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# Looptop Hard X-ray Emission in Solar Flares: Images and Statistics

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The discovery of hard X-ray sources located at or above the top of solar flare loops by the HXT instrument on board the YOHKOH satellite has provided great insight into the processes that drive solar flares. The canonical event for this phenomenon is the flare of January 13, 1992, first described by Masuda et al. (1994), and later analyzed by Alexander & Metcalf (1997), and is commonly referred to as the “Masuda” flare. This flare, which is clearly delineated by a soft X-ray (thermal) loop, shows three compact hard X-ray sources, two located at the footpoints (FPs for short) and a third above the top of the soft X-ray loop. The first systematic study of such sources was undertaken by Masuda (1994). During the period of time between the satellite’s first scientific observations (October 1991) up to September 1993, Masuda selected 11 X-ray bright limb flares observed by YOHKOH that met his selection criteria (see below), one of these 11 events was interrupted event and was not analyzed further. Of the remaining 10 flares, 6 demonstrated a nonthermal looptop (LT for short) source while another demonstrated what Masuda termed a “super hot” thermal LT source. This indicates that LT hard X-ray emission is fairly common. This view is strengthened further considering the limited dynamic range of the HXT instrument and the result we describe in this paper. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that LT sources are present in all flares.

It is generally agreed that the primary energy of solar flares must come from reconnection of stressed magnetic fields, and as pointed out by Masuda et al. (1994), the YOHKOH LT observations lend support to theories that place the location of energy release high up in the corona. The energy released by reconnection can be used to heat the ambient plasma and/or to accelerate electrons and protons to relativistic energies. The power law hard X-ray spectra seen in many of the LT sources indicate that nonthermal processes, such as particle acceleration, are indeed occurring at or near these locations. The exact mechanism of the acceleration is a matter of considerable debate. In previous works (see Petrosian 1994 and 1996) we have argued that among the three proposed particle acceleration mechanisms (electric fields, shocks, and plasma turbulence or waves) the stochastic acceleration of ambient plasma particles by plasma waves provides the most natural means of explaining the observed spectral and spatial features of solar flares.

In two recent works (Petrosian & Donaghy, 1999 and 2000, hereafter PD) we demonstrated how the power-law spectral indices and emission ratios (obtained by Masuda 1994) can be used to constrain the model parameters. In this paper, we expand and extend Masuda’s analysis for further investigation of the ubiquity and nature of the LT source, and to gain a clearer picture of the range of values of the fluxes and spectral indices of the FP and LT sources. Furthermore, we investigate the temporal evolutions of the images of several new flares observed by HXT to determine the relationship between the many spatially and temporally distinct sources that occur in complex flaring events. In the next section we describe our procedure, and in §3 we present the light curves and images of most of the new events, including three events which appear to be examples of multiple loop flares. In §3 present the statistics of the relative fluxes and spectral indices of the LT and FP sources. In §5 we present a summary and our conclusions.

## 2 PROCEDURE

In seeking to expand the sample of flares with looptop emission, we have searched through “The YOHKOH HXT Image Catalog” (Sato et al., 1998) for appropriate limb flares using Masuda’s two criteria:

1) Heliocentric longitude $`>80\mathrm{°}`$; this ensures maximum angular separation between LT and FP sources.

2) Peak count rate in the M2 band $`>10`$ counts per sec per subcollimator (cts s-1 SC-1, for short); this ensures that at least one image can be formed at high energies ($`3353`$ keV) where thermal contribution is expected to be lower.

In total, we found 20 events from October 1991 through August 1998 that satisfy these conditions. Of the events before September 1993 (when Masuda stopped his search), we found 12 such flares, including 11 events noted by Masuda and one event (that of December 18, 1991) which satisfies the search criteria but was apparently overlooked by Masuda. From the period after September 1993 up to August 1998 (when the image catalog was finished) we have an additional 8 events. In the interest of completeness we include all twenty events in this survey (see Table 1). However, two events (November 2, 1992 noted but not analyzed by Masuda, and May 10, 1998) have their observations interrupted by spacecraft night, and we are unable to obtain any useful information from them. An interesting aside (which we shall return to in §4), is that of the 9 new events, 3 appear to be examples of interacting loop structures with multiple LT and FP sources, of the type analyzed by Aschwanden et al. (1999). It is surprising that none of the 11 Masuda events are in this category. It should also be noted that three of the flares observed before September 1993 show no detectable LT emission, while all of the flares since that date (with the exception of one ambiguous source) show LT emission.

For the ten early events, Masuda quotes LT and FP spectral indices for the events when those sources are detected, although he does not supply the time intervals or spatial regions over which the indices are taken. Masuda obtains two spectral indices by fitting a power law to the L ($`1323`$ keV) and M1 ($`2333`$ keV) band fluxes, and the M1 and M2 band fluxes. We carry out spectral fitting both to a simple power law as well as a broken power law using all four channel fluxes (including the H band with energy range $`5393`$ keV), whenever significant fluxes in all four bands are detected. These results are summarized in Tables 2 and 3.

For two events (January 13, 1992 and October 4, 1992), Masuda performs a temporal and spatial analysis, providing light curves for emission from the LT and FP regions. He defines a box around each source, with size and center position determined from the best available image, and then obtains light curves by measuring the total flux of photons coming from within the box as a function of time. We undertake this temporal analysis for all the events in our list for which the necessary data are available. The data reduction is done with the standard YOHKOH HXT software package, which uses the maximum entropy method (MEM for short); in particular we use hxt\_multimg, lcur\_image, and hxt\_boxfsp routines.

For several events, we have performed image reconstruction using both the standard MEM routine as well as the “pixon” technique used by Alexander & Metcalf (1997). As described in that paper, the “pixon” routine achieves significantly better photometry of faint sources and better rejection of spurious sources than the standard MEM routine, albeit with a significantly longer computational time. These features are useful to our analysis since we are often attempting to resolve a faint LT source in the presence of much stronger FP sources. In general, the “pixon” and MEM analyses yielded similar light curves.

Major sources of systematic uncertainty in our analysis arise from the difficulty in defining exactly what constitutes a LT or a FP source. In many cases, one or more of these sources will be quite strong and well localized at one epoch during a flare but they may disappear, change position or combine with another source as the flare evolves. Therefore, the procedure of integrating the fluxes using a static box to obtain a light curve for the duration of the flare can lead to erroneous conclusions because of the possibility of contamination of one source by neighboring sources. Further errors arise from the fact that in many flares nonthermal emission, which tends to be more impulsive and and peak earlier is superimposed upon the more gradual thermal emission which peaks later. Therefore for the study of the impulsive component (as a means of studying the acceleration mechanism) we limit our analysis of the flux ratios or spectral indices to the early stages of the flares to minimize the influence of the thermal component. We also use the M1 channel (rather than the L channel) where the thermal effects are expected to be smaller. Clearly it would be safer to use channels M2 and H, but these channels have weaker emissions.

## 3 CASE STUDIES OF IMAGES AND LIGHT CURVES

In this section we present light curves and a brief analysis for all of the newly analyzed events. Unless otherwise noted, the image and light curves were taken in the M1-band and using the standard MEM procedure.

### 3.1 Single Loop Flares

Of the 18 total events, 11 appear to by morphologically similar to the canonical “Masuda event”, that is, a single flaring loop anchored by twin FPs and exhibiting a distinct LT source. Of course, within this type we observe a good deal of variation. We present a few case studies.

December 18, 1991 – This event occurred during the early phases of the YOHKOH mission, but for reasons unknown to us it was not selected or analyzed by Masuda. The hard X-ray images initially show one bright source (at around 10:25:00), which could be either a LT or a FP source, coaligned with the bright region of the soft X-ray flaring loop. Shortly after the start of the flare, the single source splits into two, and sometimes three, unresolved sources coaligned with the flaring loop. The loop joining sources A, B and C, in the right panel of Figure 1, is most likely an asymmetric loop. This can give rise to the observed differences between the intensities and heights above the solar limb of the two FP sources B and C. The left panel of Figure 1 shows the light curves for each of these three regions. The dominance of the source A during the initial peak of the flare could be due to efficient trapping of the accelerated electrons at the acceleration site (assumed to be at the top of the loop) by a high density of plasma turbulence. Therefore, we assume it to be a LT source for this analysis. Note that for this flare the ratio of the sum of the counts of the two FPs to that of the LT source, $`=FPs/LT`$, is about one, changing from 0.6 at the beginning to $`1.2`$ during the main pulse. In our statistical analyses described in the next section we will often use the counts $`FPs`$ and $`LT`$ of the main pulse, and in few cases we use the counts of well defined pulses separately. We will rarely use the counts or the ratios obtained during the decaying phase where thermal contamination may become large. The “pixon” reconstruction of the same event shows cleaner images, but the same light curves.

September, 27, 1993 – The SXT images for this event show a compact flaring loop on the limb and the HXT images primarily show two bright FPs associated with this loop. The LT source is weaker (the count ratio $`8`$) and appears only intermittently high above the flaring loop in the corona. However, as shown in Figure 2 the LT and FP sources have similar pulse structures.

August 18, 1998, 08:21UT – This very bright X-class flare is the first of two bright flares from this active region on this day. The SXT images show a bright loop structure that is coaligned with two FP HXT sources and one bright LT HXT source, Figure 3. These three sources persist throughout the impulsive phase of the flare and share common impulsive peaks. In the late phase (after 08:20:15), the LT comes to dominate and the HXT emission becomes more localized. In contrast to the preceding flare, the LT source here is extremely bright and long lived.

Taken together with the “Masuda flare” of January 13, 1992 and the other single loop flares analyzed by Masuda, we note that the LT can manifest itself in many different forms. Some flares only show LT emission very briefly or very faintly. In larger flares, we observe LT sources that are clearly spatially separated from the FP sources, yet have similar impulsive time structure.

### 3.2 Multiple Loop Flares

Three of the post 1993 flares we have analyzed show HXT (and SXT) images with complex morphologies that have strong fluxes coming from several distinct regions which brighten and dim at different times. These flares cannot be modeled by a single loop and provide evidence for existence of multiple loop structures. It should be noted that none of the pre 1993 flares showed such complex structures.

*August 18, 1998, 22:15 UT* \- This event (see Figure 4) is the second flare occurring on this day in this active region, and it is one of the most energetic flaring events observed since YOHKOH’s launch. This X-class flare appears in the hard X-rays as two flaring loops sharing a common central FP, but is too bright for most of the flare duration to yield useful images in soft X-rays. The early SXT images have many overexposed pixels and the later images show only one flaring loop associated with the upper two FPs. The upper loop is associated with two bright FPs (B and C), and a loop top source (D), which shows impulsive behavior superimposed upon an extremely hot thermal component (seen even in the M2 band). A third FP source (A) lies further south from the soft X-ray flaring loop and is associated with a comparatively fainter LT source (E) situated between it and the middle FP. The light curves give evidence for multiple acceleration sites. For example, while all three FPs participate in the first large peak (just after 22:15:05), only the upper sources show strong emission at the later peaks (22:15:30 and 22:15:50), while the lower sources fade away.

*May 8, 1998* \- Figure 5 shows hard X-ray image (at 01:57:40) and the corresponding light curves for this flare. The light curves and images presented here are from the “pixon” reconstruction method, which can identify faint sources better than the MEM method. Evidence from the soft X-ray images points to the existence of two flaring loops which share the lower FP (denoted B in the figure) and whose LT sources (E and C) overlap. The smaller loop is brighter and is associated with the FPs B and D and the LT source, E. The fainter, outer loop is associated with B and the considerably fainter FP source, A, as well as the LT source C. While two upper FP sources (D and A) are indeed fainter, they do demonstrate the same impulsive variation as their brighter LT and FP relatives. Looking at the light curves, we can see that the inner loop is strongly associated with the first impulsive peak at 01:57:30. The outer loop peaks later (at 01:58:30), at a time which coincides with a low point in the light curves of the inner loop sources. It is difficult to demonstrate the presence of a causal connection, if any, between these loops. The time profile of source B is approximately a superposition of the time profile of the two FPs A and C that are separated spatially and temporally.

*November 30, 1993* \- This event appears as a double loop structure in soft X-rays with apparent multiple LT and FP sources appearing in the hard X-ray images.

This flare was analyzed by Aschwanden et al. (1999) in their study of quadrupolar magnetic reconnection events. Aschwanden et al. analysis shows presence of only a double loop with the lower FP common to both the larger outer loop and the smaller inner loop. Our analysis of this flare using the “pixon” method resulted in images that were considerably cleaner than those from the MEM technique. In Figure 6 we present a map of the X-rays images as well as light curves for the selected sources obtained from the “pixon” method. Based on these one may deduce that there are three separate loops BGC, AFE and ADC with common FPs A and C having composite time profiles.

However, the basic structure of the flare remains complicated. In the early stages of the flare there are actually four FP HXT sources that correspond to four bright spots in the SXT images (sources A, B, C & E in the figure). More confusing is the behavior of what appear to be three separate sources appearing high in the corona (sources D, F & G). The fainter source (D) appears early in the flare at the very top of the loop, while the two stronger sources (F & G) appear later and at lower altitudes. As the flare evolves, all of these FP and LT sources shift their position with respect to each other, making it very difficult to perform the usual analysis. A comparison of the light curves for sources A, C & D (the outer loop), shows that they peak at similar times early in the impulsive phase. However, the peaks of the light curves for other sources are not correlated as clearly, and have extremely complicated structures. For example, a late peak of source B does not appear in any other source. Note also that the LT sources in this flare are much weaker than the FP sources.

### 3.3 Miscellany

April 23, 1998 – This flare appears in the soft X-ray images as bright diffuse emission above the solar limb, accompanied by thin, quickly evolving loop structures that are probably not the main flaring loop. The HXT emission initially appears in two sources, but quickly become one undifferentiated source associated with the bright diffuse soft X-ray emission. The lack of an observable flaring loop indicates the possibility that this flare occurred behind the limb and the emission we are seeing is very high up in the corona, rather than a single FP source (see Figure 8).

May 9, 1998 – This flare appears as a single FP and a LT hard X-ray source only during the initial two minutes of the flare (see Figure 8), when we see one strong FP accompanied by much fainter emission above it that may be a LT source. As the flare progresses, the FP source grows in intensity so much that the limited dynamic range of the HXT makes the detection of the much fainter LT signal impossible. The discrepancy between the positions of the SXT and HXT images is large, so that it is difficult to determine whether the observed HXT sources are associated with any SXT features.

## 4 STATISTICAL RESULTS

In this section we consider the statistical properties of the flares listed in Table 1 and summarize the differences between the original Masuda flares and the new events classified by us. In total there are 18 events for which we have sufficient data. Of these 15 show at least one impulsive source which can be classified as a LT source. Most of these can be classified as nonthermal, and one (the 920206 flare) is classified by Masuda as a “super hot” thermal LT source. The remaining three show no detectable LT emission. As we shall see below these non-detections are due to the shortcomings of the instrument indicating that LT emission is a general feature of solar flares. We discuss the statistics of two physical characteristics, namely the relative fluxes and spectral indices of the LT and FP sources.

### 4.1 Relative Fluxes

The most directly available data are the statistics of the relative values and distributions of the fluxes from the LT and FP sources. Theoretically, the relative values of these emissions are important for determination of the characteristics of the models. As shown in PD, the ratio of LT to FP emission can be related to the ratio of acceleration and diffusion rates of the electrons as well as the plasma density and magnetic field strength. Here, we examine the relative values of the LT and FP emissions for the entire sample.

In Figure 9, we plot the sum of the count rates (in units of cts s-1 SC-1) of the two footpoint sources ($`FPs`$) vs. the count rates of the corresponding looptop source ($`LT`$). The values shown in this figure refer to count rates (or fluxes) spatially integrated over each source, and integrated over the entire impulsive duration of each flare, or over individual pulses in flares where distinct pulses and loops are discernible. For three events, where multiple loop structures with corresponding LT and FP sources are observed (see §3), we plot LT and FPs fluxes for each loop as separate points but connect them with lines.

The primary trend seen in this figure is an obvious correlation between FPs and LT fluxes over more than two decades of flux. The second striking feature is that for most flares (or pulses in flares) the ratio of these two fluxes is confined to $`1<=FPs/LT<10`$. Only three events lie beneath the line of equality (the thick solid line). The presence of an upper envelope is most likely an artifact of the limited dynamic range of the instrument and the image reconstruction process (estimated to be about one decade), and is not an intrinsic feature of the flare emission. This limitation means that for two FPs with equal fluxes the plotted ratios will lie in the range $`20<<1/5`$ shown by the two thin solid diagonal lines. But if one FP is much stronger than the other, then the above ratio should lie in the range $`10<<1/10`$, shown by the dotted lines. (Because of the limited dynamic range, the weaker FP source cannot be more than ten times weaker than the stronger one. Hence, strictly speaking the latter limits should be 11 and 0.11.) Since the LT source that is 10 or 20 times weaker than the accompanying FPs would not be detected by the HXT instrument, or revealed by the image reconstruction process, we show the three events with no detectable LT emission with horizontal arrows starting at the $`=10`$ line, which assumes equal counts for the two FPs. Similarly, events falling beneath the $`=0.1`$ (or 0.2) line will not have a detectable FP emission. There is only one flare with the ratio approaching this value. This is the April, 24 1998 flare, shown by a vertical arrow in Figure 9. This and one of the other two events below $`=1`$ line, the December 2, 1991 flare, are believed to have occurred behind the limb, so that the FP sources are fully or partially occulted, giving it an abnormally low flux ratio. (Masuda mentions that two other events, January 13, 1992 and April 1, 1992, may also have occurred behind the limb.) The other flare below the $`=1`$ is the February 6, 1992 event, which according to Masuda shows a (super-hot) thermal spectrum for the LT and FP sources. Our spectral analysis shows a very steep spectrum for these sources (see Table 3 below) supporting this assertion. The Dec. 18 1991 event, missed by Masuda, also shows a very steep spectrum for both LT and FP sources (see Table 3 below) and lies near the equality line $`=1`$.

We therefore conclude that the absence of events below the line of equality ($`=1`$) is not an instrumental effect and must be intrinsic to the flare process. It should be reemphasized that the limitations introduced by the dynamic range will also bias the data in favor of events with FP flux ratios of less than 10. Those with greater ratio will appear as a double (FP and LT) or just a single (FP) source depending on the strength of the LT source. We also note that for some, but not all, events with multiple pulses and or multiple loops, the data points from different loops or pulses lie near each other (e.g. October 4, 1992 and May 8, 1998). Interesting exceptions are the flare on November 23, 1992, which exhibits one pulse with a significantly lower value of $``$ than the other two pulses, and the flare on May 9, 1998, where a LT source is detected during the first pulse, but not during the later, much stronger pulse (which we show in Fig. 9 with an upper bound for the LT source).

We must also consider the truncation introduced by our selection criteria. Because of the threshold of 10 cts s-1 SC-1 imposed by us (and Masuda), only flares with the flux (in M2 band) of $`(FPs+LT)>10`$ cts s-1 SC-1 will be in the sample. We estimate below that this translates to a threshold of 5 cts s-1 SC-1 for the M1 band. This truncation boundary is shown by the dashed curve in Figure 9. As is evident, all flares except the 911215 flare fall above this boundary.

In addition to the bounds derived from our selection criterion and the finite dynamic range, there is also an absolute bound below which the instrument sensitivity drops rapidly. Since the HXT detection of flux is not based in a well defined trigger process, we attempt to determine this bound by studying the distribution of flare peak count rates using the entire HXT database of 1307 flares over the same time period. In Figure 10, we plot the differential distribution of flare peak count rates for each of the HXT four channels and for the summed over four channel peak count rate. From each count rate we subtract a representative background count rate for the channel. Sato et al. (1998) give approximate background count rates of $`L2`$, $`M1=M21`$, $`H9`$ cts s-1 SC-1. As is evident, the distributions roughly follow a power law, especially at high and midrange values, in agreement with many previous flare surveys (see Lee & Petrosian 1995 and reference cited there). We also plot the power law distributions from linear regression fits to the distributions from M1, M2 and total peak count rates and give the power-law indices (i.e. logarithmic slopes). The slope values of $`0.60.8`$ obtained here are consistent with previous results (Lee & Petrosian 1995) and shows that YOHKOH flares do not suffer from additional biases and that our results regarding the LT emission is applicable generally to all flares. The flattening away from the power law at low count rates is due to a decrease in the sensitivity of the detectors. This is especially prominent in the L channel, because of its higher background rates. For the M1 and M2 bands there seems to be very little flattening down to the quoted background value of 1 cts s-1 SC-1. Note that the M2 and M1 band distributions are shifted relative to each other horizontally (and vertically too) by an approximately constant value of about 2. This means that the average threshold value of the M1 cts s-1 SC-1 for our sample is about 5. This value was used in determining the truncation boundary in Figure 9 (the dashed line).

In summary, from the above analysis of the relative strengths of the LT and FP fluxes we can conclude that the hypothesis that all flares have LT emission is consistent with the extant, though limited, data. Figure 11 shows the distribution of $`=FPs/LT`$ for the flares presented in Figure 9. This distribution if fairly flat between 0.5 to 8 and there are four flares with undetected LT emission (i.e. $`>10`$) as shown by the arrows. Obviously the statistical significance of these data point is marginal and a more quantitative account of the relative distributions of the fluxes of the LT and FP sources requires a larger sample and dynamic range. Nevertheless, this kind of data is very important and can constrain the model parameters. As described in PD this ratio can be related to the acceleration and the background plasma parameters. For example, it was shown that under certain conditions one has $`=\tau _{\mathrm{Coul}}/T_{\mathrm{esc}}`$, where $`\tau _{\mathrm{Coul}}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{esc}}`$ are the Coulomb collision time scale in the loop and the escape time on the electrons from the acceleration site at the LT. However, for more general situation the relation of this ratio to the physical parameters si more complicated. As shown by numerical calculation in PD values of a few for this ratio indicate plasma densities of about few times $`10^{10}`$ cm-3 and require a relatively short acceleration time compared to the escape time of the electrons from the LT source. Further constraints come from the consideration of the spectral shapes which we discuss next.

### 4.2 Spectral Indices

Another characteristic of the LT and FP emissions which can shed light on the acceleration mechanism is the relative shape of their spectra. The HXT instrument observes only at four broad channels, so that an accurate, absolute spectral analysis of individual sources is difficult and results are uncertain. However, the relative spectral characteristics of FP and LT sources are more reliable. To this end we have carried out the following analysis. We use the YOHKOH routine hxtbox\_fsp, which fits a specified model spectrum to the observed count rates and finds the best fit model parameters and calculates the chi-square’s. When possible, we attempted to measure the spectral shape early in the impulsive phase (before or right at the first impulsive peak) so as to minimize any thermal contributions to the spectrum.

For flare events with detectable images in the H band, we use the following four models:

1. A simple power law fitted to all four channels (Powerlaw1).

2. A simple power law fitted to the three highest channels (Powerlaw2) so that we avoid possible thermal contribution in the L band.

3. A broken power law with three parameters (low and high energy spectral indices, $`\gamma _1`$ and $`\gamma _2`$, and the break energy $`E_{br}`$) fitted to all four channels (Broken Powerlaw1).

4. Two simple power laws fitted separately to the L and M1 bands, and to the M1 and M2 bands (Broken Powerlaw2). In this case the break energy is fixed as the midpoint of the M1 band at $`28`$ keV.

Table 2 summarizes these results.

We first note that in 14 out of 18 cases the value of the reduced chi-square, $`\chi ^2/\nu `$, is lowered when we remove the L band from the fit. The 4-channel fit chi-squares are lower, by statistically insignificant amounts, only for one FP and three LT sources. This combined with the results from the Broken Powerlaw2 fits indicates that deviations from a power law is produced by the L band and that these could be in form of a flattening or steepening of the spectrum with approximately equal probability. (The break energy $`E_{br}`$ distribution, however, does not seem too agree with this conclusion. Only 4 out of nine values fall in or near the L band. This could be due to statistics of small sample.) The observed spectral change, of course, is not a reflection of the true behavior of the spectra because flares with detectable H band flux must necessarily be biased toward those with flat and/or flattening spectra. Below we will compare the statistics of these flares with those without a detectable H band flux.

For flares with no useable images in the H band , we use two models; a simple power law fitted to the three channels (Powerlaw) and the model 4 above (Powerlaw2). Table 3 presents the results of this analysis.

We first would like to note that the results from our analysis of the same events do not agree with Masuda’s numbers. This could be either because the HXT grid response functions have been improved since Masuda did his analysis (see Sato, Kosugi and Makishima 1999), or due to the differences in the spatial boxes or time intervals used to calculate the indices. Masuda does not specify these data. However, the general characteristics of the spectra (ranges, steepenings, etc.) of pre and post September 1993 bursts given in the above table agree with the the characteristics of ten pre September 1993 ten spectra cited by Masuda.

Second, we note that in contrast to the sample of Table 2, only two sources (LT sources in 920217 and 921123) in Table 3 show a significant flattening. The rest maintain the power law form, or in the majority of cases steepen by a significant amount (an spectral index change of greater than 1); the spectral index changing by more than 3 in some sources. This difference between the flares from Tabels 2 and 3 is due to the selection bias mentioned above and indicates that caution should be exercised in the interpretation of results from limited samples. The following figures describe the prominent features of the results from the whole sample.

Figure 12 shows the distribution of the spectral indices for FP (solid histograms) and LT (dashed histograms) sources from the simple power law fits, for events with no H band images (left panel) and events with H band images (right panel). Several features are readily apparent. First, the main difference between the two samples is absence of significant number of high spectral index ($`\gamma 6`$) events in the sample with H band images (6 vs 16 in the sample with no H band images) and a higher average spectral index, $`\overline{\gamma }_{4ch}=4.65\pm 1.2`$ vs $`\overline{\gamma }_{3ch}=5.73\pm 1.5`$. This is as expected. The HXT detects roughly equal counts in four channels from a flare with index $`\gamma =4`$. So that for $`\gamma >6`$ the counts in the H band will fall below that of the M2 band by a factor of 4. This combined with our chosen threshold of 10 cts s-1 SC-1for the M2 band indicate that such flares in our sample would have an H band count rate of about 2 to 3 cts s-1 SC-1 (which is at one or two $`\sigma `$ level) and will not yield a discernible image. (A background count rate of 2 cts s-1 SC-1 for the H band implies a $`\sigma 1`$ or 2 cts s-1 SC-1.) Thus, as stated above, this difference is purely due to the selection bias. In this connection we should note that spectral indices larger than 6 or 7 based on minimum $`\chi ^2`$ may not be very reliable. Moreover, such sources may have a significant thermal contribution or be a super-hot thermal source like the flare of 920206. If we ignore such flares (say those with $`\gamma 7.5`$), then the overall distribution of the combined sample, shown on the left panel of Figure 13, is very similar to each other ($`\overline{\gamma }_{4ch}=4.65\pm 1.2`$ vs $`\overline{\gamma }_{3ch}=5.03\pm 1.3`$) and to previous determinations of this distribution (see McTiernan & Petrosian 1991 and references cited there; see also §5). Second, despite a sizable population of flares with $`\gamma `$ 3.0 to 4.0 there exists a sharp cutoff at around $`\gamma 3.0`$ for both distributions. This must be intrinsic to the sources because there is no obvious selection bias that can produce it.

Finally, for both (and therefore the combined) samples, the LT sources tend to have larger indices than the FP sources. This is evident in the above figures, which show a clear shift of the histogram of the LT sources relative to that of FPs (spectral index shift of about 1) and from following average indices: For 3 channel, 4 channel and all sources respectively we get ($`\overline{\gamma }_{LT}=6.5\pm 1.6,\overline{\gamma }_{FP}=5.3\pm 1.7`$), ($`\overline{\gamma }_{LT}=5.5\pm 1.3,\overline{\gamma }_{FP}=4.3\pm 1.0`$), and ($`\overline{\gamma }_{LT}=6.2\pm 1.5,\overline{\gamma }_{FP}=4.9\pm 1.5`$).

Another important feature of the above results is the distribution of the spectral breaks. This effect is demonstrated by the right panel of Figure 13, where we show the distribution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma =\gamma _{M1,M2}\gamma _{L,M1}`$ for all 18 events. The most noticeable trend in this figure is that, although there are both positive and negative values for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma `$, both the FP and LT distributions are weighted toward the positive side. The median values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma `$ is about +1 and +2 for FP and LT sources, respectively. If we eliminate sources with $`\gamma _{L,M1}>6`$, which may suffer from thermal contamination, the median values remain essentially unchanged but all sources with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma 0.5`$ are eliminated. Considering the approximate nature of these values, the data are consistent with all thermally uncontaminated sources showing steepenings, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma >0`$. Higher resolution data, extended to higher energies is required to clarify this picture.

As in the case of the flux ratios, the precision of our analysis is greatly limited by our small sample size and short spectral range coverage. Nonetheless, the above distributions provide us with initial data points that can be used to demonstrate how one can set constraints on the model parameters. As evident from the theoretical results presented in Figs. 3, 5 and 9 of PD, spectral indices $`\gamma `$ greater than 3 imply a short escape time in comparison to the acceleration time. This is similar to what we inferred from the distribution of the flux ratios and may favor the smaller ratio of pitch angle to momentum diffusion coefficients advocated in Pryadko & Petrosian (1997, 1998, 1999). The larger value of the spectral indices of LT sources also tells us about the acceleration process. This difference in the spectral indices of FP and LT sources is related, among other things, to the energy dependence of the pitch angle diffusion coefficient and/or the escape time. As shown by equation (15) in PD, $`\gamma _{LT}\gamma _{FP}=2s/2`$, where $`s`$ is an index describing the energy dependence of the escape time (see Eq.  in PD). Thus, the average value of about 1 for this difference seen in Figures 12 and 13 implies a value of $`s=2`$. Inspection of the above tables shows that the spectral difference for specific FP and LT sources associated with each other varies from 0 to 2 indicating a wide range of 0 to +4 for $`s`$ in this simple parametrization. Clearly, these numbers cannot be taken too seriously but demonstrate how model parameters can be constrained using more refined data such as that expected from HESSI.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

We have used The YOHKOH HXT Image Catalogue (Sato et al. 1988) to determine the frequency of occurrence of LT hard X-ray impulsive emission in solar flares, and to compare the flux and spectral characteristics of these sources with those of the commonly observed FP sources. We have used Masuda’s (1994) selection criteria and the YOHKOH spectral and spatial analyses software packages. In a few cases we have also used the Alexander & Metcalf (1997) “pixon” method of image reconstruction. We determine the relative fluxes of the LT and FP sources and obtain rough measures for some of the spectral characteristics (e.g. Power-law indices) using all possible ways of analysis that a 4 or 3 channel data set will allow. Analysis of these results lead us to the following conclusions:

1. The LT hard X-ray emission seems to be a common characteristic of the impulsive phase of solar flares, appearing in some form in 15 of the 18 selected flares. The absence of LT emission in the remaining cases is most likely due to the finite dynamic range of the imaging technique.

2. The ratio of the summed FP to LT fluxes, lies in the range $`10=FPs/LT1`$ and has a relatively flat distribution in this range. The lower limit is intrinsic to the process but the upper limit is most likely due to the finite (one decade) dynamic range of the imaging technique. Because of this it is difficult to know the true distribution of this ratio.

3. The overall distribution of the power-law spectral indices rises rapidly above $`\gamma =2`$, peaks around 4 and declines gradually thereafter. This is similar to previous determinations of this distributions from HXRBS on board the Solar Maximum Mission (McTiernan & Petrosian 1991), but contains a few more steep spectra, specially for LT sources, which could be due to thermal contamination and lower energy range of the HXT compared to HXRBS. This agreement is encouraging and indicates the reliability of our spectral determination.

4. The spectra tend to steepen at higher energies (spectral index $`\gamma `$ increases by 1 to 2), especially for sources with $`\gamma <6`$, for which the thermal contribution should be the lowest. This is the opposite of what is observed at higher energies, where spectra tend to flatten above 100’s of keV (McTiernan & Petrosian 1991). The directivity of the X-ray emission and the albedo effect for the limb flares under consideration could also play some role, especially for the FP source (in the model discussed by PD the LT source should emit isotropically). However, this is expected to be a small effect at low energies ($`<100`$ keV) under consideration here.

5. The spectral index $`\gamma `$ of LT sources is larger (i.e. spectra are steeper) than that of the FP sources on the average by one ($`\overline{\gamma }_{LT}=6.2\pm 1.5,\overline{\gamma }_{FP}=4.9\pm 1.5`$). The differences between directivity and the albedo effects mentioned above could be a partial reason for such a behavior, but the physics of the acceleration process must certainly play a role here.

6. We have also described how the above results can be used to constrain the model parameters especially those related to the acceleration process. For example, for models with acceleration at the LT source (see, e.g. Park, Petrosian & Schwartz 1997 and PD), the observed ranges of the flux ratios and spectral indices indicate a rapid escape of the accelerated electron relative to the acceleration timescale, which is related to the momentum diffusion coefficient in the acceleration process. Moreover, the difference between spectral indices of LT and FP sources can constrain the energy dependence of the escape time which is related to the pitch angle diffusion rate in the acceleration site.

This demonstrates that similar studies of these characteristics of the flares can yield important information about the genesis and evolution of solar flares, and we eagerly anticipate the increased spectral, temporal and spatial resolution possible with the instruments of the upcoming HESSI satellite.

Finally, we note that solar flares occur in many different morphologies, the most common being a simple flaring loop with one LT and two FP sources. However, as we discussed in §3.2, interacting loop models and even more complicated structures are frequently observed.

We would like to thank an anonymous referee for a careful reading of the original manuscript and for numerous helpful comments and suggestions that improved the paper considerably. This work is supported in parts by NASA grants NAG-5-7144-0002 and NAG5-8600-0001 and by a fellowship to TQD from Stanford’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities.


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# Search for Molecular Gas in the quasar SDSS 1044-0125 at z=5.73

## 1 Introduction

The study of the star formation properties and gas content of galaxies at far cosmological distances is one important step toward understanding galaxy formation and evolution. The quasar SDSSp J104433.04-012502.2 at $`z5.8`$ (hereafter SDSS 1044-0125), discovered by Fan et al. (2000) using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is among the highest redshift objects known. Recent observations of this quasar with SCUBA on the JCMT at 850 $`\mu `$m detect thermal continuum emission (reported by Iwata et al. 2001), which suggests a large reservoir of dust and therefore also molecular gas. The presence of a substantial gas mass gains support from the apparent X-ray weakness of the quasar, which likely results from heavy intrinsic absorption (Brandt et al. 2001, Mathur 2001). Molecular gas has been detected from at least a dozen $`z>2`$ objects through CO lines at millimeter wavelengths, and these observations provide important clues to the formation history of galaxies and their relationship to supermassive black holes.

A recent search for CO J=6–5 emission from SDSS 1044-0125 by Iwata et al. (2001) reported an upper limit on the inferred molecular gas mass comparable to the detections for some high redshift quasars. Unfortunately, the search was centered at $`z=5.80`$, the initial redshift estimated by Fan et al. (2000). Recent spectroscopic studies of SDSS 1044-0125 give a more accurate value of $`z=5.73\pm 0.01`$ (Djorgovski et al. 2001, see also Goodrich et al. 2001), about 1% off from the initial estimate. Because of the narrow instantaneous bandwidth available to current millimeter interferometers, the revised redshift falls outside window that was searched for CO J=6–5 emission, and the observations likely missed the relevant redshifts for molecular gas in the quasar host. Since SDSS 1044-0125 has several properties in common with high redshift quasars where CO emission has been detected, (enumerated by Iwata et al. 2001), the revision of the optical redshift determination gives impetus to a new search for molecular gas.

A potentially important limitation of searching for emission from CO lines with high rotational quantum numbers, like the J=6–5 transition, is that prevailing physical conditions may be insufficiently extreme to excite these lines. The surprising detection of extended emission in the low excitation CO J=2–1 line towards the quasar APM 08279+5255 at $`z=3.91`$ (Papadopoulos et al. 2001) suggests that low excitation CO lines can reveal molecular mass reservoirs that are one or two orders of magnitude larger than suggested by observations of high excitation CO lines.

In this short paper, we present results of searches for CO J=2–1 and J=5–4 emission from SDSS 1044-0125 using the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Array (BIMA)111The BIMA array is operated by the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association under funding from the National Science Foundation. (Welch et al. 1996) that provide new limits on the amount of molecular gas associated with this luminous high redshift quasar. The BIMA 1 cm band receiver system, which was developed primarily for observations of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (Carlstrom, Joy & Grego 1996, Grego et al. 2000), provides a unique facility to search for highly redshifted low lying CO lines. For SDSS 1044-0125, the CO J=2–1 line is redshifted to 34 GHz, within the accessible tuning range. The standard digital correlator allows for several times larger velocity coverage than generally available at shorter wavelengths, sufficient to span the uncertainty in the quasar redshift determined from optical lines, as well as the typical kinematic offsets of molecular gas from the redshift derived optically. In addition, the small BIMA array antennas provide a large field of view, which enables imaging the quasar environs over Mpc scales at 34 GHz in a single pointing.

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 CO J=2–1 Line

Observations of the CO J=2–1 line (redshifted frequency $`230.5380/(1+5.73)=34.255`$ GHz) were conducted in two parts, in September 2000 and September 2001. Both sets of observations used the 9 antennas of the BIMA array equipped with 1 cm band receivers. The pointing center was $`\alpha (J2000)=10^h44^m33\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}04`$, $`\delta (J2000)=01^{}25\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}02\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}2`$. The 2000 observations, made with the correlator centered at the nominal redshift $`5.80`$ estimated by Fan et al. (2000), were obtained on 14 days, generally in short tracks of less than a few hours near source transit. The array antennas were in C configuration, giving $`25^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution. The 2001 observations, made with the correlator centered at the revised redshift $`5.73`$ determined by Djorgovski et al. (2001), were obtained on 2 days in longer tracks. The array antennas were in B configuration, giving $`8^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution. For both sets of observations, the hybrid correlator was configured with 8 individual windows, each with 32 channels spanning 100 MHz, in some cases overlapped to avoid gaps at the window edges. The system temperatures ranged from about 50 to 100 K (SSB). Short observations of the nearby calibrator J1058+015 were made every half hour to track the interferometer phase and also for bandpass calibration. The flux scale was determined through observations of Mars that were used to set (constant) a priori gains for the individual array antennas; the minimal amplitude drifts of the system at this low frequency suggest better than 10% accuracy.

All data calibration and imaging were performed using standard routines in the Miriad software package. The visibility data were imaged with both natural and system temperature weighting for maximum sensitivity. Since some frequencies were observed in both sets of observations, and some were observed in only one or the other, there are three regimes for the synthesized beam sizes and rms noise levels. The frequency coverage and parameters of the resulting images are as follows, where the rms is quoted for a 200 km s-1 velocity bin ($`8`$ channels), a resolution appropriate for the linewidths of galactic potentials: (1) 33.82 to 34.23 GHz observed in both 2000 and 2001, beam $`24^{\prime \prime }\times 15^{\prime \prime }`$ p.a. 3, rms 0.86 mJy, (2) 33.48 to 33.82 GHz observed in 2000 only, beam $`35^{\prime \prime }\times 18^{\prime \prime }`$ p.a. 7, rms 1.00 mJy, and (3) 34.23 to 34.55 GHz observed in 2001 only, beam $`11^{\prime \prime }\times 8^{\prime \prime }`$ p.a. -15, rms 1.67 mJy. Note that the best sensitivity was achieved for the velocity range redshifted by up to a few thousand km s-1 from the (accurate) optical redshift– the range most likely to contain CO emission. The typical kinematic offset of molecular emission in high redshift quasar hosts from optical lines is $`500`$ km s-1, with the largest known offset about $`2500`$ km s-1 (in APM 08279+5255, Downes et al. 1999).

### 2.2 CO J=5–4 Line

Observations of the CO J=5–4 line (redshifted frequency $`576.2679220/(1+5.73)=85.627`$ GHz) were conducted on two days in October 2001. These observations used 10 antennas in D configuration, giving $`20^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution. As for the September 2001 observations with the 1 cm receiver system, the correlator was configured to span nearly 800 MHz centered near the revised redshift of $`z=5.73`$. The system temperatures ranged from 150 to 600 K (SSB). Frequent observations of the nearby calibrator J1058+015 were used to track amplitude and phase, and bandpass calibration was checked with short observations of the strong source 3C273. The flux density scale was derived from observations of Mars and should be accurate to 20%. The frequency coverage and parameters of the resulting images are: 85.22 to 85.92 GHz, beam $`26^{\prime \prime }\times 20^{\prime \prime }`$ p.a. 20, rms 3.0 mJy, for 200 km s-1 resolution.

## 3 Results and Discussion

Figure 1 shows the CO J=2–1 and CO J=5–4 spectra obtained at quasar position. The velocity binnings for the two lines are 200 and 162 km s-1, respectively. The noise in the CO J=2–1 spectrum is not uniform, and empirical $`\pm 1\sigma `$ error bars derived from the rms noise measured from the images are shown for each velocity bin. There are some tantalizing hints of signal in adjacent channels close to the expected velocities, but features with similar (low) significance are present elsewhere in the data, and we do not consider any of these features to be reliable line detections. Figure 2 shows a series of maps with 200 km s-1 width that span the full half power field of view ($`6\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$) for the J=2–1 line. Various attempts at smoothing in both space and frequency did not uncover any significant CO emission in either of the observed transitions.

Two mechanisms have been suggested for heating large masses of dust and gas in high redshift quasar systems: (1) high energy photons emitted from gases accreted onto a massive black hole and (2) bursts of star formation. If the dust is heated by the activity of a massive black hole, then bright emission may be expected from high excitation CO lines in a compact region close to the exciting source, from large amounts of warm, dense gas involved in fueling and accretion. The CO J=5–4 line, whose upper energy level lies 88 K above the ground state, requires warm gas ($`>30K`$) at high densities ($`>10^3`$ cm-3) to be populated significantly by H2 collisions. Consequently, the upper limits on CO emission from the J=5–4 line constrains primarily the amount of molecular gas with these conditions close to the massive black hole or other powerful heating sources. On the other hand, such extreme physical conditions are not necessarily appropriate for starbursts, which are likely to be distributed over larger spatial scales and involve cooler, more diffuse molecular gas. If the dust is heated by primarily by star formation, then emission in CO J=2–1 line may be a more appropriate tracer of molecular gas content, given that the upper energy level lies just 16 K above ground and the excitation requirements are significantly less stringent.

Following Solomon, Downes & Radford (1992), we calculate upper limits to CO line luminosities with the expression

$$L_{CO}^{^{}}=3.25\times 10^7S_{CO}\mathrm{\Delta }v\nu _{obs}^2D_L^2(1+z)^3\mathrm{K}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{pc}^2,$$
(1)
where $`S_{CO}\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ is the limit on the velocity integrated line flux in Jy km s-1, $`\nu _{obs}`$ is the observing frequency in GHz, and $`D_L`$ is the luminosity distance in Mpc. The choice of cosmological parameters enters in $`D_L`$, and we adopt $`H_0=75`$ km s-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ for consistency with most work in this field. (An alternative cosmology with $`H_0=75`$ km s-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ results in $`D_L`$ larger by a factor of 1.54 for this redshift.) The effective linewidth is not known, but it likely falls in the range 150 to 550 km s-1 found for a large sample of ultraluminous galaxies in the local universe (Solomon et al. 1997). For the $`3\sigma `$ flux limit obtained in the more sensitive part of the CO J=2–1 spectrum, assuming a linewidth of 200 km s-1, $`L_{CO}^{^{}}(21)<5.1\times 10^{10}`$ K km s-1 pc2. For the $`3\sigma `$ flux limit obtained for CO J=5–4, again assuming a linewidth of 200 km s-1, $`L_{CO}^{^{}}(54)<3.0\times 10^{10}`$ K km s-1 pc2. If the assumed linewidth were two times larger, then these luminosity limits would be $`\sqrt{2}`$ times higher.

Conversion of these CO luminosity limits to molecular gas mass limits is fraught with uncertainties. But a simple conversion factor from CO luminosity to H2 mass is commonly taken to be $`4.5M_{}`$ (K km s-1 pc2)-1, the value determined for Milky Way molecular clouds (Sanders, Scoville & Soifer 1991). There is evidence from comparisons of luminosity based mass estimates with dynamical mass estimates that the conversion factor may be perhaps five times lower in ultraluminous objects (Downes & Solomon 1998). Additional corrections of order unity are also needed to account properly for excitation from the elevated cosmic background radiation at high redshift. Adopting the Galactic conversion factor for CO J=2–1 line luminosity gives a limit on the cold or diffuse molecular gas mass of $`2.3\times 10^{11}M_{}`$ in the SDSS 1044-0125 system. Using the same conversion factor for the CO J=5–4 line luminosity gives a limit on the warm and dense molecular gas mass of of $`1.3\times 10^{11}M_{}`$ in the SDSS 1044-0125 system.

These mass limits are comparable to the mass indicated from the detection of CO J=5–4 emission from some $`z>4`$ quasars, including at least two thought not to be amplified by gravitational lensing. In particular, observations of CO J=5–4 emission from BR1202-0725 at $`z=4.7`$ (Omont al. 1996, Ohta et al. 1996) and BRI1335-0417 at $`z=4.4`$ (Guilloteau et al. 1997) indicate molecular gas masses in excess of $`10^{11}`$ M (adjusted for the cosmology and CO to H2 conversion factor adopted here). There is no clear physical argument to explain why some quasar environments show CO emission at this sensitivity level while others do not (Guilloteau et al. 1999). In any case, the CO J=2–1 and J=5–4 luminosity limits suggest that the environment of SDSS 1044-0125 does not possess an enormous mass reservoir of either low excitation or high excitation molecular gas.

The CO J=2–1 limit is comparable to the amount of molecular gas detected toward the lensed quasar APM 08279+5255, where Papadopoulos et al. (2001) found several CO J=2–1 emission features with total luminosity $`6.6\pm 3.1\times 10^{11}`$ K km s-1 pc2 attributed to (unlensed) molecular gas rich companion galaxies to the quasar host. For the SDSS 1044-0125 observations, such features would have been contained within one synthesized beam (together with any nuclear emission). The luminosity limit suggests that no comparable population of nearby massive companions is present. Moreover, no significant CO J=2–1 emission features are found within the entire field of view that spans $`1.4`$ Mpc, which suggests that such massive cold molecular gas concentrations are rare. Observations of SDSS 1044-0125 with better sensitivity are needed to explore whether smaller but still significant concentrations of low excitation molecular gas are present in the environment of this high redshift quasar.

The work was supported in part by NSF grant AST-21795 to the University of California. We thank Leo Blitz for scheduling additional observations on this project after revision of the quasar redshift, and Alberto Bolatto for a generous donation of observing time.


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# Structure and Physical Conditions in MHD Jets from Young Stars

## I Introduction

Herbig-Haro objects (Herbig 1950,Haro 1950) are small nebulous objects that trace jet-like, collimated structures, with characteristic emission spectra of hydrogen and optical forbidden lines of \[O I\], \[N II\], and \[S II\], in the red wavelengths. Mechanisms that produce these phenomena play necessary roles in the making of young stars.

Whether jets alone can also drive the often associated molecular outflows has been long debated (Reipurth & Bally 2001). The morphology and the distribution of mass and momenta of these outflows argue for wide-angle winds pushing the ejecta and sweeping up materials at wide solid angles (Shu et al 1991). X-winds, by construction, are wide-angle winds, launched magneto-centrifugally near the innermost edge of the circumstellar disks of YSOs (Shu et al 1994), that expand and quickly fill space to ultimately collimate at large distances. Shang et al. (1998) demonstrated the density structure and kinematic information for an x-wind based on a semi-analytic method (Shang 1998), by computing emissions from \[S II\]$`\lambda `$6716 and \[O I\]$`\lambda `$6300 lines with uniform ionization conditions throughout the smooth flow without identifying the sources of excitation. The synthetic images for the forbidden lines show strongly cylindrically stratified structures in the center, and suggested the visual appearance of jets is an optical illusion out of an intrinsically very divergent flow (Shu et al 1995).

It is very compelling to learn whether conditions arising self-consistently in flows driven by magnetically interacting young star-disk systems can reproduce the many observed features known about the dynamics, morphology, and excitation conditions of jets and Herbig-Haro objects. To identify a definitive set of diagnostic tools to help probe the highly collimated jet emissions from the theoretical aspects, is the primary task. This also serves as the first test to bring a well-developed MHD model based on semi-analytic approaches into stringiest confrontation with observations. The fundamental concepts and approaches can be generalized with many multiwavelength observations, and transferred to other theoretical MHD wind/jet models, such as the many interesting numerical simulations discussed in this volume.

## II Physics Conditions and Thermal Structure of Jets

We opened new investigations of thermal structures in the MHD winds from young stars, following an earlier attempt of Ruden, Glassgold, & Shu (1990, RGS), for a cold spherical stellar wind. In RGS, they attempted a spherically symmetric model, with density, velocity and Lorentz forces enough to accelerate the neutrals to escape velocity. They found that the dominant source of heat for the gas is ambipolar diffusion associated with the magnetic acceleration, and adiabatic expansion of the wind is the most powerful cooling mechanism. However, ambipolar diffusion failed to heat the wind beyond $`10𝐑_{}`$, and the plasma could be at most lightly ionized ($`<10^4`$). In the environment of star-disk interaction, many new processes have been discovered and identified since RGS (e.g. Shu et al 1997). In Shang et al (2001), we incorporated the processes into the self-consistent x-wind flow and made it a diagnostic package fore the jet phenomena.

New ingredients: X-rays, as observed to accompany essentially all YSOs (e.g., Feigelson & Montmerle 1999), UV photons from accretion funnels onto stars, and ambipolar diffusion, are among the most important radiative and physical processes intrinsic to the MHD flows that ionize and heat the gas. Many significant updates of physics in X-rays, hydrogen reactions and momentum transfer cross sections and coefficients of ambipolar diffusion, go into streamline-by-streamline computations of electron fraction, temperature and abundances of important species. The flow spans up to 8000 AU, right from where the wind is launched. This is the first a priori whole scale computation of thermal structures of MHD winds by self-consistent flow structure and processes that drive the winds.

Studies with the approach by Shang et al (2001) concluded that x-rays are capable of ionizing the base of the x-wind, and help maintain the ionization level at large distances, which are balanced by slow radiative recombination. This finding explains the profile of ionization in jets, which Bacciotti et al (1995) inferred phenomenologically from ground-based data with forbidden line ratios, but whose ionization source was not identified. Better analysis of Bacciotti & Eislöffel (1999, BE), applied to adaptive optics and HST/STIS data, indicated that the base of jets are significantly ionized with $`x_\mathrm{e}0.010.4`$ (Bacciotti 2001). The typical X-ray luminosity from an active YSO ionizes the x-wind flow at this level. However, for jets to be bright in the optical forbidden lines, maintaining $`T5,00010,000`$ K at thousands of AU from the stars with sufficient emitting areas, poses a difficulty for the internal heating sources due to powerful adiabatic expansion.

We also implemented a phenomenological model of wind heating based on stochastic shock dissipation, similar to MHD simulations of turbulence (e.g., Ostriker et al. 1999). The mechanical heating arises from fluctuations produced by the time dependent processes that are carried by the wind to large distances where they are dissipated in shocks, MHD waves, and turbulent cascades. This combines the local shock diagnostics that have long been applied to explain the complex emission spectra (see, e.g., Hartigan, Bally, Reipurth, and Morse 2000), and the global properties of the jets that seem closely connected to the activities of the exciting sources. Applied to a time-steady flow, the time-averaged effect of heating can be expressed by the scale-free volumetric heating rate, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{mech}}=\alpha \rho v^3s^1`$, where $`\rho `$ and $`v`$ are the local mass density and flow speed, and $`s`$ is the distance from the origin. In particular, $`\alpha `$ is a phenomenological constant, whose magnitude characterizes the strength of the disturbances. When a partially-revealed but active YSO is considered, $`\alpha 10^3`$ in the numerical calculations produces temperatures and electron fractions that are high enough for the x-wind jet to radiate in the optical forbidden lines at the intensity level and on the spatial scales that are observed (see Figure 1). Expressed in terms of velocity variations, such values of $`\alpha `$ imply a fractional velocity change of $`<5\%`$, which suggests that the underlying background steady-state flow is relatively unperturbed.

Figure 2 shows the synthetic image made of the excitation conditions in Figure 1. Compared with the synthetic image of uniform excitation (which only illustrates the integrated column density out of 3-D flow cube), the appearance of conic shape at the base of the jet, as has been widely adopted as the “jet opening” in images, is a result of the self-consistent excitation profile obtained by the phenomenological approach of heating. This illustrates the importance of self-consistent density and thermal profiles in the modelling scheme to capture the features in real images. The jet width extracted from Figure 2 is very similar to some jet widths obtained by HST and by adaptive optics (Dougados et al 2000).

The value of such diagnostics is best illustrated by cross line ratios from the optical forbidden lines. Figure 3 is the line ratio derived from Figure 2. Each blue point is a “theoretical” data point from each pixel. The stars are compiled from the HH objects available from ground-based data back in Raga et al (1996). The circles are DG Tau at resolution approaching 0.1<sup>′′</sup> for the microjets (read from Fig.3 of Lavalley-Fouquot et al 2000). The synthetic line ratio plot of one single jet object, using x-wind model, could encompass the diverse excitation condition in most objects. The only points that fall outside of the theoretical domain actually come from strong shock emissions which cannot be explained in the current theory of weak shocks. Figure 3 provides the critical test for theoretical models to generate conditions that excite the observed lines, and opens up the window for new perspective of interpretation.

## III SUMMARY

In this short article, we summarized recent theoretical developments that lead to direct comparison with real data by first-principle modelling of MHD x-winds and physical processes occurring near the YSOs. We argue that at their base, YSO jets are optical illusions associated with the excitation mechanisms by which atomic forbidden lines are excited. Gentle time-variabilities or pulses implied by knots in observed jets mainly contribute to the variation of thermal excitation on top of background flow, whose densities and velocities are closely maintained by steady state values. This is a demonstration that, first-principle calculations of self-consistent physical processes in young stellar winds provide robust theoretical help on probing the jet phenomena.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS H.S. sincerely thank the hospitality of the local organizing committee.

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# Heavy flavor kinetics at the hadronization transition

## References


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# Photoemission studies of Ga1-xMnxAs: Mn-concentration dependent properties

## I Introduction

The possibility to include magnetic impurities at relatively high concentrations in GaAs by means of low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy (LT-MBE) has opened new exciting prospects of combining magnetic phenomena with high-speed electronics and optoelectronics. The numerous investigations of Ga1-xMnxAs alloys that have been carried out so far have revealed interesting material properties, the most notable being carrier-induced ferromagnetism, with reported Curie temperatures as high as 110 K. Other interesting properties are anomalous Hall effect, negative magnetoresistance and photoinduced ferromagnetism. Although there is general consensus concerning the importance of Mn-induced holes, the detailed mechanisms behind the ferromagnetic ordering of the Mn spins remain a subject of debate. The electronic state of the Mn ions in samples with high Mn content is also discussed, though at low concentrations (below 1%) the $`d^5`$+hole configuration is established. It is clear that further spectroscopic studies related to these problems are strongly motivated. In the present work we have used photoemission to study two key features in the electronic structure of Ga1-xMnxAs alloys for a range of Mn concentrations: the Mn-related modifications of the electronic structure and the Fermi level position relative to the VBM.

## II Experiment

The experiments were performed on the toroidal grating monochromator beamline (BL 41) at the MAX I storage ring of the Swedish National Synchrotron Radiation Center MAX-lab, where a dedicated system for molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is attached to the photoelectron spectrometer. This configuration allows samples to be transferred between the growth and analytical chambers under UHV conditions. In the transfer system the vacuum was in the low 10-9 torr range, and in the electron spectrometer in the low 10-10 torr range. The ability to transfer samples means that no post-growth treatment was needed to prepare the surfaces for the photoemission measurements. This is a point worth stressing in the present context, as the samples are prepared under rather extreme conditions and change their properties with annealing even at temperatures well below that at which MnAs segregates. Indeed, the spectra presented here are somewhat different from those obtained on sputtered and annealed surfaces.

The MBE system contains six sources, including an As2 valved cracker. It is also equipped with a 10 keV electron gun for reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED). The samples were approximately 10$`\times `$10 mm2 pieces of epi-ready $`n`$-type GaAs(100) wafers, which were In-glued on tranferrable Mo holders. Each sample preparation started with a 1000 Å buffer, grown at a substrate temperature ($`T_s`$) of 590 C, $`T_s`$ was then lowered to the growth temperature of LT-GaAs and GaMnAs, which was typically 220 C. At the low temperature the growth started always with a 200–300 Å LT-GaAs buffer layer. The As2/Ga flux ratio was maintained at values around 10. During deposition of this layer the LT-GaAs growth rate was measured by recording RHEED intensity oscillations. After opening the Mn shutter the RHEED oscillations were observed again during the GaMnAs growth. At this low growth temperature the reevaporation of Mn and Ga from the surface is negligible, so the growth rate increase is proportional to the Mn content. The Mn-concentrations quoted below are estimated to be accurate within 0.5%.

Immediately after transfer the surfaces were checked with low energy electron diffraction (LEED). All Mn-containing samples exhibited 1$`\times `$2 reconstructed surfaces in RHEED as well in LEED, while the clean reference GaAs sample displayed a $`c`$(4$`\times `$4) LEED pattern with sharp integer order and less distinct fractional order spots. Photoemission was excited with mainly $`p`$-polarized light incident at 45 relative to the surface normal, the samples being oriented with the  azimuth (i.e. the 1-fold periodicity) in the plane of incidence. The electron energy distribution curves were obtained using a hemispherical electron energy analyzer with an angular resolution of 2, and the overall energy resolution was around 0.3 eV. A clean Ta foil, in contact with the sample holder, was used to determine the Fermi level position in each case. The counting rates were normalized to the incident beam intensity by means of photocurrent from a gold mesh in the beam path.

## III Results and discussion

Considering the intrinsic surface sensitivity of photoemission, and that surface compositions in alloy systems often deviate from those in the bulk, it is well motivated to start with a brief comment on this point. The fact that clear and actually unusually persistent RHEED oscillations are observed during growth of GaMnAs, shows that the atoms are still mobile in the surface layer despite the low-temperature conditions. However, once accommodated in lattice sites, further mobility that would lead to phase separation is efficiently inhibited under the low-temperature growth conditions. Thus, it is well motivated to expect that the sample compositions are uniform, including the first atomic layers. We should mention, however, that applying secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) as well as Auger microprobe analysis on samples exposed to atmospheric pressure, we have observed pronounced enrichment (by a factor of 2) of Mn in the surface layer (and a corresponding depletion in the underlying region), which is clearly associated with oxidation. Typically these redistributions range over a thickness of around 150 Å. This clearly emphasises the significance of carrying out surface sensitive experiments on in situ prepared samples. Photoemission from Mn 3$`d`$ states in dilute systems like Ga1-xMnxAs is easily identified via resonant enhancement of the 3$`d`$ cross section at the 4$`p`$ excitation threshold, which occurs at 50 eV photon energy. Since the spectral shape changes quite much in this energy range, and since our aim is to compare spectra recorded from a series of different samples, we have chosen to use a photon energy well above this resonant range (81 eV). Although the absolute cross section of Mn 3$`d`$ is smaller at 81 eV than that just above 50 eV photon energy, the cross sections of the GaAs valence states are also reduced in a similar way and therefore the Mn 3$`d`$-induced spectral features are still readily detected. Fig. 1a shows a set of such valence band spectra from samples with different Mn contents, together with a reference spectrum from clean LT-GaAs. It is worth pointing out that just like the GaMnAs, such LT-GaAs contains large concentrations of point defects (mostly As antisites), and that spectra from such layers are found to be somewhat different relative those obtained from MBE layers grown at high temperature. Considering that until now only one independent valence-band photoemission study of such materials has been published, and that the samples are produced under rather extreme growth conditions, it is well motivated to start the discussion with a direct comparison between the present data and the published ones. We note then that the data contain some similarities, but also some significant differences. The main Mn-induced feature is the peak at 3.4 eV below the VBM for the most Mn-rich samples. Its Mn origin is clearly revealed by the resonant enhancement mentioned above. A similar resonant structure was found in Ref. REFERENCES, but at a binding energy of 4.5 eV relative to the Fermi level. Since the Fermi level is located about 0.13 eV above the VBM (see below), there seems to be a discrepancy of almost 1 eV between the two results. Furthermore, the spectra in Ref. REFERENCES contain a second pronounced peak at about 2.5 eV larger binding energy. This structure is completely missing in our data. The weak asymmetric peak seen in all spectra around 6.5–7 eV in Fig. 1a reflects the $`X_3`$ critical point emission. Such density of states (DOS) structures are seen at all photon energies and all emission angles due to diffuse elastic scattering of the direct interband excitation of this state. Altogether we thus find that the present spectra are significantly different from those found in literature, and although the reason for these deviations is not clear, it is natural at this point to suspect that the different surface preparations could be the cause. This would then underline the importance of carrying out these experiments on in situ grown samples.

It is immediately clear in Fig. 1 that the Mn-induced spectral changes vary with the Mn content. To examine this variation in some more detail, we have generated consecutive difference spectra, as displayed in Fig. 1b. The first spectrum in this sequence shows that with 1% Mn the spectral intensity is increased over a range 1–4 eV below the VBM, with a peak centered around 3 eV and a shoulder at 1 eV below the VBM. The main increase coincides with weak structures in the clean GaAs spectrum (around 3 eV and 4 eV below the VBM). As these structures are due to excitations at the high DOS regions at the $`X_5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1^{min}`$ points, one could suspect that the Mn-induced changes are in this case caused by disorder-related increase of diffuse scattering. However, from the fact that no corresponding increase is seen for the $`X_3`$ critical point emission, and from the following development of the 3-eV peak, we can safely conclude that these spectral changes do indeed reflect Mn-derived states. With the Mn content raised to 3% we see that the incremental change is somewhat different than the initial one. The peak at 3 eV is increased further, but the range around 1 eV remains essentially unchanged. Increasing the Mn content further results in another change: the main additional spectral contribution appears as an asymmetric peak around 3.8 eV below the VBM, i.e. clearly shifted relative to that found at lower concentrations. Thus, the peak observed at 3.4 eV in the corresponding full spectrum (Fig. 1) can be concluded to represent an average of several contributions. Finally, the additional spectral changes with further increase of Mn content are found to be less distinct, the intensity is increased rather uniformly over a range 2–6 eV below the VBM. The next difference spectrum is also essentially a peak centered at 3 eV below the VBM, though it is clearly narrower on the high-energy side.

The important conclusion from the data in Fig. 1 is that the character of the Mn states in Ga1-xMnxAs depends on the Mn concentration. Since supplementary X-ray diffraction analysis of our samples shows high degree of perfection in the layers, we have no reason to suspect that the variations seen here are due to varying sample structure quality, but ascribe them to the different Mn contents. No such dependence has been reported in any of the earlier studies. Previous analysis of Mn 3$`d`$ partial DOS in GaMnAs with 6.9% Mn was successful in modelling the observed spectrum using a configuration interaction model involving Mn 3$`d`$ and ligand states in a MnAs4 cluster. Obviously, this kind of model can not account for concentration-dependent properties like those reported here. With an average distance between two impurities of around 25 Å, it is clear that the explanation must be based on a model in which long range interactions are taken into account.

GaMnAs is also known to exhibit unusual conductivity characteristics: at low Mn concentrations the system is semiconducting, around 4–5% Mn metallic conductivity is reported and with further increase of the Mn content the material becomes again insulating. Interestingly enough, the Curie temperature also exhibits a maximum around the same Mn concentration. These two observations suggest that the density of holes is actually decreasing with Mn concentrations above 5%, and this might be directly reflected by the Fermi level position relative the VBM. In Fig. 2 we show a set of valence-band spectra from samples with varying Mn contents, aligned at the Fermi level. The photon energy used in this case was 38.5 eV, chosen to probe the phase space region around the $`X_3`$ point. This emission is reflected by the prominent peak around 7.5 eV. Considering the high density of defects in LT-GaAs and in GaMnAs, (in the range of 1020/cm2), it is reasonable to assume that the surface Fermi level does not deviate from that in the bulk. This assumption is supported by the fact that no additional spectral broadening that could be expected due to a emission from a very narrow band bending region was detected in any spectra. Focusing on the $`X_3`$ emission we see that its position is changing with Mn content. This variation is shown more clearly in Fig. 3, where we have plotted the energy separation $`E_\text{F}X_3`$ for a larger set of samples. Starting at a value of 7.35 eV for clean LT-GaAs it is reduced, and settles at a value of 7.1 eV around 1.5% Mn concentration. This pinning position remains stable for Mn concentrations up to around 3.5%, and is likely due to the Mn acceptor level known to be located 113 meV above the VBM. With this interpretation we deduce the VBM to be located around 6.95 eV above the $`X_3`$ point, a value well in the range of literature data (6.70–7.1 eV) based on angle resolved photoemission and X-ray photoemission. A very interesting feature is observed around 4–5% Mn concentrations, where $`E_\text{F}`$ appears to drop to a position close to the VBM. As already mentioned, samples in this concentration range are reported to exhibit metallic conductivity. The present observations are fully consistent with such behaviour. We also note that the low position of $`E_\text{F}`$ implies an increased density of holes, which in turn may be the explanation for the relatively high Curie temperatures found in this range of Mn concentrations. The most intriguing observation is the shift of $`E_\text{F}`$ back into the band gap region with further increased Mn content. This is consistent with the reported metal-insulator transition, though the present results suggest that the reason for the insulating properties is not impurity scattering, but rather a true reduction of charge carriers.

## IV Conclusions

The present investigations of valence band photoemission from Ga1-xMnxAs compounds show two new effects. Firstly we find that the spectral changes induced by the Mn atoms depend on the Mn concentration, and secondly we observe that the position of the Fermi level also changes with Mn content. None of these features has been reported previously. The varying shape of the Mn-induced valence-band structures directly shows that the Mn-host interaction cannot be treated with a local model. As to the Fermi level variations, we note that the minimum observed around 3.5–5% Mn content coincides with previously reported metallic conductivity and also with the range of maximum paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition temperatures.

## Acknowledgements

We are pleased to acknowledge the technical support of the MAX-lab staff. This work was supportet by grants from the Swedish Natural Science Research Council (NFR), the Swedish Research Council for Engineering Sciences (TFR), and, via co-operation with the Nanometer Structure Consortium in Lund, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).