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# Experimental demonstration of quantum source coding

## Abstract

We report an experimental demonstration of Schumacher’s quantum noiseless coding theorem. Our experiment employs a sequence of single photons each of which represents three qubits. We initially prepare each photon in one of a set of 8 non-orthogonal codeword states corresponding to the value of a block of three binary letters. We use quantum coding to compress this quantum data into a two-qubit quantum channel and then uncompress the two-qubit channel to restore the original data with a fidelity approaching the theoretical limit.

Introduction
The coding of messages is a fundamental issue in information theory. There are two basic coding problems, namely how to represent messages as efficiently as possible and how to transmit messages as precisely as possible. The former is called source coding, and is related practically to data compression, while the latter is called channel coding and is concerned with error correction. All information processing techniques are connected with these two kinds of coding problem. We focus on source coding in this report.

Essentially, source coding entails the coding of common alphabet in a message as short sequences of code letters, such as the binary digits $`\{0,1\}`$, and uncommon alphabet as longer sequences, to make the average length of the coded message as short as possible. The unequal frequencies of the letters imply a redundancy that enables the compression of the message. Shannon’s source coding theorem gives the bounds on the degree a classical message can be compressed. For a source of alphabet $`\{A,B,\mathrm{},Z\}`$ with given prior probabilities $`\{P(A),P(B),\mathrm{},P(Z)\}`$, the minimum average length of the coded message is given by the Shannon entropy

$$H=\underset{n=A,B,\mathrm{}}{}P(n)\mathrm{log}_2P(n).$$
(1)
$`H`$ takes its maximum value when all alphabet appear with equal probability, that is, when we know nothing better than a random guess for each element. Then any compression is impossible.

In quantum domain, there is another kind of redundancy when the letters are conveyed by the non-orthogonal quantum states, $`|\psi _A`$, $`|\psi _B`$, $`|\psi _C`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ with corresponding probabilities $`P_A`$, $`P_B`$, $`P_C`$, $`\mathrm{}`$. Significantly, compression is possible here even if $`P_A=P_B=P_C=\mathrm{}`$, in contrast to the classical case. Recently Schumacher and Jozsa derived the quantum version of the source coding theorem. The quantum noiseless coding theorem Schumacher95 ; Jozsa\_Schumacher94  implies that by coding the quantum message in blocks of $`K`$ letters, $`KS(\widehat{\rho })`$ qubits are necessary to encode each block in the limit $`K\mathrm{}`$, where $`S(\widehat{\rho })`$ is the von Neumann entropy of the density operator $`\widehat{\rho }=P_n|\psi _n\psi _n|`$ representing the average state of the letter states.

In addition to its central role in quantum information theory, the compression of non-orthogonal data sets has significant practical advantages. For example, in long-haul optical communication channels one must deal with sequences of attenuated weak coherent pulses, that is, non-orthogonal states. Expensive quantum channel resources can be saved by compressing the sequences before storing or relaying to another channel.

Given its fundamental as well as practical importance, it is perhaps surprising that quantum source coding has not been demonstrated experimentally to date. We report an experimental demonstration of the reliable communication of 3-qubit codewords over a 2-qubit quantum channel. The minimum resources needed for an analogous classical channel would be 3 bits per codeword.

Quantum coding protocols
Our demonstration is based on the example given by Jozsa and Schumacher Jozsa\_Schumacher94 . Imagine Alice needs to send Bob a message composed of an alphabet of 2 letters, “$`+`$” and “$``$”, represented by the letter states $`|\psi _+`$ and $`|\psi _{}`$,

$$|\psi _\pm =\alpha |0+\beta _\pm |1.$$
(2)
Here $`|0`$, $`|1`$ are an orthonormal (computational) basis, $`\beta _\pm =\pm \beta `$, $`\alpha ^2+\beta ^2=1`$, and for clarity we assume $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are real numbers. Let the letter states occur with equal likelihood so that the density operator representing the average letter state is $`\widehat{\rho }=\alpha ^2|00\left|+\beta ^2\right|11|`$. The corresponding von Neumann entropy is $`S(\widehat{\rho })=\alpha ^2\mathrm{log}_2\alpha ^2\beta ^2\mathrm{log}_2\beta ^2`$.

If the letter states are orthogonal, $`\alpha ^2=\beta ^2=\frac{1}{2}`$, then 1 qubit (or classically 1 bit) is needed to encode each letter faithfully. In this case a sequence of letter states cannot be compressed to a smaller code. However, the von Neumann entropy of $`\widehat{\rho }`$ is 0.4690 bits for the case $`\alpha ^2=0.9`$ Jozsa\_Schumacher94 . According to the quantum noiseless coding theorem, in the limit of large block sizes Alice needs approximately $`1/2`$ qubit per letter state to faithfully transmit the message to Bob.

Following Jozsa\_Schumacher94  we use blocks of 3 letter states:

$`|B_𝐋`$ $`=`$ $`|\psi _{L_1}|\psi _{L_2}|\psi _{L_3}`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`\alpha ^3|000+\alpha ^2\left(\beta _{L_1}|100+\beta _{L_2}|010+\beta _{L_3}|001\right)`$
$`+\alpha \left(\beta _{L_1}\beta _{L_2}|110+\beta _{L_2}\beta _{L_3}|011+\beta _{L_1}\beta _{L_3}|101\right)`$
$`+\beta _{L_1}\beta _{L_2}\beta _{L_3}|111`$
where $`𝐋=(L_1,L_2,L_3)`$ and $`L_1`$, $`L_2`$ and $`L_3\{+,\}`$. The index $`𝐋`$ selects one of 8 possible letter state configurations. In our quantum coding scheme differ , Alice first applies the unitary transformation $`\widehat{U}`$ which leaves all computational bases states unchanged except for the following mapping $`\widehat{U}|100=|011`$ and $`\widehat{U}|011=|100`$. The state of a block after the application of $`\widehat{U}`$ is

$$\widehat{U}|B_𝐋=\alpha ^2\sqrt{1+2\beta ^2}|0|\mu _𝐋+\beta ^2\sqrt{1+2\alpha ^2}|1|\nu _𝐋$$
(4)
where

$`|\mu _𝐋`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1+2\beta ^2}}}\left(\alpha |00+\beta _{L_1}|11+\beta _{L_2}|10+\beta _{L_3}|01\right)`$
$`|\nu _𝐋`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\beta ^2\sqrt{1+2\alpha ^2}}}[\alpha \left(\beta _{L_1}\beta _{L_2}\right|10+\beta _{L_1}\beta _{L_3}|01`$ (6)
$`+\beta _{L_2}\beta _{L_3}|00)+\beta _{L_1}\beta _{L_2}\beta _{L_3}|11].`$
Alice then makes a projection measurement of the first (leftmost) qubit in the computational basis. The last two qubits represent the coded block state sent to Bob. We consider two different protocols corresponding to two different actions Alice takes when the projective measurement results in the state $`|1`$. Essentially, the coding protocols amount to a perfect transmission of the most likely parts of letter state configurations, and a less faithful transmission of, or even discarding of, the remaining less likely part.

The first protocol, which we shall label P1, is to treat the projection measurement result $`|1`$ as a failure. Under this protocol the state of the 2-qubit quantum channel is

$$\widehat{\rho }_𝐋^{(1)}=|\mu _𝐋\mu _𝐋|$$
(7)
with probability $`p=\alpha ^4(1+2\beta ^2)`$ and a state of zero overlap with any block state with probability $`1p`$. Bob decodes the state $`\widehat{\rho }_𝐋^{(1)}`$ at his end of the quantum channel by preparing an extra qubit in the state $`|0`$ and applying the inverse of $`\widehat{U}`$; this results in the decoded state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_𝐋^{(1)}=\widehat{U}^{}\left(|00|\widehat{\rho }_𝐋^{(1)}\right)\widehat{U}`$. The fidelity of the whole quantum coding-decoding operation for P1 is given by

$$F_1=\underset{𝐋}{}\frac{1}{8}B_𝐋\left|\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_𝐋^{(1)}\right|B_𝐋=\alpha ^8(1+2\beta ^2)^2.$$
(8)
$`F_1`$ is plotted as the solid curve in Fig. 1 and has a value of $`0.9448`$ at $`\alpha ^2=0.9`$.

The second protocol, P2, yields a higher fidelity than that of P1. In this case Alice prepares the quantum channel in the state $`|00`$ in the event that her projection measurement results in the state $`|1`$. This operation results in the average state of the quantum channel as

$$\widehat{\rho }_𝐋^{(2)}=\alpha ^4(1+2\beta ^2)|\mu _𝐋\mu _𝐋\left|+\beta ^4(1+2\alpha ^2)\right|0000|.$$
(9)
Bob again adds an extra qubit in the state $`|0`$ and applies the inverse operation $`\widehat{U}^{}`$ to produce state $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_𝐋^{(2)}=\widehat{U}^{}\left(|00|\widehat{\rho }_𝐋^{(2)}\right)\widehat{U}`$ which has a corresponding fidelity of

$$F_2=\alpha ^8(1+2\beta ^2)^2+\alpha ^6\beta ^4(1+2\alpha ^2).$$
(10)
The value of $`F_2`$ is plotted as the dashed curve in Fig. 1. $`F_2`$ has a value of $`0.9652`$ at $`\alpha ^2=0.9`$.

Finally, Jozsa and Schumacher also considered the simple protocol, P3, where Alice discards the state of every third letter and encodes the remaining letters in a block of 2 qubits, and Bob generates the state $`|0`$ for the missing letter state. This protocol yields an average fidelity of

$$F_3=\alpha ^2,$$
(11)
which is plotted as the dotted curve in Fig. 1.

Optical scheme
Fig. 2 shows an ideal single-photon linear optics implementation of the block coding scheme of the previous section using polarizing beam splitters, $`\lambda /2`$ wave plates and photodetectors. One photon is used to represent the 3 qubits in terms of two location qubits (the first 2 qubits) and a polarization qubit LinearOptGating  (the third qubit). The paths labeled A, B, C and D represent the states $`|00`$, $`|01`$, $`|10`$ and $`|11`$ of the first two qubits, respectively, and the polarization directions in the plane and perpendicular to the plane of the optical circuit represent the states $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ of the last qubit, respectively. We parameterize the $`n`$th letter state by the angle $`\theta _n=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{arcsin}(\beta _{L_n})`$. The orientation of the fast axis of each wave plate to the vertical direction is given beside the wave plate in the figure.

First we discuss the preparation of the 3-qubit block state $`|B_𝐋`$. A horizontally-polarized photon enters the quantum circuit at position E. The first location qubit is prepared by the $`\lambda /2`$ wave plate and the polarization beam splitter between vertical lines labeled 0 and 1 in terms of angle $`\theta _1`$. Similarly, the second location qubit and the polarization qubit are prepared between the vertical lines labeled 1 and 2, and 2 and 3, respectively. (Note that the photodetectors D3, D4, D5 and D6 are not used in state preparation.) The fully state-prepared block appears as a photon in a superposition of 4 path and two linear polarization modes along the vertical line labeled 3. This is the 3-qubit message Alice wants to compress and communicate to Bob.

Next we discuss the quantum coding which takes place between vertical lines 3 and 4. The unitary transformation $`\widehat{U}`$ is performed by the polarization beam splitter and the two $`\lambda /2`$ wave plates in this section. The projection measurement of the first qubit is performed by the photodetectors D1 and D2 where the detection or non detection of a photon projects the state onto $`|1`$ or $`|0`$, respectively. The circuit in Fig. 2 implements protocol P1 explicitly: if the photodetectors D1 and D2 detect a photon no quanta will be present in the quantum channel and so the coding results in failure. The projective measurement is destructive in this case. Protocol P2 can be implemented by switching a horizontally-polarized single photon source into the optical path A to encode the state $`|000`$ each time one of the photodetectors D1 or D2 detects a photon. The encoded (compressed) 2-qubit message appears along vertical line 4. This is transmitted to Bob.

The decoding of the quantum channel AB at Bob’s site requires a mirror image of the quantum circuit in Fig. 2 between lines 3 and 4 but without the photodetectors D1 and D2. Moreover, the mirror image of the circuit to the left of the line 3 can be used to determine the fidelity of the decoded block message. The fidelity test results in a ‘yes’-‘no’ answer for each coded-decoded block state as follows. The ‘yes’ answer (i.e. perfectly reconstructed letter block) is indicated by the horizontally-polarized photon emerging from the mirror image of point E. A ‘no’ answer is indicated by the photon being detected by one of the photodetectors D3, D4, D5 or D6 in the mirror image circuit 7outcomes .

Experimental Implementation
Our actual experimental circuit is shown in Fig. 3. Again, the orientation angle $`\theta _n`$ of each $`\lambda /2`$ wave plate is given in the figure. For practical convenience, we did not construct an additional mirror-image circuit for the decoding and fidelity check. Instead we use corner reflectors (CR1 and CR2) to reflect the light in the quantum channel back through the circuit (shown as dotted lines in the figure) so that the coding and state-preparation circuits operate as decoding and state-measurement circuits for the reflected light. We use strongly attenuated light from a He-Ne laser (wavelength 632.8 nm) as our single photon source. The CW laser output of 1 mW power is attenuated to $``$50 fW which corresponds to an average photon flux of 105 photons/sec. The average time between photons through our experiment far exceeds the time taken for light to pass through the circuit ($`10^8`$ s).

We use multimode optical fibers with coupling efficiency of more than 80% to direct the photons exiting the circuit to silicon avalanche photodiodes (APDs). The quantum efficiency and dark count of the APDs are typically 70% and less than 100 counts/sec, respectively. The labels for each APD (D1–D6) correspond to those of photodetectors in Fig. 2 and the APD labeled D0 detects the ‘yes’ answer of the fidelity test. Since we do not need to discriminate the photodetection between D4 and D5, we use one APD for these detectors.

In essence, the optical circuit consists of a Michaelson and a Mach-Zehnder interferometers controlled by Piezo transducers PZT1 and PZT2, respectively. We use a bright reference light and adjust the voltages of PZT1 and PZT2 to produce visibilities of more than 98% for these interferometers. The reference light is then switched off and the signal photons are guided into the circuit. The single photon events are counted by six APDs for each block state $`|B_𝐋`$. The gating time of the APDs is 5 sec with the combined count over 1 sec being of the order of 105. Since the whole apparatus is shielded by a black box, the number of background photons is much smaller than the dark count of the APDs. Also we estimate the number of events where two photons are present simultaneously in the circuit to be less than half the dark count.

Our use of a photon source with random arrival times means that the quantum coding-decoding operations occur in the context of post-selection measurements; that is, we know that a quantum coding-decoding operation has taken place after it has occurred, and, due to the limited efficiency of the photodetectors, in a subset of possible cases.

The experimental fidelity for protocol P1 is given by

$$F_1^{\mathrm{ex}}=\underset{𝐋}{}\frac{1}{8}\frac{N_0^𝐋}{_{j=0}^6N_j^𝐋}$$
(12)
where $`N_j^𝐋`$ is the number of photons detected by the detector Dj for the block state $`|B_𝐋`$. As an example, Fig. 4 shows the photon counting data for the letter state with $`\alpha ^2=0.9046`$ for which the fidelity $`F=0.933\pm 0.006`$. By varying the angle $`\theta `$ the fidelity of our quantum coding-decoding experiment can be compared by the theoretical predictions given of the previous section over a range of $`\alpha `$ values. The results are shown in Fig. 1 as solid circles.

For protocol P2, rather than switching a horizontally-polarized light source into channel A each time one of the photodetectors D1 or D2 records a photon, we perform a 2 step procedure as follows. The first step is the same as for protocol P1 and, in fact, we use the same photon counting data $`N_j^𝐋`$ as described. The second step corresponds to the transmission of a horizontally-polarized photon in channel A for each of the photons detected by D1 and D2 in the first step. For this purpose, the corner reflector CR1 is removed and horizontally-polarized and attenuated light from a He-Ne laser is directed into the circuit. The number of photons used (i.e. the total number of photons detected by all APDs) in this second step is adjusted to be $`N_1^𝐋+N_2^𝐋`$ for each corresponding block state $`|B_𝐋`$. We can do this adjustment with an accuracy of $`\pm 3`$% by carefully controlling the gating time of the APDs. The total fidelity for this protocol is calculated as follows:

$$F_2^{\mathrm{ex}}=\underset{𝐋}{}\frac{1}{8}\frac{N_0^𝐋+N_0^{𝐋(2)}}{_{j=0}^6N_j^𝐋}.$$
(13)
where $`N_0^{𝐋(2)}`$ is the total number of photons detected by D0 in the second step. We obtain the fidelities corresponding to several $`\alpha `$ values and plot them as open circles in Fig. 1. The experimental fidelities for both protocols exceed that of the simple protocol.

Discussion
A message of equal-likely letters is not compressible classically. In contrast, quantum source coding allows a quantum message of equally likely (but non orthogonal) letter states to be compressed Schumacher95 ; Jozsa\_Schumacher94 . Our compression of 3-qubit codewords gives a clear demonstration of this fundamental principle.

The practical application of quantum source coding faces several challenges. An immediate task is to demonstrate quantum source coding using a single-photon-on-demand source. Another is to replace spatial mode qubits with frequency mode qubits as this leads to compression of bandwidth of quantum carrier. Of direct practical importance is to demonstrate the coding and decoding of a source of weak coherent states. Quantum circuits based on measurement induced non-linearities and non-classical light sources have potential in this regard. Our experiment is the first step towards realizing these practical goals.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the British Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Scottish Executive Education and Lifelong Learning Department and the EU Marie Curie Fellowship program.


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# Large 𝑁 dynamics in QED in a magnetic field

## I Introduction

The phenomenon of the magnetic catalysis of dynamical symmetry breaking was established as a universal phenomenon in a wide class of $`(2+1)`$\- and $`(3+1)`$-dimensional relativistic models in Refs.  (for earlier consideration of dynamical symmetry breaking in a magnetic field see Refs. ). The general result states that a constant magnetic field $`B`$ leads to the generation of a fermion dynamical mass (a gap in a one-particle energy spectrum) even at the weakest attractive interaction between fermions. The essence of this effect is the dimensional reduction $`DD2`$ in the dynamics of fermion pairing in a magnetic field. At weak coupling, this dynamics is dominated by the lowest Landau level (LLL) which is essentially $`(D2)`$-dimensional . The applications of this effect have been considered both in condensed matter physics  and cosmology (for reviews see Ref. ).

The phenomenon of the magnetic catalysis was studied in gauge theories, in particular, in QED  and in QCD . In Ref. , the present authors derived an asymptotic expression for the fermion dynamical mass in the chiral limit in QED, reliable for a weak coupling $`\alpha _b`$ and for the number of charged fermions $`N`$ being not too large (here $`\alpha _b`$ is the running coupling related to the magnetic scale $`\mu ^2|eB|)`$. Specifically, when the parameter $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_bN\alpha _b`$ is small, i.e., $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1`$, the fermion dynamical mass is

$$m_{dyn}=C_1\sqrt{|eB|}F(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b)\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\pi N}{\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b\mathrm{ln}\left(C_2/\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b\right)}\right],$$
(1)
where $`F(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b)(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b)^{1/3}`$, and the constants $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ are of order one.

In this paper, we will extend the analysis of Ref.  to the case with a large coupling $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$. As it will be discussed below, such a strong coupling regime can be put under control for large values of $`N`$ in the framework of $`1/N`$ expansion. It will be shown that the expression for the dynamical mass in this dynamical regime is essentially different from that in equation (1) and it reads:

$$m_{dyn}\sqrt{|eB|}\mathrm{exp}\left(N\right).$$
(2)
It is noticeable that this expression of $`m_{dyn}`$ is $`\alpha _b`$ independent. As it will be shown below, the origin of such a dramatic change of the form of the dynamical mass is intimately connected with the dynamics of screening of the photon interactions in a magnetic field in the region of momenta relevant for the chiral symmetry breaking dynamics, $`m_{dyn}^2|k^2||eB|`$. In this region, photons acquire a mass $`M_\gamma `$ of order $`\sqrt{N\alpha _b|eB|}`$. More rigorously, $`M_\gamma `$ is the mass of a fermion-antifermion composite state coupled to the photon field. The appearance of such mass resembles pseudo-Higgs effect in the $`(1+1)`$-dimensional massive QED (massive Schwinger model)  (see below). The crossover from the dynamics corresponding to expression (1) to that corresponding to expression (2) occurs for such a threshold value of $`N_{thr}`$ when the mass $`M_\gamma \sqrt{N_{thr}\alpha _b|eB|}`$ becomes of order $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$, i.e., for $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b^{thr}N_{thr}\alpha _b1`$.

Let us consider this point in more detail. There are generically three different scales, $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$, $`M_\gamma `$, and $`m_{dyn}`$, in this problem. These scales correspond to the following four, dynamically different, energy regions. The first one is the region with the energy scale above the magnetic scale $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$. In that region, the dynamics is essentially the same as in QED without a magnetic field. In particular, the running coupling increases logarithmically with increasing the energy scale there. The second region is that with the energy scale below the magnetic scale $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$ but larger than the photon mass $`M_\gamma `$. In that region the photon can be considered as approximately massless. The next, third, region is the region with the energy scale less than the photon mass $`M_\gamma `$ but larger than the fermion mass $`m_{dyn}`$. In this region, the photon is heavy, and the interaction is similar to that in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model (with the current-current interaction) in a magnetic field. The important point is that just those third and second regions are relevant for spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in this problem. At last, the fourth region is the region with the energy scale $`E`$ less than the fermion mass $`m_{dyn}`$. In that region, fermions decouple and their interaction is suppressed by powers of the ratio $`E/m_{dyn}`$.

Now, when $`N`$ grows up to $`N_{thr}1/\alpha _b`$, the photon mass $`M_\gamma `$ becomes of the order of the scale $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$ and, therefore, the third region, between $`M_\gamma `$ and $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$, shrinks and disappears. Thus for $`N`$ of order $`N_{thr}`$ or larger, the dynamics of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is solely provided in the second region, through the interaction with a heavy photon. As a result, the dynamics becomes similar to that in the NJL model in a magnetic field with cutoff $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$ and the dimensional coupling constant $`G\alpha _b/M_\gamma ^21/N|eB|`$. This implies that this dynamics is $`\alpha _b`$ independent and, therefore, corresponds to an infrared stable fixed point. It also explains the origin of the threshold value $`N_{thr}1/\alpha _b`$. In the rest of the paper, we will derive expression (2) and justify this qualitative dynamical picture.

## II Magnetic catalysis in QED

We begin by considering the Schwinger-Dyson (gap) equation for the fermion propagator. It has the following form:

$`G^1(x,y)`$ $`=`$ $`S^1(x,y)+4\pi \alpha _b\gamma ^\mu `$ (3)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle G(x,z)\mathrm{\Gamma }^\nu (z,y,z^{})𝒟_{\nu \mu }(z^{},x)d^4zd^4z^{}},`$ (4)
where $`S(x,y)`$ and $`G(x,y)`$ are the bare and full fermion propagators in an external magnetic field, $`𝒟_{\nu \mu }(x,y)`$ is the full photon propagator and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^\nu (x,y,z)`$ is the full amputated vertex function.

Let us first consider the weak coupling dynamics ($`\alpha _b1`$) with the number of fermion flavors $`N`$ of order one. In this case, one might think that the rainbow (ladder) approximation is reliable in this problem. However, this is not the case. Because of the $`(1+1)`$-dimensional form of the fermion propagator in the LLL approximation, there are relevant higher order contributions . In particular, there is a large contribution of fermions to the polarization operator. Fortunately, one can solve this problem . Let us discuss this in more detail.

First of all, one can show that the dynamics of the fermion-antifermion pairing is mainly induced in the region of momenta $`k`$ much less than $`\sqrt{|eB|}`$ and much larger than the dynamical mass $`m_{dyn}`$, i.e., in the the second and third scale regions discussed in Introduction. In particular, this implies that the magnetic scale $`|eB|`$ yields a dynamical ultraviolet cutoff in this problem.

The important ingredient of this dynamics is a large contribution of fermions to the polarization operator. It is large because of an (essentially) $`(1+1)`$-dimensional form of the fermion propagator in a strong magnetic field. Its explicit form in the one-loop approximation is :

$`𝒫^{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _bN}{3\pi }}\left(k_{}^\mu k_{}^\nu k_{}^2g_{}^{\mu \nu }\right){\displaystyle \frac{|eB|}{m_{dyn}^2}},`$ (5)
for $`|k_{}^2|m_{dyn}^2`$, and

$`𝒫^{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _bN}{\pi }}\left(k_{}^\mu k_{}^\nu k_{}^2g_{}^{\mu \nu }\right){\displaystyle \frac{|eB|}{k_{}^2}},`$ (6)
for $`m_{dyn}^2|k_{}^2||eB|`$, where $`g_{}^{\mu \nu }\text{diag}(1,0,0,1)`$ is the projector onto the longitudinal subspace, and $`k_{}^\mu g_{}^{\mu \nu }k_\nu `$ (note that the magnetic field is in the $`x^3`$ direction). Similarly, we introduce the orthogonal projector $`g_{}^{\mu \nu }g^{\mu \nu }g_{}^{\mu \nu }=\text{diag}(0,1,1,0)`$ and $`k_{}^\mu g_{}^{\mu \nu }k_\nu `$ that we shall use below. Notice that fermions in a strong magnetic field do not couple to the transverse subspace spanned by $`g_{}^{\mu \nu }`$ and $`k_{}^\mu `$. This is because in a strong magnetic field only the fermions from the LLL matter and they couple only to the longitudinal components of the photon field. The latter property follows from the fact that spins of the LLL fermions are polarized along the magnetic field .

The expressions (5) and (6) coincide with those for the polarization operator in the massive $`QED_{1+1}`$ (Schwinger model)  if the parameter $`2\alpha _b|eB|`$ here is replaced by the dimensional coupling $`e_1^2`$ of $`QED_{1+1}`$. As in the Schwinger model, Eq. (6) implies that there is a massive resonance in the $`k_{}^\mu k_{}^\nu k_{}^2g_{}^{\mu \nu }`$ component of the photon propagator. Its mass is

$$M_\gamma ^2=\frac{2N\alpha _b}{\pi }|eB|.$$
(7)
This is reminiscent of the pseudo-Higgs effect in the $`(1+1)`$-dimensional massive QED. It is not the genuine Higgs effect because there is no complete screening of the electric charge in the infrared region with $`|k_{}^2|m_{dyn}^2`$. This can be seen clearly from Eq. (5). Nevertheless, the pseudo-Higgs effect is manifested in creating a massive resonance and this resonance provides the dominant forces leading to chiral symmetry breaking.

Now, the main points of the analysis of the weak coupling dynamics in QED in a magnetic field are : (i) the so called improved rainbow approximation is reliable in this problem provided a special non-local gauge is used, and (ii) the relevant region of momenta in this problem is $`m_{dyn}^2|k^2||eB|`$. We recall that in the improved rainbow approximation the vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^\nu (x,y,z)`$ is taken to be bare and the photon propagator is taken in the one-loop approximation. For a weak coupling dynamics, this approximation is reliable since in that special gauge the loop contributions in the vertex are suppressed by powers of $`\alpha _b`$. \[It is appropriate to call this approximation the “strong-magnetic-field-loop improved rainbow approximation”. It is an analog of the hard-dense-loop improved rainbow approximation in QED or QCD with a nonzero baryon density \]. This leads us to the expression (1) for the dynamical gap.

Let us now turn to the case with a large number of fermion flavors $`N`$. The crucial point is that the improved rainbow approximation is still reliable in this case. The essential difference, however, is that now one has to consider not the conventional loop expansion (with a small $`\alpha _b`$) but the $`1/N`$ expansion (with a small $`1/N`$). It is well known  that in this expansion the coupling constant $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_bN\alpha _b`$ has to be kept fixed as $`N\mathrm{}`$. A great advantage of the $`1/N`$ expansion is that now one can treat the dynamics with an arbitrary value of $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$: it could be small $`(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1)`$, intermediate $`(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1)`$, or large $`(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1)`$. Indeed, independently of the value of $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$, the loop corrections in the vertex are suppressed by powers of $`1/N`$ and, therefore, the improved rainbow approximation is indeed reliable for large $`N`$.

Let us now proceed to the analysis of the SD equation for the dynamical mass of fermions in QED in a magnetic field for a large number of flavors $`N`$. In the improved rainbow approximation, the SD equation reads in Euclidean space \[see Eq. (54) in Ref. \]:

$$B(p^2)=\frac{\alpha _b}{2\pi ^2}\frac{d^2qB(q^2)}{q^2+m_{dyn}^2}\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{dx\mathrm{exp}(x/2|eB|)}{x+(𝐪𝐩)^2+M_\gamma ^2},$$
(8)
where $`B(q^2)`$ is the fermion mass function and the two-dimensional vector $`𝐪`$ is $`𝐪=(q_4,q_3)`$ with $`q_4=iq_0`$.

As we mentioned in Introduction, in the limit of small coupling constant $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$, the above SD equation was solved in Ref. , using numerical as well as approximate analytical methods. The result for the dynamical mass of fermions is quoted in Eq. (1). Here we would like to comment on the nature of the interaction, provided by photons, in this weak coupling regime. One could easily check that the dominant interaction is provided by the photons with the (“longitudinal”) momenta in the following range: $`m_{dyn}^2(𝐪𝐩)^2|eB|`$. Then, by noticing that the photon mass also lies in the same range of momenta, i.e., $`m_{dyn}^2M_\gamma ^2|eB|`$, one finds that the degree of importance of the photon mass is changing when the values of momenta are sweeping the relevant range of momenta. While in the near-infrared region with $`m_{dyn}^2(𝐪𝐩)^2M_\gamma ^2`$ (the third region, in the nomenclature of Introduction) the interaction is local with a good precision, it becomes essentially nonlocal in the intermediate range of momenta where $`M_\gamma ^2(𝐪𝐩)^2|eB|`$ (the second region in that nomenclature).

In the opposite limit, $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1`$, the structure of the SD equation (8) considerably simplifies. The simplification comes due to the new hierarchy of scales, $`|eB|M_\gamma ^2`$ (see Eq. (7)). From physical point of view, this hierarchy means that the photon mass is so large that the interaction leading to fermion pairing is essentially local. Therefore, by neglecting $`(𝐪𝐩)^2`$ term in the denominator of the second integral on the right hand side of Eq. (8), we derive an approximate algebraic form of the gap equation that works rather well at large values of $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$,

$$\frac{\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b}{2\pi N}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b}{\pi }\right)\text{Ei}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b}{\pi }\right)\mathrm{ln}\frac{|eB|}{m^2}=1,$$
(9)
where $`\text{Ei}(z)`$ is the exponential integral function. By making use of the asymptotic expansion of the exponential integral function at large $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$, this equation is further simplified, and the following result for the dynamical mass of fermions is obtained:

$$m_{dyn}\sqrt{|eB|}\mathrm{exp}\left(N\right),\text{for}\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1.$$
(10)
Notice that this regime with large $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$ is qualitatively the same as in the NJL model with the cutoff of order $`|eB|`$ and the dimensional coupling constant $`G\alpha _b/M_\gamma ^2=\pi /(2N|eB|)`$.

Therefore our analysis shows that there are two opposite regimes of dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking in QED in a magnetic field at large number of flavors. The first of them, which develops for $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1`$, is essentially the same as the weakly coupled regime with a small number of fermion flavors $`N`$. The other limiting case appears when $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b1`$, and it is characterized by pairing dynamics governed by an almost local interaction. In terms of the number of fermion flavors, these two regimes occur for $`N1/\alpha _b`$ and for $`N1/\alpha _b`$, respectively.

## III Conclusion

QED in an external magnetic field yields an example of a rich dynamics. It is important that this dynamics can be taken under control both for a weak coupling constant $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$ with $`N`$ of order one and for an arbitrary value of $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$ when $`N1`$. In accordance with the general analysis of Refs. , the phenomenon of the magnetic catalysis in QED is universal, although its dynamics varies dramatically with increasing $`N`$.

In this paper we did not discuss the dynamical regime with a strong coupling constant $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$ and $`N`$ of order one (genuine strong coupling regime). Although in this case the dynamics does not admit a controllable approximation, one should expect that spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in this regime takes place even without an external magnetic field . An external magnetic field should presumably enhance the value of the dynamical mass for fermions, as it happens for example in the supercritical phase of the NJL model \[see Ref.  and the second paper in Ref. \].

###### Acknowledgements.

The work of V.P.G. was supported by the SCOPES-projects 7UKPJ062150.00/1 and 7 IP 062607 of the Swiss NSF and by the Grant No. PHY-0070986 of NSF (USA). V.A.M. is grateful for support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The work of I.A.S. was partially supported by Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) and by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF).


text:
# Charge and orbital excitations in Li2CuO2

## I Introduction

The magnetic properties of insulating copper oxide compounds have been drawn much attention over the past decade. Such systems include quasi-one-dimensional (1D) spin chains (Sr2CuO3, SrCuO2, CuGeO3), spin ladders (SrCu2O3, Sr14Cu24O41), and quasi-two-dimensional (2D) parent compounds of high temperature superconductors (La2CuO4, Sr2CuO2Cl2). Many of these systems can be modeled by a simple Heisenberg spin Hamiltonian with only one parameter, that is, the superexchange coupling between copper spins, $`J`$. Unfortunately, calculating $`J`$ is a difficult task, due to the strong electron correlations in these so-called Mott insulators. Part of the difficulty also lies in the fact that there is limited information on the electronic structure of these copper oxide compounds. Thus, spectroscopic studies of the electronic structure and excitations can provide important information leading towards an improved microscopic understanding of magnetism in insulating copper oxides.

Li2CuO2 has been frequently modeled as an edge-sharing chain compound,Hoppe70 ; Sapina90 ; Ohta93 ; Mizuno98 ; Boehm98 ; Neudert99 ; Atzkern00  that is, the copper-oxygen plaquettes in this material are connected by their edges with the Cu-O-Cu bond angle ($`\theta `$) close to 90. Electronic properties of Li2CuO2 have been studied with optical conductivity,Mizuno98  x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS),Neudert99  and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS).Atzkern00  The consensus from these experiments is that Li2CuO2 is a charge-transfer (CT) insulator, with a CT gap of $`2.22.7`$ eV. This is in agreement with spin-polarized local density approximation (LDA) calculations by Weht and Pickett,Weht98  which found a gap of 2.5 eV. Another important observation is that there exist several exchange paths between the copper spins and that none of these exchange interactions dominate, and as a result Li2CuO2 cannot be described as a simple Heisenberg spin chain.Neudert99 ; Atzkern00  This intricate nature of the magnetic interactions is most clearly demonstrated by the magnetic phase transitions: Experimentally, the paramagnetic susceptibility of Li2CuO2 exhibits an antiferromagnetic Curie-Weiss behavior, with a transition temperature $`T_N9`$ K. However, the magnetic structure is composed of ferromagnetic chains, which are coupled antiferromagnetically. In addition, a second transition to canted ferromagnetic phase at $`2.8`$ K has been observed by magnetizationOrtega98  and muon-spin rotation studies.Staub00

Due to this complexity of the underlying spin Hamiltonian, it is difficult to experimentally determine the magnetic interactions in this system. Even the sign of $`J`$, that is, whether the nearest-neighbor coupling along the chain is ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic is controversial. According to the Goodenough-Kanamori-Anderson rules, $`J`$ is expected to be small, unlike the large antiferromagnetic superexchange coupling present in the case of a $`\theta =180^{}`$ bond. In fact, calculations of Mizuno and coworkersMizuno98  show that $`J`$ is very sensitive to $`\theta `$ for $`\theta `$ close to $`90^{}`$. In the case of La6Ca8Cu24O41, $`\theta =91^{}`$ and $`J`$ is ferromagnetic ($`J<0`$), while for $`\theta =99^{}`$ in CuGeO3, $`J>0`$. For Li2CuO2, a powder x-ray diffraction study found $`\theta =94^{}`$.Hoppe70  A number of theoretical studiesMizuno98 ; Mizuno99 ; deGraaf02  suggest a ferromagnetic coupling between nearest-neighbor copper spins, which is consistent with the magnetic structure determined by powder neutron diffraction.Sapina90  On the other hand, Boehm et al. Boehm98  found that $`J`$ is antiferromagnetic from their inelastic neutron scattering experiment. Clearly, further investigation of the electron hopping and the exchange interactions in this system is needed to determine the spin Hamiltonian and elucidate the magnetic phase behavior.

In the present work, we have carried out resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments to study the electronic excitations of Li2CuO2. This technique allows one to probe the energy and momentum dependence of charge neutral electronic excitations, in particular focusing on those that involve the copper orbitals.Hill98 ; Abbamonte99 ; Hasan00 ; Kim02a  We have observed two types of excitations; one at 2.1 eV which we attribute to a localized $`dd`$ type orbital excitation, and excitations at 5.4 eV and 7.6 eV which we believe arise from CT-type processes in the Cu-O plaquettes. A small, but finite, dispersion of the latter along the direction perpendicular to the chain direction suggests that the interchain coupling is non-zero, supporting the conclusions of previous studies of magnetic interactions.Boehm98 ; Neudert99 ; Mizuno99 ; deGraaf02  In addition, we compare our results with those of CuGeO3 and discuss the possible implications of ferromagnetic $`J`$ on our RIXS spectra.

In the next section, we describe the experimental configurations used in the measurements. The incident energy dependence and the momentum dependence of the observed RIXS spectra are discussed in Sec. III.1 and Sec. III.2, respectively. Finally, we will discuss the possible implications of the experimental results in Sec. IV.

## II experimental details

The experiments were carried out at the Advanced Photon Source on the undulator beamline 9ID-B. A double-bounce Si(333) monochromator and a spherical, diced, Ge(733) analyzer was used to obtain an overall energy resolution of 0.4 eV (FWHM). The scattering plane was vertical and the polarization of the incident x-ray was kept close to the c-direction for the data reported here. Note that the edge-sharing CuO4 chain runs along the crystallographic b-direction, and the Cu-O plaquettes lie perpendicular to the a-direction.Hoppe70  A single crystal sample of Li2CuO2 ($`a=3.662`$ Å, $`b=2.863`$ Å, and $`c=9.393`$ Å) was grown using the traveling solvent floating zone method. The crystal was cleaved along the $`(\mathrm{1\hspace{0.33em}0\hspace{0.33em}1})`$ plane and mounted on an aluminum sample holder at room temperature. Since Li2CuO2 is hygroscopic, care was taken to cleave the sample immediately before the experiment. It was then kept in vacuum throughout the experiment.

## III experimental results

### III.1 Incident Energy Dependence

In Fig. 1, we plot the incident energy ($`E_i`$) dependence of the scattered intensity as a function of energy transfer ($`\omega `$) at a fixed momentum transfer of Q=(2.5 0.1 2.5). Since (2.5 0.1 2.5) is near the Brillouin zone boundary, the elastic scattering intenisty (i.e., at $`\omega =0`$) is not very large. Three resonant features are observed in Fig. 1. The strongest feature has an excitation energy of $`5.4`$ eV, and shows a large resonant enhancement in the intensity as the incident energy is varied through $`E_i9000`$ eV, becoming weaker as the incident energy is tuned away from the resonance. A second feature at $`7.6`$ eV shows slightly different resonance behavior. In addition, a third feature at 2.1 eV is very weak compared to the other two features, and resonates at much lower incident energy, around $`E_i8990`$ eV. Note, because of geometrical constraints associated with the near backscattering angle of the Ge(733) analyzer crystal at these low incident energies, it was not possible to scan the incident energy below $`E_i=8979`$ eV.

To illustrate the resonance profile of these peaks, we plot in Fig. 2(a) the scattered intensity as a function of $`E_i`$, with the energy transfer fixed at these excitation energies. That is, the intensity as measured at the positions indicated by vertical dotted lines in Fig. 1 is plotted as a function of $`E_i`$ in Fig. 2(a). The intensity of the 2.1 eV feature is multiplied by 2 in order to show its resonance profile more clearly. Raw experimental data are plotted without any absorption corrections in this figure. For the 5.4 eV feature, the observed spectra were also fitted to a Lorentzian squared lineshape. The fitted intensity as a function of $`E_i`$ (not shown) is virtually identical to the raw data shown in Fig. 2(a). However, the peak position of the 5.4 eV feature, plotted in Fig. 2(b), exhibits an interesting $`E_i`$-dependence. Specifically, there is a linear shift of the peak position from 5.4 eV at $`E_i=8995`$ eV to 5.6 eV at $`E_i=9000`$ eV; for $`E_i9000`$ eV, the peak position remains around 5.6 eV. An apparent peak position shift is also observed for $`E_i8995`$ eV. However, the small intensity \[shown in Fig. 2(a)\] and the resultant large error bars for these data points make it difficult to analyze in quantitatively meaningful way. Thus, we will focus on the peak position shift for $`E_i8995`$ eV in what follows.

Such an apparent shift at first sight appears surprising. The natural expectation is that a valence excitation – such as this – would appear as a Raman-shift in a RIXS spectra, that is, a peak at a fixed energy-transfer, independent of the incident energy. However, in their RIXS study of La2CuO4, Abbamonte and coworkers also observed an incident energy dependence of the peak position.Abbamonte99  They proposed an expression based on a shakeup picture in third order perturbation theory to explain the experimental results, following earlier theoretical work by Platzman and Isaacs.Platzman98  Specifically, the scattered intensity $`w`$ is expected to have the form

$$w=\frac{S_K(𝐪,\omega )}{[(E_iE_K)^2+\gamma _K^2][(E_fE_K)^2+\gamma _K^2]},$$
(1)
where $`E_K`$ and $`\gamma _K`$ are adjustable parameters, and $`S_K`$ describes an electronic excitation spectrum of interest. The key ingredient of Eq. (1) is that both incoming and outgoing resonances are included in the denominator. The shape of this function depends on the relative widths of the function $`S_K(𝐪,\omega )`$ and the inverse lifetime, $`\gamma _K`$. For a sharp $`S_K(𝐪,\omega )`$, $`\omega `$ is peaked at constant energy transfer as a function of $`E_i`$. For a small value of $`\gamma _K`$, the peak exhibits characteristic dispersion. We have fitted all the data in the range of $`3<\omega <7`$ from Fig. 1 to Eq. (1), using a Lorentzian squared function for $`S_K`$ of full-width 1.1 eV. We have obtained a single set of parameters $`E_K8995`$ eV and $`\gamma _K2.5`$ eV. These parameter values are similar to those obtained in Ref. Abbamonte99, . By substituting the values of these parameters back in Eq. (1), we can reproduce the intensity and the peak position, which is plotted as a dashed line in Fig. 2. The fitting results indeed describe the observed peak shift and intensity on a qualitative level. However, it is not at all clear that this is a unique description of the data and further understanding of the discrepancy between the fit and the observed data will require a detailed model calculation as well as a microscopic theory of RIXS cross-section. We note that in the soft x-ray regime, there exist detailed model calculations to describe resonant emission spectroscopy experiments.Mizouchi98 ; Okada00

Also shown in Fig. 2(b) is the measured x-ray absorption spectrum (solid line). The final states of this process are the intermediate states of the RIXS process. One can associate the peaks around 8986 eV and 8996 eV in the absorption spectrum with the well-screened ($`\underset{¯}{1s}3d^{10}\underset{¯}{L}4p`$) and poorly-screened ($`\underset{¯}{1s}3d^94p`$) core hole final states, respectively, where $`\underset{¯}{1s}`$ and $`\underset{¯}{L}`$ denote holes in the core level and oxygen ligands, respectively. This association is consistent with the XAS studies on other insulating cuprates, including CuGeO3. Cruz99  We also observe a small pre-edge feature around $`E_i=8978`$ eV. Qualitatively similar results were obtained in the XAS study of CuGeO3 by Cruz et al.,Cruz99  in which the pre-edge feature was assigned to electric dipole forbidden transitions from the Cu $`1s`$ level to unoccupied Cu orbitals with $`3d`$ character. The possible channels suggested for such transitions were (a) electric dipole transitions to Cu $`4p`$ character mixed with neighboring Cu $`3d`$ states, and (b) electric quadrupole transitions to the Cu $`3d`$ states. In either case, the pre-edge feature, which is the intermediate state for the peak at 2.1 eV, has a strong $`3d`$ character and will therefore have a large overlap with excitations involving $`3d`$ electrons.

The intermediate states responsible for the resonant enhancement of the high-energy features at 5.4 eV and 7.6 eV are the poorly-screened states. This is consistent with previous RIXS results obtained for quasi-2D cuprates La2CuO4 Kim02a  or Nd2CuO4.Hill98  However, the association of RIXS excitations with a particular intermediate states is not absolute. In Fig. 1, for example, the 5.4 eV feature seems to resonate at more than one intermediate state; that is, the intensity increases again as the incident energy decreases below $`8990`$ eV. This needs further investigation.

### III.2 Momentum Dependence

To investigate the momentum dependence of these excitations, we have measured the energy-loss spectra along the high-symmetry directions , , and , around the (2 0 3) reciprocal lattice point. In Figs. 3 and 4, energy-loss scans taken with the incident energy fixed at $`E_i`$=8997 eV and $`E_i`$=8987 eV, respectively, are plotted at various momentum transfers. The reduced wave vector, q, is noted for each scan. Vertical dashed lines are drawn to show the almost dispersionless behavior of the peaks at 5.4 eV and 7.6 eV in Fig. 3, and at 2.1 eV in Fig. 4. To obtain quantitative information on the dispersion of these excitations in Fig. 3, we fit the observed spectra with two peaks; both with a Lorentzian squared lineshape. We note here that these peaks are not resolution limited; the full-widths of the 5.4 eV peak and the 7.6 eV peak were fixed at 1.1 eV and 1.5 eV, respectively. The peak positions obtained from these fits are plotted in the upper two panels of Fig. 5. Due to its proximity to the much stronger peak at 5.4 eV, the location of the peak at 7.6 eV has rather large error bars, and more or less follows the dispersion of the 5.4 eV feature. As evident in Fig. 3, the energy dispersions of both excitations are very small along all high-symmetry directions. In particular, along the chain direction, \[0 1 0\], the 5.4 eV feature is virtually dispersionless. On the other hand, there is a suggestion of some dispersion ($`140`$ meV) along the \[1 0 0\] direction, which is perpendicular to the copper-oxygen ribbon.

We attribute the 5.4 eV feature to a charge-transfer type excitation on a single copper-oxygen plaquette; specifically, we believe that it represents the energy difference between a bonding state and an antibonding state. Due to the strong hybridization between the Cu $`3d`$ and O $`2p`$ orbitals, the ground state for a half-filled copper-oxygen plane is not a simple 3$`d^9`$. Rather, according to the Anderson impurity model, Hill98  it is a bonding state with an admixture of 3$`d^9`$ state and $`3d^{10}\underset{¯}{L}`$ state. In the RIXS process at the Cu K-edge, a Cu $`1s`$ electron is excited to the Cu $`4p`$ band, and this intermediate state may then decay into the antibonding excited state, producing the 6 eV feature commonly found in cuprate systems.Hill98 ; Abbamonte99  This interpretation is also consistent with the calculation by Weht and Pickett,Weht98  in which they found a splitting of $`5`$ eV between the bonding and the antibonding states. Since this excitation is localized in a single plaquette of one copper and four oxygens, its excitation energy is somewhat material independent and would also be expected to have a very small momentum dependence. Recently, a small ($`150`$ meV) dispersion along the chain direction has been observed for the 6.4 eV excitation of CuGeO3.Zimmermann02  Since this dispersion should depend critically on the angle $`\theta `$ formed by Cu-O-Cu bond,Mizuno98  it is not surprising to observe smaller dispersion in Li2CuO2 ($`\theta =94^{}`$) than in CuGeO3 ($`\theta =99^{}`$).

There are at least two possible interpretations for the 7.6 eV feature. First, the peak at 7.6 eV could arise from excitation of electrons from different bands than for the 5.4 eV feature. Alternatively, in the localized excitation picture described above, and in Ref. Atzkern00, , one can have different excitation modes depending on the symmetry of the four oxygen orbitals in the plaquette. In this scenario, the 7.6 eV feature would involve the same bands, but differ from the 5.4 eV feature by the symmetry of the particle-hole pair. Further studies of polarization dependences might be able to distinguish between these two possibilities.

We next discuss the momentum dependence of the 2.1 eV feature. In order to investigate this, the incident photon energy was held fixed at $`E_i`$=8987 eV and energy loss scans were taken at a number of momentum transfers (Fig. 4). In contrast to the higher energy features, the 2.1 eV feature is found to be resolution limited at all momentum transfers and is therefore fitted to a single Gaussian lineshape. The peak position extracted in this way is plotted in the bottom panel of Fig. 5. It is clear that the energy dispersion of this peak is negligibly small. The two salient characteristics of the 2.1 eV feature are thus its lack of dispersion and its narrow peak width, which implies that this excitation is localized and has a long-lifetime. Another important point is that the intermediate states of this 2.1 eV feature are either $`3d`$ states, or states having a large overlap with the $`3d`$ states.

Based on these observations, we associate the 2.1 eV feature with a $`dd`$ type orbital excitation; that is, an excitation corresponding to exciting holes from the $`d_{yz}`$ orbital to higher energy $`d`$-orbitals. According to the calculation of Tanaka et al.,Tanaka99  the energy splitting between the ground state, $`d_{yz}`$, and excited levels of $`d_{xy}`$, $`d_{zx}`$, $`d_{3x^2r^2}`$ in Li2CuO2 is $`2`$ eV, which is consistent with our value 2.1 eV. Similar $`dd`$ excitations have been observed in CuGeO3 with RIXS Zimmermann02  and optical spectroscopies.Bassi96

## IV discussion

To summarize, we have observed energy loss features at 2.1 eV, which we attribute to a $`dd`$ excitation, and at 5.4 eV and 7.6 eV, which are attributed to localized charge-transfer excitations of copper oxygen plaquettes. These obsevations are generally consistent with the recent RIXS study of a similar edge-sharing chain compound CuGeO3, with only a quantitative difference in the excitation energies. However, an additional excitation at 3.8 eV was observed for CuGeO3. This was assigned to a non-local CT exciton mode formed by a particle and hole pair residing on neighboring plaquettes. The particle in this case forms a $`d^{10}`$ state on one plaquette and the hole forms a Zhang-Rice (ZR) singlet state ($`d^9\underset{¯}{L}`$) on the neighboring plaquettes.Zhang88  The exciton state formed by this particle-hole pair can have a large dispersion of $`1`$ eV in corner-sharing geometries such as La2CuO4,Kim02a  Sr2CuO3,Hasan02  or SrCuO2.Kim03b  In these cuprate materials (including CuGeO3), the RIXS peak corresponding to this CT exciton was observed at energies slightly higher than the CT gap energy as measured in optical conductivity \[$`\sigma (\omega )`$\] studies. This trend is illustrated in Table 1, where we list the RIXS peak positions and the corresponding optical conductivity peak positions in selected cuprate compounds. This difference presumably originates in the difference in the measured response functions. That is, the optical conductivity is proportional to the imaginary part of complex dielectric function, Im$`[ϵ(𝐪=0,\omega )]`$, while the RIXS cross section is expected to follow the dielectric loss function, Im$`(1/ϵ(𝐪,\omega )`$.

In light of the above discussion, it seems clear that none of the observed features in Li2CuO2 are such a non-local, exciton-like excitation. Consider first the case of the 2.1 eV feature, which we have previously argued as a $`dd`$ excitation. Were this excitation to be in fact, a non-local CT excitation, then, as discussed above, one would expect to observe a sharp feature in the optical conductivity just below this value, say around 1.9 eV. No such feature is observed in the optical data.Mizuno98  Rather, one observes a rapid increase of the optical conductivity above 2.6 eV which develops into peaks around 3.5 eV and 4.2 eV. In addition, as noted, the 2.1 eV feature is resolution limited, while CT exciton features are characterized by broad peaks in other materials.Kim02a ; Zimmermann02 ; Kim03b  Conversely, the feature at 5.4 eV is too high in energy to be associated with such a non-local excitation, both in terms of theoretical expectations for such an excitation and from the observed features in the optical conductivity data. Thus we conclude that such non-local CT exciton-like excitations are suppressed in Li2CuO2.

This immediately raises the question as to why such excitations are suppressed in this material. One possible explanation for this apparent absence lies in the different magnetic ground states of CuGeO3 and Li2CuO2. This non-local CT exciton involves the movement of the hole on one copper site onto the oxygen orbitals of the neighboring plaquette where it forms a singlet state with the copper spin on that plaquette. This hole necessarily preserves the spin of the original Cu $`3d`$ hole. If neighboring copper spins are ferromagnetically coupled, as is the case for Li2CuO2, then a singlet state cannot be formed and only triplet excitations are possible. Since a significant fraction of the exciton formation energy comes from the binding energy of the Zhang-Rice singlet,Zhang98  this excitation is likely to be significantly suppressed in such cases. Conversely, for the case of antiferromagnetic coupling of neighboring coppers, as in the case of CuGeO3, the singlet state may form naturally and the non-local excitation is stabilized. This argument was first made in the context of O K-edge RIXS spectra by Okada and KotaniOkada01  who showed just such an effect theoretically in calculated spectra for edge-sharing geometries, and it seems plausible that it is also active in the present case. The absence of such an exciton would be consistent with the absence of a sharp feature near the CT gap in the optical conductivity data, and in fact, a recent theoretical calculation on a small cluster seems to support these ideas.Maekawa  In any case, it is quite remarkable that the sign of the nearest-neighbor exchange coupling manifests itself at room temperature via the (non)existence of the RIXS peak from the CT exciton. This further emphasizes the delicate nature of bond angles and orbital overlap in determining the electronic properties of these strongly correlated cuprate systems.

Finally, in order to describe the apparent dispersion along the a-direction, one needs to go beyond the simple picture of a localized excitation. As shown in Fig. 4, the features at 5.4 eV and 7.6 eV seem to exhibit non-zero dispersion along the a-direction, with a minimum located at the zone boundary. This is similar to the dispersion behavior of the 6.4 eV excitation of CuGeO3, Zimmermann02  although in that case dispersion was observed along the chain direction. If confirmed, this observation suggests that the interchain coupling along the a-direction is not negligible. However, according to the calculation by de Graaf et al..deGraaf02 , the superexchange interaction via Li and O orbitals is too small to account for the non-zero dispersion behavior along this direction. A different exchange mechanism, such as direct exchange between Cu orbitals may need to be considered to understand this.Neudert99

In summary, we have observed three excitations in Li2CuO2 using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering. These occur at 2.1, 5.4, and 7.6 eV and are attributed to a $`dd`$ excitation and two CT-type excitations, respectively. None of the excitations exhibit measurable dispersion along the chain direction consistent with the Cu-O-Cu bond angle being close to $`90^{}`$. There is some evidence of dispersion perpendicular to the plane of the Cu-O ribbon for the CT-type excitations. This would suggest there is a non-zero interchain coupling. Finally, we find no evidence for a non-local (Zhang-Rice) CT exciton in the vicinity of the gap. We associate the suppression of such a feature with the ferromagnetic coupling between the neighboring copper spins.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank S. Maekawa and J. van den Brink for invaluable discussions. The work at Brookhaven was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Division of Materials Science, under contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, under Contract No. W-31-109-Eng-38.


text:
# Follow-Up HST/STIS Spectroscopy of Three Candidate Tidal Disruption EventsBased on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. These observations are associated with proposal #9177.

## 1 Introduction

Dormant, supermassive black holes, suspected to be present in the centers of many normal galaxies, should reveal themselves by a UV/X-ray flare when they tidally disrupt a star and some fraction of the tidal debris is accreted. Tidal disruption flares were proposed by Lidskii & Ozernoi (1979) and Rees (1988, 1990) as a probe for supermassive black holes in the centers of inactive galaxies. Such an event is very rare in the nucleus of a galaxy ($`<10^4`$ yr-1); however, the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS, Voges et al. 1999) conducted in 1990–1991 was an ideal experiment to detect these flares since it sampled hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the soft X-ray band. ROSAT detected soft X-ray outbursts from several galaxies with no previous evidence for Seyfert activity \[see Komossa (2002) for a review\]: NGC 5905 (Bade, Komossa, & Dahlem, 1996), RX J1242.6–1119 (Komossa & Greiner 1999), RX J1624.9+7554 (Grupe, Thomas, & Leighly, 1999), RX J1420+5334 (Greiner et al. 2000), and a possible fifth candidate, RX J1331–3243 (Reiprich & Greiner 2001). NGC 5905, RX J1624.9+7554, and RX J1420+5334 were detected in the RASS, and then faded beneath the detection limits of the follow-up pointed observations, indicating variability by a factor $`>100`$ on a time scale of months. RX J1242.6–1119 was serendipitously observed in the field of view of a pointed observation 18 months after its RASS non-detection, and was found to have increased in count-rate by a factor $`>`$ 20. In addition to the large amplitude of these flares, they were distinctive due to their extremely soft spectral indices ($`2\mathrm{\Gamma }5`$) or blackbody temperatures ($`kT_{\mathrm{bb}}=0.050.1`$ keV), and high luminosities ($`10^{42}10^{44}`$ ergs s-1). From the statistics of the RASS, Donley et al. (2002) calculated a rate of $`1\times 10^5`$ yr-1 for X-ray flares from these non-AGN galaxies.

Table 1 is a summary of the high-state ROSAT observations for the three galaxies studied in this paper, including the fitted power-law spectral index or blackbody temperature, corresponding 0.1–2.4 keV luminosities, absorbing column densities, estimated duration of the flare, and amplitude of variability. Previous authors ruled out various outburst scenarios due to their inconsistencies with the observed properties of the flares. Stellar sources such as X-ray binaries and supernovae rarely reach X-ray luminosities exceeding 1040 ergs s-1. Gamma-ray burst afterglows could reach high enough peak luminosities, however, they have harder spectra and shorter durations than these flares, and are accompanied by bright optical afterglows. Gravitational lensing is another candidate for a high luminosity flare, but such an event would cause amplification at all wavelengths, not just in soft X-rays. The remaining outburst mechanisms that are able to produce the observed large flare luminosities require a central supermassive black hole. Soft X-ray variability due to varying obscuration or warm absorption of a Seyfert nucleus in NGC 5905 was examined in detail by Komossa & Bade (1999). Since no Seyfert-like narrow emission lines or broad Balmer lines were detected in ground-based optical spectra, their warm absorber model included dust to explain the absence of such optical emission. The dusty warm absorber did not allow an acceptable fit to the high-state and low-state ROSAT spectra without fine-tuning of the dust composition. With an obscured Seyfert nucleus as an unlikely fit, and no evidence for persistent Seyfert activity at any wavelength, an accretion disk instability was also disfavored as the cause for the soft X-ray outburst. A tidal disruption event by an otherwise quiescent central supermassive black hole arose as the most likely cause for the flares in these apparently inactive galaxies.

Throughout this paper, calculated and quoted luminosities are for $`H_0=75`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$.

## 2 Theory of Tidal Disruption Events

When a star of mass $`m_{}`$ and radius $`R_{}`$ is in a radial “loss cone” orbit that brings it within the tidal radius of a central supermassive black hole, $`R_T=(M_{\mathrm{BH}}/m_{})^{1/3}R_{}`$, the tidal forces on the star are stronger than its self-gravity, and the star will be torn apart. For a solar type star, $`R_T=R_{\mathrm{}}(M_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_{\mathrm{}})^{1/3}=1.1R_{\mathrm{Sch}}M_8^{2/3}`$, where $`M_8=M_{\mathrm{BH}}/10^8M_{\mathrm{}}`$. If $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}>1.1\times 10^8M_{\mathrm{}}`$, then the tidal radius is less than the Schwarzschild radius, and solar-type stars will not be disrupted, but will be swallowed whole by the black hole. For this mass range, red giants could be stripped of their outer layers, and solar-type stars could be disrupted if the black hole is spinning. The rate at which stars are disrupted by a central black hole depends on the mass of the black hole, the stellar density and velocities in the galactic nucleus, and the rate at which radial loss cone orbits are depleted. For typical nuclear stellar densities and velocities in the centers of galaxies, this results in a tidal disruption rate of $`10^610^4`$ yr-1 (Magorrian & Tremaine 1999; Syer & Ulmer 1999). When a star is disrupted, half of the tidal debris will be ejected on hyperbolic orbits, half will return to pericenter and circularize, and a fraction of that bound debris will be accreted by the central black hole (Rees 1988). The return rate of this bound material on orbits that intersect at pericenter is what determines the time scales of the onset and decay of the luminosity resulting from a tidal disruption event. The observable flare would begin with accretion of the most tightly bound material as it returns to pericenter and circularizes. As summarized by Ulmer (1999), the first return would occur at a time $`t_0`$ after the disruption, where $`t_01.1M_8^{1/2}`$ yr. The maximum return rate, according to numerical simulations (Evans & Kochanek 1989) is $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{max}}0.14M_8^{1/2}M_{\mathrm{}}`$ yr-1, and occurs at a time $`t1.5t_0`$. At late times, material returns at the declining rate $`\dot{M}(t)=0.3M_8(t/t_0)^{5/3}M_{\mathrm{}}`$ yr-1, which is an important factor that controls the decay of the flare over the next few years. For $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}<10^7M_{\mathrm{}}`$, the dynamical time for the tidal debris is short relative to the return time, so the material is accreted quickly, resulting in a super-Eddington flare ($`L_{\mathrm{flare}}>ϵM_{\mathrm{Edd}}c^2>1.3\times 10^{46}M_8`$ ergs s-1) (Ulmer 1999). For $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}>2\times 10^7M_{\mathrm{}}`$, stellar debris takes a longer time to fall back than the rate at which it can circularize and radiate, thus accretion probably proceeds through a thin disk, with a luminosity always less than the Eddington limit. For a super-Eddington infall rate, the duration of the accretion flare is $`t_{\mathrm{flare}}0.76M_7^{2/5}`$ yr, and the spectrum of the flare will be characterized by the blackbody temperature of a thick disk or spherical envelope at the tidal radius, $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}(L_{\mathrm{Edd}}/4\pi \sigma R_T^2)^{1/4}=3.0\times 10^5M_7^{1/12}`$ K (Ulmer 1999). Thus, for low-mass central black holes ($`M_{\mathrm{BH}}<10^7M_{\mathrm{}}`$), tidal disruption theory predicts luminous flares of up to $`10^{46}`$ ergs s-1, peaking in the UV/X-ray domain, with time scales on the order of months.

The three flaring galaxies studied in this paper had X-ray outbursts with properties predicted for a tidal disruption event: a high-state spectrum well-fitted by a soft blackbody and a flare duration on the order of months. The galaxy with the best sampled X-ray light curve, NGC 5905, shows a fading of the flare luminosity close to the predicted accretion rate $`\dot{M}t^{5/3}`$ (Komossa & Bade 1999), which Li, Narayan, & Menou (2002) regard as strong evidence that its flare was a tidal disruption event. Although the tidal disruption hypothesis is appealing, there remains the possibility that low-luminosity Seyfert nuclei could reside in these galaxies, undetected in their low-states by ground-based optical observations. In order to establish beyond a reasonable doubt whether these flares were in fact tidal disruption events, as opposed to some other form of extreme AGN variability, we obtained follow-up HST/STIS spectroscopy through narrow slits, which are up to a factor of 100 more sensitive to nuclear activity than previously obtained ground-based spectra, to search for persistent Seyfert activity in the centers of these galaxies.

## 3 Observations and Basic Results

Long-slit spectra centered on the nuclei of RX J1242.6–1119A (the larger of a pair of galaxies at $`z=0.050`$), RX J1624.9+7554 (a barred spiral at $`z=0.064`$), and NGC 5905 (a large barred spiral at $`z=0.011`$), were obtained a decade after their flares in Cycle 10 of HST with the STIS/CCD and either a $`0.^{\prime \prime }2`$ or a $`0.^{\prime \prime }1`$ slit. In each case, pairs of acquisition images were first obtained that were used to center the slit precisely on the nucleus of the galaxy. The STIS 2D spectra were reduced using the data calibration pipeline CALSTIS. After sky subtraction and bad-pixel removal, a 1D spectrum was rectified using a width in the spatial direction of $`0.^{\prime \prime }36`$, corresponding to 93.5% of the total energy in the point-spread-function (PSF). For comparison with the STIS spectra, ground-based spectra of comparable spectral resolution were obtained for each galaxy on the KPNO 2.1m and MDM 2.4m telescopes, with slits of width $`1.^{\prime \prime }51.^{\prime \prime }9`$. Table 2 is a log of STIS and ground-based observations. The STIS spectra of RX J1242.6–1119A and RX J1624.9+7554, shown in Figures 1 and 2, have stellar absorption features that are very similar to their ground-based optical spectra. Although the STIS spectra were obtained through a narrow slit, which explains the factor of $`510`$ weaker continuum levels compared to the ground-based spectra, there appears to be no difference in their spectral features or continuum shape. Some weak extended \[N II\] emission is seen in the KPNO 2.1m spectrum of RX J1624.9+7554, which was also detected in the ground-based spectrum of Grupe et al. (1999), and is most likely from the photoionized or shocked diffuse interstellar medium near the nucleus. Thus, there is no evidence for nuclear emission lines or a non-stellar continuum indicative of an AGN in RX J1242.6–1119A or RX J1624.9+7554. These two galaxies remain the most convincing as hosts of tidal disruption events, and will not be discussed further here. The remainder of this paper is concerned with evaluating the more problematic case of NGC 5905.

The STIS spectrum of NGC 5905, shown in Figures 3 and 4, contains Balmer and forbidden emission lines, including H$`\alpha `$, H$`\beta `$, \[O III\], \[O II\], and \[N II\]. The ground-based spectra differ in both continuum level and relative narrow emission-line strengths. Most dramatic are the differences in the strength of \[O III\]$`\lambda \lambda `$4959,5007 relative to H$`\beta `$, and \[N II\]$`\lambda \lambda `$6548,6583 relative to H$`\alpha `$. The forbidden lines are strongest relative to the Balmer lines in the STIS spectrum of the nucleus, whereas the STIS spectra offset to the east and west of the nucleus (Figure 4) have emission-line ratios similar to the ground-based spectrum. The blue-shifted H$`\alpha `$ and \[N II\] lines in the $`+1.^{\prime \prime }4`$ offset spectrum and the red-shifted lines in the $`1.^{\prime \prime }2`$ offset spectrum align with the blue and red peaks of the double-peaked H$`\alpha `$ and \[N II\] lines in the STIS nuclear spectrum, which we interpret as rotation.

Figure 5 shows an H$`\alpha `$ rotation curve of the central $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ of NGC 5905 measured from the 2D STIS spectrum, in which the slit was oriented at position angle $`99.^{}4`$, nearly perpendicular to the bar. The red-shifted and blue-shifted components of the double-peaked nuclear H$`\alpha `$ line are seen to match the velocities of the outer rotation curve. This can be interpreted as a nuclear gas disk rotating in the same plane as the outer gas disk. The observed radial velocity semi-amplitude, $`v_r=114`$ km s-1, is assumed to be the line-of-sight component of the circular rotation velocity $`v`$, where

$$v_r=\frac{v\mathrm{cos}i\mathrm{sin}i}{(\mathrm{cos}^2i+\mathrm{tan}^2\varphi )^{1/2}},$$

$`i`$ is the inclination angle of the rotation axis relative to the line of sight, and $`\varphi `$ is the angle between the spectrograph slit and the major axis of the galaxy. Similarly, the projected distance $`d`$ along the slit is related to the physical radius $`r`$ in the galaxy via

$$d=r\mathrm{cos}i\left(\frac{1+\mathrm{tan}^2\varphi }{\mathrm{cos}^2i+\mathrm{tan}^2\varphi }\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}.$$

From the UGC catalog (Nilsson 1973) and other sources (van Moorsel 1982; Ma 2001), we adopt $`i=40^{}`$, and we determine that $`\varphi 35.^{}6`$. For this set of parameters, we derive $`v=243`$ km s-1, which is in excellent agreement with the maximum H I rotation velocity of 245 km s-1 measured by van Moorsel (1982). Accordingly, the derived enclosed mass $`M_{\mathrm{enc}}=rv^2/G1.7\times 10^8M_{\mathrm{}}`$ within an aperture $`d<11\mathrm{pc}=0.^{\prime \prime }05`$ (half the width of the slit). This mass estimate is consistent with $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}1\times 10^8M_{\mathrm{}}`$, and therefore in the appropriate mass range for causing the tidal disruption of a solar mass star.

Emission-line strengths in the STIS spectra of the nucleus of NGC5905 were measured using a wavelength interval of 27.4 Å for the low-resolution G430L spectrum, and 11.1 Å for the medium-resolution G750M spectrum (in order to include all the flux from the double-peaked profile of the lines). The neighboring continuum was estimated as the median value in an interval of the same width on either side of the line, with the standard deviation in the continuum interval estimated as the $`1\sigma `$ error. The emission lines in the high signal-to-noise ground based-spectrum, shown in Figure 4, were measured using Gaussian fits to the lines. Table 3 lists the optical line fluxes relative to H$`\alpha `$ for both the STIS and ground-based spectra of NGC 5905. The nuclear spectrum is significantly reddened, as indicated by the ratio H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta =11.8`$. Also listed in Table 3 are the STIS line fluxes corrected for reddening using the extinction curve of Cardelli, Clayton, & Mathis (1989) and visual extinction $`A_V=4.26`$ magnitudes, assuming intrinsic H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta =3.1`$ as is appropriate for Seyfert narrow-line regions (Halpern & Steiner 1983). This value of $`A_V`$ should be considered an upper limit, as it does not take into account probable underestimation of the flux of H$`\beta `$ emission due to its superposition on stellar absorption from which it cannot be separated. When the double-peaked \[N II\] and H$`\alpha `$ lines in the STIS G750M nuclear spectrum are fitted with two Gaussians, the width of each Gaussian, corrected for instrumental resolution, is 130 km s-1. The single-peaked \[N II\] and H$`\alpha `$ lines in the offset spectra are narrower, with an intrinsic width of 80 km s-1. This difference indicates that there is a source of broadening in the nucleus in addition to rotation. The intrinsic width of the H$`\beta `$ and \[O III\] lines in the STIS G430L nuclear spectrum is 400 km s-1, broader than the lines in the G750M nuclear spectrum, probably because the spectral resolution of the G430L spectrum is inadequate to resolve the double-peaked structure of the lines.

## 4 Interpretation

### 4.1 Ground-based Versus HST Post-flare Optical Spectra of NGC 5905

The post-flare ground-based and HST STIS spectra of NGC 5905 differ dramatically. The stellar continuum flux in the STIS spectrum is lower than the KPNO spectrum by two orders of magnitude, and the narrow emission line ratios in the STIS spectrum indicate a higher ionization state for the line emitting gas. The narrow emission line ratios measured from the KPNO spectrum identify NGC 5905 as a H II/starburst galaxy, consistent with the interpretation of previous ground-based spectra (Ho et al. 1997; Komossa & Bade 1999). The STIS spectrum of the nucleus of NGC 5905, on the other hand, has narrow emission-line ratios that place it in the Seyfert region of the diagnostic diagrams of Veilleux & Osterbrock (1987, see Figure 6). These differences in continuum flux and narrow emission-line ratios can be understood as a result of the narrower $`0.^{\prime \prime }1`$ slit used for the STIS spectrum as compared to the $`1.^{\prime \prime }9`$ slit of the KPNO spectrum, appropriate for ground-based seeing. The narrow slit effectively reduces the contribution of stellar light and circumnuclear H II region emission in the STIS spectrum, making it more sensitive to flux originating from the nucleus itself. The narrow-line emission in the STIS spectrum is spatially compact compared to the stellar continuum (shown in Figure 7), indicating that the STIS has detected emission from a distinct source in the nucleus, namely, a low-luminosity Seyfert 2 nucleus that was previously masked by H II regions in the ground-based spectra.

### 4.2 Search for Non-Stellar Continuum & Broad Emission Lines

The post-flare STIS spectrum of NGC 5905 contains no broad Balmer line emission and no direct evidence for a non-stellar continuum. The Mg I $`b`$ $`\lambda `$5175 and G-Band $`\lambda `$4300 stellar absorption features are detected in the STIS spectrum (shown with dotted lines in Figure 3), with equivalent widths consistent with the absorption features in the KPNO spectrum within $`2\sigma `$, where $`1\sigma `$ $``$ 1.2 Å. The $`1\sigma `$ error includes the statistical error estimated from the neighboring continuum, and the systematic error from choosing the continuum level. The error in the equivalent widths places an upper limit on the percent contribution by a featureless continuum of 60%. This featureless continuum could be a power-law continuum from the Seyfert nucleus, or due to young stars. The Ca II H & K $`\lambda \lambda `$3968,3933 features and 4000 Å break are not obvious in the STIS spectrum, however their presence cannot be ruled out at this signal-to-noise level. It should be noted that the depth of the 4000 Å break is sensitive to the stellar population, as well as to the presence of an AGN continuum. The spatial profile of the acquisition image, shown in Figure 8, also does not indicate an AGN-like unresolved point source in the nucleus. Its radial profile is only slightly more concentrated than the confirmed inactive galaxies RX J1242.6–1119A and RX J1624.9+7554.

While these optical properties of NGC 5905 might be consistent with a Seyfert 2 nucleus having an obscured broad-line region and non-stellar continuum, the lack of X-ray absorption during the soft X-ray flare is a strong indicator that the direct line of sight to the nucleus is unobscured. Thus, the lack of broad emission lines is either intrinsic, or is evidence that the nucleus is in a quiescent state. The X-ray flare will have illuminated any gas around it with different light travel time delays. The observer will see reprocessed emission from an isodelay paraboloid, with the source of the flare at the focus. A point at a distance $`r`$ from the flare and at angle $`\theta `$ from the line from the source to the observer will be illuminated with time delay $`\tau =(1\mathrm{cos}\theta )r/c`$. Gas in the line of sight ($`\theta =0^{}`$) will be illuminated with no time delay, and gas behind the nucleus ($`\theta =180^{}`$), will be observed to be illuminated with the maximum time delay of $`2r/c`$. Given that the STIS spectrum was obtained 11.4 years after the X-ray flare was observed, the smallest radial distance that the flare could be probing in the STIS spectrum is 1.7 pc, or 5.7 lyr. This is orders of magnitude larger than the scale of the broad-line region in Seyfert galaxies, which is typically on the order of light days or weeks (e.g., Wandel, Peterson, & Malkan 1999). Therefore, we do not expect to see flare-excited broad-line emission in the STIS spectrum. In addition, since the high density typical of the broad-line region corresponds to rapid recombination times, fossil broad-line emission would not be expected either.

This result can be compared to observations of IC 3599, a ROSAT flaring galaxy that was observed optically only 5 months after its X-ray flare (Brandt, Pounds, & Fink 1995). In that case, strong Balmer emission lines and highly ionized \[Fe VII\] and \[Fe X\] lines characteristic of a Seyfert galaxy were detected. In the next spectrum obtained 9 months later, the highly ionized Fe lines had disappeared (Grupe et al. 1995). Henceforth, the optical spectrum of IC 3599 maintained the characteristics of a Seyfert galaxy (Grupe et al. 1995) of type 1.9 (Komossa & Bade 1999). Thus, the first post-flare spectrum had detected Fe emission from gas within 0.1 pc of the nucleus, ionized by the variable continuum. The opportunity to detect line emission from gas ionized by the flare very close to the nucleus in NGC 5905 was lost because the first post-flare optical spectrum was not obtained until 6 years after the event (Komossa & Bade 1999).

### 4.3 Narrow Emission Lines: Low-luminosity Seyfert 2 or Fossil Nebula?

Even in the absence of other evidence for Seyfert activity, the narrow emission-line ratios in the STIS spectrum of NGC 5905 require a non-stellar ionizing continuum. Two possibilities for the excitation of the line emission can be considered: narrow-line clouds ionized by a persistent, low-luminosity Seyfert nucleus, or the fossil nebula of the ionizing soft X-ray flare. If the emission lines are powered by a Seyfert nucleus, then the dereddened H$`\alpha `$ flux can be used to predict the time averaged soft X-ray luminosity of the nucleus using the correlation of soft X-ray luminosity with H$`\alpha `$ luminosity derived from observations of low-luminosity AGN ($`L_X<10^{42}`$ ergs s-1) by Halderson et al. (2001), who find $`L_X=7L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ on average. The predicted soft X-ray luminosity of NGC 5905 is $`4\times 10^{40}`$ ergs s-1, consistent with the lowest value observed by the ROSAT PSPC ($`L_X2\times 10^{40}`$ ergs s-1), but the latter detection might also be partly associated with its nuclear starburst (Bade, Komossa, & Dahlem, 1996).

If the narrow emission lines are in fact powered by a Seyfert nucleus, then photoionization modeling can constrain the density and covering fraction $`f_c`$ of the line-emitting gas. Using the photoionization code of Halpern & Steiner (1983), and similar works by Ferland (1981) and Ferland & Netzer (1983), we come to the following conclusions. The H$`\beta `$ luminosity as an indicator of the rate of absorption of ionizing photons yields $`f_cQ(\mathrm{H})5.4\times 10^{51}`$ s-1. Employing the ionization parameter $`U=Q(\mathrm{H})/(4\pi r^2n_\mathrm{H}c)`$, which must be $`10^3`$ for the excitation level indicated by the observed \[O III\]/H$`\beta `$ flux ratio, we find $`f_cn_\mathrm{H}r^21.5\times 10^{43}`$ cm-1. Since $`r11`$ pc, we require $`f_cn_\mathrm{H}1.3\times 10^4`$ cm-3. The luminosity of the collisionally excited \[O III\] line also constrains the density and covering fraction of the line emitting gas. Assuming a plane-parallel geometry at a distance $`r`$ from the nucleus, a thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }r<r`$ for \[O III\] zone of the cloud or filament, and a covering fraction $`f_c`$, the luminosity of \[O III\] is:

$$L([\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}])=h\nu _{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}4\pi r^2\mathrm{\Delta }rn_{\mathrm{O}^{++}}n_eq_{12}f_c\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1$$

For a collisional excitation rate $`q_{12}=2.6\times 10^9`$ cm3 s-1 at $`T=15,000`$ K, n$`{}_{\mathrm{O}^{++}}{}^{}=10^4n_e`$, and a dereddened \[O III\] luminosity of $`1.1\times 10^{40}`$ ergs s-1, this implies an emission measure $`r^2\mathrm{\Delta }rn_e^2f_c=8.5\times 10^{62}`$ cm-3. Models indicate that $`\mathrm{\Delta }rn_e`$ for the \[O III\] zone is $`1\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 for $`U10^3`$, so with $`r11`$ pc (half the width of the slit), we find $`n_ef_c7300`$. Another constraint on $`n_e`$ comes from the \[S II\] density-sensitive line ratio, which indicates higher density in the nucleus than in the H II disk. Allowing for the large error bars on the fluxes of these weak lines, we find $`0.3<F(\lambda 6716)/F(\lambda 6731)<1`$ in the nucleus, which implies $`n_e500`$ (i.e., consistent with the high-density limit for this diagnostic). Thus, photoionized clouds of $`n_\mathrm{H}10^4`$ and large convering fraction are consistent with the STIS spectrum of the nucleus. To the extent that we have overestimated the extinction, $`n_\mathrm{H}`$ and/or $`f_c`$ might be smaller.

Although a persistent Seyfert nucleus cannot be ruled out as the source of the high excitation narrow emission lines, could the X-ray flare have produced these lines that we observe 11 years later? Using the blackbody fit to the ROSAT spectrum (which is more reasonable than a steep power-law, which would extrapolate to a bright optical flare that was not observed) the number of photons available to ionize hydrogen at the time of the flare can be estimated as those between the Lyman limit $`\nu _0`$ and 100 eV,

$$Q(\mathrm{H})=_{\nu _0}^{100\mathrm{eV}}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu =4\pi R_{\mathrm{bb}}^2\frac{2\pi }{c^2}\left(\frac{kT}{h}\right)^3\frac{x^2}{e^x1}𝑑x=1.5\times 10^{51}\mathrm{photons}\mathrm{s}^1,$$

where R$`{}_{\mathrm{bb}}{}^{}=9.2\times 10^{10}`$ cm \[corresponding to a $`0.12.4`$ keV X-ray luminosity of $`9.2\times 10^{41}`$ ergs s-1 from Bade, Komossa & Dahlem (1996)\] and $`T=6.5\times 10^5`$ K. The predicted peak luminosities of H$`\beta \lambda 4861`$ and He II $`\lambda 4686`$ are

$$L=f_ch\nu \frac{\alpha _\nu ^{eff}}{\alpha _B}_{\nu _0}^{100\mathrm{eV}}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu \mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1,$$

yielding $`L=5.4\times 10^{38}f_c`$ ergs s-1 for H$`\beta `$ and $`1.6\times 10^{39}f_c`$ ergs s-1 for He II, with $`\nu _0`$(He) = $`4\nu _0`$(H). The dereddened STIS luminosity of H$`\beta `$ is $`1.9\times 10^{39}`$ ergs s-1, 2.5 times greater than the peak luminosity powered by the flare, while He II is not detected with more than 2$`\sigma `$ significance in the STIS spectrum, and can be assigned an upper limit of $`6.5\times 10^{38}`$ ergs s-1. The non-detection of the He II line in the STIS spectrum, which would be expected to be even stronger than the H$`\beta `$ line for gas ionized by the flare, is strong evidence that its emission lines are not powered by the flare, or if they are, that they must have decayed significantly.

The decay time for each emission line depends inversely on the density of the gas. Using the time-dependent photoionization model results of Binette & Robinson (1987), narrow-line emitting gas should continue to emit after the ionizing source (i.e., X-ray flare) has turned off. Although the \[O III\] line responds rapidly to the change in ionizing flux, and decays almost instantaneously due to efficient recombination by charge transfer, the He II and H$`\beta `$ lines will persist after the flare. Neglecting for the moment light travel time delays, the decay time for \[O III\] as a function of density is $`\tau =2000n_\mathrm{H}^1`$ yr, thus for $`n_\mathrm{H}>180`$ cm-3 the decay time is less than 11 years, and any \[O III\] emission excited by the flare will have decayed by now. The He II line has a decay time, $`\tau =23,500n_\mathrm{e}^1`$ yr, such that for $`n_e<2350`$ cm-3, there should be fossil He II emission still detected in the post-flare spectrum 11 years later. Given the typical range of densities for narrow-line regions, if the line emitting gas were powered by a soft X-ray flare, the post-flare spectrum observed 11 years later should contain He II emission, but most if not all of the \[O III\] line emission will have decayed away. Given that \[O III\] is the stronger emission line compared to H$`\beta `$ and He II in the STIS spectrum, the narrow emission lines do not have flux ratios diagnostic of such a fossil nebula, i.e. \[O III\]/He II $``$ 1 (Binette & Robinson 1987).

If we now allow for light travel time delays, we might hypothesize that the reason the narrow-line emission does not have line ratios characteristic of a fossil nebula is that we are seeing only clouds recently illuminated by the flare, and that differential rates of photoionization of various species could account for the strong \[O III\] emission relative to H$`\beta `$ and He II. The photoionization rate for hydrogenic ions is

$$_{\nu _0}^{100\mathrm{eV}}\frac{F_\nu }{h\nu }\sigma _\nu (Z)𝑑\nu \mathrm{s}^1$$

where $`F_\nu =L_\nu /4\pi r^2`$ and $`\sigma _\nu (Z)`$ is the photoionization cross section as a function of atomic number $`Z`$. The resulting photoionization time scales at $`r=11`$ pc (the half width of the STIS slit) are 115 days for H and 96 days for He. Similarly, the collisional excitation rate of \[O III\] at $`15,000`$ K is $`2.6\times 10^9`$ cm3 s-1, corresponding to a mean excitation time of $`9(n_e/500)^1`$ days. Since the excitation times for all of these emission lines are very short relative to the light travel time between different parts of the narrow-line region, we would not expect to observe effects of photoionization delays.

If light-travel time delays are invoked to explain the continued presence of \[O III\] emission in the STIS post-flare spectrum of NGC 5905, then this argument cannot simultaneously account for the absence of He II emission, which would be strong in recently ionized clouds. Thus, the line ratios in the STIS spectrum are not consistent with clouds photoionized by a soft X-ray flare, either near the nucleus and now decaying, or far from the nucleus and just being ionized. Therefore, the narrow line emission observed in NGC 5905 requires there to be a long-term source of ionization, i.e., a persistent Seyfert nucleus.

### 4.4 Geometry of the Line-Emitting Gas

If NGC 5905 in fact contains a Seyfert 2 nucleus, then according to the unified model it should be surrounded by a dusty torus that obscures emission in the line-of-sight from rapidly orbiting clouds in a broad-line region close to the central accreting black hole (Antonucci 1993). If this torus obscures the nucleus, then how could a soft X-ray flare have been observed from the vicinity of the black hole through such a high column density of X-ray absorbing gas? The column density derived from the ROSAT spectrum is close to the Galactic value, $`1.5\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2, while the Balmer decrement in the STIS spectrum corresponds to a column density of $`8\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2. This discrepancy might be addressed by invoking a higher than Galactic dust-to-gas ratio for the line emitting gas, or a gross error in the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ measurement in the STIS spectrum due primarily to stellar absorption in those lines. However, neither effect is likely to be large enough to account for the factor of $`50`$ difference in column density. A geometrical argument, on the other hand, could easily explain the observed optical extinction and lack of X-ray absorption if dusty line-emitting gas is distributed in a disk or torus in the plane of the galaxy and out of our line of sight to the nucleus. The double-peaked line profiles that match the rotation curve of the Galaxy also support this interpretation.

If the nucleus of NGC 5905 is not obscured by dust in the line-of-sight, then why does the STIS spectrum show only Seyfert 2 features? Halderson et al. (2001) found that Seyfert 2 galaxies in their sample of low-luminosity AGNs did not have systematically higher column density than Seyfert 1 galaxies in fits to ROSAT spectra. While this is contrary to the prediction of the unified model, they also attributed the apparent similarity in column density to the contamination by extended soft X-ray emission observed in both types of low-luminosity Seyfert galaxies. Ho et al. (2001) also found small column densities, $`N_\mathrm{H}<10^{22}`$ cm-3, for most of the low-luminosity AGNs in their survey, including Seyfert 2s, suggesting that the unified model for Seyfert galaxies might not apply at low luminosities. An alternative interpretation of Seyfert 2 galaxies with small measured line-of-sight gas column densities is that they are “true” Seyfert 2s, with no broad line region, and any extinction is due to large-scale structures such as dust-lanes or circumnuclear starbursts. Panessa & Bassani (2002) find that unobscured Seyfert 2’s, with observed X-ray column densities $`N_\mathrm{H}<10^{22}`$ cm-2, are biased towards lower luminosities. There is also mounting observational evidence that correlates a lower luminosity with a smaller broad line region (Wandel et al. 1999; Kaspi 2000; Collin & Huré 2001). This model can be extended to low enough luminosities that no broad line region exists (Tran 2001). An intrinsically weak Seyfert nucleus can also account for the non-detection of a featureless continuum in the STIS spectrum, and the lack of optical variability (within $`0.2`$ mag) during the flare as reported by Komossa & Bade (1999) from photographic plates. Thus, NGC 5905 may have an intrinsically weak non-stellar continuum, no broad line region, and only narrow-line clouds available to be ionized. A final possibility to consider is that the HST/STIS observations could have occurred during a low-state of the Seyfert nucleus, when the ionizing continuum and broad line region emission are temporarily “off”.

## 5 Conclusions

RX J1242.6–1119A and RXJ1624.9+7554 are confirmed to be inactive galaxies from the lack of broad or narrow emission lines, or a non-stellar continuum in their narrow-slit HST/STIS spectra. The most likely explanation for large amplitude X-ray flares from the nuclei of inactive galaxies is a tidal disruption of a star by an otherwise dormant central supermassive black hole.

An important question is raised in the case of NGC 5905: whether its X-ray flare was the result of large amplitude variability of its low-luminosity Seyfert nucleus, or a tidal disruption event. Both scenarios involve a dramatic increase in the rate of accretion onto the central black hole, either by an instability in a preexisting accretion disk, or by the formation of a debris disk from the tidally disrupted star. We use emission-line diagnostics to show that a persistent Seyfert nucleus in NCG 5905 is required to account for its nuclear emission lines, which we resolved from the surrounding H II regions using HST/STIS spectroscopy. While not ruling out the possibility that the soft X-ray flare was a tidal disruption event, this prior activity does raise some uncertainty about such an interpretation. The nuclear emission-line luminosities correspond to an average X-ray luminosity of $`4\times 10^{40}`$ ergs s-1, which is similar to the lowest value seen by ROSAT after the flare. Further long-term monitoring in the X-ray and optical is necessary to see whether flaring behavior in NGC 5905 recurs, which would indicate variability intrinsic to the Seyfert nucleus, or whether its X-ray flare was a one-time event consistent with the expected frequency of tidal disruption. If the flare was not a tidal disruption event, it is one of the most extreme cases of X-ray variability observed sofar among AGN. A separation of nuclear and starburst X-ray sources in NGC 5905 can be accomplished by Chandra, which could then establish the minimum X-ray luminosity of the nucleus by repeated observations.

It is important to find unambiguous indicators of tidal disruption events. If they have properties similar to the candidates studied here, then future UV and X-ray sky surveys will have the potential to detect hundreds of tidal disruption events, making it possible to study the masses of black holes as a function of galaxy type and size, unbiased by the minority of galaxies that are AGNs, and to a much larger distance than those that can be studied using stellar dynamics.

We thank Mike Eracleous for his help with observations and reduction of ground-based spectra. Support for Proposal #9177 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555.