text:
# The Chandra Deep Field North Survey. VII. X-ray Emission from Lyman Break Galaxies

## 1 Introduction

Over the last few years, the Lyman break technique has been used extensively to isolate galaxies at $`z`$ 2–4 (e.g., Steidel et al. 1996; Lowenthal et al. 1997; Dickinson 1998; Steidel et al. 1999) observed near the peak in the cosmic star-formation rate (e.g., Blain et al. 1999). These objects often exhibit stellar and interstellar absorption lines characteristic of local starburst galaxies. Their morphologies are varied, with multiple knots of emission and diffuse wispy tails that suggest nonrelaxed systems. The Lyman break technique has found particular application in the Hubble Deep Field North (HDF-N; Williams et al. 1996) due to the excellent imaging data and photometry available there, although the small angular size of the HDF-N limits somewhat its utility for statistical studies (e.g., Dickinson 1998).

We have recently completed an $`1`$ Ms observation of the HDF-N and its environs with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (Weisskopf et al. 2000): the Chandra Deep Field North (CDF-N; Brandt et al. 2001b, hereafter Paper V). In addition to probing luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN) throughout the Universe, this survey is also useful for studying X-ray emission from more “normal” galaxies where the emission originates from X-ray binaries, supernova remnants, and low-luminosity AGN (LLAGN; e.g., Hornschemeier et al. 2001, Paper II; Brandt et al. 2001a, Paper IV). Stacking techniques are particularly powerful in this regard, since they allow detection of X-ray emission from objects lying below the detection limit for individual sources. In Paper IV we used stacking techniques to constrain the X-ray emission from normal spiral galaxies out to $`z`$ 0.5–1, finding that their X-ray luminosities were not more than a factor of $`2`$ larger (per unit $`B`$-band luminosity) than those of spiral galaxies in the local Universe ($`z<0.01`$). Stacking analyses using the 480 ks of data available at the time allowed effective exposures of 5–8 Ms to be achieved.

With the additional Chandra data recently obtained and improvements in our data processing techniques, we are now able to extend our constraints on galaxy X-ray luminosities to higher redshift. This is of cosmological interest since the X-ray luminosities of normal galaxies are expected to evolve with redshift due to the changing cosmic star-formation rate (e.g., van Paradijs 1978; White & Ghosh 1998; Ghosh & White 2001; Ptak et al. 2001). Here we present constraints on the X-ray emission from the Lyman break galaxy population found in the HDF-N itself.

The Galactic column density along this line of sight is $`(1.6\pm 0.4)\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Stark et al. 1992). $`H_0=65`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=1/3`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=2/3`$ are adopted throughout this paper. Coordinates throughout this paper are J2000.

## 2 Data, Analysis, and Results

We have used the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS; G.P. Garmire et al., in preparation) data sets and basic analysis methods described in Paper V. We employ three standard X-ray bands: 0.5–8.0 keV (full band), 0.5–2.0 keV (soft band), and 2–8 keV (hard band). We use data screened with the restricted ACIS grade set defined in Table 2 of Paper V, since this screening provides significantly improved signal-to-noise for faint sources. We restrict our focus to the data obtained within the HDF-N itself; our X-ray coverage is deepest in this area, and the Chandra background and point-spread function (PSF) are relatively uniform over the HDF-N. Chandra positions within the HDF-N are good to within $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$.

For the stacking analysis, we selected galaxies in the HDF-N itself using the spectroscopic redshift catalogs of Cohen et al. (2000), Cohen (2001), Dawson et al. (2001), and references therein. We considered the $`z=`$ 2–4 galaxies spectroscopically identified in the HDF-N; there are 28 such objects, and most were found using the Lyman break technique (the HST $`U_{300}`$ filter has allowed Lyman break galaxies to be found down to $`z2`$ in the HDF-N; e.g., Dickinson 1998). Prior to stacking, we verified that none of the objects being stacked was individually detected by Chandra. This was accomplished by searching for nearby (within $`2\mathrm{}`$) X-ray sources found by wavdetect with a false-positive probability threshold of $`10^5`$ (Dobrzycki et al. 1999; Freeman et al. 2001); it led to the removal of one source, the $`z=3.479`$ AGN 123639.6+621230 (associated with CXOHDFN J123639.5+621230). We have also manually inspected Chandra images in all three of the standard X-ray bands and removed three Lyman break galaxies lying near unrelated X-ray sources. 123645.3+621153 was removed because it lies within the region covered by the faint extended source CXOHDFN J123645.0+621142. 123645.8+621411 and 123654.7+621314 were removed because they lie relatively near (6–8$`\mathrm{}`$) the bright X-ray sources CXOHDFN J123646.3+621404 and CXOHDFN J123655.4+621311, respectively, and could be affected by the low-level wings of the Chandra PSF. While we consider it unlikely that these three Lyman break galaxies suffer from significant contamination by the unrelated X-ray sources, we wanted to be cautious and avoid any problems with the background estimation. Figure 1 shows the redshifts and $`R`$ magnitudes of the 24 selected objects. The median redshift of the selected objects is $`z=2.92`$, corresponding to a median lookback time of 11.9 Gyr (84% of the age of the Universe) and a median luminosity distance of 25,800 Mpc (Hogg 1999). These galaxies have a range of morphologies but generally appear nonrelaxed. They do not show signs of containing AGN in their optical spectra, although the spectral quality is often limited. They were not identified as AGN candidates by Jarvis & MacAlpine (1998), Conti et al. (1999), or Sarajedini et al. (2000). Two of the 24 galaxies have weak (6–8 $`\mu `$Jy) radio emission at 8.5 GHz (Richards et al. 1998); this emission could be due to either starburst activity or AGN.

For each of the standard X-ray bands, we stacked “cutout” images centered on the positions of the 24 selected galaxies. For the photometry below we use an approximately circular aperture comprised of the 30 pixels with centers within $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ of the stacking position (see §3.4 of Paper IV). In Figure 2 we show the number of full-band and soft-band counts obtained for each of the individual galaxies being stacked, and in Figure 3 we show images created from the stacked data. The stacked full-band image has an effective exposure time of 22.44 Ms (260 days). In this image, we find 164 counts within the 30-pixel aperture, while 134.3 are expected from the background. The Poisson probability of obtaining 164 counts or more when 134.3 are expected is $`5\times 10^3`$, indicating a detection at the 99.5% confidence level. In the stacked soft-band image (22.46 Ms exposure), we find 43 counts when 26.2 are expected from background, corresponding to a detection at the 99.9% confidence level. The higher significance of the soft-band detection is most likely due to the lower background in this band. No significant detection is obtained in the hard band; unfortunately, the spectral constraint implied by the hard-band nondetection is not physically interesting.

Following Appendix A of Paper IV, we performed Monte Carlo stacking simulations to assess false-detection probabilities empirically. For each band, we performed 100,000 trials where we stacked 24 random positions using the same photometry aperture as was used for the Lyman break galaxies above. The random positions were chosen to lie within $`15\mathrm{}\times 15\mathrm{}`$ “local background regions” centered on each of the Lyman break galaxies (avoiding known Chandra sources) to reproduce the actual background as closely as possible. Figure 4 displays the number of trials giving a particular number of counts for the full and soft bands. The resulting distributions are very nearly Gaussian. In the full band 518 of the 100,000 stacking trials gave 164 counts or more; the corresponding detection confidence level of 99.5% is in excellent agreement with that computed from Poisson statistics above. In the soft band 103 of the 100,000 stacking trials gave 43 counts or more; again the corresponding detection confidence level of 99.9% agrees well with Poisson statistics. Again, no significant detection is obtained in the hard band.

We performed several additional tests to verify the robustness of our results. If we include the three Lyman break galaxies excluded above because they lie near to unrelated X-ray sources (123645.3+621153, 123645.8+621411, and 123654.7+621314), the statistical significance of our results is improved. We varied the size of the local background regions to examine if background gradients could be confusing the stacking analysis; our results remain highly significant for local background region sizes of $`5\mathrm{}\times 5\mathrm{}`$, $`9\mathrm{}\times 9\mathrm{}`$, and $`21\mathrm{}\times 21\mathrm{}`$. Because use of the local background regions limits the number of independent random positions that can be chosen in the Monte Carlo simulations, we also performed simulations with “global background regions.” For these simulations we drew the random positions from larger areas, not restricting the positions to lie close to the Lyman break galaxies. The statistical significance of our results remained the same or was slightly improved. Finally, we varied the size of our photometry aperture, and our results remain significant for reasonable aperture-size choices. In fact, reducing the aperture size to include only the 14 pixels with centers within $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}0`$ of the stacking position improves the statistical significance by a further factor of $`5`$ in both the full and soft bands.

We note that our results cannot be explained by instrumental effects (e.g., subtle cosmic ray afterglows) since such effects will not be preferentially correlated with Lyman break galaxies. Moreover, unrelated galaxies at lower redshift that by chance lie within our stacking apertures cannot explain the observed signal since these galaxies will be found equally in both the Lyman break galaxy stacking and the Monte Carlo simulations.

## 3 Discussion

The stacking analyses above extend our ability to detect relatively normal galaxies in the X-ray band to substantially higher redshifts ($`z=`$ 2–4) than was previously possible. At the median redshift of our sample of $`z=2.92`$, the observed-frame full and soft bands correspond to rest-frame bands of 2.0–31.4 keV and 2.0–7.8 keV, respectively. Provided the basic X-ray production mechanisms of Lyman break galaxies are similar to those of spiral galaxies in the local Universe, the emission in these bands should have an effective power-law photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$ (e.g., Kim, Fabbiano, & Trinchieri 1992; Ptak et al. 1999); this is a typical photon index for both X-ray binaries and LLAGN. In the soft band, where we obtain the highest significance detection, the measured count rate ($`7.5\times 10^7`$ count s-1) corresponds to an average observed-frame flux of $`4.0\times 10^{18}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 and an average rest-frame 2.0–7.8 keV luminosity of $`3.2\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1 (at the median redshift).111For comparison, our soft-band flux limit for a single source is $`3.0\times 10^{17}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, corresponding to a rest-frame 2.0–7.8 keV luminosity of $`2.4\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1. Note that these Lyman break galaxies are $`30`$ times more luminous from 2–8 keV than the 11 normal spiral galaxies at $`z0.5`$ studied in §4.2 of Paper IV. Since these Lyman break galaxies are thought to contain significant starburst activity (see §1), it is appropriate to compare their X-ray luminosities to those of local starbursts. On average the 2–8 keV luminosities of these Lyman break galaxies are $`5`$ times larger than that of the starburst galaxy M82 (e.g., Griffiths et al. 2000; Kaaret et al. 2001) and are comparable to that of NGC 3256, one of the most X-ray luminous starbursts in the local Universe (e.g., Moran, Lehnert, & Helfand 1999; Lira et al. 2001). The star-formation rates in these Lyman break galaxies are uncertain but are thought to be often $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 30–50 M yr-1, compared to $`10`$ M yr-1 for M82 and $`40`$ M yr-1 for NGC 3256.

The HDF-N Lyman break galaxies are optically luminous with $`B`$-band luminosities somewhat greater than present-day $`L^{}`$; a present-day $`L^{}`$ galaxy has a $`B`$-band luminosity density of $`l_\mathrm{B}^{}=1.0\times 10^{29}`$ erg s-1 Hz-1 (e.g., Blanton et al. 2001). The 24 Lyman break galaxies used in the stacking analysis above have a mean rest-frame $`l_\mathrm{B}=2.4\times 10^{29}`$ erg s-1 Hz-1 \[the median $`l_\mathrm{B}=1.7\times 10^{29}`$ erg s-1 Hz-1, and the range is $`l_\mathrm{B}=`$ (0.4–6.6)$`\times 10^{29}`$ erg s-1 Hz-1\]; this is $`1.3`$ times larger than for the 11 normal spiral galaxies at $`z0.5`$ studied in §4.2 of Paper IV.222The rest-frame $`l_\mathrm{B}`$ values for the Lyman break galaxies have been calculated using the observed-frame $`H`$-band data in Table 2 of Papovich, Dickinson, & Ferguson (2001) and the irregular galaxy spectral energy distribution from Coleman, Wu, & Weedman (1980). The good match between the $`H`$-band data and rest-frame $`B`$ for these objects removes nearly all of the dependence of $`l_\mathrm{B}`$ on the spectral energy distribution. Therefore, the HDF-N Lyman break galaxies are $`(30/1.3)23`$ times more X-ray luminous per unit $`B`$-band luminosity than normal spiral galaxies at $`z0.5`$ (also see Shapley, Fabbiano, & Eskridge 2001). An elevated ratio of X-ray to $`B`$-band luminosity is observed in many starburst galaxies at low redshift. The starburst galaxies in §3 of David, Jones, & Forman (1992) have X-ray to $`B`$-band luminosity ratios $``$ 3–15 times higher than for normal galaxies (for example, this ratio is $`13`$ times higher for M82). Thus, the X-ray to $`B`$-band luminosity ratios for Lyman break galaxies are somewhat, but not greatly, higher than those of local starbursts. If the Lyman break galaxies suffered from more dust obscuration than local starbursts, this could explain their higher X-ray to $`B`$-band luminosity ratios; dust would attenuate $`B`$-band emission substantially more than 2–8 keV emission.

Theoretical efforts to predict the X-ray evolution of galaxies (e.g., van Paradijs 1978; White & Ghosh 1998; Ghosh & White 2001; Ptak et al. 2001) have typically focused on their low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) populations which are predicted to peak in luminosity at $`z1.5`$. Much less work has been carried out, however, at the higher redshifts under study here. If the X-ray emission of Lyman break galaxies is indeed produced via the same mechanisms as those operating in local starburst galaxies, then high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) and “super-Eddington” X-ray sources (e.g., Makishima et al. 2000) are likely to produce much of the observed emission in the rest-frame 2–8 keV band. Unlike LMXBs, which have an evolutionary timescale of $`10^9`$ yr, the X-ray emission from HMXBs should track the cosmic star-formation rate closely (any LMXBs contributing to the observed X-ray emission would have formed at $`z5`$). Given the results from submillimeter and other surveys which are sensitive to star formation in dusty environments, cosmic star formation is likely to peak at roughly the redshifts under study here (e.g., Blain et al. 1999). The cosmic evolution of super-Eddington X-ray sources is impossible to predict reliably at present given that even the basic nature of these objects is poorly understood at low redshift. LLAGN with 2–8 keV luminosities $`\stackrel{<}{}2.4\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1 could also contribute to the observed X-ray emission from some of these Lyman break galaxies, although none of the galaxies under study here has been found to contain an LLAGN (see §2); again, even the most basic properties of LLAGN at these redshifts are poorly constrained by current data.

Finally, these results show that the Chandra ACIS performs well at source detection even with effective exposure times of 260 days (the current longest Chandra exposures are 11.6 days for the CDF-N and the Chandra Deep Field South). Any systematic effects that cause the sensitivity to deviate from that expected due to photon statistics appear mild. Stacking analyses using deeper observations with Chandra should allow this work to be extended. Missions such as XEUS should ultimately allow the X-ray study of individual Lyman break galaxies.

This work would not have been possible without the enormous efforts of the entire Chandra and ACIS teams. We thank O. Almaini, A.C. Fabian, E.C. Moran, A. Ptak, A.E. Shapley, and an anonymous referee for helpful discussions. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of NASA grant NAS 8-38252 (GPG, PI), NSF CAREER award AST-9983783 (WNB, DMA, FEB), NASA GSRP grant NGT 5-50247 and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium (AEH), NSF grant AST-9900703 (DPS), and NASA LTSA grant NAG5-8107 (CV).


format: text

text:
# Far Ultraviolet and H𝛼 Imaging of Nearby Spirals: The OB Stellar Population in the Diffuse Ionized Gas

## 1 Introduction

The details of the relationship between massive stars and the ISM are crucial to understanding how galaxies evolve. One place where this interaction is critical, and not well understood, is in the diffuse ionized gas (DIG). This is the dominant component of ionized gas in terms of mass, contributing 95% of the ionized gas mass in the Milky Way (Reynolds, 1991), and requiring the equivalent of 30 to 50% of the ionizing photons of OB stars to remain ionized in almost all of the external spirals studied (Walterbos & Braun, 1996). The DIG is clearly an important physical manifestation of energy transfer from stars to gas, yet the mechanisms through which this transfer occurs remain unclear. The large energy requirement, the morphological association of DIG with H II regions (Walterbos & Braun, 1994; Ferguson et al., 1996; Hoopes, Walterbos, & Greenawalt, 1996; Greenawalt, 1998; Greenawalt et al., 1998), and the spectral properties of the DIG (Greenawalt, Walterbos, & Braun, 1997; Wang et al., 1997; Galarza, Walterbos, & Braun, 1999; Haffner, Reynolds, & Tufte, 1999) all very strongly suggest OB stars as the ionization source, although there are indications that other sources, such as old supernova remnants (Slavin, McKee, & Holenbach, 2000) or turbulent mixing layers (Slavin, Shull, & Begelman, 1993) also play a role (Wang et al., 1997). However, problems transporting the ionizing photons from OB stars to the DIG remain unsolved. Specifically, if the ionizing stars are in H II regions, are there enough density-bounded H II regions leaking ionizing photons, as well as paths through the $`\mathrm{H}\mathrm{I}`$ in spiral disks, for these photons to reach the DIG?

An alternative is that field OB stars ionize some of the DIG, reducing the amount of leakage from H II regions required. Field OB stars have been studied in the Milky Way (Torres-Peimbert, Lazcano-Araujo, & Peimbert, 1974), the Magellanic Clouds (Massey et al., 1995b), and M33 (Patel & Wilson, 1995; Hoopes & Walterbos, 2000). There are several possible explanations for the presence of these OB stars outside of H II regions. They may form in H II regions, but then diffuse out of the H II region into the diffuse gas, or they may survive as an H II region is destroyed by supernovae (SNe) from other massive stars. Both of these processes would produce a population in the field that is weighted toward later-type ionizing stars. A late-type (B0-O9) ionizing star has a longer lifetime than an earlier-type star, increasing the probability that it will live long enough to move an appreciable distance from its birthplace, or survive as the H II region is destroyed when the more massive stars explode in SNe. Another possibility is that field OB stars actually form in the field, as suggested by Massey et al. (1995b) for the Magellanic Clouds. Those authors defined their sample of field stars so that it would not include stars which might have traveled out of an H II region. However, they also found that the initial mass function (IMF) for field stars has a steeper slope than in H II regions, making the very early-type OB stars rare. All of these mechanisms, then, lead to a field population dominated by later-type OB stars. These stars must ionize some fraction of the DIG, but since they are predominantly later-types, a large number is needed to explain all of the DIG. The presence of just one O3 star in the field is equivalent to 50 B0 stars.

A direct way to determine the fraction of DIG that is ionized by field OB stars is to look for OB stars in and out of H II regions, determine their spectral types and ionizing luminosities (NLyc), and compare this to the energy required to maintain the observed H$`\alpha `$ luminosity. This was done for H II regions in the LMC, and several were found that may be leaky (Oey & Kennicutt, 1997). Hoopes & Walterbos (2000) studied OB stars in H II regions and DIG in M33, using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) far-ultraviolet (FUV) and optical images. The FUV information is crucial for assigning ionizing luminosities to massive stars, as there is a severe color degeneracy for hot stars at optical wavelengths (Massey, 1985; Massey et al., 1995a). Even in the FUV the color degeneracy is a problem, but when combined with the FUV and optical absolute magnitudes, the problem is reduced to a level where values of NLyc good to the equivalent of about $`\pm 1`$ spectral subtype can be obtained.

The current paper builds on the results of Hoopes & Walterbos (2000), so we briefly describe the analysis carried out in that paper. The goal was to determine the ionizing luminosities of stars in H II regions and in the field, in order to compare with ionizing luminosity inferred from the H$`\alpha `$ emission in each environment. Magnitudes were measured from the WFPC2 images in four filters, F170W, F336W, F439W, and F555W, along with the statistical uncertainty and flat fielding uncertainty, for each star. Color magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for each H II region and DIG region were plotted and compared to theoretical CMDs (Schaerer, et al., 1993). The extinction correction required to place the observed main sequence on the theoretical main sequence was then determined, resulting in a mean extinction correction for each region. A conservative estimate of the uncertainty in determining this correction was combined with the previously measured uncertainty in the photometry.

The extinction corrected magnitudes in four bands for all of the stars were compared with the predicted magnitudes for massive stars from the CoStar models (Schaerer & de Koter, 1997), and NLyc from the best matching model was assigned to each star. The uncertainty in NLyc was determined by finding the models with the largest and smallest ionizing luminosities that matched within the 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty in the magnitudes (which included statistical, flat-field, and extinction uncertainties). The NLyc values for all stars in a given H II region or DIG region were summed together, and compared with NLyc required by the H$`\alpha `$ emission. In the regions of M33 that were investigated, OB stars outside of H II regions can ionize an appreciable amount of the DIG, $`40\%\pm 12\%`$, while the OB stars in H II regions account for $`107\%\pm 26\%`$ of the observed H$`\alpha `$ luminosity of the H II regions. The good agreement between the mean predictions and observations for H II regions gives confidence that the DIG result is not affected by systematic uncertainties. Thus, even though estimates of ionizing luminosities for individual stars have substantial uncertainty since spectral classification from photometry alone is not very accurate, the overall result seems robust. The sizable contribution of field OB stars to the ionization of the DIG relaxes somewhat the need for leaky H II regions, and emphasizes the fact that OB stars outside of H II regions have a large impact on the ISM.

In this paper we investigate whether the source of the DIG ionization in M33 is similar to other spirals. In more distant spirals HST cannot resolve individual stars. We have used images acquired by the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) to yield global FUV information, which can then be compared to M33, in which we have both HST and UIT data. The resolution of the UIT images is approximately 2′′ or $``$80 parsecs at the typical distances of our targets. Thus we can well resolve the FUV field. Comparing the spatial distribution of FUV emission to that of the H II regions (from narrow band H$`\alpha `$ imaging) in our target galaxies will allow for an assessment of the sources of ionization in a manner similar to that done by Hoopes & Walterbos (2000).

## 2 Data Reduction and Analysis

The sample of galaxies for which we analyzed H$`\alpha `$ and FUV images is described in Table 1. Ten galaxies were included, including M33 which was studied previously (Hoopes & Walterbos, 2000). The sample spans a range of Hubble types, but early-type spirals are under represented. Most of the galaxies are nearby, although NGC 1512 and NGC 1566 are beyond 15 Mpc. A metallicity estimate for each galaxy was taken from Zaritsky et al. (1994), using their value of 12+log(O/H) at a radius of 3 kpc from the nucleus.

Table 2 summarizes the H$`\alpha `$ data for each galaxy. The reduction for M33 was described in Greenawalt (1998) and Hoopes & Walterbos (2000), M81 and M51 were discussed in Greenawalt et al. (1998), and M101, NGC 628, NGC 925, and NGC 2903 were discussed in Greenawalt (1998). Both line and nearby continuum images were obtained, and the continuum image was scaled to the line image by comparing the fluxes of foreground stars, and then subtracted to produce a line-only image. The calibration method for each galaxy is given in Table 2. Most were calibrated using observations of a standard star, but a few were calibrated using the R-band magnitude of the galaxy and the shape of the narrow band filter, and a few were calibrated by comparing the luminosities of specific H II regions to published values. Three galaxies, NGC 3031 (M81), NGC 5194 (M51) and NGC 5457 (M101) were observed through H$`\alpha `$ filters wide enough to include a contribution from $`[\mathrm{N}\mathrm{II}]`$ $`\lambda 6548+6584`$ Å. In these cases, 20 to 30% of the luminosity my arise from $`[\mathrm{N}\mathrm{II}]`$. We have not corrected for this contamination, but it will be addressed in the relevant sections.

Table 3 summarizes the UIT data for the sample. Details of the UIT instrument and data characteristics can be found in Stecher et al. (1997). The UIT instrument was flown on two occasions: the Astro-1 mission aboard the space shuttle Columbia in December, 1990, and the Astro-2 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavor in March, 1995. The galaxies were observed by the FUV ($``$ 1500Å) camera, through one of two filters: B1 (1520Å, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ 354Å) and B5 (1615Å, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ 225Å). The images were originally produced on film, and later digitized on the ground. The images were calibrated by observing standards stars observed previously with the International Ultraviolet Explorer, and are estimated to be accurate to 15% (Stecher et al., 1997). Nonlinearity at low flux levels introduces further uncertainty. The effects of nonlinearity have been found to be as high as 20%, and the effects vary significantly between exposures (Bell & Kennicutt, 2001). We adopt 15% uncertainty for H II region UIT flux, and 25% (15% + 20% in quadrature) for the fainter DIG UIT flux. The UIT images have an angular resolution of about 2′′.

For each galaxy the DIG was isolated in the H$`\alpha `$ image using the masking procedure described in Hoopes, Walterbos, & Greenawalt (1996). The H$`\alpha `$ image was smoothed with a median filter using a linear length scale of 1 kpc. The smoothed version was subtracted from the original, leaving an image of the small scale structure only, the smoothly varying component having been subtracted away. On this image a mask was created by replacing pixels with values less than 50 pc cm-6 in emission measure with one, and pixels with values greater than 50 pc cm-6 with zero. The resulting mask thus has a value of zero in the bright, small scale structures (i.e. H II regions), and one everywhere else. The original (unsmoothed) H$`\alpha `$ image was then multiplied by the mask image, leaving an image of only the DIG, with zeros over the H II regions. This is called the DIG H$`\alpha `$ image. A DIG FUV image was also created by multiplying the FUV image with the same mask (the mask defined on the H$`\alpha `$ image). An H II region mask was created by inverting the DIG mask, and this was multiplied with the H$`\alpha `$ and FUV images, producing an H II region H$`\alpha `$ image and an H II region FUV image.

Using the H II region H$`\alpha `$ image, circular apertures were defined by eye for as many H II regions as possible. The fluxes of these regions were then measured on the original (unmasked) H$`\alpha `$ and FUV images. The H II region image is used only to find the H II regions with no confusion from the DIG. A local background was defined for each H II region as the mode of the pixel values in an annulus around the aperture. This background was subtracted from each pixel in the aperture.

The DIG fluxes were measured in square 500$`\times `$500 pc apertures which covered the galaxy. The fluxes were measured on the DIG images with the H II regions masked out. A lower cutoff equal to the 1-$`\sigma `$ noise level in the H$`\alpha `$ image was applied to the resulting images, in order to remove apertures which did not include any DIG. For each galaxy there were a small number of apertures that contained H$`\alpha `$ flux but no FUV flux (both DIG and H II regions after background subtraction). These were not included in the final analysis. These procedures follow exactly those used to analyze M33 in Hoopes & Walterbos (2000).

## 3 Results

### 3.1 The H$`\alpha `$/FUV Ratio

In Table 4 we list the observed H$`\alpha `$ and FUV properties of the sample galaxies. The global F/FUIT DIG and H II region ratios were measured using the masked images. The diffuse fraction is the ratio of the DIG H$`\alpha `$ luminosity (measured on the masked DIG image) to the total H$`\alpha `$ luminosity of the galaxy. The FUV diffuse fraction is the fraction of the total FUV luminosity that arises in the DIG. The uncertainty in L and in the H$`\alpha `$ diffuse fraction was found by varying the continuum scale factor by $`\pm `$3%. The uncertainty in the flux ratios is the combination of the uncertainty in L and the uncertainty in LUIT, which is the 15% calibration uncertainty in HII regions, and 25% (15% calibration and 20% nonlinearity) in DIG (Stecher et al., 1997; Bell & Kennicutt, 2001). For the ratio of total luminosities we conservatively use the 25% uncertainty for LUIT. In all cases except NGC 1512, the H$`\alpha `$ diffuse fraction is roughly between 30 and 50%. The H$`\alpha `$/FUV ratios are higher in the DIG than in H II regions. This can also be seen in the FUV diffuse fraction, which is much higher than the H$`\alpha `$ diffuse fraction for all of the galaxies. In the FUV, a greater fraction of light is found in the field than in H$`\alpha `$, due to the fact that the FUV band includes light from later-type B and A stars. In NGC 1512, 39% of the H$`\alpha `$ flux is emitted by the nuclear star-forming ring. If this region is excluded, the H$`\alpha `$ diffuse fraction rises to about 20%.

Figure 1 shows the histograms of the F/FUIT flux ratio for the galaxies observed in the B1 filter, and Figure 2 shows the galaxies observed through the B5 filter. The histograms show the observed values; no correction for extinction has been made at this point. M33 is shown twice because it was observed through both the B1 and B5 filters. The three galaxies with $`[\mathrm{N}\mathrm{II}]`$ contamination are not noticeably different, but the correction to the ratio would be only about 0.1 in the logarithmic plots.

In all of the galaxies in the sample, H II regions have a higher F/FUIT ratio than DIG regions. Hoopes & Walterbos (2000) interpreted this trend seen in M33 as a hotter stellar population in the H II regions, and confirmed the interpretation through HST WFPC2 imaging of individual OB stars in H II regions and DIG. The H$`\alpha `$ emission results from ionizing photons, so the F/FUIT ratio is really a ratio of ionizing/non-ionizing UV photons. The spectra of hotter stars will have a higher ratio of ionizing to non-ionizing photons (i.e. a bluer spectrum) than that of cooler stars. The difference suggests that the population of ionizing stars in the field is dominated by cooler, later-type OB stars, in qualitative agreement with the mechanisms for forming field stars discussed in section 1.

### 3.2 Comparison with Starburst99 Models

In this section we compare the F/FUIT ratios to models of evolving stellar populations, to see whether the observed ratios can be reproduced by a reasonable population of stars. Figures 3 and 4 show the same histograms as Figures 1 and 2, but now they are shown sideways for comparison with the models. We have also converted the H$`\alpha `$ luminosity to the number of ionizing photons $`N_{Lyc}`$, assuming case B recombination (Osterbrock, 1989) and neglecting absorption of ionizing photons by dust. The histograms now include a rough extinction correction, which depends upon the models also shown in the figures. First we will describe the models, and then we will describe the correction for extinction.

The Starburst99 stellar population evolution model (Leitherer et al., 1999) was used to simulate the conditions in H II regions and in the field. This model simulates the evolution of a star cluster through time, and allows one to change parameters, such as the initial mass function (IMF), metallicity, and star formation rate. We ran two types of models. One set has a single burst of star formation, which represent an H II region. The other is a steady state model with constant star formation, which roughly approximates the conditions in the field, in which a relatively small population of young stars is superimposed on a much larger population of old stars.

The burst models begin with a high $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ ratio, as the cluster is dominated by hot young stars with large ionizing luminosities. As the cluster ages and the most massive stars evolve and die, $`N_{Lyc}`$ drops, while $`L_{UIT}`$ stays relatively constant since it contains emission from later-type B stars as well as O stars, so the $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ ratio falls. Thus the $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ ratio is a good indicator of the age of a burst population (Hill et al., 1995, 1998; Stewart et al., 2000). The steady state models reach an equilibrium value.

The metallicity of each type of model was varied to include LMC like abundances(z=0.08), solar (z=0.20) and twice solar (z=0.40). The metallicity chosen for each galaxy was based on the measurements of Zaritsky et al. (1994) in Table 1. We also varied the IMF slope to include $`\alpha `$=2.35, 3.00. and 3.50. The purpose was to simulate a steeper mass function slope, which might arise from the processes which that produce field OB stars (see section 1). The steeper mass function results in a lower $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ ratio, as the most massive O stars become rare compared to the number of less massive OBA stars. For H II regions we show only the standard $`\alpha `$=2.35 IMF models, as there has been no indication of variation of the IMF in H II regions (Massey, 1998).

In order to make a rough estimate of the extinction in each galaxy, we assume that the single burst models are appropriate for the brightest H II regions in each galaxy (e.g. von Hippel & Bothun 1990). The brightest regions probably have the largest number of O stars, and thus the IMF is more likely to be well sampled. Under-sampling the IMF can have a large effect on the $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ ratio, and this is likely to happen if the number of O stars is low. An extreme case is a single O3 star and no other UV emitting stars, resulting in a very high $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ ratio. This is why we do not use the H II regions with the highest observed $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ to define the extinction correction, as one might be tempted to do since the models predict that these should be the youngest H II regions.

For each galaxy we found the average of log $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ for the ten brightest H II regions (only 3 for M33, which lacks very bright H II regions). The average value was compared to the prediction of the single burst model (for the metallicity of that galaxy) at 1 Myr. We chose this age based on the assumption that part of the reason these H II regions are bright is that they are young, since the models in Figures 3 and 4 show that after a few Myr the ionizing luminosity of a star cluster drops drastically as the most massive stars die. The difference between the mean log $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ and the model value is the extinction correction for that galaxy. The histograms in Figures 3 and 4 have been corrected by that amount. Table 5 lists the shifts used for each galaxy, and the corresponding E(B-V) for two extinction laws. Since the magnitude of the correction was measured, the particular extinction law does not matter, but the values are shown for reference. Published values of E(B-V) for these galaxies are also listed in Table 5.

Correcting for extinction moves the histograms down in the plots, because the correction for $`L_{UIT}`$ is larger than that for $`N_{Lyc}`$ (measured through H$`\alpha `$). We do not specifically correct the ionizing photon flux for absorption by dust, however making the H II regions equal to the model predictions should also correct for this. McKee & Williams (1997) find that about 25% of the ionizing photons emitted by stars in H II regions are absorbed by dust. The effect of absorption by dust on the observed histograms is to move them down, by making the $`N_{Lyc}/L_{UIT}`$ lower, so the correction for this works in the opposite sense of correcting the H$`\alpha `$ and FUV light for extinction. This may be part of the reason that the extinction values in Table 5 are lower than the previously determined values for those galaxies.

This is an average correction for all H II regions (and DIG). Part of the scatter in the histogram is probably due to differences in extinction from region to region, but we have no way to correct for this. A large assumption in this process is that the extinction in the DIG is the same as that for H II regions. In reality it is likely that the extinction is somewhat different due to several processes, an example being the destruction of large grains due to shocks in H II regions (Jones, Tielens & Hollenbach, 1996). In both M31 (Greenawalt, Walterbos, & Braun, 1997) and M33 (Hoopes & Walterbos, 2000) the difference has been small, about $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$AV=0.3. This much difference would move the DIG histograms in Figures 3 and 4 up by 0.22 using the Milky Way extinction law, and 0.32 using the LMC extinction law. It is also possible that the fraction of $`N_{Lyc}`$ absorbed by dust is different in the DIG. We will discuss the effects of a difference in extinction where it is relevant.

The extinction corrections for NGC 1313, NGC 1512, NGC 1566, and NGC 925, are particularly low. These are also the four galaxies (besides M33) that were observed through the B5 filter. The extinction correction derived for the two M33 observations are remarkably consistent, so there does not seem to be a problem with the B5 filter. There may be a calibration problem with the FUV images of these galaxies, or there may be a real difference between these and the other galaxies, such as a higher fraction of $`N_{Lyc}`$ absorbed by dust. In any case, the results for these galaxies should be treated with caution.

After the extinction correction, most of the galaxies look very similar to M33. The DIG ratios are consistent with a steady state model, or with a single burst model older than that for H II regions. The steady state model seems like a more realistic model for the field stellar population than an older burst, as the steady state model represents a disk built up through star formation over several Gyr, with a much smaller population of young stars. The DIG histograms exhibit even better agreement with the steady state models with somewhat steeper IMF slopes, which was also seen in M33. As already stated, the steep IMF slopes in the models simulate a steep present-day mass function slope, which may be a result of the way H II region stars become field stars, and not necessarily an indication of how field stars actually form.

### 3.3 Analysis of the Observed Ratios

The comparison with the Starburst99 models supports the general conclusion that the field OB star populations in these galaxies are similar to that in M33, and that they are likely to ionize a similar fraction of the DIG. However, the differences that do exist between these galaxies may indicate real differences in the amount of leakage or field star ionization present. A comparison of the mean F/FUIT ratios may elucidate some of these differences or lack thereof. Instead of comparing to models, we will compare the observed F/FUIT ratios to those seen in M33, where we have independent information on the fraction of DIG ionized by field OB stars. In this section we use only the observed values, without the extinction correction described in the last section.

The analysis is complicated by the important effects of extinction at ultraviolet wavelengths, and the possible differences in stellar populations in the field and in H II regions due to varying star formation histories, metallicity, or IMF slopes. To mitigate these complicating factors, we will begin the analysis by making some simplifying assumptions. First we will assume that the H II region stellar population is the same among galaxies. This means that the mean intrinsic F/FUIT ratio in H II regions for all of the galaxies will be the same. The variation seen in the observed ratio (Table 5) is within the range that can be explained by differences in the amount of extinction, so we have no evidence that this assumption is false. Second, we assume that the relative extinction in H II regions and DIG is the same for all galaxies. By relative, we mean that there may be more or less extinction in DIG compared to H II regions, but the difference between H II region and DIG extinction will be constant for all galaxies. For M31 and M33, the only two galaxies where this has been measured, this assumption appears to be true (Greenawalt, Walterbos, & Braun, 1997; Hoopes & Walterbos, 2000).

With these assumptions we can then use the measured H II region ratio to anchor the DIG ratio, independent of extinction. The difference between the H II region ratio and the DIG ratio can then be compared among galaxies. This approach does not suffer from the effects of any errors that might have been made in the extinction correction made using the starburst models. Table 6 lists for each galaxy the differences in the logarithm of the mean observed F/FUIT ratios for H II and DIG. If the assumptions we have made are true, then the difference in this value for different galaxies is completely due to a difference in the F/FUIT ratio in the DIG, since we have assumed that the H II ratio is constant, and the H II/DIG relative comparison removes the effects of extinction.

The interpretation of these values is still complicated. Since the H II regions are ionized by local stars with no leakage of ionizing photons into the system, the simplest interpretation is to consider them as the zero-leakage reference point for the DIG. In this case differences between the H II region and DIG ratios would be interpreted as being due to leakage, with larger differences indicating more leakage. However, all of the DIG F/FUIT ratios are smaller than the H II region ratios. The largest differences arise from the smallest DIG ratios, so taking this scenario to the extreme means that a ratio of zero (i.e. no H$`\alpha `$ emission) corresponds to maximum leakage. The key point is that leakage should always increase the F/FUIT ratio in the DIG by adding H$`\alpha `$ flux but no FUV flux. Since the DIG ratios are always lower than the H II region ratios, leakage cannot be the only factor affecting the ratios.

The other factor is the stellar population in the field, which is different from that in H II regions. Hoopes & Walterbos (2000) found that the mean spectral type of stars in the field is later than that in H II regions, a conclusion also found for the LMC, SMC, and Milky Way (Massey et al., 1995b). Later type stars have lower ratios of LLyc/FUV luminosity (i.e. more FUV luminosity relative to their ionizing luminosity). This results in lower F/FUIT ratio for DIG than H II regions in the absence of leakage. Because of this fact, H II regions do not represent the zero-leakage reference point for DIG.

However, we can use the M33 ratio as a reference point for the DIG in other galaxies, since we know that field OB stars ionize $`40`$% of the DIG in that galaxy (Hoopes & Walterbos, 2000). Table 6 shows the difference in the F/FUIT ratio relative to M33. Here we make another assumption: the mean spectral type of the field stars, while different from that in H II regions, is the same in all of the galaxies. Then the difference in the ratio can be understood as being due solely to a difference in the fraction of DIG ionized by leakage. The F/FUIT ratio for the DIG that is ionized only by field stars remains the same, independent of the number of field stars, since the mean spectral type is constant. Then any change in the DIG F/FUIT ratio is caused by the addition or subtraction of H$`\alpha `$ flux from DIG ionized by leakage.

We illustrate this scenario using M51 as an example. The observed difference in the mean log F/FUIT ratio for DIG and H II regions for M51 is 1.09, while for M33 it is 0.81. Since this is a difference of logarithms it is actually a ratio, and if the intrinsic H II region F/FUIT ratios are the same for both galaxies, this difference means that the M51 F/FUIT ratio for DIG is 0.52 that in M33. We assume that this difference is totally due to a change in the fraction of DIG ionized by leakage. In M33, 40% of the DIG is ionized by field stars, so 60% of the observed H$`\alpha `$ in the DIG come from leakage. The H$`\alpha `$ flux from leakage in M51 has to be reduced to get the lower observed F/FUIT ratio, resulting in a fraction of DIG ionized by leakage of 23%, and 77% ionized by field OB stars. The fraction of DIG ionized by field stars for each galaxy based on these assumptions is shown in Table 6.

In this scenario, field OB stars dominate the ionization of the DIG in M51 and NGC 628, NGC 1313 and NGC 1512 have smaller contributions from field stars, and the other galaxies are similar to M33. The large H$`\alpha `$ luminosities of M51 and NGC 628 indicate that they have both undergone recent galaxy-wide star formation events. If this is connected with the dominance of the field OB stars, it suggests that these events somehow enhance the creation of field OB stars, but do not affect the amount of DIG ionized by leakage. This is highly speculative however, since other galaxies in the sample have had recent star formation, but do not appear to exhibit this effect. The H$`\alpha `$ filter used for M51 contains a contribution from $`[\mathrm{N}\mathrm{II}]`$, and the $`[\mathrm{N}\mathrm{II}]`$/H$`\alpha `$ ratio is higher in the DIG, which may affect the observed difference. However, correcting for this would make the F/FUIT ratio lower in the DIG compared to H II regions, and make the difference between H II regions and DIG even larger, raising the predicted contribution of field OB stars even higher.

If the assumption that the field star populations are similar in spectral type in all galaxies is in error, the analysis becomes more complicated. In this case the F/FUIT ratio for DIG ionized by field stars will be different, higher in galaxies where the mean spectral type is earlier, and lower if the mean spectral type is later. Put another way, if the mean spectral type is earlier, then a field star population with a given amount of FUV luminosity can ionize more DIG (resulting in higher H$`\alpha `$ luminosity) than in a galaxy with a later mean spectral type in the field. The F/FUIT ratio for DIG ionized by such a population of field OB stars would be closer to that in H II regions. In M51, for example, the large difference between the H II regions and DIG ratios suggests the DIG ratio is low, which in this scenario would imply a field OB star population with a later mean spectral type than in M33. Disentangling this effect from a change in the amount of leakage is not possible with these data, as the two have the same effects on the F/FUIT ratio.

### 3.4 Radial and Surface Brightness Variations

For the following analysis we selected four galaxies in order to make the figures easier to read. Figure 5 shows the F/FUIT as a function of H$`\alpha `$ surface brightness for H II regions and DIG for four of the galaxies with the best FUV images: M33 (B1), M51, M81, and M101. The ratio is correlated with surface brightness in both environments. In the H II regions, a high F/FUIT can arise from either a hotter (i.e. younger) stellar population, or higher extinction. Although there is a trend for the F/FUIT to increase with H$`\alpha `$ surface brightness, the brightest H II regions do not have the highest F/FUIT ratios (this is most apparent in M101 or M81, for example). In fact the scatter in the ratio tends to increase as the H$`\alpha `$ intensity decreases from the brightest to moderately bright regions, so that the regions with the highest F/FUIT are only moderately bright regions, while the brightest regions have a more moderate ratio (although less so for M33). This scatter is larger than the uncertainty in the ratio, which even at a very conservative 30% in the low luminosity regions is only about $`\pm `$0.1 in the logarithmic plot. These high ratios may be caused by undersampling of the IMF in regions with low total mass of stars formed (e.g. Oey & Clarke 1998). If the undersampling causes the mass function to be top-heavy (more very massive early O stars and few or no less massive late O and B stars) a high F/FUIT ratio will result. Our choice to use the brightest H II regions to define the extinction correction for the histograms in Figures 3 and 4 rather than those with the highest F/FUIT ratio was designed to avoid these stochastic effects.

Figure 6 shows the F/FUIT ratio as a function of projected distance from the center of the galaxy. The higher ratios in the H II regions are clearly seen again, and several of the galaxies show higher ratios in the DIG toward the center of the galaxy, although it is not apparent in M101. In the total sample about half of the galaxies exhibit this trend. Possibly related to this effect is the fact that the DIG near the centers of spirals is usually brighter than DIG further out (Greenawalt 1998). The radial trend could be an effect of extinction. Higher extinction in the centers of galaxies would produce higher F/FUIT ratios.

Figure 7 shows the F/FUIT ratio in DIG regions as a function of projected distance from the nearest H II region. In general, it appears that at larger distances from H II regions, the DIG regions have lower F/FUIT, while near H II regions, the DIG regions can have low or high ratios (i.e. , the high ratio DIG regions are missing far from H II regions). A higher F/FUIT in the DIG can either mean that the field OB star population there is dominated by earlier-type stars, or it may indicate a larger fraction of leakage of ionizing photons into the region. Both scenarios seem possible near H II regions, and we cannot distinguish between the two with these data. We explore this further in Figure 8, which shows the F/FUIT for inter-arm and spiral arm DIG regions in M51. The inter-arm DIG regions generally have lower ratios than spiral arm DIG (with much overlap), but this may just be part of a continuous trend with H$`\alpha `$ surface brightness. The faintest DIG regions are the inter-arm regions, but whether this is a result of the fewer ionizing photons or less gas to ionize is not clear.

One scenario that could plausibly explain the low F/FUIT ratios in the inter-arm DIG is that a lower fraction of the DIG is ionized by leakage in the inter-arm region. In a DIG region, the field OB stars emit FUV flux and ionizing photons, but there is an extra flux of ionizing photons from outside of the region (leaking into the DIG from an H II region). Reducing this extra component of NLyc would result in a lower F/FUIT ratio. If this is the case in the inter-arm regions, one would expect fainter DIG due to fewer available ionizing photons. One would also expect the field OB stars to also be more sparse in the inter-arm region, further reducing the DIG luminosity.

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

We have compared the FUV and H$`\alpha `$ images of 10 nearby spirals in order to investigate the field star populations and their contribution to the ionization of the DIG. We find that the F/FUIT ratio is lower in the DIG than in H II regions, an indication that the field OB stars are predominantly later-types. When roughly corrected for extinction and compared to models of evolving stellar populations, we find that the DIG F/FUIT most closely resemble a steady-state model, or a burst model at an older age than H II regions. Comparing the difference between the H II region and DIG ratios with that in M33, we find that field OB stars are important contributors to the DIG ionization in most of the galaxies, and in some galaxies they may be the dominant ionization source.

The similarity of the F/FUIT in the DIG of the sample of spirals studied here to that of M33 suggests that field OB stars in these galaxies are responsible for a similar fraction of the ionization of the DIG as in M33. Evidence for some variation in this amount is seen, with field stars perhaps dominating the emission in M51 and NGC 628, but contributing relatively little in NGC 1512 and NGC 1313 (but still 15% or more). Most of the galaxies are similar to M33, however, with field OB star contributions around 40%. The variation seen depends on many assumptions, and could be affected by varying extinction, or it could be a result of differences in the mean spectral type of the field star population. As a result, the precise contributions found for each galaxy may not be reliable, and the strongest result is that field OB stars appear to be an important ionization source in all of the galaxies. If the contribution is in fact around 40% for all spirals, this reduces by almost half the amount of leakage required from H II regions to power the DIG. There are indications that other sources such as shock ionization or turbulent mixing layers (Slavin, Shull, & Begelman, 1993) contribute as much as 20% of the ionization of the DIG in some galaxies (Greenawalt, Walterbos, & Braun, 1997; Wang et al., 1997), further reducing the amount of leakage from H II regions required. In fact, Slavin, McKee, & Holenbach (2000) calculate that cooling supernova remnants may account for 50% of the ionization of the DIG in the Milky Way. The combination of these mechanisms may almost eliminate the need for density-bounded H II regions.

Elmegreen (1997, 1998) presented a fractal model of the ISM, in which ionizing photons can travel at least twice as far as the Strömgren radius. Leakage of ionizing photons from H II regions is thus expected in this model, and it should have a large effect on the gas near H II regions. It is interesting that we see some indications that the fraction of DIG ionized by leakage may be lower far from H II regions. It seems natural to expect that the DIG near H II regions and in spiral arms is ionized by leakage, and the ionization of the DIG in the inter-arm region has a more important contribution from field OB stars. This scenario can be tested through spectroscopy of the DIG, particularly with the $`\mathrm{He}\mathrm{I}`$ 5876Å and $`[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]`$ 5007+4959Å lines. These lines both require high energy photons emitted only by the earliest O stars, so they should be strongest in DIG ionized by leakage, since early O stars in H II regions would contribute to the ionizing spectrum. In the field, very early O stars are rare (Massey et al., 1995b; Hoopes & Walterbos, 2000), so these line should be weak. We plan to carry out this test in the near future.

The fact that field OB star ionization is viable in this sample of 10 spirals suggests that it may be a common feature of spirals. OB stars outside of H II regions appear to be fairly important in the energy balance of the ISM in spirals then, as the results suggest that at least 15% of the ionizing photons emitted by OB stars are not emitted in H II regions. This fraction may be higher if other sources contribute to the ionization of the DIG. Since they are in the diffuse ISM, the influence of these stars may extend much further than their counterparts in dense H II regions. By ionizing and heating the intercloud medium, they may prevent it from condensing, tempering the formation of molecular clouds, and thus star formation.

There is clearly a difference between the OB stellar population in the field and that in H II regions. The fact that the F/FUIT ratios are lower in the DIG in spite of the addition of ionizing photons through leakage from H II regions indicates that later type OB stars dominate in the field. This has bearing on the origin of this population. Since later-type OB stars have longer lives than earlier-types, they are more likely to live long enough to diffuse out of an H II region, or to survive when an H II region is destroyed by SNe from the more massive stars. In this case the mass function of field OB stars would be truncated at the stellar mass whose lifetime corresponds to the time it takes OB stars to become field stars. This time may not be the same for every star formation event, and since the field OB population is probably a mixture if stars from several star formation events, the composite IMF would appear steeper than that for H II regions. Thus while the mass function of the field OB population would be steeper than H II region stars, the initial mass function would not. However, if these stars formed in the field, then the paucity of early-type OB stars suggests that the initial mass function is steeper in the field, and that the process of star formation is fundamentally different in the field environment. In Hoopes & Walterbos (2000) and this paper, no distinction could be made between field stars that may have drifted out of H II regions and those that could only have formed in the field. The former category certainly exists, but whether it makes up all or only part of the field OB population is not clear. For LMC field OB stars, Massey et al. (1995b) carefully corrected for stars that were close enough to an H II region to have drifted out, and the mass function was still found to be steeper than in H II regions. Whether these stars may have originated in H II regions that no longer exist is not clear, but is very important in the interpretation of the mass function slope.

We are grateful for the helpful comments from the anonymous referee. This work benefited from helpful discussions with Salman Hameed and David Thilker. Bruce Greenawalt obtained and reduced much of the H$`\alpha `$ data. The archival UIT images were obtained through the Multimission Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (MAST). We would like to acknowledge the UIT project for making their data available. The availability of the Starburst99 models of C. Leitherer and collaborators was an immense help in the interpretation of the observations. This work was supported by grants from NASA (NAG5–2426) and the NSF (AST 9617014). CH was supported by a grant from the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium.


text:
# On the Interquark Potential calculation from Dirac Brackets

## I INTRODUCTION

It is well known that to gain a deeper insight into gauge theories a proper study of the concepts of screening and confinement is of considerable importance. In this connection the binding energy of an infinitely heavy quark-antiquark pair represents a fundamental concept in QCD which is expected to play an important role in the understanding of quark confinement. In this respect we recall that asymptotic freedom allows one to use perturbation theory for the description of high energy phenomena. But within this framework, we cannot explain low energy phenomena such as the permanent confinement of quarks and gluons. The reason is that the infrared divergences and gauge dependence make bound-state equations very hard to approximate. We further note that the choice of the gauge has a strong influence on the propagator. For instance, the studies of Caracciolo et al.  were crucial in the investigation of the ambiguity in the definition of the gluon propagator.

In view of the above-mentioned difficulties much attention has been recently devoted to formulations of QCD in which gauge-invariant variables are explicitly constructed. By doing so it has been possible to obtain a more direct physical insight into the description of charged fields . As a result of this development the matter fields (quarks) are now dressed by a cloud of gauge fields. Using this approach, the pure QCD correction to the Coulomb potential in 3+1 dimensions has also been derived more recently by Lavelle et al. . In particular, it was showed that such correction contains a dominant anti-screening contribution and another one which corresponds to screening by physical gluons.

On the other hand, it is well known that gauge theories fall into the class of constrained systems, where a systematic procedure for quantizing such systems has been given by Dirac . The point we wish to emphasize, however, is that because of the structure of the constraints the resulting equal-time commutation relations involve in general the coupling constant. This raises the question of how to recover from them the interquark potential between charged fields following the conventional path via the expectation value of the QCD Hamiltonian. This problem is addressed in the present letter.

## II INTERQUARK POTENTIAL

Before computing explicitly the interquark potential, we shall first present the Hamiltonian analysis for the Yang-Mills field coupled to an external source $`J^0`$. We start with the Lagrangian

$$=\frac{1}{4}Tr\left(F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\right)A_0^aJ^0=\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }^aF^{a\mu \nu }A_0^aJ^0.$$
(1)
Here $`A_\mu \left(x\right)=A_\mu ^a\left(x\right)T^a`$, where $`T^a`$ is a hermitian representation of the semi-simple and compact gauge group; and $`F_{\mu \nu }^a=_\mu A_\nu ^a_\nu A_\mu ^a+gf^{abc}A_\mu ^bA_\nu ^c`$, with $`f^{abc}`$ the structure constants of the gauge group. The Dirac procedure  as applied to (1) is straightforward. The canonical momenta are $`\mathrm{\Pi }^{a\mu }=F^{a0\mu }`$, which results in the usual primary constraints $`\mathrm{\Pi }_0^a=0`$, and $`\mathrm{\Pi }^{ai}=F^{ai0}`$. The canonical Hamiltonian following from the above Lagrangian is:

$$H_c=d^3x\left(\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\mathrm{\Pi }^{ai}+\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a^iA^{a0}+\frac{1}{4}F_{ij}^aF^{aij}gf^{abc}\mathrm{\Pi }^{ai}A^{b0}A_i^c+A_0^aJ^0\right).$$
(2)
The persistence of the primary constraints leads to the following secondary constraints

$$\mathrm{\Omega }^{a\left(1\right)}\left(x\right)=_i\mathrm{\Pi }^{ai}+gf^{abc}A^{bi}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^cJ^00.$$
(3)
It is easy to check that there are no further constraints in the theory, and that the above constraints are first class. The corresponding total (first class) Hamiltonian that generates the time evolution of the dynamical variables is given by

$$H=H_c+d^3x\left(c_0^a\left(x\right)\mathrm{\Pi }_0^a\left(x\right)+c_1^a\left(x\right)\mathrm{\Omega }^{a\left(1\right)}\left(x\right)\right),$$
(4)
where $`c_0^a`$ and $`c_1^a`$ are arbitrary functions. Since $`\mathrm{\Pi }_0^a0`$ for all time and $`\dot{A}_0^a\left(x\right)=[A_0^a\left(x\right),H]=c_0^a\left(x\right)`$, which is completely arbitrary, we discard $`A_0^a\left(x\right)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_0^a\left(x\right)`$ because they add nothing to the description of the system. The Hamiltonian then takes the form

$$H=d^3x\left(\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\mathrm{\Pi }_{ai}+\frac{1}{4}F_{ij}^aF^{aij}+c^a\left(x\right)\left(^i\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a+gf^{abc}A^{bi}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^cJ^0\right)\right),$$
(5)
where $`c^a\left(x\right)=c_1^a\left(x\right)A_0^a\left(x\right)`$.

Therefore, we have the first class constraints $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{a\left(1\right)}\left(x\right)`$ , which appear at the secondary level. Now the presence of the arbitrary quantities $`c^a\left(x\right)`$ are undesirable since we have no way of giving them a meaning in a quantum theory. To circumvent this trouble, we introduce a supplementary condition on the vector potential such that the full set of constraints becomes second class. A particularly appealing and useful choice is given by

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_a^{\left(2\right)}\left(x\right)=\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑\lambda \left(x\xi \right)^kA_k^{\left(a\right)}\left(\xi +\lambda \left(x\xi \right)\right)0,$$
(6)
where $`\lambda (0\lambda 1)`$ is the parameter describing the spacelike straight path $`x^k=\xi ^k+\lambda (x\xi )^k`$, on a fixed time slice. This supplementary condition is the non-Abelian generalization of the gauge condition discussed in , which leads to the Poincaré gauge. For simplicity we restrict our considerations to $`\xi ^k=0`$. As a consequence, (6) becomes

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_a^{(2)}\left(x\right)=\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑\lambda x^kA_k^a\left(\lambda x\right)0.$$
(7)
Now we come to the calculation of the Dirac brackets. By following the Dirac’s procedure one arives at

$$\{A_i^a\left(x\right),A_b^j\left(y\right)\}^{}=0=\{\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\left(x\right),\mathrm{\Pi }_b^j\left(y\right)\}^{},$$
(8)
$$\{A_i^a\left(x\right),\mathrm{\Pi }^{bj}\left(y\right)\}^{}=\delta ^{ab}\delta _i^j\delta ^{(3)}\left(xy\right)\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑\lambda \left(\delta ^{ab}\frac{}{x^i}gf^{abc}A_i^c\left(x\right)\right)x^j\delta ^{(3)}\left(\lambda xy\right).$$
(9)
Note the presence of the last term on the right-hand side which depends on $`g`$. In passing we note that similar Dirac brackets were obtained independently in reference .

We are now equipped to compute the interaction energy between pointlike sources in pure QCD, where a fermion is localized at the origin $`\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and an antifermion at $`𝐲`$. In order to accomplish this purpose, we will calculate the expectation value of the energy operator $`H`$ in the physical state $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$, which we will denote by $`H_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ . From our above discussion, we see that $`H_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ reads

$$H_\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Omega }\left|d^3x\left(\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\mathrm{\Pi }^{ia}+\frac{1}{4}F_{ij}^aF^{aij}\right)\right|\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(10)
Since the fermions are taken to be infinitely massive (static), this can be further simplified as

$$H_\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Omega }\left|d^3x\left(\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\left(x\right)\mathrm{\Pi }^{ia}\left(x\right)\right)\right|\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(11)
Let us also mention here that, as was first established by Dirac , the physical states $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ correspond to the gauge invariant ones. It is helpful to recall at this stage that in the Abelian case $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ may be written as

$$|\mathrm{\Omega }|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\left(𝐲\right)\mathrm{\Psi }\left(\mathrm{𝟎}\right)=\overline{\psi }\left(𝐲\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(ig\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^iA_i\left(z\right)\right)\psi \left(\mathrm{𝟎}\right)|0,$$
(12)
where $`|0`$ is the physical vacuum state and the line integral appearing in the above expression is along a spacelike path starting at $`\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and ending at $`𝐲`$, on a fixed time slice. It should be clear from this discussion that the strings between fermions have been introduced in order to have a gauge-invariant function $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$. According to this viewpoint the fermion fields are now dressed by a cloud of gauge fields.

The expression (12) may be extended on account of the fact that we have non-Abelian fields. Accordingly, we can write a state which has a fermion at $`\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and an antifermion at $`𝐲`$ as

$$|\mathrm{\Omega }=\overline{\psi }\left(𝐲\right)U(𝐲,\mathrm{𝟎})\psi \left(\mathrm{𝟎}\right)|0,$$
(13)
where

$$U(𝐲,\mathrm{𝟎})P\mathrm{exp}\left(ig\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^iA_i^a\left(z\right)T^a\right).$$
(14)
As before, the line integral is along a spacelike path on a fixed time slice, $`P`$ is the path-ordering prescription and $`|0`$ is the physical vacuum state.

This last point gives us an opportunity to compare our work with the standard Wilson loop procedure , to make sure that the known results are recovered from the general expression (13) in the weak coupling limit. In effect, due to asymptotic freedom, the short distance behavior of the interquark potential is determined by perturbation theory. According to this, at weak coupling, one can expand

$$U(𝐲,\mathrm{𝟎})P\mathrm{exp}\left(ig\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^iA_i^a\left(z\right)T^a\right)=P\left(1+ig\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^iA_i^a\left(z\right)T^a+\mathrm{}\right).$$
(15)
This implies that, at lowest order in $`g`$, the non-Abelian generalization of the dressing framework is the same as in the Abelian theory. Thus, at short distances, one should expect to obtain the known Coulomb potential in addition to a correction of order $`g^4`$, as we will now show.

With this in view, our next task is the computation of the expectation value of $`H`$ in the physical state $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ given by the expression (11). From the above Hamiltonian analysis one distinguishes here an Abelian part (proportional to $`C_F`$) and a non-Abelian part (proportional to the combination $`C_FC_A`$). We first consider the Abelian part which is identical to the $`QED`$ case. To do this, we shall begin by observing that

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\left(𝐱\right)|\mathrm{\Omega }=\overline{\psi }\left(𝐲\right)U(𝐲,\mathrm{𝟎})\psi \left(\mathrm{𝟎}\right)\mathrm{\Pi }_i^a\left(𝐱\right)|0+gT^a\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z_i\delta \left(𝐱𝐳\right)|\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(16)
Using this in (11) we then evaluate the interaction energy in the presence of the static charges

$$V^{g^2}=\frac{1}{2}g^2trT^aT^a\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^i\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z_i^{}\delta \left(𝐳𝐳^{}\right),$$
(17)
remembering that the integrals over $`z^i`$ and $`z_i^{}`$ are zero except on the contour of integration. Writing the purely group theoretic factor $`trT^aT^a=C_F`$, the expression (17) leads to

$$V^{g^2}(L)=\frac{1}{2}g^2C_FkL,$$
(18)
after subtracting the term $`H_0=0|H|0`$, where $`|𝐲|L`$ and $`k=\delta ^{(2)}(0)`$. This calculation shows that special care is required in order to clarify the appearance of this peculiar result. It may be remarked, however, that the origin of the divergence is quite clear, so that it is possible to extract the Coulomb potential from the infinite contribution. Notice that the origin of the divergent factor $`k`$ is due to the fact that the thickness of the string is nonvanishing only on the contour of integration. It is worth stressing at this stage that a more careful examination of the term $`\frac{g^2}{2}d^3x\left(\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z_i\delta ^{(3)}\left(xz\right)\right)^2`$ reproduces exactly the expected Coulomb interaction between charges after subtracting the self-energy term, as was discussed in . Having made this observation, we write immediately the standard result for the potential to order $`g^2`$, that is,

$$V^{g^2}(L)=\frac{1}{4\pi }g^2C_F\frac{1}{L}.$$
(19)
Let us also mention here that if we had considered a modified form for the supplementary condition (6), which is equivalent to the Coulomb gauge , the result for the potential would have been the same.

We now turn our attention to the non-Abelian part. From the expressions (9) and (11), we see that the $`g^4`$ contribution may be written in the form

$$V^{g^4}=d^3x0\left|\left(I^i\right)^2\right|0,$$
(20)
where

$$I^i=g^2f^{bac}T^b\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^k\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑\lambda A_k^c\left(z\right)z^i\delta \left(𝐱\lambda 𝐳\right).$$
(21)
The expression (21) may then be further manipulated as described in . Thus, if we use spherical coordinates, we find that

$$I^i=g^2f^{bac}T^b\frac{𝐳^i}{|𝐳|}\frac{1}{|𝐱|^2}\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^kA_k^c(z)\underset{lm}{}Y_{lm}^{}(\theta ^{},\phi ^{})Y_{lm}(\theta ,\phi ).$$
(22)
Now, by employing (22) we can reduce (20) to

$$V^{g^4}=\frac{1}{2}g^4trd^3x0\left|\left(f^{bac}T^b\frac{𝐳^i}{|𝐳|}\frac{1}{|𝐱|^2}\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^kA_k^c(z)\underset{lm}{}Y_{lm}^{}(\theta ^{},\phi ^{})Y_{lm}(\theta ,\phi )\right)^2\right|0,$$
(23)
which, by introducing the integration variable $`𝐫=𝐱`$ and using usual properties for the spherical harmonics, may be rewritten as

$$V^{g^4}\left(L\right)=\frac{1}{2}g^4C_AC_F\left(\frac{1}{L}\right)\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^i\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑z^jD_{ij}(z,z^{}).$$
(24)
Here $`D_{ij}(z,z^{})`$ is the propagator, which is diagonal in colour and taken in an arbitrary gauge. Thus, in order to carry out this calculation, we choose, for example, $`D_{ij}(z,z^{})`$ in the Feynman gauge. Hence expression (24) reduces to

$$V^{g^4}\left(L\right)=\frac{1}{8\pi ^2}g^4C_AC_F\left(\frac{1}{L}\right)\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑𝐳\underset{\mathrm{𝟎}}{\overset{𝐲}{}}𝑑𝐳^{}\frac{1}{\left(zz^{}\right)^2}.$$
(25)
This allows us to derive the $`g^4`$ contribution

$$V^{g^4}\left(L\right)=g^4\frac{1}{4\pi ^2}C_AC_F\frac{1}{L}\mathrm{log}\left(\mu L\right),$$
(26)
where $`\mu `$ is a cutoff. By putting together Eqs.(19) and (26), we obtain for the total interquark potential

$$V\left(L\right)=g^2C_F\frac{1}{4\pi L}\left(1+\frac{g^2}{\pi }C_A\mathrm{log}\left(\mu L\right)\right).$$
(27)
In this way one obtains the known heavy interquark potential at lowest order in $`g`$ . However, the central difference between the above analysis and that of Ref.  rests in the fact that the potential (27) is directly recovered from the constraints structure of the theory we have discussed. In this context, the present investigation complements the discussion done in Ref., as well as it reveals the general viability of our analysis. Thus it seems a challenging job to extend the scope of applicability of the above analysis. We expect to report on progress along these lines soon.

## III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank G. Cvetic for helpful comments on the manuscript. Work supported in part by Fondecyt (Chile) grant 1000710, and by a Cátedra Presidencial (Chile). I would also like to thank I. Schmidt for his support.


text:
# 1 Comparison between the spectrum of the GBR, measured by EGRET (Sreekumar et al. 1998), and the prediction for ICS of starlight and the CMB by CR electrons. The slope is our central prediction, the normalization is the one obtained for hₑ=20 kpc, 𝜌ₑ=35 kpc.

Galactic Origin of the Alleged Extragalactic Gamma Background Radiation
Arnon Dar
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

Abstract

The diffuse gamma-ray background radiation (GBR) at high Galactic latitudes could be dominated by inverse Compton scattering (ICS) of cosmic ray (CR) electrons on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CBR) and on starlight (SL) in an extended CR halo of our galaxy. Assuming the locally observed CR electron spectrum beyond a few GeV, which follows from equilibrium between Fermi acceleration and radiative cooling, to be a universal spectrum throughout our galaxy and its CR halo, we reproduce the observed spectral index, the intensity and the angular dependence of the GBR, in directions away from the galactic disk and centre, without recourse to hypothetical extragalactic sources.

1. The GBR: The existence of an isotropic, diffuse extragalactic gamma background radiation (GBR) was first suggested by data from the SAS 2 satellite (Thompson & Fichtel 1982) and claimed to be confirmed by the EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (e.g. Sreekumar et al. 1998). The alleged extragalactic diffuse GBR is the diffuse emission observed by EGRET by masking the galactic plane at latitudes $`|\mathrm{b}|10^\mathrm{o}`$, as well as the galactic centre at $`|\mathrm{b}|30^\mathrm{o}`$ for longitudes $`|\mathrm{l}|40^\mathrm{o}`$, and by extrapolating to zero column density, to eliminate the $`\pi ^0`$ and bremsstrahlung contributions to the observed radiation and to tame the model-dependence of the results. Outside the mask, the GBR flux integrated over all directions in the observed energy range of $`30`$ MeV to $`120\mathrm{GeV}`$, shown in Fig. 1, is well described by a power law:

$$\frac{\mathrm{dF}_\gamma }{\mathrm{dE}}(2.74\pm 0.11)\times 10^3\left[\frac{\mathrm{E}}{\mathrm{MeV}}\right]^{2.10\pm 0.03}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1\mathrm{MeV}^1.$$
(1)
The overall magnitude in Eq. (1) is sensitive to the model used to subtract the foreground (Sreekumar et al. 1998; Strong et al. 1998), but the spectral index is not. The EGRET data are given in Sreekumar et al. (1998) for 36 $`(\mathrm{b},\mathrm{l})`$ domains, 9 values for each half-hemisphere. The spectral index is, within errors, extremely directionally uniform, as shown in Fig. 2, where we have plotted the EGRET results as functions of $`\theta `$, the observation angle relative to the direction to the galactic centre ($`\mathrm{cos}\theta =\mathrm{cos}[\mathrm{b}]\mathrm{cos}[\mathrm{l}]`$). The normalization is less homogeneous, but in directions well above the galactic disk and away from the galactic-centre region it has been found to be consistent with a normal distribution around the mean value: thus the claim of a possible extragalactic origin (Sreekumar et al. 1998).

The origin of this diffuse GBR is still unknown. The published candidate sources range from the quite conventional to the decisively speculative. Perhaps the most conservative hypothesis is that the GBR is extragalactic, and originates from active galaxies (Bignami et al. 1979; Kazanas & Protheroe 1983; Stecker & Salamon 1996). The fact that blazars have a $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum with an average index $`2.15\pm 0.04`$, compatible with that of the GBR, supports this hypothesis (Chiang & Mukerjee 1998). The possibility has also been discussed that Geminga-type pulsars, expelled into the galactic halo by asymmetric supernova explosions, be abundant enough to explain the GBR (Dixon et al. 1998; Hartmann 1995). More exotic hypotheses include a baryon-symmetric universe (Stecker et al. 1971), now excluded (Cohen et al. 1998), primordial black hole evaporation (Page & Hawking 1976; Hawking 1977), supermassive black holes formed at very high redshift (Gnedin & Ostriker 1992), annihilation of weakly interactive big-bang remnants (Silk & Srednicki 1984; Rudaz & Stecker 1991), and a long etc.

The EGRET GBR data in directions above the galactic disk and centre show a significant deviation from isotropy, correlated with the structure of our galaxy and our position relative to its centre (Dar et al. 1999). In Fig. 4 we have plotted, as a function of $`\theta `$, the EGRET GBR counting-rate above 100 MeV. This figure clearly shows, in three out of the four quarters of the celestial sphere, an increase of the counting rate towards the galactic centre. The “reduced” $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom for a constant flux is 2.6: very unsatisfactory. A best fit of the form $`\mathrm{F}=\mathrm{F}_0+\mathrm{F}_1(1\mathrm{cos}\theta )`$ yields $`\overline{\chi }^2=1.3`$, a very large amelioration (for higher polynomials in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ the higher-order coefficients are compatible with zero: the fit does not significantly improve). Note also that at angles with $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ larger than its mean value $`\mathrm{cos}\theta =0.0246`$ ($`\theta <88.6^\mathrm{o}`$), 10 out of the 12 data points are above the average flux, while at angles with $`\theta >88.6^\mathrm{o}`$, 18 out of the 24 data points are below the average. The probability for a uniform distribution to produce this large or a larger fluctuation is $`1.5\times 10^4`$. Even in directions pointing to the galactic disk and the galactic centre, EGRET data on $`\gamma `$-rays above 1 GeV show an excess over the expectation from galactic cosmic-ray production of $`\pi ^0`$’s (Pohl & Esposito 1998). Electron bremsstrahlung in gas is not the source of the 1–30 MeV inner-Galaxy $`\gamma `$-rays observed by COMPTEL (Strong et al. 1997), since their galactic latitude distribution is broader than that of the gas. These findings also imply that inverse Compton scattering may be much more important than previously believed (Strong & Moskalenko 1998; Moskalenko and Strong, 2000; Dar et al. 1999).

Thus, it appears that the EGRET data advocates a local (as opposed to cosmological) origin for the GBR. Indications of a large galactic contribution to the GBR at large latitudes were independently found by Dixon et al. (1998) by means of a wavelet-based “non-parametric” approach that makes no reference to a particular model. Strong & Moskalenko (1998) and Moskalenko & Strong (2000) also found that the contribution of inverse Compton scattering of galactic cosmic ray electrons to the diffuse $`\gamma `$-ray background is presumably much larger than previously thought.

2. Galactic Origin of the GBR: In recent publications we went one step further (Dar et al. 1999; Dar & De Rj́ula 2000) and explored in detail the possibility that the diffuse gamma-ray background radiation at high galactic latitudes could be dominated by inverse Compton scattering of cosmic ray (CR) electrons on the cosmic microwave background radiation and on starlight from our own galaxy. We made three very simple assumptions: (1) The locally-measured electron spectrum, shown in Fig. 4, which is well fitted, from $`\mathrm{E}10\mathrm{GeV}`$ to $`2`$ TeV by,

$$\frac{\mathrm{dF}_\mathrm{e}}{\mathrm{dE}}(2.5\pm 0.5)\times 10^5\left[\frac{\mathrm{E}}{\mathrm{MeV}}\right]^{3.2\pm 0.10}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1\mathrm{MeV}^1,$$
(2)
is representative of its average form throughout the Galaxy and its extended CR halo. (2) Above a few GeV the acceleration of CR electrons is in equilibrium with their cooling by inverse Compton scattering (ICS) on starlight and on the microwave background radiation. (3) The GBR is produced by ICS of CR electrons on CBR and starlight photons in our Galaxy and in external galaxies.

Assumptions (1) and (2) allow us to derive directly, the GBR spectral index from the observed electron index: $`\beta _\gamma =(\beta _\mathrm{e}+1)/2=2.10\pm 0.05`$. It agrees with the GBR index as observed by EGRET, $`\beta _\gamma =2.10\pm 0.03`$. This index is universal, independent of whether the ICS took place in our Galaxy or in external galaxies.

The two dominant contributions to the GBR within our model are inverse Compton scattering of Galactic CR-electrons off the cosmic background radiation and starlight. There is a small additive effect of ICS from sunlight. The contribution from external galaxies, is also sub-dominant. The ICS spectrum –a cumbersome convolution (Felten & Morrison 1966) of a CR power spectrum $`\mathrm{dn}_\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{dE}=\mathrm{A}\mathrm{E}^{\beta _\mathrm{e}}`$ with a photon thermal distribution– can be approximated very simply (Dar & De Rújula 2000) by

$$\frac{\mathrm{dF}^\mathrm{i}\gamma }{\mathrm{dE}}=\frac{\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{i}(\mathrm{b},\mathrm{l})\sigma __\mathrm{T}\mathrm{A}}{2}\left[\frac{4ϵ_\mathrm{i}\mathrm{MeV}}{3\mathrm{m}_\mathrm{e}^2\mathrm{c}^4}\right]^{\frac{\beta _\mathrm{e}1}{2}}\left[\frac{\mathrm{E}}{\mathrm{MeV}}\right]^{\frac{\beta _\mathrm{e}+1}{2}},$$
(3)
where $`\sigma _\mathrm{T}=0.65\times 10^{24}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is the Thomson cross section, $`ϵ_\mathrm{i}`$ are the mean photon energies of starlight and of the CBR and $`\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{i}(\mathrm{b},\mathrm{l})`$ are the effective CR electron column density resulting from the convolution of the space distribution of CR electrons with those of starlight and of the CBR in the direction (b,l). Simple analytical expressions for them are given in Dar & De Rújula (2000).

Our predictions of the intensity and the angular dependence of the GBR are shown in Figs. 5, 6. Like that for the spectral index, they are in excellent agreement with those observed for the alleged extragalactic GBR, leading to the conclusion that the GBR could be dominated by the emission from our own galaxy.

The only non-conventional aspect of our model is that, in order to reproduce the observed intensity of the GBR, we must assume the scale height of our galaxy’s CR-electron distribution to be almost twice the traditionally-accepted upper limit. Such a large scale height is not in contradiction with radio synchrotron-emission from our galaxy if the galactic disk and its magnetic field are embedded in a larger magnetic halo with a much weaker field.

3. Predictions: The main predictions specific to our scenario are:
(1) The GBR should reflect the asymmetry of our off-centre position in the Galaxy.
(2) Very nearby star-burst Galaxies, such as M82, and radio galaxies with presumably large CR production rates, such as Cygnus A, may be visible in gamma rays.
(3) The GBR spectrum should not have the sharp cutoff, above $`\mathrm{E}100`$ GeV, expected (Salamon & Stecker 1998) for cosmological sources. But it should nonetheless steepen around 10–100 GeV, because of the anticipated “knee” in the electron spectrum and of the energy-dependence of the Klein-Nishina cross section.

These features of our scenario should be testable when the next generation of cosmic-ray and $`\gamma `$-ray satellites (AMS-02 and GLAST) are operational, hopefully by 2005.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This talk is based on a research done in collaboration with A. De Rújula. It was supported in part by the Helen Asher Fund for Space Reseach and by the V.P.R. Fund - Steiner Research Fund at the Technion.

REFERENCES
Barwick S. W. et al., 1998, ApJ, 498, 779
Bignami G. et al., 1979, ApJ, 232, 649
Cohen A., De Rújula A., Glashow S. L., 1998, ApJ, 495, 539
Dar A., De Rújula A., Antoniou N., 1999, astro-ph/9901004, in press
Dar A., De Rújula A., astro-ph/0005080, MNRAS in press
Dixon D. D. et al., 1998, New Astron. 3, 539
Evenson P., Meyers P., 1984, J. Geophys. Res., 89 A5, 2647
Felten J. E., Morrison P., 1966, ApJ, 146, 686
Ferrando P. et al., 1996, A&A 316, 528
Golden R. L. et al., 1984, ApJ, 287, 622
Golden R. L., et al., 1994, ApJ, 436, 739
Hartmann D. H., 1995, ApJ, 447, 646
Kazanas D., Protheroe J. P., 1983, Nature, 302, 228
Moskalenko I. V., Strong A. W., Reimer O., 1998, astro-ph/9811221
Moskalenko I. V., Strong A. W., 2000, ApJ, 528, 357
Nishimura J. et al., 1980, ApJ, 238, 394
Page D. N., Hawking S. W., 1976, ApJ, 206, 1
Pohl M., Esposito J. A., 1998, ApJ, 507, 327
Prince T. A., 1979, ApJ, 227, 676
Rudaz S., Stecker F. W., 1991, ApJ, 368, 40
Salamon M. H., Stecker F. W., 1998, ApJ, 493, 547
Silk J., Srednicki M., 1984, PRL, 53, 264
Sreekumar P. et al., 1998, ApJ, 494, 523
Stecker F. W., Salamon M. H., 1996, ApJ, 464, 600
Stecker F. W., Morgan D. L., Bredekamp J., 1971, PRL, 27, 1469
Strong A., Moskalenko I. V., 1998, ApJ, 509, 212
Strong A. W. et al., 1997, in Proceedings of the 4th Compton Symposium, AIP, 410, 1198
Strong A. W., Moskalenko I. V., Reimer O., 1998, astro-ph/9811296
Tang K. K., 1984, ApJ, 278, 881
Thompson D. J., Fichtel C. E., 1982, A&A, 109, 352