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# A Short Timescale Candidate Microlensing Event in the POINT-AGAPE Pixel Lensing Survey of M31

## 1 Introduction

Following the suggestion of Paczyński (1986), several groups searched for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (Machos), using gravitational microlensing of background stars in the Magellanic Clouds (see Alcock et al. 2000; Lasserre et al. 2000; and references therein). After monitoring about 107 stars for several years, the results are consistent with a Macho halo mass fraction of $`20\%`$, though with considerable uncertainty.

The possibility of detecting microlensing events in M31 was independently suggested by Crotts (1992) and Baillon et al. (1993). The advantage of targeting a large external galaxy is that the number of stars that can act as possible sources is enormous. Moreover, the high inclination of M31’s disk causes an asymmetry in the observed rate of microlensing by lenses in a spheroidal halo. Although this gives an unambiguous signature of the halo lenses (Crotts (1992)), the difficulty is that the sources are resolved only while they are lensed (and then only if the magnification is substantial). Nonetheless, pilot campaigns by the Columbia-VATT group (Crotts & Tomaney (1997)) and by the AGAPE collaboration (Ansari et al. (1997); Ansari et al. (1999)) established the feasibility of such observations and identified some candidate microlensing events. In particular, the AGAPE collaboration (Ansari et al. (1999)) reported a short duration candidate, AGAPE Z1, in the bulge of M31.

The POINT-AGAPE collaboration111 see http://www.point-agape.org employs the Wide Field Camera (WFC) on the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) to carry out a pixel-lensing survey towards M31, monitoring two fields of 0.3 deg2 each, located North and South of the M31 center. The survey has the potential to map the global distribution of the microlensing events in M31 and to determine any large-scale gradient. POINT-AGAPE is a long-term program, as at least three years of data will be required to make a convincing identification of a gradient (Kerins et al. 2001). Also, it is usually necessary with pixel lensing to establish a long baseline to distinguish microlensing events from variable stars. In this Letter, we report on a particularly interesting and convincing early candidate, PA-99-N1, so named because it is the first event to be announced by POINT-AGAPE that peaks in the northern field in 1999.

## 2 Observations and Data Analysis

We restrict analysis to a ($`11^{}\times 22^{}`$) field centered $`3^{}`$ west and $`12^{}`$ north of the center of M31. The observations are spread over 36 epochs between August and December 1999. The exposures are in two bands: 36 epochs in Sloan $`r^{}`$ and 26 epochs in Sloan $`g^{}`$. The exposure time is typically between 5 and 10 minutes per night. The sampling averages to one epoch every three nights, though the observations are strongly clustered because the WFC is not always mounted. The data reduction is described in detail elsewhere (Ansari et al. (1997); Strauman et al. (1998); Le Du (2000)).

After bias subtraction and flat-fielding, each image is geometrically and photometrically aligned relative to a reference image (14 August 1999) which was chosen because it has a long exposure time, typical seeing ($`1.^{\prime \prime }6`$) and little contamination from the Moon. The lightcurves are computed by summing the flux in 7-pixel ($`2.^{\prime \prime }3`$) square “superpixels” and then removing the correlation with seeing variation. This size is set by the worst seeing $`2.^{\prime \prime }1`$.

We use a simple set of candidate selection criteria designed to isolate high signal-to-noise events. Detection of events is made in the $`r^{}`$ band, which has better sampling and lower sky background variability. For an event to be detected, it must induce one and only one significant bump on the lightcurve. A bump is defined by at least 4 consecutive data points rising above the background by a minimum of $`4\sigma `$. Its significance is quantified by the probability $`P`$ of obtaining data points, each of which has at least the signal to noise ratio of the measured points (evaluated assuming Gaussian errors). To pass as a microlensing candidate, we demand the lightcurve has only one bump with $`\text{ln}P>100`$ and no other bump with $`\text{ln}P>20`$. A similar selection procedure was used by the AGAPE Pic du Midi program (Ansari et al. 1997).

The background is the minimum of the running average of 7 consecutive data points. Flagged events are fitted to a high magnification degenerate microlensing curve (Gould 1996) simultaneously in the $`r^{}`$ and $`g^{}`$ bands, whose 6 parameters are ($`t_{1/2},t_0,F_{\mathrm{base},r^{}},F_{\mathrm{base},g^{}},\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{peak},r^{}},\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{peak},g^{}}`$). Here, $`t_{1/2}`$ is the full-width at half-maximum, $`t_0`$ is the time of the peak, $`F_{\mathrm{base}}`$ is the baseline flux and $`\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ is the flux difference between baseline and maximum. We require a $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom be less than 3 for this fit. We also require at least minimal detection in $`g^{}`$, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{peak},g^{}}>1\mathrm{ADU}\mathrm{s}^1`$. To insure a high probability of detecting microlensing rather than other forms of stellar variability, given the clustered sampling and relatively short duration of the observations, we demand $`t_{1/2}<8`$days and a peak flux $`\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{peak},r^{}}>10\mathrm{ADU}\mathrm{s}^1`$, corresponding to $`R_{\mathrm{peak}}<21.5`$. We find one candidate which has $`t_{1/2}1.8`$day and $`\mathrm{\Delta }F_{\mathrm{peak},r^{}}17\mathrm{ADU}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

## 3 The Microlensing Candidate

Figure 1 shows the lightcurves in $`r^{}`$ and $`g^{}`$ of this candidate together with the non-degenerate fit derived below. The $`g^{}`$ data with comparatively large error bars were taken on nights with high Moon background. Using the Aladin Sky Atlas222 see http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/aladin.gml, we find that PA-99-N1 has J2000 position: $`\alpha =00^\mathrm{h}42^\mathrm{m}51\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}42`$, $`\delta =+41^{}23^{}53\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}7`$. That is, it lies projected on the near disk, $`7^{}52^{\prime \prime }`$ from the center of M31.

There are some straightforward tests to see if PA-99-N1 is compatible with microlensing. First, there are no comparable “bumps” in the remainder of the lightcurve shown in Figure 1 as might be expected for many classes of variable stars. (There is, however, a much smaller but somewhat disturbing bump in December, near day 130. We investigate this bump in § 4.1.) There also are no comparable bumps at this field position in our data taken in 1998 and 1999 with the 1.3m McGraw-Hill telescope at the MDM observatory. Second, microlensing events are achromatic, so the ratio of flux change in different bands should be constant in time (e.g., Ansari et al. 1997). This requires

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }F_g^{}(t)}{\mathrm{\Delta }F_r^{}(t)}=\frac{F_g^{}(t)F_{\mathrm{base},g^{}}}{F_r^{}(t)F_{\mathrm{base},r^{}}}=\mathrm{constant},$$
(1)
which does indeed hold for PA-99-N1 (see Fig. 1c).

Using DAOPHOT (Stetson (1987)) on the images taken nearest maximum magnification, we find $`R=20.80\pm 0.13`$ and $`V=22.00\pm 0.17`$, i.e., $`VR=1.20\pm 0.22`$ and $`M_V=2.8\pm 0.3`$, assuming $`(mM)_{0,M31}=24.43`$ and estimated total extinction $`A_V=0.4\pm 0.2`$. The transformation from instrumental $`(r^{},g^{})`$ to Johnson $`(V,R)`$ is based on 31 standard stars that lie in the same field as PA-99-N1 (Magnier et al. (1992); Magnier et al. (1993); Haiman et al. (1994)).

The PA-99-N1 position lies within a series of five Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 archival images taken in July 1996, three with F814W ($`I`$) and two with F606W ($`V`$). We use the relations of Zheng et al. (2001) to transform from these filters to Johnson-Cousins $`V`$ and $`I`$. Since the event is very red, $`VR1.2`$, the source must lie either high up on the giant branch where essentially all stars are resolved by HST, or must be on the main-sequence and so magnified by $`A_{\mathrm{max}}10^4`$ (see Fig. 2). The latter possibility is extremely unlikely a priori. Hence, a firm prediction of the microlensing interpretation is that there should be a resolved star in the HST image with the same color and same position as the event.

To measure the spatial position of the event within the INT image we take the difference of the image at maximum and another image at baseline that has similar seeing. The difference image shows a well-defined and isolated difference star whose position we measure using IRAF IMEXAMIN. Variation of the IMEXAMIN parameters changes the result by $`0.2`$ pixels ($`0.^{\prime \prime }07`$), which we adopt as the error in the measurement. The spatial transformation between the INT and HST fields is derived by comparing the positions of the eight stars that are both resolved in the INT image and unsaturated in the HST image. The uncertainty in this transformation is much smaller than that of the INT position measurement. Figure 3 shows part of the HST field with the $`1\sigma `$ and $`3\sigma `$ positional error circle centered on the event. Close to this circle there is a resolved star for which we find $`V=24.51\pm 0.12`$ and $`I=22.41\pm 0.10`$, implying $`VI=2.10\pm 0.16`$. There are no other resolved stars within the $`3\sigma `$ circle. For typical stellar populations this $`VI`$ is compatible with the $`VR=1.20\pm 0.22`$ measured for the event (Demarque et al. 1996; Yi, Demarque, & Oemler 1996). The prior probability to find such a star so close to the predicted position is only 3%. We conclude that the resolved HST object is almost certainly the source star of the event.

## 4 Lightcurve Interpretation

### 4.1 PA-99-N1 as a Variable Star

Before analyzing PA-99-N1 as a microlensing event, we need to ask whether it is consistent with an interpretation as a variable star? The color and magnitude are compatible with a M0 Mira at maximum. However, such Miras have periods greater than 200 days and their flux at maximum does not vary as rapidly as the event (Allen 1999). PA-99-N1 is unlikely to be a dwarf nova. It is too bright at maximum to be in M31. If it is a Galactic dwarf nova, it must be either unusually faint or improbably far from us ($`>10`$ kpc). It is also unlikely to be a nova. The brightness decrease of PA-99-N1 just after maximum is very rapid with a rate of decline of about 0.7 magnitudes/day. Capaccioli et al. (1989) studied the relation between the rate of decline and the magnitude at maximum for novae in M31 and found that the brighter the nova, the faster the decrease. The decline of PA-99-N1 would indicate a nova as bright as $`V=16`$, which would imply $`A_V=6`$, in stark contrast to the small extinction seen in Figure 2. To conclude, there is no type of stellar variability known to us that could generate the lightcurve of PA-99-N1.

However, if the December bump near day 130 in Figure 1 were due to the event source, one would nevertheless have to conclude that the source was probably a variable. We therefore investigate this bump closely. For each of the nine December images, we find a corresponding image at baseline with comparable seeing, and subtract the two. Summing these difference images, we find a very clear stellar profile located $`1.^{\prime \prime }1\pm 0.^{\prime \prime }1`$ south of the source. Hence, this bump is due to genuine stellar variability, which was close enough to contaminate our $`2.^{\prime \prime }3`$ superpixels, but is clearly distinguishable from the event source. We eliminate these contaminated December points from the analysis.

### 4.2 PA-99-N1 as a Microlensing Event

Making use of the identification of the HST star as the source of the microlensing event, we fit the data to a full (non-degenerate) microlensing curve and so evaluate the Einstein crossing time, $`t_\mathrm{E}=10.4`$days.

By permitting the measurement of $`t_\mathrm{E}`$,

$$t_\mathrm{E}=\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}},\theta _\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\pi _{\mathrm{rel}}\left(\frac{4GM/c^2}{\mathrm{AU}}\right)},$$
(2)
the identification of the source reduces but does not eliminate the degeneracy in the lens parameters. The mass $`M`$ remains entangled with $`\pi _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ and $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$, the lens-source relative parallax and proper motion. If the lens transits the source, one can measure $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ and so further break the parameter degeneracy (Gould 1994; Alcock et al. 1997). We are not able to measure $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ for PA-99-N1, but are able to strongly constrain it from the lack of finite source effects that would be induced by a transit.

Let $`\rho _{}=\theta _{}/\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, where $`\theta _{}`$ is the angular radius of the source. We find that if we fit the lightcurve with $`\rho _{}`$ fixed at any value $`\rho _{}0.1`$, then the other parameters all assume the same values as in Table 1. However, as $`\rho _{}`$ is increased further, $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ declines, so that the parameter combination $`\rho _{}t_\mathrm{E}`$ saturates at $`1.0`$day, and then for $`\rho _{}0.12`$, $`\chi ^2`$ rises dramatically. From this we derive the constraint $`\rho _{}t_\mathrm{E}1.0`$day, implying,

$$\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}=\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{t_\mathrm{E}}=\frac{\theta _{}}{\rho _{}t_\mathrm{E}}\frac{\theta _{}}{1.0\mathrm{day}}.$$
(3)
Using the empirical surface-brightness/color relation of van Belle (1999), the color-color transformation of Bessell & Brett (1988), and an estimated total extinction $`A_V=0.4\pm 0.2`$, we find $`\theta _{}=0.30\pm 0.04\mu \mathrm{as}`$, where the uncertainty is dominated by the 11% intrinsic scatter about the van Belle (1999) relation. The constraint (3) then yields

$$v_{\mathrm{rel}}=\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}D_\mathrm{l}>400\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\left(\frac{\rho _{}t_\mathrm{E}}{1.0\mathrm{day}}\right)^1\left(\frac{\theta _{}}{0.3\mu \mathrm{as}}\right)\left(\frac{D_\mathrm{l}}{770\mathrm{kpc}}\right),$$
(4)
where $`v_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is the transverse speed of the lens relative to the observer-source line of sight, and $`D_l`$ is the distance to the lens. While the constraint (4) is unimportant for Galactic lenses (where $`D_\mathrm{l}1030`$ kpc), it strongly limits the allowed range of $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ for M31 lenses (since high values are exponentially suppressed). Hence $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is crudely measured, which implies, via equation (2), a constrained relation between $`M`$ and $`\pi _{\mathrm{rel}}`$. Thus, when the proper-motion constraint (4) is incorporated into the Monte Carlo (see below) it indirectly constrains the mass to a much narrower range than would be allowed without it. Note that our finite source fits incorporate a linear limb-darkening parameter of 0.78 in $`R`$ band, which is appropriate for a $`VI=2.1`$ (M0-M1, 3630 K) star (Manduca, Bell & Gustafsson 1977; Johnson 1966).

## 5 Discussion

The location of PA-99-N1, at nearly $`8^{}`$ from the center of M31, is interesting because the majority of stellar lenses are expected to reside within $`5^{}`$ of the M31 center (e.g., Kerins et al. 2001). The significance of the candidate is assessed by performing Monte Carlo simulations of events with the same source magnitude, Einstein timescale and projected position as PA-99-N1, as well as taking account of the lower limit on $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ in equation (4). We use the actual sampling and exposure times for the 1999 season. We model the halos of both galaxies with cored near-isothermal spheres, taking the mass of M31 as twice the mass of the Galaxy and assuming a core radius of 5 kpc for both galaxies. The M31 bulge follows Kent’s (1989) axisymmetric model while the disk has a sech-squared profile (see Kerins et al. 2001 for details). We model the disk stellar lens masses based on the Galactic disk mass function (MF) of Gould, Bahcall, & Flynn (1997) corrected for binaries and extended down to $`0.01M_{}`$, and the bulge stellar masses using the Zoccali et al. (2000) Galactic bulge MF, similarly corrected and extended.

The thick solid line in Figure 4 (a) shows the relative probability $`P`$ that PA-99-N1 is due to a Macho of mass $`M`$, assuming full Macho halos. The curve is normalized with respect to the probability that the lens is a star, $`P_{}`$. The thick dashed (dotted) curve gives the contribution to $`P(M)`$ from M31 (Milky Way) Machos. In addition to this, we have plotted the M31 distribution before applying the proper motion cut of equation (4) (thin dashed line). The black horizontal line (‘d/b’) gives the fractional contribution of the disk lens and bulge source configuration to $`P_{}`$, whilst the gray line (‘b/b’) shows the contribution of bulge-bulge lensing. The width of these lines reflects the dispersion in the logarithm of the stellar lens mass.

Clearly, if the halos are full of Machos, the most probable interpretation is that the lens is a Macho with mass $`0.03\mathrm{M}_{}`$. This is about five times more likely than PA-99-N1 being due to a stellar lens. The lens is about equally likely to lie in the Milky Way or M31 halo, which is quite unexpected given that the line of sight passes only $`2`$ kpc from the center of M31, but $`8`$ kpc from the Galactic center. Normally this would cause the M31 probability to be much higher (as shown by thin dashed line). However, the $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ constraint (4) severely suppresses the M31 distribution at low masses, while leaving the Milky Way distribution virtually unaffected. This is because the average Milky Way Macho has a relative proper motion of $`10\mu `$as/day, whilst for the typical M31 Macho it is $`0.2\mu `$as/day. The constraint also has the effect of displacing the peak of the M31 distribution towards higher mass.

Assuming a logarithmic prior in the Macho mass gives $`M=6.4_{4.9}^{+21}\times 10^2\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for an M31 Macho and $`2.1_{1.6}^{+7.0}\times 10^2\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for a Milky Way Macho. The M31 and Milky Way distributions are both quite broad. As they are about equal in amplitude and are displaced from one another by nearly a decade in mass, their combined distribution is even broader, with a FWHM extending from the planetary to the stellar mass range.

If the lens is a star, then the overall mass probability distribution is given by the thick solid line in Figure 4 (b). The thick dashed line (‘d/b’) shows the contribution from disk-bulge lensing whilst the thick dotted line (‘b/b’) shows the distribution for bulge-bulge lensing. The contribution of lensing involving disk sources is negligible. In the absence of the relative proper motion cut, the disk and bulge distributions would be given by the thin dashed and dotted lines respectively. Including these cuts results in a most probable mass around $`0.2\mathrm{M}_{}`$, making a rather plausible hypothesis that the lens is a low mass star. Logarithmic averaging of the solid line gives $`M=0.27_{0.12}^{+0.21}\mathrm{M}_{}`$, i.e., only a factor 1.8 ($`1\sigma `$) uncertainty.

We see that, if the lens is an M31 star, it most likely lies in the disk. This is a direct consequence of the fact that the source lies at the edge of the bulge, while the line of sight passes through the near side of the disk. Comparing Figures 4a and 4b, it is clear that the mass of the lens is much better constrained if it lies in the M31 disk than the M31 halo. This is because for M31 lenses, $`M(\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}t_\mathrm{E}D_{\mathrm{ls}})^2`$ where $`D_{\mathrm{ls}}`$ is the distance from the lens to the source (see eq. ). For both populations, the product $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}t_\mathrm{E}`$ is reasonably well constrained, but for halo lenses, $`D_{\mathrm{ls}}`$ can take on a very broad range of values, while for disk lenses, the geometry implies $`D_{\mathrm{ls}}=4.0\pm 1.8`$kpc. Since $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ is measured and $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is constrained by equation (4), $`M`$ is also constrained. This means that we only detect events at the location and timescale of PA-99-N1 if the stellar mass $`M>0.1\mathrm{M}_{}(4\mathrm{kpc}/D_{\mathrm{ls}})`$.

The relative rate of Machos to stars is subject to a number of modeling uncertainties. First, we have assumed that the M31 halo is twice as massive as that of the Milky Way. The most recent mass estimates of the M31 halo derived from the kinematics of the satellite galaxies suggest that it may be only roughly as massive as the Milky Way (Evans et al. 2000). Second, it is sensitive to the choice of the core radius for M31’s halo, with larger core radii giving a reduced M31 Macho rate at the location of PA-99-N1. Third, we have assumed that the M31 bulge is axisymmetric, but the twisting of the optical isophotes (e.g., Walterbos & Kennicutt 1987) is evidence for the presence of a bar. Inspection of their Figure 5 shows that the twisting is away from the location of PA-99-N1. We therefore expect a bar model with the same overall mass as our axisymmetric model to have a lower surface density at the position of the event and thus a lower stellar lensing rate there.

## 6 Conclusions

We have reported the discovery of PA-99-N1, a high signal-to-noise, short duration event which is consistent with the microlensing hypothesis. Almost certainly, the source star has been identified on archival HST frames, from which the Einstein crossing time of $`10.4`$ days has been determined. We have argued – from the stability of the lightcurve, the achromaticity of the flux excess, the excellence of the fit, and the consistency of the color of the event at maximum with the color of the HST source – that by far the most natural explanation of this event is microlensing. The lens is most likely to be a Macho if the halo fraction is above $`20\%`$. However, it is also plausible that the lens is a disk star with a mass of $`0.2\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

Acknowledgments: YLD, EJK and SJS are supported by PPARC postdoctoral fellowships and EL by a CNPq postdoctoral fellowship. NWE acknowledges financial support from the Royal Society. Work by AG was supported in part by a grant from Le Ministère de l’Education Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie and in part by grant AST 97-27520 from the NSF.


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# On the age of PSR B 1509-58

## 1 Introduction

PSR B 1509-58 (Seward & Harnden (1982), Manchester et al. (1982)) is situated not far from the geometrical centre of the SNR MSH 15-52 (or G 320.4-01.2), and their association is beyond any doubt. However, this association causes a number of difficulties for the understanding and interpretation of the observational data. The problem is that the size and the general appearance of the SNR suggest that it should be much older than it follows from the pulsar age estimates.

It is usually assumed that the rotational frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of a pulsar decreases according to the relation $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}=K\mathrm{\Omega }^n`$, where $`K`$ depends upon the physics of the slow-down mechanism, and $`n=\mathrm{\Omega }\ddot{\mathrm{\Omega }}/\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}^2`$ is the braking index. Assuming constant $`K`$ and $`n`$, and provided that the initial spin period $`P_\mathrm{i}`$ of the pulsar was much smaller than the current period $`P=2\pi /\mathrm{\Omega }`$, one can estimate the characteristic spin-down age $`\tau =P/(n1)\dot{P}`$. For $`P0.15`$ s, $`\dot{P}1.4910^{12}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and $`n=2.84`$ (Weisskopf et al. (1983), Manchester et al. (1985), Kaspi et al. kas (1994)), one derives an age of PSR B 1509-58 of $`1700`$ years, i.e. it is nearly as young as the Crab pulsar. The spin-down age could be even less by a factor of $`[1(P_\mathrm{i}/P)^{n1}]^1`$, if the pulsar was born with $`P_\mathrm{i}`$ of $`0.1`$ s (see e.g. Spruit & Phinney (1998)). These estimates are at odds with the age estimates for MSH 15-52 (Seward et al. s3 (1983), van den Berg & Kamper (1984), Kamper et al. (1995)), which show that the SNR is a much older object.

To reconcile the ages of the pulsar and the SNR, Seward et al. (s3 (1983)) considered two possibilities: 1) MSH 15-52 is a young SNR, and 2) PSR B 1509-58 is an old pulsar. The first one implies (in the framework of the Sedov-Taylor model) that the SN explosion was very energetic and occured in a tenuous medium (see also Bhattacharya (1990)). This point of view is generally accepted (e.g. Kaspi et al. kas (1994), Greiveldinger et al. (1995), Trussoni et al. (1996), Gaenzler et al. gae (1999)). The second possibility implies that $`\tau `$ is at least few times shorter than the “true” age (Seward et al. s3 (1983)). This possibility was re-examinated by Blandford & Romani (1988). Assuming that the pulsar spin-down is mostly due to the electromagnetic torque, they suggested that the torque grew within the last $`10^3`$ years due to the growth of the pulsar’s magnetic field (see also Muslimov & Page (1996)). In this case, the coefficient $`K`$ is an increasing function of time and therefore the “true” age of the pulsar could be as large as follows from the age estimates for the SNR. In this paper we offer an alternative explanation for the increase of the braking torque (Sect. 2), viz. we suggest that it could be episodically enhanced due to the interaction of the pulsar’s magnetosphere with dense clumps of circumstellar matter (Sect. 3). Sect. 4 deals with some issues related to our suggestion.

## 2 The spin-down of PSR B 1509-58

It is known that the electromagnetic torque acting on a rotating, magnetized body (e.g. a neutron star) immersed in a plasma is enhanced as compared with the torque in vacuum (Ginzburg (1971), see also Istomin i (1994)). It was mentioned by Istomin (i (1994)) that for the increase of the slow-down torque of a pulsar it is suffient to have a dense plasma in the vicinity of the light cylinder, since just in this region the pulsar loses its rotational energy due to the acceleration of particles. The particles of the ambient medium penetrating into the region of the light cylinder are accelerated there to velocities comparable with the speed of light and then leave this region (Istomin i (1994)). This presumably equatorial outflow (cf. Brinkmann et al. (1985), King & Cominsky (1994)) carries away the pulsar’s angular momentum and is responsible for the enhanced braking of the pulsar. We suggest (see also Gvaramadze 1999a ; cf. Yusifov et al. (1995), Istomin & Komberg (2000)) that just this effect is responsible for the present high spin-down rate of PSR B 1509-58, i.e. that the pulsar loses its rotational energy mainly due to the acceleration of protons of the ambient medium arriving at the light surface at the rate $`\dot{M}`$:

$$|\dot{E}|=|I\mathrm{\Omega }\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}|=\gamma _\mathrm{p}\dot{M}c^2,$$
(1)
where $`I10^{45}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is the moment of inertia of the pulsar, $`c`$ is the speed of light, and $`\gamma _\mathrm{p}`$ is the Lorentz factor of accelerated protons. For $`\mathrm{\Omega }=41.89\mathrm{s}^1`$ and $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}=4.2510^{10}\mathrm{s}^2`$ (e.g. Kaspi et al. kas (1994)), and $`\gamma _\mathrm{p}1`$ (Istomin i (1994)), one has $`\dot{M}2.210^{16}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{s}^1`$. We also suggest that the pulsar moves through the inhomogeneous ambient medium and episodically plunges into clumps of dense matter. If the density of clumps is sufficiently high (see Sect. 3), one can expect a temporary increase of $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ every time the pulsar travels through a clump (we believe that just this situation takes place now). The corresponding spin-down age will be less than estimated when the pulsar moves through the low-density interclump medium.

It is clear that the presence of radio emission of the pulsar means that the ambient medium does not penetrate far beyond the light surface. Assuming that the ram pressure of the accreting medium is equal to the magnetic pressure at the light surface (cf. King & Cominsky (1994)), one has an estimate of the surface magnetic field of the pulsar111Note that this estimate is about ten times smaller than what follows from the usual dipole formula (Weisskopf et al. (1983)).:

$$B_{}=\left[2(2GM_{})^{1/2}\dot{M}r_\mathrm{L}^{7/2}/r_{}^6\right]^{1/2}2.910^{12}\mathrm{G},$$

where $`G`$ is the gravitational constant, $`M_{}=1.4M_{}`$ and $`r_{}=10^6`$ cm are the mass and the radius of the pulsar, and $`r_\mathrm{L}=c/\mathrm{\Omega }7.110^8`$ cm is the radius of the light cylinder; for simplicity we assumed that the pulsar magnetic field is dipolar. Given this value of $`B_{}`$, one can estimate the “vacuum” values of $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ and $`\tau `$: $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}_0=2\mu ^2\mathrm{\Omega }^3/3c^3I1.3610^{11}\mathrm{s}^2`$, where $`\mu =B_{}r_{}^3`$ is the magnetic momentum of the pulsar, and $`\tau _0\mathrm{\Omega }/2\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}_04.910^4\mathrm{yr}30\tau `$ (here we assumed that the “vacuum” braking index is equal to 3). This means that the “true” age of the pulsar could be as large as $`\tau _0`$ (provided that $`P_\mathrm{i}P`$) and that the SNR MSH 15-52 could be a middle-aged remnant similar to the Vela SNR (G 263.9-3.3).

## 3 Dense clumps in the central part of SNR MSH 15-52

We suggest that PSR B 1509-58 and SNR MSH 15-52 are the remnants of the SN explosion of a massive star (Gvaramadze 1999b ). In this case, the structure of MSH 15-52 could be determined by the interaction of the SN blast wave with the ambient medium reprocessed by the joint action of the ionizing emission and stellar wind of the SN progenitor star (McKee et al. (1984), Shull et al. (1985), Ciotti & D’Ercole (1989), Chevalier & Liang (1989), Franco et al. (1991), D’Ercole (1992), Gvaramadze 1999b ,c , 2000a ). The outer shell of the SNR could arise due to the abrupt deceleration of the SN blast wave after it encounters the density jump at the edge of the bubble created by the fast stellar wind during the main-sequence or the Wolf-Rayet (WR) stages. On the other hand, some structures in the central part of the SNR222Note that these structures could be significantly offset from the geometrical centre of a middle-aged SNR due to the proper motion of the SN progenitor star (Gvaramadze 1999b , 2000a ,b ). could be attributed to the interaction of the SN blast wave with the circumstellar material lost during the late evolutionary stages of the SN progenitor star (this is the material that determines the appearance of young type II SNRs, e.g. SN 1987A (e.g. McCray (1993)) or Cas A (e.g. Garcia-Segura et al. (1996), Borkowski et al. (1996))). During the red supergiant (RSG) stage a massive star loses a significant part (about two thirds) of its mass in the form of a slow, dense wind. This matter occupies a compact region with a characteristic radius of few parsecs (the high-pressure gas in the main-sequence bubble significantly affects the spreading of this region (Chevalier & Emmering (1989), D’Ercole (1992))). Before the SN exploded, the progenitor star (of mass $`>1520M_{}`$) becomes for a short time a WR star (e.g. Vanbeveren et al. (1998)). At this stage, the fast stellar wind sweeps up the slow RSG wind and creates a low-density cavity surrounded by a shell of swept-up circumstellar matter. The shell expands with a nearly constant velocity $`v_{\mathrm{sh}}(\dot{M}_{\mathrm{WR}}v_{\mathrm{WR}}^2v_{\mathrm{RSG}}/3\dot{M}_{\mathrm{RSG}})^{1/3}`$, where $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{WR}},\dot{M}_{\mathrm{RSG}}`$ and $`v_{\mathrm{WR}},v_{\mathrm{RSG}}`$ are, correspondingly, the mass-loss rates and wind velocities during the WR and RSG stages (e.g. Dyson (1981)), until it catches up the shell separating the RSG wind from the main-sequence bubble. For parameters typical for RSG and WR winds, one has $`v_{\mathrm{sh}}100200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The interaction of two circumstellar shells results in Rayleigh-Taylor and other dynamical instabilities, whose development is accompanied by the formation of dense clumps moving with radial velocities of $`v_{\mathrm{sh}}`$ (Garcia-Segura et al. (1996)). The dense clumps could originate much closer to the SN progenitor star due to the stellar wind acceleration during the transition from the RSG to the WR stage (Brighenti & D’Ercole (1997)). The number density of clumps is $`10^5\mathrm{cm}^3`$ provided they are not fully ionized and were able to cool to a temperature of $`10^2`$ K (Brighenti & D’Ercole (1997)). Direct evidence of the existence of high-density clumps close to the SN explosion sites follows from observations of young SNRs. For example, the optically emitting gas of quasi-stationary flocculi in Cas A is characterized by a density of $`10^4\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and a temperature of $`10^4`$ K (e.g. Lozinskaya (1992)). Assuming that the optical emission of a floccule comes from an ionized “atmosphere” around the neutral core, one can estimate the density of the core to be $`10^6\mathrm{cm}^3`$, provided that the temperature of the core is $`10^2`$ K. Similar estimates could also be derived from observations of the optical ring around SN 1987A, the inner ionized “skin” of which has nearly the same parameters (e.g. Plait et al. (1995)) as the optically emitting gas of flocculi in Cas A, or from observations of some other young SNRs (e.g. Chugai (1993), Chugai & Danziger (1994)). The radial velocity of flocculi in Cas A ranges from $`80`$ to $`400\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (e.g. Lozinskaya (1992)).

Initially, the new-born pulsar moves through the low-density cavity created by the fast wind of the presupernova star until it plunges into the first dense clump on its way. This happens at the moment $`tr_{\mathrm{cav}}/v_{}`$, where $`r_{\mathrm{cav}}12`$ pc is the radius of the cavity, $`v_{}=v_\mathrm{p}v_{\mathrm{cl}}`$, $`v_\mathrm{p}`$ and $`v_{\mathrm{cl}}`$ are respectively the velocities of the pulsar and the clump. For $`v_\mathrm{p}150\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and $`v_{\mathrm{cl}}100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, one has $`t(24)10^4`$ years333No proper motion for PSR B 1509-58 has yet been detected (Kaspi et al. kas (1994), Gaensler et al. gae (1999)), though the recent finding of the candidate optical counterpart of this pulsar (Caraveo et al. ca (1994), see also Mignami et al. (1998) and Sect.4) allows one to hope that it will be detected in due course. For the distance to the pulsar of $`5d_5`$ kpc (e.g. Gaensler et al. gae (1999)), a velocity of $`150\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ corresponds to a proper motion of $`6\mathrm{mas}\mathrm{yr}^1`$; this is much smaller than the upper limits on the pulsar’s proper motion given by Kaspi et al. (kas (1994)) and Gaensler et al. (gae (1999)).. Let us assume that all matter captured inside the accretion radius $`r_{\mathrm{acc}}=2GM_{}/v_{}^2`$ ($`v_{}c_\mathrm{s}`$, where $`c_\mathrm{s}`$ is the sound speed in the cold, dense circumstellar clump) of the pulsar moving through the clump penetrates into the region of the light cylinder, where it is accelerated to relativistic velocities and then leaves this region in the form of equatorial outflow (cf. Istomin i (1994) and King & Cominsky (1994)). The rate at which the ambient medium arrives at the light cylinder could be estimated as

$$\dot{M}=\pi r_{\mathrm{acc}}^2n_{\mathrm{cl}}m_\mathrm{p}v_{},$$
(2)
where $`n_{\mathrm{cl}}`$ is the number density of the clump, and $`m_\mathrm{p}`$ is the mass of a proton. If the pulsar braking is indeed mainly due to the acceleration of circumstellar protons arriving at the light surface, then one obtains from (1) and (2) that $`n_{\mathrm{cl}}3.810^6v_{,50}^2\mathrm{cm}^3`$, where $`v_{,50}=v_{}/50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The time it takes for PSR B 1509-58 to cross the clump, $`t^{^{}}l_{\mathrm{cl}}/v_{}`$, where $`l_{\mathrm{cl}}`$ is the characteristic size of clumps, should be larger than the time since the pulsar discovery, i.e. $`t^{^{}}>30`$ years. This requirement results in $`l_{\mathrm{cl}}510^{15}v_{,50}`$ cm and $`M_{\mathrm{cl}}>0.0002v_{,50}^3M_{}`$, where $`M_{\mathrm{cl}}`$ is the characteristic mass of clumps. For the SN progenitor star of mass $`15M_{}`$, the mass of the circumstellar gas (i.e. the matter lost during the RSG stage) is about $`10M_{}`$, and the number of clumps is $`<510^4`$. For the current radius of the region occupied by circumstellar matter of about 10 pc (Gvaramadze 1999b ), one finds a covering factor of the clumpy circumstellar material (i.e. the fraction of the sphere occupied by clumps) $`10^4`$.

For accretion to occur, the standoff radius $`r_\mathrm{s}`$ of the bow shock (formed by the outflow of relativistic particles) should be less than $`r_{\mathrm{acc}}`$. For the spherically symmetric outflow, one has $`r_\mathrm{s}=(\alpha |\dot{E}|/4\pi n_{\mathrm{cl}}m_\mathrm{p}cv_{}^2)^{1/2}<r_{\mathrm{acc}}=2GM_{}/v_{}^2`$, where we assume that only a fraction $`\alpha <1`$ of the spin-down luminosity $`|\dot{E}|`$ is transferred to the ambient medium (cf. Kochanek (1993)). This condition can be re-written as $`\alpha <(\gamma _\mathrm{p}/4)^1v_{}/c10^3\gamma _\mathrm{p}^1v_{,50}`$ (cf. Kochanek (1993), Manchester et al. (1995)), i.e. $`\alpha `$ should be much smaller than the usually adopted value of $`1`$ (e.g. Kulkarni & Hester (1988), Cordes et al. (1993)). Weak coupling ($`\alpha 1`$) of the pulsar wind with the ambient medium is consistent with an outflow composed of highly relativistic particles (e.g. Kochanek (1993) and references therein). Alternatively, if the outflow of relativistic particles is confined to the vicinity of the rotational equatorial plane, one can expect that the ambient matter accretes onto the pulsar’s magnetosphere along the polar directions. Another possibility is that the ambient matter penetrates in the pulsar wind bubble through instabilities in the bow shock front. In the latter both cases $`r_\mathrm{s}`$ could be larger than $`r_{\mathrm{acc}}`$, and one can adopt $`\alpha 1`$ (see next section).

## 4 Discussion

We now discuss some consequences of our proposal that the braking of PSR B 1509-58 is mostly due to the interaction of the pulsar’s magnetosphere with the dense matter of a circumstellar clump.

First, we consider the contribution of the circumstellar matter to the neutral hydrogen absorption toward the pulsar. The low covering factor of clumps (see Sect. 3) implies that this contribution is

$$N_{\mathrm{cl}}=\underset{r_\mathrm{L}}{\overset{r_{\mathrm{acc}}}{}}n_{\mathrm{ff}}(r)𝑑r+n_{\mathrm{cl}}(r_{\mathrm{cl}}r_{\mathrm{acc}}),$$
(3)
where $`n_{\mathrm{ff}}(r)=\dot{M}/4\pi m_\mathrm{p}r^2v_{\mathrm{ff}}`$ is the number density of the infalling gas captured inside the accretion radius, $`v_{\mathrm{ff}}=(2GM_{}/r)^{1/2}`$ is the free-fall velocity, $`r_{\mathrm{cl}}`$ is the line of sight thickness of the dense neutral gas located between the pulsar and the observer ($`r_{\mathrm{cl}}l_{\mathrm{cl}}`$).

It was pointed out by Strom (st (1994)) that a ROSAT observation of the SNR MSH 15-52 indicates a larger absorption towards PSR B 1509 - 58 than seen from the bright northwest part of the SNR’s shell (known as RCW 89). The comparison of neutral hydrogen absorption data (see Greiveldinger et al. (1995), Trussoni et al. (1996), Tamura et al. (1996), Marsden et al. (1997), Rots et al. (1998)) shows that the excess of absorption towards the pulsar could be as large as $`(15)10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. This discrepancy could be interpreted as a sign that the pulsar is more distant than the SNR, and therefore that these two objects are not physically associated with each other (Strom st (1994)). It is also possible that “the spectral analysis is not detailed enough to provide the correct parameters” (Trussoni et al. (1996)). Another possibility is that the H I column density distribution is really inhomogeneous across the SNR (cf. Trussoni et al. (1996)). We favour the last possibility and suggest that the excess of absorption towards PSR B 1509-58 is due to the dense neutral gas around the pulsar. One can use Eq. (3) to set an upper limit on $`r_{\mathrm{cl}}`$. For the parameters adopted above, and assuming that $`N_{\mathrm{cl}}(15)10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, one has $`r_{\mathrm{cl}}(0.21.2)10^{16}v_{,50}^3`$ cm. This estimate shows that if our explanation of the age discrepancy is correct, then one might expect that in the near future (i.e. after a lapse of $`r_{\mathrm{cl}}/v_,`$, where $`v_,`$ is the line of sight component of $`v_{}`$) the first derivative of the pulsar’s spin period will suffer a significant decrease.

Second, let us discuss the candidate optical counterpart for PSR B 1509-58 proposed by Caraveo et al. (ca (1994)). Caraveo et al. pointed out that the luminosity of the optical counterpart ($`L_\mathrm{V}6.510^{32}d_5^2\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$) exceeds by a few orders of magnitude the value derived for magnetospheric optical emission of young pulsars (Pacini pa (1971)). This fact together with the negative result of searching of optical pulsations at the radio period led to the conclusion that the proposed identification could be erroneous (Mignami et al. (1998); see also Shearer et al. (1998), Chakrabarti & Kaspi (1998)). We suggest, however, that the observed optical emission should rather be attributed to the bow shock around the pulsar than to the pulsar itself. This suggestion is supported by the estimate of the total luminosity of the bow shock, $`L_\mathrm{T}Sn_{\mathrm{cl}}v_{}(m_\mathrm{p}v_{}^2/2)`$, where $`S\pi r_\mathrm{b}^2`$ and $`r_\mathrm{b}3^{1/2}r_\mathrm{s}`$ are the area and the characteristic radius of the bow shock, respectively. For the adopted parameters444Note that shocks in the range ($`v_\mathrm{s}40\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, where $`v_\mathrm{s}`$ is the shock velocity ($`v_{}`$), $`10^6\mathrm{cm}^3n_{\mathrm{cl}}10^8\mathrm{cm}^3`$) produce strong 22 GHz $`\mathrm{H}_2\mathrm{O}`$ masers (see Fig. 3 of Hollenbach (1997)). The possible detection of $`\mathrm{H}_2\mathrm{O}`$ masers towards PSR B 1509-58 will lend strong support to the suggestions of this paper. this gives $`L_\mathrm{T}\alpha 10^{33}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$, i.e. $`L_\mathrm{V}L_\mathrm{T}`$ for $`\alpha 1`$. It is obvious that if our suggestion is correct, there can be no correspondence between the observed luminosity and the luminosity expected from the results of Pacini (pa (1971)). The optical pulsations should be absent as well.

To conclude, we point out a curious coincidence of the accretion rate derived in Sect. 2 with accretion rates required in accretion-based models to explain high spin-down rates of anomalous X-ray pulsars and soft gamma-ray repeaters (e.g. Mereghetti & Stella (1995), Ghosh et al. (1997), Chatterjee et al. (2000), Alpar (2000)). This coincidence allows us to believe (Gvaramadze 1999a , 2000b ) that these objects could lose a significant part of their rotational energy due to the process discussed in this paper, and that their “true” ages could be much larger than the respective characteristic spin-down ones.

###### Acknowledgements.

I am grateful to N.D’Amico and A.D’Ercole for discussions, to D.Page (the referee) for comments, and to J.K.Katgert-Merkelijn (the Deputy Editor) for carefully reading the manuscript. This work was partially supported by NPS.


text:
# Detection of a Hard Tail in the X-ray Spectrum of the Z Source GX 349+2

## 1 Introduction

Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXB) are usually divided into Z and Atoll sources, according to the path they describe in a X-ray Color-Color Diagram (CD) or hardness-intensity diagram (Hasinger & van der Klis 1989). The six known Z sources in the Galaxy are among the most luminous LMXBs and close to the Eddington limit ($`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$) for a 1.4 $`M_{}`$ neutron star (NS). The instantaneous position of an individual source in the CD is an indicator of the mass accretion rate (e.g. Hasinger et al. 1990), which most likely increases along the Z track from the top left to the bottom right.

The LMXBs of the Atoll class usually have lower luminosities than Z sources (generally in the range 0.01–0.1 $`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$). These sources can be found in soft or hard states (see Barret et al. 2000). In the hard state their spectrum is dominated at high energies by a power law, sometimes showing an exponential cutoff at energies of $`100`$ keV (see e.g. Barret et al. 2000, and references therein). On the other hand, the spectrum of the Z sources is much softer, with cutoff energies usually well below 10 keV. However, hard tails were occasionally detected in their spectra. The first detection was in the spectrum of Sco X–1; beside the main X–ray component, at a temperature of $`4`$ keV, Peterson & Jacobson (1966) found a hard component dominating the spectrum above 40 keV. The latter component was observed to vary as much as a factor of 3. Since then hard tails were repeatedly searched for in the spectrum of Sco X–1 and other Z sources: they were detected on occasions (e.g. Buselli et al. 1968; Riegler, Boldt, & Serlemitsos 1970; Agrawal et al. 1971; Haymes et al. 1972), but in most cases they were not found, perhaps due to pronounced variations (e.g. Miyamoto & Matsuoka 1977, and references therein; Soong & Rothschild 1983; Jain et al. 1984; Ubertini et al. 1992). Recently a hard tail was detected in another Z source, GX 17+2, observed by BeppoSAX in a broad energy range (0.1–200 keV). In this case the intensity variations of the hard tail were clearly correlated with the source spectral state: a factor of 20 decrease was observed moving from the Horizontal Branch (HB) to the Normal Branch (NB; Di Salvo et al. 2000). The presence of a variable hard tail in Sco X–1 was confirmed by OSSE and RXTE observations (Strickman & Barret 2000; D’Amico et al. 2000). A hard tail was also detected in Cir X–1 (Iaria et al. 2001) and in type-II bursts from the Rapid Burster (Masetti et al. 2000).

GX 349+2, also known as Sco X–2, is one of the six Z sources. Similar to the case of Sco X–1, GX 349+2 possesses a short and underdeveloped HB (if at all). The source variability in the frequency range below 100 Hz is closely correlated with the source position on the X-ray CD, as in other Z sources. Twin quasi periodic oscillations at kHz frequencies (kHz QPO) were detected in the upper and middle NB (Zhang, Strohmayer, & Swank 1998). In this paper we report the results of a spectral study of GX 349+2 in the energy range 0.1–200 keV based on data obtained with BeppoSAX. This led to the detection of a hard component, fitted by a power law with photon index $`1.8`$ or by a thermal bremsstrahlung with $`kT120`$ keV.

## 2 Observations and Analysis

The Narrow Field Instruments (NFI) on board BeppoSAX satellite are four co-aligned instruments which cover more than three decades in energy, from 0.1 keV up to 200 keV, with good spectral resolution over the whole range (see Boella et al. 1997a for detailed description of BeppoSAX instruments). These are two Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometers, MECS (position sensitive proportional counters operating in the 1.3–10 keV band, Boella et al. 1997b), a Low Energy Concentrator Spectrometer, LECS (a thin window position sensitive proportional counter with extended low energy response, 0.1–10 keV; Parmar et al. 1997), a High Pressure Gas Scintillation Proportional Counter (HPGSPC; energy range of 7–60 keV; Manzo et al. 1997) and a Phoswich Detection System (PDS; energy range of 13–200 keV; Frontera et al. 1997).

GX 349+2 was observed by BeppoSAX from 2000 March 10 20:42 UT to March 11 23:10 UT, with an effective exposure time of $`16`$ ks in the LECS, $`45`$ ks in the MECS, $`45`$ ks in the HPGSPC, and $`22`$ ks in the PDS. We selected the data for scientific analysis in circular regions centered on the source with $`8^{}`$ and $`4^{}`$ radius for LECS and MECS, respectively. The background subtraction was obtained with standard methods by using blank sky observations. The background subtraction for the high-energy (non-imaging) instruments was obtained by using off-source data for the PDS and Earth occultation data for the HPGSPC. There is no evidence indicating the presence of contaminating sources in the FOVs of the HPGSPC and PDS, either in the on-source and off-source positions. In fact the off-source PDS count rates are in the expected range and the HPGSPC and PDS spectra align well with each other and the MECS spectra.

Relative normalizations of the four NFIs were treated as free parameters in the model fitting, except for the MECS normalization that was fixed to a value of 1. We checked after the fitting procedure that these normalizations were in the standard range for each instrument111See the BeppoSAX handbook at http://www.sdc.asi.it/software/index.html.. The energy ranges used in the spectral analysis were: 0.12–4 keV for the LECS, 1.8–10 keV for the MECS, 8–40 keV for the HPGSPC, and 15–200 keV for the PDS. We rebinned the energy spectra in order to have approximately the same number of bins per instrument resolution element across the entire energy range. Moreover a 1% systematic error was applied to all these spectra in order to take into account calibration residuals.

In Figure 1 we show the 200 s binned MECS light curve of GX 349+2 in the 1.8–10 keV range. A flare, lasting $`4`$ ks, is clearly apparent close to the beginning of the observation, followed by a series of smaller flares. In Figure 2a we show the CD of GX 349+2, where we defined the Hard Color (HC) as the ratio of the counts in the 7–10.5 keV to the 4.5–7 keV energy bands, and the Soft Color (SC) as the ratio of the counts in the 4.5–7 keV to the 1.8–4.5 keV bands. The SC and HC relationship versus the source intensity in the 1.8–10.5 keV is also shown in Figure 2b (upper and lower panel, respectively). The color variations in these diagrams are mainly due to the spectral changes associated with the flares, during which both the HC and the SC increase. In consideration of presence of fairly large flares in the light curve and the shape of the source variations in the CD, we identify the state of the source with the flaring branch (FB) of the Z path. Hints of the NB/FB vertex are visible in the diagrams at $`SC0.2`$ and $`HC0.3`$. We extracted energy spectra during the non-flaring intervals, corresponding to SC lower than 0.48, and during the flares, corresponding to SC higher than 0.48.

We tried several two-component models to fit the source X-ray spectrum during the non-flaring state. In particular we tried a blackbody or a disk multicolor blackbody (diskbb in XSPEC, Mitsuda et al. 1984) to describe the softer component, and blackbody or Comptonization models such as a power law with high energy exponential cutoff, compst (Sunyaev & Titarchuk 1980), comptt (Titarchuk, 1994), and pexriv (i.e. a power law with exponential cutoff with its reflection component, Magdziarz & Zdziarski 1995) to describe the harder component. None of these models could well describe the source X-ray spectrum in the whole BeppoSAX energy range, because an excess of emission was present above $`30`$ keV (see Fig. 3a, upper and middle panels). We then considered the low energy part (0.1–30 keV) of the spectrum, where we obtained the best fit by using a blackbody plus comptt for the continuum: this model gave a reduced chisquare of $`\chi _\mathrm{r}^2=1.19`$, while we obtained $`\chi _\mathrm{r}^2`$ from 1.49 to 2.35 for the other models we fitted. An emission line at $`6.7`$ keV and an edge at $`8.5`$ keV, probably produced by highly ionized iron, are also necessary (probability of chance improvement of the fit $`<10^{20}`$ and $`8.6\times 10^5`$ for the addition of an emission line and an absorption edge, respectively). The fit is further improved by the addition of a low energy Gaussian emission line at $`1.16`$ keV (chance probability of $`7\times 10^9`$).

A two-component continuum model was not sufficient to well fit the non-flaring spectrum in the whole BeppoSAX range. A hard excess is clearly visible above 30 keV with respect to any of the two-component models that we tried. For example, the best fit model described above, when fitted in the whole 0.1–200 keV range, gives rise to the residuals (in units of $`\sigma `$) shown in Figure 3a (middle panel). A significant improvement of the fit was obtained by adding to the model a power law with photon index $`1.9`$, which eliminates the residuals at high energies (see Fig. 3b, lower panel). With the addition of this component the $`\chi ^2`$ decreases from 397 (for 191 d.o.f) to 220 (189 d.o.f.). An F-test indicates that the probability of chance improvement is negligibly small. The contribution of this power law component to the unabsorbed 0.1-200 keV luminosity is $`2\%`$. Alternative models for the hard excess cannot be excluded. Using a thermal bremsstrahlung for the hard component we obtain a similarly good fit for a temperature of $`kT_{\mathrm{TB}}=120\pm 50`$ keV. A high energy power-law spectrum might in principle be produced by Comptonization of seed photons with a blackbody distribution in a optically thin, hot region. Therefore we also tried to fit the hard component using the Comptonization model compbb (Nishimura, Mitsuda, & Itoh 1986), which, however, gave a worse fit. In particular we substituted the blackbody plus power law of the best fit model with compbb, obtaining a $`\chi _r^2=1.41`$ (for 189 d.o.f.) and a temperature of the optically thin Comptonizing region higher than 150 keV. The high $`\chi _r^2`$ is due to large residuals (up to $`45\sigma `$) in the energy range above $`70`$ keV, because of a sharp cutoff in the model, which is not present in the data. In other words, because these data do not show a high energy cutoff in the BeppoSAX range, this implies a high electron temperature ($`100`$ keV) or a non-thermal origin.

No useful LECS data were obtained during the flares, because of the low exposure time: due to UV contamination problems, the LECS is usually operated only at satellite night time, resulting in a much reduced on-source time; therefore low energy data (0.1–1.8 keV) were not available in this case. The spectrum during the flare cannot be described by a single component, such as a blackbody or a comptt. As in the case of the non-flaring spectrum, we obtained a good fit using a blackbody plus comptt model. The addition of an iron line, with centroid energy and width fixed to the best fit values found in the non-flaring spectrum, gave an improvement of the fit at 99.9% confidence level. On the other hand the addition of a power law at high energies did not improve the fit: the $`\chi ^2`$ decreases from 145 (for 119 d.o.f) to 144 (118 d.o.f.), which is clearly not significant. To study the variation of the power law intensity with respect to the non-flaring spectrum we fixed the photon index fixed to the best fit value of 1.9 found in the non-flaring spectrum, and calculated the corresponding power-law normalization. We find an upper limit (at 90% confidence level) on the power-law unabsorbed 0.1–200 keV flux of $`3.6\times 10^{10}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1 ($`1\%`$ of the unabsorbed 0.1–200 keV flux during the flare). Therefore we conclude that there is evidence that the hard component weakens during the flare, although the upper limit is still compatible with the best fit power-law normalization during the non-flaring emission.

We report in Table 1 the best fit parameters corresponding to the spectra during the non-flaring and the flaring intervals. These spectra are shown in Figure 3 (top panels, a and b respectively), together with the residuals with respect to the best fit models (bottom panels). The unfolded spectra are also shown in Figure 4 (a and b, respectively), together with the components of the best fit models reported in Table 1.

## 3 Discussion

We fitted the BeppoSAX energy spectra of GX 349+2, extracted at different positions of the source in the CD. The best fit model up to energies of $`30`$ keV consists of a blackbody and a Comptonization spectrum (described by the comptt model), two emission lines and an absorption edge. The blackbody is at a temperature $`kT_{\mathrm{BB}}0.50.6`$ keV, and the radius of the blackbody (spherical) emitting region is $`R_{\mathrm{BB}}35`$ km (using a distance of 5 kpc, Cooke & Ponman 1991; Christian & Swank 1997). The temperature of the soft seed photons for the Comptonization is $`kT_\mathrm{W}1`$ keV. These are Comptonized in a hotter ($`kT_\mathrm{e}3`$ keV) region of moderate optical depth ($`\tau 1012`$ for a spherical geometry). The radius of the region emitting the seed-photon Wien spectrum, calculated as in In ’t Zand et al. (1999), is $`R_\mathrm{W}=3\times 10^4D\sqrt{f_{bol}/(1+y)}/(kT_W)^2\mathrm{km}79`$ km, where $`D`$ is the distance in kpc, $`f_{bol}`$ is the bolometric flux in ergs cm-2 s-1, and $`kT_W`$ is in keV. A broad ($`0.7`$ keV FWHM) iron K$`\alpha `$ emission line is present at $`6.7`$ keV, with equivalent width $`3070`$ eV, accompanied by an absorption edge at $`8.5`$ keV. The high energy of both the line and edge indicates that these features are produced in a highly ionized region (corresponding approximately to Fe XXV). We also found evidence for an emission line at $`1.2`$ keV, with equivalent width of $`20`$ eV, which can be associated with emission from the L-shell of Fe XXIV or, perhaps, the K-shell of Ne X (see e.g. Kallman et al. 1996). We note that the main differences in the continuum below 30 keV between the spectra during the flares and the non-flaring emission are in the temperatures of the blackbody and Comptonized components: both temperatures are higher during the flares than during the non-flaring emission, while the optical depth of the Comptonized component is smaller during the flares. The iron emission line remains approximately unchanged.

A hard component is required to match the spectrum above 30 keV during the non-flaring emission. This component can be fit by a power-law with photon index $`2`$, contributing $`2\%`$ of the 0.1–200 keV source flux. This component is not required in the flare spectrum, where it probably weakens contributing a smaller fraction of the source flux. Evidence for such a hard component was previously found in this source by the Ariel V satellite (Greenhill et al. 1979), and was fit by a thermal spectrum with $`kT30`$ keV. In our data this component is much harder, corresponding to a temperature of $`120`$ keV. We note that the high energy instrument on board Ariel V had a field of view of $`8^{}`$ FWHM, much larger than the PDS field of view.

The smaller PDS field of view, $`1.3^{}`$ FWHM, reduces the possibility of the presence of contaminating sources. The eclipsing binary system 4U 1700–37 (the only nearby X-ray source brighter than 1 $`\mu `$Jy, e.g. Valinia & Marshall 1998), is $`1.4^{}`$ away from GX 349+2, and out of the PDS field of view. Another possible contaminating source is the hard diffuse emission of the Galactic ridge. Using data from Valinia & Marshall (1998), for latitudes $`1.5^{}<|b|<4^{}`$ and longitudes $`|l|<15^{}`$ (the region of GX 349+2) the flux of the diffuse Galactic emission is $`3.2\times 10^{11}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1 in the 10–60 keV energy range for the effective solid angle of the PDS FOV. This is one order of magnitude lower than the flux of the hard power-law component we detected from GX 349+2 in the same energy range. Given the flux of the power-law component in the 13–80 keV energy range, which is $`1.2\times 10^{10}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1, we calculated the probability to find an active galactic nucleus in the PDS FOV at a flux level equal or higher than $`1.2\times 10^{10}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1. We find a small probability of $`2\times 10^3`$ (see Fiore & Tamburelli 2000, in preparation; Levine et al. 1984). We can also exclude that this hard component is an instrumental feature, because in other BeppoSAX observations of soft sources there was no evidence of a hard excess. A clear example of this is given by the BeppoSAX spectrum of GX 17+2 in the lower NB (Di Salvo et al. 2000). We find that a power law with photon index 1.9, like that detected in this paper, is incompatible with those data, which give a 90% upper limit on the power-law unabsorbed 0.1–200 keV flux of $`2.5\times 10^{11}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1. It therefore is plausible that this hard component represents emission from GX 349+2.

A similar hard component has also been observed in other Z sources, indicating that this is probably a common feature of these sources. The presence (or strength) of these components appears to be related to the source state or its position in the CD. In a Ginga (1.5–38 keV energy range) observation of GX 5–1 a hard excess was detected (Asai et al. 1994).222Note, however, that the detection of a hard tail from GX 5–1 was not confirmed by SIGMA observations (Barret & Vedrenne 1994).  This component was fit by a power law with photon index 1.8 (Asai et al. 1994), and its intensity decreased from the NB to the FB, i.e. from low to high mass accretion rate. In a BeppoSAX observation of GX 17+2 the hard component (power-law photon index of $`2.7`$) was detected in the HB and its intensity significantly decreased in the NB (Di Salvo et al. 2000). Cir X–1, thought to be a peculiar Z source (Shirey et al. 1998), was observed by BeppoSAX in the FB (Iaria et al. 2001). Also in this case a hard tail was detected in the non-flaring spectrum. We note that hard component detected here in GX 349+2 is one of the hardest among the high energy components detected so far in bright LMXBs. It corresponds to a photon index of $`1.9`$, with no evidence of a high energy cutoff in the BeppoSAX range. In fact, using thermal models to fit it, we obtain electron temperatures $`100`$ keV. The power-law tail observed in the NB of GX 5–1 (Asai et al. 1994), had a photon index of $`1.8`$, similar to that we measured for GX 349+2. Also, Cir X–1 showed a spectral state similar to that of GX 349+2 observed here (Iaria et al. 2001). However, in Cir X–1 the power law was much steeper (photon index $`3.3`$) than in the case of GX 349+2, and the low energy continuum was characterized by a softer electron temperature of the Comptonized component $`1`$ keV. In all these cases the hard component seems to become weaker for higher accretion rates (see also Fig. 5), while the relative contribution of the hard component to the flux in a given source state appears to be different in different sources. Yet, in recent HEXTE observations of Sco X–1, a hard power-law tail was detected in 5 out of 16 observations, without any clear correlation with the position in the CD (D’Amico et al. 2000).

It is already known that some Atoll sources, the so-called X-ray bursters, can show a hard component in their spectra, similar to the observed spectra of accreting Black Holes (BH). Given that BHs and NSs are hardly distinguishable by their broad band spectral shape (see also Barret et al. 2000, and references therein), Barret et al. (1996) introduced another criterion based on the comparison of hard and soft luminosities. Plotting the 1–20 keV luminosity versus the 20–200 keV luminosity for BHs and NSs of the Atoll class, they observed that all NS systems in which a hard component had been detected lie in the so-called X-ray burster box, while all BH systems lie outside (see Fig. 5). If we plot in the same diagram the luminosities of the Z sources GX 17+2 (Di Salvo et al. 2000), Cir X–1 (Iaria et al. 2001), and GX 349+2 we find that these data lie clearly outside the X-ray burster box, and there is no clear distinction between Z sources and BHs (Fig. 5). Stated differently, this result shows that BHs are not the only sources to posses high energy tails when their 1–20 keV luminosity exceeds $`1.5\times 10^{37}`$ ergs/s. In particular, the hard components in Z sources seem to be similar to the extended power-law tails detected in the so-called very-high state (and perhaps intermediate state) of Galactic BH systems (e.g. Grove et al. 1998). On the other hand it appears to be still true that only BHs can emit bright hard X-ray tails, with a 20–200 keV luminosity $`1.5\times 10^{37}`$ erg/s. This might be related to the higher Eddington luminosity that on average characterizes BHs. The fact that the luminosity in the hard tail observed in Z sources is similar in terms of Eddington luminosity to that seen in BHs is a further evidence that probably the same mechanism originates the hard tails in both BHs and NSs. This would imply that this mechanism does not depend on the presence or absence of a solid surface.

As in BHs, the hard tails observed in Z sources can be produced either in a thermal or non-thermal corona (e.g. Poutanen & Coppi 1998) or in a bulk motion of matter close to the NS (e.g. Titarchuk & Zannias 1998; Papathanassiou & Psaltis 2001). Fast radial converging motions are unlikely to be dominant in the innermost region of the accretion flow in such high-luminosity systems, because of the strong radiation pressure emitted from or close to the NS surface. However, power-law tails, dominating the spectra at high energy, can also be produced when the flows are mildly relativistic ($`v/c0.1`$) or when the velocity field does not converge (Psaltis 2001). Therefore azimuthal motions around the NS or outflows can be the probable origin of these components, with flatter power laws corresponding to higher optical depth of the scattering medium and/or higher bulk electrons velocities, in a way that is similar to thermal Comptonization (see Psaltis 2001). It has been proposed that non-thermal, high energy electrons, responsible for the hard tails observed in Z sources, might originate in a jet (Di Salvo et al. 2000, Iaria et al. 2001; see also Fender 2001 for a review regarding both BH and NS systems). In fact all the Z sources are detected as variable radio sources, with the highest radio fluxes associated with the HB. The radio emission weakens in the NB, and is not detected any longer in the FB (Hjellming & Han 1995, Fender & Hendry 2000, and references therein). This hypothesis is in agreement with the behavior of GX 17+2, where the hard tail was observed in the HB. In GX 349+2 the hard tail is present at the NB/FB vertex, where the radio flux should be near its minimum, and probably weakens when the source moves further into the FB. However, note that a similar correlation was not observed in the case of Sco X–1 (D’Amico et al. 2000). Further observations will help clarifying the correlation between hard X-ray and radio emission in these sources.

The authors thank D. Barret and L. Titarchuk for interesting discussions. This work was supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), by the Ministero della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (MURST).

## TABLES


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# Vacuum Solutions of Classical Gravity on Cyclic Groups from Noncommutative Geometry

## I Introduction

It is a marvelous property of noncommutative geometry(NCG) that Dirac operator induces a metric onto a space . Specifying this result to a cyclic group, we discussed recently at the end of  that the effect of a non-unitary 1D link variable on this Connes’ distance is to modify a linear(Euclidean)-distance with the moduli of this link variable. This feature indicates the general characteristics of NCG that gauge connection and metric are easily interwound on a noncommutative space. In this contribution, we will explore the (classical) gravitational physics of cyclic groups in depth. We construct action functionals for gravitational fields from Dirac operator, deduce the equations of motion, then solve them and give a series of vacuum solutions. It will be shown that in a broad range of coupling constants of one action functional, there is a non-trivial vacuum solution that can be expressed by Chebyshev’s polynomials and that breaks translation invariance. Of course, this model is just an exercise as a class of toy-models like ; however, it provides an easily-handling example to formulate gravity theory on discrete sets. Though being simple, it has shown a lot of general features of NCG approach to gravity problems. For a more abstract and general treatment of noncommutative gravity, one can refer to Majid’s .

This paper is organized as the following way. In section II, NCG on a cyclic group is formulated, especially Dirac operator is defined. Several action functionals are established in section III. Three types of vacua will be found out, in which only the last one is nontrivial. Some opening discussions are put into section IV.

## II NCG of Cyclic Groups: Kinematics of Dirac Operator

Let $`𝒵_N`$ be a $`N`$-order cyclic group $`𝒵_N=\{0,1,2,\mathrm{},N1\}`$ whose multiplication is just integer addition modulo $`N`$. Additions appearing below are understood as additions in $`𝒵_N`$. $`𝒜(𝒵_N)`$ is the algebra of complex functions on $`𝒵_N`$ and there is a regular representation of $`𝒵_N`$ on $`𝒜(𝒵_N)`$ generated by $`(T^+f)(x)=f(x+1),f𝒜(𝒵_N),x𝒵_N`$. For any finite $`N`$, $`(T^+)^N=\mathrm{𝟏}`$ where $`\mathrm{𝟏}`$ is identity transformation on $`𝒜(𝒵_N)`$; hence $`T^{}:=(T^+)^1=(T^+)^{N1}`$. A spinor space $`_s=𝒞^2`$ is introduced to each point of $`𝒵_N`$; a fermion field on $`𝒵_N`$ is an element in $`:=𝒜(𝒵_N)_s`$. Under the standard inner product on $``$, $`T^+`$ is a unitary operator. A Fredholm operator acting on $``$ is defined to be $`F=\eta _++\eta _{}`$ in which $`\eta _\pm =T^\pm \sigma _\pm `$, $`\sigma _\pm =(\sigma _1\pm i\sigma _2)/2`$ and $`\sigma _i,i=1,2,3`$ are Pauli matrices . Note that $`\eta _\pm `$ fulfil Clifford algebra relation on 2D-Euclidean space $`\eta _\pm \eta _\pm =0,\{\eta _\pm ,\eta _{}\}=\mathrm{𝟏}`$; accordingly, $`F^2=\mathrm{𝟏}`$, s.t.$`(,F)`$ forms a Fredholm module . The fundamental non-commutativity in this formalism is $`\eta _\pm f=(T^\pm f)\eta _\pm `$. It is proved in  that Connes’ distance on $`𝒵_N`$ defined by $`d_F(x,y)=sup\{|f(x)f(y)|:[F,f]1\},x,y𝒵_N`$ is just the conventional linear(Euclidean)-distance on $`𝒵_N`$: $`d(x,y)=min\{|xy|,N|xy|\}`$.

Dirac operator on $`𝒵_N`$ is $`F`$ twisted with a link-variable: $`F(\omega )=\omega ^{}\eta _++\eta _{}\omega `$ in which $`\omega `$ is a $`End_𝒞(_c)`$-valued function on $`𝒵_N`$ and $`_c`$ is a internal Hilbert space. The triple $`(𝒜(𝒵_N),\stackrel{~}{},F(\omega ))`$ becomes a K-cycle where $`\stackrel{~}{}=_c`$ . A gauge transformation $`u`$ is a $`U(_c)`$-valued function on $`𝒵_N`$; $`T^{}\omega `$, $`\omega ^{}T^+`$ play the role of $`U(_c)`$ parallel transports, providing that $`\omega (T^+u)\omega u^{}`$. Below only 1-dimensional case $`_c=𝒞`$ will be considered, hence $`\omega 𝒜(𝒵_N)`$. Subsequently, $`\omega =\rho e^{i\theta }`$ where $`\rho ,\theta `$ are real functions, $`\rho (x)0`$ and $`\omega ^{}=\overline{\omega }`$, $`\omega ^{}\omega =|\omega |^2=\rho ^2`$. We argued at the end of  that $`d_{F(\omega )}(x,x+k)=min\{\rho (x)^1+\rho (x+1)^1+\mathrm{}+\rho (x+k1)^1,\rho (x+k)^1+\rho (x+k+1)^1+\mathrm{}+\rho (x+N1)^1\}`$ for all $`x,k𝒵_N`$. Therefore, metric on $`𝒵_N`$ is modified by the strength of $`\omega `$ in the sense that $`\rho ^1`$ provides a varying lattice spacing. This point can be illustrated more clearly by some special examples. 1)$`\rho (x)=\rho _0>0`$, then resulting metric differs from the “free” one by a lattice constant $`1/\rho _0`$; 2)$`\rho (0)=0`$, then $`d_{F(\omega )}(0,1)=\mathrm{}`$, which can be interpreted that the points $`x=0`$ and $`x=1`$ are disconnected; 3)$`\rho (0)+\mathrm{}`$, then $`d_{F(\omega )}(0,1)0`$, which is interpreted as a “black hole” by M. Hale in . In the next section, dynamics of $`\omega `$ will be considered; cases 1) and 2) will be shown to emerge from classical solutions to the equations of motion for $`\omega `$. We deliver two identities at the end of this section

$$F(\omega )^2=T^{}(\omega \omega ^{})\eta _{}\eta _++(\omega ^{}\omega )\eta _+\eta _{}=T^{}(\rho ^2)\sigma _{}\sigma _++(\rho ^2)\sigma _+\sigma _{}$$
(1)
$$F(\omega )F(\omega ):=T^{}(\omega \omega ^{})\eta _{}\eta _++(\omega ^{}\omega )\eta _+\eta _{}=\frac{1}{2}(T^{}(\rho ^2)\rho ^2)[\sigma _{},\sigma _+]=\frac{1}{2}^{}(\rho ^2)\sigma _3$$
(2)
where $`^\pm f:=T^\pm ff`$.

## III Vacuum Solutions: Dynamics of Dirac Operator

Three action functionals containing only $`\omega `$ will be considered below. What we mainly concern is whether there be non-trivial vacuum solutions in the corresponding equations of motion. By a “non-trivial vacuum”, we mean that translation invariance of $`𝒵_N`$ is broken by this solution.

### III.1 Trivial Cases: $`S[\omega ]=Tr(F(\omega )^{2k}),k=1,2,\mathrm{}`$

Notice Eq.(1), $`S[\omega ]=2\rho ^{2k}`$. This action admits only 0-solution obviously.

### III.2 Trivial Cases: $`S[\omega ]=Tr((F(\omega )F(\omega ))(F(\omega )F(\omega )))`$

By Eq.(2), $`S[\omega ]=\frac{1}{2}(^{}(\rho ^2))^2`$. Equation of motion is deduced by $`\delta _\omega S[\omega ]=0`$

$$\rho (x)(2\rho (x)^2\rho (x+1)^2\rho (x1)^2)=0,x𝒵_N$$
(3)
If $`\rho (x)0,x𝒵`$, let $`\varphi =\rho ^2`$, Eq.(3) takes on the form

$$^+^{}\varphi =0$$
(4)
which is a discretized harmonic equation $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =0`$ on $`S^1`$. Eq.(4) admits only constant solution $`\rho (x)=\rho _0`$, which can be understood schematically by the extremal value principle in commutative harmonic analysis . The on-shell metric satisfies $`d_{F(\omega )}(,)=\frac{1}{\rho _0}d_F(,)`$ which corresponds the case 1) in the last section, namely that lattice constant is modified from 1 to $`1/\rho _0`$. Else if there is one $`x_0`$ such that $`\rho (x_0)=0`$, then the only consistent solution is $`\rho (x)=0`$ for all $`x`$.

### III.3 Nontrivial Case

Now consider

$$S[\omega ]=\frac{1}{2}Tr((F(\omega )F(\omega ))(F(\omega )F(\omega ))+\frac{\alpha }{4}F(\omega )^4\frac{\beta }{2}F(\omega )^2)$$
(5)
in which coupling constants $`\alpha ,\beta `$ are real numbers and are required to be not equal to zero at the same time. One can check that $`S[\omega ]=(\frac{1}{4}(^{}(\rho ^2))^2+\frac{\alpha }{4}\rho ^4\frac{\beta }{2}\rho ^2)`$. The equation of motion is given by

$$\rho (2t\rho ^2T^+(\rho ^2)T^{}(\rho ^2)\beta )=0$$
(6)
where $`t:=(2+\alpha )/2`$.

#### III.3.1 Non-singular Case: $`\rho (x)>0,x𝒵_N`$

Remember the definition of $`\varphi `$, then Eq.(6) changes form as

$$\varphi (x1)+2t\varphi (x)\varphi (x+1)=\beta ,x𝒵_N$$
(7)
The cyclic symmetry in Eq.(7) $`\varphi (x)\varphi (x+1)`$ implies that $`\varphi (x)=\varphi _0,x𝒵_N`$ in which $`\varphi _0=\frac{\beta }{2t2}=\frac{\beta }{\alpha }`$. Note that if $`\alpha =0,\beta 0`$, no solution exists. Upon this solution as a background, metric fulfills relation $`d_{F(\omega )}(,)=\sqrt{\frac{\alpha }{\beta }}d_F(,)`$.

#### III.3.2 Singular Case

The remainder of this section will be devoted to one most interesting situation in which, without losing generality, $`\rho (N1)=0,\rho (x)>0,x=0,1,\mathrm{}N2`$. If we find out a solution to this case, then this solution breaks translation invariance, hence being a nontrivial vacuum. Some matrix algebra has to be prepared here. Introduce a matrix sequence $`\{M_n(t):n=1,2,\mathrm{}\}`$ in which

$$M_n(t):=\left(\begin{array}{cccccccc}2t& 1& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& 0& 0& 0\\ 1& 2t& 1& 0& \mathrm{}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 2t& 1& \mathrm{}& 0& 0& 0\\ & & & & \mathrm{}& & & \\ 0& 0& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& 1& 2t& 1\\ 0& 0& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& 0& 1& 2t\end{array}\right)$$

is a n$`\times `$n matrix, and define

$$U_n(t)=det(M_n(t))$$
(8)
One can prove this iterative relation easily

$$U_0(t):=1,U_1(t)=t,U_n(t)=2tU_{n1}(t)U_{n2}(t),n=2,3,\mathrm{}$$
(9)
Eq.(9) shows that $`U_n(t)`$ are Chebyshev’s polynomials of the second kind, hence $`U_n(t)=\frac{z_+^{n+1}z_{}^{n+1}}{2\sqrt{t^21}}`$ in which $`z_\pm =t\pm \sqrt{t^21}`$ . So (8) provides Chebyshev’s polynomials with another interpretation. Note that all roots of $`U_n(t)`$ are real and lie in $`(1,1)`$ and that $`U_n(t)>0`$, if $`t>1`$, $`n=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$. We set $`t>1`$, i.e. $`\alpha >0`$ from now on.

Now let $`\mathrm{\Phi }=(\varphi (0),\varphi (1),\mathrm{},\varphi (N2))^T`$, $`\mathrm{𝟏}_V=\underset{N1}{\underset{}{(1,1,\mathrm{},1)}}^T`$, then equation of motion (6) can be written as $`M_{N1}(t)\mathrm{\Phi }=\beta \mathrm{𝟏}_V`$. Assume $`\beta 0`$ and scale $`\varphi =\beta v,\mathrm{\Phi }=\beta V`$, then

$$M_{N1}(t)V=\mathrm{𝟏}_V$$
(10)
Introduce notations $`f_{i,j}(t)=\frac{U_i(t)}{U_j(t)}`$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_n(t)=_{j=0}^nU_j(t)`$, $`\psi _n=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_n(t)}{U_{n+1}(t)}`$. Formal solution to Eq.(10) is

$$v(x)=\underset{y=0}{\overset{N2x}{}}f_{x,x+y}(t)\psi _{x+y}(t),x=0,1,\mathrm{},N2$$
(11)
Since we choose $`t>1`$, there is no singularity in $`v(x)`$. If $`\beta >0`$, due to the positivity of $`U_n(t)`$ when $`t>1(\alpha >0)`$, $`\varphi (x)>0,x=0,1,\mathrm{},N2`$, i.e. being physically acceptable. Solutions for $`N=3,4,5,6`$ are listed in Appendix A.

## IV Discussions

The geometric interpretation of the solutions in Subsect.III.3.2 is that when coupling $`\alpha >0`$ and $`\beta >0`$, there are nontrivial vacuum appearing and that the metrics appear to be

$$d_{F(\omega )}(x,y)=\beta ^{\frac{1}{2}}(v(x)^{\frac{1}{2}}+v(x+1)^{\frac{1}{2}}+\mathrm{}+v(y1)^{\frac{1}{2}})$$

for all $`x,y=0,1,\mathrm{},N2,x<y`$. Moreover, this statement is valid in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$.

Interesting topics along this line are interaction between link variable $`\omega `$ and matter fields, “black hole” solutions, quantization, $`dim(_c)>1`$ case and higher dimension cases. Work on these aspects is in proceeding.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Climb-Up (Pan Deng) Project of Department of Science and Technology in China, Chinese National Science Foundation and Doctoral Programme Foundation of Institution of Higher Education in China. We are very grateful to Dr. B. Feng in MIT for that the general method to discuss Eq.(9) is showed by Dr. Feng to us, and to Prof. S. Majid for introducing his work to us.

## Appendix A Solutions to Eq.(10) for N=3,4,5,6

$$N=3:v(0)=v(1)=\frac{1}{2t1}$$

$$N=4:v(0)=v(2)=\frac{2t+1}{4t^22};v(1)=\frac{t+1}{2t^21}$$

$$N=5:v(0)=v(3)=\frac{2t}{4t^22t1};v(1)=v(2)=\frac{2t+1}{4t^22t1}$$

$$N=6:v(0)=v(4)=\frac{4t^2+2t1}{2t(4t^23)};v(1)=v(3)=\frac{2t+2}{4t^23};v(2)=\frac{4t^2+4t+1}{2t(4t^23)}$$


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# Infrared and optical spectroscopy of 𝛼 and 𝛾-phase Ce.

\[

## Abstract

We determined the optical properties of $`\alpha `$\- and $`\gamma `$-phase Ce in the photon energy range from 60 meV to 2.5 eV using ellipsometry and grazing incidence reflectometry. We observe significant changes of the optical conductivity, the dynamical scattering rate, and the effective mass between $`\alpha `$\- and $`\gamma `$-cerium. The $`\alpha `$-phase is characterized by Fermi-liquid frequency dependent scattering rate, and a effective mass of about 20 me on an energy scale of about 0.2 eV. In $`\gamma `$-Ce the charge carriers have a large scattering rate in the far infrared, and a carrier mass characteristic of $`5d`$ band electrons. In addition we observe a prominent absorption feature in $`\alpha `$-Ce, which is absent in $`\gamma `$-Ce, indicating significant differences of the electronic structure between the two phases.

\]

One of the most intriguing phenomena of cerium is the isostructural phase transition between a low temperature $`\alpha `$-phase and a high temperature $`\gamma `$-phase, which ends in a solid-solid critical point, where the two phases are indistinguishable. The structure is fcc with one atom per unit cell. It has become clear, that the proximity of the $`4f`$ level to the Fermi level is at the heart of these phenomena. Recently the nature of the $`\gamma \alpha `$ phase transition has been questioned by Eliashberg and Capellmann. They argued that a second order phase transition line continues beyond the tricritical point on the melting curve, implying that the symmetries of the two phases are different. The question is which symmetry breaking takes place through the phase transition. Crystallographically the two phases appear to be identical. Alternatively $`\alpha `$\- and $`\gamma `$-Ce may correspond to states of matter with the same crystallographic symmetries, but with a ’hidden’ electronic symmetry which is broken in the $`\alpha `$-phase. This motivated us to embark on a series of spectroscopic experiments on the electronic structure including the work presented here. Although we can not argue on the basis of these experiments that a symmetry is broken, we do provide compelling evidence that the electronic structure of both phases is qualitatively different.

Although an extensive literature exists on optical properties of heavy fermion compounds, many of which are intermetallic compounds based on Ce, little is known about the optical spectra of pure metallic cerium . Wilkins et al. reported several absorption peaks (288, 218, 170, 150, 83 $`meV`$), which we have not been able to reproduce. Rhee et al. reported optical spectra from 1.5 to 5 eV on different films, with a large sample dependence of the data, and which were distinctly different from ellipsometry measurements of polycrystalline samples by Knyazev et al.. In this Letter we present infrared/optical data over a broad range of photon energy. Using in-situ thin film deposition technology we obtained excellent sample to sample reproducibility of the optical spectra.

Cerium is a highly reactive metal. In order to prepare and maintain a clean and oxygen free sample over a period of about one day, it is necessary to work under ultra high vacuum. We used a compact UHV cryostat for low temperature in situ evaporation of Ce films, with vacuum in the $`10^{10}`$ $`mbar`$ range. The ZnSe windows are transparent from 0.06 to 2.5 eV photon energy. Following the procedure outlined in Ref. we prepared thin films of $`\alpha `$\- and $`\gamma `$-phase Ce on clean and oxygen free silicon wafers using ultra high vacuum deposition. The evolution of the optical spectra was monitored during the deposition process. The growth rate of about $`2\AA /`$s provided smooth mirror-like films, in agreement with earlier reports, with optical properties which were reproducible over 4 cycles of deposition and measurement. Details of the sample preparation are given in Ref. .

For photon energies between 0.8 and 2.5 eV we measured the optical constants using spectroscopic ellipsometry using an angle of incidence $`\theta `$ of 80o. Ellipsometry provides directly the amplitude-ratio ($`\mathrm{tan}\psi =|r_p/r_s|`$) ) and phase-difference ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=\text{Arg}(r_p)\text{Arg}(r_s)`$) ) of the reflection coefficients ($`r_p`$ and $`r_s`$) of $`p`$\- and $`s`$-polarized light, the dependence of which on the dielectric function, $`ϵ(\omega )`$ is given by the ellipsometric formula

$$\mathrm{tan}\psi e^{i\mathrm{\Delta }}=\frac{\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \mathrm{cos}\theta \sqrt{ϵ\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}{\mathrm{sin}^2\theta +\mathrm{cos}\theta \sqrt{ϵ\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}$$
(1)
In the photon energy range of 60 meV to 0.8 eV we used a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer to measure the intensity ratio of the reflectivity coefficients of $`p`$\- and $`s`$-polarized light, providing only $`\psi (\omega )`$, but not $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$. The conventional approach for obtaining $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ would be, to use Kramers-Kronig relations between phase and amplitude. However, knowledge of the amplitude over only a limited frequency range is in principle insufficient to determine the phase function. As was shown in Refs. a minimum of two ’anchors’ (frequencies where amplitude and phase have been measured) suffices to nail down the phase in the entire frequency range where the amplitudes have been measured. In the present case we have anchored the phases from 0.8 eV to 2.5 eV, which allows us to determine the $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ between 0.06 and 0.8 eV in a very accurate way. Special care is needed here, because for $`\theta >45^0`$ the function $`\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{tan}\psi (\omega ))+i\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ does not have all its poles in the lower half of the complex frequency-plane, as can be verified easily from Eq. 1. On the other hand, Re$`ϵ(\omega )`$ and Im$`ϵ(\omega )`$ do satisfy this condition, implying that $`ϵ(\omega )`$ can always be represented as a sum of oscillators $`ϵ(\omega )=1+_j\omega _{pj}^2\{\omega _{0j}^2\omega ^2\mathrm{i}\gamma _j\omega \}^1`$ This means that any experimental $`\psi (\omega )`$ and/or $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ spectrum can be fitted by adjusting the number of oscillators such, as to reproduce all the details of the spectrum other than statistical noise. No obvious physical interpretation of the individual oscillators necessarily exists, as the oscillator sum is rather similar in nature to a Kramers-Kronig integral, which indeed also becomes a summation when applied to a set of experimental data points. Using Eq. 1, we determined $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ for $`\mathrm{}\omega <0.8`$ eV with this analysis, using on input the experimental $`\psi (\omega )`$ for 0.06 eV $`<\mathrm{}\omega <2.5`$ eV, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ for $`\mathrm{}\omega >0.8`$ eV (see bottom panel of Fig. 1). The final step is to calculate Re$`ϵ(\omega )`$ and Re$`\sigma (\omega )=\omega `$Im$`ϵ(\omega )/4\pi `$ from the ellipsometric parameters using Eq. 1. For $`\omega >0.8`$ eV, we used the directly measured $`\psi `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. For $`\omega <0.8`$ we used the directly measured $`\psi (\omega )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ determined with the analysis described above.

Following the analysis of Ref. we identify the films deposited at temperatures below 4 K and above 300 K ($``$400 K in our case) as $`\alpha `$\- and $`\gamma `$-phase Ce respectively. We observed strong hysteresis of the optical spectra during cycling of the temperature after deposition Similar hysteresis loops have been reported for the DC resistivity of Ce films by Löffler et al.. In Fig. 1 we show Re$`ϵ(\omega )`$ and Re$`\sigma (\omega )`$ for the $`\alpha `$\- and the $`\gamma `$-phase. In the $`\alpha `$-phase the Drude contribution narrows and increases in intensity, leading to a more metallic-like behavior as expected.

At the lowest frequencies of our experiment the conductivity of $`\alpha `$-phase cerium is higher than that of the $`\gamma `$-phase, in qualitative agreement with the trends observed in the DC transport properties. In addition to a very sharp Drude peak, we observe in $`\alpha `$-Ce a shoulder at 0.3 - 0.4 eV, and a peak at 1.0 $`eV`$, on top of a broad and featureless background conductivity. In the $`\gamma `$-phase the Drude peak is much broader, the shoulder is absent, and again there is a broad and almost featureless background, except for a weak and broad shoulder from 0.5 to 1.5 eV. The most significant difference is the presence of a prominent peak at 1 eV in the $`\alpha `$-phase, and the absence thereof in the $`\gamma `$-phase, indicating that the electronic structure of both phases is significantly different on an energy scale far exceeding reported values of the Kondo temperature. The intensity and sharpness of this peak suggests that this is a virtual bound state of $`5d4f`$ character.

Cerium has $`4`$ valence electrons per unit cell. One of the key issues is how these electrons are distributed between the quasi-atomic $`4f`$-states and the non-$`4f`$ conduction bands (mainly $`5d`$), and to what extent this distribution changes as a function of temperature. A powerful tool to address these issues is provided by an analysis of the spectral weight. In the top panel of Fig.1 we display the function

$$N_{eff}(\omega )=\frac{2m_e\mathrm{\Omega }_u}{\pi e^2}_0^\omega \sigma (\omega ^{})𝑑\omega ^{}$$
(2)
where we used $`\mathrm{\Omega }_u=29.2\AA ^3`$ for the unit cell volume of $`\alpha `$-Ce and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_u=34.4\AA ^3`$ for $`\gamma `$-Ce. According to the $`f`$sum rule the limiting behaviour at high frequencies $`N_{eff}(\omega )`$ reflects the total number of electrons (core and valence). If the integration is restricted to the Drude peak, $`N_{eff}(\omega )`$ corresponds to the $`k`$-space (Luttinger) volume occupied by the valence electrons, multiplied by $`m_e/m_b`$, where $`m_b`$ is the band-mass of the conduction electrons. For both phases $`N_{eff}(\omega )1`$ between 1.5 and 2.5 eV. However, even at 2.5 eV there is no saturation of $`N_{eff}(\omega )`$. This implies, that interband transitions and electron-electron scattering processes continue to contribute to the optical absorption in the ultraviolet. An upper limit of $`m_b`$ can be set to $`6m_e`$, which is reasonable given the fact that these bands have mainly $`5d`$ character.

Let us consider the case of $`\alpha `$ cerium at low frequencies, and let us assume at this point that the narrow Drude peak below $`0.2`$ eV is the response of all four valence electrons, with the same effective mass. To estimate the spectral weight of the narrow peak, we choose $`\omega 0.2eV`$ as the upper limit of integration. Because $`N_{eff}(0.2eV)0.2`$, this implies that close to EF the valence electrons have an effective mass $`m^{}/m_e20`$. In reality the Fermi surface has a complicated shape, and the mass may have a strong $`k`$-dependence along the various sections of this Fermi surface. As a consequence $`m^{}`$ should be regarded as a quantity representing the $`\mathrm{a}\mathrm{v}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{e}`$ effective mass.

Let us now consider the $`\gamma `$-phase. In this case we have a good reason to make a clean distinction between the localized $`4f`$ states and the conduction bands of mainly $`5d`$ character. Due to their localized character the $`4f`$ electrons have a negligible contribution to the low frequency spectral weight. As a result the Drude peak extending upto about 1 eV is mainly of $`5d`$ character, and 3 electrons contribute to the Drude peak. Reading $`N_{eff}(0.6eV)0.5`$ for the $`\gamma `$-phase, we conclude that the effective mass of the conduction electrons of $`\gamma `$-Ce is about $`6m_e`$.

Another way to analyze the nature of the low frequency spectral weight is to calculate the frequency-dependent effective mass $`m^{}(\omega )`$ and scattering rate $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ directly from the real and imaginary part of the optical conductivity, using the generalized Drude form

$$\sigma (\omega )=\frac{ne^2/m_e}{\tau (\omega )^1+i\omega m^{}(\omega )/m_e}$$
(3)
using $`n=4/\mathrm{\Omega }_u`$ for the density of valence electrons. The results are shown in Fig.2. The large mass enhancement in the $`\alpha `$-phase indicates that the valence bands at the Fermi energy are strongly renormalized. The heavy mass indicates that at least one of the bands crossing the Fermi has considerable $`4f`$ character, and/or a strong mass-renormalization due to coupling to spin-fluctuations. The width of the effective mass peak is about $`0.2`$ eV, which indicates that coherent Bloch like states exist below a typical energy scale $`k_BT_{coh}=0.2`$ eV. At higher energies the Fermi-liquid type mass renormalization reduces gradually to the mass of a bare band electron, and in Fig. 2 we see, that the effective mass of the $`\alpha `$-phase approaches that of the $`\gamma `$-phase above 0.6 eV. The frequency dependent scattering rate of the $`\alpha `$-phase bears a strong resemblance to Fig. 13.3 of Ref., which in the context of the Kondo lattice model, indicates that a narrow band of itinerant electrons is formed with a coherence temperature $`k_BT_{coh}=0.2`$ eV, and a characteristic heavy-fermion temperature $`k_BT^{}=0.4`$ eV.

The frequency dependence of the scattering rate and effective mass of $`\alpha `$-Ce has similar characteristics as the heavy fermion compound URu2Si2, for which $`k_BT_{coh}=6`$ meV and a mass enhancement factor of 50 have been reported. The frequency dependence $`1/\tau `$ and $`m^{}`$ (Fig. 2 are directly visible as a shoulder at 0.3 eV in the conductivity of $`\alpha `$-Ce (Fig. 1). The spectra of $`\alpha `$-and $`\gamma `$-Ce agree very well with calculations based on the Local Impurity Self Consistent Approximation of the Anderson model by Rozenberg, Kotliar, and Kajueter (Fig. 20 of Ref. ) for temperatures far below ($`\alpha `$-C) and above ($`\gamma `$-Ce) $`T^{}`$. Similar side-bands have been observed in UPd2Al3 (1 meV), UPt3 (1 meV)), CeCu6(5 meV), UNi2Al3 (25meV), and Yb1-xLuxB12($`(1x)`$0.25 eV). It is conceivable that at least for some of these other materials the side band is of a similar nature as in $`\alpha `$-Ce. The large variation of the position of the side-band among the different heavy fermion systems would then reflect a variation of the coherence temperature from system to system, which is a lower energy scale than the on-site electron-electron interactions (Hubbard $`U`$). The hierarchy of energy scales in heavy-fermion systems is believed to be $`T_{coh}T^{}T_K`$, providing indirect evidence that $`T_K`$ is several thousend K for $`\alpha `$-Ce, in agreement with the analysis of Allen and Martin. They estimated, that $`T_K`$ of the $`\gamma `$-phase is of order 20 K . Under these conditions the mass renormalization effects are small. On the other hand the partly filled $`4f^1`$ states at each Ce atom still act as paramagnetic impurities, which form an efficient source for resonant scattering of the valence electrons. This is visible as a large residual scattering rate, as suggested by saturation of $`1/\tau (\omega )`$ to a high value in the far infrared range.

An interesting consequence emerges from these considerations: $`\gamma `$-Ce corresponds to a state of matter with 3 valence electrons per atom. The fourth electron only contributes a single spin degree of freedom, while the charge degree of freedom is gapped at an energy scale of several eV. The $`\alpha `$-phase on the other hand, corresponds to a state where all 4 valence electrons participate in itinerant bands. This result has common factors with the Mott model of Johansson and with the Kondo Volume Collaps model. The difference with the Mott model is, that not four, but only one $`4f`$ electron undergoes a Mott transition. With the KVC model it shares the property that the $`\gamma `$-phase consists of a band of itinerant electrons, weakly exchange coupled to paramagnetic local moments. The main difference is for the $`\alpha `$-phase, where our optical data suggest that an itinerant band is formed, a feature which requires explicit consideration of the lattice aspect of the problem. These aspects have been recently taken into account by Laegsgaard and Svane in a model combining SIC-LDA and the Anderson impurity model. Is indeed a hidden electronic symmetry broken in the $`\alpha \gamma `$ transition? The disappearance of one charge degree of freedom per atom as the system enters the $`\gamma `$-phase, suggests that the answer to this question is affirmative.

We performed infrared grazing incidence measurements on cerium thin films. The conductivity shows a remarkable change between the $`\alpha `$ and $`\gamma `$ phase. A significant difference is the presence of a prominent peak at 1 eV in the $`\alpha `$-phase, and the absence thereof in the $`\gamma `$-phase, indicating that the electronic structure is significantly different in both phases on an energy scale far exceeding reported values of the Kondo temperature of both phases. At low frequencies $`\alpha `$-Ce is found to be reminiscent of a Fermi-liquid with an effective mass of $`20m_e`$. We observe this behaviour on an energy scale of about $`k_BT_{coh}=0.2`$ eV, above which $`\tau (\omega )^1`$ and $`m^{}(\omega )`$ saturate at $`610^{15}`$s-1 and $`5m_e`$ respectively. In the $`\gamma `$-phase the three conduction electrons have an effective mass of $`6m_e`$, with a large residual scattering rate ($`410^{15}`$s-1) in agreement with the notion of valence electrons resonantly scattered by $`4f^1`$ local moments.

We like to thank G. M. Eliashberg for drawing our attention to this problem. A.B.K. was supported by the Russian Foundation of Basic Research, grant No 99-02-17752 and by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). This investigation was supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) with financial aid from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).