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# Detection of Molecular Hydrogen Orbiting a ‘Naked’ T Tauri Star

## 1 Introduction

The thick envelopes of dust and gas that surround young stellar objects evolve into circumstellar disks on a timescale of order 106 yr (Strom, 1995). The absence of thermal emission from millimeter or smaller-sized dust grains, as measured through levels of millimeter and infrared continuum emission much above that expected from a naked star (Beckwith & Sargent, 1996; Osterloh & Beckwith, 1995; André & Montmerle, 1994), as well as the non-detection (Zuckerman et al., 1995; Duvert et al., 2000) of molecular line emission from CO towards more evolved, weak-lined T Tauri stars (wTTS) studied suggests that the disks become dust and gas depleted in only 3-5 $`\times `$ 106 yr.

Two different explanations may account for these observations. According to the first, circumstellar material has dissipated through one or more of several processes: photo-evaporation, accretion onto the star, tidal dissipation by nearby stars, outflows, or strong stellar winds (Hollenbach et al., 2000). Alternatively, larger objects could have formed through accretion, thereby reducing the total surface area of the dust and burying the molecular component (in the form of ices) inside growing protocometary grains. Consequently, the levels of thermal emission from solids and line emission from molecules would drop below detection thresholds as the effective surface area of solids and number of molecules in the gas phase decrease. Hydrogen, which accounts for $`>`$70% of the mass of the disk, would be collected into planetesimals last, assuming that the hydrogen can avoid being removed from the disk until the planetesimals have grown large enough to gravitationally bind gas.

According to the second scenario, hydrogen should remain in the disk until long after the dust becomes undetectable; however, H2 is difficult to stimulate due to its lack of a dipole moment and the low temperatures normally found in circumstellar environments. Consequently, the bulk of the disk material is nearly impossible to detect directly, so observers typically resort to emission from dust and abundant trace molecules for insight into the physical conditions within and masses of circumstellar disks. The evidence from these tracers indicate that classical T Tauri stars (cTTS) are surrounded by substantial disks of gas and dust, while wTTS — similar, but possibly slightly more evolved objects — are ‘naked,’ essentially diskless. Together, these data suggest that T Tauri stars shed their disks in less than 107 yr, too short a time for gas giant planets to form unless the disk is much more massive than a ‘minimum mass’ nebula (Lissauer, 1993).

High-resolution spectroscopy of near-infrared ro-vibrational emission from H2 offers a means to detect hydrogen directly and, hence, provides a diagnostic of the presence of gas in the near environments of young stars (Weintraub et al., 2000). High velocity (shocked) H2 has been detected in outflows associated with young stars; however, quiescent H2 associated with orbiting material in circumstellar disks has been almost impossible to identify. Detections of cold H2 gas apparently about 100 AU from the parent stars were reported recently for three debris-disk stars (Thi et al. 2001a, ) and from several Herbig Ae/Be stars and cTTS stars (Thi et al., 1999; Thi et al. 2001b, ), based on low signal-to-noise observations made at 17 and 28 $`\mu `$m by the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). In much more sensitive observations made from Mauna Kea at 12 and 17 $`\mu `$m, Richter et al. (2002) were unable to confirm the detections of H2 reported at 17 $`\mu `$m by Thi et al. (2001b) for the three stars observed by both groups (GG Tau, AB Aur, HD 163296). The Richter et al. (2002) results call into question the other ISO detections as well. If the ISO observations are correct, the detected gas must be outside of 150 AU in extended, non-disk components. Thus, the only undisputed observations reporting the detection of the most abundant gas in circumstellar disks of young stars are both for the cTTS TW Hya (Weintraub et al., 2000; Herczeg et al., 2002), for which the presence of a circumstellar disk was both expected and already established.

In this paper, we report the detection of emission from molecular hydrogen emission from DoAr 21 (= V2246 Oph), which is classified as a wTTS based on its H$`\alpha `$ line equivalent width ($``$0.6 Å; Bouvier & Appenzeller (1992)). Consistent with its being classified as a wTTS, DoAr 21 remains undetected to very low sensitivity thresholds in thermal emission from circumstellar dust (André & Montmerle, 1994). The canonical age for wTTS is 3-10 Myr old, placing stars like DoAr 21 in the planet building epoch. However, Wilking et al. (2001) suggest that the young stellar object population in rho Ophiuchus has a shorter than average disk survival time and quote an age of 0.4 Myr for the class III sources (wTTS) they studied. Whether 0.4 or 4 Myr old, as a wTTS DoAr 21 is presumed to be beyond the disk accretion phase of pre-main sequence evolution and shows virtually no signs that any circumstellar material is present. The only previous hint of the existence of circumstellar material around this source is an observed polarization amplitude of 5.8% in 9$`^{\prime \prime }.`$7 aperture observations at I band Ageorges et al. (1997); however, optical speckle images presented by Ageorges et al. revealed no extended structure around DoAr 21 at 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$2 spatial resolution and to a sensitivity level of K$``$12.

## 2 Observations

We obtained high-resolution (R $``$ 60,000) spectra of DoAr 21, centered near the 2.12 $`\mu `$m ro-vibrational transition of H2, on 2000 June 20-23, UT, using the Phoenix spectrometer (Hinkle et al., 1998) on NOAO’s 4 m telescope atop Kitt Peak, Arizona. In spectroscopic mode, Phoenix used a 256 $`\times `$ 1024 section of a 512 $`\times `$ 1024 Aladdin InSb detector array. Our observations were made using a 30′′ long, 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$8 (4 pixel) wide slit, resulting in instrumental spatial and velocity resolutions of 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$11 and 5 km s-1, respectively. Our actual seeing limited spatial resolution was $``$ 1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4. The spectra were centered at 2.1218 $`\mu `$m providing spectral coverage from 2.1167 to 2.1257 $`\mu `$m. This spectral region includes three telluric OH lines, at 2.11766, 2.12325, and 2.12497 $`\mu `$m that provide an absolute wavelength calibration.

The DoAr 21 spectrum was obtained in a 3600 s integration. Telluric calibrations were made from 600 s observations of the A0V star Vega. Flat-field images were made using a tungsten filament lamp internal to Phoenix. Observations were made by nodding the telescope 14′′ along the slit, producing image pairs that were then subtracted to remove the sky background and dark current. The DoAr 21 spectrum was extracted within 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$7 E-W of the source for a total beam width of 1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4, beyond which no emission was detected. The spectrum was divided by the continuum and ratioed with that of the telluric calibrator in order to remove telluric absorption features.

The spectrum presented in Figure 1 has been corrected, though incompletely, for telluric absorption features and shifted in velocity to the measured vlsr (3.7 km s-1) of the rho Ophiuchi cloud (Kamazaki et al., 2001). Although no direct measurements exist for the velocity of DoAr 21, all published values of vlsr for sources known to be in the rho Ophiuchus cloud, at a distance of 160 pc, fall within 1 km s-1 of the velocity of the cloud, with respect to the local standard of rest. Thus, since DoAr 21 is well established as a member of this cloud, we have made the assumption that the rest velocity of DoAr 21 is indistinguishable from the velocity of the cloud. This spectrum shows a single, spatially unresolved emission line, with a full-width-half-maximum velocity of 9 km s-1, associated with the v = 1$``$0 S(1) transition of H2 at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m, and centered at the rest velocity of DoAr 21. We estimate the intensity of this line emission to be 1.5 $`\pm `$ 0.15 $`\times `$ 10-14 erg s-1 cm-2.

## 3 Discussion

Emission from cold H2 is not expected from a supposedly diskless, wTTS, such as DoAr 21. Yet, we detected a single emission line in the spectrum of DoAr 21, the central wavelength of which matches the stellar rest frame wavelength of the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m v=1$``$0 S(1) ro-vibrational transition of H2 to within errors ($`\pm `$1 km s-1). We conclude that the observed emission is from gaseous H2 within $``$110 AU of DoAr 21.

Could this gas be shock excited H2 in a stellar jet, as often is seen toward young stellar objects? Such gas is expected to have a velocity of 30-50 km s-1 relative to the star. The fact that the central line velocity of the H2 falls within $``$ 1 km s-1 of the velocity of the CO in the rho Ophiuchus cloud, and implicitly at the rest velocity of DoAr 21, demands that such a jet would have to be oriented in a highly unlikely geometry, within $``$ 2° of perpendicular to our line of sight. Furthermore, since the detected emission line is spatially unresolved, the jet would have to be contained to within 110 AU of the star and be very tightly confined along the outflow axis, since the conical expansion velocity of an outward rushing jet is likely greater than 10 km s-1. We conclude that, in this case, shock excitation in a stellar jet is an extremely unlikely stimulating mechanism for exciting the H2 emission.

Could the H2-emitting gas reside in a tenuous halo, rather than a disk, surrounding the young star? DoAr 21 is seen through more than 6 magnitudes of visual extinction (Bouvier & Appenzeller, 1992); thus, it is perhaps conceivable that the H2 emission from DoAr 21 could originate in ambient molecular cloud gas that is excited by ultraviolet photons and/or X-rays from the star. The fact that the H2 line emission is spatially unresolved yet marginally spectrally resolved is inconsistent with this interpretation, as such an UV- or X-ray-excited halo should be many hundreds or thousands of AU in extent and would exhibit a very narrow line profile. We believe that it is very unlikely that some kind of excitation of a quiescent interstellar gas cloud would produce broadened, yet spatially unresolved H2 line emission. Furthermore, we have failed to detect H2 emission around other rho Ophiuchus and Taurus cloud stars that display similarly large values of AV and large UV and X-ray fluxes (Bary et al., in prep.) We therefore conclude that the H2 emission from DoAr 21 arises in a circumstellar disk and from within 110 AU of the star.

The cTTS LkCa 15 shows a double-peaked velocity profile for the H2 line at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m, with a peak-to-peak separation of 10 $`\pm `$ 1.5 km s -1 (Bary et al. 2001; Bary et al., in prep). This double-peaked profile is just that which is expected for H2 emission orbiting LkCa 15 in a disk seen at an inclination angle of 34$`\mathrm{°}`$$`\pm `$10$`\mathrm{°}`$ (for which the inclination angle has been determined through interferometric, millimeter wavelength observations of CO emission; Duvert et al. (2000)). Given the kinematic information from the emission line and the inclination angle, we determine the bulk of the emission to be at a distance of 10-30 AU from the star, in Keplerian motion. Since the line widths, strengths, and velocities relative to their stars are all very similar for LkCa 15 and DoAr 21, the physical mechanism for producing the H2 emission also is likely very similar in both cases. We therefore infer that the bulk of the H2 gas producing the emission observed toward DoAr 21, which we have already constrained to be within 110 AU of the star, probably is located at distances of 10-30 AU from the star. Although the double-peaked velocity profile is not observed for DoAr 21, the absence of a detectable double-peaked velocity profile is probably due to the fact that this disk is viewed at a steeper inclination angle (i $`>`$ 55°), such that the double-peaked distribution is below the velocity resolution of our data and because the gas does not reside within a few AU of the star, since the absolute velocities would be quite high at small orbital distances.

What is the mechanism for producing the observed H2 line emission within this disk? Ultraviolet fluorescence and X-ray radiation are both capable of stimulating H2 emission since UV pumping and X-ray ionization (Tine et al., 1997; Maloney et al., 1996; Gredel & Dalgarno, 1995) serve to enhance the population of the first excited vibrational state of H2 under the right conditions. In general, T Tauri stars are good sources of UV (Valenti et al., 2000) and X-ray photons (Feigelson & Montmerle, 1999).

DoAr 21 is one of the most X-ray luminous T Tauri stars known (Casanova et al., 1995). DoAr 21 also has significant emission in the UV (Bouvier & Appenzeller, 1992; Herbig & Bell, 1988; Safier, 1995) above that expected from thermal emission from the photosphere of the star, with a $`UV`$ excess of $``$1.4 magnitudes. For the last decade, both excess UV emission and strong X-ray emission (Feigelson & Montmerle, 1999) have been thought of as indicators of coronal activity for TTS; on the other hand, more recent work suggests they may be signposts of accretion from a circumstellar disk onto the star (Johns-Krull et al., 2000; Kastner et al., 2002). Kastner et al. (2002) model the Chandra X-ray spectrum of TW Hya and show that the temperature characterizing the bulk of the plasma producing the X-rays from this star is at a temperature of $``$ 3 $`\times `$ 106 K and that the electron densities are $`>`$ 1012 cm-3. This high temperature and high density, they argue, are consistent with adiabatic shocks produced by gas infalling onto less than 5% of the surface of the star at free-fall velocities of a few 100 km s-1. Johns-Krull et al. (2000) compared the level of “transition region” line emission from TTS with main sequence, RS CVn magnetic “standard” stars, and wTTS and showed that cTTS appear to have an anomalous line emission strength with accretion shocks being the most likely explanation for the excess line strength. Noting that DoAr 21 is a strong source of X-rays and UV photons that can be produced through either accretion processes or coronal activity (with coronal activity having previously been assumed to be the production mechanism for wTTS because of their supposed absence of accreting material) and having demonstrated from our spectra the likelihood that a significant amount of gas still orbits the wTTS DoAr 21, we suggest that DoAr 21 may be actively accreting material from its disk. This suggestion, while contrary to the present paradigm that wTTS are not accretionally active, is consistent with our detection of UV or X-ray excited H2 gas in a disk orbiting a wTTS, which is likewise contrary to present paradigm. We note, however, that at kT $``$ 3 keV, as suggested by Imanishi et al. (2002), the X-ray emission from DoAr 21 may be too hard to be explained by accretion.

For X-ray stimulated excitation, the optical depth for X-rays, determined using cross-sections from Yan et al. (1998) and a disk density profile found in Glassgold et al. (2000), is such that the X-rays must travel through a significant column of gas (N $``$ 1021 cm-2) before depositing their energy. Given the gas densities likely in an inner disk, we find that X-rays produced in the near-environment of DoAr 21 could penetrate a few tens of AU into the disk. Any gas excited by X-ray absorption followed by collisional excitation in the high density, inner disk will quickly become collisionally de-excited. This precludes the X-ray excitation mechanism from working well in the inner disk; however, this mechanism may plausibly work at a few tens of AU, especially in lower density regions at the upper and lower surfaces of the disk, where the density is below 107 cm-3. A similar argument holds for UV excited gas; UV photons cannot penetrate out to tens of AU in the self-shielding midplane, but they could excite a small volume of gas in more tenuous regions above the midplane out at 10-30 AU. UV excitation would work in the inner disk; however, we should then see a wider H2 line width due to the higher Keplerian velocities of gas within a few AU of the star. We cannot definitively determine which excitation mechanism, X-ray ionization or UV fluorescence, is of primary importance since both appear to be plausible candidate mechanisms for producing the observed emission at distances of a few tens of AU from the star.

For infrared H2 emission, it is straightforward to estimate the mass of H2 responsible for the detected emission line (see, e.g., Thi et al. 2001a); however, the mass we calculate (4.4$`\times `$10-10 M) will be only a small fraction of the total mass of hydrogen and therefore of the disk. Any estimate of the total disk mass depends on a determination of this fraction. Our task, then, is to quantify the ratio of the tracer to the total mass. To do this, we compared the total disk masses as measured in millimeter CO line emission and submillimeter thermal emission for the cTTS GG Tau, LkCa 15, and TW Hya with the masses we estimate from quiescent, near-infrared line emission of H2. The amount of H2 gas as determined directly from the line emission at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m, and making no assumptions about the gas temperature, for GG Tau and TW Hya is about 10-7 to 10-9 of the total mass (Bary et al., 2001) based on estimates from CO line emission and millimeter and submillimeter continuum emission. The amount of H2 gas for LkCa 15 is about 10-8 to 10-10 of the total mass based on millimeter and submillimeter continuum emission. Clearly, mass estimates made using the line intensity in the v=1$``$0 S(1) line greatly underestimate the true masses in the disks in these three cases, thus establishing that the warm H2 gas can act as a tracer of much more massive disks. Using the ratio of the H2 line-based mass : tracer mass for GG Tau, TW Hya, and LkCa 15 the H2 line-based mass of 10-10 M for DoAr 21, we can infer a total disk mass range of 10-3 to 1 M for DoAr 21, assuming the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m H2 line acts as a tracer of a more massive disk.

Near-infrared and longer wavelength broad band photometry of young stellar objects previously have been used as methods for identifying protostellar sources that are likely candidates for harboring circumstellar disks, as any emission from such stars above that expected from the nearly isothermal photosphere must emerge from small dust grains in the near-star environment. However, DoAr 21 shows no evidence of excess near-infrared thermal emission (Wilking et al., 2001), has at best a marginal mid-infrared excess (Wilking et al., 2001; Bontemps et al., 2001), and has not been detected in very sensitive 1.3 mm continuum observations (André & Montmerle, 1994) (the upper limit for the 1.3 mm flux density of 4 mJy implies the presence of less than about 10-6 M of dust and 10-4 M of gas). Thus, small dust grains are not present in sufficient quantities to be detectable and, prior to this work, all the available evidence suggested that DoAr 21 had no circumstellar disk.

Our detection of a persistent gaseous disk around DoAr 21 is consistent with recent findings (Stassun et al., 1999; Rebull, 2001) suggesting that wTTS may not spin faster than cTTS (but see also Herbst et al. 2000, 2001). Hence, the discrepancy, if any exists, in X-ray production between cTTS and wTTS (Feigelson et al. in press, ) may not be attributable to their spin rates. The continued presence of a disk is a logical, though not the only (Hartmann, 2002), explanation for the lack of two distinct distributions of rotation periods for cTTS and wTTS, since magnetic decoupling of the star from the disappearing disk, followed by contraction and spin-up of the star, originally was believed responsible for the now contested bimodal distribution for T Tauri star rotational velocities.

The detection of excited H2 from the near-star environment of DoAr 21 is the first of its kind. Most likely, we have detected only the small annular portion in the upper layers of a gaseous disk around DoAr 21 that is sensitive to excitation by X-ray or UV photons. Thus, the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m emission line of H2 likely is tracing the existence of a much larger, more massive disk, but also one in which significant planet building already may have occurred.


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# A Chandra Spectroscopic Survey of Persistent Black Hole Candidates

## 1 Introduction

Prior to the launch of Chandra X-ray Observatory (Chandra), emission lines and absorption lines or edges had already been detected in the X-ray spectrum of a few black hole candidates (BHCs), with X-ray spectrometers of low to moderate resolution (e.g., Barr et al. 1985; Kitamoto et al. 1990; Done et al. 1992; Ebisawa et al. 1996; Cui et al. 1998; Ueda et al. 1998; Cui et al. 2000; Feng et al. 2001). The features often appear in the energy range 6–8 keV and are, therefore, attributed to emission or absorption processes involving iron K-shell electrons. Although the exact location of the emitting or absorbing material is often debatable, there is evidence that, at least for some black hole candidates, the observed iron $`K\alpha `$ line appears to originate in the innermost region of the accretion disk, very close to the central black hole. If this proves to be the case, the profile of the line would be distorted by the strong gravitational field of the hole (Fabian et al. 1989; Tanaka et al. 1995) and could be carefully modeled to constrain the intrinsic properties of the hole, such as its mass and spin (Laor 1991; Bromley et al. 1997).

Two major advances were brought about by the CCD spectrometer aboard ASCA. First, several pairs of Doppler-shifted emission lines were observed and attributed to the relativistic jets in SS 433 (Kotani et al. 1996). A recent observation of the source with Chandra confirmed the presence of these lines from the jets and provided many more details (Marshall et al. 2002), thanks to the improved spectral resolution of the High-Energy Transmission Gratings (HETG) aboard. The studies of such lines have proven fruitful in gaining insights into the dynamics and physical conditions of the jets in SS 433 (Marshall et al. 2002; Kotani et al. 1996). Similar Doppler shifted lines also seem to exist in the spectrum of another well-known jet source, 1E1740.7-2942, based on a recent Chandra HETG observation (Cui et al. 2001). Second, the ASCA observations of micro-quasars GRS 1915+105 and GRO J1655-40 revealed the presence of absorption lines (Ueda et al. 1998; Kotani et al. 2000). The results are confirmed by a recent Chandra observation of GRS 1915+105 (Lee et al. 2001). The absorption lines were interpreted as resonant absorption lines due to highly ionized (helium or hydrogen like) ions in a non-spherical configuration. There was speculation as whether such lines were characteristic of microquasars. This is clearly not the case, as shown by recent Chandra observations of Cyg X-1 (Schulz et al. 2002; Marshall et al. 2001). The obtained HETG spectra of Cyg X-1 show numerous narrow absorption lines due to H-like or He-like ions of various elements. Therefore, the phenomenon may be common for BHCs.

The presence of energetic electrons in the vicinity of accretion disks has always been a key ingradient in nearly all attempts to model the X-ray continuum of a BHC. The observed power-law spectrum at high energies ($`10`$ keV) is invariably attributed to inverse Comptonization of soft photons by such electrons in an optically thin but geometrically thick configuration (review by Tanaka & Lewin 1995). At low energies, contribution from the accretion disk becomes important and often dominant. The $`\alpha `$-disk solution (Shakura & Sunyaev 1973) is often adopted to describe the observed spectrum of the disk emission; this has led to the formulation of the popular multi-color disk (MCD) model (Mitsuda et al. 1984). The model has worked satisfactorily in describing low-resolution data, but so have other models (such as a simple blackbody). The high-resolution data from Chandra (and XMM-Newton) may now allow us to see subtle differences in the shape of the continuum as predicted by various models.

The MCD model contains fundamental physical information about the accretion disk, such as its temperature (distribution) and the distance from the inner edge of the disk to the black hole. Existing observational evidence shows that, under certain conditions, the accretion disk extends down to the last (marginally) stable orbit (Tanaka & Lewin 1995 and references therein). Therefore, modeling emission from the disk may lead to a determination of the radius of the last stable orbit and thus the properties of the black hole (e.g., its mass and angular momentum; Zhang, Cui, & Chen 1997; Tanaka & Lewin 1995). However, the local X-ray spectrum of an accretion disk is not a perfect blackbody, because in the hot inner portion of the disk the opacity is primarily due to electron scattering as apposed to free-free absorption. The spectrum can instead be described by a “diluted” blackbody (Ebisuzaki, Hanawa, & Sugimoto 1984), with its temperature higher than the effective temperature. Attempts have been made to quantify such effects theoretically in terms of a spectral hardening factor (Shimura & Takahara 1995), but the results are still quite uncertain. In particular, it has been shown that the hardening factor seems to vary with mass accretion rate (Merloni, Fabian, & Ross 2000). On the other hand, the derivation of disk properties depends critically on this factor. The question becomes whether we can determine it observationally.

In this paper, we present results from a survey of persistent BHCs with the HETG. The motivations for conducting the survey included: (1) using emission or absorption lines, if present, to study the physical properties of the emitting region and its environment; (2) obtaining profiles of those emission lines that might originate in the accretion disk, with a goal of inferring the properties of the black hole; (3) directly detecting X-ray emission from the jets in microquasars; and (4) better characterizing the disk component of the continuum, making use of good low-energy sensitivity as well as excellent energy resolution of the HETG. The survey might also have provided data for systematic studies of line production in persistent BHCs. The results are likely to be relevant to transient BHCs, which constitutes the majority.

## 2 Sources and Observations

The sample of sources for the survey originally included LMC X-1, LMC X-3, Cyg X-1, and 1E1740.7-2942. Cyg X-1 was subsequently observed a few more times. The results on spectral lines and edges in Cyg X-1 have been presented elsewhere (Schulz et al 2002; Marshall et al. 2001). Here, we used a subset of data from the first observation (see Schulz et al. 2002 for details) to characterize the continuum. 1E1740.7-2942 was omitted from this study because the results have also been published (Cui et al. 2001). On the other hand, we re-analyzed an HETG observation of GRS1758-258 (with data taken from the public archive) and the results are presented here for completeness (see also Heindl & Smith 2001).

LMC X-1 and LMC X-3 are both located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), about 55 kpc away. Unlike most BHCs, these two sources are usually seen to be in the “soft state” where the soft X-ray ($`<`$ 10 keV) flux is relatively high and the X-ray spectrum is relatively soft. Evidence for the presence of an iron Kα line in the X-ray spectrum exists for LMC X-1 (Ebisawa et al. 1989; Schlegel et al. 1994) and LMC X-3 (Nowak et al. 2001), but it is not very convincing in either case. In the former, the line appears to be weak and narrow, while in the latter only a broad line is allowed by the observations.

LMC X-1 was observed for about 20 ks on 2000 January 16. We adopted the default time exposure (TE) mode for the observation. The zeroth order image is severely piled up (i.e., multiple photons hit the same event detection cell of the ACIS within one readout frame), because of the brightness of LMC X-1. In fact, the pile-up effect is so severe that the events at the source position were rejected by the on-board processing system (and thus not transmitted back), leaving a “hole” in the image. Because we were mostly interested in using higher-order data to construct a high-resolution spectrum of the source, we sacrificed the imaging capability for better statistics in the dispersed spectra.

LMC X-3 was also observed for about 20 ks on 2000 Febuary 29. In this case, we adopted an alternating exposure mode to obtain some zeroth-order data that is nearly pile-up free. The observation was conducted with eight regular exposure frames (with a readout time of 3.2 sec) followed by one short exposure frame (with a readout time 0.3 sec). Although the use of alternating exposure modes reduces the observing efficiency, the loss is almost negligible in this case. Unlike LMC X-1, which is a relatively steady source, LMC X-3 seems to vary in a quasi-periodic fashion (with a characteristic timescale of 199 days; Cowley et al. 1991; see also the light curves111http://xte.mit.edu/ASM\_lc.html from the All-Sky Monitor (ASM) on Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE)). The Chandra observation took place when the flux of the source was quite low, as seen by the ASM, but it was still high enough to cause significant pile-up in the zeroth-order image.

GRS 1758-258 is a persistent X-ray source near the center of our own galaxy. It is considered a black hole candidate only because of its similarities to Cyg X-1 both in terms of the observed spectral and temporal X-ray properties. The most remarkable property known of this source is the presence of persistent, two-sided radio jets, reminiscent of extragalactic radio-loud quasars (Rodríguez et al. 1992). Such a comparison also supports the suggestion that GRS 1758-258 is an X-ray binary that contains an accreting black hole. The source shows uncanny similarities to 1E1740.7-2942 (Mirabel & Rodríguez 1999), both in terms of the observed X-ray properties and radio properties. Perhaps, the two systems are indeed intrinsically similar.

GRS 1758-258 was observed with the HETG for about 30 ks on 2001 March 24. A $`\frac{1}{2}`$-subarray mode was adopted to reduce the readout time and thus to minimize expected pile-up in the zeroth-order image. Although the use of the subarray mode raises the lower energy threshold of the dispersed spectra, the effects are minimal here because it is still the interstellar absorption that limits the detection of low-energy photons. Like 1E1740.7-2942, GRS 1758-258 is thought to be relatively steady and seems always to be in the “hard state” (Tanaka & Lewin 1995 and references therein). When this Chandra observation was carried out, the X-ray flux of the source was unusually low (Smith et al. 2001).

Cyg X-1 is the first system that was dynamically determined to contain a black hole. It spends most of the time in the hard state. Once every a few years, it undergoes a transition to the soft state, and remains there for weeks to months before returning to the hard state. An iron Kα line has been observed in the X-ray spectrum of Cyg X-1 (Barr et al. 1985; Done et al. 1992; Ebisawa et al. 1996; Cui et al. 1998). The line seems to be relatively broad and strong (however, see Ebisawa et al. 1996). In some cases, it is thought to be significantly red-shifted (Barr et al. 1985). An interesting evolution of the line properties has been observed during the spectral state transition, which seems to suggest a physical origin of the line in the accretion disk (Cui et al. 1998).

Cyg X-1 was observed for about 11 ks on 1999 October 19. An alternating exposure mode was also used here, with five long frames followed by one short frame (with a readout time of 0.3 sec). The pile-up effects are extremely severe in this case, not only affecting the zeroth-order image but also the dispersed spectra. More details regarding this observation can be found in Schulz et al. (2002), along with the procedures to deal with complications caused by pile-up and the results on the detection of discrete spectral features. Here, we only use the short-frame data to construct a reliable continuum for comparison with other sources.

## 3 Analysis and Results

The HETG consists of two grating assemblies: the medium-energy grating (MEG; 0.4–5 keV or 2.5–31 Å) and high-energy grating (HEG; 0.9–10 keV or 1.2–14 Å). The two gratings are offset by a small angle to avoid the overlap of their dispersed spectra. The resolving power reaches as high as about 1000 for both gratings. The separation of various orders is achieved by utilizing the intrinsic energy resolution of the ACIS CCDs.

With the standard software package CIAO 2.2 (provided by the Chandra X-ray center), we first processed the Level 1 data to produce Level 1.5 and then Level 2 products. The Level 2 data was then reduced and analyzed, again using CIAO, to construct images and spectra of the sources. Spectral modeling was carried out with XSPEC 11.1.0.

### 3.1 Imaging Analysis

Fig. 1 shows images of the central region of the field of view for all observations. The readout trace is visible (quite bright in the Cyg X-1 image), cutting through the position of the source. For LMC X-3 and Cyg X-1, the images were generated from the long-frame data, so a “valley” (as opposed to a peak) is seen at the position of the source due to severe pile-up. The same is true for LMC X-1, as expected. In all cases, a diffuse “halo” is present around the source. The halo is spherically symmetric and is centered right on the source. It is almost certainly due to the scattering of X-rays from the source by interstellar dust along the line-of-sight. Note that the halo emission is also apparent in the dispersed spectra for Cyg X-1 because the source is so bright. Since photons of lower energies are deflected by larger angles, the size of the halo is determined by two competing factors: dust scattering and photo-electric absorption; the larger the column density, the more likely a photon is scattered out of the line-of-sight (strengthing the halo) or absorbed (weakening the halo). The scattering halos are known to exist around many X-ray sources and have proven useful for studying the spatial and size distributions of dust grains in our Galaxy (e.g., Mauche & Gorenstein 1986; Predehl & Schmitt 1995; Witt, Smith, & Dwek 2001). Chandra now makes it possible to directly image the phenomenon. The observations should, in principle, allow us to derive spatially resolved energy distribution of photons in the halo and thus to test theoretical models at a more detailed level. Such an investigation is beyond the scope of this paper.

A natural product of the observations is a precise determination of the position of each source, thanks to the unprecedented spatial resolution of Chandra. For LMC X-3 and Cyg X-1, the zeroth-order image from the short-frame data is nearly free of pile-up effects. It was used to determine the peak positions of linear count profiles across the directions of right accension (RA) and declination (Dec), which directly yields the source coordinates. However, the short-frame data suffers from poor statistics. The uncertainties on the positions are, therefore, significantly larger than those derived from the long-frame data (which is described below).

Although the zeroth-order image from the long-frame data (or regular frames for LMC X-1 and GRS 1758-258) may be severely piled up, the position of a source can be determined from the intersection between the readout trace and dispersed MEG or HEG image. Since the readout trace is caused by the process in which photons from the source hits the CCD chip during the frame transfer operation, the source must be located somewhere along the trace. Moreover, both the MEG and HEG images should, in principle, run through the position of the source. However, in no cases, their intersection points with the readout trace coincide, due to systematic uncertainties. We chose the average of the two positions to obtain the coordinates of the source. The difference between the two provides an estimate of the systematic uncertainty associated with this technique, which is much larger than the statistical uncertainty. The results are summarized in Table 1. Note that for both GRS 1758-258 and Cyg X-1 the unusually small error bar in the Dec is due to the fact that the readout trace is nearly perpendicular to this direction; the error is, therefore, determined by the statistical uncertainty in fitting the cross linear profile of the trace.

The measured position of LMC X-1 is only about 0.7″ away from the location of its optical counterpart (star 32; Cowley et al. 1978; Pakull 1978). The discrepancy is well within the uncertainty in the absolute aspect solutions222see http://cxc.harvard.edu/cal/ASPECT/celmon/. Therefore, the result strongly supports the conclusions, based on dynamical mass determination, regarding the black hole candidacy of the source (Hutchings et al. 1987). For GRS 1758-258, the derived position is about 0.6″ away from the position of its radio counterpart (whose is accurate to about 0.1″, Marti et al. 1998; also see Table 1). The association between the X-ray source and the core of the radio system (with prominent lobes) is, therefore, quite solid. Similarly, Cyg X-1 is determined to be about 0.5″ away from its optical counterpart (HD 226868). On the other hand, the discrepancy is much larger for LMC X-3, which is about 2.7″ away from its optical counterpart, although it could still be attributed to the uncertainty in the absolute aspect solutions.

### 3.2 Spectral Analysis

A list of instrumenal features can be found in the Proposers’ Observatory Guide (Table 9.4), which is available from the Chandra X-ray Center. All features in the LETG are also in the HETG (due to Au M edges) and the HETG has additional features at O K, Cr L and N K edges. Moreover, ACIS has an edge at 1.84 keV (Si K) when the detector is a front-illuminated chip and the edge is very weak in a back-illuminated chip.

To account for any remaining calibration uncertainties, we added 1% systematic uncertainty to the data for all sources.

#### 3.2.1 LMC X-1

We caught LMC X-1 in a very soft state. Fig. 2 shows the first-order HETG spectra of the source. The MEG and HEG spectra are shown separately for comparison. The spectral were rebinned so that there were at least 15 counts in each energy bin. They were then jointly fitted with the MCD model (“diskbb” in XSPEC) plus interstellar absorption (“wabs” in XSPEC, using cross-sections from Morrison & McCammon (1983) and assuming solar abundances) and the quality of the fit is excellent. This seems to imply that the X-ray photons detected originate predominantly from the accretion disk; no Compton component is formally required to describe the data. The best-fit parameters are shown in Table 2.

We tried but failed to detect any discrete features in the spectrum of LMC X-1. The absence of interstellar absoprtion edges is certainly due to low statistics of the data, since, after all, such features have been clearly seen in Cyg X-1 (Schulz et al. 2002). To be more quantitative, we derived upper limits on the optical depths of some of the most prominent edges (e.g., Ne K and Fe L3) detected in Cyg X-1. The procedure involved: replacing “wabs” with “varabs” in the model; setting the abundance of an element of interest to zero; and adding to the model an absorption edge (“edge” in XSPEC) of the element (i.e., with fixed energy). It should be noted that the “varabs” model uses more recent cross sections from Balucinska-Church & McCammon (1992). We found that for the Ne K edge the 99% upper limit is about 0.14, which is significantly lower than the expected value of 0.25 (derived by scaling the Cyg X-1 result by the best-fit column densities). On the other hand, the 99% upper limit is about 0.90 for the Fe L3 edge, which is consistent with the scaled Cyg X-1 value (0.80). As for emission or absorption lines, the upper limits are not very constraining. For instance, we searched for Fe Kα emission similar to what was recently detected in Cyg X-1 (Miller et al. 2002). For such a line (which is centered at 6.4 KeV and has a sigma width of 30 eV) the 99% upper limit on the equivalent width is roughly 177 eV (compared to 16 eV as measured for Cyg X-1).

#### 3.2.2 LMC X-3

The X-ray intensity of LMC X-3 is known to vary greatly. The variation was thought to be periodic and the period was determined to be $``$199 or $``$99 days (Cowley et al. 1991). However, a simple periodic modulation of the soft X-ray flux can be ruled out by the ASM/RXTE long-term monitoring of the source, although the flux seems to vary quasi-periodically on both timescales ($``$199 or $``$99 days).

LMC X-3 was in a very faint (and thus relatively hard) state when we observed it. Fig. 3 shows the first-order HETG spectra of the source, again with the MEG and HEG spectra shown separately for comparison. We proceeded to model the spectra in a manner that is similar to the case of LMC X-1. Although the MCD model (plus interstellar absorption) produced a statistically acceptable fit to the data, the residuals show apparent features. An improved fit was achieved by adding a Compton component (“comptt” in XSPEC) to the model (see Fig. 3). The best-fit parameters are also summarized in Table 2. The inferred HI column density is significantly lower than that toward LMC X-1, as is known from previous works. As in the case of LMC X-1, we failed to detect any discrete features in the spectrum. The absence of interstellar absorption edges is certainly due to the combination of low column density along the line of sight and poor statistics of the data. The latter also prevents us from deriving meaningful constraints on emission or absorption lines. For example, the 99% upper limit on the equivalent width of the 6.4 keV line is about 643 eV!

#### 3.2.3 GRS 1758-258

Like 1E1740.7-2942 (but unlike most BHCs), GRS 1758-258 was thought to always occupy the hard state (Tanaka & Lewin 1995). Recently, however, the source was seen to make a brief transition to the soft state as its X-ray flux decreased significantly (Smith et al. 2001). The phenomenon is rather unusual because the X-ray spectrum of a BHC usually hardens as its X-ray flux decreases.

Fig. 4 shows the first-order HETG spectra of GRS 1758-258. The spectra are well described by the MCD model (plus interstellar absorption), which confirms the conclusions of Smith et al. (2001). The spectral fit results are shown in Table 2. The inferred hydrogen column density is in agreement with previous measurements (e.g., Lin et al. 2000 and references therein). The derived temperature of the disk is in the typical range for BHCs in the soft state. In this case, two absorption edges were positively detected at $`1.308\pm 0.003`$ keV and $`1.845\pm 0.006`$ keV and were thus attributed to Mg and Si K edges, respectively. The measured optical depths are $`0.13\pm 0.03`$ and $`0.14\pm 0.02`$. The former (Mg) is significantly less than the scaled Cyg X-1 value but the latter (Si) is in agreement (see Schulz et al. 2002 for values found in Cyg X-1). We found no emission or absorption lines, confirming the results of Heindl & Smith (2001) who had also derived upper limits on the strength of a possible line over the entire energy range. The spectrum of the source is so soft that there are very few counts at energies above 6 keV. Therefore, no meaningful constraints could be derived for the 6.4 keV emission.

#### 3.2.4 CYGNUS X-1

The short-frame data is nearly pile-up free. Fig. 5 shows the first-order HETG spectra of Cyg X-1 which were constructed from such data. Because of the very short effective exposure time (only about 200 seconds) the quality of the data is insufficient to reveal the discrete features that are known to be present (Schulz et al. 2002).

Cyg X-1 was also observed simultaenously with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) and High-Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE) aboard RXTE. The power density spectrum constructed from the PCA data shows that the source was in the normal hard state, even though its soft flux seems a bit higher and spectrum softer (cf. Schulz et al. 2002). In terms of spectral coverages, the PCA significantly overlaps the HETG at low energies; the PCA and HEXTE extends the energy range up to about 200 keV. Since we were only interested in using the RXTE data to reliably determine the spectrum of non-disk emission, to minimize calibration uncertainties of the PCA at low energies we ignored data below 5 keV. Moreover, we only used data from the first xenon layer of each PCA detector unit. The PCA and HEXTE spectra are also shown in Fig. 5. For spectral modeling, we added 1% systematic uncertainty to the RXTE data.

The Chandra and RXTE data were modeled jointly with the hydrogen column density fixed at $`6.2\times 10^{21}\text{ }cm^2`$ (Schulz et al. 2002). We allowed the relative normalization between the HETG and each of the PCA and HEXTE detector units to vary; the results derived (e.g., fluxes and normalizations of individual spectral components) were based on the HETG normalization. The usual combination of a MCD component and a Compton component failed to provide an adequate description of the data, even with the inclusion of a Gaussian function to account for residuals in the RXTE data between 5-8 keV. A much improved (but marginally acceptable) fit was achieved with a model consisting of two Compton components (plus the Gaussian function with its centroid energy fixed at 6.4 keV). There seem to be features in the residuals mostly above 10 keV (see Fig. 5. The fit is nevertheless good enough for decoupling the soft and hard components, so we refrained ourselves from trying more sophisticated models invoking disk reflection. The best-fit parameters are summarized in Table 3. The Gaussian feature is broad ($`\sigma 1`$ keV) and its equivalent width is about 150 eV. It is intriguing that these properties are similar to those of the disk line reported by Miller et al. (2002), although complicated calibration issues regarding the PCA often make it difficult to assess the reality of such features. We will not discuss it any further.

## 4 Summary and Discussion

Unlike Cyg X-1 (Schulz et al. 2002; Marshall et al. 2001; Miller et al. 2002) or 1E1740.7-2942 (Cui et al. 2001), we found no evidence for the presence of any emission or absorption lines in the spectra of LMC X-1, LMC X-3, and GRS 1758-258. This is at least partly due to the lack of statistics, as evidenced by the absence of interstellar absorption edges. In the case of GRS 1758-258, we did positively detect Mg K and Si K edges, which are most likely of interstellar origin.

For BHCs, X-ray illumination of the accretion disk is thought to be very important and is thus necessarily taken into account in the models. The re-processing of incident X-rays by the disk is often used to explain some of the continuum features. This process is expected to be accompanied by the production of fluorescent lines. On the other hand, depending on the ionization state of the disk, the lines can be destroyed by the Auger process (Ross & Fabian 1993). The lack of line emission can, therefore, shed light on these physical processes. Unfortunately, in our case, the quality of data is not good enough to constrain the models.

We have shown that for most sources in our sample the observed X-ray continuum can be well described by a two-component model including a MCD component and a Compton component. Such a model has been successfully applied to BHCs in general previously. The low-energy sensitivity of the HETG has allowed us to reliably model the emission from the hot inner region of the accretion disk (i.e., the MCD component). As in previous studies, however, the coupling between the two components still makes it challenging to completely separate them. Luckily, in two cases, LMC X-1 and GRS 1758-258, the data requires only the MCD component, indicating the X-ray photons from these sources originate entirely from the disk. Here, the derived disk parameters should, in principle, be quite reliable.

There are three important issues that make it uncertain to extract the physical properties of the accretion disk from the measured quantities (e.g., Zhang 1999; Cui 2001). First of all, it is still not clear what is the origin of seed photons for the inverse Comptonization process. If the accretion disk provide all the seed photons, as often assumed, these photons will not appear in the observed spectrum of the disk (i.e., the MCD component). Instead, they appear in the Compton component. In this scenario, therefore, the photons detected are originally all from the accretion disk. To compute intrinsic luminosity of the disk we must then add photons in the Compton component to the MCD component. It is the intrinsic disk luminosity that should be used to derive such important properties as the radius of the inner edge of the disk. In practice, however, the disk radius is often derived directly from the best-fit normalization of the MCD component, which is clearly erroneous, especially when the Compton component is seen to be strong. This erroneous procedure is likely to be responsible for the claimed correlation between the inner disk radius and the spectral hardness of the source: the stronger the Compton component the smaller the radius, since this is exactly what would be expected if the disk is the primary source of seed photons for Comptonization. Unfortunately, the derivation of the intrinsic luminosity of the disk (by taking into account the loss of disk photons to the Comptonization process) depends on many assumption, such as the exact origin of seed photons and the spatial distribution of Comptonizing electrons with respect to the disk, and is thus very model dependent. Robust results can be obtained only for cases in which the Compton component is either absent or weak enough to produce negligible effects.

Secondly, as discussed in § 1, the local spectrum of the inner portion of the disk is not a blackbody, because the opacity is predominantly determined by electron (Compton) scattering as opposed to free-free emission (e.g., Ebisuzaki, Hanawa, & Sugimoto 1984). Strictly speaking, therefore, the spectral shape of the disk emission is that of a (saturated) Comptonized spectrum, with the spectrum of seed photons being of MCD shape. The ratio of the temperature of electrons in the disk to that of seed photons gives the so-called “color correction factor” (or more precisely, spectral hardening factor). This factor is critical to deriving the radius of the inner edge of the disk (see discussion in § 1). A possible way to determine the hardening factor observationally is, therefore, to model the disk spectrum with a Compton component. We investigated this possibility by replacing the MCD component (see Table 2) in the model with “comptt”. The new model fit the data equally well, if not better, for all cases. The results are summarized in Table 3. As a sanity check, we expect that the temperature ($`T_e`$) of Comptonizing electrons in the disk should be close to the effective temperature of the disk, when the optical depth is large. This is indeed the case (comparing results in Table 3 and Table 2), although the measured values of the optical depth are much smaller than that expected from the standard $`\alpha `$ disk model (Shakura & Sunyaev 1973). It should be noted that “comptt” assumes a Wien (as opposed to MCD) spectrum for seed photons (Titarchuk 1994). Empirically, we found that in order to fit the peak of a MCD spectrum with a Wien function the temperature of the inner disk ($`T_{in}`$ in MCD) must be equal to 2.7 times that of the Wien distribution ($`T_0`$). Therefore, the spectral hardening factor is simply given by $`f=T_e/(2.7T_0)`$. With large uncertainties (mostly due to poor constraints on the seed photon temperature), the values of $`f`$ were found to be $`2.6`$, $`0.3`$, $`1.6`$, and $`4.7`$, respectively, for the sources in Table 3. While some of these values seem reasonable (compared to the results of Merloni et al. 2000), others are too high (but keep in mind the large uncertainties). Data of much improved statistics, especially at low energies, is required to constrain the temperature of seed photons.

Finally, the situation can be further complicated by the presence of a “warm layer” just above the disk (Zhang et al. 2000). Such a layer can be due to the heating of the disk by an illuminating hard X-ray source (e.g., Nayakshin & Melia 1997; Mistra et al. 1998), although observation evidence suggests that the layer exists even in the absence of any non-disk emission (Zhang et al. 2000). The presence of a low-density warm layer is in fact supported by our results (i.e., relatively small optical depth of the soft Compton component for all sources; see Table 3). To account for the warm layer, yet another Compton component needs to be added to the model, which is not warranted by the quality of our data. This can perhaps explain somewhat erratic values of the spectral hardening factor.

To conclude, we emphasize that although modeling the disk continuum is a viable approach to deriving physical parameters of the disk the derivation is complicated by the issues discussed. Progress can be made by improving the quality of the data, especially at the lowest energies. Equally important is simultaneous broadband coverages that make it possible to reliably separate out the disk component from other components. The value of broad spectral coverage was demonstrated by the modeling of the Cyg X-1 spectrum: the traditional MCD model was shown to fail in this case.

We wish to thank Mark Ertmer and Joe Germano for their assistance with data analysis and Herman Marshall for providing information on HETG calibrations. We also acknowledge useful discussions with Yangsen Yao and Xiaoling Zhang on the subject of spectral color correction. This work was supported in part by NASA through Contract NAS8-38252 (with subcontracts to MIT and Purdue) and the LTSA grant NAG5-9998.