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# A step toward the calibration of the RGB Tip as a Standard Candle

## 1 Introduction

While the use of the luminosity of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) as a standard candle dates back to 1930 (see Madore & Freedman (1998) and references therein), the development of the method as a safe and viable technique is relatively recent (Lee, Freedman & Madore (1993), hereafter L93). In a few years it has become a widely adopted technique, finding fruitful application also within the HST Key project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale (see Ferrarese et al. (2000a, b), and references therein). The underlying physical processes are clearly understood and well rooted in the theory of stellar evolution (Madore & Freedman, 1998). The method is particularly useful to estimate distances to those stellar systems that do not contain Cepheids, such as early type galaxies, and it can be applied to galaxies as far as $`12`$ Mpc with the current instrumentation. The key observable quantity is the magnitude of the bright end (the tip) of the Red Giant Branch (RGB), that corresponds to a sharp cut-off in the RGB Luminosity Function (LF), measured in the Cousin’s $`I`$ passband111Hereafter, when we will refer to the $`I`$ passband, we will always mean the Cousin’s $`I`$ passband, unless we specify otherwise.. In this passband the magnitude of the tip shows a very weak (if any) dependence on metallicity (Da Costa & Armandroff (1990), hereafter DA90). The feature can be identified by applying the Sobel’s filter, an edge-detection algorithm, to the LF of the upper RGB (see Sakai, Madore & Freedman (1996), hereafter S96, for a standard application222From now on, we will refer to their method for the detection of the TRGB as to the standard analysis.). The possible biases have been well characterized and quantified by means of numerical simulations by Madore & Freedman (1995) (hereafter MF95).

In this context, we are performing an extensive study of the Red Giant population in Galactic Globular Clusters (GGC). In particular, we have derived an accurate calibration of the RGB photometric properties as a function of metallicity, both in the optical and in the IR (Ferraro et al., 1999, 2000). The final aim of this program is to use stellar populations in GGCs as calibrators for the TRGB method, taking advantage of the large samples that can be easily assembled with the new generation of array detectors and cameras. As a part of this general project, in this paper we present (i) a very robust empirical calibration of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$at $`[Fe/H]1.7`$, derived by applying the standard analysis to a very large sample of RGB stars in the globular cluster $`\omega `$ Centauri (NGC 5139), and based on a direct distance estimate recently obtained by Thompson et al. (2001) (hereafter T01) for a detached eclipsing binary in this cluster, and (ii) a new empirical calibration of the $`M_I^{TRGB}`$$`[Fe/H]`$ relation based on a large, homogeneous IR database of RGB stars in Galactic Globular Clusters, recently published by Ferraro et al. (2000) (hereafter F00).

The aim of this paper is to provide a first, robust pillar for a well rooted empirical calibration of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$as a standard candle, extending over a wide range in metallicity. This will constitute the basis for a secure application of the TRGB method as an extragalactic distance indicator.

## 2 A new $`M_I^{TRGB}[Fe/H]`$ relation

The most widely adopted calibration of the absolute I magnitude of the TRGB ($`M_I^{TRGB}`$$`=M_{bol}^{TRGB}BC_I`$) was derived by L93 from the following relations, which give the bolometric magnitude of the tip ($`M_{bol}^{TRGB}`$) as a function of metallicity:

$$M_{bol}^{TRGB}=0.19[Fe/H]3.81$$
(1)
and the I bolometric correction ($`BC_I`$) as a function of the intrinsic color $`(VI)_0`$:

$$BC_I=0.8810.243(VI)_0$$
(2)
both obtained by DA90. Using accurate V and I photometry of a small number of RGB stars333From 20 to 110 stars per cluster were observed by DA90 in the upper $`4`$ mag of each RGB. in eight selected globular clusters in the metallicity range $`2.2[Fe/H]0.7`$, DA90 estimated the apparent I magnitude of the TRGB ($`I^{TRGB}`$) as the magnitude of the brightest and reddest giant in their samples. They converted $`I^{TRGB}`$to absolute magnitudes by adopting the RR Lyrae distance scale $`M_V(RRLy)=0.17[Fe/H]+0.82`$, from Lee, Demarque & Zinn (1990), and finally to $`M_{bol}`$ using Eq. 2. Note that, in this context, the most relevant observational fact presented by DA90 is that $`M_I^{TRGB}`$$`=4.0\pm 0.1`$, in the sampled range of metallicity.

The above calibrations suffer from two major sources of uncertainty:

* The evolution of stars along the RGB becomes faster as their luminosity increases along the path toward the TRGB. Thus, most of the cluster light has to be observed to correctly sample the fastest evolutionary phases (Renzini & Fusi Pecci, 1988). MF95 stated that acceptable detections of the TRGB can be obtained if more than 50 stars are sampled within 1 mag from the tip and that fine estimates can be obtained only sampling more than 100 stars in that range. The DA90 samples are much poorer than this, therefore their $`I^{TRGB}`$estimates may be affected by the systematics associated with small number statistics.
* The RR Lyrae distance scale is quite uncertain. While there is now some agreement on the slope of the $`M_V(RRLy)`$$`[Fe/H]`$ relation, the actual zero points is still hardly debated (see Cacciari (1999), for a recent review).

The most recent calibration of the $`M_{bol}^{TRGB}[Fe/H]`$ relation has been obtained by F00, from homogeneous near-infrared photometry of a large sample of RGB stars in nine Galactic Globular Clusters. Several hundred giants were observed in the upper $`4`$ mag of each RGB. Moreover, the data-set presented by F00 extends to a much higher metallicity with respect to DA90, covering the range $`2.2[Fe/H]0.2`$. The TRGB was identified by using the brightest non-variable RGB star in K band. F00 adopted the new distance scale presented by Ferraro et al. (1999) which, although still based on the Horizontal Branch, was obtained by using a new semi-empirical approach (see Ferraro et al. (1999) for details). F00 provided $`M_{bol}^{TRGB}`$ as a function of \[Fe/H\] in two metallicity scales: (i) the Carretta & Gratton (1997) scale and (ii) the global metallicity (\[M/H\]) scale, which takes into account also the $`\alpha `$elements abundances. To obtain a more direct comparison with the calibration by L93, we used the data from F00 to derive $`M_{bol}^{TRGB}`$ as a function of \[Fe/H\] in the Zinn & West (1984) metallicity scale, and obtained:

$$M_{bol}^{TRGB}=0.12[Fe/H]3.76.$$
(3)
The larger samples used by F00, the wider metallicity range covered and the minor impact of the extinction and bolometric corrections on infrared luminosities, suggest that eq. 3 has to be preferred to eq. 1. Note, however, that the final $`M_I^{TRGB}`$– \[Fe/H\] relations derived by the two independent calibrations of $`M_{bol}^{TRGB}`$ are in agreement within the uncertainties (see Sect. 4 and Fig. 4).

In order to derive the $`M_I^{TRGB}`$ from the new empirical calibration, we need to combine eq. 3 with eq. 2, following the relation $`M_I^{TRGB}=M_{bol}^{TRGB}BC_I`$. The actual $`BC_I`$ depends implicitly on metallicity, since $`BC_I`$ depends on the $`(VI)`$ color of the TRGB (eq. 2) which, in turn, depends on metallicity. To make such a dependence explicit, we plot in Fig. 1 $`(VI)_0^{TRGB}`$ as a function of \[Fe/H\] for the six clusters studied by DA90. The data are best fitted by a second order polynomial whose equation is also reported in Fig. 1. We adopt this relation to eliminate the dependency of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$ on $`(VI)`$ color and we finally obtain the following relation:

$$M_I^{TRGB}=0.14[Fe/H]^2+0.48[Fe/H]3.66$$
(4)
which provides the calibration of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$ as a function of the metallicity only (in the Zinn & West (1984) scale).

Eq. (3) and (4) represent a substantial improvement with respect to previous work, since they are based on the largest IR RGB samples in GGCs available in the literature. Note that the F00 survey sampled a significative fraction of the cluster light (up to $`80\%`$). However even in this large data-set the number of RGB stars in the upper 1 mag bin from the TRGB is $`<50`$ in all the cases, and the brightest star detection is possibly prone to low number statistics effects. This is due, in most cases, to intrinsic poorness of the cluster population, since the majority of GGCs simply do not contain a sufficient number of RGB stars to adequately sample the upper RGB. Thus extensive observations of the most massive GGCs are urged in order to properly calibrate the above relations. In the following sections we report our results on the most massive Galactic globular: $`\omega `$ Centauri.

## 3 The determination of the TRGB luminosity in $`\omega `$ Centauri

### 3.1 Why $`\omega `$ Centauri ?

$`\omega `$ Centauri is a nearby and well studied cluster. It is the most luminous globular cluster in the Milky Way system, therefore even the fastest evolutionary phases are well populated and it is possible to observe a quite large sample of RGB stars, fulfilling the prescriptions of MF95. Here we adopt the huge photometric ($`B`$,$`I`$) database presented by P00, consisting of more than 220,000 stars observed with the WFI camera at the 2.2 ESO-MPI telescope and extending over a $`34^{}\times 33^{}`$ field roughly centered on the cluster. The absolute photometric calibration is accurate to within $`\pm 0.02`$ mag. The observed field extends over $`24`$ core radii (van Leeuwen et al., 2000), i.e. an area enclosing $`90\%`$ of the cluster light. Thus, virtually all the bright stars of $`\omega `$ Centauri are included in the adopted database. Considering that $`\omega `$ Centauri is the most luminous globular cluster of the whole Galaxy, this photometric database is the largest sample that can be obtained in the Galactic globular cluster system.

Moreover, $`\omega `$ Centauri was the first globular in which a detached eclipsing binary system, OGLEGC17, was discovered (Kaluzny et al., 1996). This enabled T01 to obtain a direct distance estimate, independent of any other distance scale. The distance of detached, eclipsing double line spectroscopic binaries can in fact be obtained by coupling the physical parameters of the system with the relations between color and surface brightness by Barnes & Evans (1976). This method is basically geometrical, since the distance is obtained by comparison between the linear and angular size of the binary members (see Lacy (1977); Kruszewski and Semeniuk (1999)). The final distance obtained by T01 is $`d=5385\pm 300`$ pc, which corresponds to $`(mM)_0=13.65\pm 0.11`$, if we assume their adopted extinction value, $`E(BV)=0.13\pm 0.02`$. Their result is in good agreement with previous estimates. According to T01, the error bar on the distance modulus can be significantly reduced as soon as better light and velocity curves will be obtained for OGLEGC17. Thus, a significant improvement of the quoted measure of the distance modulus has to be expected in the near future. A further independent distance estimate based on a geometrical method could soon be provided also by the comparison of the linear and the angular velocity dispersion from the large database of proper motions by van Leeuwen et al. (2000), once supported by detailed dynamical modeling.

In deriving $`M_I^{TRGB}`$another fundamental ingredient can still be greatly refined and improved in the near future: the reddening. For instance, Mateo et al. (1995) report that the $`(VI)_0`$ color at minimum light of RRab variables is universal and independent of metallicity. Thus, reliable $`E(VI)`$ estimates can be obtained from the observed $`(VI)`$ at minimum light and large samples would greatly improve the accuracy. For $`\omega `$ Centauri, in particular, a ($`V`$,$`I`$) survey of RR Lyrae can potentially provide a reddening estimate with an uncertainty of $`\pm 0.01`$ mag or lower, since this populous cluster contains more than 70 RRab (Rey et al., 2000).

In conclusion, $`\omega `$ Centauri seems to fit all the requirements to obtain an excellent calibration of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$and still leaves considerable room for future improvements.

A possible caveat may be associated with the wide metallicity distribution observed in this cluster (see P00 and references therein). However, it has been shown that the largely dominant population is metal poor \[Norris, Freeman & Mighell (1996); Suntzeff & Kraft (1996), P00\]. The peak of such population occurs at $`[Fe/H]1.7`$ \[Suntzeff & Kraft (1996), P00\] and we will adopt this as the characteristic metallicity of the cluster.

### 3.2 $`M_I^{TRGB}`$in $`\omega `$ Centauri

Fig. 2 shows the ($`I`$,$`BI`$) Color Magnitude Diagram (CMD) of the brightest 3 mag in the RGB of $`\omega `$ Centauri : 1777 stars are reported in this diagram, most of them being RGB stars. The contribution of AGB stars is negligible for $`I<11`$. The photometric errors are lower than 0.02 mag in both passbands, over the whole magnitude range plotted in the diagram. The contamination by foreground sources is negligible in this region of the CMD and the crowding is not a serious concern for such bright stars in this nearby and relatively loose cluster.

The P00 sample contains 185 stars in the upper magnitude bin, which is almost twice of what recommended by MF95 for an optimal detection of the TRGB.

The edge-detector filter is applied on a smoothed version of the LF of the RGB, following the standard analysis as described by SMF96 (see their appendix). In Fig. 2 panel (a) the RGB LF for $`I<11`$ is reported. A sharp cut-off is clearly evident at $`I9.8`$. The same LF is shown in Fig. 2 panel (b) as a smoothed histogram, while the edge-detector filter response to the smoothed LF is reported in panel (c). The main peak in the filter response indicates the cut-off point: the TRGB is clearly and unambiguously detected at $`I=9.84\pm 0.1`$, the associated uncertainty is the Half Width at Half Maximum (HWHM) of the peak.

Moreover, the large sample of giants observed in this cluster allows us to adopt a more refined approach to the quantification of the uncertainty, by applying a bootstrap technique (see Babu & Feigelson (1996), and references therein). To do this, we randomly extracted a subsample containing $`80\%`$ of the stars from the global sample of all RGB stars with $`I<11`$, we repeated the measure of $`I^{TRGB}`$ on the extracted subsample with the same technique as above and recorded the final result. Panel (d) in Fig. 2 shows the distribution of 10,428 such estimates on randomly extracted subsamples: the mean of the distribution is $`<I>=9.835`$ and the standard deviation is $`\sigma =0.04`$ mag. The estimate of $`I^{TRGB}`$ turns out to be remarkably robust to statistical fluctuations, with $`83\%`$ of the estimates falling within $`\pm 1\sigma `$ from the mean. We adopt the bootstrapped $`\sigma `$ as the uncertainty on our estimate of the apparent $`I`$ magnitude of the tip. The final result is: $`I^{TRGB}`$$`=9.84\pm 0.04`$.

It is now straightforward to provide $`M_I^{TRGB}`$ of $`\omega `$ Centauri as a function of distance modulus and reddening:

$$M_I^{TRGB}=9.84(\pm 0.04)KE(BV)(mM)_0$$
(5)
where $`K=A_I/E(BV)`$, $`A_I`$ is the amount of extinction in the $`I`$ passband, $`E(BV)`$ is the reddening and $`(mM)_0`$ is the true distance modulus. Since the P00 data-set sampled virtually the whole cluster population in this range of magnitudes, it is unlikely that the $`I^{TRGB}`$ estimate will be significantly improved by new observations. On the other hand, all other terms of Eq. 5 can be subject to substantial improvements in their estimates, as discussed in Sect. 3.1. Here we adopt the distance and reddening by T01 and the reddening laws by Dean, Warren & Cousins (1978)444As far as we know Dean, Warren & Cousins (1978) are the only ones providing a reddening law for the Cousin’s $`I`$ passband. All other sources we were able to retrieve refer to Jhonson’s $`I`$, a quite different filter with different $`A_I/E(BV)`$ values., with the same assumptions of DA90, i.e., $`A_I1.76E(BV)`$. We obtain:

$$M_I^{TRGB}=4.04\pm 0.12$$
(6)
where all the sources of uncertainty have been taken into account. The main contributor to the error budget remains the estimate of the distance modulus.

## 4 Comparison with other calibrations

It is worth checking how the existing empirical and theoretical calibrations compare with the above estimate of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$, at the relevant metallicity $`[Fe/H]1.7`$.

In Figure 4 our estimate of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$ in $`\omega `$ Centauri is reported as a big black dot in the $`M_I^{TRGB}`$vs. \[Fe/H\] plane. The horizontal error bar represents the range in metallicity covered by the dominant population of the cluster (see Fig.11 in Suntzeff & Kraft (1996)).

The empirical calibrations discussed in Section 2 are also plotted: the heavy solid curve is the new calibration based on the large IR database by F00 (eq. 4), while the L93 calibration (eq. 1 plus eq. 2 from DA90) has been converted to a function of metallicity, following the procedure described in Sect. 2, and it is plotted as a dotted-dashed curve. The horizontal long dashed line represents the recent result by Ferrarese et al. (2000a) (hereafter Fe00a) who calibrated the TRGB as a secondary indicator by using Cepheid distances in a small set of nearby galaxies where both Cepheids and the TRGB have been detected. They found $`M_I^{TRGB}`$$`=4.06\pm 0.07`$ (random) $`\pm 0.13`$ (systematic), in very good agreement with our estimate, despite their larger uncertainty. In Fig. 4, we plotted also the region delimited by the two empirical calibrations discussed above as a shaded area, in order to point out the region of the plane where most of the empirical estimates lie.

Salaris & Cassisi (1998) (hereafter SC98) provided a theoretical relation of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$ as a function of the global metallicity \[M/H\], instead of \[Fe/H\]. We convert their \[M/H\] to \[Fe/H\] according to the prescriptions of Salaris, Chieffi & Straniero (1993) and assuming $`[\alpha /Fe]=+0.28`$ over the considered metallicity range (see Ferraro et al. (1999)). Using two different bolometric corrections, SC98 derived two slightly different relations (their eq. 5 and 6), which are reported in Fig. 4 as a short dashed curve and as a dotted curve, respectively.

As can be seen from Fig. 4, the theoretical calibrations are systematically ($`0.2`$ mag) brighter than empirical ones, as already noted by SC98 and Fe00a. The strong constraint provided by the TRGB luminosity in $`\omega `$ Centauri seems to favor the empirical calibrations. However, as stated by Castellani, Degl’Innocenti & Luridiana (1993) and F00, theoretical relationships should be considered as upper limits for the TRGB luminosity, since they refer to the nominal red giant luminosity at the He flash.

## 5 Summary and Conclusions

We have used some of the most recent results from the study of Galactic Globular Clusters to improve the observational basis of the calibration of the TRGB method as a powerful distance indicator.

In particular, we have derived a robust estimate of $`M_I^{TRGB}`$in the globular cluster $`\omega `$ Centauri, based (a) on the application of the standard technique on the very large sample of RGB stars by P00, and (b) on a direct distance estimate from a detached eclipsing binary by T01. Our result turns out to be in excellent agreement with previous empirical calibrations. Expected improvements in the distance and reddening estimates may likely reduce the uncertainties of our calibrating point to $`\pm 0.06`$ mag. Thus, eq. 5 shall be considered as a very firm point of the TRGB calibration (at $`[Fe/H]1.7`$) for the future, as well as an important observational test for stellar evolutionary models. However, even at the present level of accuracy, the $`M_I^{TRGB}`$measure derived here is the less uncertain calibrating point for the $`M_I^{TRGB}`$– \[Fe/H\] relation.

A new empirical $`M_I^{TRGB}`$-$`[Fe/H]`$ relation (eq. 4) was also derived. It turns out to be in excellent agreement with the derived $`M_I^{TRGB}`$of $`\omega `$ Centauri as well as with other empirical calibrations. The main advantages of the new relation derived here with respect to the previous ones (L93, DA90) are: (i) it is based on more solid observational basis, since it has been derived from the largest IR database of RGB stars in Galactic globulars available in the literature (F00), (ii) it has been calibrated over a larger range of metal abundances, extending the metallicity limit from $`[Fe/H]0.7`$ (L93, DA90) to $`[Fe/H]0.2`$; for this reason, eq. 4 has to be considered a much more appropriate tool for applications to external galaxies, which, in general, are significantly more metal rich than $`[Fe/H]>0.7`$.

This research has been supported by the Italian Ministero della Università e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (MURST), through the COFIN grant p. MM02241491\_004, assigned to the project Stellar Observables of Cosmological Relevance. The financial support of the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) is also kindly acknowledged. We thanks M. Tosi, G. Clementini and L. Greggio for useful discussions. E.P. acknowledges the ESO Studentship programme. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service.


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# Ionizing Photons and EUV Excesses in Clusters of Galaxies

## 1 Introduction

Rich clusters of galaxies are one of the major identified reservoirs of baryons at low redshift; the contribution of hot plasma in clusters to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{baryon}}`$ is comparable to that of the stellar components of galaxies (Fukugita, Hogan & Peebles 1998). Most of the intracluster medium (ICM) in galaxy clusters is at temperatures $`T110`$ keV, as expected from the depth of the potential wells traced by the galaxies, although the high-density cores of clusters may exhibit gas at lower temperatures (e.g., Sarazin 1988). This hot gas radiates primarily through thermal bremsstrahlung. Since bremsstrahlung is intrinsically broad-band emission, the ICM should be detectable at soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths as well as keV energies.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite provided the capability to observe at energies of order 100 eV; the precise bandpass depends on convolution of the instrument response with the absorption due to the intervening interstellar medium. EUVE observations of several clusters of galaxies have been interpreted as implying substantial EUV emission in excess of that expected from the gas observed at keV energies (Lieu et al. 1996a,b; Mittaz, Lieu & Lockman 1998). This claim has been disputed by Bowyer, Berghöfer & Korpela (1999) who argue that the EUV excesses are an artifact caused by improper subtraction of the instrumental background (although they infer that the relatively weak EUV excesses in the Virgo and Coma clusters may be real), and an increasingly fractious debate has ensued (e.g., Lieu et al. 1999; Bonamente, Lieu & Mittaz 2001, hereafter BLM; Berghöfer, Bowyer, & Korpela 2000; Bonamente et al. 2001). Dixon, Hurwitz, & Ferguson (1996) and Dixon et al. (2001) used the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) and Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), respectively, to search for the far-UV resonance lines of C IV $`\lambda \lambda 1548`$, 1551 and O VI $`\lambda \lambda 1032`$, 1036 (both the carbon and oxygen lines in the former paper and just the oxygen lines in the latter), which would be expected to be prominent if the EUV excesses are produced by warm gas. Neither observation detected any line emission; Dixon et al., in particular, ruled out the existing warm gas models for the Virgo and Coma clusters at the $`2\sigma `$ level. In this Letter, we present an alternative probe of the reality of the EUV excesses, namely, observations of recombination line radiation produced by irradiation of neutral gas in galaxies by the ionizing radiation associated with the EUV excesses.

## 2 Cluster Ionizing Photon Fluxes

Two different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the EUV excesses: thermal emission from warm ($`T10^6`$ K) gas (Lieu et al. 1996a), and inverse Compton (IC) scattering of cosmic microwave background photons by nonthermal electrons in the cluster (Hwang 1997; Ensslin & Biermann 1998). Both of these mechanisms suffer from serious difficulties. In the thermal model, the gas cooling times are so short that it is difficult to see how such emission could be sustained for more than a small fraction of the age of the cluster. Fabian (1997) proposed that the EUV emission arises in mixing layers, so that the energy source for the emission is the thermal reservoir of hot gas. This could alleviate the cooling difficulty for several of the clusters but probably fails for the most EUV-luminous cluster, Abell 1795 (A1795). The nonthermal model sidesteps this problem; however, it runs into difficulties with the strength of cluster magnetic fields (e.g., Kempner & Sarazin 2000) and the pressure of nonthermal particles (including the relativistic electrons) (Bowyer & Berghöfer 1998; BLM).

We adopt the thermal interpretation of the EUV excesses since BLM have presented detailed thermal fits (gas density and temperature) as a function of radius to the EUV emission from the Virgo and A1795 clusters. As these fits by definition reproduce the alleged EUV excesses in these clusters, the resulting ionizing photon fluxes $`\varphi _i`$ should not be very sensitive to this choice as opposed to an IC model. (Since the emission from a power-law electron distribution will have a broader energy distribution than thermal emission, which is dominated by line emission at these temperatures, a thermal model will produce smaller values of $`\varphi _i`$ than an IC model.)

For simplicity, we assume a spherically symmetric distribution of gas; because of the integration over angle and radius, we expect the results to be insensitive to this assumption. Specifically, we take the radial distribution of protons to be described by a $`\beta `$model,

$$n(r)=n_o\left[1+(r/r_o)^2\right]^{3\beta /2}$$
(1)
where $`n_o`$ and $`r_o`$ are the core density and radius, respectively. Assuming thermal emission from the gas, the ionizing photon emissivity is proportional to $`n^2`$, and the normally incident ionizing photon flux on a surface at radius $`R`$ oriented normally to the radius vector is given by

$$\varphi _i=2\pi \xi _in_o^2r_ox_o^{6\beta 1}_{\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}^{\theta _{\mathrm{max}}}_0^{x_m}𝑑\theta 𝑑x\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\theta A_x^{3\beta }\mathrm{phot}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1$$
(2)
where $`x=r/R`$, $`x_o=r_o/R`$, and $`A_x1+x_o^2+x^22x\mathrm{cos}\theta `$. The ionizing photon emissivity $`\xi _i`$ is defined so that $`n^2\xi _i`$ is the number of ionizing photons emitted cm-3 s-1 sr-1. The integral over the radial variable can be done analytically for $`3\beta `$ equal to an integer or half-integer. The limits of the angular integration depend on the hemisphere of integration; $`(\theta _{\mathrm{min}},\theta _{\mathrm{max}})=(0,\pi /2)`$ gives the flux on the inward-facing surface, while $`(\pi /2,\pi )`$ gives the flux on the outward surface. The maximum radius of integration $`x_m`$ is $`\theta `$dependent for a finite gas distribution.

For consistency with the thermal fits in BLM, we have used the the MEKAL plasma code (Kaastra, Mewe, & Nieuwenhuijzen 1996, as implemented in the SPEX software package: Kaastra et al. 1995) to calculate the ionizing photon emissivities for the cluster gas. In figure 1 we plot $`\xi _i`$ as a function of the gas temperature; we have taken the upper limit to be 500 eV in calculating $`\xi _i`$, but the results are insensitive to this assumption. Metal abundances of $`1/3`$ solar have been assumed. For comparison, we have also plotted $`\xi _i`$ as calculated using the MAPPINGS III code (Sutherland & Dopita 1993; Dopita & Sutherland 1996). The largest differences are about $`40\%`$, which we take to be a measure of the uncertainty in the predicted $`\varphi _i`$.

In Figure 2 we plot the normally incident photon flux $`\varphi _i`$ on a surface as a function of radius for the A1795 cluster. (This is the sum of the fluxes incident on opposite sides of the surface.) The upper solid curve uses the thermal fit to the EUV emission from BLM. Because this result is sensitive to the density at the largest radius for which BLM present results, we have also plotted $`\varphi _i`$ for this model with the gas density in the outermost bin reduced by its stated uncertainty (dashed line). Finally, the lower solid curve shows the ionizing photon flux expected from the hot X-ray-emitting gas in the cluster, with the $`T`$ and $`n`$ as derived from XMM-Newton observations (Tamura et al. 2001)111Since we actually truncate the cluster gas distribution at $`10^{}`$ radius, the limit of the fits presented by BLM, the curves in Figure 2 are lower limits to the true ionizing fluxes; this effect is much more important for the EUV excess models.. Although, as noted above, the curves are for a surface oriented normally to the radius vector, the extremely weak dependence on radius for the models with EUV excesses indicates that the actual fluxes incident on galactic disks at random orientations within the cluster will not differ significantly from the plotted values.

## 3 Discussion

From the plot of ionizing photon fluxes in Figure 2, we see that $`\varphi _i`$ will be a minimum of one to two orders of magnitude larger if the EUV excess claimed in A1795 by BLM is present than it would be if there is only the more conventional hot gas component; over most of the cluster volume, the ratio is actually much larger, $`10^210^3`$, since $`\varphi _i`$ from the EUV component is much less centrally concentrated than the hot gas. Any spiral galaxy within the inner $`10^{}`$ ($`660h_{70}^1`$ kpc at the distance of A1795) will see an ionizing photon flux $`\varphi 5\times 10^7`$ phot cm-2 s-1 (for the warm gas parameters derived by BLM). The corresponding emission measure (normal to the disk ) $`_m63\mathrm{cm}^6\mathrm{pc}`$, assuming $`T_e10^4`$ K (e.g., Maloney & Bland-Hawthorn 1999). For comparison, this is about ten times larger than the emission measure characterizing the warm ionized medium (the Reynolds layer: Reynolds 1984).

This offers a straightforward observational test of the reality of the EUV excesses. The large predicted emission measures can be easily probed through recombination line observations. In particular, the predicted H$`\alpha `$ surface brightness is

$$I_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }=35.7\left(\frac{_m}{100\mathrm{cm}^6\mathrm{pc}}\right)\mathrm{Rayleigh}$$
(3)
where $`1\mathrm{Rayleigh}=10^6/4\pi `$ phot cm-2 s-1 sr-1, and we have normalized to the expected $`_m`$ for galaxies in A1795222We have performed similar calculations for the Virgo cluster, for which BLM also present detailed fits, but we do not present them as the results are uninteresting: the EUV excess contribution does not exceed that from the hot gas in the cluster (which has $`T_{\mathrm{kev}}1`$), and the ionizing photon flux drops below the cosmic background level at a distance smaller than the separation of any disk galaxy from the center of the emission. This is largely a consequence of the small spatial scale of the emission, which is concentrated on the giant elliptical galaxy M87.. The resulting $`I_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ depends only on $`\varphi _i`$ and is independent of $`T_e`$ and $`n`$. Emission measures as low as unity can be reached quite readily with a differential narrow-band imager, in particular, the TAURUS Tunable Filter333See the TTF web site at http://www.aao.gov.au/ttf/ (TTF) which combines beam switching and frequency switching to suppress atmospheric variability (Bland-Hawthorn & Jones 1998). These faint emission levels can also be reached in one night with spectrographs on 8m class telescopes (Cirkovic, Bland-Hawthorn, & Samurovic 1999).

The cluster-induced H$`\alpha `$ emission can be easily distinguished from the warm ionized media intrinsic to the cluster galaxies, even if we adopt a reduced density in the outer regions of the cluster (dashed curve in Figure 2). The surface brightness of the diffuse ionized gas in spiral disks are typically of the same order as in the Reynolds layer, with $`_m10`$ cm-6 pc (e.g., Ferguson et al. 1996; Hoopes, Walterbos, & Greenawalt 1996; Greenawalt, Walterbos, & Braun 1997; Greenawalt et al. 1998), and decline with increasing radius, generally to $`_m1`$ cm-6 pc around the edge of the optical disk. The radial behavior of the cluster-induced H$`\alpha `$ will be very different. Since the cluster ionizing field will be uniform across a galactic disk, the entire neutral hydrogen disk of a galaxy, even outside the optical disk, should be glowing in H$`\alpha `$ at the same level. Hence this component will be flat with radius, and extend outside of the optical disk, as far as the neutral hydrogen edge. We also note that even such high ionizing photon fluxes probably do not significantly increase the critical column density for ionization of galactic neutral hydrogen disks above the value expected in field spirals due to the cosmic ionizing background (Maloney 1993), since the pressure of the ICM will force the ISM of cluster spirals to high values ($`P/k\stackrel{>}{}10^4`$ cm-3 K) even at large radius.

This technique would fail if stripping of gas from spiral galaxies in the cluster were a very efficient process, as suggested by early HI observations of the densest clusters (Giovanelli & Haynes 1985; Cayette et al. 1990). However, more recent studies show that stripping is less effective than originally suggested. The most comprehensive survey to date, incorporating 1900 galaxies in 18 clusters (Solanes et al. 2001), finds that more than one-half of spirals retain at least half their HI within $`900h_{70}^1`$ kpc ($`13^{}`$ at the distance of A1795). This is the scale, roughly $`40\%`$ of an Abell radius, over which we expect to see disks with bright H-alpha disks or halos (see Fig. 2). A third of the clusters in the Solanes et al. sample show no H I deficiency.

We have investigated the brighter end of the predicted range of $`\varphi _i`$ using archival broad-band images of the core of A1795. An emission measure of $`_m`$ produces an R band surface brightness of $`\mu _R31.52.5\mathrm{log}_m`$ mag arcsec-2. An extended HI disk seen face-on glowing at $`_m100`$ cm-6 pc corresponds to $`\mu _R26.5`$; this rises to $`\mu _R25`$ for a disk viewed edge on. We have reanalyzed the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 images of A1795 obtained by J. Trauger (ID 5212) (q.v., McNamara et al. 1996). The flux-calibrated F702W images have a summed exposure time of 1780 sec. The combined image achieves $`\mu _R25`$ mag arcsec-2 at S/N $`0.5`$ per WFPC pixel. When smoothed over $`1^{\prime \prime }`$, we see no evidence of faint, flat H$`\alpha `$ halos down to $`\mu _R26.5`$ ($`2\sigma `$). The disk galaxies appear to be exponential down to and below this level. (The HST has been used to reach down to 28 mag arcsec-2 in broadband images, e.g., Tyson et al. 1998. At these levels, it would be possible to detect H$`\alpha `$ halos with $`_m10`$ cm-6 pc in inclined galaxies.) However, the WFPC2 L-shaped field of view is only about $`3^{}`$.

We have attempted a second experiment with the TTF at the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in order to reach fainter levels in H$`\alpha `$ over a $`10^{}`$ diameter field. A1795 was observed for us by A. Edge and K. Baker on 2001 Mar 3 using the TTF at the AAT f/8 Cassegrain focus. The tunable filter was set to 14Å effective bandpass. To suppress systematic errors induced by the atmosphere, we used the TTF in ‘straddle shuffle’ mode. The on band exposures (6970Å) were interleaved with blue and red off band exposures (6920Å,7050Å). This differential imaging mode produces perfect off-band subtraction (zero systematic error) not possible with conventional imaging filters (Bland-Hawthorn & Jones 1998). Two observing sequences gave a total exposure time of 20 minutes each on the redshifted H$`\alpha `$ line and the summed off band (Figure 3).

While the photometric conditions were good, the seeing was variable around $`1.6^{\prime \prime }`$. The flux-calibrated data reach a surface brightness $`E_m5`$ cm-6 pc at 2$`\sigma `$. At these faint levels we find no evidence of diffuse H$`\alpha `$ disks or extended H$`\alpha `$ halos for galaxies over the $`10^{}`$ field. There is evidence for nucleated star formation in some galaxies, and the central dominant elliptical shows evidence of a spectacular cooling flow (Edge et al. 2001, in preparation).

The preliminary observations from HST and the TTF do not support the existence of faint extended halos or disks within $`5^{}`$ ($`350h_{70}^1`$ kpc) of the cluster core.

## 4 Summary

We present an independent method for determining the reality of the alleged EUV excesses in galaxy clusters. At least for the case of Abell 1795, the ionizing photon fluxes implied by the claimed EUV emission imply that the neutral hydrogen disks of spiral galaxies within the cluster (out to at least $`10^{}`$ radius from the cluster center, corresponding to about 660 kpc) should be glowing in hydrogen recombination lines, with surface brightnesses of tens of Rayleighs at H$`\alpha `$. Current instrumental sensitivities should make it possible to detect the H$`\alpha `$ emission expected due to the ionizing photon flux from the hot gas in the cluster (which is two orders of magnitude or more weaker than the predicted fluxes in the EUV excess model) out to several arcminutes radius, and hence H$`\alpha `$ observations can easily discriminate between the two cases and provide stringent limits on the presence of any additional source of ionization for spiral galaxies within the cluster. A preliminary investigation using archival broad-band images and new H$`\alpha `$ observations does not support the existence of the alleged EUV excess in this cluster.

We are very grateful to Alastair Edge and Kurt Baker for allowing us to use their H$`\alpha `$ data in advance of publication and to the referee for a helpful and extraordinarily prompt report. JBH would like to thank Roberto de Propris, John Dickey, Greg Taylor, and Warrick Couch for useful conversations. PRM is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AST 99-00871.


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# HST observations of the LMC compact H ii region N 11ABased 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 NAS 5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

The giant H ii complex N 11 (Henize henize (1956)) or DEM 34 (Davies et al. dem (1976)) is the most luminous H$`\alpha `$ source in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) after the famous 30 Doradus (Kennicutt & Hodge ken (1986)). Interestingly, N 11 has been suggested to be reminiscent of an evolved, some 2 $`\times `$ 106 years older version of the 30 Doradus starburst (Walborn & Parker wp (1992)). Known also as MC 18 (McGee et al. mc (1972)), it lies at the north-western extremity of the LMC bar and consists of a dozen ionized nebulae (named N 11A to N 11L) with several filaments surrounding a central cavity (see Fig. 1 of Rosado et al. ros (1996)). Almost the entire complex is contained within a bubble $``$ 25$`\times `$ 20 (375 pc $`\times `$ 300 pc) in size created by stellar winds and several supernova explosions (Meaburn et al. mea (1989), Rosado et al. ros (1996), Mac Low et al. mac (1998), Kim et al. kim (1999)). The complex harbors tens of hot stars at different stages of evolution distributed in four OB associations, LH 9, LH 10, LH 13, and LH 14 (Lucke & Hodge lh (1970)).

A considerable amount of work has been devoted to examining various properties of the whole complex. In particular, the physical properties of the components B (LH 10), C (LH 13), and D (LH 14) and their massive star contents were studied by Heydari-Malayeri & Testor (hey83 (1983) and hey85 (1985), hereafter Papers I and II), Heydari-Malayeri et al. (hey87 (1987)), Parker et al. (par (1992)), Degioia-Eastwood et al. (1993), Heydari-Malayeri & Beuzit (hey94 (1994)), Parker et al. (1996), and Heydari-Malayeri et al. (hey00 (2000)). Parker et al. (par (1992)) present an extensive spectral classification of some 70 O and B stars in the associations LH 9 and LH 10. The latter association, which powers N 11B, is the largest and brightest component of the complex containing several young massive stars of type O3.

N 11A (also known as IC 2116, HD 32279), to which this paper is devoted, is a quite isolated ionized region situated north-east of N 11B (see Fig. 1 of Paper I). It is a fairly bright object with $`V`$$``$ 12.5 mag, and its size of $``$ 12′′ makes it the smallest and the most compact nebula in the complex. Using ground-based narrow-band imaging and spectroscopy, in Papers I and II we studied several physical characteristics of N 11A (emission spectrum, excitation, extinction, gas density, chemical composition, abundances, etc.), and suggested that it is the most excited ionized region of the complex. These observations indicated that the excitation source has a $`T_{eff}`$$``$ 44,000 K, corresponding to a mid-O type star. Israel & Koornneef (ik91 (1991)) also presented infrared and IRAS photometry of N 11A, and showed that it is a strong near-IR source dominated by nebular emission.

N 11A belongs to the class of the so-called high excitation blobs (HEBs) in the Magellanic Clouds. In contrast to the typical H ii regions of the Magellanic Clouds, which are extended structures spread over several minutes of arc on the sky and powered by a large number of hot stars, HEBs are very dense small regions usually 5′′ to 10′′ in diameter. At the distance of the Magellanic Clouds this corresponds to sizes of more than 50 pc for normal H ii regions and 1 to 3 pc for the blobs. They are also characterized by large amounts of local dust. HEBs are in fact created by very young massive stars just leaving their natal molecular cloud (see Heydari-Malayeri et al. 1999c  for references).

In their study of N 11A, Parker et al. (par (1992)) used a method for removing the contribution of the surrounding nebular brightness in CCD images and found an embedded star with $`V=14.21`$ mag and two fainter neighbors (unpublished images). The presence of He ii absorption lines in the spectrum of the brightest component (which they called LH 10: 3264) confirmed as O the spectral type of the main exciting source, even though contamination by very strong nebular emission lines made possible to only restrict its subclass within the O3–O5 V range.

In this paper we use the excellent imaging power of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to resolve N 11A and study the structure of the ionized gas as well as its stellar content. This allows us to present a clear picture of the compact ionized nebula and identify its exciting stars. Such information is essential for a better understanding of massive star formation, particularly in isolated, compact regions.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

The observations of N 11A were performed as part of our project GO-8247 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on board of the HST. The images taken with the broad-band filters (F300W, F467M, F410M, and F547M) were obtained on February 7, 2000. Centered on the Planetary Camera (PC), these images had as a goal to reveal the details of the stellar content of N 11A. The narrow-band filter images (F487N, F503N and F656N) were obtained on May 21, 2000. In that case the target was centered on the WF2 which has larger pixels and lower noise than the PC CCD and is better suited for detecting faint nebular emission. Exposures were taken at 4 different pointings offset by 0′′.8 and the exposure times ranged from 10 to 300 sec (see Table 1 for details).

The data were processed through the standard HST pipeline calibration. Multiple images were co-added using the stsdas task imcombine, while cosmic rays were detected and removed with the stsdas task crrej. Normalized images were then created using the total exposure times for each filter. To extract the positions of the stars, the routine daofind was applied to the images by setting the detection threshold to 5$`\sigma `$ above the local background level. The photometry was performed setting a circular aperture of 3–4 pixels in radius in the daophot package in stsdas.

A crucial point in our data reduction was the sky subtraction. For most isolated stars the sky level was estimated and subtracted automatically using an annulus of 6–8 pixel width around each star. However, this could not be done for several stars located in the central region of N 11A due to their crowding. In those cases we carefully examined the PSF size of each individual star (fwhm$``$ 2 pixels, corresponding to 0′′.09 on the sky) and did an appropriate sky subtraction using the mean of several nearby off-star positions. To convert into a magnitude scale we used zero points in the Vegamag system, that is, the system where Vega is set to zero mag in Cousin broad-band filters. The magnitudes measured were corrected for geometrical distortion, finite aperture size (Holtzman et al. holtz (1995)), and charge transfer efficiency as recommended by the HST Data Handbook. An additional correction to take into account the long versus short photometric anomaly (Casertano & Muchler 1998) was also applied. This increased the brightness of our fainter stars by as much as 0.4 magnitudes but it had no measurable effect on the brighter stars of the region.

We note that the filter F547M is wider than the standard Strömgren $`y`$ filter. To evaluate the presence of any systematic effects in our photometry and color magnitude diagrams due to this difference in the filters, we used the stsdas package synphot. Using synthetic spectra of hot stars, with spectral types similar to those found in H ii regions, we estimated the difference due to the HST band-passes to be less than 0.002 mag, which is well within the photometric errors.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Morphology

Narrow-band H$`\beta `$ and \[O iii\] images obtained with ground-based telescopes show N 11B to be delineated at its eastern part by a sharp ionization front (Paper I). In those images N 11A appears as a featureless blob situated $``$ 50′′ (12 pc) east of the ionization front.

The present HST observations resolve N 11A into a very bright core surrounded by a diffuse envelope of $``$ 8′′ in diameter (Fig. 1) and reveal several interesting nebular and stellar features. A sharp ridge or front, extending over $``$ 4′′ along the south-east to north-west direction, borders the core towards north. Beyond the ridge the H$`\alpha `$ emission drops by about a factor of 10. A small cluster of five tightly packed stars are seen towards a cavity in the central region (Fig. 2).

The small scale filamentary structures are best seen in Fig. 3, which presents an un-sharp masking image of N 83B in H$`\alpha `$ from which large scale structures have been subtracted. In order to remove these brightness variations and enhance the high spatial frequencies, a digital “mask” was created from the H$`\alpha `$ image. First, the H$`\alpha `$ image was convolved by a 2 $`\times `$ 2-pixel Gaussian, and then the smoothed frame was subtracted from the original H$`\alpha `$ image.

### 3.2 Extinction and nebular emission

A map of the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ Balmer decrement is presented in Fig. 4a. It reveals a strong absorption zone north of the bright ridge, where the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio reaches values as high as $``$ 5.5, while its mean value there is 4.5. Applying the interstellar reddening law, these ratios correspond to $`A_V`$ = 1.8 and 1.3 mag respectively. Outside that area the ratio is smaller with a mean value of $``$ 3.5 which corresponds to $`A_V`$ = 0.6 mag.

The \[O iii\]$`\lambda `$5007/H$`\beta `$ intensity map (Fig. 4b) reveals a remarkably extended high-excitation zone where the O++ ions occupy almost the same volume as H+. The most excited area, though, surrounds the central stellar cluster, with a mean ratio of 4.1, while the ratio reaches slightly higher values in some pixels in the zone lying between the sharp ridge and the exciting stars. On average the \[O iii\]/H$`\beta `$ is $``$ 3.7 over the diffuse part of the nebula.

Using the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ map, we can accurately correct the H$`\beta `$ flux of the H ii region for interstellar reddening on a pixel by pixel basis. The total corrected flux is $`F_0`$(H$`\beta `$) = 1.17 $`\times `$ 10-11 erg cm-2 s-1 above 3$`\sigma `$ level without the stellar contribution and accurate to 3 %, if our extinction correction which assumes external dust is verified. Supposing that the H ii region is ionization-bounded, the corresponding Lyman continuum flux of the region is $`N_L`$ = 9.10 $`\times `$ 1048 photons s-1. Similarly, with the assumption of a homogeneous spherical nebula, a mean electron density of 550 cm-3 can be derived from the H$`\beta `$ flux, which leads to an ionized hydrogen mass estimate of 54 $`M_{}`$.

A single main sequence star of type O7.5 or O8 or several massive stars of later types can account for this ionizing photon flux (Vacca et al. vacca (1996), Schaerer & de Koter sch (1997)). However, this could clearly be an underestimate since the H ii region is more likely to be density-bounded almost in all directions except northward where lies the sharp ridge.

### 3.3 Stellar content

The automatic search routine daofind detected 18 stars in the WFPC2 field of N 11A, all of them unambiguously present in the four stellar filters (Fig. 5) with their magnitudes ranging from $`y=14.69`$ to 20.23. The photometry measurements for these stars are presented in Table 2, where the star numbers refer to Figs. 2 and 4.

Among these stars only seven are situated in the direction of N 11A. A small cluster of five stars, observed at the center of N 11A (Fig. 2), is obviously associated with this region. Star #7, with a $`y`$ magnitude of 14.69 is the main exciting star of the region, nearly 6 times more luminous than star #8, the second brightest star, which is situated $``$ 0′′.7 to its south, and has a magnitude of $`y=16.68`$. Star #5 lying 0′′.8 to the north-east of #7 is the faintest member of the sample. If this one is an exciting star, its faint magnitude should be due to local reddening.

One could try to estimate the luminosity of the brightest star of the cluster (#7), although in the absence of spectroscopic data this is not accurate. Using an extinction of $`A_V`$ = 0.6 mag corresponding to the mean value for the associated nebula (Section 3.2), and a distance modulus $`m`$ – $`M`$ = 18.5 (e.g. Kovács ko (2000) and references therein), we find a visual absolute magnitude $`M_V=4.4`$. If the star is on the main sequence, it would be an O9V according to the calibration of Vacca et al. (vacca (1996)) for Galactic stars. Its corresponding luminosity and mass would be log L = 5.06 $`L_{}`$ and $`M`$ = 25 $`M_{}`$.

Parker et al. (par (1992)) derived a more luminous exciting star with $`M_V=5.1`$ mag corresponding to an O6V type. The reason for this discrepancy is that they measure a $`V`$ magnitude which is 0.48 mag brighter than our Strömgren $`y`$ and also use a stronger visual extinction of $`A_V`$ = 0.8 mag. A magnitude offset of this type could be attributed to the fact that the exciting stars are tightly packed inside a very bright H ii region, making sky subtraction difficult.

## 4 Discussion

The total H$`\beta `$ flux measured for N 11A corresponds to a main exciting source of spectral type O7.5–O8V. There are two major reasons, though, which suggest that this estimate is a lower limit to the power of the exciting star. One, as we mentioned earlier, is the fact that the H ii region is most probably not fully ionization-bounded and a fraction of the UV photons produced by the star remain unaccounted for because they escape into the interstellar medium. A second factor which contributes to underestimating the H$`\beta `$ flux is possibly an inadequate estimate of the extinction correction, since the H$`\beta `$ flux was corrected assuming only external extinction. Otherwise, it is also probable that the region harbors hotter undetected stars still embedded in the gas/dust concentrations. The same exciting star was observed by Parker et al. (par (1992)) who estimated its spectral type as O6-O3V. The O3 type, though, is uncertain because of contamination by the strong nebular emission line of He i$`\lambda `$ 4471 Å. Moreover, if an O3V star lies inside N 11A, one would expect an \[O iii\]/H$`\beta `$ ratio much higher than that actually measured.

Ionization fronts in H ii regions, which represent the separation between the hot ionized gas and the photodissociation region, can appear differently according to their orientation with respect to the line of sight. The high resolution HST images reveal a sharp ridge north-east of the exciting stars which can be explained by the presence of such a front. The associated molecular cloud in which the stars of N 11A formed must therefore be further to the north-east of that front, in agreement with the observation that the dust content increases significantly in that direction, as suggested by the higher values of the Balmer decrement. This result is supported by the CO (1–0) observations of the N 11 complex (Israel & de Graauw isr (1991), Caldwell & Kutner cal (1996)). The CO map shows that molecular emission comes from a zone surrounding the central cavity of N 11 and has a long branch spreading in a north-east direction which passes by N 11A. Although the spatial resolution of the CO map is much coarser than that of the present observations, there is little doubt about the relative position of the molecular cloud with respect to N 11A.

The morphology of N 11A is well accounted for by the champagne model (Tenorio-Tagle teno (1979), Bodenheimer et al. boden (1979)). It corresponds to the evolutionary stage when the ionization front has reached the border of the molecular cloud. The central bright area (Fig. 1) is the cavity created in the molecular cloud by the ionizing photons of the stars, and the bright ridge is a part of the cavity situated along the line of sight. Dense ionized gas is pouring out of the cavity into the interstellar medium as shown by the presence of the outer diffuse component. Since the line of sight is slightly tilted with respect to the outflow axis, a part of the cavity and the associated external dust hides a portion of the H ii region and causes the higher extinction observed at its north-east side. The surrounding filamentary structure (Fig. 3) is probably created by the stellar winds from the central cluster acting on the dense ionized gas at the surface of the molecular cloud.

The compact H ii region N 11A is the fifth in a sample of HEBs we have observed so far with HST. The other regions of the sample are N 159-5 (the Papillon nebula) and N 83B in the LMC (Heydari-Malayeri et al. 1999c, 2001), as well as N 81 and N 88A in the SMC (Heydari-Malayeri et al. 1999a, 1999b). Despite the small number of regions available, it would be interesting to compare those HEBs by examining a possible correlation between their de-reddened H$`\beta `$ fluxes and the corresponding \[O iii\] (5007Å)/H$`\beta `$ ratios (Fig. 6). The motivation for that is due to current photoionization models of spherically symmetric H ii regions which suggest that the emission line spectrum of the region depends on the effective temperature of the star(s), the ionization parameter, and the gas metallicity (Stasińska sta (1990), Stasińska & Leitherer stalei (1996)). The ionization parameter is defined as $`U=Q/4\pi R^2nc`$, where $`Q`$ is the total number of ionizing photons with energy above 13.6 eV, $`R`$ the Strömgren radius, $`n`$ the hydrogen density, and $`c`$ the speed of light. Models by Stasińska (1990) show a linear correlation between \[O iii\]/H$`\beta `$ and the H$`\beta `$ flux for H ii regions with the same gas density, the same number of exciting stars, but with increasing effective temperatures. The reason for this relationship is that when there are energetic UV photons available for producing high \[O iii\] /H$`\beta `$ ratios, they also produce a large H$`\beta `$ flux. The models also show that lower metallicity environments favor higher \[O iii\]/H$`\beta `$ ratios, but the metallicity dependence can be outweighed by the ionization parameter.

Even though the real H ii regions are not ionization-bounded spheres, and one should be careful when applying model results to observations, the fact that HEBs have sizes which are of the same order of magnitude provides a good opportunity for comparison. It is interesting that if we exclude N 159-5, the plot of Fig. 6 suggests that there is indeed a linear relationship as predicted by the models. The reason for discarding N 159-5 is because we know (Heydari-Malayeri et al. 1999c) that it is a very reddened region by both local and external dust, and its discrepant position may be due to inadequate flux correction for extinction in a manner similar to the one discussed at the beginning of this section. If our reasoning is justified, then the measured H$`\beta `$ flux of N 159-5 is underestimated by a factor of $``$ 5, mainly due to the effect of internal dust whose properties remain to be studied. We also observe that among the HEBs studied, SMC N 88A is the most excited and LMC N 11A the least excited. The lower excitation of N 11A may simply be due to the fact that it is excited by a less massive, young star. It may also be the result of an evolutionary effect, in the sense that the lower \[O iii\]/H$`\beta `$ may in fact be the consequence of a smaller gas density caused by the champagne outflow. From our previous HST observations we know that SMC N 88A is younger than SMC N 81, since it is more compact, of higher gas density, and more affected by dust so that its exciting stars are still hidden inside the H ii region. The same holds for the LMC objects, since N 159-5 is associated with a much larger amount of dust than N 83B and N 11A and is more compact compared to them.

One should keep in mind though, that despite the compactness of N 11A (and HEBs in general) compared to typical extragalactic H ii regions, if it was situated in our Galaxy, it would appear as a rather “classical” H ii region nearly $``$ 4 times smaller than the Orion nebula. In fact, based on our new observation, it appears that N 11A has many similarities with Orion regarding its central exciting cluster, its high excitation, a region of high extinction at the northern border and the filamentary loops on the southern side. Consequently, these small high excitation, compact H ii regions found in the Magellanic Clouds near locations where other giant H ii regions are present, are very interesting to study in order to better understand massive star formation processes in more distant galaxies.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank the referee Dr. Joel Wm. Parker for his helpful comments. We are also grateful to Dr. Grażyna Stasińska for discussions. VC would like to acknowledge the financial support for this work provided by NASA through grant number GO-8247 from the STScI, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract 26555.


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# Polynomial Observables in the Graph Partitioning Problem

## 1 Introduction

Decisional problems are essentially divided into two great classes: P or easy problems, which can be solved in polynomial time by deterministic algorithms, and NP or difficult problems whose worst instances can’t be solved in polynomial time, unless you have a non-deterministic computer. Of course P $``$ NP but the question if P$``$ NP is still open. Among the NP problems, the so called NP-Complete are particularly important because they are the most difficult in NP; in fact all NP problems can be converted into a NP-Complete problem in polynomial time. If just one NP-Complete problem could be shown to be in P, that would imply P=NP. Till now, no polynomial algorithm for any NP-Complete problem is known; however, recently, a polynomial observable has been found in the K-SAT problem, which is NP-Complete, suggesting that also other NP-Complete problems can display computationally easy observables.
Another relevant feature of NP-Complete problems (but not only of them) was found about twenty years ago: they exhibit phase transitions. Important results were obtained for K-SAT, Number Partitioning and Graph Partitioning.
In this work the Graph Partitioning Problem (GPP) was applied to random graphs; two correlated P observables were found in it: the number of redbonds and the number of redgraphs; moreover, the number of redgraphs could be put in relation to the phase transition of the problem.
In the next section a review of GPP is sketched, while in section $`3`$ we describe our polynomial algorithm and discuss the numerical results.

## 2 The Graph Partitioning Problem

A graph $`G(V,E)`$ is assigned by giving a set $`V`$ of $`N`$ points called vertices, and a set $`EV\times V`$ of $`m`$ edges which specify which pairs of vertices are adjacent in $`G(V,E)`$: each edge connects two distinct vertices. The graph is a random graph if each edge exists with some probability $`p`$. The mean connectivity $`\alpha `$ is defined as the average number of edges per vertex. Having $`N`$ vertices and $`m`$ edges, the total number of possible edges is $`\frac{N(N1)}{2}`$ so $`p=\frac{2m}{N(N1)}`$ and $`\alpha `$ is simply $`\frac{2m}{N}`$.
In general, given a graph $`G(V,E)`$, the Graph Partitioning Problem consists in finding the partition of set $`V`$ into two disjoint and equally sized subsets $`V_1`$ and $`V_2`$ such that the number $`K`$ of edges having one vertex in $`V_1`$ and the other in $`V_2`$ (bonds) is minimized; if we find a partition with no bonds at all, we will say that the graph is partitionable. In decisional form one can simply ask if, given a graph $`G(V,E)`$ and a number $`K`$, there is a partition such that the number of bonds is lower than or equal to $`K`$.
We know that a large (giant) cluster appears in random graphs at $`\alpha =1`$, the so called percolation threshold, but the giant cluster’s size becomes $`N/2`$ only at $`\alpha _c=2\mathrm{ln}21.386`$ and here GPP shows a phase transition: when $`\alpha <\alpha _c`$ random graphs are partitionable, but they become suddenly unpartitionable for $`\alpha >\alpha _c`$ and the number of bonds grows up with $`\alpha `$ (for fixed values of $`N`$). It’s reasonable to suppose that partitions with only one bond, the so called redbond partition, lie only in a small region around $`\alpha _c`$.
A random graph which has at least one redbond will be called redgraph and the mean number of redbonds per redgraphs at fixed values of $`\alpha `$ and $`N`$ represents the entropy (that is the number of solutions) of the GPP with $`K=1`$.
Why redbond? This name originated from an electronics problem which is a practical application of GPP: the design of an efficient component made of $`N`$ circuits equally divided over two chips and connected by $`m`$ wires. One would like to minimize the time required by informations to propagate through the entire machinery, and it is known that wires connecting circuits on different chips (the bonds) slow down remarkably the propagation: so one has to look for a circuits’ placement which minimizes the number of bonds between the two chips. On the other hand, another effect might come into play; if there were just one link, the whole information would go through it overloading the bond: in a little while the entire component would break down because the bond burns, after turning red.
It’s worthwhile to note at the end of this section that, like in electronics, infinite range percolation models can be used to cope with problems in a huge variety of different subjects, for example: the origin of life, fluctuations in the stock market and the breakdown of the internet

## 3 The method and the results.

In order to find a redbond, after having broken the entire random graph into clusters (connected subgraphs) using the Hoshen-Kopelman algorithm, the first step is to find the giant cluster and to calculate its size, namely the number of its vertices. If the giant cluster’s size is lower than or equal to $`N/2`$, the istance is partitionable and it has no sense to look for a redbond; otherwise, if the size is greater than $`N/2`$, the graph could be a redgraph. As a second step, remove one edge from the giant cluster: if this edge is a redbond, the stripped giant cluster separates into two subclusters, the size of the biggest one being lower than or equal to $`N/2`$. Putting the just obtained biggest cluster in $`V_1`$ and the other subclusters in $`V_2`$, and completing the partition by inserting into $`V_1`$ and $`V_2`$ all other clusters of the original graph, one obtains a partition with a redbond.
Therefore, to calculate the number of redbonds, this procedure is applied recursively to each edge of the giant cluster: one checks whether the removal of each one leads to a biggest subcluster with size lower than or equal to $`N/2`$. Using again the Hoshen-Kopelman algorithm, the breaking of the giant cluster requires at most $`O(N^2)`$ steps; since the number of the giant cluster’s edges is obviously $`O(N^2)`$, the complexity time of the algorithm is $`O(N^4)`$, so that the number of redbonds is a polynomial observable of GPP.
If we have a statistical ensemble of $`l`$ random graphs and want to know how many graphs are red, we have only to repeat the above process $`l`$ times. Therefore, regarding the number of redgraphs as an observable of the problem, we see that it can be calculated in $`lN^4`$ steps, so that it is also polynomial.
Actually these observables would be better called probable redbonds and probable redgraphs, because, in searching for true redbonds, also the structure of the non-giant clusters should be taken into account in detail. However, as $`N`$ increases, the probability to meet a real redbond with our algorithm grows up. We performed simulations over random graphs with $`N=1000`$, $`5000`$, $`10000`$, $`15000`$, $`20000`$, and $`25000`$, in order to calculate the number of redgraphs. The range of $`\alpha `$ depended on $`N`$ and varied, for example, from $`1.3`$ to $`1.55`$ for $`N=1000`$ and from $`1.36`$ to $`1.42`$ for $`N=25000`$. For each couple of values of $`N`$ and $`\alpha `$ the program crunched $`1000`$ samples. The outcome is that redgraphs do exist, as expected, only in a small region around $`\alpha _c`$, while the probability to find a redgraph shows a peak close to $`\alpha _c`$, which becomes smaller and more narrow as $`N`$ increases. This behaviour might be interpreted as the signal of the known phase transition, in analogy to what happens in some physical systems (think of the magnetic susceptivity $`\chi `$ versus temperature in a ferromagnetic system). (Fig.1).

In order to estimate the entropy, we limited ourselves only to the cases $`N=1000`$ and $`N=5000`$, taking care to average our results over 10000 samples, in order to reduce the statistical errors. We verified that entropy doesn’t vanish abruptly at $`\alpha _c`$, as problem’s solutions are found above this point. For $`N=1000`$ entropy goes to zero slowly whereas the fall for $`N=5000`$ is much faster. This behaviour is a clear finite-size effect, quite similar to the one found in the K-SAT problem(Fig.2).

## 4 Conclusion

In this paper we have studied the GPP applied to random graphs and we have shown that two tightly correlated P observables are present in this NP-Complete Problem: the number of redbonds and the number of redgraphs. We have also characterized in a new way the phase transition in partitionability of the GPP through the peaked behaviour of the number of redgraphs near $`\alpha _c`$.

## 5 Acknowledgements

I want to thank G. Ponzano and M. Caselle for their help in doing this work.