code. The intermediate mass fragments (IMFs) are defined as the fragments with charge numbers greater than 3 and less than 18. The calculated results are compared with the experimental data  in the same scaler in Fig. 2 which gives the correlation between the mean value of the intermediate mass fragment multiplicity $`N_{imf}`$ and the charged particle multiplicity $`N_c`$. The solid (open) circles represent the experimental data for the reaction $`{}_{}{}^{58}Ni+^{58}Ni`$ ($`{}_{}{}^{58}Fe+^{58}Fe`$) at $`E=75`$MeV/u and the solid line (dot line) denotes the IQMD results for $`{}_{}{}^{58}Ni+^{58}Ni`$ ($`{}_{}{}^{58}Fe+^{58}Fe`$). It is clear that the present IQMD predictions are in a satisfactory agreement with general features of the experimental data.

## 3 Results and Discussions

As is well known that the isospin effects on the reaction mechanism and the reaction products in heavy ion collisions depend sensitively on the entrance channel conditions, such as the neutron-proton ratio, the total mass of the colliding system, the beam energy, and the impact parameter. In this paper, the entrance channel dependence of preequilibrium nucleon emission for the two neutron-rich systems $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{76}Zn`$ $`(\frac{N}{Z}=1.53)`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn+^{80}Zn`$ $`(\frac{N}{Z}=1.67)`$, and for the neutron-deficient system $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{76}Kr`$ $`(\frac{N}{Z}=1.11)`$ are studied by using IQMD in the beam energy region from 45 MeV/u to 150 MeV/u.

Fig. 3 shows the time evolutions of the ratio of preequilibrium neutrons to protons $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ for the three colliding systems $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn+^{80}Zn`$ (top window), $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{76}Zn`$ (middle window), and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{76}Kr`$ (bottom window) at the beam energies E=45MeV/u (left column), 120MeV/u (middle column), and 150MeV/u (right column), and at the impact parameter b=1.0 fm for the following three cases:
1) $`U^{sym}+\sigma ^{Iso}`$ (solid line), indicating symmetry potential and isospin dependent in-medium N-N cross section;
2) $`U^{sym}+\sigma ^{Noiso}`$ (dash line), indicating symmetry potential and isospin independent in-medium N-N cross section;
3) C=0 MeV+ $`\sigma ^{Iso}`$ (dot line), indicating isospin dependent in-medium N-N cross sections without symmetry potential.

$`\sigma ^{Iso}`$ and $`\sigma ^{Noiso}`$ denote the isospin dependence N-N cross section and isospin independence N-N cross section, respectively. In the case of $`\sigma ^{Iso}`$, the neutron-proton cross section $`\sigma _{np}^{Iso}`$ is about three times larger than the neutron-neutron cross section $`\sigma _{nn}^{Iso}`$ below about 500MeV. But in the case of $`\sigma ^{Noiso}`$, $`\sigma _{np}^{Noiso}=\sigma _{nn}^{Noiso}=\sigma _{nn}^{Iso}`$ .

The preequilibrium nucleon emission is defined as to include all neutrons and protons emitted before the colliding system has reached the thermal equilibrium. From the time evolution of the nucleon quadrupole momentum distribution $`Q_{zz}`$ (right window) in Fig. 4 and those of neutron number (middle window) and proton number (right windows) in Fig. 5, we see that the colliding systems reach thermal equilibrium and the single particle emission approaches a constant value before 200fm/c and $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ reaches about constant value at about 100fm/c. The nucleon is considered to be free if it is not correlated with other nucleons within a spatial distance of $`\mathrm{\Delta }r=3`$fm and a momentum distance of $`\mathrm{\Delta }p=300`$MeV/c as in . In addition, in the early stage of the reaction, the neutron excess is seen to fluctuate due to violent N-N collisions. So the colliding duration in the figures is from 60 fm/c to 200 fm/c.

From Fig. 3 we can see that $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ depends strongly on the symmetry potential, but weakly on the isospin-dependent in-medium N-N cross section in the energy region from 45MeV/u to 150MeV/u. At relatively large beam energy ($`E>100`$MeV/u), the isospin effects of the N-N cross sections on the dissipation-fluctuation and fragmentation process are obvious from Fig. 4, where is plotted the time evolution of the intermediate mass fragment multiplicity $`N_{imf}`$ (left window) and the nucleon quadrupole momentum distribution $`Q_{zz}`$ (right window) for the system $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn+^{80}Zn`$ at E=120 MeV/u and b=1.0fm in the three cases. ¿From Fig. 3 one can also see that the influence of the beam energy on the ratio of preequilibrium neutrons to protons is salient.

The left window of Fig. 5 shows the time evolution of $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ for the three collision systems at E=100 MeV/u and b=1.0 fm in the case of ( $`U^{sym}+\sigma ^{Iso}`$ ). $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ for the neutron-rich systems $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn+^{80}Zn`$ (dot-dash line) and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{76}Zn`$ (dot line) are 1.83 and 1.62 which are larger than the initial values of the colliding systems: $`(\frac{N_t+N_p}{Z_t+Z_p})`$ = 1.67 and 1.53, respectively. Here $`N_p,N_t,Z_p`$ and $`Z_t`$ are the neutron number and proton number for the projectile and target, respectively. Because the symmetry potential tends to make more neutrons than protons to be unbound (compare the time evolutions of preequilibrium neutron number and proton number in the middle window and right window in Fig. 5), one thus expects that a stronger symmetry potential leads to a larger ratio of neutrons to protons.

From the left window of Fig. 5 one can also see that $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ for the neutron-deficient colliding system $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{76}Kr`$(solid line) is quite different from that for the neutron-rich colliding system. For instance, its ratio of preequilibrium neutron number to proton number is 1.06 being less than its initial value of $`(\frac{N_t+N_p}{Z_t+Z_p})`$ of 1.11. The mechanism about that can be explained as follows. On the one hand, the symmetry potential tends to make more neutrons than protons to be unbound; on the other hand, the Coulomb interaction tends to make more protons than neutrons to be unbound (see solid lines in the middle window and the right window of Fig. 5). The final result depends on the competition between the two factors. For the neutron-rich colliding systems, the effect of symmetry potential is stronger than that of Coulomb interaction, more neutrons will be emitted than protons and $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ will be larger than its initial value. On the contrary, for the neutron-defficient colliding systems, Coulomb effect is stronger than that of the symmetry potential, less neutrons will be emitted than protons and $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ will be less than its initial value. Nevertheless, for both neutron-rich and neutron-defficient colliding systems, the ratio of preequilibrium neutron number to proton number depends always strongly on the symmetry potential and weakly on the in-medium isospin dependent N-N cross section in the energy region from 45 MeV/u to 150 MeV/u.

Figure 6(a) shows the time evolutions of $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ for the system $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn+^{80}Zn`$ at E=150 MeV/u and b=1.0 fm in three cases:
1) indicating Pauli and momentum-dependent interaction (denoted by “p, m” and solid line);
2) indicating Pauli potential without momentum-dependence interaction (denoted by “p, nom” and dot line);
3) without both of them (denoted by “nop, nom” and dash line).
It is clear to see that the effects of Pauli potential and the momentum dependent interaction on the $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ are very poor.

In Figs. 6(b, c, d) are shown the time evolutions of $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$, $`N_n`$, and $`N_p`$ for the reaction $`{}_{}{}^{80}Zn+^{80}Zn`$ at E=150 MeV/u , b=1.0 fm (solid line), and b=5.0fm (dot line). Though the numbers of preequilibrium neutron and proton decrease as increasing impact parameter b (see Figs. 5(c, d)), the ratio $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ only slightly increases with increasing impact parameter, which is in agreement with the result of Bao-An Li et al.  (see Fig. 5(b)).

Fig. 7 indicates the impact parameter averaged kinetic energy spectra (b=0.0-3.0 fm) of preequilibrium neutron-proton ratio for the system 76Zn+$`76`$Zn at E=100 MeV/u and in the three cases as the same as in Fig. 3. It is clear to see that the conclusion about that $`\frac{N_n}{N_p}`$ dependes sensitively on the symmetry potential and weakly on the in-medium isospin dependence N-N cross section has remained the same .

## 4 Conclusion

In summary, the entrance channel dependence of the isospin effect of the preequilibrium nucleon emission for the neutron-rich colliding systems and neutron-deficient colliding systems have been studied systematically by using IQMD in a wide region of beam energies. The calculated results show that the ratio of preequilibrium neutron number to proton number depends strongly on the symmetry potential, the neutron-proton ratio of the colliding system, and the beam energy, but weakly on the isospin dependence of the in-medium N-N cross section, in the energy region from 45MeV/u to 150 MeV/u. The Pauli potential, the momentum dependent interaction, and the impact parameter also have a sizable effect on the preequilibium nucleon emission, but the effects of the three factors on neutron emission are nearly the same as on proton emission, so the preequilibrium neutron-proton ratio depends slightly on the impact parameter, MDI and Pauli potential. The ratio of preequilibrium neutron number to proton number for the neutron-rich colliding system is larger than the initial value of the system, but that for the neutron-deficient colliding system is less than its initial value. The present investagation also supports the suggestion by Bao-An Li et al. using BUU calculations  that the ratio of preequilibrium neutron number to proton number in HIC can be used as a probe to extract the information on the symmetry potential. However our investigation has extended the energy region of the applicability of this suggestion from the beam energy $`E<100`$ MeV/u to relatively higher beam energy up to $`E=150`$MeV/u.

## Acknowledgment

This work was supported in part by the “100 person project” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, ”973 project” under Grant number G2000077400, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 19775057 and No. 19775020, No. 19847002, No. 19775052 and KJ951-A1-410, by the Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.