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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Historically, almost all our information about the current and past star-formation properties of galaxies has been based upon spatially integrated measurements in the ultraviolet (UV), visible and near-infrared (NIR) spectral regimes. However, star-forming galaxies contain dust which absorbs some fraction of the emitted starlight, re-radiating it predominantly in the far-infrared (FIR)/sub-millimeter(submm) range. The true significance of this process even for “normal” (i.e. non-starburst) galaxies has been revealed by observations of a representative sample of late-type Virgo cluster galaxies with the ISOPHOT instrument on board the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). These showed the dust emission to typically account for 50 percent of the bolometric output of these systems, with a spectral peak generally lying between 100 and 250$`\mu m`$ (Tuffs et al. 2002; Popescu et al. 2002).

In view of this, the measurement of current and past star-formation in galaxies - and indeed of the universe as a whole - requires a quantitative understanding of the role different stellar populations play in powering the FIR/submm emission. For this both optical and FIR/submm data needs to be used, as they contain complementary information about the distribution of stars and dust.

On the one hand, optical data probes the colour and spatial distribution (after correction for extinction) of the photospheric emission along sufficiently transparent lines of sight. This is particularly useful to investigate older, redder stellar populations in galaxian disks with scale heights larger than that of the dust. On the other hand, grains act as test particles probing the strength and colour of ultraviolet (UV)/optical interstellar radiation fields. This constitutes an entirely complementary constraint to studies of photospheric emission. In the FIR, grains are moreover detectable over almost the full range of optical depths present in a galaxy. At least part of this regime is inaccessible to direct probes of starlight, especially at shorter wavelengths, even for face-on systems. This particularly applies to light from young stars located in, or close by, the dust clouds from which they formed, since a certain fraction of the light is locally absorbed. Furthermore, there is at least a possibility that most of the remaining UV and even blue light from young stars that can escape into the disk might be absorbed by diffuse dust there. A combined analysis of the whole UV-optical/FIR/submm spectral energy distribution (SED) of galaxies seems to be a promising way to constrain the problem.

Here we present the results from a new tool for modelling the optical-FIR/submm SED of galaxies (Popescu et al. 2000b, Misiriotis et al. 2001). Our model predicts the SED as a function of intrinsic SFR, star formation history (from population synthesis calculations) and dust content. This tool includes solving the radiative-transfer problem for a realistic distribution of absorbers and emitters, considering realistic models for dust (taking into account the grain-size distribution and stochastic heating of small grains) and the contribution of HII regions. The model addresses the fundamental and controversial question of optical thickness in the disk of galaxies and can account for the detailed UV-optical-FIR-submm SED with an absolute minimum of independent physical variables, each strongly constrained by data.

## 2 An overview of SED modelling in the literature

The SED models of galaxies have been built using the tools and results from previous studies of the key ingredients required by such models: radiative transfer codes and dust emission models. Radiative transfer codes were initially developed to account for the UV-optical/NIR appearance of galaxies, their extinction properties, and the role the spatial distribution of stars and dust play in shaping the SED. These codes used either analytical methods (Kylafis & Bahcall (1987) or Monte Carlo simulations (Witt & Gordon 1996, 2000, Ferrara et al. 1999, Gordon et al. 2001). In parallel, dust models have been built to model extinction curves and the heating and emission of grains in different environments. These include the studies of Mathis et al. (1977), Draine & Lee (1984), Draine & Anderson (1985), Dwek (1986), Guhathakurta & Draine (1989), Désert et al. (1990), Laor & Draine (1993), Weingartner & Draine (2001).

Applications of such methods to study the SED of galaxies have been initiated, as expected, in the optical/NIR regime. Thus, in their fundamental work, Kylafis & Bahcall (1987) applied a radiation transfer modelling technique to edge-on systems, where the scale height of the stars and dust extinction can be directly constrained. The technique was subsequently applied on several edge-on galaxies by Xilouris et al. (1997, 1998, 1999). Radiative transfer codes in combination with observations of nearby edge-on galaxies were also used by Ohta & Kodaira (1995), Kuchinski et al. (1998) and Matthews & Wood (2001).

A further step in the SED modelling was to include the FIR-submm spectral regime in the overall analysis. Different tools have been proposed starting with the pioneering works of Xu & Buat (1995) and Xu & Helou (1996). They used radiative transfer codes for an assumed “sandwich” configuration of dust and stars and considered in detail the relative contribution of the non-ionising UV photons and the optical photons in heating the grains. However, these calculations did not incorporate a model for the dust grain emission, nor for radial variations in the absorbed radiation in the disk, and therefore could not account for the shape of the FIR SED.

Recently, there have been several works modelling the SED of galaxies from the UV to submm, which considered more realistic geometries and dust models, and which have started to make use of the new observational data becoming available at longer FIR/submm wavelengths. In parallel with these self-consistent models a series of empirical or semi-empirical approaches for modelling the SED from UV to submm wavelengths have been adopted, mainly for statistical applications (Devriendt et al. 1999, Dale et al. 2001).

Self consistent calculations of the SED over the entire spectral range have been developed slowly, due to the large amount of computational time required both for the radiative transfer and for the calculation of the probability distribution of temperatures of dust grains, especially of the small grains, which undergo large temperature fluctuations. To this should be added that it is only now becoming possible to obtain resolved images covering the MIR to FIR and submm spectral range, even for nearby galaxies. Such observations are needed for constraining SED models. Recent self-consistent SED modelling was presented by Silva et al. (1998). They applied photometric and chemical evolution models of galaxies to explain the SED of both normal and starburst galaxies. Their model considers radiative transfer in both the molecular clouds and in the diffuse ISM, and includes a consistent treatment of dust emission and stochastic heating of small grains. It can thus reproduce reasonably well the SED of the studied galaxies, in both the optical and FIR spectral range and is therefore suited to describe the general shape of the volume-integrated SED. The model has however more free parameters than the generally available observational constraints and the solution obtained may not be unique. The model is also less adequate in describing the intrinsic distributions of stars and dust because of its simplified geometry. For example the model does not consider different scale heights and scale lengths for the stellar and dust distribution. Furthermore, all stellar populations are constrained to have the same scale heights, including the young stellar population which is known to reside in a very thin stellar disk. The radiative transfer is only an approximation, and is rigorously applicable only to an infinite homogeneous medium, and there is no treatment of anisotropic scattering.

Bianchi et al. (2000) attempted to model NGC 6946 from the UV to FIR using a 3D Monte Carlo radiative-transfer code for a simplified geometry of emitters (a single stellar disk). They concluded that the total FIR output is consistent with an optically thick solution. This result should be considered with caution as their model makes a number of simplifications. For example they did not consider a size distribution for grains and there is no consistent treatment of grain heating and emission. Accordingly, there is no calculation of stochastic heating for small grains, but rather a MIR correction calculated according to the model of Désert et al. (1990). Furthermore the model did not consider the contribution of localised sources within star-forming complexes. This resulted in a poor fit of the FIR SED and a failure to reproduce the IRAS flux densities.

Several studies have been dedicated to modelling the SED of starburst galaxies. Recent work on modelling the UV to submm emission was presented by Efstathiou et al. (2000) for starburst galaxies, which were treated as an ensemble of optically thick giant molecular clouds (GMCs) centrally illuminated by recently formed stars. The model has a proper treatment of dust emission, including stochastic heating of small grains, and it allows for the star-forming complexes to evolve with time, based on a physical model of the dusty HII region phase and of the supernova phase. The star-forming complexes are modelled assuming spherical symmetry, which, as remarked by the authors, may not be true in the later stages of the GMC evolution. Also there is no further transfer of radiation between GMCs, meaning that the stellar light is not allowed to escape the GMC. The FIR spectrum is fitted for an exponential decaying star formation rate, where the age and time constant of the star-burst (or in some cases of two star-bursts) are fitted parameters. This modelling technique successfully reproduced the observed SED of M 82 and NGC 6090, though for the latter case there is an ambiguity between the existence of an older burst and a diffuse component not considered in the model. Obviously this method is suitable for starburst dominated galaxies and can bring interesting insights into the ages of the stellar populations, but cannot be applied to normal “quiescent” disk galaxies dominated by emission from the diffuse interstellar radiation field.

Bekki et al. (2000) studied the time evolution of the SED in starburst galaxies based on numerical simulations that can analyse simultaneously dynamical and chemical evolution, structural and kinematical properties. This method is rather unique and can be used to study mergers, for example, or other physical processes related to galaxy formation. The price to pay for this complexity is the quite rudimentary treatment of the radiative transfer and dust emission: scattering has been neglected from the radiative transfer, there is no grain size distribution and no treatment of stochastic heating of small grains. Therefore, their model can be used to indicate trends in the SED evolution rather than to give quantitative predictions and is suitable for numerical simulations.

As a general remark, most of the work described above has been concentrated in fitting the volume-integrated emission of the galaxies at different spectral wavelengths and has not been constrained by morphological information from images. A more robust knowledge of the intrinsic distributions of stellar populations and dust, and ultimately of the SF history in galaxies can be gained if also the surface brightness distribution of optical and even FIR emission can be analysed. The method we present here constrains the problem by using the whole information in the brightness distribution. This approach has been only used in the optical/NIR regime, by Xilouris et al. (1997, 1998, 1999). With the ISO and SCUBA data we are now able to make predictions also for the appearance of the FIR/submm images and compare the predicted maps with the observed ones. In the future SIRTF observations will extend knowledge of the FIR morphology in galaxies and will bring new constraints for the SED modelling methods.

## 3 Our model

Star-forming galaxies are fundamentally inhomogeneous, containing highly obscured massive star-formation regions, as well as more extended structures harbouring older stellar populations which may be transparent or have intermediate optical depths to starlight. Accordingly, our model divides the stellar population into an “old” component (considered to dominate the output in B-band and longer wavelengths) and a “young” component (considered to dominate the output in the non-ionising UV).

### 3.1 The “old” stellar population

The “old” stellar population is generally observed to have scale heights of several hundred pc in rotationally supported spiral galaxies, a result which can be physically attributed to the increase of the kinetic temperature of stellar populations on timescales of order Gyr due to encounters with molecular clouds and/or spiral density waves. This means that the “old” stellar population can be constrained from resolved optical and near-IR images via the modelling procedure of Xilouris et al. (1999). The procedure uses the technique for solving the radiation transfer equation for direct and multiply scattered light for arbitrary geometries by Kylafis & Bachall (1987).

For edge-on systems these calculations completely determine the scale heights and lengths of exponential disk representations of the old stars (the “old stellar disk”) and associated diffuse dust (the “old dust disk”), as well as a dustless stellar bulge. This process is feasible for edge-on systems since the scale height of the dust is less than that of the stars. For face-on systems the scale height cannot be fixed by the optical data alone, and must be determined through consideration of its effect on the FIR SED.

The extinction law of the dust can be directly determined from the observed optical/near-IR wavelength, since the calculation is done independently at each wavelength. In all cases so far, an extinction law consistent with that predicted from the graphite/silicate mix of Laor & Draine (1993) and the $`a^{3.5}`$ grain size distribution of Mathis Rumpl & Nordsieck (1977) has been found (Xilouris et al. 1999).

### 3.2 The “young” stellar population

The “young” stellar population is also specified by an exponential disk, which we shall refer to as the “young stellar disk”. Invisible in edge-on systems, its scale height is constrained to be $`90`$pc (the value for the Milky Way) and its scale length is equated to that of the “old stellar disk” in B-band. The emissivity of the “young stellar disk” is parameterised in terms of the current star formation rate ($`SFR`$) by relating the non-ionising UV emission to $`SFR`$ using the population synthesis models of Bruzual & Charlot (2001) for $`Z=Z_{}`$, a Salpeter initial mass function, a mass cut-off of $`100\mathrm{M}_{}`$, and an exponential decrease of the $`SFR`$ with time, with a time constant $`\tau =\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}Gyr`$.

A second exponential dust disk of grain mass $`M_{\mathrm{dust}}`$ \- the “second dust disk” is associated with the young stellar population. This is needed to account for the observed submm emission from edge-on disk galaxies, which cannot be reproduced by models containing only the old dust disk determined from the optical images (Popescu et al. 2000b, Misioritis et al. 2001). It is constrained to have the same scale length and height as that of the young stellar disk. This second dust disk is assumed to be composed of grains with the same graphite/silicate and $`a^{3.5}`$ grain size distribution as for the old dust disk. All the exponential disks for young and old stars and dust in the model are truncated at three times the exponential scale length. Because two disks of dust are required for the model, we refer to it as to the “two-dust-disk” model.

The current star-formation rate ($`SFR`$) and mass of the second dust disk ($`M_{\mathrm{dust}}`$) are the first two primary free parameters of the model to determine the FIR/submm radiation. They both relate to the smooth distribution of stars and dust in the second disk. A third primary parameter, $`F`$, is included to account for inhomogeneities in the distributions of dust and stars in the young stellar disk. $`F`$ is defined as the fraction of non-ionising UV which is locally absorbed in HII regions around the massive stars. It determines the additional likelyhood of absorbtion of non-ionising UV photons due to autocorrelations between an inhomogeneous distribution of young stars and parent molecular clouds. Astrophysically, this arises because at any particular epoch some fraction of the massive stars have not had time to escape the vicinity of their parent molecular clouds. Thus, $`F`$ is related to the ratio between the distance a star travels in its lifetime due to it’s random velocity and the typical dimensions of star-formation complexes.

### 3.3 Calculation of dust emission

The first step in the calculation of the dust emission is to determine the radiation energy density of the unabsorbed light versus wavelength from the non-ionising UV to the near-IR for the diffuse radiation field. This is done for trial values of the mass of dust in the second dust disk $`M_D`$ by solving the radiation transfer equation for the observed optical wavelengths and three wavelengths in the non-ionising UV. (For edge on systems, $`M_D`$ is independent of the dust mass in the old dust disk, which is fixed by the optical observations). The actual energy density distribution can then be determined for any trial combination of $`SFR`$ and $`F`$ without a further radiation transfer calculation. Both the colour and intensity of the radiation field vary with position in different ways according to the combination of $`SFR`$, $`M_D`$ and $`F`$.

The FIR/submm emission for each combination of $`SFR`$, $`M_D`$ and $`F`$ is then calculated for graphite and silicate grains of size $`a`$ immersed in the radiation field at each point of a grid of positions in the galaxy, including an explicit treatment of stochastic emission. Subsequently we integrate over the entire galaxy to obtain the FIR-submm SED of the diffuse disk emission. Prior to comparison with observed FIR-submm SEDs, an empirically determined spectral template for the HII regions, scaled according to the value of $`F`$, must be added to this calculated spectral distribution of diffuse FIR emission.

Due to the precise constraints on the distribution of stellar emissivity in the optical-NIR and the distribution and opacity of dust in the “old dust disk” yielded by the radiation transfer analysis of the highly resolved optical-NIR images, coupled with the simple assumptions for the distribution of the young stellar population and associated dust, our model has just three free parameters - $`SFR`$, $`F`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{dust}}`$. These fully determine the FIR-submm SED, and allow a meaningful comparison with broad-band observational data in the FIR/submm, where, in particular for distant objects, typically only a few spectral sample points for the spatially integrated emission are available. The parameters are strongly coupled, but in general terms, $`M_{\mathrm{dust}}`$ is principally constrained by the submm emission, $`SFR\times (1F)`$ by the bolometric FIR-submm output and the factor $`F`$ (in the absence of high resolution images and/or for edge-on systems) by the FIR colour.

## 4 Application to edge-on spiral galaxies

Modelling edge-on spiral galaxies has several advantages, mainly when investigating them in the optical band. One advantage is that, in this view of a galaxy, one can easily separate the three main components of the galaxy (i.e., the stellar disk, the dust and the bulge). Another advantage is that the dust is very prominently seen in the dust lane, and thus its scalelength and scaleheight can be better constrained. A third advantage is that many details of a galaxy that are evident when the galaxy is seen face-on (e.g., spiral arms), are smeared out to a large degree when the galaxy is seen edge-on (Misiriotis et al. 2000). Thus, a simple model with relatively few parameters can be used for the distribution of stars and dust in the galaxy. However, in edge-on galaxies it is very difficult to see localised sources (i.e., HII regions), in which the radiation can be locally absorbed and thus not contribute to the diffuse radiation field. Also, if the galaxy has a thin (young) stellar/dust disk, highly obscured by the dust lane in the plane of the galaxy, then this disk cannot be inferred from observations in the optical/NIR spectral range. As described in the previous section, our model makes use of the information in the FIR-submm regime to constrain this problem.

We first applied the above method to the well-known edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891. This is one of the most extensively observed edge-on galaxies in the nearby universe, which makes it ideal for a verification of our modelling technique. We have also extended our SED modelling technique to four additional edge-on systems - NGC 5907, NGC 4013, UGC 1082 and UGC 2048 - with the aim of examining whether the features of the solution we obtained for NGC 891 might be more generally applicable. In this section we mainly show and discuss the results for NGC 891, and only briefly illustrate the solution for NGC 5907.

The “two-dust-disk” model can successfully fit the shape of the SED for both NGC 891 and NGC 5907. The best solution for NGC 891 (Fig. 1) has a central face-on V-band optical thickness $`\tau _V^f=3.1`$ and a corresponding non-ionising UV luminosity $`8.2\times 10^{36}`$ W. The luminosity of the diffuse component is $`4.07\times 10^{36}`$ W, which accounts for $`69\%`$ of the observed FIR luminosity, and the luminosity of the HII component is $`1.82\times 10^{36}`$ W, making up the remaining $`31\%`$ of the FIR luminosity. The best solution for NGC 5907 (Fig. 2) has a central face-on optical depth in the optical band $`\tau _\mathrm{v}=1.4`$. The total FIR-submm re-radiated luminosity of NGC 5907, obtained by integrating the “two-dust-disk” model SED, is $`50.5\times 10^{35}`$ W out of which $`27.0\times 10^{35}`$ W is attributed to heating from the young stellar population. Thus, about $`40\%`$ of the dust emission is powered by the old stellar population. The major difference between NGC 891 and NGC 5907, on the basis of the “two-dust-disk” model, is that the spectrum of the former apparently allows for the existence of a larger contribution from HII regions (see Misiriotis et al. 2001 for a detailed discussion) - $`F`$ takes values of 0.22 and 0.10, respectively. Such small values of $`F`$ are expected for “normal” galaxies, in contrast to starburst systems, where the FIR/submm SEDs peak shortwards of $`100\mu `$m, and one would anticipate that $`F`$ would be closer to unity.

In both cases most of the luminosity comes from the diffuse component, and the main heating source is provided by the young stellar population. The relative contribution of optical and UV photons in heating the dust has been a longstanding question in the literature. Since we have a detailed calculation

of the absorbed energy over the whole spectral range and at each position in the galaxy, we can directly calculate which part of the emitted FIR luminosity from each volume element of the galaxy is due to the optical and NIR photons, and which part is due to the UV photons. In this way we can also predict the contribution of different stellar populations in heating the dust as a function of FIR wavelength. Volume-integrated IR spectral components

arising from re-radiated optical and UV light are presented in Figs. 3,4 for the case of NGC 891. We note that the diffuse optical radiation field makes only a relatively small contribution to the total emitted dust luminosity. This is in qualitative agreement with various statistical inferences linking FIR emission with young stellar populations, in particular the FIR-radio correlation. Our analysis predicts the predominance of UV-powered grain emission even in the submm range, which, in turn, would predict a tighter FIR-radio correlation when the FIR luminosity integrated over the FIR-submm range is considered. This prediction has been recently confirmed by Popescu et al. (2002), using the new ISOPHOT observations of a complete sample of late-type Virgo cluster galaxies (Tuffs et al. 2002).

A more stringent test of the model is to compare its predictions for the morphology of the dust emission with spatially resolved maps. Because observed radial profiles were derived by Alton et al. (2000) using the SCUBA observations at $`850\mu `$m, we first attempt to calculate the radial profiles at this wavelength and compare it with the observations (Fig. 5), which are mainly sensitive to dust column density. We have found that in the case of the “two-dust-disk” model there is a very good agreement between the model predictions and the observations, where the observed profiles were mirrored for compatibility with the symmetry in our model. The predicted radial profile can be traced out to 300 arcsec radius (15 kpc), as also detected by the SCUBA.

Recent deep observations of NGC 891 with the ISOPHOT instrument at 170 and 200 $`\mu `$m (Popescu et al. 2001) offer a still stronger test of the model, as the FIR emission here depends on the distribution of both stellar luminosity and dust.

Simulated FIR maps were obtained using the actual pointing data to scan the diffuse disk model. The model map was then convolved with empirical PSFs derived from point source measurements. The comparison between the observed map (Fig. 6a) and the simulated one (Fig. 6b) show a remarkable agreement. To search for small differences between the model and the observations, not detectable in the maps due to the high dynamical range of the displayed data, we present in Fig. 6c the residual map of the difference between the observed and the simulated map. The main feature in the residuals is a localised, unresolved source in the Northern side of the disk, with a peak of 46.1 MJy/sr. This localised source is probably a giant molecular cloud complex - associated with one of the spiral arms, and not considered in the simulated map, which only includes the diffuse component of the model. At this FIR wavelength our model predicts a $`11\%`$ contribution from the star-forming complexes. The integration of the unresolved source gives a flux density of 9.4 Jy, which is $`6\%`$ of the total integrated flux density. Furthermore a faint extended source is seen in the southern side of the galaxy, of 4.0 Jy integrated flux density. This makes another $`2\%`$ of the total integrated emission. Thus the faint localised sources seen in the residual maps are in reasonable agreement with the prediction of our model, which reassures us that the template used in our model and scaled according to our model parameters, SFR and the F factor, are indeed a good representation for the galaxy. Apart from the two sources, a faint extended halo (at $`1\%`$ brightness level) is seen extending at large heights perpendicular to the disk. The interpretation of this halo component is beyond the scope of this paper.

A final comparison can be made between the projected radial profiles of the simulated and observed maps. Due to the larger longitudinal coverage of the ISO data, which embraces the outer, asymmetrical HI disk (Swaters et al. 1997), this time we did not mirror the observed profile. Again, a very good agreement between the model prediction and the observed profiles can be seen in Fig. 6d for the Southern side of the galaxy. The localised FIR source from the northern side of the residual map becomes prominent in the radial profiles as well. There also seems to be an excess of FIR emission at radii larger than 300$`^{\prime \prime }`$, not reproduced by our model. We interpret this result as indicative of a dust disk larger than considered by our model, in which all dust disks are truncated at three scale lengths of the B-band stellar disk. A finer grid of models with varying truncation of the scale length may be needed to reproduce the faint FIR emission at large galactocentric radii.

## 5 The SFRs derived from SED modelling

To statistically evaluate our results for SFR, we compare the SFR characteristics of the 5 edge-on galaxies modelled by us with the larger sample of 61 galaxies with inclinations less than 75 degrees which were studied by Kennicutt (1998) on the basis of H<sub>α</sub> measurements.

Fig. 7 depicts the relation between the disk-averaged surface density in SFR ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SFR}}`$) as a function of the average gas surface density ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{g}`$) for the 5 galaxies. The upper and lower limits for the SFRs are calculated such that the predicted SED is still consistent with the IRAS colours (within the 20$`\%`$ IRAS error bars). Lower error bars are not given when the plotted SFRs represent lower limits for the SFR (maximum values for the factors $`F`$, see discussion in Sect. 3 of Misiriotis et al. 2001). In these cases lower limits would be possible only if we allowed for different sources of uncertainties, like variations in the spectral shape of the template used for the HII regions. However this is hard to quantify, and in the following we assume that the errors of the SFR are given only by the uncertainties in the IRAS data. The plotted data are summarised in Table 3 of Misiriotis et al. (2001) and details on the calculations of the error bars and of the gas masses can be found in the same paper. The horizontal error bar corresponds to the uncertainty in the gas masses for which we adopted an average 0.2 dex error. The surface area of the disk was calculated for $`R_\mathrm{o}=(3\pm 0.5)h_\mathrm{d}`$, where $`h_\mathrm{d}`$ is the intrinsic radial scalelength determined from the radiation-transfer modelling in the I band. In their analysis of surface photometry of the outer regions of spiral disks, Pohlen et al. (2000) show that the disk boundaries are typically in this range.

The points for the 5 galaxies in Fig. 10 lie within the area of the diagram occupied by the galaxies in the Kennicutt sample. The match is even better for those members of the Kennicutt sample with Hubble types Sb to Sc. This agreement is quite reassuring, bearing in mind the several factors which could introduce a systematic difference between the SFRs inferred for a sample of nearly face-on systems from H<sub>α</sub> measurements compared with the present technique for edge-on systems based on an analysis of broad-band non-ionising UV re-radiated in the FIR-submm range.

Firstly, the H<sub>α</sub> analysis is sensitive to the most massive stars and in particular to the assumed mass cut of 100 M. Whereas the FIR-submm modelling also assumes the same mass cut in the conversion of SFR to non-ionising luminosity, our model is less sensitive to this effect.

Secondly, whereas the H<sub>α</sub> is sensitive to the star-formation history of the last 10<sup>7</sup>yr, our broad-band FIR-submm SED analysis samples approximately the last 10<sup>8</sup>yr. Thus, our analysis is consistent with the basic hypothesis (see Kennicutt 1998) for “normal” spiral galaxies of a steady star-formation activity. In principle, we could extend our analysis based on our determinations of the intrinsic populations and use the determined intrinsic colours to determine more accurately the SFR history of the galaxies.

The assumption of a steady-state star-formation rate is also broadly consistent with the timescales for the exhaustion of the current gas supply under the derived SFRs. The dotted, dashed and dot-dashed lines in Fig. 10 represent star-formation efficiencies corresponding to consumptions of 100, 10 and 1 percent of the gas mass in 10<sup>8</sup> yr.

Thirdly, the SFRs derived from H<sub>α</sub> were corrected by a single factor for extinction, despite the varying orientations. As well as possibly affecting the vertical position of the galaxies on the plot, this may induce some scatter, especially if all the dust were diffusely distributed. The systematic effect may be expressed in terms of the factor $`F`$: an overestimation of the factor $`F`$ is equivalent to an overestimation of the local extinction in the star-formation regions (statistically averaged over the population of HII regions in a disk). Thus, while moving to higher factors $`F`$ would move the points for the 5 galaxies towards lower SFRs, it would have the opposite effect for the SFRs determined from the H<sub>α</sub>.

Lastly, we remark that NGC 891 does not appear as an exceptional system compared with the other 4 galaxies in our sample (and with Kennicutt’s  normal galaxy sample) on the basis of SFR normalised to disk area. Our work thus provides no evidence that this galaxy’s exceptional layer of extraplanar H<sub>α</sub>-emitting diffuse ionising gas (e.g. Hoopes et al. 1999) and surrounding X-ray-emitting hot gas (e.g. Bregman & Houck 1997) is attributable to unusual star-formation activity.

## 6 Discussion and Outlook

We have described a “two-dust-disk” model which can successfully account for the observed optical-FIR/submm characteristics of “normal” edge-on spiral galaxies in terms of three fundamental parameters - the $`SFR`$, $`F`$ \- the fraction of non-ionising UV absorbed locally in HII regions, and $`M_{\mathrm{dust}}`$ \- the mass of a second dust disk associated with the young stellar population. We found these parameters to play the key role in determining the amplitude and shape of the FIR-submm SED in galaxies. Some other parameters were given larger attention in the literature, like for example clumpiness, different grain populations, metallicity.

Clumpiness has been extensively discussed by Witt & Gordon (1996, 2000) and used by Gordon et al. (2001) and Matthews & Wood (2001). However, the clumpiness in the interstellar medium is difficult to relate to observations. For example the optical properties of grains in clouds and fundamental parameters such as cloud size and density contrast are poorly known. Because of such uncertainties in the parameterisation of clumpy media, our model does not explicitly incorporate clumps, though our radiative transfer code can treat any arbitrary distribution of emitters and absorbers. However, our model considers implicitly the clumpy distribution in form of the spectral template used for the star-forming complexes. Thus, our model does not include clumps that are not associated with stellar sources, the so called “quiescent clouds”, but does include clouds associated with star-forming regions. As discussed by Popescu et al. (2000), the quiescent clumps must be optically thick to the diffuse UV/optical radiation field in the disk to have an impact on the predicted submm emission. They would then radiate at predominantly longer wavelengths than the diffuse disk emission in the FIR/submm spectral range. One can speculate that such optically thick “quiescent clouds” could be physically identified with partially or wholly collapsed clouds that, for lack of a trigger, have not (yet) begun to form stars. However, due to the lack of intrinsic sources, a very substantial mass of dust would have to be associated with the quiescent clouds to account for a substantial change in the submm SED of galaxies. On the other hand, there may be also dark clouds associated with star-forming complexes. In the Milky Way HII regions around newly born massive stars are commonly seen in juxtaposition to parent molecular clouds (e.g., M17). This is thought to be a consequence of the fragmentation of the clouds due to mechanical energy input from the winds of the massive stars. Thus, warm dust emission from cloud surfaces directly illuminated by massive stars can be seen along a fraction of the lines of sight, together with cold submm dust emission from the interior of the associated optically thick cloud fragments. These dense clumps (with or without associated sources) may contribute to the submm emission, and thus supplement the contribution of compact HII regions. Our template for localised sources was successful in reproducing the FIR-submm surface brightness distribution for the prototypical galaxy NGC 891. However, modelling of more galaxies may be needed to check whether our template is a good representation for localised sources, or whether it needs to be supplemented with a submm cold component of dark clouds. More detailed FIR-submm observations of star-forming complexes may also help in improving our HII-region templates.

Different dust populations can produce different types of extinction curves and change the colour of the FIR SED. Our model used the Laor & Draine (1993) silicate/graphite mix, compatible with a Milky Way extinction law. Our choice was based on the agreement between our model extinction curve and the empirical extinction law derived for the studied galaxies independently by Xilouris et al. (1997, 1998, 1999) via the radiative transfer modelling of the optical images. In the case that different galaxies would require different extinction laws, we would adopt a different dust model (chemical composition, grain size distribution).

Finally the metallicity was fixed in our model to be the solar metallicity. Again, this choice was confirmed by the agreement in the extinction curves. A different metallicity may also affect the redistribution of the UV photons with UV wavelengths, as given by the stellar population synthesis models.

In the SED model presented here we did not consider any interactions or effects of inflows/outflows in galaxies. Observationally there is however increased evidence for H$`\alpha `$ extraplanar emission in galaxies (e.g. Hoopes et al. 1999, Howk & Savage 2000), of X-ray (e.g. Bregman & Houck 1997) and radio halos (e.g. Allen et al. 1978), of galactic (starburst-driven) winds (e.g. Heckman et al. 2000) or for enhanced FIR emission in interacting/merging systems (e.g. Sanders et al. 1998). A discussion of the possible contamination of the FIR disk emission from an extraplanar component has been qualitatively discussed in Popescu et al. (2000b). Moreover, the effect of the cluster environment can also affect the morphology of both stellar and dust distribution, or can produce even more dramatic effects, for example by sweeping the gas and dust material and producing tail-like companions with collisionally heated grains visible in the FIR. As noted by Popescu et al. (2000a), the FIR flux density of the transient IR emission from the dust trail is predicted to rival that of the photon-heated dust in the galactic disk, and, despite the difference in heating mechanism, have similar colours (with a spectral peak in the 100-200$`\mu m`$ range). This, combined with removal of dust from the disk, and hence reduced internal extinction, will create a discrete system with brighter apparent blue magnitudes and a boosted spatially integrated IR flux density. If seen in a distant cluster, where the intracluster IR component could not be resolved from the disk component, this could create the illusion of a galaxy with an enhanced star-formation activity, even though the star-formation in the galaxy may actually be somewhat suppressed by the gas removal in reality.

Our model has been applied only to edge-on galaxies, where the scale heights of the old stellar population and old dust disk can be directly determined. However, our model will also be applicable to face-on systems where the scale heights cannot be so directly determined, making use of UV data as an additional constraint. Although our model requires resolved optical/NIR images to constrain the old stellar population and associated dust, it relies on geometry-sensitive colour information in the FIR/submm to constrain the spatial distributions of young stars and associated dust. The model will therefore be applicable to studies of cosmologically distant “normal” galaxies, which, though detectable, will be unresolved with forthcoming generations of spaceborne FIR observatories. It is to be expected that the optical-FIR-submm SEDs of these objects will differ systematically from their local universe counterparts, not only due to the presence of younger stellar populations, but also, for example, because of evolution of stellar disk thicknesses and changes in the dust abundance and composition.

SED modelling from UV to submm has an important application to interpretation of the cosmological FIR background radiation in terms of constituent galaxies. This particularly applies to the possible contribution from normal galaxies in the early universe, since these are too faint to be observed directly. The development of SED models incorporating a self consistent physical theory for the evolution of these systems may ultimately be needed for this application.

## 7 Acknowledgements

C. Popescu would like to express her gratitude to the organisers of the JENAM 2001 and AG meeting, and especially to Dr. Magdalena Stavinschi, for their invitation to give a Highlight Talk at the meeting. We are grateful to all collaborators in this project, N. Kylafis, A. Misiriotis, J. Fischera and B.F. Madore. We would also like to acknowledge E.M. Xilouris and J. Gallagher for interesting and constructive discussions.

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# STAR FORMATION HISTORY SINCE 𝑍=1.5 AS INFERRED FROM REST-FRAME ULTRAVIOLET LUMINOSITY DENSITY EVOLUTION

## 1 INTRODUCTION

A major goal of observational cosmology is to understand the star formation history of the Universe from the earliest epoch of structure formation to the present. Much recent attention has focused on determining the contribution to the global history from the most distant sources; however, the star formation history even at modest redshifts ($`z<1`$) is not well determined and has recently undergone a revision.

Early work by Madau et al. (1996) (later updated by Madau, Pozzetti, & Dickinson 1998) suggested that the global star formation as seen in the optical and ultraviolet (UV) had a strong peak around $`z=1`$ and then fell very steeply at lower redshifts. The $`z<1`$ data used in the analysis were taken from a paper by Lilly et al. (1996), who used rest-frame near-UV luminosities derived from the $`I`$-selected Canada-France Redshift Survey (CFRS, Lilly et al. 1995) to determine the comoving UV luminosity density from $`z=1`$ to the present. These authors found the evolution to be a steep function of the form $`(1+z)^4`$. However, when Treyer et al. (1998) presented the first UV-selected constraints on the local integrated luminosity density, they found that their result was well above the optically-derived estimates. Sullivan et al. (2000) subsequently tripled the Treyer et al. UV-selected sample and confirmed the higher local volume-averaged star formation rate.

Cowie, Songaila, & Barger (1999, hereafter CSB) decided to reinvestigate the rest-frame UV luminosity density evolution to $`z=1`$ using a large, extremely deep, and highly complete spectroscopic galaxy redshift survey. Their data enabled them to select objects based on the rest-frame UV magnitudes at all redshifts. The evolution found by these authors was a much shallower function of the form $`(1+z)^{1.5}`$. CSB suggested that the differences between their results and those of Lilly et al. could be accounted for by the $`I`$-band selection of the Lilly et al. sample, which required large extrapolations to obtain UV colors, and by the CFRS data not being deep enough to probe the flat segments of the luminosity function (LF), which meant that at redshifts near $`z=1`$, reliable extrapolations to total luminosity density could not be made.

In this paper, we expand on the work of CSB to more thoroughly investigate the rest-frame UV luminosity density evolution from $`z=1.5`$ to the present. Our new galaxy sample is nearly twice as large as that used by CSB, and we explore various methods for constructing the UV LFs. The outline of the paper is as follows. In § 2 we present our data sample and strategy and we investigate the $`U^{}`$ number counts and redshift distribution. We also explore the redshift-magnitude relationship for the $`U^{}`$, $`B`$, and $`V`$ passbands. In § 3 we describe how we construct rest-frame UV LFs as a function of redshift from the $`U^{}`$, $`B`$, and $`V`$ data. In § 4 we utilize these LFs to infer the evolution of the global UV luminosity density with redshift. In § 5 we summarize our conclusions. Initially, we assume a flat lambda ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{m0}}=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_{\lambda 0}=0.7`$) cosmology with $`\mathrm{H}_0=100`$ h $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$. Subsequently, we investigate the effect of an Einstein-de Sitter ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{m0}}=1.0,\mathrm{\Omega }_{\lambda 0}=0.0`$) cosmology on our results.

## 2 OBSERVATIONS

We analyzed a three passband subset ($`U^{}`$ ($`3400\pm 150`$Å), $`B`$, $`V`$) of an ongoing eight passband ($`U^{}`$, $`B`$, $`V`$, $`R`$, $`I`$, $`Z`$, $`J`$, $`HK^{}`$) Hawaii imaging survey of four $`6^{}\times 2.5^{}`$ areas crossing the Hawaii Survey Fields SSA13, SSA17, and SSA22 (Lilly, Cowie, & Gardner 1991) and the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) (Williams et al. 1996). The $`B`$ and $`V`$ images were obtained using the Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (LRIS; Oke et al. 1995) on the Keck 10 m telescopes and the UH8K CCD Mosaic Camera (Luppino 1997) on the Canada-France-Hawaii 3.6 m telescope. The $`U^{}`$ data were taken with the ORBIT CCD on the University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescope. All magnitudes were measured in 3$`\mathrm{}`$ diameter apertures and corrected to total magnitudes following the procedures described in Cowie et al. (1994).

The sources analyzed in this paper contain and extend the CSB catalogs. The total number of galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in the present $`U^{}`$, $`B`$, and $`V`$ samples are 403, 414, and 518, all to a survey limit magnitude (AB) of $`24.5`$. These numbers can be compared to those in CSB (218, 350, and 259 respectively) . Thus, our current dataset contains approximately double the number of objects in the CSB $`U^{}`$ and $`V`$ samples.

The great advantage of multiband data is that one can, for all redshifts, select galaxies based on their rest-frame UV magnitudes, thereby avoiding the uncertainties associated with selecting galaxies at longer (redder) wavelengths and then extrapolating to obtain their UV magnitudes. In addition, the depth of the current dataset allows us to construct LFs to sufficiently faint absolute magnitudes to constrain the faint-end slope. Moreover, by selecting galaxies based on their rest-frame UV magnitudes, we expect the relative shape of the inferred UV LFs to be minimally sensitive to the effect of interstellar dust; i.e., we expect the relative forms of our derived LFs (and hence the relative values of our luminosity densities) to be subject only to evolution in the amount or properties of galactic dust with redshift and not to its effect in absolute terms. (Note that any extinction due to dust in the source galaxy should not be confused with the tiny extinction corrections due to interstellar dust)

As discussed in CSB, one is free to choose the rest-frame wavelength at which to compute LFs and the UV light density. For our dataset, 2500 Å provides a sensible compromise between our wide range of redshifts and large number of galaxies in each passband.

Because there are missing or unidentified galaxies in each sample, we construct LFs by either omitting them (i.e., we assume they are unidentified because they are unusual in some way, e.g., at very high redshift), or by assuming they are distributed in redshift in exactly the same manner as the identified galaxies (i.e., we assume they are identical to the measured galaxies but have been missed for some trivial reason). It is likely that the true LF lies between these two possibilities. In subsequent sections we refer to the former case as minimal and the latter case as incompleteness-corrected. The $`U^{}`$, $`B`$, and $`V`$ samples are $`88\%`$, $`90\%`$, and $`83\%`$ complete, respectively, so the correction is not a huge factor in any case.

### 2.1 The $`U^{}`$ Sample

Figure 1 shows number counts versus apparent magnitude for our $`U^{}`$ sample. The symbols indicate the number counts in each of the four fields. We assume a 1 $`\sigma `$ Poisson uncertainty for each field. The solid line shows the best-fit to the counts for galaxies with magnitudes between $`U^{}`$ of 22.0 and 24.0 (slope of $`0.61\pm 0.06`$ and intercept at $`10.34\pm 1.49`$). The uncertainties were calculated from the field-to-field variations.

A number of groups (e.g., Williams et al. 1996; Pozzetti et al. 1998; Gardner, Brown, & Ferguson 2000) have measured deep galaxy counts at 3000 Å from the HST Hubble Deep Field imaging survey, but their counts are somewhat deeper than those presented here, so it is difficult to make a direct comparison. The sample most similar to ours was that obtained at the Palomar 5 m by Hogg et al. (1997). We overplot their data (filled diamonds) on Fig. 1 for comparison, after converting their magnitudes to $`U^{}`$AB by adding 0.79 mag. The agreement is generally good.

In Fig. 2 we show the total number of objects in our $`U^{}`$ sample versus redshift for two apparent magnitude bins. The upper panel shows the number of galaxies versus redshift for all galaxies with $`U^{}`$ between 22.5 and 23.5, and the lower panel is for galaxies with $`U^{}`$ between 23.5 and 24.5.

Wilson et al. (2001) found that a good model for the redshift distribution (at least at $`I`$ and $`V`$) is provided by

$$p(z)=0.5z^2\mathrm{exp}(z/z_0)/z_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{3}$$
(1)
where $`p(z)\times dz`$ is the probability of finding a galaxy in the redshift interval $`z+dz`$ (the mean redshift is $`\overline{z}=3z_0`$ and the median redshift is $`z_{\mathrm{median}}=2.67z_0`$). A nice property of (1) is that there is only one free parameter, the redshift scale parameter, $`z_0`$. The solid lines overlaid on Fig. 2 show the best-fits to the model ($`z_0=0.19`$ and $`z_0=0.28`$), normalized to the total number of galaxies in each sample.

### 2.2 Magnitude-Redshift Dependence

In this section we investigate the dependence of median redshift on apparent magnitude and wavelength. In Fig. 3 we show redshift versus magnitude for the $`U^{}`$ sample. The symbols denote the field in which the galaxy was observed. Note that the SSA13, SSA22, and HDF fields are $`90\%`$ complete to an AB limiting magnitude of 24.5, and the SSA17 field is similarly complete to 23.5.

Table 1 quantifies Fig. 3, giving the median redshift with $`\pm `$ 1 $`\sigma `$ Poisson uncertainties (Gehrels 1986) and the number of objects in each half-magnitude interval as a function of apparent magnitude. We note that the median redshift obtained from the parameterized fit to the data (Eq. 1) for the $`22.5<U^{}23.5`$ interval is 0.51, and for the $`23.5<U^{}24.5`$ interval, 0.75. The values are in good agreement with those calculated directly in Table 1.

In Table 1 we also calculate the median redshift for the $`B`$ and $`V`$ samples. Median redshift as a function of apparent magnitude can potentially be used to constrain galaxy evolution models, e.g. if we compare with the $`B`$-band predictions from the merger model proposed by Carlberg (1992, his Table 2), we find that his median redshift values of $`0.44`$ for $`B=23`$ and $`0.55`$ for $`B=24`$ are lower than our values, suggesting that more pure luminosity evolution might have occurred than was proposed in his model.

## 3 THE REST-FRAME ULTRAVIOLET LUMINOSITY FUNCTION

For any given galaxy, $`i`$, at redshift, $`z`$, the equation relating the absolute and apparent magnitudes is given by

$$M_i^{2500}=m_i5\mathrm{log}d_L(z_i)25+2.5\mathrm{log}(1+z)+dK(z_i)$$
(2)
where $`m`$ is the observed magnitude at the redshifted wavelength and $`d_L(z)`$ is the luminosity distance in $`h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$. $`dK(z)`$ is given by

$$dK(z)=2.5\mathrm{log}_{10}\frac{f_\nu [2500\mathrm{\AA }\times (1+z)]}{f_\nu [2500\mathrm{\AA }\times (1+z_c)]}$$
(3)
where $`f_\nu `$ is the spectral energy distribution of the galaxy and $`z_c`$ is the redshift corresponding to the center of the band. $`dK(z)`$ is a differential $`K`$-correction to account for each sample containing a range of redshifts and hence a range of rest-frame wavelengths around 2500 Å. It is generally small and is obtained by interpolation from the neighboring passbands.

### 3.1  Luminosity Functions from the $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ Method

We used two methods to construct LFs: the traditional $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ method described by Schmidt (1968), Felten (1976), and Ellis et al. (1996) and a new method recently suggested by Page & Carrera (2000). In the $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ method, the number density of galaxies in the redshift range $`[z_1,z_2]`$ with absolute magnitude $`M`$ is given by

$$\varphi (M)dM=\frac{1}{V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)}$$
(4)
where the sum is over the galaxies in the magnitude interval $`M\pm dM/2`$. $`V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)`$ is the maximum total comoving volume within which each galaxy (as defined by its apparent magnitude and redshift) would remain detectable within survey limits. The uncertainty for each magnitude interval is conventionally calculated from

$$\sigma =\left[\frac{1}{(V_{\mathrm{max}}(M))^2}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}$$
(5)
(Marshall 1985; Boyle, Shanks, & Peterson 1988). This expression weights each observation by its contribution to the sum. However, it assumes Gaussian statistics, which is not ideal for bins at the bright or faint end of the LF where only a small number of objects contribute to the sum.

Figure 4 shows the 2500 Å rest-frame LF for our three redshift bins: $`z=0.20.5`$, constructed from the $`U^{}`$ sample (upper panel), $`z=0.61.0`$, constructed from the $`B`$ sample (center panel), and $`z=1.01.5`$, constructed from the $`V`$ sample (lower panel). At redshifts $`z=0.35\pm 0.15`$, $`0.80\pm 0.20`$ and $`1.25\pm 0.25`$, the $`U^{}`$ (3400Å), B (4500Å) and V (5500Å) samples correspond to rest-wavelengths of $`2519_{253}^{+314}`$, $`2500_{250}^{+312}`$ and $`2444_{244}^{+306}`$ Å. The open circles denote the minimal function, and the solid circles denote the incompleteness-corrected function. The number of galaxies used in the construction of each LF was 121 ($`U^{}`$), 119 ($`B`$), and 59 ($`V`$).

### 3.2  Luminosity Functions from the PC Method

The Page & Carrera (2000) method is very similar to the $`V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)`$ method in that it results in a binned differential LF, but the advantage is that it more accurately determines the LF at the faint end. The maximum redshift at which any galaxy may be found is a constantly varying function determined by the flux limit of the survey. The $`V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)`$ method assumes that the redshift is a constant for any given absolute magnitude bin. However, by dividing each magnitude bin into a series of steps, calculating $`V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)`$ for each interval, and then integrating over the magnitude bin, one can obtain a more precise estimate of the maximum volume to which each object could be observed in the survey. Estimates of $`\varphi (M)`$ obtained by either of the two methods should agree at the bright end of the LF where objects are much brighter than the flux limit. The two estimates should also agree in the case of very fine magnitude intervals, such that the widths of the magnitude bins tend to zero.

We denote the LFs obtained using the $`V_{\mathrm{PC}}`$ method by diamonds in Fig. 4. The open triangles show the minimal function and the solid triangles show the incompleteness-corrected function. The diamonds have been offset from the circles of the $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ method by 0.15 mag for clarity. The $`\pm `$ 1 $`\sigma `$ Poisson uncertainties (Gehrels 1986) in the LFs are appropriate for small numbers of objects per magnitude interval. The LFs obtained from the two methods are very similar.

Both $`V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)`$ and $`V_{\mathrm{PC}}(M)`$ give unbiased estimates of $`\varphi (M)`$ only if galaxy clustering can be neglected. It is easy to imagine how a nearby excess of clustering could bias the estimator: such an excess of intrinsically faint galaxies would cause the LF to be too steep at the faint end. Although the effects of clustering are mostly of concern in pencil-beam surveys, we tested two maximum likelihood alternatives, which should be less sensitive to clustering, on our $`U^{}`$ sample. These were the Schechter fit estimator suggested by Sandage, Tammann, & Yahil (1979) and the stepwise estimator of Efstathiou, Ellis, & Peterson (1988). In all cases, the LFs were very similar to those obtained using $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$, giving us confidence in the robustness of our results. We also note that the LFs in this paper were obtained using code written independently from that used in CSB.

### 3.3 Schechter Parameterization

We then assumed that each LF could be parameterized by a Schechter function

$$\varphi (M)dM=k\varphi ^{}e^{k(\alpha +1)(M^{}M)}e^{e^{k(M^{}M)}}dM$$
(6)
where $`k=\frac{2}{5}\mathrm{ln}10`$ (Schechter 1976). We solved for the best-fit Schechter parameters assuming two fixed faint-end slopes that likely bound the range of faint-end slopes : $`\alpha =1.0`$ and $`\alpha =1.5`$. Table 2 shows the best-fit absolute magnitude at the knee, $`M^{}`$, and normalization, $`\varphi ^{}`$ for these values of fixed faint-end slope. In Fig. 5 the open circles again show the minimal function; the solid circles the incompleteness-corrected function assuming a flat lambda cosmology as in Figure 4. Overlaid on Fig. 5 are the best-fitting Schechter functions assuming $`\alpha =1.0`$ or $`\alpha =1.5`$. The solid portion of the line shows the magnitude range utilized in the fit.

### 3.4 Effect of Cosmology

We then investigated how one’s choice of cosmology affects the LFs. We reconstructed LFs again using the $`V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)`$ method but this time assuming an Einstein-de Sitter cosmology. For comparison, in Fig. 5, the open triangles show the minimal function; the solid triangles the incompleteness-corrected function assuming this cosmology. As in Figure 4, the triangles have been offset by 0.15 mag for clarity.

Table 3 shows the best-fit Schechter values of absolute magnitude at the knee ($`M^{}`$) and normalization ($`\varphi ^{}`$) for the Einstein-de Sitter cosmology (again assuming fixed faint-end slopes of $`1.0`$ and $`1.5`$). From Figure 5 and from Tables 2 and 3, it is clear that the larger distance/volumes associated with a cosmological constant cause $`M^{}`$ and $`\varphi ^{}`$ to decrease compared to the best-fit parameters in the Einstein-de Sitter case.

## 4 REST-FRAME UV LUMINOSITY DENSITY EVOLUTION

The LFs in § 3 can now be used to calculate the rest-frame ultraviolet luminosity densities, $``$, with redshift. One approach is to choose a magnitude limit and to sum the LF over the magnitude bins directly using

$$_{\mathrm{Direct}}=4.4\times 10^{20}\frac{10^{0.4M}}{V_{\mathrm{max}}(M)}h\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Hz}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3$$
(7)
An alternative approach, which we adopt, is to choose a faint-end slope (we use either $`\alpha =1.0`$ or $`\alpha =1.5`$) and to integrate the LF analytically using the best-fit Schechter parameters from Tables 2 and 3

$$_{\mathrm{Schechter}}=_0^{\mathrm{}}L\varphi (L)𝑑L=L_{}\varphi _{}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\alpha +2)$$
(8)
giving

$$_{\mathrm{Schechter}}=4.4\times 10^{20}\times 10^{0.4M_{}}\varphi _{}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\alpha +2)h$$
(9)
in units of $`\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Hz}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ . Although this method involves integrating over all luminosities, fainter galaxies have a rapidly decreasing contribution to the total luminosity density, and thus the two methods give similar results. We calculate the luminosity density for both the minimal and incompleteness-corrected cases assuming firstly a faint-end slope of $`\alpha =1.0`$ and then $`\alpha =1.5`$. The resulting luminosity densities for the flat lambda and Einstein de-Sitter cosmologies are shown in Table 4.

Luminosity density evolution with redshift is often parameterized as a power-law, $`(1+z)^\beta `$. In Fig. 6, we show $`\mathrm{log}_{10}`$(luminosity density) versus $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(1+z)`$ using the values from Table 4. As in Fig. 5, we use circles to denote the the flat lambda cosmology and triangles to denote the Einstein-de Sitter cosmology. The open symbols denote the minimal case , and the solid symbols denote the incompleteness-corrected case.

We solved for the best-fit power-law exponent, $`\beta `$, in each case. We used the mean of the luminosity densities obtained assuming faint end slopes of $`\alpha =1.0`$ and $`\alpha =1.5`$ as our best estimate, with the extreme values as estimates of the uncertainty. Table 5 gives the best-fit exponent and uncertainty as a function of completeness-correction and cosmology. For the flat lambda cosmology we found a best-fit exponent of $`1.44\pm 0.63`$ in the minimal case and a best-fit exponent of $`1.95\pm 0.65`$ in the incompleteness-corrected case. For the Einstein de-Sitter cosmology we found a best-fit exponent of $`2.22\pm 0.62`$ in the minimal case and a best-fit exponent of $`2.54\pm 0.62`$ in the incompleteness-corrected case. Thus, depending on the choice of completeness correction, we conclude that luminosity density evolves as $`(1+z)^{1.7\pm 1.0}`$ in the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{m0}}=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_{\lambda 0}=0.7`$ cosmology and as $`(1+z)^{2.4\pm 1.0}`$ in the Einstein de-Sitter cosmology. The two solid lines overlaid on Fig. 6 show the best-fit solutions for each cosmology in the incompleteness-corrected case. The Einstein de-Sitter value is slightly steeper than that obtained by CSB ($`1.3`$ for $`\alpha =1.0`$ and $`1.7`$ for $`\alpha =1.5`$) but consistent within the uncertainties.

Finally, in Fig. 7 we compare our values of luminosity density to the values obtained by other surveys. Other groups have previously assumed an Einstein-de Sitter cosmology and therefore should be compared to the triangles from Fig. 6. To convert the low-redshift value obtained by Sullivan et al. (2000) (from the FOCA2000 balloon-born survey) we used their best-fit Schechter values (their Table 3) and converted their magnitudes to AB magnitudes using a 2.29 mag offset; we also converted from a rest-frame of 2000 Å to 2500 Å using a $`\lambda ^{1.1}`$ power-law, as suggested by Fig. 4 of CSB. As mentioned in § 1, the Sullivan et al. UV-selected sample results in a higher value of integrated luminosity density for the local universe than previous optically-derived estimates.

In comparing with the surveys of Pascarelle, Lanzetta, & Fern$`\stackrel{´}{a}`$ndez-Soto (1998), Connolly et al. (1997), and Lilly et al. (1996), we again converted to a rest-frame of 2500 Å using a $`\lambda ^{1.1}`$ power-law. We also converted to $`H_0`$ = 100 $`h`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, where necessary. Connolly et al. and Pascarelle et al. both calculate their luminosity density from the small Hubble Deep Field North-proper (HDF-N) using photometric redshift estimates. The results of Connolly et al. are more directly comparable to ours since they measure at a rest-frame of 2800 Å whereas Pascarelle et al. measure at a rest-frame of 1500 Å. Connolly et al. assume a faint end slope of $`\alpha =1.3`$. Both obtain somewhat higher luminosity densities than do we, although the values are consistent within the uncertainties. As discussed at length in the Appendix to CSB, much of the discrepancy between our results and Connolly et al. and Pascarelle et al. may be attributable to the slightly higher number counts in the HDF-N versus other fields.

Lilly et al. calculated their luminosity density from the Canada-France Redshift Survey, and found a best-fit exponent of $`\beta =3.9\pm 0.75`$. As discussed in § 1, this is somewhat steeper then the value of $`\beta =2.5\pm 1.0`$ that we obtained. From Fig. 7, we conclude that the steeper value obtained by Lilly et al. is most likely due to a combination of their $`z1`$ luminsity density estimate being rather higher than ours, and their use of a low (optically-derived) estimate of the local luminsity density.

In closing, it is important to add one caveat concerning the effect of interstellar dust on our conclusions. In this paper we assumed that any extinction would suppress UV emission uniformly. This corresponds to applying a constant correction factor to the LFs, and does not affect the luminosity density slope inferred from Fig. 7. Some authors have suggested that extinction may be luminosity dependent (Adelberger & Steidel 2000; Sullivan et al. 2000; Hopkins et al. 2001). If this is the case, the higher redshift luminosity functions containing greater contributions from brighter galaxies would see larger extinction corrections, possibly flattening the slope observed in Fig. 7 from a steeper value. The satisfactory resolution of the complex role of dust and the validity of these claims will require further investigation with larger samples.

## 5 SUMMARY

We investigated the evolution of the universal rest-frame luminosity density from $`z=1.5`$ to the present. The availability of both multicolor data and highly complete spectroscopy enabled us to select galaxies based on their rest-frame ultraviolet color, minimizing potential sources of error such as large $`K`$-corrections and interstellar dust. Our large, deep sample allowed us to constrain the faint-end of the luminosity function with confidence, even at the highest redshift interval of $`z=1.25\pm 0.25`$. Assuming analytic Schechter forms for our luminosity functions and using likely extremal faint-end slope values of $`\alpha =1.0`$ and $`\alpha =1.5`$, we constrained the relative luminosity density as a function of redshift. We concluded that, in an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{m0}}=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_{\lambda 0}=0.7`$ \[Einstein-de Sitter\] Universe, the evolution in the luminosity density follows a $`(1+z)^{1.7\pm 1.0}`$ \[$`(1+z)^{2.4\pm 1.0}`$\] slope from $`z=1.5`$ to the present, implying that rather more star formation has occurred in recent times than was previously suggested.

We gratefully acknowledge support from NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HF-01117.01-A (AJB) awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA under contract NAS 5-26555, the University of Wisconsin Research Committee with funds granted by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (AJB), NSF grants AST-0084847 (AJB, PI) and AST-0084816 (LLC), SAO contract SV4-64008 (DJB) and NASA contract NAS8-39073 (DJB).


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# Radiative stability of neutrino-mass textures

## Abstract

Neutrino-mass textures proposed at high-scales are known to be unstable against radiative corrections especially for nearly degenerate eigen values. Within the renormalization group constraints we find a mechanism in a class of gauge theories which guarantees reproduction of any high-scale texture at low energies with radiative stability. We also show how the mechanism explains solar and atmospheric neutrino anomalies through the bimaximal texture at high scale.

I. Introduction: A major challenge to particle physics at present is the theoretical understanding of experimentally observed neutrino anomalies. This has led to suggestions of many interesting models and mass textures with hierarchial or degenerate eigen values 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4 ; 5 ; 6 ; 7 ; 8 . Whereas the observed mixing between quarks are small, experimental indications appear to favor maximal mixings in the neutrino sector. A possible mechanism to explain large neutrino mixings at low-energies starting from small high-scale mixings similar to quarks could be through radiative magnification for quasidegenerate neutrinos 9 ; 10 .

An outstanding problem with bimaximal neutrino-mass textures with degenerate eigen values is the instability of the masses and mixing angles due to radiative corrections which spoils their prospects for the neutrinoless-double-beta decay and the neutrino anomalies 10 ; 11 ; 12 . While investigating radiative stability the usual procedure has been to assume the bimaximal texture to be associated with a single 5-dim operator through see-saw mechanism with SM or MSSM as gauge theories at lower scales 9 ; 10 ; 11 ; 12 .

Using renormalization group constraints in this letter we show that it is possible to reproduce any high-scale mass texture at low scale $`(\mu =M_Z)`$ with high degree of accuracy leading to stable evolution of the physically relevant Majorana-neutrino-mass matrix. The models where the mechanism operates consists of two component matrices contributing to the resultant Majorana-neutrino mass texture at the highest scale. It is quite interesting to note that the mechanism operates successfully in 2HDM and also with SM and MSSM in the presence of type II see-saw mechanism probing left-right model (LRM) and $`SO(10)`$ GUT as prospective high-scale theories 6 ; 13 ; 14 . We also show how experimental data on solar and atmospheric neutrino anomalies are explained through the bimaximal texture.

II. The mechanism in 2HDM: In the SM, MSSM, and 2HDM, the Majorana-neutrino mass in the flavor basis originates from 5-dim operators generated at the lepton-number-breaking scale $`(\mu _0M_N,t_0=\mathrm{ln}M_N)`$ through see-saw mechanism. In the SM there is only one Higgs doublet $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ with VEV $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=v/\sqrt{2}`$ and one operator $`(=K^{(SM)})`$ contributing to the Majorana mass $`m^{(SM)}=(1/4)K^{(SM)}v^2`$. In the MSSM, although there are two Higgs doublets, there is only one neutrino-mass operator contributing to the neutrino-mass matrix due to the coupling of up type doublet with $`m^{(MSSM)}=(1/4)K^{(MSSM)}v_u^2`$. In a class of 2HDM there are two doublets, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_u`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_d`$, with VEVs $`v_u/\sqrt{2}=v\mathrm{sin}\beta /\sqrt{2}`$, $`v_d/\sqrt{2}=v\mathrm{cos}\beta /\sqrt{2}`$. But, unlike SM or MSSM, there are two neutrino-mass operators, $`K^I`$ and $`K^{II}`$, and two matrices $`m^I`$ and $`m^{II}`$ which add up to generate the physically relevant Majorana-neutrino-mass matrix 10 , $`m=(1/4)\left(K^Iv_u^2+K^{II}v_d^2\right)m^I+m^{II}`$. We use the renormalization scheme where the runnings of $`v_u`$, $`v_d`$, and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ are ignored. Then the relevant RGEs and their one-loop solutions for $`\mu <M_N(t=\mathrm{ln}\mu <t_0)`$ are,

$`16\pi ^2{\displaystyle \frac{dm^I}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left\{3g_2^2+2\lambda _2+2\mathrm{T}\mathrm{r}\left(3Y_U^{}Y_U\right)\right\}m^I+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[\left(Y_E^{}Y_E\right)m^I+m^I\left(Y_E^{}Y_E\right)^T\right]+2\lambda _3m^{II},`$
$`16\pi ^2{\displaystyle \frac{dm^{II}}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left\{3g_2^2+2\lambda _1+2\mathrm{T}\mathrm{r}\left(3Y_D^{}Y_D+Y_E^{}Y_E\right)\right\}m^{II}{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\left[\left(Y_E^{}Y_E\right)m^{II}+m^{II}\left(Y_E^{}Y_E\right)^T\right]+2\lambda _3^{}m^I,`$
$`m_{ij}^I(t)`$ $`=`$ $`a_{ij}^I(t)m_{ij}^I(0),a_{ij}^I(t)=I_{g_2}^{\frac{3}{2}}I_{\lambda _2}I_{top}^3\left(I_iI_j\right)^{\frac{1}{4}}R_{ij},`$ (1)
$`m_{ij}^{II}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`a_{ij}^{II}(t)m_{ij}^{II}(0),a_{ij}^{II}(t)=I_{g_2}^{\frac{3}{2}}I_{\lambda _1}I_b^3I_\tau \left(I_iI_j\right)^{\frac{3}{4}}\stackrel{~}{R}_{ij}.`$ (2)
Here $`m_{ij}^{I,II}(0)=m_{ij}^{I,II}(t_0)`$,

$`I_l`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{t_0}^t}h_l^2𝑑t\right),(l=e,\mu ,\tau ,top,b)`$
$`I_{g_k}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{t_0}^t}g_k^2𝑑t\right),(k=1,2)`$
$`I_{\lambda _k}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{t_0}^t}\lambda _k𝑑t\right),(k=1,2)`$
$`R_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{t_0}^t}\left(m^{II}m_{}^{I}{}_{}{}^{1}\right)_{ij}\lambda _3𝑑t\right],`$
$`\stackrel{~}{R}_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{t_0}^t}\left(m^Im_{}^{II}{}_{}{}^{1}\right)_{ij}\lambda _3^{}𝑑t\right].`$ (3)
Any texture at the highest scale for the physically relevant Majorana-neutrino-mass matrix

$$m(0)=m^I(0)+m^{II}(0),$$
(4)
never determines both the matrices $`m^I(0)`$ and $`m^{II}(0)`$. Given any element $`m_{ij}(0)`$ at $`t_0`$, one of the component elements, $`m_{ij}^I(0)`$ or $`m_{ij}^{II}(0)`$, remains completely undetermined at that scale. Then (1)-(2) show that the same matrix, $`m^I(t)`$ or $`m^{II}(t)`$, is undetermined at all lower scales too. This is in clear contrast to the cases in conventional analyses (CA) with SM or MSSM where there is only one $`m(0)`$ at $`\mu =M_N`$ and the texture gives all the elements of $`m_{ij}(0)`$ and $`m_{ij}(t)`$ 10 ; 11 . Now we impose the stability criterion that the texture is exactly reproduced at the lowest scale by demanding that

$$m_{ij}(t_Z)=m_{ij}^I(t_Z)+m_{ij}^{II}(t_Z)m_{ij}(0).$$
(5)
Since $`a^I(t_z)`$ and $`a^{II}(t_Z)`$ are known in terms of the model parameters, solutions of (4) and (5) now determine both $`m^I(0)`$ and $`m^{II}(0)`$ in terms of the high-scale neutrino-mass texture, $`m(0)`$,

$`m_{ij}^I(0)`$ $`=`$ $`m_{ij}(0)\left(a_{ij}^{II}(t_Z)1\right)/d_{ij},`$
$`m_{ij}^{II}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`m_{ij}(0)\left(1a_{ij}^I(t_Z)\right)/d_{ij},`$
$`d_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`a_{ij}^{II}(t_Z)a_{ij}^I(t_Z).`$ (6)
These parameters of the component matrices, determined from the boundary conditions (4) and (5) are expected to guarantee reproduction of the high-scale texture at $`M_Z`$ when $`m^I(t)`$ and $`m^{II}(t)`$ are evolved through (1)-(3).

As an example we study RG evolution of the bimaximal texture with triply degenerate masses at $`M_N10^{13}`$ GeV 4

$$m(0)=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}0& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}& \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\\ \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}& \frac{1}{2}& \frac{1}{2}\\ \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}& \frac{1}{2}& \frac{1}{2}\end{array}\right]m_0.$$
(7)
Using, $`\lambda _1=0.16,\lambda _2=1.13,\lambda _30.011`$ 10 , and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =40`$ we obtain $`I_{\lambda _1}0.95`$, $`I_{\lambda _2}0.6976`$, $`I_{top}=0.833213`$, $`I_b=0.935023`$, $`I_\tau =0.950882`$, $`I_\mu =0.999832`$, $`I_e=0.999999`$, $`I_{g_2}=0.478614`$ at $`\mu =M_Z`$. We compute $`a^I(t_Z)`$ and $`a^{II}(t_Z)`$, and, hence, $`m^I(0)`$ and $`m^{II}(0)`$ shown in Table 1 as input parameters. The solutions for $`m^I(t)`$ and $`m^{II}(t)`$ are obtained through (1)-(3)and the elements of the Majorana-neutrino-mass matrix $`m_{ij}(t)`$ are obtained as their sum for all $`t<t_0`$. In Fig. 1 we have shown the radiative corrections for $`m_{\tau \tau }(t)`$. For comparison we have shown the results of the conventional analysis as SM (CA) and MSSM (CA) for which there is only one matrix at the highest scale. The maximum radiative correction of the matrix elements in 2HDM using the present mechanism is found to be only 3-4% as compared to 30-40% in the SM (CA) or MSSM (CA). Whereas the maximal corrections in SM (CA) or MSSM (CA) occur at $`\mu =M_Z`$, in our case they occur with substantially reduced magnitude at intermediate scales. NonSUSY SM and 2HDM have been successfully embedded in $`SO(10)`$ with single intermediate symmetries 15 .

III. Implementation in SM or MSSM: We note that the present mechanism also operates in SM and MSSM if they originate from high-scale theories which predict two component matrices at $`M_N`$. The popular see-saw mechanism which has its natural origin in LRM and $`SO(10)`$ contains the second contribution and leads to the two matrices in type II see-saw formula with $`m^I=m^{\mathrm{SM}}(m^{\mathrm{MSSM}})`$ and $`m^{II}fv^2/M_N(fv_u^2/M_N)`$ when SM (MSSM) is obtained after symmetry breaking of LRM or $`SO(10)`$ 1 ; 6 ; 7 ; 8 ; 14 ; 15 ; 16 . Here $`f`$ is the Majorana type Yukawa coupling of the neutrino. The mechanism also operates in SM or MSSM when there are other types of contributions 16 . The problem of obtaining a specific texture for $`m(0)`$, or $`m^I(0)`$ and $`m^{II}(0)`$, may call for appending specific flavor symmetries to $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R\times U(1)_{BL}\times SU(3)_C`$ or $`SO(10)`$. Assuming such possibilities we derive the constraints on $`m^I(0)`$ amd $`m^{II}(0)`$ resulting from the bimaximal texture for $`m(0)`$ and its radiative stability. The RG evolutions of the standard see-saw term is the same as in SM or MSSM as shown through $`a^I(t)`$ in (8)-(9) below. But those for $`m^{II}(t)`$ occur due to loop-mediation of the standard-weak-Higgs doublet and gauge bosons (plus superpartners) with the LH neutrinos alone. We derive them as

$`16\pi ^2{\displaystyle \frac{dm^{II}}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(c^{(1)}g_1^2+c^{(2)}g_2^2\right)m^{II}`$
$`+c^{(3)}\left[\left(Y_E^{}Y_E\right)m^{II}+m^{II}\left(Y_E^{}Y_E\right)^T\right],`$
where $`c^{(i)}=(9/10,3/2,3/2)`$ for SM, but $`c^{(i)}=(9/5,9/2,1)`$ for MSSM. In the notations of (1)-(2) we obtain
SM

$`a_{ij}^I(t)`$ $`=`$ $`I_{g_2}^{\frac{3}{2}}I_\lambda I_{top}^3I_b^3I_\tau \left(I_iI_j\right)^{\frac{3}{4}},`$
$`a_{ij}^{II}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`I_{g_1}^{\frac{9}{20}}I_{g_2}^{\frac{3}{4}}\left(I_iI_j\right)^{\frac{3}{4}},`$ (8)
MSSM

$`a_{ij}^I(t)`$ $`=`$ $`I_{g_1}^{\frac{3}{5}}I_{g_2}^3I_{top}^3\left(I_iI_j\right)^{\frac{1}{2}},`$
$`a_{ij}^{II}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`I_{g_1}^{\frac{9}{10}}I_{g_2}^{\frac{9}{4}}\left(I_iI_j\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}.`$ (9)
Then using (4)-(6) we obtain the initial values of $`m^{I,II}(0)`$ and, hence, solutions for $`m_{ij}(t)`$ for $`\mu =M_Z`$$`M_N`$ exhibiting stability of all the matrix elements of $`m(t)`$ under radiative corrections. The elements of the component matrices for the two cases are also shown in Table 1. In Fig. 1 we have plotted $`m_{\tau \tau }(t)`$ in comparison to conventional analyses. As against the maximal 30-40% radiative corrections in SM (CA) and MSSM (CA) occurring at $`\mu =M_Z`$, they are only 3-4% in SM and 1.5% in MSSM which occur at intermediate scales in the present analysis. Among all the three models, the minimum radiative corrections upto 1.5% is found to occur in MSSM.

IV. Fitting the neutrino anomalies: When the bimaximal texture is exactly reproduced at $`M_Z`$, one way to explain neutrino anomalies could be through threshold effects 17 . But here ignoring threshold effects we show how the present mechanism permits matching of the observed solar (LAMSW) and atmospheric neutrino anomalies starting from the bimaximal texture with degenerate mass eigen values at the highest scale. Using quasidegenerate neutrinos with masses $`m_1=0.2`$ eV, $`m_2=0.200045`$ eV, $`m_3=0.2075`$ eV which are spread around $`m_0=0.2`$ eV, the mixing angles suitable for LAMSW with $`s_3=0.6946`$ and atmospheric neutrino oscillations with $`s_1=0.6950`$, it is straight forward to construct the mass matrix consistent with the experimental data

$$m^{(e)}(t_Z)=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill 0.044716& \hfill 0.722025& \hfill 0.690426\\ \hfill 0.722025& \hfill 0.501718& \hfill 0.477908\\ \hfill 0.690426& \hfill 0.477908& \hfill 0.544506\end{array}\right]m_0.$$
(10)
Although we have used $`s_2=0`$, the mechanism is found to work for other values consistent with CHOOZ bound 18 . Similarly the mechanism also works with other values of $`m_00.11.0`$ eV. Within the RG-constraints, the high scale texture can match the experimentally observed anomalies provided $`m_{ij}(0)`$ in (5) and (6) is replaced by $`m_{ij}^{(e)}(t_Z)`$ leading to

$`m_{ij}^I(0)`$ $`=`$ $`\left(a_{ij}^{II}(t_Z)m_{ij}(0)m_{ij}^{(e)}(t_Z)\right)/d_{ij},`$
$`m_{ij}^{II}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`\left(m_{ij}^{(e)}(t_Z)a_{ij}^I(t_Z)m_{ij}(0)\right)/d_{ij}.`$ (11)
In Fig. 1 the curves 2HDM(e), MSSM(e) and SM(e) represent the result of fitting the data through the high scale bimaximal texture given in (7) and $`m^{(e)}(t_Z)`$ given in (10) using 2HDM, MSSM and SM, respectively. We note that similar RG-stability also holds approximately for certain other elements depending upon the exact values of $`s_1`$ and $`s_3`$. But the radiative corrections are found to be larger if the difference between $`s_1`$ and $`s_3`$ is larger. Similar curves can be plotted for other elements also.

V. Conclusion: The present mechanism demonstrates how to evade RG-constraints on neutrino-mass textures in conventional analyses. It operates in a class of gauge theories leading to 2HDM, SM or MSSM where two component matrices contribute to the physically relevant Majorana-neutrino mass at the highest scale. Once a resultant texture is generated using suitable flavor symmetries at the highest scale, this mechanism determines the two unknown matrices at the highest scale which ensure its RG-stability at all lower scales or its matching with the experimental data. The mechanism can be applied to reproduce any high-scale texture at low energies with any desired degree of stability including higher order corrections in (5). It is quite interesting that the stability criteria operate in the presence of type II see-saw mechanism and probe into models including left-right gauge theories and $`SO(10)`$ as prospective high-scale theories. The textures for component matrices derived from the stability condition sets considerable constraint on future model building with flavor symmetry.

###### Acknowledgements.

The work of M.K.P. is supported by Project No. SP/S2/K-30/98 and the work of C.R.D. is supported by Project No. 98/37/9/BRNS-Cell/731 of the Government of India.