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# CO band emission from MWC 349

## 1 Introduction

After the discovery of CO band head emission in the BN object by Scoville et al. (scoville (1979)) a large number of further detections in other young stellar objects (YSO) followed (see e.g. Geballe & Persson geballe (1987); Carr carr (1989); Chandler et al. chandler (1993); Greene & Lada green (1996); Najita et al. najita (1996)).

Several scenarios were discussed to explain the origin of the hot (2500–5000 K) and dense ($`n>10^{11}`$ cm-3) CO component (for some examples see Calvet et al. calvet (1991); Martin martin (1997)), but the most likely location is a neutral disk or wind (Carr carr (1989); Chandler, Carlstrom, & Scoville chandler95 (1995)). The disk model is especially supported by high resolution spectroscopic observations of the CO $`20`$ band head. The shape of this band head shows for several YSO the kinematic signature of Keplerian rotation (Carr et al. carr93 (1993); Carr carr95 (1995); Najita et al. najita (1996)) and is a powerful tracer for the existence of a circumstellar disk around young stellar objects.

Also the peculiar B\[e\]-star MWC 349 shows the first overtone CO bands in emission. These bands were observed first by Geballe & Persson (geballe (1987)) with a velocity resolution of about 460 km/s.

MWC 349 is a binary system consisting of the main component MWC 349A, classified as a B\[e\]-star, and the B0 III star companion, MWC 349B, localized $`2\mathrm{}`$ west of MWC 349A. We are only interested in the main component, in the following refered to as MWC 349. Its evolutionary state is still unclear. It shows some characteristics of a pre-main sequence B\[e\]-type star as well as characteristics of a B\[e\] supergiant (e.g. Lamers et al. lamers (1998)).

Cohen et al. (cohen (1985)) determined its distance (1.2 kpc), bolometric luminosity ($`310^4`$ L) and the visual extinction towards it ($`A_\mathrm{V}^{\mathrm{ISM}}10`$ mag of which 2 mag might be circumstellar).

The existence of a bulge of circumstellar dust around MWC 349 has been known since long ago (e.g. Geisel geisel (1970)). The proposition that MWC 349 also has a disk was supported by observations of double-peaked emission lines (Hamann & Simon hamann (1986), hamann88 (1988)) and by IR speckle interferometry (Leinert leinert (1986); Mariotti et al. mariotti (1983)) which revealed a disk-like structure of the dust emission in the east-west direction, seen nearly edge on. An accumulation of neutral gas and dust in the equatorial plane of the star is also expected to be responsible for the bipolar structure of the optically thick wind zone seen in the VLA-map of White & Becker (white (1985)). The mass loss rate found for a 50 km/s wind velocity is $`1.210^5`$ Myr-1 (Cohen et al. cohen (1985)).

Another indicator for the circumstellar disk are the strong hydrogen recombination maser lines in the mm and submm range which also show the characteristic double-peaked profiles (e.g. Martín-Pintado et al. martin-pintado (1989)). Recombination lines at different wavelengths sample different regions. With decreasing quantum number $`n`$, i.e. increasing frequency, one sees ionized gas closer to the star. The fact that the rotational velocity of recombination lines with decreasing $`n`$ displays a systematical increase led to the assumption that the double-peaked maser emission comes from the ionized atmosphere of a Keplerian rotating disk around a 25–30 M star (Thum, Martín-Pintado & Bachiller thum (1992); Thum et al. thum94 (1994)) whose free-free and free-bound emission was modelled by Kraus et al. (kraus (2000)). In addition, Rodríguez & Bastian (rodriguez (1994)) determined the inclination angle of the disk towards the line of sight to $`15^{}\pm 5^{}`$.

In this paper, we present new low resolution observations of the total first overtone CO band emission as well as high resolution observations of the $`20`$ and $`31`$ band heads. We discuss the probable location of the hot CO gas by modeling the emission for several scenarios.

## 2 Observations

In 1997 we observed MWC 349 with the UKIRT telescope in the NIR range ($`1.852.5\mu `$m) with a spectral resolution of $`330`$ km/s (Fig. 1a). The spectrum contains several prominent hydrogen and helium recombination lines as well as the first overtone CO bands, all of them in emission.

In two sessions in 1998 we reobserved MWC 349 in the spectral range 2.285–2.341 $`\mu `$m with higher spectral resolution (10–15 km/s). The observations consist of four seperate subspectra with a small overlap at their edges. They are slightly offset relative to each other and at their low wavelength end, the fluxes are systematically overestimated. We calibrated the subspectra by smoothing them to the resolution of the spectrum in Fig. 1c, then scaled each spectrum with a factor near $`1`$ and combined them to the final plot of Figure 2.

Unfortunately, the $`31`$ band head falls into the overlap region of two subspectra, so its strength is rather uncertain (marked by the dashed line within the figure). This fact turned out during the modeling to be a disadvantage.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Hydrogen recombination lines – the Pfund series

As can be seen in Figs. 1c and 2, the spectrum of MWC 349 in the wavelength range from 2.25 to 2.5 $`\mu `$m contains beside the first overtone CO bands also the Pfund series (transitions of the form $`nn^{}=5`$, denoted as Pf($`n`$) ) of the hydrogen atom. Hamann & Simon (hamann (1986)) already identified some of them in their velocity-resolved infrared spectroscopy of MWC 349, but their resolution of $``$20 km/s was lower than ours, so they could only resolve lines up to Pf(34). Their FWHM values of several unsmeared lines were about 100 km/s and agree with ours.

Many of the other emission lines they observed are double-peaked which is a hint for a rotating medium. At first glance we cannot exclude the Pfund lines to take part of the rotation because they are superimposed on the CO bands, but their profile looks more than a gaussian than a double-peaked one. A gaussian velocity component of about 50 km/s, however, is not a surprising feature for MWC 349. Also the cm and mid IR hydrogen recombination lines as well as the ’pedestal‘ feature of the double-peaked mm recombination maser lines show such a velocity component (Smith et al. smith (1997); Thum, Martín-Pintado & Bachiller thum (1992)). It is often ascribed to the wind of MWC 349.

To model the hydrogen emission, we assume the Pfund lines to be optically thin. Their intensity is given by

$$I_\nu =N_nA_{n,5}h\nu \mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{H}(\nu ).$$
(1)
To evaluate it, we need the number density $`N_n`$ of the atoms in level $`n`$, the Einstein coefficients, $`A_{n,5}`$, and the profile function of the hydrogen gas, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{H}(\nu )`$.

In view of the measured line widths, we choose a gaussian profile function defined as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_\mathrm{H}(\nu )=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi }\frac{\nu _0}{c}v}\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(\frac{\nu \nu _0}{\frac{\nu _0}{c}v}\right)^2\right]$$
(2)
$`v`$ is the most probable velocity which is in the case of the thermal velocity given by $`v=\sqrt{2kT/m}`$ for particles having a Maxwellian velocity distribution. In our case, $`v`$ 50 km/s. We also take into account the local standard of rest velocity of $``$ 8 km/s (Thum, Martín-Pintado & Bachiller thum (1992); Thum et al. thum95 (1995)).

The Einstein coefficients, $`A_{nn^{}}`$, can be calculated, following Menzel & Pekeris (menzel (1935)). If we restrict ourselves to Pfund lines with $`n18`$ (see Fig. 1c), they can be approximated by

$$A_{n,5}3.02310^9n^{5.005}.$$
(3)
The number density, $`N_n`$, of the level $`n`$ follows from Saha’s equation

$$N_n=b_nN_\mathrm{i}N_\mathrm{e}g_n\frac{h^3}{2(2\pi m_\mathrm{e}kT_\mathrm{e})^{3/2}}\mathrm{e}^{\frac{hRy}{n^2kT_\mathrm{e}}}$$
(4)
where $`N_\mathrm{i}`$ and $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ are the number densities of the protons and electrons, $`T_\mathrm{e}`$ and $`m_\mathrm{e}`$ are the electron temperature and electron mass, $`g_n=2n^2`$ is the statistical weight of the state $`n`$, and $`Ry`$ is the Rydberg constant. The $`b_n`$-factors which describe the deviation from LTE and which depend on the electron temperature and density were taken from the electronic Tables of Storey & Hummer (storey (1995)) for Menzel’s case B recombination theory.

Detailed modeling of the Pfund line spectrum performed by Kraus (kraus00 (2000)) showed that the emission arises within the innermost parts of the ionized wind where the electron densities are highest. Within these regions it is expected that $`N_\mathrm{e}10^9`$ cm-3. Electron densities as high as $`10^8`$ cm-3 have already been found by Strelnitski et al. (strelnitski96 (1996)) and Thum et al. (thum98 (1998)). For such high electron densities the emission is clearly in LTE, i.e. the $`b_n`$-factors are $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}`$. Therefore, non LTE effects are negligible.

In our case of optically thin Pfund lines in LTE and with a constant electron temperature the intensity ratios of two neighbouring Pfund lines is according to Eq. (1) independent of the electron density

$$\frac{I_{\mathrm{Pf}(n+1)}}{I_{\mathrm{Pf}(n)}}\left(\frac{n}{n+1}\right)^{5.005}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{hRy}{kT_\mathrm{e}}\frac{2n+1}{(n^2+n)^2}\right).$$
(5)
and always smaller than 1, which means that the intensity of the Pfund lines decreases with increasing quantum number. This behaviour can qualitatively be seen in Fig. 3 where we plotted the synthetic Pfund lines which we smoothed to the spectral resolution of 10–15 km/s (solid line) and 330 km/s (dashed line), respectively. The wavelength difference between the neighbouring Pfund lines decreases with increasing $`n`$ leading to a blend of the individual lines. The onset of this blend depends on the width of the lines and on the spectral resolution and leads to a hydrogen ’continuum‘.

The interstellar visual extinction towards MWC 349 is about $`A_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{ISM}}10`$ mag and has to be taken into account. Fitting the Pfund lines with the parameters displayed in Table 2 leads to the quantity $`N_\mathrm{e}^2𝑑V`$, where $`V`$ is the volume of the emitting region.

The middle panel of Figure 4 contains the modelled Pfund series added to the continuum emission of MWC 349 (dashed line) taken from Kraus et al. (kraus (2000)). These two components were subtracted from the observations (upper panel) and the resulting spectrum (lower panel) can mainly be ascribed to the CO first overtone band emission. To fit this observed CO spectrum is the aim of the following sections.

### 3.2 Theory of the CO bands

The energy of a diatomic molecule in rotational level $`J`$ and vibrational level $`v`$ can be expanded in the following way (Dunham 1932a , 1932b )

$$E(v,J)=hc\underset{k,l}{}Y_{k,l}\left(v+\frac{1}{2}\right)^k(J^2+J)^l.$$
(6)
The parameters $`Y_{k,l}`$ are for the CO molecule taken from Farrenq et al. (farrenq (1991)). The first overtone bands result from coupled vib-rot transitions in the ground electronic state and obey the selection rules $`\mathrm{\Delta }v=2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }J=\pm 1`$.

In the following, we assume the CO gas to be in LTE. Then, the levels are populated following a Boltzmann distribution,

$$N_{vJ}=\frac{N}{Z}(2J+1)e^{\frac{E(v,J)}{kT}}$$
(7)
where $`N`$ and $`T`$ are the total number density and temperature of CO molecules and $`Z`$ is the total partition function, given as the product of the vibrational and the rotational partition function

$$Z=Z_vZ_J=\underset{v}{}e^{\frac{E_v}{kT}}\underset{J}{}(2J+1)e^{\frac{E_J}{kT}}.$$
(8)
To account for optical depth effects, we calculate the line intensities from the transfer equation

$$I_\nu =B_\nu (T)(1e^{\tau _\nu }).$$
(9)
The optical depth is $`\tau _\nu =\kappa _\nu 𝑑s`$ with the absorption coefficient per cm

$$\kappa _\nu =\frac{c^2N_{vJ}A_{vJ;v^{}J^{}}}{8\pi \nu ^2}\left(\frac{2j+1}{2j^{}+1}\frac{N_{v^{}J^{}}}{N_{vJ}}1\right)\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{CO}}(\nu )$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{CO}}(\nu )`$ is the profile function of the CO gas. The Einstein coefficients, $`A_{vJ;v^{}J^{}}`$, are from Chandra, Maheshwari & Sharma (chandra (1996)).

Let $`\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}`$ denote the onset of the ($`20`$) bandhead. We define it to be the wavelength where the intensity of the $`(2,51)(0,50)`$ line (see Fig. 5) has dropped by a factor $`x5`$ from its maximum at $`\lambda _0`$; the exact number is not important. We determine $`\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}`$ from Figure 6 to $`(2.29285\pm 0.00005)\mu `$m.

The value of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}`$ depends of course on the various mechanisms of line broadening. Most processes lead to a gaussian or nearly gaussian profile, like thermal (turbulent) motion of mean velocity $`v_{\mathrm{th}}`$ ($`v_{\mathrm{turb}}`$), detector resolution $`v_{\mathrm{res}}`$, spherical wind $`v_{\mathrm{wind}}`$ (see e.g. Hamann & Simon hamann (1986)). Their superposition results again in a gaussian line of width $`v_{\mathrm{gauss}}=\sqrt{v_{\mathrm{th}}^2+v_{\mathrm{turb}}^2+v_{\mathrm{wind}}^2+v_{\mathrm{res}}^2}`$.

Disk rotation, on the other hand, produces a double-peaked profile. In a gas ring rotating at velocity $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ a line with laboratory frequency $`\nu _0`$ is shifted up to a maximum frequency $`\nu _0(1+v_{\mathrm{rot}}/c)`$. In a mixture of disk rotation and gaussian broadening one finds the following expression for the minimum wavelength,

$$\frac{1}{\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}}=\frac{1}{\lambda _0}\left[1+\frac{v_{\mathrm{lsr}}+v_{\mathrm{rot}}}{c}\right]\left[\frac{v_{\mathrm{gauss}}}{c}\sqrt{\mathrm{ln}x}+1\right],$$
(11)
where $`v_{\mathrm{lsr}}=8`$ km/s is the velocity shift of MWC 349 with respect to the local standard of rest. This relation only holds if the emission in the rise of the spectrum is optically thin. The thermal velocity $`v_{\mathrm{th}}`$ of CO molecules at 3500 K is less than $``$ 1 km/s and negligible in comparison with the spectral resolution $`v_{\mathrm{res}}=10\mathrm{}15`$ km/s. The same can be said about the turbulent velocity which is not likely to exceed the speed of sound.

Eq. (11) can now be used to relate $`v_{\mathrm{wind}}`$ to the rotational velocity $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}`$. The result is shown in Figure 7. The dashed lines above and below the solid line are for the lower and upper limit of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}`$. If the CO gas performs no rotation, the gas must emanate from the disk in a wind with about $``$50 km/s, the same velocity as for the Pfund lines. Without a wind, one derives a rotational velocity of $`58\pm 7`$ km/s. This value is larger than other rotational velocities around MWC 349 observed up to now, the highest being 42.5 km/s for He i (Hamann & Simon hamann (1986)).

## 4 Modeling the CO band emission

### 4.1 A gaussian line profile for the CO gas

First, we neglect rotation and assume a pure gaussian line profile. The velocity of the CO gas is taken from Figure 7 as $`v_{\mathrm{gauss}}50`$ km/s.

For the calculation of the optical depth we assume the absorption coefficient to be constant along the line of sight. Then $`\tau _\nu `$ is simply given as the product of the absorption coefficient per CO molecule, $`\kappa _\nu `$, times the CO column density, $`\tau _\nu =\kappa _\nu N_{\mathrm{CO}}`$.

In Fig. 8 we plotted $`\kappa _\nu `$ for temperatures between 3000 K and 5000 K, and a gaussian velocity of the gas of 50 km/s. In the wavelength range around the $`31`$ band head (2.322–2.325 $`\mu `$m) the absorption coefficient is higher than in the region around the $`20`$ band head (2.293–2.295 $`\mu `$m). This effect becomes stronger with increasing temperature. Thus, the turnover from optically thin to optically thick emission depends not only on the column density but also on the temperature: the $`31`$ band head becomes optically thick at lower temperature and lower column density than the $`20`$ band head.

Next, we vary the CO column density and fix $`T_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ at 4000 K. The synthetic spectra in Figure 9 are calculated for the case of extreme optical depth (upper line) and for CO column densities (from top to bottom) of $`210^{21},10^{21},510^{20}`$, and $`10^{20}`$ cm-2. With increasing column density the optical depth enlarges and the intensity tends towards its limiting blackbody value. In addition, the spectra show two characteristic features: a varying intensity ratio of the two band heads and a broadening of the band head structure.

The first property can better be seen in Figure 10 where we plotted the flux density ratio of the $`31`$ and $`20`$ band head with temperature for different column densities. This ratio decreases with increasing column density, i.e. increasing $`\tau `$, and approaches 0.96 for $`\tau \mathrm{}`$.

The determination of the column density with only the help of this ratio is, however, not definite because the flux density ratio also depends on temperature. From our observations we get no information at all on the column density in this way because the observed strength of the $`31`$ band head is subject to some uncertainty as discussed in Section 2.

The second characteristic feature is the broadening of the band head structure with increasing column density, especially at the long wavelength side. In Figure 11 the observed $`20`$ band head region (histogram) is overlaid on the theoretical spectra with column densities of $`210^{21}`$ (dashed line), $`510^{20}`$ (solid line), and $`10^{20}`$ cm-2 (optically thin case, dotted line).

At first glance, it seems that the observations might also be fitted by optically thin emission, but the upper panel of Figure 12 which includes a somewhat larger wavelength interval is clearly inconsistent with the optically thin case whereas the observations can be reconciled with a synthetic spectrum of column density $`N_{\mathrm{CO}}510^{20}`$ cm-2 (lower panel of Figure 12). An additional disagreement is that the flux density ratio of the bandheads is highest for the optical thin case which can not be confirmed by the observations.

So we take $`N_{\mathrm{CO}}=510^{20}`$ cm-2 as the best fit CO column density. The synthetic spectra of the $`20`$ band head look very similar for temperatures in the range of $`30005000`$ K. For a more sensitive limitation of the temperature range we must take a look at the $`31`$ band head. From there we conclude that $`T_{\mathrm{CO}}=`$ 3500–4000 K. Unfortunately, an exact determination of the CO temperature fails because the higher bandheads are not available within our high resolution spectrum.

With the derived values for column density and temperature we model the synthetic CO band spectrum taking into account the foreground extinction, $`A_\mathrm{v}^{\mathrm{ISM}}`$, and fitted it to the observations (Figure 13; Table 3 summarizes the parameters used). The lower panel of Fig. 13 shows the residue of observed minus calculated spectrum. Some remaining features may result from observational uncertainties (indicated as dashed parts), for example the dip around 2.3225 $`\mu `$m and the region around 2.314 $`\mu `$m, whereas the features at 2.3253 and 2.3084 $`\mu `$m seem to be yet unidentified emission lines.

For a distance to MWC 349 of 1.2 kpc we find a CO emission area projected on the sky of $`A_{\mathrm{CO}}1.3610^{26}`$ cm2 and a mass of $`M_{\mathrm{CO}}3.210^{24}`$ g. Our $`A_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ is about 5 times larger than the value of $`2.510^{25}`$ cm2 found by Geballe & Persson (geballe (1987)) who could only derive a lower limit.

### 4.2 CO bands from a Keplerian rotating disk

We investigate whether the CO bands in MWC 349 can alternatively be explained by emission from the circumstellar disk. For demonstration, we first calculate the optically thin emission from an infinitesimally narrow ring. For Kepler rotation, the orbital velocity is

$$v_{\mathrm{rot}}=\sqrt{GM_{}/r}.$$
(12)
and the line of sight velocity, $`v_{\mathrm{los}}`$, of a gas element in the ring

$$v_{\mathrm{los}}=v_{\mathrm{rot}}\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cos}i.$$
(13)
Here $`G`$ denotes the gravitational constant, $`r`$ the ring radius, $`M_{}`$ the stellar mass, $`i`$ the inclination angle of the ring, and $`\theta `$ the azimuthal angle. The resulting profile of the CO band head smoothed to the observational resolution of 15 km/s shows a characteristic shoulder at short and a maximum at long wavelengths relative to an unbroadened band head (see Fig. 14). The distance between shoulder and maximum decreases with decreasing orbital velocity. The CO profile of a rotating ring is evidently very different from what is observed in MWC 349.

We next calculate the emission from a whole disk viewed nearly edge-on, using the radiative transfer of Eq. (9). We assume power laws for the temperature and surface density,

$$T(r)=T_0\left(\frac{r}{r_i}\right)^p=T_0\left(\frac{v}{v_i}\right)^{2p}$$
(14)
and

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(r)=\mathrm{\Sigma }_0\left(\frac{r}{r_i}\right)^q=\mathrm{\Sigma }_0\left(\frac{v}{v_i}\right)^{2q}.$$
(15)
$`r_i`$ is the inner radius of the Kepler disk where the rotational velocity has its maximum value $`v_i`$. We fix the inner radius by putting $`v_i=60`$ km/s (see Figure 7). Further, we assume $`T_0=5000`$ K, which is the dissociation limit of CO molecules, and an inclination angle of $`10\mathrm{°}`$. The radius $`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$, out to which the CO (2$``$1) band is thermally excited, is a free parameter; the velocity there equals $`v_{\mathrm{out}}`$. For these disk calculations we surmize that the CO bands at 2 micron are for radii greater than $`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$ only subthermally excited due to lower densities. Therefore their contribution to the overall spectrum is probably small. The CO disk is geometrically flat so that along each line of sight through the inclined disk the density and temperature are constant. The total flux from the disk is obtained from a straight forward numerical integration.

By a systematic variation of the free parameters ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }_0,v_{\mathrm{out}},p,q`$), we find that the shape of the spectrum is strongly influenced by the column density at the inner edge and by the size of the disk, whereas the exponents $`p`$ and $`q`$ play a minor role; we therefore fix them following Hayashi (hayashi (1981)) to $`p=0.5`$ and $`q=1.5`$. Similar numbers are derived for the dust disk (Kraus et al. kraus (2000)).

The disk models then contain only two free parameters: the outer radius, $`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$, and the column density at the inner edge, $`N_0`$. To explain the observed band head profile with a rotating disk, one needs a large spread in the rotational velocity because otherwise one cannot surpress the shoulders seen in Fig. 14. The large velocity spread implies a large emitting area, and therefore a low column density, so that the emission becomes very optically thin ($`\tau 10^4`$), even at the inner edge of the CO disk. The outer velocity $`v_{\mathrm{out}}`$ must lie in the range between 30 and 40 km/s. If $`v_{\mathrm{out}}`$ were higher, the shoulder of the band head would become too broad, if it were smaller, the profile would get too narrow. Our best models of a rotating disk are presented in Fig. 15. Considering the quality of the data, they are marginally acceptable.

We add that if one assumes dust and gas to be thermally decoupled, it is in these models nevertheless possible that the strength of the CO band head amounts to $`f5`$ % of the continuum, as observed, although the CO emission is very optically thin. As the dust emits like a blackbody, the equation $`fB_\nu (T_d)=\tau _\nu B_\nu (T_{\mathrm{CO}})`$ is approximately fulfilled for $`T_d1000`$ K, $`T_{\mathrm{CO}}4000`$ K and $`\tau 10^4`$.

## 5 Discussion

Mathematically, there is also the possibility to combine the wind model of Fig. 11 (solid line), which is based on a gaussian profile of $`50`$ km/s half width, with a Kepler rotation as long as $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}40`$ km/s. This is shown in Figure 16, where a rotational component with $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}=40`$ km/s (black curve) is added to the gaussian velocity profile. Otherwise the basic parameters are the same as for the wind (LTE; CO column density $`510^{20}`$ cm-2; $`T_{\mathrm{CO}}=3500\mathrm{}4000`$ K).

Although the fit is again very good, this scenario meets the following difficulties: If the rotational velocity $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}40`$ km/s, the stellar mass of 26 M implies a distance greater than 14 AU. If the CO gas is coupled to the dust, it should have the same temperature of $`950`$ K as the dust grains at that distance (Kraus et al. kraus (2000)), which is much too low. If CO is located above the disk and thermally decoupled from the dust, it might achieve the required temperature of $`3500`$ K by radiative heating. But the CO column density of $`510^{20}`$ cm-2 then implies a gas surface density which is at least an order of magnitude greater than what follows from the dust disk (adopting standard conversion factors $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{dust}}:\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{H}10^2`$, $`N_{\mathrm{CO}}:N_\mathrm{H}10^4`$).

The scenario of a pure wind is very vague in its details, but gives a remarkably good fit. We might think of dense molecular blobs emanating from the disk. The total emission area of the blobs is $`0.6`$ AU2.

But there is still another alternative with $`N_{\mathrm{CO}}510^{20}`$ cm-2, which we discuss now. If the CO band emission arises in the disk, it must come from inside the evaporation radius of the dust, $`r_{\mathrm{evap}}`$, because of its high temperature of $`3500`$ K. According to the Kraus et al. model of the dust disk, the distance is then smaller than 2.88 AU according to a rotational velocity greater than 90 km/s. Let us assume $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}100`$ km/s. To avoid the problems with the line profile in case of such a high $`v_{\mathrm{rot}}`$, as discussed in subsection 4.2 and demonstrated in Figure 14, we propose a configuration as depicted in Figure 17. The disk has a bulge and because of its small inclination angle $`i10\mathrm{°}`$, this bulge blocks the light from the inner edge of the disk on the near side to the observer. We therefore receive emission only from sector 1 in Figure 17 where the radial velocity is low. In Figure 18 we show computations of the flux received from sector 1 for different opening angles $`\theta `$. The ranges of radial velocities in the sectors are summarized in Table 5.

## 6 Conclusions

We present low and high resolution spectra in the near infrared of the B\[e\]-star MWC 349. The wavelength interval 2.285–2.342 $`\mu `$m contains mainly emission of the first overtone bands of the CO molecule as well as the Pfund series of atomic hydrogen. From modeling the Pfund lines under the assumption that they are optically thin, we find that they come from the inner part of the H ii region around MWC 349 and are in LTE. The hydrogen line profiles are approximately gaussian and their width indicates a wind velocity of $`50`$ km/s.

The CO molecules are at a temperature of 3500–4000 K, the population of the vibrational levels is close to LTE. The width of the $`20`$ band head indicates a velocity broadening of the order of 50–60 km/s, depending on the broadening mechanism, wind or rotation. The location of the hot CO gas producing the band emission could not be clarified, but we were able to propose several scenarios.

Because the CO as well as the Pfund lines can be fitted with a gaussian velocity component of $`50`$ km/s, the first possibility is that the CO bands arise in the windy transition layer between the disk and the HII region, presumably in dense clumps (see Fig. 13). The band head has in this case an optical depth of order unity ($`N_{\mathrm{CO}}510^{20}`$ cm-2).

Alternatively, the CO might form in a thin layer above the dust disk at radii between 6.5 and 15 AU. In this scenario, the CO emission is optically very thin ($`N_{\mathrm{CO}}610^{16}`$ cm-2; $`\tau 10^4`$), and the gas is thermally decoupled from the dust. As we could only produce fits of mediocre quality (see Fig. 15), due to the characteristic line profiles under Keplerian rotation (see Figure 14), this is not our favorite configuration.

Finally, we suggest that the CO bands come from the inner edge of the circumstellar disk. Because of the required high temperature and column density, the CO gas must be located inside the evaporation radius of the dust, i.e. at distances less than $`3`$ AU from the star. Although this would imply a high rotational velocity component which would usually lead to a characteristic shoulder in the band profile, which is not observed, the disk may well have a bulge, as depicted in Figure 17. This bulge absorbs the CO emission from the near part of the rotating inner disk edge, so that the observer sees only a sector on the far side where the radial velocities are all smaller than $`60`$ km/s. With such a geometrical configuration, a satisfactory fit is also possible (see Figure 18).

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Frank Shu, the referee, for his helpful comments


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# The ROSAT-ESO Flux Limited X-ray (REFLEX) Galaxy Cluster Survey II: The Spatial Correlation Function 11footnote 1Based on observations taken at The European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Clusters of galaxies have been used for many years as tracers of the large-scale mass distribution in the universe. As the largest gravitationally bound objects their clustering statistics provide important information on the hierarchical process of galaxy formation enabling estimates to be made of the mass fluctuation amplitude and the density paramter $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (e.g. Mo et al. 1996). The early statistical analyses relied on the visual cluster compilations of Abell (1958) and Abell, Olowin & Corwin (1989). From the redshift surveys of richness-limited subsamples of the Abell catalogue (Bahcall & Soniera 1983, Klypin & Kopylov 1983, Postman et al. 1992, Peacock & West 1992) it was established that the correlation function $`\xi _{cc}(r)`$ followed the form

$$\xi _{cc}(r)=\left(\frac{r}{r_0}\right)^\gamma ,$$
(1)
on scales $`100h^1`$ Mpc with $`\gamma 2`$ and $`r_0`$ systematically 5 times higher than the value of $`5h^1`$ Mpc found for galaxies (e.g. Davis & Peebles 1983, Tucker et al. 1997), but with a strong dependency on the limiting richness of the cluster sample used (see Bahcall 1988). For example, while the richness class $`R0`$ samples give $`r_020h^1`$Mpc, at the higher threshold $`R2`$ the correlation length rises to $`r_040h^1`$Mpc (Peacock & West 1992). In principle these results can be used to place constraints on theoretical models of large-scale structure, however the cosmological information they contain is questionable due to the likely existence of inhomogeneities (Sutherland 1988, Sutherland & Efstathiou 1991) and line-of-sight projection effects (Lucey 1983, Dekel et al. 1990) artificially enhancing the correlation amplitude of Abell-based cluster samples. Strong evidence that these effects play a significant role comes from comparing the amplitude of the correlation function $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )`$ in the redshift direction $`\pi `$ of space with the perpendicular direction $`\sigma `$. Both rich and poor Abell cluster samples regularly fail this isotropy test, showing line-of-sight elongations in the contours of $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )`$. These features are consistent with an artificial enhancement of the correlation function (Sutherland 1988, Efstathiou et al. 1992, Peacock & West 1992) although physical interpretations have also been suggested (Bahcall et al. 1986, Miller et al. 1999).

The advent of digitised cluster surveys saw a dramatic increase in the homogeneity with which optical cluster samples could be compiled. Results from both the Edinburgh/Durham Cluster Catalogue (Nichol et al. 1992) and the APM survey (Dalton et al. 1992, 1994, Croft et al. 1997) demonstrated that for the equivalent Abell richness class $`R0`$, clusters found from automated detection algorithms have $`r_015h^1`$Mpc with significantly reduced anisotropies. Testing the results of the richer clusters has proved more difficult due to the large search volume required to find suitable numbers and the diminishing contrast of distant clusters against the background of faint galaxies. For example, Croft et al. (1997) used 46 APM clusters with richnesses equivalent to $`R2`$ and found $`r_020\pm 5`$.

In recent years attention has focused on cluster samples generated on the basis of their X-ray emission. This method has enormous advantages for the determination of $`\xi _{cc}`$ over the optically compiled cluster catalogues described above:

* The X-ray emission from a cluster provides a direct physical link with the presence of a large gravitational potential in quasi-equilibrium (e.g. $`L_xM^{4/3}`$). Thus the signature of X-ray emission provides strong evidence that the apparent overdensities seen in the optical are gravitationally bound structures.
* The emissivity of Thermal Bremsstrahlung radiation is proportional to the square of the electron number density, whereas the optical richness estimates are simply proportional to the galaxy density. Therefore, at fixed density, the contamination in cluster samples resulting from the projection of systems along the line-of-sight is intrinsically higher in richness-based optical samples compared to X-ray cluster catalogues. Furthermore the X-ray emission from clusters is concentrated towards the dense central cores which are typically $`250h^1`$ kpc in size – significantly smaller than the spatial extent of the galaxy concentration in clusters. Both these effects substantially reduce the chance of projection effects which, as described above, are thought to plague Abell-based samples.
* The comparatively low internal background of the ROSAT Position Sensitive Proportinal Counter (PSPC) and the relatively short exposure times in the All-Sky Survey means that the X-ray fluxes from clusters at the flux limit of REFLEX are photon-noise limited as opposed to background limited. This is in contrast to purely optically selected samples which are forced to have a minimum density contrast above a varying background of galaxies before they can be detected.

The first attempts to measure $`\xi _{cc}`$ using X-ray clusters were confined to small samples: Lahav et al. (1989) detected significant clustering with $`r_021h^1`$ for $`\gamma =1.8`$ using an all-sky sample of 53 clusters above a flux $`1.7\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 (2-10 keV). Nichol, Briel & Henry (1994) used ROSAT data for a complete sample of 67 X-ray bright Abell clusters finding a correlation length $`r_0=16.1\pm 3.4h^1`$ Mpc and detecting no significant clustering anisotropy. A more extensive study using data from the ROSAT satellite carried out by Romer et al. (1994) for a nearly complete flux-limited sample of 129 clusters above $`1\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 found $`r_0=12.9\pm 2.2h^1`$Mpc, $`\gamma =1.8\pm 0.4`$. This study also found no evidence of spatial anisotropy in the clustering pattern. More recently, there have been two independent estimates of $`\xi _{cc}`$ from the 277 X-ray brightest Abell cluster sample from the RASS (XBACS, Ebeling et al. 1996). For this sample Abadi et al. (1998) suggest $`r_0=21.1_{2.3}^{+1.6}h^1`$Mpc and $`\gamma =1.9`$ from a $`\chi ^2`$ minimisation procedure using the binned correlation data, while Borgani et al. (1999) use a more reliable likelihood analysis finding $`r_0=26.0_{4.7}^{+4.1}h^1`$ Mpc (here error bars are $`2\sigma `$). The anisotropy diagram for XBACS is published by Miller et al. (2000) and shows strong Abell-type elongations.

These X-ray results do not attempt to take account of the sky coverage of the parent X-ray survey in the correlation analysis. However, X-ray cluster samples generated from the RASS (Trümper 1993, Voges et al. 1999) have the advantage that the sky coverage is known from accurate information on the X-ray flux limit pertaining to any part of the sky.

The first attempt to utilise the RASS sky coverage information is Moscardini et. al. (2000a), who analyse the spatial distribution of the clusters in the RASS1 Bright Sample (De Grandi et al. 1999) using a very simple version of the sky coverage based on the first processing of the All-Sky Survey. This cluster catalogue is the forerunner to REFLEX consisting of 130 clusters to a limit $`34\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 defined in the ROSAT hard energy band ($`0.52.0`$ keV) and covering an area covering 2.5 sr centred on the Southern Galactic Cap. Moscardini et al. (2000a) find $`r_0=21.5_{4.4}^{+3.4}h^1`$ and $`\gamma =2.1_{0.56}^{+0.53}`$ ($`95.4\%`$ errors) with a mild dependence of $`r_0`$ on limiting flux and luminosity. The REFLEX survey provides the opportunity to substantially improve on this result in a number of important respects: (i) REFLEX provides more than 3 times the number of X-ray clusters over a contiguous area nearly twice as large. (ii) All RASS standard analysis source detections are reanalysed using our own flux determination method. (iii) Due account is taken of all exposure variations, in contrast to the the RASS1 sample which is limited to exposure times larger than 150 secs. (iv) The optical identification is done in a homogeneous way based on the most comprehensive optical data base available for the southern sky. The power spectrum for REFLEX is presented elsewhere (Schuecker et al. 2000), here we concentrate on the correlation function.

The outline of the paper is as follows: In Section 2 we give a brief description of the REFLEX cluster survey. In Section 3 we discuss the algorithm used to esimate the the correlation function and the results for both the entire REFLEX catalogue and volume limited sub-samples are presented in Section 4. The interpretation of these results in terms of structure formation models is discussed in Section 5.

## 2 THE REFLEX Survey

The REFLEX survey represents an objective flux-limited catalogue of X-ray clusters in the southern hemisphere south of declination +2.5 degs and excluding the region within $`\pm 20`$ deg of the Galactic Plane. A further $`324`$ deg2 of sky around the LMC and SMC is removed where X-ray detection is hampered by the high interstellar absorption and crowded star fields. The remaining area covered by the survey is 13924 deg2 or 4.24 sr, representing $`34\%`$ of the entire sky.

The primary X-ray data for REFLEX originates from the second processing of the ROSAT All-Sky-Survey (RASS2) using the Standard Analysis Software System (SASS) which is based on a maximum likelihood detection algorithm. Confirmed RASS2 sources with a likelihood parameter of at least 15 and count rate $`0.05`$ cts s-1 in the $`0.12.4`$ keV energy band have already been published in the RASS bright source catalogue (Voges et al. 1999). For REFLEX we use the internal MPE source catalogue totalling 54076 sources in the study area which allows the inclusion of sources with a likelihood $`7`$. Although some sources will be detected at a significance $`3\sigma `$ and not all are real, this lower likelihood threshold ensures that the parent catalogue is as complete as possible.

It is well known from previous studies that the RASS analysis software is optimised for point-like sources and therefore underestimates the flux of extended sources (e.g. Ebeling et al. 1996, De Grandi et al. 1997). Therefore we have reanalysed all the source fluxes using a growth curve analysis method to recover the total flux of extended sources with an internal error of between $`1020\%`$ (Böhringer et al. 2000a). Note: X-ray count rates are measured in the hard band ($`0.52.0`$ keV) then converted to unabsorbed fluxes in the ROSAT band ($`0.12.4`$ keV) and the cluster X-ray luminosities are determined by an iterative procedure using the luminosity-temperature relation of Markevitch (1998) assuming $`h=0.5`$ (Böhringer et al. 2000c in preparation), with the values scaled by a factor 0.25 to $`h=1`$ in this paper. Excluding double detections we have 4206 sources above a count rate limit of 0.08 cts s-1, which corresponds to a flux limit between $`1.62.0\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2.

The optical identification is based on finding galaxy overdensities in concentric rings around X-ray source positions using the UK Schmidt J-survey photographic plates digitised by COSMOS which reduces the total number of cluster candidates to $`500`$ above a flux limit $`3\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 in the ROSAT energy band $`0.12.4`$ keV. Details of the optical identification process are given elsewhere (Böhringer et al. 2000b).

To carry out further indentification and obtain redshifts, multi-object ($`520`$ galaxies per cluster) and single-slit ($`23`$ galaxies per cluster) spectroscopy was carried out on $`431`$ targets as part of an ESO Key Programme (Böhringer et al. 1998, Guzzo et al. 1999). This results in 452 clusters above $`3\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 in the energy band $`0.12.4`$ keV, of which 449 have secure redshifts either from our ESO programme or from the literature. About $`65\%`$ of these clusters are in the Abell catalogue while most of the others were previously unknown.

A comprehensive discussion of the contamination and completeness statistics in REFLEX is given in Böhringer et al. (2000b) and results on the comoving number density of clusters in the survey are presented in Schuecker et al. (2000). These indicate a completeness well in excess of $`90\%`$ and a contamination by non-cluster X-ray sources of less than $`9\%`$. We mention a few results here to serve as an illustration of the quality of the catalogue: (i) From a search for X-ray emission around all ACO and ACO supplimentary clusters only 1 cluster with an X-ray flux more than the flux limit is not found by the selection process. (ii) Clusters in the luminosity range $`0.082.5\times 10^{44}h^2`$ erg s-1 have a constant comoving number density of objects and V/Vmax=$`0.51\pm 0.01`$ at the flux limit of the survey. This is consistent with the lack of evolution seen in the X-ray luminosity function out to at least $`z0.3`$ reported by other surveys (e.g. Burke et al. 1997, Ebeling et al. 1997). (iii) Approximately $`81\%`$ of the REFLEX clusters are extended – we searched the RASS2 database separately for extended X-ray sources finding only a further 8 bona-fide clusters and 5 candidate clusters, 3 of which show no obvious optical counterpart and for which futher deep imaging is planned.

## 3 Calculating the correlation function

### 3.1 Areal Coverage

One complication with the RASS is that the sky coverage is not homogeneous resulting in about $`12\%`$ of the REFLEX survey region having an exposure time less than half of the median exposure time ($`323`$ s). This, coupled with the varying galactic hydrogen coloumn density, results in a variation of the limiting flux of the RASS2 across the sky. Although the very low background for the ROSAT PSPC, especially in the hard band ($`0.52.0`$ keV), allows the detection and characterisation of sources with comparitavely low source source counts a minimum number is required for a safe detection. Fig. 1 shows the resulting effective area of the REFLEX survey as a function of flux with the additional criterion imposed of detecting at least 10 photons in the hard band. The exposure times of the RASS2 in the REFLEX area are sufficient that at a flux limit of $`3\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 at least 10 photons are detected for $`97.4\%`$ of the REFLEX survey area and hence the number of clusters detected with low photon counts is very small – 3.8 clusters with less than 10 counts are expected in the survey and only 1 is detected. For a more conservative requirement of at least 30 photons for each source the sky coverage falls to $`78\%`$ (see Böhringer et al. 2000b).

### 3.2 Correlation Estimator

In all computations we use the estimator

$$1+\xi _{cc}(r)=4\frac{(DD)(RR)}{(DR)^2},$$
(2)
where DD stands for the number of distinct pairs in the data, RR stands for the number of distinct pairs in the random catalogue and DR represents the number of cross pairs. The factor of 4 in this expression accounts for the fact that while the number of distinct pairs in a large catalogue of size $`n`$, say, is $`n^2/2`$, the number of cross-pairs between two different catalogues each with $`n`$ entries is $`n^2`$ and these are all distinct. Since the correlation function is defined in terms of the total number of pairs, the number of distinct $`DD`$ and $`RR`$ pairs must each be multiplied by 2 to obtain the total numbers, hence the factor of 4. This estimator has been shown by Hamilton (1993) to be the most robust for datasets which may be sensitive to the chance location of strong clustering close to the sample boundary.

In principle the estimator in equation 2 can be generalised to include an arbitrary weighting function. For calculating the correlation function of galaxies from magnitude-limited samples, the variance in the estimate of $`\xi (r)`$ on large scales is minimised if $`w(r_i,\tau )`$ is

$$w(r_i,\tau )=\frac{1}{1+4\pi n_DJ_3(\tau )\varphi (r_i)},$$
(3)
where $`r_i`$ is the distance of an object from the origin, $`\tau `$ is the distance separating two objects, $`\varphi (r)`$ is the survey selection function, $`n_D`$ the mean space density of objects and $`J_3(\tau )=_0^\tau 𝑑rr^2\xi (r)`$ (see Saunders, Rowan-Robinson & Lawrence 1992, Fisher et al. 1994, Guzzo et al. 2000). The physical interpretation of the term $`4\pi n_DJ_3(\tau )`$ in the weighting scheme is that it represents something like ‘the mean number of objects per clump’. For galaxies this number is large on small scales giving equal volume weighting to the pairs ($`w1/\varphi (r)`$). By contrast, for clusters the weighting term $`4\pi n_DJ_3(\tau )`$ is always small compared to unity on scales of interest and consequently we assign equal weight to all pairs in the calculation of the cluster correlation function.

We calculate spatial separations using the formula for comoving coordinate distance ($`r_1`$);

$$r_1=\frac{\mathrm{c}}{\mathrm{H}_0}\left[\frac{(q_0z)+((1q_0)(1((2q_0z)+1)^{1/2}))}{(1+z)q_0^2}\right],$$
(4)
adopting the cosmology $`\mathrm{H}_0=100\mathrm{h}^1`$ Mpc, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1.0`$ & $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.0`$, along with the cosine rule to determine angular separations.

### 3.3 Random catalogues

The random catalogues are constructed over the REFLEX survey area using a Monte-Carlo technique which incorporates knowledge of the flux limit in cells of size $`1`$ square degree. To begin with it is assumed that the observed number count distribution of X-ray clusters, LogN-LogS, is well fitted by a simple lower-law:

$$N(>S)=AS^\alpha .$$
(5)
For the purposes here we adopt the value $`\alpha =1.35`$, consistent with the REFLEX number counts (see Böhringer et al. 2000b) and those of RASS1, the precursor survey of REFLEX (De Grandi et al. 1999). Small changes to the value of $`\alpha `$ does not alter the outcome of the results. If we assume that the accumulative distribution $`P`$ defined as

$$\frac{N(<S)}{N_{total}(>S_{lim})}=P$$
(6)
is uniformly distributed in the range $`01`$, then the distribution of cluster X-ray fluxes $`S`$ selected at random above $`S_{lim}`$ is given by

$$S=S_{lim}(1P)^{\frac{1}{\alpha }}.$$
(7)
We select a cluster at random within the allowed borders of the REFLEX survey and then use eqn. 7 to assign it a flux. We then test whether the cluster falls above or below the flux limit for that region of the REFLEX survey based on the local values of exposure time and the interstellar hydrogen column density (Dickey & Lockman 1990, Stark et al. 1992). We set $`S_{lim}=3\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2, which is the cut-off flux limit for the entire survey. An example of a random catalogue with 1000 points generated in this way is shown in Fig. 3. To demonstrate reliability of the random catalogues the histogram in Fig. 4 shows the number of REFLEX clusters as a function of Galactic longitude and latitude compared to that of a random catalogue generated using the REFLEX survey sensitivity map. The random catalogues used in the determination of $`\xi _{cc}`$ contain typically 100,000 points.

We use two methods to assign each random point a redshift. (i) Redshifts are drawn from the distribution of REFLEX clusters smoothed with a Gaussian kernel. This method allows the redshift selection function to be estimated without prior knowledge of the underlying density distribution of clusters and is used in almost all previous determinations of the cluster correlation function. For REFLEX we use a Gaussian of width 5600 km s-1 – the optimum value depends on the space density of clusters and is constrained by the need to follow the redshift distribution accurately enough while not removing large-scale clustering. The exact figure used is generally not critical, with values in the literature ranging between $`40008000`$ km s-1. (ii) The second method, which we apply to luminosity limited samples, uses the X-ray cluster luminosity function to generate the expected number of clusters at each redshift. Assuming a Schechter function of the form

$$n(L)dL=Aexp(L/L_{})(L/L_{})^\alpha dL,$$
(8)
where $`n(L)`$ is the number density of clusters per luminosity interval, then for particular values of $`\alpha `$ and $`L_{}`$, we can integrate $`n(L)dL`$ above $`L_{lim}`$ to determine the number density of clusters at each redshift $`\eta (z)`$. The value of $`L_{lim}`$ at each redshift is found from the flux limit (fixed at $`3\times 10^{12}`$erg s-1 cm-2). The expected number of clusters in each redshift interval $`dz`$ is then simply $`\eta (z)dV(z)`$, where $`dV(z)`$ is the comoving volume element at redshift $`z`$. Each random point generated in the area of the survey is thus assigned a random redshift weighted by the expected number of clusters based on eqn. 8. We have used the values of $`\alpha =1.61`$, $`L_{}=6.04\times 10^{44}`$ (erg s-1), $`A=3.04\times 10^8`$ ($`10^{44}`$ erg s$`{}_{}{}^{1})^1`$ and H$`{}_{0}{}^{}=50`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, which are appropriate to the REFLEX sample (Böhringer et al. 2000c, in preparation), although using our previous luminosity function parameters from De Grandi et al. (1999) gives identical results. The redshift distribution for the REFLEX sample along with the smoothed version using method (i) is shown in Fig. 5, while Fig. 6 shows a comparison between the redshift distribution of both methods for the luminosity subsample of 399 clusters limited to $`L_x3\times 10^{44}`$erg s-1. We prefer method (ii) for the luminosity sub-samples as it makes no prior assumptions regarding the scale of the clustering and avoids the need to smooth the data, however in practice we found no significant difference in the correlation functions resulting from the two methods.

### 3.4 Maximum Likelihood Determination of $`r_0`$ and $`\gamma `$

In calculating the best-fit power-law for the correlation function from samples of $`100`$ clusters there has traditionally been one of two methods adopted. The first is to calculate errors for $`\xi _{cc}`$ based on estimates from pair counts binned into $``$ 10 coarse intervals, which are usually spaced logarithmically out to $`100h^1`$ Mpc (e.g. Bahcall et al. 1983, Dalton et al. 1992, Nichol et al. 1992). On the grounds that each bin contains a large numbers of pairs, the best-fit power-law is estimated using the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic. The danger with such an approach is that the resulting estimates of parameters describing the power-law ($`r_o,\gamma `$) will then depend on the precise details of the binning. In order to overcome this limitation we adopt the second of the two methods referred to above and maximise the likelihood $`L`$ that the model correlation function produces the measured number of cluster pairs at a given separation (Croft et al. 1997, Borgani et al. 1999, Moscardini et al. 2000a). The likelihood estimate is based on Poisson probabilities, such that

$$L=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}e^\mu \mu ^\nu /\nu !,$$
(9)
where $`\nu `$ is the observed number of cluster-cluster pairs in a small interval $`dr`$ and $`\mu `$ is the expected number in the same interval calculated using Hamilton’s estimator (eqn. 2). As long as the number of random points is kept large enough to avoid a zero in the denominator of eqn. 2, $`dr`$ can be made arbitrarily small, so as to ensure the final results are independent of the bin size. In practice we used $`7000`$ bins between $`5100`$ Mpc, which resulted in either a 0 or 1 cluster-cluster pair in almost all bins.

The associated errors on the correlation function are usually calculated from ‘Poisson’ statistics. In the case of large bin intervals errors are computed from the formula

$$\delta \xi _{cc}(r)=\frac{(1+\xi _{cc}(r))}{\sqrt{N_{cc}}},$$
(10)
where $`N_{cc}`$ is the number of distinct cluster pairs in the bin centred at separation $`r`$. In the case of a maximum likelihood determination, such as that used here, confidence levels can be defined as $`S(r_{best},\gamma _{best})S(r_0,\gamma )`$, where $`S`$ is the usual $`S=2lnL`$, assuming that $`\mathrm{\Delta }S`$ is distributed like $`\chi ^2`$.

Both these methods are likely to produce underestimates of the true dispersion as the use of Poisson statistics assumes that the pair counts are independent of each other, which is clearly not the case. An estimate of the true dispersion in the correlation function, which tries to account for cosmic variance, can be made either by applying a bootstrap resampling of the real data (e.g. Ling, Frenk & Barrow 1986; Mo, Jing & Börner 1992) or by carrying out numerical simulations based on plausible cosmological models (Croft & Efstathiou 1994, Croft et. al. 1997). Both methods produce similar results indicating that the real errors are probably $`12`$ times larger than the Poisson-based estimates. We confirmed this result for our sample by generating mock catalogues from bootstrap resampling of the data and calculating the best-fit $`r_0`$ and $`\gamma `$ values using the likelihood method described above. The ratio of the error for $`r_0`$ from the variance between the bootstrap samples and the Poisson error is between $`1.52.0`$ for all luminosity subsamples. Unless stated otherwise, in the results which follow we quote the $`1\sigma `$ likelihood errors on the values of $`r_0`$ and $`\gamma `$.

## 4 Results

The $`\xi _{cc}(r)`$ for the REFLEX survey of 449 clusters is shown in Fig. 7. A fit was made to the correlation function assuming a single power law over the range $`440h^1`$ Mpc using the likelihood analysis described in Section 3.4. Fig. 8 shows the corresponding joint constraints resulting from this analysis. The best-fit value for the power-law parameters are $`r_0=18.8\pm 0.9`$ and $`\gamma =1.83_{0.08}^{+0.15}`$. If points are included on larger scales then the slope steepens, e.g. fitting between $`4100h^1`$ Mpc gives $`\gamma 2.35`$ and $`r_016.25`$. The inability of a single power law to adequately describe the correlation function is further reflected in the zero crossing of $`\xi _{cc}`$ at $`45h^1`$ Mpc (see Section 7.1).

In order to investigate the dependency of $`r_0`$ with X-ray luminosity we also calculated $`\xi _{cc}(r)`$ for 5 volume-limited X-ray sub-samples with luminosity thresholds $`0.08,0.18,0.3,0.5,1.0`$ in units of $`10^{44}h^2`$ erg s-1. Fig. 9 shows the distribution of luminosity with redshift for the REFLEX sample along with the regions corresponding to the 5 subsamples. Due to the significant covariance between $`r_0`$ and $`\gamma `$ this investigation has been carried out with $`\gamma `$ fixed at 2.0. The correlation results for the sub-samples are presented in Table 1 and Fig. 10. These indicate no significant positive trend of $`r_0`$ vs $`L_{lim}`$, with the highest measured $`r_0`$ occuring at intermediate luminosities ($`L_{lim}0.3\times 10^{44}h^2`$ Mpc). Beyond this point the statistical errors increase rapidly. To test the reliability of the parameter $`r_0`$ as an indicator of how clustering changes with X-ray luminosity, we calculated the average correlation function amplitude for the 5 volume-limited sub-samples over the range of separations $`020h^1`$ Mpc. The result, shown in Fig. 11, is in good agreement with the trend of $`r_0`$ vs $`L_{lim}`$.

We have examined the isotropy of the clustering signal for the REFLEX survey by plotting contours of $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )`$, where $`\pi =|r_1r_2|`$ is the line-of-sight separation, with $`r_{1,2}`$ determined from eqn. 4, and $`\sigma =(s^2\pi ^2)^{1/2}`$ is the perpendicular component of the cluster separation $`s`$. As discussed in the introduction, elongations of the contours in the redshift direction compared to the perpendicular direction for scales $`20h^1`$) Mpc are a feature of some optical cluster catalogues – typically with a ratio $`4:1`$ for redshift samples based on the Abell catalogue (e.g. Postman et al. 1992). Fig. 12 represents the corresponding plot for the REFLEX clusters and indicates that unlike optical surveys, the $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )`$ contours are close to being completely concentric on scales close to the correlation length.

## 5 Discussion

The determination $`\xi _{cc}`$ from the REFLEX survey can be compared with similar determinations for other X-ray cluster samples. Our results of $`r_0=18.8`$ and little dependency of $`r_0`$ on X-ray luminosity are broadly consistent with the results of XBACS (Borgani et al. 1999) and RASS1 (Moscardini et al. 2000a). The result presented by Romer et al. (1994), hereafter R94, for a sample of 128 clusters above $`1.0\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 in a 3100 deg2 area centered on the SGP, suggests a correlation length $`r_0=1315h^1`$ Mpc, smaller than any of the other determinations from X-ray samples. In addition to the fainter flux limit, the R94 study differs from REFLEX in 2 further ways which in principle could affect the result: (i) the cluster sample was based on a reduction of the all-sky-survey using the ROSAT Standard Analysis Software, which has subsequently been revised (ii) the correlation analysis performed by R94 did not include the sample sky coverage corresponding to the SGP region under study. We have investigated the origin of a possible systematic difference between R94 and REFLEX by repeating our correlation analysis on the 109 REFLEX clusters lying within the R94 SGP area of sky, defined by the boundaries $`22\mathrm{h}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{RA}3\mathrm{h}\mathrm{r}`$, $`50^{}\mathrm{dec}2^{}`$,$`|b|40^{}`$. The resulting power-law fit to the correlation function out to $`100h^1`$ Mpc gives $`r_0=12.9_{1.9}^{+1.9}`$ $`\gamma =2.0_{0.4}^{+0.4}`$, smaller than the REFLEX amplitude of $`18.8\pm 0.9`$ and very close to the original SGP result of $`r_0=12.9\pm 2.2h^1`$ Mpc, $`\gamma =1.8\pm 0.4`$ found by R94 fitting over the same range. This suggests that the difference between the REFLEX and the SGP result is most likely due to the superior statistical sampling of REFLEX which represents a 4-fold increase in survey area over the SGP region while probing to a similar redshift.

Miller et al. (2000) analyse the $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )`$ diagram for a number of X-ray cluster samples. In their analysis the XBACS clusters show very strong elongations around $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )1`$ in the redshift direction and a similar anisotropy is present in other X-ray confirmed Abell cluster samples. The RASS1 sample shows a much weaker anisotropy over the same scale. On the basis of this Miller et al. (2000) argue that clustering anisotropy is a ubiquitous feature of X-ray cluster samples which demonstrates that the anisotropies are real. However, the absence of any significant anisotropy in the contours of $`\xi (\sigma ,\pi )`$ for the REFLEX survey shown in fig. 12 indicates that this is not the case. This is the strongest indication yet that elongations seen in other catalogues are spurious and justifies the claim, first pointed out by R94, that X-ray selected surveys do not suffer from significant projection biases. As with optical studies based on the Abell catalogue, the presence of strong elongations close to the scale of $`r_0`$ in the XBACS bring the accuracy of the clustering signal derived from this sample into question.

### 5.1 Comparison with Cosmological Models

Predictions for the clustering properties of X-ray selected clusters from a number of surveys, including REFLEX, have recently been made by Moscardini et al. (2000b). In these predictions the structures on a given scale are assumed to evolve by hierarchical merging of smaller units and instantaneous merging on cluster scales. The comoving mass function of haloes is computed using the Press-Schechter (1974) technique but incorporating more recent corrections which improve the comparison of Press-Schechter with numerical simulations (e.g. Sheth & Tormen 1999). The link between X-ray luminosity and mass of the hosting dark matter halo begins with the empirical relation between gas temperature $`T`$ and X-ray luminosity $`L_{bol}`$

$$T=AL_{bol}^\beta (1+z)^\nu ,$$
(11)
with $`A=4.2`$ & $`\beta =1/3`$, which is a good approximation for clusters (e.g. David et al. 1993; White, Jones & Forman 1997; Markevitch 1998). The parameter $`\nu `$ describing the evolution of the $`TL_{bol}`$ relation is constrained by Moscardini et al. (2000b) using the X-ray cluster number counts over the range $`5\times 10^{13}3\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 ($`0.52.0`$ keV) taken from the RASS1 Bright Sample (De Grandi et al. 1999) and the fainter ROSAT Deep Cluster Survey Rosati et al. (1998). It is possible to convert the temperature estimates from eqn. 11 to halo mass assuming a virial isothermal gas distribution and spherical collapse (e.g. Eke, Cole & Frenk 1996). Finally, in order to make predictions for the correlation function of the REFLEX survey, Moscardini et al. (2000b) incorporate the actual sky coverage of the survey shown in Fig. 1 for the passband $`0.12.4`$ keV in an identical manner to the procedure used for calculating $`\xi _{cc}(r)`$ using the REFLEX data described in Section 3.1 above.

The behaviour of the cluster correlation function for a range of popular cosmological models based around cold dark matter (CDM) are shown in Fig. 13 and Fig. 14. The model predictions are taken directly from Moscardini et al. (2000b) and represent: Standard (SCDM), $`\tau `$ ($`\tau `$CDM) and tilted (TCDM) models, all with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.0`$; along with an open model $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ (OCDM) and a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$. An examination of these figures reveals clear evidence for an inconsistency between all $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$ models and the REFLEX correlation function, with a significantly better fit to the data for open or $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated cosmologies. This is further illustrated in Fig. 15 which shows the Moscardini et al. (2000b) predictions of correlation length with limiting X-ray flux. While the Einstein-de Sitter models predict $`r_0=1113h^1`$Mpc, both the OCDM and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models predict $`r_020h^1`$Mpc. These results are in agreement with the analysis of the X-ray clusters based on the RASS1 Bright Sample (Moscardini et al. 2000a) and the digitised optical surveys (e.g. Croft et al. 1997).

Confirmation of the general conclusions on the form of the cosmological power spectrum comes from the behaviour of of $`\xi _{cc}`$ on large scales. In Fig. 16 we show the REFLEX $`\xi _{cc}(r)`$ at low amplitude which shows a positive clustering signal out to at least $`40h^1`$ Mpc ($`\xi (3040)=0.32\pm 0.08`$), with a zero-crossing $`45h^1`$ ($`\xi (4050)=4.7\times 10^3\pm 0.05`$). On larger scales the amplitude remains slightly negative ($`\xi (50100)=0.07\pm 0.02`$). Also shown is the curve representing the power law with $`r_0=18.8h^1`$ Mpc and $`\gamma =1.83`$, along with predictions from Moscardini et al. (2000b) for the OCDM and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models. Since the SCDM model predicts a zero-crossing near $`r33h^1`$Mpc (Klypin & Rhee 1994), the REFLEX data again support the findings of other cluster surveys that models with more power than SCDM are required to adequately fit the large-scale $`\xi _{cc}(r)`$. Generally for CDM-like models (with $`n=1`$ for the primordial spectral index) the first zero-point occurs at $`r16.5(\mathrm{\Omega }_mh^2)^1`$ for a vanishing baryon fraction (see Klypin & Rhee 1994). For the particular parameterisation used by Moscardini et al. (2000b) the OCDM and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models remain positive until $`80h^1`$ Mpc, however the small clustering amplitude in the data between $`45100h^1`$ Mpc seen in Fig. 16 prohibits any definitive comparison of the zero crossings.

## 6 Summary

Catalogues of galaxy clusters based on their X-ray emission provide a powerful tool for studies of large-scale structure. We present the spatial correlation function of the REFLEX cluster survey, which consists of 449 X-ray emitting clusters above a flux limit $`3\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and covering a contiguous area of 4.24 sr in the southern hemisphere. The advantages of X-ray selection, combined with the increased statistics and high completeness of REFLEX enable a significant step to be taken in establishing the clustering properties of clusters in the local universe. Over the scale $`440h^1`$ Mpc we find a correlation amplitude $`r_0=18.8\pm 0.9`$ and power law index $`\gamma =1.83_{0.08}^{+0.15}`$ for the entire survey. The high degree of isotropy in the correlation function demonstrates that systematic projection effects are not present in the data. By analysing volume-limited sub-samples we find no significant trend of clustering amplitude with X-ray luminosity. Comparing the REFLEX $`\xi _{cc}`$ results with predictions from various CDM-type models which incorporate directly the areal coverage of REFLEX, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.3`$ models provide an excellent fit, while $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$ & $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ models fail to provide enough large-scale power. Finally, it is intriguing to note the concensus emerging between clustering studies and the lack of evolution in the abundance of X-ray clusters (e.g. Burke et al. 1997, Collins et al. 1997, Borgani et al. 1999, Henry 1997, Nichol et al. 1999), which also indicates that the Einstein de-Sitter universe is in trouble.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the ROSAT team at MPE for providing the RASS data ahead of publication and the COSMOS team at the ROYAL Observatory Edinburgh for the digitised optical data. We are also indebted to Rudolf Dümmler, Harald Ebeling, Alastair Edge, Andrew Fabian, Herbert Gursky, Silvano Molendi, Marguerite Pierre, Waltraut Seitter, Giampaolo Vettolani, and Gianni Zammorani for their help in the observations taken at ESO and their work in the early stages of the project. We also thank Kathy Romer for providing unpublished redshifts and useful discussions. We thank Stefano Borgani for useful feedback after reading a draft of this manuscript and also thank Lauro Moscardini for providing the CDM predictions in tabulation form. CAC acknowledges support from a PPARC Advanced Fellowship during part of the lifetime of this project.

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