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# Conformations of Proteins in Equilibrium

## Abstract

We introduce a simple theoretical approach for an equilibrium study of proteins with known native state structures. We test our approach with results on well-studied globular proteins, Chymotrypsin Inhibitor (2ci2), Barnase and the alpha spectrin SH3 domain and present evidence for a hierarchical onset of order on lowering the temperature with significant organization at the local level even at high temperatures. A further application to the folding process of HIV-1 protease shows that the model can be reliably used to identify key folding sites that are responsible for the development of drug resistance .

Recent experimental and theoretical advances  have shown that the topology of the native structure of a protein plays an important role in determining many of its attributes. The number of distinct native state conformations of proteins is limited  – often several distinct sequences fold into the same native state structure. The native state structures of proteins contain secondary motifs (helices and sheets) in lower dimensional manifolds which are curled into neat patterns (somewhat analogous to the packing of clothes in a suitcase) and play a central role in the folding process .

The problem of protein folding entails the study of the non-equilibrium dynamics in a rugged free energy landscape . A valuable starting point for attacking such a problem is through a thorough equilibrium analysis of proteins with known native state structures. This would be useful for the determination of the folding transition temperature by, for example, monitoring the temperature at which thermodynamic quantities such as the specific heat show a peak. Such a study would lead to clear indications of the equilibrium conformations of proteins as a function of the temperature and provide a detailed picture of the onset of native-state like order on lowering the temperature through the folding transition temperature. Ideally, one would like information on the non-native contacts and their role in facilitating the onset of native-state ordering. Furthermore, it would be useful to incorporate amino-acid specific interactions whenever such information is available.

At the present time, there is no simple theoretical framework for accomplishing all these objectives. Go-like models  have proved to be useful for incorporating the role of the topology of the native state structure in the folding process. In such models, one ascribes a favorable attractive energy to the native contacts. There have been numerous studies of Go-like models, which capture the notion of minimal frustration , but even here, for realistic off-lattice calculations, it is hard, if not impossible, to carry out a full exploration of phase space in order to deduce equilibrium averages. As mentioned previously, the ruggedness of the free energy landscape carves out only a small part of phase space that the system tends to be in leading to non-ergodic behavior even for modest size proteins. Commonly used dynamics such as Monte-Carlo or molecular dynamics tend to result in the system being compartmentalized in phase space because of barriers that are difficult to surmount as the temperature is lowered.

Recent progress has been made in the development of physically motivated topology-based models . The models vary greatly in complexity and analytic tractability. The only energy contributions are postulated to arise from the establishment of native interactions and therefore it is impossible to recover information on non-native contacts. In addition, a huge reduction in phase space is achieved by introducing suitable constraints on contiguous spin variables along the chain. As a consequence, the “true” hiearchical formation of the native state structure may lead to incompatibilities with the phase-space constraints.

In this paper, we present a simple model for calculating the equilibrium properties of heteropolymers or proteins with known native states. The model builds on the importance of the native state topology by assigning an attractive interaction between nearby amino acids that are known to make native state contacts. It is also possible to incorporate amino acid specific interactions into the model. While the model, in its present simple form, does not accurately represent the effects of self-avoidance , it nevertheless ensures that the native state is the true ground state and satisfies all the steric constraints. The connectedness of the chain as well as its entropy are captured in a simple, but non-trivial, manner. The most significant advantage of the model is that it can be used to explore the equilibrium thermodynamics without being hampered by inaccurate or sluggish dynamics. A self-consistent approximation is used to reduce the model to a Gaussian  form. The latter lends itself to a straightforward determination of equilibrium quantities that identify the key folding sites , such as those targeted by drugs against viral enzymes .

The conformation of a protein is specified by the location of the $`C^\alpha `$ atom of the $`i`$-th amino acid in sequence, $`\stackrel{}{r}_i`$. In the native state, $`\stackrel{}{r}_i\stackrel{}{r}_i^0`$. A simple effective Hamiltonian (energy function) that captures the essential features of proteins is:

$$\stackrel{~}{}=\frac{T}{2}K\underset{i=1}{\overset{N1}{}}(\stackrel{}{r}_{i,i+1}\stackrel{}{r}_{i,i+1}^0)^2+\underset{i,j}{}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_{i,j}}{2}X_{i,j}\theta \left[X_{i,j}\right],$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{}{r}_{i,j}\stackrel{}{r}_i\stackrel{}{r}_j`$, $`T`$ is the temperature ($`K_B=1`$), $`\theta `$ is the step function,

$$\theta (x)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \hfill \text{if }x>0\text{ ,}\\ 0\hfill & \hfill \text{otherwise ,}\end{array}$$
(2)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the contact matrix, whose element $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}`$ is 1 if residues $`i`$ and $`j`$ are in contact in the native state (i.e. their Cα separation is below the cutoff $`c=6.5`$ Å)  and 0 otherwise, and

$$X_{i,j}=(\stackrel{}{r}_{i,j}\stackrel{}{r}_{i,j}^0)^2R^2.$$
(3)
The first term in the Hamiltonian involves harmonic interactions between successive “beads” in the chain . The temperature factor ensures that the free-energy contributions of the peptide chain are constant over the range of temperatures relevant to the folding process. The second term in (1) provides an attractive interaction when amino acids which are in contact in the native state conformation are in the proximity of each other . Furthermore (1) guarantees that a specific native target structure is the ground state among all possible three dimensional structures. It is straightforward to generalize the Hamiltonian so that all the pairwise interactions do not have the same strength but are different and reflect the amino acid-specific interactions. In standard off-lattice approaches, the interaction between non-bonded amino acids at a distance $`d`$, is taken to be a square well potential, or some type of Lennard-Jones interaction. Our choice in Eq. (1) is a sort of “harmonic well” which, while being physically sound and viable, is suitable for a self-consistent treatment, as explained below. The location of the outer rim of the well is controlled by $`R`$, which can be set to a few Angstroms ($`R=3`$ Å in the present study) to reflect the fact that, when the separation of two residues is appreciably different from the native one, their interaction is negligible. In its present form, the model is complex and not amenable to a simple attack. While the first term has a simple quadratic form, the second term is difficult to deal with because of the step function.

The key observation is that a dramatic simplification is accomplished on making a self-consistent Gaussian approximation within which the partition function is $`𝒵=\mathrm{\Pi }_id^3r_ie^\beta `$, with

$$=\frac{T}{2}K\underset{i=1}{\overset{N1}{}}(\stackrel{}{r}_{i,i+1}\stackrel{}{r}_{i,i+1}^0)^2+\underset{i,j}{}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_{i,j}}{2}X_{i,j}p_{i,j},$$
(4)
where the $`p_{i,j}`$’s are determined self-consistently, in a spirit similar to a local mean field approximation:

$$p_{i,j}\theta \left(R^2(\stackrel{}{r}_{i,j}\stackrel{}{r}_{i,j}^0)^2\right)_{}.$$
(5)
Physically, $`p_{i,j}`$ represents the equilibrium probability of the formation of the $`i`$-$`j`$ contact at temperature $`T`$. $`p_{i,i+1}`$ can be conveniently frozen to 1 to reflect the strength of the peptide chain. With the functional form given in (4), the partition function can be readily deduced because all integrals are Gaussian. The free energy, $`F=T\mathrm{ln}𝒵`$ is:

$$F=\frac{3N}{2}\mathrm{ln}(2\pi )\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{ln}(detM)\frac{R^2}{2T}\underset{lm}{}\mathrm{\Delta }_{lm}p_{lm}$$
(6)
where the inverse matrix $`M^1`$ is defined as

$$M_{i,j}^1=\{\begin{array}{cc}\hfill K(2\delta _{i,1}\delta _{i,N})+2_l\mathrm{\Delta }_{i,l}p_{i,l}/T& \mathrm{for}i=j\hfill \\ \hfill 2p_{i,j}\mathrm{\Delta }_{i,j}/T+K\left[\delta _{i,j+1}\delta _{i,j1}\right]& \mathrm{for}ij.\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)
The self-consistency relations for the the probabilities $`p_{ij}=\theta _{i,j}_{}`$ are satisfied by finding the fixed point of the recursion equation:

$$p_{ij}^{}=(2\pi G_{i,j})^{3/2}d^3re^{r^2/2G_{i,j}}\theta (R^2r^2).$$
(8)
where the right-hand side depends on the $`p_{ij}`$ obtained at the previous iteration through the matrix $`M`$, which enters the definition of $`G_{i,j}=M_{i,i}+M_{j,j}M_{i,j}M_{j,i}`$. The solution of the recursion equations for the $`p_{i,j}`$, (8), entails the evaluation of incomplete $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ functions and converge to the fixed point very fast and typically an accuracy of $`10^4`$ is reached in a few dozen iterations. Thus the Gaussian nature of the Hamitonian allows a straightforward analytic attack on the problem which, when combined with a rapidly convergent iterative procedure on a computer, allows one to determine the equilibrium properties of any protein with ease.

We present here the results for the globular proteins 2ci2, Barnase and the $`\alpha `$-spectrin SH3 domain (PDB codes: 2ci2, 1a2p and 1shg, respectively) for the simple case of uniform attractive interactions between the amino acids which form the native contacts. In all cases, it is straightforward to determine various thermodynamic quantities as a function of temperature and identify  the folding transition temperature as one at which the specific heat exhibits a maximum (see e.g. Figure 1). The width of the specific heat peak at the folding transition in Figure 1 is significantly smeared out compared to experiment  and theory . The cooperativity of the model can be easily controlled by adjusting the value of $`K`$, with smaller values leading to sharper “transitions”. In addition, a change of $`K`$ also impacts on the average amount of native structure that is formed at the native state. Because we are particularly interested in characterizing the progressive formation of native interactions, we chose the strength of the peptide chain, $`K`$, by inspecting the behaviour of the fraction of native contacts, $`Q`$, as a function of temperature. $`Q`$, which is often termed “native-state overlap”, is defined as

$$Q=\frac{\underset{i,j}{\overset{}{}}\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}p_{ij}}{_{i,j}^{}\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}}$$
(9)
where the prime denotes that the sum is not carried out over consecutive pairs, in order to exclude the effects of the peptide bond. We find that, almost irrespective of the length of the target proteins, a value of $`K=1/15`$ yields $`Q0.5`$ at the folding transition, consistent with experimental findings  and previous observations .

While $`Q`$ is a good global parameter to characterize the progress towards the native state in a folding process, it is useful to monitor the onset of native ordering at the level of individual residues. The quantity, $`P_i`$,

$$P_i=\frac{\underset{j}{\overset{}{}}\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}p_{ij}}{_j^{}\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}}$$
(10)
provides an intuitive measure of the degree to which amino acid $`i`$ is in its native-like conformation. Figure 2 shows the profiles of such environments for each amino acid in proteins CI2, barnase and the $`\alpha `$-spectrin domain of SH3 as a function of the temperature.

In agreement with the experimental findings on these heavily investigated proteins , and also with theoretical predictions, we observe that the secondary structures form at relatively high temperatures and condition subsequent folding events. Note the significant lack of ordering of the loop regions even at the folding transition temperature. $`\beta `$-sheets are seen to form along one preferred direction, while the formation of $`\alpha `$-helices occurs from the ends. In general, the tendency of a site to reach its native environment increases with both its degree of burial and the locality of the contacts it forms. The intricate details of the figure reflect an incremental assembly process and also the complex interplay between the two effects mentioned above.

To further corroborate the validity of the proposed model in capturing the important folding steps we consider an application to an important enzyme, the protease of the HIV-1 virus (pdb code 1aid), which plays a vital role in the spreading of the viral infection. Through extensive clinical trials , it has been established that there is a well-defined set of sites in the enzyme that are crucial for developing, through suitable mutations, resistance against drugs and which play a crucial role in the folding process.

To identify the key folding sites we looked for contacts that are significantly formed above the folding transition temperature. Quantitatively we define the formation temperature of a contact as one at which a given $`p_{i,j}`$ takes on the value $`0.5`$. Our results are summarized in Fig. 3 (upper-left triangular region). As a comparison, in the lower-right triangular region of the same figure, we have highlighted the contacts involving the known mutating sites. Remarkably, among the top 20 contacts with the largest formation temperature there were 10 including one (or more) known mutating site. A straightforward calculation shows that the probability of observing this many successful matches by picking contacts at random is less than 2 %, confirming that our model captures important aspects of the folding process with remarkable precision and reliability.

In summary, the self-consistent Gaussian approach provides a simple way of probing the equilibrium properties of proteins with the incorporation of amino acid specific interactions (when known) shorn away from the usual complications associated with imperfect or inadequately studied dynamics. A key advantage is that our approach is essentially analytic and the quantities of interest may be determined with arbitrary accuracy quite easily.

We are indebted to Alessandro Flammini for a careful reading of the manuscript This work was supported by INFM, Murst Cofin99, and NASA.


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# An Analysis of 900 Optical Rotation Curves: The Universal Rotation Curve As A Power-Law And The Development Of A Theory-Independent Dark-Matter Modeller

## 1 Introduction

It has been know for several years - for example, Rubin, Burstein, Ford & Thonnard, hereafter RBFT - that optical rotation curve shapes are strongly determined by luminosity in the sense that, within any given morphological class and away from the innermost part of the rotation curve, high luminosity galaxies have almost flat rotation curves, whilst low luminosity galaxies have more ‘rounded and rising’ rotation curves.

However, until recently all studies of the correlations existing between rotation curve kinematics and global galaxy properties have necessarily been confined to relatively small samples of rotation curves, and have therefore been subject to the corresponding uncertainties. This problem has been rectified by the publication of 900 good quality rotation curves by PS 1995. A first analysis of this data was given by Persic et al (1996), hereafter PSS, in which they concluded that there exists a ‘universal rotation curve’ for spiral galaxies which is determined primarily by the total luminosity of the galaxy concerned, and the essence of this conclusion is confirmed here. The present analysis of the same data differs crucially from that of PSS in that an early decision was taken to analyse the data within the context of the hypothesis that rotation curves in the optical disc (that is, away from the dynamical effects of the bulge) could be reasonably described by a generalized power law, $`V_{rot}=AR^\alpha `$, where $`R>R_{min}`$ and $`R_{min}`$ represents an estimate of the transition radius from bulge-dominated to disc-dominated dynamics. This decision, which was motivated by arguments which are independent of the matters at hand, could easily have resulted in relative failure in the sense of providing no particular insights into rotation curve structure. In fact, the opposite happened and it was found that the hypothesis imposes extremely strong correlations between rotation curve kinematics, total luminosities and surface brightnesses, thereby giving a detailed confirmation to the general thrust of the PS studies, and a strong confirmation to the particular idea of the universal rotation curve.

In detail, the primary conclusion of this analysis is that the rotation curve in the optical disc of any given spiral galaxy with absolute magnitude $`M`$ and surface brightness $`S`$ behaves according to

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{R}{R_0}}\right)^\alpha ,`$ (1)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $``$ $`0.5840.133M0.000243S,`$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $``$ $`3.2910.208M0.00292S,`$
$`\alpha `$ $``$ $`g(d_m,b_m,h_m),`$
where $`g(d_m,b_m,h_m)`$ is some undetermined function for which the most significant parameters are probably the disc-mass ($`d_m`$), bulge-mass ($`b_m`$) and halo-mass ($`h_m`$) respectively. Since this model is shown to account for over 90% of the variation in the pivotal diagram (equivalent to a regression correlation of 0.95), it can be considered as, at the very least, an extremely good approximation to the statistical reality, as judged for a large number of spiral discs.

The best model that can be given for the undetermined exponent, $`\alpha `$, in terms of the data provided by PS 1995 is that $`\alpha =2.56+0.105M`$, which accounts for over 29% of the variation in the $`(\alpha ,M)`$ plot (equivalent to a regression correlation of 0.55). We see immediately from this model that high luminosity galaxies are the ones which possess the flattest rotation curves, whilst the low luminosity galaxies are the ones which possess the ‘rounded and rising’ rotation curves - thereby confirming the RBFT result for a very large sample.

A further, and very significant, consequence of the success of (1) is its implied confirmation of the PS 1986 result that optical discs appear to contain no signature of the transition from disc-dominated dynamics to halo-dominated dynamics. PS reached this conclusion after an analysis of 42 rotation curves showed the near-constancy, over the whole of each optical rotation curve, of the parameter $`\widehat{V}(\mathrm{\Omega }K/2)R`$, for angular velocity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and epicyclic frequency $`K`$. The connection between this result of PS and the present perspective is discussed in Appendix A.

Further evidence supporting the apparent absence of any kinematical transition region in the optical disc arises through the discovery of very strong correlation between $`R_{opt}`$ and $`R_{min}`$, where $`R_{min}`$ is a theory-independent estimate of the transition region between bulge-dominated and disc-dominated dynamics (see Appendix B). The existence of such a correlation implies a causal connection between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{opt}`$ which, again, argues against the existence of sharply delineated transition regions between disc-dominated and halo-dominated dynamics.

Finally, and of potentially greatest significance, it is to be noted that halo-mass only enters the system through the undetermined function $`\alpha `$; this fact provides the possibility of a dark-matter modelling process which is independent of any particular dynamical theory. Specifically, since, for any given galaxy, reasonable estimates for $`d_m`$ and $`b_m`$ can be obtained, then it becomes possible to model $`\alpha `$ in terms of these two quantities. Analysis of any systematic differences arising between $`\alpha `$-values calculated from the rotation curves, and the modelled $`\alpha `$-values, will then, in principle, allow systematic estimates of any given galaxy’s dark-matter content to be given in terms of the galaxy’s disc-mass, bulge-mass and surface brightness.

## 2 The Data

The data given by PS is obtained from the raw $`H\alpha `$ data of MFB by deprojection, folding and cosmological redshift correction. For any given galaxy, the data is presented in the form of estimated rotational velocities plotted against angular displacement from the galaxy’s centre; estimated linear scales are not given and no data-smoothing is performed.

The analysis proposed here requires the linear scales of the galaxies in the sample to be defined which, in turn, requires distance estimates of the sample galaxies from our own locality. This information is given in the original MFB paper in the form of three variations of the Tully-Fisher, hereafter TF, distance estimate, say TF1, TF2 and TF3. TF1 is derived by using the TF relation for Fornax obtained from magnitude data; TF2 is the Malmquist-bias corrected form of TF1 giving TF2=1.08$`\times `$TF1 for all galaxies; TF3 is obtained by using the TF relation for Fornax obtained from rotation curve data. The current analysis is based upon TF3.

Table 3 gives the morphological type-distribution in the PS 1995 data base, and shows that the great majority of the selected galaxies are of types 3,4,5 and 6, with only two examples of types 0,1,2 and a tail of 31 examples of types 7,8,9.

| Table 3 | |
| --- | --- |
| Galaxy | Sample |
| Type | Size |
| 0,1,2 | 2 |
| 3 | 306 |
| 4,5 | 177 |
| 6 | 384 |
| 7,8,9 | 31 |

For the purposes of the following analysis, no distinction is made between type classes, and so the whole sample of 900 rotation curves is used. However, the results of this analysis remain unchanged, except in the numerical details, when it is repeated on any of the subsets consisting of types $`\left\{3\right\}`$, $`\{4,5\}`$ or $`\left\{6\right\}`$.

The details of the data-reduction used in these analyses are given in Appendix B and, briefly, they amount to a prior-decided means of minimizing the effect of the bulge on the rotation-curve calculations.

## 3 A Necessary Condition For The Power-Law Hypothesis

Suppose the power-law hypothesis of (1) to be true; in this case, and excepting for the inevitable high level of noise, a plot of any given rotation curve in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane would lie on a straight line. Since the rotation curves are not identical then, for the 900 rotation curves, we would obtain 900 distinct straight-line plots in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane. In the following, we show that, in this case, the mean plot of the 900 separate plots must also be a straight line: For a given $`\mathrm{log}R`$, the corresponding $`\mathrm{log}V`$ value for each of the 900 rotation curves would be given by

$$\mathrm{log}V_k=a_k+b_k\mathrm{log}R,k=\mathrm{1..900}.$$

Summing over $`k`$, and forming the mean response, we find

$$\mathrm{Mean}\left(\mathrm{log}V\right)=A+B\mathrm{log}R,$$

so that, as stated, the mean plot is also a straight line. It follows that a necessary condition for optical rotation curve data to be described by a power law is that the mean plot of all the rotation curves in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane must be a (statistically) straight line. So, the strategy of the initial analysis is described as follows:

* Reduce all the data in the combined sample of 900 rotation curves to a uniform linear scale based on TF3;
* Superimpose all the data of the combined sample into a single data set;
* Divide the data set into bins subject to some convenient criteria. For present purposes, the bin-width was chosen as $`0.057kpc`$ subject to the constraint that each bin contained at least 200 data points. In practice, the average per bin is about 800 data points.
* Form the average of the data in each bin and plot it.

The rationale is simply that, if the power law hypothesis is correct, then the internal noise on the data for the 900 separate rotation curves should largely cancel out over the averaging process. The result is plotted in Figure 1 \- and it is to be emphasized that this plot does not represent a physical rotation curve, but is merely a convenient graphic tool designed to illustrate a statistical point.

The only discernible sense of any possible systematic deviation from a purely linear behaviour occurs in the innermost part of the plot; apart from this, the figure provides solid support for the idea that a general power law is, at the very least, a good working approximation to $`H_\alpha `$ rotation curve data, and provides the necessary rationale for the basic analysis of this paper.

## 4 The Minimization Of Bulge-Dominated Dynamics In Rotation Curve Data

Before beginning the analysis proper, we note that the apparent deviation from linear behaviour on the innermost part of the rotation curve, noted in the previous section, is easily understood in terms of the transition from bulge-dominated to disc-dominated dynamics. In this section, we describe the effect of implementing the data-reduction process described in Appendix B which is designed to minimize the effects of bulge-dominated dynamics in the present considerations . In effect, this process is a numerical process which removes the innermost data points on any given rotation curve according to how statistically ‘unusual’ those points are in relation to the rest of the data, and its effects are described below in Figures 2 & 3 and in Tables 1 & 2.

Figure 2 plots the measured $`R_{min}`$ against the measured $`R_{opt}`$ before any data reduction is performed, whilst Figure 3 plots the calculated $`R_{min}`$ arising from the data reduction process against the measured $`R_{opt}`$. It is clear from these diagrams that the data reduction process reveals a fairly strong correlation between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{opt}`$. The change between the two diagrams is quantified in Tables 1 & 2.

| Table 1 | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`R_{opt}=b_0+b_1R_{min}`$ | | | | |
| Before data reduction | | | | |
| Predictor | Coeff | Std Dev | t-ratio | p |
| Const. | 7.25 | 0.13 | 57 | 0.00 |
| $`R_{min}`$ | 1.62 | 0.11 | 14 | 0.00 |
| $`R^2`$ = 19.2% | | | | |
| Table 2 | | | | |
| After data reduction | | | | |
| Predictor | Coeff | Std Dev | t-ratio | p |
| Const. | 5.73 | 0.14 | 41 | 0.00 |
| $`R_{min}`$ | 1.64 | 0.07 | 24 | 0.00 |
| $`R^2`$ = 38.6% | | | | |

It is surprising to note that Table 1 clearly shows that $`R_{min}`$ in the unreduced data is already a very significant (if very noisy) predictor for $`R_{opt}`$. However, after the data reduction process, both the significance and the reliability of $`R_{min}`$ as a predictor for $`R_{opt}`$ increase considerably.

If we consider the post data-reduction values of $`R_{min}`$ as strong predictors of bulge-radius (which is reasonable), then the strong post data-reduction correlation between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{opt}`$ can be seen as a correlation between bulge radius and optical disc radius. The fact that a significant correlation between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{opt}`$ already existed prior to the data reduction can then be interpreted to indicate that the pre data-reduction $`R_{min}`$ values were already significant (if very noisy) predictors of bulge-radius.

There is a further significant implication of the strong post data-reduction correlation between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{opt}`$: the correlation implies a strong causal connection between the two values which, in turn, implies that any effect the halo has on $`R_{opt}`$ is necessarily balanced by a corresponding effect of the halo on $`R_{min}`$. In particular, the correlation is inconsistent with the existence of any strong transition region between disc-dominated and halo-dominated dynamics in the optical disc - a conclusion already reached by PS 1986, and others and clear from Figure 1.

## 5 A Basic Correlation Imposed By Power-Law Rotation Curves

In the following, it is shown that an extremely strong correlation exists between the power-law parameters over the whole PS sample, and the correlation is detected in the following way:

* The basic assumption is that rotation velocities behave as $`V=AR^\alpha `$ so that $`\mathrm{log}V=\mathrm{log}A+\alpha \mathrm{log}R`$;
* For each of the 900 rotation curves in the sample, regress $`\mathrm{log}V`$ on $`\mathrm{log}R`$ to obtain estimates of $`\mathrm{log}A`$ and $`\alpha `$;
* Plot the 900 pairs $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ on a single diagram.

The results of this exercise are shown in Figure 4,

and shows that there exists an extremely strong negative $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ correlation. The only obvious deviations from what could be called an almost perfect linear correlation are, firstly, a slight hint of curvature along the lower boundary of the distribution and, secondly, the fan-like behaviour of the diagram going from a broad spread of points at the bottom right-hand of the figure to a narrow neck at the top left-hand of the figure.

In the following sections, we show that the structure of Figure 4 orders the galaxies in the sample according to their absolute magnitude and surface brightness properties.

## 6 The First-Order 70% Model

### 6.1 The Basic Analysis

The first-order model simply assumes that the $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ relationship underlying Figure 4 is linear, so that

$$\mathrm{log}A=a_0+b_0\alpha ,$$
(2)
where $`a_0`$ and $`b_0`$ are constants, and linear regression shows that this model can account for 70% of the variation (equivalent to a regression correlation coefficient of 0.84) in Figure 4.

### 6.2 Geometric Implications

It is easily shown that when the parameters, $`(m,c)`$, of a set of lines $`y=mx+c`$ in the $`(x,y)`$-plane are constrained to satisfy $`c=y_0x_0m`$, for constants $`(x_0,y_0)`$, then the lines themselves are constrained to meet at the fixed point $`(x_0,y_0)`$ in the plane. Consequently, in the present context, the first-order linear approximation (2) implies that all rotation curves,

$$\mathrm{log}V=\mathrm{log}A+\alpha \mathrm{log}R,$$
(3)
for which $`\mathrm{log}A`$ and $`\alpha `$ are related by (2), intersect at the fixed point $`(b_0,a_0)`$ in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane. If this fixed point is denoted as $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, then (2) is more transparently written as

$$\mathrm{log}A=\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0$$
(4)
so that (3) implies

$$V=V_0\left(\frac{R}{R_0}\right)^\alpha .$$
(5)
Assuming the model (4), a linear regression on the data of Figure 4 subsequently gives $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)(0.84,2.22)`$. Whilst the idea of a single intersection point for all rotation curves in the sample seems rather extreme, it is unambiguously deduced as a consequence of the first-order modelling of Figure 4 \- and is therefore to be seen as a first-order approximation of the reality.

In the following sections, we give two powerful illustrations of the reality of the idea that optical rotation curves can be considered, in the first approximation, to converge in a very small region of the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane.

### 6.3 The Intersection Frequency <br>Diagram

A direct illustration of rotation curve convergence is given as follows: we have calculated the coordinates of intersection between all possible pairs of 200 randomly sampled rotation curves drawn from the full sample, and have plotted the frequencies of intersection along the $`\mathrm{log}R`$ and $`\mathrm{log}V`$ axes respectively in Figures 5 & 6.

It is clear from these figures that there is a very sharp peak of intersection points in both diagrams. Using the mean points in each diagram, together, they are consistent with a peak intersection point at $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)(1.02,2.24)`$.

### 6.4 A Geometric Illustration Of Rotation Curve Convergence

A second, and dramatic, illustration of rotation curve convergence can be formed from the realization that, if the rotation curves really do converge on a single fixed point in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane, then all of the rotation curves will transform into each other under rotations about the fixed point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, in this plane.

This idea can be tested in the following way: suppose that an arbitrarily chosen straight line passing through the point $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$ is defined as a standard ‘reference line’. Since, according to the first-order model interpretation of Figure 4, all the rotation curves in the sample pass through the point $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, then every rotation curve in the sample can be transformed into the standard reference line by a simple bulk-rotation about $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$. Since, according to this idea, the rotation curves are reduced to equivalence by the rotation, then the process of forming an ‘average rotation curve’ from the set of rotated such curves should greatly reduce the internal noise associated with the individual rotation curves, and we would expect the resulting average curve to be a very close fit to the standard reference line, referred to above.

In the following analysis, which is performed for all 900 galaxies in the sample, the technique described in Appendix C is used to refine the histogram estimate of $`(1.02,2.24)`$, given in the last section, to the optimal value for the fixed point as $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)=(1.06,2.29)`$.

The solid line in Figure 7 is the standard reference line which is defined to pass through the fixed point $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)=(1.06,2.29)`$, and fixed arbitrarily so that $`\mathrm{log}A=1.5`$. The results are not sensitive to the choice of this latter parameter. The circles in the figure show the results of rotating the 900 rotation curves of the sample about the fixed point so that they coincide in a least-square sense with the standard reference line, and then averaging over all the rotation curves. Each circle represents an average of approximately 800 separate measurements.

When Figure 7 is compared with Figure 1, we see that virtually all of the scatter present within the latter figure is eliminated in Figure 7, thereby providing the strongest possible evidence for the idea of the equivalence of rotation curves with respect to rotation about particular fixed points in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane.

### 6.5 A Comparison of Three <br>$`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$ Estimates

As we pointed out in §6.1, the first-order approximation of the $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ plot of Figure 4 implies directly that all $`H_\alpha `$ rotation curves pass through a single fixed point in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane, and we have three distinct ways of estimating the position of this fixed point. The first way was by a direct linear regression on the data of Figure 4, the second way was by estimating the peaks of the intersection histograms of Figures 5 and 6 respectively, whilst the third way was by the minimization procedure described in §6.4 the results of which are shown in Figure 7. The three estimates are shown together in Table 4.

| Table 4 | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Method | $`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ | $`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ |
| Regression | 0.84 | 2.22 |
| Mean Values | 1.02 | 2.24 |
| Minimization | 1.06 | 2.29 |

There is clearly a high degree of consistency between the three methods which serves to emphasize the reality of the first-order effect.

## 7 The Second-Order 85% <br>Model

### 7.1 The Basic Analysis

Whilst, so far, Figure 4 has been analysed on the basis of a first-order linear model, there is the possibility that systematic internal structure exists in Figure 4. In this section, we show how the existence of this internal structure is strongly supported on the data, and leads to a second-order model which accounts for over 85% of the variation (equivalent to a regression correlation coefficient of 0.92) in the pivotal diagram, Figure 4.

| Table 5 | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ data averaged in | | | |
| magnitude-limited quartiles | | | |
| Sample | Mean | Mean | Mean |
| Size | abs(mag) | $`\alpha `$ | $`\mathrm{log}A`$ |
| 224 | -22.20 | 0.22 | 2.15 |
| 227 | -21.16 | 0.34 | 1.96 |
| 224 | -20.27 | 0.47 | 1.79 |
| 225 | -18.80 | 0.58 | 1.65 |

We begin by taking the 900 pairs of $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ data which form the basis of Figure 4 and partition them as near as possible into quartiles according to absolute magnitude; thus the data is partitioned into the brightest 25% of the sample, the next brightest 25% and so on. For each quartile, we then form the mean values of the absolute magnitude, $`\mathrm{log}A`$ and $`\alpha `$ respectively, and the results of this exercise are listed in Table 5 and plotted in Figure 8.

The solid line in the figure is the linear regression line fitted to the four data points, and the whole diagram can be considered as a condensed representation of the data plotted in Figure 4 showing the variation of absolute magnitude through that data. It is clear from Table 5 and Figure 8 that $`\alpha `$ and $`\mathrm{log}A`$ are each very strongly correlated with the absolute magnitude, thereby justifying a more detailed investigation.

### 7.2 The Refined Analysis

We begin by plotting the $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ data for each of these magnitude-limited quartiles and displaying these plots in Figure 9.

Viewed collectively, the four diagrams of this figure display three significant features:

* Firstly, the diagram corresponding to the brightest magnitude-limited quartile shows that $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ data exhibits almost scatter-free linear behaviour, whilst the data of the remaining quartiles exhibits increasing scatter as absolute magnitude increases.
* Secondly, apart from this scatter, there appears to be a systematic variation of the data through the four diagrams when they are viewed in order of increasing absolute magnitude.
* Thirdly, the scatter evident in Figure 4 is seen to be a function of increasing absolute magnitude which, at face value, would suggest it is a function of increasing measurement uncertainties at the dimmer end of the sample. However, there is a feature which suggests that the situation is not this straightforward: specifically, the lower boundary of points in each diagram of Figure 9 is very sharply delineated whilst it is the upper boundary which becomes increasingly diffuse in the higher magnitude quartiles. If measurement uncertainty is the basic cause of scatter in these diagrams, then it is not immediately obvious why the lower boundary of points in every quartile is sharply delineated.

The reality of a systematic variation with increasing magnitude in the diagrams of Figure 9 is confirmed by forming the linear regression of $`\mathrm{log}A`$ on $`\alpha `$ for the data of each of these diagrams so that, for each diagram, there is a linear model analogous to (4). The results are listed in Table 6 and plotted in Figure 10. The figure shows very clearly that the four regression lines meet in a very small neighbourhood of the point $`(0.9,1.5)`$ of the $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ plane.

| Table 6 | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{log}A=\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0`$ | | | |
| Sample | $`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ | $`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ | Mean $`M`$ |
| Size |  |  | of quartile |
| 224 | 2.35 | 0.90 | -22.20 |
| 227 | 2.23 | 0.80 | -21.16 |
| 224 | 2.10 | 0.65 | -20.27 |
| 225 | 1.89 | 0.41 | -18.80 |

We have already noted that, when a set of lines $`y=mx+c`$ in the $`(x,y)`$-plane are constrained to meet at a fixed point, $`(x_0,y_0)`$ say, then the parameters $`(m,c)`$ of the lines are constrained to satisfy $`c=y_0x_0m`$. In the present case, representing any of the lines in Figure 10 as $`\mathrm{log}A=\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0`$, this means that the parameters $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$ are constrained to satisfy $`\mathrm{log}V_01.5+0.9\mathrm{log}R_0`$. Since, in Figure 10, the only thing which varies between the lines is the absolute magnitude, then we can expect $`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ and $`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ to be individual functions of absolute magnitude and this is confirmed by Table 6. Linear regression of the data of this table gives

$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.670.14M,`$ (6)
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`2.340.15M`$
from which we get $`\mathrm{log}V_0=1.51+0.93\mathrm{log}R_0`$, which confirms the result obtained directly from Figure 10. We now note that the constants and coefficients in (6) can be ‘fine tuned’ in the following way: If we substitute equations (6) into (4) we obtain the relationship

$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0`$
$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`0.670.14M`$ (7)
$`+`$ $`2.34\alpha +0.15\alpha M,`$
which shows directly that the model (6) is equivalent to a model for $`\mathrm{log}A`$ expressed in terms of $`M`$, $`\alpha `$ and $`\alpha M`$. Given this model for $`\mathrm{log}A`$, its coefficients can be optimised in a least-square sense by regressing $`\mathrm{log}A`$ directly on the predictors $`M`$, $`\alpha `$ and $`\alpha M`$ over the whole data set. This process gives

$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`0.560.13M`$
$`+`$ $`2.27\alpha +0.14\alpha M,`$
$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{where}`$
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.560.13M,`$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`2.270.14M.`$
with very strong statistics on the constant and coefficients, and shows that this regression accounts for over 85% of the variation (equivalent to a regression correlation coefficient of 0.92) in the pivotal diagram, which is Figure 4. A comparison with (7) shows only minor adjustments to the constants and coefficients of the $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$ models. Consequently, and using (5), the optimised second-order model gives the universal rotation curve as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{R}{R_0}}\right)^\alpha ,`$ (8)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.560.13M,`$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`2.270.14M.`$
## 8 The Third-Order 90% Model

It has been shown that over 85% of the variation in the pivotal diagram, Figure 4, is accounted for by the second-order model (8) which depends only on absolute magnitudes. However, the PS data-base for the 900 rotation curves also provides estimates to the optical radius, $`R_{opt}`$, which, with the absolute magnitudes, allows us to estimate the surface brightness of each galaxy in the sample; since this represents independent information, it seems sensible to consider the effect of its inclusion in the model and, for present purposes, we define it to be in solar luminosities per square parsec so that

$$S\left(\frac{2.5^{5M}}{\pi R_{opt}^2}\right).$$

The second-order model, (8), was arrived at by initially noting that Table 6 implied the relations (6) which, in conjunction with the basic relationship $`\mathrm{log}A=\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0`$, allowed the deduction of the structure

$$\mathrm{log}A=a_0+a_1\alpha +a_2M+a_3\alpha M$$

for the $`\mathrm{log}A`$ model. If (8) is to be modified by the introduction of $`S`$, so that

$`\mathrm{log}V_0=b_0+b_1M+b_2S`$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0=c_0+c_1M+c_2S,`$
then the $`\mathrm{log}A`$ model will have the structure

$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`b_0+b_1M+b_2S`$ (9)
$``$ $`c_0\alpha c_1\alpha Mc_2\alpha S.`$
The results of regressing $`\mathrm{log}A`$ on the predictors $`M`$, $`S`$, $`\alpha `$, $`\alpha M`$ and $`\alpha S`$ are given in Table 7.

| Table 7 | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{log}A=b_0+b_1M+b_2Sc_0\alpha c_1\alpha Mc_2\alpha S`$ | | | | |
| Pred | Coeff | Std Dev | t-ratio | p |
|  | $`\times \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^4`$ | $`\times \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^4`$ |  |  |
| Const. | -5840 | 890 | -7 | 0.00 |
| $`M`$ | -1330 | 44 | -30 | 0.00 |
| $`S`$ | -2.434 | 0.77 | -3 | 0.00 |
| $`\alpha `$ | 32910 | 1600 | 21 | 0.00 |
| $`\alpha M`$ | 2080 | 84 | 25 | 0.00 |
| $`\alpha S`$ | 29.23 | 2 | 14 | 0.00 |
| $`R^2=90.3\%`$ | | | | |

This model now accounts for marginally over 90% of the variation (equivalent to a regression correlation coefficient of 0.95) in the pivotal diagram, Figure 4, and we see from the t-ratios that the surface brightness is most certainly a significant component of the model. Interpreting the table according to the model

$`\mathrm{log}A=\mathrm{log}V_0\alpha \mathrm{log}R_0,`$
$`\mathrm{log}V_0=b_0+b_1M+b_2S,`$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0=c_0+c_1M+c_2S,`$
we arrive, finally, at the third-order model

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{R}{R_0}}\right)^\alpha ,`$ (10)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.5840.133M0.000243S,`$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`3.2910.208M0.00292S.`$
Referring to Table 7 again, we see that $`S`$ is a very strong predictor for $`\mathrm{log}R_0`$, whilst its effect on $`\mathrm{log}V_0`$, whilst significant, is much less so. This conclusion is supported by numerical experimentation which shows that it can be omitted from $`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ with hardly any effect on the model. However, Table 7 shows that it probably is a real predictor for $`\mathrm{log}V_0`$, and so it is retained in the model.

### 8.1 A Secondary Test Of The Model

A secondary test of the validity of the third-order model can be given as follows: For each galaxy we compute $`(R_0,V_0)`$ according to (10), form the scaled profile $`(R/R_0,V/V_0)`$ and regress $`\mathrm{log}(V/V_0)`$ on $`\mathrm{log}(R/R_0)`$. If (10) is good enough, then the regression constant should be statistically zero. The distribution of the 900 regression constants is shown in Figure 11, for which a one-parameter t-test gives the 95% confidence interval for the mean of the distribution as $`(0.003,+0.007)`$ whilst the 99.999% confidence interval is given as $`(0.010,+0.014)`$. Thus, for all practical purposes, the regression constant can be considered as statistically zero, thereby confirming the quality of the model.

### 8.2 The Brightest Quartile

Finally, as a means of demonstrating that the (already small) scatter about the zero point evident in Figure 11 is a function of uncertainty in the data, rather than due to a poor fit of the basic power-law model, we apply the third-order model directly to the 224 rotation curves of the brightest quartile, for which the $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ data is plotted in the first diagram of Figure 9. For this data, the distribution of the 224 regression constants arising from the linear regression of $`\mathrm{log}(V/V_0)`$ data on $`\mathrm{log}(R/R_0)`$ data is given in Figure 12.

A direct visual comparison with Figure 11 shows immediately that the scatter of points about the zero point is very much reduced in the brightest quartile data, thereby supporting the hypothesis that the scatter which exists in Figures 11 and 12 is due purely to uncertainty in the data, and not at all due to any lack of fit of the general power-law model.

### 8.3 The Surface-Brightness Cut-Off

It has already been noted that the lower boundary of points in each of the magnitude-limited quartile plots of $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ shown in Figure 9 is very sharply delineated, whilst the corresponding upper boundaries become increasingly diffuse as magnitude increases. We shall show that this phenomenon arises because the lower boundary of points in each of this diagrams effectively defines a zero surface-brightness boundary and therefore represents a real physical cut-off boundary. By contrast, the upper boundaries are closely associated with maximum surface brightnesses in each of the quartiles, and so the magnitude-dependent scatter observable through the four magnitude-limited quartiles almost certainly arises from observational uncertainties.

This is shown in the following manner: for each of the quartiles, which is magnitude-limited in its own specific range $`(M_{min}<M<M_{max})`$, we determine the surface-brightness limits, $`(0<S<S_{max})`$, which contain 95% of the sample (to eliminate the effects of long tails). Then, using the third-order model, $`\mathrm{log}A=F(\alpha ,M,S)`$, we find that the distribution of points in each of the quartiles is closely bounded by the lines

$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`F(\alpha ,M_{max},0),`$
$`\mathrm{log}A`$ $`=`$ $`F(\alpha ,M_{min},S_{max}),`$
in the $`(\alpha ,\mathrm{log}A)`$ plane for each of the magnitude-limited quartiles. The results are shown in Figure 13, and the plots in the three brightest quartiles show very clearly that the lower boundaries of points in these quartiles coincide very closely with the $`(S=0,M=M_{max})`$ boundary in the plane, whilst the diffuse upper boundaries of points coincide very closely with the $`(S=S_{max},M=M_{min})`$ boundary in the plane.

The only partial exception to this rule is the plot in the dimmest magnitude-limited quartile. Here, the upper (very diffuse) boundary of points still coincides with the $`(S=S_{max},M=M_{min})`$ boundary; however, it was found that the $`(S=0,M=M_{max})`$ boundary is not even close to the lower boundary of points in the plot but, instead, we find that the lower-boundary of points follows closely the $`(S=0,M=M_{min})`$ boundary. The important point is that the lower boundary of points is still a $`S=0`$ boundary. The obvious explanation for this discrepancy is that objects of very low surface brightness and very high magnitude are observationally excluded by selection effects, and therefore do not exist in the dimmest quartile sample whilst, simultaneously, the same selection effects will also ensure that the low surface-brightness objects in the dimmest quartile will tend to be the low magnitude objects.

To summarize, the sharply delineated lower boundaries in the magnitude-limited quartiles of Figures 9 or 13 define a physical $`S=0`$ cut-off boundary, whilst the increasingly diffuse upper boundaries probably arise as a function of the increasing observational uncertainties associated with increasing magnitudes.

## 9 A Comparative Test Of The First, Second And Third-Order Models

The three models share the basic structure

$$\frac{V}{V_0}=\left(\frac{R}{R_0}\right)^\alpha $$
(11)
and are distinguished only by the models assumed for $`(R_0,V_0)`$. These three models are defined, respectively, according to:

The First-Order Model

$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`1.02,`$ (12)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`2.29;`$
The Second-Order Model

$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`2.270.14M,`$ (13)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.560.13M;`$
The Third-Order Model

$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`3.2910.208M0.00292S,`$ (14)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.5840.133M0.000243S.`$
As a final comparative test of these three models we note that, assuming each to be ‘correct’, then a linear regression of $`\mathrm{log}(V/V_0)`$ data on $`\mathrm{log}(R/R_0)`$ data should give rise to a statistically zero constant terms, indicating that the regression lines (tend to) pass through the origin. The distribution of these constant terms for each of the 900 rotation curves is given, for each of the three models, in Figure 14. To make the visual comparison easy, the three diagrams in the figure are each drawn to the same scale, and it is clear that the process of successively refining the model has the effect of tightening the distribution of $`\mathrm{log}A`$ about the zero-point. Specifically, the first-order model is comparatively very poor, whilst the third-order model is visually significantly better than the second-order model.

| Table 8 | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One-parameter t-test for confidence | | |
| limits of Mean($`\mathrm{log}A`$) | | |
| Model | 95% Interval | 99.999% Interval |
| 1st-Order | 0.009,0.029 | -0.003, 0.041 |
| 2nd-Order | -0.006,0.007 | -0.014,0.015 |
| 3rd-Order | -0.003,0.007 | -0.010,0.014 |

The results of a one-parameter t-test for limits on the position of the mean value of $`\mathrm{log}A`$ for each of the models are given in Table 8. Apart from showing that the $`\mathrm{log}A`$ distribution for the 1st-order model is slightly asymmetric with respect to the zero point, the table shows that the 2nd and 3rd-order models place very tight 95% and 99.999% confidence intervals on the mean of $`\mathrm{log}A`$ about the zero point. Thus, for all practical purposes, the regression constant computed over the 900 rotation curves is statistically zero in both the second and third-order models, so that these models receive the strongest possible support from the data.

## 10 Equivalence Classes Of Rotation Curves

As already discussed in detail in §6, the first-order model, equation (11) with (12), effectively defines the set of all rotation curves in the sample as a single class within which all the rotation curves pass through the single point $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$ in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane.

By contrast, the second-order model, equation (11) with (13), replaces the single point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, of the first-order model by a class of such points parametrized by $`M`$. All rotation curves in the class specified by $`M`$ then pass through the single point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, defined by (13).

The third-order model, equation (11) with (14), is a refinement of the second-order model in which the class to which any given rotation curve belongs is defined by specifying $`M`$ and $`S`$, the surface brightness. All rotation curves in the class specified by $`(M,S)`$ then pass through the single point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, defined by (14).

If we make the (reasonable) assumption that all of the systematic variation in the pivotal diagram, Figure 4, has been accounted for by the 90% third-order model then we can realistically assume that, although the functional form of the model is probably an approximation to some ideal, there are no further physical parameters involved in the specification of $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$. It will then follow that the rotation curves of all galaxies of having the same absolute magnitude and surfaces brightness will pass through a single point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane. Consequently, all such rotation curves will be equivalent to within a rotation through the point, and can therefore be considered to define an equivalence class of rotation curves.

## 11 The Universal Rotation Curve

Using the third-order model, it is shown that the universal rotation curve for spiral galaxies can reasonably be assumed to have the general structure

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{R}{R_0}}\right)^\alpha `$ (15)
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`3.2910.208M0.00292S,`$
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.5840.133M0.000243S,`$
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`g(d_m,b_m,h_m)`$
where $`g(d_m,b_m,h_m)`$ is some undetermined function for which the most significant parameters are probably the disc-mass, bulge-mass and halo-mass respectively of the spiral galaxy concerned.

### 11.1 The General Situation

Reference to (11) with (12), (13) and (14) shows that, once a model for $`\alpha `$ in terms of the physical properties of spiral galaxies is obtained, then (11) with any one of (12), (13) or (14) can be considered to represent a universal rotation curve. In the following, we consider the problem within the context of the third-order model.

As we have already noted, the issue depends entirely upon the function $`\alpha `$, and what galaxy parameters it is a function of.

| Table 9 | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\alpha =b_0+b_1M`$ | | | | |
| Predictor | Coeff | Std Dev | t-ratio | p |
| Const. | 2.560 | 0.112 | 23 | 0.00 |
| $`M`$ | 0.105 | 0.005 | 19 | 0.00 |
| $`R^2`$ = 29.2% | | | | |

A least-square linear modelling of $`\alpha `$ in terms of the available parameters, $`M`$ and $`S`$, gave the best model as $`\alpha =0.583+0.105M`$, with no evidence of any significant dependency on $`S`$. The details of the best model are given in Table 9 which shows the dependency of $`\alpha `$ on $`M`$ to be extremely significant, but which also shows that the model accounts for only 29% of the total variation in the $`(\alpha ,M)`$ plot (equivalent to a regression correlation of approximately 0.55). To test the possibility that the scatter in this latter plot was, perhaps, due to noisy data, we tried modelling on the brightest 25% and 50% of the data, but found no evidence at all to support this possibility. The only reasonable conclusion was that the unaccounted-for 71% variation in the $`(\alpha ,M)`$ plot arises through the effects of unaccounted-for additional physical parameters.

The major unincluded determinants of disc dynamics are the relative amounts of disc-mass, halo-mass and bulge-mass. Consequently, defining $`d_m`$ disc-mass, $`b_m`$ bulge-mass and $`h_m`$ halo-mass, and noting that $`M`$ is effectively a measure of the total visible mass, then we can reasonably assert that $`\alpha g(d_m,b_m,h_m)`$.

### 11.2 A Simple Approximation

Finally, it is interesting to note how the foregoing analysis allows the construction of a very simply universal rotation curve, based on absolute magnitude alone. This is given by (11) and (13) together with the model for $`\alpha `$ described in Table 9 so that, specifically:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{V_0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{R}{R_0}}\right)^\alpha `$
$`\mathrm{log}R_0`$ $`=`$ $`2.270.14M,`$ (16)
$`\mathrm{log}V_0`$ $`=`$ $`0.560.13M,`$
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`2.560+0.105M,`$
which can be considered as a formal refinement of the information contained in Figure 8. This latter approximation confirms the conclusions of PS 1996 which are that the universal rotation curve is substantially determined by absolute magnitude alone, especially for the brightest galaxies.

## 12 Theory-Independent Dark-Matter Models

PSS, used essentially the same data set as that analysed here to show that whilst, at high luminosities, there is only a slight discrepancy between observed rotation curves and those predicted on the basis of the observed luminous matter distributions, the discrepancy is far more serious at low luminosities. This conclusion is already strongly supported by the simple model given at (16) which shows how the power-law exponent, $`\alpha `$, increases strongly with absolute magnitude. Since, (relatively) large values of $`\alpha `$ correspond directly to the most steeply rising rotation curves, and since it is precisely these kinds of rotation curves that require the largest amounts of dark matter for their explanation, according to the virial theorem, then the findings of the present analysis are in direct accord with those of PSS.

In this way, PSS have already used the data to show that the dark-matter component of spiral galaxies does not seem to have the form of an unconstrained and independent structure added onto the visible structure of spiral galaxies, but appears to make its presence felt in some kind of systematic way which is strongly inversely correlated with the visible component of the galaxy structure. This effect, together with the detailed considerations of the foregoing sections, allows the construction of dark-matter models which are independent of any particular dynamical theory and therefore, as a side effect, provide strong tests of such theories.

Specifically, referring to the final form of the universal rotation curve, given at (15), we see how dark-matter can only make its presence felt through the exponent, $`\alpha `$. Given that reasonable light-based estimates can be made of disc-mass ($`d_m`$) and bulge-mass ($`b_m`$) for spiral galaxies, then it is (in principle) a simple process to form empirical models of $`\alpha `$ directly in terms $`d_m`$ and $`b_m`$. Once such models are formed for a reasonably sized data-base of spiral galaxies, then it becomes a straightforward process to investigate the structure of any systematic deviations of predictions based on the model $`\alpha g(d_m,b_m)`$ from the $`\alpha `$-values calculated directly from the rotation curves. The presence of any such systematic deviations can then reasonably be considered due to the presence of a dark-matter halo, so that, subsequently, estimates for the amount of dark-matter present for any given galaxy can be given in terms of the directly measurable properties of the galaxy concerned.

## 13 Conclusions

By demonstrating how completely the power-law model for rotation curves resolves rotation curve data, magnitude data and surface brightness data over a large data-base, this paper:

* substantially refines the well-known correlations that exist between the rotational kinematics of spiral galaxies and various of their non-kinematic properties, such as absolute magnitude;
* shows how the power-law rotation curve is, almost certainly, exact for idealized discs (that is, for discs without the irregularities inevitably present in real optical discs).

Additionally, at its lowest approximation, the analysis confirms the conclusion of PSS (1996) that the rotation curve of any given galaxy is largely determined by the absolute luminosity of the galaxy concerned, and supports their conclusion that absolute luminosity is inversely correlated with dark mass. Such an inverse correlation obviously provides a means of dark-matter modelling, but the detailed nature of the present analysis allows a further step in providing a means for the generation of statistical dark-matter models which are independent of any particular dynamical theory. Apart from the objective desirability of such models, they have an obvious potential in distinguishing between competing dynamical theories.

Furthermore, in showing that optical discs contain no signature of the transition from disc-dominated dynamics to halo-dominated dynamics, and in showing the existence of a strong correlation between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{opt}`$, the work provides very strong support for the conclusion of PS (1986) that the disc-mass distribution and the halo-mass distribution are very strongly correlated, and suggests that the bulge-mass distribution should also be factored into this correlation.

## Appendix A The Constancy of $`\overline{V}`$

PS (1986) showed that the parameter

$$\overline{V}\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{K}{2}\right)R,$$

where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is angular velocity, and $`K`$, the epicyclic frequency, is defined by

$$K^2=\frac{1}{R^3}\frac{d}{dR}\left(V^2R^3\right),$$

is almost constant over the larger part of any given optical disc for a sample of 42 spiral galaxies, and they deduce from this constancy that rotation curves contain no signature indicating transition from disc-dominated dynamics to halo-dominated dynamics. In the present case, the same conclusion can be drawn from the fact that the kinematics over the whole optical disc are amenable to description by a single power-law prescription. Such a power-law also provides an extra insight into the constancy of the $`\widehat{V}`$ parameter:

Using the general power-law prescription $`V=AR^\alpha `$ in the above we find, after some algebra,

$$\frac{d\widehat{V}}{dR}=AR^{\alpha 0.5}\left(\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{R}}\frac{1}{2}\left(\alpha +\frac{1}{2}\right)\sqrt{2\alpha +3}\right).$$

From this, we see that, whenever whenever a rotation curve is such that $`\alpha <0.5`$, then the corresponding $`d\widehat{V}/dR`$ rapidly becomes small for increasing $`R`$ \- and this corresponds to a nearly constant $`\widehat{V}`$. Reference to Figure 8 shows that this conditions holds for all galaxies brighter than $`M20`$ and, of the PS (1986) sample of 42 galaxies, 37 are brighter than $`M20`$ so that $`\alpha <0.5`$ generally, indicating very flat $`\widehat{V}`$ functions, as actually shown by PS.

## Appendix B Data Reduction

A basic assumption is that optical rotation curves can be described in terms of a simple power law, and the validity of this assumption as, at the very least, a good approximation to the reality over the approximate range $`(1,20)kpc`$ has been demonstrated in §5.

However, spiral galaxies can be considered to consist of a spherical bulge surrounded by a flat disk, and we can be reasonably certain that the bulge and the disk represent distinct dynamical regimes. In practice therefore, the structure of the inner parts of rotation curves will be determined one dynamical regime, whilst the structure of the outer parts of the rotation curves will be determined by another. Since it is not reasonable to suppose that a single simple power law can bridge the two dynamical regimes, there is a need to find a way of eliminating the effect of the bulge dynamics from the rotation curve data. In order to ensure that no subjective bias is imposed on the data during such a data reduction process, the process adopted must be automatically applicable according to strictly predefined rules. The adopted procedure is described below.

The original analysis was done using the commercial statistics package, Minitab; when regressions are performed in Minitab, it automatically flags observations which have an unusual predictor or if they have an unusual response. In both cases ‘unusual’ is defined by internal parameters of the software. It was decided, in advance of any data processing, that when a Minitab regression flagged the innermost observation on any given rotation curve (that is, the one most likely affected by the central bulge) as ‘unusual’ then that observation would be deleted from the analysis, and the regression repeated. If, on the repeated regression, the new innermost observation was flagged as unusual, then it too would be deleted from the analysis. This process was repeated until the innermost observation remained unflagged after the regression process.

There are 900 rotation curves with a total of 19183 observations recorded with a non-zero radial coordinate (those with a zero radial coordinate were necessarily deleted because data was transformed into logarithmic form). Of these 19183 observations, the ‘innermost deletion’ strategy led to the exclusion of 2264 observations, which is $`11.8\%`$ of the sample. This was considered to be an acceptable attrition rate.

## Appendix C Determination of Fixed Points, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$

In §4 and §5 it was determined that the form of Figure 4 implied the first-order hypothesis that all rotation curves in the sample passed through a fixed point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$, in the $`(\mathrm{log}R,\mathrm{log}V)`$ plane. The problem is to determine the position of the fixed point $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$. In the following, we describe how this can be done using a minimization procedure.

The hypothesis implies that all 900 rotation curves in the sample should be equivalent to within a rotation about $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$; in this case it should be possible to superimpose all such rotations curves upon each other by means of a simple appropriate rotation. However, the very noisy nature of rotation curve data means that, at best, such a process of superimposition can only be defined in some averaged statistical way.

In practice, what is done can be characterized as follows:

* Define an initial guess for the fixed point $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$; this is done by the simple expedient of identifying the peaks of the rotation-curve intersection frequency distributions show in Figures 5 & 6, and they are found to be $`\mathrm{log}R1.02`$ and $`\mathrm{log}V2.24`$.
* Define a standard reference curve passing through the estimated fixed point; typically, this is done by making the arbitrary choice $`\mathrm{log}A=1.5`$ and then using (4) to determine $`\alpha `$.
* Rotate the data corresponding to each individual rotation curve about this estimated $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$ until it coincides in a least-square sense with the standard reference curve.
* Keep a cumulative sum of all the least-square residuals arising from the foregoing rotation operations performed on the individual rotation curves.
* Minimize this cumulative sum of least-square residuals with respect to variations in the estimated position of the fixed point, $`(\mathrm{log}R_0,\mathrm{log}V_0)`$.

Note that the minimization processes referred to above are minimizing functions defined on noisy data. It is routinely recommended that such problems are solved using the Simplex method, which is extremely robust - although slow. The original implementation of the method is given by Nelder & Mead (1965).


text:
# The IR counterpart of the black-hole candidate 4U 1630-47Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Chile.

## 1 Introduction

Despite the regular outburst behavior (600–690 days, e.g., Jones et al. jones76 (1976); Kuulkers et al. 1997b ) of the soft X-ray transient (SXT) 4U 1630$-$47, little is known about this source. Its X-ray spectral (Parmar et al. parmar86 (1986); Barret et al. barret96 (1996); Oosterbroek et al. tim98 (1998)) and X-ray timing (Kuulkers et al. 1997a ; Sunyaev & Revnivtsev sunyaev00 (2000)) properties during outburst suggest it harbors a black-hole (see also Dieters et al. stefan00 (2000); Tomsick & Kaaret tomsick00 (2000); Trudolyobov et al. trudo01 (2001)).

Optical/infra-red identification of 4U 1630$``$47 has been hampered due to the high extinction and the crowded field near its X-ray position (Reid et al. reid80 (1980); Parmar et al. parmar86 (1986)). A more precise location became available when the source was discovered in the radio during its 1998 outburst (Hjellming & Kuulkers hjell98 (1998); Buxton et al. buxton98 (1998); see also Hjellming et al. hjell99 (1999)): (J2000) RA = $`16^h34^m01\stackrel{s}{.}6\pm 0\stackrel{s}{.}05`$, Dec = $`47\mathrm{°}23\mathrm{}33\mathrm{}\pm 2\mathrm{}`$ (VLA) or RA = $`16^h34^m01\stackrel{s}{.}61\pm 0\stackrel{s}{.}02`$, Dec = $`47\mathrm{°}23\mathrm{}34\stackrel{}{.}8\pm 0\stackrel{}{.}3`$ (ATCA). This position lies well within the Einstein HRI error region (Parmar et al. parmar97 (1997)).

A first attempt to localize the infrared counterpart during the 1996 outburst was recently presented by Callanan et al. (callan00 (2000), henceforth CMG). We here report on a search for the infrared counterpart during its 1998 outburst.

## 2 Observations and reduction

We observed 4U 1630$``$47 with the infrared spectrograph and imaging camera SOFI on the 3.5-m NTT at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile on 4 separate occasions during the course of the 1998 outburst. A log of the observations is presented in Table 1.

All observations were made with a Rockwell HgCdTe 1024$`\times `$1024 Hawaii array using the “small field” objective, which provides a 2$`\stackrel{}{.}`$47$`\times `$2$`\stackrel{}{.}`$47 field, with a pixel size of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$144. The $`K_s`$ filter used during the observations is slightly different from both the $`K`$ and $`K^{}`$ filters defined by Wainscoat & Cowie (wain92 (1992)). The long wavelength edge of the $`K_s`$ is similar to that of the $`K^{}`$ filter, but the short wavelength edge is similar to that of the $`K`$ filter. Thus, the $`K_s`$ filter avoids both the atmospheric absorption feature at 1.9 $`\mu `$m and the radiation from the thermal background beyond 2.3 $`\mu `$m (Lidman & Cuby lidman98 (1998)).

To accurately determine the sky brightness across the field the observations in each night consisted of 20 slightly-dithered frames with an exposure time of 30 seconds each. These frames were flat-fielded and sky subtracted. The source is located in the Galactic plane, and crowding is the main limitation to reaching faint magnitudes. We therefore selected in each case the best quality images and co-registered these to form a master frame for each night, producing a total on-target integration time of between 270 and 330 seconds. The seeing in the resulting frames as derived from the point-spread-function (PSF) determined for each observation (see Sect. 4.2) is listed in Table 1.

## 3 X-ray outburst light curve

In Fig. 1 we give the observed 1.5–12 keV fluxes (i.e. not corrected for absorption) during the 1998 outburst of 4U 1630$``$47 (January 11 to June 15, 1998). The RXTE/ASM data points were derived by dividing the observed daily averaged count rates by the total average Crab count rate during the same period (74.94$`\pm `$0.20 ASM cts s-1) and assuming that 1 Crab equals 2.975$`\times `$10-8 erg s-1 cm-2 (1.5–12 keV). The other data points were derived from the spectral fit parameters as given by Oosterbroek et al. (tim98 (1998): BeppoSAX/MECS+PDS, their Table 2), Tomsick & Kaaret (tomsick00 (2000): RXTE/PCA+HEXTE, their Table 5) and Trudolyubov et al. (trudo01 (2001): RXTE/PCA, their Table 2). We have normalized the derived fluxes from the observations of Oosterbroek et al. (tim98 (1998)) and Trudolyubov et al. (trudo01 (2001)) to those of Tomsick & Kaaret (tomsick00 (2000)) using observations done closest to each other in time (i.e. near JD 2450892 or March 19, 1998). This resulted in correction factors of 1.30 and 0.91 for the Oosterbroek et al. (tim98 (1998)) and Trudolyubov et al. (trudo01 (2001)) observations, respectively. In Fig. 1 we have also indicated the mid-times of the IR observations discussed below with arrows.

The outbursts in 4U 1630$``$47 occur fairly regularly. From its first detection in 1969 to the mid-1980’s the outbursts appeared to be periodic with a recurrence time of $`600`$ days. However, from the mid-1980’s to the 1998 outburst discussed here the recurrence time appeared to be longer, at about 690 days (Kuulkers et al. 1997b ; Kuulkers gnotor98b (1998)). The latest two outbursts, which reached maximum X-ray fluxes as derived from the RXTE/ASM data at approximately JD 245 1350 and 245 1885, respectively, indicate a different recurrence time again. A linear fit to all dates indicates an average recurrence time of $`610`$ days, with a root-mean-square (rms) spread of $`100`$ days. We believe that the observed variation in the outburst timings is in fact intrinsic to the mechanism causing the outbursts, and the recurrence time just reflects the typical time-scale. The next outburst is expected to occur somewhere in the second half of the year 2002.

## 4 Search for a Near-Infrared Counterpart

### 4.1 Astrometry

Astrometry was done relative to the USNO-A2.0 catalogue (Monet et al. monet98 (1998)). For all 35 USNO-A2.0 stars overlapping with the best-seeing image of March 18, 1998, centroids were determined. Five of these were extended and therefore rejected. With the remaining stars, the zero point position, the plate scale, and the position angle on the sky were determined. After rejection of four outliers, with positions deviant by more than 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5, the rms residuals for the 26 remaining stars were 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$15 and 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$19 in right ascension and declination, respectively, consistent with the expected uncertainties on the USNO-A2.0 positions. Therefore, we expect that the tie to the system defined by USNO-A2.0 is good to about 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$04. The uncertainty in the tie to the International Celestial Reference Frame should thus be dominated by the systematic uncertainties in USNO-A2.0 itself, of about 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$2.

The other images were rebinned to an image matching in position and orientation with the 18 March, 1998 image, using some 40 secondary stars to determine the alignment. The aligned images are shown in the top row in Fig. 2. Also shown are the 95% confidence error circles derived using the ATCA, VLA and HRI positions (where for each position, the uncertainty we used includes the 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$2 uncertainty in the optical position added in quadrature). Clearly, several stars lie inside the smallest (ATCA) error circle.

### 4.2 Photometry

A region of $``$45″$`\times `$45″, approximately centered on the radio error circle, was extracted from the resulting frame for each night and analyzed with DAOPHOT (Stetson stetson87 (1987)) using a constant PSF. Photometric calibration was obtained through the observation of the NICMOS standard 9172 (= S279$``$F; Persson et al. nicmos98 (1998)) which was observed close in time and in position on the sky to the March 14, 1998 observations. The photometric zeropoint of the data was determined by performing aperture photometry of the (relatively isolated) stars used to determine the PSF after having removed nearby stars using standard routines supplied in DAOPHOT. The resulting zeropoints showed a rms spread of 0.054 mag when averaged over the different PSF stars, and we take this value as the error in the zeropoint. The data in the other nights were calibrated by comparing the magnitudes of the PSF stars as derived by DAOPHOT in the different night with the data of March 14, 1998. The resulting relative zeropoints show an rms spread of 0.022 mag for the March 12, 1998 data, 0.011 mag for the March 18, 1998 data, and 0.022 mag for the May 16, 1998 data. These values determine the accuracy with which we can compare the data from the different nights.

### 4.3 Variability

The main problem in comparing the data from different nights is that due to the varying seeing, objects which are identified as single objects can split in to various components, or individual sources can no longer be separated and are detected as one object. This is especially true for the field of 4U 1630$``$47 as it is located in the Galactic plane, and the field is very crowded. As the best seeing was obtained on March 18, 1998, we have used those data as a basis. In the region of the radio position there is a fairly tight cluster of stars, and, using DAOPHOT, we identify a total of 15 objects in, or close to, the radio error circle as shown in Fig. 3. The relative positions and magnitudes of these 15 stars are given in Table 2.

Using the position of star 1, which is the brightest of all the stars (see Table 2), as reference point the positions of the 15 stars were used to determine the magnitudes of the objects in the data from the other nights. It still could be that an object detected in the March 18, 1998 image in fact consists of more than one star, but in this way we assure that each time the brightness of the same star(s) is measured in the different nights. As the seeing during the other nights was significantly worse, not all 15 stars are detected in each observation. As one might expect mostly the fainter stars were not detected. To check our method we also derived the position and magnitude of the sources in the different nights leaving the positions free. In all cases half of all the sources were recovered, mostly the brighter objects. The remaining fits converged to nearby, relatively bright stars. The position and magnitudes of the objects that were recovered were all consistent with those derived using the fixed positions, giving us confidence that our method provides reliable results.

In Table 2 we give the relative magnitudes with respect to the March 18, 1998 observations of the sources that were detected in each night using fixed positions. The errors in the relative magnitudes refer to the formal errors derived by DAOPHOT added quadratically to the error in the relative zeropoints for each night (see Sect. 4.2). Looking at the last 3 nights, one can see that only star 2 is variable by more than 3-sigma, where the source is 0.215 mag fainter (6.7-sigma) on March 14, 1998 and 0.198 mag fainter (4.8-sigma) on May 16, 1998 with respect to the March 18, 1998 observations. In the March 12, 1998 observations there are various sources which have varied between 3- and 4-sigma with respect to the March 18, 1998 observations, but we believe this is due to the poor seeing of these observations which leads to some systematic variation in the measured brightness of the sources. However, we can conclude from the March 12, 1998 observations that star 2 is at a similar brightness level as during the March 18, 1998 observations.

There might be some concern about these results given the crowded nature of the field, and considering the slightly deviating results in the March 12, 1998 observations. To quantify the degree to which seeing contributes to systematic variations in the measurements we have degraded the data of March 18, 1998 to various degrees by convolving the original data with a 2-d Gaussian. This was done in such a way as to match the seeing of the other data sets. Subsequently, the convolved data were then subjected to the whole reduction process in the same way as the original data. The resulting magnitudes for the different stars in the experimental data follow fairly closely the results presented in Table 2, with the exception of star 2 which shows variations far smaller than the variations observed in the real data. The results for the simulated data are consistent with star 2 being constant, but in principle they are also consistent with a possible systematic shift in the results relative to the March 18, 1998 observations of up to $``$0.04 mag. If such systematic shifts exist in the analysis of the real data, the significance of the observed variations is somewhat lower. This analysis does confirm our belief that the relatively large deviations observed in the results from March 12, 1998 are due to the poor seeing of the data, and that the observed variations of star 2 are not just the result of variations in the seeing.

Furthermore, to get a perhaps clearer, or at least a different, measure of the variability in all images, we formed difference images with the best-seeing, March 18, 1998 image. For this purpose, we used the optimal image subtraction technique introduced by Alard & Lupton (alard98 (1998)). In this method, the image with better seeing is convolved with a kernel chosen such that the convolved point-spread function is as close as possible to that of the image with the worse seeing. The difference images found using the above method are shown in the lower panels of Fig. 2 (here, the difference is in the sense image minus convolved March 18, 1998 image). Although the subtraction is not perfect (especially for the brightest objects) there clearly is a residue close to the center of the ATCA error circle in the March 14, and May 16, 1998 images (see Fig. 2). The centroid of these residues coincide with the position of star 2, and the relative brightness variations in the different images are consistent with the photometric brightness variations derived above, which indicates that these results are not an artifact of the method used to analyze the data.

Given its variability and position, we conclude that star 2 is the IR counterpart to 4U 1630$``$47. From our astrometry we derive a position of RA = $`16^h34^m01\stackrel{s}{.}584\pm 0\stackrel{s}{.}020`$, Dec = $`47\mathrm{°}23\mathrm{}34\stackrel{}{.}80\pm 0\stackrel{}{.}20`$ (J2000) for this star.

## 5 Discussion

### 5.1 Previous observations

Previous IR imaging of the region 4U 1630$``$47 taken during the 1996 outburst, and in quiescence in 1995 and 1998 were presented by CMG. These observations were taken with a pixel scale of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$65 per pixel and with a relatively poor seeing of $``$1$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 which makes the detection and measurement of fainter stars in this crowded field very difficult. In fact, CMG detect only 2 stars close to the ATCA error circle where we detected 15 sources in our best seeing image. These two stars correspond to stars 1 and 3 as shown in Fig. 3 and presented in Table 2. The magnitude of $`K`$=13.65$`\pm `$0.05 derived by CMG for star 1 is fully consistent with our results, while the two measurements of $`K`$=16.5$`\pm `$0.2 and 16.9$`\pm `$0.2 presented by CMG for star 3 are somewhat fainter than our results (see Table 2). A third star to the East of star 3 was also measured twice by CMG at $`K`$=16.8$`\pm `$0.2 and 16.7$`\pm `$0.2 mag. For this star we derived a magnitude of 16.02$`\pm `$0.06, which is nearly the same as we measured for star 3 and brighter by a similar amount compared to CMG. As it seems unlikely that these two stars have changed in brightness by a similar amount, we believe that the measurements for these stars presented by CMG were affected by the poor resolution (both in seeing and pixel size) of their data, and that these sources are probably constant.

Of course, any measurement of star 1 will have included star 2 which we believe is the counterpart of 4U 1630$``$47. However, if this star would have been as bright as during our observations and have contributed all its flux to the measurement of star 1, it would only contribute 0.1 mag. As CMG used PSF fitting to derive their magnitudes, star 2 would only have effected the flank of star 1 on one side, and its contribution will likely have been a few 0.01 mag at most. It is, therefore, perfectly plausible that star 2 reached a similar brightness in $`K`$ during the 1996 outburst as during the 1998 outburst.

### 5.2 What kind of system is 4U 1630$``$47?

Although it is clear that the interstellar reddening towards 4U 1630$``$47 is high, the precise value is not certain. $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ column densities as derived from spectral fits to X-ray data are in the range 5-15$`\times `$1022 cm-2 (Parmar et al. parmar86 (1986), parmar97 (1997); Kuulkers et al. gnotor98a (1998); Tomsick et al. tomsick98 (1998); Oosterbroek et al. tim98 (1998); Cui et al. cui00 (2000); Dieters et al. stefan00 (2000); Tomsick & Kaaret tomsick00 (2000); Trudolyubov et al. trudo01 (2001)) which varies with the X-ray brightness of the system, and clearly includes a contribution from within the system. Deriving the column density from HI radio surveys (Kerr et al. kerr86 (1986)) yields a value of $``$2$`\times `$1022 cm-2. However, at high optical depth the derived column densities are unreliable, and probably underestimate the true value (Dickey & Lockman dickey90 (1990)). Furthermore, this value does not include the possible contribution of molecular hydrogen. Considering this, we will assume a conservative range of 2$`\times `$1022 cm-2 $`<N_\mathrm{H}<`$ 5$`\times `$1022 cm-2 for the column density towards 4U 1630$``$47. Using the relation between $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ and interstellar extinction $`A_\mathrm{V}`$ (Predehl & Schmitt nhav95 (1995)), and a ratio $`A_\mathrm{K}/A_\mathrm{V}=0.112`$ (Rieke & Lebofsky akav85 (1985)) the observed column density corresponds to a $`K`$ band extinction of 1.3 $`<A_\mathrm{K}<`$ 3.1 mag.

Given its location on the sky and the high interstellar absorption, the source is most likely at the distance of the Galactic center or beyond, and following previous authors we will assume a distance of 10 kpc. It is interesting to note that the source lies in the direction of a giant molecular cloud (GMC: Corbel et al. corbel99 (1999)). This GMC is located at a distance of 11 kpc, and the column density of this cloud alone exceeds the value derived from X-rays, indicating that the source is most likely on the near side of this cloud. In any case, given the large uncertainty in the extinction, the precise distance to the source is not very important for the following discussion. For an average magnitude of $`K`$ = 16.1 for star 2 during our observations we derive –0.2 $`>M_\mathrm{K}>`$ –2.0 mag.

The general X-ray properties of 4U 1630$``$47 suggest that the source is a (transient) low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB), and the optical/IR emission in outburst is likely dominated by the hot X-ray heated accretion disk (i.e., $`T>10^4`$ K over most of the disk surface; see Van Paradijs & McClintock jvpmcc95 (1995)). For Sco X-1, which is thought to be dominated by emission from its accretion disk $`(VK)_0=0.3`$ (Hertz & Grindlay hertz84 (1984); Van Paradijs & McClintock jvpmcc94 (1994), henceforth VPM). However, in the case a system contains a late-type giant secondary it is expected to contribute significantly to the IR emission compared to the optical, and for GS 2023+338 in outburst we derive $`(VK)_0=0.6`$ (Gehrz et al. gehrz89 (1989); VPM). Using these two values as extremes, we derive for the visual absolute magnitude of 4U 1630$``$47 in outburst 0.4 $`>M_\mathrm{V}>`$ –2.3 mag.

The absolute visual magnitudes of LMXBs with known distances and orbital periods are well represented by the relation $`M_\mathrm{V}=1.57(\pm 0.24)2.27(\pm 0.32)\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=\gamma ^{1/2}(P_{\mathrm{orb}}(\mathrm{hr}))^{2/3}`$, and $`\gamma `$ is the observed X-ray luminosity in units of the Eddington limit for a 1.4 M neutron star (VPM). The average X-ray flux at the time of the IR observations was $`2.8\times 10^9`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (see Fig. 1), which corresponds to $`8.5\times 10^{36}`$ erg s-1 at 10 kpc. The above relation then implies 11 hr $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$ 29 d. Assuming that the outbursts in SXTs are due to a disk instability and taking into account the effect of X-ray heating of the disk Van Paradijs (jvp96 (1996)) derived that for a system to show outbursts the X-ray luminosity must conform to the inequality $`\mathrm{log}\overline{L_\mathrm{X}}<35.8+1.07\mathrm{log}P_{\mathrm{orb}}(\mathrm{hr})`$. The average X-ray luminosity over the outburst cycles for the 1996 and 1998 outbursts (CMG; Oosterbroek et al. tim98 (1998)) corresponds to $`\overline{L_\mathrm{X}}=1\times 10^{37}`$ erg s-1 (at 10 kpc), and for 4U 1630$``$47 to be transient its orbital period must be $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$ 13 hr which agrees well with the above estimate.

Compared to other black-hole SXTs, the orbital period estimates best match those of 4U 1543$``$47, XTE J1550$-$564, GRO J1655$``$40, SAX J1819.3$``$2525 and GS 2023+338 (Orosz et al. orosz98 (1998), orosz01 (2001); Sánchez-Fernández et al. sanchez99 (1999); Jain et al. 2001b ; Shahbaz & Kuulkers shahbaz98 (1998), and references therein). Also the estimated absolute visual magnitude for 4U 1630$``$47 agrees well with that of 4U 1543$``$47 and SAX J1819.3$``$2525, though it is too bright compared to XTE J1550$``$564, and a bit faint compared to GRO J1655$``$40 and especially GS 2023+338.

The main problem with the identification of the source as an LMXB is the small observed brightness variations. For an X-ray heated disk one expects the flux to vary as $`FF_\mathrm{X}^{0.5}`$ (Van Paradijs & McClintock jvpmcc95 (1995)). During our IR observations the X-ray flux varied by a factor $``$5 (see Fig. 1), which implies a variation of $``$1 mag in the brightness of the disk as compared to the small variation observed over the course of our observations. However, if the source is a long orbital period LMXB, the secondary is expected to contribute significantly to the brightness in the IR reducing the expected variation seen in the $`K`$ band. Furthermore, the outburst amplitude in the optical (and most likely the IR as well) of 4U 1543$``$47 and GRO J1655$``$40 are the smallest among SXTs (Orosz et al. orosz98 (1998); Shahbaz & Kuulkers shahbaz98 (1998)) and they varied only by $``$2-3 mag over the course of an entire outburst. By analogy one might expect that any variation in average brightness in the IR of 4U 1630$``$47 during an outburst is small.

The latter two sources (and also SAX J1819.3$``$2525) all contain rather early-type (late-B to mid-F) secondaries, and to a certain extent they are not true ‘low-mass’ X-ray binaries. However, the mass-transfer in these source is still thought to occur through Roche-lobe overflow and the optical emission (at least in outburst) is dominated by the (X-ray heated) accretion disk. In that sense, the above discussion concerning the orbital period of 4U 1630$``$47 is still valid.

The detection of a dip in the X-ray light curve during the 1996 outburst (Kuulkers et al. gnotor98a (1998)) indicates that the inclination of the system is fairly high ($`i6075\mathrm{deg}`$), similar to GRO J1655$``$40. In the latter system the orbital brightness variations have an amplitude of $``$0.3–0.5 mag (Van der Hooft et al. vdh97 (1997), vdh98 (1998)), which could also mask longer term average brightness variations if the source is observed on only a few occasions as is the case for our observations of 4U 1630$``$47. Another possibility is that there is an additional (varying) source of IR emission. In fact, the May 16, 1998 observations coincide with the soft-to-hard state transition observed in X-rays (Tomsick & Kaaret tomsick00 (2000)). In other systems in the low/hard X-ray state there is an excess radio emission component which probably extends to the IR (Fender et al. fenderetal01 (2001); Fender fender01 (2001) and references therein), and most likely originates from a compact jet. Especially interesting in that respect are the observations of XTE J1550$``$564 during outburst (Jain et al. 2001a ). The transition from the soft to the hard state itself has also been associated with the ejection of relativistic plasma (Corbel et al. corbel00 (2000); Corbel et al. corbel01 (2001); Brocksopp et al. brock01 (2001)).

We conclude that our observations are consistent with 4U 1630$``$47 being a system with a relatively long orbital period, and that it is most likely similar to 4U 1543$``$47, GRO J1655$``$40 or SAX J1819.3$``$2525 containing a relatively early type secondary.

Not only do the general properties of 4U 1630$``$47 suggest that it is a LMXB type system, also GRO J1655$``$40 and GRS 1915+105, which are the two sources that most closely resemble its X-ray behavior (e.g., Kuulkers et al. 1997a , 1997b ), are both LMXBs (Bailyn et al. bailyn95 (1995); Greiner greiner01 (2001)). However, we note that the range in absolute $`K`$ band magnitude derived for 4U 1630$``$47 also agrees with the source being a (intrinsically slightly reddened) B star (at 10 kpc), which one would expect if the source is a detached Be/X-ray binary. Furthermore, the observed variability is typical for what is observed for these binaries in the IR (Coe et al. coe97 (1997)), so on the basis of our photometry alone we can not exclude this possibility. Probably only IR spectroscopy will be able to settle this question definitely.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Chris Lidman for help with obtaining the observations. EK thanks John Tomsick for providing their XSPEC spectral fit results in numerical form. The RXTE/ASM data used in this paper was obtained from the public ASM database at MIT, which is supported by the ASM and RXTE instrument teams at MIT and Goddard Space Flight Center. We thank the referee John Tomsick for various useful comments.