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# Revealing New Physical Structures in the Supernova Remnant N63A through Chandra Imaging Spectroscopy

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are valuable tools for understanding the composition of the interstellar medium (ISM), recent star formation, and supernovae (SNe) themselves. The structure of SNRs and their interactions with the surrounding medium give us insight into their origin and effects on their environment. The second brightest X-ray SNR in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), N63A, provides us with an excellent laboratory for studying such structures and interactions. This remnant is embedded in a larger H ii region, N63, and appears to be located within the OB association NGC 2030 (Chu & Kennicutt, 1988). N63A is believed to be the product of the explosion of a massive star in a dense and complex environment (Shull, 1983; Hughes, Hayashi, & Koyama, 1998) and is the first confirmed SNR in an H ii region (Shull, 1983).

The X-ray size of the SNR ($`34^{\prime \prime }`$ or 8.2 pc radius for an LMC distance of 50 kpc) is about three times the size of the optical remnant, which appears as a three-lobed structure (Mathewson et al., 1983). Two lobes are shock-heated, while the third (southwestern) is a photoionized H ii region (Levenson et al., 1995). The shock-heating is a result of interactions with the ISM, rather than with SN ejecta, based on the derived abundances (Russell & Dopita, 1990). Similarly, the X-ray emission from N63A is also consistent with swept-up ISM (Hughes et al. 1998). In the radio, the remnant appears as a thick shell, with the brightest emission corresponding to the two shock-heated eastern lobes of optical emission (Dickel et al., 1993). N63A was shown by Graham et al. (1987) to be a significant IRAS source, with $`L_{\mathrm{IR}}=1.5\times 10^5L_{}`$. However, the Columbia CO survey of the LMC revealed no significant molecular gas associated with the SNR (Cohen et al., 1988) and no CO emission was detected in a higher angular resolution pointed observation by SEST (Israel et al., 1993). Hughes et al. (1998) estimate the age of N63A to be in the range 2000-5000 yr.

We targeted N63A with Chandra to study the interaction of the SNR with the ISM, to find evidence for SN ejecta, and to search for a compact remnant and its associated pulsar wind nebula (PWN). Here we report on the most prominent new features of the remnant derived from the Chandra imaging and spectral data.

## 2 OBSERVATIONS

N63A was observed for 45.7 ks on 2000 October 16 on the back-side–illuminated chip (S3) of the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS-S) (Obs ID 777). The remnant was offset slightly from the aimpoint to ensure that it fell entirely on one node of the chip. In order to reduce as much of the pixel-to-pixel variation in the data as possible, we employed the charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) corrector code (Townsley et al., 2000) to correct for spatial gain variations. We used standard software tools to filter for grade (retaining grades 02346 only), bad pixels, and times of high or flaring background. There were count rate flares up to 26 s-1 summed over the entire S3 chip (excluding the source), compared to a rate of 24 s-1 for N63A. Nevertheless the source extent is small enough that even a moderate background count rate restriction ($`<`$14 s-1) was found to be acceptable for our studies. After all filtering, the net exposure time was 41.4 ks. All spectral analyses utilized the PI column of the final Chandra events file.

In Figure 1a we present a three-color Chandra X-ray image of N63A. This reverse-color image clearly shows the complex X-ray spatial and spectral structure of this remnant. Cyan (blue color) represents the 0.16–0.75 keV energy band; magenta (pink color) represents the 0.75–0.96 keV band, and yellow represents the 0.96–6.64 keV band. These energy bands were chosen to obtain roughly equal numbers of counts in the integrated Chandra spectrum of N63A. Regions with equal emission in each band should appear black in Figure 1a. In the southwestern and northern portions of the X-ray remnant crescent-shaped features protrude far beyond the edge of the main shell and appear bluish in color, indicating a relative enhancement in soft emission. A faint triangular region (henceforth, “hole”), just west of center, is characterized by higher energy emission. The rest of the interior of the remnant shows similar levels of emission in all energy bands, although there is a broad greenish-yellow stripe that runs diagonally from the northeast to the southwest. Sharp linear filaments extend across large portions of the remnant. Relatively bright knots and clumps of emission can be seen northwest of center and in the east. Images made in narrow X-ray energy bands reveal subtle but significant variations. The relative faintness of the triangular region is most prominent in the lowest energy band but becomes progressively less apparent toward higher energy. At the highest energies the remnant’s emission fades slowly into the background. There is no hard unresolved X-ray source observed in N63A.

The morphology of N63A varies strongly across the wavebands. In Figure 1b we present a color composite of the following: the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) 8638 MHz image (Dickel et al., 1993) in red, the Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 H$`\alpha `$ image (Chu, 2001) in green, and the Chandra 0.4–7 keV broadband image in blue. The brightest X-ray emission is toward the east where there is little to no radio emission. Several compact optical knots evident in the image do not correlate well with similar-sized structures in either the X-ray or radio bands, although two appear near the brightest X-ray emission. The optical and brightest radio emission is broadly associated with the triangular hole in the X-ray emission. This is discussed more in Section 4.

## 3 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

### 3.1 Image Analysis

Our preliminary studies of the Chandra data suggested the presence of significant column density variations with position in N63A. We developed a simple technique to characterize the statistical significance of these variations and to obtain numerical estimates of the amount of absorption. Initially we divided the entire remnant into regions containing at least 1000 counts, using an adaptive mesh, that resulted in 570 independent regions. For each region a spectrum was extracted over the 0.4–4.0 keV band and rebinned to a minimum of 25 events per channel. This was compared to the total observed spectrum of the remnant, which was rebinned in the same way.

Two simple models were used for this comparison: one assumed that each region’s spectrum was simply a scaled-down version of the integrated spectrum; the other allowed for both a scaling factor and an additional X-ray absorption factor (hereafter $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$). The latter used abundances reduced to 0.3 times solar, as appropriate to the LMC, to calculate $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$. Best-fit parameters in each case were determined by minimizing $`\chi ^2`$. We then compared these two values with the $`F`$-test to determine the significance of the fitted additional column density for each region. We did not put any a priori limits on $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$.

The most statistically significant $`F`$-values ($`>3\sigma `$) correspond to either highly negative or positive $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ values. A negative $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ naively suggests a region with lower than average absorbing line-of-sight column density, while a positive $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ suggests a higher value. We plot these regions in Figures 2b and 2c as soft and hard, respectively, where the grayscale encodes the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$. Superposed on these images is a slightly smoothed version of the broadband image, which is shown (unsmoothed) in Figure 2a. The regions of apparently negative $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ are on the outer rim of the remnant, indicating spectral softening at the shell. We plot an example spectrum of such a region in Figure 3b (lower spectrum) overlaid with the best-fit scale (solid curve) and absorption (dotted curve) models. This example illustrates how a negative $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ enhances the lower energy portion of the spectrum. However, neither model provides a good fit because oxygen emission, i.e., the lines at 0.53 and 0.65 keV, appears relatively enhanced in this particular spectrum. Large positive column densities are found in interior regions of the remnant, especially in the vicinity of the triangular hole mentioned previously. We plot an example spectrum in Figure 3c (lower spectrum) where the absorption model clearly provides a better fit than the scale model. Much of the rest of the remnant shows $`F`$-values with low significance ($`<1\sigma `$) that correspond to $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ near zero. These represent regions of mean spectra, as illustrated in Figure 3a (lower spectrum).

### 3.2 Spectral Analysis

To confirm that the image analysis produced valid and numerically accurate results, we carried out spectral fits of nonequilibrium ionization (NEI) thermal plasma models, using the planar shock model described in Hughes, Rakowski, & Decourchelle (2000). We summed together a number of individual regions from the image analysis to obtain three well-sampled spectra, each containing at least 50,000 counts, corresponding to the soft, hard, and mean spectral regions identified above. The extraction region for the soft spectrum came from along the southeastern limb of the remnant, approximately centered at $`5^\mathrm{h}35^\mathrm{m}42^\mathrm{s},66^{}02^{}07^{\prime \prime }`$. The hard spectrum came from a region centered on $`5^\mathrm{h}35^\mathrm{m}47^\mathrm{s},66^{}02^{}35^{\prime \prime }`$ and encompassing the darkest portions of the grayscale image of Figure 2c. The mean spectrum was extracted from pixels, distributed throughout the interior of the SNR, that had low significant ($`<1\sigma `$) $`F`$-values. These spectra are also plotted in Figure 3 along with their best fit NEI models (upper spectra). We allowed the temperature, terminal value of the ionization timescale, column density, and the elemental abundances for each spectrum to be free parameters. Again, the column density was determined using LMC abundances.

The best-fitted parameter values are quoted in Table 1. Abundances are lower than solar and generally consistent with the gas phase LMC values (Russell & Dopita, 1992). The abundances are slightly elevated near the absorbed region, which can be seen in the form of somewhat stronger Ne and Mg line intensities (compared to the mean spectrum) in Figure 3c. This result is less secure than the formal statistical errors would indicate, due to uncertainties in modelling the Fe L-shell emission, and therefore we do not discuss this result further. Also, there is a slight excess over the thermal model fits in the mean and especially hard spectra. Although the statistics are low, the 3.3–7.0 keV band image, where this excess appears, generally resembles the rest of the X-ray remnant; there is no particular enhancement at the site of the brightest radio or optical emission. The spectral fits for the integrated soft rim spectrum yield a lower column density and higher $`kT`$ than the mean. We discuss these fits in more detail below.

To compare the spectral-fit and image-analysis results, we had to average the values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ from the image analysis over the larger regions used for the spectral study. This was done by taking an average, weighted by the number of counts, of the individual $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ derived from each separate adaptive mesh pixel. These average values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ (see Table 2) agree fairly well with the $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\mathrm{H}`$ calculated from the difference between the soft or hard spectral fit $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ and the value from the mean spectrum. This test validates the image analysis results and gives us confidence that the hard and soft regions identified in Figure 2 do indeed differ significantly from the mean.

Levenson et al. (1995) estimated the interstellar reddening toward N63A to be $`E_{BV}`$ = 0.25, using the Balmer decrement. From established correlations between $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ and optical extinction (Gorenstein, 1975; Predehl & Schmitt, 1995) and assuming $`A_V3E_{BV}`$ (Gorenstein, 1975), we obtain $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ = (1.3–1.7) $`\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2. This agrees nicely with our value for the mean $`N_\mathrm{H}=(1.68\pm 0.12)\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 and provides further confirmation of our spectral fits.

### 3.3 Limits on a Compact Object

As mentioned previously, we find no evidence from broadband Chandra images for a hard unresolved X-ray source in N63A. Our image analysis technique, however, allows us to search the entire remnant for a region (or regions) that are dominated by any specific spectral form. To simulate the X-ray emission from a young PWN we used a power-law spectral model with photon index $`\alpha _p=2`$ and again allowed the additional hydrogen column density to be free. None of the 570 regions provided an acceptable fit (the minimum reduced-$`\chi ^2`$ was 6.67), indicating that nowhere within N63A is the emission dominated by a hard power-law spectrum. We determined a numerical upper limit to the flux of a hard source using an image from the 3.25–6.40 keV band, which is free of strong emission lines in the integrated spectrum. The 3$`\sigma `$ count rate upper limit for an unresolved source anywhere in the interior of N63A is $`<`$ $`5.4\times 10^4`$ s-1 or an unabsorbed 2–8 keV flux of $`2.5\times 10^{14}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1. The limit for a source with a diameter of 2 pc, roughly the size of a young PWN, is $`<`$ $`3.0\times 10^3`$ s-1, implying an unabsorbed 2–8 keV flux of $`1.4\times 10^{13}`$ ergs cm-2 s-1 or luminosity of $`4\times 10^{34}`$ ergs s-1. This limit allows us to rule out the presence of a bright PWN powered by a young, energetic pulsar like the Crab, or the two already known in the LMC (N157B and 0540$``$69). However we cannot exclude an older PWN, like the one in Vela ($``$11,000 yr old), or one powered by an intrinsically weaker pulsar, such as the recently discovered PWN in the much younger ($``$1600 yr) SNR G292.0+1.8 (Hughes et al., 2001).

## 4 DISCUSSION

The crescent-shaped plumes in N63A resemble features seen in the ROSAT image of the Vela supernova remnant (Aschenbach, Egger, & Trümper, 1995). These are the only SNRs where such features have been detected. The plumes in N63A extend from the main shock boundary, distorting the otherwise very symmetrical shape of the remnant. The largest one in the southwest reaches approximately 4.2 pc (in projection) beyond the main shock wave, the one just north of this protrudes about 3.5 pc, and the smaller northern region about 1.6 pc. The lateral size of the largest crescent feature is about 6 pc measured halfway out from the shell. These sizes should be compared to the 8.2 pc radius of the nearly circular main blast wave of N63A. Three other crescent features appear closer in projection to the main shell in the northeast, east, and south. Wang & Chevalier (2002) use two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to model the formation of such structures. They find that dense, high velocity clumps of ejecta may protrude beyond the forward shock as the remnant interacts with the surrounding medium. Shocks moving through the clump at first crush it and then cause it to expand laterally, eventually taking on the shape of a crescent, such as is seen in N63A.

The origin of crescent-shaped features as ejecta is supported by Miyata et al. (2001), who found an overabundance of Si in their study of Vela shrapnel A. ASCA and Chandra observations of Vela bullet D show strong O, Ne, and Mg emission (Slane et al., 2001; Plucinsky et al., 2001), suggesting an origin as a dense knot of supernova ejecta. However, Plucinsky et al. (2001) argue that a nearly-solar abundance plasma far from ionization equilibrium is a more likely explanation for their observations. N63A is about 200 times more distant than Vela, limiting our ability to do a similar detailed spectral study. We find that none of the crescent regions in N63A shows strongly enhanced abundances, although there is weak evidence for enhanced Ne, Mg, and Si line emission at the apex of the northern crescent (compared to the sides). We can confidently conclude that the plumes are not dominated by ejecta. Thus, for the high-speed ejecta clump scenario to be correct, the clumps in N63A must be significantly mixed with ambient material, perhaps signalling the onset of their fragmentation and destruction.

On the other hand, our image analysis has revealed that both the crescent-shaped regions and the entire rim of the SNR show considerably softer spectra than average for N63A. This argues for a common origin in terms of shocked ISM. However, confirmation of this hypothesis will require more careful study of spatially resolved X-ray spectra from these regions. Based on models of SNR evolution as well as other Chandra observations (e.g. Rakowski et al. 2002), we expect the most rapid changes in the thermodynamic state of the post-shock gas to occur immediately behind the blast wave, and it is at the projected rim where these variations can be most cleanly resolved. It is somewhat puzzling, therefore, that our initial fits for the integrated soft rim spectrum appear to support a relatively lower column density, which, if taken literally, would imply a screen of absorbing matter covering most of the SNR that falls off near the projected rim. We find this to be a rather contrived geometry and believe the low fitted value of $`N_\mathrm{H}`$, as well as the higher fitted value of $`kT`$, to be spurious and a result of our oversimplified spectral modelling, i.e., the use of a single component NEI planar shock model for a region with spatially varying spectral characteristics. In fact when the rim region is examined in finer detail, it is apparent that there is spectral evolution of the ionization state with position behind the shock front on scales of an arcsec or so, qualitatively showing the advance of post-shock ionization state. Further work is in progress to study this effect and use it to quantify the dynamical state of the remnant.

We interpret the hard region to be absorption by an intervening cloud in the LMC with a mass of $``$450 $`M_{}`$, determined by integrating the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ map over the extraction region for the spectrum in Figure 3c. If we assume that the cloud’s depth along the line-of-sight is roughly half of its length (3.8 pc), which is reasonable given our discussion below, then the mean density of the cloud is on the order of 250 cm-3. This value is consistent with estimates of $``$50–300 cm-3 (see Shull 1983 and references cited therein) for the preshock density of the optical remnant. Two other smaller absorbing clouds, north and northeast of center, are roughly 20-30 $`M_{}`$ in size. The large region of excess absorption is situated in nearly the same area as the bright radio and optical emission from N63A (see Figure 4). To explain the X-ray absorption, the cloud must be on the near side of N63A with little to no residual X-ray emission coming from in front of it. The radio and optical emission signal the presence of slow shocks (several 100 km s-1 or less) driven into the dense gas of the cloud. However, the modest extinction to the optical knots (consistent with the mean $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ to N63A rather than the higher value associated with the cloud) means that we are predominantly seeing the shocks being driven into the near side of the cloud. This is further supported by the observation of only blue-shifted emission from the shock-heated optical lobes (Shull, 1983). In essence, then, we are viewing the dense cloud as it is being engulfed by the remnant’s blast wave. The clumpy, knot-like features apparent in the absorption map and HST image suggest that the dense cloud’s interaction with the blast wave is causing it to break-up and fragment. Indeed the highest measured radial velocities in the optical band (up to 250 km s-1) appear mainly around the edges of the lobes (Shull, 1983), while the interior portions appear to be moving toward us at less than half this speed. Numerical simulations of an ISM cloud overrun by a SN blast-wave (e.g., Klein, McKee, & Colella 1994) show, rather generically, that the edges of the cloud are accelerated more rapidly (hence attaining higher speeds) than the cloud core. When viewed perpendicular to the direction of motion of the blast wave, this results in a characteristic shape for the shocked cloud: the edges are swept forward along with the blast wave, while the core trails behind. An example of this type of interaction can be seen in an isolated cloud on the eastern limb of the Cygnus Loop (Fesen, Kwitter, & Downes, 1992). If the shocked cloud is viewed along the direction of the blast wave’s motion, then the edges of the cloud should show higher radial velocities than the core. This situation appears, at least qualitatively, to describe the optical characteristics of N63A. Further studies of this remnant across the wavebands should help to confirm this scenario and provide deeper insights into the interaction of SNRs with their environments.

We would like to thank Cara Rakowski for help on numerous Chandra issues as well as for allowing us to use her mesh program. We also thank John Dickel for sharing his 6-cm radio image with us, Parviz Ghavamian for helpful discussions and comments on the text, and John Nousek and Dave Burrows for assistance with the original proposal. This research was partially supported by Chandra grant GO0-1035X (JPH) and NASA contract NAS8-39073 (POS).


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# Phonons Softening in Tip-Stretched Monatomic Nanowires

## 1 Introduction

Quantized electronic transport through metallic gold nanowires has been extensively studied experimentally . Recent transmission electron microscopy and break junction data showed that unit conductance (in unit of $`G_0=2e^2/h`$) corresponds to tip-suspended wires segments consisting of a single monatomic strand . At sufficiently low voltage, the conductance of these wires is ballistic. However, a recent experiment  showed that above a voltage threshold of about 15 meV a monatomic gold wire, seven atoms long, displays a drop of about 1 % in the differential conductance below the ballistic value of one. The symmetric drop of conductance with respect to the voltage sign and the value of the voltage threshold of around 15 meV suggested the effect to be due to inelastic scattering of electrons by longitudinal wire vibrations. Under that hypothesis, the voltage threshold yields precisely the frequency of the most important nanowire phonons. That voltage was shown experimentally to drop indicating a phonon softening with increasing stretching, and that needs to be quantitatively explained. Here we present calculations, based on density functional theory, of the vibrational frequencies of a monatomic gold wire and study their dependence on the wire stretching. Since simple arguments suggest that the phonon responsible for the effect is the longitudinal acoustic phonon at the zone boundary $`\pi /a`$ ($`a`$ is the gold-gold distance), we concentrate on the frequency of this vibration.

We show that the dependence of the longitudinal frequency on wire strain is not compatible with experiment if a uniformly distributed nominal strain is assumed. In order to analyze the role of possible non-uniform strain configurations, we modeled the mechanics of a realistic nanowire in contact with two tips with a semi-empirical gold potential. We found that strain was non-uniformly distributed, the tip-wire junctions absorbing a large fraction, and reducing correspondingly the true nanowire strain. With this reduction the agreement of experimental and theoretical stretch-dependent phonon frequency was very much improved.

## 2 Phonon Calculations for a Stretched Nanowire

We considered an infinite monatomic nanowire and calculated its phonon frequencies as a function of the wire strain, that is for increasing interatomic spacing $`a`$. The model is of course very crude since it does not include at all the wire-tip junctions; but as a simple approximation it allows us to address first of all the reduced dimensionality effect on the force constants among gold atoms. The nanowire total energy and electronic structure were determined within standard Density Functional Theory (DFT) in the local density approximation. The phonon frequencies were calculated within density functional perturbation theory, using the PWSCF and PHONON codes  with the gold pseudopotential of Ref. . The gold wire was simulated by using a tetragonal periodically repeated supercell. The wire was oriented along the $`z`$ axis and repeated periodically along $`x`$ and $`y`$ with a wire-wire distance ($`10.58`$ Å) large enough to avoid unphysical interactions among replicas. The energy cutoffs of the plane wave basis was $`28`$ Ry for the wavefunctions and $`252`$ Ry for the charge density. We used $`40`$ uniformly distributed k points to integrate the one dimensional Brillouin zone and a broadening technique  with a smearing parameter of $`0.01`$ Ry to deal with the presence of a Fermi level. These parameters were found to be sufficient for a good convergence of the results. Based on these first principles calculations, we also generated parameters for an empirical effective potential between gold atoms. In a tight binding scheme, and in the second moment approximation (SMA), the effective potential between Au atoms separated by $`r_{ij}`$ may be written as :

$$E_i=\lambda \underset{j}{}e^{p\left(\frac{r_{ij}}{r_0}1\right)}ϵ\left(\underset{j}{}e^{2q\left(\frac{r_{ij}}{r_0}1\right)}\right)^\alpha \text{ with}r_{ij}<r_c$$
(1)
The parameters entering in the above expression can be obtained by fitting the first-principles energies and related bulk properties of gold. We obtain in this way $`\lambda =0.4086`$, $`p=8.5624`$, $`ϵ=1.6332`$, $`q=3.6586`$, $`\alpha =0.6666`$, $`r_0=2.88`$ Å.

## 3 Results and discussion

In our first step, we calculated with DFT the equilibrium properties of the infinite monatomic wire (Fig. 1). The stable chain under zero tension (minimum of the total energy) has a nearest neighbour distance $`a_0`$=2.49 Å in agreement with other calculations . Neglecting electron reflection at the junctions (justified for a very wide s-band) this ideal wire has a ballistic conductance of one due to a single band crossing the Fermi level at $`\pi `$/$`2a_0`$. The important resistive electron-phonon coupling is electron backscattering by the zone boundary longitudinal phonon at $`q_z=\pi /a_0`$. At the strain-free equilibrium spacing $`a_0`$, the calculated phonon frequencies are $`240`$ cm-1 and $`i52`$ cm-1 for the longitudinal and the two degenerate transverse modes, respectively. As a reference, with these pseudopotentials, the stretch frequency of the Au dimer is $`191`$ cm-1. The imaginary frequency of transverse modes indicates that an infinite wire is unstable under zero tension, for example against a zigzag distortion, as discussed in Ref.. This in no way implies that the real wire segment hanging between the two tips will be distorted, since the equilibrium geometry will be strongly influenced by the tips. In particular, grand canonical tip-wire equilibrium requires a positive string tension , and an increase of $`a`$. We find that the frequency of the transverse modes becomes positive for $`a`$=2.75 Å.

Returning to the evolution of the frequency of the longitudinal phonon under wire stretching, we calculated that by increasing progressively the distance between atoms in the chain. We show in Fig. 2 the evolution of the vibrational frequency $`\omega _X`$ at the $`X`$ point as a function of the distance $`a`$. During stretching the bond softens and $`\omega _X`$ decreases almost linearly as $`a`$ increases. At $`a`$=2.85 Å, $`\omega _X`$ becomes negative and above this distance the infinite wire is unstable, for example against dimerization. For comparison, we also plotted in Fig. 2 the frequencies deduced from the experiment of Ref.  (long dashed line). In order to decide the position of these points we made two assumptions. First we converted the measured elongation, $`0.75`$ Å, into an elongation of the gold-gold bonds, assuming that the experimental wire is uniformly stretched and dividing the total elongation on each bond of the $`7`$ atom wire. Next we had to decide what was the starting gold-gold distance in the experimental curve. Since the initial wire tension is unknown, we assumed the highest measured longitudinal frequency to correspond to a bond length equal to $`2.68`$ Å. In this way the experimental and theoretical frequencies of the first point coincide. The slopes of the two curves however differ by a factor of almost $`2`$, theory decreasing faster than experiment.

This discrepancy between the calculated dependence of the longitudinal frequency on the gold-gold distance and the measured one is too large to be attributed to computational inaccuracy, and rather suggests that we made a wrong assumption somewhere. Our main doubt eventually converged on the assumption of uniform strain. On the one hand the gold-gold bond could be expected to be stronger in the monatomic nanowire than in the tip, as indicated by shorter distances. On the other hand the dependence of the experimental phonon frequency with strain would be in better agreement with the theoretical values if one were to assume a elongation of $`0.04`$ Å instead of nearly $`0.1`$ Å (7 Au atoms and a total elongation of $`0.75`$ Å).

A full ab-initio attack of this problem is desirable but seems well beyond the scope of our work. Thus, we investigated further this aspect by simulating with our classical SMA effective potential a realistic 7-atom chain in contact with two tips, where all atoms in the chain and in the tips are allowed to move without any geometrical constraints. It is important to note that the mechanical properties of the gold wire calculated by DFT and SMA differ by very little, essentially only a small shift of the equilibrium spacing (about $`0.05`$ Å) and the cohesive energies differs by only $`0.23`$ eV (see Fig. 1). The gold chain is thus obtained by optimizing the total energy of the atoms in the system while the distance of the two tips is increased. Each step corresponds to an elongation of $`0.02`$ Å. At each step, the equilibrium configuration attained is only guaranteed to be a local minimum of the potential energy surface, which in turn depends on the starting configuration. Nevertheless, the strain evolution obtained appeared very reasonable, providing a vivid picture of a possible inhomogeneous strain in the tip-suspended nanowire.

Fig. 3 displays typical snapshots during the formation and the stretching of a wire. At the beginning of the stretching (Fig. 3a), the two tips are stuck together. Upon stretching a twisted chain appears while one atom is extracted. Subsequently a chain of 8 atoms is formed by successive incorporation of atoms from the tips. At this length, the simulated nanowire broke. Incorporation of each new atom in the chain was observed after a elongation of nearly 1.5 Å and involved a sudden downward jump in bond lengths. This crude model shows that the wire of given length can only be stretched elastically over a limited distance which compares well with the 1 Å in the experiments . The calculated change of nanowire interatomic distance for a total elongation tip-tip distance of $`0.75`$ Å and a chain of 7 atoms was $`0.03`$ Å, instead of nearly $`0.1`$ Å as expected the perfect chain. Using a nanowire strain corrected by this scaling factor, the experimental phonon softening against corrected strain (dot-dashed line in figure 2) is now in much better agreement with theory.

## 4 Conclusion

We calculated the evolution with stretching of the longitudinal phonon frequency of a monatomic gold wire, motivated by recent observations indicating a softening. The softening obtained via density functional theory in a monatomic wire is indeed large, in fact too large. It is compatible with the experimental data only if a non uniform distribution of the strain is introduced, the largest strain being taken up by the tips and tip-wire junctions, and only 40% of the strain in the chain.

This project is sponsored by MIUR COFIN2001, INFM/F, INFM/G, Iniziativa Trasversale Calcolo Parallelo, and by EU through TMR FULPROP, Contract ERBFMRXCT970155.

Fig. 1: Circles and continous line: total energy of the infinite monatomic gold wire obtained by DFT-LDA as a function of the Au-Au distance. Dashed line: total energy of the infinite monatomic gold wire calculated with the semi-empirical potential.

Fig. 2: Frequencies of the longitudinal phonon as a function of the gold-gold distance. Continuous line and circles correspond to theoretical results. Triangles are the experimental data in the first linear part of Fig. 3d of Ref.. The dashed line is a linear interpolation of experimental data. The dot-dashed line represents the experimental frequencies replotted for a stretching rescaled by a factor 0.3 (see text).

Fig. 3: Mechanical model. The total energy of the system is minimized during the stretching of the two tips. a) Starting configuration of the simulation. The two tips are in the nearest position. b) One atom is extracted . c) Strained nanowire 7 atoms long. The lengths of each bond are indicated on the snapshot. d) After elongation of $`0.75`$ Å of the 7 atoms wire, one supplementary atom is extracted. At this moment, the evolution of the bonds shows a mean deviation of $`0.03`$ ÅṪhe wire broke in this simulation before extraction of the 9th atom.


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# Gamma Ray Bursts from delayed collapse of neutron stars to quark matter stars

## 1 Introduction

The discovery of a transient (13 s) absorption feature in the prompt emission of the $`40`$ s Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) of July 5, 1999 (GRB990705) (Amati et al., 2000) and the evidence of emission features in the afterglow of several GRBs (Piro et al., 1999; Yoshida et al., 1999; Piro et al., 2000; Antonelli et al., 2000; Reeves et al., 2002) have stimulated the interpretation of these characteristics in the context of the fireball model of GRBs. Amati et al. (2000) attribute the transient absorption feature of GRB990705 (energy released $`10^{53}`$ erg assuming isotropy) to a redshifted K edge of Iron contained in an environment not far from the GRB site ($`0.1`$ pc) and crossed by the GRB emission. They estimate an Iron abundance typical of a supernova (SN) environment ($`A_{\mathrm{Fe}}75`$) and a time delay of about 10 years between the SN explosion and the GRB event. Lazzati et al. (2001) give a different interpretation of the absorption feature, in terms of a redshifted resonance scattering feature of H–like Iron (transition 1s–2p, $`E_{\mathrm{rest}}=6.927`$ keV) in an inhomogeneous high–velocity outflow, but invoke a Iron rich environment as well, due to a preceding SN explosion, even if a shorter time delay ($`1`$ yr) between SN and GRB is inferred. A SN explosion preceding the GRB event is also inferred for explaining the properties of the emission features in the X–ray afterglow spectrum of GRB000214 (Antonelli et al., 2000) and GRB991216 (Piro et al., 2000). In the latter case it cannot be excluded that the SN explosion occured days or weeks before the GRB (Rees & Mészáros, 2000). Reeves et al. (2002), to explain the multiple emission features observed in the afterglow spectrum of GRB011211 (time duration of $`270`$ s, isotropic gamma–ray energy of $`5\times 10^{52}`$ erg), invoke a SN explosion preceding the GRB event by $`4`$ days (in the isotropic limit, a minimum of 10 hrs). Even if other interpretations for the afterglow emission lines are possible which do not involve a previous SN explosion (e.g., (Rees & Mészáros, 2000; Mészáros & Rees, 2001)), this explosion seems to be the most likely way to explain the transient absorption line observed from GRB990705 (Böttcher et al., 2002). In conclusion, the previous observations suggest that, at least for a certain number of GRBs, a SN explosion happened before the GRB, with a time interval between the two events ranging from a few hours to a few years. In this context, an attractive scenario is that described by the supranova model (Vietri & Stella, 1998) for GRBs. In this model, the GRB is the result of the collapse to a black hole (BH) of a supramassive fast rotating neutron star (NS), as it loses angular momentum. According to this model the NS is produced in the SN explosion preceding the GRB event. The initial barionic mass $`M_B`$ of the NS is assumed to be above the maximum baryonic mass for non-rotating configurations. However, as also noticed by Böttcher et al. (2002), on the basis of realistic calculations of collapsing NS (Fryer & Woosley, 1998), in these collapses too much baryonic material is ejected and thus the energy output is expected to be too small to produce GRBs. Even if the introduction of magnetic fields or beaming could overcome this limitation, in any case, the GRB duration from a NS collapse should be very short ($`1`$ s), much shorter than that observed from GRB990705.

In this Letter, we propose an alternative model to explain the existence of GRBs associated with previous SN explosions. In this model, unlike the supranova model, the NS collapse to BH is replaced by the conversion from a metastable, purely hadronic star (neutron star) into a more compact star in which deconfined quark matter (QM) is present. This possibility has already been discussed in the literature (Cheng & Dai, 1996; Bombaci & Datta, 2000; Wang et al., 2000; Ouyed et al., 2002). The new and crucial idea we introduce here, is the metastability of the purely hadronic star due to the existence of a non-vanishing surface tension at the interface separating hadronic matter from quark matter. The mean-life time of the metastable NS can then be connected to the delay between the supernova explosion and the GRB. As we shall see, in our model we can easily obtain a burst lasting tens seconds, in agreement with the observations. The order of magnitude of the energy released is also the appropriate one.

## 2 Quark Matter nucleation in compact stars

Recently various possibilities have been discussed in the literature to get compact stars in which matter is, partially or totally, in a state of deconfined quarks (see e.g. Glendenning (2000); Heiselberg & Hjorth-Jensen (2000); Drago & Lavagno (2001)). Concerning the stellar quark content, it is possible to have three different classes of compact stars: a) purely hadronic stars (HS), in which no fraction of QM is present; b) hybrid stars (HyS), in which only at the center of the star QM is present either as a mixed phase of deconfined quarks and hadrons or as a pure phase; c)quark stars (QS), in which the surface of the star is made of matter having a large density, of the order of nuclear matter saturation density or larger, and the bulk of the star is made of deconfined QM. The sizeable amount of observational data collected by the new generations of X-ray satellites, has provided a growing body of evidence for the existence of very compact stars, which could be HyS or QS (Bombaci, 1997; Cheng et al., 1998; Li et al., 1999a, b; Xu, 2002; Drake et al., 2002).

In our scenario, we consider a purely HS whose central density (pressure) is increasing due to spin-down or due to mass accretion (e.g., from fallback of ejected material in the SN explosion). As the central density approaches the deconfinement critical density, a virtual drop of quark matter can be formed in the central region of the star. The fluctuations of a spherical droplet of quark matter having a radius $`R`$ are regulated by a potential energy of the form (Lifshitz & Kagan, 1972)

$$U(R)=\frac{4}{3}\pi R^3n_q(\mu _q\mu _h)+4\pi \sigma R^2+8\pi \gamma R$$
(1)
where $`n_q`$ is the quark baryon density, $`\mu _h`$ and $`\mu _q`$ are the hadronic and quark chemical potentials at a fixed pressure $`P`$, and $`\sigma `$ is the surface tension for the surface separating quarks from hadrons. Finally, the term containing $`\gamma `$ is the so called curvature energy. The value of the surface tension $`\sigma `$ is poorly known, and typical values used in the literature range from 10 to 50 MeV/fm2 (Heiselberg et al., 1993; Iida & Sato, 1998). Following the work of Iida & Sato (1998), we have assumed that the term with $`\sigma `$ takes into account in an effective way also the curvature energy. The term with $`\gamma `$ is discussed e.g. by Masden (1993), while other more complicated terms, connected with the Coulomb energy, are discussed in the literature (Heiselberg et al., 1993; Iida & Sato, 1998). We have neglected them in our analysis since they do not dramatically modify both the nucleation time and the energy associated with the transition into the stable quark matter configuration.

If the temperature is low enough, the process of formation of a bubble having a critical radius proceeds through quantum tunnelling and it can be computed using a semiclassical approximation. The procedure is rather straightforward. First one computes, using the semiclassical (WKB) approximation, the ground state energy $`E_0`$ and the oscillation frequency $`\nu _0`$ of the virtual QM drop in the potential well $`U(R)`$. Then it is possible to calculate in a relativistic frame the probability of tunneling as (Iida & Sato, 1998):

$$p_0=\mathrm{exp}[\frac{A(E_0)}{\mathrm{}}]$$
(2)
where

$$A(E)=2_R_{}^{R_+}𝑑R\sqrt{[2M(R)+EU(R)][U(R)E]}.$$
(3)
Here $`R_\pm `$ are the classical turning points and

$$M(R)=4\pi \rho _h(1\frac{n_q}{n_h})^2R^3,$$
(4)
$`\rho _h`$ being the hadronic energy density (here and in the following we adopt the so-called “natural units”, in which $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$). $`n_h`$ and $`n_q`$ are the baryonic densities at a same and given pressure in the hadronic and quark phase, respectively. The nucleation time is then equal to

$$\tau =(\nu _0p_0N_c)^1,$$
(5)
where $`N_c`$ is the number of centers of droplet formation in the star, and it is of the order of $`10^{48}`$ (Iida & Sato, 1998).

## 3 Results

The typical mass-radius relations for the three types of stars we are discussing can be found e.g. in Fig. 3 of Drago & Lavagno (2001), where a relativistic non-linear Walecka-type model (Glendenning & Moszkowski, 1991) has been used to describe the hadronic phase. As it appears, stars containing QM (either HyS or QS) are more compact than purely HS. In particular QS can have much smaller radii then HS when they have a small mass. In our scenario a metastable HS having a mass of, e.g., 1.3 $`M_{}`$ and a radius of $`13`$ km can collapse into an HyS having a radius of $`10.5`$ km or into a QS with radius $`9`$ km (with respect to the results of Fig. 3 of Drago & Lavagno (2001), here we use an equation of state (EOS) which includes hyperonic degrees of freedom). The nature of the stable configuration reached after the stellar conversion (i.e. an HyS or a QS) will depend on the parameters of the quark phase EOS.

The time needed to form a critical droplet of deconfined quark matter can be calculated for different values of the stellar central pressure $`P_c`$ (which enters in the expression of the energy barrier in eq. (1)) and it can be plotted as a function of the gravitational mass $`M_{\mathrm{HS}}`$ of the HS corresponding to that given value of central pressure. The results of our calculations for a specific EOS of hadronic matter (the GM3 model with hyperons of Glendenning & Moszkowski (1991)) are reported in Fig. 1, where each curve refers to a different value of the bag constant $`B`$. If we assume, for example, $`B^{1/4}=170`$ MeV (which corresponds to $`B=109`$ MeV/fm3) and the initial mass of the HS to be $`M_{HS}=1.32M_{}`$, we find that the “life time” for this star is about $`10^{12}`$ years. As the star accretes a small amount of matter, the consequential increase of the central pressure lead to a huge reduction of the nucleation time, and, as a result, to a dramatic reduction of the HS life time. For our HS with initial mass of $`1.32M_{}`$ the accretion of about $`0.01M_{}`$ reduces the star life time to a few years. We would like to stress that in our model the delay between the SN explosion and the GRB is regulated by the mass accretion rate, rather then by the mass and the spinning of the metastable star itself. Since the mass accretion rate is generally larger during the first days after the SN explosion, a delay of a few days will be rather typical in our scenario. However, longer delays are also possible if the material ejected during the SN explosion has a small fallback.

In the model we are presenting, the GRB is due to the cooling of the justly formed HyS or QS via neutrino-antineutrino emission (and maybe also via emission of axion-like particles, see below). The subsequent neutrino-antineutrino annihilation generates the GRB. In our scenario the duration of the prompt emission of the GRB is therefore regulated by two mechanisms: 1) the time needed for the conversion of the HS into a HyS or QS, once a critical-size droplet is formed and 2) the cooling time of the justly formed HyS or QS. Concerning the time needed for the conversion into QM of at least a fraction of the star, the seminal work by Olinto (1987) has been reconsidered by Horvath & Benvenuto (1988). The conclusion of this latter work is that the stellar conversion is a very fast process, having a duration much shorter than 1s. On the other hand, the neutrino trapping time, which provides the cooling time of a compact object, is of the order of a few ten seconds (Prakash et al., 1997), and it gives the typical duration of the GRB in our model. In Table 1 we give the measured duration and the estimated electromagnetic energy (assuming isotropic emission) of the GRBs associated with Fe emission or absorption lines. All bursts last at least 10 s. According to our model the firsts few ten seconds correspond to a prompt $`\gamma `$-rays emission, while the subsequent emission should be interpreted as the beginning of the afterglow. Actually it has been found that at least the second half of the prompt emission of long bursts is likely due to afterglow (Frontera et al., 2000). We would like to remark however that we are not suggesting that all the GRBs should be explained in our model. In particular long and energetic bursts could be originated e.g. by collapsars (MacFadyen & Woosley, 1999). On the other hand, the variety of GRB durations could be explained within the QS formation scenario itself making use of the “unstable photon decay” mechanism proposed by Ouyed & Sannino (2002).

Next we consider the total energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ released in the transition from a metastable HS (with hyperonic degrees of freedom) to HyS or QS (which final state is reached in this transition depends on the details of the QM EOS and in particular on the value of the bag constant). The energy released is calculated as the difference between the gravitational mass of the metastable HS and that of the final stable HyS (or QS) having the same baryonic mass (Bombaci & Datta, 2000). In Table 2 we report the energy released for various values of the bag constant $`B`$ and of the surface tension $`\sigma `$. Notice that the transition will take place when the nucleation time will be reduced to a value of the order years, due e.g. to mass accretion on the HS (recall the exponential dependence of the nucleation time on the mass of the HS, as shown in Fig. 1). Therefore the total energy released in the collapse will be always of the same order of magnitude, once the parameters of the model have been fixed. As shown in Table 2, the released energy is in the range $`(35)\times 10^{52}`$ ergs for all the sensible choices of the EOS parameters. The “critical mass” $`M_{\mathrm{cr}}`$ of a metastable HS having a lifetime $`\tau =1`$ yr is in the range $`(0.91.4)M_{}`$. When the mass of the HS reaches a value near $`M_{\mathrm{cr}}`$, the conversion process takes place. It is worth mentioning that the energy released in the conversion can be larger if a diquark condensate forms inside QM, see e.g. Hong et al. (2001).

To generate a strong GRB, an efficient mechanism to transfer the energy released in the collapse into an electron-photon plasma is needed. In an earlier work (Fryer & Woosley, 1998) it was this difficulty that hampered the possibility to connect GRBs and the hadronic-quark matter phase transition in compact stars. Only more recently it was noticed (Salmonson & Wilson, 1999) that near the surface of a compact stellar object, due to general relativity effects, the efficiency of the neutrino-antineutrino annihilation into $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs is strongly enhanced with respect to the Newtonion case. The efficiency of the conversion of neutrinos in $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs could be as high as 10$`\%`$. In the computation of the energy associated with the final GRB we must take into account the possibility of a moderate anisotropy of the electron motion, due to the presence of the magnetic field of the star, which will in turn generate a moderate anisotropy of the burst emission 111Dramatic effects of a time-dependent magnetic field have been discussed e.g. by Kluzniak & Ruderman (1998).. Other anisotropies in the GRB emission could be generated by the rotation of the star which could affect the efficiency of the neutrino-antineutrino annihilation due to general relativity effects. On the basis of these considerations, the energy deposited in the burst could be sufficient to explain the isotropic energy of the GRBs listed in Table 1. We must also recall that more efficient ways to generate photons and/or $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs have been proposed in the literature, based on the decay of axion-like particles (Berezhiani & Drago, 2000). This mechanism would have an extremely high efficiency and would transfer most of the energy produced in the collapse into GRB electromagnetic energy.

There are various specific signatures of the mechanism we are suggesting. First, two classes of stars having similar masses but rather different radii should exist: a) pure (metastable) HS, with radii in the range 12–20 km, as is the case of the compact star 1E 1207.4-5209, assuming $`M=1.4M_{}`$ (Sanwal et al., 2002), and b) HyS or QS with radii in the range 6–8 km (Bombaci, 1997; Li et al., 1999a, b; Drake et al., 2002). Second, all the GRBs generated by the present mechanism should have approximately the same isotropic energy and a duration of at least 10 s.

## 4 Conclusions

We propose the following origin for at least some of the GRBs having a duration of tens of seconds. They can be associated with the transition from a metastable HS to a more compact HyS or a QS. The time delay between the supernova explosion originating the metastable HS and the GRB is regulated by the process of matter accretion on the HS. While most of the stellar objects obtained by a SN explosion will possibly have a mass larger than $`M_{\mathrm{cr}}`$ and will therefore directly stabilize as HyS or QS at the moment of the SN explosion, in a few cases the mass of the protoneutron star will be low enough not to allow the immediate production of QM inside the star. Only when the star will acquire enough mass, the process of QM formation could take place. Due to the surface tension between the hadronic matter and the QM the star will become metastable. The later collapse into a stable HyS or QS will generate a powerfull GRB. It can be interesting to notice that, in order to have a not too small value for $`M_{\mathrm{cr}}`$, a relatively large value for the bag constant $`B`$ has to be choosen, $`B^{1/4}`$ 170 MeV, which turns out to be the prefered value in many hadronic physics calculations (see e.g. (Steffens et al., 1995)). In this situation the final state is an HyS and not a QS.

It is a pleasure to thank Elena Pian and Luciano Rezzolla for very useful discussions.


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# References

Spectral signature of cosmological infall

of gas around the first quasars

School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, ISRAEL

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA; on sabbatical leave from the Astronomy Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Recent observations have shown that, only a billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was already lit up by bright quasars1  fuelled by the infall of gas onto supermassive black holes. The masses of these early black holes are inferred from their luminosities to be $`>10^9`$ solar masses ($`M_{}`$), which is a difficult theoretical challenge to explain. Like nearby quasars, the early objects could have formed in the central cores of massive host galaxies. The formation of these hosts could be explained if, like local large galaxies, they were assembled gravitationally inside massive ($`>10^{12}M_{}`$) halos of dark matter2 . There has hitherto been no observational evidence for the presence of these massive hosts or their surrounding halos. Here we show that the cosmic gas surrounding each halo must respond to its strong gravitational pull, where absorption by the infalling hydrogen produces a distinct spectral signature. That signature can be seen in recent data3 ,4 .

We model the effect of resonant Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption by infalling gas on the quasar light (Figure 1). For each quasar we consider the history of the formation of its host halo from an initial positive overdensity of dark matter. For the initial surrounding density profile at high redshift we adopt the typical profile expected around the dense region that collapses to form the halo5 . This profile as well as the approximation of a spherical geometry are particularly satisfactory for the very rare and massive halos under consideration. We calculate gas infall down to the radius of the accretion shock, and neglect any Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption due to the post-shock gas. The hot ($`10^7`$K) post-shock gas should be fully-ionized by collisions. Part of it is expected to subsequently cool and collapse onto the galactic disk, but Compton heating by the quasar should keep the virialized gas hotter than $`10^6`$K. Even if a thin cold shell of shocked gas remains, it will not change the basic pattern produced by infalling gas since the post-shock gas no longer has a high infall velocity.

In order to predict the Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption around a quasar we must estimate the mass of its host halo. A tight correlation has been measured in local galaxies between the mass of the central black hole and the bulge velocity dispersion6 ,7 . This relation also fits all existing data on the luminosity function of high-redshift quasars within a simple model8  in which quasar emission is assumed to be triggered by mergers during hierarchical galaxy formation. We use the best-fit6 ,7 ,8  relation, in which the black hole mass in units of $`10^8M_{}`$ ($`M_8`$) is related to the circular velocity at the halo boundary in units of 300 km s-1 ($`V_{300}`$) by $`M_8=1.5(V_{300})^5`$. For the typical quasar continuum spectrum, we adopt a power-law shape of $`F_\nu \nu ^{0.44}`$ in the rest-frame range 1190–5000Å based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) composite spectrum9 , and $`F_\nu \nu ^{1.57}`$ at 500–1190Å using the composite quasar spectrum from the Hubble Space Telescope10 . Based on observations in soft X-rays11 , we extend this power-law towards short wavelengths.

We assume that the brightest quasars shine at their Eddington luminosity, and we note that for the SDSS composite spectrum9 , the total luminosity above 1190Å equals 1.6 times the total continuum luminosity at 1190–5000Å. Thus, ionizing photons stream out of the quasar’s galactic host at the rate $`\dot{N}=1.04\times 10^{56}M_8`$ s-1. We infer the black hole mass using the observed continuum at 1350Å, with the conversion $`F_\nu =1.74\times 10^{30}M_8`$ erg s-1 Hz-1. Given that helium is doubly-ionized by the quasar, the frequency-averaged photoionization cross-section of hydrogen is for our template spectrum $`\overline{\sigma }_H=2.3\times 10^{18}`$ cm2. The double ionization of helium increases the recombination rate due to the extra electrons, and also produces a characteristic gas temperature of $`1.5\times 10^4`$ K in regions that had already been reionized by a softer ionizing background12 .

Only a limited number of published spectra are currently available for a clear test of our predictions. First, only the brightest quasars, which reside in the most massive halos, produce strong infall over a large surrounding region. The infalling gas density scales as $`(1+z)^3`$ and the shock radius scales as $`(1+z)^1`$, so that the absorption optical depth (see below) scales roughly as $`(1+z)^4`$ and the absorption feature is much weaker at low redshift. Even at high redshifts, measuring the detailed Ly$`\alpha `$ line profile is possible only in a high resolution spectrum with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio.

Figure 2 shows two particularly high-quality spectra and compares them with our model predictions. Both spectra show our predicted double-peak pattern and disagree with the single-peaked profile predicted by previous models that ignored infall. In particular, models that assume a pure Hubble flow firmly predict no absorption at all at positive velocities and only a gradual decline in the transmitted flux toward negative velocities. This slow decline is due to the fact that in these models the gas closest to the quasar produces no absorption since it is fully ionized by the strong ionizing intensity of the quasar. More distant gas recedes along with the universal expansion and absorbs only at negative velocities. Our model, in contrast, firmly predicts a sharp flux cutoff located at a positive velocity. This flux drop corresponds to absorption by gas just outside the accretion shock, and the positive velocity of the cutoff corresponds to the infall velocity. The strong absorption caused by this gas despite exposure to the ionizing flux from the quasar is due to the high density of the infalling gas. This gas is expected to be $`10`$–30 times denser than the cosmic mean after having fallen toward the quasar host halo over the history of its formation.

The infall velocity is proportional to the halo circular velocity and thus2  to $`M^{1/3}(1+z)^{3/2}`$, in terms of the halo mass $`M`$ and the redshift $`z`$. The actual physical distance of the accretion shock in the model is 86 kpc and 80 kpc for the quasars at $`z=4.795`$ and $`z=6.28`$, respectively. Our model with infall also fits approximately the secondary peak that is observed on the blue side of the main peak (i.e., at lower velocity). This blue peak corresponds closely to the point of weakest absorption by the infalling gas, although the profile of the intrinsic quasar emission also affects somewhat the precise location of this peak. In this region we do not expect to fit the flux profile in full detail; our model averages over all lines of sight and possible quasar positions, but observable random fluctuations around our predicted mean are expected in each specific spectrum.

However, once we average over the density fluctuations, the prediction of a second peak rather than a smooth fall-off is generic and insensitive to the detailed model assumptions. At a distance $`R`$ from the quasar the resonant optical depth depends on $`\rho ^2R^2`$, where $`\rho `$ is the density including infall; one factor of $`\rho `$ comes from the total gas density, the second comes from the H 1 fraction which increases with $`\rho `$ due to recombinations, and the $`R`$-dependence results from the $`R^2`$ decline of the ionizing intensity of the quasar. Thus, a second peak should appear as long as infall produces a density profile falling off faster than $`1/R`$ (our model predicts $`R^{3/2}`$) before asymptoting to the cosmic mean value of unity. We note that in our model the position of the blue peak corresponds to absorption by gas at $`R=0.45`$ Mpc ($`z=4.795`$) or 0.41 Mpc ($`z=6.28`$).

Even in each particular spectrum, the more distant region where the flux drops toward zero can be modelled much more robustly. In particular, significant flux is observed at $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=2000`$ km s-1 ($`z=4.795`$) and $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=3000`$ km s-1 ($`z=6.28`$), respectively. These relatively distant regions are only weakly affected by infall and the observed positions translate to a distance from the quasar of 3.8 Mpc ($`z=4.795`$) or 4.2 Mpc ($`z=6.28`$). In models that do not include a clump distribution, the optical depth at these positions is $`3`$, which means that the observed flux requires an intrinsic unabsorbed flux that is 20 times greater. This is clearly impossible regardless of any uncertainties about the intrinsic line shape and the quasar continuum level. To explain the observed flux, the ionizing intensity of the quasar as determined by our template spectrum from the observed continuum would have to be too low by a factor $`>2`$. However, our full model accounts for the fact that part of the cosmic gas falls into dense sheets and filaments and leaves the rest with a density below the cosmic mean. The resonant Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption is made up of the separate contributions of gas elements at a variety of overdensities, and since gas in low-density regions absorbs very weakly, clumping actually increases the mean transmission. Thus, our model naturally accounts for the flux observed far from the quasar, with no change required in the quasar spectrum.

Our conclusions are insensitive to the question of whether the H 2 region of the highest redshift quasar is surrounded by a region of neutral hydrogen (due to the fact that the universe had not been fully reionized by $`z=6.28`$13 ) or not14 ; a distant neutral region would only add on the IGM damping wing15  which produces a smooth, gradual suppression that should not alter the basic double-peak pattern. We note that the quasar may possess a velocity offset relative to Hubble flow due, for example, to a violent galactic merger that had originally activated the quasar. However, the close fit that we find between the predicted accretion shock position and the observed flux drop is evidence against the presence of a large velocity offset in the two quasars we have considered. We note as well that if the observed absorption pattern were due to dense gas clouds within the galaxy (for example, in the region feeding the central black hole), then the absorbing gas would be expected to contain heavy elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. This gas would then be expected to absorb other emission lines of the quasar in addition to Ly$`\alpha `$ . Such associated absorption is absent in the $`z=4.795`$ quasar which has several emission lines with well measured profiles3 , suggesting that the absorbing gas has a near-primordial composition as expected for intergalactic gas.

Our models provide the first direct evidence that two characteristic properties of quasars at low redshift are also applicable to bright quasars in the early universe. These properties include the quasar spectral template, which determines the ionizing intensity of the quasar, and the relation between black hole mass and halo velocity dispersion, which we have used to determine the host halo mass. Both observed spectra show a blue peak of about $`75\%`$ of the height of the red (positive velocity) peak, and this is roughly matched by the models. However, if we were to increase the ionizing intensity by an order of magnitude then we would predict a blue peak at least of equal height to the other peak. If, instead, we decreased the ionizing intensity by an order of magnitude then the resulting blue peak would be under $`50\%`$ of the height of the red peak and the transmitted flux would decrease to zero toward negative velocities much faster than is observed. Similarly, if we varied the assumed halo mass by more than an order of magnitude then the resulting absorption profile in each quasar would disagree with the data. High-redshift quasars could in principle be much fainter intrinsically than they appear, if they are magnified by gravitational lensing16 ; our limits on the ionizing intensity, however, suggest that the two quasars we have modelled cannot be magnified by a factor $`10`$.

We can also estimate from the data the total gas infall rates into these massive galaxies. The positions of the accretion shocks imply in our models infall velocities of 400–550 km s-1 and shock radii of 80–90 kpc. Since gas at this radius is expected to have a density of $`20`$ times the cosmic mean density5 , we obtain accretion rates of $`1300M_{}`$ yr-1 ($`z=4.795`$) and $`2900M_{}`$ yr-1 ($`z=6.28`$), respectively. At these rates, the host galaxies of these two quasars could have been assembled in 2–3$`\times 10^8`$ yr, consistent with the $`9\times 10^8`$ yr age of the universe at $`z=6.28`$. Future comparison of our model to the averageLy$`\alpha `$ absorption profile of a statistical sample of bright, early quasars with similar luminosities and redshifts should allow us to fit the details of the absorption spectrum and refine our quantitative conclusions.

Acknowledgments The authors thank Ed Turner and Hagai Netzer for helpful discussions, and are grateful for the hospitality of the Institute for Advanced Study where this work was completed. RB acknowledges the support of an Alon Fellowship at Tel Aviv University and of the Israel Science Foundation. AL acknowledges support from the Institute for Advanced Study and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. This work was also supported by the National Science Foundation.

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to R.B. (email: barkana@wise.tau.ac.il) or A.L. (email: loeb@ias.edu).


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# Discovery of the heavily obscured supernova 2002cv

## 1 Introduction

The AZT-24 telescope of the Campo Imperatore Observatory 111see http://www.mporzio.astro.it /cimperatore/WWW/ (a cooperation among Rome, Teramo and Pulkovo Observatories) is mainly used for photometric studies of variable sources at near infrared (NIR) wavelengths. During the follow-up of the supernova 2002bo (Cacella et al. iauc7847 (2002)), discovered on 2002 March 9 in the spiral galaxy NGC3190, a new source appeared $`28\mathrm{}`$ to the North and $`10\mathrm{}`$ to the West of the galactic nucleus (Larionov et al. iauc7901 (2002)) at $`10^h18^m03\stackrel{s}{.}68`$ and $`+21^{}50\mathrm{}06\stackrel{}{.}2`$ (J2000). Our discovery images of this supernova, called SN 2002cv, are presented in Fig. 1.

A more detailed analysis of the images obtained during the days preceding May 13, that is the discovery date, has shown that the outburst became visible between May 6 and May 9, though at the limit of detectivity, thus preventing us from a prompt detection of the new supernova. The maximum in our NIR light curves was observed between the 20th and the 22nd of May ($`J=14.77\pm 0.05`$ on $`MJD52414.5\pm 0.5`$, $`K=13.92\pm 0.07`$ on $`MJD52416.8\pm 0.5`$).

As soon as the object was discovered, a simultaneous follow-up was started at optical wavelengths using the Schmidt telescope of the Campo Imperatore Observatory and the TNT telescope of the Teramo Observatory.

Since our first discovery IAU Circular and the preparation of this text, 4 additional IAU Circulars were published about SN 2002cv. In the first of them, Li (iauc7903 (2002)) reports the failed localization of SN 2002cv using the KAIT telescope222see http://astro.berkeley.edu/$``$bait/kait.html that observed NGC3190 at optical wavelengths ($`B`$, $`V`$, $`R`$ and $`I`$) both before and after the discovery. In the second Meikle and Mattila (iauc7911 (2002)) provide a preliminary classification of the supernova as Type-Ia by means of the UKIRT telescope NIR spectroscopy; this classification is confirmed in the fourth Circular by Filippenko et al. (iauc7917 (2002)).

## 2 Instrumentation

The observations at NIR wavelengths were obtained by using the 1.1m telescope and the SWIRCAM camera (D’Alessio et al. spie2000a (2000)) at the Campo Imperatore Observatory (AQ-ITALY) located 2150 m a.s.l. SWIRCAM is based on a Rockwell PICNIC array having $`256\times 256`$ pixels with a size of $`40\mu \mathrm{m}`$, that corresponds to 1.04″ on the sky. Standard broad band filters ($`J`$, $`H`$, $`K`$ and $`Ks`$) are available as well as some narrow band filters and low resolution grisms ($`R270`$) for $`IJ`$ and $`HK`$ spectroscopic observations.

The $`60/90/180\mathrm{cm}`$ Schmidt telescope at Campo Imperatore was used for optical follow-up. It is equipped with an optical CCD camera (ROSI) using a $`2048\times 2048`$ pixels, back illuminated, thinned array from Marconi Ltd. (Pedichini et al. spie2000b (2000)) featuring 1.5″ per pixel on the sky. Johnson broad band optical filters are available via a filter jukebox especially designed for Schmidt telescopes focal station.

The TNT is an F/14 Ritchey-Chrétien $`72\mathrm{cm}`$ telescope located at the Teramo Observatory at about 300 meters a.s.l., equipped with Tektronic TK512 CB1-1 front illuminated $`512\times 512`$ pixels CCD camera and standard Johnson filters .

## 3 Observations and Results

At NIR wavelengths, during the first 20 days of observations we were able to acquire detailed light curves in $`J`$, $`H`$ and $`K`$ bands with very good signal-to-noise ratio (error bars are shown on Fig. 2). At the same time $`V`$, $`R`$ and $`I`$ band images were obtained both from the Schmidt and TNT telescopes.

It was immediately clear that SN 2002cv was heavily obscured since it could not be detected in $`V`$-band images which reach the 22nd magnitude on the sky and the 20th on the galaxy disk (Fig. 1). This fact is supported by the existence of a strong dust lane passing across the SN location which is measured from IR images.

NIR images were obtained by 6 on-source ditherings with a 10″ radius, as well as by side sky images. Both were processed using the Preprocess package (Di Paola ppr (2000)). The sky images were combined using 2-D median composition to eliminate stars. The resulting sky frame was subtracted from each target image before flat-fielding and co-adding the dithered images. Because of the difficulties caused by the galactic disk gradient just through the SN image, we decided to perform plain aperture photometry providing galaxy subtraction. Galaxy images without the SN are available from images acquired before the SN 2002cv outburst, during the SN 2002bo follow-up. The error estimates are derived from the composition of the statistical errors on the supernova and the standards measurements.

At optical wavelengths the Schmidt telescope images were also dithered on a larger circle (5′). Only for $`I`$-band images it was necessary to calculate a sky image on the basis of the same target images, just to subtract the fringes pattern. In any case all the images were flat-fielded and co-added before proceeding with profile fitting photometry.

Unfortunately at optical wavelengths we have not a library image as deep as those we obtained after SN 2002cv discovery. This implies that the galaxy subtraction technique cannot be applied and the accuracy of the photometry is affected by the uncertainty in galaxy background contribution. This contribution has been locally approximated by a second degree surface fitted on the region surrounding the SN. The Landolt standards were used for field photometric calibration.

Each TNT image was reduced by using standard bias subtraction and flat-field normalization techniques. The photometric measurements were performed by adopting a point-spread function (PSF) fitting with the ROMAFOT package implemented in the MIDAS software. In order to derive more accurate relative photometry of the supernova with respect to two comparison stars located in the same field, we have properly accounted for the host galaxy luminosity profile. This was done during the fitting procedure by adopting a tilted plane approximation for the diffuse background emission. The calibration to the standard system was performed by using two nearby standard stars from the Landolt catalogue.

All the available values are reported in the Fig. 2 light curves (a further analisys will be published in a forthcoming paper). From the plot it is clearly visible that SN 2002cv was discovered while its brightness was still increasing, about 11 days before the IR maximum. According to Meikle and Mattila (iauc7911 (2002)) and Filippenko et al. (iauc7917 (2002)) SN 2002cv is a Type-Ia. If this classification will be confirmed, these observations will represent the earliest NIR measurements available of such type of supernovae.

## 4 Discussion

It appears clearly from the near-infrared light curves and V-band non-detection that supernova 2002cv is heavily obscured. It is possible to evaluate the reddening basing on available measurements and on the assumption it is a Type-Ia supernova. We employ average optical–IR light curves from Nugent, Kim and Perlmutter (NKP (2002)) and standard galactic dust extinction law (Rieke & Lebofsky rieke (1985)).

From Fig. 2 we use MMT and Nickel Telescope data coupled with our NIR simultaneous observations to obtain $`IK`$ and $`RK`$ colour indexes ($`R19^\mathrm{m}`$ from MMT observations on May 15). The resultant colour excesses correspond to values of $`A_\mathrm{V}`$ in the range $`7\stackrel{m}{.}4`$ to $`8\stackrel{m}{.}3`$, while $`V`$ band non-detection at $`20^\mathrm{m}`$ level sets a consistent lower limit of $`A_\mathrm{V}7\stackrel{m}{.}0`$. Another estimate of the extinction may be derived from the SN absolute magnitude at maximum. Since from our observations the $`J`$-band maximum is better defined than others, we can obtain an estimate of $`A_\mathrm{J}`$ using the SN apparent magnitude, the typical absolute magnitude of Type Ia supernovae in the $`J`$-band from Meikle (meikle (2000)) and the distance modulus (DM) for the galaxy. DM can be estimated both from NGC3190 redshift ($`z=0.00424`$, see Heraudeau & Simien heraudeau (1998)) and from Tully-Fisher method (see Tully tully (1988)): the two values are respectively $`31.46\pm 0.2`$ and $`31.76`$. In the following we will then use $`31.6\pm 0.3`$. Then:

$$A_\mathrm{J}=m_\mathrm{J}M_\mathrm{J}DM=14.8+19.031.6=2.2\pm 0.3.$$

The accuracy depends mostly on the absolute magnitude and on the DM uncertainty. Using $`A_\mathrm{J}`$, the $`A_\mathrm{V}`$ value is obtained from the extinction law:

$$A_\mathrm{V}=A_\mathrm{J}/0.282=7.8\pm 1.0$$

and confirms the previous estimates.

At a lower accuracy level, $`A_\mathrm{V}`$ can be estimated also using $`H`$ and $`K`$ bands maxima. In these cases the results are $`A_\mathrm{V}=7.7\pm 2.3`$ and $`A_\mathrm{V}=10.0\pm 3.6`$ respectively.

Definitely we estimate $`A_\mathrm{V}=7.9\pm 0.9`$, thus SN 2002cv is really the most reddened supernova ever observed.

If the complete light curves will support the hypothesis of SN 2002cv to be overluminous supernova as suggested by its affinity with SN 1991T (Li iauc7903 (2002), Filippenko iauc7917 (2002)), then it strengthens the Howell (howell (2001)) correlation between the host galaxy morphological type (NGC3190 is classified as a SA(s)a late type galaxy) and the supernova type-Ia luminosity.

We note that the observing of two supernovae simultaneously in the same galaxy is supposed to be a very rare event according to the actual supernova-rate estimates. This fact and the fact that this object and SN 2001db (see Maiolino et al. maiolino (2002)) are invisible to most of the currently working supernova search programs, seem to suggest that those supernova-rates need to be significantly revised.

## 5 Conclusions

1. We present preliminary light curves of the supernova 2002cv we have discovered in NGC3190 galaxy.
2. The supernova outburst appeared above magnitude $`J=18`$ between the 6th and 9th of May, and reached its maximum on May 20, making 2002cv the earliest supernova Ia observed at NIR wavelengths.
3. The color index $`VK6`$ magnitudes makes this supernova the most reddened ever observed.

###### Acknowledgements.

A.A. and V.L. are thankful to collegues from Roma and Teramo Observatories for their kind hospitality during their observations at Campo Imperatore.