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# The Reddest Quasars II. A gravitationally-lensed FeLoBAL quasar

## 1 Introduction

We are currently conducting a survey for very red objects selected using the Two-micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; Kleinmann et al. 1994) and the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-centimeters survey (FIRST; Becker, White & Helfand 1995; White et al. 1997 ). We select stellar infrared objects coincident with FIRST radio sources which lack (or have only faint) counterparts on the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates. To date we have examined about 100 candidate red quasars, most using Keck or Lick spectroscopy. Of these, $`13`$ have optical spectra characteristic of $`z>0.5`$ quasars reddened by dust (final classification will need to await near-infrared spectroscopy as broad lines sometimes appear in the near-infrared where the extinction to the quasar broad line region is lower). In a previous paper (Gregg et al. 2002) we reported the discovery of two dust-reddened quasars discovered as part of this survey – FIRST J013435.6-093102 and FIRST J073820.1+275045 – one of which (J0134-0931) is gravitationally lensed (see also Winn et al. ). In this paper we describe the recent discovery of a second gravitationally-lensed system, FIRST J100424.9+122922 (hereafter J1004+1229). This quasar is reddened by a combination of dust and extreme, low ionization broad absorption in the rest-frame ultraviolet, making it a member of the rare sub-class of low-ionization broad absorption line quasars, dubbed “FeLoBALs” by Becker et al. (1997), as much of the absorption is due strong absorption from metastable Fe II (Hazard et al. 1987; Becker et al. 1997).

There are two main hypotheses concerning the nature of broad absorption line quasars (BALs). One is that most quasars possess BAL flows, but we only see them if the quasars are viewed at a particular angle to the line of sight which grazes a torus of gas around the nucleus (hereafter the “orientation hypothesis”, e.g. Weymann et al. 1991). The other, which applies particularly for the case of the low-ionisation BALs \[LoBALs\], is that BALs are quasars at an early stage in their evolution (hereafter the “youth hypothesis”, e.g. Voit, Weymann & Korista 1993). Recently, support for the youth hypothesis has come both from an analysis of the radio properties of BALs in FIRST (Becker et al. 2000), which indicates a range of orientations can produce BAL quasars, and also an apparent association of BALs with infrared-luminous quasars having hosts with merging morphologies and host spectra with “post-starburst” features (Canalizo & Stockton 2001). A further, but more controversial, hint that BALs may represent a stage in the life cycle of a quasar is that BALs may have steep intrinsic X-ray spectral slopes (Mathur et al. 2001; but see also Gallagher et al. 2001 who argue that the X-ray spectral slopes of BALs are not significantly steeper than those of normal quasars). Steep X-ray slopes may be connected with high accretion rates relative to the Eddington limit (Laor et al. 1997), so if BALs do indeed have steeper X-ray slopes this would suggest a link between high accretion rates and the BAL phenomenon. If it is assumed that high accretion rates are typical in the early life of a quasar, perhaps because the supply of fuel capable of falling into the black hole is greatest just after the triggering event, then a consistent picture emerges in which BAL flows are a symptom of high accretion rates produced as radiation pressure from a young quasar close to the Eddington limit pushes away excess material.

The first FeLoBAL to be identified was LBQS 0059-2735 (Hazard et al. 1987). Since then five more have been found in the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey (FBQS) (Becker et al. 1997; 2000). These objects are overlooked in quasar surveys based on UV/optical color or objective prism selection, not only because of their extreme absorption features and lack of prominent emission lines, but also because, like other LoBALs, they tend to be more heavily reddened by dust than the normal quasar population (Sprayberry & Foltz 1992). Like normal BALs, few are very radio-loud, so they do not appear in surveys with high radio flux density limits either. Quasar surveys based on the FIRST radio survey, are, however, better suited to finding such objects in significant numbers, because of the faint radio flux limit and the lack of the necessity for candidate selection based on exceptionally blue colors.

For our other FIRST/2MASS gravitational lens, J0134-0931, we were unable to determine whether the reddening arose predominately in the immediate environment of the quasar, or in the lensing galaxy. Determining the source of the reddening (and extinction) is critical, however: if heavy reddening by lenses is commonplace, then many gravitationally lensed systems may be missing from optically-based lens surveys. If, on the other hand, the reddening is in the host, then many red quasars may be missing from current quasar surveys, with important implications for attempts to match the mass accreted onto black holes during the “quasar epoch” to the masses of black holes in galaxies today (e.g. Merritt & Ferrarese 2001). An association between BAL quasars and gravitational lensing was noted by Chartas (2000), suggesting that reddening in the hosts usually dominates, but examples of lensed quasars reddened by their lenses are also known \[B0218+357 (e.g. Menten & Reid 1996), and PKS 1830-211 (e.g. Wiklind & Combes 1996)\].

Our infrared imaging and optical and infrared spectroscopy demonstrate conclusively that J1004+1229 is a lensed FeLoBAL and allow us to derive the basic quantities of the lensing system and also investigate the nature of the lensing galaxy and quasar, as detailed in Sections 2-4. J1004+1229 is the second gravitationally lensed, $`z>0.5`$ red quasar found in our survey. This lensing rate (2/13) is much larger than higher that for the overall quasar population, though the statistics are poor so far. In Section 5 we model the effects of lensing and reddening on the optical and near-infrared selection of quasars, attempting to account for this apparently high lensing rate of reddened quasars.

We assume a cosmology with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7,H_0=60\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, unless otherwise stated.

## 2 Observations

Matching of FIRST and 2MASS showed that the $`K^{^{}}=14.5`$ 2MASS source corresponding to J1004+1229 is 0.3 arcsec from the 12mJy FIRST radio source (compared to estimated rms position errors of 0.2 arscec in 2-MASS and 0.5 arcsec in FIRST), but that this object was not present on second-generation digitised sky survey plates to a limit of $`R20.8`$. In this Section, we describe observations of J1004+1229 in the radio, near-infrared and optical bands. Broad band magnitudes and radio flux densities for the system are listed in Table 1.

### 2.1 Spectroscopy

J1004+1229 was initially identified as an FeLoBAL in a Keck ESI spectrum taken on 2000 December 29, though the gravitationally lensed counterimage was not noticed at the time.

Infrared spectroscopy with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) using NSFCAM was taken on 2001 April 16 (UT) using the $`K`$-band grism. The spectrum was nodded up and down the slit in the standard two-point “ABBA” pattern (Eales & Rawlings 1993) to facilitate sky subtraction. A $`K`$-band acquisition image showed two components separated by $`1.5`$-arcsec which were fortuitously almost aligned with the north-south slit. The spectra show that both components have an emission line at an identical redshift (Figure 1). We denote the bright image as component A, and the faint image as component B throughout this paper.

A further ESI spectrum was taken on 2001 May 26 with the 1-arcsec slit rotated to a sky PA of 9 deg. to include both images of the quasar (Figure 2). Two 900s integrations were taken, and both components of the lensed system were easily resolved along the slit in the $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ arcsec seeing. The data were calibrated using an observation of Fiege 34.

Figure 3 compares the ESI spectrum of J1004+1229 with two other FeLoBALs, LBQS 0059-2735 (Hazard et al. 1987) and FIRST 1556+3517 (Becker et al. 1997). The similarity of J1004+1229 and FIRST 1556+3517 is evident. Further discussion of the spectrum may be found in Section 3.1. The spectral resolution of the observations is $`2`$Å, though the spectra have been smoothed to 8Å resolution in Figures 2 and 3.

### 2.2 Optical and near-infrared imaging

Infrared images in $`J`$ and $`K^{^{}}`$ were taken with NSFCAM at the IRTF on 2001 April 16. The data were taken in a 9-point mosaic pattern with 60s exposures at each point, and were reduced using the dimsum package after flat-fielding with dome flats. The weather was non-photometric and the seeing 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$7. $`V`$ and $`I`$band images were obtained with the Andalucia Faint Object Spectrograph Camera (ALFOSC) on the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) on 2001 April 22 for $`3\times 300`$s and $`3\times 600`$s respectively, and flat-fielded with twilight flats. Both images show the counterimage component to be extended, most probably due to blending with the lensing galaxy. The images are shown in Figure 4, where we have also attempted to subtract our best estimate of the contribution of the quasar images from the $`I`$-band image (see Section 3.2) to reveal the lensing galaxy. Table 1 lists the broad-band magnitudes, flux densities and image-to-counterimage ratios.

### 2.3 Radio imaging

We observed J1004+1229 at 1.67 GHz with the VLBA111 The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. on 8–9 October 2001, using all 10 antennas. We used the compact radio source J1002+1216 as the phase reference (26′away, peak flux density 0.13 Jy), with a switching time of 5 minutes. The total dwell time on J1004+1229 was 200 minutes.

The data were recorded in eight 8 MHz bands in dual-polarization mode, for a total observing bandwidth of 32 MHz per polarization. Each 8 MHz band was subdivided into $`16\times 0.5`$ MHz channels. The sampling time was 1 s. For the correlation phase centers, we used the JVAS position (J2000) of the phase reference source ($`10\stackrel{\mathrm{h}}{\mathrm{.}}02\stackrel{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{.}}52\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}8457`$, $`+12\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}16\stackrel{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{.}}14\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}588`$; Browne et al. 1998), and the FIRST position of the target source.

Calibration was performed with standard AIPS tasks. We used a fringe-fitting interval of 2 minutes. Prior to imaging, we averaged the data in time into 6 s bins and in frequency into 1 MHz bins. This level of sampling was sufficient to reduce bandwidth and time-average smearing to less than 1% within $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ of the phase center. Imaging was also performed with AIPS. We created a $`2\mathrm{}\times 2\mathrm{}`$ image centered on the expected A–B midpoint. After component A was subtracted using the CLEAN algorithm, a significant peak ($`9\sigma `$) was apparent in the residual image. This peak is the brightest peak in the residual image, it does not belong to the sidelobe pattern of component A, and it is near the expected location of component B. We concluded that it represents component B of the lensed system. The final contour maps, shown in Figure 5, were produced after phase-only self-calibration with a 60 minute solution interval.

When A and B are modeled as elliptical Gaussian components, their flux densities are $`6.23`$ mJy and $`0.99`$ mJy, respectively. The noise on the map is $`0.11`$ mJy beam-1, and the the flux density ratio (A/B) is $`6.3\pm 0.7`$. The overall flux density calibration is uncertain by 5%. Component A is $`263.3\pm 1.0`$ mas west and $`1517.2\pm 1.7`$ mas south of component B. The position of A is (J2000) $`10\stackrel{\mathrm{h}}{\mathrm{.}}04\stackrel{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{.}}24\stackrel{\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{.}}8858`$, $`+12\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}29\stackrel{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{.}}22\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}313`$. The lowest surface-brightness contours of component A suggest the source is partially resolved. The elongation is in a direction nearly perpendicular to the A/B separation, which is suggestive of the tangential stretching that is characteristic of gravitational lensing. However, it is possible that the elongation is an artifact of residual gain errors rather than intrinsic source structure. Further evidence for extended emission comes from the difference between the 1.4 GHz flux density from FIRST of 12.3mJy, measured in an 5.6-arcsec beam, and the 7.2 mJy total flux measured at 1.67 GHz in the VLBA image. The source has a flux density at 1.4 GHz of 11.8 mJy in the $`45`$-arcsec resolution NVSS survey (Condon et al. 1998), identical to the FIRST flux density to within the errors. Thus assuming the difference in flux density between the VLA and VLBA measurements is not due to variability, this suggests the VLBA has resolved out extended emission from the radio source, and also that the source is not significantly larger than the FIRST beamsize.

## 3 Results and Interpretation

### 3.1 The quasar spectrum

Our ESI spectra of J1004+1229 show a complicated absorption line spectrum with an apparent edge at 10200Å, which we ascribe to Mgii absorption at $`z=2.65`$ (Figures 2 and 3). This interpretation is confirmed by the $`K`$-band spectrum, which shows a strong, broad (3500 kms-1) emission line at 2.40$`\mu `$m, corresponding to H$`\alpha `$ at $`z=2.66\pm 0.01`$. Most of the absorption features can be tentatively identified with low-ionization species; for example, Mgii 2796/2803 and Aliii 1859 are clearly present. Much of the absorption between these wavelengths is due to metastable excited states of Fe II and perhaps Fe III (Hazard et al. 1987; Becker et al. 1997), hence its classification as an FeLoBAL. The absorbing systems which give rise to the spectral features seem to be quite complex, making the resemblance between J1004+1229 and FIRST 1556+3517 particularly striking (Figure 3). Nevertheless, there are detailed differences in the spectra, for example the Fe I 2167 line, apparently present in FIRST 1556+3517 is absent from J1004+1229. The blueshifts extend to $`10000\mathrm{kms}^1`$ even for the low ionization lines. J1004+1229A has very black absorption troughs, indicating a high covering factor for the absorbing clouds.

### 3.2 Evidence for lensing

The infrared and optical spectra, which indicate that both components A and B are members of the rare FeLoBAL class of quasar, taken together with the similarity of the image-to-counterimage ratio in the near infrared and the radio indicate that components A and B are almost certainly lensed images of a single quasar. The optical spectra of A and B do, however, differ in detail, and in this section we discuss whether these differences are consistent with lensing.

In a simple, isolated three-image lens system, the brightest component is farthest from the lensing galaxy, and the faintest (demagnified) component is closest. As third images are only rarely detected we modelled the system as containing two images, and assumed that the likely effects of lensing on the spectrum were blending of the weaker component with light from the lensing galaxy, and possibly differential reddening of the two images by dust in the lens. This picture is borne out by the photometry (Table 1): the image-to-counterimage ratio increases from the radio to $`K^{^{}}`$ and from $`K^{^{}}`$ to $`J`$, as one would expect if the counterimage is more strongly reddened, but then decreases again in $`I`$ as light from the lensing galaxy is blended into that from the counterimage.

We thus attempted to decompose the spectrum of component B into a reddened version of component A plus the lensing galaxy. Fortunately the large number of strong features in the spectrum of the quasar makes this relatively easy to do. The unknown nature and redshift of the lensing galaxy mean that a large parameter space would need to be covered in a full analysis; we have therefore decided to restrict ourselves to a fairly course grid of reddenings to simplify the problem.

We explored reddening values of $`E(BV)`$ from 0 to 0.5 in steps of 0.1, assuming a ratio of selective to total extinction, $`R_V=3.1`$ and a Milky Way extinction law (Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis 1989) (Figure 6). Initially we assumed a lens redshift $`z_\mathrm{L}=1`$ at which we applied the extinction. We fixed the true image:counterimage ratio by estimating the excess reddening of component B at $`K`$-band and then divided the $`K`$-band image:counterimage ratio by this excess reddening factor.

An $`E(BV)0.2`$ was found to best remove the quasar features from the spectrum of B, leaving a residual which is smooth apart from a break at 7800Å. We interpret this as a 4000Å break at $`z=0.95`$. In the lower panel of Fig. 6 we show the residuals from subtracting normalized, reddened spectra of component A from that of component B for reddenings of $`E(BV)=0.1,0.2`$ and $`0.3`$ at the lens redshift. The intrinsic flux ratio we obtain for the best-fit, namely 5.5 is a little lower than the 6.3 obtained from the VLBA data (though only by 1.2-$`\sigma `$). Inspection of Figure 6 seems to indicate that the intrinsic flux ratio lies between $`5`$ and $`6.2`$ (corresponding to reddening by the lens between $`E(BV)=0.1`$ and $`0.3`$), but spatially-resolved spectroscopy of the lens is required to make a more accurate estimate.

As the resolution of our images is insufficient to show the lens resolved from component B, we adopted a simple singular isothermal sphere model with which to extract the rough physical parameters of the lens system. In this model, the image to counterimage ratio is given by:

$$R=\frac{\alpha +\theta _\mathrm{s}}{\alpha \theta _\mathrm{s}},$$

where $`\theta _\mathrm{s}`$ is the angle between the source position and the lens center, and $`\alpha `$ is the deflection angle induced by the lens (which for this model is independent of impact parameter). The bright and faint images are offset by $`\alpha +\theta _\mathrm{s}`$ and $`\alpha \theta _\mathrm{s}`$ from the lens center, respectively. Thus given the image:counterimage ratio of 5.5 and separation ($`2\alpha `$) of 1.54 arcsec, we expect the fainter image to be offset by 0.24 arcsec from the lens, consistent with us failing to resolve them in our images. The total magnification in this model is $`2\alpha /\theta _\mathrm{s}=2.9`$.

We derive a velocity dispersion for the lens of $`240\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1`$, a mass within the Einstein radius of $`3.0\times 10^{11}M_{}`$, and a blue mass-to-light ratio of $`11h`$ in solar units (where $`H_0=100h\mathrm{kms}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$), all of which are consistent with the lens being a massive elliptical galaxy. The optical magnitude estimated from the spectra and the $`I`$-band image is also consistent with this, and suggests that the galaxy has a stellar luminosity about 0.5 magnitudes brighter than $`M_B^{}`$ at zero redshift.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The dust in the lensing galaxy

The low but non-zero value for the excess reddening produced by the lensing galaxy is at the upper end of the range observed for local ellipticals (e.g. Goudfrooij & de Jong 1995), and also those inferred for other quasars lensed by $`0.3\stackrel{<}{_{}}z\stackrel{<}{_{}}1`$ elliptical galaxies (Falco et al. 1999). Elliptical galaxies at $`z1`$, however, are more likely to have low-level star formation episodes occurring in their cores (Menanteau, Abraham & Ellis 2001), so it is possible that such galaxies would typically have more dust in their inner few kpc than is usually seen either in local ellipticals or in $`z0.5`$ lensing galaxies.

### 4.2 The intrinsic nature of the quasar

LoBALs are in general redder than normal quasars, almost certainly because of reddening in the quasar environment. Estimating the reddening of this quasar is difficult because of the strong absorption features in the rest-frame UV. If, however, J1004+1229 is like lower redshift FeLoBALs there should be little line absorption longward of Mgii 2798, and we can make a very rough estimate of the reddening by comparing the observed optical to near-infrared spectral energy distribution (SED) with that expected from a normal FBQS quasar at this redshift. We assume that the effect of reddening in the lens is negligible compared to that in the quasar environment: we expect dust only in the inner few kpc of the elliptical, and, as discussed above, this has only a small effect on the fainter image; the brighter image, with an impact parameter $`10`$ kpc is unlikely to be significantly reddened by dust in the lens. In Figure 7 we plot a comparison of the SED of J1004+1229 with that of FBQS composites (Brotherton et al. 2001) reddened with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) extinction law of Pei (1992), from which we estimate an $`A_V1`$ mag. This is similar to the $`A_V1.5`$ estimated for the FeLoBAL J1556+3517 by Najita, Dey & Brotherton (2001) (see also Fig. 1).

With a radio luminosity at 5GHz, $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}10^{25}\mathrm{WHz}^1\mathrm{sr}^1`$ after correction for lensing, the quasar is in the radio-intermediate class when this is defined through radio luminosity. In terms of the radio-to-UV continuum ratio $`R^{}`$ (Sramek & Weedman 1980), $`R^{}280`$ before correction of the UV flux for reddening and BAL absorption. After correction by an assumed $`E(BV)=0.35`$ for reddening, and an estimated BAL absorption of a further factor of two, this results in an $`R^{}10`$, again placing the quasar in the radio-intermediate class, as is typical for BALs in FIRST (Becker et al. 2000; 2001).

At restframe optical wavelengths the extinction due to dust approximately matches the magnification due to gravitational lensing, and using this assumption we can use the width of the H$`\alpha `$ line to estimate a black hole mass of a few times $`10^9M_{}`$, following the prescription used by Lacy et al. (2001). Even with this high black hole mass, the high intrinsic luminosity of the quasar requires that it is accreting near the Eddington limit. The high black hole mass is consistent with its high radio luminosity for a BAL quasar.

## 5 Lensing of red quasars

The steep number counts of high luminosity quasars produces a large magnification bias, i.e. a tendency for lensed quasars to be over-represented in a flux-limited quasar survey (e.g. Turner, Ostriker & Gott 1984). This typically results in such samples containing $`1`$% of lensed quasars, compared to $`0.1`$% expected in the absence of magnification bias. As our 2MASS quasar sample is very bright, the magnification bias is even higher than usual, and, using the lensing model discussed below, we estimate that the expected lensing rate for $`z>0.5`$ quasars in our sample is $`3`$%. Even so, the discovery that 2/13 of our $`z>0.5`$ luminous red quasars are lensed is surprising. Although the numbers of quasars and lenses in our sample is small, the Poisson probability of finding two or more lensed quasars in our sample by chance is only 0.06. Why the lensed fraction is so high is not clear, but it is probably linked to the observation of Chartas (2000) who showed that the fraction of lensed quasars which are BALs is higher than that in normal quasar samples. Chartas argues that the fraction of attenuated BAL quasars in samples of gravitationally-lensed quasars can be explained as a result of the joint effects of lensing and attenuation on the selection of these samples. His analysis is strongly dependent on the relative amounts of attenuation by dust and magnification by lensing, in addition to the slope of the luminosity function. To see this, we follow Goodrich (1997) and Chartas (2000) by considering a quasar population with a luminosity function $`\varphi (L,z)`$ studied in a narrow range of luminosity ($`L_1,L_2`$) at redshift $`z`$. We draw samples of lensed quasars magnified by a mean magnificaton factor $`M`$, and reddened quasars (including BALs), attenuated by a mean attenuation factor $`A`$. We also now define the probability of the quasar being lensed by $`p_l`$, and the probability of it being significantly reddened by $`p_r`$. The fraction of lensed quasars in the sample is $`f_l`$:

$$f_l=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_1/M,L_2/M,z)}{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_1,L_2,z)}p_l=b_lp_l$$

where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the integral luminosity function and $`b_l`$ is the usual lensing magnfication bias factor (e.g. Turner, Ostriker & Gott 1984). The fraction of red quasars in the sample is $`f_r`$:

$$f_r=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_1A,L_2A,z)}{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_1,L_2,z)}p_r=b_rp_r$$

where we define $`b_r`$ as the “attenuation bias factor”, by analogy with $`b_l`$. If the luminosity function is steep (i.e., equivalent to a power-law of index $`<1`$ over the luminosity ranges of interest), then $`b_l>1`$ and $`b_r<1`$. The fraction of lensed quasars which are reddened, $`f_{lr}`$ is then:

$$f_{lr}=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_1A/M,L_2A/M,z)}{\mathrm{\Phi }(L_1/M,L_2/M,z)}p_r.$$

Hence if $`AM`$ and the luminosity function is a single power-law, then $`f_{lr}=p_r/b_lb_rp_r=f_r`$, i.e. the same as in the rest of the sample. It is, however, suggestive in this context that both the lensed objects are amongst the brightest in $`K`$-band of all our FIRST-2MASS quasar candidates, where $`b_l`$ should be highest. A steep cutoff in the luminosity function at high luminosities could have the effect of dramatically decreasing $`b_r`$ (as there are very few high luminosity quasars to attenuate) whilst keeping $`b_l`$ moderate. No evidence for such a cutoff has been found, however (e.g. Wisotzki 2000).

We now make the discussion more quantitative, by considering hypothetical quasar surveys selected in the $`K`$-band, with magnitude limits of $`K=15`$, typical of the deeper portions of 2MASS, and $`K=18`$, which would be typical of future large-area near-infared surveys with 4-m class telescopes, and $`B`$-band selected samples at $`B=18`$ and $`B=21`$. We adopt the luminosity function of Boyle et al. (2000) 222At $`z2`$ this luminosity function is consistent with that of Wisotzki (2000), which, although it is only applicable to the bright end, covers the range of magnitudes which includes our very luminous quasars., and assume an optical spectrum whose flux density $`f_\nu \nu ^{0.5}`$. We take the lensing probability $`p_l(z)`$ from Kochanek (1993), and integrate over the magnification distributions of King & Browne (1996). The distribution of attenuations in the quasar population is uncertain. The only sample for which this has been well-studied is the extremely radio-bright 3C sample, which, of course, may well not be typical of the quasar population as a whole, and contains no BALs. Simpson, Rawlings & Lacy (1999) find that, in a total sample of $`32`$ $`z1`$ 3C radio sources, $`28_{13}^{+25}`$% of quasars are significantly reddened with $`A_V`$ values ranging from $`2`$ to $`15`$. Given the difficulty of defining a plausible attenuation distribution we have decided to investigate how the fraction of reddened quasars in both lensed and unlensed samples varies as a function of attenuation, using the SMC extinction law of Pei (1992). In Fig. 8, we plot the fraction of reddened quasars expected in magnitude limited samples as a function of attenuation in the rest-frame at $`z=2`$ in both lensed and unlensed samples, selected in $`K`$-band and $`B`$-band. The plots are normalized to unity for zero attenuation. Even for samples selected in the near-infrared, red quasars with rest-frame $`A_V\stackrel{>}{_{}}1`$ are strongly selected against. This is particularly true in bright samples, where the slope of the luminosity function is steepest. Also, although the fraction of red quasars in lensed samples is higher than that in unlensed samples, it remains a factor of several lower than the true fraction. These numbers depend only on the magnitude limit of the quasar sample and the band to which that limit is applied, and are independent of other selection criteria which might further decrease the number of red quasars in a sample, e.g. a blue color selection criterion. Our model implies that the high fraction of red quasars seen in lensed samples is not likely to be entirely due to magnification bias effects, if the assumption that reddened and unreddened quasars are drawn at random from the same underlying population is correct. In the $`B`$-band, where quasar samples are typically selected, the selection effects are even more pronounced, and in a $`B18`$ magnitude-limited sample (e.g. LBQS) very few $`z>2`$ quasars reddened by $`A_V>1`$ in the rest-frame would ever be found.

An alternative explanation for the high fraction of red lensed quasars is that red quasars are a distinct population, as might be the case if redness is a phase in a quasar’s life cycle rather than a purely geometrical effect. This is consistent with the interpretation of BAL QSOs, especially the FeLoBALs, as being an early or heavily obscured phase in the lives of quasars (Voit et al. 1993; Egami et al. 1996; Becker et al. 1997, 2000; Gregg et al. 2000). If the luminosity function for red quasars is significantly steeper than for normal quasars, then this could lead to a higher than normal magnification bias in samples of red quasars, and explain our seemingly large lensing rate, as well as the tendency for the fraction of BAL QSOs in lensed samples to be higher. A physical basis for this might be that the luminosity function of quasars accreting at close to the Eddington rate will resemble the black hole mass function, which has a steep slope at high masses caused by the cutoff in galaxy masses produced by the Schechter function (e.g. Salucci et al. 1999). The only way for a geometrical model to be consistent with this result is if the range of angles over which the quasar is seen as significantly reddened increases as quasar luminosity decreases.

## 6 Conclusions

The comparison of FIRST and 2MASS has allowed us to discover quasars reddened by dust, both intrinsic and intervening. J1004+1229 is almost entirely reddened in the local environment of the quasar by a combination of dust and strong low ionization absorption features; the lens contributing only a small amount of reddening, and probably only to the fainter lensed image.

Even after taking into account magnification by lensing, the quasar is intrinsically very luminous and contains a supermassive black hole, probably accreting at close to the Eddington rate. The apparently high frequency of lensing among our red quasars could be explained in a model in which red quasars have an intrinsically steeper luminosity function than the normal quasar population, although if the geometry of the reddening material is such that the range of angles in which reddening is seen increases as quasar luminosity decreases, a geometrical explanation could also work. In either case, the extent to which high-redshift, dust-reddened quasars in both lensed and unlensed are selected against in bright quasar surveys is very great, and suggests that a large fraction of quasars are missed from surveys with optical or near-infrared selection. In particular it suggests that FeLoBALs, selected against both because of dust reddening and extreme rest-frame UV absorption, may be much more common than their rarity in magnitude-limited samples would suggest. When we complete our FIRST/2MASS survey, and analyse the results in the context of our modelling we should obtain a good estimate of the true fraction of red quasars in quasar samples of much more moderate radio luminosity than those in the 3C survey.

The lensed nature of J1004+1229 gives us a unique opportunity to study the host galaxy of a high-redshift BAL through deep imaging with NICMOS on HST, or with ground-based adaptive optics. If red quasars and BALs are indeed a distinct and early phase in quasar evolution, study of the host galaxy of J1004+1229 may help reveal the phenomena responsible for creating such objects.

We thank Per Lilje for taking the $`V`$\- and $`I`$-band images of J1004+1229 on the NOT, and Mike Brotherton for helpful discussions. ML was a visiting Astronomer at the Infrared Telescope Facility, which is operated by the University of Hawaii under contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The NOT is operated on the island of La Palma jointly by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. ALFOSC is owned by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) and operated at the NOT under agreement between IAA and the NBIfAFG of the Astronomical Observatory of Copenhagen. The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This work was mostly performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48, with additional support from NSF grants AST-98-02791 (University of California, Davis) and AST-98-02732 (Columbia University), with some work carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.


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# Thermodynamics of an interacting trapped Bose-Einstein gas in the classical field approximation

## Abstract

We present a convenient technique describing the condensate in dynamical equilibrium with the thermal cloud, at temperatures close to the critical one. We show that the whole isolated system may be viewed as a single classical field undergoing nonlinear dynamics leading to a steady state. In our procedure it is the observation process and the finite detection time that allow for splitting the system into the condensate and the thermal cloud.

Successful experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute gas of alkali atoms BEC  offers a new and fascinating tool to probe the border between quantum and classical worlds. The theory of the dynamical behavior of such a many body system is very difficult and cannot be solved exactly. It is particularly hard to extract quantitative predictions in the vicinity of the critical temperature. At the other extreme, at zero temperature, the weakly interacting Bose gas is well described by the mean-field approach. All particles occupy the same quantum state whose wave function is the lowest energy solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation GP . At low temperatures the Bogoliubov approximation comes handy Bogol  with its quasi-particles that have just been observed in a direct experiment exp-Bogol . The theory gets much more complex at higher temperatures. There is a considerable effort to develop a working theoretical and numerical tool valid there. One group of papers Gora ; 2quant ; correl ; stoch ; two-gas  from the very beginning describes the system as consisting of two (interacting) fractions: the condensate and the thermal cloud. This ambitious program is very demanding numerically. The other group interprets the high energy solutions of the time-dependent GP equation as describing the full condensate plus thermal cloud system semiclassical . As a rule, these authors were able to identify the condensate as a definite part of the system only in the somewhat academic case of the gas in a rectangular box with periodic boundary conditions. In this case the condensate is just the zero momentum component of the wave function. The aim of this Rapid Communication is to show that much more may be achieved with the readily available high-energy solutions of the GP equation in harmonic traps. It is also possible to split this solution into a sum of the condensed and uncondensed parts, define the condensate wave function and approximately estimate the temperature of the resulting system.

The Hamiltonian H of the system takes the form:

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^3r\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(𝐫,t)(\frac{p^2}{2m}+\frac{1}{2}m\omega ^2r^2)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)}`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi \mathrm{}^2a_s}{m}}{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^3r\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(𝐫,t)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(𝐫,t)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)},`$
where $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)`$ is a field operator that destroys a particle at position r and obeys standard bosonic commutation relations $`[\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t),\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(𝐫^{},t)]=\delta (𝐫𝐫^{})`$. The first term describes particles with mass $`m`$ trapped in a potential of a spherically symmetric harmonic oscillator of frequency $`\omega `$ while the second term describes two-body interactions. Here we have assumed that particles interact via a contact potential $`V(𝐫𝐫^{})=4\pi \mathrm{}^2a_s\delta (𝐫𝐫^{})/m`$, where $`a_s`$ is the s-wave scattering length. The Heisenberg equation originating from this Hamiltonian acquires the following form

$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2^2}{2m}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m\omega ^2r^2)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)`$ (2)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi \mathrm{}^2a_s}{m}}\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(𝐫,t)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t).`$
A full operator solution of the non-linear Eq.(2) is not known. In addition, the identification of a condensate phase is also a subtle issue. The only exception is a system of particles in a periodic box. Here the symmetry of the problem helps: natural eigenmodes of the system are plane waves with a quantized momentum $`𝐤=2\pi (j_1,j_2,j_3)/L`$ ($`j_i`$ being integer, $`L`$ \- box size). Therefore, the field operator can be expanded in these modes:

$$\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)=\frac{1}{L^{3/2}}\underset{𝐤}{}\mathrm{exp}(i𝐤𝐫)\widehat{a}_𝐤(t).$$
(3)
A Bose-Einstein condensate can be uniquely associated with the zero momentum mode, $`𝐤=0`$. The annihilation and creation operators $`\widehat{a}_𝐤,\widehat{a}_𝐤^{}`$ satisfy non-linear equations following from Eq.(2).

Different approximate approaches mentioned above Gora ; 2quant ; correl ; stoch ; two-gas  have been introduced in order to solve the problem. Here we want to utilize a method which has been extensively and successfully explored in quantum optics. A quantum field operator describing a coherent electromagnetic field (such as laser light) can be replaced by a complex valued classical field. Such a substitution is justified for these modes that are highly occupied. Only then are quantum fluctuations negligible and the non-vanishing commutator may be ignored. This kind of approximation has been used recently in semiclassical  for the matter field: $`\widehat{a}_𝐤a_𝐤`$. Note that $`_𝐤|a_𝐤|^2=N`$ and the condensate occupation is equal to $`n_0=|a_0|^2`$. On the other hand, it follows from Eqs.(2)-(3) that the semi-classical approximation is equivalent to a substitution: $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)\sqrt{N}\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,t)=\frac{1}{L^{3/2}}_𝐤a_𝐤\mathrm{exp}(i𝐤𝐫)`$, where $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,t)`$ fulfills the standard GP equation. According to conventional wisdom, this equation describes a pure condensate at zero temperature, hence the whole classical field $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,t)`$ represents the condensate populated by $`n_0=N`$ particles Marshall ; Adams .

It seems that the two contradicting interpretations of the high-energy solution coexist in the literature. In the following we will clarify this seeming incongruity. We focus our attention on experimentally relevant system of 100 000 87Rb atoms trapped in the spherically symmetric harmonic potential of frequency $`\omega =2\pi 100`$Hz. Our procedure is as follows. First, we define the wave function of the system on a spatial three-dimensional grid. Initial values of the wave function at each point are chosen in accordance with the constraints of a fixed energy and particle number. Next, we propagate this state in time, solving the time dependent GP equation with the help of the Fast Fourier Transform. It occurs that for the given total energy and particle number the same steady state is reached after several milliseconds. We have checked that the steady state attained does not depend on the choice of the initial wave function (in particular, on the fact whether its phase is random or not) as long as the number of particles and the total energy are kept constant.

The high-energy solutions of the GP equation have striking features Marshall . A snapshot of the density distribution is shown in Fig.1. The density is extremely irregular and exhibits a number of sharp spikes changing its shapes and positions on very short time scales. Typical methods used to monitor trapped atomic condensates involve optical techniques. A condensate is illuminated by laser light which, after passing through the atomic system (and some optical elements), is monitored by a CCD camera. The exposure time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ varies from a few microseconds to hundreds of milliseconds and within this time the condensate density undergoes rapid changes due to the fast dynamics but also because of quantum fluctuations. The nature of the observation process introduces a kind of smearing. In fact, in such a long exposure a time-averaged rather then an instantaneous single-particle density is monitored. The existence of short time scales in non-linear many-body dynamics has to be taken into account. The object of physical significance is therefore a time-averaged single-particle density matrix:

$$\overline{\rho (𝐫_1,𝐫_2,t)}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Delta }t}_{t\mathrm{\Delta }t/2}^{t+\mathrm{\Delta }t/2}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}(𝐫_\mathrm{𝟏},t^{})\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫_\mathrm{𝟐},t^{})𝑑t^{}.$$
(4)
This coarse graining procedure destroys the purity of a state of the system. After the time averaging all irregularities of the density are being smoothed out especially in the inner part of the density profile (see Fig.2). The resemblance to the well publicized photographs of the experimental condensates at intermediate temperatures is striking 3peaks . Varying the energy of the gas we can scan the whole range from the pure condensate all the way to a nearly critical condition of no condensate. The sample profiles of the time-averaged column density (integrated along the z-axis) are shown in Fig.2. In parts A and B of Fig.2 note the bimodal structure of the distribution: the central peak corresponding to the Bose-Einstein condensate and the broad background identified with the thermal cloud.

We can provide a quantitative analysis of the resulting averaged state of the Bose gas. To this end we recall a classical definition of the condensate by means of the spectral decomposition of the single-particle density matrix definition . Diagonalization of a single-particle time-averaged density matrix leads to natural eigenmodes $`\psi _i(𝐫,t)`$ and eigenvalues $`n_i/N`$:

$$\overline{\rho (𝐫_1,𝐫_2,t)}=\underset{i}{}\frac{n_i}{N}\psi _i^{}(𝐫_1,t)\psi _i(𝐫_2,t).$$
(5)
The system may be viewed as a mixture of many coupled coherent modes $`\psi _i`$ whose occupation is $`n_i`$. The self-consistency of the model requires that population of each single mode $`\psi _i`$ is large, $`n_i>1`$. Otherwise the substitution of the field operator $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(𝐫,t)`$ by a wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,t)`$ would not be justified. The existence of the dominant eigenvalue $`n_0/N`$ of the order of unity signifies the presence of the condensate with the corresponding eigenvector $`\psi _0`$ being its wave function. As the modes and their occupation are known only after the time averaging, the verification of the semi-classical criterion can only be done a posteriori. We try a number of grids and choose the one that yields the highest occupation of all modes, justifying the semi-classical approximation.

The time averaging followed by a diagonalization of the density matrix gives the spatial modes of the system. These modes are typically not known even in a stationary case. Still, the only exception is the box with periodic boundary conditions. Let us illustrate our method using again this simple case.

Substitution of all annihilation operators by complex amplitudes $`\widehat{a}_𝐤a_𝐤`$ gives the following expression for the single-particle density matrix:

$$\overline{\rho (𝐫_1,𝐫_2,t)}\frac{1}{V}\underset{𝐤}{}exp[i𝐤(𝐫_1𝐫_2)]|a_𝐤(t)|^2$$
(6)
and the time averaging leaves only diagonal elements $`𝐤=𝐤^{}`$ as the off-diagonal ones oscillate rapidly and get rapidly dephased, $`\overline{a(t)_𝐤^{}a(t)_𝐤^{}}\delta _{𝐤,𝐤^{}}|a_𝐤(t)|^2`$. Obviously, the $`|a_𝐤|^2`$ are populations of different modes. Only if one introduces a kind of coarse graining leading to a suppression of the off-diagonal elements of the single-particle density matrix can one identify the $`𝐤=0`$ mode as a Bose-Einstein condensate with an occupation given by $`|a_0|^2`$ . Without this additional assumption the whole complex field $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,t)`$ describes one coherent, dynamically evolving Bose-Einstein condensate without any thermal cloud. This kind of interpretation is used in Marshall ; Adams . On the contrary, identification of the $`𝐤=0`$ momentum component of $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,t)`$ with a Bose condensate has been directly assumed in semiclassical . Our analysis solves this apparent contradiction. By examining a detection process and the relevant time scale we can uniquely determine the condensate fraction, its wave function as well as the structure of excited modes of the interacting system. Moreover, the method is no longer limited to an academic problem of the uniform system. A steady-state single-particle density matrix for the spherically symmetric trapping potential must have eigenvectors that are simultaneously diagonalizing the angular momentum operators. Therefore, the eigenvectors must be proportional to the spherical harmonics $`Y_{lm}`$. What remains is the one dimensional diagonalization in the radial variable of the following projection of the density matrix:

$$\rho _{lm}(r,r^{})=\overline{\rho (r,\mathrm{\Omega };r^{},\mathrm{\Omega }^{})}Y_{lm}^{}(\mathrm{\Omega })Y_{lm}(\mathrm{\Omega }^{})𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }^{},$$
(7)
where the integration is performed over solid angles $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ associated with the corresponding particle coordinates. We expect the condensate to be present in the zero angular momentum component of the single-particle density matrix. Indeed, in the inset of Fig.3 we show a typical distribution of the eigenvalues of the $`l=0`$ part of the density matrix with one dominant eigenvalue and with the corresponding eigenfunction plotted in Fig.3 together with the whole time-averaged radial density distribution.

The last point raised here is the question of temperature. In principle we could do something similar to a typical experiment: switch off the trapping potential, let the gas expand and analyze the properties of the thermal part. Numerical limitations and the constraining condition of the high occupation of each eigenmode make it hard. Alternatively, we can follow the procedure of Varenna  and fit the profile of the thermal fraction of the ideal Bose gas to the outer part of our averaged density. This yields a reasonable, order of magnitude result. The temperature dependence of the condensed fraction together with its large uncertainty is shown in Fig.4. In the inset we plotted the energy dependence of the number of atoms in the condensate. We compare our results with the ideal gas and with a two-gas estimate (finite-temperature Hartree-Fock scheme RMP ). We see a reasonably good agreement between all three calculations.

To summarize: we have shown a simple way of numerically simulating the stationary dynamics of a weakly interacting trapped Bose gas at finite temperature, which uses a semi-classical representation of the matter field and, in accordance with the experimental procedures, stresses the role of a finite exposure time when photographing the condensate. In the self-consistent determination of the condensate fraction we rely solely on the classic criterion of Onsager and Penrose. This way we avoid an arbitrary splitting of the system into the condensed and thermal components from the very beginning. The method may be used to model the impact of thermal fluctuations on the dynamical processes with the condensate, such as solitons or vortices. The next step in going beyond the approximations employed in our model is the estimation of the influence of quantum corrections to the classical fields, in particular the study of the corresponding time scales.

We thank J. Mostowski and G.V. Shlyapnikov for stimulating discussions. K.R. is supported by the subsidy of the Foundation for Polish Science. K.G. and M.G. acknowledge support by Polish KBN grants 5 P03B 102 20 and 2 PO3B 078 19, respectively. Numerical calculations have been performed using computers at Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling of Warsaw University.


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# Ionized iron K𝛼 lines in AGN X-ray spectra

## 1 Introduction

The basic idea behind unification models for Seyfert galaxies is that all objects are intrinsically the same and all observed different features are simply the result of the orientation of the system with respect to the line of sight.

In this scenario, emission from circumnuclear regions is much easier to observe in Seyfert 2s (and in particular in Compton–thick ones), where the nuclear radiation is obscured, than in unobscured Seyfert 1s in which these components are heavily diluted by the photons from the nucleus. Indeed, such regions are commonly observed in Seyfert 2s (e.g. Matt 2001 for a review), and found to be of at least two types: a cold gas with high column density which partially or completely obscures the nuclear radiation (the ‘torus’) and an ionized, optically thin medium that scatters it into the line of sight. Both these materials produce a reflected continuum and narrow iron K$`\alpha `$ lines (e.g. Matt et al. 1996, hereinafter MBF96).

If these emitting regions are also present in the environment of Seyfert 1s, as expected in unification schemes, we should in principle be able to observe these lines as well, although with a much smaller EW due to the dilution by the direct nuclear continuum. The limited sensitivity and energy resolution of past X–ray missions prevented, until a couple of years ago, the unambiguous detection of these features in unobscured sources. The situation has been radically changed with the launch of $`Chandra`$ and XMM–$`Newton`$. Indeed, a narrow neutral iron line have been found to be fairly common in Seyfert 1s spectra (e.g. Kaspi et al. 2001; Yaqoob et al. 2001; Weaver 2002; Yaqoob et al 2002 for $`Chandra`$ results; Reeves et al. 2001; Pounds et al. 2001; Gondoin et al. 2001; Matt et al. 2001 for XMM–$`Newton`$ findings). On the other hand, evidence for ionized iron K$`\alpha `$ lines at 6.7 and 6.96 keV from distant matter have been reported so far in only one unobscured (at the lines energies) Seyfert, namely NGC 5506 (Matt et al. 2001).

In this paper, we calculate the expected equivalent widths for the two ionized lines with respect to both reflected and total continua. Details of the calculations and results will be presented in Sects. 2 and 3, respectively, and the case of NGC 5506 discussed in Sect. 4.

## 2 The model

The line emitting material is assumed to be optically thin to Thomson scattering and in photoionization equilibrium, as observed e.g. in the ‘hot reflector’ in NGC 1068 (see Guainazzi et al. 1999; Bianchi et al. 2001). In these conditions, both recombination and resonantly scattered K$`\alpha `$ lines from H– and He–like iron ions can be produced.

Resonantly scattered K$`\alpha `$ lines consists of radiative de–excitation following excitation from continuum photons. The radiative channel has a probability of occurrence which, for Fe xxv and Fe xxvi, is unity as Auger de–excitation is of course impossible. The angular dependence of the emission depends on the transition involved (Chandrasekhar 1960). In the column density intervals explored in this paper, resonant lines are optically thick. Therefore, the first resonant scattering occurs preferentially close to the illuminated surface (this effect of course becoming more and more important as the column density of the matter increases). As there are not competing processes apart from Compton scattering (which has a much smaller cross section), the line photons eventually escape from the matter, but with a larger probability to escape from the illuminated surface (reflection case, see Fig. 1) rather than from the opposite boundary (transmission case). Line transfer in the matter is treated here by means of Monte Carlo simulations.

Recombination K$`\alpha `$ lines occur after a photoionization of a K shell electron. Similarly to the case of fluorescence, it is customary to describe the process by introducing an effective fluorescent yield $`Y`$, which is the probability that the recombination cascade does include the K$`\alpha `$ transition (Krolik & Kallman 1987; MBF96). Recombination occurs almost homogeneously in the matter, as it follows photoabsorption, which is optically thin in the column density ranges considered here. Of course, K$`\alpha `$ line photons produced by recombination may in turn be resonantly scattered before escaping, but because of the uniform source function there is no preferred escaping surface. This process can be therefore treated in the optically thin approximation, thus analytically.

Both processes and their treatment are described in detail in MBF96, to which the reader is deferred.

Ionization fractions for Fe xxv and Fe xxvi have been calculated with the well known public photoionization code cloudy111http://www.pa.uky.edu/~gary/cloudy/ (v94.00; Ferland 2000), as a function of the ionization parameter $`U`$, defined as:

$$U=\frac{_{\nu _R}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu }{4\pi r^2cn_e}$$
(1)
where $`c`$ is the speed of light, $`r`$ the distance of the gas from the illuminating source, $`n_e`$ its density and $`\nu _R`$ the frequency corresponding to 1 Rydberg. This, however, is not the best choice when investigating highly ionized iron atoms, as the result depends dramatically on the spectral shape of the photoionizing continuum. Assuming a power law shape, a small change in the spectral index (for the same $`U`$) may change significantly the number of X–ray photons (which are the most relevant in this case). We decided to use instead a “X–ray” ionization parameter, defined over the 2–10 keV energy range:

$$U_x=\frac{_2^{10}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu }{4\pi r^2cn_e}$$
(2)
where the integration limits are the frequencies correspondent to 2 and 10 keV. The conversion factor between the two ionization parameters is clearly a function of the power index of the continuum:

$$\frac{U_x}{U}(\gamma )=\frac{_2^{10}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu }{_{\nu _R}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu }=\frac{10^{1\gamma }2^{1\gamma }}{E_R^{1\gamma }}$$
(3)
where $`\gamma `$ is the photon index of the powerlaw and $`E_R=13.6\times 10^3`$ keV. Adopting this new definition of the ionization parameter, the results are almost independent of $`\gamma `$: the residual effects will be presented at the end of the next section, together with those due to changing the temperature and density of the gas.

The sketch in Fig.1 shows the geometry adopted in our calculations. We assumed $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$=$`r`$ and isotropic illumination within a 30 cone. As said above, the equivalent widths of the resonant scattered lines are different when transmitted or reflected spectra are considered. Therefore, we will present plots for both cases.

## 3 Results

In Figs. 3, 3, 5 and 5 the equivalent widths of Fe xxv and Fe xxvi K$`\alpha `$ lines (recombination plus resonantly scattered; hereinafter we will always consider the sum of the two contributions) against the transmitted (or reflected) continuum only are plotted as a function of $`\mathrm{log}U_x`$ and for different values of the column densities of the line emitting gas. The results are obtained with $`\gamma =2.0`$, $`T=10^6`$ K, $`n_e=10^6cm^2`$. Plots in Figs. 3 and 3 were obtained combining the results in figure 4, 5 and 6 of MBF96 (where EWs of recombination and resonant lines where presented assuming ionization fractions equal to 1 for the interested ion) with the ionization structures calculated by cloudy as a function of $`U_x`$. The iron abundance is assumed equal to the solar one (as for Morrison & McCammon 1983). As described in MBF96, for small column densities the main contribution comes from the resonant lines, while at large column densities recombination dominates, because photoionization is still optically thin while resonant scattering is thick, and the line production for the latter process consequently saturates. Plots in Figs. 5 and 5 have been obtained re–running the Monte Carlo code described in MBF96 for a reflecting, rather than transmitting, material. Because the two cases differs only for the contribution of the resonant lines, the main differences occur for small column densities.

In Figs. 7 and 7 the EWs, obtained for the reflecting matter, are instead calculated against the total continuum. (The corresponding plots for the transmitted flux are not shown because differences are appreciable only for small column densities, where the EWs are very small.) The relation between the EWs with respect to reflected and total continua is easy to calculate. In the Compton–thin regime, the reflected flux is given by:

$$F_rf\tau F_t$$
(4)
where $`F_t`$ is the illuminating flux and $`f`$ a geometrical factor (basically the solid angle subtended by the illuminated matter); $`\tau =\frac{N_H}{1.5\times 10^{24}}`$ is the Thomson optical depth. Therefore, the equivalent widths are:

$$EW_t=EW_r\frac{F_r}{F_t+F_r}EW_r\frac{F_r}{F_t}EW_rf\tau $$
(5)
Figs. 7 and 7 have been obtained assuming $`f`$=1.

Finally, we illustrate the effects of changing the value of $`\gamma `$, $`T`$ and $`n_e`$. Fig. 9 shows the equivalent widths of Fe xxv lines against the total continuum for a column density of $`10^{23}`$ cm-2 and different values of the photon index of the incident continuum. Clearly, the choice of $`U_x`$ instead of $`U`$ keeps the differences small: the maximum of the function occurs almost at the same value of $`U_x`$ for the various indices, while it would have been significantly shifted if plotted against $`U`$. There is however a difference in the value of the maximum, which increases with $`\gamma `$.

The opposite occurs for Fe xxvi (Fig. 9), with a shift in the value of $`U_x`$ for which the function has the maximum value, but not appreciable differences in the values of this maximum.

The effect of changing the gas temperature is shown in Figs. 11 and 11. The overall result is, as expected, that the colder is the gas the higher is the ionization parameter required to reach the peak in the ionization fraction of both the iron ions. On the other hand, there are no significant changes in the maximum values of the equivalent widths of the lines.

A change of the gas density over a wide range ($`10^410^8`$ cm-3) does not instead produce any appreciable variations in our results. This is expected, because the ionization parameter is a quantity that describes the ionization structure of a gas under a combination of density, distance and luminosity of the incident radiation. Changing one of these quantities keeping the ionization parameter fixed ends up only in a rescale of the other ones, without changing the ionization structure of the gas surface.

## 4 An example: NGC 5506

Let us now compare our calculations with the only case in which the presence of ionized iron K$`\alpha `$ lines from circumnuclear matter have been claimed in an unobscured (at the iron line energies) source, namely NGC 5506 (Matt et al. 2001).

NGC 5506 is a bright Narrow Emission Line Galaxy, optically classified as an intermediate Seyfert with a highly reddened BLR (Veron-Cetty & Veron 2001). Several X-ray observations clearly indicate the presence of a hidden Seyfert 1 nucleus (Matt et al. 2001 and references therein). Its iron K$`\alpha `$ line has been claimed to be complex by ASCA (Wang et al. 1999) and RXTE (Lamer et al. 2000) observations. BeppoSAX found an iron line centroid energy definitely higher than 6.4 keV (Perola et al. 2002).

XMM–Newton data definitely confirm that the iron line is complex, with at least two components clearly present: one narrow, corresponding to neutral iron, the other broad and consistent with ionized iron.

Even if a fit of the ionized, broad component with a disc relativistic line is as good as that with a blend of He– and H–like unresolved lines, the second solution is preferable from a physical point of view, as argued by Matt et al. (2001). If this is, indeed, the case, these two lines are likely to be produced in a photoionized matter as the one described in this paper. The observed equivalent widths are $`40\pm 16`$ eV and $`32\pm 15`$ eV for Fe xxv and Fe xxvi, respectively.

Moreover, NGC 5506 presents a soft excess whose normalization is about 2% of the primary component: recalling equation (4) this could be the result of reflection from a gas with column densities of $`3\times 10^{22}/f`$ cm-2. Let us now assume that the two ionized lines and the soft X-ray emission come from one and the same matter. Let us also assume $`f`$=1 (a smaller value of $`f`$ would implies a larger value of the column density to produce the observed flux of the reflected continuum: the two parameters have the same effect on the line EWs, and in the first approximation we can assume that the EWs are almost independent of their ratio). The observed EWs can be reproduced provided that $`\mathrm{log}(U_x)0÷0.5`$ ($`T=10^6K`$) and the iron is overabundant by a factor 2$`÷`$3. (A different choice of the gas temperature would require a different value of $`\mathrm{log}(U_x)`$, but not of the iron abundance, see Figs. 10 and 11). This solution is of course valid in the stationary case. If the source flux was larger in the past than during the XMM–$`Newton`$ observation, then the requirement on the iron overabundant will be correspondingly reduced; it is worth noting that the flux during the XMM–$`Newton`$ observation was about 30% lower than the average flux during the longer contemporaneous $`BeppoSAX`$ observation.

Finally, combining the derived value of the ionization parameter with the luminosity of the object ($`L_{210}=8.5\times 10^{42}`$ erg cm2 s-1), its spectral shape ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$) and the inferred column density of the gas, we can write two equations linking the above, observed parameters with the density $`n_e`$, the distance $`r`$ (from the nucleus) and the depth $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ of the gas (see Fig. 1):

$$n_er^2=\frac{_2^{10}\frac{L_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu }{4\pi cU_x}n_e\mathrm{\Delta }r=N_H$$
(6)
where $`r=\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ in our model (see Sect. 2). If we use the value of $`U_x`$ found before to reproduce the observed lines for $`T=10^6`$ K, we get the following estimates for $`r`$ and $`n_e`$:

$$n_e2.5\times 10^5/f\mathrm{cm}^3;r0.04f\mathrm{pc}$$
(7)
These values change if we use the ionization parameters which best reproduce the observed EWs in the case of $`T=10^5`$ K and $`T=10^7`$ K (see Figs. 11 and 11), being respectively: \[$`n_e8\times 10^5/f\mathrm{cm}^3`$; $`r0.01f\mathrm{pc}`$\] and \[$`n_e8\times 10^4/f\mathrm{cm}^3`$; $`r0.1f\mathrm{pc}`$\].

This distance scale is slightly larger than that typical of the BLR (e.g. Peterson 1997). On the other hand, it is definitely smaller than the inner radius of the absorbing torus, which is of the order of parsecs (e.g. Bianchi et al. 2001). Interestingly, our estimated distance is consistent with the (poorly constrained) distance scale of warm absorbers (e.g. Otani et al. 1996; Netzer et al. 2002), but it is worth remarking that the ionization parameter required in NGC 5506 is clearly higher than that of warm absorbers.

## 5 Conclusions

We have calculated the equivalent widths of H– and He–like iron K$`\alpha `$ lines from photoionized, Compton–thin matter in Seyfert galaxies, using results from MBF96 and ionization fractions estimated with cloudy. We have applied our calculations to NGC 5506, whose XMM-Newton spectrum shows a complex iron K$`\alpha `$ line system, possibly composed by a neutral line and a blend of two ionized lines as those produced in our model. We found that, if this interpretation is correct, the ionized lines observed in this source can be reproduced assuming $`\mathrm{log}U_x0÷0.5`$ (if $`T=10^6`$ K) and an iron overabundance of $`2÷3`$.

At a given gas temperature, the range of ionization parameters which produces EWs as observed in NGC 5506 is rather narrow; moreover, NGC 5506 is one of the brightest AGN in the X–ray sky. We then expect that, unless for some unknown reason the ionization parameter tends to assume values in this narrow range, in most cases these lines will be below detectability even with XMM–$`Newton`$ and $`Chandra`$, and therefore that NGC 5506 may be the exception rather than the rule. It is interesting to note that very similar iron line complexes have been observed so far by XMM–Newton in only two other sources, Mrk 205 (Reeves et al. 2001) and Mrk 509 (Pounds et al. 2001) where, as discussed in those papers, the origin of the ionized lines is likely to be the accretion disc.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank G. Cesare Perola for useful comments and suggestions, and the anonymous referee for his help in improving the clarity of the paper. Financial support from ASI and MIUR (under grant cofin-00-02-36) is acknowledged.