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# ROSAT HRI and ASCA Observations of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 6946 and Its Northeast Complex of Luminous SNRs

## 1 Introduction

The first step in the study of the X-ray emission from spiral galaxies is the identification and characterization of a galaxy’s point and extended sources, followed by a comparison of these source types across a broad range of galaxy properties. Prior to the launch of ROSAT in 1990, X-ray observations of spiral galaxies were limited to Local Group members or a few bright and relatively nearby galaxies such as M51, M81, and M83 (e.g., Fabbiano (1992) and references therein). ROSAT greatly expanded the number of galaxies for which more detailed observations could be undertaken due in part to a sharper point spread function and a lower detector background (Pfeffermann et al., 1986).

X-ray emission from the face-on, nearby, spiral galaxy NGC 6946 (d=5.1Mpc, deVaucouleurs 1979; NH $``$2–3$`\times `$1021 cm-2, Burstein & Heiles 1984) was first observed with Einstein (Fabbiano & Trinchieri, 1987). However, the relatively low spatial resolution of the data was insufficient to permit individual source identifications. More recent ROSAT PSPC observations detected about 10 sources (Schlegel, 1994a), two of which have been identified as counterparts to optically-detected supernova remnants (SNRs) (Schlegel, 1994b; Blair & Fesen, 1994; Van Dyk et al., 1994; Matonick & Fesen, 1997). One of these is of particular interest due to its unusually high optical and X-ray luminosity ($``$1040 erg s-1 in the 0.2–2.0 keV band). Despite unusually high optical, radio, and X-ray luminosities suggestive of a young SNR, optical spectral data showed only relatively low expansion velocities. A Hubble Space Telescope observation of this source has revealed that it is actually a complex of two or more unusually luminous remnants with an especially bright region marking an apparently strong collision between two of the remnants (Blair, Fesen, & Schlegel, 2000) (hereafter BFS00). The NGC 6946 SNR complex may be a younger example of the double SNR DEM L316 in the LMC (Williams et al., 1997). Dunne, Gruendl, & Chu (2000) present an alternative interpretation, describing MF16 as the interaction of a strong wind with a nitrogen-rich circumstellar medium.

In addition to the X-ray point sources, unresolved emission was also detected across much of the galaxy in the PSPC data (Schlegel, 1994a). This emission was interpreted as arising from a diffuse component likely representing emission from the galaxy’s hot interstellar medium.

In this paper, we present both the ROSAT HRI image and an ASCA CCD observation (Tanaka, Inoue, & Holt, 1994) of NGC 6946. These data consist of images of the galaxy and a spectrum of the extraordinary SNR, hereafter called MF16 (the 16th entry on the SNR list of Matonick & Fesen 1997).

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 ROSAT HRI and PSPC

The ROSAT HRI was used to observe NGC 6946 for 60.3 ksec spread across 15 days in 1994 May (Table 1). We used the HRI analysis software assembled by S. Snowden (Snowden, 1998) to remove the particle background from the data, leaving 59.6 ksec of deadtime-corrected exposure. Figure 1 shows the results after filtering and smoothing with an pyramid-shaped, adaptive filter (Lorenz et al., 1993) of 10 counts. The 10-count criterion represents a compromise between the preservation of spatial resolution and accumulating a high signal-to-noise ratio across the entire image. The HRI data have been overlaid onto an optical image from the digitized Palomar Sky Survey in Figure 2.

Point sources were detected using the Chandra Observatory’s wavdetect program, based on the wavelet code of Micela et al. (1996). We used a detection criterion of 1.0$`\times `$10-6 which permits at most $``$1 false source. Point sources have been labeled and correspond to the entries in Table 2. The luminosities in Table 2 are tabulated for the 0.5-2.0 keV band assuming a 1 keV thermal bremsstrahlung spectrum absorbed by a Galactic column NH of 2.5$`\times `$1021 cm-2. The luminosities differ from the adopted model by $``$25% if the adopted model temperature is instead set to 5-7 keV.

Since the ROSAT PSPC data were published (Schlegel, 1994a), several improvements in the pipeline processing have been made, particularly in the corrections for the boresight and aspect (Briel et al., 1996). The data were obtained in 1992 June (Table 1). The re-processed data were filtered using the diffuse analysis procedures available from the ROSAT data center and described by Snowden (1995). After screening the data for particle background and solar-scattered X-rays, a total of 34.3 ksec remained. The filtered PSPC image does not differ in any systematic way from that presented in Schlegel (1994a) so we do not include it to conserve space.

### 2.2 ASCA

The ASCA data were obtained from 1994 Dec 28 to 1995 Jan 2 for a total exposure time of 92 ksec (Table 1). After applying the standard screening 83 ksec of observation remained. The majority of the data ($``$75%) were obtained in 1-CCD mode with the remainder taken in 2-CCD mode. Data screening was applied to each data mode separately and the results were registered and summed. The data were divided by energy into the following seven bands: 0.5–1.0, 1.0–1.5, 1.5–2.5, 2.5–3.5, 3.5–4.5, 4.5–6.5, and 6.5–9.5 keV. The corners of each image were used to define the background level which was then subtracted.

The point spread function (PSF) of the ASCA mirrors has a FWHM of $``$3 and has a cross-shaped pattern (Tanaka, Inoue, & Holt, 1994). To recover the most information from the image of NGC 6946, we deconvolved the PSF from the image using a point source filtered into the seven energy bands and the Lucy-Richardson deconvolution (the task as coded in the IRAF/STSDAS111IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories which is operated by the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Space Telescope Science Data Analysis System is distributed by the Space Telescope Science Institute. “restore” package) following the prescription in Jalota et al. (1993). The noise in the corners of the image were monitored by calculating the root mean square average value after each iteration. The restoration was stopped when the rms value approached an asymptotic value (typically, $``$20 iterations).

The relatively high foreground column density to NGC 6946 nearly eliminates any photons below 0.5 keV, so we did not include any counts below that energy. Figure 3 shows a montage of the results; the energy band increases left to right, top to bottom.

As a test of the deconvolution, we blurred the ROSAT HRI data with the ASCA PSF. To obtain the PSF as a function of energy, we filtered the data of a point source (3C273, sequence 70023000) into the seven ASCA energy bands defined above. We then convolved those PSF bands with energies $`<`$2.5 keV with the HRI image and summed the results. We also filtered the raw ASCA counts to retain only those events with E $`<`$2.5 keV. Figure 4 shows the summed image and the filtered raw ASCA data. Note the difference between the real (lower right) and the artificial (upper right) ASCA data. Figure 4 will be used below to help interpret the deconvolved ASCA data.

## 3 Analysis and Discussion

### 3.1 ROSAT HRI Data

The ROSAT HRI image of NGC 6946 was used to inventory the galaxy’s point sources. Since the ROSAT HRI offers little spectral resolution (Prestwich et al., 1997), we used a sliding box detection algorithm (box size 8′′) to locate and to identify candidate point sources. Table 2 lists the sources detected and their count rates. HRI sources are designated with an “H” followed by a serial number. The counts were extracted using circular apertures 48′′ in diameter. The background was determined from an aperture 5 in diameter positioned well away from the galaxy and corrected for vignetting at that location.

The HRI image (Figure 1) shows that many of the point sources identified in the PSPC data (Schlegel, 1994a) are still present and remain at essentially identical relative intensities as in the PSPC data. In particular, HRI sources H1, H3, H5, H6, H9, H10 (SNR MF16), and H11 are all clearly detected in the PSPC image. Table 2 lists the correspondences between the sources detected in the HRI data and those detected in the PSPC data. Spectral fits and hardness values from the PSPC data showed that all of the sources within 8 of NGC 6946 were consistent with sources in NGC 6946 (or behind it) (Schlegel, 1994a). Based on a Galactic log N-log S relation (Krautter et al., 1999), we expect $``$0.1 stars to fall by chance within a radius of 5 of NGC 6946. Using their extragalactic log N-log S (their “AGN” curve), we expect 0.04 AGN within the same 5 radius.

If we correct for the count rate differences between the PSPC and the HRI, all of the sources are consistent with a constant between the PSPC and HRI epochs. The large uncertainty in the conversion from PSPC to HRI counts prohibits a stronger statment. Within the HRI data, individual pointings are less than $``$2 ksec in length. Only the strongest sources (H5, H9, H10) were examined for variability and none show evidence of variability $`>`$90% confidence. The X-ray constancy of sources in NGC 6946 is in marked contrast to some other galaxies, for example, NGC 1313, where about a half-dozen sources have been detected as variable objects (Schlegel et al., 1999). We turn now to a discussion of the individual sources.

The extraordinary X-ray luminosity of the MF16 SNR complex is obvious in Figs. 3–5 where it is the dominant X-ray source in NGC 6946. Therefore its X-ray spectral properties are of special interest. The MF16 complex and environs are resolved in the HRI data into two sources; MF16 itself (H10) and a fainter additional source, H8, $``$30′′ farther to the west-southwest (see Fig. 1) with a luminosity $``$ 6.5% that of H10. H8 produces significant count contamination in the MF16 spectrum in both the ROSAT PSPC and ASCA data, leading to uncertainty in the spectral behavior of MF16.

Unfortunately, the nature of H8 is unknown. It is not directly attributable to an OB association that is near MF16 (BFS00) because H8 lies $`10^{\prime \prime }`$ west of the association. The luminosity of H8 is $``$1038 erg s-1 and thus not unlike that of X-ray binaries (White, Nagase, & Parmar, 1995), suggesting one possible identification. Its contamination of H10 (MF16) is particularly serious if H8 has a systematically different spectrum than the SNR complex. As an example, if MF16 can be described by a Raymond-Smith plasma at 1 keV and the putative XRB by a thermal bremsstrahlung component of 5 keV, as is typical of X-ray binaries, the merged spectrum will be increasingly dominated by the 5 keV bremsstrahlung emission above $``$3 keV even with a 15:1 ratio in the total 0.5–2.0 keV luminosities. This will make the interpretation of the ASCA SIS data more difficult.

The source H5, although close to the center of NGC 6946, may not correspond to the X-ray emission from the galaxy’s nucleus. The difference in the position of MF16 between the HRI data and the VLA data (Van Dyk et al., 1994) amounts to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ = +0′′.6, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ = –1′′ (defined as HRI – VLA). Only one other source in the HRI field is positively identified: the Algol variable DT Cep which lies 12 off-axis. The difference between the optical and HRI positions are $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ = +6′′, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta `$ = –9′′ (defined as HRI – optical) (Krautter et al., 1999). These differences are typical of the uncertainties of the ROSAT boresight offsets (Kürster & Hasinger, 1993). If we use these MF16 offsets to correct the position of H5, because they are nearly on-axis, the revised X-ray coordinates (Table 2) place it within 4–5′′ of the radio nucleus222The position of the radio nucleus is (J2000) $`\alpha `$: 20:34:52.33; $`\delta `$: +60:09:14.23 (Van Dyk et al., 1994).. In the optical, the center of light, assumed to be the nucleus, appears to lie south of the position of the radio nucleus and H5 by $``$15–20′′. The PSPC spectrum (Schlegel, 1994a) of the “nuclear” source is soft with a fitted thermal bremsstrahlung temperature of $``$0.5 keV. The source is consistent with the point spread function of the HRI. The 0.5–2.0 keV luminosity is $``$3$`\times `$1038 erg s-1 which is highly sub-Eddington ($``$3$`\times `$10-7) if the nucleus were considered to be an accreting black hole of $``$107 M based on the black hole mass-bulge luminosity correlation (e.g., Kormendy & Richstone 1995) and the bulge luminosity of $``$-17.1 (Simien & deVaucouleurs, 1986; Kim & Chun, 1984).

Recently, Colbert & Mushotzky (1999) have shown that a population of off-set “nuclear” sources may exist at the center of galaxies. They found that, of those nearby (vred $`<`$ 1000 km s-1) galaxies for which X-ray observations exist, about half contain an X-ray source consistent with an off-center point source, each of which has a luminosity of $``$1039-40 erg s-1. They suggest these sources are 102-4 M black holes. NGC 6946 was one of the galaxies on their list of detections.

Four sources are detected in the HRI image that are weak, but visible in the PSPC data. These are H2, H12, H13, and H14. PSPC source 5, which lies $``$1.5 northwest of MF16 and has an LX of 5.5$`\times `$1037 erg s-1, is not detected in the HRI observation. A drop even as small as $``$30 in its luminosity would place the source below the HRI detection threshold. Source H7 was not resolved in the PSPC data. In that data set, it sits within the broad band of unresolved emission near the nucleus of NGC 6946.

In the HRI data, we detect none of the diffuse emission seen in the PSPC data, but we can easily understand why. The conversion factor of HRI counts to PSPC counts ranges from $``$2.2 (Schlegel, Petre, & Colbert, 1996) to $``$2.8 (Zimmermann et al., 1994) depending upon the adopted spectral shape. We arbitrarily adopt a conversion of 2.5 HRI counts to 1.0 PSPC count so we can illustrate the limitations of the HRI for the detection of diffuse emission. To reach a sensitivity similar to that of the PSPC, the HRI exposure time must be longer than the PSPC exposure time by at least the conversion factor. Strictly on the basis of the conversion factor, the 60 ksec HRI exposure corresponds to an approximate PSPC exposure of 24 ksec. This is substantially less than the actual duration of the PSPC observation in which the diffuse emission was detected (Schlegel, 1994a). An alternative approach illustrates the same point. The PSPC-detected surface brightness is $``$5$`\times `$1036 erg s-1 arcmin-2 (value from Schlegel (1994a) corrected for arithmetic error). That brightness generates approximately 10-4 counts s-1 arcmin-2 in the PSPC while the internal PSPC background is $``$3$`\times `$10-5 cts s-1 arcmin-2 (Snowden et al., 1992), for a ratio of $``$3. For the HRI, the same surface brightness produces $``$6$`\times `$10-6 counts s-1 arcmin-2 compared to the internal background of $``$4$`\times `$10-3 counts s-1 arcmin-2 for a ratio of $``$0.002 (David et al., 1995). The diffuse emission is overwhelmed by the internal background of the HRI.

### 3.2 ASCA Data

The deconvolved ASCA image of NGC 6946 is shown in Figure 3. This is the first image of NGC 6946 at energies above 2 keV. We filtered the Einstein IPC image into E $`<`$2 keV and $`>`$2 keV; there are no photons above $``$2 keV. The ASCA can be compared to the HRI image blurred with the ASCA PSF shown in Figure 4. Unlike the blurred HRI data which contains no true diffuse emission, the ASCA image shows point sources which are embedded in diffuse emission. Below we will use the the HRI image shown in Figure 4 to interpret the deconvolved ASCA data.

The bright point sources (H3, H5, H9, and H10) are deconvolved (although the deconvolution does not separate H5 and H9 except in the 1.0–1.5 keV panel where the counts are highest). Diffuse emission surrounds the nuclear sources, most visibly present in the 1–2 keV range (additional discussion follows below). There is also crude spectral information visible in the deconvolved figure for several of the point sources. Sources H3, H6, and H9 are weak above $``$3 keV. For H5 and H9, the centroid of emission shifts from H9 to H5 between the 0.5–1.0 keV panel (upper left) and the 4.5–9.5 keV panel (center row, right), implying that $``$30% of the flux of H5 lies above 3 keV. This behavior matches the spectral fit to the PSPC data of H5 which assigned only a lower limit to the temperature of $``$0.5 keV (Schlegel, 1994a).

The deconvolved images also provide support for the identification of H8 as an X-ray binary. Even though the binary is blended with MF16, the shape of the deconvolved image becomes an ellipse above $``$5 keV, oriented east-west. We used the ‘ellipse’ task in the STSDAS package333 to fit ellipses to the images in the 1.0-2.5 and 4.5-9.5 keV bands. The ellipticity in the higher-energy panel is significant at the $``$4$`\sigma `$ level, while the lower energy fits are consistent with zero ellipticity, both outwards to an intensity level 70% below the maximum. That implies either MF16 is contributing a decreasing fraction of the flux of the total flux or H8 contributes an increasing fraction. If H8’s spectrum is typical of our Galaxy’s population of low-mass XRBs, we expect to see a bremsstrahlung spectrum with kT $``$7 keV in the ASCA band (e.g., White, Nagase, & Parmar 1995). For such a spectrum, normalized to the count rate in the HRI image, we estimate $``$60% of the flux to lie above 3 keV and $``$25% above 6 keV. These estimates increase if H8 is more similar to a Galactic high-mass X-ray binary. The deconvolved ASCA image suggests H8 is not harder than $``$4–7 keV because otherwise we would see a definite point source in the hardest ASCA bands. An observation with higher spatial resolution and moderate to good spectral resolution is required to establish definitively the source type for H8.

Before leaving the discussion of the point source population, we note the publication of a recent radio survey of NGC 6946 by Lacey, Duric, & Goss (1997). They used the VLA at 6 and 20 cm to carry out a search for compact radio sources. Source 85 on their list corresponds to the MF16 SNR complex to within $``$0′′.5 verifying the identification of Van Dyk et al. (1994). The correspondence of other sources is included in the notes of Table 2, but can be summarized briefly. Each of the “strong” sources (those with S/N $`>`$4.5) has a compact radio counterpart except H1 and H9.

Finally, there is apparent diffuse emission distributed across the face of the galaxy in the deconvolved images (Figure 3). This emission was detected in the PSPC image (Schlegel, 1994a). If the deconvolution process has recovered all of the photons of the point sources, then the spectrum of the diffuse component extends to energies of $``$3 keV. Support for the correctness of the deconvolution is the match in the overall appearance of Figure 3 to the PSPC image (Schlegel, 1994a) where we know diffuse emission was detected. To examine the significance of the potential emission, we extracted all counts in an 8 radius circle encompassing the galaxy, excluding the counts within 2.5 surrounding each of the point sources. The excluded zone leaves $``$30% of the flux of a point source outside of the aperture (Jalota et al., 1993). The counts in the galaxy aperture, in the 0.5-2.0 keV band in common with the PSPC, total $``$5$`\times `$10-5 counts s-1 arcmin-2. The background is $``$2.0$`\times `$10-5 counts s-1 arcmin-2. To this background value we must add the photons in the wings of the PSF. Sources 3, 5, 9, and 10 contribute $`>`$90% of the total counts in the 0.5-2.0 keV band. If we assume these counts raise the background uniformly, then an additional $``$2.2$`\times `$10-5 counts s-1 arcmin-2 exists. The ratio of the detected diffuse emission to the sum of the backgrounds is $``$1.2.

We set a limit on the luminosity of additional point sources of $``$5$`\times `$1037 erg s-1, about 25% lower than the limit from the PSPC data. Either the diffuse emission is truly diffuse or a gap exists, at about a few 1037 erg s-1, in the point source luminosity function for this galaxy. The definitive properties of the diffuse emission must await observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory or XMM.

### 3.3 The MF16 SNR Complex

A sensitive search for emission lines from the hot gas in the spectrum of MF16 constituted one of the prime purposes for the ASCA observation. We extracted the SIS source counts in a region 8 in radius. We only used the SIS data because of that instrument’s superior spectral resolution. For the background, we extracted the counts from all pixels outside of the source aperture. We tested the background subtraction by extracting the counts from a “blank sky” observation444“Blank sky” observations are available from the ASCA GOF at NASA-GSFC. using the source aperture.

Extracted SIS data were then used to construct a model fit. Because the low energy calibration of the SIS is inaccurate below $``$0.5 keV (Dotani et al., 1997) while the ROSAT PSPC is sensitive to the column density, NH, we combined the ROSAT PSPC and the SIS data. MF16’s evolution should be sufficiently slow that little spectral evolution will occur during the $``$2.5 year gap between observations. The ROSAT PSPC spectrum was extracted using an aperture of 1; the background was defined by an aperture 8 due west and well outside the galaxy’s detected diffuse emission structure. We temporarily ignored data near the positions of expected lines (e.g., Fe K$`\alpha `$, Fe L, Si K$`\alpha `$) and used the remaining SIS+PSPC data to define the continuum. Once we had a successful continuum fit, we used all the data to search for emission lines in the SIS spectrum by adding one or more gaussians to represent the line(s). The fit results are listed in Table 3.

The resulting continuum contours after fitting the PSPC+SIS spectrum with an absorbed power law are shown in Figure 5. From the dust maps of Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998), the value of EB-V in the direction of NGC 6946 is 0.342. Using the column density-EB-V relation of Predehl & Schmitt (1995), that value of EB-V converts to NH $``$1.8$`\times `$1021 cm-2. The column density derived from the model fit to the ASCA data is $``$2$`\pm `$0.2$`\times `$1021 cm-2. The measured EB-V toward the MF16 complex is 0.65 (BFS00) which implies patchy extinction on an unresolved spatial scale. Very likely, the X-ray column is an ”effective” column that arises from the area-weighted average of spatially-variable extinction. As a test of our interpretation, when we fix the column at the BFS00 value, the resulting fit is very poor with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2/\nu `$ $``$1.5.

The best single component fit to the continuum yields a power law index of $``$2.5. The unavoidable presence of the neighboring source H8 in the combined spectrum may artificially lower the power law index by inputting more energy above $``$5 keV than the SNR alone. Nonetheless, from our fit we estimate an unabsorbed 0.5–2.0 keV luminosity of $``$2$`\times `$1040 erg s-1 and the 2.0–10.0 keV luminosity of $``$7$`\times `$1039 erg s-1.

We see distinct residuals near 0.8–0.9 keV (Figure 6). The apparent line which is best fit by a width ($`\sigma `$) of $``$0.1 keV centered at 0.91 keV (Figure 7). The equivalent width of the line is 157$`\pm `$50 eV. If we interpret the line as a $`\delta `$-function at the measured energy, it corresponds to Ne IX at either 0.915 or 0.922 keV. Conversely, the line might represent a blend of Fe L-shell emission from Fe XIX and Fe XX (Kallman et al., 1996). However, unless the Fe abundance is enhanced, high ionization stages of Fe L-shell emission are accompanied by K$`\alpha `$ lines of medium-Z elements (e.g., Ne, Mg). Unfortunately, we have no information regarding the Fe abundance from the ASCA data. The poor signal-to-noise above $``$5 keV places only a weak limit on the pressence of an line in the 6.4-6.7 keV band (no line $`>`$1 keV equivalent width), so we can not deduce any information about the presence of Fe L based on the presence or absence of Fe K.

Two alternative, equally valid fits use either dual bremsstrahlung or dual Raymond-Smith components. We followed the same fitting procedure (i.e., first PSPC+SIS continuum, then line search). In neither case do we detect emission lines in the model fits. The fitted bremsstrahlung temperatures are 0.21$`{}_{0.04}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.02}`$ and 3.0$`{}_{0.6}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.4}`$ keV, respectively. The fitted data, using the Raymond-Smith model, appears in Figure 8 and the parameter contours are shown in Figure 9. The fitted Raymond-Smith temperatures are 0.81$`{}_{0.05}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.04}`$ keV and 4.2$`{}_{0.4}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.6}`$ keV. The unabsorbed 0.5–2.0 keV luminosity is $``$9.6$`\times `$1039 erg s-1 and the 2–10 keV luminosity is $``$1.1$`\times `$1040 erg s-1 which are about a factor of 2 lower and 1.6 higher, respectively, than the computed luminosities from the power law model. The lower flux in the 0.5–2.0 keV band comes from the improved fit to the low-energy channels which reduces the column density.

Although the ASCA spectra do not have sufficient signal-to-noise to constrain the abundance values, we can test their effects. For an abundance of 0.1 solar, the component temperatures lie well within the errors of the original fit. No abundance peculiarities were detected in the optical spectrum either, although the strength of the \[N II\] 6584 Å line relative to H$`\alpha `$ was considerably stronger in MF16 than in any other SNR in NGC 6946 and indicates possible enrichment of nitrogen (BFS00).

As an aid to interpreting the observed X-ray data on MF16, we used HST optical images (BFS00) which provide a wide-field view of the region. Within a square $``$30′′ region with its eastern edge fixed on MF16, potential X-ray contributors include the SNR MF15 ($``$15′′ to the NW), an apparent OB association ($``$10′′ to the W), a possible X-ray binary (XRB, 30′′ to the SW), and MF16 itself. SNR MF15 is about an order of magnitude less bright than MF16 in the optical and may be similarly faint in the X-ray. Also, because the OB association shows no evidence of abnormal brightness in the HST image, we assume its X-ray emission is the product of the emission from an average OB star and the number of member stars; that product is $``$1034-36 erg s-1 (e.g., Gagné & Caillault 1994), well below the luminosity of MF16. The possible XRB undoubtedly contaminates the spectrum, particularly at high energies, but with a luminosity ratio of $``$15 to 1, the spectrum will not be dominated by the XRB’s emission below $``$3 keV.

Determining the precise physical locations of the observed X-rays coming from MF16 is not possible from the present low-spatial-resolution data sets. However, several sources are likely: each of the SNR shells or the optically bright, crescent-shaped interaction region where two of the SNRs are apparently colliding (BFS00). Each source’s emission, unfortunately, cannot be uniquely deconvolved from the observed spectrum and two equally valid models fit the MF16 spectrum: a power law continuum plus emission line or dual thermal components consisting of bremsstrahlung or Raymond-Smith spectra. The plausibility of a thermal model is questionable on the grounds of a lack of thermal line emission, yet appears more physically likely given that other SNRs possess thermal components with temperatures of $``$0.2 keV (e.g., the Cygnus Loop, Miyata et al. 1994). Therefore, in the following discussion, we adopt the dual Raymond-Smith model.

If we treat the interaction of the two shocks as approximately equivalent to a shock impacting a wall (as in the Cygnus Loop; Levenson et al. 1997; Hester, Raymond, & Blair 1994), then the cooler component of the ASCA spectrum should describe the summed emission of both SNRs, leaving the hard spectral component to describe the interaction region. This component assignment has a precedent. Simulations (e.g., Pittard & Stevens 1997) and ASCA observations (Maeda et al., 1999) of colliding winds in O star binaries show the harder component ($``$2–3 keV) is emitted by the interaction region. The emission measure ($`EMn^2V`$, for density $`n`$ and volume $`V`$) is directly related to the normalization of the Raymond-Smith component. Assuming two spherical SNRs of diameters of $``$8 and $``$20 pc (BFS00) each contributing half the total, we estimate electron densities of $``$35 and $``$10 cm-3, respectively, in good agreement with the pre-shock density values inferred from the post-shock, optical \[S II\] $`\lambda \lambda `$6716,6731 line ratio (BFS00).

For the optically bright interaction crescent region, we estimate an upper limit to the electron density assuming that the hard spectral component is not strongly contaminated by emission from other nearby sources. Model simulations of colliding SNRs show such interactions will generate a ring-like contact zone which then expands outward as the shells merge (e.g., Ikeuchi 1978; Voinovich & Chernin 1995). Assuming the interaction region is also a torus, the fitted emission measure and the toroid volume yield a density of $``$100 cm-3. Contamination of the hard component will lower this estimate. At the interface, we expect the thermal and ram pressures of each SNR to be approximately equal. Since the density ratio is $``$3–4, the shock velocity ratio must be $``$1.7–2. Spatially-resolved X-ray spectroscopy will provide valuable constraints on the relative strengths of the two shocks.

Models of colliding SNRs assume a homogeneous circum-progenitor medium (Ikeuchi, 1978; Voinovich & Chernin, 1995). If such a medium described the MF16 region, the SNRs would eventually merge to one remnant (e.g., Ikeuchi 1978). However, we have uncovered evidence for an inhomogeneous medium. Furthermore, the HST data suggest the possibility of a cavity explosion (BFS00), further complicating the dynamics and clouding our understanding of the origin and evolution of the SNR complex. Given the already high optical, radio, and X-ray luminosity of this remarkable SNR complex, such a merger could be related to especially large, energetic SNRs (hypernovae remnants) recently identified in other galaxies (M101; Wang (1999)). In any case, further study of this extraordinarily luminous X-ray region should help shed new insights on the properties of SNR shock emission under high density situations.

## 4 Summary

We have presented the data from an ASCA and a ROSAT HRI observation of the spiral galaxy NGC 6946. The ASCA image represents the first look at this galaxy above 2 keV. The ASCA image contains evidence for diffuse emission in the inner $``$4 extending to energies $`>`$2 keV. Fourteen point-like sources are detected in the HRI observation. One source corresponds to the very luminous SNR complex uncovered in the PSPC data. The HRI resolves a point source $``$30′′ west of the SNR complex that could not be detected in the PSPC data. The luminosity of the point source is $``$1/15 of the SNR complex. None of the point sources shows evidence of variability.

Two possible spectral fits to the ASCA spectrum of the SNR complex provide contrasting interpretations. The spectrum can be fit either by a power law plus an emission line or by dual Raymond-Smith thermal plasma models with differing temperatures. We argue that the dual thermal models provide a physically plausible interpretation.

This research was supported by grant NAG5-4015 to SAO from the ASCA Guest Observer Program. EMS thanks John Raymond for a valuable conversation on possible X-ray spectra from colliding SNRs.


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# Galactic 1.275 MeV emission from ONe novae and its detectability by INTEGRAL/SPI

## 1 Introduction

Observations with several instruments have provided upper-limits to the 1.275 MeV flux, related to 22Na decay from the Galaxy or from individual novae, (see Clayton & Hoyle  for the original idea to look for 22Na lines in novae). Observations with the HEAO3 $`\gamma `$-ray spectrometer provided an upper limit of 4 $`\times `$ 10-4 photons cm-2 s-1 on the Galactic accumulated flux at 1.275 MeV (Higdon & Fowler , hereafter HF87). With the $`\gamma `$-ray spectrometer of the Solar Maximum Mission, Leising et al.  found a 99% confidence limit of 1.2 $`\times `$ 10-4 photons cm-2 s-1 on a steady 1.275 MeV flux from the Galactic center direction. Iyudin et al. , using observations of single novae, with the COMPTEL instrument on board the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, estimated a 2$`\sigma `$ upper-limit of 3 $`\times `$ 10-5 photons cm-2 s-1 for any neon-type nova in the Galactic disk, which has been translated into an upper-limit of the ejected 22Na mass of 3.7 10-8 M.

The next generation of $`\gamma `$-ray spectrometers will have the sensitivity required for the detection of the 1.275 MeV emission from classical ONe novae. In particular, SPI, the future spectrometer of the INTEGRAL observatory will be operational in 2001. With its high energy resolution ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$E/E $``$0.2%), the spectrometer is designed for the detection of astrophysical $`\gamma `$-ray lines in the 20 keV \- 8 MeV energy range. The detection plane is made of 19 germanium (Ge) detectors and is surrounded by an active shield made with bismuth germanate (BGO) scintillators, in order to reduce the instrumental background. SPI will be able to perform images with an angular resolution of $``$3 by using a coded aperture system made of tungsten elements. The mean fully coded field-of-view is $``$16 (for a more detailed description of the spectrometer see Mandrou et al.  and Teegarden et al. ). Using calculations of 22Na yields in ONe novae by José & Hernanz  and instrumental background predictions, Hernanz et al.  and Goḿez-Gomar et al.  estimated that the 1.275 MeV line from an individual ONe nova could be detected by SPI if its distance is less than $``$ 0.5 kpc (standard CO novae produce 22Na in much smaller amounts than ONe novae). With a new analysis of the nuclear reaction rates involved in 22Na synthesis  a bit larger distance is obtained (around 1.5 kpc, Hernanz et al. ).

The total Galactic flux at 1.275 MeV depends not only on the amount of 22Na ejected per outburst but also on the distribution and the rate of Galactic ONe novae. However, the Galactic nova rate is poorly known, independently of the underlying white dwarf composition, because the interstellar extinction prevents us from directly observing more than a small fraction of the novae that explode each year. Several methods have been used to estimate the nova occurrence rate. Estimations based on extrapolations of Galactic nova observations suggest a rate in the range 50-100 yr-1(see Liller & Mayer  and references therein). Observations of novae in other galaxies have revealed a correlation between the nova rate and the infrared luminosity of the parent galaxy. However, the occurrence rates of Galactic novae computed by scaling the nova rate measured in external galaxies are lower than $``$50 yr-1. With this method, Ciardullo et al.  predicted a nova rate in the range 11-45 yr-1, and Della Valle & Livio  a rate $``$20 yr-1. This is significantly lower than estimations based on Galactic nova observations. Recently, Shafter  reconciled this difference by recomputing the nova rate with the Galactic nova data. He extrapolated the global nova rate from the observed one, accounting for surface brightnesses of the bulge and the disk components and correction factors taking care of any observational incompleteness. With this method, Shafter  estimated the nova rate to be 35$`\pm `$11 yr-1. Hatano et al.  found a similar value (41$`\pm `$20 yr-1) using a Monte-Carlo technique with a simple model for the distribution of dust and classical novae in the Galaxy. As only ONe novae are important producers of 22Na, the Galactic ONe nova rate is the relevant one for this work. The Galactic ONe nova rate is obtained by multiplying the total nova rate by the fraction of novae that results from thermonuclear runaways on ONe white dwarfs. Williams et al.  deduced from observations of abundances in nova ejecta a proportion of ONe novae from 20 to 40 percent. With a detailed model of white dwarf mass distribution in cataclysmic binaries, Ritter et al.  estimated that 25-57 percent of observed nova outbursts should occur on ONe white dwarfs. Livio & Truran  reestimated the frequency of occurrence of ONe novae, in light of observations of abundances in nova ejecta. They concluded that, of the 18 classical novae for which detailed abundance analyses were available, only two or three had a large amount of neon and were ONe novae, whereas three other novae showed a modest enrichment in neon, casting doubt on the type of the underlying white dwarf. Under these considerations, they estimated a fraction of Galactic ONe novae between 11 and 33 percent.

In addition to the 22Na mass ejected per outburst and the ONe novae rate, the distribution of ONe novae in the Galaxy is an important parameter that tunes the total 1.275 MeV flux arriving on Earth. Some 22Na mass upper-limits, resulting from 1.275 MeV total Galactic flux upper-limit measurements, are underestimated since they have been computed assuming that all the ONe novae are embedded in the Galactic Center. Indeed, a larger 22Na mass can be ejected by ONe novae leading to a 1.275 MeV total Galactic flux below the measured upper-limit if the ONe nova distribution is more diluted in the Galaxy.

In this paper, we model the Galactic cumulative emission at 1.275 MeV as a function of the ONe novae rate and the mean 22Na yield per outburst, for several spatial distributions of novae in the Galaxy. The lower-limit for the mean mass yield of 22Na ejected per nova, in order to detect the 1.275 MeV cumulative emission, is predicted for the future observations of SPI, using the estimation of the sensitivity of the future spectrometer developed by Jean  and Jean et al. . The method for the simulation of the Galactic 1.275 MeV emission and its results are described in section 2, whereas the method of observation with SPI and its application to the previous simulations are presented in section 3. Discussion and conclusions follow (section 4).

## 2 Simulation of the Galactic 1.275 MeV emission

### 2.1 Method

The 1.275 MeV emission from Galactic ONe novae is calculated with a Monte-Carlo simulation. A simulation of a set of ONe novae that is representative of what could be the Galactic novae distribution at a given time, i.e. a given novae frequency-spatial distribution, is made (this set of novae is further called a ‘Galaxy-test’). The two nova populations (bulge and disk) have been considered. The population origin (bulge or disk), the position in galacto-centric coordinates (depending on the chosen population) and the age of ONe novae are chosen randomly according to the appropriate distributions. The local-galactic coordinates ($`l,b`$) of each nova as well as its distance to the Sun are calculated assuming a Sun to Galactic center (hereafter GC) distance of 8 kpc. The 1.275 MeV flux ($`F_{22}`$ in photons cm-2 s-1) has been estimated using the relationship

$$F_{22}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3.17\hspace{0.25em}10}^5\frac{M_{22}e^{\frac{t}{\tau _{22}}}}{A_{22}\tau _{22}d^2}$$
(1)
where $`M_{22}`$ is the 22Na mass ejected per nova (in solar masses), $`t`$ the age of the nova (in years), $`d`$ its distance to the Sun (in kpc). $`A_{22}`$ and $`\tau _{22}`$ are the mass number and the lifetime of 22Na (3.75 yr), respectively. Limitation of the flux due to opacity of the ejecta has not been taken into account, since it is significant only in the first week after the explosion , which is a short time as compared to the 22Na lifetime. The number of simulated ONe novae depends on the global (CO and ONe) nova frequency ($`f_n`$), the total period during which ejected 22Na is an effective emitter ($`N_\tau \tau _{22}`$), the proportion of novae in the bulge ($`p_b`$) and the proportion of ONe novae in the bulge (with respect to all novae in the bulge, $`q_b`$) and in the disk (with respect to all novae in the disk, $`q_d`$). The number of simulated ONe novae is calculated as

$$N_n=f_nN_\tau \tau _{22}\left[p_bq_b+\left(1p_b\right)q_d\right]$$
(2)
It has been assumed that the emissivity of novae older than 5$`\tau _{22}`$ has a negligible contribution to the diffuse Galactic 1.275 MeV emission; therefore, $`N_\tau `$=5. The proportion of ONe novae in the bulge (with respect to all ONe novae) is given by

$$p_{ONe}^{bulge}=\frac{p_bq_b}{p_bq_b+(1p_b)q_d}$$
(3)
The simulation of a Galaxy-test provides a set of 1.275 MeV line fluxes $`F_i`$ for each nova $`i`$ localized at $`l_i`$, $`b_i`$. Distribution of the intensity and of the number of novae has been calculated with 3 by 3 size pixels, which correspond to the angular resolution of SPI.

### 2.2  Models

#### 2.2.1  Distribution of novae in the Galaxy

For the purpose of this work, a Galaxy model with a disk and a spheroid is convenient to simulate the distribution of Galactic nova events. Several laws for the spatial distribution in the disk and in the ‘spheroid’ (representative of the bulge) have been proposed in the literature. We have selected four models that differ significantly from each other. The first and older of them is described in Higdon & Fowler . The radial scalelength of the disk is derived from the starlight suface brightness distribution  and the height dependence is from Patterson . HF87 use the analytic dependence for the spheroid light distribution from Bahcall et al.  and Young , also called the ‘R1/4’ law (R is the distance to the GC), originally formulated by de Vaucouleurs . By scaling the nova rate in the bulge of M31 to the bulge of our Galaxy, HF87 estimate a proportion of novae in the spheroid of 0.348. The second model has been used by Hatano et al.  to estimate the spatial distribution and the occurrence rate of Galactic classical novae. It is based on a model of the distribution of type Ia supernovae . The proportion of novae that occur in the bulge is set to 0.111 on the basis of an estimate of the bulge to total galaxy mass ratio. The third model is derived from the Galactic survey of the Spacelab InfraRed Telescope (IRT) that provides a reliable tracer of the distribution of G and K giant stars (see Kent, Dame & Fazio  and Kent ). It has also been used by Prantzos & Diehl  to estimate the contribution of old population stars (novae and AGB) to the Galactic 26Al emission at 1.8 MeV measured by COMPTEL. Using the total infrared luminosity of the bulge and the disk, the derived proportion of novae occurring in the bulge is 0.179. The last model is taken from Van der Kruit . It has been used by Shafter  to estimate the nova rate in our Galaxy. This author assumes that the nova distribution follows the brightness profile of our Galaxy. Under this assumption, the proportion of bulge novae is 0.105.

The adopted distributions are shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3, which represent the probability to find a nova in the Galactic bulge at spherical radius R in a volume element (kpc-3, Figure 1), and the probabilities to find a nova in the Galactic disk at cylindrical radius $`\rho `$ in an area element (kpc-2, Figure 2) and at height z above the Galactic plane in a line element (kpc-1, Figure 3). Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the adopted models.

#### 2.2.2  Galactic ONe nova rate

As presented in section 1, methods used to estimate the occurrence rate of novae are based on extragalactic and Galactic nova observations. The first method can underestimate the Galactic nova rate since the nova count can be biased by the extinction of the Galactic disk. On the other hand, estimations obtained with Galactic nova observations depend on the Galaxy model used for the extrapolation. The last estimations of classical novae rates are those by Shafter  (35$`\pm `$11 yr-1) and Hatano et al.  (40$`\pm `$20 yr-1). Therefore, for the calculations presented in section 2.3, we have adopted frequencies of Galactic novae ranging from 20 yr-1 to 60 yr-1 and a proportion of ONe novae from 10 % to 30 %, in agreement with the recent estimate . These values correspond to a lower and upper limit of the ONe nova rate of 2 yr-1 and 18 yr-1 , respectively.

#### 2.2.3  22Na yield range

The most recent upper-limit for the 22Na mass ejected by ONe novae is provided by Iyudin et al. , who derived 3 10-8M for any neon-type nova in the Galactic disk, at a 2$`\sigma `$ level with COMPTEL. Recent theoretical estimations  provide typical 22Na yields of $``$2 10-9 M per ONe nova, well below such observational upper limit. However, the average yield of 22Na ejected per nova is not yet well known. It is sensitive to the composition of the underlying white dwarf and to the degree of mixing between the core and the accreted enveloppe (which constrain not only the ejected envelope mass but also the maximum temperature reached during the runaway) and also to the convection efficiency , . It is important to remind that in some cases theoretical models predict total ejected masses which are smaller than some observed ones (which in turn have often large determination uncertainties). Moreover, some uncertainties of nuclear reaction cross-sections affect the computed 22Na yields: a net increase in the 22Na ejected mass by a typical ONe nova is obtained, with a very recent update of the nuclear reaction network affecting 22Na synthesis. The new 22Na yields for typical ONe novae are larger by factors ranging between $``$2 and $``$10, resulting in ejected masses as large as 10-8 M for a 1.25 M ONe nova in the most favorable case of nuclear reaction rates .

### 2.3  Results: maps of the 1.275 MeV emission

Examples of Galaxy-tests for the distributions of novae in the Galaxy presented in section 2.2.1 are shown in Figures 4, 5, 6 and 7. For these simulations, the adopted Galactic nova rate is 35 yr-1  and the proportion of ONe novae is 30%. As already shown by HF87, the 1.275 MeV intensity is irregularly distributed in the Galaxy. We have recovered the 22Na upper-limit mass found by HF87 with the sensitivity of HEAO3 - 4 10-4 photons cm-2 s-1 at a 3$`\sigma `$ level,  \- by simulating their frequency-spatial distribution of Galactic novae (rate 46 yr-1and spatial distribution as shown in Table 1) and by integrating the flux between 330 and 30 longitude.

The statistical distributions of the 1.275 MeV fluxes from the 12.5 around the GC and from the brightest nova of the Galaxy have been calculated using a large number of Galaxy-tests. The results are presented in figure 8 and 9 for an ONe nova rate of $``$10 yr-1 and for the four models of spatial distribution. The KDF91 model provides the highest mean flux in the GC region, whereas the distribution of fluxes emitted by the brightest nova are similar in the four models, since the distributions of novae distances to the Sun are similar up to $``$7 kpc for all the models.

Table 2 shows the mean 1.275 MeV flux from the GC entering in the SPI field-of-view normalized to the 22Na mass ejected per year in the Galaxy. The uncertainties give an idea of the intensity fluctuation magnitude due to the limited number of effective emitting novae in the SPI field-of-view. The normalized fluxes are directly related to the spatial characteristics of the chosen Galactic ONe novae distribution (see Table 1). The total 1.275 MeV normalized flux of the Galaxy is also presented in Table 2. The intensity in the GC region represents 15%, 10%, 21% and 11% of the total flux in the Galaxy for the HF87, VdK90, KDF91 and DJ94 models, respectively.

We have investigated the variation of the normalized 1.275 MeV intensity in the 12.5 around the GC as a function of the scaleheight and scalelength of the novae distributions in the case of a zero proportion of novae in the bulge (see below). For a 0.3 kpc scaleheight, the normalized intensity decreases from $``$89 to $``$31 photons cm-2 s-1M-1 yr when the scalelength increases from 2.5 to 6.0 kpc. Although the novae distances to the Sun are decreasing with increasing scalelength, the distribution around the GC is more diluted and the flux entering in the field-of-view is therefore lower.

## 3  Analysis of the Galactic 1.275 MeV emission by SPI

### 3.1  Types of detection

Each one of the above mentioned Galaxy-tests could be observed by a $`\gamma `$-ray spectrometer at a given date. This is true if the observation time is short as compared with the occurrence period of ONe novae and with the time variation of the 22Na emissivity. These conditions are satisfied since the common observation time of the future $`\gamma `$-ray spectrometer SPI will be $``$11 days, that is shorter than both the average ONe novae occurrence period ($``$45 days) in the whole Galaxy, and the decay period of 22Na (3.75 yr, implying 1.275 MeV flux reduction of only 0.8% in 11 days). However, for an observation time longer than few times the ONe novae occurrence period, the time variation of the 1.275 MeV Galactic emissivity has to be accounted for. Figure 10 shows an example of the total 1.275 MeV flux variations in the 12.5 around the GC. It results from a Monte Carlo simulation as described in the previous section. The flux has been normalized to the 22Na ejected mass per outburst. In figure 10, the flux in the GC is dominated by a single nova (which contributes to 91% of the total flux) at 8.6 yr. After 20 yr, the flux shows fluctuations with a maximum amplitude of $`\pm `$40% of the mean flux. Figure 11 shows the statistical distributions of the relative variations between two epochs of the total 1.275 MeV flux in the 12.5 around the GC. They have been calculated using the flux variation of figure 10. Several delays between the two epochs are presented. For two observations 6 months apart, there are probabilities of 15% and 21% to get a flux variation of more than 10% and less than -10% respectively. Even if the flux variations are not large, the weak additional spots that could appear in the field-of-view will modify the distribution of the pixel-intensity. This could modify significantly the analysis in the case of the detection of excesses in the spatial distribution (see section 3.1.2).

As stated above (section 2.1), the number of novae and the distribution of the intensity have been calculated with 3 by 3 pixels. Therefore, several novae can be located in the same pixel (this happens mostly in the direction of the GC region). However, the flux in those pixels can be dominated by only one nova. In this case, the measured intensity can not be considered as a cumulative effect. Therefore, we state for a seldom-nova criterium when a single nova contributes to more than 95% of the total flux in a pixel.

Jean  and Jean et al.  have estimated the narrow line sensitivity of SPI for an on-axis point source by computing instrumental background and detection efficiency with Monte-Carlo simulations including detailed physics. However, Gómez-Gomar et al.  have shown that the 1.275 MeV line should have a typical width of 20 keV (FWHM). With these conditions, the sensitivity is 2.2 10-5 photons cm-2 s-1 at a 3$`\sigma `$ level and for 106 s ($``$11 days) of observation time, instead of 6 10-6 photons cm-2 s-1. In the present case, the Galactic ONe novae emission is diffuse and the spectrometer will also provide a distribution of intensity in pixels.

Therefore, three types of detection have been investigated for the analysis of any Galaxy-test.

#### 3.1.1  Detection of the cumulative emission at 1.275 MeV (case 1)

The total 1.275 MeV flux impinging on the SPI detectors will generate counts that will be added to the instrumental background ones. It will be possible to estimate these source counts by substracting the instrumental background component from the overall detector rates without using imaging deconvolution. Contrary to the imaging method, where the background rate is estimated using detectors that are not illuminated by a source (i.e. half of the total number of detectors - which are below opaque mask elements), the instrumental background is estimated using either observations pointing out of the galactic plane - i.e. the on/off method used in balloon-borne spectrometers - or background modelling. The latter can consist of estimating the instrumental background under the line of interest either by using data obtained during the observation (rate around the studied line, other background feature rates), or by fitting the background temporal variations before and after the observations, or both of the two methods.

For this study, we simply consider the measurement of the cumulative emission with the on/off method. The sensitivity is estimated using the calculation of Jean  (see also SPI - Science Performance Report \[SPI - Science Performance Report 1996\]) assuming that the time spent to measure instrumental background is equal to the GC observation time and that there is no more modulation of the source photons by the coded aperture. In this case the exposure is on average equal to the point source exposure since half of the flux irradiates the detection plane (the other half being hidden by the coded mask elements). Since the counts recorded over all the detectors are taken into account, the background is increased by a factor $``$2 with respect to the imaging case. Therefore, since the sensitivity increases with the square root of the background, the sensitivity of such a mode of detection is roughly the sensitivity for an on-axis point source (in the imaging case) multiplied by the square-root of 2 (i.e. 3.1 10-5 photons cm-2 s-1 at a 3$`\sigma `$ level and for 106 s of observation time). In this method, the single information that will be available is the number of detected 1.275 MeV photons coming from the region in the field-of-view of SPI. Although such a detection will give the proof of 22Na decay in the Galaxy, it will not provide any information on its spatial distribution in the observed region. However, galactic 22Na yield can be estimated provided that assumptions on the ONe distribution in the Galaxy are made.

#### 3.1.2  Detection of excesses in the spatial distribution of the intensity at 1.275 MeV (case 2)

The total flux in the SPI field-of-view is distributed in several pixels. Some of the pixels can contain an intensity that leads to a significant signal. In this case, we obtain an additional information that is the location of the emission in the Galaxy. However, it is necessary to account for the reduction of the significance of the detection with the number of pixels involved in the total flux. A rough estimation of the significance (number of $`\sigma `$) of such a detection is derived by computing the probability that the observed intensity distribution in the field-of-view is due to background fluctuation. The lower the probability, the higher the significance. The number of sigma for each pixel is calculated by comparing the flux with the sensitivity for a point source . Afterwards, this number of sigma is converted in probabilities. The combination of the probabilities of the overall pixels allows us to estimate the probability that the observed distribution is not due to background fluctuation. Equation 4 shows an estimation of this probability $`P`$ that is available when the significances in pixels are high enough. $`N`$ is the total number of pixels in the SPI field-of-view, $`k`$ is the number of pixels above a given significance threshold (2.5$`\sigma `$ in this work) and $`P_i`$ is the probability derived from the significance in the pixel $`i`$.

$$P=\frac{N!}{(Nk)!}\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}P_i$$
(4)
The distribution of the emission from the GC is considered to be detected when the calculated probability leads to a significance that is above 3$`\sigma `$ for an observation time of 106 seconds ($``$11 days). A single nova close to the Earth can be the major source in the SPI GC field-of-view. Account for such an event makes a bias on the statistics of the cumulative 1.275 MeV flux. Therefore, to avoid such effect, the effective single nova pixel is removed from the analysis if its flux is more than 95% of the central 25 total flux.

#### 3.1.3  Detection of the brightest nova of the Galaxy in 1.275 MeV (case 3)

The flux from the brightest nova that can be observed from the Earth is also analyzed and considered to be detected if its value is above the sensitivity of the spectrometer SPI, for an observation time of $``$11 days. The observation time needed to detect with SPI (at a 3$`\sigma `$ level) the brightest nova of the Galaxy-test has also been estimated. Equation (5) allows us to calculate the duration of the observation ($`T_{3\sigma }`$ in days) to get a 3$`\sigma `$ detection of the flux $`f`$ (photons cm-2 s-1) in a single pixel.

$$T_{3\sigma }=\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2.42\hspace{0.25em}10}^5f^1+\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}5.28\hspace{0.25em}10}^9f^2$$
(5)
We can recognize the well known variation of the sensitivity as a function of the square root of the observation time in the second term of the equation, that is dominant when the signal-to-noise ratio is low (i.e. low fluxes). The first term accounts for the statistical fluctuations induced by the counts from sources when the signal-to-noise ratio is not low anymore (i.e. for high fluxes).

### 3.2  Probability to detect the 1.275 MeV line with SPI

For a large number of Galaxy-tests, the probability to detect any type of emission can be estimated by calculating the fraction of time that the simulated 1.275 MeV flux is above the upper-limit of a given experiment (HEAO3 or SPI). For the particular case of the future spectrometer of INTEGRAL, the average times of observation to obtain detections of the three types mentioned above have been derived, as well as the average number of novae that contribute to the diffuse emission of the GC region. Each Galaxy-test has been analyzed in order to check whether SPI would detect: the cumulative emission at 1.275 MeV in the 12.5 around the GC region (case 1), an excess in the distribution of the emission (case 2) and the brightest nova of the Galaxy (case 3), for a given average 22Na yield per ONe nova outburst. The time needed for a 3$`\sigma `$ level detection is also computed. Two hundred Galaxy-tests have been simulated for each model and for a given 22Na yield in order to calculate the number of Galaxy-tests that lead to a detection by SPI with an observation time of 106 s. The number obtained, divided by the total number of Galaxy-tests, gives an estimation of the probability to detect the 1.275 MeV line from ONe novae with SPI.

Figure 13 shows the mean observation times for the three types of detection with SPI, as a function of the average 22Na mass ejected per nova. The adopted ONe nova rate is 10 yr-1and the spatial distributions of novae are those described in section 2.2.1. For low values of 22Na yield, the observation times are very long and do not make sense since the limited duration of the INTEGRAL mission does not allow for observation times larger than 2 years. Moreover, as the Galactic 1.275 MeV intensity and its distribution would change due to the decay of 22Na and to the explosion of additional novae, the analysis of the intensity distribution (case 2) and of the brightest nova flux (case 3) are not valid anymore. However, other analyses (cases 1) can be possible with exposures in the limit of the allocated observation time.

Figure 13 shows the fraction of time that SPI would detect, in $``$11 days, an excess in the distribution of the emission from the GC region (case 2) as a function of average 22Na masses ejected per nova, for Galactic ONe nova rates ranging from 2 to 18 yr-1(i.e., an estimation of the probability to detect this emission). In this analysis, it is not possible to normalize the 22Na mass ejected by the ONe nova rate, because when the frequency of novae increases, the ($`l,b`$) distribution of intensity changes, resulting in an estimation of the significance that implies more pixels and not only more flux. Therefore, the sensitivity to an excess in the 1.275 MeV intensity distribution is not directly proportional to the amount of 22Na ejected per year.

Our results allow for the determination of the 22Na yield lower-limit that can be detected by the spectrometer of INTEGRAL. We state that this lower-limit of 22Na ejected mass corresponds to a probability of detection of 90%. The lower-limit depends also on the nova rate, since more ONe novae lead to higher cumulative GC region flux, on the Galaxy model and on the type of detection. Taking the 22Na mass values at 90% of probability in Figure 13 we can calculate the lower-limit as a function of the Galactic ONe nova rate for case 2. Similar calculations have been performed for the detection of the cumulative emission in the SPI field-of-view (case 1) and of the brightest nova of the Galaxy (case 3). The results are displayed in Figures 14 for the four adopted spatial distributions, as a function of the nova rate. As it has already been shown in Figure 13, it is clear that the future spectrometer SPI will be more sensitive to the brightest nova of the Galaxy and the total diffuse flux than to a detection of an excess in the distribution of the emission. The 22Na lower-limit masses needed to detect the brightest nova (case 3) are similar for the four models, since the distributions of novae distances to the Sun associated to these models are similar up to $``$7 kpc from the Sun. Concerning the 22Na lower-limit masses for the cumulative emission (case 1), it can be seen in Figure 14 that models KDF91 and HF87 provide lower values than VdK90 and DJ94 models. The radial scalelengths for the former are 3.0 kpc and 3.5 kpc, respectively, whereas the models VdK90 and DJ94 have higher radial scalelengths, 5 kpc in both cases (see Table 1). Since novae are closer to the GC in the KDF91 and HF87 models, their cumulative 1.275 MeV flux is higher and more compact (see Figures 4, 5, 6 and 7). For a given ONe nova rate, the 22Na lower-limit mass decreases with decreasing scaleheight of the Galactic disk: the lower the zh (i.e., models HF87 and KDF91), the higher the cumulative 1.275 MeV flux at the GC (see Table 2) and the smaller the 22Na lower-limit mass (see Figure 14). However, this variation is not significant: for instance, when the scaleheight increases from 0.1 kpc to 0.45 kpc the 22Na lower-limit mass increases from $``$7 10-7 M to 9 10-7 M, if we use the DJ94 model with variable scaleheight. Moreover, the limited angular resolution of SPI constrains to a lower-limit the observable disk scaleheight. Indeed, in the case of an exponential disk model (without bulge contribution), simulations show that the estimated 22Na lower-limit mass does not change for zh values lower than $``$0.15 kpc and $``$0.25 kpc, which correspond roughly to a scale-angle of 3 for a Galactic disk radial scalelength of 5 kpc and 3 kpc, respectively.

It is not clear whether the Galactic bulge should be a source of 1.275 MeV photons, since it has been proposed that it is 1010 years old and white dwarfs responsible of ONe novae should be much younger (the zero age mass of the white dwarf progenitor being probably larger than $``$10 M). However, the ages of novae do not only depend on the main sequence lifetime of the progenitor but also on the time necessary for the onset of the Roche lobe overflow in the binary system and the time between the onset of accretion and the outburst phase. Taking into account the eventuality that there is a lack of ONe novae in the bulge (see the recent paper by Della & Livio ), we have estimated the 22Na mass lower-limits in the case of ONe novae only distributed in the Galactic disk. Figure 15 shows the results of the simulations in this case for the four models adopted: the 22Na mass lower-limits that SPI can detect are in general lower, since novae are concentrated in the disk and, therefore, they are closer to the Earth.

As a final result, extracted from those presented in Figure 13, Figure 16 shows the observation time needed to have 90% of chance to detect with SPI the 1.275 MeV line emitted by the accumulated 22Na from the GC region (case 1) as a function of the mean 22Na mass ejected per ONe nova. These results are displayed for the four distributions of novae in the Galaxy. For the HF87 and KDF91 spatial distributions and our estimations of 22Na yields, observation times compatible with those planned for the deep survey of the central Galaxy are obtained. Therefore, cumulative emission in the GC may be detected with SPI.

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

It is important to remind that the total Galactic flux at 1.275 MeV depends not only on the amount of 22Na ejected per outburst and the ONe novae rate but also on their distribution in the Galaxy. The ejected 22Na mass upper-limit derived by HF87 using HEAO3 measurement was estimated for only one distribution and an ONe nova rate of 11.5 yr-1. Figure 17 shows the 22Na mass upper-limits computed with the 1.275 MeV upper-limit flux of HEAO3 considering other possible frequency-spatial distributions of novae in the Galaxy. It shows that the 22Na mass upper-limit lies between 2 and 10 10-7 M per nova.

The spectrometer of INTEGRAL will be more sensitive for the detection of the brightest nova of the Galaxy and of the cumulative diffuse emission of ONe novae in the GC region by an “on-off” type observation than for the determination of their intensity distribution. But it is not clear whether the brightest novae will be first detected in the visible due to the interstellar extinction. Nevertheless, long exposures in the Galactic plane region may allow for their detection with SPI.

According to José, Coc & Hernanz , the 22Na average yield could be between 3. 10-9 and 1.2 10-8 M per nova. Therefore, there are few chances to detect the Galactic diffuse 1.275 MeV emission with SPI with only $``$10 days of observation. However, 80 days of observation of the GC region could already give constraints to the mean 22Na yield in ONe novae as a function of their frequency-spatial distribution in the Galaxy (see Figure 16).

It is worth mentioning that the adopted width of the 1.275 MeV line (20 keV) is quite large, corresponding to the fastest ONe novae, which have the largest ejection velocities (and also the largest ejected 22Na masses). As the correlation between 22Na ejected mass and ejection velocity is not well established (neither theoretically nor observationally), and the braking of the ejected mass during the lifetime of 22Na is in principle small but not null, we are in the worst situation when we adopt such broad lines (corresponding to the largest velocities and without any braking effect). In the other extreme case of narrow lines (less realistic but interesting to make a comparison), the sensitivity of SPI is 6 10-6 photons cm-2 s-1 at a 3$`\sigma `$ level and for 106 s ($``$11 days) of observation time, for a point source, which is $``$3.7 times better than the one for our broad lines (see section 3.1) and allows for the detection of lower fluxes by the same factor. Consequently, a positive detection of the 1.275 MeV line by SPI would be achieved either with a smaller 22Na mass or with a smaller observation time.

Gamma-ray observation of novae would provide information not only on their eruption mechanisms and the nucleosynthesis processes involved in their explosion but also on their distribution and their rate in the Galaxy (e.g. proportion in the bulge, scaleheight in the Galactic disk) since the problem of the interstellar extinction does not appear at this energy range.

## Acknowledgments

We wish to thank G. Skinner for his helpful comments.

Research partially supported by the training and Mobility Researchers Programme, ‘Access to supercomputing facilities for european researchers’, established between the European Community and CESCA-CEPBA, under contract ERBFMGECT050062, and with the research projects ESP98-1348 (CICYT-PNIE), PB97-0983-C03-02 and PB97-0983-C03-03 (DGICYT), GRQ94-8001 (CIRIT).


text:
# Collision-assisted Zeeman cooling of neutral atoms

## Abstract

We propose a new method to cool gaseous samples of neutral atoms. The gas is confined in a non dissipative optical trap in the presence of an homogeneous magnetic field. The method accumulates atoms in the $`m_F=0`$ Zeeman sub-level. Cooling occurs via collisions that produce atoms in $`m_F0`$ states. Thanks to the second order Zeeman effect kinetic energy is transformed into internal energy and recycling of atoms is ensured by optical pumping. This method may allow quantum degeneracy to be reached by purely optical means.

Since the first proposal of optical pumping  many authors have focused on different schemes to cool samples by means of light fields . Laser cooling has produced significant results both for macroscopic and microscopic systems.

Spontaneous anti-Stokes scattering has been used to cool molecular gasses, fluid solutions and solid states systems . However these cooling schemes have intrinsic limitations in the attainable temperature due to the reduction of anti-Stokes scattering at low temperatures.

In the microscopic domain laser cooling has been very efficient on gases of ions and neutral atoms . Associated with evaporative cooling , laser cooling was an essential step towards Bose-Einstein condensation of weakly interacting gases . For neutral atoms polarization gradient cooling in optical molasses reaches temperatures on the order of 10 $`T_\mathrm{r}`$ ($`T_\mathrm{r}=\mathrm{}^2𝐤^2/mk_B`$ is the single-photon recoil temperature, k is the photon wave-number). Sideband cooling in 3D has reached 1.5 $`T_\mathrm{r}`$ and the limitation by multiple photon scattering has been identified . 3D sub-recoil cooling  has reached $`T_\mathrm{r}`$/20 for free atoms but suffers from a loss of efficiency for trapped atoms at high density . In contrast evaporative cooling takes advantage of elastic collisions and does not have limitations due to light scattering. It only suffers from a significant loss of atoms during evaporation.

In this letter we propose a new cooling mechanism that combines elastic collisions, inelastic collisions and optical pumping to efficiently cool samples of alkali atoms with no loss of atoms. In principle the method is able to reach sub-recoil temperatures and hold promises to reach quantum degeneracy by purely optical means. The key points of the method are the following: (i) the gas is stored in an optical far-off resonance trap (FORT)  in a well defined Zeeman sub-level of the electronic ground state, (ii) an uniform magnetic field is applied to the sample and its magnitude is chosen to have the second order Zeeman energy on the order of $`k_BT`$, (iii) inelastic collisions produce atoms in different Zeeman sub-levels of higher energy transforming kinetic energy into internal energy, (iv) atoms are then optically pumped back to the initial state by an additional laser beam with suitable polarization. Such a cycle removes an energy of the order of the second order Zeeman energy and cooling occurs at a rate set by the collision rate.

Now we apply the method to an alkali atom with nuclear spin 3/2 (such as 7Li, 23Na or 87Rb). The energy shifts of the different Zeeman sub-levels in a uniform magnetic field $`B`$ can be calculated using:

$$\xi =\frac{\mu _BB}{2\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}}=\frac{\omega _L}{\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}}$$
(1)
where $`\mu _B`$ is the Bohr magneton, $`\mathrm{}\omega _L`$ is the linear Zeeman shift between adjacent Zeeman sub-levels and $`\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}`$ is the hyperfine splitting of the electronic ground state. The Zeeman corrections to second order in $`\xi `$ read:

$$\delta _{F,m_F}(\xi )=(1)^F[\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}m_F\xi +\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}(4m_F^2)\xi ^2].$$
(2)
Assume that the gas is polarized in the level $`|F=1,m_F=0`$ and sufficiently cold that only s-wave collisions take place . The projection of the angular momentum on the quantization axis is conserved, hence a colliding pair of atoms either remains in the same internal state (A), or changes the internal state to the pair $`|F=1,m_F=1+|F=1,m_F=+1`$ (B). Those collision have already been observed in

. The total internal energy of the pairs A and B are equal to first order in $`\xi `$ but differ to second order: $`E_\mathrm{A}(\xi )=8\xi ^2\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}`$, $`E_\mathrm{B}(\xi )=6\xi ^2\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}`$. Since $`E_\mathrm{A}(\xi )<E_\mathrm{B}(\xi )`$, couples of $`|F=1,m_F=0`$ atoms may collide and change the internal state only when their energy in the center of mass is greater than the energy threshold $`\mathrm{\Delta }=E_B(\xi )E_A(\xi )`$. This endo-energetic collision (EC) transforms a fraction of kinetic energy into internal energy. The cycling on EC’s is insured by a $`\pi `$-polarized laser resonant on a $`F=1F^{}=1`$ optical transition. $`m_F=0`$ atoms are not coupled to the pumping light (see Fig. 1) while $`m_F=\pm 1`$ atoms once excited in $`|F^{}=1,m_F=\pm 1`$ may decay with a 1/2 branching ratio to A . The efficiency of the cooling process will depend on the ratio of the removed energy and heating on each cycle: the pumping process will heat the sample due to the recoil of the atom after the absorption and spontaneous emission of the pumping photon. In fact two different situation can be considered: the temperature is much larger than the recoil energy $`k_BTE_\mathrm{r}`$ ($`E_\mathrm{r}=k_BT_\mathrm{r}/2`$), or the two are similar $`k_BTE_\mathrm{r}`$ . In the first case the heating associated with the pumping can be neglected and the cooling is then equal to the rate of EC times the removed energy in each collision. In the low energy domain the energy balance of the cooling will also include the heating associated with the pumping process.

As stated above, the cooling rate depends on the rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ at which EC’s take place and the amount of the energy removed. To calculate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, we consider the gas as a classical homogeneous gas and we determine the fraction of collisions with energy in the center of mass $`E_{\mathrm{CM}}`$ greater than the removed energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Delta },T)`$ $`\sigma `$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐩_1𝑑𝐩_2n(1,T)n(2,T)}`$ (3)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{\Theta }(E_{\mathrm{CM}}\mathrm{\Delta })|𝐯_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{}𝐯_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}|,`$ (4)
where $`\sigma `$ is the cross section for a collision changing the internal state, 1 and 2 represent the two colliding atoms, $`n(i,T)`$ is the Boltzmann factor for atom $`i`$ at temperature $`T`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the step function equal to 1 if $`E_{\mathrm{CM}}>\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and null otherwise, and $`𝐯_{}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}`$ is the velocity of atom $`i`$ after the changing of the Zeeman sub-level. The factor $`|𝐯_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{}𝐯_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}|`$ in equation 4 takes in account the reduction of the density of final states when the energy in the center of mass changes during the collision .

Fig. 2 shows $`\gamma (\mathrm{\Delta }/k_BT)`$, i.e. the rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Delta },T)`$ normalized by the collisional rate at zero energy threshold $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(0,T)`$. If we define $`E_\mathrm{p}`$ as the energy gained during the pumping process (typically few $`E_\mathrm{r}`$), in the limit where the pumping is faster than $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Delta },T)`$ the cooling rate $`W`$ reads:

$$W(\mathrm{\Delta },T,E_\mathrm{p})=\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Delta },T)(\mathrm{\Delta }E_\mathrm{p}).$$
(5)
Those rates are plotted in Fig. 3 for different amounts of heating associated with the pumping. One finds that for different values of $`E_\mathrm{p}/k_BT`$, the cooling rate

is optimized when $`\mathrm{\Delta }k_BT+E_\mathrm{p}`$. Then it is possible to make an estimation of the dynamics of the cooling process by solving

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}T}{\mathrm{d}t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }E_\mathrm{p})}{6k_B}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Delta },T)`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{in}}}{6}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(0,T_{\mathrm{in}})\gamma \left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{E_\mathrm{p}}{k_BT}}\right),`$ (7)
where $`T_{\mathrm{in}}`$ is the initial temperature after the loading of the FORT. The denominator in Eq. 6 takes into account the heat capacity of a 3D confined gas and the fact that the energy subtracted in EC is provided by the two colliding atoms. In Eq. 7 we use the fact that if the trapping potential is harmonic (like the bottom of a FORT) $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(0,T)T^1`$. The dynamics of the cooling behaves differently in the two temperature regimes: if $`E_\mathrm{p}/k_BT1`$ the argument of $`\gamma `$ is constant therefore the temperature decreases linearly. Once $`E_\mathrm{p}/k_BT1`$ the normalized collision rate $`\gamma `$ is no longer constant and since it can be approximated by an exponential function (see figure 2) the temperature decreases logarithmicaly with time.

As an example we consider a gas of 87Rb at 36 $`\mu `$K and 2 $`10^{11}`$ cm-3 peak density (typical values attainable after charging a FORT from a magneto-optical trap ). If we suppose that the collisional cross section for collisions changing the Zeeman sub-level is of the same order as those for elastic collisions  we find $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(0,T_{\mathrm{in}})4`$ s-1. In Fig. 4 are plotted the integration of equation 7 for values of $`E_\mathrm{p}`$ ranging from 0 to 18 $`E_\mathrm{r}`$ ($`E_\mathrm{r}`$=180 nK for 87Rb). For this choice of parameters the temperature drops almost linearly during the first two seconds. After the first 2 seconds typically we find $`TE_\mathrm{p}/4k_B`$ and after 3 seconds $`TE_\mathrm{p}/6k_B`$. At longer cooling times $`T[\mathrm{log}t]^1`$ and reaches $`E_\mathrm{p}/12k_B`$ after 50 seconds. The present simulation will not be valid in the regime of extremely low temperature when the gas can no longer be treated as a classical gas and when the radiation trapping effect becomes extremely large. Experimentally $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ should be swept from a value corresponding to the initial temperature of the gas, to slightly more than

$`E_\mathrm{p}`$. To avoid any dependency of the optical potential on $`m_F`$, the trapping light has to be linearly polarized and propagating along the quantization axis. Slight imperfections in the polarization of the trapping light do not affect the physics discussed so far since they do not change the energy of colliding pairs of atoms if the projection of the angular momentum is conserved.

An important issue for the cooling is the control of the magnetic field $`𝐁`$. As stated before the direction of $`𝐁`$ has to be well defined and parallel to the polarization of the pumping light. Indeed any misalignment results in a $`\sigma `$ component in the polarization of the pumper that introduces further heating terms. Since the $`\pi `$ component affects only $`m_F=\pm 1`$ atoms and the $`\sigma `$ component affects the ensemble of the gas, choosing a Rabi frequency on the order of the rate of EC’s will reduce the heating due to the imperfect polarization. The requirements on the intensity of $`𝐁`$ are much less demanding. In order to cool 87Rb ($`\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}=2\pi \times 6.8`$ GHz) in the lower hyperfine state $`F=1`$, the magnetic field necessary to have $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ corresponding to 100 $`\mu `$K is 100 Gauss. The intensity of $`𝐁`$ is then swept down to slightly more than $`E_\mathrm{p}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }1\mu `$K (a few times $`E_\mathrm{r}`$). Since $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝐁^2`$, the magnetic field at the end of the sweep will be of the order of 10 Gauss. It is worth noting that loss due to light-assisted collisions such as fine-structure or hyperfine-structure changing collisions can be avoided by choosing properly the pumping transition: pumping of 87Rb on the $`F=1F^{}=1`$ transition of the D1 line has no allowed channel for those collisions.

Other cooling schemes are possible for the same atoms in the higher hyperfine state (positive Landé factor $`g_F`$). Using Eq. 2 we find that the magnetic energy of the couple $`|F=2,m_F=\pm 1`$ is $`6\xi ^2\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{HF}}`$ higher than that of couple $`|F=2,m_F=\pm 2`$. Optical pumping on a $`F=2F^{}=1`$ transition with $`\pi `$-polarized light (see Fig. 5) again permits cycling on EC’s that lower $`|m_F|`$. A major obstacle to this type of cooling is represented by inelastic collisions changing the hyperfine state. Nevertheless it may remain

feasible for particular choices of atoms: 87Rb was proven to have the cross section for spin-exchange collisions sufficiently small to make an unpolarized dilute cold gas stable .

This cooling mechanism can also be extended to alkali atoms with nuclear spin different from 3/2, in the highest hyperfine state. As in the previous case the atoms are polarized in the extreme Zeeman levels $`m_F=\pm F`$ and EC’s produce atoms in lower Zeeman levels. The pumping is done by a $`\pi `$-polarized laser resonant on a $`FF^{}=F1`$ transition. Other generalizations could consider mixtures of different atoms with different $`g_F`$ factors. The cooling would then take advantage of the first-order Zeeman effect.

The proposed cooling mechanism can be applied to produce Bose-Einstein condensates  with purely optical means. Since collisions between atoms in different Zeeman sub-levels do not give rise to trap losses, one can choose pumping rates arbitrarily low in order to fulfill the festina lente scenario  where the fluorescence rate is much smaller than the oscillation frequency of the atom in the trapping potential. The lower limit in the attainable temperature with this technique is presumably due to the reabsorption of scattered photons during the pumping phase. One possibility to partially avoid this effect is to reduce the dimensionality of the trapping potential in order to have an elongated cigar-shaped cloud .

In conclusion we have presented a new, simple and spin-polarizing cooling scheme that combines optical pumping, elastic collision and second order Zeeman effect. The combination of optical pumping and endo-energetic collisions permits to avoid the intrinsic limitation of laser cooling and evaporative cooling: the finiteness of the exchangeable momentum between atoms and photons, and the loss of atoms respectively. In presence of an homogeneous magnetic field, collisions allow a defined amount of kinetic energy to be

transformed into internal energy (by changing the Zeeman state of the atoms) and optical pumping ensures the cycling on the process.

Finally it is interesting to note that the proposed cooling method, polarizing the atoms at will in the extremal Zeeman sub-level ($`m_F=\pm F`$) or $`m_F=0`$, is well adapted to operation in atomic fountains. 87Rb, which seems to be a valid candidate as a future frequency standard , fits all the requirements of the presented mechanism.

I acknowledge fruitful discussions with Iacopo Carusotto, Yvan Castin, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Kristan Corwin, Jean Dalibard, Florian Schreck, Christophe Salomon and Guglielmo Tino. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel is an Unité de recherche de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure et de l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie, associée au CNRS. This work was partially supported by CNRS, Collège de France, DRET, DRED and EC (TMR network ERB FMRX-CT96-0002).


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# Universal free energy correction for the two-dimensional one-component plasma

## I Introduction

Two-dimensional Coulomb systems are models which have attracted some attention. On a two-dimensional manifold, a Coulomb system is a system made of particles interacting through the corresponding Coulomb potential plus perhaps some short-range interaction. In a plane, the Coulomb interaction energy of two particles of charges $`q`$ and $`q^{}`$, separated by a distance $`r`$, is defined as $`qq^{}\mathrm{ln}(r/L)`$, where $`L`$ is some (irrelevant) length.

Some time ago, it has been shown that the free energy of such systems has a universal finite-size correction  very similar (except for its sign) to the one which occurs in a system with short-range forces at a critical point : for a finite Coulomb system of characteristic size $`R`$, the free energy $`F`$ has the large-$`R`$ behaviour

$$\beta F=AR^2+BR+\frac{\chi }{6}\mathrm{ln}R+\mathrm{},$$
(1)
where $`\beta `$ is the inverse temperature. $`A`$ and $`B`$ are non-universal constants describing the bulk and boundary contributions, respectively. $`(\chi /6)\mathrm{ln}R`$ is the universal correction, depending only on the Euler number $`\chi `$ which describes the topology of the manifold on which the system lives. However, the general derivation  of (1) had some heuristic features. The purpose of the present paper is to check (1) in the special case of a one-component plasma on the surface of a sphere, by a different method.

The one-component plasma is a system made of one species of point-particles of charge $`q`$ in a uniform neutralizing background. On a sphere of radius $`R`$, the interaction between two particles can be chosen  as $`q^2\mathrm{ln}[(2R/L)\mathrm{sin}(\psi /2)]`$, where $`\psi `$ is the angular distance (seen from the sphere centre) between the two particles. There are also particle-background and background-background interactions. A dimensionless coupling constant is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\beta q^2`$.

A sphere has no boundaries and its Euler number is $`\chi =2`$. Furthermore, for a given particle density, $`R^2`$ is proportional to the number of particles $`N`$. Thus, expansion (1) becomes

$$\beta F=CN+\frac{1}{6}\mathrm{ln}N+\mathrm{},$$
(2)
where $`C`$ is a constant. The model is exactly solvable  when $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$ and it can be checked  that (2) is obeyed in that case. Also, exact calculations  for finite values of $`N`$ at $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=4`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=6`$ are well fitted by (2).

The present derivation of (2) relies on a recent result  about the direct correlation function $`c(r)`$ of the plane one-component plasma. By a diagrammatic analysis, it has been shown in ref.  that the second moment of the short-range part $`c_{_{SR}}(r)`$ has the simple value

$$n^2c_{_{SR}}(r)r^2d^2𝐫=\frac{1}{12\pi }.$$
(3)
A remarkable feature of (3) is its universality, in the sense that it is independent of the coupling constant $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. It will now be shown how (3) leads to (2). More specifically, we show how (3) implies the finite-size correction to the chemical potential $`\mu =F/N`$:

$$\beta \mu =\beta \mu _{\mathrm{}}+\frac{1}{6N}+\mathrm{}$$
(4)
This derivation bears some similarity with another one about the two-component plasma .

## II Density functional theory approach

We consider the OCP of average density $`n_s`$ on the sphere of radius $`R`$ (with a corresponding number of particles $`N=4\pi R^2n_s`$). Introducing the stereographic projection of the sphere onto the plane $`𝒫`$ tangent to its south pole (see figure 1), we map the homogeneous OCP on the sphere onto a modified inhomogeneous plasma on the plane, with local particle density

$$n(𝐫)=n_s\left(1+\frac{r^2}{4R^2}\right)^2.$$
(5)
In terms of planar coordinates $`𝐫_1`$ and $`𝐫_2`$, the interaction potential between two particles on the sphere with angular distance $`\psi _{12}`$ can be written as the sum of the planar two dimensional Coulomb potential $`v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{})=q^2\mathrm{ln}[|𝐫𝐫^{}|/L]`$ and one-body terms since:

$$\mathrm{ln}\left[\frac{2R}{L}\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{\psi _{12}}{2}\right)\right]=\mathrm{ln}\left[\frac{|𝐫_1𝐫_2|}{L}\right]+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left(1+\frac{r_1^2}{4R^2}\right)+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left(1+\frac{r_2^2}{4R^2}\right).$$
(6)
The two one-body terms appearing on the right hand side of eq. (6), as well as the metric, create a central potential and we can consider the projected planar system as a OCP interacting through the standard pair potential $`v_p`$, in an external one-body central potential $`V_R^N(r)`$. The latter acts as a confining mechanism ensuring the proper density given by eq. (5), and its detailed form need not be precised. Without background, the free energy $`^{}`$ for the set of particles with pair potential $`v_p`$ can be formally expanded in a Mayer diagrammatic representation , with a leading term $`(1/2)n(𝐫)v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{})n(𝐫^{})d^2𝐫d^2𝐫^{}`$ for the excess (over ideal) part of $`^{}`$. The presence of a neutralizing background cancels this mean-field electrostatic term and the intrinsic free energy functional of the inhomogeneous OCP becomes:

$$[n(𝐫)]=^{}[n(𝐫)]\frac{1}{2}n(𝐫)v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{})n(𝐫^{})d^2𝐫d^2𝐫^{}.$$
(7)
The local chemical potential reads

$$\mu (𝐫)=\frac{\delta [n]}{\delta n(𝐫)}=\frac{\delta ^{}[n]}{\delta n(𝐫)}v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{})n(𝐫^{})d^2𝐫^{}$$
(8)
and the second functional derivative of $``$ yields:

$`\beta {\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mu (𝐫)}{\delta n(𝐫^{})}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta ^2\beta ^{}[n]}{\delta n(𝐫)\delta n(𝐫^{})}}\beta v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{})`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`c(𝐫,𝐫^{})+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta (𝐫𝐫^{})}{n(𝐫)}}\beta v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{})`$ (10)
$`=`$ $`c_{_{SR}}(𝐫,𝐫^{})+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta (𝐫𝐫^{})}{n(𝐫)}},`$ (11)
where the variations of the excess contribution to $`^{}`$ give rise to the usual direct correlation function , having a short-range part given by

$$c_{_{SR}}(𝐫,𝐫^{})=c(𝐫,𝐫^{})+\beta v_p(𝐫,𝐫^{}).$$
(12)
Note that the chemical potential of the OCP on the sphere coincides with $`\mu (0)`$ for the optimum density profile (5).

Equation (11) emphasizes the short range dependence of the chemical potential on a density perturbation. Consequently, $`\mu (0)`$ is the same in a finite $`N`$-particle OCP in the central potential $`V_R^N(r)`$ and in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ with an external potential $`V_R^{\mathrm{}}(r)`$ ensuring the same density variation around the origin as expression (5), namely:

$$n(𝐫)=n_s\left(1\frac{r^2}{2R^2}\right)+\mathrm{}$$
(13)
For the purpose of the present analysis, it is sufficient to truncate (5) after second order in $`r`$, as becomes clear below. The knowledge of the finite-size correction to the chemical potential for the OCP on the sphere then amounts to computing the shift $`\delta \mu (0)`$ induced by switching $`V_R^{\mathrm{}}(r)`$ starting from the infinite homogeneous planar OCP with density $`n_s`$ (corresponding to the stereographic projection of the “spherical” plasma in the thermodynamic limit $`R\mathrm{}`$). The density variation caused by the addition of $`V_R^{\mathrm{}}(r)`$ reads $`\delta n(𝐫)n_sr^2/(2R^2)`$ and induces the shift

$`\beta \delta \mu (0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \left[c_{_{SR}}(𝐫)+\frac{\delta (𝐫)}{n(𝐫)}\right]\delta n(𝐫)d^2𝐫}`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{n_s}{2R^2}}{\displaystyle c_{_{SR}}(r)r^2d^2𝐫},`$ (15)
where the direct correlation function to be considered is that of the homogeneous reference planar OCP. From the sum rule (3), we finally obtain:

$$\beta \delta \mu (0)=\frac{1}{24\pi n_sR^2}=\frac{1}{6N},$$
(16)
and eq. (4) is recovered.