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# Observational Signatures of Black Holes: Spectral and Temporal Features of XTE J1550-564

## 1 Introduction

It has long been known that accreting stellar-mass black holes (BH) in Galactic binaries exhibit a “bi-modal” spectral behavior - namely the so called high-soft and low-hard spectral states; see Liang (1998) for a recent review. High and low in this context refer to the relative 2-10 keV luminosities in a given system, which is related to the rate at which mass accretion is taking place. An increase in the soft blackbody luminosity component leads to the appearance of the extended power law. An important observational fact is that this effect is seen as a persistent phenomenon only in BHCs, and thus it is apparently a unique black hole signature.

Although in Neutron star (NS) systems similar power law components are detected in the intermediate stages (Strickman, Barret 1999; Iaria et al. 2000; Di Salvo et al. 2000), they are of a transient nature, disappearing with the luminosity increase (Di Salvo et al.). The low-hard state spectral form on the other hand, has been seen in BH and NS binaries as well under certain condition. It was previously believed that the hard component in NS systems was associated with the low luminosity states of bursters (Barret & Grindlay 1995; Heindl & Smith 1998) when the soft component is suppressed.

It thus seems a reasonable assumption that the unique spectral signature of the soft state of BH binaries is directly tied to the black hole event horizon. This is the primary motivation for the Bulk Motion Comptonization Model (BMC) introduced in several previous papers, and recently applied with striking success to a substantial body of observational data. A complete theory of black hole accretion must, however, be also able to accommodate in a natural manner a growing number of empirical traits exhibited in the temporal domain. For example, it is now well established that black hole X-ray binaries exhibit quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) phenomena in essentially three distinct frequency domains; low, $`0.1`$ Hz, intermediate ($`110`$ Hz) and high ($`10^2`$ Hz). It is likely that these are interrelated by some as yet unspecified underlying physics. The high-frequency QPOs seem to occur during periods of flaring, and when the spectra (although in the high-soft state) tend to be relatively hard, i.e. the proportional hard-power- law to thermal excess flux ratio is larger than usual. Furthermore, the QPO amplitudes increase with energy, that is there is a higher degree of modulation of the signal in the hard-power law than in the thermal excess component. In addition to the QPO phenomena, it has been noted by Nowak et al (2000) (also see Cui, Zhang, & Chen 2000) that measures of the coherence between the intensity variations in the hard power law and thermal components is negligible.

In this paper we present empirical evidence in both the temporal and spectral domains in support of our ideas on the converging inflow phenomenon and the BMC model. In section 2, we describe the main observational consequences of the Comptonization model for high-soft and low-hard states based on the presence of thermal and advection dominated (converging inflow) motions around the compact objects. We consider some empirical properties of accreting black holes in Section 3, highlighted by recent observations of XTE J1550-564. Interpretation within the context of our BMC model is presented. In section 4 discussion of issues such as the reliability of obtaining the correct spectra from the deconvolution of time-varying, background dominated signals is discussed. We also investigate possible high-soft-state features such as Compton reflection and relativistically broadened line reported in the recent literature, and present physical parameter estimation (distance-to-mass ratio) for XTE J1550-56. In addition we consider the interrelation between spectral and temporal black hole properties, identifying further support of the converging-inflow hypothesis. Summary and conclusions are offered in section 5.

## 2 The Bulk-Motion Comptonization Model

### 2.1 An Overview and Synopsis of the Recent Literature

As noted, the specific spectral and timing features of the X-ray radiation characterizing the high-soft and low-hard states presumably provide insights into the underlying physical processes. The thermal Comptonization model (Sunyaev & Titarchuk 1980; Titarchuk 1994; Hua & Titarchuk 1995; Poutanen & Svensson 1996) quite well fits the low-hard state spectra with a typical electron temperature of $`T_e`$60 keV and optical depth $`\tau `$1(Zdziarski 2000). These parameters seem to describe both galactic and extragalactic BH sources over the broad range of luminosities, characteristics of those objects; the energy spectral indices $`\alpha `$ and electron temperatures $`kT_e`$ are consistently about 0.7 and 60 keV respectively. When the luminosity of the thermally radiating disk reaches a certain threshold, the power law steepens with the canonical value of $`\alpha 0.7`$ changing to $`\alpha 1.5`$. Laurent & Titarchuk (1999, see also Titarchuk, Lapidus & Muslimov 1998, hereafter TLM98) argued that this type of the spectral phase transition is a consequence of the bulk and thermal motions in a Compton cloud surrounding the black hole.

Sunyaev & Titarchuk (1978; 1980 hereafter ST80) first demonstrated, using an analytical Comptonization theory, that the observed spectrum of Cyg X-1 (Sunyaev & Trumper 1979) can be represented quite precisely by a thermal Comptonization spectral model. It was thus shown that X-ray radiation in the energy band from a few to several hundred keV is a result of the soft disk photons upscattering off thermal electrons. Chakrabarti & Titarchuk (1995 hereafter CT95) subsequently demonstrated through hydrodynamical calculations, a centrifugal-barrier shock region is formed in the region around compact objects (10-20 $`R_s`$) where the accreted matter releases its gravitational energy and heats that region to temperatures of 30-70 keV. In TLM98, the authors argued that any Keplerian motion in the disk has to pass through the centrifugal barrier (CB) region if the inner disk boundary rotates with a sub-Keplerian velocity. The CB location depends on the effective Reynold’s number which, they point out, leads to CB oscillations which can in turn lead to an observable QPO signature.

The presence of the bulk motion in addition to thermal motion in the Compton cloud is an unavoidable consequence of the gravitational attraction by the central source. Blandford & Payne (1981) were first to address the issue of bulk-motion effects on the emergent spectra of accreting black holes by formulating and solving the bulk motion problem in the simplified context of a nonrelativistic Fokker-Plank treatment. They considered a semi-infinite converging inflow atmosphere without taking into account any effects of General Relativity. The first realization that the high-soft state black hole spectra might be related to Bulk Motion Comptonization was put forth by Titarchuk, Mastichiadis & Kylafis \[1996 and in the extended version in (1997), hereafter TMK\].

Zane et al. (1996) have elaborated the numerical method of characteristic for the solution of general relativistic kinetic (GRK) equation for the bulk inflow atmosphere. Subsequently, Titarchuk & Zannias (1998 hereafter TZ98) solved semi$``$analytically the relativistic kinetic equation for a finite converging inflow atmosphere using the separation variables method but they neglected the recoil effect in photon-electron interactions. Laurent & Titarchuk (1999) reproduced TZ98’s results through Monte Carlo simulations and they calculated the overall spectrum taking into account all effects of the photon-electron interactions and the Special and General Relativity Theory.

Recently, Papathanassiou & Psaltis (2001, hereafter PP01) presented calculations of the resulting spectrum of the bulk-motion atmosphere. They solved numerically the general-relativistic kinetic (GRK) equation in the steady-state Schwarzschild spacetime, neglecting the recoil effect in photon-electron interactions. They demonstrated that power-law spectra result from multiple scatterings, similar in some regards to thermal Comptonization.

PP01 conclude that “the photons emerging from the accretion flow with high energies do not carry any signatures of regions of high velocities or space time”. However, their calculations do not allow them to make this strong statement because they neglect the recoil effect. The estimate of the mean electron energy is determined by the position of the high energy cutoff in the spectrum. It is the same as in the thermal Comptonization case (see for example ST80). The spectral index itself which is a real outcome of PP01 calculations does not allow for estimates of the average electron energy. In TZ98 and PP01, following separate and independent approaches to solving the same kinetic equation, both sets of authors elaborate the necessary properties of the Bulk motion inflow in Schwarzschild space time: spectral indices which converges to the asymptotics value of $`1.7`$, and a hard-photon source distribution confined to $`3`$ Schwarzschild radii. For additional details, we refer the reader to the references contained in in TMK97, PP01 and Psaltis (2001).

We also note recent work by Reig et al (2001), who have considered the possibility that rotational motion of electrons in the disk upscatter photons to produce the high-energy power law. They are similarly able to reproduce the basic high-energy continuum properties, provided that the disk vertical optical depth exceeds some threshold value near the inner-most Keplerian orbit.

### 2.2 Predictions of Observable Black-Hole Properties

Most of the spectral and temporal properties predicted theoretically by the BMC model can in principle be verified by observations. They are: (i) the specific high-energy spectral index, $`\alpha 1.75`$ in the limits of high accretion rates and low electron temperatures of order 1 keV and less; (ii) the presence of a high energy turnover, at energies between 300-500 keV; (iii) QPOs detected as oscillations of the hard power law component formed in the same inner-disk vicinity through bulk motion upscattering. These are due to a hard photon-source distribution with a strong maximum about (1.5-1.8) $`R_s`$ (TZ98, Fig. 3, see also Laurent & Titarchuk 2001) which result from the strong photon bending and Doppler effects in the immediate vicinity of a black hole. The contribution to the total disk flux from the inner most region is generally small, hence these oscillations would not be detected. (iv) a lack of discernible coherence between the temporal signals of the high-state soft-thermal emission, emanating from a relatively large region, and the hard-power-law emission emanating from a compact region, and illuminated by a relatively small fraction of the overall thermal emission, and finally, (v) an increase in this coherence measure as the source transitions to the low-hard state.

### 2.3 Emergent Thermal Spectrum: The Hardening Factor

Empirical support of the BMC model, based on numerous high-soft-state BHC observations, has been presented in papers by Shrader & Titarchuk (1998, hereafter ShT98), Borozdin et al.(1999, hereafter BOR99) and Shrader & Titarchuk (1999, hereafter ShT99). In BOR99 and ShT99 it was shown through high quality fits of the BMC model to the observed spectra, that the soft component can be extracted with a high degree of accuracy. The emergent soft flux component depends strongly on BH mass, distance and a color correction or ”hardening factor” $`T_h`$, which is the ratio of the effective to observed blackbody color temperature (see BOR99). Because the mass and distance are known to a high degree of accuracy for GRO J1655-40, it was possible to determine $`T_h2.6`$.

Recently Zhang et al. (2000) and Merloni, Fabian & Ross (2000) have also pointed out the importance of the hardening factor determination. There is an essential difference between the BOR99 empirical determination and the Zhang et al (2000) determination. In BOR99 the authors extracted the blackbody-like component from the high-soft spectrum of GRO J1655-40 using BMC’s model. The quality of fit was very high with $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom of order unity (see BOR99, Table 3 and Fig. 1). They found that the presence of a blackbody-like spectral component was consistent with the data. Then, assuming the thermal component emanates from the disk, the Shakura-Sunyaev 1973 model (hereafter SS73) is used to determine $`T_h2.6`$. Recently, the value $`T_h=2.6`$ for GRO J1655-40 was independently confirmed by Ebisawa et al. (2001).

In contrast with our determination Zhang et al. (2000) assumed that the disk component is embedded in a Comptonizing ”haze”, and is thus viewed through this medium. The hardening factor they derive is due then to upscattering of the disk soft photons in this medium, and it thus depends strongly on the optical depth and temperature (see Sunyaev & Titarchuk 1980). This being the case, the hardening factor can have any of a wide range of values (Zhang et al. found that $`T_h=36`$). We concur that at times the ”weather” in GRO J1655 may be such that the disk is covered by this relatively hot haze and additional spectral components may be needed to fit the data (see BOR99). But very often the effective emission area of the disk is directly observable and its intrinsic properties can thus be determined.

Merloni et al. (2000), using the numerical calculations of the disk spectral formation, confirm that the hardening factor can be noticeably higher than 1.7 which is widely assumed in the literature following Shimura & Takahara (1995). Furthermore they found (see Table 1 of their paper) that with certain combinations of model parameters the hard color factor can be very close to the empirically determined value $`T_h=2.6`$. It is worth noting that the theoretically determined value of $`T_h`$ is very sensitive to choice of model parameters, hence making it very difficult to use for BH mass determination. Given the large uncertainty in the $`\alpha `$parameter for realistic black-hole accretion disks, and because $`T_h`$ changes drastically when $`\alpha `$ approaches unity \[which can be the case at least for disks in NS binaries (Titarchuk & Osherovich 1999)\], we have opted to proceed using our empirically determined value.

## 3 THE EMPIRICAL PICTURE

### 3.1 High-Energy Spectral Evolution

To illustrate some of these ideas we present our recent analysis of the X-ray nova XTE J1550-564 (e.g. Remillard et al 1999; Sobczak et al. 1999) which was observed by RXTE and CGRO. This analysis is based on data obtained by the CGRO OSSE and BATSE instruments, and primarily, the RXTE PCA and HEXTE instruments.

The basic BMC model features can be seen in the context of an evolving source, in this case for XTE J1550-564 during the March 1999 time frame. The composite hard-soft X-ray light curve (Figure 1) illustrates roughly the evolution of that particular event–its rather gradual linear decay from about 2.5 to 2 Crab, followed by an exponential decay in the 2-10 keV band, with more erratic flaring behavior in the BATSE 20-100 keV band.

The spectra illustrated in Figure 2, derived from the RXTE observations of about TJD 11220 (where TJD=JD-2450000), represent the extreme high soft-state in XTE J1550- 564. The flux is completely dominated by thermal emission, with a characteristic temperature of $`kT1`$ keV. The mass-accretion rate is high, as indicated by the $``$2.5 Crab flux (2-10 keV), and we speculate that the geometrical configuration of the thermal source expands due to viscous angular momentum loss in the inner disk. In the extreme case, only a small fraction of the thermal photons illuminate the bulk-in-flow site. Hard photons are further suppressed due to Compton down-scattering by the thermal plasma. As the accretion surge subsides, the situation moderates. This is reflected in the de-convolved spectra; the hard power-law component is barely discernible in the upper panel, and then slightly more pronounced in the lower panel. The parameters of the fit (panels a and b): (T, $`\alpha ,f`$)=(0.9,3.7,0.02) and (0.9,2.6,0.06), where $`T`$ is the temperature of the injected soft photons, $`\alpha `$ is the energy spectral index and $`f`$ is the illumination factor.

As the mass-accretion further decreases and the system stabilizes, the hard X-ray flux increases in proportion to the thermal source. The resulting spectral form is the characteristic black-hole high-soft state spectrum, illustrated in two stages of evolution here. In the spectrum illustrated in panel (c), which is derived from RXTE PCA and HEXTE observations on TJD 11236, the hard power law is becoming more prominent. This is also evident in the upturn in the BATSE Light Curve. The next spectrum of the sequence, (d), is a composite from XTE and OSSE covering about 3-300 keV. The OSSE integration spans TJD 11253-11260. The hard power law is now very prominent out to $`200`$ keV where it becomes noise limited. This is reflected in the evolution in our inferred parameters, (T,$`\alpha ,f`$)=(0.9,1.6,0.11), that is the illumination fraction has now increased. It must be noted however, that the OSSE spectrum presented here represents an integration over the 1-week viewing period, whereas the RXTE soft X-ray spectra are typically $`10^3`$ s “snapshots”. This more than two orders of magnitude difference in the integration time for the RXTE/PCA and OSSE bands clearly makes problematic the identification of a high-energy spectral cutoff. Such a feature cannot be reliably established, primarily due to the noise-limited nature of the high-energy, but additionally because of the drastically different integration times of two these instruments (in this particular case, the net background subtracted count-rate for the coarsely binned 400-650 keV interval is in fact negative by about 1$`\sigma `$). The long time integrations are unavoidable for the high energy part of spectra because of the very steep power law shape. But from the other hand they are problematic for the high-soft state, where any changes in the illumination geometry or mass accretion rate (of any sub-Keplerian or Keplerian portions of the flow) may lead to the drastic spectral changes.

As the outburst continues to evolve (Figure 2e & f), the luminosity of the thermal source decreases. The ambient plasma cloud can no longer be efficiently Compton cooled, and the thermal luminosity is thus further diminished by scattering. The resulting decrease in the thermal excess is clearly seen in this sequence of de-convolved spectra (in either case, a detection is made only up to 20 keV). This change is quantitatively reflected in the derived parameters: T decreases (0.75 to 0.34 keV), and f, which recall is related to the illumination parameter of the bulk-motion in fall, increases (0.2 to 0.31), although the power-law index is still consistent with the high-soft-state spectral form.

### 3.2 Spectral Characteristics Associated with QPO Behavior

In Figure 3, we show how continuum models derived through fits to BH X-ray nova XTE J15550-564 (panel a) and 4U 1630-47 (panel b). For XTE J1550-564 data from the two epochs; October 1998 (solid curve), when 185-Hz QPOs were reported (e.g. Remillard et al. 1999); and March 1999 when no prominent high-frequency QPOs are present. The October 1998 case represents a higher luminosity state than March 1999. The spectra are scaled for illustrative purposes. It is worth noting the dramatic difference in the proportional luminosity in the soft-to-hard components for the two cases. This is reflected in the inferred values of the $`f`$ parameters, 0.04 and 0.6 for the two cases. 4U 1630-47 provides another, albeit less dramatic example (panel b).

We interpret this as being due to an enchanced illumination of the converging inflow site, $`14R_S`$ for the hard/QPO case, which we conjecture results from a pile up of the material – i.e. the formation of a standing wave – in the inner disk region (TLM). This is also reflected in the larger parameter $`f`$, the BMC illumination factor, of our model (ShT98-99). We consider the luminosity and spectral dependence, specifically the $`f`$-dependence, of the presence (absence) of the QPO as an additional support for the BMC model.

### 3.3 Mass-distance estimate for XTE J1550-564

We have previously developed and presented a method for physical parameter estimation based the derived BMC model parameters (ShT99; see also BOR99). The basic idea is to infer the effective soft-emission region area in terms of the distance (typically unknown) and the previously mentioned hardening factor. The observable surface area can then be applied to a determination of the black-hole mass in terms of a specific disk model, typically that of SS73 with modification to treat electron scattering.

Applying our method to XTE J1550-564, we obtain the distance to mass ratio $`d/m=0.042\pm 0.004`$, where $`m`$ in solar units and $`d`$ is in units of 10 kps. A $`\mathrm{cos}(i)=0.5`$ as a cosine of the inclination angle and the hardening factor $`T_h=2.6`$ has been assumed in this calculation. This suggests a large black-hole mass, perhaps $`m1015`$ if the source is in the 5-kpc distance range. The distance is unknown for this source, but given the large column density $`N_H=2\times 10^{22}`$ it is probably more than a few kpc. We further note that for $`d=5`$ kpc and our corresponding mass estimate, the source would have been radiating in the 5-7% $`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ range during early March 1999 when the 2-10 keV flux was in the 2-2.5 Crab. However, given the apparently large mass accretion rate 10-15% $`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ is more plausible and the distance may well be in the $`78`$ kpc range calling for a larger BH mass.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Spectral/Temporal Connections in BH Binaries

There are roughly speaking three “types” of QPO behavior seen in Galactic black hole binaries; $`(.1,10,100)`$ Hz. The latter 2 seem to be associated with ”power law-dominant” high-soft states (e.g. Remillard. et al 1999; Cui et al 1997). The high-frequency cases are also luminosity dependent – they tend to be associated with luminosity surges – perhaps for the same reasons that kilohertz QPOs in neutron star sources are associated with high luminosity states of those objects. The high-frequency QPO amplitude is also seen to increase with energy \[see e.g. Morgan et al (1997); Cui et al (2000)\]. In our interpretation, this is because the high-energy photons are produced in a more compact region – i.e. the converging inflow site – than the low-energy ones which are produced in the inner-disk annuli. Another empirical trend that has emerged is that the break frequency, $`\nu _b`$, of the power density spectra (PDS) increases with the photon energy (Belloni et al. 1997, Homan et al. 2000). Titarchuk & Osherovich (1999) have shown that the break frequency $`\nu _b`$ is related to the size of the emission region. This is because $`\nu _b`$ is inversely related to the emission area viscous time $`t_b`$. Thus smaller values of $`t_b`$ imply smaller emission areas for a given energy band. This is precisely the case for Bulk Motion Comptonization; harder photons are produced in the deeper layers of the converging inflow atmosphere.

We should also note that the coherence between low and high energies, e.g. between $``$ 2-5 keV and $`>6`$ keV, is small, in the soft-high state but it increases when the soft-to-hard state transition occurs (Cui et al. 1997; Nowak et al. 2000). In the framework of the BMC model, only the innermost part of the disk, of order a few $`R_S`$, provides the seed photons for the Bulk motion Comptonization and thus for hard photon production. The low degree of coherence between intensity fluctuations of the low-energy disk photons ($``$ 2-5 keV), which come from much larger disk area of order $`\pi [(1015)R_S]^2`$, with that of the high energy photons formed in the compact converging inflow region of order $`\pi (3R_S)^2`$ arises naturally. However the coherence is expected to increase for the soft-hard transition because the Comptonization region becomes larger and ultimately it completely covers the seed-photon area of the disk.

Each of these trends is difficult to explain in context of “standard” disk plus coronae models. They can in principle be reproduced by invoking additional parameter, such as a radial temperature gradient in the corona (e.g. Nobili et al. 2000; Lehr, Wagoner, & Wilms 2000), or by more elaborate geometrical and dynamical configurations (e.g. Boettcher & Liang 2000). However, we assert that they are explained naturally and self consistently if the hard flux emanates from a compact region. In this case, the: (i). high-frequency inner-disk oscillations are expected to be preferentially scattered, since only this small fraction of the thermal source illuminates CI region, (ii). higher energy photons are produced closer to the BH horizon (where the velocity is closer to the speed of light), and thus the compactness of the emission region increases with the energy, (iii). high luminosity is consistent with “pile up” in accretion flow.

### 4.2 Hard and Soft Phase Lags

Additional important information related to the X-ray spectral-energy distribution can be extracted from the time lags between different energy bands. While hard lags have been observed for several sources, soft phase lags have been found in some cases as well (e.g. Reig et al. 2000). In addition, there have been suggestions of separate harmonic components of given feature having lags of the opposite signs \[e.g. Tomsick & Kaaret (2000) studied the QPO properties of GRS 1915+105 where both negative (soft) phase lags and positive (hard) lags were detected\]. However, it is natural to expect the positive time lags in the case of the thermal Comptonization. In the case of bulk-motion Comptonization, both negative and positive time lags are anticipated. In the thermal Comptonization case, the primary soft photons gain energy in process of scattering off hot electrons; thus the hard photons spend more time in the cloud than the soft ones. There is then a one-to-one correspondence between the photon energy and the photon travel time in the cloud. But this is not the case for bulk-motion Comptonization where soft disk photons at first gain energy in the deep layers of the converging inflow, and then in their subsequent path towards the observer lose energy in the relatively cold outer atmosphere. If the overall optical depth of the converging inflow atmosphere (or the mass accretion rate) is near unity, we would detect only the positive lags as in the thermal Comptonization case, because relatively few photons would lose energy in escaping. But with an increase of the optical depth, the soft lags appear because more hard photons lose their energy in the cold outer layers. There is a piling up effect at low energies due to the recoil effect (see ST80). A significant portion of the low-energy photon distribution, particularly at energies of order 2-5 keV, results from this piling up effect. The low-energy photons spend more time in the matter than the higher-energy photons because since they undergo additional scatterings from cold electrons of the outer regions.

In fact, for unsaturated Comptonization the spectral formation is mostly due to the Doppler effect but in the saturated case it is equally determined by recoil and the Doppler effects (see e.g. ST80 and figures of spectra there). For thermal Comptonization the relative change of energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/E=(4kT_eE)/m_ec^2`$. In the unsaturated case, the photon energy E, on average, is less than $`4kT_e`$ and thus most of the photons gain energy and the soft photons are led by the hard ones and thus the hard lags occur due to Comptonization. But in the saturated case when the Comptonization parameter is very high, i.e. when the product of $`4kT_e/m_ec^2`$ and $`\tau ^2`$ is greater than one, a significant fraction of the hard photons lose energy trying to thermalize to the average electron energy, $`kT_e`$. In this case there is a distribution of soft and hard lags as a result of Comptonization. Some of hard photons are followed by the soft ones.

A very similar situation is realized for the Bulk Comptonization where the temperature of the electrons should be replaced by $`m_ev_b^2/3`$ (TMK97, appendix D). Because in the outer part of the converging inflow atmosphere $`(r>5r_s)`$ $`m_ev_b^2/3=m_ec^2(r_S/r)/3`$ less than 30 keV the hard photons with energies more than 30 keV readily lose their energies and consequently the hard photons can be followed by the photons with energies less than 30 keV.

Because the hard state is characterized by the thermal Comptonization spectra we expect the hard lags in the hard state and we expect the soft lags in the high-soft states characterized by high f values (i.e. power-law dominated). Hard lags would be more likely to occur in high-soft states with lower f values. Laurent & Titarchuk (2001) present the extensive calculations of the distribution of time lags in the framework of the BMC model.

### 4.3 Additional Spectral Components

We also note that we have not included additional continuum features such as Compton reflection in our high-soft state analysis (e.g. Tomsick et al. 1999; Zdziarski, 2000; Gierlinski et al. 1999). While it may always be possible to improve the chi-square statistic through the introduction of additional parameters, our goal is to extract physical information invoking a minimal parameter space. Furthermore, the aforementioned analyses were motivated by the presence of significant residuals to additive continuum models (typically blackbody or multi-color disk plus power law). In our fitting however, we have not generally been so compelled. For example, for the GRO J1655-40 high-soft state covered by the TJD 10322-10328 OSSE observation we obtain a 3-parameter fit with a reduced chi-square statistic of $`\chi _\nu ^20.6`$. This compares favorably to other efforts in the literature where more complex models are invoked. For example, a $`\chi _\nu ^20.7`$ result was obtained by Tomsick et al (1999) by invoking a 8-parameter model including Compton reflection characterized by a 26% covering factor. The difference may have to do with the effects of applying an additive model as opposed to a self-consistently derived model to the instrumental response (Figure 4).

### 4.4 Extent of the High-Energy Power Law

Another issue regards the high-energy extent of the hard power law. As noted, the BMC model predicts a turnover of this power law below the electron rest-mass energy due to Compton recoil effects, relativistic bending of photon trajectories and gravitational redshift. There have been claims in the literature of detections to as high as 700 keV, however, what is generally presented is the high-energy extension of a power-law $`fit`$ to the data, which is in fact dominated by the higher signal-to-noise detector count rates at lower energies. The problem is that the source count rates above $`500`$ keV are typically a fraction of a percent of the background count rates, and the long integration times required lead to systematic uncertainties which are hard to characterize. The first, and still the most notable case has been GRO J1655-40 (e.g. Grove et al 1997; Grove et al. 1998; Tomsick et al 1999). Referring to our analysis of GRO J1655-40 from the preceding section, a coarse binning of the data leads to a statistical significance of $``$3.5-$`\sigma `$ in the 475-600 keV spectral range. To better address this issue we have analyzed 14 spectra from 6 Galactic BH binaries observed with OSSE during the CGRO mission. The resulting statistical distribution of detection significance for the $`450750`$ keV band is illustrated in Figure 5. Although, there is an apparent positive asymmetry relative to the overlayed Gaussian curve (which represents random statistical fluctuation about a zero mean), the results seem less than compelling, given the likely predominance of systematic uncertainties in this spectral domain.

We further note that while we have made a specific prediction regarding the high-energy extent of the BMC-produced high-energy power law, we are not ruling out the possibility of higher-energy gamma-ray emission from some other process.

The recent claim by Zdziarski et al. (2001) regarding the observational evidence of the nonthermal Comptonization and ruling out the bulk Comptonization for the high-soft state is based on the OSSE observation of the high-soft state in GRS 1915+105. The exposure time for these observations of $`(27)\times 10^5`$ s is incomparable with the dynamical time scale of the X-ray emission region of order of $`10^3`$ s determined by the subKeplerian component. One should expect variability of the spectral index of the emergent spectrum within one hour or less. Furthemore, Focke et al. (1997) analyzed RXTE observations of Cyg X-1 in the soft state. They claimed significant variations of the hard tail photon index occuring in minute time scales. Thus it is very problematic to restore the true spectral shape (particularly the high energy turnover) using the data with the exposure time of order of a few times of $`10^5`$ seconds when the real count rate from the source is washed out and additionally distorted by the high level X-ray background.

### 4.5 Sub-Keplerian Flows

CT95 first argued that two flows (subKepleian and Keplerian) are always present in the binaries. Now this prediction is confirmed by the recent observation of a number of sources including XTE J1550-554 (Smith et al. 2001; Soria et al. 2001) The dynamical time scale of the propagation of the subKeplerian components towards the central object is very close to the free-fall time scale which is less that $`10^3`$ s for a black hole of 10 solar masses.

### 4.6 Physical Parameter Extraction: Previous Approaches

We note that many efforts described in the literature have attempted to directly infer physical information through spectral deconvolutions based on specific disk models. The models are typically some variation of the SS73 formulation. We point out however, that the SS73 formulation invokes a dimensionless radial integration variable, and thus for example, determinations of the inner disk radius in physical units are not valid.

A full analytical presentation of the multi-color disk spectrum can be found in ShT99, equations 1 and 2. In this analysis, the spectrum is formulated as an integral over disk annuli with a lower limit expressed as the dimensionless inner radius, namely, $`r_{\mathrm{in}}=R_{\mathrm{in}}/R_\mathrm{S}`$. Here $`R_\mathrm{S}`$ is the Schwarzchild radius. The temperature distribution in the SS73 formulation is described by a function $`f(r)`$, where r is the dimensionless radius in Schwarzchild units (ShT99, equation 2). Mitsuda et al. (1984) \[also see Makishima et al. (1986)\] first suggested simplification of this integral (e.g. ShT99 equation 1) by ignoring the term $`(r_{\mathrm{in}}/r)^{1/2}`$. This simplification transforms the radial integration over the disk from dimensionless to dimensional units. Such a procedure is not mathematically correct. It is nonetheless widely used in the community; it is for example, the formalism underlying the “diskbb” routine of the “XSPEC” package.

Despite this problem, in many instances in the literature of this field, values for the inner-disk radius are not only quoted in physical units to high degrees of precision, but the accompanying dialog often leaves the reader with the misleading impression that what is being presented is a measurement, rather than an inferred parameter of a particular (and non-unique) spectral deconvolution.

### 4.7 Global Disk Oscillations, Low Frequency QPOs and Mass Determination

The low frequency oscillations seen in hard state as well as soft, and at multiple wavelengths have been interpreted as the global disk mode (GDM) oscillations (Titarchuk & Osherovich, hereafter TO00). If the disk oscillates coherently as a single body, the observed frequencies should be seen in all wavelengths emitted by the extended disk, i.e. from optical to X-rays. The GDM frequency, of order 0.1 Hz for BH masses of order of 10-20 solar, is consistent with the observations (TO00). This lack of energy dependence, as well as the observed anticorrelation of the QPO frequency with the disk mass has been observed in XTE J1118+480 (Wood et al. 2000). The latter effect is also a natural consequence of GDM model, where QPO frequency anticorrelates with the disk mass which is believed to decrease during the soft-to-hard transition. The intensities and profiles of high-excitation optical/UV lines, believed to result from photoionization of the outer disk by X-irradiation, may also be modulated at the GDM frequency. This is a measurement which could in principle be made as a further test, and it also allows for a more precise estimates of the size and physical properties of the disk (Wood et al 2001).

The low-frequency QPOs, interpreted in the context of the GDM oscillations and the BMC model analysis provide two independent derivations of BH masses. This approach has been applied to derive the BH mass in LMC X-1 (TO00) which was earlier derived using the X-ray spectral method (ShT99). A similar procedure can be applied to XTE J1550-56, XTE J1859+227, and others. Recently McClintock et al. (2000); also see Wagner et al (2001) have independently confirmed earlier, more speculative results presented by Dubus et al. (2000) regarding the binary solution for XTE J1118+480. Those authors demonstrated through observations of the quiescent system that the velocity amplitude of the dwarf secondary is $`698\pm 14`$km/s and the orbital period of the system is $`0.17013\pm 0.00010`$ d. The implied value of the mass function, $`f(M)=6.00\pm 0.36`$ solar masses, provides a hard lower limit on the mass of the compact primary that greatly exceeds the maximum allowed mass of a neutron star. Among the eleven dynamically established black-hole X-ray novae, the large mass function of XTE J1118+480 is rivaled only by V404 Cygni and XTE J1859+226. A large black hole mass, in XTE J1118+480 in fact, was predicted earlier by TO00 using the GDM frequency. The GDM leads to a BH mass estimate for XTE J1118+480 of $`7M_{}`$ based on the $`0.1`$ Hz QPO frequency, in agreement with the optical observations by Wagner et al. ( We note there is a typographical error in equation (14) of TO00 which should have $`x_{\mathrm{in}}^{4/5}`$ instead of $`x_{\mathrm{in}}^{8/15}`$.) We note that distance-to-mass determination method based on the BMC formalism (BOR99, ShT99 and section 4.5) could not be applied to this source since it observed only in the low-hard spectral state.

### 4.8 High - Frequency QPOs

As a synopsis of the QPO behavior in BH binaries it is worthwhile to note that sources such as XTE J1550-56, 4U 1630-47, XTE J1859+227 exhibit $`10^2`$ Hz QPO behavior only when high “f” values are seen in our analysis (f parameterizes the fractional illumination of the CI region; see BOR99). The intermediate case, i.e. $`10`$ Hz QPOs, are more ambiguous and the low-frequency ($`10^1`$) QPOs seem to be energy independent, spanning the X-ray to near IR bands (Haswell et al. 2000; Wood et al 2000; Chaty et al 2000). Low-frequency QPOs are seen in low-hard and high-soft states but high-frequency cases only in high-soft states (Remillard et al 1999; Cui 1998). Thus, there is a apparently certain connection between different QPO regimes. The observations seem to be suggesting that the presence of the low frequencies is not associated with spectral state transitions, whereas high frequencies appear only in the high-soft state, albeit an extreme manifestation (hard-power-law dominated) of that state. It is worth noting that in GRS 1915+105, a broad PDS feature near 70 Hz is detected the low-hard state whereas a strong QPO feature is observed in the high-soft state (Trudolyubov 2000). In our interpretation, the oscillations in the near vicinity of the black hole are strongly smeared because they are viewed through a hot Compton cloud by the the observer. This prediction, based on the converging-inflow conceptual frame work should be confirmed or refuted by observations.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

Based on a number of empirical trends in the literature regarding the temporal and spectral properties of BH binaries, supplemented by our own analysis of a number of these objects, we have presented a number of arguments in support of the BMC model. Most notably, the high-soft state spectral form, and the high frequency variability but long-term stability of the power law, which are problematic for thermal Comptonization scenarios, arise naturally in our model. These features, along with the other empirical trends such as the lack of temporal coherence between the soft and hard variability in the high-soft state, and increased coherence in the low-hard state further support our conjecture of the existence of a compact high-energy emission region located in the vicinity of BH horizon $`(14R_S)`$. The total (kinetic) energy of the matter increases towards to the BH horizon. This radial gradient of the matter energy provides a natural explanation of the noted increase in QPO power with energy. A majority of efforts to explain these phenomena invoke thermal-Comptonizing media external to the disk. The problem with this approach, from our point of view, is that the physical parameters of the Comptonizing plasma require ”fine tuning” to retain consistency with the ubiquitous nature of the spectral form. This is further compounded by the requirement to provide a self consistent explanation for the recently emerging temporal characteristics, such as this energy dependence of the high-frequency QPO power. If one for example, invokes radial thermal gradients to a Comptonizing plasma as an explanation of the QPO energy dependence, the inferred parameter space must be further tuned to allow one to consistently reproduce the emergent high-soft state spectral form over a considerable luminosity range.

Regarding the high-frequency QPOs, we predict analogous effects in AGN but with frequency rescaled in inverse proportion to BH mass, thus at least seven orders of magnitude lower, of order of $`10^5`$ Hz. In particular, the narrow-line Seyfert-1 Galaxies which are an characterized by the steep power law with $`\alpha 1.7`$ and apparent soft excess emission, relative to the canonical $`\alpha 0.8`$ X-ray spectra of the broader class of Seyfert-1 and quasar spectra. This may be related to mass-accretion rate (and thus to the host environment) in a manner similar to the bimodal spectral behavior of Galactic binaries, thus these objects would be the obvious candidates to search for this phenomenon. Nominal evidence for such oscillations has recently appeared in the literature (Boller, et al 2001).

We argue that the high-soft-state spectral form represents a unique black-hole event horizon signature. We further conjecture that an extra-Galactic analog may exist, namely the narrow line Seyfert-1 galactic nuclei. Given the ubiquitous nature of this phenomenon for many Galactic systems, and its apparent extension into the extra-Galactic realm, we suggest that we are witnessing a direct signature of the disappearance of matter falling down the black-hole event-horizon drain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work made use of the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer science support facilities at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.


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# A photometric and spectroscopic study of dwarf and giant galaxies in the Coma cluster - V. Dependence of the spectroscopic properties on location in the cluster 1footnote 11footnote 1Based on observations made with the William Herschel Telescope operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.

## 1 Introduction

This is the fifth paper in a series which examines the properties of galaxies in the Coma cluster in the magnitude range 12 $`<`$ R $`<`$ 20 and in a wide variety of environments. In this paper we examine the spatial dependence of line indices which depend upon metal abundance and age, and of the luminosity weighted mean stellar abundances and ages which we derived from these indices in Paper III of this series (Poggianti et al. 2001). In this paper we examine the spatial dependence of the line indices diagnostic of metal abundance and age and investigate the origin and implication of such gradients.

The properties of galaxies in clusters have long been known to depend strongly upon the environment. This was shown most clearly by the survey of Dressler (1980a,b) who showed a dependence of galaxy morphology upon environment in the sense that the proportion of E and S0 galaxies increases with increasing density. This has been taken as evidence for a merger process occurring in clusters which transforms disk galaxies to spheroids at an early epoch. Further work on clusters at higher redshifts (Dressler et al. 1997) shows that this dependence is qualitatively similar in highly concentrated clusters at earlier epochs.

The importance of the intracluster medium has become clear more recently. the hot gas mass in clusters is typically 5 times the luminous mass in galaxies, and that gas typically has a metal abundance (specifically iron abundance) of 0.2 - 0.5 solar (Finoguenov et al. 2000; De Grandi & Molendi 2000). The majority of the heavy elements in a cluster are in the hot gas, but all of these heavy elements must have come from galaxies at some stage. Finoguenov & Ponman (1999) and Finoguenov et al (2000) study the distribution of both iron and $`\alpha `$ elements in the hot gas component in clusters, and find that there are radial gradients in the abundances, stronger in iron than in $`\alpha `$ elements. They conclude that Type II supernovae dominate the enrichment process in the outer regions of clusters, but in their centers Type I supernovae are more important. However in the Coma cluster, which is the subject of this study, Arnaud et al. (2001) find that the abundance profile is flat at 0.25 solar out to 15 arcminutes radius, except for a region of enhanced abundance less than 30 arcsec in radius centerd on NGC 4874. These authors present only a single abundance profile, presumably derived assuming solar abundance ratios.

As the galaxies are the source of the heavy elements, it is important to study and understand their properties. Line indices and luminosity weighted ages and abundances for samples of Coma cluster galaxies have been published by Jorgensen (1999) and Terlevich et al. (2000), but our sample has a much greater range in luminosity, and covers a wide range of radius and of environment.

## 2 Observations

Our data are taken from photometric and spectroscopic observations of two 40 x 30 arcminute fields in the Coma cluster, with the Tokyo Mosaic CCD camera and the WYFFOS fibre fed spectrograph respectively. Details of the observing setup and data reduction are given in earlier papers in this series. Photometric observations and reduction are described in paper I (Komiyama et al. 2001). Paper II (Mobasher et al. 2001) describes the spectroscopic sample selection. In paper III (Poggianti et al. 2001) we derive line indices on the Lick system and luminosity weighted ages and metallicities from these indices. In the current paper we analyse the following quantities: galaxy position, R magnitude, (B-R) color and concentration index from Paper I; and the spectroscopic indices Mg2, $`<`$Fe$`>`$ and H$`\beta `$ from paper III, together with luminosity weighted ages and metallicities derived from the the model grids presented in the Mg2 \- H$`\beta `$ diagram in Figure 4 of that paper.

Our galaxy sample selection is described in paper II. The spectroscopic sample comprises two subsamples, a bright sample of galaxies at R$`<`$18 with known redshifts from Colless & Dunn (1996) and Colless (1998) and a faint sample selected from our own photometric imaging survey (Paper I) to have 18$`<`$R$`<`$20 and 1$`<`$B–R$`<`$2. As described in Paper II, the samples are both believed to be free of morphological bias. Our faint spectroscopic sample is not complete, but the galaxies observed are drawn at random from the photometrically defined sample.

The sample discussed here comprises 229 galaxies from our spectroscopic survey for which the formal errors on the Mg2, $`<`$Fe$`>`$ and H$`\beta `$ indices are less than 0.04 magnitude, 1.5 Å and 1.5 Å respectively, and which did not show emission lines on visual inspection. Of these, 163 are in the central Coma 1 field and 66 in the Coma 3 field which is located to the southwest of the cluster center. described in Paper II. If more than one such spectrum was available then the line index values were combined with weighting proportional to the inverse of the variance on each line index. Because we require small errors in the indices for inclusion in the sample we discriminate against faint galaxies and in particular low surface brightness galaxies, for low surface brightness the signal-to-noise ratio of our spectra is often too poor for inclusion. Rejecting emission lines (which otherwise will dilute the Balmer indices in particular) discriminates against galaxies with ongoing star formation.

In this paper we examine the dependence of galaxy properties on the distance of the galaxy from the the cluster center, which has been taken to be at RA = 12h 59m 42.8s, Dec = 27 58’ 14”, Equinox J2000.0, a position near the peak of the X-ray emission (White et al. 1993) and some 1.8 arcminutes East of NGC 4874. However we do not completely sample the azimuthal distribution at radii greater than 15 arcminutes. Our outer field is to the South West of the center, and includes NGC 4839 and the group of galaxies around it, which are believed to be falling into the Coma cluster (e.g. Neumann et al. 2001). The effect of the inclusion of this group in our sample is considered later in the paper.

## 3 Radial dependence of line indices

In Figures 1 \- 3 we plot the Lick Indices Mg2, $`<`$Fe$`>`$ and H$`\beta `$ as a function of radius in the cluster.

The Mg2 index (Figure 1) shows a clear trend with radius, galaxies in the outer part of the cluster have lower Mg2 indices than those in the core. There is a substantial scatter at all radii which is due to the strong trend of this index with galaxy magnitude (paper III); the fainter galaxies have weaker Mg2, and larger errors, because of the lower signal-to-noise of the spectra. The lines show weighted (dashed line) and unweighted (dot-dash line) least squares fits to the data, there is a large offset between the lines because the brighter galaxies which have stronger Mg2 have better signal-to-noise and hence lower errors and higher weights in the weighted fit. However both fits show the trend which is visible in the data; towards lower Mg2 at larger radii within the cluster.

In Table 1 we present the statistical properties of the fits, to show the significance of the correlations. The important statistics in this context are “Student’s” t, and P, the probability of obtaining a value of $`|t|`$ this high by chance in an uncorrelated sample.

The equivalent plots for the $`<`$Fe$`>`$ and H$`\beta `$ indices are shown in Figures 2 and 3 respectively, the $`<`$Fe$`>`$ index shows a weaker gradient than Mg2, perhaps masked by higher errors, whereas H$`\beta `$ shows a marginal positive gradient.

Although Figure 3 shows marginal evidence for a positive gradient in H$`\beta `$ the statistical parameters in Table 1 show that this is not significant. In this Figure we do not see evidence for a concentration of Balmer line strong galaxies in the NGC 4839 region of the Coma cluster, as was proposed by Caldwell et al. (1993), although our survey area does cover this region. NGC 4839 is 41.7 arcminutes from our defined cluster center, and we see no concentration of H$`\beta `$ strong galaxies at this radius. Caldwell et al. measured H$`\delta `$ rather than H$`\beta `$, which is less affected by emission. Emission line galaxies have been eliminated from our sample following visual inspection, although some low level of emission may remain (possibly giving rise to the negative outliers in Figure 3). Again, these galaxies appear to be distributed evenly throughout the cluster.

### 3.1 Correcting for the luminosity dependence of the indices

In Paper 3 we show a tight correlation between the metallicity derived from the Mg2 index and galaxy luminosity for our sample. Here we investigate whether this dependence alone is sufficient to explain the radial gradient that we see in Figure 1. In Figure 4a we plot Mg2 against R magnitude for the sample used here. This shows the well defined correlation between Mg2 and magnitude, which is discussed in Paper 3. To take this relationship out of the radial dependence, in Figure 4b we plot the residuals in the Mg2 index from a weighted least squares straight line fit against radius.

The correlation with radius is clearly still present in the residuals, and the scatter has been reduced, which shows that the correlation in Figure 1 is not entirely due to index-magnitude relation.

A similar effect is seen if we plot the residuals from the Color-Magnitude relation (paper I) against radius (Figure 5).

In Figures 6 \- 7 we repeat this procedure for our measurements of the $`<`$Fe$`>`$ and H$`\beta `$ indices, to see whether we can identify residual radial trends in these indices which may have been masked by the scatter introduced by the index-magnitude relations. $`<`$Fe$`>`$ shows a strong dependence upon magnitude (Paper III and Figure 6a), and when this relation is taken out we see no dependence of the residual upon radius (Figure 6b).

This result is surprising given the strong gradient seen in Mg2, and if confirmed suggests a different radial dependence of the enrichment mechanisms for these two elements. However we have to consider the possibility that it is simply the larger scatter in $`<`$Fe$`>`$ which masks a radial trend. Formally the slope in Figure 4b is -0.00050 $`\pm `$ 0.00013 mag arcmin-1 and that in Figure 6b is -0.00137 $`\pm `$ 0.00140 Å arcmin-1. If the slopes of the residual/radius relations were to be in the same ratio of the slopes of the index/magnitude relations for Mg2 and $`<`$Fe$`>`$ (Figures 4a and 6a) then we would expect a slope in Figure 6b of -0.0034 Å arcmin-1, which is 1.4$`\sigma `$ away from the observed value.

There is a very small positive radial gradient in the H$`\beta `$ residual, amounting to only 0.4 Å over the entire radial range.

### 3.2 Metallicity or age as a driver of the radial dependence of the indices

In paper 3 we interpreted our measurements of Lick indices in terms of luminosity weighted stellar age and metallicity with the help of Single Stellar Population models described in that paper. The models show that the Mg2 index in particular is sensitive not only to the metallicity of the population, but that at high metallicity it is also sensitive to the age of the population. This problem is sometimes referred to as the “age-metallicity degeneracy”. However, if galaxies really did consist of a single age and metallicity population, then a pair of indices such as Mg2 and H$`\beta `$ would yield an unambiguous estimate of the age and metallicity of the population, subject to observational error and the correctness of a particular set of models such as those we use in Paper 3.

The problems with interpretation of the Lick indices are largely due to the uncertainties in the models. First, the models are only Single Stellar Population models, and a galaxy such as our own does not consist of stars with a single age and abundance. Second, our understanding of stellar evolution is as yet incomplete. The limitations of current models are most apparent from our lack of understanding of Galactic globular clusters. We still don’t know if age is the dominant second parameter affecting horizontal branch morphology (e.g. Chaboyer et al. 1996; Stetson et al 1999; Rich et al. 1997), and some authors claim that the age differences between clusters of similar metallicity are too small to explain their difference in HB morphology. A related problem is the embarrassing discrepancy between the spectroscopic and CMD ages for 47 Tuc (Gibson et al. 1999), though population synthesis models with improved physics reduce the discrepancy (Vazdekis et al. 2001) or possibly eliminate it completely (Schiavon et al. 2001). Certainly, if we cannot model the relatively simple globular clusters, which are coeval and chemically homogeneous, we will have little hope of understanding more complicated stellar systems such as galaxies.

Accepting these caveats, we use the models described in Paper III to investigate whether the radial gradients in the indices we observed are due to metallicity or age gradients, or a combination of the two.

In Figure 8 we plot the metallicity from the grids in the H$`\beta `$/Mg2 diagram in Paper 3 against radius, there is a gradient of around 0.4 dex from the center of the cluster to 80 arcminutes radius.

In Figures 9a and 9b we again take out the dependence of metallicity upon luminosity, Figure 9a is the correlation between metallicity and R magnitude, and in Figure 9b we plot the residuals from the fit to this relation against radius. When the strong luminosity dependence is taken out we find a gradient $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$log\[Fe/H\] $``$ -0.2 between the center of the cluster and 80 arcminutes radius. The significance of this gradient is not as well established as those in the raw indices, Table 1 shows an 11% probability of a gradient of this size arising by chance, i.e. it is established at the 89% confidence level. Further observations of a larger sample of galaxies are required to firm up this result.

A feature of Figure 9a is the lack of galaxies in the lower left quadrant of this plot, i.e. there are very few bright metal-poor galaxies, although there are rather more faint metal-rich ones, although our spectroscopic sample at R $`<`$ 16 is complete. This distribution, together with the very strong correlation observed in this diagram, suggests that processes which form smaller galaxies from larger ones (tidal stripping, fragmentation and harassment) were more important in the evolution of the cluster than processes which form bright galaxies out of faint ones (e.g. near equal-mass mergers), at least at times since the bulk of the stars were formed.

In Figure 10 we plot histograms of the derived luminosity weighted stellar age from the models in Paper III, divided into samples at projected radius greater than and less than 40 arcminutes. Our ages are derived from the right hand panel of Figure 5 of that paper. as pointed out there, many galaxies lie below the grid lines, i.e. at lower H$`\beta `$ strength than any models predict, these galaxies are allocated an age of 30 Gyr. The cause of this discrepancy is discussed in Paper III. Figure 10 shows that a higher proportion of the galaxies in the inner sample than in the outer lie below the grid. The ages attributed to these particular galaxies are not satisfactory for addressing the problem addressed in this paper, and because the significance of the difference in the age distributions outside and inside 40 arcminutes depends critically upon our treatment of these galaxies, we can only test such differences using non-parametric rank tests. Using the two-sample form of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we test the samples against the null hypothesis that they are drawn from the same distribution. Taking at face value the rank of the ages of the galaxies in Figure 10, and using the two-sample form of the test, we find that the distributions differ at the 93% confidence level. However ignoring those galaxies placed at an age of 30 Gyr, we find that the age distributions for those galaxies with well established ages differ only at the 30% confidence level, i.e. those distributions are entirely consistent with each other.

Maraston & Thomas (2000) present composite population models using isochrones which reproduce the strong Balmer lines seen in old, metal-poor galactic globular clusters. Their models of early type galaxies consist of two old populations, one metal poor and one metal rich. They propose that these models can give rise to the observed scatter in cluster galaxy H$`\beta `$ strengths as a combination of different proportions of old metal poor and old metal rich populations without the need for a young population. If there were a metal poor population in the galaxies in our sample which became more important further out in the cluster, then this could mask an age gradient, but this age gradient would be in the sense that galaxies at the center of the cluster were younger. There is no firm evidence for such an effect, and although the work of Maraston & Thomas (2000) suggests that there may be galaxies in our sample for which we are deriving unrealistically young ages, these galaxies seem to be spread evenly throughout the cluster.

### 3.3 Dependence of the abundance gradient on the morphology and age

It is well known that there is a dependence of galaxy morphology upon environment within clusters (Dressler 1980a,b), so in this section we consider whether the metallicity gradient which we see is the same effect. At first sight this seems unlikely, as the processes which give rise to transformations between morphological types (ram pressure stripping, galaxy harassment) are unlikely to affect the galaxy metallicity, and any effects on the metallicity-magnitude relation will result from effects on the luminosity, and is second order to effects upon the luminosity function. Moreover the processes which determine the galaxy metallicity are either internal and depend primarily upon the galaxy mass (resulting in the metallicity-magnitude relation), or they are environmental and involve transfer of gas between the galaxies and the intracluster medium, and are unlikely to depend upon morphology.

Our sample consists largely of galaxies fainter than V=17, for which we have no objective or subjective morphological classification. Inevitably there will be some spiral and irregular galaxies in the sample. Terlevich et al. (2001) plot the (U-V) color-magnitude relation for galaxies of various morphological types in the Coma cluster (their Figure 6). The color - magnitude (CM) relation is driven mostly by the metallicity-mass relation (Faber 1973); Terlevich et al. find that most spiral, irregular and unclassified galaxies in their sample lie on the same CM relation as the E and S0 galaxies, although there are a few outliers on the blue side of the ridge line. However these outliers are very blue, around 1 magnitude bluer in (U-V) than the ridge line, which is likely to be due to ongoing star formation. Such galaxies would have emission lines, and would have been rejected from our sample.

Figure 11 shows the residuals in metallicity from the metallicity magnitude relation, plotted only for those galaxies with a well established mean stellar age greater than 6Gyr. There are only 143 galaxies in this plot, due to the uncertainties in the ages. However the correlation with radius is still clear, indeed it is stronger and more significant than in the complete sample (Figure 9b); Table 1, so the gradient is stronger in older galaxies, or at least galaxies with older stars.

## 4 Discussion

There is clear evidence for a metallicity gradient for the galaxies in the Coma cluster, this presents itself as a difference of -0.03 magnitude in the Mg2 index (Fig 4b) or -0.2 in log\[Fe/H\] (Fig 9b) between the value at the center of the cluster and that at 80 arcminutes radius.

There are good reasons to expect that there might be a gradient in the metallicity of galaxies within clusters. Although galaxies will have undergone several orbits or crossings within the cluster they will not be well mixed, so galaxies which form in the outer regions of a cluster will spend most of their time there. The metallicity-magnitude relation can be understood in terms of the loss of processed material in supernova driven outflows (Larson 1974, Vader 1984). This loss of the heavy elements is counteracted by the gravity of the galaxy, hence the metallicity-mass and metallicity-magnitude relation. But it can also be counteracted by external pressure of the intra-cluster medium (Silk et al. 1987). Galaxies formed in the densest parts of the cluster would be expected to retain more of their heavy elements. We only detect a significant gradient in Mg2, not $`<`$Fe$`>`$, so it is possible that the mechanism which constrained the processed material was more effective at a time when Supernovae Type II were the dominant source of processed material, early in the history of the cluster. This is also supported by the evidence of Figure 11, that the gradient is stronger in galaxies with an older stellar component.

This picture is complicated by the possible modification of the cluster membership by accretion of subclusters. There is some evidence from the X-ray morphology (Neumann et al. 2001) that the NGC 4839 group is being accreted by the cluster. Any such accretion would be expected to dilute any gradient existing in the cluster.

Guzmán et al. (1992), investigating the $`\sigma `$-Mg2 relation amongst the bright ellipticals in Coma, find an offset between a core sample and a halo sample in the sense that the halo ellipticals have weaker Mg2 for a given $`\sigma `$. These authors, having only one index, cannot distinguish between metallicity and age as an origin of this offset, they show that age is a possible origin. Rose et al. (1994), using different indices, conclude that there is a difference in stellar populations between galaxies in rich clusters and those in a field environment, in that the luminosity weighted mean stellar population is younger and more metal rich in low density environments. They attribute this difference to an additional intermediate age population in the low density environments. They do not investigate the difference between high- and low-density regions in the same cluster. We note that their dataset is heterogeneous, particularly in the detectors used to gather it, and includes not only CCD spectra but also some from older image tube based detectors. It is not clear whether the difference between their conclusions and ours results from different observational techniques, or different sample selection, or because the comparison between high- and low-density clusters is different from the comparison between regions of different density in the same cluster.

Terlevich et al. (2001) find a gradient in the (U-V) color residual from the CM diagram with radius, in the sense that galaxies in the outer part of the Coma cluster are bluer than those in the center. At 30 arcminutes radius, the galaxies are 0.03 magnitudes bluer in (U-V) than in the cluster center. Terlevich et al. (2001) attribute this gradient to a gradient in the mean stellar age of the galaxies, however (U-V) is also sensitive to metallicity (Wallerstein 1962; Faber 1973). The relationship between (U-V) and metallicity in single stellar population models is complicated (e.g. Vazdekis et al. 1996), and depends upon other parameters, and indeed differs by worrying amounts between models. Inspection of Figure 3 of Vazdekis et al. (1996) shows however that a gradient of -0.1 in log\[Fe/H\] between 0 and 30 arcminutes radius would be sufficient to produce the gradient in (U-V) seen by Terlevich et al. without the need for an age gradient.

Balogh et. al (2000) propose a model in which star forming galaxies fall into rich clusters at a fairly uniform rate over time, and their star formation is gradually quenched by ram pressure and tidal stripping removing their gas over a period of a few Gyr. Their model explains the observed gradients in star formation rate, as measured by spectroscopic indices in the CNOC cluster sample (Balogh et al. 1999). This mechanism would be expected to lead to an age gradient in our sample, indeed given the small sample and the uncertainties in the ages of a substantial number of galaxies in Figure 10 we cannot rule this out. However as galaxies further out in the cluster would have had their star formation truncated on average later than galaxies in the core, any effect on the metallicity gradient would be in the opposite sense to that which we see. We conclude that the metallicity gradient is not due to infall of galaxies.

## 5 Conclusions

We detect significant evidence for a negative radial gradient in the metallicity of the galaxies in the Coma cluster, as measured from pairs of indices including Mg2. Our $`<`$Fe$`>`$ index measurements are less accurate, however the gradient that we find in this index is significantly shallower that we would deduce from the size of the Mg2 gradient. Evidence for a gradient in luminosity weighted stellar age is unclear, and we suggest that the gradient in (U-V) observed by Terlevich et al. (2001) and attributed by them to an age gradient could instead be driven by the metallicity gradient that we observe.

Our observations are most easily explained by models in which the pressure of the intracluster medium confines enriched material in supernova driven winds early in the history of the cluster. We find no firm evidence for a gradient in the mean stellar ages of galaxies with radius. Thus our observations support models in which the epoch of formation of the bulk of the stars in galaxies does not depend upon their location within the cluster.


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# A Monte Carlo Study on the Identification of Quark and Gluon Jets 11footnote 1This work is supported in part by the NSFC under project 19975018

## Acknoledgements

The authors thank Professor Sijbrand de Jong for helpful discussion.