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# Random Points, Convex Bodies, Lattices

## 1. Sylvester’s question

In the 1864 April issue of the Educational Times J. J. Sylvester  posed the innocent looking question that read: “Show that the chance of four points forming the apices of a reentrant quadrilateral is 1/4 if they be taken at random in an indefinite plane.” It was understood within a year that the question is ill-posed. (The culprit is, as we all know by now, the “indefinite plane” without a properly defined probability measure on it.) So Sylvester modified the question: let $`KR^2`$ be a convex body (that is, a compact, convex set with nonempty interior) and choose four random, independent points uniformly from $`K`$, and write $`P(K)`$ for the probability that the four points form the apices of a reentrant quadrilateral, or, in more modern terminology, that their convex hull is a triangle. How large is $`P(K)`$, and for what $`K`$ is $`P(K)`$ the largest and the smallest? This question became known as Sylvester’s four-point problem. It took fifty years to find the answer: Blaschke  showed that for all convex bodies $`KR^2`$

$$P(\text{disk})P(K)P(\text{triangle}).$$

Assume now, more generally, that $`X_n=\{x_1,\mathrm{},x_n\}`$ is a random sample of $`n`$ uniform, independent points from the convex body $`K`$ and write $`p(n,K)`$ for the probability that $`X_n`$ is in convex position, that is, no $`x_i`$ is in the convex hull of the others. Sylvester’s question is just the complementary problem for $`n=4`$: $`P(K)=1p(4,K)`$. The probability $`p(n,K)`$ has been determined in various special cases (see ). The following result from  describes the asymptotic behaviour of $`p(n,K)`$.

Theorem 1.1. For every convex body $`KR^2`$ of unit area

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}n^2\sqrt[n]{p(n,K)}=\frac{e^2}{4}A^3(K)$$

where $`A(K)`$ is the supremum of the affine perimeter of all convex sets $`SK`$.

The affine perimeter, $`AP(K)`$ can be defined in many ways (see ), for instance $`AP(K)=_K\kappa ^{1/3}𝑑s`$ where $`\kappa `$ is the curvature and integration goes by arc-length. (This definition works for smooth convex bodies, the extension for all convex bodies can be found in .) Theorem 1 of  says that there is a unique convex compact set $`K_0K`$ with $`AP(K_0)=A(K)`$. The proof of Theorem 1.1 gives more than just the asymptotic behaviour of $`p(n,K)`$, namely, if the random points $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ are in convex position, then their convex hull is, with high probability, very close to $`K_0`$. For the precise formulation see .

Define $`Q(X_n)`$ as the collection of all convex polygons spanned by the points of $`X_n`$, that is, $`PQ(X_n)`$ iff $`P=conv\{x_{i_1},\mathrm{},x_{i_k}\}`$ for some $`k`$-tuple of points from $`X_n`$ that is in convex position ($`k3`$). Clearly, $`Q(X_n)`$ is a random collection as it depends on the random sample $`X_n`$. How many polygons are there in $`Q(X_n)`$? The answer is given in . Write $`E|Q(X_n)|`$ for the expectation of the size of $`Q(X_n)`$.

Theorem 1.2. For every convex body $`KR^2`$ of unit area

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}n^{1/3}\mathrm{log}E|Q(X_n)|=32^{2/3}A(K).$$

Further, there is a limit shape to the polygons in $`Q(X_n)`$, meaning that all but a small fraction of the polygons in $`Q(X_n)`$ are very close to $`K_0`$. We use $`\delta (S,T)`$ to denote the Haussdorf distance of $`S,TR^2`$.

Theorem 1.3. For every convex body $`KR^2`$ and for every $`\epsilon >0`$

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{E|\{PQ(X_n)\delta (P,K_0)>\epsilon \}|}{E|Q(X_n)|}=0.$$

We will see in Section 3 that similar phenomena hold for the lattice case. In general, lattice points and random points, in relation to convex bodies, behave very much alike. Quite often one understands in the random case what to expect for lattice points, or the other way around. The proofs are quite different and are omitted in this survey.

## 2. Higher dimensions

Much less is known in higher dimensions. One reason is that the unicity of the convex subset of $`K`$ with maximal affine surface area is not known. It is a mystery, for instance, which convex subset of the unit cube in $`R^3`$ has maximal affine surface area. But there are other reasons as well, connected to the lack of the multiplicative rule (5.3) from . Yet one can prove the following asymptotic formula . Here $`𝒞^d`$ denotes the set of all convex bodies in $`R^d`$, and $`p(n,K)`$ denotes, as before, the probability that the random sample $`X_n=\{x_1,\mathrm{},x_n\}`$ from $`K`$ is in convex position, that is, no $`x_i`$ is in the convex hull of the others.

Theorem 2.1. For every $`K𝒞^d`$, and for all $`nn_0`$

$$c_1<n^{2/(d1)}\sqrt[n]{p(n,K)}<c_2$$

where $`n_0,c_1,c_2`$ are positive constants that depend only on $`d`$.

With Vinogradov’s convenient $``$ or $`_d`$ notation this says that

$$1_dn^{2/(d1)}\sqrt[n]{p(n,K)}_d1.$$

From this one can estimate the size of $`E|Q(X_n)|`$ when $`K𝒞^d`$:

$$n^{(d1)/(d+1)}_d\mathrm{log}E|Q(X_n)|_dn^{(d1)/(d+1)}.$$

For comparison let us have a look at lattice polytopes contained in some fixed $`K𝒞^d`$. So let $`Z^d`$ be the lattice of the integers in $`R^d`$ and consider, for a large integer $`m`$, the lattice $`\frac{1}{m}Z^d`$. Assume $`K`$ contains $`n`$ points from this lattice. As $`m`$ is large, $`n=(1+o(1))m^dVolK`$. Write $`𝒫_m(K)`$ for the collection of all $`\frac{1}{m}Z^d`$-lattice polytopes contained in $`K`$. The next theorem, which follows easily from the results of , shows a very strong analogy between $`𝒫_m(K)`$ and $`Q(X_n)`$.

Theorem 2.2. For every $`K𝒞^d`$

$$n^{(d1)/(d+1)}_d\mathrm{log}|𝒫_m(K)|_dn^{(d1)/(d+1)}.$$

The result shows that when $`K𝒞^d`$ contains $`n`$ lattice points, these lattice points span (essentially) $`\mathrm{exp}\{cn^{(d1)/(d+1)}\}`$ convex polytopes, the same number as in the random case. Lattice points and random points in convex bodies behave similarly: this is the moral.

## 3. Lattice polygons and limit shape

In the plane Theorem 2.2 can be proved in stronger form (see , , and ):

Theorem 3.1. For every $`K𝒞^2`$

$$limn^{2/3}\mathrm{log}|𝒫_n(K)|=3\sqrt[3]{\frac{\zeta (3)}{4\zeta (2)}}A(K).$$

Here $`\zeta (.)`$ stands for Riemann $`\zeta `$ function. Note that this result is in complete analogy with Theorem 1.2: just the constant is different. (Also, $`n`$ is in power $`2/3`$ instead of $`1/3`$ as $`K`$ contains $`(1+o(1))n^2AreaK`$ lattice points.) The analogy carries over to Theorem 1.3 as well:

Theorem 3.2. For every convex body $`K𝒞^2`$ and for every $`\epsilon >0`$

$$lim\frac{|\{P𝒫_n(K))\delta (P,K_0)>\epsilon \}|}{|𝒫_n(K)|}=0.$$

This shows again that all but a tiny fraction of the polygons in $`𝒫_n(K)`$ are very close to $`K_0`$. In other words, these polygons have a limit shape. Theorems of this type were first proved by Bárány , Vershik  (for the case when $`K`$ is the unit square). Sinai  found a different proof which uses probability theory and gives a central limit theorems about how small that tiny fraction of polygons is. This has been generalized by Vershik and Zeitouni  to all convex bodies in $`R^2`$. A central limit theorem of this type holds for the random sample case as well, see  for the precise statement.

## 4. The integer convex hull

The integer convex hull, $`I(K)`$, of a convex body $`K𝒞^d`$ is, by definition, the convex hull of the lattice points contained in $`K`$:

$$I(K)=conv(Z^dK).$$

$`I(K)`$ is clearly a convex polytope. How many vertices does it have? Motivation for the question comes from integer programming, classical enumeration questions (like the circle problem), and from the theory of random polytopes. In integer programming one wants to know that $`I(K)`$ does not have too many vertices, assuming, say, that $`K`$ is a nice rational polytope. The latter means that $`K`$ can be given by $`m`$ inequalities with integral coefficients; the size of such an inequality is the number of bits necessary to encode it as a binary string. Then the size of the rational polytope is the sum of the sizes of the defining inequalities. Strengthening earlier results by Shevchenko , and Hayes and Larman , Cook, Hartman, Kannan, and McDiarmid  showed that for a rational polytope $`K`$ of size $`\varphi `$

$$f_0(I(K))2m^d(12d^2\varphi )^{d1}.$$

Here, as usual, $`f_i(P)`$ stands for the number of $`i`$-dimensional faces of the polytope $`P`$. Thus $`f_0(P)`$ is the number of vertices of $`P`$. Most likely, the same inequality holds for all $`i=0,1,\mathrm{},d1`$:

$$f_i(I(K))\varphi ^{d1}$$

where the implied constant depends on $`d`$ and $`m`$ as well.

The above inequality for $`f_0(I(K))`$ is best possible, as is shown Bárány, Howe, and Lovász in :

Theorem 4.1. For fixed $`d2`$ and for every $`\varphi >0`$ there exists a rational simplex $`PR^d`$ of size at most $`\varphi `$ such that $`I(P)`$ has $`_d\varphi ^{d1}`$ vertices.

The construction uses algebraic number theory. It shows further that the estimate $`f_i(I(K))\varphi ^{d1}`$ for all $`i`$ is best possible, if true.

What about the integer convex hull of other convex bodies? Balog and Bárány  considered case $`K=rB^2`$ where $`B^2`$ is the Euclidean unit ball centered at the origin and $`r`$ is large and showed that

$$0.3r^{2/3}<f_0(I(rB^2))<5.5r^{2/3}.$$

Later Balog and Deshoullier  determined the average of $`f_0(I(rB^2))`$ on an interval $`[R,R+H]`$ which turned out to be very close to $`3.453R^{2/3}`$ as $`R`$ goes to infinity ($`H`$ has to be large). Bárány and Larman  determined the order of magnitude of $`f_i(I(rB^d))`$. (The method, and the result, apply not only to the unit ball but to smooth enough convex bodies as well.)

Theorem 4.2. For every $`d2`$ and every $`i=0,1,\mathrm{},d1`$

$$r^{d(d1)/(d+1)}_df_i(I(rB^d))_dr^{d(d1)/(d+1)}.$$

This result is related to a beautiful theorem of G. E. Andrews  stating that a lattice polytope $`P`$ in $`R^d`$ with volume $`V>0`$ has $`_dV^{(d1)/(d+1)}`$ vertices. The above theorem shows that Andrews’ estimate is best possible (apart from the constant implied by $`_d`$). A similar (perhaps less compact) example was given earlier V. I. Arnol’d .

This kind of question can be considered in a more general setting. Let $`G`$ be the group of all isometries of $`R^d`$ with translations by elements of $`Z^d`$ factored out. $`G`$ is a compact topological group with a Haar measure which is a unique invariant probability measure when normalized properly. Assume $`gG`$ is chosen according to this probability measure. Then $`gK`$ is a random copy of $`K`$ and we can talk about the expectation of the random variable $`f_0(I(gK))`$.

For the next result we assume $`K𝒞^d`$ and define the function $`uKR`$ by

$$u(x)=Vol(K(2xK)),$$

that is, $`u(x)`$ is the volume of the intersection of $`K`$ with $`K`$ reflected about $`x`$. Set, finally, $`K(u<t)=\{xKu(x)<t\}`$. The following is an unpublished result of Bárány and Matoušek:

Theorem 4.3. Consider all $`K𝒞^d`$ with the ratio of the radii of the smallest circumscribed and the largest inscribed balls to $`K`$ bounded by $`D`$. Then, as $`VolK`$ goes to infinity,

$$VolK(u<1)Ef_0(I(gK))VolK(u<1)$$

where the constants implied by $``$ depend only on $`d`$ and $`D`$.

It follows easily from Minkowski’s classical theorem that all vertices of $`I(K)`$ belong to $`K(u<2^d)`$. (This is the first step in proving the upper bound.) It is not hard to see that $`VolK(u<2^d)VolK(u<1)`$. So the meaning of the theorem is that the average number of vertices of $`I(gK)`$ is essentially the volume of $`K(u<2^d)`$. Probably the same is true for the expected number of $`i`$-dimensional faces of $`I(gK)`$ but there is no proof in sight.

The behaviour of $`VolK(u<1)`$ is more or less known (from , say, but more precise results are known as well): it is of order $`(VolK)^{(d1)/(d+1)}`$ for smooth enough convex bodies and of order $`(\mathrm{log}VolK)^{d1}`$ for polytopes, and it is between these bounds for all convex bodies.

We mention further that Theorem 4.3 is quite analogous to a result in the theory of random polytopes. Given $`K𝒞^d`$, and a random sample of $`n`$ points, $`X_n`$, from $`K`$, $`K_n=convX_n`$ is called a random polytope on $`n`$ points. It is shown in  that, assuming $`VolK=n`$ (which is the proper scaling for comparison with Theorem 4.3), for all $`i=0,1,\mathrm{},d1`$

$$VolK(u<1)Ef_i(K_n)VolK(u<1)$$

where the implied constants depend only on dimension.

Note that, unlike Theorem 4.3, this result works for all $`i=0,\mathrm{},d1`$ (without any condition on the ratio of radii of the circumscribed and inscribed balls). Most likely, Theorem 4.3 also holds for all $`i`$, which would make the analogy even more complete.

There is, however, a point here where the analogy breaks down. Let $`KR^2`$ be the square of area $`n`$, so $`K_n`$ is a random polytope, and $`I(gK)`$ is the integer hull of a random copy of $`K`$. The expectation of $`Area(KK_n)`$ is of order $`\mathrm{log}n`$ (see , say), while the expectation of $`Area(KI(gK))`$ is of order $`(\mathrm{log}n)^2`$. (The latter result comes again from the unpublished work of Bárány and Matoušek.) The reason is that the boundary of $`K_n`$ contains no points from $`X_n`$ apart from its vertices, while the boundary of $`I(gK)`$ does. A further reason is that what we are measuring here is a metric property, and not a combinatorial one. We think that the same phenomena is bound to happen in higher dimension.

## 5. Random 0-1 polytopes

Finally we mention a recent development, prompted by a question of K. Fukuda and G. M. Ziegler . They asked how many facets a 0-1 polytope in $`R^d`$ can have; a 0-1 polytope is a polytope whose vertices only have 0 or 1 coordinates. So such a polytope is the convex hull of a subset of the vertices of the unit cube, $`Q^d`$, in $`R^d`$. 0-1 polytopes play an important role in combinatorial optimization where the target is, very often, a concise description of the facets of the polytope. This task has turned out to be difficult for several classes of 0-1 polytopes.

Write $`G(d)`$ for the maximal number of facets a 0-1 polytope can have. It is not hard to see that $`2^dG(d)2d!`$. The upper and lower bounds have been improved slightly: the lower bound by a construction of Christoff (see ), and the upper bound by Fleiner, Kaibel, and Rote .

The vertices of every 0-1 polytope are on a sphere (centered at $`(1/2,\mathrm{},1/2)`$). There is a formula (see for instance ) for the expected number of facets of a random polytope with $`n`$ uniform independent points from the (unit) sphere in $`R^d`$. It says that, in the range when $`2d<n<2^d`$, the expected number of facets is of order $`(\mathrm{log}n/d)^{d/2}`$. So if the analogy between random points and lattice points carries over the 0-1 case one should expect $`G(d)`$ to be of order $`d^{d/2}`$. This is too much to ask for at the moment, yet the following is true (see ).

Theorem 5.1. There is a constant $`c>0`$ such that for all $`d2`$

$$G(d)\left(c\frac{d}{\mathrm{log}d}\right)^{d/4}.$$

The construction giving this estimate is random. Write $`K_n`$ for the convex hull of $`n`$ random, uniform, and independent 0-1 vectors. Assume $`x`$ is a point from $`Q^d`$, and define

$$p(x,n)=Prob[xK_n].$$

General principles would tell that, for most $`xQ^d,p(x,n)`$ is either close to one or close to zero. To be more specific, set

$$P(t)=\{xQ^d:p(x,n)t\}.$$

The proof of Theorem 5.1 is based on the fact that for all small $`\epsilon >0`$ and large enough $`d`$ $`P(1\epsilon )P(\epsilon )`$, of course, but the drop from $`1\epsilon `$ to $`\epsilon `$ is very abrupt: $`P(\epsilon )`$ is in a small neighbourhood of $`P(1\epsilon )`$. This shows that $`P(1\epsilon )K_n`$ with high probability. But only a tiny fraction of $`K_n`$ lies outside $`P(\epsilon )`$ : most of the boundary of $`P(\epsilon )`$ is outside $`K_n`$. Thus most of the boundary of $`P(\epsilon )`$ is cut off by facets of $`K_n`$. These facets lie outside $`P(1\epsilon )`$. Comparing the surface area of $`P(\epsilon )`$ with the amount a facet can cut off from it gives the lower bound.

The actual proof is technical, difficult, and makes extensive use a beautiful result of Dyer, Füredi, and McDiarmid . Their target was to determine the threshold $`n=n(d)`$ such that $`K_n`$ contains most of the volume of $`Q^d`$. As they prove, this happens at $`n=(2/\sqrt{e})^d`$. Their method describes where $`p(x,n)`$ drops from one to zero as $`d\mathrm{}`$. The analysis carries over for other values of $`n`$. In our case higher precision is required as we need a good estimate on how fast $`p(x,n)`$ drops from one to zero. We were able to control this only where the curvature of the boundary of $`P(\epsilon )`$ behaves nicely. This is perhaps the spot where the exponent $`d/2`$ (for the random spherical polytope) is lost and we only get $`d/4`$ for $`K_n`$.

## References


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# Two characteristic temperatures for a Bose-Einstein condensate of a finite number of particles

## Abstract

We consider two characteristic temperatures for a Bose-Einstein condensate, that are related to certain properties of the condensate statistics. We calculate them for an ideal gas confined in power-law traps and show that they approach the critical temperature in the limit of large number of particles. The considered characteristic temperatures can be useful in the studies of Bose-Einstein condensates of a finite number of atoms, indicating the point of a phase transition.

Experimental achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in trapped, cold gases of alkali atoms BEC , has stimulated large interest in the physics of this phenomenon. Among others, the issue of fluctuations in the number of condensed atoms has been a subject of intensive theoretical studies, both for noninteracting Politzer ; Wilkens ; SPcalc ; SPGross ; MaxDem ; MDGross ; MDWeiss ; Schnack ; Holthaus  and interacting gases FluktInt . For an ideal Bose gas, described in the canonical or microcanonical ensemble, the condensate fluctuations are maximal just below the critical temperature. The point of maximal fluctuations defines some characteristic temperature, which can indicate the occurence of a phase-transition Schnack . In the systems containing finite number of particles, the thermodynamic functions remain analytic for all temperatures, and definition of the critical temperature cannot be based on the presence of a singularity in the thermodynamic functions. In this case, the characteristic temperature provides an alternative way to localize the point of a phase-transition.

Different characteristic temperature can be defined on the basis of the ground-state occupation number. Mean ground-state population as a function of the temperature, exhibits the presence of the inflexion point close to the critical temperature. In this paper we study the properties of both characteristic temperatures, demonstrating that they tend to the critical temperature in the limit of large number of particles.

The definition of a suitable characteristic temperature for finite systems was already considered by several authors. One of the candidates was a cross-over temperature. It is the temperature at which the probability distribution of the occupation of the condensed state changes its character from the one with the maximum at zero atoms (above phase transition) to the one with the maximum at nonzero (below the phase transition) MDGross ; MDWeiss ; Kocharovsky2 ; WilkensInt . Another candidate was the maximum in the specific heat Kirsten ; Haugerud ; Pathria . We stress that there are other characteristic temperatures possible, all tending to the critical one in the limit of $`N`$ going to infinity and, perhaps, one of them may be less difficult to measure in the experiment or compute rigorously for the interacting system.

We describe the system of $`N`$ noninteracting bosons, at a temperature $`T`$, using the canonical ensemble. The canonical partition function $`Z(N,T)`$, is, by definition related to grand canonical one $`\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)`$, through equation: $`\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)=_{N=0}^{\mathrm{}}z^NZ(N,T)`$. The grand canonical partition function is known in the compact form: $`\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)=_{\nu =0}^{\mathrm{}}(1ze^{\beta \epsilon _\nu })^1`$ where $`\beta =1/(k_BT)`$, and $`\epsilon _\nu `$ is the single-particle energy of the level $`\nu `$. Unfortunately, no such general expression exists for $`Z(N,T)`$, and we calculate $`Z(N,T)`$ from $`\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)`$, using Cauchy integral formula

$$Z(N,T)=\frac{dz}{2\pi i}\frac{\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)}{z^{N+1}}.$$
(1)
In the similar manner, it is possible to express the ground-state occupation number $`N_0`$ in the canonical ensemble

$$N_0=\frac{1}{Z(N,T)}\frac{dz}{2\pi i}\frac{\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)}{z^{N+1}}\frac{z}{1z},$$
(2)
and its fluctuations $`\delta ^2N_0`$

$`\delta ^2N_0`$ $`=`$ $`N_0^2N_0+N_0N_0^2,`$ (3)
$`N_0^2N_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{Z(N,T)}}{\displaystyle \frac{dz}{2\pi i}\frac{\mathrm{\Xi }(z,T)}{z^{N+1}}\left(\frac{z}{1z}\right)^2}.`$ (4)
Standard way of calculating the contour integrals (1), (2) and (4) is to use the saddle point (SP) approximation. This method exploits the fact that for large number of atoms the integrand is sharply peaked around the most probable value, and can be approximated by the Gaussian function. This approximation, however, ceases to be valid below the critical temperature, $`T_C`$, of the BEC, when the saddle point lies close to the ground-state singularity. In this case SP method predicts improper results for the condensate fluctuations at low temperatures SPcalc ; SPGross ; Holthaus  Alternatively, the Maxwell Demon (MD) ensemble MaxDem  can be used, in which the moments of the condensate statistics can be easily elaborated from the grand canonical partition function of excited subsystem. This approach, however, is not suitable for studying the condensate statistics in the transition region, and in the case of fluctuations, it does not predict the occurence of the maximum MaxDem ; MDGross ; MDWeiss .

In this paper we apply a variant of the SP method, developed quite recently by Holthaus and Kalinovski Holthaus . Following the idea of Dingle Dingle , the authors of Holthaus  exclude the ground-state term from the Taylor expansion around the SP and perform further calculation with the special treatment of the ground-state term. In this way, they calculate mean number of condensed atoms and its fluctuations, in the whole range of temperatures, including the most interesting regime of the phase transition. According to Holthaus  we rewrite Eq. (1) in the form

$$Z(N,T)=\frac{dz}{2\pi i}\frac{\mathrm{exp}(F(z,T))}{1z},$$
(5)
where $`F(z,T)=(N+1)\mathrm{ln}z+_{\nu =1}^{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{ln}(1ze^{\beta \epsilon _\nu })`$ is a tempered function, with excluded contribution of the ground-state term. Function $`F(z,T)`$ should be expanded around the saddle point $`z_0`$, which is calculated for the whole integrand. It fulfills the following equation

$$\frac{z_0}{1z_0}+\underset{\nu =1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{z_0e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}{1z_0e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}=N+1.$$
(6)
Expansion of $`F(z,T)`$ around $`z_0`$ up to the second-order terms, leads to an integral involving a product of the Gaussian function with the singular ground-state term $`1/(1z)`$. The result of integration may be expressed in terms of the parabolic cylinder function Holthaus . In the regime of condensation, it can be approximated by relatively simple expression

$$Z(N,\beta )=e^{F(z_0,T)1}.$$
(7)
The same procedure may be repeated for the contour integrals (2) and (4), describing $`N_0`$ and $`\delta ^2N_0`$, respectively. The SP of the former integral, $`z_1`$, fulfills the following equation

$$2\frac{z_1}{1z_1}+\underset{\nu =1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{z_1e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}{1z_1e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}=N,$$
(8)
while the SP of the latter integral, $`z_1`$, has to be determined from

$$3\frac{z_2}{1z_2}+\underset{\nu =1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{z_2e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}{1z_2e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}=N1.$$
(9)
Similar procedure, as that used for derivation of (7), applied to the integrals (2) and (4), yields the following results Holthaus

$`N_0`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{z_1}{1z_1}}e^{F(z_0,T)F(z_1,T)1},`$ (10)
$`N_0^2N_0`$ $`=`$ $`9\left({\displaystyle \frac{z_2}{1z_2}}\right)^2e^{F(z_0,T)F(z_2,T)2}.`$ (11)
Eqs. (10)-(11), with the saddle points $`z_0`$, $`z_1`$ and $`z_2`$ calculated from Eqs. (6), (8), and (9) respectively, determine the mean ground-state occupation number $`N_0`$ and the fluctuations $`\delta ^2N_0`$ for temperatures $`T<T_C`$. Comparison with the exact numerical results calculated for moderate-size systems containing $`10^2`$ \- $`10^4`$ atoms demonstrate, that the modified SP method predicts very accurate values of $`N_0`$ and $`\delta ^2N_0`$ . The accuracy of the SP approximation grows with the number of atoms, which reflects the fact, that for larger $`N`$ the integrand becomes more sharply peaked in the SP.

Derivation of the analytical results for the considered characteristic temperatures, requires to solve, at least in some approximation, the implicit equations determining the saddle points. The approximate solutions of Eqs. (6), (8) and (9) may be found, by expanding their left hand side around $`z=1`$, without altering the ground-state term $`z/(1z)`$. Applying this procedure to Eq. (6), we obtain

$$\frac{z_0}{1z_0}+n_e(T)+d_e(T)(z_01)N+1,$$
(12)
where

$$n_e(T)=\underset{\nu =0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}{1e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }},$$
(13)
and

$$d_e(T)=\underset{\nu =0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}{1e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}\left(\frac{e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}{1e^{\beta \epsilon _\nu }}+1\right).$$
(14)
After expansion, the SP Eq. (12) becomes quadratic in $`z_0`$. Its solution reads

$$z_0=\frac{n_0+2d_e\sqrt{n_0^2+4d_e}}{2d_e},$$
(15)
where $`n_0(T)=Nn_e(T)+2`$. The same procedure repeated for the two remaining SP Eqs. (8) and (9), leads to the following solutions

$`z_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{n_0+2d_e\sqrt{n_0^2+8d_e}}{2d_e}},`$ (16)
$`z_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{n_0+2d_e\sqrt{n_0^2+12d_e}}{2d_e}}.`$ (17)
The distance of the saddle points $`z_1`$ and $`z_2`$ to $`z_0`$, in the complex plane, is very small, which may be easily seen from Eqs. (15), (16), (17). Hence, $`F(z_1,T)`$ and $`F(z_2,T)`$, appearing in Eqs. (10) and (11), may be calculated by means of the Taylor expansion around $`z=z_0`$. This will allow to further simplify Eqs. (10) and (11). In order to preserve sufficient accuracy required for calculation of the characteristic temperature, we perform expansion up to the second order terms in the small parameters $`(z_1z_0)`$ and $`(z_2z_0)`$ for $`F(z_1,T)`$ and $`F(z_2,T)`$, respectively. In the case of $`F(z_1,T)`$, we obtain

$`F(z_1,T)`$ $``$ $`F(z_0,T)+{\displaystyle \frac{z_1z_0}{1z_0}}`$ (18)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(d_e(T)+{\displaystyle \frac{z_0}{1z_0}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{z_2z_0}{z_0}}\right)^2,`$
where we have applied the following approximation $`\frac{^2F}{z^2}(z_0)d_e(T)z_0/(1z_0)`$. The small error that results from this approximation is, in fact, a higher order term, which may be safely neglected. In the same way we expand $`F(z_2,T)`$, and substitute the expanded functions into (10) and (11), obtaining

$`N_0`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{z_1}{1z_1}}\times `$ (19)
$`\times `$ $`e^{\left(\frac{z_0z_1}{z_0}\right)^2\left[\frac{z_0}{1z_0}\left(\frac{1}{2}+\frac{z_0}{z_0z_1}\right)+\frac{1}{2}d_e(T)\right]1},`$
$`N_0^2N_0`$ $`=`$ $`9\left({\displaystyle \frac{z_2}{1z_2}}\right)^2\times `$ (20)
$`\times `$ $`e^{\left(\frac{z_0z_2}{z_0}\right)^2\left[\frac{z_0}{1z_0}\left(\frac{1}{2}+\frac{z_0}{z_0z_2}\right)+\frac{1}{2}d_e(T)\right]2}.`$
We have performed several numerical tests, which proved that Eqs. (19)-(20), with the saddle points given by (15)-(17), predict very accurate values of $`N_0`$ and $`\delta ^2N_0`$. In comparison to the initial Eqs. (10) and (11), they do not require numerical solving of equations for the saddle points. Nevertheless, developed set of equations is still too complicated, for the analytical calculation of the characteristic temperature. To this end, we expand Eqs. (15)-(17) and (19)-(20) in the power series in small parameter $`N^1`$, assuming that $`n_eN`$ and $`d_eN`$. After straightforward, but tedious calculations we arrive at

$`N_0`$ $`=`$ $`n_0+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d_e}{n_0}}{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}},`$ (21)
$`\delta ^2N_0`$ $`=`$ $`d_e{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{d_e}{n_0}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d_e}{n_0}}2,`$ (22)
where in the final result we include the terms of the order of $`O(1)`$, and higher. In the thermodynamic limit, only the leading order terms are important: $`n_0`$ in Eq. (21) and $`d_e`$ in Eq. (22). Those terms can be derived from the MD ensemble MaxDem . The inclusion of the remaining terms is, however, crucial for the occurrence of the inflexion point in $`N_0`$, and the maximum in $`\delta ^2N_0`$.

Figure 1 shows the fluctuations $`\delta ^2N_0`$ for an ideal gas of $`N=10^4`$ atoms, confined in 3D harmonic trap. The exact numerical result calculated by means of recurrence relations, is compared with predictions of Eqs. (11) and (22). In the case of Eq. (11), the saddle points $`z_0`$, $`z_1`$, and $`z_2`$, are calculated numerically from Eqs. (6), (8), and (9), respectively. It is clearly seen that Eq. (11) obtained in the SP approximation, fits very well the exact numerical curve, apart from the region close to the maximum, where a small discrepancy is present. This difference, however, does not influence significantly the temperature of the maximal fluctuations. On the other hand, in a wide range of temperatures Eqs.(11) and (22) gives almost identical values of $`\delta ^2N_0`$. Their predictions are different in the vicinity of the critical temperature, where $`n_00`$ and Eq.(22) becomes invalid. It should be stressed, however, that this wrong behavior at $`T_C`$ does not influence the position of maximum, which remains exactly the same as in (11).

Now, we turn to the calculation of the temperature of maximal fluctuations $`T_m`$ and the temperature of inflexion point $`T_i`$. We consider an ideal Bose gas confined in D-dimensional trap with power-law single-particle energy spectra. The condensate fluctuations in such systems have been studied MDGross ; MDWeiss ; in this paper we adopt the notation of MDWeiss . The energy spectra is given by $`\epsilon _{\{\nu _i\}}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{i=1}^D\nu _i^\sigma `$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the energy gap between the ground-state and the first excited state, $`\sigma `$ is an exponent depending on the shape of potential, and $`\nu _i`$ are the integer numbers counting the excitations in $`i`$-th cartesian direction. Here, we assume the case of spherically symmetric potential, stressing that our analysis can be extended for general case of an anisotropic trap. Moreover, we are interested in the case $`D>\sigma `$, in which the condensation occurs below the critical temperature $`T_C`$ given by $`k_BT_C/\mathrm{\Delta }=(N/\zeta (d))^{1/d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+1/\sigma )^\sigma `$ MDGross ; MDWeiss , where $`d=D/\sigma `$, and $`\zeta (d)`$ denotes Riemann’s Zeta function. In power-law traps, functions $`n_e(T)`$ and $`d_e(T)`$ are given by MDGross ; MDWeiss

$`n_e(T)=N\left({\displaystyle \frac{T}{T_c}}\right)^d,`$ (23)
$`d_e(T)=\alpha N\left({\displaystyle \frac{T}{T_c}}\right)^\gamma ,`$ (24)
where we retain only the leading order terms. In Eq. (24), the dimensionless coefficients $`\gamma `$ and $`\alpha `$ are given by $`\alpha =\zeta (d1)/\zeta (d)`$, $`\gamma =d`$ in the case of $`d>2`$, while for $`1<d<2`$ they are given by $`\alpha =\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+1/\sigma )^{D2\sigma }\zeta (3d)\mathrm{\Gamma }(d)^1\zeta (d)^{2/d}`$, $`\gamma =2`$. In the border case: $`d=2`$, $`d_e(T)`$ exhibits logarithmic dependence on $`T`$, however, we will not consider this special case. We substitute Eqs. (23) and (24) into Eqs. (21) and (22), and determine the characteristic temperatures from: $`\frac{d\delta ^2N_0}{dT}|_{T=T_m}=0`$ and $`\frac{d^2N_0}{dT^2}|_{T=T_i}=0`$, obtaining

$`{\displaystyle \frac{T_m}{T_c}}`$ $`=`$ $`1{\displaystyle \frac{(3\alpha )^{1/3}}{d}}N^{\frac{(\gamma /d)2}{3}},`$ (25)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{T_i}{T_c}}`$ $`=`$ $`1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha d}{d1}}\right)^{1/3}N^{\frac{(\gamma /d)2}{3}}.`$ (26)
It is worth stressing that the power-law depence on $`N`$ is exactly the same for $`T_m`$ and $`T_i`$. In the considered regime of parameters $`\gamma /d<2`$, and both characteristic temperatures approach $`T_C`$ when $`N\mathrm{}`$. In the specific case, of 3D harmonic potential ($`d=3`$, $`\gamma =3`$), Eqs. (25) and (26) take form

$`{\displaystyle \frac{T_m}{T_c}}`$ $`=`$ $`1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\zeta (2)}{9\zeta (3)}}\right)^{1/3}N^{1/3},`$ (27)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{T_i}{T_c}}`$ $`=`$ $`1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\zeta (2)}{18\zeta (3)}}\right)^{1/3}N^{1/3}.`$ (28)
Figure 2 shows the dependence of $`T_m`$ (upper plot) and $`T_i`$ (lower plot) on the number of atoms $`N`$, in the case of 3D harmonic trap. It compares the predictions of Eqs. (25) and (26) with exact results of numerical calculations. In addition it also presents the analytical result, derived with the inclusion of the lower order terms in $`n_e(T)`$ and $`d_e(T)`$. In this case we obtain the same $`N^{1/3}`$ dependence of $`T_m`$ and $`T_i`$ as in Eqs. (27) and (28), but with a different prefactors equal to $`\zeta (2)/2\zeta (3)^{2/3}+(\zeta (2)/9\zeta (3))^{1/3}`$ and $`\zeta (2)/2\zeta (3)^{2/3}+(\zeta (2)/18\zeta (3))^{1/3}`$, respectively. From Fig. 2 we see that Eqs. (27) and (28) predicts slightly different values in comparison to the exact data. Nevertheless, the analytical curve accountinng also for lower order terms fits very well the numerical results.

In conclusion, we have studied two characteristic temperatures for a Bose-Einstein condensate, defined by the point of maximal fluctuations in the ground-state occupation number and by the inflexion point of the ground-state occupation number. For a wide class of power-law traps, we have calculated both characteristic temperatures, showing that they approach the critical temperature in the limit of large number of particles. The numerical calculations performed for 3D harmonic trap, reveal a good agreement with our analytical results. The concept of the characteristic temperature may be useful in the studies of the BEC with a finite number of atoms, where the characteristic temperature can indicate the occurence of a phase transition.

Z.I. acknowledges support from Polish KBN Grant No. 5-P03B-103-20 and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.


text:
# A method to infer the stellar population that dominated the UV background at the end of reionization

## 1 Introduction

Intergalactic hydrogen is almost completely ionized by $`z6`$ (Becker et al., 2001; Djorgovski et al., 2001), but the sources responsible for reionization are still not known (see Barkana & Loeb 2001 and Loeb & Barkana 2001 for reviews of the theoretical possibilities). A low neutral-hydrogen fraction is found at lower redshift even in relatively over-dense systems, despite the short (compared to the Hubble time) recombination time-scale in those systems. This implies a continued supply of ionizing photons after reionization completed. Measurements of the intensity of the ionizing background below $`z3`$ (Scott et al., 2000) are consistent with an ionizing background produced by observed quasars (Haardt & Madau, 1996). At higher redshifts, however, the declining abundance of bright quasars (e.g., Fan et al., 2001b) suggests that they cannot provide an ionizing background sufficient to reionize the universe (Wyithe & Loeb, 2003a), and this conclusion is supported by deep x-ray surveys (Barger et al., 2003).

Recent results from the WMAP satellite imply that reionization was substantially underway by $`z15`$ (Kogut et al., 2003; Spergel et al., 2003). However, quasar absorption studies at $`z6`$ (Becker et al., 2001; Djorgovski et al., 2001) suggest a dramatic evolution in the ionizing background around that redshift. Some authors have reconciled the WMAP evidence for early reionization with the quasar result that reionization is just finishing at $`z6`$ by postulating two reionizations of the universe (Cen, 2003a, b; Wyithe & Loeb, 2003a, b), generally invoking a hard Pop iii stellar spectrum for the early reionization and a Pop ii stellar spectrum for the final reionization at $`z6`$.

The most direct technique to ascertain the sources responsible for the ionizing background at high redshift is to take a census of all sources that contribute ionizing photons. The advantage of this technique is that the relative contribution of different types of sources are measured directly, as are the spatial distributions and other properties of the populations. Unfortunately, the large luminosity distance to high redshift means that only the most luminous sources can be detected with current observational methods. For example, Fan et al. (2001b) measure a power-law high-redshift quasar luminosity function with a steep slope, but estimate that the traditional power-law break of the quasar luminosity function would occur more than one magnitude below their survey limit: there is little constraint on the faint end of the quasar luminosity function from direct source detection.

A complementary method to direct detection is measurement of the properties of the integrated ionizing background. Although this technique does not identify ionizing sources directly, it is effective at detecting ionization due to a very abundant population of low-luminosity sources. Moreover, the shape of the integrated ionizing background is dictated by the combination of sources responsible for it; different spectra arise from various possible contributors, such as quasars (Telfer et al., 2002), Pop ii OB stars (e.g., Leitherer et al., 1999), very massive metal-free (Pop iii) stars (Bromm, Kudritzki & Loeb, 2001), and x-rays from early stars (Oh, 2001).

This paper describes possible observations that would constrain the spectral shape of the ionizing background just after reionization finished. In Section 2, we introduce quasar absorption line spectroscopy in the context of this paper. Section 3 describes our parametrization of the ionizing background, and the resulting ionization state of absorption systems in the intergalactic medium (IGM). In Section 4 we apply those results to observed statistics of H i absorbers to generate a model for H i and He i opacity toward high-redshift quasars; the assumed properties of the quasars are given in Section 5. The method of simulating line of sight (LOS) absorption spectra and studying the sensitivity of the results to the shape of the ionizing-background spectrum is described in Section 6. Section 7 presents a method to select the best quasars for absorption line spectroscopy. We summarize our results in Section 8.

## 2 Absorption spectroscopy

The easiest way to make a crude measurement of the shape of the ionizing background is through the ionization state of photoionized IGM gas; in the next Section we show explicitly how the background spectrum is related to the ionization state. Atoms and ions with at least one bound electron in the ground state have strong bound-bound transition cross-sections, typically located at UV or soft x-ray energies. Consequently, even small amounts of these species on the line of sight to a background source produce strong absorption features. The most common extragalactic application of this technique uses UV-bright quasars as the background sources (for a recent review see Bechtold, 2003). Many species have been detected in absorption, ranging from H i and He ii, to Fe ii and Zn ii, plus high-ionization ions such as C iv and Si iv (e.g., Prochaska et al., 2001).

We examine the first ionization states of hydrogen and helium; they are the most abundant elements in the IGM, and are responsible for most of the UV opacity toward high-redshift quasars. Specifically, we will investigate the relative neutral fractions of hydrogen and helium, which have first ionization potentials of 13.6 and 24.6 eV, respectively. Since the photoionization cross-sections for H i and He i are peaked at threshold, their relative neutral fractions constrain the effective slope of the ionizing background between 13.6 and 24.6 eV.

The relative abundances of H i and He i constrain the ionizing background—the challenge is to measure these abundances in the IGM at high redshift. Both atoms exhibit line and continuum absorption. For H i, the Lyman series lines begin at $`1216\mathrm{\AA }`$ and continue down to 912 A, where continuous photoelectric absorption begins. The corresponding line transitions in He i are from $`1s^2`$ to $`1s2p`$ (584 Å), $`1s3p`$ (537 Å), etc., down to the first ionization threshold of helium, at 504 Å. These wavelengths are the rest-frame values; the observed wavelengths of these transitions depend on the redshift of the absorbing gas. If the neutral gas is distributed in many systems with a discrete redshift distribution, then the associated absorption lines appearing in a quasar spectrum form a ‘forest’ of absorption features against the continuum. Figure 1 shows two example absorption spectra with the general absorption regions labelled.

The absorption cross-sections of H i and He i are larger at the center of a line (at the IGM temperature of $`2\times 10^4\mathrm{K}`$) than in the continuous absorption region. Despite this fact, the strongest absorption effect for the expected distribution of neutral IGM gas (see Section 4) is from the cumulative continuous absorption due to many absorbers at different redshifts, named the ‘valley’ by Møller & Jakobsen (1990). This is illustrated for H i in Fig. 1; once Lyman limit absorption begins (shortward of $`912(1+z_\mathrm{Q})`$ Å, where $`z_\mathrm{Q}`$ is the quasar redshift), the forest typically gives way to almost complete absorption. In such cases it is very difficult to observe helium forest lines because of the small residual continuum flux at short wavelengths. In rare cases the valley is not very pronounced, and the continuum is strong enough that the He i 584 Å forest region may be observed. We call the region of the He i 584 Å forest red-ward of He i 537 Åthe ‘He i band.’

The identification of absorption features in spectra like those in Fig. 1 can be difficult, especially in low-resolution spectra, except in the region red-ward of the Ly$`\beta `$ forest, where the only possible absorption feature from hydrogen or helium is the hydrogen Ly$`\alpha `$ line. (Trace metals produce additional absorption features, though these can be discriminated based on linewidth or because they have a doublet feature, e.g., C iv.) The He i band is the analogous region for He i, where the He i 584 Å lines are the only source of helium opacity; however, this region also may contain absorption due to all of the H i Lyman transitions, confusing the assignment of any individual line to He i. In principle, unsaturated He i lines could be identified because they are twice as narrow as unsaturated Ly$`\alpha `$ lines. However, line blending and the expected weakness of the He i lines complicate a practical implementation of that criterion, and spectroscopy of sufficiently high resolution would require an extremely bright target.

Even after hydrogen reionization is complete at $`z6`$, the filamentary nature of the clumpy IGM leads to significant Ly$`\alpha `$ opacity in regions with neutral hydrogen column density of $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}10^{14}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. A line of sight through the universe pierces many of these filaments at different redshifts, resulting in the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest described above. Helium is expected to be singly reionized (24.6 eV ionization threshold) at a similar redshift to hydrogen, for almost any expected ionizing spectrum. Consequently, absorption by neutral helium at $`z<6`$ should be confined to the same filaments that give rise to hydrogen absorption.111This is in contrast to doubly ionized helium, which is distributed more diffusely (that is, the absorption features traces smaller over-densities) than hydrogen (Kriss et al., 2001). This justifies a one-to-one search for He i 584 Å lines at the same redshift as lines identified in the ‘Ly$`\alpha `$ band’ region, where the Ly$`\alpha `$ band is defined as the spectral region where absorbers with a He i 584 Å line in the He i band exhibit Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption (see Fig. 1).

The application of absorption line studies of the IGM is limited by the supply of suitable background sources, primarily quasars. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey222http://www.sdss.org (SDSS) is a large photometric and spectroscopic survey of the northern sky that will identify and measure redshifts for almost all quasars brighter than 20th magnitude over one quarter of the sky. At the current discovery rate of the survey, it will find approximately 1000 quasars at $`4<z5.2`$, and about 200 at $`4.8<z<5.2`$ (Anderson et al., 2001; Fan et al., 2001b). As we will demonstrate (Section 7), rest-frame extreme ultraviolet (EUV) absorption line study of $`z5`$ quasars requires a large sample of quasars, and could only be realized with the large catalog of $`z5`$ quasars that the SDSS will provide.

## 3 Ionizing background

Next we consider the relationship between the ionization state of IGM absorbers and the ionizing background. The quantity of interest for an absorbing system is the ratio of column density of neutral helium, $`N_{\mathrm{HeI}}`$, to the column density of neutral hydrogen, $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$,

$$\eta \frac{N_{\mathrm{HeI}}}{N_{\mathrm{HI}}}.$$
(1)
As we will describe in Section 4, the abundance of absorbers as a function of redshift and $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ is already observed. Thus predictions for He i absorption from these systems can be easily made from calculations of the relative ionization states of helium and hydrogen.

First we assume that the relative abundance of neutral helium to neutral hydrogen in an absorbing system with high H ii and He ii fractions333We neglect the possible presence of He iii in the absorption systems. Observations suggest that the second reionization of helium did not occur until $`z3`$ (Kriss et al., 2001; Theuns et al., 2002), and Wyithe & Loeb (2003b) predict that the full helium reionization happens over a narrow redshift interval. These studies suggest that most of the intergalactic helium was singly ionized at $`z5`$. is described by the optically-thin limit (e.g., Miralda-Escudé & Ostriker, 1992),

$$\eta _{\mathrm{thin}}\frac{N_{\mathrm{HeI}}}{N_{\mathrm{HI}}}=\frac{n_{\mathrm{HeII}}}{n_{\mathrm{HII}}}\frac{\alpha _{\mathrm{HeI}}}{\alpha _{\mathrm{HI}}}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{HI}}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{HeI}}}0.083\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{HI}}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{HeI}}},$$
(2)
where $`n_{\mathrm{He}}/n_\mathrm{H}0.083`$ is the cosmic abundance ratio of helium to hydrogen (assuming a mass fraction of 4He of 0.25, consistent with the combination of WMAP CMB results (Spergel et al., 2003) and big bang nucleosynthesis predictions (Burles et al., 2001)), $`\alpha _{\mathrm{HeI}}/\alpha _{\mathrm{HI}}=1.0`$ is the ratio of the radiative recombination coefficients for He i and H i (Osterbrock, 1989), and

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{HI}}=_{\nu _{\mathrm{HI}}}^{\mathrm{}}d\nu \frac{4\pi J_\nu \sigma _{\mathrm{HI}}(\nu )}{h\nu },$$
(3)
and similarly for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{HeI}}`$. The angle-averaged specific intensity is $`J_\nu `$, $`\sigma _i(\nu )`$ is the photoionization cross-section of species $`i`$, and the lower limit of the frequency integral is $`\nu _i`$, the photon frequency at the ionization threshold of species $`i=`$H,He.

The most important absorbers for measuring $`\eta `$ are systems where the observed equivalent widths of the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest absorption lines are roughly equal to the spectral resolution obtained in the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest spectrum. For a typical spectral resolution of 0.27 Å (a choice justified in Section 6.2), this corresponds to $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}3\times 10^{14}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ at $`z5`$. At such column densities, the optical depth to photons at the hydrogen ionization threshold is $`\tau _{\mathrm{HI}}2\times 10^3`$, thus the optically-thin approximation should be valid.

However, optically thick absorbers can have a substantial impact on the spectrum of the ionizing background, both through absorption and emission. Haardt & Madau (1996) find that the mean UV background is attenuated by roughly a factor of 3 at both $`\nu _{\mathrm{HI}}`$ and $`\nu _{\mathrm{HeI}}`$; additionally, much of the flux shortward of 228 Å is absorbed by He ii and re-emitted at 304 Å (see Haardt & Madau, 1996, fig. 5c). These changes to the unabsorbed spectrum have important implications for the He iii abundance, but do not affect the abundance ratio of He i to H i.

Because we are only concerned with the relative rate of neutral-helium ionizations to hydrogen ionizations, we approximate the ionizing background by a power law,

$$J_\nu \nu ^{\alpha _\mathrm{b}}.$$
(4)
Using a continuous star-formation history with metallicity $`Z=10^3`$ and a Salpeter IMF from 1 to 100 M (Leitherer et al., 1999), the effective power-law index is $`\alpha _\mathrm{b}=2.05`$. Also of interest is the spectrum of very massive metal-free stars, which represent the most extreme expectation of the stellar IMF at very high redshift: these stars are well approximated by a blackbody spectrum with temperature $`T=10^5\mathrm{K}`$ (Bromm, Kudritzki & Loeb, 2001). Very massive metal-free stars yield a particularly hard power-law index of $`\alpha _\mathrm{b}=0.28`$. Quasars produce a spectrum with a power-law shape matching their own EUV spectral slope; that value is not well constrained at high redshift, but $`\alpha _\mathrm{b}=1.6`$ may be a reasonable guess (see Section 5). Finally, x-rays radiated from early stars have a near-zero spectral slope (Oh, 2001), but the effect of secondary ionizations should produce an effective slope slightly greater than zero (S.P. Oh, private communication). Figure 2 shows the value of $`\eta _{\mathrm{thin}}`$ as a function of $`\alpha _\mathrm{b}`$.

## 4 IGM absorption model

Our model for the H i absorption in the IGM is empirical, based on the data obtained in many quasar absorption line studies. Ongoing and planned observations are likely to constrain its parameters better in the future.

Absorption by H i is quantified by discretizing the absorption into individual absorbing systems, identified by their redshift, $`z`$, and neutral hydrogen column density, $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$. The distribution of H i systems may be described reasonably well by power laws in both redshift and column density. We define H i systems with $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}<1.6\times 10^{17}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ as Ly$`\alpha `$ forest systems, and systems with $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}1.6\times 10^{17}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ as Lyman Limit Systems (LLSs). The distribution of H i systems in redshift and column density are parametrized by three constants: $`A`$, $`\gamma `$, and $`s`$,

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}N(z)}{\mathrm{d}z}=A(1+z)^\gamma ,$$
(5)
$$f(N_{\mathrm{HI}})N_{\mathrm{HI}}^s.$$
(6)
Here $`N(z)`$ is the total number of absorbers along a line of sight to redshift $`z`$, and $`f(N_{\mathrm{HI}})`$ is the number of absorbing systems per unit H i column density.

We chose $`s=1.5`$ for the power law index of the $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ distribution for all values of $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$, and assume that the absorber population extends up to $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}=10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Storrie-Lombardi & Wolfe, 2000). For the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest, we adopt the redshift evolution determined by HST observations at low redshifts (Dobrzycki et al. 2002, cf. Weymann et al. 1998) and from ground-based surveys at high redshifts (Bechtold, 1994). Those surveys covered the H i column density range of $`10^{14}\mathrm{cm}^2N_{\mathrm{HI}}1.6\times 10^{17}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (i.e., from a rest-frame equivalent width of 0.24 Å up to the LLSs). We extend their results to $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}=10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ by scaling up the number density using the $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ distribution quoted above, to give

$$\begin{array}{c}A=106,\gamma =0.65,\mathrm{for}z<2.4,\\ A=29,\gamma =1.7,\mathrm{for}z2.4.\end{array}$$
(7)
The transition redshift, $`z=2.4`$, was chosen to match the low-redshift and high-redshift fits smoothly; this is higher than the traditional value of about 1.5 (e.g., Weymann et al., 1998), but is a consequence of the upward revision of $`\gamma `$ by Dobrzycki et al. (2002) compared to Weymann et al. (1998); given the large uncertainties in the values of $`A`$ and $`\gamma `$, this is not alarming.

For the LLSs, we adopt $`A=0.2`$ and $`\gamma =1.5`$, which are consistent with the results of Storrie-Lombardi et al. (1994) and Stengler-Larrea et al. (1995). We note that Stengler-Larrea et al. (1995) do not present an analysis of their full sample of LLSs because they exclude absorption systems within $`5000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ of the quasar, yet their results are consistent with the result of Storrie-Lombardi et al. (1994) for all LLSs. These parameter choices provide a relatively smooth intersection between the abundance of LLSs and Ly$`\alpha `$ forest systems at $`z1`$, assuming the column density distribution described above. The covariance of the uncertainties in $`A`$ and $`\gamma `$ implies that the mean number of LLSs toward a high-redshift quasar is constrained, but the LLS distribution with redshift is uncertain: the 1-$`\sigma `$ uncertainty on $`\gamma `$ is about 0.4 (Storrie-Lombardi et al., 1994; Stengler-Larrea et al., 1995).

The absorber distributions described above can be converted into a mean comoving H i number density using

$$n_{\mathrm{HI}}^\mathrm{c}(z)=A(1+z)^\gamma \frac{H_0E(z)}{c(1+z)^2}N_{\mathrm{HI}},$$
(8)
where $`H_0`$ is the Hubble constant, $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ is the mean H i column density of the absorber population, and

$$E(z)=\left[\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }+(1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda })(1+z)^2\right]^{1/2}.$$
(9)
For a universe with density parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.3`$ in matter, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ in a cosmological constant, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}h^2=0.02`$ in baryons, and a Hubble constant $`hH_0/(100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1)=0.7`$, this gives an H i neutral fraction at $`z4`$ of,

$$x_{\mathrm{HI}}(z)9.8\times 10^3A(1+z)^{\gamma 1/2}\frac{N_{\mathrm{HI}}}{4\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2}.$$
(10)
For LLSs (which have $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}=4\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2`$), $`A=0.2`$ and $`\gamma =1.5`$, thus $`x_{\mathrm{HI}}(z=6)=0.01`$. This is consistent with the limit derived by Fan et al. (2002) from H i absorption toward a $`z=6.28`$ quasar.

We assume that there is no correlation between absorbing systems. There is observational evidence for clustering of the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest lines (e.g., Liske et al., 2001; Dobrzycki et al., 2002, and references therein), but our assumption is conservative for the purposes of this paper: we will show that to study He i absorption, we need quasars with fewer than average absorbers along the line of sight. Clustering of absorbers would skew the ‘bad’ quasar targets (i.e., those with many strong absorbers) worse, and skew the ‘good’ quasar targets better. This is not an important effect for low-$`N_{\mathrm{HI}}`$ absorbers, since they are very numerous, but could be a significant effect for LLSs if they are clustered (note, however, that Sargent, Steidel, & Boksenberg 1989 showed that LLSs followed Poisson statistics in their sample of 37 absorbers). The proximity effect generates an absorber deficit of $`30`$ per cent within $`4h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ of the quasar, or about 200 Å observed from the quasar Ly$`\alpha `$ line (Scott et al., 2000). We also ignored this relatively small effect.

In addition to the absorber redshift and column-density distributions, our IGM model must also describe their absorption properties. We used the photoionization cross-sections given by Osterbrock (1989) for H i and Verner et al. (1996) for He i. Our model treats the first 11 line transitions from the ground state (which all atoms are assumed to occupy), using data from the NIST Atomic Spectra Database v2.0.444http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/AtData/main\_asd The line profiles were modelled as Doppler cores of width $`b=26\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Kim et al., 1997) with damping wings outside of the core (e.g., Peebles, 1993).555In Section 6.2 we assume instrumental resolutions considerably larger than $`26\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, so the choice of exactly that value and our use of a single $`b`$ value for all absorbers rather than the actual distribution should have a negligible effect on our results.

Our absorption model includes only hydrogen and helium; metal lines are not considered here. There are not likely to be many metal line systems in the quasars used to measure $`\eta `$ because metal lines are associated with H i absorbers of high column density, and, due to the selection techniques employed (see Section 6), quasars with strong absorbing systems are unsuitable for measuring $`\eta `$. Moreover, the strongest metal lines that could pollute the Ly$`\alpha `$ band, such as the C iv and Mg ii doublets, show only a few absorbers per unit redshift, compared to of order 100 Ly$`\alpha `$ absorbers in the same redshift interval. In the He i band, metal lines are again far less numerous than H i lines, and thus were ignored.

One complication to the application of absorber statistics determined from other quasar samples to the population of quasars discovered by SDSS is the quasar selection techniques employed. The SDSS quasar selection primarily uses observed optical colors to generate a well-defined selection function (Fan et al., 1999); by contrast, the quasars studied in absorption line surveys were culled from heterogeneous catalogs (e.g., Hewitt & Burbidge, 1987), and include radio-, x-ray-, and emission-line-selected quasars in addition to color-selected quasars. An analysis of the systematic errors introduced by using absorption lines in quasars discovered by several different techniques to predict absorption patterns in quasars selected by another technique is outside the scope of this paper; we simply analyze the colors of the quasars most important to this study to ensure they would meet the quasar color-selection criteria of SDSS (see Section 7).

## 5 Model quasar intrinsic spectrum

In order to simulate realistic observations of IGM absorption of background quasars, we need to make assumptions about the intrinsic properties of the quasar UV spectrum. The SDSS will provide a large catalog of high-redshift quasars, so we attempt to model the typical properties expected of SDSS quasars based on the results of the survey so far.

In a sample drawn from 182 square degrees of the SDSS, Fan et al. (2001a) presented 18 quasars with $`z4`$ and $`i^{}<20`$, where $`i^{}`$ is the preliminary SDSS determination of the quasar $`i^{}`$ magnitude. We assume the quasars presented are a fair sample of the final SDSS results.

For each quasar in their sample, Fan et al. (2001a) compute the properties of the quasar near-UV (NUV) continuum, assuming a power law form, $`f_\nu \nu ^{\alpha _{\mathrm{NUV}}}`$. They set the normalization to the quasar continuum at the observed wavelength corresponding to rest-frame 1450 Å. They then convert that specific flux into a magnitude on the AB system,

$$\mathrm{AB}_{1450}=2.5\mathrm{log}_{10}[f_\nu (\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}=1450\mathrm{\AA })]48.6,$$
(11)
where $`f_\nu (\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}=1450)`$ is the specific flux in $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{Hz}^1`$ at rest-frame 1450 Å. Typically AB$`{}_{1450}{}^{}i^{}`$ or $`z^{}`$, depending on quasar redshift. Fan et al. (2001a) also estimate $`\alpha _{\mathrm{NUV}}`$ for each quasar; the mean for quasars with $`z4`$ is 0.6, with substantial uncertainty in the slope of any individual quasar. However, Telfer et al. (2002) found a break in the UV slope of their quasar composite spectrum near the wavelength of Ly$`\alpha `$; the measured slope became softer blue-ward of Ly$`\alpha `$. This confirmed earlier work by Zheng et al. (1997). The Telfer et al. (2002) sample is comprised almost entirely of quasars with $`z<2.5`$; for radio-quiet quasars they find a mean EUV slope of about 1.6, with a break to a shallower NUV slope at about 1250 Å. Telfer et al. (2002) compare their radio-quiet sample to the radio-quiet SDSS quasar sample of Vanden Berk et al. (2001), and find an evolution toward harder NUV slope with samples at higher redshift; EUV comparison between the samples is extremely difficult due to the presence of strong IGM absorption in the high-redshift quasars.

Given the available observational evidence, we adopt a conservative model for the EUV properties of SDSS quasars: AB$`{}_{1450}{}^{}=20`$ with a NUV slope of 0.6 between rest-frame 1450 and 1250 Å and an EUV slope shortward of 1250 Å given by $`\alpha _{\mathrm{EUV}}=1.6`$.

## 6 Lines of sight toward SDSS quasars

Many $`z5`$ quasars will be discovered by SDSS; in this Section we evaluate how good the best quasar target will be. We then simulate observations of the best quasar target and demonstrate our ability to constrain the spectrum of the ionizing background from such data.

Extrapolating from the results of the color-selected sample of Fan et al. (2001a), SDSS will discover $`1000`$ quasars with $`4<z<5.2`$. We assume the SDSS quasar selection function does not depend much on redshift over the range $`4<z<5.2`$; this is a conservative estimate for our purposes because the detection probability is higher for quasars with $`4.7<z<5.2`$ than for other $`z>4`$ quasars (Fan et al., 2001a). Fan et al. (2001b) fit the redshift dependence of the high redshift quasar spatial density with $`\rho 10^{0.5z}`$. Thus about 200 of the high-redshift quasars will fall within the range $`4.8<z<5.2`$.

We would like to know how many of these quasars have spectra like the middle panel of Fig. 1, which would be useful for measuring He i lines, and how many have spectra like the bottom panel of Fig. 1, which would not be a suitable target for measuring He i lines. We quantify this by determining the distribution of quasar sightline ‘suitability,’ as measured by the flux of the quasar in the He i band. From that distribution and the expected number of SDSS quasars, we determined what the most suitable quasar discovered by the SDSS will be. Though for some applications an analytic approach to the subject is suitable (Zuo & Phinney, 1993), we require a Monte Carlo simulation approach (Møller & Jakobsen, 1990; Jakobsen, 1998) for this study.

### 6.1 Absorber Monte Carlo simulations

We started from the distribution of H i absorbing systems in redshift and column density described in Section 4. For a quasar at a given redshift $`z_\mathrm{Q}`$, we used Poisson statistics to generate the number of low-$`z`$ Ly$`\alpha `$ forest, high-$`z`$ Ly$`\alpha `$ forest and LLS absorbers along the line of sight. Once we generated the number of absorbers of each type, we assigned redshifts and column densities drawn from the absorber model described in Section 4. This list of absorbers was then passed through a routine to calculate the optical depth to H i at every sampled wavelength value.666Wavelength sampling ranges from 0.08 to 0.28 Å, chosen so that there are three samples per Doppler FWHM of the spectral lines of interest (He i lines are twice as narrow as H i lines); all results were checked for sensitivity to spectral resolution and are converged at this resolution choice. In each simulated spectrum, the optical depth due to helium was stored separately from hydrogen; given the universal optically thin ratio of column densities, $`\eta _{\mathrm{thin}}`$ derived in Section 3, the helium optical depth scales simply as $`\eta _{\mathrm{thin}}`$.

For each LOS, the H i optical depth data were converted into the IGM transmission as a function of wavelength. We integrated the IGM transmission over the He i band to derive the mean He i-band transmission along each LOS, $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$. Figure 3 shows the cumulative fraction of quasars with $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ greater than a given value. For simplicity, we will assume the expected 200 SDSS quasars with $`4.8<z_\mathrm{Q}<5.2`$ all fall at $`z_\mathrm{Q}=5`$. Then from Fig. 3 we can read off the value of $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ corresponding to a fraction of $`1/200`$; this is the largest expected $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ value of the lines-of-sight toward the SDSS quasars. The result is $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.03`$. Note that if we change the assumed redshift of the quasars by $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=0.2`$ (the dotted lines in Fig. 3), the expected maximum value of $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ for 200 quasars changes by a factor of about 2. When the final SDSS quasar catalog is constructed, we may use the real distribution of quasar redshifts together with our simulation machinery to generate a $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ histogram that depends only on the IGM absorber model. Thus measurements of the observed distribution of $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ can be used to constrain a combination of the properties of the H i component of the IGM and the intrinsic quasar spectral shape.

Small changes to the absorber-model parameter $`s`$, the slope of the column-density distribution, have a strong effect on the expected maximum value of $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ (as pointed out by Møller & Jakobsen 1990, and illustrated by the dashed lines in Fig. 3). In the next subsections we discuss what could be learned about the $`z5`$ ionizing background under the assumption that SDSS will discover a quasar with properties given in Section 5 along a LOS with $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.03`$, our ‘expected’ value for the best SDSS quasar, or $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.1`$, which we consider to be a reasonable ‘optimistic’ value for the best SDSS quasar.

### 6.2 Quasar absorption line spectrum simulations

Based on the results of the previous subsection, we analyzed lines-of-sight with $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.03`$ and $`0.1`$, our ‘expected’ and ‘optimistic’ values for the best SDSS quasar LOS. For each observational realization of a quasar along the simulated LOS, a value of $`\eta `$ was assumed. Then the optical depth data were used to construct the IGM transmission as a function of wavelength. This was multiplied by the intrinsic quasar spectrum from the model described in Section 5 to generate the observed spectrum. The Galactic extinction curve was taken from Scheffler & Elsässer (1988). Atmospheric extinction was applied based on the sky transparency from Mauna Kea (the location of the Keck Observatory).777http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/inst/lris/atm\_trans.html Our modelling of the telescope and instrument parameters included slit losses, system throughput, instrumental resolution, pixel sampling, spatial extraction of the spectra, and detector noise. Slit losses and spatial extraction both incorporate an assumed value for the seeing. A mean emission spectrum of the sky,888http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Instruments/ObserverManual/ chapter5.html; note the sky will darken slightly as we approach solar minimum in 2008. measured at Mauna Kea, was also passed through the telescope/instrument model.

Our model observations were performed assuming a Galactic extinction value of $`A_u^{}=0.15`$ toward the target quasar, typical for SDSS quasars (Schneider et al., 2002). We assumed the observations were made at a constant value of 1.2 airmasses and a constant seeing of 0.7 arcsec.

Our simulated observations of the H i Ly$`\alpha `$ forest were based on the properties of the Keck II 10-meter telescope and the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI; Sheinis et al. 2002), an intermediate resolution optical spectrograph, with ESI in echelle mode ($`R4000`$). We assumed a 1 arcsec slit, with $`75\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ resolution and $`11.5\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{pixel}^1`$. The spatial extraction window was 0.77 arcsec; the spatial pixel scale was $`0.154\mathrm{arcsec}\mathrm{pixel}^1`$. We assumed no dark current, and a readnoise of 2.1 counts per pixel (the gain was 1.3 e- per count). We assumed each H i Ly$`\alpha `$ forest spectrum consisted of 40 co-added 1000 sec observations, for a total exposure time of 11 hours. This is similar to the exposure times of Keck observations of the highest-redshift SDSS quasars (White et al., 2003).

We assumed that the He i band was observed with the Keck I 10-meter telescope and the Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS; Oke et al. 1995), using the blue channel of LRIS (LRIS-B; McCarthy et al. 1998) with the 1200 line grism. This configuration with a 0.7 arcsec slit delivers a resolution of $`1.30\mathrm{\AA }`$, sampled at $`0.24\mathrm{\AA }\mathrm{pixel}^1`$. The spatial extraction window was 1.08 arcsec, about 1.5 times the seeing; the spatial pixel scale was $`0.2151\mathrm{arcsec}\mathrm{pixel}^1`$. We assumed no dark current, and a readnoise of 2.5 counts per pixel (the gain was 1.6 e- per count). Because readnoise otherwise made a non-negligible contribution to the noise, we binned the data by 2 pixels in the spatial and spectral directions. We assumed each He i 584 Å forest spectrum consisted of 72 co-added 2000 sec observations, for a total exposure time of 40 hours. This is substantially more observation time than is typically devoted to any one object with Keck. However, the total observation time devoted to study He ii absorption in the $`z=2.885`$ quasar HE2347-4342 was almost 150 hours with the FUSE satellite.

For each simulated exposure, we computed the expected signal, expected sky, and expected detector noise. The observed counts in each spectral pixel due to source, sky and detector were drawn from Poisson distributions with the means set to the expected counts, and the three contributions were summed. Then the expected sky and detector noise were subtracted (assuming photon-noise limited sky subtraction). The simulated exposures were then summed to create the final simulated observation.

### 6.3 Quasar absorption line spectrum analysis

Our goal is to estimate the ionization state of the IGM as measured by the relative abundance of He i to H i, $`\eta `$. Our analysis technique is to make use of the cross-correlation of the H i Ly$`\alpha `$ forest spectrum and the He i-band spectrum, which depends on $`\eta `$ as illustrated in Fig. 4.

Each pixel in the He i-band spectrum was matched up with the Ly$`\alpha `$-band spectrum pixel whose wavelength is closest to $`\lambda _{\mathrm{HI}}=(1216/584)\lambda _{\mathrm{HeI}}`$, where $`\lambda _{\mathrm{HeI}}`$ is the wavelength of the He i-band pixel. Thus an absorber at a given redshift will exhibit He i 584 Å absorption and Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption in matched pixels. Figure 5 shows a plot of the fluxes, normalized to the local quasar continuum, of pixel pairs matched in this manner, for two values of $`\eta `$. If He i 584 Å absorption and Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption were the only features in the spectra, and the observations were perfect, then the points would fall along a tight locus described primarily by $`\eta `$. In regions of little absorption, both continuum-normalized pixel fluxes would be near one: regions of strong absorption would have normalized H i pixel fluxes near zero and normalized He i pixel fluxes set by $`\eta `$. However, the presence of other lines and the effects of instrumental smoothing and observational noise scatter the points. There is little scatter in the H i-pixel-flux direction, both because these simulated observations have a good signal-to-noise ratio, and because there are no absorption features in the Ly$`\alpha `$ band besides Ly$`\alpha `$. There is substantial scatter in the He i-pixel-flux direction, though, because of lower signal-to-noise in the observations, and also the presence of Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption (and, to a lesser extent, absorption due to the other Lyman series lines) from low-redshift absorbers. Despite the scatter, one can easily see that, at low values for the normalized H i pixel flux, the points Fig. 5 for the $`\eta =0.06`$ case (solid squares) lie higher (less He i absorption) than the points for the $`\eta =0.20`$ case (open squares).

In the He i-band spectrum, we would like to know what the quasar effective continuum level is after accounting for bound-free absorption by higher-redshift absorbing systems. For a $`z_\mathrm{Q}=5`$ quasar, any strong absorber between $`z=2.53`$ and $`z=2.84`$ will cause a change in the effective continuum in the He i band, due to the H i bound-free absorption edge at $`912(1+z)\mathrm{\AA }`$. Consequently, the H i Ly$`\alpha `$ forest spectrum should be searched for strong Ly$`\alpha `$ lines over the range of 4292 to 4669 Å (for $`z_\mathrm{Q}=5`$). We assumed for our analysis that the effective continuum can be accurately estimated. In the analysis of real observations, one could apply the same technique used to estimate the effective continuum to our mock observations, and thus analyze the real observations in an unbiased way.

Using our large Monte Carlo library of simulated quasar LOSs, we generated the distribution of pixel pair fluxes, as a function of $`\eta `$, for multiple observational realizations of a quasar along each LOS. Figure 6 shows contours that represent the likelihood of finding a given pair of continuum-normalized fluxes for $`\eta =0.06`$ and $`\eta =0.20`$. This distribution of mock-observational results were then used to analyze an individual observation of a quasar LOS: we generated the matched pair data as shown in Fig. 5, then summed the value of the likelihood at that point over all the pixel pairs with continuum-normalized H i pixel fluxes less than 0.5 (cf. Fig. 6), for each of the two values of $`\eta `$ under consideration. We termed each sum of the likelihood values (which depend on $`\eta `$) $`L(\eta )`$. The $`L(\eta )`$ value is larger when a set of pairs matches up well with the contours of Fig. 6 for $`\eta `$, and smaller when there is not a good match. Then we formed the ratio $`RL(0.06)/L(0.20)`$, which we find is better for recovering our input value of $`\eta `$ than, for example, $`L(0.06)L(0.20)`$. We have found that binning the He i-band spectra by 2 pixels (in addition to the $`2\times 2`$ on-chip binning) reduces the scatter in $`R`$.

Figure 7 shows histograms of $`R`$ for each of our two input values of $`\eta `$, assuming observations described in Section 6.2 of a quasar along a sightline with $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.03`$, our expected value for the best SDSS LOS toward a $`z5`$ quasar (see Section 6.1). The histograms are clearly separated, though they do show some overlap. Figure 8 is the same as Fig. 7, but for observations along a LOS with $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.1`$, our optimistic value for the best quasar LOS in the SDSS. In this case the histograms are much more clearly separated, illustrating the importance of discovering a very good quasar LOS.

Figures 9 and 10 cumulate (and normalize) the histograms of Figs. 7 and 8. They illustrate that, for our model observations toward one $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.03`$ LOS, if the true value of $`\eta `$ is 0.06, then we have almost a 60 per cent chance of making an observation that will reject $`\eta =0.20`$ at the 95 per cent confidence level. Conversely, if the true value of $`\eta `$ is 0.20, then we have a 60 per cent chance of making an observation that will reject $`\eta =0.06`$ at the 95 per cent confidence level. The situation along a $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.1`$ LOS is much more optimistic: if the true value of $`\eta `$ is either one of our model choices, we will reject the other value of $`\eta `$ about 95 per cent of the time at the 95 per cent confidence level.

Using the observations we propose, it will be difficult to estimate a precise value of $`\eta `$ from the data. If the true value of $`\eta `$ is, for example, 0.11, then we will only be able to reject very extreme values of $`\eta `$. However, if the ionizing background is either hard or soft, it may well be possible to reject the other hypothesis. For example, if we measured an $`R`$ value of 1, we could be confident that the ionizing background at $`z5`$ is not dominated by Pop ii stars.

## 7 Observational quasar selection techniques

In previous Sections we estimated the likely properties of the best SDSS quasar for the measurement of He i absorption features, and what we could learn about the $`z5`$ ionizing background from analysis of such a quasar. In this Section we describe the final aspect of practical implementation, how to pick out the best SDSS quasar from the expected sample of 200.

We would like to select the $`z5`$ SDSS quasar with the highest flux in the He i band. So far we have primarily discussed $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$, the IGM-transmitted fraction in the He i band; however, this was always under the assumption of the intrinsic quasar model described in Section 5. The real SDSS quasar sample will certainly include quasars with a range of values for AB1450, and these quasars may have a range of EUV spectral shapes. Due to these distributions, the quasar with the largest He i-band flux may not be the quasar with the largest $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$; we made conservative assumptions about AB1450 and the EUV spectrum, so we expect that the true distributions of quasar properties may only improve the suitability of the best SDSS quasar over our estimates.

For $`z_\mathrm{Q}=5`$, the He i band covers 3222 to 3506 Å; this is within the SDSS $`u^{}`$ filter, which runs from $`3250`$ to 3750 Å (Fan et al., 2001a). As a consequence we expect the $`u^{}`$ magnitude to serve as a good proxy for the He i-band flux. Figure 11 shows the relationship between $`T(\text{He }\text{i})`$ and $`T(u^{})`$, the transmitted flux fraction in the $`u^{}`$ band. The strong correlation illustrated in the scatter plot is independent of the intrinsic quasar properties. Assuming our standard quasar model, the transmitted fractions are directly related to fluxes; the cumulative histogram at the bottom of Fig. 11 shows the fraction of observed quasars brighter than a given value of $`u^{}`$. We expect that 95 per cent of SDSS $`z5`$ quasars will be fainter than $`u^{}=27`$, but the quasar with the highest He i-band flux will have $`u^{}25.5`$, with an optimistic value of $`u^{}=24`$. The $`u^{}`$-band 1-$`\sigma `$ limiting magnitude for the SDSS survey is expected to be about $`u^{}=24`$ (Fan et al., 2001a), thus under optimistic assumptions there is some chance the SDSS survey itself would make a $`u^{}`$ detection of a $`z5`$ quasar, and thus identify an excellent candidate for spectroscopic follow-up observations. It is likely, however, that deeper $`u^{}`$-band photometry on the SDSS quasars will be desirable to locate the few brightest quasars in the $`u^{}`$ band. The 2.5-meter SDSS telescope integrates for only 54.1 seconds per filter, so achieving deeper $`u^{}`$ photometry on a small telescope equipped with a blue-sensitive CCD should not be difficult (extending the 1-$`\sigma `$ limit to $`u^{}=25.5`$ would only require 2.5 minutes per source with the SDSS telescope, or about 8 hours of total integration time for all 200 SDSS $`z5`$ quasars).

Once candidates have been identified from $`u^{}`$-band photometry, low-resolution spectroscopy should be performed to determine the flux in the He i band; because the $`u^{}`$ band extends longward of the He i band, a quasar can be relatively bright in $`u^{}`$ but faint in the He i band (note the points scattered below the main correlation in Fig. 11). The low-resolution spectroscopy will require a blue-sensitive spectrograph, but on only a 2-meter class telescope.

We now turn to our final point: the SDSS quasars are selected based on photometry in all of the SDSS bands. The primary SDSS photometric-selection criteria for $`z5`$ quasars require $`u^{}>22.00`$ and $`g^{}>22.60`$ (Fan et al., 2001a). As illustrated in Fig. 11, we do not expect any $`z5`$ quasars to be nearly as bright as $`u^{}=22.00`$. In contrast, Fig. 12 shows that quasars with $`T(\text{He }\text{i})=0.1`$ will sometimes be slightly brighter than $`22.60`$ in $`g^{}`$. Though unlikely, it is possible that the SDSS quasar selection algorithm could miss not only a $`z5`$ quasar, but the best one in the survey for our purposes. When the SDSS quasar survey is complete, and the SDSS data are publicly released, a full search of the SDSS catalog can be made to determine whether any objects meet all the SDSS $`z5`$ quasar criteria except for $`g^{}>22.60`$, but still have, e.g., $`g^{}>22.40`$. These objects could be followed up independently.

## 8 Summary

We have developed a method to infer the dominant stellar population responsible for the ionizing background radiation at $`z5`$, using absorption lines in the spectrum of a $`z5`$ quasar. Specifically, we related the strength of relative absorption in He i lines compared to H i lines to whether Pop ii or Pop iii stars dominated the ionizing background shortly after reionization completed.

First we related the ionizing background shape to the ratio, $`\eta `$, of He i to H i in an optically thin absorbing system; the spectrum of Pop ii stars gives rise to $`\eta =0.20`$ while the spectrum of very massive Pop iii stars yields $`\eta =0.06`$. Then we adopted a model for the population of IGM absorbers based on absorption line observations of quasars. The existing observations do not tightly constrain absorber populations at $`z4`$; our model does extrapolate to a neutral fraction of $`1.4\times 10^2`$ at $`z=6.28`$, consistent with measurements. We adopted a model quasar spectrum to shine through our model IGM: we assumed the quasar flux to be at the faint limit for the SDSS quasar survey (20th magnitude in the AB system at rest-frame 1450 Å), and modelled the EUV spectral shape based on the composite spectrum of lower-redshift quasars with a spectral slope of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{EUV}}=1.6`$.

We extrapolated the early results of the SDSS quasar survey to find that SDSS will discover 200 quasars with $`4.8<z<5.2`$. We used Monte Carlo simulations of our IGM model to generate random realizations of lines-of-sight (LOSs) toward $`z_\mathrm{Q}5`$ quasars. Based on those results, we concluded that a sample of 200 quasars should contain one quasar along a line-of-sight with 3 per cent transmission by the IGM in the He i band ($`537(1+z)`$ to $`584(1+z)`$ Å); given the uncertainty in the absorber model, we consider a LOS with 10 per cent transmission to be an optimistic possibility.

We simulated large numbers of quasar LOSs with 3 and 10 per cent transmission. We placed a model quasar at $`z=5`$, and then simulated observations of the He i and H i forests. Based on the result for a large ensemble of observations, we derived an estimation technique that can discriminate (at 95 per cent confidence) a Pop ii ionizing background from a Pop iii ionizing background $`50`$ per cent of the time for observations along our expected best LOS, and that can discriminate the backgrounds 95 per cent of the time for observations along our optimistic best LOS. These observations require very long integrations with a 10-meter class telescope instrumented with a blue-sensitive low-dispersion spectrograph and an optical intermediate-resolution spectrograph.

Finally, we examined the selection of the best quasar/LOS combination on which to perform our proposed experiment from the expected 200 SDSS quasars at $`z5`$. The He i forest at $`z=5`$ falls in the $`u^{}`$ filter; consequently $`u^{}`$ imaging is an efficient way to select the best quasar/LOS combination. However, the SDSS $`u^{}`$ photometry will not be deep enough to detect $`z5`$ quasars (any detection would be beyond the optimistic expectation of our IGM model), so follow-up $`u^{}`$ photometry of the 200 $`z5`$ quasars will be required; these observations will be inexpensive. We also consider the possibility that a quasar/LOS combination will be so good for our purposes that it falls outside of the SDSS quasar color selection criteria. This is very unlikely for quasars with $`10`$ per cent or lower transmission, but about half of all quasars with 20 per cent transmission, should any exist, would be brighter in $`g^{}`$ than the SDSS quasar color selection limit of 22.6. If quasars are discovered with 10 per cent transmission, it may be worthwhile to modify the SDSS quasar color selection criteria so as to discover quasars with even less IGM absorption in the He i forest.

## Acknowledgments

MRS thanks the TA group at Harvard CfA for warm hospitality. We gratefully acknowledge helpful conversations with Wal Sargent, Rob Simcoe, Chuck Steidel, Peng Oh and Marc Kamionkowski. This work was supported in part by NASA GSRP grant NGT5-50339 and NASA grant NAG5-9821 (for MRS), and by NASA grant ATP02-0004-0093 and NSF grants AST-0071019 and AST-0204514 (for AL). AL acknowledges support from the Institute for Advanced Study and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.