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# Fusion rate enhancement due to energy spread of colliding nuclei

## I Introduction

The chemical elements were created by nuclear fusion reactions in the hot interiors of remote and long-vanished stars over many billions of years . Thus, nuclear reaction rates are at the heart of nuclear astrophysics: they influence sensitively the nucleosynthesis of the elements in the earliest stages of the universe and in all the objects formed thereafter, and they control the associated energy generation, neutrino luminosity and evolution of stars. A good knowledge of their rates is essential for understanding this broad picture.

Nuclear reactions in static stellar burning phases occur at energies far below the Coulomb barrier. Due to the steep drop of the cross section $`\sigma (E)`$ at sub-barrier energies, it becomes increasingly difficult to measure it as the energy $`E`$ is lowered. Generally, stellar fusion rates are obtained by extrapolating laboratory data taken at energies significantly larger than those relevant to stellar interiors. Obviously such an “extrapolation into the unknown” can lead to considerable uncertainty. In the last twenty years a significant effort has been devoted to the experimental exploration of the lowest energies and new approaches have been developed so as to reduce the uncertainties in the extrapolations. In particular, the installation of an accelerator facility in the underground laboratory at LNGS  has allowed the $`\sigma (E)`$ measurement of $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}(^3\mathrm{He},2\mathrm{p})^4\mathrm{He}`$ down to its solar Gamow peak, $`E_0\pm \mathrm{\Delta }/2=(21\pm 5)`$ keV  so that for this reaction no extrapolation is needed anymore.

As experiments have moved well down into the sub-barrier region, the screening effect of atomic electrons has become relevant . With respect to the bare nuclei case, the Coulomb repulsion is diminished, the tunneling distance $`R_\mathrm{t}`$ is reduced, and the fusion probability, which depends exponentially on $`R_\mathrm{t}`$, is enhanced. The electron effect on the reaction can be seen as a transfer of energy $`U`$ (the screening potential energy) from the electronic to the translational degrees of freedom. For each collision energy $`E`$, one has an effective energy $`E_{\mathrm{eff}}=E+U`$ and a cross section enhancement:

$$f=\sigma (E+U)/\sigma (E)$$
(1)
The screening potential energy $`U`$ is easily estimated in two limiting cases : In the sudden limit, when the relative velocity $`v_{rel}`$ of the nuclei is larger than the typical electron velocity $`v_0=e^2/\mathrm{}`$: the electron wave function during the nuclear collision is frozen at the initial value $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and the energy transferred from electrons to the nuclei is thus

$$U_{\mathrm{su}}=\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}|Z_1e^2/r_{1e}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}},$$
(2)
where here and in the following the index 1 (2) denotes the projectile (target) nucleus and a sum over the electrons is understood. In the adiabatic limit, i.e. when $`v_{rel}v_0`$: electrons follow adiabatically the nuclear motion and at any internuclear distance the electron wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ad}}`$ corresponds to an energy eigenstate calculated for fixed nuclei. As the nuclei approach distances smaller than each atomic radius , $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ad}}`$ tends to the united atom (i.e. with nuclear charge $`Z=Z_1+Z_2`$) limit, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{un}}`$. The kinetic energy gained by the colliding nuclei is thus

$$U_{\mathrm{ad}}=ϵ_{\mathrm{in}}ϵ_{\mathrm{un}},$$
(3)
where $`ϵ_{\mathrm{in}}`$ ($`ϵ_{\mathrm{un}}`$) is the electron energy of the isolated (united) atom in the corresponding states.

We like to stress a few important features:

i) Screening potential energies, which are in the range 10–100 eV, are definitely smaller than the practical collision energies (1–100 keV), nevertheless they can produce appreciable fusion enhancements due to the exponential dependence of the cross section.

ii) In the adiabatic limit the electron energy assumes the lowest value consistent with quantum mechanics. Due to energy conservation, the energy transfer to the nuclear motion is thus maximal in this case ($`U<U_{\mathrm{ad}}`$) and the observed cross section enhancement should not exceed that calculated by using the adiabatic potential:

$$ff_{\mathrm{ad}}=\sigma (E+U_{\mathrm{ad}})/\sigma (E)$$
(4)
iii) The enhancement factors which have been measured are generally larger than expected. A summary of the available results is presented in Table I. The general trend is that the enhancement factors exceed the adiabatic limit. Recent measurement of $`d(d,p)^3\mathrm{H}`$ with deuterium implanted in metals  have shown enhancements of the cross sections with respect to the bare nuclei case by factors of order unity, whereas one expects a few percent effect. In other words, if one derives an “experimental” potential energy $`U_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ from a fit of experimental data according to eq. (1), the resulting values significantly exceed the adiabatic limit $`U_{\mathrm{ad}}`$. In the case of deuterium implanted in metals, values as high as $`U_{\mathrm{ex}}700`$ eV have been found , at least an order of magnitude larger than the expected atomic value $`U_{ad}`$. Several theoretical investigations have resulted in a better understanding of small effects in low energy nuclear reactions, but have not provided an explanation of this puzzling picture.

iv) Dynamical calculations of electron screening for finite values of the relative velocity show a smooth interpolation between the extreme adiabatic and sudden limits . In fact, one cannot exceed the value obtained in the adiabatic approximation because the dynamical calculation includes atomic excitations which reduce the energy transferred from the electronic binding to the relative motion.

v) The effects of vacuum polarization , relativity, Bremmstrahlung and atomic polarization  have been studied. Vacuum polarization becomes relevant when the minimal approach distance is close to the electron Compton wavelength but it has an anti-screening effect, corresponding to the fact that in QED the effective charge increases at short distances. All these effects cannot account for the anomalous enhancements.

Although one cannot exclude some experimental effect, e.g. a (systematic) overestimate of the stopping power, the general trend is that most reactions exhibit an anomalous high enhanchement. Phenomenologically, this corresponds to an unexplained collision energy increase in the range of 100 eV.

Actually, the anomalous experimental values $`U_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ look too large to be related with atomic, molecular or crystal energies. Some other processes, involving the much smaller energies available in the target, should mimic the large experimental values of U. As an example, if the projectile approaches a target nucleus which is moving against it with energy $`E_2E`$, the collision energy is increased by an amount:

$$U=\left(\frac{4m_1}{m_1+m_2}EE_2\right)^{1/2}.$$
(5)
For $`d+d`$ reactions at (nominal) collision energy $`E=10`$ keV, a target energy $`E_2=0.5`$ eV is sufficient for producing $`U=100`$ eV.

Generally, one expects that opposite motions of the target nuclei are equally possible. Even in this case, however, the effect is not washed out: due to the strong nonlinearity of the fusion cross section the reaction probability is much larger for those nuclei which are moving against the projectile.

In this spirit, we shall consider processes associated with the energy spread of the colliding nuclei. These processes generally lead to an enhancement of the fusion rate, for the reasons just outlined.

In the next section we shall first consider the thermal motion of the target nuclei. For this example, we shall derive an expression for the enhancement factor on physical grounds and then we shall outline the effects of an energy spread for the extraction of the astrophysical S-factor from experimental data.

The treatment is generalized in sect. III and in sect. IV it is applied to study energy spreads due to motion of the nuclei inside atoms, molecules and crystals. Beam energy width and straggling are also considered.

In summary, all the effects turn out to be too tiny to explain the observed anomalous enhancements. Nevertheless, they have to be considered in analyzing the data, particularly in future experiments at still lower energies.

## II The effect of thermal motion of target nuclei

In this section we consider the effects of thermal motion of the target nuclei. We shall make several simplifications, in order to elucidate the main physical ingredients. In this way we shall derive a simple expression for the enhancement factor on physical grounds.

Essentially, we shall concentrate on the exponential factor of the fusion cross section, neglecting the energy dependence of the pre-exponential factors, and we shall only consider the effect of the target motion in the direction of the incoming particle, neglecting the transverse motion. When these simplifications are removed the result is essentially confirmed: see the more general treatment of sect. III.

The fusion cross section at energies well below the Coulomb barrier is generally written as:

$$\sigma =\frac{S(E)}{E}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{\sqrt{2E/\mu }}\right)$$
(6)
where $`E=\frac{1}{2}\mu v_{\mathrm{rel}}^2`$ is the collision energy, $`\mu =m_1m_2/(m_1+m_2)`$ is the reduced mass, $`V_0=Z_1Z_2e^2/\mathrm{}`$ and $`S(E)`$ is the astrophysical S-factor ***For convenience of the reader, we recall that $`v_0=e^2/\mathrm{}`$ and thus $`V_0=Z_1Z_2v_0`$. . The cross section is more conveniently expressed in terms of the relative velocity of the colliding nuclei $`v_{\mathrm{rel}}`$:

$$\sigma (v_{\mathrm{rel}})=\frac{2S(v_{\mathrm{rel}})}{\mu v_{\mathrm{rel}}^2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\right)$$
(7)
At energies well below the Coulomb barrier, $`v_{\mathrm{rel}}V_0`$, the main dependence is through the exponential factor, so we shall treat the pre-exponential term as a constant:

$$\sigma (v_{\mathrm{rel}})B\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\right).$$
(8)
We consider a projectile nucleus with fixed velocity $`𝐕`$ impinging against a target where the nuclei have a thermal distribution of velocity. Since the target nucleus velocity $`𝐯`$ is generally much smaller than $`V=|𝐕|`$, one can expand $`1/v_{\mathrm{rel}}=1/|𝐕𝐯|`$ and retain the first non vanishing term:

$$\sigma B\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{V}\frac{V_0v_{}}{V^2}\right),$$
(9)
where $`v_{}`$ is the target velocity projection over the $`𝐕`$-direction.

The enhancement factor with respect to the fixed target case, $`f=\sigma /\sigma (V)`$, is thus calculated by averaging $`\mathrm{exp}(V_0v_{}/V^2)`$ over the $`v_{}`$ distribution:

$$\rho (v_{})=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi v_{}^2}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{2}\frac{v_{}^2}{v_{}^2}\right),$$
(10)
where $`v_{}^2=kT/m_2`$. The integral

$$f=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi v_{}^2}}_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}𝑑v_{}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0v_{}}{V^2}\frac{v_{}^2}{2v_{}^2}\right)$$
(11)
is easily evaluated by using a (saddle point) trick similar to that used by Gamow for evaluating stellar burning rates. The product of the Gaussian and the exponential functions (Fig.1) results in an (approximately) Gaussian with the same width, centered at $`v_\mathrm{G}=v_{}^2V_0/V^2`$, its height giving the enhancement factor:

$$f=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0^2v_{}^2}{2V^4}\right).$$
(12)
Concerning this equation, which is the main result of the paper, several comments are needed:

i) Since the term in parenthesis in eq. (12) is positive, one has $`f1`$, i.e. the energy spread always results in a cross section enhancement. One cannot ignore the target velocity distribution for the calculation of the reaction yield since nuclei moving towards the projectile have a larger weight in the cross section.

ii) The main contribution to the cross section comes from target nuclei with velocity close to $`v_\mathrm{G}`$. When $`V\sqrt{v_{}^2^{1/2}V_0}`$, this velocity is larger than the typical thermal velocity $`v_{}^2^{1/2}`$. This result is equivalent to the Gamow peak energy in stars, which is significantly higher than the thermal energy $`kT`$. In terms of the energy, by putting $`E_2=\frac{1}{2}m_2v_G^2`$ in eq. (5), we see that the “most probable” collision energy is The most probable energy $`E_{mp}`$ has not to be confused with the effective energy $`E_{eff}`$.:

$$E_{\mathrm{mp}}=E+2\left(\frac{m_1}{m_1+m_2}\right)\frac{V_0}{V}E_\mathrm{t},$$
(13)
where $`E_\mathrm{t}=\frac{1}{2}m_2v_{}^2=\frac{1}{2}kT`$ is the average thermal energy associated with the motion in the collisional direction.

iii) The energy dependence of eq. (12),

$$f=\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{m_1}{m_1+m_2}\right)\frac{E_tE_0}{E^2}\right],$$
(14)
where $`E_0=\frac{1}{2}\mu V_0^2`$, is different from that resulting from electron screening $`f=\mathrm{exp}(D/E^{3/2})`$.

iv) The resulting effects are anyhow extremely tiny. For example, for $`d+d`$ collisions ($`V_0=e^2/\mathrm{}`$) at $`E=1`$ keV $`(V=1/5V_0)`$ and room temperature ($`v_{}^2^{1/2}=510^4V_0`$) one has $`f110^4`$. A 10% enhancement would correspond to $`kT30`$ eV.

v) The same method can be extended to other motions of the target nuclei, provided that the velocity distribution is approximately Gaussian and if other interactions of the nuclei during the collision are neglected (sudden approximation). One has to replace $`v_{}^2`$ in eq. (12) with the appropriate average velocity associated with the motion under investigation. Vibrations of the target nucleus inside a molecule or a crystal lattice can be treated in this way, since the vibrational times are much longer than the collision times. These and other similar effects will be discussed in sect. IV.

vi) From the discussion presented above one gets an easy procedure to correct the experimental results for taking into account the effect of an energy spread. If the astrophysical S-factor has been measured at a nominal collision energy $`E=\frac{1}{2}\mu V^2`$, from $`S_{\mathrm{exp}}=\sigma _{\mathrm{exp}}E\mathrm{exp}(V_0/V)`$, then the “true” S-factor is obtained as $`S=S_{\mathrm{exp}}/f`$, where $`f`$ is given by eq. (12) and the “true” energy is changed from $`E`$ to $`E_{\mathrm{mp}}`$ given in eq. (13) ( Fig. 2). In summary, the effect of the energy spread translates into both a cross section enhancement and an energy enhancement.

## III General treatment

In this section we shall provide a more general discussion of the energy spread effects, which will substantially confirm eq. (12) and which can be applied to a rather large class of processes. The main assumption is that the projectile motion is fast in comparison with the other motions, so that the sudden approximation can be used.

Let us consider a projectile with velocity $`V`$ impinging onto a thin target (density $`n`$ and thickness $`L`$), where energy loss can be neglected. The interaction probability $`P`$ is the product of the interaction probability per unit time $`\dot{p}=n\sigma v_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ with the time spent in the target, $`L/V`$. The measured counting rate $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=ϵI\dot{p}`$, where $`I`$ is the beam current and $`ϵ`$ is the detector efficiency, is thus:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{IϵnL}{V}\sigma v_{\mathrm{rel}}.$$
(15)
As in stars, the quantity which is physically relevant is thus $`\sigma v_{\mathrm{rel}}`$, where the average has to be taken over the target nuclei velocity distribution.

This distribution is due to the coupling with other degrees of freedom. Inside an atom (or a molecule, or a crystal) the nucleus is vibrating, its motion is altered by the arrival of the projectile nucleus and the calculation of the average is complicated in the general case. However, if the velocity $`V`$ of the impinging particle is large in comparison with the velocity $`v`$ of the target nucleus, the problem is simplified. The target wave function does not have time for significant evolution during the collision and it can be taken as that of the initial (unperturbed) state. This is the main content of the sudden approximation: the velocity distribution of the target nuclei $`\rho (v)`$ can be taken as the initial one $`\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)`$ and one has to compute:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{IϵnL}{V}d^3v\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)\sigma (v_{\mathrm{rel}})v_{\mathrm{rel}}.$$
(16)
By using eq.(7), one has thus to compute:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{IϵnL}{V}d^3v\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)\left[\frac{2S(v_{\mathrm{rel}})}{\mu v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\right)\right].$$
(17)
We recall that $`S`$ is a weakly varying function of energy, so that it can be taken out of the integral.

Since we are assuming $`V^2v^2`$, we expand the integrand $`g=\frac{1}{v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\mathrm{exp}(V_0/v_{\mathrm{rel}})`$ in powers of $`v`$ and keep the lowest order terms:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{2SIϵnL}{\mu V}d^3v\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)\left[g_{v=0}+v_i(_ig)_{v=0}+\frac{1}{2}v_iv_j(_i_jg)_{v=0}\right].$$
(18)
We shall consider distributions which are symmetrical for inversions and rotations around the collision axis $`V`$. In this case the term linear in $`v`$ vanishes and the result is:

$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2SIϵnL}{\mu V^2}}\mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \frac{V_0}{V}})`$ (21)
$`\{1+{\displaystyle \frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{2V^4}}(14{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}\right)^2)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{2V^4}}[{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}\right)^2]\},`$
where the index $`()`$ denotes the component of the velocity along (transverse to) the collision axis.

The term in front of the curl bracket is the counting rate calculated neglecting the target energy spread. So, if we define the enhancement factor $`f`$ as the ratio of the measured counting rate $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to the rate calculated for fixed velocity $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_V`$, we have:

$$f\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\mathrm{\Lambda }_V}=V\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{V}\right)d^3v\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)\left[\frac{1}{v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{v_{\mathrm{rel}}}\right)\right],$$
(22)
we have now:

$`f`$ $``$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{2V^4}}\left[14{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}\right)^2\right]+`$ (24)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{2V^4}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}\right)^2\right].`$
For a one dimensional motion ($`v_{}=0`$) it simplifies to:

$$f=1+\frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{2V^4}\left[14\frac{V}{V_0}+2\left(\frac{V}{V_0}\right)^2\right].$$
(25)
For the case of a spherically symmetrical distribution, $`v_{}^2=1/2v_{}^2`$ one gets:

$$f=1+\frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{2V^4}\left(12\frac{V}{V_0}\right).$$
(26)
This equation can be easily compared with the result of the previous section concerning the thermal energy effect. By expanding eq. (12) one gets:

$$f=1+\frac{1}{2}\frac{v_{}^2V_0^2}{V^4}.$$
(27)
This is the same as eq. (26) apart for the last term which is negligible at small velocities, since it is a higher order contribution in $`V/V_0`$. Note that this last term arises from the variation of the pre-exponential factor $`1/v_{\mathrm{rel}}`$, which was neglected in the simplified treatment of sect. II. Clearly this term, once averaged over the target distribution, is smaller than $`1/V`$ and therefore it provides a reduction of the rate, as implied by the negative coefficient in eq.(26).

The previous results have been obtained by neglecting higher order terms in the expansion of $`g`$. Their contribution is suppressed by a factor $`v_{}^2V_0^2/V^4`$.Thus the previous results are not valid for $`V\sqrt{v^2^{1/2}V_0}`$, as can be simply understood. In this case, one cannot expand the integrand function $`g(v)`$, since it changes faster than the distribution function $`\rho (v)`$ over a large range of target velocities. More precisely, the decrease of $`\rho (v)`$ is counter-balanced by the increase of $`g(v)`$ in a velocity range which is typically larger than the average target velocity dispersion $`v^2^{1/2}`$. As a consequence, the tails of the distribution function $`\rho (v)`$ give a relevant contribution to the counting rate, leading to an increase of the factor $`f`$ with respect to the simple estimate eq.(26).

It is difficult to obtain a general expression for $`f`$ in this low velocity regime. The factor $`f`$ depends, in fact, on the shape of the distribution function. In the case of a gaussian distribution function, $`\rho (v)\mathrm{exp}(v^2/2v^2)`$, one can use the Gamow “trick” described in the previous section which leads to eq.(12). For distribution functions which decrease more slowly with $`v`$ one expects larger effects.

In order to have, however, a general result for the low velocity ($`v^2<V^2<v^2^{1/2}V_0`$) behaviour of $`f`$, we note that, being the counting rate $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ an increasing function of the projectile velocity $`V`$, one has:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{\Lambda }(0)\frac{IϵnL}{V}Ad^3v\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)\left[\frac{1}{v}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{v}\right)\right]$$
(28)
This means that the enhancement factor $`f`$ should be larger than:

$$f_0=V\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{V}\right)d^3v\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)\left[\frac{1}{v}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{v}\right)\right].$$
(29)
## IV Applications

The method developed in the previous sections, summarized in eq. (12) or in the more accurate eq. (24), can be applied to several motions of the target nuclei (vibrations inside an atomic, molecular or crystal system), provided that interactions with other degrees of freedom during the collision can be neglected. Simply, one has to compute the value of $`v^2`$ which is appropriate to the system under consideration. Also, the treatment can be easily extended to the effect of beam energy width and straggling.

### A Nuclear motion inside the atom

Very much as the motion of a star in the sky is affected by the presence of planets around it, the nucleus inside an atom is vibrating around the center of mass of the atomic system. The nuclear momentum distribution $`P(p)`$ is immediately determined from that of the atomic electrons $`P_e(p_e)`$ by requiring that the total momentum of the atom vanishes in the center of mass $`(p=p_e)`$, where $`p_e`$ is the (total) momentum carried by the electron(s), i.e. $`P(p)=P_e(p_e)`$ and the initial nuclear velocity distribution $`\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)`$ is immediately determined from $`v=p/m_2`$, where $`m_2`$ is the target nucleus mass.

For the case of Hydrogen (isotope) in the ground state, the atomic electron momentum distribution is:

$$P_e(p_e)=\frac{8}{\pi ^2}\frac{(m_ev_0)^5}{(p_e^2+m_e^2v_0^2)^4}$$
(30)
so that the nucleus velocity distribution is:

$$\rho _{\mathrm{in}}(v)=\frac{8}{\pi ^2}\frac{u_0^5}{(v^2+u_0^2)^4},$$
(31)
where $`u_0=(m_e/m_2)v_0=(m_e/m_2)e^2/\mathrm{}`$, is the typical velocity associated with the target nuclear motion. In practice, this is definitely smaller than the collision velocity $`V`$, so that the sudden approximation holds and the results of the previous section can be applied.

One can easily evaluate that:

$$v_{}^2=\frac{1}{3}u_0^2=\frac{1}{3}\left(\frac{m_e}{m_2}\right)^2v_0^2,$$
(32)
so that for Hydrogen-Hydrogen (or deuterium-deuterium) collisions, for which $`V_0=Z_1Z_2e^2/\mathrm{}=v_0`$, by using eq. (26), one obtains for the enhancement factor :

$$f_{\mathrm{at}}=1+\frac{1}{6}\left(\frac{m_e}{m_2}\right)^2\left(\frac{V_0}{V}\right)^4\left(12\frac{V}{V_0}\right).$$
(33)
This is an extremely tiny correction, since one has $`f_{\mathrm{at}}1210^5`$ for a d-d collision at $`E=1`$ keV energy .

In the low energy regime, i.e. when $`V\sqrt{u_0V_0}=(m_e/m_2)^{1/2}v_0`$, the previous estimate has to be corrected to take into account the contribution of the tails of the distribution function. By using eq.(29) we can easily estimate:

$$(f_{\mathrm{at}})_0\frac{325!}{\pi }\frac{V}{V_0}\left(\frac{u_0}{V_0}\right)^5\mathrm{exp}(\frac{V_0}{V})$$
(34)
In Fig. 3 we compare the approximate expressions with the numerical evaluation of eq. (24). In the whole range a good approximation to the full numerical calculation is provided by $`f=f_{at}+(f_{\mathrm{at}})_0`$.

### B Molecular vibrations

Let us consider, as an example, reactions involving a deuterium nucleus bound in a $`D_2`$ molecule. The target nucleus is vibrating, the vibration energy in the ground state being $`E_{\mathrm{vib}}=0.19`$ eV . This energy is shared between the two nuclei and between potential and kinetic energy, so that the average kinetic energy of each nucleus is $`\frac{1}{2}m_dv^2_{\mathrm{vib}}=1/4E_{\mathrm{vib}}`$. The target nucleus velocity, $`v^2_{\mathrm{vib}}10^6v_0^2`$, is much smaller than the projectile velocity so that the sudden approximation applies again. By using eq. (12) and assuming a random orientation of the molecular axis , $`v_{}^2=1/3v^2_{\mathrm{vib}}`$, we get:

$$f_{\mathrm{mol}}=\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{v^2_{\mathrm{vib}}V_0^2}{6V^4}\right].$$
(35)
This corresponds to a $`10^4`$ correction at E=1 keV. Conversely, an enhancement correction of 10% would correspond to $`E_{vib}200`$ eV.

### C Local vibrations in a crystal lattice

When a deuterium nucleus is implanted in a crystal, it generally occupies an interstitial site where it performs local vibrations. The vibration energy $`E_{\mathrm{cr}}`$ depends on the host lattice, being typically in the range of 0.1 eV, very similar to the molecular vibration scale. Effects associated with vibrations in the crystal are thus similar to those calculated for the $`D_2`$ molecule:

$$f_{\mathrm{cr}}f_{\mathrm{mol}}.$$
(36)
### D Finite beam width and straggling

In an ideal accelerator all projectiles have the same energy $`E_{\mathrm{lab}}`$. Actually, due to several physical processes (voltage fluctuations, different orbits…) the beam will have a finite energy width $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. As an example, in the LUNA accelerator one has $`\mathrm{\Delta }10`$ eV. Furthermore, when the beam passes through the target, fluctuations in the energy loss will produce an enlargement of the energy width (straggling). Thus, even neglecting the target motion, there is a collision energy spread. The beam energy distribution,

$$P(E^{^{}})\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(E^{^{}}E_{\mathrm{lab}})^2}{2\mathrm{\Delta }^2}\right]$$
(37)
gives a velocity ditribution with:

$$v_{}^2=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{m_dE_{\mathrm{lab}}}$$
(38)
By using eq. (24) the enhancement factor is thus  For the sake of precision, the counting rate is now: $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=ϵInL\sigma _{beam}`$. This is different from eq. (15). A calculation of the average, similar to that presented in sect. III, yields the same expression as in eq.(21) for the leading term in $`V/V_0`$ and different numerical coefficients for the higher order (negligible) terms. :

$$f=\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{V_0^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{m_1^2V^6}\right]$$
(39)
Effects are very small in the case of LUNA: for d+d at $`E=1`$ keV and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=10`$ eV one has $`f1210^5`$. The effect behaves quadratically with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and it can be significant if momentum resolution is worse. Conversely, an enhancement correction of 10% corresponds to $`\mathrm{\Delta }250`$ eV.

### E Polynomial velocity distributions

One could suspect that velocity distributions of different shape can provide enhancements significantly larger than the tiny effects which we have found so far.

In this spirit, let us consider the case of a polynomial velocity distribution,

$$\rho (v)=\frac{A}{\left(v^2+B^2\right)^n}$$
(40)
where the slowly decreasing tail should provide a significant enhancement. Clearly the more favourable cases correspond to small values of $`n`$. The requirement that $`v^2`$ is finite implies $`n3`$, so we consider $`n=3`$ in order to maximize the tail effect. The normalized distribution is in this case:

$$\rho (v)=\frac{4}{\pi ^23^{3/2}}\frac{v^2^{3/2}}{\left[v^2+(1/3)v^2\right]^3}$$
(41)
The low energy enhancement factor $`f_0`$ of eq. (29) becomes now:

$$f_0\frac{163!}{\pi 3^{3/2}}\left[v^2/V_0^2\right]^{3/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{V_0}{V}\right)\frac{V}{V_0}$$
(42)
In order to have $`f_01.1`$ for d+d collisions at $`E=1`$ keV one needs $`v^2310^2V_0^2`$, which corresponds to an average energy in the range of 1 keV, well above the physical scale of the process.

## V Concluding remarks

We summarize the main points of this paper:

* Energy spread is a mechanism which generally provides fusion enhancement.
* We have found a general expression for calculating the enhancement factor $`f`$:

$$f=\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(\frac{Z_1Z_2e^2}{\mathrm{}}\right)^2\frac{v_{}^2}{2V^4}\right]$$
(43)
* We have provided quantitative estimates for the enhancement effects. For a d+d collision one has:

| thermal motion: |  | $`f110^4`$ (E/1keV)-2 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| vibrational motion: |  | $`f1(10^5`$$`10^4`$) (E/1keV)-2 |
| beam width: |  | $`f110^5`$ (E/1keV)-3 |
* All these effects are marginal at the energies which are presently measurable, however they have to be considered in future experiments at still lower energies.
* This study allows to exclude several effects as possible explanation of the observed anomalous fusion enhancements, which remain a mistery.


format: text

text:
# Restricted linear properties of scalar product in T-geometry

(Institute for Problems in Mechanics, Russian Academy of Sciences,
101, bild.1 Vernadskii Ave., Moscow, 119526, Russia.
e-mail: rylov@ipmnet.ru)

## Abstract

It is shown that scalar product of two vectors can be introduced in any geometry (metric space) independently of possibility of the linear space introduction. In general, linear properties of scalar product are restricted. Domain of linearity increases in homogeneous geometry.

T-geometry  is a very general geometry giving on an arbitrary set $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of points by setting the world function $`\sigma `$:

$$\sigma :\mathrm{\Omega }\times \mathrm{\Omega },\sigma (P,P)=0,P,Q\mathrm{\Omega }$$
(1)
T-geometry is symmetric, if additionally

$$\sigma (P,Q)=\sigma (Q,P)$$
(2)
The T-geometry has no its own axiomatics. It is obtained as a result of a deformation of the proper Euclidean geometry. In other words, any relation of T-geometry is obtained as a result of some deformation of the corresponding relation of the proper Euclidean geometry. The relation of Euclidean geometry is written in $`\sigma `$-immanent form (i.e. in terms of only world function $`\sigma `$). Thereafter the world function of the proper Euclidean space is replaced by the world function of the T-geometry in question. Corresponding relation of T-geometry arises. Representation of a proper Euclidean relation in $`\sigma `$-immanent form is always possible, because the proper Euclidean geometry can be formulated $`\sigma `$-immanently (in terms of only world function) .

Vector $`𝐏_0𝐏_1\stackrel{}{P_0P_1}`$ in T-geometry is the ordered set of two points $`𝐏_0𝐏_1=\{P_0,P_1\}`$, $`P_0,P_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The scalar product $`\left(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1\right)`$ of two vectors $`𝐏_0𝐏_1`$ and $`𝐐_0𝐐_1`$ is defined by the relation

$$(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1)=\sigma (P_0,Q_1)+\sigma (P_1,Q_0)\sigma (P_0,Q_0)\sigma (P_1,Q_1),$$
(3)
for all $`P_0,P_1,Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$. As it follows from (1) – (3), in the symmetric T-geometry

$$(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1)=(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1),P_0,P_1,Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }$$
(4)
When the world function $`\sigma `$ is such one  that the $`\sigma `$-space $`V=\{\sigma ,\mathrm{\Omega }\}`$ is the $`n`$-dimensional proper Euclidean space $`E_n`$ the scalar product (3) turns to scalar product of two vectors in $`E_n`$. Besides as it follows from (1), (3) that in any T-geometry

$$(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1)=(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_1𝐐_0),P_0,P_1,Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }$$
(5)
$$(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1)=(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_1𝐏_0),P_0,P_1,Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }$$
(6)
$`(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1)+(𝐏_1𝐏_2.𝐐_0𝐐_1)`$ $`=`$ $`\left(𝐏_0𝐏_2.𝐐_0𝐐_1\right),`$ (7)
$`(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1)+(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_1𝐏_2)`$ $`=`$ $`(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_2.),`$ (8)
for all $`P_0,P_1,P_2,Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$

Let us consider relations between two vectors $`𝐏_0𝐏_1`$ and $`𝐑_0𝐑_1`$

$$𝐏_0𝐏_1𝒯𝐑_0𝐑_1:(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1)=(𝐑_0𝐑_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1)(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1)=(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐑_0𝐑_1)$$
(9)
for all $`Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The relation (9) is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. It can be considered to be equivalence relation. Thus, two vectors $`𝐏_0𝐏_1`$ and $`𝐑_0𝐑_1`$ are equivalent $`\left(𝐏_0𝐏_1=𝐑_0𝐑_1\right)`$, if the conditions

$`\left(𝐏_0𝐏_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1\right)`$ $`=`$ $`(𝐑_0𝐑_1.𝐐_0𝐐_1),Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (10)
$`\left(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1\right)`$ $`=`$ $`(𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐑_0𝐑_1),Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (11)
take place. Then one obtains from (5) – (8)

$$𝐏_1𝐏_0=𝐏_0𝐏_1=\alpha 𝐏_0𝐏_1,\alpha =1$$
(12)
$$𝐏_0𝐏_2=𝐏_0𝐏_1+𝐏_1𝐏_2,𝐏_0𝐏_1=𝐏_0𝐏_2𝐏_1𝐏_2$$
(13)
Relations (12), (13) determine multiplication of a vector by a real number $`\alpha =\pm 1`$ and summation of vectors. But vectors in the $`\sigma `$-space $`V=\{\sigma ,\mathrm{\Omega }\}`$ are not free vectors and two vectors may be added, provided end of one vector is the origin of other vector. At such a definition of the vector summation the scalar product of vectors have linear properties

$`\left(\alpha 𝐏_0𝐏_1+\beta R_0R_1.Q_0𝐐_1\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha (𝐏_0𝐏_1.Q_0𝐐_1)+\beta (𝐑_0R_1.Q_0𝐐_1)`$ (14)
$`\left(𝐐_0𝐐_1.\alpha 𝐏_0𝐏_1+\beta R_0R_1\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha (𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1)+\beta (𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐑_0R_1)`$ (15)
$$\alpha =\pm 1,\beta =\pm 1,P_0,P_1,R_0,R_1\mathrm{\Omega },Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }$$

The linear properties of the scalar product are restricted as compared with those in the Euclidean space, because according to (5) – (8) the linear operations on vectors are always defined only in the following cases:

1. $`\alpha =0\beta =0`$
2. $`\alpha =\beta =\pm 1,`$ $`\left(P_1=R_0\right)\left(R_1=P_0\right)`$
3. $`\alpha =\beta =\pm 1,`$ $`\left(P_1=R_1\right)\left(P_0=R_0\right)`$

In other cases the linear operations on vectors are not defined, in general, but they may be defined in some special T-geometries, when relations (14), (15)

$$\begin{array}{c}(𝐒_0S_1.Q_0𝐐_1)=\alpha (𝐏_0𝐏_1.Q_0𝐐_1)+\beta (𝐑_0R_1.Q_0𝐐_1)\\ (𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐒_0S_1)=\alpha (𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐏_0𝐏_1)+\beta (𝐐_0𝐐_1.𝐑_0R_1)\end{array}$$
(16)
take place for all vectors $`𝐐_0Q_1`$ and some $`\alpha ,\beta `$. Then by definition

$$𝐒_0S_1=\alpha 𝐏_0𝐏_1+\beta 𝐑_0R_1$$
(17)
In general case, there is no vector $`𝐒_0S_1`$, satisfying (16), for all vectors $`𝐐_0Q_1`$, and linear operations are defined only in the case, when (5) – (8) are fulfilled.

Let $`E_n=\{\sigma _\mathrm{E},^n\}`$ be $`n`$-dimensional proper Euclidean space. Remove some set $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ of points from $`^n`$. The $`\sigma `$-space $`V=\{\sigma _\mathrm{E},\mathrm{\Omega }\}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=^n\backslash \mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ is a result of deformation of Euclidean space $`E_n`$, because deletion of points is a special kind of deformation. Linear operation (17) is defined in $`E_n`$ for all points $`P_0,P_1,R_0,R_1`$ and all real $`\alpha ,\beta `$. Linear operation (17) is defined in $`V`$ for some real $`\alpha ,\beta `$ and for $`P_0,P_1,R_0,R_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$, provided there are such points $`S_0,S_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$ that relations (16) are fulfilled for all $`Q_0,Q_1\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Thus, deletion of points from Euclidean space destroys its linear structure, but not completely. A change of the world function plays the same role. Nevertheless, there is a minimal linear structure (12), (13) which remains at any deformation of the Euclidean space.


text:
# Remarks on the Cosmic Density of Degenerate Neutrinos

## I introduction

It is well known that the evolution of the universe deeply depends on the properties of neutrinos (see Ref. Dolgov2002  for review). In the standard cosmology, we assume three types of massless neutrinos with the same number of particles and antiparticles. In this paper, we deviate from the last assumption and consider cosmological effects caused by neutrino-antineutrino number asymmetry. We use a terminology ”degeneracy” for this asymmetry. We also assume, just for simplicity of the description, the neutrino number is larger than the antineutrino number (i.e. the neutrino has positive chemical potential). When considering the opposite case, we need to just exchange the role of neutrinos and antineutrinos.

Since degeneracy increases the sum of the energy density of neutrinos and antineutrinos, it significantly affects standard predictions such as the big bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background (in addition, electron-type neutrinos destroy neutrons so the nucleosynthesis depends strongly on their number density). Naively, these effects monotonously increase with the degree of degeneracy so the observations can put upper bounds on the degeneracy in each generation of neutrinos.

However, things are not as simple as this because the neutrino number freeze-out temperature also increases with the degeneracy (the rise in the freeze-out temperature is caused by the scarcity of the antineutrinos, the annihilation partners of the neutrinos). The complication occurs when the freeze-out takes place before the muon-antimuon annihilation ends. In this case, when muons and antimuons annihilate, already frozen neutrino number can not change but the entropy is transfered to the neutrinos through the elastic scattering with electrons and positrons so the neutrinos keep the same temperature with the rest of the cosmic plasma. In order to conserve the number while the temperature changing faster than the inverse of the scale factor, the neutrino degeneracy parameter, chemical potential divided by temperature, decreases. As a result, by the onset of nucleosynthesis, the neutrino energy density becomes much lower than the value calculated using the initial degeneracy. Therefore, there is a logical possibility that very large initial degeneracy cannot be ruled out by the observations.

This possibility is pursued in Ref. Kang1992  but with an incorrect picture on the ”neutrino decoupling” when very large degeneracy exists (the same lines of argument are still found in a few papers Orito2000  Orito2002  etc ). They have regarded the neutrino number freeze-out and its kinematical decoupling from the rest of the cosmic plasma occur simultaneously. The correct picture is the one as described in the previous paragraph, the kinetic equilibrium holds well after the chemical equilibrium ceases to hold. The reason is that there is small number of annihilation partners, antineutrinos, but elastic scattering partners, electrons and positrons, are abundant. This is pointed out in Ref. Dolgov2002 , but they have not calculated the relation between the initial degeneracy and the final degeneracy after the entropy producing events. Obtaining this relation is the main purpose of this paper.

In the next section, we calculate the neutrino number freeze-out temperature and show it increases exponentially with the initial degeneracy parameter. We also justify the neutrinos and anti-neutrinos are in kinetic equilibrium during the annihilation by demonstrating their elastic scattering rate is sufficiently large. In Sec. III, for a certain range of initial degeneracy parameter, we calculate their final value after the entropy producing events using the neutrino number conservation and the total entropy conservation. This is our main result. In Sec. IV, we summarize the results and discuss the current constraints on the neutrino degeneracy are not affected.

## II neutrino number freeze-out

We calculate the neutrino number freeze-out temperature $`T_f`$ by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_A(T_f)=H(T_f)`$, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_A`$ is the rate of the change in the neutrino number density $`n_\nu `$ through the neutrino-antineutrino annihilation processes and $`H`$ is the cosmic expansion rate.

In order to calculate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_A`$, we have to sum all the annihilation process rate. Assuming one type of the neutrino $`\nu _l`$ has degeneracy, we consider the annihilation to some fermion-antifermion pairs, $`\nu _l(p_1)+\overline{\nu }_l(p_2)F(p_3)+\overline{F}(p_4)`$ where the variables in the brackets denote the four-momentum of each particle in the comoving frame. For $`F`$, there are electrons and two non-degenerate types of neutrinos. In addition, we consider the annihilation to muon-anitimuon pairs when $`T>m_\mu /3`$ and to quark-antiquark pairs when $`T>T_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ where we assume the quark-hadron phase transition to occur instantaneously at $`T_{\mathrm{QCD}}=200`$ MeV and the quark-gluon phase contains u, d and s quarks. The contribution of this process to the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_A`$ is,

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\nu _l\overline{\nu _l}F\overline{F}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\dot{n}_{\nu _l}}{n_{\nu _l}}}\right)_{\nu \overline{\nu }F\overline{F}}`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n_{\nu _l}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^3p_1}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{d^3p_2}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{d^3p_3}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{d^3p_4}{(2\pi )^3}|(\nu _l+\overline{\nu _l}F+\overline{F})|^2}`$
$`\times (2\pi )^4\delta ^{(4)}(p_1+p_2p_3p_4)f_{\nu _l}(E_1)f_{\overline{\nu _l}}(E_2)[1f_F(E_3)][1f_{\overline{F}}(E_4)].`$
$`F`$’s are well-approximated to be massless so the square of the invariant matrix element $`|(\nu _l+\overline{\nu _l}F+\overline{F})|^2`$ can be written in the form $`32G_F[b(p_1p_3)^2+c(p_1p_4)^2]`$ where $`G_F=(292.80\mathrm{GeV})^2`$ is the Fermi coupling constant. For $`Fl`$, only the neutral current contributes so that $`b=(C_V^FC_A^F)^2`$ and $`c=(C_V^F+C_A^F)^2`$ and for $`F=l`$, the charged current contributes in addition so that $`b=(C_V^lC_A^l)^2`$ and $`c=(C_V^l+C_A^l+2)^2`$. The vector and axial-vector couplings $`(C_V^F,C_A^F)`$ are $`(1/2,1/2)`$ for $`F=\nu `$, $`(1/2,1/2+2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )`$ for $`F=e`$ and $`\mu `$, $`(1/2,1/2(4/3)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )`$ for $`F=u`$, and $`(1/2,1/2(2/3)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )`$ for $`F=d`$ and $`s`$ where the weak-mixing angle $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta =0.231`$. $`f`$’s are the distribution functions of the particle species on the subscript and we use the equilibrium form, $`f_{F,\overline{F}}=1/[\mathrm{exp}(E/T)+1]`$ and $`f_{\nu _l,\overline{\nu _l}}=1/[\mathrm{exp}((E\pm \mu )/T)+1]`$ where $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential and the signs are $``$ for $`\nu _l`$ and $`+`$ for $`\overline{\nu _l}`$. Here, we assume $`\mu =\mu _{\nu _l}=\mu _{\overline{\nu _l}}`$, expecting the chemical equilibrium holds initially at very high temperature. Some of the integration can be performed analytically and we obtain

$`\dot{n}_{\nu _l}|_{\nu _l\overline{\nu _l}F\overline{F}}`$ $`=`$ $`T^8{\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2}{64\pi ^5}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑x{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑y{\displaystyle _1^1}𝑑z{\displaystyle _f_{}^{f_+}}𝑑tf_{\nu _l}(x)f_{\overline{\nu _l}}(y)x^3y^3(1z)^2\delta ^5`$ (2)
$`\times [(b+c)\{3\delta ^4+3(xy)^2(2txy)^2(xy)^2\delta ^2(2txy)^2\delta ^2\}`$
$`4(bc)(xy)(2txy)\delta ^2][1f_F(t)][1f_{\overline{F}}(x+yt)]`$
$``$ $`T^8G_F^2L(\xi )`$
where $`x=E_1/T`$, $`y=E_2/T`$, $`z=\mathrm{cos}\theta `$, $`t=E_3/T`$, $`\delta (x,y,z)=(x^2+y^2+2xyz)^{1/2}`$ and $`f_\pm =(x+y\pm \delta )/2`$. With these variables, the distribution functions are $`f_{\nu _l,\overline{\nu _l}}(x)=1/[\mathrm{exp}(x\pm \xi )+1]`$ and $`f_{F,\overline{F}}(x)=1/[\mathrm{exp}(x)+1]`$, where we define the degeneracy parameter $`\xi \mu /T`$. Finally, the degenerate neutrino number density is

$$n_{\nu _l}(\xi )=\frac{T^3}{2\pi ^2}\frac{x^2}{e^{x\xi }+1}𝑑xM(\xi )T^3.$$
(3)
The cosmic expansion $`H`$ is determined by the total energy of the universe by the Einstein equation,

$$H=\sqrt{\frac{8\pi \rho _{tot}}{3M_P^2}}=\sqrt{\frac{4\pi ^3g_{}(\xi )}{45}}\frac{T^2}{M_{pl}},$$
(4)
where $`M_P=1.2\times 10^{19}`$ GeV is the Planck energy and we have introduced $`g_{}`$ to express the total energy density as $`\rho _{tot}=g_{}(\xi )(\pi ^2/30)T^4`$. On calculating the total energy, we do not have to worry about temperature dependence of $`g_{}`$ because it turns out that when the freeze-out temperature becomes so high as muons to contribute as relativistic degree of freedom, $`\xi `$ should be large making the muon (and the other particle species other than the degenerate neutrino) energy density negligible compared to that of the degenerate neutrino. The same is true for pions and the quark-gluon plasma. Therefore we include the contribution from photons, electrons, positrons, two types of non-degenerate (anti)neutrinos and the degenerate (anti)neutrinos,

$`g_{}(\xi )=9+{\displaystyle \frac{15}{\pi ^4}}{\displaystyle \left(\frac{x^3}{e^{x\xi }+1}+\frac{x^3}{e^{x+\xi }+1}\right)𝑑x}.`$ (5)
This gives usual value $`g_{}(0)=43/4`$.

Combining Eqs. (1) $``$ (5) gives freeze-out temperatures of the neutrino number as a function of $`\xi `$

$`T_f(\xi )=0.999756g_{}(\xi )^{1/6}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{M(\xi )}{L(\xi )}}\right]^{1/3}\mathrm{MeV}.`$ (6)
The results are shown in Fig. 1. We find that $`T_f`$ increases exponentially with $`\xi `$. This is expected because the number density of the antineutrinos, the annihilation partners of neutrinos, is exponentially suppressed due to the degeneracy. To see this more explicitly and for the later convenience, we here derive the approximate expression for $`T_f`$ when $`\xi `$ is large. First, Eq. (2) is simplified by setting $`f_{\overline{\nu _l}}(y)\mathrm{exp}(y)\mathrm{exp}(\xi )`$ and neglecting $`e^\pm `$ Pauli blocking factors. Using the integration approximation formula for a function satisfying $`\phi (0)=0`$,

$$_0^{\mathrm{}}\phi ^{}(x)f_\nu (x)𝑑x=_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\phi ^{}(x)dx}{\mathrm{exp}(x\xi )+1}=\phi (\xi )+\frac{\pi ^2}{6}\phi ^{\prime \prime }(\xi )+\frac{7\pi ^4}{360}\phi ^{(4)}(\xi )+\mathrm{},$$
(7)
we obtain

$`L(\xi )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3\pi ^5}}(b+c)\mathrm{exp}(\xi )\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\xi ^4}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2\xi ^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{7\pi ^4}{60}}\right],`$ (8)
$`M(\xi )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\xi }{6}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\xi ^2}{\pi ^2}}+1\right].`$ (9)
For $`g_{}(\xi )`$, we neglect the exponentially suppressed contribution from antineutrinos and obtain

$`g_{}(\xi ){\displaystyle \frac{43}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{15}{4}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\xi }{\pi }}\right)^4+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{\xi }{\pi }}\right)^2\right].`$ (10)
We have the expression for $`T_f`$ by putting these approximations into Eq. (6) and it reproduces closely the numerical result plotted in Fig. 1 when $`\xi 5`$.

Now we explicitly write down the expression for $`T_f`$ taking the leading order in $`\xi `$ to compare with that of Refs. Dolgov2002 , Kang1992  and Freese1983 . Our analysis shows

$`T_f1.37408\left({\displaystyle \frac{b+c}{2.3432}}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}}\xi ^{\frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{exp}(\xi /3)\mathrm{MeV}.`$ (11)
This and theirs all agree with respect to $`T_f\mathrm{exp}(\xi /3)`$ which originates from the exponentially suppressed degenerate $`n_{\overline{\nu }}`$. Our expression contains the factor $`\xi ^{1/3}`$, which originates from the degenerate $`\nu `$ distribution affecting both of $`n_\nu `$ and $`H`$, but it seems not to appear in the others. However, the expression of Ref. Dolgov2002  agrees with ours if thermally averaged momentum divided by $`T`$, $`p/T`$, is calculated using the degenerate $`\nu `$ distribution so that $`p/T(3/4)\xi `$ (they use $`p/T3`$ which is true when the degeneracy is small) and $`g_{}(\xi )`$ is approximated as $`\xi ^4`$. As for Ref. Freese1983 , $`T_f\xi ^{2/3}`$ but this is thought to originate from the incorrect division by $`n_e`$ when deriving $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_A`$. This does not make difference when calculating $`T_f`$ with no degeneracy but is not appropriate when strong degeneracy exists. Ref. Kang1992  has not found such a factor of power of $`\xi `$ but this is thought to originate from calculating the annihilation rate in the center-of-mass frame. In addition, they also calculate $`\dot{n_e}/n_e`$ so, as Ref. Orito2000  has pointed out, their result has to be corrected anyway.

Until now, we have not cared about the possibility of the neutrino spectral distortion and have used thermal distributions to calculate various quantities. We now justify this procedure. Since neutrinos with larger energies have more probability to annihilate (from Eq. (2), we see $`\dot{f_\nu }/f_\nu E_1`$), they seems to freeze-out later and the neutrino spectrum would distort very much. But as we discuss next, the neutrino-electron elastic scattering occur sufficiently so the thermal distribution of neutrinos is preserved at the time of annihilation. Since the presence of neutrino large degeneracy ensures that the neutrino-antineutrino annihilation process occurs with their distribution preserving equilibrium form, it is considered that the estimation of neutrino number freeze-out temperature from $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_A=H`$ turns out to be good.

We investigate how these degeneracy parameters undergo a change in the next section. Before we proceed, we estimate the temperature at which the neutrinos decouple kinematically from $`e^\pm `$. This temperature is expected to be much lower than the number freeze-out temperature because the partners of the elastic processes, electrons and positrons are abundant regardless of the neutrino degeneracy. So they are coupled until relatively low temperature and have the same temperature with the others even after their number has frozen out at higher temperature. This decoupling temperature is well estimated from the rate for the elastic scattering processes because the energy transfer between $`e^\pm `$ and $`\nu `$ occurs efficiently in this case. The energy transfer efficiency is estimated as follows. The center-of-mass frame differencial cross section for the elastic processes is

$$\left(\frac{d\sigma _{CM}}{d\mathrm{cos}\theta }\right)_{\nu +e^{}\nu +e^{}}+\left(\frac{d\sigma _{CM}}{d\mathrm{cos}\theta }\right)_{\nu +e^+\nu +e^+}=\frac{s}{16\pi }G_F^2(C_V^2+C_A^2)\left\{4+(1+\mathrm{cos}\theta )^2\right\},$$
(12)
where $`s`$ and $`\theta `$ are the total initial energy squared and the polar angle in the center-of-mass frame. The energy transfer from $`e^\pm `$ to $`\nu `$ with initial energy (in the laboratory frame) $`E_{e^\pm }`$ and $`E_\nu `$ is

$$E_{\mathrm{transfer}}=\frac{1}{2}(E_{e^\pm }E_\nu )(1\mathrm{cos}\theta ).$$
(13)
From (12) and (13), the expectation value of the energy transfer by one collision is computed as

$$E_{\mathrm{transfer}}=\frac{{\displaystyle E_{\mathrm{transfer}}\frac{d\sigma }{d\mathrm{cos}\theta }d(\mathrm{cos}\theta )}}{{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{d\mathrm{cos}\theta }d(\mathrm{cos}\theta )}}=\frac{7}{16}(E_{e^\pm }E_\nu ).$$
(14)
Therefore, roughly speaking, $`\nu `$ becomes almost as energetic as $`e^\pm `$ after one collision.

Now, we compute the rate for the elastic scattering processes

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\nu ,\mathrm{elastic}}=\left[\left(\frac{dn_\nu }{dt}\right)_{\nu +e^{}\nu +e^{}}+\left(\frac{dn_\nu }{dt}\right)_{\nu +e^+\nu +e^+}\right]/n_\nu $$
(15)
and search a temperature $`T_d`$ at which it becomes equal to the expansion rate, just as we have done in the case of the annihilation process. The result is shown in Fig. 2. We see that $`T_d`$ increase with $`\xi `$ but rather slowly. Therefore, as is the case of no degeneracy, the neutrinos are in kinetic equilibrium holding the same temperature as the rest of the plasma until at least the muon-antimuon annihilation ends.

## III the change in chemical potential and energy density

In this section, we study how the neutrino or its degeneracy parameter $`\xi `$ evolves after its number has frozen out. $`\xi `$ is conserved when the annihilation occurs frequently so that chemical equilibrium holds. Even after the annihilation practically ceases, $`\xi `$ does not vary as long as the temperature $`T`$ falls as $`Ta^1`$ where $`a`$ is the cosmological scale factor. But this condition is not satisfied when, for example, the muon annihilation progresses because the temperature falls more slowly (recall from the end of the last section that the neutrino temperature evolves along with the $`e^\pm `$ temperature because they are in kinetic equilibrium). For the case when the freeze-out takes place before the muon annihilation ends, there is a period in which the neutrino number at the freeze-out temperature is conserved while the temperature falls slower than $`a^1`$. This causes $`\xi `$ to decrease during the muon annihilation or other entropy producing processes.

We can compute the value of $`\xi `$ after the muon annihilation on the basis of neutrino number and total entropy conservation after the freeze-out. We briefly explain why the latter holds. The second law of thermodynamics for the total gas in physical volume $`V`$ is EarlyUniverse

$$TdS=d(\rho V)+pdV\mu d(nV),$$
(16)
where $`\rho `$ is the energy density, $`p`$ is the pressure and $`n`$ is the number density. The first two terms on the right hand side vanishes according to the total energy conservation. For the last term, there could be contributions from particle species with non-zero chemical potential, but $`d(nV)=0`$ for neutrinos because it has been already frozen out and $`d(nV)`$ is negligible for antineutrinos because its number density is exponentially suppressed ($`n_{\overline{\nu }}=(T^3/\pi ^2)e^\xi `$ for $`\xi 1`$) for such large degeneracy as to make the neutrino number freeze out before the muon-antimuon annihilation ends.

The total entropy conservation is expressed as

$$a_f^3s_{tot}(T_f(\xi _{\mathrm{initial}}),\xi _{\mathrm{initial}})=a_{\mathrm{final}}^3s_{tot}(T_{\mathrm{final}},\xi _{\mathrm{final}}),$$
(17)
where the subscript ”$`f`$” denotes the value at the neutrino number freeze-out and ”final” after the $`\mu ^\pm `$ annihilation but before the $`e^\pm `$ annihilation. $`\xi `$ is conserved when the chemical equilibrium holds so we have written $`\xi _{\mathrm{initial}}`$ instead of $`\xi _f`$. $`s_{tot}`$ is the sum of entropy density $`s=(\rho +p\mu n)/T`$ of all the particle species exist. On the right hand side, there exists only the relativistic particles, photons, $`e^\pm `$, and neutrinos one type with degeneracy and 2 types without, so the $`T^3`$ can be scaled out as

$$s_{tot}(T,\xi )\frac{2\pi ^2}{45}T^3\left(g_{}(\xi )\xi \frac{45}{4\pi ^4}\frac{x^2}{e^{x\xi }+1}𝑑x\right)\frac{2\pi ^2}{45}K(\xi )T^3,$$
(18)
where $`g_{}(\xi )`$ is the effective degrees of freedom same as the one appeared in Eq. (5). We neglect exponentially suppressed antineutrino contribution. When we calculate the left hand side of Eq. (17), finite masses of muons ($`m_\mu =106`$ MeV) and pions ($`m_\pi =135`$ MeV) are included in order to treat the annihilation of these particles continuously. We assume the quark-hadron phase transition to occur instantaneously at $`T_{\mathrm{QCD}}=200`$ MeV and the quark-gluon phase contains u, d and s quarks which are well approximated as massless. Then

$`s_{tot}(T,\xi )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi ^2}{45}}T^3(g_{}(\xi )\xi {\displaystyle \frac{45}{4\pi ^4}}{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{x^2}{e^{x\xi }+1}}dx+{\displaystyle \frac{95}{2}}\theta (TT_{\mathrm{QCD}})`$ (19)
$`+4I_\mu ^+(T)+3I_\pi ^{}(T)\theta (T_{\mathrm{QCD}}T)){\displaystyle \frac{2\pi ^2}{45}}J(T,\xi )T^3,`$
where $`\theta (x)`$ is 1 for $`x>0`$ and is 0 otherwise. $`I_i^\pm `$ denotes the contribution from the massive particles $`i`$ as

$`I_i^\pm (T)={\displaystyle \frac{45}{4\pi ^4}}\left[{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑x{\displaystyle \frac{x^2}{\mathrm{exp}\left(\sqrt{x^2+\alpha _i^2}\right)\pm 1}}\left(\sqrt{x^2+\alpha _i^2}+{\displaystyle \frac{x^2}{3\sqrt{x^2+\alpha _i^2}}}\right)\right],`$ (20)
where $`\alpha _i=m_i/T`$ and the sign is $`+/`$ when $`i`$ is a fermion/boson.

The neutrino number conservation is

$$a_f^3n_\nu (T_f(\xi _{\mathrm{initial}}),\xi _{\mathrm{initial}})=a_{\mathrm{final}}^3n_\nu (T_{\mathrm{final}},\xi _{\mathrm{final}}),$$
(21)
and $`n_\nu `$ is calculated by Eq. (3). Dividing each sides of Eq. (17) by Eq. (21), we obtain an equation with respect to $`\xi _{\mathrm{final}}`$ for given $`\xi _{\mathrm{initial}}`$,

$$J(T_f(\xi _{\mathrm{initial}}),\xi _{\mathrm{initial}})M(\xi _{\mathrm{final}})K(\xi _{\mathrm{final}})M(\xi _{\mathrm{initial}})=0.$$
(22)
We numerically solve this for $`\xi _{\mathrm{final}}`$ in the range $`0\xi _{\mathrm{initial}}15`$. The result is shown in Fig. 3 and we see considerable difference between the initial $`\xi _\nu `$ and the final $`\xi _\nu `$.

We translate this results in terms of neutrino energy density as shown in Fig. 4 (with regard to only the degenerate family). We show the final value of the energy density of the degenerate neutrinos plus antineutrinos divided by the one with no degeneracy (so-called effective number of neutrino types minus two).

For a comparison, in Fig. 5, we also show the degenerate neutrino final energy densities when some assumptions are different. We compute the case when the degeneracy parameter $`\xi `$ maintains the initial value and the case when we assume, as in Refs. Kang1992 Orito2000 , the neutrinos are not heated by annihilation processes after its number has frozen out. Our result demonstrates that for some range of the degeneracy, the final neutrino energy density can be lower than the one with the initial degeneracy but not as low as previous analysis Orito2000  has shown.

At last, we make a comment on the evolution of the antineutrino degeneracy parameter, $`\xi _{\overline{\nu }}`$. At the initial stage, the chemical equilibrium holds so $`\xi _{\overline{\nu }}=\xi _\nu `$. This relation could be broken after the neutrino number freeze-out because the neutrino is not in the chemical equilibrium any more. However, since the frequent elastic scattering with electrons ensures neutrinos and antineutrinos to be in kinematical equilibrium and annihilation is still efficient for antineutrinos, the relation $`\xi _{\overline{\nu }}=\xi _\nu `$ continues to hold. Therefore, as $`\xi _\nu `$ decreases during for example the muon-antimuon annihilation, $`\xi _{\overline{\nu }}`$ follows its variation with the sign opposite. Meanwhile, when the temperature drops down to the electron-positron annihilation, the elastic scattering is not efficient to keep $`\nu `$ (and also $`\overline{\nu }`$ if the degeneracy is not very large) in the kinetic equilibrium with $`e^\pm `$. In this case, the momentum distribution is distorted from the equilibrium form so, strictly speaking, the notion of the chemical potential or the degeneracy parameter is lost. But the distortion can usefully expressed as momentum dependent chemical potential and in this sense, $`\xi _\nu +\xi _{\overline{\nu }}0`$ as shown in Ref.Esposito2000  where the evolution of the neutrino spectrum is fully simulated with $`\xi 1`$.

## IV conclusion

We have re-investigated some properties of the thermal history of the early universe with very large neutrino degeneracy. We have justified and adopted the correct picture of the neutrino number freeze-out as explained by Ref. Dolgov2002 . We have made some complementary arguments and calculations to those found in Ref. Dolgov2002  and have obtained the results concerning the evolution of the strong neutrino degeneracy and in turn its energy density. We find there are cases that the neutrino degeneracy parameter $`\xi `$ becomes smaller than the initial value after the muon annihilation. However, they do not seem to require alteration to the cosmological bounds on the neutrino degeneracy such as $`0.01\xi _{\nu _e}0.22`$ and $`|\xi _{\nu _{\mu ,\tau }}|2.6`$ Hansen2001  (more stringent bound, $`|\xi _\nu |0.07`$ for all three neutrino types, is likely to apply taking into account neutrino oscillations with maximal mixing Dolgov2002a . The analysis on how the bounds are modified for the region of the Large Mixing Angle solution to solar neutrino problems is found in Refs. Wong2002  and Abazajian2002 ), because, in Fig. 3, the local minimum of the final degeneracy caused by the quark-hadron phase transition does not have the value lower than the present upper bound.

Finally, we note our results stem from the fact that the degenerate neutrinos are in kinetic equilibrium with the rest of the cosmic plasma well after their number has frozen out. The same is true for other possibly degenerate species of stable particles other than the neutrinos and our analysis is applicable to them. So, although our analysis on the neutrinos has turned out not to affect the cosmological bound on their degeneracy, the remark made in this paper is worth bearing in mind.


text:
# The Faint Sky Variability Survey I: Goals and Data reduction process

## 1 Introduction

The advance of large format ($`>`$2k$`\times `$2k) CCDs with high quantum efficiency has opened up a new area in Galactic and extragalactic astrophysics: the systematic study of astrophysical objects fainter than 20th magnitude. The importance of this brightness regime is nicely illustrated by the current, fast development in the field of $`\gamma `$-ray bursts (GRBs; for a recent review see Van Paradijs, Kouveliotou and Wijers, 2000), where the localization of faint variable optical counterparts has led to a large increase in our understanding of GRBs.

In the following sections we will outline the main goals of the Faint Sky Variability Survey111http://www.astro.uva.nl/$``$fsvs (FSVS, Sect. 2), the INT Wide Field Camera (Sect. 3), the observing strategy (Sect. 4) and field selection (Sect. 5). After a short comparison with other, running surveys (Sect. 6), we will discuss data reduction (Sect. 7), final data products (Sect. 8) and availability of the data (Sect. 9).

## 2 Goals of the FSVS

Understanding the variability of stars has often been crucial in the development of astrophysics, with applications ranging from the evolution of stars, to the structure of our Galaxy and the distance scale of the Universe. Current variability studies are mainly restricted to either bright regimes (brighter than 20th magnitude) or smaller areas (high-$`z`$ supernovae and GRB searches). In the Galaxy, a deep variability study will not only reveal the characteristics of specific groups of stellar objects, but will also shed light on the outer parts of our Solar System, the direct Solar Neighbourhood, the structure of our Galaxy, and the extent of the Galactic halo. The FSVS has observed $``$23 square degrees (23) down to 24th magnitude. The main targets can be divided into two broad areas of interest: photometrically and astrometrically variable objects.

### 2.1 Photometrically variable objects

Among the various classes of variable stars our main targets are:

* Close Binaries:
Current detections of low-mass close-binary systems (Cataclysmic Variables, Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries (LMXBs, including Soft X-Ray Transients, SXTs) and AM CVn stars) are strongly biased to small subsets of their populations. Of these systems the Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) form the main subgroup we expect to find. We refer to Warner (1995a) for an extensive review of CV properties, Van Paradijs & McClintock (1995) for optical observations of LMXBs and Warner (1995b) for AM CVn stars. Apart from novae, most CVs are either found as by-products of extragalactic studies like blue-excess, quasar surveys (e.g. the Palomar-Green survey: Green, Schmidt and Liebert, 1986; the Hamburg Quasar Survey: Engels et al., 1994; the Hamburg-ESO Quasar Survey: Wisotzki et al., 1996; and the Edingburgh-Cape Survey: Stobie et al., 1988), or by their outbursts in which the system suddenly brightens 3-10 magnitudes due to enhanced mass transfer through the accretion disk. However, theoretical calculations show that the majority of the CV population should have evolved down to mass-transfer rates that are lower than $``$10-11 M yr-1 (see e.g. Kolb 1993; Howell, Rappaport and Politano, 1997; Howell, Nelson and Rappaport, 2001; however, see Patterson, 2001 for an alternative view). At these very low-mass transfer rates, CVs are expected to be faint (typically V$`>`$20), have no UV excess, show no (frequent) outbursts, and will therefore not show up in conventional searches. However, all CVs show intrinsic variability of the order of tenths of magnitudes or more. This variability is either caused by ‘flickering’ (mass-transfer instabilities), orbital modulations (hot spots or eclipses) or long-term mass-transfer fluctuations. Searching for faint variable stars is therefore a good way to define the characteristics of the majority of the CV population. Based on population synthesis models we expect to find 20 new CVs per square degree (Howell et al., 1997). The same search technique will also make the survey sensitive to other classes of close binaries, such as LMXBs, SXTs in quiescence and AM CVn stars.
* RR Lyrae stars:
Due to their standard candle properties and easy recognition by colour and variability, RR Lyrae stars can be used as excellent tracers of the structure of the Galactic halo. A few of these stars have been found at large galactocentric distances (Hawkins, 1984; Ciardullo et al., 1989), but number statistics are still poor. Finding more of these stars will help to constrain the total enveloped mass in the Galaxy at different radii. From the small number of known systems we derive a very uncertain estimate of 0.2 RR Lyrae stars per square degree that are beyond 30kpc.
* Optical Transients to GRBs:
The detection of optical counterparts to GRBs (e.g. Van Paradijs et al., 1997), and the subsequent classification of GRBs as cosmological (e.g. Metzger et al., 1997, Kulkarni et al., 1998) have shown that GRBs are among the most energetic phenomena known in the Universe. The high energies implied by observations of GRB afterglows (1053-54 erg in $`\gamma `$-rays if isotropy is assumed, Kulkarni et al., 1998; 1999), raises the question whether GRBs are emitting their energy isotropically or in the form of jets. In the latter case the energies involved will be much lower, depending on the amount of beaming. Even if the $`\gamma `$-rays are beamed the optical afterglow is expected to radiate more isotropically, and thus one expects to observe faint afterglows without an accompanying burst in $`\gamma `$-rays. The detection rate of such transient events will constrain the beaming angle. The expected detection rate depends very much on the chosen geometry of the GRBs and varies for the FSVS database between several dozens and $``$1. A discussion and analysis of our results is presented in Vreeswijk (2002).

### 2.2 Astrometrically variable objects

The observing schedule that we have adopted for the FSVS (see Sect. 4) also allows for the detection of astrometrically variable objects. Our interests fall into two main categories:

* Kuiper Belt Objects:
Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are icy bodies revolving around the Sun in orbits that lie outside the orbit of Neptune (which has led to the alternative name of Trans Neptunian Objects; TNOs). Since their discovery in 1993 (Jewitt and Luu, 1993), more than 100 of these objects have been found. Studying their properties will give important insight into the formation of the Solar system and planetary systems in general. One question that is particularly well suited to be answered is the inclination distribution of KBOs. Most KBOs have been found within 5 from the ecliptic, but this may constitute an observational bias, since most searches have been (and are) performed close to the ecliptic. Since the FSVS is mostly pointing away from the ecliptic, we will be able to set limits on the inclination distribution of KBO’s. KBO’s are found from intra-night astrometric variability. One KBO is found so far in a preliminary search of the FSVS database (K01QW2X; Gladman et al., 2001).
* Solar Neighbourhood Objects:
The yearly re-observations allow for the detection of high proper-motion objects in the Solar neighbourhood. These will be extremely important to constrain the low-mass end of the IMF in the solar neighbourhood, to estimate the relative contribution of the disk and halo population of stars in the solar neighbourhood and trace the star formation history of the Galactic halo by finding old, high proper motion, white dwarfs.

## 3 The INT Wide Field Camera

The Wide Field Camera222see: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/$``$wfcsur/index.php for an extensive description of the WFC (WFC) is mounted at the prime focus of the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos on the island of La Palma. The WFC consists of 4 EEV42 CCDs, each containing 2048$`\times `$4100 pixels. They are fitted in an L-shaped pattern, which makes the Camera 6k$`\times `$6k, minus a 2k$`\times `$2k corner (see Figure 1). The CCDs consist of 13.5$`\mu `$ pixels (0$`.^{\prime \prime }`$33 per pixel on the sky), which gives a sky coverage per CCD of 22$`.^{}`$8$`\times `$11$`.^{}`$4. A total of 0$`.^{\mathrm{}}`$29 is covered by the combined four CCDs. With a typical seeing of 1$`.^{\prime \prime }`$0-1$`.^{\prime \prime }`$3 on the INT, point objects are well-sampled, which allows for accurate photometry. The Camera is equiped with Harris and Sloan filters, of which we use the Harris $`B,V`$ and $`I`$ filter. Zeropoints, defined as the magnitude that gives 1 detected e-/s, in these filters are 25.6 in $`B`$ and $`V`$ and 25.0 in $`I`$.

## 4 Observing strategy

The typical timescales of variability covered by the objects listed above vary from hours (CVs, KBOs, RR Lyrae stars) to days (optical transients to GRBs) to years (high proper motion stars). To cover all possible timescales of variation we have devised an observing strategy that optimises both the coverage per field as well as the total sky coverage. The variability search is done with 10 min. V-band observations. This is a compromise between the expected colours of our targets and the sensitivity of the WFC which peaks between 4000Å and 6000Å or the photometric variability we find that at least 15-20 pointings are needed to firmly state that an object is variable and also get an indication of the timescale of its variability (or ideally its period). For the first two runs of the FSVS this number was limited to $``$10, but has been raised to 15-20 in subsequent runs.

The FSVS has been observing in one-week time slots, separated by roughly half year intervals. Observations of one field are mainly obtained within the one week observing run, with single observations in the yearly returns. In the observing sequences we have tried to avoid a regular spacing of the observations since this will introduce strong aliases in any period search. On photometric nights (which were always present in each of the runs) the fields were observed in B (10 min) and I (15 min) together with Landolt (1992) fields. These observations were taken centered on each of the four chips to obtain a sufficient number of photometric standards per chip (see Sect. 7.9). Using this observing strategy an average of 4per one-week run was observed. Single V-band re-observations of each field are being obtained on a yearly basis.

## 5 Field selection

The field selection was governed by the following four criteria (in order of importance) to ensure maximum quality of the data:

* Fields are located at Galactic latitudes $`b^{II}>`$ 20: to probe the Galactic halo as well as the Galactic disk to considerable depths we target most of our fields at mid-Galactic latitudes (see Table 1). This also prevents problems with field crowding and interstellar extinction that will be present at lower Galactic latitudes.
* Fields are observed within a zenith distance, $`z<`$30: this criterion has been set to limit the effect of differential extinction coefficients on the accuracy of the photometry.
* If possible we select our fields at the ecliptic, to increase the chances of finding KBOs. However, as explained in Sect. 2.2 even if we are not able to point at the ecliptic, our results may help to constrain the inclination distribution of KBOs.
* Bright stars are avoided: stars brighter than $``$10th magnitude will cause large charge overflows and diffraction patterns that limit the area on a CCD that can be used for accurate photometry, depending on the placement and brightness of the star. To prevent this from happening the fields are selected to be as devoid as possible of bright stars. We checked for the presence of bright stars using the Digital Sky Survey in the selection of the fields.

It is clear that not all four criteria can always be met. For the Northern Hemisphere all four criteria can only be met in late November-early December. Table 1 shows the center points of the FSVS fields, together with the Galactic coordinates and period of first observations.

## 6 Comparison with other surveys

The FSVS is unique in its search for variability on short timescales (tens of minutes to days), depth and precision of its differential photometry, although having a rather moderate sky-coverage. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al., 2000) covers a much larger area of the sky (10 000 ), but at brighter magnitudes (14 $`<g^{}<`$ 22.5), and provides almost no variability information. The microlensing studies (e.g. MACHO, Alcock et al., 1997; EROS, Beaulieu et al., 1995; OGLE, Udalski et al., 1992) do obtain variability information, but are targeted at different stellar populations (the Galactic Bulge, the LMC, or M31) and have a limit of V$``$21 with a photometric precision of 0.5 mag at the faint end, caused by limited S/N and crowding in their necessarily high density star fields. High $`z`$ supernovae searches reach as deep as the FSVS, but have a lower time-resolution and smaller area. In Figure 2 we show schematically how the FSVS compares with other deep ongoing surveys.

## 7 Reduction and Analysis Methods

To obtain variability information on all the objects detected in our observations we use the technique of differential aperture and psf photometry. We have written a pipe-line reduction package, consisting of IRAF tasks, Fortran programs and at its core the SExtractor program by Bertin and Arnouts (1996). Every object in every observation is analysed and the results are stored in a master-table that lists the essential information (described below in detail) for each object. Below we outline the data flow through our pipe-line reduction, starting with the raw data as it comes from the telescope.

### 7.1 Bias subtraction

The mean of the counts in the overscan region of each observation is used to subtract the overall bias level. After this the 2-D bias pattern, determined from bias observations taken at the start of the night, is subtracted.

### 7.2 Linearization of the data

A non-linearity in the read-out electronics causes all data taken with the INT WFC to be non-linear up to a level of $``$5%. The magnitude of this non-linearity as a function of exposure level is determined by the Cambridge WFS group222 see: previous footnote for URL and details and is posted in tabular and analytic form. These corrections are applied after bias-subtraction.

### 7.3 Flatfielding

From twilight skyflats taken during a complete observing run a master flatfield is made, which is used for all the observations taken in that band during the observing run. For the I-band observations, which suffer from fringing at the 3.5% level, we have made fringe maps from the night time observations, which allows the fringe pattern to be removed down to the 0.6% continuum sky level (see Fig. 3).

### 7.4 Source detection

The bias-subtracted, linearized and flat-fielded data are fed to the SExtractor program. This program detects sources and measures their instrumental magnitude in a number of different ways, as set by the user. Source detection is done by requiring that three neighbouring pixels are more than two sigma above the sky-background. Visual inspection shows that this threshold value is capable of detecting virtually all objects that can be identified by eye. Some contamination from extended cosmic rays is present, but these are effectively removed in the subsequent steps. Apart from finding the sources and determining their instrumental magnitudes, for each source the SExtractor program determines other characteristic parameters such as the position, size, extent, ellipticity and orientation angle. Due to vignetting a corner of CCD3 (the NE corner in Fig. 1) has very low count rates. We discard any object detected in a square box 200 pixels wide from this corner of CCD3. Spatial offsets between observations of the same fields in different visits are small (typically $`<`$20″) so no check is made for detections on different CCDs.

### 7.5 Instrumental magnitudes

For each object instrumental magnitudes are extracted in four different ways: fixed aperture photometry, seeing matched aperture photometry, variable psf fitting photometry and isophotal magnitudes. The isophotal magnitudes and fixed 12 pixel radius aperture photometry have been included as a check on the others and for extragalactic work in case of the isophotal magnitudes. The seeing matched aperture photometry uses an aperture that scales with the seeing of the observations. This seeing is determined using bright unsaturated stars in the inner 1k $`\times `$ 1k region of each chip. The size of the aperture for the observation is set to twice the FWHM of the seeing estimate. This relatively large aperture works well for bright stars, but the S/N deteriorates for faint objects due to the dominant sky background. In Fig. 4 we show the variation of the error for an aperture of twice the seeing FWHM and for an aperture of one time the FWHM. This clearly shows that for bright stars they work equally well and for faint stars small apertures work better. However, in Sect. 7.8 we will show that the aperture photometry is not ideal for variability studies.

The error on the instrumental magnitudes is determined only by Poisson-statistics, including the source and background brightness, read-out noise of the chip and the gain.

In the variable psf fitting the point-spread-function of the objects, and its variation, over the chip is determined from a set of 25 isolated stars, spread equally in position over the chip. Using this variable psf the instrumental magnitude of each object is determined with the use of the IRAF daophot package, in which the photometric accuracy is adjusted from 1 mmag to 0.1 mmag to be able to obtain the photometric precision needed for the brightest stars. The error in the instrumental magnitude is now a combination of the Poisson statistics (as in the aperture photometry) as well as a factor from the fitting procedure. This causes the psf errors on the brightest objects to be higher than in the aperture photometry (see Fig. 4), but for the faint sources it is as good as that of the 1$`\times `$FWHM aperture photometry.

Although from just Fig. 4 it would seem that the aperture photometry is doing much better than the psf photometry at the brighter end, the variability study (as discussed in Sect. 7.8) shows this not to be the case. The Poisson errors on the aperture photometry are not a good representation of the actual error on the measurement. Other sources of errors besides counting statistics such as low-level gain and read-out noise variations, flatfield errors and a variable psf become dominant at bright magnitudes. This shows up as a flattening of the error distribution. In Sect. 7.8 we will show that the small aperture photometry errors introduce apparent variability for the brightest stars and therfore aperture photometry is therefore not the most suitable for the FSVS.

### 7.6 Field matching

Different observations of the same field are automatically matched using the offset program, supplied with the dophot package (Schechter, Mateo and Saha; 1993), using the 100 brightest, non-saturated stars, that are not located near the edges of the CCDs. Matching is done by triangle pattern recognition in the two images. This matching allows for linear scaling, rotation and translation of the different images. Output is given as the elements of a rotation-translation matrix. All image source catalogues are transformed to that of a reference image (the one with the best seeing). Individual objects are matched if in the new image an object is found within 1 FWHM of the position of the object in the reference image. This same criterion is used to match stars between different filters.

### 7.7 Local reference star selection

In order to obtain differential magnitudes, an ensemble of local reference stars has to be selected. The average (ensemble) magnitude of these stars is used as a baseline to compute all instrumental magnitudes. In the selection of this ensemble it is important to use the brightest, non-variable, stars that are not saturated. Using the brightest stars is essential because the error on the differential magnitude of any object consists of the error that is obtained from counting statistics for that object, and the error on the average of the reference stars (see e.g. Howell, Mitchell and Warnock, 1988). The uncertainty in the mean magnitude of the ensemble must be made significantly smaller than the uncertainty imposed by counting statistics on the magnitude of any star of interest. If this is not the case, it will cause small-amplitude variability, that should have been detected on the basis of counting statistics, to become undetectable. Per CCD, an ensemble of ten local standards is selected by requiring that their variation with respect to the average is less than 5 millimagnitudes. If this requirement is set more stringently not enough standards are found. In the Galactic North Pole observations of May 1999 the selection criterion had to be relaxed to 10 millimagnitudes in order to find a suitable number of stars. This is, of course, due to the limited number of stars in the NGP direction. As explained above, this selection criterion naturally sets the minimum amplitude (= scatter/$`\sqrt{N_{\mathrm{reference}\mathrm{stars}}}`$) of variation that can be found. We have not taken a colour difference between the ensemble and targets stars into account. However, this small effect will only be important for the brightest stars, which, on average, will also have similar colours to the ensemble stars.

### 7.8 Differential magnitudes and variability

For every object the differential magnitude is calculated against the ensemble average. The error of the instrumental magnitude is propagated to the differential magnitude, adding quadratically to the error on the ensemble average. The error on the ensemble average is determined from the scatter of the ensemble stars at that epoch around their average over all epochs. The differential magnitude is calculated for all four instrumental magnitudes as described in Sect. 7.5 for all observations of this field. In Fig. 5 we show the variation around their average magnitude for all objects in a representative field of the FSVS, both for seeing matched aperture photometry as well as for the variable PSF fitting. The rise towards fainter magnitudes is a consequence of the larger instrumental magnitudes errors due to lower count rates. For the brightest sources a differential magnitude variation of $`<5`$mmag, which is at the level of extrasolar planet transits, is easily obtained.

Variability is determined by calculating the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of the light curve with respect to its average value. As expected this is a constant as a function of magnitude (Fig. 6). In Fig. 6 we show the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution for the 1$`\times `$FWHM aperture (bottom), and 2$`\times `$FWHM aperture photometry (middle) and the variable psf fitting (top). The dashed line in Fig. 6 shows the 5-$`\sigma `$ variability level above which we denote our stars to be variable. From this we see that an aperture of 1$`\times `$FWHM is too small for the bright stars and introduces spurious variability. The 2$`\times `$FWHM also suffers from spurious variability, although that is not immediately clear from Fig. 6.

Despite the accurate photometry on a single epoch, the 2$`\times `$FWHM aperture photometry suffers from the introduction of systematic variability into the light curves due to the basic assumption of aperture photometry that the psf is the same for all objects in the field. The chips of the WFC are slightly tilted with respect to the focal plane of the camera, which introduces a variation in the psf of $``$20% over the field of a single chip. When analysed with aperture photometry this introduces spurious variability both at the bright end as well as at the fainter end of the magnitude range. At the bright end the variation is caused by the change of the psf due to tilt of the CCDs. At the fainter end the change is caused by barely resolved binaries and compact galaxies. Not including this source of error in the aperture photometry at the bright end causes the high number of spurious variables. In the PSF fitting these errors are taken into account (as can be seen from the higher level of single-epoch errors in Fig. 4), and the spurious variability is removed (see Fig. 5 and 6). The fact that the average $`\chi ^2`$-value for the psf-fitting lies around 1 for the non-variable stars at all magnitudes shows that the psf errors are an accurate reflection of the true uncertainties on the individual photometric measurements.

### 7.9 Astrometric and photometric calibration

Using the USNO A2.0 catalogue an astrometric solution is obtained for each CCD and each field separately. On average, we use 20-30 USNO A2.0 stars, which is sufficient to obtain a cubic solution that is accurate to 0$`.^{\prime \prime }`$2-0$`.^{\prime \prime }`$4 in right ascension and declination, depending on the position of a field on the sky.

During each of our runs, we have had photometric nights, during which all fields and several Selected Areas of Landolt (1992) were observed. After having found the astrometric solution for the standard stars, we can measure the standard stars automatically. We use the SExtractor aperture photometry option, with an aperture radius of twice the image FWHM. For each CCD the measured $`B,V`$ and $`I`$ standard star magnitudes are fitted to a model that includes a zero-point offset, an airmass term and a colour term. When sufficient standards are observed at different airmasses, we fit for the airmass term. If not, we hold it constant at the following values: 0.25, 0.15 and 0.07 for the filters B, V and I, respectively222see first WFC footnote. The colour term is only included if it improves the fit significantly. These solutions are applied to all objects listed in the catalogue through the ensemble reference stars that are selected for each CCD of each field (see Sect. 7.7). From the scatter in the solutions, we estimate the error in the absolute calibration to be 0.05 for the B and V filters, and 0.1 for the I band.

### 7.10 Limiting magnitudes

Based on the amount of flux in the ten reference stars (see Sect. 7.7), the level of the background sky, the photometry aperture size and the background aperture size, we calculate the a 3-, 5-, and 7-sigma limiting magnitude object for each CCD, field and observation. In this calculation we neglect the read-out noise since our observations are long and have background levels whose noise is much higher than the read-out noise. On average the 5-sigma limiting magnitudes range between 22.5-24.5 for the B and V-band images (depending on seeing and cloud cover) and between 21.5 and 23.5 for the I-band observations.

### 7.11 Star - Galaxy separation

The star-galaxy separation used in the FSVS is based on the ’stellarity’ parameter, as returned from the SExtractor routines (Bertin and Arnouts, 1996). This parameter has a value between 0 (highly extended) and 1 (point source). In the FSVS the stellarity value of an object is taken as the value in the combined V-band images. Due to the increased S/N in this image, the star-galaxy separation can be done reliably almost 1 magnitude deeper than from any individual image. As can be seen in Fig. 7 this separation of object types works very well to classify point-sources (with a value $`>`$0.8) down to V$``$23.5-24. Fainter stars tend to have slightly lower stellarity values (they turn down between V=23 and V=24) but can still be well separated from the galaxies, although some stars at the faint end of the distribution may be mis-classified as extended.

### 7.12 Astrometric variables

The proper motion analysis is currently not included in the standard pipe-line reduction but is handled separately using either the reduced images (in the case of Kuiper Belt Objects) or the SExtractor output and astrometric solution as provided by the pipeline (in the case of the high proper motion stars). Details on both analyses will be given in subsequent papers. Our first results indicate that proper motions will be measurable down to 10 mas yr-1 with a 2-year baseline.

## 8 Final products

The pipeline discussed above returns two sets of output files:
$``$ The reduced images
$``$ The data tables with the photometric and astrometric information.
The data tables are made per field, per CCD and are made for four different magnitudes: the psf magnitude, the fixed aperture magnitude, the isophotal magnitude and seeing matched aperture magnitude.

The header of the table contains all relevant information on the exposures: run numbers of the original frames, the HJDs of the observations, the filter, the airmass, the average FWHM of the point sources in the observation (the ’seeing’), the six element rotation-translation matrix to the reference image and the 3-, 5-, and 7-$`\sigma `$ limiting magnitude of the image. The data tables contain, for each detected object: name, position and colour, followed by the magnitude, error on the magnitude, fwhm, stellarity and the error flag as returned from the SExtractor program for each observation.

If an object is only detected in a subset of all the observations, it is added to the final catalogue, and dummy values (any decimal combination of 9’s, e.g. 99.999 , 9.99 etc.) are introduced when it was not detected.

The object names are given in standard IAU format as FSVSJhhmmss.ss+ddmmss.s, all in J2000 coordinates. Each object is also given an ’internal’ name whose format is F\_XX\_Y\_ZZZZZ, with XX the field number, Y the CCD number (1-4) and ZZZZZ a five digit detection number. The position of each object is given both in RA and DEC as well as in x,y-coordinates in the reference frame of the specific field.

## 9 Availability of the data

All raw images are available upon request from the ING-WFS archive in Cambridge after the one year propietary right. For UK and NL astronomers the data is immediately available. All ASCII data-tables, containing the reduced information described above, are retrievable from the FSVS website.

## 10 Conclusions

The FSVS offers a unique possibility of studying the behaviour of variable objects in the magnitude range of 16 $`<V<`$ 24 with photometric precisions ranging from 3 millimag (at $`V`$=16) to 0.2 mag (at V$``$24).

Besides the study of variable objects, the FSVS offers a large dataset that can serve as the basis for many research topics (e.g. YSO’s, gravitational lenses, galaxy counts, quasar searches). The FSVS-collaboration encourages the use of the data set for all purposes.

## acknowledgement

PJG, PMV, GN and the Faint Sky Variability Survey are supported by NWO Spinoza grant 08-0 to E.P.J.van den Heuvel. PJG is also supported by a CfA Fellowship. SBH acknowledges partial support of this research from NSF grant AST 98-19770. MEH is partially supported by a NASA/Space Grant Fellowship, NASA Grant #NGT-40008. The FSVS is part of the INT Wide Field Survey. The INT is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instítuto de Astrofísica de Canarias.