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# Discovery of Radio-loud Quasars with Redshifts above 4 from the PMN sample

## 1 Introduction

Radio selection remains one of the most efficient ways of finding high-redshift AGN. This approach has the further advantage of being less prone to selection effects than optical selection, since radio emission is unaffected by either intrinsic or extrinsic absorption due to dust. The specific aim of this work was to find optically bright, radio-selected high-redshift quasars. These can be used for unbiased studies of damped Lyman alpha systems at high redshift and other follow-up studies such as searches for associated high-redshift galaxy clusters.

We therefore began to carry out a large, systematic survey aimed specifically at $`z>4`$ QSOs. Our method involves the optical identification of flat-spectrum radio sources and the spectroscopic follow-up of the red stellar identifications. This approach exploits the fact that quasars at high redshift have redder optical colours than their low-redshift counterparts due to absorption by intervening HI (see figure 1 in Hook et al. 1995), and has proved successful at finding high-redshift quasars in the past (Hook et al 1995, 1996, 1998).

Previous work using well-defined quasar samples has shown that $`z>4`$ radio-loud quasars are likely to be rare objects, both because the quasar population as a whole appears to decline at redshifts above $`23`$ (Kennefick et al. 1996; Hawkins & Veron 1996, Schmidt, Schneider & Gunn 1995; Warren, Hewett & Osmer 1995) and because radio-loud quasars represent only about 10% of the full quasar population.

Specific studies of the radio-loud quasar population have shown that these objects are indeed rare at $`z>4`$. Dunlop & Peacock (1990) presented strong evidence for a drop in the space density of radio-loud quasars between $`z=2`$ and $`z3`$ based on radio-selected samples reaching $`\mathrm{S}_{2.7\mathrm{GHz}}=100\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$. More recently, significant progress has been made towards understanding the evolution of the radio-loud quasar population out to $`z4`$ and the potential effects of absorption by dust, by the study of a completely identified, large area, flat-spectrum radio sample with $`\mathrm{S}_{2.7\mathrm{GHz}}250\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$ (Shaver et al. 1996; Wall et al., in preparation). The low numbers of high-reshift quasars found in these studies demonstrates that there is a distinct drop-off in the space density of quasars at $`z>3`$. Thus for our new survey to be successful it must reach fainter radio flux density limits than the above surveys (to sample further down the luminosity function), and cover a significant fraction of the sky.

Here we present the first results of this new survey for high-redshift radio-loud quasars. As will be seen in section 2, the survey uses deeper radio and optical data than previous radio-loud quasar surveys, and covers a very large area in the Southern sky ($`7,500`$ sq deg, comparable to that of the planned 10,000 sq deg of the Sloan survey). Our survey has produced seven $`z>4`$ flat-spectrum quasars, one of which was previously known. The survey complements the survey of Snellen et al (2001) which contains four flat-spectrum $`z>4`$ in the Northern sky, selected using a a similar method.

## 2 The Radio Sample and the Optical Identification procedure

The parent radio sample used in this study is based on the Parkes-MIT-NRAO radio survey (PMN, Griffith et al 1995 and references therin), selected at 5GHz. The data cover the southern sky with $`\delta <10^{}`$ to a flux density limit of 20-72mJy depending on declination. No additional flux density limit was applied when carrying out the survey, but note that when considering the statistics of the final quasar sample, we consider sources with $`\mathrm{S}72\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$, since the PMN completeness at lower flux density levels is patchy (see Figure 2).

To provide accurate positions and spectral index information, the PMN catalogue was matched to the 1.4GHz NRAO-VLA Sky Survey (NVSS, Condon et al. 1998), which covers the declination range $`\delta 40^{}`$. All NVSS sources matching within a 2 arcminute radius of a PMN position were kept.

Since the beam sizes of the PMN and NVSS surveys are different ($`4.2^{}`$ for PMN and $`45^{\prime \prime }`$ for NVSS), the 1.4 flux density used to determine spectral indices were calculated by summing the total flux density from all NVSS sources whose positions were within a 2 arcminute radius of the PMN position. Flat spectrum objects with $`\mathrm{S}_{\mathrm{PMN}}50\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$ were then selected using the criterion $`\alpha _{1.4}^50.5`$ where $`S\nu ^\alpha `$. This gave 5976 PMN radio sources.

The NVSS positions were matched to optical catalogs which were derived from scans of UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) plates. The scans were produced using the Automatic Plate Measuring (APM) facility (McMahon & Irwin 1992). The optical identification procedure was similar to that used in the past to make POSS-based identifications of radio samples, described in Hook et al (1995,1996,1998). However the current survey also makes use of I-band plates for the first time.

The plate data used is from the UKST survey of the southern sky in the B, R and I bands, reaching limiting magnitudes of approximately 22.6, 21.0 and 19.5 mag respectively. The blue plates are in the $`\mathrm{B}_\mathrm{J}`$ passband, $`39505400\mathrm{\AA }`$, and have 606 centres spaced at intervals of 5 degrees. In most cases the matching R plate used was from the OR survey with a passband of $`59506900\mathrm{\AA }`$, although in some fields not yet covered by the OR survey, the the old R plate was used ($`63006900\mathrm{\AA }`$). The I plates used IV-N emulsion + RG715 filter giving a passband of $`71508900\mathrm{\AA }`$.

The maximum redshift of quasars that our survey can detect in principle is defined by the redshift at which the $`\mathrm{Ly}\alpha `$ line is redshifted out of the redder passbands. For the R-plates this occurs at redshifts above $`z=4.7`$ and for the I plates at redshifts above $`z=6.3`$.

### 2.1 Area covered by the survey

Figure 2 shows the spatial distribution of the radio sources which form the basis of the survey. These lie in the region of overlap of the PMN and NVSS surveys. The effective area of our quasar survey is defined by the subset of this region that is covered by APM scans of UKST plates.

All the available B, R and I plates have now been scanned in the region of overlap with our radio sample ($`40^{}<\delta <+2.5^{}`$, avoiding the galactic plane, $`|b|>30^{}`$). At the time of the spectroscopic observations reported here, an area of 7525 sq degrees was covered by plates in the B and R bands (4637.5sq deg in the South Galactic Cap region and 2887.5sq deg in the North Galactic Cap region). A total of 3887.5 sq degrees also had I-band plates. The spatial distribution of the plates is shown in Figure 2. Of this, two regions around RA=13h, DEC=0 have no radio data, as shown in Figure 2. The total area of overlap with the B,R data is 7265.5 sq deg of which 4637.5sq deg is in the South Galactic Cap (SGC) region and 2628.0 sq deg is in the North Galactic Cap (NGC). Of this a total of 3637.5 sq deg also had I data.

In addition there are small areas within the region of radio/optical overlap that were not yet covered by the NVSS survey at the time our QSO survey was carried out. This resulted in some PMN sources not being matched with an NVSS counterpart in certain regions, as can be seen in figure 2. When considering the statistics of our final quasar sample, we take this incompleteness into account in a statistical way by calculating the fraction of PMN sources with $`\mathrm{S}_{\mathrm{PMN}}>72\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$ that do not have NVSS counterparts. In the SGC the matched fraction is 0.955 and in the NGC it is 0.871.

### 2.2 Selection of the spectroscopic sample

Optical identifications were made based on positional coincidence of the NVSS position with an optical counterpart on the UKST plates. A matching radius of $`3.0^{\prime \prime }`$ between the NVSS and optical positions was used (see Figure 3 for the distribution of positional differences).

From these identifications, red, stellar objects were selected for spectroscopic follow up. Figure 4 shows colour-magnitude and colour-colour diagrams for optical identifications within $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ of the NVSS position. The first spectroscopic sample contained any stellar object with $`\mathrm{B}\mathrm{R}1.5`$. A second sample, the ‘I-band sample’, was then defined, which contained stellar objects with $`\mathrm{R}\mathrm{I}1.0`$, or $`\mathrm{B}\mathrm{I}2.0`$ that were not already included in the first sample. The criterion for being considered a stellar object was $`\sigma _{class}3.0`$ where $`\sigma _{class}`$ is the APM classification parameter measured from the R plate. If the object was not detected in R then the I plate classification was used. These selection criteria resulted in a sample of 228 sources. Of these, 33 had known redshifts from the literature prior to the start of this project.

## 3 Spectroscopic observations and results

In total, 169 candidates were observed spectroscopically. During two runs in October 1998 and May 1999, 157 objects were observed at the ESO 3.6m, La Silla, Chile using the EFOSC spectrograph. For both runs the detector used was ’ccd40’, a Loral CCD with $`2048\times 2048`$ pixels, binned $`2\times 2`$. For the 1999 May observations grism #12 was used, covering the spectral range 5800Å–9500Åwith a dispersion of 4.23Å per binned pixel. For the 1998 October observations grisms #4 and #5 were used covering the ranges 3420–7460Å and 6000–10000Å respectively with dispersions of 4.08 and 4.27Å per binned pixel. The slit width was chosen to match the seeing, typically 1.2–1.5 arcsec. For the 1998 October observations a sky PA of $`270^{}`$ was used, and for the 1999 May observations the slit was at the paralactic angle. Approximate relative flux calibration was obtained using observations of spectrophotometric standards from Hamuy et al (1994). Twelve sources were observed at AAT using the RGO spectrograph in October 1996.

26 sources remain to be observed, of which 24 are in the North Galactic Cap (NGC) and 2 are in the South Galactic Cap (SGC) region.

The data were reduced using standard procedures with the IRAF111IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. software environment.

Table 1 summarises the current survey status and in Table 2 we give redshifts, optical magnitudes and radio flux densities for the objects which were identified as new high-redshift quasars. The spectra are shown in Fig. 5, and finding charts, with J2000 coordinates, are given in Figure 7. Two of the $`z>4`$ QSOs are discussed in more detail below.

#### PMNJ1451-1512

This is now the most distant radio-selected quasar. The object is blank on the UKST B-band plate, detected in R, and very bright in I (17.3). Near-IR magnitudes from the 2MASS survey are J = $`16.39\pm 0.10`$, $`H=15.28\pm 0.09`$, $`K=14.67\pm 0.09`$.

The optical spectrum (Fig. 5) shows strong lines of $`\mathrm{Ly}\alpha `$ SiIV/OIV and CIV from which we estimate a redshift of 4.763. However the absorption of the CIV and Ly-$`\alpha `$ line make redshift determination uncertain. A 4800s IR spectrum was obtained using SOFI at the 3.5m NTT, La Silla on 31 May 1999. The spectrum shows strong, broad emission lines of CIII and MgII at a redshift of 4.764 and approximately 4.78 respectively (the MgII line has a complex shape, see Figure 6). We adopt a redshift of 4.763 for this QSO.

The NVSS map (see Fig. 8) shows a source at the optical position of the QSO, and a second NVSS source about 4 arcmin away. The PMN position appears to lie between the two, although much closer to the first position (that of the QSO). It is possible that the PMN flux density is overestimated because of a contribution from the second source.

#### PMN J0525-3343

This QSO was discovered in the AAT run of October 1996. It was reobserved at the Las Campanas 100” du Pont telescope using the ModSpec spectrograph and this spectrum is shown Figure 5. The somewhat lower signal-to-noise combined with the lack of clean strong lines make the redshift determination difficult. However Péroux et al (2001) have since obtained a higher quality spectrum from which a more accurate redshift measurement can be made. They obtain $`z=4.383\pm 0.034`$ assuming rest wavelengths for the emission lines that have not been corrected for systematic shifts, or $`z=4.338`$ when assuming the rest wavelengths used in Table 3, which have been corrected for systematic shifts as described by Tytler & Fan (1992).

This source has been confirmed as an X-ray source with ROSAT HRI and its X-ray properties are the subject of another paper (Fabian et al 2001).

## 4 Discussion

By using radio and optical multicolour data covering a significant fraction of the sky, we have produced a sample of high-redshift, optically bright radio-loud quasars.

Since this new quasar sample is well-defined, we can use it to estimate the surface density of $`z>4`$ quasars. To do this we consider objects with radio flux densities above the brightest limit of the PMN surveys, 72mJy. The SGC region of our survey has a high completeness of spectroscopic follow up (only two objects, or 1%, were not observed in this region) and also had a high completeness of the NVSS survey (0.955). There are four $`z>4`$ QSOs in the SGC region of the complete sample, which implies a surface density of $`0.92\pm 0.5\times 10^3\mathrm{sq}\mathrm{deg}^1`$ for $`z>4`$ QSOs with $`\mathrm{S}72\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$.

If the whole survey is considered, and the completeness for the SGC and NGC are taken as 94% and 61% respectively (as implied by the number of spectroscopically observed candidates in each region combined with the NVSS completeness factors derived in section 2) then the derived surface density is $`1.0\pm 0.4\times 10^3\mathrm{sq}\mathrm{deg}^1`$. This is fully consistent with the value determined from the SGC alone.

This value is similar to that of 1 per 1600sq deg ($`6.3\times 10^4`$) found by Snellen et al (2001) using a similar technique although with a slightly different radio and optical flux density limits ($`\mathrm{R}=20`$ compared to R=21 for the current survey, $`\mathrm{S}30\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$ compared to $`\mathrm{S}>72\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$, an upper redshift limit defined by the red optical filter of $`z4.5`$ rather than $`4.7`$, and a radio spectral index cut at $`0.35`$ rather than $`0.5`$).

There were no quasars found in our survey with $`z>4.76`$ despite the fact that bright quasars with 4.9$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_<}{^{}}`$z$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_<}{^{}}`$6.3 should have been detectable on the I-plates. Allowing for the 86% completeness of spectroscopic follow up of the I-band sample, the effective area covered was 2930 sq deg. Therefore we derive an upper limit of $`3.4\times 10^4\mathrm{sq}\mathrm{deg}^1`$ for the surface density of flat spectrum quasars with $`\mathrm{I}<19.5`$, $`\mathrm{S}_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}25\mathrm{m}\mathrm{J}\mathrm{y}`$ and 4.9$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_<}{^{}}`$z$`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{_<}{^{}}`$6.3.

Finally, the new sample of quasars presented in this paper represent some of the most luminous objects in the Universe and may also represent extreme peaks in the matter density distribution at high-redshift. They are therefore ideal targets for various follow-up programs such as high-redshift absorption line studies and searches for associated high-redshift clusters.

###### Acknowledgements.

RGM thanks the Royal Society for support. We thank Jason Spyromilio for providing the IR spectrum of PMN J1451-1512. We also thank Mike Irwin and the staff at the APM facility in Cambridge for producing the scans of UKST plates used in this survey. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.


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# The ELAIS Deep X-ray Survey I: Chandra Source Catalogue and First Results

## 1 Introduction

The results of recent deep X-ray surveys reveal that almost the entire X-ray background can be resolved into discrete sources. The ROSAT Deep Survey (Hasinger et al. 1998) resolved 70 - 80% of the 0.5 - 2 keV background at a flux level of 1 $`\times 10^{15}`$ erg s-1 cm-2. Observations with Chandra and XMM-Newton are now pushing the detection limits even further. In particular, the unprecedented resolution of Chandra allows extremely deep observations that are not limited by source confusion. This has been exploited in the Chandra Deep Fields (North, Brandt et al. 2001, and South, Giacconi et al. 2002). In the Chandra Deep Field-North 2 Msec of data has been accumulated reaching a flux limit of $`1.5\times 10^{17}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 in the 0.5 - 2 keV band (Barger et al. 2003). However, the greatest advances have been at higher energies where Chandra is now beginning to resolve the 2 - 8 keV background.

The majority of sources resolved by ROSAT were found to have spectra that were too steep to account for the flat spectrum of the hard X-ray background. However towards fainter fluxes a new population emerged in the ROSAT data with intrinsically harder X-ray spectra (Hasinger et al. 1993, Almaini et al. 1996). Chandra is now uncovering a large number of hard spectrum sources, and the majority of the 2 - 8 keV background has been resolved. Over the flux range 2 $`\times 10^{16}`$ to 10-13 erg s-1 cm-2 the contribution of resolved sources to the 2 - 8 keV background is 1.1 $`\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 deg-2 (Cowie et al. 2002). This translates to $``$ 65 - 85 per cent of the background as measured by Vecchi et al. (1999, Beppo-Sax) and Ueda et al. (1999, ASCA) respectively.

Early spectroscopic observations are finding a majority of the sources with hard X-ray spectra to be type II AGN, indicated by the presence of narrow lines (Tozzi et al. 2001, Barger et al. 2001a, Hornschemeier et al. 2001). Most of these are found at $`z<1`$. However, a considerable fraction of the hard X-ray sources are optically faint, probably due to obscuration, and provide challenging targets for spectroscopic identification. Sources identified as type I AGN display softer X-ray spectra and are observed to have a higher median redshift.

There are still a number of unanswered questions relating to the properties of the hard X-ray populations at longer wavelengths. AGN with large X-ray absorbing columns do not always appear as type II AGN in the optical (e.g. Maiolino et al. 2001, Willott et al. 2002). The relationship between gas and dust absorption in AGN remains unclear. It is also uncertain where the absorbed radiation may be re-radiated. Approximately $``$ 7 per cent of X-ray sources in the Chandra Deep Field North are sub-millimetre sources (Barger et al. 2001b), however whether this is the result of reprocessed nuclear emission or due to a starburst component, is unknown. Almaini et al. (2003) find evidence for a strong angular cross-correlation between the X-ray and sub-millimetre populations. They suggests there may be an evolutionary sequence in these galaxies between the major episode of star-formation (sub-millimetre sources) and the onset of quasar activity (X-ray sources). To more fully understand the nature of these sources will require in-depth multi-wavelength studies of the X-ray source population.

We are conducting a deep X-ray survey with Chandra and XMM in two of the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS) fields, N1 and N2. These high latitude fields were chosen for their low cirrus emission, and have a wealth of multi-wavelength data available. Both fields have been observed with ISO at 7, 15, 90, and 175 $`\mu `$m (Oliver et al. 2000), with the VLA at 1.4 GHz (Ciliegi et al. 1999, Ivison et al. 2002), and have deep g, r, i, H, and K imaging (Gonzalez-Solares et al. 2003). Region N2 has been mapped with SCUBA to 8 mJy at 850$`\mu `$m (Fox et al. 2001, Scott et al. 2001). As well as the Chandra observations described here, XMM-Newton observations in region N1 ($`5\times 30`$ ksec pointings) are awaiting scheduling.

In this paper we present the analysis of the Chandra X-ray data and the Chandra source catalogue. Paper II (Gonzalez-Solares et al. 2003) will present details of the optical identifications.

## 2 The X-ray data

The ELAIS Deep X-ray Survey (EDXS) is being conducted in the northern ELAIS regions N1 and N2. The Chandra data consists of approximately 75 ks exposures in each field. Region N1 was observed on 3-4 August 2000 (OBS\_ID 888) and N2 on 2-3 August 2000 (OBS\_ID 887). The nominal aimpoints were N1: 16:10:20.11 +54:33:22.3, and N2: 16:36:46.99 +41:01:33.7. The ACIS-I chips were used with the addition of ACIS-S2 and ACIS-S4.

Analysis was carried out on data reprocessed with version R4CU5UPD14.1 of the pipeline processing software. The data were reduced using the CIAO software package (version 2.1). Bad pixels and columns were removed and data were filtered to eliminate high background times. The latter was achieved through constructing a lightcurve for background regions and identifying periods of intense background activity due to solar flares. One obvious flaring period was identified over the course of the observations resulting in the removal of 1552 seconds from the data in region N1. More stringent conditions for the removal of high background times were not thought necessary considering the low level of the quiescent background. After filtering, exposures in fields N1 and N2 were 71.5 ks and 73.4 ks respectively.

Exposure maps were constructed to account for variations in effective exposure across an image. This incorporates the positions of bad pixels, dithering, and vignetting. The effective exposure is significantly affected by the energy of the source counts. To account for this, an assumed source spectrum is convolved with the quantum efficiency of the chip and the effective area of the mirrors. The resulting map provides an estimate of the effective exposure (cm-2 s-1) at each point on the image. For our images, we used a power-law model spectrum, with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.7`$.

## 3 Source detection

Sources were detected using a wavelet method, specifically the WAVDETECT program (Freeman et al. 2002) included with the CIAO software package. The “Mexican Hat” wavelet function is used, which consists of a positive core similar to a canonical PSF, surrounded by a negative annulus. The overall normalisation is zero. The zero-crossing point is at a radius of $`\sqrt{2}`$i, and the minimum at 2i, where i refers to the scale size in pixels. The correlation of this wavelet function with an image will reveal sources where correlation values are larger than a pre-defined threshold.

A $`2\times 2`$ binned image was used, giving a pixel size of 0.984′′. The threshold for source detection was set such that the probability of erroneously identifying a given pixel with a source is 9.5$`\times 10^7`$. This translates to a mean detection of 1.0 false sources over the region of the 4 ACIS-I chips. Wavelet scales were chosen at i = 2, 2$`\sqrt{2}`$, 4, 4$`\sqrt{2}`$, 8, 8$`\sqrt{2}`$, 16, 16$`\sqrt{2}`$, and 32 pixels. The minimum scale was chosen to enclose $``$90% encircled energy of an on-axis PSF. Larger scales can then match the increased size of off-axis and resolved sources. The algorithm also uses an exposure map to correct for inconsistencies across the chips.

Sources were detected in 3 bands: 0.5 - 8 keV (full band), 0.5 - 2 keV (soft band), and 2 - 8 keV (hard band). Below 0.5 keV the quantum efficiency (including the optical blocking filters) of the front illuminated chips drops off steeply. A steep rise is also observed in the background rate due to charged particles. Beyond 8 keV the effective area of the mirrors is sharply decreasing whilst the background rate is again beginning to rise.

In order to verify that no sources were missed, we also ran a source detection on the 0.3 - 10 keV band. All sources found were also detected in the 0.5 - 8 keV band, and overall, fewer sources were detected.

### 3.1 Sample reliability and detection efficiency

For the purposes of source detection, counts flagged as cosmic-ray afterglows were removed from the image. This procedure is known to also remove several percent of source photons. Therefore, to obtain reliable measurements of source flux and extent, a second run of the WAVDETECT algorithm was performed on an image where the flagged counts were reinstated. Only sources obtained in the original source detection were used.

WAVDETECT simulations (Freeman et al. 2002) suggest a mean of 1.0 false sources will be detected over the region of the 4 ACIS-I chips. We also impose a cut-off at a S/N of 3.0, principally, for the purpose of defining a flux limit. This has the effect of removing a handful of the least significant sources, further improving the reliability of the sample.

The detection efficiency of WAVDETECT is yet to be definitively determined. Early simulations have been done by V. Kashyap (private communication) to determine the probability of detecting sources of given strengths. In order to gain an indication of the number of sources missing from our list of detections, we have made crude extrapolations to these simulations. These indicate that we detect $``$ 98.5 – 99.5 % of the sources with intrinsic strengths above the S/N limit of our sample.

## 4 The Chandra Source Catalogue

A total of 233 X-ray sources have been detected in the 2 fields (Fig. 1). In N1 there are 127 sources in the full band (0.5 - 8 keV), 101 in the soft band (0.5 - 2 keV) including 2 extra sources not detected in the full band, and 72 sources in the hard band (2 \- 8 keV) including 1 extra source not detected in the full band. There are 57 sources detected in both the soft and hard bands. In N2 there are 98 sources in the full band, 81 in the soft band (including 3 extra sources not in the full band), and 52 sources in the hard band (including 2 extra sources not in the full band). There are 41 sources detected in both the soft and hard bands.

The IAU name for the catalogued sources is CXOEN1 JHHMMSS.s+DDMMSS, for sources in N1 (table 1), and CXOEN2 JHHMMSS.s+DDMMSS for sources in N2 (table 2). Coordinates are truncated to the above accuracy.

Tables 1 & 2 display the full catalogue. Sources are detected to a S/N limit of 3, defined as

$$S/N=C/(1+\sqrt{0.75+B})$$
(1)
where C are the net source counts, and B the background counts within the ‘source cell’, a region defined by WAVDETECT assumed to contain effectively all of the source counts (Freeman et al. 2002). It should be noted that the source cell used here may be larger than regions used for conventional aperture photometry. The values calculated for S/N may therefore be lower than those expected from such methods. The denominator of equation 1 is an approximate expression for the error on the background counts (a small number statistic). This comes from Gehrels (1986): equation (7), which gives the upper confidence level equivalent to a $`1\sigma `$ Gaussian error. For sources that do not reach the S/N limit in a certain band, an upper flux limit has been calculated from equation 5 (section 5, this paper).

Source coordinates have been astrometrically corrected using calibrated r band images (to a depth of r $``$26). High S/N Chandra sources were matched with stellar r band counterparts. 16 sources were used in N1 and 11 in N2, with a good spread across the fields. The Starlink package ASTROM was used to perform a 6-parameter fit (zero points, scales in $`x`$ and $`y`$, orientation and non-perpendicularity). The RMS residuals were all less than 1′′, randomly distributed with a mean of $`0.4^{\prime \prime }`$. The positional error quoted in the catalogue is the error on the centroid position from the source detection algorithm, with 0.4′′ added in quadrature to represent astrometric error.

Net counts are quoted as the total source counts (background subtracted) in the full energy band (0.5 - 8 keV). Where sources are only detected in the soft or hard bands, the net counts represent counts in this band only.

Flux values are calculated assuming a power-law source spectrum of the form $`F=\nu ^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha =0.7`$ . The effective area will vary as a function of $`\alpha `$ depending on the response of the detector. If the slope of the spectrum is known for a given source, Fig. 2 can be used to calculate the true flux from the value given in the catalogue. This figure has been calculated by passing model spectra of slope $`\alpha `$ through the total response matrix of the detector. For illustrative purposes we use the response matrix at a position corresponding to the source N1\_23 which lies 4.5 arcmin from the field centre.

## 5 Source counts

In this section we calculate the cumulative source counts, N($`>`$S), and the differential source counts, n(S), in the three bands. We first outline details of the calculation (section 5.1) which requires knowledge of the available area of the survey as a function of flux. Section 5.2 presents our results and comparisons with other surveys, while section 5.3 describes our source contribution to the hard X-ray background.

### 5.1 Calculating source counts

N($`>`$S) is defined as the sum of the reciprocal areas available for detecting each source that is brighter than flux S. It follows that n(S) is the sum of reciprocal areas per flux interval. The sky area over which a source of flux S may be observed depends on the flux limit at each point in the image. This, in turn, depends on the variation in PSF size and effective exposure across the image. The flux limit ($`S_{lim}`$ in erg cm-2 s-1) may be defined by the chosen S/N limit of our sample (from equation 1):

$$S/N_{lim}=3=C_{lim}/(1+\sqrt{0.75+B})$$
(2)
where

$$C_{lim}=S_{lim}\times \text{effective exposure}\times K$$
(3)
K is a constant (conversion factor from ergs to counts), while the effective exposure (in cm2s) at each point on the image can be found from the exposure map. The background counts within the source region (B), depend on the size of the PSF:

$$B=B_{avg}\times \text{PSF size}$$
(4)
$`B_{avg}`$ is the mean background counts per pixel. We are left with the following expression for the flux limit:

$$S_{lim}=3\times \frac{1+\sqrt{0.75+(B_{avg}\times \text{PSF size})}}{\text{effective exposure}\times K}$$
(5)
PSF sizes across the image were taken from the latest PSF library available with the CIAO software distribution. These were used in conjunction with the relevant exposure maps for each band to calculate a ‘flux limit map’ of the Chandra image. The sky area available at a given flux limit is found by summing all the pixels with values smaller than this limit. Fig. 3 displays the sky area available at the flux limit of our survey.

### 5.2 Results

The cumulative number counts per square degree are plotted as filled circles in Fig. 4. 1$`\sigma `$ errors are plotted as solid lines. These incorporate Poisson errors on the counts and the error on the available sky area. The limiting flux levels are $`1.1\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (0.5 - 8 keV), $`4.6\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (0.5 - 2 keV), and $`2.2\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (2 - 8 keV). Simulations show detection efficiency to be around 99% (see section 3.1), while Eddington bias may result in an over-estimation of the cumulative number counts by approximately 1% (Manners 2002). These factors work to cancel each other and can safely be neglected.

We compare the number counts with those obtained from the Chandra Deep Field North (CDFN, Brandt et al. 2001), the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS, Rosati et al. 2002), and those of Mushotzky et al. 2000 (M2000). The number counts in the soft band are in good agreement with CDFN and M2000, differing by less than 1$`\sigma `$ at the flux limit, while CDFS counts are $``$25% lower ($``$2.5$`\sigma `$). The hard band counts of all four surveys are in reasonably good agreement at our flux limit. At brighter fluxes the surveys differ by $`>2\sigma `$, most likely as a result of large-scale structure.

The presence of clustering on these scales is well illustrated by the difference in the number counts observed in N1 and N2 (Fig. 5). There are 30% more sources in N1 than N2 in the full band. In particular there is an overabundance of brighter sources in N1 at a flux of $`(12)\times 10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. Large-scale structure is evident in the source images (Fig. 1), most noticeably as a dearth of sources in the centre of N2. Similar structure can also be seen in images of the Chandra Deep Field South (Giacconi et al. 2001). An analysis of 9 Chandra fields by Yang et al. (2003) has shown that such clustering is common in the Chandra source population.

A striking feature of the number count relations is the difference in slope between soft and hard band counts. Fig. 6 over-plots the soft and hard band counts normalised to an equivalent full band flux. Normalisation is done in order to plot both populations on the same flux scale and does not affect the slope of the number counts. The hard band sources are assumed to have hard spectra and so are arbitrarily normalised using an alpha of 0. The soft band sources are arbitrarily normalised assuming a soft spectrum with an alpha of 1. The ratio of hard sources to soft sources is seen to increase dramatically towards fainter fluxes. This can be explained through the mechanism of obscuration, which will act to harden the spectra while reducing the flux observed from X-ray sources.

Differential number counts per square degree per unit flux are plotted in Fig. 7. Error bars display 1$`\sigma `$ errors incorporating Poisson errors on the counts and the error on the available sky area. The slope of the differential counts for each band was fitted with a power-law using a weighted least-squares fit. A single power-law was found to adequately fit the entire flux range for each of the three bands. For the 0.5 - 2 keV band over the flux range (0.57 - 26) $`\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 we find:

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{n}(\mathrm{S})=(1.72\pm 0.09)\mathrm{log}\mathrm{S}(8.0\pm 1.3)$$
(6)
For the 2 - 8 keV band over the flux range (2.7 - 63) $`\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 we find:

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{n}(\mathrm{S})=(2.07\pm 0.15)\mathrm{log}\mathrm{S}(12.5\pm 2.1)$$
(7)
For the 0.5 - 8 keV band over the flux range (1.4 - 70) $`\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 we find:

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{n}(\mathrm{S})=(1.70\pm 0.08)\mathrm{log}\mathrm{S}(7.4\pm 1.2)$$
(8)
The hard band differential counts are compared to a maximum likelihood fit from Cowie et al. (2002) to the combined counts from four deep fields (CDFN, CDFS, SSA22, & SSA13). These are found to be in good agreement with the error limits of our survey.

### 5.3 Contribution to the hard X-ray background

Fig. 8 plots the integrated source flux for our survey (filled circles) for all sources with $`S<10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. At the flux limit of $`S_{28}=2.2\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 the resolved flux amounts to 8.5 $`\times 10^{12}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 deg-2. This is equivalent to between 50 and 64% of the 2 - 8 keV background measured by Vecchi et al. (1999, Beppo-Sax) and Ueda et al. (1999, ASCA) respectively. To arrive at these values for the total background (as plotted in Fig. 8) the contribution from sources with $`S>10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, as observed by ASCA (Della Ceca et al. 1999), has been subtracted. The contribution to the background at fainter fluxes has been extrapolated from the source counts of the CDFN survey (Brandt et al. 2001). By combining the results of our survey with that of CDFN the contribution to the background within the flux range $`10^{13}`$ \- 6 $`\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 becomes 1.12 $`\times 10^{11}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 deg-2, equivalent to 66% and 84% of the aforementioned backgrounds. To compare the contributions from other surveys, we have used the best fit to the source counts as published by Mushotzky et al. (2000), and Giacconi et al. (2001, 120ks exposure of CDFS). These have been normalised at the bright end using the number counts of ASCA sources from Della Ceca et al. (1999) to a bright limit of $`10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. The observed discrepancy between the different surveys may be due to the effects of clustering on scales larger than the survey regions.

## 6 Star/galaxy classification

Deep multicolour optical images have been obtained in both our fields, and will be discussed fully in Gonzalez-Solares et al. (2003). They have identified the optical counterparts of our X-ray sources in r band images with limiting magnitudes of $``$ 26. Source optical morphologies are classified according to agreement with a stellar point spread function, as quantified in the SExtractor “stellarity” parameter, CLASS STAR (Bertin & Arnouts 1996). The output of a neural network classifier, the value of this parameter ranges from 0.0 for significantly extended sources to 1.0 for those with perfectly stellar PSFs. For our Chandra sample, we divide sources with quasar-like and galaxy-like counterparts at CLASS STAR $`=0.8`$. In practice, morphological classification is increasingly ambiguous for fainter sources with lower signal to noise and cannot be considered reliable near to the image limiting magnitude. A number of X-ray sources remain unclassified where they are associated with blank fields, gaps in the data, or are near to bright contaminating sources in the optical images.

The cumulative soft-band source counts for each group have been calculated and are plotted in Fig. 9. At bright X-ray fluxes quasar-like sources are the most numerous. However their number counts flatten appreciably below a flux of $`5\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. At fainter fluxes the fraction of galaxy-like sources dramatically increases. At the flux limit of $`4.6\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 there are 35% more galaxy-like sources than quasar-like sources.

An X-ray luminosity function (XLF) from Boyle et al. (1994) invoking pure luminosity evolution, was used to obtain number count predictions for broad-line AGN. This was based on observations of 107 QSOs from a deep ROSAT survey. These QSOs reached a flux limit of $`5\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.5 - 2 keV band. We use their best fitting model (model S), with an exponential decline in the quasar population beyond $`z=2.7`$, to construct a prediction for the soft band QSO number counts. This is over-plotted in Fig. 9 (solid line) to compare with the cumulative number counts for sources with quasar-like optical IDs. The Boyle XLF also includes relatively low luminosity AGN which may possibly be resolved into galaxies in our r band images. A second model has therefore been added which excludes AGN with a 0.5 - 2 keV luminosity less than $`10^{43.5}`$ erg s-1 (dotted line).

The models are well matched to the data up to the flux limit of the ROSAT survey. However, beyond this they over-predict the number of quasar-like sources. In the limiting case where all the unclassified sources are stellar, the data becomes a good fit to the first model. In the more likely outcome that most of the unclassified objects are galaxies, the data may still be a reasonable fit to the Boyle XLF as long as a luminosity cut-off is applied.

In Fig. 10 we plot full band X-ray flux vs. r band magnitude for our Chandra sources (compare with Fig. 3 of Barger et al. 2002, Fig. 16 of Giacconi et al. 2002, Fig. 6 of Mainieri et al. 2002). In this figure, as in those in section 7, we indicate source morphology only for sources with r $`<`$ 24, which have unambiguous classifications. Over-plotted are lines of constant X-ray to optical ratio, appropriate for the Sloan Gunn r filter:

$$\mathrm{log}(\frac{f_X}{f_r^{}})=\mathrm{log}f_X+5.67+\frac{r^{}}{2.5}$$
(9)
Among point-like sources optical luminosity is seen to scale with X-ray luminosity; nearly all exhibit X-ray to optical ratios, $`f_X/fr^{}`$, of 0.1 to 10. In contrast, sources with galaxy-like morphology show no tight relation between X-ray and optical fluxes, suggesting that the host galaxies and not the central AGN dominate the optical emission. Four spectroscopically confirmed Type II AGN (discussed fully in Willott et al. 2002, Peres-Fournon et al. 2002) are marked in Fig. 10, only one of which has a notably high value of $`f_X/fr^{}`$. Of the six point-like sources with $`f_X/fr^{}<0.1`$, three are spectroscopically confirmed stars, as noted in the figure.

## 7 Hardness ratios

Broad band X-ray hardness ratios were calculated for each source, and were defined as $`HR=\frac{(HS)}{(H+S)}`$, where H and S are the background-subtracted source counts in the hard (2.0 - 8.0 keV) and soft (0.5 - 2.0 keV) bands, respectively. Net source counts were extracted from the exposure corrected hard and soft band images within circular regions centred on the WAVDETECT positions. The apertures were scaled to mimic the degradation of the Chandra PSF with off-axis angle in each band, and had minimum radii of 10 pixels. Background counts were extracted from source-free images in annuli around each source, and subtracted. The net, source, and background counts thus obtained were consistent within the errors to those reported by WAVDETECT. We find that background subtraction and exposure correction of the source counts have increasingly significant effects on the derived hardness ratios toward fainter fluxes.

Hardness ratios are plotted against full band X-ray flux in Fig. 11. As noted by earlier surveys (Mushotzky et al. 2000, Giacconi et al. 2001, Hasinger et al. 2001, Hornschemeier et al. 2001), harder sources are seen at fainter fluxes, signalling the emergence of the population comprising the majority of the XRB. Assuming $`\alpha =0.7`$ power-law spectra typical of AGN, the range of hardnesses observed suggests absorbing columns of up to NH $`10^{23}`$ at zero redshift. As apparent absorption column scales as $`(1+z)^{2.6}`$ (see e.g. Barger et al. 2002), actual columns in higher redshift sources will be significantly higher. The range of observed columns is consistent with that seen in other deep surveys (e.g. Barger et al. 2002, Mainieri et al. 2002) in which growing samples of spectroscopic identifications have so far revealed only a handful of more heavily obscured objects.

The symbols in Fig. 11 refer to the morphological classification discussed in section 5.2. We see that the point-like sources generally cluster around a HR of -0.5 at all fluxes. This value is consistent with a power law of $`\alpha `$ $``$ 0.7 modified only by Galactic absorption, and is typical of Type I QSOs. Sources with galaxy-like morphology are seen in this region, but also populate increasingly hard regions of the diagram at fainter fluxes. Three of the four confirmed Type II AGN are conspicuously hard. The trend to harder X-ray spectra at fainter X-ray fluxes for optically extended sources is more clearly seen in Fig. 12, which shows error-weighted average hardness ratios for sources of different morphologies binned by flux.

## 8 Extended Sources

To search for X-ray sources on scales much larger than the PSF we have run the source detection algorithm WAVDETECT using wavelet scales of 16, 16$`\sqrt{2}`$, 32, 32$`\sqrt{2}`$, and 64 pixels (see section 3). Any sources found in addition to those already detected were checked by inspecting the adaptively smoothed Chandra images.

No additional sources were detected in N1 and inspection of the smoothed image reveals no hint of large extended sources. In N2 there are 2 significant extended sources. This is equivalent to $``$12 deg-2 over the 2 fields at a limiting soft band flux of $`5\times 10^{15}`$ erg s-1 cm-2. This source density is consistent with the number counts reported by Bauer et al. (2002) and references therein (their Fig. 6).

The most significant of the 2 detected sources is CXOEN2 J163637.3+410804 displayed in Fig. 13. The X-ray position (centred on the brightest component of the extended source) is at J2000 16:36:37.38 +41:08:04.9. There are 207 net source counts in the 0.5 - 2 keV band in an area corresponding to a factor 17.5 larger than the PSF. This extrapolates to a soft band flux of $`1.46\pm 0.15\times 10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, although this includes the flux from point source N2\_101 (CXOEN2 J163633.8+410730) which lies within the extended source region at a distance of 52 arcsec from the core. The r band image of this region reveals the presence of a galaxy cluster.

Spectra of three cluster members show absorption features consistent with a redshift of 0.4232 (Perez-Fournon et al. 2003). The ACIS-S pulse height spectrum of the cluster (Fig. 14) and appropriately weighted response matrices were extracted using standard CIAO tools, and spectral analysis was performed using XSPEC. The data is well fitted with a Raymond-Smith emission model for hot, diffuse gas with an abundance of 0.3 solar and a plasma temperature of 2.73$`\pm `$0.81 keV.

The second extended X-ray source in N2 is also associated with a galaxy cluster. This source (shown in Fig. 15) is at the very edge of the Chandra image. Its position is approximately J2000 16:37:28.5 +41:00:13, although the centroid may in fact lie outside the area of the image. For this reason, the identification and properties of this source will not be reported here.

## 9 Conclusions

We have presented the Chandra source catalogues for deep (75 ks) observations of the ELAIS fields N1 and N2. A total of 233 X-ray point sources are detected: 225 in the 0.5 - 8 keV band, 182 in the 0.5 - 2 keV band, and 124 in the 2 - 8 keV band. In addition, 2 extended sources are detected in N2 in the 0.5 - 2 keV band and are found to be associated with galaxy clusters.

An over-density of sources is found in N1 with 30% more sources than N2. This difference is present in both the soft and hard band number counts and may be attributed to large-scale structure. A similar variance is seen between other deep Chandra surveys.

Source count statistics reveal an increasing fraction of hard sources at fainter fluxes. The number of galaxy-like counterparts also increases dramatically towards fainter fluxes, consistent with the emergence of a large population of obscured sources. Additionally, objects with galaxy-like and faint optical counterparts exhibit harder X-ray spectra towards fainter fluxes, consistent with significant absorbing columns in this population.

The source catalogues and further information regarding the ELAIS deep X-ray survey can be found at this URL: http://www.roe.ac.uk/$``$jcm/edxs

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

JM acknowledges the support of a PPARC Studentship and would like to thank the IfA, Edinburgh for providing extra funds for the completion of this paper.


text:
# Effectiveness of group interaction on conceptual standardized test performance

## 1 Introduction

Peer collaboration as a learning tool has been exploited in many diverse instructional settings and with different types and levels of student populations. Here we investigate the effectiveness of working in pairs on the performance on a standardized conceptual multiple-choice test, Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM), in a calculus-based introductory physics course. In a double class period (1 hour 50 minutes), students were administered the test individually and in groups of two after instruction in the relevant concepts. In both instances (whether group or individual), students were allowed 50 minutes. Between the individual and group testing there was a short 5-10 minute break, and students were required to turn in their first response so that they could not refer to it when working in group. The test answers were never discussed with students so when they switched from individual to group (or vice versa), they did not know if their initial responses were correct.

Although some studies show that heterogenous groups are more effective for group learning, others show that working with friends has special advantages. In this study, students were allowed to choose their own partners. They were encouraged to discuss the response with each other, and each test counted for one quiz grade. Students had an additional incentive to discuss the concepts, because an examination in two weeks covered the same material. Moreover, students had extensive experience working with two peers in the recitation on context-rich problems and with one peer during the lecture on Mazur-style concept tests. We note that the peer collaboration was unguided in that there was no help or facilitation from the instructor.

## 2 Discussion

To obtain two random equivalent samples, all students in the class sitting on one side of the aisle took the individual test first, followed by the group test (IG treatment: 74 students or 37 pairs) while those on the other side of the aisle took the group test first before taking it individually (GI treatment: 54 students or 27 pairs). One reason for giving the test in both orders was to assess the effect of thinking individually before the peer discussion. In the Mazur-style peer instruction, students are first asked to think about the concepts based on the assumption that not allowing an opportunity to think individually may prevent students from evaluating their own stand on a concept. Another reason for designing both the IG and GI treatments was to evaluate the “test-retest” or “practice” effect.

Although the trends in some individual test items are interesting, here we only discuss the effect of group work on the overall test scores. In Table 1, we show the average individual and group scores for the GI and IG treatments and for the IG treatment, also the average normalized gain, $`g=(s_fs_i)/(100s_i)`$, where $`s_i`$ and $`s_f`$ are the earlier (individual) and later (group) test scores in percent. The fact that the group performance on the IG and GI treatments are virtually indistinguishable suggests that giving students an opportunity to think individually before the peer discussion did not improve their group performance. Also, in the IG treatment, the normalized gain of $`0.39`$ in the group work is clearly not a “test-retest” effect because considering the treatment samples to be equivalent, we can compare the individual performance on IG treatment ($`55\%`$) with the group performance of GI treatment ($`71.7\%`$) which shows a gain of $`0.37`$ (indistinguishable from $`0.39`$). Therefore, most of the following discussion will focus on the IG treatment.

But before moving on, we note some interesting trends in the time students took during the two successive testings in the IG and GI treatments. In the GI treatment, during the group work only, and in the IG treatment, both during the individual and group work, students took roughly the same amount of time. One the other hand, students working individually after the group work in the GI treatment on an average took roughly one third of the time spend on group work. It appears that in the IG treatment, despite having worked on the problems individually, students were willing to spend the time discussing the same test because they found peer collaboration useful. However, in the GI treatment, after having discussed the test with peers, students were reasonably sure about their thoughts and did not consider it necessary to brood over the problems again.

### 2.1 Evidence for co-construction

Although there is no consensus in the research literature on the definition of “co-construction”, we use the term here to denote cases where neither student alone chose the correct response but did as a group. Co-construction can occur for several reasons. For example, if the group members chose different incorrect responses, they will have to explain their reasoning to each other. This can unravel problems in their initial logic and complementary information provided by peers can help them converge on the correct solution. Even in cases where both students have the same incorrect response, co-construction can occur if students are unsure about their initial response and are willing to discuss their apprehensions with peers. Important clues provided by peers during the discussion can trigger recall of relevant concepts and can help the group co-construct. One attractive feature of peer collaboration is that since both peers have recently gone through similar difficulties in assimilating and accommodating the new material, they can often relate to each other’s difficulties more easily than the instructor. The instructors’ extensive experience can often make a concept so obvious and automatic that they may not comprehend why students are misinterpreting various aspect of a concept or finding them confusing.

Table 2 displays the percentage of the overall cases where neither, one, or both group members had the correct response individually and how they changed during the group work (for IG treatment). It shows the possibility for co-construction in $`29\%`$ of the cases where neither group members were correct individually.

To ensure that the cases in which both students individually chose the incorrect response but the group chose the correct response is not due to “just guessing”, we analyze the first row of Table 2 in detail. In Table 3, we subdivide this row based upon whether both partners had the same or different incorrect responses and if the group response was one of the original incorrect response or a third incorrect response.

Table 3 shows that in $`22\%`$ of the cases when both group members had the same incorrect response, and in $`34\%`$ of the cases when both had different incorrect response, the group response was correct. In comparison, a relatively small frequency of a third incorrect group response that was not originally selected by either members suggests that students were not “just guessing” (see Table 3). Although we did not conduct formal interviews with students after they worked in groups, we briefly discussed the aspects of the group work they found helpful with several students. Most students admitted that they got useful insights about various electricity and magnetism concepts by discussing them with peers. Students frequently noted (often with examples) that they had difficulty interpreting the problems alone but interpretation became easier with a friend. They also said that talking to peers forced them to think harder about the concepts, find fault with their initial reasoning, and reminded them of concepts they had difficulty recalling on their own. Qualitative observations show that students were more likely to draw field lines, write equations or scribble on their exams in the group work than in the individual work.

### 2.2 Negative impact of grouping?

Table 2 (second row) shows that out of all the cases in which one group member individually had the correct response and the other had an incorrect response, $`78\%`$ of the group responses were correct. The fact that $`22\%`$ of such cases resulted in an incorrect group response is not very troublesome because it was an unguided peer discussion. It can happen if students who individually chose the correct response are not very confident and cannot defend or justify their response. The fact that a majority of such cases resulted in correct group responses suggests that students who individually chose the correct response were generally more confident and were able to justify their choice. It also suggests that students who picked an incorrect item individually were less sure of their choice and were willing to listen to their peers. As will be discussed in the next section, group work always results in individual gain.

### 2.3 Individual gain and retention

The individual performance in the GI treatment was much superior ($`70.3\%`$) compared to the IG treatment ($`55\%`$). One can hypothesize that students could immediately recall the group responses for all the 32 test items in the GI treatment and their superior performance does not reflect the effectiveness of group work with regard to the retention of the concepts discussed. Similarly, in the IG treatment, the superior group performance compared to the individual performance is due to a large number of cases where the group member with the correct response was able to convince the one with the incorrect response. It does not guarantee that students will retain what they learned in the group work. To investigate the impact of group interaction on retention, two weeks after the IG and GI treatments, all students individually took the CSEM test again. In view of the fact that students earlier went through either the IG or GI treatments, we now relabel the treatments IGI and GII. We note that students did not know that they will be taking the same test again. Although it would have been better to use different, equally reliable test for assessing similar concepts; unfortunately, none was available.

In the IGI treatment, the average score for the second individual testing was $`74\%`$, a gain of $`0.42`$ compared to the initial individual score of $`55\%`$. A detailed comparison of the group vs. the second individual test scores shows that $`81\%`$ of the overall individual responses chosen by the members of a particular group were the same as the group responses. Out of the $`19\%`$ individual responses that were different from the group, roughly $`11\%`$ went from incorrect to correct while $`8\%`$ went from correct to incorrect. There are two competing effects: the fact that students forgot some group responses over time and the fact that they had time to study for the second individual test; a large fraction of group response was retained even after two weeks. The corresponding numbers in the GII treatment are virtually the same.

### 2.4 Effective pairing

To learn about the type of pairings that will optimize the overall gain for this conceptual test, we divided the 74 students in the IGI treatment into three equal types: high (A), middle (B), and low (C), based upon their initial individual score on CSEM. In Tables 4a and 4b, we show the average initial individual score (left) and the normalized gain in the second individual testing (right) for all the nine possible pairs. In comparison, for all 74 students together, the average initial individual score was $`55\%`$ and the average individual gain was $`0.42`$.

Table 4 shows that although all students in the IGI treatment gained in the second individual testing two weeks later compared to the first, the gain matrix is not symmetric. For example, the gain of A student due to the interaction with C ($`0.29`$) is not the same as that of C due to A ($`0.41`$) in the (A C) pairing. It is striking that the gain of A and B students is significantly lower when they paired with C students. ‘A’ students have similar gains whether they paired with A or B students while B students benefit more from pairing with A than with another B student. Interestingly, the gain of C students (lowest third) is virtually the same regardless of who they paired with (bottom row of Table 4). One hypothesis is that while pairing with a higher achievement student helped C students do well in the group test, they did not retain all of the concepts because they were subdued by the higher achieving student and did not participate actively in the discussions. Thus, the opportunity to learn from the higher achieving student may have been outweighed by the inability of C students to participate fully in the discussions and process the information at the rate discussed by the other student. On the other hand, in the (C C) pairing, both students had comparable but at least some complementary knowledge and both actively participated in the discussions. The evidence for this hypothesis comes from the comparison of the average group (left) and second individual test scores (right) for each of the pairings as shown in Tables 5a and 5b.

A comparison of Tables 5a and 5b shows that the average individual score of C students in the (A C) pairing after two weeks ($`61\%`$) is lower compared to their group score ($`72\%`$). Also, a comparison of Tables 4a and 5a shows that A students did not benefit from interactions with C students and the average initial individual score for A students and the group score for the (A C) pairing are the same. Similar comparisons for B students shows that although they benefitted from all types of interactions, their gain improved as they interacted with higher achieving students. It appears that at least for this conceptual test, the pairing that helps maximize the overall gain is one that only has (A B) and (C C) pairs. It will be useful to investigate the extent to which this result is universal, i.e., whether two peers collaborating on conceptual tests show highest overall gains when the high and middle achievement students are paired, and the low achievement students are paired with each other.


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# Critical exponents and phase transition in gold nuclei fragmentation at energies 10.6 and 4.0 GeV/nucleon

## 1 Introduction

Multifragmentation, a breakup of an excited nucleus into many intermediate mass fragments, has been discussed for almost twenty years in terms of statistical mechanics; possible critical behavior was investigated. In its ground state nuclear matter behaves like a liquid. Mean field theory simulations  predict that nuclear equation of state resembles that of Van der Waals gas. Therefore existence of phase transition, spinodal instabilities and critical point are expected. However, nature of the possible phase transition is still under debate. Existing experimental data do not lead to a conclusive answer .

In many papers it was shown (e.g.) that nuclear interactions undergo two stages. During the first stage, prompt nucleons are emitted from the colliding system and they carry out a large amount of available kinetic energy. They result from quasi-elastic and nonelastic collisions of projectile and target nucleons. Immediately after the collision, the remnant of the nucleus is in an excited state with temperature $`T_i`$. At the second stage, the excited remnant expands and cools evolving into neighborhood of the critical point on the temperature–density plane . Then the hot and decompressed nucleon gas with temperature $`T_f`$ condenses into many fragments. This last process is the multifragmentation. It was also shown that total charged fragment multiplicity is proportional to the temperature of the colliding system, both to $`T_i`$ and $`T_f`$ .

In the 90-ties there were many attempts to extract critical exponents in nuclear fragmentation from the experimental data, e.g. . A method of charged moments invented by Campi  and supported by percolation theory  was commonly applied. These attempts did not take into account the fact that it is only the remnant of the nucleus that undergoes multifragmentation process, so all prompt particles (participating in the nucleus-nucleus collision) were included in the analysis. This approach raised a critique , that pointed out that: inclusion of prompt particles, assumption that fragment multiplicity is directly proportional to the temperature of the fragmenting system and using fragment charges $`Z_i`$ instead of fragment masses $`A_i`$ are not justified and can significantly change the resulting values of critical exponents.

Recently, the EOS collaboration  calculated critical exponents based on a high-statistics sample of fully reconstructed events from fragmentation of Au nuclei with energy 1.0 GeV/nucleon, taking into account the above criteria and using fragment masses, not charges. The obtained results are in agreement with the previously extracted values of the critical exponents . Therefore the exclusion of prompt particles and performing analysis based on moments of mass distribution, instead of charge distribution, does not impact resulting values. This can be understood based on the fact that a large majority of prompt particles are fragments with charge $`Z=1`$. Their impact on the second charge moments (that take square of the charges) is much smaller than that of heavier fragments.

In this paper we present the analysis of data coming from interactions of projectile gold nuclei of primary energies 4.0 and 10.6 GeV/nucleon with nuclear emulsion target.

## 2 The experiment

Stacks of BR-2 emulsion pellicles were irradiated with gold ion beam at the AGS accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The stacks were oriented so that the beam was parallel to the pellicles. Interactions were found during a microscope scanning along the primary tracks in order to obtain a sample with minimum detection bias. The two data sets consist of 448 events at 4.0 GeV/nucleon and 884 events at 10.6 GeV/nucleon. In each event analyzed, multiplicities and emission angles of all produced particles and fragments of colliding nuclei were measured. In addition, charges of projectile nucleus fragments were determined. Singly-charged particles (released protons and produced pions) were distinguished unambiguously from heavier fragments. Charges of heavier fragments ($`Z2`$) of the projectile were measured using a photometric method with a CCD camera .

The experimental method of identification of prompt particles (i.e. nucleons directly participating in the collision) in emulsion experiments is not available. We can however estimate the number of prompt particles as a difference between the total number of emitted protons $`N_{prot}`$ and the number of spectator protons $`N_{spec}`$. $`N_{prot}`$ is determined using charge balance of the projectile fragments. We have estimated $`N_{spec}`$ as the number of singly charged particles that are emitted at the angle $`\theta <2\theta _0`$, where $`\theta _0`$ is the average proton emission angle given by relation $`\theta _0=0.12/p`$, and $`p`$ is the momentum of the nucleon prior to emission .

In this paper critical exponents were extracted using the Campi’s charge moments method. The charge moments in our analysis were calculated in two different ways. One of them is to find non-normalized charge moments taking into account all heavy ($`Z>2`$) fragments, alpha particles and protons emitted from the vertex of interaction following Gilkes at al . The other way is for normalized charge moments and excludes prompt protons following Elliott et al. . The two ways were used to detect possible inconsistencies coming from the choice of the method.

## 3 Charge moments

Following Campi , we define the total charged fragment multiplicity $`m`$, as $`m=N_f+N_\alpha +N_{prot}`$, where $`N_f`$ denotes the number of fragments with charge $`Z3`$, $`N_\alpha `$ is the number of emitted alpha particles and $`N_{prot}`$ is the number of emitted protons.

The distance from the critical point for a given event can be properly measured by a difference between multiplicity $`m`$ and the multiplicity at the critical point $`m_c`$. The validity of this assumption rests on a linear dependence between temperature of the system $`T`$ and the total multiplicity $`m`$, that was shown to be valid by Hauger at al. . Therefore we introduce variable $`ϵ`$:

$$ϵ=mm_c,$$
(1)
Fragments of a given charge, $`Z_f`$, were counted on event-by-event basis to determine fragment charge distributions $`N_{Z_f}`$. The normalized charge distribution was defined as $`n_{Z_f}=N_{Z_f}/Z_{A_0}`$, where $`Z_{A_0}`$ is charge of the nucleus remnant undergoing fragmentation, given by a sum of charges of all fragments $`Z_f2`$ plus total charge of spectator protons.

In order to compare our results with theoretical calculations (the Fisher model), mass distributions should be used and should be normalized to the remnant mass $`A_0`$ rather than to its charge $`Z_{A_0}`$. In emulsion experiments, fragment mass is not measurable; therefore it was assumed that fragment charge $`Z_f`$ is proportional to its mass $`A_f`$. It was also assumed that on average, charge and mass distributions are equal $`N(Z_f)=N(A_f)`$. In fact, the same assumption is made also by other authors, at least in specific ranges of charges. This is dictated by the difficulty in measuring masses of all heavier fragments emerging from the interaction vertex. In case of electronic experiments masses of fragments only in some small mass range are measured. Therefore, we have to rely on the assumption of proportionality between mass and charge.

Following Campi , we define the k-th moment of charge distribution as:

$$M_k(ϵ)=n_{Z_f}(ϵ)Z_f^k,$$
(2)
where the sum extends over all charged fragments except prompt protons in the ’gas phase’, that is for $`ϵ>0`$. In the ’liquid phase’,where $`ϵ<0`$, in addition the fragment with highest charge $`Z_{max}`$ is omitted from summation. The above procedure is motivated by the Fisher model. The bulk liquid of infinite volume is excluded from calculation on the ’liquid’ phase. Similar procedure is carried out in percolation models, where percolating cluster of infinite size is excluded from calculation on the ’liquid’ phase.

With the above assumptions, and based on the Fisher model, in the thermodynamic limit the following relations are valid :

$$M_2(ϵ)|ϵ|^\gamma ,$$
(3)
$$n_{Z_f}(ϵ)Z_f^\tau \text{for}ϵ=0$$
(4)
In addition, Bauer et al  have shown that:

$$Z_{max}(ϵ)ϵ^\beta \text{for}ϵ<0,$$
(5)
In these equations $`\beta `$, $`\gamma `$ and $`\tau `$ are the critical exponents. $`Z_{max}(ϵ)`$ is the average charge of the largest fragment for a given value of the distance from critical point $`ϵ`$. The above relations are valid in the neighborhood of the critical point. Far away from the critical point, the behavior of the system is dominated by the mean field regime and these relations are not followed. Very close to the critical point, on the other hand, finite size effects come into play and $`M_2`$ does not raise to infinity with $`ϵ`$ approaching 0 (Equation 3), but achieves some maximum value. The critical exponents $`\beta `$, $`\gamma `$ and $`\tau `$ are not independent. A scaling relation between them exists:

$$\tau =2+\frac{\beta }{\beta +\gamma }$$
(6)
Practical calculations of the moments of charge distributions were based on averaging in the small bins of multiplicity $`m`$ of event-by-event distributions :

$$M_k(ϵ)=\frac{1}{N}M_k^i(ϵ)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i}{}(\underset{Z_f}{}n_{Z_f}^i(ϵ)Z_f^k)$$
(7)
where $`i`$ is the index of an event, $`N`$ denotes the total number of events in a given small range of $`ϵ`$, $`M_k^i`$ is a charge distribution moment for event $`i`$.

## 4 Fluctuations close to the critical point

One of the basic effects of the second order phase transition is the appearance of significant fluctuations in the neighborhood of the critical point, in a small range of temperatures $`T`$ (or other parameter measuring distance from the critical point). Fluctuations grow as the critical point is approached and appear at increasingly large scales. In the case of a normal liquid, the effect is known as the critical opalescence: fluctuations of density of the liquid and sizes of gas bubbles result from vanishing latent heat of the phase transition as the critical point is approached. In the Fisher model of nuclear fragmentation, this is reflected by the divergence of the isothermal compressibility $`\kappa _T`$ at the critical temperature $`T_c`$: small variations of the pressure result in big density changes. In the neighborhood of the critical point, the volume and surface terms of the Gibbs free energy of fragment formation vanish and the fragment distribution is dominated by the power law of Equation 4 .

In case of multifragmentation, fluctuations can be analyzed using moments of charge distributions. Campi suggested a variable $`\gamma _2`$ linearly dependent on variance $`\sigma ^2`$ of the charge $`Z`$ distribution:

$$\gamma _2=\frac{M_2M_0}{M_1^2}=1+\frac{\sigma ^2}{Z^2},$$
(8)
Figure 1 shows $`\gamma _2`$ as a function of multiplicity $`m`$ for energies 4.0 and 10.6 GeV/nucleon. As critical value of multiplicity $`m_c`$ is not identified at this stage, in all above calculations charge moments were calculated with $`Z_{max}`$ excluded. For multiplicities smaller than $`m30`$, $`\gamma _2`$ grows monotonically with multiplicity, for multiplicities larger than $`m40`$, it falls down monotonically. Fluctuations of $`\gamma _2`$, reflected in large dispersion, are largest for multiplicities between $`10`$ and $`40`$. It is commonly assumed that strong maximum of $`\gamma _2`$ results from undergoing a phase transition at critical point multiplicity $`m=m_c`$. The region of multiplicities $`m<m_c`$ is called a ’liquid’ phase, and events with $`m>m_c`$ are called to be in ’gas’ phase. However, the presence of maximum of $`\gamma _2`$ is not a conclusive argument for appearance of phase transition. It was shown  that such maximum is observed also in systems that do not undergo a phase transition. Therefore Figure 1 will be treated as only a hint for possibility of phase transition in a specific range of multiplicities. It is also worth mentioning that $`\gamma _2`$ fluctuations at energies 4.0 and 10.6A GeV agree well with each other.

In order to closer analyze the fluctuations, the mean values of second moment of charge distribution $`M_2`$ were plotted versus multiplicity in Figure 2. Similar characteristics to that of $`\gamma _2`$ is seen. Large dispersion of $`M_2`$, especially in the ’liquid’ phase reflects strong fluctuations of experimental values.

Figure 3 shows a scatter plot of second charge moments for individual events $`M_2^i`$ versus multiplicity $`m`$ at energy 10.6 GeV/nucleon. Strong fluctuations of $`M_2^i`$ for multiplicities $`15m45`$ are clearly visible, which result in large dispersion of $`M_2`$ values (shown as error bars in Figure 2). For systems undergoing a second order phase transition, it is expected that fluctuations rise in the neighborhood of the critical point. Therefore observation of large fluctuations quite far away from expected critical region should be attributed to a different physical phenomenon. For example, events with values of $`M_2^i>4`$ and multiplicity $`m<20`$ are fission-like (only 2 heavy fragments plus alphas and protons). Two distinct groups of experimental points are seen in Figure 3. One of these groups consists of events with multiplicity smaller than $`m=35`$ and $`M_2<0.9`$, the other — of events with multiplicities larger than $`m=30`$ and largest $`M_2`$ values for a given $`m`$. The former group, with small multiplicities and small $`M_2^i`$ suggests that the fragment charge distribution must be dominated by one heavy fragment – i.e. the expected characteristics of the ’liquid’ phase. On the other hand, the latter group of events, with large multiplicity and larger $`M_2`$, suggests existence of a larger number of small fragments, thus it resembles the expected characteristics of the ’gas’ phase. The events which do not belong to either of these groups may be thought of as nuclei in a ’mixed’ phase (see Section 7). The ’liquid’ and ’gas’ groups were selected from experimental data for further analysis. Figure 4 shows the selection criteria. The ’liquid’ group of events consist of those with multiplicity smaller than $`m=35`$ located below the solid line, while the ’gas’ group consists of events with $`m>30`$ and located above and to the right of the dashed line. Similar selection was performed for data with energy 4.0 GeV/nucleon – see Figure 5.

Let us look at these two selected groups in order to check if they really can be treated as ’liquid’ and ’gas’ phases. For example, Figure 6 presents charge distributions as a function of heavy ($`Z>2`$) fragment multiplicity, $`N_f`$, for the two selected groups of data. Fragment charge distributions are clearly different in both groups. The charge distribution for the group of low multiplicity events consists mainly of events with one heavy fragment emitted ($`Z45`$). If the second fragment is emitted, it has a small charge ($`Z3`$). Therefore, we will refer to this group of data as ’liquid’ as for these events one large fragment remains after collision in analogy to the large drop of liquid. In most cases there are only alphas and protons accompanying the large heavy fragment. The second group of events has totally different charge distribution that consists of events with number of emitted heavy fragments ranging from 1 to 9 and charges of fragments $`Z25`$. The majority of fragments in this group has charges $`Z15`$. We will call this group of events a ’gas’ as it consists of events with many light fragments emitted. The analysis presented in subsequent sections presents results on these selected sets of data unless explicitly stated otherwise.

## 5 Critical exponent $`\gamma `$

In order to extract the critical exponent $`\gamma `$ and the critical value of multiplicity $`m_c`$ the method known as ’gama matching’ was used . The outline of this method is the following. A trial value of the critical multiplicity $`m_c`$ is chosen. For a given $`m_c`$, a distribution of mean values of the moment $`M_2(ϵ)`$ is determined as a function of distance from the critical point $`ϵ=mm_c`$. Then the ranges in $`ϵ`$ are chosen to fit the power law (3) to the experimental data, separately for the ’gas’ and ’liquid’ phases. With fitting boundaries determined, the linear fit to the $`lnM_2(ϵ)`$ versus $`ln|ϵ|`$ is made to extract values of the slope $`\gamma `$ separately for ’gas’ and ’liquid’ phases.

The fitting boundaries for the ’liquid’ phase are easily determined. Figure 7 presents a comparison of second moments of charge distribution for the selected ’liquid’ phase and all available experimental data at $`m<m_c`$. It is seen that the selection results in appearance of a very clear region of power law dependence.

Similar comparison for the ’gas’ phase is shown in Figure 8. The impact of selection of the ’gas’ phase is not significant in this case. The region of the power law dependence is not clearly seen. This may be due to the inclusion of the charge of the largest fragment $`Z_{max}`$ in the ’gas’ phase. The largest charge dominates the second moment, shifts it to the higher values and makes the power law less visible, probably due to the finite size effect. Thus, it may be interesting to check if the exclusion of $`Z_{max}`$ also in the ’gas’ phase reveals a clear range of power law dependence of $`<M_2>`$ versus $`ϵ`$. The $`M_2`$ moment for the ’gas’ phase computed without $`Z_{max}`$ is shown in Figure 9. Open circles represent moments computed for ’gas’ group of data, filled circles represent those for all experimental data at $`m>m_c`$, without selection. In both cases the region of power law behavior is now clearly visible. This region is much larger for selected ’gas’ data compared to $`m>m_c`$ data, so it is now clear in which region of $`ϵ`$ the fit should be performed. In other words, Figure 9 was used as a guideline in determining fitting region in the ’gas’ phase in the ’gamma matching procedure’. It is interesting that the value of $`\gamma _{gas}=1.14\pm 0.05`$ determined from moments of charge distribution with $`Z_{max}`$ excluded is very close to the value determined by the ’gamma matching procedure’ (i.e. with $`Z_{max}`$ included).

The above procedure was repeated for several trial values of the critical point $`m_c`$. The value of the critical exponent $`\gamma `$ and critical point $`m_c`$ is found by demanding that $`|\gamma _{gas}\gamma _{liquid}|`$ takes a minimum value and $`\gamma _{gas}`$ and $`\gamma _{liquid}`$ agree with each other within statistical errors. Trial values of the critical point were selected in the range $`25m_c35`$.

Results of the calculations for energy 10.6 GeV/nucleon are presented in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 shows results obtained based on normalized charge distribution moments whereas Table 2 present results from calculation based on non normalized moments. It is easily seen that both procedures give exponents that agree with each other within statistical errors. Final value of exponent $`\gamma `$ is calculated as a mean value of $`\gamma _{gas}`$ and $`\gamma _{liquid}`$ for normalized moments. The critical point is determined at $`m_c=31\pm 2`$ and the critical exponent $`\gamma =1.17\pm 0.09`$.

The analogous results of the ’gama matching’ procedure for energy 4.0 GeV/nucleon are given in Tables 3 and 4. The determined critical point is $`m_c=30\pm 2`$ and the critical exponent $`\gamma =1.15\pm 0.09`$. Figure 10 shows values of $`|\gamma _{liquid}\gamma _{gas}|`$ plotted as a function of trial values of critical multiplicity at energy 10.6 Gev/nucleon. Figure 11 presents results of fitting procedure for $`\gamma _{liquid}`$ and $`\gamma _{gas}`$ for critical multiplicity value $`m_c=30`$ for the same energy.

## 6 Critical exponents $`\beta `$ and $`\tau `$

After determination of the critical multiplicity $`m_c`$ and ranges of $`ϵ`$ in which to fit the critical exponents, determination of the exponents $`\beta `$ i $`\tau `$ is straightforward. Based on Equation 5, the mean value of $`\mathrm{ln}Z_{max}`$ was plotted as a function of $`\mathrm{ln}|mm_c|`$ (Figure 12). The slope of the linear fit to the plotted relation gives the critical exponent $`\beta `$. A linear fit was made within the fitting boundaries determined during the ’gamma matching procedure’. For energy 10.6 GeV/nucleon the determined value of $`\beta =0.33\pm 0.01`$ with $`\chi ^2/ndf=1.66`$, and for 4.0 GeV/nucleon $`\beta =0.34\pm 0.01`$ with $`\chi ^2/ndf=0.99`$.

The critical exponent $`\tau `$ was determined from equation :

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}M_3}{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}M_2}=\frac{\tau 4}{\tau 3}.$$
(9)
Figure 13 presents $`\mathrm{ln}M_3`$ versus $`\mathrm{ln}M_2`$ for the ’gas’ phase at energy 10.6 GeV/nucleon together with the linear fit. The slope of this linear fit is used to determine the $`\tau `$ exponent, which is $`\tau =2.11\pm 0.05`$ for 10.6 GeV/nucleon and $`\tau =2.12\pm 0.04`$ for energy 4.0 GeV/nucleon. To verify the consistency, the exponent $`\tau `$ also was determined from Equation 4. This Equation is supposed to be valid at the critical point, but in order to have sufficient statistics, data with $`25<m<35`$ were used. Normalized charge multiplicity distribution was calculated and plotted in Figure 14. The exponent $`\tau `$ is given by the slope of the linear fit to the data points for charges from $`Z=6`$ to $`Z=16`$. For charges smaller than 6, the assumptions of the Fisher model are not valid  and for charges larger than 16 experimental data statistics is too small. The resulting value $`\tau =2.19\pm 0.33`$, with reduced $`\chi ^2=1.2`$ is in agreement with previously determined value.

## 7 Discussion

Table 5 summarizes the determined values of critical exponents $`\gamma `$, $`\beta `$ and $`\tau `$ at energies 4.0 and 10.6 GeV/nucleon both for normalized and non-normalized charge moments. For comparison, exponents obtained by the EOS, EMU01 and KLMM experiments are also shown, as well as the values predicted by the liquid-gas and percolation models. The data on the $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$ exponents from Table 5 are plotted in Figure 15. The values of $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$ exponents determined in this work are very close to those expected for the ’liquid-gas’ phase transition, both for 4.0 and 10.6 GeV/nucleon data. We note that the critical exponents discussed here were determined from the selected ’liquid’ and ’gas’ groups of events. Earlier analyses, without such a selection, gave values of the exponents which do not agree with any of the models.

Values of the critical exponent $`\tau `$ predicted by the percolation and liquid-gas models are not too different. As experimental errors are large compared to the difference between the predicted values of $`\tau `$, this exponent cannot be used to discriminate models of multifragmentation.

Presented in this work a suggestion that the Fisher’s liquid drop model properly describes multifragmentation process, is in agreement with recently published results of the ISiS collaboration , confirming that the Fisher’s scaling law is followed by experimental data. In addition, Mader et al.  have shown a similarity between predictions of the Fisher model and clusterisation process in the three-dimensional Ising model. Therefore, multifragmentation can be interpreted in a similar way as condensation of liquid drops in equilibrium with the bulk liquid.

One can try to estimate a critical temperature of the system by using a relation between multiplicity and temperature of the system given in . Estimation of the initial temperature of the system after collision, $`T_i`$, was based on Fermi gas model and does not take into account the expansion of the system. The final temperature of the system at breakup, $`T_f`$, was estimated based on a relation between multiplicity $`m`$ and temperature $`T`$ for isotopic-yield-ratio thermometer given in . Our values of critical multiplicity ($`m_c=30`$ and $`m_c=31`$ at 4.0 and 10.6 GeV/nucleon, respectively) correspond to $`T_i=9.3\pm 0.7`$ MeV and $`T_f=5.4\pm 0.2`$ MeV. The error of $`T_i`$ reflects uncertainty of the input parameters in the Fermi gas model. These $`T_i`$ and $`T_f`$ values bracket the critical temperature of the system. This estimated range for the critical temperature agrees with predictions of the Fisher model if we take into account the scaling of critical temperature with the finite system size . The estimation of the critical temperature relies on the assumption that relation between multiplicity $`m`$ and temperature of the system established for energy 1.0 A GeV applies also for higher energies 4.0 and 10.6 GeV/nucleon.

The above results, together with results of ISiS collaboration  suggest that not all multifragmentation events undergo a second order phase transition. The data excluded from our analysis presented above may be interpreted as events in which multifragmentation occurs far away from the critical point. These events could undergo a first order phase transition so that ’gas’ and ’liquid’ coexist inside the nucleus as suggested by experimental analysis of GSI data .

As noted earlier, the excited nucleus after a collision evolves into the neighborhood of the critical point on the density–temperature plane. If multifragmentation occurs close to the critical point, critical exponents characterizing second order phase transition occurring in the neighborhood of the critical point should be observed. If for some events multifragmenation occurs far away from the critical point and they are included in the analysis, the observed values of critical exponents could be altered so that the whole picture of the physical process is obscured. In such situations proper selection of events should help obtain true values of critical exponents.

Events excluded from our analysis show very strong fluctuations of the second moment of the charge distribution significantly far away from the critical point, especially in the liquid phase. Large fluctuations could result from coexistence of two different phases with different properties inside a single nucleus. Below critical multiplicity $`m_c`$ (proportional to temperature of the system) two separate phases with significantly different properties could coexist in nucleus as is suggested by mean field  or canonical model calculations . The coexistence of the two phases may take place in wide ranges of temperature and pressure. This could explain large fluctuations of second moment of charge distribution far away from the critical point. It is also important to stress that moment $`M_2`$ is proportional to the isothermal compressibility of the system. Therefore, large fluctuations of $`M_2`$ correspond to fluctuations of the compressibility $`\kappa _T`$ and to fluctuation of the density of the system. Large fluctuations of $`M_2`$ observed in ’liquid phase’ (Figure 3) may be interpreted as resulting from large density difference between the two coexisting phases.

In summary, an attempt to extract critical exponents $`\gamma `$, $`\beta `$ and $`\tau `$ was performed, using data coming from interactions of gold nuclei with nuclear emulsion at energies 4.0 A GeV and 10.6 A GeV. To extract the exponents, two subsets of data with characteristics similar to that of ’gas’ and ’liquid’ phases were selected, based on analysis of Campi’s 2nd charge moments. The extracted values of the critical exponents for the selected data sets are in agreement with predictions of liquid-gas model of phase transition. The same analysis performed without the selection of ’gas’ and ’liquid’ samples favors neither percolation nor liquid-gas model of phase transition. A suggestion is made that data excluded from the above mentioned samples represents events where phase transition, if any, occurs far from the critical point.