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# Resistivity, Hall effect and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in CeNiSn

## I Introduction

Kondo semiconductors (or insulators), e.g., SmB6, YbB12, and Ce3Bi4Pt3, are cousins of heavy-fermion compounds.Takabatake et al. (1998); Aeppli and Fisk (1992) Both classes of materials behave like Kondo-impurity systems at high temperatures, f-electron spins independently scattering conduction electrons. As the scattering becomes coherent at low temperatures, the heavy-fermion compounds remain metallic, described as a Fermi liquid of heavy quasiparticles, while the Kondo semiconductors become semiconducting with a small energy gap opening in the excitation spectrum. Since the known Kondo semiconductors have an even number of electrons per unit cell, it has been suggested that, despite strong electron-correlation effects, they may be viewed as band insulators.Aeppli and Fisk (1992) Namely, if one occupied f state hybridizes with a single half-filled conduction band, a band insulator may result, with the lower hybridized band completely occupied.

CeNiSn, crystallizing in an orthorhombic structure, is a unique variety of the Kondo semiconductors, in which the gap formation seems incomplete.Takabatake et al. (1998) The Kondo temperature TK of 51 K is deduced from specific heat data above $``$10 K,Nishigori et al. (1996) which is comparable to TK of 24 K in the representative heavy-fermion compound CeRu2Si2.Besnus et al. (1985) Although the semiconducting behavior of resistivity observed in early samples (Ref. Takabatake et al., 1990) is completely suppressed as the quality of crystals is improved,Nakamoto et al. (1995) there is plenty of evidence for the gap formation below $``$10 K, e.g., direct observations of the gap by break-junction tunneling spectroscopy (Ref. Ekino et al., 1995) and the rapid suppression of C/T (Refs. Nishigori et al., 1996; Izawa et al., 1996) and 1/T1,Kyogaku et al. (1990) where C is the electronic part of specific heat, T temperature and T1 the nuclear spin lattice relaxation time. However, C/T levels off at $``$40 mJ/molK2 below 1 K,Izawa et al. (1999) and 1/T1 exhibits the Korringa law (T1T = constant) below 0.4 K.Nakamura et al. (1994) Further, the thermal conductivity exhibits T-linear dependence below 0.3 K,Paschen et al. (2000) which is characteristic of metallic systems as T $``$ 0. Analyses of C/T and 1/T1 suggest that the gap is a V-shaped pseudogap of the width $``$10 K with finite density of states (DOS) at the Fermi level.Izawa et al. (1996); Kyogaku et al. (1990); Nakamura et al. (1994) Since the width of the gap is small, the magnetic field B may alter the electronic structure via the Zeeman splitting of the up- and down-spin energy bands. There are some experimental indications that the gap may be suppressed by the field applied along the a axis,Takabatake et al. (1992); Inada et al. (1996); Izawa et al. (1996); Sugiyama et al. (1998); Terashima et al. (2001) which is the easy axis of magnetization.

On the theoretical side, there are two contrasting approaches to CeNiSn. One is an anisotropic hybridization-gap model.Ikeda and Miyake (1996); Moreno and Coleman (2000) It is argued that, if the lowest Kramers doublet of the Ce 4f state has special symmetry, the hybridization between conduction and f electrons and hence the gap may vanish in some directions in the Brillouin zone, leading to finite DOS at the Fermi level. The other approach takes a view of a two-fluid model, assuming the existence of neutral spin excitations that are decoupled from charged Fermi-liquid excitations (i.e., charge carriers).Kagan et al. (1997) It is claimed that the spin excitations dominate low-temperature thermodynamic properties and that a pseudogap opens only in their spectrum.

In a previous paper, we have reported the first observation of Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations in CeNiSn.Terashima et al. (2002) In this paper, we present more extensive measurements of low-temperature resistivity and Hall effect as well as SdH oscillations in CeNiSn. We discuss the electronic structure and the influence of the magnetic field on it.

## II Experiments

Single-crystalline ingots of CeNiSn were grown by the Czochralski method and were purified by a solid-state electrotransport technique.Nakamoto et al. (1995) Two parallelpipeds (samples-b1 and -b2) of $``$0.5 mm2 in cross section and $``$4 mm in length along the b axis were cut from an ingot by spark erosion. Gold lead wires were spot-welded. The resistivity and Hall effect were measured at temperatures down to 35 mK and in magnetic fields up to 20 T by a conventional four-terminal method with a low-frequency ac excitation current (f = 17 Hz, I = 100 $`\mu `$A) applied along the b axis. The field was rotated in the ac and bc planes, and the field angles $`\theta `$ca and $`\theta `$cb are measured from the c axis. Both samples were metallic down to the lowest temperature.

## III Results

Figure 1(a) shows the temperature dependence of resistivity, which is quite unusual. The resistivity is nearly constant around 1 K, as if a residual resistivity regime is reached, yet it starts to decrease again near 0.8 K. The resistivity exhibits a quadratic temperature dependence at the lowest temperatures \[Fig. 1(b)\], which is a characteristic of a Fermi liquid. The coherence temperature $`T_{\text{coh}}`$, i.e., the upper limit of the T2 behavior, is very low, $``$0.16 K. The coefficient A of the T2 term is huge, 54 $`\mu `$$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$cm/K2. These points may be illustrated by comparison with the corresponding values found in CeRu2Si2, i.e., $`T_{\text{coh}}`$ $``$ 0.6 K and A = 0.4 $`\mu `$$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$cm/K2.Mignot et al. (1989)

Figure 1(c) shows the magnetoresistance for selected field directions in the ac plane. The magnetoresistance for B $``$ a ($`\theta `$ca = 90) exhibits a broad maximum at 4.4 T and then decreases, showing a bend near 9 T. This behavior is in accord with previous data at 0.45 K.Inada et al. (1996) Note that the field geometry is transverse. Since CeNiSn has an even number of electrons per unit cell and hence must be a compensated metal, the negative magnetoresistance at high fields is unexpected. The position of the magnetoresistance maximum moves to higher fields with decreasing $`\theta `$ca (e.g., 7.6 T at $`\theta `$ca = 42), going beyond the investigated field range near $`\theta `$ca = 8, and then comes back to 15 T for B $``$ c ($`\theta `$ca = 0). The bend also shifts to higher fields with decreasing $`\theta _{ca}`$ and evolves into a dip for $`\theta `$ca $`<`$ $``$60, as seen at 13.5 T at $`\theta `$ca = 42. As the field is further rotated, the dip is preceded by an extended region where the resistivity exhibits rapid decrease; at $`\theta `$ca = 27, the rapid decrease starts at 15.5 T, but the dip is not reached up to 20 T. For B $``$ c, the oscillatory behavior below 15 T is due to the SdH effect and will be described in more detail below.

Figure 1(d) shows the magnetoresistance for selected field directions in the bc plane. The field geometry changes from transverse at $`\theta `$cb = 0 to longitudinal at $`\theta `$cb = 90. Although this leads to much suppressed magnetoresistance for large $`\theta `$cb, the position of the magnetoresistance maximum can be traced. As the field is tilted from the c axis with increasing $`\theta `$cb, the maximum position first moves to slightly lower fields, then goes up, and appears to go out of the field range near $`\theta `$cb = 60.

The Hall resistivity for B $``$ a is also anomalous \[Fig. 1(e)\]; it exhibits a negative peak at 2.5 T and takes small positive values at high fields. Similar behavior was previously observed at 1.5 K.Takabatake et al. (1996) For B $``$ c, the Hall resistivity is linear in B at low fields and then bends near 15 T in line with the anomaly in the magnetoresistance. The oscillatory behavior below 15 T is ascribed to the SdH effect. Although CeNiSn must have both electron and hole carriers because of the charge compensation, the large negative Hall resistivity suggests that electron carriers dominate the electrical conduction. Accordingly, if we assume a single-carrier model, the Hall coefficient at 2 T, -33$`\times `$10-2 cm3/C, corresponds to the carrier concentration of 1.2$`\times `$10-3 electron/Ce.

In Fig. 2(a), we show the oscillatory part of the magnetoresistance measured with B $``$ c for the two samples. We see that both samples exhibit essentially identical SdH oscillations. The Fourier transform of the oscillations indicates a single frequency at 65$`\pm `$5 T \[Fig. 2(b)\], where the error is simply set by the inverse of the 1/B-width of the original data. The corresponding orbit area is 0.5$`\%`$ of the cross-section normal to the c axis of the Brillouin zone. Fitting the temperature dependence of the oscillation amplitude to the Lifshitz-Kosevich formula Shoenberg (1984) (inset), we find the associated effective mass to be 13$`\pm `$1 me, where me is the free electron mass.

Although the Fourier transforms show a single peak, a closer examination of the oscillations reveals that the frequency actually changes with field. Figure 2(c) shows the frequency determined from each one oscillation period (peak to peak or valley to valley) as a function of field. We find that the frequency changes from $``$70 to $``$60 T with increasing field. We also examined possible field dependence of the effective mass for the sample b1 by measuring a peak-to-valley height of each oscillation. The masses thus determined are 12.3, 13.2, 14.2, and 13.9 $`m_e`$ at 7.4, 8.4, 9.6, and 11.5 T, respectively. It appears that the mass slightly increases with field. However, since the errors associated with these estimations are $`\pm `$1 $`m_e`$, more precise measurements are necessary to conclusively state the field dependence of the mass.

SdH oscillations of this frequency branch are observed in a wide range of field directions; $`\theta `$cb up to 60 and $`\theta `$ca up to 36. For instance, we show the oscillatory part of the magnetoresistance measured at $`\theta `$cb = 60 as a function of 1/B in Fig. 3(a). The Fourier spectrum indicates a frequency of 77$`\pm `$5 T \[Fig. 3(b)\], and the effective mass is determined to be 19$`\pm `$2 me (inset). We plot the angular dependence of the SdH frequency in Fig. 4. Here the frequencies were determined from Fourier transforms of the data in the same field interval from 5.56 to 14.3 T for all $`\theta `$cb’s and for $`\theta `$ca $`<`$ 26. For $`\theta `$ca $``$ 26, a narrower window from 5.56 to 10.9 T was used so that the magnetoresistance maximum and bend (or dip) will not affect the Fourier transforms. The frequency increases faster than 1/cos$`\theta _{ca}`$ in the ac plane, while the angular dependence in the bc plane is weak. As a rough approximation, the shape of the Fermi surface (FS) seems a concave lens of which the axis is parallel to the a axis.

We here note evidence that the observed SdH oscillations are intrinsic to high-quality single crystals of pure CeNiSn, not due to impurities. (1) We performed measurements not only at positive field angles ( $`\theta `$ca or $`\theta `$cb $`>`$ 0) but also at negative ones ( $`\theta `$ca or $`\theta `$cb $`<`$ 0). It was verified that the angular dependences of the SdH frequency and amplitude were symmetric with respect to the c axis. Namely, the SdH oscillations exhibit the appropriate symmetry of the crystal. (2) The angular dependences in the ac plane determined for the two samples are identical within error (Fig. 4).

For a limited range of field directions, we have observed another frequency branch at high fields above the aforementioned magnetoresistance dip. Figure 5(a) shows the magnetoresistance and its derivative with respect to 1/B for the field angle $`\theta `$ca = 42 as a function of 1/B. The magnetoresistance decreases fairly sharply from $``$12 T and exhibits a minimum at 13.5 T. In the field range higher than this dip, the magnetoresistance exhibits oscillatory behavior, which is more clearly visible in the derivative curve. The Fourier transform of the magnetoresistance in the field range above the dip \[Fig. 5(b), solid curve\] shows a clear peak at $``$380 T, while the spectrum for the field range below the dip (broken curve) does not show any peak. The effective mass for the orbit is determined to be 22$`\pm `$2 me (inset). For the nearby field directions $`\theta `$ca = 48 and 55, SdH oscillations with a frequency of $``$300 T appear similarly on the high-field side of the magnetoresistance dip. For still larger field angles, $`\theta `$ca $`>`$ 55, no oscillations are observed. This may be attributed to that the resistivity at high fields and hence its oscillatory part are so small for field directions close to the a axis \[see Fig. 1(c)\].

## IV Discussion

We begin with the field-dependence of the SdH frequency shown in Fig. 2(c). When a SdH frequency depends on the field, the momentary frequency $`F_m`$ that is experimentally measured differs from the true frequency $`F_{\text{true}}`$ that is directly connected with an extremal cross-section of the FS; $`F_m=F_{\text{true}}B(\text{d}F_{\text{true}}/\text{d}B)`$.van Ruitenbeek et al. (1982) This means that (1) a linear variation in $`F_{\text{true}}`$ does not affect $`F_m`$, and that, (2) when $`F_{\text{true}}`$ has non-linear field dependence, the variation in $`F_m`$ may be enhanced over that in $`F_{\text{true}}`$. A linear Zeeman shift of a parabolic energy band leads only to a linear change in a FS cross-section and hence does not affect $`F_m`$, i.e., $`F_m`$’s of oscillations from up- and down-spin electrons remain the same and constant. The observed field-dependence indicates that the energy band shifts non-linearly with fields and/or that the energy dispersion in the vicinity of the Fermi level strongly deviates from quadratic. When theoretical models become available for comparison, further information can be extracted from the present observation.

We next discuss the FS responsible for the frequency branch shown in Fig. 4. The size of the observed SdH frequencies, the order of $``$100 T, is compatible with the carrier concentration estimated from the Hall coefficient with a single-carrier model; a spherical FS enclosing 10-3 electron/Ce would give a SdH frequency of 190 T. The compatibility supports that what we have found from the SdH oscillations is not small structures of a large FS but the major portion of a small but dominant FS. Since the Hall resistivity is negative, the observed FS is an electron pocket. Note that, even if the measured Hall resistivity contains some contribution from hole carriers, the above line of argument is still valid. In that case, the true carrier number is smaller than the single-carrier-model estimation, and hence it becomes even more unlikely that larger FS’s are hidden.

It is interesting to estimate the contribution to $`\gamma `$ (= C/T) of this electron FS. Using isotropic three-dimensional effective-mass approximation, $`\gamma `$ is given by $`\pi ^2k_\text{B}^2n/2ϵ_F`$, where $`ϵ_F=\mathrm{}^2k_F^2/2m^{}`$ and $`k_F^3=3\pi ^2n/v`$. Here, $`ϵ_F`$ is the Fermi energy, $`k_F`$ the Fermi wave number, $`v`$ unit volume, and other symbols as usual. Assuming n to be 10-3 electron/Ce and $`m^{}`$ to be 10 - 20 $`m_e`$, we have $`ϵ_F`$ of 26 - 13 K and $`\gamma `$ of 1.5 - 3 mJ/molK2. The estimated $`\gamma `$ is one order-of-magnitude smaller than the experimental value of 40 mJ/molK2.Izawa et al. (1999)

Having discussed the experimental estimations of the carrier number and $`\gamma `$, we here compare the two theoretical models of CeNiSn. The considerable discrepancy between the estimated and measured $`\gamma `$ values may be a support to the two-fluid model,Kagan et al. (1997) since it claims that the specific heat is dominated by neutral spin excitations. However, it does not seem to provide clear explanation for the largely reduced carrier number. On the other hand, in the case of the anisotropic hybridization-gap model, small FS’s are expected to appear around the nodes in the Brillouin zone where the hybridization gap vanishes, if small dispersion of renormalized f-electron levels is taken into account.Ikeda and Miyake (1996) Thus, the observation of the FS does not conflict with the model. The measured large $`\gamma `$ may be accounted for if we assume that hole carriers have effective mass of $``$200 me. This assumption is not so unlikely as it may, at first sight, appear. It is known that the many-body mass enhancement in Ce-based heavy fermions varies from FS to FS and hence that light and heavy carriers often coexist in one compound. Indeed, effective masses in CeRu2Si2 found by de Haas-van Alphen measurements range from $``$1 me to more than 100 me.Aoki et al. (1993) If TK is a measure of possible mass enhancement factor, the existence of carriers with mass of $``$200 me in CeNiSn can not be ruled out, since TK is comparable in the two compounds.

We now turn to the $`T^2`$ dependence of resistivity observed below 0.16 K \[Fig. 1(b)\]. We attribute it to quasiparticle-quasiparticle collisions. Namely, we regard it as a low-temperature limiting behavior of a Fermi liquid. The two peculiarities in the T2 dependence, i.e., the relatively low $`T_{\text{coh}}`$ and anomalously large A can not be taken as indications of exceptionally strong many-body effects in CeNiSn, but rather seem to be connected with the extremely low carrier concentration of 10-3 electron/Ce. The Fermi energy of the electron carriers is estimated to be $``$20 K as described above, while that of the hole carriers could be one order-of-magnitude smaller because of the larger mass. The suppression of $`T_{\text{coh}}`$ probably relates to these fine energy scales. The huge $`A`$ does not conform to the Kadowaki-Woods relation, A/$`\gamma `$2 $``$ 1$`\times `$10-5 $`\mu `$$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$cm(molK/mJ)2, which is observed in many heavy fermions.Kadowaki and Woods (1986) In the theoretical derivation of this relation,Takimoto and Moriya (1996) metals with large carrier concentration ($``$1 electron/Ce) are assumed. This is, however, not the case with CeNiSn, in which the formation of the pseudogap suppresses $`\gamma `$, while it enhances resistivity through reduced carrier number. Thus the anomalously large A can be qualitatively explained.

One might argue that electron-phonon scattering could also lead to $`T^2`$ behavior in semimetals. For example, the resistivity of bismuth varies as $`T^2`$ between 0.3 and 1 K.Uher and Pratt (1977) The essence of the electron-phonon scenario of the $`T^2`$ resistivity is that, if the FS is small and anisotropic, large-angle scattering (i.e., scattering angle $``$ 180) by phonons may survive down to very low temperatures:Kukkonen (1978) At a low temperature T, most of excited phonons have wave numbers smaller than $`q_T=k_BT/\mathrm{}s`$, where $`s`$ is a sound velocity. If a minimal caliper of a FS is smaller than $`q_T`$, appreciable large-angle scattering can still occur and the temperature dependence of resistivity remains weaker than $`T^5`$ that is expected from the Bloch-Grüneisen law.Ziman (1964) Specifically, in the case of a cylindrical FS, it can be shown that the resistivity exhibits $`T^2`$ dependence in an extended temperature range before the $`T^5`$ dependence appears.Kukkonen (1978) This scenario, however, does not apply to CeNiSn. The sound velocity in CeNiSn is $`24\times 10^5\text{ cm/s}`$,Nakamura et al. (1991); Suzuki et al. (1992) yielding $`q_T=12\times 10^4\text{ Å}^1`$ at $`T=0.035\text{K}`$, the lowest temperature of the measurements. The observed SdH frequencies, $``$100 T, correspond to a FS cross-section of $`1\times 10^2\text{ Å}^2`$. For simplicity, let us assume the cross-section to be rectangular. The shorter sides of the rectangle must be comparable to $`q_T`$ so that large-angle scattering can be effective. Accordingly, the longer sides will be $`10050\text{ Å}^1`$. Such extremely anisotropic FS (aspect ratio $`>`$ 105) can never be compatible with the anisotropy in the resistivity: the ratio of the resistivities along the most resistive c and least resistive a axes is $``$4 at most.Nakamoto et al. (1995)

Lastly, we discuss magnetic-field effects on the electronic structure. The negative magnetoresistance and nonlinear Hall resistivity for B $``$ a \[Figs. 1(c) and (e)\] suggest that the electronic structure changes with the field, as was previously pointed out.Takabatake et al. (1992, 1996) Although the magnetoresistance maximum and bend (or dip) can not necessarily be identified with phase transitions, it seems reasonable to regard them as characteristic fields of the field-induced change. The magnetoresistance maximum probably signals the onset of substantial changes. This view is supported by the fact that the Hall resistivity for B $``$ c deviates from nearly linear field dependence, i.e., normal behavior, at the field of the magnetoresistance maximum. On the other hand, it is not clear what underlies the bend (or dip). These characteristic fields increase as the field is tilted away from the a axis. This may be related to that the magnetic susceptibilities along the b and c axes are less than half of that along the a axis.Takabatake et al. (1990); Nakamoto et al. (1995)

The sudden appearance of the high-frequency oscillations above the magnetoresistance dip (Fig. 5) suggests that a larger FS appears at high fields as a result of the changes in the electronic structure. The quasiparticle mass associated with the high frequency is no smaller than those found for the low-frequency branch. These are basically consistent with that $`\gamma `$ is enhanced in fields along the a axis.Takabatake et al. (1992); Izawa et al. (1996) The variation of $`\gamma `$ is gradual and featureless, compared to the sudden appearance of the high frequency oscillation. The discrepancy could be ascribed to the difference in the field direction and/or the fact that $`\gamma `$ was measured on an early semiconducting sample (Ref. Takabatake et al., 1992) or at a much higher temperature of 3.3 K.Izawa et al. (1996)

## V Conclusion

We have established that a small number of intrinsic charge carriers with enhanced mass do exist in the ground state of CeNiSn. The carrier concentration is estimated to be $`10^3`$ electron / Ce, while the quasiparticle mass is $``$10-20 $`m_e`$. Combining these two parameters, we have estimated the contribution of the observed FS to $`\gamma `$ to be a few mJ / molK2, which is one order-of-magnitude smaller than the experimental $`\gamma `$. Thus, the essential question raised by the two-fluid model still remains to be solved; whether or not neutral spin excitations, besides charge carriers, are necessary to explain low-temperature thermodynamic properties in CeNiSn. The resistivity exhibits $`T^2`$-dependence below $`T_{\text{coh}}=0.16\text{ K}`$. Viewing this dependence as a Fermi-liquid behavior, we have argued that the low $`T_{\text{coh}}`$ and huge $`A`$ associated with it may be related to the extremely low carrier concentration.

We have observed that the high-frequency SdH oscillations appear above the magnetoresistance-dip anomaly for certain field directions and have discussed these observations in terms of field-induced changes in the electronic structure. We note that the Zeeman energy at 20 T is $``$20 K for a moment of $``$1 $`\mu `$B and is comparable to (or much larger than) the Fermi energy of the electron (hole) carriers derived in the present work. This suggests that competition between these energies may lead to fundamental change of the electronic structure. Therefore field-effects on the electronic structure deserve further studies.

###### Acknowledgements.

Work at Hiroshima University was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (COE Research 13CE2002) of MEXT, Japan.


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# Gamma rays from clusters of galaxies

## 1. Introduction

The presence of nonthermal particles in clusters of galaxies is a well established fact. These particles are responsible for extended synchrotron radio halos in several clusters (see Feretti et al., 2000 for a recent rewiew), as well as for hard X-ray (HXR) and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) excesses (see e.g. Fusco Femiano et al., 1999, 2000; Lieu et al., 1996). Several explanations have been proposed for the origin of this radiation, but at present there is no conclusive evidence in favor or against any of these models.

The simplest explanation for the HXR excess is based on the inverse compton scattering (ICS) of the same relativistic electrons that are responsible for the radio halos. In this case, low values of the intracluster magnetic field are required, that seem in some contradiction with the much larger values of the fields evaluated through faraday rotation measurements (RM) (Eilek 1999; Clarke, Kronberg & Böringer 1999). These measurements are however quite difficult, and the discrepancy needs to be considered critically. The severe energy losses associated with the relativistic electrons make the nonthermal phenomena due to synchrotron and ICS of relativistic electrons transient phenomena, with duration not longer than a few billion years. However, if the acceleration processes occur during some violent phenomenon such as cluster mergers, some level of reacceleration may be expected due to the presence of turbulence in the intracluster medium (Brunetti et al. 2001a, 2001b).

Alternative explanations of the HXR excess have also been proposed, based on acceleration of electrons from the thermal bath and bremsstrahlung radiation from these particles (Ensslin, Lieu & Biermann 1999; Blasi 2000; Dogiel 2000; Sarazin & Kempner 2000). These models also have their drawbacks, as discussed by Petrosian (these proceedings) and Petrosian (2001).

An important theoretical insight transformed our way of looking at clusters: cosmic rays accelerated in clusters are trapped there for cosmological times (Berezinsky, Blasi, & Ptuskin 1997; Völk, Aharonian, & Breitschwerdt 1996). Clusters behave as cosmological storage rooms for cosmic rays. The combination of this argument and the ever-increasing mass of observations of nonthermal phenomena, generated an unprecedented interest in clusters as possible sources of gamma rays. The detection (or not) of gamma radiation by one of the future gamma ray telescopes such as GLAST, or even current ground based telescopes such as STACEE or HEGRA would allow us to weigh the nonthermal content of clusters and achieve a better understanding of the nonthermal history of these large scale structures.

The issue of nonthermal radiation is clearly related to the problem of acceleration of particles: although the common wisdom is that the acceleration occurs during mergers of subclusters, there are several arguments which complicate this simple picture. We discuss this important issue at length in this review.

Throughout the paper we assume a flat cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$) with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=1\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.7`$ and a value for the Hubble constant of $`70\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}/\mathrm{Mpc}`$.

The paper is planned as follows: in §2 we discuss the physics of cosmic ray confinement in clusters of galaxies; in §3 we summarize the gamma ray predictions for gamma rays from clusters of galaxies. §4 is devoted to the investigation of merger shocks as cosmic ray accelerators. The consequences of gamma ray production from clusters onto the diffuse gamma ray background are discussed in §5, while our conclusions are presented in §6.

## 2. Cosmic Ray confinement. When $`\gamma `$-rays became an option

The bulk of high energy particles in clusters of galaxies propagate diffusively. The diffusion time scale for a particle with energy $`E`$ on a spatial scale $`R`$ comparable with the size of a cluster is

$$\tau _{diff}\frac{R^2}{4D(E)},$$

where $`D(E)`$ is the diffusion coefficient. It is easy to see that the energy at which the diffusion time becomes shorter than the age of the universe is

$$\stackrel{~}{E}=2\times 10^8B_\mu \mathrm{GeV}$$
(1)
for a Bohm diffusion, and

$$\stackrel{~}{E}=3\times 10^4B_\mu L_{20}^2\mathrm{GeV}$$
(2)
for a Kolmogorov spectrum of the fluctuations on the magnetic field $`B_\mu `$ (in $`\mu G`$). $`L_{20}`$ represents here the scale where there is most of the power in the Kolmogorov spectrum , in units of 20 kpc. These expressions for $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$ tell us that the bulk of cosmic rays is confined within clusters, which therefore behave as cosmological storage rooms for cosmic rays (Berezinsky, Blasi & Ptuskin 1997; Völk, Aharonian, & Breitschwerdt 1996). Any process or any source that accelerates particles within the cluster volume contributes to increase the nonthermal content of the intracluster gas. The present value of the energy density of cosmic rays in a cluster is the result of all these processes integrated over the lifetime of the cluster (comparable to the age of the universe $`t_0`$).

This argument is of special importance for particles whose energy losses occur on time scales longer than $`t_0`$, in particular high energy protons (or nuclei). Relativistic electrons with $`\gamma >300`$ lose energy on time scales shorter than $`t_0`$, so that their energy is radiated away through synchrotron and ICS emission. The fate of these high energy electrons is to finally pile up at lorentz factors around $`100`$ where the timescale for losses, dominated now by Coulomb scattering, becomes of several billion years.

For protons, the main channel of energy losses is provided by inelastic proton-proton scattering, with inclusive cross section $`\sigma _{pp}3\times 10^{26}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. In a cluster of galaxies, the timescale associated with this process is

$$\tau _{pp}=\frac{1}{n_{gas}\sigma _{pp}c}=3.5\times 10^{10}n_3^1\mathrm{yrs},$$

where $`n_3=n_{gas}/10^3\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and $`n_{gas}`$ is the gas density in the intracluster medium. Inelastic $`pp`$ scattering is weak enough to allow the accumulation of protons over cosmological times, as discussed above, but also efficient enough for the continuous production of pions, which in turn decay into gamma rays (for neutral pions), electron-positron pairs and neutrinos (for charged pions). The decay chain is as follows:

$$p+p\pi ^0+\pi ^++\pi ^{}+\mathrm{anything}$$

$$\pi ^0\gamma \gamma $$

$$\pi ^\pm \mu +\nu _\mu \mu ^\pm e^\pm \nu _\mu \nu _e.$$

The role of electron-positron pairs from $`\pi ^\pm `$ decays is subject of much debate and investigation (see also talk by Brunetti, these proceedings). In fact synchrotron emission from these pairs may well reproduce the general features of the radio halos and their diffuse appearance (Colafrancesco & Blasi 1998), without invoking any additional reacceleration processes. Reacceleration is instead required in radio halo models based on the acceleration of primary electrons and their propagation in the cluster volume. In order to accomodate the HXR emission observed from the Coma cluster, this model requires a magnetic field of $`0.1\mu G`$. This conclusion actually holds for any other model, with the possible exception of models in which a cutoff in the electron spectrum is tuned up in order to reduce the corresponding synchrotron emission. In these cases the magnetic field can be as high as $`0.30.4\mu G`$ (Brunetti et al. 2001a). It was shown by Colafrancesco & Blasi (1998) that for the Coma cluster, in the context of the secondary electron model, small magnetic fields imply an overproduction of gamma radiation compared to the EGRET upper limit (Sreekumar et al. 1996). This conclusion may possibly be avoided only if the emission regions of HXRs and radio radiation are different. A careful investigation of all these effects is being carried out by Blasi, Brunetti & Gabici (2002), in order to understand under which conditions, if any, the fine structure of radio halos (spatial distribution of the radiation, spectral steepening in the outer regions of clusters, radio halo statistics) can be accomodated within the so-called secondary electron model (Dennison 1980, Colafrancesco & Blasi 1998, Blasi & Colafrancesco 1999), where all the electrons responsible for the radio halo are due to $`pp`$ scatterings. This investigation is extremely important even if the bulk of the observed nonthermal radiation had to be generated mainly by something other than the secondary $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs. In fact, if to take our own Galaxy as a template of cosmic ray behaviour, it seems likely that in clusters, as well as in the Galaxy, protons outnumber electrons (at least around 1 GeV) by about a factor 100. The questions then become: where are these protons? And how can we detect them? The answer to these questions is, we believe, in gamma ray observations, both in the GeV range, with GLAST, and in the TeV range, with ground based detectors. In the next section we describe the current predictions of gamma ray fluxes and their physical information load.

## 3. $`\gamma `$-ray emission

A useful way of discussing the gamma ray emission from clusters of galaxies is by simply parametrizing the proton abundance in clusters as a fraction of the thermal (virial) energy of the cluster, or, in other words, in terms of deviations from equipartition. In fig. 1, we plot the gamma ray fluxes expected from a Coma-like cluster as due to $`pp`$ inelastic scattering, and neglecting at this stage any other contribution. The energy density of cosmic ray protons is taken to be equal to the thermal energy density.

In the upper panel we assumed that cosmic rays are injected by a point source (for instance a radio Galaxy) in the center of the cluster, while in the bottom panel cosmic rays are assumed to be injected homogeneously in the cluster volume. The EGRET upper limit and the sensitivity curves for GLAST and for some ground based experiments are also reported in the figure. Some comments are in order: 1) the fluxes of gamma rays above $`100`$ GeV are already at the EGRET sensitivity level, and will certainly be at hand for GLAST. 2) In the presence of protons, it is basically unavoidable to have gamma ray production up to at least the TeV range; in this energy region, the radiation spectra reproduce the spectrum of parent protons.

It seems that even with present experiments, such as STACEE, it would be possible to put interesting upper limits on the gamma ray fluxes from some nearby clusters of galaxies, such as Coma (Blasi 1999). If the clusters are too far away, then absorption effects due to photon-photon pair production on the cosmic infrared background and smaller fluences may make the detection more difficult or even impossible at energies in excess of a few TeV.

In order to have a more complete picture of the processes that contribute to the gamma ray brightness of a cluster, we need to include at least two other components, namely primary and secondary electrons. Blasi (2000) has carried out this calculation for the case of a merger shock as accelerator, but the basic features remain valid even for a different type of accelerator. A similar numerical calculation was carried out by Miniati et al. (2001).

For a Coma-like cluster, the flux of gamma radiation is plotted in fig. 2.

The spectrum of the injected particles has been chosen to reproduce the spectral slope of the radio halo in Coma. The solid thick lines, labelled as Pion01 and Pion001 are the gamma ray fluxes due to neutral pion decay in $`pp`$ inelastic scattering. The normalization between electrons and protons accelerated at the same merger shock (therefore with the same power law injection spectrum in momentum) is parametrized by a parameter $`\xi `$ representing the ratio in the number density of electrons and protons at injection. After fixing $`\xi `$ the solution of the transport equation (including diffusion and energy losses) can be determined. For the numerical calculations we use $`\xi =0.1`$ (curve Pion01) and $`\xi =0.01`$ (curve Pion001). The thin solid lines labelled as ICS01 and ICS001 represent the gamma ray fluxes due to ICS of the secondary electrons from the decay of charged pions for the two values of the parameter $`\xi `$. The two curves labelled BS01 and BS001 are the gamma ray fluxes due to bremsstrahlung emission of secondary electrons. The dashed lines are the result of bremsstrahlung emission of primary electrons, as a function of the time from the end of the merger event.

The dotted line is the flux of gamma rays due to ICS of the primary electrons. Note that this conctribution exists only for Bohm diffusion coefficient, as the acceleration time of electrons exceeds the timescale for losses for less extreme choices of the diffusion coefficient. In these more reasonable cases, the ICS emission ends up in the X-rays and stops there.

Some very general conclusions can be extracted from fig. 1:

* The fluxes that are expected from a Coma-like cluster are accessible to GLAST in the energy region above 100 MeV.
* While the gamma ray emission from primary electrons is always time dependent and rapidly fading away after the end of the merger (it basically disappears a few hundred million years after the merger), the gamma ray emission due to either neutral pion decay or emission of secondary electrons is time independent (and actually slightly increasing with time), as a result of cosmic ray confinement and of slow energy losses of relativistic protons.
* The contribution due to protons is underestimated in fig. 2, because only one merger has been considered. While this is an excellent approximation for relativistic electrons, it is not for protons, which are accumulated during the cluster’s history piling up to a likely larger value than that used to obtain the curves in fig. 2. Their spectrum depends however on the specific injection mechanism.
* Above a few GeV the gamma ray flux is likely to be dominated by the decay of neutral pions. The spectra are as flat as those of the parent protons and may extend to very high energies. In the energy region above a few hundred GeV these fluxes will be accessible to ground based experiments (see also fig. 1) such as VERITAS, MAGIC and HESS.
* The ICS contribution of primary electrons is present only if electrons can attain a maximum Lorentz factor larger than about $`10^610^7`$, which may happen only for very small diffusion coefficients, like in the Bohm case (Blasi 2000). These considerations are crucial for models that try to establish a connection between cluster mergers and the diffuse extragalctic gamma ray background (Loeb & Waxman 2000).

The main conclusions listed above remain valid even if the nonthermal particles are accelerated at a place other than merger shocks. Nevertheless, much interest has been shown recently on merger events as the origin of nonthermal phenomena in clusters of galaxies. Therefore in the next section, we discuss in detail the acceleration of particles in merger shocks, and their relevance on cosmological time scales.

## 4. Merger shocks as cosmic ray accelerators

Relativistic particles can be accelerated at strong shocks by diffusive (first order) Fermi acceleration (Fermi 1949; Blandford & Eichler 1987). This mechanism has been invoked several times as the ideal acceleration process in clusters of galaxies that have been involved in a merger event (Blasi 2000; Fujita & Sarazin 2001). In §4.1 we briefly summarize the basic physics of shock acceleration, since it is instrumental to understand whether merger related shock waves can indeed play a role for the acceleration of the relativistic particles responsible for the observed nonthermal radiation from clusters of galaxies. In order to assess this point, we also need to reconstruct the merger history of a cluster, and use it to determine the statistics of strengths of the shocks associated to the merger events. We do this in §4.2. The results summarized here are discussed at length by Gabici & Blasi (2002).

### 4.1. The basics of shock acceleration in clusters

A shock with compression factor $`r`$ and Mach number $``$ can accelerate particles to a power law in momentum $`f(p)p^\alpha `$, with slope $`\alpha `$ related to the Mach number and compression factor by the following expressions:

$$\alpha =\frac{r+2}{r1}=2\frac{^2+1}{^21}.$$
(3)
The acceleration occurs diffusively, in that particles scatter back and forth the shock, gaining at each crossing and recrossing an amount of energy proportional to the energy of the particle itself, $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/EV/c`$, where $`V`$ is the speed of the shock and $`c`$ is the speed of light. The distribution function of the accelerated particles is normalized here by $`_{p_{min}}^{p_{max}}𝑑pE(p)f(p)=\eta \rho u^2`$, where $`E(p)=\sqrt{p^2+m^2}`$ and $`m`$ is the mass of the accelerated particles, $`\eta `$ is an efficiency of acceleration, $`\rho `$ and $`u`$ are the density and speed respectively of the fluid crossing the shock surface. The minimum and maximum momenta ($`p_{min}`$ and $`p_{max}`$) of the accelerated particles are determined by the properties of the shock. In particular, $`p_{max}`$ is the result of the balance between the acceleration rate and either the energy loss rate or the rate of escape from the acceleration region. Less clear is how to evaluate $`p_{min}`$; the minimum momentum of the particles involved in the acceleration process depends on the microphysics of the shock, a problem well known in the investigation of shock acceleration as the injection problem. Fortunately, most physical observables usually depend very weakly on $`p_{min}`$.

In the following we estimate the value of the maximum energies for electrons and protons as accelerated particles. The acceleration time, as a function of the particle energy $`E`$ can be written as

$$\tau _{acc}(E)=\frac{3}{u_1u_2}D(E)\left[\frac{1}{u_1}+\frac{1}{u_2}\right]=\frac{3D(E)}{u_1^2}\frac{r(r+1)}{r1},$$
(4)
valid for any choice of the diffusion coefficient $`D(E)`$, for which we consider two possible models. First we use the expression proposed in (Blasi & Colafrancesco 1999):

$$D(E)=2.3\times 10^{29}B_\mu ^{1/3}L_{20}^{2/3}E(GeV)^{1/3}cm^2/s,$$
(5)
where $`B_\mu `$ is the magnetic field in microgauss. Here we assumed that the magnetic field is described by a Kolmogorov power spectrum.

In this case the acceleration time becomes:

$$\tau _{acc}(E)6.9\times 10^{13}B_\mu ^{1/3}L_{20}^{2/3}E(GeV)^{1/3}v_8^2g(r)s,$$
(6)
where $`v_8=\frac{v}{10^8cm/s}`$ and $`g(r)=r(r+1)/(r1)`$ and $`v=u_1`$.

For electrons, if the average magnetic field is less than $`3\mu G`$, the energy losses are dominated by ICS off the microwave background, with a loss time $`\tau _{loss}4\times 10^{16}/Es`$, where $`E`$ is in GeV. The maximum energy of accelerated electrons is obtained requiring $`\tau _{acc}<\tau _{loss}`$:

$$E_{max}^e118L_{20}^{1/2}B_\mu ^{1/4}v_8^{3/2}g(r)^{3/4}GeV.$$
(7)
The compression ratio $`r`$ and the velocity $`v_8`$ are not independent, since

$$r=\frac{\frac{8}{3}^2}{\frac{2}{3}^2+2},$$
(8)
valid for an ideal monoatomic gas.

For protons, energy losses are not relevant and the maximum energy is clearly determined by the finite time duration of the merger event. Therefore the maximum energy for protons will be defined by the condition $`\tau _{acc}<t_{merger}`$, which gives

$$E_{max}^p9\times 10^7L_{20}^2B_\mu v_8^6g(r)^{1/2}GeV.$$
(9)
As a second possibility for the diffusion coefficient we assume Bohm diffusion, well motivated for the case of strong turbulence. In this case:

$$D(E)=3.3\times 10^{22}E(GeV)/B_\mu cm^2/s.$$
(10)
In this case, for electrons we obtain:

$$E_{max}^e6.3\times 10^4B_\mu ^{1/2}v_8g(r)^{1/2}GeV,$$
(11)
while for protons

$$E_{max}^p3\times 10^9B_\mu v_8^2g(r)^1GeV.$$
(12)
If $`E_{max}^p`$ becomes larger than $`10^{10}`$ GeV energy losses due to pair production and photopion production on the photons of the microwave background become important and limit the maximum energy to less that a few $`10^{10}`$ GeV.

### 4.2. The merger tree and related shocks

The standard theory of structure formation predicts that larger structures are the result of the mergers of smaller structures: this hierarchical model of structure formation in the universe has been tested in several independent ways and provides a good description of the observations of the mass function of clusters of galaxies and their properties.

While a complete understanding of the process of structure formation can only be achieved by numerical N-body simulations, an efficient and analytical description can also be obtained and several of these approaches are widely discussed in the literaure. Historically, the first approach to the problem was proposed by Press & Schechter (1974, hereafter PS) and successively developed by Bond et al. (1991) and Lacey & Cole (1993, hereafter LC) among others. In the PS formalism, the differential comoving number density of clusters with mass $`M`$ at cosmic time $`t`$ can be written as:

$$\frac{dn(M,t)}{dM}=\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\frac{\varrho }{M^2}\frac{\delta _c(t)}{\sigma (M)}\left|\frac{dln\sigma (M)}{dlnM}\right|exp\left[\frac{\delta _c^2(t)}{2\sigma ^2(M)}\right].$$
(13)
The rate at which clusters of mass $`M`$ merge at a given time $`t`$ is written as a function of $`t`$ and of the final mass $`M^{}`$ (LC, 1993):

$$R(M,M^{},t)dM^{}=$$

$`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\delta _c(t)}{dt}}\right|{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma ^2(M^{})}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma (M^{})}{dM^{}}}\right|\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2(M^{})}{\sigma ^2(M)}}\right)^{3/2}`$
$`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\delta _\mathrm{c}^2(\mathrm{t})}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma ^2(\mathrm{M}^{})}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma ^2(\mathrm{M})}}\right)\right]\mathrm{dM}^{},`$ (14)
where $`\varrho `$ is the present mean density of the universe, $`\delta _c(t)`$ is the critical density contrast linearly extrapolated to the present time for a region that collapses at time $`t`$, and $`\sigma (M)`$ is the current rms density fluctuation smoothed over the mass scale $`M`$. For $`\sigma (M)`$ we use an approximate formula proposed by Kitayama (1997), normalized by assuming a bias parameter $`b=0.9`$. We adopt the expression of $`\delta _c(t)`$ given by Nakamura & Suto (1997). In this respect our approach is similar to that adopted by Fujita & Sarazin(2001).

Salvador-Solé, Solanes & Manrique (1998) modified the model illustrated above, by introducing a new parameter, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=r_{crit}=[(M^{}M)/M]_{crit}`$, defined as a peculiar value of the captured mass that separates the accretion events from merger events. Events in which a cluster of mass $`M`$ captures a dark matter halo with mass smaller then $`\mathrm{\Delta }_mM`$ are considered as continuous mass accretion, while events where the collected mass is larger than $`\mathrm{\Delta }_mM`$ are defined as mergers. The value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_mM`$ is somehow arbitrary.

Using this effective description of the merger and accretion events, it is easy to construct simulated merger trees for a cluster with fixed mass at the present time. Although useful from a computational point of view, this difference does not correspond to any new phyics information, therefore in the following we will adopt the name “merger” for both regimes, provided there is no ambiguity or risk of confusion.

In figure 3 we plotted the merger tree for a cluster with present mass equal to $`10^{15}M_{}`$ and for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.6`$. The big jumps in the cluster mass correspond to merger events, while smaller jumps correspond to what Salvador-Solé et al. (1998) defined as accretion events.

While the dark matter components of two clusters involved in a merger can compenetrate each other due to the collisionless nature of dark matter, and form a deeper gravity potential well, the baryon components of the clusters are forced to move supersonically during the merger event, and shock surfaces are formed. These shocks are instrumental for the heating of the intracluster gas, since they allow the conversion of part of the available gravitational energy into thermal energy.

In this section we describe in more detail the physical properties of such shocks, with special attention for their Mach numbers and compression factors.

We assume to have two clusters, as completely virialized structures, at temperatures $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$, and with masses $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$ (here the masses are the total masses, dominated by the dark matter component). The virial radius of a cluster can be written as follows

$$r_{vir,i}=\left(\frac{3M_i}{4\pi \mathrm{\Delta }_c\rho _{cr,0}(1+z_{f,i})^3}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}}=$$

$$\left(\frac{GM_i}{100\mathrm{\Omega }_mH_0^2(1+z_{f,i})^3}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}},$$
(15)
where $`i=1,2`$, $`\rho _{cr,0}=\mathrm{\Omega }_m1.8810^{29}h^2\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is the current value of the critical mass density of the universe, $`z_{f,i}`$ is the redshift of formation of the cluster $`i`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c=200`$ is the density constrast for the formation of the cluster and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ is the matter density fraction. In the right hand side of the equation we used the fact that $`\rho _{cr,0}=3H_0^2/8\pi G`$, where $`H_0`$ is the Hubble constant. The formation redshift $`z_f`$ is on average a decreasing function of the mass, meaning that smaller clusters are formed at larger redshifts, consistently with the hierarchical scenario of structure formation. There are intrinsic fluctuations in the value of $`z_f`$ from cluster to cluster at fixed mass, due to the stochastic nature of the merger tree.

Two clusters with masses $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$ collide with a relative velocity $`V_r`$ that can be easily calculated from energy conservation:

$$\frac{GM_1M_2}{r_{vir,1}+r_{vir,2}}+\frac{1}{2}M_rV_r^2=\frac{GM_1M_2}{2R_{12}},$$
(16)
where $`M_r=M_1M_2/(M_1+M_2)`$ is the reduced mass and $`R_{12}`$ the turnaround radius of the system of two masses. In a Einstein-De Sitter cosmology, the latter equals twice the virial radius of the system, so that, using eq. 15, we get:

$$R_{12}=\left(\frac{M_1+M_2}{M_1}\right)^{1/3}r_{vir,1}.$$
(17)
In different cosmologies this expression still remains valid in approximate way. The sound speed of the cluster $`i`$ is given by

$$c_{s,i}=\gamma _g(\gamma _g1)\frac{GM_i}{2r_{vir,i}}$$

where we used the virial theorem to relate the gas temperature to the mass and virial radius of the cluster. The adiabatic index of the gas is $`\gamma _g=5/3`$. Following Takizawa (1999), the Mach numbers of each cluster while moving in the volume of the other cluster can be written as:

$`_1^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1+\eta )}{\gamma (\gamma 1)}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+\frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_{f,2}}\eta ^{1/3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_f}(1+\eta )^{1/3}}}\right]`$
$`_2^2`$ $`=`$ $`\eta ^{2/3}{\displaystyle \frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_{f,2}}}_1^2,`$ (18)
where $`\eta =M_2/M_1<1`$ and $`z_f`$ is the formation redshift of the cluster with mass $`M_1+M_2`$. Our strategy at this point is to consider a cluster with mass $`M_0`$ at the present time and simulate numerous merger trees and calculate the Mach numbers of the subclusters taking part to the merger events. To start with, we simulate 500 realizations of the merger history of a $`10^{15}M_{}`$ cluster. A value $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.05`$ is assumed, much lower than in (Fujita & Sarazin 2001). This simply implies that we follow the histories of very small halos of dark matter, rather than the big ones only. The results of our calculations of the Mach numbers are plotted in fig. 4a (left panel).

It is evident from the figure that for major mergers, involving clusters with comparable masses ($`\eta 1`$), the Mach numbers of the shocks are of order unity. In other words the shocks are only moderately supersonic. In order to achieve Mach numbers of order of $`34`$ it is needed to consider mergers between clusters with very different masses ($`\eta 0.05`$), which, in the language of Salvador-Solé et al. (1998) and Fujita & Sarazin (2001) would not be considered as mergers but rather as continuous accretion. These events are the only ones that produce strong shocks, and this is of crucial importance for the acceleration of suprathermal particles, as discussed below. This picture seems to be confirmed by X-ray observations (see for instance Markevitch, Sarazin and Vikhlinin (1999)).

Fig. 4b (right panel) requires some preliminary comments: during a merger event, new particles are accelerated from the thermal pool, but the protons already confined in the cluster volume are also reaccelerated. These processes are taken into account in detail by Gabici & Blasi (2002). The final spectra of protons at the present time, as a result of the superposition of all the merger events that a cluster suffered, have a shape which can be something more complicated than a simple power law (Gabici & Blasi, 2002), therefore we choose here to plot, in fig. 4b, the slope at fixed energy, say 10 GeV (one should remember that this corresponds to secondary electrons with typical energy of a few GeV). The result of our calculations show that the time integrated proton spectra are typically steep, or at least steeper than needed to explain the observed nonthermal radiation, even in the cases $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m1`$.

The situation is slightly different for primary electrons. High energy electrons must be relatively young to generate appreciable nonthermal radiation. A typical time for the production of these electrons is of about one billion years. In other words, only electrons injected in the last few mergers (or accretion events) can generate nonthermal radiation at present. Hence, we generated a merger tree of a cluster with Coma-like mass and extended it only for one billion years in the past, and again calculated the spectra of the electrons accelerated at the merger shocks. We repeated this procedure for 500 clusters and only about $`30\%`$ of them suffered any kind of merger (down to $`\eta =0.05`$) in the last billion years. Of these, $`20\%`$ are characterized by strong shocks, able to accelerate particles with spectra flatter than $`E^{2.4}`$. In other words, only $`6\%`$ of clusters with mass comparable with the Coma cluster should have a similar radio halo. It is important to stress again that strong shocks are not associated to major mergers but rather to accretion events.

## 5. The extragalactic diffuse gamma ray background

Since the detection of an isotropic excess in the gamma ray emission of the Galaxy, as detected by EGRET (Sreekumar et al. 1998), and interpreted as of extragalactic origin, several attempts have been made of relating it to nonthermal processes occurring in clusters of galaxies. The initial paper by Dar & Shaviv (1995) reached incorrect conclusions, mainly due to an errouneous calculation of the spectrum of the radiation, as later recognized by Berezinsky, Blasi & Ptuskin (1997). More recently, Loeb & Waxman (2000) have reproposed this connection: in their paper the gamma ray emission is generated by ICS of relativistic electrons accelerated at the shocks generated during structure formation. This scenario has received much attention and also inspired some searches for associations between the EGRET unidentified sources and the positions of some clusters of galaxies (Colafrancesco 2002; Kawasaki & Totani 2001, Totani & Kitayama 2000).

Some of the shocks related to the formation of large scale structures are related to cluster mergers, in that they form within the virial radii of the merging clusters. Other shocks form in the outer regions and propagate in a colder medium, therefore reaching higher Mach numbers (Miniati, F., et al. 2000). The Mach numbers of the shocks related to structure formation range between unity and a few hundreds. The weaker shocks, usually associated to major mergers, as discussed by Gabici & Blasi (2002) are inefficient particle accelerators (see also the discussion in §4.2). The stronger shocks extend over several Mpc regions and are strong enough to generate flat spectra. To understand whether the former or the latter dominate, it is needed to run careful numerical simulations, as performed by Miniati (2002). One point that should be made clear is that the possibility that part of the diffuse extragalactic gamma ray background may have a connection to large scale structures relies upon the strong assumption that the diffusion coefficient of the particles around the shock surface is well described by a Bohm diffusion coefficient. Only in this case the electron energies may be large enough to generate gamma rays by ICS off the photons of the cosmic microwave backgound. Moreover, the magnetic fields that have been estimated from the observations of nonthermal radiation in clusters are of fraction of $`\mu G`$, but they only refer to the virialized region of the clusters. In the flux freezing approximation, the magnetic field scales with the radial coordinate as $`B\rho ^{2/3}r^{3\beta }`$, where $`\beta 0.75`$ is the parameter entering the $`\beta `$-model for the density $`\rho `$ (simulations performed by Dolag, Bartelmann & Lesch (2002) show even steeper trends). At the distance of the large Mach number shocks, say comparable to the turnaround radius of a cluster, the strength of the field is likely reduced to $`nG`$ values. For a typical scale of 5 Mpc, the maximum energy of accelerated electrons, as derived in eq. 11, is reduced to values that are barely sufficient for the production of gamma rays up to $`1030`$ GeV, even in the case of Bohm diffusion. Although there are several aspects that deserve further investigation, the possibility that at least a fraction of the alleged extragalactic gamma ray background may be due to processes related to structure formation is certainly interesting and will continue to fuel much interest in the years to come.

## 6. Conclusions

The diffuse medium in the intracluster volume is filled with a nonthermal gas of particles that are the relics of all the events occurred within the cluster itself. Gamma ray astronomy is an important tool to study this component and infer information about particle acceleration and confinement and about the specific processes (mergers, active galactic phases, and many others) that inject nonthermal particles in a cluster and possibly contribute to its heating.

We discussed here the expectations for gamma ray fluxes in the presence of both protons and primary electrons in clusters. Even if the amount of hadronic cosmic rays trapped on cosmological scales is, say, $`10\%`$ of the equipartition energy, we expect that the gamma ray fluxes may be detectable by GLAST for energies above 100 MeV, and by future ground based gamma ray telescopes such as VERITAS, MAGIC and HESS at higher energies. Even current observations with STACEE and HEGRA could actually provide interesting information about the abundance of cosmic rays in the intracluster gas of nearby clusters, as shown in fig. 1. Unfortunately, we are not aware of any scientific report of such attempt to look for high energy gamma rays with either STACEE or HEGRA. While the higher energy gamma ray emission is likely to be generated by hadronic interactions, the lower energy gamma rays (in the MeV-GeV range) can be generated by several processes related to electrons, and most of the fluxes derived in the literature are in the range of interest for GLAST.

The importance of gamma ray observations can be appreciated particularly well in the context of the growing multifrequency observations, that one piece at a time, are allowing us to understand the processes that occur in the intracluster volume, enriching it with hot gas, nonthermal particles and magnetic fields, in a way that at present is still unclear.

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# A Parsec-Scale Study of the 5/15 GHz Spectral Indices of the Compact Radio Sources in M82

## 1 Introduction

The radio emission from star-forming galaxies can be either of a thermal (e.g. free-free) or non-thermal (e.g. synchrotron radiation) origin. The non-thermal radiation originates from relativistic electrons which have been accelerated by supernovae resulting from the deaths of massive stars and the thermal emission is from free-free emission from gas which has been ionised by hot, young stars. Therefore, it is obviously of interest to investigate the relative contributions of these processes to the emission which we observe from nearby star-forming galaxies. A separation of the non-thermal and thermal components of radio emission from the archetypal starburst galaxy, M82, has already been carried out by Allen & Kronberg (1999) on angular scales of 2′′ and they identified several complexes of ionised gas. However, 2′′ is not sufficient resolution to separate the most compact radio sources from the more diffuse radio structure. In this paper we compare observations of M82 made with the VLA in its A-configuration at 15 GHz, incorporating the VLBA Pie Town antenna, with MERLIN 5 GHz observations. The maps made from these observations have a resolution $``$ 0.1′′ which extends the analysis of the most compact radio structure into the thermal regime. Thus, we are now able to comment on the relative contribution of thermal and non-thermal processes to the radio emission on scales of order 1 pc. For consistency with previous publications, we assume a distance of 3.2 Mpc to M82 throughout the paper (Burbidge, Burbidge & Rubin 1964).

Spectral information on 26 of the compact radio sources in M82 has already been published (Wills et al., 1997; Allen & Kronberg, 1998). These analyses were prompted by 408 MHz MERLIN observations and the radio continuum spectra of the detected sources were mainly consistent with non-thermal synchrotron emission, occasionally with a low-frequency turnover which was attributed to free-free absorption by ionised gas. However, free-free absorption is likely to be responsible for the non-detection of many of the remaining sources at low frequencies. In addition, Wills et al. (1997) (hereafter W97) identified two sources which were inconsistent with a free-free absorbed synchrotron spectrum, the AGN candidate, 44.01+59.6111All positions within M82 are quoted relative to (B1950) 09h 51m +69 54 and a possible Hii region at 40.62+56.0. Allen & Kronberg (1998) (hereafter AK98) came to similar conclusions regarding the majority of the sources, but additionally identified a flat-spectrum ($`\alpha `$ -0.1, where $`S\nu ^\alpha `$) source at 42.21+59.2, which they identified as an Hii region. However, over 50 compact radio sources have been identified in the nuclear region of M82, therefore until now there has only been spectral information published on around half of the total number, similar to the situation in another nearby starburst, NGC 2146 (Tarchi et al., 2000). Also, since previous investigations concentrated on the brightest sources at the longer radio wavelengths, there would have been a bias away from the identification of thermal sources such as Hii regions. This is because their electron temperatures are unlikely to exceed 104 K and hence even if the ionised gas is optically thick, the brightness temperatures cannot exceed this limit (n.b. 104 K $``$ 0.48 mJy beam-1 with MERLIN at 5 GHz, 50 mas resolution). Therefore, in order to make robust comparisons between the numbers of compact radio sources of different types in starburst galaxies we must first make more confident identifications of a greater fraction of the sources. Furthermore, with the improved sensitivity of radio observations, it is clear that further populations of compact radio sources will be discovered in more distant galaxies. Hence the need to fully investigate the nature of these sources in nearby galaxies.

## 2 The observations and data analysis

Observations of M82 were performed with the Very Large Array (VLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, including the Pie Town Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) telescope, the data from which were correlated in real-time via a fibre-optic link to the VLA site, on the 2nd December 2000. These observations represent the first stage of a programme to image the 15 GHz radio emission from M82 on a wide range of scales and the combination with B- and C-configuation data will be presented in a later paper, along with a discussion of the structures and sizes of the compact sources. However, the A-configuration data alone represent measurements of the radio emission from M82 on scales comparable to those measured using MERLIN at 5 GHz. Therefore, we also present observations made with the MERLIN interferometer in February 1999. The details of both observations are summarised in Table 1. A number of the parameters listed in Table 1 were chosen to optimise the field of view of the observations since the compact sources in M82 cover a region roughly 50′′ $`\times `$ 10′′ in size. Hence, the VLA correlator was used in spectral line mode, limiting the usable bandwidth to 43.75 MHz, but producing 7 spectral channels with widths of 6.25 MHz. This mode results in smearing at the 5$`\%`$ level at a distance of 95′′ from the phase centre of the observations (Taylor, Carilli & Perley (1999). We deemed this level of smearing to be acceptable for the purposes of our observations and Figure 1 shows the map of the field of view of the observations.

Table 1 shows that the two sets of observations cover a similar overall range of spatial frequencies, although the VLA has more shorter baselines and hence greater sensitivity to extended structure. In addition, MERLIN has some slightly longer baselines (in terms of wavelengths) than the VLA and Pie Town combination. Therefore, in order to provide a valid comparison, maps were made by limiting both data-sets to a range of 130 k$`\lambda <L<`$ 3660 k$`\lambda `$, where $`L=(u^2+v^2)^{1/2}`$ and $`u`$ and $`v`$ are the co-ordinates of the visibilities in the u-v plane. The lower limit to this range means that any structures larger than $``$1.6′′ are suppressed. For the purposes of this paper, the word ‘compact’ may describe any source which has significant radio emission on the scales measured by our data, i.e. less than $``$1.6′′ in size. In addition, the density of sampling in the u-v plane is substantially different between the VLA and MERLIN, since MERLIN is a more sparsely distributed array. Therefore, the relative weighting functions used on the two data-sets needed to be different. The final imaging parameters used in the comparison are also presented in Table 1.

The MERLIN and VLA data were reduced separately and self-calibration was used to remove residual complex gain errors after phase-referencing. Therefore, the images from each data-set were registered relative to one another by ‘fixing’ the position of the brightest and most compact radio source, 41.95+57.5, at (B1950) 09h 51m 41.95s +69 54 57.50′′ (Pedlar et al., 1999). A spectral index map and spectral index error map was then produced for the entire central region of M82 using the aips task comb. Spectral indices were only calculated for pixels with brightnesses above the 3-$`\sigma `$ level in each map as stated in Table 1, using the spectral index convention stated previously. Spectral index error maps were also calculated using the noise levels stated in Table 1, but are not presented. Sufficient signal was present in the maps at both frequencies such that spectral index maps could be derived for 34 sources. The MERLIN and VLA images of these 34 sources are shown in Figure 2 and the spectral index maps for 5 of these sources are shown in Figure 6. For around 75$`\%`$ of the 34 sources in Figure 2 there exists a good correspondance between the positions of the compact sources (within $``$10 mas) at 5 GHz and 15 GHz. In the remaining $``$25$`\%`$ of cases more complex structure is present which does not agree as well between frequencies. Some possible reasons for these discrepancies are discussed in Section 3.2. In addition to the 34 sources detected in both sets of observations, we detect an additional 5 compact sources in the VLA map which have no counterparts in the MERLIN map on the same scale. These sources were chosen by examining the spatial frequency limited VLA 15 GHz map and searching for compact sources with emission above the 5-$`\sigma `$ level. The VLA maps of these sources are shown in Figure 7 with the corresponding limits on their two-point spectral indices. For reference purposes, Figure 1 contains boxes indicating which sources are illustrated in Figure 2 and circles indicating the sources in Figure 7. It should be noted that Figure 1 shows a significant amount of 15 GHz emission from regions outside of the regions imaged in Figures 2 and 7. Most of this emission is suppressed once the limitation on the spatial frequency coverage of the 15 GHz observations is made, although emission is detected at a $``$3-$`\sigma `$ level in these regions.

## 3 The nature of the compact sources

By comparing the maps of the compact radio emission in M82 at 5 GHz and 15 GHz we have detected 34 sources that display compact radio emission at both frequencies as discussed in Section 2 and identified an additional 5 compact sources at 15 GHz, but not at 5 GHz. Of these 39 sources, 19 have had spectra published by either W97, AK98 or both. We agree with the original identification of 18 of these 19 sources as being of supernova origin and the remaining source as being an Hii region, although the nature of the non-thermal sources at 41.95+59.5 and 44.01+59.6 is still questionable (e.g. Wills et al., 1999; McDonald et al., 2001). Therefore, there were 20 sources which remained to be reliably identified. In order to do this we examined the radio continuum spectrum of each source from 1.4 GHz to 15 GHz.

### 3.1 Spectra of the compact sources

Since two-point spectral indices only offer a limited amount of information regarding the nature of the source it is obviously of interest to examine the full spectra of as many sources as possible. Therefore, we have used lower resolution ($``$0.2′′ typically) maps at 1.42 GHz (L-band), 4.86 GHz (C-band), 8.4 GHz (X-band) and 15 GHz (U-band) and examined the flux densities at the positions given by the VLA and MERLIN comparison maps. For the L-band measurements we used the combined VLA and MERLIN map of Pedlar & Muxlow (1995) and for the C-band measurements we used an existing VLA A and B-configuration combined image (observed on 5th July 1995 and 31st October 1995 in A and B-configurations respectively). For the X-band measurements we used the data in Huang et al. (1994) for the sources available and for the U-band map we used the new VLA data and utilised the full spatial frequency range with an appropriate weighting for a comparison on a scale of $``$0.2′′. Since these low-resolution maps contain a substantial amount of the more diffuse background radio emission in M82, an estimate of the background away from the position of the source was made and an appropriate amount deducted from the measured flux density at the position examined. The errors in the corrected flux densities reflect the uncertainty in the background level which has been subtracted. Table 2 shows the measured flux densities of the ‘new’ sources from the high-resolution maps and compares these measurements with the integrated flux densities from the low-resolution maps. Clearly, the flux densities measured from the high-resolution maps are systematically lower than those measured from the low-resolution maps. This discrepancy is partly due to the more diffuse parts of the sources being ‘resolved out’ in the 85 mas maps and to the erroneous inclusion of diffuse background in the measurements from the 200 mas resolution maps.

Figure 8 shows the continuum radio spectra of the 20 sources which have not had spectra previously published by either W97 or AK98. The spectra were fitted by three models for the radio emission and 6 examples are shown in Figure 8. The models used can be described by the equations

$$S(\nu )=S_0\nu ^\alpha ,$$
(1)
$$S(\nu )=S_0\nu ^\alpha e^{\tau (\nu )},$$
(2)
and

$$S(\nu )=S_0\nu ^2(1e^{\tau (\nu )}),$$
(3)
where,

$$\tau (\nu )=(\nu /\nu _{\tau =1})^{2.1}.$$
(4)
These equations represent a simple power-law spectrum, a power-law spectrum with free-free absorption by a screen of foreground ionised gas and a self-absorbed Bremsstrahlung spectrum respectively. From this point they will be referred to as models 1, 2 and 3 respectively. In these expressions $`\alpha `$ is the optically thin spectral index and $`\nu _{\tau =1}`$ is the frequency at which the free-free optical depth is unity. Of the 20 sources which were modelled, 7 were found to be best fitted by model 1 with an ‘inverted’ spectral index ($`\alpha >`$ 0), 1 source was best fitted by model 1 with a non-thermal spectral index ($`\alpha <`$ 0), 4 sources were best fitted by model 2 and 8 sources by model 3. These results are used in the following section to make the final source identifications. Note that we interpret the spectra of the sources which have inverted spectra with a spectral index $`<`$ 2 (as expected for a simple, optically thick Hii region), as being due to an electron density gradient of the type discussed by Olnon (1975) and Panagia & Felli (1975), since ionised gas with different optical depths which are confused will result in an inverted spectral index (for the entire optically thick source) which is a function of the power-law index of the electron density gradient.

### 3.2 Radio source identification

In order to determine which mechanism is responsible for the radio emission from the compact sources in M82, the morphology of the sources as resolved in the maps shown in Figure 2 and the spectral information in Figure 8 were considered. Therefore, in addition to the 26 which have been identified in previous publications, identifications have been made for a further 20 sources. Table 3 lists all of the 46 sources which have had spectra analysed by W97, AK98 and in this paper as follows.

1. Source identifier.
2. Position of image origin.
3. Optically thin spectral index deduced by Wills et al. (1997) (W97).
4. Optically thin spectral index deduced by Allen & Kronberg (1998) \- screen absorption model / no absorption (AK98 (a)).
5. Optically thin spectral index deduced by Allen & Kronberg (1998) \- mixed absorption model (AK98 (b)).
6. Two-point spectral index (this paper).
7. Final identification of source as either supernova-related (SNR), Hii region or AGN candidate.

As can be seen from Figure 2, some of the regions imaged contain complex structure, therefore some of the identifications listed in Table 3 are more robust than others. For example, the sources at 39.29+54.2, 39.68+55.6, 41.64+57.9, 42.08+58.4, 42.21+59.2 and 42.56+58.0 as well as the 5 ‘new’ sources shown in Figure 7 all consist of relatively simple structure which is clearly brighter at 15 GHz than 5 GHz. Hence, these sources are confidently identified as being the most optically thick part of regions of thermal emission. The remaining 5 sources which are listed as Hii regions in Table 3 are located in more morphologically complex regions which are dominated by thermal processes, although a mixture of thermal and non-thermal emission is inevitable at some level. For example, at 5 GHz, 46.17+67.7 has a simple single-component structure which becomes more complex at 15 GHz. A mixture of thermal and non-thermal emission may also be responsible for the structures of sources which have been identified as supernova remnants, examples of which are 44.43+61.8 and 44.52+58.2.

Of the 26 sources identified previously, only one was deemed to be a possible Hii region. This number has now increased to 16 by the addition of 15 sources examined in this paper. In addition, a further 5 supernova remnants have been identified. Therefore, it is suggested that the previous studies were biased towards the identification of supernova remnants, since only the most luminous sources were investigated. Also, the measurements of the source spectra were also biased towards longer wavelengths, away from the regime where thermal sources are brightest - especially if they are optically thick. The observations made with the VLA and Pie Town combination have provided the highest resolution images of the central regions of M82 at 15 GHz and clearly allowed an extension of previous work into the thermal regime. The peak brightness temperature of a radio source can also be used as a constraint when identifying Hii regions. The brightness temperature, $`T_b`$, is related to the electron temperature, $`T_e`$ by

$$T_b=T_e(1e^\tau ),$$
(5)
where $`\tau `$ is the optical depth. Hence in the optically-thick regime ($`\tau `$ 1) $`T_bT_e`$. Since ionised gas becomes opaque towards lower frequencies it was decided to measure the brightness temperatures from the lowest frequency map available, which was the L-band (1420 MHz) map of Pedlar & Muxlow (1995) and Figure 9 shows the measured brightness temperatures plotted against the source spectral indices. It can be seen that the brightness temperatures of the Hii regions all lie below 104 K, as indicated by the horizontal line. It should be noted that the measured brightness temperature of a thermal source is a lower limit for the electron temperature because as an Hii region becomes optically thin the brightness temperature becomes less than the electron temperature. It can also be seen that the brightness temperatures derived for the supernova remnants are mostly in excess of 104 K, although since the previous studies of the spectra by W97 and AK98 concentrated only on the brightest sources this can be mainly attributed to a selection effect.

### 3.3 The radio source distribution in M82

Since the number of identified sources in M82 is now 46, a rudimentary statistical analysis of the distributions may be attempted. Comparing the distribution of Hii regions with identified supernova remnants, it can be said that the two distributions are different with 80$`\%`$ confidence. This confidence level was derived using the two-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of Fasano & Franceschini (1987) and Peacock (1983). Figure 10 shows the one-dimensional distributions of the right ascension coordinates of the compact radio sources in M82. The top panel shows the distribution of Hii regions and the bottom panel shows the distribution of supernova remnants, including an additional 14 unidentified sources. These sources were noted by Wills (1998) but were undetected at 408 MHz and were not included in the spectral analysis in W97. However, these sources are almost certainly supernova remnants, since they are generally present on low-frequency ($``$1.6 GHz) maps, but not at higher frequencies - implying a non-thermal spectrum. Due to their low brightnesses a spectral analysis has yet to be made for them. In addition, by taking into account the transient source at 41.50+59.7, the total number of compact sources whose origin has been determined is now 61.

The propagation of star-forming regions within M82 has been discussed by Satyapal et al. (1997) and de Grijs et al. (2000). On the basis of a changing CO index across M82 and other indicators of an old stellar population in the nucleus, Satyapal et al. (1997) suggested that the starburst was propagating outwards from the centre. However, de Grijs et al. (2000) reported the discovery of ‘fossil’ supernova remnants away from the nucleus ($``$ 500 pc away) and suggested that the star-formation was propagating inwards. In order to test these hypotheses with the radio data, the sizes of the Hii region and SNR distributions shown in Figure 10 was examined, since the Hii regions trace the hot, young stars and are more indicative of recent star-formation than the supernova remnants which are the result of star-formation $``$107 years previously. Figure 11 shows how the positions of the 16 Hii regions correlate with the large scale distribution of ionised gas in M82 as shown by the 12.8 $`\mu `$m \[NeII\] map of Achtermann & Lacy (1995). It can be seen that the \[NeII\] distribution has a width of $``$20′′ at half-intensity which compares with a width of $``$35′′ for the supernova remnant distribution in Figure 10 which may seem to favour the inwardly propagating star-formation hypothesis of de Grijs et al. (2000). However, small-number statistics in the compact source distribution do not allow a robust distinction to be drawn between the two possibilities.

Again referring to Figure 11, it can be seen that a number of the thermal sources appear to be associated with the two peaks in the \[NeII\] emission in the west, although a number of the sources seem to be in regions of low \[NeII\] intensity. However, another two-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov test comparing the compact Hii region distribution with the \[NeII\] line distribution determined that the distributions are similar with a significance level of 90$`\%`$.

### 3.4 Compact radio sources of non-thermal origin

For the 30 non-thermal sources, it can be seen from Table 3 that the measured two-point spectral indices are often significantly different from those derived for the models of W97 and AK98. As shown in Figure 2, these sources are often highly resolved and more morphologically complex than the compact Hii regions identified previously. It would appear that the two-point spectral indices are more consistent with the models for the brightest, most compact sources and less consistent for the weaker, complex sources. This discrepancy may be partly due to the ‘resolving out’ of larger scale emission. In any case, deciding on what size scale some of the sources ‘start’ is a very subjective matter.

### 3.5 The compact radio sources of thermal origin

In the previous studies of the spectra of the most compact radio sources in M82, only two sources have been identified as being of possible thermal origin, 40.62+56.0 (W97) and 42.21+59.2 (AK98). It should be noted at this stage that we identify 40.62+56.0 as a supernova remnant due to the extension of the spectrum of this source to higher frequencies than those presented in W97. The spectrum of this source is shown in Figure 8 and if the 15 GHz measurement is excluded then the spectrum agrees with that in W97 and appears to be flat. The higher frequency measurement, however, implies a non-thermal origin for the radio emission from this source. In Section 3.2, 16 sources (including 42.21+59.2) were identified for which positive or flat spectral indices have been derived which are attributable to free-free emission from ionised gas. Table 4 summarises the inferred properties of these Hii regions. For the resolved sources, the sizes were measured by taking a slice through the emission and determining the largest angular size. For the more compact sources, a two-dimensional Gaussian was fitted to the source using the aips task jmfit. The emission measures were derived from the fits to the spectra of the sources as described in Section 3.1. For the cases where the sources did not display a turnover in their spectra at the transition between the optically thick and optically thin regimes, a lower limit for the emission measures was taken to be 9 $`\times `$ 107 cm-6 pc. This limit corresponds to a turnover frequency somewhere above 5 GHz. By calculating the Lyman continuum flux required to ionise the Hii regions, given their sizes and emission measures stated in Table 4, it is possible to derive an equivalent number of O5 stars, assuming that the Lyman continuum output of an O5 star is $``$5.1 $`\times `$ 1049 photons s-1 (Spitzer, 1978). The number of O5 stars required to ionise these regions varies from $``$ a few, to over 500. Therefore, these regions may be similar to those found in other galaxies such as NGC 2146 (Tarchi et al., 2000), Henize 2-10 (Kobulnicky & Johnson, 1999) and NGC 5253 (Turner, Beck & Ho 2000), which were deemed to be due to the precursors of ‘super-star clusters’ or ‘proto-globular clusters’. No optical counterparts were found for the radio sources in these galaxies, however, since these galaxies are not face-on, the optical emission is likely to be obscured by intervening dust and/or the parent molecular cloud.

With the relatively high resolution provided by the VLA and MERLIN (85 mas = 1.3 pc) it is now possible to resolve the compact thermal sources. Variations in the two-point spectral indices can be seen across several of the sources and Figure 12 shows the spectral index variation across the brightest Hii region at 42.21+59.2. Three models for the electron density distribution were fitted to these data - a power-law, Gaussian distribution and constant electron density sphere. As can be seen from Figure 12, it is currently not possible to choose between these models. However, the increased spectral index towards the centre of the region may be attributed to increasing optical thickness due to enhanced emission measure.

## 4 Conclusions

The VLA in its A-configuration connected with the Pie Town VLBA antenna via a real-time fibre optic link has been used to image M82 at 15 GHz. These observations have provided the highest resolution images yet made at this frequency and allowed a direct comparison with 5 GHz MERLIN images at a similar resolution. The conclusions may be summarised as follows.

1. In addition to the 26 compact radio sources which have been previously identified in the nucleus of M82, a further 20 sources have been identified. The final identifications are summarised in Table 5 (n.b. the controversial sources at 41.95+57.5 and 44.01+59.5 are included under ‘supernova remnants’). By comparison with the 12.8 $`\mu `$m \[NeII\] map of Achtermann & Lacy (1995), it was noted that the locations of the compact Hii regions broadly coincided with the peaks in the large-scale ionised gas distribution.
2. Of the 15 new Hii regions identified, all have steep ‘inverted’ spectra at the highest resolution ($`\alpha _5^{15}>`$ +0.4). For the simple model of an Hii region in which S $`\nu ^2`$ in the optically-thick regime and S $`\nu ^{0.1}`$ in the optically-thin regime this would imply that these sources are becoming optically thick between 5 and 15 GHz. However, Olnon (1975) and Panagia & Felli (1975) showed that simple models of ionised nebulae with significant electron density gradients could produce inverted spectra, the slope of which depends on the structure of the region. This may be the case for a number of the sources, but further high-resolution imaging at different frequencies is required to confirm or deny this possibility.
3. The low-resolution spectra of the regions in which the compact sources have been imaged show inverted spectra for about half of the sources and flattening spectra at the highest frequencies for the remainder. It is inferred that at the highest resolution only the most compact and optically-thick components of the ionised gas are being detected.
4. Of the 46 identified sources in M82, $``$ 35$`\%`$ are Hii regions and the remaining $``$ 65$`\%`$ probably have supernova origins. Therefore, it would appear that M82 is not lacking in compact Hii regions in comparison to other galaxies such as NGC 2146 (Tarchi et al., 2000) as much as was previously thought, although it still appears that M82 is in a more advanced starburst stage than NGC 2146 due to the greater number of supernova remnants.
5. Five additional sources were identified as supernova remnants since they have steep, negative spectral indices at the higher frequencies. At the lower frequencies they are often experiencing a turnover in their spectra by 1.4 GHz requiring emission measures for the foreground ionised gas of $``$ 107 cm-6 pc. These supernova remnants are obscured at the lower radio frequencies where previous studies have concentrated and may represent those supernova remnants embedded deeper within M82 and hence behind a greater amount of ionised gas.
6. An additional 14 unidentified sources were added to the analysis and after taking into account the transient source noted by Kronberg, Biermann & Schwab (1985), the total number of compact sources now stands at 61. The 14 unidentified sources are most likely the older supernova remnants in the sample and hence are not bright enough to have been included in the essentially flux-limited analyses. However, assuming that they are all SNR, a comparison between the Hii region distribution and SNR distribution shows significant differences, although any difference in the overall extent of the distributions is not significant. Hence, the radio data cannot be used to either confirm or deny the propagating star-formation hypotheses of Satyapal et al. (1997) and de Grijs et al. (2000).

### Acknowledgements

MERLIN is a national facility operated by the University of Manchester on behalf of PPARC. The VLA is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. ARM acknowledges the receipt of a PPARC postgraduate research grant.