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# Untitled Document

lp01jjm.tex dias-stp-01-09

Jets signal for Higgs particle detection at LHC

T. Garavagli,

Institiúid Árd-léinn Bhaile Átha Cliath, Baile Átha Cliath 4, Éire

A method using jets is investigated for detecting the Higgs boson at LHC in the mass range about $`114`$ GeV$`/c^2`$, suggested by LEP experiments. Higgs bosons are produced in association with a $`t\overline{t}`$ pair, and both $`t`$ and $`\overline{t}`$ decay semileptonically to reduce the QCD background. After appropriate cuts, the signal is compared with the main background, $`t\overline{t}+2`$ jets. This estimate, using a reasonable approximation for the dominant background $`t\overline{t}gg`$, suggests a $`5.1\sigma `$ effect. This method is seen to be complimentary to the two gamma signal. The $`t\overline{t}Z`$ channel, with $`Z`$ decaying to $`l^+l^{}`$, may be used to reduce theoretical uncertainties in determining the $`t\overline{t}H`$ signal.

PACS numbers: 14.80.B., 13.85, 12.15 XX International Symposium on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies, Rome 2001. Abstract Number 104.

Email address: bronco@stp.dias.ie

Also Institiúid Teicneolaíochta Bhaile Átha Cliath.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Standard Model Higgs with mass up to 114 GeV$`/c^2`$ has been suggested by fits to electroweak parameters \[ 1 \] and recent experiments at LEP \[ 2–3 \]. These results could be confirmed at the LHC where it should be possible to find a Higgs boson with mass near 114 GeV$`/c^2`$. For this mass, the rare decay $`H\gamma \gamma `$ was suggested \[ 4 \], where the Higgs boson $`H`$ is produced in association with either a $`W^\pm `$ boson or a $`t\overline{t}`$ pair in $`pp`$ scattering experiments. A charged hard lepton from $`W^\pm `$ or one of the $`t`$ quarks is required as a trigger in order to reduce the QCD background. However, since the $`2\gamma `$ mode is a rare decay, it may be difficult to extract this signal from the complicated background. I study the possibility of searching for an intermediate Higgs boson in the two-jet channel by reconstructing its invariant mass. I consider Higgs bosons that are produced in association with $`t\overline{t}`$ pairs only. This allows both the $`t`$ and $`\overline{t}`$ to be tagged using semileptonic decays to cut down on the QCD background. Similar method have been used in top searches at the TEVATRON. Although this method had been suggested for the SSC \[ 5 \], there has been considerable improvement in b vertex recognition and NLO QCD corrections to the $`ggH`$ cross section \[ 6 \] since then, and the probable success of this search method at the LHC has increased. 2. SIGNAL AND BACKGROUND

The main process of interest is

$$ppt\overline{t}H+X,$$
$`(1)`$
with

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill t& b+(W^+l^++\nu ),\hfill & (2)\hfill \\ \hfill \overline{t}& \overline{b}+(W^{}l^{}+\overline{\nu }),\hfill & (3)\hfill \\ \hfill H& b\overline{b}\mathrm{or}c\overline{c},\hfill & (4)\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`l`$ stands for either an electron or a muon. The final signal searched for is

$$2\mathrm{leptons}+4\mathrm{jets}+\mathrm{missing}E_T.$$
$`(5)`$
It has been know for some time \[ 4 \] and \[ 7 \] that $`t\overline{t}H`$ production at $`pp`$ colliders can be very well approximated by two-gluon fusion alone. The tree level cross section as a function of the Higgs mass is found using the method of Kunzst \[ 4 \] for $`m_t=175\text{GeV}/c^2`$. As an example, I take $`m_H=114\text{GeV}/c^2`$, which gives a cross section of 0.4 pb; our signal (5) has a combined cross section $`\times `$ branching ratio of

$$\sigma (ppt\overline{t}H)B^2(tbl^+\nu )B(Hq\overline{q}orgg)=0.4\mathrm{pb}\times (2/9)^2\times 0.95=18.8\mathrm{fb}$$
$`(6)`$
at the LHC. This is still significantly larger than the $`H\gamma \gamma `$ signal with a single lepton tag. Although a b-tagging efficiency of $`50\%`$ is suggested to likely at the TEVATRON and at LHC, I assume only a $`40\%`$ efficiency, and I assume a lepton recognition efficiency of $`90\%`$, which has been achieved at LEP. To reduce most of the QCD background, I put a 15 GeV cut on the minimum $`p_T`$ of each of the leptons and jets and place a 30 GeV minimum on the total missing $`E_T`$. An isolation cut is then applied to each lepton, requiring it to be at least $`\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\eta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi ^2}=0.4`$ units away from any of the four jets. This has the effect of guaranteeing that almost all remaining events are of the type $`t\overline{t}+2`$ hard jets. The same amount of separation is also applied to $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ pairs to avoid QED background.

I now consider possible sources of background to the signal. There are three major types of background events:

(1) Sources of background other than $`t\overline{t}`$ that produce $`l^+l^{}`$ pairs are suppressed by at least two factors of either $`\alpha _{weak}`$ or $`\alpha _{em}`$. These events do not have intrinsic missing $`E_T`$ and will probably not pass the missing $`E_T`$ cut. Thus, non $`t\overline{t}`$ contributions to the background are likely to be small.

(2) By far, the most important background is the QCD process

$$ppt\overline{t}+2\mathrm{jets},$$
$`(7)`$
where the jets come mostly from initial state radiation. Both the $`t`$ and $`\overline{t}`$ decay, as before, semileptonically to give the required signature.

Experience shows that $`t\overline{t}`$ pairs produced at the LHC are almost always accompanied by extra high $`p_T`$ jets, and I make the ansatz that there will be an average of 2.0 jets with $`p_T>15`$ GeV in every $`t\overline{t}`$ event. By assuming a Poisson distribution for the number of extra jets, the $`t\overline{t}`$ cross section with two and only two accompanying jets with $`p_T>15`$ GeV is found to be 0.41 nb. Folding in the leptonic branching ratio for top quarks reduces this number to 0.02 nb. The Poisson distribution peaks at the average value, and I take this to be a conservative estimate.

There is also a combinatorial factor for forming two-jet pairs from the four jets in each event, and this enhances the background by a factor of 6. Compared to 18.8 fb for the signal, the background is larger by a factor of $`2\times 10^3`$. As seen later this will be suppressed severely by additional cuts (see Table I). In addition, the background events will not have any special feature in the two-jet invariant mass spectrum while the signal will show a prominent peak around the mass of the Higgs boson.

(3) In addition to $`t\overline{t}H`$, there are also $`t\overline{t}W^\pm `$ and $`t\overline{t}Z`$ events in which the $`W^\pm `$ and $`Z`$ decay to two jets, thus producing the same signature. The production cross section for $`W^\pm `$ is about one-tenth of that for the $`Z`$. This together with a smaller mass makes the $`W^\pm `$ events less important. The $`t\overline{t}Z`$ signal is an exact analogue of $`t\overline{t}H`$ for $`m_H`$ close to the $`Z`$ mass. With $`m_H`$ near 114 GeV$`/c^2`$, I expect the two to have very similar cross sections; however, they should have no significant overlap. The estimated cross section for $`t\overline{t}Z`$ is roughly 0.3–0.4 pb for $`m_t=175`$. The mass resolution for $`Z2`$ jets at the LHC was estimated to be roughly $`\pm 5`$ GeV in a similar energy dependent situation.

This signal not only turns out to be benign, it actually works to our advantage. Unlike the Higgs, the $`Z`$ also decays to charged lepton pairs with a large branching ratio (6%). In my case, this gives a signature of 4 leptons and 2 jets, which has very little background if I further require two of the leptons to reconstruct to a $`Z`$. Therefore, the $`t\overline{t}Z`$ cross section can be measured by reconstructing the two-lepton invariant mass in the 4 leptons + 2 jets events. I expect that most of the theoretical uncertainty in the ratio of the two cross sections, $`ppt\overline{t}H`$ and $`ppt\overline{t}Z`$, cancels, and the cross section for $`t\overline{t}H`$ can then be reliably inferred from that of the $`t\overline{t}Z`$. Finally, this calibration from the $`Z`$ is absent in the $`\gamma \gamma `$ channel because $`Z\gamma \gamma `$ is forbidden on account of anomaly cancellation.

3. SIMULATION

Both the signal and background are simulated using Monte Carlo methods at the parton level. As a preliminary study, simplified distributions in phase space are used for each scattering and decay process. The total cross sections are then normalized to published values.

For my signal, the parton cross section is given on purely dimensional ground by

$$d\sigma (ggt\overline{t}H)\frac{1}{\widehat{s}^2}d\mathrm{\Phi }_3,$$
$`(8)`$
where $`d\mathrm{\Phi }_n`$ is the $`n`$-body Lorentz invariant phase space:

$$d\mathrm{\Phi }_n=\delta ^{(4)}(Pp_i)\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{d^3p_i}{2E_i},$$
$`(9)`$
where $`\widehat{s}`$ is the center of mass energy of the partons and $`P`$ is their total momentum. Each of $`t,\overline{t}`$ and $`H`$ is then decayed independently to $`bl^+\nu `$, $`\overline{b}l^{}\overline{\nu }`$ and $`b\overline{b}`$ respectively to give us the signature of 4 jets + 2 leptons + missing $`E_T`$. I take $`m_t=175,m_H=114\text{GeV}/c^2`$ and 0.4 pb for the total cross section.

For the background, I first take

$$d\sigma (ggt\overline{t}gg)\frac{1}{\widehat{s}^3}d\mathrm{\Phi }_4,$$
$`(10)`$
and normalize it to the $`t\overline{t}gg`$ cross section. Just as in the case of $`t\overline{t}H`$, I assume that the dominant contribution to the $`t\overline{t}`$ cross section comes from gluon fusion. Since the top quarks are heavy and hardly radiate, I next assume that the two extra jets are gluons coming from initial state radiation only. The angular and energy distributions of the gluons, in addition to Eq. (10), are assumed to follow the Altarelli-Parisi function

$$P_{gg}(z)=c_{gg}\left(\frac{z}{1z}+\frac{1z}{z}+z(1z)\right),$$
$`(11)`$
where $`z`$ is the fractional momentum of the initial gluon after radiation:

$$z=\frac{E_ip_{L}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}}{E_{i1}p_{L}^{}{}_{i1}{}^{}},$$
$`(12)`$
where the subscripts $`i1`$ and $`i`$ refer to the initial gluon before and after radiation. I also use the approximation where the further splitting of a radiated virtual gluon is replaced by two sequential radiations from the same initial gluon. The $`t`$ and $`\overline{t}`$ are decayed as before to give us the required signature.

To mimic a real experimental situation, the energy of each parton is smeared to reproduce the proposed detector resolution for jets and leptons, and I impose an isolation cut on each of the hadronic partons (jets) in $`\eta `$-$`\varphi `$ space so that no two jets are within a distance of 0.5 units from each other:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }R=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\eta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi ^2}>0.5.$$

A rapidity cut of $`\eta <2.5`$ is also applied to each of the jets and leptons. 4. RESULTS

I generate the number of events for the signal and background that corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 100 fb<sup>-1</sup> with an LHC luminosity of $`10^{33}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. The following cuts are then performed on both types of events: (1) A 15 GeV minimum $`p_T`$ cut is first applied to all jets and leptons. (2) A second $`p_T`$ cut is then applied to the four hadronic jets: For each of the six pairs of jets, I form the scalar sum of the two individual $`p_T`$ and require it to be larger than 60 GeV. This will severely suppresses the background while keeping the signal almost unchanged. (3) To try to guarantee that the two leptons originate from top quark decays, I require each lepton to be at least a distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }R=0.4`$ away from any jet in $`\eta `$-$`\varphi `$ space. The two leptons are required to be separated by the same amount. (4) The missing transverse energy in each event must be larger than 30 GeV.

There are many less important sources of background such as $`Z+4\mathrm{jets}+\mathrm{missing}E_T`$ and $`b\overline{b}+2g`$, etc. To ensure that they do not significantly affect our result, I also apply the following cut: The invariant mass of all the observed particles should be larger than $`2m_t+m_H`$. This greatly enhancing the probability of having heavy particles in the final state. The results of all the cuts are shown in Table I in the order of their applications.

| Table I. |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | Signal ($`t\overline{t}H`$) | Background ($`t\overline{t}gg`$) |
| Cuts | $`100\%18.8`$ fb | $`100\%2.0`$ pb |
| All $`p_T>15`$ GeV | 51% | 64% |
| All $`p_{T1}+p_{T2}>60`$ GeV | 49% | 11% |
| Missing $`E_T>40`$ GeV | 48% | 11% |
| Observed invariant mass $`>`$ 464 GeV | 33% | 3.2% |
| Isolation cuts ($`j`$-$`j`$, $`l`$-$`j`$ and $`l`$-$`l`$) | 17% | 1.3% |

To extract the signal from this background, I need to reconstruct the Higgs mass from two-jet pairs. Figure 1a shows the distribution of the two-jet invariant mass of the signal and the $`Z`$ peak. It has a prominent peak about $`m_H`$ = 114 GeV$`/c^2`$ containing 208 counts in the 8 GeV$`/c^2`$ or so region under the peak. The width of the resonance matches roughly the two-jet resolution of 8 GeV achievable at the LHC. The $`t\overline{t}gg`$ background is shown in Fig. 1b. Over the same 8 GeV range under the Higgs peak, the background contains roughly 1680 counts. Thus, I obtain a significance, $`\mathrm{signal}/\sqrt{\mathrm{background}}=5.1`$. The combined result is shown in Fig. 1c. This figure shows with our approximations a recognizable signal over the QCD background despite the fact that the cuts applied have not been fully optimized. In view of all the approximations I have made, the background in the region of interest can easily be off by a factor of two or three. For example, the Altarelli-Parisi splitting function I used in Eq. (11) tends to generate gluons softer and closer to the beam line than would occur in real background events. However, I have been generous in normalizing the overall cross section for the background. If more optimal cuts are also used, I believe the signal could still be measured over a slightly higher background. I believe that reconstruction from jets is a promising technique in the detection of the Higgs boson, and, used in conjunction with related methods \[ 8–9 \], it should give definitive evidence for Higgs detection. QCD NLO corrections \[ 6 \] to the process $`ggH`$ indicate a $`K`$ factor of $`2.2`$, and this could improve the signal recognition. Although jet smearing has been used to give a more realistic representation of the jet and lepton signals, the actual fragmentation of jets is hard to simulate \[ 9 \], and this could cancel the NLO effect. Finally, these results can be used in conjunction with other signals, and this should lead to Higgs detection within the first two years of LHC operation.

The author has benefited from the use of the Queen’s University Belfast and Dublin University parallel processor. REFERENCES

 Particle data group, Euro. Phys. Jr. B 15, 103, 274 (2000).

 L3 Collaboration, /hep-ex/0011043, Phys. Lett. B 495, 18-25(2000).

 ALEPH Collaboration, /hep-ex/00111045, Phys. Lett. B 495, 1-17(2000).

 Z. Kunszt, Nucl. Phys. B247, 339 (1984); D. Dicus and S. Willenbrock, Phys. Rev. D 39, 751 (1989).

 T. Garavaglia, Waikwok Kwong, Dan-Di Wu, Phys. Rev. D 48, R1899-R1903 (1993).

 M. Spira, A. Djouadi, D. Graudenz, and P. M. Zerwas, Nucl. Phys. B 453, 17 (1995).

 M. Spira, Fortsch. Phys. 46, 203 (1998).

 D. Denegri, The CMS Detector and Physics at LHC, CERN-PPE/95-183.

 D. Froidevaux, E. Richter-Was, Is the $`Hb\overline{b}`$ observable at LHC, Atlas Internal Note, Phys-NO-043 (1994).

FIGURE CAPTION FIG. 1. Two-jet invariant mass distributions. The vertical axes shows counts/2 GeV$`/c^2`$ bin. The horizontal axes shows two-jet invariant mass values in GeV$`/c^2`$.

(a) $`t\overline{t}H`$ signal and $`t\overline{t}Z`$ events.

(b) QCD $`t\overline{t}gg`$ background.

(c) Signal plus background.


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# Analyses of multiplicity distributions at Tevatron by a two-component stochastic model — No leading particle effect in E735 Experiment —

## 1 Introduction

In 1993, we made predictions for multiplicity distributions at the Tevatron collider by a two-component stochastic model including the pure-birth (PB) process and the Poisson process . See also . Those predictions have been based on analyses of $`C_q=n^q/n^q`$ ($`q=35`$) in the energy range $`\sqrt{s}=11.5900`$ GeV . The method of an extrapolation has been utilized for the predictions.

On the other hand, recently Alexopoulos et al., the E735 Experiment at the FNAL  has reported the multiplicity distributions of the full phase space at 300, 546, 1000 and 1800 GeV. The data corrected by the simulation program are shown as the data of full phase space. Thus it is possible to compare our predictions with the multiplicity distributions at the Tevatron collider. Indeed we are very interested in these comparisons, because we can confirm whether or not the hadronization process is ruled by the two-component stochastic model.

In the next paragraph, the two-component stochastic model is introduced. In the 3rd paragraph, we compare the predictions with observed data by E735 at the Tevatron at $`\sqrt{s}=1.8`$ TeV. In the 4th one, we consider why there are discrepancies among the predictions and the data by E735 at the Tevatron. In the final one, we present our concluding remarks.

## 2 Two-component stochastic model

We explain briefly the essentials of the two-component stochastic model used in ref. . It is based on the following two-component branching equation for the two-component probability $`P(n_a,n_b;t)`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{P(n_a,n_b;t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mu \left[P(n_a1,n_b;t)P(n_a,n_b;t)\right]`$ (1)
$`+\lambda \left[(n_b1)P(n_a,n_b1;t)n_bP(n_a,n_b;t)\right].`$
In eq. (1) the Poisson component (type $`a`$ particles) and the pure-birth (PB) component (type $`b`$ particles) do not couple to each other: The former is mainly related to particles in the fragmentation region whereas the latter is related to those in the central region. The two-component probability $`P(n_a,n_b;t)`$ is therefore a product of multiplicity distributions for the Poisson component, $`P_a(n_a;t)`$ and the corresponding one for the PB component, $`P_b(n_b;t)`$:

$$P(n_a,n_b;t)=P_a(n_a;t)P_b(n_b;t),$$
(2)
and the multiplicity distribution in the final state (i.e., for maximum $`t=T`$ (the maximum value of an evolution time)) is

$$P(n)=\underset{n_a+n_b=n}{}P(n_a,n_b;T),$$
(3)
Here we use the following initial condition :

$$P(n_a,n_b;t=0)=\frac{n_{a0}^{n_a}}{n_a!}e^{n_{a0}}\frac{n_{b0}^{n_b}}{n_b!}e^{n_{b0}},$$
(4)
which leads to

$$P_a(n_a,n_a)=\frac{n_a^{n_a}}{n_a!}e^{n_a},$$
(5)
and

$$P_b(n_b,n_b)=\{\begin{array}{cc}e^{n_{b0}}\hfill & \text{ for }n_b=0\hfill \\ \multicolumn{2}{c}{}\\ \frac{n_b}{n_b}\frac{p^{n_b1}}{(1+p)^{n_b+1}}e^{n_{b0}}L_{n_b1}^{(1)}\left(\frac{n_{b0}}{p}\right)\hfill & \text{ for }n_b1,\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
where $`p=e^{\lambda T}1`$. Here and after $`L_n^{(k)}(x)`$ denotes the normalized Laguerre polynomials. The total multiplicity distribution is therefore given by

$`P(n)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n_a+n_b=n}{}}P_a(n_a,n_a)P_b(n_b,n_b)`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`e^{(n_a+n_{b0})}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{n_a^n}{n!}}+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{n_a^{nj}}{(nj)!}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{p}{1+p}}\right)^j{\displaystyle \frac{1}{j}}{\displaystyle \frac{n_{b0}}{p}}L_{j1}^{(1)}\left({\displaystyle \frac{n_{b0}}{p}}\right)\right].`$
The corresponding factorial moments for this $`P(n)`$ are given by

$`F^{(l)}`$ $`=`$ $`n(n1)\mathrm{}(nl+1)`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`n_a^l+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{l}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{l}{j}}\right)n_a^{lj}\mathrm{\Gamma }(j)n_bp^{j1}L_{j1}^{(1)}\left({\displaystyle \frac{n_b}{p}}\right).`$
The $`C_q`$ moments which we calculate in what follows are easily derived from $`F^{(l)}`$. We use the same parameters: $`\mu T`$, $`n_{a0}`$, $`\lambda T`$ and $`n_{b0}`$  which were determined by fits to data for energies $`\sqrt{s}=11.5900`$ GeV  by choosing minimum chi-squared of sum of $`C_q(q=25)`$. Finally we have the following expressions:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{n_b}{n_{b0}}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}(\lambda T)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\lambda \mathrm{ln}\sqrt{s/s_0}\right),`$ (9)
$`n_a`$ $`=`$ $`\mu T+n_{a0},`$ (10)
with $`n_{b0}=4.2`$, $`\lambda =0.42\pm 0.01`$, $`\sqrt{s_0}=8.60\pm 0.33`$ GeV, $`\mu =1.22\pm 0.10`$ and $`n_{a0}=1.50\pm 0.12`$.

## 3 Comparisons of predictions with data at $`\sqrt{s}=1.8`$ TeV

Using eqs. (9) and (10), we can predict $`n`$ and $`C_q=n^2/n^2`$ in Table 1 and Fig. 2. Combining the data at $`\sqrt{s}=1.8`$ TeV in ref.  and our predictions, we find that there are discrepancies among our predictions and the data.

To elucidate the reasons, we adopt other ways. Using eq. (7) with the CERN-MINUIT program, and the multiplicity distributions at the FNAL, the CERN Sp̄pS and the Tevatron, we obtain various results given in Table 2. See Fig. 3.

Table 2 shows that the data at the Tevatron do not contain the multiplicity by the Poisson process in eq. (7), because $`n_a=0`$. On the other hand, the leading particle effect (finite $`n_a`$) can be observed in the data by UA5 and in the ISR regions.

## 4 Differences between data by UA5 and those at Tevatron

To consider the reason of $`n_a=0`$ at the Tevatron, we analyse the data at $`\sqrt{s}=546`$ GeV and $`\sqrt{s}=1.8`$ TeV by CDF Collaboration . What we expect is small $`n_a`$’s, because of no correction by the simulation program in ref. . Indeed we find that the magnitude of $`n_a`$ is small, due to the restriction of the pseudo-rapidity cutoff $`|\eta |<3.25`$. This fact suggests that the data by CDF mainly produced in the central region. (See also .)

As the next step, we carefully compare the data at $`\sqrt{s}=546`$ GeV by UA5 and E735. We find that the comparison of the data ($`\sqrt{s}=546`$ GeV) of UA5 and E735 shows us that error bars of low multiplicities $`\delta P(n)(n=2,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6})`$ at the Tevatron are larger than those by UA5. Then we can examine the above observation by making a pseudo-multiplicity at $`\sqrt{s}=546`$ GeV as follows: The magnitude of error bars $`\delta P(n)`$ at $`n=2,4`$ are assumed to be $`\delta P(n)P(n)(n=2,4)`$ in Table 4, to consider our problem. As the same situation is seen in $`P(n)`$ at $`\sqrt{s}=1.8`$ TeV in Table 5 111 We have confirmed that the multiplicity distribution derived from the generalized gamma distribution in QCD  can explain data with smaller chi-squared values than those of Table 2. However, it is difficult to find physical meanings of a set of parameters:
$$P_k(n,n,D)=\frac{n^n}{n!}N_0^{\mathrm{}}z^{n+\mu k1}e^{znD^\mu z^\mu }𝑑z,$$
where $`z=n/n`$, $`N=\mu D^{\mu k}/\mathrm{\Gamma }(k)`$ and $`k=1/2`$ ($`\chi ^2/N_{dof}=88.8/123`$ at $`\sqrt{s}=1.8`$ TeV). (See also refs. .) , we make two kinds of pseudo-multiplicity distributions and analyse them.

The results of Tables 4 and 5 show that $`n_a`$ and $`C_2`$ depend on the magnitudes of error bars at $`n=`$ 2 and 4, as is shown by analysing the pseudo-$`P(n)`$’s. The low multiplicities with larger error bars are equal to $`P(2)=P(4)=0`$, as is seen in the first pseudo-$`P(n)`$ in Table 5. We find that $`n_a`$ from the second pseudo-$`P(n)`$ in Table 5 is coincided with the prediction of Table 1. Thus, it can be said that the leading particle effect is relating to low multiplicities and the magnitude of error bars.

## 5 Concluding remarks

We have compared our predictions  for the multiplicity distribution at 1.8 TeV, based on the two-component model, and the data at the Tevatron by E735. It is found that there are discrepancies between them. See Fig. 2 and Table 1.

To elucidate physical reason of the discrepancies, we have analysed the data by means of the two-component model. From this procedure, we have known that the data by UA5 contain the reading particle effect, finite $`n_a`$. On the other hand, the data by the Tevatron do not contain it 222 It should be noticed that the streamer chamber at the CERN Sp̄pS and the tracking detector at the Tevatron are used. The pseudo-rapidity range of the Tevatron is $`|\eta |<3.25`$, which corresponds to the central region. As events of low multiplicity probably contain particles with larger $`\eta `$, it may be said that the leading particle might be missed in measurements at the Tevatron. Of course, the corrected data of the full phase space should contain the effect. .

As the next step, we have resolved the reason why the data by the Tevatron do not contain $`n_a`$. For this purpose, we analyse the data by CDF  and find small $`n_a`$ at $`\sqrt{s}=546`$ GeV and 1.8 TeV. See Table 3. Moreover, we compare the data by UA5 and at the Tevatron in Tables 4 and 5 and find that the error bars of low multiplicities, $`\delta P(n)`$ ($`n=2,4,6`$) are large. To see how our result depends on large $`\delta P(n)`$ ($`n=2,4,6`$), we have made the pseudo-multiplicity distribution, assuming $`\delta P(n)P(n)`$ at $`n=2`$ and $`4`$. From the pseudo-multiplicity distribution, we can estimate the finite leading particle effect at $`\sqrt{s}=546`$ GeV and 1.8 TeV at the Tevatron. The result of $`n_a8`$ from the second pseudo-$`P(n)`$ in Table 5 is almost the same of our prediction . (See Table 1.)

In conclusion, we have found that the corrected data of full phase space at Tevatron by E735 do not contain the leading particle effect which is observed in the data by UA5. It is difficult to estimate this effect, because of larger error bars at low multiplicities, $`P(n)\pm \delta P(n)`$ ($`n=2,4`$) 333 For us, it is difficult to discuss the valuation of the correction methods applied to the data at the Tevatron by E735. . In other words, the low multiplicities with $`\delta P(n)>P(n)`$ $`(n=2,4)`$ are equivalent to $`P(n)=0`$ $`(n=2,4)`$. They are playing important roles for determining the leading particle effect which is expected in ref. .

Moreover, providing $`P(n,\delta \eta )`$ with the pseudo-rapidity cutoff in a future, we could obtain more useful information for the production mechanism which are illustrated in Fig. 4: The pure-birth (PB) process mainly describes $`P(n)`$ in the central region. On the other hand, the Poisson process mainly does $`P(n)`$ in the fragmentation region 444 Two papers relating to $`d\sigma /d\eta `$ are presented in different points of view by Takagi and Tsukamoto , and Ohsawa . .

## Acknowledgements

We are greatly appreciated Prof. W. D. Walker for his sending the data at the Tevatron collider by E735 Experiment. One of authors (M.B.) is indebted to Japanese Grant-in-aid for Education, Science, Sports and Culture (No. 09440103).


text:
# Spectroscopic Signatures of Conduction-Mediated Transition Layers Above an X-ray Illuminated Disk

## 1 INTRODUCTION

X-ray reflection off the surface of cold disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and galactic black holes (GBHs) has been an active field of research since the work of Lightman & White (1988). In early studies, the illuminated material was assumed to be cold and non-ionized (Lightman & White 1988; George & Fabian 1991). It was soon realized, however, that photoionization of the disk can have a great impact on both the reflected continuum and the iron fluorescence lines. Detailed calculations were then carried out by Ross & Fabian (1993); Matt, Fabian & Ross (1993); Życki et al. (1994); Ross, Fabian & Brandt (1996) and Ross, Fabian & Young (1999). However, in all of these papers, the density of the illuminated material was assumed to be constant along the vertical direction. This assumption applies only to the simplest version of radiation-dominated Shakura-Sunyaev disks (Shakura & Sunyaev 1973), and only for the portion where viscous dissipation is the dominating heating process. For the surface layers, however, photoionization and Compton scattering are the major heating sources. Therefore the approximation of constant density is not appropriate. Moreover, thermal instability allows the coexistence of gas at different phases. These different phases have very different temperatures, and hence different densities to keep the gas in pressure balance.

Recently Nayakshin, Kazanas & Kallman (2000) relaxed the simplifying assumption of constant gas density. They determined the gas density from hydrostatic balance solved simultaneously with ionization balance and radiative transfer. They made an important observation that the Thomson depth of the hot coronal layer can have great influence on the X-ray reprocessing produced by the deeper, and much cooler disk. In order to simplify the calculation of the vertical structure, though, they ignored thermal conduction and the effects of transition layers between the different stable phases. A discontinuous change in temperature was allowed whenever an unstable phase was encountered. They argued that such transition layers are of little importance because their Thomson depths are negligibly small. However, without taking into account the role of thermal conduction, their method of connecting two different stable layers is rather ad hoc. Moreover, even though the Thomson depths of these transition layers are small, it does not guarantee that the X-ray emission and reflection from such layers are negligible. Because the temperature regime where the transition layers exist is not encountered in the stable phases, some of the most important lines can have appreciable emissivity only in these layers. Also, since resonance line scattering has much larger cross section than Thomson scattering, the optical depths in resonance lines can be significant.

Including thermal conduction in the self-consistent solution of the vertical structure presents a serious numerical challenge. The difficulties are due to the coupling between hydrostatic balance, radiative transfer and heat conduction. Zel’dovich & Pikel’ner (1969) first studied the phase equilibrium of a gas heated by cosmic rays and cooled by radiation. They found that taking into account heat conduction in the boundary layer allows one to obtain a unique solution of the stable equilibrium. Różańska (1999) calculated the full temperature profile for a Compton-heated corona, and Różańska & Czerny (2000a) calculated the static conditions of the plasma for different forms of heating and cooling. But they did not include much discussion of the spectroscopic signatures resulting from the derived vertical structure.

In this paper, we first calculate the temperature structure in the layers above the accretion disk, then calculate the emission lines via radiative recombination (RR) and reflection due to resonance line scattering from the derived layers. Certain illuminating continua spectra allow more than two stable phases to coexist, with two transition layers connected by an intermediate stable layer. For the transition layer, since the Thomson depth is small, the ionizing continuum can be treated as constant; and since its geometric thickness is smaller than the pressure scale height, the pressure can be treated as constant as well. We can thus obtain semi-analytic solution of the temperature profile by taking into account thermal conduction. For the intermediate stable layer, its thickness is determined by the condition of hydrostatic equilibrium. In our model, the normally incident continuum has a power-law spectrum with an energy index of $`\alpha =1`$. We also assume a plane-parallel geometry and that the resonance line scattering is isotropic.

The structure of this paper is as follows: In §2 we discuss the existence of the thermal instability and compute the thermal ionization structure of the transition layers; in §3 we calculate the recombination emission lines and the reflection due to resonance line scattering; in §4 we summarize the important points of the calculations, the validity of various approximations made in the calculations, and the detectability of the recombination emission and reflection lines.

## 2 THERMAL INSTABILITY AND TRANSITION LAYERS

### 2.1 The “S curves”

The vertical structure of an X-ray illuminated disk at rest is governed by the equations of hydrostatic equilibrium and of energy conservation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dP}{dx}}`$ $`=`$ $`n_H(x)F,`$ (1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}(\kappa (T){\displaystyle \frac{dT}{dx}})`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }(T,P,F_x(E)).`$ (2)
In the first equation, $`F`$ is the force density due to gravity and radiation pressure. The dependence of the force on the plasma density is included explicitly through the hydrogen density $`n_H(x)`$. In the second equation, a time independent state is assumed, $`\kappa (T)`$ is the thermal conductivity, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }(T,P,F_x(E))`$ is the net heating rate depending on the gas state and the incident flux $`F_x(E)`$ (differential in energy). We neglect the effects of magnetic field and adopt the Spitzer conductivity appropriate for a fully ionized plasma, $`\kappa (T)=5.6\times 10^7T^{5/2}`$ erg cm2 s-1 K-1 (Spitzer 1962). We have used the classical heat flux, $`q_{class}=\kappa (T)T`$, in Equation (2) because the electron mean free path is short compared to the temperature height scale.

Since the continuum flux may change along the vertical height, in principle, the above two equations must be supplemented by an equation for radiative transfer. A self-consistent solution of such equations is difficult to obtain. In the following, we invoke a few physically motivated approximations, which make the problem tractable.

First, in thermally stable regions, the gas temperature is slowly varying, the heat conduction term in the energy balance equation can be neglected. Therefore, the temperature can be determined locally with the condition $`\mathrm{\Phi }(T,P,F_x(E))=0`$. It is well known (Krolik, McKee & Tarter 1981) that the dependence of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ on the gas pressure $`P`$ and the illuminating continuum $`F_x(E)`$ can be expressed in the form of $`\mathrm{\Phi }=n_e^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })`$, where $`n_e`$ is the electron density, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })`$ is the net cooling rate per unit volume, and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ is an ionization parameter defined by

$$\mathrm{\Xi }=\frac{F_x}{cP},$$
(3)
where $`F_x`$ is the total flux of the continuum, and $`c`$ is the speed of light. In Figure 1, we show the local energy equilibrium curve $`T`$ versus $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$, at $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })=0`$ calculated with the photoionization code XSTAR (Kallman & Krolik 1986). These curves are commonly referred to as “S curves” due to their appearance. The illuminating continuum is assumed to be a power law with energy index $`\alpha =1`$. The solid line labeled with “S-curve 1” corresponds to a low energy cutoff at 1 eV and a high energy cutoff at 150 keV, while the dashed line “S-curve 2” corresponds to a high energy cutoff at 200 keV. The choice of such incident spectra is based on their common appearance in many AGNs and GBHCs. The region is thermally “unstable” where the “S-curve” has a negative slope, and “stable” where the slope is positive, as indicated in Figure 1. In the thermally unstable regions, we have

$$\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Xi }}{T}\right)_{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}=0}<0,$$
(4)
where the derivative is taken while the energy balance is satisfied, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}=0`$. This condition was shown (Krolik, McKee & Tarter 1981) to be equivalent to the instability condition discovered by Field (1965)

$$\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}}{T}\right)_P<0.$$
(5)
### 2.2 The Temperature Profiles

#### 2.2.1 The Transition layers

The thermal instability allows the gas to coexist at different phases. The gas temperature may change by orders of magnitude over a geometric thin region whenever an unstable phase separates two stable ones. This results in enormous temperature gradients and heat conduction. Therefore the heat conduction in the energy balance equation should be included in such transition layers between stable phases. On the other hand, the thicknesses of these transition layers are usually smaller than the pressure scale height, so one can safely treat the gas pressure as constant in these regions. Moreover, the continuum radiative transfer can be neglected because the Compton optical depth is found to be small. The vertical structure of the transition regions is then solely determined by the energy balance equation with heat conduction. The Thomson optical depth $`d\tau _e=n_e\sigma _Tdx`$ of such regions is readily estimated by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\tau _e=\frac{\kappa (T)T\sigma _T}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })}}.$$
(6)
where $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson scattering cross section.

The transition layer solution is not arbitrary under the steady-state conditions, i.e., where there is no mass exchange between the two stable phases which the transition layer connects. A similar problem in the context of interstellar gas heated by cosmic rays was well studied by Zel’dovich & Pikel’ner (1969). We follow their procedure here and define $`y=\kappa (T)dT/d\tau _e`$, in order to rewrite Equation (2) in the form:

$$\frac{dy^2}{dT}=\frac{2\kappa (T)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })}{\sigma _T^2}.$$
(7)
A steady-state requires vanishing heat flux at both boundaries of the transition layer, or

$$y^2_{T=T_1}y^2_{T=T_2}=0=2_{T_1}^{T_2}\frac{\kappa (T)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{net}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })}{\sigma _T^2}𝑑T,$$
(8)
where $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$ are the temperatures of the two stable phases which are connected by a transition layer. This condition determines a unique ionization parameter $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ for the transition layer in question, and the integration of Equation (7) along the vertical height gives the detailed temperature profile as a function of optical depth.

If the disk does not realize the steady-state solution, there are additional enthalpy terms in Equation (2) which require that there be mass flow through the transition region – i.e. the cool material in the disk evaporates, or the hot material in the corona condenses (Meyer & Meyer-Hofmeister 1994; Dullemond 1999; Różańska & Czerny 2000b). Physically, this corresponds to a movement of the transition layer up or down through the vertical disk structure. However, since the density increases monotonically toward the center of the disk, this “motion” stops where the transition layer reaches the steady state value of $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$. Thus, in the absence of disk winds or continuous condensation from a disk corona, the steady state solution should generally be obtained.

#### 2.2.2 The Intermediate Stable Layer

There is a complication for the “S-curves” shown in Figure 1, because in each curve there exist two unstable regions and therefore there should be two transition layers. For “S curve 1”, Condition 8 can be met for both transition layers with resulting ionization parameters $`\mathrm{\Xi }_1<\mathrm{\Xi }_2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Xi }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }_2`$ are associated with the transition layer which connects to the lowest temperature phase and highest temperature phase, respectively. For “S curve 2”, the resulting ionization parameters for two transition layers, however, satisfy $`\mathrm{\Xi }_1>\mathrm{\Xi }_2`$. Such a situation is unphysical, where the ionization parameter of the upper transition layer is smaller than that of the lower one, because in the context of accretion disks, the upper layer receives more ionizing flux and has lower pressure. So in practice, for “S curve 2” the intermediate stable region is skipped and a transition layer connects the lowest temperature phase to the highest temperature phase directly. The ionization parameter of this transition layer is determined the same way by applying Equation (8).

There is then an intermediate stable layer, of nearly uniform temperature, in between these two transition layers for “S curve 1”, as indicated with BC in Figure 1. The thickness of the intermediate layer should in principle be obtained by solving the coupled equations of hydrostatic equilibrium, energy balance, and radiative transfer. However, unlike the stable phase at the disk base or that of the corona, which may be Compton thick, this intermediate stable layer is generally optically thin, because its optical depth is restricted by the difference between $`\mathrm{\Xi }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }_2`$. Furthermore, the temperature in this layer is slowly varying, and therefore heat conduction can be neglected. We shall make another approximation that the variation of the force density $`F`$ in the hydrostatic equation can also be neglected. This may not be a good approximation. However, since our main purpose is to investigate qualitatively the effects of an intermediate stable layer, such a simplifying procedure does capture the proper scaling relations of the problem, and has the advantage of less specific model dependence. Writing Equation (1) in a dimensionless form and parameterizing the force factor by a dimensionless parameter $`A=cF/\sigma _TF_x`$, we obtain

$$\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Xi }^2}\frac{d\mathrm{\Xi }}{d\tau _e}=A.$$
(9)
The parameter A defined here is identical to the gravity parameter in Nayakshin, Kazanas & Kallman (2000) in the absence of radiation pressure. The integration of this equation from $`\mathrm{\Xi }_1`$ to $`\mathrm{\Xi }_2`$ gives the Thomson depth of the intermediate stable layer.

Assuming radiation pressure can be neglected, The force factor at a given radius $`R`$ of the disk can be estimated as

$$A=\frac{1}{l}\frac{H}{R}\frac{4\pi GMm_pc}{\sigma _TL_{EDD}},$$
(10)
where $`l`$ is the luminosity of the continuum source in units of the Eddington limit, $`H`$ is the half thickness of the disk at radius $`R`$, $`M`$ is the mass of the central source, $`m_p`$ is the proton mass, and $`L_{EDD}`$ is the Eddington luminosity. In this estimate, we have assumed that $`F_x=L/4\pi R^2`$. This gives $`A`$ the value:

$$A=1.4\frac{1}{l}\frac{H}{R}.$$
(11)
For a typical thin disk, as those present in AGN and black hole binaries, one expects $`H/R0.01`$. If the luminosity is sub Eddington, $`l0.01`$ as in most AGNs, $`A`$ is of order unity. However, since the disk surface may not be normal to the continuum radiation, $`F_x`$ may be only a fraction of the value assumed above, which increases $`A`$ by one or two orders of magnitude. On the other hand, as the source approaches the Eddington limit, $`A`$ may become smaller than 1. Therefore, we expect $`A`$ to be in the range of 0.1 – 10. The exceptional cases of much smaller and larger $`A`$ are discussed in §4.

The temperature profiles and optical depths of the transition layers and possible intermediate stable layer are shown in Figures 2. Three labeled curves in solid lines correspond to “S-curve 1” (in Figure 1) with different values of the force factors $`A`$ = 10, 1, and 0.1, respectively. The dashed curve corresponds to “S-curve 2”, where there is no intermediate stable layer. For each of the solid curves, three layers are clearly seen, with two transition layers being connected by an intermediate stable layer, as illustrated for the case of $`A=1`$. The smaller $`A`$ produces a more extended intermediate stable layer as expected.

## 3 X-RAY EMISSION AND RESONANCE LINE SCATTERING

### 3.1 X-ray Emission From Radiative Recombination (RR)

Because the stable phase with the lowest temperature is almost neutral, and the stable phase at the highest temperature is almost fully ionized, they are not efficient in generating X-ray line emission, except for iron fluorescence lines from the neutral material. Only the transition layers and the intermediate stable layer are expected to emit discrete lines in the soft X-ray band. In a photoionized plasma, the temperature is too low for collisional excitation to be an important line formation process. Instead, radiative recombination (RR) followed by cascades dominates the line emission. The flux of a particular line can be written as

$$F_{em}=n_en_iE_l\mathrm{\Lambda }_l(T)𝑑x,$$
(12)
where $`n_i`$ is the density of the ion before recombination, $`E_l`$ is the line energy, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_l(T)`$ is the line emissivity defined as in Sako et al. (1999).

In ionization equilibrium where the ionization rate is equal to the recombination rate, we have $`n_en_i\alpha _i=n_{i1}\frac{F_x(E)}{E}\sigma _{i1}(E)𝑑E`$, where $`\alpha _i`$ is the recombination coefficient of ion $`i`$, $`n_{i1}`$ is the number density of ion $`i1`$, $`F_x(E)`$ is again the monochromatic incident flux (differential in energy), and $`\sigma _{i1}(E)`$ is the photoionization cross section of ion $`i1`$. Defining the branching ratio $`\rho _l(T)=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_l}{\alpha _i}`$, Equation (12) can be rewritten as:

$$F_{em}=E_l\frac{F_x(E)}{E}\frac{\sigma _{i1}(E)}{\sigma _T}𝑑E\rho _l(T)f_{i1}(\mathrm{\Xi },T)𝑑\tau _e,$$
(13)
where $`f_{i1}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })=\frac{n_{i1}}{n_e}`$ is the fractional abundance of ion $`i1`$ with respect to the electron density.

As indicated, $`\rho _l`$ and $`f_{i1}`$ depend only on temperature $`T`$ and ionization parameter $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$, which are both functions of optical depth $`\tau _e`$. For convenience, we further define the “emission equivalent width” $`EW_l^e=\frac{F_{em}}{F_x(E_l)}`$. Then if $`h(E)=\frac{F_x(E)}{F_x(E_l)}`$, which depends only on the shape of the incident continuum, $`EW_l^e`$ can be written as:

$$EW_l^e=E_l\frac{h(E)}{E}\frac{\sigma _{i1}(E)}{\sigma _T}𝑑E\rho _l(T)f_{i1}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })𝑑\tau _e.$$
(14)
Therefore the emission equivalent width $`EW_l^e`$ is independent of the density of the medium and the incident flux. It is a unique function of the structure deduced in Section 2. All other variables depend only on $`T`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$. The numerical values of $`\rho _l(T)`$ were provided by D. Liedahl (private communication), and were calculated using the models described in Sako et al. (1999). The values of $`f_{i1}(T,\mathrm{\Xi })`$ were computed using XSTAR (Kallman & Krolik 1986).

In Figure 3, we plot the spectra of the recombination emission within the 0.5 – 1.5 keV band with a spectral resolution $`2`$ eV, which is close to the spectral resolution of the grating spectrometers on Chandra and XMM-Newton. The top panel corresponds to the case without an intermediate stable layer, and the bottom panels corresponds to the case with an intermediate layer for $`A=10,1`$ and 0.1, respectively. For clarity, from top to bottom, the flux in each panel is multiplied by a factor indicated in each panel. It appears that the existence of an intermediate stable layer enhances the emission in this energy band. This is not surprising since the ions that are responsible for these lines have peak abundances at temperatures close to that of the intermediate stable layer. In all cases, the equivalent widths (EWs) of the emission lines are less than 1.0 eV, with respect to the ionizing continuum. The strongest lines are the hydrogen-like and helium-like lines of oxygen, with EWs approaching several tenths of an eV. Hydrogen-like and helium-like lines from iron outside the plotted energy band are somewhat stronger, with EWs reaching a few eV. We note that our low equivalent width values conflicts with those derived by Nayakshin, Kazanas & Kallman (2000), who found some lines with equivalent widths as high as 30 eV. However, since they did not consider the appropriate locations for the transition regions in $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-space, their intermediate stable layer subtended a much larger optical depth than we find here. Naturally with a thicker layer, they found larger equivalent widths.

### 3.2 X-ray Reflection From Resonance Scattering (RS)

Emission from RR is not the only line formation process in the transition layers and the intermediate stable layer. Due to very large cross sections in resonance line scattering, the reflected flux in these lines may be significant. With the computed thermal and ionization structure, the column density in each ion and the optical depth in all resonance lines can be calculated straightforwardly.

The cross sections for resonance line scattering depend on the line broadening. We assume thermal Doppler effects as the only mechanism. Although the gas temperature is a function of depth, we calculate the line width for a temperature where the abundance of each ion peaks as an average, and assume that the resonance scattering cross sections are uniform along the vertical direction. In terms of absorption oscillator strength $`f`$, this cross section of the resonance line scattering $`\sigma _{RS}`$ can be written as

$$\sigma _{RS}=\frac{\pi e^2}{m_ec^2}f\frac{\lambda ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda },$$
(15)
where $`m_e`$ is the electron mass, $`e`$ is the electron charge, $`\lambda `$ is the wavelength of the line and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ is the average line width in wavelength. Under the assumption of thermal Doppler broadening,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =2.35\lambda \sqrt{\frac{kT_M}{m_ic^2}},$$
(16)
where $`T_M`$ is the temperature at which the ion abundance peaks, and $`m_i`$ is the ion mass. The resonance scattering optical depth $`\tau _{RS}`$ for a line from ion $`i`$ can be estimated as

$$\tau _{RS}=\sigma _{RS}N_i,$$
(17)
where $`N_i`$ is the column density of the ion.

The radiative transfer in the line is a complicated issue (Dumont, Abrassart & Collin 2000). A full treatment is beyond the scope of this work. However, since we are only interested in a reasonable estimate of the reflected line flux, a simple approach may be adopted. We assume the resonance line scattering is isotropic and conservative and neglect the polarization dependence. Under such conditions, the reflection and transmission contributions by a plane-parallel slab of finite optical depth $`\tau `$ have been solved by Chandrasekhar (1960). For normal incident flux $`F_x`$, the angle dependent reflectivity is

$$r(\mu )=\frac{I}{F_x}=\frac{S(\tau ,\mu )}{4\pi \mu },$$
(18)
where $`\mu =\mathrm{cos}\theta `$, $`r(\mu )`$ is the reflectivity at $`\mu `$, $`I`$ is the reflected intensity, $`F_x`$ is the incident flux, and $`S(\tau ,\mu )`$ is the scattering function defined as

$$(1+\frac{1}{\mu })S(\tau ,\mu )=X(\mu )X(1)Y(\mu )Y(1),$$
(19)
where $`X(\mu )`$ and $`Y(\mu )`$ are two functions that satisfy the following integral equations:

$`X(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2}}{\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mu +\mu ^{}}}[X(\mu )X(\mu ^{})Y(\mu )Y(\mu ^{})]𝑑\mu ^{}`$
$`Y(\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{\tau /\mu }+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2}}{\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mu \mu ^{}}}[Y(\mu )X(\mu ^{})X(\mu )Y(\mu ^{})]𝑑\mu ^{}.`$ (20)
The solutions of these equations may be obtained by an iterative method with the starting point $`X(\mu )=1`$ and $`Y(\mu )=e^{\tau /\mu }`$. The angle integrated reflectivity $`R_t`$ can be calculated as

$$R_t=2\pi _0^1r(\mu )\mu 𝑑\mu ,$$
(21)
and is shown in Figure 4 as a function of the resonance scattering optical depth $`\tau _{RS}`$.

The reflected flux in a line can be written as

$$F_r=R_tF_x(E)\mathrm{\Delta }E,$$
(22)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ is the line width in energy. Similarly to the “emission equivalent width” $`EW_l^e`$, we define a “reflection equivalent width” $`EW_l^r=\frac{F_r}{F_x(E_l)}`$, which results in:

$$EW_l^r=\frac{R_t\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda hc}{\lambda ^2}.$$
(23)
This “reflection equivalent width” from our numerical results is a few tenths of an eV for strong resonance lines, similar to that of the recombination emission lines.

In Figure 5, we plot the spectra of the resonantly scattered lines in the energy band 0.5 – 1.5 keV with a spectral resolution $`2`$ eV. The top panel corresponds to the case without an intermediate stable layer, and the bottom panels corresponds to the case with an intermediate layer for $`A=10,1`$ and 0.1, respectively. For clarity, from top to bottom, the flux in each panel is multiplied by a factor of 100. We see that the equivalent widths of the reflected lines are notably enhanced when there is an intermediate stable layer, but not as significantly as for the recombination emission lines. This is because the optical depths of many strong lines become much larger than unity, and the reflection is saturated. If there are broadening mechanisms other than thermal Doppler effects, such as turbulent velocity, the reflected intensity can be further enhanced.

### 3.3 X-ray Spectrum with RR Emission and RS Reflection

In order to gain a crude idea of the relative importance of recombination emission and reflection from the transition layers and intermediate stable layer, we compare them to the “hump” produced by Compton scattering off a cold surface (Lightman & White 1988). We use the Greens function obtained by Lightman & White (1988) to calculate the Compton reflection. This method was verified to be accurate with a Monte Carlo procedure by George & Fabian (1991). In Figure 6, we show the combined spectra including recombination emission and reflection lines from resonance line scattering, and the Compton reflection “hump”.

## 4 SUMMARY

We now summarize the most important conclusions that can be drawn from the calculations presented in this paper. We also discuss the detectability of the predicted line features.

1. The unique ionization parameters that characterize the steady-state solutions of the transition layers depend on the shape of the “S-curve”. We have shown that two power-law illuminating spectra with different high energy cutoffs produce very different temperature profiles. The harder spectrum only allows one transition layer even though there are two unstable branches in the “S-curve”, while the softer one allows two separate transition layers connected by an intermediate stable layer. This is due to the fact that the ionization parameter of the upper transition layer must be larger than that of the lower one, if they are to exist separately in a disk environment. The harder spectrum produces a turnover point of the upper branch of the “S-curve” at smaller $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$. Therefore the transition layer due to the upper unstable region joins the lower one smoothly without allowing the intermediate stable region to form. The turnover of the upper “S-curve” represents the point where Compton heating starts to overwhelm bremsstrahlung. The ionization parameter at which this point occurs is related to the Compton temperature of the continuum, $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{top}T_{IC}^{3/2}`$ (Krolik, McKee & Tarter 1981; Nayakshin 2000). A harder spectrum has larger $`T_{IC}`$, therefore the intermediate stable layer tends to disappear for hard incident spectra.
2. Although the Thomson depths of the transition layers and possible intermediate stable layer are generally negligible, the X-ray emission lines from them may comprise the main observable line features, because the temperatures of these layers are inaccessible to the stable phases, and thus some of the important lines can have appreciable emissivity only in these layers. Due to the much larger cross sections for resonance line scattering, reflection due to resonance lines off such transition layers is also important. The strengths of reflected lines are at least comparable with those of the recombination emission lines when there is no intermediate stable layer. Because the appearance of the reflected line spectrum is different from that of the recombination emission spectrum, high resolution spectroscopic observations should be able to distinguish these mechanisms.
3. The justification of the assumption that the ionizing continuum does not scatter in the intermediate layer depends on the magnitude of the parameter $`A`$. The Thomson depth of this layer $`\tau _e`$ is given by:

$$\tau _e=\frac{1}{A}(\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Xi }_1}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Xi }_2}).$$
(24)
For the power-law continuum with high energy cutoff at 150 keV (“S curve 1”), $`\mathrm{\Xi }_1=2.82`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }_2=3.14`$ from our numerical results. Therefore, $`\tau _e=0.036/A`$. $`\tau _e`$ is much less than unity as long as $`A`$ is greater than 0.1. For smaller $`A`$, however, another effect comes into play. Nayakshin, Kazanas & Kallman (2000) showed that the Thomson depth of the coronal layer (the stable phase with highest temperature) exceeds unity when the gravity parameter (identical to $`A`$ defined here when the radiation pressure is neglected) is $``$ 0.01. Therefore not much ionizing flux can penetrate this layer, and the reprocessing in the deeper and cooler layers can be neglected completely. As $`A`$ becomes much larger than 10, the thickness of the intermediate stable layer is negligible compared to the transition layers. Therefore, its presence may be ignored.
4. Since the recombination rate must equal the photoionization rate in the irradiated gas, recombination radiation is also a form of reflection – i.e. the line equivalent widths are independent of the incident flux. They depend only on the structure ($`T(\tau );\mathrm{\Xi }(\tau )`$) deduced from the hydrostatic and energy balance equations.
5. The detectability of these recombination emission and reflection lines depends on whether the primary continuum is viewed directly. When the ionizing continuum is in direct view, our results show that the EWs of the strongest lines in the 0.5 – 1.5 keV band are at most a few tenths of an eV, slightly larger when there is an intermediate stable layer.

The signal to noise ratio (SNR) in such a line can be written as

$$SNR=\frac{EW}{E_l}(tE_lF_\gamma )^{1/2}\left(A_{eff}\frac{E}{\delta E}\right)^{1/2},$$
(25)
where $`t`$ is the integration time of the observation, $`E_l`$ is the energy of the line, $`F_\gamma `$ is the photon flux in the continuum, $`A_{eff}`$ and $`E/\delta E`$ are the effective area and resolving power of the instrument, respectively. For a line at $``$ 1 keV, with $`EW=1eV`$, and with HETGS on board Chandra, we have $`SNR=0.25\sqrt{tF_\gamma }`$. A typical Seyfert 1 galaxy has a flux of $`10^{10}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in the energy band of 2–10 keV. Assuming a power law with energy index of 1, the photon flux at 1 keV would be $`0.05`$ cm-2 s-1 keV-1. For a reasonable integration time of 10 ks, we have SNR $`5`$. When the primary continuum is obscured as in Seyfert 2 galaxies, the EWs of the emission and reflection lines can be orders of magnitude larger, because the continuum at this energy region is absorbed severely, and the SNR can be greatly enhanced, making these lines observable.

Acknowledgment: SMK acknowledges several grants from NASA which partially supported this work, MFG acknowledges the support of a Chandra Fellowship at MIT. We wish to thank M. Sako, D. Savin and E. Behar for several useful discussions.


text:
# The X-ray background from groups and clusters of galaxies

## 1. Introduction

The missing baryon problem still has no resolution in sight at present. It is commonly believed that most of the baryons in the universe exist in the form of diffuse warm-hot intergalactic medium (IGM) at temperatures of $`T10^5`$$`10^7`$ K (Cen & Ostriker 1999), which may contribute a non-negligible fraction of the soft X-ray background (XRB) as a result of thermal bremsstrahlung emission. Therefore, the measurement of the soft XRB constitutes a critical test for the presence of the warm-hot IGM and also for the models of structure formation. Important progress in the issue has been made over the past few years (e.g. Pen 1999; Phillips, Ostriker & Cen 2000; Wu, Fabian & Nulsen 2001; Davé et al. 2001; Voit, Evrard & Bryan 2001). Essentially, most of the warm-hot IGM associated with the gravitational potentials of less massive dark halos must reside outside of the systems characterized by their virial radii. Otherwise, the XRB produced by the gravitationally heated and bound IGM in groups and poor clusters will greatly exceed the upper limits set by current X-ray observations. This implies that the preheating of IGM either by non-gravitational processes such as supernovae, AGNs and galactic winds or by purely gravitational processes due to large-scale density perturbations must play a potentially important role in the early phase of structure formation, which raises the IGM entropy and makes the IGM harder to compress. Such a scenario is supported by both the discovery of the entropy excess in groups relative to that can be achieved in the pure accretion shock heating (Ponman, Cannon & Navarro 1999) and the remarkable departure of the observed X-ray luminosity ($`L_\mathrm{x}`$) - temperature ($`T`$) relations for groups and clusters ($`L_\mathrm{x}T^{35}`$) (Xue & Wu 2000 and references therein) from the simple gravitational scaling law ($`L_\mathrm{x}T^2`$) (Kaiser 1986).

While a sophisticated estimate of the XRB produced by the warm-hot IGM must rely upon cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (e.g. Phillips et al. 2000), semi-analytic models, which emphasize the essential physics behind the problem, provide a simple approach to understanding quantitatively the issue, in a complementary manner to hydrodynamic simulations. Indeed, the pioneering work of Pen (1999) based on the cosmic virial theorem and the standard Press-Schechter (PS) mass function has already revealed the properties of the expected XRB from the gravitationally bound IGM within the virialized systems, in gross consistency with subsequent numerical results. In particular, the employment of the observed X-ray luminosity - temperature relations for groups and clusters in the prediction of the XRB spectra permits the inclusion of other heating effects on the IGM, regardless of the details of heating mechanisms and processes (Kitayama, Sasaki & Suto 1998; Wu et al. 2001). In this paper, we conduct an alternative, semi-analytic approach to the estimate of the XRB, using purely the observationally determined quantities such as the X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of groups and clusters and their X-ray luminosity - temperature relations. The advantages of this method are as follows: First, it provides a much simpler and also more realistic way to estimate the contribution of the warm-hot IGM contained in groups and clusters to XRB, in the sense that the influence of non-gravitational heating on the IGM can be naturally included; Second, it allows one to correctly remove the component from known population of groups and especially clusters in the measurement of XRB, which will be of potential importance in search for the missing baryons residing in large-scale structures; Finally, it will be interesting to compare the XRB expected from the XLF and $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations of groups and clusters with other independent observational constraints such as the current XRB surveys by ROSAT, ASCA, Chandra and XMM. Of course, the accuracy and reliability of this semi-analytic method depend on our knowledge of X-ray groups and clusters revealed by current X-ray observations. We have recently applied the same method to the study of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster counts, and found a noticeable difference between the prediction by the PS mass function and that by the XLF of clusters (Xue & Wu 2001). Throughout this paper we assume a flat cosmological model ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM) of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ and $`h=0.68`$.

## 2. $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation

The X-ray luminosity - temperature relation is a good indicator of the dynamical and heating properties of the IGM associated with the underlying gravitational potentials of dark halos. It follows that the bolometric X-ray luminosity of groups and clusters should obey the simple gravitational scaling law $`L_\mathrm{x}^{\mathrm{bol}}T^2`$, if there is no other heating mechanism (Kaiser 1986). However, it has been well known that the observationally determined $`L_\mathrm{x}^{\mathrm{bol}}`$-$`T`$ relations on group and cluster scales deviate significantly from this simple scaling, with $`L_\mathrm{x}^{\mathrm{bol}}T^{35}`$ (e.g. Edge & Stewart 1991; David et al. 1993; Wu, Xue & Fang 1999; Xue & Wu 2000 and references therein). This is often interpreted as being due to the preheating of IGM by supernova explosions and/or AGNs before the IGM falls into the dark matter potential of groups and clusters (e.g. Kaiser 1991; Cavaliere, Menci & Tozzi 1997; Balogh, Babul & Patton 1999; but see Bryan 2000). Consequently, the employment of the observed $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations in the estimate of the XRB from the IGM in groups and clusters may allow us to include the non-gravitational heating effect.

We determine the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations for groups and clusters using the non-exhausted catalog of X-ray groups and clusters compiled by Wu et al. (1999) and Xue & Wu (2000). The updated catalog contains 55 groups and 191 clusters whose X-ray temperature and luminosity are both available, and the corresponding $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation in the 0.5-2.0 keV band is shown in the upper panel of Figure 1. In order to properly take the intrinsic dispersion of the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ distribution into account in our estimate of XRB below, we smooth the observed data points in the following way: For any given X-ray luminosity $`L_\mathrm{x}`$, we construct a subsample of ten neighbor groups/clusters that have the minimum value of $`|L_{\mathrm{x},\mathrm{i}}L_\mathrm{x}|`$. The average temperature of the ten groups/clusters weighted by their measurement uncertainties ($`\mathrm{\Delta }T_i`$) is used as the central temperature $`T`$ at $`L_\mathrm{x}`$: $`T=(T_i/\mathrm{\Delta }T_i^2)/(1/\mathrm{\Delta }T_i^2)`$. The temperature scatter around the central temperature $`T`$ is described by the standard deviation of the ten data points $`(T_i,i=1,\mathrm{},10)`$ from $`T`$. The reconstructed $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation over a broad X-ray luminosity range of $`4.5\times 10^{40}<L_x<6.8\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.5-2.0 keV band is displayed in the lower panel of Figure 1. Nevertheless, at the lower and higher X-ray luminosity ends beyond the above range the best fit $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations for groups and clusters will be used, which read

$`kT=10^{0.41\pm 0.13}L_\mathrm{x}^{0.19\pm 0.06}`$ $`\mathrm{groups};`$ (1)
$`kT=10^{0.73\pm 0.05}L_\mathrm{x}^{0.41\pm 0.01}`$ $`\mathrm{clusters},`$ (2)
where $`L_\mathrm{x}`$ and $`kT`$ are in units of $`10^{44}`$ erg s-1 (in the 0.5-2.0 keV band) and keV, respectively. The two relations intersect at $`L_\mathrm{x}=3.5\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1, and show no apparent evolution at least out to $`z0.8`$ (e.g. Mushotzky & Scharf 1997; Della Ceca et al. 2000).

## 3. XLF

Essentially, we follow an approach similar to our recent application of the XLF of clusters for the expectation of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster counts (Xue & Wu 2001). We model the differential XLF of groups/clusters by the Schechter function (e.g. Ebeling et al. 1997; Collins et al. 1997; Rosati et al. 1998; 2000; Burke et al. 1997; De Grandi et al. 1999):

$$\frac{dn}{dL_\mathrm{x}}=A\mathrm{exp}(L_\mathrm{x}/L_\mathrm{x}^{})L_\mathrm{x}^\alpha ,$$
(3)
We consider both the non-evolving and evolving XLFs of groups and clusters, which can be characterized by $`A=A_0(1+z)^{\overline{A}}`$ and $`L_\mathrm{x}^{}=L_{\mathrm{x0}}^{}(1+z)^{\overline{B}}`$. For the non-evolving XLF ($`\overline{A}=0`$ and $`\overline{B}=0`$), we adopt the local XLF constructed by Ebeling et al. (1997) in the 0.5-2 keV band: $`A_0=3.32_{0.36}^{+0.33}\times 10^7`$ Mpc-3 ($`10^{44}`$ ergs s-1)α-1, $`L_{\mathrm{x0}}^{}=5.70_{0.93}^{+1.29}\times 10^{44}`$ ergs s-1 and $`\alpha =1.85_{0.09}^{+0.09}`$, where the Hubble constant is $`h=0.5`$. For the evolving XLF, we use the evolution parameters given by Rosati et al. (2000) for an Einstein-de-Sitter universe: $`\overline{A}0`$ and $`\overline{B}=3`$. We also adopt a combined model or partially evolving XLF suggested recently by Gioia et al. (2001), in which the non-evolving XLF given by Ebeling et al. (1997) is applied to all groups and clusters except for the luminous clusters beyond $`z=0.3`$ and with $`L_\mathrm{x}1.8\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.5-2 keV band. For the latter we choose $`\overline{A}0`$ and $`\overline{B}=3`$. We convert the above XLFs and X-ray luminosity $`L_{\mathrm{x},0}`$ in the Einstein-de-Sitter universe into the ones in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model by demanding that the observed number of groups/clusters in a given redshift interval ($`z,z+dz`$) be conserved and by utilizing the relation

$$L_\mathrm{x}=\left[\frac{D_L}{D_{L,0}}\right]^2L_{\mathrm{x},0},$$
(4)
where $`D_L`$ and $`D_{L,0}`$ are the corresponding luminosity distances. Note that the current XLFs are only valid down to $`L_\mathrm{x}1\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.5-2 keV band. Nevertheless, in order to test how significant the X-ray emission from the warm gas associated with elliptical galaxies and small groups affects the soft XRB, we will make an attempt to extrapolate the current XLFs to $`L_{\mathrm{x},\mathrm{min}}=1\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-1.

## 4. XRB: expectation

Integrating the X-ray emission of all the groups and clusters with X-ray luminosity above the threshold $`L_{\mathrm{x},\mathrm{min}}`$ and over redshift space yields the total XRB intensity at a given frequency $`\nu `$:

$$J(\nu )=\left(\frac{dL_\mathrm{x}/d\nu }{4\pi D_\mathrm{L}^2(z)}\right)\left(\frac{dn(L_\mathrm{x},z)}{dL_\mathrm{x}}\right)\left(\frac{dV}{d\mathrm{\Omega }dz}\right)𝑑L_\mathrm{x}𝑑z,$$
(5)
where $`dV`$ is the comoving volume element:

$$\frac{dV}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{c}{H_0}\frac{(1+z)^2}{E(z)}D_\mathrm{A}^2dz,$$
(6)
$`D_\mathrm{L}(z)`$ and $`D_\mathrm{A}(z)`$ are the luminosity and angular diameter distances to groups/clusters at $`z`$, respectively. Since the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation and XLFs of groups/clusters are both given in the 0.5-2 keV band, we adopt the optically thin and isothermal plasma emission model with a metallicity of $`Z=0.3Z_{}`$ by Raymond & Smith (1977) to convert the X-ray luminosity in the 0.5-2 keV band into the X-ray luminosity per unit frequency, $`dL_\mathrm{x}/d\nu `$, in which line emission is also included.

We numerically integrate equation (5) for the three different evolutionary scenarios of XLF. It turns out that the difference in the expected XRB between the non-evolving and evolving XLFs of groups/clusters is only minor especially when the scatter of the observationally determined $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations is included (see Figure 3). Essentially, the non-evolving XLF only leads to a slightly larger XRB flux than the evolving or partially evolving models. Note that the current evolutionary models only admit the pure luminosity evolution of clusters. In Figure 2 we display the resulting 0.1-10 keV XRB spectra for the partially evolving XLF, in which the total XRB is also decomposed into the contributions of groups and clusters separated at $`L_\mathrm{x}=3.5\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.5-2 keV band and at different redshift ranges. It is apparent that the predicted hard XRB above $`1`$ keV is dominated by clusters at intermediate reshifts $`0.1<z<1`$, while most of the soft XRB is produced by groups, as was naturally expected. In particular, nearby groups within $`z=0.1`$ make little contribution to the soft XRB, in contrast to the distant groups beyond $`z=1`$ which can give arise to a large fraction of the soft XRB below $`0.4`$ keV.

## 5. XRB: observational constraints

We now compare our predicted XRB flux from the IGM in groups and clusters with the upper limits set by current observations.

A considerably large fraction of the hard (2-10 keV) XRB has been resolved into discrete sources, which contribute a total sky brightness of $`(1.31.75)\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 for flux down to $`1.42\times 10^{15}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 (Mushotzky et al. 2000; Giacconi et al. 2001; Hasinger et al. 2001). The new result from 300 ks exposure of the Chandra Deep Field South gives a value of $`(1.46\pm 0.20)\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 deg-2 (Tozzi et al. 2001). Combined with the 2-10 keV background of $`1.62.3\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 deg-2 (Gendreau et al. 1995; Marshall et al. 1980; Vecchi et al. 1999), the maximum admitted range of the unresolved flux is $`(01.0)\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 deg-2.

In the soft (1-2 keV) band, the total contribution of the resolved sources for flux greater than $`2\times 10^{16}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 amounts to $`3.383.55\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 (McHardy et al. 1998; Hasinger et al. 1998; Mushotzky et al. 2000; Giacconi et al. 2001; Tozzi et al. 2001). The percentage contribution from the discrete and other sources to the soft XRB depends upon the uncertainty on the evaluation of the total soft XRB which varies from the lowest value $`3.7\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 (Gendreau et al. 1995), the mid-range value $`4.2\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 (Miyaji et al. 1998), to the largest value $`4.4\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 (Chen, Fabian & Gendreau 1997). We adopt two additional upper limits to the soft XRB from diffuse IGM given by Bryan & Voit (2001): $`1.8\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 and $`6.8\times 10^{13}`$ erg s-1 cm -2 deg-2 for the 0.5-2 keV and 0.1-0.4 keV bands, respectively. These values are derived by combining the XRB intensity measurements (Gendreau et al. 1995; Barcons, Mateos & Ceballos 2000) and the deep surveys with ROSAT and Chandra (Hasinger et al. 1998; Giacconi et al. 2001), along with a proper modeling of the spectral slope. Finally, the “remaining” fluxes recently discovered by Kuntz, Snowden & Mushotzky (2001) from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey after peeling off various known X-ray foreground and background components can also be used as useful constraints on the XRB from the IGM in groups and clusters, although these remainders may be contaminated by the Galactic halo emission. It should be pointed out that the faint, diffuse X-ray emission from groups and small clusters may also be included in the current resolved 1-2 keV XRB. This arises from the difficulty of clearly separating X-ray emission between nuclear and extended sources at very faint flux level. Moreover, X-ray emission from normal galaxies has become detectable in the recent deep exposure by Chandra and XMM (Mushotzky et al. 2000; Giacconi et al. 2001; Hasinger et al. 2001; Tozzi et al. 2001). Therefore, the current residual soft XRB after the resolved sources are removed may not strictly be used as an upper limit on the X-ray emission from diffuse IGM associated with elliptical galaxies, groups and clusters.

We first perform an integration of the total XRB in terms of equation (5) over four different energy bands, using again the partially evolving XLF, and compare our predictions with the existing limits (Table 1). Note that in the 0.5-2 keV band, we can obtain the total XRB flux simply by integrating equation (5) without the employment of the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations. Essentially, our predicted results in all the four bands are well within the upper limits placed on the contribution from diffuse gas to the XRB. We then compare our expected XRB spectrum from the IGM in groups and clusters with the observational constraints (Figure 3). For the latter, we use the mean strength of the upper limits over different energy bands except for the data of Kuntz et al. (2001). In order to demonstrate how the scatter in the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ distribution (see Figure 1) affects our predictions, we employ the Monte Carlo technique to determine the uncertainty ($`68\%`$ confidence limits) in the resulting XRB. It appears that the overall XRB produced by the IGM associated with groups and clusters is roughly consistent with the current upper limits. Namely, the X-ray emission from groups and clusters may account for the remaining XRB flux reported by the advanced X-ray detectors (ROSAT, ASCA, Chandra) after the discrete sources are removed. Note that the upper limits given by Kuntz et al. (2001) at $`0.2`$ keV significantly exceed our predictions, which can be attributable to the contribution from the Galactic halo emission.

We have also compared our predictions with the simulated XRB by Phillips et al. (2000) (Figure 3). For the latter, the contributions from nearby, massive clusters ($`z0.2`$ and $`M5.5\times 10^{14}h^1M_{}`$) were removed. This last restriction will not significantly alter our predictions because the effect of the nearby, massive clusters on the total XRB is rather small. It appears that there is good agreement between our analytical results, based on the XLF and $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations of groups and clusters, and their numerical simulations over the entire energy band.

## 6. Discussion and conclusions

We have provided an alternative, semi-analytic model to the estimate of the contribution from the warm-hot IGM associated with groups and clusters to the XRB, based purely on the observationally determined $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations and XLF of groups and clusters. This has enabled us to naturally include both gravitational and non-gravitational heating influence without detailed knowledge of the heating processes. The resulting 0.1-10 keV XRB spectrum is roughly consistent with the upper limits set by current X-ray observations on the contribution from diffuse gas to the XRB (e.g. Hasinger et al. 1998; 2001; Mushotzky et al. 2000; Giacconi et al. 2001; Tozzi et al. 2001). It is thus possible that the residual flux, after the discrete sources are removed from the total XRB, is (at least partially) due to the X-ray emission from the warm-hot IGM associated with groups and clusters. If confirmed, this would have profound implications for our understanding of the missing baryons and their distributions.

As compared with previous semi-analytic models which essentially employ the PS mass function and the mass - temperature relation in terms of virial theorem, combined with either an oversimplified scenario for the IGM distribution in dark halos (e.g. Pen 1999) or the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation for clusters (Kitayama et al. 1998; Wu et al. 2001), our semi-analytic approach provides a more straightforward and realistic way to calculate the XRB from the warm-hot IGM associated with groups and clusters. Indeed, we have made no assumption about the dynamical and heating properties of the IGM, and included the intrinsic dispersion, if any, in the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations due to different physical mechanisms among different groups and clusters. The uncertainty in our predictions, aside from the dispersion of the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ distribution, thus arises mainly from the XLF of groups and clusters: Firstly, we have extrapolated the current XLF and its evolutionary model to $`z>1`$ where the XLF evolution of clusters is poorly constrained. Our main prediction would remain unchanged only if the evolutionary scenario shown by current observations (e.g. Rosati et al. 2000; Gioia et al. 2001; references therein) is correct, i.e., the bulk of clusters exhibit no significant evolution out to $`z1`$ and the evolution only commences for the most luminous clusters, and if such a scenario should also be applicable to groups. On the other hand, we have shown that the major uncertainty in the predicted XRB arises from the scatter of the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation rather than from the current available evolutionary models of XLF. At this point, it is unlikely that the XBR can be used for the purpose of testing the evolution of XLF for groups and clusters. Second, we have extrapolated the current XLF to less massive systems with X-ray luminosity down to $`L_\mathrm{x}1\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-1 in the 0.5-2 keV band. This limit even allows us to include the contribution from the X-ray emission of elliptical galaxies, which would affect the estimate of the 0.1-1 keV XRB. Unfortunately, there has been no observational justification for such an extrapolation, except for the consistency between our prediction and the numerical result by Phillips et al. (2000). Third, we have adopted a less vigorous approach to converting the XLF in an Einstein-de-Sitter universe to that in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. A sophisticated treatment of the problem is to reconstruct the XLF of groups and clusters and its evolutionary model in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model from real data, and then proceed to the computation of the XRB from the IGM in groups and clusters, as we have done for the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation.

Overall, the XRB spectrum in the 0.1-10 keV band estimated from the available $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation and XLF of groups and clusters is consistent with the residual XRB reported by current observations after the source contributions are removed. This would be of great significance for future detection of the missing baryons which are believed to exist in the form of the warm-hot IGM associated with poor clusters and groups that are further embedded in large-scale structures.

We gratefully acknowledge the constructive suggestions by an anonymous referee that greatly improved the presentation of this work. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China, under Grant No. 19725311 and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, under Grant No. NKBRSF G19990754.


text:
# Exponential Temperature Dependence of Penetration Depth in MgB2

\[

## Abstract

The temperature dependence of the London penetration depth, $`\lambda (T)`$, was measured in polycrystalline MgB2 samples by a high-resolution, radio frequency technique. A clear exponential temperature dependence of $`\lambda (T)`$ was observed at low temperature, indicating $`s`$-wave pairing. A fit to the data gives an effective energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of $`2.8\pm 0.4`$ meV ($`2\mathrm{\Delta }/k_BT_c=1.7\pm 0.2`$), which is significantly smaller than the standard BCS weak coupling value of 3.5. This may be explained either by an anisotropic gap or the influence of low frequency phonon modes.

\]

The recent discovery  of superconductivity at 39 K in the binary compound MgB2 has sparked a large number of investigations into its physical properties. A crucial question is whether its high $`T_c`$ can be explained by a phonon mediated pairing interaction within the usual BCS-Eliashberg framework. A first step in answering this question is to determine the symmetry of the superconducting order parameter and the nature of the low energy excitations.

Several experiments so far, have given strong indications that the superconductivity is of the $`s`$-wave BCS type. An important experiment has been the observation of a large boron isotope effect . In conventional superconductors, tunneling measurements played a key role in verifying the BCS theory, however, in the cuprate superconductors this probe has not proved quite as useful because the short coherence length $`\xi `$ makes junction fabrication difficult. The majority of tunneling measurements on MgB2 so far show a $`s`$-wave like gap but the values of the deduced gap vary widely between 2 and 7 meV . The magnetic penetration depth $`\lambda `$ has proven to be a powerful probe of the gap symmetry in both classical and high $`T_c`$ superconductors and gives unambiguous information about the nature of the low energy excitations in superconductors. As the length scale probed is of order $`\lambda `$ rather than $`\xi `$, for high $`\kappa `$ materials, penetration depth measurements are much less sensitive to surface quality than tunneling, and hence we expect the results to be more representative of the bulk.

There have been several recent reports of measurements of $`\lambda (T)`$ for MgB2 by ac-susceptibility , muon spin rotation  and optical conductivity  techniques. These authors conclude that at high temperature $`\lambda (T)`$ follows a power law dependence \[$`\lambda (T)T^2`$ (Refs. ) and $`\lambda (T)T^{2.7}`$ (Ref. )\], which seems to be at odds with tunneling and other measurements which indicate that there is a sizeable $`s`$-wave gap. In this paper we present high resolution measurements of the temperature dependence of the penetration depth in polycrystalline samples of MgB2. We find strong evidence for a predominately exponential temperature dependence of $`\lambda `$ at low temperature consistent with $`s`$-wave BCS behavior. The gap deduced from fits to the data however, is significantly smaller than the BCS weak coupling value. This may be explained by either a strong anisotropy of the gap or the presence of low energy phonon modes.

Three different types of polycrystalline MgB2 samples were studied. Samples A and C, were produced from commercially available (Alfa Aesar) powder. Sample A was produced by casting the powder directly in epoxy resin (weight ratio MgB2:Epoxy $``$ 1:6.5). The commercial powder has a relatively wide range of grain sizes which complicates quantitative analysis of the data. For the analysis to give a reliable estimate of the absolute values of $`\lambda (T)`$ grain sizes $`5\lambda `$ are required . To obtain such a distribution the commercial powder was ground in an agate mortar and then sedimented in acetone for 1 hour. The resulting powder was then cast in epoxy ($``$6% by volume) to produce sample C. The grain size distribution was measured from scanning electron microscope images. The diameter of 96% of the grains was less than 1$`\mu `$m, and the mean diameter was 0.56$`\mu `$m. Sample B was fabricated by reacting boron powder and Mg flakes in an Argon atmosphere at high temperature. This procedure produced a dense polycrystalline pellet. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy showed that as grown samples of type B contained some residual flakes of unreacted Mg. Initial measurements found that this changed the low temperature behavior of $`\lambda (T)`$ markedly . To remove this contamination we immersed these samples in a dilute solution ($``$ 0.5 %) of HCL and ethanol. $`T_c`$ was unaffected by this. Previous studies have shown that the commercial MgB2 powder is 98% phase pure, the remaining 2% being mostly composed of iron, carbon and oxygen . The susceptibility of these impurities is too weak to effect the results presented here

Measurements of penetration depth were performed in a tunnel diode oscillator operating at 11.9 MHz, with frequency stability of a few parts in $`10^{10}`$ Hz$`^{\frac{1}{2}}`$. For the powder samples in the present work this translates to a resolution in $`\lambda `$ of $`10^{12}`$m. A particular feature of our apparatus is the very low value of the ac-probe field which we estimate to be $`1\mu `$T. Ambient dc fields are shielded to a similar level with a mu-metal can. Changes in the oscillator frequency are directly proportional to the inductance of the probe coil and hence to the susceptibility of the sample. For single crystal samples, this frequency shift may be directly related to changes in the penetration depth using the known sample dimensions . In general for polycrystalline samples the relation between the measured susceptibility (per unit volume of superconductor) $`\chi `$ and $`\lambda `$ is more complicated and depends on the size distribution of the grains. For well separated grains

$$\chi =\frac{\frac{3}{2}\underset{i}{}\left(1\frac{3\lambda }{r_i}\mathrm{coth}(\frac{r_i}{\lambda })+\frac{3\lambda ^2}{r_i^2}\right)r_i^3N_i}{\underset{i}{}r_i^3N_i}$$
(1)
where $`N_i`$ is the measured number of grains of radius $`r_i`$ . For sample C, $`\lambda (T)`$ was determined from the measured $`\chi (T)`$ and grain size distribution by solving Eq. (1) at each point. For samples A and B the wide distribution of grain sizes and (for sample B) the possibility of interconnection between the grains makes a quantitative determination of $`\lambda (T)`$ impossible. We note however, that if $`\lambda (T)`$ becomes temperature independent, then so will $`\chi (T)`$, irrespective of the detailed dependence of $`\chi (T)`$ on $`\lambda `$ and $`r_i`$.

In Fig. 1 we show the temperature dependence of $`\chi `$ for the three different samples. For samples A and B, $`\chi `$ was normalized to $`1`$ at low temperature, whereas for sample C, $`\chi `$ was calculated from the measured volume of superconductor and is thus in absolute units. $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi (T)`$ denotes the change in $`\chi `$ relative to its value at our base temperature ($`T`$=1.4 K). It is apparent that in all three samples $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi (T)`$ becomes essentially temperature independent below around 5 K. This is the main result of this paper and is a clear indication of an finite energy gap in all directions in $`k`$-space. A large distribution of grain sizes or anisotropy of $`\lambda `$ will effect the detailed $`T`$ dependence of $`\chi `$ (especially at higher temperature) but cannot cause such an abrupt flattening off of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi (T)`$.

The material parameters of MgB2 deduced from other measurements put it firmly in the clean, local limit ($`\lambda (0)0.2\mu `$m , $`\xi (0)`$50 Å and mean free path $`\mathrm{}`$ 600 Å), so $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi (T)`$ is directly proportional to changes in the London penetration depth ($`\lambda _L`$). For a $`s`$-wave superconductor, at sufficiently low temperature, irrespective of the coupling strength, $`\lambda _L(T)`$ should follow the BCS behavior

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda (T)\lambda _0^e\sqrt{\frac{\pi \mathrm{\Delta }_0}{2k_BT}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_0}{k_BT}\right)$$
(2)
were $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ is the value of the energy gap at zero temperature and $`\lambda _0^e=\lambda (0)`$ in the weak coupling case. In Fig. 1 we show a fit of Eq. (2) to the data for the three samples. The fits give consistent values for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ which average $`33\pm 4`$ K (the uncertainty reflects the different values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ between the three samples and as the upper limit of the fit ($`T_{\text{max}}^{\text{fit}}`$) was varied from 15 K to 20 K). It should be noted that Eq. (2) is not a perfect fit to the data and particularly at very low temperature where the measured $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda (T)`$ has a larger temperature dependence that would be indicated by Eq. (2). If taken literally this may indicate the presence of a small amount of excitations with energies significantly below our deduced $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$. However, until high quality single crystals become available it is impossible to rule out extrinsic origins of this term (for instance from weak links at the surface of the grains). The fit improves if two gaps are used (for instance with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_12\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ and the lower gap having a weight of 5% of the larger gap), but this leaves the value of the larger gap unchanged (within the error) from our original estimate.

As mentioned above, several other authors  have claimed that $`\lambda (T)`$ in MgB2 does not follow a simple exponential $`T`$ dependence but rather a power law dependence with an exponent close to 2. In Fig. 1 we show a $`T^2`$ fit to data. Clearly, this fit is much worse than the BCS dependence \[Eq. (2)\]. We have also tried to fit other forms such as $`AT+BT^2`$ or $`AT^2/(T+T^{})`$ but both fit the data much worse than Eq. (2) (the latter of these two equations is the form followed by a dirty $`d`$-wave superconductor ). The key differences between our data and previous studies is our very high resolution, low base temperatures and very low excitation fields.

As described above, for sample C we are able to deduce the absolute values of $`\lambda (T)`$. In Fig. 2 we show the temperature dependence of the calculated superfluid density $`[\rho =\lambda (0)/\lambda (T)]^2`$. Our data give a value of $`\lambda (0)=160\pm 20`$nm which is in good agreement with other estimates  although is somewhat longer than that deduced from $`\mu `$SR data . The uncertainty in $`\lambda (0)`$ does not make any significant difference to the temperature dependence of $`\rho (T)`$. The fit to the low temperature behavior of $`\rho (T)`$ (Fig. 3) gives values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ in the range 28 K to 33 K as $`T_{\text{max}}^{\text{fit}}`$ was varied from 10 K to 15 K, in good agreement with those extracted from the fits to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi (T)`$ in Fig. 1. From this data we are also able to calculate the constant $`\lambda _0^e`$ in Eq. (2). We find that, unlike $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, $`\lambda _0^e`$ depends quite strongly on the fitting range - increasing from 57 nm to 90 nm as $`T_{\text{max}}^{\text{fit}}`$ was varies from 10 K to 15 K. This is however, significantly below the BCS value of $`\lambda (0)`$= 160 nm.

MgB2 has a anisotropic structure, with Mg atoms sandwiched between planar, hexagonal boron rings. It is therefore expected that there will be some anisotropy between the $`ab`$-plane and the $`c`$-axis responses. As our measurements have been performed on unaligned polycrystalline samples our measurements of $`\lambda (T)`$ will be a mixture of the $`ab`$-plane and $`c`$-axis penetration depths ($`\lambda _c`$ and $`\lambda _{ab}`$). Recent results on aligned crystallites and single crystals have shown a significant anisotropy in $`H_{c2}`$ which implies an anisotropy in the coherence lengths, $`\gamma =\xi _{ab}/\xi _c`$. In an anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau theory this implies a similar anisotropy in $`\lambda `$, $`\gamma =\lambda _c/\lambda _{ab}`$. There is some disagreement about the magnitude of this anistropy, Refs.  give $`\gamma =1.7\pm 0.1`$ and Refs.  give $`\gamma =2.6\pm 0.1`$. As far as we know the is no general solution for the moment of a sphere when $`\lambda `$ is anisotropic, however solutions do exist in the limits $`\lambda r`$  and $`\lambda r`$ . Fortunately, these two limits give similar results for $`\gamma 3`$. To within $`\pm `$10% the effective $`\lambda (0)`$ equals 1.2 $`\lambda _{ab}`$ or 1.5 $`\lambda _{ab}`$ for $`\gamma `$=1.6 and 2.6 respectively. Our value of $`\lambda (0)`$ then implies that $`\lambda _{ab}`$=130nm and $`\lambda _c`$=210nm or $`\lambda _{ab}110`$ nm and $`\lambda _c280`$ nm, for the two values of $`\gamma `$ respectively.

Although the overall temperature dependence of $`\lambda `$ deduced from our measurements is consistent with the a $`s`$-wave BCS picture, the value of the gap obtained is somewhat smaller than the usual BCS weak coupling value ($`\mathrm{\Delta }/k_BT_c=1.76`$). As pointed out by Haas and Maki  a simple explanation for this may be that the $`s`$-wave gap is anisotropic. In most conventional superconductors the anisotropy in the pairing interaction is weak ($``$ 10%). However, it has been proposed that the unique structure of MgB2 may produce a significantly enhanced anisotropy .

Following Ref.  we model the anisotropy in $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ by $`\mathrm{\Delta }(z)=\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }(z)`$ where $`z=\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ ($`\theta `$ is the polar angle - with respect to the $`c`$ direction), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(z)=(1+az^2)/(1+a)`$ and $`a`$ is the parameter which controls the anisotropy. To determine $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda (T)`$ in this model it is necessary to first calculate $`\mathrm{\Delta }(T)`$ self consistently from the gap equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N_0V}}{\displaystyle _0^1}\mathrm{\Gamma }(z)^2𝑑z=`$ (4)
$`{\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}\omega _c}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(z)^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{1}{2T}\left(E^2+\mathrm{\Delta }(z)^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\right)}{\left(E^2+\mathrm{\Delta }(z)^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}}}𝑑E𝑑z`$
and then $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _{ab}(T)`$ from

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _{ab}^2(T)}{\lambda ^2(0)}=6_0^1_{\mathrm{\Delta }(z)}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{df(E)}{dE}\frac{E}{\left(E^2\mathrm{\Delta }(z)^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}}z^2𝑑z𝑑E$$
(5)
and similarly for $`\lambda _c(T)`$ ( $`f`$ is the fermi function). The temperature dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda (T)`$ measured on unaligned polycrystalline samples can then be calculated by a suitable average of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _{ab}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _c`$. For moderate to high anisotropy the low temperature behavior is dominated by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _{ab}`$ as in this model the gap is smallest in the plane. The resulting $`T`$ dependence of $`\lambda `$ may then be fitted by Eq. (2) with an effective gap which is approximately equal to the minimum gap in the model (the in-plane gap). We find that in order to explain the experimentally determined value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }/T_c=0.86\pm 0.1`$ we need $`a=2.2\pm 0.4`$, or a total gap anisotropy $`(1+a)=3.2\pm 0.4`$. Whether or not this very strong anisotropy may be explained by a phonon interaction alone needs to be addressed by microscopic theories. This anisotropy implies a significant difference in the temperature dependence of both $`\lambda (T)`$ and $`\rho (T)`$ between the in-plane and out-of-plane directions. The different $`T`$ dependencies of $`\rho _c(T)`$ and $`\rho _{ab}(T)`$ calculated from this model for $`a=3`$ are shown in Fig. 2. It should be noted although the detailed behavior will be different if strong coupling corrections and fermi velocity anisotropy are included, the qualitative difference between $`\rho _c(T)`$ and $`\rho _{ab}(T)`$ will remain. As our measurements were made on unaligned polycrystals, our data will be an average of $`\rho _c(T)`$ and $`\rho _{ab}(T)`$ (the weights depending on anisotropy in $`\lambda (0)`$). Only a qualitative comparison is possible, but it can be seen that the measured $`\rho (T)`$ falls between $`\rho _c(T)`$ and $`\rho _{ab}(T)`$.

A different approach has been taken by Manske et al. , who have calculated the tunneling density of states from first principles within a standard Eliashberg theory. Their calculations suggest that the small value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{min}/T_c`$ is due to a pronounced low frequency dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega )`$ originating from a low-frequency phonon mode. The size of the minimum gap they calculate is in broad agreement with tunneling and our data.

In conclusion we have presented a study of the penetration depth of polycrystalline MgB2 samples. In agreement with other direct probes of the symmetry of the order parameter we find that $`\lambda (T)`$ is well described by the usual $`s`$-wave BCS behavior, but with a gap that is significantly below the weak coupling BCS value. If this is to be ascribed to a simple anisotropy of the gap then we find that a fairly large anisotropy of around 3 is required. Alternatively the recent calculation of Manske et al.  may also explain our data without the need for significant anisotropy in $`\mathrm{\Delta }(k)`$. Further studies on single crystal samples or aligned polycrystallites will help to clarify this question.

We thank R.W. Giannetta, R. Prozorov, K. Maki, N.E. Hussey, J.F. Annett and J.R. Cooper for useful discussions, and P. Timms for providing the type B MgB2 samples.