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# STIS spectroscopy of newborn massive stars in SMC N81Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

Understanding the formation of massive stars, which is still a largely unsolved problem, requires studying them at the earliest phases where they can be reached through the enshrouding material at different wavelengths. While high resolution radio continuum observations allow the investigation of ultracompact H ii regions formed around newborn massive stars (Churchwell chur (1990)), high angular resolution observations in the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared are also necessary to access accurate physical parameters of these stars in order to identify their evolutionary states (Walborn & Fitzpatrick wal (1990), Walborn et al. 1995b , Hanson et al. hanson (1996)). In particular UV observations are of prime importance since massive stars emit the bulk of their energy in this wavelength range. In practice though observing newborn massive stars is not straightforward for several reasons. Mainly, they are very rare, and the relatively small evolutionary timescales involved make it difficult to catch them just at this very point in their evolution, that is when they become observable in the UV and visible (Yorke & Krügel yk (1977), Shu et al. shu (1987), Palla & Stahler pal (1990), Beech & Mitalas bee (1994), Bernasconi & Maeder bern (1996)).

We have amply argued that the compact H ii regions known as HEBs (High Excitation Blobs) provide the best opportunities for a direct access to massive stars at very early stages of their evolution (Heydari-Malayeri et al. 2001a  and references therein). The members of this distinct and very rare class of ionized nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds are small and compact ($``$ 5′′ to 10′′ in diameter corresponding to $``$ 1.5–3.0 pc), in contrast to the typical H ii regions in those galaxies, which are extended structures (sizes of several arc minutes corresponding to more than 50 pc, powered by a large number of exciting stars). In general, HEBs are also heavily affected by local dust, as one would expect from their very young age (Heydari-Malayeri et al. 2001a  and references therein, see also Israel & Koornneef ik91 (1991)). And their study is pertinent to understanding the process of massive star formation especially in the context of the Magellanic Clouds.

Our recent high resolution imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope (GO 6563, GO 8246) using the Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC2) has for the first time resolved several HEBs which had appeared featureless to ground-based telescopes: SMC N81, N88A, LMC 159-5 (the Papillon nebula), N83B, and N11A (Heydari-Malayeri et al. 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 2001a, 2001b). The HST observations uncover the so far hidden stellar content as well as the nebular features of these compact nebulae and display a turbulent environment typical of newborn massive star formation sites: outstanding emission ridges created by shocks and cavities sculpted in the ionized gas by the powerful winds of massive stars, prominent dust structures protruding from hot gas. The observations also bring to light even more compact H ii blobs, immersed in the HEBs, harboring newborn, hot stars.

The present paper is devoted to N81, also known as DEM 138 (Henize henize (1956), Davies et al. dem (1976)), a nebula only $``$ 10′′ across and located in the Shapley Wing at $``$ 1.2 ($``$ 1.2 kpc) from the main body of the SMC. A first detailed study of this compact H ii region carried out by Heydari-Malayeri et al. (hey88 (1988)), revealed its nature and some of its physical characteristics: gas density and temperature, chemical composition, mass, age, etc. Subsequently, near infrared observations showed the presence of H2 emission towards N81 (Israel & Koornneef ik88 (1988)), while 12CO (1-̇0̇) emission at two points towards this H ii region was also detected (Israel et al. is (1993)). However, due to the lack of sufficient spatial resolution, it was not possible to view and study the exciting star(s) hidden inside the ionized gas. Therefore, the rather important question, which is often challenged by star formation theories, of whether N81 was powered by a single massive star or a cluster of them, remained unanswered. This is, however, a critical question for theories of star formation.

High spatial resolution imaging with HST allowed us to resolve N81 and reveal the presence of a tight cluster of newborn massive stars embedded in this compact nebula (Heydari-Malayeri et al. hey99 (1999), hereafter Paper I). Six of the stars are grouped in the core region of $``$ 2′′ diameter, with a pair of the main exciting stars in the very center separated by only 0′′.27 or 0.08 pc. The images also displayed conspicuous marks of strong stellar winds, shocks, and ionization fronts characterising turbulent massive star forming regions. Moreover they revealed prominent dust lanes dividing the nebula into three lobes. One of the lanes running over 15′′ (4.5 pc) ends in a magnificent curved plume. A remarkable absorption “hole” or dark globule of radius $``$ 0′′.25 ($``$ 0.07 pc) is situated towards the center of the H ii region, where the extinction reaches higher values (AV = 1.3 mag). These absorption features are probably parts of the molecular cloud which has given birth to the massive stars.

From the Strömgren uvby imaging with WFPC2 we carried out the photometry of some 50 stars towards N81. This allowed us, using color-magnitude diagrams, to select the main exciting stars of the region. This paper is devoted to the spectroscopy of these stars. We derive spectral classification for these very young massive stars and study their nature.

## 2 Observations and reduction

The General Observer Program No 8246 devoted to observations of N 81 was performed with Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, STIS (Woodgate et al. wood (1998)) on board HST on 28 and 31 October 1999. The spectra were obtained with the far-UV Multi-Anode Microchannel Array (MAMA) detector in the G140L mode covering the wavelength range 1120–1715 Å. All the observations were made through the 52′′$`\times `$ 0′′.2 entrance slit. The effective resolution was 0.6 Å per pixel of 25 $`\mu `$m, corresponding to a dispersion of 24 Å mm-1, or a resolution of 1.2 Å (FWHM). The exposure times were set according to the apparent magnitudes of the stars in order to equalize the signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) of the spectrograms. Total exposure times varied from 1229 sec (stars #1 and #2) to 3169 sec (stars #3, #4, and #8). Three relatively faint stars (#5, #7, #10), not initially scheduled for observations, happened to lie on the slit when observing their adjacent stars (#3 and #11). The S/N ratio is particularly weak for these stars, yet we present the spectrogram of star #5 which shows some interesting features. STIS was also used to obtain the spectra of the N81 stars in the visible domain. The grating G430L covered the range of 2900 to 5700 Å with a resolution of of 2.73 Å per pixel. The CCD pixels of 21 $`\mu `$m yielded a dispersion of 130 Å mm-1. The exposure times ranged from 24 sec (star #1) to 750 sec (star #8).

The calibrated output products from the standard pipeline use a default extraction aperture of 22 pixels (0′′.53 on the sky). We carefully reprocessed the 2D images using the most recent calibration reference files applicable to the observations and extracted the spectra using slits of both 6 and 2 pixels. We verified the centering of the stars on the slits, and tested for the effects of different sky background extraction on our spectra. The 6 pixel slit yielded spectra which are very similar to those produced by the standard pipeline with an insignificant loss in S/N. Even the 2 pixel slit did not indicate any extraction effect due to its size other than the expected loss in S/N. Comparing the resulting line profiles as a function of the aperture width, we found that other than an increase in noise when going to the smaller slits, and slightly modifying the slope of the spectra (because of slight tilt of the spectral images), the line profiles do not change by any significant amount. The spectra displayed in Figs. 1 and 2 are based on 6 pixel extraction apertures.

## 3 Results

The N81 stars observed with STIS are listed in Table 1, and their physical location can be seen on Fig. 2 of Paper I. The table also presents the corresponding photometry of the stars (Paper I). The color excesses $`E(BV)`$ were derived from $`E(by)`$ using the intrinsic color $`(by)_0=0.15`$ mag for hot stars (Relyea & Kurucz rk (1978)) and assuming that our observed colors represent the standard Strömgren system. Then the relation $`E(BV)=1.49E(by)`$ (Kaltcheva & Georgiev kg (1992)) was used to transform into the Johnson system, which finally yielded the extinctions $`A_V=3.1E(BV)`$. The estimated absolute magnitudes are based on a distance modulus $`M`$ – $`m`$ = 19.0 mag (corresponding to a distance of 63.2 kpc, e.g. Di Benedetto di (1997) and references therein) and assuming that the Strömgren $`y`$ filter is equal to the Johnson $`V`$.

The final reduced spectrograms are presented in Figs. 1 and 2, where the former figure includes the four brightest stars of the sample, whereas Fig. 2 displays the fainter ones. The main stellar features (C iii$`\lambda `$ 1176, N v$`\lambda `$ 1239, 1243, O v$`\lambda `$ 1371, Si iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1394, 1403, C iv$`\lambda `$ 1548, 1551, and He ii$`\lambda `$ 1640) are distinguished with tick marks. The labels appearing below the features indicate cases where contamination with an interstellar component is possible. The identification of S v$`\lambda `$ 1502 Å is based on the work of Werner & Rauch (wr (2001)).

An outstanding aspect of these spectra is the extreme weakness of the UV wind profiles. Weak stellar wind features in SMC O stars have already been found by several workers (Hatchings hutchings (1982), Garmany & Conti garmany (1985), Walborn et al. 1995b ), who ascribed them to the metal deficiency of the SMC leading to a reduced radiation pressure responsible for driving the winds of early type stars. More recent observations have further confirmed this result (Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler smith\_neubig\_smc (1997), Walborn et al. wal00 (2000)). However, the wind features observed in the stars of N81 are even weaker. If we consider the usually stronger wind lines seen in O stars (such as the N v$`\lambda `$ 1239, 1243 and C iv$`\lambda `$ 1548, 1551 in dwarfs, or the Si iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1394, 1403 in giants/supergiants), with the exception perhaps of star #5, none shows the emission part of a P-Cygni profile and the absorption is extremely weak particularly for N v$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1239, 1243. For stars which we classify as O types (see below), such a behavior is observed for the first time.

### 3.1 Spectral classification

Traditionally the spectral classification schemes of stars are based on their optical spectra. However, recent studies comparing spectral features in the optical and UV have resulted in a global, coherent picture of classification criteria (Walborn et al. wal85 (1985), 1995a , Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler smith\_neubig\_smc (1997), smith\_neubig\_lmc (1999)). In particular, Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler (smith\_neubig\_smc (1997)) have proposed a UV classification system for O and B stars of the SMC which is defined by a set of standard, low resolution spectra observed with the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE). This UV scheme, which was used by the authors to derive classifications for 133 O and B stars of the SMC, while independent of the MK system, shows general agreement with those deduced from visual data.

The low S/N ratio of our STIS optical spectra and in particular their contamination with strong nebular emission lines limit their practical use for spectral classification. This can be understood since N81 is a very bright compact H ii region with strong nebular emission lines in the visible part of the spectrum (Paper I). Although nebular emission lines are present also in the UV part, they are much less troublesome. Therefore, we will use the method put forward by Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler (smith\_neubig\_smc (1997)). However, given some morphological differences of the N81 UV spectra with previously well studied stars, the limitations of the optical part of the spectrum mentioned earlier, and the constraints available from the UV classification scheme (Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler smith\_neubig\_smc (1997)), it is clear that there is no unique solution to the spectral classification of our targets.

The presence of He ii $`\lambda `$ 1640 and O v $`\lambda `$ 1371 in all spectra, except perhaps in stars #13 and #8 which have lower S/N ratios, is the first and strongest evidence that we are observing O type stars. These spectra though display characteristics suggesting that the stars also belong to the dwarf luminosity class since the features Si iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1394, 1403 as well as N v$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1239, 1243 and C iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1548, 1551 are weak (even weaker than usual). Star #5 may be a different case as explained below. These features are known to increase with luminosity, ranging from weak P-Cyg profiles on the main sequence to very pronounced P-Cyg profiles in the supergiants (Walborn et al. 1995a , Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler smith\_neubig\_smc (1997)). A dwarf luminosity class is also supported by the optical spectra which show no He ii$`\lambda `$ 4686 and N iii$`\lambda `$ 4640 emission. Although the morphology of the N81 spectra differs qualitatively from that of the known O types, we may classify them as “zero age main sequence dwarf” Vz, based on the weakness of the wind lines (Walborn & Parker wp (1992), Walborn & Blades wb (1997), Walborn et al. wal00 (2000)). Note that the original definition of the Vz class is He ii$`\lambda `$ 4686 absorption much stronger than He ii$`\lambda `$ 4541 or He i$`\lambda `$ 4471, and therefore the association of these stars with that class is indirect.

No clear distinction between the various subtypes can be made based on the available spectral features, but it is very likely that all stars are of a late O type ($``$ O6 – O8). This is supported by the following three facts. First, the presence of the O v $`\lambda `$ 1371 feature indicates a spectral type earlier than $``$ O8 (Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler smith\_neubig\_smc (1997)). Second, the weakness of the Si iii $`\lambda `$ 1300 feature, which appears in the wing of O i \+ Si ii $`\lambda `$ 1304, excludes much later types. Finally, the N v$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1239, 1243 feature is weaker than C iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1548, 1551, which is only seen in O types $``$ O6–O7 or alternatively in OC stars (Walborn & Panek wpan (1985)).

Star #5 shows some puzzling emission features in its spectrum ($`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1480, 1508, 1616, and 1640 Å), at least one of which, He ii$`\lambda `$ 1640, is apparently part of a P-Cyg profile. It should be stressed though that the S/N ratio is not high enough to be absolutely certain about their presence. If these were indeed wind induced features, their presence would confirm the fact that the C iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 1548, 1551 profile has a particularly marked emission component compared to the other stars of the sample. Since both of the He ii$`\lambda `$ 1604 and S v$`\lambda `$ 1502 lines show P-Cyg profiles in Of and Wolf-Rayet spectra (Walborn et al. wal85 (1985), Willis et al. willis (1986)), star #5 appears to be an Of or WR candidate in N81.

### 3.2 Stellar parameters and wind properties

To constrain the stellar wind properties we have examined the line profiles of the strongest UV lines. The best indications for velocity shifts come from the C iv$`\lambda `$ 1548, 1551 feature. The profiles of stars #1 and #2 show blue-shifted absorption reaching up to velocities of $``$ 1700 and 2000 km s-1 respectively. These values are compatible with terminal velocity measurements in other SMC O stars of similar spectral type (Walborn et al. 1995b , Prinja & Crowther pc98 (1998)). For star #5 we derive a terminal velocity of 1000 km s-1, while in the other profiles the terminal velocities are lower. However, these profiles also show asymmetries which are stronger on the red side, and further investigations will be necessary to understand their structure in detail.

Using an effective temperature derived from the estimated spectral types (O6–O8), in particular the one from Vacca et al. (vacca (1996)) for dwarfs, and the absolute magnitudes from Table 1, we place the N81 stars (filled circles) in an HR-like diagram (Fig. 3). For further comparison we also include the mean $`M_V`$ magnitudes for O3–B0 dwarfs based on a compilation by Vacca et al. (vacca (1996)), as well as the mean $`M_V`$ relation of Walborn (wal72 (1972)) used by Walborn & Blades (wb (1997)) for 30 Doradus stars. Fig. 3 clearly shows that most of the stars in N81 are sub-luminous compared to the mean $`M_V`$ for dwarfs. This finding still holds even if the spectral types are shifted by 1-2 subtypes towards later types. Compared to the so-called Vz luminosity class, the sub-luminosity of the N81 stars is more pronounced. Our targets are up to $``$ 2 mag fainter in $`M_V`$ than the mean relation for dwarfs! Although this is not the defining characteristic of the Vz class, the above indications as well the weakness of the UV wind lines further attests that these stars belong to the Vz class.

Two sets of ZAMS and isochrones of 4 Myr are presented in Fig. 3 using the Geneva stellar evolution tracks for metallicities bracketing approximately that of the SMC (Lejeune & Schaerer ls (2001)). One set has been computed for a metallicity 1/20 Solar ($`Z=0.001`$) and is marked with a long-dashed line, while the second has a metallicity of 1/5 Solar ($`Z=0.004`$) and is marked with a dotted line. The observed $`M_V`$ and spectral types are roughly compatible with positions close to the theoretical ZAMS or young ages. Given mostly the lack of an accurate spectral subtype determination we cannot firmly establish if the lower luminosity stars (#8, #13) are really hotter than the ZAMS. Atmospheric modeling is in progress to obtain more accurate stellar parameters of these unique young stars in the SMC (Martins et al., in preparation). Based on the $`Z=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.004}`$ tracks, the ZAMS luminosities and masses corresponding to the observed $`M_V`$ are between $`\mathrm{log}L/L_{}`$ 4.2 – 5.5 and $``$ 14 – 50 M respectively.

## 4 Discussion

The HST spectra of N81 presented here are the first ones ever obtained from a tight cluster of stars in a HEB. The reason is that these stars, embedded in a compact emission nebula, have not been reachable by ground-based telescopes. And even with recent developments in ground-based instruments, taking spectra of individual stars in the visible remains still practically infeasible. As a result, contrary to other massive stars in the SMC that have been observed from space in the UV (Walborn et al. 1995b , wal00 (2000), Smith Neubig & Bruhweiler smith\_neubig\_smc (1997)), the N81 stars lack high quality spectra in the visible. Our low-resolution HST spectra in the visible, imposed by stringent time allocation constraints, were intended to be a first exploratory such attempt.

Massive stars observed from the ground and also with HST are typically much brighter than the ones seen in N81 and comparably they are much less affected by nebular emission and dust. The decoupling from nebulae is presumably due to the evolutionary state of these stars; they have had enough time to entirely and/or effectively disrupt their H ii regions and the associated dust. This means that those bright stars are older than the N81 members, as supported by their spectra. Among the 15 SMC stars studied by Walborn et al. (wal00 (2000)), 9 are clearly giants, 5 are peculiar and have already developed emission line features of N iv$`\lambda `$ 4058, N iii$`\lambda `$ 4640, or C iii$`\lambda `$ 4650 (two of them being on the main sequence), and the last one is a pure main sequence.

The fact that all the observed exciting stars of N81 display the Vz characteristics, further supports the very young age of the cluster (Paper I). This observed concentration of Vz stars in a small region is intriguing since in the LMC region of 30 Doradus only 6 of the 104 O and early B stars classified by Walborn & Blades (wb (1997)), that is $``$ 6%, belonged to the Vz category. If we assume that all 20 bright stars we detected towards N81 (Paper I) are of O or B type, then the lower limit for the fraction of Vz stars in N81 is nearly 35%, which is quite considerable!

The exact nature and evolutionary stage of Vz stars is still unknown. Presumably these objects are close to a transition from their formation locus in the HR diagram to the main sequence. However, several issues regarding their properties, which are relevant to our observations of compact low-metallicity H ii regions, remain open:

1. Why do these stars show such weak stellar winds? Are their mass loss rates compatible with expectations from “normal” O stars, i.e. due to their reduced luminosity compared to stars with similar effective temperatures and representative for massive stars in their earliest evolutionary stage?
2. Are these objects truly on the ZAMS, blueward or redward of it? The presence or absence of massive stars on the ZAMS – corresponding to the locus of completely homogeneous objects initiating H-burning – yields information on the star formation process. Indeed, the apparent lack of Galactic OB stars close the ZAMS could be due to the hiding of such stars in their parental cocoon (Garmany et al. gar (1982)) or explained by the progressive redward bending of the upper part of the birthline due to moderate mass accretion rates in an accretion scenario for these stars (Bernasconi & Maeder bern (1996)). In the former case the position of the “earliest” star visible provides thus constraints on the duration of the hidden phase. For the latter scenario, the position of the bluest stars constrains the accretion rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{acc}}`$; the existence of massive stars close to the ZAMS requires high values of $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ (Norberg & Maeder nm00 (2000), Behrend & Maeder bm01 (2001)).

Given the present uncertainties on the $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ determination of the N81 stars, one may speculate that some of the objects are indeed hotter than the ZAMS, as indicated by Fig. 3. If true, this “blue straggler” like behavior could be indicative of stellar collisions (e.g. Benz & Hills bh (1987)), and thus a signature of formation of massive stars via this process, as advocated among others by Bonnell et al. (bo (1998)).
3. Could some of the N81 stars still be accreting pre-main sequence objects? The stars with smaller $`M_V`$ magnitudes (# 3, 4, 8, 11, and 13) have estimated luminosities slightly above the probable high luminosity Herbig Ae/Be pre-main sequence stars found by Lamers et al. (1999) and de Wit et al. (2001) in the LMC and SMC. Their location in the HRD also coincides with the region where the predicted birthlines follow quite closely the ZAMS. Given the strong indications for a very young age of N81, it is thus conceivable that our objects are still accreting mass as part of their formation process. The redshifted C iv profiles in the above cited objects could be an indication of ongoing accretion.
4. Are Vz stars related to low metallicity? Vz stars have also been detected in the Milky Way by Walborn and co-workers (private communication). Therefore, it appears unlikely that they are due to a simple metallicity effect.

While at present these answers remain fairly speculative, our upcoming determinations of stellar and wind parameters and further studies of similar objects should hopefully shed more light onto these issues related to the formation and early evolution of massive stars.

## 5 Conclusions

Our HST/STIS observations of the brightest massive stars powering the high excitation compact H ii region SMC N81 reveal that the stars have strikingly weak wind profiles and a pronounced sub-luminosity which are clear indications of their early evolutionary state. Most likely they belong to the Vz category of massive Magellanic Cloud stars (Walborn & Parker wp (1992), Walborn & Blades wb (1997)), which are very young stars just arriving on the ZAMS or already located near it. These stars may also serve as templates for newborn massive stars of distant metal-poor galaxies which cannot be individually resolved. Therefore, a more detailed study and modeling of their properties is highly desirable as it will help shed some more light on the intricacies and consequences of the early stages in stellar evolution.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank the referee for a critical reading of the paper which contributed to its improvement. We are also grateful to Dr. Nolan R. Walborn (Space Telescope Science Institute) for very helpful comments and suggestions. VC would like to acknowledge the financial support for this work provided by NASA through grant number GO-8246 from the STScI, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract 26555. DS, FM, and MH-M received partial support from the French “Programme National de Physique Stellaire” (PNPS).


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# The Berry Phase and Monopoles in GluodynamicsPresented by F. V. G. at Lattice’2001, Berlin.

## Abstract

We introduce a gauge invariant definition of a monopole on the lattice. The construction is based on the observation that for each Wilson loop there exists an extra $`U(1)`$ group which leaves the loop invariant. Since the lattice formulation utilizes the language of Wilson loops, the definition of the monopole charge in terms of this plaquette dependent $`U(1)`$ is gauge invariant. The explicit construction of gauge invariant monopoles is presented both in continuum and on the lattice.

Introduction of magnetic monopoles in non-Abelian pure gauge models has a long history (see  and references therein). The basic problem is that the monopoles are intrinsically $`U(1)`$ objects and, in absence of the physical Higgs field, the choice of the $`U(1)`$ turns out to be a matter of gauge fixing. The standard procedure111 Throughout this paper we consider the case of $`SU(2)`$ gauge group only.  to define monopole charge is to partially (up to a remaining $`U(1)`$) fix the gauge and then construct Abelian monopoles in this particular gauge. Due to the ambiguity of gauge fixing prescription the construction is not unique and it is a separate question which monopole definition is physically relevant.

1. The crucial observation  which is used in considerations below is that in lattice formulation there is in fact a natural $`U(1)`$ subgroup locally embedded into $`SU(2)`$. Indeed, the action of $`SU(2)`$ lattice gluodynamics is constructed in terms of elementary Wilson loops $`U_p=e^{i\stackrel{}{F}_p\stackrel{}{\sigma }/2}=e^{i|F_p|\stackrel{}{n}_p\stackrel{}{\sigma }/2}`$, $`\stackrel{}{n}_p^2=1`$ and therefore possesses an additional symmetry $`\stackrel{}{F}_p\stackrel{}{F}_p+4\pi \stackrel{}{n}_p`$ which is evidently lost in the naive continuum limit. In other words Wilson loop itself defines a natural $`U(1)`$ associated with it as the group of rotations around $`\stackrel{}{n}_p`$. Since these Abelian rotations are defined in terms of a Wilson loop, the definition of the $`U(1)`$ is gauge invariant by construction. The application of this procedure to each plaquette gives, basically, a gauge invariant fixation of $`U(1)`$ which is plaquette dependent.

To make the next step and define monopoles in terms of this local, gauge invariant $`U(1)`$ we utilize the interpretation of Wilson loop as an evolution operator of quantum mechanical system . As follows from the standard representation $`W(C)=W(T)=\mathrm{P}\mathrm{exp}\{i_{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}}^TA𝑑t\}`$ the Hamiltonian governing evolution is $`H=A`$ and quantum mechanical state space coincides with irreducible representation space of $`SU(2)`$. Here $`C`$ is an arbitrary closed contour parameterized by $`t[0;T]`$. Furthermore, we introduce the conventional  coherent state basis $`\{|\stackrel{}{n}\}`$ parameterized by a set of unit three-dimensional vectors $`\stackrel{}{n}`$, $`\stackrel{}{n}^2=1`$. The action of an arbitrary element $`gSU(2)`$ in this basis is222 For simplicity we consider fundamental representation only, generalization to higher representations is straightforward.  $`g|\stackrel{}{n}=e^{i\phi }|\stackrel{}{n}^{}`$. A special case of cyclic evolution

$$W(T)|\stackrel{}{n}(0)=e^{i\phi (T)}|\stackrel{}{n}(0)$$
(1)
is of particular importance. In Eq. (1) the evolving state $`|\stackrel{}{n}(t)`$ is determined by

$$\mathrm{P}\mathrm{exp}\{i_0^tA𝑑\tau \}|\stackrel{}{n}(0)=e^{i\phi (t)}|\stackrel{}{n}(t).$$
(2)
Clearly the cyclic state $`|\stackrel{}{n}`$ always exists and moreover $`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Tr}W(T)=\mathrm{cos}\phi (T)`$. From (2) it directly follows that

$$\phi (T)=_0^T\left(\stackrel{}{n}|A|\stackrel{}{n}+i\stackrel{}{n}|\frac{d}{dt}|\stackrel{}{n}\right)𝑑t=$$
(3)
$$=_C\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{A}+\frac{1}{2}_{S_C}\stackrel{}{n}[\stackrel{}{n}\times \stackrel{}{n}],$$

where the state $`|\stackrel{}{n}`$ has been smoothly extended from the contour $`C`$ into an arbitrary surface $`S_C`$ bounded by $`C`$. Note that Eq. (3) cannot be used in the Wilson loop calculation since construction of the evolving state $`|\stackrel{}{n}`$ requires knowledge of the Wilson loop itself. Nevertheless, Eq. (3) is useful theoretically since it represents the phase angle of Wilson loop as an integral of abelian ’t Hooft tensor . Note also that the angle $`\phi (T)`$ is well defined only modulo $`2\pi `$. Indeed, one can verify explicitly that $`\phi `$ is changing $`\phi \phi +2\pi k`$, $`kZ`$ under gauge transformations. From now on we always take $`\phi (T)`$ in “fundamental domain” $`\pi <\phi \pi `$.

Consider now the infinitesimal version of Eq. (3) when contour $`C`$ is the boundary of elementary surface element $`\delta \sigma `$

$$\phi =\left((\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{A})+\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{n}\right)\delta \sigma .$$
(4)
It is straightforward now to integrate (4) over arbitrary closed two-dimensional surface $`S_{phys}^2`$ in physical space. Usual assumption of fields continuity guarantees that $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ is a smooth field on $`S_{phys}^2`$. Therefore integral is non-zero in general

$$_{S_{phys}^2}\phi =2\pi Q,QZ$$
(5)
due to the second term in Eq. (4) which is widely known as Berry phase . In fact Eq. (5) calculates the gauge invariant monopole charge $`Q`$ contained inside $`S_{phys}^2`$. Gauge invariance is evident since integral is constructed in terms of infinitesimal Wilson loops only. The term “monopole charge” is also quite natural because Eq. (5) coincides with well known Abelian monopole construction when gauge fields have the same color structure. Moreover, Eq. (5) being considered in four-dimensional space-time defines a closed world-lines of topological defects which have a natural interpretation of monopole trajectories.

To conclude this section we would like to emphasize that gauge invariant monopole charge definition is only possible when gluodynamics is considered as limiting case of lattice gauge models because of periodicity of gauge fields action on the lattice (or more details see ). One can verify that Eq. (5) considered in the context of conventional continuum gluodynamics is trivial and produces identically zero magnetic charge.

2. Being extremely simple in continuum limit, Eq. (5) is quite non-trivial to implement on the coarse lattice. The problem is that lattice discretization is not suitable to calculate most of topological invariants (e.g. instanton number). In our case the problem is even more severe since effective Higgs field in Eq. (4,5) is defined not in lattice sites as usual, but on elementary 2-cells (plaquettes). Below we illustrate the monopole charge calculation in case of single three-dimensional cube. More realistic calculations will be presented elsewhere .

To begin with we consider a single plaquette situated at lattice site $`x`$ and directed along $`\mu `$, $`\nu `$ space-time directions. It is straightforward to calculate plaquette matrix $`U_p`$ as ordered product of links. For fundamental representation there are two eigenvectors $`|\stackrel{}{n}_\pm `$: $`U_p|\stackrel{}{n}_\pm =e^{\pm i\phi }|\stackrel{}{n}_\pm `$ which are related by $`\stackrel{}{n}_+=\stackrel{}{n}_{}`$. While only a single plaquette is considered there is no way to distinguish between $`|\stackrel{}{n}_+`$, $`|\stackrel{}{n}_{}`$ and one can take either of them as initial state $`|\stackrel{}{n}_1`$ to be ascribed to point 1 on the plaquette (see Fig. 1). Starting from $`|\stackrel{}{n}_1`$ one builds the corresponding evolving states $`|\stackrel{}{n}_i`$ in all other plaquette corners: $`U_\mu (x)|\stackrel{}{n}_1=e^{i\phi _1}|\stackrel{}{n}_2`$ etc. Thus the lattice implementation of Eq. (3,4) is obtained.

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Consider now the intersection of two plaquettes, Fig. 2. Evidently, on coarse lattice the states build separately on each plaquette differ drastically. In particular, the states $`|\stackrel{}{n}_i`$, $`i=1,2`$ and $`i=3,4`$ nearest to common link do not form continuous vector field $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ which is needed to go from Eq. (4) to Eq. (5). Moreover, there is also a mentioned ambiguity in the choice of initial states $`|\stackrel{}{n}_\pm `$. Since the problem is only due to the lattice coarseness there should be no difference in continuum limit between various ways to overcome it. We propose to introduce additional two dimensional cells in the intersection of every two plaquettes which do not lie in the same plane, Fig. 3. The newly introduced links $`V_{12}`$, $`V_{34}`$ may be defined in fact unambiguously. Indeed, among various $`SU(2)`$ matrices which satisfy $`V_{12}|\stackrel{}{n}_2=e^{i\alpha }|\stackrel{}{n}_1`$ there is only one which corresponds to geodesic motion $`\stackrel{}{n}_2\stackrel{}{n}_1`$. Note that these new links are in adjoint representation since for example $`\stackrel{}{n}_1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{n}_2`$ transform in the same

Fig. 3

way under gauge transformation: $`|\stackrel{}{n}_ig|\stackrel{}{n}_i`$, $`i=1,2`$. The ambiguity in choice of initial state on every plaquette may be resolved in similar manner. Namely, one can impose a requirement that resulting field $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ should be the smoothest one.

To test the proposed algorithm we have considered the simplest case of single three-dimensional cube. The first test was to generate random pure Abelian gauge fields, calculate the monopole charge in standard way and then apply our method after random non-Abelian gauge transformation. We found that our method works perfectly on single 3-cube reproducing the known monopole charge in all cases. Furthermore, we have found a reasonable behavior when non-Abelian gauge fields $`U_l=\mathrm{const}\{1+\zeta i\mathrm{\Sigma }_{i=0}^3\epsilon _i\sigma ^i\}`$ were generated (here $`\epsilon _i[1;1]`$ are random numbers). On Fig. 4 the average monopole charge as a function of $`\zeta `$ is shown.

3. We have proposed a gauge invariant definition of Abelian monopole charge in gluodynamics which is turn is only possible when gluodynamics is considered as limiting case of lattice gauge models. The crucial element of the presented construction is the observation that actual symmetry group of $`SU(2)`$ LGT is in fact $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ and

therefore monopoles defined with respect to second factor are $`SU(2)`$ invariant. The explicit calculations are carried out both in continuum and on the lattice. Being transparent in continuum limit the actual calculations become rather intricate on the coarse lattice. We have proposed a way to overcome this difficulty which allows to investigate the monopole dynamics numerically. Unfortunately, we were not yet able to implement the method in realistic calculations since it requires changing of lattice geometry and standard Monte-Calro algorithms. The work in these directions is currently in progress.


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# Note on flat foliations of spherically symmetric spacetimes

## Abstract

It is known that spherically symmetric spacetimes admit flat spacelike foliations. We point out a simple method of seeing this result via the Hamiltonian constraints of general relativity. The method yields explicit formulas for the extrinsic curvatures of the slicings.

The Painleve-Gulstrand form  of the metric of Schwarzschild spacetime

$$ds^2=\left(1\frac{2M}{r}\right)dt^2+2\sqrt{\frac{2M}{r}}dtdr+dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2.$$
(1)
demonstrates that this spacetime has a foliation by flat spatial surfaces. This generalizes to all spherically symmetric and time dependent spacetimes, for which the metric may be written as

$$ds^2=f^2(r,t)dt^2+2g(r,t)dtdr+dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2.$$
(2)
The question of what observers in the spacetime see flat spacelike constant time surfaces was addressed recently in : the surfaces of the foliation are orthogonal to the trajectories of observers freely falling from rest at infinity. (Such flat foliations have also been used to study Hawking radiation .) A similar result holds for the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime .

The purpose of this note is to demonstrate a method of showing that all spherically symmetric spacetimes admit flat spacelike foliations via the Hamiltonian equations of general relativity. The approach involves finding solutions, in spherical symmetry, of the Hamiltonian and spatial diffeomorphism constraints of general relativity

$``$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{q}}}G_{abcd}\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ab}\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{cd}\sqrt{q}^{(3)}R+\stackrel{~}{\rho }=0,`$ (3)
$`𝒞^a`$ $``$ $`_b\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ba}+\stackrel{~}{P^a}=0,`$ (4)
where $`(q_{ab},\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ab})`$ are the canonically conjugate Hamiltonian variables, $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{P_a}`$ are the matter energy density and momentum, $`G_{abcd}=(g_{ac}g_{bd}+g_{ad}g_{bc}g_{ab}g_{cd})/2`$ is the DeWitt supermetric, $`D_a`$ is the covariant derivative of $`q_{ab}`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{}`$ denotes densities of weight one.

The constraints are first class, therefore they continue to be satisfied on all time slices under evolution. Furthermore the lapse and shift can be chosen such that flat slices evolve to flat slices. This is easily done by solving the Hamiltonian equations for the lapse and shift such that the time derivative of the spatial metric is zero, ie. that it remains flat. Thus it is sufficient to find flat slice initial data in spherical symmetry to show that there exist flat slice foliations.***After this work was submitted for publication, we learned of Ref.  where an initial value approach for flat slice foliations is also studied. Our approach stems from the slightly earlier work .

Following , we assume that a flat slice foliation exists, and seek solutions of the constraints. Let $`q_{ab}=e_{ab}`$, the flat Euclidean 3-metric in (global) rectangular coordinates $`x^a`$. The general form of the conjugate momentum is given by

$$\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ab}=f(r)n^an^b+g(r)e^{ab}.$$
(5)
where $`f(r)`$ and $`g(r)`$ are functions to be determined, $`n^a=x^a/r`$ is the unit radial vector and $`r^2=x^ax^be_{ab}`$. That this is the most general form for $`\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ab}`$ is easy to see by noting that the symmetric $`\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ab}`$ must be constructed from the only objects at hand given flat slicing and spherical symmetry: $`n^a`$ and $`e_{ab}`$.

Substituting these into the constraints gives

$`(f3g)(f+g)+\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (6)
$`f^{}+g^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{2f}{r}}+\stackrel{~}{P}^r`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (7)
where $`\stackrel{~}{P}^r`$ is the radial matter momentum. These are the two equations of interest: the unknown functions are ($`f(r),g(r)`$), with the given matter variables $`(\stackrel{~}{\rho },\stackrel{~}{P^r})`$. These equations may be rewritten in a form more emanable for general solution by replacing $`g(r)`$ with the canonical variable $`\stackrel{~}{\pi }(r):=e_{ab}\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{ab}=f+3g`$, and solving the algebraic constraint:

$`f`$ $`=`$ $`\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{\pi }^23\stackrel{~}{\rho }},`$ (8)
$`f^{}`$ $`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3f}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{\pi }^{}}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\stackrel{~}{P}^r=0.`$ (9)
Finally, the substitution $`\stackrel{~}{\pi }(r)=\sqrt{3\stackrel{~}{\rho }(r)}\mathrm{cosh}z(r)`$ gives $`f(r)=\pm \sqrt{3\stackrel{~}{\rho }}\mathrm{sinh}z(r)/2`$, and Eqn. (9) becomes

$$\pm z^{}+\frac{3}{2r}\left(1e^{2z}\right)+e^z\frac{\sqrt{3}\stackrel{~}{P}^r}{\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{\rho }}}+\frac{\stackrel{~}{\rho }^{}}{2\stackrel{~}{\rho }}=0.$$
(10)
Thus the problem is reduced to solving Eqn. (10). This nonlinear ode can be solved at least numerically for given matter energy-momentum. In particular, for $`\stackrel{~}{P}^r=0`$ this gives a rather explicit relationship between $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ and $`z`$, and hence $`\stackrel{~}{\pi }`$.

It is worth mentioning that a problem can arise since $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ is a function of $`r`$, so that the expression inside the square-root in (8) can become negative. This occurs, for example, in the foliation of the Reissner-Nordstrom geometry. It was dealt with in  by computing the hypersurface in the domain where the expression remains non-negative and then continuing numerically across the boundary (where it becomes negative) by using a Taylor expansion. This procedure may be adopted for other spacetimes where this problem occurs, including cases where there is more than one such boundary. In the following we discuss some special cases of interest, where the solutions are explicit.

(i) Schwarzschild spacetime: $`(\stackrel{~}{\rho }=\stackrel{~}{P^r}=0).`$ This case is most easily solved using (7). The solution is $`f=3g`$ with $`f=Cr^{3/2}`$ where $`C`$ is an integration constant. This constant is related to the Schwarzschild mass $`M`$ by $`C\sqrt{M}`$. Note that $`f=g`$ also solves the Hamiltonian constraint, but this gives zero extrinsic curvature which is the Minkowski solution.

(ii) Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime: ($`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=Q^2/r^4`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{P^r}=\stackrel{~}{E}^r_rA_r=0`$ since the spatial part of the vector potential $`A_a`$ vanishes for this metric). Eqn. (10) reduces to

$$z^{}\frac{1}{2r}\left(3e^{2z}+1\right)=0.$$
(11)
This has general solution

$$z(r)=\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}(Cr3).$$
(12)
Thus

$$\stackrel{~}{\pi }=\frac{\sqrt{3}Q}{r^2}\mathrm{cosh}z=\frac{\sqrt{3}Q}{2r^2}\frac{Cr2}{\sqrt{Cr3}}.$$
(13)
With the integration constant $`C`$ written as $`C=6M/Q`$, the solutions are

$$f_\pm =\pm \frac{\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{\pi }^23Q^2/r^4}}{2},g_\pm =\frac{\stackrel{~}{\pi }}{3}\pm \frac{\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{\pi }^23Q^2/r^4}}{2},$$
(14)
This result agrees with the forms given in  obtained by constructing the flat slice foliation of the Reissner-Nordstrom metric via the use of freely falling frames.

(iii) deSitter spacetime: ($`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=\sqrt{q}\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{P}^r=0`$). Eqn. (10) is

$$z^{}\frac{3}{2r}\left(e^{2z}1\right)=0,$$
(15)
which has general solution

$$z=\pm \mathrm{ln}\left(\sqrt{1K/r^3}\right),(K>0).$$
(16)
Thus

$$\stackrel{~}{\pi }=\pm \frac{1}{2}\sqrt{\frac{3\mathrm{\Lambda }r^3}{r^3K}}.$$
(17)
(iv) Anti-deSitter spacetime: ($`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=\sqrt{q}/l^2`$, $`\stackrel{~}{P}^r=0`$). Eqn. (10) may be rewritten as

$$(1\pm \mathrm{sin}z)z^{}\pm 3\frac{\mathrm{cos}z}{r}=0.$$
(18)
This has solution

$$z=\mathrm{arctan}(1Kr^3),(K>0),$$
(19)
which gives

$$\stackrel{~}{\pi }=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{l}(1Kr^3).$$
(20)
In summary, we have given a simple method for explicitly finding flat slice initial data for arbitrary spherically symmetric spacetimes, with the general case summarized in Eqn. (10). The method also gives a way to verify that all spherically symmetric spacetimes have flat slice foliations, via existence of solutions of Eqn. (10).

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the 25th. International Nathiagali Summer College on Physics and Contemporary Needs, where this work was initiated. Work of VH was supported in part by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. AQ is grateful to KFUPM for facilities provided there.


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# Detection of Variable Circular Polarization in the SW Sex star V795 Herculis

## 1. Introduction

From the early 90’s, many models have been proposed to explain the behaviour of the SW Sex stars. Currently, the main point of discussion is whether the SW Sex stars harbour magnetic white dwarfs or not. The idea of SW Sex stars being magnetic CVs was strenghtened after the discovery of variable circular polarization in LS Pegasi, modulated with a period of 29.6 min (Rodríguez-Gil et al. 2001). The authors introduced a new accretion scenario, in which a disc-overflown gas stream meets the white dwarf’s magnetosphere at the corotation radius, where a shock above the disc is produced.

## 2. The observations

Simultaneous $`UBVRI`$ polarimetry was performed in 1998 March 2 and 5, with the turpol photopolarimeter at the 2.56-m Nordic Optical Telescope, in La Palma. The object was observed for a total of 5.3 hours (2.04 orbital periods). The zero polarization star BD +332642 was also measured.

## 3. Results

The mean circular polarization levels, after subtracting the averaged levels of the comparison star are: $`P_\mathrm{c}(U)=0.16\pm 0.04\%`$, $`P_\mathrm{c}(B)=0.16\pm 0.05\%`$, $`P_\mathrm{c}(V)=0.29\pm 0.09\%`$, $`P_\mathrm{c}(R)=0.24\pm 0.07\%`$ and $`P_\mathrm{c}(I)=0.41\pm 0.13\%`$. This increasing trend with wavelength is reminiscent of cyclotron emission from accretion columns in Intermediate Polars (see e.g. West, Berriman, & Schmidt 1987). The same trend is observed in the Intermediate Polars, PQ Gem (Potter et al. 1997) and BG CMi (West et al. 1987).

In the periodogram from the $`U`$-band data (see left panel of Fig. 1), two prominent peaks are located at $`33.49\pm 1.02`$ min and $`19.54\pm 1.02`$ min. We get a clear modulation when folding the $`U`$-band data on the latter period (see right panel of Fig. 1), obtaining a peak-to-peak amplitude of 0.12 %. The modulation with this period is also evident in $`B`$-band and seems to vanish redwards. The 19.54-min period is consistent with the 19.3-min optical QPO reported by Patterson & Skillman (1994). So, the 19.54-min period could be the spin period of a magnetic white dwarf. The polarization only takes positive values, a characteristic of low-inclination magnetic systems. Following the method proposed by Rodríguez-Gil et al. (2001) to estimate the primary magnetic field, we get a magnetosphere extending to $`f=0.55`$ R$`_{\mathrm{L}_1}`$ (in LS Peg, $`f=0.52`$ R$`_{\mathrm{L}_1}`$) and a field intensity of $`B_1`$ 2–7 MG.

## References

Patterson, J., & Skillman, D. R. 1994, PASP, 106, 1141

Potter, S. B., Cropper, M., Mason, K. O., Hough, J. H., & Bailey, J. A. 1997, MNRAS, 285, 82

Rodríguez-Gil, P., Casares, J., Martínez-Pais, I. G., Hakala, P., & Steeghs, D. 2001, ApJ, 548, L49

West, S. C., Berriman, G., & Schmidt, G. D. 1987, ApJ, 322, L35


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# Map-making methods for Cosmic Microwave Background experiments

## 1 Introduction

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB hereafter) is being extensively studied nowadays, thanks to the improvement of instrument and detector performances. Since the COBE experiment \[Smoot et al. 1992\], which performed the first detection of CMB anisotropies, the size of time-ordered information (TOI hereafter) has been widely increased. The data processing and analysis is thus still a challenge for large timeline data, already in processing or still to come. MAP (see for example Wright 1999) and Planck (see for example Tauber 2000) experiments will produce huge timelines of hundreds of million samples or more, and even the balloon-borne experiments, BOOMERanG \[De Bernardis et al. 2000\], MAXIMA \[Hanany et al. 2000\], Archeops \[Benoît et al. 2001\] and many others, produce large timelines for many channels. The Cosmic Microwave Background data analysis is usually performed in three steps, the first being the map-making process, the second the $`C_l`$ estimation from the maps and the noise covariance matrices, the third the cosmological parameters estimation from the $`C_l`$ power spectrum. In this article, we focus on the map-making step, in the context of computing difficulties due to large timelines. We also explore how the scanning strategy influences the map-making process and the final amount of noise in the maps. Map-making, in the context of large timelines, cannot be performed by a brute-force approach, which would imply the manipulation and inversion of tera-element large matrices. Non optimal map-making methods have been developed, such as destriping using the scan intercepts (see Delabrouille 1998 and Dupac & Giard 2001). We aim in this paper to apply the optimal methods to large timelines, developing algorithms to avoid computation trouble. The map-making methods for CMB are known to be optimal when following desirable properties, such as minimizing the reconstruction error and the noise chi square towards the reconstructed map, and being the maximum likelihood solution for simple conditions or no conditions. These are linear map-making methods, well known as the COBE method \[Janssen et al. 1992\] and the Wiener filter \[Wiener 1949\]. The linear methods allow to find an analytical expression for such requirements: the time-ordered data, represented by a vector y, are a linear expression of the real sky, represented by a vector x. (We note every vector with a small letter and every matrix with a capital letter.) We have thus:

$`y=Ax+n`$ (1)

where A is the point-spread (convolution) matrix and n the noise vector in the timeline. For CMB experiments, x would represent the pixelised sky map of the CMB temperature. The map-making problem is thus written as this:

$`=Wy`$ (2)

where x̃ is the vector of the reconstructed sky map, and W the inversion matrix. The COBE method can be derived by minimizing the noise chi square towards the reconstructed map, the reconstruction error subject to the constraint W A = I, and is the maximum likelihood solution for the sky if the noise is gaussian (no prior on the sky) (see for example Tegmark 1997). It is written as:

$`W=[A^tN^1A]^1A^tN^1`$ (Eq. 3, COBE)

where N is the covariance matrix of the noise in the timeline: N = $`<nn^t>`$. The Wiener filter can be derived as the solution of the absolute minimization of the reconstruction error \[Bunn et al. 1994\], or as the maximum probability solution for the sky if both the noise and the sky are a priori gaussian \[Zaroubi et al. 1995\]. It is written as:

$`W=[S^1+A^tN^1A]^1A^tN^1`$ (Eq. 4, Wiener 2)

or:

$`W=SA^t[ASA^t+N]^1`$ (Eq. 5, Wiener 1)

where S is the covariance matrix of the sky in the map domain: S = $`<xx^t>`$. These two writings are the same matrix but can be totally different toward algorithmics. From these theoretically optimal methods, one can imagine other slightly different methods, made to solve such or such practical problem (see Tegmark 1997 for a large set of linear and non linear methods). The COBE method (Eq. 3) and the Wiener filter (Eq. 4, 5) are both known to retain all the cosmological information present in the TOI \[Tegmark 1997\]. These methods are optimal subject to the condition that the noise is uncorrelated with the sky, which is a good assumption for low contrasts maps such as CMB ones. One finds this assumption in every paper concerning CMB map-making, and it is not the purpose of this article to question this, however, following the objects observed and the nature of the observation strategy, the bolometer response could be less perfect, and therefore induce some noise correlated to the sky signal.

Applying these optimal methods to large timelines is not straightforward, because of computer limitations. The several tens or hundreds of mega-elements in a bolometer timeline have to be processed by vector-only methods, that we aim to present in this paper. We mean by ”vector-only methods” computations in which one never needs to compute or even to store any large matrix such as A, N or S. In this context, the way to make the timeline, that is the scanning strategy, can be important towards map-making and the quality of the final products. We present in Section 2 diverse balloon and satellite scanning strategies for CMB experiments. These aim to be representative of the different priorities one aims to focus on: redundancy, coverage, whole sky survey…, and how these strategies influence the map-making efficiency and the final quality of the retrieved maps. In Section 3 we present how we simulate our timelines. In Section 4 we present the map-making methods, applied to large timelines, and discuss their conditions of application. In Section 5 we compare the results on the reconstructed maps, for the different map-making methods and experiment strategies that we have investigated.

## 2 Observation strategy

We present here three different large-coverage observation strategies, simulated from simple and usual technical requirements. We simulate balloon-borne CMB experiments, required to scan the sky making constant elevation circles at a rather constant rotation speed (as do Archeops and TopHat: http://topweb.gsfc.nasa.gov). This allows to observe a large area on the sky, thanks to the rotation of the Earth (and, eventually, to the moving of the balloon on the Earth). In this context, it is easy to understand that the launching place of the balloon and the flight duration will have a crucial influence on the sky coverage and the redundancy in the map pixels. Experiments using this constant elevation scanning strategy have to balance between coverage and redundancy. Maximum redundancy is obtained with high elevation angles and high latitude launch places. To the contrary, the best coverage over flight time ratio is obtained at near-equatorial places and with low elevation angles. The factors controlling the observation characteristics are the place and date of launch, the trajectory of the balloon, the flight duration, the elevation angle of scanning above the horizon, the sampling frequency, and the rotation speed of the gondola (especially if it is constant or not). We have simulated two balloon-borne experiment timelines with a constant scanning elevation of 35 degrees above the horizon, a sampling frequency of 100 Hz and a rotation speed of the gondola of 2 rpm.

One simulated experiment is designed to maximize the redundancy per pixel, however covering a large part of the sky. It is a 24 hours polar flight from Kiruna, Swedish Lappland. The winter time in this region provides polar nights allowing to make 24 hours flight avoiding contamination from the sun. The coverage for this polar flight is 35 % of the sky.

The second simulated experiment is a 12 hours equatorial flight. The coverage is for this 12 hours flight 61 % of the whole sky, and would be 82 % for a 24 hours flight, or two 12 hours flights, one taking place six months after the first one, to avoid sunlight. The polar flight we present here is especially good for redundancy, while the equatorial flight has a clearly better coverage but a much weaker redundancy. The comparison of map-making methods on these two flights will therefore give interesting results on how in practice the observation strategy controls the final quality of the maps.

The third simulated scanning strategy is the one of a satellite making great circles on the sky along ecliptic meridians. For a satellite on a low-earth orbit (LEO), this strategy allows to always point towards the zenith, in order to avoid contamination from the Earth. The great circles are made perpendicularly to the sun direction, that allows to avoid the main sunlight contamination too. Of course, on a LEO, the exact trajectory would not be exactly as simple, because of the gravitational perturbations that the satellite would face, but our simulated timeline is near to what it would be. This strategy also works for a satellite at L2, as Planck. In this case the strategy can be as simple as a constant great circle in the ecliptic meridian perpendicular to the Sun-Earth axis, that slowly shifts with the revolution of the Earth. The whole sky survey is thus completed in six months. We have simulated a quick whole sky survey made with this observing strategy, containing 8 million samples. Although this would not be of course the final product of a one-year satellite mission, it allows us to compare the scanning strategy and final map properties with those of the two balloon-borne experiments.

## 3 Simulation process

We have made our simulated skies from three components: the CMB fluctuations, the dipole, and the Galaxy, at 2 mm wavelength. The simulated Universe we have simulated is $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ dominated, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{CDM}=0.25`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{bar}=0.05`$, $`H_0=50`$ and a scalar spectral index of the fluctuations equal to 1. The exact cosmological parameters we choose is not important for the purpose of this article, but the gaussianity is a priori important for the Wiener methods that we will test. The $`C_l`$ simulated spectrum (with no cosmic variance) is made thanks to the CMBFAST software \[Seljak & Zaldarriaga 1996\]. The sky gaussian random field (i.e. a realization of a Universe with the cosmological parameters we chose) is then simulated with the SYNFAST tool of the HEALPix package (http://www.eso.org/science/healpix). The dipole is added thanks to its COBE/DMR determination \[Lineweaver et al. 1996\], and the Galaxy at 2 mm wavelength is extrapolated from the composite 100 $`\mu m`$ IRAS-COBE/DIRBE all sky dataset \[Schlegel et al. 1998\]. We present in Fig. 1 a full-sky map of the Cosmic Microwave Background fluctuations, and a full-sky 2 mm map including the dipole and the Galaxy. All the maps that we present in this article are Galactic Mollweide projections centered on the Galactic center.

We have simulated noisy timelines. However, the true time-ordered data coming directly from a true detector has not exactly the same shape. Usually there are glitches, systematics and noises to be subtracted before applying careful map-making methods. The glitches are energetic cosmic rays which hit a bolometer and produce high and narrow peaks in the time-ordered data. They can usually be detected and removed. Some noises and systematics may be removed by decorrelating with signals from thermometers or other bolometers. The topic of this article is not to treat these problems, however it is important to keep in mind that the map-making that we present here is not known to work well on brute data. For our simulations, we aim to test our map-making methods with white and 1/f noise. The noise we introduce in our simulated timelines can be characterized by its statistical power spectrum which follows a 1/f law: $`l_{inf}.(1+(f_c/f)^n)`$, where $`l_{inf}`$ is the level of white noise (i.e. the only noise at high frequency), $`f_c`$ the cut frequency and n the power index. These stationary noises are usually what stays in the cleaned timelines, after removing what is possible to remove without modifying the signal. In order to properly compare our different observing strategies, we apply the map-making methods to timelines simulated with the same noise level and statistical properties, with $`n=1`$, $`f_c=0.1`$ Hz and $`l_{inf}=100`$ $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms. This white noise rms is approximatively the level expected for Planck \[Tauber 2000\] bolometers with a 100 Hz sampling rate. Of course this quite low value is the level of the non-correlated noise in the timelines, but the total amount of noise introduced is much larger, as we can see in Fig. 2, which is the three simulated data projected on a map by averaging the samples in the pixels (the simplest map-making method, as we explain hereafter).

## 4 Map-making methods applied on large timelines

To make maps, we need first to choose a pixelization of the sphere. We use the HEALPix scheme (http://www.eso.org/science/healpix), whose angular resolution is defined by the parameter $`N_{side}`$. We present our simulated and reconstructed maps with $`N_{side}=256`$, which splits the sphere into 786432 pixels. This number of pixels corresponds to a 13.5’ by 13.5’ pixel on the sphere, and fits well the scanning strategies we simulate. Indeed, using $`N_{side}=512`$ pixels would leave many holes in the maps and therefore harm their visibility and further analysis. To pixelize correctly the maps of a given experiment, and do the further analysis, one needs of course to use pixels two or three times smaller than the beam diameter. Maps of many modern experiments would be well pixelized with pixels a bit smaller than we use, but it would mean large maps to store and a bit longer computation times (as the convergence speeds of the methods would be lower), without giving any extra result to these investigations. In this article, we do not deal with the beam of an experiment and we do not treat the issue of deconvolving the beam effect.

### 4.1 Pixel averaging

Reprojecting timelines on maps is not only a domain to domain transform, but the simplest way to estimate the true map of the sky, by averaging the samples of a same pixel on the sky. The noise is therefore reduced by a factor square root of the number of samples in the pixel (the weight). To increase the signal-to-noise ratio in the pixels, one has to increase the counts in a pixel, so increase the pixel size. However the size pixel limits of course the maximum l to be investigated ($`l_{max}=2.N_{side}`$). If we consider pixel sizes bigger than the beam, or neglect the beam effect, then the $`A^t`$ matrix is adding samples in a pixel, which means that this matrix is filled with 1 and 0 only. This is much easier to handle than the true point-spread matrix, as in this simple case the map-making (pixel averaging) of a timeline y is just $`[A^tA]^1A^ty`$, where $`A^tA`$ is a hit counter per map pixel. A is in this case just the projection from a map to a timeline. We will not investigate the beam deconvolution in this article, and therefore consider only 1-and-0 point-spread matrices. We present in Fig. 3 the weight maps for the three experiment strategies that we have described. It is clear that the 24 h balloon-borne polar flight has the best redundancy. We will see if these differences in the experiment strategy produce important differences in the final reconstructed maps.

### 4.2 Correlation properties

The optimal map-making methods use the noise and sky covariance matrices N and S. These are impossible to invert or even to store for such large timelines. However, if the noise is stationary in the time domain, as it is the case for 1/f noise and white noise (usual bolometer noises), the noise correlation matrix in the time domain is circulant, i.e. multiplying a vector by this matrix is a convolution, which is filtering in the Fourier domain. The noise correlation matrix has to be a statistical average on the realizations of the $`nn^t`$ matrix, which means that a fit has to be performed on the Fourier noise vector, to remove the gaussian fluctuations. The Fourier noise vector can be estimated from the data, since the 1/f tail is usually visible. We fit this noise power spectrum with the $`1/f^n`$ law expressed below. For the sky covariance matrix, the problem is different. The sky covariance matrix is stationary in the map domain, as far as the Cosmic Microwave Background is a gaussian random field. Thus the S matrix (in the map domain) is circulant for CMB maps. However, it is more complicated for the sky covariance matrix in the timeline. The sky covariance matrix in the time domain is stationary if two conditions are verified: the sky covariance matrix has to be stationary in the map domain, and the sampling on the sky has to be constant, that means that the scanning speed has to be constant if the sampling frequency is constant, which is usually the case. If the last condition is not verified, then the stationarity of the CMB signal is lost in time domain. However, the tolerance threshold to this condition has to be investigated. If we consider both the sky timeline and the noise timeline to be stationary, then multiplying by $`S^1`$ or $`N^1`$ matrices is a convolution, i.e. a vector multiplication in the Fourier domain.

### 4.3 Direct and iterative methods

We present here three optimal vector-only map-making methods: a COBE iterative method, a Wiener direct method and a Wiener iterative method.

#### 4.3.1 COBE iterative method

The COBE equation (Eq. 3) cannot be directly applied with vector-only algorithms, because of the matrix inversions needed. Thus the trick is to solve rather:

$`[A^tN^1A]`$ x̃ = $`A^tN^1`$ y

This form prevents from the heavy inversion, but needs an iterative scheme. The general iterative scheme for this equation is:

$`\alpha `$n+1 = $`\alpha `$n \+ $`A^tN^1`$ y - $`[A^tN^1A]`$n

where $`\alpha `$ is any linear operator on a vector, that is, any square matrix. We have tested this algorithm on simulations and real data from the Archeops experiment \[Benoît et al. 2001\], with $`\alpha `$ being a scalar. By testing the method with different $`\alpha `$, we find that the identity is the best iterator.

Another scheme can be developed, by making the noise map converge instead of the sky map, as mentioned by Prunet (2001). This can be better, as the signal can be more tricky than the instrumental noise for the stability of the iterative scheme: hot galactic points for example may induce stripes on the maps. The noise-iterating scheme works with the following trick: we change the variable x̃ to x̌ = $`[A^tA]^1A^t`$ y - x̃. It is straightforward to show that this is the noise map plus the reconstruction error. It leads to:

$`\alpha `$n+1 = $`\alpha `$n \+ $`A^tN^1`$ z - $`[A^tN^1A]`$n

where z = $`A[A^tA]^1A^t`$ y - y. If this algorithm converges, then the converging limit is exactly the optimal solution of the map-making problem: the proof is that if it converges, then x̌n+1 = x̌n at the limit, and so the above equation leads to the map-making equation for x̌n, which is therefore the unique solution. Of course, this true solution is different from the true (simulated) sky, the residual noise covariance matrix being $`[A^tN^1A]^1`$ in the case of the COBE method. The case of $`\alpha `$ = I is actually the simplest iterator one can imagine, but works well on the simulations and real data that we have processed. We present in Section 5 the maps made with the iterative noise-converging COBE method.

#### 4.3.2 Wiener direct method

The Wiener 1 matrix (Eq. 5) is reduced to the Wiener filter \[Wiener 1949\] in the time domain, if few conditions are verified. Indeed, the Wiener 1 equation can be written as:

$`W=[A^tA]^1A^tASA^t[ASA^t+N]^1`$

$`ASA^t`$ is the sky covariance matrix in the timeline, and N is the noise covariance matrix in the timeline. Thus if both the noise and the sky are stationary in the time domain, then the Wiener 1 method is mapping the filtered timeline, with the optimal Wiener filter being $`\frac{\sigma ^2}{\sigma ^2+\nu ^2}`$ in the Fourier domain, with $`\sigma `$ and $`\nu `$ the fitted Fourier transforms of the sky and the noise. It is important to notice that two conditions are necessary so that the signal is stationary in the timeline: the signal has to be stationary in the map, and the observation has to be stationary towards the map, which means that both the scanning speed and the sampling frequency have to be constant. The noise Fourier fit is made as described for the COBE iterative method. The sky power spectrum in the timeline is dominated by the rotation peaks, and so to approximate the realization average by the power spectrum itself is not a bad approximation. This can be easily done even for real data by simulating the observation of a pure sky (without noise). We present in Fig. 4 the power spectra of the simulated noise timeline and the simulated sky timeline.

The Wiener direct method is optimal when applied to stationary gaussian random signals, but we test it also on non-gaussian and non-stationary skies, the first being non-stationary even in the map domain because of the Galaxy, the other being non-stationary on the timeline because of large variations of the scanning speed, and we present the results in Section 5.

#### 4.3.3 Wiener iterative method

The Wiener 2 matrix (Eq. 4), although identical to the Wiener 1, is computationally nearer to the COBE matrix (Eq. 3). Thus the iterative scheme is very close to the COBE one:

$`\alpha `$n+1 = $`\alpha `$n \+ u - $`[S^1+A^tN^1A]`$n

where u = $`A^tN^1[A[A^tA]^1A^tyy]+S^1[A^tA]^1A^ty`$. As we have shown for the COBE iterative method, the converging limit is the exact solution of the Wiener map-making equation. This iterative scheme needs to handle both the N matrix, noise covariance matrix in the timeline, that we process as a filter in the Fourier domain like we do for the COBE iterative method, and the S matrix, sky covariance matrix in the map domain. Handling this as a matrix is not possible for a small scale pixelization that we need for CMB experiments of today, thus we have to process it as a filter in Fourier space, like we do for filtering timelines. The HEALPix RING scheme is stationary with respect to the sphere, because it pixelizes it making a ring around the sphere from the north pole to the south pole, with equal pixel surfaces. So filtering a HEALPix vector (i.e. a map) in Fourier space is optimal, to the condition that there must not be large holes in the map, that would harm the stationarity of the sky in the HEALPix scheme. Of course this means that for maps like the polar flight ones or the equatorial flight ones, the filtering in the HEALPix scheme has to be made separatly for each observed part of the sky, following the HEALPix ordering. Another method is to define another pixelization, adapted to a given observation. But our satellite whole sky survey experiment is particularly well adapted to test this method, as the holes are few in the $`N_{side}`$ = 256 pixelization, so we can just filter the whole map. We present the resulting maps in Section 5.

## 5 Results and discussion

### 5.1 Testing the COBE iterative method and the Wiener direct method on the polar flight data

We have made 1000 iterations with the COBE method, for the polar simulated data containing the CMB fluctuations, the dipole, the Galaxy and the instrumental noise. We present the convergence plot of the rms of the difference map between the reconstructed sky and the true sky (residual noise map) in Fig. 5 (top). The level of white noise is shown as a blue straight line at 21.1 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms. At the bottom of Fig. 5, we present the convergence plot made by considering at each iteration the less well reconstructed pixel of the map, i.e. the maximum of the residual noise map.

The method reaches the residual noise at about 50 iterations, and this residual is about 21.6 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms. We can check that we have reached the convergence by observing the evolution of the global residual noise rms, but also the evolution for some individual pixels, the map aspect and the $`C_l`$ power spectrum. We have to compare this result to the white noise amount in the map. We can calculate the white noise in the map by two ways: one is to calculate it theoretically as $`n_{rms}^2.\mathrm{\Sigma }_iw_i^1/N_{pix}`$, where $`n_{rms}`$ is the white noise rms level in the timeline, $`w_i`$ the weight in pixel i, and $`N_{pix}`$ the total number of observed pixels (the sum is of course on the observed pixels). The other is to simulate a white noise timeline and make a map. The rms level of white noise in the polar flight map is 21.06 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms, which is very close to the residual noise amount. This shows how good the reconstruction is, as it is clear that the correlated noise is significantly removed from the map. The reconstructed map exhibits no visible difference with the true map (whole simulated sky in Fig. 1). We present in Fig. 6 the residual noise map. The noise feature which can be seen in this map is the granularity of the white noise, which confirms that the iterative method removes nearly completely the correlated noise. Moreover, the bottom plot in Fig. 5 shows that there are no pixels excluded from the general convergence. We present in Fig. 7 the $`C_l`$ power spectra of the map made by simple pixel-averaging, of the residual noise map after convergence, and of a map made with only white noise at the same level. All spectra are corrected from the fraction of the sky covered. The units show very well how better is the iterative method, compared to the pixel averaging. The noise spectrum is nearly the one of a white noise above about l=50, but exhibits some weak residual correlation at larger scales. Since we can be confident in the fact that the convergence has been reached, then the map obtained has to be the solution of the map-making problem. We see that a small amount of correlated noise still lurks at large scales: this may be explained by the fact that these scanning strategies do not constrain perfectly the largest scales (few crossing scans), which are the most noisy (by definition of the 1/f noise). Of course, a method such as MASTER (Hivon et al. 2001, subm. to ApJ) may be able to estimate this large-scale noise excess. However, this correlated residual noise amount is extremely low, even at the largest scales, and could have to be taken into account only for extremely precise measurements of the low l (precision better than 0.05 $`\mu K^2`$ on the $`C_l`$ at large scales !).

We have also tested the method on timelines made with just CMB fluctuations and instrumental noise. To get a timeline without the Galaxy from real data, it is possible, for instance, to decorrelate with a shorter wavelength bolometer. Indeed, most CMB experiments have high frequency channels (for instance Planck and Archeops bands at 353 and 545 GHz) in which the CMB fluctuations are completely negligible. These bands are used as tracers of the dust Galactic emission. The way to decorrelate the CMB bands from the dust emission is usually to do it after the map-making process (component separation), but it is also possible to decorrelate the Galactic emission in the timelines, though it may cause noise propagation in the CMB-band timeline. The right way to do it seems to us (though it is not the purpose of the paper) to get first a Galactic map as clean as possible (from some high frequency bolometers, or even from standard Galactic maps as IRAS ones…), and then re-sample it with the scanning strategy of the timeline one wants to decorrelate. But we have to note also that many CMB experiments do not observe the Galaxy at all, and thus have directly nearly CMB-only timelines.

The residual noise obtained on the reconstructed CMB-only map is the same as the one obtained from complete data. This shows that the COBE iterative method is as efficient with different sky signals, as we could expect from the theory. This algorithm is very efficient, but quite slow: the full CPU time on a 500 MHz PC is about one hour per 25 iterations, for the 8 million sample timeline. However, we shall see hereafter that the number of iterations needed to reach the convergence can be much reduced, if we use a first estimator for the sky map. Also, it is possible to speed up this kind of iterative methods with multi-grid algorithms \[Doré et al. 2001\].

We have applied the Wiener 1 direct method to the same timeline. This method is particularly well adapted to CMB-only signals, as the stationarity is perfectly verified, and more fundamentaly because the Wiener method assumes a gaussian prior for both the sky and the noise. The direct Wiener method works very well on the CMB-only data: the difference map between the Wiener direct reconstructed map and the true sky is 22.8 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ in rms, which is close to the white noise level. One could wonder what a ”wild” whitening filter used instead of the optimal Wiener filter could produce: we present in Fig. 8 the map made with a whitening filter, that is the inverse of the fitted noise power spectrum. The result is that the signal is clearly destroyed by this non-optimal filter (compare with the CMB map in Fig.1).

We present in Fig. 9 the residual noise map obtained with the Wiener direct method.

Some weak residual striping is still visible in this map. It shows that the Wiener direct filtering processes the data in a very different way than does the COBE iterative method. The iterative method removes gradually the correlated noise, to end with a nearly perfectly destriped map, whereas the Wiener direct filter processes the data in order to properly construct the sky map. In this method, it is the signal which is restored, and not the correlated noise which is removed. This may explain why some correlated noise can be in the final map while the total residual noise amount is very weak. It is important to keep in mind that not only the quantity of residual noise is important, but above all its ”whitness”: if the residual noise is quite correlated, then the pixel noise matrix in the reconstructed map is not diagonal, which is a problem for the $`C_l`$ estimation. The $`C_l`$ spectrum of the Wiener-direct-reconstructed map shows that some power is suppressed at all scales, whereas it is not the case for the COBE iterative method, for which the $`C_l`$ power spectrum exhibits no significant difference with the true CMB power spectrum.

An idea to accelerate the convergence of the iterative methods is to use a non-zero first estimate of the map, the best being the Wiener direct map. It is important to understand that whatever is the first estimate, what defines the exact solution is only the map-making equation, thus the Wiener 1 first estimate used for COBE iterations accelerates the convergence of the COBE iterative method, but does not influence the final reconstructed map.

In order to test how the lack of stationarity in the signal can harm the Wiener direct filtering, we test the method on a timeline made with CMB and Galactic signals, plus the instrumental noise. We also test it on a CMB timeline suffering from an extremely non constant scanning speed, the beam doing 30 degrees amplitude swingings 17 times per minute. The Galactic Wiener direct map is quite badly reconstructed, since stripes are still visible and the residual noise is 257 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ in rms. This is not surprising, as the intense Galactic signal harms very clearly the stationarity of the sky signal. The Wiener direct filtering is thus not adapted to timelines containing Galactic signals. It may therefore be applied to timelines whose foregrounds have been removed first, or to observations made away from the Galactic plane. To the contrary, the Wiener direct map is well reconstructed for the data made with the very non constant scanning speed: the residual noise is 33.8 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ in rms, which is not bad compared to the 21.4 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms of white noise in the map, but of course clearly less good than the 22.8 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms of residual noise obtained with the same processing on constant scanning speed data. However, the good result obtained with these dreadfully sampled data shows the robustness of the method.

### 5.2 Comparing the different observations toward the map-making methods

We have applied the COBE iterative method with the Wiener 1 direct map as first estimate, to the equatorial flight and satellite data, with CMB fluctuations and instrumental noise. Once again, this can also be applied to signals including the Galaxy, but since the Wiener direct estimate would not be so good, the number of iterations needed to get a perfectly destriped map would be higher. The maps made with the COBE iterative method for these two other experiments are very well reconstructed too: for the equatorial flight simulations, the residual noise map is 42.1 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ in rms, with 40.8 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms of white noise. For the satellite data, the residual noise map is 38.9 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms, with 38.1 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ rms of white noise. The residuals of the iterative COBE method are close to the white noise amount, and the residual over white noise ratios are nearly constant. Of course the residual is larger for the low-redundancy experiments, but the efficiency of the iterative method is not less. In particular, this shows that numerous crossing scans are not crucial for the map-making process.

It is interesting to notice that in the case of the equatorial flight, the Wiener direct filtering gives a lower residual than the COBE iterative method, and even lower than the white noise amount. However, the residual noise map (Fig. 10) exhibits some residual striping.

### 5.3 Testing the Wiener iterative method on the satellite simulated data

As explained before, a whole sky survey, even with a few holes in the map, is a perfect candidate to test the Wiener iterative method. The method works well even with no first estimate of the sky, but is much faster with a Wiener 1 first estimate. We present in Fig. 11 the residual noise map of the Wiener iterative method. This map is very close to the one of the COBE iterative method (no visible difference, and very close rms: 38.933 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ for the COBE iterative method, 38.931 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ for the Wiener iterative method). Once again, we observe that the correlated noise is nearly totally removed by the iterations. The Wiener method is known to minimize the reconstruction error: we check it, but the difference with the COBE method is very small. Moreover, the $`C_l`$ power spectra of the true CMB sky and both reconstructed maps (COBE iterative and Wiener iterative) do not exhibit significant differences.

### 5.4 Generalization of the iterative map-making methods

The noise-converging iterative scheme can be generalized to balance the influence of the a priori signal correlation knowledge in the map-making process. This is done with the following map-making matrix:

$`W=[ϵS^1+A^tN^1A]^1A^tN^1`$ (Eq. 6, Saskatoon)

It is the Saskatoon way to make maps (Tegmark et al. 1997 and Tegmark 1997), where the $`ϵ`$ factor allows to choose the signal-to-noise ratio in the final map. Actually, the Wiener map-making gives generally less noisy maps than the COBE one, by reducing the power in the pixels unequally. This induces a given signal-to-noise ratio in the final map, which is optimal with respect to the minimization of the reconstruction error, in the case of the Wiener method. As the noise is more important at small scales, the Wiener map-making smoothes the map in an adequate way. However, it is interesting to assume a different signal-to-noise ratio, in order, for instance, to try to retrieve small scale features in the map. For $`ϵ=0.5`$, we obtain a residual noise map of 38.932 $`\mu K_{CMB}`$ in rms, that we could expect. The method is unstable for $`ϵ>1`$.

We have seen that the difference exists much more between the iterative methods and the direct ones, than between COBE iterative and Wiener iterative. Indeed, the iterative methods are very precise, both toward the map aspect and the $`C_l`$ spectrum, and do not seem to allow significant differences between Wiener and COBE, with this quite good signal-to-noise ratio. Though, we can be confident in the reality of the Wiener iterative method (compared to the COBE one) because the epsilon factor is very sensitive (when superior to 1, the method diverges).

## 6 Conclusion

We have presented efficient map-making methods for large Cosmic Microwave Background timelines. The direct way to estimate the sky signal from a noisy timeline is the Wiener direct filtering, which is robust towards scanning strategy non-stationary effects, but needs to process a stationary signal, which demand to remove the Galactic signal before map-making. The iterative methods (COBE, Wiener, and generalized) are very efficient to remove the correlated stationary noises, and allow to get a very good precision on the reconstructed map, whose residual noise is nearly only averaged white noise. Though the results of COBE, Wiener and ”Saskatoon” iterative methods are very close, we check that the Wiener estimation more reduces the global reconstruction error. The difference should be larger if the pixels are more unequally noisy: it seems that this kind of experiment strategies does not allow the Wiener estimation to be very different from the no prior one. The different scanning strategies that we have simulated allow as efficient map-making, even if the crossing scans are few. However, it is important to keep in mind that we have processed stationary noises, which means a timeline free from, for instance, periodic systematics which could be projected on the maps like features on the sky.

This kind of vector-only methods seems to us unavoidable to make optimal maps from CMB experiments of today, or still to come. The reduction of the information in CMB data is a heavy work, from gigabytes of rawdata to essentially 12 cosmological numbers with their error bars. Since the computer facilities are limited and unsufficient for brute force approaches (and it will be still the case for Planck data reduction), it is an interesting challenge to process each step of this reduction work without losing information. Using stationarity properties of a signal in a given domain (sphere, map, timeline…) to transform a matrix inversion problem into a vector-only solution, could be probably also developed for other CMB reduction steps, such as the component separation.

## 7 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank K.M. Górski and his collaborators for their so useful HEALPix package. We also thank very much F. Bouchet, F.-X. Désert, O. Doré, P. Filliatre, J.-C. Hamilton, and the whole Archeops collaboration.


text:
# The BaSeL library as a basic tool to provide fundamental stellar parameters of future space missions: COROT and GAIA.

## 1. Brief description of the BaSeL models

The Basel Stellar Library (BaSeL) is a library of theoretical spectra corrected to provide synthetic colours consistent with empirical colour-temperature calibrations at all wavelengths from the near-UV to the far-IR (see Cuisinier et al. 1996 for the correction procedure, and Lejeune et al. 1998 and references therein for a complete description). These model spectra cover a large range of fundamental parameters (2000 $``$ Teff $``$ 50,000 K, $``$5 $``$ \[Fe/H\] $``$ 1 and $``$1.02 $``$ log g $``$ 5.5) and hence allow to investigate a very large panel of multi-wavelength astrophysical questions.
The BaSeL library spectra have been calibrated directly for standard dwarf and giant sequences at solar abundances and using UBVRIJHKLM broad-band photometry, and are hence expected to provide excellent results in these photometric bands. Since they are based on synthetic spectra, they can in principle be used in many other photometric systems taken either individually or simultaneously, and this is another major advantage of these models. Moreover, their photometric calibrations are regularly updated and extended to an even larger set of parameters (see Lejeune et al. 1998 and references therein). In the two next sections we describe how we intend to apply this library to COROT and GAIA target stars.

## 2. COROT: major asteroseismology space mission

COROT (COnvection and ROTation) is a space experiment dedicated to ultra high precision, wide field, relative stellar photometry, for very long continuous observing runs on the same field of view. It has two main scientific programs working simultaneously on adjacent regions of the sky: asteroseismology and search for extrasolar planets. To perform an optimal selection among the potential targets it is necessary to know their fundamental parameters. One of the objectives of the preliminary study of target characterization for the central seismology programme of COROT (Lignières et al. 1999) was to choose the appropriate method(s) to determine the basic parameters of the potential targets of this programme (Teff, log g, abundances, vsini, multiplicity). One of these methods is based on the BaSeL library.

Given a set of effective temperature, surface gravity and metallicity (Teff, log g, \[Fe/H\]), the BaSeL models provide various colours that can be directly compared with stellar populations. The inverse method (Lastennet et al. 1999) is as well very useful to derive the atmospheric parameters from the observed colours: Lastennet et al. (1999) applied this method to a sample with photometry in the Strömgren system, and obtained very good results from the BaSeL models, in agreement with accurate HIPPARCOS data.

The capability of the BaSeL models to derive simultaneously or individually the (Teff, log g, \[Fe/H\]) parameters for the main programme stars of the COROT mission has already been shown in Lastennet et al. (2001). For illustration purpose, we show some of the final results we obtain in Figure 1. We propose to develop in the near future an automatic tool based on the method of Lastennet et al. (1999) to complete the facilities of the new ”BaSeL interactive server”, the web version of the BaSeL models hosted by the Coimbra Observatory since the end of 2000 (http://www.astro.mat.uc.pt/BaSeL/, see also Lejeune & Schaerer, 2001 for details). This method would be applied to the $``$ 1000 remaining potential targets of the COROT exploratory programme.

## 3. GAIA: ESA Cornerstone space mission

The GAIA mission, an ESA (European Space Agency) cornerstone mission, has been designed to solve many of the most difficult and deeply fundamental challenges in modern astronomy: to determine the composition, formation and evolution of our Galaxy. GAIA will provide unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies required to produce a stereoscopic and kinematic census of about one billion stars in our Galaxy (this amounts to about 1 % of the Galactic stellar population) and throughout the Local Group. Combined with astrophysical information for each star, provided by on-board multi-colour photometry, these data will have the precision necessary to quantify the early formation, and subsequent dynamical, chemical and star formation evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy. Additional scientific products include detection of new binary systems, brown dwarves, extragalactic objects (more than 1 million galaxies, 5.106 quasars, 105 supernovae etc…), with crucial implications for stellar and galactic physic, galactic structure, distance scales in the Local Group, etc…
The core science case for GAIA requires measurement of luminosity, Teff, mass, age, and composition for the stellar populations in our own Galaxy and in its nearest galaxy neighbours. These quantities can be derived from the spectral energy distribution of the stars, through multi-band photometry.
Nonetheless, while many photometric systems already exist (e.g. Johnson-Cousins, Geneva, Strömgren, RGU, Washington, etc…) none satisfy all the GAIA requirements. The GAIA photometric system must be able to classify stars across the entire Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, as well as to identify peculiar objects. It must be able, for example, to determine temperatures and reddening for OBAFG stars (needed as tracers of Galactic spiral arms and as reddening probes), temperatures and abundances for late-type giants and dwarfs, abundance of Fe and $`\alpha `$-elements, etc…. Thus it is necessary to observe a large spectral domain, extending from the UV to the far-infrared.
Provided that the new pass-bands of the GAIA space mission (e.g. the 4 broad bands and 11 intermediate bands covering the spectral range 280 to 920 nm, see Cayrel et al. 1999 and http://wwwhip.obspm.fr/gaia/photometrie.html) are implemented in the BaSeL models, the new tool described in the previous section will provide automatically (Teff, log g, \[Fe/H\]) estimates for the stars observed by GAIA.

## 4. Concluding remarks

COROT and GAIA are two next generation space missions which should provide essential results for stellar evolution theory. Here we present a proposition to develop for these two missions an automatical method, already used with success for COROT potential targets (Lastennet et al. 2001), for a systematic determination of fundamental parameters from BaSeL synthetic multi-photometry. This new tool should be publicly available on the following web site http://www.astro.mat.uc.pt/BaSeL/ by the end of 2001.

### Acknowledgments.

EL acknowledges support from CNPq and FAPERJ.

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Cuisinier F., Lejeune Th., Buser R., 1996, IAU Symp. 171, R. Bender and R.L. Davies (eds), p.355

Lastennet E., Lejeune Th., Westera P., Buser R. 1999, A&A, 341, 857

Lastennet E., Lignières F., Buser R., Lejeune Th., Lüftinger Th., Cuisinier, F., van’t Veer-Menneret C., 2001 A&A, 365, 535

Lejeune Th., Cuisinier F., Buser R. 1998, A&AS, 130, 65

Lejeune Th., Schaerer D., 2001, A&A, 366, 538

Lignières F., Catala C., Katz D., Lastennet E., Lüftinger Th., van ’t Veer-Menneret C., 1999, Joint European and National Astronomical Meeting (JENAM 99), “Fundamental parameters of COROT potential targets.”

Marsakov V.A., Shevelev Y.G., 1995, Bull. Inform. CDS 47,13