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# The First Compact Objects in the Λ-dominated Universe

## 1 Introduction

Present observations of the CMB anisotropies by the BOOMERANG (Netterfield et al., 2002), MAXIMA-1 (Lee et al., 2001), CBI (Padin et al., 2001) and DASI (Pryke et al., 2002) experiments combined with the data from the Supernova project (Riess et al. (1998); Perlmutter et al. (1999)) suggest that although the geometry of the Universe is flat, its matter content is dominated by the vacuum energy or so-called quintessence. The background cosmology has a very strong influence on the structure formation. In this paper we address the formation of first bound objects in the flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology.

The structure formation on both large and small scales has been studied very carefully in the dark matter dominated cosmology, in particular in the flat pure CDM model. This is not so for the vacuum-energy-dominated models, which are of prime relevance according to the above observations. Perhaps one of the most interesting objects to study are the first bound objects in the Universe – the first quasars and the Population III stars that were the first sources of photons after the light of CMB faded away, and ended the ‘Dark Ages’ of the Universe. Some of these calculations were described in a review by Barkana & Loeb (2001). The recent identification of quasars at $`z6`$ in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Fan et al., 2001) strongly motivates such an investigation.

Our code is similar to the one by Thoul & Weinberg (1995) and by Haiman, Thoul & Loeb (1996). We consider the evolution of a single spherically symmetric density perturbation in the early Universe starting soon after recombination until it finally forms a bound stationary object. Our aim here is to extend their analysis, which was restricted to the $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ CDM cosmology, to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe and compare the results with those for the flat, dark matter dominated Universe but with more up-to-date cosmological parameters ($`h=0.72`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.02`$).

We start tracing the initial expansion of the perturbation at high redshift when its density contrast is still in the linear regime. Then we follow decoupling of the perturbation from the Hubble flow and its subsequent collapse and formation of a virialized cloud. We include the gas dynamics and various cooling and heating processes operating in the expanding and collapsing cloud. The chemical evolution of the collapsing primordial gas cloud is also accounted for.

After the initial collapse, a virialized gas cloud is formed. The kinetic energy of the infalling gas is dissipated through shocks and the cloud becomes pressure-supported. We study the further evolution of the cloud which is determined by its ability to cool sufficiently fast. The most important cooling mechanism for low-mass clouds is the radiation of excited H2 molecules. The presence of a small amount of the molecular hydrogen H2 is crucial for triggering the final collapse of such clouds which could form the first luminous object in the Universe.

## 2 Nonlinear evolution of a spherically symmetric density perturbation

A major approximation we use is the assumption of spherical symmetry. This assumption is best justified in the case of first objects formed in the Universe which are supposed to originate from the rare highest fluctuations in the primordial density field (Bardeen et al., 1986). It allows us to focus mainly on gas dynamical processes which are expected to control the collapse of low-mass clouds which are supposed to form the first luminous objects.

The spectrum of density fluctuations has more power on small scales, hence the first nonlinear structures are expected to occur on relatively small scales (Miller et al., 1999). As we are interested in small scales, much lower than the horizon, we use Newtonian gravity and treat the expansion of the Universe as a hydrodynamical flow. To describe the evolution of a spherically symmetric density perturbation in the nonlinear regime we use Lagrangian coordinates. We divide both baryonic and dark matter into concentric shells. The dynamics of primordial matter is given by the equations below.

The continuity equation for baryonic matter reads

$$\frac{dM_b}{dr_b}=4\pi r_b^2\varrho _b,$$
(1)
where $`r_b`$ is the radius of a sphere of mass $`M_b`$. The radial velocity of the surface of this sphere is

$$\frac{dr_b}{dt}=v_b,$$
(2)
and the acceleration satisfies the dynamical equation

$$\frac{dv_b}{dt}=4\pi r_b^2\frac{dp}{dM_b}\frac{GM(r_b)}{r_b^2},$$
(3)
where $`M(r_b)=M_b(r_b)+M_{dm}(r_b)+2(M_{rad}(r_b)M_\mathrm{\Lambda }(r_b)`$) is the total mass within radius $`r_b`$ including the effects of radiation and vacuum energy components of the stress-energy tensor. Two last contributions result from the CMB and cosmological constant components of the energy density of the Universe,

$$M_{rad}(r_b)=\frac{H_0^2}{2G}\mathrm{\Omega }_{rad}(z+1)^4r_b^3$$
(4)
and

$$M_\mathrm{\Lambda }(r_b)=\frac{H_0^2}{2G}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }r_b^3,$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{rad}=8\pi GaT_{CMB}^{}{}_{}{}^{4}/(3H_0^2c^2)`$ is the present contribution of the CMB to the total energy density of the Universe in terms of the critical density. Although, as we have shown in (Stachniewicz & Kutschera, 2001), at least the radiation component is not negligible, both dark energy and radiation terms are not very important.

The energy conservation condition for baryonic matter reads

$$\frac{du}{dt}=\frac{p}{\varrho _b^2}\frac{d\varrho _b}{dt}+\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}}{\varrho _b},$$
(6)
where $`u`$ is the internal energy per unit mass, $`p`$ is the pressure and $`\varrho _b`$ is the baryon density. The last term in the eq.(6) describes cooling/heating of the gas, with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}`$ being the energy emission (absorption) rate per unit volume.

We use the equation of state of the ideal gas

$$p=(\gamma 1)\varrho _bu,$$
(7)
where $`\gamma =5/3`$, as the primordial baryonic matter after recombination is assumed to be composed of monoatomic hydrogen and helium with a small (but very important) admixture of molecular hydrogen H2.

Dynamics of dark matter is simpler, as we assume it to be collisionless. The continuity equation is

$$\frac{dM_{dm}}{dr_{dm}}=4\pi r_{dm}^2\varrho _{dm},$$
(8)
where $`r_{dm}`$ is the radius of dark matter sphere of mass $`M_{dm}`$. The radial velocity of this sphere is

$$\frac{dr_{dm}}{dt}=v_{dm},$$
(9)
and the acceleration reads

$$\frac{dv_{dm}}{dt}=\frac{GM(r_{dm})}{r_{dm}^2}.$$
(10)
To solve the above equations we must specify the cooling/heating function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}`$ and the the initial conditions.

## 3 Initial conditions

Let us begin with the initial conditions. We start to follow the evolution of the perturbation soon after the recombination at a sufficiently high redshift that the perturbation is still in the linear regime. We choose the initial redshift to be $`z_i=500`$ like in Haiman et al. (1996).

We apply the initial density profiles in the form of a single spherical Fourier mode used also by Haiman et al. (1996)

$$\varrho _i(r)=\mathrm{\Omega }_i\varrho _c(1+\delta _i\frac{\mathrm{sin}kr}{kr}),$$
(11)
where $`i=b,dm`$ and $`\varrho _c`$ is the critical density of the Universe, $`\varrho _c=3H^2/8\pi G`$ with $`H`$ being the actual value of the Hubble parameter. The quantities $`\delta _b`$ and $`\delta _{dm}`$ measure, respectively, the baryon and dark matter density enhancement with respect to the mean densities $`\overline{\varrho }_b=\mathrm{\Omega }_b\varrho _c`$ and $`\overline{\varrho }_{dm}=\mathrm{\Omega }_{dm}\varrho _c`$.

For this profile there exist two distinguished values of the radius, $`R_0`$ and $`R_z`$ which correspond, respectively, to the first zero and the first minimum of the function $`\mathrm{sin}(kr)/kr`$. They are shown in Fig. 1.

Inside the sphere of radius $`R_0=\pi /k`$ which contains mass $`M_0`$, the local density contrast is positive. The mass $`M_0`$ and the radius $`R_0`$ will be referred to as the cloud mass and the cloud radius, respectively. The local density contrast is negative for $`R_z>r>R_0`$, with the average density contrast vanishing for the sphere of radius $`R_z=4.49341/k`$ with the mass $`M_z`$. According to the gravitational instability theory in the expanding Universe, the shell of radius $`R_z`$ will expand together with the Hubble flow not suffering any additional deceleration. This is why we regard this profile as very convenient in numerical simulations because it eliminates numerical edge effects and mentioned shell simply follows the Hubble expansion of the Universe. It can thus be regarded as the boundary of the perturbation and the mass $`M_z`$ will be referred to as the bound mass.

It is worth to note that for radii not greater than $`3/4R_0`$ this profile is very similar to the Gaussian profile

$$\varrho _i(r)=\mathrm{\Omega }_i\varrho _c\left[1+\delta _i\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r^2}{2R_f^2}\right)\right]$$
(12)
with $`R_f=1/2R_0`$. Both profiles are compared in Fig. 2.

As the initial velocity we use the Hubble velocity for baryon matter,

$$v_b(r)=Hr,$$
(13)
whereas for dark matter the initial velocity is (Haiman et al., 1996)

$$v_{dm}(r)=Hr(1\frac{1}{3}<\delta _{dm}>_r).$$
(14)
The expression in brackets indicates averaging over the sphere of radius r. Slower expansion of dark matter at $`z_i=500`$ results from the fact that the dark matter perturbations start to grow earlier than do the baryon matter ones.

Finally, the amplitudes of baryon and dark matter perturbations, $`\delta _b`$ and $`\delta _{dm}`$ should be specified. To do so one should use the power spectrum corresponding to the initial redshift $`z_i=500`$ that provides rms density fluctuations at a given mass $`M_0`$. For Cold Dark Matter model we use transfer functions calculated using the CMBFAST program by Seljak & Zaldarriaga (1996). The actual value of the rms density fluctuation is equal to

$$\sigma (R,z)=\sqrt{\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{dk}{k}P(k)\stackrel{~}{W}(k,R)^2}$$
(15)
where $`P(k)=4\pi d_{norm}^2100k^n0.05^{1n}k^3t_f(k,z)^2`$. The value of normalization constant $`d_{norm}^2`$ may be also obtained from the CMBFAST program.

The rms fluctuation $`\sigma (R,z)`$ depends on the shape of the window over which the density is averaged. However, this dependence is quite weak. In the table 1 we list some values for $`z=500`$ obtained by applying this formula to the transfer function and COBE-normalized normalization obtained from CMBFAST to the Gaussian profile of filter radius $`R_f=1/2R_0`$. Instead of $`R_f`$, we use M0 which is equal to the total baryonic mass within a sphere of the radius R0.

It is worth to note that these results are not much different from the results obtained by applying the fit by Eisenstein & Hu (1999). However, our results are systematically greater by about 23-24% for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated model and by about 7-10% for the pure CDM model. Probably it is due to the fact that the mentioned fit is less accurate for larger redshifts (especially for $`z>30`$) and greater $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b/\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ ratios.

As the baryon density perturbations start to grow only after the recombination, we have decided to set its initial value to $`\delta _{b,i}=0.1\delta _{dm,i}`$ (Haiman et al., 1996). Let us note that CMBFAST predicts $`\delta _{b,i}`$ to be about $`0.2\delta _{dm,i}`$ in both $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and dark matter dominated models. However, as we have shown in Stachniewicz & Kutschera (2001), if $`\delta _{b,i}/\delta _{dm,i}`$ is 0.2 or less the results are pretty much insensitive to this ratio, runs with its values equal to 0.2, 0.1 and 0.0 were almost indistinguishible.

## 4 Baryonic matter components, chemical reactions and thermal effects

To specify the cooling/heating function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}`$ in Eq.(6) one should include all relevant thermal and chemical processes in the primordial gas. There are many papers discussing the most important contributions to the function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}`$ – see e.g. Katz, Weinberg, Hernquist (1996). All formulas may be found in Stachniewicz & Kutschera (2001).

The primordial gas consists of neutral atoms and molecules, ions and free electrons. In this paper we have taken into account nine species: H, H-, H+, He, He+, He++, H2, H$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{2}{}^{}`$ and e-. Some authors (e.g. Galli & Palla (1998)) include also deuterium and lithium.

The abundance of various species can, generally, change with time as the chemical reactions between species occur and the ionization and dissociation photoprocesses take place in the hot gas. The chemical reactions include such processes as e.g. the ionization of hydrogen and helium by electrons, the recombination of ions with electrons, the formation of negative hydrogen ions, the formation of H2 molecules, etc. The full list of relevant chemical reactions is given in Stachniewicz & Kutschera (2001). Photoprocesses include ionization of neutral hydrogen H, helium He and He+ by photons, and dissociation of negative hydrogen ions H- and H2 molecules by photons.

Time evolution of the number density of the component $`n_i`$ is described by the kinetic equation:

$$\frac{dn_i}{dt}=\underset{l=1}{\overset{9}{}}\underset{m=1}{\overset{9}{}}a_{lmi}k_{lm}n_ln_m+\underset{j=1}{\overset{9}{}}b_{ji}\kappa _jn_j.$$
(16)
The first component on the right-hand side of this equation describes the chemical reactions and the other one describes photoionization and photodissociation processes. The coefficients $`k_{lm}`$ are reaction rates, the quantities $`\kappa _n`$ are photoionization or photodissociation rates and $`a_{lmi}`$ and $`b_{ji}`$ are numbers equal to 0, $`\pm 1`$ or $`\pm 2`$ depending on the reaction. All the reaction rates, photoionization and photodissociation rates are given in Stachniewicz & Kutschera (2001).

The cooling (heating) function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}`$ includes emissivities (absorption rates) due to such processes as the collisional ionization of H, He and He+, recombination to H, He and He+, the collisional excitation of H and He+, Bremsstrahlung, the Compton cooling and the cooling by deexcitation of H2 molecules. The formulae for the heating/cooling contributions of various processes are given in Stachniewicz & Kutschera (2001).

## 5 Numerical code and initial conditions

The dynamical equations (1)-(10) are solved numerically. At each timestep also the chemical composition of the gas is updated by solving Eq.(16) and the appropriate value of the cooling function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{cool}`$ is calculated. We based our numerical code on the code described by Thoul & Weinberg (1995), which is the standard, second-order accurate, Lagrangian finite-difference scheme. Details of the code are described in Stachniewicz & Kutschera (2001).

We handle timesteps and central boundary conditions in the way proposed by Thoul and Weinberg Thoul & Weinberg (1995). For dark matter, we treat the center as a hard sphere of some ”small” radius $`r_c`$. In order not to affect the results of calculations the value of $`r_c`$ should be much less than any other characteristic radius in the problem but it should not be too small because smaller $`r_c`$ means worse energy conservation and longer computation time. We have chosen $`r_c`$ equal to the initial radius of the most innermost dark matter shell. For the baryonic component, if a shell falls below $`r_c`$ we assume that it has ‘collapsed’ and fix its radius, temperature and chemical composition.

In the collapse of baryon matter one encounters the formation of shocks. In our code shocks are treated with the artificial viscosity technique (Richtmyer & Morton, 1967).

It is worth to mention that set of equations 16 is very stiff and may require very small timesteps. To deal with this problem we follow Haiman et al. (1996) and we used the STIFBS routine from Press et al. (1996).

We have performed two sets of calculations, for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.02`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.35`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.65`$) and for the pure CDM model ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.02`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=1.0`$), with $`h=0.72`$ in both cases. We started our calculations at $`z=500`$. The initial gas temperature and chemical composition were obtained by running our own program that starts at $`z=10000`$ with equilibrium values and ends at a required redshift. We have compared its predictions to the results of Galli & Palla (1998) and the differences were not greater than 10%. One should note note that these authors have included more species (e.g. deuterium and lithium) and some of their reaction rates were slightly different. The difference between the temperatures of the baryonic gas and the CBR turned out to be lower than 1% at $`z=500`$.

For the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated model we have performed runs with cloud masses M0 from 2000 to 105 M, for the pure CDM model cloud masses were between 500 and 5000 M. For each cloud mass we have chosen a few values of the initial dark matter overdensity between 0.07 and 0.40, depending on the mass.

We have divided the baryonic component to 200 concentric shells of equal mass, the dark matter component was divided to 1000 equal mass shells. It turned out to be enough – in Fig. 3 we compare the calculated amount of virialized and collapsed mass for the same initial conditions and three different runs: with 200 baryonic and 1000 dark matter shells, 200 baryonic and 2000 dark matter shells and, finally, with 400 baryonic and 2000 dark matter shells. The results are the same within our numerical accuracy.

## 6 Results

We expect that there will be a significant difference between the low-mass structure formation in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM and the Standard CDM models. The main reason is that the rms fluctuations in the dark energy dominated model are about 2.5-2.7 times lower than in the Standard CDM model (table 1). The other one is that in the Standard CDM the average matter density is equal to the critical density so any overdensity would eventually stop its expansion and collapse. In the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM the matter density is lower, so there is some threshold overdensity necessary for recollapse. Any given overdensity would collapse slower (if at all) than in Standard CDM. It means that in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe there would be much less luminous objects at large redshifts and the first ones would appear much later as compared to the dark matter dominated Universe. In addition, we may expect that the masses of the first collapsed objects would be greater.

The behaviour of dark matter shells plays the crucial role in the cloud collapse as there is much more dark matter than the baryonic matter. By assumption, dark matter is collisionless, so there is no energy loss mechanism apart from possible gravitational energy exchange. The evolution of the dark matter shells in the absence of baryonic matter is that their radii increase to some maximal value, then the shells collapse and after some oscillations due to bounces off the artificial hard sphere the dark matter cloud becomes stationary. In the presence of baryonic matter the behaviour of dark matter shells is similar because the amount of baryonic matter is much lower than the amount of dark matter. The difference is that the average radius of a dark matter shell slowly decreases.

The behaviour of baryon matter shells is that after reaching maximum radii, the shells collapse and the shock develops at some stage due to pressure crowding of neighbouring shells (Haiman et al., 1996). The shock stops the collapse and the baryon shells virialize. Then if the clouds have a sufficient temperature and density for efficient cooling, they can undergo the final collapse.

We assume that the shell has ‘virialized’ if the mean density inside the shell exceeds $`18\pi ^2`$ times the actual mean baryon density of the Universe. This value was calculated for the top-hat overdensities in the Einstein-de Sitter model but, however, Bryan & Norman (1998) have shown that in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models the dependence on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ is not very strong. Of course, this criterion depends on the redshift. For a virialized baryonic shell its radius and density are roughly constant but the mean matter density of the Universe decreases so the overdensity increases. This means that overdensity is not a good criterion of the collapse – we need to take something related to the actual size of the object. We have decided to assume that a shell has ‘collapsed’ if its radius falls below some ‘small’ value, in our case: the initial radius of the cloud $`R_0`$.

The results of our calculations are displayed in Figs. 48. Perhaps the most interesting are plots that show the evolution of the amount of the collapsed baryonic mass for various cloud masses and initial overdensities. Figs. 4 a-d show the fraction of the cloud mass that meets the collapse criterion at a given redshift for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe. Similar plots for the dark matter dominated Universe are shown in Figs. 5 a-d.

If there is a line that is described but cannot be found on a plot it means that for this overdensity no baryonic shell has collapsed before $`z=8`$.

The results confirmed our expectations. In the dark energy dominated Universe initial clouds need greater mass and larger initial overdensities in order to at least partially collapse before $`z=8`$. If we restrict ourselves to clouds of $`z=500`$ DM overdensities not greater than 0.4, the minimal mass needed for at least partial collapse before $`z=8`$ is 3000 M (Fig. 4 b). For $`M=2000M_{}`$ and $`\delta _{dm,i}=0.4`$ the fraction of the collapsed mass is on order two percent (Fig. 4 a). One should remember that for these cloud masses the rms fluctuations at $`z=500`$ are about 0.05 so overdensities equal to 0.4 represent $`8\sigma `$ peaks, which are extremely unlikely. For the dark matter dominated Universe, the minimal cloud mass is about 500 M (Fig. 5 a) – for the initial overdensity equal to 0.4 (the rms overdensity is about 0.14) about 9% of the cloud mass may collapse before $`z=8`$.

If we look at higher masses, the collapse becomes easier and easier, threshold initial overdensities for partial collapse before $`z=8`$ fall much faster than the rms overdensities. However, for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe and cloud masses not greater than 104 M the clouds need overdensities larger than $`3\sigma `$ in order to at least partially collapse – unlike in the flat CDM model. For greater baryonic masses the collapse is a bit more likely but even for 105 M (Fig. 4 d) they need at least 2 $`\sigma `$ to start their collapse before $`z=8`$.

Fig. 6 shows approximately the redshift when the most innermost shell has collapsed for various masses and $`3\sigma `$ overdensities in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM Universe and for $`2\sigma `$ overdensities in the flat CDM Universe.

In Figs. 7 a-d we compare the evolution of dark matter shells and baryon matter shells of the cloud with mass $`M_0=5000M_{}`$, for the dark energy and dark matter dominated Universes. The values of initial dark matter density enhancements are, respectively, $`\delta _{dm,i}=0.30`$ and $`\delta _{dm,i}=0.20`$.

The shells shown on the plots enclose $`7\%`$, $`17\%,27\%,\mathrm{},97\%`$ of the bound mass. This fractional division of mass applies to both dark matter and baryon matter shells. It applies also to the Fig. 8 (plots a and b) that show thermal evolution of gas shells.

The behaviour of both baryonic and dark components is quite typical, very similar to the results of Haiman et al. (1996) and our previous work (Stachniewicz & Kutschera, 2001). Dark matter shells expand to some maximum radius, then recollapse to about a half of this value and then very slowly contract. In our calculations the behaviour of dark matter is quite independent of the cloud mass – however, the position and the value of the maximal radius depend on the initial overdensity. In contrast, the behaviour of baryon matter shells strongly depends on the cloud mass and initial overdensity. Of course, higher masses and overdensities cause faster and more violent final collapse.

In Figs. 8 a and b we show the temperature of shells as a function of redshift. The curves indicating temperatures of baryonic shells behave in an opposite way than the radii of baryonic shells. The temperature falls during expansion and increases in the collapse phase. After virialization the temperature remains roughly constant until it starts to fall quite rapidly during the final collapse. These figures show that virial temperatures in Standard CDM are higher than in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM for objects of the same mass: even though for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cloud initial overdensity was higher (0.3 compared with 0.2), virial temperatures of its shells were about two times smaller. We also have noticed that in both cosmological models shells that undego the final collapse must reach some critical temperature. For $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM it is about 500 K while for Standard CDM it is about 450 K and it is quite independent on the mass of the cloud. Shells at lower temperatures do not collapse before $`z=8`$.

The abundance (by mass) of various species as a function of redshift is shown in Figs. 8 c and d. The results correspond to the shell of mass $`M=0.12M_z`$ of the same cloud as in Figs. 7 and 8 a, b. One can notice the increase of the amount of H2 molecules at later redshift when the shell collapses. This makes H2 cooling more efficient, triggering the final collapse of inner shells.

In Figs. 9 a-f we show plots similar to Fig. 7 but normalized to the maximum radius R0 and time of the turnaround t0 for $`M_0=5\times 10^3M_{}`$, $`\delta _{dm,i}=0.30`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe (plots a, c and e) and for $`M_0=5\times 10^3M_{}`$, $`\delta _{dm,i}=0.25`$ for the CDM-dominated Universe (plots b, d and f) with cooling, without H2 cooling and without any cooling or heating (including photoionization). While plots with no cooling/heating (e and f) and no H2 cooling (c and d) are almost self-similar for different shells (the difference in final radii is probably due to different mean initial overdensity for each shell) and similar to those predicted by Bertschinger (Bertschinger, 1985), plots with cooling are self-similar and Bertschinger-like up to virialization only. It also shows that H2 cooling is necessary to collapse before $`z=8`$.

## 7 Conclusions

For the dark energy dominated Universe we need very large overdensities, usually much exceeding the 3$`\sigma `$ limit, for low-mass ($`M_010^5M_{}`$) objects in order to at least partially collapse before $`z=8`$. For the flat, dark matter dominated Universe the collapse is much faster and direct formation of a low-mass object is quite likely, even as soon as for $`z2030`$. It is a result of much lower normalization in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM (Table 1) and lower virial temperatures for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM clouds of the same mass and initial overdensity. A secondary reason may be that in the flat CDM model any overdensity will stop its evolution and possibly cool and collapse while for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M<1`$ there is some threshold overdensity that depends on the model and epoch. The chemical evolution is pretty much insensitive to cosmology, at least before the final collapse. In the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated Universe perhaps low-mass objects may form through fragmentation of greater objects. Direct formation of such objects before $`z10`$ seems unlikely.


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# Dark matter within high surface brightness spiral galaxies

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Much evidence has accumulated in recent years that the stellar disks of high surface brightness spiral galaxies dominate the mass budget of the inner regions. Most of the studies arguing for a maximal disk scenario, are based on the detailed analysis of high resolution rotation curve measurements (Blais-Ouellette et al., 1999; Palunas & Williams, 2000; Ratnam & Salucci, 2000; Salucci, 2001). These studies, however, generally derive the rotational support of the stellar disk from an axisymmetric disk mass model and allow no consideration of non-circular rotation components. More sophisticated modelling strategies have been applied to spiral galaxies with variable significance (Erickson, Gottesman, & Hunter, 1999; Pignatelli et al., 2001). For the most part those studies also support heavy disks for high surface brightness galaxies, but they also find candidates for which lower disk mass fractions are more likely. The most convincing direct arguments for the maximal disk scenario come from the studies of strong bars in spiral galaxies. These features induce a strong dynamic trace in the velocity field and provide a good laboratory for estimating the stellar mass component. Based on fluid dynamic modelling, a maximal disk solution is found by Englmaier & Gerhard (1999) for the Milky Way and by Weiner, Sellwood, & Williams (2001) for NGC 4123. Furthermore, theoretical considerations hint for the requirement of a non-massive halo contribution in the central regions of strongly barred galaxies with a very cold disk, because otherwise dynamical friction would slow down the bar very quickly, leading to its destruction Debattista & Sellwood (1998, 2000). On the other hand, for initially hotter disks, this effect is largely reduced Athanassoula (2002) and references therein.

However, there is also evidence that even high surface brightness spiral galaxies might be dominated by the dark matter mass component in their central disk regions as suggested by high resolution simulations of cosmological dark matter halos (Moore et al., 1999a; Ghigna et al., 2000; Fukushige & Makino, 2001, e.g.). Bottema (1997) inferred from stellar velocity dispersions in spiral galaxy disks that a more massive halo component is needed to explain the findings. There are recent studies that argue for lighter disk models by making use of previously hardly exploited relations. Courteau & Rix (1999) applied a statistical Tully-Fisher relation analysis to a large sample of galaxies trying to relate the maximal rotation velocity of a galaxy to its disk size. Maller, Simard, & Guhathakurta (2000), and more recently Trott & Webster (2002) used the geometry of gravitationally lensed systems to disentangle the effects of the stellar disk and the halo masses. These groups found that the dark halo also dynamically plays an important role in the galaxies’ inner regions.

In the present study, we quantify the relative mass fractions of the stellar disk and the inner dark halo by analyzing the non-axisymmetric force component in the gravitational force field that arises in response to the spiral structure of the observable stellar mass distribution. We address this issue by exploring the influence of the spiral arms on the gas velocity field that builds up in response to the total gravitational potential of the galaxy. We model the gravitational potential from a mass map of the stellar distribution and a dark halo model. With the use of hydrodynamical gas simulations, we predict the gas velocity fields for different empirical mass models of the sample galaxies, assembled from a variety of stellar disk and dark matter mass components. The two parameters that dominate the resulting forces in the disk are the stellar disk mass contribution and the pattern speed of the stellar spiral, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{p}`$. Thus, in this study we explore the effects of those parameters and compare the simulated gas morphology and velocity wiggles with our observations, enabling the identification of the best fitting scenario for each individual galaxy. Comparable studies have been applied to barred spiral galaxies taking advantage of the strong dynamical trace of the bar in the velocity field (Weiner, Sellwood, & Williams, 2001).

First results from our study have been presented already in Kranz, Slyz, & Rix (2001), (hereafter, KSR01) for NGC 4254 where it was proven that this strategy yields valuable information which allows us to constrain disk and halo fractions also for spiral galaxies without a strong bar. In the present paper we only briefly discuss the modelling and comparison strategies involved (Section 2) but instead focus on the conclusions of the analysis. More details about the modelling issues can be found in KSR01, Slyz, Kranz, & Rix (2003) and Kranz (2002).

## 2 OBSERVING AND MODELLING THE SAMPLE GALAXIES

For the studied galaxies we collected near-infrared (NIR) photometry as the basis to study the luminous mass distribution and gas emission line (H$`\alpha `$) spectroscopy to acquire kinematic information for the systems. The NIR images were taken during two observing runs in May 1999 and March 2000 with the Omega Prime camera at the Calar Alto 3.5 m’s prime focus (Bizenberger et al., 1998). It provides a field of view of 6$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$76 $`\times `$ 6$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$76 with a resolution of 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$3961 per pixel. We used the K′filter which has a central wavelength of 2.12 ¯m. We obtained the gas kinematics from longslit spectroscopy measurements of the H$`\alpha `$ emission. With the setup we used, the TWIN spectrograph that is located at the cassegrain focus of the Calar Alto 3.5 m telescope achieved a spectral resolution of 0.54 Å per detector pixel, which translates to $`24.8\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ LOS-velocity resolution per pixel, allowing us to determine LOS-velocities with $`7\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ precision. We sampled the velocity field of the galaxy along 14 or 16 slit position angles. The slit of the TWIN spectrograph measures 4′$`\times `$ 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5 on the sky. The spectra were obtained during three observing runs in June 1999, May and December 2000.

The modelling procedure involved four separate steps. First, a stellar mass map had to be derived for each galaxy from the NIR images, as the basis to calculate the gravitational disk potential. Then, a parameterized dark matter component had to be added to the stellar mass component, constrained to render the observed rotation curve of the galaxy. In a third step we carried out two-dimensional hydrodynamical gas simulations in these gravitational potentials, modelling the gas density distribution and the gas velocity field. Finally, these models needed to be compared to the observations to draw conclusions about the galaxies’ structure. This detailed analysis was performed for the four galaxies NGC 3810 (catalog ), NGC 3893 (catalog ), NGC 5676 (catalog ) and NGC 6643 (catalog ), following KSR01. We included NGC 4254 (catalog ) in the final analysis, which was published in KSR01.

### 2.1 Constructing the stellar mass maps

For the first step, converting the stellar light map into a stellar surface mass map of unknown stellar M/L, we used color-corrected NIR photometry, applying a correction recipe provided by Bell & de Jong (2001). Bell & de Jong showed, based on population synthesis models and the assumption of a universal initial mass function, that a galaxy’s color is tightly correlated to its mass-to-light ratio. This applies to a galaxy’s global color as well as to local colors, and is approximately true, regardless of whether the color changes are due to dust, age, or metallicity differences. The color–M/L relation can be employed to improve the estimate of the stellar surface mass density distribution, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{}`$, of galaxies taken from the measured NIR surface brightness, $`\mu _K`$, by using color maps of the galaxy:

$$2.5\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{}=\mu _K+a_K(VK)+c_K$$
(1)
for the example of $`(VK)`$ color maps. The optical images that were required to determine the galaxy colors were taken from the literature (see Table 1). Although this correction is physically motivated, it relies on empirical constants $`a`$ and $`c`$111The constant $`c`$ combines both empirical parameters and ones that are specific to the particular galaxy that is studied: $`c=c+\mu _{}`$, where $`c`$ is the empirical constant and $`\mu _{}`$ is the surface brightness of 1 M at the galaxy’s physical distance. determined from numerical studies. Following Bell & de Jong (2001, Table 1), we used $`a_K=0.314`$ and values for $`c_K`$, depending on the galaxies’ physical distances.

When applied to our sample galaxies, this color correction (Eqn. 1) had two major consequences. First, the radial disk scale length shortened from the K-band image to the color corrected stellar mass image. Second, the detailed two dimensional distribution changed by attenuating or enhancing different azimuthal light features in the disk. Figure 1 illustrates how the color correction affects the radial light distribution of NGC 6643. The steepening of the radial profile is due to the overall color gradients within the disk. Interestingly, the color correction also diminishes the deviation of the stellar profile from an exponential disk, which in the stellar light appear in part caused by different stellar populations. Despite the color correction, the derived mass map still may bear some systematic uncertainties for NGC 5676 and NGC 6643, because these galaxies are classified as starburst galaxies. The correction (Eqn. 1) need not be a good approximation in this regime.

The color correction not only applies to population differences, but also works for moderate dust absorption ($`\tau _{\mathrm{opt}}<1`$). Dust makes the stellar radiation dimmer and redder. To first order, this is accounted for by Eqn. 1, with similar constants. Eventually, even in the $`K`$-band, which is usually considered as quite a good estimate of the stellar mass distribution, the color correction changes the radial scale length of a galaxy by about 10 %. Consequently, this causes the inferred radial force components in the disk to change their magnitude, affecting the shape of the rotation curve. The use of more than only two colors for the correction, could further improve the quality of the mass density distribution that can be derived. Besides this color correction, several other minor procedures (e.g., spatial filtering) have been applied to the $`K`$-band images. They were described in more detail in KSR01 and Kranz (2002).

### 2.2 Gravitational potentials and hydrodynamic models

In order to derive total gravitational potentials, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{tot}}`$, for the galaxies, a maximal stellar M/L was chosen for the disk, which corresponds to a maximal stellar potential contribution, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{}`$. For five different values of the stellar M/L, parameterized by a disk fraction $`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}`$, the total gravitational potential of the galaxy was assembled by adding the potential of a dark halo component, constrained to match the observed rotation curve of the galaxy. For the dark halo, the mass density distribution of an axisymmetric isothermal sphere with a core was chosen. Its gravitational potential, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{halo}}`$, was also calculated in the two-dimensional plane of each galaxy’s disk:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{tot}}(𝑹|\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d})=\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Phi }_{}(𝑹)+\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{halo}}(𝑹|\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d})$$
(2)
with $`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}=0.2,0.45,0.6,0.85`$ and 1. Finally, a fixed pattern speed was chosen to represent the dominant spiral feature, leading to centrifugal and coriolis forces in the simulations.

The hydrodynamic simulations were performed using the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) hydro-code, of Adrianne Slyz. This is an Eulerian, grid based hydrodynamics code which is derived from gas kinetic theory. Its concept and performance is well documented in Xu (1998), Slyz (1998), Slyz & Prendergast (1999), Slyz et al. (2002). The gas density distributions and gas velocity fields resulting from these simulations were compared to the observed galaxy morphologies and to the measured H II kinematics (see Kranz 2002 for modelling and comparison details). The evaluation of the data match let us probe both the relative luminous-to-dark matter fractions for the sample galaxies and the pattern speed of the spiral structure.

## 3 RESULTS FROM THE ANALYSIS

For the discussion of the results we also include the findings for the spiral galaxy NGC 4254 which was studied with the same approach and has been presented in KSR01. In light of this, our sample consists of five high surface brightness spiral galaxies for which we discuss the modelling results in a common context.

### 3.1 Disk dynamics

The secular evolution of spiral structures in disk galaxies is not yet fully understood. The debate is about whether spirals arise from quasi-stationary, self-sustained density waves, or if they are transient features, triggered by internal or external processes, that fade away unless continuously replenished (Athanassoula, 1984, for a review). The present study is not very dependent on the long-term evolution of the spiral. The gravitational potentials used for the modelling are calculated from the morphological “snapshot” that the measurements provide and the potentials were not allowed to evolve during the simulation process. To achieve a steady state flow in the simulations we needed to adopt a spatially and temporally constant pattern speed for the dominant spiral structure. The good qualitative match of observed and simulated morphology in our sample suggests that in the end this approximation might not be far off. Furthermore, it must be noted that the modelling only requires that the spiral morphology is stable over about one dynamical period, the time required for the gas to adjust to moderate changes in the pattern speed. Aside from some subtle evidence that weak central bars of our sample galaxies reveal pattern speeds that are decoupled from the rest of the disk, the rigid spiral pattern assumption seems to be consistent for most of the disks studied here. To avoid confusion with possible effects of these weak central bars, we exclude in such cases the very inner parts of the disk from the comparison with the simulations and thus restrict ourselves to the galaxies’ outer disks.

#### 3.1.1 Location of the corotation resonance

If a fixed pattern is a reasonable approximation, the determination of resonance locations within galactic disks is well defined. It has already been proven that such an approach yields valuable information about the disk dynamics of several galaxies, e.g., M 51 Garcia-Burillo, Combes, & Gerin (1993), M 100 Garcia-Burillo, Sempere, & Combes (1994), NGC 7479 (Sempere, Combes, & Casoli, 1995) and M 94 and NGC 3310 (Mulder & Combes, 1996). However, since these studies were mostly dealing with single systems, the results were not put into a more general context.

KSR01 showed that it is possible with our modelling approach to locate the corotation resonances with a fairly high precision, by comparing the simulated gas density distributions for different spiral pattern speeds to the observed disk morphology. The decision for the best pattern speed, or equivalently the corotation radius, $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$, was based on a visual match in the morphologies, which accounted for the phase pitch angle and the extent of the spiral arms, as well as for bifurcations. This method appears to be of a qualitative nature, and it might be argued that the pitch angle of the response depends on the velocity dispersion of the gas, in the sense that cold material will form a more tightly wound spiral than the stars. However, comparing the simulated gas response to images of the galaxies taken in optical wavelengths rather than the NIR images, it can be seen that the most dense, shocked regions in the simulations come to lie in fact inside the stellar spirals and tend to coincide with dust lanes, in cases there are some. Furthermore, this approach was supported by the fact that the simulated velocity field for the selected $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$ also matches best with the observed rotation curves and less good for other pattern speed assumtions. In this way it is also possible to estimate an uncertainty range. Details of the $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$ estimates are given in KSR01 and Kranz (2002). Table 2 compiles the results for the five analyzed galaxies and Figure 2 illustrates the location of the corotation (circle) with its uncertainty range. Figure 3 compares the estimated corotation radii to the disk scale length. Taking the $`K`$-band exponential disk scale length, the mean ratio of the corotation radius and the disk scale length shows little variation among the objects: $`2.71\pm 0.43`$, increasing to $`3.04\pm 0.49`$ for the color corrected exponential disk scale lengths. Already from this rather small sample it is possible to outline general trends for spiral galaxies.

First, one can examine the spiral morphologies and how they reflect the dynamical state of the disk. In the modal theory of spiral structure (Bertin et al., 1989a, b) the corotation resonance is typically located in the outer parts of the optical disk, where the gas-to-star density ratio is larger. The stellar spiral should exhibit a basic continuity across the corotation resonance and a reversal of the properties of the spiral tracers, such as the locations of H II-regions (Bertin, 1993). As is apparent from Figure 2, these predictions are only partly satisfied for the galaxies in our sample. On the other hand, some of the galaxies reveal multi-arm or flocculent spiral properties that cannot be explained by linear, quasi-stationary modal theories. Non-linear mechanisms or transient amplification processes might play important roles and affect the location of the corotation resonance, too. The results from non-linear orbital modelling of spiral structures (Patsis, Contopoulos, & Grosbøl, 1991) indicate that the strong, symmetric, logarithmic stellar spirals already end at the inner 4:1 resonance, located well inside the corotation resonance. In their approach, the end of the strong spiral pattern is found at a radial range of 2 – 3 exponential disk scale lengths, which is compatible with a corotation radius of $`3R_{\mathrm{exp}}`$. As seen from Figure 3, the corotation radii from our galaxy sample tend to fall in that range.

Figure 2 compares these corotation radii to the image morphologies. Clearly, the dominant two-arm pattern in these galaxies lies mostly within the corotation resonance. This finding does not disagree with the conclusions of Patsis, Contopoulos, & Grosbøl (1991) and Patsis & Kaufmann (1999), derived from non-linear orbital modelling and N-body simulations respectively. However, the linear modal theory of spiral structure also predicts that the corotation radius falls into the radial range, which was found for the sample galaxies discussed here. Bertin (1993) states $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}34R_{\mathrm{exp}}`$. Thus, the locations of the corotation resonances in the sample galaxies are mostly in agreement with the predictions from linear as well as non-linear theories. The good agreement between the measured disk properties and the theoretical expectations from spiral density wave theories can be regarded as support of these theories.

Determining the location of the corotation resonance from hydrodynamic modelling is a rather elaborate and time consuming process. However, looking at Figure 2 it becomes clear that there is no obvious common feature in the galactic disks that would enable an easy identification of the corotation resonance otherwise. It is not always the case that at corotation the star forming rate is largely reduced. Furthermore, there is no characteristic feature in the amplitudes of the low Fourier components at the radius of the corotation resonance. This lack of any reliable corotation tracer complicates the application of density wave theories to real galaxies. Ultimately, the appearance of any real galaxy in the universe is the product of a combination of many processes. In some cases, the linear modal density wave theory can be applied to describe the relevant issues, but in many galaxies non-linear effects in the density wave dynamics and other processes seem to play a role. Nevertheless, assuming a fixed spiral pattern rotation speed seems, to first order, to be a viable assumption for the simulations of gas flows in fixed galaxy potentials. In light of this, it is a very promising conclusion that the hydrodynamic gas simulations provide a powerful tool to learn about disk dynamics and to determine the location of resonances in spiral galaxies.

#### 3.1.2 Quantitative match of the 2D gas kinematics

In addition to the good agreement of the simulated gas density distribution with the disk morphology, the modelled gas velocity fields provide a good overall match to the measured kinematics too. This comparison can be made along the 14 or 16 position angles along which we have long-slit H$`\alpha `$ velocities. Figure 4 gives an example of how good the simulations reproduce individual features in the observed kinematics. Displayed are the rotation curves along three slit positions across the disks of the galaxies NGC 3893, NGC 5676, and NGC 6643. Overlaid are the simulation results from each a maximum disk and a minimum disk model with the best fitting model indicated by the thick line. In all cases, the global structure of the velocity field could be reproduced with satisfying accuracy by the model velocity field. This is a non-trivial result which speaks highly for the quality of the hydrodynamics code.

In order to compare the amplitude of individual wiggles and rotation curve features to the observations, the code was required not only to reproduce global gas dynamics but also to properly model the small scale features. In general, this is also quite well achieved by the simulations, as it can be read from Figure 4. Slyz, Kranz, & Rix (2003) discuss the details of how the positions and amplitudes of features in the simulations depend on our modelling assumptions. However, within the galactic disks, there are processes other than local gravity fluctuations which create additional gas-dynamic effects. The gas dynamic traces of expanding supernova gas shells or outflows from young star forming regions are superimposed on the larger scale response to the gravitational potential wells and may eventually cover up the features that are relevant for this project. In order to minimize the influence of these non-gravitational effects, we used the hydrodynamic simulations – for which the only driving force is gravity – as a reference to discard a fraction of 30 - 40 % from the observed data points that deviate largely from *all* simulated cases as non-gravitationally induced wiggles. This procedure is explained in more detail in §4.3.2.1. of Kranz (2002). It should be added that with this treatment only local parts of the rotation curves, such as individual wiggles or features near the center, where small bars could play a role, were excluded and that the global coverage of the disk is not sacrificed. Ultimately, it would be desirable to use high sensitivity two dimensional velocity maps to provide a better understanding of the dynamical processes in the disk and to completely eliminate this concern.

Using this technique we find that the agreement between the simulated two dimensional velocity fields and the observed rotation curves is very good also on a wiggle-by-wiggle basis. As an example, this is shown for the *averaged* rotation curve of NGC 3893 in Figure 5. About 30 % of the data points have been discarded. Although the match of the large wiggle at about 12″ radius is not perfect, the simulated velocity field provides a better general representation of the rotation curve features than any axisymmetric rotation curve model could do.

### 3.2 Ratio of stellar to dark mass

Our main objective was to find the relative stellar disk to dark halo mass fractions from the comparison of modelled gas flows within realistic galaxy gravitational potentials of differing dark and luminous matter composition to observations. The results from the model-to-data comparison is presented in Figure 6 for the five galaxies NGC 3810, NGC 3893, NGC 4254, NGC 5676 and NGC 6643 drawing on a least squares comparison of predicted velocity fields for differing $`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}`$ to the observed. The symbol sizes represent the probability – derived from the least squares analysis – that a certain mass model applies to the specific galaxy. The most probable values for the disk mass fraction is indicated by the dotted regions in the plot. Since in some cases a purely formal least squares analysis does not give an unambiguous indication of the mass composition of the galaxy, we have to reexamine the quality of the fit by eye in order to assign a certain disk mass fraction to the specific galaxy. In the cases of NGC 3893 and NGC 5676 this approach supported higher disk mass fraction models (Kranz, 2002). As can be seen from Figure 6, the precision with which a certain scenario can be attributed to a particular galaxy is not equally good for all sample galaxies. For NGC 3893 the disk mass fraction could be estimated quite well, placing this galaxy into the realm of maximum disks. For NGC 3810 and NGC 6643 the least squares comparison mostly argued for a light to medium disk scenario. The analysis for NGC 6643 was especially difficult since this galaxy exhibits only a weak stellar spiral density wave, leading to a larger uncertainty range for the disk mass fraction. The analysis of NGC 4254 suffered from the high abundance of strong non-gravitationally induced gas kinematic features in the observed velocity field, which is apparent from the high abundance of small scale wiggles in the obseved rotation curves. The main conclusion for NGC 4254 was to exclude the strictly maximal disk solution. For NGC 5676 the $`\chi ^2`$-analysis mostly argues for a heavy disk scenario, although some simulations suffered from premature terminations. However, as discussed in Kranz (2002), the simulations proceeded to a point where the spiral pattern seemed to have reached a quasi-stationary state, making us confident that the conclusions for this galaxy are quite reliable.

As defined by Sackett (1997), the designation “maximal disk” applies to a galactic disk when $`85\pm 10`$ % of the total rotational support of a galaxy at a radius R = 2.2 Rexp is contributed by the stellar disk mass component. In the extreme case of $`v_{\mathrm{disk}}=0.75v_{\mathrm{tot}}`$, this definition allows a relatively massive halo to almost comprise the same amount of mass as the disk within that radius.

The above definition translates into the notation used here in the following way. The rotational support from the stellar disk is $`v_{\mathrm{disk}}(R_{2.2})=\sqrt{\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}}v_{}(R_{2.2})`$, where $`v_{}(R_{2.2})`$ is the rotational support from the maximal stellar disk at a radius of 2.2 disk scale lengths. A maximal disk model also includes a halo contribution $`v_{}(R_{2.2})=\mathrm{f}_{\mathrm{max}}v_{\mathrm{tot}}(R_{2.2})`$, with $`\mathrm{f}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ typically 0.9. Accordingly, the rotational support from the disk is about 0.9 ($`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}=100`$ %), 0.83 ($`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}=85`$ %), 0.7 ($`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}=60`$ %), 0.6 ($`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}=45`$ %), and 0.4 ($`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}=20`$ %). All of the $`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}`$ = 85 % models clearly represent maximal disk scenarios. The $`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}`$ = 60 % models are at the lower border of the maximal disk realm, representing compositions with about an equal amount of dark and luminous mass within 2 – 3 exponential disk scale lengths. In light of this, Figure 6 shows that a maximal disk scenario applies to NGC 3893 and NGC 5676. For the other galaxies the results from the modelling favor less massive stellar disks. NGC 3810, NGC 4254 and NGC 6643 possess stellar disks that appear to balance the mass of the dark halo inside the optical disk ($`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}60`$ %), although for NGC 6643 an even lighter stellar mass component could not be excluded.

Table 4 gives an overview of the stellar mass-to-light ratios that were derived from the calculations of the potentials. The values are given for a maximum disk and mostly fall in the range between M/LK = 0.6 – 0.7. A smaller value for M/LK was only found for NGC 4254. These stellar mass-to-light ratios agree very well with those emerging from the color correction procedure of Bell & de Jong (2001), which are based on population synthesis models222Bell & de Jong (2001) used an initial mass function that was scaled to a maximal disk scenario, which was established from measured disk kinematics. In light of this, the population synthesis M/Ls also ultimately rely on disk dynamics.. Using these mass-to-light ratios, the total mass of the stellar disk can be inferred. The values given in Table 4 apply to a disk mass fraction which, as taken from Figure 7, is a reasonable assumption for the particular galaxy. These disk masses appear realistic and scale well with the maximal velocities in the rotation curves, i.e. attributing a high disk mass to NGC 5676 and a light disk to NGC 3810. The mismatch for NGC 4254 most likely originates from residual inaccuracies in the determination of the galaxy’s distance, inclination and possible calibration errors due to non-photometric conditions during the data acquisition. The other results for NGC 4254 are only insignificantly affected by possible inaccuracies of these parameters.

## 4 DISCUSSION

We have presented a new, direct and independent estimate of the stellar mass fraction in a small sample of spiral galaxies. With respect to ratio of luminous and dark matter in their inner parts, the population of high surface brightness spiral galaxies does not seem to comprise an entirely homogeneous class of objects. Combining the maximum rotation velocity, presented in Table 1, with the estimates for the galaxies’ most probable fractions of the stellar disk mass, reveals an intriguing trend: the most massive of the analyzed galaxies, NGC 3893 and NGC 5676, tend to also possess the most massive stellar disks which dominate the dynamics of the central regions. The other galaxies from the sample are less massive systems that exhibit a maximum rotation velocity $`v_c`$$`<`$ 200 km s-1. For those objects the total mass of the dark halo within the optical radius is higher and was found to, at least, equal the stellar mass. This trend is graphically presented in Figure 7.

Our results can be compared to Athanassoula, Bosma, & Papaioannou (1987). These authors inferred disk and halo mass fractions from spiral structure constraints. The small points displayed in Figure 7 represent a subsample of the total sample (given in Athanassoula et al. 1987, Table A2), selected for late type galaxies with a bulge mass $`M_{\mathrm{bulge}}<20`$ % $`M_{\mathrm{disk}}`$ and a maximum rotation velocity of more than 100 km s-1. For comparison the stated disk-to-halo mass ratio was converted into our scheme of quantifying the disk mass fraction $`\mathrm{f}_\mathrm{d}`$.

It can be clearly seen that the trend that emerged from our small dataset is supported by the results from Athanassoula, Bosma, & Papaioannou (1987). In this sample there is no late type spiral galaxy with a maximum rotation velocity of over 200 km s-1 that seems to be in agreement with a substantially submaximal stellar disk. For less massive systems this is not the case anymore. Apparently galaxies with a wide range of dark halo and disk mass decompositions can exist and maintain spiral structure.

In light of this, the results from Courteau & Rix (1999) might be explained that in a statistical sample of spiral galaxies the heavy and clearly maximum disk galaxies could account for only a relatively small fraction and most of the “lighter” high surface brightness galaxies exhibit already a considerable dark mass fraction. Indeed, in the Courteau & Rix sample, only roughly a third of the galaxies exhibit maximal rotation velocities $`v_c`$$`>`$ 200 km s-1.

However, beyond the discussion of the disk mass fraction in spiral galaxies, at present there is growing evidence that galaxy size dark halos are not cuspy in their centers, as claimed by standard cold dark matter (CDM) models. (Moore, 1994; Flores & Primack, 1994; Moore et al., 1999b; Salucci & Burkert, 2000; Borriello & Salucci, 2001; de Blok et al., 2001; van den Bosch & Swaters, 2001). This circumstance was first found for low surface brightness and dwarf galaxies, that supposedly are comprised of a massive dark halo. Most of the authors argued that this also applies to high surface brightness galaxies. For the present analysis, the functional form of the dark halo profile has only a second order effect on the results as long as the models describe well the overall shape of the observed rotation curves. Thus, we decided not to distinguish between different dark halo profiles. However, the results from this study, which mostly confirm the strong dynamic influence of the stellar disk in massive high surface brightness spiral galaxies within the optical radius, provide very little room for a strongly cusped halo core.

## 5 SUMMARY

With this project it has been demonstrated that an analysis similar to the one applied to barred galaxies (Englmaier & Gerhard, 1999; Weiner, Sellwood, & Williams, 2001) can also be applied to non-barred spiral galaxies. This application is on one hand more difficult and problematic, since the spiral arms provide a much less prominent dynamical feature in the velocity field than a strong bar does. On the other hand, for pure disk galaxies the vertical scale height is smaller in the central regions than in strong bars that often show peanut shapes when viewed edge-on. This fact reduces systematic uncertainties that arise from motions along the z-axis which are superimposed onto the circular motions that are studied. The main points that could be learned from this study can be summarized in the following way:

* The color correction, described in Section 2.1, allows us to derive the stellar mass density from any multi color imaging data. As a correction to the K-band photometry Equation 1 has proven to work very well. We encourage its use for all studies that depend on the mass distribution in galaxy disks.
* The BGK hydrodynamics code, applied to the problem (Slyz, Kranz, & Rix, 2003), is a powerful tool and it can be used successfully to simulate the interstellar gas in the disks of galaxies. The parameters that dominate the morphology and the kinematics of the gas simulations are the non-axisymmetric stellar mass component and the pattern speed of the spiral structure.
* Adopting a globally fixed pattern speed for the rotation of the spiral seems to be a viable approximation for the simulation process. Moreover, from analyzing the morphology of the simulated gas density distribution it could be found for the sample of five galaxies that the corotation radius $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}=2.71\pm 0.43R_{\mathrm{exp}}`$, increasing to $`3.04\pm 0.49R_{\mathrm{exp}}`$ for the color corrected exponential scale lengths representing the stellar disk mass. In all five cases the strong stellar spiral ends inside the corotation resonance.
* The detailed comparison of the velocity fields is challenging, but it is possible to put constraints on the relative mass fractions of the inner disk. The results from this study indicate that high surface brightness galaxies possess maximal disks if their maximal rotation velocity $`v_c`$$`>`$ 200 km s-1. If the maximal rotation velocity is less, the galaxies appear to have submaximal disks.

We would like to thank the Calar Alto staff for their support in obtaining the data for this study. AS acknowledges the support of a fellowship from the UK Astrophysical Fluids Facility (UKAFF).


text:
# Pulsar Searches of Unidentified 𝐸𝐺𝑅𝐸𝑇 Sources

## 1. Introduction

The $`EGRET`$ $`\gamma `$-ray telescope detected around 300 sources at energies above 100 MeV, the majority of which remain unidentified (Hartman et al. 1999). Large error boxes on the order of $`1^{}`$ across make unambiguous identifications on the basis of source position difficult. Timing observations allow definitive identifications for sources showing aperiodic (such as active galactic nuclei) or periodic (pulsars) variability. Between 6-8 pulsars have been positively identified in the $`EGRET`$ data by epoch folding on the known period determined from radio or, in the singular case of Geminga, X-ray data (Thompson et al 1999, Kaspi et al. 2000 and references therein). Several other energetic pulsars were found to be coincident with unidentified $`EGRET`$ sources, but folding the sparse $`\gamma `$-ray data using contemporaneous radio ephemerides did not yield significant detections (Fierro, 1995). Although $`GLAST`$, when it flies in 2006, may be able to discover new pulsars just by searching the $`\gamma `$-ray data, it is likely that a priori knowledge of a pulse period will in many cases prove crucial in determining which $`\gamma `$-ray sources are pulsars.

## 2. Recent Galactic Plane Pulsar Discoveries

Since the effective end of the $`EGRET`$ mission and the publishing of the third $`EGRET`$ catalog (Hartman et al. 1999), there have been both new wide scale pulsar surveys and searches of potential $`\gamma `$-ray counterparts which have yielded several new, energetic young pulsars positionally coincident with unidentified $`EGRET`$ sources. The most productive effort has been the Parkes multibeam survey (Manchester et al. 2001). Manchester et al. (2002) list six energetic pulsars from the PM survey which are contained within $`EGRET`$ positional error boxes. For two of these, PSR J1016$``$5857 and PSR J1420$``$6048, previously obtained X-ray and radio data identified potential pulsar wind nebulae (PWN) (Camilo et al. 2001, Roberts, Romani, & Johnston 2001). Hence, searches directed at the potential counterparts would have been successful. In a third case, PSR J1015$``$5719, very little is known about any potential X-ray or radio PWN. In the last three cases, neither radio nor X-ray data show clear evidence for a potential source counterpart. PSR J1837$``$0604 is on the edge of a bright molecular cloud, making detection of a radio PWN difficult (D’Amico et al. 2001). A 10 ks Chandra image of the region shows no evidence for a X-ray point source associated with the pulsar to extremely low flux levels (Roberts et al. in preparation). The last two Parkes multibeam pulsars, PSR J1413$``$6141 and PSR J1412$``$6145, are located within the bright energetic supernova remnant G312.4$``$0.4. Chandra imaging and radio spectral tomography of the region show neither point sources nor potential PWN associated with either pulsar (Doherty et al. in press). The low spin-down luminosity, large distance, and alternate potential source of $`\gamma `$-rays (the supernova remnant) all argue against either of these latter two pulsars being the true counterpart of the coincident $`EGRET`$ source.

Deep pulse searches of potential X-ray and radio counterparts have also recently proven successful. The extremely energetic pulsar PSR J2229+6114 was discovered with the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank in a 1.5 hr observation of a potential PWN identified by X-ray and radio imaging of the associated $`EGRET`$ error box (Halpern et al. 2001). An $`ASCA`$ X-ray image of the unidentified source GeV J2020+3658, associated with the COS B source 2CG 075+00, showed a point-like X-ray source at which the very small ($`3^{}`$) Arecibo beam could be directed. The young pulsar PSR J2021+3651, at a 20 cm flux of only 0.1 mJy, was discovered as a result (Roberts et al. 2002). This flux is about a factor of two below the sensitivity limits of the Parkes multibeam survey and similar to the sensitivity limit of a 5 hr observation with Parkes. Thus, it is possible that deep searches of potential counterparts contained within the Parkes Multibeam survey region will yield further candidates. However, three likely PWN identified by Roberts, Romani, and Kawai (2001) were searched with 5 hr pointings at Parkes and failed to yield any good candidates. Two of these, the Rabbit and GeV J1809$``$2327, are almost certainly PWN, based on their X-ray and radio properties (Roberts et al. 1999, Braje et al. 2002). Therefore, more sensitive radio searches might be necessary to detect the pulsars these contain. The third source, GeV J1825-1310 is less clear of a PWN candidate, due to its large size and the confused radio emission in the region, but other source classes for hard, extended X-ray sources seem less plausible.

Between the Parkes Multibeam survey and directed searches, six new strong $`\gamma `$-ray pulsar candidates have been discovered as radio pulsars since the demise of $`EGRET`$. Since these are young pulsars, which tend to glitch, extrapolating ephemerides back to the $`EGRET`$ era is uncertain making detection of $`\gamma `$-ray pulsations difficult. I list these pulsars in Table 1 in boldface. The dispersion measure (DM) distances, determined using the new Cordes and Lazio (2002) NE2001 model, are given. The $`\gamma `$-ray efficiencies, $`\eta _\gamma `$, are determined from the 100 MeV to 10 GeV flux, assuming the DM distance and 1 steradian beaming. All of the new pulsars have high DMs and have 20 cm fluxes $`<1`$ mJy. The inferred $`\gamma `$-ray efficiencies are also quite high. For comparison, Table 1 lists the values for the known $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars, using the NE2001 distances for consistency and adapting the efficiencies from the values given by Kaspi et al. (2000). If the $`\gamma `$-ray sources associated with these new pulsars are nearly 100% pulsed, as are the known sources, then the oft-noted inverse correlation of efficiency with spin-down power ($`\eta _\gamma L_{sd}^{1/2}`$, eg. Zhang & Harding 2000) and characteristic age, $`\tau _c`$, is not well supported.

## 3. A Mid-Latitude Survey for $`\gamma `$-ray Pulsars

In addition to the Galactic plane population, there is at least one distinct population of unidentified $`\gamma `$-ray sources at mid-Galactic latitudes. Some authors have modelled these as a Gould belt (a local region of recent star formation) population plus a Galactic Halo population (Grenier 2001). It has also been noted that the distribution is similar to that of the millisecond pulsars (Romani 2001). A population of older, Geminga-like pulsars has been postulated, as well as a population of $`\gamma `$-ray emitting millisecond pulsars. Indeed, there has been a recent claim of a marginal detection of pulsed $`\gamma `$-rays in the $`EGRET`$ data set from the millisecond pulsar PSR J0218+4232 (Kuiper et al. 2000). Practically speaking, because the mid-latitude sources are generally weaker and have steeper spectra than the Galactic plane sources, they will be difficult to identify if they are not pulsed or have some other characteristic variability. If some fraction are pulsars, then a priori knowledge of the pulse period may be crucial to finding the pulsations at $`\gamma `$-ray energies even with the large effective area of the $`GLAST`$ mission.

We have begun a survey of the unidentified mid-latitude $`EGRET`$ sources that are observable by the Parkes telescope. With the multibeam system, a series of four pointings in the standard tesselation pattern can completely cover most $`\gamma `$-ray error boxes out to the 95% confidence contour. Alist of 56 sources from the 3rd $`EGRET`$ catalog at latitudes $`|b|>5^{}`$ have been selected on the basis of their error box size and lack of probable AGN counterpart. Four 35 min pointings using a time resolution of 0.125 ms cover each of the error boxes. In order to be sensitive to millisecond pulsars in tight binaries, a full acceleration search will be performed using the PRESTO software package (Ransom 2001). The sensitivity of this survey will be similar to that of the PM survey, and much greater than the highly successful mid-latitude surveys with Parkes, which generally use only 4 min. pointings (Edwards et al. 2001).

## References

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text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The cosmic shear is a gravitational lensing effect caused by the large scale structures in the universe on the distant galaxies. Its net effect is to distort coherently the galaxy images over large angular scales and to change the focusing properties of the light beam (galaxies appear larger or smaller depending on the intervening mass density). Only the former effect is ’easily’ measurable, and is the one we will discuss here. The latter, which has been measured in some cluster lensing cases, is much more challenging for cosmic shear purposes.

The measurement of the amplitude of the cosmic shear as a function of scale is a direct indicator of the projected mass power spectrum, convolved with a selection function which only depends on the cosmological parameters and the redshift distribution of the sources. It is therefore a tool for evaluating the mass distribution in the universe, as well as for measuring the cosmological parameters. In the following, we first outline the theory of cosmic shear, and its link to measurable quantities in Section2. We discuss the measurements and the systematics in Section 3. Section 4 is a discussion of the cosmological parameters measurements and the still open problems associated with it.

## 2 Theory

In the presence of mass inhomogeneities, a light ray is deflected, and it is observed at an angular position $`𝜷`$ on the sky instead of at its intrinsic location $`𝜽`$. The mapping between the two position angles defines the amplification matrix $`𝒜`$

$$𝒜=\frac{\beta _i}{\theta _j}=\left(\begin{array}{c}1\kappa \gamma _1\gamma _2\\ \gamma _21\kappa +\gamma _1\end{array}\right),$$
(1)
where the convergence $`\kappa `$ and the shear $`𝜸=(\gamma _1,\gamma _2)`$ are given by the second derivatives of the projected gravitational potential $`\phi `$:

$$\kappa =\frac{1}{2}\left(\phi _{,11}+\phi _{,22}\right);\gamma _1=\frac{1}{2}\left(\phi _{,11}\phi _{,22}\right);\gamma _2=\phi _{,12}.$$
(2)
The central quantity in cosmic shear analysis is the convergence power spectrum $`P_\kappa (k)`$, which relates any cosmic shear two point statistics to the cosmological parameters and the 3-dimensional mass power spectrum $`P_{3D}(k)`$:

$$P_\kappa (k)=\frac{9}{4}\mathrm{\Omega }_0^2_0^{w_H}\frac{\mathrm{d}w}{a^2(w)}P_{3D}(\frac{k}{f_K(w)};w)\left[_w^{w_H}dw^{}n(w^{})\frac{f_K(w^{}w)}{f_K(w^{})}\right]^2,$$
(3)
where $`f_K(w)`$ is the comoving angular diameter distance out to a distance $`w`$ ($`w_H`$ is the horizon distance), and $`n(w(z))`$ is the redshift distribution of the sources. The mass power spectrum $`P_{3D}(k)`$ is evaluated in the non-linear regime , and $`k`$ is the 2-dimensional wave vector perpendicular to the line-of-sight. Figure 1 is an example of 3-dimensional and convergence power spectra for comparison. A fair amount of baryons was included (using CAMB ), in order to show that the baryon oscillations, which are clearly visible on the 3D spectrum, are severely diluted in the projected spectrum.

The cosmic shear effect is measured from the ellipticity $`𝒆`$ of the galaxies, which is assumed to be fully described by their second order moments $``$ of the surface brightness $`I(𝜽)`$:

$$_{ij}=I\left(𝜽\right)\theta _i\theta _j\mathrm{d}^2\theta ;𝒆=(\frac{_{11}_{22}}{\mathrm{Tr}()},\frac{2_{12}}{\mathrm{Tr}()}).$$
(4)
To first order in the lensing amplitude, $`𝒆`$ is an unbiased estimate of the shear $`𝜸`$. The three most commonly measured 2-point statistics are respectively the shear top-hat variance , the aperture mass variance  and the shear correlation function . They are all different measurements of the same quantity, the convergence power spectrum $`P_\kappa (k)`$:

$$\gamma ^2=\frac{2}{\pi \theta _c^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{d}k}{k}P_\kappa (k)[J_1(k\theta _c)]^2;M_{\mathrm{ap}}^2=\frac{288}{\pi \theta _c^4}_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{d}k}{k^3}P_\kappa (k)[J_4(k\theta _c)]^2,$$

$`\xi (\theta _c)`$ $`=`$ $`𝜸(r)𝜸(r+\theta _c)_r={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dkkP_\kappa (k)J_0(k\theta _c)`$ (5)
$`\left(\begin{array}{c}\xi _t(\theta _c)\\ \xi _r(\theta _c)\end{array}\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dkkP_\kappa (k)\left[J_0(k\theta _c)\pm J_4(k\theta _c)\right]`$ (6)
where $`J_n`$ is the Bessel function of the first kind, and $`\theta _c`$ is the smoothing radius (or the pair separation for the shear correlation functions).

Figure 2 is an example of lensing quantities predictions for the same cosmology as in Figure 1. It shows the importance of the non-linear corrections for scales below $`30^{}`$ to $`1`$ degree. An illustration of the difference between the linear and non-linear regimes is done by plotting the integrants of Eqs.(2, 6) as in Figure 3. Figures 2 and 3 make it clear that the lensing signal is dominated by the first few peaks in the smoothing kernel, with a transition linear/non-linear around a smoothing scale of $`1`$ degree, depending slightly on the statistic under interest.

## 3 Observations

### 3.1 Two-point statistics

There are now several evidences of the cosmological origin of the measured signal:

(a) The consistency of the shear excess variance measured from different telescopes, at different depths and with different filters. This is summarized on Figure 4.

(b) On a single survey, the self consistency of the different types of lensing statistics as given in Eqs.(2,6) .

(c) The $`E`$, $`B`$ modes decomposition separates the lensing signal into curl and curl-free modes . It is expected, and it can also be quantified on the star field , that residual systematics equally contribute to $`E`$ and $`B`$, while the lensing signal should be present ONLY in the $`E`$ mode. This is a consequence that gravity derives from a true scalar field . The $`E`$ mode is identical to the aperture mass statistic Eq.(2) , while the $`B`$ mode can be computed in the same way by rotating each galaxy by $`45`$ degrees. The $`E`$ and $`B`$ modes have been measured in several surveys , and support the cosmological origin of the signal, showing also the already small amount of residual systematics achieved with today’s technology. Figure 5 shows such measurements for the VIRMOS–DESCART 111http://www.astrsp-mrs.fr 222http://terapix.iap.fr/DESCART and RCS 333http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/ gladders/RCS/ surveys.

(d) The lensing signal is expected to decrease for low redshift sources, as consequence of the lower efficiency of the the gravitational distortion. This decrease of the signal has been observed recently for the first time, when comparing the VIRMOS survey aperture mass  which has a source mean redshift around $`0.9`$ to the RCS which has a source mean redshift around $`0.6`$. The expected decrease in signal amplitude is about $`2`$, which is what is observed (see Figure 5).

(e) Space images provide in principle a systematics-free environment, and even if the observed areas are still smaller than ground based observations, space data provide ideal calibrations of the cosmic shear signal , which are in excellent agreement with ground based measurements.

### 3.2 Systematics

As we said, any 2-points statistic can be decomposed into the so-called $`E`$ and $`B`$ modes channels, which separate the cosmological signal from the systematics . Figure 6 shows 444The $`B`$ mode peak at $`10^{}`$ in  is due to a PSF correction error over the mosaic. It is gone when the proper correction is applied, Hamana, private communication. the $`E`$ and $`B`$ modes that have been measured so far, using the aperture mass only (this is the statistic which provides an unambiguous $`E`$ and $`B`$ separation ). The two deepest surveys have large scale $`B`$ mode contamination , and the two shallow surveys have small scale contamination .

The source of systematics is still unclear. It could come in part from an imperfect Point Spread Function correction, but also from intrinsic alignment of galaxies. The later effect has been observed for dark matter halos in simulations, but it is still difficult to have a reliable prediction of its amplitude. Nevertheless, it is not believed to be higher than a $`10\%`$ contribution for a lensing survey with a mean source redshift at $`z_s=1`$. In any case, intrinsic alignment contamination can be removed completely by measuring the signal correlation between distant redshift bins, instead of measuring the full projected signal .

## 4 Cosmological Parameters Constraints and Conclusion

As quoted earlier , the cosmic shear signal depends primarily on four parameters: the cosmological mean density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$, the mass power spectrum normalization $`\sigma _8`$, the shape of the power spectrum $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, and the redshift of the sources $`z_s`$. Therefore, any measurement of the statistics shown in Section 2 provide constraints on these parameters. A big enough lensing survey  will also provide constraints on many other parameters, but we do not discuss this issue here.

Figure 7 shows the joint $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$, $`\sigma _8`$ constraints obtained from the measurements of Figure 5. They are obtained only when comparing the measured lensing signal to the non-linear predictions. Indeed, the actual surveys are not yet big enough to probe the linear scales accurately. The non-linear power can be computed numerically , but its precision is still uncertain. Recent investigations show that a $`10\%`$ r.m.s. uncertainty is expected, which means that the cosmological parameters cannot be known with better precision for the moment. According to the Figures 2, 3, the transition scale between the linear and non-linear regimes is around 1 degree. The consequence is that the quoted mass normalization $`\sigma _8`$ is sensitive to the validity of the non-linear mapping at small scale. In this respect,  are less contaminated by this problem because they used the lensing signal from $`30^{}`$ to $`100^{}`$ to constrain the mass normalization.

Table 1 summarizes the $`\sigma _8`$ measurements for all the lensing surveys published so far. For simplicity it is given for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$. Despite the differences among the surveys, it is worth to note that the results are all consistent within $`2.5\sigma `$ between the most extreme cases, when poorly known parameters are marginalised.

The residual $`B`$ mode has been included in the analysis of the most recent cosmic shear surveys , but we do not know yet how to deal with it properly: some groups  added the $`B`$ mode in quadrature to the $`E`$ errors, taking into account the correlation between various scales. The $`B`$ mode has been substracted first from the $`E`$ mode in , and not in . This might probably result in a slight bias for high $`\sigma _8`$ values in . Unfortunately we have no garantee that the $`B`$ substraction is the right correction method. Recently  marginalised the probabilities over $`EB`$ to $`E+B`$ taken as the signal, which is more likely to include the ’true’ $`B`$ mode correction one has to apply.

The $`B`$ mode correction and the non-linear power spectrum predictions are, today, the major limitations of cosmic shear surveys. They prevent the measurements of cosmological parameters below $`10\%`$, even if today’s lensing surveys could do better in principle. It is therefore very difficult to establish a discrepancy among the cosmic shear results today. There is probably something to learn about basic PSF correction with the existing data, since the different groups get different $`B`$ mode amplitude and scale dependence. This is still widely unexplored.

The positive aspect is that cosmic shear is now established as a powerfull tool to probe the dark matter and the cosmological parameters, and that it works, which was not the case only 2 years ago. There is a lot to expect from forthcoming surveys, with the first results expected in less than a year from now.

Acknowledgements.  We thank H. Hoekstra, U.-L. Pen, P. Schneider for useful discussions. We thank Anthony Lewis for the use of the CAMB software. This work was supported by the TMR Network “Gravitational Lensing: New Constraints on Cosmology and the Distribution of Dark Matter” of the EC under contract No. ERBFMRX-CT97-0172.