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# Flaring and warping of the Milky Way disk: not only in the gas….

## 1 Introduction.

The structure of the stellar disk of our Galaxy is still not very well known. The stellar population of the disk is usually decomposed in a thin disk and thick disk component. The thin disk and thick disk populations are separated on the basis that they may have different metallicity and velocity profiles. The typical ratio of the thick disk to thin disk components in the solar neighborhood is about a few percent (Gilmore & Reid 1983). . Both disk are supposed to follow a double exponential profile, associated with a radial scale length and a vertical scale height. It is unclear at the moment if the scale length of these 2 disks are the same. There is still some uncertainty even for the scale length of the thin disk itself, although the more recent measurement seems to indicate that it is between 2 and 3 Kpc. For the the thick disk the uncertainty is much larger, typically the scale length is in the range 1.5 to 4.5 Kpc. The scale heights of the thin disk is about 0.3 Kpc , and is around 1 Kpc for the thick disk. The structure of the gas component (whether HI or CO) is better understood, and suggests some questions concerning the stellar disk. Since a warp is well identified in the gas ( W. B. Burton and P. te Linkel Hekkert 1986), one may wonder if it does exists also in the stellar components, with the same amplitude and phase. Another problem is the extension of the gas component which is visible up to a distance of 25 Kpc from the Galactic center. Some observations suggests that the stellar disk ends long before, at about 14 Kpc from the center. This fact may indicate that stellar formation in the disk did not occur beyond 14 Kpc, or that the geometry of the stellar disk is not well understood. One additional source of complication is the possibility that the disk in addition to its warp mode presents an elliptical mode of deformation. At the moment this issue is very speculative, however this effect may exist and should be investigated.

## 2 The data

### 2.1 Presentation

The data set consist of 3 strips perpendicular to the Galactic plane around the longitudes, l$`=`$66, l$`=`$180, l$`=`$240. All the data have been extracted form the 2MASS point source catalogue accessible on the Web (http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2MASS/). The detailed characteristics of the fields are given in Table 1.

### 2.2 Canceling the effect of extinction.

By combining 2 photometric bands it is easy to derive a magnitude that is independent of reddening. For instance using J and K, we can derive $`M_E`$:

$$M_E=K\frac{A_K}{A_JA_K}(JK)$$

Following Rieke and Lebofsky (1985) we take:

$$\frac{A_K}{A_V}=0.112\mathrm{and}\frac{A_J}{A_V}=0.282$$

Leading finally to:

$$M_E=K0.659(JK)$$
(1)
This corrected magnitude will be very insensitive to reddening, furthermore, it is important to notice that the reddening in the 3 fields is low (see Fig. 1). The maximum reddening is about $`A_V1.5`$, which is only 0.17 in the K band. Consequently, after adding the correcting term: $`0.659(JK)`$, the residual will not exceed a few percent.

### 2.3 Star counts as a function of latitude

Before making the star counts, it is essential to correct for empty areas in the catalogue (due most of the time to the obliteration of fainter stars by a very bright star). To locate these bad areas a 2 dimensional histogram in the l and b coordinates was computed. The size of the bin was chosen in order to have a mean of 50 stars in the bin. It was required that the bin contains a minimum of 5 stars to be considered valid. This way the histogram of the valid areas was constructed as a function of latitude. The step in latitude is 0.5 degree. The counts were finally normalized to a surface of 1 square degree. To avoid any problem related to the completeness of the sample, only stars brighter than $`M_E=12.5`$ have been included. The resulting histograms are presented in Fig. 2.

### 2.4 Assymetry between positive and negative longitude.

It is interesting to investigate the symmetry of the distribution of the counts as a function of latitude. A significant assymetry would reveal the presence of the Galactic warp. In Fig.3 the difference in star counts between positive and negative longitude is plotted. It appears immediately that the field L240 presents large deviations from symmetry near b$`=`$6. It is likely that this assymetry is associated with the presence of a significant Galactic warp in this field. Note that possible evidences for an assymetry in the star counts has already been presented by Carney & Seitzer (1993). For the 2 other fields the pattern of assymetry is less clear. For l=180 we observe some systematic deviation near the 2 $`\sigma `$ level, in the range b$`=`$10 to b$`=`$30. For the field at l$`=`$66 there are a few deviating points near b$`=`$4.

## 3 Analyzing the data.

### 3.1 Deviations from the exponential profile.

To estimate numerically the star counts, we need to integrate the luminosity function of the stellar population and the density function of the disk along the line of sight. The luminosity function is assumed to be the same everywhere and is identical to the luminosity function in the solar neighborhood tabulated by Wainscoat et al. (1992). To represent the density profile of the disk, it is natural to look first at the simplest model, which is a single double exponential:

$$\rho (R,Z)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR0}{R_h}\frac{|Z|}{z_h}\right)withR=\sqrt{(x^2+y^2)}$$

It is important to note than despite its simplicity, the exponential profile seems to show en excellent consistency with the Z-profile of edge-on galaxies within a few scale length form the center (de Grijs et al. 1996). It is interesting to check the consistency of the data with such simple model, and in particular to study the shape of the deviations from this model which may indicate that other components are present. It is possible to study this model in a the full range of latitude covered by our data ($`50<b<50`$, 169 line of sight). By probing different line of sight, with increasing latitudes, we probe areas of the disk more and more distant form the Galactic plane. Thus basically, by doing this, we explore the $`Z`$ profile of the Galactic disk. If the disk is really a double exponential, this $`Z`$ profile should be a constant exponential, whatever the distance $`R`$ from the center. Consequently along all the line of sight the density should be consistent with an exponential in $`Z`$ with constant scale height, $`H_Z`$. In case the $`Z`$ profile is not exponential we should observe a variation of the scale height as a function of the latitude. To first order in $`Z`$ we can develop the variation to the $`Z`$ profile for each latitude $`b`$ is equivalent to a variation of the scale height $`H_Z`$:

$$\rho =\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{R}{R_h}\frac{|Z|}{Z_h}f(b)|Z|\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{R}{R_h}\frac{|Z|}{H_Z(b)}\right)$$

it is easy to reconstruct the function $`H_Z(b)`$ for the 169 line of sight. Along each line of sight the data have been decomposed in 20 bins of magnitudes, allowing direct maximum likelihood determination of $`H_Z(b)`$ by maximum likelihood. It is interesting to note that the estimation of the factor $`H_Z(b)`$ along each line site can also compensate for an imperfect estimation of the scale length $`R_h`$. This is obvious for the line of sight near $`l=180`$, since the distance $`d`$ is proportional to Z in this direction. For the line of sight near $`l=240`$ this is still a good approximation. An even for $`l=66`$, one can check easily numerically that the factor $`H_Z(b)`$ can compensate with good accuracy for small discrepancies in the estimation of $`R_h`$. The function $`H_Z(b)`$ has been estimated for the 3 fields, allowing a full reconstruction of the density profile of the disk. In order to make an easy comparison with an exponential profile, the Z profile of this density has been computed for different values of the distance to the center $`d`$. The result for the 3 fields is presented in Fig. 4,5,6. The most obvious difference between the 3 fields is that the vertical profile does not deviate much from the straight line (pure exponential) all along the line of sight in the field at $`l=66`$. The situation is very different in the 2 other fields, where the profile becomes broader and broader with distance with an increasingly large deviations from an exponential. One could always claim that this is a bias due to the fact that the Z profile is constant but not exponential. However, we see immediately that this is not possible, since in this case the same discrepancy should be observed in the field at $`l=66`$. There are small deviations near the top of the profile at $`l=66`$, which could be due to the fact that we reach a distance of about 10 Kpc, for which we already observe some flattening in the other fields. It might be also that in this field, source confusion affects the star counts in a small in a small range of latitude ($`1.5<b<1.5`$). For the 2 other fields, the stellar density is about 10 times smaller, thus we do not expect any significant effects due to the source confusion.

### 3.2 Disk models with more parameters.

It is important to check that this thickening of the disk with distance that we observed is not related to some bias, due for instance that we did not included a thick disk. It is easy to check this issue by introducing a thick disk component in the model, and to reproduce the fitting procedure and the set of vertical profile in this case. Some recent determination of the thick disk parameters indicates that the thick disk accounts for about 0.06 % of the local density (Buser et al. 1998). The scale height of the thick disk is close to 1 Kpc while its radial scale length, is about 3 Kpc (Buser et al. 1998). This thick disk component was included in the model for the field towards the anti-center. The direction of the anti-center for chosen for reason of simplicity. In this field the amplitude of the warp is negligeable, and if the disk is elliptical, the effect of ellipticity is constant along the line of sight. The resulting set of density profiles is presented in Fig. 7. The addition of the thick disk component does not modify much the shape of the profiles. The only effect is only a reduction of the density in the wings of the profiles, but it does not affect the flattening. Other model of thick disk with larger density or different scale length do not modify the result. This can be easily understood, since due to its “thickness”, the thick disk becomes really important beyond Z $`=`$ 1.5, and most of the flattening effect we observe occur at Z $`<`$ 1.5. Another possibility that has been used to reproduce the the star counts towards the anti-center is to used a cut-off of the disk to some distance of the center. For instance Robin et al. (1992) found that a cut-off of the disk at 14 Kpc was necessary in order to account for the stellar density in a field close to anti-center direction, near b$`=`$2.5. The density reconstructed with this cut-off in our model of the disk is presented if Fig. 8. This cut-off does not help to reduce the variation of profile with distance. This fact was easily predictable, since if we try estimate the cut-off for different line of sight, the value of the cut-off is not constant (see Fig. 9 and 10). It shows that a cut-off of the disk is not a good solution. This we can conclude that the effect of flattening of the profile with distance, is not a bias due to the simplicity of our approach, but a real effect.

### 3.3 Evolution of the scale height as a function of the distance to the center.

To estimate the scale height corresponding to the different vertical profiles an exponential has been fitted to each profile. The result for the 3 fields is presented in Fig. 11 as a function of the distance to the Galactic center. It is clear that the 3 fields show a good consistency in the thickening of the profile. The effect seems to be somewhat larger at l$`=`$240, and is the smaller at l$`=`$66. It is very hard to know what happens when going closer to the Galactic center, since our data do not go closer than 7.5 Kpc from the center. Unfortunately the lines of sight which would allow to probe the disk closer to the center are not in the areas released by the 2MASS team to date.

### 3.4 Full maximum likelihood fit.

The former analysis conducted along each line of sight has been particularly useful to present the data, and demonstrate the existence of a basic feature: the thickening and flattening of the Z profile with distance. This effect has been well established, however it is also important to derive simple analytical full maximum likelihood solution of the whole data set. For this full maximum solution all the line of sight in the range $`50<b<50`$ will be fitted at the same time. Note that has we did previously, we will fit by maximum likelihood, the decomposition in bins of magnitude (20 bins) of the distribution along the different line of sights, and not only the total counts.The effect of disk thickening will be investigated in 2 the fields towards the outer disk, at l$`=`$180 and l$`=`$240. First, it is interesting to illustrate the fitting of different type of models to the data. To illustrate this issue we will present the result of the fitting of 4 different models for the field at l$`=`$180. For all the models the luminosity function of Wainscoat el al. (1992) has been used. The scale height for each population has also been taken from Wainscoat el al. 1992.
1-) Simple double exponential disk (Fig. 12):

$$\rho (R,Z,l)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_H}\frac{|ZZ_0(R)|}{Z_H}\right)$$

$$Z_0(R)=\{\begin{array}{cc}(RR_0)\times A_W\hfill & \text{}>\text{ }R_0\hfill \\ & \\ 0\hfill & \text{}<\text{ }R_0\hfill \end{array}$$

2-) Double exponential disk + thick disk (Fig. 13):

$$\rho (R,Z,l)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_H}\frac{|ZZ_0(R)|}{Z_H}\right)(1R_{Sol})$$

$$+\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_{HT}}\frac{|Z|}{Z_{HT}}\right)R_{Sol}$$

3-) Isothermal disk:

$$\rho (R,Z,l)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_H}\right)\mathrm{sech}^2\left(\frac{|ZZ_0(R)|}{Z_H}\right)$$

4-) Isothermal disk + thick disk (Fig. 14):

$$\rho (R,Z,l)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_H}\right)\mathrm{sech}^2\left(\frac{|ZZ_0(R)|}{Z_H}\right)(1R_{Sol})$$

$$+\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_{HT}}\frac{|Z|}{Z_{HT}}\right)R_{Sol}$$

5-) Disk with variable scale height (Fig. 15, l=180, Fig. 18, l=240):

$$\rho (R,Z,l)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_H}\frac{|ZZ_0(R)|}{Z_H(R)}\right)\times (1+A_T)^1$$

$$Z_H(R)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(1+(RR_0)A_T\right)\times H_Z\hfill & \text{}>\text{ }R_0\hfill \\ & \\ 1\hfill & \text{}<\text{ }R_0\hfill \end{array}$$

6-) Disk with variable scale height and flattening (Fig. 17 l=180, Fig. 19, l=240): Let’s define:

$$F(x,\beta )=1\mathrm{exp}\left(\beta \mathrm{exp}(x)\right)$$

Then:

$$\rho (R,Z,l)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{R_H}\right)\times F(\frac{|ZZ_0(R)|}{Z_{HT}},\beta (R))$$

$$\times \left((1+A_T)_0^{+\alpha }F(x,\beta )𝑑x\right)^1$$

With the same definition of $`Z_H(R)`$ as for the previous model, and:

$$\beta (R)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1+(RR_0)A_F\hfill & \text{}>\text{ }R_0\hfill \\ & \\ 1\hfill & \text{}<\text{ }R_0\hfill \end{array}$$

The best maximum likelihood fit for these 6 models are presented in Fig. 12,13,14,15,16,17. One can note immediately that disk models with constant scale height do not give any acceptable fit of the data (Fig. 12 and 13). Even by including a thick disk component, it is not possible to reproduce the star counts (Fig. 13). By exploring different scale height scale length and ratio in the solar neighborhood, for the thick disk one cannot reproduce the star counts properly. The situation is not improved, if instead of an exponential profile, one adopt an isothermal profile for the Z distribution (see Fig. 14, 15) However, as one can see in Fig. 16, just by adding a linear variation of the scale height with distance from the Sun, to the single exponential disk model, one can reproduce the star counts with much better accuracy. Note that this disk model with variable scale height show this good agreement with the data, with even less free parameters than the model with a thick disk component, which despite more parameters is not able to reproduce the star counts. An even better agreement is possible if one introduces some flattening of the disk profile by using a “saturation” parameter $`\beta `$ (see model (6) for the definition of $`\beta `$, and Fig. 16 for the fit). Finally, model (5) and (6) are fitted to the data in the field at l$`=`$240. As one can check in Fig. 18 and 19, these simple model reproduce the data with quite good accuracy. Note that the thickening of the disk calculated using model (5) is the same for the 2 fields: $`Z_H=(1+0.32(RR_0))\times H_Z`$. It is also interesting to see that the flattening of the profile is larger at l$`=`$240, something that is also visible in our previous analysis. However something more troublesome is the fact that the scale length of the disk differs in the 2 fields. Some bias can be introduced by the presence of a spiral arm towards the anti-center, however the contrast in density of a spiral arm in the old population is small and unlikely to produce such discrepancies. This difference in scale heights is more likely due to the fact that even if our model reproduces well the star counts, it is too simple to account for the complexity of the situation. The thickening of the disk is a flaring process and is likely to be non-linear, and the shape of the Z profiles are probably more complex than our simple analytical forms. To conclude with the full maximum likelihood fit, one can say that the results are in very good agreement with the simple analysis along each line of sight that was conducted before. The basic features, the thickening and flattening of the outer disk region is confirmed.

## 4 Discussion.

Our first analysis, which used a first order re-construction of the Z profile along each the line of sight has been very useful to present the data and describe the basic effect. Once the thickening of the disk with distance had been established, a full maximum likelihood of the data has been performed. The full maximum likelihood analysis confirms the result obtained previously, and show that simple model, with linear variations of the scale height and flattening are in good agreement with the star counts. The maximum likelihood analysis confirms that the warping of the disk is present in the field at l$`=`$240. As for the thickness of the disk, a linear variation starting form the position of the Sun has been used to describe the warp. The maximum likelihood analysis shows also that a significant amount of warping is present in the field near l$`=`$180, however the amplitude of the effect is much smaller than in the field at l$`=`$240 (about 6 times smaller). In this analysis, a large number of models has been tested, models with thick disk, isothermal disk models, disks models with cut-off…, none of them is in agreement with the data set, except the models including thickening of the disk with increasing distance from the Sun. We arrive at the obvious that the thickening of the disk is the only possible explanation. Note that we did not took into account the metallicity effects, but since metallicity is expected to decrease towards the outer disk, and that stars becomes brighter with decreasing metallicity, the effect goes into the other direction. Since we observe a drop of the star counts in line of sights near the Galactic plane, it cannot be caused by a decreasing metallicity. This possibility of a flared and warped stellar disk has already been evaluated by Ewans el al. (1998) as a possible source of microlenses for sources in the LMC. This analysis demonstrates unambiguously for the first time the flaring and the warping of the stellar disk, and gives an accurate description of the effect. It is interesting to note that for other galaxies (edge-on spiral) some evidence of thickening of the disk vertical profile in the outer regions is also observed by de Grijs et al. (1996) (see Fig. 2 in de Grijs 1996). As a whole we see that a self-consistent picture of the stellar disk emerge from this work: the stellar component is warped and flared, just like the HI component. The direction of the Z offset due to the warp is the same as in the HI maps presented by Burton & te Linkel Hekkert (1986). The amplitude of the effect is consistent with the HI to an accuracy of about 30 %. One may not forget that our model of the warp is very simple, in the range of distance investigated. Note that warp effect was treated in the linear approximation; it is possible that as is observed for the gas, the warp effect is not linear, however this linear approximation is sufficient to reproduce the data. Concerning the thickening of the disk it is interesting to make a comparison to the flaring of the HI disk. This comparison is presented in Fig. 20, scale height of the HI is taken from Wouterloot et al. (1990). It is clear that the amplitude of the thickening of the disk follow is comparable to what is observed in HI. This thickening of the disk, offers a natural explanation to the so called set of different “disk cut-off” observed for the Milky way (Robin et al. 1992, Ruphy et al. 1996, Freudeinrech 1998). due to the thickening, stars close to the plane are raised above the plane. This thickening gives the impression of a drop in the star counts at low latitudes, and fitting a cut-off in such density will give inconsistent results for different latitudes (as illustrated in Fig. 10). This effect may also confuse the separation between the thick disk and disk component. The separation between this 2 components may prove very difficult. At least this work shows that clear evidences of the thick disk should be searched rather towards the inner regions of the Galaxy. Obviously the modelisation of the thickening and of the warping is somewhat degenerated, and it is clear that non linear thickening laws would fit the data also. However, in such case it is better to keep the simplest model that can fit the data. More accurate determination of the outer disk would require to overcome the degeneracy due to the unknown distances of the sources. Such result could be easily achieved by using contact binaries. The contact binaries are good distance indicators, and are found in large numbers (about 1% of the main sequence stars are contact binaries). These stars are ideal tools to probe the structure of the outer disk, and some experiment should be conducted in the near feature.


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# Gauge Invariant Formulations of Dicke-Preparata Super-Radiant Models

## I Introduction

In an early paper on the interaction between radiation and molecular dipole moments , Dicke formulated a model which was later shown to exhibit a super-radiant phase transition. The notion that such phase transitions should exist in condensed matter systems has been investigated in a series of papers by Preparata and coworkers and others. Different workers have come to somewhat different conclusions concerning super-radiant phase transitions . Some doubt has been expressed concerning the physical laboratory reality of super-radiant phase transition. The mathematical issues are as follows: (i) It appears,at first glance, that quadratic terms (in photon creation and annihilation operators) enter into the model via quadratic terms in the vector potential $`𝐀`$. (ii) The quadratic terms in the “corrected Dicke model” appear to destroy the super-radiant phase transition.

Our purpose is to show that if the dipole-field interaction is treated in a gauge invariant manner then the interaction is strictly linear in the electric field $`𝐄`$. Thus, quadratic terms are absent for purely electric dipole-photon interactions . These considerations render likely the physical reality of condensed matter super-radiant phase transitions.

To see what is involved, let us first consider a single molecule with an electric dipole moment $`\mu `$ given by

$$\mu =\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}q_a𝐫_a,$$
(1)
where $`q_a`$ and $`𝐫_a`$ denote respectively, the charge and position of the $`a^{th}`$ particle. Suppose that the dipole moment interacts with a classical electric field which is uniform in space, but not in time

$$𝐄(t)=\frac{1}{c}\left(\frac{d𝐀(t)}{dt}\right).$$
(2)
The molecule will have a time dependent Hamiltonian of the form

$$H_{mol}(t)=\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}K_a\left(𝐩_a\frac{q_a}{c}𝐀(t)\right)+V(𝐫_1,\mathrm{},𝐫_N),$$
(3)
where $`K_a(𝐩_a)=(𝐩_a^2/2m_a)`$ is the kinetic energy of $`a^{th}`$ particle in the molecule and $`V(𝐫_1,\mathrm{},𝐫_N)`$ is the internal Coulomb energy of the molecule. Employing the unitary operator

$$U(t)=e^{i\left(\mu 𝐀(t)/\mathrm{}c\right)}$$
(4)
in the time dependent canonical transformation

$$_{mol}(t)=U^{}(t)H_{mol}(t)U(t)i\mathrm{}U^{}(t)\frac{dU(t)}{dt}$$
(5)
yields

$$_{mol}(t)=\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}K_a(𝐩_a)+V(𝐫_1,\mathrm{},𝐫_N)\mu 𝐄(t).$$
(6)
For completeness of presentation, a derivation of Eq.(5) is given in Appendix A.

Note: For classical electric fields of the form in Eq.(2), the Hamiltonians in Eqs.(3) and (6) are rigorously equivalent. Furthermore, the Hamiltonian in Eq.(3) depends on linear and quadratic terms in the vector potential $`𝐀(t)`$. On the other hand, the Hamiltonian in Eq.(6) depends only on the electric field $`𝐄(t)`$ and in a strictly gauge invariant and linear fashion.

In the work which follows, both the charged particles and the electromagnetic field will be treated using quantum mechanics. In Sec.II we discuss a single molecule in the presence of the quantized electromagnetic field. It is proved for the gauge invariant description of the dipole interactions that the coupling between the electromagnetic field and the molecule is linear in photon creation and annihilation operators The results for $`𝒩`$ molecules are discussed in Sec.III. The resulting Hamiltonian has four terms: (i) a sum of single molecule Hamiltonians, (ii) a sum of screened Coulomb interaction potentials between neighboring molecules, (iii) the radiation field energy and (most importantly) (iv) a strictly linear coupling between the dipole moments and the electric field. Dicke-Preparata models are defined and explored in Sec.IV. In the concluding Sec.V, the importance of the super-radiant phase transition associated with linear couplings will be discussed. The errors by some previous workers who falsely “voided” the super-radiant phase transition will be discussed in detail.

## II Photon-Dipole Interactions

Consider, as in Sec.I, a single molecule having a total number of $`N`$ charged particles with an electric dipole moment $`\mu `$ as in Eq.(1). The dipole is considered to interact with a quantized electromagnetic field (photons) $`𝐀`$ and/or $`𝐄`$ which is again uniform in space. The Hamiltonian for the photons is given by

$$H_{rad}=\underset{k}{}\mathrm{}\omega _ka_k^{}a_k,$$
(7)
where

$$[a_k^{},a_k^{}]=\delta _{kk^{}}.$$
(8)
Furthermore, for a “quantization box” of volume $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$,

$$𝐀=c\sqrt{\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\underset{k}{}\frac{1}{\sqrt{\omega _k}}(𝐞_ka_k+𝐞_k^{}a_k^{}),$$
(9)
and

$$𝐄=i\sqrt{\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\underset{k}{}\sqrt{\omega _k}(𝐞_ka_k𝐞_k^{}a_k^{}).$$
(10)
The matter Hamiltonian for a single molecule in the electric dipole limit is then

$$H_{mol}(𝐀)=\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}K_a\left(𝐩_a\frac{q_a}{c}𝐀\right)+V(𝐫_1,\mathrm{}𝐫_N).$$
(11)
In total, the time independent Hamiltonian for the molecule with dipole-quantized electromagnetic field interactions reads

$$H=H_{rad}+H_{mol}(𝐀),$$
(12)
where $`H_{rad}`$ is defined in Eq.(7), and $`H_{mol}(𝐀)`$ is defined in Eqs.(9) and (11). In the quantum electrodynamic model, Eq.(2) is replaced by the operator equation

$$𝐄=\left(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}c}\right)[H,𝐀]$$
(13)
leading to Eq.(10).

Employing the unitary operator

$$S=e^{i(\mu 𝐀/\mathrm{}c)}$$
(14)
in the time-independent canonical transformation

$$=S^{}HS,$$
(15)
yields

$$=H_{rad}+H_{mol}(𝐀=0)\mu 𝐄+W_{mol}$$
(16)
where the “self energy” contribution to the molecule is given by

$$W_{mol}=\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Omega }}\underset{k}{}(𝐞_k\mu )(𝐞_k^{}\mu ).$$
(17)
The derivation of Eq.(16) is given in Appendix B.

Introducing the boson operators $`b_k=ia_k`$ and the Hermitian conjugate $`b_k^{}=ia_k^{}`$ yields our final Hamiltonian

$$=\underset{k}{}\mathrm{}\omega _kb_k^{}b_k+\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}K_a(𝐩_a)+V(𝐫_1,\mathrm{}𝐫_N)$$

$$+\left(\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Omega }}\right)\underset{k}{}(𝐞_k\mu )(𝐞_k^{}\mu )\mu 𝐄.$$
(18)
where

$$𝐄=\sqrt{\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\underset{k}{}\sqrt{\omega _k}(𝐞_kb_k+𝐞_k^{}b_k^{}),$$
(19)
and

$$[b_k^{},b_k^{}]=\delta _{kk^{}}.$$
(20)
The central result of this section is the following:

Theorem: For the electric dipole-electromagnetic field interaction, the resulting Hamiltonian is that of free photons plus interaction terms linear in the photon creation and annihilation operators. Quadratic interaction terms rigorously vanish.

Proof: See Eqs.(18) and (19), which were derived solely on the basis of the dipole interaction.

Let us now consider the case of $`𝒩`$ molecules, each of which interact with the quantized electromagnetic field via the electric dipole moment.

## III Many Molecules

We consider the case of many molecules with electric dipole moments interacting with electromagnetic field modes whose minimum wavelength $`\lambda _{min}`$ is large on the scale of the molecular size $`L`$; i.e. $`\lambda _{min}>>L`$ as shown in Fig.1 below.

The Hamiltonian for $`𝒩`$ molecules plus the electromagnetic field reads

$$H=H_{rad}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}H_{mol;j}(𝐀)+\underset{1j<i𝒩}{}V_{ij}.$$
(21)
The radiation Hamiltonian in the Coulomb gauge

$$div𝐀(𝐫)=0$$
(22)
is given by

$$H_{rad}=\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(𝐄^2+𝐁^2\right)d^3𝐫.$$
(23)
The internal $`j^{th}`$ molecular Hamiltonian is given by

$$H_{mol;j}(𝐀)=$$

$$\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}K_a\left(𝐩_{(a;j)}\frac{q_a}{c}𝐀(𝐑_j)\right)+V(𝐫_{(1;j)},\mathrm{},𝐫_{(N;j)}),$$
(24)
where $`𝐑_j`$ is the central position of the $`j^{th}`$ molecule.

The internal Hamiltonian of each molecule contains the internal Coulomb potentials. In the last term on the right hand side of Eq.(21), $`V_{ij}`$ describes the Coulomb interactions between two different molecules. The long ranged part of this potential is of the conventional dipole-dipole interaction form

$$V_{ij}^{dipole}=\mu _i\left(\frac{|𝐑_{ij}|^2\mathrm{𝟏}3𝐑_{ij}𝐑_{ij}}{|𝐑_{ij}|^5}\right)\mu _j$$
(25)
where $`𝐑_{ij}=𝐑_i𝐑_j`$.

The commutation relations of the quantum electrodynamic fields in the Coulomb gauge are given by

$$[𝐄(𝐫),𝐀(𝐫^{})]=4\pi i\mathrm{}c𝚫(𝐫𝐫^{})$$
(26)
where the transverse delta function is defined as

$$𝚫(𝐫)=\left(\mathrm{𝟏}\widehat{𝐤}\widehat{𝐤}\right)e^{i𝐤𝐫}\left(\frac{d^3𝐤}{(2\pi )^3}\right).$$
(27)
Equivalently

$$𝚫(𝐫)=\left(\frac{|𝐤|^2\mathrm{𝟏}\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}}{|𝐤|^2}\right)e^{i𝐤𝐫}\left(\frac{d^3𝐤}{(2\pi )^3}\right),$$
(28)
so that

$$𝚫(𝐫)=\left(\frac{1}{4\pi }\right)\left(\mathrm{𝟏}^2\right)\frac{1}{|𝐫|}.$$
(29)
Explicitly

$$𝚫(𝐫)=\left(\frac{2}{3}\right)\mathrm{𝟏}\delta (𝐫)+\left(\frac{1}{4\pi }\right)\left(\frac{3\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}|𝐫|^2\mathrm{𝟏}}{|𝐫|^5}\right).$$
(30)
Eqs.(25) and (30) imply

$$V_{ij}^{dipole}=4\pi \mu _i𝚫(𝐑_{ij})\mu _j\mathrm{for}𝐑_{ij}0.$$
(31)
The transverse distribution function $`𝚫(𝐫)`$ removes the longitudinal part of a vector field. For example, if

$$\stackrel{~}{𝐏}(𝐫)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}\mu _j\delta (𝐫𝐑_j)$$
(32)
represents polarization, i.e. the molecular dipole moment per unit volume, then

$$𝐏(𝐫)=𝚫(𝐫𝐫^{})\stackrel{~}{𝐏}(𝐫^{})d^3𝐫^{}$$
(33)
represents the transverse part of the polarization.

Now, consider the unitary operator

$$𝒮=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}c}𝐀(𝐫)\stackrel{~}{𝐏}(𝐫)d^3𝐫\right).$$
(34)
Eq.(26), (33) and (34) imply

$$𝒮^{}𝐄(𝐫)𝒮=𝐄(𝐫)4\pi 𝐏(𝐫)$$
(35)
so that the radiation Hamiltonian of Eq.(23) reads

$$𝒮^{}H_{rad}𝒮=\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(|𝐄4\pi 𝐏|^2+|𝐁|^2\right)d^3𝐫.$$
(36)
Eqs.(17), (23), (31)-(33) and (36) imply that

$$𝒮^{}H_{rad}𝒮=H_{rad}𝐄𝐏d^3𝐫$$

$$+\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}W_{mol;j}\underset{1i<j𝒩}{}V_{ij}^{dipole}.$$
(37)
It is useful to define the “screened” (or short ranged) intermolecular Coulomb potential with the long ranged dipole-dipole potential subtracted

$$\stackrel{~}{V}_{ij}=V_{ij}V_{ij}^{dipole}.$$
(38)
Finally, the unitary transformation removes the vector potential from the internal degrees of freedom of a molecule as in the above Sec.II; i.e. in the dipole interaction limit

$$𝒮^{}H_{mol;j}(𝐀)𝒮=H_{mol;j}(𝐀=0).$$
(39)
The “grand finale” of the algebraic ceremony of this section is the assertion that total transformed Hamiltonian

$$=𝒮^{}H𝒮$$
(40)
which for $`𝒩`$ molecules takes the form

$$=\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(𝐄^2+𝐁^2\right)d^3𝐫+\underset{1i<j𝒩}{}\stackrel{~}{V}_{ij}$$

$$+\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}_{mol;j}𝐄𝐏d^3𝐫,$$
(41)
where the internal molecular Hamiltonian

$$_{mol;j}=H_{mol;j}(𝐀=0)+W_{mol;j}$$
(42)
is independent of the transverse $`𝐀`$. The central Eq.(41) of this section follows from Eqs.(17), (24), (37)-(39) and (40).

## IV Dicke-Preparata Model

The Hamiltonian in Eq.(41) has four parts: (i) a sum of intramolecular Hamiltonians describing the internal kinetic and Coulomb energies of each molecule, (ii) a sum of screened (short ranged) intermolecular Coulomb potentials between neighboring molecules, (iii) the radiation field energy and (iv) a linear coupling between the dipole moment per unit volume and the electric field. Within the dipole approximation, Eq.(41) is exact but not yet amenable to rigorous mathematical solution. For the purpose of obtaining reasonable answers for (say) the free energy, further simplifications must be made.

For the Dicke-Preparata model, the approximations are as follows: (i) The sum of intramolecular Hamiltonians is modeled by a sum of “two-level molecules”, each described by Pauli matrices $`(\sigma _{x;j},\sigma _{y;j},\sigma _{z;j})`$;

$$\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}_{mol;j}\frac{\epsilon }{2}\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}\sigma _{z;j}.$$
(43)
(ii) The sum of screened intermolecular Coulomb potentials between neighboring molecules is neglected

$$\underset{1i<j𝒩}{}\stackrel{~}{V}_{ij}0.$$
(44)
(iii) The radiation field energy is modeled by a single photon oscillator mode

$$\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(𝐄^2+𝐁^2\right)d^3𝐫\mathrm{}\omega _0b^{}b.$$
(45)
(iv) The linear coupling between the dipole moment per unit volume and the electric field is modeled by the resonant photon creation and annihilation terms

$$𝐄𝐏d^3𝐫\stackrel{~}{\mu }\sqrt{\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}\omega _0}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}(b\sigma _{+;j}+b^{}\sigma _{;j}),$$
(46)
where $`2\sigma _{\pm ;j}=\sigma _{x;j}\pm i\sigma _{y;j}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ is the excitation matrix element of the electric dipole operator of a single molecule. Putting the model replacement Eqs.(43)-(46) into Eq.(41) yields the Dicke-Preparata model

$$_{DP}$$
(47)
where

$$_{DP}=\epsilon S_z+\mathrm{}\omega _0b^{}b+\stackrel{~}{\mu }\sqrt{\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}\omega _0}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left(bS_++b^{}S_{}\right),$$
(48)
$$S_z=\frac{1}{2}\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}\sigma _{z;j},$$
(49)
and

$$S_\pm =\frac{1}{2}\underset{j=1}{\overset{𝒩}{}}(\sigma _{x;j}\pm i\sigma _{y;j}).$$
(50)
The Dicke-Preparata model may be written in terms of the oscillator coordinate $`Q`$ and momentum $`P`$ using

$$b=\frac{(Pi\omega _0Q)}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}\omega _0}},b^{}=\frac{(P+i\omega _0Q)}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{}\omega _0}},$$
(51)
yielding

$$_{DP}^{}=\left(\frac{P^2+\omega _0^2Q^2}{2}\right)+𝐡𝐒$$
(52)
where the vector $`𝐡`$ is given by

$$𝐡=\stackrel{~}{\mu }\sqrt{\frac{4\pi }{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left(P𝐢+\omega _0Q𝐣\right)+\epsilon 𝐤.$$
(53)
The free energy $``$ of the model is determined by

$$e^{/k_BT}=Tre^{_{DP}^{}/k_BT}.$$
(54)
Here, the trace over the oscillator degree of freedom may be taken as being classical with virtually zero error in the limit $`𝒩\mathrm{}`$; i.e.

$$e^{/k_BT}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}tre^{_{DP}^{}/k_BT}\left(\frac{dPdQ}{2\pi \mathrm{}}\right).$$
(55)
Since

$$tre^{𝐡𝐒/k_BT}=\left\{2\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{|𝐡|}{2k_BT}\right)\right\}^𝒩,$$
(56)
and since Eq.(53) implies

$$|𝐡|^2=\epsilon ^2+\left(\frac{4\pi \stackrel{~}{\mu }^2}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\right)(P^2+\omega _0^2Q^2),$$
(57)
it follows from Eqs.(52), (53), and (55)-(57) that

$$e^{/k_BT}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}e^{𝒢/k_BT}\left(\frac{dPdQ}{2\pi \mathrm{}}\right),$$
(58)
where

$$\frac{𝒢}{𝒩}=wk_BTln\left(2\mathrm{cosh}\left\{\frac{\sqrt{\epsilon ^2+8\pi \stackrel{~}{\mu }^2nw}}{2k_BT}\right\}\right),$$
(59)
the oscillator energy per molecule is

$$w=\left(\frac{P^2+\omega _0^2Q^2}{2𝒩}\right),$$
(60)
and the number of molecules per unit volume $`n`$ is

$$n=(𝒩/\mathrm{\Omega }).$$
(61)
In the thermodynamic limit of Eqs.(58)-(61), the minimum free energy principle is that

$$\underset{𝒩\mathrm{}}{lim}(/𝒩)=\underset{(0<w<\mathrm{})}{inf}f(w,n,T),$$
(62)
where

$$f(w,n,T)=wk_BTln\left(2\mathrm{cosh}\chi (w,n,T)\right),$$
(63)
and

$$\chi (w,n,T)=\frac{\sqrt{\epsilon ^2+8\pi \stackrel{~}{\mu }^2nw}}{2k_BT}.$$
(64)
Let $`\overline{w}(n,T)0`$ represent the mean oscillator energy per molecule as a function of the molecular density $`n`$ and the temperature $`T`$. If $`\overline{w}>0`$, then the system is in a super-radiant phase. If $`\overline{w}=0`$, then the system is in a normal (incoherent radiation) phase. The free energy per molecule $`f(w,n,T)`$ is at a minimum for $`w=\overline{w}`$. Setting $`(f/w)_{nT}=0`$ yields the following implicit function equation for $`\overline{w}`$:

$$\left(\frac{k_BT\chi (\overline{w},n,T)}{\pi \stackrel{~}{\mu }^2n}\right)=\mathrm{tanh}\chi (\overline{w},n,T).$$
(65)
The phase diagram in the $`(n,T)`$ plane follows from setting $`\overline{w}(n,T_c)=0`$ and solving for the critical temperature $`T_c(n)`$ as a function of density. The super-radiant phase exists for $`T<T_c(n)`$ and the normal phase exists for $`T>T_c(n)`$. The critical temperature $`T_c(nn_c)=0`$ where the critical density

$$n_c=\left(\frac{\epsilon }{2\pi \stackrel{~}{\mu }^2}\right).$$
(66)
Analytically,

$$k_BT_c(n>n_c)=\left\{\frac{\epsilon }{ln\left((n+n_c)/(nn_c)\right)}\right\}.$$
(67)
A plot of the phase diagram is shown below.

## V Conclusions

The doubts about the physical reality of the super-radiant phases were discussed in great detail by I. Bialynicki-Birula and K. Rzazewski, who came to the remarkable (and dubious) conclusion that the electric dipole-photon interaction could be gauged away. This incorrect conclusion was based on using a vector potential which is independent of both space and time. It is no wonder that such a pure “gauge field” had zero effect on the thermodynamic equations of state.

In reality, the transverse electric field in the Coulomb gauge should be calculated using either

$$𝐄=\frac{1}{c}\frac{𝐀}{t},(\mathrm{Heisenberg}\mathrm{or}\mathrm{Classical}\mathrm{Picture}),$$
(68)
or

$$𝐄=\left(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}c}\right)[H,𝐀],(\mathrm{Schrodinger}\mathrm{Picture}).$$
(69)
The classical canonical transformation Eq.(12) of I. Bialynicki-Birula and K. Rzazewski (in the dipole approximation) should have been properly performed as in our Eqs.(5) and (6). The last term on the right hand side of both our Eqs.(5) and (6) were incorrectly omitted in Eq.(12) of I. Bialynicki-Birula and K. Rzazewski. This incorrect classical canonical transformation eliminated the electric field $`𝐄`$ and thereby the electric dipole-photon interaction.

A proper procedure is to employ a fully quantum electrodynamic framework to obtain a non-trivial electric field $`𝐄`$ before going to the classical electrodynamic oscillator trace evaluation. From this rigorous Schrödinger picture point of view, Eq.(12) of I. Bialynicki-Birula and K. Rzazewski is still incorrect because Eqs.(B2-B3) in our Appendix B Eqs.(B2-B3) were not taken into account in that work.

In any or all pictures, the electric dipole-photon interaction cannot be described by gauging away the electric field $`𝐄`$. When the Hamiltonian is expressed in terms of $`𝐄`$ and $`𝐁`$, it is then properly gauge invariant and non-trivial changes very surely appear in the thermal equations of state. For example, the one-photon loop corrections to the equations of state have long been known to produce Casimir-van der Waals forces in condensed matter. Such forces cannot possibly be gauged away and I. Bialynicki-Birula and K. Rzazewski are thereby in error. A further error is found in K. Rzazewski, K. Wodkiewicz and W. Zakowicz, where it is asserted that the super-radiant phase transition is null and void due to quadratic coupling in the photon creation and annihilation operators. Had the canonical transformation been carried out correctly, as in the present work, then it would have been noted that the coupling between the electric dipole moment and the photons in the gauge invariant Eq.(41) is strictly linear. The super-radiant phase transition remains intact.

Preparata has recently proposed several examples of super-radiant phases in a recent review. Water is perhaps the most interesting example. In future work it would appear interesting to relate the super-radiant transition to an instability of the incoherent radiation phase which produces the conventional theoretical and experimental QED Casimir effects. QED effects at the one photon loop level have long proved their importance in the understanding of the long ranged intermolecular forces.

MATHEMATICAL APPENDIX A

Starting from the Schrödinger equation

$$i\mathrm{}\left(\frac{d|\varphi (t)}{dt}\right)=H(t)|\varphi (t),$$
$`(A1)`$
one seeks a solution of the form

$$|\varphi (t)=U(t)|\psi (t),$$
$`(A2)`$
where $`U^{}(t)=U^1(t)`$. Putting Eq.(A2) into Eq.(A1) yields

$$i\mathrm{}U(t)\left(\frac{d|\psi (t)}{dt}\right)+i\mathrm{}\left(\frac{dU(t)}{dt}\right)|\psi (t)$$

$$=H(t)U(t)|\psi (t),$$
$`(A3)`$
or equivalently

$$i\mathrm{}\left(\frac{d|\psi (t)}{dt}\right)=(t)|\psi (t),$$
$`(A4)`$
where

$$(t)=U^{}(t)H(t)U(t)i\mathrm{}U^{}(t)\frac{dU(t)}{dt}.$$
$`(A5)`$
Eq.(A5) is the required time dependent canonical transformation.

MATHEMATICAL APPENDIX B

From Eqs.(1) and (14) it follows that

$$S^{}𝐩_aS=𝐩_a+\frac{q_a}{c}𝐀.$$
$`(B1)`$
Eqs.(B1) and (11) then imply

$$S^{}H_{mol}(𝐀)S=H_{mol}(𝐀=0).$$
$`(B2)`$
Thus, the vector potential in the dipole interaction theory may be “gauged away”. However, the dipole interaction returns to the full Hamiltonian since Eqs.(9) and (14) imply that

$$S^{}a_kS=a_k+i(𝐞_k\mu )\sqrt{\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}\omega _k}}$$
$`(B2)`$
and

$$S^{}a_k^{}S=a_k^{}i(𝐞_k^{}\mu )\sqrt{\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}\omega _k}}.$$
$`(B3)`$
From Eqs.(7), (B2) and (B3) it follows that

$$S^{}H_{rad}S=H_{rad}\mu 𝐄+W_{mol}$$
$`(B4)`$
where the operator electric field $`𝐄`$ is given in Eq.(10), and the molecular self energy $`W_{mol}`$ is given in Eq.(17). Thus the same canonical transformation which gauges away the vector potential in the molecule Hamiltonian, brings back the electric dipole interaction $`\mu 𝐄`$ when applied to the radiation Hamiltonian via Eq.(B4). Finally, from Eqs.(B2) and (B4) it follows that

$$S^{}\left(H_{rad}+H_{mol}(𝐀)\right)S=$$

$$H_{rad}+H_{mol}(𝐀=0)+W_{mol}\mu 𝐄,$$
$`(B5)`$
and Eqs.(16) and (18) then follows from Eq.(B5). The proof of Eq.(18) has been completed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We wish to thank Dr. Flavio Fontana for an initial discussion of this problem.


text:
# Incipient magnetic rotation? A magnetic dipole band in 104Cd

## 1 Introduction

The shears mechanism (or magnetic rotation) is a mechanism whereby angular momentum is generated by the simultaneous alignment, from an intial perpendicular coupling, of long, rigid proton and neutron vectors with the total angular momentum vector . The mechanism is characterised by a pronounced decrease in magnetic dipole transition strength, B(M1) as the shears vectors close. Such behaviour may be inferred from lifetime measurements. Using DSAM lifetime measurements, the existence of the shears mechanism was firstly confirmed in the light lead nuclei  and has more recently been shown to be manifested in the light tin nuclei, 106Sn and 108Sn . In the mass 110 region, the proton vector may be generated from g9/2 holes in the Z=50 shell while the neutron vector is principally composed of h11/2 neutrons and g7/2,d5/2 neutrons. In the cadmium nuclei, recent lifetime measurements have confirmed the action of the shears mechanism in 108Cd , 109Cd  and 110Cd . However, the shears mechanism has not so far been shown to be active in the lighter cadmium isotopes.

Two of the outstanding issues associated with the phenomenon of magnetic rotation are the point of interface of both the shears mechanism with conventional collective rotation and the disappearance of the shears mechanism leading to the irregularly spaces shell model states. The former issue is somewhat simpler in that rotation of the weakly deformed core may be modelled as a contributory vector to the total angular momentum which increases linearly with spin. However, it might be expected that the shears mechanism would be supplanted by collective rotation in nuclei for nuclei which have a deformation much larger than $`\beta `$2 $``$ 0.1. Nevertheless, the exact point at which the transition between the magnetic rotation and collective regimes takes place is presently unclear. Similarly, the lower boundary, so to speak, between the magnetic rotation regime and the spherical regime is uncertain. It is with this lower boundary that the present work is principlally concerned.

In terms of the cadmium nuclei, the neutron number, N=56, forms an interesting dividing line since it separates the heavier cadmium nuclei whose high spin states are best understood in terms of collective rotational bands and the lighter cadmium nuclei which might be classified as spherical and whose limited valence space affords a relatively good understanding in terms of the shell model. The nucleus 104Cd might therefore be a good testing ground for an investigation of the boundary between the spherical nuclei and the region where magnetic rotation is possible.

## 2 Experimental Details and Data Analysis

Excited states in the nucleus 104Cd were populated using the 54Fe(58Ni,$`\alpha `$4p) reaction at a beam energy of 243 MeV in two separate experiments. In the first experiment, a 58Ni beam accelerated by the 88-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was incident on a target composed of 600$`\mu `$g/cm2 enriched 54Fe on a backing of 15.2mg/cm2 of gold. The full implementation of the Gammasphere array  with 95 HPGe detectors was used to detect the resulting $`\gamma `$ decay. In a second experiment a 58Ni beam from the ATLAS accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory was directed onto a 540$`\mu `$g/cm2 enriched 54Fe thin target. The $`\gamma `$ decay was studied using the Gammasphere array consisting of 100 HPGe detectors. The array was coupled with the Microball charged particle detector system  in order to provide channel selection. A large number of nuclei in the mass 100 to 110 region were populated in this reaction; the strongest channels being 109Sb and 108Sn with 27% and 42% of the total cross-section, respectively. However, $`\gamma `$ rays from the decay of 104Cd, the subject of this study, comprised only approximately 6.5% of the data-set. The next lightest even-even cadmium nucleus, 102Cd, whose high-spin structure has already been thoroughly studied , was populated with a similar intensity ($``$6%).

The backed-target data were unfolded and used to produce a $`\gamma `$-$`\gamma `$-$`\gamma `$ cube, containing 2.1$`\times `$1010 triples events, which was analysed using the RADWARE analysis program, Levit8r . The thin-target data were unfolded and a channel selection requirement of one $`\alpha `$ particle and at least 2 protons was made. This allowed a $`\gamma `$-$`\gamma `$-$`\gamma `$ cube to be created, containing 9.2$`\times `$108 triples, which had reasonable selection for the $`\alpha `$4p channel without overly reducing the statistics. The absence of the hevimet collimators on the BGO shields for the thin target experiment permitted total energy (H) and $`\gamma `$-ray multiplicity (K) to be measured. Accordingly, suitable two-dimensional coincidence gates were set on H and K in order to enhance the desired reaction channel. The gates were set by identifying the region in the H-K plane associated with the $`\gamma `$ rays at the bottom of the 104Cd level scheme. Both the thick- and thin-target cubes were explored for detailed information about the structure of 104Cd ; the resulting level scheme is presented in Figure 1. The level scheme has been considerably revised from published level schemes for the low-spin shell model states  and high-spin rotational bands . During the preparation of this work, a work was published which revised the prior level schemes and discussed some aspects of the revised scheme in terms of the interacting boson-fermion model (IBM/IBFM) . The level scheme presented in the present work is in broad agreement with this recent publication.

In order to perform an angular correlation analysis, the backed target data were unfolded and sorted into two 2D matrices. In each case the data were unpacked into triples and gates were set on known E2 transitions (658.0, 834.3, 878.4, 840.9 and 890.5 keV) at the bottom of the 104Cd level scheme in order to enhance the $`\alpha `$4p reaction channel. Two angle sets were used for the angular correlation analysis. Angle Set 1 comprised those detectors at far forward and backward positions including detectors at 17, 32 and 37 and the corresponding detectors in the other hemisphere, at 143, 148 and 163 . Angle Set 2 comprised those detectors close to 90 including detectors at 79, 81, 90, 99 and 101. These particular groups were chosen since they contained a similar number of detectors and were large enough to make good use of the angular composition of the array while clearly discriminating between dipoles and quadrupoles. Matrices were created for Set 1 against Set 1 and Set 1 against Set 2. An angular correlation method  was used to assign the multipolarity of previously unknown transitions, using the first two matrices. These matrices were used to extract angular correlation ratios (RDCO) from the ratio of the intensities of transitions in angle set 1 to those in angle set 2, after gating on known stretched quadrupoles in angle set 1. The values were normalized to take into account the difference between the numbers of detectors in angle set 1 (30) and those in angle set 2 (37). Angular correlation ratios for this geometry were obtained for transitions of known multipolarity in 108Sn as a guide in assigning multipolarites of unknown transitions in 104Cd. By this means, it was deduced that stretched dipole - stretched quadrupole transitions from this geometry have an average RDCO value of 1.45 whilst those of known stretched quadrupole - stretched quadrupole transitions have an average RDCO value of 1.85. The results of this angular correlation analysis are presented in Table 1. In addition to the angular correlation matrices, a further matrix was sorted containing all detectors against all detectors and this was used to obtain intensity information and hence to extract branching ratios.

Band 2 was originally classified by Klamra et al.  as a decoupled band, although the irregularity of the observed transitions and the sharply contrasting features of this band with similar structures in neighbouring isotopes were noted. In common with the recent work of De Angelis et al. , this structure is interpreted in the present work as a cascade of dipole transitions, crossed-over by at least two E2 transitions (figure 2). The multipolarity of the dipole transitions has been verified by angular correlation measurements up to the 13+ level. Due to the combination of the low statistics in this weakly populated channel and the design of the Gammasphere array, it was not possible to measure the linear polarisation of these dipole transitions to clearly establish whether they are of electric or magnetic character. However, if the dipoles are assumed to be E1 then the intensity of the dipole transitions would imply B(E1)/B(E2) ratios which are an order of magnitude larger than those of the deformed octupole nuclei in the mass 220 region and several orders of magnitude larger than octupole vibrational effects observed in the A$``$110 region, e.g. 108Te . It is therefore assumed that these transitions are of M1 multipolarity.

It should be noted that the structure of band 2 presented here differs from that presented in ref  in that the ordering of the 635 and 717 keV transitions is reversed. The alternate ordering given in ref  is made on the basis of the existence of a structure parallel to band 2 which contains a 636 keV $`\gamma `$-ray. The present data-set does not support the existence of such a structure or a 635/636 keV doublet. Furthermore, coincidence data confirm the ordering suggested here.

## 3 Discussion

Since the recent work of de Angelis et al.  provides a comprehensive description in terms of the IBM/IBFM model of the decoupled bands observed in 104Cd, it is not the intention of the present work to rehearse the configuration assignments appropriate to bands 1,3 and 4. However, this recent work  did not consider the possibility of two g9/2 proton holes coupled to spin 8+ within the IBM model. This approach was, therefore, unable to account for the properties of band 2. Accordingly, the remainder of this discussion is focussed on the reasons for the appearance of the cascade of magnetic dipole transitions, band 2.

It is instructive to look to the neighbouring even-even cadmium nuclei, 102Cd and 106Cd. 106Cd does not exhibit a dipole structure analagous to that observed in 104Cd. Instead, there is a decoupled band built on the 10+ bandhead which is believed to be generated from an aligned $`\nu `$(h11/2)2 configuration . De Angelis et al. suggests that a decoupled band with a 12+ bandhead, not observed in the present work, is the analogy of this structure in 104Cd . However, a structure similar to the dipole structure in 104Cd has been observed in 102Cd . In the case of the 102Cd band, it was tentatively suggested that some kind of shears mechanism might be responsible for the appearance of the irregular dipole band in this nucleus . The two g9/2 proton holes in the Z=50 shell could couple to a spin of 8+ providing the proton vector of the shears, whilst the neutron vector might be composed of d5/2,g7/2 neutrons coupled to 6+ . Such a shears configuration could produce a shears band with a 10+ bandhead. However, one of the characteristic features of the known shears bands is their regular increase in excitation energy with increasing spin e.g. . Clearly, the dipole band in 102Cd is highly irregular and does not exhibit such a smooth increase. Therefore, this interpretation of the 102Cd band does not fit easily into the conventional picture of a shears band. Although similar particles are active in the dipole bands in 102,104Cd as in the shears bands in 108-110Cd, it is clear that they do not both result in shears bands.

A comparison of the dipole structures in 102Cd and 104Cd in figure 3 makes it clear that neither band exhibits the regular increase in transition energy observed in the shears bands in the heavier cadmium isotopes. However, they do share common features in that they both have 10+ bandheads and the odd spin to even spin dipole transitions have much larger energies than their even spin to odd spin counterparts. The similarity of the two structures points to a common underlying structure, most probably in the coupling of the g9/2 holes to the d5/2,g7/2 neutrons.

As a means of understanding these irregular structures in the light cadmium nuclei, it is instructive to refer to previous work on magnetic dipole structures in the light indium nuclei, which highlights the question of regularity in magnetic dipole structures . 107In exhibits an irregular sequence of M1 transitions with fluctuating transition energies, whereas the heavier nuclei, 109,111,113In have structures of 5-6 transitions that have similar characteristics to shears bands and become more regular with increasing mass. It has been suggested that a kind of shears mechanism is taking place in these nuclei between a pair of h11/2 neutrons and a g9/2 proton hole. Depending on the position in the shell, the d5/2,g7/2 neutrons, which are spectating, may couple to the shears mechanism taking place, augmenting it in some manner, or they may disrupt it leading to an irregular sequence of dipoles. Frauendorf and Reif distinguish between four scenarios for generating angular momentum using the g7/2,d5/2 particles . These scenarios depend on the particular coupling and quadrupole moments of the g7/2,d5/2 neutrons.

* The quadrupole moment of the g7/2,d5/2 neutrons is negative. Spin is generated by the recoupling of the g7/2,d5/2 neutrons, leading to the irregular multiplets seen in near-spherical nuclei.
* The quadrupole moment is positive. The g7/2,d5/2 neutrons orient perpendicular to the $`\nu `$\[h11/22\]J=10 pair, generating angular momentum from a shears mechanism between these two “blades” adding to that shears mechanism occurring between the g9/2 proton hole and the $`\nu `$\[h11/22\]J=10 pair.
* The quadrupole moment of the g7/2,d5/2 neutrons is close to zero. The g7/2,d5/2 neutrons orient themselves parallel to the $`\nu `$\[h11/22\]J=10 pair. This augments the shears mechanism taking place, again, leading to a regular structure.
* The g7/2,d5/2 neutrons couple to low spin (J=0 or 2). The J=2 admixture slowly increases generating spin from the collective rotation of the slightly deformed $`\nu `$\[g7/2,d5/2\] system.

There are four g7/2,d5/2 neutrons above the Z=50 shell in 102Cd and six g7/2,d5/2 neutrons in 104Cd. Shell model calculations using RITSSCHIL  give Q $``$ -33 e fm2 for (g7/2,d5/2)4J=6 and Q $``$ -7 e fm2 for (g7/2,d5/2)6J=6 . One is tempted, therefore, to suggest that the negative quadrupole moment of 102Cd leads to the irregular structure observed in 102Cd which arises from the first mechanism, while the less negative quadrupole moment for 104Cd leads to a somewhat more “regular”, albeit staggered, structure. However, the quadrupole moment is not sufficiently near to zero for the structure to go over into the shears mechanism via the the third mechanism described above.

Considering the fact that the g9/2 holes are coupled to 8+ and have a large positive g-factor and the g7/2,d5/2 neutrons involved a low g factor, the effective g-factor for the proposed coupling will be large. In turn, this implies relatively large absolute B(M1) values and short lifetimes for these states. However, the odd-even staggering of the states in band 2 implies that the transversal magnetic moment does not break the signature symmetry to any great extent. Whilst it is clear from the backed-target data that the dipole transitions in this band are considerably Doppler-shifted, there is, unfortunately, insufficient intensity to perform a lifetime analysis.

## 4 Conclusion

In summary, a cascade of magnetic dipole transitions, band 2, has been observed in 104Cd and interpreted as a case of incipient magnetic rotation. This dipole band is very similar to a structure in 102Cd but has a somewhat more regular appearance. Shell model calculations indicate that the coupling of the g7/2,d5/2 neutrons is highly sensitive to their quadrupole moments. Furthermore, it has been shown from previous work that this can result in regular or irregular magnetic dipole bands depending on whether these neutrons have a positive or negative quadrupole moment. The increase in the number of positive parity neutrons from 102Cd to 104Cd may explain the origin of the increased regularity of the dipole band in 104Cd. The odd-even spin state staggering observed suggests that the symmetry breaking is moderate and that it is more appropriate to describe this structure in terms of the spherical shell model rather than in terms of magnetic rotation. This work provides useful information in determining the boundaries of and conditions for the appearance of magnetic rotation in the mass 110 region.

We would like to thank the staff of both the 88–Inch Cyclotron and the ATLAS accelerator and A. Lipski for making the targets used. This work has been supported in part by the U.S. NSF and Department of Energy under Contracts No. DE–AC03–76SF00098 and W-31-109-ENG-38, the UK EPSRC, AECL and the Canadian NSERC. RW and RMC acknowledge receipt of a NATO grant.


text:
# Spectral energy distributions of FR I nuclei and the FR I/BL Lac unifying model

## 1 Introduction

In the framework of the unifying models for AGN, the low luminosity Fanaroff–Riley (1974) type I, FR I, radio galaxies are identified as the parent population of BL Lac objects: the non–thermal continuum of BL Lacs is dominated by beaming effects, resulting from the relativistic motion of plasma at a small angle with respect to the line of sight (Blandford & Rees 1978), and FR I radio galaxies would represent their mis-oriented counterparts. Support to this unification comes from different and independent observational pieces of evidence (see Urry & Padovani 1995 for a review).

In this scenario the detection of any non–thermal jet emission in FR I would allow a quantitative analysis of the unified model based on the direct comparison of the beamed component in the two populations. However, to pursue this goal we need to isolate the jet emission in the cores of radio galaxies.

Recently, Chiaberge, Capetti & Celotti (1999) have analyzed HST images of a complete sample of 33 FR I radio galaxies and found an unresolved central optical source in the majority of them. The luminosity of these sources show a striking linear correlation with that of the radio cores, strongly arguing for a non–thermal synchrotron origin also for the optical emission. Furthermore, the high detection rate suggests that obscuring tori in the nuclei of FR I must be either geometrically thin or present only in a minority of the objects.

HST images also reveal the presence of extended nuclear disks in low luminosity radio galaxies (e.g. Jaffe et al. 1993). As shown by Capetti & Celotti (1999, hereafter CC99) from the analysis of 5 objects, such disks can be used as reasonably good indicators of the orientation of the radio sources. All of the 5 FR I also show the optical central source. By comparing their intensity with the emission of BL Lacs with similar extended (isotropic) characteristics they found that: i) BL Lacs are $`10^2`$$`10^5`$ brighter than the corresponding radio galaxies and ii) the relative core brightness decreases with increasing observing angle, quantitatively consistent with the inference that also the FR I nuclear component is dominated by the beamed jet emission.

In this framework, multi–wavelengths observations of FR I radio galaxies clearly represent an alternative and more detailed way to test the model, as their SED can be directly compared with those of BL Lacs. The latter ones are well described by two broad peaks (in $`\nu L_\nu `$), the first one attributed to non–thermal synchrotron emission while the second one is most commonly ascribed to inverse Compton scattering. Moreover, the whole BL Lac (and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar, FSRQ) broad band phenomenology seems to be accounted for by the (continuous) distribution in the energy position of the two peaks and their relative luminosity (Padovani & Giommi 1995; Fossati et al. 1998): an increase in the inverse Compton vs synchrotron luminosity ratio corresponds to a decrease in the peak frequencies, describing the progressive trend from FSRQ, to High and Low Energy Peaked BL Lacs (HBL and LBL, Giommi & Padovani 1994). This establishes a direct relation between the type of SED/object and the relative contribution of the two components in the X–ray band (steep synchrotron turnover vs flat Compton power law; Padovani & Giommi 1996). These phenomenological trends seem also to be simply connected with the source (bolometric and radio) power, increasing from HBL to LBL (Ghisellini et al. 1998).

But how does orientation affect the SED ? While it has been rather convincingly shown that orientation alone cannot account for the differences in the SED of blazars (Sambruna, Maraschi & Urry 1996), the alternative interpretation just described has been - so far - focused only on highly beamed sources (blazars), neglecting the (comparatively smaller) effects due to orientation.

SED of radio-galaxies and in particular of FR I have been derived by several authors (e.g. Impey & Gregorini 1993; Ho 1999). However, the comparison with those of BL Lacs is hampered by the large aperture from which data have been obtained, which often includes a dominant contribution from the host galaxy. We therefore gathered archival observations of FR I from which it is possible to separate the nuclear from the extended emission, in particular ROSAT data and HST/NICMOS infrared images. These can be combined with our analysis of the HST optical images and radio core measurements from the literature. Clearly, data in the infrared/optical and X–ray bands could also provide an independent test for the role of absorption from thick material (torus) in this unifying scheme.

As the orientation of the radio galaxies is a crucial parameter, in this paper we focus on the sample of 5 objects studied in CC99 (see Table 1), for which we have such information.

ROSAT archival pointed observations of 4 out of 5 galaxies are available and are presented in Section 2. HST/NICMOS infrared images have been obtained for 3 of the selected objects and are described in Section 3. In Section 4 we discuss the role of absorption with respect to the inferred nuclear SED, which we assemble in Section 5. The comparison with the SED of BL Lacs and the implications for the FR I/BL Lac unified scheme are discussed in Section 6, while in the final Section 7 we present our conclusions and future perspectives.

Throughout this work, we adopt the following values for the cosmological parameters: $`H_0=75`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$.

## 2 The ROSAT observations

ROSAT HRI and PSPC data are available for 3 of the selected sources, namely 3C 31, 3C 270 and 3C 465, while for 3C 264 only PSPC data exist. In Table 2 we list the available pointed observations. The X–ray properties of these targets have been already discussed by different authors (see last column of the table) but we decided to re-analyze the data to follow a more homogeneous approach.

For the analysis we have used the EXSAS package (release of Jan. 1996; Zimmermann et al. 1995) and the data have been corrected for vignetting and dead time. In the PSPC observations only the energy range 0.15 - 2.1 keV has been considered and the spectra have been rebinned according to the source count rate 111The minimum signal to noise ratio per energy channel is $`5\sigma `$ for 3C 264 and 3C 270, $`4\sigma `$ for 3C 31 and $`3\sigma `$ for 3C 465..

All targets are members of clusters or groups of galaxies, and this implies that any central non–thermal X–ray emission must be disentangled from that of a hot intergalactic medium, with temperatures $`38`$ keV (Sarazin 1986), and of the extended hot halos ($`1`$ keV; Donnelly et al. 1990; Trussoni et al. 1997). Therefore for the spectral analysis of the PSPC data we used composite models allowing for the presence of both a thermal and a non–thermal (power-law) component. The free physical parameters in the spectral fits are, besides the two normalizations, the hydrogen column density $`N_H`$, the photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ for the power–law spectrum, the temperature $`T`$ and metallicity $`\mu `$ for the thermal component (optically thin plasma, Raymond & Smith 1977). As count rates are usually quite low, some parameters must be fixed in order to deduce usefully constrained fits. In all cases (except for 3C 264) we set $`N_H`$ to its galactic value $`N_{H,gal}`$, and $`\mu =0.5`$, as typical for hot galactic halos (Fabbiano 1989). Fixing the metallicity does not significantly affect our results as the parameters describing the non-thermal component depend only weakly on $`\mu `$ – at least if it lies within the plausible range $`0.2\mu 1`$. To establish the statistical significance of the non thermal component, we have then checked through an F-test when its inclusion improves the fit.

The HRI data should allow in principle to spatially separate the unresolved central component from the coronal emission. However, the spatial resolution of the HRI is insufficient to fully resolve the cores of the galactic coronae, particularly for the more distant sources. Furthermore, problems in the aspect solution associated with the satellite wobble may lead to smearing of point-like sources (algorithms proposed to overcome this problem work only for bright sources, Morse 1994; Harris et al. 1998; Sarazin et al. 1999) compromising the spatial analysis. We therefore preferred to use the HRI observations just to check their consistency with the count rates predicted by the PSPC spectral decomposition.

No statistically significant variability has been found in the light curves of the observations, and in the targets observed with PSPC and HRI the count rates are consistent in both instruments. This is also true for two very short HRI exposures of 3C 31 (Jan. 1992; see Trussoni et al. 1997) and 3C 270 (Jul. 1994), that we have not included in the present analysis.

### 2.1 Individual sources

In the following we discuss the X–ray properties of the targets and in particular the results from the spectral fits with a two components model (thermal + power-law). The results are summarized in Table 3.

3C 31. The host galaxy of 3C 31 (NGC 383) is the dominant member of the group Arp 331. A fit to its PSPC spectrum including a non-thermal source is more acceptable at $`90`$% confidence level than a single thermal component. We obtain a gas temperature of $`T0.6`$ keV, but the spectral index of the non–thermal component is essentially unconstrained, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.8_{1.1}^{+0.6}`$. We derive the power-law flux adopting two values of the photon index (namely $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.7`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.3`$ see Table 3): the resulting estimates differ by only 20 % indicating that in this case uncertainties are dominated by photon statistics. Our spectral results are basically consistent with those of Komossa & Böhringer (1999).

The HRI brightness radial profile (Fig. 1a) shows a compact component (broader than the PSF) and faint extended emission out to $`40^{\prime \prime }`$. From the PSPC analysis we expect a HRI photon flux of $`4.1\times 10^3`$ cts s-1 and $`2.9\times 10^3`$ cts s-1 from the thermal and non–thermal components, respectively. The total HRI count rate (within the same extraction radius of the PSPC spectrum) is $`(6.6\pm 1.3)\times 10^3`$ cts s-1, in agreement with our estimates. Furthermore, the predicted non–thermal photon flux cannot exceed that measured in the central compact component. Indeed within $`15\mathrm{}`$ we measure $`(5.2\pm 0.5)\times 10^3`$ cts s-1.

3C 264. This radio galaxy lies at a projected distance of $`8^{}`$ from the center of the cluster A1367. Low brightness emission from the cluster gas is detected around the galaxy, but it is effectively removed after background subtraction. The spectrum is remarkably well fitted with a single power law ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }2.46`$) absorbed by a column density $`N_\mathrm{H}=2.6_{0.2}^{+0.4}\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, consistent with the Galactic one ($`2.55\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$), in agreement with the results of Edge & Röttering (1995). A thermal component might be present at $`1\sigma `$ level (assuming $`T=1`$ keV) at a confidence level of $`80`$%.

3C 270. This source is associated to NGC 4261, main member of a group of galaxies located behind the Virgo cluster. The emitted flux is fitted better by a composite spectrum than by a single thermal law (improving of the quality of the fit at a significance level of $`99.2`$%). The two component spectral model provides acceptable fits to the PSPC data with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.7`$ and $`T0.8`$ keV. These results, and in particular the presence of a flat non–thermal component, are confirmed by the analysis of the ASCA observations (Sambruna et al. 1999).

The HRI brightness profile (Fig. 1b) is similar to that of 3C 31 but the extended emission (detected up to a radius $`1^{}`$) is much more prominent. Again the central compact region is more extended than the PSF. In the HRI we detect a total count rate $`(3.2\pm 0.3)\times 10^2`$ cts s-1, as expected from the PSPC data which predict $`2.2\times 10^2`$ cts s-1 and $`1.1\times 10^2`$ cts s-1 for the thermal and power–law components, respectively. The photon flux of the compact component is $`(1.9\pm 0.1)\times 10^2`$ cts s-1 again consistent with the derived intensity of the power–law one.

3C 465. The galaxy NGC 7720 (3C 465) is the brightest member of the cluster A2634. The PSPC emission from the central region is well fitted by a thermal spectrum with $`T1.2`$ keV. The addition of a non–thermal component does not improve the fit. We set an upper limit to the non–thermal luminosity of $`<2\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1 (see Table 3). This contrasts with the results obtained by Hardcastle & Worrall (1999) based on the spatial analysis of the HRI brightness profile.

NGC 7052. No pointed observation is available for this source. From the RASS an upper limit of the count rate $`<0.01`$ cts s-1 is found (Brinkmann, private comm.). Assuming a power-law spectrum with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.3`$ this corresponds to a total luminosity $`<1.8\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1.

### 2.2 Summary of the X-ray data

Non–thermal emission is detected in 3 out of the 4 targets with pointed X–ray observations: in 3C 264 it is the dominant source, while in 3C 270 and 3C 31 the inclusion of a non–thermal component significantly improves the fit. Only an upper limit can be set for the power-law emission from the nucleus of 3C 465. The photon fluxes predicted by the spectral decomposition agree with those observed in the HRI images.

Worral & Birkinshaw (1994) & Worral (1997) found a correlation between the luminosities of FR I radio galaxies in the radio and soft X-ray bands, recently confirmed by Canosa et al. (1999) and Hardcastle and Worrall (1999) who analyzed the PSPC and HRI brightness profiles of a large sample of objects. This trend appears to hold also at harder X-ray energies for brighter radio galaxies (Trussoni et al. 1999a). The non-thermal luminosity of the three detected sources we found is consistent with this correlation. Conversely, the upper limit for 3C 465 is $`4`$ times lower than expected. Concerning the thermal component, elliptical galaxies show a correlation between the coronal X–ray luminosity and the optical magnitude in the $`B`$ band (Fabbiano et al. 1984, Donnelly et al. 1990, Eskridge et al. 1995, Trussoni et al. 1997, Beuing et al. 1999). The thermal luminosities derived for 3C 31 and 3C 270 (as well as the upper limit deduced for 3C 264) are again consistent with this X-ray/optical relation. Only the luminosity of 3C 465 is significantly lower (by a factor $`5`$) than expected.

This overall agreement provides independent support to the validity of our spectral decomposition.

## 3 The HST/NICMOS observations

HST/NICMOS observations are available in the public archive for 3C 264, 3C 270 and NGC 7052. For the first two objects we analyzed images taken with the F110W, F160W and F205W wide band filters (approximatively corresponding to the H, J and K bands, respectively), while for NGC 7052 only F160W images exist.

The targets were observed using NICMOS Camera 2 (0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$075/pixel). The field of view of this 256 $`\times `$ 256 pixels camera is 19$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4 $`\times `$ 19$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4. All observations were carried out with a MULTIACCUM sequence (MacKenty et al. 1997), i.e. the detector is read out non-destructively several times during each integration to facilitate removal of cosmic rays and saturated pixels. The data were re-calibrated using the pipeline software CALNICA v3.0 (Bushouse et al. 1997) and the best reference files in the Hubble Data Archive to produce flux calibrated images. Bad pixels were removed interpolating from values of neighboring pixels. A log of the observations is given in Table 4.

The final images are presented in Fig. 2. While in NGC 7052 the extended dusty disc seen in the optical images is clearly visible, we do not find evidence for circum–nuclear structures in 3C 264 and 3C 270. This is somewhat expected at this longer wavelengths where dust absorption is less efficient, confirming that these discs are associated with dust with small optical depth (e.g. Jaffe et al. 1993). On the other hand, similarly to what found in the optical band, in all targets it is detected a central IR source, whose emission can be now easily isolated from that of the host galaxy. We performed aperture photometry to measure their nuclear fluxes in the different bands (reported in Table 4). Photometric errors are dominated by the accuracy of the NICMOS internal flux calibration, which is within 5%, except in the case of NGC 7052 where the relative error is $`30`$ %.

## 4 The role of absorption in FR I nuclei

As absorption could have significantly affected our measurements in the optical and X–ray bands, and thus in principle alter the inferred SED properties, in this section we carefully examine its possible role.

Photoelectric absorption can be very effective on soft X-rays, and thus measures in this band provide a powerful tool to estimate the (equivalent) column density in neutral hydrogen $`N_\mathrm{H}`$. In 3C 264 the X-ray emission is dominated by a power–law component over the whole ROSAT energy range and its spectrum is sufficiently well determined that we could directly measure a column density which – as already mentioned – is fully consistent with the Galactic one: no significant local absorption is present in this source. This is somewhat expected as 3C 264 is likely to be seen at a small angle from the jet axis (see Table 1) and thus along an unobscured line of sight (within the nuclear region). Conversely, in 3C 31, 3C 270 and 3C 465, the observed X-ray flux is dominated by extended thermal emission which is unaffected by nuclear absorption. The detection in 3C 31 and 3C 270 of non–thermal emission above 1 keV only sets an upper limit of $`N_\mathrm{H}<10^{23}`$ cm-2222This column density corresponds to an attenuation of a factor 100 in the intensity at 2 keV. Note that these results are in agreement with the conclusions of Chiaberge et al. (1999), namely that optically thick material (torii) affects the nuclear emission at most in a minority of FR I. Clearly only X-ray observations at higher spatial resolution, increasing the fraction of nuclear vs extended component, can provide more stringent and valuable estimates of $`N_H`$ in these cases.

Obviously optical images do not directly lead to estimates of absorption. However, the tight linear correlation which exists between the optical (R band) and radio fluxes/luminosities of FR I cores (see Introduction) can set interesting upper limits on the nuclear extinction. In fact, even if the entire dispersion of this correlation (0.4 orders of magnitude) is due unically to foreground dust absorption varying from source to source, the extinction can not exceed $``$ 2 magnitudes. This limit translates into a gas column density of $`N_\mathrm{H}<5\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (assuming a standard gas-to-dust ratio and the extinction curve by Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis 1988), and thus the flux at 1 keV could be depressed at most by a factor of 4 (photoelectric absorption values tabulated by Morrison & McCammon 1983).

Given these upper limits on the exctintion, what would be its effect on the SED properties (and more specifically on the broad band spectral indeces)? As the fluxes in the V band and at 1 keV can be underestimated by a factor $`<10`$ and $`<4`$ respectively, the corresponding (maximum) changes in the spectral indeces are limited to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}<0.20`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{RX}}<0.08`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}<0.15`$ ($`F_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$ 333they are calculated between 5 GHz, 5500 Åand 1 keV (rest frame)). Such uncertainties do not affect significantly our findings and conclusions.

## 5 Spectral Energy Distributions of FR I nuclei

Combining the available data in different energy bands, it is possible to build a SED for the FR I nuclei, isolating for the first time this emission from that of the host galaxy (see Fig. 3 and Table 5). Besides the IR and X–ray data presented in the previous sections, we used HST optical fluxes from CC99 and radio data taken from the literature. In the following we describe the individual SED – always referring to a $`\nu L_\nu `$ representation – and characterize them through the broad band spectral indices, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}`$, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RX}}`$ and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}`$ (the potential effects produced by the presence of local absorption are discussed in the previous Section 4).

$``$ 3C 31. The average radio-to-optical spectral index is $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}=0.79`$ while the optical-to-X–ray one is $`\alpha _{\mathrm{OX}}=1.03`$. These spectral indices imply the presence of a peak in the energy distribution. A better energy coverage or the determination of the optical (or X–ray) spectral slope are necessary in order to better constraint its location.

$``$ 3C 264. Its SED is the better determined in our sample as there are data at radio, infrared and optical frequencies, the X–ray spectrum is also well defined and the absorption is constrained to a negligible value. The energy distribution rises from the radio toward higher frequencies (with an average index $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}=0.63`$) and it is still rising in the IR/optical band, although with a flatter slope. At 1 keV the intensity is 20% larger than in the optical (in $`\nu `$Lν) but the X–ray spectrum is rather steep ($`\alpha _\mathrm{X}`$= 1.45) indicating that the SED has already reached its peak, which must be thus located in the interval $`10^{15}10^{16.5}`$ Hz.

$``$ 3C 270. This SED is characterized by the sharp decline in the IR/optical range described by a spectral index $`\alpha 3.5`$. Clearly dust absorption can play a significant role in producing this rapid decline. However its spectrum in the X–ray band, as also measured by ASCA, indicates that the minimum observed at optical energies is real, although possibly enhanced by the presence of dust. Moreover, its representative point is not located significantly below the radio-optical correlation described by Chiaberge et al. (1999), arguing against an obscuration larger than average.

$``$ 3C 465. After rising from the radio to the optical ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}=0.83`$), the SED of 3C 465 is already falling at higher energies as the X–ray upper limit lies below the optical point. This indicates that also in this case a peak in the emission is reached below the X–ray band, although the poorly determined SED does not allow us to better constrain its location.

$``$ NGC 7052. The average radio-to-optical spectral index is $`\alpha _{\mathrm{RO}}=0.80`$. Contrarely to what seen in 3C 270, the nuclear source in NGC 7052 is (marginally) fainter in the infrared than in the optical band. This indicates that, although the extended disk is seen at the highest inclination ($``$ 70) and has a very large optical depth, the nuclear emission is not significantly affected by dust obscuration. The upper limit derived from the RASS requires a flattening of the SED slope at higher energies.

Summarizing, the nuclear SED of the selected FR I present a wide variety of behaviors. However three common features can be recognized: i) it always rises from the radio to the infrared/optical; ii) no SED can be described as a single power law; iii) for all of the sources with pointed X–ray data the presence of a peak in the emission can be localized at energies lower than soft X–rays.

## 6 Discussion

### 6.1 Comparison of the SED of FR I and BL Lacs

Let us now compare the SED of FR I with those of BL Lacs. Despite of the poor spectral coverage of the FR I SED (somewhat reminiscent of the SED coverage of BL Lac objects in the 80s), it is possible to recognize a qualitative similarity with the SED of blazars, and in particular the likely presence of one broad peak (see Fig. 3). In fact, as discussed in Section 5, the spectra appear to raise from the radio to the IR/optical band, and in all cases - except for NGC 7052 - the X–ray information (flux and/or spectrum) suggest that a peak in the SED occurs at lower energies.

In the specific case of 3C 270 the flat X–ray spectrum is plausibly due to the dominance of a rising Compton component in this band. And interestingly its extremely steep IR-optical spectrum seems to indicate the presence of a minimum, fully consistent with the indications derived from the X–ray spectral shape. Agreement between the hints inferred from the IR/optical and X–ray spectra is also found in the SED of 3C 264 in which the X–rays can be interpreted as the steep high energy cut-off of the synchrotron component.

Clearly, the paucity of spectral information limits any detailed analysis and in particular does not allow us to determine the location of the energy peak precisely enough to identify the ’type’ of blazar putatively hosted in the radio galaxies, except possibly for 3C 270 and 3C 264, which resemble an LBL and HBL, respectively.

Nevertheless, it is possible to profitably use the available data to compare the broad band spectral indices with those of BL Lacs, as shown in Fig. 4 where complete samples of BL Lacs (and FSRQ) are considered 444The separation between LBL and HBL does not univocally correspond to the selection band of BL Lacs (i.e. Radio selected BL Lacs and X-ray selected BL Lacs, RBL and XBL). However, there is a sufficiently large overlap of RBL with LBL (and of XBL with HBL) that we consider the values of spectral indices for RBL and XBL as representative of the respective classes as defined from the SED peak location.. Three out of the four radio galaxies (3C 31, 3C 264 and 3C 465) lie in the area occupied by FSRQ and RBL. Particularly puzzling is the case of 3C 264. In fact this source is observed at a small angle with respect to the jet axis, re-enforcing the view that its nucleus should be rather similar to that of a BL Lac. Furthermore its SED suggests that the putative synchrotron peak is located between the optical and X–ray bands, analogously to HBL, in contrast with its position in the spectral index planes. The fourth source, 3C 270, is located on its own in the upper left corner of the diagrams.

However, as discussed in detail by Chiaberge et al. (2000) relativistic beaming can have strong effects on the position of the source in the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ro}}`$$`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ plane. Due to the shift in energy caused by beaming, these quantitatively depend on the shape of the SED if there are changes in the spectral slope (even in the simplest case in which the degree of beaming does not depend on energy). The transformation law for broad band spectral indices, derived in Chiaberge et al. (2000), is

$$\alpha _{\mathrm{BLLac}}\alpha _{\mathrm{FR}\mathrm{I}}=(\alpha _1\alpha _2)\frac{\mathrm{log}(\delta _{\mathrm{BLLac}}/\delta _{\mathrm{FR}\mathrm{I}})}{\mathrm{log}(\nu _2/\nu _1)},$$

where $`\alpha _1`$, $`\alpha _2`$ are the radio, optical or X-ray spectral indices and $`\delta _{\mathrm{BLLac}}`$, $`\delta _{\mathrm{FR}\mathrm{I}}`$ are the relativistic beaming factors.

For 3C 264 and 3C 270, for which $`\alpha `$ in both the optical and X-ray bands are measured, we can determine “beaming tracks”, i.e. the changes of the broad band spectral indices for increasing Doppler boosting (Fig. 4), adopting $`\alpha _r=0`$. For 3C 264, since the SED slope in the X–ray is steeper than in the IR/optical and radio bands, blue-shifting the SED has the effect of reducing all spectral indices. Its representative point thus moves toward the origin in both the $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`\alpha _{\mathrm{ro}}`$ and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$$`\alpha _{\mathrm{rx}}`$ planes and the beaming track crosses the region in which HBL are located. Similarly, the track of 3C 270 intercepts the region typical of LBL 555As dust absorption can cause an enhancement of the minimum in the IR/optical region of the SED of 3C 270, we also estimated its ‘beaming track’ allowing for the presence of extinction. This turns out to be similar to the case of no absorption.. For both objects, the inconsistency between SED shape and the values of the spectral indices might be thus resolved, once the effects of beaming are properly taken into account.

We note, however, that the beaming factor required in the case of 3C 264 is $`\delta _{\mathrm{BLLac}}/\delta _{\mathrm{FR}\mathrm{I}}10100`$ (the beaming correction for 3C 270 is heavily dependent on possible effects of dust extinction and thus is not quantitatively reliable). As the nuclear luminosity increases as $`\delta ^{p+\alpha }`$ (with $`p=23`$), when seen pole-on 3C 264 would be 3 - 6 orders of magnitude brighter in the optical band (where $`\alpha 1`$ and for $`p=2`$). This is only marginally consistent with the estimates of the ratio between its luminosity and that of BL Lacs of similar extended (isotropic) power, which are only $`10^210^3`$ times brighter (CC99). Furthermore, as discussed in the Introduction the radio luminosity of BL Lacs appears to be univocally connected with their SED. As the nuclear radio luminosity of 3C 264 is $`\nu L_\nu 10^{39.9}`$ erg s-1, if seen pole-on this would increase by $`10^210^4`$ (again for $`p=2`$) reaching values which are typical of LBL and higher than those seen in HBL (Fossati et al. 1998). Chiaberge et al. (2000) found a similar problem when comparing the luminosities of complete samples of FR I and BL Lacs: FR I appear to be overluminous with respect to what is expected by debeaming the BL Lacs emission, modeled with a single emitting component. They suggested that this can be ascribed to a velocity structure within the relativistic jet and that in FR I the emission is dominated by components/regions moving slower than those seen in BL Lacs.

Summarizing, the SED of FR I are qualitatively similar to those of BL Lac objects, supporting the identification of these sources as their mis-oriented counterparts, but their intensity does not seem to be compatible with the simplest model in which we are observing a single beamed emitting component in both classes of objects.

### 6.2 X-ray emission and radio-galaxy orientation

Following the method developed in CC99, we compare the luminosity of FR I nuclei with that of BL Lac objects in the X-ray band. In order to restrict the comparison to objects which potentially belong to the same region of the luminosity function of the FR I/BL Lacs population, we identify BL Lacs whose isotropic properties are similar to those of our radio-galaxies. More specifically, we consider objects whose extended radio luminosity (data taken from Kollgaard et al. 1996) differs by less than a factor of two from each of our FR I. 666 With respect to CC99, we dropped the further requirement of similar host galaxy magnitude since this does not appear to strongly correlate with the nuclear properties neither in BL Lacs nor in FR I. This less restrictive choice enables us to increase the number of BL Lac counterparts for each FR I. We thus selected between 6 and 10 ‘relatives’ for each FR I. Their X–ray fluxes (1 keV rest frame energy, corrected for absorption) and spectral indices in the ROSAT band are taken from Lamer et al. (1996) and Urry et al. (1996). The X-ray nuclear emission of FR I is fainter than that of BL Lacs by a factor which ranges from $``$ 10 up to 3$`\times `$104.

For a given FR I, the X-ray luminosity ratios with respect to the different ‘relative’ BL Lacs present a very large dispersion, of 2 – 3 orders of magnitude, and therefore, contrarely to what is found in the optical band (CC99) we cannot draw any conclusion on whether a trend with orientation is present.

## 7 Summary and future perspectives

We used ROSAT and HST observations to isolate the emission originating from the nuclei of 5 FR I sources with the aim of studying their Spectral Energy Distributions. For the ROSAT PSPC observations, in order to disentangle the nuclear non-thermal emission from that of the host galaxy halo, we performed fits allowing for the presence of both a thermal and a power–law component: in the case of 3C 264 the emission is dominated by a power law spectrum; in 3C 31 and 3C 270 the inclusion of the non–thermal component improves the fit, while this is not required in 3C 465. A nuclear source is clearly seen in the HST/NICMOS infrared images, available for 3 objects.

Combining the measurements in the X-ray and IR band with optical nuclear luminosities derived from HST/WFPC2 images and radio data taken from the literature, we have been able to build for the first time the SED of FR I nuclei.

These indicate the presence of a peak between the IR and the soft X–ray bands, and the X–ray slopes are consistent with the broad band indications. For the two best constrained SED, it is also possible to tentatively classify the FR I nuclei similarly to what is done for BL Lacs, in High and Low Energy Peaked sources. This turns out to agree with that derived from the comparison of the broad band spectral indices once the changes in the SED due to the beaming are properly taken into account. However, the intensity of the nucleus of 3C 264 does not appear to be compatible with the simplest model in which we are observing a single beamed emitting component in both FR I and BL Lacs. The SED of FR I are thus qualitatively (but probably not quantitatively) similar to those of BL Lacs.

The proposed approach of comparing the SED of the parent and beamed population appears to be promising. Better data and energy coverage are clearly required, particularly in the X–ray band, as the spectral shape at these energies is essential in giving clues on the frequency range where most of the synchrotron emission is released and thus in ‘classifying’ FR I sources similarly to what is done for BL Lacs. Both the AXAF and XMM missions will soon provide us with X–ray spectra for large, and especially complete, samples of FR I.

## Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the referee for their useful comments and suggestions. The authors acknowledge the Italian MURST for partial financial support under grant Cofin 98-02-32 and from the Italian Space Agency (ASI). This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY94-07194 (A. Celotti). We wish to thank I. Lehmann for providing the inflight calibrated PSF of the HRI, and W. Brinkmann for allowing us to access to the RASS data on NGC 7052.

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