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# Structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud from 2MASS

## 1 Introduction

Morphologically, the LMC is an irregular barred spiral galaxy with three spiral arms and an extended outer loop of stellar material de Vaucouleurs & Freeman (1973). Based on deprojection and photometric distances (e.g. de Vaucouleurs 1957, 1980), its disk is inclined at an angle of $`27^{}`$ to the plane of the sky. The disk exhibits solid body rotation out to $`2.5^{}`$ with a rotation center at $`5^h21^m,69^{}17^{}(1950)`$, about $`0.6^{}`$ north of the optical center of the bar. This kinematic signature is present in a variety of tracers: HI gas, planetary nebulae, HII regions, supergiants, CH stars, etc. Freeman et al. (1983) have examined kinematics of rich star clusters with ages between $`100`$ Myr and $`10`$ Gyr. They found that young clusters rotated with HI gas, while the older ones (SWB VII; Searle et al. 1980) formed a flattened rotating system with dispersion along the line of sight $`\sigma 18`$ km/s. A later study of more extended sample of outer LMC clusters Schommer et al. (1992) confirmed the absence of isothermal pressure-supported spheroid. All this has led to the standard view that the LMC is a geometrically thin object.

However, recent studies have suggested that the LMC may have an extended component. First, the evidence for a flattened spheroid population was found in the kinematics of old long-period variables Hughes et al. (1991). Kunkel et al. (1997) describe a population of carbon stars out to 12 kpc from the LMC center. These authors interpret these in the context of a thin disk model and derive a rotation curve and mass estimate. However, Weinberg (2000) argues that the LMC should be evolving rapidly in the Milky Way tidal field, based on both analytic calculations and n-body simulations. The tidal field causes the LMC disk axis to precess and torques disk orbits out of the disk plane, causing a strongly flared, spheroidal-like distribution in the outer Cloud and loss of stars and gas. This interaction leads to an a spatially extended population while roughly preserving the disk-like kinematic signature (i.e., small $`\sigma `$).

The detection of, or strict limits on, the predicted extended distribution would resolve these views and is one of the goals for the present study. Our star count analysis is based on fitting the projected spatial density of several LMC populations among those identified in Nikolaev & Weinberg (2000; hereafter NW00) based on their location in the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of the field. The late-type giant populations are dominated by the LMC and may be used as tracers of the spatial structure of the Cloud. Each population is fitted by two models: 1) thin exponential disk and 2) spherical power law model. Our best-fit models based on circular disks give the inclination of the LMC to the line of sight $`i24^{}28^{}`$ and the position angle of the disk $`\theta 165^{}174^{}`$, in good agreement with previous estimates. The direction of the LMC disk inclination is also determined. In short, projected 2MASS star counts reproduce the standard LMC inferences.

The near-infrared 2MASS photometry easily discriminates carbon stars in the color-magnitude diagram. While the 2MASS single-epoch survey of the LMC does not provide variability information, we identified a region of the CMD populated nearly exclusively by carbon-rich AGB stars (Region J in NW00), which are also long-period variables (LPVs). This identification is reinforced by recent analyses of MACHO data Alves et al. (1998); Wood (1999), although roughly $`25\%`$ could be binaries Wood (1999). LPVs obey period-luminosity-color (PLC) relations (e.g., Feast et al. 1989), and based on the PLC relations, the LPVs in a narrow color range ($`1.6<JK_S<1.7`$) are standard candles with $`\sigma _K0.3^m`$. Their photometric distribution in selected LMC fields has a least three distinct components: a well-defined narrow distribution due to LMC disk and two secondary peaks at fainter and brighter magnitudes. The differential photometric distance to the central disk peak provides a direct determination of the inclination: $`42.3^{}\pm 7.2^{}`$. This value is consistent with but larger than those inferred by deprojecting isopleths. The secondary peak could in principle be due to stellar blends, geometric structure, interstellar reddening, distribution of periods, gradient in age and metallicity, or contaminating population of overtone pulsators in the sample. We carefully examine the possible origins of this secondary component, and conclude that most likely explanation is spatial structure. This interpretation is bolstered by the good match of the central peak, which includes known fundamental mode pulsators, with the established LMC disk inclination. This implies the presence of an extended component of the LMC, which may be as thick as 14 kpc along the line of sight. This component is thicker than the 2.8 kpc flattened spheroid suggested by Hughes et al. (1991) from kinematic data and may be streams of material rather than be smooth and well-mixed. The bright peak is then an intervening population at a distance of roughly 35 kpc and the existence of relatively young carbon-rich AGB stars suggests tidal debris.

The outline for the paper follows. In the main section, we briefly describe the 2MASS sample (§2), and present the star count (§3) and the standard candle (§4) analyses of the LMC. In particular, §4.1 describes the selection of standard candles, §4.2 gives the details of the standard candle analysis and §4.3 presents the main results. The major conclusions are summarized in §5.

## 2 Observations

The LMC field, (4h00m to 6h 56m in right ascension, $`78^{}`$ to $`60^{}`$ in declination, J2000.0) has been observed by 2MASS and is included in the most recent data release. Details of the data reduction and sample selection are described in NW00. Figure 1 shows both the projected spatial distribution of sources and the color-magnitude diagram of the field.

The color-magnitude diagram also shows the location of 12 regions analyzed in NW00. Total number of sources in our sample is 823,037.

NW00 examined the populations in selected CMD regions and associated the features with known populations of stars (cf. Table 2 of NW00). Here, we take an in-depth look at the spatial distribution of sources in seven of those regions (Table 1) which contain mostly LMC stars. These seven areas of the CMD account for a quarter of all sources in the field.

The projected spatial density distribution for each of the seven regions is shown in Figure 2. As expected, younger populations (Regions A and H) have relatively clumpy distributions which trace the spiral pattern of the LMC (cf. Figure 7 of Schmidt-Kaler 1977). Older stars, on the other hand, have smoother and more extended distributions with significant overdensity in the bar of the Cloud. Several well-known morphological features of the LMC are easily recognizable in Figure 2, e.g. 30 Doradus complex (an HII region near $`\alpha =5^h36^m`$, $`\delta =69^{}`$) and asymmetric outer loop in the south-eastern part of the LMC, traced by AGB stars.

## 3 Spatial Structure Using Parametric Maximum Likelihood

To quantify the spatial distribution of sources in six selected regions, we perform maximum likelihood (ML) analyses for thin exponential disk and spherical power-law models. The observed source counts for each population are binned in equatorial coordinates, $`n_{ij}^o,i=1,N;j=1,M`$. The scale was chosen by successively reducing the bin size until the inferred parameters converged. The final coordinate grid is spaced uniformly, with the bin size $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha =\mathrm{\Delta }\delta =1^{}`$. The ML scheme selects a parametric model for which the expected source counts $`n_{ij}^e`$ most closely match the observed source counts $`n_{ij}^o`$. The goodness-of-fit measure,

$$u^2=\underset{i,j}{}\frac{(n_{ij}^on_{ij}^e)^2}{n_{ij}^e},$$

is distributed as $`\chi ^2`$ with $`(N\times M1n_p)`$ degrees of freedom, where $`n_p`$ is the number of free parameters of the model (see below). The expected source counts $`n_{ij}^e`$ are obtained from the corresponding source density in each bin, $`\rho _{ij}^e`$, predicted by the model:

$$n_{ij}^e=\frac{N_{src}\rho _{ij}^e}{_{i,j}\rho _{ij}^e}$$

(see Appendix A for details).

The density of the exponential disk is described by

$$\rho =C\mathrm{exp}(r/R),$$
(1)
where $`R`$ is the disk scale length. The model has five free parameters: coordinates of the disk center $`\alpha _0`$, $`\delta _0`$, the scale length $`R`$, and two orientation angles: inclination $`i`$ ($`0^{}i<180^{}`$) and position angle (line of nodes) $`\theta `$ ($`0^{}\theta <360^{}`$). The position angle $`\theta `$ increases counterclockwise from the north (i.e. NESW). The density of the spherical power law model is described by

$$\rho =Sr^\nu .$$
(2)
The free parameters are positions of the LMC center, $`\alpha _0`$ and $`\delta _0`$, and power law index $`\nu `$.

The results of parametric fits are presented in Table 2 (for thin exponential disk model) and Table 3 (for spherical power law model). The best fit parameters in both tables can be grouped by the population age: results for young stars (A, H) and older stars (E, F, J, K) show good agreement among themselves. The error in centroid of each population is $`\text{ }<\text{ }0.1^{}`$. The near side position angles marked with ‘?’ are inaccurate due to clumpiness and compactness of the corresponding distributions.

The distributions of young OB stars and supergiants are clumpy and therefore poorly fitted by a smooth model. The centroid of these populations is $`1^{}`$ to the north of the optical center of the bar (defined by the center of symmetry of the bar, at $`\alpha _{1950}=81.0^{}`$, $`\delta _{1950}=69.8^{}`$), similar to the displacement found by de Vaucouleurs & Freeman (1973). The scale lengths $`R`$ derived for these populations are noticeably greater than the scale lengths for older populations and reflect the location of the distinct star forming activity. The position and inclination angles for these populations are mutually consistent. Our derived inclinations, $`i36^{}38^{}`$, are consistent with $`i=38.2^{}`$ found from the distribution of HI regions (Feitzinger et al. 1977), and also with $`i=36_5^{+2}`$ degrees found from Monte Carlo simulations of ultraviolet photopolarimetric maps of the western LMC Cole et al. (1999).

The older populations (M giants, AGB stars and LPVs) are well-represented by a smooth density law. The centroids for these populations are within $`0.4^{}`$ of each other on the sky and are close to the optical center of the bar. The scale lengths are $`R1.31.4`$ kpc (sources in Region E have the largest scale length among older stars, $`R1.6`$, which is probably due to Galactic M dwarfs contamination). The inferred inclinations are in the range $`i24^{}28^{}`$, in good agreement with previous determinations from star counts de Vaucouleurs (1955), $`i=(25\pm 5)^{}`$; distribution of star clusters, $`i=(25\pm 9)^{}`$ or HI isophotes, $`i=(27\pm 5)^{}`$ McGee & Milton (1966); or photographic R isophotes de Vaucouleurs (1957), $`i=(27\pm 2)^{}`$. These deprojection-based position angles for the group are mutually consistent, $`\theta 169^{}173^{}`$, and fall in the range $`\theta =160^{}180^{}`$ derived from surface photometry of the LMC by others (see, e.g. Table 2 of Schmidt-Kaler & Gochermann 1992).

The extended spatial coverage of the LMC field by 2MASS allows one to determine the absolute direction of the inclination, i.e. to determine the closest side of the LMC. To illustrate this point, we make two different test models of an exponential disk with $`\{\alpha _0,\delta _0,R,i,\theta \}`$ $`=`$ $`\{80^{},70^{},1.5,\pm 30^{},135^{}\}`$. Both disks are modeled with 3,000 point sources. The restored density contours are presented in Figure 3. The difference in the expected source counts is clearly seen in the outer regions. This suggests that for relatively spatially extended populations both the absolute value and the direction of the inclination can be reliably determined. On the other hand, if a population is relatively compact in the sky, the inferred direction of inclination may differ from the actual value (cf. Table 2). Based on the results for older populations, we see that the nearest side of the LMC is its eastern side, in agreement with previous results based on photometry of Cepheids in the Cloud de Vaucouleurs (1955); Gascoigne & Shobbrook (1978); Laney & Stobie (1986). Restricting our attention to Region J, which has little if any Galactic contamination, we can be sure that we are not affected by a gradient caused by the Galactic foreground.

The results of fits to a spherical power-law profile are described in Table 3. There are no significant difference between power-law exponents for various populations: all values are $`2.52.6`$. The centroid shift for younger populations, present in Table 2, is seen here as well. The underlying distribution, a disk and spheroid together, is described here as a single profile. A power-law disk profile, of course, will have an index $`1+\nu `$, where $`\nu `$ is the index for the spherical profile, and therefore some unknown combination of a disk and spheroid makes interpretation difficult. We note that these fits have poorer quality than the exponential fits and probably do not bear on the reality of a spheroidal population. A more independent test for spatially extended population is described below (§4.2).

We compared the results of our fits to similar fits by Hughes et al. (1991), who modeled the distribution of intermediate and old long-period variables (ILPV and OLPV, respectively) with exponential disk and power law models. They found $`\nu =1.8\pm 0.1`$ and $`R=1.6\pm 0.2`$ (OLPV), $`\nu =1.7\pm 0.1`$ and $`R=1.7\pm 0.2`$ (ILPV). Our results for similar populations (Regions E, F, G and J) imply $`\nu 2.5`$ and $`R1.4`$ kpc. While the scale lengths $`R`$ are mutually consistent, the best-fit power law exponents differ. Our best fit parameters are larger than the power-law model exponents of Hughes et al. which has $`\nu 2.0`$.

To summarize, the projected distribution of LMC populations observed by 2MASS is consistent with previous studies. We found the scale length of the LMC disk, $`R1.41.5`$ kpc, the inclination angle, $`i24^{}28^{}`$, and the direction of the LMC tilt in good agreement with existing estimates.

## 4 Standard Candle Analysis

We complement our previous analysis (§3) by incorporating photometric distances in addition to our CMD selection. Below, we describe the selection of standard candles, the details of the analysis, and the implications for the structure of the LMC derived from 2MASS photometry.

### 4.1 Selecting Standard Candles from 2MASS Data

Good standard candles satisfy three conditions: 1) they must be luminous and easily identified; 2) they must be sufficiently numerous and representative of the underlying structure, and 3) they must have small photometric dispersion as a class (that is, small $`\sigma _M`$). In NW00, we argued that stars in Region J of the 2MASS CMD are potentially good standard candles. Being brighter and redder than the RGB tip, most of these stars are carbon-rich thermally-pulsating AGB stars (TP-AGB). Recent data Alves et al. (1998); Wood (1999) suggests that most of these stars exhibit Mira-like variability. The fraction of variables in this region is close to $`100\%`$, although roughly $`25\%`$ could be binaries Wood (1999). Here, we will assume that all sources in Region J are carbon-rich long-period variables. Their red colors effectively discriminate against the population of oxygen-rich LPVs, since the latter rarely have $`JK_s>1.5`$ Hughes & Wood (1990). As long-period variables, these stars follow a linear period-luminosity-color relation (e.g. Feast et al. 1989). The luminosity of these stars can be characterized by their periods or near-infrared colors, and therefore, these stars can be used to probe the structure of the LMC along the line of sight.

The 2MASS sample of C-rich LPVs in the LMC contains 8229 stars. The surface map of Region J is shown in Figure 4.

The luminosity-color relation for these stars results in the well-defined ridge in the figure. In the absence of the period data, we cannot use standard PL or PC relations to calibrate the intrinsic brightness of these variables. Rather, we have to rely on luminosity-color relation. Figure 5 shows the sample of 79 oxygen- and carbon-rich Miras in the LMC Glass et al. (1990). Magnitude and color of each Mira are averaged over period and plotted on top of 2MASS color-magnitude digram. The luminosity-color relation (shown with the solid line) for 14 carbon Miras in the color interval bounded by vertical dashed lines is

$$<K_s>=(0.99\pm 0.80)<JK_s>+(12.36\pm 1.33),\sigma =0.38.$$

The average r.m.s is $`\sigma \text{ }<\text{ }0.3^m`$ for $`1.4<JK_s<1.7`$. Given this LC relation, we may argue that selecting LPVs from a reasonably narrow color range will result in sources with similar luminosities, i.e., standard candles. For our analysis, we choose color interval $`1.6<JK_s<1.7`$, sufficiently narrow to ensure similar luminosities of our standard candles and sufficiently broad to host enough sources (1385) for statistically meaningful inference.

The ridge-line fit above was based on the average LC relation. From analysis of light curves in Glass et al. (1990), the amplitudes of carbon-rich LPVs are $`\mathrm{\Delta }K\text{ }<\text{ }0.5`$ mag, so one may expect significant broadening of the LC relation due to random phase observations. However, as we will demonstrate below (§4.3), the width of main peak in the apparent luminosity function is only $`\sigma 0.2^m`$, even with random phase observations. This suggests that the phase-average LC relation is much tighter.

### 4.2 Method

Without prior knowledge of the true source distribution, which is likely to be irregular due to tidal interaction (e.g. Weinberg 2000) or sufficient characterization of the stellar populations to allow a non-parametric density estimation with all of the data, we study the photometric distribution in several fields in the LMC. The fields are located along two great circle arcs passing through the central region of the Cloud: Arc 1, parallel to the line of nodes, and Arc 2, perpendicular to the line of nodes (see Fig. 6).

The apparent luminosity function can be analyzed in terms of the centroid $`\overline{m}`$ and the width $`2\sigma _m`$ of the distribution. For a homogeneous standard candle population, the centroid of the distribution measures LMC distance and the width of the distribution gives an estimate of its line-of-sight depth. The error analysis of a standard apparent magnitude-absolute magnitude-distance relation gives

$$\sigma _m^2\sigma _M^2+\frac{4.72}{R_{LMC}^2}\sigma _r^2+\sigma _A^2+\sigma _{ph}^2,$$
(3)
where $`R_{LMC}=50`$ kpc is the average distance to the LMC, $`\sigma _M`$ is the intrinsic precision of our standard candles, $`\sigma _A`$ is the variance due to extinction, $`\sigma _r`$ is the geometric depth, and $`\sigma _{ph}`$ is the photometric error. Equation (3) states that the apparent brightness distribution is the convolution of the spatial density and the intrinsic luminosity function and therefore provides an upper limit to the geometrical depth.

### 4.3 Results and Interpretation

The brightness distributions of standard candles in selected fields are shown in Figures 7 and 8.

All fields in Figures 7 and 8 exhibit well-defined central peaks corresponding to the midplane of the LMC disk. We immediately notice that the narrowest features in the brightness distributions have widths $`\sigma _m0.2^m`$ (cf. Field 3). This is a direct evidence that our color-selected sources are standard candles at least as good as $`\sigma _M0.2^m`$. In fact, they are even better, because of the additional terms on the right-hand-side in equation (3). This suggests that carbon LPVs in the narrow ($`0.1`$ mag) color range are excellent standard candles, even observed at random phases.

#### 4.3.1 Analysis of the Distribution Centroids

The centroids of the distributions are consistent with the inclination of the LMC derived in §3. Since Arc 1 is parallel to the line of nodes, the stars in the fields along this arc should be roughly at the same distance. Hence, we do not expect any drift in the means $`\overline{m}`$ for stars in these fields. On the other hand, we expect a shift in the mean magnitude for fields along Arc 2, which is perpendicular to the line of nodes. Assuming the Eastern part of the Cloud is closer to us, sources in Eastern fields should be, on average, brighter than their counterparts in Western fields. Figures 7 and 8 confirm the expectations. The magnitude of the effect is shown in Figure 9 for both arcs as the function of the angular distance from the optical center of the bar.

To improve the signal-to-noise ratio, we take the average $`\overline{m}`$ of the mean magnitudes in three bands and plot the resulting averages normalized to the central field of the respective arc. We find that fields along the North-South line have similar mean magnitude, whereas Eastern fields are on average $`0.1^m`$ brighter and Western fields are $`0.2^m`$ fainter than central bar fields. The magnitude difference is similar to what Caldwell & Coulson (1986) found in their analysis of Cepheids in the Cloud.

Data shown in Figure 9 allow independent determination of the LMC inclination angle. We provide results of two methods: (1) the inclination of the best fit plane to the photometric distance estimate for each field; and (2) the mean inclination of each field paired with the central field. In Method 1, we compute the best fit line through spatial positions of the field centers. The estimates for each arc are $`0.9^{}\pm 0.3^{}`$ and $`42.3^{}\pm 7.2^{}`$, respectively. We observe that the inclinations along our Arc 1, as expected, are consistent with zero, while the inclination angles along Arc 2 are consistent with values in Table 2 at $`2\sigma `$ level. Alternatively, in Method 2 does not presuppose a tilted plane but rather computes the inclination of each field relative to the line of sight through the central field. We then compute the weighted average over all pairs. The resulting inclinations are $`1.0^{}\pm 4.1^{}`$ and $`34.4^{}\pm 2.7^{}`$ for the first and second arcs, respectively.

In principle, this magnitude drift could have been produced by a reddening gradient across the Cloud. However, the extinction maps by Oestreicher & Schmidt-Kaler (1996) do not show any systematic change in reddening in the West-East direction across the LMC. In addition, an analysis of the extinction across the entire cloud based on the location of the giant branch reveals little evidence for significant extinction on average outside of the inner square degree Nikolaev & Weinberg (2000). Moreover, if the magnitude drift were indeed due to reddening gradient, it would have had band-dependent signature. The ratios of magnitude offset in $`J`$, $`H`$, $`K_s`$ bands would be in direct proportion to the extinction coefficients $`A_J`$, $`A_H`$, $`A_K`$. Since this is not the case, we have to reject this possibility and interpret the drift as the true distance effect.

#### 4.3.2 Shape of the Distributions

Careful study of the density distributions in Figures 7 and 8 shows that some distributions have extended tails. For example, distributions in Fields 3 and 4 clearly show positive skewness. Figure 4 also shows the extension of the central ridge toward fainter magnitudes. To quantify the extended component, we model the distribution of LMC disk sources with a properly centered Gaussian. After subtracting the disk component in the central field (Field 3), we find a secondary, broader distribution which contains approximately 90 sources or about a quarter of the total number in the field. This distribution itself appears to have two distinct components. The strongest peak of this extended component is $`0.5`$ mag fainter than that of the disk distribution and a weaker peak is roughly $`0.8`$ mag brighter. In general, the tail toward fainter magnitudes is more pronounced, although the distribution extends to both sides.

Among the factors which could produce the extended component visible in Figures 7 and 8 are: 1) foreground population, 2) source blending, 3) interstellar reddening, 4) population of overtone pulsators, 5) distribution of periods, 6) age/metallicity variations, and 7) spatial density distribution111We do not list spurious detection as the possibility, because the distribution s are the same in three bands, suggesting real feature. Foreground population can be rejected because the fraction of Galactic sources in Region J is nearly zero (see Table 1). Interstellar reddening would produce a band-dependent effect (i.e. longer tails in $`J`$ band than in $`K_s`$ band). We consider each of the remaining five possibilities in detail:

1. Source blending. Considering that the secondary peak runs parallel to the main LC relation (cf. Figure 4), at least one member in the blend must be a carbon star. However, blending a carbon star with an unresolved source would produce a source brighter than the carbon star. This means the secondary peak would be brighter than the main feature, which contradicts to data;
2. Population of overtone pulsators. The question about the pulsation mode of Mira variables seem to have been resolved recently with Miras unambiguously identified as fundamental mode pulsators Wood & Sebo (1996); Wood et al. (1998). It is conceivable, then, that our color-selected sample of standard candles includes a population of first- and higher-overtone LPVs. Based on Figures 7 and 8, this ‘secondary’ population should constitute about $`25\%`$ of the entire sample, and be fainter by $`0.40.5^m`$. We test this possibility by cross-correlating 2MASS data with the sample of Hughes & Wood (1990), which contains fundamental-mode LPVs only. Picking out sources in the color range $`1.6<JK_s<1.7`$ and plotting the histogram of their $`K_s`$ magnitudes reveals the same extended component, approximately $`0.5`$ mag fainter than the main peak. Since the feature is present even in the data without overtone pulsators, this explanation has to be rejected;
3. Distribution of periods. Even in case of zero-dispersion PLC relation for C-rich LPVs, the observed magnitude distribution could result from an intrinsic period distribution (in addition to overtone pulsations discussed above). Although this explanation remains a possibility because the physics of these stars remains uncertain in detail, such an effect is not apparent in current theoretical models, which confirms an intrinsic width of the instability strip but not multiple peaks. Conversely, as previously mentioned, the good fit of the primary peak to the disk inclination gives us confidence in a well-defined instability strip and width of this peak is consistent with other pulsators. Alternatively, the pulsation periods depend on mass and metallicity and distribution of periods implies the range of mass, ages and metallicities, and vice versa. Assuming a range of initial AGB masses leads to the range of intrinsic bolometric magnitudes for a single period Marigo et al. (1996). Marigo’s et al. theoretical evolutionary tracks show the difference in a few tenths of a magnitude for carbon Miras at a constant period, depending on the mass of the star. Fitting the apparent luminosity function to these tracks Cole (2000) suggests that the stronger peak may be due to younger ($`0.6`$ Gyr) and more massive stars ($`2M_{}`$), while the broader component is formed by older ($`2.8`$ Gyr) and less massive ($`1.2M_{}`$) stars. This appears consistent with observations: Frogel et al. (1990) found that carbon stars are present in globular clusters aged 100 Myr to about 3 Gyr and that carbon stars in intermediate-age LMC clusters are a few tenths of a magnitude fainter than those in young LMC clusters. Alves et al. (1998) reported that AGB variables in the intermediate age cluster NGC 1783 are about 0.5 mag brighter at given period than variables in ancient LMC globular cluster NGC 1898. We find two aspects of this possibility to be unsatisfying. First, it does not naturally explain the bright secondary peak. Second, the star formation rate subsequent to the 2.8 Gyr burst would have to be small in order to result in a well-defined feature;
4. Extended density distribution in the LMC. This appears to be the most natural explanation to the observed brightness distributions: it is band-independent, it does not rely on special star formation history, and straightforwardly explains both the brighter and fainter secondary distribution. The distinct feature at fainter magnitudes may be associated with the population kinematically distinct from the disk sources, recently found by Graff et al. (1999). This motivates a detailed kinematic follow-up of the small bright “clump” in the photometric distribution. Based on the offset, this population is 15 kpc from the LMC center and coincident with the intervening population detected by Zaritsky & Lin (1997). The existence of LPVs implies a relatively young population, and the broad area is consistent with tidally stripped material. A future detailed study will attempt to self-consistently model the disk, an extended spheroid component as suggested by Hughes et al. (1991), and test for other distinct features. Regardless of details, the broad photometric distribution suggests that LMC is geometrically thick along the line of sight. From Figures 7 and 8, the average thickness of the LMC is $`2\sigma _m0.7^m`$, which implies a thickness (after deconvolution) of $`14`$ kpc (for the LMC distance $`R_{LMC}=50`$ kpc). This makes the LMC as thick along the line of sight as it is wide across the sky, something which one would naively expect for a dwarf companion in the process of being tidally shredded. In summary, the spatial interpretation of these photometric distributions suggests the LMC consists of a centrally concentrated barred disk and some number of extended distributions, including a spheroid and tidally distorted and possibly stripped populations.

## 5 Summary

We have analyzed the spatial distributions of several LMC populations, identified in NW00 based on their location in the color-magnitude diagram. Quantitative analysis of the observed distributions includes parametric source-count and a preliminary standard candle analyses. Our major conclusions are:

* Projected star count analyses based 2MASS data yield scale lengths, deprojection-based inclinations, and position angles consistent with previous studies. The near-far degeneracy of the disk orientation is broken by perspective difference. The near side of the Cloud subtends a larger angle in the sky-and this allows us to determine that Eastern side of the disk is closer, in agreement with Cepheid-based results.
* We propose using carbon-rich LPVs in a narrow color range, $`1.6<JK_s<1.7`$ as standard candles to probe the structure of the LMC along the line of sight. Based on published light curves, their intrinsic magnitudes have a dispersion of $`\text{ }<\text{ }0.3^m`$ including the random phase of the observations. The width of the LMC disk in the observed photometric distribution ($`\sigma _m0.2`$) suggests that these are excellent standard candles.
* The photometric distribution of our standard candle sample reveals strong central peak with extended tails in both directions, with tail toward fainter magnitudes more pronounced. In the densest field, the distributions in all bands show two secondary peaks, $`0.5`$ mag fainter and $`0.8`$ mag brighter than the primary. We interpret the primary peak as due to the midplane of the LMC disk and examine various possibilities which could produce the tails and secondary peaks of observed distribution. We conclude that the photometric distribution of standard candles is most likely caused by a spatially extended stellar component and tidally stripped debris, consistent with a tidally disturbed dwarf companion. It is possible that the distribution reflects the intrinsic period distribution of LPVs but or distinct populations of masses (ages) and metallicities for these stars, but such explanations special populations or evolutionary histories.
* The distribution of apparent magnitudes of standard candles is consistent with tilted geometry derived from star counts. We derive a direct determination of the LMC disk inclination of $`42.3^{}\pm 7.2^{}`$, consistent with Laney & Stobie (1986) estimate of $`45^{}\pm 7^{}`$ and with results of Welch et al. (1987), $`37^{}\pm 16^{}`$. Interpreting the apparent luminosity function as due to real source density, we find evidence of the extended component of the LMC, with a width of approximately 14 kpc (for the LMC distance $`R_{LMC}=50`$ kpc).

This detection of this thick component implies that LMC may contain a kinematically distinct population as suggested by Graff et al. (1999) and/or an the extended component found by Hughes et al. (1991) and predicted for the tidal interaction with the Milky Way (Weinberg 2000). The existence of such a population will affect the self-lensing models of the LMC in the microlensing studies. These preliminary results suggest a number of projects for short- and long-term follow-up. An improved analysis of the 2MASS sample may be obtained with larger sample of standard candles, or with full three dimensional analysis based on several distinct standard candles using data from the entire survey rather than selected fields (work in progress). Assuming that the extended stars originated in the disk, both populations will appear rotationally supported. However, using the 2MASS photometric distribution as a guide, a combined disk and extended spheroid population should be kinematically separable and these stars are good candidates for future spectroscopic work.

## Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Peter Wood for MACHO data on variable stars and for help in interpretation of these data. We are grateful to Michael Skrutskie and Andrew Cole for careful reading of the manuscript and suggesting ways of improving it. We thank Shashi Kanbur for helpful advice regarding LPVs. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

## Appendix A Parametric Maximum Likelihood

The expected source density for a bin in the direction ($`\alpha _i`$, $`\delta _j`$) is determined by integrating the LMC density model along the line of sight across the bin. This is given by the following integral:

$`\rho _{ij}^{exp}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑tt^2{\displaystyle _{\delta _j\mathrm{\Delta }\delta /2}^{\delta _j+\mathrm{\Delta }\delta /2}}𝑑\delta \mathrm{cos}\delta {\displaystyle _{\alpha _i\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /2}^{\alpha _i+\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /2}}𝑑\alpha \rho (t,\alpha ,\delta )`$ (A1)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑tt^2\rho (t,\alpha _i,\delta _j)\mathrm{cos}\delta _j\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\delta ,`$
where the last equality assumes that the bin size $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ is sufficiently small. We perform the integral in (A1) using 256-point Gaussian quadrature formula, with $`20`$ kpc and $`80`$ kpc as the integration limits. The underlying source density $`\rho (t,\alpha ,\delta )`$ is given either by equation (1) or by equation (2). The coordinate transformations for both models follow.

### A.1 Exponential Disk

To quantify $`\rho ()`$, we introduce the coordinate system $`\{x_0,y_0,z_0\}`$ which has the origin at the center of the LMC at $`\{t,\alpha ,\delta \}=\{R_{LMC},\alpha _0,\delta _0\}`$ and has $`z_0`$-axis toward the observer, $`x_0`$-axis antiparallel to the right ascension axis, and $`y_0`$-axis parallel to the declination axis. The coordinate transformations are given by

$`x_0`$ $`=`$ $`t\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{sin}(\alpha \alpha _0)`$
$`y_0`$ $`=`$ $`t\mathrm{sin}\delta \mathrm{cos}\delta _0t\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{sin}\delta _0\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \alpha _0)`$ (A2)
$`z_0`$ $`=`$ $`R_{LMC}t\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{cos}\delta _0\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \alpha _0)t\mathrm{sin}\delta \mathrm{sin}\delta _0.`$
The coordinate system of the exponential disk, $`\{x^{},y^{},z^{}\}`$, is the same rectangular system as $`\{x_0,y_0,z_0\}`$, except rotated about $`z_0`$-axis by the position angle $`\theta `$ counterclockwise and about the new $`x^{}`$-axis by inclination angle $`i`$ clockwise. The coordinate transformations are given by

$`x^{}`$ $`=`$ $`x_0\mathrm{cos}\theta +y_0\mathrm{sin}\theta `$
$`y^{}`$ $`=`$ $`x_0\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}i+y_0\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cos}iz_0\mathrm{sin}i`$ (A3)
$`z^{}`$ $`=`$ $`x_0\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}i+y_0\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{sin}i+z_0\mathrm{cos}i.`$
Because our resolution in photometric distance is larger than the disk thickness, the integral in equation (A1) may be simplified by assuming that the exponential disk is infinitely thin, i.e. $`z^{}=0`$ for all points of the disk. The contribution to the integral is zero everywhere, then, except the point where line of sight intercepts the plane of the disk. The value of $`t`$ at the intercept, $`\overline{t}`$, is

$`\overline{t}`$ $`=`$ $`R_{LMC}\mathrm{cos}i\times [\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{sin}(\alpha \alpha _0)\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}i`$ (A5)
$`+\left(\mathrm{sin}\delta \mathrm{cos}\delta _0\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{sin}\delta _0\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \alpha _0)\right)\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{sin}i`$
$`(\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{cos}\delta _0\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \alpha _0)+\mathrm{sin}\delta \mathrm{sin}\delta _0)\mathrm{cos}i]^1.`$
The values of $`x_0`$, $`y_0`$ and $`z_0`$ coordinates at the intercept point follow from equation (A.1). The radius of the intercept point in the plane of the exponential disk is given by

$$r=\sqrt{x^2+y^2}.$$
(A6)
Finally, the expected source density (A1) may be written as

$$\rho _{ij}^{exp}\overline{t}^2\mathrm{exp}(r/R)\mathrm{cos}\delta _j,$$
(A7)
where $`\overline{t}`$ and $`r`$ are given by equations (A5) and (A6), respectively.

### A.2 Power Law Model

Treatment of the spherical power law model is much simpler. Unlike the disk, there is no unique axis of symmetry and one may write the density (2) in the coordinates $`t`$, $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ directly. It is straightforward to verify that

$$r=\sqrt{t^2+R_{LMC}^22R_{LMC}t\left[\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{cos}\delta _0\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \alpha _0)+\mathrm{sin}\delta \mathrm{sin}\delta _0\right]}.$$
(A8)


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# Algebraic characterization of constraints and generation of mass in gauge theories

## 1 INTRODUCTION

In this paper we discuss a new approach to quantum gauge theories, from a group-theoretic perspective, in which mass enters the theory in a natural way. More precisely, the presence of mass will manifest through non-trivial responses

$$U\mathrm{\Psi }=D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}(U)\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(1)
of the wavefunctional $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ under the action of gauge transformations $`U\stackrel{~}{T}`$, where we denote by $`D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}`$ a specific representation of the gauge group $`\stackrel{~}{T}`$ with index $`m`$. The standard case $`D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}(U)=1,U\stackrel{~}{T}`$ corresponds to the well-known ‘Gauss law’ condition, which also reads $`\mathrm{\Phi }_a\mathrm{\Psi }=0`$ for infinitesimal gauge transformations $`U1+\varphi ^a\mathrm{\Phi }_a`$. The case of Abelian representations $`D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(\vartheta )}(U_n)=e^{in\vartheta }`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{T}`$, where $`n`$ denotes the winding number of $`U_n`$, leads to the well-known $`\vartheta `$-vacuum phenomena. We shall see that more general (non-Abelian) representations $`D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}`$ of the gauge group $`\stackrel{~}{T}`$ entail non-equivalent quantizations (in the sense of, e.g. ) and a generation of mass.

This non-trivial response of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ under gauge transformations $`U`$ causes a deformation of the corresponding Lie-algebra commutators and leads to the appearance of central terms proportional to mass parameters (eventually parametrizing the non-equivalent quantizations) in the algebra of constraints, which then become a mixture of first- and second-class constraints. As a result, extra (internal) field degrees of freedom emerge out of second-class constraints and are transferred to the gauge potentials to conform massive bosons (without Higgs fields!).

Thus, the ‘classical’ case $`D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}=1`$ is not in general preserved in passing to the quantum theory. Upon quantization, first-class constraints (connected with a gauge invariance of the classical system) might become second-class, a metamorphosis which is familiar when quantizing anomalous gauge theories. Quantum “anomalies” change the picture of physical states being singlets under the constraint algebra. Anomalous (unexpected) situations generally go with the standard viewpoint of quantizing classical systems and the avoidance of them is evident when quantizing, for example, Yang-Mills theory with chiral fermions, where a cancellation of gauge anomalies is apparently needed; however, these breakdowns, which sometimes are inescapable obstacles for canonical quantization, could be reinterpreted as normal (even essential) situations in a wider setting. Dealing with constraints directly in the quantum arena, this transmutation in the nature of constraints should be naturally allowed, as it provides new richness to the quantum theory.

This cohomological mechanism of mass generation makes perfect sense from a Group Approach to Quantization (GAQ ) framework, which is, at heart, an operator description of a quantum system. Thus, our essential ingredient to define a quantum system will be a given underlying symmetry algebra $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}`$ rather than an action functional $`S`$, which is the standard starting point in the usual (“classically-oriented”) formulation of QFT.

In order to set the context, let us describe a simple, but illustrative, example of an abstract quantizing algebra $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}`$ which eventually applies to a diversity of physical systems.

## 2 A SIMPLE ABSTRACT QUANTIZING ALGEBRA

Our particular algebra under study will be the following:

$`[X_j,P_k]`$ $`=`$ $`i\delta _{jk}I,`$
$`[\mathrm{\Phi }_a,\mathrm{\Phi }_b]`$ $`=`$ $`if_{ab}^c\mathrm{\Phi }_c+im_{ab}I,`$ (2)
$`[X_j,\mathrm{\Phi }_a]`$ $`=`$ $`i\stackrel{ˇ}{f}_{ja}^kX_k,[P_j,\mathrm{\Phi }_a]=i\stackrel{ˇ}{f}_{ja}^kP_k,`$
where $`X_j`$ and $`P_k`$ represent standard “position” and “momentum” operators, respectively, corresponding to the extended phase space $``$ of the preconstrained (free-like) theory; The operators $`\mathrm{\Phi }_a`$ represent the constraints which, for the moment, are supposed to close a Lie subalgebra $`\stackrel{~}{𝒯}`$ with structure constants $`f_{ab}^c`$ and central charges $`m_{ab}`$. We also consider a diagonal action of constraints $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ on $`X`$ and $`P`$ with structure constants $`\stackrel{ˇ}{f}_{ja}^k`$ (non-diagonal actions mixing $`X`$ and $`P`$ lead to interesting “anomalous” situations which we shall not discuss here ). By $`I`$ we simply denote the identity operator, that is, the generator of the typical phase invariance $`\mathrm{\Psi }e^{i\beta }\mathrm{\Psi }`$ of Quantum Mechanics. At this stage, it is worth mentioning that we could have introduced dynamics in our model by adding a Hamiltonian operator $`H`$ to $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}`$. However, we have preferred not to include it because, although we could make compatible the dynamics $`H`$ and the constraints $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, the price could result in an unpleasant enlarging of $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}`$, which would make the quantization procedure much more involved. Anyway, for us, the true dynamics (that which preserves the constraints) will eventually arise as part of the set of good operators (observables) of the theory (see below).

Note that a flexibility in the class of the constraints has being allowed by introducing arbitrary central charges $`m_{ab}`$ in (2). Thus, the operators $`\mathrm{\Phi }_a`$ represent a mixed set of first- and second-class constraints. Let us denote by $`𝒯^{(1)}=\{\mathrm{\Phi }_n^{(1)}\}`$ the subalgebra of first-class constraints, that is, the ones which do not give rise to central terms proportional to $`m_{ab}`$ at the right hand side of the commutators (2). The rest of constraints (second-class) will be arranged by conjugated pairs $`(\mathrm{\Phi }_{+\alpha }^{(2)},\mathrm{\Phi }_\alpha ^{(2)})`$, so that $`m_{+\alpha ,\alpha }0`$.

The simplest (‘classical’) case is when $`m_{ab}=0,a,b`$, that is, when all constraints are first class $`𝒯^{(1)}=𝒯=\stackrel{~}{𝒯}/u(1)`$ and wave functions are singlets under $`𝒯`$. However, the ‘quantum’ case $`m_{ab}0`$ entails non-equivalent quantizations with important physical consequences. This possibility indicates a non-trivial response (1) of the wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ under $`\stackrel{~}{𝒯}`$. That is, $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ acquires a non-trivial dependence on extra degrees of freedom $`\varphi _\alpha ^{(2)}`$ (‘negative modes’ attached to pairs of second-class constraints), in addition to the usual configuration space variables $`x_j`$ (attached to $`X_j`$).

Let us formally outline the actual construction of the unitary irreducible representations of the group $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ with Lie-algebra (2). Wave functions $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ are defined as complex functions on $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }:\stackrel{~}{G}C`$, so that the (let us say) left-action

$$L_{\stackrel{~}{g}^{}}\mathrm{\Psi }(\stackrel{~}{g})\mathrm{\Psi }(\stackrel{~}{g}^{}\stackrel{~}{g}),\stackrel{~}{g}^{},\stackrel{~}{g}\stackrel{~}{G}$$
(3)
defines a reducible (in general) representation of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$. The reduction is achieved by means of that maximal set of right restrictions on wave functions

$$R_{\stackrel{~}{g}_p}\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Psi },\stackrel{~}{g}_pG_p,$$
(4)
(which commute with the left action) compatible with the natural condition $`I\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Psi }`$. The right restrictions (4) generalize the notion of polarization conditions of Geometric Quantization and give rise to a certain representation space depending on the choice of the subgroup $`G_p\stackrel{~}{G}`$. For the algebra (2), a polarization subgroup can be $`G_p^{(P)}=F_P\times _sT_p`$, that is, the semi-direct product of the Abelian group of translations $`F_P`$ generated by $`_P\{P_k\}`$ (half of the symplectic generators in $``$) by a polarization subalgebra $`𝒯_p=\{\mathrm{\Phi }_n^{(1)},\mathrm{\Phi }_{+\alpha }^{(2)}\}`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{T}`$ consisting of first-class constraints and half of second-class constraints (namely, the ‘positive modes’). The polarization conditions (4) lead to the configuration-space representation made of wave functions $`\mathrm{\Psi }(x_j,\varphi _\alpha ^{(2)})`$ depending arbitrarily on the group coordinates on $`\stackrel{~}{G}/G_p`$ only. Thus, as mentioned above, wave functions transform non-trivially under the left-action $`L_\varphi \mathrm{\Psi }(\stackrel{~}{g})=D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}(\varphi )\mathrm{\Psi }(\stackrel{~}{g})`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{T}`$ according to a given representation $`D_{\stackrel{~}{T}}^{(m)}`$ like in (1). The physical Hilbert space is made of those wave functions $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ph}.}`$ that transform as ‘highest-weight vectors’ under $`\stackrel{~}{T}`$, that is, they stay invariant under the left-action of first-class constraints and (let us say) negative second-class modes:

$`L_{\varphi _n^{(1)}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ph}.}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ph}.},n=1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{dim}(T^{(1)}),`$
$`L_{\varphi _\alpha ^{(2)}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ph}.}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{ph}.},\alpha =1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{dim}(T/T^{(1)})/2,`$ (5)
which close the subgroup $`T_p\stackrel{~}{T}`$.

The counting of true degrees of freedom is as follows: polarized-constrained wave functions (5) depend arbitrarily on $`d=\mathrm{dim}(\stackrel{~}{G})\mathrm{dim}(G_p)\mathrm{dim}(T_p)1`$ reduced-space coordinates (we are subtracting the phase coordinate $`e^{i\beta }`$). The algebra of observables of the theory, $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}_{\mathrm{good}}𝒰(\stackrel{~}{𝒢})`$ (the enveloping algebra), has to be found inside the normalizer of constraints, that is:

$$[\stackrel{~}{𝒢}_{\mathrm{good}},𝒯_p]𝒯_p.$$
(6)
From this characterization, the subalgebra of first-class constraints $`𝒯^{(1)}`$ become a horizontal ideal (a gauge subalgebra ) of $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}_{\mathrm{good}}`$. The Hamiltonian operator has to be found inside $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}_{\mathrm{good}}`$ by using extra physical arguments.

In what follows, the quantization of massless and massive non-Abelian Yang-Mills, linear Gravity and Abelian two-form gauge field theories are developed from this new approach, where a cohomological origin of mass is pointed out.

## 3 UNIFIED QUANTIZATION OF MASSLESS AND MASSIVE VECTOR AND TENSOR BOSONS

Let us start with the simplest case of the electromagnetic field. Let us use a Fourier parametrization

$`A_\mu (x)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{2k^0}[a_\mu (k)e^{ikx}+a_\mu ^{}(k)e^{ikx}]},`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }(x)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{2k^0}[\phi (k)e^{ikx}+\phi ^{}(k)e^{ikx}]},`$ (7)
for the vector potential $`A_\mu (x)`$ and the constraints $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x)`$ (the generators of local $`U(1)(x)`$ gauge transformations). The Lie algebra $`\stackrel{~}{𝒢}`$ of the quantizing electromagnetic group $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ has the following form

$`[a_\mu (k),a_\nu ^{}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`\eta _{\mu \nu }\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$
$`[\phi (k),\phi ^{}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`k^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$
$`[a_\mu ^{}(k),\phi (k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`ik_\mu \mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$
$`[a_\mu (k),\phi ^{}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`ik_\mu \mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$ (8)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}=2k^0\delta ^3(kk^{})`$ is the generalized delta function on the positive sheet of the mass hyperboloid and $`k^2=m^2`$ is the squared mass. Constraints are first-class for $`k^2=0`$ and constraint equations $`\phi \mathrm{\Psi }=0=\phi ^{}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ keep 2 field degrees of freedom out of the original 4, as corresponds to a photon. For $`k^20`$, constraints are second-class and the restrictions $`\phi \mathrm{\Psi }=0`$ keep 3 field degrees of freedom out of the original 4, as corresponds to a Proca field.

For symmetric and anti-symmetric tensor potentials $`A_{\mu \nu }^{(\pm )}`$, the algebra is the following :

$`[a_{\lambda \nu }^{(\pm )}(k),a_{\rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`N_{\lambda \nu \rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$
$`[\phi _\rho ^{(\pm )}(k),\phi _\sigma ^{(\pm )}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`k^2M_{\rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}(k)\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$
$`[a_{\lambda \nu }^{(\pm )}(k),\phi _\sigma ^{(\pm )}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`ik^\rho N_{\lambda \nu \rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$
$`[a_{\lambda \nu }^{(\pm )}(k),\phi _\sigma ^{(\pm )}(k^{})]`$ $`=`$ $`ik^\rho N_{\lambda \nu \rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,`$ (9)
where $`M_{\rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}(k)\eta _{\rho \sigma }\kappa _{()}\frac{k_\rho k_\sigma }{k^2}`$ and $`N_{\lambda \nu \rho \sigma }^{(\pm )}\eta _{\lambda \rho }\eta _{\nu \sigma }\pm \eta _{\lambda \sigma }\eta _{\nu \rho }\kappa _{(\pm )}\eta _{\lambda \nu }\eta _{\rho \sigma }`$, with $`\kappa _{(+)}=1`$ and $`\kappa _{()}=0`$. For the massless $`k^2=0`$ case, all constraints are first-class for the symmetric case, whereas the massless, anti-symmetric case possesses a couple of second-class constraints:

$$[\stackrel{ˇ}{k}^\rho \phi _\rho ^{()}(k),\stackrel{ˇ}{k}^{}{}_{}{}^{\sigma }\phi _{\sigma }^{()}(k^{})]=4(k^0)^4\mathrm{\Delta }_{kk^{}}I,$$
(10)
where $`\stackrel{ˇ}{k}^\rho k_\rho `$. Thus, first-class constraints for the massless anti-symmetric case are $`𝒯_{()}^{(1)}=\{ϵ_\mu ^\rho \phi _\rho ^{()},ϵ_\mu ^\rho \phi _\rho ^{()}\},\mu =0,1,2,`$ where $`ϵ_\mu ^\rho `$ is a tetrad which diagonalizes the matrix $`P_{\rho \sigma }=k_\rho k_\sigma `$; in particular, we choose $`ϵ_3^\rho \stackrel{ˇ}{k}^\rho `$ and $`ϵ_0^\rho k^\rho `$. There are $`2=108`$ true degrees of freedom for the symmetric case (a massless graviton) and $`1=65`$ for the anti-symmetric case (a pseudo-scalar particle).

For $`k^20`$, all constraints are second-class for the symmetric case, whereas, for the anti-symmetric case, constraints close a Proca-like subalgebra which leads to three pairs of second-class constraints, and a pair of gauge vector fields $`(k^\lambda \phi _\lambda ^{()},k^\lambda \phi _\lambda ^{()})`$. The constraint equations keep $`6=104`$ field degrees of freedom for the symmetric case (massive spin 2 particle \+ massive scalar field —the trace of the symmetric tensor), and $`3=63`$ field degrees of freedom for the anti-symmetric case (massive pseudo-vector particle).

For non-Abelian $`SU(N)`$ Yang-Mills theories in the Weyl gauge $`A^0=0`$ there is still a residual gauge invariance $`T=\mathrm{Map}(\mathrm{}^3,SU(N))`$. The basic commutators between the non-Abelian vector potentials $`A_a^j(x),j=1,2,3;a=1,\mathrm{},N^21`$, the electric field $`E_a^j(x)`$ and the (Gauss law) constraints $`\mathrm{\Phi }_a(x)`$ are

$`[A_a^j(x),E_b^k(y)]`$ $`=`$ $`i\delta _{ab}\delta ^{jk}\delta (xy)I,`$
$`[\mathrm{\Phi }_a(x),\mathrm{\Phi }_b(y)]`$ $`=`$ $`if_{ab}^c\delta (xy)\mathrm{\Phi }_c(x)`$
$`if_{ab}^c{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _c}{r^2}}\delta (xy)I,`$
$`[A_a^j(x),\mathrm{\Phi }_b(y)]`$ $`=`$ $`if_{ab}^c\delta (xy)A_c^j(x)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{r}}\delta _{ab}_x^j\delta (xy)I,`$
$`[E_a^j(x),\mathrm{\Phi }_b(y)]`$ $`=`$ $`if_{ab}^c\delta (xy)E_c^j(x),`$ (11)
where $`r`$ is the coupling constant and $`\lambda _{ab}=f_{ab}^c\lambda _c`$ is a mass matrix $`(\lambda m^3`$). Let us denote by $`c\mathrm{dim}(T^{(1)})`$ and $`\tau N^21`$ the dimensions of the rigid subgroup of first-class constraints and $`SU(N)`$ respectively. Unpolarized wave functions $`\mathrm{\Psi }(A_a^j,E_a^j,\varphi _a)`$ depend on $`n=2\times 3\tau +\tau `$ field coordinates in $`d=3`$ dimensions; polarization equations introduce $`p=c+\frac{nc}{2}`$ independent restrictions on wave functions, corresponding to $`c`$ non-dynamical coordinates in $`T^{(1)}`$ and half of the dynamical ones; finally, constraints (5) impose $`q=c+\frac{\tau c}{2}`$ additional restrictions which leave $`f=npq=2c+3(\tau c)`$ field degrees of freedom (in $`d=3`$). These fields correspond to $`c`$ massless vector bosons (2 polarizations) attached to $`T^{(1)}`$ and $`\tau c`$ massive vector bosons. In particular, for the massless case, we have $`c=\tau `$, since constraints are first-class (that is, we can impose $`q=\tau `$ restrictions) and constrained wave functions have support on $`f_{m=0}=3\tau \tau =2\tau f_{m0}`$ arbitrary fields corresponding to $`\tau `$ massless vector bosons. The subalgebra $`𝒯^{(1)}`$ corresponds to the unbroken gauge symmetry of the constrained theory. There are distinct symmetry-breaking patterns $`\stackrel{~}{𝒯}𝒯^{(1)}`$ according to the different choices of mass-matrices $`\lambda _{ab}=f_{ab}^c\lambda _c`$ in (11).


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# Large-Scale Cosmic Shear Measurements

## 1. Introduction

Weak lensing provides a potentially powerful probe of mass fluctuations in the Universe (Gunn (1967); Mellier (1999) and references therein). Three independent groups have recently presented estimates of the shear variance from deep ‘blank-field’ CCD imaging surveys. Van Waerbeke et al. (2000) (hereafter vWME+) measured the shear variance in circular cells of radii ranging from $`0^{}.7`$ to $`3^{}.5`$; Bacon et al. (2000) (hereafter BRE) measured the shear variance in square cells of side $`8^{}.0`$ and Wittman et al. (2000) (hereafter WTK+) have provided estimates of the shear-shear correlation function at separations $`3^{}.25`$, $`8^{}.5`$ and $`22^{}.0`$. Here we present shear variance measurements from $`1.5`$ square degrees of deep photometry obtained as part of our ongoing weak lensing survey. We find results which are broadly in good agreement with the recently published estimates.

## 2. The Data

The data were taken at the 3.6m CFHT telescope using the $`8192\times 8192`$ pixel UH8K camera at prime focus. The camera delivers a field size of $`0^{}.5`$ with $`0^{\prime \prime }.207`$ pixels. Our survey strategy has been to target blank fields in six widely separated areas for ease of scheduling, and in each area we plan to make $`6`$ or so pointings scattered over a region of extent $`3^{}`$. In January 1999 the UH8K was replaced by the CFH12K camera. By that time we had completed 1 hour integrations in both V and I for two pointings in each of three areas. The field names, centers and also the estimated seeing are given in table 1. One of the 8 devices in the mosaic (lying in the NW corner of our images) has very poor charge transfer efficiency and the data from this device were discarded. After further masking of regions around bright stars the total useful solid angle per field is $`0.16`$ square degrees.

## 3. Data Reduction

The data were reduced much as for our MS0302 supercluster observations Kaiser et al. (1999). After flat fielding, an object finder was applied to each image, and a set of bright but non-saturated stars extracted for registration purposes. The positions of these stars, along with celestial coordinates from the USNOA Monet (1998) catalog, were used to find a mapping from image pixel coordinates to orthographic sky coordinates.

Images of the stars were analyzed to generate a model for the point spread function (PSF) $`g(𝐱;𝐫)`$, this being the 2-dimensional profile of a star with centroid at $`𝐫`$ measured in coordinates $`𝐱`$ being measured relative to the centroid. The model is a sum of 2-D image valued modes $`g_i(𝐱)`$: $`g(𝐱;𝐫)=_ic_i(𝐫)g_i(𝐱)`$ with coefficients $`c_i(𝐫)`$ which are low order polynomials in star position. We found a 1st order model to be adequate to describe the variation of the PSF with position on the chip (though see below).

The astrometric solutions, the PSF models, and also standard star observations were first used to create a set of photometrically calibrated ‘homogenized’ images which were degraded to have a common identical PSF. These images were compared in order to identify cosmic rays and other transient events. Next, for each raw image we generated a re-circularized image by convolving with a 90-degree rotated version of the PSF model. These, as well as the raw images, were then warped to sky coordinates, with previously identified cosmic rays being removed, and the stacks of images combined to provide a quilt of overlapping images. This procedure results in three images: a median of the raw images (in which the PSF is generally non-circular), a median of the re-circularized images, and also a sky-noise image. The final summed images were sampled with $`0^{\prime \prime }.15`$ pixel size.

The final object catalogs were obtained by applying hfindpeaks to the median averaged raw images, this program having been modified in order to allow properly for the non-trivial noise correlations in the final images. After applying aperture photometry analysis, shapes of the objects were measured as described in ?). The essential result of this is a polarization vector $`q_\alpha =M_{\alpha lm}d^2xw(x)x_lx_mf(𝐱)`$ formed as a combination of weighted second moments of the re-circularized image, and a polarizability tensor which describes the response of the polarization to gravitational shear. The weight function $`w(x)`$ was taken to be a Gaussian ball of 2 pixels in scale length. For convenience, the quantities actually generated were the normalized polarization $`\widehat{q}_\alpha =q_\alpha /\sqrt{q_\beta q_\beta }`$ and a polarizability $`Q`$ defined such that for galaxies with this shape and size, the expectation value of $`\widehat{q}_\alpha `$ is $`\widehat{q}_\alpha =Q\gamma _\alpha `$. The $`q_\alpha `$ values were corrected for artificial shear introduced in the image warping by slight errors in our astrometric solution.

Finally a selection on significance of $`4\nu 100`$ was applied to select a ‘faint galaxy’ catalog. The corresponding magnitude limits are somewhat fuzzy since significance depends on both size and magnitude. The counts (number per magnitude interval) turn over at about $`m_\mathrm{I}24`$ and $`m_\mathrm{V}25`$. Numbers of objects in the final catalogs are shown in table 3. The density of objects on the sky is very similar to that in the images obtained by vWME+, WTK+, and slightly higher than the density of objects in the BRE sample, so our shear variance estimates should be more or less directly comparable.

Given a single galaxy, a fair (but very noisy) estimate of the shear is $`\gamma _\alpha =\widehat{q}_\alpha /Q`$. However, since the normalized polarization response $`Q`$ varies with shape and size of the object (small objects having very little response for example), to measure the mean shear in a region containing $`N`$ galaxies one should weight the individual estimates by $`Q^2`$ so the optimal mean shear estimate is $`\overline{\gamma }_\alpha =Q\widehat{q}_\alpha /Q^2`$. This assumes that one has little prior knowledge of the of galaxy redshifts. If the averaging region contains a large number of galaxies, as is the case for the cells considered here, one can replace $`Q^2`$ by $`NQ^2`$ where the $`Q^2`$ is an average over all of the galaxies in the catalog. The optimal mean shear is then the average of weighted shear values for the individual galaxies: $`\gamma _G=\omega _G\widehat{q}_G/Q_G`$, with normalized weight $`\omega _GQ_G^2/Q^2`$. The quantity $`Q^2`$ is a useful measure of the image quality. It is equal to the inverse shear variance per galaxy, so, for instance, the statistical uncertainty in the mean shear $`\overline{\gamma }`$ measured from a sample of $`N`$ galaxies is $`\sigma _{\overline{\gamma }}^2=1/(NQ^2)`$. The values of $`Q^2`$ are also given in table 3.

Preliminary results of this analysis Wilson et al. (1999) in the form of estimates of the net shear for each of the six fields and for catalogs generated from the I and V images separately gave shear values typically of about 1%, but with a few larger values. These, however, showed little correlation between the two passbands, suggesting that the results were contaminated by some systematic error. Examination of the re-circularized images of the stars in the fields with seemingly spurious shear values revealed at least a major part of the problem. The mean stellar polarization was found to vary systematically with magnitude. This is to be expected for very bright stars where the pixels saturate and charge begins to bleed along the slow direction of the CCD. The effect found here had the same signature (a trend for $`q_1`$ to become negative for bright objects) but appeared at a low level and, unexpectedly, for stars much fainter than the saturation limit. The result was that in some cases our PSF model fitting procedure, which weighted stars according to brightness, did not correctly recircularize the faint stars as it should (since we require the PSF appropriate for faint galaxies). The effect seemed to be variable, and also tended to be associated with particular chips. As a simple fix, we fit the residual polarizations for the faintest stars ($`I>18`$, $`V>21`$) to a 4th order spatial polynomial and then used a smear polarizability analogous to that defined by ?) to correct the galaxy $`q_\alpha `$ values. This reduced the spurious shear values considerably.

## 4. Cosmic Shear Variance

We have chosen to focus here on a single simple statistic: the variance of the shear averaged in cells of various sizes. This is the statistic used by vWME+ and BRE and is simply related to the shear covariance function presented by WTK+. The cell averaged shear variance is also simply computable from the spectrum of mass fluctuations (e.g. Kaiser (1992)), so this provides a useful link between observation and theory. Now each weighted shear estimate $`\gamma _G`$ consists of a random intrinsic component $`\gamma _{G\mathrm{int}}`$ and a ‘cosmic’ component proportional to the integral of the tidal field along the line of sight. Modeling the cosmic shear as the sum over a set of statistically independent screens, we have

$$\gamma _G=\gamma _{G\mathrm{int}}+\omega _G\underset{S}{}\gamma _S(𝜽_G)\beta (z_G,z_S)$$
(1)
where $`\gamma _S(𝜽)`$ is the shear field for the $`S`$th screen and for fictitious sources at infinite distance, and $`\beta \mathrm{max}(0,1D_{SG}/D_{OG})`$ is the usual ratio of angular diameter distances.

This model allows one to compute the variance of the shear averaged over galaxies falling in a cell on the sky. We will also be interested in the co-variance of shear measured in different passbands. Consider the mean shear $`\overline{\gamma }_P=(1/N_P)\gamma _P`$ for a specific cell and for galaxies found in two passbands $`P=A,B`$. Averaging over realizations of random intrinsic shear values, and also averaging over an ensemble of realizations of cosmic shear screens, yields

$$\overline{𝜸}_A\overline{𝜸}_B=\frac{N_{AB}}{N_AN_B}𝜸_A𝜸_B+\underset{S}{}\omega _A\beta _{AS}\omega _B\beta _{BS}\overline{\gamma }_S^2$$
(2)
where $`N_{AB}`$ is the number of objects in the cell which were detected in both passbands. This formula is also valid when $`A`$ and $`B`$ are the same. The expectation value of the dot product of the cell averaged shear is therefore equal to a noise term plus a cosmic term which is a sum of the cell-averaged shear variances for the screens. Interestingly, the noise term involves the total shear variance $`𝜸_A𝜸_B`$, containing both intrinsic and cosmic contributions, which is convenient since this is the quantity that one can actually measure. In obtaining (2) we assumed that the faint galaxies are randomly distributed on the sky, this being motivated by the fact that the angular correlation function is very small, with $`w(\theta )<10^2`$ on all relevant scales.

To implement this, for each field we averaged the shear in a grid of contiguous square cells of side $`L`$, and those cells in the lower quartile of occupation number were discarded. To obtain an estimate of the cosmic shear variance we then computed for each field

$$\overline{𝜸}^2_{AB}=\frac{1}{n_{\mathrm{cells}}}\underset{\mathrm{cells}}{}\left[\overline{𝜸}_A\overline{𝜸}_BN_{AB}𝜸_A𝜸_B/(N_AN_B)\right].$$
(3)
The shear covariance functions are $`𝜸_\mathrm{I}𝜸_\mathrm{I}=1/Q^2_\mathrm{I}`$ and $`𝜸_\mathrm{V}𝜸_\mathrm{V}=1/Q^2_\mathrm{V}`$ whereas $`𝜸_\mathrm{I}𝜸_\mathrm{V}`$ was estimated by correlating the shears for objects which were detected in both the I and V catalogs. The shear variances estimated from the separate fields were then averaged together to obtain a final cosmic shear variance with uncertainty estimated from the scatter of the field estimates about the mean.

The diagonal components of $`\overline{𝜸}^2_{AB}`$ provide estimates for the shear variance for the respective passbands, with strength roughly proportional to the square of the mean distance to the galaxies (assuming a spectrum of mass fluctuations with index $`n1`$), and the off-diagonal components should lie somewhere in between. The results are shown in figure 4 and in table 4 and deviate somewhat from this expectation: the I-V cross correlation lies systematically below both the I- and V-band shear variance estimates. These results are robust to changes in the order of the polynomial in the stellar polarization model, and they are not caused by a few discrepant cells.

The difference between the I and V band shear variance may be due to differences in the redshift distributions, some evidence for which was found by ?) in their study of MS1054. However, we typically find about 60% of the galaxies are detected in both passbands, so this requires fairly high redshifts for the blue galaxies. For example, assume that the I-band sample has a redshift distribution like that measured by Cowie (personal communication) in the range $`23<\mathrm{I}_{\mathrm{AB}}<24.0`$, but that the V band sample contains an additional 40% population of higher redshift galaxies. If we place these at redshift 3, we find that the V-band shear variance is about a factor 2 higher than the I-band, much as seen in figure 4. However the I-V cross-correlation is then predicted to be about 30% higher than the I-band variance, which is not seen.

The simplest interpretation of these results is that the shear inferred from the I- and V-band data separately has been inflated by residual systematic errors of some kind. The level of these errors is on the order of 2 percent rms shear on scales of a few arc-minutes, falling to somewhat below the 1 percent level on $`30^{}`$ scales. If so, the most reliable estimate of the cosmic shear variance is provided by the I-V cross-correlation since systematic errors which are uncorrelated between the passbands will cancel out. Of course there is no guarantee that the cross-correlation is not affected by some source of error which is common to both passbands, a specific example of which is artificial shear arising from intrinsic correlation of galaxy shapes in clusters etc. due to tidal effects.

The I-V shear variance estimator is shown with an expanded vertical scale in figure 4. Also shown are the recently announced results. The BRE result is shown as presented in their paper and with total error estimate including cosmic variance. The vWME+ circular cell average shear are plotted against $`L=\sqrt{\pi }\theta `$. The vWME+ error bars are statistical only. WTK+ presented estimates of the ellipticity correlation function $`C_1(\theta )=ϵ_1(0)ϵ_1(\theta )`$. We have converted their $`C_1(\theta )`$ to an equivalent shear variance using formulae from ?) with $`ϵ=2\gamma `$ and assuming a spectral index $`n=1`$. The lower panel shows the variance multiplied by averaging box size $`L`$. For a $`n=1`$ spectrum, corresponding to a mass auto-correlation function $`\xi (r)1/r^2`$, this quantity should independent of scale.

At small scales $`<10`$ arcmin there seems to be remarkably good agreement between the independent estimates. Note that the measurements were made using three separate observing facilities. At $`L=3^{}.75`$ we find $`\overline{𝜸}^22.510^4`$. This about a factor 4-5 lower than the prediction for a light-traces mass $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$ cosmology, and an effective redshift for the background galaxies $`z_{\mathrm{eff}}=1`$ Kaiser (1992); Jain & Seljak (1997).

At larger scales the shear variance we find falls below that of WTK+. Their largest scale estimates appear to conflict with our null result at about the 2-sigma level. Our large-angle results are also smaller than the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ theoretical model predictions.

## 5. Discussion

For an effective background galaxy redshift of $`z_{\mathrm{eff}}1.0`$ these measurements probe mass fluctuations in a shell peaked at $`z0.4`$. At this redshift the $`30^{}`$ field size corresponds to a comoving distance of about $`6h^1`$Mpc, so the cell variances presented here probe scales in the range $`0.46h^1`$Mpc. On the smaller end of this scale we find very good agreement with recently announced estimates from other groups, and also with canonical cosmological theory predictions. It is hard to definitively rule out the possibility that the small angle measurements are inflated by systematic errors, but one can safely rule out theories such as light-traces mass high density models which predict shear variance a factor $`5`$ higher than our results.

On larger scales our measurements are extremely precise, yet we find only a null detection for our largest cells. These results show that on large scales the rms shear is at most a fraction of a percent. The apparent discrepancy between these results and the theoretical predictions is quite interesting, and suggests a steepening of the mass correlation function at scales $`12h^1`$Mpc. More data are needed however to definitively confirm this.

## 6. Acknowledgements

The results here were extracted from data taken at the Canada France Hawaii Telescope. The analysis was supported by NSF grants AST95-00515, AST99-70805. GW gratefully acknowledges financial support from the estate of Beatrice Watson Parrent and from Mr. & Mrs. Frank W. Hustace, Jr. We thank Peter Schneider and Gary Bernstein for helpful suggestions.


text:
# Anomalous temperature dependence of magnetic quantum oscillations in CeBiPt

\[

## Abstract

Shubnikov–de Haas (SdH) and Hall-effect measurements of CeBiPt and LaBiPt reveal the presence of simple and very small Fermi surfaces with hole-like charge carriers for both semimetals. In the magnetic material, CeBiPt, we observe a strong temperature dependence of the SdH frequency. This highly unusual effect might be connected with an internal exchange field within the material and a strongly spin-dependent scattering of the charge carriers.

\]

The Shubnikov–de Haas (SdH) effect, i.e., quantum oscillations in the magnetoresistivity $`\rho (B)`$, was discovered about 70 years ago in the semimetal Bi . Since then, innumerable studies on the SdH effect and the related de Haas–van Alphen (dHvA) effect in the magnetization were reported for many metals, metallic compounds, and semimetals. Both effects arise from the oscillations of the free energy of the electrons as with increasing field $`B`$ a sudden change of population of Landau cylinders occurs whenever a Landau cylinder is pushed through an extremal cross-section $`A`$ of the Fermi surface perpendicular to the magnetic field. The oscillations are periodic in 1/$`B`$ and the frequency $`F`$ is directly proportional to $`A`$, i.e., $`F=(\mathrm{}/2\pi e)A`$. The theory of the dHvA effect is well established , and also the SdH effect, reflecting the more involved transport properties, is principally understood . In recent years, SdH and dHvA effects have been exploited to establish the Fermi surface of complex materials with strong electron correlations such as heavy-fermion systems . In many cases, the effective mass of the carriers in a given band of the Fermi surface can be determined from the temperature dependence of the amplitude of the oscillations. Here we report on a new observation, namely a strongly temperature-dependent frequency of the SdH oscillations. This anomalous $`T`$ dependence of $`F`$ was found for a certain field orientation in semimetallic CeBiPt, while it is absent in the homologous - except for the Ce 4$`f`$ electron \- semimetal LaBiPt.

The single crystals were grown at Hiroshima University with the Bridgman technique in a hermetically sealed Mo crucible from the starting materials Ce (m5N, Ames Laboratory), Bi (m5N), Pt (m3N), and La (m4N). To avoid oxidation of elemental Ce or La during handling, CePt or LaPt were first prepared by argon-arc melting and the appropriate amount of Bi then was added for single-crystal growth. The crucible, sealed under Ar atmosphere, was heated to 1350C in a furnace (with an intermediate halt at 500C for 2 h) and after 12 hours was slowly cooled by moving it out of the central zone of the furnace with 1 mm/h. This cooling process from 1350C to 20C took 6 days, then the furnace was switched off. Whether the 1-1-1 compounds or 3-4-3 compounds like Ce3Bi4Pt3 are formed, depends very sensitively on the excess amount of Bi. The 1-1-1 compounds show the F$`\overline{4}`$3m cubic structure previously determined for polycrystalline samples  with no indications of second phases. The lattice constant 6.8338 (25)$`\mathrm{\AA }`$ found for CeBiPt is in good agreement with the previously reported value . For the LaBiPt crystal, Laue-diffraction pictures showed some mosaicity of the sample.

The longitudinal and transverse magnetoresistance (Hall effect) were measured with a standard 3He cryostat setup up to 15 T in Karlsruhe, and up to 28 T at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Grenoble. Both sets of data agree with each other in region of overlap. Six gold wires were glued with graphite paste to the samples, thereby enabling to measure simultaneously the longitudinal ($`\rho _{xx}`$) and transverse ($`\rho _{xy}`$) magnetoresistance. These resistances were measured by use of a low-frequency ($`16`$ Hz) lock-in technique for normal and reversed field orientations which allowed a well-defined separation of $`\rho _{xx}`$ and $`\rho _{xy}`$. The dHvA signal of the LaBiPt sample was measured by means of a capacitance cantilever torque magnetometer. All sample holders could be rotated in situ around one axis.

Fig. 1(a) and (b) show the magnetoresistance $`\rho (B)`$ for CeBiPt and for LaBiPt with field along \[1 0 0\] for several temperatures. The current direction was perpendicular to $`B`$. In both cases, clear oscillations are seen. For LaBiPt at $`T`$ = 0.4 K, the strong decrease of $`\rho `$ below about 1 T (with a 50% value at 0.45 T) indicates the onset of superconductivity with $`T_c`$ = 0.88 K \[see inset of Fig. 1(b) for $`\rho (T)`$\]. The rather large critical-field slope ($`\mathrm{d}B_{c2}/\mathrm{d}T)_{T_c}`$ -1 T/K hints at a small coherence length. For some field directions we observed a beat pattern for LaBiPt which might be attributed to the mosaicity mentioned above. We can, however, not exclude the existence of a second extremal Fermi surface of small area in LaBiPt.

For CeBiPt, a first unusual observation is the sharp drop of the magnetoresistance at low fields and low temperatures \[Fig. 1(a)\]. Below about $`T_N=1`$ K, CeBiPt is in an antiferromagnetically ordered state as was evidenced by specific-heat and magnetization measurements for our samples . Below $`T_N`$, the field-dependent magnetization, $`M`$, has a maximum in $`\mathrm{d}M/\mathrm{d}B`$ at about 0.3 T . Therefore, the negative magnetoresistance at low fields presumably is caused by antiferromagnetic fluctuations which become reduced in an applied magnetic field.

The most striking observation for CeBiPt is the shift of the oscillating SdH signal with temperature. This can be made more apparent when the resistivity is converted to conductivity via $`\sigma _{xx}=\rho _{xx}/(\rho _{xx}^2+\rho _{xy}^2)`$ making use of the simultaneously measured transverse magnetoresistance $`\rho _{xy}`$ . A smooth background longitudinal conductivity $`\sigma _0`$ can be fitted to the $`\sigma _{xx}`$ data to obtain the SdH signal $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma /\sigma _0=(\sigma _{xx}\sigma _0)/\sigma _0`$ as shown in Fig. 2. The inset of Fig. 2 displays the sequence of the position of 1/$`B`$ of the oscillation maxima and minima.

The oscillations are indeed periodic in $`1/B`$ within our resolution and for the limited field range. The oscillation frequency $`F`$ is directly obtained from the slope of $`1/B`$ vs. oscillation index $`n`$. $`F`$ decreases from 58.2 T at 0.4 K to about 35 T at 10.3 K. Additional data taken in Karlsruhe in fields up to 15 T are fully in line with this decrease (see Fig. 3). The total change of $`F`$ between 0.4 and 10.3 K corresponds to an apparent reduction of the Fermi-surface cross-section by more than 50%! The inset of Fig. 3 shows the decrease of the amplitude $`A`$ of the SdH oscillations with increasing $`T`$ as measured at 10.5 T. $`A`$ can be described quite well with the standard expression $`AT/\mathrm{sinh}[(14.69(T/B)(m^{}/m_0))]`$, where $`T`$ and $`B`$ are expressed in K and T, respectively . We obtain the effective mass $`m^{}=0.24m_0`$, where $`m_0`$ is the free-electron mass. A simple consistency check serves to test whether we are indeed dealing with a quantum-oscillation phenomenon. From the field dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma /\sigma _0`$ at fixed $`T`$ one can estimate the charge-carrier scattering rate $`\tau ^1`$. The Dingle temperature $`T_D4`$ K obtained from the field dependence of the SdH amplitude (at lower fields) corresponds to $`\tau ^1=3.3\times 10^{12}`$ s-1. Together with the carrier density $`n_h=7.7\times 10^{17}`$ cm-3 obtained from the Hall effect at liquid-He temperature we obtain in the simple Drude model $`\rho 3.7`$ m$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$cm which is perfectly in line with the measured resistivity.

The angular dependence of $`F`$ for CeBiPt is depicted in Fig. 4(a) for $`T`$ = 0.43 K and 4.21 K. The anomalous $`T`$ dependence is found only for field along the \[1 0 0\] and \[0 1 0\] directions where $`F`$ is found to be somewhat larger, i.e., about 58 T. Between approximately $`\theta =20^{}`$ and $`70^{}`$, where $`\theta `$ is the angle from the \[1 0 0\] direction, $`F`$ is constant at 30 T and furthermore independent of $`T`$. For $`B`$ along the \[1 1 1\] direction a very low SdH frequency of about 20 T - but again independent of $`T`$ \- was found. LaBiPt shows a temperature-independent angular dependence of $`F`$ \[Fig. 4(b)\]. The SdH and the dHvA frequency are within error bars identical and somewhat larger ($`F`$ increases from 65 T for $`B`$ along \[1 0 0\] to 95 T for $`B`$ along \[1 1 0\]) than $`F`$ for CeBiPt. The large magnetization of CeBiPt due to the Ce $`4f`$ electrons prevented us from taking dHvA data of the torque magnetization for this compound. Nevertheless, the very good agreement between SdH and dHvA data for LaBiPt lends support to the SdH data for CeBiPt. For both materials we were able to observe a SdH signal over the whole angular range. This suggests that the Fermi surfaces are simple single-connected hole pockets. The volume enclosed by the Fermi surface is estimated to comprise only about $`1.5\times 10^4`$ of the volume of the first Brillouin zone for CeBiPt. This is consistent with the low (hole-like) charge-carrier concentration of $`n_h=7.7\times 10^{17}`$ cm-3. Within a free-electron picture, $`n_h`$ corresponds to a Fermi energy of $`E_F=\mathrm{}^2(3\pi ^2n_h)^{2/3}/2m^{}=12.8`$ meV. Assuming a circular Fermi-surface cross section, i.e., $`A=\pi k_F^2`$ with the Fermi wavevector $`k_F`$, this results in a SdH frequency of $`F=m^{}F/\mathrm{}e27`$ T in nice agreement with the experimental $`F`$ between $`20^{}`$ and $`70^{}`$.

The main point of the present investigation is the observation of a temperature dependence of the quantum-oscillation frequency which is found only for the Ce-based metal. To our knowledge such an effect has never been observed before. As a possible origin for this behavior one could assume a temperature-dependent charge-carrier density which would lead to a change in the Fermi-surface topology. However, the simultaneously measured Hall constant $`R_H=1/n_he`$, is independent of temperature.

Another possibility would be a reconstruction of the Brillouin zone. This might be caused, e.g., by an antiferromagnetic ordering, which introduces an extra periodicity into the lattice. The effect of magnetic ordering has previously been observed in a field-dependent change of the dHvA frequency in NdIn3  or in an unusual temperature dependence of the dHvA amplitude in YbAs , SmSb , and SmAgSb2 . As mentioned, CeBiPt undergoes an antiferromagnetic transition at about 1 K. However, no abrupt change of $`F`$ with $`T`$ around $`T_N`$ or $`B`$ but a rather smooth variation over a large $`T`$ range is observed. This indicates that a Brillouin-zone reconstruction must be ruled out as a cause for the observed frequency change.

One important fact which is evident from our investigation is the absence of any unusual effect for the non-magnetic sister compound LaBiPt. Therefore, it is clear that the magnetism of the Ce atoms affects the magnetic quantum oscillations. For a sample possessing an internal magnetization, the magnetic induction $`B_i=\mu _0(H+M)`$ is different from the externally applied field $`B=\mu _0H`$. The SdH signal is proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}(2\pi F/B_i)`$. Therefore, a temperature-dependent magnetization would cause a change in the SdH frequency. However, in order to explain the experimentally observed increase of the SdH frequency with decreasing temperature, $`M`$ would have to become smaller at lower temperatures. This is contrary to the usual behavior of $`M`$ and not in line with the measured magnetization which is about $`\mu _0M=0.2`$ T at $`\mu _0H=12`$ T and $`T=1.7`$ K and decreases with increasing temperature. Moreover, the magnitude of $`\mu _0M`$ compared to $`B`$ is much too small to account for the observed change of $`F`$.

An anomalous situation may occur when we suppose that a temperature-dependent (and possibly also a field-dependent) phase difference $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ exists between the spin-up and spin-down oscillations and that, in addition, their amplitudes may be different . The latter can easily occur because the scattering by magnetic impurities (or magnetic sublattices) is in general appreciably spin dependent. The usual splitting of the spin-up and spin-down Landau levels gives rise to a phase shift of the oscillations by $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\pm \pi gm^{}/m_0`$, where $`g`$ is the $`g`$ factor of the conduction electrons. If an antiferromagnetic exchange interaction $`B_{ex}`$ is present, the phase difference can be expressed as $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\pm \pi (gB_{ex}/B)m^{}/m_0`$ . The superposition of the spin-up and spin-down oscillations gives a signal which is $`M=a_{}\mathrm{sin}(\psi +\mathrm{\Phi }/2)+a_{}\mathrm{sin}(\psi \mathrm{\Phi }/2)`$, with $`\psi =(2\pi F/B)\pm \pi /4`$ and the spin-dependent amplitudes $`a_{}`$ and $`a_{}`$. In case of largely different amplitudes, the frequency of the oscillating signal becomes $`F^{}=F\pm B_{ex}/4`$. Adopting this scenario would, however, imply a change of $`B_{ex}`$ with $`T`$ by several 10 T which appear unlikely. On the other hand, the apparent decrease of the oscillation frequency in $`1/B`$ above about 0.12 T-1 at low $`T`$ does suggest an influence of internal and/or exchange fields. Calculations of spin splitting in low-carrier-density systems are necessary to check the viability of this scenario.

In summary, we have presented an unusual $`T`$ dependence of SdH oscillations in CeBiPt which are due to the magnetic Ce $`4f`$ electrons. Simple estimates of the scattering rate derived from the Dingle temperature and of the volume enclosed by the Fermi surface yield good agreement with the corresponding quantities obtained from other measurements. This lends confidence to the assignment of the observed apparent $`T`$ dependence being a feature associated with the magnetic quantum oscillations in CeBiPt. However, theoretical work is needed to unravel the origin of this new phenomenon.

We would like to thank A. Schröder and J. Sereni for many helpful discussions. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 195, and the TMR Programme of the European Community under contract No. ERBFMGECT950077.