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# Properties of the Molecular Clouds in NGC 205

## 1 Introduction

In recent years it has become apparent that elliptical galaxies are not devoid of neutral interstellar gas and dust. Many, if not most, ellipticals show some sign of a neutral interstellar medium (ISM). Nearly half of the ellipticals in a magnitude-limited sample were detected by the IRAS satellite (Knapp et al. 1989; see also the recent analysis by Bregman et al. 1998). Goudfrooij et al. (1994) estimate that some eighty percent of a magnitude-limited sample of ellipticals in the Revised Shapley-Ames catalog contain dust clouds or lanes which would be visible as optical obscuration if the orientation of the dust lane was favorable. Similarly high dust detection rates were found by van Dokkum & Franx (1995) and Ferrari et al. (1999). Fifty to seventy percent of ellipticals also have atomic hydrogen in a quantity $`\mathrm{M}(\mathrm{HI})/\mathrm{L}_\mathrm{B}>10^3`$ (Huchtmeier et al. 1995; Knapp et al. 1985; Wardle & Knapp 1986). Statistical work on the molecular gas content of ellipticals has not progressed as far as for atomic gas and dust, but nevertheless, thirty to forty percent of Es or E/SOs which have been observed have been detected (Rupen 1997; Henkel & Wiklind 1997).

If elliptical galaxies contain molecular clouds, they may be forming stars. Therefore, the evolution of an elliptical galaxy depends on the properties of its interstellar medium, especially its molecular gas, and the relationships between the various phases of the ISM. Is atomic gas formed from the molecular gas or vice versa, and will the molecular gas be stable on long timescales? Henkel & Wiklind (1997) discuss the atomic and molecular gas in ellipticals with particular emphasis on the relation between the neutral gas and the hot (X-ray emitting) gas and proposed cooling flows. A molecular cloud’s properties such as density, cloud size, and magnetic field strength help to determine whether or how the cloud can survive in a hostile bath of hot gas. But the physical properties (e.g. density and temperature) of the molecular gas in ellipticals are poorly known, so these ideas about gas and galaxy evolution cannot yet be evaluated. Indeed, the molecular clouds in elliptical galaxies might be significantly different from Milky Way clouds because, among other things, X-ray heating and heating from stellar velocity dispersions are probably much more important in ellipticals than they are in spirals. The present observations of NGC 205 use molecular line ratios and the distributions of atomic and molecular gas to study the molecular gas’s physical properties and its relation to the atomic gas.

The main hindrance to studying the neutral ISM in ellipticals is that elliptical galaxies tend to be rather far away, so the observed fluxes are weak and also the linear resolution is poor. The two major exceptions to this statement are two dwarf elliptical companions to M31, the galaxies NGC 185 and NGC 205. Their distances are less than 1 Mpc. They are the only elliptical galaxies with a neutral interstellar medium that can be observed at resolutions better than 100 pc, which allows us to resolve the individual giant molecular clouds.

It is true that these galaxies are not true ellipticals in some classification schemes; in general, dwarf ellipticals follow a different fundamental plane than giant ellipticals (Ferguson & Binggeli 1994). However, with respect to the factors which might influence the properties of their interstellar media, they can be regarded as ellipticals or as reasonable facsimiles thereof. They have mostly old stellar populations (Lee 1996; Davidge 1992; Martínez-Delgado et al. 1999), so the energetics of the interstellar medium will be very different than in a spiral galaxy with large numbers of young massive stars. They are supported by stellar velocity dispersions (Bender et al. 1991; Held et al. 1992), and they have no spiral density waves. Because NGC 205 has these properties and others in common with “true” ellipticals, the interstellar medium in NGC 205 offers important insights into elliptical galaxies.

The original detection of 12CO 1-0 emission in NGC 205 was made by Sage & Wrobel (1990), but that work provided no information on the molecular gas distribution or physical properties. Higher resolution observations by Young & Lo (1996, 1997) and Welch, Sage, & Mitchell (1998) found CO emission associated with a dust cloud in the northern part of the galaxy. In fact, the interferometric CO observations of Young & Lo (1996), with a 20 pc beam size, resolved the molecular cloud. Young & Lo and Welch et al. found a few tentative detections of CO emission in other parts of the galaxy, but were unable to study the gas distribution and the relationship between atomic and molecular gas over most of the galaxy. The present paper addresses that issue. Previous work also gave limited information on the molecular gas’s physical properties; the present paper improves on that situation with better 12CO 2-1/1-0, CO/HCN, and CO/HCO+ line ratios, as well as the first 12CO/13CO ratio in NGC 205.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

Observations of the molecular clouds in NGC 205 were made with the IRAM 30m telescope during August 1996. The observed transitions included 12CO J=1-0 and 2-1, 13CO J=1-0 and 2-1, HCN J=1-0, and HCO+ J=1-0. Two 3 mm and one 1 mm SIS receivers were used simultaneously. Each receiver was connected to two backends: a filter bank of 256 $`\times `$ 1 MHz channels and an autocorrelator unit giving 449 channels of 312.5 kHz. The telescope was operated in the wobbler switch (nutating subreflector) mode with a cycle time of 4 seconds and a throw of 180″ in azimuth. The 180″ throw is similar to the largest diameter of the HI distribution in NGC 205 and may possibly be similar to the north-south extent of the molecular gas in that galaxy. However, the strong velocity gradient of the gas in NGC 205 (Young & Lo 1997) means that gas in the reference position would have a different velocity (by 30 km s-1) from gas in the on-source position. This type of confusion is not evident in the data, so the 180″ throw must have been large enough to avoid problems.

The telescope’s focus was checked two or three times every night, especially around the times of sunset and sunrise. The pointing was checked every two to three hours with observations of W3OH; the pointing errors are consistent with the 3.5″ rms expected for the period soon after a pointing model update (Greve et al. 1996). Pointing scans on Mars also provided checks that the telescope beam size was as expected. Cold load calibrations were made at least every 15 minutes, and more often as the weather degraded. The temperature scale was also checked with periodic observations of W3OH and W51D in all of the transitions mentioned above (Mauersberger et al. 1989) and was found to be accurate and repeatable with a rms of about 13%.

System temperatures ($`T_A^{}`$) were 200–300 K for the HCN, HCO+, and 13CO lines, and 300–700 K for the 12CO lines. Integration times were about one hour at each position in the 12CO lines and 2–3 hours in the HCO+, HCN, and 13CO lines. After eliminating bad scans, the data were averaged together using a standard weighting by integration time and system temperature. Baselines of order 0 or 1 were subtracted from the spectra. All data presented in this paper are in the main beam brightness temperature scale, which is obtained from the antenna temperatures via the relation $`T_{mb}=T_A^{}/\eta _{mb}`$. The beam sizes, velocity resolutions (the width of a 1 MHz channel), and the values of $`\eta _{mb}`$ (the ratio of the beam to forward efficiencies) are given in Table 1.

Table 2 gives the coordinates of the positions observed in NGC 205. The positions were mostly selected based on the presence of dust, which is visible as obscured patches in optical images (Hodge 1973, Peletier 1993, Kim & Lee 1998). Hodge (1973) assigned numbers to the dust clouds he detected, and that nomenclature is followed in this paper.

Tables 3 and 4 give the results of Gaussian fits and moment analysis for each position and each line observed. The final stacked, baseline-subtracted spectra were fit with one Gaussian component if there appeared to be a detection. For the fits that converged, the table gives the component area, central velocity, and width (full width at half maximum) along with their associated formal uncertainties.

Tables 3 and 4 also give the line area derived from a simple integration over velocity. After integrating over velocity ranges of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 km s-1, it was found that velocity ranges of 30 km s-1 worked well for all the detected lines except those in DC2, where 40 km s-1 is necessary. For clouds with no detected emission, a broader velocity range of 50 km s-1 is used. The velocity ranges were all centered on the velocity of the Gaussian fit component of 12CO(1-0) in that cloud, if there was a reliable fit, or $``$235.6 km s-1 if there wasn’t. The 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty in the integrated line area counts two contributions (summed in quadrature): the error in determining the baseline level and the error from summing individual noisy channels (e.g. Sage & Isbell 1991). In the present case, the primary contribution to uncertainty in integrated area is from summing the noise over the line. Of course this estimate is only a formal uncertainty; it underestimates the true uncertainty because it ignores correlations from one channel to the next (baseline wiggles). Despite this drawback, the uncertainties in the integrated areas are probably more reliable than the formal errors to the Gaussian fits. The 1$`\sigma `$ values in Tables 3 and 4 do not include the uncertainty in the temperature calibration scale, which is probably about 10–15% (see above).

## 3 Molecular gas distribution and kinematics

Figure 1 shows the observed positions with respect to the atomic hydrogen (HI) column density and the dust clouds in NGC 205. The HI distribution was mapped with the Very Large Array111The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. and was previously published by Young & Lo (1996, 1997). Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5 show 12CO(1-0) spectra and HI spectra at the positions with detected CO; in figures 2 and 4, the spectra are laid out in their relative positions on the sky. CO emission is detected from three clouds: Hodge’s (1973) dust cloud number 11, which is called DC11 in this paper, and is about 1′ northeast of the galaxy center; DC2, near the galaxy center, and DC12, about 1.5′ southeast of the galaxy center. The emission in DC11 was already known (Young & Lo 1996, 1997; Welch et al. 1998). Young & Lo (1996) also showed one tentative detection in the southern cloud DC12, whereas the present observations detect CO in several positions within DC12. The new data also show detected emission from DC2, near the center of the galaxy, for the first time.

All positions except for the ones called “NoDust1” and “NoDust2” were selected because of dust patches visible in the optical images (see especially Kim & Lee 1998). The positions “NoDust1” and “NoDust2” were selected as an attempt to test whether the molecular gas distribution makes a complete ring around the center of the galaxy, but no gas was detected there. Thus, the atomic gas in NGC 205 clearly follows the distribution of dust patches. The pattern of CO detections and non-detections suggests that the molecular gas also follows the dust distribution, which would be consistent with the results of Sage & Galletta (1993) for three other peculiar ellipticals. However, it should be noted that a complete map of molecular gas in NGC 205 has not yet been made.

Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5 also show the kinematic relationship between the atomic and molecular gas. Both species show the same velocity gradient of about 30 km s-1 from the north end of the galaxy to the south end. The HI and CO lines have approximately the same width (FWHM about 10 km s-1); in some cases the HI is broader than the CO, but never narrower. The two species have velocity centroids which agree to within 5 km s-1 in most cases; the major exception to this statement is the center position of DC12, where the line centroids differ by almost 10 km s-1.

The close spatial and kinematic association of atomic and molecular gas in this galaxy suggests that the two phases are probably physically associated with each other. A high resolution map of CO emission in DC11, made with the BIMA millimeter interferometer, strengthens this impression (Young & Lo 1996). I suggest that the atomic gas forms a photodissociated envelope around the molecular clouds. The velocity offsets of a few km s-1 between the atomic and molecular phases should not be interpreted as evidence against the photodissociation model. Indeed, detailed observations of the Orion molecular cloud–photodissociation region clearly show that the various molecular and atomic species have velocities which differ by several km s-1. In Orion A, the 12CO 7-6 line and the \[CII\] 158$`\mu `$m line differ by 2–3 km s-1, and the ionized gas differs by about 14 km s-1 from the neutral phases (Genzel & Stutzki 1989; see especially their Table 1 and Figure 5). Thus the atomic and molecular gas in NGC 205 could still be physically associated, despite velocity offsets of a few km s-1. The photodissociation model of molecular and atomic gas in NGC 205 is dicussed further in section 6.

## 4 H2 masses

Table 3 gives the mass of molecular gas at each position where the integrated intensity is greater than three times its own uncertainty. The 12CO(1-0) integrated intensity $`\mathrm{I}_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ (K km s-1, in the brightness temperature scale) is converted to a H2 column density $`\mathrm{N}(\mathrm{H}_2)=\mathrm{X}\mathrm{I}_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ mol cm-2. The CO-to-H2 conversion factor X is taken to be 1.56$`\times 10^{20}`$ mol $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$ per K km s-1, which is the value recently determined for our own Galaxy from models of gamma ray emission (Hunter et al. 1997). Integrated CO intensities are also converted to H2 mass per beam

$$\mathrm{M}(\mathrm{H}_2)=4.27\times 10^{19}\mathrm{X}\mathrm{\Theta }^2\mathrm{D}^2\mathrm{I}_{\mathrm{CO}}\mathrm{M}_{},$$

where the beam size $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is in arcseconds and the distance D is in Mpc. The distance to NGC 205 is assumed to be 0.85$`\pm `$ 0.1 Mpc (Saha, Hoessel, & Krist 1992; see also Mould, Kristian, & Da Costa 1984, and Salaris & Cassisi 1998). The beam size of the 30m telescope in the 12CO(1-0) line is 21″, or 87 pc at 0.85 Mpc. It is not clear that the CO-to-H2 conversion factor should be the same in NGC 205 as in our own Galaxy. In fact, the photodissociation region models of Kaufman et al. (1999) imply that the CO-to-H2 conversion factor for a molecular cloud could vary by orders of magnitude in different kinds of conditions. However, in this case the Galactic value is used in lieu of something better.

When describing the molecular gas in our own Galaxy, Blitz & Williams (1999) discuss a spectrum of cloud sizes. At the massive end of the spectrum are the self-gravitating giant molecular clouds (GMCs) which have masses $``$ 104 $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$; at the low-mass end are the non-self-gravitating “chaff” clouds (102 $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$). From Table 3 it is apparent that the molecular clouds in NGC 205 have masses $``$ 104 $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$. Furthermore, observations of 12CO(1-0) emission with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland interferometer (BIMA) resolved the molecular gas in the cloud DC11 and show that its largest detectable extent is about 30″ = 120 pc (Young & Lo 1996). Thus, the molecular clouds in NGC 205 have similar sizes and masses to the large Galactic GMCs, not the “chaff” clouds.

The H2 masses in Table 3 agree well with previous measurements. For example, the H2 mass detected in the center position of dust cloud 11 is given as (5.7$`\pm `$0.3)$`\times 10^4`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$. (The uncertainty quoted here includes just the measurement noise, not uncertainties in the calibration scale.) The mass given by Welch et al. (1998) from NRAO 12m observations of the same cloud is (6.0$`\pm `$1.7)$`\times 10^4`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$ in a larger beam, after correction to the same CO-to-H2 conversion factor used here. (Welch et al. used a conversion factor of 2.3$`\times 10^{20}`$ mol cm-2 per K km s-1\[Strong et al. 1988\].) The mass of this cloud from the interferometric CO map of Young & Lo (1997) is (6.4$`\pm `$1.3)$`\times 10^4`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$. Thus, there is good consistency between the detected fluxes of indiviual clouds.

The total H2 mass for NGC 205 is more difficult to constrain because no observation has covered the entire galaxy and because the positions which have been observed overlap each other. A sum over the firm ($`>3\sigma `$) detections, counting only the non-overlapping positions, gives (9.9$`\pm `$0.5)$`\times 10^4`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$, which may be an underestimate to the total. Of this sum, the bulk of the gas (60%) is in the northern cloud DC11. But 2.2$`\times 10^4`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$ comes from positions in the southern half of the galaxy, in DC12, where Welch et al. (1998) did not find any CO emission.

With a molecular gas mass of at least 9.9$`\times 10^4`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$, and an HI mass of (4.3$`\pm `$0.6)$`\times 10^5`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$ (Young & Lo 1997), the H2/HI mass ratio in NGC 205 is $`0.23`$, which is consistent with the mass ratios found in other ellipticals. The FIR-selected samples of Wiklind et al. (1995) and Huchtmeier et al. (1995) have H2/HI mass ratios ranging from about 0.03 to 1 or 2.

## 5 Line ratios

Figures 6 and 7 compare spectra of the different molecular species which were observed in NGC 205. Table 5 gives the line ratios that could be measured with the current dataset, estimated both from Gaussian fits and from integrated line areas (on the main beam brightness temperature scale). Where the weaker line did not have a reliable Gaussian fit, no Gaussian line ratio is given, but an integrated area ratio is given. If the weaker line has an integrated area with less than 3$`\sigma `$ significance, the ratio is a lower limit. In those cases the 3$`\sigma `$ limit is used for the weaker line so that the lower limits are always conservatively low.

For the ratio of two lines in the same observing band (1-0/1-0 or 2-1/2-1), no correction was made for the difference in beam sizes. For the 1-0/2-1 ratios, the 2-1 data were convolved to the same spatial resolution as the 1-0 data. To make this convolution, dust clouds 11 and 12 were mapped in a five-point cross pattern spaced at 10″ (approximately the FWHM of the 2-1 beam). To the extent that the beams can be approximated by Gaussians of the FWHM given in Table 1, the 12CO(2-1) data need to be convolved with an 18″ Gaussian function to bring them to the same resolution as the 1-0 data. If this convolution is changed into a discrete sum at 10″ steps, the relative weights are 1.0 for the center pointing and 0.426 for each of the offset pointings. (If data had been taken on a nine-point square instead of a five-point cross, the relative weights of the corner points would be 0.181, so that the convolution is still dominated by the center point and the four nearest points.) To conserve the detected flux, the convolution is normalized by the sum of the weights.

Thus, the convolution of the 12CO(2-1) data with an 18″ Gaussian function can be approximated by the sum

$$0.370(S(0^{\prime \prime })+0.426S(10^{\prime \prime })),$$

where $`S(0^{\prime \prime })`$ represents the spectrum at the center position and $`S(10^{\prime \prime })`$ is the sum of the four offset spectra. When comparing 13CO(2-1) to 13CO(1-0), the weights are 0.459 for the offset pointings and 0.352 for the normalization. This formula is very close to the one used by Allen et al. (1995). It is significantly different from the one used by Johansson et al. (1994), who assumed that the response of the 1-0 beam is constant over the area of the 2-1 beam. The present paper makes no attempt to correct for the fact that a molecular cloud may have different sizes in the different molecules and different transitions.

The 12CO(1-0)/(2-1) line ratios for DC11 in Table 5, namely 2.2$`\pm `$0.3 and 1.9$`\pm `$0.2, give 2-1/1-0 ratios of about 0.5$`\pm `$0.1. This result is significantly different from the value of 0.9 $`\pm `$0.2 previously reported by Young & Lo (1996). The new data are higher quality and the lines are detected with better signal-to-noise ratios, so the value of 0.5$`\pm `$0.1 should be adopted. This ratio indicates subthermal excitation of the CO transitions, which may arise from either low kinetic temperatures and/or low densities. The corresponding line ratio in the southern cloud, DC12, is consistent with the value found in DC11. Also, the present 12CO(1-0)/HCN(1-0) limit in NGC 205 is 12CO/HCN $`>13`$; that is a significant improvement over the previous work of Welch et al. (1998), who found 12CO/HCN $`>6`$.

Table 6 compares the line ratios measured in the cloud DC11 of NGC 205 to ratios measured in other elliptical galaxies, in spiral galaxy disks, and in spiral galaxy nuclei. The table is not intended to be a complete review of the literature, merely to provide some interesting comparisons. The values for NGC 205 are taken from Table 5, after averaging the results from the integrated areas and the Gaussian fitting. Of course, these two methods do not give independent results and the uncertainty in the ratio is not assumed to decrease by that averaging. The error estimates for NGC 205 in Table 6 now include the uncertainty in the calibration scale.

The available line ratios indicate that the molecular clouds in NGC 205 have broadly similar physical properties to the moderate density giant molecular clouds in our own spiral’s disk, though not to the dense molecular gas in the nuclei of galaxies. The density information comes from the high density tracers HCO+ and HCN; the lower limits in NGC 205 are consistent with the high values found in spiral galaxy disks, but not with the low values found in the nuclei of spirals or the circumnuclear disk of Cen A. The 12CO/13CO ratio in NGC 205 is consistent with all the other 13CO ratios in the table.

Finally, the 12CO 2-1/1-0 ratio in NGC 205 is consistent with the values measured in other ellipticals and in the Milky Way disk, but not with the very low values from the center of M31. Often this line ratio is used as a very rough indicator of gas temperature; for example, the 12CO 2-1/1-0 values $`1`$ which are found in the Small Magellanic Cloud (Rubio et al. 1993a, 1993b; Lequeux et al. 1994) are thought to arise in relatively warm gas bathed in a high UV and cosmic ray field. The values of 0.2–0.4 which are found in the center of M31 (Allen et al. 1995) are thought to arise in very cold gas with a temperature of about 5 K. The simple models of Braine & Combes (1992) and Allen et al. (1995) would imply that temperatures less than about 7 K are required for the gas in NGC 205. However, without a more complete analysis it should not be assumed that these models are appropriate for dust clouds 11 and 12 in NGC 205.

## 6 Molecular and atomic gas

Table 7 gives the atomic, molecular, and total gas column densities for all the positions observed with the 30m telescope. The most striking result from the table is the low atomic column densities which are associated with the molecular gas. The highest atomic column density in the table (also the highest atomic column density in the galaxy, at 21″ resolution) is 4$`\times 10^{20}`$ $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$, and the strongest CO emission in the galaxy comes from a position with an HI column density of just 2$`\times 10^{20}`$ $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$.

This result is surprising because it runs counter to the conventional wisdom that molecular gas cannot form unless HI column densities are about 1021 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$ or greater. For example, Blitz (1993) analyzed the relationship between Galactic giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and HI, and found that the Galactic GMCs are associated with atomic clouds of peak column density 1–2$`\times 10^{21}`$ $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$. In ultraviolet absorption experiments towards Galactic OB associations, Savage et al. (1977) found that molecular hydrogen usually does not form until the HI column density reaches 5$`\times 10^{20}`$ $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$. A similar result is found by Lada et al. (1988) for a spiral arm in the galaxy M31; in that case, a linear fit to molecular and atomic column densities implies that molecular gas does not form until the atomic column density is at least 1021 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Furthermore, in the observations of Lada et al., molecular gas (CO emission) is not detectable until the atomic hydrogen column density rises to about 5$`\times 10^{21}`$ $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$. All of this evidence is interpreted to mean that a layer of atomic hydrogen of about 1021 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$ must be present to shield molecular hydrogen from dissociation by the interstellar UV field. Yet molecular hydrogen has clearly formed in NGC 205 in locations with atomic column densities of 2$`\times 10^{20}`$ $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$ and lower.

The comparison between NGC 205 and the M31 results of Lada et al. (1988) is particularly appropriate because NGC 205 and M31 are at comparable distances (NGC 205 is a companion of M31) and the two galaxies have been studied with the same observing techniques at comparable spatial and linear resolutions. Figure 8 makes a graphical comparison between HI and H2 column densities in M31 and NGC 205. The data for M31 have been corrected to the same CO/H2 conversion factor which is adopted in this paper (Section 4) and have been corrected for an inclination of 77°. The figure shows that the molecular clouds studied by Lada et al. in M31 have similar H2 column densities to the clouds in NGC 205. (More specifically, the brightest cloud in NGC 205, DC11, is similar to the median clouds in Lada’s sample.) But the clouds in NGC 205 have smaller atomic column densities, by about a factor of six. One cannot conclude that the molecular clouds in NGC 205 are different from all of the clouds in M31 or in our Galaxy, but they certainly are different from the “typical” or most commonly studied GMCs in M31 and in our own Galaxy.

The photodissociation models of Draine & Bertoldi (1996) provide an explanation for the threshold effect seen in the formation of molecular gas in Galactic (and M31) GMCs, and they also explain why the molecular clouds in NGC 205 are different. Molecular hydrogen can exist on long timescales if its formation rate balances the photodissociation rate. Thus the relative amounts of atomic and molecular gas are strongly dependent on the ratio $`\chi /\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$, where $`\chi `$ measures the intensity of the UV radiation field (at 1000 Å) in units of the Habing (1968) value, and $`\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$ is the gas volume density. When $`\chi /\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$ is high— 0.1 to 10, as in the case of GMCs which are associated with young massive stars, the models of Draine & Bertoldi (1996) show that the formation of molecular gas does indeed require a shielding atomic layer of about 1021 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Furthermore, the formation of molecular gas happens very quickly, in a small range of values around 1021 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$. However, when $`\chi /\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$ is low, either due to a low UV field or a high gas density, molecular gas can form with much smaller shielding atomic layers; the shielding layer can be 1018 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$ or even lower. The molecular and atomic column densities observed in M31 by Lada et al. (1988) are consistent with $`\chi /\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$$``$0.1, but the results in NGC 205 are more consistent with $`\chi /\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$$``$0.01 (see Draine & Bertoldi’s figures 9 and 10).

The fundamental difference between the molecular clouds in NGC 205 and those in M31 is probably not a higher density $`\mathrm{n}_\mathrm{H}`$, but a lower UV field $`\chi `$. That is because the high density molecular tracers have not been detected in NGC 205. Also, Welch et al. (1998) have attempted to estimate the strength of the interstellar UV field at the positions of the molecular clouds in NGC 205 by counting the known bright blue stars and estimating the UV field produced by the old stellar population. They estimate that the UV field in NGC 205 is about one tenth as strong as the standard solar neighborhood field. Thus, I speculate that a lower UV field in NGC 205 makes it easier to form and retain molecular gas in that galaxy than in the disk of our own Galaxy.

When the atomic gas in ellipticals can be mapped, the peak HI column densities are often found to be small, around 1020 $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$, which leads authors to suggest that molecular gas cannot form and therefore star formation cannot occur (e.g. Oosterloo, Morganti, & Sadler 1999). These assumptions are based on comparisons with Galactic GMCs; however, the relationship between atomic and molecular gas may be different in ellipticals than it is in our Galaxy. A proper understanding of molecular gas and star formation in ellipticals must await future surveys of molecular gas, rather than inferences based on the atomic gas.

## 7 Gas and dust

In elliptical galaxies, the gas-to-dust ratio may be an important clue to the evolution of the ISM. For example, dust which is acquired in a merger with a gas-rich galaxy may be gradually destroyed by the hot gas in the elliptical (e.g. Henkel & Wiklind 1997). But a simple comparison of dust opacities and gas column densities in NGC 205 indicates that the gas-to-dust ratio in this galaxy is probably consistent with the Galactic value. Table 8 gives the atomic plus molecular column densities in dust clouds 2 and 11, taken from Table 7, and some estimates of the dust opacity in those clouds.

The first step in the estimation of a gas-to-dust ratio is to correct the observed dust opacities for the fact that the dust clouds are probably behind some of the stars in the galaxy. Line 2 of Table 8 gives the peak extinctions $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$, in magnitudes, measured by Price & Grasdalen (1983) \[PG83\] for two clouds in NGC 205. One may correct these observed extinctions to the true extinctions by assuming that the dust is in a small screen about halfway through the galaxy (Line 3; also taken from PG83). Line 4 gives the $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ values derived from this information. For comparison, the average Galactic relations $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{E}(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V})=5.8\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{mag}^1`$ (Bohlin, Savage, & Drake 1978) and $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}/\mathrm{E}(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V})=3.1`$ (Clayton, Cardelli, & Mathis 1989) give $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}=1.9\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{mag}^1`$.

The $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ estimates for DC11 are similar to this canonical Galactic value. The estimates for dust cloud 2 are factors of 10–40 lower than the canonical Galactic value, which is probably related to the poor resolution of the gas column density measurements. Figure 1 shows that DC2 is significantly smaller than the 21″ beam used to measure gas column densities. The $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ measurements are the peak values in the cloud at optical resolutions, but the gas column densities are smoothed to resolutions of 21″. DC11 is well matched to the size of the 21″ beam, but the poor radio resolution probably underestimates the gas-to-dust ratio there as well.

The true visual extinctions are themselves uncertain because of the unknown distributions of gas and stars. For example, Witt & Gordon (1999) make a model in which dust is uniformly mixed with stars in the inner third of an elliptical galaxy; they include the effects of scattering, and they predict true visual extinctions which are about a factor of five larger than those of PG83 for the same observed extinction. Thus, the gas-to-dust ratios measured here are highly uncertain. However, the data are consistent with the interpretation that the clouds in NGC 205 have the same gas-to-dust ratio as Galactic clouds. Welch et al. (1998) have also compared the dust mass in NGC 205 (measured from FIR emission) to the gas mass, and they find gas-to-dust ratios somewhat lower than, but roughly comparable to, the canonical Milky Way ratio of $``$100. If the gas-to-dust ratio can indeed be used to tell us something about the destruction of dust in ellipticals (as suggested above), then these broad consistencies imply that the environment inside of NGC 205 is not hostile enough to destroy much dust or, possibly, that the gas and dust in NGC 205 were acquired relatively recently.

## 8 Summary

The molecular clouds in NGC 205 have properties which are similar to the giant molecular clouds in the disk of our own Galaxy. For example, gas-to-dust ratios have been estimated from optical extinctions and atomic and molecular gas column densities. These ratios are highly uncertain because of the different spatial resolutions of the optical and radio data, and because of the unknown geometry of the dust with respect to the stars. However, the data are consistent with the interpretation that the gas-to-dust ratio in the molecular clouds of NGC 205 is similar to the gas-to-dust ratio in our own Galaxy (section 7). The molecular line ratios 12CO(2-1)/(1-0), 13CO(1-0)/12CO(1-0), and HCN and HCO+ upper limits tell a similar story: the line ratios in NGC 205 are similar to those in giant molecular clouds in the disk of our own Galaxy (section 5).

However, a detailed analysis of the relationship between atomic and molecular gas shows that in this respect, the molecular clouds in NGC 205 are significantly different from their Galactic counterparts. The associated HI envelopes in NGC 205 have much smaller column densities than the HI envelopes around Galactic GMCs. The idea that 1021 atoms $`\mathrm{cm}^2`$ of atomic gas is necessary for the formation of molecular gas is a rule of thumb which does happen to work (most of the time) for Galactic GMCs and also for molecular clouds in the disk of M31 (section 6). However, this is not an intrinsic property of molecular clouds; it depends on the local conditions such as the gas density and the interstellar UV field. In the dwarf elliptical NGC 205, molecular gas forms with smaller atomic envelopes, which is probably because the interstellar UV field is lower than in the solar neighborhood. In general, because of this dependence on the UV field, it may be easier to form and retain molecular gas in low-luminosity elliptical galaxies than in the spirals such as our own. But the molecular clouds which do form are expected to have properties which are similar to spiral galaxy molecular clouds, and the elliptical galaxies may be forming stars just as the spirals do.

Thanks to G. Welch, M. Rupen, B. Draine, A. Witt, and R. Young Owl for discussions about elliptical galaxies and the ISM. The referee, L. J. Sage, provided many helpful suggestions. The majority of this paper was completed while L.Y. was a Tombaugh Scholar at New Mexico State University. Thanks also to the Physics Department at New Mexico Tech for their hospitality.


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# Resolved Spectroscopy of the Narrow-Line Region in NGC 1068. III. Physical Conditions in the Emission-Line GasBased on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under the NASA contract NAS5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

NGC 1068 is the nearest ($`z=`$ 0.0038) and brightest Seyfert 2 galaxy and has been observed extensively in all wavebands from the radio to the X-ray (it was recently the subject of an entire workshop, see Gallimore & Tacconi 1997). The detection of broad (Full Width Half Maximum, FWHM $``$ 4500 km s-1) permitted emission lines in the polarized flux from NGC 1068 (Antonucci & Miller 1985; Miller, Goodrich, & Mathews 1991) was the inspiration for the unified model for Seyfert galaxies, the basis of which is that all Seyfert 2s harbor a broad-line region (BLR) and non-stellar continuum source, which are hidden along our line-of-sight by a dense molecular torus, while the central source and BLR are viewed directly in Seyfert 1s (see Antonucci 1993).

Ground-based narrow-band images of the narrow-line region (NLR) of NGC 1068 reveal that the emission lines form a biconical structure, roughly parallel to the radio axis, extending northeast and southwest of the nucleus (Pogge 1988). Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reveal that the inner NLR contains numerous knots and filaments of ionized gas, also in a biconical geometry (Evans et al. 1991; Macchetto et al. 1994). The hidden active galactic nucleus (AGN) is thought to lie 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$13 south of the optical continuum peak (Capetti, Macchetto, & Lattanzi 1997), and is thought to be associated with the thermal radio source designated S1 (cf. Gallimore et al. 1996).

Analysis of ground-based observations has revealed that the emission-line gas in the extended NLR, $``$ 1 kpc from the nucleus, is most likely photoionized by continuum radiation emitted by the hidden AGN (Evans & Dopita 1986). Although it follows that photoionization must be important, if not dominant, closer to the active nucleus, conditions within $``$ 200 pc of the nucleus are apparently quite complex. Inspired by the surprisingly strong C III $`\lambda `$977 and N III $`\lambda `$990 lines seen in Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope spectra, Kriss et al. (1992) argued that shock heating is an important process in the inner NLR (but see Ferguson, Ferland, & Pradhan  for another interpretation). Based on HST/Faint Object Camera (FOC) long slit spectra, Axon et al. (1998) found evidence for an increase in emission-line flux and ionization state at a region $``$ 150 pc northeast of the nucleus, which may be due to the interaction of the radio jet which traverses the NLR of NGC 1068 (Wilson & Ulvestad 1983) with interstellar gas clouds. In fact several authors have argued that the ionizing radiation emitted by fast ($``$ 500 km s-1) shocks, arising either from cloud/cloud interactions (cf. Sutherland, Bicknell, & Dopita 1993), or jet/cloud interactions (Wilson & Raymond 1999; Morse, Raymond, & Wilson 1996), may power the NLR in Seyfert 2 galaxies. On the other hand, using HST/Faint Object Spectrograph data, Kraemer, Ruiz & Crenshaw (1998) examined conditions in the inner $``$150 pc of the NLR and determined that the observed emission lines could generally arise in gas photoionized by the hidden AGN (although there appeared to be some additional collisional excitation in the region nearest the radio jet). Recently, Alexander et al. (2000) found evidence that the ionizing radiation incident upon the NLR was heavily absorbed by an intervening layer of gas (although it should be noted that the spectra these authors analyzed were from an area encompassing nearly the entire NLR and, thus, any local effects were diluted). In summary, although it is likely that the NLR is photoionized, both the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the ionizing radiation incident on the emission-line clouds and the physical process(es) in which this radiation arises have yet to be firmly established.

In previous papers, we used STIS long slit spectra, taken along a position angle of 202o, to examine the nature of the extended continuum radiation in the NLR (Crenshaw & Kraemer 2000a, hereafter Paper I), the physical conditions near the continuum hot spot (Kraemer & Crenshaw 2000, hereafter Paper II), and the NLR kinematics (Crenshaw & Kraemer 2000b, hereafter CK2000). Interestingly, we found that the emission-line gas near the hot spot, in spite of the presence of coronal lines such as \[Fe XIV\] $`\lambda `$5303 and \[S XII\] $`\lambda `$7611, appears to be photoionized by the central continuum source, with no evidence of additional shock heating (Paper II). In this paper, we use the same long slit dataset and photoionization models to determine the physical conditions as a function of position within the inner $``$ 200 pc of NLR of NGC 1068. In Section 3 we will discuss general trends derived from the emission-line flux ratios, specifically reddening and ionization state at different radial positions. In section 4 and 5 we will present the details of photoionization models of the emission-line gas, which reveal that the physical conditions vary greatly along different sight-lines to the active nucleus. Finally, we will discuss the implications of these results, including a possible connection between the NLR conditions and the orientation of the emission-line bicone and the host galaxy. We adopt a systemic redshift of cz $`=`$ 1148 km s-1 from H I observations (Brinks et al. 1997) and a distance of 14.4 Mpc (Bland-Hawthorn et al. 1997), so that 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$1 corresponds to 7.2 pc.

## 2 Observations and Analysis

We observed NGC 1068 with HST/STIS using a 52′′ x 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$1 slit to obtain spectra over 1150 – 10,270 Å at a resolving power of $`\lambda `$/$`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ $``$ 1000. Our slit position (at PA $`=`$ 202o, offset 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$14 north of the continuum peak) intersects a number of bright emission-line knots in the inner NLR (see Paper I). We extracted spectra using a bin length of 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 (14.4 pc) along the slit, to obtain reasonable signal-to-noise ratios for the emission lines. Paper I gives additional details on the observations and data reduction.

In CK2000, we showed that the \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007 emission splits into two major kinematic components (blueshifted and redshifted relative to the systemic velocity) both NE and SW of the optical continuum peak (hot spot). The other emission lines show the same general behavior (see Paper I). Since the \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007 emission is isolated from other lines and has the greatest signal-to-noise over this extended region, we used it as a template for the other lines. Thus, at each spatial bin, we fit the \[O III\] emission with one or two Gaussians, and determined the velocity positions and widths of each component. These positions and widths were then kept fixed for the other emission lines, and the height of the Gaussians were allowed to vary independently to determine the fluxes. The advantage of this procedure is that it allows us to determine a consistent set of line ratios for different kinematic components along the same line of sight. We can therefore place the emission-line measurements into one of four quadrants: NE-blue, NE-red, SW-blue, SW-red. The location of the emission is further specified by the projected distance (in arcseconds) from the center of the bin that contains the hot spot.

Our fitting procedure works well for lines that are relatively isolated (e.g., H$`\beta `$) or for doublets with fixed ratios (e.g., C IV $`\lambda \lambda `$1548.2, 1550.8). However, many other features, such as the blend of H$`\alpha `$ and N II $`\lambda \lambda `$6548, 6584 or the blend of H$`\gamma `$ and \[O III\] $`\lambda `$4363, are impossible to disentangle in this fashion, due to the mixing of kinematic components of different lines. Therefore, we only measured isolated lines that could yield reliable fluxes for each kinematic component. Errors in the fluxes are from the uncertainties in the Gaussian fits and different reasonable continuum placements (added in quadrature). As in the past, we used the He II $`\lambda `$1640/$`\lambda `$4686 ratio to determine the reddening (see Paper II), and dereddened the observed ratios using a standard extinction curve (Savage and Mathis 1979). Errors in the dereddened ratios include a contribution from the reddening error (also added in quadrature). The observed line ratios are listed in Table 1a, while the dereddened line ratios, H$`\beta `$ fluxes, and reddening (EB-V) are listed in Tables 1b. Note that our central bin, position 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0, is approximately 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$3 north of S1.

## 3 General Trends

### 3.1 Reddening

Figure 1a shows EB-V as a function of position along the slit. Although the reddening shows considerable variation within each quadrant, it is apparent that the emission-line gas in the NE-blue quadrant, with an average EB-V is $``$ 0.35, is more heavily reddened than that in the NE-red quadrant, where the average EB-V is $``$ 0.22 (there are not enough datapoints in the SW quadrants for us to determine trends). It is possible that both regions are viewed through an external screen of dust, corresponding to a reddening of EB-V $`=`$ 0.2 and a column of hydrogen of $``$ 1021 cm2, assuming a typical Galactic gas-to-dust ratio (cf. Shull & Van Steenberg 1985). The NE-blue quadrant must be viewed through an additional column of $``$ 7 x 1020 cm-2. The simple kinematic model described in CK2000 requires that the NE-blue quadrant lies in front of the NE-red quadrant along our line-of-sight. Such a geometry can fit the observed reddening if the difference in the reddening is associated with the individual components and the total covering factor of the NE-blue components is small enough that it does not eclipse much of the NE-red quadrant.

As we will demonstrate in the following sections, the emission-line gas in the NE-blue quadrant is generally matter-bounded (optically thin). Therefore, we are able to constrain the column density of the emission-line clouds, and hence their spatial extent across our line-of-sight. The extent of the emission-line gas is quite small compared to the size of the spatial bins ($`<`$ a few %); hence it is likely that we are not viewing the NE-red components through a screen of material in the NE-blue quadrant.

The addditional reddening might be associated with the emission-line gas itself if we are preferentially viewing the the ionized face of the NE-red components while viewing the backends of the NE-blue components, which is consistent with our proposed geometry in CK2000 (the NLR gas in NGC 4151 is viewed in a similar fashion \[Kraemer et al. 2000\]). However, as we will show, there is insufficient dust embedded in the emission-line clouds to fully account for this. Another possibility is that the clouds are filamentary rather than spherical, in which case the path-length for photon escape may be quite large. However, this requires that the NE-red components are either more symmetric or, again, that we are preferentially viewing their illuminated surfaces. Note that, in the NE-red components, the average dereddened L$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ is close to Case B (24 – 36; Osterbrock 1989), as shown in Figure 1b, which indicates minimal destruction of L$`\alpha `$ by dust within the emission-line gas (although there are several cases where the suppression is significant, as noted Section 5.3). Unfortunately, we were unable to separate the intrinsic and geocoronal L$`\alpha `$ in the NE-blue components.

In summary, while this difference in reddening does not compromise our kinematic model, we cannot determine its source.

### 3.2 Density and Ionization

Although we will use photoionization models in order to make a detailed examination of the physical conditions of several components of the emission-line gas (see next section), we can infer general trends from the \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ and \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727/H$`\beta `$ ratios as a function of position along the slit. These ratios are shown in Figures 1c and 1d.

In the NE-blue quadrant, \[O III\]$`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ increases slightly between $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 and $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8, which is followed by a slight drop out to $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2, then a steeper increase out to $``$2$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0. The \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727/H$`\beta `$ ratio increases steeply from $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 to $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2, followed by an abrupt decrease. One possible interpretation is that the density is high enough (well above the critical density of 3.3 x 103 cm-3; Osterbrock 1989) that \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727 is significantly suppressed by collisional de-excitation in the inner 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$6. Apparently, the density decreases with the radial distance, as D-2, since \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ is fairly constant, out to $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4, with \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727/H$`\beta `$ increasing as the density drops. At this point, there is a simultaneous rise in \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007 and drop in \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727, which appears to be the result of an increase in the ionization state of the gas (the relative strength of these lines is a good indicator of the ionization state in low density gas (Ferland & Netzer 1983), which could be the result of a faster density drop-off or an increase in the flux of ionizing radiation; we prefer the latter, as we will show in Section 5.2.

In the NE-red quadrant, \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ is significantly lower than in the NE-blue quadrant, which indicates that this gas is in a lower state of ionization, a point that we will discuss in Section 5.3. \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ decreases slightly out to $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$6 (with one exception), then recovers somewhat, while \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727/H$`\beta `$ shows the same overall trend as in the NE-blue quadrant. Hence, density appears to be decreasing with radial distance. Unlike in the NE-blue quadrant, there is no abrupt increase in relative strength of \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007, hence there is no strong evidence of an increase in the ionization state of the gas between $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4 and $``$2$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0. The large values of \[O III\]$`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ at radial distances beyond $``$3$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0 is most likely indicative of the presence of large amount of optically thin gas, as seen in the outer NLR of NGC 4151 (Kraemer et al. 2000).

There are too few datapoints in the SW quadrants to clearly determine trends, due to the overall weakness of emission in this direction. A possible explanation, consistent with our kinematic model (CK2000), is that the majority of the SW cone lies behind the galactic plane. The weakness or absence of \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727 in the SW-red quadrant, although possibly just a detectability problem, is also consistent with higher densities than in either of the NE quandrants.

## 4 Photoionization Models

The details of our photoionization code have been discussed in several previous publications (Kraemer 1985; Kraemer & Harrington 1986; Kraemer et al 1994). As usual, the photoionization models are parameterized in terms of the dimensionless ionization parameter, U, which is the number of ionizing photons per hydrogen atom at the illuminated face of the cloud. The inputs to the models include the gas density (nH), the distance from the nucleus (D), the number of ionizing photons (Q), the spectral energy distribution of the ionizing radiation, the elemental abundances, the dust/gas ratio, and the column density of the emission-line clouds.

The possibility of non-solar elemental abundances in the inner NLR of NGC 1068 has been discussed previously (Netzer 1997; Netzer & Turner 1997; Kraemer et al. 1998). In Paper II, we argued that there was no strong evidence for non-solar O, Ne, and N, and that, although the Fe/O ratio did appear to be supersolar within 30 pc of the hidden nucleus, this might not be true at larger radial distances. Therefore, we have chosen to assume solar abundances (cf. Grevesse & Anders 1989) for these models. The numerical abundances, relative to hydrogen, are as follows: He$`=`$0.1, C$`=`$3.4x10-4, O$`=`$6.8x10-4, N$`=`$1.2x10-4, Ne$`=`$1.1x10-4, S$`=`$1.5x10-5, Si$`=`$3.1x10-5, Mg$`=`$3.3x10-5, Fe$`=`$4.0x10-5.

We have assumed that both silicate and carbon dust grains are present, although the dust-to-gas ratio, which we express as a dust “fraction” relative to that in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Milky Way (cf. Draine & Lee 1984), varies throughout the emission-line region. The depletions of elements from gas phase are equal to the dust fraction multiplied by the following ISM depletions (cf. Snow & Witt 1996): C, 65%; O, 50%; Si, Mg, and Fe, 100%.

Although Alexander et al. (2000) report evidence of the presence of a Big Blue Bump in the SED of the ionizing continuum, in Paper II we demonstrated that the emission-line spectrum from the hot spot could be produced by a simple power-law continuum. Here we assume the same ionizing continuum used in Paper II, specifically a broken power-law of the form, Fν $`=`$ K$`\nu ^\alpha `$, as follows (also, see Figure 3):

$$\alpha =1.0,h\nu <13.6eV$$
(1)
$$\alpha =1.4,13.6eVh\nu <1000eV$$
(2)
$$\alpha =0.5,h\nu 1000eV$$
(3)
The intrinsic luminosity above the Lyman limit, $``$ 3 x 1044 erg s-1 (Q $``$ 4x1054 photons s-1, is typical of Seyfert 1 nuclei (Pier et al. 1994). As we will discuss in the following sections, there is evidence at specific locations that the ionizing continuum has been modified by either 1) absorption by intervening gas, or 2) an additional component of UV – X-ray radiation, such as that produced by a fast shock.

For each position, we found the best fit was obtained by a two-component model, with the density (nH) and the dust fraction of each left as free parameters. Multiple component models were used with success in our earlier study of the NLR in NGC 1068 (Kraemer et al. 1998), while Kraemer et al. (2000) and Schulz & Komossa (1993) found strong evidence for components of different densities at the same radial distances to model the NLR and extended NLR, respectively, in NGC 4151 (one might infer that local density inhomogeneity is a typical characteristic of the NLR). To determine the distance between the emission-line clouds and the central source, D, we measured the angular separation of the center of each extraction bin and the location of the S1 radio source (see Paper II, and references therein). We did not correct for projection effects, which would only increase D by a factor $``$ 1.4 (CK2000). We chose the dust fraction to account for the suppression of resonance lines (e.g., L$`\alpha `$ and C IV $`\lambda `$), but were constrained by the strength of emission lines such as Mg II $`\lambda `$2800 and \[Fe VII\] $`\lambda `$6087, whose presence requires a portion of these elements to be in gas phase.

Similar to the approach taken in Kraemer et al. (1998), we have assumed that one component is screened from the ionizing source by the other, the denser gas by the the more tenuous component. In such a model, the covering factor of the dense component with respect to the continuum source is constrained by the covering factor of the tenuous gas by which it is screened. Note that this is different than the geometry assumed in Paper II, in which the low- and high-ionization gas were not co-planar. Such a geometry is plausible in the case of the hot spot, since the low ionization lines were redshifted with the respect to the high ionization lines. However, in the extended emission-line gas, there are low and high ionization lines with the same velocities, which implies that the regions of different ionization are kinematically associated. The total column density, NH (the sum of the columns of ionized and neutral hydrogen), of the tenuous component was fixed to provide the best fit to the He II lines, while that of the denser component was constrained by the observed strength of the \[O I\] $`\lambda `$6300 line.

Our photoionization code does not include the pumping of UV resonance lines by scattering of continuum radiation and continuum fluorescence (cf. Ferguson, Ferland, & Pradhan 1994). In modeling the hot spot spectrum, we generated comparison models with CLOUDY90 (Ferland et al. 1998), and did not find this effect important for C IV $`\lambda `$1550, at turbulent velocities $`<`$ 500 km s-1. The reasons are twofold. First, for very optically thick lines ($`\tau `$linecenter $`>`$ 100) the pumping efficiency is low. Second, in typical NLR conditions (e.g., a cloud with nH $`=`$ 104, U $`=`$ 10-2, which is optically thick at the He II Lyman limit), the contribution to C IV $`\lambda `$1550 from collisional excitation dominates any boost from resonance scattering. However, in Paper II, we find that resonance scattering is an important effect for other UV resonance lines, such as C II $`\lambda `$1335 and N V $`\lambda `$1240, for which collisional excitation is less dominant, due to weak collision strengths or smaller ionic columns. Hence, the predicted N V $`\lambda `$1240 flux is a lower limit, since pumping can boost the relative strength of this line by a factor of 2 – 3 for the conditions in typical emission-line gas and turbulent velocities $`<`$ 500 km s-1 (we do not expect that the turbulent velocities are even this high, given the fact that the FWHM of the emission lines is $`<`$ 1000 km s-1 and the broadening is probably partially due to the superposition of different kinematic components).

## 5 Model Results

### 5.1 NE-blueshifted Quadrant – Photoionization by the AGN

As noted above, we initially assumed that the blueshifted emission-line gas NE of the optical continuum peak is ionized solely by the continuum radiation emitted by the hidden AGN. To test this, we first fit the emission-line spectrum from the bin centered at $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2. The physical parameters for the two components, and a comparison of the model prediction to the observed line ratios are given in Table 2555In Table 2 – 14, we list, in addition to the model parameters described in Section 4, the following: the predicted emitted H$`\beta `$ flux (F); the emitting area, which is the observed H$`\beta `$ luminosity divided by F; the Depth, which is a lower limit to the distance the emitting region projects into the plane of the sky, constrained by the slit width (7.2 pc); and the fraction each component contributes to the total H$`\beta `$ flux.. Assuming equal contributions to the H$`\beta `$ flux from each component, we obtained a very good fit for each emission line (the model fits the data within a factor 2 and, generally, much better than that). The one exception is N V $`\lambda `$1240, which is often poorly fit, even with the expected boost from resonance scattering. We have discussed the underprediction of this line by photoionization models (Kraemer et al. 2000; Paper II), although we have no ready explanation.

The line ratios do not vary significantly among the bins from $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 to $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 (see Table 1b), which implies that the density is falling off roughly as D-2. To test this, we generated a model of the emission-line spectrum in the Bin at $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0, lowering the densities of the two components accordingly (we increased NH by a factor of 3 to match the strength of the \[O I\] $`\lambda `$6300 line). The comparison of the model and the observed line ratios is given in Table 3. Again the fit is reasonably good. The overprediction of C IV $`\lambda `$ 1550 and Mg II $`\lambda `$2800 could be easily rectified by assuming a slightly higher dust fraction than the 10% assumed here (hence, we assumed a somewhat higher dust fraction for the emission-line gas further out). Although the N V $`\lambda `$1240 might be fit with a turbulent velocity of 500 km s-1, this would worsen the C IV $`\lambda `$1550 fit.

### 5.2 NE-blueshifted Quadrant – AGN $`+`$ Shock

Although irradiation by the central source appears to be the dominant process in the inner 120 pc, it does not seem to fully explain the emission-line spectrum near $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4, which show a large He II $`\lambda `$4686/H$`\beta `$ ratio and strong \[Ne IV\] $`\lambda `$2423 and \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426 lines, as shown in Figures 2a – c. The increase in the He II $`\lambda `$4686/H$`\beta `$ ratio could be explained by a greater fraction of optically thin, tenuous gas, however such conditions would result in weak \[Ne IV\] $`\lambda `$2423 and, perhaps, \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426. Also, the relative strengths of the low ionization lines, such as \[O I\] $`\lambda `$6300 and \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727, are not appreciably different than in the emission-line gas closer to the nucleus, which constrains the fraction of more highly ionized gas.

As noted in Section 1, Axon et al. (1998) discussed the possibility of an additional source of ionizing radiation in the inner NLR of NGC 1068, perhaps arising from the interaction of the emission-line clouds or radio jet with the interstellar medium. Models of fast shocks (Vshock $``$ 400 km s-1) predict strong EUV and X-ray continuum and line emission from the shock front (cf. Sutherland et al. 1993; Morse et al. 1996). Since the emission-line clouds at radial distances $`>`$ 100 pc appear to be decelerating from maximum velocities of $``$ 1000 km s-1 (given projection effects; CK2000), it is entirely plausible that such fast shocks arise. Recent STIS longslit observations, which mapped the NLR of NGC 1068 at a resolving power of $`\lambda `$/$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$`\lambda `$ $``$ 10,000, show local velocity structure which may be evidence of cloud disruption due to shocks (see Cecil et al. 2000).

The combined effects of shocks and photoionization by an AGN have been modeled by Viegas-Aldrovandi & Contini (1989a and b, and references therein to their earlier work). However, these were generated for a specific range size and structure of the emission-line clouds, and are not readily applicable to the present data. Although our photoionization code does not include shocks, we have approximated its effect by combining the continuum from the hidden AGN, appropriately diluted by distance, with the ionizing radiation from the shock front. This was done in a simplistic fashion, by assuming that both the AGN radiation and shock-induced radiation are incident upon the same “face” of the cloud. Although this is almost certainly not the case for radially outflowing clouds, it is sufficient to demonstrate the effects of an additional source of UV – X-ray radiation. For the shock-induced radiation, we used models generated by Wilson & Raymond (1999) for shock velocity of 1000 km s-1 (see Figure 4). The observed 2 – 10 keV flux is $``$ 2 – 8 x 10-12 ergs cm-2 s-1, or 0.5 – 2.0 x 1041 ergs s-1, assuming a distance of 14.4 Mpc (Bland-Hawthorn et al. 1997), which is consistent with the X-ray emission produced by the starburst disk in NGC 1068 (Wilson et al. 1992; Turner et al. 1997). Since the starburst is likely to contribute most of the extended X-ray flux, we scaled to a total shock luminosity above the Lyman limit to $``$ 1042 ergs cm-2 sec-1, ($``$ 5 x 1040 ergs s-1 in the 2 – 10 keV band), which can be produced by an emitting area of $``$ 1039 cm2 for a precursor gas density of nH $`=`$ 103 cm-3. Of course, the shock-induced luminosity could be much lower.

For the model of the $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4 bin, we assumed that the shock front contributes $``$2.5 times the ionizing flux of the central source, which, given our scaling of the shock, requires distance from the shock of 10 pc (i.e., within an extraction bin). The comparison of the model and observations is given in Table 4. For the bin centered at $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8, we assumed the shock contributes $``$ 2.8 times the flux of the central source. The results are given in Table 5. Considering the crude manner in which we included the effects of the shock, the model predictions fit the observed emission-line ratios reasonably well. The underpredictions of \[Fe VII\] $`\lambda `$6087 may indicate that less iron is depleted onto dust grains than we assumed. The underprediction of the \[Ne IV\] $`\lambda `$2423 is slightly troubling, although the fit is only marginally outside our limit of acceptability, since its relative strength was one of the spectral features that suggested a boost in ionization. The shock induced emission is primarily a combination of free-free continuum and recombination lines (Sutherland et al. 1993), and the frequency grid in our photoioization models is somewhat coarse (Kraemer 1985); hence, we may have missed important emission features above 63.5 eV (the ionization potential for Ne III). Alternatively, the strength of collisionally excited UV lines can be enhanced in high temperature (2 x 104 K – 105 K) zones behind the shock front (cf. Allen, Dopita, & Tsevtanov 1998), an effect which we have not included, although one would expect that would result in underpredictions of C IV $`\lambda `$1550 and \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426. Of course, the fit for \[Ne IV\] $`\lambda `$2324 would have been even worse without including the shock-induced ionizing radiation.

### 5.3 NE-redshifted Quadrant

Based on the observed emission-line ratios (e.g., \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta ,`$He II $`\lambda `$4686/H$`\beta `$, and \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/\[O II\]$`\lambda `$3727; Figures 1c, 2a, and 2d, respectively), it is apparent the NE-red gas is generally in a lower state of ionization than the NE-blue gas. There are several ways in which this might occur. One is if the redshifted gas is actually at larger radial distance from the central source than the corresponding blueshifted gas. However, the kinematics of the \[O III\] emission-line gas suggests that the bicone axis is nearly in the plane of the sky (CK2000), hence the red- and blueshifted components along any sight-line are probably at roughly the same distance from the nuclear source. Although the lower ionization state of the redshifted gas could be due to its having a higher density than its blueshifted counterpart, the presence of \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727 in both components would suggest otherwise (although we do find that the redshifted components may be somewhat denser). A more plausible explanation is that the redshifted gas is exposed to a lower flux of ionizing radiation. Although this could be the result of an intrinsically anisotropic radiation field, we think it is more likely the result of a component of gas close ($`<`$ 30 pc) from the central source, which absorbs some fraction of the ionizing radiation emitted towards the redshifted gas. Notably, if there is mix of optically thin and thick components among the emission-line gas, as is the case in the NE-blue quadrant, the lower value of the He II $`\lambda `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio is evidence for a paucity of photons above the He II Lyman limit, which can be caused by an intervening absorber (Alexander et al. 1999; Kraemer et al. 2000).

As mentioned in Section 1, Alexander et al. (2000) found strong evidence that the narrow-line gas in NGC 1068 is irradiated by continuum which has been partially absorbed by a neutral hydrogen column of $``$ 6 x 1019 cm-2. Similar to the situation for NGC 4151 ( Kraemer et al. 2000), we modeled the absorber as a large column of highly ionized gas (an “X-ray” absorber) and a thinner, outer layer of low ionization gas (a “UV” absorber). For the X-ray absorber, we assumed U $`=`$ 1.0 and NH $`=`$ 3.7 x 1022 cm-2, while for the UV absorber, U $`=`$ 10-3.7 and NH $`=`$ 1.0 x 1019 cm-2. The effects of the absorbers on the ionizing continuum are shown in Figure 3, with deep edges due to H I, at 13.6 eV, and He II, at 54.4 eV, primarily from the UV absorber, and the combined effects of O VII and O VIII, above 740 eV, from the X-ray absorber.

We modeled redshifted components from the following four bins: $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2, $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0, $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4, and $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8. The comparison of the model predictions and the observed line ratios are given in Tables 6 – 9. Although the fits are generally good, in 3 of 4 cases the models overpredict the L$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio, even though we assumed a higher dust fraction for the red-shifted components. This may provide a clue to the structure of the emission-line knots. We assumed that the denser gas is screened by a more tenuous layer, and among the red-shifted components, the bulk of the L$`\alpha `$ arises in the dense gas. We have not included the effects of resonance-line scattering of L$`\alpha `$ photons by the outer, tenuous component, but there is enough neutral hydrogen such that the mean optical depth of L$`\alpha `$ is large ($`>`$ 103). Therefore, we believe that we are viewing the denser gas through a substantial column of tenuous gas, in which there is additional suppression of L$`\alpha `$.

An odd feature of the models is the overprediction of \[Ne III\] $`\lambda `$3869 in the three outer bins, since this line is generally well fit by photoionization models. Furthermore, the predictions for the other neon lines are quite good. We do not have an explanation for this discrepancy.

In addition to finding evidence for somewhat higher densities, we do not find evidence that nH $``$ D-2, as in the blueshifted gas. There is a shallower fall-off ($``$ D-1.5) between 40 and 100 pc, with the density remaining fairly constant out to $``$ 200 pc, which may be evidence of a somewhat different confining medium.

Although our model predictions provide a good fit to the data, there are some open issues. First, the $``$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8 bin has a noticeably higher excitation spectrum than any of the other redshifted points (see Table 1b). This could be due to an additional component of ionizing radiation, due to shocks, or the absence of absorption between this region and the central source. Second, the velocities of the redshifted components are similar to those of the blue-shifted components at the same radial distance (CK2000). Hence, the force which drives these clouds outward does not seem to be significantly diminished by the intervening absorber.

### 5.4 SW-blueshifted Quadrant

Due to the weakness of the flux in the SW-blue quadrant, we were only able to obtain dereddened emission-line ratios for two bins, centered at $`+`$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4 and $`+`$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0. The spectra from both bins are somewhat unusual. In the $`+`$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4 bin, the large He II $`\lambda `$4686/H$`\beta `$ indicates the presence of highly ionized, optically thin gas, while the \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426 and \[Fe VII\] $`\lambda `$6087 lines are much weaker than one would expect from gas with an extended He+2 zone. Also, C IV $`\lambda `$1550 and N V $`\lambda `$1240 are quite strong, particularly compared to the weakness of the \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426. The spectrum from $`+`$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0 bin shows very strong high ionization lines, such as He II $`\lambda `$4686, C IV $`\lambda `$1550 and N V $`\lambda `$ 1240, while the \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007/\[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727 ratio is $``$ 2.5, indicative of fairly low ionization gas (Ferland & Netzer 1983).

It is possible to produce strong He II lines at the same time as weak \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426 in very highly ionized gas (U $`>`$ 10-1), in which most of the neon is in the form of Ne VI and higher. Although there will be similarly small amounts of C IV and N V, these lines will be strong relative to \[Ne V\], due to their larger collision strengths, greater abundance (in the case of carbon), and, since these are resonance lines, continuum pumping. As such, we have modeled the $`+`$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4 bin as the superposition of such a highly ionized, optically thin component, $``$ 14 pc from the hidden AGN, and a low ionization, optically thick component. Unlike our other models, the optically thick gas is not screened in the thin component, but is out of the plane, and ionized only by scattered continuum emission ($``$ 0.5% of the continuum radiation incident on the optically thin gas). Presumably, this component is blocked from the AGN by an extremely optically thick absorber, similar to the model used for the hot spot (Paper II). Such a geometry can account for the presence of low ionization, low density gas, in which the \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727 arises, at such a small distance from the central source. The details and predicted line ratios are given in Table 10, and the fit is quite good, with the exception of \[Ne IV\] $`\lambda `$2423. Note that we have included CLOUDY90 predictions for the boost due to continuum pumping for L$`\alpha `$, N V $`\lambda `$1240, and C IV $`\lambda `$1550, assuming a turbulent velocity of 100 km s-1 in the highly ionized component. Even at such low velocity, the boost is significant, since $`\tau `$linecenter $`<`$ 100 for each of these lines, hence the pumping probability is non-negligible.

Due to the large uncertainties in the line fluxes, we have not attempted to model the emission-line ratios for the bin centered at $`+`$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0. However, the strong C IV and N V lines coupled with the relatively low ionization state indicated by the optical line ratios are evidence that we are again viewing a superposition of highly ionized gas within the emission-line bicone and low ionization gas outside the bicone.

### 5.5 SW-redshifted Quadrant

The spectra from the SW-red quadrant are characterized by a combination of high and low excitation emission-lines, similar to the NE-blue quadrant. As discussed in CK2000, the kinematic profiles of the two quadrants are similar. Therefore, we assumed that the SW-red gas is directly ionized by the central continuum source.

The bins centered at $`+`$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0 and $`+`$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 overlap the region nearest the hot spot, and the models discussed in Paper II apply to these regions as well; therefore, we started with the bin centered at $`+`$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0. Our predicted emission-line ratios fit the observed quite well, as shown in Table 12. We assumed nH $`=`$ 1.9 x 105 cm-3 for the denser component, which is high enough to nearly collisionally extinguish the \[O II\] $`\lambda `$3727 line, which would explain its apparent weakness. Assuming nH $``$ D-2, we also obtained a satisfactory fit for the bin centered at $`+`$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4, as shown in Table 13. Interestingly, this is the point where the velocity begins to decrease (CK2000), although we see no effect in the emission-line ratios, unlike those in the NE-blue quadrant.

The spectrum of the $`+`$0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8 bin is somewhat different, in that both the He II $`\lambda `$4686/H$`\beta `$ and \[Ne V\] $`\lambda `$3426/H$`\beta `$ ratios are larger, which indicates a higher average ionization state in the gas. To model this effect, we have assumed a lower density for this component than for that at $`+`$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$0. The results are given in Table 11, and are a reasonable fit, except for the UV resonance lines, although there are large uncertainties for the dereddened UV line fluxes. It is possible that the resonance lines are enhanced by continuum pumping but, as noted above, one would not expect this process to be significant for lines that are extremely optically thick, and, in any case, this would not account for all the observed N V $`\lambda `$1240 emission. Furthermore, the FWHM of \[O III\] $`\lambda `$5007 is $``$ 550 km s-1 for this bin (CK2000), which constrains the turbulent velocity. Thus, although this region is apparently directly photoionized by the AGN, we cannot rule out other physical processes.

## 6 Discussion

### 6.1 Physical Conditions in the inner NLR of NGC 1068

Based on our previous analysis and these model results, we can describe the conditions of the inner NLR of NGC 1068. The physical conditions in this region are dominated by the effects of the hidden AGN, since the emission-line knots are photoionized by the central source and the gas is radially accelerated, presumably due to radiation pressure or a wind emanating from the nucleus (CK 2000). The small dust fractions in these clouds (generally $``$ 25%) may indicate that they originate close to the nucleus (the dust sublimation radius is a few tenths of a parsec for a source of the luminosity of NGC 1068; Barvainis 1987). The number density, nH, of the clouds is generally decreasing as D-2; as such, a given cloud should decrease in density by a factor of $``$ 100 in the time it takes to cross the emission-line region (e.g., from 10 pc to 100 pc). However, given the thermal velocity within the ionized gas ($``$ 106 cm s-1), assuming spherical clouds with a radius $``$ 1016 cm (roughly the average of NH/nH), the density should decrease by a factor of 100 in $``$ 1000 yrs, about 1/100 the crossing time. Furthermore, the high and low density components are not in pressure equilibrium with each other (nHT is typically 5 times higher for the denser component). Hence there is likely some confinement, perhaps via an intercloud medium. However, the intercloud medium in the inner $``$ 100 pc must be quite tenuous, since there is no evidence for cloud deceleration and the ionizing radiation is unattenuated except near the plane of the host galaxy. At $``$ 150 pc, the cloud velocities begin to decrease. The deceleration in the NE-blue quadrant is accompanied by enhanced high-ionization line-emission from the clouds, which we suggest is the result of UV – X-ray radiation from shocks. This supports our hypothesis that the deceleration is caused by the interaction of the outflowing gas and the ambient medium, which is apparently denser here than closer to the hidden AGN.

Regarding the cloud/medium interaction, medium resolution longslit STIS observations provide strong evidence for the disruption of the emission-line gas, which is also attributed to shocks (Cecil et al. 2000). Although the position and extent of the shock front is not constrained in our simple models, it is most likely that the shocks occur at the leading edges (the side opposite the ionized face) of the outflowing emission-line clouds. In any case, there is no need for additional ionizing radiation arising from the interaction of the radio jet and the interstellar medium, at least along PA 202o. It may still be that the jet/cloud interaction is important locally; previously, we found evidence for cosmic ray heating in emission-line gas which is in the direction of the radio axis (Kraemer et al. 1998). Unfortunately, these data provide no definitive evidence as to the nature of the decelerating medium (although there is some evidence from the extended continuum; see below).

We have found evidence that the ionizing continuum is heavily absorbed in the direction of the NE-red quadrant, similar to the situation in NGC 4151 (Alexander et al. 1999; Kraemer et al. 2000). In the case of NGC 4151 and several other Seyferts, Kraemer et al. (1999) argued that there may be absorbers between the NLR and the central source similar to the X-ray (Reynolds 1997; George et al. 1998) and UV (Crenshaw et al. 1999) absorbers often detected along the line-of-sight to their nuclei. However, our observations of NGC 1068 provide new insights as to the nature of the intervening absorber. First, although the overall NLR appears to indicate the presence of an absorber (Alexander at al. 2000), we find that the covering factor of the absorber is probably less than 0.5, since much of the inner NLR is irradiated by an unabsorbed continuum. Second, the scatterer, which has a covering factor close to unity, is too highly ionized to modify the SED significantly (Miller et al. 1991; Paper II). Finally, it is significant that the NE-red and SW-blue quadrants, which show evidence of a weaker flux of ionizing radiation, lie close to the plane of the host galaxy (CK2000). It is not too surprising to find that there is more intervening material in the galactic plane. Hence, the absorption may be partially due to the alignment of the emission-line bicone and the host galaxy.

### 6.2 The Extended Continuum

In Paper I, we discussed the nature of the extended continuum emission in the inner NLR of NGC 1068, which we were able to deconvolve into two components: 1) electron-scattered light from the hidden AGN, and 2) an old stellar population. In addition to the region nearest the hot spot, there were local peaks of non-stellar continuum roughly 1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$5 NE and SW of the hot spot. One of the slit positions in Axon et al.’s (1998) FOC f/48 observations, “POS3”, intersects our long slit placement at approximately 1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8 NE of the optical hot spot, where they reported the presence of excess continuum radiation, which they suggested was the result of shocks. However, we determined that the excess UV continuum had the same features as the continuum from the hot spot, such as broad Fe II emission and Balmer continuum (the “little blue bump”), and thus was principally scattered light. On the other hand, we have found evidence for contribution of shock-induced ionizing radiation in this region. Are these results consistent?

For electron scattering by an optically thin plasma, the fraction of light from the nucleus that is scattered by a given region is the product of the electron column density of the scattering medium, the Thomson cross-section, and the covering factor (see discussion in Pier et al. 1994; and Paper II). As shown in Paper I, at 2500 Å , the continuum at $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$5 NE is $``$ 1/12 the strength of that at the hotspot, and, therefore, 1 x 10-4 that of the hidden continuum. The maximum covering factor for the region subtended by the slit is $``$ 0.015, assuming a bicone opening angle of $``$ 80o (CK2000). If we impose the constraint that this gas contributes a small ($``$ 15%) fraction of the observed H$`\beta `$ flux, and the gas is in photoionization equilibrium, the electron column density is $``$ few x 1021 cm-2, which would account for $``$ 1/3 of the continuum emission. Fast shock models predict some contribution to the UV continuum longward of 1200 Å (Morse et al. 1996). Given the contraints on the total X-ray emission from the shock front discussed in Section 5.2, the shock could contribute $``$ 1/3 of the observed continuum at 2500 Å , although this would require that a significant fraction of the soft X-ray emission arises within a single bin along our slit position, which may be unlikely. Hence, it is most probable that the continuum emission at $``$1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$5 is reflected, particularly given the presence of the little blue bump. Although this requires a greater electron column density, hence denser gas, it may be that the scatterer is in a somewhat higher state of ionization than would be predicted by simple photoionization models and, thus, contributes less H$`\beta `$ flux.

It has been suggested that the scatterer is an X-ray absorber viewed across our line-of-sight (Krolik & Kriss 1995), and certainly the scattering medium near the hotspot resembles such an absorber (Paper II). However, the knots of scattered emission further out (Paper I) indicate the presence of a substantial column of very highly ionized (U $``$ 1.0), high covering factor gas at distances $`>`$ 100 pc in NGC 1068 which suggests that X-ray absorbers extend deep into the NLR of Seyfert galaxies, and certainly lends credence to the arguments for multi-zoned absorbers (Otani et al. 1996; Guainazzi et al. 1996; Reynolds et al. 1997).

Finally, there are reasons to believe the scatterer is responsible for the cloud deceleration666In order for it to be as highly ionized as the scatterer, the precursor density must be $``$ a factor of 10 lower than we assumed, although its density was chosen primarily for illustrative purposes. First the local peak in the scattered continuum is coincident with the velocity turn-over (see Paper I and CK2000). The scattered continuum is evidence for the presence of gas to which the clouds can transfer kinetic energy. Finally, the scatterer is tenuous and spatially extended, which may account for the gradual deceleration of the clouds (CK2000). However, if the scatterer is indeed the decelerating medium, it must have a lower radial velocity than the emission-line clouds. Also, one must explain the local build-up of such a highly ionized plasma.

## 7 Summary

We have analyzed STIS UV and optical spectra of the NLR of NGC 1068. We have generated photoionization models of the NLR gas and have been able to match most of the observed dereddened emission-line ratios. In Figure 5, we present a simplified schematic diagram of the NLR. As discussed in CK2000, the emission-line gas is distributed in a bicone, centered on the hidden active nucleus. The bicone has an opening angle of $``$ 80o, and is tilted $``$ 5owith respect to the plane of the sky. The plane of the host galaxy is inclined $``$ 40o, with a major axis PA $``$ 106o. We have concluded the following regarding physical conditions in the inner $``$ 200 pc of the NLR, along PA 202o.

1) The emission-lines, both NE and SW of the hot spot, show evidence of two distinct kinematic components, one blueshifted with respect to the systemic velocity and the other redshifted, which are outflowing from the nucleus. The gas in each of these four quadrants is photoionized, for the most part, by continuum radiation emitted by the hidden AGN. The emission-line knots consist of two components of matter-bounded gas, of different densities; the denser gas may be screened in the more tenous component. The densities decrease with radius, but more slowly than expected from thermal expansion, so it is likely that there is some source of cloud confinement. There is evidence for dust mixed in with the emission-line gas, but the strengths of the UV resonance lines and the presence emission lines of magnesium and iron indicate that the dust/gas ratio is substantially less than in the interstellar medium of our Galaxy. We find no strong evidence for non-solar element abundances.

2) The emission-line gas in the NE-blue quadrant appears to decelerate at $``$ 130 pc from the nucleus. At the same position, we find evidence for an additional source of ionization, which may be the UV – X-ray radiation generated by fast ($``$ 1000 km s-1) shocks. Although we cannot rule out such an effect in the SW-red quadrant, the emission-line fluxes at the point of deceleration can be explained by photoionization of the gas by the AGN.

3) The ionizing radiation emitted toward the NE-red quadrant is absorbed by a layer of gas close to the nucleus. This absorption may be associated with the intersection of the emission-line bicone and the plane of the host galaxy which may be an important clue as to the origin of high column absorbers. Interestingly, the radial velocities in this quadrant are similar to those which have an unabsorbed line-of-sight to the nucleus, which indicates that the source of the acceleration is not affected by the absorber.

S.B.K would like to thank John Raymond for sharing the results of his shock models, and Gerald Cecil for discussing the preliminary results from his STIS observations of NGC 1068. We thank Cherie Miskey for help with the figures. S.B.K. and D.M.C. acknowledge support from NASA grant NAG 5-4103.


text:
# The Measurement of Azimuthal Asymmetries In Deep Inelastic Scattering

## 1 Introduction

Semi-inclusive processes in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) are of importance because they can be used to test the perturbative Quantum Chromodynamic (QCD) description of hadron production via parton fragmentation. An observable of particular interest is the distribution of the azimuthal angle, $`\varphi ,`$ (measured in the hadronic centre-of-mass frame, HCM) between the lepton scattering plane, defined by the incoming and outgoing lepton momenta, and the hadron production plane, defined by the exchanged virtual boson and an outgoing hadron .

Asymmetries in the $`\varphi `$ distribution, i.e. terms proportional to $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ and $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ arise whenever a non-zero transverse momentum, in the HCM frame, is present in the scattering process. Consequently both non-perturbative and perturbative QCD effects  give rise to these asymmetries. The azimuthal dependence of parton production has the form

$$d\sigma /d\varphi =A+B\mathrm{cos}\varphi +C\mathrm{cos}2\varphi .$$
(1)
This form results from the polarisation of the exchanged virtual boson. The coefficients $`B`$ and $`C`$ depend on the helicities of the final-state parton(s), partonic transverse momenta and on colour coherence . The $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ term is expected from interference of amplitudes arising from the $`+1`$ and $`1`$ helicity components of the transversely-polarised part of the exchanged boson, whereas transverse/longitudinal interference gives rise to the $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ term. Terms in $`\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$ and $`\mathrm{sin}2\varphi `$ are not expected for neutral current reactions.

The asymmetry that results from the intrinsic momentum of a quark in the proton is referred to as the non-perturbative asymmetry. Since the intrinsic momentum is small, this asymmetry should fall rapidly with increasing transverse momentum of the measured hadron and with increasing $`Q^2`$ , where $`Q^2q^2`$ is the negative square of the four-momentum of the virtual exchanged boson. In particular, the term $`C`$ is small at high $`Q^2.`$ The transverse momenta arising from the fragmentation itself does not contribute to the asymmetry but only smears the observed distribution .

In contrast, the asymmetry associated with leading-order terms in perturbative QCD calculations, the perturbative asymmetry, is weakly dependent on $`Q^2`$ and persists at high transverse momenta. The perturbative QCD contribution to terms $`B`$ and $`C`$ is large at leading order (LO) in $`\alpha _s.`$ The $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ term can be unambiguously attributed to perturbative QCD processes in the high $`Q^2`$ region under investigation.

The event kinematics of DIS are determined by $`Q^2`$, and one of the two Bjorken scaling variables $`x=Q^2/2Pq`$ or $`y=Q^2/xs,`$ where $`P`$ is the four-momentum of the incoming proton and $`\sqrt{s}`$ is the positron-proton centre-of-mass energy. The kinematic region studied is $`0.2<y<0.8`$ and $`0.01<x<0.1,`$ corresponding to a $`Q^2`$ range $`180<Q^2<7220\mathrm{GeV}^2.`$

The form of Eq. 1 is expected to be maintained for single particle production , since high-momentum hadrons are produced close to the direction of the parton. Note that in order to observe the $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ asymmetry, a selection procedure is required which consistently associates leading hadrons produced from either quarks or gluons . Since the gluon fragmentation function is ‘softer’ than that of the quarks, the hadron-quark correlation can be enhanced by selecting ‘leading’ charged particles. This was accomplished by cutting on the Lorentz-invariant variable $`z_h(=Pp_h/Pq)>0.2`$, where $`p_h`$ is the track or particle four-vector.

## 2 Results

Figure 1 shows the differential $`\varphi `$ distributions of charged hadrons for four values of their minimum transverse momentum, $`p_c,`$ in the HCM. The results obtained from the main analysis method  (full line) and a bin-by-bin correction method (points) are seen to agree. At low $`p_c,`$ a clear $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ term is observed. As the value of $`p_c`$ is increased a $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ term becomes evident.

Figure 2 shows the moments $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ and $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ as a function of $`p_c.`$ The $`\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$ term is consistent with zero independent of the value chosen for $`p_c,`$ in agreement with expectation. The value of $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ is negative and decreases in magnitude as $`p_c`$ is increased. In contrast, the value of $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ is positive and rises as $`p_c`$ is increased. Figure 2 also compares the data with two LO QCD calculations. Both calculations were made with $`Q`$ as the appropriate scale, with the Binnewies et al. LO fragmentation function  and with the CTEQ4 LO proton parton densities .

The calculation from ZEUS (based on the calculation of Chay et al. ) includes an estimation of the non-perturbative contribution, from intrinsic $`k_T`$ and hadronisation $`p_T,`$ and integrates over the whole kinematic range. The results of Ahmed & Gehrmann are purely at leading order in $`\alpha _s`$ and are evaluated at the mean values $`x=0.022`$ and $`Q^2=750\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ of the data. The different implementations account for the observed difference in the two predictions; using $`x`$ and $`Q^2`$ in the ZEUS perturbative calculation leads to agreement with the Ahmed & Gehrmann calculation.

## 3 Conclusions

The azimuthal asymmetries in the deep inelastic electroproduction of single particles have been measured at HERA in the HCM. For hadrons produced at large transverse momenta, the measured value for $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$ is negative and is in agreement with QCD predictions. The moment $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ has been measured here for the first time and is non-zero and positive. It increases as a function of the minimum particle transverse momentum, as expected from QCD. Since the non-perturbative contribution to $`\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ is predicted to be negligible, this measurement provides clear evidence for a perturbative QCD contribution to the azimuthal asymmetry.