text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Searching for fast algorithms to solve certain problems is a central and difficult task in computer science. Positive results usually come from explicit constructions of efficient algorithms for specific problem classes. Levin’s algorithm is one of the few general purpose speed-ups. Within a (large) factor, it is the fastest algorithm to invert a function $`g:YX`$, if $`g`$ is easy to evaluate \[Lev73, Lev84\]. Given $`x`$, an inversion algorithm $`p`$ tries to find a $`y`$ with $`g(y)=x`$ by evaluating $`g`$ on a trial sequence $`y_iY`$. Levin search runs all such algorithms $`p`$ in parallel with relative computation time $`2^{l(p)}`$; i.e. a time fraction $`2^{l(p)}`$ is devoted to execute $`p`$, where $`l(p)`$ is the length of program $`p`$ (coded binary). The total computation time to find a solution (if one exists) is bounded by $`2^{l(p)}time_p`$, where $`p`$ is any program of length $`l(p)`$ finding a solution in time $`time_p`$. Hence, Levin search is optimal within a multiplicative constant in computation time. It can be modified to handle time-limited optimization problems as well \[Sol86\]. Many, but not all problems are of inversion or optimization type. The matrix multiplication example, considered in the next section, for instance, cannot be brought into this form. Furthermore, the large factor $`2^{l(p)}`$ somewhat limits the applicability.

A wider class of problems can be phrased in the following way. Given a formal specification of a problem depending on some parameter $`xX`$, we are interested in a fast algorithm computing solution $`yY`$. This means that we are interested in a fast algorithm computing $`f:XY`$, where $`f`$ is a formal specification of the problem. For function inversion problems, $`f:=g^1`$. Ideally, we would like to have the fastest algorithm, maybe apart from some small constant factor in computation time. Unfortunately, Blum’s Speed-up Theorem \[Blu67, Blu71\] shows that there are problems for which an (incomputable) sequence of speed-improving algorithms (of increasing size) exists, but no fastest algorithm, however.

In the approach presented here, we consider only those algorithms which provably solve a given problem, and have a fast (i.e. quickly computable) time bound. Neither the programs themselves, nor the proofs need to be known in advance. Under these constraints we construct the asymptotically fastest algorithm save a factor of 5 that solves any formally defined problem $`f`$.

Theorem 1. Let $`p^{}`$ be a given algorithm computing $`p^{}(x)`$ from x, or, more generally, a specification of a function. Let $`p`$ be any algorithm, computing provably the same function as $`p^{}`$ with computation time provably bounded by the function $`t_p(x)`$ for all $`x`$. $`time_{t_p}(x)`$ is the time needed to compute the time bound $`t_p(x)`$. Then the algorithm $`M_p^{}`$ constructed in Section 3 computes $`p^{}(x)`$ in time

$$time_{M_p^{}}(x)\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}5}t_p(x)+d_ptime_{t_p}(x)+c_p$$

with constants $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$ depending on $`p`$ but not on $`x`$. Neither $`p`$, $`t_p`$, nor the proofs need to be known in advance for the construction of $`M_p^{}(x)`$.

Known time bounds for practical problems can often be computed very quickly, i.e. $`time_{t_p}(x)/time_p(x)`$ often converges very quickly to zero. Furthermore, from a practical point of view, the provability restrictions are often rather weak. Hence, we have constructed for every problem a solution, which is asymptotically only a factor $`5`$ slower than the (provably) fastest algorithm! There is no large multiplicative factor, as in Levin’s algorithm, and the problems are not restricted to inversion problems. What somewhat spoils the practical applicability of $`M_p^{}`$ is the large additive constant $`c_p`$, which will be estimated in Section 4.

An interesting consequence of Theorem 1, discussed in Section 6, is that the fastest program that computes a certain function is also one of the shortest programs that provably computes this function. Looking for larger programs saves, at most, a finite number of computation steps, but cannot improve the time order.

In Section 2 we elucidate the theorem and the range of applicability on several examples. In Section 3 we give formal definitions of the expressions time, proof, compute, etc., which occur in Theorem 1, and define the fast algorithm $`M_p^{}`$. The central idea is to enumerate all programs $`p`$ equivalent to $`p^{}`$ by enumerating all proofs. In Section 4 we analyze the algorithm $`M_p^{}`$, especially its computation time, prove Theorem 1, and give upper bounds for the constants $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$. Subtleties regarding the underlying machine model are briefly discussed in Section 5. In Section 6 we show that the fastest program computing a certain function is also one of the shortest programs provably computing this function. For this purpose, we extend the definition of the Kolmogorov complexity of a string and define two new natural measures for the complexity of functions and programs. Section 7 outlines generalizations of Theorem 1 to i/o streams and other time-measures. Conclusions are given in Section 8.

## 2 Applicability

To illustrate Theorem 1, we consider the problem of multiplying two $`n\times n`$ matrices. If $`p^{}`$ is the standard algorithm for multiplying two matrices111Instead of interpreting $`R`$ as the set of real numbers one might take the field $`IF_2=\{0,1\}`$ to avoid subtleties arising from large numbers. Arithmetic operations are assumed to need one unit of time. $`xR^{nn}\times R^{nn}`$ of size $`l(x)n^2`$, then $`t_p^{}(x):=2n^3`$ upper bounds the true computation time $`time_p^{}(x)=n^2(2n1)`$. We know there exists an algorithm $`p^{}`$ for matrix multiplication with $`time_p^{}(x)t_p^{}(x):=cn^{2.81}`$ \[Str69\]. The time-bound function (cast to an integer) can, as in many cases, be computed very fast, $`time_{t_p^{}}(x)=O(log^2n)`$. Hence, using Theorem 1, also $`M_p^{}`$ is fast, $`time_{M_p^{}}(x)=5cn^{2.81}+O(log^2n)`$. Of course, $`M_p^{}`$ would be of no real use if $`p^{}`$ is already the fastest program, since $`p^{}`$ is known and could be used directly. We do not know however, whether there is an algorithm $`p^{\prime \prime }`$ with $`time_{p^{\prime \prime }}(x)dn^2logn`$, for instance. But if it does exist, $`time_{M_p^{}}(x)5dn^2logn+O(1)`$ for all $`x`$ is guaranteed. The matrix multiplication example has been chosen for specific reasons. First, it is not an inversion or optimization problem, hence unsuitable for Levin search. Second, although matrix multiplication is a very important and time-consuming issue, $`p^{}`$ is not used in practice, since $`c`$ is so large that for all practically occurring $`n`$, the cubic algorithm is faster. The same is true for $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$, but we must admit that although $`c`$ is large, the bounds we obtain for $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$ are tremendous. On the other hand, even Levin search, which has a tremendous multiplicative factor, has been successfully applied \[Sch97, SZW97\], when handled with care. The same should hold for Theorem 1, as will be discussed. We avoid the $`O()`$ notation as far as possible, as it can be severely misleading (e.g. $`10^{42}=O(1)`$).

An obvious time bound for $`p`$ is the actual computation time itself. An obvious algorithm to compute $`time_p(x)`$ is to count the number of steps needed for computing $`p(x)`$. Hence, inserting $`t_p=time_p`$ into Theorem 1 and using $`time_{time_p}(x)time_p(x)`$, we see that the computation time of $`M_p^{}`$ is optimal within a multiplicative constant $`(d_p+5)`$ and an additive constant $`c_p`$. The result is weaker than the one in Theorem 1, but no assumption on the computability of time bounds had to be made.

When do we trust a fast algorithm to solve a problem? At least for well specified problems, like satisfiability, solving a combinatoric puzzle, computing the digits of $`\pi `$, …, we usually invent algorithms, prove that they solve the problem and in many cases also can prove good and fast time bounds. In these cases, the provability assumptions in Theorem 1 are no real restriction. The same holds for approximate algorithms which guarantee a precision $`\epsilon `$ within a known time bound (many numerical algorithms are of this kind). For exact/approximate programs provably computing/converging to the right answer (e.g. traveling salesman problem, and also many numerical programs), but for which no good, and easy to compute time bound exists, $`M_p`$ is only optimal apart from a huge constant factor $`5+d_p`$ in time, as discussed above. A precursor of algorithm $`M_p^{}`$ for this case, in a special setting can be found in \[Hut00\]. For poorly specified problems, Theorem 1 does not help at all.

## 3 The Fast Algorithm

The idea of the algorithm $`M_p^{}`$ is to enumerate proofs of increasing length in some formal axiomatic system. If a proof actually proves that $`p`$ and $`p^{}`$ are functionally equivalent and $`p`$ has time bound $`t_p`$, add $`(p,t_p)`$ to a list L. The program $`p`$ in $`L`$ with the currently smallest time bound $`t_p(x)`$ is executed. By construction, the result $`p(x)`$ is identical to $`p^{}(x)`$. The trick to achieve the time bound stated in Theorem 1, is to schedule everything in a proper way, in order not to lose too much performance by computing slow $`p`$’s and $`t_p`$’s before the $`p`$ has been found.

To avoid confusion, we formally define $`p`$ and $`t_p`$ to be binary strings. That is, $`p`$ is neither a program nor a function, but can be informally interpreted as such. A formal definition of the interpretations of $`p`$ is given below. We say “p computes function f”, when a universal reference Turing machine $`U`$ on input $`(p,x)`$ computes $`f(x)`$ for all $`x`$. This is denoted by $`U(p,x)=f(x)`$. To be able to talk about proofs, we need a formal logic system $`(,\lambda ,y_i,c_i,f_i,R_i,,,=,\mathrm{})`$, and axioms, and inference rules. A proof is a sequence of formulas, where each formula is either an axiom or inferred from previous formulas in the sequence by applying the inference rules. We only need to know that provability, Turing Machines, and computation time can be formalized:

1. The set of (correct) proofs is enumerable.
2. A term $`u`$ can be defined such that the formula $`[y:u(p,y)=u(p^{},y)]`$ is true if and only if $`U(p,x)=U(p^{},x)`$ for all $`x`$, i.e. if $`p`$ and $`p^{}`$ describe the same function.
3. A term $`tm`$ can be defined such that the formula $`[tm(p,x)=n]`$ is true if, and only if the computation time of $`U`$ on $`(p,x)`$ is $`n`$, i.e. if $`n=time_p(x)`$.

We say that $`p`$ is provably equivalent to $`p^{}`$ if the formula $`[y:u(p,y)=u(p^{},y)]`$ can be proved.

$`M_p^{}`$ starts three algorithms $`A`$, $`B`$, and $`C`$ running in parallel.

1. Algorithm $`M_p^{}(x)`$
2. Initialize the shared variables $`L:=\{\},`$ $`t_{fast}:=\mathrm{},`$ $`p_{fast}:=p^{}`$.
3. Start algorithms $`A`$, $`B`$, and $`C`$ in parallel with 10%, 10% and 80%
computational resources, respectively.
That is, $`C`$ performs 8 steps when $`A`$ and $`B`$ perform 1 step each.

1. Algorithm $`A`$
2. for $`i`$:=1,2,3,… do
3. pick the $`i^{th}`$ proof in the list of all proofs and
isolate the last formula in the proof.
4. if this formula is equal to $`[y:u(p,y)=u(p^{},y)u(t,y)tm(p,y)]`$
for some strings $`p`$ and $`t`$,
then add $`(p,t)`$ to $`L`$.
5. next $`i`$

1. Algorithm $`B`$
2. for all $`(p,t)L`$
3. run $`U`$ on all $`(t,x)`$ in parallel for all $`t`$ with relative computational resources $`2^{l(p)l(t)}`$.
4. if $`U`$ halts for some $`t`$ and $`U(t,x)<t_{fast}`$,
then $`t_{fast}:=U(t,x)`$ and $`p_{fast}:=p`$.
5. continue $`(p,t)`$

1. Algorithm $`C`$
2. for k:=1,2,4,8,16,32,… do
3. pick the currently fastest program $`p:=p_{fast}`$ with time bound $`t_{fast}`$.
4. run $`U`$ on $`(p,x)`$ for $`k`$ steps.
5. if $`U`$ halts in less than $`k`$ steps,
6. then print result $`U(p,x)`$ and abort computation of $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$.
7. continue $`k`$.

Note that $`A`$ and $`B`$ only terminate when aborted by $`C`$. The discussion of the algorithm(s) in the following sections clarifies details and proves Theorem 1.

## 4 Time Analysis

Henceforth we return to the convenient abbreviations $`p(x):=U(p,x)`$ and $`t_p(x):=U(t_p,x)`$. Let $`p^{}`$ be some fixed algorithm that is provably equivalent to $`p^{}`$, with computation time $`time_p^{}`$ provably bounded by $`t_p^{}`$. Let $`l(proof(p^{}))`$ be the length of the binary coding of the, for instance, shortest proof. Computation time always refers to true overall computation time, whereas computation steps refer to instruction steps. $`steps=\alpha time`$, if a percentage $`\alpha `$ of computation time is assigned to an algorithm.

A) To write down (not to invent!) a proof requires $`O(l(proof))`$ steps. To check whether the sequence of formulas constitutes a valid proof requires $`O(l(proof)^2)`$ steps. There are less than $`2^{l+1}`$ proofs of length $`l`$. Algorithm $`A`$ receives $`\alpha =10\%`$ of relative computation time. Hence, for a proof of $`(p^{},t_p^{})`$ to occur, and for $`(p^{},t_p^{})`$ to be added to $`L`$, needs, at most, time $`T_A\frac{1}{10\%}2^{l(proof(p^{}))+1}O(l(proof(p^{})^2)`$. Note that the same program $`p`$ can and will be accompanied by different time bounds $`t_p`$, for instance $`(p,time_p)`$ will occur.

B) The time assignment of algorithm $`B`$ to the $`t_p`$’s only works if the Kraft inequality $`_{(p,t_p)L}2^{l(p)l(t_p)}1`$ is satisfied \[Kra49\]. This can be ensured by using prefix free (e.g. Shannon-Fano) codes \[Sha48, LV97\]. The number of steps to calculate $`t_p^{}(x)`$ is, by definition, $`time_{t_p^{}}(x)`$. The relative computation time $`\alpha `$ available for computing $`t_p^{}(x)`$ is $`10\%2^{l(p^{})l(t_p^{})}`$. Hence, $`t_p^{}(x)`$ is computed and $`t_{fast}t_p^{}(x)`$ is checked after time $`T_BT_A+102^{l(p^{})+l(t_p^{})}time_{t_p^{}}(x)`$. We have to add $`T_A`$, since $`B`$ has to wait, in the worst case, time $`T_A`$ before it can start executing $`t_p^{}(x)`$.

C) If algorithm $`C`$ halts, its construction guarantees that the output is correct. In the following, we show that $`C`$ always halts, and give a bound for the computation time.

1. Assume that algorithm $`C`$ stops before $`B`$ performed the check $`t_p^{}(x)<t_{fast}`$, because a different $`p`$ already computed $`p(x)`$. In this case $`T_CT_B`$.
2. Assume that $`k=k_0`$ in $`C`$ when $`B`$ performs the check $`t_p^{}(x)<t_{fast}`$. Running-time $`T_B`$ has passed until this point, hence $`k_080\%T_B`$ . Furthermore, assume that $`C`$ halts in period $`k_0`$ because the program (different from $`p^{}`$) executed in this period computes the result. In this case, $`T_C\frac{1}{80\%}2k_02T_B`$.
3. If $`C`$ does not halt in period $`k_0`$ but $`2k_0t_{fast}`$, then $`p^{}(x)`$ has enough time to compute the solution in the next period $`k=2k_0`$, since $`time_p^{}(x)t_{fast}4k_02k_0`$. Hence $`T_C\frac{1}{80\%}4k_04T_B`$.
4. Finally, if $`2k_0<t_{fast}`$ we “wait” for the period $`k>k_0`$ with $`\frac{1}{2}kt_{fast}<k`$. In this period $`k`$, either $`p^{}(x)`$, or an even faster algorithm, which has in the meantime been constructed by A and B, will be computed. In any case, the $`2kk>t_{fast}`$ steps are sufficient to compute the answer. We have $`80\%T_C2k4t_{fast}4t_p^{}(x)`$.

The maximum of the cases (i) to (iv) bounds the computation time of $`C`$ and, hence, of $`M_p^{}`$ by

$$time_{M_p^{}}(x)=T_C\mathrm{max}\{4T_B,5t_p(x)\}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}4}T_B+5t_p(x)$$

$$\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}5}t_p(x)+d_ptime_{t_p}(x)+c_p$$

$$d_p=402^{l(p)+l(t_p)},c_p=402^{l(proof(p))+1}O(l(proof(p)^2)$$

where we have dropped the prime from $`p`$. We have also suppressed the dependency of $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$ on $`p^{}`$ ($`proof(p)`$ depends on $`p^{}`$ too), since we considered $`p^{}`$ to be a fixed given algorithm.

## 5 Assumptions on the Machine Model

In the time analysis above we have assumed that program simulation with abort possibility and scheduling parallel algorithms can be performed in real-time, i.e. without losing performance. Parallel computation can be avoided by sequentially performing all operations for a limited time and then restarting all computations in a next cycle with double the time and so on. This will increase the computation time of $`A`$ and $`B`$ (but not of $`C`$!) by, at most, a factor of $`4`$. Note that we use the same universal Turing machine $`U`$ with the same underlying Turing machine model (number of heads, symbols, …) for measuring computation time for all programs (strings) $`p`$, including $`M_p^{}`$. This prevents us from applying the linear speedup theorem (which is cheating somewhat anyway), but allows the possibility of designing a $`U`$ which allows real-time simulation with abort possibility. Small additive “patching” constants can be absorbed in the $`O()`$ notation of $`c_p`$. Details will be given elsewhere.

## 6 Algorithmic Complexity

Data compression is a very important issue in computer science. Saving space or channel capacity are obvious applications. A less obvious (but not far fetched) application is that of inductive inference in various forms (hypothesis testing, forecasting, classification, …). A free interpretation of Occam’s razor is that the shortest theory consistent with past data is the most likely to be correct. This has been put into a rigorous scheme by \[Sol64\] and proved to be optimal in \[Sol78, Hut99\]. Kolmogorov Complexity is a universal notion of the information content of a string \[Kol65, Cha66, ZL70\]. It is defined as the length of the shortest program computing string $`x`$.

$$K_U(x):=\underset{p}{\mathrm{min}}\{l(p):U(p)=x\}=K(x)+O(1)$$

where $`U`$ is some universal Turing Machine. It can be shown that $`K_U(x)`$ varies, at most, by an additive constant independent of $`x`$ by varying the machine $`U`$. Hence, the Kolmogorov Complexity $`K(x)`$ is universal in the sense that it is uniquely defined up to an additive constant. $`K(x)`$ can be approximated from above (is co-enumerable), but not finitely computable. See \[LV97\] for an excellent introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and \[VL00\] for a review of Kolmogorov inspired prediction schemes.

Recently, Schmidhuber \[Sch00\] has generalized Kolmogorov complexity in various ways to the limits of computability and beyond. In the following, we also need a generalization, but of a different kind. We need a short description of a function, rather than a string. The following definition of the complexity of a function $`f`$

$$K^{}(f):=\underset{p}{\mathrm{min}}\{l(p):U(p,x)=f(x)x\}$$

seems natural, but suffers from not even being approximable. There exists no algorithm converging to $`K^{}(f)`$, because it is undecidable, whether a program $`p`$ is the shortest program equivalent to a function $`f`$. This is similar to the case of the fastest program. This is obvious if $`f`$ is an abstract function. But even if we have a formal specification or program $`p^{}`$ of $`f`$, $`K^{}(p^{})`$ is not approximable. Using $`K(p^{})`$ is not a suitable alternative, since $`K(p^{})`$ might be considerably longer than $`K^{}(p^{})`$, as in the former case all information contained in $`p^{}`$ will be kept – even that which is functionally irrelevant (e.g. dead code). An alternative is to restrict ourselves to provably equivalent programs. The length of the shortest one is

$$K^{\prime \prime }(p^{}):=\underset{p}{\mathrm{min}}\{l(p):\text{a proof of }[y:u(p,y)=u(p^{},y)]\text{ exists}\}$$

It can be approximated from above, since the set of all programs provably equivalent to $`p^{}`$ is enumerable.

Having obtained, after some time, a very short description $`p^{}`$ of $`p^{}`$ for some purpose (e.g. for defining a prior probability for some inductive inference scheme), it is usually also necessary to obtain values for some arguments. We are now concerned with the computation time of $`p^{}`$. Could we get slower and slower algorithms by compressing $`p^{}`$ more and more? Interestingly this is not the case. Inventing complex (long) programs is not necessary to construct asymptotically fast algorithms, under the stated provability assumptions, in contrast to Blum’s Theorem \[Blu67, Blu71\]. The following theorem roughly says that there is a single program, which is the fastest and the shortest program.

Theorem 2. Let $`p^{}`$ be a given algorithm or formal specification of a function. There exists a program $`\stackrel{~}{p}`$, provably equivalent to $`p^{}`$, for which the following holds

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill i)& l(\stackrel{~}{p})\hfill & K^{\prime \prime }(p^{})+O(1)\hfill \\ \hfill ii)& time_{\stackrel{~}{p}}(x)\hfill & 5t_p(x)+d_ptime_{t_p}(x)+c_p\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`p`$ is any program provably equivalent to $`p^{}`$ with computation time provably less than $`t_p(x)`$. The constants $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$ depend on $`p`$ but not on $`x`$.

To prove the theorem, we just insert the shortest algorithm $`p^{}`$ provably equivalent to $`p^{}`$ into $`M`$, that is $`\stackrel{~}{p}:=M_p^{}`$. As only $`O(1)`$ instructions are needed to build $`M_p^{}`$ from $`p^{}`$, $`M_p^{}`$ has size $`l(p^{})+O(1)=K^{\prime \prime }(p^{})+O(1)`$. The computation time of $`M_p^{}`$ is the same as of $`M_p^{}`$ apart from “slightly” different constants.

## 7 Generalizations

If $`p^{}`$ has to be evaluated repeatedly, algorithm $`A`$ can be modified to remember its current state and continue operation for the next input ($`A`$ is independent of $`x`$!). The large offset time $`c_p`$ is only needed on the first call.

$`M_p^{}`$ can be modified to handle i/o streams, definable by a Turing machine with monotone input and output tapes (and bidirectional working tapes) receiving an input stream and producing an output stream. The currently read prefix of the input stream is $`x`$. $`time_p(x)`$ is the time used for reading $`x`$. $`M_p^{}`$ caches the input and output streams, so that algorithm $`C`$ can repeatedly read/write the streams for each new $`p`$. The true input/output tapes are used, when needing/producing a new symbol . Algorithm $`B`$ is reset after $`1,2,4,8,\mathrm{}`$ steps (not after reading the next symbol of x!) to appropriately take into account increased prefixes $`x`$. Algorithms $`A`$ just continues. The bound of Theorem 1 holds for this case too, with slightly increased $`d_p`$.

The construction above also works if time is measured in terms of the current output rather than the current input $`x`$. This measure is, for example, used for the time-complexity of calculating the $`n^{th}`$ digit of a computable real (e.g. $`\pi `$), where there is no input, but only an output stream.

## 8 Summary & Conclusions

We presented an algorithm $`M_p^{}`$, which accelerates the computation of a program $`p^{}`$. The central idea was to enumerate all programs $`p`$ equivalent to $`p^{}`$ by enumerating all proofs. Under certain constraints, $`M_p^{}`$ is the asymptotically fastest algorithm for computing $`p^{}`$ apart from a factor 5 in computation time. Blum’s Theorem shows that the provability constraints are essential. We have shown that the conditions on Theorem 1 are often satisfied for practical problems, but not always, however. For complex approximation problems, for instance, where no good and fast time bound exists, $`M_p^{}`$ is still optimal, but in this case, only apart from a large multiplicative factor. We briefly outlined how $`M_p^{}`$ can be modified to handle i/o streams and other time-measures. An interesting consequence of Theorem 1 was that the fastest program computing a certain function is also one of the shortest programs provably computing this function. Looking for larger programs saves, at most, a finite number of computation steps, but cannot improve the time order. To quantify this statement, we extended the definition of Kolmogorov complexity and defined two new natural measures for the complexity of a function. The large constants $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$ seem to spoil a direct implementation of $`M_p^{}`$. On the other hand, Levin search has been successfully applied to solve rather difficult machine learning problems \[Sch97, SZW97\], even though it suffers from a large multiplicative factor of similar origin. The use of more elaborate theorem-provers, rather than brute force enumeration of all proofs, could lead to smaller constants and bring $`M_p^{}`$ closer to practical applications, possibly restricted to subclasses of problems. A more fascinating (and more speculative) way may be the utilization of so called transparent or holographic proofs \[BFLS91\]. Under certain circumstances they allow an exponential speed up for checking proofs. This would reduce the constants $`c_p`$ and $`d_p`$ to their logarithm, which is a small value. I would like to conclude with a general question. Will the ultimative search for asymptotically fastest programs typically lead to fast or slow programs for arguments of practical size? Levin search, matrix multiplication and the algorithm $`M_p^{}`$ seem to support the latter, but this might be due to our inability to do better.

### Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Monaldo Mastrolilli and Jürgen Schmidhuber for enlightening discussions and for proof-reading drafts.


format: text

text:
# Monitoring of the optical and 2.5 – 11.7 𝜇m spectrum and mid-IR imaging of the Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 279 with ISO Based on observations collected with the Infrared Space Observatory, ISO, an ESA project with instruments funded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) with the participation of ISAS and NASA.

## 1 Introduction

According to the unified model of active galactic nuclei (AGN), the central massive black hole, its surrounding accreting material and the broad-line region (BLR) are all embedded within a dusty region, probably a thick molecular torus. Along some directions, the dust extinction is sufficient to block all UV, optical, and near-IR radiation originating in the inner components. A review of the arguments which led to this picture is presented in Wills (1999). The presence of a universal inflection point near 1.2 $`\mu `$m in the spectral energy distribution of radio-quiet AGN’s strongly suggests that the bulk of the near IR flux arises from dust thermal emission (e.g., Barvainis 1987; Sanders et al. 1989). The corresponding color temperature, $``$ 1,500 K, matches closely the sublimation temperature of graphite, the most resilient of the grain constituents. The near IR emission can be variable, and therefore originates, at least in part, in a compact region. Furthermore, in three AGN, the near IR variations have been shown to be delayed with respect to the UV-optical variations. The time delay corresponds closely to the light-travel time to the dust sublimation radius $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$; measured values of $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ are 400 light days for Fairall~9 (Clavel et al. 1989), 50 light days for NGC~1566 (Baribaud et al. 1992), 80 light days for NGC~3783 (Glass 1992) and 32 light days for Mrk 744 (Nelson, 1996).

The emerging picture is one where the near to mid-IR emission arises from thermal re-radiation of UV and optical photons absorbed by the circumnuclear dust. Various models for the geometry and location of this dust have been proposed, but the exact configuration of the models remains unconstrained due to a lack of suitable observational data.

One can use variability as a tool to probe the inner few light years of the dusty regions. Reverberation-mapping techniques (Blandford & McKee 1982) have been used extensively to map the BLR in several AGN, on scales of light days to light months, notably by the International AGN Watch111For a complete panorama of the AGN Watch data sets, results, and related studies, see the AGN Watch web page at URL http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/$``$agnwatch/. consortium (Alloin et al. 1994). A similar approach can be used to probe the IR-emitting region, i.e. the warm dust component within the obscuring material. Given UV flux variations of sufficient amplitudes, a mid-IR monitoring campaign of sufficiently long duration and adequate sampling rate, it may in principle be possible to recover the transfer function of the dust.

The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO; Kessler et al. 1996) offerred a unique opportunity to carry out such a spectrophotometric monitoring program in the mid-IR. The Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 279 ($`z=0.0294`$) was selected because its celestial position allows an uninterrupted 12-month visibility window for ISO and it has a well-documented variability history in the optical (Osterbrock & Shuder 1982; Peterson et al. 1985; Maoz et al. 1990; Stirpe et al. 1994, the UV (Chapman et al. 1985), and X-rays (Reichert et al. 1985). Balmer-line time-delays (Maoz et al. 1990; Stirpe & de Bruyn 1991; Stirpe et al. 1994) suggest a BLR size in the range 6 to 12 light days. A search for day-to-day variability across the Balmer-line profile was unsuccessful (Eracleous & Halpern 1993). No far-IR flux variations were detected with IRAS (Edelson & Malkan 1987).

## 2 IR observations and data reduction

Mrk 279 was observed with two of the instruments on board the ISO satellite: nine narrow-band filter images were obtained with ISOCAM (Cesarsky et al. 1996), while spectra were recorded with the PHT-S spectrometer, a subsystem of the ISOPHOT instrument (Lemke et al. 1996). The PHT-S spectrometer covers the 2.5–12 $`\mu `$m spectral range at a mean resolution of $``$3150 km s-1, with a gap between 4.9 and 5.9 $`\mu `$m. Its entrance aperture projects to $`24\mathrm{}\times 24\mathrm{}`$ on the sky. All PHT-S observations were carried-out in an identical fashion. The integrating amplifiers were reset every 32 s and on-source measurements were interleaved with background measurements by “chopping” on the sky at a frequency of 1/256 Hz. The chopper throw was set to 300′′. For each of the observations, total on-source integration time was 2048 s and total observing time (including background measurements and instrument overheads) was 4236 s.

The CAM observations were performed in staring mode at a magnification of $`3\mathrm{}`$ per pixel and with a gain of 2. Nine different filters were used. The unit integration time was 2.1 s per readout and there were between 72 and 197 readouts per image, depending on the filter used. The particular sequence of filters was chosen to go from high to low illumination so as to minimize the detector stabilization time. Good stabilization was also guaranteed by the relatively large number of readouts per exposure.

The PHT-S observations were made at 16 different epochs, from 1996, February 5 to 1997, February 13 (Table 1). The ISOCAM observations of Mrk 279 were all carried out on 1996 February 5, contemporaneously with the first of the PHT-S spectra.

Standard procedures from the CAM Interactive Analysis (CIA) software package 222CIA is a joint development by the ESA Astrophysics Division and the CAM Consortium. were used for the reduction of the ISOCAM data (Ott et al. 1997). The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of Mrk 279 varies with the filter wavelength from $`3^{\prime \prime }.3`$ to $`5^{\prime \prime }.0`$, (table 2) but is always consistent with that of a point source. Monochromatic intensities were obtained by integration of the source flux within a circle of radius 6 pixels ($`18^{\prime \prime }`$) and subtraction of a normalised background measured in a concentric circular ring. The intensity of Mrk 279 in the different filters is listed in Table 2. The accuracy of these measurements is $`\pm 10`$ %.

The ISOPHOT-S data were reduced with the PHOT Interactive Analysis (PIA; 333PIA is a joint development by the ESA Astrophysics Division and the ISOPHOT Consortium led by the ISOPHOT PI, D. Lemke, MPIA, Heidelberg. Gabriel gabriel (1998)) software package. However, because ISOPHOT-S was operating close to its sensitivity limit, special reduction and calibration procedures had to be applied. After a change of illumination, the responsivity of the Si:Ga photoconductors immediately jumps to an intermediate level. This initial jump is followed by a characteristic slow transient to the final level. At the faint flux limit, this time constant is extremely long, and in practice only the initial step is observed in chopped-mode. The spectral response function for this particular mode and flux-level was derived directly from observations of a faint standard star HD 132142 whose flux ranges from 0.15 to 2.54 Jy. The calibration star observation was performed with the same chopper frequency and readout-timing as the AGN observations. The $`S/N`$ of the ISOPHOT-S spectra was considerably enhanced by two additional measures: $`i`$) the 32-s integration ramps were divided into sub-ramps of 2 sec and no de-glitching (removal of cosmic ray hits) was performed at ramp-level $`ii`$) after slope-fitting and de-glitching at slope-level, the maximum of the distribution of the slopes was determined by fitting a gaussian to the histogram. The resulting ISOPHOT-S fluxes are accurate to within $`\pm 10`$ %.

The 1996 February 5 PHT-S spectrum is shown in Fig. 1, together with the monochromatic intensities measured with ISOCAM on the same day. Each PHT-S data-point is shown with its formal error as propagated by the PIA software. The CAM and PHT-S fluxes agree to better than $`\pm 10`$ %, providing further confidence in the reliability of the flux calibration.

## 3 MIR flux Measurements and uncertainties

### 3.1 PHT-S flux measurements and reproducibility

For each epoch of observation the continuum flux was measured over two different intervals, at short wavelengths (SW: 2.5–4.7 $`\mu `$m) and long wavelengths (LW: 5.8–9.9 $`\mu `$m). Table 1 lists the mean intensities over these intervals and their uncertainties, while the light curves are shown in Fig. 2.

An accurate determination of the flux uncertainties is essential when discussing source variability. We have therefore investigated the different source of errors which could potentially affect our PHT-S measurement.

In staring mode, the overall responsivity of PHT-S is known to remain stable within $`\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}`$% (Schulz 1999). We have assessed the stability of the PHT-S responsivity more specifically at the time of each of the Mrk 279 observations and verified that no other systematic effects were present. For this purpose, two different types of calibration measurements were used as diagnostic:

1. The detector dark current measurements, which are obtained immediately prior to each PHT-S observation: throughout the campaign, the dark current signal retained its nominal value of $``$ zero $`V/s`$. We can therefore be confident that none of the Mrk 279 observations suffered from detector remanence induced by a prior exposure to a bright source.
2. Measurements with an internal calibration source which are carried-out systematically at the beginning of each ISO revolution: averaged over all pixels, the variations of detector responsivity from epoch to epoch are $`\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}`$%, with upper limits of 3% and 5% in the SW and LW range, respectively.

A conservative upper limit of $`\pm 10`$% was thus adopted for the systematic uncertainty on the PHT-S fluxes of Mrk 279. Internal measurement errors were added in quadrature to this systematic uncertainty. The internal errors were computed as the dispersion about the mean flux in the SW and LW integration intervals, after normalization of the spectra. The purpose of the normalization is to remove the spectral curvature. Each spectrum was first divided by its best-fit power-law continuum ($`F_\nu =\mathrm{8.44\hspace{0.17em}10}^{14}\nu ^{0.8}`$ erg s-1cm-2Hz-1; see §5) and the rms deviations were computed. The results show that the internal errors associated with each flux measurement are of 2.8 % and 1.7 % for the 2.52-4.70 $`\mu `$m and 5.76-9.89 $`\mu `$m bands, respectively.

As a consistency check, errors were also computed by comparing PHT-S fluxes obtained within 30 days from each others. This gives a conservative error estimate since it assumes that there are no flux variations on time scales shorter than 30 days. Taking every pair of fluxes within 30 days and measuring the error on their means, we get mean relative errors of 3.5 % and 1.6 % for the SW and LW bands, respectively.

### 3.2 Comparison with ground based measurements and estimation of the host galaxy contribution

Spinoglio et al. (1985) measured $`L`$-band ($`3.5\mu \text{m}`$) fluxes of $`100\pm 21`$ mJy, $`112\pm 27`$ mJy, and $`68\pm 15`$ mJy through apertures of 12′′, 12′′, and 17′′, respectively, consistent with our results to within the measurement uncertainties.

Given the spectrograph aperture ($`24^{\prime \prime }\times 24^{\prime \prime }`$), the host galaxy of Mrk 279 could, in principle, contribute to the PHT-S flux. Indeed, a faint extended nebulosity is apparent in the $`K`$-band ($`2.2\mu \text{m}`$) image of McLeod & Rieke (1995). This extended flux arises from the integrated emission of giants and supergiants in the galactic disk whose energy distribution is maximum at $`2\mu \text{m}`$ and falls-off abruptly at longer wavelengths. In practice, stellar emission will therefore make a negligible contribution to the PHT-S flux. Nevertheless, this was positively verified by comparison with ground-based data as follows:

1. In the $`K`$-band, McLeod & Rieke (1995) estimated that the AGN contributes 90% of the flux within the central $`1^{\prime \prime }.5`$ (FWHM) and 55% (35 mJy) of the total $`K`$-band flux (68 mJy) integrated over the whole galaxy (i.e., out to a radius of 35′′). Assuming “normal” near-IR colors ($`KL=0.22\pm 0.02`$ mag; Clavel et al. 1989) for the stellar population, we derive a total host-galaxy flux of 18 mJy at $`3.5\mu \text{m}`$.
2. Using the $`B`$-and $`R`$-band nucleus–galaxy decomposition of Granato et al. (1993), and assuming normal optical-to-IR ($`VK=3.22`$ mag; Clavel et al. 1989) and $`KL`$ colors, we estimate a total galaxy flux of 20 mJy and 17 mJy respectively at $`3.5\mu \text{m}`$.

These consistent estimates can be used to infer the amount of stellar light which enters the $`24^{\prime \prime }\times 24^{\prime \prime }`$ PHT-S aperture, $`5\pm 2`$ mJy at $`3.5\mu \text{m}`$ flux. Such a small contamination is within the measurement errors and can be neglected.

The galaxy contributes $`11\pm 4`$ mJy, $`14\pm 5`$ mJy and $`11\pm 4`$ mJy to the $`12\mathrm{}`$ photometric measurements in the $`J`$, $`H`$, and $`K`$ bands respectively (Granato et al. 1993). These values are used in §6 to infer the intrinsic spectral energy distribution of the active nucleus in Mrk 279

## 4 Optical observations and data reduction

Ground-based optical observations were made in support of the ISO observations. Spectroscopic monitoring was carried out with the 1.8-m Perkins Telescope of the Ohio State and Ohio Wesleyan University at the Lowell Observatory, the 1.0-m telescope of the Wise Observatory, the 2.6-m Shajn Telescope of the Crimean Observatory, and the 1.5-m Mt. Hopkins Telescope of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). A detailed log of the spectroscopic observations can be found at the International AGN Watch website.

In addition CCD photometry was made on the 1.0-m telescope of the Wise Observatory. The flux was measured using a fixed aperture of radius 7′′, under seeing conditions of 2–3′′. The $`B`$, $`V`$, $`R`$, and $`I`$ instrumental magnitudes are listed in columns (3) – (6) of table 4. They have not been scaled to any standard system.

The spectroscopic data were processed by the individual observers in standard fashion for CCD frames. However, the standard astronomical flux calibration techniques based on determining the instrument response function from observations of standard stars are only accurate for AGN spectrophotometry at about the 10% level even under ideal observing conditions. We used the standard stars only for relative calibration, and employed different calibration techniques for absolute calibration: The data from Wise Observatory were calibrated following the method described by Maoz et al. (1994). The data from Ohio, Crimean, and CFA were calibrated through scaling through \[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$ flux that was measured on five photometric nights, at F(\[O iii\]$`\lambda 5007`$) = $`(1.512\pm 0.096)\times `$ 10$`^{13}`$ergs s-1 cm-2.

On these calibrated spectra we measured the continuum flux by averaging the flux in a 10 Å wide band centered at 5105 Å in the rest frame of Mrk 279 ($`F_\lambda (5100\text{Å})`$). The H$`\beta `$ line flux has been measured by linear interpolation between rest-frame wavelengths $`4765`$ Å and $`5105`$ Å, and line integration between 4770 Å and 4935 Å. The long-wavelength cutoff of this integration band misses some of the H$`\beta `$ flux underneath \[O iii\]$`\lambda 4959`$, but avoids the need to estimate the Fe ii contribution to this feature and still gives a good representation of the H$`\beta `$ variability. We did not correct for the narrow-line, which is expected to be constant.

As the measurements made from the spectra are subject to systematic differences between the four data sets used, we applied the prescriptions of Peterson et al.(1999) to intercalibrate the data sets, and correct for aperture effects. The final continuum $`F_\lambda `$(5100 Å) and H$`\beta `$ emission-line fluxes are given in table 5 The spectrophotometric and photometric light curves are shown in Fig. 2. Using the results of Granato et al. (1993), we estimate that stars contribute for $`1.2\pm `$0.6 mJy or $`20\pm 10`$% to the mean redenning corrected 5100 Å flux.

## 5 The mid-IR spectrum of Mrk 279

Figure 3 shows the weighted mean 2.5 – 11.7 $`\mu `$m spectrum of Mrk 279 obtained by averaging all 16 PHT–S spectra.

The spectrum of Mrk 279 is quite similar to the mean Seyfert 1 spectrum obtained by Clavel et al. (2000) from their sample of 28 type 1 AGNs. It shows a strong continuum, with a flux density per frequency unit that drops sharply with increasing frequency and only weak broad emission features. The continuum is well approximated by a power law ($`F_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$) of spectral index $`\alpha =0.80\pm 0.05`$ (Fig. 3), close to the average Seyfert 1 mid-IR index $`\alpha =0.84\pm 0.24`$ (Clavel et al. (2000)). Its flux at a fiducial wavelength of 7 $`\mu `$ is 103 mJy. While the broad emission features of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) bands (Puget et al. 1985) at 3.3 $`\mu `$m, 6.2 $`\mu `$m, 7.7 $`\mu `$m, and 8.6 $`\mu `$m are ubiquitous in many different galactic and extragalactic line of sight, only the strongest band at 7.7 $`\mu `$m is unambiguously detected in Mrk 279, with an intensity of $`0.76\pm 0.12`$ mJy. Clavel et al. (2000) showed that PAH emission in AGNs originates in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the galaxy, whereas the mid-IR power-law continuum arises from near nuclear dust emission in the torus. Because Mrk 279 is a luminous AGN, almost a quasar, the apparent weakness of its PAH emission can be understood as a contrast effect whereby a faint ISM is observed against a bright nucleus. The 9.7 $`\mu `$m silicate absorption feature, conspicuous in the mid-IR spectra of starburst galaxies (Moorwood et al. 1996; Rigopoulou et al. 1996; Acosta-Pulido et al. 1996), is absent from the Mrk 279 spectrum.

## 6 The spectral energy distribution

Figure 4 shows the continuum spectral energy distribution (SED) of Mrk 279 from the far-IR to the X-rays. The IRAS data points are the average of 6 pointed observations reported by Edelson & Malkan (1987). The near-IR data are from Spinoglio et al. (1985) after subtraction of the stellar light (§3.2). The $`R`$ and $`B`$ band fluxes (Granato et al. 1993) and the mean 5100 Å-flux (this paper) have also been corrected for the underlying galaxy contribution and de-redenned. The 1500 Å data point represents the average of 26 observations made with IUE (Rodriguez et al. 1998) between 1978 and 1991. It has been corrected for foreground redenning using $`N_\mathrm{H}=1.6\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Elvis et al. 1989). The large error bar reflects the strong variability of Mrk 279 at UV wavelengths. The EXOSAT X-ray data are from 1983 and 1984 and are best described in terms of a broken power-law (Ghosh & Soundararajaperumal 1992), while the 1994 data from ASCA are modeled with a unique power law in the Tartarus Database (http://tartarus.gsfc.nasa.gov/).

Since this SED is constructed from data collected over $``$ 19 years, we caution that it may be distorted by variability. Variability is important in shaping the X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical spectrum, but is much less significant at longer wavelengths (see §7). Bearing these limitations in mind, it is still possible to draw some general conclusions which are not affected by flux variations at short wavelengths.

The Mrk 279 SED displays three broad maxima or “bumps”. The first maximum occurs in the far-IR at wavelengths $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}25}\mu \text{m}`$. Given the large IRAS ($`1^{}`$) apertures and the cold color temperature of the far-IR bump, the 100 $`\mu `$m and 60 $`\mu `$m fluxes are probably dominated by cold dust from the host galaxy’s ISM. Hence, the far-IR “bump” is most likely not related to the AGN itself. The second maximum is the usual “big blue bump” which dominates the SED of type 1 AGNs from the optical to the soft X-rays. It is usually identified as thermal emission from an accretion disk. In between these two maxima lies a third and smaller bump which extends from $`1`$$`\mu `$m to $`15`$–20 $`\mu `$m. We tentatively identify this mid-IR bump as thermal emission from dust in the putative molecular torus and/or from dust in the NLR, as discussed below.

## 7 The IR variability

The total duration of our ISO campaign was 374 days, with a mean sampling interval of 24.9 days. In addition to the weighted-mean spectrum, $`F_\nu `$, Fig. 3 displays the rms spectrum $`\mathrm{rms}_\nu `$, and the mean error spectrum $`ϵ_\nu `$. The latter was evaluated as

$$ϵ_\nu ^2=\frac{1}{N_{i=1}^N1/\mathrm{\Delta }_{\nu ,i}^2}$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\nu ,i}`$ is the uncertainty associated with the flux $`F_i`$ at epoch $`i`$ and $`N=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}16}`$ is the number of epochs. We can exclude significant (i.e. 3$`\sigma `$) flux variability since the largest value of $`\mathrm{rms}_\nu /ϵ_\nu `$ is only $``$ 1.4. A chi-square test was also applied to the average PHT-S fluxes of Table 1. The reduced chi-squares are $`<1`$ which confirms that no significant variations of the mid-IR flux took place during our $`1`$-year observing campaign.

## 8 Optical variability and the H$`\beta `$ emission-line lag

The relatively dense sampling of the optical light curves between January and July 1996 allows us to measure the time-delayed response, or “lag”, of the H$`\beta `$ emission line to continuum variations by cross-correlation of the light curves shown in Fig. 2. We used both the interpolation method of Gaskell & Sparke (1986) and the discrete-correlation function (DCF) method of Edelson & Krolik (1988), in both cases employing the specific implementation described by White & Peterson (1994). The centroid of the cross-correlation is at $`16.7_{5.6}^{+5.3}`$ days. Uncertainties were estimated using the model-independent FR/RSS Monte-Carlo method described by Peterson et al. (1998). The cross-correlation results are shown in Table 3 and Fig. 5. For comparison, Table 3 also lists the results of previous Mrk 279 monitoring campaigns by Maoz et al. (1990) and Stirpe et al. (1994).

## 9 Discussion and concluding remarks

The mid-IR spectrum of Mrk 279 shows a strong power-law continuum of spectral index $`0.80\pm 0.05`$, with weak PAH emission bands and no detectable silicate $`9.7\mu \text{m}`$ feature. The mid-IR bump of Mrk 279 extends444for the extension of the bump we consider the wavelength range $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ over which $`\nu F_\nu `$ exceeds one third of its peak value. from roughly 1.25 $`\mu `$m to 15–20 $`\mu `$m and is wider than a single blackbody. It peaks near $`3\mu \text{m}`$ . In Fairall 9, the mid-IR bump most likely originates from the re-processing of UV and optical photons by nuclear dust (§1). We can estimate the distance to the central source of the innermost and hottest dust grains in Mrk 279, $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$, by scaling directly from Fairall 9 (Clavel et al. 1989). Mrk 279 is approximately eight times less luminous than Fairall 9. Since the inner radius of the dust distribution is presumably controlled by sublimation, $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ should scale approximately as $`L^{1/2}`$, so $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ should be a factor of $`2.8`$ smaller in Mrk 279 than in Fairall 9, i.e. $`r_{\mathrm{in}}140\pm 36`$ light-days.

During the ISO campaign, the mid-IR flux did not experience variations of amplitude larger than 10 %, the detection limit of the PHT-S instrument. Optical data contemporaneous to the IR observations revealed significant fluctuations of the 5100 Å flux with a relative rms amplitude of 9% and a ratio of the maximum to the minimum fluxes, R$`{}_{\mathrm{max}}{}^{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1.64}\pm 0.11`$. Any upper limit to the mid-IR variability in Mrk 279 has to be examined in the light of the UV and optical continuum variations over the same period of time. As noted earlier, in the dust reprocessing scenario the amplitude of the MIR flux variations will be reduced compared to that of the primary UV-optical source because of the finite propagation time of the photons. Imagine a short (duration $`1`$ day) pulse of the UV-optical source illuminating a thin dust annulus, inclined by $`i=10^{}`$ with respect to the line of sight. The annulus IR response will be delayed by $`\delta t=(1\mathrm{sin}i)r_{\mathrm{in}}/c`$ and will last for $`2(\mathrm{sin}i)r_{\mathrm{in}}/c`$. For numerical values appropriate to Mrk 279, the duration of the IR reverberated pulse will be 38 days and its peak amplitude thereby reduced by a factor of order 38. Given the relatively low amplitude of the optical flux variations (Fig. 2), the absence of measurable variations of the MIR flux is consistent with the above scenario.

Though a detailed quantitative fit with a particular model is beyond the scope of this paper, it is nevertheless illustrative to perform a qualitative comparison of our data with the theoretical predictions from the torus model by Pier & Krolik (1992). This model predicts a mid-IR “bump” that is approximately 0.7 to 1 decade wide in wavelengths, in agreement with the Mrk 279 observations. In the Pier & Krolik (1992) model, the torus emission is expected to peak at a wavelength $`\lambda _{\mathrm{peak}}`$ that depends primarily on the flux illuminating the torus inner surface and its inclination angle $`i`$ with respect to the line of sight. The relatively high color temperature implied by $`\lambda _{\mathrm{peak}}3\mu \text{m}`$ constrains the inclination to be small ($`\mathrm{cos}i0.75`$). The absence of silicate absorption also rules-out very optically thick models and constrains the vertical column density at the torus inner edge, $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{H}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{24}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Comparison of Fig. 4 with Fig. 5 of Pier & Krolik (1992) also suggests a moderately thick torus, with $`r_{\mathrm{in}}/h=0.3`$.

The delay $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$T of H$`\beta `$ w.r.t. the optical continuum was $`16.7_{5.6}^{+5.3}`$ days during this campaign. Comparison with the results from previous monitoring campaigns (see Table 3) does not reveal any significant change of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$T over a time span of $``$8 years. In other words, we find no evidence for a secular change in the structure of the BLR in Mrk 279. Equating $`\mathrm{c}\times \mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{T}`$ with the emissivity weighted radius $`\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{BLR}}`$ of the H$`\beta `$ emitting region, one sees that $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ is about 8 times larger than $`\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{BLR}}`$. In other words, the BLR lies well within the dust evaporation radius.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors are grateful to all the observatories involved for the generous allocation of observing time and José Acosta-Pulido for helpful discussions on the PHT-S instrument calibration. MS acknowledges partial support by Spanish CICYT grant PB-ESP95-0389-C02-02 and all the staff at the Laboratorio de Astrofísica Espacial y Física Fundamental, Spain where most of this work was done. Support for the ground-based observations was provided by the National Science Foundation through grant AST–9420080 to Ohio State University. Observations at the Wise Observatory are supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation. This research has made use of the TARTARUS database, which is supported by Jane Turner and Kirpal Nandra under NASA grants NAG5-7385 and NAG5-7067.

Electronic tables


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The last months of the year 2000 have seen a great excitement in the physics community because of a possible evidence at LEP of a Higgs boson with a mass $`M_H115`$ GeV. Unfortunately the shutdown of LEP will not allow additional information on the Higgs to be collected in the near future. Thus, it seems a good moment to try to review what we (do not) know about the Higgs.

On one side we have the impressive amount of data collected at LEP, SLC, and the Tevatron that allow to probe the quantum structure of the Standard Model (SM), thereby providing indirect information about the Higgs mass. On the other we have the result of the direct searches performed at LEP with the excess of events reported in the combined analysis of the four collaborations. The virtual Higgs effects are usually analyzed through a $`\chi ^2`$ fit to the various precision observables that allows a $`95\%`$ Confidence Level (C.L.) upper bound to be derived. The outcome of the searches used to be reported as a combined $`95\%`$ C.L. lower bound, while today is more appropriate described by the likelihood of the experiments. Given these two pieces of information it is often said that one of the greatest achievement of LEP has been to have pin down the Higgs mass between 113 (from the $`95\%`$ C.L. lower bound of the direct searches) and 170 GeV (from the $`95\%`$ C.L. upper bound of the global fit to electroweak data). What I would like to discuss in this talk is how confident we are in the fact that $`113M_H170`$ GeV addressing two aspects of this problem: i) how solid is the $`170`$ GeV $`95\%`$ C.L. upper bound? ii) What is the right way to combine the information from the precision measurements with that from the searches to answer the simple question:“what is the probability that the Higgs mass is between, for example, 113 and 170 GeV?”

## 2 Theoretical uncertainties in the indirect Higgs mass determination

As well known, the vector boson self-energies are sensitive to virtual Higgs effects and therefore the value of the Higgs mass affects the precision measurements like, for example, the ones made at peak of the $`Z`$. However, the Higgs behavior in the relevant electroweak corrections is very mild, just logarithmic. To appreciate how much this logarithmic behavior makes hard to constrain the Higgs let me consider a simple example. Let us take the effective electroweak mixing angle, $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{eff}^{lept}s_{eff}^2`$, that is the most important quantity in the determination of $`M_H`$, and write it as

$$s_{eff}^2(c_1+\delta c_1)+(c_2+\delta c_2)\mathrm{log}y;y(M_H/100\text{GeV}).$$
(1)
In Eq. (1) I identify the l.h.s. with the experimental result $`s_{eff}^2=(s_{eff}^2)_0\pm \sigma (s_{eff}^2)`$ while in the r.h.s. $`\delta c_i`$ represent the theoretical uncertainty in the corresponding coefficients connected to the fact that we have computed $`c_i`$ in perturbation theory through certain order in the perturbative series and therefore we do not know their exact values because of higher order contributions. From Eq. (1) one obtains

$$y=y_0\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_{th}}{c_2}\pm \frac{\sigma }{c_2}\right];\mathrm{\Delta }_{th}=\delta c_1+\delta c_2\mathrm{log}y$$
(2)
where $`y_0`$ is the value corresponding to $`\delta c_1=\delta c_2=\sigma =0`$. To see the effect of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{th}`$ in extracting $`M_H`$ I put $`\sigma =0`$ and take

$$c_2\frac{\alpha }{2\pi (c^2s^2)}\left(\frac{5}{6}\frac{3}{4}c^2\right)5.5\times 10^4;\mathrm{\Delta }_{th}\pm 1.4\times 10^4$$
(3)
where $`s^20.23,c^2=1s^2`$. In Eq. (3) I estimate $`c_2`$ through the Higgs leading behavior of the correction $`\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{r}`$ relevant for $`s_{eff}^2`$  while for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{th}`$, I take the value estimated in the 1995 CERN report on ‘Precision calculation for the Z resonance’  that was supposed to represent the uncertainty due to next-to-leading two-loop electroweak effects. Inserting the values of Eq. (3) into Eq. (2) yields $`y1.29y_0`$. We see that a theoretical uncertainty coming from two-loop unknown contributions (that are supposed to be not even the dominant part) makes an error in the indirect determination of the Higgs mass of 29 %!

Eq.(2) tells us an important thing, namely that the error on $`y`$ depends on its central value $`(y_0)`$. This implies that not always shrinking the uncertainty in $`\mathrm{ln}y`$ reduces the uncertainty on $`y`$. This is true only if the central value does not change, but this is not always the case (as we will see later). This consideration can be put in a more formal way noticing that if the logarithm of a quantity, $`A\mathrm{ln}y`$, is normally distributed, then the quantity itself is distributed according to a lognormal (see, e.g.,  for the properties of this distribution) whose standard deviation, given by

$$\sigma (y)=\left(\mathrm{exp}\left[2\text{E}[A]+2\sigma ^2(A)\right]\mathrm{exp}\left[2\text{E}[A]+\sigma ^2(A)\right]\right)^{\frac{1}{2}},$$

is a combination of the expected value and standard deviation of its logarithm and therefore compensating effects can happen.

The above example clearly tells us that to extract accurate indirect information on the Higgs one needs both very precise experiments and a very good control of the theory side. This brings in the issue of what error we can associate to our theoretical predictions. They are affected by uncertainties coming from two different sources: one that is called parametric and it is connected to the error in the experimental inputs used in our predictions. The second one is called intrinsic and it is related to the fact that our knowledge of the perturbative series is always limited, usually to the first few terms. Concerning parametric uncertainties, $`\alpha (0),G_\mu `$ and $`M_Z`$ are very well measured, while the top mass, $`M_t`$, and the strong coupling constant, $`\alpha _s`$, are not so precisely known. However, the scale of the weak interactions is given by the mass of the intermediate vector bosons, so what actually matters in our predictions is not $`\alpha (0)`$ but $`\alpha (M_Z)`$. The latter contains the hadronic contribution to the photon vacuum polarization, $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h`$, that cannot be evaluated in perturbation theory. Fortunately, one can use a dispersion relation to relate it to the experimental data on the cross section for $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation into hadrons. In the recent years this subject has received a lot of attention with the appearance of several new evaluations that have followed two main streams. On one path there are the most phenomenological (ph.) analyses that rely on the use of all the available experimental data on the hadron production in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation and on perturbative QCD (pQCD) for the high energy tail ($`E40`$ GeV) of the dispersion integral . On the other the so called “theory driven” (t.d.) analyses that advocate the use of pQCD down to energy scale of the order of tau mass, supplemented by the use of the experimental data in regions, like, for example, the threshold for the charmed mesons, where pQCD is not applicable . I am not going to discuss the differences in the various analyses (see Fred Jegerlehner’s talk ) but I would like to point out few facts: i) all results are compatible with each other. The choice of one value instead of another is just a matter of taste (or friendship). ii) The t.d. results have a smaller error with respect to the ph. ones but a lower central value. iii) I can take two perfectly compatible numbers, one from the ph. analyses like $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h=0.02804\pm 0.00065`$  and one from the t.d. ones like $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h=0.02761\pm 0.00022`$  and get a difference in the $`95\%`$ C.L. upper bound for the Higgs mass $`𝒪(50\text{GeV})`$. Just to mention, it is the t.d. value, that has a smaller error, that gives the higher upper bound.

I would like to emphasize that this uncertainty has nothing to do with the blue band in the famous $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$ vs. $`M_H`$ LEPEWWG plot. There, the blue band represents, for a chosen value of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h`$, the intrinsic uncertainty. There is no way to rigorously define the intrinsic uncertainty. The best that can be done is to try to estimate it by comparing the output of the two codes TOPAZ0  and ZFITTER , that now include up to two-loop next-to-leading terms, when they are run enforcing the several built in options for resumming known effects. These options are supposed to mimic the size of unknown higher order terms and the numerical spread in the outputs of the two codes can be taken just as an order of magnitude of the unknown higher order contributions.

## 3 Higgs mass inference from precision measurements

I am going to discuss now what can we learn about the Higgs from precision measurements. In the spirit of the question raised in the Introduction, I am not going to perform the standard $`\chi ^2`$ analysis, although clearly what I present will be related to it, but following a Bayesian approach I am going to construct $`f(m_H|\text{ind.})`$, the p.d.f. of the Higgs mass conditioned by this indirect information under the assumption of the validity of the S.M. I would do it employing the three observables, $`s_{eff}^2`$, $`M_W`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}`$. These quantities are the most sensitive to the Higgs mass and also very accurate measured. The most convenient way to approach the problem is to make use of the simple parameterization proposed in Ref. and updated in Ref. where $`s_{eff}^2,M_W`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}`$ are written as functions of $`M_H`$, $`M_t`$, $`\alpha _s`$ and the hadronic contribution to the running of the electromagnetic coupling:

$`s_{eff}^2`$ $`=`$ $`(s_{eff}^2)_{}+c_1A_1+c_2A_2c_3A_3+c_4A_4,`$ (4)
$`M_W`$ $`=`$ $`M_W^{}d_1A_1d_5A_1^2d_2A_2+d_3A_3d_4A_4,`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}^{}g_1A_1g_5A_1^2g_2A_2+g_3A_3g_4A_4.`$ (6)
In the above equations $`A_1\mathrm{ln}(M_H/100\text{GeV})`$, $`A_2\left[(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h/0.02801\right]`$, $`A_3\left[(M_t/175\text{GeV})^21\right]`$ and $`A_4[(\alpha _s(M_Z)/0.1181]`$; $`(s_{eff}^2)_{}`$, $`M_W^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}^{}`$ are (to excellent approximation) the theoretical results obtained at the reference point $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h=0.0280`$, $`M_t=175`$ GeV, and $`\alpha _s(M_Z)=0.118`$ while the values of the coefficients $`c_i`$, $`d_i`$ and $`g_i`$ are reported in Tables 3-5 of Ref. for three different renormalization scheme. Formulae (46) are very accurate for $`75\mathrm{\Gamma }<M_H\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}350}`$ GeV with the other parameters in the ranges $`170\mathrm{\Gamma }<M_t\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}181}`$ GeV, $`0.0273\mathrm{\Gamma }<(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.0287}`$, $`0.113\mathrm{\Gamma }<\alpha _s(M_Z)\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.123}`$. In this case they reproduce the exact results of the calculations of Refs.() with maximal errors of $`\delta s_{eff}^21\times 10^5`$, $`\delta M_W\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$ MeV and $`\delta \mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3}`$ KeV, which are all very much below the experimental accuracy. Outside the above range, the deviations increase but remain very small for larger Higgs mass, reaching about $`3\times 10^5`$, 3 MeV, and 4 KeV at $`M_H=600`$ GeV for $`s_{eff}^2`$, $`M_W`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}`$, respectively.

Formula (4) can be seen as providing an indirect measurement of $`A_1=[s_{eff}^2(s_{eff}^2)_{}c_2A_2+c_3A_3c_4A_4]/c_1`$, while (5) and (6) of the quantities $`Y=M_W^{}M_Wd_2A_2+d_3A_3d_4A_4`$ and $`Z=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}g_2A_2+g_3A_3g_4A_4`$, respectively, all three variables being described by Gaussian p.d.f.’s. The $`A_1`$, $`Y`$ and $`Z`$ determination are clearly correlated, therefore one has to built a covariance matrix. This can be easily done because formulae (46) are linear in the common terms $`\underset{¯}{X}\{M_t,\alpha _s(M_Z),(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h\}`$. The likelihood of these indirect measurements $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Theta }}\{A_1,Y,Z\}`$ is then a three dimensional correlated normal with covariance matrix

$$V_{ij}=\underset{l}{}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_i}{X_l}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_j}{X_l}\sigma ^2(X_l)$$
(7)
or

$$f(\underset{¯}{\theta }|\mathrm{ln}(m_H/100))e^{\chi ^2/2}$$
(8)
where $`\chi ^2=\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Delta }}^T𝐕^1\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ with $`\underset{¯}{\mathrm{\Delta }}^T=\{a_1\mathrm{ln}(m_H/100),yd_1\mathrm{ln}(m_H/100)d_5\mathrm{ln}^2(m_H/100),zg_1\mathrm{ln}(m_H/100)g_5\mathrm{ln}^2(m_H/100)\}`$. Using Bayes’ theorem the likelihood (8) can be turned into a p.d.f. through the choice of a prior. The natural choice is a uniform prior in $`\mathrm{ln}(m_H)`$, since it is well understood that radiative corrections measure this quantity (for this reason the likelihood (8) has been expressed in terms of $`\mathrm{ln}(m_H)`$). The uniform prior in $`\mathrm{ln}(m_H)`$ implies that $`f(\mathrm{ln}(m_H/100)|\text{ind.})`$ is just the normalized likelihood (8). Thus, using standard probability calculus I can express the result as a p.d.f. of $`M_H`$:

$$f(m_H|\text{ind.})=\frac{m_H^1e^{(\chi ^2/2)}}{_0^{\mathrm{}}m_H^1e^{(\chi ^2/2)}\text{d}m_H}.$$
(9)
## 4 Including the constraint from the direct search

Given $`f(m_H|\text{ind.})`$ a natural question to ask is how this p.d.f. should be modified in order to take into account the knowledge that the Higgs boson has not been observed (that there is some indication for the Higgs) at LEP111A related discussion can be found in Ref... To answer this question let me discuss first an ideal case. I consider a search for Higgs production in association with a particle of negligible width in an experimental situation of “infinite” luminosity, perfect efficiency and no background whose outcome was no candidate. In this situation we are sure that all mass values below a sharp kinematical limit $`M_K`$ are excluded. This implies that: a) the p.d.f. for $`M_H`$ must vanish below $`M_K`$; b) above $`M_K`$ the relative probabilities cannot change, because there is no sensitivity in this region, and then the experimental results cannot give information over there. For example, if $`M_K`$ is $`110`$ GeV, then $`f(200\text{GeV})/f(120\text{GeV})`$ must remain constant before and after the new piece of information is included. In this ideal case we have then

$$f(m_H|\text{dir.}\&\text{ind.})=\{\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & m_H<M_K\hfill \\ \frac{f(m_H|\text{ind.})}{_{M_K}^{\mathrm{}}f(m_H|\text{ind.})\text{d}m_H}\hfill & m_HM_K,\hfill \end{array}$$
(10)
where the integral at denominator is just a normalization coefficient.

More formally, this result can be obtained making explicit use of the Bayes’ theorem. Applied to our problem, the theorem can be expressed as follows (apart from a normalization constant):

$$f(m_H|\text{dir.}\&\text{ind.})f(\text{dir.}|m_H)f(m_H|\text{ind.}),$$
(11)
where $`f(dir|m_H)`$ is the so called likelihood. In the idealized example we are considering now, $`f(dir|m_H)`$ can be expressed in terms of the probability of observing zero candidates in an experiment sensitive up to a $`M_K`$ mass for a given value $`m_H`$, or

$$f(\text{dir.}|m_H)=f(\text{“zero cand.”}|m_H)=\{\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & m_H<M_K\hfill \\ 1\hfill & m_HM_K.\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
In fact, we would expect an “infinite” number of events if $`M_H`$ were below the kinematical limit. Therefore the probability of observing nothing should be zero. Instead, for $`M_H`$ above $`M_K`$, the condition of vanishing production cross section and no background can only yield no candidates.

Consider now a real life situation. In this case the transition between Higgs mass values which are impossible to those which are possible is not so sharp. In fact because of physical reasons (such as threshold effects and background) and experimental reasons (such as luminosity and efficiency) we cannot be really sure about excluding values close to the kinematical limit, nevertheless the ones very far from $`M_K`$ are ruled out. Furthermore, the kinematical limit is in general not sharp; at LEP, for example, the large total width of the $`Z^{}`$ plays an important role. Thus, in a real life situation we expect the ideal step function likelihood of Eq. (12) to be replaced by a smooth curve which goes to zero for low masses. Concerning, instead, the region of no experimental sensitivity, $`M_H\mathrm{\Gamma }>M_{K_{eff}}`$, the likelihood is expected to go to a value independent on the Higgs mass that however is different from that of the ideal case, i.e. 1, because of the presence of the background.

In order to combine the various pieces of information easily it is convenient to replace the likelihood by a function that goes to 1 where the experimental sensitivity is lost . Because constant factors do not play any role in the Bayes’ theorem this can be achieved by dividing the likelihood by its value calculated for very large Higgs mass values where no signal is expected, i.e. the case of pure background. This likelihood ratio, $``$, can be seen as the counterpart, in the case of a real experiment, of the step function of Eq. (12). Therefore, the Higgs mass p.d.f. that takes into account both direct search and precision measurement results can be written as

$$f(m_H|\text{dir.}\&\text{ind.})=\frac{(m_H)f(m_H|\text{ind.})}{_0^{\mathrm{}}(m_H)f(m_H|\text{ind.})\text{d}m_H}.$$
(13)
In Eq. (13) $``$, namely the information from the direct searches, acts as a shape distortion function of $`f(m_H|\text{ind.})`$. As long as $`(m_H)`$ is 1, the shape (and therefore the relative probabilities in that region) remains unchanged, while $`(m_H)0`$ indicates regions where the p.d.f. should vanish.

One should notice that $`(m_H)`$ can also assume values larger than 1 for Higgs mass values below the kinematical limit. This situation corresponds to a number of observed candidate events larger than the expected background. In this case the role played by $`(m_H)`$ is to stretch $`f(m_H|\text{ind.})`$ below the effective kinematical limit and this might even prompt a claim for a discovery if $``$ becomes sufficiently large for the probability of $`M_H`$ in that region to get very close to 1.

## 5 Results

The experimental inputs I use to construct $`f(m_H|\text{ind.})`$ are : $`s_{eff}^2=0.23146\pm 0.00017`$, $`M_W=80.419\pm 0.038`$ GeV, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{}}=83.99\pm 0.10`$ MeV, $`M_t=174.3\pm 5.9`$ GeV, $`\alpha _s(M_Z)=0.119\pm 0.003`$. Concerning $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h`$, as I said we have many possible choices. I am going to present my results using two different values of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h`$, one as representative of the ph. analyses and the other for the t.d. evaluations. For the ph. case I take the standard value $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{EJ}=0.02804\pm 0.00065`$  while for the t.d. analyses I choose the one that has the smallest uncertainty, i.e. $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{DH}=0.02770\pm 0.00016`$ . The intrinsic uncertainty is taken into account by averaging different inferences (see Ref.).

The values of the $``$ function that enters in Eq. (13) has been provided by the LEP Higgs Working Group : they take into account all Higgs searches by the four LEP collaborations.

Table 1 summarizes the result of my analysis. The shape of the p.d.f. with and without the inclusion of the direct search information is presented in Fig. 1.

From this figure one can notice that, in the case of $`f(m_H|\text{ind.})`$, the use of a higher central value for $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h`$ (i.e. $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{EJ}`$) tends to concentrate more the probability towards smaller values of $`M_H`$. As a consequence the analysis based on $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{EJ}`$ gives results for the expected value, E\[$`M_H`$\], the standard deviation, $`\sigma (M_H)`$, of the $`M_H`$ p.d.f. and 95 % probability upper limit, $`M_H^{95}`$, very close to those obtained using $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{DH}`$ regardless the fact that the uncertainty on $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{EJ}`$ is approximately $`4`$ times larger than that of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{DH}`$. As expected, the inclusion of the direct search information drifts the p.d.f. towards higher values of $`M_H`$ by cutting regions below 110 GeV. However, the most striking thing in the figure is the spike around $`M_H115`$ GeV. Indeed, due to the excess of events in the combined data set of the LEP experiments, the $``$ function around 115 GeV takes values $`30`$ strongly enhancing the probability of that region.

## 6 Conclusions

The analysis that I have presented clearly shows that a heavy Higgs scenario is highly disfavored, given a $`𝒪(90\%)`$ probability that the Higgs weights less than 200 GeV. However, it should be said that the distribution has a quite long tail. Indeed we have that above 300 GeV there is still a residual $`𝒪(1\%)`$ probability. The excess in the data recorded by the LEP collaborations is reflected in the analysis by the spike in the distribution around $`M_H115`$ GeV. Maybe it can be of some interest to know that, according to my analysis, the probability that the Higgs mass is below 116 GeV is $`37\%`$, if we use $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{EJ}`$, and $`38\%`$ in the case of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{DH}`$.

Let me say clearly that all the results I have presented are derived under the assumptions of the validity of the SM and rely on the experimental inputs I have used. In particular I have used for $`s_{eff}^2`$ the combined LEP+SLD value, although it is well known that the two most precise determinations of it are not in very good agreement. Just to see how much my conclusions rely on the combined $`s_{eff}^2`$ value I have redone the analysis discarding the SLD result, i.e. using the LEP value for the effective sine, $`s_{eff}^2=0.23184\pm 0.00023`$. The results of this extreme exercise are not very different: in the worst case, i.e. employing $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha )_h^{DH}`$, $`P(M_H200\text{GeV})=75\%`$ while $`M_H^{95}=320`$ GeV. Finally there is still a $`23\%`$ probability that the Higgs mass is below 116 GeV.

I am grateful to G. D’Agostini, S. Fanchiotti, F. Feruglio, P. Gambino, M. Passera, A. Sirlin and A. Vicini for the fruitful collaboration on different projects variously connected with the subject discussed here. I would like also to thank M. Porrati and the other organizers for the excellent organization and the very pleasant atmosphere of the workshop. This work was supported in part by the European Union under the contract HPRN-CT-2000-00149.


text:
# 1 The dependence of ”surface density” (on the left) and of ”proper thickness” of the plate (on the right) on the parameter 𝑞₀ (dotted curve corresponds to the case of 𝜒┴∼(0)0 ).

”HOMOGENEOUS” GRAVITATIONAL FIELD
IN GENERAL RELATIVITY ?

R. M. Avakyan, E. V. Chubaryan, A. H. Yeranyan

Department of Physics, Yerevan State University

1 Alex Manoogian St., 375049 Yerevan, Armenia
E-mail ayeran@www.physdep.r.am

The gravitation field of the flat plate was investigated. It have been shown that there exist the internal solution of Einstein equations sewed together with external one, which described a ”homogeneous” gravitational field.

Introduction. The interest to the problems with planar symmetry has again increased in the last years. First of all it is connected to the fact that this type of solution plays an important role in the theories of superstrings and supergravity .

There are series of papers devoted to the study of gravitational field of a flat plate (see Ref. in ). The external solution of this problem have been found for the first time by Taub . The numerical integration of internal solution and its sewing together with external one was performed in . Here, we stress that Einstein equations accept two types of internal solutions: with negative and positive derivative of metric tensor at the centre of plate.

We will show in this paper, that only solution with negative derivative can be sewing together Taub solution. The second one corresponds to gravitational field for which the Riamannian tensor is zero outside of the plate.

Flat plate: general. Let’s consider a static gravitational field of infinite flat plate. Following the paper , space - time metric can be written as (axis $`Ox`$ is perpendicular to the plate, and the plane $`yz`$ is located at the middle of the plate)

$$ds^2=e^{\nu \left(x\right)}dt^2dx^2e^{\lambda \left(x\right)}\left(dy^2+dz^2\right).$$
(1)
Obviously, $`\nu \left(x\right)`$ and $`\lambda \left(x\right)`$ are even functions of $`x`$. Below for definiteness we shall consider the solutions in $`x>0`$.

Einstein’s equations and equations of hydrodynamics (with energy-momentum tensor for ideal liquid) appropriate to the metric (1) are as follows (using system of units $`c=G=1`$):

$$\lambda ^{\prime \prime }+\frac{3}{4}\lambda ^2=8\pi \rho ,$$
(2)
$$\frac{\lambda ^2}{4}+\frac{\lambda ^{}\nu ^{}}{2}=8\pi p,$$
(3)
$$\frac{\nu ^{\prime \prime }}{2}+\frac{\nu ^2}{4}+\frac{\lambda ^{\prime \prime }}{2}+\frac{\lambda ^2}{4}+\frac{\lambda ^{}\nu ^{}}{4}=8\pi p,$$
(4)
$$p^{}=\frac{\nu ^{}}{2}\left(p+\rho \right),$$
(5)
where $`\rho (x)`$ is the energy density, $`p(x)`$ is the pressure, and prime denotes the differentiation with respect to $`x`$. We should add to this system the state equation $`p=p(\rho )`$. We would like to remind that one of the equations of system (2) - (5) is a consequence of the others.

As boundary conditions for system (2) - (5) we have to specify values for $`\nu (0)`$, $`\nu ^{}(0)`$, $`\lambda (0)`$, $`\lambda ^{}(0)`$ and $`p(0)`$ at the centre. The functions $`\nu \left(x\right)`$ and $`\lambda \left(x\right)`$ are determined to up additive constants (as they are not contained in the equations evidently), which can be removed by simple scale transformation: $`t\alpha t`$, $`y\beta y`$, $`z\beta z`$ . Therefore, we can put

$$\nu (0)=\lambda (0)=0.$$
(6)
It is obvious from symmetry, that derivative of pressure (force) at the centre of the configuration is equal to zero, i.e.

$$p^{}(0)=0,$$
(7)
therefore

$$\nu ^{}(0)=0.$$
(8)
Inside the configuration pressure decreases monotonically ($`p^{}<0`$ ), and $`\nu \left(x\right)`$ increases monotonically ($`\nu ^{}>0`$ ). The bound of configuration $`x_s`$ is determined by condition

$$p(x_s)=0.$$
(9)
The derivative of $`\lambda `$ at the centre of the plate is determined from the equation (3)

$$\lambda ^{}(0)=\pm \sqrt{32\pi p_0},$$
(10)
where $`p_0p(0)`$ . At $`x=x_s`$ the pressure is equal to zero, therefore, as it follows from the equation (3), $`\lambda ^{}(x_s)=0`$ or $`\lambda ^{}(x_s)=2\nu ^{}(x_s)<0`$. Inside the configuration the function $`e^{\lambda (x)}`$ is monotone and should not have singularity, therefore if $`\lambda ^{}(0)=\sqrt{32\pi p_0}`$ then $`\lambda ^{}(x_s)=0`$ and $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }(x_s)=0`$ (from the equation (2)), if $`\lambda ^{}(0)=\sqrt{32\pi p_0}`$ then $`\lambda ^{}(x_s)=2\nu ^{}(x_s)`$. According to this, depending on sign of $`\lambda ^{}(0)`$ the internal solution will be sewed either with the external solution of Taub  (for $`\lambda ^{}(0)=\sqrt{32\pi p_0}`$)

$$ds^2=\frac{A}{\left(1Bx\right)^{\frac{2}{3}}}dt^2dx^2C\left(1Bx\right)^{\frac{4}{3}}\left(dy^2+dz^2\right),$$
(11)
where $`A>0`$, $`B`$ and $`C>0`$ are constants of integration, or with external solution distinct essentially from it (for $`\lambda ^{}(0)=\sqrt{32\pi p_0}`$)

$$ds^2=\left(a+bx\right)^2dt^2dx^2c\left(dy^2+dz^2\right),$$
(12)
where $`a>0`$, $`b`$ and $`c>0`$ are also constants of integration.

Model of ideal liquid. We study in detail the case of homogeneous liquid $`\rho =\rho _0=const`$. The equation (2) can be integrated easily and taking into account the boundary conditions (6) and (10) we have:

$$e^{\lambda \left(x\right)}=\left(1+3q_0\right)^{\frac{2}{3}}\left[\mathrm{cos}\left(\sqrt{6\pi \rho _0}x\pm \mathrm{arccos}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+3q_0}}\right)\right]^{\frac{4}{3}},$$
(13)
where $`q_0p_0/\rho _0`$ the ratio of the central pressure to the density. In the formula (13) upper sign corresponds to the solution with boundary condition $`\lambda ^{}(0)=\sqrt{32\pi p_0}`$, and lower sign corresponds to $`\lambda ^{}(0)=\sqrt{32\pi p_0}`$. As in the second case $`\lambda ^{}(x_s)=0`$, from (13) we can find also the bound of the configuration $`x_s`$. Differentiating the right hand side of (13) and equating to zero we find:

$$x_s=\frac{\mathrm{arccos}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+3q_0}}}{\sqrt{6\pi \rho _0}}.$$
(14)
In the second case the value of $`\lambda `$ on bound is equal to

$$\lambda (x_s)=\frac{2}{3}\mathrm{ln}\left(1+3q_0\right).$$
(15)
The equation of hydrodynamics can be also integrated

$$p=\left(p+\rho \right)e^{\frac{\nu }{2}}\rho _0.$$
(16)
Therefore, in both cases the value of $`\nu `$ on bound is equal to

$$\nu \left(x_s\right)=2\mathrm{ln}\left(1+q_0\right).$$
(17)
Substituting (13) and (16) into (3), and taking into account the boundary conditions we find:

$`e^{\nu (x)}`$ $`=`$ $`(1+q_0)^2[1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\left(\sqrt{6\pi \rho _0}x\pm \mathrm{arccos}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+3q_0}}\right)}{\mathrm{cos}^{\frac{1}{3}}\left(\sqrt{6\pi \rho _0}x\pm \mathrm{arccos}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+3q_0}}\right)}}(\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{q_0}{3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left(1+3q_0\right)^{\frac{1}{3}}}{\left(1+q_0\right)}}+`$ (18)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{6\pi \rho _0}}{3}}{\displaystyle _0^x}{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{\mathrm{cos}^{\frac{2}{3}}\left(\sqrt{6\pi \rho _0}x\pm \mathrm{arccos}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+3q_0}}\right)}})]`$
To find the constants of integration $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$ or $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ we should require continuity of the components of metric tensor and their first derivative on the bound of the configuration. However, as (16) (with the account (18)) is rather complicated, the bound of the configuration could not be found explicitly, and sewing together can not be made analytically. Therefore it’s convenient to find the internal solution by numerical calculation. For this purpose we should write down system of the equations (2) - (5) in the convenient form. It’s reasonable, for that, besides $`\nu \left(x\right)`$, $`\lambda \left(x\right)`$ and $`p\left(x\right)`$ to calculate the following functions

$$\sigma \left(x\right)=2_0^x\left(T_0^0T_1^1T_2^2T_3^3\right)\sqrt{g}𝑑x=2_0^x\left(\rho +3p\right)e^{\frac{\nu }{2}+\lambda }𝑑x,$$
(19)
$$\chi \left(x\right)=2_0^x\left(T_0^0+T_1^1\right)\sqrt{g}𝑑x=2_0^x\left(\rho p\right)e^{\frac{\nu }{2}+\lambda }𝑑x.$$
(20)
The function $`\sigma \left(x\right)`$ is ”accumulated” surface density (it can be easily verified passing to the Newtonian limit ). Taking into account (19), (20) and replacing the independent variable

$$x=\frac{1}{\sqrt{8\pi \rho _0}}\stackrel{}{x},$$
(21)
we can write equations (2) - (5) in the following form:

$$\stackrel{\stackrel{}{}}{\sigma }=2(1+3q)e^{\frac{\nu }{2}+\lambda },$$
(22)
$$\stackrel{.}{\nu }=\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{}{\sigma }e^{\frac{\nu }{2}\lambda },$$
(23)
$$\stackrel{\stackrel{}{}}{\chi }=2(1q)e^{\frac{\nu }{2}+\lambda },$$
(24)
$$\stackrel{.}{\lambda }=\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{}{\chi }e^{\frac{\nu }{2}\lambda },$$
(25)
$$\stackrel{.}{q}=\frac{1}{4}\stackrel{}{\sigma }e^{\frac{\nu }{2}\lambda }(1+q),$$
(26)
where $`qp/\rho _0`$, $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }\sqrt{8\pi /\rho _0}\sigma `$, $`\stackrel{}{\chi }\sqrt{8\pi /\rho _0}\chi `$, and dot denotes differentiation with respect to $`\stackrel{}{x}`$. For numerical calculation, starting from the centre of the configuration $`\stackrel{}{x}=0`$ we should specify values of $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }\left(0\right)`$, $`\stackrel{}{\chi }\left(0\right)`$ and $`q\left(0\right)`$ besides $`\nu \left(0\right)`$ and $`\lambda \left(0\right)`$ (see eq. (6)). Obviously, $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }\left(0\right)=0`$. From the equation (3), using (19), (20) and (21) we find:

$$\stackrel{}{\chi }=\pm 4\sqrt{q_0}.$$
(27)
Constants of integration in terms of boundary values of $`\nu _s`$, $`\lambda _s`$, $`\underset{s}{\overset{}{\sigma }}`$and $`\underset{s}{\overset{}{x}}`$, have the following form:

$$A=e^{\frac{\nu _s}{2}+\lambda _s}C^{\frac{1}{2}};B=\frac{6\sqrt{2\pi \rho _0}\underset{s}{\overset{}{\sigma }}}{4e^{\frac{\nu _s}{2}+\lambda _s}+3\underset{s}{\overset{}{\sigma }}\underset{s}{\overset{}{x}}};C=(e^{\frac{3}{4}\lambda _s}+\frac{3}{4}\underset{s}{\overset{}{\sigma }}\underset{s}{\overset{}{x}}e^{\frac{\nu _s}{2}\frac{\lambda _s}{4}})^{\frac{3}{4}},$$
(28)
$$a=e^{\frac{\nu _s}{2}}\frac{1}{4}\underset{s}{\overset{}{\sigma }}\underset{s}{\overset{}{x}}e^{\lambda _s};b=\sqrt{\frac{\pi \rho _0}{2}}\underset{s}{\overset{}{\sigma }}e^{\lambda _s};c=e^{\lambda _s}.$$
(29)
The numerical calculation of the equations (22) - (26) was carried out for configurations with the parameter values $`10^2q_01`$. The results of numerical calculation are given on figures.

External solutions. We study now external solutions (11) and (12).

In Taub solution (11) constant $`B>0`$ (as $`\lambda ^{}(x_s)<0`$), therefore, on final distance from the centre of the plate in the point $`x=1/B`$ the metric has real singularity: $`\left|g_{ik}\right|=0`$. And, it can be easily convinced that $`x_s<1/B`$, i.e. the plate is inside of the singular planes. Indeed, from the equations it can be seen that the function $`\lambda (x)`$ monotonically decreases in all space ($`\lambda ^{}<0`$ and $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }<0`$) and becomes ”$`\mathrm{}`$ ” only outside the plate, as function is a finite quantity inside the plate.

In the solution (12) constant of integration $`b`$ is also positive, as $`\nu ^{}(x_s)>0`$. The solution is 4-flat, what can be convinced by evaluating Riemannian tensor for this metric. However, it can be checked easier using transformations

$$a+bx=b\sqrt{x_1^2t_1^2};bt=arcth\frac{t_1}{x_1}.$$
(30)
Thus, the metric (12) takes the Galilean form

$$ds^2=dt_1^2dx_1^2dy^2dz^2,$$
(31)
Thus, this solution represents realization of a homogeneous gravitational field in sense of GR, which can be excluded by one global transformation (30) in all space outside the plate.

Conclusions. It is conventionally assumed that in the Einstein’s theory the presence of gravitational field in some area is indicated by nonzero Riemannian tensor in this area. However, the analysis of this solution leads to the following conclusion: the metric (12) describes a homogeneous gravitational field of the plate in reference system, fixed with respect to the plate, but for it the Riemannian tensor $`R_{klm}^i`$ is zero. Really, in this field the trial particle moves under the law

$$a+bx=\frac{a+bx_0}{\mathrm{cosh}bt}$$
(32)
and falls on the plate in finite time $`t_0=\mathrm{arccos}\mathrm{h}(a+bx_0/a+bx_s)`$, where $`x_0>x_s`$ is the coordinate of the point, where the particle was at rest at the moment $`t=0`$.

We think that namely this solution (but not Taub solution) is a relativistic analogue of the appropriate solution in the Newton’s theory.