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# More nitrogen rich B-type stars in the SMC cluster, NGC 330

## 1 Introduction

NGC330 is one of the brightest and most populous young clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The photometric surveys of Arp (Arp (1959)), Robertson (Rob74 (1974)) and Carney et al. (Car (1985)) illustrate the key features of the cluster’s colour-magnitude diagram, namely the presence of two groups of blue and red supergiants well separated from the cluster’s supposed main-sequence blue plume. These two groups of stars have been widely interpreted as core helium burning stars and the cluster is therefore considered as a key test of stellar evolution theory and physics for stars of intermediate mass in a low metallicity regime. Essentially the ratio of blue (B) to red (R) supergiants is an indicator of the relative times a massive star spends in the these phases, and these quantities are extremely sensitive to assumptions made concerning convection and mixing. In fact the B/R ratio in NGC330 is generally assumed to be representative of the SMC as a whole and is used as a calibrator for stellar evolution calculations at low metallicity (Stothers & Chin 1992a , 1992b ; Keller et al. Kel00 (2000); Chiosi et al. Chi95 (1995)). The specific problem of the B/R ratio as a function of metallicity has been discussed by Langer & Maeder (Lan95 (1995)), where a more detailed discussion of the various treatments of convection and overshooting may be found.

The interpretation of the cluster’s HR diagram is complicated by the surprise finding that many main sequence B-type stars in the cluster have H$`\alpha `$ emission implying a very high incidence of Be stars (Feast Fst72 (1972)). A subsequent intermediate band and H$`\alpha `$ photometric study indicated that at least 60% of all main-sequence B-type stars are of Be-type (Grebel et al. Gre96 (1996)), this high fraction being confirmed independently by the spectroscopic observations of Lennon et al. (Len94 (1994)), Mazzali et al (Maz96 (1996)) and Keller & Bessell (Kel98 (1998)). As with the ratio of B/R supergiants, the ratio Be/B-type stars in NGC330 is often taken as being representive for the SMC metallicity (Maeder et al. Mae99 (1999)). A second complication arises concerning uncertainty over the metallicity of stars in NGC330; some estimates of the metallicity based upon spectroscopy of the brightest K and F-type supergiants (Spite et al. Spi91 (1991)) and one B-type giant (Reitermann et al. Rei90 (1990)) imply that these objects are metal poor even with respect to SMC field stars, while Strömgren photometric observations of supergiants by Grebel & Richtler (Gre92 (1992)) have been interpreted as evidence for a metal deficiency of 0.5 dex with respect to field stars. However more recent analyses of K-type supergiants have tended to suggest that this difference in metallicity is much smaller, or indeed not significant (Hill Hil99 (1999)), confirming the results obtained from the analysis of two B-type stars in the cluster by Lennon et al. (Len96 (1996), hereafter Paper I).

The spectroscopic work of Lennon et al. (Len94 (1994)) also found that the bright non-Be and weak Be-type stars occupied that region of the HR-diagram known as the post main sequence gap, or blue Hertzsprung gap (BHG). That is, they are giant/supergiant stars lying red-wards of the main sequence band, but blue-wards of the A/F-type supergiant regime. Caloi et al. (Cal93 (1993)) and Grebel et al. (Gre96 (1996)) have also commented on this fact, the latter suggesting that these stars are most likely a mixture of rapidly rotating B/Be-type stars of varying orientation and blue stragglers formed by interaction in binary stars. Keller et al. (Kel00 (2000)) also attempted to address this problem using far-UV photometry (from the F160BW filter on WFPC2 of HST) to constrain B-type stellar effective temperatures and find significantly fewer stars in the blue Hertzsprung gap (BHG). However they assumed that the logarithmic surface gravities were 4.0 in their work (Keller, private communication), which may result in spuriously high effective temperatures for stars near the turn-off since they have much lower surface gravities (Lennon et al. Len94 (1994)). Note that Caloi et al. (Cal93 (1993)) also adopted lower values for the surface gravities. Clearly a detailed spectroscopic analysis of the BHG stars leading to estimates of both stellar parameters and atmospheric abundances is needed for comparison with the predictions of various stellar evolution calculations.

In Paper I, we derived metallicities of two such B-type stars in NGC330 and while we found them in general to be compatible with that of the SMC field both stars had a significant nitrogen overabundance. The magnitude of the nitrogen enrichment was uncertain due to the small number of NGC330 targets analysed and also the difficulty in estimating the low nitrogen abundance of the SMC field, at least, from B-type stars. Also in Paper I we found that the carbon abundance was not significantly depleted, contrary to what one expects if the nitrogen were produced in the CN cycle. The carbon abundance was uncertain however, and coupled with the uncertainty of the magnitude of the nitrogen enrichment, made interpretation difficult. An additional puzzling aspect was that both stars are narrow-lined and therefore if the nitrogen enhancements are the result of high rotation we must be observing them almost pole-on, which seemed unlikely give that they were drawn from the sample of about 20 stars observed by Lennon et al. (Len94 (1994)). In the present paper we analyse seven targets in NGC330 (including the two discussed in Paper I) belonging to both the blue supergiant group and the tip of the blue main sequence plume discussed above. Hence all stars lie in, or close to, the BHG. We estimate stellar parameters, radial and projected rotational velocities, as well as both absolute abundances and differential abundances relative to a galactic target in the h and $`\chi `$ Persei cluster (Vrancken et al. Vra00 (2000)) and to an SMC field star, AV304. For the latter we utilise the results from a recent analysis (Rolleston et al Rol02 (2002)) based on high quality VLT data, which now give us a reliable estimate of the pristine nitrogen abundance in unevolved B-type stars in the SMC. We also attempt to provide improved estimates for carbon abundances and compare our results with stellar evolution calculations, including the recent models of Maeder & Meynet (Mae01 (2001)) which include the effects of rotationally induced mixing.

## 2 Observational data and results

### 2.1 Optical Spectroscopy

High resolution spectra of early-type stars in the cluster NGC330, were obtained using the CASPEC spectrograph on the ESO 3.6m on the 26 and 27 August 1994 and on the 22 and 23 September 1996; the observational parameters are summarized in Table 1. The UBV photometry has been taken from Mazzali et al. (Maz96 (1996)) supplemented by additional unpublished data, while the spectral types have been estimated from unpublished low dispersion EMMI spectroscopy. The observational configuration and data reduction techniques are discussed in detail in Paper I. Briefly, Caspec was used with an entrance slit width of 2 arc-seconds giving an effective resolving power of approximately 20 000, or about 15 km/s. Preliminary reduction of the echellograms to a one dimensional format was achieved using the IRAF reduction package (Willmarth and Barnes, Wil94 (1994)). The relative faintness of the targets, lead to some of the spectra having relatively low continuum counts and signal-to-noise ratios. In particular, the observations for A01, B04 and B32 were taken in conditions that were at times cloudy, and so not all spectra were co-added to produce the final spectrum for these stars. The s/n estimates are summarized in Table 1 and were measured near the centre of the echelle order at approximately 4200Å. Fortunately, all the stars have small projected rotational velocities and are hence sharp lined with line widths (FWHM) ranging from 0.4 to 0.9Å (see Table 1). Hence despite the significant shot noise, lines with equivalent widths of more than 50mÅ could normally be detected, while features with line strengths as small as 30mÅ could sometimes be convincingly identified. Projected rotational velocities were estimated from the line widths by assuming that the only contributions to the intrinsic widths of the absorption lines are instrumental and pure rotational i.e. that the effects of macroturbulence are negligible. Hence the results in Table 1 are most likely upper limits on the projected rotational velocities.

Equivalent widths were measured for the metal and non-diffuse helium lines using the starlink spectrum analysis program dipso. Absorption lines were fitted using a non-linear least squares technique with a variety of profile shapes (e.g. triangles, gaussians) and degrees of polynomial for the continuum being considered. Equivalent widths for the diffuse helium lines were measured manually with the continuum being arbitrarily defined at $`\pm `$10Å from the line centre. For the hydrogen H$`\gamma `$ and H$`\delta `$ lines, the spectra were again normalised and profiles measured, with the continuum levels now being defined at $`\pm `$16Å (as were the theoretical profiles). For all these measurements the procedures were effectively identical to those described in Paper I where further details can be found.

The model atmosphere analysis utilised both absolute and differential techniques. For the latter, two standard stars were considered - BD +56 576 in the h and $`\chi `$ Persei galactic cluster and the SMC target AV304. The observational data for BD +56 576 was taken from our study (Vrancken et al Vra00 (2000)) of early-B type stars in this double cluster, while the results for AV304 are based on recently obtained VLT spectra (Rolleston et al. Rol02 (2002)).

### 2.2 Flux distributions

IUE low resolution spectra are available in both the short and long wavelength cameras for all the NGC330 targets (apart from A04) and for BD +56 576. These were extracted from the INES archive (Rodriguez-Pascuel et al. Rod99 (1999)), where further details may be found.

## 3 Method of Analysis

We initially consider standard LTE model atmosphere techniques in our analysis, however in section 5 we discuss the accuracy of this method and correct our abundances for NLTE effects. Here we use the model atmospheres taken from the grids calculated with the code of Kurucz (Kur91 (1992)) and made available at his website. This grid covers a range of chemical compositions, with the current analysis utilising mainly the results for metallicities of $``$0.5 dex, which is compatible with that found in Paper I. Details of the methods and atomic data used in the radiative transfer calculations can be found in, for example, Rolleston et al. (Rol00 (2000)) or Smartt et al. (Sma96 (1996)).

### 3.1 Atmospheric parameters

As discussed in Paper I, the relatively low signal-to-noise of the Caspec spectra preclude the observation of different ionization stages of the same element for most of the stars. Additionally there is no extant Strömgren photometry. Hence none of the standard techniques (see, for example, Kilian, Kil94 (1994), Gies and Lambert, Gie92 (1992), Rolleston et al. Rol00 (2000)) are available for constraining effective temperatures. Hence, initial temperature estimates were made from the observed flux distributions. The extinction toward NGC330 has been found to be relatively small and here we have adopted a foreground reddening of $`E(BV)=0.034`$ and the extinction relation of Seaton (Sea79 (1979)), together with an SMC extinction of $`E(BV)=0.05`$ and the relationship of Thompson et al. (Tho88 (1988)). As discussed in Paper I, similar effective temperatures would have been estimated using, for example, the galactic extinction law for all the reddening.

The effective temperature estimates are listed in Table 2. As discussed in Paper I, at effective temperatures greater than approximately 22 000 K, the flux distribution becomes relatively insensitive to this parameter. Additionally there may be uncertainties due to the presence of fainter targets in the IUE aperture. Hence we adopt conservative error estimates of 2 000 K for our cooler targets and up to 4 000 K for our hottest targets. For the latter, we note (see Paper I for details) that our estimates are consistent with the absence of a detectable He ii spectrum, which implies that the effective temperatures must be less than 26 000 K.

Two stars, A01 and B04, had been already been discussed in Paper I; here we have independently re-estimated their effective temperatures. For the latter the two estimates are consistent, whilst for A01, the current estimate is 2 000 K less than in Paper I. Here, we used flux distributions calculated for a metallicity 0.5 dex less than solar (in paper I, fluxes for a normal metallicity were adopted) but tests showed that the estimates were little affected by the choice of metallicity; hence we ascribe the difference mainly to the flux distributions not being particularly temperature sensitive in the case of A01.

For A04, no IUE observations were available; there are, however, measurements of the equivalent widths of both Si iii and Si iv ions and these have been used to estimate an effective temperature (see, for example, Rolleston et al. Rol00 (2000) for details) and this is also listed in Table 2. Note that the equivalent widths are small (typically 30 mÅ) and hence subject to considerable uncertainty. Additionally several authors (for example, Kilian Kil92 (1994), Smartt et al. Sma01 (2001)) have found systematic differences between temperatures found from optical photometry and ionization equilibria and it is possible that similar differences will be present for the two methods used here. Hence, the temperature estimate for A04 should be treated with some caution.

Comparison of observed and theoretical Balmer lines (see Rolleston et al. Rol00 (2000) for further details) were then used to estimate logarithmic surface gravities, which are again summarized in Table 2. Some of the surface gravity estimates differed significantly from the value (3.5 dex) assumed when initially estimating the effective temperatures. In these cases the effective temperatures were re-estimated using an appropriate gravity and the procedure iterated until it converged. An example of the quality of the fit can be found in Fig. 2 of Paper I and relevant uncertainties for the individual stars are also listed in Table 2.

For three stars (A02, B22, B37) there were sufficient O ii lines to estimate microturbulent velocities and these are again summarized in Table 2. For the other stars a value of 5 km s<sup>-1</sup> was adopted; we note that although this may be too low, the weakness of the metal line spectra in the SMC targets implies that the choice of this parameter does not significantly affect the abundance analysis.

For the galactic standard, BD+56 576, the atmospheric parameters have been re-estimated using the same criteria and methods as for the NGC330 targets and are summarized Table 3, together with the values deduced by Vrancken et al. (Vra00 (2000), VDLL). Given the different criteria and non-LTE methods used by VDLL, the agreement is surprisingly good. However, we emphasize that the values deduced here should not be considered as the best available but rather appropriate for a differential analysis with respect to the NGC330 targets. The comparison with VDLL also provides us with an estimate of the importance of non-LTE effects which will be discussed in the next section.

In the case of AV304, we have adopted the atmospheric parameters (listed in Table 3) deduced by Rolleston et al. (Rol02 (2002)). They used similar model atmosphere techniques and criteria to those adopted here, apart from the effective temperature which was estimated from the silicon ionization equilibria. However, in a previously analysis of this star (Rolleston et al. Rol93 (1993)) good agreement was found between the effective temperatures estimates found from the ionization equilibrium and the IUE flux distribution.

## 4 Results

Using the atmospheric parameters discussed above, the metal lines in the NGC330 targets were used to deduce absolute abundances using atomic data taken from Jeffery (Jef91 (1991)). These absolute values are listed in Table 2, together with the number of lines used in the analysis. Also listed for each ionization stage are the mean abundance estimate and the standard deviation. In Table 3, absolute abundance estimates are given for BD +56 576 (both deduced here and by Vrancken et al. Vra00 (2000)) and for AV304, which are again taken directly from Rolleston et al. (Rol02 (2002)).

It is more useful to consider a differential analysis of the NGC330 targets relative to the galactic standard BD 56 576. This will be less affected by any errors in oscillator strengths or systematic errors in the adopted atmospheric parameters. Unfortunately, it was not possible to consider all the lines observed in the Caspec spectra due to the more limited wavelength coverage for BD +56 576. The differential abundances are summarized in Table 4 for each star, together with the means (and standard deviations) for each element. The results of a similar differential comparison for AV304 (relative to the galactic star HR2387) taken from Rolleston et al. (Rol02 (2002)) are also summarized in table 4. These differential analyses confirm the main results from the absolute analyses – all the SMC targets are deficient in metals apart from nitrogen, which is very deficient in AV304 but slightly enhanced relative to our Galaxy in the NGC330 targets. Below the results for individual elements are discussed in more detail.

### 4.1 Helium

An effectively normal helium abundance is found, although there is considerable scatter within the NGC330 stars. This probably reflects the difficulty in estimating the continuum placement for the relatively broad diffuse helium lines, which make up the majority of our dataset. Hence we conclude that within the uncertainties, there is no evidence for an anomalous helium abundance in our targets.

### 4.2 Carbon

The differential abundances are based mainly on the C ii doublet at 4267Å, supplemented in some cases by the line at 3921Å. The former is know to be particularly sensitive to non-LTE effects (Eber and Butler, Ebe88 (1988)). Also as discussed in Paper I the stellar absorption line could be affected by recombination from an associated Hii region. However all the NGC330 targets show a significant carbon underabundance (with a relatively small scatter between stars), while the mean differential abundance is similar to that found for AV304.

The latter result appears inconsistent with the results in Tables 2 and 3, where the corresponding abundances differ by 0.35 dex. However the value for AV304 was based on a mixture of C ii and C iii lines and if only the former are considered the difference in absolute abundances decreases to approximately 0.15 dex. The small remaining discrepancy of approximately 0.1 dex with the differential abundances arises from the different set of lines used in the two analyses.

### 4.3 Nitrogen

As discussed in Paper I, the most striking difference between the two NGC330 targets and AV304 is in their N ii spectra. However the new VLT observations for AV304, now allows this difference to be quantified. Indeed the mean differential abundance implies that for the NGC330 targets nitrogen is overabundant by a factor of approximately twenty compared with AV304. This is consistent with paper I, where a lower limit on the nitrogen enrichment of a factor of six was deduced relative to the SMC. There is considerable scatter in the differential abundances deduced for individual stars. This is somewhat surprising as the N ii lines are relatively strong and hence the equivalent width estimates should be reliable. Additionally, only small non-LTE effects have been found for the N ii spectra (Becker and Butler, Bec89 (1989)). Hence the scatter could possibly reflect a real variation in the nitrogen abundances in these stars.

### 4.4 Oxygen

The O ii spectrum, together with that for N ii is the best observed in our targets. The differential oxygen abundances are in good agreement with only that for B22 being far from the mean. This star has a relatively low effective temperature estimate of 20 000 K and a change of 1 000 K in this estimate would change the differential abundance by more than 0.3 dex. Hence we believe that there is no evidence for any variation in the oxygen abundances among the NGC330 targets. Additionally the mean differential abundance is similar to, although somewhat lower than, that found for AV304.

### 4.5 Magnesium

Although the results are based solely on the Mg ii doublet at 4481Å, there is reasonable agreement in the individual differential abundances, whilst the mean value agree well with that for AV304.

### 4.6 Silicon

In contrast with oxygen and magnesium, the differential silicon abundances show a wide spread, which is characterised by the relatively large standard deviation in the mean value. The reason for this is unclear as for most of the targets the Si iii lines near 4560Å are relatively well observed, although the relative strengths of these lines are sometimes anomalous. Additionally for the cooler targets, the estimated abundances are very temperature sensitive; for example at an effective temperature of 18 000 K, a shift in temperature of 1 000 K changes the abundance by more than 0.3 dex. However the O ii ion has a similar temperature sensitivity in this regime, whilst the oxygen abundance estimates are far more consistent. Although the cause of the discrepancies is unclear, they may well be due (at least in part) to the small number of measurable silicon lines. Indeed they are unlikely to reflect real abundance differences given the behaviour of other $`\alpha `$-process elements. The mean differential abundance is within the uncertainties in good agreement with that found for AV304.

## 5 Discussion

### 5.1 The chemical composition of our B-type sample in NGC330

The principle conclusion from the differential analysis is that the cluster targets have a much higher nitrogen and possibly lower oxygen abundance than AV304. Relative nitrogen to oxygen abundances, $`[\frac{N}{O}]`$ of $`0.40\pm `$0.24 dex and $``$1.6 dex are deduced for the NGC330 targets and AV304 respectively. For the former the estimates from the individual stars have been weighted by the number of lines observed (although if the stars are uniformly weighted the ratio is only changed by 0.1 dex), whilst for the latter the uncertainty in the individual element abundances imply an error in the ratio of approximately 0.2 dex. For the NGC330 targets, if the errors in the ratios are randomly distributed, the error on the mean would be reduced to approximately $`\pm `$0.1 dex.

As discussed in Paper I, the theoretical N ii and O ii line strengths have a similar dependence on the adopted atmospheric parameters and hence the estimated nitrogen to oxygen abundance ratios are unlikely to be affected by uncertainties in these quantities. Hence we conclude that the $`[\frac{N}{O}]`$ ratio is enhanced by 1.2 dex with respect to AV304 and this estimate is unlikely to be significantly affected by uncertainties in atmospheric parameters or the relatively simple LTE analysis adopted.

The simplest explanation for this nitrogen enhancement is that it represents the products of hydrogen burning by the CNO bi-cycle. In such circumstances, it might be expected that there were a corresponding enhancement in helium and underabundances in carbon and possibly oxygen, with the sum of CNO nuclei in the NGC330 stars comparable to that in AV304. It is therefore important to try to map the abundances for the NGC330 targets as derived from our differential analysis onto an absolute scale. There are a number of options available to us, which we now discuss.

If we assume that the composition of AV304 is the baseline initial composition of NGC330, then we can use the difference in the LTE abundances of the NGC330 targets relative to AV304. However we must also address the probable impact of non-LTE (NLTE) effects on these abundances. We have used NLTE calculations similar to those discussed in McErlean et al. (McE00 (2000)) to estimate the difference in NLTE and LTE CNO abundance estimates for AV304. The corrections are approximately +0.07, -0.11 and -0.07 dex respectively for C, N and O. In addition we note that our carbon abundance in AV304 relies heavily on the 4267Å line which is well known to give spuriously low abundances. Following the discussion of Vrancken et al. (Vra00 (2000)) and comparing their results with those of Gies & Lambert (Gie92 (1992)) we further correct the carbon abundance by +0.34 dex. Our final CNO NLTE abundances estimates for AV304 are then 7.41, 6.55 and 8.16 dex in good agreement with the H ii region results of 7.4, 6.6 and 8.1 dex as summarized in the discussion of baseline SMC abundances for A-type supergiants in the SMC by Venn (Venn99 (1999)).

We can now use these modified NLTE abundance estimates for AV304 and the difference in LTE abundances listed in Tables 2 and 3 to estimate absolute CNO abundance for our NGC330 targets; these are summarized in Table 6. In turn we can then estimate sum of the CNO and CN abundances for AV304, which are are 8.24 and 7.46 dex respectively. These may be compared with the mean NGC330 totals of 8.17 and 7.71 dex respectively. There is some slight evidence for an increase in CN but the difference of +0.25 should be compared with uncertainties in the mean carbon and nitrogen abundances of 0.15 and 0.18 dex (the total being dominated by the more abundant species). The sum of CNO is in good agreement but again the total is dominated by the oxygen abundance for which the uncertainty is approximately 0.13 dex. Clearly it is unproductive to compare summations of abundances when one species is substantially more abundant than all other species, and the uncertainty in that abundance is similar to, or larger than, that of the less abundant species.

We arrive at a similar picture if we instead consider the differential abundances of the NGC330 stars relative to BD+56 576 using the NLTE abundances published by Vrancken et al. (Vra00 (2000)) to put them on an absolute scale. This results in CNO abundances for the NGC330 targets of 7.28, 7.52 and 7.98 dex respectively which are in good agreement with the values obtained using AV304 as the standard (see Table 6). This is possibly fortuitous, and given the difficulty in modeling the 4267Å line, unexpected for carbon. Nevertheless it reinforces the previous discussion of the absolute abundances. We conclude that the chemical peculiarities of the NGC330 targets may be understood in terms of nuclear processing by the CNO bi-cycle, perhaps with some weak evidence that ON processing has occurred, but it is not necessary to invoke primary nitrogen production (although this cannot be precluded).

We can also search for correlations between element abundances within the NGC330 targets. Linear least squares fits show a positive correlation between the helium and nitrogen abundances and negative correlations between the carbon and nitrogen and between the oxygen and nitrogen abundances. Interestingly all these trends are consistent with the transformation of hydrogen into helium using the CNO bicycle. Unfortunately however, none of the correlations are convincing and the coefficients are not significantly different from zero at even the 1$`\sigma `$ level.

### 5.2 Other stellar abundances in NGC330 and the SMC

Korn et al. (Korn00 (2000)) have recently published C, O, Mg and Si NLTE abundances for another B-type giant in NGC330, the star B30, and their abundances are in good agreement with ours given the magnitude of the NLTE corrections and the uncertainties in both studies. Unfortunately they do not give a nitrogen abundance but two other similar SMC giants in their sample have NLTE nitrogen abundances of 7.3 and 7.2 dex. We will return to these stars in the discussion of their evolutionary status below. Furthermore an LTE nitrogen abundance for star B30 was published by Reitermann et al. (Rei90 (1990)) who obtained a value of 7.4 dex for a microtubulence of 5 km/s.

There have also been many studies of cool giants and supergiants in NGC330. These results are summarized in Table 6. Of interest here are CNO abundances and there are two recent estimates for NGC330 stars by Hill (Hil99 (1999), H99) and Gonzalez & Wallerstein (Gon99 (1999), GW). One obvious difference between these is that the mean nitrogen abundance of GW is systematically lower than that of H99. However we note that the nitrogen abundance is derived from molecular CN features, and depends on the adopted carbon abundance (which is derived from C<sub>2</sub>). While H99 independently derive their carbon abundances, GW adopted mean values from the literature and there is a small systemic overestimation relative to H99 (approximately 0.2 dex). Such a small change in the carbon abundance is the most likely reason for their low nitrogen abundances and given that the carbon abundance of H99 may be more reliable and that their results agree better with other samples of evolved B, A and F-type stars in the SMC, we prefer their results for carbon and nitrogen.

Comparing with other SMC samples we note that our mean CNO abundances are in good agreement with the results of Venn (Venn99 (1999)) and Hill et al. (Hil97 (1997)) although the NGC330 stars may be mildly metal poor. There have been previous suggestions that NGC330 may be relatively metal poor with respect to the SMC (Grebel & Richtler Gre92 (1992)) but our results confirm recent work in that any metal deficiency must be small ($`<0.2`$ dex). We therefore conclude that the pattern of the mean CNO abundances found in the NGC330 B-type giants is very similar to that found for samples of other evolved A, F and K-type giants and supergiants. We also note that Dufton et al. (Duf00 (2000)) investigated a large sample of B-type supergiants in the SMC and the nitrogen abundances found in their less luminous stars, although uncertain, are comparable to those found here.

### 5.3 Evolutionary status

It is useful to preface our discussion of the evolutionary status of these stars by considering their positions in the HR-diagram. We follow the procedure described in VDLL, adopting a distance modulus for the SMC of 18.9 and extinction estimates as discussed in section 3.1. As in VDLL we estimate spectroscopic masses (M<sub>spec</sub>) from our derived stellar radii and surface gravities. Figure 1 illustrates the positions of the stars compared with the non-rotating stellar evolution tracks of Charbonnel et al. (Cha93 (1993)) which are computed with metallicity of $`Z=0.004`$ (SMC-like). Again following VDLL we estimate evolutionary masses (M<sub>evol</sub>) by interpolation in this diagram and these may be compared with M<sub>spec</sub> in Table 5. where all derived quantities are summarized. We note that Maeder & Meynet (Mae01 (2001)) have produced a grid of calculations including the effects of rotation for a metallicity of $`Z=0.004`$. Figure 1 also shows the locus of the end of H-burning main sequence phase for an assumed initial rotational velocity of 300 km/s (taken from their Figure 6). Note that this locus also corresponds to the approximate position of the end of the main sequence for the non-rotating models. This is a consequence of the fact that the main sequence widening in Charbonnel et al. comes from their inclusion of convective overshooting, while a similar effect is obtained by Maeder & Meynet with rotationally induced mixing alone. The fact that overshooting and rotation both have similar results in this respect has been discussed previously, see for example Talon et al. (Tal97 (1997)). We will return to this point later in the discussion, after first considering the observed abundance pattern.

Nitrogen enrichment is clearly a sign of contamination of the surface by the products on the nuclear burning, in this case from the CNO bi-cycle. What is especially interesting about the current sample of stars (to which we can add the star B30 mentioned above) is that they represent a coeval group of stars with rather homogeneous properties, whose N/C surface abundance ratio is enhanced by typically a factor of 10. Stellar models which include the effects of rotationally induced mixing have been proposed as a means of producing the observed nitrogen enhancements in main sequence and evolved massive stars. Maeder & Meynet (Mae01 (2001)) have followed the evolution of the surface abundances for a range of initial rotational velocities. Comparing our results to the models with high initial rotational velocity, $`v_{\mathrm{ini}}=300`$ km/s, and therefore relatively large nitrogen enhancements, we find that the best agreement is with their red supergiant or blue loop stars. At the end of the main sequence these models predict an increase in \[N/H\] by a factor of only 3, or about 0.5 dex. Note however that their initial abundance ratios are assumed to be solar and therefore they overestimate the initial nitrogen abundance significantly, adopting one fifth solar, which is approximately 7.3 dex in our notation.

We can perform a simple recalibration of their results by assuming that a calculation with an initial lower nitrogen abundance of 6.6 dex (but similar carbon and oxygen) produces the same excess of nitrogen in absolute terms. In this case the nitrogen abundance at the end of the main sequence would be approximately 7.7 dex rather than 7.8 dex, a consequence of the fact that the initial nitrogen abundance is negligible compared with that which is produced by the star. These models therefore could conceivably reproduce the observed nitrogen enhancements. In fact if the initial N/O or N/(O+C) abundance ratios are small and can be neglected, which in the case of the SMC is a good approximation, then it is easy to show that one only needs a relatively small fraction of core material in ON equilibrium to produce a big change in the observed nitrogen abundance.

Nevertheless, as Figure 1 shows, there are other more serious discrepancies. For example, our objects tend to lie red-wards of the main sequence despite the widening provided by the rotating models (and models with convective overshooting). In addition all the B-type giants/supergiants in our sample are slow rotators with values of $`v`$sin$`i`$ less than 50 km/s. By contrast the rotating models require very high initial rotation to produce the enhanced nitrogen but do not predict significant slow down by the end of the main sequence. As discussed in Paper I, while there may be a selection effect in our observer sample (we can only analyse the slow rotators) it is highly unlikely that there are so many fast rotators in NGC330 oriented pole on. For example, both Mazzali et al. (Maz95 (1994)) and Keller & Bessell (Kel98 (1998)) give $`v`$sin$`i`$ values for 22 of the brightest B and Be-type stars in NGC330. They find that maximum values lie in the range 300 – 400 km/s and if we assume that our sample have similar rotation rates ($`v`$) this implies that sin$`i`$ is less than 10 degrees. In other words if the distribution of $`i`$ is random we should expect our sample to be drawn from about 1.5% of all the B-type stars in NGC330. This is clearly incompatible with the number of B-type stars in NGC330 in the relevant magnitude range. One is left with the conclusion that our objects are intrinsically slow rotators at the present time. Either they were fast rotators in the past, and have somehow slowed down, or some process other than rotationally induced mixing is responsible for the observed abundance pattern.

Given the similarity between the carbon and nitrogen abundances in the blue and red stars in NGC330 it is tempting to invoke blue loops as a means of explaining our abundances. This seems unlikely given that no stellar evolution calculations predict loops which progress hotter than effective temperatures corresponding to late-B spectral types. While Venn (Venn99 (1999)) invoked blue loops for the A-type supergiants this does not seem a viable option for our early B-type stars, despite similarities in CNO abundances. Mass-transfer in binaries may also be invoked to explain enhanced nitrogen abundances and Wellstein et al. (Wel01 (2001)) have recently produced models which produce nitrogen enriched blue stars which can reside in the post main-sequence gap. Such stars may also appear to be under-massive for their luminosities and is therefore tempting to ascribe the discrepancies between spectroscopic and evolutionary masses in Table 5 to binarity. One should be cautious however because our spectroscopic masses were estimated from the derived surface gravities and in some cases the uncertainties in this quantity are quite substantial. The final two columns of Table 5 compares the differences between spectroscopic and evolutionary masses with the uncertainties in gravity and in all but three cases (A02, B32 and B37) the mass differences are easily accounted for. There does appear to be a suggestion of a correlation between nitrogen enhancement and luminosity in our sample. Stars A02 and B37 are the most luminous and most N-rich of our sample, however their positions are perhaps consistent with being core-helium burning stars on their way red-wards (this phase represented by the slight kink in the 20 solar mass track for the non-rotating models). The problem for the rotating models is that this phase becomes progressively cooler and shorter lived as initial rotational velocity is increased, with only the slow rotators spending any significant time in this part of HR-diagram. However, such stars should not be significantly N-enriched, in contradiction to the observations. B32 would appear to be the best candidate for the binary evolution hypothesis, the real problem being that much better constraints are needed on the gravity of this object, and indeed all other stars in our sample, before definitive statements can be made about possible mass discrepancies. Finally, while binarity appears to be an attractive scenario, it has a significant problem in that it is expected that the products of mass accretion will be fast rotators having been spun up by the accreted material. In addition radial velocities of all our stars are typical of the NGC330 cluster (Table 1) although it must be noted that expected radial velocity amplitudes of the kind of systems predicted by the models of Wellstein & Langer (Wel01 (2001)) are typically the order of 10–20 km/s.

Finally we note that VDLL carried out a similar study to the present one but for the solar metallicity cluster h+$`\chi `$ Per. They did not find evidence for significant nitrogen overabundances in any of the evolved B-type stars in this cluster. However if we take the nitrogen enrichments found here, in absolute terms, apply these to their galactic counterparts it is clear that this leads to enhancements the order of a factor of 2–3. For some objects in h+$`\chi `$ Per this magnitude of a nitrogen enhancement is consistent with the observations. It is simply more obvious in the SMC stars given their initial very low nitrogen abundance.

## 6 Summary

In this paper we have presented new results for 5 B-type giants/supergiants in the SMC cluster NGC330. Together with our previous work, plus results for one other such star in NGC330 presented by Korn et al. this brings the total of bright B-type stars analysed in this cluster to 8. All the stars have the following characteristics:

* They are nitrogen rich and possibly carbon poor, with perhaps some marginal evidence for oxygen depletion, with their N/C ratios being enhanced by approximately a factor of 10 relative to the SMC norm. The nitrogen enhancements are remarkably homogeneous.
* They all lie close to the main-sequence but with a strong tendency to lie beyond the end of the main-sequence even if main-sequence widening through rotation or convective overshooting is considered.
* They all appear to be currently slow rotators with $`v`$sin$`i`$ values below 50 km/s. The sample is too large for this to be an inclination angle effect for fast rotators.
* The nitrogen enhancements agree well with those found for cool red supergiants in the same cluster.

Single star stellar evolution models including the effects of rotation may indeed be able to explain the abundance patterns, although we note that there is a clear need for stellar evolution calculations with the correct mix of abundances for the SMC, in particular scaling the solar composition produces much too high an initial nitrogen abundance for the SMC. However single star models suffer from severe difficulties in reproducing both the effective temperatures of our sample and their low rotational velocities. Binary star models may be able to produce stars in the correct effective temperature range but may also have similar problems to single star models in reproducing the low rotational velocities. The similarity between blue B-type giant/supergiant nitrogen enhancements and those found for red supergiants in NGC330 is surprising since one might expect the latter to be more nitrogen enriched with the blue stars’ enhancement coming from rotation while that of the red stars coming from dredge-up processes. In conclusion, the B-type stars considered here are still something of a puzzle and not well modeled by current stellar evolution calculations. Moreover, given the large number of these objects in NGC330 it is clear that they are not the product of some peculiar evolutionary path and therefore represent an important challenge to current stellar evolution theory.

###### Acknowledgements.

Data reduction was performed on the PPARC funded Northern Ireland starlink node. DJL is grateful for NOVA funding for a visit to Utrecht in May 2001 during which time much of the present work carried out. Thanks are also due to a number of people for contributions to this project; Norbert Langer, Paolo Mazzali, Gianni Marconi, Robert Rolleston and Kim Venn.


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# Nonthermal radiation from clusters of galaxies: the role of merger shocks in particle acceleration

## 1 Introduction

Rich clusters of galaxies are strong X-ray sources with luminosity typically in the range $`L_X10^{43}10^{45}erg/s`$. The X-ray emission is well explained as bremsstrahlung radiation of the very hot ($`T10^8K`$), low density ($`n_e10^3cm^3`$) and highly ionized intracluster electron gas.

There is now compelling evidence for the existence, besides the thermal electron gas, of a nonthermal population of particles, responsible for extended synchrotron radio halos in a growing fraction of the observed clusters (see Feretti et al., 2000 for a recent rewiew), as well as for hard X-ray (HXR) and extreme ultra violet (EUV) excesses detected in a few clusters (see e.g. Fusco Femiano et al., 1999, 2000; Lieu et al., 1996). While it is clear that radio emission is due to synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons, it is not as clear how these particles are accelerated. Several models have been proposed, based on shock acceleration of electrons in merger shocks (Roettiger, Burns & Stone, 1999; Sarazin 1999; Takizawa & Naito, 2000; Fujita & Sarazin 2001) or models in which electrons are secondary products of hadronic interactions (Dennison 1980, Colafrancesco & Blasi 1998; Blasi & Colafrancesco 1999; Dolag & Ensslin 2000) and finally models in which electrons are continuously reenergized by turbulence (Schlickeiser, Sievers, & Thiemann 1987; Brunetti et al. 2001; Ohno, Takizawa, & Shibata 2002).

HXR and EUV radiation in excess of the thermal emission may be generated by inverse Compton scattering (ICS) of relativistic electrons off the photons of the cosmic microwave background radiation. When applied to the Coma cluster, these models require values of the volume averaged magnetic field which are smaller than those measured through Faraday rotation, which are typically of several $`\mu G`$ (Eilek 1999; Clarke, Kronberg & Böringer 1999). This conclusion can be possibly avoided only by constructing 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. 2001). In the case of a secondary origin for the radiating electrons, the small magnetic fields imply a large cosmic ray content in the intracluster gas. In the case of the Coma cluster, the gamma ray upper limit found by Sreekumar et al. (1996) is exceeded by the gamma ray flux from the decay of neutral pions, as shown by Blasi & Colafrancesco (1999).

The HXR excess might also be the result of bremsstrahlung emission from a population of thermal electrons whose distribution function is slightly different from a Maxwell-Boltzmann (MB) distribution (Ensslin, Lieu & Biermann 1999; Blasi 2000; Dogiel 2000; Sarazin & Kempner 2000). A tail might in fact be induced in the MB distribution by the presence of MHD waves that resonate with part of the thermal electrons (Blasi, 2000). This model requires an energy input comparable with the energy budget of a cluster merger, and implies a substantial heating of the intracluster gas (this was shown by Blasi (2000) by solving the full Fokker-Planck equations, including Coulomb scattering). If the process lasts for too long a time (larger than a few hundred million years) the cluster is heated to a temperature well in excess of the observed ones, and the model fails. In this case the arguments presented by Petrosian (2001) apply.

The presence of tails in the MB electron distribution can be tested through observations of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect, as proposed by Blasi, Olinto & Stebbins (2000) (see Ensslin & Kaiser (2000) for a general discussion of the SZ effect including nonthermal effects). Clearly, by simply observing radio radiation and hard X-ray radiation from clusters, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to discriminate among classes of models. The study of the SZ effect allows one to partly break the degeneracy. An even more powerful tool is represented by gamma ray astronomy. Some of the models in the literature predict gamma ray emission to some extent, while others (this is the case of nonthermal tails in the MB distribution) do not make precise predictions about the gamma ray emission, and in fact do not require it. Clusters of galaxies are among the targets for observations by the GLAST satellite. These observations will open a new window onto the nonthermal processes occurring in the intracluster gas, and will allow one to understand the origin of the observed radiation at lower frequency (for a recent review see (Blasi 2002)).

As stressed above, there is at present no compelling evidence in favor of any of the proposed acceleration sites for the nonthermal particles in clusters. Nevertheless, energetic events in the history of a cluster represent good candidates, and cluster mergers, that build up the cluster itself hierarchically, fit the description. It seems therefore reasonable to associate the existence of nonthermal particles to some process occurring during these mergers. This argument is made stronger by the fact that mergers are also thought to be responsible for the heating of the intracluster gas. A possible observational evidence for a correlation between major mergers and radio halos has recently been found by Buote (2001). In particular, the correlation exists between the radio emission at 1.4 GHz and the degree of departure from virialization in the shape of clusters, interpreted as a consequence of a recent or ongoing merger that visibly changed the dark matter distribution in the cluster core.

The shocks that are formed in the baryon components of the merging clusters are able to convert part of the gravitational energy of the system into thermal energy of the gas, as shown by direct observations (e.g. (Markevitch, Sarazin and Vikhlinin 1999)). It has been claimed that if these shocks are strong enough, they can efficiently accelerate particles by first order Fermi acceleration (Fujita & Sarazin 2001; Miniati et. al. 2001a,b; Blasi 2000). The consequences of these shocks on the nonthermal content of clusters of galaxies may be dramatic, and deserve to be considered in detail. Both electrons and protons (or nuclei) are accelerated at the shock surfaces during mergers, but the dynamics of these two components is extremely different: high energy electrons have a radiative lifetime much shorter than the age of the cluster, so that they rapidly radiate most of their energy away and eventually pile up at lorentz factors $`100`$. On the other hand, protons lose only a small fraction of their energy during the lifetime of the cluster, and their diffusion time out of the cluster are even larger, so that they are stored in clusters for cosmological times (Berezinsky, Blasi & Ptuskin 1997; Volk, Aharonian, & Breitschwerdt 1996). In other words, while for high energy electrons only the recent merger events are important to generate nonthermal radiation that we can observe, in order to determine the proton population of a cluster (that can generate secondary electrons) we need to take into account the all history of the cluster.

In this paper we simulate merger histories of galaxy clusters and we calculate the properties of the shocks generated during the merger events and the related spectrum of particles accelerated at the shocks. We also account for the re-energization of particles preexisting within the merging clusters. We demonstrate that major mergers (mergers between clusters with comparable masses) which are supposed to be the most energetic events and that are often thought to be responsible for nonthermal activity, generate shocks that are typically weak and cannot account for the spectral slopes of the observed nonthermal radiation. Shocks in small mergers are also considered, and we find that they may play an important role to generate the nonthermal radiation by primary electrons accelerated recently. As far as the proton component is concerned, the time integrated spectra are energetically dominated by major mergers, so that the resulting spectra are very steep, due to the weakness of the corresponding shocks.

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 organized as follows: in §2 we discuss our simulations for the reconstruction of the merger tree; in §4 we discuss the basics of shock acceleration and reacceleration in clusters of galaxies, and the physics of cosmic ray confinement. In §5 we describe our results, and we conclude in §6.

## 2 Constructing the merger tree of a cluster

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 achieved. It represents an extremely powerful tool in that it allows one to reconstruct realizations of the merger history of a cluster with fixed mass at the present time. These analytical descriptions come in different flavors and are widely discussed in the literature. 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:

$$\frac{dn(M,t)}{dM}=\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\frac{\varrho }{M^2}\frac{\delta _c(t)}{\sigma (M)}\left|\frac{dln\sigma (M)}{dlnM}\right|exp\left[\frac{\delta _c^2(t)}{2\sigma ^2(M)}\right].$$
(1)
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):

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

$`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\delta _c(t)}{dt}}\right|{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma ^2(M^{})}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma (M^{})}{dM^{}}}\right|\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2(M^{})}{\sigma ^2(M)}}\right)^{3/2}`$
$`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\delta _\mathrm{c}^2(\mathrm{t})}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma ^2(\mathrm{M}^{})}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma ^2(\mathrm{M})}}\right)\right]\mathrm{dM}^{},`$ (2)
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 somewhat arbitrary, but its physical meaning can be grasped in terms of modification of the potential well of a cluster, following a merger. A major merger is expected to appreciably change the dark matter distribution in the resulting cluster, while only small perturbations are expected in small mergers, that are then interpreted as events more similar to accretion than to real mergers.

Adopting this effective description of the merger and accretion events, it is easy to use the LC formalism to construct simulated merger trees for a cluster with fixed mass at the present time. Although useful from a computational point of view, this strategy of establishing a boundary between mergers and accretion events does not correspond to any real physical difference between the two types of events, therefore in the following we will adopt the name “merger” for both regimes, provided there is no ambiguity or risk of confusion.

In fig. 1 we plotted a possible realization of the merger tree for a cluster with present mass equal to $`10^{15}M_{}`$ and for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.6`$. The history has been followed back in time up to redshift $`z=3`$. The big jumps in the cluster mass correspond to merger events, while smaller jumps correspond to what Salvador-Solé, Solanes & Manrique (1998) defined as accretion events.

## 3 Shocks during cluster mergers

During the merger of two clusters of galaxies, the baryonic component, feeling the gravitational potential created mainly by the dark matter component, is forced to move supersonically and shock waves are generated in the intracluster medium.

In this section we describe in more detail the physical properties of such shocks, with special attention for their Mach numbers and compression factors. To this purpose we use an approach introduced in its original version by Takizawa (1999). 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 components). The virial radius of each cluster can be written as follows

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

$$\left(\frac{GM_i}{100\mathrm{\Omega }_mH_0^2(1+z_{f,i})^3}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}},$$
(3)
where $`i=1,2`$, $`\rho _{cr}=1.8810^{29}h^2\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ is the current value of the critical 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 $`\rho _{cr}=3H_0^2/8\pi G`$, 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.

The relative velocity of the two merging clusters, $`V_r`$, can be easily calculated from energy conservation:

$$\frac{GM_1M_2}{r_{vir,1}+r_{vir,2}}+\frac{1}{2}M_rV_r^2=\frac{GM_1M_2}{2R_{12}},$$
(4)
where $`M_r=M_1M_2/(M_1+M_2)`$ is the reduced mass and $`R_{12}`$ is the turnaround radius of the system, where the two subclusters are supposed to have zero relative velocity. In fact the final value of the relative velocity at the merger is quite insensitive to the exact initial condition of the two subclusters. In an Einstein-De Sitter cosmology this spatial scale equals twice the virial radius of the system. Therefore, using eq. (3), we get:

$$R_{12}=2\left(\frac{M_1+M_2}{M_1}\right)^{1/3}\frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_f}r_{vir,1}.$$
(5)
where $`z_f`$ is the formation redshift of the cluster with mass $`M_1+M_2`$. This expression remains valid in approximate way also for other cosmological models (Lahav et al. 1991). The sound speed of the cluster $`i`$ is given by

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

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 $`\gamma _g=5/3`$. The Mach number of each cluster while moving in the volume of the other cluster can be written as follows:

$`_1^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(1+\eta )}{\gamma (\gamma 1)}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+\frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_{f,2}}\eta ^{1/3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_f}(1+\eta )^{1/3}}}\right]`$
$`_2^2`$ $`=`$ $`\eta ^{2/3}{\displaystyle \frac{1+z_{f,1}}{1+z_{f,2}}}_1^2,`$ (6)
where $`\eta =M_2/M_1<1`$. The procedure illustrated above can be applied to a generic couple of merging clusters, and in particular it can be applied to a generic merger event in the history of a cluster with fixed mass at the present time. The merger history (and indeed many realizations of the history) for a cluster can be simulated as discussed in the previous section. In particular, for a cluster with mass $`M_0`$ at the present time we simulate 500 realizations of the merger tree and calculate the Mach numbers associated with the merger events. A value $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.05`$ is assumed. Note that this value is 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. 2.

The striking feature of this plot is 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.

In fig. 3 we plotted an histogram of the frequency of shocks with given Mach number. It is easy to see that the greatest part of the merger shocks are weak, with a peak in Mach number at about 1.4. This result is in some contradiction with the Mach number distribution found by Miniati et al. (2000), which is a bimodal distribution with one peak at Mach numbers of $`1000`$, and one at Mach numbers of $`5`$. While the former peak cannot be obtained within our approach, because it is caused by shocks in the cold outskirts of clusters, not directly related to merger events, the latter shocks should be the same as those described in our paper. In fact, they are located, according to Miniati et al. (2000), within $`0.5h^1`$ Mpc from the cluster center, namely in the virialized region, so that the arguments presented here do apply. It is worth noticing in passing that the simulations of Miniati et al. (2000) have an intrinsic cutoff at Mach numbers smaller than $`\sqrt{3}`$, so that the peak we find at 1.5 is out of the available range. It is also worth noticing that the spatial resolution achieved in these simulations is of $`0.315h^1`$ Mpc, very close to the size of the region ($`0.5h^1`$ Mpc) where the shocks need to be identified.

On the other hand, the simple method introduced in our paper in order to evaluate the Mach number of merger related shocks suffers of the limitation of being applicable only to binary mergers. The cases in which a cluster is merging with another cluster in a deeper gravitational potential well generated by a collection of nearby structures cannot be treated in the context of this method. The occurrence of these events may induce fluctuations around the mean Mach number which might be larger than those considered here. We discuss this limitation more quantitatively in §5.

The presence of the shocks at very large Mach numbers in the intergalactic medium well outside virialized structures like clusters of galaxies can be expected simply on the basis of the propagation of shocks moving with speed typically $`10^8cm/s`$ in a cold medium, with say $`T10^4K`$. These shocks can accelerate particles efficiently: if these particles are electrons, their radiation is expected to be concentrated around the shocks, and well outside the intracluster medium. If the accelerated particles are protons, they are expected to be advected inside the cluster by the accretion flow, where their inelastic collisions can generate secondary radiation (Gabici & Blasi, in preparation).

Observationally, the strength of merger related shocks has been measured from high resolution X-ray images that allow one to evaluate the temperatures on the two sides of a shock. One instance is provided by Cygnus A ($`z=0.057`$), where two subclusters with comparable masses ($`\eta 1`$) are merging. ASCA observations of this cluster have been used by Markevitch, Sarazin and Vikhlinin (1999) to determine the temperature upstream ($`T_1=4\pm 1`$ keV) and downstream ($`T_2=8_1^{+2}`$ keV) of the shock, so that the compression factor $`r`$ at the same shock can be determined from the Rankine-Hugoniot relations:

$$\frac{1}{r}=\left[4\left(\frac{T_2}{T_1}1\right)^2+\frac{T_2}{T_1}\right]^{1/2}2\left(\frac{T_2}{T_1}1\right).$$
(7)
Numerically we obtain $`r2.22.4`$, corresponding to a Mach number $`2`$, roughly consistent with our predictions in fig. 2. Other cases of current merger events provide further examples of moderately supersonic relative motion of the merging clusters (Markevitch et al. 2001, 2002). None of the observed shocks seems to have Mach numbers around $`5`$, which appears in agreement with our findings. If the peak in Mach numbers were at $`5`$ it would be statistically unfavourable to observe only Mach numbers smaller that this value.

## 4 Acceleration and confinement of cosmic rays

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 are or have been involved in a merger event (Blasi 2000; Sarazin & Fujita 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 §4.2 we summarize the findings of Berezinsky, Blasi & Ptuskin (1997) on the confinement of cosmic rays in clusters of galaxies for cosmological time scales. In §4.3 we briefly explain how to extend the formalism of shock acceleration to the re-energization of the particles confined in the cluster volume.

### 4.1 Shock acceleration

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:

$$\alpha =\frac{r+2}{r1}=2\frac{^2+1}{^21}.$$
(8)
The acceleration occurs diffusively, in that particles scatter back and forth across 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 $`_{p_{min}}^{p_{max}}𝑑pE(p)f(p)=\eta _{shock}\rho u^2`$, where $`E(p)=\sqrt{p^2+m^2}`$ and $`m`$ is the mass of the accelerated particles, $`\eta _{shock}`$ 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, which is very poorly known. Fortunately, most of the physical observables usually depend very weakly on $`p_{min}`$.

The basic points introduced above can be simply applied to the case of shocks originated in cluster mergers, where the approximate values of the parameters are known. In the following, we use these parameters to estimate the maximum energies attainable for electrons and protons as accelerated particles. The acceleration time, as a function of the particle energy $`E`$ can be written as

$$\tau _{acc}(E)=\frac{3}{u_1u_2}D(E)\left[\frac{1}{u_1}+\frac{1}{u_2}\right]=\frac{3D(E)}{v^2}\frac{r(r+1)}{r1},$$
(9)
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):

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

In this case the acceleration time becomes:

$$\tau _{acc}(E)6.9\times 10^{13}B_\mu ^{1/3}L_{20}^{2/3}E(GeV)^{1/3}v_8^2g(r)s,$$
(11)
where $`v_8=\frac{v}{10^8cm/s}`$ and $`g(r)=r(r+1)/(r1)`$ and $`v=u_1`$.

For electrons, energy losses are dominated by ICS off the photons of the cosmic microwave background, provided the magnetic field is smaller than $`3\mu G`$. The maximum energy of accelerated electrons is obtained by requiring $`\tau _{acc}<\tau _{loss}`$:

$$E_{max}^e118L_{20}^{1/2}B_\mu ^{1/4}v_8^{3/2}g(r)^{3/4}GeV.$$
(12)
The relation between the compression ratio $`r`$ and the Mach number is

$$r=\frac{\frac{8}{3}^2}{\frac{2}{3}^2+2},$$
(13)
valid for an ideal monoatomic gas. Here $``$ is the Mach number of the unshocked gas, moving with speed $`v_8`$.

For protons, energy losses are usually 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

$$E_{max}^p9\times 10^7L_{20}^2B_\mu v_8^6g(r)^{1/2}GeV,$$
(14)
for $`t_{merger}10^9`$ years. As a second possibility for the diffusion coefficient we assume Bohm diffusion, well motivated for the case of strong turbulence. In this case:

$$D(E)=3.3\times 10^{22}E/B_\mu cm^2/s.$$
(15)
For electrons we obtain:

$$E_{max}^e6.3\times 10^4B_\mu ^{1/2}v_8g(r)^{1/2}GeV,$$
(16)
while for protons

$$E_{max}^p3\times 10^9B_\mu v_8^2g(r)^1GeV.$$
(17)
If $`E_{max}^p`$ becomes larger than $`10^{10}`$ GeV, energy losses due to proton 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 (Kang, Rachen & Biermann 1997).

The relative abundance of electrons and protons at injection is an unknown quantity. Theoretically, there are plausibility arguments for having a small $`e/p`$ ratio, related to the microphysics of shock acceleration: protons resonate with Alfvén waves on a wide range of momenta, so that they can be efficiently extracted from the thermal distribution and injected into the acceleration engine. For electrons this is much harder. Low energy electrons do not interact with Alfvén waves and some other modes need to be excited (for instance whistlers) and sustained against their strong damping. A detailed discussion of the electron injection at non relativistic shocks can be found in (McClements et al. 1997; Levinson 1994) and references therein.

Another issue that contributes to the suppression of the injection of the electron component in a shock is the finite thickness of the shock, comparable with the Larmor radius of thermal protons (Bell 1978a,b). Electrons can be injected in the shock accelerator only if their Larmor radius is larger than the thickness of the shock. For a proton temperature of $`8`$ keV, only electrons with energy larger than $`510`$ MeV can be injected in the acceleration box. This energy is much larger than the typical electron temperature in the ICM. The value of $`5`$ MeV can be adopted as a sort of low energy cutoff in the injection spectrum of electrons.

### 4.2 Confinement of accelerated particles

It was first realized by Berezinsky, Blasi & Ptuskin (1997) and Volk, Aharonian, & Breitschwerdt (1996) that the bulk of the hadronic cosmic rays accelerated or injected in clusters of galaxies remain diffusively confined within the cluster volume for cosmological times. The maximum energy for which the confinement is effective is a strong function of the assumed diffusion coefficient, being the highest for the case of Bohm diffusion. For this case, for our purposes we can assume a complete confinement. In cases that might be more realistic, for instance for a Kolmogorov spectrum of magnetic fluctuations, the confinement may be limited to particles with energy up to a few TeV.

For the energies at which the confinement is effective, the energy density in cosmic rays increases with time due to the pile up of particles injected during the cluster history. In particular this accumulation occurs at each merger event if the merger related shocks are strong enough. This process may result in a sufficient accumulation of cosmic ray protons to induce detectable fluxes of gamma radiation through pion decay (see Blasi (2002) for a recent review).

For high energy electrons, the processes that affect the most the propagation are energy losses, so that the discussion on confinement does not apply. On the other hand, the confined protons induce a secondary population of electron-positron pairs due to the decay of charged pions generated in inelastic collisions of relativistic protons with the thermal gas. These pairs are responsible for radio radiation through synchrotron emission and for X-rays due to ICS. Moreover, gamma radiation is also generated through ICS and bremsstrahlung emission of these secondary pairs.

Low energy electrons ($`\gamma 100`$) lose energy slowly and can be piled up and confined for a few billion years, and eventually re-energized by shocks related to successive merger events.

### 4.3 Reacceleration of confined relativistic particles

Shocks formed during a merger not only accelerate new particles from the thermal bath but also re-energize particles confined in the cluster either from previous mergers or from additional sources of cosmic rays. Low energy electrons and relativistic hadrons are affected by the reacceleration.

Assuming that the spectrum of particles confined within the cluster is $`n(p)`$, and that the merger shock has a compression factor $`r`$, the spectrum of the reaccelerated particles can be easily calculated. In fact, particles with initial momentum between $`p`$ and $`p+dp`$ are $`n(p)dp`$ and they are reprocessed by the shock into the spectrum $`df(p^{})`$ that can be calculated by standard shock acceleration theory

$$df(p^{})=dA\left(\frac{p^{}}{p}\right)^\alpha \alpha =\frac{r+2}{r1}$$
(18)
and

$$_p^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p^{}𝑑f(p^{})=n(p)dpdA=(\alpha 1)n(p)\frac{dp}{p},$$
(19)
where we assumed $`\alpha >1`$ and $`p_{max}\mathrm{}`$. The spectrum of all the reaccelerated particles is then:

$$f(p^{})=_{p_{min}}^p^{}\frac{dp}{p}(\alpha 1)n(p)\left(\frac{p^{}}{p}\right)^\alpha .$$
(20)
If the initial spectrum of the particles is a power law $`n(p)=n_0(p/p_{min})^\beta `$, then eq. (20) gives

$$f(p^{})=\frac{\alpha 1}{\alpha \beta }n_0\left(\frac{p^{}}{p_{min}}\right)^\alpha \left[\left(\frac{p^{}}{p_{min}}\right)^{\alpha \beta }1\right]$$
(21)
for $`\alpha >\beta `$ (a similar expression is obtained for $`\beta >\alpha `$), and

$$f(p^{})=(\alpha 1)n_0\left(\frac{p^{}}{p_{min}}\right)^\alpha \mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{p^{}}{p_{min}}\right)$$
(22)
for $`\alpha =\beta `$. A typical effect of reacceleration is to generate particle spectra which are flatter than the spectrum of the seed particles. Moreover, at each reacceleration step, the total energy in accelerated particles can be substantially increased if the shocks are sufficiently strong. Note that eq. (20) holds for an arbitrary spectrum of the pre-existing particles.

Low energy electrons, which may also be confined for a few billion years with no appreciable energy loss within the clusters, may also be re-energized by the passage of merger shocks, so that for the duration of the merger they can reach the relativistic energies required to produce the nonthermal radiation observed in the radio and X-ray bands. Strong shocks, with Mach numbers of order $`34`$ are needed in order to explain observations.

## 5 Simulated shocks and spectra of nonthermal particles

The technique described in §2 allows us to simulate merger trees of a cluster and evaluate the physical properties of the shock waves generated at each merger of subclusters, as discussed in §3. While the merger tree is constructed moving backwards in time, starting with a cluster of given mass at the present time, the shock properties and particle acceleration are reconstructed by moving forward in time and accounting for the mergers of all the substructures generated during the first step of the simulation (backwards in time).

Each merger here is assumed to be a two body event. This is clearly increasingly less true for large mass differences between the merging subclusters, because it may happen that more subclusters with small masses can accrete onto the big cluster at approximately the same time. In other words, the merger between two clusters may occur in the deeper gravitational potential well created by nearby structures. In this case, the relative velocity between the two clusters, and also the related shock Mach numbers may be larger (or smaller) than those estimated in §3. Although a rigorous evaluation of the probability of occurrence of this kind of situations cannot be carried out in the context of our simple approach, convincing arguments can be provided to support the results discussed in §3: let us assume that our two clusters, with mass $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$, are merging in a volume of average size $`R_{sm}`$ where the overdensity if $`1+\delta `$ ($`\delta =0`$ corresponds to matter density equal to the mean value). Clearly the overdense region must contain more mass than that associated with the two clusters, therefore for a top-hat overdensity at $`z=0`$ we can write:

$$\frac{4}{3}\pi R_{sm}^3\rho _{cr}\mathrm{\Omega }_m(1+\delta )=\xi (M_1+M_2),$$
(23)
where $`\xi >1`$ is a measure of the mass in the overdense region in excess of $`M_1+M_2`$. In numbers, using $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, this condition becomes:

$$(1+\delta )=2\xi M_{15}R_{10}^3,$$
(24)
where $`M_{15}`$ is $`M_1+M_2`$ in units of $`10^{15}`$ solar masses and $`R_{sm}=10\mathrm{Mpc}R_{10}h^1`$.

If the clusters are affected by the potential well of an overdense region with total mass $`M_{tot}`$, the maximum relative speed that they can acquire is $`v_{max}2\sqrt{GM_{tot}/R_{sm}}`$. Note that this would be the relative speed of the two clusters if they merged at the center of the overdense region and with a head-on collision, therefore any other (more likely) configuration would imply a relative velocity smaller than $`v_{max}`$. In particular, the presence of the local overdensity might even cause a slow down of the two merging clusters, rather than a larger relative velocity. In numbers

$$v_{max}=1.1\times 10^8\xi ^{1/2}M_{15}^{1/2}R_{10}^{1/2}\mathrm{cm}/\mathrm{s}.$$

Using the usual expression for the sound speed in a cluster with mass $`M_i`$ we also get

$$c_s=8.8\times 10^7M_{i,15}^{1/3}\mathrm{cm}/\mathrm{s}.$$

Therefore the maximum Mach number that can be achieved in the i-th cluster is

$$_{i,max}=1.25\xi ^{1/2}R_{10}^{1/2}M_{15}^{1/2}M_{i,15}^{1/3}.$$
(25)
As stressed in the previous sections, the Mach numbers which may be relevant for particle acceleration are $`>3`$, which implies the following condition on $`\xi `$:

$$\xi >5.8M_{15}^1M_{i,15}^{2/3}R_{10},$$
(26)
that, when introduced in eq. (24) gives:

$$(1+\delta )>11.6R_{10}^2M_{i,15}^{2/3}.$$
(27)
Similar results may be obtained using the velocity distribution of dark matter halos as calculated in semi-analytical models (Sheth & Diaferio 2001) and transforming this distribution into a pairwise velocity distribution, by adopting a suitable recipe.

The probability to have an overdensity $`1+\delta `$ in a region of size $`R_{sm}`$ has the functional shape of a log-normal distribution, as calculated by Kayo, Taruya & Suto (2001). Eq. (27) gives the overdensity $`1+\delta `$ necessary for a cluster of mass $`M_i`$ to achieve a Mach number at least 3 in the collision with another cluster in the same overdense region. In the table below we report the probabilities $`P(\delta )`$ as a function of $`M_i`$, evaluated following Kayo et al. (2001) for different sizes of the overdense region.

| $`M_{i,15}`$ | $`R_{10}`$ | $`(1+\delta )`$ | $`P(\delta )`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 0.8 | 18.1 | $`7\times 10^5`$ |
| 1 | 1 | 11.6 | $`9\times 10^5`$ |
| 1 | 1.2 | 8.1 | $`10^4`$ |
| 0.5 | 0.8 | 11.4 | $`5\times 10^4`$ |
| 0.5 | 1 | 7.3 | $`10^3`$ |
| 0.5 | 1.2 | 5.1 | $`2\times 10^3`$ |
| 0.1 | 0.8 | 3.9 | $`2\times 10^2`$ |
| 0.1 | 1 | 2.5 | $`5\times 10^2`$ |
| 0.1 | 1.2 | 1.7 | 0.12 |

These numbers must be interpreted as upper limits to the probability that a cluster of mass $`M_i`$ develops a merger shock with Mach number larger than three, since the probabilities refer to the configuration in which the relative velocity between the two clusters is maximized. For rich clusters, with masses larger than $`5\times 10^{14}`$ solar masses (corresponding to X-ray luminosities $`L_X>4\times 10^{44}erg/s`$) the probability that the presence of a local overdensity may generate Mach numbers relevant for the nonthermal activity has been estimated to be $`10^3`$ or smaller, suggesting that our two body approximation is reasonable, in particular for the massive clusters that are typically observed to have nonthermal activity. For smaller clusters, the probabilities become higher, indicating that the distribution of Mach numbers might have a larger spread compared with that illustrated in fig. 2. Note however that for small clusters, even the two body approximation gives relatively high Mach numbers, provided the merger occurs with a bigger cluster, simply as a result of a lower temperature and a correspondingly lower sound speed.

Motivated by this argument, in the following we will continue to consider only binary mergers.

For each of these binary mergers, we evaluate the duration of the merger and the relative volumes that take part in it.

A prescription on how to define these two quantities is required since they affect the amount of energy injected in the cluster in the form of relativistic particles. Acceleration occurs at each one of the two shocks formed as a result of the merger. Once the relative velocity is calculated from eq. (4), the duration of the merger event is defined as

$$\tau _{mer}\frac{r_{vir,1}}{V_r}$$

where $`r_{vir,1}`$ is defined as the virial radius of the bigger cluster. The geometry of the merger is schematized in fig. 4.

It is extremely important to keep in mind that the radiation from electrons directly accelerated at a shock is, in first approximation, solely dominated by the last merger events that the cluster suffered; on the other hand, for protons and the consequent secondary products, it is mandatory to study the full history of the cluster and account for all the shocks that traversed the cluster volume. Both acceleration of new particles and re-energization of previously accelerated particles need to be taken into account, as explained in §4.

Observations may be explained by a population of electrons (primaries or secondaries) injected in the cluster with a power law spectrum having a slope around $`2.32.4`$ (see for instance (Blasi 2000)). In the discussion below we will refer exclusively to injection spectra, without explicitely accounting for the obvious steepening by one power in energy in the equilibrium spectrum of the radiating electrons (energy losses are dominated by ICS and synchrotron emission in the energy range of interest). In other words, if the injection spectrum of electrons (as primaries or as secondary products of hadronic interactions) is (locally) a power law with slope $`2.32.4`$, the corresponding equilibrium spectra will have local slope $`3.33.4`$.

In the following we distinguish the two cases of primary electrons (directly accelerated at the shocks) and secondary electrons, whose spectrum at energies above a few GeV approximately reproduces the spectrum of the parent protons. We start with the case of secondary electrons, concentrating our attention upon the spectrum of the accelerated protons. We stress again that merger related shocks accelerate new protons and reaccelerate protons which were already confined in the parent clusters from previous times. The efficiency for particle acceleration at each shock is taken as a constant equal to $`10\%`$. For simplicity we assume that the accelerated particles are all confined in the cluster volume, although this may not be true at the highest energies for large diffusion coefficients. It seems however a good approximation for protons with the energies that we are interested in. The spectra that result from our calculations are plotted in fig. 5. These curves are obtained averaging the spectra of 500 clusters, each one followed in its merger history back in time to redshift $`z=3`$. We consider the three cases $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.6`$ (dashed line), $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.1`$ (dotted line) and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.05`$ (solid line). It is clear that at high energy it is crucial to account for small mergers, since they are responsible for flatter spectra. In fact the flatter regions are also due to some level of reacceleration of pre-existing protons, confined in the intracluster volume. If only major mergers are considered ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.6`$), the resulting spectrum is too steep to be of any relevance for the generation of the observed nonthermal radiation.

In fig. 6 we plot the distribution of spectral slopes ($`\alpha `$ in eq. (8)) for different choices of the threshold in mass ratio for mergers. Since the spectra are not power laws (see fig. 5) it is convenient to plot the slopes at fixed energy, say 10 GeV (it is worth to recall that protons with this energy typically generate electrons of few GeV, which are the ones relevant for the production of radio halos). When major mergers are considered ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.6`$), the typical slopes of the spectra of accelerated particles peak around 4.4, too steep to be relevant for nonthermal radiation in clusters. When mergers between clusters with very different masses are considered, the situation improves, but still, even for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.05`$, the spectra remain too steep. An important point is that flat spectra, if any, are not obtained in major mergers but rather in those mergers that according to Fujita & Sarazin (2001) qualify as accretion events. Shocks related to major mergers are not strong enough to account for the observed spectra. The spread in the values of $`\alpha `$ in fig. 6 reflects the fluctuations in the Mach numbers in fig. 2, due to the distribution of formation redshifts in the simulation and to the stochasticity of the merger tree. Even accounting for these fluctuations, the strength of the shocks appears to be insufficient to generate the required spectra of accelerated particles.

In fig. 7 we also plot the slope of the proton spectrum for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_m=0.05`$, at three energies, 10 GeV (solid line), 100 GeV (dotted line) and 1 TeV (dashed line). It is clear that the spectrum flattens at high energies, which is again in some disagrement with observations of radio halos, which seem to suggest a steepening of the radio spectrum towards its higher frequency end.

We now consider the acceleration of primary electrons as responsible for nonthermal radiation in clusters of galaxies. In this case, only recent mergers, occurred within about one billion years may be related to the observed radiation, due to the short lifetimes of relativistic electrons. Therefore, we simulate the merger tree of clusters with fixed present mass, limiting the simulations to one billion years far into the past. In fact, even one billion years is a time appreciably longer than the time for losses of relativistic electrons, so that our predictions have to be considered as optimistic. Mergers and related shocks have been treated as discussed in the previous sections.

Of the 500 clusters with mass $`10^{15}`$ solar masses that we simulated the merger tree of, about $`30\%`$ suffered a merger during the last billion years. In fig. 8 we plotted the Mach numbers of the shocks generated in the clusters that suffered at least one merger (actually it is rare to have more than one merger during the last billion years). The dashed line represents the value of the Mach number that would correspond to a slope of the accelerated electrons equal to 2.4, required to explain observations. Only $`20\%`$ of the shocks have Mach numbers fulfilling this condition, so that in the end, about $`6\%`$ of the 500 simulated $`10^{15}`$ solar masses clusters of galaxies have suffered a merger than may have generated nonthermal activity with Coma-like spectrum.

## 6 Conclusions

We investigated the possibility that the nonthermal activity observed from some clusters of galaxies may originate through radiative losses of electrons either accelerated at shocks during cluster mergers or produced as secondary products of the inelastic collisions of protons, in turn accelerated at the same merger shocks.

While the spectrum of protons at any time is the result of all the merger history of a cluster, due to cosmic ray confinement (Berezinsky, Blasi & Ptuskin 1997; Volk, Aharonian & Breitschwerdt 1996), primary electrons that are able to radiate radio or X-ray photons at present need to be accelerated in very recent times, so that only the last mergers are relevant (Fujita & Sarazin 2001).

The merger history of clusters can be simulated by using a PS approach, which allows one to obtain, for each merger event, the mass of the subclusters. In the reasonable assumption of binary mergers, it is also easy to calculate the relative velocity of the two merging clusters, and if clusters are assumed to be virialized structures, also the Mach numbers of the two approaching subclusters. Once the Mach numbers are known, it is possible to calculate the spectra of the particles accelerated by first order Fermi acceleration.

We discussed separately the case of secondary and primary electrons. The secondary electrons, generated in $`pp`$ scattering have a spectrum that approximately reproduces the spectrum of the parent protons (due to Feynman scaling for the cross section). The spectrum of the protons is calculated by taking into account the acceleration process at each merger, and the reacceleration of protons confined in the merging clusters. The spectrum at the present time is the result of these processes along the all history of the cluster. The spectra that we obtained from our calculations are typically steeper than those required to explain the observed nonthermal radiation. This result is the consequence of the weakness of the shocks associated to major mergers, where the relative motion of the two subclusters occurs at almost free-fall velocity, which implies Mach numbers only slightly larger than unity. Minor mergers produce stronger shocks, but they are energetically subdominant.

Mach numbers larger than those calculated here may be achieved if the merger event occurs in an overdense region, where the infall motion of the two clusters may be dominated by the gravitational well of the surrounding matter rather than by the mutual interaction between the two clusters. This kind of situations can indeed either increase or decrease the Mach numbers compared with the binary case. In §5 we have found that in order to obtain Mach numbers larger than $`3`$ the overdensity must be such that for rich clusters (mass larger than $`5\times 10^{14}`$ solar masses) the probability of sitting in such a potential is pretty slim, and the binary merger model should represent an accurate description of reality, in a statistical sense.

As stressed above, primary electrons can generate observable nonthermal radiation only if accelerated in recent mergers, occurred less than $`10^9`$ years ago. Our simulations of 500 clusters with mass $`10^{15}`$ solar masses show that only $`6\%`$ of them seem to have nonthermal activity with the same spectral features observed in the Coma cluster. This number should be compared with the statistics of radio halos (Feretti et al. 2000) which seems to suggest that $`30\%`$ of the clusters with X-ray luminosity larger than $`10^{45}`$ erg/s have such radio halos. This comparison should however be taken with caution. In fact, if the radio halos found by Feretti et al. (2000) have steep spectra, then our statistics increases appreciably and the disagreement may be attenuated. Unfortunately the spectrum is not available for all radio halos. A more detailed analysis of recent mergers accounting in detail for the time dependent electron losses is being currently carried out (Gabici & Blasi, in preparation).

We can summarize our conclusions as follows:

* the diffuse nonthermal activity should not be directly associated to protons accelerated at merger shocks within the cluster volume;
* the nonthermal activity should not correlate directly with major cluster mergers, unless the turbulence induced by mergers is responsible for particle acceleration; if a correlation is confirmed between radio halos and clusters that suffered major mergers, as seems to emerge from the analysis of Buote et al. (2001), then the natural conclusion is that the nonthermal particles are not accelerated at shocks but rather energized by other processes, possibly related to resonant wave-particle interactions;
* if electrons directly accelerated at merger shocks are the sources of radio halos and HXR emission, then only about $`6\%`$ of the clusters with mass $`10^{15}`$ solar masses are expected to have such nonthermal activity (note that even in these cases the acceleration is not expected to occur at shocks formed during major mergers).

We are grateful to G. Brunetti and A. Diaferio for many instructive discussions on the topics of nonthermal radiation in clusters of galaxies and velocity dispersions of clusters in overdense regions respectively. We want also to thank the anonymous referee for his comments that helped us to improve the present paper.