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# Six years of BeppoSAX Wide Field Cameras observations of nine galactic type I X-ray bursters

## 1 Introduction

Since the discovery of type I bursts by Grindlay & Heise (1975) about 65 other X-ray bursters have been discovered (e.g., in ’t Zand 2001). Most of these are concentrated toward the Galactic center, which illustrates their Galactic origin. X-ray bursts are characterized by a fast rise and an exponential decay with durations ranging from seconds to tens of minutes. Their spectrum can best be described by black body radiation with cooling during the decay of the burst. These type I X-ray bursts are due to unstable hydrogen/helium burning in a thin shell on a neutron star surface (see, e.g., the review by Lewin et al. 1993).

By far most of the X-ray bursts are emitted by sources, persistent or transient, with luminosities of $`10^{3637}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Some sources at higher persistent luminosities also show X-ray bursts (e.g., Kuulkers et al. 2002), but such bursts are less common. At lower luminosities bursts have also been sporadically observed (e.g., Gotthelf & Kulkarni 1997, Cocchi et al. 2001a, Cornelisse et al. 2002).

Assuming that the amount of fuel burnt per burst is roughly the same, one expects that the burst rate increases linearly with accretion rate. However, for most X-ray bursters where it is possible to study this the opposite is observed (van Paradijs et al. 1988a), see e.g. GX 3$`+`$1 (den Hartog et al. 2002). Bildsten (2000) noted that the onset of a burst is governed by the local rather than the global accretion rate (see also Marshall 1982). If the area on the neutron star on which accretion takes place increases rapidly with the global accretion rate, the local accretion rate may actually drop, giving rise to a lower burst rate.

Observations of several sources (e.g., 4U 1705$``$44, Gottwald et al. 1989; EXO 0748$``$676, Gottwald et al. 1986), show different burst properties at different accretions rates. Fujimoto et al. (1981) predicted this behavior by showing that the composition of the unstable burning shell changes with accretion (see also Bildsten 1998 for a recent overview). Briefly, at the highest accretion rates ($`\dot{M}\text{ }>10^9`$ M yr-1) the helium ignites in an unstable fashion in a mixed He/H environment, causing bursts with durations of minutes. At the intermediate accretion regime ($`10^9\text{ }>\dot{M}/(`$M yr-1) $`\text{ }>2\times 10^{10}`$) the helium ignites in an unstable fashion in a hydrogen-poor environment, causing bursts with durations smaller than 10 s. At the lowest accretion regime ($`\dot{M}\text{ }<2\times 10^{10}`$ M yr-1) unstable hydrogen burning triggers a helium flash causing bursts with durations larger than 10 s.

If the accretion rate is stable over long periods of time, periodic burst behavior is expected. It should always take the same amount of time to accrete enough matter to start the unstable burning again. This quasi-periodic burst behavior is observed in several burst sources, for example 4U 1820$``$30 (Haberl et al. 1987) or 4U 1705$``$44 (Langmeier et al. 1987), but only for limited periods of time. During other periods the occurrence of bursts appear completely a-periodic. An exception is GS 1826$``$24 whose bursts are always seen to recur quasi periodically (Ubertini et al. 1999; Cocchi et al. 2001b).

In this paper we describe the burst behavior of the nine most frequent X-ray bursters in the Galactic center region observed with the Wide Field Cameras. All are known X-ray bursters and most of them are persistently bright ($`L_\mathrm{X}`$$``$$`10^{3637}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$). We compare these bursters with each other and with other bursters. The observations and the search for type I bursts are described in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3 we present the results. We start in Sect. 3.1 with the general properties of the nine burst sources. In Sect. 3.2 we discuss the wait time as a function of persistent emission for the bursters where this is possible. In Sect. 3.3 we compare the exponential decay times of the bursts with the theoretical regimes. Finally in Sect. 4.1 we start with a summary of the observations and compare our results with previous studies and in Sect. 4.2 discuss some implications for burst theory. We also derive some general properties of the population of X-ray bursters.

## 2 Observations and data analysis

The BeppoSAX satellite operated from May 1996 until May 2002 (Boella et al. 1997). During this period the Wide Field Cameras (Jager et al. 1997) onboard the satellite observed the Galactic center region each spring and fall with an average schedule of one day per week. This adds up to 12 Galactic center campaigns with a total net observation time of 7 Ms. The Wide Field Cameras (WFC) are two identical coded mask cameras with a $`40^{}\times 40^{}`$ field of view, a $`5^{}`$ angular resolution, 2-28 keV bandpass and 20% spectral resolution (full width at half maximum at 6 keV). The large field of view combined with the good angular resolution makes it an excellent instrument to simultaneously observe a large fraction (50%) of the low mass X-ray binary (LMXB) population in our Galaxy when pointed at the Galactic center.

Each source in the field of view casts a shadow of the mask pattern on the detector. The detector accumulates the sum of differently shifted mask shadows. By cross-correlating this detector image with the mask pattern a sky image is reconstructed (e.g., in ’t Zand 1992). This procedure is supplemented with a dedicated iterative cleaning algorithm (Hammersley et al. 1992). When no new sources are detected in the iterative process the background is estimated from the (supposedly) empty sky image. Lightcurves are constructed in the full bandpass for each detected source with a time resolution of 5 s, which is a trade-off between the average duration of a type I burst ($`10`$ s) and the statistical quality of the data.

These lightcurves are searched for X-ray bursts in the following manner. We estimate the average flux and the standard deviation ($`\sigma `$) for each orbit (about 60 minutes of net exposure time). If a bin is at least 4$`\sigma `$ above the average flux we mark this as a candidate burst. We estimate that we have, on average, only one false peak triggered as a burst per observation. A triggered bin is visually approved as a burst if the shape of the lightcurve around the bin can be described by a fast rise and exponential decay. If needed, this is done at 1 s time resolution. Thus, we detect all bursts with e-folding times $`\text{ }>`$2 s and peak fluxes in excess of 0.5 Crab. Bursts with lower peak intensities or shorter e-folding times do exist but this is only a minor fraction compared to the bursts detected (e.g. Cocchi et al. 2001b, van Paradijs et al. 1988b).

We also searched the lightcurve of all photons detected on the whole detector (“detector lightcurve”) for X-ray bursts from sources whose persistent flux is below the detection limit of the WFC (see e.g., Cornelisse et al. 2002); note that this limit becomes worse toward the edge of the field of view. Detector lightcurves are created with a resolution of 1 s. A running average of 50 bins is calculated and if at maximum 24 successive bins are $`>`$4% above the average the first bin is labeled as a candidate burst. For all potential new bursts we cross-correlate the detector image again with the coded mask but only for the burst time interval. In this way a point source from which the burst originated may be identified. The sensitivity in this procedure is at most a factor of 2 worse than in the above mentioned procedure.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Global burst behavior

A total of 1823 bursts have been detected from 37 sources in the Galactic center region, when not taking into account bursts from the Rapid Burster (MXB 1730$``$333) and the Bursting Pulsar (GRO J1744$``$29). For each burst we determined the exponential decay time in the total energy band (2-28 keV), the peak flux and average persistent flux over the observation in WFC cts s-1 cm-2. In Table 1 we give an overview of the nine most frequent bursters in the Galactic center region. All these sources are known X-ray bursters and have been studied in the past. The number of type I bursts detected with the WFC in other burst sources is too small for a meaningful statistical analysis.

In Fig. 1 we show RXTE All Sky Monitor (RXTE/ASM; Levine et al. 1996) lightcurves of the sources listed in Table 1. Most lightcurves show a smooth variation and no large fluctuations on a timescale of weeks. On the timescale of years a variation by a factor of roughly 50% is often present in these sources, and an apparent increase in burst rate (indicated by arrows) when the source becomes fainter. In contrast, the lightcurves of 4U 1705$``$440 and 4U 1820$``$30 show strong variations, and bursts are only observed when the flux is low. Note that bursts would have been easily detected at the highest observed persistent flux levels of all sources, because those levels are presumed to be still significantly below the Eddington limit.

To study the burst rate as a function of persistent flux we assigned to each burst the average WFC-measured flux over the complete observation in which the burst occurred. We also checked the average persistent flux in a 5-minute time interval prior to each burst, but the difference with the aforementioned flux is within the errors. The persistent flux range was divided in 5 or 10 intervals of equal size. Only the flux range of KS 1731$``$260, the sole transient source in our sample, was divided in 10 bins with different bin sizes. For each flux interval we determined the total exposure time and the number of bursts; the latter with an error equal to the square root of this number (if no bursts are within an interval upper limits of 68% confidence were estimated). In Fig. 2 we show for each source the burst rate as a function of observed photon flux (bottom axis) and the derived energy flux (top axis). To get an indication of the conversion of photon flux to energy flux we generated for each source a spectrum for each campaign. We fitted the spectrum, assuming an absorbed thermal bremsstrahlung model, and we derived a mean conversion factor over all campaigns (corrected for absorption), see Table 1. The spread in the conversion factors over all campaigns is about 10% for each source. In the WFC passband the assumption of a bremsstrahlung spectrum is good enough to derive fluxes; fluxes derived using other models give comparable results.

We notice in Fig. 2 that at the lowest flux levels KS 1731$``$260 shows an increase in burst rate with increasing persistent flux. When KS 1731$``$26 reaches $`1.7\times 10^9`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, the burst rate drops by a factor of 5 and at higher flux levels the burst rate slowly decreases. 4U 1702$``$429, GX 354$``$0 and GS 1826$``$24 all show only an increasing burst rate, while 4U 1636$``$536 is the only source that shows a decreasing burst rate. 4U 1705$``$44, GX 3$`+`$1 and 4U 1820$``$30 show a drop by a factor of $``$5 in burst rate over a small range of persistent flux. A 1742$``$294 is the only source for which no clear trend is visible, and the burst rate stays constant over the total observed flux range. This source traces out the lowest fluxes within our sample.

### 3.2 Wait times

Several sources are known to show quasi-periodic burst recurrence times during certain periods. The best example is GS 1826$``$24, in 1996-1997 it exhibited a burst every $``$6 hours, and the burst wait times were constant within a few minutes for long periods of time (Ubertini et al. 1999; Cocchi et al. 2001b).

In the left panel of Fig. 3 we plotted the wait time as a function of the persistent flux for GS 1826$``$24. Most wait times appear to follow a straight line at the bottom of the figure. A second linear trend can clearly be distinguished above this line (and even two more above that). Given the fact that BeppoSAX has a 96-minute low-earth orbit, it is probable that bursts are missed during data gaps and that multiples of the burst wait times are observed. We checked bursts with long wait times within one observation and find that for all of them the previous burst may have occurred during an earth occultation or South Atlantic Anomaly passage. From Fig. 3 we see that the wait time between the bursts decreases linearly with increasing persistent flux. We performed a least-squares fit on the bursts where the previous one is not missed to the function: $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=AF_{\mathrm{pers}}+B.`$ The results for the parameters are given in Table 2. Assuming a wait time that is two times longer (i.e., doubling the numbers derived above) gives a good description of the trend followed by the bursts forming the second line from the bottom. This shows again that for these points the previous burst is missed. Note that formally the fit is not acceptable ($`\chi _\nu ^2=5.7`$, 92 d.o.f.), but the general trend is clearly visible. This means that there are significant fluctuations in the wait time around the average relation.

From theory a linear relation between the burst rate (inverse of the wait time) and the persistent flux is expected, and no bursts are expected anymore when $`F_{\mathrm{pers}}`$=0 $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (i.e. no accretion). We therefore tried to fit the relation: $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=C/F_{\mathrm{pers}}.`$ The result of the fit of parameter C is given in Table 2.

Given the large number of bursts, we have also investigated the relation between the wait time and persistent flux for KS 1731$``$260 and GX 354$``$0. In the middle panel of Fig. 3 we show the results for KS 1731$``$260, and notice the strong suggestion of a linear dependency. However, this only applies to persistent flux levels below 0.14 WFC cts cm-2 s-1. At higher persistent flux the wait time between bursts becomes apparently random. We fitted the relations as given above for the bursts with a persistent flux below 0.14 WFC cts cm-2 s-1 and where we expect that the previous burst is not missed. The best fit parameters are given in Table 2.

Also for GX 354$``$0 there vaguely appears to be a linear relation between the persistent flux and the wait time (right panel Fig. 3). However, the scatter is significantly larger than in the previous two cases, making a clear distinction between the different multiples of the wait time very difficult. Therefore, an iterative process was used to search for bursts where we expect that the previous one is not missed. We simultaneously fitted a straight line (the single wait time line) plus several lines at multiples of the wait time. The bursts closest to the single wait time line were attributed to this line and used for a least-square fit to get a better estimate. This process was continued until a best fit was found. The bursts attributed to the single wait time line were also used to fit the relation: $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=C/F_{\mathrm{pers}}.`$ The results are summarized in Table 2.

For the other six sources the number of subsequent bursts with a wait time of less than one day becomes very small, and the data does not allow the verification of a linear relation.

We converted the fit parameters as given in Table 2 from the observed flux to luminosities using the conversion factors and distances as given in Table 1. For the parameter C the values are $`(2.5\pm 1.5)\times 10^{36}`$, $`(0.8\pm 0.5)\times 10^{36}`$ and ($`1.9\pm 1.1)\times 10^{36}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for GS 1826$``$24, KS 1731$``$260 and GX 354$``$0, respectively (taking into account an error of 30% in the distance). Although the errors are very large, these slopes are the same within their errors. Therefore, the burst rate may be a unique function of the persistent flux.

### 3.3 Decay times

Another important burst parameter is the e-folding decay time. As discussed in Sect. 1, this diagnoses the composition of the burst fuel. To derive the decay time for each burst we generated lightcurves with a 1 s time resolution. A running average of 5 s was used to determine the moment of the peak flux. The persistent emission level and the decay time are then simultaneously fitted with a constant and exponential, respectively. We took the bin in which the peak flux was reached as the first data point. In Fig. 4 we show the decay times as a function of persistent emission for the nine sources. We here discuss GX 354$``$0, KS 1731$``$260 and GS 1826$``$24 in more detail and compare them with the other sources.

GX 354$``$0 only shows bursts with decay times shorter than $``$10 seconds at all flux levels. The same applies to 4U 1636$``$536, GX 3$`+`$1 and 4U 1820$``$30. GS 1826$``$24 shows a large range of decay times at all persistent flux levels, but almost no bursts below 10 seconds are observed (i.e., less than 5% of all bursts). Of the nine sources, this is the only one that shows this behavior.

Two trends can be observed for the decay times of KS 1731$``$260. At high persistent flux ($`\text{ }>`$0.14 WFC cts s-1 cm-2) all decay times are below 10 seconds, as for e.g. GX 354$``$0. At lower fluxes the spread in decay times increases rapidly and most bursts have decay times well above 10 s, as for GS 1826$``$24. However, in contrast to GS 1826$``$24, still a significant fraction of bursts show decay times below 10 s (about 30%). The same behavior is also suggested by the figures for 4U 1702$``$429, 4U 1705$``$44 and A 1742-294.

a spectral change instead of a change in persistent emission could be the only indication of a change in mass accretion (van der Klis et al. 1990). This could explain the occurrence of both long and short bursts at low persistent flux. We therefore investigated the low persistent flux levels of KS 1731$``$260 in a little more detail. At MJD 51799.60 and MJD 51799.72 there were bursts with decay times of 4.7$`\pm `$0.1 s and 20.8$`\pm `$3.5 s, respectively. Due to the low flux level of the source full resolution spectra do not have enough statistics, and we resorted to the study of hardness ratios. The WFC passband was divided in two channels from 2-6 keV and 6-28 keV, and derived hardness ratios by dividing the count rates in the 6-28 keV with the count rates in the 2-6 keV band. We found hardness ratios of 0.68$`\pm `$0.07 and 0.70$`\pm `$0.08 for the periods prior to the two bursts, respectively. We note that the average persistent flux stayed constant at 0.111 and 0.115 WFC cts s-1 cm-2 in these periods. The 1$`\sigma `$ statistical fluctuations at one minute time resolution are 24% and 30%, respectively. We conclude that no significant changes occurred between the two bursts.

The transition from short bursts to long/short bursts in KS 1731$``$260 is rapid. Therefore, an observation (at MJD 51637) where the persistent emission is at this transition was analyzed in more detail. A spectrum was derived for this observation, assuming an absorbed bremsstrahlung spectrum with a hydrogen absorption column of $`1.3\times 10^{22}`$ $`\mathrm{atoms}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Predehl & Schmitt 1995). A temperature of 21.4$`\pm `$3.4 keV and an unabsorbed flux of (2.4$`\pm `$0.3)$`\times `$10-9 $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (2-28 keV) was estimated. A power law spectrum with a photon index of 1.64$`\pm `$0.06 gives a flux of (2.6$`\pm `$0.2)$`\times `$10-9 $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (2-28 keV; corrected for absorption). Converting these numbers to a mass accretion rate, assuming standard neutron star parameters ($`R`$=10 km, $`M`$=1.4$`M_{}`$, solar abundances) and 100% efficiency in converting gravitational energy to radiation, gives 1.3$`\times `$10-9 M yr-1. This is similar to the estimated mass accretion rate of GX 3$`+`$1 at its transition (den Hartog et al. 2002).

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Observational summary

Our observations of the burst rate as a function of luminosity for the nine frequent X-ray bursters are summarized in Fig. 5. In order to compare sources we calculated the 2–28 keV luminosity from the flux and the distances as listed in Table 1. Given that the distance has an estimated accuracy of 30% and that the 2–28 keV luminosity is only a crude indicator of the accretion rate, we estimate that the luminosity correspondence between sources is accurate to about a factor of 2. The following conclusion can be drawn from Fig. 5 (and 2): the burst rate shows trends with luminosity that are consistent over all sources. Between 1 and $`2\times 10^{37}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ the burst rate peaks. Above that the burst rate drops fast by roughly a factor of 5 (first observed in GX 3+1 by den Hartog et al. 2002, and now also seen for 4U 1820-30, KS 1731-260, and 4U 1705-44). Below that there is a smooth increase towards the peak. Above $``$5.5$`\times 10^{37}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ no bursts are seen anymore. The latter is confirmed by observations of brighter low-mass X-ray binaries in the same field with presumably similar distances such as GX 9+1, GX 349+2, GX 340+0, GX 17+2, GX 13+1 and GX 5-1. None of these were seen to burst by the WFC. The general trends in burst rate were known previously. The knowledge that our work adds is 1) that there does seem to be a rather consistent burst rate behavior from one burster to another, and 2) that there is a rather discrete transition in this behavior between 1.4 to 2.1$`\times 10^{37}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

Our searches for (quasi-)periodicity in burst recurrence were meaningful in three sources: GX 354-0, KS 1731-260 and GS 1826-24. The presence of quasi-periodicities is most obvious in GS 1826-24 (see also Ubertini et al. 1999 and Cocchi et al. 2001b), present in KS 1731-260, but only suggestive in GX 354-0. The quasi-periodicity is only present during times when the persistent flux is below that for the peak burst rate, as is most clearly demonstrated by KS 1731-260 which, thanks to its transient nature, traces a relatively wide range of fluxes. GS 1826-24 never leaves this domain which explains why its bursts always recur quasi-periodically. The same appears to apply to GX 354-0. Quasi-periodicity has been seen previously with EXOSAT in a number of other sources: EXO 0748-676 (Gottwald et al. 1986), 4U 1705-44 (Gottwald et al. 1989), Ser X-1 (Sztajno et al. 1983) and 4U 1636-536 (Lewin et al. 1987) but only for a limited amount of time. Our observations for the first time show empirically that the quasi-periodicity is restricted to a very particular luminosity range and that there is a narrow positive relationship between burst frequency and the persistent flux.

Our determinations of burst decay times in KS 1731-260 and 4U 1705-44 suggest a clear correspondence between decay time, burst rate behavior and quasi-periodicity, in the sense that there is a clear transition at a luminosity between 1.4 and 2.1$`\times 10^{37}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. However, the decay times observed in GX 3+1 and 4U 1705-44 do not follow this trend despite tracing out similar ranges in luminosity (formally the same applies to 4U 1820-30 but here we know that the decay times cannot be long because the mass donor is proven to be a helium white dwarf; Stella et al. 1987).

To summarize: the central finding in our study is the likely identification of a single luminosity between 1.4 to 2.1$`\times 10^{37}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$, consistent with a single mass accretion rate, where the bursting behavior changes in three basic ways: going to higher luminosities, bursts 1) become rather quickly a factor of 5 less frequent, 2) stop recurring quasi-periodically, 3) stop being long.

### 4.2 Theoretical interpretation

From theory it is expected that long bursts can only be due to helium flashes in a hydrogen-rich environment, which is predicted to occur at the highest or lowest accretion regimes (Fujimoto et al. 1981; Bildsten 1998; see also introduction). Given the fact that in our sample only short bursts are observed at higher luminosities, we may identify the transition in burst behavior with the transition from the lowest to the middle accretion regime.

At the lowest luminosities the helium flash is triggered by unstable hydrogen burning (Fujimoto et al. 1981). Between two bursts no hydrogen is burned, and it is only the accretion of matter that increases the pressure and temperature to high enough values to start this burning. If we assume that the accretion flow is stable then the burst wait time is only dependent on the accretion rate, and a quasi-periodic behavior is not unexpected, as is a narrow relationship between its frequency and the persistent flux.

In the middle accretion regime, bursts take place in a pure helium shell which is fed by stable hydrogen burning in a layer above that. When a critical temperature and pressure are reached the helium ignites. Here the onset of the bursts is determined by the heating of the shell due to the hydrogen burning and the accretion. But more importantly, the onset of helium burning is very sensitive to the temperature (Bildsten 1998), making it highly dependent on local perturbations in the hydrogen burning. This means that local conditions determine the onset (and thus the wait time) of a burst, and quasi-periodic behavior is not readily expected anymore.

Hydrogen starts burning in an unstable fashion at lower column depths than helium (Joss 1977). This means that the conditions for triggering an X-ray burst in the lowest accretion regime are reached after accreting a smaller amount of matter than in the middle accretion regime, and a higher burst rate is expected. Assuming that only the accretion rate can set the condition for the start of unstable hydrogen burning, it is expected that this transition happens in a fairly small range of accretion rates. We remark that recently an interesting phenomenon was detected of quasi periodic oscillations (QPOs) at 7-8 mHz in a few bursting LMXBs which appear to coincide with this transition and whose presence is coupled to the occurrence of type I bursts (Revnivtsev et al. 2001). Revnivtsev et al. speculate that these QPOs are related to special modes of nuclear burning. Support for this hypothesis is provided from trends in kHz QPOs observed in one of those sources (Yu & van der Klis 2002).

We have for the first time shown that the largest decrease in burst rate towards higher fluxes is coincident with the onset of stable hydrogen burning. Thereby, the above-mentioned explanation for the apparently sudden decrease in burst rate may partly resolve a long-standing problem for explaining decreasing burst rates. Van Paradijs et al. (1988) explained this by invoking increased stable helium burning with increasing accretion rate. However, such burning is not expected to occur at sub-Eddington accretion rates (Fujimoto et al. 1981). Bildsten (2000) suggested that non-global accretion on the neutron star (Marshall 1982; Inogamov & Sunyaev 1999) may explain the decreasing burst rate: the accretion area may be smaller than the neutron star surface so that the local mass accretion rate is higher than the globally measured one.

It is unclear how the burst rate behaves above the transition. Direct measurements (Fig. 2) are ambiguous: it may be constant or slowly decreasing. The rarity of X-ray bursts for more luminous sources suggests that there is a decrease, but observations in this domain are subject to strong selection effects as was already noted by other investigators (i.e., since the persistent emission is already close to Eddington there is hardly any room for flux increases by bursts). If the decrease is real, that does need to be explained, perhaps in a manner as proposed by Van Paradijs et al. (1988) and Bildsten (2000).

So far, we have dealt with observations that are explainable in current burst theory. There are three observational facts for which this is more difficult. The first is that short bursts seem to be rather common in the low accretion regime. Long bursts would be expected because the flashes occur in a hydrogen-rich layer. This problem was recently also recognized by den Hartog et al. (2002) for the specific case of GX 3+1. Also, short type I bursts have been detected with extremely low persistent fluxes (e.g., a short, 2.6 s, burst from SAX J2224.9+5421 was quickly and deeply followed up in X-rays and no persistent source was found with a 2–10 keV upper limit of $`1.3\times 10^{13}`$ $`\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$; see Cornelisse et al. 2002). Fujimoto et al. (1981) briefly sketch an alternative path to trigger bursts in the lowest regime that could explain this. If the unstable hydrogen burning in the bottom shell does not trigger the helium burning instantaneously it will cause temporary stable hydrogen burning in the higher shells. The unstable hydrogen burning is not observable (Joss 1977). A pure helium layer will be built up by the stable hydrogen burning and it will probably take a number of invisible hydrogen flashes to trigger a helium flash in this layer, very much like in the middle accretion regime, with a short burst as a result.

It is unclear what determines the varying mix of short and long bursts (100% short bursts for GX 3+1 and GX 354-0, less than 5% for GS 1826-24, and in-between percentages for other sources). We suspect that variability of the persistent flux may be an issue. If we compare the ASM lightcurves in Fig. 1 of KS 1731$``$260 and GS 1826$``$24 we notice that KS 1731$``$260 is more variable at comparable luminosities (between MJD 51000 and MJD 51700). During the last WFC campaign (around MJD 51800) only long bursts are observed for KS 1731$``$260 and the variability becomes comparable to GS 1826$``$24. This would indicate that low variability, (i.e., a smooth accretion rate) gives rise to solely long X-ray bursts, while a more inhomogeneous accretion rate gives rise to incidental pure helium flashes, and this would lead to the following naive picture. An inhomogeneous accretion flow would give rise to large variation in the local accretion rate. These variations could at certain times be high enough to start stable (or unstable) hydrogen burning, and the hydrogen would be depleted in the burning layers. This would give rise to hydrogen poor bursts. For a homogeneous accretion flow, where the local accretion rate stays constant over time, hydrogen burning would not start and long burst would be observed.

Another issue unexplainable by current burst theory is the different peak burst rate between different sources. A bi-modal distribution appears to be present. GX 354$``$0, KS 1731$``$260, 4U 1820$``$30 and GS 1826$``$24 all have a peak burst rate of about 9 bursts day-1, while the other sources have a peak burst rate of about 2.5 bursts day-1. EXOSAT observations of 4U 1636$``$536 showed a burst rate of 8 bursts day-1, more in line with the first group (Lewin et al. 1987). Given the large uncertainty in the distance it could well be possible that during the WFC observations the luminosity of 4U 1636$``$536 is not low enough for such high burst rates, and this might be the case for the other sources. We have no good explanation for this apparent bi-modality.

As was already noted by van Paradijs (1988), there exists a large discrepancy between theory and observations with regards to the mass accretion rate at which the transition takes place from the lowest accretion regime to the middle regime. We find a value of $`(1.42.1)\times 10^9`$ M yr-1, thus confirming the values found by van Paradijs et al. (1988), while theory predicts 1 to 2$`\times 10^{10}`$ M yr-1 (Fujimoto et al. 1981; Bildsten 1998; indicated in Fig. 5 with a dash-dotted line). The theoretical values do depend somewhat on assumptions for a number of neutron star parameters (radius, mass, etc.) and conditions in the neutron star (abundances of CNO elements, opacity, etc.) and become somewhat uncertain due to uncertainties in the distance. This results in substantial margins in the theoretical value from source to source of a factor of three. Still, this is insufficient to explain the discrepancy.

Bildsten (2000) suggests that the discrepancy can be resolved if the transition is not from the lower to the middle regime but from the upper to the middle regime. This may be accomplished if the area over which the accretion takes place is smaller than the neutron star and grows faster than linearly with the global accretion rate. Thus, the mass accretion rate per unit area diminishes as the global accretion rates grows and the source moves from the middle to the lower regime with increasing persistent fluxes. This idea is based on a suggestive radius versus persistent flux trend observed in EXO 0748-676 (Gottwald et al. 1986). It remains to be seen from a complete analysis of our sample, involving time-resolved spectroscopy of all bursts, whether the radius shows such trends with persistent flux. However, a partial result by den Hartog et al. (2003) on GX 3+1 shows no indications for such a trend. Furthermore, the measurements of one source in particular strongly suggest that this effect is not important: KS 1731-260 is the only frequent bursters that exhibits a large dynamic range in persistent flux due to it being transient. The source gradually dies out in our observations and traverses from high global mass accretion rates to a negligible ones. Our observations show that once it exited the middle regime, it never changed regime again. It seems unlikely that KS 1731-260 remains in the upper mass accretion rates per unit area regime all the way down to negligible global accretion rates. Therefore, our data suggest that the explanation as put forward by Bildsten (2000) for the discrepancy in predicted and observed threshold value between lower and middle accretion burst regime, cannot be general. This is further supported by the quasi-periodicity that we find in the burst recurrence for KS 1731-260 in this regime as well as GS 1826-24. Such a form of stability is more likely to happen if the trigger criterion for the flash is dependent on fewer parameters. In the lower burst regime, where the hydrogen is first ignited, the trigger is only dependent on pressure while in the upper regime, where the helium first ignites, it also depends on the local temperature.

## 5 Summary

Thanks to the wide (50%) and long (7 Ms) coverage of the population of low-mass X-ray binaries we detected an unprecedented large number of type I X-ray bursts for nine sources which enabled us to perform a comparative study of bursting behavior which was hitherto not possible. We were able to accurately detect systematic trends in burst rate, burst duration and burst recurrence periodicity and to put them under the common denominator provided by current burst theory. Our central finding is that most of the trends in bursting behavior are driven by the onset of stable hydrogen burning in the neutron star atmosphere. Furthermore, we notice three new observational facts which are more difficult to explain with current burst theory: the presence of short pure-helium bursts at the lowest accretion regimes, the bimodal distribution of peak burst rates, and an accretion rate at which the onset of stable hydrogen burning occurs that is ten times higher than predicted. Finally, we note that our investigation is the first to signal quasi-periodic burst recurrence in KS 1731-260, and a clear proportionality between the frequency of the quasi-periodicity and the persistent flux in GS 1826-24 and KS 1731-260.


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# Internal Extinction in Spiral Galaxies in the Near Infrared

## 1 Introduction

The determination of an accurate value for the internal extinction in galaxies is of relevance both in the understanding of their structure and in applications such as the determination of redshift independent distances. Edge-on spirals are used preferentially in studies that apply the luminosity-linewidth relation (Tully & Fisher 1977) and these are, of course, the galaxies in which extinction effects will be the largest. Inadequate corrections for extinction will produce systematic distance errors in our catalogs. Recent discussions of this issue can be found in Disney & Burstein (1995) and Calzetti (2001), while a comprehensive history of the study of internal extinction in galaxies can be found in the introduction of Huizinga (1994). Analyses similar to the ones carried out in this paper can be found in Giovanelli et al. (1994; hereafter G94, and 1995) and Tully et al. (1998).

Since there is intrinsic variability in the properties of galaxies, the determination of the amount of extinction is most readily obtained in a statistical way, in which case large samples are desirable. However, sample selection effects need to be well understood in order to avoid interpreting spurious effects as astrophysically significant. There will be further discussion of the effects of such biases on the results of this paper in Sections 5.3 and 6.2.

In this paper we report on statistical tests which search for the effects of extinction in spiral galaxies in the near infra-red (NIR) bands, I (0.81 $`\mu `$m), J (1.25 $`\mu `$m) , H (1.65 $`\mu `$m) and Ks (2.17 $`\mu `$m). NIR bands are often used in cases where accurate total magnitudes of galaxies are needed, as they clearly minimize, if not eliminate, the need for extinction corrections. For this reason it is particularly interesting to search for the effects of extinction in these bands.

Samples and available data are described in Sections 2 and 3. In Section 4 we apply simple tests for reddening with inclination and in Sections 5 and 6 we discuss in more detail the effects of extinction on the isophotal radius and total magnitudes respectively. A simple photometric model for the extinction is discussed in Section 7 and in Section 8 luminosity dependences are discussed. A summary of the conclusions is given in Section 9.

## 2 Description of the Samples

The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) completed its coverage of the near infra-red sky in February 2001. Data were taken in three NIR bands, J, H and Ks using two identical 1.3m telescopes, one in Arizona, the other in Chile. With an extended source sensitivity of 14.8, 14.0 and 13.4 mag at J, H and Ks (Jarrett et al., 2000) and an angular resolution of about 2-3 arcseconds, 2MASS has detected more than 1.65 million galaxies (Jarrett et al., 2003); the resultant data are available in the Extended Source Catalog (XSC)111Available through the online catalog query service of the IR Science Archive: http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/Gator/.

Two samples were extracted from the 2MASS All-Sky release XSC. For statistical studies the samples should be as large as possible, but it is also important for them to have well defined selection criteria. The first sample (and by far the largest) consists of all galaxies with well defined spiral morphology and known redshift taken from the Arecibo General Catalog (a private compilation by the authors known as the AGC). Nearby, peculiar motions contribute significantly to observed recessional velocities so we further limit the AGC to $`cz>3000`$ km s-1 in order to use the redshift as a reliable distance indicator. This large sample is referred to as the AGC$`z`$. The AGC is an all-sky compilation, but has varying completeness functions in different areas of the sky. A second, smaller sample consists of galaxies in the AGC$`z`$ for which I-band photometry is also available (as will be described below). This sample we call the SFI2 as it contains all of the SFI data (Giovanelli et al., 1997; Haynes et al., 1999a, b) plus similar but newer and as yet unpublished additions to that. This sample is a homogeneous all-sky sample of mostly Sc galaxies. In summary:

Spiral galaxies of known redshift from the Arecibo General Catalog. The redshift was further confined to $`cz>`$ 3000 km s-1. This sample includes a total of 15244 galaxies.

Galaxies from AGC$`z`$ which also have I-band photometry available. This sample has a total of 3035 galaxies, which are mostly of types Sc and Sbc.

The detection fractions of these galaxies in the 2MASS XSC (within 12″ of the previously cataloged position) are 80% for the AGC$`z`$ and 85% for the SFI2 sample. We expect that this is due in part to the detection limits of the 2MASS survey and in part to the accuracy of the currently tabulated positions of the galaxies in the AGC. In support of this assumption the detection fraction increases for the SFI2 galaxies that are expected to have more accurate positions in the AGC. For the Second Incremental release of 2MASS data, a discussion of completeness is included in the on-line Explanatory Supplement222The Explanatory Supplement to the 2MASS Second Incremental Release (Curtri et al., 2000) is an on-line document: http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/releases/docs.html. When the search for a match is extended to a radius of 0.5′ of known galaxies from the Zwicky Catalog, the detection rate is 95%. In the NIR, surface brightness decreases towards later type galaxies (Jarrett et al., 2003) making late type, gas rich galaxies (like the Sc galaxies which make up the bulk of the SFI2 sample) harder to detect than E/S0/Sa galaxies.

## 3 Description of data

For all of the galaxies in our samples various data are available. These included redshifts, coarse blue magnitudes and angular sizes from the AGC, photometry from 2MASS and I-band photometry for the SFI2 sample. In the computation of absolute magnitudes a value of H$`{}_{}{}^{}=100h`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 is adopted.

### 3.1 I-band photometry

The I-band photometry available for the SFI2 sample is described in Haynes et al. (1999a). Quantities of particular interest are:

\- I-band axial ratio derived from a fit of elliptical surface brightness contours to the I-band images. The average error in $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ is 0.03.

\- radius measured at the I-band isophote of 23.5 mag arcsec-2.

\- total I-band magnitude. Calculated from an extrapolation of a fit to the disk to 8 scale lengths of the disk. Typical total errors are in the range 0.03-0.06 mag.

\- scale length of the disk derived from a fit to the one-dimensional I-band photometric profile.

### 3.2 Photometric quantities from the 2MASS XSC

The photometric quantities in the XSC are derived by inspecting the 2MASS images with the extended source processor (GALWORKS), which was developed for this purpose (see Jarrett et al. 2000). By the time the 2MASS images get to GALWORKS a point source spread function has already been derived for each image. GALWORKS identifies extended sources (galaxies as well as other more nearby resolved sources) and measures a variety of parameters for each one as described in Jarrett et al. (2000) and in the 2MASS Explanatory Supplement (Curtri et al., 2000). Very large galaxies (greater than 5′ in size at $`20`$th mag arcsec-2 in J-band) are first identified in in a separate large galaxy atlas333See: http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/2MASS/LGA/ and then added to the XSC. The quantities from the XSC that we use are:

\- J-band axial ratio fit to the 3$`\sigma `$ isophote (which is close to the 20th mag arcsec-2 isophote). The center of this ellipse fit is fixed to the peak intensity pixel and since only one isophote is fitted, it is an approximation to the ellipticity of the galaxy. If the 3$`\sigma `$ isophote is too close to the center of the galaxy the bulge might interfere with the derived ellipticity, making the galaxy appear more face-on than it really is. Of the three 2MASS bands, the J axial ratio should suffer the least from this effect; we note that no systematic offset is seen between the J-band and I-band axial ratios, as can be seen Figure 4d. An estimate of the average error of 0.1 in $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ is derived from the scatter in this plot; this is more than three times as large as the average error estimated for the equivalent I-band quantity.

\- semi-major axis of the isophotal elliptical aperture set to the 21st mag arcsec-2 isophote individually in each band. An alternative to this would have been the semi-major axis of the ellipse fit to the 20th mag arcsec-2 isophote, which is the preferred aperture in the XSC (Jarrett et al., 2003). In Section 5.1 it is shown that $`r_{21}`$ in J-band is at $`2.5`$ scale lengths of the disk ($`r_d`$), while in H and Ks it is $`3.3r_d`$. A similar analysis for $`r_{20}`$ shows that $`r_{20}^\mathrm{J}1.6r_d`$, and r$`{}_{21}{}^{\mathrm{H},\mathrm{K}}2.2r_d`$. We choose to use $`r_{21}`$ in order to trace the disks as far out as possible (which still is not far compared to $`r_{23.5}^I3.5r_d`$). Since the typical 1 $`\sigma `$ background noise is 21.4, 20.6 and 20.0 mag in J, H and Ks respectively (Jarrett et al., 2003), we must be careful in using the radii set to the 21st mag arcsec-2 level, especially in H and Ks. In J-band $`r_{21}`$ should be reasonably well defined, and does indeed show good correlation with $`r_{20}`$ with a scatter of about 3 ″. The same analysis for H and Ks shows a similar correlation with a slightly larger scatter (3.5″ and 4 ″ respectively). When $`r`$ is smaller than 7″ or greater than 120″ (for either isophote and in all bands) it does not follow the correlation well. These radii are not used.

\- magnitudes within the 21st mag arcsec-2 elliptical isophote set in J-band (referred to as “J fiducial” are used to construct colors because of the necessity of having a consistent aperture. The uncertainty on these magnitudes listed in the XSC is that associated with Poisson noise and background subtraction and does not include other errors such as the zero point calibration and the uncertainty in the elliptical isophotal aperture (see Jarrett et al. 2000 for more details). This formal uncertainty is small (with the largest quoted at only 0.2 mag) and the real uncertainty is likely to be larger. The “Level One Science Requirements” of 2MASS (which can be found in the on-line Explanatory Supplement) require that the extended source photometry be accurate and uniform to within 10% , and we assume this is a closer estimate of the error in the magnitudes.

\- magnitudes measured within the 21st mag arcsec-2 level set in J-band are used to construct colors.

\- XSC “extrapolated” magnitudes designed to represent the total magnitude of the galaxy. These magnitudes are derived from an extrapolation of the radial surface brightness profile from the 20th mag arcsec-2 elliptical isophote down to $`r_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ which is set to 5 times the scale length from the J-band fit. See Jarrett et al. (2003) for more details.

### 3.3 Corrections

In order to use the photometry from the 2MASS XSC to its best potential for our purposes, various corrections for seeing, galactic extinction and cosmological redshift need to be applied. These corrections have already been applied to the I-band quantities in a similar manner as that described below (for details, see Haynes et al. 1999a).

#### 3.3.1 Seeing correction

Figure 1a shows a plot of $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)_\mathrm{J}`$ vs. the 20th mag arcsec-2 isophotal radius (the approximate isophotal radius at which $`a/b`$ is reported). We see that there is a lack of galaxies with both high axial ratio and small size. This is due mainly to the resolution of the images set by the seeing and the pixel size.

In the XSC, seeing is characterized using a modified exponential of the form

$$f(r)=f(0)\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(\frac{r}{\alpha }\right)^{1/\beta }\right]$$
(1)
fit to many stars in each frame, where $`f(0)`$ is the central surface brightness, $`r`$ is the radius in arcseconds and $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are free parameters. The “radial shape” ($`\mathrm{sh}=\alpha \times \beta `$) is reported, and an approximate relation is given in the 2MASS Seeing and Image Statistics 4442MASS Seeing and Image Statistics (Cutrie 1998) is an on-line document found at: http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/roc/2mass/ to recover the full width at half maximum of the point spread function;

$$\mathrm{FWHM}(\mathrm{arcseconds})=3.13\mathrm{sh}0.46.$$
(2)
The mean value of this FWHM is about 2.5″ for the galaxies in our samples (the 2MASS raw images have a pixel size of 2″ which sets the lower limit on the resolution), and the spread is small. We derive a correction by numerically convolving exponential disks of varying inclination and angular sizes with a Gaussian of FWHM = 2.5″. Axial ratios are measured at a radial distance from the galaxy center of $`1.7r_d`$ (where $`r_d`$ refers to the scale length of the exponential disk), corresponding to $`r_{20}`$ in J-band (the ratio $`r_d/r_{20}`$ is obtained in the same way as $`r_d/r_{21}`$ in Section 5.1). The derived correction is parameterized as

$$(a/b)_{\mathrm{corr}}=(a/b)_{\mathrm{obs}}(10.02x+0.21x^20.01x^3)$$
(3)
with

$$x=\mathrm{FWHM}\left(\frac{a/b}{r_{20}}\right)_{\mathrm{measured}}$$
(4)
(where FWHM = 2.5″ is used in all cases and $`r_{20}`$ is measured in arcseconds in the J-band image). Hereafter, when we refer to the J-band axial ratio, we refer to the quantity corrected by the above equation. The result of the correction can be seen in Figure 1b. In a few cases where the galaxy is very small and highly inclined the correction is large so to avoid over-correcting a maximum value of $`a/b=1/0.12`$ is imposed and these galaxies are assumed to have an inclination of 90°. From Figure 1b it appears that the correction removes much but perhaps not all of the bias, so very small galaxies may appear less inclined than they really are. It should also be noted that the derived correction assumes light profiles are exponential, which may not be an ideal approximation within the $`r_{20}1.7r_d`$ radius in J-band where the contribution from a bulge may be significant.

#### 3.3.2 Galactic Extinction and K-corrections

Magnitudes are corrected for galactic (i.e. originating within the Milky Way) extinction using the DIRBE galactic extinction maps (Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis 1998). The column densities listed in the map are converted to extinction in the relevant bands by $`A_J=0.902E(BV)`$, $`A_H=0.576E(BV)`$ and $`A_K=0.367E(BV)`$. A small cosmological k-correction is also included using a simple linear fit to the low redshift end of the models of Poggianti (1997) which is $`k_J=0.68z`$, $`k_H=0.40z`$, and $`k_K=1.52z`$.

The magnitude in band X corrected for galactic extinction and cosmological k-correction is then

$$m_\mathrm{X}=m_\mathrm{X}^{\mathrm{obs}}A_\mathrm{X}+k_\mathrm{X}.$$
(5)
The isophotal radii also need to be corrected for galactic extinction. If we assume the disk photometric profiles are exponential with scale length $`r_d`$ in band X, then

$$r_\mathrm{X}^{\mathrm{iso}}=r_\mathrm{X}^{\mathrm{obs}}r_d\frac{A_\mathrm{X}}{1.086}$$
(6)
(since the surface brightness at radius $`r`$ in an exponential disk is given by $`\mu (r)=\mu (0)+1.086r/r_d`$). We also correct sizes for a cosmological stretch factor $`(1+z)^2`$.

## 4 Reddening

In this section we use the samples defined above in Section 2 to investigate the effects of internal extinction in the disks by investigating color gradients with inclination. This test has the advantage of suffering little from selection effects. For the SFI2 sample, we use the I-band axial ratios as the measure of inclination since these have errors almost three times smaller than the equivalent J-band measure from the XSC. The result is shown in Figure 2 in which colors (measured within an elliptical aperture with a semi-major axis of $`r_{21}`$ in J-band) are plotted vs. axial ratio. It is clear that reddening is present in all colors, which sets a lower limit to the extinction in the J and H bands by assuming that the extinction in Ks is negligible. Following G94 and others, we parameterize the internal extinction as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M=\gamma \mathrm{log}(a/b).$$
(7)
The lower limit on $`\gamma `$ is then 0.3 mag in J and 0.1 mag in H. The formal error in fitting this slope to the data is 0.01 mag in both cases, while the scatter in the relationship is 0.1 mag. If there is extinction present in Ks-band (i.e. $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}0`$), the actual values of $`\gamma `$ in J and H will be $`0.3+\gamma _\mathrm{K}`$ and $`0.1+\gamma _\mathrm{K}`$ respectively. An indication that the linear law of Eqn 7 may not be appropriate for the highest inclinations is apparent in panels (a) and (c) of Figure 2, an issue we’ll revisit below and in Section 6.

For the SFI2 sample, I-band magnitudes are also available. These magnitudes can be used to construct I-J, I-H and I-Ks colors, with the understanding that the apertures are not consistent between I and the other bands. This mismatch should not, in the first order, affect the slope of the reddening, just the absolute color. The results of this are shown in Figure 3. Under the assumption that the extinction in Ks is negligible, we derive a lower limit on the extinction in I-band of $`\gamma =0.94\pm 0.03`$ mag (where the error is the formal error in determining the slope). G94 find an extinction law of $`\gamma _I=1.05\pm 0.08`$, while Tully et al. (1998) derive $`\gamma _I1.0`$, suggesting that if the extinction in Ks is not equal to zero, it is likely to be small.

For the much larger AGC$`z`$ sample of galaxies (which does not have I-band photometry for all the galaxies), we can plot the J-H, J-Ks and H-Ks colors against the J-band axial ratios (Figure 4). Since the sample is large, we combine the points into averages in $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ bins which makes the inadequacy of a simple linear law for the relationship (as noted in Figure 2) stand out. We fit two separate lines respectively for $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ less than and greater than 0.5, and also include a quadratic fit for comparison. The parameterization of $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ with a linear law in Eqn 7 is an expedient form, and internal extinction can well depart from such a linear law, depending on the details of the relative distribution of stars and dust (see, e.g. Evans 1992 and G94). In most simulations, in fact, $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ steepens with increasing $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ as will be shown for a simple photometric model in Section 7. Our adoption of bi-linear and quadratic fits reflects a least departure from simple expediency. The location of the break in the bi-linear law at $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)=0.5`$ for all color trends is also practical but arbitrary. The slopes of the bi-linear relation are 0.10 $`\pm `$ 0.02 and 0.31 $`\pm `$ 0.05 for J-H, 0.05 $`\pm `$ 0.02 and 0.15 $`\pm `$ 0.05 for H-Ks, and 0.15 $`\pm `$ 0.02 and 0.46 $`\pm `$ 0.05 for J-Ks. The quadratic fit is 0.65(20) - 0.03(1)$`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ \+ 0.24(2)$`[\mathrm{log}(a/b)]^2`$ for J-H, 0.31(25) - 0.04(2)$`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ \+ 0.14(2)$`[\mathrm{log}(a/b)]^2`$ for H-Ks, and 0.97(28) - 0.07(2)$`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ \+ 0.39(3)$`[\mathrm{log}(a/b)]^2`$ for J-Ks.

## 5 Effect of inclination on isophotal radius

### 5.1 Formal corrections for inclination

If a galaxy is completely opaque within a given isophotal radius in the face-on perspective then no change in the measured radius is expected with inclination. If it is assumed that the face-on disk is transparent at that radius, then the isophotal radius should increase as the disk is tilted and we look through a longer path length. The expected change derived for the simple case of a pure exponential disk is

$$r_{iso}=r_{iso}^{}+2.302r_d^{}\mathrm{log}(a/b)$$
(8)
where $`r_{iso}^{}`$ and $`r_d^{}`$ are respectively the isophotal radius and the disk scale length in the face-on case. If we assume that the scale length changes with inclination like $`r_{iso}`$ (which is justified by the observation that the ratio $`r_d/r_{21}`$ does not change with inclination, as seen below) then we derive

$$\frac{r_{iso}}{r_{iso}^{}}=1+2.302\frac{r_d}{r_{iso}}\mathrm{log}(a/b).$$
(9)
We have the scale lengths in I-band measured for the SFI2 sample and make the assumption that scale lengths do not change significantly between I, J, H and Ks-band, as found by de Jong (1996) from a sample of 86 face-on spiral galaxies. In their sample, scale length is seen to decrease as the wavelength increases, but not significantly between I and K. A measure of the scale length is provided in the XSC for all of the galaxies in our sample, but given the notorious difficulties with fitting scale lengths, we choose not to use that automated measure here, and only use scale lengths from the SFI2 sample fit “by hand” (see Haynes et al. (1999a) for more details on the SFI2 scale lengths). Using these scale lengths we estimate $`r_d/r_{21}=0.4\pm 0.1,0.3\pm 0.1`$ and $`0.3\pm 0.1`$ in J, H and Ks for the SFI2 galaxies (where the error here is the scatter in the sample), and we assume that these ratios hold for all the galaxies in the AGC$`z`$ sample. The ratio $`r_d/r_{21}`$ in Ks may be slightly smaller than in H, but this is within the errors. No significant dependence of the ratio on inclination is observed in any band. We note that the $`r_d/r_{21}`$ ratios imply that $`r_{21}^J`$ is at only $`2.5\pm 0.6`$ scale lengths out in the disk, while in H and Ks, $`r_{21}`$ is still at only $`3.3\pm 1.1`$ scale lengths. The commonly reported isophotal radius at I-band is $`r_{23.5}`$ at 3.5-4 scale lengths which is further out than $`r_{21}^\mathrm{J}`$.

If the face-on disks were transparent at $`r_{21}`$ we can rewrite Eqn 9 as

$$r_{21}/r_{21}^{}=1+\delta \mathrm{log}(a/b)$$
(10)
where $`\delta =0.9\pm 0.3,0.7\pm 0.2`$ and $`0.7\pm 0.2`$ in J, H and Ks respectively, when we use the $`r_d/r_{21}`$ values given above. The isophotal radius does not change ($`\delta =0`$) if the disk is opaque at $`r_{21}`$ so $`\delta `$ must decrease as the disk becomes less transparent. The main limitation on Eqn 9 is that it assumes that the photometric profile is exponential, while it is expected that the importance of the bulge light increases in these NIR bands.

### 5.2 Are disks transparent at $`r_{21}`$?

Here we test the often made assumption that the outer disks of galaxies are transparent, especially in the NIR. Suppose that stars and dust are exponentially distributed with scale lengths $`r_d^{\mathrm{dust}}=r_d^{}=r_d`$. The disk opacity at radius $`r`$ and inclination $`i`$ is then

$$\tau (r,i)=\frac{\tau ^{}(0)\mathrm{exp}(r/r_d)}{\mathrm{cos}i}$$
(11)
where $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ is the opacity at $`r=0`$ in the face-on perspective. There have been many attempts to derive $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ for spiral galaxies. G94 derive an upper limit in I-band of $`\tau _I^{}(0)<5`$ using statistical arguments with a sample of about 2000 Sc galaxies. A lower estimate of $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ was obtained by Xilouris et al. (1999): they claim that $`\tau ^{}(0)<1`$ in 7 edge-on spiral galaxies they model in K, J, I, V and B-bands. Kuchinski et al. (1998) derive values of $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ using BVRIJHK photometry and radiative transfer models for 15 spiral galaxies. They adopt values in the ranges of 0.15-0.6, 0.1-0.4, and 0.05-0.2 for J, H and K respectively. Moriondo et al. (1998) find $`\tau ^{}(0)=`$0.3-0.5 in H-band from a sample of 154 galaxies. Even if $`\tau _I^{}(0)`$ were as high as $`5`$ it is easy to see that at $`r_{23.5,\mathrm{I}}3.5r_d^{}`$ the disk is close to transparent out to quite high inclinations. However it has been shown above that $`r_{21}`$ in J, H and Ks is closer to the center of the disk than $`r_{23.5,\mathrm{I}}`$ so (in the above model) even for relatively low values of $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ the opacity could become significant in a highly inclined disk. Figure 5 shows the inclination at which the galaxy becomes optically thick ($`\tau =1`$) plotted as a function of the radial distance for $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ varying between 0.25 and 10.

At $`r_{21}`$ in J-band, which is $`2.5\pm 0.6`$ $`r_d`$, the disk can become opaque before it is fully inclined for even the smaller $`\tau ^{}(0)`$. If we interpret the change of slope for high inclinations shown in Figures 4 and 8a as the onset of $`\tau 1`$ at $`r_{21}`$, a “break” for J-band ($`r_{21,\mathrm{J}}2.5r_d`$) and H and Ks ($`r_{21,\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{K}}3.3r_d`$) near $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)0.5`$ would suggest that the disk opacity in the J, H and Ks bands, while low, is non-negligible and that even at $`r_{21}`$ an important fraction of the light is extincted when disks are edge-on.

Recent studies suggest that the dust scale length is larger than that of the stars, see for example Moriondo et al. (1998) who use $`r_d^{\mathrm{dust}}=\xi r_d^{}`$ with $`\xi =1.5`$. In the above model this simply changes the position of $`r_{21}`$with respect to the dust scale length so that for example $`r_{21,\mathrm{J}}2.5r_d^{}(2.5/\xi )r_d^{\mathrm{dust}}`$. In that case a lower central face-on opacity is required to explain the behavior.

### 5.3 A statistical test for the inclination dependence of isophotal radius

It is possible to test the mean change in isophotal radius with inclination in a statistical way using large samples of galaxies. For the test described below, the biases introduced by the selection function of the sample can be quite severe. In order to keep track of these effects, we use only galaxies north of declination $`=3`$° from the AGC$`z`$, since that region is known to be more homogeneously and completely sampled in the catalog. Most of the galaxies in the AGC were originally identified by eye from photographic plates on which small, dim galaxies are easier to pick out if they are edge-on. In an attempt to remove this bias we also restrict the sample to B $`<`$ 15.5. The samples are then further reduced to be flux limited (using $`m_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ from the XSC) or angular size limited (using $`r_{21}`$) within each band. The final 6 subsamples are taken to represent complete flux or angular size limited samples, and are summarized in Table 1.

For either size or flux-limited samples, the mean value of $`r_{\mathrm{iso}}=r_{21}`$, expressed in kpc, will increase with distance. In order to remove this simple manifestation of the Malmquist bias, we divide our sample into five distance groups with the same number of galaxies in each. Within each group the mean of $`r_{21}`$ is then computed in bins of $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$. These bins all have an equal number of galaxies in them ($``$30-60 depending on the size of the subgroup). Since there are few galaxies at high inclinations this restricts analysis of subgroups to $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)<`$ 0.7-0.8 in most cases. In each of the bins the values of $`<r_{21}>_{\mathrm{log}(a/b)}`$ are scaled by the mean of the value for the whole distance group ($`<r_{21}>_{\mathrm{dist}}`$). A relation $`c_1+c_2\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ is fit to the points and the value of $`\delta `$ (see Eqn 10) is calculated as $`c_2/c_1`$. The results in Ks-band for both the size and flux-limited sub-samples are shown in Figure 6, and are summarized for each band in Table 2 along with the values of $`\delta `$ derived in Section 5.1 for the case of an exponential disk which is transparent at $`r_{21}`$.

A comparison of panels 6a and 6b, constructed from flux and angular size-limited samples respectively, well illustrates the amplitude of the bias introduced by the character of the sample. This is explained as follows; as disks become more inclined, on average $`r_{21}`$ moves out and the total magnitude dims (assuming that the galaxies are neither totally transparent throughout the whole disk or totally opaque at $`r_{21}`$). In a sample defined by a threshold angular size, $`r_{\mathrm{min}}`$, galaxies that in the face-on perspective would be smaller than $`r_{\mathrm{min}}`$ (and thus excluded from the sample) at high inclinations will appear to have a size greater than $`r_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and will be included in the sample. As a result, this sample will exhibit a shallow $`r_{\mathrm{iso}}`$ v. $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ slope as shown by Figure 6b. Alternatively, in a magnitude limited sample, intrinsically larger galaxies fall below the threshold magnitude if they are edge-on due to the dimming caused by extinction. This will have the effect of steepening the slope, as seen in Figure 6a.

Note that if disks were opaque, $`r_{21}`$ would not change with inclination ($`\delta =0`$), and this result would be recovered by the analysis of an angular size-limited sample. On the other hand, if the disk dimming due to internal extinction is small or negligible, a flux-limited sample will return the correct value of $`\delta `$ through an analysis such as that represented in Figure 6a. The presumption of very low dimming at Ks-band, supported by the results discussed in Section 4, is further supported by the similarity of the value of $`\delta `$ in columns 1 and 3 of Table 3 for Ks-band. A final choice on the value of $`\delta `$ in each band needs to be made after an estimate of the amount of internal extinction so will be discussed in Section 6.3. It is probably safe to assume there is very little extinction in Ks so we can conclude here that $`\delta _K=0.7\pm 0.1`$.

## 6 Effect of inclination on magnitude

### 6.1 Formal corrections for inclination

Note that if the disks of galaxies are completely transparent all the way to the center, then there should be no change in the total magnitude with inclination (i.e. $`\gamma =0`$) , while the magnitude enclosed within a fixed isophote will brighten as the physical radius at which it is measured moves out. If the disks are completely opaque, then both the total and isophotal magnitudes will dim by an amount 2.5 $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$.

### 6.2 A statistical test for the inclination dependence of total magnitude

We test for the inclination dependence of the total magnitude (here taken to be $`m_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ as described in Section 3.3) using a method similar to that described in Section 5.3. We fit a relation $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=\gamma \mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ to the mean values of the magnitude binned in $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ within five separate distance groups. We use the flux and angular size limited samples described in Section 5.3, since (as for the test in Section 5.3) the interpretation must take into account bias introduced by the selection function of the sample. For an angular size limited sample with threshold $`r_{\mathrm{min}}`$, if the disk is not completely opaque all the way through, then $`\gamma `$ will be increased as intrinsically small and dim galaxies move above $`r_{\mathrm{min}}`$ at high inclinations. If the disks are completely opaque, this type of sample would recover the exact result of $`\gamma =2.5`$ as the angular sizes are unaffected by inclination. For a flux limited sample, and if the galaxies are not completely transparent, internal extinction will dim galaxies at higher inclinations and force $`\gamma `$ to be smaller. If the disks are completely transparent, this sample would recover the exact result of no change of total magnitude with inclination. The change in $`\gamma `$ with sample selection is observed in all photometric bands explored here (as summarized in Table 3), providing further evidence that galaxies are neither completely opaque nor completely transparent in these bands. We note that under the assumption of little extinction in Ks, the flux-limited sample in that band should give a value of $`\gamma `$ very close to the real value. This implies $`\gamma _K=0.2\pm 0.1`$. In the other bands, J and H, we use this test to provide upper and lower limits to the actual extinction law as parameterized by $`\gamma `$.

### 6.3 The Modified Holmberg Test

Following G94 we use a modified version of the Holmberg test (Holmberg 1958, 1975). Define $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}=m_{\mathrm{iso}}+5\mathrm{log}r_{\mathrm{iso}}`$ as the surface brightness within an elliptical aperture with semi-major axis $`r_{\mathrm{iso}}`$. The original Holmberg test consists of measuring the change of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ with disk inclination. Unfortunately a similar trend can be found in both opaque and transparent galaxies. If the galaxy is totally opaque we expect that the radius at which a given isophote is measured will not shift with inclination and that the magnitude will dim by 2.5 $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$, so a slope of 2.5 is expected. In the fully transparent case, fixed brightness isophotes will move to larger radii as the galaxies are tilted which will also decrease $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$. From Eqn. 8 this geometric dilution alone (i.e. not taking into account the change in the isophotal magnitude as the aperture changes) is given by

$$5\mathrm{log}(r_{21,a}/r_{21,b})=5\mathrm{log}\left[\frac{1+2.302(r_d^{}/r_{21}^{})\mathrm{log}(a/b)_a}{1+2.302(r_d^{}/r_{21}^{})\mathrm{log}(a/b)_b}\right]$$
(12)
between axial ratios $`(a/b)_a`$ and $`(a/b)_b`$. This would give a change in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ between $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ = 0 and 1 of 1.1 $`\pm `$ 0.3 for the $`r_d/r_{21}`$ derived in Section 5.1 in H and Ks and 1.4 $`\pm `$ 0.3 in J (where the errors indicate the scatter in $`r_d/r_{21}`$). These values provide an upper limit to the change since the isophotal magnitude will brighten slightly as the aperture increases.

Here, we do not use the isophotal magnitude, but rather a measure of the total magnitude (extrapolated magnitude from the XSC), to remove the effects of the physical size of the aperture changing with inclination. $`r_{\mathrm{iso}}`$ is respectively $`r_{21,\mathrm{J}}`$, $`r_{21,\mathrm{H}}`$ and $`r_{21,\mathrm{K}}`$ for the three 2MASS bands. In the following discussion we will refer to this radius as $`r_{21}`$, with the understanding that it is separately measured in each of the three bands. The slope fit to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}=m_{\mathrm{ext}}+5\mathrm{log}r_{21}`$ vs. $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ for galaxies in the AGC$`z`$ sample with lower inclinations (below $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)=0.5`$) is 2.0 $`\pm `$ 0.1 in J, 1.6 $`\pm `$ 0.1 in H and 1.3 $`\pm `$ 0.1 in Ks. Since this is higher than the values given above for the transparent case we take it to be indication that there is extinction present in the inner parts of these galaxies, while the outer parts are largely transparent. This is supported by the radial variation of colors and surface brightness seen in large galaxies in the XSC (Jarrett et al., 2003). If the disk is transparent at the edges but not in the center, the change of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}=m_{\mathrm{ext}}+5\mathrm{log}r_{\mathrm{iso}}`$ from face-on to edge-on will be larger than the values for geometric dilution alone and can in fact be larger than 2.5 as there will be some dimming of the magnitude which is dominated by light from the inner parts of the disk.

In order to remove the effect introduced by an inclination dependence of the isophotal radius, we adopt a modified version of the Holmberg test in which the isophotal radius in the face-on view is derived via Eqn 10. The value of $`\delta `$ which is used in Eqn 10 can significantly change the resulting slope. This is illustrated in Figure 7 which shows the standard Holmberg test (for galaxies observed in Ks-band) as well as the test with corrections using $`\delta `$ = 0.6, 0.7 and 0.8 (spanning the error range for $`\delta _\mathrm{K}`$ discussed in Section 5).

We will discuss the obvious up turn of these relationships further in Section 7 but for now deal with the low inclination ($`\mathrm{log}(a/b)<0.5`$) and high inclination ($`\mathrm{log}(a/b)0.5`$) regions separately. At the low inclinations in Ks-band, $`\gamma `$ changes from 0.31 (with $`\delta =0.6`$) to 0.05 ($`\delta =0.8`$); a significant difference within the plausible range of $`\delta `$. As a consequence of this interdependency, the best values of $`\delta `$ and $`\gamma `$ must be decided upon together. Considering all the available evidence (Sections 5.1, 5.3 and 6.2) we adopt $`\delta =0.7`$ in Ks-band, $`\delta =0.7`$ in H-band, and $`\delta =0.9`$ in J-band. As a comparison, Moriondo et al. (1998) derive $`\delta _\mathrm{H}=0.85\pm 0.16`$ at the same isophotal level (from their sample of 154 galaxies). The results for just these values of $`\delta `$ in J and H can be seen in Figure 8, while the test with the chosen value of $`\delta `$ in Ks-band is shown in Figure 7c. We thus derive $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}=0.48\pm 0.15`$, $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}=0.39\pm 0.15`$, and $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}=0.26\pm 0.15`$ for $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)<0.5`$ from this test (where the error indicates the variation in the value within the adopted value of $`\delta \pm 0.1`$. Similar values of $`\gamma _H=0.16\pm 0.22`$ (Moriondo et al., 1998) and $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}0.22`$ (Tully et al., 1998) have been found before, although Graham (2001) and others suggest $`\gamma _K0`$. While the variation of $`\gamma `$ with the wavelength band depends on the detailed form of the geometric mixing of stars and dust, it is interesting to note that, in the simple geometric case of a foreground absorbing screen model, the extinction curve of our galaxy would yield $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}=0.5`$, $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}=0.3`$, and $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}=0.2`$, if $`\gamma _\mathrm{I}=1.0`$ (see G94, Tully et al. 1998, Schlegel et al. 1998).

At the higher inclinations (above $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)=0.5`$) the modified Holmberg test is not appropriate as the disk is probably not completely transparent at $`r_{21}`$. The values of $`\delta `$ used to correct to the face-on value of $`r_{21}`$ are therefore too large which artificially lowers the change in the average surface brightness and leads to an underestimate for $`\gamma `$. The standard Holmberg test (i.e. $`\delta =0`$) does not work either. As discussed above, if there is significant extinction present in the inner parts of the disks where most of the light comes from, but the outer edges are still at least partly transparent, the slope of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ vs. $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ can be larger than 2.5 and so is obviously an overestimate of $`\gamma `$. This is observed in J, H and Ks (the slopes are 2.9$`\pm `$0.2, 2.4$`\pm `$0.2 and 2.4$`\pm `$0.2 respectively), providing evidence that the most inclined galaxies are not totally opaque or transparent at $`r_{21}`$, and that there is significant extinction in the central regions. Since the extinction is lowest in Ks we expect that the disk is closest to transparent at $`r_{21}`$ in this band and therefore adopt the slope of the modified Holmberg test here to give a tentative value of $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}1.1\pm 0.2`$ for the more inclined galaxies (up to $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)0.85`$). We then use the slopes of the reddening in J-Ks and H-Ks (above $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)=0.5`$: $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}\gamma _\mathrm{K}=0.46\pm 0.05`$ and $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}\gamma _\mathrm{K}=0.31\pm 0.05`$ from Figure 4.) to suggest $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}1.6\pm 0.2`$ and $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}1.4\pm 0.2`$. The difference between the bi-linear and quadratic fit is quite small (as can be seen in Figure 8), so we also provide a smooth fit to the points giving $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}=0.12(15)+1.14(15)\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$, $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}=0.25(15)+1.12(15)\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ and $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}=0.53(15)+1.23(15)\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$. Below $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)=0.1,0.2`$, and 0.4 in J, H and Ks respectively the value for the correction should be zero – the upturn in the quadratic fit at low inclination is obviously unphysical.

## 7 Photometric Model

Here we investigate a simple photometric model which can be used to explain the upturn in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ vs. $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ relation at high $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ seen in all three bands. The model used is that described in Section 9 of G94 which is based on the “triple exponential” model of Disney et al. (1989). This model assumes that the dust is distributed in the disk with an exponential scale length equal to the stars and that the $`z`$ distributions are also exponential with a ratio $`\zeta `$ between the scale height of the dust and the stars. The face-on central surface brightness, $`\tau ^{}(0)`$ can be specified, as can the ratio, $`q`$, between the scale height and scale length of the stars. We use the “standard galaxy” of G94 which has 7% of the light in a central bulge.

Figure 9 shows the difference between the magnitude at a given axial ratio and the face-on magnitude calculated for various inputs to the model. In the model the upturn becomes more noticeable with increasing $`q`$ (i.e. as the disk becomes thicker) and as the central face-on opacity decreases. The ratio between the thickness of the disk in the dust and stars has a much smaller effect as shown in Figure 9b.

Figure 10 shows our “best fit” to the Holmberg test points (Section 6.3). Note that at high inclinations the points are artificially lowered (see discussion in Section 6.3). The simple photometric model described here can explain the observed behavior. While the dependence of the models on the dust-to-stars thickness ratio is weak, best fit models favor low values of $`\zeta `$. This is consistent with the expectation that stellar disks may appear somewhat thicker in NIR light, as they are dominated by an older stellar population. The models shown in Figure 10 were computed for $`\zeta =0.5`$. The other parameters of the model are $`\tau ^{}(0)=1.1`$, $`q=0.14`$ in J-band, $`\tau ^{}(0)=0.7`$, $`q=0.14`$ in H-band and $`\tau ^{}(0)=0.3`$, $`q=0.15`$ in K-band. Reassuringly, the central face-on opacity of the best fit model decreases with increasing wavelength. Given the uncertainties in the Holmberg test (see Section 6.3) this model should be taken with caution, but does provide a plausible explanation for what is observed.

## 8 Luminosity dependence

Here we use the AGC$`z`$ sample of 15,244 galaxies to search for luminosity dependences of the extinction laws, as was done in both Giovanelli et al. (1995) and Tully et al. (1998). As a measure of the total luminosity of the galaxy we use $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{K}}5\mathrm{log}h`$ in K-band since this is least affected by internal extinction. The luminosity distribution is shown in Figure 11. The peak of the distribution is at $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{K}}5\mathrm{log}h=23`$, which is near to $`M_{}`$ in K-band (Kochanek et al., 2001) and most of the galaxies in the sample are within one magnitude of this.

The expected dependence is that brighter galaxies will show more internal extinction at a given inclination than dimmer ones. This is due both to the increase in physical size (and thus optical path lengths) and to the increase in metallicity (and thus presumably dust content) in the more luminous galaxies.

### 8.1 Isophotal radius

Here we derive a parametric relation for the change of $`\delta `$ in $`r_{21}/r_{21}^{}=1+\delta \mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ with total luminosity as measured by $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{K}}5\mathrm{log}h`$. We discussed the expected value of $`\delta `$ for an exponential disk with scale length $`r_d`$ which is transparent at $`r_{21}`$ in Section 5.1. This is given by $`2.302r_d/r_{21}`$ and is shown by the points in Figure 12 for galaxies from the SFI2 sample in 9 bins of luminosity (each with an equal number of galaxies). There is a clear trend for the ratio $`r_d/r_{21}`$ (and thus $`\delta `$ if the disks are transparent at $`r_{21}`$) to decrease with luminosity, as was also found by Giovanelli et al. (1995) in I-band, who also discuss why this trend is to be expected. We fit a cubic to these points which we truncate at both the highest and lowest luminosities. These fits are shown by the solid lines in Figure 12 and the fit parameters are listed in Table 4.

### 8.2 Magnitude

Here we apply the “modified Holmberg test” discussed in Section 6.3 to the full AGC$`z`$ sample to investigate the dependence of internal extinction (as parameterized by $`\gamma `$ in Eqn 7) on galaxy luminosity. We divide the sample into 10 luminosity bins with $``$ 1500 galaxies per bin. We correct the isophotal radius to the face-one view using the cubic fit to the points in Figure 12. We then fit a single linear law to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ vs. $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ for each luminosity bin as the subdivision in luminosity bins restricts statistics, especially at high inclinations.

The extent of the luminosity dependence of $`\gamma `$ depends critically on the value $`\delta `$ used to correct radii to the face-on values. In the modified Holmberg test, an over-estimate of $`\delta `$ leads to an under-estimate of $`\gamma `$ (and vice-versa). Since $`\delta `$ clearly decreases with luminosity, using a constant value of $`\delta `$ for all galaxies thus leads to an over-estimate of $`\gamma `$ at low luminosities and an under-estimate at high luminosities and suppresses the expected luminosity dependence. The cubic fit in Figure 12 follows luminosity dependence of $`\delta `$ (under the assumption of transparency at $`r_{21}`$) and should be used here. The values of $`\gamma `$ derived by using this $`\delta `$ are shown in Figure 13 as a function of luminosity. We find that over much of the range of luminosities the value of $`\gamma `$ is roughly constant in each band. In support of this we observe that the slope of the reddening does not change much with luminosity. It is clear that at low luminosities the extinction in these bands does decrease significantly and (unlike as found for galaxies in I-band by Giovanelli et al. 1995) does fall off to zero for galaxies less luminous than $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{K}}5\mathrm{log}h=20`$, -20.7 and -20.9 in J, H and Ks respectively. The solid line in Figure 13 shows our adopted luminosity dependence for $`\gamma `$, which is broken into two regions. The relation is $`\gamma _J=0.26x+0.77`$, $`\gamma _H=0.26x+0.58`$, and $`\gamma _K=0.13x+0.31`$, for $`x>0.8`$, and $`\gamma _J=0.04x+0.60`$, $`\gamma _H=0.01x+0.38`$, and $`\gamma _K=0.20`$, for $`x<0.8`$ (where $`x=\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{K}}5\mathrm{log}h+23`$). It should be noted that a straight line can fit within the errors on the points (dotted line in Figure 13), which are $`\pm 0.15`$ in $`\gamma `$.

If the assumption of transparency at $`r_{21}`$ is not valid then we are over-estimating $`\delta `$ and thus under-estimating $`\gamma `$. High luminosity galaxies have more extinction, but $`r_{21}`$$`/r_d`$ is also larger in these galaxies which could mean that they are more likely to be transparent at $`r_{21}`$ than low luminosity galaxies. What bias the assumption of transparency might introduce into this determinations of the luminosity dependence of $`\gamma `$ is not clear.

## 9 Conclusions

Two samples of spiral galaxies are constructed, both of which have photometry from 2MASS and redshifts from the AGC. For the smaller sample (which has over 3000 galaxies), I-band photometry is also available. We apply a variety of statistical tests to look for disk inclination dependences in these galaxies. The results of these tests can be highly sensitive to the selection function of the sample and some interdependencies exist, but taken together they provide reliable information on the average internal extinction in the galaxies. We parameterize internal extinction via Eqn 7 and change of the isophotal radius via Eqn 10; these results are summarized in Tables 4 and 5, where the numbers between brackets indicate the error on the last digit of the parameter value.

From the trends of NIR color with inclination in the SFI2 sample, we derive a firm lower limit to the total extinction in J and H-band of $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}=0.3+\gamma _\mathrm{K}`$ mag and $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}=0.1+\gamma _\mathrm{K}`$ mag respectively. The scatter in these trends is on the order of 0.1 mag, while the statistical error on determining the slope is 0.01 mag. Using the same argument, we derive a lower limit on the extinction in I-band of $`0.9+\gamma _\mathrm{K}`$ mag, which when compared with those derived by G94 and Tully et al. (1998), is consistent with very low extinction in Ks-band. Using the much larger AGC$`z`$ sample, we note that the simple linear relation given by Eqn 7 does not adequately describe the variation of the 2MASS colors with inclination, but an upturn at high inclinations takes place instead which we fit with a bi-linear law.

The radius $`r_{21}`$ is seen to be closer to the center of the disk in J, H and Ks ($`2`$-3 scale lengths) than $`r_{23.5}`$ in I-band (at 3.5-4 scale lengths), and we work through a simple model to estimate at what inclination the disk might become opaque at that radius for a given central face-on opacity. Using samples defined according to different selection criteria, we explore the inclination dependence of $`r_{21}`$ and compare the data with the dependence that would be expected for pure exponential disks which are transparent at $`r_{21}`$ at all inclinations. We find that complete transparency at $`r_{21}`$ is inconsistent with the data of very nearly edge-on galaxies. Upper and lower limits are estimated for $`\delta `$ (as defined by Eqn 10), and we adopt as most probable values $`\delta _\mathrm{J}0.9\pm 0.1`$, $`\delta _\mathrm{H}=0.7\pm 0.1`$ and $`\delta _\mathrm{K}=0.7\pm 0.1`$.

Tracking the flux dependence on inclination and using a modified version of the Holmberg test we investigate the amount of internal extinction in disks in the three bands. This analysis confirms that a simple value of $`\gamma `$ (as defined by Eqn 7) is not adequate to describe extinction for all values of $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$. Because of this we fit a bi-linear law fitting separately high and low inclination systems as separated by $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)=0.5`$. The value of $`\gamma `$ calculated from this test is sensitive to how the isophotal radii are corrected to the face-on value (i.e. the value of $`\delta `$ that is used in Eqn 10) and can change by a significant amount. Using the adopted values of $`\delta `$ we find $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}=0.48\pm 0.15`$, $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}=0.39\pm 0.15`$, and $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}=0.26\pm 0.15`$ for $`\mathrm{log}(a/b)<0.5`$. If $`\delta `$ is increased, $`\gamma `$ decreases and vice-versa.

At the higher inclinations the modified Holmberg test is not appropriate as we expect a much smaller variation of $`r_{21}`$ with inclination than is corrected for. This implies that the measured slope is only a lower limit to the value of $`\gamma `$ in Eqn 7. We expect that the limit will be closest to the actual value of $`\gamma `$ in Ks where the extinction is lowest and therefore adopt $`\gamma _\mathrm{K}=1.1\pm 0.2+0.13/\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$. Using information on reddening we then derive $`\gamma _\mathrm{J}=1.6\pm 0.2+0.24/\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$ and $`\gamma _\mathrm{H}=1.4\pm 0.2+0.20/\mathrm{log}(a/b)`$.

We explore a simple photometric model for extinction due to dust in spiral galaxies. In the model the dust is distributed exponentially both radially and in the $`z`$-direction. The scale length of the dust is assumed to be the same as the stars, while a ratio $`\zeta `$ is assumed between the scale heights. The “best fit” models to the data (all with $`\zeta =0.5`$) suggest a central face-on opacity, $`\tau ^{}(0)=1.1`$ and intrinsic axial ratio, $`q=0.14`$ for J-band, $`\tau ^{}(0)=0.7`$ and $`q=0.14`$ for H-band and $`\tau ^{}(0)=0.3`$ and $`q=0.15`$ for Ks-band. This model explains well the upturn in the extinction at high inclinations, which becomes more obvious for lower values of $`\tau ^{}(0)`$.

In Tables 4 and 5 we give estimates of our favored solutions for $`\delta `$ in Eqn 10 and $`\gamma `$ in Eqn 7 as compromises of derivations from different methods. They are listed in the row labelled “Adopted”.

Finally, we explore the luminosity dependence of $`\delta `$ and $`\gamma `$. Under the assumption of transparency at $`r_{21}`$ the value of $`\delta `$ decreases with luminosity. We use the modified Holmberg test to explore the luminosity dependence of $`\gamma `$ and find that the extinction drops off to zero below a luminosity of $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{ext},\mathrm{K}}5\mathrm{log}h=20`$, -20.7 and -20.9 in J, H and Ks respectively. and is roughly constant at $`\gamma =0.61`$, 0.39 and 0.19 at the higher luminosities. There is marginal evidence of further increase at the very highest luminosities. The adopted luminosity dependences are also listed in Tables 4 and 5.

We have explored the commonly held view that there is little internal extinction in external galaxies at NIR wavelengths, especially Ks-band. We have shown that except for the least luminous galaxies, there is evidence for internal extinction (which increases with luminosity), and that in the most inclined galaxies the extinction becomes significant.

We are very grateful to Dr. Tom Jarrett for his help in accessing the 2MASS Full release Extended Source Catalog and for his reading and comments on the paper. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This work has been partially supported by the NSF Grant No. AST-0098526.