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# A Dark-Matter Spike at the Galactic Center?

## I Introduction

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the leading candidates for the dark matter in galactic halos. Such particles arise in extensions to the standard model of particle physics. The most widely studied example is the neutralino, plausibly the lightest superpartner in supersymmetric versions of the standard model. The cosmological abundance of WIMPs is naturally of order the critical density of the Universe, and so WIMPs make natural dark-matter candidates.

The search for WIMPs in the Milky Way halo has been a major endeavor both theoretically and experimentally in the last two decades (for comprehensive reviews see Refs. ). The main efforts so far have been to detect WIMPs directly in low-background laboratory experiments and indirectly via observation of the energetic neutrinos produced by annihilation of WIMPs that have accreted in the Sun and/or Earth. Another possibility is to search for exotic cosmic rays, such as high-energy gamma rays, positrons, antiprotons, or neutrinos produced by WIMP pair annihilations in the Galactic halo. In particular, the flux of gamma rays in a given direction is proportional to the line-of-sight integral of the square of the WIMP density. Since the dark-matter density is expected to be largest towards the Galactic center, the flux of such exotic gamma rays should be highest in that direction.

We now know that black holes of mass of $`10^610^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$ reside in most galactic centers (see, e.g., ). In particular, the arguments for a $`2.6\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ black hole at the center of the Milky Way are at this point almost incontrovertible (see, e.g., Refs. ) given the rise of the velocity (radial and proper motion) dispersion within 1 pc of the Galactic center. It has long been argued that if a black hole grows inside a given population of stars, the density of stars should be enhanced in the vicinity of the black hole after its appearance . If the WIMP density is likewise enhanced at the Galactic center, then the source of exotic cosmic rays from WIMP annihilation therein should be increased. Several authors investigated the enhancement in the gamma-ray flux for the dark-matter-density spike, $`\rho (r)r^{1.5}`$ as the radius $`r0`$, that would be induced by the adiabatic growth of a black hole in an initially isothermal dark-matter profile .

More recently, Gondolo and Silk  (hereafter GS) investigated the dark-matter spike that arises if a black hole grows adiabatically at the center of a dark-matter halo that initially has a singular power-law cusp, $`\rho (r)r^\gamma `$ with $`0<\gamma <2`$, as suggested by numerical simulations . They found that the black-hole growth gives rise to a dark-matter spike $`\rho (r)r^A`$ with $`2.25A2.5`$, in agreement with earlier scaling results found in Ref. . In this case, the cosmic-ray source from WIMP pair annihilation, proportional to $`d^3r\rho ^2(r)`$, becomes huge due to the diverging contribution from small radii. (The divergence is cut off by the black-hole horizon or by a maximum density set by WIMP pair annihilation.) The flux of neutrinos from neutralino annihilation in this spike exceeds current experimental upper bounds in some regions of neutralino parameter space. Subsequent work  shows that synchrotron emission from the motion of electrons and positrons produced by neutralino annihilation in this spike would also be significant and in most cases exceeds current upper bounds. The conclusion of Refs.  is that either neutralino dark matter or a cuspy halo must be ruled out.

Given these very important implications for dark-matter searches, the claim of the possible presence of a steep dark-matter spike at the Galactic center and the underlying assumptions should be investigated more carefully. Here we argue that although a possibility, the enhancement found by GS requires somewhat unusual initial conditions for the Galactic halo and for the black hole. In particular, we emphasize how crucial it is that the black hole grew adiabatically from a tiny initial mass to its present-day mass, and that this happened precisely at the center of the dark-matter distribution.

To do so, we consider a few alternatives for the black-hole-formation scenario that we can treat with semi-analytic methods and jet captures the main dynamical processes in (hierarachical) galaxy formation. We show that for the GS spike to arise, the majority of the black-hole growth had to occur within the inner 50 pc of the dark-matter cusp and on a timescale long compared with $`10^7`$ years. We also show that the growth of the spike relies on the existence of a very high density of cold orbits within the inner 50 pc. If the black hole is formed away from the center and then spirals in, it should generically lead to the weaker dark-matter spike, $`\rho r^{0.5}`$, with possibly even a depletion, rather than an enhancement, in the central dark-matter density.

The outline of the paper is as follows: In Section II, we consider a simple toy model to illustrate the origin of the spike found by GS in case the black hole grows adiabatically at the exact center of the dark-matter system. In Section III we perform the computation of the adiabatic growth for a class of more realistic dark-matter-halo profiles, stressing a few more subtle points. In Section IV we treat instead the opposite case of fast growth for the black hole. Section V deals with the more complex scenarios of off-centered formation for the black hole. While in all cases above we include just dark matter and the black hole, in Section VI we consider the more realistic scenario in which other baryonic components (i.e., stars in the stellar nucleus, bulge, and disk) are included as well. In Section VII we summarize and comment on current theoretical ideas about the origin of the black hole.

## II Warmup: Halo distributions with only circular orbits

Before proceeding with our numerical calculations, let us consider a simple toy model that illustrates the origin of the GS spike. In this model, we assume an initial self-gravitating dark-matter distribution $`\rho _i(r)`$ made of particles that are all on circular orbits, at the center of which a black hole grows adiabatically. The angular momentum of each particle remains invariant since the central black hole exerts no torque on any dark-matter particle. This tells us that $`r_iM_i(r_i)=r_fM_f(r_f)`$, where $`M(r)`$ is the total (i.e., dark-matter plus black-hole) mass enclosed within the radius $`r`$. Moreover, conservation of the dark-matter mass tells us that $`M_i^h(r_i)=M_f^h(r_f)`$, where the superscript $`h`$ denotes the halo contribution to the mass.

Now suppose the initial dark-matter density profile is $`\rho _i(r_i)r_i^\gamma `$ and let the final density be $`\rho _f(r_f)r_f^A`$. Conservation of mass implies that $`r_i^{3\gamma }r_f^{3A}`$. In the final state, the mass enclosed within a radius $`r`$ will be dominated by the black hole, $`M_f(r_f)M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, as $`r0`$. Conservation of angular momentum thus gives $`r_i^{4\gamma }r_f`$. Putting these two conditions together, we find a final profile, $`\rho _f(r_f)r_f^A`$, where $`A=(92\gamma )/(4\gamma )`$ . Note that for $`0<\gamma <2`$, we get $`2.25<A<2.5`$. Hence the WIMP pair annihilation rate, which is proportional to the density $`\rho _f(r_f)`$ squared, would have diverged except for the truncation at the horizon of the BH.

This derivation illustrates several important points, some of which will be discussed further for more general distributions in subsequent Sections.

### A Where does the mass in the spike come from?

The dark-matter particles that make up the spike come from the inner part of the dark-matter halo, the part that encloses a mass roughly equal to $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}2.6\times 10^6M_{}`$. The addition of a black hole will have negligible effect on circular orbits that enclose larger masses. That the spike comes from this inner part agrees with intuitions, and is suggested by numerical simulation of Ref.  (see their Fig. 6) for models with isotropic velocity distributions.

For the power-law density profile that GS considered (and for the NFW profile we consider below), the radius that encloses $`2.6\times 10^6M_{}`$ of halo mass is only about 50-60 pc. Thus, for the spike in the GS picture to form, the black hole must have originated within the inner 50–60 pc of the Galactic center. This is in some sense surprising because this length scale is microscopic compared with characteristic Galactic distance scales: $`3`$ kpc for the bulge and $`10`$ kpc for the disk. Put another way, the inner 50 pc encloses only about $`(1.52)\times 10^8M_{}`$ of stellar material, about $`5\times 10^3`$ of the total stellar mass (probably about $`(58)\times 10^{10}M_{}`$) of the galaxy. Although the alignment between the black hole and the stellar distribution is quite good in our own Galaxy (even that is a mystery—the situation is quite different, e.g., in M31), the required alignment is between the black hole and the center of the dark-matter system. Although baryons and dark matter are mixed homogeneously in the early Universe, there are numerous processes involved in galaxy formation that should segregate the baryons from the dark matter. For example, baryons will experience radiation drag from the cosmic microwave background when they first start to cool; UV radiation from the first generation of stars could exert a wind on the baryons; in galaxy mergers, baryons shock while dark-matter halos pass through each other; baryons today appear in disks, bulges, and bars, unlike dark matter; they are clumped into globular clusters, open clusters, and molecular clouds. Thus, there are many good reasons to believe that the precise center of the baryon distribution should be displaced relative to that of the dark matter, at least at some intermediate stages in the formation of our Galaxy. Thus, even if the black hole formed at the center of a stellar distribution, it would still be somewhat surprising if, at all times during its formation, that coincided to 50 pc with the center of the dark-matter distribution.

### B Cold particles

The circular-orbit toy model shows us that the particles that give rise to the spike are initially very cold; i.e., the circular speeds in the initial distribution approach zero as $`r0`$. (Below, we will show that the same is true for more general and realistic velocity distributions.) Again, this is somewhat surprising, as cold particles are easily subject to heating by a variety of phenomena, especially in the environment at the Galactic center. For example, the passing of molecular clouds, open, or globular clusters would tend to disrupt these cold orbits, as would the existence of a bar. Likewise, the mergers and sub-halo accretion that certainly played a role in the formation of the Milky Way would tend to disrupt these cold orbits. We cannot be more quantitative without a more precise model for galaxy formation. However, these disruptive processes must have occurred at some level, and they would tend to hinder the growth of the dark-matter spike.

Note that a dark-matter spike that will give rise to a divergent WIMP annihilation rate can arise even if $`\gamma =0`$. As explained in Ref. , implied above, and discussed further below, the existence of a spike is more generally due to the existence of a singularity in the density of cold orbits at the Galactic center. Such singularities can arise even if the density profile is non-singular. If the density $`\rho `$ at the origin is finite and can be written as an analytic function of the Cartesian coordinates $`x`$, $`y`$, and $`z`$, then there will be no singularity in the phase-space distribution that gives rise to a spike, but otherwise there will be a phase-space singularity and a spike after adiabatic growth of a black hole . Thus, consider for example, the profiles $`\rho (r)(a+r)^2`$ and $`\rho (r)(a^2+r^2)^1`$, both of which approach a constant at the origin, and suppose that both have isotropic velocity distributions. As argued in Ref.  and described below, adiabatic black-hole growth in the former gives rise to a spike $`\rho r^A`$ with $`A=2`$, while the latter gives rise to a spike with $`A=1.5`$.

### C Initial black-hole mass

The circular-orbit model also indicates that the spike will grow only if the black hole grows almost entirely (not just partially) at the black-hole center. Put another way, the spike that grows from an initial state with a $`10^6M_{}`$ black hole and a $`\rho r^1`$ dark-matter halo to a final state with a $`2\times 10^6M_{}`$ black hole is not nearly as dramatic as that which arises when a black hole is grown from nothing to $`10^6M_{}`$. If we start with a black hole of significant mass and a dark-matter cusp, then the angular momentum of the inner orbits is dominated by the initial black-hole mass. Slowly doubling the black-hole mass reduces the radius of each of these inner orbits by a factor of 2 and thus leads to a factor-of-4 density enhancement. In other words, the huge densities of the innermost orbits that give rise to a huge annihilation signal come from the fact that initially, $`M_i(r)0`$ as $`r0`$ and the radius $`r_i`$ of each inner orbit is reduced by a factor $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_i(r_i)`$. If a black hole exists at the Galactic center from the start with a mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^i`$ and then grows to a final mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^f`$, the initial dark-matter density profile $`\rho _i(r_i)r_i^\gamma `$ becomes a density profile with the same exponent and normalization enhanced by a factor $`(M_{\mathrm{BH}}^f/M_{\mathrm{BH}}^i)^{3\gamma }`$.

### D Timescale for adiabatic growth

If the initial halo profile is $`\rho (r)r^1`$, then the enclosed mass will be $`M(r)r^2`$, the circular velocity will be $`v_c(r)r^{1/2}`$ and the period of a circular orbit will be $`Tr^{1/2}`$. The period of an orbit at 50 pc will therefore be $`10^7`$ yr. Thus, the black hole can grow relatively quickly compared with a cosmological timescale and still be considered adiabatically. This provides an argument in favor of the GS spike. On the other hand, the present-day growth rate of the black hole due to consumption of stars coming inside its loss cone is at most $`3\times 10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$/Gyr , one order of magnitude smaller than what is needed to form the current black hole in a Hubble time (mean growth rate of $`2\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$/Gyr). This information combined with the evidence that peak AGN activity occurred near redshift $`z2`$ suggests that the majority of the black-hole mass was in place at these early epochs. Although this leaves plenty of time (few Gyr) for the black hole to grow adiabatically, the violent processes that are likely required to form the black holes that power AGN may well operate on a much more rapid timescale.

### E Weaker spikes at smooth densities

All of the discussion above should make it clear that if the black hole grows adiabatically away from the Galactic center, or in a Galactic center with a nonsingular phase-space distribution, then the spike should be the weaker $`\rho r^{1.5}`$ spike found in Refs. . Although this will produce an enhancement in the flux of annihilation radiation, it will not produce the huge enhancement that arises in a spike $`\rho (r)r^A`$ with $`A>2`$.

## III Adiabatic growth of the black hole

We now consider adiabatic growth of a black hole at the center of a spherically symmetric self-gravitating dark-matter system with a more general (and realistic) phase-space distribution. Because of the two key ingredients here—adiabaticity and spherical symmetry—this problem can be treated semi-analytically. The slow changes in the potential allow us to relate in a simple way the dark-matter distribution functions before and after the appearance of the black hole. The symmetry, both in the initial and final states, implies simple forms for the adiabatic invariants.

The calculation has been discussed in several papers in the past, in the context of growth of a black hole in a general stellar system , or in the context of growth of the central black hole at the Milky Way center  (see also Ref. ). Below we briefly review the calculation, both to reproduce the result in GS and to provide some additional insight on the origin of the spike.

### A Semi-analytic treatment

In a spherically symmetric problem, the adiabatic invariants are the angular momentum and the radial action; i.e., $`L_f=L_iL`$ and $`J_{r,f}(E_f,L)=J_{r,i}(E_i,L)`$, where

$`J_r(E,L)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{r_{\mathrm{min}}}^{r_{\mathrm{max}}}}𝑑rv_r`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{r_{\mathrm{min}}}^{r_{\mathrm{max}}}}𝑑r\sqrt{2(E\mathrm{\Phi }(r)){\displaystyle \frac{L^2}{r^2}}},`$ (2)
and the subscripts $`i`$ and $`f`$ refer to the value of the quantity in the initial and final state. If the growth of the black hole is adiabatic, the distribution function $`f(E,L)`$ remains unchanged, so $`f_f(E_f,L)=f_i(E_i,L)`$.

We specify the initial state by its density $`\rho _i(r)`$ as a function of radius $`r`$. We also postulate that it has an isotropic velocity-dispersion tensor. If so, then there is a one-to-one correspondence between $`\rho _i(r)`$ and $`f_i(E_i)`$, given by Eddington’s formula (see, e.g., ),

$$f(E)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{8}\pi ^2}\left[_E^0\frac{d^2\rho }{d\mathrm{\Phi }^2}\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Phi }E}}\frac{\left(d\rho /d\mathrm{\Phi }\right)_{\mathrm{\Phi }=0}}{\sqrt{E}}\right],$$
(3)
and the initial state is fully defined.

By inverting the expression for the radial action in the initial state, we can write $`E_i`$ as a function of $`E_f`$ and $`L`$ and hence find $`f_f(E_f,L)`$ from $`f_i(E_i,L)`$. To compute the radial action in the final state, we actually need first a guess for the final potential. We assume that the potential is dominated by the the black hole in its vicinity, while it is roughly unchanged at large galactocentric distances, fixing $`\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)\mathrm{\Phi }_i(r)GM_{\mathrm{BH}}/r`$. Once $`f_f(E_f,L_f)`$ is obtained, the density profile of the system in the final state is recovered by integrating $`f_f`$ over the velocity space, or, with a change of variables, over $`E_f`$ and $`L`$:

$$\rho _f(r)=\frac{4\pi }{r^2}_{E_f^{\mathrm{min}}}^0𝑑E_f_{L_f^{\mathrm{min}}}^{L_f^{\mathrm{max}}}𝑑L_f\frac{L_f}{v_r}f_f(E_f,L_f).$$
(4)
Because of the form we choose for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)`$, we expect $`\rho _f(r)`$ to be fairly accurate in the central region and far from the black hole. A more accurate result could be obtained in the transition region by iterating. However, we will mainly be interested in the region near the black hole where the approximation $`\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)GM_{\mathrm{BH}}/r`$ is fairly accurate. It is also the form adopted by GS.

We apply this procedure numerically in one case. Among the general family of spherical double-power-law dark-matter profiles (the Zhao models ),

$$\rho _i(r)=\rho _0\left(\frac{R_0}{r}\right)^\gamma \left[\frac{1+(R_0/a)^\alpha }{1+(r/a)^\alpha }\right]^{(\beta \gamma )/\alpha },$$
(5)
we focus on the functional form suggested by the N-body simulation of Navarro, Frenk, and White , a density profile with $`(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )=(1,3,1)`$ (hereafter the NFW profile). We fix the values of the Sun’s galactocentric distance, the local halo density and the length scale in the profile, respectively, as $`R_0=8`$ kpc, $`\rho _0=0.3`$ GeV cm<sup>-3</sup> and $`a=20`$ kpc (values compatible with available dynamical constraints); this profile is plotted as a dotted line in Fig. 1.

We first compute numerically the corresponding distribution function and then we follow the same steps applied in Ref.  for the isothermal sphere. We perform numerically the inversion between $`E_i`$ and $`E_f`$, computing the radial action for the initial and the final state on grids, respectively, in the $`(E_i,L)`$ and $`(E_f,L)`$ plane (we implement adaptive grids in order to achieve everywhere the required numerical accuracy for the inversion). Then we compute $`\rho _f(r)`$ performing the double integral in Eq. (4). The result is shown as a solid line in Fig. 1. As can be seen, the adiabatic growth of the black hole at the center of the dark-matter system induces a sharp increase in the dark-matter density close to the black hole (compare the solid line with the dotted line which gives the initial profile). At a galactocentric distance of about 20 pc, there is the transition from the $`1/r`$ cusp in the NFW profile to a much steeper spike $`\rho (r)r^A`$ with $`A=7/3`$. This is in agreement with the corresponding result (profile scaling as $`1/r^\gamma `$ with $`\gamma =1`$) in GS. In Fig. 1 we also plot, as a dashed line, the result for the adiabatic contraction if all particles are on circular orbits (the toy model we introduced in the previous Section). As can be seen, this simplified treatment reproduces quite closely the result we obtained in case of an isotropic distribution (within a factor of 2, which is less than the uncertainty in the overall normalization of the dark-matter profile).

The density in the spike exceeds $`10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$ pc<sup>-3</sup>, which is roughly the maximum density if the dark matter is made of WIMPs, which we indicate as $`\rho _{\mathrm{core}}`$ in this and in the following Figures. The limit comes from the value of the pair-annihilation cross section for WIMPs, which is fixed, to some extent, by their relic abundance (see GS for details). In fact, the cross section for WIMP-WIMP elastic scattering should generally be larger than the annihilation cross section, so the maximum central density derived by GS should actually be a bit lower.

### B Scaling properties

The result for the spike slope we have just derived numerically could have been anticipated using scaling properties, as suggested in Ref. . This argument can be summarized as follows: Let the potential of the initial system increase with radius, for small radii, as $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(r)r^{2\gamma }`$; this is the leading term in systems such as, e.g., those described by Eq. (5) with $`\gamma 0`$. Then the conservation of the radial action implies the scaling $`E_iE_f^{(2\gamma )/(4\gamma )}`$ . Suppose then that the distribution function in the initial state diverges near $`E_i=\mathrm{\Phi }_i(0)`$ as $`f_i(E_i)[E_i\mathrm{\Phi }_i(0)]^n`$. Combining this with the expression for the final density profile, Eq. (4), it follows that

$$\rho _f(r)r^A,A=\frac{3}{2}+n\left(\frac{2\gamma }{4\gamma }\right).$$
(6)
It is interesting to derive the exponents $`A`$ and $`n`$ for the family of profiles introduced above in Eq. (5). We derive $`n`$ for $`1\alpha 2`$; results for other ranges can be obtained analogously. In Eddington’s formula, Eq. (3), the second term is zero, while the main contribution to the first comes from the singularity in the lower extreme of integration. After some algebra, one finds that the leading terms are given by

$$f(E)_r^{}𝑑r\frac{\left[c_0+c_1(r/a)^\alpha +c_2(r/a)^{2\alpha }+\mathrm{}\right]}{r^3\sqrt{r^{2\gamma }[E\mathrm{\Phi }(0)]}},$$
(7)
where $`r^{}=[E\mathrm{\Phi }(0)]^{1/(2\gamma )}`$, and the first two coefficients in the expansion are (up to a constant),

$`c_0`$ $`=`$ $`2\gamma (3\gamma )`$ (8)
$`c_1`$ $`=`$ $`(\alpha 2)(3\gamma )(\beta \gamma )`$ (10)
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{(2\alpha \gamma )(3\gamma )+\alpha (\alpha \gamma )}{\alpha (3+\alpha \gamma )}}.`$
To illustrate, consider three cases. For $`\gamma >0`$ and independent of $`\alpha `$, $`c_00`$ and

$$n=\frac{6\gamma }{2(2\gamma )},A=\frac{92\gamma }{4\gamma }$$
(11)
recovering the result of Ref. and GS. In the limit $`\gamma 0`$ and for $`1\alpha <2`$, the first term in the expansion vanishes, $`c_0=0`$, and hence the second becomes the leading term. In this case one finds milder singularities,

$$n=\frac{3\alpha }{2},A=\frac{9\alpha }{4}.$$
(12)
Finally, in the limit $`\gamma 0`$ and $`\alpha 2`$, both $`c_0`$ and $`c_1`$ go to zero, the distribution function is non-singular, $`n=0`$, and the density profile after the adiabatic growth of the black hole has a $`\gamma =3/2`$ singularity, which is the result obtained in Ref.  using an isothermal (non-singular) distribution function.

A few comments on the results above. The derivation of the scaling in Eq. (6) verifies that the dark-matter spike is mainly formed by particles which, before the black-hole growth, were very cold and close to the Galactic center; i.e., particles with $`E_i\mathrm{\Phi }_i(0)`$. If the distribution function is singular in that limit (i.e., there are many such particles in the initial state), the spike is hugely enhanced. As we have seen, this is possible even for a dark-matter-density profile that is non-singular towards the Galactic center (but in this case the spike is always milder than for $`\gamma 0`$). Note also that the enhancement in the spike due to the singularity in the distribution function is possible just if the black hole grows exactly at the center of the initial dark-matter system. If the black hole is formed away from the Galactic center, the induced dark-matter spike will be mild. For a system with an isotropic velocity-dispersion tensor, it will be of the same form we obtained above for a non-singular distribution function.

In the previous paragraph, we found for the NFW profile a spike with $`A=7/3`$. For this result to hold, it is crucial to postulate that the initial density profile has a $`1/r`$ singularity all the way down to the Galactic center. This behavior is just an extrapolation from an N-body simulation with resolution not better than a kpc. As the simulations show that larger structures form from the merging of smaller substructures, such an extrapolation to scales smaller than 10 pc or so may not be trivial. More importantly, even if the $`1/r`$ scaling is indeed preserved down to the inner few pc in N-body simulations, it is unlikely to survive the addition of baryons. If the density profile is assumed to be truncated in the innermost region, we expect a shallower spike and a model-dependent suppression. For example, if the truncation of a singular profile is performed introducing a core radius, by replacing $`\rho _i(r)1/r^\gamma `$ with $`\rho _i(r)1/[1+(r/a)^\alpha ]^{\gamma /\alpha }`$, the spike exponent $`A`$ will depend just on $`\alpha `$ (its expression can be recovered from the analysis above substituting $`\gamma =0`$ and $`\beta =\gamma `$; note, however, that the normalization of the spike is set by the other parameters as well).

Finally, the results in this Section show that the spike obtained by assuming a single-power-law density profile ($`1/r^\gamma `$ for any $`r`$) with $`\gamma 0`$ will probably not provide a good approximation to the true spike. Most likely, the results in Ref. , where values of $`\gamma `$ as low as $`10^6`$ are considered, will be modified assuming the more general double-power-law density profile of the form in Eq. (5).

## IV Instantaneous growth of the black hole

We now consider what happens when the black hole is inserted instantaneously to the center of the dark-matter distribution. This will provide some indication of what happens to the dark-matter distribution if the black-hole growth is too rapid to be approximated as adiabatic. We do this calculation under the assumption that all particles are on circular orbits.

We first provide a qualitative argument to show that the sudden black-hole growth leads to a central dark-matter-density enhancement that is not as dramatic as that for adiabatic growth. If the black hole grows adiabatically, the initial large circular orbit becomes a final circular orbit of much smaller radius. Thus, the dark matter that was initially at a large radius spends all of its time at a much smaller radius. Now suppose the black hole appears suddenly and dominates the potential at these radii. Again, the angular momentum of the particle is conserved, but its energy changes in such a way that it follows an elliptical Keplerian orbit, as shown in Fig. 2, in which its largest radius is the initial radius. Although the orbit reaches to smaller radii than the circular orbit that arises from adiabatic growth, the velocity of the particle at these small radii is large. As a result, the particle on this orbit spends most of its time at radii larger than the radius of the final orbit from adiabatic growth.

We now quantify these arguments. When the black hole is added, the velocity of each particle remains unchanged, but the gravitational potential is changed suddenly. The final profile is obtained by following each particle along its subsequent orbit. The probability for a particle that at the appearance of the black hole was at galactocentric distance $`r_0`$ with a velocity $`\stackrel{}{v}_0`$ to be between radii $`r`$ and $`r+dr`$ is

$$P(r)dr=\frac{dt}{T(r_0,\stackrel{}{v}_0)}=\frac{1}{T(r_0,\stackrel{}{v}_0)}\frac{dr}{v_r(r,r_0,\stackrel{}{v}_0)},$$
(13)
where $`T`$ is half of the period of the particle, and $`v_r`$ is the radial component of its velocity.

If all particles are on circular orbits, then the calculation is simplified, as the initial radial velocities are all zero. We thus need to integrate the probability that a particle that is observed at radius $`r`$ in the final configuration came from an orbit at radius $`r_0`$ in the initial configuration. Doing so, we find that the final radial profile is given by:

$$\rho _f(r)=\frac{1}{r^2}_{r_{\mathrm{min}}}^{r_{\mathrm{max}}}𝑑r_0r_0^2\rho _i(r_0)\frac{1}{T(r_0)}\frac{1}{v_r(r,r_0)},$$
(14)
where

$$v_r=\sqrt{2\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r_0)\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)\right]+v_c^2(r_0)\left(1r_0^2/r^2\right)},$$
(15)
with $`v_c`$ the circular velocity in the initial state. The extremes of integration $`r_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{max}}`$ are the minimum and maximum initial radii for particles contributing to the final profile at the radius $`r`$. For such radii, $`v_r(r,r_{\mathrm{min}})=v_r(r,r_{\mathrm{max}})=0`$. From the expression for $`v_r`$, it follows that $`r_{\mathrm{min}}=r`$; i.e., a particle on a circular orbit shrinks in general to a rosette orbit with apocenter equal to the radius of the initial orbit.

We compute $`\rho _f`$ for the initial NFW profile introduced in Section III A. Again, we assume $`\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)GM_{\mathrm{BH}}/r`$; the result is shown as a dash-dot curve in Fig. 1. Although the black hole steepens the profile, the steepening is not nearly as dramatic as if the black hole is introduced adiabatically.

The final profile has a $`r^{4/3}`$ singularity, a result that can be understood analytically. In the small-$`r`$ limit, the potential is dominated by the black hole, and $`T(r_0)r_0^{3/2}`$, while $`v_r`$ becomes

$`v_r`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2GM_{\mathrm{BH}}}{rr_0}}}`$ (17)
$`\times \sqrt{(r_0r)\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{M_i^h(r_0)}{2M_{\mathrm{BH}}}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{r_0}{r}}\right)\right)}.`$
For the NFW profile, the halo mass $`M_i^h(r_0)`$ enclosed within the radius $`r_0`$ is proportional to $`r_0^2`$, $`r_{\mathrm{max}}`$ can be computed exactly, and the final profile is

$`\rho _f(r){\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}{\displaystyle _r^{r_{\mathrm{max}}}}𝑑r_0{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{(r_0r)(r_{\mathrm{max}}r_0)}}}`$ (19)
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{r_0^2(rr_0)/(kr_{\mathrm{max}}^2)r/(kr_{\mathrm{max}})}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^{4/3}}},`$
as found numerically and shown in Fig. 1.

Heuristically, our circular-orbit model should generalize to any orbit with a finite peri-to-apocenter ratio. The apocenter distribution is unchanged after the implanting of the black hole, and the pericenter is determined by the angular-momentum distribution, which is a power law differing from that of the circular orbits by a scaling. So we expect the pericenter to move in according to the same power law as for circular orbits and thus produce a density power law as before except for normalization.

## V Models with off-centered Black Hole

The black hole, or at least its seed, might not form exactly at the center of the dark-matter halo due to deviations from spherical symmetry in various galaxy formation processes. If the black hole forms off-center, then it will slowly sink via dynamical friction to the center of the Galactic potential well. We sketch in this Section the number of competing effects entering this problem.

### A Enough time to spiral in?

The process of dynamical friction is not efficient enough to center the black hole regardless of its initial mass and of its initial distance from the center of mass. The spiral-in timescale for a very small black hole or for a black hole born very far from the center of the Galaxy, may be longer than the age of the Galaxy itself. For a black-hole seed of mass $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$, the timescale to spiral in the potential well of the NFW profile we considered is roughly comparable to the Hubble time if its initial location is 100 pc away from the center of the dark-matter system. This is illustrated in Fig 3. Also shown is the case of a black-hole seed of mass $`10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$, for which the timescale is of the order of 10 Gyr if it spirals in from 1 kpc. The conclusion is that if, as plausible, the black-hole seed is generated through some violent process off-center, it will not get to the center until almost fully formed.

### B Merger and growth at the center

What happens when the seed BH arrives at the center? There are two competing effects with the dark-matter distribution near the Galactic center: (a) it may be smoothed out by the time-dependent perturbation induced by the incoming black-hole; (b) it may be squeezed in by subsequent at-the-center growth of the black hole.

Effect (a) has been investigated with N-body simulations in Ref. . It was shown there that the back-reaction to the spiral-in of the black hole leads to the formation of a weak density cusp, with an $`r^{0.5}`$ singularity, regardless of the initial density profile. More precisely, the same features are obtained in simulations with the King model (which has a core radius) and with the Hernquist profile (which is singular at the Galactic center and given by Eq. (5) with $`(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )=(1,4,1)`$). Furthermore, the size of the weak-cusp region is found to be correlated to the black-hole mass, with roughly the total mass of the region affected by the black hole equal to the black-hole mass. The proposed explanation for this result is as follows: The sinking of the black hole induces a heating process that leaves no particle in the system with energy below some minimum energy $`E_0`$. We saw above in the case of adiabatic growth at the center of the halo that the spike in the final density profile was due to initially cold particles. If such particles are removed from the system, neglecting the dependence on angular momentum in the distribution function, one finds that the final density profile goes at small radii like

$`\rho _f(r)`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi {\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)}^0}f_f(E_f)\sqrt{2\left[E_f\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)\right]}`$ (20)
$`=`$ $`4\pi {\displaystyle _{E_0}^0}f_f(E_f)\sqrt{2\left[E_f\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)\right]}`$ (21)
$``$ $`\sqrt{\mathrm{\Phi }_f(r)}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}}.`$ (22)
We implement this result in our picture, with a simple scheme. We suppose we have an initial dark-halo profile of the form in Eq. (5). Then we postulate the off-center formation of a black-hole seed of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^S`$, which we keep as a free parameter. Since we are supposing that the black-hole seed appears off-center, regardless of whether it forms quickly or slowly, it induces a very mild dark-matter spike around it; we neglect this effect. We model then the modification to the dark-halo profile due to the sinking of the black-hole seed in the center of the Galaxy by replacing the initial density profile with the following:

$`\rho _{\mathrm{int}}(r)`$ $`=`$ $`\rho _0\left({\displaystyle \frac{R_0}{r}}\right)^{0.5}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1+(R_0/r_s)}{1+(r/r_s)}}\right]^{\gamma 0.5}`$ (24)
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle \frac{1+(R_0/a)^\alpha }{1+(r/a)^\alpha }}\right]^{(\beta \gamma )/\alpha },`$
which is essentially a modified Zhao model with a break at both $`r_s`$ and $`a`$. The new length scale $`r_s`$ we introduce is determined by requiring that the mass of the dark halo within $`r_s`$ to be equal to $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^S`$.

Moving onto Effect (b), we model the accretion of matter onto the black hole so that $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^S`$ grows to the mass we now observe $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ as a slow adiabatic process, and compute the final dark-matter density, treating the adiabatic contraction in the circular-orbit approximation described above.

In Fig. 4 we plot $`\rho _f`$ for the initial NFW profile introduced in Section III A and for a few choices for the mass of the black-hole seed. As can be seen, if the black hole that spirals in has a mass comparable to (more than a tenth of) the mass we observe now at the center of the Galaxy, the dark-matter density close to the black hole is, in this picture, lower than the density in the initial profile. This indicates that the number of dark-matter particles expelled from the inner Galaxy by the black-hole seed is larger than the number of those attracted later on by the adiabatic deepening of the potential well due to the increase in mass of the black hole.

The adiabatic contraction process dominates for $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^S<M_{\mathrm{BH}}/10`$. For $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^S<M_{\mathrm{BH}}/200`$, the end result is a dramatic enhancement in the dark-matter density around the black hole. Although the final density profile obtained with this procedure differs from what we found in case of adiabatic growth of the black hole at the center of the dark-matter system, the difference occurs only at densities higher than the maximum WIMP density $`\rho _{\mathrm{core}}`$. Thus, if a black-hole seed with less than 1/200th the mass of the final black hole is let to grow adiabatically at the center, then a spike that is essentially indistinguishable accordance with the GS result could be formed. The trouble is that such small seed cannot spiral in the center quickly enough, as shown by Fig. 3. So the conclusion is that if the GS spike is to grow, the black hole must form within the inner 50 pc of the dark-matter distribution: If it forms outside this radius with a large mass, it will destroy the cusp as it spirals in, and if it forms well outside this radius with a small mass, it will not have enough time to spiral in.

Although we have considered so far just the NFW profile, the procedures we outlined can be applied to any density profile. As another example, we consider the dark-matter-density profile obtained in the high-resolution N-body simulation of Moore et al. . In this case, the initial dark-matter profile is more cuspy towards the Galactic center and is given by Eq. (5) with $`(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )=(1.5,3,1.5)`$ (hereafter the Moore et al. profile). Again we make a choice for the values of our galactocentric distance, the local halo density, and the length scale in agreement with available dynamical constraints: $`R_0=8`$ kpc, $`\rho _0=0.3`$ GeV cm<sup>-3</sup>, and $`a=28`$ kpc.

Results in this case are shown in Fig. 5. The initial profile is shown as a dotted curve; the dashed curve shows the slight increase in density in case of instantaneous growth of the black hole according to the treatment in Section IV. The solid curves give the final profile in the case described above in this Section. We see again that for large values of the mass of the black-hole seed, the net effect is a decrease in the dark-matter density. For values $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^S<M_{\mathrm{BH}}/50`$, the enhancement in the final density reproduces, for $`\rho _f<\rho _{\mathrm{core}}`$, the result one gets just assuming the adiabatic growth at the center of the dark matter system. The timescales to re-center black hole seeds of $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ are again shown in Fig 3, and the same discussion we outlined for the NFW case applies here.

## VI Taking stars into account

So far we have used a schematic picture of the Galaxy which included just dark matter and the black hole, neglecting other baryonic components. More realistically, the stellar components may outweigh the dark matter in the inner part of the galaxy in the initial configuration before the black hole grows. We treat this problem here.

In the standard sequence of galaxy formation, a roughly spherical overdensity, in which the baryons and dark matter are distributed homogeneously, undergoes gravitational collapse. The collisionless matter then relaxes to an NFW or Moore profile, as indicated by N-body simulations, while the baryonic matter shocks, heats, and then cools to a disk and/or bulge in the gravitational potential well generated by both the dark and the baryonic matter. The radiative cooling and collapse of baryons is likely to be a slow process and hence it should be a good approximation to treat it as an adiabatic contraction of the baryons.

We sketch this process in one example. We reconsider again the case of off-center formation discussed in the previous Section, refining the definition of initial and final states. In the initial state we add the extra component due to baryons (same density profile as for dark matter but scaled down of a factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b/\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$). In the final state we add the stellar bulge and disk. We pick standard forms for them, compatible with available observations in the outer part of the Galaxy and with the rotation curve close to the black hole (we do not reproduce the functional forms here as they do not enter critically in the discussion below). The spiral-in of the black-hole seed is treated in the same way as in Section V. The adiabatic contraction is performed using the circular-orbit approximation. We also replace the disk with a spherical mass distribution that produces the same rotation curve. This simplification allows us to still treat the problem as spherically symmetric and does not enter crucially in the results we focus on.

Results are shown in Fig. 6. The adiabatic contraction of the baryons in the bulge and the disk induces a significant enhancement of the dark-matter density at intermediate galactocentric distances (few pc up to few kpc). In the innermost region, however, the main role is still played by the black hole.

## VII Conclusions

We have tried to determine the initial conditions required for growth of this spike by considering several alternative formation scenarios. We have found that for the spike to arise, the majority of the black-hole mass must grow on a timescale long compared with $`10^7`$ years and within 50 pc of the center of a cuspy dark-matter distribution. Moreover, the dark-matter particles that make up this spike must be initially in very cold orbits near the Galactic center. A spike essentially equivalent to the GS spike could in principle arise if a low-mass black hole spiraled in to the Galactic center and then grew in mass, but the spiral-in timescale for such low-mass black holes is larger than the Hubble time.

If we understood precisely how the black hole in the Galactic center formed, we could say more definitively whether the GS spike arises or not. Unfortunately, however, the details of black-hole formation are far from clear. The present-day growth rate for the Milky Way’s black hole as well as the peak of AGN activity at redshifts $`z2`$ suggest that a good fraction of the black-hole mass was in place at early times. The most promising mechanisms for black-hole production at high redshift do not seem to contain the ingredients required for the GS spike (see, e.g., Refs. ). N-body simulations show that at that time, dark halos are forming via rapid and often violent mergers. Moreover, hydrodynamic simulations show that when two galaxies collide, they can leave behind a cold dense baryonic gas that can then collapse to form a supermassive black hole. The rate for black-hole growth is estimated to be orders of magnitude larger than the current rate (see, e.g., Ref. ), although a timescale long compared with $`10^7`$ years, the period for the orbits that eventually wind up in the spike, is still conceivable. However, even if the timescale is reasonable, the dark halos for each of the two initial galaxies pass through each other almost undisturbed and then later relax to the dark-matter profile for a single halo. The timescale for this relaxation should be even longer. Moreover, it is hard to believe that the cold orbits required for the GS spike would be found right at the center of the dark-matter distribution so soon after this very violent collision. The mass density in these inner regions will be dominated by the baryons, and baryons can shock, form molecular clouds, stars, star clusters, and supernova-driven winds. The dynamical effects of all these processes are heuristically expected to disrupt cold orbits. Finally, it is not clear why the centers of the dark-matter and gas distributions should be so coincident in this violent formation. (Although the black hole in our Galaxy coincides fairly well at the current epoch with what appears to be the dynamic center of the Galaxy, this is not necessarily the case in other galaxies, such as M31.)

An alternative (although not mutually exclusive) possibility is that a $`10^310^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ black hole could form at a redshift $`z30`$ when molecular-hydrogen cooling permits the collapse of the first baryonic objects. The remaining $`10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ of mass could then be accreted during the subsequent generations of mergers that eventually give rise to a galactic halo. Although it would not be unusual for the initial high-density peak in the primordial mass distribution that gave rise to this black-hole seed to be near the center of the resulting galactic halo, it would be somewhat surprising if it was so close to the center.

In conclusion, we have determined the initial conditions for the growth of the GS spike and given several reasons to doubt they were manifest in our own Galaxy. Given these doubts, null searches for annihilation radiation from the Galactic center should not be interpreted as evidence against WIMP dark matter, nor against a cuspy halo.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank A. Loeb for useful discussions. This work was supported in part at Caltech by NSF AST-0096023, NASA NAG5-8506, and DoE DE-FG03-92-ER40701, and at Trieste by the RTN project under grant HPRN-CT-2000-00152. H.S.Z. wishes to thank Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and Sterrewacht Leiden for financial supports and Caltech for hospitality during his visit.


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# HEXTE STUDIES OF SCO X–1 SPECTRA: DETECTIONS OF HARD X–RAY TAILS BEYOND 200 keV

## 1 INTRODUCTION

It is well established, after the GRANAT/SIGMA and CGRO missions, that a power–law spectra extending beyond 30 keV are not exclusive signatures of a black hole in an X–ray binary system (Barret and Vedrenne, 1994; Barret, McClintock, and Grindlay, 1996). High sensitivity observations with RXTE (e.g., Heindl and Smith, 1998; Barret et al., 2000) have shown the presence of hard X–ray flux in other types of low–mass X–ray binaries (LMXBs) and BeppoSAX observations also have detected hard X–ray flux from LMXBs systems (see, e.g., Frontera et al., 2000; Iaria et al., 2000; Di Salvo et al., 2000).

In this work we studied the hard X–ray spectrum of Sco X–1, a high luminosity LMXB Z source, using the High Energy X–ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE) on–board RXTE. The presence of a non–thermal component in Sco X–1 spectra has been historically reported (e.g., Peterson and Jacobson, 1966; Haymes et al., 1972; Duldig et al., 1983), but much more sensitive searches have failed to detect such a component, placing strong upper limits on the non–thermal flux (e.g., Greenhill et al. 1979; Rothschild et al., 1980; Soong and Rothschild, 1983). Recently, Strickman and Barret (2000) reported the presence of a hard X–ray tail in Sco X–1 using CGRO/OSSE. Thanks to the HEXTE sensitivity, we show here, on several occasions, strong evidence for the presence of this variable non–thermal component extending up to 220 keV.

This present study is an extension of a previous work (D’Amico et al., 2000) with the use of an expanded database from the public RXTE archive of Sco X–1 observations, containing data from 1997 April to 1999 July. Our on–source time (for the Proportional Counter Array, PCA) is 203,440 s in 22 subsets of data (an improvement factor of 30 % over our previous study) which, in turn, provided us with more than 100 ks of on–source live time in HEXTE. In the next sections we describe our data selection and analysis, then we discuss the detection of a non–thermal component and present our conclusions.

## 2 DATA SELECTION AND ANALYSIS

We used data from HEXTE (Rothschild et al., 1998) to search for hard X–ray tails in Sco X–1 in the $``$ 20–220 keV interval and data from PCA (Jahoda et al., 1996) to determine the position of the source in the Z diagram. We have chosen, from the public RXTE database of Sco X–1, those subsets of data in which $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 5000 s of HEXTE total on–source time was available, in order to achieve good sensitivity at high energies, resulting in 22 RXTE observations (as of 2000 August) that cover the period from 1997 April to 1999 July. If, in a particular observation, the source was moving back and forth from the normal to the flaring branch (see, e.g., van der Klis, 1995), then we split the data according to the branch resulting in the 28 observation segments displayed in Table 1. Since we are primarily interested in the study of the non–thermal ($`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 50 keV) spectra of the source (the “hard” component of the spectrum), we have simply modeled the (HEXTE) low energy thermal component as thermal bremsstrahlung emission .

We refer the reader to D’Amico et al. (2000), for a more detailed description of the instrument and data analysis.

## 3 RESULTS

We developed two criteria to determine the presence of a hard X–ray tail in a particular spectrum: 1) a signal to noise ratio (SNR) $``$ 5 in the 75–220 keV energy range, and 2) an F–Test null significance for the addition of the hard component at a level of 10-7 or less. We claim that we observed a hard X–ray tail only when both of these criteria are fulfilled. We have 8 clear detections of non–thermal flux in Sco X–1 spectra, with the hard X–ray tail extending at least to 220 keV. The spectral parameters derived for those observations are shown in Table 2. Similarly, we defined a strong non–detection when 1) the SNR in the 75–220 keV is $`<`$ 1, and 2) the F–Test was at a level of $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 10-5. We thus observed (see Table 1) 4 strong non–detections. We note that several of our observations have very significant F–Test values, but with an SNR $`<`$ 5. In those cases we do not claim that we have observed a hard X–ray tail, although this is an open possibility. In Figure 1 we show one of our clear detection spectra, together with a spectrum when we have not detected a hard component.

We observed a variation of a factor of $``$ 3 in the flux of the non–thermal component in the 20–200 keV interval among our 8 detections, and, at least, an order of magnitude in overall variability, taking into account our entire database.

We were also able to study the time–scale of variations of the hard X–ray component. As can be seen in Table 1, for observation 20 we detected a hard X–ray tail, which was not present 4 hours later in observation 21. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a short time–scale variability in the hard component is reported for Sco X–1.

We also note that on all 3 occasions that the source was in the HB, a hard X–ray tail was detected.

## 4 DISCUSSION

Taking 2.5 kpc as the lower limit to the distance to Sco X–1 (Bradshaw, Fomalont, and Geldzahler, 1999), we found (using the PCA data) Sco X–1 to be emitting near the Eddington level in the 2–20 keV band (for a 1.4 M neutron star). This is remarkably different from the atoll sources (Barret et al., 2000), in which the luminosity in the same energy range is below 1037 ergs s-1 when a hard tail is detected. The 20–200 keV hard component luminosity variation between our 8 detections is 5.9–15.0 $`\times `$ 1035 ergs s-1, which is comparable to the weaker atoll sources hard X–ray luminosities reported by Barret, McClintock, and Grindlay (1996).

We have observed the presence of a hard X–ray tail in each of the 3 branches on the Z diagram. Although it is unclear what is producing the hard X–ray tail in Sco X–1, as can be seen in Figure 2a, it appears that the chance of observing a hard X–ray tail is greater if the thermal component is brighter. This assumes that the thermal component observed in HEXTE 20–50 keV band can be used to trace its $`E`$$`<`$ 20 keV behavior. When we do observe a hard component, the power law index is correlated with the soft component temperature. (Figure 2b). One other interesting and suggestive relationship (Figure 2c) is that the hard component flattens as the mass accretion rate ($`\dot{M}`$) increases, if we assume that the movement along the Z diagram (from the horizontal to the flaring branch) is the result of the increasing variation of the $`\dot{M}`$ (see, e.g., van der Klis, 1995). Thus it is possible to speculate that the mechanism responsible for the production of the hard component and its shape is dependent on the $`\dot{M}`$, the 20–50 keV flux, and temperature of the soft thermal component. We note that while is straightforward to explain the derived power law indices, and the hard X–ray emission, when the source was observed in the HB and in the FB in terms of synchrotron emission or Comptonization models, our measured photon indices in the FB (consistent with 0) are not compatible with the hard X–ray emission being produced by one of those two mechanisms.

Our HEXTE observations 20–22 and 26 (see Table 1) overlap with BATSE/OSSE observations reported in Strickman and Barret (2000). It is interesting to note that while HEXTE detected the presence of the hard X–ray tail in observations 20 and 22, BATSE/OSSE did not. Meanwhile, in observation 26 the hard X–ray tail was detected both by HEXTE and BATSE/OSSE, with a spectrum extending up to $``$ 400 keV.

Our measured luminosities in the 2–20 keV ($`L_x`$) and 20–200 keV energy intervals ($`L_{hx}`$) can be used to study the suggestion (Barret et al., 2000) that such luminosities can be used to distinguish between neutron star and black hole systems, with neutron stars systems emitting $`L_{hx}L_x`$ when $`L_x\stackrel{<}{}L_{crit}`$, with $`L_{crit}=1.5`$$`\times `$ 1037 ergs s-1. Since Sco X–1 is emitting close to the Eddington level, our observations can not be used to test the hypothesis for the 2–20 keV luminosity (see details in Barret et al., 2000). Otherwise our observations of $`L_{hx}`$ are in agreement with the idea that only black hole binaries can have both $`L_x`$ and $`L_{hx}`$ above $`L_{crit}`$.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we provided clear evidence for variable hard X–ray emission from the Z source Sco X–1. We observed that the 20–200 keV non–thermal component varied by at least an order of magnitude. We were able to track the movement of the source along the Z diagram and we concluded that the presence of the hard X–ray tail is not confined to a particular position in such a diagram, which may suggest that the mechanism responsible for the production of the hard X–ray tail is not uniquely dependent on the inferred $`\dot{M}`$. Otherwise we speculated that the appearance of a hard component in the spectrum may be related to the brightness of the thermal component, and that the shape of the X–ray tail may be correlated with the temperature of the thermal component.

## 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research has made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. F. D’Amico gratefully acknowledges FAPESP/Brazil for financial support under grant 99/02352–2. This research was supported by NASA contract NAS5–30720.


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# Young Supernova Remnants: Issues and Prospects

## Introduction

Young supernova remnants (YSNRs) are fascinating objects. Just as star formation connects the interstellar medium (ISM) with stars through the process of gravitational contraction, so YSNRs complete the connection back to the ISM through a titanic explosion driven by the release of either gravitational or nuclear energy. An SNR is produced by the interaction of the ejecta with the ambient medium or, alternatively, by the effects of a pulsar left behind by the explosion. The ambient medium can be circumstellar—i.e., matter ejected by the progenitor or its companion—or interstellar. I shall use the term “YSNR” to denote an SNR in which the total mass ejected by the star, both the circumstellar mass, $`M_{\mathrm{cir}}`$, and the mass ejected by the supernova explosion, $`M_{\mathrm{ej}}`$, exceeds the mass of swept-up interstellar gas, $`M_{\mathrm{sw},\mathrm{is}}`$—i.e., $`M_{\mathrm{cir}}+M_{\mathrm{ej}}>M_{\mathrm{sw},\mathrm{is}}`$.

In this article, I shall first review the dynamics of YSNRs. I shall then discuss YSNRs as physics laboratories that enable us to address problems that are difficult or impossible to address on Earth. Finally, I shall address several challenges posed by YSNRs, including whether they can be the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts.

## Review of YSNR dynamics

The dynamics of a YSNR is driven by the interaction between the ejecta and the surrounding matter. The first step in analyzing the dynamics is therefore to determine the density structure of the ejecta. Chevalier chev76  began this effort by working out the dynamics of the blast wave produced by a core-collapse supernova as it propagated in the envelope of a red giant. Subsequently, Chevalier & Soker chev89  approximated the envelope of a blue supergiant as having a power-law density distribution with $`\rho _0r^{17/7}`$, which gives rise to a Primakoff blast wave in which the density and velocity are power-laws in radius. A general treatment of the generation of the ejecta density profile (under the assumption of spherical symmetry) was given by Matzner & McKee mm99 , and we shall briefly review their results here.

They began by developing an analytic expression for the velocity of the supernova shock as it propagates through the progenitor star. In the interior, one expects $`v_s[E_{\mathrm{in}}/m(r)]^{1/2}`$, where $`m(r)M(r)M_{\mathrm{rem}}`$ is the mass of the ejecta inside $`r`$. When the shock reaches the atmosphere, it accelerates down the density gradient according to $`v_s[m(r)/\rho _0(r)r^3]^\alpha `$, with $`\alpha 0.19`$. A general expression for the shock velocity, that is accurate throughout the envelope and atmosphere, is mm99

$$v_s=A\left[\frac{E_{\mathrm{in}}}{m(r)}\right]^{1/2}\left[\frac{m(r)}{\rho _0(r)r^3}\right]^\alpha .$$
(1)
It is possible to evaluate the coefficient $`A`$ analytically as well tan00 . This expression is accurate to within 2% in stellar envelopes. It should be contrasted with the result of the Kompaneets approximation, which gives $`v_s[E_{\mathrm{in}}/\rho _0(r)r^3]^{1/2}`$ and fails in both the interior and the atmosphere.

With this result as a base, Matzner & McKee were able to determine approximate analytic expressions for the density distribution of the ejecta that are quite general. The distribution in the outer ejecta can be approximated as a power-law in velocity,

$$\rho (v_{\mathrm{ej}}/v)^\mathrm{}_\rho ,$$
(2)
where $`v_{\mathrm{ej}}`$ is the maximum velocity of the ejecta. In general, $`\mathrm{}_\rho `$ can depend on position; indeed, by comparing with numerical models, Dwarkadas and Chevalier dwar98  find that an exponential approximation fits best for Type Ia SNRs. In the outer ejecta, the value of $`\mathrm{}_\rho `$ is typically greater than 5, which means that the energy as well as the mass of the ejecta are concentrated in the interior.

In the ejecta-dominated stage of evolution of SNRs ($`M_{\mathrm{ej}}>M_{\mathrm{sw}}`$), there are two shocks: the blast-wave shock that advances into the ambient medium at velocity $`v_b`$ and a reverse shock that propagates back into the ejecta with a relative velocity $`v_r`$ mck74 . Between the shocks lie the shocked ambient medium and the shocked ejecta, separated by a contact discontinuity. For the case of a steep density gradient in the ejecta ($`\mathrm{}_\rho >5`$), the ejecta-dominated stage of evolution can be divided into two parts: First, there is a brief initial stage described by the Hamilton-Sarazin ham84  similarity solution, in which the velocity of the blast-wave shock $`v_b`$ is approximately equal to $`v_{\mathrm{ej}}`$. In a medium of constant density, the radius of the blast wave expands with time as $`R_b1.10v_{\mathrm{ej}}t(1at^{3/2})`$, where $`a`$ is a numerical constant. The velocity of the reverse shock propagating back into the ejecta satisfies $`v_rt^{3/2}`$. Once the blast-wave velocity has slowed significantly below $`v_{\mathrm{ej}}`$, the evolution enters a second self-similar phase of evolution, which is described by the Chevalier-Nadyozhin solution chev82  nad85 . In this solution, the blast-wave radius varies as $`R_bt^{13/\mathrm{}_\rho }`$; the velocities of the blast-wave shock and the reverse shock both scale as $`t^{3/\mathrm{}_\rho }`$.

When the mass of the swept-up ambient medium exceeds the mass of the ejecta, the dynamics approaches that of an adiabatic blast wave produced by a point explosion. The Sedov-Taylor similarity solution for this problem has $`R_b(E_{\mathrm{in}}t^2/\rho _0)^{1/5}`$. Many historical remnants are in transition between the ejecta-dominated stage and the Sedov-Taylor stage, and McKee & Truelove mck95  proposed an approximate analytic solution that describes the evolution from the Chevalier-Nadyozhin stage through the Sedov-Taylor stage. This solution was developed by Truelove & McKee true99  (note the erratum in true00 ), who defined the characteristic quantities

$`R_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ $``$ $`(M_{\mathrm{ej}}/\rho _0)^{1/3},`$ (3)
$`v_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ $``$ $`(E_{\mathrm{in}}/M_{\mathrm{ej}})^{1/2},`$ (4)
$`t_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ $``$ $`R_{\mathrm{ch}}/v_{\mathrm{ch}},`$ (5)
and then gave approximate expressions for $`R_b/R_{\mathrm{ch}}`$, $`v_b/v_{\mathrm{ch}}`$, and $`v_r/v_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ as functions of $`t/t_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ (or in some cases, $`t/t_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ in terms of $`R_b/R_{\mathrm{ch}}`$, etc). This solution has been successfully compared with the observations of Tycho’s SNR by Hughes hug00 .

Actual YSNRs present a rich range of phenomena that go well beyond the simple dynamics described above. For example, if the YSNR has an embedded pulsar, then the pulsar nebula can be dramatically transformed by the reverse shock chev98 . Deviations from spherical symmetry can have major effects. Such deviations can be due to asymmetries in the explosion (e.g., blon00 ), the ambient medium maj98 , or due to instabilities (e.g., gull73  chev92 ). Theoretical and observational studies of these effects are given in these conference proceedings.

## YSNRs as Physics Laboratories

Young SNRs provide extreme environments in which novel physical effects can be studied. The role of YSNRs in cosmic ray acceleration is reviewed elsewhere in this volume by Steve Reynolds. Some YSNRs harbor pulsars, and these objects are discussed by Manchester and by Gaensler elsewhere in these proceedings. Here I shall briefly comment on how YSNRs can serve as physics laboratories for the study of nucleosynthesis, dust formation and destruction, and interstellar hydrodynamics.

### Nucleosynthesis

YSNRs provide laboratories to test both the theory of the formation of the elements and the theory of supernova explosions. X-ray spectroscopy is crucial, since optical spectroscopy is often sensitive to only a small fraction of the mass of the ejecta. Spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy is now available with Chandra and with XMM-Newton. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee (AASC) aasc  has recommended that an even more powerful instrument be built during the coming decade, Constellation-X. Consisting of four X-ray telescopes, Constellation-X would have an energy resolution $`E/\mathrm{\Delta }E3005000`$ over the energy range 0.25-40 keV. Its effective area would be about 20-100 times that of existing instruments, and it would have an angular resolution of about 15 arcsec. A particularly strong clue on the nucleosynthesis that occurs in YSNRs is provided by radioactive elements, which can be studied with the INTEGAL spacecraft that is due to be launched in 2001. The Panel on High-Energy Astrophysics from Space of the AASC recommended an Explorer Class mission for nuclear line X-ray spectroscopy.

### Dust Formation and Destruction

Most of the refractory elements like silicon and iron in the interstellar medium are contained in dust grains. Observations of isotopic anomalies in meteorites suggest that dust forms in core-collapse supernovae clay75 . This idea received observational confirmation when SN1987A showed several signs of dust formation, including dust emission, dust absorption, and a drop in the line intensities of the refractory elements at the time at which the dust emission appeared dwek98 . Whereas observations of dust emission suggest that only about $`(110)\times 10^4M_{}`$ of dust formed in the supernova, observations of the extinction and of the diminution of the refractory lines—which measure all the dust, not just the hot dust—suggest that most of the refractory elements in the ejecta could have gone into dust dwek98 . From a theoretical perspective, supernovae have long been thought to be sites of dust formation: Once grains are injected into the ISM they are subject to efficient destruction by SNR shocks, so it is essential that the refractory elements be injected in solid form in order to account for their large depletions (e.g., ds79 ). Even in this case, significant growth of refractory grains is inferred to occur in the ISM dwek98  mck89 .

However, the same shock processes that are effective at destroying grains in the ISM can destroy them in YSNRs. How can the grains survive the reverse shock? How can they survive being embedded in the hot gas in the interior of an SNR? How can they survive being decelerated from velocities in excess of $`10^3`$ km s-1? Sputtering is the dominant process of grain destruction in this case tiel94  dwek96 . The effectiveness of sputtering is enhanced by the shattering of the grains that occurs in shocks, since that increases the grain surface area jone96 . Furthermore, recent ISO observations have cast doubt on the idea that core collapse supernovae are the dominant source of interstellar grains: Douvion, Lagage, & Cesarsky douv99  argue that only a small fraction of the silicon in Cas A is microscopically mixed into the regions necessary to make silicates, whereas Arendt, Dwek, & Mosely aren99  find that the spectrum of Cas A indicates that the silicates that do form are not of the type that is typical of interstellar grains.

In order to understand how dust is formed and destroyed in YSNRs, further observational and theoretical work is needed. The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) will provide valuable new data. Further in the future, the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) offers the possibility of observing the infrared spectra of grain-producing elements and of the grains themselves at high angular resolution.

### Interstellar Hydrodynamics

YSNRs offer a fascinating laboratory in which to study hydrodyamic processes in the ISM. As described by McCray elsewhere in these proceedings, observations of the youngest nearby SNR, the remnant of SN1987A, even provide us with an opportunity to observe the temporal evolution of these hydrodynamic processes.

YSNRs produce extremely powerful shocks, with shock velocities that can exceed $`10^4`$ km s-1 and Mach numbers $``$ that can exceed $`10^3`$. These shocks may be strongly modified by the acceleration of cosmic rays. Indeed, Hughes, Rakowski, and Decourchelle hug00b  have analyzed Chandra observations of the SMC SNR E0102.2-7219 and have concluded that the most natural interpretation of the low electron temperatures they observe is that most of the shock energy has gone into cosmic rays. A key issue of shock physics that can be addressed through observations of YSNRs is the degree of collisionless heating of electrons behind fast shocks. Ghavamian et al ghav01  have studied optical emission from nonradiative shocks in several SNRs (the Cygnus Loop, RCW 86, and Tycho), and they infer that the electron heating efficiency falls as the shock velocity increases: they find $`T_e/T_i0.71`$ in the Cygnus Loop ($`v_s300`$ km s-1), $`0.3`$ in RCW 86 ($`v_s600`$ km s-1), and $`0.1`$ in Tycho ($`v_s2000`$ km s-1). However, they did not allow for the possibility that some of the energy of the shocked gas is in cosmic rays, as found by Hughes et al hug00b . Further studies of shock physics using both optical and X-ray observations will be very illuminating.

A problem of fundamental importance in astrophysics is the interaction of a shock wave with a density inhomogeneity (a “cloud”). Astrophysical plasmas are generally inhomogeneous, and shocks are ubiquitous because these plasmas can typically cool to temperatures well below those associated with the violent events that occur in them. Once the shock has passed the cloud, this problem reduces to that of a cloud embedded in a flow, or, equivalently, a clump of ejecta interacting with the ambient medium (an “interstellar bullet”). These problems have been studied both theoretically (e.g., mck75 , mck88 , kle94 ) and in the laboratory kle00 . The clouds are subject to both thermal evaporation and hydrodynamic stripping; the first process plays a key role in the three-phase model of the ISM mck77 . Magnetic fields have a strong effect on both processes; the effective conductivity in a magnetized, collisionless plasma remains uncertain. The combined effects of hydrodynamic stripping and thermal conduction are invoked in the model of turbulent mixing layers beg90  sla93 , in which it is assumed that conduction is so efficient that the mixed gas starts with an initial temperature that is determined only by mass and energy conservation, but not so efficient that it affects the radiative cooling of the gas. As yet, there is no direct observational evidence that the boundary layers of shocked clouds are described by turbulent mixing layers, but YSNRs provide an ideal laboratory for studying this question, as well as for determining the fate of the “interstellar bullets” seen in the jet in Cas A fes96  and for addressing many other problems in interstellar gas dynamics.

## Challenge: Where are the Very Young SNRs in the Galaxy?

No supernova remnants are known in the Galaxy since Cas A exploded more than 300 years ago, with the possible exception of a very young SNR in the Galactic Center reported at this meeting sen01 . Van den Bergh & Tammann van91  cite a range of estimates for the Galactic supernova rate; perhaps the best is from observations of SNe in other galaxies, which gives $`8.4h^2`$ per century, where $`h`$ is the Hubble constant normalized to 100 km s-1 Mpc-1. Taking $`h=0.63`$ from a recent “concordance model” based on observations of the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure teg00 , we find a Galactic SN rate of 3.3 per century. Subsequently, van den Bergh & McClure van94  estimated a rate of $`1.71.9`$ per century for the same value of $`h`$. McKee & Williams mck97  analyzed data on the OB associations in the Galaxy and estimated that the rate of core-collapse supernovae is 2.0 per century; including Type Ia’s, the total SN rate becomes 2.3 per century (note that this estimate is independent of $`h`$). In 300 years, we therefore expect that 5-10 SNe have exploded in the Galaxy. Where are their remnants?

Most of these SNe are core-collapse SNe that originated in associations. McKee & Williams mck97  worked out the birthrate of associations in the Galaxy based on observations of radio H II regions, radio free-free emission, and N II $`\lambda 122\mu `$m emission. They adopted an IMF based on the work of Scalo sca86 , in which $`d𝒩_{}/d\mathrm{ln}m_{}m_{}^{1.5}`$, slightly steeper that the Salpeter value. If $`8M_{}`$ is the lower mass limit for core-collapse SNe, then half the missing SNRs had progenitors less massive than 13 $`M_{}`$. Under the assumption that each association has five consecutive generations of star formation (lasting for a total of 18.5 Myr), they estimated that the birthrate of associations that eventually produce at least $`𝒩_h`$ stars more massive than 8 $`M_{}`$ is

$$\dot{𝒩}_a(>𝒩_h)=0.33\left(\frac{7200}{𝒩_h}1\right)\mathrm{Myr}^1,$$
(6)
where the largest association in the Galaxy has $`𝒩_h7200`$ high-mass stars. They extrapolated this distribution down to associations with 100 stars per generation, or 500 stars altogether; for their IMF, this corresponds to a minimum value of $`𝒩_h1.3`$. From this distribution, one can infer that half of these missing SNRs occurred in associations in which about 35 SNe have already occurred. To find out where in the Galaxy the SNe are likely to have occurred, we use the spatial distribution of associations from referencemck97

$$\frac{d\dot{𝒩}_a}{dA}=\dot{𝒩}_a(>𝒩_h)\left[\frac{\mathrm{exp}(R/H_R)}{A_{\mathrm{eff}}}\right](3\mathrm{kpc}R11\mathrm{kpc}),$$
(7)
with a radial scalelength $`H_R3.5`$ kpc and an effective area $`A_{\mathrm{eff}}=47`$ kpc2. From this we can infer that half the missing SNRs are between 3 and 6 kpc from the Galactic Center, which includes the highly obscured molecular ring; other SNRs could lie on the far side of the ring, where the obscuration is even greater.

We conclude that many of the missing very young SNRs are either highly obscured or located in regions that have been evacuated by previous SNRs. In this latter case, the SNR is “muffled” by the cavity: the ejecta remain in free expansion out to a radius of about $`20[(M_{\mathrm{ej}}/10M_{})(10^2\mathrm{cm}^3/n_\mathrm{H})]^{1/3}`$ pc and radiate their energy less efficiently than in denser environments mck88 . YSNRs like Cas A, which is interacting with circumstellar matter, or the Crab, which is a plerion, would be easily seen throughout the Galaxy, however; we conclude that the progenitors of such SNRs are relatively rare.

Two projects recommended by the AASC could dramatically improve the census of YSNRs in the Galaxy: The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) will survey the sky in the energy range 5-300 keV with 300 arcsecond resolution. It will be able to detect highly obscured SNRs. The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is a radio telescope with a square kilometer of collecting area at wavelengths between 200 and 1000 cm and an angular resolution of 1 arcsec. With these capabilities, it will be extremely sensitive to the nonthermal radio emission from YSNRs.

## Challenge: Can Very Young SNRs Make Gamma-Ray Bursts?

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) remain one of the great puzzles in astrophysics more than 30 years after their discovery (see Piran pir99  for a review). There are several arguments suggesting that GRBs are associated with the deaths of massive stars: supernova explosions are the most energetic phenomenon known to occur outside galactic nuclei; observations of GRBs with afterglows have suggested that they may be associated with star-forming regions (e.g., kul00 ); and finally, GRB 980425 appears to be temporally and spatially associated with the unusual supernova SN1998bw gal98 . Long before there was any observational evidence for an association of GRBs with massive stars, Colgate col74  suggested that GRBs could be produced by the emission from accelerating shock waves in the outer layers of supernovae in galaxies at distances of 30-50 Mpc. It is now known that most GRBs are at cosmological distances, and Paczynski pac98  has suggested that more energetic stellar explosions associated with the collapse of rapidly rotating massive stars (“hypernovae”) may underlie GRBs. Some attempts to model the energetics of a gamma-ray burst produced by a spherical explosion of SN1998bw found that the energy in relativistic ejecta was inadequate (e.g., woo99 ). Extrapolating from a nonrelativistic analysis, however, Matzner & McKee mm99  concluded that there was enough energy in relativistic ejecta to produce the observed burst. What was missing from these analyses was the inclusion of the relativistic effects on the hydrodynamics as the shock wave accelerates to velocities near the speed of light. This omission has been rectified by Tan, Matzner, & McKee’s analysis of trans-relativistic blastwaves in supernovae tan00 .

Shock-acceleration models of GRBs have a great advantage in that they naturally deal with the “baryon-loading problem.” The observed energies of GRBs are so great that any viable model must be highly efficient, putting a significant fraction of the energy into radiation. Shock acceleration models are intrinsically efficient because they concentrate the energy in the outermost, fastest moving material in an explosion.

The dynamics of a nonrelativistic shock in a stellar envelope are described by equation (1). In the outer layers of the envelope, where the enclosed mass $`m(r)`$ approaches the total ejected mass $`M_{\mathrm{ej}}`$, this reduces to

$$v_s(\rho _0r^3)^\alpha ,$$
(8)
where $`\alpha 0.19`$. The shock accelerates if the stellar density $`\rho _0`$ falls off faster than $`1/r^3`$. Gnatyk gna85  proposed that a similar relation should hold for trans-relativistic flows, with $`v_s`$ replaced by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_s\beta _s`$ and $`\alpha `$ set equal to 0.2 for accelerating shocks; here $`\beta _s=v_s/c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_s=(1\beta _s^2)^{1/2}`$. Tan et al tan00  obtained a more accurate representation of the shock dynamics, which in addition is valid throughout the star:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_s\beta _s`$ $`=`$ $`p(1+p^2)^{0.12}`$ (9)
$`p`$ $``$ $`A\left[{\displaystyle \frac{E_{\mathrm{in}}}{m(r)}}\right]^{1/2}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{m(r)}{\rho _0r^3}}\right]^{0.187}.`$ (10)
This reduces to equation (1) in the nonrelativistic limit.

After the passage of the shock through the stellar envelope, the shocked gas is left with an internal energy that is equal to its kinetic energy. As the shocked gas undergoes adiabatic expansion, this internal energy is converted to kinetic energy; in addition, the inner layers do work on the outer layers. Matzner & McKee mm99  found that as a result the final velocity in a nonrelativistic, planar flow is about twice the post-shock value. In the relativistic case, Tan et al tan00  find

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_s\beta _s}=2.0+(\mathrm{\Gamma }_s\beta _s)^\sqrt{3},$$
(11)
where the scaling in the relativistic limit is the same as that found analytically by Johnson & McKee joh71 . The effects of spherical expansion reduce $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f`$ somewhat below the planar value.

Based on their nonrelativistic theory, Matzner & McKee mm99  estimated the mass of relativistic ejecta in a supernova; for example, for an $`n=4`$ polytrope, the mass with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f>1`$ is

$$M_{\mathrm{rel}}=2.7\times 10^6\left(\frac{E_{\mathrm{in}}}{10^{52}\mathrm{erg}}\right)^{3.29}\left(\frac{1M_{}}{M_{\mathrm{ej}}}\right)^{2.29}M_{}.$$
(12)
The corresponding energy is

$$M_{\mathrm{rel}}c^2=3.1\times 10^{48}\left(\frac{E_{\mathrm{in}}}{10^{52}\mathrm{erg}}\right)^{3.29}\left(\frac{1M_{}}{M_{\mathrm{ej}}}\right)^{2.29}\mathrm{erg}.$$
(13)
Tan et al tan00  show that this is a reasonably good estimate for $`M_{\mathrm{rel}}`$, and furthermore, that the kinetic energy of the ejecta above some value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f`$ is

$$E_kF(\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f)M_{\mathrm{rel}}c^2,$$
(14)
where (for $`n=4`$) $`F(\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f)^{4.69}`$ in the nonrelativistic limit and $`F(\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f)^{0.98}`$ in the relativistic limit.

To determine if the explosion of SN1998bw had enough energy to power GRB980425, Tan et al used a model of the supernova kindly provided by Stan Woosley. This model, which is consistent with the observed light curve of the supernova, had a Wolf-Rayet progenitor with a mass of $`6.55M_{}`$, an ejecta mass of $`4.77M_{}`$, and an energy of $`2.8\times 10^{52}`$ erg. Both the analytic theory and numerical simulation yield about $`2\times 10^{48}`$ erg in ejecta with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f>1`$; by comparison, the observed energy of the burst was $`(8.1\pm 1.0)\times 10^{47}`$ erg, under the assumption that it was in fact associated with the supernova gal98 . The energy content of the ejecta therefore appears sufficient to power the burst. In order to release the energy, however, it must first be randomized. This can be done through interaction with the dense stellar wind expected for a Wolf-Rayet star woo99 ; a mass loss rate of a few times $`10^4M_{}`$ yr-1 is required. Because the emission is due to the interaction with the ambient medium, this model for GRBs is in fact a YSNR model. Tan et al did not attempt to carry out a calculation of the emitted spectrum, so it remains to be seen whether an approximately spherical shock-acceleration model can account for the observed burst. However, they did show that the characteristic synchrotron energy from such a model is compatible with the observations and that this model can satisfy the constraints imposed by observations of the radio emission kul98 .

The inferred isotropic energies of GRBs range up to in excess of $`10^{54}`$ erg, so if GRB 980425 was in fact associated with SN1998bw, it was a very puny burst. Can shock acceleration models account for these much more luminous cosmological bursts? To address this question, Tan et al considered an extreme hypernova model in which $`E_{\mathrm{in}}=5\times 10^{54}`$ erg is released into about $`5M_{}`$ of ejecta. Whether such an energetic explosion is possible is not known; whereas most of the energy in a conventional core-collapse supernova is released in the form of neutrinos and possibly gravitational radiation, much of the energy in a hypernova is assumed to go into kinetic form as the result of a rapidly rotating, magnetized black hole at the center pac98 . Tan et al find that in this model almost 1% of the explosion energy goes into material with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f>10`$. The principal observational limits on the minimum value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f`$ come from the constraints that the opacity due to photon-photon interactions and to the external medium be small. These limits in turn depend upon the size of the burst and therefore the timescale of the variations. While some GRBs show very rapid variability, most of the bursts with observed afterglows (and therefore measured energies) are relatively smooth. By assuming that the variations observed in these bursts could be explained by fluctuations in the ambient medium or by instabilities in the ejecta, Tan et al inferred that the minimum values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_f\beta _f`$ were of order 10, almost an order of magnitude smaller than the limits inferred by some other workers (see pir99 ). As a result, they concluded that some of the cosmological GRBs with measured afterglows could be accounted for by an extreme hypernova model with a spherical explosion. However, a number of the bursts were too energetic to be accounted for by such a model. The most likely conclusion is that the cosmological bursts are aspherical, so that the emission is beamed towards us and the actual explosion energy is much smaller than the isotropic value (see pir99 ). Furthermore, beaming provides the most natural explanation for the optical and X-ray light curves of some bursts, such as GRB 990510 sta99  pia00 .

Tan et al conclude that very young SNRs (including very young hypernova remnants) might indeed be the engines that underlie GRBs. Whereas the explosion that produced the GRB that is believed to be associated with SN1998bw could have been approximately spherical, the explosions associated with the much more energetic cosmological bursts are most likely quite aspherical. The recently launched HETE-2 spacecraft, the proposed Swift mission, and the AASC-recommended Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) and EXIST missions should provide the data that will enable us to finally determine the nature of the enigmatic GRBs.

## Conclusion: The Connections Challenge

In this brief review, I have tried to show how YSNRs are at the nexus of many important problems in contemporary astrophysics: the late stages of stellar evolution, supernovae, the formation of compact objects, nucleosynthesis, the formation and destruction of interstellar dust, astrophysical gas dyanamics, and possibly even gamma-ray bursts. In order for the study of YSNRs to reach its potential, however, we must overcome a major challenge, which I call the “Connections Challenge:” How can one infer the nature of the supernova and its progenitor from observations of the YSNR? Some steps have been taken in this direction for the best-studied YSNRs such as Cas A (e.g., fes88 ), but much more needs to be done. A key step in this process is to identify the compact object that remains from the explosion, when it exists. In some cases this can be done through observations of radio pulsars. However, the recent discovery of an X-ray point source in Cas A tan99  shows that other approaches to this problem are possible and opens up a new window on understanding supernovae and the formation of compact objects ume00 .

The results presented at this conference show that we are making progress in addressing the challenges I have presented. If the ambitious program for new instruments and theory recommended by the AASC is carried out, the coming decade could well see the resolution of most of these challenges.

Acknowledgments. I wish to thank the organizers for inviting me to an extremely valuable conference. Comments on a draft of this paper by Roger Chevalier, Chris Matzner, and Jonathan Tan are gratefully acknowledged. My research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant AST 95-30480.