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# The quasar fraction in low–frequency selected complete samples and implications for unified schemes

## 1 Introduction

Orientation-based unified schemes for radio-loud quasars and powerful radio galaxies play a key role in our understanding of these objects. Ever since the conception of the idea that powerful radio galaxies are simply quasars with their jet axes oriented away from our line of sight, such that the nuclear continuum and broad-line regions are obscured by a dusty torus or warped disc (Scheuer 1987; Barthel 1989), evidence has been sought to prove that these unification schemes are correct. Reviews of unification schemes for active galactic nuclei have been presented by Antonucci (1993) and Urry & Padovani (1995). Although the majority of observations are consistent with them, some observations have been used to cast doubt on their viability over all ranges of radio luminosities and redshifts.

The narrow line emission in radio sources is observed to be emitted largely from beyond the obscuring material (e.g. McCarthy, Spinrad & van Breugel 1995; Hes, Barthel & Fosbury 1996) and therefore is independent of the jet axis orientation. Hence in this model one would expect radio galaxies and quasars to have similar narrow line luminosities. The strong positive correlation between the extended radio luminosities and narrow line luminosities of radio sources (Baum & Heckman 1989; Rawlings et al. 1989; Willott et al. 1999) means that the samples of radio galaxies and quasars to be compared must be matched in extended radio luminosity. At low redshift ($`z<0.8`$), there have been claims that quasars are observed to have \[OIII\] line luminosities a factor of 5-10 greater than radio galaxies of similar radio luminosities (Baum & Heckman 1989; Jackson & Browne 1990; Lawrence 1991), although the \[OII\] luminosities of radio galaxies and quasars at these redshifts are indistinguishable (Browne & Jackson 1992; Hes et al. 1996). These differences between \[OII\] and \[OIII\] have been interpreted as being due to partial obscuration of \[OIII\] since its higher ionization potential means it is likely to be emitted from closer to the nucleus than \[OII\]. However, Jackson & Rawlings (1997) have investigated the \[OIII\] luminosities of $`z>1`$ radio galaxies and quasars and find their distributions indistinguishable. Using a combined 7C/3CRR dataset Willott et al. (1999) find that quasars have more luminous narrow lines than radio galaxies at intermediate radio luminosities \[$`26<\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{151}`$ / W Hz-1sr$`{}_{}{}^{1})<27`$\], but they are similar at higher radio luminosities; this result leads to different slopes for the narrow-line versus radio luminosity correlation for quasars and radio galaxies.

Barthel (1989) showed that in the redshift range $`0.5<z<1.0`$ the linear size distributions and fraction of quasars in the 3CRR sample are consistent with all radio galaxies having their jet axes at an angle $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}>44^{}`$ from our line-of-sight and all the quasars having $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}<44^{}`$, where $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ is the half-opening angle of the obscuring torus; a value of $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}=45^{}`$ has been adopted by many on the basis of this paper. However, at higher redshifts in the 3CRR sample, the fraction of quasars increases giving $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}60^{}`$ (e.g. Singal 1993). Note that because of the tight luminosity–redshift correlation inherent in a single flux-limited sample, this apparent correlation with redshift may be due instead to a correlation with radio luminosity. Singal (1996) used several large samples with differing radio flux-density limits to find that the quasar fraction in radio samples declines with decreasing radio flux-densities. However, due to the correlation between the optical and radio luminosities of steep-spectrum quasars (Serjeant et al. 1998; Willott et al. 1998a), radio-fainter samples will contain optically-fainter quasars. Therefore the quasar fraction in faint samples might be underestimated if only quasars brighter than a certain optical magnitude limit are identified, which may well be the case in some of these fainter samples used by Singal.

Using the new 7C Redshift Survey, a low-frequency radio sample selected at a flux-density limit $`25\times `$ lower than the 3CRR sample with $`90\%`$ spectroscopic redshift completeness, we have previously shown that the quasar fraction does not depend strongly upon radio luminosity or redshift for $`1<z<3`$ (Willott et al. 1998b). Note that the low-frequency selection of the samples is crucial, because this ensures selection on extended radio flux which should be entirely isotropic. In this paper we use a larger sample to investigate how the quasar fraction of radio sources depends upon redshift, radio luminosity and narrow emission line luminosity and we consider the implications for orientation-based unified schemes. In a companion paper (Blundell, Rawlings & Willott in prep.) we will investigate the constraints placed on unified schemes by the radio properties of quasars and radio galaxies from the combined 7C/6C/3CRR dataset. We assume throughout this paper that $`H_{}=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ and $`q_{}=0.5`$.

## 2 The sample

Our sample consists of three completely–identified samples selected at (similar) low radio frequencies. These samples have different flux limits to provide broad coverage of the radio luminosity–redshift ($`L_{151}z`$) plane (see Figure 1). This enables the separation of evolutionary– and luminosity–dependent effects.

Our faintest sample is the 7C Redshift Survey which is briefly described here (see also Willott et al. 1998a; Willott et al. in prep.; Blundell et al. in prep; Lacy et al. 1999). The 7C Redshift Survey includes all sources with flux-densities at 151 MHz $`S_{151}0.5`$ Jy in three selected regions of sky (7C-I, 7C-II and 7C-III with a total sky area of 0.022 sr). The sample contains 130 radio sources which have all been identified with an optical/near-IR counterpart. The spectroscopic completeness is $`90`$% with most of the remaining sources having redshifts well-constrained by optical/near-IR photometry (Willott, Rawlings & Blundell, in prep.).

The bright sample used is the 3CRR sample of Laing, Riley & Longair (1983), which has complete redshift information for all 173 sources, selected with $`S_{178}10.9`$ Jy. 3C 231 (M82) is excluded because it is a nearby starburst galaxy and not a radio-loud AGN. 3C 345 and 3C 454.3 are flat-spectrum quasars which are excluded on the grounds of Doppler-boosting of compact components being responsible for raising their fluxes above the selection limit. One quasar from the 7C sample (5C7.230) was excluded for the same reason.

The intermediate flux-density sample used is a revision of the 6C sample of Eales (1985) (see Rawlings, Eales & Lacy in prep., hereafter REL, for details). The flux limits of this sample are $`2.0S_{151}<3.93`$ Jy and the sky area covered is 0.103 sr. Only 2 of the 58 sources in this sample do not have redshifts determined from spectroscopy. One object is faint in the near–infrared ($`K>19`$), so we take it as a galaxy at $`z=2.0`$ in this paper. The other is relatively bright in the near-IR but very faint in the optical. Its red colour suggests a galaxy with a redshift in the range $`0.8<z<2`$ and we assume $`z=1.4`$ here. Full details of the sample, including optical spectra, will appear in REL.

All the sources in two of the three 7C regions, 7C-I and 7C-II, and in the 6C sample have been imaged in the near–infrared $`K`$-band. This has enabled the discovery of a few lightly reddened quasars, which would otherwise have been identified as galaxies on the basis of optical spectroscopy (see e.g. Willott et al. 1998a). In addition we have obtained near–infrared spectroscopy of some possible reddened quasars in these samples to search for broad emission lines (Willott et al. in prep.). On the basis of the available imaging and spectroscopy, all sources have been classified into one of three categories: quasar, broad line radio galaxy (BLRG) or radio galaxy. Given the relatively small number of reddened quasars found in the 6C, 7C-I and 7C-II samples, we do not believe the lack of near–infrared data for the 7C-III sample has caused a statistically–significant number of quasars to be mis–classified. Spectra of the quasars and BLRGs in 7C-I and 7C-II are presented with a detailed discussion of the classification scheme in Willott et al. (1998a).

Our total sample comprises 356 sources (one object, 3C 200, is common to both the 3CRR and 7C-II samples). We do not exclude compact symmetric objects (CSOs) from our analysis as previous authors have (e.g. Barthel 1989, Singal 1996), since we have no a priori reason to expect them not to be part of the unified schemes. In Section 3 we repeat our analysis excluding the CSOs to check this assumption. Sources with FRI radio structure are however excluded. The main reason for this was a practical one: most (24 out of 33) of the FRIs are from the 3CRR sample, and the existing spectrophotometry of these objects is inadequate for the quantitative investigations of this paper. However, as discussed fully in Section 4.5, the lack of quasars with FRI radio structure (e.g. Falcke, Gopal-Krishna & Biermann 1995), and the concentration of these objects at low $`L_{151}`$ and low $`z`$ (see Fig. 1) makes it easy to investigate the effects of the exclusion of FRIs on our study of the quasar fraction. Although the radio structures of the quasars 5C6.264 and 3C 48 are arguably FRI, we count them in this paper as FRIIs because of their high radio luminosities. Indeed all objects that could not unambiguously characterised as FRI or FRII (e.g. the ‘DA’ sources in the notation of Blundell et al. in prep.) are also counted as FRIIs in this study. Thus our total combined sample contains 323 objects deemed to be FRIIs.

## 3 The quasar fraction

We now investigate the fraction of objects which show broad emission lines (referred to hereafter simply as the quasar fraction) in the complete radio samples. Broad line radio galaxies (broad line objects with $`M_B>23`$) are counted as quasars in this analysis, because they are most likely to be weak quasars viewed within the torus opening angle (Laing et al. 1994; Hardcastle et al. 1998; Fig. 6 of Willott et al. 1998a). However, objects with scattered broad lines seen only in polarised light (4 cases) are counted as galaxies, because the fact that the broad lines are not observed directly indicates that the nuclear regions are heavily obscured, most likely by the torus. Since spectropolarimetry is unavailable for most sources, there is clearly some danger that the split between weak and scattered-light quasars is imperfect. A further concern is the question of the classification of lightly-reddened broad-line objects in which it remains uncertain whether (a) the reddening is related to the torus or is caused by dust further from the nucleus, for example in the host galaxy of the quasar; and (b) whether, particularly given the inhomogeneous spectrophotometric dataset for the 3CRR sample, all such objects have yet to be discovered. Taking $`0\stackrel{<}{}A_V\stackrel{<}{}5`$ as a working definition of ‘light’ reddening, we have chosen to count all such objects known to us as quasars. We will return to this important point in Section 4.2.

In Fig. 1 (left), we plot low-frequency radio luminosity $`L_{151}`$ against redshift $`z`$ for the combined sample of FRII sources. The $`L_{151}z`$ plane has been binned and the percentage of quasars in each bin shown, along with the associated Poisson errors. The first thing to note is that there are very few quasars at $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{151}/`$ W Hz-1 sr$`{}_{}{}^{1})<26.5`$. Excluding this region, the quasar fraction appears to increase slightly as a function of both redshift and radio luminosity, ranging from 0.3 to 0.5. However, with Poisson errors of $`\sigma 0.08`$ these differences can at best be called marginally–significant, and we will not consider them further. Note also that for the high-luminosity bins, the median luminosity in each bin changes with redshift, so the effects of redshift and luminosity have not been completely separated.

Laing et al. (1994) proposed that by excluding low–excitation radio galaxies (LEGs; Hine & Longair 1979) which have very weak or absent emission lines and low–ionization narrow lines, the quasar fraction in 3CRR was not a function of luminosity (or redshift). Their classification for LEGs was that they have \[OIII\] to H$`\alpha `$ ratios of $`<0.2`$ and \[OIII\] equivalent widths of $`<3`$ Å. Since the radio galaxies in the combined samples here span a large range of redshift, Balmer and/or \[OIII\] lines are often not observed in optical spectra and a classification scheme such as this cannot be applied. Instead we separate sources into those with high and low \[OII\] emission line luminosities. The division between these classes we adopt is $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}/\mathrm{W})=35.1`$. Below this line luminosity there are very few broad line objects in the complete samples (Willott et al. 1999). This cut in narrow emission line luminosity was chosen to be equivalent to a rest-frame \[OII\] equivalent width of 10 Å for a quasar with $`M_B=23`$222The mean rest-frame equivalent width of the \[OIII\] line for BQS quasars in the study of Miller et al. (1992) is 30 Å. Assuming a ratio of 3:1 for the \[OIII\]:\[OII\] equivalent widths, this translates to 10 Å for \[OII\]. This value was used in Willott et al. (1999) to determine the strength of the photoionizing continuum in radio sources. However, the typical ratio between \[OII\] and \[OIII\] may actually be smaller than this, causing Willott et al to have overestimated the mean \[OII\] equivalent width by a factor of a few. Baker et al. (1999) finds a median \[OII\] equivalent width of 4 Å in the Molongo Quasar Sample. Also, in the LBQS composite quasar spectrum of Francis et al. (1991) the \[OII\] equivalent width is 2 Å, which would give a line luminosity of $`\mathrm{log}_{10}L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}=35.1`$ for a $`M_B=25`$ quasar.. Note that this division puts more sources in the low-luminosity category than those typically classified as LEGs.

On the right-hand side of Fig. 1 we plot only sources with \[OII\] luminosities $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}/\mathrm{W})35.1`$. The differences between the quasar fractions in the bins is reduced somewhat here. Now we find that (with the exception of the poorly–populated low radio luminosity bin) the quasar fraction is 0.40 in all the bins at the 1$`\sigma `$ level. The largest change has occurred in the low-redshift, intermediate luminosity bin which contains many weak-lined 3CRR galaxies. Note that the $`1z<2`$, intermediate luminosity bin has the lowest quasar fraction. A possible reason for this is that this bin contains most of the galaxies without lines in their optical spectra which may not all truly lie within this redshift range. Considering all 216 high emission line luminosity sources plotted on the right-hand side of Fig. 1, we find a quasar fraction of $`0.40\pm 0.03`$ implying a mean torus half-opening angle of $`53^{}\pm 3^{}`$ for the luminous population. There is likely to be quite a range of torus opening angles and the small error presented here on the mean angle should not be interpreted as the dispersion in opening angles present in the population.

We have repeated the analysis of this section excluding CSO sources (projected linear sizes $`30`$ kpc). We find that this reduces the quasar fraction by $`0.04`$ in all the bins. The quasar fraction of all luminous CSO sources is $`0.56\pm 0.08`$, different at the 2$`\sigma `$ level from that of non-CSO sources. We defer discussion of possible reasons for a higher quasar fraction for CSOs in low-frequency selected samples to a future paper.

## 4 Possible causes of the change in quasar fraction with luminosity

### 4.1 Selection effects caused by lower intrinsic broad line luminosity

We first investigate whether the decrease in quasar fraction with decreasing narrow-line and radio luminosity is a simple selection effect. If the low-luminosity objects have lower luminosity narrow emission lines it is natural to expect that their broad line and continuum luminosities should be lower too (e.g. Miller et al. 1992). It follows that their spectra may on average have lower signal-to-noise and weak broad lines may be missed. Given the strong correlation between narrow-line and radio luminosities (e.g. Willott et al. 1999) this could explain the deficit of broad line objects at radio luminosities $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{151}`$ / WHz-1sr$`{}_{}{}^{1})<26.5`$, and also the apparent constancy of the quasar fraction for objects with luminous narrow lines discussed in Section 3.

To test whether selection effects such as these could cause the apparent lack of low-luminosity broad line objects, we first calculate the expected broad line fluxes of objects in the 3CRR and 7C samples as a function of luminosity. To do this we make use of the fact that the narrow emission line luminosities of radio galaxies and quasars are positively correlated with low-frequency radio luminosity as shown in Willott et al. (1999). This correlation has a slope of $`0.79\pm 0.04`$ in the sense that $`L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}L_{151}^{0.79}`$ and is most likely due to a correlation between jet power and photoionizing continuum luminosity (Rawlings & Saunders 1991). Use of this relation enables one to estimate the narrow line \[OII\] luminosity for values of radio luminosity.

A similar correlation between the broad line luminosity and radio luminosity is expected to hold. There are several lines of evidence supporting this. First, radio luminosity is correlated with the optical continuum luminosity for steep-spectrum quasars (Serjeant et al. 1998) and quasars show little variation in broad line equivalent widths over a wide range of luminosity (e.g. Osmer & Shields 1999). Second, Celotti et al. (1997) have shown that broad line luminosities are correlated with the power in pc-scale jets in radio-loud quasars.

To determine the relationship between the strengths of narrow and broad lines in quasar/BLRG spectra, we adopt the line ratios from the composite quasar spectrum of Francis et al. (1991). Although this is from an optically-selected sample, we do not expect significant differences between the line ratios of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars. This is borne out by a comparison with the Molonglo Quasar Sample of Baker & Hunstead (1995): repeating the analysis using their line ratios gives a virtually identical result.

We consider a range of radio luminosities and attach to each one typical redshifts at which sources of these luminosities are observed in both the 3CRR and 7C samples. The correlation between the \[OII\] line and radio luminosity is then used to determine typical \[OII\] luminosities at each value of radio luminosity. From the typical wavelength range covered by optical spectra (4000Å– 8500Å), we find the strongest broad line observable at each redshift. The typical luminosities, redshifts and strongest broad lines are shown in Table 1. Finally, we use the ratio of broad to \[OII\] lines in Francis et al. (1991) to calculate the luminosity and hence flux of the strongest broad line expected at each luminosity-redshift pair.

There is considerable scatter in the relationship between narrow emission line luminosity and radio luminosity ($`\sigma =0.5`$ dex). Extra scatter comes in due to the conversion from narrow to broad line luminosities. Therefore a total scatter of $`1\sigma =0.6`$ dex was assumed to determine the fraction of objects with broad line fluxes significantly below the characteristic values.

Figure 2 shows the expected flux of the strongest broad line observable at each redshift as listed in Table 1 for both 3CRR and 7C. Also plotted are the actual data for the 7C-I and 7C-II quasars and BLRGs (Willott et al. 1998a) and all 3CRR quasars with $`z<0.86`$ in the RA range 18–12 hr (all from Jackson & Browne 1991 except 3C 109 from Goodrich & Cohen 1992). In general points corresponding to 3CRR BLRGs are not plotted because only a few of their broad line fluxes are available in the literature, although a few points from Hill et al. (1996) are plotted to illustrate the discussion of Section 4.2. The quasars which are red(dened) \[$`\alpha _{\mathrm{opt}}>1`$, where $`f_\nu \nu ^{\alpha _{\mathrm{o}pt}}`$\] are shown as open symbols on Fig. 2; again the 3CRR spectrophotometric dataset is too inhomogeneous for this to be done reliably for 3CRR sources. Note that very few quasars fall below the limits of the model error bars. Virtually all of those which do are reddened (the exception is 5C6.282 at $`z2`$, which has an unusual spectrum with very narrow Ly$`\alpha `$; see Willott et al. 1998a). The similarity of the predicted fluxes with those observed justifies the use of the line ratios and method described here.

The key point to note from Fig. 2 is that as one considers lower radio luminosities in each sample (i.e. lower redshifts), the expected broad line fluxes increase. Therefore, so long as the spectra of lower redshift sources have similar exposure times to those at higher redshift, the broad lines should be visible if they are there and unreddened. For the 3CRR sample the spectra are rather inhomogeneous and it is difficult to prove that this is the case (but note that the deficit of 3CRR sources is most marked at $`z<0.3`$, where the H$`\alpha `$ line is covered by optical spectra and the expected broad H$`\alpha `$ fluxes are high). However, in the 7C sample, similar exposure times have been attained for the spectra at low redshift to those at high redshift. Therefore we are confident that in the absence of significant reddening of the BLR, an insignificant number of sources would be mis-classified.

A further problem is whether a weak quasar spectrum can be discerned against a stronger host galaxy spectrum. To determine if this could cause broad line selection problems, synthetic spectra of quasars and galaxies were created and combined. The model used for the galaxy spectra was a 1 Gyr old stellar population synthesis model of Bruzual & Charlot (1993). For the quasar spectra, the LBQS composite of Francis et al. (1991) was used. Poisson noise was added and it was found that broad H$`\alpha `$ or MgII should still be clearly visible for a quasar $`2`$ magnitudes (in $`B`$-band) fainter than the galaxy (Fig. 3). Broad H$`\beta `$, however, is more difficult to detect. Spectra with poor blue wavelength coverage (e.g. no data below $`5000`$ Å) of sources at $`0.3<z<0.8`$ would not include H$`\alpha `$ or MgII, in which case H$`\beta `$ is the brightest line. Almost all the 7C and 6C spectra cover a large enough wavelength range to avoid this problem. However many spectra of 3CRR sources in the literature have a smaller wavelength range. But the radio–optical correlation (and Table 1) show that quasars at these redshifts in 3CRR typically have high luminosities and should not be fainter (at $`B`$-band) than their host galaxies. Indeed, the deficit of broad line objects in 3CRR only really begins at $`z\stackrel{<}{}0.3`$. Hence quasar broad lines should be clearly visible against typical background galaxy spectra down to $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{151}`$ / WHz-1sr$`{}_{}{}^{1})25.5`$, with possible problems only at fainter radio luminosities.

Another possibility to consider is that the narrow lines may be much stronger than the broad lines, so only weak wings in the line profiles would be seen. However, this picture seems unlikely for many sources in the absence of broad line reddening, since if both the narrow and broad lines are photoionizied by the same nuclear source it would require a conspiracy between broad and narrow line covering factors.

We conclude that the low quasar fraction at low luminosity is not due to selection effects caused by the difficulty of detecting intrinsically less luminous broad lines.

### 4.2 Increased reddening at low luminosities

In this section we consider the possibility that the drop in quasar fraction at low luminosities is due, at least in part, to an increase in the fraction of lightly-reddened ($`0\stackrel{<}{}A_V\stackrel{<}{}5`$) lines-of-sight as quasar luminosity decreases. It can be seen from Fig. 2 that the majority of the 7C quasars are lightly reddened at the highest redshifts. We exclude from this paper any discussion of any systematic changes of quasar reddening with cosmic epoch.

The question of the range of reddening towards the nuclei of powerful (3CRR) $`z1`$ radio sources has recently been addressed by the $`3.5\mu `$m imaging programmes of Simpson, Rawlings & Lacy (1999) and Simpson & Rawlings (2000). They concluded that these high luminosity nuclei are mostly either naked ($`A_V0`$) or heavily obscured ($`A_V\stackrel{>}{}15`$) with only a small fraction ($`15`$ per cent) of intermediate lightly-reddened cases. If these results could be extrapolated to the lower narrow-line and radio luminosity regimes then light reddening of quasar nuclei would not be a serious issue for our study of the quasar fraction.

However, two studies suggest that the fraction of lightly-reddened lines-of-sight might increase significantly at lower narrow-line and radio luminosities. First, Hill, Goodrich & DePoy (1996) studied the Pa$`\alpha `$ and $`H\alpha `$ lines in a complete sample of low redshift ($`0.1<z<0.2`$) 3CR sources, looking for evidence of reddened broad lines in radio galaxies. These objects lie near the top of lowest-$`L_{151}`$ (and $`z`$) bin in Fig. 1. They found broad lines in six objects out of a complete sample of thirteen (including two FRI sources), of which three had intermediate values of $`A_V`$. This study, although subject to a major problem with small number statistics together with the difficulties of detecting lightly reddened broad lines over certain ranges of redshift (see Fig. 2), hints that an increase in the fraction of the lightly-reddened population at low luminosities might provide part of the explanation for the dropping quasar fraction at low luminosities. Second, Baker (1997) showed that a typical low-luminosity lobe-dominated quasar, i.e. an object akin to those near the top of lowest-$`L_{151}`$ (and $`z`$) bin in Fig. 1, has a reddening $`A_V3`$ and is thus lightly reddened.

We conclude that some of the drop in the quasar fraction at low luminosities might be explained by an increased chance of light reddening towards low luminosity quasar nuclei. In other words, we cannot allay the suspicion that some lightly reddened quasars have been misclassified as galaxies on the basis of existing, chiefly optical, spectroscopy. In the lowest-$`L_{151}`$ and $`z`$ bin of Fig. 1 this is a problem for (very low-$`z`$) 3CRR sources because of the inhomogenous optical dataset; it is a problem for the 6C and 7C sources because their redshifts are sufficient to remove the strong H$`\alpha `$ line from the optical window (see Fig. 2). To pursue this idea further we next consider specific physical models which might explain this behaviour.

### 4.3 The receding torus model

Lawrence (1991) proposed that the apparent increase in quasar fraction and hence $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ with luminosity in the 3CRR sample could be explained naturally by a ‘receding torus’ model. Dust sublimates at $`T1500`$ K and therefore the inner radius of a dusty torus/disc may be governed by the radius at which this temperature is achieved via radiation from the AGN. The more luminous the AGN the larger this radius and if the scale height of the torus $`h`$ is independent of luminosity, then more luminous sources will have a larger $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$; the inner radius of the torus $`r`$ scales as $`L^{0.5}`$ and $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}=\mathrm{tan}^1(r/h)`$. This model can also explain more lightly-reddened quasars at low luminosity since a larger fraction of the lines-of-sight pass through intermediate columns of obscuring material when the inner wall of the torus lies closer to the nucleus (see e.g. Fig. 8 of Hill et al. 1996).

Simpson (1998) has shown that if the height of the torus is independent of the ionizing luminosity $`L`$ then the receding torus model predicts a theoretical quasar fraction $`f_\mathrm{q}`$ given by

$$f_\mathrm{q}=1\left(1+\frac{L}{L_0}\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _0\right)^{0.5},$$
(1)
where $`L_0`$ and $`\theta _0`$ are the normalisation luminosity and the torus half-opening angle at that luminosity, both of which are fixed by the measurement of the quasar fraction at some normalisation luminosity. We further assume that the \[OII\] luminosity scales with the ionizing continuum luminosity, and that it is not significantly affected by the changing torus opening angle, so that we can replace ionising luminosities in Eqn 1 by values of $`L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}`$. 333 As emphasised by Simpson, \[OII\] is probably a far from ideal choice of narrow emission line for this procedure because for an ionisation-bounded emission line cloud, the \[OII\] emission is from a region whose size depends much less strongly on the incident photoionising flux than the sizes of the regions responsible for higher-ionization lines like \[OIII\]. This leads to a much weaker dependence of \[OII\] luminosity on incident photoionising luminosity $`L`$ than the near proportionality between, say, \[OIII\] luminosity and $`L`$. Unfortunately, the choice of \[OII\] was forced on us by the available spectrophotometric data (see Willott et al. 1999).  Binning all FRII sources in terms of $`L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}`$ we find that for $`35<\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}/\mathrm{W})<36`$, the quasar fraction is $`0.32\pm 0.04`$ giving $`\theta _0=46^{}`$. This is used to normalise Equation 1 which is plotted in Fig. 4 along with the quasar fraction measured in four bins of $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[\mathrm{OII}]})`$.

This simple model appears to fit the data fairly well although it does predict a marginally sharper transition between low and high quasar fractions than the data (at about the $`1\sigma `$ level). Note that the above model depends crucially upon the height of the torus being independent of luminosity. If the height of the torus increases with luminosity, albeit more slowly than the inner radius, then this would flatten the model distribution to something more closely resembling the data.

Taken together with the results of Hill et al. (1996), we conclude that the receding torus model provides a plausible if non-unique explanation for the declining quasar fraction below $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[OII]}/\mathrm{W})=35.1`$.

### 4.4 Dust–ejection by jets or outflow

Tadhunter et al. (1999) have recently obtained high-resolution near-infrared imaging of the powerful radio galaxy Cygnus A which shows an edge-brightened biconical structure roughly aligned with the jets. They suggest that at least some of the very high reddening towards the nucleus of Cygnus A ($`A_V70`$ mag) occurs in a kiloparsec scale dust-lane. For radio-loud sources, the jets may clear a path through this dust, so that only when viewed within a critical angle of the jet-axis is there a chance of a line-of-sight having little reddening. The jet power could control the dust-clearing efficiency in such a way as to give an anti-correlation between reddening and radio luminosity. The conceptual difference between this model and the receding torus model is that it is now a decrease in jet power (and hence the radio luminosity) rather than a decrease in optical luminosity that controls the closing down of the effective opening angle of the radiation cone at low luminosities. Tadhunter et al. speculate that lightly reddened quasars are objects viewed within the nuclear torus opening angle, but not within the region cleared of dust by the jets. Another possibility (e.g. Dopita et al. 1998) is that dust is cleared by a radiation-driven outflow in which the opening angle and strength of the outflow could be related to the luminosity of the nucleus and hence give rise to the observed dependence of quasar fraction on luminosity.

### 4.5 Dual-population models

The evidence of increased reddening at low luminosities (Section 4.2) and the quantitative success of the receding torus model (Section 4.3) hint that we have a reasonable explanation for at least part of the drop in quasar fraction at low luminosities. In this section we discuss separate evidence for a second conceptually different mechanism.

A corollary of Fig. 4 is that at low luminosities the low fraction of quasars results from a small value for the typical opening angle of the torus $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$. Falcke et al. (1995) have cited this as a strength of the receding torus model since if the opening angle approaches the beaming angle of the jet then there will be an unobscured view of the nucleus of low power jets only when their emission is also strongly Doppler-boosted. Such objects would be classified as BL Lac objects rather than quasars, providing a neat explanation for the well-known lack of quasars with FRI radio structures. We are unaware of any systematic measurements of broad line fluxes in BL Lac type objects which would provide a quantitative test of this hypothesis. However, recent observations of BL Lacertae itself (Corbett et al. 2000), an object with an extended radio flux characteristic of a low-luminosity radio galaxy (Antonucci & Ulvestad 1985), suggest that in at least this object there are broad emission lines at about the predicted level, and that these lines are excited by a hot accretion disc.

However, other recent results suggest that the small opening angles required at low luminosities from Fig. 4 are more likely to argue against the generality of the receding torus model. If it were true that low luminosity radio galaxies possessed very thick obscuring tori then it should prove very difficult to get a clear view of their central regions at optical wavelengths. Chiaberge, Capetti & Celotti (1999) have studied the nuclear emission from FRI galaxies using the HST. In most cases they find probable optical synchrotron from the nuclear regions, which they interpret as implying a clear view of the inner jet and hence a lack of obscuring material on scales greater than $`100`$ pc. This straightforwardly rules out a kpc-scale obscuration model for FRIs along the lines of the model proposed by Tadhunter et al. (1999) for Cyg A. Still stronger constraints come from the nearby FRI radio galaxy M87 since its optical synchrotron core is smaller than $`5`$ pc and varies on the timescales of months (Tsvetanov, Kriss & Ford 1997), implying that the emission region is a pc or smaller in size. Since the inner regions of the optical synchrotron-emitting jet are in clear view, and these size scales are comparable in size to the expected size of the obscuring torus in low-luminosity quasars (e.g. Netzer & Laor 1993), these results begin to question the existence of any thick torus, at least in the case of M87. Chiaberge et al. maker stronger statements than this by making the additional assumption that this optical emission is emitted from within the region probed by radio VLBI which is argued to be within $`0.1`$ pc of the central black hole (Junor, Biretta & Livio 1999). We remain to be convinced that these observations rule out the existence of a pc-scaled torus in M87. There is a plethora of evidence from studies of M87 using optical continuum (Chiaberge et al. 1999), emission-line (Ford et al. 1994) and hard X-ray (Guainazzi & Molendi 1999) observations that it contains a supermassive black hole accreting at a tiny ($`<10^4`$) fraction of its Eddington-limited rate (see Willott et al. 1999 for a discussion of this object in the context of the radio-optical correlation).

As shown in Fig. 1, excluding objects with weak narrow emission lines gives a quasar fraction which is virtually independent of redshift and/or radio luminosity. This observation can be naturally explained if the weak-line objects belong to a different population from the strong emission line objects. Perhaps, as is seemingly the case for M87, a large fraction of these objects are fundamentally different in that they lack a well-fed quasar nucleus and also a thick obscuring torus (Chiaberge et al. 1999), and perhaps their jets are powered by a fundamentally different mechanism (e.g. Blandford & Begelman 1999). The continuity of the radio-optical correlation for radio sources provides a weak argument against a fundamental change in the accretion process (Rawlings & Saunders 1991), but evidence for systematic changes in the slope of this relation at low luminosities (Zirbel & Baum 1995) may be evidence that there are at least some differences at low radio luminosities. Arguing along similar lines, Laing et al. (1994) proposed that the low-excitation radio galaxies (LEGs) in their 3CRR sample would lack broad lines if viewed from any orientation. Recall that we specifically excluded FRI radio sources from our analysis of the quasar fraction in Section 3. The only difference that including the FRIs would have made, would be to decrease the quasar fraction in the lowest luminosity bin from $`0.14\pm 0.04`$ to $`0.10\pm 0.03`$.

Such a ‘two population’ model would remove another troubling problem for any extrapolation of the receding torus model to the lowest quasar luminosities. Seyfert galaxies – radio-quiet AGN with similar optical narrow-line luminosities to radio galaxies in the lowest-$`L_{151}`$ bin of Fig. 4 – do not have the narrow opening angles predicted by the receding torus model. Direct observations of the ionization cones in nearby Seyfert galaxies typically show cones with half-opening angles in the range $`2050^{}`$ (Wilson & Tsvetanov 1994), considerably greater than those predicted. Moreover, the vast majority of Seyfert galaxies do not seem to be obscured, i.e. of type 2, as would be required by narrow opening angles. Hence, as noted by Falcke et al (1995) it would appear that the receding torus model cannot apply similarly to radio-quiet and radio-loud AGN requiring some ad-hoc explanation, for example a different geometry for the obscuring material (i.e. a smaller scale height), due to a difference in black hole mass, environment and/or angular momentum.

We can make a crude association of the putative second population of radio sources with all sources with narrow emission line luminosities $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}/\mathrm{W})<35.1`$. Due to the scatter in the radio–optical correlation, it is not expected that this would lead to a clean division between the two populations at a particular \[OII\] luminosity, and if the data were available, a classification based on line ratios, and hence excitation, might well prove cleaner. However, subject to this limitation, the change in quasar fraction with redshift of a combination of the two populations (seen on the left plot of Fig. 1) is then naturally explained by the less rapid cosmic evolution of the low-luminosity population (e.g. Urry & Padovani 1995) than the high-luminosity population (shown on the right plot of Fig. 1). Hence at high-redshift, the contribution of the low-luminosity population is negligible and the quasar fraction of 0.4 is just that of the high-luminosity population. Dual population modelling of the low-frequency radio luminosity function is consistent with just such a scheme (Jackson & Wall 1999; Willott et al. in prep.). Also, Laing et al. (1994) and Hardcastle et al. (1998) find that low-excitation radio galaxies have linear size and core prominence distributions consistent with an isotropic population.

There are two residual concerns with the two population model. First, many of the low-luminosity objects have emission lines, so their excitation and the correlation between luminosity and ionization parameter (Saunders et al. 1989; Tadhunter et al. 1998) need some explanation. Second, it must explain why radio galaxies and quasars have different narrow line luminosity distributions at intermediate luminosities (Jackson & Browne 1990) but similar distributions at high luminosities (Jackson & Rawlings 1997). The first concern can be addressed by simple analogy with M87: the absence of a broad-line quasar nucleus does not mean an absence of a photoionising source; for example Dopita et al. (1997) favour radiative shocks as a source of the excitation for the H$`\alpha `$ lines in the nuclear disc of M87, and shock models in which ionization parameter correlates with line luminosity are easily envisaged (e.g. Dopita & Sutherland 1995). The second concern is probably also easily dealt with. Considering first the 3CRR sample, the dual-population model is consistent with the drop in quasar fraction at low luminosities because a low luminosity 3CRR source is necessarily at low redshift where there is clearly a mixture of both populations; at high redshifts only the high-luminosity population is observed. Thus any comparative narrow emission line study of quasars and radio galaxies which is based on bright radio samples (Jackson & Browne 1990; Jackson & Rawlings 1997) should yield different line luminosity distributions at low redshift, and similar distributions at high redshift, which is just as observed. However, a small difference in the distributions of the \[OII\] line luminosities of intermediate luminosity quasars and radio galaxies is also observed in the 7C sample (Willott et al. 1999). The lower radio flux limit of this sample means that these intermediate luminosity sources are at high redshift, where there are few low emission line luminosity objects, so the difference is not due to the mixing of the two populations. This is most likely the result of small but inevitable biases pointed out by Rawlings & Saunders (1991), and quantified in the context of the receding torus model by Simpson (1998): a positive correlation between quasar luminosity and opening angle, coupled with inevitable scatter in quasar luminosity at a fixed radio luminosity, means that objects viewed within the opening angle are biased towards the more luminous objects within the scatter.

### 4.6 Time variability

There is yet one more possible cause of the drop in quasar fraction at low luminosities: systematic differences in the time variability of objects with luminosity.

In Willott et al. (1999) we used the narrow emission line–radio correlation to suggest that the most luminous objects are probably accreting at rates close to the Eddington limit, but lower luminosity sources are sub-Eddington accreters. It therefore seems plausible that the lower luminosity sources have more scope for variability, since an object accreting at the Eddington rate should have a ready fuel supply which is accreted at a fairly steady rate limited by radiation pressure. In contrast, sub-Eddington accretion suggests there is not a ready supply of fuel available and hence fluctuations in accretion rate may be more likely. Indeed observations of radio-quiet quasars show that the lower luminosity quasars are more highly optically-variable than higher luminosity quasars over timescales of a few years (e.g. Véron & Hawkins 1995; Cristiani et al. 1996; Paltani & Courvoisier 1997), although it should be noted that some authors attribute at least some of this variability to gravitational microlensing (e.g. Hawkins & Taylor 1997).

The small quasar fraction at low luminosities could be explained by these objects spending a significant fraction of their active lifetimes in a ‘quiet’ state whereas the more luminous objects are continuously active over their entire lifetime. Due to light travel time effects, different emission regions of quasars have different variability timescales: BLR $``$ months; NLR $`10^4`$ yr; radio lobes $`10^6`$ yr. Reverberation mapping of quasars has shown that the broad line fluxes follow the nuclear continuum flux with just such a time lag (see Peterson 1993 for a review). If a quasar undergoes high-amplitude variability over a timescale $`100`$ yr, then only the continuum and BLR fluxes would be observed to undergo this strong variability, and the NLR and extended radio emission would simply reflect the time-averaged output of the central engine. Note that a quasar undergoing a decrease in luminosity of this sort of timescale may then appear as a low-excitation radio galaxy. If this behaviour occurs only in a significant fraction of the intermediate and low luminosity objects, then it could reproduce the observed change in quasar fraction.

Essentially this model is a slightly more complicated version of the two-population model considered in Section 4.5, with the two populations being unified along a time rather than a jet orientation axis. It is important to stress that there is as yet no firm evidence for the type of time variability required. However, the few long-term time variability studies hint that there may be some interesting effects: the BLRG 3C 390.3 was found to undergo a sustained decrease of 1.5 mags in the optical over $`80`$ years (Cannon, Penston & Penston 1968); however, Angione (1973) used archival plates to study the variability of 23 quasars over $`60`$ years finding no evidence for long-term sustained increases or decreases.

A separate issue related to time variability is whether the probability of individual radio sources being observed to be quasars varies systematically throughout their lifetimes. Because flux-limited samples introduce inevitable biases into the age distributions of the sources they contain (e.g. Blundell, Rawlings & Willott 1999), this can lead to subtle effects.

## 5 Conclusions

Using complete, low-frequency selected samples of radio-loud AGN we have investigated the fraction of observed broad line objects – the quasar fraction – as a function of redshift, and radio and emission line luminosity. Our findings are interpreted in terms of orientation-based unified schemes. We find that

* Considering only those sources with strong narrow emission lines \[$`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{[\mathrm{OII}]}/\mathrm{W})35.1`$, corresponding roughly to $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(L_{151}/\mathrm{W})26.5`$\], the quasar fraction is virtually independent of radio luminosity and redshift, and is consistent with a simple unified scheme involving an obscuring torus with a half-opening angle $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ of $`53^{}`$.
* For less luminous emission-line sources, the quasar fraction is much lower, a finding which is not simply the result of selection effects induced by the lower intrinsic broad line luminosities of these sources.

We have found evidence which supports at least two probable physical causes for the drop in quasar fraction at low luminosity: (i) a gradual decrease in $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ and/or a gradual increase in the fraction of lightly-reddened ($`0\stackrel{<}{}A_V\stackrel{<}{}5`$) lines-of-sight with decreasing quasar luminosity; and (ii) the emergence of a second population of low luminosity radio sources which, like M87, lack a well-fed quasar nucleus, and may well lack a thick obscuring torus.

## Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Steve Eales, Gary Hill, Julia Riley and David Rossitter for important contributions to the 7C Redshift Survey. Thanks also to Robert Laing and Chris Simpson for some very useful discussions, and to the referee Ian Browne for useful suggestions. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extra-galactic Database, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. CJW thanks PPARC for support.


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# Possible scenario of the spatially separated Fermi-Bose mixture in the superconductive bismuthates Ba1-xKxBiO3

## I Introduction

The concept of the extremely strong-coupling superconductivity with the preexisted local pairs was firstly introduced by Shafroth  in the middle of fifties. His statement was that in the extremely type-II superconductors, where the parameter $`\xi _0k_F1`$, the nature of the superconductive transition corresponds to the local pair formation (pairing in the real, and not in the momentum space) at some relatively high temperature $`T^{}`$, and their Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) at a lower critical temperature $`T_c<T^{}`$. Later on Alexandrov and Ranninger developed this concept  in connection with the narrow-band materials with an extremely strong electron-phonon coupling constant ($`\lambda 1`$), where a standard Eliashberg theory  starts to fail. The key issue of their approach was a statement that in narrow bands, where polaron formation is important, it is possible, in principle, to create the conditions where the two polarons could effectively occupy the same potential well, prepared in a self-consistent fashion. Approximately in the same time Leggett and Nozieres  developed a general theory which yields a smooth interpolation between a BCS-type of pairing in the momentum space for a small electron-electron attraction and the pairing in the real space for a large electron-electron attraction.

There were two crucial points in the papers . (i) Their results are valid independently of the precise nature of the short-range effective attraction between electrons; (ii) they investigated self-consistently a standard equation for the superconductive gap and an equation for the number of particles conservation. The most important result of Nozieres and Leggett is that for $`T^{}>T_c`$ (or, in other words, for a binding energy of a local pair $`|E_b|>\epsilon _F`$) the chemical potential $`\mu `$ is always large and negative $`\mu =|E_b|/2+\epsilon _F<0`$. Hence in a strong-coupling limit a superconductive pairing takes place not on the Fermi-surface, as in the BCS-theory, but below the bottom of a conductive band. This is a crucial drawback of all local-pairs theories. We cannot match two basic facts: the existence of the Fermi-surface and the presence of preformed pairs above $`T_c`$. First one who emphasized this contradiction was J. Ranninger , who introduced the concept of the two-band Fermi-Bose mixture. In this scenario the presence of a degenerate fermionic band guarantees the existence of a Fermi-surface, while the Bose-Einstein condensation is responsible for the superconductivity in a bosonic band. Soon after the discovery of high-$`T_c`$ superconductors P. W. Anderson  reintroduced the concept of the local pairs. He also introduced two bands of the fermionic and bosonic quasiparticles. In his approach, a superconductive transition was connected with the BEC in the bosonic band of the charge excitations — holons, while the presence of a large Fermi-surface was guaranteed by the fermionic band of the spin excitations — spinons. Unfortunately, even this beautiful approach was not totally successful because at least in a one layer the BEC of holons yields a charge of a superconductive pair equal to $`e`$ instead of $`2e`$ measured experimentally. Later on Geshkenbein, Ioffe, and Larkin  phenomenologically reintroduced a concept of the Fermi-Bose mixture on the level of the coefficients in the Ginzburg-Landau expansion and showed that several important experiments in the underdoped high-$`T_c`$ materials can be explained naturally within this form of the Ginzburg-Landau functional.

So, up to now a question whether a two-band Fermi-Bose mixture scenario is applicable to the high-temperature superconductive (HTSC) materials is still open. Probably, the best chances to be described by this scenario has a bismuth family of high-$`T_c`$ superconductors Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ, where the parameter $`k_F\xi _02`$, and the tunneling experiments of Fischer et al. signal the formation of a pretty large and a stable pseudogap at temperatures well above $`T_c`$. In our paper we would like to discuss a possibility of a two-band Fermi-Bose mixture scenario in a quite different class of superconductors with a relatively high $`T_c30`$ K, namely in the superconductive bismuthates Ba1-xKxBiO3 (BKBO). The key issue of our paper is a possibility of the existence of the two spatially separated bands of fermionic and bosonic quasiparticles in these materials.

Our paper is organized as follows. In the first part we present the basic experimental facts concerning the local electronic and crystal structure peculiarities, and their connection with the superconductive and the normal transport properties of BKBO. In the second part we try to show how these basic facts could be naturally explained within a scenario of the two spatially separated bands of the fermionic and bosonic quasiparticles. We conclude the paper by a summary of our model and a discussion of the several additional experiments, which would help us to give a definite answer whether our proposal is the only possibility for a superconductive pairing in the bismuthates.

## II Spatially separated Fermi-Bose mixture

The BaBiO3, which is a parent compound for the bismuthates Ba1-xKxBiO3 and BaPb1-xBixO3 (BPBO), represents a charge-density-wave (CDW) insulator having the two gaps: an optical gap $`E_g=1.9`$ eV and an activation (transport) gap $`E_a=0.24`$ eV . A partial replacing of Ba by K in BKBO causes the decrease of the gaps, and as a result the insulator-metal transition as well as the superconductivity are observed at the doping levels $`x0.37`$. The superconductivity remains up to the doping level $`x=0.5`$ corresponding to the solubility limit of K in BKBO but a maximal critical temperature $`T_c30`$ K is achieved for $`x0.4`$ .

### A Local crystal structure peculiarities

A three-dimensional character of a cubic perovskite-like structure of the bismuthates differs from a two-dimensional one in the HTSC cuprates. The building block in the bismuthates is a BiO6 octahedral complex (analogue of CuOn ($`n=4,5,6`$) in the HTSC-materials). The octahedral complexes are the most tightly bound items of the structure because of a strong covalence of the Bi$`6s`$-O$`2p_\sigma `$ bonds. According to the crystallographic data , the crystal structure of a parent BaBiO3 represents the alternating arrangement of the expanded and contracted BiO6 octahedra in a barium lattice, spoken as a “breathing” distortion. Such an alternation together with a static rotation of the octahedra around  axis produce the monoclinic distortion of a cubic lattice. As shown in Refs. , to the larger soft octahedron corresponds the complex BiO6 with the completely filled Bi$`6s`$-O$`2p`$ orbitals and to the smaller rigid octahedron corresponds a complex BiL2O6. Here L2 denotes the free level in the antibonding Bi$`6s`$-O$`2p_\sigma ^{}`$ orbital of the smaller octahedral complex.

The K doping of BaBiO3 is equivalent to a hole doping and leads to a partial replacement of the larger soft octahedra BiO6 by the smaller rigid octahedra BiL2O6 . This causes a decrease and finally a disappearance of the static breathing and tilting distortions, and the lattice should contract despite a practically equal ionic radii of K+ and Ba2+. As a result, the average structure according to the neutron diffraction data  at the doping level $`x=0.37`$ becomes a simple cubic. However, the local EXAFS probes  showed the essential difference of the local crystal structure from the average one. We found out that the oxygen ions belonging to the different BiO6 and BiL2O6 octahedra vibrate in a double-well potential, while those having equivalent environment of the two equal BiL2O6 octahedra oscillate in a simple harmonic potential . This very unusual behavior is in a close connection with a local electronic structure of BKBO.

### B Local electronic structure

The coexistence in BaBiO3 of the different types of the octahedra with the two Bi-O bond lengths and strengths reflects the different electronic structures of BiO6 complexes. The valence band of BaBiO3 is determined by the overlap of Bi$`6s`$ and O$`2p`$ orbitals , and, owing to a strong Bi$`6s`$-O$`2p_\sigma `$ hybridization, the octahedra can be considered as the quasi-molecular complexes . In each complex there are ten electron levels consisting of the four bonding-antibonding Bi$`6s`$-O$`2p_\sigma `$ orbitals and the six nonbonding O$`2p_\pi `$ orbitals. A monoclinic unit cell includes the two octahedra and contains 38 valence electrons (10 from the two bismuth ions, 4 from the two barium ions, and 24 from the six oxygen ions). All the Bi-O bond lengths should be equal and the local magnetic moments should be present in the case of equal electron filling for nearest octahedra (BiL1O$`{}_{6}{}^{}+`$BiL1O6). In contrast both the presence of the two types of octahedral complexes and an absence of any local magnetic moment are experimentally observed , so the mentioned above scheme of the valence disproportionation 2BiL1O$`{}_{6}{}^{}`$ BiL2O6+BiO6 was proposed . In this scheme the numbers of occupied states in the neighbouring octahedral complexes are different: the octahedron BiL2O6 contains 18 electrons and has one free level or a hole pair L2 in the upper antibonding Bi$`6s`$O$`2p_\sigma ^{}`$ orbital, while in the octahedron BiO6 with 20 electrons this antibonding orbital is filled as shown in Fig. 1. It is quite natural that the BiL2O6 octahedra have the stiff (quasi-molecular) Bi-O bonds and a smaller radius, while the BiO6 octahedra represent the non-stable molecules with a filled antibonding orbital and a larger radius. Because the sum of the two nearest octahedra radii overcomes the lattice parameter, the octahedral system must tilt around  aixis, producing together with a breathing a monoclinic distortion in BaBiO3.

Thus, in BaBiO3 one has an alternating system of the two types of the octahedral complexes filled with the local pairs: the hole pairs in BiL2O6 complexes and the electron pairs in BiO6 complexes. The local pair formation in BaBiO3 was advocated previously, see for example . The binding mechanism for the pairs is probably of an electronic nature  in accordance with Varma’s picture of the pairing due to the skipping of the valence “4+” by the Bi ion . However one cannot fully exclude the lattice mediated pairing  in accordance with de Jongh’s statement  that the preference to retain the closed-shell structures overcomes the Coulomb repulsion involved with an intrasite bipolaron formation.

The local electronic structure of BaBiO3 combined with the real-space local crystal structure is presented in Fig. 2(a). In such a system there are no free Fermi carriers, and the conductivity occurs only due to the transfer of the carrier pairs . The dissociation of the pairs and the hopping of a single electron from one octahedron to another, in similarity with Varma’s  suggestion, cost an energy:

$$E_b=2E(\mathrm{Bi}\underset{¯}{\mathrm{L}}^1\mathrm{O}_6)[E(\mathrm{BiO}_6)+E(\mathrm{Bi}\underset{¯}{\mathrm{L}}^2\mathrm{O}_6)],$$

and is observed experimentally as an optical conductivity peak at the photon energy $`h\nu =1.9`$ eV .

Thus we have an example of the normal bosonic liquid of the pairs bound with an energy $`E_b`$ (as in Ref. ). Experimentally, BaBiO3 shows a semiconductor-like behavior with an energy gap $`E_a=0.24`$ eV, which can be explained only as a two-particle transport with the activation energy $`2E_a`$ due to the delocalization of the pairs. From our point of view, the transport gap is defined by the combined effect of the Coulomb interaction and the deformation potential between the neighboring octahedral complexes.

In principle, the electronic structure of BaBiO3 presented in Fig. 3(a) is similar to that proposed by Namatame et al. . They supposed that the thermally excited charge carriers in BaBiO3 are the polarons with a substantial band narrowing due to a strong electron-phonon coupling. In our case the carriers are the local pairs (the bipolarons), the empty and the occupied bosonic bands are very narrow, and that is why in Fig. 2(a) they are shown as energy levels. So, the transport gap $`2E_a`$ is the gap between the empty and the occupied bosonic states, and the conductivity in BaBiO3 arises from the thermo-activated bosonic quasiparticles. This fact is in agreement with the suggestion of Taraphder et al. about a bosonic character of the ground state in BaBiO3.

Another key question in the bismuthates is a nature of the optical gap $`E_g=1.9`$ eV. In accordance with the band structure calculations , this gap arises from the peak-to-peak splitting of the Bi$`6s`$ band due to CDW formation. Namatame et al.  attribute this gap to the Frank-Condon transition under which the lattice should be frozen. That contradicts to the observation in the Raman spectra  of the abnormally large amplitude of the breathing-type vibrations of the oxygen octahedra. The required mode arises only at a resonant excitation by the laser radiation with an energy $`h\nu =E_g`$. The resonance was destroyed and the abrupt decrease of the mode amplitude was observed when the lasers with an other frequency were used . Obviously, the photons cannot excite a carrier pair as a whole and should destroy it. Such a behavior directly proves that the lattice is involved in this optical transition. In our scheme an excitation over the optical gap corresponds to the pair destruction BiL2O6+BiO$`{}_{6}{}^{}\stackrel{h\nu }{}`$ 2BiL1O6, which produces a local deformation of the lattice due to the changing of the two different octahedra on equivalent ones. This dynamic deformation is manifested in the Raman spectra as an abnormally high amplitude of the breathing mode. Thus the nature of the optical gap is just the pair binding energy $`E_g=E_b`$. It is important to emphasize that there are no free fermions in the system. Only the excited fermions can be produced by the unpairing, and they do not give any input into the charge transport because of a high value of $`E_b=1.9`$ eV. Thus the bosonic and the fermionic subsystems are separated both spatially and energetically, and therefore the Fermi-Bose mixture is absent in the parent compound.

### C Formation of the Fermi-Bose mixture

The substitution of the each two K+ for the two Ba2+ modifies the BiO6 complex to the BiL2O6 one. As a result, the number of the small stiff BiL2O6 octahedra increases as $`n_0(1+x)/2`$, while the number of large soft BiO6 octahedra decreases as $`n_0(1x)/2`$, where $`n_0=1/a^3`$ is the number of the unit cells and $`a`$ is a lattice parameter. The spatial overlap of the BiL2O6 complexes appears at the finite doping levels, which, taking into account their small radii and the rigid bonds, contracts the lattice.

The structural changes are accompanied by the essential changes in the local electronic structure and in the physical properties of BKBO. A spatial overlap of the L2 levels leads to their splitting into an empty fermionic-like band $`F`$ inside the BiL2O$`{}_{6}{}^{}\mathrm{}`$BiL2O6 Fermi-cluster \[see Fig. 2(b)\]. In the doping range $`x<0.37`$ the band is narrow enough due to a polaronic effect and is still separated from an occupied Bi$`6s`$O$`2p`$ subband. The number of the empty electronic states in the $`F`$ band increases with $`x`$ as $`\widehat{n}_F=n_0(1+x)`$, while the number of the local electron pairs decreases as $`n_B=n_0(1x)/2`$.

A free motion of the pairs is still prevented by the intersite Coulomb repulsion , which becomes strongly screened inside the clusters. When the Fermi-clusters are formed, the conductivity occurs due to the motion of the pairs through the clusters of the different lengths. The BKBO compounds demonstrate a semiconducting-like conductivity changing from a simple activation type to the variable-range-hopping Mott’s law . Moreover the activation energy lowers with the doping down to $`E_a0`$ at $`x0.37`$. One can understand the decrease of the activation energy as a suppression of the Coulomb blockade due to the formation of the Fermi-clusters and due to the decrease of an energy shift between the empty and the occupied bosonic levels as the lattice distortion is diminished.

At the doping level $`x0.37`$ (see Fig.2(c) and Fig.3(c)) the following cardinal changes take place:

(i) Both the breathing and the rotational static lattice distortions transform to the dynamic ones. At the cluster borders, where all oxygen ions belongs to BiO6 and BiL2O6 octahedra, the local breathing dynamic distortion is observed as a vibration in a double-well potential of $`(1x)`$ part of the oxygen ions  but cannot be detected by the integral methods of the structural analysis such as an X-ray and a neutron diffraction.

(ii) The infinite percolating Fermi cluster (formed from the spatially overlapped BiL2O6 octahedra) appears, which leads to the overlap of an empty fermionic band with a filled one, and as a result $`F`$ becomes a conduction band. Overcoming of the percolation threshold provides the insulator-metal phase transition and the formation of the Fermi-liquid state for $`x>0.37`$. The valence electrons of the BiL2O6 complexes previously localized become itinerant which is in agreement with the experiments .

(iii) The pair localization energy disappears $`E_a0`$ so the local electron pairs (from the BiO6 complexes) can freely move in the real space providing a bosonic contribution into the conductivity. Thus, in the metallic phase the two types of carriers are present: the itinerant electrons from the BiL2O6 complexes (fermions) and the delocalized electron pairs from the BiO6 complexes (bosons). Despite the normal state conductivity is mainly due to a fermionic subsystem, the contribution from a bosonic subsystem was also observed by Hellman and Hartford  as the two-particle normal state tunneling.

As a result at doping levels $`x>0.37`$ we have a new type of a spatially separated mixture of the bosonic $`B`$ and the fermionic $`F`$ subsystems, which describes metallic properties of BKBO. It should be stressed that the fermions and the bosons belong to the complexes with the different electronic structure, therefore the Fermi and the Bose subsystems are spatially separated at any doping level. These subsystems are connected by the relations $`2n_B+\widehat{n}_F=2n_0`$ and $`2n_B/\widehat{n}_F=(1x)/(1+x)`$. The high enough value of the binding energy, which in the superconductive compositions becomes apparent as a pseudo-gap $`E_b=E_g0.5`$ eV , is the guarantee against the pair destruction. The unpairing is possible only under the optical excitation to the band $`F^{}`$ (see Fig. 3), which does not play any role in the charge transport.

At $`x=1`$ all the BiO6 octahedra are transformed to the BiL2O6 ones. The Bose system disappears ($`n_B=0`$) together with an excited fermionic band $`F^{}`$. As a result, KBiO3 should behave as a simple Fermi-liquid metal without superconductive properties (see Fig.2(d) and Fig.3(d)).

It is worth to notice that a metallic KBiO3 compound exists only hypothetically because of the exceeding of the potassium solubility limit in BKBO, which in this case equals to $`x0.5`$. However BaPbO3 as an electronic analogue of KBiO3 demonstrates the metallic but not the superconductive properties. Recent attempts to synthesize KBiO3 at a high pressure found out that only K1-yBiyBiO3 with a partial replacement of K+ ions by Bi3+ ones is formed . Such a replacement should lead to the appearance of the BiO6 octahedra with the local electron pairs, and hence the compound K1-yBiyBiO3 should be superconductive in accordance with the discussion above. Indeed, a superconductivity with $`T_c=10.2`$ K was experimentally observed in this compound . From this point of view, it follows that BaPbO3 should be superconductive at a partial substitution of the Ba2+ ions for the La3+ ones (or for the other trivalent ions) because such a substitution produces the local electronic pairs as in the case of K1-yBiyBiO3.

## III Discussion

The most important point which differs our model from the ones considered by Rice and Sneddon , Varma , and De Jongh  is the claim that the local hole pair belongs to the whole BiL2O6 complex and not only to the Bi5+ site. Analogously the local electron pair belongs to the whole BiO6 complex and not only to the Bi3+ site. From this point of view we do not believe in the scheme 2Bi$`{}_{}{}^{4+}`$ Bi3++Bi5+ of a charge disproportionation, but propose a scheme 2BiL1O$`{}_{6}{}^{}`$ BiL2O6+BiO6, where L denotes a local hole in the upper antibonding Bi$`6s`$O$`2p_\sigma ^{}`$ orbital of the whole octahedral complex. To some extent our idea has a certain similarity with Zhang-Rice construction for HTSC-materials . The essential difference is that Zhang-Rice singlet is a boson (a holon in Anderson terminology) with zero spin and charge $`e`$ (so to create a Cooper pair one needs two singlets). In the bismuthates from the beginning we have a rather tightly bound boson (biholon) with a proper charge $`2e`$. Of course, a total spin of the biholon is again zero, so their Bose-Einstein condensation corresponds to a standard $`s`$-wave superconductivity. The existence of the biholons before was only proved rigorously in the quasi one-dimensional ladder materials at a strong coupling along the rungs (Dagotto and Rice ). Our scheme immediately gives us an understanding of a spatial separation of the fermionic and the bosonic bands in the bismuthates.

Namely, our model identifies an optical gap with the binding energy of a preformed pair $`E_b=E_g`$. In the same time a transport gap $`2E_a`$ corresponds to the pair localization energy. As a result we have the picture for the one-particle density of states presented in Fig. 3. In this picture for $`x=0`$ there is a filled bosonic band separated by the large gap $`E_g=E_b`$ from an empty fermionic band (an excited band $`F^{}`$) and by a smaller transport gap $`2E_a`$ from an empty bosonic band $`B`$, which plays the role of the conduction band for the bosonic quasiparticles involved in the activation transport. In accordance with Ref.  in the representation of the one-particle density of states the filled bosonic band has the hole-like dispersion while the empty bosonic band has the electron-like dispersion. The above bands are on top of the completely filled wide ($``$16 eV) Bi$`6s`$-O$`2p`$ hybridized band, which includes 18 valence electrons per unit cell. Since the occupied and the empty bands belong to the different octahedra, they are always spatially separated.

Formally, the transport gap is similar to the impurity band in doped semiconductors. However, the combined transport and the Hall-effect measurements showed that the number of carriers participated in an activation conductivity is extraordinary large and is estimated as a number of unit cells . This rejects any impurity mechanisms and suggests that the conduction process in the doping range $`0<x<0.37`$ can not be understood by the conventional transport mechanisms of the ordinary semiconductors. The attempts have been made to identify the excitation with the energy gap $`E_a`$ using some optical methods: the reflectivity, the photoconductivity, and the photoacoustic spectroscopy measurements. However, no photoresponse could be detected by either method in the energy region near $`E_a`$ . So the meaning of this gap is just a localisation energy of the local pairs. Hence for $`x=0`$ we have the normal bosonic semiconductor with an activation character of the conductivity $`\sigma (T)=\sigma _0\mathrm{exp}(2E_a/kT)`$.

As we pointed above, the localization energy is influenced by at least two effects: the Coulomb intersite repulsion due to CDW state and the energy shift between the empty and the occupied bosonic bands due to a static lattice distortion. With the doping both effects diminish, which leads to the decrease of the pair localization energy. The reason is that the appearing Fermi clusters screen the Coulomb intersite repulsion and the decrease of the static lattice distortion lowers the energy shift between the bosonic bands. At $`0<x<0.37`$ the lengths of the Fermi-cluster islands along  directions are variable due to the random distribution of the dopant atoms, so the temperature dependence of the conductivity becomes more complicated, but remains a semiconducting-like. It corresponds to the experimentally observed variable-range-hopping conductivity according to the Mott’s law $`\sigma =\sigma _0\mathrm{exp}(T_0/T)^{1/4}`$ . The value of $`T_0(36)\times 10^8`$ K obtained by Hellman et al.  implies a strong carrier localization as in our model. On the language of the fermionic and the bosonic bands, at $`0<x<0.37`$ the Fermi and the Bose subsystems are both energetically and spatially separated.

Near the insulator-metal transition the characteristic temperature $`T_0`$ depends on the stoichiometry, and an agreement with the Mott’s law breaks down . A pair localization energy approaches zero because the movement of BiO6 octahedron, surrounded by the equivalent BiL2O6 octahedra in undistorted lattice, does not change the total energy. In the doping range $`x0.37`$ we have a two-band Fermi-Bose mixture similar to that proposed earlier by Ranninger et al. . In the same time this mixture of a bosonic metal state with a Fermi-liquid state is rather unusual. The normal conductivity in this mixture is mainly due to the fermionic subsystem which overcomes at $`x0.37`$ the percolation threshold. Nevertheless, the bosonic two-particle contribution into the normal state conductivity is also present. At the doping level $`x0.37`$ the occupied and the empty pair levels are in the resonance, therefore the energy separation disappears and the Bose and the Fermi subsystems remain separated only spatially.

Note that there is an interplay between the Bose and the Fermi subsystems since the motion of the carrier pairs leads to the transformation of the Bose octahedral clusters to the Fermi ones and vice versa in the process of the dynamic exchange BiO$`{}_{6}{}^{}\mathrm{Bi}`$L2O6. Because this process is closely related with the superconductivity, we analyze it below in more details.

### Superconductivity in Ba1-xKxBiO3

Taking into account an existence of the double-well potential in Ba1-xKxBiO3 one can consider superconductivity in this compound in the framework of the anharmonic models for HTSC . As it was shown in these models, if the oxygen ions move in a double-well potential, an order-of-magnitude enhancement of a constant of an electron-lattice coupling follows automatically from a consistent treatment of this motion. The pairing mechanism is connected in these models with the enhancement of the coupling constant due to the oxygen ion vibrations in a double-well potential. However, in agreement with Refs. , we believe that in the bismuthates the pairing mechanism is more probably of the electronic than of the phonon-mediated origin (see Sec. II b). In the same time in our system the local pairs tunnel between the neighboring octahedra due to the vibration of the oxygen ions in the double-well potential. Therefore we suppose that the lattice is involved in the superconductivity more probably by providing the motion of a local pair rather than via a pairing mechanism itself.

The process of a dynamic exchange is illustrated in Fig. 4. An oxygen belonging to the two neighboring octahedra BiO6 and BiL2O6 vibrates in a double-well potential, and hence the tunneling of the electron pair between the neighboring octahedra occurs when the ion tunnels through the potential barrier between the wells. Because of this interconnection between the processes of the pair and the oxygen tunneling, one can estimate the matrix element of the pair tunneling as $`t_B\omega _0e^D`$ where $`\omega _0`$ is the tunneling frequency, $`D=(1/\mathrm{})_{x_0}^{x_1}|p|𝑑x(d/\mathrm{})\sqrt{2MU}`$ is a quasiclassical transparency of the barrier in the double-well potential, $`U`$ and $`d`$ are the barrier height and width, and $`M`$ is the oxygen ion mass. Note that rather small tunneling frequency $`\omega _0=200`$ K (see Fig.4) already incorporates the effects connected with a polaronic narrowing of the one-particle bands $`t_pt_0exp(g^2)`$ and the hopping of a bosonic pair via virtual dissociation processes. The last ones are described by a second order perturbation theory (see Ref. ) and yield an estimate $`t_Bt_p^2/|E_b|`$ for a width of a bosonic band in a spatially homogeneous Bose-system.

The tunneling of the pairs helps to establish a macroscopic long range order (a phase coherence) in the bosonic system. On the language of the spatially separated Fermi-Bose mixture, a local pair is transferred from one Bose cluster to a nearest one over the Fermi-cluster, which, depending on the doping level, consists of several octahedra. The pairs overcome the Fermi-cluster step by step. A single step, corresponding to the pair transfer into a neighboring octahedron, is described by the pair tunneling in the double-well potential. Thus the tunneling frequency $`\omega _0`$ is the same for each step. If one assumes that the steps are independent events, a probability of the overcoming of the Fermi-cluster can be obtained as a product of the probabilities of an each step. In this case the matrix element of the pair tunneling through the Fermi-cluster can be estimated as $`\widehat{t}_B\omega _0e^{ND}`$ where an evarage number of steps (which is proportional to a Fermi-cluster linear size) can be obtained from the ratio of the concentrations of BiL2O6 and BiO6 octahedra. Hence a number of steps can be estimated as $`N\left(\frac{1+x}{1x}\right)^{1/3}`$.

Of course, it is naturally to assume that the critical temperature of superconductivity is of the order of the temperature of the Bose–Einstein condensation $`T_c\widehat{t}_Ba^2n_B^{2/3}`$ in the bosonic system with a large effective mass $`m_B1/\widehat{t}_Ba^2`$. We remind that $`a^3n_B=(1x)/2`$ in our case. For $`x=0.4`$ and the parameters of the double-well potential obtained in the Ref.  (see also Fig. 4) we estimated $`T_c50`$ K. This value is larger than the measured $`T_c30`$  in the bismuthates.

Note that the estimate above is quite rough. An accurate analysis of the superconductivity in the bismuthates should also take into account a significant boson-phonon interaction, arising due to the interconnection between the vibrations of the oxygen ions and the transfer of the pairs. When the pair is transferred from one octahedron to another, the lattice has a sufficient time to relax, forming each time a new configuration before the next tunneling event occurs. As a result the pair’s “deformed” environment (the BiO6 octahedra) may follow the tunneling processes without the retardation. If the local pair motion is slow compared to the frequencies of the optical phonons associated with the deformations of the octahedra, the so-called anti-adiabatic limit is fulfilled in our system .

Note that in our case the stretching phonons are associated with the tunneling of the pairs. The following conclusions can be made from the analysis of the phonon modes studied in Ba1-xKxBiO3 by an inelastic neutron scattering . (i) The frequencies of the optical modes of the Bi-O vibrations $`\omega _{ph}>630`$ K are high enough to provide the anti-adiabatic limit, since the tunneling frequencies are lower, $`\omega _0300`$ K for $`x0.5`$ . Note that from a theoretical point of view a polaronic narrowing of the one- particle bandwidths $`t_p<<t_0`$, and hence a small value of $`\omega _0`$ itself, is just a direct consequence of the non-adiabaticity. (ii) The energy of the longitudinal stretching mode with  wave-vector direction is lower than the energy of modes with other wave-vector directions or of transversal modes. (iii) The breathing-type vibrations with the wave vector $`𝐪_b`$=$`(\pi /2a,0,0)`$ are energetically favorable since an energy of the longitudinal stretching phonons is the lowest at the Brillouin band edge. That is why a “breathing” of each octahedron should be coordinated with its neighbors to guarantee a resonant tunneling in the system. Hence a long-range correlation of the vibrations should occur at low temperatures when only the low-energy states are occupied. (iv) The bandwidth of the longitudinal stretching mode is of the order of 100 K, and thus a temperature $`TT_c`$ is high enough to excite the non-breathing-type longitudinal stretching phonons with the wave vectors shorter than $`𝐪_b`$. The thermal excitation of the phonons with such short wave-vectors leads to the destruction of the long-range correlation between the breathing-type vibrations, and hence play a destructive role for the pair tunneling.

It should be stressed in addition, that the oscillations of the oxygen ion in the double-well potential corresponds to the breathing-type longitudinal vibrations with  directions (see Fig. 4a).

Thus the pair motion is more correctly described as follows. When the local pair is transferred to a neighboring octahedron (for example, from the left to the right in Fig. 4c) due to the transition of the oxygen ion from one well to another one in the double-well potential, the charge density corresponding to a pair is quickly redistributed inside the octahedron. As a result a double-well potential, designed for the vibration of the other oxygen ions belonging to the same octahedron, is formed. The longitudinal stretching phonons with $`\omega _{ph}>\omega _0`$ are involved in this fast process. After the relaxation of the deformed surrounding, the pair becomes prepared for the next hopping, and the described process repeats again and again, providing a resonant tunneling of the pairs on the large distances along  directions.

Note that since the BiO6 and BiL2O6 complexes have different strengths of the Bi-O bonds, the pair transfer in turn is able to change both the phase and the wave vectors of the stretching phonons. As the vibration in the double-well potential is of a breathing-type, the wave vectors remain unchanged when the octahedra ( which the pair is passing by) vibrates in the breathing mode. However a value of $`𝐪`$ can be changed in the case of the vibrations with the short wave-vector. Due to the dispersion of the longitudinal stretching mode such a change can cost some energy. Thus to provide the pair motion in this case, an energy should be transmitted to the phonons and the dissipation of the pair kinetic energy should occur. Of course, this leads to the decrease of the BEC critical temperature for the pair. Hence the more exact estimate for $`T_c`$ requires the solution of a problem of a self-consistent preparation of the barrier due to the interaction of a pair with a phonon subsystem in a process of underbarrier tunneling. This brings us all the nice physics of the tunneling with the dissipation . Remind, that in the problem of the tunneling with the dissipation the shape and the height of a potential barrier in a two-level system are determined self-consistently taking into account an interaction of a tunneling particle with a thermal reservoir. Note that the more exact evaluation of $`T_c`$ will give us an experimentally observed decrease of the critical temperature as a function of the concentration in the metallic region $`x>0.4`$. This decrease should take place mainly due to the following facts: (i) a decrease of a bosonic density $`n_B`$, (ii) an increase of the width of the barrier $`N`$, and maybe the most important, (iii) the decrease of lattice softening which leads to the increase of the dissipation of the pair kinetic energy due to the stretching phonons with $`𝐪𝐪_b`$. Note also, that at temperatures $`T>T_c`$ a bosonic subsystem behaves for the concentrations $`x>0,37`$ as a normal bosonic metal with a heavy mass $`m_B1/\widehat{t}_Ba^2`$.

Summarizing the discussion above we point out that the two processes are important for the superconductivity in Ba1-xKxBiO3. The vibrations of the oxygen ions in the double-well potential provides the mechanism for a transfer of the local pairs from the one Bose-cluster to the other. At the same time the pair motion is strongly affected by the stretching longitudinal vibrations of the oxygen ions in the octahedra which the pair is passing by. We suppose that the last process should be taken into account to estimate correctly the critical temperature.

It is worth to notice, that a similar dispersion of the longitudinal stretching phonons, which leads to the dominant role of the breathing-type phonons at low temperatures, has been observed also for the high $`T_c`$ cuprates La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 and YBa2Cu3O7 . Taking into account the recent experimental evidence by Müller et al.  of the coexistence of the small bosonic and fermionic charge carriers in La2-xSrxCuO4, we suppose also to apply our Fermi-Bose mixture scenario to HTSC cuprates. Our paper on this problem is in preparation . Note again that the nature of the pairing itself in the cuprates is definitely of the electronic origin. However, due to the fact that underdoped HTSC-materials are close to the phase-separation on AFM and PM-clusters , the lattice here can play an assistant role again providing a pair tunneling between the superconductive PM metallic clusters via an insulating AFM-barrier. It can also serve as a limitation on the estimate of the effective critical temperature for the Bose-condensation of the pairs in our system.

## IV Conclusion

In conclusion we briefly summarize the main results.

1. The parent compound BaBiO3 represents a system with the initially preformed local electron and hole pairs. Every pair is spatially and energetically localized inside an octahedron volume. The localization energy of a pair determines the transport activation gap $`E_a`$. The binding energy of a pair becomes apparent as the optical gap $`E_g=E_b`$.

2. The new type of the Fermi-Bose mixture is possibly realized in the superconductive compositions of Ba1-xKxBiO3 for $`x>0.37`$. The bosonic bands are responsible for the two-particle normal state conductivity. The overlap of the empty fermionic band $`F`$ with an occupied valence band Bi6$`s`$O2$`p`$ provides the insulator-metal phase transition and produces the Fermi-liquid state. This state shunts to a great extent the normal state conductivity arising from the two-particle Bose transport.

3. The fermionic band $`F^{}`$ connected with the pair destruction does not play any role in the transport. The excitation energy is high enough to guarantee against the destruction of bosons (a pair binding energy $`E_b0.5`$ eV for the superconductive compositions).

4. Pair localization energy is absent for $`x>0.37`$ ($`E_a=0`$), so the bosonic and the fermionic subsystems are separated only spatially. The interplay between them is due to the dynamic exchange BiL2O$`{}_{6}{}^{}`$BiO6, which causes a free motion of the local pairs in the real space.

5. The pairing mechanism in the bismuthates is more probably of the electronic than of the phonon-mediated origin. The existence of the local pairs and their tunneling between the neighboring octahedra are the reasons for the appearance of the double-well potential, which describes the vibration of the oxygen ions. The lattice is involved in the superconductivity more probably by providing the motion of the local pairs.

Finally, we would like to emphasize that the scenario of the Fermi-Bose mixture allows us to describe qualitatively an insulator-metal phase transition and a superconductive state in BKBO in the framework of the one common approach. To some extent this scenario explains the contradictions observed experimentally by the UPS and XPS , the EXAFS and XANES , and the Raman  spectroscopies, as well as by an inelastic neutron scattering , the transport and the optical measurements . Nevertheless, the additional experiments are required to make a definite conclusion about the nature of the superconductivity in these systems.

First of all we propose two direct experiments to test our model. (i) To synthesize a new compound Ba1-xLaxPbO3, which should be superconductive in accordance with our point of view. (ii) To provide the Raman scattering experiment of the superconducting Ba0.6K0.4BiO3 compound using a resonance optical excitation in the range of the optical pseudogap $`E_g0.5`$ eV. In this case the appearance of the additional Raman modes due to local dynamic distortions should be observed at the pair destruction in accordance with our model.

Besides, it is important to carry out the more precise measurements of the specific heat in the bismuthates for $`TT_c`$. We know that the specific heat behaves as $`C_B(T/T_c)^{3/2}`$ for the temperatures $`T<T_c`$, and $`C_B=const`$ for $`TT_c`$ in a three-dimensional Bose-gas. As a result, there is a $`\lambda `$-point behavior of the specific heat for $`TT_c`$. However, in the Fermi-Bose mixture there is an additional contribution from a degenerate Fermi-gas $`C_F\gamma T`$. This contribution could in principle destroy a $`\lambda `$-point behavior of the specific heat in the Fermi-Bose mixture. Note that the currently available experimental results in the bismuthates signal a smooth behavior of the specific heat near $`T_c`$ , because in all the experiments the contributions from the degenerate Fermi and Bose-gases are masked by a larger lattice contribution.

Another important measurement, which can be proposed to elucidate the nature of the superconductivity, is a measurement of the thermopower in the normal state of the bismuthates. According to the ideas of Larkin et al. , the Seebeck coefficient $`S_0=n_B(T)/n_0\mathrm{ln}(n_B(T)/n_0)+\alpha T/\epsilon _F`$ in the Fermi-Bose mixture is much larger by absolute value than the usual value $`S_0=\alpha T/\epsilon _F`$ in the normal state of an ordinary fermionic metal. Moreover, the sign of the thermopower can become negative, which is also rather unusual. Note that up to now there is a lot of controversy in the measurements of Seebeck coefficient in the bismuthates (see Ref.  and references therein).

###### Acknowledgements.

We acknowledge fruitful discussion with N. M. Plakida, Yu. Kagan, P. Fulde, P. Woelfe, and A. N. Mitin. This work was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grants 99-02-17343 and 98-02-17077), INTAS grant 97-0963, and Program “Superconductivity” (Grant 99010). M. Yu. K is grateful for the grant of the President of Russia 96-15-96942 and acknowledges a hospitality of Max-Planck-Institut in Dresden.


text:
# CROSS-CORRELATING CMB POLARIZATION WITH LOCAL LARGE SCALE STRUCTURES

## 1 Introduction

Secondary CMB anisotropies offer new windows to constrain cosmological models. Lens effects$`^\mathrm{?}`$ are particularly attractive since they are expected to be one of the dominant effect. Methods to detect the lens effects on CMB$`^\mathrm{?}`$ have been proposed recently. Unfortunately all of them suffer from a high sensitivity to cosmic variance. However, this problem can be solved if one considers CMB polarization instead of temperature anisotropies. Standard cosmological models predict that at small scale, the so called $`B`$ component of the polarization can be significant only if CMB-lens couplings are present$`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. This feature of CMB polarization will allow us to present tools that enhance the detection of lens effect in CMB by mixing them with galaxy survey $`^\mathrm{?}`$.

## 2 Lens effects on CMB polarization

Photons emerging from the last scattering surface are deflected by the large scale structures of the Universe that are present on the line-of-sights. Therefore photons observed from apparent direction $`\stackrel{}{\alpha }`$ must have left the last scattering surface from a slightly different direction, $`\stackrel{}{\alpha }+\stackrel{}{\xi }(\stackrel{}{\alpha })`$. Thus, the lensing effect does not produce any polarization nor rotate the polarization vector, it just moves the apparent direction of the line of sight$`^\mathrm{?}`$; if $`\stackrel{}{P}=(Q,U)`$ the Stoke variables,

$$\stackrel{}{\widehat{P}}(\stackrel{}{\alpha })=\stackrel{}{P}(\stackrel{}{\alpha }+\stackrel{}{\xi }).$$
(1)
This mechanism alters the geometrical properties of the polarization field, that is to say, changes the *electric* ($`E`$) and *magnetic* ($`B`$) components of the polarization that reflects its non-local geometrical properties. Indeed, inflationary models, predict that the small scale $`B`$ polarization is dominated by lens effect $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. We explicit this point in the weak lensing regime where distortions are small. At leading order (one can refer to $`^\mathrm{?}`$ for description of this calculation) one obtains:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{B}=2ϵ_{ij}\left(\gamma ^i\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{P}^j+\gamma _{,k}^i\widehat{P}^{j,k}\right)$$
(2)
where we described the lens effect by its convergence field $`\kappa =1/2\xi _{,i}^i`$ and its shear field $`(\gamma _1,\gamma _2)=1/2(\xi _{,x}^x\xi _{,y}^y,2\xi _{,x}^y)`$. The $`ϵ_{ij}`$ (the totally antisymmetric tensor) reflects the geometrical properties of the $`B`$ field. It comes in front of two shear-polarization mixing terms. One which we will call the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-term couples the shear with second derivative of the polarization field. The other one, hereafter the $``$-term, mixes gradient of the shear and polarization.

As a consequence, the $`B`$ field directly reflects the properties of the shear maps. Fig. 1 shows a comparison of relation (2) with the exact lensing effect. The agreement is excellent.

## 3 Cross-correlating CMB maps and weak lensing surveys

With the help of eq.(2), one can try to recover lensing information out of $`B`$ polarization. Unfortunately, a direct inversion is not possible since it leads to a huge degeneracy in the resulting shear maps $`^\mathrm{?}`$. Another way of deciphering the encoded lensing data will be to cross-correlate CMB polarization with other lensing information, namely, weak lensing galaxy surveys$`^\mathrm{?}`$.

There are strong theoretical motivations to perform this kind of cross-correlations$`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. The cross-correlation coefficient between line-of-sight mapped by a photon emerging from last scattering,

$$r=\frac{\kappa _{\mathrm{cmb}}\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}}{\sqrt{\kappa _{\mathrm{cmb}}^2\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}^2}},$$
(3)
is around 40% in standard models and accordingly, the correlation between $`B`$ polarization and lensing survey will be significant. Since only the lens effect generates $`B`$ field at this scale, we can expect to have a low cosmic variance on the cross-correlation. Moreover, one can assume that systematics and foreground noises that will hamper each detections will be poorly correlated, so that mixing the two data sets can be an effective way of enhancing the accuracy of the signal.

We present here two objects that mix CMB polarization data with reconstructed shear fields. Looking at eq. (2), the most simple idea is to try to construct *guess* $`B`$-fields, $`b_\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`b_{}`$, with local shear instead of the CMB one and to try to correlate them with our polarization data.

$`b_\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ_{ij}\gamma _{\mathrm{gal}}^i\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{P}^j,b_{}ϵ_{ij}_k\gamma _{\mathrm{gal}}^i_k\widehat{P}^j.`$ (4)
Then, the amplitude of the cross-correlation between $`\mathrm{\Delta }B`$ and $`b_\mathrm{\Delta }`$ can easily be estimated. At leading order, we have

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{B}b_\mathrm{\Delta }(\stackrel{}{\alpha })=\mathrm{\Delta }E^2\kappa \kappa _{\mathrm{gal}},\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{B}b_{}(\stackrel{}{\alpha })=\frac{1}{2}(\stackrel{}{}E)^2\stackrel{}{}\kappa \stackrel{}{}\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}.$$
(5)
These results remain valid even when filtering effects are included (see $`^\mathrm{?}`$ for complete calculation).

Fig. 1 shows a numerical illustration of this cross-correlation. The similarities between the left and the right maps are not striking. Yet, under close examination one can recognize individual patterns shared between the maps. Moreover, computation of correlation coefficient gives significant overlapping up to 40%.

Using this results, we define two quantities insensitive to the normalization of CMB and $`\sigma _8`$ and to filtering effects, which probe the cross-correlation between two lensing planes:

$`𝒳_\mathrm{\Delta }{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{B}b_\mathrm{\Delta }(\stackrel{}{\alpha })}{\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{E}^2\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{\kappa \kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}}{\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}^2}},𝒳_{}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{B}b_{}(\stackrel{}{\alpha })}{(\stackrel{}{}\widehat{E})^2(\stackrel{}{}\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}})^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{}\kappa \stackrel{}{}\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}}{\stackrel{}{}\kappa _{\mathrm{gal}}^2}}`$ (6)
Previous methods to probe weak lensing in CMB anisotropies $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$ ran into high cosmic variance problems. This is not surprising since lens effect which is not dominant can be masked by statistical deviations of the primary CMB signal, thus reducing the accuracy of lens detection. Since $`B`$ polarization only emerges in presence of lensing, this last effect should be less important. Indeed, we showed in $`^\mathrm{?}`$ that $`𝒳_\mathrm{\Delta }`$ cosmic variance can be simply estimated in terms of the cosmic variances of the polarization field and of the shear field.

$`\mathrm{C}osVar(𝒳_\mathrm{\Delta })=\mathrm{C}osVar\left(\mathrm{\Delta }E^2\right)+\left({\displaystyle \frac{1+r^2}{2r^2}}\right)\mathrm{C}osVar\left(\kappa ^2\right).`$ (7)
The same kind of equation holds for $`𝒳_{}`$. This expression leads to values for the cosmic variance of $`𝒳_\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of less than 8% for realistic 100 square degrees surveys (see table 1).

## 4 Conclusion - Sensitivity to the cosmic parameters

We showed that weak lensing effect on the CMB $`B`$ polarization can be embedded in a simple, real space, first order expression. This expression can be used to create mathematical objects that compare the lensing effects up to the last scattering surface to the one up to our galaxy surveys probes. We showed that this objects should produce a significant information, even in realistic (i.e. filtered) situations, with a low intrinsic statistical error.

These objects are also expected to be good, unbiased, cosmic parameters tracers. Fig. 2 presents their behavior in the $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ plane which exhibit a high sensitivity to the vacuum energy density. This is not surprising, since we are probing the length of the optical bench we are working in, which is rather sensitive to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$.

## Acknowledgments

We thank B. Jain, U. Seljak and S. White for the use of their ray-tracing simulations. KB and FB thank CITA for hospitality and LvW is thankful to SPhT Saclay for hospitality. We are all grateful to the TERAPIX data center located at IAP for providing us computing facilities.

## References