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# Detections of Ro-Vibrational H2 Emission from the Disks of T Tauri Stars

## 1 Introduction

The study of circumstellar disks around young stars may provide insight into how and when planets form. Theoretical models suggest different mechanisms and timescales for planet formation. The core accretion model requires that a rocky core of $``$ 10M aggregate before substantial gaseous accretion can form a Jupiter-like gas giant. This theory predicts that gas giants will form a few AU or more from the star due to the enormously greater mass of solids available beyond the snow line. A time period of roughly 107 yr is predicted for giant planet formation to occur through runaway accretion in a greater than minimum mass solar nebula (Lissauer, 1993; Pollack et al., 1996). A second though less thoroughly investigated model, which may require a time period as brief as 103 yr for the formation of gas giant planets, proposes that such planets may form as a consequence of gravitational instabilities in disks (Boss, 2000).

Typically, astronomers have resorted to emission from trace molecules and dust for insight into the physical conditions and masses of gas in circumstellar disks. Once these tracers disappear, the disks appear to have been removed from the system. Two decades of such observations have shown that young stellar objects (YSOs) appear to be surrounded by thick envelopes composed of dust and gas that evolve into circumstellar disks on the order of 106 yr Strom et al. (1995). The absence of thermal dust emission, as measured through millimeter and infrared continuum excesses, as well as the non-detection of CO line emission towards most T Tauri stars (TTS) over the ages of 3-5 Myr old, suggests that the disks become depleted in gas and dust grains rather quickly. Two viable explanations may account for these observations: in one model, when the disk becomes undetectable it no longer exists, while in the second the disk is present but difficult to detect. According to the first of the these scenarios, circumstellar material has been dissipated through one or more of several processes: photo-evaporation, accretion onto the star, tidal stripping by nearby stars, outflows, or strong stellar winds (Hollenbach et al., 2000). The second scenario, which describes the evolution of a circumstellar disk into a planetary system according to the core accretion theory of planet formation, suggests that larger structures (i.e., planetesimals) could have formed through accretion, collecting both solids and some gases like CO, reducing the emitting surface area of the dust and pushing the emission from both dust grains and gaseous CO below detectable levels.

In order to know whether the disks are dispersed or accretionally evolved, we must find a method to observe the part of the disk that does not disappear quickly during accretion. Since the bulk of the gaseous component of the disk, hydrogen and helium gas, will be the last to be collected into protoplanets, assuming that it avoids being removed through the various processes listed above, the H and He should remain in the disk and in the gas phase even after the dust and gaseous CO has become undetectable. Therefore, we need to study the H2 gas directly.

H2, at the low temperatures typically found in circumstellar environments, predominantly populates the ground vibrational level and only low rotational excitation levels and remains difficult to stimulate due to its lack of a dipole moment. In the small, inner regions of disks where temperatures may be high enough to excite H2 gas into the first vibrational state such that 2.12183 $`\mu `$m emission might be possible, densities often are too high to permit detectable levels of H2 line emission. Therefore, the bulk of the disk material has remained nearly impossible to detect directly. Assuming that most of the gas in these environments maintains a temperature much less than 1000 K, few molecules will be excited into the first vibrational state; thus, the flux of thermally excited line emission from H2 at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m will be extremely low and consequently impossible to detect. In the case of T Tau, the detected emission from shocked H2 traces approximately 10-7 M (Herbst et al., 1996), a mere fraction of the total mass in the system (Weintraub et al. 1989a, ; Weintraub et al. 1989b, ; Weintraub et al., 1992).

Pure rotational H2 line emission found in the mid-infrared at 17 and 28 $`\mu `$m corresponds to excitation temperatures on the order of $``$100 K. These lines therefore should act as tracers of the bulk of the unshocked gas which resides in the circumstellar disks. Of these two lines, only the 17 $`\mu `$m line can be successfully observed from ground based telescopes; however, Thi et al. (1999,2001a,b) reported the detection of emission from H2 at 17 and 28 $`\mu `$m using a low spatial and spectral resolution mid-infrared spectrometer on the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) towards GG Tau, more evolved sources with Vega-type debris disks, and Herbig Ae/Be stars. However, in much more sensitive, higher spatial and spectral resolution mid-infrared spectra obtained by Richter et al. (2002), centered on the 17 $`\mu `$m H2 emission line, no emission was observed towards GG Tau, HD 163296, and AB Aur. The Richter et al. results not only did not confirm the detections made toward these stars, but also call into question other ISO detections.

We have taken a different approach. Motivated by models predicting that X-rays produced by TTS may be sufficient to ionize a small fraction of the gas and indirectly stimulate observable near-infrared H2 emission in circumstellar environments through collisions between H2 molecules and nonthermal electrons (Gredel & Dalgarno, 1995; Maloney et al., 1996; Tine et al., 1997), we have begun a study of TTS searching for near-infrared H2 emission. We reported our initial detections of quiescent H2 emission in the near-infrared towards TW Hya (Weintraub et al., 2000), an X-ray bright classical TTS (cTTS), and DoAr 21 (Bary et al., 2002), an X-ray bright weak-lined TTS (wTTS). We previously have suggested that the most plausible explanation for the stimulation of the H2 emission from these sources is the X-ray ionization process. However, preliminary results from our modeling of UV and X-ray photons originating from the source and incident on the disk at varying angles (Bary, in prep) suggest that UV radiation from the source may be an equally likely stimulus for the observed emission. Therefore, these results indicate that gaseous disks of H2 surrounding other TTS possessing substantial X-ray and UV fluxes could be detected at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m using high-resolution, near-infrared spectroscopy.

In this paper, we present the first results of a high-resolution, near-infrared spectroscopic survey of cTTS and wTTS in the Taurus-Auriga and $`\rho `$ Ophiuchus star forming regions. We report new detections of H2 towards two sources: GG Tau A and LkCa 15. We use the new data and our previously reported detections of H2 emission toward TW Hya and DoAr 21 to estimate disk masses for these four stars.

## 2 Observations

We obtained high-resolution (R $``$ 60,000), near-infrared spectra of selected TTS (Table 1) in Taurus-Auriga and $`\rho `$ Ophiuchus on 1999 December 26-29, and 2000 June 20-23, UT, using the Phoenix spectrometer (Hinkle et al., 1998) on NOAO’s 4-m telescope atop Kitt Peak. 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 }.`$8 (4 pixel) wide, north-south oriented slit, resulting in instrumental spatial and velocity resolutions of 0$`^{\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.

Integration times for our program stars, with K magnitudes 5.9 $``$ K $``$ 9.6 (Table 1), ranged from 3600 s to 7200 s. Nightly observations were obtained of an A0V star, either Vega or HD 2315, for telluric calibration, with on-source integration times of 600 sec. 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 spectra were extracted from columns of the array covering the region from 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$7 east to 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$7 west of each source for total beam widths of 1$`^{\prime \prime }.`$4, beyond which no emission was detected. Spectra were then divided by the continuum to produce normalized spectra and ratioed with that of a star with a featureless spectrum in this spectral region in order to remove telluric absorption features from the spectra of the program stars. SU Aur, a program star classified as an X-ray bright G2III wTTS produced a high signal to noise ratio, featureless spectrum and therefore, also was utilized as a telluric calibrator.

## 3 Results

We detected line emission very nearly at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m from two cTTS, GG Tau A and LkCa 15 and, as reported previously Bary et al. (2002), the wTTS DoAr 21 and the cTTS TW Hya Weintraub et al. (2000)111Note that LkCa 15 had been classified as a wTTS (with an H$`\alpha `$ EW of 13 Å) in the Herbig Bell Catalog; however, Wolk & Walter (1996) measured Wλ (H$`\alpha `$) = 21.9 Å, leading some authors to reclassify this star as a cTTS.. Full spectra for all our target stars obtained with Phoenix are presented in Figure 1. Most of the absorption features in these spectra are telluric. As best as could be done given tens-of-minutes timescale fluctuations in atmospheric conditions, the spectra presented in Figure 2 have been corrected for telluric absorption features, extracted from the total spectra presented in Fig. 1 and shifted in velocity using previously measured values of Vlsr (Skrutskie et al., 1993; Kamazaki et al., 2001), placing the spectra in the rest frames of the stars. In no cases in which H2 emission was observed was any emission detected in the spectra beyond 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$7 from the central positions of the star. The central wavelengths of the emission lines were determined by fitting a Gaussian to the emission features. In each case, the central wavelength of the observed emission line matches the rest wavelength of the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m v=1$``$0 S(1) transition of H2 to within errors and the line is narrow ($`<`$ 14 km s-1) yet spectrally resolved ($`>`$ 9 km s-1). Therefore, we conclude that the observed emission is from gaseous H2 molecules within $``$ 100 AU of the stars. The central velocities of the observed H2 reservoirs are neither red-shifted nor blue-shifted with respect to the stars and therefore experience no net line-of-sight motion. H2 equivalent widths and line strengths for all four stars now detected in the H2 line, corrected for extinction, are presented in Table 1, along with 3-$`\sigma `$ upper limits for the line strengths of the non-detections. Ak was determined using previously reported values for the visual extinction (Table 5) and taking Ak/Av = 0.1 Becklin et al. (1978).

Several of our sources, notably V836 Tau, V819 Tau, and IP Tau show possible emission peaks at wavelengths just shortward of 2.122 $`\mu `$m. The low signal to noise levels of these stars’ spectra, however, preclude drawing any positive conclusions about these features in these data. Two absorption features centered at 2.11699 $`\mu `$m and 2.12137 $`\mu `$m remain after the telluric corrections were made. The line at 2.12137 $`\mu `$m labeled ‘Al’ is indicated in Figure 2. The line at 2.11699 can be seen in many of the Fig. 1 spectra, in most cases slightly red-shifted to $``$ 2.117 $`\mu `$m. We have identified these lines as photospheric absorption features produced by Al (Wallace & Hinkle, 1996). Each of the stars with observed H2 emission have both of these photospheric features, as do many of the sources not detected in H2 emission; however, four of our sources do not. The strength of these absorption features decreases toward earlier spectral types and disappears entirely for the F and G type stars in our sample (Table 1) in agreement with the Wallace & Hinkle (1996) data.

### 3.1 The Location of the Emitting H2 Gas

The spectrum of LkCa 15 is presented in Figure 2. The double-peaked H2 emission line profile for LkCa 15 is consistent with the double-peaked CO(J=2$``$1) and HCO+ emission profiles reported by Duvert et al. (2000). The presence of blue-shifted and red-shifted emission peaks for each of these emission features, including the H2, is indicative of gas revolving in a circumstellar disk (Beckwith & Sargent, 1993; Mannings & Sargent, 1997). The peak-to-peak velocity separation for the H2 is resolved at $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$``$ 10 $`\pm `$ 1.5 km s-1, which is considerably larger than the peak-to-peak separation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$``$ 2 km s-1 found from both the CO and HCO+ spectra. For a K5V star with a disk inclination angle of 34°$`\pm `$ 10° as determined by Duvert et al., the H2 emission would be produced at radial distances of between 10 and 30 AU while the CO emission should arise from molecular gas located $``$ 600 AU from the source. The combination of the CO and H2 data indicate that the near-infrared H2 emission is sampling a different reservoir of gas than is the CO(J=2$``$1) emission and that the H2 is from regions of the circumstellar disk in which gas and ice giant planets might form. In addition, the mechanism responsible for exciting the H2 apparently is most efficient in doing so for gas at these intermediate distances from LkCa 15. As all four stars sharing H2 emission have similar H2 line widths, fluxes and relative velocities, it is plausible that the excitation mechanism is similar in all four stellar environments. We suggest, therefore, that the H2 emission emerges from the 10-30 AU region around each of these four stars. Only LkCa 15, however, has a disk inclined to our line of sight such that we can distinguish the double-peaked profile (TW Hya, in fact, is known to be viewed nearly pole-on). The spatial resolution for the spectra centered on each source probes emission from the disks out to radii of $``$ 30 AU for TW Hya and $``$ 110 AU for LkCa 15, GG Tau, and DoAr 21. Thus, the spatial resolution in our data is consistent with our spectroscopically derived conclusion about the location of the emitting H2.

In concluding that the gas is located in the regions 10-30 AU from the sources, we are ruling out the possibility that the emission arises in extended halos surrounding the sources. The fact that in all four cases the H2 line emission is spatially unresolved is inconsistent with emission from a halo that should be many hundreds or thousands of AU in extent. In addition, since the H2 emission lines appear to be spectrally resolved, the velocity line width of the gas also is inconsistent with a halo interpretation for the observed emission, for which we would expect line profiles with FWHM of only $``$ 1-2 km s-1. Line widths of this size would be unresolved at R $``$ 60,000.

## 4 H2 Mass Calculation

While detection of H2 is important in establishing the continued presence of gas in the evolving circumstellar environment of TTS, a determination of the exact amount of H2 gas still present has further reaching implications concerning the timescale for planet formation and/or the dispersal of the disk. Making such a calculation requires understanding in what environments and under what conditions the H2 molecule can be excited into the v = 1, J = 3 state and what excitation mechanism(s) is active in this environment. The v=1$``$0 S(1) transition energy corresponds to a temperature of $``$ 5000 K above the ground state. Therefore, excitation temperatures between 1000 K and 2000 K typically are required in all types of astrophysical environments in order for H2 gas to populate the first vibrationally excited level and produce detectable levels of emission at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m (Tanaka et al., 1989).

According to the disk model discussed in Glassgold et al. (2000), which includes X-ray heating, the outer surface layers of the disk may be heated to temperatures of 1000 K out to several AU, while the midplane remains cool at $``$ 100 K. Hollenbach et al. (2000) show that temperatures of 1000 K produced by incident UV radiation are high enough to create photoevaporative flows that deplete disks on million year timescales. Increasing the temperature to 2000 K would enhance the photoevaporation process, destroy the disks on even shorter timescales, and make detections of the emission we observed extremely rare or unlikely. We note that both possible stimulation mechanisms, UV fluorescence and X-ray ionization, are non-thermal processes. Consequently, the gas producing the emission may not be in Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE).

Proceeding under the assumption that the source is optically thin, we can determine the mass of H2 emitting v=1$``$0 S(1) line emission from the measured line flux, independent of temperature, from

$$\mathrm{M}(\mathrm{H}_2)_{_{\mathrm{v}=10\mathrm{S}(1)}}=1.76\times 10^{20}\frac{4\pi F_{if}D^2}{E_{if}A_{if}},$$
(1)
where $`F_{if}`$ is the line flux measured in ergs s-1 cm-2 (column 9, Table 1), $`E_{if}`$ is the energy and $`A_{if}`$ is the Einstein coefficient for the transition, $`D`$ is the distance in pc to the source, and M(H2) is given in units of M. For the v=1$``$0 S(1) transition, $`E_{10}`$ = 9.338 $`\times `$ 10-13 ergs and $`A_{10}`$ = 2.09 $`\times `$ 10-7 s-1 (Turner et al., 1977). The derived masses are given in column 2 of Table 2.

The next steps are to determine the population fraction $`\chi _{v,J}(T)`$, where v and J are the vibrational and rotational number for the upper level of the transition, respectively, for H2 in the excited state located in the upper atmosphere of the disk in the 10-30 AU emission volume, and the mass fraction of the disk represented by this fractional part of the disk. One approach is to assume LTE in which case the total mass in the emitting volume of the disk would be

$$\frac{\mathrm{M}(\mathrm{H}_2)_{_{\mathrm{v}=10\mathrm{S}(1)}}}{\chi _{v,J}(T)}.$$
(2)
Under LTE conditions at 1500 K, $`\chi _{v,J}(T)`$ = 5.44 $`\times `$ 10-3 and the masses range from 6.4$`\times `$10-10 M for TW Hya to 8.1$`\times `$10-8 M for DoAr 21 (column 3, Table 2). If the gas is not in LTE or is at a lower temperature, then $`\chi _{v,J}`$ would be smaller and the masses larger. As is evident from these calculations, the masses estimated from ‘hot’ H2 are only small fractions of the total disk masses, based on comparisons with disk gas masses estimated from observations of warm H2, cool dust, and cold CO (see Table 2). Since the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m observations of hot H2 do not likely sample gas present in the inner disk (r$``$10 AU), the dense midplane of the disk at 10-30 AU, nor the disk outside of 30 AU, what is needed is a (temperature independent) scaling factor, f, such that

$$\mathrm{M}_{disk}=f\mathrm{M}(\mathrm{H}_2)_{_{\mathrm{v}=10\mathrm{S}(1)}}.$$
(3)
Just as canonical scaling factors have been determined for the mass ratio between dust and gas and for the number ratio of CO and H2, we have calculated f from equation (3) and the “line emission” masses in Table 2 for our four stars to determine whether such a scale factor relating hot H2 to total disk mass can be derived by using previous estimates of Mdisk in Table 2. Scale factors derived from masses implied by several different tracers of the total disk mass are listed in Table 3. The scale factors all fall within the range from $``$107 to $``$109 and suggest that we are detecting as little as one billionth of the total disk mass.

The differences in these mass estimates, and therefore the range in f values, most likely arise because the various observations are sensitive to different reservoirs of material, with the (sub)mm dust continuum consistently giving the largest f values and the CO and warm H2 smaller f values. The emission from H2 at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m must arise from hot gas, at T $`>`$ 1000 K, which necessarily must reside near the surface of the disk and within a couple of tens of AU of the star (see §3.1 and §5), while the millimeter continuum and CO observations trace cooler gas at distances of 100s of AU. Given the location and density of the hot gas in comparison to the cool gas, it is reasonable to conclude that the tracers of the cooler gas will uncover much more mass than the hot gas tracer.

If the hot gas is stimulated by non-thermal processes such as X-ray ionization and/or UV fluorescence, as we argue is likely in §5, the near-infrared H2 line emission will be most sensitive to gas in the inner few tens of AU of the disk. In the case of DoAr 21 for which previous non-detections of cold dust indicated that this star was largely void of circumstellar material, our detection of quiescent H2 emission at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m suggests that a gaseous component in the inner few tens of AU of the disk persists even after the cold gas tracers stop producing detectable levels of emission (Bary et al., 2002). Therefore, we conclude that high-resolution, near-infrared spectroscopy of H2 provides a means to detect evolved, low mass disks which may have no other observable signatures at this point in their evolution.

## 5 Identifying the Stimulation Mechanism

H2 emission in the near-infrared has been observed in a variety of stellar environments such as planetary nebulae, Herbig-Haro objects, and galaxies. For example, H2 emission observed from planetary nebulae and HH objects is attributed to heating of molecular gas as it encounters shock fronts from outflows associated with the source. UV radiation produced in accretion flows or emitted by the sub-dwarf embedded in a PN can likewise stimulate H2 molecules located near these sources to fluoresce. Near-infrared H2 emission also has been observed towards a Seyfert galaxy, with X-rays suggested as the mechanism responsible for the excitation of the molecules (Tine et al., 1997). Similarly, several authors have proposed that gas densities and X-ray luminosities in the environments of TTS also are sufficient to produce H2 emission in the near-infrared, with the strongest transition being the v=1$``$0 S(1) ro-vibration line (Gredel & Dalgarno, 1995; Maloney et al., 1996; Tine et al., 1997).

With the high-resolution velocity information from our data placing the velocity of the gas at the systemic velocities of the stars with only a very small dispersion, and the spatial resolution of and spectral information from our data placing the H2 emission within a few tens of AU of the respective stars, we conclude that the observed emission is unlikely to originate from shock excitation in a YSO outflow, for which typical outflow velocities are at least many tens of km s-1 and the shocked gas is most often observed at great distances from the stars. The FWHM velocity distribution for the observed emission lines, $``$ 9 to 14 km s-1, is larger than the thermal broadening expected from H2, but not large enough to be produced by gas shocked by a jet, even for a jet aligned perpendicular to the line of sight with a small opening angle. For example, assuming an extremely small opening angle of $``$ 4°, as has been observed for the outflow observed towards RW Aur (Dougados et al., 2000), and a launch velocity of $``$ 200 km s-1, the H2 line would be broadened by $``$ 10 km s-1. Even a tiny inclination angle of the jet toward our line of sight would increase the breadth of the line tremendously by creating blue- and red-shifted jets of gas. Since all of our sources’ emission lines have similarly small FWHM, it is statistically reasonable to argue that most of these sources do not possess jets aligned nearly perpendicular to the line of sight, although conceivably one of the sources might be so aligned. Therefore, we conclude that shock excitation in a stellar outflow is not likely to be the stimulating mechanism for most and probably not any of these sources.

Since the observed line widths appear to rule out shocks in outflowing gas, the velocity dispersion in our line must be due only to thermal and/or orbital broadening, leaving ultraviolet pumping and X-ray ionization as candidate mechanisms for stimulating the H2 emission. Ultraviolet pumping and X-ray ionization would serve to enhance the population of H2 molecules in excited states in the circumstellar disks of young stars via photon excitation (UV) or secondary interactions between H2 molecules and ions produced by X-ray ionization events. Using the disk model found in Glassgold et al. (2000) and cross-sections for H2 molecules as “seen” by UV photons and X-rays determined from Yan et al. (1998) we have calculated a set of optical depth surfaces in the disk, in the range 0.2 $``$ $`\tau `$ $``$ 2, to which photons of different energies and angles incident upon the inner disk would penetrate. The optical depth surfaces determined by our model assume a disk composed entirely of H2 molecules with incident photons originating at an inner radius of 0.35 AU. Although this model is simple, the results from our preliminary simulations (Bary, in prep) suggest that both UV and X-ray photons could be responsible for the observed 2.1218 $`\mu `$m emission. Because the interaction cross-sections for the X-rays are much smaller than those for UV photons, X-rays will penetrate through a greater optical column than will UV photons. Thus, some X-ray photons will penetrate deeper below the surface layer of the disk than will the UV photons and deposit their energy in regions of the disk in which the number densities are greater than 107 cm-3; such densities are too high to produce the observed H2 emission at radii less than 50 AU. At these densities, excited H2 molecules will be collisionally de-excited. However, a significant fraction of the X-ray photons will be absorbed at the more shallow disk layers where the number density is below 107 cm-3. The fraction of X-ray photons absorbed in regions of greater vs. smaller number density will depend on the exact physical shape (flaring profile) of the disk, the vertical density gradient in the disk, and the place of origin of the X-ray photons (stellar surface or accretion funnels). A majority of UV photons incident upon the surface of the disk at distances between 10 and 30 AU will be absorbed at distances of 5-10 AU above the mid-plane, in a region of the disk where the number densities (104 $``$ $`n`$ $``$ 107 cm-3) are suitable for producing observable H2 emission at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m.

Because both UV and X-ray photons are capable of penetrating to and being absorbed at depths and radii at which the observed line emission likely arises, in the following discussion, we examine both UV fluorescence and X-ray excitation models to determine if the flux of emission observed towards each source can be stimulated by either or both mechanisms.

### 5.1 X-ray Stimulated Emission

We now predict the flux of the v=1$``$0 S(1) line emission using the models of X-ray excitation presented by Maloney et al. (1996). For example, using the ROSAT measured X-ray flux from DoAr 21, we determined the X-ray energy deposition rate per volume element Hx/n to be 3-8 $`\times `$ 10-27 ergs s-1 cm-3 at a distance of 10 AU from the source in a disk and assuming a number density222Note that this density is below the critical density and all of the H2 line flux predicted to be stimulated by the X-rays will be observable. However, even if far less than 50% of the X-rays are absorbed in a less than critically dense region and the predicted line fluxes are cut in half, the X-ray mechanism still proves to be effective at producing most of the observed H2 emission from these sources. of 105 cm-3. For this range in likely values of Hx/n, we can estimate the emergent integrated surface brightness in the 1$``$0 S(1) emission line from Figure 6a of Maloney et al. (1996). Assuming the emission emerges from an annulus in a circumstellar disk stretching from 10 to 30 AU and at a distance of 160 pc, the predicted flux of the 1$``$0 S(1) line lies in the range 2.4 $`\times `$ 10-17 to 2.4 $`\times `$ 10-14 ergs s-1 cm-2 (Table 4). The observed line flux falls within and near the top of this predicted range. Thus, this calculation suggests that the observed emission could be attributed solely to X-ray excitation. Similar results (Table 4) are found using the X-ray fluxes for GG Tau, TW Hya, and using an assumed X-ray flux for LkCa 15.

Thus, for the stars that are sources of X-rays, we have determined that X-rays are capable of stimulating the observed H2 emission at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m. In fact, two of the four sources for which we have detected the quiescent H2 emission, DoAr 21 and TW Hya, are among the X-ray brightest TTS (column 6, Table 1). However, GG Tau is considerably less X-ray luminous, while LkCa 15 was not detected at all by ROSAT. If X-rays are important for stimulating the observed emission, we must understand why these four stars appear so different in observed X-ray emission.

Historically, we know that most wTTS are strong X-ray emitters, with many wTTS having been discovered through extensive X-ray surveys of star forming regions (e.g., Casanova et al. 1995; Neuhäuser et al. 1995). The apparent bimodal distribution of TTS as X-ray sources, in which wTTS were almost always detected and cTTS were much less often detected, led to widespread acceptance that the X-ray emission mechanism was related to the evolution of the star/disk system. According to this scenario, X-ray emission from wTTS is attributed to conservation of angular momentum and “spinning up” of the star as the magnetic field lines decouple from the dissipating circumstellar disk, allowing the forming star to contract (Edwards et al., 1993; Bouvier et al., 1993). With the decrease in rotational period of the source, surface magnetic activity presumably increases. In turn, this process is expected to lead to an increase in coronal heating and the production of detectable levels of X-ray emission. Thus for several years, X-ray emission was thought to distinguish wTTS from cTTS, with observational evidence suggesting that wTTS were, indeed, fast rotators (Choi & Herbst, 1996; Shevchenko & Herbst, 1998) while cTTS rotated more slowly due to disk-locking and therefore lacked the mechanism for X-ray production. With increasing statistics from large X-ray surveys, however, many cTTS also have been found to be generating X-rays. Since X-rays are no longer thought to distinguish cTTS from wTTS (Feigelson & Montmerle, 1999), it is no longer clear what mechanism produces X-rays in the YSO environment. In addition, increasing evidence has called into question the existence of a bimodal rotation period distribution for wTTS and cTTS (Stassun et al., 1999; Rebull et al., 2001), with some authors now suggesting such a distribution applies only to TTS in the mass range of about 0.25-1.0 M Herbst (2002).

In recent work based on Chandra spectra, Kastner et al. (2002) use the inferred plasma temperature distribution and the relative densities of iron, oxygen and neon deduced from high-resolution Chandra X-ray spectroscopy to infer that the bulk of the X-ray emission from TW Hya is generated via mass accretion from its circumstellar disk. If this is correct, and more so if this is a common mechanism for X-ray production, then X-ray bright TTS — including wTTS — would be those still accreting material from their disks. This interpretation is contrary to the common wisdom suggesting X-rays are dominantly from fast rotating wTTS that are no longer accreting material from circumstellar disks and suggests that DoAr 21, despite being a wTTS, not only has H2 in a circumstellar disk, but may still be actively accreting material from a circumstellar disk (Bary et al., 2002).

We suggest that despite the absence of detectable levels of X-ray emission, LkCa 15 could be accreting from a circumstellar disk; however, because its thick disk is oriented nearly along our line of sight, the disk may absorb a significant fraction of the X-ray emission, thereby decreasing the X-ray flux that escapes the circumstellar region to a level that is below detection thresholds. A column of 1021 cm-3 (equivalent to Av $``$ 0.5; Av $``$ 0.64 for LkCa 15 (see Table 5)) is sufficient to decrease the flux from a source with an intrinsic X-ray luminosity of Lx = 3 $`\times `$ 1029 ergs s-1 to a count rate below 0.003 s-1, which is well below the detection threshold of the ROSAT all sky survey. A scenario such as this may explain the observed differences in X-ray fluxes from cTTS and wTTS, since most cTTS are observed to have thicker disks more capable of attenuating the flux of X-rays produced within the inner boundary of the disks.

A star that previously has stood out as a notable exception to the absence of X-ray bright cTTS is TW Hya. TW Hya has been imaged extensively at wavelengths ranging from the optical Krist et al. (2000) and near-infrared Weinberger et al. (2002) through the mm Wilner et al. (2000), and all of these observations indicate the presence of a face-on disk. Therefore, in the case of TW Hya, there is no line-of-sight gas and dust associated with the circumstellar disk of the star to attenuate the X-ray emission from the star.

### 5.2 Ultraviolet Stimulated Emission

In an attempt to determine whether that the UV flux (FUV) is capable of producing the observed H2 line flux, we compare observed and extrapolated values of FUV with those predicted from the models of Black and van Dishoeck (1987). Using the model for UV fluorescence found in Black and van Disheock (1987), the predicted UV flux is given by

$$\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{UV}}=\frac{4\pi \mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{v}=10\mathrm{S}(1)}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{Disk}}\epsilon f_{10}},$$
(4)
where $`\epsilon `$ is the UV absorption efficiency, f1→0 is the fraction of the total infrared flux emitted in the the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m emission line, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{Disk}}`$ is the solid angle of the disk that intercepts the stellar UV flux and F$`_{\mathrm{v}=10\mathrm{S}(1)}`$ is the observed H2 line flux in erg s-1 cm-2. Using the scale height of the disk at a distance of 30 AU from the source, we conservatively estimate $`\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{Disk}}}{4\pi }`$ to be $``$ 0.1 since UV photons are likely to be absorbed at distances above the midplane that are larger than the scale height. The model dependent UV absorption efficiencies and line fractions were chosen from models 12 and 15 from Black and van Dishoeck (1987) to provide a wide range of predicted UV fluxes.

Of the four sources, TW Hya is the only star that has been observed in the wavelength range, 925-1130 Å, which are the wavelengths of interest because only photons with $`\lambda `$ $``$ 1130 Å possess the right energy to produce infrared H2 fluorescent emission. Far Ultraviolet Space Explorer FUSE observations (Herczeg, private communication) show that the uncorrected line and continuum fluxes for TW Hya have nearly the same magnitude when integrated over the wavelengths 925-1130 Å. Using equation (4), we predict a range of 6.6 $`\times `$ 10-12 $``$ FUV $``$ 4.8 $`\times `$ 10-10 erg s-1 cm-2 for the value of UV flux from TW Hya necessary to stimulate the observed H2 line emission. Using the sum of the integrated FUSE continuum flux and the line fluxes (CIII at 977 Å, O VIII at 1032 and 1038 Å) for TW Hya we estimate that the model dependent UV flux is responsible for 1% to 20% of the observed H2 line emission at 2.12183 $`\mu `$m.

For the other sources, we converted the U magnitude for each star to a flux at 3620 Å. Assuming the stars radiate as blackbodies with temperatures indicated by their main-sequence spectral types, we extrapolated the 3620 Å flux to 1000 Å. By comparing the theoretical FUV for TW Hya to the observed value of FUV, we can determine if the extrapolation method accurately predicts the UV continuum flux. For TW Hya, we determined FUV to be about 3 $`\times `$ 10-18 erg s-1 cm-2, about five orders of magnitude less than the level observed by FUSE. We conclude that the extrapolation method for determining FUV is a poor predictor of the stellar UV flux. Therefore, for DoAr 21, LkCa 15, and GG Tau, without FUSE observations we can only surmise that their FUV spectra may be similar to that of TW Hya and, thus, that their actual levels of FUV may be capable of stimulating at least part of the observed 2.12183 $`\mu `$m line emission.

The results of the UV fluorescence model suggest that a significant fraction of the infrared H2 emission may be produced via UV photo-excitation for each star. However, the model is not well constrained. For example, UV emission can be absorbed by circumstellar and interstellar gas, in which case, the UV line and continuum fluxes would be lower limits. Predicting the UV flux necessary to produce the 2.12183 $`\mu `$m line flux is complicated by the narrow range of densities for which the efficiencies and line fractions have been calculated. In addition, Black and van Dishoeck (1987) assume a plane parallel cloud of gas with a constant density; in our case we used 3 $`\times `$ 103 cm-3, while in a realistic circumstellar disk there will be a density gradient with the outer layers of the disk having lower densities and the inner layers of the disk having much higher densities. As shown in Black and van Dishoeck (1987), the efficiencies can be affected greatly by the column and space densities of the gas.

Ultraviolet excesses associated with pre-main-sequence stars normally are attributed to active accretion of disk material onto a forming star. Thus, if X-rays are produced in accretion flows one would expect to find that those same sources show ultraviolet excesses. We have calculated U$``$V color excesses towards the H2 detected sources (Table 5) by dereddening their U and V magnitudes and comparing the observed, dereddened U$``$V colors with standard main-sequence colors (Johnson, 1966). Using the photometry of GG Tau Aa and Ab from Ghez et al. (1997), we determined a value for the excess of each component of the northern binary. TW Hya, DoAr 21, and GG Tau Aa and GG Tau Ab all have significant excesses with \[U$``$V\]excess $`<`$ $``$1.3. LkCa 15 appears to have a smaller, but significant, ultraviolet excess. On this basis we conclude that each of these sources may still be undergoing active accretion and producing excess UV emission that could be responsible for stimulating some of the observed H2 emission.

A closer look at the ultraviolet excesses from TW Hya and LkCa 15 suggests a possible dependence of \[U$``$V\]excess on the inclination angle of the disk. The nearly edge-on disk of LkCa 15 may absorb a significant fraction of the ultraviolet emission produced in the accretion process, just as suggested for the attenuation of its X-ray flux. On the other hand, TW Hya, which has been imaged and shown to be viewed nearly pole-on, produces the largest value of \[U$``$V\]excess of any of these four sources. Based on the shape of the H2 emission line from DoAr 21, we inferred Bary et al. (2002) the orientation of its disk to be more pole-on (i $`>`$ 55°) than that of LkCa 15; such an orientation is consistent with the larger value of \[U$``$V\]excess found for DoAr 21 than for LkCa 15. Due to the complexity of the GG Tau system, with both circumbinary and circumstellar material, we are unable to relate the \[U$``$V\]excess values for these stars to disk orientation in any meaningful manner. While our sample remains small so that we lack the statistical certainty that could prove the existence of a correlation between the strength of \[U$``$V\]excess and disk orientation, such a possible correlation is intriguing and consistent with the data presented.

## 6 Color-Color Diagrams

Near-infrared broad band photometry of YSOs previously has been used to identify sources that are likely candidates for harboring circumstellar disks. In this section, we examine infrared color-color diagrams to determine if there exists a correlation between the infrared excess, the implied presence of a circumstellar disk and the observed H2 emission. J$``$H vs. H$``$K color-color diagrams of YSOs can be used to distinguish sources possessing infrared excesses from main-sequence stars. However, as described by Haisch et al. (2000), JHK observations do not sample long enough wavelengths to allow for unambiguous identification of sources that posses circumstellar disks. Lada et al. (2000) explain that the JHK near-infrared excess depends on the star/disk system (i.e., disk inclination, accretion rate, presence and size of holes in the inner disk) and also may be produced by emission from HII regions and reflection nebulae usually associated with star forming regions. L band observations, however, are much less sensitive to emission from HII regions and scattered light from reflection nebulae and will measure infrared excess emission from circumstellar disks independent of the star/disk system. Therefore, an infrared excess observed using JHKL photometry can be characterized more confidently as being produced by a circumstellar disk. To this end, extensive L band surveys are being conducted to determine disk fractions in many nearby young star clusters (Lada et al., 2000; Haisch et al., 2000; Haisch et al. 2001a, ; Haisch et al. 2001b, ; Kenyon & Gómez, 2001).

Using JHKL observations made by Rydgren et al. (1976), Rucinski & Krautter (1983), Kenyon & Hartmann (1995), Strom et al. (1995), Coulson et al. (1998), and Calvet et al. (2002), we have plotted the TTS in our survey on JHK (Figure 3) and JHKL (Figure 4) color-color diagrams. The solid main-sequence lines included on the diagrams are drawn from standard colors found in Koorneef (1983). With the exception of LkCa 15, none of the sources display unambiguous evidence of an infrared excess based solely upon the JHK observations. However, the JHKL color-color diagram shows clear evidence of infrared excesses associated with GG Tau Aa, GG Tau Ab, LkCa 15, and TW Hya. All four of these have been observed to have other evidence of circumstellar material, either millimeter continuum observations and/or CO line emission. DoAr 21 shows only a marginal hint of a K$``$L excess, as the error bar of its K$``$L color overlaps with the interstellar reddening vector for a K1V star. Therefore, we conclude that DoAr 21 lacks strong evidence of a near-infrared excess, in good agreement with previous non-detections of millimeter continuum observations of this source (André et al., 1990; André & Montmerle, 1994). More accurate K and L band photometry of DoAr 21 will determine its true position on the JHKL diagram and provide a more definitive conclusion as to the presence or absence of an infrared excess.

### 6.1 A Variety of Circumstellar H2 Detections

Several detections of H2 in the vicinity of young stellar objects have been made in recent years. As previously mentioned, ISO observations of Herbig Ae/Be stars and cTTS claim to have detected pure rotational emission from H2 in the vicinity of these stars Thi et al. 2001b . Ratios of the mid-infrared lines give temperatures of the emitting gas to be approximately $``$ 100 K placing the gas in the outer regions of the disk at radii beyond 100 AU. These observations have yet to be confirmed and Richter et al. (2002) have called these interpretations into question. Herczeg et al. (2002) have detected far ultraviolet H2 emission from the cTTS, TW Hya. They interpret this emission as produced by Lyman $`\alpha `$ pumping of H2 molecules located within 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$05, or $``$ 3 AU, of the source. In contrast to the pure rotational emission which may have been observed by ISO, the detections reported by Herczeg et al. (2002), Weintraub et al. (2000), Bary et al. (2002) and herein, represent the only detections of H2 in the inner regions of TTS disks where planet formation may occur.

## 7 Conclusions

We have demonstrated that high-resolution, near-infrared spectroscopy of young stars can provide useful information about circumstellar gas around TTS. The discovery of ro-vibrational emission from quiescent H2 towards GG Tau A and LkCa 15 adds to the increasing number of such observations (Weintraub et al., 2000; Bary et al., 2002). These data suggest that the gaseous component of circumstellar disks persists and may be substantial, even though other tracers of the gas may suggest otherwise. However, limited by the spatial resolution of our data, we have inferred the proximity of the emitting H2 gas to the source from kinematic arguments, while further observations such as high-resolution narrow band images are needed to definitively identify the location of the H2 emission. Spectral observations of other ro-vibrational H2 emission lines are needed in order to determine a gas temperature and help confirm the excitation mechanism for the gas. Observations such as these will lead to a more complete understanding of the emission we have detected and the implications thereof to planet formation.

Special thanks to Tracy L. Huard for his assistance with data reduction techniques and discussions of color-color diagrams. Also, thanks to Phil Maloney, David Hollenbach, Didier Saumon, and Nuria Calvet for insightful discussions. Additional thanks to N. Calvet and Andrew Walsh for providing us with the L band photometry and G. Herczeg for providing us with FUSE continuum and line fluxes for TW Hya prior to publication. We also would like to thank KPNO staff members Hillary Mathis, Doug Williams, and Ken Hinkle for making our observing runs both productive and enjoyable. Thanks to Ginny Nickles for her assistance in making some of the observations reported herein. This work is supported by NASA grant NAG5-8295 to Vanderbilt University.

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# Energy Consumption and Jet Multiplicity from the Leading Log BFKL Evolution

## 1 Introduction

The leading log BFKL formalism  resums large logarithms in QCD processes with two large but different energy scales. In dijet production at hadron colliders the resummation is relevant in the forward region , when $`\widehat{s}|\widehat{t}|`$ with $`\widehat{s}`$ the parton centre of mass energy and $`\widehat{t}`$ the square of the momentum transfer. This process has been promoted as the cleanest case at hadron colliders for studying the BFKL evolution of the dominating $`t`$–channel gluon exchange, since other processes where the BFKL formalism is applicable, for example the DIS structure functions at low $`x`$, are plagued by an interplay between perturbative and non–perturbative effects.

One of the most striking parton–level prediction of the leading log BFKL formalism is an exponential rise in the dijet cross section with increasing rapidity span of the dijets. However, as has been pointed out , this BFKL enhancement may not be visible in the hadronic cross section. This is because the exponential rise of the cross section relies on the emission of gluons from the BFKL evolution of the $`t`$–channel gluon exchange, but the suppression from the parton distribution functions (pdfs) for increasing partonic centre of mass energy $`\widehat{s}`$, at either the Tevatron or LHC, more than compensates for the exponential rise. While this is certainly true for dijet production, which is driven by the steeply falling (in $`x`$) gluon pdf, recent results  suggest that for processes depending instead on the much flatter (in the relevant region) valence quark distributions, the BFKL evolution might indeed lead to an increase in the hadron–level cross section over the LO result.

Since the exponential rise in the cross section as a function of the rapidity span of the dijets cannot therefore be considered a precision BFKL prediction, other signatures of the BFKL evolution have been proposed. In particular, the weakening of the angular correlation of the leading dijets with increasing rapidity span, as predicted by BFKL at the partonic level, is still present after the convolution with the pdfs . This angular decorrelation is a result of the multiple emission of gluons, strong ordered in rapidity but unordered in transverse momentum, resulting from the BFKL evolution. It is also interesting to study the jet multiplicity resulting from the BFKL evolution, since this could be another experimentally verifiable signature of the theory. Such studies have been undertaken previously , but these did not take into account the impact of the BFKL gluon energies on the parton luminosities. In this paper we present a study which does include this effect and thereby conserves overall energy and momentum.

We will report on a study of the jet multiplicity from the BFKL evolution of the $`t`$–channel gluon exchange in dijet production at hadron colliders. We will also examine the energy of the multi–jet events, in order to understand better why the exponential rise of the partonic dijet cross section evidently comes at too big a price in total energy to survive the convolution with the pdfs. Both of these studies are performed using the BFKL Monte Carlo approach of Ref. . The paper is organised as follows: we first briefly review BFKL applied to dijet production and the technique of the BFKL MC in Section 2, before reporting on the results obtained for the total energy of the partonic BFKL events (Section 3). In Section 4 we calculate the jet multiplicity characteristic of BFKL evolution in dijet production, both in the partonic and the hadronic case, and finally we present our conclusions in Section 5.

## 2 Dijet Production at Hadron Colliders

In the high energy limit of $`\widehat{s}|\widehat{t}|0`$, the gluon–gluon scattering cross section to leading order in $`\mathrm{ln}\widehat{s}/|\widehat{t}|`$ but summed to all orders in $`\alpha _s`$ is given by

$$\frac{\text{d}\widehat{\sigma }_{gg}(\mathrm{\Delta }y)}{\text{d}^2𝐩_a\text{d}^2𝐩_b}=\left(\frac{C_A\alpha _s}{p_a^2}\right)f(𝐩_a,𝐩_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)\left(\frac{C_A\alpha _s}{p_b^2}\right),$$
(1)
where $`𝐩_a`$ ($`𝐩_b`$) is the transverse momentum of the most forward (backward) jet, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ is the rapidity difference between them. The function $`f(𝐩_a,𝐩_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$ resums the logarithms in $`\widehat{s}/|\widehat{t}|`$ arising from both virtual corrections to, and rapidity ordered emission from, the $`t`$–channel gluon exchange, and so solves the BFKL equation. Although an analytic form for $`f`$ can be obtained, and the result for the gluon–gluon scattering including the resummation of the BFKL logarithms in Eq. (1) thereby also solved analytically, such an approach will potentially pose a problem when it comes to calculating the hadronic cross section. This is because in order to obtain an analytic solution, the gluons emitted from the BFKL evolution cannot be counted in the contribution to the parton momentum fractions, and therefore the BFKL gluons that lead to the exponential rise in the partonic cross section are emitted at no cost in energy. Although these energy–conserving contributions to the centre of mass energy are formally subleading compared to the contribution from the leading dijets, they can have a huge impact on the parton distribution functions and therefore on the normalisation of the hadronic cross section, since the pdfs (and in particular the gluon pdfs) are decreasing very rapidly in the relevant region. The reformulation of the solution to the BFKL equation in terms of an explicit sum and integration over the emitted gluons and their rapidity ordered phase space was devised to solve this problem. In particular one finds for the solution to the leading log BFKL equation

$`f(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}f^{(n)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y).`$ (2)
where we have set $`𝐪_a=𝐩_a,𝐪_b=𝐩_b`$ and

$`\begin{array}{cc}\hfill f^{(0)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)& =\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b),\hfill \\ \hfill f^{(n1)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)& =\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}\left\{{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \text{d}^2𝐤_i\text{d}y_i_i}\right\}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}𝐤_i),\hfill \\ \hfill _i& ={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\alpha }_s}{\pi k_i^2}}\theta (k_i^2\mu ^2)\theta (y_{i1}y_i)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(𝐪_a+_{j=1}^{i1}𝐤_j)^2}{(𝐪_a+_{j=1}^i𝐤_j)^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_sy_i},\hfill \end{array}`$ (3)
with $`\overline{\alpha }_s=C_A\alpha _s/\pi `$111This is the fixed $`\alpha _s`$ result. The solution for running $`\alpha _s`$ is only slightly more complicated and is given for example in Ref. . In the numerical results that follow we use a fixed coupling with a value of $`\alpha _s(20\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})=0.1635`$. and $`\mu `$ the resolution scale of the Monte Carlo. For small $`\mu `$ the sum in Eq. (2) is only weakly dependent on $`\mu `$. This Monte Carlo formulation has been applied to studies of the dijet production rate and angular decorrelation at large rapidity separation at hadron colliders. One finds that the decrease in parton flux as a result of the increased centre of mass energy when the BFKL radiation is taken into account more than compensates for the BFKL exponential rise in the partonic cross section. The details of this effect obviously depends on the specific shape of the pdfs. In this paper we will therefore first study directly the impact of the BFKL radiation on the centre of mass energy for gluon–gluon scattering.

## 3 Energy Consumption of the BFKL evolution

Using the solution of the BFKL equation in the form of Eqs. (2,3) together with the Monte Carlo implementation of the integrations, we can answer the question of how much energy goes into creating the LL BFKL radiation. When energy and momentum conservation is applied, the parton momentum fractions are given by

$`\begin{array}{cc}\hfill x_a=& {\displaystyle \frac{p_a}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{y_a}+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{k_i}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{y_i}+{\displaystyle \frac{p_b}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{y_b}\hfill \\ \hfill x_b=& {\displaystyle \frac{p_a}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{y_a}+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{k_i}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{y_i}+{\displaystyle \frac{p_b}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{y_b},\hfill \end{array}`$ (4)
with the overall centre of mass energy squared given by $`\widehat{s}=x_ax_bs`$ where $`\sqrt{s}`$ is the energy of the hadron collider.

In Fig. 1 we show the average centre of mass energy squared for dijet production in fixed leading order QCD (green/dotted) and for dijet production in the high–energy limit with BFKL evolution of the $`t`$–channel gluon exchange (red/dashed). The prediction for pure dijet production is indistinguishable in this plot from the ‘standard’ prediction for BFKL evolution, when the BFKL equation is solved analytically and the contribution from the BFKL gluons to the centre of mass energy is neglected.

The contribution from the BFKL radiation to the centre of mass energy is formally subleading compared to the contribution from the leading dijets. Indeed we see in Fig. 1 that asymptotically (which evidently is reached quickly), the two curves have the same slope, even though they are offset by about 1.5 units of rapidity. This means that the kinematic limit of dijet production with BFKL evolution at hadron colliders is reached about 1.5 units of rapidity before an estimate based on the energy of the leading dijets only. We have also indicated the hadronic centre of mass energy squared for the Tevatron ((1.8TeV)2) and the LHC ((14TeV)2). The rapid decrease of the pdfs as the kinematic limit is approached means that the horizontal lines of interest for a given hadron collider lie considerably lower than the lines indicated on the figure. Therefore the effect of including the contribution from the BFKL radiation in the overall energy and momentum conservation is larger than may appear at first glance. When considering the implications on the cross section, it must also be remembered that the BFKL evolution predicts an exponential rise with the rapidity span $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$, i.e. $`\widehat{\sigma }\mathrm{exp}(\lambda \mathrm{\Delta }y)`$. Therefore effectively reducing the available rapidity span has a sizeable impact on the prediction for the cross section.

We can see explicitly why the two curves in Fig. 1 have the same asymptotic slope. As we will see later, the radiation from the BFKL chain is distributed evenly in rapidity along the chain. We can approximate the Bjorken $`x`$’s given by Eq. (4) by assuming that all the $`k_i`$ are equal to $`k`$ and that the $`n`$ BFKL gluons are distributed evenly over the rapidity span $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$, separated by $`\delta y`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Delta }y=(n+1)\delta y`$. The Bjorken $`x`$’s for the $`22+n`$ scattering then become (with $`z=e^{\delta y}`$ and assuming that $`y_0=\mathrm{\Delta }y/2,y_{n+1}=+\mathrm{\Delta }y/2`$ — the centre of mass energy is independent of this assumption)

$`x_a=x_b={\displaystyle \frac{k}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{\mathrm{\Delta }y/2}(1+z+z^2+\mathrm{}+z^n)={\displaystyle \frac{k}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{\mathrm{\Delta }y/2}{\displaystyle \frac{1z^{n+1}}{1z}}.`$ (5)
In the large $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ limit, with $`n\mathrm{}`$ for evenly spaced radiation, we find

$`\widehat{s}k^2e^{\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1e^{\delta y})^2}},`$ (6)
to be compared with the pure dijet prediction $`\widehat{s}k^2e^{\mathrm{\Delta }y}`$, which has the same dependence on $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$. It is radiation from the region of the chain close to the endpoints that contributes most to $`\widehat{s}`$, since the middle part of the chain will give exponentially suppressed contributions to the energy (this is just a refinement of the asymptotic argument for dropping the contribution from the chain altogether). This explains why asymptotically there is only a difference in the normalisation and not the shape of the two curves in Fig. 1. From Eq. (6) we see that the smaller the $`\delta y`$, the bigger the difference in normalisation. Note that a smaller $`\delta y`$ can be achieved by increasing $`\alpha _s`$, thereby increasing the amount of BFKL radiation everywhere, and specifically also in the region close to the endpoints of the BFKL chain.

The observation that there is insufficient energy available at present–day colliders for all the BFKL radiation resummed in the analytic approach to be emitted without penalty motivated the introduction in Ref.  of a ‘reduced effective rapidity separation’, to be used when making phenomenological predictions of BFKL signatures for comparison with data. The idea behind this is to emulate the reduction of phase space for BFKL radiation, dictated by energy and momentum conservation, by reducing the rapidity span $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ that is used in the solution to the BFKL equation.

## 4 Jet Multiplicity of the BFKL Evolution

In this section we will study the jet multiplicity from the leading log BFKL evolution, first for partonic gluon–gluon scattering and then for the full hadronic cross section when proper account is taken of the energy and momentum carried by the BFKL gluons. The parton multiplicity, as predicted from leading log BFKL evolution, is equivalent (up to sub–leading terms) to the result obtained in the CCFM approach, in which colour coherence effects are taken into account . This supports the correspondence between gluons emitted from the BFKL chain and jets appearing in the detector.

### 4.1 Mini–jet Parton Multiplicities

In this section we study the mini–jet multiplicity from the BFKL chain. A mini–jet is here defined as a gluon with transverse momentum $`q_i<\mu _m`$, where $`\mu _m`$ is the maximum allowed transverse momentum of a mini–jet, and the scales of the problem are ordered according to

$`\mu <q_i<\mu _mq_{a,b}.`$ (7)
Recall that $`\mu `$ is the resolution scale of the BFKL MC solution in Eq. (3). Defined in this way, the sum over $`n`$–mini–jet rates with a resolution scale $`\mu `$ and upper scale $`\mu _m`$ should equal the 0–jet rate with a resolution scale of $`\mu _m`$ (up to terms of order $`\mu ^2/\mu _m^2`$). Introducing a cut–off in the transverse momentum integral in the definition of $`f^{(1)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$ in Eq. (3) and denoting the function with constrained integration $`f_c^{(1)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$, we find

$`f_c^{(1)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)=`$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \text{d}^2𝐤_1_0^{\mathrm{\Delta }y}\text{d}y_1\frac{1}{2}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b𝐤_1)}`$ (8)
$`\theta (k_1^2\mu ^2)\theta (\mu _m^2k_1^2){\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\alpha }_s}{\pi k_1^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(𝐪_a)^2}{(𝐪_a+𝐤_1)^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_sy_1}.`$ (9)
If we approximate the term in the square brackets by unity (by virtue of the applied ordering of momenta in (7)) we find that $`f_c^{(1)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$ can be approximated by

$`f_c^{(1)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b)\mathrm{\Delta }y\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _m^2}{\mu ^2}},`$ (10)
where we have set $`\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b𝐤_1)\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b)`$. Similarly, one finds

$`f_c^{(n)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y^n}{n!}}\left(\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _m^2}{\mu ^2}}\right)^n.`$ (11)
Therefore the contribution to the sum $`f(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$ in Eq. (2) with no gluon emission with transverse momentum squared greater than $`\mu _m^2`$ calculated this way is

$`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}f_c^{(n)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b){\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n!}}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }y\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _m^2}{\mu ^2}}\right)^n`$
$`=`$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b)\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }y\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _m^2}{\mu ^2}}\right)`$ (12)
$`=`$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _m^2}{q_a^2}}\right]^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta ^{(2)}(𝐪_a𝐪_b),`$
which we recognise as $`f^{(0)}(𝐪_a,𝐪_b,\mathrm{\Delta }y)`$ evaluated with a resolution scale $`\mu _m`$. This serves as a check of the consistency of the physical picture emerging from the Monte Carlo solution to the BFKL equation.

### 4.2 Partonic Jet Multiplicities

It proves much harder to obtain analytic predictions for multi–jet multiplicities or predictions for the rates of harder mini–jets from the BFKL chain, i.e. with the strong ordering $`\mu _mq_{a,b}`$ constraint relaxed. The results which follow are therefore obtained using the Monte Carlo approach. In all of these calculations we have chosen a resolution scale for the Monte Carlo implementation of Eqs. (2,3) of $`\mu =1`$ GeV and a fixed value for the coupling $`\alpha _s=0.1635`$.

In Fig. 2(a) we plot the contribution to the partonic cross section from different numbers of resolved (i.e. $`k_i>\mu =1`$ GeV) gluons from the BFKL chain for a selection of rapidity spans of the chain. In calculating the partonic cross section (Eq. (1)) we have chosen a cut–off on the minimum transverse momentum of the jets $`a,b`$ of 20 GeV. Such a simple cut–off, in which the threshold is the same for jet $`a`$ and jet $`b`$, is known to cause incomplete cancellations of virtual and real IR divergences in a full NLO QCD calculation , but as was shown in Ref.  this effect is not present in the case of BFKL evolution. This is essentially because that at NLO the transverse momentum of the third gluon is by momentum conservation determined by the two others, and so the collinear (and soft) phase space of the third gluon can be restricted by cuts in the allowed phase space for the two harder jets. However, when more gluons are emitted (e.g. by BFKL evolution) this is no longer true, and the extra gluons can populate the IR regions irrespective of the cuts on the harder jets. We can therefore safely choose just a simple cut–off for our calculation.

The cross section for a given value of the rapidity difference between the leading dijets is given by the integral of the curves in Fig. 2(a). If one were to plot the average number $`n`$ of emitted BFKL gluons as a function of the rapidity span of the BFKL chain, one would find that $`n`$ increases linearly with the rapidity span. This feature will be evident in later plots.

Fig. 2(b) contains the same curves as in (a), but now for harder BFKL gluons with $`k_i>20`$ GeV. These latter curves are obtained by running the Monte Carlo with a resolution scale $`\mu _r=1`$ GeV and then counting how many gluons with $`k_i>20`$ GeV the event contains. These plots are for the partonic cross section, and so these harder gluons from the BFKL chain contribute significantly to the increase in the average centre of mass energy seen in Fig. 1 for BFKL in comparison with the LO prediction.

Fig. 2 also shows that the jet multiplicity varies with the minimum $`k_i`$ in the expected way. This is also seen in Fig. 3, where the $`0`$–, $`1`$–, $`2`$–, $`3`$– and $`4`$–jet cross sections are shown as a function of $`\mu _R`$ for a rapidity span of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y=5`$ and $`p_{\mathrm{min}}=20`$ GeV for the leading dijets. Note that for $`\mu _Rp_{\mathrm{min}}`$ the multijet cross sections are all of similar magnitude (for the relatively small number of jets considered here). Also shown in Fig. 3 is the analytic prediction for the zero jet rate, valid for $`\mu _Rp_{\mathrm{min}}`$, obtained by integrating Eq. (4.1) over $`q_{a,b}`$:

$`\sigma _R={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s^2C_A^2\pi }{2p_{\mathrm{min}}^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu _R^2}{p_{\mathrm{min}}^2}}\right)^{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }y}.`$ (13)
In Fig. 4 we show the average density in rapidity of the gluons emitted from the BFKL chain (not counting the two leading jets) in the case of gluon–gluon scattering for a gluon chain spanning 7 units of rapidity. The two lines on the plot correspond to the average density of resolved BFKL gluons ($`k_i>1`$ GeV) and harder gluons ($`k_i>20`$ GeV). The density of gluon emission along the chain is the observable best suited for illustrating the effects of taking into account the energy of this radiation when calculating the parton momentum fractions for the hadronic cross section. As expected from the analytic approach, the density in rapidity of emitted gluons is (relatively) constant along the chain.

### 4.3 Hadronic Jet Multiplicities

If the contributions from the BFKL gluon radiation to the parton momentum fractions in Eq. (4) are neglected, the parton–level result of an exponential growth (over the LO result) in cross section when BFKL evolution is taken into account obviously carries through to the hadronic cross section. As has been discussed before (see for example Refs. ), this will no longer be the case when energy and momentum conservation is imposed by taking into account the BFKL gluon radiation in evaluating the parton momentum fractions. This is because the dijet cross section is driven by the gluon pdf, which falls off very sharply at medium and high $`x`$. So despite the fact that the contribution of the BFKL gluons to the parton momentum fractions is formally subleading, the numerical impact for dijet production is large and gets magnified by the sharply decreasing gluon pdf (see for example Ref.  for arguments on the error in the normalisation of the result when neglecting the contribution of the BFKL gluons to the parton momentum fraction). The impact on the pdfs counteracts the expected exponential rise in cross section with growing rapidity difference between the leading dijets , and results in an almost no–change situation for the cross section. The fine details obviously depend on the exact shape of the pdfs, but the conclusions do not. In the following we will use the fits to the pdfs of Ref..

The observation that the shape of the differential cross section as a function of rapidity is not expected to change dramatically when including BFKL evolution of the $`t`$–channel gluon has led to the study of other observables such as the azimuthal correlation of the leading dijets, where the dependence on the pdfs is expected to be less pronounced.

Here we will study how energy and momentum conservation influences the associated gluon (i.e. jet) multiplicity for hadronic dijet production at the LHC. If the effect of the energy and momentum conserving constraint was to suppress the emissions of BFKL gluons completely, then BFKL would be irrelevant at such collider energies and fixed–order calculations would be adequate: there simply would not be enough phase space available for the gluon emission resummed through the BFKL equation. In Fig. 5 we plot the average density (in rapidity) of gluons emitted from a BFKL chain with ends fixed at rapidities $`3.5`$ and $`3.5`$ in the case of the hadronic cross section, i.e. with pdfs included. Just as for Fig. 4, we plot the density of both resolved ($`k_i>1`$ GeV) and harder ($`k_i>20`$ GeV) gluons, and we have chosen to plot the results obtained by two choices for evaluating the parton momentum fractions, namely the full version of Eq. (4) and the version where the BFKL gluon contribution is ignored.

Let us start by discussing the two upper curves of Fig. 5, corresponding to the density of resolved gluons. The upper line is obtained by ignoring the BFKL gluon contribution to the parton momentum fractions, and so corresponds to the case where one obtains an exponential increase over the LO cross section. The result for the gluon density is to be compared with the upper line in Fig. 4. We see that, just as expected, the density of gluons is not modified significantly in this case222The small difference compared to Fig. 4 is caused by the fact that the transverse momentum spectrum of the leading dijets is softened after convolution with the pdfs. The softening of the leading dijets results also in a softening of the BFKL radiation.. This is needed in order to maintain the exponential rise in cross section over the LO result. However, when we include the contribution of the BFKL gluons to the parton momentum fraction, the result is changed to the dashed (red) curve, and we see that the density of radiated gluons is reduced, especially at the ends of the chain where the effect on the energy consumption is exponentially enhanced compared to the effect of radiation in the middle of the chain (in this symmetric configuration).

The corresponding curves for harder gluons with $`k_i>20`$ GeV are also plotted in Fig. 5, and we see that in this case the relative effect of conserving energy and momentum is larger, especially at the end points. This is of course because the effect of energy and momentum conservation is most severe for hard radiation near the end points of the chain.

But the most important conclusion to be drawn from Fig. 5 is that the suppression of the BFKL evolution is not as dramatic as suggested by the cancellation of the BFKL rise in the dijet cross section by the pdf suppression. Conservation of energy and momentum still leaves sufficient phase space (at the LHC) to allow for a significant number of BFKL gluons to be emitted, and therefore for the BFKL evolution to be relevant. Therefore one cannot conclude from the predicted lack of rise in the hadronic dijet cross section that BFKL evolution is irrelevant. It is the abundance of BFKL radiation even when applying the full parton momentum fractions that results in sizeable angular decorrelations predicted between dijets at the LHC.

Fig. 5 also supports the idea of introducing an effective reduced rapidity span of the BFKL chain in analytic calculations. The BFKL evolution is obviously most important in a reduced rapidity span, where the BFKL emission (serving as a measure of the importance of BFKL evolution in the presence of energy and momentum conservation) is only slightly reduced compared to the partonic prediction.

It is not clear a priori in which region of rapidities an analytic prediction (ignoring energy and momentum conservation) will be valid, since first “asymptotic” values of the rapidity span have to be reached for the formalism to be valid, but these “asymptotic values” cannot be too large in order for the total energy available at the collider not to restrict too much the phase space available for BFKL gluon emission. In essence, examining this problem is what the construction of the BFKL Monte Carlo approach is all about.

## 5 Conclusions

We have examined the jet multiplicity predicted from BFKL evolution of a $`t`$–channel gluon exchange in dijet production, at both the partonic and hadronic levels, at the LHC. Previous results have shown that the effect of conserving overall energy and momentum at present and future hadron colliders is to introduce a pdf suppression that completely compensates the predicted exponential BFKL rise with rapidity difference between the leading dijets. However, in the present analysis we have shown that there is still predicted to be a significant amount of BFKL radiation, and therefore that BFKL evolution will be relevant for QCD observables less dependent on the parton distribution functions. These include the angular decorrelation of the leading dijets. Furthermore, this multi–jet emission will of course provide a background to multi–jet observables in processes beyond the Standard Model at hadron colliders.

###### Acknowledgments.

We are grateful to Bryan Webber and Gavin Salam for useful discussions.