text:
# Structure and mass of a young globular cluster in NGC 6946 1footnote 11footnote 1Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and with the W. M. Keck Telescope.

## 1 Introduction

Ever since the presence of ultra-luminous young star clusters in certain external galaxies was first suspected, the true nature of such objects has remained somewhat controversial. It took the spatial resolution of the *Hubble Space Telescope* to definitively prove that the compact blue objects in starburst dwarfs like NGC 1705 and NGC 1569 (Sandage, 1978; Arp & Sandage, 1985) are indeed star clusters and not merely foreground stars (O’Connell, Gallagher & Hunter, 1994). Subsequently, similar “super-star clusters” or “young massive clusters” (hereafter YMCs) have been discovered in other starburst galaxies, notably in mergers like e.g. the “Antennae”, NGC 7252 and NGC 3256 (Whitmore et al., 1993; Whitmore & Schweizer, 1995; Zepf et al., 1999). From their luminosities and reasonable estimates of the mass-to-light ratios, YMCs appear to have masses similar to those of the old globular clusters observed around virtually all major galaxies, and there is thus growing anticipation that the study of these young clusters can provide important information about how their older counterparts formed.

One remaining challenge is to verify that YMCs contain enough low-mass stars to remain bound for a significant fraction of a Hubble time. Deep HST imaging has recently allowed the stellar population of the R136 cluster in the LMC to be probed down to about 1.35 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (Sirianni et al., 2000), with some evidence for a flattening of the mass function below $`2`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Direct observations of low-mass stars in more distant extragalatic star clusters are currently far beyond reach. Brodie et al. (1998) compared features in low-resolution spectra of YMCs in the peculiar galaxy NGC 1275 with population synthesis models and concluded that their data were best explained by models with a lack of low-mass stars. However, the integrated light of these young objects is generally dominated by A- and B- type stars and cool supergiants and conclusions about low-mass stars, based on integrated spectra and/or photometry are inevitably quite uncertain and model-dependent. A potentially better way to gain insight into the stellar mass function of unresolved star clusters is to compare dynamical mass estimates with the masses predicted by population synthesis models. Should the dynamical masses turn out to be much lower than expected, this would indicate that the clusters may lack a significant number of low-mass stars. This, in turn, would imply that such objects are *not* similar to old globular clusters and will not survive for anything like a Hubble time, since only stars with masses below $`1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ have the required long lifetimes.

Dynamical masses have, so far, been estimated only for a small number of YMCs in NGC 1569 and NGC 1705 (Ho & Filippenko, 1996a, b), in M82 (Smith & Gallagher, 2000) and the Antennae (Mengel, 2001). Sternberg (1998) concluded that the velocity dispersion and luminosity of the luminous cluster NGC 1569A are consistent with a Salpeter IMF down to 0.1 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$, while the cluster NGC 1705A may have a flatter IMF slope. The luminous cluster ’F’ in M82 appears to have a somewhat lower velocity dispersion than expected from its luminosity, favoring a top-heavy IMF (Smith & Gallagher, 2001). The $`100`$ Myr old cluster NGC 1866 in the Large Magellanic Cloud was studied by Fischer et al. (1992), who obtained a dynamical mass of $`1.35\times 10^5`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$. van den Bergh (1999) pointed out that, for the luminosity and age of NGC 1866, this mass implies a very high mass-to-light radio and large numbers of low-mass stars.

In a study of 21 nearby spiral galaxies, Larsen & Richtler (1999) found several examples of YMCs. Most of these galaxies are at distances less than about 10 Mpc and thus offer attractive targets for detailed studies of their YMC populations. A particularly interesting, very luminous young cluster was found within a peculiar bubble-shaped star forming region in the nearby face-on spiral NGC 6946. Tully (1988) lists a distance of 5.5 Mpc and more recently a mean distance of $`5.9\pm 0.4`$ Mpc has been estimated for the NGC 6946 group from ground-based photometry of the brightest blue stars (Karachentsev, Sharina & Huchtmeier, 2000). For the remainder of this paper we adopt the latter distance estimate. The star forming region was first noted by Hodge (1967) in a search for objects similar to Constellation III in the LMC, but was then largely forgotten. Using ground-based CCD images from the Nordic Optical Telescope, the young massive cluster and its surroundings were further discussed by Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen (2000), who estimated a total mass of about $`5\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and an age of 15 Myr based on $`UBV`$ colors. The ground-based data, obtained in a seeing of about $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}7`$, also provided an estimate of the half-light (effective) radius of the cluster of about 11 pc. With an apparent $`V`$ magnitude of about 17, it may seem surprising that such a luminous object in a nearby galaxy went relatively unnoticed until recently. This may be due to the fact that NGC 6946 is located at a low galactic latitude ($`b=12\mathrm{deg}`$), in a field rich in foreground stars. Therefore, on ground-based images taken in less than optimal seeing, the cluster is easily confused with a foreground star.

Here we present new HST / WFPC2 and Keck I / HIRES data for the young massive cluster in NGC 6946, labeled n6946-1447 by Larsen (1999). The WFPC2 field of view is shown in Fig. 1, superimposed on an image of NGC 6946 from the Digital Sky Survey. A color image from the Nordic Optical Telescope, showing the region around the cluster, can be found in Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen (2000).

## 2 Data

### 2.1 HST data

WFPC2 data were acquired in Cycle 9, using the F336W ($`U`$), F439W $`(B)`$, F555W $`(V)`$ and F814W $`(I)`$ filters. The integration times were 3000 s, 2200 s, 600 s and 1400 s in the four bands, respectively, with all integrations split into two exposures in order to facilitate efficient elimination of cosmic ray hits. Initial processing (bias subtraction, flatfielding etc.) were performed “on-the-fly” by the standard pipeline processing system at STScI. The individual exposures were then combined using the IMCOMBINE task within IRAF222IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomical Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under contract with the National Science Foundation, setting the reject option to crreject in order to eliminate cosmic ray (CR) hits.

The PC field of view of the F555W exposure is shown in Fig. 2. The whole star forming complex comfortably fits on the PC chip and we do not consider data in the Wide Field chips in this paper. The YMC is easily recognizable as the single most luminous object in the field. At the distance of NGC 6946, one PC pixel corresponds to a linear scale of 1.3 pc so unless the YMC is unusually compact, its radial profile will be well resolved. In this paper we only discuss the cluster itself and its immediate neighborhood. The numerous other clusters and individual stars contained within the PC field will be discussed in a subsequent paper.

### 2.2 Keck data

Observations with the HIRES high-dispersion spectrograph (Vogt et al., 1994) on the Keck I telescope were obtained during two half nights in August 2000. Both nights were photometric with a seeing of around $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}9`$. Following Ho & Filippenko (1996a), we used two different setups: One optical setting covering the wavelength range from 3780 Å to 6180 Å in 37 echelle orders, and a near-infrared setting ranging from 6220 Å to 8550 Å in 16 orders. For the optical setting we used the “C1” decker, providing a $`7\mathrm{}\times 0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}86`$ slit, while the “D1” decker with a $`14\mathrm{}\times 1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}15`$ slit was used for the near-IR setting. This provided a spectral resolution of $`R=45000`$ and $`R=34000`$ for the two settings, respectively.

The total integration times were 180 minutes and 220 minutes for the optical and near-IR spectra, split into 4 individual exposures for each setting. The slit orientation was kept constant with respect to the sky during the exposures, but was aligned with the parallactic angle at the beginning of each exposure. In addition to the cluster spectra we also obtained spectra for 11 stars of different spectral types, to be used as cross-correlation templates. These are listed in Table 1.

The reductions were performed using the highly automated “makee” package, written by Tom Barlow. “makee” automatically performs bias subtraction and flatfielding, identifies the location of the echelle orders on the images and extracts the spectra. Wavelength calibration is done using spectra of ThAr calibration lamps mounted in HIRES. Each of the individual 1-dimensional spectra were then combined using the scomb task in IRAF. In Fig. 3 we show two echelle orders from the cluster spectra compared with a G5Ia star (HR 8412) and an A7III star (HR 114). The left plot includes the $`H\beta `$ line. The cluster spectrum is clearly of a composite nature, showing both strong Balmer lines similar to those in early-type stars, and numerous lines due to heavier elements, as in evolved cool supergiants.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Structure of the cluster

Fig. 4 shows close-ups of the cluster in F336W, F555W and F814W, each spanning 6″ or about 170 pc across. Note that another fainter cluster is located about 15 pixels (19 pc) to the North-East. In addition a number of field stars are visible, in particular in the F814W image, and also the young globular itself begins to resolve into individual stars. From Figs. 2 and 4, it is hard to tell where the cluster ends and where the general field population begins. In fact, star formation appears to have taken place over an area much larger than that directly connected with the cluster, and only the stars closest to the cluster center may actually be bound to it.

In Fig. 5 we show the integrated luminosity (left) and surface brightness (right) of the cluster as a function of radius. The photometry was done using the PHOT task within the DAOPHOT package in IRAF, measuring the background in an annulus starting at 50 pixels ($`2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}25`$) and 50 pixels wide. The instrumental profile has not been taken into account in Fig. 5. We do not measure the luminosity profile of the cluster beyond 50 pixels, as it is clear e.g. from Fig. 2 that the irregular background at larger distances from the cluster would make such a measurement very uncertain. Nevertheless, the integrated light will probably continue to rise well beyond 50 pixels ($`65`$ pc). This is not unusual for young star clusters: Elson, Fall & Freeman (1987) found that young (8 – 300 Myr) clusters in the LMC are surrounded by large envelopes with power-law luminosity profiles which will probably be lost to tidal forces. Similarly, Whitmore et al. (1999) found an extended envelope with a diameter of more than 900 pc around the highly luminous “knot S” in the Antennae.

If we approximate the surface brightness $`(SB)`$ as a function of radius $`r`$ with a simple power-law of the form $`SBr^\alpha `$ (for $`SB`$ in counts / unit area) and perform a fit to the cluster profile between $`r=2`$ and $`r=15`$ pixels, we formally obtain an exponent of $`\alpha =1.79\pm 0.03`$. The fit is indicated by the dashed line in the right-hand panel of Fig. 5.

Although a power-law may provide a satisfactory fit to the outer parts of a cluster, the intensity must level off at some radius near the center. Thus, a more realistic analytic model of the cluster profile will involve some core radius $`r_c`$. Elson, Fall & Freeman (1987) found that the surface brightness profiles of young clusters in the LMC are generally well fit by analytic models of the form

$$SB(1+r^2/r_c^2)^{\xi /2}$$
(1)
with exponent $`\xi `$ in the range $`2.2<\xi <3.2`$ and core radii from 1.3 to 7 pc. For $`rr_c`$, equation (1) is similar to a power-law with slope $`\xi `$, but reaches a constant value near the center.

Because the core radius of n6946-1447 is comparable to the resolution of the PC camera, it cannot be accurately estimated from a simple plot of surface brightness vs. radius. We have used a modified version of the ishape algorithm (Larsen, 1999) to fit models of the form (1) to the image of the young globular. ishape iteratively adjusts the exponent $`\xi `$ and the core radius $`r_c`$ and then convolves the corresponding model with the HST point-spread function (PSF) until the best match to the observed cluster image is obtained. The HST PSF is modeled using the TinyTim PSF simulator (Krist & Hook, 1997) and the modeling done by ishape also involves a convolution with the WFPC2 “diffusion kernel” (Krist & Hook, 1997). Since the diffusion kernel is best characterized for the F555W band, we used exposures in this band for the model fits.

To test the stability of the fitted parameters we carried out a number of fits, varying the fitting radius between 5 and 15 pixels and changing the initial guesses for the exponent $`\xi `$. The algorithm returned exponents in the range $`1.98<\xi <2.18`$ and FWHM values between 1.70 and 2.19 pixels. We thus adopt FWHM = $`1.95\pm 0.25`$ pixels and $`\xi =2.1\pm 0.1`$ as our estimates of the structural parameters for the cluster. Note that this is a slightly steeper profile than that obtained by a simple power-law fit to the raw cluster profile, uncorrected for instrumental effects. For the relevant range of $`\xi `$ values, the core radius $`r_c=0.5\times \text{FWHM}`$ to within 5%, i.e. $`r_c=1.26\pm 0.16`$ pc for a distance of 5.9 Mpc. This is comparable to the most compact young LMC clusters and is also a typical value for Milky Way globular clusters (Peterson & King, 1975; Harris, 1996). In 5 of the 6 fits we performed, ishape returned minor/major axis ratios between 0.91 and 0.93, while one fit (for $`r=5`$ pixels) returned an axis ratio of 0.97. The cluster thus seems to be somewhat elongated with an axis ratio of about 0.92, with a likely uncertainty of a few times 0.01.

Integrating equation (1) from $`r=0`$ to $`r=\mathrm{}`$, the total luminosity diverges for $`\xi <2`$. With our estimate of $`\xi =2.1\pm 0.1`$, the half-light radius ($`R_\mathrm{e}`$) is therefore not very well-defined. For $`\xi =2`$, (1) is identical to a King (1962) profile with infinite tidal radius. We also attempted to fit King models to the cluster profile, varying the concentration parameter, but such fits are highly sensitive to inaccuracies in the background level and turned out to be too uncertain. If we (somewhat arbitrarily) define the “total” luminosity as the luminosity contained within 50 pixels, Fig. 5 suggests $`R_\mathrm{e}10`$ pixels or about 13 pc. This crude estimate is significantly larger than the typical half-light radius for stellar clusters, but agrees well with the ground-based estimate of $`R_\mathrm{e}11`$ pc obtained by Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen (2000). Old globular clusters typically have $`R_\mathrm{e}3`$ pc (e.g. Harris, 1996), while young massive clusters in starburst / merger galaxies such as the Antennae may have slightly larger effective radii ($`R_\mathrm{e}4`$ pc, Whitmore et al., 1999). However, because of the youth of the cluster in NGC 6946, it is quite likely that much of the loosely bound outer parts may eventually be stripped. Assuming that the core remains relatively unaffected by tidal stripping, we can calculate the half-light radius for King models with various tidal radii ($`r_t`$). Integration of the King profiles shows that the effective radius $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ and core radius are related as $`R_\mathrm{e}=2.9r_c`$ for $`r_t/r_c=30`$ and $`R_\mathrm{e}=5.1r_c`$ for $`r_t/r_c=100`$. Assuming $`r_c=1.3`$ pc for n6946-1447, we then obtain $`R_\mathrm{e}=3.8`$ pc and $`R_\mathrm{e}=6.6`$ pc for $`r_t/r_c=30`$ and $`r_t/r_c=100`$, respectively. These numbers suggest that, if the cluster evolves towards a King profile with a finite tidal radius, its effective radius could decrease significantly.

It is also worth noting that some old globular clusters have significantly larger half-light radii than 3 pc. The Harris (1996) catalog lists $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ values up to about 20 pc for some of the outer Palomar-type halo clusters, and Harris, Poole & Harris (1998) obtained a half-mass radius of about 7 pc for a globular cluster in NGC 5128, corresponding to $`R_\mathrm{e}5.3`$ pc.

### 3.2 Integrated photometry

In Table 2 we list photometry for the young cluster in 5 different apertures between $`r=5`$ pixels ($`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}23`$) and $`r=50`$ pixels ($`2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}25`$). Again, the photometry was obtained using the PHOT task within IRAF, measuring the background between 50 and 100 pixels from the cluster center. Instrumental magnitudes measured on the PC images were transformed to the standard $`UBVI`$ system using the transformations in Holtzman et al. (1995). For comparison, we also list the ground-based photometry from Larsen (1999). The magnitudes and colors in Table 2 have not been corrected for galactic foreground extinction, and no aperture corrections have been applied to the HST data other than the $`0.1`$ mag correction which is implicit in the Holtzman et al. calibration. Strictly speaking, the Holtzman et al. calibration is only valid for a point source observed through a $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ aperture (11 pixels). In order to get the “true” magnitude for the cluster, we would have to observe it through an aperture known to encompass 90% of the total luminosity. Comparing with Fig. 5, it is quite likely that not even our $`r=50`$ pixels aperture contains 90% of the cluster light, so the true total magnitude of the cluster may be even brighter than $`V=16.7`$.

Both Fig. 5 and Table 2 show that the colors are somewhat bluer when measured through the larger apertures. To test if this could be due to wavelength-dependent aperture corrections, we convolved TinyTim PSFs in different bands with a cluster model of the form (1) and carried out photometry in the same apertures as those listed in Table 2. Two sets of tests were performed, one with the sky background kept at a fixed level of 0 and another where the background was measured on the synthetic images in the same annulus as for the real photometry. For U B and B V, we found no change larger than $`0.01`$ mag in the color index aperture corrections from 5 to 50 pixels, while the tests show that the $`VI`$ colors are about 0.03 mag too blue when measured through the $`r=5`$ pixels aperture. These results are essentially independent of how the background was measured. The color gradient thus appears to be real, although it is not clear whether it is intrinsic to the cluster or due to differential reddening, contamination by field stars with different ages, or other causes.

Correcting the $`r=50`$ pixels photometry for a Galactic foreground extinction of $`A_B=1.48`$ (Schlegel et al., 1998) and using the reddening law by Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis (1989), we get $`(\mathrm{U B})_0=0.75`$ and $`(\mathrm{B V})_0=0.04`$. Adopting the Girardi et al. (1995) ‘S-sequence’ calibration for age as a function of $`UBV`$ colors, this implies a cluster age of about 15 Myr, identical to the value reported by Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen (2000) based on ground-based photometry. Our 15 Myr age estimate is also compatible with a spectroscopic age determination, based on Balmer line equivalent widths measured on low-dispersion spectra from the 6 m Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) telescope (Efremov et al., in preparation). Furthermore, the SAO data (as well as the Keck/HIRES spectra) show no H$`\alpha `$ emission from the cluster itself, indicating a lower bound on the age of $`10`$ Myr. Girardi et al. (1995) quote an rms scatter of 0.137 in log(age) for the S-sequence calibration, corresponding to an uncertainty of about $`\pm 5`$ Myr for a 15 Myr old cluster. We note that, since the S-sequence age calibration is based on LMC clusters, it may not be strictly valid for clusters with different metallicity. However, $`UBV`$ colors are not very sensitive to metallicity below $`500\times 10^6`$ yr so this should not lead to any large errors in the age estimate.

### 3.3 Velocity dispersion

From the virial theorem, the total mass ($`M`$), velocity dispersion ($`v`$) and half-mass radius ($`r_h`$) of an isolated cluster with isotropic velocity distribution are related as

$$M=a\frac{v^2r_h}{G},$$
(2)
where the constant $`a`$ has a value of about 2.5 (Spitzer, 1987, p. 11). Note that $`v`$ is the 3-dimensional velocity dispersion. What we actually measure is the line-of-sight velocity dispersion, $`v_x^2=\frac{1}{3}v^2`$.

The spectral resolution $`R40000`$ of the HIRES spectra is of the same order of magnitude as the expected velocity dispersion within the cluster, so simply measuring the width of the spectral lines directly on the spectra would not provide a realistic estimate of the true velocity dispersion. Instead, we follow the same procedure used by Ho & Filippenko (1996a, b). First, the cluster spectrum is cross-correlated with the spectra of a number of suitable template stars, using the fxcor task in IRAF. The velocity dispersion $`v_x`$ is then obtained from the full width at half maximum of the cross-correlation peaks, FWHMcc. The relation between FWHMcc and $`v_x`$ is established empirically by artificially broadening the template star spectra by convolution with Gaussian profiles and then cross-correlating the broadened template spectra with the spectra of other template stars. FWHMcc is independent of image noise, although the height of the peak does depend on the signal/noise of the cross-correlated spectra. For very poor S/N spectra the cross-correlation peak vanishes into the noise. Our cluster spectra typically have a S/N of about 50, but by artificially adding noise to our spectra we found that consistent measurements of FWHMcc were still possible even if the S/N of the cluster spectra was degraded to below 10.

The principle is illustrated in Fig. 6: The upper left-hand panel shows the cross-correlation peak for one echelle order of the cluster spectrum vs. the template star HR 8412. The remaining panels show cross-correlation peaks for the template star HR 9053, convolved with Gaussians corresponding to $`v_x=7`$ km/s, $`v_x=11`$ km/s and $`v_x=15`$ km/s vs. the same template star as for the cluster spectrum. For the cluster vs. HR 8412 peak, FWHMcc = 33 pixels, compared to FWHMcc = 25.7, 33.1 and 41.9 pixels for the three test cases. In this case, the data imply a velocity dispersion for the cluster spectrum close to 11 km/s.

In practice, we convolved the template star spectra with a number of Gaussians, having dispersions between 2 and 8 pixels (4.15 km/s to 16.6 km/s). In this way, FWHMcc was empirically established as a function of $`v_x`$ for each combination of template stars. In Fig. 7 this is illustrated for just one combination of template stars, HR 8412 and HR 9053 (as in Fig. 6). The diamonds show FWHMcc for the HV 9053 spectrum convolved with Gaussians of different velocity dispersions. Measurements where FWHMcc for the cluster vs. template star peak fell outside the range corresponding to a velocity dispersion in the 4.15 – 16.6 km/s interval were rejected.

As is evident from Fig. 3, the saturated nature of the Balmer lines, along with the rapid rotation of hot early-type stars, makes them unsuitable for measurement of velocity dispersion. We therefore used regions of the spectra dominated by features from cool supergiants. Cool supergiants in a $`15`$ Myr old cluster are expected to be of luminosity class Ia – Ib, but to test the sensitivity of the results to the luminosity class of the templates, we observed a number of template stars covering a range of spectral types as well as luminosity classes. The template stars are listed in Table 1.

In spite of the large number of echelle orders, only relatively few turned out to be useful. In the optical setting, signal-to-noise was quite low at the blue end and only 3 orders were used. In the near-infrared setting, many orders were dominated by skylines, reducing the number of useful orders to 6. Even so, the number of individual “measurements” of the cluster velocity dispersion is very large, each “measurement” consisting of cross-correlation of a cluster spectrum with a template star and comparing with the template star cross-correlated with another smoothed template star spectrum. The distribution of all velocity dispersion measurements is shown in Fig. 8, and Table 3 lists the median velocity dispersion for each echelle order for stars of luminosity classes I, II and III separately. In some cases, only part of an order was used, as indicated by column 2 of Table 3. As can be seen from Fig. 8, the lower and upper velocity dispersion limits bracket the relevant range quite well. The median value is 10.1 km/s and the standard deviation is 2.7 km/s.

The velocity dispersions are generally larger when using template stars of luminosity class III. This is not surprising, considering the significant amounts of macro-turbulence in the atmospheres of cool supergiants which contributes to line broadening (Gray & Toner, 1987). Thus, when using normal cool giants as templates, the velocity dispersion of the cluster stars will be overestimated.

Using only template stars of luminosity class I, the median value for the velocity decreases slightly to 10.0 km/s, while the scatter remains at 2.7 km/s. As a further check, we also computed the velocity dispersion using the three best-fitting templates. As determined from the height of the cross-correlation peaks, these are HR 1009 (M0II), HR 861 (K3Ib) and HR 8726 (K5Ib). The best fits were obtained from orders 10 and 14 in the IR setting, leading to an average velocity dispersion of 9.4 km/s with a standard deviation of 0.57 km/s for this best-fitting template subsample. This value is slightly lower than that based on the full sample, but within the error margins there is good agreement. We thus adopt $`v_x=10.0\pm 2.7`$ km/s as our final estimate of the velocity dispersion of n6946-1447, noting that the uncertainty estimate is probably quite conservative.

### 3.4 Cluster mass

#### 3.4.1 Dynamical mass

With an estimate of the cluster velocity dispersion and physical size at hand, we are now ready to estimate the dynamical mass. Note that the cluster radius used in equation (2) is the 3-dimensional *half-mass* radius $`r_h`$, which is larger than the 2-dimensional *half-light* or effective radius $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ measured on the images by approximately a factor of 1.3 (Spitzer, 1987). As discussed in Sect. 3.1, the effective radius of the cluster is not very well determined, but if we tentatively adopt $`r_h=17`$ pc and insert this number, together with a velocity dispersion of $`v_x=10.0\pm 2.7`$ km/s in equation (2), then the total virial cluster mass becomes $`3.0\pm 1.6\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

However, obtaining the dynamical cluster mass directly from equation (2) is inaccurate for a number of reasons: As already mentioned, the half-mass radius is uncertain because we only observe the cluster profile out to 50 pixels. As noted in Sect. 3.1, the cluster may not even have a well-defined half-light radius. Secondly, equation (2) gives the *total* virial mass out to some large radius, so comparing this dynamical mass with the luminosity within a radius of, say, 50 pixels may not give a realistic picture of the extent to which the luminous and dynamical masses agree. We therefore decided to perform a more detailed modeling of the cluster’s structure, as described in the following:

First, we modeled the cluster density distribution using the projected, azimuthally-averaged intensity profile in each passband, measured out to 50 pixels. We interpolated through the intensity bump from the companion cluster in the northeast using a power law fit to the profile on either side of it. The corrected profile was then assumed to come from a spherical cluster with a three-dimensional density profile, $`\rho (r)`$, plus some unknown light contamination from foreground and background stars. In addition to the background subtraction done prior to photometric analysis, various levels of background light were uniformly subtracted from the profile to give a range of density solutions, ranging from the background level measured at the 50th pixel down to zero background subtraction. With the largest of these subtracted backgrounds, the pure-cluster intensity went to zero at the 50th pixel, as if the cluster had an edge there.

The 3D density profile $`\rho (r)`$ was then determined from this projected profile by assuming that the cluster was made from a superposition of equal-density onion-skin shells, one at each pixel. In fact, the pixels of the measurements were interpolated linearly onto a finer grid with four times as many pixels, to get a better accuracy in the final density. The line-of-sight depth through each of these interpolated shells is known from the spherical symmetry assumption, so we began at the outer pixel where the intensity came only from the outer shell and obtained the density there. This outer density was determined from the ratio of the intensity to the line-of-sight depth of the outer shell. The density in the next-inner shell was determined by first subtracting the intensity at this position coming from the outer shell, using the appropriate line of sight depth and density there, from the observed intensity, and then dividing this difference by the line of sight depth through the next-inner shell. In this way, we could work from the outside to the inside and determine the 3D density of each shell. The result is the 3D density profile inside the cluster.

Figure 9 shows the fitted 3D density profile of the cluster determined from the $`V`$-band projected intensity profile using a background subtraction that was tuned to give the densities at the largest few radii a smooth continuation. This will be called the best-fit solution. Larger subtractions caused the density profile to drop suddenly at the 50 pixel edge, and smaller subtractions caused it to turn up. The dashed line in Figure 9 is a solution to the density structure of an isothermal cluster using the same velocity dispersion as the average determined from the observations. The straight dashed line has a slope of 2, which is the expected slope for an isothermal cluster at large radius.

The fitted 3D density profile was used in the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium in order to determine the one-dimensional velocity dispersion, $`v_1(r)`$, in each shell. This dispersion satisfies the equation

$$d\rho v_1^2/dr=\rho GM/r^2,$$
(3)
for mass as a function of radius, $`M(r)`$, obtained from the density solution, $`M(r)=_0^r4\pi r^2\rho (r)𝑑r`$. To solve (3), we need to know the velocity dispersion at the edge of the cluster to give the boundary condition on pressure there. We assumed two cases: zero dispersion at the edge, corresponding to zero pressure, and a dispersion equal to the average in the cluster, determined from the fitted $`\left(M/R\right)^{1/2}`$ at the cluster edge, as given by the density profile. The run of dispersion, $`v_1(r)`$ was determined by integrating from the outside in. Once this dispersion solution was obtained, the square of the dispersion was averaged with a weighting proportional to the shell mass. The square root of this weighted average then gives the rms dispersion in the whole cluster, as would be observed with a slit spectrograph that covers it all. This final dispersion makes the reasonable assumption that the flux-weighted sum of Gaussian line profiles from sub-components of a total cluster is approximately equal to a Gaussian line profile itself, and that the dispersion of this summed profile is equal to the weighted quadratic sum of the dispersions of the components.

The absolute calibration for the density and mass now comes from the ratio of the observed, $`v_x`$, to the modeled, $`v_1`$, one-dimensional velocity dispersions. The absolute mass is $`(v_x/v_1)^2\times \left(1.3\mathrm{pc}\right)/G`$ multiplied by the program fitted mass, which is in units of photon counts. The absolute density is $`(v_x/v_1)^2/\left(1.3\mathrm{pc}\right)^2/G`$ multiplied by the program fitted density. Here, 1.3 pc is one pixel. For the best-fit density solution with an edge dispersion equal to the average, the mass out to the 50 pixel=65 pc radius becomes $`1.67\times 10^6`$ M, and the central density is $`5.3\times 10^3`$ M pc-3. With no background subtraction and an average edge dispersion, the peripheral density is greater and the central density smaller, $`3.8\times 10^3`$ M pc-3, to give the same observed velocity dispersion, but the mass inside 50 pixels is about the same.

The case with zero velocity dispersion at the edge is not physical but it is interesting to compare with the results given by equation 2, which is for an isolated cluster with zero pressure at the boundary. Our masses for this zero-dispersion case were systematically larger than the masses for the average-dispersion cases, particularly for the models in which there was no background subtraction. Compared to the best-fit mass above of $`1.67\times 10^6`$ M, the zero edge-dispersion masses were $`1.78\times 10^6`$ M and $`2.81\times 10^6`$ M for the best-fit and no-background subtraction density fits, respectively. The reason why equation 2 gives a larger mass is that it effectively includes all of the mass out to some zero-pressure boundary, even if it is beyond 50 pixels, but the 3D fit includes only the mass inside 50 pixels. Also, equation 2 assumes that the cluster has a well-defined half-mass radius while our 3D fit derives the mass directly from the luminosity profile.

In summary, the $`V`$-band radial intensity profile was converted to a 3D density profile using a reasonable assumption involving the level of background contamination, and this density profile was used to find a velocity dispersion profile assuming hydrostatic equilibrium with a dispersion at the edge equal to the average obtained from the density fit. The weighted average of this dispersion was then compared with the observed dispersion to give the absolute calibration for mass and density. The result is a cluster mass inside the 65 pc radius equal to $`1.7\times 10^6`$ M and a central cluster density of $`5.3\times 10^3`$ M pc-3. A similar procedure was applied to the other passbands with the result that the fitted mass increases slightly with wavelength.

The fit to the velocity dispersion profile gives a result that decreases with radius by a factor of 0.6 and 0.8 from the center to the mid-radial points for the best-fit and no-background subtraction solutions, respectively. This decrease is also evident from the difference in Figure 9 between the fitted 3D density profile and the isothermal profile, considering that a steeper profile implies a smaller local scale height and a smaller dispersion for comparable acceleration. Thus we predict that the dispersion in the center of the NGC 6946 cluster is slightly higher than the dispersion at 10 to 20 pc radius. Our solution at larger radii becomes uncertain because of the unknown starlight background and the unknown outer boundary condition for the velocity dispersion.

#### 3.4.2 Luminous mass

The dynamical mass estimate of $`1.7\times 10^6`$ M may be compared to a *photometric* estimate, based on the luminosity of the cluster and a M/L ratio from population synthesis models. Such a comparison can potentially provide constraints on the stellar IMF of the cluster. For the following discussion we adopt a cluster age of $`15\pm 5`$ Myr, as derived in Sect. 3.2 and in Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen (2000). Using the $`V`$ magnitude measured through the $`r=50`$ pixels aperture and correcting for a galactic foreground extinction of $`A_B=1.48`$ mag, the absolute cluster luminosity is $`M_V=13.2`$ for a distance modulus of 28.9. This also includes a correction of $`+0.1`$ mag to the magnitude listed in Table 2 to account for the fact that an aperture correction of $`0.1`$ mag from $`r=0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ to $`r=\mathrm{}`$ is implicit in the Holtzman et al. calibration, while our measurement has already been performed through a large aperture. Thus, $`M_V=13.2`$ represents the luminosity of the cluster *out to $`r=50`$ pixels (65 pc)*, which is what should be compared to the dynamical mass derived in Sect. 3.4.1.

Using 1996 versions of the Bruzual & Charlot population synthesis models (from Leitherer et al., 1996), we can estimate the expected luminosity per unit mass for a given cluster age and stellar initial mass function (IMF). The Bruzual & Charlot models are computed for a Salpeter (1955) and a Scalo (1986) IMF, the latter approximated as a composite of 6 power-law segments. Both extend from 0.1 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ to 125 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$, but the Scalo IMF has a steeper slope than the Salpeter IMF over most of the mass range, resulting in a higher mass-to-light ratio. For an age of $`15\pm 5`$ Myr, the models predict $`M_V(1\mathrm{M}_{})=2.36\pm 0.3`$ for the Scalo IMF and $`M_V(1\mathrm{M}_{})=1.58\pm 0.4`$ for the Salpeter IMF, respectively. This corresponds to a total mass of $`1.68\pm 0.46\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for the Scalo IMF and $`0.82\pm 0.30\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for a Salpeter IMF. These numbers agree fairly well with the dynamical mass within $`r=50`$ pixels of $`1.7\pm 0.9\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (Sect. 3.4.1), although a somewhat steeper than Salpeter IMF is preferred.

Alternatively, we may consider an IMF of the form

$$dN=\left(1e^{(M/M_0)^2}\right)M^{\gamma 1}dM$$
(4)
with $`M_0=0.4\mathrm{M}_{}`$. For $`\gamma =1.35`$ it approaches a Salpeter function at high masses, but has a shallower slope for $`M<M_0`$, making it similar to the IMF reported for old globular clusters by Paresce & de Marchi (2000). If the function is normalized to the pure-Salpeter function at high mass to give the same cluster luminosity, then it has only 0.67 times as much mass as the Salpeter-only function down to $`0.1\mathrm{M}_{}`$, or $`0.55\pm 0.20\times 10^6`$ $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$. This is somewhat lower than the dynamical mass estimate, although an IMF of the form (4) is still within the $`1\sigma `$ error margins.

Although we have corrected for galactic foreground extinction, some extinction may still be present within NGC 6946 itself. Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen (2000) suggested that the extinction may vary substantially across the star forming region surrounding the young globular. In Fig. 10 we show a $`\mathrm{B V},\mathrm{U B}`$ two-color diagram with the Girardi et al. (1995) S-sequence and a cross indicating the cluster colors corrected for foreground extinction. The S-sequence is basically a fit to the colors of LMC clusters. The young globular in NGC 6946 lies almost perfectly on the S-sequence, but the reddening vector is nearly parallel to the S-sequence at this location and the cluster could be considerably younger if additional absorption is present. Furthermore, around $`10^7`$ years, cluster colors do not really change as smoothly with age as indicated by the S-sequence and ages derived on the basis of $`UBV`$ colors should only be taken as approximate (Girardi et al., 1995). Assuming an additional $`A_B=0.5`$ within NGC 6946, the cluster colors would correspond to an age of only $`5\times 10^6`$ yr (according to the Girardi et al. (1995) calibration) and the $`V`$-band luminosity per unit mass predicted by the Bruzual & Charlot models would increase by $`1.1`$ mag (for Salpeter IMF). Although a correction for additional reddening would also make the absolute magnitude 0.4 mag brighter in $`V`$, this is not enough to account for the decrease in mass-to-light ratio due to lower age. If the cluster is subject to additional reddening in NGC 6946, the net result would therefore be a *decrease* in the photometric cluster mass estimate, while the dynamical mass would remain unaffected as long as the relative radial profile is the same.

An additional uncertainty comes from the distance to NGC 6946. Although Karachentsev, Sharina & Huchtmeier (2000) list a mean distance modulus of 28.9 for the NGC 6946 group and adopt this as the distance of NGC 6946 itself, they actually obtain a distance modulus of 29.15 for NGC 6946. This would increase our estimate of the half-mass radius of the cluster to 20 pc and the dynamical mass from equation 2 to $`3.5\pm 1.9\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$. The fitted mass from the 3D density profile would increase by the same linear factor and become $`2.7\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Also at this distance, the absolute $`V`$ magnitude would be $`13.6`$ and the resulting photometric mass $`2.0\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ or $`1.0\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for Scalo or Salpeter IMFs.

In conclusion, our data are compatible with any of the three stellar IMFs considered here, although a somewhat steeper IMF than Salpeter is preferred. An IMF with Salpeter slope down to $`0.4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and a log-normal shape below this limit is still within the error limits, but it is clear that our data do *not* favor a top-heavy IMF with any significant lack of low-mass stars.

### 3.5 Central density

The central density $`\rho _0`$ of the cluster can be estimated from the central $`V`$-band surface brightness $`\sigma _0(V)`$ in mag arcsec-2, mass-to-light ratio $`M/L`$ and core radius in pc (Peterson & King, 1975; Williams & Bahcall, 1979):

$$\rho _0=\frac{3.44\times 10^{10}}{Pr_c}10^{0.4\sigma _0(V)}(M/L)\mathrm{M}_{}\text{pc}^3$$
(5)
where $`P2`$. Assuming a light profile of the form (1) with $`\xi =2.1`$ and an extinction-corrected $`V`$-band magnitude of 16.0 within 20 pixels (Table 2), the central surface brightness is $`\sigma _0(V)=12.3`$ mag arcsec-2. Here we have used the $`r=20`$ pixels aperture for reference in order to avoid extrapolation of the model profile to larger radii. Measuring the light directly on the image gives $`\sigma _0(V)=13.2`$ mag arcsec-2 within the central $`r=0.5`$ pixels. The direct measurement is expected to underestimate the central surface brightness because the central cusp of the profile is smeared by the finite resolution of the PC. For the same reason, the estimate of $`\rho _0=5.3\times 10^3\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{pc}^3`$ for the central density from Sect. 3.4.1 is also likely to be an underestimate. In the following we adopt $`\sigma _0(V)=12.3`$ mag arcsec-2 as our best estimate of the central surface brightness.

For a mass of $`(1.7\pm 0.9)\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and absolute $`V`$ magnitude $`M_V=13.2`$, the mass-to-light ratio is $`M/L=0.11\pm 0.06`$. Inserting in equation (5), the central density is then $`\rho _0=(1.7\pm 0.9)\times 10^4\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{pc}^3`$. We can also use the population synthesis models instead of the dynamical mass to derive $`M/L`$ ratios. For an IMF of the form (4) with $`M_0=0.4`$ and $`\gamma =1.35`$, we get a $`M/L`$ ratio of 0.039 and $`\rho _0=6.2\times 10^3\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{pc}^3`$, which may be considered a lower limit. In any case, the central density is on the order of $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}\mathrm{pc}^3`$ and thus similar to that of the densest stellar clusters in the Milky Way, such as Monoceros R2 and the Trapezium cluster (Carpenter et al., 1997; Prosser et al., 1994) and to the R136 cluster at the center of the 30 Dor complex in the LMC (Campbell et al., 1992), but the total number of stars and physical dimensions of n6946-1447 are much larger.

## 4 Discussion

With a total mass somewhere around $`10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$, n6946-1447 is about an order of magnitude more massive than the most massive young cluster in the LMC, NGC 1866 (Fischer et al., 1992) and many orders of magnitude more massive than typical open clusters in the Milky Way. It is, however, comparable to the most massive clusters in merger and starburst galaxies such as the Antennae (Zhang & Fall, 1999). This clearly illustrates that, although such clusters are *mostly* observed in merger galaxies and other starburst environments, they can also form far from the nucleus in quite normal, apparently undisturbed disk galaxies. Violent interactions such as galaxy collisions may help to create an environment that is favorable for formation of massive clusters, but such events are evidently not a *necessary* condition. The density near the cluster center seems to be similar to dense star forming regions in the Milky Way. Thus, the basic star forming mechanism at work may well be the same, although proceeding at a much larger scale in n6946-1447.

It is also of interest to compare n6946-1447 with two of the most luminous old globular clusters in the Milky Way, $`\omega `$ Cen and 47 Tuc. From their dynamical properties, Meylan & Mayor (1986) estimate total masses for the two clusters of $`2.9\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`1.3\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$, respectively. Considering that a significant fraction of the mass may be located beyond 65 pc, this makes n6946-1447 comparable in mass to these two old globular clusters. 47 Tuc has a relatively compact core with $`r_c=0.46`$ pc, while $`\omega `$ Cen is a quite loosely structured cluster with $`r_c=3.8`$ pc (Harris, 1996). The effective radii of the two clusters are 3.5 pc and 6.2 pc. Our estimate of the core radius for n6946-1447 of 1.3 pc is intermediate between 47 Tuc and $`\omega `$ Cen, while the effective radius is larger than for either of the two old globulars. As argued in Sect. 3.1, the outer parts of the cluster may eventually be stripped away and this might decrease the effective radius of n6946-1447 over time. The rotation curve of NGC 6946 indicates a mass of $`3\times 10^{10}\mathrm{M}_{}`$ within the location of n6946-1447 at about 4.5 kpc from the center (Carignan et al., 1990). For a cluster mass of $`1\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$, this corresponds to a tidal radius of about 70–100 pc (King, 1962; Keenan, 1981). This number depends only weakly on the exact masses of the galaxy and cluster, but assumes a homogeneous gravitational field. In practice, passages near giant molecular clouds, through spiral arms etc. may further contribute to stripping of stars from the cluster.

One outstanding question has been whether or not young massive clusters will be able to survive for any considerable amount of time. Here we find that the dynamical mass estimate of n6946-1447 agrees well with to the mass predicted by various population synthesis models. Formally, a slightly steeper than Salpeter IMF is preferred, but a Salpeter IMF with a lower mass limit of $`0.1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ is within the error margins. The cluster IMF could even have a Salpeter slope down to 0.4$`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and a log-normal behavior below this limit, but our data do not support a “top-heavy” IMF with a significant lack of low-mass stars. A Salpeter IMF with a lower mass limit of $`2\mathrm{M}_{}`$, for example, would give a total cluster mass of only $`2\times 10^5\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

## 5 Summary and conclusions

We have presented new HST / WFPC2 and Keck / HIRES data for an extremely luminous young star cluster in the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 6946. Within an $`r=50`$ pixels (65 pc) aperture, the integrated cluster luminosity is $`M_V=13.2`$, making the cluster luminosity similar to that of young ‘super-star clusters’ observed in starburst galaxies. It is certainly the most luminous star cluster known in the disk of any normal spiral galaxy. From the PC images we find that the cluster has a compact core with a core radius of about 1.3 pc, but is surrounded by an extended envelope. At large radii, the luminosity profile as a function of radius is well modeled by a power-law function with an exponent close to $`2`$, similar to the profile of young clusters in the LMC (Elson, Fall & Freeman, 1987) and to a King (1962) profile with a large tidal radius. We estimate the half-light radius $`R_\mathrm{e}`$ to be about 13 pc, but this estimate is uncertain because of the extended halo that surrounds the cluster. However, it agrees well with a previous estimate based on ground-based data of $`R_\mathrm{e}11`$ pc (Elmegreen, Efremov & Larsen, 2000).

From the Keck / HIRES high-dispersion spectra we estimate a velocity dispersion of $`10.0\pm 2.7`$ km/s for the cluster. From a detailed modeling of the density profile of the cluster, we find that this implies a dynamical mass within 65 pc of $`1.7\pm 0.9\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Bruzual & Charlot population synthesis models predict a mass of about $`1.7\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for a Scalo (1986) stellar IMF and $`0.8\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$ for a Salpeter (1955) IMF from 0.1 – 125 $`\mathrm{M}_{}`$. If the IMF is Salpeter down to $`0.4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and log-normal below this mass, as seen in old globular clusters (Paresce & de Marchi, 2000) then the predicted cluster mass is $`0.55\times 10^6\mathrm{M}_{}`$. Comparing the photometric and dynamical mass estimates and taking the associated uncertainties into account, we find that the IMF presumably contains at least as much mass in low-mass stars as a Salpeter law (but a turn-over at $`0.4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ is within the uncertainty limits) and the cluster will most likely remain bound, although it may lose much of its outer envelope to tidal forces. The cluster is comparable in mass to the most massive clusters in the Antennae galaxy and an order of magnitude more massive than the young LMC cluster NGC 1866. The central density of the cluster is about $`10^4\mathrm{M}_{}`$ pc-3, comparable to the densest star forming regions in the Milky Way such as the Trapezium cluster in Orion.

Support for Program number GO-8715 was provided by NASA through grants GO-08715.02-A and GO-08715.05-A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Some of the data were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. JB and SSL acknowledge support by National Science Foundation grant number AST9900732. Yu.E. is grateful for support by Russian FBR grants 00-02-17804 and 00-15-96627. We thank E. Alfaro and P. Battinelli for their help and the referee, Dr. Brad Whitmore, for a number of useful comments and suggestions.


format: text

text:
# 1 The Feynman graph for the signal process

KEK–TH–759

MSUHEP–010401

Can the charged Higgs boson be discovered in $`e\gamma `$ collisions using the channel $`e^{}\gamma \nu H^{}`$?

Shinya Kanemura

Physics and Astronomy Department, Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824–1116, USA

Kosuke Odagiri

Theory Group, KEK, 1–1 Oho, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305–0801, Japan

Abstract:

We consider the single production of charged Higgs bosons $`H^\pm `$ of the two-Higgs-doublet model in $`e\gamma `$ collisions through the production subprocess $`e^{}\gamma \nu H^{}`$. As the production rate is governed by the size of the loop-induced $`H^\pm W^{}\gamma `$ coupling, the cross section can only be substantial for smaller values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, $`\mathrm{tan}\beta 1`$, where the top-bottom loop contribution is enhanced. In this case, however, the natural width of the charged Higgs boson becomes large so that the Standard Model continuum background becomes important. We study the background subprocess $`e^{}\gamma \nu \overline{t}b`$ including the interference with the signal, and find that in the region of charged Higgs mass that can be interesting, the signal is difficult to detect.

Multi-doublet Higgs sectors arise naturally in several extensions of the Standard Model (SM) including the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), and these give rise to the charged Higgs boson $`H^\pm `$. Its discovery at present and future collider experiments has been the subject of much debate111See ref.  and the references therein for a review of the current status., but it remains that the large mass region is elusive.

Here we study the single production channel,

$$e^{}\gamma \nu H^{},$$
(1)
in the $`e\gamma `$ option of future linear colliders.

The process involves the $`H^\pm W^{}\gamma `$ vertex  which is forbidden at tree level because of gauge invariance, and is therefore loop-induced. The main motivation for considering this process is as a discovery mode. Although the physics potential of the $`e\gamma `$ option is limited compared to the $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$ options, it is possible that earlier experiments find one or more of the neutral Higgs bosons and the measurements indicate the presence of a heavy charged Higgs boson in the parameter region that is accessible using the above channel. For this reason it is important to have a grasp of the accessibility of the $`e^{}\gamma \nu H^{}`$ channel and the parameter regions in which it is applicable.

To be more specific, we want to find out whether a charged Higgs boson heavier than a half of the $`e^+e^{}`$ centre-of-mass energy can be produced in the $`e^{}\gamma `$ environment for values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and other parameters which are inaccessible through the $`e^+e^{}`$ single charged Higgs production modes studied in ref. .

For evaluating the signal cross section we utilised the form factors as given in ref. . Out of the three form factors describing the $`H^\pm W_\mu ^{}\gamma _\nu `$ vertex, only two are independent by gauge invariance such that the vertex is written as:

$$V^{\mu \nu }=G\frac{p_\gamma p_Wg^{\mu \nu }+p_\gamma ^\mu p_W^\nu }{m_W^2}+iH\frac{p_\gamma ^\rho p_W^\sigma \epsilon _{}^{\mu \nu }{}_{\rho \sigma }{}^{}}{m_W^2}.$$
(2)
Our convention is $`\epsilon _{0123}=1`$. Our spin averaged matrix element squared, corresponding to the Feynman diagram of figure 1, is given by:

$$\overline{||^2}=\left(\frac{e^2\sqrt{\widehat{t}}}{4m_W\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W(\widehat{t}m_W^2)}\right)^2\left[\widehat{s}^2|GH|^2+\widehat{u}^2|G+H|^2\right].$$
(3)
where $`\widehat{s},\widehat{t}`$ and $`\widehat{u}`$ are the usual Mandelstam variables for the subprocess.

The form factors $`G`$ and $`H`$ were calculated in the two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) with softly broken discrete symmetry. For the Yukawa interaction of quarks, we have adopted the so-called Type II coupling . For the fermionic loops, we only include the top-bottom contributions.

For the Standard Model parameters, we followed the values in ref. . For the parameters of the 2HDM Higgs sector, we chose $`\alpha =\beta \frac{\pi }{2}`$, $`m_{h^0}=120`$ GeV, $`m_{H^0}=\sqrt{m_{H^\pm }^2+m_W^2}`$, $`m_{A^0}=\sqrt{m_{H^\pm }^2m_W^2}`$, and $`\mu =m_{A^0}`$. $`\alpha `$ is the mixing angle between CP-even neutral Higgs bosons. $`m_{h^0}`$, $`m_{H^0}`$ and $`m_{A^0}`$ are the masses of the lighter and heavier CP-even Higgs bosons $`h^0,H^0`$ and the CP-odd Higgs boson $`A^0`$, respectively. $`\mu `$ is the soft-breaking mass parameter for the discrete symmetry. This parameter choice corresponds to the MSSM Higgs sector in the large $`m_{H^\pm }`$ limit.

Figure 2 shows the total signal cross section at two values of subprocess centre-of-mass energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$, 450 GeV and 900 GeV. These roughly correspond to $`e\gamma `$ collisions using Compton back-scattered photons from a $`e^+e^{}`$ collider at $`\sqrt{s}=500`$ GeV and 1 TeV. We have omitted the photon structure function for simplicity and in order that the physics of the process becomes more clear. The effect of this convolution with the photon structure function is that the large mass end of the distribution is suppressed, and the rise of the cross section in the medium mass range is counteracted, such that the distributions shown in figure 2 become more ‘flat’ as seen in figure 8 of ref. .

We show the rates for two values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ at 0.5 and 1.5. As the dominant part of the cross section comes from the top-bottom loops, the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ dependence is mainly due to the Yukawa coupling and the chirality structure of the $`H^\pm W^{}\gamma `$ vertex. In the large and small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ regions, the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ dependence is approximately as follows:

$`m_W^4\mathrm{cot}^2\beta \left(\mathrm{tan}\beta {\displaystyle \frac{m_t}{m_b}}\right),\mathrm{and}m_W^4{\displaystyle \frac{m_b^4}{m_t^4}}\mathrm{tan}^2\beta \left(\mathrm{tan}\beta {\displaystyle \frac{m_t}{m_b}}\right).`$ (4)
The enhancement of the cross section in the large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ region is negligible. The Higgs and gauge boson contributions are small when the cross section is substantial. We have explicitly confirmed that other combinations of Higgs parameters do not affect the rate significantly. This is a reflection of the fact that there are no $`𝒪(M^2/m_W^2)`$ terms in the $`H^\pm W^{}\gamma `$ vertex due to gauge invariance, and only $`𝒪(\mathrm{ln}M^2)`$ terms contribute for large $`M`$. $`M`$ represents the characteristic mass of the particles in the loop.

From this $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ dependence, it follows that if we adopt the MSSM parameters based on the LEP constraints  which give $`\mathrm{tan}\beta 3`$, the signal is too small to be observable. The $`e\gamma `$ integrated luminosity is typically $`100`$ fb-1 .

The cross section rises slowly with increasing $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$ as $`\mathrm{ln}(\widehat{s}/m_W^2)`$, as this is a $`t`$-channel process. Our results are substantially smaller than the case of neutral Higgs boson production considered in ref. . The case of neutral Higgs boson production is dominated by the low $`p_T`$ photon-fusion contributions, such that the cross section scales as $`\mathrm{ln}(\widehat{s}/m_e^2)`$.

In the heavy $`H^\pm `$ region which is the main interest of our study, the branching ratio for the mode $`H^{}\overline{t}b`$ is practically 100% especially at small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. We do not consider other decay modes as they offer no advantage compared to this mode. For the production process (1) and the $`\overline{t}b`$ decay mode, there is irreducible background coming from the Standard Model continuum production:

$$e^{}\gamma \nu \overline{t}b.$$
(5)
We evaluated this background, as well as its interference with the signal which we discuss later on, using HELAS . The Feynman diagrams for this process are shown in figure 3. The numerical integrations were carried out using a combination of Simpson’s rule and naive Monte Carlo.

We set all widths to zero, except for the natural width of the charged Higgs boson $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{H^\pm }`$ which affects the calculation of the signal and the signal–background interference.

The total rate for the background at $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$ of 450 GeV and 900 GeV are 28.4 fb and 69.2 fb, respectively. However, these numbers are not very meaningful as the dominant part of the background cross section comes from regions where the bottom quark is collinear with the initial photon direction. In order to have a more meaningful comparison with the signal cross section we introduced a cut on the bottom quark $`p_T`$ at 50 GeV and 100 GeV respectively for the two collider energies. We have explicitly verified that our main conclusions are independent of the value of this cut-off. The background cross sections drop to 3.5 fb and 11.8 fb, respectively, and the resulting $`\overline{t}b`$ invariant mass distributions are shown in figure 4. The binning width is 20 GeV.

20 GeV is a pessimistic estimate for the mass reconstruction resolution so that, had the widths been dominated by the detector resolution, it would be meaningful to compare the numbers from figure 2 directly with those on figure 4. One may thereupon conclude for instance that for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =0.5`$, $`m_{H^\pm }=700`$ GeV and $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=900`$ GeV, the signal and background rates are both about 0.3 fb so that for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1 and an optimistic value for the acceptance rate of about 25% let us say, there would be a nearly 3 $`\sigma `$ signal.

However, this is not the case as when $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is small and the signal is large, the natural width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{H^\pm }`$ also becomes large. For the case $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =0.5`$ and $`m_{H^\pm }=700`$ GeV, the width due to the $`\overline{t}b`$ decay is about 150 GeV. What happens here is that the signal and the decay width both behave as $`\mathrm{cot}^2\beta `$ at low $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ such that the signal distribution in $`M_{\overline{t}b}`$ near $`m_{H^\pm }`$ remains constant when $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is varied. Hence S/B, the signal over the continuum background integrated over the resonant region, remains constant as a function of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. However, the total number of signal events does increase at low $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ such that the signal significance, defined by S/$`\sqrt{\mathrm{B}}`$ over the resonant region, does improve at low $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$.

Let us adopt the naive approach, which we nevertheless believe gives a good estimate of the full result, in which we define the cross section over the resonant region by:

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{resonance}}=\frac{d\sigma }{dM_{\overline{t}b}}|_{M_{\overline{t}b}=m_{H^\pm }}\times \mathrm{\Gamma }_{H^\pm }.$$
(6)
We also include the effect of the interference between the signal and the background in order to have a consistent description of the production process. This definition circumvents the complications associated with the treatment of the signal when the charged Higgs boson is significantly off-shell. For a signal that has a pure Breit-Wigner distribution, (6) gives a rate that is too small by factor $`\pi /2`$. Our argument is that we are only interested in the resonant region whose width is given by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{H^\pm }`$. We note that this approach gives a somewhat optimistic estimate, where it is assumed that both the signal and the background are nearly flat over the resonant region whereas the signal is peaked when $`H^\pm `$ is on-shell. We also note that this naive approach becomes questionable when the width becomes comparable with the characteristic mass scale. However, our goal in this study is merely to establish whether, and in what region of the phase space, the signal process (1) can be seen.

S/B remains almost constant as a function of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ as mentioned before, so that we can do this calculation for any small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. We adopt the value $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =0.5`$, and in table 1 we show the total rate against the SM expectation over the resonant region as defined above. This value of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is near the lowest bound acceptable from the criterion of the validity of perturbation theory .

From the numbers shown in table 1, we point out the following. First, let us consider the $`e\gamma `$ integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1 per year and an acceptance rate of few times 10%. For concreteness let us adopt 25% for example as an optimistic estimate. We see that the signal significance, defined as S/$`\sqrt{\mathrm{B}}`$ with S being defined here as the total rate minus the background rate, is at most about $`1.25\sigma `$ at $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=450`$ GeV and $`1\sigma `$ at $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=900`$ GeV. Even with increased acceptance rate and increased luminosity, the channel is not useful for discovery in this model or generally in the 2HDM.

Second, the interference between the signal and the background is negative and sometimes large. In fact, there are regions where the total rate is smaller than the expected background. This is explained as follows. According to the definition of equation (6), it is easy to see that the interference between the signal and the background is due to the imaginary part of the form factors $`G`$ and $`H`$ given in equation (2). The imaginary parts of the top-bottom loop contributions in these form factors have exactly the form that comes from the interference between the continuum background and the decay $`H^{}\overline{t}b`$. Thus it is possible to relate the magnitude of the interference term to the signal, and it turns out that the contribution of the interference term is of the same order and has the sign that is opposite to the signal.

Lastly, we note that in this model the channel seems to offer no advantage compared to $`W^\pm H^{}`$ associated production in the $`e^+e^{}`$ mode .

The extension of our calculation by the inclusion of other light fermions into the loop can not improve the situation as whatever increases the signal rate also increases the charged Higgs boson width while the branching ratio into $`\overline{t}b`$ in general falls. On the other hand, by the inclusion of new heavy virtual particles in the $`H^\pm W^{}\gamma `$ vertex that have large non-decoupling contributions, it is possible that the signal cross section is enhanced significantly without enhancing the width. This may be possible if we consider non-decoupling contributions from heavy squarks with large left–right mixings in the stop sector, and in this case, there is some discovery potential for this mode.

In this paper we did not discuss the decay of the top quark. The polarisation of the top quark is opposite between the signal and the background in the limit $`M_{H^\pm }m_t`$, but the statistics is presumably too low to utilise polarisation analysis as described in ref. . We should also mention that in our study we have neglected the reducible background from the top pair production subprocess $`e^{}\gamma e^{}t\overline{t}`$. This could very well be important. The consideration of these more detailed points is expected to make signal detection even more difficult.

To conclude, we have considered the process $`e^{}\gamma \nu H^{}`$ as a discovery mode for the charged Higgs boson at the $`e\gamma `$ option of future linear colliders. Although the signal evaluated in the 2HDM can reach reasonable rates for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta 1`$, the background is large and it is difficult to see the charged Higgs boson through this channel.

Finally, we acknowledge advice and technical help from Stefano Moretti. We also thank Yasuhiro Okada, Wayne Repko and C.–P. Yuan for enjoyable discussions. We are grateful for the financial support from KEK which made this collaboration possible.


text:
# Total Cross-Sections

## 1 Introduction

This paper describes our approach towards a QCD description of total cross-sections, examining both proton and photon processses. In recent years, data have become available for a complete set of processes. In addition to proton-proton and proton-antiproton, $`\gamma p`$  and $`\gamma \gamma `$  total cross-sections are now known over a sufficiently extended energy range to allow for the observation of the rise with energy of all these cross-sections and one can aim to obtain a unified description. In what follows, we shall describe a QCD based approach for the energy dependence of the total cross-section, based on the Minijet model concerning the rise, and the use of soft gluon summation techniques, not only, to tame this rise but also to obtain the early decrease. We start with purely hadronic cross-sections and then look in detail to photon-photon processes. For these, we discuss various models and the precision needed for discrimination between them. Some of these models are based on the above mentioned QCD approach, others rely strictly on factorization while some others are a mixture of both.

## 2 A QCD Approach

The task of describing the energy behaviour of total cross-sections can be broken down into three parts:

* the rise
* the initial decrease
* the normalization

It has been known for quite some time, now, that the rise can be obtained using the QCD calculable contribution from the parton-parton cross-section, whose total yield increases with energy. It is not easy however to properly model this rise so as to reproduce correctly the slope, and we believe that soft gluon radiation, is the key to tame the rise due to hard gluon radiation. The distinction between soft and hard is so far arbitrary, but in this context we call soft gluons as those which do not undergo scattering against another parton in the colliding hadron, hard gluons as those which participate in the perturbative parton-parton scattering. This distinction corresponds to saying that the soft gluons have wavelength too long to see the content of the scattering area. It should be noted that the definition of the scattering area is energy dependent, since at very high energy, our physical picture of the scattering region is that of an expanding disk. We shall return to this point in later sections.

To see how the jet cross-section can contribute to the rise, consider the quantity

$$\sigma _{jet}(s;p_{tmin})=_{p_{tmin}}𝑑p_t\frac{d\sigma ^{jet}}{dp_t}=\underset{i,j,k,l}{}f_{i/a}(x_1)𝑑x_1f_{j/b}(x_2)𝑑x_2\frac{d\widehat{\sigma }(ijkl)}{dp_t}𝑑p_t$$
(1)
where the sum goes over all parton types. This quantity is a function of the minimum transverse momentum $`p_{tmin}`$ of the produced jets and can be calculated using the, phenomenologically determined, parton densities for protons and photons. We show in Fig.1 the QCD jet cross-sections with $`p_{tmin}=2GeV`$ obtained using GRV densities for the three processes $`protonproton,\gamma proton`$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$, normalized so as to be compared with each other.

The rise with energy for any fixed value of $`p_{tmin}`$ is clearly observed. Notice that the rise is stronger for smaller values of $`p_{tmin}`$, whose value is a measure of the smallness of the $`x`$-values probed in the collision. Thus different densities, which correspond to different small-x behaviour, give different results for the same $`p_{tmin}`$. In all cases however, what one observes is that $`\sigma _{jet}`$ rises too fast to describe $`\sigma _{tot}`$. For a unitary description, the jet cross-sections are embedded into the eikonal formalism, in which

$$\sigma _{pp(\overline{p})}^{\mathrm{tot}}=2d^2\stackrel{}{b}[1e^{\chi _I(b,s)}cos(\chi _R)]$$
(2)
with $`\chi =\chi _R+i\chi _I`$, the eikonal function which contains both the energy and the transverse momentum dependence of matter distribution in the colliding particles, through the impact parameter distribution in b-space. The physical picture described by the eikonal representation is that of two colliding hadronic disks, with partons providing the basic scattering constituents, distributed in the two hadrons according to an, a priori, unknown matter distribution. Thus, schematically, at any given c.m. energy $`\sqrt{s}`$ and transverse distance, $`\chi _I(b,s)`$ should be obtained by integrating the differential cross-section over all subenergies and initial momenta of the colliding partons. In the Eikonal Minijet Model (EMM) one approximates $`\chi _R0`$ and calculates $`\chi _I`$ through the average number of collisions, from the definition of the inelastic cross-section. The simplest formulation, which incorporates the mini-jet assumption that it is the jet cross-section which drives the rise, is given by

$$2\chi _I(b,s)n(b,s)=A(b)[\sigma _{soft}+\sigma _{jet}]$$
(3)
so as to separate the calculable part, $`\sigma _{jet}`$, from the rest, to be parametrized. The normalization depends both on $`\sigma _{soft}`$ and on the b-distribution. For the latter, the simplest hypothesis, is that it is given by the Fourier transform of the e.m. form factors of the colliding particles, i.e.

$$A_{ab}(b)A(b;k_a,k_b)=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^2}d^2\stackrel{}{q}e^{\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{b}}_a(q,k_a)_b(q,k_b)$$
(4)
where $`k_i`$ are the scale factors entering into the form factors. The problem with such straightforward formulation for protons is that presently used gluon densities like GRV have such an energy dependence that it is not possible, with the above scheme, and without further approximations, to simultaneously describe both the early rise and the high energy end. For instance, it is possible to describe the early rise, which takes place around $`10÷30GeV`$ for proton-proton and proton-antiproton scattering, using GRV densities and a $`p_{tmin}1GeV`$, but then the cross-sections start rising too rapidly, whereas a $`p_{tmin}2GeV`$ can reproduce the Tevatron points, but it misses the early rise. This can be seen in Fig.(2).

To cure this difficulty, a QCD model for the impact parameter distribution of partons has been proposed. In this model the function $`A(b,s)`$ tames the rise at high energy induced by $`\sigma _{jet}`$. Technically this happens because the proposed function, as the energy increases, is more and more suppressed at large b. Physically this reflects the fact that as the energy increases, the partons become more and more acollinear, due to soft gluon emission, and the probability of collisions is reduced. To obtain such effect, it was proposed that the normalized function $`A(b,s)`$ is obtained as the Fourier transform of the trasverse momentum distribution of colliding parton pair. In the leading order, the parton pair has zero transverse momentum as each parton is emitted along the direction of its parent proton. But, at high energy, this cannot be true, and the colliding valence quarks will have a degree of acollinearity, which can be calculated using soft gluon resummation tecnniques. The distribution thus obtained, labelled Bloch-Nordsieck distribution, is the following

$$A_{BN}(b,s)=[𝒫_{BN}]=\frac{e^{h(b,s)}}{d^2\stackrel{}{b}e^{h(b,s)}}$$
(5)
with

$$h(b,s)=\frac{8}{3\pi }_0^{q_{max}}\frac{dk}{k}\alpha _s(k^2)\mathrm{ln}(\frac{q_{max}+\sqrt{q_{max}^2k^2}}{q_{max}\sqrt{q_{max}^2k^2}})[1J_0(kb)]$$
(6)
and $`q_{max}`$ is a slowly increasing function of energy, which depends on the kinematics of the process.

Such a total cross-section formulation exhibits a scale dependence through the QCD coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$, basically

* through the well known and clearly defined $`p_t`$-dependence in parton-parton collisions, which we take to be $`\alpha _s(p_{tmin}^2)`$ with $`p_{tmin}1÷2GeV`$,
* through the $`k_t`$ dependence of the initial colliding partons, obtained from soft gluon emission.

This latter dependence needs to be clarified further. The integral in eq.(6) extends down to $`k_t=0`$ and one needs to model the infrared behaviour of $`\alpha _s`$ in order to carry through the quantitative application of this Bloch-Nordsieck ansatz. It clearly follows from eqs.(5,6) that the more singular $`\alpha _s`$ is as $`k_t0`$, the larger the function $`h(b,s)`$ is at large $`b`$-values and the faster is the fall of the function $`e^{h(b,s)}`$ with increasing $`b`$. On the other hand, as the energy of the colliding particles increases, $`q_{max}`$ is larger causing the function $`h(b,s)`$ to be larger, producing a suppression at high energy, for large $`b`$. The overall result is that the behaviour of $`A(b,s)`$ at large $`b`$ is determined by

* higher $`\sqrt{s}`$ producing larger $`q_{max}`$ and more emission
* singular behaviour of $`\alpha _s`$ in the infrared region producing also many more soft gluons

The above considerations can be made quantitative, by introducing an average over the parton densities and assuming an approximate factorization between the transverse and the longitudinal degrees of freedom, i.e.

$$n(b,s)n_{soft}+n_{hard}n_{soft}+A_{BN}(b,<q_{max}>)\sigma _{jet}$$
(7)
The following average expression for $`<q_{max}>`$ was proposed in ,

$$M<q_{max}(s)>=\frac{\sqrt{s}}{2}\frac{\underset{i,j}{}\frac{dx_1}{x_1}f_{i/a}(x_1)\frac{dx_2}{x_2}f_{j/b}(x_2)\sqrt{x_1x_2}_{z_{min}}^1𝑑z(1z)}{_{i,j}\frac{dx_1}{x_1}f_{i/a}(x_1)\frac{dx_2}{x_2}f_{j/b}(x_2)_{z_{min}}^1𝑑z}$$
(8)
with $`z_{min}=4p_{tmin}^2/(sx_1x_2)`$ and $`f_{i/a}`$ the valence quark densities used in the jet cross-section calculation.

M establishes the scale which, on the average, regulates soft gluon emission in the collisions, whereas $`p_{tmin}`$ provides the scale which characterizes the onset of hard parton-parton scattering. For any parton parton subprocess characterized by a $`p_{tmin}`$ of $`1÷2GeV`$, M has a logarithmic increase at reasonably low energy values and an almost constant behaviour at high energy. In Fig.(3) we plot the quantity M as a function of $`\sqrt{s}`$.

With the quantity $`q_{max}`$ thus determined, one can now calculate the Bloch-Nordsieck distribution function A(b,s), using different ansätze for the functional expression for $`\alpha _s`$ in the $`k_t`$ going to zero limit. It must be noticed that what enters in all calculations is not so much $`\alpha _s`$ as such, but rather its integral over the infrared region. Thus in principle from a phenomenological point of view, even a singular $`\alpha _s`$ can be used, provided it is integrable. Two models have been looked in detail so far, the frozen $`\alpha _s`$ model, in which

$$\alpha _s(k_t^2)=\frac{b}{\mathrm{log}(a^2+k_t^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)}$$
(9)
and the singular $`\alpha _s`$ model, in which

$$\alpha _s(k_t^2)=\frac{b^{}}{\mathrm{log}(1+(k_t^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)^{2p})}\stackrel{k_t0}{}\frac{1}{k_t^{2p}}$$
(10)
is singular, but integrable for $`p<1`$. One can now calculate the overlap function $`A_{BN}(b)`$ for frozen and singular $`\alpha _s`$ cases and compare it with the Form Factor model, as shown in Fig. 4.

The different behaviour of $`A(b,s)`$ in the large $`b`$ region, changes the energy behaviour of the average number of collisions in this region, with the result that the cross-section indeed rises much less rapidly when the singular $`\alpha _s`$ model is used. We compare the three different models for the case of proton-proton and proton-antiproton scattering in Fig.(5), where the early decrease and normalization have been described, in all three cases, using the Form factor model and a parametrization of low energy data with 5 parameters. The rise on the other hand is described using $`\sigma _{jet}`$ and the three different b-distribution functions just described. Notice that, for the three models, we have used different values of $`p_{tmin}`$ in the jet cross-section, since we wanted to have curves passing through the high energy points. We see that the EMM model for protons using current parton densities like GRV does not reproduce well the initial rise with energy, and the same is also true for the frozen $`\alpha _s`$ model. For a comparison, we also show the QCD inspired description, labelled BGHP, used in the Aspen model  to predict photon cross-sections through factorization.

What this exercise shows is that the energy behaviour of the total cross-section is determined both by soft gluon emission, and by hard gluons. Work is in progress to determine whether soft gluon emission, which produces a decrease of the cross-section with energy, plays a role also in the initial low energy region, the so called Regge region.

## 3 Photon processes

We now turn to discuss processes with photons, like photo-production or $`e^+e^{}hadrons`$, a process which, at high energy, is dominated by $`\gamma \gamma hadrons`$. Again the main characteristics of the photonic cross-sections, are the overall normalization, the rise past $`\sqrt{s}10GeV`$, and an initial decrease. For $`\gamma \gamma `$, the errors on the overall normalization at low energy are so large that the initial decrease is hard to parametrized, not so for $`\gamma p`$. In this paper, we do not address the question of the low energy behaviour, which is simply obtained from the hadronic processes, through scaling hypotheses. For the normalization, one uses Vector Meson Dominance and Quark Parton Model ideas, by defining a quantity $`P_{had}=_{V=\rho ,\omega ,\varphi }\frac{4\pi \alpha }{f_V^2}`$ which represents the probability that a photon exhibits a hadronic content. The eiknoal formulation then has to be modified to take this into account  and is written as

$$\sigma _{tot}=2P_{had}d^2\stackrel{}{b}[1e^{\chi _I}(b,s)]$$
(11)
with $`2\chi _I(b,s)=A(b)[\sigma _{soft}+\sigma _{jet}/P_{had}]`$ with the notation of the previous section. In this approach, $`P_{had}^{\gamma \gamma }=(P_{had}^{\gamma p})^2(1/240)^2`$, at $`\sqrt{s_{\gamma \gamma }}100GeV`$. This factorization ansatz seems to work reasonably well. The soft part of the cross-section, which defines the normalization, is obtained from the number of quarks in the colliding particles, through a simple scaling factor, i.e. $`\sigma _{soft}^{\gamma p}=\frac{2}{3}\sigma _{soft}^{pp}`$ and $`\sigma _{soft}^{\gamma \gamma }=\frac{2}{3}\sigma _{soft}^{\gamma p}`$. As for the rise, the eikonal minijet model of course uses jet cross-sections with the appropriate photon densities. We should mention that there are at present at least two other models, which obtain not only the rise, but the entire cross-section from the proton cross-section, using factorization  or a Regge-Pomeron type behaviour. We show in Fig.(6) old  and recent  data for $`\gamma p`$ total cross-section, together with BPC data extrapolated  from DIS, compared with a band which represents the predictions from the EMM model, using two different formulations with GRS and GRV type densities for the photonic partons.

This band is compatible with the predictions for $`\gamma \gamma `$, for which we show in Fig. (7), our favourite curve for the recent data from LEP.

The b-dependence in these figures is obtained from an intrinsic transverse momentum description , using the experimentally measured transverse momentum distribution of the photonic partons . Work is in progress to apply to photonic processes the Bloch-Nordsieck approach described in the previous section.

## 4  Precision needed to discriminate betwen models

It is instructive to compare different models among each other, also in view of the proposed electron-positron Linear Collider which should reach very high c.m. energies, with $`\sqrt{s_{\gamma \gamma }}`$ potentially as high as 500-700 GeV (if operated in the photon collider mode). This comparison between various model predictions is shown in Fig.(8). The stars for large energy values correspond to pseudo-data points, and illustrate a possible extrapolation of the measured cross-section with realistic errors.

In Table 1 we show total $`\gamma \gamma `$ cross-sections for three models of the ”proton-is-like-the-photon’ type. The last column shows the 1$`\sigma `$ level precision needed to discriminate between Aspen and BSW models. The model labelled DL is obtained from Regge/Pomeron exchange with parameters from Donnachie and Landshoff and factorization at the residues. The difference between DL and either Aspen or BSW is bigger than between Aspen and BSW at each energy value.

Similar tables can be drawn for distinguishing among different formulations of the Eikonal Minijet Model or between the EMM and other QCD based models, like BKKS . Part of the problem in comparing data with theoretical expectations and hence make predictions for future machines, lies in the fact that the total cross-section for photon processes is difficult to measure, and theoretically difficult to define. A less uncertain quantity is actually the $`e^+e^{}`$ cross-section into hadrons, which is the quantity from which the $`\gamma \gamma `$ cross-sections are extracted. Thus it may be more appropriate to fold different model predictions for $`\gamma \gamma `$ cross-sections, with the photon distribution in the electrons taking into account the (anti)tagging of the electrons  and compare the resultant uncertainties. We show one such folding, using the Weiszäcker Williams approximation, with two different models for $`\sigma _{\gamma \gamma }^{tot}`$, EMM with GRV densities and the Aspen model, in Fig.(9).

We see that as a result of the folding, the difference between different model predictions of a factor 2 or so get reduced to about $`30\%`$. Given the expected experimental errors at the future linear colliders it would be possible to discriminate between different theoretical models for $`\gamma \gamma `$ cross-sections even at a $`e^+e^{}`$ collider .

## 5 Conclusion

A QCD approach to the calculation of total cross-section based on the eikonal formulation, shows that QCD can describe the rise for both, photon and proton, processes. For protons there exist extensive and very accurate data, and it is seen that a treatment of both hard and soft gluon emission needs to be used in order to reproduce the rise at intermediate and high energies. Photon processes are still characterized by large experimental errors and the Eikonal Minijet Model, with only hard gluon scattering and fixed intrinsic transverse momentum for the photon, appears adequate. However, there exist models which are consistent with the current data within the experimental errors and which predict a much slower rise at higher energies. A more complete treatment would be required for data with much smaller experimental errors, likely only with measurements at the future Linear Colliders.

## 6 Ackowledgments

We acknowledge support from the EEC, TMR contract 98-0169.