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# Is Nature Generic?

## 1 Introduction

We live in space and time. For the cosmologist this fact relates to some fundamental and unresolved issues:

* How was our spacetime created?
* What is the shape of our space? Was it always the same? What are the possible ‘admissible’ shapes for our physical space?
* Was our spacetime so ‘simple’ in the past or more complex? What about in the future?
* What was the structure of the ‘early universe’?

and so on. These issues, when translated into a suitable mathematical language, do in fact drive most of the current research in mathematical and theoretical cosmology.

In this paper we lay the foundations of modern mathematical cosmology in a manner suitable for the nonspecialist or a graduate student who wishes to have some initial orientation in his/her attempts to embark on research in this fascinating field of Science which lies in the interface between Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. We have tried to present (an outline of the elements of) mathematical cosmology from a very broad perspective suitable for many readers and hope that even experts who work in one or more of the many modern branches of cosmology will find here some points of interest.

In the next Section we present the basic principles of cosmological modelling. Modelling the universe presents some new challenges for the applied mathematician or theoretical physicist different from those in other areas of the mathematical modelling of physical phenomena. Section 3 introduces and discusses the fundamental notion of a cosmology. Section 4 gives an overview of the basic unsolved problems of mathematical cosmology and the broad lines of attack that have been and are still being used by different research groups as well as some new and potentially efficient mathematical methods which could powerfully augment the successful treatment of the cosmological problem. Conclusions and future prospects are given in Section 5. Although almost no references are given in the text, the Bibliography presents some very basic items which are meant to serve as a useful entrance to the literature of this vast and truly exciting subject.

## 2 Principles of cosmological modelling

Modelling the universe, as opposed to that of other physical systems, is an involved and unique process different in nature and scope from other modelling in mathematical physics. There are two basic steps in the process, one we may call the theoretical step (items 1-3 below) and secondly the observational step (item 4 below). These two steps comprise in turn 3+1 basic features:

1. A (cosmological) spacetime
2. A theory of gravity
3. A collection of matter fields
4. The process of confronting the results of suitable combination(s) and analyses of 1-3 with the unique observed universe

We can loosely define a cosmology as the result of the appropriate combination of the features 1-4 above. The unifying principle that ties the basic features 1-3 together to form what we call a cosmological model is the Action Principle. Let us first consider in some detail the three most basic constituents of a cosmology.

### 2.1 Spacetimes

There is a basic cosmological hierarchy of spacetimes according to the degree of exact symmetry involved.

* Isotropic (Friedmann-Robertson-Walker) spacetimes
* Homogeneous (Bianchi) nontilted spacetimes
* Homogeneous (Bianchi) tilted spacetimes
* Inhomogeneous $`G_2`$ spacetimes
* Inhomogeneous $`G_1`$ spacetimes
* Generic spacetimes

Bianchi is that family of homogeneous but anisotropic spacetimes first classified by the Italian geometer L. Bianchi according to the underlined Lie algebra in nine types $`I,\mathrm{}IX`$ and two classes A, B. This is the most general family of spacetimes for which the Einstein field equations reduced to ordinary differential equations since the space dependence of the metric derivatives are suppressed. Here, $`G_i,i=1,2`$ means the group of symmetries ($`i`$ indicates the number of Killing vectors) of the underline spacetime manifold. The group $`G_2`$ is larger than $`G_1`$ and consequently the spacetimes in the category four above are more symmetric than those in category five. It can be shown that, in a certain sense which can be made precise, spacetimes in a given category above are contained in the next category as special cases. Therefore we have a list of increasing generality (top to bottom) or genericity and the first families in the list may not be considered as realistic candidates for the actual universe as they all contain (or are constructed through the use of) exact symmetries. However, they are very important as toy models as well as simpler cases which may contain the seed of the true dynamics of the more generic (but essentially more difficult to handle mathematically) spaces. The ones without any symmetry are in the last category, generic spacetimes, while those with maximal symmetry are the isotropic spaces. The latter are the most common spacetimes used in cosmology today.

The first five families of spacetimes are basically formed by having a group of transformations acting in some way on the spacetime manifold such that its orbits essentially create the underline point set (the action of the group on the manifold is then called transitive). The dimension of this group as well as the manner it acts on the manifold are responsible for the wide variety of cosmological spacetimes. The simplest ones are the isotropic spacetimes whereas generic spaces are extremely difficult to handle.

### 2.2 Theories of gravity

Since the realization that, under certain assumptions, general relativity leads to singularities and consequently may not correctly or adequately describe the ”observed” features of the universe at very small distances or very high energies, there has been an endless process of constructing new theories which incorporate gravity but extend general relativity in many different ways. Here is an incomplete list:

1. General relativity (GR)
2. Higher derivative gravity theories (HDG)
3. Scalar-tensor theories (ST)
4. Supergravity theory
5. String theories
6. Branes
7. M-theory
8. $`\mathrm{}`$

As we shall see, one of the basic problems in cosmology is how to figure out which theory of gravity may be the most suitable for describing the universe at its early stages of evolution. Many cosmologists believe that perhaps some variant of string theory must be the final word, but choosing a gravity theory for such a purpose certainly involves many different and interrelated issues. We consider this problem in more detail below.

The basic method used to construct and compare all these different theories is the Action Principle, familiar from Classical Mechanics we learn as students. This principle forms the basis of modern Theoretical Physics and in fact, all the gravity theories above come out by postulating the Action Principle. HDG theories extend GR by the addition of extra terms in the gravitational action functional (a function defined on the space of metrics), terms which contain higher powers of the curvature invariants. ST theories postulate that the gravitational field is mediated by a scalar field in addition to the spacetime metric, the simplest prototype of this family being the well-known Brans-Dicke theory. This class of gravity theories is a very broad one incorporating in effect many of the string theories as special cases. There has been known for some time that there are certain conformal ‘dualities’ between HDG, ST theories and GR in that these theories are GR in disguise with additional ‘fields’. Dualities have also been recently discovered between different string and supergravity theories and these in turn sometimes are interpreted to imply the existence of a more general theory, which might in some subtle way incorporate all previous ones as special cases, M-theory.

### 2.3 Matter fields

Here too one may easily compose a shopping list of interesting candidates for matter fields which may have played an important role during different epochs in the history of the universe.

* Vacuum
* Fluids
* Scalar fields
* Wave maps
* Electromagnetic fields
* Yang-Mills fields
* $`n`$form fields
* Spinors

Each one of these different families has its own special role to play in cosmology, but some are definitely more ambiguous than others for different reasons.

With this background, let us now see how modern cosmologists put together spacetimes, gravity theories and matter fields to form the basic ingredient of their subject, a cosmology.

## 3 Cosmologies

How do we construct a cosmology? Pick up a spacetime from the cosmological hierarchy list, choose a gravity theory and one or more matter fields, tie them together through the Action Principle and try to explain the observed facts in terms of the consequences of the application of the variational principle. The result is called a cosmology. In the form of a symbolic equality,

Cosmology = Cosmological model(s) + Observations

We shall denote a given family of cosmological models (or a cosmology) with a triplet $`\{//\}`$ of the sort {Spacetime/Gravity theory/Matter field}. The simplest and best studied (relativistic) cosmology of physical interest is the {FRW/General Relativity/Fluid} Cosmology. This actually is the cosmology discussed in many textbooks on the subject under the heading ‘Relativistic Cosmology’.

One may obviously attempt to construct and analyse other cosmologies, based for example on the families:

* FRW/GR/vacuum cosmologies
* FRW/HDG/vacuum cosmologies
* FRW/scalar-tensor/fluid cosmologies
* FRW/string/vacuum cosmologies
* FRW/Brane/scalar cosmologies
* Bianchi/GR/fluid cosmologies
* Bianchi/GR/scalar cosmologies
* Bianchi/scalar-tensor/vacuum cosmologies
* Bianchi/M-theory cosmologies

and so on. How do we study the properties of each one of these cosmologies? There are many questions we can ask, some common to all families and others particular to some family. We have more to say on this in the next Section. The important thing is that the families we construct be mathematically consistent, toy models upon which to base our physical predictions and conclusions for the structure of the universe at different epochs in cosmic history.

A particular issue, connected with the philosophy that there is not one single theory of the universe which would describe it at all times but some cosmologies may be more adapted to some epochs while others not, is the problem of cosmological cohesion, that is to try to connect different cosmological models together to form a consistent frame, a cohesive cosmology, to compare with observations. For example, suppose that an FRW/GR/fluid cosmology is valid after the Planck time onwards and that a Bianchi/M-theory/vacuum cosmology holds well before that time. The cosmological cohesion problem in this case is to connect the physically meaningful solutions of the two cosmology branches into one cohesive cosmology that would describe the entire cosmic history and be compatible with observations and other constraints.

The cohesion problem is one between different cosmologies which have already been studied and their solution spaces are more or less clarified. However, the first step in the study of cosmologies is to single out a particular family and to try to develop a well-defined theory addressing as many issues as one can in the garden of cosmological problems. Some of these are described in the next Section.

## 4 Cosmological problems

We now translate the questions stated in the Introduction in a more suitable terminology. The result is a number of very broad directions of research currently pursued.

### 4.1 The singularity problem

This is the ultimate and most important problem that every cosmology has to face. It indicates the true range of validity of any cosmology and of course that of the underlying gravity theory. Its two parts, namely, the existence and the structure/nature of singularities are very different and may play complementary roles in deciding the final fate of any theory of cosmology.

Usually in cosmology the definition of a singularity is taken to mean a place where some physical quantities, for example the spacetime curvature, densities, temperatures of matter fields etc, become infinite or discontinuous there. Hence it is usual that cosmological singularities are connected with either infinities or pole like behaviour. As such, it is not surprising that there is little to be said about their structure or nature using the usual geometric/topological methods. Indeed the singularity theorems in general relativity are geometric existence results about incomplete geodesics the endpoints of which, strikingly, coincide with infinite curvature singularities in most cases but the nature of these singularities is undecided in the general case.

Instead the nature of singularities is commonly tackled via the methods of dynamical systems for particular cosmology families. In the first three families of the basic spacetime hierarchy, we end up typically with ordinary differential equations whereas from the last three categories we find systems of partial differential equations. Using methods borrowed from the qualitative theory of differential equations (theory of dynamical systems) cosmologists have been able to figure out the behaviour of spacetime in the vicinity of a singularity. In the most general case wherein the Einstein equations are reduced to ordinary differential equations, that is the second and third families in the hierarchy, very complex structures can appear in the neighborhood a such singular points. A basic question is whether such structures remain as generic features in the more general cases down the hierarchy or disappear when we consider more general cosmologies as a result of the less and less symmetry imposed.

An special example of the singularity issue in cosmology is the recollapse problem, that is whether or not all closed (compact, without boundary) cosmologies recollapse to a second singularity. Of course, in general it is very easy to construct examples where closed universes filled with special matter fields do not recollapse, but the question here is, given a cosmology, under what conditions does the subclass of all closed cosmologies recollapse to a singularity in the future. This purely classical problem acquires importance also in the framework of inflationary and quantum cosmology since it is yet to be decided whether or not the universe can recollapse before an inflationary phase is reached (the so-called premature recollapse).

### 4.2 The problem of cosmic topology.

This problem has two aspects. The observational problem of deciding what the shape of the observed universe is and what would be the consequences of supposing that space has a different topology that the usual one. For example, there are many known examples of different topologies (euclidean, torus) of which can all admit a flat metric. The supposition that the manifold geometry is hyperbolic has become very fashionable and attracts a lot of attention currently. As W. Thurston has put it, ‘it is a wonderful dream to see the topology of the universe some day’. Perhaps the topology of the universe is non-trivial but not very complicated.

The second, theoretical, aspect is more involved with apparently many consequences for different parts of the general cosmological problem, most of which are as yet unclear. It is well-known that, although the Einstein equations evolve only the geometry (that is the spacetime metric) but leave the topology of initial data sets fixed (but arbitrary) during the evolution there are cases, for instance the formation of singularities in the future, where the topology of the initial data set which evolves is expected to be different after some of the space has collapsed. In fact, this issue seems to be related in a subtle way to the fundamental problem of classifying 3-manifolds (in this case the initial data sets). The Einstein flow evolves such data and one would like to know how initially different topologies affect the flow and vice versa.

### 4.3  The problem of asymptotic states.

The existence or nonexistence of singularities in a particular cosmology, notwithstanding, the issue of providing a detailed description of the dynamical behaviour of cosmological spacetimes at both small and large times in a particular gravity theory with matter fields is a very important one, aiming at establishing a first test of the scope and flavor of any particular candidate cosmology.

One may tackle this problem by finding particular exact solutions that describe special families of models within a given cosmology and this has been in fact the first line of attack in modern cosmological research. However, even if one has succeeded in finding many different solutions of a particular cosmology at hand it is often difficult to combine them into a coherent whole that would indicate the true picture of dynamical possibilities of the given family.

The dynamical systems approach used by several authors in the past is much more promising when we wish to uncover the global structure of the solution space of a given cosmology. An especially important example of an aymptotic problem is the so-called the isotropization problem (or in other contexts a cosmic no-hair conjecture) which aims at examining the possibility of first accepting that at an early stage in cosmic history the universe was in some more complex state described by one of the models down the hierarchy list (eg., Bianchi) and then showing how the present isotropic state is the result of the long term, ‘observed’, dynamical evolution of that less symmetric ‘initial’ era. This is where the central dynamical concepts of trapping sets and attractors may come into full play. What are the attractors of a given cosmology? Is it possible that attractors of one cosmology are related to attractors of another? An answer to this question will clarify to what extend members of one cosmology family belong also to another family and in this sense how different cosmologies are related to one another. A global attractor of a cosmology is defined as one that attracts all neighboring members inside the given cosmology. If one could show how the global attractors of different cosmologies are related, one would have a precise way of deciding which cosmology to pick for specific eras in the cosmic history. Consequently such a result would help to connect apparently different cosmologies.

Another issue is to find whether chaotic, unpredictable dynamical behaviour is a true feature of classical cosmological dynamics. The basic dichotomy of nonlinear dynamics, namely, integrability versus nonintegrability and chaos, is certainly to be found in mathematical cosmology too. Only the simplest cosmologies are translated into two dimensional dynamical systems and most of them are of dimension higher than four. Therefore complex dynamical behaviour is generally to be expected in cosmology and indeed this has been a subject of considerable research in modern mathematical cosmology. The notion of a cosmological attractor introduced earlier will also play a special role here as dissipative cosmologies are generally expected to have the so-called strange attractors, but their existence may not be easy to unravel except in the case of highly symmetric cosmologies.

An emerging method in recent years to decide whether a given cosmology is integrable, without actually solving the associated differential equations to construct cosmological solutions of physical interest, is based on an intriquing idea of two great mathematicians of the past, S. Kowalevski and P. Painlevé. These people thought that instead of trying to solve the relevant differential equations which describe a given problem, it would be very convenient to decide whether any given system (hamiltonian or not) is integrable if there was a way to merely examine the form of it. The answer appears to lie in the complex plane and the types of singularities the equations can have when analytically continued in the complex time plane. Kowalevski was able to discover a new, as well as recover many of the integrable cases of the so-called Euler-Poisson equations that are associated with the problem of the Lagrange top by analysing these equations when the only movable singularities that the equations can exhibit in the complex plane are poles. This feature is called the Painlevé property and has become very important in recent years in attacking the integrability problem. If this holds, then all solutions lie in a single Riemann sheet. However, much more complicated behaviour can occur when the singularities of the analytically continued system fail to be poles but take the form of movable branch points or the even essential singlarities for which the solutions are in general multivalued complex functions. The general integrability conjecture is that if a system has the Painlevé property then it is integrable. Although, not completely proven, this method has been applied with great success in many systems in Mathematical Physics in general and in mathematical cosmology in particular. The reasons why such a method seems apparently to work appears to be connected with algebraic geometry and the theory of elliptic curves. One is therefore hoping that the complicated behaviour seen in the vicinity of the big-bang singularities in many cosmologies could be quantified by using this method and looking at the singularity patterns which the analytically continued solutions of the real-time systems form on approach to the cosmological singularity. This program is still at an infant stage, but it is has the potential to yield interesting results in the coming years.

### 4.4  Gravity theories and the early universe.

This last problem is a very difficult and basic one to all attempts to construct a realistic, cohesive cosmology. It is evident that the issue of choosing a gravity theory with which to build a cosmology is of paramount importance to cosmological model building. It has been known for many years and regarded as folklore that general relativity cannot be meaningfully extrapolated back to very early times in the history of an expanding universe which is predicted by it. A look at the list of possible alternative gravity theories, however, reveals that none is thus far the unique, problem-free theory. Each time there is some particular theory which is fashionable, M-theory being today’s choice.

One way to decide among a host of possibilities has been to try to get a feeling for how these different cosmologies behave when we ask the same questions. This leads to a picture of dynamical possibilities for the whole set of all conceivable cosmologies and indeed, has been the Holy Grail of modern research in mathematical cosmology. The picture to-date, however, is by no means complete even in General Relativity and the search is continued. Here again we see the need for the full exploitation of the cosmological attractors in an effort to understand the precise relations between different cosmologies.

Although a recurrent theme in this paper has been the fact that we should work among all different possibilities (and this in fact is a basic characteristic in current research in the field), one may think that, for the case where General Relativity is expected to break down, some principle exists that could successfully guide our vision in searching for the ‘right’ theory with which to build a reliable cosmology of the early universe. A principle suitable for such a purpose can be based on the use of the fundamental notion of symmetry. Which cosmology is the most symmetric? This question raises another: What is meant by ”most symmetric”? The notion of a Lie symmetry is a natural one when applied to systems of differential equations. It is related to the fundamental invariant quantities that are preserved during the evolution of the system according to Noether’s theorem. If we could construct the symmetry atlas of any given cosmology we would have gone a long way to answering any given question about the evolution of a cosmology. Such an approach is not difficult to implement and could be done for a great variety of cosmologies. This may prove to be an interesting and fruitful direction of further research in early universe mathematical cosmology in the coming years.

## 5 Outlook

The strategy is now clear. Study each one of these problems in the framework of every possible cosmology with an effort to decide among the different possibilities for a realistic cosmology.

The cosmological problem is the global problem par excellence. In contradistinction with the other, complementary area of modern research in gravitation, namely, asymptotically flat problems, all basic problems in cosmology involve thinking about spacetimes which are nowhere trivial and in this sense the lack of knowledge of initial conditions in cosmology is natural (if only trivial boundary or initial conditions are acceptable!). Asymptotically flat problems on the other hand, being basically local ones, are well-defined mathematically having initial or boundary conditions away from the sources where the spacetime is trivial. But the universe is not asymptotically flat. The Newtonian universe is asymptotically flat, but general relativity introduced the notion of an evolving universe as a whole and therefore did away with asymptotic flatness on a cosmological scale.

The fundamental problems of mathematical cosmology discussed in this paper, namely the singularity problem, the topology problem, the asymptotic problem and the problem of choosing a gravity theory and building a realistic early universe cosmology, frame mathematical cosmology as a separate and important discipline at the interface between Mathematics and Physics and make it an interesting and active branch of Mathematical Physics.

A new direction of research in the singularity problem might consist in using the highly developed theory of singularities of differentiable mappings by Arnol’d and coworkers. Since the usual singularity theorems prove the existence of families of incomplete geodesic curves which in general refocus to form caustics, perhaps a clarification of the nature of these singularities can be attained by their classification through Arnol’d theory. However, the latter is concerned with singularities of a different type namely, those that occur due to the vanishing of certain derivatives and Jacobians rather than infinities or poles. Is it possible that the singularities in general relativity be of the milder type of this sort? The answer to this question is at present unknown.

Much work has been undertaken during the last thirty years or so in the asymptotic problem using the qualitative theory of differential equations. This work can be generalized in at least two directions. Firstly, most of the analyses are concerned with equilibrium solutions and their stability. Bifurcation theory may open the way to tackle seemingly unrelated systems as a whole system with parameters, for example, the general Bianchi/GR/vacuum family.

Secondly, the equations of the family: $`G_2`$/GR/vacuum are very similar to those of a spherically symmetric wave map and existence and regularity results for the latter system are known in the literature. The theory of partial differential equations theory has not been used in any systematic way up till now in Mathematical Cosmology. Global information about the solution spaces of some of these inhomogeneous cosmologies may also be obtained by writing them as dynamical systems in infinite dimensions and some work along this lines is now beginning to emerge.

Most of the published literature in the early universe cosmology is mainly concerned with the first two of the six-step spacetime hierarchy given above. It is entirely unknown to what degree important discoveries (a prime example is inflation) that have been made working with ‘low-level’ (ie., top of the hierarchy) cosmologies (e.g., FRW/GR,HDG,ST,String,Brane/scalar etc) are justified, i.e., persist as true features of the generic dynamics or are simply artifacts of the high degree of exact symmetry imposed. That is an additional reason why the issue of cosmological attractors in given cosmologies must be faced.

A work that analysed the sixth stage (generic spacetimes) but in the asymptotically flat case in General Relativity is the proof of the global stability of Minkowski space by Christodoulou and Klainerman (Annals of Mathematics Studies, vlm. 41, Princeton University Press, 1993). No result of such generality exists for any cosmology. What could a corresponding analysis in the cosmological case imply (for instance the global stability of the positive curvature FRW spacetime) for the validity of the current cosmological ideas (inflation, attractor properties of the known physically interesting cosmological spacetimes etc) is at present only a matter of conjecture.

Nature is unique, it is not generic. Our attempts to simulate the universe in mathematical and theoretical cosmology will lead to reliable results if and only if they follow from studies of generic cosmologies or show which features of the highly symmetric (and hence unphysical) cosmological models persist and propagate down the hierarchy list so as to become true features of the more general, asymmetric cosmologies. Progress will be made if one finds a way to sidestep the difficulties of analysing the partial differential equations of the inhomogeneous models by showing how the global attractors of different cosmologies are related and picturing more clearly the generic structures of the cosmological phase space. It is only in this way that the observations showing a homogeneous universe can be justified mathematically and give meaning to our ability to work with models high in the cosmological hierarchy list. On the other hand, if the unique features of Nature cannot be recovered by a sort of generic process the road to understanding will be very long and arduous.
Acknowledgements

We thank John Barrow, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, George Flessas and John Miritzis for many useful discussions and kind comments.


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# General relativistic spectra of accretion discs around rapidly rotating neutron stars: Effect of light bending

## 1 Introduction

The central accretors in a large number of low mass X-ray binaries (LMXB) are believed to be neutron stars, rotating rapidly due to accretion-induced angular momentum transfer. LMXBs are thought to be the progenitors of milli-second (ms) radio pulsars (Bhattacharya & van den Heuvel 1991) like PSR 1937+21 with $`P1.56`$ ms (Backer et al 1982). The recent discovery of ms ($`P2.49`$ ms) X-ray pulsations in XTE J1808-369 (Wijnands & van der Klis 1998) has strengthened this hypothesis. Kilohertz Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (kHz QPOs) seen in a number of LMXBs is another indicator of the rapid rotation of the accreting neutron star. For example, in beat-frequency models of kHz QPO, the difference ($`300500`$ Hz) in the frequencies of two simultaneously observed kHz QPO peaks is interpreted as the rotational frequency of the neutron star (e.g. van der Klis 2000).

Fast rotation makes the neutron star considerably oblate and also modifies, both the interior and exterior space-time geometry. These, in turn, modify the size and the temperature profile of the accretion disc and hence the corresponding spectrum (Bhattacharyya et al. 2000;2001). General relativity also plays an important role in shaping the spectrum. As neutron stars are very compact objects, the effect of general relativity is very significant, particularly near the surface of the star.

For luminous LMXBs, the observed X-ray spectrum can be well fitted by the sum of a multi-colour blackbody spectrum (presumably from the accretion disc) and a single temperature blackbody spectrum (presumably from the boundary layer) (see Mitsuda et al. 1984). The multi-colour spectrum can be calculated if the temperature profile in the accretion disc is known. Recently Bhattacharyya et al. (2000) have calculated the disc temperature profile as a function of the spin rate ($`\mathrm{\Omega }`$) and the mass ($`M`$) of the neutron star for different equations of state (EOS), including the effects of rotation and general relativity. In this paper, we calculate the observed spectrum from the accretion disc, using the temperature profiles. While doing so, we take into account the effect of gravitational redshift, Doppler broadening and the light-bending effect in the gravitational field of the accreting star.

For non-rotating neutron stars, an attempt has been made by Ebisawa et al. (1991) to compute the disc spectrum including the effects mentioned above. Sun & Malkan (1989) included relativistic effects of disc inclination, including Doppler boosting, gravitational focussing, and gravitational redshift, on the observed disc spectra for both Kerr and Schwarzschild black holes (in the context of supermassive black holes). They find (as we also do) that the higher energy part of the spectrum gets significantly modified due to the general relativisitic effects. A computation similar to that of Ebisawa et al. (1991), for Galactic black hole candidates, has been done by Asaoka (1989) using the Kerr metric. However, our work incorporating both: the full general relativistic effects of rapid rotation, as well as realistic equations of state describing neutron star interiors, using an appropriate metric is the first calculation for rotating neutron stars. In the present work we ignore the effects of the stellar magnetic field, so our results are applicable to weakly magnetised neutron stars.

The structure of the paper is as follows. In section 2, we describe a framework for the calculation of neutron star structure, disc temperature profile and observed spectrum. We also comment here on the the chosen equations of state. We describe the numerical procedure for spectrum calculation in section 3. The results of the spectrum calculation are displayed in section 4. We summarise the conclusions in section 5 and enlist some relevant mathematical expressions in the Appendix.

## 2 Theory

### 2.1 Neutron star structure calculation

We calculate the structure of a rapidly rotating neutron star for realistic EOS models, using the same procedure as Cook et al. (1994) (see also Datta et al 1998). With the assumption that the star is rigidly rotating and a perfect fluid, we take a stationary, axisymmetric, asymptotically flat and reflection-symmetric (about the equatorial plane) metric, given by

$`dS^2`$ $`=`$ $`g_{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu (\mu ,\nu =0,1,2,3)`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`e^{\gamma +\rho }dt^2+e^{2\alpha }(d\overline{r}^2+\overline{r}^2d\theta ^2)`$
$`+e^{\gamma \rho }\overline{r}^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta (d\varphi \omega dt)^2`$
where the metric potentials $`\gamma ,\rho ,\alpha `$ and the angular speed ($`\omega `$) of zero-angular-momentum-observer (ZAMO) with respect to infinity, are all functions of the quasi-isotropic radial coordinate ($`\overline{r}`$) and polar angle ($`\theta `$). The quantity $`\overline{r}`$ is related to the Schwarzschild-like radial coordinate ($`r`$) by the equation $`r=\overline{r}e^{(\gamma \rho )/2}`$. We use the geometric units $`c=G=1`$ in this paper.

We solve Einstein’s field equations and the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium self-consistently and numerically from the centre of the star upto infinity to obtain $`\gamma ,\rho ,\alpha ,\omega `$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (angular speed of neutron star with respect to infinity) as functions of $`\overline{r}`$ and $`\theta `$. This is done for a particular EOS and assumed values of central density and ratio of polar to equatorial radii. The obtained numerical equilibrium solutions of the metric enable us to calculate bulk structure parameters, such as gravitational mass ($`M`$), equatorial radius ($`R`$), angular momentum ($`J`$) etc. of the neutron star. We also calculate the radius ($`r_{\mathrm{orb}}`$) of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO), specific energy ($`\stackrel{~}{E}`$) and specific angular momentum ($`\stackrel{~}{l}`$) of a test particle in a Keplerian orbit and the Keplerian angular speed ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}`$) (see Thampan & Datta 1998 for a detailed description of the method of calculation).

### 2.2 Equation of state

The neutron star structure parameters are quite sensitive to the chosen EOS. In the literature, there exist a large number of EOS ranging from very soft to very stiff. For the purpose of a general study, we have chosen four EOS, of which one is soft (EOS : A, Pandharipande (1979) (hyperons)), one is intermediate (EOS : B, Baldo, Bombaci & Burgio (1997) (AV14+3bf)) in stiffness and two are stiff (EOS : C, Walecka (1974) and EOS : D, Sahu, Basu & Datta (1993)). Of these EOS : D is the stiffest.

The structure of a neutron star for a given EOS is described uniquely by two parameters : the gravitational mass ($`M`$) and the angular speed ($`\mathrm{\Omega }`$). For each chosen EOS, we construct constant $`M`$ equilibrium sequences with $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ varying from the non-rotating case upto the centrifugal mass shed limit (rotation rate at which inwardly directed gravitational forces are balanced by outwardly directed centrifugal forces). Depending on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, $`M`$ and the EOS model, neutron stars may have $`R>r_{\mathrm{orb}}`$ or $`R<r_{\mathrm{orb}}`$.

### 2.3 Disc temperature profile calculation

The effective temperature of a thin blackbody disc is given by

$`T_{\mathrm{eff}}(r)`$ $`=`$ $`(F(r)/\sigma )^{1/4}`$ (2)
where $`\sigma `$ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant and $`F`$ is the X-ray energy flux per unit surface area. We calculate $`F`$ using the expression of Page & Thorne (1974) (valid for geometrically thin non-self-gravitating disc embedded in a general axisymmetric space–time) for the accretion disc around a rotating blackhole :

$`F(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{M}}{4\pi r}}f(r)`$ (3)
where

$`f(r)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{K},r}(\stackrel{~}{E}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}\stackrel{~}{l})^2{\displaystyle _{r_{\mathrm{in}}}^r}(\stackrel{~}{E}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}\stackrel{~}{l})\stackrel{~}{l}_{,r}𝑑r`$ (4)
Here $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ is the disc inner edge radius and a comma followed by a variable as subscript to a quantity, represents a derivative of the quantity with respect to the variable.

Bhattacharyya et al. (2000) argue that, though formulated for the case of black holes, these expressions hold quite well also for the case of neutron stars. If $`R>r_{\mathrm{orb}}`$, then the disc will touch the star and we take $`r_{\mathrm{in}}=R`$. Otherwise, $`r_{\mathrm{in}}=r_{\mathrm{orb}}`$.

The temperature profile, of the accretion disc calculated as described in this and the previous subsections is a function of $`M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of the central star for any adopted EOS.

### 2.4 Calculation of the spectrum

For calculating the disc spectrum in full general relativity including light bending effect for rapid rotation we adopt the following procedure.

The observed spectrum from the accretion disc is given by

$`F(E_{\mathrm{ob}})`$ $`=`$ $`(1/E_{\mathrm{ob}}){\displaystyle I_{\mathrm{ob}}(E_{\mathrm{ob}})𝑑\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{ob}}}`$ (5)
where the subscript ‘ob’ denotes the quantity in observer’s frame, $`F`$ is expressed in photons/sec/cm2/keV, $`E`$ is photon energy in keV, $`I`$ is specific intensity and $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ is the solid angle subtended by the source at the observer.

As $`I/E^3`$ remains unchanged along the path of a photon (Misner et al. 1973), it is possible to calculate $`I_{\mathrm{ob}}`$, if $`I_{\mathrm{em}}`$ is known (we use the subscript ‘em’ to denote the quantities in the emitter’s frame). We assume the accretion disc to radiate like a diluted blackbody (see Shimura & Takahara, 1995). So $`I_{\mathrm{em}}`$ is given by

$`I_{\mathrm{em}}`$ $`=`$ $`(1/f^4)B(E_{\mathrm{em}},T_\mathrm{c})`$ (6)
where $`f`$ is the colour factor of the disc, $`B`$ is Planck function and $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ = $`fT_{\mathrm{eff}}`$.

The quantities $`E_{\mathrm{ob}}`$ and $`E_{\mathrm{em}}`$ are related by $`E_{\mathrm{em}}`$ = $`E_{\mathrm{ob}}(1+z)`$, where (1 + $`z`$) contains the effects of both gravitational redshift and Doppler shift. (1 + $`z`$) is given by (Luminet 1979)

$`1+z`$ $`=`$ $`(1+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}b\mathrm{sin}\alpha \mathrm{sin}i)(g_{tt}2\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}g_{t\varphi }`$ (7)
$`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}^2g_{\varphi \varphi })^{1/2}`$
where $`i`$ is the inclination angle of the disc with respect to an observer at infinity, $`b`$ is the impact parameter of the photon relative to the line joining the source and the observer and $`\alpha `$ is the polar angle of the position of the photon on the observer’s photographic plate. Therefore $`bdbd\alpha `$ is the apparent area of a disc element at observer’s sky and the corresponding solid angle is given by

$`d\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{ob}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{bdbd\alpha }{D^2}}`$ (8)
where $`D`$ is the distance of the source from the observer.

## 3 Numerical procedure

For a configuration, described by $`M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (and thus specified by a set of $`g_{\mu \nu }`$), we obtain $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{K}`$. To calculate the spectrum for a given value of $`i`$ with light bending effects, we backtrack the photons path from the observer to the disc, using standard ray tracing techniques (e.g. Chandrasekhar 1983) and the relevant boundary conditions. For the metric (1) that we use, the equations of motion for photons are provided in the Appendix. We cover the disc between radii $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{mid}}=1000r_\mathrm{g}`$; $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ being the radius of the inner edge of the disc and $`r_\mathrm{g}`$ the Schwarzschild radius (increasing $`r_{\mathrm{mid}}`$ has no significant effect on the spectrum). Beyond $`r_{\mathrm{mid}}`$, we ignore the effect of light-bending i.e., we take $`b\mathrm{sin}\alpha =r\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$ ($`\varphi `$ is the azimuthal angle on disc plane) and $`d\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{ob}}`$ = $`(rdrd\varphi \mathrm{cos}i)/D^2`$ (Bhattacharyya et al. 2001).

We have performed several consistency checks on our results: (1) by switching off the light bending effect (i.e. by considering flat space-time while backtracking the photon’s path), we see that the spectrum matches very well with that computed by ignoring light bending effects (calculated by an independent code – Bhattacharyya et al. 2001). Also, in this case, the analytically calculated values of several quantities on the disc plane (e.g. $`r`$, $`\varphi `$, $`d\varphi /dt`$, $`d\theta /dt`$ etc.) are reproduced satisfactorily by our numerical method, (2) an increase in the number of grid points on the ($`b`$,$`\alpha `$) plane do not have any significant effect on the computed spectrum, (3) the spectrum matches very well with the Newtonian spectrum (Mitsuda et al. 1984) at low energy limit. This would imply that for higher frequencies, our spectrum is correct to within 0.2% to 0.3%.

## 4 Results

We calculate the general relativistic spectrum from the accretion disc around rapidly rotating neutron star, taking into account the light bending effect. The spectrum is calculated as a function of 6 parameters : $`M`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, distance of the source ($`D`$), inclination angle ($`i`$) (for face-on, $`i=0\mathrm{°}`$), accretion rate ($`\dot{M}`$) and colour factor $`f`$, for each of the chosen EOS. Our results are displayed in Figs. 1 to 5. In all the displayed spectra, we have assumed $`M=1.4M_{}`$ (canonical mass for neutron stars), $`D=5`$ kpc and $`f=2.0`$.

In Fig. 1, we have plotted the Newtonian spectrum and GR spectra with (LBGR) and without (NLBGR) light bending effect, keeping the values of all the parameters same. At 10 keV, the Newtonian flux is almost 2.5 times the LBGR flux. This is quite expected, because in the inner parts of the disc, Newtonian temperature is considerably higher than the GR temperature (see Fig. 2 of Bhattacharyya et al., 2000). LBGR flux is about 50% higher than NLBGR flux at 10 keV. This is because light bending causes the disc to subtend a larger solid angle at the observer than otherwise. Thus the general effect of light bending is to increase the observed flux.

According to Shimura & Takahara (1995), the thin blackbody description of the accretion disc, as adopted in this paper, is valid for $`0.1\dot{M}_\mathrm{E}<\dot{M}<\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$, where $`\dot{M}_\mathrm{E}L_{\mathrm{Edd}}/c^2`$. Here $`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ is the Eddington luminosity and $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ is the true Eddington accretion rate. For the purpose of demonstration, we have taken three different values of $`\dot{M}`$ in this range (for the mass shed configuration) and plotted the corresponding spectra in Fig. 2. As is expected, we see that the high energy part of the spectrum is more sensitive to the value of $`\dot{M}`$. It is seen that the spectra for different values of $`\dot{M}`$ are easily distinguishable.

The inclination angle $`i`$ is a very important parameter in determining the shape of the spectrum and its overall normalisation. In Fig. 3, we have plotted the spectra for four inclination angles, for the mass shed configuration. We see that the observed flux at low energies is higher for lower values of $`i`$. This is due to the projection effect (proportional to $`\mathrm{cos}i`$). But at higher energies ($`>10`$ keV) this trend is reversed mainly because Doppler effect becomes important. The most energetic photons largely come from the inner portion of the disc, where the linear speed of accreted matter is comparable to the speed of light. The net effect of Doppler broadening is a net blue shift of the spectrum, as a larger amount of flux comes from the blue-shifted regions than from the red-shifted regions. This is a monotonic trend, but it will be noticed from Fig. 3 that the curve for $`i=85\mathrm{°}`$ overcomes that for $`i=60\mathrm{°}`$ only at the edge of the figure, i.e. at energies $`30`$ keV. This is due to the fact that between these two inclinations the difference in the $`\mathrm{cos}i`$ factor is severe, and the blueshift overcomes this only at high energies.

In Fig. 4, we have four panels for four inclination angles. In each panel, we have shown spectra for 3 different $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (corresponding to non-rotating, intermediate and the mass shed configurations). With the increase of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, disc temperature profile does not vary monotonically (see Fig. 3a of Bhattacharyya et al., 2000). Hence the behaviour of the spectrum is also non-monotonic with $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. For non-rotating and mass shed configurations (for the assumed values of other parameters) the temperature profiles are very similar. As a result, the plotted spectra for these two cases lie almost on top of each other. However, for $`i=0\mathrm{°}`$ the flux corresponding to the mass shed configuration is slightly higher than that for $`\mathrm{\Omega }=0`$, while the case is opposite at higher inclinations. This is a result of the inclination dependence of the $`(1+z)`$ factor given in Equation (7).

In Fig. 5, we have compared the spectra for the four EOS models adopted by us, for configurations at the respective mass-shed limits (which correspond to different values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ because of the EOS dependence of the stellar structure). The values of all other parameters have been kept the same. We see that the total flux received varies monotonically with the stiffness parameter, and is higher for the softer EOS. This effect has been noticed earlier by Bhattacharyya et al. (2000). We see that at high energies the fluxes for different EOS are considerably different. Therefore, fitting the observed spectra of LMXBs with our model spectra, particularly in hard X-rays, may provide a way to constrain neutron star EOS. Of course it must be remembered that these computations have been made assuming that the magnetic field of the compact object does not limit the inner boundary of the accretion disc. In the presence of a sufficiently strong magnetic fields, appropriate modifications must be taken into account while calculating the expected flux at high energies.

## 5 Conclusion

In this paper we have computed the observed radiation spectrum from accretion discs around rapidly rotating neutron stars using fully general relativistic disc models. This is the first time such a calculation has been made in an exact way, without making any approximation in the treatment of either rotation or general relativity. In computing the observed spectrum from the disc, we explicitly include the effects of Doppler shift, gravitational redshift and light-bending for an appropriate metric describing space–time around rapidly rotating neutron stars. We find that the effect of light bending is most important in the high-energy ($`>3`$ keV) part of the observed spectrum. Photons at these high energies originate close to the central star, and hence their trajectories are most affected by the light-bending effect. Depending on the viewing angle, this can enhance the observed flux at $`10`$ keV by as much as $`250`$% compared to that expected if light-bending effects are neglected.

The calculations presented here deal only with the multicolour blackbody disc. In reality, of course, there will be additional contributions to the observed spectrum from the boundary layer and also possibly from an accretion disc corona, both of which are likely to add a power-law component at high energies (Popham & Sunyaev 2000, Dove et al 1997). On the other hand, the spectra presented in Figs (2), (3) and (5) should remain essentially unaffected by boundary layer contribution, as these are for neutron stars rotating near the mass shed limit for which the boundary layer luminosity will be negligible. For slowly rotating neutron stars, the disc component of the spectrum can be obtained by fitting and removing the contribution of the boundary layer, provided a good model for the boundary layer spectrum is available. Popham & Sunyaev (2000) have calculated the boundary layer spectrum in the Newtonian approximation. General relativistic modifications need to be included in these calculations to get a realistic estimate of the spectrum of the boundary layer. We plan to address this issue in a future work. In the slow rotation case, the spectrum of the disc itself may be somewhat modified by the presence of a boundary layer if it extends beyond the disc inner radius assumed in our computations here, thus curtailing the inner edge of the disc.

In addition to the contribution of the boundary layer, the possible contribution of an accretion disc corona to the emergent spectrum could also be significant. To be able to constrain the EOS models of neutron stars using the observed spectrum, this contribution must also be accurately estimated. In the present work, we restrict ourselves to thin black–body and non–magnetic accretion discs in order to understand the effect of the EOS models describing neutron stars on the spectrum of the accretion disc alone (and thus neglect the effect of a corona). We view this as the first step in modelling of spectra of accreting neutron stars including the effects of general relativity and rotation.

The comparison of the non-rotating limit of our results with those of the fitting routine GRAD in the X–ray spectral reduction package XSPEC (Ebisawa et al. 1991), shows that the latter model overpredicts the high-energy component of the flux by a large factor. With the help of Ebisawa & Hanawa (private communication) we have been able to trace this disagreement to certain simplifying approximations made in the GRAD code, as well as a couple of incorrect expressions being used there. Conclusions based on the use of the GRAD routine may therefore need to be revised in the light of the new calculations presented here.

The computation of the complete spectrum in the manner presented here is rather time-consuming and therefore not quite suited to routine use. Therefore, in order to make our results available for routine spectral fitting work, we intend to present a series of approximate parametric fits to our computed spectra in a forthcoming publication.

The spectra presented here will find use in constraining the combined parameter set of the mass, the rotation speed and, possibly, the EOS, particularly of weakly magnetised, rapidly rotating neutron stars. The relevant signatures are most prominent in hard X-rays, above $`10`$ keV. Sensitive observations of hard-X-ray spectra of LMXBs, therefore, are needed to fully utilise the potential of these results.

## acknowledgements

We would like to thank late Bhaskar Datta for the discussions at the early stage of the work. We thank Ranjeev Misra for providing us with the GRAD routine and for many discussions. We are very thankful to K. Ebisawa and T. Hanawa for discussions which helped resolve the discrepancy between our results and those obtained from the GRAD routine. We are also grateful to B.R. Iyer for valuable suggestions during the course of this work. SB thanks Pijush Bhattacharjee for encouragement.

## Appendix

For convenience, we use $`\mu `$ ($`=\mathrm{cos}\theta `$) instead of $`\theta `$ and $`s`$ (= $`\overline{r}/(A+\overline{r}`$)) instead of $`r`$ as the coordinates. Consequently, the equation (1), becomes

$`dS^2`$ $`=`$ $`e^{\gamma +\rho }dt^2+e^{2\alpha }((A^2/(1s)^4)ds^2`$ (9)
$`+A^2(s/(1s))^2(1/(1\mu ^2))d\mu ^2)`$
$`+e^{\gamma \rho }A^2(s/(1s))^2(1\mu ^2)(d\varphi \omega dt)^2`$
Here, $`A`$ is a known constant of the dimension of distance.

Now it is quite straight forward to calculate the geodesic equations for photons, which are given below.

$`dt/d\lambda `$ $`=`$ $`e^{(\gamma +\rho )}(1\omega L)`$ (10)
$`d\varphi /d\lambda `$ $`=`$ $`e^{(\gamma +\rho )}\omega (1\omega L)`$ (11)
$`+L/(e^{\gamma \rho }A^2(s/(1s))^2(1\mu ^2))`$
$`(ds/d\lambda )^2`$ $`=`$ $`e^{2\alpha }((1s)^4/A^2)(e^{(\gamma +\rho )}(1\omega L)^2`$ (12)
$`L^2/(e^{\gamma \rho }A^2(s/(1s))^2(1\mu ^2)))`$
$`s^2(1s)^2(1/(1\mu ^2))y^2`$
$`d\mu /d\lambda `$ $`=`$ $`y`$ (13)
$`dy/d\lambda `$ $`=`$ $`2(\alpha _{,\mathrm{s}}+(1/(s(1s))))y(ds/d\lambda )`$ (14)
$`+\alpha _{,\mu }(1/(s(1s)))^2(1\mu ^2)(ds/d\lambda )^2`$
$`(\alpha _{,\mu }+(\mu /(1\mu ^2))y^2`$
$`+((1/2)e^{\gamma \rho 2\alpha }(\gamma _{,\mu }\rho _{,\mu })(1\mu ^2)^2\omega ^2`$
$`e^{\gamma \rho 2\alpha }\mu (1\mu ^2)\omega ^2`$
$`+e^{\gamma \rho 2\alpha }(1\mu ^2)^2\omega \omega _{,\mu }`$
$`(1/2)e^{\gamma +\rho 2\alpha }(\gamma _{,\mu }+\rho _{,\mu })`$
$`((1s)/(As))^2(1\mu ^2))(dt/d\lambda )^2`$
$`+e^{\gamma \rho 2\alpha }(1\mu ^2)^2(\omega _{,\mu }\omega (\gamma _{,\mu }\rho _{,\mu })`$
$`+2\omega (\mu /(1\mu ^2)))(d\varphi /d\lambda )(dt/d\lambda )`$
$`+e^{\gamma \rho 2\alpha }(1\mu ^2)^2((1/2)(\gamma _{,\mu }\rho _{,\mu })`$
$`\mu /(1\mu ^2))(d\varphi /d\lambda )^2`$
where, $`\lambda `$ is the affine parameter, $`L`$ is the negative of the ratio of the $`\varphi `$-component of the angular momentum and the $`t`$-component of the angular momentum of photon and a comma followed by a variable as subscript to a quantity, represents a derivative of the quantity with respect to the variable.


text:
# Nuclear spin driven quantum relaxation in LiY0.998Ho0.002F4

\[

## Abstract

Staircaselike hysteresis loops of the magnetization of a LiY0.998Ho0.002F4 single crystal are observed at subkelvin temperatures and low field sweep rates. This behavior results from quantum dynamics at avoided level crossings of the energy spectrum of single Ho3+ ions in the presence of hyperfine interactions. Enhanced quantum relaxation in constant transverse fields allows the study of the relative magnitude of tunnel splittings. At faster sweep rates, nonequilibrated spin–phonon and spin–spin transitions, mediated by weak dipolar interactions, lead to magnetization oscillations and additional steps.

\]

The problem of quantum dynamics of a two-level system coupled to an environment (boson or fermion bath) is at the core of mesoscopic physics . We show that the new field of “mesoscopic magnetism”, which studies the tunneling of large magnetic moments in the presence of phonons and spins, is not limited to molecular complexes and nanoparticles, but it can be extended to other systems such as rare-earth ions. After the first studies on large spin molecules Mn12-ac  and Fe8 , the role of the spin bath on the tunnel mechanism was shown . In particular, quasistatic fields due to dipolar interactions between molecules lead to a distribution of internal fields, and field fluctuations, essentially of nuclear spins, give homogeneous level broadening allowing the restoration of tunneling in a finite energy window, at low temperature; this broadening being much larger than the phonon one, it is more relevant to induce tunneling. This mechanism is efficient unless all nuclear spins of the molecule are frozen, which occurs only below the mK scale. In low spin molecules, large tunneling gaps favor spin–phonon transitions. Although the hyperfine induced level broadening is the same as in large spin molecules, the phonon bath becomes as important as the spin bath . In all these cases, the role of field fluctuations was clearly evidenced.

This description is for the relatively weak hyperfine interactions of Mn12 or Fe8 molecules, and therefore for incoherent nuclear spin fluctuations. The question as to what really happens when an electronic moment tunnels, while it is strongly coupled to its nuclear spin, has not yet a clear answer. Contrary to the 3$`d`$ group, hyperfine interactions are very large in 4$`f`$ elements. Diluted rare-earth ions in a nonmagnetic insulating single crystal are therefore very suitable to study the possible entanglement of nuclear and electronic moments, when tunneling occurs. Our choice was the weakly doped rare-earth fluoride series LiY1-xRxF4, in which high quality single crystals are mainly investigated for applications in high-power laser diodes . Note that EPR spin-echo of magnetic tunneling states have already been observed in a $`1\%`$ Dy-doped crystal. At higher concentrations, these crystals were used for phase transition studies of dipolar ordered magnets . Among them, the holmium doped fluoride is a random, dipolar coupled system with an Ising ground state doublet ($`g_{\mathrm{eff}}13.3`$ , see also  and references therein) and a pure isotope $`I=7/2`$ nuclear spin. The magnetic properties of the Ising ferromagnet LiHoF4 and spin glass LiY0.833Ho0.167F4 have been studied by ac susceptibility . In particular, enhanced quantum fluctuations, leading to a cross-over to a quantum spin glass, were evidenced in an applied transverse field .

In this letter, we investigate a single crystalline $`0.2\%`$ holmium doped LiYF4 at subkelvin temperatures. The isolated magnetic moments are weakly coupled by dipolar interactions ($`\mu _0H_{\mathrm{dip}}`$ few mT) so that this very diluted insulator should exhibit a nearly single ion quantum behavior, in which we are interested in continuity with our studies on molecular magnets. The crystal has a tetragonal scheelite structure with a C4h space symmetry group ($`I4_1/a`$), and the point symmetry group at Ho3+ sites is S4, almost equivalent to D2d (for LiHoF4, unit cell parameters are $`a=b=5.175`$ $`\AA `$ and $`c=10.74`$ $`\AA `$ ). Because of a very strong spin–orbit coupling, each magnetic ion of 165Ho is characterized by its $`J=8`$ ground state manifold (g$`{}_{J}{}^{}=5/4`$), split by crystal field effects. These last give rise to a large uniaxial magnetic anisotropy, i.e., a high energy barrier hindering the magnetic moment reversal. However, we will see that quantum fluctuations due to significant transverse anisotropy terms drastically reduce this barrier. This effect was very much weaker in Mn12-ac ($`10\%`$ barrier reduction ). Using the $`|J,M>`$ basis and D2d symmetry, the approximate Hamiltonian including hyperfine interaction writes

$`H=H_{\mathrm{crystal}\mathrm{field}}+H_{\mathrm{Zeeman}}+H_{\mathrm{hyperfine}}`$ (1)
with

$`H_{\mathrm{crystal}\mathrm{field}}=\alpha _JB{}_{2}{}^{0}O_2^0`$ (2)
$`+\beta _J(B{}_{4}{}^{0}O{}_{4}{}^{0}+B{}_{4}{}^{4}O{}_{4}{}^{4})+\gamma _J(B{}_{6}{}^{0}O{}_{6}{}^{0}+B{}_{6}{}^{4}O{}_{6}{}^{4}),`$ (3)
$`H_{\mathrm{Zeeman}}=g_J\mu _\mathrm{B}\stackrel{}{J}\stackrel{}{H},H_{\mathrm{hyperfine}}=A_J\stackrel{}{J}\stackrel{}{I}.`$ (4)
The $`\alpha _J`$, $`\beta _J`$, $`\gamma _J`$, and $`O_l^m`$ are Stevens’ coefficients and equivalent operators . Exact diagonalization of the $`136`$-dimensional Hamiltonian (1) was performed, using a set of crystal field parameters obtained by high-resolution optical spectroscopy: $`B{}_{2}{}^{0}=273.9`$ K, $`B{}_{4}{}^{0}=97.7`$ K, $`B{}_{6}{}^{0}=6.5`$ K, $`B{}_{4}{}^{4}=1289.1`$ K, $`B{}_{6}{}^{4}=631.6`$ K . $`A_J`$ was taken as a fitting parameter of the measured resonances (see below). $`J`$ mixing, Jahn-Teller effect and nuclear quadrupole interaction are assumed to be negligible. We first show the results with $`A_J=0`$ in Fig. 1.

The eigenstates transform as one of the four irreducible representations $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{1,2,3,4}`$ of the S4 point group. Significant transverse crystal field terms $`B_4^4O_4^4`$ and $`B_6^4O_6^4`$ mix free ion states, with $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=\pm 4`$, so that eigenvectors are linear combinations either of $`|\pm 7>,|\pm 3>,|1>`$ and $`|5>`$ for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{3,4}`$; $`|\pm 6>,|\pm 2>,|2>`$ and $`|6>`$ for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$; or $`|\pm 8>,|\pm 4>,|0>,|4>`$ and $`|8>`$ for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$. In Fig. 1a), the calculated low-lying states within the $`{}_{}{}^{5}I_{8}^{}`$ multiplet show a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{34}`$ Ising ground state doublet noted as $`|\psi _1^\pm >`$, while the first excited state, a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ singlet, stands at $`9.5`$ K above (direct measurements give $`10\pm 1`$ K ). Fig. 1(a) also shows how the expected large barrier $`10^2`$ K is shortcut by large tunneling gaps due to transverse crystal field terms (emphasized by shaded areas between singlets belonging to the same representation). A strong electronic level repulsion in the low-lying excited $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ states is clearly shown in Fig. 1(b). This defines the energy barrier the magnetic moment has to overcome in order to reverse its polarization. At very low temperatures, the system should be equivalent to a two-level system with an energy barrier of $`10`$ K. Actually, this picture is strongly modified when intraionic dipolar interactions are taken into account ($`A_J0`$). They lead to a more complex diagram in the electronic ground state, showing several level crossings for resonant values $`H_n`$ ($`7n7`$) in Fig. 2. The transverse hyperfine contribution $`\frac{1}{2}A_J(J_+I_{}+J_{}I_+)`$ induces some avoided level crossings between $`|\psi _1^{},I_{z1}>`$ and $`|\psi _1^+,I_{z2}>`$, with $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=|I_{z2}I_{z1}|`$, only when $`\mathrm{\Delta }I/2`$ is an odd integer so that the two electronic low-lying states $`|\psi _1^\pm >`$ are coupled through nondegenerated excited electronic levels.

Magnetic measurements were made at $`0.04<T<1`$ K and for $`\mu _0H<2`$ T, with a micro-SQUID magnetometer  allowing field sweep rates up to 1 T/s. The crystal is first saturated in a large positive field applied along the $`c`$axis $`\mu _0H_{\mathrm{sat}}0.3`$ T, and then the field $`H_z`$ is swept between $`\pm H_{\mathrm{sat}}`$. At slow field sweep rates, an $`\mathrm{𝑖𝑠𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑙}`$ process occurs, leading to staircaselike hysteresis loops at $`T200`$ mK, as shown in Fig. 3. These well defined steps come from quantum relaxation at avoided level crossings. At $`T=50`$ mK, the lowest energy level is mainly populated and magnetization steps are observed for $`1n3`$. The ground and excited tunnel splittings at $`H_z=0`$, being due to very small perturbations such as internal transverse fields, should be very similar. Therefore, quantum tunneling in zero field is mainly associated with the dynamics of the lowest avoided level crossing (the first excited crossing is at $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/k_\mathrm{B}=g_{\mathrm{eff}}\mu _\mathrm{B}H_1/k_\mathrm{B}205`$ mK, assuming $`g_{\mathrm{eff}}13.3`$ ). The amplitude of the next step, the resonance $`n=1`$ at $`\mu _0H_1=23`$ mT, is about ten times larger, suggesting a larger tunnel splitting $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Indeed, Fig. 2 shows that the hyperfine induced tunnel splitting of the third excited avoided level crossing is large enough to render the barrier transparent ($`\mathrm{\Delta }25`$ mK). The relaxation time is thus simply given by thermal activation $`\tau =\tau _0\mathrm{exp}(2\mathrm{\Delta }E/k_\mathrm{B}T)`$, with a long $`\tau _0`$ because spin–lattice relaxation time $`T_1`$ can be hours at very low temperatures and/or as a result of internal fields fluctuations.

In the same trend, the measured magnetization step ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }M(n=1)/\mathrm{\Delta }M(n=1)25`$ at $`T=50`$ mK is approximately equal to the Boltzmann ratio, which confirms that thermally activated quantum relaxation occurs at $`H_z0`$. The barrier, essentially transparent due to this large splitting, becomes again finite out of resonance.

The quantum relaxation is strongly enhanced by a constant transverse field, as a result of an increase of the tunnel splittings (see Fig. 4). In zero longitudinal field, the small tunnel splittings rapidly increase and hysteresis vanishes. A saturation of the magnetization at $`M0`$ is observed in transverse fields larger than $`100`$ mT, when the barrier is nearly transparent, and the small “overshot” with an oscillation in $`M`$ may be due to spin–phonon transitions. As expected for a large tunnel splitting, sensitivity to a small transverse field is very weak for the resonance $`n=1`$. The inset in Fig. 3 shows $`dm/dH`$ at $`T=50`$ mK. The width of the resonant transitions is about $`\mu _0\mathrm{\Delta }H=23`$ mT which is expected from dipolar broadening. Similarly to molecular magnets, quasi-static fields due to dipolar interactions lead to a distribution of internal fields whereas field fluctuations, essentially of F- nuclear spins, give homogeneous level broadening.

A hysteresis loop measured at $`T=50`$ mK for a much faster field sweep rate ($`v=0.3`$ T/s) is shown in Fig. 5(a). A succession of equally spaced large and weak magnetization steps occur at fields $`H_n`$, with $`142n14`$. The larger ones, with integer $`n`$, are associated with several equally spaced level crossings and the smaller steps, with half integer $`n`$, fall just in between when the levels are equally spaced (see Fig. 2). $`dm/dH`$ is used to determine the $`H_n`$ values plotted in Fig. 5(a) inset. From the slope, we accurately obtain $`\mu _0H_n=n\times 23`$ mT. The electronic ground doublet is thus split by hyperfine interaction in eight doublets over an energy range of about $`1.44`$ K. We deduce $`A_J/k_\mathrm{B}38.62`$ mK, to be compared to $`A_J/k_\mathrm{B}40.95`$ mK . The observed hysteresis loops depend sensitively on sample thermalization, showing that the spin–phonon system is not at equilibrium with the cryostat, leading to a phonon bottleneck . At a fast field sweep rate $`v=0.3`$ T/s, the system enters such a regime at $`T1`$ K (moderate sample thermalization) showing hysteresis without any magnetization steps down to $`T600`$ mK. When the field is swept back and forth, a stationary regime occurs and hysteresis loops become nearly temperature-independent below a temperature $`T_c(v)`$ depending on sample thermalization ($`T_c200`$ mK for $`v=0.3`$ T/s). Below $`T600`$ mK, a nearly $`\mathrm{𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐}`$ process occurs, due to a much longer spin–lattice relaxation time $`T_1`$. The spin system becomes more and more isolated from the phonon bath, and energy exchange between electronic and nuclear spins is only possible at fields $`H_n`$. Equilibrium within the spin system is due to either quantum fluctuations at avoided level crossings (integer $`n`$) or to spin–phonon transitions and/or cross-spin relaxation, allowed by weak dipolar interactions, when energy levels are almost equally spaced (integer and half integer $`n`$) . Spin–spin interactions allow two additional steps for $`n=8`$ and $`n=9`$, at fields with equally spaced levels but no level crossing \[Fig. 5(b) inset\]. A small transverse applied field only increases the zero-field magnetization step, showing the weak effect of enhanced quantum fluctuations on hysteresis loops in this regime. Other resonances and small magnetization steps, dominated by cross-spin relaxation, are not affected by a small transverse field, if small enough ($`\mu _0H_T20`$ mT). If the field sweep is suddenly stopped, the spin–phonon system exchanges energy with the cryostat and the magnetization relaxes toward the equilibrium curve.

The asymmetry of the envelope (not drawn) of the peaks in Fig. 5(b), showing that spins reverse mostly after field inversion, and the absence of constriction in the hysteresis loop near $`H_z=0`$, confirm the existence of small barriers, mainly in zero field (tunneling).

In conclusion, we have shown that the quantum rotation of weakly coupled magnetic moments in LiY0.998Ho0.002F4 can be driven and monitored by hyperfine couplings. At very low temperatures, when the field is slowly swept from negative to positive values, the coupled electronic and nuclear moments tunnels from $`|\psi _1^{},I_{z1}>`$ to $`|\psi _1^+,I_{z2}>`$. In a constant transverse field, the magnetization step, associated with incoherent tunneling at the avoided level crossing in zero field, increases very rapidly. It saturates when the barrier is completely transparent. Details of hysteresis loops are in excellent agreement with the level structure of the electronic ground state doublet split by hyperfine interaction in sixteen states. At faster field sweep rates, additional magnetization steps are observed and attributed to cross-spin relaxation and/or spin–phonon transitions in a phonon bottleneck regime. Very diluted Holmium doped LiYF4 is thus a model system to study tunneling of an electronic moment strongly coupled to its nuclear spin.

We are very grateful to I. Chiorescu, J.C. Vial, and A.K. Zvezdin for discussions and to M.F. Joubert and P. Lejay for on-going collaborations. This work has been supported by DRET, Rhône-Alpes, MASSDOTS ESPRIT, MolNanoMag TMR and AFIRST.


text:
# References

The bound state corrections
to the semileptonic decays of the $`B`$ meson.
The light–front approach versus ACM model.

I.L.Grach, P.Yu.Kulikov and I.M.Narodetskii
Institute of the Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow

## Abstract

A generalization of the parton–like formula is used for the first time to find the differential distributions in the inclusive semileptonic weak decays of the $`B`$ meson. The main features of this new approach are the treatment of the $`b`$–quark as an on–mass–shell particle and the inclusion of the effects arising from the $`b`$–quark transverse motion in the $`B`$–meson. Using the $`b`$–quark light–front (LF) distribution function related to the equal time momentum wave function taken from the ACM model we compute the electron energy spectra and the total semileptonic widths of the $`B`$ meson. We find an impressive agreement between the electron energy spectra calculated in the LF approach and the ones obtained in the ACM model, provided the $`b`$ quark mass is identified with the average of the floating $`b`$ quark mass in the ACM model. In spite of the simplicity of the model we obtain a fair good description of the CLEO data for $`|V_{cb}|=0.042`$.

PACS numbers: 12.15.-y, 12.39.Ki, 13.20.He, 13.20.-v, 14:40.Nd

Keywords:  Semileptonic Decays of Beauty Mesons, Light–Front and ACM Models, Lepton Energy Spectrum

1. Introduction. Studying of the leptonic spectra in the weak semileptonic $`BX_c(X_u)\mathrm{}\nu _{\mathrm{}}`$ decays111Throughout this paper we use the charge conjugated notations. is important to extract $`|V_{cb}|`$ and $`|V_{ub}|`$. The latter plays an important role in the determination of the unitarity triangle. Since the $`b`$–quark is heavy compared to the QCD scale, the inclusive semileptonic $`B`$ decays can be treated with the help of an operator product expansion (OPE) combined with the heavy quark expansion (HQE) . The result (away from the endpoint of the spectrum) is that the inclusive differential decay width $`d\mathrm{\Gamma }/dE`$ may be expanded in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/m_b`$, where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is a QCD related scale of order 500 MeV, and $`m_b`$ is the mass of the heavy quark. The leading term (zeroth order in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/m_b`$) is the free quark decay spectrum, the subleading term vanishes, and the subsubleading term involves parameters from the heavy quark theory, but should be rather small, as it is of order $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }/m_b)^2`$. However, near the end point the $`1/m_b`$ expansion has to be replaced by an expansion in twist. To describe this region one has to introduce a so–called ‘shape function’, which in principle introduces a large hadronic uncertainty. This is quite analogous to what happens for the structure function in deep–inelastic scattering in the region where the Bjorken variable $`x_B1`$. A model independent determination of the shape function is not available at the present time, therefore a certain model dependence in this region seems to be unavoidable, unless lattice data become reasonably precise.

As to phenomenological analyzes of the photon spectra up to now they have been solely based on the ACM model , . The various light–front (LF) approaches to consideration of the inclusive semileptonic transitions were suggested in Refs. . In Refs. ,  the Infinite Momentum Frame prescription $`p_b=\xi P_B`$, and, correspondingly, the floating $`b`$ quark mass $`m_b^2(\xi )=\xi ^2M_B^2`$ have been used. The transverse $`b`$ quark momenta were consequently neglected. In Ref.  the $`b`$–quark was considered as an on–mass–shell particle with the definite mass $`m_b`$ and the effects arising from the $`b`$–quark transverse motion in the $`\overline{B}`$–meson were included. The corresponding ansätz of Ref.  reduces to a specific choice of the primordial LF distribution function $`|\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)|^2`$, which represents the probability to find the $`b`$ quark carrying a LF fraction $`\xi `$ and a transverse momentum squared $`p_{}^2=|𝐩_{}|^2`$. As a result, a new parton–like formula for the inclusive semileptonic $`bc,u`$ width has been derived , which is similar to the one obtained by Bjorken et al.  in case of infinitely heavy $`b`$ and $`c`$ quarks.

In this paper, we use the techniques developed in Ref.  to evaluate the non–perturbative corrections to the lepton spectrum in the inclusive $`BX_c\mathrm{}\nu _{\mathrm{}}`$ decays. We strive to implement the binding and the $`B`$–meson wave function effects on the lepton energy spectrum. The main purpose of the paper is to confront the lepton spectra and the total semileptonic decay widths calculated in the LF and ACM approaches. We find that the discrepancy between the two is very small numerically.

2. ACM versus LF. The decay spectrum in the ACM model is determined by the kinematics constrains on the $`b`$ quark. It incorporates some of the corrections related to the fact that the decaying $`b`$ quark is not free, but in a bound state. The model treats the $`B`$ meson with the mass $`m_B`$ as consisting of the heavy $`b`$ quark plus a spectator with fixed mass $`m_{sp}`$; the latter usually represents a fit parameter. The spectator quark has a momentum distribution $`\varphi (|𝐩|)`$ where $`𝐩`$ is its three-dimensional momentum. The momentum distribution is usually taken to be Gaussian:

$$\varphi (|𝐩|)=\frac{4}{\sqrt{\pi }p_f^3}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{|𝐩|^2}{p_f^2}\right),$$
(1)
which is normalized so that the integral over all momenta of $`\varphi (|𝐩|)p^2`$ is 1. The energy-momentum conservation in the $`B`$ meson vertex implies that the $`b`$ quark energy $`E_b=m_B\sqrt{𝐩^2+m_{sp}^2}`$, where $`m_B`$ is the mass of the $`B`$ meson; thus the $`b`$ quark cannot possess a definite mass. Instead, one obtains a “floating” $`b`$ quark mass $`(m_b^f)^2=m_B^2+m_{sp}^22m_B\sqrt{𝐩^2+m_{sp}^2}`$ , which depends on $`|𝐩|`$. The lepton spectrum is first obtained from the spectrum $`d\mathrm{\Gamma }_b^{(0)}(m_f,E^{})/dE^{}`$ of the $`b`$ quark of invariant mass $`m_b^f`$ (in the $`b`$ quark rest frame) and then boosting back to the rest frame of the $`B`$ meson and averaging over the weight function $`\varphi (|𝐩|)`$ (further details can be found in the original work ).

The LF approach differs from that of the ACM model in two respects. First, similar to the ACM model the LF quark model treats the beauty meson $`B`$ as consisting of the heavy $`b`$ quark plus a spectator quark. Both quarks have fixed masses, $`m_b`$ and $`m_{sp}`$, though. This is at variance with the ACM model, that has been introduced in order to avoid the notion of the heavy quark mass at all. Secondly, the calculation of the distribution over lepton energy in the LF approach does not requires any boosting procedure but instead is based on the standard Lorentz–invariant kinematical analysis (see e.g. Ref. ), which we now briefly discuss.

There are three independent kinematical variables in the inclusive phenomenology, for which we choose the lepton energy $`E_{\mathrm{}},q^2`$, where $`q=p_{\mathrm{}}+p_\nu _{\mathrm{}}`$, and the invariant mass $`M_X^2=(p_Bq)^2`$ of a hadronic state. Introducing the dimensionless variables $`y=2E_{\mathrm{}}/m_B`$, $`t=q^2/m_B^2`$, and $`s=M_X^2/m_B^2`$, the differential decay rate for semileptonic $`B`$ decay can be written as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}}{dy}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2m_B^5}{64\pi ^3}}|V_{cb}|^2{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{t_{max}}{}}}𝑑t{\displaystyle \underset{s_0}{\overset{s_{max}}{}}}𝑑s`$ (2)
$`\times \left\{tW_1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[y(1+ts)y^2t]W_2+t[{\displaystyle \frac{1+ts}{2}}y]W_3+\mathrm{}\right\},`$
where the structure functions $`W_i=W_i(s,t)`$ appear in the decomposition of the hadronic tensor $`W_{\alpha \beta }`$ in Lorentz covariants . The ellipsis in (2) denote the terms proportional to the lepton mass squared. The kinematical limits of integration can be found from equation

$$\frac{s}{1y}+\frac{t}{y}1.$$
(3)
They are given by $`0yy_{max}=1\left(m_{X_c}^{(min)}/m_B\right)^2`$, where $`m_{X_c}^{(min)}`$ is the minimal mass of the hadronic state $`X_c`$, $`s_{max}=1+t(y+t/y)`$, and $`t_{max}=y((1(1y_{max})/(1y))`$.

3. Light–cone distribution functions. In a parton model we treat inclusive semileptonic $`BX_c\mathrm{}\nu _{\mathrm{}}`$ decay in a direct analogy to deep-inelastic scattering. Specifically, we assume that the sum over all possible charm final states $`X_c`$ can be modeled by the decay width of an on–shell $`b`$ quark into on–shell $`c`$–quark weighted with the $`b`$–quark distribution. Following the above assumption, the hadronic tensor $`W_{\alpha \beta }`$ is written as

$$W_{\alpha \beta }=w_{\alpha \beta }^{(cb)}(p_c,p_b)\delta [(p_bq)^2m_c^2]\frac{|\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)|^2}{\xi }\theta (\epsilon _c)𝑑\xi d^2p_{},$$
(4)
where

$$w_{\alpha \beta }^{(cb)}(p_c,p_b)=\frac{1}{2}\underset{spins}{}\overline{u}_cO_\alpha u_b\overline{u}_bO_\beta ^+u_c,$$
(5)
with $`O_\alpha =\gamma _\alpha (1\gamma _5)`$. The factor $`1/\xi `$ in Eq. (4) comes from the normalization of the $`B`$ meson vertex .

Eq. (4) amounts to averaging the perturbative decay distribution over motion of heavy quark governed by the distribution function $`f(x,p_{}^2)=|\psi (x,p_{}^2)|^2`$. In this respect our approach is similar to the parton model in deep inelastic scattering, although it is not really a parton model in its standard definition. The normalization condition reads

$$\pi \underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑\xi 𝑑p_{}^2f(\xi ,p_{}^2)=1.$$
(6)
The function $`\theta (\epsilon _c)`$ where $`\epsilon _c`$ is the $`c`$–quark energy is inserted in Eq. (4) for consistency with the use of valence LF wave function to calculate the $`b`$–quark distribution in the $`B`$–meson.

Since we do not have an explicit representation for the B–meson Fock expansion in QCD, we shall proceed by making an ansatz for $`\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)`$. This is model dependent enterprise but has its close equivalent in studies of electron spectra using the ACM model. We choose the momentum space structure of an equal time (ET) wave function $`\varphi (|𝐩|)`$ as in Eq. (1). We convert from ET to LF momenta by leaving the transverse momenta unchanged and letting

$$p_{iz}=\frac{1}{2}(p_i^+p_i^{})=\frac{1}{2}(p_i^+\frac{p_i^2+m_i^2}{p_i^+})$$
(7)
for both the $`b`$–quark $`(i=b)`$ and the quark–spectator $`(i=sp)`$. The longitudinal LF momentum fractions $`\xi _i`$ are defined as $`\xi _{sp}=p_{sp}^+/P_B^+`$, $`\xi _b=p_b^+/P_B^+`$, with $`\xi _b+\xi _{sp}=1`$. In the $`B`$–meson rest frame $`P_B^+=m_B`$. Then for the distribution function $`|\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)|^2(\xi =\xi _b)`$ normalized according to (6) one obtains 222On the same footing one can consider $`|𝐩|`$ in (1) as the relative momentum between heavy and light quarks. In this case it is more convenient to use the quark–antiquark rest frame instead of the $`B`$–meson rest frame. Recall that in the LF formalism these two frames are different. Then the longitudinal LF momentum fractions $`\xi _i`$ are defined as $`\xi _{sp}=p_{sp}^+/M_0`$, $`\xi _b=p_b^+/M_0`$, where the free mass $`M_0`$ is $`M_0=\sqrt{m_b^2+𝐩^2}+\sqrt{m_{sp}^2+𝐩^2}`$ with $`𝐩^2=p_{}^2+p_z^2`$$`p_z=(\xi \frac{1}{2})M_0(m_b^2m_{sp}^2)/2M_0`$. In this case the explicit form of $`|p_z/\xi |`$ is given e.g. by Eq. (10) of Ref. . We have checked that numerically both approaches yield identical results for the electron spectra

$$|\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)|^2=\frac{4}{\sqrt{\pi }p_f^3}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{p_{}^2+p_z^2}{p_f^2}\right)\left|\frac{p_z}{\xi }\right|,$$
(8)
where

$$p_z^2(\xi ,p_{}^2)=\frac{1}{2}\left((1\xi )m_B\frac{p_{}^2+m_{\mathrm{sp}}^2}{(1\xi )m_B}\right)\mathrm{and}\left|\frac{p_z}{\xi }\right|=\frac{1}{2}\left(m_B+\frac{p_{}^2+m_{\mathrm{sp}}^2}{(1\xi )^2m_B}\right).$$
(9)
The calculation of the structure functions $`W_i(t,s)`$ in the LF parton approximation (4) is straightforward. The result is

$$W_i(t,s)=w_i(s,t,\xi ,p_{}^2)\delta [(p_bq)^2m_c^2]\frac{|\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)|^2}{\xi }\theta (\epsilon _c)𝑑\xi d^2p_{},$$
(10)
where $`w_i(s,t,\xi ,p_{}^2)`$ are the structure functions for the free quark decay. For further details see Appendix of . Eq. (10) differs from the corresponding expressions of Refs.  and  by the non–trivial dependence on $`p_{}^2`$ which enters both $`|\psi (\xi ,p_{}^2)|^2`$ and argument of the $`\delta `$–function. For further details see 333Note that the expressions for $`w_i`$ in Ref.  miss an extra factor of 2..

4. Results. Having specified the non–perturbative aspects of our calculations, we proceed to present numerical results for the lepton spectrum in the decay $`BX_ce\nu _e`$. Our main computation refers to the case $`m_{sp}=0.15`$ GeV, $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV as chosen in Ref. .

The choice of $`m_b`$ in our approach deserves some comments. In the ACM model, it was shown ,  (see also ) that the corrections to first order in $`1/m_b`$ both to the inclusive semileptonic width and to the regular part of the lepton spectrum can be absorbed into the definition of the quark mass: $`m_b^{ACM}=<m_b^f>`$, where $`<m_b^f>`$ is the value of the floating mass, averaged over the distribution $`\varphi (|𝐩|)`$.

The choice of $`m_b`$ in the LF approach was first addressed in the context of the LF model for $`bs\gamma `$ transitions in Ref. . Using the scaling feature of the photon spectrum in the LF model, it was suggested that $`m_b^{LF}`$ can be defined from the requirement of the vanishing of the first moment of the distribution function. This condition coincides with that used in HQE to define the pole mass of the $`b`$–quark. In this way one avoids an otherwise large (and model dependent) correction of order $`1/m_b`$ but at expense of introducing the shift in the constituent quark mass which largely compensates the bound state effects. It has been also demonstrated that the values of $`m_b^{LF}`$ found by this procedure agree well with the average values $`<m_b^f>`$ in the ACM model. The photon energy spectra calculated in the LF approach were found to agree well with the ones obtained in the ACM model.

Accepting the identification $`m_b^{LF}=m_b^{ACM}`$ we want now to check whether this result holds for the description of the other channels, like $`bc`$. We find again a good agreement between the LF and ACM results but now for the semileptonic $`bc`$ decays. The results of our computations of electron spectra and the semileptonic widths are reported in Fig.1 and Table 1 using $`|V_{cb}|=0.04`$. The different curves in Fig.1 correspond to the different values of $`p_f`$. For each case we show separately the inclusive differential semileptonic decay widths for the LF and ACM models and the free quark decay. The quark decay spectra vanish for $`y>(m_b/m_B)(1m_c^2/m_b^2)`$, whereas the physical endpoint is $`y_{max}=1m_D^2/m_B^2`$, where $`m_D`$ is the mass of the $`D`$ meson. In the LF approach the endpoint for the electron spectrum is in fact not $`y_{max}`$ but $`y_{max}^{LF}=1m_c^2/m_B^2`$. This is the direct consequence of the $`p_{}^2`$ integration in Eq. (10) . Note that $`y_{max}^{LF}`$ coincides with $`y_{max}^{ACM}`$ with accuracy $`m_{sp}/m_B`$. For $`m_c1.5`$ GeV the difference between $`y_{max}^{LF}y_{max}^{ACM}`$ and $`y_{max}`$ is of the order $`10^2`$. Another possibility advocated in  is to sum the electron spectra from the exclusive $`BD,D^{}`$ channels and from the inclusive $`BX_c`$ channels, where $`X_c`$ is the hadronic state with the mass $`m_{X_c}m_D^{}`$. Such the ‘hybrid’ approach will be considered elsewhere.

In Table 1 for various values of $`p_f`$, we give the corresponding values of the total semileptonic width for the free quark with the mass $`m_b=<m_b^f>`$ and the $`B`$ meson semileptonic widths, calculated using the LF and ACM approaches, respectively. In the last two columns, we give the fractional deviation $`\delta =\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}/\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}^b`$ (in per cent) between the semileptonic widths determined in the LF and ACM models and that of the free quark. The agreement between the LF and ACM approaches for the electron spectra is excellent for small $`p_f`$ as is exhibited in Fig.1. A similar agreement also holds for integrated rates shown in Table 1. This agreement is seen to be breaking down at $`p_f0.4`$ GeV, but even for $`p_f0.5`$ GeV the difference between the ACM and LF inclusive widths is still small and is of the order of a per cent level.

Finally, we calculate the $`bc`$ spectrum and compare it with the experimental data from the CLEO collaboration . This is a direct calculation of the spectrum and not a $`\chi ^2`$ fit. We briefly investigated the sensitivity of the electron spectra to other parameters of the models and found that the choice $`p_f=0.4`$ GeV, $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV $`m_{sp}=0.15`$ GeV is quite acceptable.

We display the results in Fig.2, where the three theoretical curves are presented for the LF, ACM and free quark models. In these calculations we have implicitly included the $`O(\alpha _s)`$ perturbative corrections arising from gluon Bremsstrahllung and one–loop effects which modify an electron energy spectra at the partonic level (see e.g.  and references therein). It is customary to define a correction function $`G(x)`$ to the electron spectrum $`d\mathrm{\Gamma }_b^{(0)}`$ calculated in the tree approximation for the free quark decay through

$$\frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }_b}{dx}=\frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }_b^{(0)}}{dx}\left(1\frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }G(x)\right),$$
(11)
where $`x=2E/m_b`$. The function $`G(x)`$ contains the logarithmic singularities $`\mathrm{ln}^2(1x)`$ which for $`m_c=0`$ appear at the quark-level endpoints $`x_{max}=1`$. This singular behaviour at the end point is clearly a signal of the inadequacy of the perturbative expansion in this region. The problem is solved by taking into account the bound state effects . Since the radiative corrections must be convoluted with the distribution function the endpoints of the perturbative spectra are extended from the quark level to the hadron level and the logarithmic singularities are eliminated. In actual calculations we neglect the terms $`\rho `$ in $`G(x)`$ and take this function from , Eq. (4.10).

The agreement with the experimental data is good. Using $`|V_{cb}|=0.042`$ for the overall normalization444This value agrees with the combined average $`|V_{cb}|=(40.2\pm 1.9)\times 10^3`$ of Ref. . we obtain for the semileptonic branching ratios

$$BR_{LF}=10.16\%,BR_{ACM}=10.23\%BR_{free}=10.37\%,$$
(12)
in agreement with the experimental finding  $`BR_{SL}=10.49\pm 0.17\pm 0.43\%`$.

4. Conclusions. We have applied a new LF formula  to calculate the partial electron spectra in the semileptonic $`B`$ decays. Using the ET and LF $`b`$–quark distribution functions related by a simple kinematical transformation we compared the LF and ACM models by computing the $`bc`$ decays for $`m_b^{LF}=<m_b^f>`$. A summary of our results is presented in Table 1 and Fig.1 shows a good agreement between the results of the two models. We have also calculated (Fig. 2) the $`bc`$ spectrum including the perturbative corrections and found an agreement with the experimental data from the CLEO collaboration . A more detailed fit to the measured spectrum can impose constrains on the distribution function and the mass of the charm quark. Such the fit should also account for detector resolution.

The same formulae can be also applied for nonleptonic $`B`$ decay widths (corresponding to the underlying quark decays $`bcq_1q_2`$) thus making it possible to calculate the $`B`$ lifetime. A preview of this calculation can be found in . It would be interesting to check whether the effective values of the $`b`$–quark mass can appear to be approximately the same for different quark channels and for different beauty hadrons. This work is in progress, and the results will be reported elsewhere.

We thank Marco Battaglia and Pepe Salt for the discussion and Karen Ter–Martirosyan for his interest in this work. This work was supported in part RFBR grants Refs. 00-02-16363 and 00-15-96786.

Table. For the values of $`p_f`$ in column (1) we display the average value of the floating b–quark mass $`<m_b^f>`$ (both in units of GeV) in the second column and the total semileptonic width of the free b–quark (in units of ps-1) in the third column. In the forth and fifth columns we compare the total semileptonic widths, calculated in the ACM and LF approaches, respectively. In all cases $`m_{sp}=0.15`$ GeV and $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV and the radiative corrections are neglected. In the sixth and seventh columns, we give the fractional deviation in percent between the semileptonic widths determined in the LF and ACM models and that of the free quark. A momentum distribution of the b-quark is taken in the standard Gaussian form (1) with the Fermi momentum $`p_f`$. $`|V_{cb}|=0.04`$.

| $`p_f`$ | $`<m_b^f>`$ | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}^b`$ | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}^{ACM}`$ | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}^{LF}`$ | $`\delta ^{ACM}`$ | $`\delta ^{LF}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0.1 | 5.089 | 0.1007 | 0.1005 | 0.1005 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| 0.2 | 5.004 | 0.0906 | 0.0902 | 0.0901 | 0.4 | 0.5 |
| 0.3 | 4.905 | 0.0799 | 0.0792 | 0.0789 | 0.9 | 1.2 |
| 0.4 | 4.800 | 0.0696 | 0.0688 | 0.0682 | 1.1 | 2.0 |
| 0.5 | 4.692 | 0.0602 | 0.0592 | 0.0584 | 1.7 | 3.0 |

Figure 1. The inclusive differential semileptonic decay widths $`d\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SL}/dE_e`$ in unites ps-1GeV-1 for the LF model (thick solid lines), ACM model (thin solid lines), and the free quark decays (dashed lines). The parameters are $`p_f=0.20.5`$ GeV, $`m_{sp}=0.15`$ GeV, and $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV. $`|V_{cb}|=0.04`$.

Figure 2. The predicted electron energy spectrum compared with the CLEO data . The calculation uses $`p_f=0.4`$ GeV, $`m_b=4.8`$ GeV, $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV, and $`\alpha _s=0.25`$ for the perturbative corrections. Thick solid line is the LF result, thin solid line is the ACM result, dashed line refers to the free quark decay. The spectra normalized to $`10.16\%`$, $`10.23\%`$, and $`10.36\%`$, respectively. $`|V_{cb}|=0.042`$.