text:
# The ages and colours of cool helium-core white dwarf stars

## 1 Introduction

The theoretical and observational study of white dwarf (WD) stars with helium cores (hereafter He WD) is a subject that has received increased attention particularly during the last few years. It is well known for instance that close binary evolution and mass loss episodes are required to form low-mass He WDs within the age of the Galaxy (see Iben & Livio 1993 for a review). These He WDs populate the tail of low-mass ($`M<`$ 0.4 M) in the WD mass distribution (Bergeron, Saffer & Liebert 1992; Bragaglia, Renzini & Bergeron 1995 and Saffer, Livio & Yungelson 1998). The binary nature of these objects was first placed on a firm observational basis by Marsh (1995) and Marsh, Dhillon & Duck (1995). Since then, He WDs have been detected in numerous binary configurations involving either another WD or a neutron star (see, e.g., Lundgren et al. 1996; Moran, Marsh & Bragaglia 1997; Orosz et al. 1999; Maxted et al. 2000). Several He WDs have also been found in open and globular clusters (Landsman et al. 1997; Cool et al. 1998 and Edmonds et al. 1999). Evolutionary models appropriate for the study of He WDs have recently been presented by Althaus & Benvenuto (1997), Benvenuto & Althaus (1998), Hansen & Phinney (1998a) and Driebe et al. (1998).

The determination of ages for low-mass He WDs is a longstanding problem in the study of the evolution of these stars. As a matter of fact, cooling ages for He WD are intimately related to the mass of the hydrogen envelope left before entering the final cooling track. Early investigations carried out by Webbink (1975) indicated that, as a result of massive hydrogen envelopes, hydrogen burning via the pp cycle remains the main important source of energy over most of the computed evolution, thus implying very long evolutionary time-scales. In agreement with this prediction, Alberts et al. (1996) and Sarna, Antipova & Ergma (1999) found that, on the basis of a detailed treatment of the binary evolution leading to the formation of these objects, the hydrogen-rich envelope surviving flash episodes is massive enough for residual hydrogen burning to be dominant even at low luminosities, thus resulting in very long cooling times. Massive hydrogen envelopes for He WDs have also been derived by Driebe et al. (1998), who have simulated the binary evolution by forcing a 1 Mmodel at the red giant branch to a large mass loss rate. Obviously, very large cooling ages as derived from these evolutionary models constrain the existence of He WDs with very low effective temperature ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ ) values. For example, the Driebe et al. model of 0.195 Mneeds about 17 Gyr to evolve down to $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ = 5000K, which exceeds any age range of interest. The possibility that the hydrogen envelope is considerably reduced by additional mass loss episodes was considered by Iben & Tutukov (1986). These authors found that the last flash episode undergone by their 0.3 MHe WD model becomes strong enough so as to force the model to reach again giant dimensions, causing Roche-lobe overflow. They found that the resulting mass transfer reduces the hydrogen envelope to such an extent that it is unable to support any further nuclear burning, thereby implying short cooling ages at late stages of evolution. Finally, Benvenuto & Althaus (1998) and Hansen & Phinney (1998a) presented a detailed grid of He WD models based on the assumption that He WDs are formed with a relatively thin hydrogen envelope and thus hydrogen burning does not appreciably contribute to the luminosity budget of the star.

In the context of the foregoing discussion, binary systems composed by a millisecond pulsar and a low-mass He WD are particularly interesting, as they may place tight constraints on the evolution of He WDs. Indeed, the spin-down age of the pulsar provides an estimation of the age of the He WD companion, which can be compared with the predictions of evolutionary calculations for the WD. In this regard, the best-studied system belonging to this class is PSR J1012+5307, for which Lorimer et al. (1995) determined a spin-down age for the pulsar ($`\tau _c=`$) of 7 Gyr. In addition, atmospheric parameters of the He WD component have been derived by van Kerkwijk, Bergeron & Kulkarni (1996) and Callanan, Garnavich & Koester (1998) ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $``$ 8500K and log g $``$ 6.3-6.7). Evolutionary models for He WDs that predict thick hydrogen envelopes (Driebe et al. 1998) lead for this low-mass WD ($`M`$ 0.15-0.19 M) to an age which is consistent with the spin-down age of the pulsar. However, large evolutionary time-scales as predicted by these models are in disagreement with new observational data. In fact, a recent breakthrough has been the optical detection of the low-mass WD companion to the millisecond pulsar PSR B1855+09 by van Kerkwijk et al. (2000), who derived for the WD companion a $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ value of 4800 $`\pm `$ 800K. The mass of the WD in this binary system is accurately known thanks to the Shapiro delay of the pulsar signal (0.258$`{}_{0.016}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.028}`$ M; see Kaspi, Taylor & Ryba 1994). According to the Driebe et al.’ models, this low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ value corresponds to a WD cooling age of 10 Gyr, which is at odds with the characteristic age of the pulsar, $`\tau _c=`$ 5 Gyr. In addition, ages well above 10 Gyr are inferred from the models of Driebe et al. (1998) for the very cool WD companions to PSR J0034-0534 and PSR J1713+0747 (Hansen & Phinney 1998b), which may be an indication that such evolutionary models indeed overestimate the WD cooling ages, as discussed by van Kerkwijk et al. (2000). Finally, a recent population study of close double WDs in the Galaxy carried out by Yungelson et al. (2000) suggests that low mass He WDs have to cool much faster than suggested by evolutinary models of Driebe et al. (1998).

Very recently, Althaus, Serenelli & Benvenuto (2000a,b) have presented new evolutionary calculations for He WDs aimed at exploring the role played by element diffusion in the ocurrence of hydrogen shell flashes and, more importantly, to assess whether or not the mass of the hydrogen envelope can be considerably reduced by enhanced hydrogen burning during diffusion-induced, flash episodes. In particular, He WD models in the mass range 0.17-0.41 Mwere evolved down to very low surface luminosities starting from physically sound initial models generated by abstracting mass from a 1 Mmodel at appropriate stages of its red giant branch evolution. Most importantly, gravitational settling, chemical and thermal diffusion have been considered in these new calculations and model evolution was computed in a self-consistent way with the evolution of element abundances as predicted by diffusion processes. Althaus et al. (2000a) find that element diffusion strongly affects the structure and evolution of He WDs, giving rise to a different cooling history depending on the stellar mass of the models. In particular, diffusion induces the occurrence of hydrogen shell flashes in He WDs with masses ranging from $``$ 0.18 to 0.41 M, which is in sharp contrast from the situation when diffusion is neglected. In connection with the further evolution, these diffusion-induced flashes lead to hydrogen envelopes thin enough so as to prevent stable nuclear burning from being an important energy source at advanced cooling stages.111 Since Althaus et al. (2000a,b) did not invoke additional mass transfer when models return to the red giant region as a result of thermonuclear flashes, the surviving hydrogen envelope masses after flash episodes are upper limits. This implies much shorter cooling ages than in the case when diffusion is neglected (Driebe et al. 1998). On the contrary, for masses lower than 0.18 M(as it is the case for the WD companion to PSR J1012+5307), nuclear burning is dominant even in the presence of diffusion and cooling ages resemble those derived from models without diffusion.

The evolutionary calculations mentioned in the preceding paragraph have important implications when attempt is made in comparing theoretical predictions on the WD evolution with expectations from millisecond pulsars, such as those mentioned earlier. As a matter of fact, these evolutionary models predict that as a result of element diffusion, evolution is accelerated to such an extent that the age discrepancy between the PSR B1855+09 components vanishes completely. More specifically, these models lead to an age of 4 $`\pm `$ 2 Gyr for the WD component in good agreement with the spin-down age of the pulsar. As mentioned, there also exists other millisecond pulsars with WD companions for which cooling and spin-down ages appear to be discrepant when the WD age is assessed from evolutionary models in which diffusion is not considered. This is the case for the systems involving PSR J0034-053 and J1713+0747 (Hansen & Phinney 1998b) which most likely have very cool He WD companions. On the contrary, evolutionary calculations including element diffusion give ages in good agreement with the ages of such pulsars (Althaus et al. 2000a). Thus, age discrepancies between the predictions of standard evolutionary models and recent observational data of millisecond pulsar systems appear to be the result of ignoring element diffusion in such evolutionary calculations.

According to the Althaus et al. (2000a) evolutionary calculations, He WDs with stellar masses greater than $``$ 0.18 Mcould reach very low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ stages well within the age of the universe. In this connection, the WD LSH 3250 is particularly noteworthy. With a surface luminosity of $`\mathrm{log}(L/\mathrm{L}_{})`$ = -4.57 $`\pm `$ 0.04 (Harris et al. 1999), this places it amongst the lowest luminosity known for any WD. It is highly likely that this WD is characterized by a helium core and a very low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ value (Harris et al. 1999) such that its emergent spectrum would be dominated by collision-induced absorption (CIA) from molecular hydrogen. Such a strong molecular absorption causes cool WDs to become bluer as they age (Hansen 1998; Saumon & Jacobson 1999 and Rohrmann 2000; see also Saumon et al. 1994 in the context of low mass stars). WD evolutionary sequences based on detailed radiative transfer calculations appropriate for very old carbon-oxygen WDs have recently been presented by Hansen (1998, 1999) and Salaris et al. (2000).

If cool low-mass He WDs are actually characterized by short cooling ages, as claimed by Althaus et al., then many of them could present blue colours as a result of strong CIA from molecular hydrogen. In light of these concerns, we judge it to be worthwhile to re-examine the ages of cool He WDs and at the same time to provide colours and magnitudes for these stars in a self-consistent way with the predictions of stellar evolution and element diffusion. This is the main aim of the present work, and to our knowledge such kind of calculations have never been performed. The present calculations improve over those presented in Althaus et al (2000a) in the fact that here appropriate outer boundary conditions for the cooling models are derived on the basis of detailed non-gray model atmospheres (Rohrmann 2000). As far as cool WD ages are concerned, this is a very important point because WD cooling is very sensitive to the treatment of the outer boundary conditions. Another motivation for the present work is the determination of a theoretical luminosity function for He WDs from our new cooling curves. Details about our evolutionary code, initial models and diffusion treatment are briefly described in Section 2. In that section, we also detail the main characteristic of our model atmospheres. Results are presented in Section 3; in particular the evolution of our models in colour-magnitude diagrams is analysed. Finally, Section 4 is devoted to making some concluding remarks.

## 2 Computational details

As stated in the introduction, one of the aim of this work is to provide a grid of ages, colours and magnitudes for WD cooling models appropriate for the study of old He WDs. This set of models covers an wide range of stellar masses as expected for such objects. In particular, the evolution of models with stellar masses of 0.406, 0.360, 0.327, 0.292, 0.242, 0.196 and 0.169 Mhas been followed from the end of mass loss episodes during the pre-WD evolution down to very low surface luminosities. WD evolution is computed in a self-consistent way with the expectations from element diffusion, as done in Althaus et al. (2000a,b); but in contrast to the gray-atmosphere approximation assumed in that work, we consider here a detailed treatment of the atmosphere which enable us to obtain accurate outer boundary conditions for our cooling models and colour indices as well.

Attention is focused mainly on the low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ regime, where WD evolution is markedly dependent on the treatment of the very outer layers. When models reach such stages of evolution, element diffusion have caused the bulk of hydrogen to float and helium and heavier elements to sink from outer layers (see Althaus et al. 2000a for details). This implies almost pure hydrogen atmospheres and justifies our use of atmosphere models for zero metallicity (see below).

In what follows, we briefly comment on the initial models, our atmospheric treatment and the input physics included in our evolutionary code.

### 2.1 Initial models

Reliable initial models have been obtained by simply abstracting mass from a 1 M model at appropriate stages of the red giant branch evolution (see also Iben & Tutukov 1986 and Driebe et al. 1998). In this way, we were able to generate initial He WD models with stellar masses of 0.406, 0.360, 0.327, 0.292, 0.242, 0.196 and 0.169 M. It is worth mentioning that the resulting envelopes and hydrogen surface abundance of these initial models are in good agreement with those quoted by Driebe et al (1998). We follow the further evolution of such initial configurations consistently with the predictions of element diffusion. As the stars enter the cooling branch, diffusion processes begin to play an important role. First, they cause hydrogen to float and other elements to sink, giving rise to pure hydrogen outer layers. Simultaneously, chemical diffusion makes some hydrogen move inwards to hotter layers, favouring the occurrence of a thermonuclear flash. Short after the flash begins, the star suddenly increases its radius and developes an outer convection zone which gets deep enough and reaches helium-rich layers, thus modifying the composition of the outer layers. Over a time-scale of the order of a few hundred years the star evolves back to the red giant region and then finally to the cooling branch. At this stage, evolutionary time-scale gets longer and diffusion begins to be important again with the result that the outer layers become made up of only hydrogen. This in sharp contrast with the case in which diffusion is neglected. In that case, apart from convection, no other physical agent is able to drive hydrogen to the surface and therefore the final outer layer chemical composition is fixed by the last episode of convective mixing (made up by hydrogen and helium in comparable proportions). Should the hydrogen envelope left after the flash episode is thick enough, another thermonuclear flash will be triggered by chemical diffusion. This sequence of events will finish once the remaining hydrogen envelope is thin enough for hydrogen burning to be negligible. Thus the amount of hydrogen remaining after hydrogen flashes have ceased results markedly lower when diffusion is allowed to operate. This will produce not only a different cooling history as mentioned in the introduction but also noticeable changes in the structure of the star. In this regard, surfaces gravities result very different if diffusion is considered. For models with $`M_{}<`$ 0.18 Mfor instance, the surface gravity is reduced by almost 80 per cent as a result of element diffusion (see Althaus et al. 2000a for details).

After flash episodes have ceased and when models reach the final cooling branch, we compute the subsequent evolution by considering a detailed treatment of the atmosphere (see below). Here, evolution becomes slow enough for the purity of the outer layers to be established by diffusion processes.222However, we should note that, as a result of the long diffusion time-scales at the base of the outer convection zone, metals accreted from interstellar medium could be mantained in the outer layers of very cool He WDs for a long time (see Althaus & Benvenuto 2000)

### 2.2 Model Atmosphere

For a proper treatment of the cooling behaviour of He WDs we have calculated the evolution of our He WD models in a self-consistent way with the predictions of detailed non-gray model atmospheres, which are described at length in Rohrmann (2000). Recently, the atmospheric code described in Rohrmann (2000) has been adapted for treating mixtures of hydrogen and helium. Here we restrict ourselves to a few brief comments and we refer the reader to that work for details and comparisons of such models with other relevant atmospheric calculations in the literature.

To begin with, our non-gray model atmospheres are constructed under the assumption of constant gravity, local thermodynamic equilibrium and plane-parallel geometry and include hydrogen and helium species (zero metallicity). Energy transfer by radiation and convection are taken into account and the resulting equations are solved by means of a standard linearization technique. More specifically, the equation of radiative transfer (formulated in terms of the variable Eddington factors, see Auer & Mihalas 1970) and constant flux condition (radiative and convective contributions) are solved by means of an iterative procedure over linearized equations for a set of optical depth points and a frequency mesh. In the interests of minimising computing times, we consider a partial linearization procedure in terms of the temperature alone (Gustafsson 1971 and Gustafsson & Nissen 1972). Only the Planck function and the convective flux are linearized and temperature corrections at each depth point are obtained by means of the Rybicki procedure in which the resulting system of linear equations are ordered not in depth blocks but in frequency blocks (see Gustaffson & Nissen 1972).

Constitutive physics of our model atmospheres is based on an ideal equation of state333Non-ideal effects become important in hydrogen model atmospheres for $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`<`$ 2500K; see Saumon & Jacobson (1999). and the following species have been considered: H, H2, e-, H-, H+, H2+, H3+, He, He+ and He++. Although the abundances of species such as H2+ and H3+ are usually negligible, their presence affects significantly the absorption and emission of radiation (see Saumon et al. 1994). Partition functions of H and H2; H2+ and H3+ are from Irwin (1981), Sauval & Tatum (1984) and Neale & Tennyson (1995), respectively. All relevant bound-free, free-free and scattering processes contributing to opacity have been included in our calculations. At low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values, CIA by molecular hydrogen due to collisions with H2 and He represents a major source of opacity in the infrared and dominates the shape of the emergent spectrum at low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ . Here, we have included calculations of H2-H2 and H2-He CIA cross sections by Borysow, Jorgensen & Zheng (1997). Convection is treated within the formalism of the mixing length (ML2 version) and it has been included self-consistently in the equation of energy conservation and in the linearization procedure. It is worth mentioning that for $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values below 8000K, the temperature profile becomes insensitive to the adopted parametrization of the mixing-length theory (Bergeron, Wesemael & Fontaine 1992). Broadband colour indices have been calculated using the optical $`BVRI`$ and infrared $`JHK`$ passbands of Bessell (1990) and Bessell & Brett (1988), respectively, with callibration constants from Bergeron, Ruiz & Leggett (1997).

We note that, as reported by Saumon et al. (1994) and Bergeron, Saumon & Wesemael (1995), numerical instabilities resulting from the competition between CIA by H2 and H- opacity develop in the $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ regime from $``$ 3500-5000K depending on the surface gravity. Such instabilities were overcome by the procedure suggested by these authors. Finally, starting pressure and temperature values needed to integrate the envelope equations are given at an optical depth $`\tau `$ of $``$ 25. At this point the diffusion approximation for the radiative transfer can be assumed to be valid and the equations of stellar structure in the envelope, at the bottom of which we specify the outer boundary conditions to the evolutive models, can be integrated using Rosseland mean opacities.

### 2.3 Evolutionary code and diffusion treatment

The evolutionary calculations presented in this work were performed using the evolutionary code described in our previous works on WD evolution (see, e.g, Althaus & Benvenuto 1997, 2000 and Benvenuto & Althaus 1998). Shortly, our code includes a detailed and updated physical description such as OPAL radiative opacities (Iglesias & Rogers 1996) and molecular opacities (Alexander & Ferguson 1994); the equation of state for the low density regime is an updated version of that of Magni & Mazzitelli (1979), whilst for the high density regime we consider ionic contributions, Coulomb interactions, partially degenerate electrons, and electron exchange and Thomas-Fermi contributions at finite temperature. Conductive opacities and the various mechanisms of neutrinos emission are taken from the formulation of Itoh and collaborators. Hydrogen burning is considered via a complete network of thermonuclear reaction rates corresponding to the proton-proton chain and the CNO bi-cycle. The chemical evolution resulting from element diffusion has also been considered. The diffusion calculations are based on the multicomponent treatment of the gas developed by Burgers (1969) and gravitational settling, chemical and thermal diffusion have been taken into account. We mention that the WD evolution is calculated in a self-consistent way with the predictions of element diffusion. In addition, radiative opacities are calculated for metallicities as given by the varying abundances (more details are given in Althaus et al. 2000a and Althaus & Benvenuto 2000).

## 3 Results

We begin by examining the evolutionary ages for some selected stellar masses. They are illustrated in Fig. 1 in which the $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ versus age relation is depicted together with the observational data for the WD companions to the millisecond pulsars PSR J1012+5307 and B1855+09 (Callanan et al. 1998 and van Kerkwijk et al. 2000, respectively). Only the evolution corresponding to the final cooling branch is depicted in the figure. For stellar masses greater than $``$ 0.18 M, models experience diffusion-induced hydrogen flashes and they are left with small hydrogen mass and little nuclear burning with the consequent result that cooling ages become substantially smaller as compared with the situation for less massive models, which do not suffer from flash episodes (see Althaus et al. 2000a). Note the good agreement with the observational predictions for both of the pulsars. In particular, for the PSR B1855+09 companion, models with diffusion predict an age of 4 $`\pm `$ 2 Gyr in good agreement with the pulsar age. It is clear that element diffusion is an important ingredient in the evolution of He WDs that must be taken into account when attempt is made in comparing theoretical predictions with observational data.

Note that differences in the cooling of He WDs arise from the employment of detailed model atmospheres. Specifically, the inclusion of proper outer boundary conditions may decrease the cooling ages up to 1 Gyr in the range 4000K $`<`$ $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`<`$ 5500K. At such stages of evolution, the central temperature becomes strongly tied to the temperature stratification of the outer layers. In fact, when convection reaches the domain of degeneracy, the central temperature drops substantially and the star has initially an excess of internal energy to be radiated, thus giving rise to a lengthening of the evolutionary times during that epoch of evolution, as it is borne out by the change of slope in the cooling curves shown in Fig. 1. At advanced stages of evolution, the thermal stratification of the envelope is affected by the use of non-gray atmospheres in such a way that the location of the maximum depth reached by the base of the outer convection zone is markedly shallower as compared with the prediction of the standard gray treatment for the atmosphere (see also Bergeron et al. 1997). This can be appreciated in Fig. 2 in which we show the evolution of the base of the outer convection zone in terms of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ for the 0.242 Mmodel. Clearly, when $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is decreased below 7000K, the non-gray treatment predicts a shallower outer convection zone (this behaviour is essentially the same irrespective of the stellar mass of the model). As a result, convection reaches the degenerate core at lower $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values in such models and accordingly the drop in the central temperature takes place later than for the gray models, as shown in Fig. 3. This behaviour explains the trend of the cooling curves in both set of calculations.

Another interesting issue of our evolutionary calculations also related to the extent of the outer convection zone is the following. As noted by Althaus et al. (2000a), the hydrogen envelope left after diffusion-induced flash episodes may be thin enough that convection is able to mix it with the underlying helium layers at advanced stages of evolution. In fact, these authors find that over a time interval of 2 Gyr, models with masses of $``$ 0.2 Mare characterized by outer layers made up by hydrogen and helium by the time they have cooled down to $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $``$ 5000K. As mentioned (see Fig. 2) , the use of detailed model atmospheres to derive outer boundary conditions for evolving WDs gives rise to shallower outer convection zones as compared with the gray treatment considered in Althaus et al. (2000a). As a result, no mixing episodes occur at all and the envelope of our He WD models remains as pure hydrogen down to the end of the cooling sequence.

From the cooling curves, we can estimate the predicted number density of He WDs as a function of luminosity. To this end we have translated the cooling curves for our set of models into a total luminosity function according to the relation given by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\underset{i}{}n_i,$$
(1)
with

$$n_i=\frac{k_i\mathrm{\Delta }t}{V}.$$
(2)
Here, $`k_i`$ is the birthrate of He WDs of a given stellar mass, the summation of which is normalized to the birthrate at which He WDs are produced (0.14 $`yr^1`$; see Iben, Tutukov & Yungelson 1997). $`n_i`$ is the number density of He WDs (single luminosity function) of a given mass in the magnitude interval M$`{}_{b}{}^{}0.5`$ to M$`{}_{b}{}^{}+0.5`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ is the time interval the model requires to evolve from M$`{}_{b}{}^{}0.5`$ to M$`{}_{b}{}^{}+0.5`$ magnitude and $`V`$ is the volume of the Galactic disk ($`3\times 10^{11}pc^3`$). On the basis of these assumptions, the resulting single luminosity functions for our models are displayed in Fig. 4. A striking feature shown by this figure are the spikes at intermediate luminosities, which correspond to the evolutionary phases prior to the onset of flash episodes where evolution slows down. At high luminosities, each He WD theoretical distribution exhibits a bump. These bumps are a consequence of the slow rate of evolution before the models enter their cooling branch. To understand the behaviour of $`n_i`$ at high luminosities, it should be kept in mind that as a result of thermonuclear flashes, models reach the high surface luminosity phase more than once. Less massive models experiences many flash episodes, thus their resulting luminosity functions show more extended bumps.

The total luminosity function, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, results from the superposition of the single number density of He WDs and it is illustrated by Fig.5. Note that over most of the given surface luminosity range, the total luminosity function exhibits a rather monotonously increasing trend down to $`\mathrm{log}(L/\mathrm{L}_{})`$ $``$ \- 2.5. Little of the behaviour of the individual luminosity function remains. This is expected because flash episodes occur at different surface luminosities depending on the stellar mass with the result that spikes cancel amongst them out. At $`\mathrm{log}(L/\mathrm{L}_{})`$ $``$ \- 2.5, the luminosity function shows a local maximum as a result of the contribution of models which do not experience hydrogen shell flashes. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, such models are characterized by stable nuclear burning even at low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values, with the consequent result that their evolution is considerably slowed down. More specifically, at such a luminosity, the 0.169 Mmodel is characterized by an age of $``$ 14 Gyr; so it is expected not to contribute to the number density of He WDs at lower luminosities within the age of the universe. At $`\mathrm{log}(L/\mathrm{L}_{})`$ $``$ \- 4, the luminosity function shows a small bump. As explained earlier, when convection reaches the degenerate core, there is initially an excess of energy to get rid of and the cooling process is slowed down, thus leading to the small bump in the luminosity function at low stellar luminosities. Finally, we should note that we have considered single He WDs, that is we have neglected possible merger of those He WDs formed in binary systems with small separation for gravitational wave radiation to lead to a merger of the components on time scales shorter than the Hubble time. Accordingly, care should be taken at comparing our theoretical luminosity functions at low luminosities with observations.

The evolution of the emergent flux distribution for the 0.292 M He WD model at some selected $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values can be seen in Fig. 6. The results of the non-gray atmosphere (solid lines) are compared with the blackbody predictions (dashed lines) at the same $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ value. We want to stress again that by the time models have reached the $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ range considered in Fig.6, element diffusion have caused heavier elements than hydrogen to sink below the outer layers. So, our evolving He WD models at such advanced stages of evolution are characterized by pure hydrogen outer layers. At high temperatures, the $`H^{}`$ opacity is dominant. Since this opacity is almost independent of frequency, the emergent flux resembles that of the blackbody spectrum. The main observation we can make from this figure is that when $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is lowered below 4000K, the emergent spectrum becomes bluer. This effect, reported also by Saumon et al. (1994) and more recently by Saumon & Jacobson (1999), Hansen (1998,1999), Rohrmann (2000) and Salaris et al. (2000) (particularly in the context of carbon-oxygen WDs), is due to the strong CIA opacity by molecular hydrogen that reduces the infrared flux and force radiation to emerge at larger frequencies. As a result, cool low-mass He WDs become bluer as they age. Needless to say, this effect also affects the colour-colour and colour-magnitude diagrams. Indeed, most colour indices show a pronounced turn-off at low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values and they become bluer after reaching a maximum. This is nicely illustrated by Fig. 7 in which the ($`BV`$, $`VK`$) two-colour diagram is shown for all of our He WD models together with the observational data for DA and non-DA WDs according to Bergeron, Leggett & Ruiz (2000). The peculiar WD LHS 3250 analysed by Harris et al. (1999) is also included in the figure. Note also that for $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ below 5000K, colours become markedly bluer in this diagram.

Now we analyse the evolution of our He WD models in the colour-magnitude diagram. In particular we show in Figs. 8 and 9 the behaviour of the absolute visual magnitude $`M_V`$ for our models as a function of the color indices $`VI`$ and $`BV`$, respectively. The observational sample for cool DA (open circles) and non-DA (open triangles) WDs of Bergeron et al. (2000) are also included in the figure as well as the location of the WD LHS 3250 according to Harris et al. (1999). For the 0.169 Mmodel, only the phase of low $`M_V`$ values is depicted because such a model would require exceedingly high ages to evolve to lower luminosities. By contrast, more massive models can reach high magnitudes within a Hubble time. Indeed, as can be seen from the figure, He WD models in the mass range from $``$ 0.18 to 0.3 M can reach the turn-off point and become blue again within cooling times less than 15 Gyr. Specifically, such models have cooling ages of 6 - 9 Gyr at the turn-off, which occurs at $`M_V`$ 16. Note that with further evolution, they remain brighter than $`M_V`$ 16.5. The results presented here raise the possibility that many low-mass He WDs could have had time enough to evolve beyond the turn-off point and present blue colours. The cool WD LHS 3250 analysed by Harris et al. (1999) could be an example of such WDs. More massive He WDs present a similar trend in their colour-magnitude evolution but the ages involved are considerably larger. For instance, the 0.406 Mmodel needs about 13 Gyr to reach the turn-off in the $`VI`$ colour index. We would like to stress again the fact that the short cooling ages characterizing such models are due to the role played by element diffusion during the evolutionary phases prior to those computed here. In fact, element diffusion leads to hydrogen shell flashes during which the mass of the hydrogen envelope is reduced to such an extent that nuclear burning becomes negligible on the final cooling track, thus implying much shorter cooling ages from the situation when diffusion is neglected (such as in Driebe et al. 1998). The colour-magnitude diagram for the $`BV`$ colour index is shown in Fig. 9. Note that the $`BV`$ colour index does not show a turn-off at low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ . We should mention that for $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values above $``$ 8000K, our predictions for the $`BV`$ show discrepancies with those of Bergeron et al. (1995) because in our calculations we have not considered the effects of line broadening opacities.

Finally, we list in Table 1 the colour indices for our 0.169, 0.242, 0.327 and 0.406 MHe WD models at some selected low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values. In addition, for each stellar mass and $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ value, we provide the surface gravity ($`g`$), the age (in Gyr), the absolute visual magnitude ($`M_V`$) and the bolometric correction ($`BC`$). The latter is calculated according to (see Bergeron, Wesemael & Beauchamp 1995)

$$BC=2.5\mathrm{log}_0^{\mathrm{}}H_\lambda S_\lambda ^V𝑑\lambda 10\mathrm{log}T_{eff}+15.6165,$$
(3)
where $`H_\lambda `$ and $`S_\lambda ^V`$ are the monocromatic emergent flux at temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and the transmission function of the $`V`$ filter, respectively.

## 4 Conclusions

The present study was aimed at exploring the evolution of white dwarf (WD) stars with helium cores (He WD) on the basis of very detailed non-gray model atmospheres (Rohrmann 2000) to derive accurate boundary conditions for the evolving models. The emphasis has been placed on the advanced stages of the evolution of these objects where WD evolution is markedly dependent on the treatment of the atmosphere. The evolutionary phases leading to the formation of cool He WDs have been explored in detail by Althaus et al. (2000a), who found that the inclusion of element diffusion in evolutionary calculations for He WDs leads to hydrogen envelopes thin enough for stable nuclear burning to play a minor role at late stages of evolution. Here we improved the above-mentioned calculations by following the evolution of He WD models in a self-consistent way with the predictions of non-gray model atmospheres. Another motivation for the present work has been to construct a theoretical luminosity function for He WDs and to provide colour indices and magnitudes for these WDs self-consistently with stellar evolution and element diffusion.

In particular, we have considered He WD models with stellar masses of 0.406, 0.360, 0.327, 0.292, 0.242, 0.196 and 0.169 M, the evolution of which has been followed from the end of mass loss episodes during the pre-WD evolution down to very low surface luminosities.

We find that when $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ decreases below 4000K, the emergent spectrum of He WDs becomes bluer and not redder, as reported by other investigators. We also analyse the evolution of our He WD models in the colour-magnitude diagrams and we find that He WDs with masses ranging from $``$ 0.18 to 0.3 M can reach the turn-off in their colours and become blue again within cooling times much less than 15 Gyr and then remain brighter than $`M_V`$ 16.5. This is an interesting result because it raises the possibility that many low-mass He WDs could have had time enough to evolve beyond the turn-off point and present blue colours. Cooling times this short have also been derived by Althaus et al (2000a,b) on the basis of detailed evolutionary models that consider the pre-WD evolution and the effects of element diffusion. As shown by these authors, these new models solve the discrepancy between the predictions of standard evolutionary calculations (which do not consider element diffusion, such as Driebe et al. 1998) for He WDs and the age of some millisecond pulsar companions. The detection of blue, low-mass He WDs at very low $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ would place the theoretical predictions of our models on a firm observational basis.

Complete tables containing the results of the present calculations are available at http://www.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar/$``$althaus/ or upon request to the authors at their e-mail addresses.

We thank our anonymous referee whose comments and suggestions greatly improved the original version of this paper.


format: text

text:
# Top-quark rare decay 𝑡→𝑐ℎ in R-parity-violating SUSY

## Abstract

The flavor-changing top-quark decay $`tch`$, where $`h`$ is the lightest CP-even Higgs boson in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, is examined in the R-parity-violating supersymmetric model. Within the existing bounds on the relevant R-parity-violating couplings, the branching fraction for $`tch`$ can be as large as about $`10^5`$ in some part of the parameter space.

preprint:   MADPH-01-1212 hep-ph/0102037

The study of heavy-particle decays via flavor-changing neutral-currents (FCNC) has been playing an important role in testing the standard model (SM) and probing new physics beyond the SM. As the heaviest elementary particle in the SM with a mass at the electroweak scale, the top quark is more likely to be sensitive to new physics. Kinematically it is accessible to many FCNC decay modes, such as $`tcV`$ ($`V=\gamma ,Z,g`$) and $`tch`$, where $`h`$ is a Higgs boson. In the SM these FCNC decay modes are highly suppressed by GIM mechanism, with branching fractions typically of $`10^{13}10^{10}`$ , which are too small to be detectable at collider experiments. On the other hand, observation of any of such FCNC top-quark decays would be robust evidence for new physics .

Top quarks will be copiously produced at the next generation of hadron colliders. At the upgraded Fermilab Tevatron with an integrated luminosity of 10 fb<sup>-1</sup>, there will be about $`8\times 10^4`$ top quarks produced, while there will be about 100 times more at the LHC with the same luminosity. With such large data samples, good sensitivities may be reached for searching for the rare decay channels $`tcV`$ , and for studying other related processes at hadron colliders . A more recent study showed that the channel $`tch`$ could also be detectable , reaching a sensitivity level for the branching fraction $`Br(tch)5\times 10^5`$ at the LHC and a few percent at the Tevatron. While these high detection sensitivities are still far above the SM expectation for the rare decay channels , in many scenarios beyond the SM the branching fractions of these FCNC top-quark decays could be significantly enhanced .

In the minimal supersymmetric (SUSY) standard model (MSSM)  with R-parity conservation, it was shown  that the possibility for observing the decay channel $`tch`$ could be greatly enhanced (here $`h`$ is the lightest CP-even Higgs boson). Kinematically this decay mode is always allowed because of the strict theoretical upper bound on the Higgs boson mass , and the decay receives dominant contributions from the SUSY QCD loops of flavor-changing interactions . If the gluino and squarks involved in the contributing SUSY QCD loops are both light of order 100 GeV, the branching fraction could be enhanced to a level of $`10^5`$. The branching fraction falls off quickly for heavier sparticles in the loops.

In this Letter we examine the R-parity-violating contributions to $`tch`$. It is well-known that the R-parity conservation in SUSY theory, which implies the separate conservation of baryon number and lepton number, is put in by hand. R-parity violation ($`\overline{)R}`$) can be made perfectly consistent with other fundamental principles such as gauge invariance, supersymmetry and renormalizability . If R-parity violation is included in the MSSM, $`tch`$ will receive new contributions from the loops of R-parity-violating interactions. Such contributions can be significant for the following reasons. First, such contributing loops only involve a single sparticle, i. e., a squark or a slepton. The mass suppression in the loops thus becomes less severe than that in the MSSM. Second, the relevant $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings inducing $`tch`$ involve the third-generation fermions and are subject to rather weak bounds from low-energy experiments. We find that the branching fraction for $`tch`$ from $`\overline{)R}`$ contributions can be indeed as high as about $`10^5`$ in some part of the parameter space, reaching a level of potentially accessible at the LHC with a high luminosity.

We start our study by writing down the $`\overline{)R}`$ superpotential of the MSSM

$$𝒲_\overline{)R}=\frac{1}{2}\lambda _{ijk}L_iL_jE_k^c+\lambda _{ijk}^{}L_iQ_jD_k^c+\frac{1}{2}\lambda _{ijk}^{\prime \prime }U_i^cD_j^cD_k^c+\mu _iL_iH_2,$$
(1)
where $`L_i(Q_i)`$ and $`E_i(U_i,D_i)`$ are the left-handed lepton (quark) doublet and right-handed lepton (quark) singlet chiral superfields. $`i,j,k`$ are generation indices and $`c`$ denotes charge conjugation. Note that $`SU(2)_L`$ and $`SU(3)_C`$ indices have been suppressed. $`H_{1,2}`$ are the Higgs-doublets chiral superfields. The $`\lambda _{ijk}`$ and $`\lambda _{ijk}^{}`$ are the lepton-number-violating ($`\overline{)L}`$) couplings, and $`\lambda _{ijk}^{\prime \prime }`$ the baryon-number-violating ($`\overline{)B}`$) couplings. Constraints on these couplings have been obtained from various low-energy processes  and their phenomenology at hadron and lepton colliders have been intensively investigated recently . Note that although it is theoretically possible to have both $`\overline{)B}`$ and $`\overline{)L}`$ interactions, the non-observation of proton decay prohibits their simultaneous presence, at least in the first two fermion generations. We therefore assume the existence of either $`\overline{)L}`$ couplings or $`\overline{)B}`$ couplings, and investigate their separate effects in top-quark decay $`tch`$.

We focus our attention only on the tri-linear supersymmetric $`\overline{)R}`$ interactions in Eq. (1) and assume that the bi-linear terms $`\mu _iL_iH_2`$ can be rotated away by a field redefinition . In this case the FCNC decay $`tch`$ is induced by only the tri-linear $`\overline{)R}`$ interactions via loops. Note that, in principle, there are also possible $`\overline{)R}`$ terms in the soft-breaking part . In that case, it is no longer possible in general to rotate away the bi-linear terms  and such bi-linear terms will cause the mixing between the neutral Higgs bosons and the sneutrinos ($`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$). As studied in , the FCNC decay $`tc\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ can be induced by the one-loop diagrams of the tri-linear couplings. Followed by the oscillation $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }h`$ induced by the bi-linear $`\overline{)R}`$ terms, one can also have $`tc\stackrel{~}{\nu }ch`$, which, however, is only appreciable when $`h`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ are nearly degenerate. We will not consider this possibility further.

In terms of the four-component Dirac notation, the Lagrangian of the $`\overline{)L}`$ couplings $`\lambda ^{}`$ and $`\overline{)B}`$ couplings $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }`$ are given by

$`_\lambda ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\lambda _{ijk}^{}[\stackrel{~}{\nu }_L^i\overline{d}_R^kd_L^j+\stackrel{~}{d}_L^j\overline{d}_R^k\nu _L^i+(\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k)^{}(\overline{\nu }_L^i)^cd_L^j`$ (3)
$`\stackrel{~}{e}_L^i\overline{d}_R^ku_L^j\stackrel{~}{u}_L^j\overline{d}_R^ke_L^i(\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k)^{}(\overline{e}_L^i)^cu_L^j]+h.c.,`$
$`_{\lambda ^{\prime \prime }}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\lambda _{ijk}^{\prime \prime }\left[\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k(\overline{u}_R^i)^cd_R^j+\stackrel{~}{d}_R^j(\overline{d}_R^k)^cu_R^i+\stackrel{~}{u}_R^i(\overline{d}_R^j)^cd_R^k\right]+h.c.`$ (4)
With $`\overline{)B}`$ couplings, the decay $`tch`$ can proceed through the loop diagrams shown in Fig. 1, where a down-type quark and a squark are involved in the loops. If the lepton number is violated instead, the decay $`tch`$ can occur through the diagrams in Fig. 2, where a down-type quark and a slepton (or a down-type squark and a charged lepton) are in the loops. We note that in the former case the products of $`\overline{)B}`$ couplings $`\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }\lambda _{3jk}^{\prime \prime }`$ are involved while in the latter case the products of $`\overline{)L}`$ couplings $`\lambda _{i2k}^{}\lambda _{i3k}^{}`$ are involved.

The induced effective $`tch`$ vertex is given by, in the cases of $`\overline{)B}`$ and $`\overline{)L}`$ respectively,

$`V_{\mathrm{tch}}^\overline{)}B`$ $`=`$ $`ie{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }\lambda _{3jk}^{\prime \prime }}{16\pi ^2}}\xi _c\left(F_L^\overline{)}BP_L+F_R^\overline{)}BP_R\right),`$ (5)
$`V_{\mathrm{tch}}^\overline{)}L`$ $`=`$ $`ie{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _{i2k}^{}\lambda _{i3k}^{}}{16\pi ^2}}\left(F_L^\overline{)}LP_L+F_R^\overline{)}LP_R\right),`$ (6)
where $`\xi _c=(N_c1)!=2`$ is the color factor and $`P_{R,L}=\frac{1}{2}(1\pm \gamma _5)`$. The factors $`F_{L,R}^\overline{)}B`$ from the contributions of Fig. 1 are given by

$`F_L^\overline{)}B`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{d^j}m_tm_{d^j}(C_0+2C_{11})(p_t,p_c,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k},m_{d^j})`$ (9)
$`+Y_{\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k}m_t(C_{11}C_{12})(p_t,k,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k})`$
$`Y_c{\displaystyle \frac{m_tm_c}{m_t^2m_c^2}}B_1(p_t,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k})Y_t{\displaystyle \frac{m_c^2}{m_c^2m_t^2}}B_1(p_c,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k}),`$
$`F_R^\overline{)}B`$ $`=`$ $`Y_{d^j}m_cm_{d^j}(C_0+2C_{12})(p_t,p_c,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k},m_{d^j})`$ (12)
$`+Y_{\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k}m_cC_{12}(p_t,k,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k})`$
$`Y_c{\displaystyle \frac{m_t^2}{m_t^2m_c^2}}B_1(p_t,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k})Y_t{\displaystyle \frac{m_tm_c}{m_c^2m_t^2}}B_1(p_c,m_{d^j},m_{\stackrel{~}{d}^k}).`$
The factors $`F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L=F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L(\stackrel{~}{d})+F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L(\stackrel{~}{e})`$, where $`F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L(\stackrel{~}{d})`$ and $`F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L(\stackrel{~}{e})`$ are respectively the contributions of Fig. 2 by exchanging squarks $`\stackrel{~}{d}^k`$ and sleptons $`\stackrel{~}{e}^i`$, are obtained by the substitutions

$`F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L(\stackrel{~}{d})`$ $`=`$ $`F_{R,L}^\overline{)}B|{}_{d^je^i}{}^{},`$ (13)
$`F_{L,R}^\overline{)}L(\stackrel{~}{e})`$ $`=`$ $`F_{R,L}^\overline{)}B|{}_{d^jd^k,\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k\stackrel{~}{e}_L^i,m_{d^j}m_{d^k}}{}^{}.`$ (14)
In the above expressions the sum over family indices $`i,j,k=1,2,3`$ is implied. $`p_t`$, $`p_c`$ and $`k`$ are the momenta of the top quark, charm quark and Higgs boson, respectively. The functions $`B_1`$ and $`C_{ij}`$ are the conventional 2- and 3-point Feynman integrals , and their functional arguments are indicated in the bracket following them. The constants like $`Y_{d^j}`$ are the Yukawa couplings of the corresponding particles given by

$`Y_d`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_d\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{2m_W\mathrm{sin}\theta _W\mathrm{cos}\beta }},`$ (15)
$`Y_u`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_u\mathrm{cos}\alpha }{2m_W\mathrm{sin}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\beta }},`$ (16)
$`Y_{\stackrel{~}{d}_R}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_Z\mathrm{tan}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta )+{\displaystyle \frac{m_d^2}{m_W\mathrm{sin}\theta _W}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }},`$ (17)
$`Y_{\stackrel{~}{e}_L}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z}{\mathrm{cos}\theta _W\mathrm{sin}\theta _W}}({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W)\mathrm{sin}(\alpha +\beta )+{\displaystyle \frac{m_e^2}{m_W\mathrm{sin}\theta _W}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }},`$ (18)
where $`\theta _W`$ is the weak mixing angle, $`\alpha `$ the neutral Higgs boson mixing angle, and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =v_2/v_1`$ the ratio of the two vacuum expectation values in the Higgs sector .

The ultraviolet divergences are contained in the Feynman integral $`B_1`$. It is easy to check that all the ultraviolet divergences cancel as a result of renormalizability of MSSM.

As a good approximation of negelecting all the fermion masses but $`m_t`$, the expression can be substantially simplified. The only contributing diagram in this approximation is that of the Higgs boson coupled to the sfermion. The partial decay width is then given by a simple form

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(tch)=\frac{K^2(m_t^2m_h^2)^2}{32\pi m_t}\left|\frac{(C_{11}C_{12})(p_t,k,0,m_{\stackrel{~}{f}},m_{\stackrel{~}{f}})}{16\pi ^2}\right|^2,$$
(19)
where

$`K=\{\begin{array}{cc}e\xi _cY_{\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k}\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }\lambda _{3jk}^{\prime \prime }\hfill & \text{for }\overline{)}B\hfill \\ eY_{\stackrel{~}{e}_L^i}\lambda _{i2k}^{}\lambda _{i3k}^{}\hfill & \text{for }\overline{)}L\text{.}\hfill \end{array}`$This expression is accurate at a level of a few percent.

Now we present the numerical results for $`Br(tch)`$ with the full expression. For the SM parameters involved, we take $`m_t=175`$ GeV, $`m_Z=91.187`$ GeV, $`m_W=80.3`$ GeV, $`\alpha =1/128`$, $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W=0.232`$, $`m_c=1.7`$ GeV, $`m_b=4.7`$ GeV, and $`m_s=0.17`$ GeV. The results are not sensitive to the light fermion masses. The SUSY parameters involved are the following:

* $`\overline{)B}`$ couplings $`\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`\lambda _{3jk}^{\prime \prime }`$, and $`\overline{)L}`$ couplings $`\lambda _{i2k}^{}`$ and $`\lambda _{i3k}^{}`$: The current bounds for all $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings are summarized in Ref. . In Table 1 we only list those relevant to our study. We note that the current bounds for the $`\overline{)B}`$ couplings are generally quite weak.
* Slepton and down-type squark masses: The off-diagonal terms in the sfermion-mass matrices are proportional to the mass of the corresponding fermion, and they are thus relatively small for the down-type squarks and sleptons. Only for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the mass splitting of the sbottoms (staus) becomes sizeable. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the mass splittings for sbottom (stau) does not affect our results appreciably. In our numerical illustration, we thus assume a common mass for all squarks (sleptons).
* Higgs masses and mixing angles of the Higgs sector: At tree level the Higgs sector of the MSSM is determined by two free parameters, e. g., the CP-odd Higgs boson mass $`m_A`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. When radiative corrections are included, several other parameters enter through the loops . In phenomenological analysis it is usually to assume a common squark mass scale $`m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}`$ and thus the dominant one-loop corrections can be parameterized by a single parameter $`ϵ`$ ,

$`ϵ={\displaystyle \frac{3g^2}{8\pi ^2m_W^2}}m_t^4\mathrm{ln}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}^2}{m_t^2}}\right).`$ (20)
Then the Higgs masses and mixing angle $`\alpha `$ are obtained by

$`m_{H,h}^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[m_A^2+m_Z^2+ϵ/\mathrm{sin}^2\beta \right]`$ (22)
$`\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left\{\left[\left(m_A^2m_Z^2\right)\mathrm{cos}2\beta +ϵ/\mathrm{sin}^2\beta \right]^2+\left(m_A^2+m_Z^2\right)^2\mathrm{sin}^22\beta \right\}^{1/2},`$
$`\mathrm{tan}2\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\left(m_A^2+m_Z^2\right)\mathrm{sin}2\beta }{\left(m_A^2m_Z^2\right)\mathrm{cos}2\beta +ϵ/\mathrm{sin}^2\beta }}.`$ (23)
In our calculation we adopt the standard convention , in which $`\pi /2\alpha 0`$ and $`0\beta \pi /2`$ so that as $`m_A\mathrm{}`$, we have $`\alpha \beta \pi /2`$ and thus the $`h`$ couplings approach to those of the SM Higgs boson while other Higgs bosons ($`A,H,H^\pm `$) decouple.

The current constraints on the parameter space of the Higgs sector were given by the LEP experiments . The region of small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and low Higgs mass $`m_A`$ has been excluded, depending on the extent of top-squark mixing. In any case the robust bounds $`m_h>83.4`$ GeV and $`m_A>83.8`$ GeV have been obtained at 95% confidence level for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ greater than 0.8.

The decay rate increases quadratically with the relevant $`\lambda ^{}`$ or $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }`$ couplings and decreases with the increase of the sparticle mass. Using the upper limits of the relevant $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings in Table 1, we present the maximum values of the branching fraction in Figs. $`35`$.

Fig. 3 shows the dependence of $`Br(tch)`$ on squark mass for $`m_A=300`$ GeV and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =10`$. The solid and dashed curves correspond to B-violation and L-violation, respectively. With the parameter values in this figure, the value of $`m_h`$ is within the range $`93106`$ GeV corresponding to the squark mass range $`100300`$ GeV. The results manifest the decoupling property of the MSSM, i. e., the contributions drop with the increase of the squark mass. We found that when squarks become sufficiently heavy ($`>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}500}`$ GeV), they decouple quickly and the branching fraction goes down like $`1/m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}^4`$ asymptotically. From Fig. 3 one sees that in the $`\overline{)B}`$ case, for a squark as light as 100 GeV, the branching fraction can reach the level of $`10^5`$. In the $`\overline{)L}`$ case, however, the contributions are below the level of $`10^6`$ because of the current stringent bounds on the relevant couplings in Table 1. Thus in the following we do not present the $`\overline{)L}`$ contributions any more.

Fig. 4 shows the $`\overline{)B}`$ contributions to $`Br(tch)`$ as a function of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ for $`m_A=300`$ GeV. The solid and dashed curves correspond to squark mass of 100 GeV and 200 GeV, respectively. The hatched region is excluded by LEP experiments . Note that in the case of maximal top-squark mixing, the very small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ region ($`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.2}`$) is still allowed by LEP experiments and in this region the branching fraction can also be significant. Regarding $`m_h`$, in the small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ range $`0.01<\mathrm{tan}\beta <\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.2}`$, we have $`91<m_h<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}92}`$ GeV ($`91<m_h<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}93}`$) for squark mass of 100 GeV (200 GeV). In the large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ range $`4<\mathrm{tan}\beta <\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}100}`$, we have $`84<m_h<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}94}`$ GeV ($`91<m_h<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}101}`$ GeV) for squark mass of 100 GeV (200 GeV), correspondingly.

Fig. 5 is the $`\overline{)B}`$ contribution to $`Br(tch)`$ versus $`m_A`$ for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =10`$. The solid and dashed curves correspond to squark mass of 100 GeV and 200 GeV, respectively. The range of $`m_h`$ is $`83<m_h<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}93}`$ GeV and $`85<m_h<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}100}`$ GeV for squark mass of 100 GeV, 200 GeV, respectively. This figure shows that the dependence of the branching fraction on $`m_A`$ is quite mild.

A couple of remarks are in order regarding the above results:

* The branching fraction is very sensitive to the relevant $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings, e. g., in the $`\overline{)B}`$ case, is proportional to $`\left(\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }\lambda _{3jk}^{\prime \prime }\right)^2`$. The relaxation of some bounds in Table 1 will result in large enhancement of the branching fraction. For example, so far no experimental bound for $`\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }`$ has been reported and we used the theoretical perturbativity bound ($`1.23`$) . Such a bound is derived from the assumption that the gauge groups unify at $`M_U=2\times 10^{16}`$ GeV and the Yukawa couplings $`Y_t,Y_b`$ and $`Y_\tau `$ remain in the perturbative domain in the whole range up to $`M_U`$, i. e., $`Y_i(\mu )<1`$ for $`\mu <2\times 10^{16}`$ GeV. But there is no a priori reason to take this theoretical assumption. So the bound on $`\lambda _{2jk}^{\prime \prime }`$ could be even weaker.
* The decay rate is proportional to a product of two $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings, and thus the non-zero decay requires the coexistence of at least two couplings. Although we do not expect any stringent constraints on the coupling products involving the third-generation fermions, it would be interesting to seek for other possible FCNC processes at low energies which may be induced by such coexistence of more than one $`\overline{)R}`$ coupling.
* We assumed a common mass for all squarks or sleptons for illustration of the numerical results. Our results are not very sensitive to the mass differences of the sfermions because the involved $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings, $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }`$ or $`\lambda ^{}`$, are not unitary in general so that the delicate cancellations (like the GIM mechanism) do not generally occur.
* Although in our analysis we varied $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ freely and only considered the direct LEP constraints, we note that the extreme case of a very small or very large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ value may be severely disfavored by some theoretical arguments and/or by some indirect experimental constraints like those from $`bs\gamma `$ . Since the branching ratio of $`tch`$ could be significantly enhanced also in the intermediate range of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ (say $`4<\mathrm{tan}\beta <\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}30}`$), our conclusion will not be affected by such indirect experimental constraints.
* Finally, we point out that we only presented the analysis for the most interesting decay channel $`tch`$ because kinematically it is always allowed. Other decay channels, $`tcH`$ or $`tcA`$, are quite likely to be suppressed by phase space or even kinematically forbidden. If the channel $`tcA`$ is kinematically allowed, the branching ratio $`Br(tcA)`$ can also be significant for a very large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ $`(>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}40})`$ because its coupling to bottom quark is proportional to $`\frac{m_b}{m_W}\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Since its coupling to top quark is proportional to $`\frac{m_t}{m_W}\mathrm{cot}\beta `$, $`Br(tcA)`$ could be enhanced significantly for a small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. However, for such a light Higgs boson $`A`$ $`(m_A<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}175}\mathrm{GeV})`$, the small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ region has been almost completely excluded by LEP experiments.

In summary, we found that the FCNC decay $`tch`$ can be significantly enhanced relative to that of the SM in SUSY theories with R-parity violation. The branching fraction depends quadratically upon the products of $`\overline{)R}`$ couplings, and scales with the heavy mass of the sfermions in the loops as $`m_{\stackrel{~}{f}}^4`$, and it can be at least as large as that in the MSSM. In the optimistic scenario that the involved couplings take their current upper bounds and $`m_{\stackrel{~}{f}}100`$ GeV, the branching fraction can be as large as $`10^5`$, which is potentially accessible at the LHC with a high luminosity.

###### Acknowledgements.

G.E. would like to thank S. Bar-Shalom for very helpful discussions. G.E. is supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation and by the U.S-Israel Binational Science Foundation. The work of T.H. is supported in part by a DOE grant No. DE-FG02-95ER40896 and by Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. X.Z. is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.