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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Nuclear Physics started a little bit more than 100 years ago with the discoveries of natural radioactivity by Henri Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie; and of the atomic nucleus in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford with his assistants Ernest Marsden and Hans Geiger. First, it was a science of curiosity exhibiting phenomena unusual for that time. It is not until the late thirties, well after the discovery of artificial radioactivity by Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, that the research in that domain tended to accelerate drastically and that Nuclear Physics became more and more a quantitative science.

Since then, scientists have accumulated a huge amount of data on a large number of nuclides. Today there are some 2830 variations on the combination of protons and neutrons that have been observed. Although this number seems large, specially compared to the 6 000 to 7 000 that are predicted to exist, one should be aware that the numbers of protons and neutrons constituting a nuclide are not really independent. Their special correlation form a relatively narrow band around a line called the bottom of the valley of stability. In Fig. 1 this is illustrated for the known masses (colored ones) across the chart of nuclides. In other words, nuclear data put almost no constraint in isospin on nuclear models. From there follows the tendency of nuclear physicists to study nuclides at some distance from that line, which are called exotic nuclides.

Sometimes remeasurement of the same physical quantity improved a previous result; sometimes it entered in conflict with it. The interest of the physicist has also evolved with time: the quantities considered varied importantly, scanning all sort of data from cross sections to masses, from half-lives to magnetic moments, from radii to superdeformed bands.

Thus, we are left nowadays with an enormous quantity of information on the atomic nucleus that need to be sorted, treated in a homogeneous way, while keeping traceability of the conditions under which they were obtained. When necessary, different data yielding values for the same physical quantity need to be compared, combined or averaged to derive an adopted value. Such values will be used in domains of physics that can be very far from nuclear physics, like half-lives in geo-chronology, cross-sections in proton-therapy, or masses in the determination of the $`\alpha `$ fine structure constant.

There are two classes of nuclear data: one class is for data related to nuclides at rest (or almost at rest); and the other class is for those related to nuclidic dynamics. In the first class, one finds ground-state and level properties, whereas the second encompasses reaction properties and mechanisms.

Nuclear ground-state masses and radii; magnetic moments; thermal neutron capture cross-sections; half-lives, spins and parities of excited and ground-state levels; the relative position (excitation energies) of these levels; their decay modes and the relative intensities of these decays; the transition probabilities from one level to another and the level width; the deformations; all fall in the category of what could be called the “static” nuclear properties.

Total and differential (in energy and in angle) reaction cross-sections; reaction mechanisms; and spectroscopic factors could be grouped in the class of “dynamic” nuclear properties.

Certainly, one single experiment, for example a nuclear reaction study, can yield data for both ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ properties.

It is out of the scope of the present lecture to cover all aspects of nuclear properties and nuclear data. The fine structure of “static” nuclear data will be shortly described and the authors of the various evaluations presented. Then I will center this lecture on the two “horizontal” evaluations in which I am involved: the atomic mass evaluation Ame and the Nubase evaluation, both being strongly related, particularly when considering isomers.

## 2 “Static” nuclear data

### 2.1 The Nsdd: data for nuclear structure

The amount of data to be considered for nuclear structure is huge. They are represented schematically in Fig. 2 for each nuclide as one column containing all levels from the ground-state at the bottom of that column to the highest known excited state. All the known properties for each of the levels are included.

Very early, it was found convenient to organize their evaluation in a network, splitting these data according to the mass of the nuclides, the $`A`$-chains. Such a division makes sense, since most of the decay relations among nuclides are $`\beta `$-decays where $`A`$ is conserved. This is, of course, less true for heavier nuclides where $`\alpha `$-decay is the dominant decay-mode connecting an $`A`$-nuclide to an $`A4`$ daughter. This structure is the one adopted by the Nuclear Structure and Decay Data network (the Nsdd) organized internationally under the auspices of the Iaea in Vienna. An $`A`$-chain or a group of successive $`A`$-chains is put under the responsibility of one member of the network. His or her evaluation is refereed by another member of the network before publication in the journal ‘Nuclear Data Sheets’ (or in the ‘Nuclear Physics’ journal for $`A44`$). At the same time the computer files of the evaluation (the Ensdf: ‘Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data Files’) are made available at the Nndc-Brookhaven . In this evaluation network, most of the “static” nuclear data are being considered.

The Nsdd evaluation for each nuclide is not dependent, at first order, on the properties of a neighboring nuclide, except when there is a decay relation with that neighbor. Such evaluation, conducted nuclide by nuclide, is called a ‘vertical’ evaluation.

### 2.2 The atomic mass evaluation Ame

However, the evaluation of data for energy relations between nuclides is more complex due to numerous links that overdetermine the system and exhibit sometimes inconsistencies among data. This ensemble of energy relations is taken into account in the ‘horizontal’ structure of the Atomic Mass Evaluation Ame . By ‘horizontal’ one means that a unique nuclear property is being considered across the whole chart of nuclides, here the ground-state masses. Only such a structure allows to encompass all types of connections among nuclides, whether derived from $`\beta `$-decays, $`\alpha `$-decays, thermal neutron-capture, reaction energies, or mass-spectrometry where any nuclide, e.g. 200Hg can be connected to a molecule like 12C13C35Cl5 or, in a Penning trap mass spectrometer, to 208Pb.

The Ame, the main subject of this lecture, will be developed below, in Section 3.

### 2.3 The isomers in the Ame and the emergence of Nubase

At the interface between the Nsdd and the Ame, one is faced with the problem of identifying - in some difficult cases - which state is the ground-state. The isomer matter is a continuous subject of worry in the Ame, since a mistreatment can have important consequences on the ground-state masses. Where isomers occur, one has to be careful to check which one is involved in reported experimental data, such as $`\alpha `$\- and $`\beta `$-decay energies. Cases have occurred where authors were not (yet) aware of isomeric complications. The matter of isomerism became even more important, when mass spectrometric methods were developed to measure masses of exotic atoms far from $`\beta `$-stability and therefore having small half-lives. The resolution in the spectrometers is limited, and often insufficient to separate isomers. Then, one so obtains an average mass for the isomeric pair. A mass of the ground-state, our primary purpose, can then only be derived if one has information on the excitation energy and on the production rates of the isomers. And in cases where e.g. the excitation energy was not known, it may be estimated, see below.

When an isomer decays by an internal transition, there is no ambiguity and the assignment as well as the excitation energy is given by the Nsdd evaluators. However, when a connection to the ground-state cannot be obtained, most often a decay energy to (and sometimes from) a different nuclide can be measured (generally with less precision). In the latter case one enters the domain of the Ame, where combination of the energy relations of the two long-lived levels to their daughters (or to their parents) with the masses of the latter, allows to derive the masses of both states, thus an excitation energy (and, in general, an ordering).

Up to the 1993 mass table, the Ame was not concerned with all known cases of isomerism, but only in those that were relevant to the determination of the ground-state masses. In 1992 it was decided, after discussion with the Nsdd evaluators, to include all isomers for which the excitation energy “is not derived from $`\gamma `$-transition energy measurements ($`\gamma `$-rays and conversion electron transitions), and also those for which the precision in $`\gamma `$-transitions is not decidedly better than that of particle decay or reaction energies leading to them” .

However, differences in isomer assignment between the Nsdd and the Ame evaluations cannot be all removed at once, since the renewal of all $`A`$-chains in Nsdd can take several years. In the meantime also, new experiments can yield information that could change some assignments. Here a ‘horizontal’ evaluation should help.

The isomer matter was one of the main reasons for setting up in 1993 the Nubase collaboration leading to a thorough examination and evaluation of those ground-state and isomeric properties that can help in identifying which state is the ground-state and which states are involved in a mass measurement . Nubase appears thus as a ‘horizontal’ database for several nuclear properties: masses, excitation energies of isomers, half-lives, spins and parities, decay modes and their intensities. Applications extend from the Ame to nuclear reactors, waste management, astrophysical nucleo-synthesis, and to preparation of nuclear physics experiments.

Setting up Nubase allowed in several cases to predict the existence of an unknown ground-state from trends of isomers in neighboring nuclides, whereas only one long-lived state was reported. A typical example is 161Re, for which Nubase’97  predicted a ($`1/2^+\mathrm{\#}`$) proton emitting state below an observed 14 ms $`\alpha `$-decaying high-spin state. (Everywhere in Ame and Nubase the symbol # is used to flag values estimated from trends in systematics.) Since then, the 370 $`\mu `$s, $`1/2^+`$, proton emitting state was reported with a mass 124 keV below the 14 ms state. For the latter a spin $`11/2^{}`$ was also assigned . Similarly, the $`11/2^{}`$ bandhead level discovered in 127Pr  is almost certainly an excited isomer. We estimate for this isomer, from systematical trends, an excitation energy of 600(200)# keV and a half-life of approximatively 50# ms.

In some cases the value determined by the Ame for the isomeric excitation energy allows no decision as to which of the two isomers is the ground-state. This is particularly the case when the uncertainty on the excitation energy is large compared to that energy, e.g.: $`E^m(^{82}`$As)$`=250\pm 200`$ keV; $`E^m(^{134}`$Sb)$`=80\pm 110`$ keV; $`E^m(^{154}`$Pm)$`=120\pm 120`$ keV.

Three main cases may occur. In the first case, there is no indication from the trends in $`J^\pi `$ systematics of neighboring nuclides with same parities in $`N`$ and $`Z`$, and no preference for ground-state or excited state can be derived from nuclear structure data. Then the adopted ordering, as a general rule, is such that the obtained value for $`E^m`$ is positive. In the three examples above, 82As will then have its (5-) state located at 250$`\pm `$200 keV above the (1+); in 134Sb the (7-) will be 80$`\pm `$110 keV above (0-); and 154Pm’s spin (3,4) isomer 120$`\pm `$120 keV above the (0,1) ground-state. In the second case, one level could be preferred as ground-state from consideration of the trends of systematics in $`J^\pi `$. Then, the Nubase evaluators accept the ordering given by these trends, even if it may yield a (slightly) negative value for the excitation energy, like in 108Rh (high spin state at $`60\pm `$110 keV). Such trends in systematics are still more useful for odd-$`A`$ nuclides, for which isomeric excitation energies of isotopes (if $`N`$ is even) or, similarly, isotones follow usually a systematic course. This allows to derive estimates both for the relative position and for the excitation energies where they are not known. Finally, there are cases where data exist on the order of the isomers, e.g. if one of them is known to decay into the other one, or if the Gallagher-Moszkowski rule  for relative positions of combinations points strongly to one of the two as being the ground-state. Then the negative part, if any, of the distribution of probability has to be rejected (Fig. 3). Value and error are then calculated from the moments of the positive part of the distribution.

### 2.4 Other ‘horizontal’ evaluations

There might be other reasons for ‘horizontal’ evaluations. The splitting of data among a large number of evaluators - like in the Nsdd network described above - does not always allow having a completely consistent treatment of a given nuclear property through the chart of nuclides. In addition, some quantities may fall at the border of the main interest of such a network. This is the reason why a few ‘horizontal’ compilations or evaluations have been conducted for the benefit of the whole community. For example, one can quote the work of Otten  for isotope shift and hyperfine structure of spectral lines and the deduced radii, spins and moments of nuclides in their ground-state and long-lived isomeric states. An evaluation of isotope shifts has been published also by Aufmuth and coworkers , and Raghavan  gave a table of nuclear moments, updated recently by Stone . More recent tables for nuclidic radii were published by Angeli  in 1991 and by Nadjakov et al  in 1994. Two other ‘horizontal’ evaluations are worth mentioning. One is the evaluation of isotopic abundances, by Holden . The second one is the evaluation of Raman and coworkers  for the energy $`E_{2^+}`$ and the reduced electric quadrupole transition probability $`B(E2)`$ of the first excited $`2^+`$ state in even-even nuclides.

## 3 The evaluation of atomic masses (Ame)

The atomic mass evaluation is particular when compared to the other evaluations of data reviewed above, in that there are almost no absolute determinations of masses. All mass determinations are relative measurements. Each experimental datum sets a relation in energy or mass among two (in a few cases, more) nuclides. It can be therefore represented by one link among these two nuclides. The ensemble of these links generates a highly entangled network. This is the reason why, as I mentioned earlier (cf. Section 2.2), a ‘horizontal’ evaluation is essential.

I will not enter in details in the different types of mass experiments, since there are other lectures devoted to this subject . Nevertheless, I need to sketch the various classes of mass measurements to outline how they enter the evaluation of masses and how they interfere with each other.

Generally a mass measurement can be obtained by establishing an energy relation between the mass we want to determine and a well known nuclidic mass. This energy relation is then expressed in electron-volts (eV). Mass measurements can also be obtained as an inertial mass from its movement characteristics in an electro-magnetic field. The mass, thus derived from a ratio of masses, is then expressed in ‘unified atomic mass’ (u) (cf. Section 3.1.3), or its sub-unit, $`\mu `$u. Two units are thus used in the present work.

The mass unit is defined, since 1960, by 1 u $`=(^{12}`$C$`)/12`$, one twelfth of the mass of one free atom of Carbon-12 in its atomic and nuclear ground-states. Before 1960, as Wapstra once told me, two mass units were defined: the physical one 16O$`/16`$, and the chemical one which considered one sixteenth of the average mass of a standard mixture of the three stable isotopes of oxygen. Physicists could not convince the chemists to drop their unit; “The change would mean millions of dollars in the sale of all chemical substances”, said the chemists, which is indeed true! Joseph H.E. Mattauch, the American chemist Truman P. Kohman and Aaldert H. Wapstra  then calculated that, if 12C$`/12`$ was chosen, the change would be ten times smaller for chemists, and in the opposite direction …That lead to unification; ‘u’ stands therefore, officially, for ‘unified mass unit’! Let us mention to be complete that the chemical mass spectrometry community (e.g. bio-chemistry, polymer chemistry) widely use the dalton (symbol Da, named after John Dalton ), which allows to express the number of nucleons in a molecule. It is thus not strictly the same as ‘u’.

The energy unit is the electronvolt. Until recently, the relative precision of $`MA`$ expressed in keV was, for several nuclides, less good than the same quantity expressed in mass units. The choice of the volt for the energy unit (the electronvolt) is not evident. One might expect use of the international volt V, but one can also choose the standard volt V90 as maintained in national laboratories for standards and defined by adopting an exact value for the constant ($`2e/h`$) in the relation between frequency and voltage in the Josephson effect. In the 1999 table of standards : $`2e/h=483597.9`$ (exact) GHz/V90. An analysis by Cohen and Wapstra  showed that all precision measurements of reaction and decay energies were calibrated in such a way that they can be more accurately expressed in V90. Also, the precision of the conversion factor between mass units and standard volts V90 is more accurate than that between it and international volts V:

$`1\mathrm{u}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{931\hspace{0.17em}494.009\hspace{0.17em}0}\pm \mathrm{0.007\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{keV}_{90}`$
$`1\mathrm{u}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{931\hspace{0.17em}494.013}\pm 0.037\mathrm{keV}`$
The reader will find more information on the energy unit, and also some historical facts about the electronvolt, in the Ame2003 , page 134.

### 3.1 The experimental data

In this section we shall examine the various types of experimental information on masses and see how they enter the Ame.

#### 3.1.1 Reaction energies

The energy absorbed in a nuclear reaction is directly derived from the Einstein’s relation $`E=mc^2`$. In a reaction A(a,b)B requiring an energy $`Q_r`$ to occur, the energy balance writes:

$$Q_r=_\mathrm{A}+_\mathrm{a}_\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{B}$$
(1)
This reaction is often endothermic, that is $`Q_r`$ is negative, requiring input of energy to occur. Other nuclear reactions may release energy. This is the case, for example, for thermal neutron-capture reactions (n,$`\gamma `$) where the (quasi)-null energetic neutron is absorbed and populates levels in the continuum of nuclide ‘B’ at an excitation energy exactly equal to $`Q_r`$. With the exception of some reactions between very light nuclides, the the masses of the projectile ‘a’ and of the ejectile ‘b’ are known with a much higher accuracy than those of the target ‘A’, and of course the residual nuclide ‘B’. Therefore Eq. 1 reduces to a linear combination of the masses of two nuclides:

$$_\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{B}=q\pm dq$$
(2)
where $`q=Q_r_\mathrm{a}+_\mathrm{b}`$.

A nuclear reaction usually deals with stable or very-long-lived target ‘A’ and projectile ‘a’, allowing only to determine the mass of a residual nuclide ‘B’ close to stability. Nowadays with the availability of radioactive beams, interest in reaction energy experiments is being revived.

It is worth mentioning in this category the very high accuracies attainable with (n,$`\gamma `$) and (p,$`\gamma `$) reactions. They play a key-rôle in providing many of the most accurate mass differences, and help thus building and strengthening the “backbone”111 the ‘backbone’ is the ensemble of nuclides along the line of stability in a diagram of atomic number $`Z`$ versus neutron number $`Z`$ . The energy relations among nuclides in the backbone are multiple.  of masses along the valley of $`\beta `$-stability, and determine neutron separation energies with high precision222 The number of couples of nuclides connected by (n,$`\gamma `$) reactions with an accuracy of 0.5 keV or better was 243 in Ame2003, against 199 in Ame93, 128 in Ame83 and 60 in the 1977 one. The number of cases known to better than 0.1 keV was 100 in Ame2003, 66 in Ame93 and 33 in Ame83. Several reaction energies of (p,$`\gamma `$) reactions are presently (Ame93)known about as precisely (25 and 8 cases with accuracies better than 0.5 keV and 0.1 keV respectively). .

Also very accurate are the self-calibrated reaction energy measurements using spectrometers. When measuring the difference in energy between the spectral lines corresponding to reactions A(a,b)B and C(a,b)D with the same spectrometer settings  one can reach accuracies better than 100 eV. Here the measurement can be represented by a linear combination of the masses of four nuclides:

$$\delta Q_r=_\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{B}_\mathrm{C}+_\mathrm{D}$$
(3)
The most precise reaction energy is the one that determined the mass of the neutron from the neutron-capture energy of 1H at the Ill . The 1H(n,$`\gamma `$)2H established a relation between the masses of the neutron, of 1H and of the deuteron with the incredible precision of 0.4 eV.

#### 3.1.2 Disintegration energies

Disintegration can be considered as a particular case of reaction, where there is no incident particle. Of course, here the energies $`Q_\beta `$, $`Q_\alpha `$ or $`Q_p`$ are almost always positive, i.e. these particular reactions are exothermic. For the A($`\beta ^{}`$)B, A($`\alpha `$)B or A(p)B disintegrations333 The drawing for $`\alpha `$-decay is taken from the educational Web site of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory: http://www.lbl.gov/abc/. , one can write respectively:

$`Q_\beta ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`_\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{B}`$ (4)
$`Q_\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`_\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{B}_\alpha `$ (5)
$`Q_p`$ $`=`$ $`_\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{B}_\mathrm{p}`$ (6)
These measurements are very important because they allow deriving masses of unstable or very unstable nuclides.

This is more specially the case for the proton decay of nuclides at the drip-line, in the medium-$`A`$ region . They allow a very useful extension of the systematics of proton binding energies. But in addition they give in several cases information on excitation energies of isomers. This development is one more reason why we have to give more attention to relative positions of isomers than was necessary in earlier evaluations.

$`\alpha `$-decays have permitted to determine the masses of the heavy nuclides. Moreover, the time coincidence of $`\alpha `$ lines in a decaying chain allows very clear identification of the heaviest ones. Quite often, and more particularly for even-even nuclides, the measured $`\alpha `$-decay energies yield quite precise mass differences between parent and daughter nuclide.

#### 3.1.3 Mass Spectrometry

Mass-spectrometric determination of atomic masses are often called ‘direct’ mass measurements because they are supposed to determine not an energy relation between two nuclides, but directly the mass of the desired one. In principle this is true, but only to the level of accuracy of the parameter of the spectrometer that is the least well known, which is usually the magnetic field in which the ions move. It follows that the accuracy in such absolute direct mass determination is very poor.

This is why, in all precise mass measurements, the mass of an unknown nuclide is always compared, in the same magnetic field, to that of a reference nuclide. Thus, one determines a ratio of masses, where the value of the magnetic field cancels, leading to a much more precise mass determination. As far as the Ame is concerned, here again we have a mass relation between two nuclides.

One can distinguish three sub-classes in the class of mass measurement by mass-spectrometry (see also ):

1. Classical mass-spectrometry, where the electromagnetic deflection plays the key-rôle. More exactly, the two beams corresponding to the ion of the investigated nuclide and to that of the reference are forced to follow the same path in the magnetic field. The ratio of the voltages of some electrostatic devices that make this condition true determines the ratio of masses. These voltages are determined either from the values of resistors in a bridge  or directly from a precision voltmeter .
2. Time-of-Flight spectrometry, where one measures simultaneously the momentum of an ion (from its magnetic rigidity $`B\rho `$) and its velocity (from the time of flight along a path of well-determined length) . Calibration in this type of experiment requires a large set of reference masses, so that the Ame cannot establish a simple relation between two nuclides. Nevertheless, the calibration function thus determined, together with its contribution to the error is generally well accounted for. The chance is small that recalibration might be necessary. In case it appears to be so in some future, one could consider a global re-centering of the published values. It is interesting to note that Time-of-Flight spectrometers can be also set-up in cyclotrons  or in storage rings .
3. Cyclotron Frequency, when measured in a homogeneous magnetic field, yields mass value of very high precision due to the fact that frequency is the physical quantity that can be measured with the highest accuracy with the present technology. Three types of spectrometers follow this principle:

* the Radio-Frequency Mass Spectrometer (Fig. 4) invented by L.G. Smith  where the measurement is obtained in-flight, as a transmission signal, in only one turn;
    * the Penning Trap Spectrometer (Fig. 5) where the ions are stored for 0.1–2 seconds to interact with a radio-frequency excitation signal ; and
    * the Storage Ring Spectrometer where the ions are stored and the ion beam cooled, while a metallic probe near the beam picks up the generated Schottky noise (a signal induced by a moving charge) .

Penning traps, as well as storage rings and the Mistral on-line Smith-type spectrometer, are now also used for making mass measurements of many nuclides further away from the line of stability. As a result, the number of nuclides for which experimental mass values are now known is substantially larger than in the previous atomic mass tables. These mass-spectrometric measurements of exotic nuclides are often made with resolutions that do not allow separation of isomers. Special care is needed to derive the mass value for the ground-state (cf. Section 2.3).

Nowadays, several mass measurements are made on fully (bare nuclei) or almost fully ionized atoms. Then, a correction must be made for the total binding energy of all removed electrons $`B_e(Z)`$. They can be found in the table for calculated total atomic binding energy of all electrons of Huang et al. . Unfortunately, the precision of the calculated values $`B_e(Z)`$ is not clear; this quantity (up to 760 keV for 92U) cannot be measured easily. Very probably, its precision for 92U is rather better than the 2 keV accuracy with which the mass of, e.g., 238U is known. A simple formula, approximating the results of , is given in the review of Lunney, Pearson and Thibault :

$$B_{el}(Z)=14.4381Z^{2.39}+1.55468\times 10^6Z^{5.35}\text{eV}$$
(7)
Penning traps have allowed to reach incredible accuracies in the measurement of masses. If one observes the increase of accuracies over the last seven or eight decades, for example on 28Si, see Fig. 6, one would see that after a regular increase of one order of magnitude every ten years until 1970, the mass accuracy of 28Si seemed to have reached a limit at the level of $`5\times 10^7`$. Until the arrival of high precision Penning traps, that allowed to catch up with the previous tendency and yielded an accuracy slightly better than $`10^{10}`$ in 1995 . Such precision measurements with Penning traps have considerably improved the precision in our knowledge of atomic mass values along the backbone.

### 3.2 Data evaluation in the Ame

The evaluation of masses share with most other evaluations many procedures. However, the very special character in the treatment of data in the mass evaluation is, as said above (header of the present Section), that all measurements are relative measurements. Each experimental datum will be thus represented by a link connecting two or three nuclei (cf. Section 3.3.1). The set of connections results in a complex canvas where data of different type and origin are entangled. Here lies the very challenge to extract values of masses from the experiments. The counterpart is that the overdetermined data system will allow cross-checks and studies of the consistencies within this system. The other help to the evaluator will be the property of regularity of the surface of masses that will be described in the last section of this lecture.

The first step in the evaluation of data is to make a compilation, i.e. a collection of all the available data. This collection must include the ‘hidden’ data: a paper does not always say clearly that some of the information it contains is of interest for mass measurement. The collection includes also even poorly documented datum, which is labelled accordingly in the Ame files.

The second step is the critical reading, which might include:

1. the evaluation or re-evaluation of the calibration procedures, the calibrators, and of the precisions of the measurements;
2. spectra examination: peaks position and relative intensities, peaks symmetry, quality of the fit;
3. search for the primary information, in the data, which do not necessarily appear always as clearly as they should. (i.e. in cases the authors combined the original result with other data, to derive a mass value, the Ame should retain only the former). It also happened that the authors gave only the derived mass value. Then the evaluator has to reconstruct the original result and ask for authors’ confirmation.

The third step in the data evaluation will be to compare the results of the examined work to earlier results if they exist (either directly, or through a combination of other data). If there are no previous results, comparison could be done with estimates from extrapolations, exploiting the above mentioned regularity of the mass surface (cf. Section 4), or to estimates from mass models or mass formulae.

Finally, the evaluator often and on has to establish a dialog with the authors of the work, asking for complementary information when necessary, or suggesting different analysis, or suggesting new measurements.

The new data can now enter the data-file as one line. For example, for the electron capture of 205Pb, the evaluator enters:

```
205 890816000c1 B  78Pe08   41.4   1.1   205Pb(e)205Tl    0.525  0.008 LM

```

where besides a 14 digits ID-number, there is a flag (as described in Ref. , p. 184), here ‘B’, then the Nsr reference-code  for the paper ‘78Pe08’ where the data appeared, the value for the $`Q`$ of the reaction with its error bar (41.4 $`\pm `$ 1.1 keV), and the reaction equation, where ‘e’ stands for electron-capture. The information in the last columns says that this datum has been derived from the intensity ratio (0.525 $`\pm `$ 0.008) of the L and M lines in electron capture. The evaluator can add as many comment lines as necessary, following this data line, for other information he judges useful for exchange with his fellow evaluator. Some of these comments, useful for the user of the mass tables, will appear in the Ame publication.

### 3.3 Data treatment

In this section, we shall first see how the network of data is built, then how the system of data can be reduced. In the third and fourth subsections, I shall describe shortly the least-squares method used in the Ame and the computer program that will decode data and calculate the adjusted masses. A fifth part will develop the very important concept of ‘Flow-of-Information’ matrix. Finally, I shall explain how checking the consistency of data (or of sub-group of data) can help the evaluator in his judgment.

#### 3.3.1 Data entanglement - Mass Correlations

We have seen in Section 3.1 that all mass measurements are relative measurements. Each experimental piece of data can be represented by a link between two, sometimes three, and more rarely four nuclides. As mentioned earlier, assembling these links produces an extremely entangled network. A part of this network can be seen in Fig. 7.

One notices immediately that there are two types of symbols, the small and the large ones. The small ones represent the so-called secondary nuclides; while the nuclides with large symbols are called primary. Secondary nuclides are represented by full small circles if their mass is determined experimentally, and by empty ones if estimated from trends in systematics. Secondary nuclides are connected by secondary data, represented by dashed lines. A chain of dashed lines is at one end free, and at the other end connected to one unique444 Sometimes a chain of secondary nuclides can be free at both ends. These nuclides have no connection to the backbone of known masses, but are connected to each other by $`\alpha `$-chains of sometime high or very high precision. The chain is floating and no experimental mass can be derived. The evaluator makes an estimate for one of the masses in the chain in order to have it fixed. These non-experimental masses are all quoted as (‘systematics’) in the Tables.  primary nuclide (large symbol). This representation means that all secondary nuclides are determined uniquely by the chain of secondary connections going down to a primary nuclide. The latter are multiply determined and enter thus the entangled canvas. They are inter-connected by primary data, represented by full lines.

We see immediately from Fig. 7 that the mass of a primary nuclide cannot be determined straightforwardly. One may think of making an average of the values obtained from all links, but such a recipe is erroneous because the other nuclides on which these links are built are themselves inter-connected, thus not independent. In other words these primary data, connecting the primary nuclides, are correlated, and the correlation coefficients are to be taken into account.

Caveat: the word primary used for these nuclides and for the data connecting them does not mean that they are more important than the others, but only that they are subject to the special treatment below. The labels primary and secondary are not intrinsic properties of data or masses. They may change from primary to secondary or reversely when other information becomes available.

#### 3.3.2 Compacting the set of data

We have seen that primary data are correlated. We take into account these correlations very easily with the help of the least-squares method that will be described below. The primary data will be improved in the adjustment, since each will benefit from all the available information.

Secondary data will remain unchanged; they do not contribute to $`\chi ^2`$. The masses of the secondary nuclides will be derived directly by combining the relevant adjusted primary mass with the secondary datum or data. This also means that secondary data can easily be replaced by new information becoming available (but one has to watch since the replacement can change other secondary masses down the chain as seen from the diagram Fig. 7).

We define degrees for secondary masses and secondary data. They reflect their distances along the chains connecting them to the network of primaries; they range from 2 to 16. Thus, the first secondary mass connected to a primary one will be a mass of degree 2, and the connecting datum will be a datum of degree 2 too. Degree 1 is for primary masses and data.

Before treating the primary data by the least-squares method, we try as much as possible to reduce the system, but without allowing any loss of information. One way to do so is to pre-average identical data: two or more measurements of the same physical quantities can be replaced by their average value and error. Also the so-called parallel data can be pre-averaged: they are data that give essentially values for the mass difference between the same two nuclides, e.g. 9Be($`\gamma `$,n)8Be, 9Be(p,d)8Be, 9Be(d,t)8Be and 9Be(3He,$`\alpha `$)8Be. Such data are represented together, in the main least-squares calculation, by one of them carrying their average value. If the $`Q`$ data to be pre-averaged are strongly conflicting, i.e. if the consistency factor (or Birge ratio, or normalized $`\chi `$)

$$\chi _n=\sqrt{\frac{\chi ^2}{Q1}}$$
(8)
resulting in the calculation of the pre-average is greater than 2.5, the (internal) error $`\sigma _i`$ in the average is multiplied by the Birge ratio ($`\sigma _e=\sigma _i\times \chi _n`$). The quantity $`\sigma _e`$ is often called the ‘external’ error. However, this treatment is not used in the very rare cases where the errors in the values to be averaged differ too much from one another, since the assigned errors loose any significance (three cases in Ame’93). We there adopt an arithmetic average and the dispersion of values as error, which is equivalent to assigning to each of these conflicting data the same error.

In Ame’93, 28% of the 929 cases in the pre-average had values of $`\chi _n`$ beyond unity, 4.5% beyond two, 0.7% beyond 3 and only one case beyond 4, giving a very satisfactory distribution overall. With the choice above of a threshold of $`\chi _n^0`$=2.5 for the Birge ratio, only 1.5% of the cases are concerned by the multiplication by $`\chi _n`$. As a matter of fact, in a complex system like the one here, many values of $`\chi _n`$ beyond 1 or 2 are expected to exist, and if errors were multiplied by $`\chi _n`$ in all these cases, the $`\chi ^2`$-test on the total adjustment would have been invalidated. This explains the choice made in the Ame of a rather high threshold ($`\chi _n^0=2.5`$), compared e.g. to $`\chi _n^0`$=2 recommended by Woods and Munster  or, even, $`\chi _n^0`$=1 used in a different context by the Particle Data Group , for departing from the rule of internal error of the weighted average (see also ).

Another method to increase the meaning of the final $`\chi ^2`$ is to exclude data with weights at least a factor 10 less than other data, or combinations of other data giving the same result. They are still kept in the list of input data but labelled accordingly; comparison with the output values allows to check that this procedure did not have unwanted consequences.

The system of data is also greatly reduced by replacing data with isomers by an equivalent datum for the ground-state, if a $`\gamma `$-ray energy measurement is available from the Nndc (cf. Section 2.3). Excitation energies from such $`\gamma `$-ray measurements are normally far more precise than reaction energy measurements.

Typically, we start from a set of 6000 to 7000 experimental data connecting some 3000 nuclides. After pre-averaging, taking out the data with very poor accuracy and separating the secondary data, we are left with a system of 1500 primary data for 800 nuclides.

#### 3.3.3 Least-squares method

Each piece of data has a value $`q_i\pm dq_i`$ with the accuracy $`dq_i`$ (one standard deviation) and makes a relation between 2, 3 or 4 masses with unknown values $`m_\mu `$. An overdetermined system of $`Q`$ data to $`M`$ masses ($`Q>M`$) can be represented by a system of $`Q`$ linear equations with $`M`$ parameters:

$$\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{M}{}}k_i^\mu m_\mu =q_i\pm dq_i$$
(9)
(a generalization of Eq. 2 and Eq. 3), e.g. for a nuclear reaction $`A(a,b)B`$ requiring an energy $`q_i`$ to occur, the energy balance writes:

$$m_\mathrm{A}+m_\mathrm{a}m_\mathrm{b}m_\mathrm{B}=q_i\pm dq_i$$
(10)
thus, $`k_i^\mathrm{A}=+1`$, $`k_i^\mathrm{a}=+1`$, $`k_i^\mathrm{B}=1`$ and $`k_i^\mathrm{b}=1`$.

In matrix notation, $`𝐊`$ being the $`(Q,M)`$ matrix of coefficients, Eq. 9 writes: $`𝐊|m=|q`$. Elements of matrix $`𝐊`$ are almost all null: e.g. for reaction $`A(a,b)B`$, Eq. 2 yields a line of $`𝐊`$ with only two non-zero elements.

We define the diagonal weight matrix $`𝐖`$ by its elements $`w_i^i=1/(dq_idq_i)`$. The solution of the least-squares method leads to a very simple construction:

$${}_{}{}^{𝐭}\mathrm{𝐊𝐖𝐊}|m={}_{}{}^{𝐭}\mathrm{𝐊𝐖}|q$$
(11)
the normal matrix $`𝐀={}_{}{}^{𝐭}\mathrm{𝐊𝐖𝐊}`$ is a square matrix of order $`M`$, positive-definite, symmetric and regular and hence invertible . Thus the vector $`|\overline{m}`$ for the adjusted masses is:

$$|\overline{m}=𝐀^\mathrm{𝟏}{}_{}{}^{𝐭}\mathrm{𝐊𝐖}|q\mathrm{or}|\overline{m}=𝐑|q$$
(12)
The rectangular $`(M,Q)`$ matrix $`𝐑`$ is called the response matrix.

The diagonal elements of $`𝐀^\mathrm{𝟏}`$ are the squared errors on the adjusted masses, and the non-diagonal ones $`(a^1)_\mu ^\nu `$ are the coefficients for the correlations between masses $`m_\mu `$ and $`m_\nu `$.

#### 3.3.4 The Ame computer program

The four phases of the Ame computer program perform the following tasks:

1. decode and check the data file;
2. build up a representation of the connections between masses, allowing thus to separate primary masses and data from secondary ones and then to reduce drastically the size of the system of equations to be solved, without any loss of information;
3. perform the least-squares matrix calculations (see above); and
4. deduce the atomic masses, the nuclear reaction and separation energies, the adjusted values for the input data, the influences of data on the primary masses described in next section, and display information on the inversion errors, the correlations coefficients, the values of the $`\chi ^2`$ (cf. Section 3.3.6), and the distribution of the normalized deviations $`v_i`$.

#### 3.3.5 Flow-of-Information

One of the most powerful tools in the least-squares calculation described above is the flow-of-information matrix. This matrix allows to trace back, in the least-squares method, the contribution of each individual piece of data to each of the parameters (here the atomic masses). The Ame uses this method since 1993.

The flow-of-information matrix $`𝐅`$ is defined as follows: $`𝐊`$, the matrix of coefficients, is a rectangular $`(Q,M)`$ matrix, the transpose of the response matrix $`{}_{}{}^{𝐭}𝐑`$ is also a $`(Q,M)`$ rectangular one. The $`(i,\mu )`$ element of $`𝐅`$ is defined as the product of the corresponding elements of $`{}_{}{}^{𝐭}𝐑`$ and of $`𝐊`$. In reference  it is demonstrated that such an element represents the “influence” of datum $`i`$ on parameter (mass) $`m_\mu `$. A column of $`𝐅`$ thus represents all the contributions brought by all data to a given mass $`m_\mu `$, and a line of $`𝐅`$ represents all the influences given by a single piece of data. The sum of influences along a line is the “significance” of that datum. It has also been proven  that the influences and significances have all the expected properties, namely that the sum of all the influences on a given mass (along a column) is unity, that the significance of a datum is always less than unity and that it always decreases when new data are added. The significance defined in this way is exactly the quantity obtained by squaring the ratio of the uncertainty on the adjusted value over that on the input one, which is the recipe that was used before the discovery of the $`𝐅`$ matrix to calculate the relative importance of data.

A simple interpretation of influences and significances can be obtained in calculating, from the adjusted masses and Eq. 9, the adjusted data:

$$|\overline{q}=\mathrm{𝐊𝐑}|q.$$
(13)
The $`i^{th}`$ diagonal element of $`\mathrm{𝐊𝐑}`$ represents then the contribution of datum $`i`$ to the determination of $`\overline{q_i}`$ (same datum): this quantity is exactly what is called above the significance of datum $`i`$. This $`i^{th}`$ diagonal element of $`\mathrm{𝐊𝐑}`$ is the sum of the products of line $`i`$ of $`𝐊`$ and column $`i`$ of $`𝐑`$. The individual terms in this sum are precisely the influences defined above.

The flow-of-information matrix $`𝐅`$, provides thus insight on how the information from datum $`i`$ flows into each of the masses $`m_\mu `$.

#### 3.3.6 Consistency of data

The system of equations being largely over-determined ($`Q>>M`$) offers the evaluator several interesting possibilities to examine and judge the data. One might for example examine all data for which the adjusted values deviate importantly from the input ones. This helps to locate erroneous pieces of information. One could also examine a group of data in one experiment and check if the errors assigned to them in the experimental paper were not underestimated.

If the precisions $`dq_i`$ assigned to the data $`q_i`$ were indeed all accurate, the normalized deviations $`v_i`$ between adjusted $`\overline{q}_i`$ and input $`q_i`$ data (cf. Eq. 13), $`v_i=(\overline{q}_iq_i)/dq_i`$, would be distributed as a gaussian function of standard deviation $`\sigma =1`$, and would make $`\chi ^2`$:

$$\chi ^2=\underset{i=1}{\overset{Q}{}}\left(\frac{\overline{q}_iq_i}{dq_i}\right)^2\mathrm{or}\chi ^2=\underset{i=1}{\overset{Q}{}}v_i^2$$
(14)
equal to $`QM`$, the number of degrees of freedom, with a precision of $`\sqrt{2(QM)}`$.

One can define as above the normalized chi, $`\chi _n`$ (or ‘consistency factor’ or ‘Birge ratio’): $`\chi _n=\sqrt{\chi ^2/(QM)}`$ for which the expected value is $`1\pm 1/\sqrt{2(QM)}`$.

For our current Ame2003 example of 1381 equations with 847 parameters, i.e. 534 degrees of freedom, the theoretical expectation value for $`\chi ^2`$ should be 534$`\pm `$33 (and the theoretical $`\chi _n=1\pm 0.031`$). The total $`\chi ^2`$ of the adjustment is actually 814; this means that, in the average, the errors in the input values have been underestimated by 23%, a still acceptable result. In other words, the experimentalists measuring masses were, on average, too optimistic by 23%. The distribution of the $`v_i`$’s (the individual contributions to $`\chi ^2`$, as defined in Eq. 14 is also acceptable, with, in Ame2003, 15% of the cases beyond unity, 3.2% beyond two, and 8 items (0.007%) beyond 3.

The $`\chi _n`$ value was 1.062 in Ame’83 for $`QM`$=760 degrees of freedom, 1.176 in Ame’93 for $`QM=635`$, and 1.169 in the Ame’95 update for $`QM`$=622.

Another quantity of interest for the evaluator is the partial consistency factor, $`\chi _n^p`$, defined for a (homogeneous) group of $`p`$ data as:

$$\chi _n^p=\sqrt{\frac{Q}{QM}\frac{1}{p}\underset{i=1}{\overset{p}{}}v_i^2}.$$
(15)
Of course the definition is such that $`\chi _n^p`$ reduces to $`\chi _n`$ if the sum is taken over all the input data.

One can consider for example the two main classes of data: the reaction and decay energy measurements and the mass spectrometric data (see Section 3.1). The partial consistency factors $`\chi _n^p`$ are respectively 1.269 and 1.160 for energy measurements and for mass spectrometry data, showing that both types of input data are responsible for the underestimated error of 23% mentioned above, with a better result for mass spectrometry data.

One can also try to estimate the average accuracy for 181 groups of data related to a given laboratory and with a given method of measurement, by calculating their partial consistency factors $`\chi _n^p`$. A high value of $`\chi _n^p`$ might be a warning on the validity of the considered group of data within the reported errors. In general, in the Ame such a situation is extremely rare, because deviating data are cured before entering the ‘machinery’ of the adjustment, at the stage of the evaluation itself (see Section 3.2). On the average the experimental errors appear to be slightly underestimated, with as much as 57% (instead of expected 33%) of the groups of data having $`\chi _n^p`$ larger than unity. Agreeing better with statistics, 5.5% of these groups are beyond $`\chi _n^p=2`$.

### 3.4 Data requiring special treatment

It often happens that data require some special treatment before entering the data-file (cf. Section 3.2). Such is the case of data given with asymmetric uncertainties, or when information is obtained only as one lower and one upper limit, defining thus a range of values. We shall examine these two cases.

All errors entering the data-file must be one standard deviation (1 $`\sigma `$) errors. When it is not the case, they must be converted to 1 $`\sigma `$ errors to allow combination with other data.

#### 3.4.1 Asymmetric errors

Sometimes the precision on a measurement is not given as a single number, like $`\sigma `$ (or $`dq`$ in Section 3.3.3 above), but asymmetrically $`X_b^{+a}`$, as shown in Fig. 8.

Such errors are symmetrized, before entering the treatment procedure. A rough estimate can be used: take the central value to be the mid-value between the upper and lower 1$`\sigma `$-equivalent limits $`X+(ab)/2`$, and define the uncertainty to be the average of the two uncertainties $`(a+b)/2`$. A better approximation is obtained with the recipe described in Ref. . The central value $`X`$ is shifted to:

$$X+0.64(ab)$$
(16)
and the precision $`\sigma `$ is:

$$\sigma ^2=(1\frac{2}{\pi })(ab)^2+ab.$$
(17)
In the appendix of Ref.  one can find the demonstration and discussion of Eq. 16 and Eq. 17.

#### 3.4.2 Range of values

Some measurements are reported as a range of values with most probable lower and upper limits (Fig. 9). They are treated as a uniform distribution of probabilities . The moments of this distribution yield a central value at the middle of the range and a 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty of 29% of that range.

#### 3.4.3 Mixture of spectral lines

\**** to be completed \****

## 4 Regularity of the mass-surface

When nuclear masses are displayed as a function of $`N`$ and $`Z`$, one obtains a surface in a 3-dimensional space. However, due to the pairing energy, this surface splits into four sheets. The even-even sheet lies lowest, the odd-odd highest, the other two nearly halfway between as represented in Fig. 10.

The vertical distances from the even-even sheet to the odd-even and even-odd ones are the proton and neutron pairing energies $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pp}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{nn}`$. They are nearly equal. The distances of the last two sheets to the odd-odd sheet are equal to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{nn}\mathrm{\Delta }_{np}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pp}\mathrm{\Delta }_{np}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{np}`$ is the proton-neutron pairing energy due to the interaction between the two odd nucleons, which are generally not in the same shell. These energies are represented in Fig. 10, where a hypothetical energy zero represents a nuclide with no pairing among the last nucleons.

Experimentally, it has been observed that:

* the four sheets run nearly parallel in all directions, which means that the quantities $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{nn}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pp}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{np}`$ vary smoothly and slowly with $`N`$ and $`Z`$; and
* each of the mass sheets varies very smoothly also, but very rapidly555 smooth means continuous, non-staggering; smooth does not mean slow. . with $`N`$ and $`Z`$. The smoothness is also observed for first order derivatives (slopes, cf. Section 4.2.1) and all second order derivatives (curvatures of the mass surface). They are only interrupted in places by sharp cusps or large depressions associated with important changes in nuclear structure: shell or sub-shell closures (sharp cusps), shape transitions (spherical-deformed, prolate-oblate: depressions on the mass surface), and the so-called ‘Wigner’ cusp along the $`N=Z`$ line.

This observed regularity of the mass sheets in all places where no change in the physics of the nucleus are known to exist, can be considered as one of the basic properties of the mass surface. Thus, dependable estimates of unknown, poorly known or questionable masses can be obtained by extrapolation from well-known mass values on the same sheet. Examination of previous such estimates, where the masses are now known, shows that the method used, though basically simple, has a good predictive power .

In the evaluation of masses the property of regularity and the possibility to make estimates are used for several purposes:

1. New Physics \- Any coherent deviation from regularity, in a region $`(N,Z)`$ of some extent, could be considered as an indication that some new physical property is being discovered.
2. Outliers \- However, if one single mass violates the systematic trends, then one may seriously question the correctness of the related datum. There might be, for example, some undetected systematic  contribution to the reported result of the experiment measuring this mass. We then reread the experimental paper with extra care for possible uncertainties, and often ask the authors for further information. This often leads to corrections.
In the case where a mass determined from only one experiment (or from same experiments) deviate severely from the smooth surface, replacement by an estimated value would give a more usefull information to the user of the tables and would prevent obscuring the plots for the observation of the mass surface. Fig. 11 for one of the derivatives of the mass surface (cf. Section 4.2.1) is taken from Ame’93 and shows how replacements of a few such data by estimated values, can repair the surface of masses in a region, not so well known, characterized by important irregularities. Presently, only the most striking cases, not all irregularities, have been replaced by estimates: typically those that obscure plots like in Fig. 11.
3. Conflicts among data \- There are cases where some experimental data on the mass of a particular nuclide disagree among each other and no particular reason for rejecting one or some of them could be found from studying the involved papers. In such cases, the measure of agreement with the just mentioned regularity can be used by the evaluators for selecting which of the conflicting data will be accepted and used in the evaluation.
4. Estimates \- Finally, drawing the mass surface allows to derive estimates for the still unknown masses, either from interpolations or from short extrapolations, as can be seen in Fig. 12.

### 4.1 Extrapolations

In the case of extrapolation however, the error in the estimated mass will increase with the distance of extrapolation. These errors are obtained by considering several graphs of systematics with a guess on how much the estimated mass may change without the extrapolated surface looking too much distorted. This recipe is unavoidably subjective, but has proven to be efficient through the agreement of these estimates with newly measured masses in the great majority of cases.

It would be desirable to give estimates for all unknown nuclides that are within reach of the present accelerator and mass separator technologies. But, in fact, the Ame only estimates values for all nuclides for which at least one piece of experimental information is available (e.g. identification or half-life measurement or proof of instability towards proton or neutron emission). In addition, the evaluators want to achieve continuity in $`N`$, in $`Z`$, in $`A`$ and in $`NZ`$ of the set of nuclides for which mass values are estimated. This set is therefore the same as the one defined for Nubase .

To be complete, it should be said that regularity is not the only property used to make estimates: all available experimental information is taken into account. The limits for the methods based on regularity appear rapidly when going down to low mass numbers where nuclear structures appear and disappear on very short ranges, not to mention vanishing magic numbers.

Neutron-rich masses could be constrained by our knowledge of nuclides being stable or unstable relative to neutron emission: e.g. stability against neutron emission implies a positive neutron separation energie. This property, however, is usefull only for light species, where the neutron drip-line can be reached. Similarly for proton-rich nuclides, but here one has to be carefull and take into account the Coulomb barrier which may hinder proton emission of a slightly p-unbound nucleus. Light proton-rich masses could be derived from the masses of their mirror companions, or from the Imme (Isobaric Multiplet Mass Equation) which showed, up to now, to be fairly well verified. New developments in these directions are in progress.

### 4.2 Scrutinizing the surface of masses

Direct representation of the mass surface is not convenient since the binding energy varies very rapidly with $`N`$ and $`Z`$. Splitting in four sheets, as mentioned above, complicates even more such a representation. There are two ways to still be able to observe with some precision the surface of masses: one of them uses the derivatives of this surface, the other is obtained by subtracting a simple function of $`N`$ and $`Z`$ from the masses.

They are both described below and I will end this section with a description of the interactive computer program that visualizes all these functions to allow easier derivation of the estimated values.

#### 4.2.1 The derivatives of the mass surface

By derivative of the mass surface we mean a specified difference between the masses of two nearby nuclei. These functions are also smooth and have the advantage of displaying much smaller variations. For a derivative specified in such a way that differences are between nuclides in the same mass sheet, the near parallelism of these leads to an (almost) unique surface for the derivative, allowing thus a single display. Therefore, in order to illustrate the systematic trends of the masses, four derivatives of this last type were traditionally chosen:

1. the two-neutron separation energies versus $`N`$, with lines connecting the isotopes of a given element, as in Fig. 11;
2. the two-proton separation energies versus $`Z`$, with lines connecting the isotones (the same number of neutrons);
3. the $`\alpha `$-decay energies versus $`N`$, with lines connecting the isotopes of a given element; and
4. the double $`\beta `$-decay energies versus $`A`$, with lines connecting the isotopes and the isotones.

These four derivatives are given in the printed version of the Ame2003, Part II, Figs. 1–36 .

However, from the way these four derivatives are built, they give only information within one of the four sheets of the mass surface (e-e, e-o, o-e or e-e; e-o standing for even $`N`$ and odd $`Z`$). When observing the mass surface, an increased or decreased spacing of the sheets cannot be observed. Also, when estimating unknown masses, divergences of the four sheets could be unduly created, which is unacceptable.

Fortunately, other various representations are possible (e.g. separately for odd and even nuclei: one-neutron separation energies versus $`N`$, one-proton separation energy versus $`Z`$, $`\beta `$-decay energy versus $`A`$, …). Such graphs have been prepared and can be obtained from the Amdc web distribution .

The method of ‘derivatives’ suffers from involving two masses for each point to be drawn, which means that if one mass is moved then two points are changed in opposite direction, causing confusion in our drawings Fig. 11.

#### 4.2.2 Subtracting a simple function

Since the mass surface is smooth, one can try to define a function of $`N`$ and $`Z`$ as simple as possible and not too far from the real surface of masses. The difference between the mass surface and this function, while displaying reliably the structure of the former, will vary much less rapidly, improving thus its observation.

##### Subtracting results from a model

Practically, we use the results of the calculation of one of the modern models. However, we can use here only those models that provide masses specifically for the spherical part, forcing the nucleus to be un-deformed. The reason is that the models generally describe quite well the shell and sub-shell closures, and to some extent the pairing energies, but not the locations of deformation. If the theoretical deformations were included and not located at exactly the same position as given by the experimental masses, the mass difference surface would show two dislocations for each shape transition. Interpretation of the resulting surface would then be very difficult.

My two choices are the “New Semi-Empirical Shell Correction to the Droplet Model (Gross Theory of Nuclear Magics)” by Groote, Hilf and Takahashi ; and the “Microscopic Mass Formulas” of Duflo and Zuker , which has been illustrated above (Fig. 12). In Ame2003, we made extensive use of such differences with models. The plots we have prepared were not published, they can be retrieved from the Amdc .

The difference of mass surfaces shown in Fig. 12 is instructive:

1. the lines for the isotopic series cross the $`N`$=82 shell closure with almost no disruption, showing thus how well shell closures are described by the model;
2. the well-known onset of deformation in the rare-earth at $`N`$=90 appears very clearly here as a deep large bowl, since deformation is not used in this calculation. The contour of this deformation region is neat. The depth, i.e. the amount of energy gained due to deformation, compared to ideal spherical nuclides, can be estimated; and
3. Fig. 12 shows also how the amplitude of deformation decreases with increasing $`Z`$ and seems to vanish when approaching Rhenium ($`Z`$=75).

##### Subtracting a Bethe and Weizsäcker formula

Since 1975 , and now with more and more evidence, it appears that the ‘magic’ numbers that were though to occur at fixed numbers of protons or neutrons, are not really so. They might disappear when going away from the valley of stability, or appear at new locations. Where such migrations occur, most models are much in trouble, and the reasoning we made above for not including deformation in the models, now applies also to ‘magic’ numbers. Excluding shell and sub-shell closures, we are then driven directly back to the pioneering work of Weizsäcker . Recent works  on the modern fits of the original Bethe and Weizsäcker’s formula seems promising in this respect.

The concept of the liquid drop mass formula was defined by Weizsäcker in 1935  and fine-tuned by Bethe and Bacher  in 1936. The binding energy of the nucleus comprises only a volume energy term, a surface one, an asymmetry term, and the Coulomb energy contribution for the repulsion amongst protons. The total mass is thus:

$$(N,Z)=N_\mathrm{n}+Z_\mathrm{H}\alpha A+\beta \frac{(NZ)^2}{A}+\gamma A^{\frac{2}{3}}+\frac{3}{5}\frac{e^2Z^2}{r_0A^{\frac{1}{3}}}$$
(18)
where $`A=N+Z`$, is the atomic weight, $`r_0A^{1/3}`$ the nuclear radius, $`_\mathrm{n}`$ and $`_\mathrm{H}`$ the masses of the neutron and of the hydrogen atom. The constants $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$, $`\gamma `$ and $`r_0`$ were determined empirically by Bethe and Bacher: $`\alpha =13.86`$ MeV, $`\beta =19.5`$ MeV, $`\gamma =13.2`$ MeV and $`r_0=1.4810^{15}`$ m (then $`\frac{3}{5}e^2/r_0=0.58`$ MeV). The formula of Eq. (18) is unchanged if $`(N,Z)`$, $`_\mathrm{n}`$ and $`_\mathrm{H}`$ are replaced by their respective mass excesses (at that time they were called mass defects). When using the constants given above one should be aware that when Bethe fixed them, he used for the mass excesses of the neutron and hydrogen atom respectively 7.8 MeV and 7.44 MeV in the 16O standard, with a value of 930 MeV for the atomic mass unit.

If we subtract Eq. (18) from all masses we are left with values that vary much less rapidly than the masses themselves, while still showing all the structures. However, the splitting in four sheets will still make the image fuzzy. One can then add to the right hand side of the formula of Bethe (18) a commonly used pairing term $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{pp}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{nn}=12/\sqrt{A}`$ MeV and no $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{np}`$ (Fig. 10), which is sufficient for our purpose. (For those interested, there is a more refined study of the variations of the pairing energies that has been made by Jensen, Hansen and Jonson ).

### 4.3 Far extrapolations

When exploiting these observations one can make extrapolations for masses very far from stability. This has been done already , but with a further refinement of this method obtained by constructing an idealized surface of masses (or mass-geoid) , which is the best possible function to be subtracted from the mass surface. In Ref. , a local mass-geoid was built as a cubic function of $`N`$ and $`Z`$ in a region limited by magic numbers for both $`N`$ and $`Z`$, fitted to only the purely spherical nuclides and keeping only the very reliable experimental masses. Then the shape of the bowl (for deformation) was reconstructed ‘by hand’, starting from the known non-spherical experimental masses. It was found that the maximum amplitude of deformation amounts to 5 MeV, is located at 168Dy, and that the region of deformation extends from $`N`$=90 to $`N`$=114 and from $`Z`$=55 to $`Z`$=77, which is roughly in agreement with what is indicated by Fig. 12.

### 4.4 Manipulating the mass surface

In order to make estimates of unknown masses or to test changes on measured ones, one needs to visualize different graphs, either from the ‘derivatives’ type or from the ‘difference’ type. On these graphs, one needs to add (or move) the relevant mass and determine how much freedom is left in setting a value for this mass.

Things are still more complicated, particularly for changes on measured masses, since other masses could depend on the modified one, usually through secondary data. Then one mass change may give on one graph several connected changes.

Another difficulty is that a mass modification (or a mass creation) may look acceptable on one graph, but may appear unacceptable on another graph. One should therefore be able to watch several graphs at the same time.

A supplementary difficulty may appear in some types of graphs where two tendencies may alternate, following the parity of the proton or of the neutron numbers. One may then wish, at least for better comfort, to visualize only one of these two parities.

All this has become possible with the ‘interactive graphical tool’, called Desint (from the French: ‘dessin interactif’) written by C. Borcea  and illustrated in Fig. 13. Any of the ‘derivatives’ or of the ‘differences’ can be displayed in any of the four quadrants of Fig. 13, or alone and enlarged. Any of these functions can be plotted against any of the parameters $`N`$, $`Z`$, $`A`$, $`NZ`$, and $`2ZN`$; and connect iso-lines in any single or double parameters of the same list (e.g., in the third view of Fig. 13, iso-lines are drawn for $`Z`$ and for $`N`$). Zooming in and out to any level and moving along the two coordinates are possible independently for each quadrant. Finally, and more importantly, any change appears, in a different color, with all its consequences and in all four graphs at the same time. As an example and only for the purpose of illustration, a change of +500 keV has been applied, in Fig. 13, to 146Gd in quadrant number four; all modifications in all graphs appear in red.

## 5 The Tables

In December 2003, we succeeded in having published together the “Atomic Mass Evaluation” Ame  and the Nubase evaluation , which have the same “horizontal” structure and basic interconnections at the level of isomers.

After the 1993 tables (Ame’93) it was projected to have updated evaluations performed regularly (every two years) and published in paper only partly, while all files should still be distributed on the Web. Effectively, an update Ame’95  appeared two years later. Lack of time to evaluate the stream of new quite important data, and also the necessity to create the Nubase evaluation (see below), prevented the intended further updates of the Ame. The Nubase evaluation was thus published for the first time in September 1997 , but in order to have consistency between the two tables, it was decided then that the masses in Nubase’97 should be exactly those from Ame’95. A certain stabilization, that seems to be reached now, encouraged us to publish in 2003 a new full evaluation of masses, together with the new version of Nubase. This time, the Ame2003 and Nubase2003 are completely ‘synchronized’.

Full content of the two evaluations is accessible on-line at the web site of the Atomic Mass Data Center (Amdc)  through the World Wide Web. One will find at the Amdc, not only the published material, but also extra figures, tables, documentation, and more specially the Ascii files for the Ame2003 and the Nubase2003 tables, for use with computer programs.

The contents of Nubase can be displayed with a PC-program called “Nucleus, and also by a Java program jvNubase  through the World Wide Web, both distributed by the Amdc.

## 6 Conclusion

Deriving a mass value for a nuclide from one or several experiments is in most cases not easy. Some mathematical tools (the least-squares method) and computer tools (interactive graphical display), and especially the evaluator’s judgment are essential ingredients to reach the best possible recommended values for the masses.

Unknown masses close to the last known ones can be predicted from the extension of the mass surface. However, for the ones further out, more particularly those which are essential in many astrophysical problems, like the nucleosynthesis r-process, values for the masses can only be derived from some of the available models. Unfortunately, the latter exhibit very large divergences among them when departing from the narrow region of known masses, reaching up to tens of MeV’s in the regions of the r-process paths. Therefore, one of the many motivations for the best possible evaluation of masses is to get the best set of mass values on which models may adjust their parameters and better predict masses further away.

## Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Aaldert H. Wapstra with whom I have been working since 1981. The material used in this lecture is also his material. He was the one who established in the early fifties the Ame in its modern shape as we know now. Aaldert H. Wapstra has always been very accurate, very careful and hard working in his analysis in both the Ame and the Nubase evaluations. During these 23 years I have learned and still learn a lot from his methods. I wish also to thank my close collaborators: Jean Blachot who triggered in 1993 the Nubase collaboration, Olivier Bersillon, Catherine Thibault, and Catalin Borcea who built the computer programs for mass extrapolation, and worked hard at the understanding, the definition and the construction of a mass-geoid.


text:
# Non-decoupling effects of SUSY in the physics of Higgs bosons and their phenomenological implications

## 1 Introduction

The search for SUSY particles via their indirect signals at colliders can be of great relevance in the future. The indirect SUSY searches via their effects on radiative corrections to low energy observables are complementary to direct searches, and can be crucial if the SUSY particles turn out to be too heavy as to be produced directly. Remember that it was the case in the past regarding the top quark indirect searches at LEP, via radiative corrections, which were an important guidance towards its final dicovery at the Tevatron collider.

We consider here a plausible scenario in the MSSM where all the genuine SUSY particles are heavier than the electroweak scale $`m_{EW}`$. In this case, the most promising indirect SUSY signals come from SUSY non-decoupling effects in low energy observables. We shortly review here some of these most relevant effects and show that they will provide sizeable signals at future colliders even if the SUSY masses are as heavy as $`M_{SUSY}𝒪(TeV)`$. We study the consequences for Higgs boson physics where the SUSY radiative corrections are known to be sizeable, and focus on the SUSY-QCD radiative corrections which are the dominant SUSY contributions.

The heavy SUSY scenario is defined by taking the soft SUSY breaking mass parameters of the MSSM very large as compared to the electroweak scale. For shortness, we choose here the simplest case where all these mass parameters are quasi-degenerate, and we refer to them by a genereric common SUSY scale named $`M_{SUSY}`$. Concretely, the heavy SUSY scenario is implemented by, $`M_{SUSY}M_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}M_{\stackrel{~}{U}}M_{\stackrel{~}{D}}M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}|\mu |m_{EW}`$, where $`M_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$, $`M_{\stackrel{~}{U}}`$ and $`M_{\stackrel{~}{D}}`$ characterize the heavy squark masses, and $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ the heavy gluino masses. The large $`|\mu |`$ values, although not needed to get heavy particles in the SUSY-QCD sector, guarantee (together with large values of the other relevant parameters in the SUSY-Electroweak sector, $`M_{1,2}`$) that the charginos and neutralinos are also heavy.

In addition, we have also considered the possibility that the extra (non-SM like) Higgs particles get also very heavy. This is called here the heavy Higgs sector scenario and is defined by taking the speudoscalar mass very large, $`m_Am_Z`$. The extra Higgs particles of the MSSM, $`H^o`$, $`H^\pm `$, and $`A^o`$ get very heavy, $`m_{H^o}m_{H^\pm }m_Am_{EW}`$, while $`h^0`$ remains light with a mass close to its upper bound, $`m_{h^o}135GeV`$, and with tree level interactions being as the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson ones.

The outline of this talk is as follows. First we review the concepts of decoupling/non-decoupling of heavy particles. Next we review the non-decoupling effects of squark-gluino loops in flavour preserving Higgs decays and in flavour changing Higgs decays. Then, we summarize the results for the corresponding induced Yukawa effective couplings after the integration, at the one-loop level, of the squarks and gluinos in the path integral. Finally, we shortly review the main phenomenological consequences for future colliders.

## 2 Decoupling/Non-decoupling of heavy particles

Commonly, there are two different languages used to define the decoupling/non-decoupling behaviour of heavy particles. One uses the concept of the effective action (or, equivalently, the one-particle irreducible Green functions) that is generated after integration in the path integral of the heavy particles, and the other one studies the effects on the low energy observables that are induced from the heavy particles. To explain this more clearly we include next some illustrative examples.

(a) Effective action/One-particle irreducible functions:

Let us consider first the simple example of QED and study the effects of heavy electrons on the physics of photons at low energies. One starts with the classical action for photons and electrons in QED, $`S_{QED}=\frac{1}{4}𝑑xF_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }+𝑑x\overline{\psi }_e(i/DM_e)\psi _e`$, and study the effective action that is got after integration of the electron field at one-loop level, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{eff}=\frac{1}{4}𝑑xF_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\frac{e^2}{3(4\pi )^2}\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}𝑑xF_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\frac{e^2}{15(4\pi )^2M_e^2}F_{\mu \nu }^2F^{\mu \nu }+\mathrm{}`$ where $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}\frac{2}{ϵ}+log4\pi \gamma log\frac{M_e^2}{\mu _0^2}`$ contains the divergent piece in four dimensions, and an expansion in inverse powers of the heavy electron mass, $`M_ep`$, has been performed. The remaining terms in this expansion are suppressed by higher inverse powers of $`M_e`$ and are not shown. Notice that the second term has the same structure as the kinetic term of photons and, therefore its effects are not physically observable since they can be absorbed by a photon wave function redefinition. The other terms, being proportional to inverse powers of $`M_e`$, vanish in the asymptotically large electron mass limit and, therefore, their effects decouple at low energies. This is referred to as decoupling of electrons a la Appelquist-Carazzone, since it follows the general behaviour described in the Decoupling Theorem by these authors Carazzone .

The second example refers to the decoupling of SUSY particles, for the previously introduced heavy SUSY scenario, in the low energy self-interactions of the electroweak gauge bosons, $`\gamma ,Z,W`$, at the one-loop level. By using this effective action language, it has been shown in Dobado\_MH1  that after the integration of all the SUSY particles (squarks, sleptons, charginos and neutralinos) in the path integral formalism, and by considering the large $`M_{SUSY}`$ limit, their effects are absorbed in redefinitions of the gauge boson wave functions and weak boson masses or else they are suppressed by inverse powers of $`M_{SUSY}`$. Therefore, the SUSY particles decouple. Similarly, it has been shown Dobado\_MH1  that the effects of the extra Higgs bosons, in the previously introduced heavy Higgs sector scenario, also decouple in the $`\gamma ,Z,W`$ self-interactions at one-loop level. The low energy interactions left are then just those of the SM.

The third example is the decoupling of the extra Higgs particles in this same heavy Higgs sector scenario, in the self-interactions of the lightest MSSM Higgs particle, $`h_0`$, at the one-loop level. It has been shown in 0208014  that all the effects of the heavy Higgs bosons are absorbed by a mass correction, $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{h_o}`$, or else they are suppressed by inverse powers of the heavy mass $`m_A`$. Similarly, it has been shown Hollik\_penar1  that the effects of heavy stops also decouple in the $`h_0`$ self-interactions, at the one-loop level. These low energy $`h_0`$ self- interactions, therefore, have the same structure as the SM Higgs boson self-interactions, even at the one-loop level.

(b) Observables:

The first example is the non-decoupling of top quark loops in the partial decay width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(Z\overline{b}b)`$, within the SM context. The result to one-loop level and in the large $`m_t`$ limit can be written as, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(Z\overline{b}b)=\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\left(1+a\frac{\alpha }{4\pi }\frac{m_t^2}{m_W^2}\right)`$, where we have factorized out the treel level result and $`a`$ is a numerical factor. We see clearly that the correction grows quadraticaly with the top mass, indicating a non-decoupling behaviour.

The second example is the decoupling of squark-gluino loops in the partial decay width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(tW^+b)`$. The result to one-loop level and in the large $`M_{SUSY}`$ limit can be written as, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(tW^+b)=\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\left(1+b\frac{\alpha _S}{4\pi }\frac{m_t^2}{M_{SUSY}^2}\right)`$, where we have factorized again the treel level result and $`b`$ is a numerical factor. For asymptotically large $`M_{SUSY}`$ values the correction vanishes, indicating a decoupling behaviour.

In the following we will present some other interesting examples, within the MSSM, where the SUSY particles of the SUSY-QCD sector do not decouple. These are the fermionic decay widths of the Higgs bosons, both flavour preserving and flavour violating, and the effective low energy Yukawa interactions.

## 3 Non-decoupling of SUSY loops in Higgs decays

We choose the Higgs decays into quarks, $`Hq\overline{q}`$, because, on one hand, these are the dominant decays in a large region of the MSSM parameter space and, on the other hand, the associated Yukawa couplings, $`\lambda _{Hqq}`$, enter in relevant Higgs production processes. We study in particular $`h^o\overline{b}b`$ and $`H^+t\overline{b}`$, because $`h^0`$ will be problably the first to be detected, and because the charged Higgs provides itself an unambiguous signal of physics beyond SM. As we have said, we focus here on the SUSY radiative corrections from loops of squarks and gluinos. These being $`𝒪(\alpha _S)`$ are the dominant SUSY corrections.

There are two types of one-loop diagrams contributing to $`h^ob\overline{b}`$ , the triangular vertex diagrams with two sbottoms and one gluino in the internal propagators of the triangle, and the self-energy diagrams for the external bottom legs with one sbottom and one gluino in the internal propagators. These SUSY-QCD (SQCD) corrections and the genuine QCD corrections modify the tree level result $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ by, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(h^ob\overline{b})\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(h^ob\overline{b})(1+2\mathrm{\Delta }_{QCD}+2\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD})`$, and are known to be quite sizeable, $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_{QCD}50\%`$, $`|2\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}|50\%`$. The result of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}`$ is Dabelstein95 ,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}=\frac{\alpha _S}{3\pi }g_{h^o\stackrel{~}{b}_a\stackrel{~}{b}_b}\frac{m_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{2gm_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }[m_b(R_{2b}^{(b)}R_{2a}^{(b)}+R_{1b}^{(b)}R_{1a}^{(b)})C_{11}+M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}(R_{2b}^{(b)}R_{1a}^{(b)}+`$
$`+R_{1b}^{(b)}R_{2a}^{(b)})C_0](m_b^2,m_{h^o}^2,m_b^2,M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2,M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_b}^2,M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_a}^2)+\mathrm{\Sigma }_S^b(m_b^2)2m_b^2[\mathrm{\Sigma }_S^b^{}(m_b^2)+\mathrm{\Sigma }_V^b^{}(m_b^2)]`$

Here $`R^{(b)}`$ are the rotation matrices that realte the interaction eigenstates and the sbottom mass eigenstates. Notice that the trilinear soft breaking parameter $`A_b`$ and $`\mu `$ enter in the $`g_{h^o\stackrel{~}{b}_a\stackrel{~}{b}_b}`$ couplings (not shown explicitly here, for brevity) and in $`LR`$ squark mixing. $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ enters both in external factors and in the one-loop integrals for the vertex corrections, $`C_0,C_{11}`$, and for the self-energies $`B_0,B_1`$. $`M_{\stackrel{~}{q}}`$ enters in the integrals. The relevant $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ parameter enters in $`LR`$ squark mixing. Similar results have been obtained for $`H^+t\overline{b}`$ from loops of stops, sbottoms, and gluinos Jimenez96 .

In order to study the consequences of the heavy SUSY scenario on the previous Higgs boson decays, we perform expansions of the integrals and mixing angles appearing in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}`$, which are valid for $`M_{SUSY}m_{EW}`$, and get the two first terms being $`𝒪(\frac{m_{EW}^2}{M_{SUSY}^2})^n`$ with $`n=0,1`$ respectively Haber\_Temes . We give here the result for the leading term, $`n=0`$, that is valid for all $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ values,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}=\frac{\alpha _s}{3\pi }\left\{\frac{\mu M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}{\stackrel{~}{M}_S^2}\left(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha \right)f_1(R)+𝒪\left(\frac{m_{EW}^2}{M_{SUSY}^2}\right)\right\}`$ where, $`\stackrel{~}{M}_S^2\frac{1}{2}(M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}^2+M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2)`$, $`RM_{\stackrel{~}{g}}/\stackrel{~}{M}_S`$, $`f_1(1)=1`$. We see clearly that for large $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\stackrel{~}{M}_S\mu M_{SUSY}`$, the correction gives a non-vanishing constant and therefore the heavy squarks and gluinos do not decouple. We also see that this non-decoupling contribution is enhanced at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, which is in agreement with the result in the zero external momentum approximation and large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ limit of Carena . Finally, if we also consider the heavy Higgs sector scenario, $`m_Am_Z`$, where $`\mathrm{cot}\alpha =\mathrm{tan}\beta 2m_Z^2\mathrm{tan}\beta \mathrm{cos}2\beta /m_A^2+\mathrm{}`$, we see that the leading term cancels and the correction decouples as $`m_Z^2/m_A^2`$, recovering the SM result, as expected.

For the case of $`H^+t\overline{b}`$, we have found similar results Penaranda\_Temes . In particular the result for the leading term, $`n=0`$, valid for all $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ values, reads,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}=\frac{\alpha _s}{3\pi }\left\{\frac{\mu M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}{\stackrel{~}{M}_S^2}\left(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\beta \right)f_1(R)+𝒪\left(\frac{m_{EW}^2}{M_{SUSY}^2}\right)\right\}`$ where, $`\stackrel{~}{M}_S^2\frac{1}{2}(M_{\stackrel{~}{q}_1}^2+M_{\stackrel{~}{q}_2}^2)`$, $`\stackrel{~}{q}=\stackrel{~}{t},\stackrel{~}{b}`$, $`RM_{\stackrel{~}{g}}/\stackrel{~}{M}_S`$, $`f_1(1)=1`$, and it agrees again with the result of the effective approach, Carena2 , at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. We find again the same non-decoupling behaviour as in $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ but the correction is numerically larger. For instance, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}40\%`$ for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =30,M_{SUSY}=1`$ TeV. In addition, we find that the next to leading order terms, with $`n=1`$, are smaller than $`1\%`$ for $`M_{SUSY}300GeV`$.

## 4 Flavour changing neutral Higgs decays from squark-gluino loops

Flavour Changing Neutral Current (FCNC) processes are ideal to look for indirect SUSY signals, or any other radiative effects from possible physics beyond the SM, since the SM predicts negligible rates for these processes. These FC interactions are absent at the tree-level in the SM and in the MSSM, but they can be generated at the one-loop level and lead to sizable contributions in the MSSM, specially at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$.

We study here the Flavour Changing Neutral Higgs Boson Decays (FCHD) generated from squark-gluino loops in the MSSM Curiel2 . They are proportional to $`𝒪(\alpha _S)`$ and therefore dominate the SUSY corrections. We focus on the particular decays, $`h_0,H_0,A_0b\overline{s},s\overline{b}`$ and $`H_0,A_0t\overline{c},c\overline{t}`$ in the non-minimal flavour scenario where there is squark mixing from misalignment between quark and squark mass matrices, which constitutes the most general case in the MSSM. Our study is devoted to the second and third generation quarks because the squark mixing between these two generations is the less constrained experimentally.

Once the quark mass matrices are diagonalized, and assuming that FC squark mixing is significant only in LL entries, the squark mass matrices for the up and down sector can be written as follows,

$`M_{\stackrel{~}{u}}^2=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}M_{L,c}^2\hfill & m_cX_c\hfill & \mathrm{\Delta }_{LL}^u\hfill & 0\hfill \\ m_cX_c\hfill & M_{R,c}^2\hfill & 0\hfill & 0\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Delta }_{LL}^u\hfill & 0\hfill & M_{L,t}^2\hfill & m_tX_t\hfill \\ 0\hfill & 0\hfill & m_tX_t\hfill & M_{R,t}^2\hfill \end{array}\right)`$,

$`M_{\stackrel{~}{d}}^2=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}M_{L,s}^2\hfill & m_sX_s\hfill & \mathrm{\Delta }_{LL}^d\hfill & 0\hfill \\ m_sX_s\hfill & M_{R,s}^2\hfill & 0\hfill & 0\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Delta }_{LL}^d\hfill & 0\hfill & M_{L,b}^2\hfill & m_bX_b\hfill \\ 0\hfill & 0\hfill & m_bX_b\hfill & M_{R,b}^2\hfill \end{array}\right)`$

where,

$`M_{L,q}^2=M_{\stackrel{~}{Q},q}^2+m_q^2+\mathrm{cos}2\beta (T_3^qQ_qs_W^2)m_Z^2,M_{R,(c,t)}^2=M_{\stackrel{~}{U},(c,t)}^2+m_{c,t}^2+\mathrm{cos}2\beta Q_ts_W^2m_Z^2,`$
$`M_{R,(s,b)}^2=M_{\stackrel{~}{D},(s,b)}^2+m_{s,b}^2+\mathrm{cos}2\beta Q_bs_W^2m_Z^2,X_{c,t}=m_{c,t}(A_{c,t}\mu \mathrm{cot}\beta ),`$
$`X_{s,b}=m_{s,b}(A_{s,b}\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta ),\mathrm{\Delta }_{LL}^u=\lambda M_{L,c}M_{L,t},\mathrm{\Delta }_{LL}^d=\lambda M_{L,s}M_{L,b};\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}\lambda 1`$

The squark mass eigenstates, $`\stackrel{~}{q}_\alpha `$, and the interaction eigenstates, $`\stackrel{~}{q}_\alpha ^{}`$, are related by, $`\stackrel{~}{q}_\alpha ^{}=R_{\alpha \beta }^{(q)}\stackrel{~}{q}_\beta `$, where, $`\stackrel{~}{u}_\alpha ^{}=(\stackrel{~}{c}_L,\stackrel{~}{c}_R,\stackrel{~}{t}_L,\stackrel{~}{t}_R)`$ , $`\stackrel{~}{d}_\alpha ^{}=(\stackrel{~}{s}_L,\stackrel{~}{s}_R,\stackrel{~}{b}_L,\stackrel{~}{b}_R)`$ , $`\stackrel{~}{u}_\alpha =(\stackrel{~}{u}_1,\stackrel{~}{u}_2,\stackrel{~}{u}_3,\stackrel{~}{u}_4)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{d}_\alpha =(\stackrel{~}{d}_1,\stackrel{~}{d}_2,\stackrel{~}{d}_3,\stackrel{~}{d}_4)`$ .

We present next our results for the partial decay widths, containing the one-loop corrections in terms of the form factors $`F_{L,R}^{qq^{}}(H_a)`$ associated to each decay $`H_aq\overline{q}^{}`$, with $`H_a=h_o,H_o,A_o`$, and defined by $`iF=ig\overline{u}_q(p_1)(F_L^{qq^{}}(H)P_L+F_R^{qq^{}}(H)P_R)v_q^{}(p_2)H(p_3)`$. Similarly to the flavour preserving case, there are two types of one-loop diagrams that contribute, the triangular vertex loop diagrams and the FC self-energies of the external quarks. We show here only $`F_L^{bs}(H_a)`$ as an illustrative example (the rest can be found in Curiel2 ),

$`F_L^{bs}(H_a)=\frac{g_{H_a\stackrel{~}{d}_\alpha \stackrel{~}{d}_\beta }}{ig}\frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }(m_bR_{3\alpha }^{(d)}R_{1\beta }^{(d)}(C_{11}C_{12})+m_sR_{4\alpha }^{(d)}R_{2\beta }^{(d)}C_{12}+`$
$`+M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}R_{4\alpha }^{(d)}R_{1\beta }^{(d)}C_0)(m_b^2,m_{H_a}^2,m_s^2,M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}^2,M_{\stackrel{~}{d}_\alpha }^2,M_{\stackrel{~}{d}_\beta }^2)+\frac{G_{Hs\overline{s}}}{ig}\frac{m_b}{m_b^2m_s^2}\kappa _L^d[m_b(\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^{bs}(m_b^2)+`$
$`+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{Rs}^{bs}(m_b^2))++m_s(\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^{bs}(m_b^2)+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{Ls}^{bs}(m_b^2))]+\frac{G_{Hb\overline{b}}}{ig}\frac{1}{m_s^2m_b^2}\kappa _L^d[m_s^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_L^{bs}(m_s^2)+`$
$`+m_bm_s(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{Rs}^{bs}(m_s^2)+\mathrm{\Sigma }_R^{bs}(m_s^2))+m_b^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{Ls}^{bs}(m_s^2)]`$

Notice that the results for the form factors are finite, as expected, since renormalization is not needed in this process. The dependences on the MSSM parameters, $`m_A,\mathrm{tan}\beta ,\mu ,M_{\stackrel{~}{g}},M_0,A`$, are similar to the flavour preserving cases studied before. Here we assume universal squark masses $`M_o`$ and trilinear couplings, A. The dependency on the crucial flavour mixing parameter $`\lambda `$ enters in the rotation matrices and in the physical squark masses. We show in figs. 1 and 2 the numerical results for the case $`H_os\overline{b}+b\overline{s}`$ as a function of the six previous MSSM parameters and $`\lambda `$. We see clearly that the branching ratio can be quite sizable. Similar results are found for $`A_o`$ and $`h_o`$ and also for the decays into $`t\overline{c}`$ Curiel2 .

Regarding the large $`M_{SUSY}`$ behaviour of these corrections, we find the following result for the leading $`𝒪(\frac{M_{EW}}{M_{SUSY}})^0`$ term of the expansion, valid for all $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ values,
$`F_{L,R}^{bs}(\{h_o,H_o.A_o\})=\frac{\alpha _s}{6\pi }\frac{m_{b,s}}{2m_W}\{\frac{\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta },\frac{\mathrm{cos}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta },i\mathrm{tan}\beta \}(\mathrm{tan}\beta +\{\mathrm{cot}\alpha ,\mathrm{tan}\alpha ,\mathrm{cot}\beta \})\frac{\mu M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}}{M_o^2}F(\lambda )`$ where, $`F(\lambda )=\frac{2}{\lambda ^2}[(\lambda +1)\mathrm{ln}(\lambda +1)+(\lambda 1)\mathrm{ln}(1\lambda )2\lambda ]`$. Similar formulas are found for the u-sector Curiel2 . Again, there is non-decoupling with $`M_{SUSY}`$ and the effect is enhanced at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Decoupling appears only in the case of the light Higgs if $`m_Am_Z`$, since $`\mathrm{cot}\alpha \mathrm{tan}\beta `$, and thus $`F_{L,R}^{bs}(h_o)0`$, recovering the SM result.

This SUSY non-decoupling behaviour explains the large FCHD rates found: $`BR(H_0,A_0b\overline{s}+s\overline{b})0.2`$, $`BR(h_0b\overline{s}+s\overline{b})0.01`$, $`BR(H_0,A_0t\overline{c}+c\overline{t})5\times 10^5`$, for $`\lambda 0.6`$ that will certainly produce interesting phenomenological SUSY signals at colliders.

## 5 Non-decoupling of SUSY loops in effective Higgs-quark-quark interactions

Here we present the results for the effective Yukawa couplings generated from squark-gluino loops Dobado\_Temes . We start with the relevant terms of the MSSM classical action, containing the free part and the interaction terms, $`S=S_0[H]+S_0[q]+S[H,q]+S_0[\stackrel{~}{q}]+S_0[\stackrel{~}{g}]+S[H,\stackrel{~}{q}]+S[\stackrel{~}{q},\stackrel{~}{g},q],`$ , and compute the one-loop effective action, at order $`\alpha _S`$, that is generated after integration of squarks and gluinos in the path integral formalism, $`e^{i\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }_{eff}[H,q]}=[d\stackrel{~}{Q}^{}][d\stackrel{~}{Q}][d\stackrel{~}{g}]e^{i(S_0[\stackrel{~}{q}]+S_0[\stackrel{~}{g}]+S[\stackrel{~}{g},\stackrel{~}{q},q]+S[H,\stackrel{~}{q}])}`$. We then perform a large $`M_{SUSY}`$ expansion and get the corresponding effective lagrangian, defined by, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }_{eff}[H,q]𝑑x\mathrm{\Delta }_{eff}(H,q)`$. After redefining properly the quark wave functions and quark masses we get,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{eff}(H,q)=\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{h^o\overline{b}b}h^o\overline{b}b+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{h^o\overline{t}t}h^o\overline{t}t+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^o\overline{b}b}H^o\overline{b}b+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^o\overline{t}t}H^o\overline{t}t+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{A^o\overline{b}b}A^o\overline{b}b+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{A^o\overline{t}t}A^o\overline{t}t+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^+\overline{t}_Lb_R}(H^+\overline{t}_Lb_R+h.c.)+\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^+\overline{t}_Rb_L}(H^+\overline{t}_Rb_L+h.c.)`$ with,
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{h^o\overline{b}b}\frac{m_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }G\left[\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\alpha \right],\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{h^o\overline{t}t}\frac{m_t\mathrm{cos}\alpha }{\mathrm{sin}\beta }G\left[\mathrm{cot}\beta +\mathrm{tan}\alpha \right]\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^o\overline{b}b}\frac{m_b\mathrm{cos}\alpha }{\mathrm{cos}\beta }G\left[\mathrm{tan}\beta \mathrm{tan}\alpha \right],\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^o\overline{t}t}\frac{m_t\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{\mathrm{sin}\beta }G\left[\mathrm{cot}\beta \mathrm{cot}\alpha \right]\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{A^o\overline{b}b}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{A^o\overline{t}t}im_t\mathrm{cot}\beta G\left[\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\beta \right]\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^+\overline{t}_Lb_R}\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda ^{H^+\overline{t}_Rb_L}m_t\sqrt{2}\mathrm{cot}\beta G\left[\mathrm{tan}\beta +\mathrm{cot}\beta \right]`$ ; $`G\frac{\alpha _s}{3\pi }\frac{g}{2m_W}\frac{M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\mu }{M_{SUSY}^2}`$.

The important result is that new $`Hq\overline{q}`$ couplings emerge of 2HDMIII type. These are precisely the non-decoupling effects from the squark-gluino loops. On the other hand, these exlicit expressions of the effective Yukawa couplings, which are valid for all $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ values, have interesting applications for phenomenology as we will show next.

## 6 How to look for indirect SUSY signals

Finally, we shortly review the main phenomenological consequences for future colliders. In order to do that, we have chosen a set of observables,

$`\frac{BR(h^ob\overline{b})}{BR(h^o\tau ^+\tau ^{})},\frac{BR(H^ob\overline{b})}{BR(H^o\tau ^+\tau ^{})}`$ $`\frac{BR(A^ob\overline{b})}{BR(A^o\tau ^+\tau ^{})},\frac{BR(H^+t\overline{b})}{BR(H^+\tau ^+\nu )}`$ $`\frac{BR(tH^+b)}{BR(tW^+b)}`$ that are optimal for various reasons Curiel1 . First, the dominant SUSY-QCD corrections do not decouple in the numerator. The SUSY-EW corrections do not decouple either (in the numerator and the denominator), but are smaller Carena ; Guasch . For example, for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =30`$ and universal large $`M_{SUSY}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SEW}8\%,\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}40\%`$. There are sizeable SUSY-QCD corrections at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ in these observables and the ratios allow to cancel the production uncertainties and to minimize the systematic errors using the leptonic decays as control channels. Another interesting feature of these observables is that they will be experimentally accessible at LHC/TeVatron/Linear Colliders, being the SUSY corrections larger than the expected precision.

We show the sensitivity to SUSY-QCD corrections with $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ in fig. 3(a). The central line corresponds to the value of the observable without SUSY-QCD corrections, while the other two lines are our predictions for the observables, including the SUSY-QCD correction. The central band corresponds to the theoretical uncertainty in the observable coming from the experimental uncertainty in the SM parameters, which is dominated by $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_b`$. We can see that we are sensitive to the SUSY-QCD corrections for most of the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ parameter space, having higher sensitivity at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ Curiel1 ; Guasch .

In fig. 3(b) we plot the predictions for the observables including the SUSY-QCD corrections as a function of $`m_{A^o}`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. The solid contour lines follow the points in the $`(m_{A^o},\mathrm{tan}\beta )`$ plane with constant value of the corresponding observable, denoted here by $`O`$. The shaded area represents the region where the corrections are smaller than the mentioned theoretical uncertainty. The long (short) dashed lines join the points where an experimental resolution of $`50\%(20\%)`$ is required to achieve a meaningful measurement.The regions above these dashed lines fulfil the required sensitivity to the SUSY-QCD corrections. We see that the SUSY effects are visible in most of the parameter space even for the pessimistic case where only a 50% resolution would be achieved. As already said before, there is greater sensitivity at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. For the light Higgs, to distinguish the MSSM and SM will only be possible at low $`m_A`$.

## 7 Conclusions

In summary, we find a non-decoupling behaviour of squark-gluino loops in $`h^o\overline{b}b`$ and $`H^+t\overline{b}`$ and also in FCHD, $`h^o,H^o,A^o\overline{b}s,s\overline{b}`$ and $`H^o,A^ot\overline{c},c\overline{t}`$. We compute the low energy effective theory by integrating out squarks and gluinos in the path integral and find a 2HDM of type III, giving the explicit expressions to $`𝒪(\alpha _S)`$ for the effective $`Hqq`$ Yukawa couplings. Finally, we study the sensitivity to these non-decoupling effects at colliders with a set of optimal observables, concluding that they are promising to look for indirect SUSY signals, even if the SUSY spectrum is very heavy.

It is a pleasure to congratulate Augusto García and Arnulfo Zepeda for their 60th birthday, and M. J. Herrero wishes to thank the organizers, specially to Miguel Angel Pérez for inviting her to a very enjoyable meeting. She also thanks to her collegues A. Dobado, H. Haber, W. Hollik, H. Logan, S. Peñaranda, S. Rigolin and J. F. de Trocóniz for the various fruitful collaborations, which have been the basis for this summary talk.