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# Chronology Protection in String Theory

## 1 Introduction

General Relativity is believed to be an accurate description of our classical world. While this led to a revolution in physical thought in the twentieth century, it also introduced a myriad of ambiguities and physical conundrums. One such ambiguity arises when attempting to understand the quantum description of black holes. Naive calculations seem to indicate that information may be lost and thereby destroy our notion of unitary time evolution . Physicists have battled over this issue for decades. As a proposed ultimate theory of quantum gravity, string theory has intervened and provided some answers. For a certain class of black hole geometries, a microscopic description exists in string theory which enables one to calculate macroscopic quantities such as entropy and Hawking radiation . Resulting arguments seem to indicate that there is no loss of information and the unitarity of physics is preserved .

Another class of solutions to General Relativity which have caused much debate are geometries that are not black holes, but nevertheless have regions of infinite curvature, that is, geometries with singularities un-shielded by horizons. Such geometries are ubiquitous in General Relativity, but believed to be physically unsound. Again, string theory has intervened and provided insight. There exist mechanisms in string theory which resolve naked singularities, resulting in consistent, non-singular physics .

General relativity also admits geometries that have closed timelike curves. Examples include the Godel universe , Kerr black holes  and Gott’s time machines . Naively this would indicate that time travel is possible. This in turn gives birth to a whole host of physical inconsistencies such as the Grandmother paradox, where one is allowed to modify the initial conditions that lead to ones own existence, and the Bootstrap paradox, where an effect is its own cause ***See, for example,  for a review.

There has been much work trying to address the paradoxes posed by these geometries. Some have accepted the possibility of time travel, while others have argued that physical processes come into play rendering time travel impossible. In the case of Gott’s time machine, for instance, it has been shown that any attempt to create a time machine in a closed universe would cause the space to collapse entirely . Many believe that quantum physics will ultimately prevent all geometries which naively allow time travel from forming. This led to a proposal by Stephen Hawking who stated “It seems that there is a Chronology Protection Agency which prevents the appearance of closed timelike curves and so makes the universe safe for historians.”

As of yet, the full consistency of geometries of this type has not been tested in string theory See  for a recent discussion on holography in supersymmetric Godel universes..

In this work, we will propose that a Chronology Protection Agency does indeed exist in string theory. Specifically, we will study solutions to ten dimensional supergravity which can be dimensionally reduced to give five dimensional rotating black holes. When the rotation parameter exceeds a certain value, closed timelike curves appear outside of the horizon. By studying the full ten dimensional solution, we are able to track down the source of causality violations. We will find that our solution breaks down long before we reach the causally sick region. We conclude that the geometry must be altered at this point. The causality violating region is never created and our usual notion of chronology is retained.

In the next section, we will explore the geometry in detail, first presenting the five dimensional black hole solution, then its ten dimensional counterpart. We will review how closed timelike curves form in both the five dimensional and ten dimensional geometries and how the causality bound is associated with a unitarity bound in the dual conformal field theory. This bound, however, does not prohibit the causally undesirable geometry from forming. In fact, supersymmetric solutions appear to exist for arbitrary values of angular momentum.

In order to determine if there is some form of an obstruction to creating the causality violating region which would have a non-unitary conformal field theory dual, in section three, we examine the objects associated with the charges that make up the geometry. We propose that there is indeed an obstruction to forming the geometry and that chronology is protected. The agency of protection for the class of geometries that we discuss is analogous to the enhancon mechanism presented in  which resolves a class of naked singularities. In section four we study the conformal field theory dual in the context of the AdS/CFT duality. Unitarity requires that the naive solution be corrected. We show that unitarity is indeed preserved once the geometry has been corrected. We conclude in section five.

## 2 The Geometry

### 2.1 Five Dimensional Black Hole

Let us begin by presenting the five dimensional rotating black hole solution. We will consider a black hole with three charges, call them $`Q_1,Q_5`$, and $`Q_k`$. The metric for this geometry is

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`(f_1f_5f_k)^{\frac{2}{3}}\left[dt^2+{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2r^2}}(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)\right]^2`$ (2.1)
$`+(f_1f_5f_k)^{\frac{1}{3}}\left[dr^2+r^2d\theta ^2+r^2(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1^2+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2^2)\right]`$
where, as usual, the $`f_i`$ are harmonic functions associated with the charges, $`f_i=1+Q_i/r^2`$. In addition to the metric, this supergravity solution has the following moduli and gauge fields under which the black hole is charged,

$$e^{2\varphi }=\frac{f_5}{f_1}e^{2\sigma }=\frac{f_k}{f_5^{1/4}f^{3/4}}e^{\sigma _i}=\frac{f_1^{1/4}}{f_5^{1/4}}$$
(2.2)
$$A=\frac{1}{f_1}\left[\frac{Q_1}{r^2}dt+\frac{J}{2r^2}(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)\right]$$
(2.3)
$$A^k=\frac{1}{f_k}\left[\frac{Q_k}{r^2}dt+\frac{J}{2r^2}(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)\right]$$
(2.4)
$$B=Q_5\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _1d\varphi _2+\frac{1}{f_1}\frac{J}{2r^2}dt(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)$$
(2.5)
with $`i=1,\mathrm{}4`$.

This geometry has been studied extensively by many authors . In order to have a supersymmetric rotating black hole, the horizon must be stationary. In  it was shown that the horizon is not rotating. The nonzero rotation parameter affects the horizon by turning it into a squashed sphere. Since the squashing parameter depends on the angular momentum, $`J`$, one can show that a sensible description of the horizon can breakdown if $`J`$ becomes too large.

It was additionally shown that this geometry has closed timelike curves. Luckily, if $`J`$ is small enough, all closed timelike curves are hidden behind the horizon. However, when $`J`$ becomes too large, closed timelike curves appear outside of the horizon leading to gross causality violations. The full sickness of this over-rotating black hole geometry was studied in detail in .

The causality constraint on $`J`$ can be seen explicitly by looking at the angular components of the metric. The chronology horizon, $`R_{ch}`$, is the location where $`g_{\varphi _i\varphi _i}`$ vanishes. Closed timelike curves appear when $`g_{\varphi _i\varphi _i}`$ becomes negative. This occurs if $`J^2>4(r^2+Q_1)(r^2+Q_5)(r^2+Q_k)`$. Since the horizon is located at the origin in these coordinates, an observer outside of the horizon will see closed timelike curves if $`J^2>4Q_1Q_5Q_k`$.

This constraint on $`J`$ also becomes apparent when studying the thermodynamics of the black hole. Its Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is

$$S=\frac{\pi ^2}{2G_5}\sqrt{Q_1Q_5Q_k\frac{J^2}{4}}$$
(2.6)
This can become imaginary if $`J`$ is too large. To be complete, let us also specify the mass of the black hole

$$M=\frac{\pi }{4G_5}(Q_1+Q_5+Q_k)$$
(2.7)
We can attempt to understand the origin of the causally sick region by lifting this five dimensional solution to ten dimensions and studying the fundamental objects which create the black hole. We will begin this process by presenting the ten dimensional geometry below.

### 2.2 Ten Dimensional D–Brane Geometry

Upon lifting to ten dimensions, we find a supergravity description of D1 and D5–branes with momentum running along the effective D–string . The D5–branes are additionally wrapped on $`T_4`$. The metric, RR field and the dilaton are

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{f_1f_5}}}\left[dt^2+{\displaystyle \frac{Q_k}{r^2}}(dzdt)^2+dz^2+{\displaystyle \frac{J}{r^2}}(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)(dzdt)\right]`$ (2.8)
$`+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{f_1}{f_5}}}ds_{T^4}^2+\sqrt{f_1f_5}\left[dr^2+r^2d\theta ^2+r^2(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1^2+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2^2)\right]`$
$$C^{(2)}=\frac{1}{f_1}dtdz+\frac{1}{f_1}\frac{J}{2r^2}(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)(dzdt)+Q_5\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _1d\varphi _2$$
(2.9)
$$e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}=\frac{f_5}{f_1}$$
(2.10)
The charges $`Q_1,Q_5`$, $`Q_k`$ and $`J`$ are given by

$$Q_1=\frac{g\alpha ^3}{V}N_1,Q_5=g\alpha ^{}N_5,Q_k=\frac{g^2\alpha ^4}{R^2V}N_k,J=\frac{g^2\alpha ^4}{RV}F_R$$
(2.11)
where we have $`N_1`$ D1–branes, $`N_5`$ D5–branes, $`N_k`$ units of right moving momentum, and the angular momentum is quantized in terms of integers $`F_R`$. $`V`$ is the volume of $`T^4`$ and $`R`$ is the radius of the $`S^1`$.

This is a IIB supergravity solution with four supercharges. We can consider curves which have tangent vectors given by

$$l^\mu _\mu =\alpha _z+\beta (_{\varphi _1}_{\varphi _2})$$
(2.12)
. Since $`z`$ is a compact direction, for certain values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, curves of this type can be closed. Also, a quick calculation of the proper length shows that these curves can be timelike in the region $`r<R_{ch}`$. Closed timelike curves reappear in ten dimensional language. We have not been able to successfully rid ourselves of the sickness associated with the five dimensional geometry

In fact, we can do better than this. We can T-dualize our solution to find a system which should have the same physics. In the new geometry, the full sickness of this configuration becomes apparent. Performing a T-duality along the $`z`$ direction, we find a solution to IIA supergravity with the following metric.

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{f_k\sqrt{f_1f_5}}}\left[dt^2+{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2r^2}}(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2)dt\right]+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{f_1}{f_5}}}ds_{T^4}^2`$ (2.13)
$`+\sqrt{f_1f_5}\left[\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }{r^6f_1f_5f_k}}\right)r^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1^2+\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta }{r^6f_1f_5f_k}}\right)r^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2^2\right]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^4f_k\sqrt{f_1f_5}}}\mathrm{cos}^2\theta \mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1d\varphi _2+\sqrt{f_1f_5}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{dz^2}{f_k}}+dr^2+r^2d\theta ^2\right]`$
Since $`g_{\varphi _i\varphi _i}`$ can become negative, we see clearly that for large enough $`J`$ causality violations are an integral part of ten-dimensional physics. The causally sick region in the higher dimensional geometry coincides precisely with the causally sick region of the lower dimensional black hole.

### 2.3 The Dual Field Theory

The geometry is not the only place where we find a breakdown in our physical description of this solution. Recall that there is a gauge theory that describes this configuration . If we take the size of the $`S^1`$ to be much larger than the size of the $`T^4`$, the effective description is the 1+1 dimensional field theory living on the world volume of the D1–branes. In the decoupling limit, we have the near horizon limit of our D–brane geometry, AdS$`{}_{3}{}^{}\times S^3\times T^4`$, which is dual to an $`𝒩`$ = 4 conformal field theory living on the boundary of the AdS3 .

Turning off angular momentum for a moment, the supersymmetric states of the field theory that we are interested in are in the left moving ground state with arbitrary right moving charge. Since these states are BPS, the energy and momentum are related by $`EN_k/R`$, where $`R`$ is the radius of the $`S^1`$.

Adding rotation requires that we use up some of the energy of the oscillator modes. We can break up the $`N=4`$ superconformal algebra into left and right moving $`N=2`$ algebras. There is a $`U(1)`$ subgroup associated with each and we can specify the charges as $`(F_R,F_L)`$.

One can bosonise the $`U(1)`$ currents  to show that a state with charge $`F_R`$ is represented by an operator of the form

$$𝒪=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{i\sqrt{3}F_R\varphi }{\sqrt{c}}\right)\mathrm{\Phi }$$
(2.14)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is an operator from the rest of the field theory. The eigenvalue of $`L_0`$ gives the conformal weight of primary operators. Since $`L_0(𝒪)=N_k`$,

$$L_0(\mathrm{\Phi })=N_k\frac{F_R^2}{4N_1N_5}$$
(2.15)
Unitarity requires that conformal weights be positive. We see then that $`N_kF_R^2/(4N_1N_5)`$, or equivalently, $`Q_kJ^2/(4Q_1Q_5)`$. This is nothing more than the causality bound that we saw previously. So we see that the unitarity bound of the conformal field theory coincides with the causality bound of the geometry . Let us also note that (2.15) represents the effective level of the system after we have used some energy to add angular momentum. The level determines the degeneracy of states. The entropy can be easily calculated and agrees with the Bekenstein- Hawking entropy (2.6) calculated above .

We have seen that the physics of this solution breaks down in three dual descriptions: the five dimensional black hole, the ten dimensional D–brane configuration and the two dimensional conformal field theory. In an attempt to understand how we might resolve the causally sick region, we will study the ten dimensional supergravity solution a bit further below.

## 3 The Resolution

### 3.1 The Geometry

We can imagine building our geometry by slowly bringing in D–brane charge from infinity. A probe calculation will determine if this is a consistent thing to do. The action for a D1–brane is

$$S=\tau _1d^2\sigma e^\mathrm{\Phi }\sqrt{detg}+\tau _1C^{(2)}$$
(3.16)
Working in static gauge $`t=\tau ,z=\sigma `$, and choosing the ansatz $`x^i=x^i(\tau ),y^a=y^a`$, where the $`x^i`$ run over the transverse directions and the $`y^a`$ run over the $`T^4`$, the slow velocity limit of the action is

$$S=\tau _1d^2\sigma f_1f_5f_k\left[\dot{r}^2+r^2(\dot{\theta }^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \dot{\varphi }_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta \dot{\varphi }_{2}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})\right]$$
(3.17)
In this limit, the potential vanishes leaving behind a purely kinetic term in the action. We can therefore consistently bring D1–branes to the origin. A similar analysis holds for D5–branes (after dualizing the RR 2-form to get the appropriate RR 6-form under which the D5–branes are electrically charged). So there is no obstacle here. Where, then, is the problem?

We have probed this geometry with objects associated with two of the charges that make up the geometry. Recall that there is also charge associated with momentum modes running along the effective D–string, $`Q_k`$. This is nothing more than a gravitational wave. In a T-dual picture, this charge is associated with a fundamental string. There is additional momentum, $`J`$, associated with rotation. In order to determine where the breakdown in our geometry may be occurring, let us consider its microscopic description.

We can think of a bound state of one D1–brane and $`N_5`$ D5–branes as a system of $`N_5`$ fractional strings . If we have $`N_1`$ D1–branes, there are a total of $`N_1N_5`$ fractional strings. In this model, angular momentum can be added to the system by allowing each sub-string to be in a particular spin state of the $`SU_R(2)\times SU_L(2)`$ symmetry . We can join together any number of the sub-strings. The spin of the string created, however, must be the same as that of a single string. The maximum angular momentum of the system, then, occurs when all of the strings are split and aligned along the same direction. The angular momentum of this state is ( $`\frac{N_1N_5}{2},\frac{N_1N_5}{2}`$).

There are also massless open strings in our system which begin and end on the D–branes. When we add $`N_k`$ units of momentum along these massless strings, the entropically favored configuration is one in which all of the fractional strings join and form a single long string with an effective length of order $`R^{}=N_1N_5R`$, where $`R`$ is the radius of the $`S^1`$ along which the D-branes are wrapped . The effective level of the string state becomes $`N^{}=N_1N_5N_k`$. If we want to add angular momentum to this system, it must be carried by the massless strings since the spin of the single long string formed by the D–branes is effectively zero . The effective level, once we add angular momentum, becomes

$$N^{}=N_1N_5\left(N_k\frac{F_R^2}{4N_1N_5}\right).$$
(3.18)
The standard thermodynamic quantities can easily be calculated in this model. Since open strings are attached to the horizon in this limit, they account for the degrees of freedom which give rise to the entropy of the black hole. The entropy is $`S=2\pi \sqrt{N^{}}`$. This agrees with (2.6).

Returning to the supergravity picture, we want to form the three charge black hole. We therefore assume that the D–branes have fractionalized and joined together to form one long string. We have seen from the above probe calculation (3.17) that we can consistently bring D1 and D5–branes in from infinity to the origin to form our geometry. What about the momentum modes with non-zero rotation which, in the supergravity description, correspond to rotating gravitational waves?

We will attempt to add rotating gravitational waves to a D1-D5 system by doing the following. Assume we have an interior geometry made up of only D1 and D5–brane charge. The metric for this system is:

$$ds^2=\frac{1}{\sqrt{f_1f_5}}\left[dt^2+dz^2\right]+\sqrt{\frac{f_1}{f_5}}ds_{T^4}^2+\sqrt{f_1f_5}\left[dr^2+r^2d\theta ^2+r^2(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi _1^2+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\varphi _2^2)\right]$$
(3.19)
We will join this to the geometry (2.8) which additionally has rotating gravitational waves. We will join these two geometries together at some radius $`R`$. Continuity of the metric requires the coordinates to be related by the following transformations:

$`\varphi _1^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi _1+{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2R^4F_1F_5}}(zt)`$
$`\varphi _2^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi _2{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2R^4F_1F_5}}(zt)`$
$`z^{}`$ $`=`$ $`z+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2R^2}}\left(Q_k{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{4R^4F_1F_5}}\right)(zt)`$
$`t^{}`$ $`=`$ $`t+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2R^2}}\left(Q_k{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{4R^4F_1F_5}}\right)(zt)`$ (3.20)
where $`F_i=(1+Q_i/R^2)`$.

Our new geometry has D1 and D5–branes at the origin and rotating gravitational waves localized on the shell at radius $`R`$. The standard Israel matching conditions  give the tension and pressures associated with the joining shell. With this, we can determine if it is consistent to bring the gravitational waves in to the origin and hence create the geometry which is described by equation (2.8) for all $`r`$. The energy-momentum tensor for the shell is $`S_\nu ^\mu =8\pi G_{10}\sqrt{G_{rr}}T_\nu ^\mu `$ with

$$T_0^0=T_z^z=T_0^z=T_z^0=\frac{2}{R^3}\left(Q_k\frac{J^2}{4R^4F_1F_5}\right)$$
(3.21)
$$T_0^{\varphi _1}=T_0^{\varphi _2}=T_z^{\varphi _2}=T_z^{\varphi _1}=\frac{J}{R^5F_1^2F_5^2}g(R)$$

$$T_{\varphi _1}^0=T_{\varphi _1}^z=\frac{J}{R^3F_1F_5}g(R)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta $$

$$T_{\varphi _2}^0=T_{\varphi _2}^z=\frac{J}{R^3F_1F_5}g(R)\mathrm{cos}^2\theta $$

$$T_{\alpha ,\beta }=0$$

where $`\alpha ,\beta `$ runs over the transverse directions and the $`T^4`$, $`G_{10}=8\pi \alpha ^4g^2`$ is the ten dimensional Newton’s constant and $`g(R)=[2+(R^2F_1F_5)^{}/(RF_1F_5)]`$. The energy-momentum tensor is all we need determine where the breakdown of our geometry occurs. But let us stop here for a moment to confirm that it is indeed what we expect.

First, notice that the stresses and energy vanish in the transverse direction. This tells us that there are no transverse forces acting on the shell to prohibit it from forming and it is consistent to bring it in from infinity. Next, for large $`R`$, the asymptotic tension of the shell, $`T_0^0`$, goes like the inverse of the area of a three sphere. This gives precisely the charge-energy relationship that we expect for a gravitational wave, $`EQ_k`$, and it contributes the appropriate amount to the asymptotic mass of the black hole (2.7). Finally, the non-vanishing off-diagonal angular components of the stress energy tensor encode the rotation of the shell.

The tension of the shell,

$$\tau =\frac{2}{R^3}\left(Q_k\frac{J^2}{4R^4F_1F_5}\right)$$
(3.22)
represents the local energy density of the incoming gravitational waves from the supergravity perspective and massless strings from the microscopic D–brane point of view. Placing the shell at a radius $`R`$, the effective local Kaluza Klein momentum $`EP^{}`$ is

$$P^{}Q_k\frac{J^2}{4R^4F_1F_5}$$
(3.23)
Recall that momentum corresponds to the mass of Kaluza Klein particles in a compactified theory. Hence, we have Kaluza Klein particles with $`mP^{}`$.

If $`J>4Q_1Q_5Q_k`$, the tension and momentum of the shell vanishes before the chronology horizon is reached. This occurs at a radius

$$R_{cp}^2=\frac{(Q_1+Q_5)}{2}+\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{(Q_1Q_5)^2+\frac{J^2}{Q_k}}.$$
(3.24)
If we place the shell at this radius, the energy density of our constructed geometry is smooth and the mass of the Kaluza Klein particles vanishes. New massless states arise in the compactified theory which imply that the low energy theory must be corrected. If we try to bring the shell of gravitational waves in past $`R_{cp}`$, the energy density of the shell becomes negative. In order to avoid negative energy densities, we conclude that the gravitational waves are unable to travel past $`R_{cp}`$. This occurs precisely at the point in moduli space where we expect corrections to the supergravity theory due to the presence of the massless Kaluza Klein particles. Since the causally sick region is never created, chronology is protected.

Let us stop for a moment to recap. The naive supergravity solution is made up of D1–branes, D5–branes, and massless strings carrying momentum which are represented by gravitational waves. Following , we have argued that the rotation in our geometry is carried by the gravitational waves. We were able to bring D1 and D5–branes in to the origin. When we tried to bring in rotating gravitational waves from infinity to complete the construction of our geometry, we found that negative energy densities appear before the chronology horizon is reached. In order to avoid negative energy densities, we propose that the gravitational waves are not able to travel beyond a chronology protection radius, $`R_{cp}`$. This radius is the location in moduli space where Kaluza Klein particles become massless. It is also the location where the energy of the shell due to momentum along the compact direction exactly cancels the energy due to rotation. The ten dimensional geometry, therefore, has a smooth energy density. The final corrected geometry has momentum charge localized on the shell at radius $`R_{cp}`$ outside of the would-be chronology horizon with D1 and D5–branes at the origin. The potential causality violating region is never able to form and chronology is protected.

We should note that although we wrapped the D5–branes on $`T^4`$, we could have wrapped them on K3. Depending on the values of the parameters, wrapping branes on K3 can have the undesirable effect of creating naked singularities of repulson type. Luckily, these singularities can easily be resolved as shown in . The extension of our result to this case is straight forward. Since the origin of the causality violating region are the rotating gravitational waves and not the D1 or D5–branes, the resulting geometry will have a shell of D1 and D5–branes placed at the appropriate radius to resolve the repulson singularity and a shell of rotating gravitational waves placed at the chronology protection radius $`R_{cp}`$, as discussed here, to prevent closed timelike curves from forming.

### 3.2 Repulsive Coulomb Force

Let us return to the five dimensional geometry (2.2) - (2.5). The ten dimensional rotating gravitational wave becomes a particle charged under the gauge field $`A_k`$ in five dimensions. We can probe our geometry with a point particle with charge $`q`$ which couples to the gauge field $`A_k`$. The Hamiltonian for such a particle is .

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`g^{\mu \nu }(p_\mu +qA_\mu ^k)(p_\nu +qA_\nu ^k)`$ (3.25)
Let us focus on the Coulomb potential that the particle feels moving radially in this background.

$$V=qg^{\mu \nu }(p_\mu A_\nu ^k+p_\nu A_\mu ^k)=\frac{qQ_k}{r^2}\left(1\frac{J^2}{4Q_kr^4f_1f_5}\right)\sqrt{f_1f_5}$$
(3.26)
The Coulomb interaction changes sign precisely at $`r=R_{cp}`$, if the Coulomb force was attractive for $`r>R_{cp}`$, it becomes negative for $`r<R_{cp}`$ and visa versa . So it appears as though there is some non-trivial charged object localized at the surface $`r=R_{cp}`$. Our resolved geometry simply places it there. Again, this is analogous to the mechanism of  where a point particle probe interacting with the gravitational field felt nontrivial mass localized on a surface. The resolved geometry in that case simply placed the appropriate massive objects (D6-D2\*–branes) at that location.

In fact, as we saw previously, the asymptotic tension of the shell goes like $`Q_k/A_3`$. This is precisely the relationship that we expect for a particle charged under the gauge field $`A_k`$ with its charge smeared over a three sphere. Recall also that the shell is located at a safe distance away from the causally sick region, $`R_{cp}>R_{ch}`$. So the end result is that a rotating shell with asymptotic charge $`Q_k`$ and local charge density given by (3.22) forms outside of the chronology horizon and thereby prevents any attempt to create closed timelike curves. The interior region is no longer sick. It is just a standard compactified D1–D5–brane geometry.

Up to this point, we have only used the microscopic description of our solution to determine which objects carry the charges. A similar analysis was carried out for geometries with naked singularities of repulson type in . There is a general rule here. The limits of physical consistency are exceeded before the sick regions can be created. For a large class of geometries which are physically unsound, a simple geometric study of the laws of physics alone can reveal how one might correct a geometry to render it physically sound.

### 3.3 Massless Strings

Returning now to the microscopic description of our configuration, recall that the naive geometry is a solution to Type IIB effective low energy supergravity with momentum modes and no winding modes. In a T-dual picture, momentum modes and winding modes are interchanged. A T-dual string, then, has winding number and hence mass proportional to (3.23). If we try to construct the T-dual geometry, as we bring the strings in from infinity to create the geometry, the mass of the strings vanish at the chronology protection radius, $`R_{cp}`$. When massive modes become light, their contribution to the low energy effective theory can no longer be ignored. The low energy theory must be corrected at this point to include the new massless degrees of freedom.

Happily, massless modes appear at the chronology protection radius, $`R_{cp}`$. The breakdown in the supergravity theory coincides precisely with the breakdown we encountered when trying to construct the geometry above, since we encountered negative energy densities beyond $`R_{cp}`$. Once the new massless degrees of freedom have been taken into account, we propose that the above geometry is, to leading order, the solution to the corrected supergravity theory.

## 4 Unitarity in the Conformal Field Theory

We have proposed that the naive BMPV black hole and D1-D5-Wave geometries cannot be constructed when the angular momentum parameter exceeds a certain bound, $`J^2>4Q_1Q_5Q_k`$. Instead, a shell carrying $`Q_k`$ and $`J`$ charge forms outside of the would be causally sick region. The charges needed to create the causality violating region are not permitted to travel past this shell. Closed timelike curves, therefore, are not able to form and the resulting geometry is causally safe.

We can take the decoupling limit of the repaired geometry to study the AdS space which is dual to a conformal field theory. As we saw previously, the causality bound of our spacetime coincides with a unitarity bound in the conformal field theory . We can take the limit of our resolved geometry to see if it agrees with the expected result.

Assuming that the angular momentum exceeds the unitarity bound, the shell of gravitational waves forms outside of the horizon at the chronology protection radius, $`R_{cp}`$. Zooming in on the near horizon region gives the near horizon geometry of the D1–D5–brane configuration of (3.19). This is nothing more than the zero mass BTZ black hole. The unitarity violations discussed in section 2.3 have been remedied. The dual conformal field theory of the corrected geometry is unitary.

## 5 Conclusion

As a fundamental theory of quantum gravity, string theory has been shown to successfully resolve many of the paradoxes inherent in Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. Examples include non-singular descriptions of geometries with regions of infinite curvature and evidence that information is not lost in black hole geometries. We propose that string theory also has something to say about closed timelike curves.

We studied the BMPV rotating black hole and its higher dimensional Wave-D1-D5–brane analogue. Naively, closed timelike curves appear outside of the horizon if the rotation parameter exceeds a certain value. When trying to construct the geometry, however, we saw that massless degrees of freedom arise before reaching the causally sick region. These new degrees of freedom appear at precisely the location where the energy due to transverse momentum cancels the energy due to rotation of the gravitational waves which make up our geometry. We propose that the special radius where this occurs is a chronology protection horizon, beyond which the gravitational waves cannot travel. Instead they expand to form a shell outside of the chronology violating region. Since the presence of the gravitational waves beyond this point was crucial to create the causally sick region, our geometry is rendered safe and chronology is protected.

If $`J`$ exceeds the causality bound in the naive solution, the dual conformal field theory would be non-unitary. The correction to the geometry that has been proposed is not only causally safe, but has a unitarity conformal field theory dual.

The agent of chronology protection for the class of geometries studied here has a natural physical interpretation. Assume we begin with the standard low energy solution (2.8) with $`J<4Q_1Q_5Q_k`$. If we increase the angular momentum so that this bound is no longer satisfied, the gravitons in the ten dimensional language and the Kaluza Klein particles in the lower dimensional language begin to expand. This expansion is due to the centrifugal repulsion and causes the gravitons (particles) to grow to just the right size to compensate for the repulsive force acting on them. The end result is that giant gravitons (particles) form well outside of the chronology horizon to prevent the causally sick region from being created

It is important to note that the configurations studied in this paper are a part of a larger class of geometries related by a series of dualities. For instance, the dyonic black hole and NS5–NS1–wave configurations considered in  are S-dual to the backgrounds studied here. The chronology protection arguments should have a dual description in these geometries.

Time travel gives rise to a host of physical inconsistencies. One may conclude that any fundamental theory of quantum gravity would not admit solutions where time travel is possible. The low energy effective equations of string theory have as solutions an abundance of such causality violating geometries . We believe, however, that string theory is causally sound. As we have argued for the class of geometries studied here, stringy corrections to the low energy effective theory resolve causality violations. We propose that once all stringy effects are taken into account, our usual notion of chronology will emerge as a protected law of nature.

## 6 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank B. Freivogel, S. Ganguli, S. Hellerman, P. Horava, S. Kachru, M. Kleban, S. Shenker, E. Silverstein, L. Susskind, and U. Varadarajan for useful discussions.


text:
# Concurrent Process up to Homotopy (II)

## 1. Rappels sur les flots

Cette note est la deuxième de deux notes présentant quelques résultats de . Tous les espaces topologiques sont supposés faiblement séparés et compactement engendrés, c’est-à-dire dans ce cas homéomorphes à la limite inductive de leurs sous-espaces compacts (cf. l’appendice de  pour un survol des propriétés de ces espaces). La catégorie correspondante est notée $`\text{Top}`$. On travaille ainsi dans une catégorie d’espaces topologiques qui est non seulement complète et cocomplète mais en plus cartésiennement fermée . En d’autres termes, le foncteur $`\times X:\text{Top}\text{Top}`$ a un adjoint à droite $`\mathrm{𝐓𝐎𝐏}(X,)`$. Dans la suite, $`D^n`$ est le disque fermé de dimension $`n`$ et $`S^{n1}`$ est le bord de $`D^n`$, à savoir la sphère de dimension $`n1`$. En particulier la sphère de dimension $`0`$ est la paire $`\{1,+1\}`$.

###### Définition 1.1.

 Un flot $`X`$ consiste en la donnée d’un ensemble $`X^0`$ appelé $`0`$-squelette, d’un espace topologique $`X`$ appelé espace des chemins, de deux applications continues $`s:XX^0`$ et $`t:XX^0`$ ($`X^0`$ étant muni de la topologie discrète) et d’une application continue $`:\{(x,y)X\times X,t(x)=s(y)\}X`$ satisfaisant les axiomes $`s(xy)=s(x)`$, $`t(xy)=t(y)`$ et enfin $`x(yz)=(xy)z`$ pour tout $`x,y,zX`$. Un morphisme de flots $`f`$ de $`X`$ vers $`Y`$ est une application continue de $`X^0X`$ vers $`Y^0Y`$ telle que $`f(X^0)Y^0`$, $`f(X)Y`$, $`s(f(x))=f(s(x))`$, $`t(f(x))=f(t(x))`$, $`f(xy)=f(x)f(y)`$. La catégorie correspondante est notée $`\mathrm{𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰}`$.

Les éléments de $`X`$ sont appelés les chemins d’exécution (non-constants) et ceux de $`X^0`$ les états de $`X`$ (ou encore les chemins d’exécution constants).

Si $`Z`$ est un espace topologique, le flot $`Glob(Z)`$ est défini comme suit : $`Glob(Z)=Z`$, $`Glob(Z)^0=\{0,1\}`$, et enfin $`s=0`$ et $`t=1`$ (il n’y a pas de chemins d’exécution composables). Si $`Z`$ est un singleton, on obtient le flot $`\stackrel{}{I}`$ correspondant au segment dirigé.

###### Définition 1.2.

 Deux morphismes de flots $`f`$ et $`g`$ de $`X`$ dans $`Y`$ sont S-homotopes s’il existe une application continue $`H:X\times [0,1]Y`$ telle que

1. $`H(,u)`$ est un morphisme de flots de $`X`$ dans $`Y`$
2. $`H(,0)=f`$ et $`H(,1)=g`$

On écrit $`f_Sg`$.

De là on définit la notion de flots S-homotopes :

###### Définition 1.3.

 Deux flots $`X`$ et $`Y`$ sont S-homotopes s’il existe un morphisme de flots $`f:XY`$ et un morphisme de flots $`g:YX`$ tels que $`fg_SId_Y`$ et $`gf_SId_X`$. On dit alors que $`f`$ et $`g`$ sont deux équivalences de S-homotopie réciproques.

Il existe une deuxième classe de morphismes de flots appelés T-homotopie qui permet d’identifier des flots ayant les mêmes propriétés informatiques sous-jacentes . Nous n’en dirons rien de nouveau ici par rapport à la précédente note. Il est donc inutile de rappeler la définition précise de cette classe de morphismes.

## 2. Flot S-cofibrant

Un flot S-cofibrant est obtenu par définition comme suit. On part d’un espace discret $`X^0`$ et on considère le flot correspondant ayant $`X^0`$ comme $`0`$-squelette et l’ensemble vide $`\mathrm{}`$ comme espace de chemins. On lui attache ensuite des $`\stackrel{}{I}`$ pour obtenir un premier flot $`X_0^1`$. On passe ensuite de $`X_n^1`$ à $`X_{n+1}^1`$ pour $`n0`$ en attachant des $`Glob(D^{n+1})`$ le long de morphismes d’attachement $`Glob(S^n)X_n^1`$. En d’autres termes, on choisit une famille de morphismes de flots $`f_i:Glob(S^n)X_n^1`$ pour $`iI`$ et $`X_{n+1}^1`$ est alors obtenu par le diagramme cocartésien dans la catégorie des flots (qui se trouve être cocomplète)

Si $`Z`$ est un CW-complexe, alors $`Glob(Z)`$ est un exemple de flot S-cofibrant. Vu la similitude entre la construction des CW-complexes globulaires introduits dans  et celle des flots S-cofibrants, on n’aura pas de mal à se convaincre du :

###### Théorème 2.1.

 Le plongement des CW-complexes globulaires dans les flots induit une équivalence de catégories entre les CW-complexes globulaires à S-homotopie et T-homotopie près et les flots S-cofibrants à S-homotopie et T-homotopie près.

La preuve de ce théorème repose essentiellement sur le fait que deux CW-complexes globulaires sont S-homotopes (resp. T-homotopes) si et seulement si les flots correspondants sont S-homotopes (resp. T-homotopes) (cf. ).

## 3. Dihomotopie faible

###### Définition 3.1.

 Un morphisme de flots $`f:XY`$ est une S-homotopie faible si $`f`$ induit une bijection entre $`X^0`$ et $`Y^0`$ et une équivalence d’homotopie faible de $`X`$ vers $`Y`$. On dit alors que $`X`$ et $`Y`$ sont faiblement S-homotopes.

###### Théorème 3.2.

 Un morphisme de flots $`f:XY`$ entre deux flots S-cofibrants $`X`$ et $`Y`$ est une équivalence de S-homotopie faible si et seulement si c’est une équivalence de S-homotopie.

Si les deux flots S-cofibrants sont de la forme $`Glob(Z)`$ et $`Glob(T)`$$`Z`$ et $`T`$ sont deux CW-complexes, cet énoncé correspond au théorème classique de Whitehead.

Pour le démontrer, on commence par introduire pour tout espace topologique $`U`$ et tout flot $`X`$ un flot $`UX`$ de telle façon que l’on ait la bijection naturelle $`\mathrm{𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰}([0,1]X,Y)\text{Top}([0,1],\mathrm{𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖}(X,Y))`$$`\mathrm{𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖}(X,Y)`$ est l’ensemble des morphismes de flots de $`X`$ à $`Y`$ muni de la Kelleyfication de la topologie induite par celle de $`\mathrm{𝐓𝐎𝐏}(X,Y)`$. Mais le foncteur $`\mathrm{𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖}(X,):\mathrm{𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰}\text{Top}`$ ne commute pas avec les limites projectives. En effet, si $`X`$ est un singleton, alors $`\mathrm{𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖}(X,Y)=Y^0`$ est toujours discret mais la limite projective d’espaces topologiques discrets peut être totalement discontinue sans être discrète. On doit donc procéder autrement pour définir correctement $`UX`$. Mais dès que $`U`$ est connexe, la bijection naturelle ci-dessus est vraie et $`UX`$ est alors le flot libre engendré par $`X^0(U\times X)`$ quotienté par les relations $`s(u,x)=s(x)`$, $`t(u,x)=t(x)`$ et $`(u,x)(u,y)=(u,xy)`$ dès que $`t(x)=s(y)`$ pour tout $`uU`$ et tout $`x,yX`$.

Puis on adapte à la catégorie des flots la théorie des paires NDR et DR d’espaces topologiques  de la façon suivante. La notion de paire NDR d’espaces topologiques devient la notion de S-cofibration définie comme suit :

###### Définition 3.3.

 Un morphisme de flots $`i:XY`$ est une S-cofibration si $`i`$ vérifie la propriété de relèvement des S-homotopies, i.e. pour tous morphismes de flots $`g:YZ`$ et $`H:[0,1]XZ`$ tels que $`H(0x)=g(i(x))`$, il existe un morphisme de flots $`\overline{H}:[0,1]YZ`$ tel que $`\overline{H}(ui(x))=H(ux)`$ et $`\overline{H}(0y)=g(y)`$ pour tout $`u[0,1]`$, $`xX`$ et $`yY`$.

La notion de paire DR d’espaces topologiques devient la notion de S-cofibration acyclique définie comme suit :

###### Définition 3.4.

 Une S-cofibration $`i:XY`$ est acyclique si elle est une équivalence de S-homotopie.

Avec ces objets, on démontre alors (entre autre) le théorème suivant :

###### Théorème 3.5.

 Soit $`(Y,B)`$ une paire NDR d’espaces topologiques et soit $`i:AX`$ une S-cofibration. Alors le morphisme de flots canonique $`(Y,B)i:YA_{BA}BXYX`$ est une S-cofibration. Si de plus $`(Y,B)`$ est une paire DR ou si $`i`$ est une S-cofibration acyclique, alors la S-cofibration $`(Y,B)i`$ est acyclique.

On a enfin besoin, comme dans le cas classique, de prouver que tout morphisme de flots est S-homotope à une inclusion de flots. Cela se fait en introduisant le ”mapping cylindre” d’un morphisme de flots comme suit :

###### Définition 3.6.

 Soit $`f:XY`$ un morphisme de flots. Le mapping cylindre de $`f`$ est le flot $`I_f`$ obtenu par le diagramme cocartésien de $`\mathrm{𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰}`$ suivant :

Muni de ces outils, on suit alors pas-à-pas la démonstration du théorème de Whitehead telle que exposée dans le livre  en adaptant aux flots les théorèmes de compression ainsi que les différents théorèmes d’extension de morphismes ou d’homotopies. On obtient même gratuitement le théorème suivant :

###### Théorème 3.7.

 Soit $`f:XY`$ un morphisme de flots où $`X`$ et $`Y`$ sont deux flots S-cofibrants. Alors $`f`$ est S-homotope à un morphisme de flots $`g:XY`$ tel que pour tout $`n0`$, $`g(X_n^1)Y_n^1`$.

Enfin on a :

###### Théorème 3.8.

 Tout flot est faiblement S-homotope à un flot S-cofibrant. Ce CW-complexe globulaire est nécessairement unique à S-homotopie près d’après le théorème précédent.

Si $`X`$ est un espace topologique, on sait qu’il existe une procédure pour construire une famille de CW-complexes $`(Y_n)_{n0}`$ où pour tout $`i0`$ et tout point base, l’application canonique $`\pi _i(Y_n)\pi _i(X)`$ est surjective et pour tout $`0in`$ et tout point base, l’application canonique $`\pi _i(Y_n)\pi _i(X)`$ est injective. Dans cette procédure, on passe de $`Y_n`$ à $`Y_{n+1}`$ en attachant des disques $`D^{n+1}`$ à $`Y_n`$. La notation $`\pi _i`$ désigne évidemment le $`i`$-ième groupe d’homotopie.

Une procédure exactement similaire fonctionne pour les flots. On part d’un flot $`X`$ et on commence par associer à $`X`$ un espace $`Y_0`$ et une application continue $`Y_0X`$ vérifiant les mêmes conditions que ci-dessus. On prend alors le flot libre $`T_0`$ engendré par $`X^0`$ et $`Y_0`$, ce qui ne change évidemment rien à la situation pour les groupes d’homotopie. Puis on attache à $`T_0`$ des cellules $`Glob(D^1)`$ le long de morphismes d’attachement $`Glob(S^0)T_0`$ de façon à obtenir un morphisme de flots $`T_1X`$ induisant des bijections pour $`\pi _0`$ et $`\pi _1`$. L’unique différence avec ce qui se passe pour les espaces topologiques est qu’attacher une cellule à un flot peut engendrer, du fait de la composition des chemins, un attachement de plusieurs cellules à l’espace des chemins sous-jacents. Cela ne change rien pour les groupes d’homotopie. D’où le résultat en itérant le procédé. Et comme corollaire, on obtient le

###### Théorème 3.9.

 Le foncteur réalisation catégorique induit une équivalence de catégories entre la catégorie des CW-complexes globulaires à S-homotopie et à T-homotopie près et la catégorie des flots à S-homotopie faible et à T-homotopie près.

Nous avons donc obtenu après  une deuxième façon de décrire les automates parallèles à dihomotopie près. L’immense avantage de cette seconde façon est que la catégorie des flots est complète et cocomplète, contrairement à la catégorie des CW-complexes globulaires. De plus on a le

###### Théorème 3.10.

 Il existe une structure modèle sur la catégorie des flots dont les équivalences faibles sont exactement les S-homotopies faibles.

Il existe une deuxième classe de morphismes de flots appelés T-homotopie qu’on aimerait voir transformer en équivalence faible. D’où la

###### Question 3.11.

Existe-t-il une structure modèle sur la catégorie des flots dont les équivalences faibles contiendraient aussi les T-homotopies ? Cette structure modèle pourrait être obtenue éventuellement par localisation à gauche ou à droite au sens de  de la structure modèle du théorème 3.10.

Il y a deux obstacles à surmonter pour répondre à cette question : 1) prouver l’existence d’une ou des deux localisations , 2) vérifier que la ou les nouvelles structures modèle n’identifient pas des automates parallèles ayant des propriétés différentes.

Pour terminer, la catégorie des flots n’est pas cartésiennement fermée mais elle possède quand même une structure monoïdale fermée qui a une signification informatique intéressante .


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# The 3-D kinematics of water masers around the semiregular variable RT Virginis

## 1 Introduction

Understanding the dynamics of mass loss flows in circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars is one of the most important areas of research in the overall mass devolution of stars and the cycling of the interstellar medium. Fundamentally, material on the surface of an evolved star gets colder and forms dust while it is moving into interstellar space. The newly formed dust is accelerated by the stellar radiative pressure and forms an expanding envelope. However, such processes are complicated because the related phenomena occur in a dynamically and physically unstable region. Maser emission produced from silicon monoxide (SiO), water vapor (H2O), and hydroxyl (OH) molecules are commonly found in many circumstellar envelopes (e.g., Reid & Moran 1981; Elitzur 1992). Because of the compactness (down to 0.1 AU) of individual maser features, or probably physical gas clumps (e.g., Colomer et al. 1992; Imai et al. 1997), they are good tracers for investigating the kinematics of the envelopes using very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). Multi-epoch observations of SiO masers around Mira variables, which are located closer to a stellar surface than other masers, using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) suggest that circumstellar envelopes of Mira variables are not necessarily spherically symmetric, very likely due to anisotropic mass ejection on the stellar surface (e.g., Diamond & Kemball 1999). On the other hand, shock waves are also expected simultaneously, which are driven by the periodic variation in stellar radiative pressure to the dust in the envelopes. These shock waves caused by stellar pulsation are formed near the stellar surface and transported to larger distances from the star.

The gas dynamics of circumstellar envelopes can also be studied with multi-epoch observations of water masers with VLBI. The dynamical change of the envelope due to stellar pulsation is not so significant ($``$10%) in the near-vicinity of stellar surface, a so-called ”radio atmosphere” and a ”molecular atmosphere” (Reid & Menten, 1997). In fact, the amplitude of the expansion and contraction motions seen in SiO masers in this region is small (10-20%, Diamond & Kemball 1999). On the other hand, in the outer region ($`T`$1000 K) where water masers are excited, dust formation starts and shock waves are enhanced due to dust-induced radiative pressure (e.g., Höfner, Feuchtinger, & Dorfi et al. 1995). A shock wave is expected to produce rapid velocity changes (acceleration/deceleration) by up to 10 km s-1 in front and in back of it, these will be directly detected as radial-velocity drifts and proper motions deviating from a constant velocity motion. The present VLBI technology enables us to detect such acceleration/deceleration motions with an accuracy of 10 microarcseconds ($`\mu `$as) in position and of 0.1 km s-1 in radial velocity. Such trials have recently started (e.g., Ishitsuka et al. 2001, hereafter I01). Water masers are also good tools to directly estimate the distances to evolved stars using knowledge of their 3-D velocity vectors (radial velocities and proper motions), a method which does not rely on the standard distance ladder methods (Marvel, 1997). Distance estimation with water maser data will be applicable to distance measurements for many evolved stars invisible at optical wavelengths after examining the reliability and comparing with other methods.

Here we present the 3-D motions and the radial-velocity drifts of water masers associated with the semiregular variable star RT Virginis (RT Vir), which have been measured from VLBA data. RT Vir is one of the brightest water maser sources (e.g., Bowers & Johnston 1994, hereafter BJ; Yates & Cohen 1994, hereafter YC; Richards et al. 1999a, hereafter RCBY; Yates et al. 2000, hereafter YRGB). The period of stellar pulsation of RT Vir has been estimated to be $``$155 d with some irregularity (e.g., Kholopov et al. 1985; Etoka et al. 2001). Imai et al. (1997) (hereafter Paper I) found another pulsation period of 375 d using data obtained by the American Association of Variable Star Observation (AAVSO). Radial-velocity drifts of the water masers, with time, have been found from VLBI observations (Paper I), however, the origin of the drifts and the true maser kinematics are not yet clear because of insufficient angular resolution and a small amount of proper motion data (c.f., RCBY; YRGB).

Section 2 describes the VLBI observations and data reduction. Section 3 summarizes the revealed 3-D kinematics of the water masers and the detection of acceleration of one maser feature in its proper motion. Section 4 discusses the dynamics of the circumstellar envelope of RT Vir, which exhibits acceleration. Measurements of the distance to RT Vir are also mentioned there.

## 2 Observations and Data Reduction

The monitoring observations of water masers around RT Vir with the VLBA have been made at five epochs during 1998 May–August, with a separation of 3 weeks between the successive two epochs. Table 1 summarizes the status of the observations. Each of the observations had a duration of 4 hrs including scans towards RT Vir and the calibrator 3C 273B for clock offset and complex-bandpass calibration. The received signals were recorded with one base-band channel (BBC) with a center velocity at $`V_{\text{LSR}}`$$`=`$ 17.0 km s-1 and a bandwidth of 4 MHz in dual circular polarization mode. The correlated data were processed with 1024 velocity channels and a velocity spacing of 0.056 km s-1 in each channel at 22.24 GHz.

The procedures in data reduction using NRAO’s AIPS and maser position measurement we have applied were almost the same as those presented in section 2.2 of Imai et al. (2000) and section 3.1 of Imai, Deguchi, & Sasao (2002) (hereafter Paper III), respectively. In the present work, the complex bandpass characteristics were obtained from data on 3C 273B with an uncertainty of less than 1° in phase. For amplitude calibration, we applied a template spectrum of the water maser emission obtained from the auto-correlation data. The velocity channel at $`V_{\text{LSR}}`$$``$17.1 km s-1 was selected as reference for fringe fitting and self-calibration (see table 1). The naturally weighted visibility data created a synthesized beam of 0.41 mas $`\times `$ 0.94 mas with a position angle of 7°.6. The detection limit was typically 200 mJy beam-1 at a 5-$`\sigma `$ noise level in maps without bright maser emission. The positional accuracy for a maser feature was limited typically to 50 $`\mu `$as mainly because of the extended structure of the feature.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Proper Motions of Water Maser Features

The water masers in RT Vir were spatially well resolved into individual maser features with the VLBA synthesized beam. Each maser feature is composed of a compact ($`<`$1 AU) bright part and an extended structure. As a result, about 60 maser features have been detected at every observation. Table 1 shows the numbers of maser features detected at individual epochs. Previous observations with larger synthesized beams (Paper I; RCBY; YRGB) may not be able to distinguish some of individual maser features because of the crowded distribution of maser features in the beam.

We traced the position and radial velocity of each maser feature, which had been stable from one epoch to another within 1 km s-1 in radial velocity and 0.5 mas in position. We also checked the stability of spatial patterns of the maser feature (alignment of velocity components or spots, Paper III). A total of 60 maser features were detected at least twice and their relative proper motions and radial-velocity drifts were measured. Table 2 lists measured proper motions and radial-velocity drifts of maser features. The estimation of uncertainty in proper motion takes into account the apparent sizes of the maser features. Only 36 of the maser features were detected at least three times, indicating that individual maser features turn on and off on a time scale of typically 1–2 months. RCBY and YRGB reported maser proper motions of up to 3 mas in 70 days in the year 1996, the values were slightly larger than those measured in the present paper (typically 1–2 mas in 80 days in the year 1998).

Figure 1 shows changes in positions and radial velocities of maser features detected five times. One can find jumps in positions and radial velocities within the above stability criteria in some maser features (e.g. RT Vir:I2002 20). These maser features were blended with nearby (closer than 0.5 mas) maser features, for which it was difficult to exactly trace their velocities and positions. On the other hand, we found not only proper motions that were well fit by a constant-velocity motion but also exhibited linear radial-velocity drifts in some features. We also found an acceleration motion for a feature in its proper motion, which is described in detail in section 3.3.

### 3.2 The 3-D Kinematics of the RT Vir flow

Figure 3 shows the angular distribution and the 3-D motions of maser features. The features exhibit an elongation in their spatial distribution and a radial-velocity gradient in the east–west direction, which have been visible in previous observations (Bowers, Claussen, & Johnston 1993; BJ; YC; Paper I; RCBY; YRGB). The 3-D maser kinematics clearly exhibits an expanding flow, not rotation. The kinematic flow looks clearer when including in the diagram the 60 maser features detected at least twice than when only including 36 features detected at least three times. Because of the crowded distribution of maser features and very short lifetimes of maser features, misidentification of feature motions should be taken into account especially for the features detected only twice. We made further analyses, however, using all of the proper motion data in the present paper.

#### 3.2.1 Analysis based on the velocity variance-covariance matrix

We performed analysis based on diagonalization of the variance–covariance matrix (VVCM) of our obtained maser velocity vectors (Bloemhof 2000; I01). The velocity dispersions used in the VVCM analysis are the quantities directly determined by a proper motion measurement that lacks the absolute position reference. The VVCM diagonalization is done by obtaining eigenvectors and eigenvalues for the VVCM, which correspond to the kinematic axes of the flow and velocity dispersions along the axes, respectively. Thus, the VVCM analysis is an objective and model-independent method. The diagonalized VVCM was as follows,

$$\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\sigma _{xx}& \sigma _{yx}& \sigma _{zx}\\ \sigma _{xy}& \sigma _{yy}& \sigma _{zy}\\ \sigma _{xz}& \sigma _{yz}& \sigma _{zz}\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}23.84& 3.09& 4.19\\ 3.09& 24.11& 7.17\\ 4.19& 7.17& 21.09\end{array}\right)$$

$$\left(\begin{array}{ccc}15.03& 0& 0\\ 0& 32.79& 0\\ 0& 0& 21.22\end{array}\right),$$
(1)
where $`\sigma _{ij}=\sigma _{ji}`$ is a variance ($`i=j`$) or a covariance ($`ij`$) of measured maser motions in the $`i`$\- and $`j`$-axes ($`x`$, $`y`$, or $`z`$) in unit of km2s-2. To estimate uncertainties of the obtained values, we also performed a Monte Carlo simulation generating VVCMs with artificial errors around the values obtained in the measurement. The eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue (velocity dispersion) had an inclination of 24°.7$`\pm `$4°.6 with respect to the sky plane and a position angle of 35°.8$`\pm `$14°.9, which is roughly parallel to both of the directions of the elongation and the velocity gradient mentioned above. This implies the bipolarity of the RT Vir flow, but is not so significant, since the velocity dispersion is roughly equal in all directions; a ratio of the eigenvalue was 2.47: 1.67: 1 (c.f., the ratio of 6.1: 2.0: 1 in R Crt, I01).

#### 3.2.2 Model fitting for the maser kinematics

We also made a least-squares model-fitting analysis assuming a spherically expanding flow model, details of which have already been described in Imai et al. (2000) (c.f. Gwinn, Moran, & Reid 1992). We used weights proportional to the square of the accuracy of a measured proper motion.

First, we adopted radial expansion motions of masers with independent speeds and estimated only a systemic bulk motion, or the motion of the star, and a location of the star as free parameters. Then, we also estimated a distance to RT Vir and the velocity field of the radial expansion. In the present paper, we assumed the speed of the radial expansion of a maser feature i, $`V_{\text{exp}}(i)`$, as a function of the distance to a maser feature from the origin of the outflow, $`r_i`$, which is expressed as

$$V_{\text{exp}}(i)=V_0+V_1\left(\frac{r_i}{r_0}\right)^\alpha ,$$
(2)
where $`V_0`$ is the intrinsic velocity at the stellar surface, $`V_1`$ the velocity at a unit distance $`r_0`$, $`\alpha `$ the power-law index indicating the apparent acceleration of the flow. We applied the fitting technique step-by-step, excluding maser features with unreliably large distances from the outflow origin ($`>`$0″.3 or 66 AU at 220 pc). Table 3 shows the best solutions obtained in the analyses. Figure 3 shows the distribution of features with expanding velocities obtained using equation (10) of Imai et al. (2000) versus distances from the estimated position of the central star.

Through this procedure, we found that several maser features had negative expansion velocities or infall motions towards the star (see also figure 3). Although some of the features were detected at least at three epochs, it is still unclear whether they were tracing actual physical motions. When including these infalling maser features, the best-fit function indicates a slow ($`V_{\text{exp}}<`$5 km s-1) expansion of the flow with marginal deceleration (figure 3b). These are inconsistent with the suggestion that the RT Vir flow has an expansion velocity $`V_{\text{exp}}`$10 km s-1 in the water maser region and radial acceleration toward the outer OH maser region (RCBY). The estimated position of the star is roughly at the center of the whole maser distribution but slightly biased toward clusters of the blue-shifted maser features located at the south-west of the whole region. The estimated position of the expansion center or the star is located close to the center of the ”ring” found in the maser distribution. No maser feature is located within 30 mas ( 7 AU) from the star, indicating a ”quenching zone” of water maser emission (YC).

On the other hand, when excluding the maser features exhibiting infall, a higher expansion velocity $`V_{\text{exp}}`$8 km s-1 was obtained. The estimated location of the star is very close to blue-shifted clusters of maser features. We could not find converging solutions in which the stellar position is close to the center of the ring mentioned above. Thus, the spatial distribution of the masers is expected to be significantly asymmetric (see also figure 3). This is consistent with the estimation by BJ. Maser features apparently spread out to 200 mas ($``$45 AU) from the star (see also figure 3), which is larger by a factor of 2–3 than that previously estimated (Bowers, Claussen, & Johnston 1993; BJ; YC). The size of the maser-quenching zone is reduced to 10 mas ($``$2 AU). The estimated systemic radial velocity of the star also has an offset of $``$3 km s-1 from the value adopted by above previous papers.

Figure 4 shows the estimated 3-D spatio-kinematics of the water masers projected in three directions. Most of the maser features exhibit radial expansion without rotation around the star at the diagram origin. Contrary to the asymmetric spatial distribution of maser features, asymmetry in the velocity field is not seen; maser features seem to have only a bias in the spatial distribution. Thus, the kinematics of the RT Vir flow is well expressed by a radially expanding flow (c.f., Paper I; RCBY; YRGB) and the radial-velocity gradient in the east-west direction should be due to the bipolarity of the flow but with weak collimation.

### 3.3 Acceleration motions found in water maser features

We have measured radial-velocity drifts of individual maser features by measuring a radial velocity at the brightness peak of each maser feature in the same manner as that in Paper III. Because we measured the velocities with accuracy better than a velocity channel spacing of 0.056 km s-1, the uncertainties of the velocity drift rates were calculated by assuming a measurement error to be equal to this value. The uncertainties were as small as 0.3 km s-1yr-1 in the best case. Table 2 gives the measured radial velocity drifts of maser features. Figure 1 presents time variations in radial velocities of individual maser features with longer lifetimes.

The changes in radial velocity are usually less than the velocity widths of maser features (0.5–2.0 km s-1, see table 2) and likely to be affected by temporal changes in spatial and velocity structures of maser features with time. Gwinn (1994) pointed out that the observed line width is likely affected by the subsonic bulk motions within the feature ($``$0.5 km s-1) and the different hyperfine transitions of the H2O line (but negligible). Because the two effects will also affect the radial-velocity drift measurements, the velocity variations larger than 0.5 km s-1 can be taken into account as possible accelerations.

Nevertheless, some of the maser features changed their velocities with time at constant rates, or constant accelerations. Figure 6 shows the histogram of the measured radial-velocity rates. The drift rates of these features are equal to or smaller than 1 km s-1yr-1 and quite similar to those that have been commonly detected for 15 yrs with single-dish observations (Lekht et al., 1999). Maser features with larger drift rates ($`>`$2 km s-1yr-1) exhibit jumps in velocities, which are likely due to blending of a few very close by maser features as mentioned in section 3.1. Such large velocity drifts were also found in some maser features detected in less than four epochs. Thus, radial-velocity drifts around 1 km s-1yr-1 come from single maser features and may indicate acceleration/deceleration of the features. Previous VLBI observations (Paper I; I01) have also detected such systematic radial-velocity drifts in a small number of maser features. We did not find, however, a correlation between radial-velocity and acceleration (see figure 6).

We have also looked for maser features exhibiting acceleration/deceleration motions in their proper motions. Similar to measurements of the radial-velocity drifts, we traced positions of brightest peaks of individual maser features. The method to define the feature position was described in Paper III. Note that flux-weighted positions (e.g., Marvel 1997) are often affected by extended and weak velocity components. Figure 7a shows the time variation in spatial structures of the position-reference feature (RT Vir 2002I: 33) and the adjacent features. We find that the reference feature has changed in spatial structure from one epoch to another. Most of the maser features had similar variation in their internal structures, which makes it more difficult to judge whether an apparent acceleration motion really reflects a true one or a physical motion of the maser cloud. Because VLBI observations lose the absolute position coordinate, we can not calibrate the change in spatial structure of the reference feature for the proper motion measurements. Assuming that this change is coming from the subsonic bulk motions within the feature mentioned above, an uncertainty of $``$0.5 km s-1 (0.5 mas yr-1) likely contaminates the measured relative proper motions of other maser features.

Nevertheless, we found a maser feature candidate that may exhibit a true acceleration motion, in which the feature moved by a distance much larger than the size of the feature itself. Figure 7b shows the time variation of the candidate, RT Vir 2002I: 47, and the adjacent features. Figure 8 shows the trajectory of the candidate and a model, which adopts a constant acceleration and is fitted well to the observed trajectory. The acceleration vector (\[$``$18.5, 27.1\] in units of km s-1yr-1) has a position angle of ($``$34°, which is roughly parallel to the mean proper motion vector (\[$``$2.2, 10.4\] in unit of km s-1, subtracting the mean proper motion shown in table 3) with a position angle of $``$12° and the position vector (\[$``$2, 46\] in unit of mas) with a position angle of $``$2°. The measured acceleration motion vector is a relative one with respect to that of the reference feature, or we are measuring it in the frame in which the reference feature has a constant velocity motion. Expecting spherically symmetric acceleration motions in the features RT Vir 2002I: 47 and 33 with respect to the central star, the relative acceleration vector would be closer to the proper motion vector of the feature RT Vir 2002I: 47. Adopting this acceleration, the feature increased in speed from 1 km s-1 to 16 km s-1.

Note that the apparent acceleration of the feature was seen only on the sky plane ($``$33 km s-1yr-1), but not along the line-of-sight ($``$0.1 km s-1yr-1). Other maser features also exhibited apparently rapid acceleration motions on the sky plane but much smaller ones along the line-of-sight as mentioned above ($``$3 km s-1yr-1).

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Stellar position in the H2O maser distribution

The stellar position of RT Vir in the circmstellar envelope has been estimated in several manners based on the maser maps or position-velocity diagrams. All of the results suggest that the star is close to the center of the H2O maser distribution or the middle between the blue-shifted and red-shifted clusters of maser features (e.g., Bowers, Claussen, & Johnston 1993; YRGB). YC and Bains et al. (2002) found a ”quenching zone”, within which no maser emission is found. Reid & Menten (1990) found that a radio continuum source from the semiregular variable W Hya is located at the center of a ”ring” found in the H2O maser distribution.

On the other hand, the dynamical center of the expanding flow estimated in the present paper has a large offset ($``$40 mas) over the uncertainty in the model fitting (see table 3). The stellar position can be examined by simultaneously making proper motion measurements such as those in the present paper and observations of the radio continuum source of RT Vir such as that made by Reid & Menten (1990). It is expected that the asymmetry of the 3-D distribution of maser features (see figure 4) derived a bias in the model fitting. Long-term observations, over several years, will reduce such distribution asymmetry.

### 4.2 Distance to RT Vir

The estimation of the distance to RT Vir has been made with several methods: a trigonometric parallax with the HIPPARCOS satellite (140 pc) and bolometric distance assuming a P-L relation (120–360 pc, e.q., BJ; YC; Yuasa & Unno 1999). In the present paper, we made the distance estimation on the basis of the 3-D kinematics of the RT Vir water masers using both, the statistical parallax and the model-fitting methods. As described in section 3.2.1, the feasibility of these methods was examined by the objective analysis using VVCM, which shows no rotation or other peculiar motion in the velocity field (see also figure 6). In the model-fitting method, the detail of which has already been described in section 3.2.2 and table 3, we obtained distance values of 226$`\pm `$16 pc in the analysis using only maser features exhibiting expansion.

When including infalling features in the analysis, the distance value was 85$`\pm `$12 pc. Then we obtained an expansion velocity $`V_{\text{exp}}`$5 km s-1(see figure 3), which is smaller than the value obtained by RCBY (V$`{}_{exp}{}^{}`$10 km s-1). The results of RCBY suggested that the circumstellar envelope is accelerated gradually toward the outside, from 2-3 km s-1 in the SiO maser region closest to the star to 20–30 km s-1 in the OH maser region most distant from the star. It is expected that RCBY’s results reflected a ”steady” flow of RT Vir. Because, as expected in theoretical models (e.g. Höfner, Feuchtinger, & Dorfi et al. 1995), infall motions occur as a result of a time-variable phenomenon, or shock wave, the infalling features are needed to be excluded in the model assuming the steady flow. Thus, the above distance value is concluded to be underestimated.

On the other hand, the statistical-parallax method (Genzel et al., 1981) gave distance values of 237$`\pm `$29 pc (232$`\pm `$27 pc and 243$`\pm `$29 pc for the $`\mu _x`$$`V_z`$ and the $`\mu _y`$$`V_z`$ data, respectively) and 214$`\pm `$28 pc (211$`\pm `$27 pc and 216$`\pm `$28 pc for the $`\mu _x`$$`V_z`$ and $`\mu _y`$$`V_z`$ data, respectively) when using all 3-D motion data and only the data used in the former model fitting, respectively. The distance values obtained in the former model-fitting and the statistical parallax methods are quite consistent with each other, and the weighted-mean distance value of 220$`\pm `$30 pc is adopted for RT Vir in this paper.

Note that the statistical parallax methods used only maser features with measured proper motions. Adopting a radial velocity dispersion of 66 maser features detected in the first epoch when the largest number of features were detected, a distance value of 279$`\pm `$32 pc was obtained. Thus, the radial velocity dispersion tends to have the larger value, with respect to the proper motion dispersion, when including maser features without measured proper motions. This implies that maser features without measured proper motions have the different kinematics from that of maser features with the proper motions. The distance estimation in this paper was the first successful one for a water maser source around a low-mass Mira-type star next to those around supergiants exhibiting many long-lived water maser features (Marvel, 1997).

### 4.3 Asymmetry of the mass-loss process in semiregular variables

The morphology and the kinematics of circumstellar envelopes (or mass-losing flows) of evolved stars, which are traced by the water maser kinematics, sometimes exhibit clear bipolarity or significant asymmetry. Even if taking into account the limited physical conditions for maser excitation, such asymmetry is evident throughout the revealed 3-D maser kinematics. At the end of the AGB phase in stellar evolution, such asymmetry will be tightly related to formation of elongated planetary nebulae, some of which are created by stellar jets (e.g., Imai et al. 2002). The asymmetry, however, has been also found in semiregular variables (e.g., Bowers, Claussen, & Johnston 1993; BJ; YC; I01), which has been considered to be at the early-AGB phase. The present and previous works (e.g., Marvel 1997: I01; Yates et al. 2000) have proven that radial-velocity gradients seen in water maser distributions are due to the bipolarity, not the rotation of mass-losing flows. On the other hand, many Mira and semiregular variables, including RT Vir, do not clearly show the flow bipolarity yet, having major/minor axis ratios of $``$2. It is still difficult to discuss the relation among the asymmetry, mass-loss rate, radius, and expansion velocity of a mass-losing flow due mainly to the limited number of sample stars available for data of the 3-D maser kinematics and for accurate distances. In this paper, we speculate about the weak asymmetry of the RT Vir flow.

We re-estimated a mass-loss rate for RT Vir adopting the described spherically-expanding flow model. The density of material (hydrogen molecules) in the flow is determined from predictions by a maser excitation theory as 106 cm$`{}_{}{}^{3}n_{\text{H}\text{2}}`$ $``$ 109 cm-3 (e.g., Cooke & Elitzur 1985; Elitzur 1992). Adopting the radius of the flow in the water maser region, $`r`$44 AU, at $`d`$220 pc (distribution size of $``$200 mas), an expansion velocity, $`V_{\text{exp}}`$8 km s-1, we obtained a mass-loss rate of $`\dot{M}`$ 1.5$`\times `$10-7 ($`n_{\text{H}\text{2}}`$/106 cm-3) $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ yr-1, whose lower limit is roughly consistent with that estimated by BJ. Adopting the relation between a radius of the water maser distribution and a mass-loss rate found by Cooke & Elitzur (1985) and Lane et al. (1987), the mass-loss rate of RT Vir should be much larger than this value (c.f., 3$`\times `$10-6 $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ yr-1, BJ).

On the other hand, Mira-type stars with relatively large mass-loss rates and larger flow radii have symmetric kinematics (e.g., BJ). In OH/IR stars with larger mass-loss rates, 1612-MHz OH masers exhibit larger and symmetric distributions (e.g., Chapman & Cohen 1986). It is considered that the intrinsic bipolarity or asymmetry of a mass-losing flow is obscured by the growing envelope as the mass-loss rate increases. In this case, RT Vir will be in the transition during an increase in its mass-loss rate. We have to take into account, however, cases of supergiants, which have much higher mass-loss rates but most of which exhibit significant asymmetry.

Note that the expansion velocity and the radius of a mass-losing flow determined seem to be time dependent. Water masers around R Aql are one of the examples (BJ). The bipolarity of the maser distribution was significant after the maximum of the light curve and vice versa. A similar variation in the maser distribution has been confirmed for RT Vir, but when a stellar pulsation period of 375 d is adopted (Paper I). Adopting this tendency, water masers around RT Vir were observed around the light maximum, in which the maser distribution was larger than those observed with the VLA (Bowers, Claussen, & Johnston 1993; BJ) but smaller than those observed with the Japanese VLBI Network (J-Net, Paper I). If we could measure maser proper motions with the J-Net data, the bipolarity would be exhibited more clearly. The time dependence of the bipolarity should be examined with monitoring observations for longer than a few cycles of the pulsation period.

### 4.4 Origin of apparent acceleration motions

Long-term monitoring observations have showed that there are apparent radial-velocity drifts of water maser features that have occurred simultaneously and exhibited the same drift direction (acceleration/deceleration) among several maser features (Lekht et al., 1999). This implies a change of the velocity field in the mass-losing flow due to the stellar pulsation as suggested above. In the case of RT Vir, such acceleration/deceleration observed is likely excited by stellar pulsation with a period of $``$375 d (Imai et al., 1997) rather than $``$155 d (e.g., Kholopov et al. 1985; Etoka et al. 2001). Such systematic velocity drifts may be detectable only with monitoring observations spanning at least one year. It is because there are small changes in the drift rates on this time scale and because it is sometimes difficult to remove data exhibiting velocity jumps due to blended features having intensity variation with time. In fact, in short duration ($`<`$ a few months) the velocity drifts have not exhibited the same drift direction among maser features in both the previous and the present VLBI observations (see figure 6, also Paper I; I01).

On the other hand, theoretical models adopting shock waves driven by stellar pulsation predict that a shock wave creates acceleration/deceleration of a mass-losing flow and generates rapid velocity changes during the passage of the shock (a few months) (e.g., Höfner, Feuchtinger, & Dorfi et al. 1995). The velocity changes are expected to be $``$10 km s-1 and $``$2 km s-1 at the inner ($`r`$5 AU) and the outer ($`r`$50 AU) region of water maser excitation, respectively. The acceleration motion observed in a feature’s proper motion, as mentioned in section 3.3, is quite consistent with the theoretical prediction.

It has been a long-term issue whether change in the location of a maser feature is tracing actual physical movement of the gas in a clump rather than some kind of non-kinematic effect, such as traveling excitation phenomena or chance realignment of coherency paths through the masing gas. Recent observations, however, have strongly suggested the former in hydroxyl and water masers; all of the observations have shown that individual maser features persist in both their spatial and radial-velocity patterns throughout their motion for distances much larger than their own sizes (e.g., Bloemhof, Moran, & Reid 1996; Torrelles et al. 2001a, b; Paper III). The maser feature (RT Vir I2002:47, see figure 7 and 8) exhibited a large acceleration on the sky, but simultaneously a large position drift of 2 mas, a stable radial velocity (variation less than 0.2 km s-1). This feature also exhibited a persistent V-shaped pattern formed by a cluster of maser spots, which have radial velocities successively changing by 0.056 km s-1 from one spot to another. These strongly support that this maser feature traces the movement of a gas clump throughout five observation epochs.

The larger acceleration on the sky plane (over 10 km s-1) than that in the line-of-sight ($``$1 km s-1yr-1) is likely due to the beaming effect of maser radiation. Taking into account the hydrodynamical treatment of a maser clump, an apparent acceleration motion of a brightness peak in the maser clump is expressed as, $`\frac{\text{d}V_r}{\text{d}t}`$ $``$ $`V_r\frac{V_r}{r}`$, where $`V_r`$ and $`r`$ are the velocity field as a function of distance from the star, $`r`$, and the location in the clump, respectively. Assuming a velocity drift of 30 km s-1yr-1, a mean velocity of 8 km s-1, a velocity gradient of $`\frac{V}{r}`$4 km s-1 mas-1 is expected at 220 pc. This velocity gradient is larger than that observed in the above maser feature on the sky plane ($``$1 km s-1 mas-1) and that expected from a steady accelerating envelope in the region of the H2O masers estimated by Bains et al. (2002),

$$\frac{V}{r}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }V}{\mathrm{\Delta }r}\frac{6\text{ km s}\text{-1}}{20\text{AU}}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.1}\text{ km s}\text{-1}\text{ mas}\text{-1}.$$
(3)
If such a large velocity gradient is generated along the line-of-sight, the velocity-coherent path is too short to produce strong maser amplification occurring in a velocity width of less than 1- 2 km s-1. Adopting a velocity-coherent path 10 times as long as the observed feature size ($``$1 mas), an acceleration motion of less than 1–2 km s-1yr-1 is expected along the line-of-sight. Thus, only large acceleration along the sky plane is detectable.

The present paper is the first approach to directly detect the pulsation-driven shock waves, which should be identified in future works by finding simultaneously several maser features performing such acceleration motions and by elucidating the relation between the occurrence of the acceleration and the stellar light curve.

## 5 Summary

Our monitoring VLBA observations of water masers around RT Vir have revealed the 3-D kinematics of water masers in more detail and detected the acceleration motions of water maser features. Because of the good angular resolution ($``$1 mas) and time separations ($``$3 weeks in five epochs), we were able to measure 60 proper motions and radial-velocity drifts of maser features. Carefully dealing with maser features exhibiting infall towards the star, we obtained a spherically-expanding flow model from the 3-D maser kinematics. The estimated expansion velocity of $``$8 km s-1 is consistent with that previously suggested. The estimated outer radius of the maser distribution, $``$45 AU, was 2–3 times as large as those previously estimated, except for those estimated in the J-Net observations. The estimated velocity field of the flow is roughly spherically symmetric, while the maser spatial and velocity distribution looks weakly asymmetric. Adopting the above flow model and taking into account a statistical parallax, we estimated the distance to RT Vir as to be 220$`\pm `$30 pc. We found radial-velocity drifts of maser features of $``$2 km s-1 and speculated that the drifts larger than $`>`$2 km s-1 are due to blending of a few maser features within a small region in space and velocity. We also found an acceleration motion in the proper motion of a maser feature with a rate of 33 km s-1yr-1 and indicating radial acceleration. Such acceleration motions seen both in the line-of-sight and on the sky plane are explained by a single common phenomenon: passages of pulsation-driven shock waves in the circumstellar envelope. The possible variation in the maser expansion size and distribution asymmetry with time as well as observed acceleration motions should be examined in future observations with time intervals longer than a few cycles of the stellar pulsation.

NRAO is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. H. I. was financially supported by the Research Fellowship of the Japan Society of the Promotion of Science for Young Scientist.