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# Three-dimensional modelling of edge-on disk galaxies Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Chile and Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff (AZ), USA

## 1 Introduction

Global parameters of galactic disks can be used to constrain the formation process as well as the evolution of disk galaxies. Recently it has become possible to deduce parameters such as scalelength or central surface density from numerical or semi-analytical self-consistent galaxy formation models (Syer et al. syer (1999), Mo et al. mo (1998), Dalcanton et al. dal (1997)) and compare the results with observed values. Observationally the Hubble Deep Field gives the opportunity to study morphological features and simple structural parameters for galaxies even at high redshifts (Takamiya taka (1999), Marleau & Simard hdfmorph (1998), Fasano & Filippi fasan (1998)).
Former statistical studies providing sets of homogeneously derived parameters for nearby galaxy samples are those of de Jong (1996b ) using a two-dimensional and of Courteau (cour (1996)) with a one-dimensional decomposition technique.
However, so far only a few statistical studies based on high quality CCD data (de Grijs dgmn (1998), Barteldrees & Dettmar bd (1994), hereafter Paper I) have addressed the actual three-dimensional structure of disk galaxies with regard to the stellar distribution perpendicular to the plane (z-direction) and taking into account an outer truncation (cut-off radius) for the disk, first introduced by van der Kruit & Searle (1981a ).
While the stellar distribution perpendicular to the plane (z-profile) could result from various ”heating” processes during the galactic evolution (Toth & Ostriker toth (1992), Hernquist & Mihos hern (1995)), the cut-off radius can be used to constrain either the angular momentum of a protocloud (van der Kruit vdk87 (1987)) or possible starformation thresholds in the gaseous disk (Kennicutt kenni (1989)).
In the following, we have compiled parameters of galactic disks for a total of 31 edge-on galaxies in different optical filters of which 17 objects have been already discussed in Paper I. One goal of our detailed comparison of several independent fitting procedures is to study the influence of the applied techniques on resulting disk parameters. It also provides the data base for statistical analysis addressing some of the above mentioned questions (e.g., Pohlen et al. pol (2000)). For 14 objects surface photometric data are given for the first time in Appendix A.

## 2 Observations and data reductions

### 2.1 Observations

The observations were carried out at the 42-inch (1.06m) telescope of the Lowell Observatory located on the Anderson Mesa dark side during several nights in December 1988 (run identification: L1) and January 1989 (L2) and at the 2.2m telescope at ESO/La Silla during three runs in June 1985 (E1), March (E2) and June (E3) 1987. At the 42-inch telescope we used a 2:1 focal reducer with the f/8 secondary, equipped with a CCD camera which is based on a thinned TI 800x800 WFPC 1 CCD with 15 $`\mu `$m pixelsize resulting in a field of approximately 9$`\mathrm{}`$ with a scale of 0.7$`\mathrm{}`$pixel-1. Images were taken with a standard Johnson R filter. Observations at the 2.2m telescope were carried out with the ESO CCD adapter using a 512x320 RCA chip, giving an effective field size of $`3\mathrm{}`$x$`\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}\mathrm{}`$ and a scale of 0.36$`\mathrm{}`$pixel-1. For the ESO observing runs we used the g, r, and i filters of the Thuan and Gunn (tg (1976)) system. Exposures were mainly taken in the g or r band, and only seven galaxies were observed in all three filters.

### 2.2 Sample selection

The northern sample observed at Lowell was selected automatically in an electronic version of the UGC-catalog (Nilson ugc (1973)) searching for galaxies with an inclination class 7 matching the field size. After visual inspection to check the inclination and remove interacting and disturbed galaxies, the observed sample was chosen out of the remaining galaxies according to the allocated observing time.
For the southern sky there is no comparable catalog providing information of inclinations directly. Using the axial ratios given e.g. in the ESO-Lauberts & Valentijn catalog (lv (1989)) will introduce a selection bias preferring late type galaxies with lower B/D ratio (Guthrie guthri (1992), Bottinelli et al. bot (1983)). One way to avoid this is extending the first selection to much lower axis ratios, comparable to $`i65\mathrm{°}`$, and then checking the inclination by eye. Therefore we selected the galaxies according to the field size of about $`2\mathrm{}`$ from a visual inspection of film copies of the southern sky survey (see Paper I).
Table 1 gives a list of the resulting sample used during our fitting process, with a serial number (1), the principal galaxy name (2), the used filter (3), the integration time in minutes (4), and the run identification label (5), whereas the ’$``$’ marks images already published in Paper I. Further parameters are taken from the RC3 catalogue (de Vaucouleurs et al. rc3 (1991)): the right ascension (6) and declination (7), the RC3 coded Hubble-type (8), the Hubble parameter T (9), and the D25 diameter in arcminutes (10). In the case of ESO 578-025 parameters are taken from the ESO-Uppsala catalogue (Lauberts eso (1982)).

### 2.3 Data reduction

We applied standard reduction techniques for bias subtraction, bad pixel correction and flatfielding. Following the procedure described in Paper I the sky background was fitted for each image using the edges of the individual frames to reduce any large scale inhomogeneity in the field of view. For part of the data we tried to remove the foreground stars from the image, but even with sophisticated PSF fitting using IRAF-DAOphot routines we were not able to remove stars without any confusion. The remaining residuals were always of the order of the discussed signal. This technique could only be used to mask out the regions affected by stars. In order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio near the level of the sky background part of the data was filtered using a weighted smoothing algorithm (see Paper I). Thereby the noise was reduced by about one magnitude measured with a three sigma deviation on the background, whereas the interpretation of the faint structure is hampered by this process.
We therefore conclude that the best way is to omit any additional image modifications, besides a rotation of the image to the major axis of the disk.

### 2.4 Photometric calibration

Most of the images were taken during non-photometric nights, therefore we tried a different way to perform photometric calibration. Comparing simulated aperture measurements with published integrated aperture data led to the best possible homogeneous calibration of the whole sample. Most of the southern galaxies were calibrated using the catalogue of Lauberts & Valentijn (lv (1989)), whereas NED111NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) was used for all northern galaxies. We used equation (1) derived in Paper I for the colour transformation of R and B literature values and the g measurements, and no correction between the R and r, and I and i band, respectively. Due to the fact that the photometric errors, of the input catalogues from Lauberts & Valentijn (lv (1989)) as well as within the RC3 catalogue (de Vaucouleurs et al. rc3 (1991)) are of the order of $`0.1`$ mag, we do not apply any further corrections. Galaxies calibrated in this way are marked with l in column (5) of Table 2, whereas for galaxies which did not have published values for their magnitude in the observed filter, we interpolated from calibrated images of the same night, by comparing the count rates for the sky value. These galaxies are marked with an i. For a few nights no galaxy with published photometry was observed and in these cases we used interpolated night sky values from the same observing run. Images calibrated in this way are marked with e in Table 2. The resulting zero points and central surface brightness values in these cases should be interpreted carefully, although the derived structural parameters, like scalelength and scaleheight, are not influenced by any uncertainty in the flux calibration.
Appendix A shows the contour plots and selected radial profiles for the 14 objects (25 images) not already published in Paper I.

### 2.5 Distance estimates

In order to derive the intrinsic values of the scale parameters and to compare physical dimensions we tried to estimate distances for our galaxies. Therefore we took published radial velocities corrected for the Virgo centric infall from the LEDA222Lyon/Meudon Extragalactic Database (LEDA) database, and estimated the distance following the Hubble relation with a Hubble constant of $`H_0=75`$ km s-1Mpc-1. Table 1 gives the heliocentric radial velocities (11) according to LEDA, and our estimated distances (12).

## 3 Disk models

### 3.1 Background

Our disk model is based upon the fundamental work of van der Kruit and Searle (1981a , 1981b , 1982a , 1982b ). They tried to find a fitting function for the light distribution in disks of edge-on galaxies. These galaxies are, compared to the face-on view, preferred for studying galactic disks due to the fact, that in this geometry it is possible to disentangle the radial and vertical stellar distribution. Their model include an exponential radial light distribution found for face-on galaxies (de Vaucouleurs, devau59 (1959); Freeman, free (1970)), a sech2 behaviour in $`z`$, which is expected for an isothermal population in a plan-parallel system (Camm, camm (1950); Spitzer, spitzer (1942)), and a sharp edge of the disk, first observed by van der Kruit (vdk79 (1979)) in radial profiles of edge-on galaxies. The resulting luminosity density distribution for this symmetric disk model is (van der Kruit & Searle 1981a ):

$$\widehat{L}(R,z)=\widehat{L}_0\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{R}{h}\right)\mathrm{sech}^2\left(\frac{z}{z_0}\right)R<R_{\mathrm{co}}$$
(1)
$`\widehat{L}`$ being the luminosity density in units of \[$`L_{\mathrm{}}`$ pc-3\], $`\widehat{L}_0`$ the central luminosity density, $`R`$ and $`z`$ are the radial resp. vertical axes in cylinder coordinates, $`h`$ is the radial scalelength and $`z_0`$ the scaleheight, and $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ is the cut-off radius.
The empirically found exponential radial light distribution is now well accepted and it is proposed that viscous dissipation could be responsible (Firmani et al. firmani (1996), Struck-Marcel struck (1991); Saio & Yoshii saio (1990), Lin & Pringle lp (1987)), although there is so far no unique explanation for the disk being exponential. An alternative description of the form $`1/R`$ proposed by Seiden et al. (seiden (1984)) did not get much attention, although it emphasizes the empirical nature of the exponential fitting function.
To avoid the strong dust lane and to follow the light distribution down to the region $`z0`$ Wainscoat (wain (1986)) and Wainscoat et al. (wainetal (1989)) carried out NIR observations using the much lower extinction in this wavelength regime compared to the optical. They found a clear excess over the isothermal distribution and proposed the z-distribution to be better fitted by an exponential function $`f(z)=\mathrm{exp}(z/z_0)`$. According to van der Kruit (vdk88 (1988)) such a distribution would led to a sharp minimum of the velocity dispersion in the plane, which is not observed (Fuchs & Wielen fw (1987)). Therefore he proposed $`f(z)=\mathrm{sech}(z/z_0)`$ as an intermediate solution. De Grijs (dg (1997)) extended this to a family of density laws $`g_m(z,z_0)=2^{2/m}g_0\mathrm{sech}^{2/m}\left(mz/2z_0\right)(m>0)`$ following van der Kruit (vdk88 (1988)), where the isothermal ($`m=1`$), and the exponential ($`m=\mathrm{}`$) cases represent the two extremes.
Therefore the luminosity density distribution can be written as:

$$\widehat{L}(R,z)=\widehat{L}_0\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{R}{h}\right)f_n(z,z_0)\mathrm{H}(R_{\mathrm{co}}R)$$
(2)
with H$`(x_0x)`$ being the Heaviside function.
In order to limit the choice of parameters we restrict our models to the three main density laws for the z-distribution (exponential, sech, and sech2). Due to the choice of our normalised isothermal case $`z_0`$ is equal to $`2h_z`$, where $`h_z`$ is the usual exponential vertical scale height:

$`f_1(z)`$ $`=`$ $`4\mathrm{exp}\left(2{\displaystyle \frac{z}{z_0}}\right)`$
$`f_2(z)`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{sech}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2z}{z_0}}\right)`$
$`f_3(z)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{sech}^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{z}{z_0}}\right)`$
In contrast to Paper I and Barteldrees & Dettmar (bdold (1989)) we define the cut-off radius at the position where the radial profiles become nearly vertical, corresponding to the mathematical description. They tried to avoid any confusion due to the lower signal-to-noise in the outer parts, by fixing the cut-off radius where the measured radial profile begin to deviate significantly from the pure exponential fit.

### 3.2 Numerical realisation

The model of the two dimensional surface photometric intensity results from an integration along the line of sight of the three dimensional luminosity density distribution (2) with regard to the inclination $`i`$ of the galaxy. Describing the luminosity density of the disk in a cartesian-coordinate grid K($`x`$-$`y`$-$`z`$) with $`R=\sqrt{(x^2+y^2)}`$ leads to the following coordinate transformation into the observed inclined system K($`x^{}`$-$`y^{}`$-$`z^{}`$) with $`x^{}`$ pointing towards the observer, whereas the rotation angle between the two systems corresponds to $`90\mathrm{°}i`$:

$`x`$ $`=`$ $`x^{}\mathrm{sin}(i)z^{}\mathrm{cos}(i)`$
$`y`$ $`=`$ $`y^{}`$
$`z`$ $`=`$ $`x^{}\mathrm{cos}(i)+z^{}\mathrm{sin}(i)`$
Taking into account this transformation we have to integrate equation (2), obtaining an equation for the intensity of the model disk depending on the observed radial and vertical axes $`y^{}`$ and $`z^{}`$ on the CCD:

$$I(y^{},z^{})=\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}\widehat{L}(x(x^{},z^{},i),y^{},z(x^{},z^{},i))𝑑x^{}$$
(3)
Together with equation (2) this gives:

$`I(y^{},z^{})=`$
$`\widehat{L}_0{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{(x^{}\mathrm{sin}iz^{}\mathrm{cos}i)^2+y^2}}{h}}\right)f_n(z^{},z_0)`$
$`\mathrm{H}\left(R_{\mathrm{co}}\sqrt{(x^{}\mathrm{sin}iz^{}\mathrm{cos}i)^2+y^2}\right)dx^{}`$ (4)
Therefore six free parameters fit the observed surface intensity on the chip ($`y^{}`$, $`z^{}`$ plane) to the model:

$$I=I(y^{},z^{},i,n,\widehat{L}_0,R_{\mathrm{co}},h,z_0)$$
(5)
Figure 1 shows a sequence of computed models with an isothermal z-distribution ($`n=3`$) for the exact edge-on case ($`i=90\mathrm{°}`$) with characteristic values for the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{co}}/h`$: $`1.40,2.88,5.00`$ and for $`h/z_0`$: $`2.0,4.0,7.3`$ keeping the cut-off radius $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ and the total luminosity $`L_{tot}zh^2\widehat{L}_0`$ constant. The latter is causing a different central surface brightness $`\mu _0`$ for each model, ranging from 23.8 to 19.3 starting with $`\mu _0=21.2`$ mag$`/\mathit{}\mathrm{}`$ for the reference model with $`R_{\mathrm{co}}/h=2.88`$ and $`h/z_0=4.0`$. All contour lines falling within the interval $`\mu =25.0`$$`19.5`$ are plotted with a spacing of 0.5.

### 3.3 Method 1

#### 3.3.1 Determination of fitting area

The first step is to divide the galaxy into its quadrants. The four images are then averaged according to their orientation, following van der Kruit & Searle (1981a ) and Shaw (s93 (1993)). Thereby larger foreground stars and asymmetrical perturbations in the intensity distribution are eliminated by omitting this region during averaging. Smaller foreground stars are removed by median filtering. The average quadrant should result at least from three quadrants to get a representative image of the galaxy. This averaging additionally increases the signal-to-noise ratio. In order to determine the fitting area for modelling the disk component on the final quadrant, one has to avoid the disturbing influence of the bulge component and the dust lane. The region dominated by the bulge is fixed following Wyse et al. (wgf (1997)) defining the bulge component by “light that is in excess of an inward extrapolation of a constant scale-length exponential disk”. Therefore the clear increase of the intensity towards the center which can be seen in radial cuts determines an inner fitting boundary $`R_{\mathrm{min}}`$. We tried to minimize the dust influence (cf. Section 4.4.2) by placing a lower limit $`z_{\mathrm{min}}`$ in the vertical direction by visual inspection. Additionally we restricted the remaining image by a limiting contour line $`\mu _{\mathrm{lim}}`$, where the intensity drops below a limit of 3$`\sigma `$ on the background.
We are aware of the problem that these are rather rough definitions difficult to reproduce without quoting the exact values for $`R_{\mathrm{min}},z_{\mathrm{min}},\mu _{\mathrm{lim}}`$. However, the final choice of the fitting area is a complex and subjective procedure depending on the intrinsic shape of each individual galaxy, the influence of their environment, and the quality of the image itself. Therefore it is not possible to quote exact general selection criteria and to derive the structural parameters straight forward. One solution is to do it in a consistent way for a large sample, leaving the problem of comparing results from different methods (cf. Section 4.2).

#### 3.3.2 Numerical fitting

The numerical realisation of the fitting procedure minimizes the difference ($`SQ`$) between the averaged quadrant and a modelled quadrant based on equation (4).

$$SQ=\underset{j}{}\left(log\left(I_{O_j}(y_j,z_j)\right)log\left(I_{M_j}(y_j,z_j)\right)\right)^2$$

$`I_{O_j}`$ is the intensity within the average quadrant (observed intensity) and $`I_{M_j}`$ of the modelled intensity. In contrast to Shaw & Gilmore (sg89 (1989), sg90 (1990)) and Shaw (s93 (1993)) using a similar approach for their models we do not weight individual pixels. They weight the difference by the error in the surface brightness measure, which Shaw (s93 (1993)) derives from the averaging of the quadrants. However, this method implies an absolute symmetry for the disk in $`z`$ and $`y`$, which is not the case for real galaxies. These kind of errors only reflect the asymmetry of the galaxy. Using the observed errors in the surface brightness for weighting individual pixels does not result in a considerable advantage because they are nearly the same after smoothing. The minimal $`SQ`$ is found by varying five of the six free parameters of the model (cf. eq. 5), whereas the parameter $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ is determinated by cuts parallel to the major axis. A significant decrease of the intensity extrapolated to $`I=0`$ gives the value of $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ (van der Kruit & Searle, 1981a ), therefore it is important that the intensity at the cut-off radius is well above the noise limit. The other five parameters are determined by fixing the smallest $`SQ`$. For the three different functions $`f(z)`$ and every possible $`i`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }i=0.5\mathrm{°}`$) the remaining parameters ($`\widehat{L}_0`$, $`h`$, and $`z_0`$) are varied with the “downhill simplex-method” (Nelder & Mead, nm (1965); Press et al., pftv (1988)) until the global minimum of $`SQ`$ is found. $`I_{M_j}`$ is calculated by a numerical gaussian integration of equation (4). The possible inclination angles can be restricted from the dust lane of the galaxy (Paper I). Tests of model disks with additional noise show that the “downhill simplex-method” found the input inclination $`i`$, the used model $`f(z)`$ and the other disk parameters within errors of $`\delta h,\delta z_0`$, and $`\delta \widehat{L}_0<`$ 1%. An estimation of the errors of the parameters for the best model disk can be made by inspection of the parameter space for $`SQ`$ around the smallest $`SQ`$, with slightly different fitting areas, and different values of $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$. $`f(z)`$ is in almost all cases the same and the variation of $`i`$ is only small ($`\pm 1\mathrm{°}`$). The differences in $`h`$ and $`z_0`$ are about 15% (in some cases up to 25%), and $`\widehat{L}_0`$ varies about a factor of 2.

### 3.4 Method 2

Within this method all disk parameters as well as the choice of the optimum function $`f(z)`$ are estimated by a direct comparison of calculated and observed disk profiles by eye.
As a first step, the inclination $`i`$ is determined by using the axis ratio of the dust lane. Depending on the shape of the dust lane it is possible to restrict the inclination to $`\pm 1.5\mathrm{°}`$. The central luminosity density $`\widehat{L}_0`$ is calculated automatically for each new parameter set by using a number of preselected reference points along the disk. Given a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, the cut-off radius $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ can be determined from the major axis profile. Thus, the remaining fitting parameters are the disk scale length and height, $`h`$ and $`z_0`$, as well as the set of 3 functions $`f(z)`$. The scale length $`h`$ is fitted to a number (usually between 4 and 6) of major axes profiles (left panel of Fig. 2). The quality of the fit for the vertical profiles along the disk can be used as a cross-check for the estimated scalelengths (right panel of Fig. 2). The disk scaleheight $`z_0`$ is estimated by fitting the $`z`$-profiles, outside a possible bulge or bar contamination. The vertical disk profiles of most of the galaxies investigated enable a reliable choice of the quantitatively best fitting function $`f(z)`$. This is due to the fact that the deviations between different functions become visible at vertical distances larger than that of the most sharply-peaked dust regions. The first raw fitting steps are usually carried out by using a reduced number of both major and minor axis profiles simultaneously. Afterwards, when a good first fitting quality is reached, a complete set of major and minor calculated and observed axes profiles are investigated in detail. At the end of this procedure a final, complete disk model is calculated using all previously estimated disk parameters.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Distribution of disk parameters

Table 2 contains the best fit model for each image. Together with the galaxy name (1), the filter (2), and the referring image (3), with integration time, and run ID, we list the inclination (4), the best fitting function for the z-distribution (5), the calibration index (6) (ref. Section 2.4), and the central surface brightness of the model (7), without correcting for inclination. According to the distance tabulated in Table 1, the cut-off radius $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ (8) is given in kpc and arcsec as well as the scalelength $`h`$ (9) and the vertical scaleheight $`z_0`$ (10) which is normalised to the isothermal case, being two times an exponential scaleheight $`h_z`$. For the seven galaxies with available images in more than one filter, we do not see any correlation of fitted parameters with different wavelength, although we find the same inclination angle for the best fitted disk within the range of the errors. Appendix A shows the best fitting model as an overlay to selected radial profiles for each image. The subsequent analysis of the distribution for the different parameters concerning the formation and evolution of galaxies will be given in forthcoming papers.

### 4.2 Comparison of different methods

The different fitting methods were independently developed within two diploma theses (Lütticke 1996, Schwarzkopf 1996). The quality of the data basis for each project was the same. From the sample presented here there were five objects in common. These are used to compare the two methods and determine the quantitative difference of the derived parameters.

Table 3 shows the results for the five images. The mean deviation in the determined inclination is $`1\mathrm{°}`$ and 12.4% for the scaleheight (ranging from 5.0%-26.6%) whereas for three images different functions for the z distribution were used. The mean difference for the radial scalelength is 20.6% (2.1%-47.2%) and 4.2% for the determination of the cut-off radius.
A subsequent analysis shows that it is not possible to ascribe the sometimes quite large discrepancies to the quality of the individual method. It turns out, that the main problem is the non-uniform determination of the fitting area. The intrinsic asymmetric variations of a real galactic disk compared to the model enforce a more subjective restriction of the galaxy image to the fitting region, whereby for example one has to exclude the bulge area and the dust lane.
This finding is in agreement with the study of Knapen & van der Kruit (knap (1991)) who compared published values of the scalelength and find an average value of 23% for the discrepancy between different sources. As already mentioned by Schombert & Bothun (sb (1987)) the limiting factor for accuracy of the decomposition is not the typical S/N from the CCD-telescope combination nor the errors in the determination of the sky background, but the deviation of real galaxies from the standard model.

### 4.3 Comparison with the literature

In our former study (Paper I) with an earlier method to adapt equation (4), 20 of our 45 galaxy images have already been used. We decided to re-use them in this study to get models for as many galaxies as possible in a homogeneous way. Additionally, Paper I only presents the best fit values for the isothermal model, and uses a different definition of the cut-off radius.
Only three galaxies are in common with the sample of de Grijs (dgmn (1998)): ESO 564-027, ESO 321-010, and ESO 446-018. The mean difference for the scalelength is 10.4 % (ranging from 1.2%-20.3%) and for the scale height (normalised to the isothermal case) 4.0% (0.0%-8.2%). For the remaining galaxies there are no models in the literature.

### 4.4 Model limitations

Our model only represents a rather simple axisymmetric three-dimensional model for a galactic disk, consisting of an one component radial exponential disk with three different laws for the density distribution in the z-direction and a sharp outer truncation. Therefore it does not include additional components, such as bulges, bars, thick disks, or rings, and cannot deal with any asymmetries. Features like spiral structure or warps are not included, whereas Reshetnikov & Combes (rescom (1998)) multiply their exponential disk by a spiral function introducing an expression to characterise an intrinsic warp depending on the position angle outside of a critical radius.
The choice of our fitting area tries to avoid the dust lane, possible only for almost edge-on galaxies, as a first step to account for the dust influence (cf. Section 4.4.2). Examples of models including a radiative transfer with an extinction coefficient $`\kappa _\lambda (R,z)`$ can be found in Xilouris et al. (xil99 (1999)). However, introducing more and more new components and features automatically increases the amount of free parameters. Therefore we restricted our model to the described six parameters, to obtain statistically meaningful characteristics for galactic disks.
In the following we demonstrate that a simple disk model omitting the bulge component and the dust lane give indeed reasonable parameters.

#### 4.4.1 The influence of the bulge component

We have studied the influence of the bulge for some of our objects including the earliest type galaxy in our sample (ESO 575-059) presented here. We have subtracted our derived disk model from the galaxy and then tried to find the best representation for the remaining bulge by a de Vaucouleurs $`r^{1/4}`$ or an exponential model. Taking the slope of the vertical profile at $`R=0`$ and a fixed axis ratio, we have constructed the 2-dimensional model of the bulge. In agreement with Andredakis et al. (andre (1995)) we find, that bulges of early type galaxies are better fitted by an exponential profile than by a $`r^{1/4}`$. Figure 3 shows the resulting vertical and radial cuts for ESO 575-059 together with the models.

Despite the deviation between $`R=10^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`R=20^{\prime \prime }`$ which could be attributed to an additional component (inner disk or bar), we do not find any evidence for changing our disk model due to the influence of the bulge.
Therefore we conclude, that it is possible to nearly avoid any influence of the central component by fitting outside the clearly visible bulge region.

#### 4.4.2 The influence of dust

Dust disturbs the light profile by a combination of absorption and extinction and the net effect has to be calculated by radiation transfer models. Therefore it is not obvious that outside the “visible” dust lane, which is excluded for the fitting area as a first step, the dust will not play a major role in shaping the light distribution. Xilouris et al. (xil99 (1999)), Bianchi et al. (simone (1996)), de Jong (1996a ), and Byun et al. (byun (1994)) have recently addressed this problem in more detail. Although they investigated the influence of the dust on the light distribution by quoting best fit structural parameters for the star-disk as well as the dust-disk, they did not quantify the influence on the star-disk parameters derived by standard fitting methods without dust. Even Kylafis & Bahcall (kylafis (1987)) state within their fundamental paper on finding the dust distribution for NGC 891 that “in order to avoid duplication of previous work, we will take … (the values for the star-distribution estimated by standard fitting methods)”.
We checked the influence of the dust on our determined parameter set, by studying simulated galaxy images with three different dust distributions. These dusty galaxies were kindly provided by Simone Bianchi who calculated images with known input parameters for the star and dust distribution with his Monte Carlo radiative transfer method (Bianchi et al. simone (1996)). We have defined a worst, best, and transparent case, according to the dust distributions presented by Xilouris et al. (xil99 (1999)), of our mean stellar disk ($`R_{\mathrm{co}}=2.9`$, $`h/z=4`$, and $`f_1(z)`$). The worst case is calculated with $`\tau _R=0.51`$, $`h_\mathrm{d}/h_{}=1.55`$, and $`z_\mathrm{d}/z_{}=0.75`$, the best case with $`\tau _\mathrm{R}=0.20`$, $`h_\mathrm{d}/h_{}=1.08`$, and $`z_\mathrm{d}/z_{}=0.32`$, and a transparent case without dust. To be comparable we used the same method for selecting the fitting region by masking the “visible” dust lane and reserving a typical area for a possible bulge component using mean values for the transparent case. In contrast to our standard procedure we do not restrict the inclination range from the appearance of the dust lane, but specify the best $`SQ`$ model in the range $`i=80\mathrm{°}90\mathrm{°}`$ in Table 4. For the models marked with a ’$``$’ we pretend the correct input inclination. Table 4 demonstrates, that even for the worst case we are able to reproduce the input parameters within the range of the typical 20% error discussed in Section 4.2. It should be mentioned that for each case we overestimate the input scalelength and -height, whereas the determination of $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ does not depend on the dust distribution. The implication on the distribution of the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{co}}/h`$ will be discussed in a forthcoming paper.

### 4.5 Comments on individual galaxies

Trying to adapt a simple, perfect, and exact symmetric model to real galaxies always implies a compromise between the degree of any deviation and the final model (Section 4.6). The following list will provide some typical caveats found during the fit procedure which will characterise the quality of the specified model for individual galaxies.
ESO 112-004: warped, asymmetric, central part slightly tilted compared to disk, after fitting still remaining residuals
ESO 150-014: slightly warped, minor flatfield problems
NGC 585: remaining residuals
ESO 244-048: possible two component system, slope of inner radial profile significantly higher than of an outer one, final model fits the inner parts
NGC 973: one side disturbed by stray light of nearby star, seems to be radially asymmetric, remaining residuals
UGC 3425: superimposed star on one edge
NGC 2424: model does not fit very well without obvious reason
ESO 436-034: strong bulge component, possibly barred, hard to pinpoint final model, remaining residuals
ESO 319-026: outer parts show u-shaped behaviour, remaining residuals, therefore large ($`\pm 2\mathrm{°}`$) difference in inclination angle
ESO 321-010: u-shaped, no clear major axis visible, therefore uncertain rotation angle, bar visible, bulge rotated against disk
NGC 4835A: strong residuals
ESO 446-018: the different sides of the disk are asymmetric visible in radial profiles and on the contour plot
IC 4393: similar to NGC 4835A
ESO 581-006: galaxy shows typical late type profile, $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ questionable, but nevertheless final model seems to fit well
ESO 583-008: disturbed by superimposed star, shows warp feature and a bar structure, $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ questionable, remaining residuals
UGC 10535: one side slightly extended
NGC 6722: only one side observed, bulge rotated against disk, barred, strongly disturbed by dust absorption, radial extension visible, therefore $`R_{\mathrm{co}}`$ should be treated with caution
ESO 461-006: minor flatfield problem seems to cause asymmetry, although model looks fine
IC 4937: similar to NGC 6722, dominating bulge, small disk, model significantly different compared to the i and r image, model possibly hampered by strong dust lane
ESO 578-025: bar visible
ESO 466-001: maybe two components, final model represents only inner part, outer part clearly different from normal disk component
ESO 189-012: slightly warped
ESO 533-004: similar to NGC 4835A, model fits the whole galaxy, leaving more or less no bulge component
IC 5199: slightly radial asymmetric
ESO 604-006: only one side observed, bar structure visible

### 4.6 Comments on some rejected galaxies

The model limitations described above constrain the application of our fitting process. Therefore we had to exclude about 20 galaxies from our original sample. They all show significant deviations from the simple geometry and an inclusion of their parameters obtained by forcing the model to fit the data will spoil the resulting parameter distribution.
One larger group classified mainly as S0 galaxies (e.g. NGC 2549, ESO 376-009, NGC 7332, ESO 383-085, ESO 506-033) shows a completely different behaviour of the luminosity distribution in the outer parts compared to the other galaxies. They all show an additional component, mainly characterised as an elliptical envelope. This is already visible in the contour plot, but becomes even more evident in a radial cut parallel to the major axis. In these cases the usual common curved decline of the profile (e.g. ESO 578-025) is missing, and is replaced by a more or less straight decline into the noise level, sometimes even by an upwards curved profile. Fitting these luminosity distribution by our one component exponential disk with cut-off, will therefore naturally provide parameters qualitatively different compared to late type disks. This will be discussed in detail in a forthcoming paper.
Another group consists of galaxies dominated mainly by their bulges, whereas the disk is only an underlying component, partly characterized as having thick boxy bulges (Dettmar & Lütticke db (1999)), e.g. IC 4745, ESO 383-005, although there are also pure elliptical bulges (e.g. ESO 445-049, NGC 6948).
In the case of ESO 383-048 and ESO 510-074 the radial profiles clearly indicate that a more complex model will be needed to fit these kind of multicomponent galaxies. Galaxies like UGC 7170 or ESO 113-006 were excluded due to their strong warps, which made it impossible to fit the model in a consistent way. Mainly late type galaxies such as ESO 385-008, IC4871, UGC 1281, or ESO 376-023 show a too patchy and asymmetric light distribution, that any attempt to fit the profiles will give only very crude, low quality parameters. UGC 11859 and UGC 12423 were rejected due to their thin faint disks, which will maybe overcome by taking new images with longer integration times to get a higher signal-to-noise ratio, whereas NGC 5193A is completely embedded into the surface brightness distribution of its near companion.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the *Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG*. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We have made use of the LEDA database (www-obs.univ-lyon1.fr). The authors wish to thank Simone Bianchi, who kindly provided us dusty-galaxy images produced with his radiative transfer code.

## Appendix A Contour plots and radial profiles

The following figures show in the top panel selected cuts parallel to the major axis (full line) as well as the best fit model (dashed line) according to Table 2. The bottom panel shows isophote maps of the surface brightness for the galaxies, rotated to the major axis. The faintest plotted contour is defined by a 3$`\sigma `$ criterion of the background. Table 5 lists the name (1), image (2), and the vertical positions of the plotted profiles parallel to the major axes in arcsec (3). The contours are plotted equally spaced with 0.5 mag$`/\mathit{}\mathrm{}`$ starting from the limiting surface brightness $`\mu _{\mathrm{lim}.}`$ (4).


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# Sub-Saturn Planet Candidates to HD 16141 and HD 46375¹

## 1 Introduction

The two thousand nearest and brightest dwarf stars ranging in spectral type from late F through M are currently being surveyed by groups with a Doppler precision of $``$10 m s-1 or better. To date these surveys have resulted in the discoveries of 32 extrasolar planets (cf. Marcy, Cochran, and Mayor 2000, Marcy & Butler 2000, Vogt et al. 2000, Queloz et al. (2000), Udry et al. (2000), Noyes et al. 1997), including the first system of multiple planets (Butler et al. 1999) and the first detection of a transiting planet (Henry et al. 2000; Charbonneau et al. 2000).

Remarkably, all 32 companions found from precision Doppler surveys have $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$less than 8 MJUP, though companions with masses of 10–80 MJUP would have been much easier to detect. The companion mass function rises steeply toward smaller masses (Marcy & Butler 2000), but it turns over near 0.5 MJUP, presumably due to poor detectability. With conventional precision of 10 m s-1, companions of 0.5 MJUP in 4-day orbits induce stellar motion only a few times greater than such Doppler errors. The stars 51 Peg and HD 75289 have the lowest known values of $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$, both 0.46 MJUP (Mayor & Queloz 1995, Udry et al. 2000). However with a precision of 3 m s-1, one may explore the mass distribution below 1 MSAT (= 0.298 MJUP). If sub-Saturn mass companions occur less frequently than Jupiter-mass companions, the status of all Jupiter-mass companions as “planets” would be cast in doubt. Such a distribution of masses, peaked at $``$1 MJUP, is not the case in our Solar System nor do theories of planet formation predict such a peak (eg. Lissauer 1995, Boss 1995, Levison et al. 1998).

Here we report Doppler variations in HD 16141 and HD 46375 exhibiting $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$$`<`$ 1 MSAT. Stellar characteristics and observations are discussed in the second section. Orbital solutions are presented in the third section, followed by discussion of results.

## 2 Observations and Stellar Characteristics

HD 16141 (79 Cet, HIP 12048, G5 IV) and HD 46375 (HIP 31246, K1 IV-V) are slowly rotating, chromospherically inactive stars, based on the weak Ca II H&K emission in their spectra. Their Hipparcos (Perryman et al. 1997) distances are 35.9 and 33.4 pc, respectively, giving them absolute magnitudes of MV=4.05 and MV= 5.29, which places both stars 1.0 mag above the zero-age main sequence. The Hipparcos mission made 60 and 63 photometric observations of HD 16141 and HD 46375, respectively, revealing that both stars are photometrically stable at the level of errors, $``$0.01 mag.

The mass of HD 16141 is $`M`$=1.01 M, and it has \[Fe/H\] = 0.02, as determined by high-resolution spectral synthesis (Fuhrmann 1998). The mass of HD 46375 is probably $``$1.0 Malso. Its spectral type of K1 IV-V and color, $`BV`$= 0.86, would normally indicate a mass of 0.9 M. But its metalicity appears to be high, \[Fe/H\]=$``$+0.34, as judged from narrow band photometry (Apps, priv. comm. 2000). This high metalicity implies a higher mass than is associated with solar-metalicity stars of its color, giving it an estimated mass of 0.9 - 1.0 M. Here we adopt a mass of 1.0$`\pm `$0.1 M, for computation of $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$and semimajor axis. HD 46375 resides only a few arcminutes North-East from the bright nebulosity of the Rosette Nebula (which is over 1 kpc in the background), leaving some concern about contamination of the optical spectra and photometry of the star.

The velocities of HD 16141 and HD 46375 have been monitored since 1996 and 1998 respectively. The technique is the same as described in Vogt et al. (2000), using the Keck 1 HIRES spectrometer (Vogt et al. 1994). The H&K lines near 3950 Å provide a simultaneous chromospheric diagnostic (Saar et al. 1998), giving log$`R`$’(HK) = $``$5.05 and $``$4.94 for HD 16141 and HD 46375, respectively, typical for chromospherically quiet stars (Noyes et al. 1984). The photospheric Doppler “jitter” of such stars is less than 3 m s-1(Saar et al. 1998).

## 3 Orbital Solutions

The 46 observations of HD 16141 are shown in Figure 1 and listed in Table 1. These observations have an RMS of 7.0 m s-1, 2.5 times larger than the measurement error. A periodogram of these velocities (Figure 2a), reveals a dominant period at 75.6 days. The reality of this periodicity is supported by two tests. We broke the velocity set into its first half and second half, yielding separate periodograms with highest peaks at 75 d and 77 d, respectively, both having a false alarm probability under 1%. Thus, both halves of the measurements reveal the 76-day periodicity. We also computed the false alarm probability of the 76 d periodicity in the full velocity set by using a Monte Carlo approach (Gilliland & Baliunas 1987). We generated 105 sets of artificial velocities drawn from a Gaussian error distribution while retaining the actual times of observation. None of these artificial velocity sets yielded a periodogram peak as high as that actually found for HD 16141 (Fig 2a). Thus, the false alarm probability is less than 1$`\times `$10-5.

The best–fit Keplerian model to the velocities of HD 16141 is shown in Figure 1, and yields a period, $`P`$=75.82 d. The amplitude is, $`K`$=10.8 m s-1, and the eccentricity is $`e`$=0.28. The RMS of the residuals to the Keplerian fit is 3.2 m s-1, similar to the median internal error of 2.8 m s-1. Adopting a stellar mass of 1 M, the companion has $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$=0.22 MJUP, and the semimajor axis is 0.35 AU. A periodogram of the velocity residuals is shown in Figure 2b which shows no significant peaks, indicating that no additional companions are evident.

The 24 observations of HD 46375 are listed in Table 2. Figure 3 shows observations obtained between 6 and 11 Feb 2000, revealing a three day period. A phased version of the entire data set spanning 515 d is shown in Figure 4. The same best–fit sinusoid is shown in both Figures 3 and 4. The RMS of the sinusoidal fit is 2.59 m s-1, slightly greater than the velocity uncertainty of 2.2 m s-1. The best–fit Keplerian gives $`e`$=0.04$`\pm `$0.04 (i.e. not significant), and yields an RMS of 2.44 m s-1. The period is 3.024 d and the velocity semiamplitude $`K`$ = 35 m s-1. Assuming the host star is 1 M, the companion has $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$=0.25 MJUP and the semimajor axis is 0.041 AU. The orbital parameters for HD 16141 and HD 46375 are listed in Table 3.

## 4 Discussion

HD 16141 exhibits the smallest velocity amplitude, $`K`$=10.8 m s-1, reported for any planet candidate, thus warranting an assessment of stellar and instrumental sources of error. Chromospherically inactive stars are intrinsically stable at the level of 3 m s-1(Saar et al. 1998). Further, the majority of our program stars exhibit no instrumental “drift” in the velocity zero–point at the 2 m/s level during the last four years (Vogt et al. 2000). There is no plausible stellar time scale near 75 d except rotation. But spots are not important as HD 16141 is chromospherically quiet at Ca II H&K, and photometrically stable at 0.01 mag from Hipparcos. Thus, the most likely explanation for the Doppler variations is an orbiting planet.

The eccentricity for the planet around HD 16141 is not yet well determined, $`e`$=0.28$`\pm `$0.15, and indeed cannot be reliably distinguished from circular without further measurements. However, all 21 planets orbiting beyond 0.2 AU (Marcy & Butler 2000) have eccentricities above 0.1, and thus this planet will constitute an interesting test case of eccentricities of a possibly low mass planet.

The companion to HD 46375 is similar to the other “51 Peg–like” planets with their orbital periods of 3 to 5 days and circular orbits. Circular orbits are expected from tidal coupling with the primary star (Rasio & Ford 1996; Marcy et al. 1997; Ford et al. 1998). As the primary in the HD 46375 system has not been spun up, the mass of the planet is constrained to be less than $``$15 MJUP(Ford et al. 1998, Marcy et al. 1997). The suspected high metalicity of HD 46375 of \[Fe/H\]=0.34 (Apps, priv. comm.) supports the suggestion that “51 Peg–like”planets are associated with high-metalicity stars (Gonzalez et al. 1999, Queloz et al. 2000) .

The value of $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$=0.25 MJUP for the companion to HD 46375 is smaller than that of any known “51 Peg–like” extrasolar planet, with the smallest having been 51 Peg (0.46 MJUP, Mayor & Queloz 1995) and HD 75289 (0.46 MJUP, Udry et al. 2000). This suggests that if orbital migration brings such planets inward (Lin et al. 1996), the process may continue to operate at masses near 1 MSAT, pending knowledge of $`\mathrm{sin}i`$.

With demonstrated precision of 3 m s-1(Vogt et al. 2000), the Keck survey is currently capable of making 3 $`\sigma `$ detections of “51 Peg–like” planets down to the neptune–mass range. Knowledge of the companion mass function of “51 Peg–like” planets down into this range will provide useful constraints on models that explain the formation and subsequent dynamics of “51 Peg–like” planets.

The effective temperature of a planet in a 3.024 day orbit about HD 46375 would be $``$1400 K (Burrows et al. 1998). Henry (2000) reports that no transit occurs, implying that $`\mathrm{sin}i<`$ 0.992 . The expected amplitude of a transit signal is about 0.015 mags (Burrows et al. 1998, Henry et al. 2000, Charbonneau et al. 2000).

The companions to HD 16141 and HD 46375 have the lowest values of $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$(0.22 MJUP, 0.25 MJUP) found to date for extrasolar planets. The observed histogram of $`M\mathrm{sin}i`$shows a steep rise toward the lowest masses, consistent with a power-law, d$`N`$/d$`M`$ $`M^1`$ (Marcy and Butler 2000). These new planets support the suggestion that the mass distribution continues rising to 1 MSAT. Verification of any rise in the planetary mass function below 1 MSATwill require more detections to account properly for incompleteness.

We thank Kevin Apps for assessment of stellar characteristics. We acknowledge support by NASA grant NAG5-8299 and NSF grant AST95-20443 (to GWM), by NSF grant AST-9619418 and NASA grant NAG5-4445 (to SSV), travel support from the Carnegie Institution of Washington (to RPB), and by Sun Microsystems. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.


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# Untitled Document

STUDY OF NUCLEATING EFFICIENCY OF

SUPERHEATED DROPLETS BY NEUTRONS

B.ROY, B.K. CHATTERJEE, M. DAS and S.C. ROY

Department of Physics, Bose Institute, Calcutta 700009, India

Superheated droplets have proven to be excellent detectors for neutrons and could be used as a neutron dosimeter. To detect accurately the volume of superheated droplets nucleated, an air displacement system has been developed. Here the air expelled due to volume change upon nucleation displaces a column of water through a narrow horizontal glass tube, and, the displacement of water is linearly related to the nucleated volume and has the added advantage of being leak free.

In presence of neutrons, the rate of nucleation (rate of decrease in the volume of superheated droplets) is proportional to the residual volume of superheated droplets and the neutron flux ($`\varphi `$). Hence the volume of accumulated vapour (or the volume of the displaced air) is given as:

$$V=V_0\left(1e^{t/\tau }\right)$$
(1)
where $`\tau `$ = M/($`\varphi \rho \eta N_A`$ d $`n_i\sigma _i`$), M is the molecular weight and $`\rho `$ is the density of the superheated liquid, $`N_A`$ is the Avogadro number, $`n_i`$ is the abundance of the $`i^{th}`$ species of nucleon (whose neutron elastic scattering cross section is $`\sigma _i`$) in the molecule, $`\eta `$ is the efficiency of nucleation of the droplet by a recoil nucleon, d is the average droplet volume and $`V_0`$ is the volume of vapour of the entire superheated liquid. By least squares fitting of the volume of displaced air (V) as a function of time (t), $`V_0`$ and $`\tau `$ are obtained. From $`\tau `$ one may obtain $`\eta `$ if the other parameters are known. Results of an experiment performed with Freon- 12 samples using an Am-Be neutron source are presented in Fig. 1.

Figure Captions

Fig.1. Variation of volume (scaled by the mass of sample and the area of cross section of the tube) of displaced air as a function of time for Freon-12; solid curve is the least-squares-fit to experimental data.


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# Strange stars - linear approximation of the EOS and maximum QPO frequency

## 1 Introduction

The idea of the compact stars build of strange matter was presented by Witten (witten (1984)) and the models of stars were calculated using various models of strange matter by Haensel et al. (hzs (1986)) and Alcock et al. (afo (1986)). The main idea is that the u,d,s matter is ground state of matter at zero pressure (self-bound strange quark matter) i.e.:

$$\mu _0\mu (P=0)<M({}_{}{}^{56}\mathrm{Fe})=930.4\mathrm{MeV}$$
(1)
There were two aspects of rather extensive studies of strange stars properties. The first one in the context of maximum rotational velocity of the star (Frieman & Olinto fo (1989), Glendenning glen89 (1989), Prakash et al. Prakash (1990), Zdunik & Haensel zh90 (1990)) was related to the announcement reporting the detection of the half millisecond pulsar in 1989 (which after one year turned out to be erroneous). This observation stimulated detailed investigations of the limits on the rotational frequency of dense stars which excluded nearly all neutron stars models leaving strange stars as a possible explanation.

At present the increasing interest in strange stars is a result of QPOs observations in low-mass X-ray binaries LMBX and some difficulties with the explanations of its properties by neutron star models under the assumption that QPOs represent Keplerian frequencies of the particles in an accretion disk (Kaaret et al. 1997, Kluźniak 1998, Zhang et al. 1998, Miller et al. 1998, Thampan et al. 1999, Schaab & Weigel 1999). In this paper the maximum values of these frequencies are found for a broad set of the parameters describing a strange matter EOS. Strange star models are consistent with the maximum observed QPO frequency $`1.33`$ kHz in 4U 0614+09 (van Straaten et al. Straaten (2000)).

Frieman & Olinto (fo (1989)) mentioned the approximation of the EOS of strange matter by the linear function (see also Prakash et al. Prakash (1990)) . I present here the linear form of the EOS of strange matter with parameters expressed as a polynomial functions of the physical constants describing MIT bag model (strange quark mass and QCD coupling constant). These approximate formulae allow us to write down the pressure vs. density dependence in a simple form $`P=a(\rho \rho _0)`$. The consequence of this form are scaling laws of all stellar quantities with appropriate powers of $`\rho _0`$. This linear EOS is complete in the sense that it contains not only pressure and energy density, which enter the relativistic stress-energy tensor and are sufficient for the determination of the main parameters of the star (mass, radius), but also the formula for baryon number density (or equivalently baryon chemical potential), necessary in the microscopic stability considerations and determination of the total baryon number of the star.

## 2 Strange stars and maximum QPO frequency

We describe the quark matter using the phenomenological MIT bag model (see, e.g., Baym, baym (1978)). The quark matter is the mixture of the massless $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks, electrons and massive $`s`$ quarks. The model is described in detail in Farhi & Jaffe (fj (1984)), where the formulae for physical parameters of a strange matter are also presented. There are the following physical quantities entering this model: $`B`$ – the bag constant, $`\alpha _c`$ – the QCD coupling constant and $`m_s`$ – the mass of the strange quark. It is necessary to introduce also the parameter $`\rho _N`$ – the renormalization point. Following Farhi & Jaffe (fj (1984)) we choose $`\rho _N=313`$ MeV.

The consequence of this model of strange matter is scaling of all thermodynamic functions with some powers of $`B`$. Knowing the EOS for given $`\alpha _c`$, $`m_s`$ and $`B_0`$ we can obtain thermodynamic quantities for other value $`B`$ from the following formulae:

$$\begin{array}{ccccccc}P_{[B]}\hfill & =& P_{[B_0]}(B/B_0),\hfill & \rho _{[B]}& =\hfill & \rho _{[B_0]}(B/B_0),& \\ n_{[B]}\hfill & =& n_{[B_0]}(B/B_0)^{3/4},\hfill & \mu _{[B]}& =\hfill & \mu _{[B_0]}(B/B_0)^{1/4}& \end{array}$$
(2)
where the resulting EOS for $`B`$ is determined for the same value of $`\alpha _c`$ but for the strange quark mass given by the relation:

$$m_s(B)=m_s(B_0)(B/B_0)^{1/4}$$
(3)
The advantage of this approximations is the elimination of one parameter ($`B`$) from the calculations of the EOS. The dependence of all parameters on $`B`$ is very well defined and one can take this into account using simple scaling laws. It is therefore sufficient to study the EOS in two parameter space: $`\alpha _c`$ and $`m_s`$ for chosen value of $`B_0`$ and then obtain results for other $`B`$ from Eqs (2).

Strictly speaking the scaling relations (2) hold exactly for the parameter $`\rho _N`$ rescaled by the relation $`\rho _N(B)=\rho _N(B_0)(B/B_0)^{1/4}`$. However the renormalization point is fixed and this is the source of small discrepancy between the true results for different values of bag constant and the scaling relations presented in this paper. This difference is presented in Fig. 1 in the case of the baryon chemical potential at zero pressure calculated directly and using scaling relation (2). We choose $`\mu _0`$ because this thermodynamic function is crucial in microscopic stability considerations. The models of strange quark matter correspond to two values of bag constant: $`B_0=60\mathrm{MeV}\mathrm{fm}^3`$ and $`B=90\mathrm{MeV}\mathrm{fm}^3`$. The strange quark masses in this two cases fulfill the relation (3), namely $`m_s(60)=200\mathrm{MeV}`$ and $`m_s(90)=221.33\mathrm{MeV}`$.

We see that scaling formulae give exact results for $`\alpha _c=0`$ because then $`\rho _N`$ does not enter the EOS. The maximum error of the scaling formulae (2) is less than 0.5%.

From the microscopic point of view the strange quark matter is unstable at zero pressure for some values of $`\alpha _c`$ and $`m_s`$ discussed in this paper (large $`\alpha _c`$ and $`m_s`$), i.e. equation of state does not fulfill the relation (1). But from presented results we can obtain, using scaling formulae, the configurations which correspond to smaller value of $`B`$ and are microscopically stable. The maximum value of $`B`$ for which the strange quark matter is stable can be obtained from the equation:

$$\mu _0[B_0,\alpha _c,m_s(B_{\mathrm{max}}/B_0)^{1/4}]\left(\frac{B_{\mathrm{max}}}{B_0}\right)^{1/4}=930.4\mathrm{MeV}$$
(4)
The strange star configurations are calculated by solving Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations in the case of spherical symmetry. For given central pressure $`P_{\mathrm{centr}}`$ we obtain stellar parameters such as gravitational mass $`M`$, baryon number $`A`$, moment of inertia for slow rigid rotation $`I`$ and gravitational surface redshift $`z`$. All these quantities are subject to the scaling formulae similar to those describing the EOS (Eq. 2). If we calculate the star for $`B_0`$ with central pressure equal to $`P_{\mathrm{centr}}[B_0]`$ we know all parameters of the corresponding star with $`P_{\mathrm{centr}}=P_{\mathrm{centr}}[B_0]B/B_0`$ in the model with bag constant $`B`$ (cf. Witten witten (1984), Haensel et al. hzs (1986)). In general for the stellar parameter $`X`$ the following equality holds:

$$X[B,\alpha _c,m_s]=X[B_0,\alpha _c,m_s(B/B_0)^{1/4}](B/B_0)^k$$
(5)
where $`k=1/2`$ in the case of mass and radius ($`X=R,M`$), $`k=3/4`$ for $`X=A`$, $`k=3/2`$ for $`I`$ and $`k=0`$ for $`z`$.

In Fig. 1 we see that scaling formulae (5) reproduce the stellar parameters $`M`$ vs. $`R`$ with an error less than 0.3%.

These scaling laws so far have been mainly exploited in the case of maximum mass of the star (or equivalently maximum rotational frequency). Of course these relations refer to all stellar configurations (e.g. the curve $`M(R)`$) and as an interesting example we can consider the point defined by the equality:

$$R=R_{\mathrm{ms}}=3R_g=6\frac{GM}{c^2}$$
(6)
which corresponds to the maximum possible frequency of a particle in stable circular orbit $`\nu _{\mathrm{max}}`$ around nonrotating star. Because the scaling properties of $`R`$ and $`M`$ are the same ($`B^{1/2}`$) one can solve the Eq. 6 independently of $`B`$. For stellar masses higher than the solution of the Eq. 6 the maximum Keplerian frequency of an orbiting particle is defined by the marginally stable orbit at $`R_{\mathrm{ms}}`$ and for lower by the stellar radius $`R`$ (Fig. 2a). In both cases this frequency scales as $`B^{1/2}`$ and for other values of $`B`$ the patterns of Fig. 2a do not change, provided one rescales the axes and $`m_s`$ (Eqs 3, 5, 7).

The maximum values of $`\nu `$ as a function of strange matter parameters are presented in Fig. 2b for $`B_0=60\mathrm{MeV}\mathrm{fm}^3`$. For other values of $`B`$ these results scale as $`B^{1/2}`$ i.e.:

$$\nu _{\mathrm{max}}[B,\alpha _c,m_s]=\nu _{\mathrm{max}}[B_0,\alpha _c,m_s(B/B_0)^{1/4}]\left(\frac{B}{B_0}\right)^{1/2}$$
(7)
which allows us to determine the absolute maximum value of $`\nu _{\mathrm{max}}`$ consistent with the requirement of the stability of strange matter at zero pressure (Eq. 4) by putting the maximum allowed value of $`B`$ into Eq. (7). The result of this procedure $`\nu _{\mathrm{MAX}}\nu _{\mathrm{max}}(B_{\mathrm{max}})`$ is presented in Fig. 3a. We see that this limit is well above the highest observed QPO frequency $`\nu _{\mathrm{obs}}=1.33\mathrm{kHz}`$ recently reported by van Straaten et al. (Straaten (2000)). Thus at present the observations of the highest QPO frequency do not constrain strange matter models unless we do not make the assumptions about the mass of the star in LMBX. To set some limits on strange matter parameters the QPOs must be observed at frequencies larger than $`1.8`$ kHz. Our conclusion is true also for moderate rotation rates of strange star due to the initial increase of the frequency at marginally stable orbit which in the case of stars with mass slightly above the solution of Eq. 6 results in $`\nu _{\mathrm{max}}`$ very close to the value corresponding to the nonrotating stars (Zdunik et al. zdunik00 (2000), Datta et al. datta00 (2000)).

It should be mentioned that in principle analysis of the observational data can strongly support the existence of the marginally stable orbit. Such a conclusion have been recently presented by Kaaret et al. (Kaaret99 (1999)) in the case of 4U 1820-30. This interpretation is equivalent to the condition $`R<R_{ms}`$ setting the lower bound for the mass of the star. This minimum mass limits are presented in Fig. 3b as a function of $`m_s`$ and $`\alpha _c`$. Below this mass the innermost stable orbit is located at the surface of the star.

## 3 Linear interpolation of EOS

In the present section we discuss the interpolation of equation of state of strange quark matter by the linear function of $`\rho `$. For a broad set of parameters $`\alpha _c`$ and $`m_s`$ the dependence $`P(\rho )`$ can be very well approximated by the linear function, being exactly linear at the $`m_s=0`$ limit. The EOS for strange quark matter is presented in Fig. 4.

The main parameters of the matter are described by the following formulae:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}P(\rho )\hfill & =& \frac{1}{3}(1+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}})(\rho \rho _0)c^2\hfill \\ n(P)\hfill & =& n_0\left[1+\left(4\frac{3\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}}{1+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}}\right)\frac{P}{\rho _0c^2}\right]^{3/(4+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}})}\hfill \end{array}$$
(8)
where $`\rho _0`$ and $`n_0`$ are energy and number density of the strange quark matter at zero pressure. The second equation is implied by the first law of thermodynamics.

The equations (8) allow us to determine all thermodynamic quantities characterizing strange quark matter in linear interpolation of the EOS, e.g. the baryon chemical potential:

$$\mu (P)=\mu _0\left(1+\frac{4+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}}{1+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}}\frac{P}{\rho _0c^2}\right)^{(1+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}})/(4+\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}})}$$
(9)
where $`\mu _0=\rho _0c^2/n_0`$.

Because for all thermodynamic quantities the scaling relations with $`B`$ hold we can calculate all parameters needed for the linear EOS for chosen value of $`B`$ and then rescale them using equations (2). Thus the main point is to determine three parameters entering equations (8), as a functions of $`\alpha _c`$ and $`m_s`$: $`\rho _0(\alpha _c,m_s)`$, $`n_0(\alpha _c,m_s)`$ and $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}(\alpha _c,m_s)`$. These functions can be very well approximated by the polynomial of $`m_s`$ with coefficients depending on the value of $`\alpha _c`$. The formulae obtained by the least-squares fit to the exact results are following:

$`n_0`$ $`=`$ $`(a_0^n+a_2^nm_{s100}^2+a_3^nm_{s100}^3)\overline{B}^{3/4}`$
$`a_0^n`$ $`=0.28660C_\alpha ^{1/4}`$
$`a_2^n`$ $`=(0.010788+0.0032046\alpha _c)/\overline{B}^{1/2}`$
$`a_3^n`$ $`=0.0044248\sqrt{C_\alpha }/\overline{B}^{3/4}`$
$`\mu _0`$ $`=`$ $`(a_0^\mu +a_2^\mu m_{s100}^2+a_3^\mu m_{s100}^3)\overline{B}^{1/4}`$
$`a_0^\mu `$ $`=837.260/C_\alpha ^{1/4}`$
$`a_2^\mu `$ $`=(46.61616.848/C_\alpha )/\overline{B}^{1/2}`$
$`a_3^\mu `$ $`=(10.482+4.5211/C_\alpha )/\overline{B}^{3/4}`$
$`\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}`$ $`=`$ $`a_2^ϵm_{s100}^2+a_3^ϵm_{s100}^3`$
$`a_2^ϵ`$ $`=(0.035745+0.013366\alpha _c+0.023246\alpha _c^2)/\overline{B}^{1/2}`$
$`a_3^ϵ`$ $`=(0.00554880.0054232\alpha _c0.0069193\alpha _c^2)/\overline{B}^{3/4}`$
where $`m_{s100}`$ is strange quark mass in units 100 MeV i.e. $`m_{s100}=m_sc^2[\mathrm{MeV}]/100`$, $`\overline{B}=B[\mathrm{MeV}\mathrm{fm}^3]/60`$ and $`C_\alpha =12\alpha _c/\pi `$.

The energy-matter density at zero pressure is equal to $`\rho _0=n_0\mu _0/c^2`$. The functions $`\rho _0(m_s)`$ and $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}(m_s)`$ entering directly Eq. 8 and $`\mu _0(m_s)`$ for chosen values of $`\alpha _c`$ and accuracy of the above interpolations are presented in Fig. 5.

One can test the accuracy of the interpolation of the EOS by the linear function calculating the stellar configurations build of such a matter and comparing results with stars calculated using exact equation of state. Such a comparison is presented in Fig. 6. The relative error in this procedure is always less than 1% in the case of mass, radius and moment of inertia.

Except for the case of strange matter with massless quarks, studied in detail in the literature, the linear form of the equation of state of self-bound matter have been used so far mainly for the stellar mass and radius determination (e.g. Haensel & Zdunik hz89 (1989), Lattimer et al. latt90 (1990)). The authors exploited the relation $`P=a(\rho \rho _0)`$, because the quantities sufficient in these considerations are pressure and energy density, which enter the stress-energy tensor and TOV equations of hydrostatic equilibrium. However for the complete study of the properties of star the full microscopic description of the matter is needed, including baryon chemical potential and particle number density. In our EOS the formula for $`n(P)`$ (Eq. 8) enables us to determine the total baryon number of the stellar configuration and use this model of strange matter, for example, for the discussion of the conversion of neutron stars into strange stars (Olinto olinto87 (1987), Cheng & Dai Cheng96 (1996), Bombaci & Datta bd00 (2000)). During this process the total baryon number of the star is fixed. Using the relation (3) one can find the ranges of the values of $`m_s`$, $`\alpha _c`$ and $`B`$ consistent with the requirement that strange matter is ground state of matter at zero pressure (Eq. 1). As a result the allowable parameters of strange stars (e.g. $`M`$, $`\nu _{\mathrm{MAX}}`$) can be found without complicated and time-consuming calculations of the microscopic properties of strange matter.

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

In the present paper I analyzed the accuracy of the scaling properties of strange matter parameters with the value of the bag constant $`B`$ in the framework of MIT bag model of quark matter. The scaling formulae reproduce the main stellar parameters with an error less than 1%. This allow us to use them to determine the maximum possible frequency of a particle in stable circular orbit around strange star. The absolute maximum QPO frequency that can be accommodated by strange stars ranges from 1.7 to 2.4 kHz depending on the values of a strange matter parameters: strange quark mass and QCD coupling constant. Thus the present status of observational data ($`\nu _{\mathrm{max}}^{\mathrm{obs}}=1.33`$ kHz) cannot exclude strange stars as source of QPOs in LMBX. The frequencies of QPO in the very high range (larger than $`1.8`$ kHz), if observed, may set some bounds on parameters of strange matter, excluding large $`m_s`$ and large $`\alpha _c`$. We should mention that such a high values of $`\nu _{\mathrm{QPO}}`$ cannot be understood in terms of neutron stars (Thampan et al. Thampan99 (1999)).

The high accuracy of the simple scaling laws with $`B`$ is strictly connected with the possibility of the approximation of the equation of state by the linear function $`P=a(\rho \rho _0)`$ for which such a scaling properties are well known and exact. For this linear EOS the parameters of the strange stars scale with the powers of $`\rho _0`$ for fixed value of $`a`$ (analogous to the scaling laws with $`B`$, Eqs. 5, 7). It should be stressed that these scaling properties are valid not only for static stellar configurations but also in some dynamical problems (e.g. parameters of the rotating star, Gourgoulhon et al. ghlp (1999)). For fixed $`\rho _0`$ one can apply also the approximate scalings of the stellar parameters at the maximum mass point with appropriate powers of $`a`$ (Lattimer et al., latt90 (1990)) which have been recently confirmed by Stergioulas et al. (skb (1999)) for stars rotating at Keplerian frequency.

The presented linear approximation of the equation of state allow us to determine the dependence of many properties of strange stars on the physical parameters of a matter ($`m_s`$, $`\alpha _c`$) using very simple form of the EOS. For a broad set of $`m_s`$ and $`\alpha _c`$ the values of $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{fit}}`$ and $`\rho _0`$ entering linear EOS can be very accurately obtained by a polynomial formulae. In particular the formula for the baryon chemical potential enables us to study the microscopic stability of strange matter and make a complete discussion of the resulting constraints on strange stars parameters. The expression for baryon number density is necessary in the consideration of the conversions of neutron stars into strange stars with total baryon number conserved.

It is worth noticing that the linear approximation of $`P(\rho )`$ dependence (Eq. 8) can be used also for other models of strange matter, self-bound at high density $`\rho _0`$. The expressions for $`n(P)`$ and $`\mu (P)`$ allow us to determine all microscopic properties of the matter given the values of $`\rho _0`$ and $`n_0`$.

###### Acknowledgements.

This research was partially supported by the KBN grant No. 2P03D.014.13. I am very grateful to P. Haensel for careful reading of manuscript and helpful comments and suggestions.