text:
# PKS B1400-33: an unusual radio relic in a poor cluster

## 1 Introduction

Extended emission structures with steep radio spectral indices, which are not obviously associated with any optical galaxy, are sometimes observed in rich cluster environments. These sources are broadly separated into cluster wide ‘halos’ that appear relaxed and symmetric with respect to the X-ray intracluster gas, and the peripheral arc-like structures referred to as ‘relics’. Both types are predominantly observed to be associated with hot ($`T_X6`$ keV), X-ray luminous ($`L_X>4\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1) rich compact clusters (Schuecker and Böhringer, 1999); however, the clusters that have peripheral relics may have somewhat lower temperatures (Feretti, 1999). A standard hypothesis is that these sources are relic synchrotron plasma that has been revived.

PKS B1400$``$33 is an extended radio source, with an 85 MHz flux density of 57 Jy (Mills, Slee and Hill, 1960), and has the lowest surface brightness of any source in the Parkes catalog. PKS B1400$``$33 appears to be associated with the poor cluster S753 of Abell richness class 0; however, the source not been conclusively identified with any optical galaxy. Previous low frequency images of the source using the VLA and the MOST (Goss et al., 1987) showed a relatively bright rim along the NE edge and low surface brightness filamentary emission trailing off to the SW. The source was observed to have a steep spectrum with spectral index $`\alpha `$ ($`S_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$) in the range 1.2-2.4.

The unusual nature of this possible relic radio source and its potential value as a probe of the gas dynamics and evolution of poor cluster environments has led us to carry out new radio observations of the source. We have made images with improved surface brightness sensitivity at 330 MHz using the Very Large Array (VLA), at 843 MHz with the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) and at 1398 and 2378 MHz using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). Table 1 is a summary of the new radio observations. These are presented here followed by discussions on the origin of this source in the light of the current understanding of the phenomenology and formation of relics in the intracluster medium (ICM).

## 2 The radio continuum images

PKS B1400$``$33 was observed at 330 MHz with the VLA separately in the CnB, C, and DnC array configurations in order to image the extended emission in this low surface brightness source. Hybrid arrays were included because of the southern declination. The data were self calibrated and imaged in aips using three-dimensional imaging routines. The VLA 330 MHz image of the source is shown in Fig. 1. The image has been made combining data from all the configurations with a beam of FWHM $`77\times 53`$ arcsec2 at a P.A. of $`24^{}`$; the r.m.s. noise is 2.5 mJy beam-1. This radio image, as well as all the higher frequency radio images presented here, has been corrected for the primary beam attenuation.

Because of its steep spectrum, the total extent of the diffuse source is best defined by the 330 MHz VLA image. The low surface brightness source is bounded to the NE by a relatively bright rim of emission (marked NE rim in Fig. 1), while the source is bounded on the opposite SW side by a second fainter ridge of emission (marked SW rim in Fig. 1). Both the bounding rims are concave outwards. The emission that lies between the bounding ridges is filamentary and decreases in surface brightness from NE towards the SW. The bright compact source that is observed in the image close to the NW edge of the extended source, at RA $`14^h03^m38\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}7`$, DEC $`33\mathrm{°}58\mathrm{}39\mathrm{}`$ (J2000.0), has a flux density of 0.95 Jy at 330 MHz; the compact source appears slightly resolved and has a deconvolved size of about 25 arcsec. As discussed below, this compact component is identified with the galaxy NGC 5419. There is evidence for a protrusion towards the SW beyond the bounding rim; this extension, marked P in Fig. 1, is observed in the 330 MHz image at a level of $`20`$ mJy beam-1. The total flux density of the extended radio source PKS B1400$``$33 is 8.5 Jy at 330 MHz, excluding the emission from NGC 5419 and the source $`5\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ to its south, marked B in Figs. 1-4, that is presumably an unrelated confusing source. The error in the absolute flux density scale at 330 MHz is believed to be about 2 %.

The 843 MHz MOST image of PKS B1400$``$33 is shown in Fig. 2. This image, obtained using the most sensitive $`23\mathrm{}`$ field of view, better reproduces the extended structure than the 843 MHz image in Goss et al. (1987). The image has been made with a beam of FWHM $`77\times 43`$ arcsec2 at a P.A. of $`0^{}`$ and has an r.m.s. noise of 1 mJy beam-1. The 843 MHz image of the extended source shows the relatively bright rim along the NE, the filamentary structures trailing from this ridge towards the SW and the curved rim that defines the boundary of the diffuse source at the SW end. The flux density of the extended source (again excluding NGC 5419 and the embedded backgound source B) is 1.3 Jy at 843 MHz. NGC 5419 has a flux density of 0.46 Jy at 843 MHz. Additionally, the 843 MHz image clearly reveals a local emission peak embedded within the diffuse emission at RA $`14^h03^m55\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}9`$ DEC $`34\mathrm{°}06\mathrm{}03\mathrm{}`$ (J2000.0); we hereinafter refer to this feature as component C. It has a flux density of 13 mJy beam-1 at 843 MHz. The flux density scale in the MOST image is accurate to 5 %.

PKS B1400$``$33 was observed using the 375 m and the 750B 750 m array configurations of the ATCA during 1995 Jan and June. Observations were made in two 128 MHz wide bands centred at 1398 and 2378 MHz; the bands were covered using 13 channels. The extended source was covered with a nine-pointings mosaic with the pointings spaced $`8\mathrm{}`$ apart in RA and DEC. Continuum images at the two frequencies were made separately using the channel data, adopting a bandwidth synthesis approach to avoid bandwidth smearing effects; the mosaic imaging was carried out in aips++. Deconvolution used the multi-scale CLEAN algorithm: the bright compact source at the edge of the extended emission was first removed from the ‘dirty’ image using a ‘box’ CLEAN and subsequently a multi-scale CLEAN was performed on the residual image. The final images at the two frequencies were then convolved to identical beams of FWHM $`70\times 45`$ arcsec2 at a P.A. of $`0^{}`$. Consequently, different weightings were adopted at the two ATCA frequencies during the imaging step; however, the convolution to identical final beams implies that the images presented here effectively have the same visibility range. ATCA mosaic images of the PKS B1400$``$33 field at 1398 and 2378 MHz are shown in Figs. 3 and 4 respectively. The r.m.s. noise is 0.5 mJy beam-1 in both images. The relatively bright ridge along the NE and the filamentary emission trailing towards SW have been imaged at 1398; however, at 2378 MHz, the ridge appears non-uniform and clumpy and the filamentary emission is undetected, possibly due to the poorer signal-to-noise ratio. The bounding ridge at the SW of the extended source is not detected in either of these higher frequency ATCA images. The wide-field mosaic images show several continuum sources, presumably unrelated, in the field. Based on the ATCA data, the flux density of NGC 5419 is 0.30 and 0.23 Jy at 1398 and 2378 MHz respectively. The total flux density of the extended source PKS B1400$``$33 is 0.46 and 0.10 Jy at 1398 and 2378 MHz. The central component C is detected in both the ATCA images with flux density 5 and 2 mJy beam-1 at 1398 and 2378 MHz respectively. The absolute flux density scale in the ATCA observations was set using observations of PKS B1934$``$638 whose flux density is known, relative to sources in the northern hemisphere, with an uncertainty of 2 %.

The parameters of the radio images presented here are in Table 2. PKS B1400$``$33 has an angular size of approximately $`24\mathrm{}\times 14\mathrm{}`$. Assuming that the source is at the distance of the cluster S753, which is 40$`h^1`$ Mpc from the Sun ($`h=H_{}/100`$, where $`H_{}`$ is the Hubble constant in km s-1 Mpc-1), the linear dimensions of the extended source are approximately 280$`h^1`$ kpc $`\times `$ 160$`h^1`$ kpc. The 1.4 GHz radio luminosity of the extended source is $`2.2h^2\times 10^{22}`$ W Hz-1.

## 3 The distribution of the radio spectral index

The radio spectra of the extended emission and of the compact source associated with NGC 5419 are shown in Fig. 5. Apart from the measurements at 330, 843, 1398 and 2378 MHz reported here, the plot includes previous estimates of the flux densities of the compact and extended sources in Goss et al. (1987) as well as our estimates of the 85 and 408 MHz flux densities of the extended source that are based on the measurements made by Mills, Slee and Hill (1960) and Bolton, Gardner and Mackey (1964) and extrapolations of the flux density of NGC 5419 to low frequencies.

The extended radio source PKS B1400$``$33 (not including NGC 5419 and the background source B) has a mean spectral index $`\alpha =2.0`$ between 330 and 1398 MHz. The spectral index appears to steepen to $`\alpha =2.9`$ between 1398 and 2378 MHz; this may be because of missing extended flux density in the 2378 MHz interferometric mosaic image. The 85 MHz data indicates a spectral flattening at low frequencies. Our measurements of the flux density of the compact source associated with NGC 5419 are consistent with previous estimates; the compact source has a spectral index $`\alpha =0.8`$. The compact source B located $`5\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ south of NGC 5419 has $`\alpha =0.8`$ between 843 and 1398 MHz and $`\alpha =1.0`$ between 1398 and 2378 MHz.

The images at 330 and 843 MHz were convolved to a final beam of $`80\mathrm{}`$ FWHM and the distribution of the spectral index, that was computed from these images, is shown in Fig. 6. Effectively, the two images used for computing the spectral index image have the same u,v-coverage. Towards the NE ridge $`\alpha `$ is 1.3-1.4 and towards the SW rim at the opposite end of the diffuse source $`\alpha `$ is 1.6–1.7. In the region between the two rims, $`\alpha `$ is 1.7 towards component C whereas the spectral index is steeper, with $`\alpha `$ in the range 1.8–2.4, over most of the filamentary emission.

Between 1398 and 2378 MHz, the spectral index of the NE ridge is 1.9 and this is steeper than the spectral index between 330 and 843 MHz. Component C, which is detected in both the 1398 and 2378 MHz images, has a spectral index of $`\alpha =1.7`$ at these frequencies, similar to that between 330 and 843 MHz.

## 4 The optical galaxy environment

The 330 MHz radio contours are overlaid on a DSS digitization of the UK Schmidt optical image of the field in Fig. 7. The bright compact radio source is coincident with the galaxy NGC 5419 which is the dominant galaxy of a cluster listed in the supplementary catalog of Abell, Corwin and Olowin (1989) as S753. This is a poor cluster of Abell richness class 0. Willmer et al. (1991) find that the mean harmonic radius (Maia, da Costa and Latham, 1989) of the cluster members is 1.26$`h^1`$ Mpc. This radius corresponds to an angular size of $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}8`$. The extended source PKS B1400$``$33 is located well within the cluster radius; however, the source is offset to one side of the central dominant galaxy. Herein we assume that PKS B1400$``$33 is at the distance of S753. S753 has a high spiral content (45 %) and a low velocity dispersion of 416 km s-1 (Willmer et al., 1991). Using different criteria for cluster membership, Fadda et al. (1996) estimate the cluster internal velocity dispersion to be 536 km s-1.

In the DSS optical image, there are no detectable optical counterparts that are positionally coincident with either the compact radio source $`5\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ to the south of NGC 5419 or the central component C.

## 5 The thermal gaseous environment

The cluster is estimated to have a virial mass of $`1.5\times 10^{14}`$ M (Willmer et al., 1991). Based on the velocity dispersion - temperature relation given by Bird, Mushotzky and Metzler (1995), we estimate that isothermal X-ray gas in the relatively low-depth potential well would have a temperature of 2–3 keV. A 3 ks PSPC pointed observation of the S753 cluster was recovered from the ROSAT archives. We have examined the 0.1–2.4 keV broad-band image of the cluster. There is a bright peak in the X-ray emission at the location of NGC 5419, which might be emission associated with the interstellar medium of the central galaxy or a result of a cooling flow. There is a secondary peak, located about $`3\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$ to the west, that does not appear to be associated with any cluster member. To detect any low surface brightness diffuse X-ray emission (in the presence of the strong unresolved sources), we convolved the $`15\mathrm{}`$ pixel counts on the sky image with a Gaussian of FWHM $`1\mathrm{}`$ followed by a box-car of width $`2\mathrm{}`$. A contour representation of this X-ray image is shown in Fig. 8 overlaid on greyscales of the 330 MHz VLA image. A low surface brightness extended X-ray halo component is observed, centered on NGC 5419, with a radius of $`16\mathrm{}`$ (190$`h^1`$ kpc). The X-ray halo appears to surround the radio source PKS B1400$``$33. There is no evidence in this ROSAT image for any deficit or excess of X-ray emission towards the extended radio source. The X-ray properties of S753 are typical of poor groups (Mulchaey and Zabludoff, 1998), where the X-ray emission is dominated by a component associated with a bright cluster member.

## 6 The anomalously low surface brightness of PKS B1400$``$33

The physical parameters in those powerful FR II radio galaxies and head-tail and wide-angle tail radio sources, which have extended emission structures much bigger than the size of the host galaxy, may be useful probes of the surrounding medium (Feretti, Perola and Fanti, 1992; Subrahmanyan and Saripalli, 1993). The radio structures that are overpressured with respect to the ambient medium expand in the ambient gas with speeds limited by ram pressure; therefore, derivations of the ambient gas properties depend on a knowledge of the expansion speeds. Radio structures with relatively low surface brightness, like the diffuse source PKS B1400$``$33, potentially have the lowest internal energy densities and pressures, and are most likely to be in a static pressure balance with the ambient thermal gas. Therefore, the internal state of such synchrotron plasma might be a direct probe of the surrounding thermal environment.

Subrahmanyan and Saripalli (1993) studied the properties of the synchrotron plasma in the diffuse bridges of the lobes of powerful and giant radio galaxies located in the field. These structures, which lie outside cluster environments and outside the ubiquitous thermal halos of the host ellipticals, are among the lowest surface brightness radio components outside clusters. These giant bridges have 1 GHz surface brightness $`\sigma _{1\mathrm{GHz}}0.2`$ Jy arcmin-2 (Subrahmanyan, Saripalli and Hunstead, 1996) and the pressure inferred for the synchrotron plasma, assuming minimum energy conditions (Miley, 1980), is $`p_e=`$1–2$`\times 10^{14}`$ dyne cm-2. A study of the internal pressures in the low surface brightness tails of tailed radio galaxies in Abell clusters (Feretti, Perola and Fanti, 1992) shows that in cluster environments $`p_e`$ exceeds $`10^{13}`$ dyne cm-2. The higher pressures inferred for the radio galaxies in clusters are consistent with the relatively higher ambient densities and temperatures in the intracluster medium.

Diffuse cluster radio sources, which cannot be identified with any active radio galaxy, have a wide range in their surface brightness and $`p_e`$ in the range $`10^{14}`$$`10^{13}`$ dyne cm-2 (Feretti, 2002). Among these sources, the peripheral relics, like the arcs in A3667 (Röttgering et al., 1997), have $`\sigma _{1\mathrm{GHz}}`$ a factor 10 larger than the giant bridges in the field and in this respect they are similar to the tailed radio sources in cluster environments; however, the peripheral relics have been inferred to have a wide range in their $`p_e`$ (see, for example Feretti and Giovannini (1996)). The lowest surface brightness radio components in cluster environments are the diffuse cluster wide halos. Coma C, a prototypical example of such a halo, has $`\sigma _{1\mathrm{GHz}}3`$ mJy arcmin-2 (Kim et al., 1990) and an inferred $`p_e8\times 10^{15}`$ dyne cm-2 (Giovannini et al., 1993). Other cluster halo sources are inferrred to have a similar low $`p_e10^{14}`$ dyne cm-2 (Feretti and Giovannini, 1996). The extremely low synchrotron plasma pressure inferred for the halo sources appears inconsistent with their location at the centers of rich clusters. This anomaly might be related to the origin of the halo: the diffuse halos are not identified with any currently active galaxy and are, instead, postulated as being reaccelerated relic plasma (Brunetti et al., 2001). The halos are believed to have an origin different from the peripheral relics.

The surface brightness of PKS B1400$``$33 is about 3 mJy arcmin-2 at 1 GHz. If we assume that the cm-wavelength spectrum of PKS B1400$``$33 continues with $`\alpha =2.0`$ to low frequencies, the inferred $`p_e`$ is $`1\times 10^{13}`$ dyne cm-2. However, Mills, Slee and Hill (1960) measured the 85 MHz flux density of the source to be 57 Jy giving the source a mean spectral index of $`\alpha =1.4`$ between 330 and 85 MHz. This indicates that the spectrum has a break somewhere in the range 0.1–0.3 GHz and that the spectral index flattens towards lower frequencies. Assuming a spectral break at 165 MHz with $`\alpha =0.7`$ below the break and $`\alpha =2.0`$ above, we infer $`p_e=5\times 10^{14}`$ dyne cm-2.

PKS B1400$``$33 appears to be in a poor cluster environment, where the ambient gas pressure is probably higher than that surrounding the bridges of giant radio galaxies in the field. The cluster in which PKS B1400$``$33 is located has a relatively low inferred gas temperature, a low X-ray luminosity, and the ambient environment is not as extreme as that in rich clusters. PKS B1400$``$33 has an extremely low surface brightness very similar to that of cluster wide halo sources such as Coma C. However, unlike the halo sources, PKS B1400$``$33 is not centrally located in the cluster. Additionally, halos are almost exclusively found in rich clusters with high velocity dispersions, whereas the cluster environment of PKS B1400$``$33 is poor. The $`p_e`$ in PKS B1400$``$33 is higher than that in giant bridges in the field as well as diffuse halo sources in cluster centers, but it is not as high as that in tailed radio sources in rich clusters. The intermediate value for $`p_e`$ is consistent with PKS B1400$``$33 being a relic in a poor cluster environment; however, the surface brightness is relatively low as compared to typical relics.

Rood #27 (Harris et al., 1993) is another low surface brightness source in a poor galaxy environment. This diffuse source is not obviously identified with any optical galaxy and appears to be a relic. Rood #27 also has an extremely low $`\sigma _{1\mathrm{GHz}}`$ but somewhat higher than that of PKS B1400$``$33; additionally, the spectral index of Rood #27 is close to 0.6 and is not as steep as that of PKS B1400$``$33.

## 7 On the nature of the unusual source PKS B1400$``$33

The extremely steep spectral index (mean $`\alpha =2`$) of PKS B1400$``$33 suggests that the source is composed of relic synchrotron plasma in which energy injection has ceased and, subsequently, the spectral index has steepened as a consequence of synchrotron losses (spectral aging). The steep spectrum indicates that there is no on-going or recent reacceleration. Moreover, the steep spectrum also suggests that the emissivity of this source has not been significantly enhanced as a result of adiabatic compression. PKS B1400$``$33 is likely a relic of a source that was bright in its youth. Extrapolating the measured flux density of 57 Jy at 85 MHz to cm wavelengths using a spectral index of $`\alpha =0.7`$, we infer that the source would have had a 1 GHz flux density at least 10 Jy prior to any losses. The radio power would have exceeded $`4\times 10^{24}`$ W Hz-1 at 1 GHz and PKS B1400$``$33 would have been a powerful radio source.

Our estimate that the diffuse source has a $`p_e`$ in the range 5–10$`\times 10^{14}`$ dyne cm-2 implies that the equipartition magnetic field is 1-2 $`\mu `$G and spectral aging is predominantly via inverse Compton losses against the cosmic microwave background. If we assume that the diffuse source was initially created radiating with a power law spectrum and with spectral index $`\alpha <2`$, and that the electrons with higher Lorentz factors were depleted as a consequence of spectral aging, the spectral break would move below 300 MHz in about $`10^8`$ yr. If, today, the break is at 165 MHz, the source age is $`5\times 10^8`$ yr.

### 7.1 A relic created by NGC 5419?

PKS B1400$``$33 has a radio power $`0.9\times 10^{23}h^2`$ W Hz-1 at 1.4 GHz; before any spectral aging the radio power may have been higher. Luminous ellipticals with absolute magnitudes $`M_R21`$ are usually the hosts of extended radio sources with these high radio powers (Ledlow, 1997). It follows that the host galaxy of PKS B1400$``$33 ought to be a bright elliptical with $`m_R13.5`$ (assuming $`h=0.5`$). 11 E/S0 galaxies listed by Willmer et al. (1991) to be in S753 are of this magnitude and NGC 5419 is the most luminous.

NGC 5419 is a bright radio source suggesting that the central engine in the galactic nucleus is currently active. However, based on Fig. 7, NGC 5419 is located just outside the boundary of the extended source. Moreover, as seen in Figs. 2 and 3, there is an emission gap between the compact source associated with the galaxy and the extended source. Finally, the portion of the extended source closest to the galaxy has a different spectral index ($`\alpha =1.6`$) compared with the compact source ($`\alpha =0.8`$). Additionally, there is no evidence for any spectral index gradient away from NGC 5419.

Nevertheless, it might be that the extended source PKS B1400$``$33 is a relic of past activity in NGC 5419. In this case, the displacement of the extended structure from NGC 5419 could be due to Rayleigh Taylor instability of the light relic synchrotron plasma embedded in a denser X-ray gaseous environment and at the bottom of the cluster potential well (Churazov et al., 2000). Simulations of the rise of such buoyant bubbles (Churazov et al., 2001) indicate that the plasma may initially deform into a torus as it rises and later form pancake-like sheets at altitudes where the densities of the two-phase medium attain equilibrium. The arc-like boundaries of PKS B1400$``$33 might be fragments of such a global toroidal structure viewed in projection. In this scenario, the relatively flatter spectrum component C embedded in the diffuse source might be the past site of nuclear activity.

The ‘ghost’ cavities that are observed in the Perseus cluster (Fabian et al., 2000) and in Abell 2597 (McNamara et al., 2001), are believed to be relic synchrotron bubbles. Buoyancy has been proposed as the mechanism for their displacement from the centers of the clusters. If PKS B1400$``$33 has been displaced from NGC 5419 over the distance of $`r=100h^1`$ kpc by buoyant forces, we would expect the movement to occur over a timescale

$$t_b\sqrt{(\rho _e/\rho _{ICM})\times (r^3/GM(<r))},$$
(1)
where $`\rho _e`$ is the density of the entrained thermal matter, $`\rho _{ICM}`$ is the density of the thermal intra-cluster medium and $`M(<r)`$ is the gravitational mass of the cluster within radius $`r`$. We infer that $`M(<100h^1\mathrm{kpc})7.5\times 10^{10}`$ M from the cluster parameters derived by Willmer et al. (1991) and, consequently, the timescale of the buoyant motion $`t_b<1.6\times 10^9`$ yr. If we assume that the motion takes place in the spectral aging timescale of $`5\times 10^8`$ yr, we infer that the ratio of ambient to entrained thermal material is $`(\rho _{ICM}/\rho _e)10`$.

Alternatively, we consider the possibility that the displacement between PKS B1400$``$33 and NGC 5419 is the result of transverse motion of the galaxy itself. Assuming a timescale of $`5\times 10^8`$ years and a separation $`r=100h^1`$ kpc, the implied transverse velocity is $`190h^1`$ km s-1. This is consistent with the cluster velocity dispersion and with the peculiar radial velocity of NGC 5419 of 184 km s-1 (Willmer et al., 1991). The central component C, which has a relatively flatter spectrum, might be the site where the galaxy was situated when activity in its nucleus created the extended source.

In the above scenario, PKS B1400$``$33 was created in the past owing to nuclear activity in NGC 5419. Subsequently, the activity ceased, and the current nuclear activity in NGC 5419 is a new activity phase. The compact radio source associated with NGC 5419 has a spectral index $`\alpha =0.6`$ that is flatter than that observed in the extended emission; this gradient is consistent with the hypothesis of restarting activity (see, for example, Roettiger et al. (1994)). If the spectral age derived for PKS B1400$``$33 is nearly the true age of the relic source, it follows that the nuclear activity in NGC 5419 has restarted in less than $`5\times 10^8`$ yr. It may be noted that McNamara et al. (2001) derived a timescale of $`10^8`$ yr for recurrent outbursts in the central source of Abell 2597.

### 7.2 Relic synchrotron plasma re-energized by shocks in the ICM?

Clusters of galaxies are believed to be dynamically evolving at the present epoch, accreting mass components and undergoing mergers, which result in ICM gas density discontinuities that are either shock fronts or cold fronts (Forman et al., 2002). Relic radio sources that have been rendered invisible at cm wavelengths owing to synchrotron losses might be present in the intergalactic medium (Ensslin, 1999). Ensslin et al. (1998) have proposed that PKS B1400$``$33 may be relic plasma in which the particles have been reaccelerated by the passage of shocks related to the cluster evolution. In this model, PKS B1400$``$33 may have an origin external to S753.

Steep spectrum relics are preferentially found at the peripheries of relatively rich clusters usually with arc-like morphologies. Examples are the peripheral arc-like source J1324$``$3138 in A3556 (Venturi et al., 1999) and the arcs in A3667 (Röttgering et al., 1997), located on two opposite sides of the cluster center with no detection of any diffuse extended emission between. PKS B1400$``$33 does indeed have edge-brightened arcs; however, in this case there is diffuse filamentary emission between and, additionally, the entire source is on one side of the cluster center.

The morphological peculiarities in this relic might be a result of an unusual projection geometry. However, the parent cluster S753 has a shallow gravitational potential well and the ICM presumably has a relatively low gas pressure. Consequently, relativistic electrons that are distributed over a wider area in the relic plasma may survive radiative losses and be available to be re-energized by a passing shock wave (Ensslin and Brüggen, 2002). The steep spectral index of PKS B1400$``$33 (mean $`\alpha =2`$) implies a relatively low shock compression ratio $`R=2`$; this is consistent with the flatter gravitational potential of the poor cluster. Simulations of the passage of a shock across a hot magnetized bubble (Ensslin and Brüggen, 2002) suggest that the relic may transform into an edge-brightened toroidal geometry. The morphology of PKS B1400$``$33 does suggest such an interpretation if the torus is being viewed almost face on.

Extended halos are usually observed in clusters with a low spiral fraction, large velocity dispersion and high X-ray luminosity. These are the clusters that are expected to have merger histories and large scale shear and turbulence in the ICM and, consequently, halos. However, S753 is a poor cluster and, although it belongs to the Centaurus concentration of galaxies, it shows no evidence for subclustering (Willmer et al., 1991) or any anomalous distribution in the velocities of its members which might be indications of ongoing or past mergers.

As compared to other well studied halos and relic sources (Feretti, 2002), PKS B1400$``$33 has a relatively small linear size and an extremely low radio luminosity. As discussed in section 6, the surface brightness of the source is extremely low, similar to that in cluster halos; however, the inferred $`p_e`$ is more characteristic of cluster relics.

### 7.3 A relic of a lobe injected into the cluster environment?

The radio galaxy phenomenon, in which beams from an active nucleus power extended radio lobes, is believed to be short lived compared to the Hubble time. When the central engine switches off, presumably as the fuel is exhausted, the lobes suffer radiative losses that deplete the more energetic electrons and steepen the spectrum. However, expansion losses, if present, quickly render the synchrotron relic invisible because the radio power drops rapidly: in an expanding synchrotron bubble with a tangled magnetic field, the spectral luminosity falls as $`L_\nu f^{(4\alpha +2)}`$, where $`f`$ is the expansion factor (Leahy, 1991). For this reason, we expect invisible relics to be present in the intergalactic medium (IGM) where the ambient densities and gas pressures may be lowest, and relics may preferentially be visible in a higher density medium where expansion losses are smaller.

A plausible scenario for the origin of a cluster relic like PKS B1400$``$33 would be one in which activity in a galaxy located in the vicinity or boundaries of a cluster produced twin beams, of which one resulted in a radio lobe within the ICM and the other oppositely directed beam resulted in a second lobe outside of the cluster gas and in a relatively lower density IGM. The differences between the environments of the two lobes would be more pronounced if the double radio source is a giant radio source and the activity axis is aligned with a local gradient in the ambient gas density. Following cessation of nuclear activity in the host, the lobe in the IGM would quickly disappear from radio images, while the lobe located in the denser ICM would survive as a steep spectrum relic.

In this scenario, the extended source PKS B1400$``$33 would be one lobe of a relic double radio source. From the viewpoint of such an interpretation, the structure of the radio source (Fig. 1) suggests that the double may have been edge brightened and the NE rim of PKS B1400$``$33 (the region with the flattest spectral index) might be the site of past hotspots and the end of the double source. The low surface brightness filamentary emission trailing towards the SW from this rim could be the relic cocoon of the backflowing plasma. The overall spectral steepening observed from the NE rim towards the SW (see Fig. 6) is consistent with such a hypothesis. The faint protrusion past the rim along the SW boundary (marked P in Fig. 1) might be a relic bridge. We would expect a possible host galaxy to lie towards the SW and along the axis defined by the protrusion; a counterlobe, if it is detectable, may be located beyond that.

To test this hypothesis, we first searched wide-field NVSS and MOST images of this field for a possible counterlobe along the axis defined by the brightest portion of the NE arc and the SW protrusion in Fig. 1. A tentative MOST detection at 843 MHz was followed up with a pointed observation using the $`23\mathrm{}`$ field of view. When smoothed to a resolution of $`2\mathrm{}`$ FWHM, this observation gives marginal evidence for a very extended source ($``$50 arcmin2) with centroid position RA $`13^h59^m30^s`$, DEC $`34\mathrm{°}47\mathrm{}`$ (J2000.0) and an integrated flux density of $`50\pm 12`$ mJy. We then examined the optical field along the same axis for possible host galaxies. A candidate with $`m_B=16.7`$, and classified as S0 by Willmer et al. (1991), was found at RA $`14^h02^m18\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}3`$, DEC $`34\mathrm{°}22\mathrm{}54\mathrm{}`$ (J2000.0); it is marked H in Fig. 7. The peak of PKS B1400$``$33, the location of galaxy H and the peak of the extended source tentatively detected in the MOST observation are collinear within a few degrees.

We subsequently obtained an optical spectrum of galaxy H in the 4000–7700 Å window using the ANU 2.3-m telescope and double-beam spectrograph at Siding Spring Observatory in May 2002. Its redshift, $`z=0.01695\pm 0.0002`$, implies a peculiar velocity of 1090 km s-1 relative to the mean redshift of the cluster. Examining the distribution in galaxy velocities for a magnitude limited sample towards the cluster (see Fig. 4 in Willmer et al. (1991)), we infer that galaxy H is likely to be a member of S753. It lies $`26\mathrm{}`$ from the center of PKS B1400$``$33, implying a projected separation of 300$`h^1`$ kpc at the distance of the cluster. The optical spectrum shows narrow emission lines of H$`\alpha `$, \[N II\] and the \[S II\] doublet; the \[N II\]/H$`\alpha `$ and \[S II\]/H$`\alpha `$ ratios are about 0.25 and 0.22 strongly suggestive of starburst activity (and not emission from an AGN environment).

AGN-type radio activity usually occurs in elliptical galaxies and the probability of such activity is an increasing function of optical luminosity. Samples of extended radio sources show a sharp decline for hosts with $`R`$-band optical luminosity $`M_R21`$ (Ledlow, 1997). On the other hand, in the cluster Abell 428, Ledlow, Owen and Keel (1998) do find a powerful extended radio source 0313$``$192 associated with an $`M_B=19.9`$ disk-dominated host that is most likely an early type spiral (Sa–Sb). The argument against galaxy H being the host of PKS B1400$``$33 is simply that it is even further underluminous, with $`M_B=17.4`$.

## 8 Summary

We have presented new and improved radio images of the relic source PKS B1400$``$33. We have discussed the origin of this relic in the light of recent progress in the understanding of relic synchrotron plasma in cluster environments. The diffuse source has an extremely low surface brightness and a steep spectrum, with radio properties unlike that of relics and halos observed in cluster environments. The unusual morphology, placement in the cluster and physical parameters indicate an unusual origin for this source.

The new data does not represent evidence suggesting that the relic source PKS B1400$``$33 was created by past activity in NGC 5419. Nor do the observations rule out this possibility. The discussions suggest that PKS B1400$``$33 is not a typical relic. The radio properties suggest that if the source was created by processes similar to those that form the relics and halos, we might be observing an extreme form of a relic in a poor cluster environment or, perhaps, a relic of a re-energized relic. We have presented marginal evidence supportive of the hypothesis that the diffuse source PKS B1400$``$33 was born as a lobe of a powerful radio galaxy; however, we do not have a good candidate for the optical host. The source is unusual and the peculiar radio properties might be indicating an unusual origin: we favour the interpretation that the diffuse source is a relic of a lobe injected into the cluster environment as worthy of further consideration, particularly because of the novelty of the proposed phenomenon. Followup low frequency imaging of the field, possibly with the VLA at 74 MHz, with the aim of confirming the MOST detection of a counterlobe and better quality imaging of any low surface brightness connecting features, is proposed as the next step towards understanding the phenomenology in this unusual source.

The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia telescope which is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.


format: text

text:
# Production and Decay of Excited Electrons at the LHC

## 1 Introduction

One of the natural explanations for the existence of the fermionic generations is the compositeness of the known leptons and quarks, sharing common constituents (preons). According to this approach, a quark or lepton might be a bound state of three fermions  or a fermion and a boson . In many models along this line, quarks and leptons are composed of a scalar and a spin-1/2 preon. Composite models  predict a rich spectrum of excited states of known particles. Naturally, in these models spin-1/2 is assigned to the lowest lying radial and orbital excitations. Searching for the spin of the lowest lying fermionic excitations could thus give a rather direct clue to the underlying preon structure. Therefore, it is important to conduct experiments which will probe possible substructure of leptons and quarks and test the variety of preonic models.

Exchange of preons may lead to contact interactions between quarks and leptons. In this sense, it is conceivable that the standard model (SM) is just the low energy limit of a more fundamental theory which is characterized by a large mass scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. The existence of four-fermion contact interactions would be a signal of new physics beyond the SM. If the experimental energy scale is high enough, the nature of this new physics can be probed. It is expected that the next generation of hadron colliders like the LHC which will achieve very high centre of mass energies will extend the search for composite states. In particular, contact interactions may be an important source for excited lepton production at the CERN LHC. Updated lower limits on the scale of compositeness $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are given by the ALEPH Collaboration, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }>6.2`$ TeV  and D0 Collaboration $`\mathrm{\Lambda }>4.2`$ TeV . Lower mass limits for excited lepton mass are given by the ZEUS Collaboration, $`m_e^{}>200`$ GeV and the OPAL Collaboration, $`m_e^{}>306`$ GeV.

In the present study, single production of excited electrons is simulated through contact interactions at LHC energies.

The excited muon production is similar to $`e^{}`$ production at hadron colliders. However, with a good $`e/\mu `$ separation, $`\mu ^{}`$ can be easily detected. But overall statistical significances for $`\mu ^{}`$ should be very similar to an excited electron production case.

This work is a continuation of previous work devoted to the study of the excited quark production with subsequent decay to a quark and photon , a quark and gluon and a quark and $`W/Z`$.

## 2 Effective Lagrangian

In phenomenological models, it is assumed that any theory of compositeness at large mass scale must have a low energy limit that preserves the symmetries of the SM. If quarks and leptons are composite at the energy scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the strong forces binding their constituents induce flavor-diagonal contact interactions, which have significant effects at subprocess energies well below $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Contact interactions between quarks and leptons may appear as the low energy limit of the exchange of heavy particles. At sufficiently high energies excited fermions could be produced directly. They should form weak iso-doublets and carry electromagnetic charges similar to those of the ordinary fermions. We will assume that the excited leptons have spin and isospin 1/2 to limit the number of parameters.

### 2.1 Production of excited electrons

Excited electrons may couple to ordinary quarks via contact interactions resulting from preon interactions. For energies below the compositeness scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, these interactions can be described by an effective four-fermion Lagrangian

$$L_C=\frac{g_{}^2}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}j^\mu j_\mu $$
(1)
with

$$j_\mu =\eta _L\overline{f}_L\gamma _\mu f_L+\eta _L^{}\overline{f}_L^{}\gamma _\mu f_L^{}+\eta _L^{\prime \prime }\overline{f}_L^{}\gamma _\mu f_L+(LR)+h.c.$$
(2)
where the coupling $`g_{}^2=4\pi `$; $`\eta _L`$ and $`\eta _R`$ are coefficients for left-handed and right-handed currents, respectively. Here we assume $`\eta _L=\eta _L^{}=\eta _L^{\prime \prime }=1`$ and $`\eta _R=\eta _R^{}=\eta _R^{\prime \prime }=0`$, for simplicity.

At the CERN LHC pp collider, excited electrons can be produced either singly $`q\overline{q}l\overline{l}^{},l^{}\overline{l}`$ or in pairs $`q\overline{q}l^{}\overline{l}^{}`$ through contact interactions as shown in Fig. 1.

The partonic cross sections for excited electron production through contact interactions are given by

$$\widehat{\sigma }(q\overline{q}l\overline{l}^{},l^{}\overline{l})=\frac{\pi }{6\widehat{s}}\left(\frac{\widehat{s}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}\right)^2\left(1+\frac{v}{3}\right)\left(1\frac{m_{}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)^2\left(1+\frac{m_{}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)$$
(3)
$$\widehat{\sigma }(q\overline{q}l^{}\overline{l}^{})=\frac{\pi \stackrel{~}{v}}{12\widehat{s}}\left(\frac{\widehat{s}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}\right)^2\left(1+\frac{\stackrel{~}{v}^2}{3}\right)$$
(4)
where

$$v=\frac{\widehat{s}m_{}^2}{\widehat{s}+m_{}^2},\stackrel{~}{v}=\left(14\frac{m_{}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)^{1/2}$$
(5)
where $`\widehat{s}`$ denotes the Mandelstam variable for the subprocess, the centre of mass energy.

Cross sections for single and pair production of excited electrons through contact interactions are shown in Fig. 2. Since $`l^{}\overline{l^{}}`$ pair production requires larger centre of mass energy than single $`l\overline{l}^{}`$ production, it is less favored.

Cross section values presented in this paper were calculated using CTEQ5L parton distribution function (PDF). Other PDF’s were tried: GRV94 LO and CTEQ3L differ in their cross-section prediction by about 20% and 30%, respectively. These PDF’s extend slightly the mass reach for excited electrons at the LHC.

One should notice that excited leptons can also be produced via gauge interactions (see the effective Lagrangian in the next subsection). Gauge interactions can give rise to $`\mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}^{}`$, $`\mathrm{}\mathrm{}^{}`$, $`\mathrm{}^{}\nu `$ signatures. The study of such scenario has been done in . However, since those processes involve electromagnetic or electroweak couplings they contribute to less than 1% compared to the excited lepton production rate via contact interactions.

In the same time contact interactions will modify the Drell-Yan(DY) dilepton production process and one should definitively check how big are deviations from the SM . It is important to notice that the sensitivity of the LHC to the compositeness scale in the Drell-Yan channel is very high – for an integrated luminosity of 100 $`fb^1`$, one has $`\mathrm{\Lambda }<30`$ TeV at 5 sigma level limit !

This means that, for the range of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }30`$ TeV we consider here, the signal in the DY channel from contact interactions will be unavoidably large ! Therefore our study should be considered as the study not for the determination of the limits on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (which can be done much better using DY channel) but as the study of the excited electron production at the LHC. One should stress the big complementary role of the DY channel, however, if one would observe signal from the excited electron production, the signal from contact interactions should also be present in DY channel too.

One should notice also that the ”charged current” contact term like $`ud`$ $``$ $`e\nu `$ is not forbidden by $`U(1)\times SU(2)L\times SU(3)`$ symmetry and can give rise to $`l^{}\nu `$ production in contact interactions at the LHC. We do not consider this effective interaction in our study.

### 2.2 Decay via gauge interactions

The effective Lagrangian which describes the transition between excited and ground states via gauge interactions is given by

$$L_G=\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }}\overline{l}_R^{}\sigma ^{\mu \nu }(gf\frac{\tau }{2}W_{\mu \nu }+g^{}f^{}\frac{Y}{2}B_{\mu \nu })l_L+h.c.$$
(6)
where $`W_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`B_{\mu \nu }`$ are the field strength tensors of the SU(2) and U(1) gauge fields with the gauge structure constants $`\tau `$ and $`Y`$, respectively; the factors $`f`$ and $`f^{}`$ describe the effective deviations from the SM coupling constants; $`g`$ and $`g^{}`$ are the corresponding gauge coupling constants. An excited electron can then decay via gauge interactions to a gauge boson and an ordinary lepton.

Here we assume that excited electrons have a mass larger than the $`W`$ and $`Z`$ boson masses and the main decay mode via gauge interaction will be two-body decays (Fig. 3).

The decay widths:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_G(e^{}`$ $``$ $`\gamma e)={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _\gamma }{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_{}^3}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}f_\gamma ^2`$ (7)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_G(e^{}`$ $``$ $`W\nu )={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _W}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_{}^3}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}f_W^2(1{\displaystyle \frac{m_W^2}{m_{}^2}})^2(1+{\displaystyle \frac{m_W^2}{2m_{}^2}})`$ (8)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_G(e^{}`$ $``$ $`Ze)={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _Z}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_{}^3}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}f_Z^2(1{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z^2}{m_{}^2}})^2(1+{\displaystyle \frac{m_Z^2}{2m_{}^2}})`$ (9)
where $`f_\gamma =fT_3+f^{}Y/2,`$ $`f_W=f/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`f_Z=fT_3\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _Wf^{}(Y/2)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W,`$ and $`T_3`$ and $`Y`$ denotes the third component of the weak isospin and hypercharge of $`e^{},`$ respectively. The structure constants are defined as $`\alpha _W=\alpha /\mathrm{sin}\theta _w`$ and $`\alpha _Z=\alpha _W/\mathrm{cos}\theta _w`$, where $`\theta _w`$ is the Weinberg angle. For $`m_{}m_W,m_Z`$ we neglect $`m_W^2/m_{}^2`$ and $`m_Z^2/m_{}^2`$ terms, and the total width for gauge interaction decay can be obtained as follows

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_G(e^{}all)\frac{1}{4}\frac{m_{}^3}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}\left(\alpha _\gamma f_\gamma ^2+\alpha _Wf_W^2+\alpha _Zf_Z^2\right)$$
(10)
where the parameters $`f_\gamma ,f_W`$ and $`f_Z`$ simply reduce to the approximate values -1(0), 0.707(0.707) and -0.269(-0.5) for $`f=f^{}=1`$ ($`f=f^{}=1`$), respectively.

The present analysis will assume $`f=f^{}=1`$, but the results can easily be reinterpreted for different values of these parameters, accounting for the change in branching ratio and intrinsic width.

### 2.3 Decay via contact interactions

The decay width of a fermion via contact interactions ( three-body decay ) is given by

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_C(e^{}e+f\overline{f})=\frac{1}{96\pi }N_CS\frac{m_{}^5}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}$$
(11)
where $`N_C`$ is the number of colours of the fermions ($`N_C=3(1)`$ for quarks(leptons)) and $`S`$ is a factor given by

$`S=1`$ $`for`$ $`f=q,le`$
$`S=2`$ $`for`$ $`f=e`$
We present decay widths and branching ratios for gauge and contact interactions in Table 1, for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=m_{}`$ and for the case when we fix $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ at 6 TeV scale. The choice of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV is motivated by the fact that the case of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=m_{}`$ looks unnatural from the theoretical point of view. The effective energy of the parton-level collision ($`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$) at the LHC is of the order of several TeV. In case $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}>\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ the validity of series expansion of the effective Lagrangian in terms of $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is arguable, at least for $`m_{}`$ values below 1 TeV. With respect to this fact, the choice of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }O(10`$ TeV) is safer and theoretically motivated. Here we will take $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV, corresponding to the ALEPH limit , as a reference.

Although decay by contact interaction dominates for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=m_{}`$, the decay via gauge interactions is proportional to $`m_{}^3/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$, while decay via contact interactions varies as $`m_{}^5/\mathrm{\Lambda }^4`$. Therefore, the relative importance of the decay mediated by contact interactions on the total decay width will be suppressed by the factor $`(m_{}/\mathrm{\Lambda })^2`$. This fact is clearly illustrated in Table 1. One can see that ( contrary to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=m_{}`$ ) in the case $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV the excited electron decay is dominated by gauge interactions up to $`m_{}1.5`$ TeV. However, for $`m_{}3`$ TeV the contribution from contact interactions to the total decay width is dominant and cannot be neglected. Decays by contact interactions yield $`ejj`$ and $`ell`$ final states, but the two jets or the two leptons accompanying the electron do not have the mass of the $`Z`$.

## 3 Simulations and results

Single production of excited electrons and their decays are simulated. The branching ratios in three channels are given in Table 2 as obtained from PYTHIA. The simulations of excited lepton signal and relevant backgrounds were performed with COMPHEP, the COMPHEP-PYTHIA interface and PYTHIA programs chain.

As shown in the previous section, the decay rate of excited leptons via contact interactions is comparable to the one via gauge interaction and can even be the dominant one, contributing up to 92% to the total width ( $`m_{}=6`$ TeV case). Therefore it is very important to consider gauge and contact decays of the excited electron simultaneously. In present version of PYTHIA only gauge decay of the excited fermions is implemented. The use of PYTHIA $`only`$, therefore, for our task would be misleading.

One should also take into account the contact decays of the excited electron and, therefore, apply the proper correction for the gauge decay branching fraction (BF) from PYTHIA. Taking this into account, we have used PYTHIA with proper BF correction to perform decays of excited electrons mediated by gauge interactions, while the consideration of decays of excited leptons via contact interactions were made available with the help of COMPHEP.

The ATLFAST code has been used to take into account the experimental conditions prevailing at LHC for the ATLAS detector. The detector concept and its physics potential have been presented in the Technical Proposal and the Technical Design Report. The ATLFAST program for fast detector simulations accounts for most of the detector features: jet reconstruction in the calorimeters, momentum/energy smearing for leptons and photons, magnetic field effects and missing transverse energy. It provides a list of reconstructed jets, isolated leptons and photons. In most cases, the detector dependent parameters were tuned to values expected for the performance of the ATLAS detector from full simulation.

The electromagnetic calorimeters were used to reconstruct the energy of leptons in cells of dimensions $`\mathrm{\Delta }\eta \times \mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =0.025\times 0.025`$ within the pseudorapidity range $`2.5<\eta <2.5`$; $`\varphi `$ is the azimuthal angle. The electromagnetic energy resolution is given by $`0.1/\sqrt{E}(GeV)0.007`$ over this pseudorapidity ($`\eta `$) region. The electromagnetic showers are identified as leptons when they lie within a cone of radius $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=\sqrt{(\mathrm{\Delta }\eta )^2\times (\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi )^2}=0.2`$ and possess a transverse energy $`E_T>5`$ GeV. Lepton isolation criteria were applied, requiring a distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }R>0.4`$ from other clusters and maximum transverse energy deposition, $`E_T<10`$ GeV, in cells in a cone of radius $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=0.2`$ around the direction of electron emission.

It must be mentioned that standard parametrization in the ATLFAST has been used for the electron resolution but detailed studies are needed, using test beam data and GEANT full simulation to validate the extrapolation of the resolution function to electron energies in the TeV range.

### 3.1 $`e^{}e\gamma `$ Channel

The production cross sections for the excited electrons and backgrounds are given in Tables 3 and 4, respectively.

In order to enrich the event statistics in the region of high invariant masses, simulated background events were generated separately in different regions of the reaction transverse momentum, $`\widehat{p}_T`$.

Several types of backgrounds were selected for comparison with the signal events.

The natural background for the signal process studied is the process $`q\overline{q}`$ $``$ $`Z+\gamma `$, where $`Z`$ decays to two leptons (electron - positron pair) yielding two leptons and a photon in the final state.

Another type of background process is the single production of $`Z`$ plus jet, where $`Z`$ decays to the lepton pair and the additional jet in the event could be misidentified with a photon. However, the photon/jet separation studies done in ATLAS give a jet total rejection of around 900 for jet $`E_T`$ around of 20 GeV at high luminosity ( $`10^{34}cm^2s^1`$ ). It is expected that the rejection factor will be at least as high at higher energies.

Decays of excited electrons produce characteristic event topologies and signatures which allow one to distinguish them from their backgrounds. Due to their large mass, excited electrons would produce events with large transverse energy. We study the event topology of excited electrons in the decay channel $`e^{}e\gamma `$ and apply the selection criteria for both signal and background events.

The following cuts were used to enhance the signal:

* The transverse momentum of leptons was required to be at least 100 GeV.
* Electrons were required to be within pseudorapidity acceptance of the ATLAS tracker and precise calorimetry, i.e. $`|\eta |<2.5`$.

The resulting invariant mass distributions of photon - electron pairs are presented in Fig. 4 for different $`m_{}`$ masses of the excited lepton for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV. The resonances are clearly seen above the combinatorial and other backgrounds. The distributions were normalized to an integrated luminosity of $`L=300`$ fb-1.

The signal significances are defined at each mass point as $`S/\sqrt{B}`$ where $`S`$ and $`B`$ are the number of accepted signal and background events in the selected mass bin width ( $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ ), respectively. For the mass bin width the value was taken equal to $`\pm 2\sigma `$ width of the invariant mass distribution around the excited electron peak. A modest rejection factor of 1000 has been used for jets mistagged as photons to suppress the $`Z+jet`$ background. Achievable mass limits for the excited single electron production are established by requiring that at least 5 events survive the cuts and $`S/\sqrt{B}>5`$.

As can be seen from Table 5, the masses achieved for excited single lepton in the photon and electron decay modes are $`4.0`$ TeV for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV, the couplings $`f=f^{}=1`$ and for an integrated luminosity $`L=300`$ fb-1 at CERN LHC.

### 3.2 $`e^{}Ze`$ / eejj(eeee) channels: combining gauge and contact decays

Here we consider the decay of excited electrons to $`Ze`$ mediated by gauge interactions together with the 3-body decay ($`ell`$, $`ejj`$) of the excited electron mediated by contact interactions. It is natural to treat those decays together since we consider the vector boson decay modes to $`Zee`$ or $`Zqq`$, and the signal consists of four electrons or two jets and two electrons. The decay channel $`Z`$ $``$ $`\mu \mu `$ is expected to give results comparable to $`Z`$ $``$ $`ee`$, but with somewhat worse energy resolution.

We will allow for the possibility that one of the electrons could be outside the acceptance region of the detector or could be lost by some inefficiency of reconstruction.

The dominant backgrounds for the signal process studied when $`Z`$ decays to an electron-positron pair are:

* $`q\overline{q}`$ $``$ $`Z+\gamma `$, where $`Z`$ decays to two leptons (electron - positron pair) yielding two leptons and a photon in the final state. Good rejection of photons in electron reconstruction could help to suppress this source of background.
* $`Z+Z`$ production, where both $`Z`$ decay to an electron and a positron.
* $`W+Z`$ production, where $`Z`$ again decays to an electron and a positron, and $`W`$ decays to an electron and a neutrino.

In the case when $`Z`$ decays to jets the following backgrounds could be relevant:

* $`Z+jet`$ production, where a $`Z`$ decay to an electron and a positron, and additional jet produced by means of the final state radiation mechanism.
* $`Z+Z`$ production, where one of $`Z`$ decays to an electron-positron pair, while the other $`Z`$ decays to jets.
* $`q\overline{q}`$ $``$ $`Z+\gamma `$, where $`Z`$ decays to two jets yielding two jets and a photon in the final state. Again, as in the case of $`Zee`$ decay, good rejection of photons in electron reconstruction could help to suppress this source of background.

The production cross sections for the signal channels and backgrounds are given in Table 6 and Table 7, respectively.

The following cuts were used to separate the signal from background:

* $`eeee`$ final state case

+ The transverse momenta of leptons were required to be at least 60 GeV.
    + Electrons were required to be within pseudorapidity acceptance of the ATLAS tracker and precise calorimetry, i.e. $`|\eta |<2.5`$.
* $`eejj`$ final state case

+ The transverse momenta of jets and leptons were required to be at least 120 GeV.
    + Electrons were required to be within pseudorapidity acceptance of the ATLAS tracker and precise calorimetry, i.e. $`|\eta |<2.5`$.
    + The cosine of the opening angle between an electron and a jet was required to be greater than -0.8.

The resulting invariant mass distributions of three lepton system are presented in Fig. 5 for different $`m_{}`$ masses of the excited lepton. The four electrons with highest $`p_T`$ were selected for the reconstruction. As before, a scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV is taken as reference. A photon/electron rejection factor of 500 has been used to suppress the $`Z+\gamma `$ background. The distributions were normalized to an integrated luminosity of $`L=300`$ fb-1.

For a $`Z`$ boson that decays hadronically, the resulting jets are highly boosted for large values of $`m_{}`$. If the two jets were merged as a single jet, the mass of the excited lepton was reconstructed as the invariant mass of the jet-electron system.

The resulting invariant mass distributions of a lepton and a jet pair are presented in Fig. 6 for different $`m_{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV. The same photon/electron rejection factor of 500 has been used to suppress the $`Z+\gamma `$ background. The distributions were normalized to an integrated luminosity of $`L=300`$ fb-1. For $`m_{}=500`$ GeV we have the peak falling on top of background. However, this is not the problem, since signal to background ratio is about one. So, for the signal which is about the same as the background the problem of understanding of K-factor does not occur. We believe that by the time of LHC, uncertainties for the $`Wjj`$ cross section will be known far better then 50%.

The signal significances are defined at each mass point as $`S/\sqrt{B}`$ where $`S`$ and $`B`$ are the number of accepted signal and background events in the selected mass bin, respectively. Achievable mass limits for the excited single electron production are established by requiring that at least 5 events survive the cuts and $`S/\sqrt{B}>5`$.

As can be seen from Table 8 and Fig. 7, the masses achieved for excited single lepton in the $`Ze`$ decay modes are $`3.0`$ TeV for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV, the couplings $`f=f^{}=1`$ and for an integrated luminosity $`L=300`$ fb-1 at CERN LHC. Due to a low number of events in the signal events sample, we do not present the data for the masses beyond 4 TeV, but with an extended data taking period, this region of masses may also be reachable.

### 3.3 $`e^{}W\nu `$ Channel

The production cross sections for this channel are given in Table 9.

In the subprocesses involving a $`W`$ decaying hadronically, the final state consists of two jets, an electron and a neutrino. An attempt to reconstruct the mass of ($`jj\nu `$) system is presented in Fig. 8 for excited electron masses of 500, 750, 1000, 1250 and 1500 GeV for an integrated luminosity of $`300fb^1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV. The two jets with highest $`p_T`$ were used for the mass reconstruction. Because the reconstructed mass cannot account for the longitudinal missing momentum, a wide distribution is obtained.

The plots were obtained using following cuts:

* The transverse momenta of jets were required to be at least 70 GeV.
* The transverse momentum of electron was required to be 200 GeV within pseudorapidity $`|\eta |<2.5`$ for all excited lepton masses considered.
* It was required to have a reconstructed $`W`$ $``$ $`jj`$ with a mass in the $`7090`$ GeV range in the event to be selected.
* The missing $`p_T`$ cut was required to be 200 GeV.

As can be seen from Fig. 8, signal signatures can be observed for excited electron masses from 500 GeV up to 1000 GeV over the total background.

The second subprocess, when $`W`$ decays to a lepton and a neutrino, gives pairs of leptons and neutrinos. The effective mass reconstruction is very difficult in this case. It requires the evaluation of the neutrino longitudinal momenta, which is impossible without certain kinematical constraints. However, estimating the acceptance and efficiencies at 65% and 20%, respectively, the transverse mass distribution $`m_T=\sqrt{|𝐩_T(e)|^2+|𝐩_T(\mathrm{})+𝐩_T^{miss}|^2}`$ ($`e`$ is the electron recoiling against $`e^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{}`$ is the lepton from $`W`$ decay) should yield an observable excess of events over backgrounds for excited electron masses up to 4.5 TeV. This process could therefore confirm excited electron observation, obtained from others channels.

## 4 Conclusions

In the framework of a composite model of quarks and leptons, sharing common constituents, excited electrons could be produced copiously at CERN LHC. The first indication for the excited electrons could be the production of ordinary leptons at rates much larger than expected in the framework of the SM. Large lepton yields are expected if quarks and leptons share common sub-constituents. Clean signatures are predicted by the large fraction of decays with leptons in the final state, that are a consequence of the uniform coupling among quarks and leptons through contact interactions. We have presented the results of excited single electron production with subsequent decay mediated by gauge and contact interactions. Singly produced excited electrons could be accessible up to a mass of 5 TeV at LHC for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6`$ TeV. For the excited electrons masses decay both contact and gauge interactions plays important role and should be considered together. For comparatively light excited leptons ($`<1`$ TeV) the decays mediated by contact interactions may be considerably suppressed, while for higher masses of excited states the contribution from contact interactions to the total decay width is dominant. The decay channel $`Z`$ $``$ $`\mu \mu `$ is expected to give results comparable to $`Z`$ $``$ $`ee`$, but with somewhat lower energy resolution.

## 5 Acknowledgments

This work has been performed within the ATLAS Collaboration with the help of the simulation framework and tools which are the result of the collaboration-wide efforts. We would like also to thank G. Azuelos, H.Baer, D. Froidevaux, F. Gianotti, I. Hinchliffe, L. Poggioli, L.Reina for their comments about the subject. C.L. and R.M. thank NSERC/Canada for their support.


text:
# An X-ray investigation of the NGC 346 field in the SMC (2) : the field population

## 1 Introduction

The launch of the Chandra satellite provides an opportunity to explore the X-ray sky with a far greater sensitivity and spatial resolution than ever before. In a given field of interest, these characteristics enable the discovery of numerous X-ray sources in addition to the main target(s). Although often regarded as secondary, these sources provide important information which can improve our knowledge of the X-ray emission mechanisms in the Universe.

These serendipitous discoveries also enable us to study the source distribution in galaxies, especially Magellanic dwarf galaxies in our case. Most of the dwarf galaxies studied are at a distance of a few Mpc (e.g. Martin, Kobulnicky, & Heckman 2002), and their X-ray observations only sample the population with LX $`>`$ 1036 erg s-1. On the other hand, the relative closeness of the Magellanic Clouds enable us to probe the X-ray sources with luminosities as low as 1032 erg s-1. Putting together the informations on faint and bright X-ray sources will ultimately lead to a better understanding of this type of galaxies.

We have obtained a deep Chandra observation of the giant H ii region N66 (Henize, 1956), the largest star formation region in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The large number of massive stars and the presence of the remarkable star HD 5980 make the NGC 346 field one of the best opportunities to conduct an investigation of the X-ray domain.

In the first part of this analysis (Nazé et al. 2002, paper I), we have presented the characteristics of the cluster, the star HD 5980 and its close neighborhood. The cluster itself is relatively faint and most of its emission seems correlated with the location of the brightest stars in the core. However, the level of X-ray emission could not be explained solely by the emission from individual stars. The Chandra observation also provides the first X-ray detection of HD 5980. In X-rays, the star, that underwent a LBV-type eruption in 1994, appears very bright, comparable only to the brightest WR stars in the Galaxy. This high luminosity could be explained either by colliding winds in the binary system or by post-eruption effects. Finally, a bright, extended X-ray emission seems to surround this star. It is probably due to a SNR which may or may not be related to HD 5980 itself (see paper I).

In this second paper, we will focus on the other X-ray sources present in the field. First, we will describe in § 2 the observations used in this study. The detected sources, their hardness ratios (HRs), and their spectral characteristics will then be discussed in § 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Next, we will describe the overall properties of the point sources’ population in § 6, present their possible counterparts in § 7 and investigate their variability in § 8. Finally, we will give a summary in § 9.

## 2 The Observations and Data Analysis

### 2.1 X-ray Observations

NGC 346 was observed with Chandra for the XMEGA111http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/xmega/xmega.html consortium on 2001 May 15–16 for 100 ks (98.671 ks effective, ObsID = 1881, JD$``$2 452 045.2). The data were recorded by the ACIS-I0, I1, I2, I3, S2 and S3 CCD chips maintained at a temperature of $`120^{}`$C. The data were taken with a frame time of 3.241s in the faint mode. Our faintest sources have fluxes of about $`6\times 10^{32}`$ erg s-1 (see §6), assuming a distance of 59 kpc for the SMC (Mathewson et al., 1986). More details about the processing of the data can be found in paper I.

For long exposures, removing the afterglow events can adversely affect the science analysis (underestimation of the fluxes, alteration of the spectra and so on, see paper I). We thus computed a new level 2 events file and we will use this new file throughout this paper, except for the source detection, where it is better to use the pipeline level 2 product to avoid mistaking afterglow events for real sources.

Further analysis was performed using the CIAO v2.1.2 software provided by the CXC and also with the FTOOLS tasks. The spectra were analysed and fitted within XSPEC v11.0.1 (Arnaud, 1996). Fig. 1 shows an image of the four ACIS-I chips : numerous point sources and some diffuse emission near HD 5980 can be seen. Fig. 2 presents the superposition of the Chandra data on a DSS image. The ACIS-I field-of-view covers 290 pc$`\times `$ 290 pc, while the size of NGC 346 is 180 pc$`\times `$220 pc (Ye, Turtle, & Kennicutt, 1991). Note that due to their high noise and poor resolution, the ACIS-S data won’t be analysed in details here.

### 2.2 WFI Images

Optical imaging data were acquired as part of a project aiming at the photometric calibration of the Optical Monitor on board the ESA satellite XMM-Newton (Mason et al., 2001). The NGC 346 field was among the selected fields observed by XMM-Newton that were photometrically calibrated on the basis of ground-based observations.

The images of this field were obtained in April 2001 at the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope with the WFI mosaic camera222 The WFI is a joint project between the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPI-A) in Heidelberg (Germany) and the Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte (OAC) in Naples (Italy). For more details, see http://www.ls.eso.org/lasilla/Telescopes/2p2T/E2p2M/WFI/  providing a field of view of $`0.5\times 0.5`$ square degrees. Due to the unfavorable position of the SMC at this period of the year, the seeing was less than perfect but the data quality was still good. The total exposure times were 25 minutes in the $`U`$-band and about 10 minutes in the other bands ($`BVRI`$). The reductions were performed with IRAF and our personal software. Color transformations were done via observations of standard Landolt fields.

## 3 Source Detection and Count Rate

The discrete X-ray sources of the field were first found by running the CIAO wavelet algorithm wavdetect on an unbinned image of each chip. The source detection threshold was set to $`5\times 10^7`$, implying that a maximum of one false source would be detected within each chip. A total of 68 sources were then found: 7 sources in ACIS-I0, 19 sources in ACIS-I1, 16 sources in ACIS-I2, 23 sources in ACIS-I3 and 3 sources in ACIS-S3. As wavdetect is not 100% reliable, a second source detection was also performed. Using statistical thresholds calculated after Gehrels (1986), this second algorithm starts by eliminating all potential point-like sources and iteratively calculates the source-free background which may vary across the field-of-view. Then, using these background value(s), the algorithm detects all events exceeding the given threshold (i.e. 3 sigma in our case), groups them into spatially independent sources (whose separations exceed 2$`\times `$FWHMPSF), and finally, it calculates the centroids of the sources. We searched for significant events on separated soft, medium and hard energy-band images and this second algorithm found 13 additional sources. Five of these sources have less than 10 net photons, and may be spurious detections. We thus decided to discard them. We present in Table 1 the coordinates of the 75 remaining sources, listed by increasing Right Ascension (RA). Fig. 1 shows the sources’ positions on the ACIS-I chips.

Note that HD 5980 is designated Src 41 and that Src 44, belonging most probably to the extended emission, probably does not constitute in itself a distinct point source. One source, Src 31, was ‘detected’ in the emission associated with the NGC 346 cluster. This emission was analysed in paper I and we won’t repeat the discussion here. Some other sources are situated near a CCD gap and their derived properties should therefore be treated with caution.

Table 1 also lists the count rates of each source in the $`0.310.0`$ keV energy band. The count rates were derived using the tool dmextract, from a spatial extraction of counts within a disk centered on the detected source and of radius varying from 2.5″ to 15″, depending of the off-axis angle. The background was extracted in an annulus directly surrounding the source, with the outer radius varying between 5″ and 22″. The analysis of the ACIS-S sources was more difficult due to the high background noise of these CCDs and the poor resolution this far off-axis. wavdetect was particularly confused in this region. For example, it found two close sources at the position of Src 75, whereas there is actually only one source. The second algorithm did a better job, but since the derived properties of any source in this region will not be very reliable, we decide not to analyse further these ACIS-S sources. Note however that Src 73 seems to possess a close neighbor (although this one was not detected by the detection algorithms): a comparison with the PSF expected at this position on the ACIS-S detector confirms that it may not be a single source.

## 4 Hardness Ratios

The properties of the point sources have also been studied using their hardness ratios (HRs). As in Sarazin, Irwin, & Bregman (2001) and Blanton, Sarazin, & Irwin (2001), we have defined $`S`$, $`M`$ and $`H`$ as the count rates in the $`0.31.0`$ keV, $`1.02.0`$ keV and $`2.010.0`$ keV energy bands. We then used these data to compute two HRs: $`H21`$ is defined as $`(MS)/(M+S)`$ and $`H31`$ as $`(HS)/(H+S)`$. For the sources with more than 50 cts (i.e., a minimum count rate of $`5\times 10^4`$ cts s-1), the $`S`$, $`M`$ and $`H`$ count rates are listed with the corresponding HRs in Table 2. Fig. 3 shows $`H31`$ as a function of $`H21`$ for these sources. No supersoft source is present : the HRs extend mainly from $`(0,0)`$ to $`(1,1)`$, with a tight correlation between the two HRs. The rather high HRs of the sources in the NGC 346 field, as compared e.g. to NGC 4697 (Sarazin, Irwin, & Bregman, 2001) and NGC 1553 (Blanton, Sarazin, & Irwin, 2001), can be explained by the larger foreground absorbing column.

## 5 Spectral Fitting

We have extracted the spectra of the detected point sources using the CIAO tool $`psextract`$. Only sources with at least 150 cts were fully analysed. The spectra were binned to reach a minimum of 10 cts per bin. Models were fitted within XSPEC, and we used either a simple absorbed mekal model or an absorbed power-law model, whose properties are summarized in Table 3. Unfortunately, the low Signal-to-Noise of most spectra did not allow us to discriminate between the models, so we have listed the parameters of both models, except if they give unphysical results (e.g. $`kT>>10`$ keV) or a statistically poor fit to the data. If neither model fits the data, other models were tested, and we have listed the parameters of the best one. Unless otherwise stated, the abundances of the mekal models were always fixed to the SMC mean value, $`0.1Z_{}`$.

### 5.1 Absorption Column

To better understand the spectral properties of the point sources, we have tried to estimate the absorption column, $`N(\mathrm{H})`$. We can use two different ways. First, HI surveys provide us direct estimations of the hydrogen column: Schwering & Israel (1991) gives $`4.3\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 for the Galactic $`N(\mathrm{HI})`$ in the direction of the SMC; McGee & Newton (1982) have measured neutral hydrogen columns in the range $`(3.75.3)\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 towards NGC 346 and Israel (1997) quotes $`4.4\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 for $`N(H_2)`$ towards NGC 346. The value of the absorbing column should then be $`N(\mathrm{HI})_{\mathrm{gal}}`$ for sources located in front of the SMC, $`N(\mathrm{HI})_{\mathrm{gal}}+\mathrm{N}(\mathrm{HI})_{\mathrm{NGC}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}346}}+2\mathrm{N}(\mathrm{H}_2)_{\mathrm{NGC}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}346}}`$ for extragalactic sources, and intermediate values for sources within the SMC.

A second estimation of the extinction towards NGC 346 can be made using the reddening, $`E(BV)`$. Massey, Parker & Garmany (1989) measured an average $`E(BV)_{SMC+gal}`$ of 0.14 mag in the cluster, while Schwering & Israel (1991) estimate a Galactic contribution of 0.07 to 0.09 mag towards the SMC. We can convert these values to absorption columns using the gas-to-dust ratios. For the Galaxy, this ratio is estimated to be $`[N(\mathrm{H})/\mathrm{E}(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V})]_{\mathrm{gal}}=5.8\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 mag-1 (Bohlin, Savage, & Drake, 1978). For the SMC, the quoted values are in the range $`[N(\mathrm{H})/\mathrm{E}(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V})]_{\mathrm{SMC}}=(3.78.7)\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 mag-1 (Bouchet et al., 1985; Lequeux et al., 1994; Fitzpatrick, 1985). A range of typical absorption columns towards NGC 346 can then be calculated using the expression $`\left(\left[\frac{N(\mathrm{H})}{E(BV)}\right]_{gal}E(BV)_{gal}+\left[\frac{N(\mathrm{H})}{E(BV)}\right]_{SMC}E(BV)_{346}\right)`$.

We can thus conclude that an absorption column in the $`420\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 range indicates most probably a source in front of NGC 346 but still belonging to the SMC, while a column in the $`26\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 is characteristic of a source situated in the NGC 346 cluster. A column higher than $`10^{22}`$ cm-2 rather suggests an extragalactic source. A histogram of the values of the absorbing columns found in our spectral fits is presented in Fig. 4. It shows that most sources are indeed situated in NGC 346, with only few foreground sources and extragalactic sources.

## 6 Point Source Luminosity Function

We have used the X-ray luminosities of all the point sources detected in the field to construct a luminosity function, which can be compared to the overall luminosity function of the SMC, as well as to other galaxies. We thus first need to estimate the luminosities of the fainter sources on the basis of their count rate only.

To determine the countrate-to-luminosity conversion, we have assumed that all sources lie in the SMC, at a distance of 59 kpc. We further assumed that the data could be well represented by a power law of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=1.6. For the absorbing column, we chose $`N(\mathrm{H})=4\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2, an average of that estimated for sources belonging to the cluster in § 5.1. Note that this arbitrary model appears consistent with a combined spectrum of all sources. For these parameters, $`PIMMS`$333available on http://cxc.harvard.edu/toolkit/pimms.jsp gave us a typical absorbed flux of $`1.4\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 for 1 cts s-1 in the $`0.310.0`$ keV energy band. This leads to a countrate-to-absorbed-luminosity conversion factor of $`5.7\times 10^{36}`$ erg cts-1 (or $`7.7\times 10^{36}`$ erg cts-1 to get unabsorbed luminosities). The derived absorbed luminosities for the sources with $`<`$150 cts are listed in Table 1.

Using this conversion factor, we also derived the unabsorbed luminosities of all sources, including these with known spectral fits, and we constructed the cumulative distribution of the sources as a function of the X-ray luminosity (see Fig. 5). The best fit power law to our data, using a maximum likelihood minimisation algorithm (bayes in Sherpa v 2.3), has an exponent of $`0.84`$ (with a 90% confidence range of $`0.77`$ to $`1.32`$). If we restrict the fit to the brightest luminosities ($`log[L_X^{unabs}]>33.5]`$) - since they are less likely to be affected by incompleteness - , the slope is slightly steeper, $`0.95`$. However, a broken power-law provides a much better fit to the data. Its best fit slopes are $`0.431`$ for $`log[L_X^{unabs}]<33.68]`$ and $`1.06`$ for $`log[L_X^{unabs}]>33.68]`$ (with 90% confidence ranges of $`0.42`$ to $`0.44`$, $`0.95`$ to $`1.18`$, and $`33.60`$ to $`33.77`$ for the two slopes and the break point, respectively). Note that a fit using the unabsorbed luminosities from the spectral analysis for the brightest sources (see Table 3) gave very similar results.

For comparison, Bauer et al. (2001) indicate that the typical trend of the luminosity function for the SMC, M82 and NGC 3256 (all of which are star-forming galaxies of varying size) is $`NL_X^{0.65}`$ for $`L_X>10^{35}`$ erg s-1. The fit suggests that our data present a steeper slope than is seen for the entire SMC at higher luminosities, and also for other star-forming galaxies. But note that our observations are sampling a lower luminosity range than in the other quoted examples. In addition, our luminosity function seems actually rather complex. It presents a rather flat profile at low luminosities. The function then steepens for $`L_X^{unabs}>33.7`$ and flattens again for the highest luminosities ($`L_X^{unabs}>34.5`$).

## 7 Source Identification

### 7.1 Comparison with Previous X-ray Observations

We have compared our source list to the ROSAT catalogs of SMC X-ray sources. Only 15 of the 75 sources were previously detected. We give in Table 4 the correspondence between our sources and those previously detected (Haberl et al., 2000). To be complete, we also quoted in this table the separation between our source and the ROSAT detections, and the 90% confidence error on the position given in the catalog of Haberl et al. (2000).

Of these 15 sources, Src 10, 20, 69, 70, 71, 72 and 74 fall slightly beyond the allowed range of RA and DEC of their ROSAT counterpart444This is also true for the ROSAT sources observed on ACIS-S, but as all parameters derived for these sources are highly uncertain, we will not argue this point further.. Either the quoted errors were underestimated, or there are seven pairs of close transient sources in the field, with one member in a high state and the other in a quiescent state when the ROSAT observation was taken, and then exactly the reverse situation when Chandra took our data. As this possibility is very unlikely, we prefer to accept the identification with the quoted ROSAT sources.

During this comparison, we also found that one previously detected source was clearly missing: \[HFP2000\] 186 (Haberl et al., 2000). \[HFP2000\] 186 (quoted in Simbad with an O7III counterpart even if it is very close to a B-type star, AzV 219555AzV stars come from the catalog by Azzopardi, Vigneau, & Macquet (1975)), is not far from our Src 36, but still at a separation of 56″, to be compared with the quoted positional error on this ROSAT source, 22″. This source may be a transient X-ray binary (XRB). Three other ROSAT sources, \[HFP2000\] 202, \[SHP2000\] 61, and \[SHP2000\] 75 (Haberl et al., 2000; Sasaki, Haberl, & Pietsch, 2000), should be present in the ACIS-S field, but are not clearly detected.

### 7.2 Optical Counterparts

To search for optical counterparts to the ACIS-I sources, we have used the DSS666http://archive.stsci.edu/dss/index.html and MACHO777http://wwwmacho.mcmaster.ca/ databases. In addition, we have also compared the X-ray data to ground-based images taken with the Wide Field Imager (WFI). The limiting magnitudes are $`R17.5`$ mag for the DSS, 20-21 mag for MACHO and $``$21 mag for WFI. Before the comparison with the WFI images, a global shift of 0.3 s in RA and 1.2″ in DEC was first applied to the coordinates of our sources, so that the position of HD 5980 coincides almost perfectly in both datasets.

Next we have defined an optical counterpart as a star lying less than 3″ away from the position of the X-ray source. The results of this search are listed in the last column of Table 1. 32 sources possess at least one counterpart within the chosen 3″ error circle, but some of these counterparts are faint and/or lie just at the 3″ border. On the basis of the crowdeness of the field, we estimate that $``$20% of these identifications may be spurious detections. 15 other sources do not seem to present any counterpart in any of the datasets. The status of the rest of the sources is unclear: they present a faint counterpart in some of the optical images, but not in all of them, so we considered these identifications more dubious than the previous ones. In Table 5, we present the $`UBVRI`$ photometry of the counterparts found in the WFI data, and their separation from the X-ray source (after that the first global shift has been applied, see above). Note that the photometry of stars with $`V>`$ 20 mag is rather uncertain, and has only an indicative value. Fig. 6 shows the color-magnitude diagram of all the sources detected in NGC 346 by the WFI. The majority of the X-ray emitting sources with $`V`$ $`<`$ 20 mag are within the main sequence of NGC 346. A second group contains rather faint ($`V>`$17 mag) and redder stars which probably belongs to the SMC but are not physically associated with the cluster.

Only two counterparts in the field already have a spectral classification: HD 5980 and the star situated at the peak of the cluster’s emission. An estimation of the spectral types of the other counterparts has been made using the WFI photometry, the calibration of Schmidt-Kaler (1982), a distance of 59 kpc and a mean reddening $`E(BV)`$ of 0.14 mag (Massey, Parker & Garmany, 1989). This evaluation is given in the last column of Table 5. The majority of these newly cataloged counterparts seem to present a B spectral type. This result is not totally surprising since (a) X-ray binaries containing a Be star are expected to be moderately strong X-ray sources and to be brighter than in the case of a ‘normal’ B-star companion, and (b) Maeder, Grebel, & Mermilliod (1999) showed that the fraction of Be to B-type stars increases when metallicity decreases. With its low metallicity, the SMC should thus present a large population of Be/X-ray binaries, compared e.g. to the Galaxy, as was already suggested by e.g. Haberl & Sasaki (2000). A large number of the X-ray sources in the field are then probably Be/X-ray binaries. However, accurate spectroscopic observations of these stars are needed to confirm the spectral types and firmly secure this conclusion.

Among the identified sources, the slightly extended X-ray source Src 2 corresponds in fact to a small group of stars, too close to each other to disentangle their individual X-ray emission. Src 4, 6, and 70 are known Be/X-ray binaries (Be/XRBs). We confirm here the previous identifications of Src 6 with \[MA93\] 1038888\[MA93\] stars come from the catalog by Meyssonnier & Azzopardi (1993) (Haberl & Sasaki, 2000) and Src 70 with a “15-16th magnitude star” (Kahabka & Pietsch, 1996). Haberl & Sasaki (2000) found another Be/XRB candidate in our field: \[HFP2000\] 170 (our Src 4). It lies between the emission-line stars AzV 191 and \[MA93\] 1016. The precise position of this source on the ROSAT observations made the association with either star unlikely, and we found that this source correlates well with a faint star situated between these two bright emission-line stars.

## 8 Source Variability

### 8.1 Short-Term Variability

We have searched for short-term X-ray variability in the lightcurves of the brightest point sources (with $`>`$ 50 cts). Using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we found that all lightcurves are consistent with a constant flux at the 95 % confidence level. However, KS tests are not very sensitive, so we have also checked the constancy using a $`\chi ^2`$ test. We have also compared the $`\chi ^2`$ of a constant fit with the $`\chi ^2`$ of a linear fit, to search for any improvement when using a linear fit. With these tests, we have detected a significant variability for Src 4, 6, and 41 (=HD 5980, see paper I). Figs. 7a and b show the lightcurves of Src 4 and 6, respectively. Src 4 and 41 present an increase of the count rate towards the end of the exposure, but the variability of Src 6 seems more complex and may be related to the Be phenomenon (see § 7.2).

Considering even higher frequency variability, Lamb et al. (2002) have detected a period of $``$5 s in Src 69, the brightest point source of the field, which presents $``$6000 cts in 100 ks. On the basis of its luminosity and its soft spectrum, they have proposed it to be an Anomalous X-ray Pulsar (AXP). Using our photometry, we have classified the counterpart as a probable early B star (see Table 5). This suggests that the source is in fact a Be/X-ray binary. From the Porb vs Ppulsar diagram (Corbet, 1986), we then derived an orbital period of $``$25 d for this object.

### 8.2 Long-Term Variability

Long-term variations in the X-ray properties can also be checked by comparing our Chandra data to the ROSAT PSPC observations of the SMC. We have already mentioned (§ 7.1) at least one ROSAT source which was not detected in our Chandra observation. Such variations are indicative of transient sources.

One other transient source was already known in this field: Src 70. Kahabka & Pietsch (1996) reveal that this source is an X-ray binary evolving from $`1.3\times 10^{36}`$ erg s-1 in the high state to $`<4.6\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1 (i.e. undetected by $`ROSAT`$) six months later. In our dataset, this source is in the quiescent state, since its luminosity reaches only $`2\times 10^{34}`$ erg s-1. We have used the ROSAT data to compare the spectral properties of this source during the high and low states. The best fit parameters to the ROSAT observation of Src 70 in the high state are: $`N(\mathrm{H})=0.39_{0.17}^{0.68}\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.82_{1.68}^{4.22}`$. The flux in the $`0.32.0`$ keV band was $`5.03\times 10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in October 1991, two orders of magnitude larger than the flux in the same band in May 2001 ($`6\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1). The variations of the spectrum of Src 70 can be seen in Fig. 8. Such luminosity variations were also observed in other sources, e.g. 2E$`0050.17247`$, but in this last case, the power-law steepened when the source luminosity decreased (Israel et al., 1997). However, if we consider only the Chandra data in the ROSAT energy range ($`0.32.0`$ keV), the fitted slopes of the power-laws are very similar in both datasets; thus we cannot conclude whether the power-law has steepened or not. This X-ray source also possesses a variable counterpart in the visible wavelengths. Fig. 9 shows the MACHO light curve of this counterpart in the blue and red filters, binned to 25 days. Both curves show a long-term increase, superposed on a sinusoidal variation with a period of $``$1300 d. The properties of this interesting varying object are certainly worth further investigation.

We have compared Chandra and ROSAT data in the $`0.32.0`$ keV range for the other bright sources detected by ROSAT. The spectral properties from the ROSAT data of these sources are compatible with the Chandra data within the error bars.

Finally, we note that some of the X-ray sources may possess a variable optical counterpart. From the MACHO database, we downloaded the red and blue lightcurves of the possible counterparts to our X-ray sources. Using a CLEANed algorithm (Roberts, Lehar, & Dreher, 1987), we discovered that some of these sources correspond to long-term variables. They are presented in Table 6, along with the periods found (if any) and their MACHO id. Except for Src 70, no variation was clearly detected for these sources in the X-ray domain, but future X-ray observations could provide additional checks.

## 9 Summary

In this series of articles, we report the analysis of the Chandra data of N66, the largest star formation region of the SMC. In this second article, we have focused on the other sources detected in the field. The X-ray properties of 75 point sources, of which 32 may possess an optical counterpart, have been analysed. Their cumulative luminosity function is steeper than the global one of the SMC at higher luminosities. Using new photometry of the NGC 346 field, we estimate that a large number of the counterparts are B-type stars, suggesting that many of the X-ray sources may be X-ray binaries. Considering their absorption column and the photometry of their counterparts, we also conclude that most of these X-ray sources probably belong to NGC 346. Finally, due to their variability, some of the objects should be monitored in the future, both in the visible and X-ray wavebands.

Support for this work was provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Chandra Award Number GO1-2013Z issued by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-39073. Y.N. acknowledges support from the PRODEX XMM-OM and Integral Projects, contracts P4/05 and P5/36 ‘Pôle d’attraction Interuniversitaire (SSTC-Belgium) and from PPARC for an extended visit to the University of Birmingham. IRS and JMH also acknowledge support from PPARC. AFJM thanks NSERC (Canada) and FCAR (Quebec) for financial aid. This paper utilizes public domain data from the DSS, 2MASS, USNO, GSC, and the MACHO Project. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France and NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service.