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# Interstellar X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy of Oxygen, Neon, and Iron with the Chandra LETGS Spectrum of X0614+091.

## 1 Introduction

It has long been acknowledged that X-ray absorption spectroscopy should be a powerful technique to address the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium (ISM). The X-ray band contains the K spectra of all charge states of the abundant elements from C to Fe, so that the X-ray spectrum simultaneously captures these elements regardless of their ionization state. In addition, the X-ray absorption spectrum is sensitive to the physical and chemical properties of the interstellar medium constituents. The wavelengths and shapes of absorption lines and edges sensitively depend on whether the absorbing atoms are free, or bound in molecules, and on whether the atoms are the gas phase or locked in a solid. A first demonstration of the potential of X-ray spectroscopy in this regard was given by Schattenburg and Canizares (1986), who detected absorption by interstellar O and Ne in the Einstein Focal Plane Crystal Spectrometer observations of the Crab nebula, and even found weak evidence for the presence of both neutral and singly ionized O along the line of sight. They also found a hint of the expected narrow $`1s2p`$ absorption line in atomic O.

We obtained a high resolution spectrum of the bright, relatively unabsorbed low-mass X-ray binary X0614+091 with the Low Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer (LETGS) on the Chandra X-ray observatory, hoping to resolve the soft X-ray line emission that was detected with the Einstein SSS (Christian, White, & Swank 1994), and the Solid State Imaging Spectrometers on ASCA (White, Kallman, & Angelini 1997). To our disappointment, we find no evidence for narrow emission lines in the current data, which we take to imply that the discrete emission in this source is time variable. Instead, it turns out that the spectrum of X0614+091 is ideal for interstellar absorption spectroscopy: the source is bright, has a featureless intrinsic continuum, and happens to be behind a column density of interstellar matter such that we have optimum contrast at the O K absorption edge. We detect K shell absorption by interstellar O and Ne, and L shell absorption by Fe.

## 2 Data Analysis

X0614+091 was observed on November 28, 1999, starting at 22:26:07 UT, for 27,390 seconds. The LETGS has been described in Brinkman et al. (1987, 1997), Predehl et al. (1997), and in Brinkman et al. (2000). Our observation used the Low Energy Transmission Grating in conjunction with the High Resolution Camera (HRC-S) microchannel plate detector (Murray et al. 1997). The LETGS has highest sensitivity in the 5–150 Å (0.08–2.5 keV) band, with an approximately constant wavelength resolution of $`0.06`$ Å. The data were processed by the standard Chandra X-ray Center pipeline, and sorted into an image. The spectrum was extracted by placing a rectangular mask along the spectral image and summing the photons in the cross-dispersion direction. Background was determined from rectangular strips parallel to the spectrum, and offset in the cross-dispersion direction. Since we will only be using data at wavelengths less than approximately 30 Å, the use of rectangular masks is adequate.

The location of the centroid of the zero order image was determined, which fixes the zero of the wavelength scale. Pixel numbers were converted to wavelength using the calibration of the wavelength scale derived from the spectrum of Capella (Brinkman et al. 2000). This wavelength scale is currently believed to be accurate to approximately 20 mÅ(status as of May 2000). The residual uncertainties appear to be mainly determined by remaining small systematic distortions of the spectral image by the detector and possibly the effect of line blending. The data were binned in 0.02 Å bins, and the positive and negative spectral orders were added to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio, especially longward of 20 Å. In the present paper, we will not be using absolute fluxes, basing all quantitative conclusions on the shape of the spectrum over narrow spectral ranges only. We therefore ignore the small systematic errors in the absolute fluxes resulting from our reduction procedure, that are associated with spatial variations in the detector efficiency and background rate.

We removed the higher order contributions to the spectrum in the following manner. Starting at the shortest wavelengths, for each wavelength bin $`[\lambda _n,\lambda _{n+1}]`$, we compute the number of counts in the second order by scaling with the ratio of the grating efficiency in order $`m=2`$ to the first-order efficiency, at $`\lambda _n`$. Note that the efficiencies of all other instrument components divide out, with the exception of the detector flat field. These second-order counts are then subtracted from the counts in the interval $`2[\lambda _n,\lambda _{n+1}]`$. The process is repeated for orders up to $`m=6`$; going to higher $`m`$ does not affect the spectrum below 30 Å anymore, because the first order spectrum decreases steeply shortward of 6 Å. We distribute the higher orders counts to be subtracted from the spectrum uniformly over the bins in the wavelength range $`m[\lambda _n,\lambda _{n+1}]`$. This assumption concerning the wavelength distribution of the higher order counts is justified for what is evidently a smooth continuum spectrum, and it avoids the large amplification of noise that would result from choosing a narrower redistribution. It does artifically degrade the resolution of the estimated higher order spectrum, but since the incident spectrum is very smooth we will ignore this inaccuracy here.

Figure 1 shows the spectrum between 5 and 30 Å, background-subtracted and higher orders removed. The background amounts to approximately 1.5–1.8 counts bin-1 over the range 10–40 Å. The cumulative higher order flux equals the first order flux at approximately 26 Å, and exceeds it at longer wavelengths.

As is evident, we detect no significant line emission. Instead, a number of highly significant absorption features are clearly visible in the spectrum. The absorption features appear in both the positive and negative spectral orders, at mutually consistent wavelengths. The features coincide with the K absorption edges in neutral Ne and O, and the L2,3 edges in neutral Fe. The O edge is much deeper than a small edge in the instrument, and is clearly of interstellar origin. In addition, we detect a narrow feature at $`23.5`$ Å, consistent with the wavelength of the expected $`1s2p`$ absorption line in neutral atomic O. All these features are consistent with absorption expected from the ISM. In the following section, we will discuss the interstellar absorption spectrum in detail. The deep edge at 6 Å is instrumental, and comprises the M4,5 edges in the Ir coating of the mirror, and the M4,5 edges in the grating material, Au. In addition, we see the M4,5 edges from Cs and I in the CsI coating of the detector. All relevant instrumental features are indicated in Figure 1.

Work on the calibration of the effective area of the LETGS is still in progress. Currently, the effective area is not known accurately enough across the entire 5–30 Å band to attempt a quantitative characterization of the overall spectrum. However, we note that a very simple continuum model (a constant flux in units photons cm-2 s-1 Å-1, absorbed by an interstellar column density of neutral gas of $`N_\mathrm{H}1.52.0\times 10^{21}`$ cm-1) describes the data to within $``$ 20% across the 5–30 Å band. This implies a total unabsorbed flux in our spectrum of $`F(530\mathrm{\AA })1\times 10^9`$ erg cm-2 s-1. The spectral shape is very similar to that found in previous observations, with Einstein (Christian, White & Swank 1994) and BeppoSAX (Piraino et al. 1999). The total unabsorbed flux is in the middle of the range of fluxes observed with Einstein (when converted to the 0.5–20 keV band quoted by Christian, White, & Swank ), and is virtually equal to that observed with BeppoSAX (when converted to the BeppoSAX 0.1–200 keV band).

## 3 Absorption by Interstellar O, Ne, and Fe

In Figure 2 we show the spectrum in the wavelength range centered on the O K edge. The counting statistical fluctuations in this range of the spectrum amount to approximately 8 counts bin-1 on average, and a cumulative higher order flux of approximately 25 counts bin-1 has been removed. A deep edge and a strong narrow absorption line are readily visible, as well as perhaps some additional structure.

There is some structure in the spectrum due to absorption by O in the UV-Ion Shield (UVIS) on the HRC (Murray et al. 1997). The UVIS comprises a $`800`$ Å layer of Al on a 2750 Å film of polyimide in the central regions of the detector, and a thinner (300 Å) layer of Al at longer wavelengths (beyond $`18`$ Å). The boundary between the thick and thin Al filters is washed out over an approximately 3 Å wide band due to the dithering of the spacecraft, and because the filter is mounted out of focus. The jump in transmission across this region is $`<10`$ %. The detailed transmission characteristics of the UVIS in the region of the C, N, and O edges were determined from measurements of witness samples undertaken at the BESSY synchrotron facility using a plane grating monochromator with a resolving power $`\lambda /\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda 2000`$—approximately twice that of the LETGS in the same spectral regions. We show the absorption expected from the UVIS explicitly in Figure 2. A shallow, narrow absorption feature appears at $`23.3`$ Å, as well as an ’edge’, which gradually rolls over between 22.9 and 23.2 Å, with a relative depth of $`25`$ % (see Figure 2). The narrow feature is most likely due to absorption by O bound to N and C in the polyimide, by the analogue of the $`1s2p`$ transition, while the continuum absorption is due to all O in the UVIS (polyimide and aluminum oxide). Given the stability of the materials, the transmission curve is not expected to have changed since the ground calibration.

The deep narrow resonance at $`23.5`$ Å is undoubtedly due to the $`1s2p`$ absorption line in interstellar monatomic neutral O. Table 1 lists measured and calculated values for the wavelength of this transition. We measured the wavelength from our data by fitting a narrow Lorentzian absorption line, convolved with a Gaussian of width 0.06 Å (FWHM) to represent the response of the LETGS (Brinkman et al. 2000). We find the centroid wavelength to be $`\lambda _0=23.52\pm 0.02`$ Å, where the error represents the 90% confidence range for one parameter of interest. We take the systematic uncertainty in the wavelength scale into account by adding 0.02 Å in quadrature to this uncertainty. As can be seen in Table 1, our value is consistent with modern experiments (even if the published experimental values do not agree with each other).

McLaughlin & Kirby (1998) calculated the detailed K-shell photoabsorption cross section for atomic O using the R-matrix technique. We use their data to model the absorption by interstellar O. Figure 2 shows the absorption by a column density of O atoms of $`N_\mathrm{O}=8\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2. The model spectrum has been shifted by 0.051 Å to match the measured centroid wavelength of the resonance. The continuum model is a simple powerlaw, with interstellar absorption by elements other than O modeled with the cross sections given by Morrison & McCammon (1983). The entire model spectrum is multiplied with the effective area of the LETGS before convolution with the instrument response.

The measured column density of O, $`N_\mathrm{O}8\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2, implies that the absorption line is saturated: the optical depth at line center is $`\tau _040`$ (the line is not resolved by the spectrometer). Unfortunately, that means that the line depth or equivalent width are insensitive to the column density of atomic O. The depth and shape of the K-edge are reasonably well represented by the model, but there appears to be some additional absorption near the edge (22.7–23.0 Å), and there is marginal evidence (3–4$`\sigma `$) for a narrow absorption feature at $`23.4`$ Å, which could be due to absorption by ionized O, or O in molecules or dust.

Wavelengths for the narrow resonance in CO, various iron oxides, and in singly ionized O, are listed in Table 2. As expected, these wavelengths are offset from the wavelength of the resonance in atomic O by a few parts in 500, roughly the ratio of the $`n=2`$ binding energy per valence electron to the $`1s`$ binding energy. We also list the $`1s`$ binding energy for neutral and singly ionized O. There is no obvious absorption edge due to O+ shortward of the neutral O ionization limit, and we place a rough upper limit of $`\tau _{\mathrm{O}^+}<0.2`$ on the optical depth in the O+ continuum. Assuming that the K-shell photoionization cross sections for O and O+ are approximately equal, this implies $`N_{\mathrm{O}^+}<6\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2. It should be noted that the wavelengths for the transitions in O+ listed in Table 2 were obtained from approximate atomic structure calculations, and they could be in error by up to of order 1%, or 0.25 Å.

The wavelengths listed in Table 2 indicate that we can exclude significant absorption by the abundant molecular species CO. This is illustrated in Figure 3, where we show the absorption spectrum due to a column density $`N_{\mathrm{CO}}=2\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2, in addition to an atomic column density of $`N_\mathrm{O}=6\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2. The cross section for CO was taken from Barrus et al. (1979). This combination of column densities was chosen for illustrative purposes only; it produces almost the same continuum absorption as $`N_\mathrm{O}=8\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2 of pure atomic absorption, but produces a strong CO resonance feature near 23.2 Å, which is not observed. This absence allows us to place a rough upper limit on the column density of O in CO, of approximately $`<5\times 10^{16}`$ CO molecules cm-2, as judged by eye. The statistical quality of the spectrum probably does not warrant a more complicated quantitative analysis in this respect.

Interestingly, the feature near 23.4 Å coincides with measured wavelengths for the narrow resonance in iron oxides. Wu et al. (1997) give the relative shapes of the O K-absorption spectra in various iron oxides. In addition to the narrow feature at 23.4 Å, the oxides also have deep, broad continuum absorption, with maximum absorption in the range 22.8–23.0 Å. We estimate the depth of the narrow feature to be roughly $`\tau _00.51.0`$. Again, the noise in the data has large enough amplitude that a full quantitative statistical analysis is not warranted. Unfortunately, we are not aware of any quantitative measurements or calculations for the absolute magnitude of the photoabsorption cross section in iron oxide. But if we assume that the total absorption cross section, integrated over the resonance, has the same value as for atomic O, and that the line is unresolved, then this line depth correponds to an equivalent column density of O atoms of $`N_\mathrm{O}12\times 10^{16}`$ cm-2. Given the cosmic abundance ratio of Fe to O, $`n(\mathrm{Fe})/n(\mathrm{O})=5.5\times 10^2`$ (Anders & Grevesse 1989), this result would imply that a major fraction (up to half) of the Fe could be in oxides.

Figure 4 shows the wavelength range between 13 and 19 Å on an expanded scale. In this range are the K edge of Ne, and the L edges of Fe. Background is negligibly small compared to the first order flux in this region of the spectrum. The average level of the higher order radiation amounts to 20–30 counts bin-1. We have indicated the locations of the Fe L1,2,3 edges, taken from Fuggle & Mårtensson (1980, quoted in Williams 1986; these are binding energies relative to the Fermi level). The L2,3 edges are clearly visible in the spectrum. The L1 ($`2s`$) edge is expected to be much weaker than the $`2p`$ edges, and is indeed not detected. The Fe L edges are well-separated from the instrumental Cs M4,5 edges, which are expected to appear in emission (they appear in emission in the featureless continuum spectrum of the quasar 3C273, see Kaastra et al. 2000). The Fe absorption could be due to metallic iron, iron in molecules, or both. Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate detailed measured absorption cross sections for metallic Fe in the literature.

Crocombette et al. (1995) give experimental and theoretical $`2p`$ absorption spectra for iron oxides (FeO, Fe2O3, Fe3O4), which we have scaled and superimposed on the data in Fig. 4. The general shape of the oxide absorption spectrum is similar to that observed here, except that the measured wavelengths are significantly longer than those observed in our spectrum (by approximately 0.2 Å, for all three oxides). We note that a comparison of the positive and negative spectral orders in this limited region seems to indicate a mismatch of about 0.08 Å. The Fe $`2p`$ features as they appear in Figure 4 are at the average of the positive and negative orders. We caution that this mismatch is larger than any of the wavelength residuals observed in the emission lines in the spectrum of Capella, but it may just be a statistical fluctuation. Taken at face value, the wavelength offset between the Fe oxide absorption spectrum and the Fe $`2p`$ absorption spectrum observed in our data indicates that (most of) the interstellar absorption is not due to Fe oxides, and in fact is consistent with the expected wavelengths for absorption in metallic Fe ! This is not consistent with our tentative conclusion from the analysis of the O spectrum that a major fraction of the Fe along this line of sight may be in oxides. A possible explanation is that there is a systematic error on the wavelength scale used by Crocombette et al. (1995), but we are unfortunately in no position to judge the likelihood of this possibility, except to note that the wavelength discrepancy appears large by laboratory experimental standards. In view of the possible small distortion of our wavelength scale, we choose to leave this issue open for now.

Finally, analysis of the Ne K edge is relatively straightforward. We use the cross section given by Verner et al. (1993) to derive a column density of neutral Ne of $`N_{\mathrm{Ne}}=1.0\times 10^{18}`$ cm-2, with an estimated uncertainty of about 20%. There is some confusion about the exact ionization energy. Verner et al. (1993) give a wavelength of 14.45 Å for the edge, while Cardona & Ley (1978, quoted in Williams 1986) give 14.25 Å. In our data, the edge actually appears approximately halfway between these two values. There also appears to be some additional structure, a narrow absorption feature at 14.45 Å. This cannot be due to a narrow $`1s2p`$ resonance in neutral Ne, because neutral Ne has a closed $`n=2`$ shell. A narrow $`1s2p`$ absorption line in singly ionized Ne is technically possible. Kaastra & Mewe (1993) list 14.38 Å for the wavelength of the $`1s2p`$ transition in Ne+, which has a systematic uncertainty of order 1%. However, we do not observe a Ne+ $`1s`$ ionization edge, for which Verner et al. (1993) list a wavelength of 14.04 Å. Alternatively, the feature could be the $`1s3p`$ transition in neutral Ne (compare the K absorption spectrum of neutral Ar in Parratt 1939). Unfortunately, we are not aware of any experimentally determined wavelengths for the K spectrum of Ne+0 or Ne+1. In either case, the total depth of the K edge is a reasonable measure of the total column density of Ne along the line of sight.

## 4 Discussion

We have measured the X-ray absorption spectrum of the interstellar medium along the line of sight to the Low-Mass X-ray Binary X0614+091. We detect the K-absorption spectra of Ne and O, and the L absorption spectrum of Fe. The spectra are of sufficiently high resolution and sensitivity that they are sensitive in principle to the physical and chemical state of the ISM. However, our ability to extract the full measure of quantitative information from our data is limited in important respects by the current lack of accurate laboratory measurements or reliable calculations of transition wavelengths and absorption cross sections for the various ions and molecular species of the abundant elements.

The following conclusions are robust, however. We measure a total interstellar oxygen column density of $`N_\mathrm{O}=8\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2, a fraction of which may be in ionized O or O bound in molecular gas, oxides, or dust. We find that this bound or ionized O cannot all be in CO. We set an upper limit on the fraction of O in CO of $`N_{\mathrm{CO}}/N_\mathrm{O}<0.06`$. Instead, the shape of the spectrum appears consistent with the presence of a significant amount of iron oxide, but this conclusion is not unique, given the limited amount of laboratory comparison spectroscopy. If the narrow resonance feature at $`23.3`$ Å is indeed due to iron oxide, we estimate an equivalent column density of O in iron oxide of $`N_\mathrm{O}12\times 10^{16}`$ cm-2, i.e. a fraction $`13\times 10^2`$ of the atomic O along the line of sight, which would be bound to a major fraction of the available iron.

We measure a total Ne column density of $`N_{\mathrm{Ne}}=1.0\times 10^{18}`$ cm-2, which may contain an uncertain fraction of singly ionized Ne. This implies an abundance ratio O/Ne $`0.8`$, whereas the solar ratio is 6.0 (Anders & Grevesse 1989). The optical depth in the O edge may have been underestimated if we did not subtract enough higher order flux at the O edge. While there are some uncertainties in the calibration of the diffraction efficiencies in the various grating orders, and while we have neglected spatial variations in the detector efficiency, it is unlikely that we have underestimated the depth of the O edge by a factor 6. The discrepancy is also far too large to be ascribed to uncertainties in the photoabsorption cross sections of either O or Ne, which typically run at 20–30 % or less.

A possible astrophysical explanation for the relative shallowness of the O edge would be that a major fraction of the interstellar O along this line of sight is in fact locked up in optically thick dust grains. However, this appears implausible, because it would require the dust grains to have an average size of order $`1\mu `$m or larger, whereas the characteristic size of galactic dust grains is closer to 0.1 $`\mu `$m, as derived directly from X-ray scattering by interstellar dust (Mauche & Gorenstein 1986; Predehl & Klose 1996). The only other published X-ray absorption spectrum around the O K edge in fact indicates that the dust grains must be transparent to soft X-rays (Schattenburg & Canizares 1986).

In fact, it appears that Ne may be overabundant, instead of O being underabundant. If we convert the measured column densities to equivalent H column densities using cosmic abundances, we find $`N_\mathrm{H}9\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 from the O column density, and $`N_\mathrm{H}8\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 from the Ne column density. The latter figure is a factor 4–6 larger than the H column density we infer from the overal shape of the spectrum (see section 2), whereas the H column density implied by the O column is within a factor of about 2 of that estimate.

In principle, this apparent overabundance of Ne could be associated with absorbing gas in the binary (a large overabundance of Ne in the general ISM appears very unlikely), or with gas blown out of the binary system. In this context, it is perhaps interesting to note that at least one other low-mass X-ray binary, 4U1627-67, has also shown a large apparent overabundance of Ne. In the case of 4U1627-67, this inference is based on the presence of a very bright Ne X Ly$`\alpha `$ emission line in the X-ray emission spectrum observed with ASCA (Angelini et al. 1995). For now, we defer interpretation of the apparent overabundance of Ne in the absorption spectrum of X0614+091 until after more astrophysical X-ray absorption spectra have become available.

For a Low-Mass X-ray Binary, X0614+091 is located in a somewhat unusual direction: $`l_{\mathrm{II}}=200.9`$ deg, $`b_{\mathrm{II}}=3.4`$ deg, i.e. more or less in the direction of the galactic anticenter, a few degrees below the galactic plane. The distance to X0614+091 has been constrained to $`d<3`$ kpc, from the requirement that the inferred peak luminosity during an X-ray burst not exceed the Eddington limit (Brandt et al. 1992). From the reddening of the optical counterpart, Machin et al. (1990) conclude that the source is at least $`1.5`$ kpc away, so that it is located either just at the near edge of the Perseus arm, or inside or behind it (see the recent spiral pattern map in Taylor & Cordes 1993, their Figure 1). Given the fairly low column density of $`N_\mathrm{H}=12\times 10^{21}`$ cm -2, most of the absorption is likely to occur in the low-density environment between the spiral arms, however. The upper limit to the CO column density is not suprising in that case. Note that this region of the sky is just outside the coverage in the deep CO survey of the third galactic quadrant (May et al. 1993). If the source is indeed located on the near side of the Perseus arm, the possible detection of iron oxides, signaling the presence of a non-negligible amount of dust in the interarm region, may be interesting.

We gratefully acknowledge conversations with Jacqueline van Gorkom, and a very thorough and helpful reading by the anonymous referee. FP acknowledges support from NASA under contract NAS5-31429.

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# HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 1footnote 11footnote 1Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

During the last two decades a large amount of information about globular cluster systems (GCSs) in other galaxies has been collected. One of the most remarkable findings is the apparent constancy of the globular cluster luminosity function (GCLF), which is nearly always well fitted by a Gaussian-like function with a turn-over magnitude ($`M_{\mathrm{TO}}`$) at $`M_V7.5`$ plus/minus a few tenths of a magnitude at most (Harris, 1999) and a dispersion of $`\sigma _V1.2`$. Thus, the GCLF has gained much potential as a distance indicator. Note that the GCLF is Gaussian in magnitude units. When plotted in luminosity units it is well represented as a composite of two power-laws with a change in slope at a luminosity roughly corresponding to the turn-over magnitude (Harris and Pudritz, 1994).

Another intriguing discovery is that many GCSs have bimodal color distributions, generally thought to represent GC populations of different metallicities and/or ages. Recent studies (Gebhardt and Kissler-Patig, 1999; Kundu, 1999) have shown this to be a very common phenomenon, providing evidence that many galaxies must have had several distinct episodes of star formation. The GCSs of a few galaxies such as M87 and NGC 1399 have even been suggested to contain three metallicity peaks (Lee and Geisler, 1993). A number of scenarios have been suggested to account for the presence of several cluster populations in galaxies. These include formation of the metal-rich population by gas-rich mergers (Ashman and Zepf, 1992), in late stages of a multi-phase collapse (Forbes, Brodie and Grillmair, 1997), or accretion of the metal-poor population in giant ellipticals from less luminous galaxies (Côté, Marzke and West, 1998; Hilker, Infante and Richtler, 1999). However, no single theory can be said to satisfactorily account for all observed properties of globular cluster systems in different galaxies and the final answer may possibly lie in a combination of the above and/or other scenarios. A thorough discussion of various formation scenarios is given in van den Bergh (2000).

In spite of the advances and the vast amount of data collected, many fundamental questions about the properties of GCSs still remain to be answered. One of the most elusive problems has been to explain the constancy of the GCLF turn-over and it is still debated whether the LF of old GCSs can be explained by dynamical evolution from the power-law luminosity distribution that is observed in young cluster systems in mergers and starburst galaxies (Elmegreen and Efremov, 1997; Whitmore et al., 1999; Zhang and Fall, 1999; Fritze–v. Alvensleben, 1999). In this respect it is important to study the faint wing of the GCLF ($`M_V>7.5`$) where the effects of dynamical evolution would be most pronounced. For most galaxies this remains a difficult task even with HST photometry, so although the turn-over magnitude may indeed be universal, much less is known about whether or not the shape of the GCLF is really constant, especially to fainter magnitudes.

In this paper we report the results of a study of star clusters in the nearby SB0 galaxy NGC 1023. The generic term “star clusters” is here preferred to “globular clusters” for reasons that will become apparent later. We adopt a distance modulus of $`mM=29.97\pm 0.14`$, measured using planetary nebulae (Ciardullo, Jacoby and Harris, 1991) and consistent with the HST Cepheid distance of another member of the same group, NGC 925 ($`mM=29.84\pm 0.16`$, Silbermann et al. 1996). The GCLF turn-over is thus expected to be at $`V22.5`$, bright enough that we can reach at least two magnitudes below it with our HST data and probe the faint end of the GCLF. At the distance of NGC 1023, 1″ corresponds to 48 pc, so objects with sizes of a few pc (typical for globular clusters in the Milky Way and other galaxies) will appear relatively well resolved and good estimates of their sizes can be obtained. For the interstellar absorption towards NGC 1023 we adopt $`E(\mathrm{B V})=0.061`$ (Schlegel et al., 1998), corresponding to $`E(VI)=0.10`$ and $`A_V=0.19`$ (Cardelli, Clayton and Mathis, 1989). This is very similar to the $`E(\mathrm{B V})=0.06`$ found by Kinman et al. (1982), as well as to the $`A_B`$ value of 0.27 (equivalent to $`E(\mathrm{B V})=0.066`$) given in the RC3 catalogue.

NGC 1023 is included in Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (Arp, 1966) because of a small eastern companion, NGC 1023A. On optical images NGC 1023A looks like an extension of the main galaxy to the E, but its U B color is noticeably bluer than that of NGC 1023 itself and implies that active star formation has proceeded in the companion until $`200`$ Myr ago (Capaccioli et al., 1986). NGC 1023 is known to be rich in HI gas, possibly associated with the companion, and HI maps (Sancisi et al., 1984) show that the highest concentration of HI gas in the NGC 1023 system is indeed coincident with the location of NGC 1023A. The radial velocity of the HI gas near NGC 1023A is also consistent with the gas being associated with NGC 1023A (Capaccioli et al., 1986). Much of the remaining gas forms a ring-like structure around NGC 1023. Several other dwarf galaxies are known near NGC 1023 (Davies and Kinman, 1984) and it seems plausible that the ongoing accretion of NGC 1023A may just be the most recent of several similar events that have taken place in the past. Such interactions could have had significant impacts on the star- and cluster formation history of NGC 1023 itself.

## 2 Data

WFPC2 images in the F555W and F814W filters were obtained in Cycle 6 for two pointings in NGC 1023, one with the Planetary Camera (PC) centered on the galaxy nucleus and another further to the East (Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.). For both pointings the total integration time in each filter was 2400 sec, split into two integrations.

The two exposures for each pointing in each of the F555W and F814W filters were combined using the IRAF imcombine task with the reject option set to crreject, eliminating Cosmic Ray events. Prior to photometric analysis, we removed large-scale background variations by a two-step process: First, the images were smoothed with a $`15\times 15`$ box median filter and the smoothed images were then subtracted from the original set. Objects were detected on this first preliminary set of background-subtracted images using the daofind task in the DAOPHOT package (Stetson, 1987) and the detected objects were subtracted from the original images using the ishape algorithm (Larsen, 1999). ishape is capable of dealing with extended objects of varying sizes, in contrast to e.g. the substar task in DAOPHOT. The object-subtracted images were smoothed as before, resulting in a set of images with all small-scale variations removed, which were then subtracted from the original images to produce our final set of background-subtracted images for further analysis.

Input object lists for photometry were produced by running daofind on the background-subtracted images in both of the F555W and F814W bands and matching the two lists. As an additional selection criterion, the background noise was measured directly on the image in an annulus around each object and only objects with a S/N $`>3`$ in both F555W and F814W within an aperture radius of 2 pixels were accepted. In this way we accounted for the varying background noise within the image.

Photometry was then obtained using the phot task in DAOPHOT. Because the difference between aperture corrections in different filters is quite independent of object size (Holtzman et al., 1996; Larsen, 1999, see also Sect. 2.1), we used a small aperture radius ($`r=2`$ pixels) for $`VI`$ colors. Selection of the aperture for $`V`$ magnitudes represented a more difficult compromise between eliminating systematic and random errors, but we found an $`r=3`$ pixels aperture to be a reasonable choice. The calibration to $`V`$ and $`I`$ band magnitudes was done following the procedure described in Holtzman et al. (1995).

A second run of ishape was also performed in order to get intrinsic sizes for all objects detected in the second pass. The HST PSF was modeled using the TinyTim simulator (Krist and Hook, 1997) and King profiles with concentration parameter $`c=30`$ were assumed for the cluster profile models. Here $`c`$ is the ratio between tidal and core radius. ishape produced estimates of the FWHM of each cluster, which were then converted to half-light radii. The ishape modeling also included convolution with the WFPC2 diffusion kernel.

In order to test the reliability of the cluster sizes we added artificial objects, generated by convolving the TinyTim PSF with King profiles of various FWHM values, to the NGC 1023 images. The sizes of the artificial objects were then remeasured using ishape. Repeating this experiment for artificial objects of different magnitudes, we found that the input cluster sizes could be reproduced with an accuracy of about $`\pm `$ 30% down to $`V=24`$.

As a further check of ishape we compared our FWHM values with the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{0.53}`$ index, originally defined by Schweizer et al. (1996) and since then used by many authors to measure sizes of extended objects on HST images. Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. shows the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{0.53}`$ values versus FWHM estimates by ishape for objects with $`V<24`$. A quite good, although not linear correlation exists, giving confidence to the cluster sizes measured by ishape. We also checked the ishape cluster sizes from F555W and F814W images against each other, again providing excellent agreement.

Because of possible systematic differences between aperture corrections and object sizes measured on the PC and WF camera chips, and because of the very high surface brightness in the central parts of NGC 1023, we only considered objects in the WF chips. Inspection by eye revealed at most $`10`$ cluster candidates on the PC chip of the central pointing down to the detection limit.

### 2.1 Aperture corrections

In order to measure $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{25}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{35}`$ aperture corrections for extended sources from the $`r=2`$ and $`r=3`$ pixels apertures to the Holtzman et al. (1995) $`r=5`$ pixels reference aperture, we convolved the TinyTim PSF with King $`c=30`$ and MOFFAT15 (Larsen, 1999) profiles of different FWHM values. The aperture corrections were then obtained by carrying out aperture photometry on the convolved model profiles, measuring the differences in the fluxes through various apertures. The experiment was carried out for a number of different FWHM values for the model profiles, ranging between 0.1 and 2.0 pixels (0.5 – 10 pc at the assumed distance of NGC 1023). The FWHM can be converted to effective radii ($`R_\mathrm{e}`$) by multiplying with 1.48 for the King $`c=30`$ profiles and by 1.13 for the MOFFAT15 profiles.

The aperture corrections measured in this way are listed in Table 1 for the F555W band and for the difference F555W–F814W. In addition to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{25}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{35}`$ corrections between the $`r=5`$ reference aperture and the apertures used for our photometry, Table 1 also lists aperture corrections from $`r=5`$ to $`r=30`$ pixels.

Not surprisingly, the aperture corrections in F555W depend strongly on object size. For point sources the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{35}`$(F555W) correction is $`0.060`$ mag, increasing to $`0.15`$ for a King $`c=30`$ profile with FWHM=0.50 pixels and reaching $`0.43`$ mag for FWHM=2.0 pixels. For a given FWHM, the aperture corrections for the MOFFAT15 profiles are somewhat smaller than for the King $`c=30`$ profiles because a larger fraction of the flux is contained in the wings of the King $`c=30`$ profile. For a King profile with a smaller concentration parameter, the aperture corrections would be smaller for any given FWHM.

A correction of $`0.1`$ mag from the $`r=5`$ pixels aperture to infinity is implicit in the standard calibration procedure, in good agreement with our results for point sources listed in Table 1. According to Holtzman et al. (1995), this correction is nearly independent of the choice of filter, small changes in telescope focus etc. However, for extended objects a larger fraction of the light falls outside the $`r=5`$ aperture, amounting to an error of about $`0.4`$ mag for a FWHM of 2 pixels ($`R_\mathrm{e}=14`$ pc) if no correction is applied.

Although the aperture corrections in one filter depend strongly on object size, colors can be measured with much better precision. For point sources we find an aperture correction $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{25}`$(F555W–F814W) of 0.031 mag for the $`VI`$ colors, in good agreement with other authors (Puzia et al., 1999; Whitmore et al., 1997). The correction depends only weakly on the object size, implying that systematic errors in $`VI`$ color are small ($`0.01`$ mag) even for objects with effective radii up to $`15`$ pc. This remains true also when the correction from $`r=5`$ to infinity is considered, which is constant within the uncertainties. The $`VI`$ aperture corrections from $`r=5`$ to $`r=30`$ given in Table 1 are, strictly speaking, only valid for the idealized case where the background level can be determined with high precision. In practice, small uncertainties in the background determination and in the object profiles will generally overshadow the small changes in the $`VI`$ aperture corrections from $`r=5`$ to infinity as a function of object size.

Considering that Milky Way globular clusters typically have $`R_\mathrm{e}3`$ pc (Harris, 1996), we adopted an $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{35}`$(F555W) aperture correction of $`0.14`$ mag. This aperture correction is probably accurate to about 0.1 mag for objects with intrinsic $`R_\mathrm{e}5`$ pc, but larger objects will be systematically too faint by up to several tenths of a magnitude. The total $`V`$ error for an $`R_\mathrm{e}=14`$ pc object will amount to about 0.7 mag. For $`VI`$ we use a correction of 0.026, which should lead to systematic errors of no more than about 0.01 mag or so.

### 2.2 Completeness

Because of the relatively small distance, clusters in NGC 1023 appear quite well resolved on our HST images. This requires that special attention be paid to completeness corrections and their dependence on the angular extent of the objects. We carried out completeness tests by adding synthetically generated objects to the science frames and checking how many of the artificial objects were recovered by a subsequent photometry run as a function of magnitude. The tests were repeated for a number of different object sizes, using the TinyTim PSF convolved with King profiles of FWHM ranging between 0.25 and 2 pixels, corresponding to $`R_\mathrm{e}=1.814.2`$ pc.

The results of the completeness tests are shown in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. The 50% completeness limit for point sources (i.e., the pure TinyTim PSF) is at $`V26.2`$, but for more extended objects the curves shift rapidly to the left in the diagram, indicating that the 50% limit for objects with $`R_\mathrm{e}=14`$ pc is at $`V24.5`$, about two magnitudes brighter than for point sources.

The curves in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. represent the average completeness functions for each field. However, the completeness also depends on the background level. Because the background level increases strongly towards the center of NGC 1023, a radial dependence may be expected for the completeness functions. In order to test this, we performed another set of completeness tests by adding artificial objects to a number of purely synthetic images with different background levels, including photon shot noise as well as a contribution from “read-out noise” in the synthetic images. This allowed us to check how the completeness functions depend on the background level and, by comparison with the surface brightness profile of NGC 1023, on the distance from the center of the galaxy. Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. shows the 50% completeness limit obtained from these tests as a function of distance $`D`$ from the center of NGC 1023 along the major axis, for objects with $`R_\mathrm{e}=2`$ pc, 7 pc and 14 pc. From these tests we expect the 50% completeness limit to be below $`V=24`$ for objects with $`R_\mathrm{e}<14`$ pc at $`D20\mathrm{}`$.

Note that the $`x`$-axes in Figs. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. and HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. refer to the synthetic input magnitudes which, for extended objects, will be somewhat brighter than the magnitudes actually measured in our $`r=3`$ pixels aperture. Therefore, since extended objects are actually brighter than they appear, the detection of extended objects with a given apparent magnitude will be more efficient than what appears from the curves in Figs. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. and HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555..

## 3 Results

Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. shows a $`(VI)_0,V`$ color-magnitude diagram for all objects detected in the two WFPC2 pointings down to $`V=25`$, corrected for Galactic foreground extinction. Below $`V=25`$ the photometric errors become very large, exceeding 0.20 in $`VI`$ so we do not consider objects fainter than this limit. For further analysis we selected globular cluster (GC) candidates as objects in the color interval $`0.75<(VI)_0<1.40`$ (dashed lines) and $`20<V<25`$, resulting in a total of 221 GC candidates.

### 3.1 Colors and sizes: three cluster populations?

Already a casual inspection of the color-magnitude diagram in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. reveals a clearly bimodal color distribution. A homoscedastic KMM test (Ashman, Bird and Zepf, 1994) confirms bimodality at the $`>99.9\%`$ confidence level with peaks at $`(VI)_0=0.93`$ and $`(VI)_0=1.19`$ for the sample of GC candidates, corresponding to metallicities of \[Fe/H\] =$`1.5`$ and \[Fe/H\] =$`0.6`$ (Kissler-Patig et al., 1998). The KMM test assigns 45.7% of the objects to the blue peak and 54.3% to the red one. As a formal dividing line between “blue” and “red” clusters we adopt $`(VI)_0=1.05`$.

Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. shows the sizes as a function of $`(VI)_0`$ color for cluster candidates brighter than $`V=24`$ (145 objects). Histograms of the $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ distributions for red ($`(VI)_0<1.05`$) and blue clusters ($`(VI)_0>1.05`$) are in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. The size distribution of blue GC candidates peaks at $`R_\mathrm{e}2`$ pc, while the scatter in the size distribution for the red GC candidates is much larger with a peak at $`R_\mathrm{e}1`$ pc and a tail extending up to $`R_\mathrm{e}15`$ pc. For the most compact sources, the effective radii are not very sensitive to the specific choice of model profile (Larsen, 1999). However, for the more extended sources the derived $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ values depend on the adopted model profiles. If we use MOFFAT15 instead of King $`c=30`$ models the sizes of clusters larger than $`R_\mathrm{e}5`$ pc are reduced by roughly 25%, while the $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ values for the compact GCs remain essentially unaffected. The numbers given throughout this paper are based on King $`c=30`$ models.

Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. suggests a division of the clusters into two groups based on their sizes, splitting at $`R_\mathrm{e}=7`$ pc or so. In the following, we thus distinguish between “compact” and “extended” objects as objects with $`R_\mathrm{e}<7`$ pc and $`R_\mathrm{e}7`$ pc, respectively. This results in 116 and 29 objects being assigned to the compact and extended groups. The exact size cut is of little importance; if we had used 5 pc instead of 7 pc then the number of compact and extended objects would have been 111 and 34. Leaving out the extended objects and re-running the KMM test, the color distribution is still bimodal at the $`>99.9`$% confidence level and the two peaks are now at $`(VI)_0=0.92`$ and $`(VI)_0=1.15`$. Just taking the average colors of the blue and and red clusters gives $`(VI)_0=0.92`$ and $`(VI)_0=1.17`$, in excellent agreement with the KMM estimates. The relative numbers of blue and red objects are now 57.5% and 42.5%, confirming that a larger fraction of the red objects have $`R_\mathrm{e}>7`$ pc.

The average sizes of blue and red compact clusters are 2.0 pc and 1.7 pc, while the median sizes are 1.8 and 1.1 pc, respectively. Even for objects in the “compact” category, there is a significant tail up to $`R_\mathrm{e}5`$ pc for both blue and red clusters. This is no different from our own Galaxy (van den Bergh, 1996) and similar size distributions have also been noted in a number of other galaxies (Kundu, 1999).

Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. shows a color-magnitude diagram for the same objects as in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555., but now with symbol sizes proportional to the object sizes derived by ishape. For a few objects (mostly faint ones with $`V>24`$) the ishape fits failed to converge and hence such objects do not appear in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. Very compact objects with $`R_\mathrm{e}0.2`$ pc (presumably foreground stars) scatter all over the diagram and are not very numerous. The extended red objects are clearly fainter than the compact red objects, most of them having $`V>23`$, and appear to constitute a separate population, distinct from the normal globular clusters in NGC 1023.

The fact that clusters larger than about 7 pc are predominantly red and faint is also demonstrated by Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. which shows the cluster $`V`$ magnitudes as a function of their sizes. Red clusters are shown with plus markers and blue clusters with triangles. The plot contains a few large blue objects fainter than $`V=24`$, but the size estimates become increasingly uncertain below $`V=24`$ and some of these objects may well be contaminating background galaxies. Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. is qualitatively quite similar to the corresponding plots for globular clusters in the Milky Way (Fig. 1 in van den Bergh (1996)). Note, however, that the large clusters in our own galaxy are predominantly metal-poor while the opposite seems to be the case in NGC 1023 (assuming that a red color indicates high metallicity). Also, the large clusters are much more numerous in NGC 1023.

### 3.2 Comparison field

To check the contamination by foreground and background objects we obtained photometry for a comparison field located about 2 degrees from NGC 1023, using HST archive data (proposal ID 6254, PI: E. Groth). The comparison data consist of $`2\times 1300`$ s integrations in each of the F606W and F814W filters and should thus be roughly as deep as our NGC 1023 data, except for the wider bandpass of the F606W filter and the lower background far from NGC 1023. Both effects will tend to make the comparison data more complete at faint magnitudes than our NGC 1023 data.

The $`VI`$ color-magnitude diagram for the comparison field is shown in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. Without applying any size cut, the comparison field contains 16 objects in the color-magnitude range that confines our GC candidates, i.e. $`0.75<VI<1.40`$ and $`20<V<25`$. Since our NGC 1023 dataset consists of two pointings, we may thus expect about 32 contaminating objects out of the total number of 221 GC candidates. However, most of the contaminating objects are quite faint and for $`V<24`$ we find only 5 objects in the comparison field in the GC candidate color range. Of these, 3 fall into the blue category and 2 in the red. Contamination is thus expected to be a minor problem above $`V24`$. Comparison of Figs. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. and HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. also shows that objects outside the GC color range can be easily explained as foreground and/or background sources.

### 3.3 Spatial distributions

The spatial distributions of different object types are illustrated in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555., which shows contours of an optical image of NGC 1023 (from the Digital Sky Survey) overlaid with our WFPC2 pointings. The two upper panels show the distribution of red (left) and blue (right) compact objects. The lower left panel shows the faint extended objects with $`R_\mathrm{e}>7`$ pc, and the lower right panel contains all objects in the three other panels added together. Since size information is used in producing these plots, all objects are brighter than $`V=24`$.

The spatial distributions of compact and extended objects clearly differ. The extended sources are not nearly as concentrated towards the center of the galaxy and appear to be associated with the disk of NGC 1023. The high degree of alignment with the isophotes of NGC 1023 makes it unlikely that they are background sources like, for example, a distant galaxy cluster. Even for the extended objects, our data are expected to be more than 50% complete for $`V<24`$ (Sect. 2.2) except at distances smaller than about $`20\mathrm{}`$ from the nucleus of NGC 1023 along the major axis. This corresponds roughly to the edge of the PC chip (the small boxes in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.) and it is therefore clear that completeness effects cannot explain the observed differences in the radial distributions of various object types.

Among the compact GCs, we note that the distribution of red clusters seems to be more flattened than that of blue ones. A similar result was found for NGC 3115 by Kundu and Whitmore (1998) who suggested that the red (metal-rich) GCs are associated with a thick-disk like population, while the blue (metal-poor) clusters are halo objects.

### 3.4 Luminosity distributions

The luminosity functions for the different object types are shown in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. The overall appearance of the luminosity distributions for compact objects appears to be consistent with a maximum at $`V22.3`$, roughly as expected for a “standard” Gaussian GCLF. Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. shows the luminosity functions of red and blue objects in the comparison field. We remind the reader that the luminosity functions in Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. should be multiplied by a factor of 2 (only one comparison field but two science fields) before comparison with Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. For both the red and blue objects, significant contamination clearly sets in below $`V=24`$ and many of the excess faint red objects in NGC 1023 (relative to the standard GCLF) below this magnitude are likely contaminants.

We carried out maximum-likelihood fits of Gaussian and Student’s $`t_5`$ functions (Secker, 1992) to the luminosity functions of objects with $`V<24`$. Incompleteness effects are expected to be negligible (especially for compact objects) above this magnitude limit, which is $`1.5`$ mag below the expected turn-over and we should thus be able to obtain quite robust estimates of the parameters ($`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)`$ and $`\sigma _V`$) of the GCLFs. The results are listed in Table 2 for red and blue compact clusters separately, for the combined sample of red and blue clusters, and for all cluster candidates including the extended red objects. A Gaussian fit yields $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.37_{7.09}^{7.50}`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.58_{7.36}^{7.72}`$ for the red and blue clusters, respectively, while the dispersions are $`\sigma _V=0.97_{0.89}^{1.25}`$ and $`1.12_{1.03}^{1.33}`$. If red and blue clusters are fitted simultaneously we get $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.48_{7.32}^{7.59}`$ and $`\sigma _V=1.07_{1.00}^{1.24}`$. Fitting a $`t_5`$ function we get nearly the same turn-over magnitudes and, as expected (Secker, 1992), somewhat narrower dispersions.

Within the error bars, the turn-over magnitudes and dispersions of the red and blue GCs are thus compatible with a standard GCLF, although the red GCs formally appear to have a somewhat narrower dispersion and a slightly fainter turn-over magnitude. The fact that the red GCs tend to have fainter turn-over magnitudes than blue ones has also been noted in other galaxies like e.g. NGC 3115 (Kundu and Whitmore, 1998). We also used a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (Lindgren, 1962) to test how well the data are actually fitted by the Gaussian and $`t_5`$ functions, as indicated by the $`P`$ values in Table 2. $`P`$ gives the probability that the data are drawn from parent distributions with the specified parameters. The blue compact clusters are very well fitted by both the Gaussian ($`P=0.991`$) and the $`t_5`$ function ($`P=0.999`$), with the $`t_5`$ function being slightly preferred over the Gaussian as was also found by Secker (1992) for Milky Way and M31 globular clusters. For the red clusters, on the other hand, both the Gaussian and the $`t_5`$ function provide a quite poor fit to the data with $`P`$ values of $`0.352`$ and $`0.529`$ although the $`t_5`$ function is again preferred.

We also compared the luminosity functions of the red and blue compact populations directly using a two-population Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Such a test is independent of any assumptions about the LF. Again leaving out clusters with $`V>24`$ in order to obtain as pure a sample of “true” globular clusters as possible, the $`D_n`$ statistics of the test is 0.154. This corresponds to a 51% probability that the two cluster populations have the same luminosity function. The test is thus inconclusive as to whether or not the two compact cluster populations have the same luminosity function. This remains true even if the K-S test is performed only on a brighter subsample of the clusters.

The extended red objects do have a quite different luminosity function from a standard Gaussian (lower left panel), increasing at least down to $`V24`$. Because of extendedness of these objects, incompleteness effects have already set in at $`V24.5`$ or so (cf. Figs. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. and HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.), so it remains uncertain how their luminosity function behaves at fainter magnitudes. With typical effective radii of the order of 10–15 pc (Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.), the $`V`$ magnitudes of the extended objects are probably underestimated by $`0.5`$ mag (Table 1) although the colors remain unaffected by object size. In any case, the differences in the luminosity and color distributions of extended and compact objects clearly cannot be accounted for by instrumental effects.

The lower right panel of Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555. displays the combined luminosity function of all cluster candidates. Even without performing any statistical tests it is clear that a Gaussian or a $`t_5`$ function provide a poor fit to the combined LF, mostly due to the presence of the extended red objects. Indeed, the maximum-likelihood fit returns a turn-over magnitude of $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=6.98_{6.85}^{7.13}`$ for the Gaussian and $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.07_{6.95}^{7.21}`$ for the $`t_5`$ function, half a magnitude fainter than for the compact clusters alone.

Bearing in mind that the magnitudes for extended objects measured in the $`r=3`$ pixels aperture are probably too faint by $`0.5`$ mag (Sect. 2.1), the true luminosity function of all objects may look somewhat different from the lower right panel of Fig. HST observations of star clusters in NGC 1023: Evidence for three cluster populations? 111Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract No. NAS5-26555.. We added a rough correction of $`0.5`$ mag to the $`V`$ band magnitudes of the extended objects in order to check how this would affect the combined luminosity function. However, applying the same magnitude limit of $`V=24`$ to the corrected sample would then lead to a larger number of faint objects with uncertain sizes and photometry, possibly resulting in unreliable LF fits. We therefore restricted the LF fits of the corrected sample to objects brighter than $`V=23.5`$. For a Gaussian fit we then obtained a turn-over at $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.19_{6.77}^{7.35}`$, which is somewhat closer to the value expected for a “standard” Gaussian GCLF. If we apply the same $`V=23.5`$ magnitude cut to the original non-corrected photometry, we obtain $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.25_{6.85}^{7.42}`$ for a Gaussian fit. As demonstrated by these experiments, the LF fits to the full cluster sample including extended objects are quite unstable and depend strongly on the magnitude cuts and various corrections. This is not too surprising, considering that we are attempting to fit a Gaussian function to a non-gaussian distribution.

Until it is better understood how common such extended faint clusters are and what fraction of the total GC population they constitute in different galaxies, they could pose a potential problem for the use of GCLFs as “standard candles”. However, Gaussian or $`t_5`$ fits to GCLFs should still be relatively secure if constrained to objects brighter than about 1 mag below the turn-over.

## 4 Discussion

In summary, NGC 1023 appears to contain at least three identifiable cluster populations: 1) blue globular clusters with a standard Gaussian luminosity function and with an average $`R_\mathrm{e}2`$ pc. The mean color is $`VI_0=0.92`$. 2) red globular clusters ($`VI_0=1.15`$) with smaller sizes ($`R_\mathrm{e}1.7`$ pc), whose LF may have a somewhat fainter turn-over magnitude and a slightly narrower dispersion. 3) A population of faint extended sources with $`R_\mathrm{e}1015`$ pc ($`R_\mathrm{e}710`$ pc when using MOFFAT15 model profiles), which are predominantly red.

### 4.1 The classical globular clusters

Concerning sizes and color distributions of the normal compact clusters, the GCS of NGC 1023 appears to be quite similar to what has been observed in a number of other early-type galaxies such as NGC 4472, M87 and NGC 3115 (Kundu and Whitmore, 1998; Kundu et al., 1999; Puzia et al., 1999). Deviation from unimodality in the NGC 1023 cluster colors was already hinted at by Gebhardt and Kissler-Patig (1999) and is now very clearly confirmed by our deeper data. The fact that red GCs tend to have smaller effective radii than their blue counterparts has also been observed in the above mentioned galaxies, but the small distance of NGC 1023 and our deep HST data add further confidence to this result.

The overall characteristics of the cluster systems in a number of early-type galaxies thus appear to be quite similar, providing support to the idea that the same mechanisms governed formation of the globular cluster systems in a wide variety of galaxies. In particular, any scenario that attempts to explain the presence of bimodal color distributions must account for the presence of this phenomenon in cDs as well as lenticulars and other galaxy types.

Ultimately, one also needs to understand the size difference between metal-poor and metal-rich clusters – perhaps this is evidence for different physical conditions in the parent clouds, or maybe it indicates that the different cluster populations have been subject to different destruction processes, e.g. because of different kinematics. Obviously, a better understanding of the physics of cluster formation and evolution is needed in order to address the first possibility, while insight into the kinematics of cluster sub-populations may be gained by spectroscopy of large cluster samples. It is worth pointing out, though, that all theoretical studies so far indicate that the half-light radius for any individual cluster is a very stable quantity and does not change much over the lifetime of the cluster (Spitzer, 1987; Meylan and Heggie, 1997). If the size distributions of red and blue clusters in NGC 1023 (and other galaxies) originated from the same parent distribution, quite substantial differences in the destruction mechanisms and/or dynamical evolution of the two subpopulations would have been necessary to make their present-day size distributions differ as much as is observed. At the same time, these mechanisms would have to act in such a way that the blue and red GCs would still retain roughly similar luminosity functions, although Vesperini (2000) has recently argued that the GCLF is relatively stable against dynamical evolution.

Alternatively, different cluster sizes would be the result of different physical conditions at the time of cluster formation. Our understanding of cluster formation is currently in a rather rudimentary state, but in the case of the Milky Way, McLaughlin (1999) has suggested that the observed correlation between sizes of globular clusters and galactocentric distance could be explained by the progenitor clouds closer to the center having higher binding energies. How this relates to the size differences between red and blue GC populations in NGC 1023 and other early-type galaxies is not entirely clear though, especially since no correlation between galactocentric distance and cluster sizes appears to exist in galaxies like NGC 4472 (Puzia et al., 1999). One could speculate that, since the red (metal-rich) population is likely to have formed somewhat later than the blue one, the key issue may here be a temporal rather than spatial change in the cluster forming environment.

### 4.2 A third cluster population?

A major peculiarity about the NGC 1023 cluster system is the presence of a number of fainter objects with much larger average effective radii than the “genuine” globular clusters. Most of these objects are quite red with colors comparable to the red GC population, $`(VI)_01.2`$. Because the comparison field does not contain similar objects, and because of the alignment of their spatial distribution with the isophotes of NGC 1023 itself, we feel confident that these objects are indeed star clusters in NGC 1023. A chance alignment with e.g. a distant galaxy cluster appears to be highly unlikely, not only because of the low probability of such an alignment by itself, but even more so because the background cluster would have to have an annular shape.

The red colors of these objects are probably real and not due to e.g. reddening by interstellar absorption. First, reddening is not expected to be much of an issue in a galaxy of this type. This is confirmed by the absence of any significant FIR emission – the 12$`\mu `$ flux as measured by the IRAS satellite is only 0.16 Jy (Rice et al., 1988) and in the remaining IRAS bands only upper limits exist, so the presence of any significant amount of dust is ruled out. Furthermore, although the NGC 1023 system does possess significant amounts of HI gas, most of it is located far outside the main body of NGC 1023. Finally, interstellar absorption could not account for the extendedness of the faint clusters.

What is the nature of the faint extended clusters? Generally, they are too bright to be normal open clusters. For ages $`>1`$ Gyr, the Lyngå (1987) catalog lists no open clusters in the Milky Way brighter than $`M_V4`$. Furthermore, open clusters are not particularly large, with mean and median radii of 2.7 pc and 1.9 pc, respectively (Lyngå, 1982). Hodge (1979) finds larger sizes for open clusters in M31, but notes that his sample is biased towards large clusters because of resolution limits. Hence, the extended clusters in NGC 1023 are too bright and too extended to be normal open clusters.

The $`V`$ range spanned by the extended objects ($`2324`$) corresponds to absolute magnitudes between $`6`$ and $`7`$, well within the range spanned by globular clusters in our own and other galaxies and nearly reaching the peak of the standard GCLF. Our magnitudes for the extended objects are actually likely to be too faint by up to several tenths of a magnitude because of a larger fraction of light falling outside the $`r=3`$ aperture (Sect. 2.1). The closest counterparts in the Milky Way would be the Palomar-type globular clusters found in the outer part of the Galactic halo. Actually, most globular clusters in the Milky Way with core radii $`R_c>3`$ pc are known to be systematically fainter than globular clusters with $`R_c<3`$ pc, very few of them being brighter than $`M_V=7`$ (van den Bergh, 1983, 1996). However, the extended clusters in NGC 1023 appear to be relatively metal-rich whereas the extended clusters in the outer halo of the Milky Way are metal-poor.

Concerning the origin of the extended red clusters, we may speculate that they could be related to accretion of satellite galaxies. In particular, ground-based images reveal the presence of two bright blue condensations near the center of the companion NGC 1023A which, unfortunately, were not included on our WFPC2 pointings. These blue objects were already noted by Davies and Kinman (1984) who suggested they might be supergiant stars, but they are clearly extended and ground-based photometry and spectroscopy suggest ages on the order of $`0.5`$ Gyr (Larsen et al., in preparation). Therefore NGC 1023A must have had an active star formation history until quite recently and a number of clusters could conceivably have been stripped from the companion and ended up in the disk of NGC 1023 during the last few 100 Myr or so. If NGC 1023A used to be a cluster–rich LMC–like galaxy, this scenario may not be entirely unlikely. One problem with this scenario is the red colors of the extended clusters, indicating relatively high metallicities. This could, perhaps, be explained if the extended clusters were formed in the disk of NGC 1023 when sufficient gas was still available, possibly triggered by interaction processes, rather than simply being accreted.

It would be highly desirable to shed more light on these questions with observations of similar objects in other galaxies. However, to our knowledge no extended, faint red clusters like those in NGC 1023 have previously been identified in any other early-type galaxy. The main point, of course, is that these objects are relatively faint and thus difficult to detect, and that high angular resolution is needed to obtain any information on cluster sizes. Therefore, only deep HST observations of nearby ($`10`$ Mpc) galaxies would reveal such objects and they would, so far, have escaped detection even in HST studies of Virgo cluster galaxies. Until now, only one other early-type galaxy close enough for detection of extended clusters similar to those in NGC 1023 has had sufficiently deep HST photometry, namely NGC 3115 (Kundu and Whitmore, 1998). However, Kundu and Whitmore (1998) did not report any such objects in their study of this galaxy. In order to check if they might have been overlooked, we re-examined the archive data and found that extended faint objects are indeed absent in NGC 3115.

## 5 Summary and conclusions

We have obtained deep WFPC2 photometry for star clusters in the nearby lenticular galaxy NGC 1023, reaching two magnitudes below the expected turn-over of the globular cluster luminosity function. Our $`VI`$ photometry reveals a very clearly bimodal color distribution with peaks at $`(VI)_0=0.92`$ and $`(VI)_0=1.15`$, respectively. We also identified a number of red objects with larger effective radii than the brighter GCs and a luminosity function that rises at least down to $`M_V6`$ (assuming the objects are at the distance of NGC 1023). A comparison field located about 2 degrees from NGC 1023 shows no such objects. Moreover, the spatial distribution of faint extended objects is well aligned with the isophotes of NGC 1023, indicating a very high probability that they are star clusters in the disk of NGC 1023.

The blue GC population has a luminosity function that is consistent at the $`99\%`$ confidence level with a “standard” Gaussian GCLF with $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.58_{7.36}^{7.72}`$ and $`\sigma _V=1.12_{1.03}^{1.33}`$. A $`t_5`$ function provides an even better fit, with $`M_{\mathrm{TO}}(V)=7.56_{7.37}^{7.70}`$ and $`\sigma _V=0.99_{0.90}^{1.20}`$ at the $`99.9`$% confidence level. The average effective radius of the blue GCs is $`2`$ pc, comparable to (but perhaps slightly smaller than) that seen in the Milky Way and other galaxies. The LF of the red GC population may have a somewhat narrower dispersion and a peak magnitude about 0.2 mag fainter than for the blue GC population, but is not very well fitted by either a Gaussian or a $`t_5`$ function. On the average, the brighter red GCs have $`R_\mathrm{e}1.7`$ pc, or about 15% smaller than for the blue GCs.

The spatial, color and luminosity distributions of extended clusters with $`R_\mathrm{e}>7`$ pc are clearly different from those of compact “genuine” globulars. We suggest that the faint extended red clusters may have their origin in accretion processes with companion galaxies, similar to the ongoing interaction with the dwarf NGC 1023A. Because of the extended red clusters, the combined luminosity function of all cluster candidates in NGC 1023 deviates significantly from a standard Gaussian GCLF. If such objects are common in other galaxies, this could potentially lead to problems in using the GCLF as a standard candle.

This work was supported by HST grant GO.06554.01-95A, National Science Foundation grant number AST9900732 and Faculty Research funds from the University of California, Santa Cruz. We thank Duncan Forbes and John Huchra for useful comments and suggestions, Carl Grillmair and Ken Freeman for their support, and the anonymous referee for a detailed and constructive report which helped significantly improve the paper.


text:
# Singularity in 2+1 dimensional AdS-scalar black hole

\[

## Abstract

We study the spacetime singularity in 2+1 dimensional AdS-scalar black hole with circular symmetry using a quasi-homogeneous model. We show that this is a spacelike, scalar curvature, deformationally strong singularity.
PACS number(s): 04.20.Dw, 04.60.Kz, 04.70.Bw

\]

Recently there has been growing interest in asymptotically anti de-Sitter (AdS) black holes, motivated by the discovery of the BTZ black hole  in General Relativity (for reviews see ) and by the so-called AdS/CFT speculation in string theory . Very recently, Pretorius and Choptuik presented results of fully-nonlinear numerical simulations of the gravitational collapse of a massless, minimally-coupled scalar field in 2+1 dimensional, axially-symmetric, AdS3 spactime in classical General Relativity . Pretorius and Choptuik studied the critical behavior at the threshold of black-hole formation in this model, and found a continuous self-similar solution and type-II behavior with a mass-scaling law with critical exponent $`1.2`$. This work was followed by Garfinkle , who was able to find analytically an exact solution for this model, in agreement with the numerical results of Ref. . Husain and Olivier studied the same model using a different numerical approach and a different evaluation approach for the critical exponent, and reported on a mass-scaling law with critical exponent $`1.6`$ . This apparent discrepancy of the two estimates for the critical exponent is of great interest.

Pretorius and Choptuik also studied in Ref.  the nature of the singularity in their model for supercritical evolutions. They report on a scalar curvature singularity, which is spacelike and deformationally strong . However, the evidence brought in Ref.  appears to be inconclusive. Specifically, Pretorius and Choptuik argue that the singualrity is spacelike because the hypersurface along which the metric variables start growing unboundedly in the normal direction, and consequently the curvature invariants begin to diverge, is spacelike. Although this is consistent with the singularity being spacelike, it is only a necessary condition for it. The mass inflation  null singularity is a counter-example, where hypersurfaces of constant large (albeit finite) curvature are spacelike, although the singularity itself is null. The evidence that Pretorius and Choptuik bring for the strength of the singularity is that it is central, namely, that the proper circumference vanishes approaching the singularity. This criterion appears indeed to be sufficient evidence in spherical symmetry under very broad conditions , but this has never been shown in 2+1D and circular symmetry.

In this paper we show, within a simplified model, that indeed this singularity is spacelike, scalar curvature, and deformationally strong. Specifically, we assume that spacetime asymptotically close to the singularity can be described by a quasi-homogeneous model, i.e., we assume that spatial gradients (of the metric functions and the scalar field) are much smaller than temporal gradients. This assumption seems to be justified by the results of Ref. , where Figs. 18 and 19 imply only mild gradients tangent to the singularity, and much steeper gradients normal to it. We shall study the solution to the Einstein-scalar equations in 2+1D and circular symmetry only asymptotically close to the singularity. We thus write the metric as

$$ds^2=N(r)dt^2L(r)dr^2+r^2d\theta ^2,$$
(1)
where $`0\theta 2\pi `$ is possibly periodic, and where $`N(r)`$ and $`L(r)`$ are non-negative functions (such that $`r=\mathrm{const}`$ hypersurfaces are spacelike by construction). The coordinate $`r`$ is defined such that the proper circumference of circles of radius $`r`$ is $`2\pi r`$. Note, that $`r`$ is a timelike coordinate. We study the solution to the Einstein-scalar equations

$$G_{\mu \nu }+\mathrm{\Lambda }g_{\mu \nu }=\kappa T_{\mu \nu },$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }<0`$ is the cosmological constant and $`T_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \varphi _\nu \varphi \frac{1}{2}g_{\mu \nu }^\alpha \varphi _\alpha \varphi `$ is the energy-momentum tensor of the scalar field $`\varphi `$. Following the convention of Ref.  we set the coupling constant $`\kappa =4\pi `$. The $`tt`$ and $`rr`$ components of the field equations (2) are, correspondingly,

$$L^{}+2rL^2\mathrm{\Lambda }=4\pi rL\varphi ^2$$
(3)
and

$$N^{}2rLN\mathrm{\Lambda }=4\pi rN\varphi ^2.$$
(4)
These equations are coupled to the Klein-Gordon equation for the scalar field, $`\mathrm{}\varphi =0`$, whose first integral is given by

$$\varphi ^2=\frac{L}{N}\frac{d^2}{r^2}.$$
(5)
Here, $`d^2`$ is an integration constant, and a prime denotes differentiation with respect to $`r`$. (Recall that we neglect all derivatives with respect to $`t`$.) The $`\theta \theta `$ component of the field equations is redundant, and we use it as a consistency check for our solution. This equation is

$$LN^2+NN^{}L^{}2N^{\prime \prime }NL+4\mathrm{\Lambda }N^2L^2=8\pi N^2L\varphi ^2.$$
(6)
We next eliminate $`\varphi `$ from Eqs. (3) and (4) using Eq. (5), and find that

$$L^{}+2rL^2\mathrm{\Lambda }=4\pi d^2\frac{L^2}{Nr}$$
(7)
and

$$N^{}2rLN\mathrm{\Lambda }=4\pi d^2\frac{L}{r}.$$
(8)
Next, we present a simple solution to Eqs. (7) and (8), which is a generic solution. Then, we show that, in fact, this solution is the only generic solution. Following the analyses of Refs.  we seek a solution for which asymptotically close to the singularity the metric functions behave like $`L(r)=Ar^\alpha `$ and $`N(r)=Br^\beta `$, where $`A,B>0`$ are constants. (At larger distances from the singularity higher-order terms in $`r`$ become important.) We next seek a solution to Eqs. (7) and (8), and demonstate its validity by requiring consistency with the fully-nonlinear (and inhomogeneous) numerical simulations of Ref. . Substituting this Ansatz we find first that $`\alpha ,\beta >0`$, and that asymptotically close to $`r=0`$ the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-coupled terms are negligible. (This was also found in Ref. .) Next, we find that the solution imposes on $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ a relation. Specifically, we find that $`\alpha =\beta `$. Also, we find that $`B=4\pi d^2A\alpha ^1`$. Note, that we assume here $`\alpha 0`$. The scalar field satisfied asymptotically close to the singularity $`\varphi ^2=\alpha /(4\pi r^2)`$. (The case where $`\alpha =0`$ corresponds to a vanishing scalar field, and corresponds to the vacuum BTZ solution, for the case for which $`\theta `$ is periodic.) The dependence of the solution on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ enters only at higher-order terms $`O[r^{2(\alpha +2)}]`$. Also, Eq. (6) is satisfied by our solution at this order. (When higher-order terms in $`r`$ are considered each order will decrease the error associated with the truncated solution of the lower-order solution.) In fact, one does not have to assume the Ansatz that $`N(r)`$ and $`L(r)`$ are given by simple powers of $`r`$. Instead, if one assumes that the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-coupled terms in Eqs. (7) and (8) are negligible (close to $`r=0`$), one can solve these equations readily, and obtain that $`L(r)=Ar^\alpha `$ and $`N(r)=4\pi d^2A\alpha ^1r^\alpha `$ as an exact and unique solution (with no $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ term). Our solution here is generic in the sense that it relies on the right number of freely-specifiable parameters (recall that we have the freedom to rescale the $`t`$ coordinate, namely $`t\stackrel{~}{t}=T(t)`$, such that $`d`$ can be set equal to unity without loss of generality).

We next show, following Nolan, that this generic solution is the only generic solution . Defining $`X=LN`$ and $`Y=N/L`$, Eqns. (7) and (8) become

$`X^{}`$ $`=`$ $`8\pi {\displaystyle \frac{d^2}{r}}XY^1,`$ (9)
$`Y^{}`$ $`=`$ $`4\mathrm{\Lambda }rX^{1/2}Y^{1/2}.`$ (10)
Next, we define $`u=Y^{1/2}`$, and obtain the second order equation

$$ru^{\prime \prime }=(u4\pi \frac{d^2}{u})^{},$$
(11)
whose first integral is

$$ru^{}=2u4\pi \frac{d^2}{u}+4k,$$
(12)
where $`4k`$ is an arbitrary constant. Eq. (12) can be separated and written as

$$\frac{u}{u^2+2ku2\pi d^2}𝑑u=2\frac{dr}{r}.$$

Factorizing the denominator on the left hand side and using undetermined coefficients gives

$$\frac{u}{u^2+2ku2\pi d^2}=\frac{\beta +k}{2\beta }\frac{1}{u+k+\beta }+\frac{\beta k}{2\beta }\frac{1}{u+k\beta },$$

which integrates to give logarithmic terms. Then taking the exponential of both sides gives

$$|u+k+\beta |^{\frac{\beta +k}{2\beta }}|u+k\beta |^{\frac{\beta k}{2\beta }}=e^cr^2,$$
(13)
where $`c`$ is an arbitrary constant and $`\beta ^2=k^2+2\pi d^2`$. Notice that $`\beta \pm k>0`$ (we rule out $`d=0`$ in which case the scalar field is absent; also $`\beta `$ means the positive root of $`\beta ^2`$). Eq. (13) determines $`Y(r)`$ implicitly and Eqs. (10) and (12) can be used to give $`X`$ in terms of $`u`$ (or $`Y`$). Specifically, we find that

$$2\mathrm{\Lambda }r^2X^{1/2}=2u4\pi \frac{d^2}{u}+4k.$$
(14)
We determine the asymptotic behavior of $`X,Y`$ (and hence $`N`$ and $`L`$) as $`r0`$ as follows. Note that $`u0`$. The left hand side of Eq. (13) must vanish at $`r=0`$. Since $`u+k+\beta >u+k\beta `$, we infer that

$$\underset{r0}{lim}u(r)=\beta k>0.$$

Thus we can write

$$u(r)=\beta k+ϵ(r),$$
(15)
where

$$ϵ(r)=o(1),r0.$$

Here, $`o`$ is defined such that $`f(x)=o[g(x)]`$ as $`x0`$ implies that $`f/g0`$ as $`x0`$. Substituting this into Eq. (13) yields

$$ϵ(r)=ϵ_0r^{\frac{4\beta }{\beta k}}+ϵ_1(r),$$
(16)
where $`ϵ_1=o(ϵ)`$ as $`r0`$ and $`ϵ_0`$ is a constant which is determined by $`\beta ,k`$ and $`c`$. Equations (15) and (16) are sufficient to determine the leading order behavior of $`X`$ via Eq. (14), i.e.,

$$X^{1/2}=\frac{2\beta }{\mathrm{\Lambda }(\beta k)}ϵ_0r^{2(\frac{\beta +k}{\beta k})}+o(ϵ).$$

Then the original metric functions $`N,L`$ satisfy

$`N`$ $`=`$ $`uX^{1/2}{\displaystyle \frac{2\beta }{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}ϵ_0r^{2(\frac{\beta +k}{\beta k})},r0,`$ (17)
$`L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{X^{1/2}}{u}}{\displaystyle \frac{2\beta }{\mathrm{\Lambda }(\beta k)^2}}ϵ_0r^{2(\frac{\beta +k}{\beta k})},r0.`$ (18)
This proves that in general, the metric functions $`N,L`$ of these space-times display power-law behavior as the singularity is approached, with the same power of $`r`$ in each function. \[The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^1`$ in Eq. (17) and Eq. (18) can be absorbed into $`ϵ_0`$ by re-scaling the $`t`$ coordinate.\] Also, we find that $`\alpha =2(\beta +k)/(\beta k)`$.

With this solution we first show that the singularity is scalar polynomial. Note that all the following expression are given to leading order in $`r`$. Specifically, we find the Kretschmann scalar $`R_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }R^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }=3\alpha ^2/(A^2r^{2\alpha +4})`$, and the Ricci scalar $`R=\alpha /(Ar^{\alpha +2})`$. Both curvature scalars diverge approaching $`r=0`$. Next, we show that this singularity is strong in the sense of Tipler  (or deformationally strong in the sense of Ori ). The timelike-timelike component of the Ricci tensor in a parallel-propagated frame is given by $`R_{(0)(0)}=\alpha /(Ar^{\alpha +2})`$. Re-expressing that in terms of the proper time of a radial observer (who follows a $`t=\mathrm{const}`$ timelike geodesic), we find that

$$R_{(0)(0)}(\tau )=4\frac{\alpha }{(\alpha +2)^2}\frac{1}{\tau ^2},$$
(19)
where $`\tau `$ is (future directed) proper time, set such that $`\tau 0^{}`$ approaching the singularity. Here, and in what follows, we find $`R_{(0)(0)}(\tau )`$ to leading order in $`\tau ^1`$. \[The geodesic equation for this geodesic is $`\ddot{r}+(\alpha /2r)\dot{r}^2=0`$, whose solution is $`\tau (r)=2A^{1/2}(\alpha +2)^1r^{(\alpha +2)/2}`$, where an overdot denots differentiation with respect to $`\tau `$.\] Note that $`R_{(0)(0)}(\tau )`$ is independent of $`A`$. \[Also $`R_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }R^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }(\tau )=48\alpha ^2(\alpha +2)^4\tau ^4`$ is independent of $`A`$.\] This is similar to the independence of $`R_{(0)(0)}(\tau )`$ of the density (or pressure) in the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology near the singularity, or the independence of the Kretschmann scalar of the mass in Schwarzschild, or of the density in the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology .

We next use a theorem by Clarke and Królak, according to which a sufficient condition for the singularity to be strong in the sense of Tipler is that

$$^\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}^\tau ^{}𝑑\tau ^{\prime \prime }R_{(0)(0)}(\tau ^{\prime \prime })$$
(20)
diverges as $`\tau 0^{}`$ . From Eq. (19) it is clear that this is indeed the case, as this quantity diverges logarithmically in $`\tau `$ as $`\tau 0^{}`$, such that we show that the singularity is indeed deformationally strong. (Note that the proof of the Clarke-Królak theorem can be easily extended to 2+1 dimensions.)

Finally, we make the following remarks on the applicability of our homogeneous model. First, we find that asymptotically close to the singualrity the scalar field diverges like

$$\varphi (r)=\left(\frac{\alpha }{4\pi }\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{ln}r.$$
(21)
Indeed, the fully-nonlinear and inhomogeneous simulations find this logarithmic divergence for $`\varphi (r,t)`$ . This, however, provides us also with a quantitative check for the predictions of the homogeneous model. Specifically, the amplitude $`(\alpha /4\pi )^{1/2}`$ of the scalar field involves the same parameter $`\alpha `$ as in the metric functions $`N,L`$. Consequently, our homogeneous model captures the pointwise behavior at the singularity well if fully-nonlinear and inhomogeneous simulations confirm our prediction that

$$\left(\frac{rL(r,t)/r}{4\pi L(r,t)}\right)^{1/2}\varphi (r,t)\frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}r}1$$
(22)
as $`r0`$ towards any point along the singularity. Second, the numerical simulations also indicate that the Ricci scalar grows approaching the singularity like $`R(\tau )\tau ^2`$ . Indeed, in our model we find that $`R(\tau )=4\alpha (\alpha +2)^2\tau ^2`$. In addition to the right behavior as a function of proper time, we also predict a specific dependence on $`\alpha `$, which can be checked numerically. Finally, the quasi-homogeneity we assume is supported by the simulations in Ref. , where only mild (possibly oscillatory) dependence on $`t`$ is reported.

We showed that in a quasi-homogeneous model for the singularity in 2+1D AdS black hole with a self-gravitating scalar field in circular symmetry, the singularity is spacelike, scalar curvature, and deformationally strong. We believe that this simple model captures the pointwise behavior near the singularity when one allows for inhomogeneities. The question of how the solution is modified by inclusion of inhogeneities or angular momentum remains open.

I am indebted to Matt Choptuik, Brien Nolan, and Frans Pretorius for useful discussions. This research was supported by NSF grant No. AST-9731698.