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# The detection of the donor star in IY UMa

## 1 Introduction

IY UMa is a dwarf nova cataclysmic variable (CV). Patterson et al. (2000) (hereafter P2000) and Rolfe, Haswell and Patterson (2001) present detailed photometric studies of the January 2000 superoutburst and superhump phenomenon. Spectroscopic observations have been published, revealing a bright hotspot and deep white dwarf absorption lines during quiescence (Rolfe, Abbott & Haswell 2001, Patterson et al. 2000, Rolfe et al. 2002); an eccentric disc during superoutburst (Wu et al. 2001); and lines powered by reprocessed boundary layer emission during outburst (Rolfe, Abbott & Haswell 2002 and Rolfe et al. 2002).

The orbital period of IY UMa is 1.77 hours, and Patterson et al. (2000) estimated $`M_{wd}=0.86\pm 0.11M_{}`$, $`M_{donor}=0.12\pm 0.02M_{}`$ and orbital inclination $`i=86\stackrel{}{.}8\pm 1\stackrel{}{.}5`$. Direct measurements of orbital parameters are desirable. A model-independent solution can be obtained if the orbital period and white dwarf eclipse width (already accurately measured for IY UMa) can be combined with measurements of the donor and white dwarf orbital velocities. The orbital period suggests a spectral type of M4.2 to M6.3 for the donor in IY UMa (Equation 4 in Smith & Dhillon (1998)). Thus absorption features in the far optical and near infrared are expected cf. Z Cha and HT Cas (Wade & Horne 1988 and Marsh 1990). We obtained spectroscopic observations of IY UMa to look for these absorption features in the wavelength range 7000–8300Å.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

Observations were taken on 2001 Jan 3 and 4 using ALFOSC on the Nordic Optical Telescope. A few calibration images were taken on Jan 7. A slit width of 1.2′′ was used with GRISM 8 yielding a FWHM resolution of $``$6.2Å and dispersion 1.24Å per pixel. We discuss only the red end of the spectra here (7000–8350Å). 39 360-second exposures of IY UMa and a nearby comparison were obtained, along with exposures of several M type dwarfs for use as template stars (listed in Table 1). Frequent arc lamp exposures provided wavelength calibration (giving 9 km s-1 r.m.s. velocity variation in the sky lines) while HD 93521 served as a flux standard and telluric standard.

Data reduction was carried out using iraf. The CCD suffers from fringing but normalized lamp flats were used to flat-field the images and removed all detectable traces of the fringing pattern. The telluric package in iraf was used to correct for telluric features. Apart from the strongest feature around 7600Å, the telluric correction worked quite well.

Conditions were not photometric so flux calibration of these red spectra was not possible. However, the skew mapping technique relies on normalized spectra. Each spectrum was normalized by fitting a 4th order polynomial to the continuum regions and dividing by this.

## 3 Average spectra

Various different averages of the IY UMa spectra are shown in Figure 1a–e along with the M4V dwarf spectrum in Figure 1f. Each plotted spectrum has been Gaussian smoothed with FWHM of 4 pixels (less than the FWHM spectral resolution), and shifted in flux by a multiple of 0.5 units.

Figure 1c shows the average of all 39 IY UMa spectra. The most obvious features are the He i emission and core absorption at 7065Å, the 7773Å O i absorption, the broad absorption band around 7600Å to 8200Å and the absorption line around 8200Å. The He i is from the disc.

The broad 7600Å–8200Å feature matches the TiO absorption band seen in the M dwarf spectra, where it is strongest in the M5V dwarf. Figures 1d & 1e show average spectra of IY UMa during eclipse (orbital phases -0.1–0.1) and where the donor should be partially obscured by the disc (phase 0.42–0.58 assuming a quiescent disc radius of 0.25$`a`$ (Stanishev et al. 2001)). The TiO absorption is clearly much stronger (by a factor $``$2) when the donor eclipses the disc than when the disc obscures the donor, confirming the identification of this feature as the TiO band absorption in the donor.

The 7773Å O i triplet has been seen in many CVs. A study of 65 CVs by Friend et al. (1988) reveals this feature in absorption in several systems during outburst, but in emission during quiescence. HT Cas also shows this feature in emission during quiescence \[Marsh 1990\]. Friend et al. (1988) attribute this to line emission from an optically thin disc in quiescence, and absorption from an optically thick disc in outburst. Two high inclination systems, Z Cha \[Wade & Horne 1988\] and V2051 Oph \[Friend et al. 1988\], show a broad emission from the O i triplet, superimposed with a narrower absorption component. It is possible that a broad weak emission component is also present in these IY UMa spectra. Friend et al. (1988) suggest that the narrow absorption feature is absorption of white dwarf emission by the disc, something which we might expect in high inclination systems. That this feature arises from the disc and certainly not from the donor is confirmed by Figures 1a & b, where each individual spectrum was Doppler-shifted into the rest frame of the white dwarf or donor before adding together the spectra. The velocities of the donor and white dwarf were assumed to be $`K_2=442`$ km s-1and $`K_1=62`$ km s-1 respectively, calculated using the P2000 orbital parameters. In the rest frame of the white dwarf the O i feature remains sharp, while in the donor star frame it splits into two absorption dips. In addition, the depth of this absorption is significantly stronger when the disc is in front of the donor (Figure 1e) than when the donor eclipses the disc (Figure 1d).

The 8200Å absorption feature closely matches the 8183–8194Å Na i doublet seen in all four dwarf template spectra. In the average spectrum (Figure 1c) it does not have the same doublet structure as seen in the template spectra, but when shifted to the donor rest frame (Figure 1b) the doublet structure becomes apparent, clearly matching the laboratory wavelengths. This feature is also more significant (considering the flux errors) during disc eclipse (Figure 1d) than when the disc passes in front of the donor (Figure 1e). This is a clear detection of the Na i doublet, a feature which has been exploited to measure $`K_2`$ in other CVs, c.f. Wade & Horne (1988), Friend et al. (1988, 1990a, 1990b) and Marsh (1990).

The TiO absorption band around 7000Å–7400Å is also more prominent when the donor obscures the disc than when the disc obscures the donor. The K i lines at 7665Å and 7699Å are not clearly seen, but there are weak features close to the noise level which could be tentatively identified as these lines.

Weaker Na i and TiO absorption around phase 0.5 than at other phases has been seen before in dwarf novae, e.g. Z Cha \[Wade & Horne 1988\], HT Cas \[Marsh 1990\] and SS Cyg \[Hessman et al. 1984\], and was attributed to a non-uniform distribution of absorption across the surface of the donor. The suggested cause of this non-uniform distribution is the filling-in of absorption features on the inner face of the donor by irradiation from the disc and/or white dwarf. This, rather than eclipse of the donor by the disc, might also be the cause of the weakened features around phase 0.5 in IY UMa.

The absorption feature at 7600Å is probably a combination of residual atmospheric absorption and the 7600Å feature seen in M dwarf spectra. There is some evidence of over-correction of the telluric absorption in the M5V template around 8230Å.

We see no evidence of Paschen emission around 8200Å seen in some CVs e.g. TT Ari and V603 Aql \[Friend et al. 1988\].

The donor star in IY UMa has been detected, showing all the expected features of a late M dwarf star. Without flux calibrated spectra, the relative strengths of the absorption features cannot be used to estimate more precisely the spectral type of the donor. The low signal-to-noise ratio prevents us from exploiting the Na i doublet to measure $`K_2`$ directly from the spectra, so we adopt the skew mapping technique \[Smith, Cameron & Tucknott 1993\] to locate the donor in velocity space.

## 4 Skew mapping

Skew mapping is the best method for detecting the donor and determining its velocity when the absorption features are weak. This technique has been successfully employed for several systems (e.g. Smith, Cameron and Tucknott (1993), Smith, Dhillon and Marsh (1998) and recently in VY Aqr (Littlefair et al 2000)). Skew mapping co-adds spectra to increase signal-to-noise, while also correcting each spectrum for the orbital motion of the donor, to avoid smearing out donor absorption features. Skew mapping extends the technique used in producing Figure 1b (where $`K_2`$ was assumed), by cross-correlating each such co-added spectrum with a template donor star spectrum, and finding the combination of template star and donor velocity at which the cross-correlation peak is strongest. This process is equivalent to producing a trailed “cross-correlation spectrum”, and then back-projecting this trail into velocity space, producing a cross-correlation map in velocity-space (the skew map) which should show a peak at the velocity of the donor star.

The normalized spectra of the template M dwarfs and IY UMa were continuum subtracted, and were Gaussian smoothed with FWHM of 2.5 pixels to increase S/N without losing any spectral information. Each IY UMa spectrum, $`F(\lambda )`$, was cross correlated with the template spectrum, $`T(\lambda )`$, for a range of velocity shifts, $`v`$, using correlation coefficient $`C_v`$ defined as

$$C_v=\frac{_{\lambda =\lambda _{min}}^{\lambda _{max}}F(\lambda )T_{}^{}{}_{v}{}^{}(\lambda )}{\left(_{\lambda =\lambda _{min}}^{\lambda _{max}}F(\lambda )^2_{\lambda =\lambda _{min}}^{\lambda _{max}}T_{}^{}{}_{v}{}^{}(\lambda )^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}},$$
(1)
where $`T_{}^{}{}_{v}{}^{}(\lambda )=T(\frac{\lambda }{1+v/c})`$. This definition of $`T_{}^{}{}_{v}{}^{}(\lambda )`$ simply has the effect of red-shifting the template spectrum by velocity $`v`$ before cross-correlating. The denominator of $`C_v`$ is chosen so that if the template and donor spectra are identical, the value of $`C_v`$ at the peak will be 1, independent of any simple scaling of the flux of either spectrum. The correlation trails thus produced were then transformed to velocity-space using the Fourier-filtered back-projection technique as implemented in Tom Marsh’s molly software. The strength of the skew map at a given velocity therefore shows how well the object spectra match a star of the template’s spectral type orbiting at that velocity.

Only the Na i doublet wavelength range was used in the cross-correlation, since this is the only sharp donor absorption feature detected, and will therefore provide all the velocity information. Skew maps were also produced using the spectral range $`\lambda =`$ 7045–8240Å (with the O i and He i lines masked out) which uses all the detected donor star features, but this simply smears out the donor star in the skew map, probably a result of the broad TiO absorptions showing a strong correlation but low velocity sensitivity. The normalization of the spectrum around the Na i doublet was improved by fitting a straight line to the continuum either side of the doublet. The skew map also depends upon the relative systemic velocity of IY UMa and the template star. Neither of these is yet known, although measurements of H$`\alpha `$ emission lead to estimates for IY UMa of $`\gamma =`$ 13.6$`\pm `$1 km s-1(Rolfe et al. 2002) and $`\gamma =`$ -4$`\pm `$32 km s-1(Wu et al. 2001). Such estimates should be treated with caution, however, since the determination of systemic velocity from emission lines is notoriously unreliable: effects such as phase-dependent occultation/absorption of emission and temporal variations in emission can produce incorrect results. By cross-correlating the M3V template whose systemic velocity is 1 km s-1\[Evans 1967\] with the other four templates, the systemic velocities of these stars were determined. The skew maps for each template were produced for a range of values of the IY UMa systemic velocity, $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$, between -100 and 300 km s-1(the low resolution of our spectra limits the accuracy of our systemic velocity determinations). This was identified as a suitable range for $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ after initially studying the range -750–750km s-1. This procedure enables a determination of the value which produces the clearest peak. We do not consider this a determination of the systemic velocity of IY UMa.

The orbital phase range 0.42 to 0.58 was not included when producing the back projections to avoid the weakened/obscured absorption lines around this phase interfering with the results. The results from using the entire phase range are considered at the end of this section.

Figure 2 shows a phase-folded and -binned and velocity-binned correlation trail for the M4V template. All four templates yield almost identical trails; at this low resolution and signal-to-noise, differences in structure in the Na i doublet between the spectral types are not going to be distinguishable in the IY UMa observations. The trail shows an S-wave, corresponding to a localized region in velocity space at which the IY UMa spectrum best matches the sodium feature. The peak-peak amplitude of this feature is about 1000 km s-1, and is at minimum excursion around orbital phase 0. This phasing and amplitude is in agreement with the predicted orbital motion of the donor (plotted in white in Figure 2) using the P2000 orbital parameters (line-of-sight donor velocity semi-amplitude 442 km s-1). The velocities are heliocentric and corrected for the template systemic velocity.

The trails were transformed to velocity space. The resulting skew maps have a clear maximum close to the predicted location of the donor star using the P2000 parameters. The exact location of the maximum depends on the assumed IY UMa systemic velocity, $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$. Two skew maps for the M4V template are shown in Figure 3. The map in the left panel uses the value of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ which produces the strongest peak (i.e. max correlation), while that on the right corresponds to the $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ which produces a peak with no x-component of velocity (as expected for the donor). These values of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ were determined as described below.

The velocity and width of the peak was determined for each image by fitting a 2-dimensional Gaussian of the form

$$C_\stackrel{}{v}=C_0+C_1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{(v_xv_{x,max})^2}{2\mathrm{\Delta }v_x^2}\frac{(v_yv_{y,max})^2}{2\mathrm{\Delta }v_y^2}\right)$$

where $`C_\stackrel{}{v}`$ is the value of the skew map at velocity $`(v_x,v_y)`$. Figure 4 shows the variation in position and shape of the skew map peak as a function of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$. The phase shift is the angular offset of the peak from $`v_x`$=0 measured about the centre of mass, i.e. $`\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{arctan}\frac{v_{x,max}}{v_{y,max}}`$. The velocity amplitude is $`V=\sqrt{v_{x,max}^2+v_{y,max}^2}`$. The peak width is measured using $`\mathrm{\Delta }v_r=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }v_x^2+\mathrm{\Delta }v_y^2}`$. The correlation of the peak is taken as $`C_0+C_1`$.

As $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ increases from -100 km s-1 to 300 km s-1, the peak moves from a velocity of about 600 km s-1and phase shift of around -0.01 through the expected donor location to a lower velocity around 400–450 km s-1and phase shift of around 0.13. This result is true for for all four templates. Only the peak size $`\mathrm{\Delta }v_r`$ and the peak correlation vary appreciably depending on the template used. The difference in $`\mathrm{\Delta }v_r`$ between templates should not be taken as a measure of how tightly each template constrains the location of the donor: it is more likely to result from differing seeing between the different template observations. However, the variation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }v_r`$ with $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ for each template is more useful, telling us which value of the IY UMa systemic velocity gives us the sharpest peak, and is therefore the most likely value for the systemic velocity. This shows the peak to be narrowest for $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ around 75 to 125 km s-1. The most important measure of which value of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ is correct is that for which the peak correlation is strongest. This is around $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$=100 to 150 km s-1 for the four templates. The peak correlation of the templates is similar, which considering the low signal-noise and resolution of these observations is not surprising: detailed differences in the Na i doublet between the spectral types have not been resolved.

The value of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ with the highest peak correlation gives us one measure of the best fitting skew map. The corresponding M4V skew map is shown in the left panel of Figure 3. The average phase shift for all four of these maps is 0.044, with a spread in values of 0.001. The 360 second exposure time used corresponds to a phase resolution of 0.06, so this phase shift is consistent with the peak actually lying along the line of centres of the two stars, where we expect the donor. The accumulated error in the P2000 ephemeris at the time of these observations is only 0.005 orbits. This then gives us a donor velocity of $`K_2`$=383 km s-1 with a spread of values of 6 km s-1. If this measured phase shift is real, then we should also consider values of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ for which the phase shift is zero, placing the donor along the line of centres. The corresponding skew maps (shown for M4V in the right panel of Figure 3) give $`K_2`$=524 km s-1 with a spread of 19 km s-1. A possible cause of such a phase shift would be irradiation of the donor by emission from the stream-disc impact, filling-in the Na absorption mainly on the leading side of the donor, thus moving the correlation peak in the direction seen.

As described earlier, these skew maps were produced omitting phase range 0.42–0.58. As a check, the analysis was repeated using the entire phase range. The skew maps corresponding to phase shift zero show far less distinct peaks than in Figure 3, rendering this measurement less reliable. The peak in correlation, the minimum value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }v_r`$ and phase shift of zero occur for values of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{IYUMa}}`$ about 10–20 km s-1 greater than before. The phase shift at maximum correlation is now 0.057 with a spread of 0.003, as large as the phase resolution of the data. The orbital velocity of the donor for maximum correlation is now $`K_2`$=362 km s-1 with a spread of 1 km s-1.

## 5 Conclusions

The donor star has been unambiguously detected in IY UMa. It is a late type M dwarf, but the low signal-to-noise and resolution of these observations prevents an accurate determination of the spectral type. The donor velocity, $`K_2`$, lies in the range about 380–540 km s-1, consistent with the value of 442 km s-1 using the model-dependent orbital parameters estimated from the photometric study in P2000. Observations with a larger telescope, providing higher spectral and temporal resolution and signal-to-noise would facilitate a direct and accurate determination of both the spectral type and velocity of the donor star in IY UMa.

## 6 Acknowledgements

The data presented here have been taken using ALFOSC, which is owned by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) and operated at the Nordic Optical Telescope under agreement between IAA and the NBIfAFG of the Astronomical Observatory of Copenhagen. The Nordic Optical Telescope 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. DJR would like to thank Tom Marsh for the use of his molly software, and Ulrich Kolb and Brian Warner for useful comments. DJR was supported by a PPARC studentship and the OU research committee. CAH gratefully acknowledges support from the Leverhulme Trust F/00-180/A.


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# Survey of the ISM in Early-Type Galaxies. IV. The Hot Dust Component Based on observations with ISO, an ESA project with instruments founded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) and with participation of ISAS and NASA.

## 1 Introduction

The presence and properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) in early-type galaxies have been the subject of intense work in the last decades. In particular, dust lanes and patches have been detected in a large fraction of such galaxies, typically in about 75% of the objects. The morphology of the dust distribution in these galaxies follows very closely that of the ionized gas (Ferrari et al. 1999, Goudfrooij et al. 1994a) and typical dust masses in the range $`10^310^5`$ $`M_{}`$ have been found (Ferrari et al. 1999; Goudfrooij et al. 1994b). These results were confirmed also by optical HST data, which showed that 78% of the early-type galaxies contain nuclear dust (Van Dokkum & Franx 1995). However, dust masses derived from the IRAS flux densities (Knapp et al. 1989) are found to be roughly an order of magnitude higher than those derived from the optical extinction values. This is in strong contrast with what is found in spiral galaxies where dust masses derived from the optical extinction and IRAS luminosities are in agreement (Goudfrooij et al. 1995, Merluzzi 1998). To account for this difference it was argued that most of the dust in elliptical galaxies exists as a diffuse component essentially undetectable at optical wavelengths. This diffuse dust component produces a radial color gradient that adds to the gradient produced by metallicity and stellar population age, as shown by Goudfrooij & Jong (1995).

Knowledge of the ISM dust emission properties in galaxies has greatly increased over the last years due to the ISO satellite which has provided high quality data in the spectral range 3 - 200 $`\mu `$m. The IR emission of the interstellar medium of galaxies is mainly due to dust heated by the interstellar radiation field and a large fraction of this emission is observed in the near and mid-IR. The emission in this region has been explained under the hypothesis of a dust population formed by very small ($`a<0.02\mu `$m) grains with a fluctuating temperature, due to the absorption of individual UV photons. Emission in the wavelength range $`3<\lambda <15\mu `$m is also produced by Unidentified Infrared Emission Bands (UIBs) associated with the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) (Desert et al.1990). The mid-IR emission of a selected sample of Virgo cluster early-type galaxies has been studied by Boselli et al. (1998), who concluded that the emission up to 15 $`\mu `$m is dominated by the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the old stellar population. A survey of a larger number of E and SO galaxies using broad band filter ISOCAM imaging covering the range 4.5 to 18 $`\mu `$m shows that dust present in the form of small hot grains and/or UIB also contributes to the mid-IR emission in these galaxies (Madden et al.1999).

The origin of the gas and dust in early-type galaxies is still a highly controversial subject. Alternative scenarios include a normal quiescent component, accretion by merger events and cooling flows (Sparks et al. 1989, Kim 1989, Fabian 1994). In order to contribute to the investigation of the ISM origin in early-type galaxies, we have carried out an extensive program of imaging and spectroscopy of a large sample of bright E and S0 galaxies. The ionized gas properties in these galaxies are discussed in Macchetto et al. (1996, hereafter Paper I). The morphology of the dust distribution and the optical absorption $`A_V`$ together with assumptions on dust grain composition allowed us to estimate the dust masses for the galaxy sample. These results were presented in Ferrari et al. (1999, hereafter Paper II). Gas and star kinematics for 12 of these galaxies are discussed in Caon et al. (2000).

In the present paper we discuss the properties of the mid-IR emission in 28 early-type galaxies observed with the ISOCAM instrument on board the ISO Satellite for which we have obtained broad band imaging, covering the range 5 to 18 $`\mu `$m. For each galaxy we have estimated the total mid-IR luminosity, mid IR colors and dust properties. We have compared these results with those inferred from the optical absorption and explored the correlation between the mid-IR dust luminosity with the ionized gas luminosity given in Paper I and dust masses derived from optical data from Paper II.

This paper is structured as follows: in Section 2 we present the galaxy sample; in Section 3 we discuss the observations and data reduction. The Spectral Energy Distributions of the target galaxies are derived in Section 4. The luminosity distribution at the three observed frequencies is presented in section 5, and mid-IR colors in Section 6. Dust mass estimates from the mid-IR observations are presented in Section 7. Finally, the conclusions are given in Section 8.

## 2 The sample

The objects studied in this paper, extensively described in Papers I and II, are luminous galaxies ($`B_T<13`$) with morphological types E and SO selected from “The Reference Catalog of Bright Galaxies” (RC3) to provide a fairly large interval in optical luminosity including both radio-loud and radio-quiet galaxies, X-ray emitters and non-emitters. A large fraction of the galaxies in this sample (72%) contains ionized gas (Paper I) and considerable amounts of dust (Paper II). This sample is not complete in any sense, rather it includes rich ISM galaxies. 14 galaxies have IRAS upper limits only; 8 were detected in 2 IRAS bands and have 2 upper limits and only 3 have reliable IRAS data. Our sample galaxies are listed in Table 1 along with their coordinates, morphological type, magnitudes, distances and stellar population groups (discussed later).

Distances have been derived with the “220 model” for the Virgo Infall of Kraan-Korteweg (1986) assuming the Virgo Cluster at a distance of 21.3 Mpc. For galaxies not present in the Kraan-Korteweg’s list, distances were derived from their redshift corrected to the reference frame defined by the cosmic microwave radiation (from RC3). All distances were then rescaled according to the value of $`\mathrm{H}_0=65\mathrm{Km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ (Macchetto et al. 1999).

## 3 Observations and data reductions

The observations were carried out with the $`32\times 32`$ element infrared camera (ISOCAM) on board the ISO satellite. ISOCAM was used to perform a raster image covering the central body of the targets. The raster was built by combining the individual frames (usually more than 100 in each target) slightly shifted along the observation. The final raster has $`36\times 36`$ pixels, or $`108^{\prime \prime }\times 108^{\prime \prime }`$, since the pixel field of view (PFOV) is $`3^{\prime \prime }`$. The single integration time was 7 sec in most cases. All galaxies were observed in 3 filters LW2 ($`\lambda _c=6.75\mu `$m , $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =2.5\mu `$m), LW3 ($`\lambda _c=15.0\mu `$m, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =5\mu `$m) and LW7 ($`\lambda _c=9.63\mu `$m, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =2\mu `$m). The ISOCAM data presented in this paper were analyzed using CIA111CIA is a joint development by the ESA Astrophysics Division and the ISOCAM consortium. The ISOCAM consortium is led by the ISOCAM PI, C. Cesarsky.: the images were dark-subtracted, flat-fielded, deglitched, corrected for transient effects in the detector and combined to produce a final raster image. At first aproach, we used the mid-IR sky model by Kelsall et al. (1998), however the resulting fluxes were too large compared with 12 $`\mu `$m IRAS fluxes. Consequently, the sky background was measured in the galaxy frames. In some cases (NGC 720, NGC 4374, NGC4472, NGC 4636) the field of view is smaller than the size of the galaxy, which could lead to overestimated sky values and consequently underestimated galaxy fluxes for these galaxies.

The total fluxes were integrated in the raster images after removing the background and then converted to mJy using the conversion factor in the CIA packages. The absolute fluxes are estimated to be accurate to 30% due to ISO calibration errors (Cesarsky and Blommaert 2000). It should be mentioned that the ISOCAM fluxes ($`50F374`$ mJy) correspond to the range where the camera is quite sensitive and accurate. ISO total integrated fluxes inside the field of view as well as IRAS data are listed in Table 2. To test the reliability of ISOCAM data we made a comparison with IRAS $`12\mu `$m data (Fig. 1). However, 12$`\mu `$m fluxes fall in a range corresponding to IRAS upper limit detection, consequently these values are not so reliable as ISOCAM fluxes. If we do not consider IRAS $`12\mu `$m fluxes below $`60`$ mJy, which are below the instrument detection limit, there is a good agreement between ISO $`6.75\mu `$m and IRAS $`12\mu `$m fluxes. The same for ISO $`15\mu `$m and IRAS $`12\mu `$m fluxes, except for two galaxies (NGC 4472 and NGC 4636) which are active galaxies. It can also be seen that ISO $`9.63\mu `$m fluxes are systematically larger than IRAS $`12\mu `$m fluxes and this may be due to the presence of some silicate bands that lie in the $`9.63\mu `$m filter spectral region. Furthermore, we should not expect ISOCAM and 12$`\mu `$m IRAS fluxes to agree better than for a factor of 2, because of the differences in the field of view, filters sensitivity and bandpasses.

For most of the observed galaxies, the mid-IR emission is extended, although its distribution varies among the filters, probably due to the relative contribution of stars and dust in each filter. Figures 2, 3 and 4 present the isophotes of IC 4889, a typical example of our sample. The isophotes at 6.75 $`\mu `$m are circular, corresponding to the dominant contribution of the galaxy stellar bulge, while at longer wavelengths, where the dust emission begins to dominate, the isophotes becomes more irregular. A general feature of isophote maps is a concentration of dust around the optical nucleus of each galaxy.

## 4 Spectral energy distributions

In order to estimate the relative contributions of the stellar component and dust emission to the mid-IR luminosity in early-type galaxies, we have built the spectral energy distribution (SED) for each galaxy using our ISOCAM data together with UV, optical, near and IRAS IR data taken from the NASA Extragalatic Database222The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We have taken from NED the optical and near-IR magnitudes integrated inside an aperture similar to that corresponding to the ISOCAM field of view ($`108^{\prime \prime }`$). UV and IRAS data are total integrated values. Some IRAS values (black dots in Figures 5, 6, 7 and 8) are upper limits. All fluxes were normalized to the near-IR K magnitude. We then superposed black body (BB) curves to each galaxy SED and found that the UV, optical and near-IR data for all galaxies can be well matched with BBs of three different temperatures T=3750 K, T=4000 K and T=4600 K. These temperatures correspond to dominant stellar populations of spectral types M0, K7 and K4, respectively. The mid-IR data have been fitted ($`\chi ^2`$) with a composite BB curve $`B_\nu (T)Q_\nu =B_\nu (T)\nu ^{1.6}`$ for isothermal grains (Natta & Panagia 1976) with T=260 K, for which the hot dust is an inportant contributor. For more than $`30\%`$ of the galaxies in the sample there are no published near-IR observations, therefore to normalize the SED to the K band, we have estimated the K flux from the BB curve which fits the observed UV and optical data. This normalization was not applied to the BB with $`T=260`$ K because at this temperature the K flux is too small and the normalization would produce high mid-IR values for the BB. Besides, we are interested in the color temperature rather than in absolute fluxes. The SED for each galaxy is shown in Fig. 5 along with the corresponding BB curves for the stellar population and dust. There is a remarkable uniformity among the galaxies with respect to the dust emission properties, except for NGC 720, NGC 4374, NGC 4472 and NGC 4636 whose sizes are much greater than ISOCAM FOV, leading to underestimated fluxes. We have arranged the galaxy SEDs in three different groups named M0, K7 and K4, which are shown in Figures 6 to 8, according to the effective temperature of the stellar population that represents its SED. Together with the data points we have plotted black body radiation curves to illustrate the stellar population contribution in comparison with the dust component.

It is interesting to stress that all SEDs of our elliptical galaxies are fitted from the UV to the mid-IR with only two components, one representing the dominant stellar population continuum and the other the hot dust emission. The dust component is remarkably uniform in temperature for all the sample, $`T260`$ K. We will therefore use this temperature to estimate the mass of the hot dust (Section 7). In our Galaxy, the far-IR emission comes from dust heated by the interestellar radiation field (ISRF) (T$`<`$22 K) and from dust associated with O and B stars and molecular clouds ($`22\mathrm{K}<T<29\mathrm{K}`$) (Sodroski et al. 1997). In order to estimate the pure dust emission, we have subtracted, from the observed mid-IR fluxes, the underlying stellar contribution, represented by the corresponding black body curve for that galaxy group.

The typical mean stellar contributions relative to the total mid-IR fluxes ($`F_\lambda ^{}+F_\lambda ^{\mathrm{dust}}`$) among the galaxy groups are about 58% at 6.75 $`\mu `$m, 22% at 9.63 $`\mu `$m at and 10% 15 $`\mu `$m. The infrared emission of our sample galaxies shows an appreciable contribution of the dust, a different behavior compared with the early-type galaxies in the sample of Boselli et al. (1998) or Madden et al. (1999), for example. This can be attributed to the fact that our sample was previously selected to be composed of dust-rich galaxies, therefore their emission in the IR is expected not to be purely stellar. The figures presented here use the corrected flux values.

## 5 The mid-IR luminosity distribution

The total mid-IR luminosities (stars+dust emission) have been computed from the integrated fluxes according to:

$$L_\nu =4\pi D^2F_\nu \delta _\nu $$
(1)
Here $`\delta _\nu `$ is the filter width as follows: $`\delta _{6.75\mu \mathrm{m}}=16.18`$ THz, $`\delta _{9.63\mu \mathrm{m}}=6.61`$ THz and $`\delta _{15\mu \mathrm{m}}=6.75`$ THz. The fluxes $`F_\nu `$ have been integrated with an aperture corresponding to the field of view width ($`108^{\prime \prime }`$). The luminosities are listed in Table 3, where the total mid-IR luminosity is $`L_{\mathrm{MIR}}=L_{6.75}+L_{9.63}+L_{15}`$. The observed mid-IR luminosity ranges from $`342\times 10^8`$ $`L_{}`$, which is similar to what Boselli et al. (1998) found for 6 Virgo Cluster early-type galaxies.

Figure 9 shows the histograms of the luminosity distribution for the observed galaxies. The plots shows the luminosities that have been corrected by subtracting the stellar component. It can be seen that the three luminosities have a similar mean value $`\mathrm{log}L8.6L_{}`$. The source that dominates the SED at 6.75 $`\mu `$m is probably the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the old stellar population. For 15 $`\mu `$m the well defined peak at $`\mathrm{log}L8.5`$ may indicate that for most of the galaxies in our sample the dust properties such as temperature mass and composition are similar. In order to see whether the ionizing source of the gas is also responsible for heating the dust, we studied the correlation between the mid-IR fluxes corrected by the stellar contribution and H$`\alpha `$ fluxes. Figure 10 shows such a flux-flux plot, normalized by the K flux. Normalized $`6.75\mu `$m fluxes are constant for 3 decades of H$`\alpha `$. At $`9\mu `$m and $`15\mu `$m the weakest H$`\alpha `$ do not correlate, although for galaxies in the range $`4.5<\mathrm{log}(F_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }/F_\mathrm{K})<3.5`$ there is a weak correlation. At least for some galaxies the source of gas ionization and dust heating must be the same and also that both gas and dust coexist in the same regions.

## 6 Mid-IR colors

The integrated properties of mid-IR dust emission in galaxies can be analysed by their colors, after subtracting the stellar population contribution. Figure 11 illustrates the color-color diagram for the observed 6.75, 9.63 and 15 $`\mu `$m fluxes, along with he corresponding colors of pure black body emission for different temperatures and power-law models. Clearly, our observed $`F_{9.63}/F_{15}`$ colors are bluer than those expected for a pure black body emission, concentrated near the BB with $`T=260`$ K. Galaxies belonging to different stellar population groups (M0, K7, K4) can be found in the same regions of the color-color diagram. Since these colors have been obtained after subtracting the stellar population contribution they are associated to properties of the dust, such as chemical composition, optical properties, grain size and the nature of the heating source.

The blue excess of the mid-IR colors (in particular the $`F_{9.63}/F_{15}`$ ratio) of our sample of galaxies with respect to the pure black body curve can be explained if we assume that the emission is produced by dust composed of graphite, silicates and PAHs, as modeled by Desert et al. (1990). This model includes three components: large silicate grains, very small graphite grains (3-dimensional) and PAHs (2-dimensional). There is a silicate band at $`9.7\mu `$m, while the main PAHs features in this spectral region are at 3.3, 6.2, 7.7, 8.6 and 11.3 $`\mu `$m (Puget, Leger and Boulanger 1985), which are covered by the filters used in the present observations. The scatter of points, for different galaxies, may be attributed to differences in the amount and/or distribution of the radiation responsible for heating the dust and PAHs. As a result, the contribution of molecules to the mid-IR emisson will vary. The remaining scatter in the correlation can be easily accounted for by differences in the interestellar radiation field and dust properties.

## 7 Dust mass estimates

In the presence of a radiation field, dust grains absorb and scatter varying fractions of the incident photons, thus changing the intensity and spectral character of the radiation spectrum. Part of the absorbed energy is re-emitted in the infrared. Consequently, an analysis of the emission and absorption properties of dust grains can be used to derive estimates on the amount of dust present in galaxies.

This dust can be found in several components (Section 6), e.g. graphites, silicates, PAHs, UIBs. However, our present photometric data (broad band fluxes) do not allow us to distinguish among these components, for which it would be necessary high spectral resolution spectroscopy. Besides, recent published ISO observations and models by Athey et al. (2002) indicate that amorphous silicate are the major constituent of dust in the oxygen-rich environments in the envelopes of low mass AGB stars of early-type galaxies, where the dust is. They also have found no evidence of PAH emission in the strongest band 7.7$`\mu `$m with an detection limit of 5 mJy. Accordingly, we estimate the dust mass using silicate grains as a probe; grains have similar properties, so the dust mass would not be appreciably different if we had considered graphite grains. The morphology of the ionized gas, the hot and cold dust as well as the luminosity distribution will be analyzed in detail in a paper in preparation.

A typical large dust grain absorbs photons of wavelength $`\lambda 1\mu `$m, heats to a certain temperature and re-emits energy in the infrared approximately as a black-body. Our sample galaxies present a maximum in their SEDs in the mid-IR at $`\lambda 10.5\mu `$m (Fig. 5), which corresponds to a grain temperature $`T=260`$ K. In the context of this paper, grains heated to that temperature are considered as hot dust. Thus, if $`L_{\mathrm{MIR}}^\mathrm{g}`$ is an individual grain’s MIR luminosity and $`L_{\mathrm{MIR}}`$ the integrated luminosity of a given galaxy observed in the range 5–18 $`\mu `$m (Table 3), the total number of emitting grains (hot dust) can be approximated as

$$N_{HD}\frac{L_{\mathrm{MIR}}}{L_{\mathrm{MIR}}^\mathrm{g}}.$$
(2)
A single grain luminosity is calculated using a standard emission model (Panagia 1975, Bollea and Cavaliere 1976, Barvainis 1987) in which

$$L_{\mathrm{MIR}}^\mathrm{g}=_{\nu _{\mathrm{min}}}^{\nu _{\mathrm{max}}}4\pi a^2Q_\nu \pi B_\nu (T)𝑑\nu ,$$
(3)
where the absorption efficiency in the infrared can be approximated by (Draine and Lee 1984)

$$Q_{\mathrm{abs}}=3\frac{a}{\lambda ^{1.6}}$$
(4)
where $`a`$ and $`\lambda `$ are given in $`\mu `$m. $`B_\nu (T)`$ is Planck’s black-body function and $`a`$ is the grain radius. Finally, for grains with density $`\rho _\mathrm{g}`$, the hot dust mass is

$`M_{HD}{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi }{3}}a^3N_{HD}\rho _\mathrm{g}.`$ (5)
Further assumptions concerning the grain properties are necessary in order to estimate the mass are (Ferrari et al. 1999 and references therein): a) the grains are assumed to be composed mainly of silicates for which $`\rho _\mathrm{g}=2550\mathrm{kg}\mathrm{m}^3`$; b) a single grain size is considered as a first approximation, $`a=0.00196\mu `$m. In fact, this is the median size $`a`$ of a distribution $`f(a)a^{7/2}`$ with $`0.0012<a<0.015\mu `$m; c) a single grain temperature $`T=260`$ K – corresponding to the hot dust component – is used and d) equation (3) is integrated between $`5<\lambda <18\mu `$m, since this is the range covered by the ISO filters used.

The resulting dust masses for each galaxy are shown in Table 4. We note that the masses of the hot dust component ($`T=260`$ K) range between $`10`$ and $`200\mathrm{M}_{}`$.

Assuming now another picture in which stars and dust are uniformly distributed throughout the galaxy, the effective extinction produced by the dust distribution on the stellar radiation field can be used to estimate the dust mass. According to this scenario, the dust luminosity ($`L_D`$) corresponds to the absorbed fraction of the intrinsic galaxy luminosity ($`L_{\mathrm{gal}}^{}`$, assumed to come primarily from the stars), as follows:

$$\frac{L_D}{L_{\mathrm{gal}}^{}}=1\frac{1e^\tau ^{}}{\tau ^{}},$$
(6)
$$\tau ^{}=\frac{4}{3}\pi a^2n_\mathrm{g}Q_eR$$
(7)
where $`\tau ^{}`$ is the effective optical depth, $`n_\mathrm{g}`$ is the grain number density, $`Q_e`$ is the effective absorption efficiency and $`R`$ is the radius of the emitting region. We consider as a first approximation $`L_{\mathrm{gal}}^{}=L_{\mathrm{gal}}+L_D`$. Both $`L_{\mathrm{gal}}`$ and $`L_D`$ are calculated integrating the corresponding curves (Fig. 6-8) along the entire wavelength range. $`\tau ^{}`$ values are, respectively, 0.058, 0.051, 0.038 and 0.049 for the M0, K7, K4 and unclassified groups. Accordingly, the dust mass is calculated as follows:

$$M_D=\frac{4}{3}\pi R^3n_\mathrm{g}\frac{4}{3}\pi a^3\rho _\mathrm{g}=\frac{4}{3}\pi a\frac{\tau ^{}}{Q_e}R^2\rho _\mathrm{g}.$$
(8)
The radius of the emitting regions are measured on the ISO images and are given in the second column of Table 4; grain parameters are those of silicates with $`a=0.00196\mu `$m and $`\rho _\mathrm{g}=2550\mathrm{kg}\mathrm{m}^3`$. The resulting dust masses are given in Table 4. There is a good agreement between the dust mass values obtained with both methods.

Seven galaxies in the present sample are in common with the sample studied in Paper II and one with the sample of Goudfrooij et al. (1994a). For galaxies in Paper II the dust masses have been estimated from the optical extinction (which is caused mostly by cold dust $`T30`$ K composed of big silicate grains with $`a_{\mathrm{si}}=0.1\mu `$m). These values ($`M_{A_V}`$) are shown, for comparison purposes, in the last column of Table 4. Dust masses estimated from the effective extinction are comparable to those corresponding to the hot dust, and 100 times in average smaller than those derived from the optical extinction.

We conclude that the hot dust mass component in early-type galaxies corresponds to a small fraction (a few percent) of the cold dust component. Although this is a new result for elliptical galaxies, it is not surprising since a similar effect has been observed in spiral galaxies such as M 31, in which the warm dust mass, derived from the 12 and 25 $`\mu `$m IRAS fluxes, is a factor $`240`$ smaller than the cold dust component derived from 60 to 175 $`\mu `$m fluxes (Haas et al. 1998).

## 8 Conclusions

We have shown the results of the mid-IR observation of 28 luminous early-type galaxies directed to study the properties of their interstellar medium. The sample spans a large interval in optical luminosity and includes both radio-loud and radio-quiet, X-ray emitters and non-emitters. From our observations, which consist of 6.75 $`\mu `$m, 9.63 $`\mu `$m and 15 $`\mu `$m images, we have mapped the mid-IR dust emission and luminosities. Most of the galaxies in our sample contain extended and measurable amounts of dust in the three mid-IR wavelengths. We have built the spectral energy distribution for each galaxy from the UV to the mid-IR, and found that the SED’s in the wavelength interval from the UV to the near-IR can be well matched by BB curves of temperatures T=3750, T=4000 and T=4600 K. These temperatures correspond respectively to dominant stellar populations of spectral types M0, K7 and K4. The mid-IR data have been fitted with a composed BB with T=260 K, for which the hot dust is a significant contributor. This curves is a reasonable fit for all the galaxies in the sample. We have estimated that the mean stellar contribution to the total mid-IR flux is about 58 % at 6.75 $`\mu `$m , 22 % at 9.63 $`\mu `$m and 10 % at 15 $`\mu `$m. The observed mid-IR luminosity ranges from $`342\times 10^8`$ $`L_{}`$. We compared the mid-IR colors with the BB colors for different temperatures and showed that our observed $`F_{9.63}/F_{15}`$ colors are bluer than those expected for a pure black body emission. The mid-IR colors of our sample of galaxies can be explained if we assume that the emission is the result of dust composed of graphite, silicates and PAHs as modeled by Desert et al. (1990). The dust mass of the mid-IR component was estimated assuming that the mid-IR emission comes basically from silicates grains heated at ($`T=260`$ K). The mass of the hot dust component estimated in this paper ranges between 10 and 200 $`M_{}`$ and we conclude that it corresponds to a very small fraction (a few percent) of the cold dust component ($`T40K`$) calculated by Merluzzi (1998) for a sample of E galaxies. Using the concept of effective optical depth, we found dust masses in the range $`10400M_{}`$. This is in very good agreement with mass calculated from the grain luminosity. Finally, these observations have shown that in addition to gas and cold dust, the ISM of elliptical galaxies also includes a measurable amount of hot dust.

## 9 Acknowledgements

We thank M. Sauvage for providing patience assistance with the CIA packages; D. Calzetti and S. Arribas for interesting discussions and suggestions during the preparation of this work. This research has been partial supported by PRONEX/FINEP/CNPq grant 7697100300 and by the STScI visitor program.


text:
# A rapidly variable narrow X-ray iron line in Mkn 841

## 1 Introduction

The fluorescent K$`\alpha `$ iron line is an important feature in the high energy spectra of Seyfert galaxies. It is believed to be the result of fluorescent emission due to photoionization of iron atoms in optically thick matter illuminated by a compact source of hard X-ray photons. The study of the iron line properties (ionization state, profile, variability) indeed provides very useful information on the geometry and the physical properties of the emitting material (Fabian et al. fab00 (2000) and references therein).
Rapid variability (on less than a day time scale) of the iron line has been reported in the past for a few objects (Yaqoob et al. yaq96 (1996); Vaughan & Edelson vau01 (2001); Wang et al. wan01 (2001)). In all these cases, the line was relatively broad. This broadening is believed to be a direct probe of Doppler and gravitational effects that occur in the region very close to the putative supermassive black hole (hereafter BH). The line variability would thus be associated with the strong perturbations of the emitting medium in the vicinity of the BH. Moreover, a narrow iron line appears to be often, if not always, present in Seyfert 1 galaxies (Pounds & Reeves pou02 (2002) and references therein). It is thought to be produced by an obscuring and remote torus postulated to exist in AGN unification schemes (Antonucci ant93 (1993); Ghisellini et al. ghi94 (1994)). This line is thus not expected to vary on so short time scale.
Mkn 841 is a bright Seyfert 1 galaxy (z=0.0365), one of the rare Seyfert 1 detected by OSSE at more than 3 $`\sigma `$ (Johnson joh97 (1997)). It is known for its large spectral variability (George et al. geo93 (1993); Nandra et al. nan95 (1995)), its strong soft excess (this was the first object where a soft excess was observed, Arnaud et al. arn85 (1985)) and its variable iron line (at least on a year time scale, George et al. geo93 (1993)). The latter was observed in some cases with a relatively large equivalent width (hereafter EW) of about 400 eV (Day et al. day90 (1990); Bianchi et al. bia01 (2001)) significantly above the value predicted by standard cold reflection model (e.g. George & Fabian geo91 (1991)).
In this paper we present the results from a XMM-Newton observation of Mkn 841. This source was also observed simultaneously with the BeppoSAX satellite. We report the presence of a rapidly variable narrow (i.e. unresolved by the XMM-pn instrument) iron line changing by a factor of a few in flux on a half day time scale.

## 2 Observation and data analysis

Due to operational contingency, the 30ks observation of Mkn 841 with XMM (Jansen et al. jan01 (2001) and references therein) was split into two parts, planned the 13th (noted OBS1) and the 14th (noted OBS2) of February 2001 with $``$ 12 and 15 ks exposure time respectively. The two observations were separated by about 15 hours.
In this paper, we will only deal with the EPIC-pn data (we have checked that the pn and MOS spectra are consistent with each other in the 2-10 keV band). A complete analysis, including all the XMM instruments, is deferred to a future work. The EPIC-pn camera was operated in Small Window mode (hereafter SW), with thin aluminium filters to reject visible light. The EPIC-pn event file was reprocessed from the ODF data files using the epchain pipeline task of the XMM Science Analysis System (SASv5.2) and using the most updated version of the public calibration files. We note that SASv5.2 only contained a preliminary model for the pn-chips charge transfer efficiency. This should not affect our main results presented here, based on the difference between two spectra, but may change slightly the spectral shape. The source spectra and light curves were built from photons detected within a 40 arcsec extraction window centered on the source. X-ray events corresponding to pattern $``$ 4 were selected. The background was estimated from an offset position and was found to be extremely low during the whole observation. The EPIC-pn count rate was of about 18 cts.s-1 for both observations, i.e. well below the pile-up threshold of $``$ 300 cts.s-1 in SW mode. For the fitting procedure the XMM spectra were binned to have at least 50 counts per bin.
Mkn 841 was also observed between the 11th and 14th of February 2001 by the BeppoSAX satellite (Boella et al. boe97 (1997) and references therein). The source was pointed for a total net time exposure of $``$90, 40 and 20 ks for the MECS, PDS and LECS instruments respectively. Since we focus our analysis, in this paper, to data above 2 keV, we will not deal with the LECS data any longer.

The MECS light curve is reported in Fig. 1 with a binning of 2500 s. Variations of about 20% are observed. The periods of the two simultaneous XMM observations are also reported in this figure. The EPIC-pn light curves show smooth flux variations of a few percent on time scale of 1000 s or less.
The integrated XMM-Newton flux of Mkn 841 over the 2-10 keV range was roughly the same for the two EPIC-pn observations at about 1.4$`\times `$10-11 erg.s-1.cm-2. It slightly differs by $``$10$`\%`$ (smaller) than the mean 2-10 keV flux measured in the MECS as it is generally observed between these two instruments (Molendi private communication).
The (2-5 keV)/(5-10 keV) hardness ratio of the MECS being consistent with no spectral variability during the observation, and in order to maximize the statistics, we integrated the MECS and PDS spectrum over the entire observation despite only a part of it was simultaneous with the XMM one. In the following, all errors refer to 90% confidence level for 1 interesting parameter ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$=2.7).

## 3 The line variability

The XMM-Newton and BeppoSAX instruments need to be carefully normalized one with each other to correct from calibration uncertainties. The MECS data were used to perform the cross calibration as follows. The multiplicative factor between the EPIC-pn and the PDS was obtained by normalizing the EPIC-pn flux to the MECS spectrum and by applying a relative normalization factor of 0.86 (free to vary by $`\pm `$5%) corresponding to the cross calibration of the MECS and PDS instruments (Fiore et al. fio99 (1999)). We then obtain a normalization factor of 1.13 and 1.08 for the PDS spectrum relative to the EPIC-pn one for OBS1 and OBS2 respectively. From now, we will only use the EPIC-pn and PDS instruments after having checked that the EPIC-pn and MECS spectral shape were consistent with each other in the 2-10 keV band.

We have reported in Fig. 2 the ratio between the EPIC-pn spectra of OBS1 and OBS2 and the best fit pexrav model of xspec (Magdziarz & Zdziarski mag95 (1995)). This best fit was obtained fitting the EPIC-pn and PDS data simultaneously. A line is clearly visible near 6.2 keV ($``$ 6.4 keV in source rest frame) in OBS1. Indeed the addition of a Gaussian in the fit of OBS 1 is significant at more than 99% (following the F-test) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$=20 for 3 additional parameters. On the contrary, the addition of a line was not significant in OBS2 ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$=1). The best fit parameters of the pexrav+gaussian fits are reported in Table 1.
The energy of the line detected in OBS1 is consistent with a neutral K$`\alpha `$ line $`E_{\text{line}}`$=6.41$`{}_{}{}^{+0.05}{}_{0.06}{}^{}`$ keV (source frame), it is unresolved with a width $`\sigma _{\text{line}}<`$170 eV and has an equivalent width (EW) of 120$`{}_{}{}^{+50}{}_{40}{}^{}`$ eV (fitting with a diskline model (Fabian et al. fab89 (1989)), the data still constrain the line to have a narrow profile, the inner disk radius being larger than $``$200 Schwarzschild radii). We obtain an upper limit of $``$70 eV for the line EW in OBS2 and the best fit line flux is a factor $``$3 weaker than in OBS1.

We then checked for line flux variations on smaller time scales. For that purpose, we studied the light curves of the flux ratios (6-6.6 keV)/(3-5 keV) and (6-6.6 keV)/(7-10 keV). These ratios are expected to be sensitive to the line flux variations with respect to the continuum shape in each side of the line. The line interval is smaller than the others to be sensible enough to the line flux variability. The light curves show a significant increase of both flux ratios during OBS1 where the line flux reaches a maximum of $``$5$`\times `$10-5 ph.cm-2.s-1. Fits of the different EPIC-pn spectra along the light curves (using a temporal bining of 1800 s) show that the best fit line flux varies by a factor $``$ 6 during the total observation (the lowest flux being in OBS2). The line width is always consistent with zero i.e. the line is always unresolved by the instrument.
We have plotted on Fig. 3 the contour plots of the line flux versus the line energy (with contours at 68, 90 and 99%) obtained during the sub-interval of OBS1 where the line flux reaches its maximum (solid contours) and for the total OBS2 (dashed contours). These contour plots have been obtained using the EPIC-pn data alone fitted with pexrav + gaussian. The line width was kept fixed to the value of 0.1 keV and we also fixed the reflection normalization parameter $`R`$ to its best fit value. From these contours, the hypothesis of the constancy of the line can be rejected at more than 99.9% (it is rejected at 99.5% if we use the total OBS1). Unfortunately, the BeppoSAX/PDS data does not provide enough counts to test whether the reflection also varied significantly during the pointing.

## 4 Discussion

Two observational facts of the present data are not easy to account for. Firstly the narrow line varies rapidly by a factor of a few while the continuum changes by only $``$ 10-20%. Secondly the reflection seems relatively large, $`R>1`$, while the line EW is relatively small $`<170`$ eV (it is worth noting that fitting the BeppoSAX data above 2 keV gives also a large $`R`$=2.5$`{}_{1.3}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+2.5}`$ and a small $`EW<`$ 100 eV). These points are in contradiction with the standard cold reflection model. In this model, the line width is due to the motion of the emitting matter in the BH gravitational potential. In this case, a fluorescent neutral iron line with a width of about 150 eV ($``$ 14000 km.s-1), like in our case, is expected to be emitted at a distance $`r10^{17}M_8/q`$ cm where the BH mass $`M_{\text{bh}}=10^8M_8`$ solar masses and $`q`$ depends on the distribution of the orbital shape and inclination of the matter spiraling around the BH ($`q`$ is expected to be larger than 1, Krolik 2001).
On the other hand, a variability time scale of $``$ 10 hours constrains the size $`d`$ of the line emitting region to about 10 light hours, i.e. $`d10^{15}`$cm. The solid angle sustained by the emitting region, as seen by the X-ray source, is then $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }\pi d^2/r^23\times 10^4q^2M_8^2`$. The observed values of $`R=\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi >`$1 then imply $`qM_8^1>140`$. However, the fact that we do not observe any flare in the MECS light curve, which would be at the origin of the line variability, constrains $`r`$ to be larger than about 1 light day, meaning $`qM_8^1<`$40 in contradiction with the previous estimation and independently of the BH mass. Modifications of this standard view are thus clearly needed.
It is first possible that the observed line variability is not controlled by the continuum itself but by an intrinsic variability of the reflecting material due to, e.g. thermal instabilities. These instabilities may change the ionization state of the upper layers of the matter. The strength of the neutral iron line, expected to be produced in the deeper layers, could then be degraded by the skin scattering properties (Nayakshin & Kallman naykal01 (2001); Petrucci et al. pet01 (2001)). On the other hand, Nayakshin & Kazanas (naykaz02 (2002)) also showed that, in response to changes in the X-ray flux, the time for re-adjustment of the hydrostatic balance of the illuminated gas may be longer than the light-travel time between the primary X-ray source and the reflecting material. The line variability observed here may then result from an X-ray flare produced in the inner disc region but occuring some time before the start of the XMM and even BeppoSAX observations. We note however that the change of ionization state of the emitting region suggested above would probably produce a ionized iron line which is not detected.
Alternatively, the line emission may have been affected by the continuum outside of the observed band pass. Variations of the high–energy cut–off and/or of the UV–EUV emission can indeed alter the ionization structure of the disc surface without obvious changes in the 2–10 keV continuum (Vaughan & Edelson vau01 (2001)). The EPIC data down to $``$0.5 keV do not show significant variation between OBS1 and OBS2 but a more precise study of the RGS and OM data will help to better test this hypothesis.
Then, if we admit that the line variability can exist without significant variations of the continuum in the XMM energy range, the distance $`r`$ of the emitting line region estimated above could be compatible with a half day variability time scale (or less) if the BH mass of Mkn 841 is relatively small, $`<10^6`$ solar masses. It is however significantly smaller than the $`10^8`$ solar masses recently estimated by Laor (2001).
Interestingly, a narrow profile is also expected, independently of the BH mass, if the flare at the origin of the line variability occurs in the inner regions but close to the disc and thus illuminates a small fraction of its surface (Nayakshin & Kazanas naykaz01 (2001); Yaqoob yaq01 (2001)). However, in this case the line is generally expected to be shifted due to relativistic effects, which is not observed.
A less “standard” explanation could be the crossing of an obscuring thick cloud in between the X-ray source and the reflecting matter. This cloud needs to be close enough to the X-ray source to rapidly eclipse a large part of its emission. It can explain why the continuum does not change between the two XMM observations since the cloud may not cross the line of sight. We then would expect the reflection hump to vary, an hypothesis which is unfortunately not testable with the present data.

## 5 Conclusion

The neutral narrow iron line of Mkn 841 appears to be highly variable on a timescale of 10 hours or less. This cannot be easily explained in the standard cold reflection model framework. None of the explanations proposed here appear completely conclusive. A consistent interpretation of these results has to concile the presence of this variable narrow and apparently neutral line, a constant (in flux and shape) underlying X-ray continuum and a large ($`>`$1) reflection normalization. New data are clearly needed to confirm this observation and to understand the origin of the line variability.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thanks the referee, S. Vaughan, for his useful comments.


text:
# Experimentally obtaining the Likeness of Two unknown qubits on an NMR Quantum Information Processor

## Abstract

Recently quantum states discrimination has been frequently studied. In this paper we study them from the other way round, the likeness of two quantum states. The fidelity is used to describe the likeness of two quantum states. Then we presented a scheme to obtain the fidelity of two unknown qubits directly from the integral area of the spectra of the assistant qubit(spin) on an NMR Quantum Information Processor. Finally we demonstrated the scheme on a three-qubit quantum information processor. The experimental data are consistent with the theoretical expectation with an average error of $`0.05`$, which confirms the scheme.

Quantum Information Processing(QIP) has been the subject of much recent interest, not only because it has great advantages in efficient algorithms and secure communications, but also because quantum information differs from classical information in several fundamental ways. One important difference is that qubits can hold superposition states while classical bits can only hold either 0 or 1 at the same time. So unlike two classical bits whose relationship is either the same or inverse, the relationship of two qubits is more complex. The complication comes from the superposition principle of quantum mechanics. Recently quantum state discrimination has been studied frequently.Lee ; Shengyu ; Barnett ; Chefles ; Walgate  In this paper we study quantum states from the other way round, i.e., considering the likeness of two quantum states. We focus on such questions that whether two unknown quantum states are the same or not, morever, the extent to which two states are alike, which is useful in quantum encryption and quantum states comparison.

Since Gershenfeld and Chuang realized quantum computation with NMR technique in 1997Gershenfeld  a lot of jobs have been done with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Quantum Information Processor(NMR QIP). NMR QIP has successfully demonstrated some efficient algorithms, such as Deutsch-Jozsa algorithmDJ , searching algorithmSearching1 ; Searching2 , Bernstein-Vazirani parity problemBV , and Shor’s quantum factoring algorithmLMKVshor ; and some fundamental ideas in quantum information, such as Dense CodingDense , error correctionError , quantum gamesQgame , creation of Greenberger Horne Zeilinger statesGHZ  and approximate quantum cloningClone . In this paper we will enlarge the list.

In the paper, first we give a brief review of the concept of the fidelity which originated from quantitative measures of the accuracy of transmission in communication theory, then we present a scheme to obtain the quantitative likeness(the fidelity) of two unknown qubits on an NMR QIP. The fidelity comes from the integral area of the spectra of the assistant qubit(spin), rather than from the tomography of the spin system. This makes it convenient to implement the scheme by NMR QIP. Finally we demonstrated the scheme on a three-qubit quantum information processor by obtaining the fidelity of two unknown qubits.

Before explainning the scheme, let us first give a review of the problem to be considered. The question is: given two unknown quantum states $`|\psi _1`$ and $`|\psi _2`$, what is the relationship of them or how similar they are. In order to quantitively describe the likeness some functions are needed.

Naturally we want that the function has the following characters:

a. $`0F(\psi _1,\psi _2)1`$ and $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)=1`$, if and only if $`|\psi _1=|\psi _2`$.

b. $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)=F(\psi _2,\psi _1)`$.

c. $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)`$ is invariant under any unitary transformations on both states.

The fidelity appearing in the communication theory is a good candidate for it. The origin of the fidelity is a quantitative measure of the accuracy of transmission. It has desired properties and thus is a sensible choice as the quantitative measure of the likeness of two unknown quantum states. The fidelity of two quantum states is defined as Jozsa

$$F(\psi _1,\psi _2)=|\psi _1|\psi _2|^2.$$
(1)
Now we have the function of the quantitative measure of the likeness of two quantum states, then the question turns to be obtaining the fidelity $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)`$.

In Quantum Fingerprintingfingerprinting , Harry Buhrman have presented a quantum circuit (Fig.1). It was used to test $`|\psi _1=|\psi _2`$ or $`|\psi _1|\psi _2|\delta `$ in that paper. We found that this quantum circuit can be further used to obtain fidelity $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)`$ of the two unknown quantum states.

$$(HI)(G_{Fredkin})(HI)|0|\psi _1|\psi _2$$
(2)
where H is the Hadamard gate, which maps $`|b\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0+(1)^b|1)`$. $`G_{Fredkin}`$ is the Fredkin gate which is also called contolled-swap gate, the first qubit is the controlling qubit, the controlled qubits can be generalized to quantum states. Tracing through the execution of the circuit, the final state is

$$\frac{1}{2}|0(|\psi _1|\psi _2+|\psi _2|\psi _1)+\frac{1}{2}|1(|\psi _1|\psi _2|\psi _2|\psi _1)$$
(3)
After tracing out the other two qubits, the density matrix of the first qubit of this final state is reduced to the form,

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{2}(1+|\psi _1|\psi _2|^2)& 0\\ 0& \frac{1}{2}(1|\psi _1|\psi _2|^2)\end{array}\right)$$
(4)
When this state is projected to $`|0`$ and $`|1`$, the difference of the two probability is $`|\psi _1|\psi _2|^2`$, which is just the fidelity $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)`$. Then the question is to obtain the difference of two outcome probability.

The outcome probabilities can not be obtained from few experiments for a general quantum computer. But for NMR QIP, which is a Bulk Quantum computerGershenfeld , the situation is very different. In NMR QIP pseudo-pure states which are deviation density matrices of the spin system were proposed as the initial states, in stead of genuine pure statesGershenfeld ; Ppure . The system of the spins in NMR may be convenient described by the product operator notationOW . The state of the first qubit can sure be expressed in the notation of the deviation density matrix and the notation of product operator,

$`\rho _1=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\rho _{00}& \rho _{01}\\ \rho _{10}& \rho _{11}\end{array}\right)`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`(\rho _{00}\rho _{11})I_z^1+(\rho _{01}+\rho _{10})I_x^1`$ (6)
$`+(\rho _{01}\rho _{10})iI_y^1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\rho _{00}+\rho _{11})I`$
where $`I_a^i=\frac{1}{2}\sigma _a^i`$, $`a=x,y,z`$, and $`I`$ is the identity matrix. So if the coefficient of $`I_z^1`$ could be observed, then the difference of the two probabilities–the fidelity is obtained. Of course it can be done by constructing the density matrix of the spin system. However the fidelity can be gotten in a more simple method. The fidelity–the coefficient of $`I_z^1`$ can be gotten by the following operations(Fig.2 part 3). First apply a gradient pulse to remove the non-diagonal part of the density matrix if there are any, then get rid of the part that correspond to the spins beside the first spin, finally apply a $`90_y`$ pulse on the first qubit. After performing these operations the state of the spin system becomes

$`(\rho _{00}\rho _{11})I_x^1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\rho _{00}+\rho _{11})I.`$ (7)
The identity matrix in NMR is not observable, so the signal from the first spin, the integral area of peaks, now corresponds to $`\rho _{00}\rho _{11}`$, which is proportional to $`|\psi _1|\psi _2|^2`$-the fidelity $`F(\psi _1,\psi _2)`$.

On a three-qubit alanine(in $`D_2O`$) NMR QIP FredkingG , we demonstrated the scheme. Spin-$`C_1`$ serves as qubit-1(the assistant spin), Spin-$`C_2`$ serves as qubit-2, which holds $`|\psi _1`$, and Spin-$`C_3`$ serves as qubit-3, which holds $`|\psi _2`$. We let $`|\psi _1=\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta _1}{2}|0e^{i\phi _1}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta _1}{2}|1`$ and $`|\psi _2=\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta _2}{2}|0e^{i\phi _2}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta _2}{2}|1`$. Specifically we studied two situations systemically: $`|\psi _2=|0`$, changing $`|\psi _1`$ and $`|\psi _1=|0`$, changing $`|\psi _2`$. In each situation we have collected 20 experimental data, where $`\theta _i`$ varies from 0 to 180 degree, with a step of 45 degree, and for each $`\theta _i`$, $`\phi _i`$ varies as 0, 90, 180 and 270 degree.

The pseudo-pure state is implemented by temporal averaging of three separate experiments, see Ref.fei  for the detail. The pulse sequence of the scheme is shown in Fig.2. It is applied after the preparation pulses for the pseudo-pure state. It includes three parts: 1. Prepare $`|\psi _1=\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta _1}{2}|0e^{i\phi _1}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta _1}{2}|1`$ or $`|\psi _2=\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta _2}{2}|0e^{i\phi _2}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta _2}{2}|1`$, it is implemented by selective pulses in certain phase on Spin-$`C_2`$ or Spin-$`C_3`$ . 2. The sequence for network in Fig.1. The two Hadamard gates are implemented by $`R_y^1(90)`$ and $`R_y^1(90)`$, the Fredkin gate is implemented with three transition pulses TP1,TP2,TP3, see Ref.FredkingG ; Du2  for the detail. 3. Reading sequence. Processing of tracing out Spin-$`C_2`$ and Spin-$`C_3`$ is done by integrating the entire multiplet of the Spin-$`C_1`$. The errors in the experiment are estimated by $`Err=|F_{exp}F_{theory}|`$.

The experimental data each of which is the sum of three experimental data, after the normalization, are plotted in Fig.3. Though the biggest error in the experimental data reaches about $`0.11`$. The experimental data are consistent with the theoretical expectation with a average error of $`0.05`$. It is sufficient to demonstrate the scheme. We have also tried the experiments that both $`|\psi _1`$ and $`|\psi _2`$ were changing. It is hard to make sure that both $`\phi _1`$ and $`\phi _2`$ are what we specify, because that the spins are precessing in different frequency, and the temporal averaging technique is also increase the difficulty. If these are taken into considering and be emendated the scheme can still be confirmed. There are two main sources of the errors. One is the imperfections of the pulses in the experiments, which bring about some errors in the implementation of the circuit and can be reduced by refining the pulse sequence. The other is the effect of the relaxation times. The length of the pulse sequences reaches $`0.3s`$, while $`T_2`$ of the alanine is about $`0.893s`$ in the experiment. So the effect of the relaxation is not neglectable and will influence the final spectra. Morever, different terms of the spin system, such as $`I_z`$ and $`I_x`$, have different relaxation behaviors and different relaxation speeds, hence these errors are harder to be reduced.

To summarize, we introduced the fidelity as a quantitative measure of the likeness of two unknown quantum states. Then we presented a scheme to obtain the fidelity on an NMR Quantum Information Processor, showed that the fidelity can be set proportional to the intensity of the signal from the assistant qubit(spin). Finally we experimentally demonstrated the scheme on a three-qubit NMR QIP which is implemented by the solution of alanine. The network(Fig.1) with slight difference was studied in Ekert’s workEkert ; Entangle . In a sense our work in this paper gives an experimentally demonstration of some ideas in the paperEkert . Besides on NMR QIP, any quantum computer based on bulk spins can use the scheme to obtain the fidelity of two unknown qubits.

This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 10075041, No. 10075044 and No. 10104014), and the National Fundamental Research Program(Grant No. 2001CB309300).


text:
# Critical generalized inverse participation ratio distributions

## Abstract

The system size dependence of the fluctuations in generalized inverse participation ratios (IPR’s) $`I_\alpha (q)`$ at criticality is investigated numerically. We focus on a three-dimensional (3D) system with unitary symmetry, a 2D system with symplectic symmetry and a 1D system with orthogonal symmetry. The variances of the IPR logarithms are found to be scale-invariant at the macroscopic limit. The finite size corrections to the variances decay algebraically with nontrivial exponents, which depend on the Hamiltonian symmetry and the dimensionality. The large-$`q`$ dependence of the asymptotic values of the variances behaves as $`q^2`$ according to theoretical estimates. These results ensure the self-averaging of the corresponding generalized dimensions.

The statistical properties of wave functions have been intensively studied during recent years, helping in our understanding of phenomena in different areas of physics, ranging from nuclear ZB96  and atomic BU96  to microwave PS00  and mesoscopic physics. AK91 ; MK95 ; FM95 ; AL97 ; Mi00 ; Ch96  Of considerable interest is what happens at the critical point of a metal-insulator transition (MIT), in which eigenstates presenting strong amplitude fluctuations were demonstrated to be multifractal objects.

The Anderson MIT essentially depends on the dimensionality and symmetries of the system. The field theoretical formulation Ef83  of the MIT shows that the critical behavior can be described within a framework of three universality classes: orthogonal ($`\beta =1`$), unitary ($`\beta =2`$), and symplectic ($`\beta =4`$). The symmetry parameter $`\beta `$ is the number of independent real components that characterizes a matrix element of the corresponding Hamiltonian. The two major symmetries in field theory are time-reversal symmetry and spin-rotation symmetry. The system belongs to the orthogonal class if it has both symmetries, to the unitary class if time-reversal symmetry is broken, and to the symplectic class if the system has time-reversal symmetry but spin-rotation is broken. The relevant terms in the hamiltonian are a coupling to an applied magnetic field, which breaks time-reversal symmetry, and the spin-orbit interaction, which breaks spin-rotation symmetry.

Castellani and Peliti CP86  considered the $`d=2+ϵ`$ ($`ϵ1`$) expansion of Wegner’s nonlinear $`\sigma `$ model W80  for the generalized inverse participation ratios (IPR’s) of eigenstates,

$$I_\alpha (q)=_\mathrm{\Omega }d^dr|\psi _\alpha (𝐫)|^{2q}L^{d_q(q1)},$$
(1)
and concluded that the wave functions $`\psi _\alpha (𝐫)`$ at the transition point of a MIT show multifractal behavior characterized by an infinite set of generalized fractal dimensions $`d_q`$. The index $`\alpha `$ labels the different eigenfunctions and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ denotes a $`d`$-dimensional region with linear dimension $`L`$. Equation (1) is valid for individual states and for their ensemble average since the spectrum of multifractal dimensions has universal features for states in the vicinity of the MIT Ja94 .

As regards the IPR fluctuations, we shall first review the existing analytical results. When these fluctuations were studied for two-dimensional systems in the framework of the supersymmetry method, FM95 ; PA98 ; Mi00  it was found that the distribution function of $`I_\alpha (q)`$, normalized to its typical value, is scale-invariant at criticality. PA98  Although this case does not present a true Anderson transition, the above result motivated the conjecture that in general the normalized distribution function of $`I_\alpha (q)`$ is universal, i.e., size independent for $`L\mathrm{}`$. Accordingly, it is assumed that the distribution function of $`\mathrm{ln}I_\alpha (q)`$ is a universal curve that, while horizontally shifted by changes in $`L`$, keeps the same form. Within the same approach, Mirlin and Evers EM00 ; ME00  study the fractal properties of the power-law random banded matrix (PRBM) ensemble at criticality. This model is characterized by a parameter, $`b`$ \[see Eq. (7) below\]. In the two limiting cases, $`b1`$ and $`b1`$, for which analytical treatment is feasible, they found the distribution function of the IPR to be scale-independent at the macroscopic limit. Particularly, they analyzed the behavior of the variance $`\sigma _{z_q}^2`$ of the distribution function of $`I_\alpha (q)`$, normalized to its typical value, in the limit $`b1`$. For values of $`q`$ larger than some critical value, $`q_\mathrm{c}2.41`$, where the IPR distribution is dominated by its slowly decaying power law tail, the same authors obtained for $`L\mathrm{}`$

$$\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})=\left(q/q_\mathrm{c}\right)^2.$$
(2)
What we are trying to point out is that a general analytical description of the statistical properties of the generalized IPR at the critical point of realistic MIT’s (conventional Anderson transition, quantum Hall transition, transition in $`d=2`$ for electrons with strong spin-orbit coupling, etc.) is still lacking. This is why we addressed the problem using numerical calculations. To our knowledge, no such calculations have been previously reported.

Our aim was to find the system size dependence of the generalized IPR distributions in order to check whether they converge at large $`L`$ to the conjectured scale invariant distributions or not. A second motivation for this work was to clarify whether the corresponding generalized dimensions are well-defined in the macroscopic limit or presents scale-invariant distributions.

Using the exact eigenstates from numerical diagonalizations, we obtained the size dependence of the distribution function $`𝒫_\beta (z_q=\mathrm{ln}I_\alpha (q))`$ at the critical point of a three-dimensional (3D) system with unitary symmetry, a two-dimensional (2D) system with symplectic symmetry and a one-dimensional (1D) system with orthogonal symmetry. All these systems possess a mobility edge and are modeled by the corresponding tight-binding Hamiltonian. We found that as $`L`$ increases $`𝒫_\beta `$ becomes wider and the height of its peak smaller with a tendency towards saturation. Therefore, their variance increases as $`L`$ increases and will eventually saturate to a constant finite value for $`L\mathrm{}`$. In order to extrapolate to macroscopic systems, we propose a finite size correction to the variance $`\sigma _{z_q}^2`$ of $`z_q`$ according to

$$\sigma _{z_q}^2(L)=\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})a_qL^{y_q},$$
(3)
with $`\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})`$, $`a_q`$ and $`y_q>0`$ being three adjustable parameters. Practically for all triads $`\{q,\beta ,d\}`$ we found that the exponent $`y_q`$ was always close to the generalized dimension $`d_q`$ divided by $`2\beta d`$. Thus, for the exponent $`y_q`$ we propose the following equation,

$$y_q=\frac{d_q}{2\beta d},$$
(4)
and keep only two free parameters. This relation constitutes the main result of the present publication. As we will see below, our numerical data strongly support this conjecture. Equation (4) is a generalization of the exponent $`\gamma =d_2/2d`$ found by our group CO02  for $`I_\alpha (2)`$ in disordered systems with orthogonal symmetry.

Some technical details follow: the critical eigenfunctions (and eigenvalues) of the Hamiltonian matrices, Eqs. (5), (6), and (7), are obtained by numerical diagonalization. In 3D and 2D systems we use techniques for large sparse matrices, CW85  while for the 1D case standard diagonalization subroutines are used, since we must deal with full matrices. We consider a small energy window $`(\eta ,\eta )`$ around the center of the spectral band, where $`\eta =1`$ ($`\eta =0.4`$) for 3D and 2D (1D) systems. Reducing the width of the above windows does not alter the results. For an accurate extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit, the system size changes by one order of magnitude for 3D and 2D systems and by two orders in the case of 1D. The number of random realizations is such that the number of critical states included for each $`L`$ is roughly $`1.5\times 10^5`$, while, in order to reduce edge effects, we impose periodic boundary conditions in all the cases considered. We have checked that the normalized nearest level variances Cu99  are indeed scale-invariant at each critical point studied. Below we present our numerical results and compare them to the conjecture (4).

3D unitary symmetry. First we focus on the breaking of time-reversal symmetry by a constant applied magnetic field. We consider the standard Anderson model with diagonal disorder and Peierls phase factors in the hopping matrix elements

$$=\underset{n}{}ϵ_nc_n^{}c_n+\underset{n,m}{}V_{nm}c_n^{}c_m,$$
(5)
where $`c_n^{}`$ ($`c_n`$) are the creation (annihilation) operators of an electron at a site $`n`$ of a simple-cubic lattice, and the summation in the second term is over nearest neighbors. The diagonal energies are randomly distributed with constant probability in the interval $`W/2<ϵ_n<W/2`$, where $`W`$ parametrizes the strength of random potential. Energies are measured in units of the modulus of the hopping matrix elements, $`V_{nm}`$, and lengths in units of the lattice constant. The hopping matrix elements, $`V_{nm}=e^{2\pi i\alpha z}`$ for neighbors in the $`y`$ direction and $`V_{nm}=1`$ in any other direction, describe a system with a homogeneous magnetic field, $`B`$, in the $`x`$ direction, while the Peierls phase $`\alpha =eB/hc`$ is the number of flux quanta $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=hc/e`$ threading a lattice cell. Here, the Landau gauge with the vector potential $`𝐀=(0,Bz,0)`$ is chosen. The system size varies between 4 and 30, and for the critical disorder we take the value $`W_\mathrm{c}=18.35`$ reported in Ref. 20 for $`\alpha =0.25`$.

In Fig. 1 we represent on a log-log scale the finite size correction $`\delta ^2z_q(L)\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})\sigma _{z_q}^2(L)`$ as a function of $`L`$ for the 3D disordered system with unitary symmetry and different values of $`q`$: $`2`$ (circles), $`4`$ (squares), $`6`$ (diamonds), and $`8`$ (triangles). The good agreement with Eqs. (3) and (4) is evident. The fitted values of the free parameters are $`a_2=2.01`$, $`a_4=19.71`$, $`a_6=52.88`$, $`a_8=100.7`$, while the corresponding $`\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})`$ are summarized in Fig. 4 (squares). The slopes of the straight lines have not been fitted and correspond to Eq. (4), with $`\beta =2`$, $`d=3`$, $`d_2=1.37`$, $`d_4=1.07`$, $`d_6=0.98`$, and $`d_8=0.94`$. These generalized dimensions were estimated from the slope, $`d_q(1q)`$, of $`z_q`$ versus $`\mathrm{ln}L`$. In order to produce a diagram of reasonable size the curves for $`q=2`$, 4, and 6 have been shifted vertically. The small difference in the slopes for $`q4`$ correspond to the slight differences in the values of $`d_q`$. The value $`\sigma _{z_2}(\mathrm{})=1.40`$ found is in good agreement with the conjecture $`\sigma _{z_2}(\mathrm{})1`$. FM95

2D symplectic symmetry. In order to calculate the critical eigenstates (two-component spinors) Ando’s model Hamiltonian An89  was used,

$$=\underset{n,\sigma }{}ϵ_nc_{n,\sigma }^{}c_{n,\sigma }+\underset{n,\sigma ,m,\sigma ^{}}{}V_{n,\sigma ;m,\sigma ^{}}c_{n,\sigma }^{}c_{m,\sigma ^{}},$$
(6)
where $`c_{n,\sigma }^{}`$ ($`c_{n,\sigma }`$) are the creation (annihilation) operators of an electron at a site $`n`$ of a square lattice with the spin component $`\sigma `$ and $`m`$ denotes the sites adjacent to site $`n`$. The on-site energy $`ϵ_n`$ is randomly distributed around zero according to a box distribution with a width $`W`$, which specifies the degree of disorder. The index $`\sigma `$ takes on values of $`+1`$ and $`1`$, and denotes spin-up or spin-down. The transfer matrices $`V_{n,\sigma ;m,\sigma ^{}}=V_x`$ or $`V_y`$ depend on the direction of the nearest neighbor site

$$V_x=\left(\begin{array}{cc}V_1& V_2\\ V_2& V_1\end{array}\right),V_y=\left(\begin{array}{cc}V_1& iV_2\\ iV_2& V_1\end{array}\right),$$

and the strength of the spin-orbit coupling is given by the parameter $`S=V_2/V`$, with $`V=(V_1^2+V_2^2)^{1/2}`$ taken to be the unit of energy. We chose $`S=1/2`$ and, for the critical disorder, $`W_\mathrm{c}=5.98`$, which was previously found in Ref. 22. The system size ranges from $`L=10`$ to $`L=120`$.

Figure 2 shows the same size corrections as Fig. 1 for the 2D disordered system with symplectic symmetry. In this case the fitted values of the free parameters are $`a_2=0.17`$, $`a_4=5.10`$, $`a_6=15.77`$, and $`a_8=31.27`$ and the values of $`\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})`$ are shown in Fig. 4 (circles). As in the 3D case, the slopes of the straight lines correspond to Eq. (4), with $`\beta =4`$, $`d=2`$, $`d_2=1.60`$, $`d_4=1.34`$, $`d_6=1.23`$, and $`d_8=1.18`$. These dimensions were also estimated in a similar way. Again, the value found, $`\sigma _{z_2}(\mathrm{})=0.46`$, is in agreement with the conjecture $`\sigma _{z_2}(\mathrm{})1`$. FM95

1D orthogonal symmetry. In this case the PRBM model EM00 ; ME00  is used. The Hamiltonian, which describes a disordered 1D sample with random long-range hopping, is represented by real symmetric matrices, whose entries are randomly drawn from a normal distribution with zero mean $`_{nm}=0`$, and a variance depending on the distance between lattice sites

$$|_{nm}|^2=\frac{1}{1+(|nm|/b)^2}.$$
(7)
The model describes a whole family of critical theories parametrized by $`b`$, which determines the critical dimensionless conductance, in the same way as the dimensionality labels the different Anderson transitions. In the intermediate regime $`b1`$, where there is no analytical solution, we obtained two different diverging exponents for the correlation and localization lengths at the critical region. CG01  The system size ranges between $`L=100`$ and $`L=\mathrm{10\hspace{0.17em}000}`$, and for the calculations we choose $`b=0.2`$.

Figure 3 shows the same size corrections as Fig. 1 for the 1D disordered system with orthogonal symmetry. The fitted values of the free parameters are $`a_2=0.47`$, $`a_4=4.28`$, $`a_6=11.16`$, $`a_8=20.95`$, and $`\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})`$ are shown in Fig. 4 (diamonds). As in the two previous cases, the slopes of the straight lines correspond to Eq. (4), with $`\beta =1`$, $`d=1`$, $`d_2=0.36`$, $`d_4=0.29`$, $`d_6=0.27`$, and $`d_8=0.26`$. The last four dimensions were estimated in a way similar to those for Fig. 1. As in the 3D and 2D cases the value $`\sigma _{z_2}(\mathrm{})=0.67`$ found is in agreement with the conjecture $`\sigma _{z_2}(\mathrm{})1`$. FM95

We checked that Eqs. (3) and (4) adequately describe the IPR fluctuations in the standard 3D Anderson transition (orthogonal symmetry) and in the critical point of the 1D system with long-range hopping, Eq. (7), when unitary and symplectic symmetries are included. We are confident that further analytical development in IPR statistics at criticality will confirm our conjectured result.

The statistical properties of wave functions are intimately related to the universal conductance fluctuations. As was shown in Ref. 6 , the relative variance of $`I_\alpha (2)`$ is of the order of $`1/g^2`$, $`g`$ being the dimensionless conductance (in units of $`e^2/h`$). The extrapolation of this relation to the transition point, in which $`g1`$, is the most direct connection between our results and experiments. In this way, our results could be checked in experiments with random systems (semiconductor heterostructures, metal oxide semiconductor MOS inversion layers, vapor-deposited films, doped and amorphous semiconductor, etc.) using samples with varying size.

Finally, we focus on the $`q`$ dependence of the asymptotic values $`\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})`$ for each universality class. In Fig. 4 we represent the standard deviation $`\sigma _{z_q}(\mathrm{})`$ versus $`q`$ for the three transitions studied: 1D orthogonal (diamonds), 2D symplectic (circles), and 3D unitary (squares). The slopes of the fitted straight lines are 0.63, 0.86, and 1.39, respectively. It is interesting to note that the nonlinear $`\sigma `$ model estimates, Eq. (2), of the 1D PRBM model is valid for all three transitions. These results further support our conjecture, described by Eq. (4). The different values of the slopes directly reflect the universality class and the dimensionality of the system. From the above slope for the 1D system we obtain $`q_\mathrm{c}=1.59`$, which is less than the value of 2.41 predicted theoretically. The origin of the deviation is that the latter value of $`q_\mathrm{c}`$ was obtained for the distribution function of $`I_\alpha (q)`$ normalized to its typical value, while the former $`q_\mathrm{c}`$ corresponds to the distribution function of $`\mathrm{ln}I_\alpha (q)`$. Anyway, we have estimated the value of $`q_\mathrm{c}`$ from the extrapolated long tails of the normalized $`I_\alpha (q)`$ distributions. The obtained value $`q_\mathrm{c}=2.21`$ is in close agreement with the predicted one for these distributions.

If we now assume that the fluctuations of the generalized dimensions $`d_q`$ are due to fluctuations of the corresponding generalized IPR, Kr96  from Eq. (1) we obtain $`\sigma _{d_q}^2(L)=\sigma _{z_q}^2(L)/(q1)^2\mathrm{ln}^2L`$ for the variance of $`d_q`$. From this relation, and taking into account Eqs. (2), (3), and (4), we see that $`\sigma _{z_q}(L)`$ vanishes at a rate $`1/\mathrm{ln}L`$ when $`L\mathrm{}`$. Therefore, we conclude that all generalized dimensions are self-averaged quantities, i.e., they tend to well-defined single values at the macroscopic limit.

In summary, we have performed a detailed numerical analysis of the statistical properties of the IPR distributions at the critical point of three standard MIT’s, finding the finite asymptotic values of the variances of the distributions in each case. The corresponding finite size corrections decay with system size as a power law with exponents that depend on the system dimensionality and on the Hamiltonian symmetry. For large values of $`q`$, the asymptotic values $`\sigma _{z_q}^2(\mathrm{})q^2`$ for all three transitions is in agreement with the analytical estimates of the 1D PRBM model. Therefore, all generalized dimensions are well-defined at the macroscopic limit.

We would like to thank the Spanish DGESIC, Project No. 1FD97-1358 and No. BFM2000-1059, for financial support.