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# An Hi survey of the Centaurus and Sculptor Groups

## 1 Introduction

The Cold Dark Matter (CDM) theory is currently widely accepted as the most successful theory for the formation of structure in the universe. It has, however, become clear of late that two important results that follow naturally from the CDM theory, are difficult to reconcile with observational data: 1) The central parts of galaxy halos should have high densities with cuspy distributions (e.g. Navarro, Frenk & White 1996, 1997; Moore et al. 1999a) and, 2) high mass galaxies should be surrounded by large numbers of compact, low-mass satellites (e.g. Moore et al. 1999b; Klypin et al. 1999).

With regard to the first problem, recent high-resolution rotation curves of a large sample of Low Surface Brightness (LSB) and dwarf galaxy rotation curves show that their dark matter distributions are best characterized by a central constant density core with a typical size of a few kpc (de Blok et al. 2001b). This is in sharp contrast with the CDM result which predicts that the central parts of galaxies are characterized by a central cusp with a density that increases sharply towards the center.

Another problem is that the number of low-mass satellites actually observed is much lower than predicted. For example, in the Local Group only $`36`$ dwarf galaxies are known, while CDM predicts several hundreds of these low-mass galaxies (e.g. Moore et al. 1999b; Klypin et al. 1999).

If the gas densities at the centers of these objects are high enough to prevent ionization by the metagalactic uv-background of a significant fraction of the innate hydrogen gas, they should be detectable at the present epoch in sensitive 21-cm H i emission line surveys.

This led to the hypothesis that the observed (compact) high velocity clouds (HVCs) are actually extra-galactic and candidates for the missing low mass halos (Blitz et al. 1999; Braun & Burton 1999). Typical median properties of the locally observed compact HVCs population as derived from the HIPASS data (Putman et al. 2002) are a size of $`0.2`$ degrees, a peak column density of $`1.4\times 10^{19}`$ cm-2, a velocity width of 35 km s-1 and a total flux density of 19.9 Jy km s-1. If compact HVCs are truly extra-galactic then this implies a median H i mass of $`M_{HI}=2.3\times 10^6M_{}`$ for a distance of $`700`$ kpc, or $`M_{HI}=7.5\times 10^5M_{}`$ for a distance of 400 kpc. These H i clouds should also be present in other galaxy groups and, as the parameters above show, detectable. There has recently been a large effort to find them in existing and new H i surveys (Zwaan & Briggs 2000; Dahlem et al. 2001; Zwaan 2001; Verheijen et al. 2000). Groups are presently the only environments where it is feasible to search for these clouds as the overdensity of the groups increases the number of possible detections. Since in numerical simulations of hierarchical structure formation the number of low mass halos is scale-invariant, the same ratio of low mass halos to normal size galaxies is expected in groups and in the field. The surveys showed that HVC-like objects are *not* distributed throughout groups and galaxy halos on scales of $`1`$ Mpc (but see Braun & Burton 2001). The HVCs must therefore be much closer to our Milky Way Galaxy than Blitz et al. (1999) originally proposed and they are therefore insignificant contributors to the baryon and total mass content of groups and galaxies.

There is, however, still a region of parameter space that has not been surveyed extensively. H i surveys to date have been less suited to constrain the population of compact, high column density, low H i mass clouds and galaxies. If such a population were to exist, it could contain a substantial fraction of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{gas}}(z=0)`$ locked up in such low H i masses which would not have been detected in recent H i surveys (Rosenberg & Schneider 2000; Zwaan et al. 1997; Kilborn et al. 2000).

In this paper we present results of two surveys designed to probe the regime of compact, low H i mass objects. These surveys, conducted with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), have the lowest H i mass sensitivity to date with high spatial and velocity resolution. Section 2 discussed the targets of our surveys; section 3 addresses the observations. In section 4 we discuss the results, and section 5 describes the implications for the space density of low-mass galaxies.

## 2 Targets

At 3.5 Mpc distance from the Milky Way, the Cen A group is one of the nearest gas-rich groups known. It is well-defined both in projection on the sky and in velocity (Côté et al. 1997). It contains a large variety of galaxies, including the well-known radio galaxy Cen A (NGC 5128). The largest members are generally early-type galaxies. A large number of dwarf galaxies is however known (Côté et al. 1997; Côté, Carignan, & Freeman 2000; Banks et al. 1999), making this group ideal for this kind of survey, due to its small distance as well as large over density.

The Sculptor group has different properties. It is dominated by a small number of gas-rich late-type spiral galaxies (e.g. Jerjen et al. 1998; Côté, Carignan, & Freeman 2000). Sculptor is thought to be an elongated collection of galaxies seen pole-on (Jerjen et al. 1998) and linked with the Local Group. Following Côté et al. (1997) we adopt a distance of 2.5 Mpc. A previous H i survey of the Scl group (Haynes & Roberts 1979) detected many H i clouds, but these are not associated with the group. Rather they belong to the Magellanic Stream and the Milky Way.

Côté et al. (1997) derive from their extended Cen A and Scl dwarf samples velocity dispersions of 150 and 202 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ respectively. The equivalent crossing times are $`4.5\times 10^9`$ and $`3.2\times 10^9`$ years. This is in both cases a significant fraction of the Hubble time, showing that both groups are dynamically unevolved, loose structures.

## 3 Observations

We have observed regions in both the nearby Centaurus A group and the Sculptor group in H i with the ATCA. As we have used different observing strategies for each group we discuss them separately.

### 3.1 Centaurus

We observed part of the Cen A group at 21-cm using a grid of 36 pointings with the Australia Telescope Compact Array in the 750-D configuration. Figure 1 overlays the pointing centers on the distribution of member galaxies (Côté et al. 1997) on the sky. The grid includes M83, and several known dwarf galaxies, and a large underdensity located behind M83. We thus sample a variety of densities. Table 1 lists the coordinates of the pointing centres for all pointings. Pointings in the grid were spread 1 degree apart.

The grid was observed over 9 runs of 12 hours each (3-4 and 12-18 July 1999). In each 12 hour session one block of 4 pointing was observed by cycling over the 4 pointings in mosaicing mode (90 seconds per pointing per cycle). We used a bandwidth of 8 MHz divided into 1024 channels. The velocity range was 0 - 1700 km s-1 giving a good coverage of the velocity spread of the galaxies in the group.

For each pointing a data cube was created measuring $`256\times 256\times 785`$ pixels and a pixel size of $`16^{\prime \prime }\times 16^{\prime \prime }\times 2`$ km s-1, thus encompassing two primary beam FWHM per pointing. The average noise for all cubes was 10.3 mJy per channel (without Hanning smoothing; no primary beam correction was applied). Table 1 also lists the average noise for each cube separately. The minimum detectable H i mass per 2 km/s channel in a 3 hour integration is thus $`3\times 10^5M_{}`$ ($`5\sigma `$) at the pointing center. For a velocity width of 20 km s-1, the minimum detected H i mass would be $`3\times 10^6`$ $`M_{}`$, assuming optimal velocity smoothing. The synthesized beam was $`65^{\prime \prime }\times 48^{\prime \prime }`$, corresponding to $`1`$ kpc at the distance of Cen A. The column density sensitivity ($`5\sigma `$) for each 2 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ channel is $`4\times 10^{19}`$ cm-2 or $`8\times 10^{19}`$ after smoothing to 10 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

As the grid points are spread 1 degree apart, and the primary beam FWHM of the Compact Array measures 35 at 21-cm, this grid will not give uniform sensitivity coverage, but that is specifically not the intention of this part of the experiment. For any (moderately) steep Hi Mass Function (HiMF) the number of low mass galaxies in a unit volume will be larger than the number of high mass galaxies. A larger volume thus needs to be probed in order to get good statistics on the high mass galaxies. However, high mass galaxies in general have larger fluxes and can be found out to a larger distance from the center of the primary beam than low-mass, low flux galaxies. By spreading out the grid points we are therefore able to probe the dwarfs in the central parts of the primary beam, while the outer parts of the primary beam will give us enough volume coverage to pick up sufficient high mass galaxies. This survey probes approximately 4% of the group volume at $`M_{\mathrm{HI}}=10^6M_{}`$ and about 12% at $`10^7M_{}`$ (since this mass can be detected at larger distances from the center of the primary beam). These numbers are based on a group radius of 0.64 Mpc (van den Bergh 2000)

This mode of observing probes a different area of parameter space than blind extragalactic H i surveys such as AHISS (Zwaan et al. 1997), HIPASS (Barnes et al. 2001) or ADBS (Rosenberg & Schneider 2000). These surveys are conducted with considerably coarser spatial and velocity resolution (for HIPASS $`15^{}`$ and $`13.2`$ km s-1 respectively), but with a large area coverage. They are excellent at picking up extended low surface brightness emission, e.g. local HVCs, but their coarse resolutions are insufficient to resolve e.g. small H i clouds in the close vicinity of other galaxies (Barnes & de Blok 2001). Their relatively coarse velocity resolutions furthermore make it difficult to distinguish narrow-velocity width (and presumably low-mass) galaxies from noise or interference spikes without further follow-up observations. Our current survey has much higher spatial and velocity resolution, but covers a smaller area. It does however enable us to look 10 times lower down the slope of the HiMF. A survey such as the current one is better suited to pick up compact and narrow-line width objects and is therefore complementary to the low resolution blind H i surveys.

### 3.2 Sculptor

Our original intention for the Scl survey was to image a large area with uniform sensitivity, with a fully sampled grid of pointings, as opposed to the Cen survey where the pointing were all independent. The motivation for this was to search in the volume between Sculptor and the Local Group. The Scl survey was done in the same observing session as the Cen survey, at those times when Cen was below the horizon.

We chose an area centered on $`0^h30^m,30^{}00^{}`$ which we observed using a hexagonal grid with a 19.6 distance between the pointings. In each 12h session, we observed 4 pointings, cycling over them every 15 min. We used a 4 MHz bandwidth, centered on a velocity of 500 km s-1. Unfortunately, as the Scl survey happened in unallocated time, we were limited by telescope overrides and maintenance. This meant that we could observe only 22 pointings in a rather narrow strip and the area with uniform noise in the final mosaic thus proved to be rather small. In addition, some instrumental problems resulted in some pointings having a higher noise level. In the end we decided that the only way to get reliable statistics was to treat all pointings as independent pointings and proceed in the same manner as with the Cen survey. Table 1 lists the coordinates of the 22 pointings that we observed. Fig. 2 shows their lay-out on the sky. Also shown are the positions of the Sculptor group members (Jerjen et al. 2000)

The individual pointings were gridded in data cubes using the same pixel size as the Cen cubes (i.e. $`16^{\prime \prime }\times 16^{\prime \prime }\times 2`$ km s-1). The final cubes measured $`256\times 256\times 410`$ pixels, with the velocity axis running from $`310`$ to 530 km s-1. The synthesized beam size is $`57^{\prime \prime }\times 29^{\prime \prime }`$. The average noise per 2 km s-1 channel was 10.2 (15.5) mJy for pointings A1-D4 (E1-F2). The column density sensitivity ($`5\sigma `$) for each 2 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ channel is $`7(10)\times 10^{19}`$ cm-2 or $`1.5(2.3)\times 10^{20}`$ after smoothing to 10 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

## 4 Analysis

### 4.1 Centaurus

#### 4.1.1 Known Objects

In a number of fields previously catalogued objects were present within a $`30^{}`$ radius of the field center and within the $`01700`$ km s-1 velocity range. These fields are indicated with an asterisk in Table 1. These objects are listed in Table 2 along with their parameters as derived from the HIPASS data base.

A fair fraction could however not be retrieved from the ATCA data. These were usually objects that were far from the field center, where primary beam attenuation makes their signal too weak to retrieve. In total, four objects were detected. We list their parameters as derived from the ATCA data in Table 2 as well. Figure 3 shows integrated column density maps and spectra of three of the four detections (we do not show the M83 data: these are severely affected by missing spacing problems).

The two galaxies with H i masses of a few times $`10^8`$ $`M_{}`$ are easily detected. The observation of IC 4316 with an H i mass of $`310^7`$ $`M_{}`$ is almost at the limit of what the eye can see in the data. IC 4316 is $`17^{}`$ from the pointing center and primary beam attenuation has reduced the signal to $`0.55`$ of the value it would have in the pointing center. As the velocity width of IC 4316 is $`40`$ km s-1, it follows that the minimum H i mass that we could detect at the pointing center would be $`8\times 10^6`$ $`M_{}`$ for a 20 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$-wide profile. Optimal smoothing would improve this limit by a factor of a few, bringing us close to the theoretical limit of the data. We will return to this after discussing the blind search.

#### 4.1.2 Blind search

##### Method

The cubes were searched using an automatic search program in order to avoid any human biasses. Our proceedure extracts a spectrum at each spatial pixel and hanning smoothes it. A heavily smoothed (75 pixel boxcar) version of the spectrum is then subtracted to remove baseline ripple and other large-scale variations. This inevitably loses very wide profiles, but these observations are tuned to look for narrow signals. The difference spectrum is then searched for significant signals at different velocity resolutions. The spectra were searched at their original resolution and after smoothing with 3, 5, 9, and 15 pixel (6, 10, 18, 30 km s-1) boxcars (one velocity pixel is 2 km s-1). The first 30 and the last 50 channels were not searched as bandpass effects cause the noise there to be higher. The effective search range is therefore 192 - 1600 km s-1. Signal due to the known galaxies was also removed prior to the automated search.

We decided to place our cut-off at the $`5\sigma `$ level. At this significance level the number of false detections expected due to Gaussian statistics is still managable: in each cube we expect to find $`13`$ noise pixels with values $`>5\sigma `$ (and a similar number with values $`<5\sigma `$). At the $`4\sigma `$ level we would expect $`1400`$ false noise signals per cube, which is clearly unfeasible.

The actual detection process is a two-step one. Due to the large amount of data which must be inspected at four velocity resolutions, the computation speed is I/O limited. Our algorithm reads the datacube only once, one spectrum at a time, but the proceedure both (1) keeps a table of all signals with an absolute value $`>4.5\sigma `$ at any resolution evaluated relative to the noise level measured for each spectrum, and (2) accumulates the necessary statistical information to compute the noise level for each frequency plane in the cube. Each velocity range (frequency channel) might be corrupted by narrow RFI that would raise the noise level in certain individual planes in the cube. This permits a second pass through the list of tentative $`>4.5\sigma `$ detections to determine whether they are significant relative to the noise level in the velocity place where they were identified. Only the signals that made the $`5\sigma `$ cut at one or more velocity resolutions on the second pass were retained. This process was applied at all velocity resolutions with only one pass through the entire dataset.

To analyze the data at lower spatial resolution, we also applied the full detection algorithm to a new set of spatially smoothed cubes.

The output is a set of lists of positions with absolute flux values $`>5\sigma `$ for each velocity resolution. Obviously, there will be many cases where a signal is detected at multiple velocity resolutions. We have therefore also produced a list where all double or multiple detections (defined as $`|\mathrm{\Delta }R|<2`$ pixels \[32′′\] and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }V|<3`$ pixels \[6 km s-1\]) have been removed. We will refer to these as “double detections” or “doubles”.

For comparison, with this method IC 4316 is detected at the 8.0$`\sigma `$ level at the 15 channel (30 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) resolution, at the $`7.1\sigma `$ level for 9 channels (18 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$), at $`6.3\sigma `$ for 5 channels (10 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$), at $`5.6\sigma `$ for 3 channels (6 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) and at 5.0$`\sigma `$ at full spectral resolution (2 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). It should be kept in mind that IC 4316 is located $`17^{}`$ away from the pointing center. Had it actually been observed in the center of the field, then all significances would have been twice as high.

##### Results

In the absence of real signal and the presence of Gaussian noise we expect each cube to contain an equal number of “detections” with values above $`5\sigma `$ and below $`5\sigma `$. For theoretical Gaussian noise there ought to be $`26`$ such pixels (13 positive and 13 negative) in each full-resolution cube, although counting statistics and the fact that we expect real data to have a slightly non-Gaussian noise distribution, means that the actual number of detections may vary a little.

Fig 4 plots the number of positive detections in each cube versus the number of negative ones. In the absence of any real signal we expect an equal number of cubes to have a positive and a negative excess. This is clearly the case for the Cen data (within the uncertainties mentioned before).

Table 3 summarizes the results. There is no clear evidence that the Cen data cubes contain anything more than noise at the $`>5\sigma `$ level.

A different way of looking at the results is to compare histograms of the peak flux distributions of the “detections.” This is done in Fig. 5, for each velocity resolution separately, and for the case where double detections have been removed. The positive and negative distributions are within their Poisson-errors indistinghuishable. Again we see no evidence for the presence of real objects in the data.

#### 4.1.3 Spatial Smoothing

The beam size of $`65^{\prime \prime }\times 43^{\prime \prime }`$ is optimized to detect objects of $`1`$ kpc size at the distance of the Cen A group. In an attempt to find more extended objects we have smoothed the data by a factor of 5 spatially, resulting in a beam size of $`325^{\prime \prime }\times 215^{\prime \prime }`$ (this is roughly the maximum scale structure that the interferometer configuration that we have used is able to detect). We performed a similar blind search on the spatially smoothed data, but found no new $`>5\sigma `$ objects. The noise in the smoothed maps is 30 mJy, which for a channel separation of 2 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, translates in a $`5\sigma `$ column density of $`4.810^{18}`$ cm-2. After smoothing to 10 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, the column density limit is $`1.110^{19}`$ cm-2.

### 4.2 Sculptor

#### 4.2.1 Known objects

In contrast with the Cen survey, there were no known extragalactic objects present in the survey area. We did detect an extended HVC centered at $`00^h25^m24^s,31^{}37^m57^s`$, $`v=70`$ km s-1. This HVC is prominently visible in the HIPASS data. In most cubes a bright very narrow linewidth feature ($`5`$ km s-1), presumably Galactic emission, is present at $`v=+4`$ km s-1. These features were subsequently blanked in the data in order to facilitate the blind search.

#### 4.2.2 Blind search

The Scl data cubes were searched in the same way as the Cen cubes. Fig. 6 shows for each velocity resolution separately the number of $`>5\sigma `$ detections plotted agains the number of $`<5\sigma `$ detections. Table 3 summarizes these results. As with Cen there is no evidence for an excess of positive detections. There is a hint of an excess of negative detections, however this is at most a $`1.5\sigma `$ difference. The excess negative detections occur in a narrow velocity range adjoining the (blanked out) Galactic emission, and are therefore most likely artefacts caused by the relatively strong Milky Way emission. Figure 7 shows the noise histograms for both positive and negative signals. As with Centaurus we find no evidence for the presence of anything other than noise.

#### 4.2.3 Spatial Smoothing

We smoothed the data to one-fifth of its original spatial resolution (resulting beam $`285^{\prime \prime }\times 145^{\prime \prime }`$). Apart from the aforementioned HVC and the Galactic signal we did not detect any additional detections with a significance $`>5\sigma `$. For pointings A1-D4 (E1-F4) the noise was 47 (61) mJy, which for a channel spacing of 2 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, translates in a $`5\sigma `$ column density sensitivity of $`1.3(1.6)10^{19}`$ cm-2, and after smoothing to 10 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$to a column density sensitivity of $`2.8(3.7)10^{19}`$ cm-2.

## 5 Discussion

Fig. 8 shows the space density of galaxies in the two surveyed groups, in combination with the sensitivity of the surveys. The solid dots represent the space density of known group members with measured H i masses (Côté et al. 1997), which are calculated by dividing the number of galaxies per 0.5 dex bin, by the total volume of the group. For the group radii we adopt the values $`R=0.64`$ Mpc for Cen A (van den Bergh 2000) and $`R=0.66`$ Mpc for Sculptor (Freeman 1997).

We estimate a mean overdensity of the groups by vertically scaling the Schechter fit to the field H i mass function from Zwaan et al. (1997) so as to fit the points in Fig. 8. Using this method we arrive at an overdensity in the two groups of 300 times the cosmic mean. This number should be regarded as a rough indication of the groups’ overdensity because the calculation is heavily dependent on the definition of the groups’ boundaries. The calculation assumes that the groups are spherical while the actual shape of the groups are more complicated. This is especially true for Cen A as can be seen from Fig. 1, but possibly also for Sculptor (Jerjen et al. 1998). Furthermore, due to substructure in the groups, the actual overdensity is a strong function of the position in the groups. For the conclusions reached in this paper, the value of the overdensity is however not crucial.

The dashed lines in Fig. 8 show the reciprocal of the surveyed volumes for different assumed velocity widths of H i clouds or galaxies. They are calculated for optimal spectral smoothing for velocity widths of 2, 6, 10, 18, and 30 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (from left to right). The shape of the curves is determined by the (approximately) Gaussian primary beam of the survey. Larger volumes are searched for higher mass galaxies since these can be detected out to larger distances from the centre of the primary beam. The curves level off at H i masses of approximately $`10^8M_{}`$, because we assume that no detections can be made at separations larger that 35 arcmin (equal to the FWHM) from the centre of the primary beam.

From the information presented in Fig. 8 it is now trivial to calculate how many detection the survey should have turned up assuming different shapes of the H i mass function. This number can be evaluated by taking the integral over H i mass function multiplied by the survey volume. Assuming the HiMF as presented in Fig. 8, and a velocity width of 6 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, the survey should have detected $`2.6`$ galaxies. This number drops to 1.8 and 1.7 for velocity widths of 30 and 50 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. More detection are expected if the HiMF would show an upturn below $`M_{\mathrm{HI}}=10^{7.5}M_{}`$, as has been proposed by Schneider, Spitzak & Rosenberg (1998). If the faint-end of the HIMF would have a steep slope with $`\alpha =1.5`$ below $`M_{\mathrm{HI}}=10^{7.5}M_{}`$, the expected number of detections would rise to 5.3, 2.4 and 2.1 using velocity widths of 6, 30 and 50 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Clearly, even steeper extensions of the HiMF are excluded by our present survey.

The null-result of this group survey can be used to place tight constraints on the space density of small H i clouds in galaxy groups. Fig. 9 shows the combined constraint on the H i mass of intragroup clouds and the space density of clouds. The lines show the 95% confidence levels on the existence of cloud populations. These lines are calculated assuming Poisson statistics and the fact that no new clouds were detected. Regions of parameter space above each line are excluded by our survey.

For comparison, we also show the 95% confidence upper limits on cloud populations as calculated by Zwaan (2001) by means of a pointed Arecibo survey in five galaxy groups. The limits on intragroup H i clouds from the present survey are slightly stricter than those from Zwaan (2001), but care should be taken with the interpretation of the results. The surface brightness sensitivity of the Arecibo group survey was much better, resulting in very low detectable H i column densities of $`1.0\times 10^{18}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ ($`5\sigma `$) per 16 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for gas filling the beam. The full resolution H i column density sensitivity of the present ATCA survey is $`1.0\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ ($`5\sigma `$) per 10 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The two surveys are therefore sensitive to different populations of H i clouds, the Arecibo survey to lower column densities, the ATCA survey to lower H i masses.

The beam area of the smoothed cubes is $`25`$ times larger than in the original resolution cubes, and the column density sensitivity is a factor of 10 better, so in principle the smoothed cubes could be used to constrain the density of more diffuse H i clouds, and would be suitable to assess the problem of extragalactic HVCs (Blitz et al. 1999). However, as our column density sensitivity and survey volume are less than those of the surveys by Zwaan & Briggs (2000) and Zwaan (2001), our limits are not as strong as the ones presented in those surveys.

Using the parameters of compact HVCs from Putman et al. (2002), we expect them to have sizes of approximately $`2.5^{}`$ at the distance of the surveyed groups, and having peak column densities of $`1.4\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ over 35 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. This means that most of the CHVCs in the groups would escape detection in the present survey.

In summary, the current survey supports the conclusion reached previously that HVCs are not objects with H i masses $`10^7M_{}`$ distributed throughout galaxy groups, but does not improve on them.

## 6 Conclusions

One of the results of the CDM theory of formation of structure in the universe is that every galaxy group should be filled with a few hundred small mass halos. Optical surveys for these objects have only turned up $``$ 10% of the predicted numbers. If the density of the primordial H i in the satellites is sufficiently high to prevent ionization by the meta-galactic uv-background, they should be detectable in 21cm H i surveys. This motivated us to perform a sensitive 21cm search in two nearby galaxy groups: the Centaurus A and Sculptor groups.

We have used the Australian Telescope Compact Array to observe 36 fields in the Cen A group in the velocity range 192–1600 km s-1 and 22 fields in the Sculptor region in the velocity range $`300`$-500 km s-1. The surveys are sensitive to H i masses down to a few times $`10^6`$ $`M_{}`$, which is an improvement of a factor 10 on previous surveys. These surveys were tuned to pick up narrow profiles that might in single-dish surveys with a coarser velocity resolution have been confused with RFI.

We find no new detections, though observations of known galaxies show that we do indeed reach our theoretical mass limit. This null-result rules out faint HiMF slopes steeper than $`\alpha =1.5`$ below $`10^{7.5}M_{}`$ in these groups, and puts tight constraints on the occurence of compact H i clouds in other groups.

We have also searched the data for extended and diffuse H i clouds, and our null-detections support the results derived by e.g. Zwaan & Briggs (2000) and Zwaan (2001) that HVCs are not distributed in the intra-group environment on scales of 1 Mpc.


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# First stars, very massive black holes and metals

## 1 Introduction

Recent studies have started to tackle the formation and collapse of the first cosmic structures (often referred to as PopIII objects) through numerical simulations (Abel et al. 1998; Bromm, Coppi & Larson 1999; Abel, Bryan & Norman 2000; Bromm et al. 2001) based on hierarchical scenarios of structure formation. These studies have shown that gravitational collapse induces fragmentation of pre-galactic units with an initial baryonic mass $`10^5M_{}`$ into smaller clumps with a typical mass of $`10^3M_{}`$, which corresponds to the Jeans mass set by molecular hydrogen cooling. However, a considerable mass range ($`10^{24}M_{}`$) for the clumps seems plausible.

Tracking the subsequent gravitational collapse of these metal free clumps is a very challenging problem as it requires the simultaneous solution of hydrodynamics and of (cooling lines) radiative transfer (Omukai & Nishi 1998; Nakamura & Umemura 1999; Ripamonti et al. 2001). Preliminary attempts and several physical arguments indicate that these clumps do not fragment into smaller units as the evolution progresses to higher densities. Independent studies (Hernandez & Ferrara 2001) comparing the observed number of metal poor stars with that predicted by cosmological models, also imply that the characteristic stellar mass sharply increases with redshift. Hence, there are grounds to believe that the first stars were very massive.

The evolution of massive, metal free stars is currently subject to a rapidly growing number of studies (Fryer 1999; Fryer, Woosley & Heger 2001; Heger & Woosley 2001) which rejuvenate earlier activity (Fowler & Hoyle 1964; Carr, Bond & Arnett 1984; El Eid et al. 1983; Fricke 1973; Fuller et al. 1986). As we discuss in detail later in the paper, stars more massive than about 260 $`M_{}`$ collapse completely to black holes, therefore not contributing to the metal enrichment of the surrounding gas. Similar arguments apply to stars in a lower mass window (30 $`M_{}`$ \- 140 $`M_{}`$), which are also expected to end their evolution as black holes. Hence, if supernovae from more standard progenitors (stellar masses in the range 8 $`M_{}`$ \- 40 $`M_{}`$) are either not formed efficiently or occur in negligible numbers, it appears that the initial cosmic metal enrichment had to rely on the heavy element yield from the so-called pair-unstable supernovae (SNγγ ), whose explosion leaves no remnant. This conclusion can potentially be tested by studying peculiar elemental abundances, for example of heavy r-process elements (Oh et al. 2001).

Metallicity is thought to noticeably affect the fragmentation properties of a gravitationally unstable gas. For example, Bromm et al. (2001) have shown that the evolution of a collapsing proto-galaxy depends strongly on the level of gas pre-enrichment. These authors argue that a critical metallicity $`10^4Z_{}`$ exists such that, above that value vigorous fragmentation into relatively low mass ($`10M_{}`$) clumps takes place, differently from what is discussed above under metal-free conditions.

The key question then concerns the interplay between the properties of the IMF and the metal enrichment of the gas. To better illustrate this, let us ideally suppose that the first stars are all formed – as suggested by numerical simulations – with masses above the SNγγ mass threshold, thus leading to the formation of black holes. Then, because metals are completely swallowed by the latter, the gas retains its primordial composition and star formation continues in the high-mass biased mode. A solution to this ”star formation conundrum” must evidently exist as at present stars form with a much lower characteristic mass ($`1M_{}`$).

In this paper, we describe in detail a possible solution to this conundrum utilizing various constraints: metal abundance patterns in clusters, the mass density of super-massive black holes, off-nuclear galactic X-ray sources and, to a more speculative extent, the nature of a particular class (optically hidden) of gamma-ray bursts - we attempt to infer the main properties of the early stages of cosmic star formation.

## 2 Fragmentation modes

In this Section, we focus on the first episode of star formation and discuss the relevant cooling criteria and timescales in detail. We work within the paradigm of hierarchical cold dark matter (CDM) models for structure formation, wherein dark matter halos collapse and the baryons in them condense, cool, and eventually form stars. Once a halo of mass $`M`$ collapses at redshift of $`z_\mathrm{c}`$, the baryons are shock-heated to the virial temperature given by

$$T_{\mathrm{vir}}=10^{4.5}\mu M_8^{2/3}\left(\frac{1+z_\mathrm{c}}{10}\right)\mathrm{K},$$
(1)
where $`M_8=M/10^8h^1M_{}`$ and $`\mu `$ is the molecular weight. If $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}\stackrel{>}{}10^4\mathrm{K}`$ \[or equivalently $`M\stackrel{>}{}10^9(1+z_\mathrm{c})^{3/2}h^1M_{}`$\], the baryonic gas cools due to the excitation of hydrogen Ly$`\alpha `$ line. In the absence of metals, as expected for the very first episode of star formation, objects with $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}\stackrel{<}{}10^4\mathrm{K}`$ can cool only through the collisional excitation of molecular hydrogen. Hereafter, in this work, we refer to the former objects as Ly$`\alpha `$-cooling halos and to the latter as PopIII objects.

The first stars form once the gas cools. The typical initial mass function (IMF) of this first generation of stars is still highly uncertain. Several authors have tackled this crucial issue through theoretical (Rees 1976; Rees & Ostriker 1977; Silk 1977, 1983; Haiman, Thoul & Loeb 1996; Uehara et al. 1996) and numerical approaches (Omukai & Nishi 1998; Nakamura & Umemura 1999, 2001; Abel, Bryan & Norman 2000; Bromm, Coppi & Larson 2001; Omukai 2000, 2001; Ripamonti et al. 2001). Recent multi-dimensional simulations of the collapse and fragmentation of primordial gas within PopIIIs, show preliminary indications that the IMF could be either top-heavy with typical masses of order $`\stackrel{>}{}10^2M_{}`$ (Abel, Bryan & Norman 2000; Bromm, Coppi & Larson 2001) or bimodal with peaks at $`10^2M_{}`$ and $`1M_{}`$ (Nakamura & Umemura 2001). Note, that these numerical treatments cannot address the issue of the mass spectrum. Therefore, it is important to understand what physical processes set the scales of fragment masses and hence the stellar mass spectrum.

It is obvious that much hinges on the physics of cooling, primarily the number of channels available for the gas to cool and the efficiency of the process (Rees & Ostriker 1977). In general, cooling is efficient when the cooling time $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}=3nkT/2\mathrm{\Lambda }(n,T)`$ is much shorter than the free-fall time $`t_{\mathrm{ff}}=(3\pi /32G\rho )^{1/2}`$, i.e. $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}t_{\mathrm{ff}}`$; where $`n`$ ($`\rho `$) is the gas number (mass) density and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(n,T)`$ is the net radiative cooling rate \[erg $`\text{cm}^3\text{s}^1`$\]. This efficiency condition implies that the energy deposited by gravitational contraction cannot balance the radiative losses; as a consequence, temperature decreases with increasing density. Under such circumstances, the cloud cools and then fragments. At any given time, fragments form on a scale that is small enough to ensure pressure equilibrium at the corresponding temperature, i.e. the Jeans length scale,

$$R_F\lambda _Jc_\mathrm{s}t_{\mathrm{ff}}n^{\gamma /21}$$
(2)
where the sound speed $`c_\mathrm{s}=(RT/\mu )^{1/2}`$, $`Tn^{\gamma 1}`$, where $`\gamma `$ is the adiabatic index. Since $`c_\mathrm{s}`$ varies on the cooling timescale, the corresponding $`R_F`$ becomes smaller as $`T`$ decreases. Similarly, the corresponding fragment mass is the Jeans mass,

$$M_FnR_F^\eta n^{\eta \gamma /2+(1\eta )},$$
(3)
with $`\eta =2`$ for filaments and $`\eta =3`$ for spherical fragments (Spitzer 1978). This hierarchical fragmentation process comes to an end when cooling becomes inefficient because (i) the critical density for LTE is reached or (ii) the gas becomes optically thick to cooling radiation; in both cases, at that juncture $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}\stackrel{>}{}t_{\mathrm{ff}}`$. At this stage, the temperature cannot decrease any further and it either remains constant (if energy deposition by gravitational contraction is exactly balanced by radiative losses) or increases. The necessary condition to stop fragmentation and start gravitational contraction within each fragment is that the Jeans mass does not decrease any further, thus favoring fragmentation into sub-clumps. From eq. 3, this implies the following condition:

$$\gamma \stackrel{>}{}2\frac{\eta 1}{\eta },$$
(4)
which translates into $`\gamma \stackrel{>}{}4/3`$ for a spherical fragment and $`\gamma \stackrel{>}{}1`$ for a filament. Thus, a filament is marginally stable and contracts quasi-statically when, $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}t_{\mathrm{ff}}`$, and the gas becomes isothermal. Finally, when $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}t_{\mathrm{ff}}`$ or the fragments become optically thick to cooling radiation, the temperature increases as the contraction proceeds adiabatically.

### 2.1 Fragmentation of metal-free clouds

In this subsection, we follow the evolution of metal-free primordial clumps during the fragmentation process. These results are based on the model of Omukai (2001). The gas within the dark matter halo is given an initial temperature of $`100\mathrm{K}`$ and the subsequent thermal and chemical evolution of the gravitationally collapsing cloud is followed numerically until a central proto-stellar core forms.

The gas within the dark matter halo gets shock-heated to the virial temperature $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, which is typically $`100\mathrm{K}`$. However, after a short transient phase (irrelevant for the present analysis), the evolutionary track in the $`(n,T)`$ plane shown in Fig. 1 (top curve, upper panel) provides a good description of the thermal evolution of the gas. The metal-free gas is able to cool down to temperatures of a few hundred Kelvin regardless of the initial virial temperature. This is the minimum temperature at which molecular line cooling becomes effective.

In this analysis, external sources of heating are not included (i.e. external UV background or CMB radiation). This is because at redshifts prior to reionization the UV background field is relatively weak and inhomogeneous (Ciardi, Ferrara, & Abel 2000), hence we do not expect it to be important. Also, the CMB energy input is negligible for clouds with $`T>100`$ K (or $`Z<10^4Z_{}`$) where the first stars presumably formed at redshifts $`z<30`$. It might affect the temperature evolution of more metal rich systems shown in Fig. 1, but does not modify the conclusions drawn here.

The gas within halos with $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}>10^4`$ K starts to cool through the hydrogen Ly$`\alpha `$ line. It quickly reaches a temperature of $`8000\mathrm{K}`$ and, at this stage, the fraction of molecular hydrogen formed is sufficient to activate H2 ro-vibrational line cooling. Thereafter, the gas within a Ly$`\alpha `$-cooling halo follows the same thermal evolution as the gas within PopIIIs. Independent of the virial temperature, the thermal evolution of the gas rapidly converges to the $`(n,T)`$ track corresponding to $`Z=0`$ (the zero metallicity track), shown in Fig. 1. The temperature of the gas decreases with increasing density, thus favoring fragmentation into sub-clumps.

As the number density increases, it reaches the critical value $`n_{\mathrm{cr}}10^3\text{cm}^3`$; and the corresponding Jeans mass is $`10^4M_{}`$ (empty dot in the upper panel of Fig. 1). The cooling time at this critical point becomes comparable to the free fall time as a consequence of the H2 levels being populated according to LTE \[regime where the cooling rate $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(n,T)n`$\] and no longer according to NLTE \[regime where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(n,T)n^2`$\]. The temperature then starts to rise slowly.

At this stage, the stability of the fragments toward further increase in the density needs to be investigated according to the condition eq. 4 above. The lower panel of Fig. 1 shows the density dependence of $`\gamma `$ (see eq. 2) for each metallicity track. For a metal-free gas $`\gamma `$ lies in the range $`0<\gamma 1<1/3`$, implying that further fragmentation is unlikely to occur unless the fragments are spherical. Although the gravitational evolution will probably favor a tendency towards spherical symmetry, this is not likely to occur until the central density has reached high ($`10^8\mathrm{cm}^3`$) values as seen from simulations (e.g. Abel et al. 2000).

The only two deviations from the above range occur (see lower panel of Fig. 1) around $`n=10^{10}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and $`10^{16}\mathrm{cm}^3`$. The former is a result of the thermal instability due to three-body H2 formation (Silk 1983; Haiman et al. 1996). However, this instability is quite weak and does not lead to fragmentation (Abel et al. 2000). The latter (at $`n=10^{16}\mathrm{cm}^3`$) is caused by H2 collision-induced emission. This instability is also weak and probably unimportant.

It is important to stress that, even if the fragments are nearly spherical, fragmentation will be modest and is likely to result only in a low multiplicity stellar system. As the density increases, quasi-static contraction takes place ($`n=10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^3`$) until the fragments become optically thick to H2 lines, $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}t_{\mathrm{ff}}`$, and adiabatically collapse to increasingly higher central densities and temperatures. At this stage, $`\gamma >4/3`$ and a central hydro-static core (stellar core, filled circle in Fig. 1, upper panel) is formed, with mass $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^3M_{}`$ (Omukai & Nishi 1998).

We stress again that, as long as the gas is metal-free, these sequence of events and conclusions hold independent of the halo virial temperature, i.e. for PopIIIs as well as for Ly$`\alpha `$-cooling halos. In Fig. 2 we show the evolution with temperature of the ionization fraction and of the fraction of molecular hydrogen for typical Ly$`\alpha `$-cooling halos of mass $`M=10^8M_{}`$ at three different redshifts, $`z=15,20,25`$. We find that the evolution of these fractions is independent of the mass (or, equivalently, $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$) and virialization redshift. Molecule formation in the post-shock flow which follows the virialization of the gas within a dark matter halo has been recently investigated by Uehara & Inutsuka (2000). If the gas is fully ionized, molecules form through non-equilibrium recombination, leading to overall fractions that are much higher than in the expanding homogeneous universe. As a consequence of enhanced H2 and HD fractions, the gas rapidly cools to well below $`10^4\mathrm{K}`$ and fragments. Molecular chemistry is important also for star formation in halos with $`T_{vir}>10^4`$ K as assessed by Susa et al. (1998) and Oh & Haiman (2001). They find that initial atomic line cooling leaves a large residual free electron density which allows molecule formation up to a universal fraction of $`x_{\mathrm{H}_2}=10^3`$. The newly formed molecules cool the gas further to $`100`$ K and the gas fragments on mass scales of a few $`100M_{}`$.

Once the critical density for H2 ($`n_{\mathrm{cr}}10^3\text{cm}^3`$ or $`10^5\text{cm}^3`$ for HD, if this is assumed to be the main coolant) has been reached, LTE conditions for the level populations disfavor further cooling and fragmentation. At this stage, fragments have masses comparable to the Jeans mass corresponding to the point $`(n_{\mathrm{cr}},T_{\mathrm{cr}})`$ and virialize, following the evolution described above. Therefore, independent of the initial virial temperature, fragments are formed with typical masses $`10^310^4M_{}`$.

Each fragment is characterized by a central core of $`10^3M_{}`$ surrounded by a large envelope of gravitationally unstable gas. The core grows in mass due to gas accretion from the envelope. The mass of the formed stars depends on the accretion rate as well as on the fragment mass (Larson 1999). In the absence of metals, radiation pressure cannot counter-balance mass accretion onto the core (Ripamonti et al. 2001, Omukai & Inutsuka 2001) and the mass of the resulting star is comparable to that of the original fragment, i.e. $`\stackrel{<}{}10^3M_{}`$. We will return to this crucial issue in Section 2.3. Of course, if the parent cloud is rotating, angular momentum, if not dissipated, might prevent the collapse of the entire cloud. However, for the arguments relevant to the present paper, it is sufficient that the overall efficiency is of a few % thus yielding a few hundreds solar mass stars out of the $`10^4M_{}`$ fragments predicted by Fig. 1. The question that needs to be addressed now is what mechanism can finally lead to the transition to a conventional mode of star formation, i.e. to a standard IMF, and what are the necessary conditions for this to occur.

### 2.2 Fragmentation of metal-enriched clouds

We now consider the effects of the presence of heavy elements on the fragmentation process. The discussion presented in this Section is based on the analysis by Omukai (2000) (see the original paper for details). Fig. 1, reproduced from Omukai (2000), shows the effects of metal enrichment on the $`(n,T)`$ tracks for the same initial conditions and different values of the mean metallicity.

In general, clouds with lower metallicity tend to be warmer because of their lower radiative cooling ability. As long as the clouds are transparent, cooling and fragmentation occur. Clouds with a mean metallicity $`Z10^6Z_{}`$ follow the same evolution as that of the gas with primordial composition in the $`(n,T)`$ plane. However, at $`Z\stackrel{>}{}10^4Z_{}`$, H2 formation on grain surfaces enhances cooling at low density. Dust grains are well known to condense out the ejecta of SNe (see Todini & Ferrara 2001 and references therein). When the LTE-NLTE transition occurs for H2 , the cloud can still cool (though less efficiently) due to OI line cooling. At densities $`>10^6\mathrm{cm}^3`$, heating due to H2 formation becomes larger than compressional work, i.e. $`\gamma >1`$ and the temperature starts to increase until thermal emission from grains due to energy transfer between gas and dust dominates the cooling. This occurs at a density $`n10^{10}\mathrm{cm}^3`$, where the temperature drops to $`100\mathrm{K}`$ and a new fragmentation phase occurs. This shows up in the lower panel of Fig. 1 as the large dip in the $`\gamma `$ evolution. The minimum fragment mass is reached at the point indicated by the empty circle, when the density is $`10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and the corresponding Jeans mass is of order $`10^2M_{}`$. Finally, as the density increases, the gas becomes opaque to dust thermal emission, fragmentation stops and compressional heating causes the fragments to contract adiabatically ($`\gamma >4/3`$). Therefore, a critical metallicity of $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}10^4Z_{}`$ can be identified, which marks the transition point between metal-free and metal-rich gas evolution.

When the metallicity is $`Z>10^4Z_{}`$, at density $`\stackrel{<}{}10^4\mathrm{cm}^3`$ cooling is driven by OI, CI and CO line emission. When the NLTE-LTE transition for the level populations of CO occurs, fragmentation stops and the temperature increases due to H2 formation. The larger concentration of dust grains (assumed here to be proportional to the mean metallicity) leads to a significant thermal emission which is responsible for cooling the gas and starting a new phase of fragmentation. This stops when $`T_{grain}T`$ and thereafter the fragments contract quasi-statically until they become optically opaque to dust emission and adiabatic contraction occurs. Due to the enhanced ability to cool, fragmentation stops at lower temperatures and densities for higher metallicity clouds (see open circles in the lower panel of Fig. 1). However, the Jeans mass corresponding to the minimum fragmentation scale is always $`10^2M_{}M_F1M_{}`$ for the metallicity range $`10^4Z/Z_{}1`$, several orders of magnitude smaller than for a cloud with no metals.

At the onset of adiabatic contraction, when $`\gamma `$ becomes larger than 4/3, an initial hydro-static core forms (transient core) with a mass $`10^2M_{}`$ regardless of the metallicity of the gas. This transient core is fully molecular and is absent when the gas is metal-free. The temperature of the transient core increases as its mass increases due to accretion of surrounding gas. Eventually, the temperature reaches about $`2000\mathrm{K}`$, where H2 dissociation begins. This softens the equation of state until the dissociation is almost complete. Then, $`\gamma `$ falls below 4/3 in the density range $`10^{16}10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^3`$. Note that the thermal evolution after H2 dissociation (i.e., $`n>10^{16}\mathrm{cm}^3`$) is the same independent of the initial composition of the gas. After $`\gamma `$ once again exceeds 4/3, a hydro-static core (so-called stellar core) forms. Its physical characteristics are independent of metallicity ($`n\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{22}\mathrm{cm}^3,M\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^3M_{}`$; Omukai 2000).

### 2.3 Formation of proto-stars

Proto-stars, whose mass is initially very low (about $`10^3M_{}`$), grow in mass by accretion of the envelope material. The final mass of stars is, then, determined not only by the mass of the fragments, but also by when accretion stops. The accretion rate onto the proto-star is related to the sound speed (and therefore, temperature) of the proto-stellar cloud by the relation, $`\dot{M}c_\mathrm{s}^3/G`$, (Stahler, Shu, & Taam 1980).

As seen in Fig. 1, the temperature of proto-stellar clouds decreases with metallicity. Therefore, the mass accretion rate is higher for proto-stars formed from lower metallicity gas. If dust is present in the accretion flow, accretion onto the massive proto-star becomes increasingly difficult owing to the radiation pressure onto the dust. In present-day interstellar gas, accretion onto stars more massive than $`30M_{}`$ is inhibited by this mechanism (Wolfire & Cassinelli 1987). In gas with lower metallicity, the mass bound is expected to be higher because of the higher accretion rate and lower radiation force. In particular, for metal-free gas, this mechanism does not work. Therefore, without dust, accretion is likely to continue until the ambient gas supply is exhausted (Ripamonti et al. 2001, Omukai & Inutsuka 2001).

In conclusion, the presence of metals not only enables fragmentation down to smaller mass scales $`10^2M_{}`$, but also breaks the one-to-one correspondence between the mass of the formed star and that of the parent fragment by halting the accretion through radiation force onto the dust.

## 3 The star formation conundrum

According to the scenario proposed above, the first stars that form within PopIII and Ly$`\alpha `$-cooling halos out of gas of primordial composition tend to be very massive, with masses $`10^{23}M_{}`$. It is only when metals change the composition of the gas that further fragmentation occurs producing stars with significantly lower masses. It is at this stage that we expect a transition to occur from a top-heavy IMF towards a more conventional IMF with a wide range of masses, such as the one observed locally (Scalo 1998, Kroupa 2001).

A growing body of observational evidence points to an early top-heavy IMF (see Hernandez & Ferrara 2000 and references therein). Compelling arguments for an early top-heavy IMF can also be made from observations on various scales: (i) the early enrichment of our Galaxy required to solve the so-called G-dwarf problem, (ii) the abundance patterns of metals in the Intracluster Medium (ICM), (iii) the energetics of the ICM, (iv) the non-detection of metal-free stars, and (v) the over-production of low mass stars at the present epoch and metals at $`z25`$ for the submillimeter derived star formation histories using SCUBA detections for a standard IMF can be resolved with an early top-heavy IMF.

For instance, the ICM metal abundances measured from Chandra and XMM spectral data are higher than expected from the enrichment by standard IMF SN yields in cluster galaxy members, which can be explained by a top-heavy early IMF. Furthermore, the observed abundance anomalies (e.g. oxygen) in the ICM can be explained by an early generation of PopIII SNe (Loewenstein 2001). There is observational evidence from the abundance ratio patterns of \[Si/Fe\], \[Mg/Fe\], \[Ca/Fe\] and \[Ti/Fe\] in the extremely metal-poor double-lined spectroscopic binary CS 22876-032 in the halo of our galaxy (Norris, Beers & Ryan 2000) for enrichment by a massive, zero-metallicity supernova on comparison with the theoretical models of Woosley & Weaver (1995). These issues, highly suggestive of top-heavy early star formation, have recently motivated a series of numerical investigations of the nucleosynthesis and final fate of metal-free massive stars (Heger & Woosley 2001; Fryer, Woosley & Heger 2001; Umeda & Nomoto 2002). In their recent paper, Heger & Woosley delineate three mass ranges characterized by distinct evolutionary paths:

1. $`M_{}\stackrel{>}{}260M_{}`$: the nuclear energy release from the collapse of stars in this mass range is insufficient to reverse the implosion. The final result is a very massive black hole (VMBH) locking up all heavy elements produced.
2. $`140M_{}\stackrel{<}{}M_{}\stackrel{<}{}260M_{}`$: the mass regime of the pair-unstable supernovae (SNγγ ). Pre-collapse winds and pulsations result in little mass loss, the star implodes to a maximum temperature that depends on its mass and then explodes, leaving no remnant. The explosion expels metals into the surrounding ambient ISM.
3. $`30M_{}\stackrel{<}{}M_{}\stackrel{<}{}140M_{}`$: black hole formation is the most likely outcome, because either a successful outgoing shock fails to occur or the shock is so weak that the fall-back converts the neutron star remnant into a black hole (Fryer 1999).

Stars that form in the mass ranges (1) and (3) above fail to eject most of their heavy elements. If the first stars have masses in excess of $`260M_{}`$ (in agreement with numerical findings), they invariably end their lives as VMBHs (in the following we will refer to VMBHs as black holes of hundred solar mass or so) and do not release any of their synthesized heavy elements. However - as we have shown - as long as the gas remains metal-free, the subsequent generations of stars will continue to be top-heavy. This star formation conundrum can be solved only if a fraction of the first generation of massive stars have masses $`\stackrel{<}{}260M_{}`$. Under such circumstances, these will explode as SNγγ and enrich the gas with heavy elements up to a mean metallicity of $`Z\stackrel{>}{}10^4Z_{}`$, and as per arguments outlined in the previous section (see Fig. 1), thereafter causing a shift over to an IMF that is similar to the local one. In what follows, we further explore the implications of the above scenario and derive the conditions for the solution of the conundrum.

### 3.1 Abundance of VMBHs and metals

As a consequence of the picture proposed above, VMBHs are an inevitable outcome. We now compute the expected mass density of metals and the mass density of remnant VMBHs produced in such a first episode of star formation. For a collapsed dark matter halo of total mass $`M`$, the associated baryonic mass is assumed to be $`M(\mathrm{\Omega }_B/\mathrm{\Omega }_M)`$ (where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_B/\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ is simply the baryon fraction). Following the results of numerical simulations at different resolutions (Bromm et al. 2001, Abel et al. 2000) we assume that $`1/2`$ of the total available gas is utilized in star formation, the rest remaining in diffuse form.

The relative mass fraction of SNγγ and VMBH progenitors are parametrized as follows:

$`M_{\gamma \gamma }`$ $`=`$ $`f_{\gamma \gamma }{\displaystyle \frac{M}{2}}({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_B}{\mathrm{\Omega }_M}})=f_{\gamma \gamma }M_{},`$ (5)
$`M_{}`$ $`=`$ $`(1f_{\gamma \gamma }){\displaystyle \frac{M}{2}}({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_B}{\mathrm{\Omega }_M}})=(1f_{\gamma \gamma })M_{},`$
where $`M_{\gamma \gamma }`$ ($`M_{}`$) is the total mass which ends up in SNγγ (VMBHs) and $`M_{}`$ is the mass processed into stars. Thus, only a fraction $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$ of the formed stars can contribute to gas metal enrichment. The metal yields for the dominant elements have been computed using the results of Heger & Woosley (2001), and are plotted in Fig. 3 as a function of the mass of the progenitor star. The bulk of the yield is contributed by O16 and the mass of metals ejected can be written as

$$M_ZM_{\gamma \gamma }/210M_{}\frac{M_{\gamma \gamma }}{200M_{}},$$
(6)
where we have taken $`200M_{}`$ as a fiducial mass for SNγγ progenitors. Next, the further assumption is made that metals are ejected from the parent galaxy into the IGM and their cosmic volume filling factor is close to unity, therefore uniformly polluting the IGM. This comes from the results of Madau, Ferrara & Rees (MFR, 2001) and Mori, Ferrara & Madau (2001), where it is shown that for reasonable values of the star formation efficiency, metal bubbles produced by (standard SNII in) proto-galaxies which result from 2-$`\sigma `$ peaks of the density power spectrum at redshift 10 do overlap. Indeed, the kinetic energy released by SNγγ is much higher than for ordinary SNII (see Fig. 2), hence making our assumption even more solid. The temperature of the hot gas is expected to be somewhat higher than estimated by MFR: however, due to the higher redshifts and consequent stronger Inverse Compton cooling, ejected metals have enough time to cool by $`z3`$.

As long as the average metallicity is below the critical value, i.e. $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}=10^4Z_{}`$, we argue that the IMF remains top-heavy and the redshift-dependent critical density of metals contributed by all SNγγ at redshifts $`>z`$ can be computed,

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_Z(z)=\frac{1}{\rho _{\mathrm{cr}}}_z^{\mathrm{}}𝑑z^{}_{M_{min}(z^{})}𝑑Mn(M,z^{})M_Z$$
(7)
where $`n(M,z)`$ is the number density of halos per unit mass predicted by the Press-Schechter formalism and the integration is performed from $`M_{\mathrm{min}}(z)`$ which is the minimum mass that can cool within a Hubble time at the specified formation redshift $`z`$, i.e. $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}(M,z)\stackrel{<}{}t_H(z)`$ (see Ciardi et al. 2000). We adopt a cosmological model with the following parameters to compute the abundance of halos : $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, $`h=0.65`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_B=0.047`$ (latest predictions from BBN, see Burles, Nollett & Turner 2001) and use the COBE-normalized power spectrum for fluctuations as described in Efstathiou, Bond & White (1992).

From the above expression, we can estimate the transition redshift $`z_f`$ at which the mean metallicity is $`10^4Z_{}`$,

$$<Z(z_f)>=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_Z(z_f)}{\mathrm{\Omega }_B}10^4Z_{}$$
(8)
for various values of the fraction $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$. The results are plotted in Fig. 4 alongwith the corresponding critical density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}`$ contributed by the VMBHs formed, which is given by,

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}(z_f)=\frac{(1f_{\gamma \gamma })}{\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}}_{z_f}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑z^{}_{M_{min}(z^{})}𝑑Mn(M,z^{})M_{}.$$
(9)
Several assumptions as to the fate of these VMBHs at late times will be examined in an attempt to obtain constraints on the value of $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$ from current observations in the next Section.

## 4 Observational Constraints

The objective now is to set some limits on $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$, the fraction of stars formed that result in SNγγ providing the first metals, that are eventually responsible for the shift to a normal IMF. In order to compare the predicted critical density of VMBH remnants to present observational data we need to make further assumptions about the fate of these VMBHs at late times.

The mass density contributed by remnant supermassive black holes $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0`$ can be estimated observationally111The superscript $`0`$ denotes the present day value from the demography of local galaxies (Magorrian et al. 1998; Merritt & Ferrarese 2001). There are two extreme possibilities (bounding cases for the values of $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$) concerning the relation between the inferred mass density of SMBHs and VMBHs:

\[A\] $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}(z_f)=\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0`$: all VMBHs have, during the course of galaxy mergers, in fact, been used to build up the SMBHs detected today;

\[B\] $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}(z_f)=\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}^0\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0`$ there is no relation between the detected SMBHs and the early VMBHs, implying that SMBHs have grown primarily by gas accretion.

Thus, in the first scenario \[A\], we assume that all VMBHs are able to sink to the center of host systems to merge within a Hubble time, giving birth to the SMBHs in the nuclei of galaxies that we see today. Note, that this is in fact unlikely (as explained further below), nevertheless, this argument provides an extreme bound.

It is important to point out here, that in the current proposed theoretical models for the mass accretion history of black holes, the mass density seen today locally in SMBHs can be built either predominantly by mergers or by accretion. In phenomenological models that attempt to tie in the current high redshift observations of the space density and luminosity function of quasars with that of the local space density of black holes wherein it is assumed that quasars are (i) powered by BHs and (ii) are optically bright for a period of $`10^{67}`$ yr (Haiman & Loeb 1998; Haehnelt, Natarajan & Rees 1998; Kauffmann & Haehnelt 2000), either picture (mergers/accretion) can adequately explain the mass assembly of the remnant SMBHs.

This permits both scenarios \[A\] (wherein SMBHs grow primarily via mergers of VMBHs during galaxy assembly) and \[B\] (wherein SMBHs grow primarily by accretion and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0`$ is unrelated to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}`$) to be plausible extreme cases. Consideration of cases \[A\] and \[B\] will provide bounds on the value for $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$. For a given $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$, the corresponding value for the transition redshift can be found on the $`z_f`$ curve shown in Fig 4.

We note here that VMBHs in the mass range expected from the first episode of metal-free star formation (a few hundred solar masses) are likely to be ubiquitous. Using ISO observations, Gilmore & Unavane (1998) have convincingly argued that low mass stars (in fact hydrogen burning stars of any mass) do not provide a substantial portion of the dark matter inferred in the halos of galaxies. In combination with the mass limits obtained on potential dark matter candidates from the MACHO (Alcock et al. 2001) and EROS (Lasserre et al. 2000) experiments (micro-lensing studies) in our Galaxy, low mass objects, with masses under $`10M_{}`$ are ruled out \- thereby, making VMBHs ($`100M_{}`$ BHs) in halos (case \[B\]) plausible dark matter candidates.

For case \[A\], we can simply equate $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}^0`$ to the measured mass density in SMBHs found from the demography of nuclei of nearby galaxies (Magorrian et al. 1998; Gebhardt et al. 2001) indicated by the horizontal line in Fig. 4 (top panel). The most recent value reported by Merritt & Ferrarese (2001) is $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0=10^4h\mathrm{\Omega }_B`$, which for $`h=0.65`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_B=0.047`$ yields $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0=3.05\times 10^6`$. From the top panel of Fig. 4, we see that this gives $`f_{\gamma \gamma }0.06`$. The corresponding value for the transition redshift can be found on the $`z_f`$ curve on the same plot, yielding a value $`z_f18.5`$. This constraint implies that all but a small fraction of the mass involved in the first episodes of star formation - approximately 6% - went in objects outside the mass range $`140M_{}<M_{}<260M_{}`$, yielding remnant black holes with mass $`10500M_{}`$. The scenario corresponding to \[A\] therefore implies that $`z_f`$, the transition redshift from top-heavy to normal IMF occurred at $``$ 18.5.

Let us now look at the other extreme case \[B\], wherein the assembled SMBHs in galactic centers have formed primarily via accretion and are unrelated to VMBHs. This leads us to two further possibilities: (i) VMBHs would still be in the process of spiralling into the centers of galaxies due to dynamical friction but are unlikely to have reached the centers within a Hubble time due to the dynamical friction time-scale being long (Madau & Rees 2001), or (ii) VMBHs contribute the entire baryonic dark matter in galactic halos.

Pursuing scenario (i), therefore, at best some fraction of these VMBHs (for instance, those in gas-rich regions of gas-rich systems) might appear as off-center accreting sources that show up in the hard X-ray wave-band. Such sources have indeed been detected both by ROSAT (Roberts & Warwick 2000) and more recently by Chandra in nearby galaxies (M84: Jones 2001; NGC 720: Buote 2001).

In a survey of archival ROSAT HRI data to study the X-ray properties of the nuclei of 486 optically selected bright nearby galaxies (Ho, Fillipenko & Sargent 1995), Roberts & Warwick (2000) found a large number of off-center X-ray sources. The X-ray sources detected within the optical extent of these galaxies were classified either as nuclear or non-nuclear (and therefore off-center) depending on whether the source was positioned within 25 arcsec of the optical nucleus. They detect a nuclear source in over 70% of the galaxy sample and a total of a 142 off-center sources. Roberts & Warwick (2000) find that the non-nuclear sources follow a steep, near power-law X-ray luminosity distribution in the $`10^{36}10^{40}\text{ erg s}^1`$ which leads to an $`L_X/L_B`$ ratio of

$$\frac{L_X}{L_B}=1.1\times 10^{39}\text{ erg s}^1(10^{10}\text{ L}_{})^1.$$
(10)
The median luminosity of the non-nuclear sources is found to be a factor of $`10`$ lower than that of the nuclear sources. However, they estimate the incidence rate of off-center sources with $`L_X10^{38.3}\text{ erg s}^1`$ (which corresponds to the Eddington luminosity for a 1.4 solar mass neutron star) to be $`0.7\mathrm{per}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{10}L_{}`$ galaxy. The existence of accreting VMBHs might also help explain the following observation. The far-IR excess detected with DIRBE at 60 and 100 $`\mu `$m has been tentatively interpreted as an extra-galactic background with integrated intensity of $`44\pm 9`$ nW $`\text{m}^2\text{sr}^1`$ in the range $`60100\mu `$m (Finkbeiner, Davis & Schlegel 2000). The energy required to produce such a FIR background could derive from a highly obscured population of accreting VMBHs at moderate redshifts (for an alternative to this see explanation of scenario (ii) below).

In order to estimate the mass density contributed by these VMBHs, we can compare the mass in VMBHs to that of the SMBH in a typical galaxy of luminosity say $`10^{10}L_{}`$ for case \[B\]. Most of the VMBHs are likely to be en-route to galactic centers. Note however, that not all the inspiralling VMBHs will be accreting and be X-ray bright: many of these could, in fact, be low radiative efficiency ADAFs (Advection Dominated Accretion Flows), and therefore be too faint to be detected by ROSAT or Chandra or not accreting at all if they do not happen to be in gas-rich regions of the galaxy. Thus, using the following argument we can obtain a lower limit on the abundance of VMBHs.

The mass of the central SMBH hosted by a galaxy with a luminosity $`L_{galaxy}=10^{10}L_{}`$ (assumed to be the fiducial galaxy for these purposes) in the B-band is given by (Merritt & Ferrarese 2001):

$$M_{SMBH}=10^3M_{\mathrm{bulge}}=10^3L_{\mathrm{galaxy}}$$

where the mass-to-light ratio in the B-band is taken to be $`1M_{}/L_{}`$ and the galaxy luminosity is essentially dominated by the bulge luminosity. Hence, the mass of the central SMBH is $`M_{SMBH}10^7M_{}`$. Now, we use the luminosity of the ROSAT off-center sources (Roberts & Warwick 2000) and use the fact that they find $``$ 0.7 off-center sources with luminosity $`10^{38.3}\text{ erg s}^1`$ per $`10^{10}L_{}`$ galaxy, to estimate the mass of VMBHs in the fiducial galaxy. If we assume that these VMBHs have a typical mass of $`300M_{}`$, their Eddington luminosity is,

$$L_{\mathrm{Edd}}=4.3\times 10^{40}(\frac{M_{VMBH}}{300M_{}})\text{ erg s}^1.$$

Thus, VMBHs appear to be radiating at sub-Eddington luminosities, the average rate (given by eq. 10) being $`3\%`$ of the Eddington value. This is consistent with the observed luminosities of the nuclear sources in the sample, which Roberts & Warwick (2000) find to be radiating at severely sub-Eddington rates.

Therefore, we expect that the typical accreting VMBH mass in a $`10^{10}L_{}`$ galaxy to be about 210$`M_{}`$. Little is known about the spatial distribution of such objects. How can we take into account the fact that only a fraction of the sources are likely to be accreting? Since the detected ROSAT off-center sources are within the optical radius of the galaxies, the number of non-accreting VMBHs in the halos of these galaxies can be large. One can obtain a simple estimate of this number by pursuing the following argument. Assume that VMBHs, being collisionless particles, closely trace the dark matter (which we take to obey a Navarro, Frenk & White \[NFW, 1997\] profile) and that the ratio of virial to optical radius is $`15`$ for a $`10^{10}L_{}`$ disk galaxy (Persic, Salucci & Stel, 1996). These hypotheses require that we scale up the total mass in VMBHs by a factor of $`10`$, which gives $`M_{VMBH}=2.1\times 10^3M_{}`$. Now, the ratio $`M_{VMBH}/M_{SMBH}`$ is $`2.1\times 10^4`$, implying that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}=2.1\times 10^4\mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}^0=6.4\times 10^{10}`$ which in turn gives $`f_{\gamma \gamma }1`$ (see dashed line in bottom panel of Fig. 4) and $`z_f22.1`$.

Now we explore scenario (ii) of Case \[B\], the instance when VMBHs constitute the entire baryonic dark matter content of galaxy halos (but do not contribute to the disk dark matter). It is important to point out here that cosmological nucleosynthesis arguments require both baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter (Pagel 1990). Essentially, this is due to the fact that the mass density contributed by baryons $`\mathrm{\Omega }_B`$, is well in excess of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_V`$, the contribution to the mass density by visible baryons.

Using the luminosity dependent relation of visible to dark matter for spirals (Persic, Salucci & Stel, 1996) for a fiducial galaxy of $`10^{10}L_{}`$ we find,

$$\frac{M_{vis}}{M_{DM}}0.05$$

where $`M_{vis}`$ is the visible mass and $`M_{DM}=M_{DM}^b+M_{DM}^{nb}`$ is the total dark matter mass, given as a sum of a baryonic and a non-baryonic component. The total baryonic mass is a fraction $`\mathrm{\Omega }_B/\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ of the total mass of the system, e.g.

$$M_{vis}+M_{DM}^b=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_B}{\mathrm{\Omega }_M}(M_{vis}+M_{DM}).$$

From the two equations above and assuming a NFW density profile, we estimate that the total baryonic dark matter content as,

$$M_{DM}^b(\mathrm{\Omega }_M^11)M_{vis}=2.33M_{vis};$$

moreover, 90% of this mass resides outside the optical radius and can be contributed by VMBHs:

$$\frac{M_{VMBH}}{M_{SMBH}}=\frac{2.1\times M_{vis}}{10^3\times M_{vis}}=2.1\times 10^3,$$
(11)
implying

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{VMBH}=2.1\times 10^3\times \mathrm{\Omega }_{SMBH}=6.4\times 10^3.$$
(12)
Incorporating this constraint into Fig. 4 (bottom panel), we find $`f_{\gamma \gamma }3.15\times 10^5`$ and $`z_f5.4`$. Note that this scenario does not violate the constraint on the over-production of background light (see Carr 1998; Bond, Carr & Hogan 1991; Wright et al. 1994). In fact, some fraction of the observed near-IR DIRBE excess could be produced by VMBHs. In a recent estimate of the cosmic background at 1.25 $`\mu `$m and 2.2 $`\mu `$m (corresponding to the J and K bands respectively) using 2MASS and the DIRBE results Cambresy et al. (2001), also find an excess (significantly higher than the integrated galaxy counts in the J and K bands) suggesting the contribution of other sources. Pop III stars and their VMBH remnants (accreting at very high redshifts) postulated here are likely candidates.

According to scenario \[B\], the average metal abundance at redshift $`5.4`$ should be $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}=10^4Z_{}`$, marking the transition from a top-heavy IMF to a standard power-law IMF. This does not necessarily violate the observed metal abundances in Damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, $`Z10^3`$, as it is yet not clear to what extent the IGM metallicity is spatially uniform at these intermediate redshifts.

Therefore, scenario \[B\] is poorly constrained by the data, as the two options (i) and (ii) give large ranges for $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$ and $`z_f`$: $`3.15\times 10^5<f_{\gamma \gamma }<1`$ and $`5.4<z_f<22.1`$. Consistently, scenario \[A\] gives a limit on $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$ and $`z_f`$ of $`f_{\gamma \gamma }=0.06`$ and $`z_f=18.5`$.

The actual data do not allow us at present to strongly constrain the above two quantities, but they provide interesting bounds on the proposed scenario. These ranges also have implications for the expected detection rate of SNe beyond $`z_f`$ with future instruments like NGST (Marri, Ferrara & Pozzetti 2000).

## 5 Discussion

We have proposed a scenario to solve a puzzling star formation conundrum: the first stars are now thought to be very massive and hence to lock their nucleosynthesis products into a remnant (very massive) black hole. This high-mass biased star formation mode continues as long as the gas remains metal-free. During this phase, metal enrichment can occur only if a fraction $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$ of the stars have mass in the window leading to pair-unstable SNe ($`140M_{}<M_{}<260M_{}`$) which disperse their heavy elements into the surrounding gas. Such metals enrich the gas up to $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}10^4Z_{}`$, when a transition to efficient cooling-driven fragmentation producing $`\stackrel{<}{}1M_{}`$ clumps occurs at redshift $`z_f`$. We argue that the remaining fraction of the first stars end up in $`100M_{}`$ VMBHs. By analyzing the evolutionary fate of such objects, we argue that \[A\] they could end up in the SMBHs in the centers of galactic nuclei, \[B\] (i) could be en-route to the center and hence identified with the X-ray bright, off-center ROSAT sources, or (ii) constitute the entire baryonic dark matter content of galaxy halos. These possibilities are used to obtain constraints on the two quantities: $`f_{\gamma \gamma }0.06`$ and $`z_f18.5`$ for \[A\], and $`f_{\gamma \gamma }[10^51]`$ and $`z_f[5.422.1]`$ for case \[B\]. The value $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}10^4Z_{}`$ found here is admittedly somewhat uncertain. For this reason we have investigated how the above results might be affected by a different choice, e.g. assuming $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}10^5Z_{}`$. Indeed, lower values of $`Z_{\mathrm{cr}}`$ imply that less efficient metal enrichment is required in order to change to a more conventional star formation mode. Thus, comparable values for $`z_f`$ are found but the corresponding values for $`f_{\gamma \gamma }`$ tend to be systematically smaller, being $`f_{\gamma \gamma }0.6\%`$ for scenario \[A\] and in the range $`3.15\times 10^6<z_f<0.98`$ for scenario \[B\].

Several uncertainties remain in the comparison of the inferred density of VMBHs to local observations. For example, it is not obvious if SMBHs could at all form out of VMBHs. Dynamical friction can effectively drag VMBHs towards the center of the host system, at least within a distance of $`100`$ pc (Madau & Rees 2001). Unless most of the energy is radiated away in gravitational waves, it could be difficult for a VMBH cluster to coalesce into a single unit. Furthermore, accretion onto isolated VMBHs could be too inefficient to explain most of the off-center sources observed by ROSAT and CHANDRA. Higher accretion rates might be activated by the tidal capture/disruption of ordinary stars. Question remains if the frequency of such an event is in fact sufficiently high to explain the data.

In spite of the many difficulties and uncertainties discussed above, our study represents a first attempt to link the first episode of cosmic star formation activity to present day observational evidence of their fossil remnants.

A top-heavy IMF for the early episodes of star formation in the universe might have other interesting observational consequences, we speculate further on them below. The kinetic energy released during the thermonuclear explosions powered by pair instability are $`10^2`$ larger than those of ordinary Type II SNe. This might cause the interaction with the circumstellar medium to be as strong as predicted for hypernovae (Woosley & Weaver 1982). However, these explosions do not lead to the ejection of strongly relativistic matter (Fryer, Woosley & Heger 2001) and therefore cannot power a gamma-ray burst (GRB).

In PopIII progenitors of VMBHs, the estimated angular momentum is sufficient to delay black hole formation and the system might develop triaxial deformations (Fryer, Woosley & Heger 2001). If the instabilities have enough time to grow, the core might break into smaller fragments that would then collapse and merge to form the central VMBH. If not, the star might still develop a bar-like configuration. Both these scenarios lead to a significant emission of gravitational waves (Schneider et al. 2000; Fryer, Holz & Hughes 2001). Furthermore, significant emission of gravitational radiation can occur as a result of the in-spiral and merger of VMBHs onto the SMBHs in the center of host systems (Madau & Rees, 2001)

Once the VMBHs have formed, accretion continues through a disk at a rate which can be as large as $`10M_{}\text{s}^1`$ (Fryer, Woosley & Heger 2001). Magnetic fields might drive an energetic jet which can produce a strong gamma-ray burst through the interaction with surrounding gas. The properties of these PopIII GRBs would be considerably different from their more recent ($`z<5`$) counterparts: depending on the uncertain interaction of the jet with the surrounding matter, the bursts would be probably longer \[$`10(1+z)`$ s\] and the peak of emission, that in the rest frame is in $`\gamma `$-rays, would be shifted into X-rays. Indeed, BeppoSAX has revealed the existence of a new class of events, the so-called X-ray flashes or X-ray rich GRBs, which emit the bulk of their energy in X-rays (Piro, private communication). Furthermore, since PopIII GRBs explode at very high redshifts, it is likely that their optical afterglow might be heavily absorbed by the intervening gas. These systems might be the natural candidates for the significant number (about 40 % of GRBs for which fast follow-up observations were carried out) of GRBs which do not show an optical counterpart, the so-called GHOST (GRB Hiding Optical Source Transient) or dark GRBs. Other explanations ascribe the failed optical detection to dust extinction within the host system but the ultimate nature of GHOSTS is still very debated (Lazzati, Covino & Ghisellini, 2001; Djorgovski et al. 2001)

Finally, the energetic jets generated by GRBs engines produce, by photon-meson interaction, a burst of TeV neutrinos while propagating in the stellar envelope (Mészáros & Waxman 2001). We investigate this aspect in a companion paper (Schneider, Guetta & Ferrara 2002) where we use the constraints set by the AMANDA-B10 experiment on the total integrated flux of TeV neutrinos from PopIII GRBs.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are grateful to P. Coppi, K. Nomoto & M. Rees for comments and suggestions. We wish to thank V. Bromm and L. Piro for discussions. We thank the referee for his/her thoughtful comments. This work is partially supported (RS) by the Italian CNAA (Project 16/A); KO is supported by Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists, grant 6819.


text:
# REFERENCES

\[\]

Comment on “Bethe Ansatz Results for the 4$`f`$-Electron Spectra of a Degenerate Anderson Model ”

In a recent letter , the author calculates the density of states for $`4f`$ electrons coupled to a conduction band in the framework of the Bethe ansatz (BA) solution for the degenerate Anderson model. It is claimed that the results qualitatively disagree with the results obtained for the same model but using a variational approach . Even the high energy feature in the $`f`$-spectral function near the $`4f`$-level energy $`ϵ_f`$, i.e. the “normal” ionization peak (NIP), is argued to be qualitatively different in the two approaches. In the following we point out that this is not the case.

We concentrate on the $`U\mathrm{}`$, $`N`$-fold degenerate Anderson model. As the Bethe ansatz for this model can yield exact results only in the large bandwidth limit $`B|ϵ_f|`$, we confine our discussion to this limit. Zvyagin first presents BA results which show that the NIP is shifted towards the chemical potential from $`ϵ_f`$ in the Kondo limit $`n_f1`$, where $`n_f`$ is the mean $`f`$-occupancy. He then states that the peak shifts in the opposite direction in our variational calculation . That this is not the case is obvious from our results in the Kondo limit presented in Appendix C of reference . This is also shown very clearly in Fig. $`5`$ of our handbook article . The NIP position is called $`\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_f`$ in Appendix C of reference . For large $`N`$ and the Kondo limit this real quantity is determined by the equation

$$\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_f=ϵ_f+Re\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_f),$$
(1)
where

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(z)=N_B^0𝑑ϵ|V(ϵ)|^2/(zϵ).$$
(2)
$`Re\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(ϵ)`$ is positive  for negative $`ϵ`$ with $`|ϵ|B`$ (for a constant $`V(ϵ)`$ it is given by $`N\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}(B/|ϵ|)`$). It therefore follows without actually solving the equation that in our variational calculation the NIP shifts towards the chemical potential as in the BA solution. Zvyagin claims that the solution to this equation was found by us “in the complex form” . Apparently he was confused by an unfortunate misprint in the second equality of our equation which determines $`\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_f`$. It should read $`|\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_f|`$ instead of $`\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_f`$ in the argument of the logarithm. From the first part of the equation presented above it should be obvious that this is in fact a misprint.

We should mention that the results for the $`f`$-spectral function using our variational method  essentially agree with the low temperature solution of the NCA equations and numerical renormalization group results . As noted by Zvyagin other low energy characteristics obtained within our scheme qualitatively coincide with the BA ones.

In conclusion we have pointed out that in contrast to the claims in reference  our variational results for the high energy feature in the $`f`$-spectral function for the degenerate Anderson model, which has been used successfully in the description of photoemission spectra of Cerium compounds, qualitatively agree with the BA results.

O. Gunnarsson1 and K. Schönhammer2
1Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung
Heisenbergstrasse1
D-70569 Stuttgart
Germany
2Institut für Theoretische Physik
Universität Göttingen
Bunsenstr. 9
D-37073 Göttingen
Germany


text:
# The influence of dust properties on the mass loss in pulsating AGB stars

## 1. Introduction

Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars show large amplitude pulsations with periods of about 100 to 1000 days. The pulsation creates strong shock waves in the stellar atmosphere, causing a levitation of the outer layers. This cool and relatively dense environment provides favorable conditions for the formation of molecules and dust grains. The dust formation basically determines the mass loss in these stars. Dust grains therefore play a very important role for the further evolution of the star (Sedlmayr this volume).

Dust formation can only take place if (1) the temperature is sufficiently low, (2) the abundance of the dust forming species is sufficiently large and (3) the time scale providing favorable conditions is sufficiently long to allow for effective dust formation to proceed.

Condensation and evaporation of dust in envelopes of pulsating stars must be treated as a time-dependent process since the time scales for condensation and evaporation are comparable to variations of the thermodynamic conditions in the stellar atmosphere. The radiation pressure on newly formed dust grains can enhance excisting shock waves or even create shock waves leading to more or less pronounced discrete dust shells in the expanding circumstellar flow (e.g. Fleischer et al. 1992; Höfner & Dorfi 1997). We have calculated models of carbon-rich AGB stars with different carbon dust properties, in order to establish the dependence of the dynamical models on the material properties such as the opacity and the intrinsic density of the dust material.

## 2. Carbon grains

Amorphous carbon grains seem to be a very good candidate as the most common type of dust particles present in circumstellar envelopes of carbon-rich AGB stars.

There exists a wide variety of possible amorphous carbon grain types, which fall in between the categories “diamond-like” and “graphite-like” amorphous carbon depending on the dominant type of chemical bonds. Different amorphous carbon dust data are listed in Table 1. The extinction efficiency data presented in this paper were calculated in the Rayleigh approximation for spheres (see Andersen et al. (1999) for details). As can be seen in Fig. 1a the difference in optical properties of different types of amorphous carbon is substantial.

## 3. Dynamical models

To obtain the structure of the stellar atmosphere and circumstellar envelope as a function of time we solve the coupled system of frequency-dependent radiation hydrodynamics and time-dependent dust formation (see Höfner 1999 and Höfner et al. this volume for details). The dust formation is treated by the so-called moment method (Gail & Sedlmayr 1988; Gauger et al. 1990). In the moment method dust formation is regarded as a two step process; (1) the formation of supercritical nuclei out of the gas phase and (2) the time dependent growth of grains to macroscopic sizes. The moment method is concerned with the time evolution of an ensemble of dust grains of various sizes and requires the nucleation rate as external input.

The models require as input the extinction efficiency $`Q_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ of the grains111Or rather of the quantity $`Q_{\mathrm{ext}}/a`$, which is independent of the grain radius, $`a`$, in the small particle (Rayleigh) limit which is applicable in this context. and the intrinsic density of the material. The parameters of the models discussed here can be found in Table 2. Wind properties like the mass loss rate $`\dot{M}`$, the time-averaged outflow velocity $`u`$ and degree of condensation $`f_\mathrm{c}`$ are direct results of the dynamical calculations. All elemental abundances are assumed to be solar except the one of carbon which is specified by an additional parameter, the carbon-to-oxygen ratio $`\epsilon _\mathrm{C}/\epsilon _\mathrm{O}`$.

## 4. Results

It is seen in Fig. 1b that the new models coincide resonable well with observations of comparable stars. But at the same time it is clear from Table 2, that the mean outflow velocity, $`u`$, and the degree of condensation, $`f_\mathrm{c}`$, change significantly with the dust data used.

Comparing Model 1 and 3 the mean degree of condensation, $`f_\mathrm{c}`$, is much higher for the model using the dust data with the lower opacity, but at the same time the mean outflow velocity, $`u`$, is higher for the model using the dust data with the higher opacity.

The degree of condensation also increases substantially if a higher intrinsic density for the material is assumed. In the models we have used both the true value of the material (Model 1,3,5,7,8,9) as it was determined in the laboratory as well as the value of $`\rho =2.25`$ g/cm3, equivalent to the intrinsic density of pure graphite (Model 2, 4, 6). The latter value has been used in many existing models (e.g. Fleischer et al. 1992; Höfner & Dorfi 1997). The result of using the higher density of graphite instead of the right value, is that the models become much redder since more dust is formed. Even a small increase of about 10% in the density of the dust material (as is the case from Model 1 to 2) results in a doubling of the degree of condensation and a substantial increase in the outflow velocity, $`u`$. This stresses the importance of using the measured material value if possible, since an other choice (even if it has been carefully considered) can create an artificial increase/decrease in the calculated mass loss of the models.

### Acknowledgments.

ACA greatfully acknowledges financial support from the Carlsberg Foundation. This work was supported by NorFA, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and the Swedish Research Council.

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