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# DETECTION OF A SERIES OF X-RAY DIPS ASSOCIATED WITH A RADIO FLARE IN GRS 1915+105

## 1. INTRODUCTION

The X-ray transient source GRS 1915+105 was discovered by Castro-Tirado, Brandt, and Lund (1992) with the WATCH all sky X-ray monitor on-board the Granat satellite. The source has been exhibiting a wide variety of temporal variability in its X-ray and radio emission. GRS 1915$`+`$105, the first Galactic superluminal radio source, has characteristics of a micro-quasar and is located at a distance of about 12.5 $`\pm `$ 1.5 kpc (Mirabel & Rodriguez 1994).

Besides the chaotic variability, narrow quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) at centroid frequency in the range of 0.001 $``$ 10 Hz were discovered in the X-ray emission from the source using the Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment (IXAE) (Agrawal et al. 1996) and the RXTE (Morgan & Remillard 1996). A QPO at a centroid frequency of 67 Hz which does not change with time, was also detected in this source in the RXTE observations. It has been suggested that it is related with the innermost stable orbit in the accretion disk of the source. Chen, Swank, & Taam (1997) found that the intensity dependant narrow QPOs are a characteristic feature of the hard branch and it is absent in the soft branch which corresponds to the very high state similar to those of other black hole candidates. Trudolyubov, Churazov, & Gilfanov (1999) studied the 1996/1997 low luminosity state and transitions of states using the RXTE data. They found a strong correlation between the QPO centroid frequency and spectral and timing parameters similar to the one detected in other Galactic black hole candidates in the intermediate state. Muno, Morgan, & Remillard (1999) sampled the RXTE data over a wide range of properties and found that the 0.5 $``$ 10 Hz QPOs are correlated with the temperature of the accretion disk. From the studied behavior of the source they distinguish two different states of the source: the spectrally hard state, dominated by a power law component when the QPOs are present and the soft state, dominated by thermal emission when the QPOs are absent.

Paul et al. (1998) detected quasi periodic bursts with period of about 45 s using the IXAE data obtained in 1997 June $``$ August and interpreted the slow rise and fast decay of bursts as evidence for matter disappearing into the event horizon of the black hole. Yadav et al. (1999) made a systematic analysis of these bursts and classified them into regular, irregular and quasi-regular based on the burst duration and recurrence time. They found the bursts to recur at a mean time of 20 $``$ 150 s and they suggested that the irregular long duration bursts (recurrence time $``$ 120 s) during which the spectrum becomes harder and harder as the burst progresses and becomes hardest at the end of the decay, are characteristic of the change of state of the source. They calculated the rise time and the decay time for these bursts to be of the order of a few seconds ($``$ 10s). The back and forth switching of the state of the source from a low-hard to a high-soft state within a time scale of a few seconds is explained by invoking the appearance and disappearance of the advective disk over its viscous time scale. These irregular bursts were also quasi-simultaneously observed by Belloni et al. (1997) who interpreted them as repeated filling and evacuation of inner accretion disc.

Simultaneous X-ray and infrared observations of the source established a close link between the non-thermal infrared emission and the X-ray emission from the accretion disk (Eikenberry et al. 1998). They found that the X-ray properties showed a drastic change coincident with the occurance of the IR and radio flares. Similar episodes of X-ray and radio flares were detected by Feroci et al. (1999) using the BeppoSAX satellite. From the spectral analysis of the X-ray data, they found evidence for a temporary disappearance and subsequent restoring of the inner accretion disk during the flare. Such simultaneous multi-wavelength observations establish the disk-jet connection in GRS 1915$`+`$105. These observations, however, pertain to jet emission which can be termed as “baby-jets” (Eikenberry et al. 1998) from consideration of energy. On the other hand, the accretion disk phenomena giving rise to superluminal jets are not very clearly established. Harmon et al (1997) found an anti-correlation between the decrease in the hard X-ray flux (obtained from BATSE with a time resolution of $``$1 day) from the accretion disk and the subsequent jet production. Fender et al. (1999) worked back the time of occurrence of super-luminally moving jets and found rapid (20 $``$ 30 minute) radio oscillations during the beginning of such jets. Though they attempted to associate these oscillations with the X-ray oscillations detected by Belloni et al. (1997), there are no simultaneous high time resolution observations in the radio and X-ray wave-bands during huge radio flares responsible for super-luminal jets. Though there are some indication of association between radio and X-ray emission based on low time resolution observations (RXTE ASM and GBI), detailed quantitative association between the two is not very conclusive. Hence we can conclude that the disk-jet connection for jets with superluminal motion is indirect at best.

In this paper we report the detection of multiple X-ray dips interpreted as “disk-evacuation” events which are similar in nature to the “baby-jet” X-ray events (Mirabel et al. 1998; Eikenberry et al. 1998). These events started during the transition of the source state from a steady low-hard state with the X-ray flux at 0.62 Crab at 1999 June 07 17.79 UT to a chaotic state with a flux of 1.46 Crab at 19.22 UT. A simultaneous increase in radio flux was seen at 2.25 GHz from 0.029 Jy at 1999 June 07 10.94 UT to 0.478 Jy on 1999 June 08 05.54 UT (from the public domain data from the NSF-NRAO-NASA Green Bank Interferometer). The presence of multiple dips in the X-ray light curve after the transition of the state when a radio flare also occurred, suggest the presence of “disk-evacuation” process in the inner accretion disk of GRS 1915$`+`$105.

## 2. INSTRUMENT AND OBSERVATIONS

The X-ray observations of GRS 1915$`+`$105 were carried out with the Pointed Proportional Counters (PPCs) of the Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment(IXAE) on board the Indian satellite IRS-P3. The IXAE includes three co-aligned and identical, multi-wire, multi-layer proportional counters, filled with a gas mixture of 90% Argon and 10% Methane at a pressure of 800 torr, with a total effective area of 1200 cm2, covering 2 to 18 keV energy range with an average detection efficiency of about 60% at 6 keV. The accepted X-ray events are stored in counters in 2$``$6 keV and 2$``$18 keV band for the top layer, 2$``$18 keV band for the middle layer, $`>`$ 18 keV (ULD counts) for all layers and $`>`$ 2 keV counts from the veto layers. For a detailed description of the PPCs refer to Agrawal (1998) and Rao et al. (1998).

The IRS-P3 satellite is in a circular orbit at an altitude of 830 km and inclination of 98. Pointing towards any particular source is done by using a star tracker with an accuracy of $``$ 0.1. The useful observation time is limited to 5 of the 14 orbits outside the South Atlantic Anamoly (SAA) region to the latitude band of 30S to 50N to avoid the charge particle background. The high voltage to the detectors is reduced when the satellite enters the SAA region and the data acquisition is stopped.

Background observations were made at the end of the source observation by pointing the PPCs to a source-free region in the sky, close to the target source as the simultaneous background observation is not possible because of the co-alignment of the PPCs. The source GRS 1915$`+`$105 was observed from 1999 June 6 $``$ 15 with 1 s time integration mode and June 16 $``$ 17 in 0.1 s time bin, for useful period of 37,740 seconds. The log of the observations is given in Table 1.

## 3. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

The data, corrected for background and pointing offset, for PPC-1 and PPC-3, were added to construct the X-ray light curve for GRS 1915$`+`$105. The dead time correction is not done as it is less than 1% for each PPCs as the event processing time for each PPCs is about 20 $`\mu `$s. The X-ray light curve for the source in the energy range of 2 $``$ 18 keV for all the observations with the PPCs averaged over each orbit, is shown in Figure 1 (top panel). Also seen in the figure are 1.3 $``$ 12.2 keV energy range light curve obtained with the RXTE-ASM (middle panel) and the radio flux at the frequency 2.25 GHz (bottom panel). The radio observations were taken from the public domain data from the NSF-NRAO-NASA Green Bank Interferometer.

As can be deduced from the low resolution ASM and GBI data, the source was in a steady low-hard state from June 2 to June 7 (MJD 51331 to 51336). It made a transition to a ‘chaotic state’ in a very short time which is very different from the slow transition (about three months) of the source in 1997 May to July (Trudolyubov, Churazov, & Gilfanov 1999). The source count rate increased from about 53 ASM counts s-1 on MJD 51336.5 (June 7 12.00 UT) to 109.4 ASM counts s-1 on MJD 51336.8 (June 7 19.2 UT). The onset of X-ray activity is further constrained by the PPC observations on June 7 17.50 UT, when the source showed a steady behaviour. Hence we can conclude that there was an abrupt change in the X-ray emission characteristics in less than 1.7 hours. From the radio light curve of the source, a sharp peak is clearly visible on MJD 51337 (June 8), on the same day when the source showed the X-ray transition as seen from the RXTE/ASM light curve. The onset of the radio flaring event is between June 7 10.94 UT and June 8 05.54 UT. After the radio peak, on MJD 51337, the flux decayed slowly over next 5 days. The exponential decay time of the radio flare is estimated to be 2.8 days. Though the low time resolution X-ray light curve appears like a flaring event, a closer examination of the high resolution data reveals that variations of much shorter duration are also present as indicated by a factor of 4 $``$ 5 variation over a few days within a span of a few hundred seconds in a series of dips.

The light curves for some of the individual observations of the source with the PPCs are shown in Figure 2 and 3. No bursts or dips are seen in the X-ray light curves of 1999 June 06 and 07 (MJD 51335 and 51336) when the source was in a low-hard state. From 1999 June 08 onwards, various types of dips of duration in the range of 20 to 160 seconds are seen in most of the observations as shown in Figure 2 and 3. During the dips, the X-ray flux decreases by a factor of about 3 within about 5 seconds, remains low for 20 to 160 s and then slowly recovers to the maximum. The short term variability in the X-ray light curves decreases during the dip. The duration of the dips is not constant in all the observations. In some of the observations, short period dips of 20 $``$ 60 seconds duration are observed after the occurance of long dip with duration of more than 100 s. Towards the end of the observation, long duration dips lasting for more than 100 s are not seen but larger numbers of shorter duration dips are observed. A summary of the duration of dips observed in the light curves of the source is given in Table 1.

The first three panels of Figure 4 shows one of the dips observed during the PPC observations in 2 $``$ 18 keV, 2 $``$ 6 keV and 6 $``$ 18 keV energy ranges, co-added by matching the falling part of the dips. In the figure, the sharp decrease in the X-ray flux to almost one third of its original value followed by a slow recovery is clearly seen. We have calculated the rise time and decay time for the dips by fitting exponential to the light curve. The values are found to be about and 110 seconds and 7 seconds respectively. The hardness ratio (counts in 6 $``$ 18 keV energy range/counts in 2 $``$ 6 keV energy range) for the same observation is shown in the fourth panel of the figure. It is seen from the figure that during the dips the spectrum (hardness ratio) of the source is soft. The bottom panel in Figure 4 shows the rms variation in the source calculated for successive three data points in the light curve for 2 $``$ 18 keV energy range during the dip and non-dip regions. There is a sharp decrease in the rms value at the beginning of the dip which recovers gradually as the flux increases.

The hardness ratio is computed for all the PPC observations. It is found that during the dips, the value of the hardness ratio is less in comparison to the non-dip regions for all the observation which indicates that the spectrum of the source is soft during the dips. There is no significant change in the value of hardness ratio averaged over each orbit. The timing behavior of the source was studied by taking the Fourier transform of 1 s and 0.1 s resolution mode data. From the power density spectrum (PDS) constructed from 0.1 s time mode data of June 17, narrow quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are detected at 4.5 Hz as shown in Figure 5 along with the 1s bin light curve. From the figure, it is clear that the QPOs are present in the source when there are no dips in the light curve. As the time resolution is limited to 1 s for most of the observations, we could not study in detail the QPOs in the frequency range of 1 $``$ 10 Hz during those periods when the dips were present.

In Table 2, we summerise various properties of the source during the dip and non-dip periods. The average count rate during the dips is about half or one-third of the count rate during the non-dip regions. The values of the hardness ratio and rms variations of the source are always smaller for the dip periods compared to the non-dip periods.

All the above properties of the source during the non-dip and dip regions are also seen in the publicly available RXTE/PCA data on 1999 June 08. The RXTE/PCA public archive contains only one observation during the radio flare (from June 8 to June 13) and we have analyzed this data to substantiate the properties of the dips. The first dip in X-ray band detected with the PPCs (shown in Figure 2, second panel) was also seen with RXTE/PCA at the same time. Figure 6 shows the X-ray light curve of the RXTE/PCA data in the energy range of 2 $``$ 13 keV (upper panel) and the hardness ratio (count rate in 5 $``$ 13 keV energy range / count rate in 2 $``$ 5 keV energy range) (lower panel) for the source. The PDS for the source for the different regions i.e. regions during the dips and during the absence of dips is shown in Figure 7. The first, third and fifth panels in the figure represent the PDS during the absence of the dips and second and fourth show the PDS during the dips. A narrow QPO peak at a centroid frequency in the range 4 $``$ 6 Hz is seen in the non-dip regions which is absent in the dips. The spectrum during the dips is softer in comparison to the non-dip regions. These properties are consistent with the PPC observations.

The dips detected in the X-ray light curves with the PPCs are similar to the dips which occurred after the spike in the X-ray light curve, observed on 1997 May 15 and Sept 09 (Mirabel et al. 1998; Markwardt et al. 1999) which is described as the “quiet” state by Markwardt et al. (1999). The properties of the source during this state are similar to those found during the dips observed in 1999 June with the PPCs.

During the multi-wavelength observation of the source carried out in 1997 May 15 and Sept 09, it was found that an X-ray event is followed by non-thermal infrared and radio flares. Here we estimate whether a series of mini-jets similar to those observed in 1997 May 15 (Mirabel et al. 1998) associated with the dips can account for the huge radio flare. From the simultaneous observation of the source in X-ray, IR and radio, Mirabel et al. (1998) estimated the value of spectral index of the relativistic electrons by applying the van der Laan (1966) model and derived a relation for the observed maximum flux density (Sλ) at a given wavelength $`\lambda `$ and the time since the ejection to reach the maximum flux at a particular wavelength (tλ) given by

$$S_\lambda \lambda ^{(7p+3)/(4p+6)}$$
(1)
$$t_\lambda \lambda ^{(p+4)/(4p+6)}$$
(2)
They found the value of spectral index $`p0`$ by using the observed maximum flux density at 3.6 cm and 6 cm during the burst observed on 1997 May 15. They determined the time for $`t_{6cm}0.9`$ h and $`t_{3.6cm}0.65`$ h. Using these parameters we estimate the peak flux at 2.25 GHz ($`\lambda `$ = 13.3 cm) as 26.5 mJy and t13.6cm as 1.6 hr. Assuming the time profile of the radio emission as seen by Mirabel et al. (1998) we estimate the total radio emission at 2.25 GHz ($`\lambda `$ = 13.3 cm) in the radio mini-flare corresponding to a dip in X-ray flux as

$$F_{13.3}40mJyhour.$$
(3)
The total radio emission at 2.25 GHz during the 1999 June flaring is estimated by integrating the radio profile (for 6 days) by fitting an exponential to the decay phase of the light curve. If the total radio emission in the flare observed in 1999 June is a superposition of such mini-flares, we can calculate the approximate number of dips in the X-ray light curve required to produce the radio flare as 720. If mini-flares in the radio are associated with the dips in the X-ray, this gives a rate of one dip in 12 minutes (in PPC).

## 4. DISCUSSION

Galactic superluminal sources are ideal astrophysical laboratories to probe in detail the connection between jets and accretion disks, ubiquitously thought to be present in Quasars. There were several attempts in the past to isolate characteristics in the X-ray emission of these sources (assumed to be coming from an accretion disk) and relate them to the onset of jet emission. Also, evidence for a sudden mass ejection event from the accretion disk is sought in the X-ray emission characteristics. Belloni et al. (1997) have discovered a series of outbursts in GRS 1915$`+`$105 which were attributed to “inner-disk” evacuation. They found that the source makes transition to two intensity levels lasting from a few tens to a few hundred seconds with distinct and different inner disk radii (as obtained from spectral measurements) and they attributed this change to the disappearance of inner disk due to thermal-viscous instabilities. Fender et al. (1999) made a detailed analysis of the super-luminal jet ejection events observed in GRS 1915$`+`$105 in 1997 October/November and detected continuous short period (20$``$40 minute) radio oscillations shortly after the start of the jet emission. They proposed that these are indications of repeated ejection of inner accretion disk, quite similar to the events seen in X-rays by Belloni et al. (1997). A causal connection between disk and jet was thus attempted.

Paul et al. (1998) and Yadav et al. (1999) have made a detailed study of such intensity variations using the data obtained with the IXAE and contemporaneous to the burst events reported by Belloni et al. (1997). They found that the source spectrum i.e. the ratio between the count rate in 6 $``$ 18 keV energy range/count rate in 2 $``$ 6 keV energy range, was softer during the burst and harder during the quiescent phase. Yadav et al. (1999) concluded that the repeated intensity variation cannot be attributed to inner disk evacuation. This is due to the viscous time scale arguments as well as due to the fact that the two intensity states are quite similar to the low-hard and high-soft state of the source. They invoked the two component accretion flow model (TCAF) of Chakrabarti & Titarchuk (1995) to conclude that the rapid changes are due to the appearance and disappearance of advective disk covering the standard thin disk without any requirements of mass ejection. Further, these types of hard dips (with a transition time of a few seconds) are seen almost for about a month in 1997 June (Yadav et al. 1999) when the radio emission was low. We estimate an average radio emission for this month as 8 mJy at 2.25 GHz using the GBI data. There was also no evidence for any flares (flux $`<`$ 20 mJy at all times). Hence the causal relationship between the disk instabilities and jet emission can be treated as not completely established.

In the next sub-section we summaries the available X-ray and radio observations which indicate the disk-jet connections.

### 4.1. Radio and X-ray emission in GRS 1915$`+`$105

1. There are periods of long durations when both the radio as well as the X-ray emissions are low. One example is from 1997 January-March when the X-ray flux was $``$0.25 Crab and 2.25 GHz radio flux was 10 mJy. These are classified as the radio-quiet hard state observations in Muno et al. (1999).

2. There are durations when the X-ray and radio flux are higher, which are classified as radio-loud hard-steady state. They are also known to exhibit optically thick radio emission and referred to as the “plateau” state (1996 July-August; 1997 October). For the 1997 October “plateau” state, the X-ray flux is 0.50 Crab and 2.25 GHz radio flux is 50 mJy. There is evidence for an AU scale radio jet observation in this state (Dhawan et al. 2000).

3. The X-ray flux changes from the steady-hard state to a flaring-state at various time-scales from a few hours (as seen in the present work) to a few months. During this time a variety of X-ray variations are seen.

3.1 The X-ray flux teeters between two intensity states in a short time (a few second) with a periodicity of 20 $``$ 150 s. These are called “inner-disk oscillations” by Belloni et al. (1997) and “irregular and quasi-regular” bursts by Yadav et al. (1999). There is no evidence for enhanced radio emission during these events.

3.2 A peculiar morphology of X-ray emission is associated with radio and infra-red flares. The X-ray emission changes from a high oscillating state (at a period of 10$``$20 s) to a low hard state (in a time scale of about 100 s). The X-ray intensity in the low-hard state gradually increases. There is a sudden dip characterized by low intensity, low hardness ratio and disappearance of the 0.5 $``$ 10 Hz QPO. The source gradually returns to the high oscillating state. These are associated with the synchrotron flares in radio (Mirabel et al. 1998; Fender & Pooley 1998) and infrared (Eikenberry et al. 1998). The peak intensities of these flares are in the range $``$ 100 $``$ 200 mJy from infrared to radio bands (Eikenberry et al. 2000). Eikenberry et al. (1998) strongly argue that the onset of radio/infrared flare is associated with the soft dip rather than the gradual change to the low-hard state.

3.3 Eikenberry et al. (2000) identify a series X-ray dips coincident with faint infrared flares. The peak amplitude of the observed mini-infrared flares are found to be $``$ 0.5 mJy for a duration of a few hundred seconds. The period of the soft X-ray dips, producing the observed flares is found to be $``$ 20 s. These soft dips have the X-ray characteristics identical to the dips seen during the synchrotron infrared flares (3.2 above).

4. The huge radio-flares producing super-luminal blobs are associated with chaotic X-ray variability (as measured by low time resolution X-ray data). The radio spectrum is steep during these flares. There is, as yet, no strong morphological identification with detailed X-ray emission characteristics.

In the following sections we argue that these soft X-ray dips are responsible for the superluminal radio flares.

### 4.2. Radio flare as a collection of X-ray dips

The peculiar dips presented in this paper provide an additional feature in the X-ray emission which, we argue, is related to mass ejection and the consequent jet production. There is a vast difference in the nature of the X-ray light curves of the source between the 1999 June observation reported in the present work and those seen in 1997 using PPCs (Paul et al. 1998; Yadav et al. 1999) and RXTE (Belloni et al. 1997). During the present observations the spectrum was softer as the hardness ratio of the source was less, during the dips in comparison to the non-dip regions. The observed properties of the source during the non-dip periods i.e. rms variability in X-ray flux, presence of QPO at a centroid frequency of 4 $``$ 6 Hz disappear during the dip. There is a gradual return to the accretion-disk properties: the hardness ratio and the variability characteristics slowly change back to the pre-dip values (see Figure 4).

Morphologically, these dips have properties very similar to those seen during the dips responsible for the infrared flares (Eikenberry et al. 1998; 2000; Mirabel et al. 1998). Fender et al. (1999) have worked back the onset time of the super-luminal blobs and during these times the radio emission shows oscillations in a time scale of 20 $``$ 30 minutes. Similar radio oscillations (at similar periods, but at lower intensity) are observed to be accompanied by a series of soft X-ray dips (see Fig 10. of Dhawan et al. 2000). Further, one of the superluminal blobs was thought to originate from the core on MJD 50750.5 (which is accompanied by radio oscillations) and the X-ray emission observed on MJD 50751.7 shows soft X-ray dips (see Muno et al. Fig 1e).

In view of strong evidence for association of such dip events to radio emission, it is suggested that a series of dips can produce the complete radio flare lasting for a few days. The onset of the first dip event detected with the PPCs on June 8, 15.51 UT and independently with the RXTE coincided with the onset of the radio flare within a few hours. It was shown in the previous section that a superposition of several disk evacuation events can produce the radio flare if one assumes a scaling for energy from single dip events. It would be interesting to see whether all radio flares are necessarily accompanied by such X-ray dips interpreted as disk evacuation events.

To produce the observed radio light curve, one needs to assume that the number of dips produced as a function of time also follows a similar time profile. Since the IXAE data are obtained for only 5 of the 14 orbits everyday, observations are not continuous enough to conclusively establish this hypothesis. It may be pointed out that during the superluminal jet events of 1997 October $``$ November, the frequency of radio oscillations decreased from 2.9 hr-1 on MJD 50750.5 (when the radio flux was 200 mJy) to 1.9 hr-1 on MJD 50752.5 (when the radio flux decreased to 120 mJy - see Fig. 7 of Fender et al. 1998). The smooth radio light curve and the steep spectrum could be due to the movement of the ejecta in the interstellar medium. The radio flares of 1997 October $``$ November seen by Fender et al. (1998) is the superposition of at least four ejecta and the start of each ejecta is associated with a series of radio oscillations.

The mass and energy estimates of the superluminal blobs emitted by GRS 1915+105 (Rodriguez & Mirabel 1999) is too large to be caused by a single isolated event in the accretion disk, and a series of accretion disk driven events would be required, as suggested by Fender et al. (1999). The series of dips that we have observed could provide the necessary energy for the superluminal blobs, if they occur in a rapid series. A continuous X-ray monitoring during a radio flare will clarify this question. Also, the dips seen during the later part of the radio flare are of shorter durations and these events may not be ejecting matter in sufficient quantities. It is quite conceivable that only the long duration dips with a gradual recovery are responsible for jet emission. The start of the dips always shows similar observable parameters like count rates and hardness ratio indicating a causal relationship between disk parameters and the onset of dip events.

### 4.3. TCAF model for the advection accretion

We attempt to interpret the present results in the light of the TCAF model for the advective accretion disk around the black holes.

It has been recognized that very near to the black hole, accretion is necessarily advective and far away from the compact object it is beleived that the accretion is through a geometrically thin accretion disk. In the ADAF (Advection Dominated Accretion Flow) model of Narayan & Yi (1994) the changeover occurs at a transition radius (rtr) whereas in the Two Component Accretion Flow (TCAF) model of Chakrabarti & Titarchuk (1995) a standing shock wave or a centrifugal barrier dominated dense region at R0 separates these two. Das & Chakrabarti (1999) have included the effect of outflow in the TCAF model. GRS 1915$`+`$105 changes from hard to soft states at a variety of time scales and the observed properties of the source can be interpreted as the variation in R0.

#### 4.3.1 Time scales of the dip events

Yadav et al. (1999) derived various time scales for the quiescent period, decay time and rise time for the different types of bursts observed by equating the inner disk radius(Rin) to Ro from where the advection dominated halo component covers the thin accretion disk during the quiescent state. They obtained the viscous time scale for the standard $`\alpha `$ disk (t$`{}_{vis}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{d}`$) as

$$t_{vis}^d=4.3\times 10{}_{}{}^{4}\alpha _{}^{1}\dot{m}_d^1m^1R_o^2$$
(4)
where ṁd is in the unit of Eddington accretion rate, m is the mass of the source in the unit of solar mass and Ro in km. They calculated this time scale (t$`{}_{vis}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{d}`$) to be of the order a few hundred seconds for ṁd = 1, m = 10, $`\alpha `$ = 0.01 and R = 300 km.

Similarly, the time scale for the advection disk for halo component t$`{}_{vis}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{h}`$ (Yadav et al. 1999) as

$$t_{vis}^h=4.9\times 10{}_{}{}^{6}\alpha _{}^{1}m^{1/2}R_o^{3/2}$$
(5)
Using the parameters used to derive t$`{}_{vis}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{d}`$ the free fall time scale is calculated to be order of seconds, which agrees with the decay time of the observed dips.

The recovery time of the dips ($``$ 110 s) agrees with the calculated viscous time scale of the standard disk t$`{}_{vis}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{d}`$.

The time-scale of the dip onset (a few seconds) is comparable to the free-fall time scale as well as the advective disk time scale (equation 5), for typical advection dominated disk parameters. Hence we can conclude that all the accretion disk characteristics suddenly disappear during the dips and they reappear in a gradual way. We feel that a sudden disk evacuation and a gradual refilling is a natural explanation for this observation.

#### 4.3.2 TCAF explanation for the outflow

To produce radio jets, a large amount of matter has to be expelled from the disk and this has to be accelerated to relativistic velocities. Das & Chakrabarti (1999) have proposed a combined inflow/ outflow model in which the computation is done using combinations of exact transonic inflow and outflow solutions. assuming free-falling conical polytropic inflow and isothermal outflows, they estimated the ratio of out flowing and in-flowing rate to be

$$\frac{\dot{M}_{}}{\dot{M}_{in}}=R_{\dot{m}}=\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_{out}}{\mathrm{\Theta }_{in}}\frac{R}{4}e^{(f_0\frac{3}{2})}f_0^{3/2}$$
(6)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$out and $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$in are the solid angles of the outflow and inflow respectively, R is the compression ratio of the in-flowing matter which is a function of the flow parameters such as specific energy and angular momentum (Chakrabarti 1990) and f0 is given by

$$f_0=\frac{R^2}{R1}=\frac{(2n+1)R}{2n}$$
(7)
n is the polytropic constant = 1/($`\gamma `$$``$1), $`\gamma `$ being the adiabatic index.

They found that the outflow rate depends on the initial parameters of the flow and in some cases the outflow rate can be higher than the inflow rate leading to disk evacuation. We propose that the dips that we have observed are a result of such disk evacuation phenomenon. It would be interesting to carry out a detailed spectral and timing analysis to extract the exact disk parameters leading to a disk evacuation event.

### 4.4. Jet acceleration

It is possible that the accretion disk magnetic field is responsible for accelerating the disk evacuated matter into radio emitting jets. Meier et al. (1997) have proposed a magnetic switch that can generate superluminal jet ejection. They have shown that when the coronal Alfven velocity exceeds a critical value, the jet velocity can become relativistic. We have calculated the Alfven velocity by assuming the advection dominated disk parameters given by Narayan et al. (1998).

The expression for Alfven velocity (VA) and Escape velocity (Vesc) are

$$V_A=\frac{B}{\sqrt{4\pi \rho }},$$
(8)
$$V_{esc}=\sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}}=\frac{c}{\sqrt{r}}$$
(9)
where B is the magnetic field, r is the radial distance, $`\rho `$ is the plasma density and r is the distance in the unit of Schwarzschild radius.

Assuming an equipartition with the magnetic energy, the expression for B and ne (number density) are given by (Narayan et al. 1998)

$$B7.8\times 10{}_{}{}^{8}\alpha {}_{}{}^{1/2}m{}_{}{}^{1/2}\dot{m}{}_{}{}^{1/2}r{}_{}{}^{5/4}G$$
(10)
$$n_e6.3\times 10{}_{}{}^{19}\alpha {}_{}{}^{1}m{}_{}{}^{1}\dot{m}r{}_{}{}^{3/2}cm^3$$
(11)
where $`\alpha `$ is Shakura & Sunyaev viscosity parameter, m is in the unit of M,
and $`\dot{m}`$ is in the unit of Eddington accretion rate.

For equipartition of magnetic field (i.e. $`\beta `$ = 0.5),
$`\alpha `$ = c ( 1$``$$`\beta `$$``$ 0.3 (for c $``$ 0.5$``$0.6)

Taking the values of m as 10 and $`\dot{m}`$ as 0.1 to 1 for GRS 1915$`+`$105, we estimated the magnetic field and the density (assuming one proton corresponding to one electron in the plasma) as

B = 4.51 $`\times `$ 108 $`\dot{m}`$1/2 r-5/4 G
$`\rho `$ = 3.5 $`\times `$ 10-5 $`\dot{m}`$ r-3/2 g/cc

Using the values of B and $`\rho `$, the Alfven velocity VA is calculated to be

$$V_A=\frac{B}{\sqrt{4\pi \rho }}=\frac{2.1\times 10^{10}}{\sqrt{r}}\frac{2}{3}\frac{c}{\sqrt{r}}$$
(12)
Now, the ratio between VA and Vesc is

$$\frac{V_A}{V_{esc}}=\frac{2}{3}$$
(13)
We find that the Alfven velocity is near the critical velocity for advection dominated flows indicating the operation of the magnetic switch. It should be noted that just before the detection of the superluminal jet ejection in GRS 1915$`+`$105 in November 1997 by Fender et al. (1998), the source was in a low-hard state as well as a radio-loud state. We can envisage a scenario where the accretion disk condition during a low-hard state makes the magnetic switch to operate and the ejected material is accelerated to relativistic velocities. These accelerated blobs can move in the interstellar medium to give the steep spectrum superluminal ejecta. The transition period from a low-hard to a high-soft state provides critical conditions for a series of disk evacuation events to occur so that sufficient matter is ejected to produce relativistic jets. A continuous monitoring in X-ray and radio bands during a radio flare will clarify most of these questions.

## Acknowledgments

We express sincere thanks to the referee for his useful comments and suggestions which improved the contents and presentations of the paper. We acknowledge the contributions of the scientific and technical staff of TIFR, ISAC and ISTRAC for the successful fabrication, launch and operation of the IXAE. It is a pleasure to acknowledge constant support of Shri K. Thyagarajan, Project Director IRS$``$P3 satellite, Shri J. D. Rao and his team at ISTRAC, Shri P. S. Goel, Director ISAC and the Director of the ISTRAC. We thank the RXTE/ASM and NSF-NRAO-NASA Green Bank Interferometer group for making the data publicly available. The Green Bank Interferometer is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated by the NRAO in support of NASA High Energy Astrophysics programs.


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# Four Years of Extreme Ultraviolet Observations of Markarian 421. I: Spectral Analysis

## 1 Introduction

Evidence for absorption features in the X-ray spectra of BL Lac objects at $`0.6`$ keV 111PKS 2155-304 (Canizares & Kruper 1984), H1426+428 (Sambruna et al. 1997) and PKS 0548-322 (Sambruna & Mushotzky 1998) has existed for many years. This is a tantalizing situation: BL Lac objects were originally defined by their lack of the sharp spectroscopic features that provide the normal tools for understanding astrophyisical objects. Without this tool, only large multisatellite, multitelescope campaigns spanning 20 decades of frequency have been able to constrain the BL Lac emission mechanism. Absorption features can provide a unique tool to study the presence and the dynamical properties of any gas surrounding the nucleus of the otherwise ‘featureless’ BL Lac objects. The extremely large Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite database on Mrk 421 offers a so far a unique opportunity to search for and characterize any sharp spectroscopic feature.

Mrk 421 is one of the brightest, best known and closest BL Lac objects ($`z`$=0.0308, Ulrich et al. 1975). Mrk 421 was in fact the first BL Lac object found to have X-ray emission (Richetts et al. 1976) and its low redshift makes this object one of the few extragalactic sources detected at $`\gamma `$-rays above 300 GeV up to TeV energies (Punch et al. 1992). Mrk 421 has been extensively observed at radio (e.g. Zhang & Baath 1990), UV/optical (Maza, Martin & Angel 1978; Mufson et al., 1990) and X-ray frequencies (e.g. Mushotzky et al., 1979; George, Warwick & Bromage 1988, Takahashi et al. 1996, Guainazzi et al. 1999). Mrk 421 shows optical polarization, a flat radio spectrum and significant time variability, characteristics of the blazar class (Makino et al., 1987) and its parent galaxy has been identified as a giant elliptical (Ulrich et al. 1975; Mufson, Hutter & Kondo 1989).

In the EUV band ($`60750`$ Å) Mrk 421 was detected during the ROSAT WFC survey (Pounds et al. 1993, Pye et al. 1995) and the EUVE all-sky survey (Marshall, Fruscione & Carone 1995, Fruscione 1996). It is one of the strongest EUV extragalactic sources and was immediately recognized as a prime target for subsequent EUV spectroscopic studies. For 4 almost consecutive years (1994, 1995, 1996 and 1998) Mrk 421 was the target of multiwavelength campaigns covering radio to TeV energies (Macomb et al., 1995, Kerrick et al. 1995, Buckley et al. 1996, Takahashi et al. 1999) and the EUVE satellite (which gives simultaneous photometric and spectroscopic data) was always part of the campaigns. In addition, in 1995 and in 1997 Mrk 421 was observed serendipitously with the EUVE photometers (the “scanners”).
The large amount of data accumulated for Mrk 421 by the EUVE satellite to date ($`1100`$ ks of public imaging data and $`950`$ ks of public spectroscopic data) represents the best coverage for any BL Lac object at high energies. Less than half of this data has been analysed to date (Fruscione et al. 1996, Kartje et al. 1997, hereafter K97) revealing that (i) the source exhibits a flare-like behavior (ii) the strong EUV variability is correlated with soft X-ray and TeV-energy emission, and (iii) the spectrum may have strong absorption features between 65 Å and 75 Å (0.16-0.19 keV) (K97). However in the EUV, all the previous analysis of BL Lacs can only infer the presence of absorption from the extrapolation of the X-ray spectrum (e.g. Konigl et al 1995 for PKS2155-304 and K97 for MRK 421).

The purpose of this paper is to analyze, in an homogeneous way, all of the 950 ks of EUVE public spectroscopic data for Mrk 421 . The results of this paper will also provide a useful reference for the calibration of other satellites observing in this energy range. In particular Mrk 421 is a calibration target for both the Chandra and XMM satellites, whose Low Energy Transmission Grating (LETG) and Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) partially overlap with the EUVE energy band.
In Section 2 we present all the EUVE spectra of Mrk 421 taken from 1994 to 1997; in Section 3 we discuss the results and in Section 4 we give a brief summary and our conclusions. All the photometric data, the corresponding lightcurves and a detailed variability analysis are presented in a companion paper (Cagnoni, Papadakis & Fruscione, 2000, hereafter paper ii).

## 2 Observations

The EUVE satellite was launched in June 1992 and is still acquiring astronomical data in the wavelength range from $`60`$ to 750 Å. Onboard EUVE there are 4 telescopes: three of them are co-aligned photometers observing in 4 different EUV bandpasses, while the fourth is the Deep Survey/Spectrometer (DS/S, see e.g. Welsh et al. 1990) mounted orthogonally to the scanners. (Figure 1 of paper ii shows the DS effective area compared to the scanner effective area). In addition to a photometer (10 % bandpass 68-178 Å) the DS/S telescope is also equipped with three spectrometers (Hettrick & Bowyer, 1983; Abbott et al. 1996) covering the “short” (SW: $`70190`$ Å), “medium” (MW: $`140380`$ Å) and “long” (LW: $`280760`$Å) EUV wavelengths. This configuration allows simultaneous imaging and spectroscopy with a spatial resolution of $`1^{}`$ and a spectral resolution of $`\lambda /\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda 200`$ at the short wavelengths, i.e. 0.35 Å at 70 Å.
Further details on the science instrumentation and performances can be found in Malina (1994), Sirk et al. (1997) and Abbott et al. (1996).

The scanners were used to carry out the EUVE all-sky survey (July 21 1992 - January 23 1993) and are currently utilized in the Right Angle Program (RAP), that is the observation of targets of scientific interest with the scanner telescopes while the DS/S telescope is conducting the primary science observation. The DS/S has been used for a deep EUV survey along the ecliptic during the all-sky survey and for pointed spectroscopic and imaging observations since then.

We use throughout this paper all of the publicly available DS/S data on MRK 421: from 1994 to 1997, a total of 950 ks. We are not considering the most recent observation (April 1998) since the data is presently being analysed by the original proposers (Marshall et al. in preparation). Mrk 421 was observed by EUVE several times from 1994 to 1997, four times with the DS/S and twice with the scanners; Table 1 summarizes the observations.
Because of strong absorption by the interstellar medium (ISM) along the line of sight (even at the low $`N_H=1.45\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 Elvis, Wilkes & Lockman 1989), Mrk 421 was detected only at the shortest wavelengths: in the Lex/B filter of the scanners (10% bandpass 58-174 Å), in the Lex/B filter of the DS instrument (10% bandpass 67-178 Å) and, relevant for this paper, in the SW spectrometer (70-190 Å) 222A graphical representation of the simulated DS/S and scanner responses is presented in Figure 2 of paper ii, where we convolved the Mrk 421 energy spectrum corrected for the ISM absorption with the DS/S and scanners effective area. No signal is present at wavelengths longer than $`110`$ Å.

### 2.1 Energy spectra

After rejecting the time intervals with high particle background, such as the satellite passages over the South Atlantic Anomaly, and correcting the data for instrumental deadtime and telemetry saturation, we measured a total effective exposure of 315858 s, 506780 s, and 354806 s for the 1994, 1995 and 1996 observations respectively (note that the first 1995 and the 1997 observations were performed with the scanners, instrument with imaging capabilities only).
We extracted all the spectra in a homogeneous way from the two-dimensional SW detector image, using the EUVE Guest Observer Center software (IRAF/EUV package) and other standard spectroscopic IRAF tasks. The spectrum was extracted in a 14 pixel wide aperture and the background obtained by linearly fitting an average background in two regions ($`80`$ pixel wide) of the detector, one on each side of the spectrum. The resulting wavelength-calibrated spectra (Figures 1, 4 and 8) were convolved with the proper effective area and binned over 1 Å. For the 1994 on-axis observation (Figure 1) we used the on-axis effective area derived from in-orbit calibrations for the 75 Å- 110 Å range. The 1995 and 1996 observations were performed off-axis (a technique that slightly increases the short-wavelength coverage, down to $`70`$ Å). This results in a different effective area (Marshall et al. 1999) that we applied here for the first time. The 1$`\sigma `$ error bars on the flux measurements shown in the figures of all the spectra were computed using the formula

$$\sigma (\lambda )=\frac{\sqrt{[S_\lambda +B_\lambda /(1+H_{sp}/H_B)]}}{A_{eff}(\lambda )}$$

where S is the signal from the target, B the averaged background, both in counts/s, $`A_{eff}`$ the SW effective area in $`cm^2`$ and $`H_{sp}`$ and $`H_B`$ are respectively the width in pixels of the extraction region for spectrum (14 pixels) and background (160 pixels) in the direction perpendicular to the dispersion.

We modeled the EUV spectrum of Mrk 421 using version 2.0 of the SHERPA modelling and fitting software (recently developed at the Chandra X-ray Center). We initially used an absorbed power law of the form

$$\mathrm{f}(\lambda )=\mathrm{f}(\lambda _0)\lambda ^{\alpha 1}\mathrm{exp}\{[\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{X}\mathrm{N}(\mathrm{X})\sigma _\mathrm{X})\}\mathrm{photons}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^2\mathrm{\AA }^1$$

where f($`\lambda _0`$) is a normalization factor. We used $`\lambda _0=80`$ Å (E0=0.155 keV). $`\alpha `$ is the energy index and the absorption is characterized by a column density N(X) and an absorption cross section $`\sigma _\mathrm{X}`$ for each element. We included in the model H, He i and He ii (Rumph, Bowyer and Vennes, 1994) and heavier elements (Morrison and McCammon, 1983). We fixed the Galactic hydrogen column density at $`N_H=1.45\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Elvis, Wilkes & Lockman 1989) and the ratios $`N_{He\mathrm{i}}`$/$`N_{H\mathrm{i}}`$=0.1 and $`N_{He\mathrm{ii}}`$/$`N_{H\mathrm{i}}`$=0.01. The best fit values for the simple absorbed power law model are summarized in Table 2 together with their $`1\sigma `$ uncertainties for 1 interesting parameter. Two-parameter $`\chi ^2`$ contour confidence levels at $`\chi _{min}^2`$+1, +4.61 and +5.99 – corresponding respectively to the 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty for each single parameter and to the 90% and 95% joint confidence levels – are shown in Figure 2, 5 and 9 for the 1994, 1995 and 1996 data sets respectively.

#### 2.1.1 1994 energy spectrum

Our best fit flux in 1994 is slightly higher than the previous analysis of Fruscione et al., 1996 (f$`{}_{80\mathrm{\AA }}{}^{}=6.44\pm 0.33\times 10^3`$ photons cm-2 s-1 Å-1 compared to their f$`{}_{80\mathrm{\AA }}{}^{}=290\pm 15`$ $`\mu `$Jy$`=5.47\pm 0.28\times 10^3`$ photons cm-2 s-1 Å-1) but our slope is within the errors ($`\alpha =0.85_{0.72}^{+0.66}`$ compared to their $`\alpha =1.4\pm 0.8`$). The 1$`\sigma `$ error bars reported in Fruscione et al., 1996 were not corrected for the effective area; the small difference in the value of the normalization can be possibly explained by the difference in the errors and a possible difference in the wavelength range used to model the spectrum. This is the only spectrum for which the addition of an absorbed interved gaussian line does not improve the fit (Tab.3).

#### 2.1.2 1995 energy spectrum

The 1995 EUVE DS/S observation was part of a large multiwavelength campaign during which a powerful TeV flare occured (Buckley et al. 1996). Simultaneously an X-ray flare developed (Takahashi et al. 1996), and the EUV followed with a short delay (Buckley et al. 1996). As illustrated in figure 3, the EUVE observation spanned the flare ($`104`$ ks), the decay ($`218`$ ks) and the following quiescent state ($`185`$ ks) The observation was performed $`0.3^{}`$ off-axis and as expected the signal reaches down $`70`$Å. This spectral region is crucial since it covers the location of the wide EUV absorption feature proposed by K97 using less than half (the flare decay) of the 1995 data. In our analysis we corrected the data with the $`0.3^{}`$ off-axis effective area (Marshall et al. 1999) and the resulting spectrum, binned over 1 Å, is presented in Figure 4.

In order to compare our data analysis to that of K97, and in an attempt to look for changes during the flare, we divided the 1995 observation into three parts (Figure 3):
Flare: April 25–28 ($`104`$ks), the time interval of the EUVE flare;
Decay: April 29 – May 6 ($`218`$ ks), the time interval analysed by K97;
Quiescence: May 7–13 ($`185`$ ks), the remaining data. The EUVE spectra for the 3 parts are shown in Figiure 6 a,b and c.

Table 1 lists the exposures times and Table 2 summarizes the best-fit parameters for each one of the three parts. In Figure 7 we plot the two-parameter $`\chi ^2`$ contour confidence levels.

#### 2.1.3 Comparison with previous results

The ‘decay’ section of the 1995 spectrum deserves comparison with the analysis of K97, given the importance of the absorption line evident in their Figure 2. We show the effect of using the improper $`0.3^{}`$ off-axis effective area in Figure 6b; we compared the EUVE spectrum obtained using the on-axis effective area (open cirles) as in K97, and the $`0.3^{}`$ off-axis effective area (filled squares). The effect of using the appropriate calibration is to increase the flux below $`80`$ Å and so weaken the absorption feature ($`45`$%). Another effect to consider is that K97 evaluated the level of the continuum in the EUV range by adopting an $`\alpha _{\mathrm{EUVX}}`$ ($`1.32`$) slope derived from the 0.15 kev EUV flux and the 1.5 keV X-ray (ASCA) flux, which resulted in a strong absorption feature (see also §3 for further discussion on this point).

Our best fit slope $`\alpha =2.19\pm 0.5`$ (Table 2) is flatter than the $`\alpha =3.5\pm 0.8`$ in K97. If we consider the same wavelength range (70-95 Å instead of 70-110 Å) we find $`\alpha =2.54\pm 0.56`$, consistent with K97 result.

A simultaneous fit of an absorbed power law plus an absorbed (inverted) gaussian should provide a more reliable result. If the position of the gaussian is a free parameter then the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ goes to 1.17 and a narrow (FWHM=$`1.8\pm 0.5`$ Å) absorption feature is found at $`72.7\pm 0.3`$ Å while the slope becomes significanlty flatter ($`\alpha =1.62\pm 0.59`$) (see Tab.3). This is the first time that an absorption feature in the EUV range is derived from EUV data alone.

Both for PKS 2155-304 (Konigl et al. 1995) and for Mrk 421 (K97) the presence of absorption features was previously derived on the basis of an extrapolation of the X-ray power law and not directly from EUVE data. However there is strong evidence that the X-ray spectrum of the high-energy peaked BL Lac objects, including Mrk 421 , is concave (Sambruna et al. 1994, 1997; Tashiro et al. 1995; Takahashi et al. 1996a; Giommi et al. 1998; Guainazzi et al. 1999) and a gradual steepening with energy agrees with the “synchrotron self Compton” scenario, which has often been used to explain the spectral energy distribution of BL Lac objects (Ghisellini, Maraschi & Treves 1985, Ghisellini 1989). Therefore, a simple power law model is an unreliable extrapolation from X-rays to the EUV.

In order to verify this assumption for Mrk 421 , we reanalyze, as an example, one of the many one-hour-long 1995 ASCA observations (the one on 25-26 April) undertaken simultaneously with the EUVE observation (1995 ‘flare’). This in order to investigate the spectral slope below 1.5 keV (Takahashi et al. 1996b and 1999 only published data for 1.5 keV and above). First we fitted the ASCA spectra with an absorbed broken power law and the best fit requires a break position at $`E_{break}=1.77\pm 0.07`$ keV and the energy slopes varies from $`1.44\pm 0.16`$ above the break to $`0.98\pm 0.02`$ below the break (consistent with what found by Takahashi et al.). The broken power law model however does not give a good fit of the spectrum below 1.5 keV; a better result is found if we assume a “curved spectrum” parametrized as

$$F(E)=E^{(f(E)\alpha _{low}+(1f(E))\alpha _{high})}$$

where $`f(E)=(1exp(E/E_0))^\beta `$, $`\alpha _{low}`$ and $`\alpha _{high}`$ are the low and high energy asymptotic slopes and $`\beta `$ is the curvature radius in the energy space. The best fit values for the curved model with fixed $`\beta =1.0`$ (e.g. Guainazzi et al. 1999) are $`\alpha _{low}=0.57\pm 0.06`$, $`\alpha _{high}=1.34\pm 0.13`$ and $`E_0=1.78\pm 0.18`$ (see fig. 10); these values show that the slope flattens toward lower energies and that an extrapolation with a simple power law is not an accurate way to predict the EUV continuum level; the low energy asymptotic slope ($`\alpha _{low}=0.57`$) is generally in agreement with the flat slope derived from the EUV spectrum ($`\alpha =0.71\pm 0.61`$ from Tab.3).
Note that in the case of PKS 2155-304 there is an additional problem: the ROSAT spectral slope used for the extrapolation was not measured simulteneously to the EUV spectrum and the spectral slope has been observed to harden when the source intensity increases (Giommi et al. 1998).

#### 2.1.4 1996 energy spectrum

In 1996 Mrk 421 was again observed $`0.3^{}`$ off-axis with a total effective exposure of 354806 s. The 1 Å binned spectrum and the best fit parameters model are plotted in Figure 8; the corresponding contour confidence levels are shown in Figure 9.

#### 2.1.5 The EUV absorption feature

We performed several fits using an absorbed power law model plus gaussian for all the observations. The results are listed in Table 3. In every case, except for the 1994 observation, the addition of a gaussian absorption line improves the fit. The power law slope is in the range $`\alpha =[0.15,1.62]`$ which is not too distant from the slope measured from X-ray data, (see e.g. Guainazzi et al.with SAX data which gives $`\alpha =0.31.1`$ depending on the spectral model). The best-fit center of the gaussian absorption lines is in the 71-75 Årange with full width half maximum varying from 0.2 to 6 Å. We note however that the 6 Å FWHM is relative to the global 1995 observation and it is probably due to the superposition of narrower slightly variable lines.

## 3 Discussion

### 3.1 The absorption feature

Ever since Einstein Pioneering observations suggested the existence of an ubiquitous absorption feature around $`0.55`$ keV in the X-ray spectra of BL Lacertae objects (Canizares & Kruper 1984, Madejski et al. 1991), much X-ray and EUV data has been collected with the goal of confirming the existence of such absorption features.

#### 3.1.1 EUV/X-ray absorption in other BL Lac objects

The first object to show evidence of an X-ray absorption feature was PKS 2155-304 ($`z=0.117`$) in a 1980 Einstein grating spectrum (Canizares & Kruper 1984). The feature was detected at $`0.6`$ keV ($`\lambda =21`$ Å) and extended for 50-100 eV ($`\lambda =120250`$ Å); it was interpreted by the authors as O VIII Ly$`\alpha `$ emitted by high velocity material. Looking at a 1979 Einstein solid state spectrometer observation of the same object Madejski et al. 1991 found evidence for absorption at $`0.55`$ keV, consistent with the grating result.
Krolik et al. 1985 modelled the absorption as due to an outflowing subrelativistic wind beamed in our direction.
PKS 2155-304 was subsequently observed by BBXRT in 1990 and the absorption feature at $`0.55`$ keV was confirmed in those data (Madejski et al. 1994), although instrumental effects cast some doubt on this result (Sambruna et al. 1997, Weaver et al. 1995).
In a long exposure ($`>100`$ ks) Beppo-SAX spectrum of PKS 2155-304 in the soft X-rays (Giommi et al. 1998) the best fit model is improved (at 99% confidence) when a notch at $`0.55\pm 0.04`$ keV is added to the model, although the magnitude of the feature is close to the instrument calibration limits.
PKS 2155-304 was also observed by EUVE. A 1992 30 ks observation gives hints of an absorption feature at $`80`$ Å (Fruscione et al. 1994). Two longer observations in June (130 ks) and in July (150 ks) 1993 suggested the existence of 2 to 5 absorption features at a $`3\sigma `$ level in the range 75 to 110 Å (Konigl et al. 1995). Extrapolating the ROSAT X-ray spectral slope into the EUV the authors found evidence of a wide absorption feature from $`75`$ to $`85`$ Å and interpreted it as the superposition of Doppler-smeared absorption lines (L-shell transitions of Mg and Ne as well as M-shell transitions of Fe) that originate in a high-velocity clumped outflow from the nucleus. According to this model the X-ray line spectrum should be dominated by an O VII K$`\alpha `$ broadened and blueshifted feature. This corresponds to the feature observed in by Einstein and in 1990 by BBXRT, but the predictions are an order of magnitude greater than the observations; to match BBXRT measurement the oxygen must be present in subcosmic abundance (Konigl et al. 1995).

Another BL Lac object to show an X-ray absorption feature is H1426$`+`$428 ($`z=0.129`$). Sambruna et al. (1997) reanalyzed a BBXRT 1990 observation and found a broad feature around $`0.50.6`$ keV confirmed by an ASCA 1994 spectrum, but not by a ROSAT 1993 spectrum.

A third BL Lac, PKS 0548-322 ($`z=0.069`$) (Sambruna & Mushotzky, 1998) confirmed the early discovery of an absorption feature from the Einstein spectrum (Madejski et al. 1991); this feature is present in ASCA data and can be modeled with either an edge at $`0.66`$ keV and optical depth $`\tau 0.3`$ or with a notch at $`0.82`$ keV and fixed width of $`\mathrm{\Delta }E=0.1`$ keV and covering fraction $`f_c0.1`$. The ASCA absorpton feature is at energies significantly higher than in previous X-ray observations, when the continuum was in a slightly higher state (by a factor $`1.4`$); this provides tentative evidence for variability in the absorption feature.

#### 3.1.2 EUV/X-ray absorption in Markarian 421

K97 interpret the absorption feature in the context of the Konigl et al. (1995) model for PKS 2155-304 as a superposition of Mg VIII and Mg IX absorption lines. The implied ionization state of the gas would require stronger O VII absorption in the X-ray range than is allowed by observations and the authors invoke subcosmic oxygen abundance to explain its absence.

Our analysis of the 1994, 1995 and 1996 EUVE spectra of Mrk 421 shows an absorption feature inferred directly from the EUVE data, (i.e. by modelling the EUV continuum and the absorption line simultaneously). The simplest model for this feature is a reverted Gaussian at about 71-75 Å a maximum FWHM of the order of few Å.

In order to investigate likely absorption features in a BL Lac environment, we ran photoionization equilibrium models (Nicastro et al. 1999, Nicastro et al. 2000) which include the strongest 300 emission and resonant absorption lines down to 50 eV (oscillator strength $`>0.1`$). We find that the predicted wavelengths and strengths of the absorption lines, both absolute and relative, are highly sensitive to the properties of the photoionizing continuum and the absorbing gas (e.g. the ionization state and the assumed outflowing velocity). The number of transitions in the model also has a strong effect. However assuming the observed EUV-to-X-ray continuum and adjusting the gas paramters to maximize the relative abundance of OVII ($`65\%`$) both an OVII K$`\alpha `$ absorption line (EW=0.25Å) and a FeIX L ($`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}=82.43`$ Å, EW=0.2Å) absorption line are expected respectively around 0.6 keV and 73 Å (assuming an outflow velocity of 0.15c). The equivalent width of the lines is too small to give significant detections, however, especially in the EUV regime, the presence of many fainter satellite lines (not included in the model) could explain the observed feature For example between the Si VI line ($`\lambda =72.34`$ Å) and the Mg VI complex ($`\lambda 71.3`$ Å), both included in the model, at least 15 additional lines from ionized Fe, Al, Be and Ne are not included (oscillator strength 0.01-0.1) and could be important especially if the elements are abundant.

Even though no strong absorption line seem to be visible in the X-ray spectrum, we note that both in the 1979 Einstein data (Madejski et al. 1991) and in the 1997 and 1998 Beppo-SAX spectrum (Guainazzi et al. 1999, Fossati et al. 2000) the fit improves when adding an absorption feature centered at $`0.55`$ keV.

In order to investigate any possible correlation between spectral changes and source flux, we plotted in Fig.11 the energy index as a function of total EUV flux for the the power law plus gaussian models. However the large error bars prevent any statististically significant conclusion.

## 4 Conclusions

From EUVE data, we have found a clear absorption feature at $`7175`$ Å in the spectrum of MRK 421. The absorption features detected in the EUV/X-ray spectra of BL Lac objects are often poorly determined statistically, as in the Beppo-SAX observations of PKS 2155-304 and MRK 421 (Giommi et al. 1998 and Guainazzi et al. 1999), but it is interesting to notice that different instruments on different satellites point to the same possible $`0.55`$ keV feature and to a (probably linked) absorption feature in the EUV spectra of the same objects.

We do not know if X-rays and EUV absorption features are present in all or many BL Lac objects, as initially suggested by Madejski et al. 1991, but to-date absorption features at $`0.50.6`$ keV have been found – or at least statistically improves the spectral fitting – in four of the brightest BL Lacs objects (PKS 2155-304, H1426$`+`$428, PKS 0548-322 and MRK 421) and EUV absorption features has been found in two of them (PKS 2155-304 and MRK 421). Future observations covering the EUV to X-ray energy bands with much higher resolution and collecting area, as with Chandra and XMM, will soon be able to answer this question and give more detailed observational data on which to develop new models.

We would like to thank Dr. Herman Marshall for providing the off-axis effective areas for the EUVE DS instrument, and Drs. I. Papadakis, A. Celotti, R. Sambruna, M. Elvis for the useful discussions. We are particularly grateful to F. Nicastro and G. Matt for making their models available to us. We thank the EUVE science team and in particular Dr. Roger Malina for their logistical support for our continuing analysis effort on EUVE data. This research has made extensive use of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service (HEASARC), provided by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, under contract with NASA and of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service. A.F. and I.C. are grateful to the Brera Observatory for the ospitality. This work was supported by AXAF Science Center NASA contract NAS 8-39073 and by NASA grants NAG 5-3174 and NAG 5-3191.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The subject of the enhancement of a discrete symmetry to a continuous one at large distances is important both theoretically and phenomenologically. Indeed, even if there are good grounds to expect that a certain material is well described by some model enjoying $`O(N)`$ symmetry, one may wonder what might be the effect of anisotropies. This question was addressed in 1977 by José et al  for the $`O(2)`$ nonlinear $`\sigma `$ model. Nonrigorous renormalization group arguments led them to the conclusion that in two dimensions ($`2D`$) the discrete symmetry $`Z_N`$ should be enhanced to full $`O(2)`$ invariance if $`N5`$ for $`\beta `$ (inverse temperature) not too large. For $`N`$ sufficiently large, the occurrence of this phenomenon was proven rigorously by Fröhlich and Spencer in 1981 , who showed that there exists a range of temperatures in which spin correlation functions decay algebraically and are $`O(2)`$ invariant. Fröhlich and Spencer proved also that a similar phenomenon of discrete abelian symetry enhancement occurs in $`4D`$ gauge theories.

For a long time, the consensus was that no symmetry enhancement should occur in nonabelian models. The main reason appears to have been the belief that for continous symmetries, these models exhibit asymptotic freedom (AF). The discrete models, known rigorously to undergo phase transitions at nonzero temperature, did not seem likely to be AF, hence had to be different. A proposal for nonabelian symmetry enhancement came however from Newman and Schulman . Their argument was based on the fact that if the discrete symmetry group is sufficiently large, any 4-th order polynomial invariant under the discrete group is also invariant under the continuous group in which it is contained. While this is an undisputable mathematical fact, the question was why 4-th order? Their heuristic answer was that the renormalization group flow was expected to be free of bifurcations as the dimension $`D`$ was varied between 2 and 4. So if one started just below $`D=4`$, where the most one could have is a $`\varphi ^4`$ interaction (higher powers being irrelevant), this symmetry enhancement should persist down to $`D=2`$. Since however in $`D=2`$ all polynomials in $`\varphi `$ are relevant and it is easy to write down such polynomials possessing only a discrete symmetry, and to construct the corresponding $`P(\varphi )_2`$ models, the validity of the argument of Newman and Schulman remains unclear.

A different heuristic argument in favor of symmetry enhancement for abelian as well as nonabelian groups was put forward by Patrascioiu in 1985 . For spin models, his argument went as follows: at sufficiently low temperatures, there exists a phase with long range order (l.r.o.) because, as Peierls showed long ago, given an ordered state, there is not enough free energy to create a domain in which the spin points elsewhere. Now consider a model like $`Z_5`$. As one increases the temperature, clearly the first abundant domains to form would be those in which the spin pointed in a direction immediately neighboring the one chosen by the boundary conditions (b.c.) for the ordered state. For temperatures not too high, the system could form domains inside domains of neighboring spin values. This would be different from the phase at high temperature, where no such restriction between adjacent domains would be required. This scenario does not seem to have anything it do with the model being abelian or not and Patrascioiu suggested that, since it was known to happen in abelian models, it must happen also in nonabelian cases.

Except for the papers quoted above, in the 80s, while it was quite fashionable to replace continous groups with discrete ones in Monte Carlo simulations, everybody seemed to be convinced that the discrete and continuous models belonged to different universality classes. Our interest in the subject was rekindled in 1990 when, together with Richard, we derived a rigorous inequality relating correlation functions in the dodecahedron model to those of $`Z_{10}`$ . Our result was that for any $`\beta `$ the dodecahedron model is more ordered than $`Z_{10}`$ at $`0.607^2\beta `$. Since it is was pretty well established that $`Z_{10}`$ possess an extended intermediate phase which is $`O(2)`$ invariant, our inequality implied that provided $`\beta _m(D)>\beta _c(Z_{10})`$ the dodecahedron must also possess an intermediate massless phase. Here $`\beta _m(D)`$ denotes the onset of the l.r.o. phase in the dodecahedron and $`\beta _c(Z_{10})`$ the onset of algebraic decay in $`Z_{10}`$. We determined numerically these values  and concluded that the dodecahedron seemed to possess an intermediate massless phase for $`2.15<\beta <2.8`$. We conjectured that this phase must enjoy full $`O(3)`$ invariance.

Intrigued by our findings for the dodecahedron, in the early 90s we looked numerically at the other regular polyhedra. While the cube is obviously equivalent to 3 uncoupled Ising models, hence not a good candidate for exhibiting $`O(3)`$ invariance, the other 3 regular polyhedra (platonic solids) a priori are. Actually in the scenario advocated by Patrascioiu in 1985 , the tetrahedron should not be able to simulate spin waves since its spin gradient can take only one nontrivial value (in fact it is nothing but the 4 state Potts model). The octahedron and the icosahedron could. Our numerics suggested that the octahedron had a first order transition. For the icosahedron the MC data suggested a second order transition from the high temperature phase to the low temperature phase exihibiting l.r.o.; in particular there did not seem to be an extended massless phase, as for the dodecahedron.

That the discrete icosahedral symmetry may be enhanced to $`O(3)`$ began to become manifest in 1998 when we began extensive numerical investigations of the contiuum limit of the spin 2-point function versus $`p/m`$  in the dodecahedron model. The original motivation of that study was to compare the lattice continuum limit with the form factor (FF) prediction of Balog and Niedermaier . Since it was not to be expected that the latter could possibly describe the continuum limit of the dodecahedron model, we decided to take data on this model too. To our surprise, the $`O(3)`$ data seemed to agree with both the FF prediction and with the dodecahedron. Since Balog and Niedermaier had produced a convincing argument  that the FF approach incorporates AF and we could not see how a discrete model, freezing at nonzero temperature, could possibly be AF, we decided to refine our data by concentrating on the region $`p/m<13`$. Our results  showed small but statistically significant deviations between $`O(3)`$ and FF, but excellent agreement between $`O(3)`$ and the dodecahedron.

The comparison of the FF and $`O(3)`$ could have been marred by lattice artefacts, a problem to which we will return below. This is why a different comparison was performed by Patrascioiu , who computed the renormalized spin 2-point function versus the physical distance $`x/\xi `$. The results were very similar with the ones we will report here about the icosahedron. They suggested that the dodecahedron and $`O(3)`$ models share the same continuum limit.

Another reason to investigate the discrete spin models arose in 1999, while in collaboration with Balog, Niedermaier, Niedermayer and Weisz we decided to compare the FF prediction for the renormalized coupling $`g_R`$ (to be defined below) with its lattice continuum limit value. Although our first results  suggested excellent agreement, as we continued to reduce the error bars and especially to take data at larger correlation length $`\xi 167`$, our original extrapolation to the continuum limit became dubious and in our second paper  we stated that we could no longer give a reliable number for the lattice continuum limit value of $`g_R`$. In the hope of gaining insight into this issue, we turned again to the discrete models. Corroborating our previous findings regarding $`G_r(p/m)`$ and $`G_r(x/\xi )`$, the data, to be shown later, suggested that $`g_R`$ also agreed in the dodecahedron, icosahedron and $`O(3)`$ models.

In the course of the debates of our collaboration F. Niedermayer raised the intriguing possibility that maybe indeed all these models do have the same continuum limit, which however is AF. The present paper is our reply to his suggestion. The results were communicated to him already in 1999, hence we were surprised by his recent paper with P. Hasenfratz . In their paper, Hasenfratz and Niedermayer claim that indeed they find strong numerical evidence that the dodecahedron and icosahedron models have the same continuum limit as $`O(3)`$, but state that, since “overwhelming evidence exists that the $`O(3)`$ model is AF”, the dodecahedron and icosahedron models must be AF too. The authors do not mention which ‘overwhelming evidence’ they have in mind, but omit the following facts, which in our opinion are relevant to this issue:

* The data for $`g_R`$ in $`O(3)`$ produced by Balog et al  at larger $`\xi `$ values do not support the $`1/\xi `$ fit for the lattice artefacts.
* The last report of Balog et al  retracted the original prediction $`g_R=6.77(2)`$ and stated that due to uncontrollable lattice artefacts, no continuum value could be given.
* In our recent paper , we combined mathematically rigorous arguments with some numerics to conclude that the $`O(3)`$ model must undergo a transition to a massless phase at finite $`\beta `$. We then proved rigorously that such a phase transition rules out the existence of AF in the massive continuum limit.

Being based on numerics, any of the above stated facts could be false, but if Hasenfratz and Niedermayer have evidence to that effect, they should put it forth so that it can be scrutinized.

In this paper we will compare the continuum limit of the $`O(3)`$ model to that of the icosahedron model by comparing the values of $`g_R`$ and of the renormalized spin 2-point function $`G_r(x/\xi )`$. The advantage of the icosahedron model is the existence of a rather well localisable critical point, whereas, as stated above, the dodecahedral model appears to have a soft intermediate phase. To address the issue of AF, we study the value of the Lüscher-Weisz-Wolff (LWW) coupling constant at the critical point. According to LWW, AF requires that the continuum limit of this observable vanishes at short distances. If in fact the icosahedron model has the same continuum limit as $`O(3)`$, then the LWW coupling constant should vanish at the critical point of the former model. We find excellent evidence that it does not. Thus our conclusion is that either, in spite of the excellent agreement observed for $`\xi 121`$, $`O(3)`$ and the icosahedron model have different continuum limits, or neither is AF.

The paper is organized as follows: we first describe the critical properties of the icosahedon model and in particular locate its critical point. This allows us to determine the value of the LWW running coupling at the critical point. Then we move on to the comparison of the icosahedron and the $`O(3)`$ models. We compare the renormalized coupling constant and the renormalized spin-spin correlation function of the two models and present convincing evidence that they converge to the same continuum limit.

## 2 Critical Behavior of Icosahedron Model

We first describe the critical properties of the icosahedron model: we locate the critical point and give some estimates of critical exponents. This allows us to determine the value of the Lüscher-Weisz-Wolff (LWW) coupling constant at the critical point, which is independent ot the size $`L`$ of the lattice, as required by scaling. This (nonzero) value is also the short distance limit of the continuum value of the LWW coupling constant.

The icosahedron model is defined by the standard nearest neighbor coupling between the spins

$$H=\underset{ij}{}s_is_j$$
(1)
where the spins $`s_i`$ are unit vectors forming the vertices of a regular icosahedron. In suitable coordinates, those 12 vertices are given by

$$e_k=(s\mathrm{cos}\frac{2\pi k}{10},s\mathrm{sin}\frac{2\pi k}{10},c\mathrm{cos}(\pi k))(k=1,2,\mathrm{}10);$$
(2)
where

$$s=\frac{2}{\sqrt{5}},c=\frac{1}{\sqrt{5}}$$
(3)
and

$$e_{11}=(0,0,1)\mathrm{and}e_{12}=(0,0,1)$$
(4)
The model has at least two phases, a high temperature phase with exponential clustering and full symmetry under the icosahedral group $`Y`$, and a low temperature phase with spontaneous magnetization and 12 coexisting phases, with the magnetization pointing into one of the 12 directions of the icosahedron. At intermediate temperatures there could be in principle a phase with partial breaking of $`Y`$, but there is no reasonable candidate for a possible unbroken subgroup. There is also the possibility of an extended intermediate phase with no symmetry breaking, but actual enhancement of the symmetry from $`Y`$ to $`O(3)`$ as well as only algebraic decay of correlations analogous to the $`Z_N`$ models and the dodecahedron model (see above).

In the icosahedron model the situation seems to be simpler, however: it seems to have a single critical point separating the high and low temperature phases, as we will demonstrate.

To determine the critical point we proceed as follows: we determine the mass gap $`m(L)=1/\xi (L)`$ in an (ideally infinite) strip of width $`L`$; in practice we use a finite strip of size $`L\times L_t`$ with $`L_t>>L`$ and measure the effective correlation length defined by

$$\xi (L)=\frac{1}{2\mathrm{sin}(\pi /L_t)}\sqrt{\chi /G_11}$$
(5)
where

$$\chi =\frac{1}{LL_t}\underset{i,j}{}s_is_j,$$
(6)
$$G_1=\frac{1}{LL_t}\underset{i,j}{}s_is_j\mathrm{exp}[2\pi (i_1j_1)/L_t].$$
(7)
We then study the behavior of the quantity

$$\overline{g}\frac{2L}{(N1)\xi (L)},$$
(8)
which we consider as a function $`\overline{g}(z,\xi )`$ of $`z=L/\xi (\mathrm{})`$ and the infinite volume correlation length $`\xi (\mathrm{})`$. The continuum limit of this quantity for fixed $`z`$ is the ‘running coupling constant’ introduced by Lüscher, Weisz and Wolff  for the $`O(N)`$ models. In the high temperature phase, where the model has a mass gap $`m(\mathrm{})=1/\xi (\mathrm{})`$ in the infinite volume limit, $`\overline{g}`$ will grow linearly with $`L`$. On the other hand in the low temperature magnetized phase, the mass gap in a finite volume goes to 0 faster than $`1/L`$, so $`\overline{g}`$ will decrease to $`0`$ as $`L\mathrm{}`$. At a critical point the model will be scale invariant for large distances and $`\overline{g}`$ should converge to a finite nonzero limit.

To determine $`\overline{g}`$ we took data on lattices of size $`L\times L_t`$ with $`L_t=10L`$; $`L`$ was varied from 10 to 320. Fig.1 (Table 1) shows clearly the dramatic change in behavior between $`\beta =1.800`$ and $`\beta =1.805`$. For $`\beta =1.802`$ $`\overline{g}`$ shows only some small variation for small $`L`$ ($`L<40`$) and stabilizes for larger $`L`$. So we estimate

$$\beta _{crt}=1.802(1)$$
(9)
where the error is of course somewhat subjective.

To corroborate this determination of the critical point, we also measured on the same lattices the renormalized coupling defined as

$$g_R=\left(\frac{5}{3}\frac{g_4}{g_2^2}\right)\frac{LL_t}{\xi ^2}.$$
(10)
Here $`g_2`$ is the magnetic susceptibility multiplied by the volume of the lattice $`L\times L_t`$, i.e.

$$g_2=\underset{i,j}{}s_is_j$$
(11)
and

$$g_4=\underset{i_1,i_2,i_3,i_4}{}(s_{i_1}s_{i_2})(s_{i_3}s_{i_4})$$
(12)
This quantity is also a Renormalization Group (RG) invariant and therefore should also go to a constant for $`\beta =\beta _{crt}`$. It is well known that in the high temperature phase $`g_R(L)`$ goes to a nontrivial constant for $`L\mathrm{}`$, (which as about 6.7, see below) whereas in the magnetized phase it goes to $`0`$, so one expects a qualitatively similar picture as for $`\overline{g}`$. The data presented in Table 1 and displayed in Fig.2 confirm this nicely and are consistent with the estimate of $`\beta _{crt}`$ given above.

Finally we want to see if our determination of $`\beta _{crt}`$ is consistent with a singularity in the thermodynamic values of the correlation length $`\xi `$ and the susceptibility $`\chi `$. We therefore measured $`\xi `$ and $`\chi `$ on lattices with $`L/\xi 7`$ for various values of $`\beta <1.802`$; our data are given in Tab.2 . There is a row listing the number of runs; a run consists of 100,000 cluster updates for thermalization followed by 20,000 sweeps of the lattice for measurements. Each run is started independently with a randomly chosen new configuration.

To describe the critical behavior of the data for $`\xi `$ and $`\chi `$ two types of fits were tried: firstly a Kosterlitz type fit with an exponential singularity

$$\xi =C_\xi \mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{a_\xi }{\sqrt{\beta _{crt}\beta }}\right),\chi =C_\chi \mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{a_\chi }{\sqrt{\beta _{crt}\beta }}\right),$$
(13)
and secondly a power law fit of the type

$$\xi =C_\xi (\beta _{crt}\beta )^\nu ,\chi =C_\chi (\beta _{crt}\beta )^\gamma $$
(14)
or similar ones in $`1/\beta `$. Both types of fit are not very good, with similar quite large values of $`\chi ^2`$ and they do not allow a very precise determination of the fit parameters. The reason seems to be the following: the asymptotic singular behavior seems to have significant subleading contributions, which however cannot be well determined with only 5 values of $`\beta `$. Trying to fit our very precise data with functions that do not describe the behavior with similar accuracy necessarily leads to a poor fit quality, even though visually the data may be very well described (see Fig.3).

The Kosterlitz type fit leads to predictions of $`\beta _{crt}1.93`$, which is unacceptably large – this value is deeply in the magnetized phase. The power law fits, on the other hand, give values of $`\beta _{crt}`$ quite close to our preferred value 1.802 . By playing with the number of parameters and fitting in $`1/\beta `$ as well as $`\beta `$ we obtain quite spread in the values of the exponents; they fall into the intervals

$$\nu =1.62.0\mathrm{and}\gamma =2.93.5$$
(15)
This is consistent with a value of

$$\eta =2\frac{\gamma }{\nu }.25$$
(16)
which is also favored by the data for spin-spin correlation function (see below).

In Fig.3 we use the best values produced by the power law fit in $`1/\beta `$ with no subleading corrections, namely

$$\nu =1.717,\gamma =3.002.$$
(17)
We plot $`\xi ^{1/\nu }`$ and $`\chi ^{1/\gamma }`$ vs $`\beta `$ together with the fits, which are straight lines intersecting the abscissa at $`\beta =1.802`$. So even though the thermodynamic data for $`\xi `$ and $`\chi `$ do not lead to a precise prediction of the critical point and the critical exponents, they are certainly consistent with our determination based on the LWW coupling constant.

We also investigated the possibility that the transition from the high temperature phase to the one with long range order is first order, but we did not find any signal for phase coexistence.

## 3 The renormalized coupling in the icosahedron and $`O(3)`$ models

To check whether the icosahedron and the $`O(3)`$ model define the same continuum limit, we also determined the renormalized coupling constant $`g_R`$ on thermodynamic lattices. For this purpose we took data on square lattices with $`z=L/\xi 7`$. To correct for the small finite size effects still present, we determined a finite size scaling curve by taking data at various values of $`z=L/\xi `$ at $`\beta =1.550`$ corresponding to $`\xi 19.7`$. The finite size effects are fitted with the function

$$g_R(z)=g_R(\mathrm{})(1d\sqrt{z}\mathrm{exp}(z).$$
(18)
This behavior is inspired by the spherical model and was successfully used already in . In Fig.4 we show the data at $`\beta =1.55`$ together with the fit, which has a $`\chi ^2`$ per d.o.f. of 1.1 ; the constant $`d`$ is determined to be

$$d=4.63\pm .15$$
(19)
The results of this fit are then used to extrapolate our data taken with $`z7`$ to the thermodynamic values. In Tab.2 we present our data together with the extrapolation.

Finally we compare our data for $`g_R`$ in the icosahedron model with those we had obtained earlier for the $`O(3)`$ model  and again presented in Tab.2. Fig. 5 shows the thermodynamically extrapolated data for the two models for various values of $`\xi `$. Even though the lattice artefacts are quite different for the two models, and in spite of the fact that we are not quite sure how one should extrapolate to the continuum limit, the data show that the two models approach each other with increasing $`\xi `$ (decreasing lattice spacing) and suggest that they will have the same continuum limit.

## 4 Spin correlation function in the icosahedron and $`O(3)`$ models

In this section we compare the renormalized spin-spin correlation functions of the icosahedron and the $`O(3)`$ models. They are defined as

$$G(i/\xi )\frac{\xi ^2}{\chi }s(0)s(i)$$
(20)
The physical distance is

$$x=\frac{i}{\xi }$$
(21)
We measured the two-point functions in the icosoahedron model at $`\beta =1.47`$, 1.55, 1.61, 1.665 and 1.707 corresponding to $`\xi `$ 11, 20, 34, 64, 122 (see Tab.2). For the $`O(3)`$ model we used the data from ref. at $`\beta =1.8`$, 1.9, 1.95 corresponding to $`\xi 65`$, 122 and 168. In Fig.6 we show $`G(x)x^{1/4}`$ for the $`O(3)`$ model together with the 2-loop PT prediction

$$G(x)=\frac{1.000034657}{3\pi ^31.001687^2}\left[t+\mathrm{ln}t+1.1159+\frac{1}{t}\mathrm{ln}t+\frac{.1159}{t}\right]$$
(22)
where $`t=\mathrm{ln}(x/8)1`$. It can be seen that the data approach their continuum limit from above and deviate considerably from the PT prediction. For $`x>0.4`$, barring some very slow convergence to the continuum limit, our data suggest that the lattice artefacts are quite small for the large correlation lengths we are using.

In Fig.7 we present $`G(x)x^{1/4}`$ for the icosahedron model together with the same expression for $`O(3)`$ at approximately the largest value of $`\xi 122`$. The lattice artefacts have the opposite sign at least for the lattices with $`\xi <122`$, i.e. the data are increasing with decreasing lattice spacing. At $`\xi 122`$ they are already quite close to the corresponding correlation function in the $`O(3)`$ model. It is therefore reasonable to expect that if we could further refine the lattice we would see that the data follow the behavior of the $`O(3)`$ model, i.e. the lattice artefacts would change sign and the final approach to the continuum limit would be from above.

It should be stressed that already at $`\xi 122`$ the icosahedron and $`O(3)`$ data are much closer to each other than the $`O(3)`$ data are to the PT prediction.

## 5 Conclusion: Universality between the icosahedron and $`O(3)`$ models and asymptotic freedom

We have accumulated strong evidence that the continuum limits of the discrete icosahedron model and the continuous classical Heisenberg ($`O(3)`$) model describe the same quantum field theory.

As discussed in the introduction, this is one more fact which puts the asymptotic freedom of the $`O(3)`$ model severely into doubt. The point of view advocated by Hasenfratz and Niedermayer , namely that the continuum limit of the discrete icosahedron model should be asymptotically free is untenable in view of our results about the LWW running coupling $`\overline{g}`$: our data (see Fig.1) indicate that $`\overline{g}(L)`$ runs to a fixed point value $`g^{}.59`$ at small distances. Actually to determine the true running coupling, one should take first the continuum limit at fixed $`z=L/\xi `$ and then the limit $`z0`$. Since this is not feasible, we instead studied the finite size scaling at and around the critical point and took as our estimate of $`g^{}`$ the apparent limit

$$\underset{L\mathrm{}}{lim}m(L)L$$
(23)
at the critical point. Somebody might wonder if it is not possible that the continuum limit shows asymptotic freedom after all; in other words, if it is possible that

$$\underset{z0}{lim}\underset{\xi \mathrm{}}{lim}\overline{g}(z,\xi )=0\mathrm{?}$$
(24)
Our data make this extremely unlikely: for fixed $`\beta <\beta _{crt}1.802`$ $`\overline{g}`$ is increasing with $`L`$ (except for very small lattices) and it is always larger than .59, even at $`\beta =1.802`$, our estimated critical point. To claim that in the continuum limit $`\overline{g}(z,\mathrm{})`$ would go to 0 one would have to assume some truly bizarre $`L`$ dependence at fixed $`\beta `$. This is illustrated in our Fig.8 which shows some of our data for $`\overline{g}`$ as a function of $`z=L/\xi (\mathrm{})`$. We used data at $`\beta =1.665`$ and 1.707, where we know the correlation length $`\xi (\mathrm{})`$ quite well, together with the data taken slightly below the estimated critical point, wehre we used the fit appearing in Fig.3 to estimate $`\xi (\mathrm{})`$. The solid curve is a fit of the form

$$\overline{g}(z)=g^{}+az^{1/2}+bz$$
(25)
Since we did not make any effort to control the lattice artefacts and estimate the precise continuum values, this figure should be taken with some caution. It does, however, illustrate nicely the qualitative behavior of the LWW running coupling near the critical point.

To sum up: the universality observed between the icosahedron and the $`O(3)`$ model gives strong evidence against asymptotic freedom of the latter.

Tab.1:
The LWW running coupling $`\overline{g}`$ and the renormalized coupling $`g_R`$ as a function of $`L`$ for various values of $`\beta `$

$`\beta =1.665`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40    $`\overline{g}`$ .9121(14) 1.0651(11) 1.3033(21)  $`g_R`$ 2.216(13) 2.501(12) 3.080(29)

$`\beta =1.707`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40 80    $`\overline{g}`$ .8156(9) .9312(12) 1.0882(23) 1.3276(35)  $`g_R`$ 1.898(6) 2.213(11) 2.593(23) 3.171(36)

$`\beta =1.75`$:
$`L`$ 10 20    $`\overline{g}`$ .7221(24) .7902(21)  $`g_R`$ 1.695(14) 1.841(24)

$`\beta =1.80`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40 80 160    $`\overline{g}`$ .6083(16) .5989(17) .6018(21) .6158(17) .6337(22)  $`g_R`$ 1.363(9) 1.329(9) 1.357(14) 1.395(9) 1.459(13)

$`\beta =1.802`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40 80 160 320    $`\overline{g}`$ .6015(10) .5951(14) .5919(26) .5938(24) .5955(14) .6000(32)  $`g_R`$ 1.340(4) 1.3330(6) 1.328(5) 1.348(11) 1.360(7) 1.358(14)

$`\beta =1.803`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40 80 160    $`\overline{g}`$ .5979(16) .5912(18) .5823(14) .5807(25) .5772(17)  $`g_R`$ 1.335(10) 1.327(10) 1.307(9) 1.306(14) 1.302(10)

$`\beta =1.805`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40 80 160    $`\overline{g}`$ .5918(13) .5821(17) .5721(19) .5583(8) .5341(19)  $`g_R`$ 1.308(7) 1.298(8) 1.274(10) 1.242(4) 1.173(11)

$`\beta =1.82`$:
$`L`$ 10 20 40 80    $`\overline{g}`$ .5566(8) .5196(8) .4578(28) .3533(42)  $`g_R`$ 1.213(4) 1.119(4) .964(10) .652(8)

Tab.2:
Correlation length $`\xi `$, susceptibility $`\chi `$ and renormalized coupling $`g_R`$ in the high temperature phase of the icosahedron model
$`\beta `$ 1.470 1.550 1.610 1.665 1.707  $`Ł`$ 80 140 250 500 910  $`\xi `$ 11.203(5) 19.627(12) 33.655(21) 63.628(33) 122.09(16)  $`\chi `$ 181.88(10) 479.43(36) 1228.04(91) 3774.5(2.1) 12009(17)  $`g_R(L)`$ 6.404(28) 6.487(35) 6.546(39) 6.684(36) 6.715(88)  $`g_R(\mathrm{})`$ 6.467(28) 6.552(35) 6.595(39) 6.718(36) 6.765(88)  \# runs 200 100 100 149 28

Tab.3:
Correlation length $`\xi `$ and renormalized coupling $`g_R`$ in the high temperature phase of the $`(O3)`$ model (from
$`\beta `$ 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.95  $`L`$ 80 140 250 500 910 1230  $`\xi `$ 11.030(7) 18.950(14) 34.500(15) 64.790(26) 122.330(74) 167.71(17)  $`g_R(L)`$ 6.553(16) 6.612(15) 6.665(14) 6.691(15) 6.737(21) 6.792(40)  $`g_R(\mathrm{})`$ 6.616(16) 6.668(15) 6.730(14) 6.733(15) 6.792(21) 6.853(40)  \# runs 344 370 367 382 127 68